Limit of Vision

by Linda Nagata

  “And you think the LOVs’ language might be like that?”

  “Could we ever know?” He touched his own embedded LOVs. He brushed his hair back, exposing them fully. “Think with me.”

  Instantly, she pulled away. Her head turned, while her hand rose to hide her third eye. “No.”

  He endured a flood of confusion, of loss. It was a feeling she seemed to share, for she blinked at him in wide-eyed pain. “You were already thinking with me,” he accused.

  Her fist struck the desk. “You knew it was happening!”

  Her anger fed his. “I should have known.”

  “You knew before!”

  She had forgotten his farsights. He saw his chance, and snatched them from her fingers, sliding them on before she could grab them back. The screen was in default mode, its display transparent. “What are you afraid of?” he demanded. “You already made them part of you.”

  She would not face him. “I did not come to play games with you!”

  “Why then?”

  “I wanted to tell you, I found a new mutation.”

  IT WAS already dusk when, with a skewed sense of déj→ vu, Virgil followed Ela into the cool water of an abandoned pond. He peered beneath the dark surface, but he did not see Gabrielle.

  “The family who owned this farm left one week ago,” Ela told him. “A lot of families are leaving. They hear about the globe that slipped like a ghost through the mesh of a fishing net, and they are afraid. Nothing more has happened, but it is seen as a sign of terrible things to come. I’m sorry for it, though it makes life easier for us.”

  After the family left, the shrimp had been harvested and eaten by the Roi Nuoc.

  Ela settled into the water, submerging to her chin so she could reach deep to fetch a globe up from the murk. Virgil stood beside her. He had taken off his shirt, so the water lapped at his bare belly, just above the waistband of his shorts. He leaned forward, watching the scintillating globe grow brighter as it neared the surface, half-expecting to see a face coalesce out of the glow. He was surprised instead by a sense of discovery. It swept over him: the sudden recognition of another. “Can you feel that?” he asked Ela.

  “I … can feel something. Like friendliness. As if it knows me, and is pleased I’m here.”

  “You see it every day, don’t you?” he asked.

  “I saw it only an hour ago.”

  “Then it can tell the difference between us—or at least between our LOVs.” But what could it know of itself? What could it know of the world?

  “Look at it closely,” Ela urged. “It’s one of nine globes in this pond.”

  “Nine?”

  “This is a very prolific pond.”

  Virgil slid deeper into the water, so that it lapped at his shoulders as he crouched facing Ela. He took the globe from her hands, then frowned. It felt different from other globes he’d handled. Slippery? Loose. As if its surface was sloughing off in a tough, dense layer. He rubbed his thumbs over it in a gentle, circular motion. The loose layer moved like skin sliding over bone. Ideas began to germinate in his mind.

  He looked up, to find Ela watching him with raised eyebrows and a teasing grin. “You see what I mean?” she asked as she huddled in the dark water. “It has grown a veil.”

  “A veil? Yes. That’s the right word.”

  The globe was veiled in a membrane of LOVs different from any LOVs Virgil had seen before. They were larger, and their light was more intense.

  Ela said, “All the globes in this pond have veils—and I think I know what it’s for.”

  Virgil took a moment to think this over. “By saying ‘what it’s for’ you’re implying it didn’t get that way by chance.”

  “I don’t think the Hammer’s LOVs moved onto the fiber-optic lines by chance.” Her LOVs sparkled as she spoke, their light reflecting in her eyes. It made her look beautiful and mysterious, as her breath rippled the water’s perfect skin. He held her gaze—too long, evidently, for her expression cooled. She turned her head away so that he could not see her LOVs.

  But in the deepening twilight, blue light shone up from the water. He turned again to the globe in his hands, trying to recapture his train of thought. “You’re right of course,” he said. “The LOVs must have some degree of control over the structure, the organization of the next generation.”

  “And some kind of consciousness,” Ela added stiffly, “to design what they need.”

  He examined the globe, pinching at the dense membrane, lifting it away from the hidden inner surface. “It does start to look that way. So … what do you think the membrane’s for?”

  “Privacy.”

  A smile touched his lips. That had been his thought too.

  Ela’s voice remained cool, clinical. “There are nine globes in this pond. A veil would prevent the signals of one globe from interfering with the cognition of another.”

  “Yes. I think that’s right. The size of each colony is limited, because if they grow too big, they lose coherence. So it’s plausible that two adjacent colonies would interfere with each other. It would make sense to isolate the cognitive part of the globe.”

  “So if the cognitive part is isolated by the veil …” She nodded at the sparkling membrane. “Then what purpose is served by the activity in the veil itself?”

  Virgil crouched in the water, speaking slowly to contain his excitement. “Think about this: If the veil can be seen by other colonies, and it, in turn, can perceive their veils—”

  “Then it could be a language organ.” She nodded, her gaze focused inward. “That’s what you’re thinking. An organ to translate the cognition of nearby colonies.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed.

  Then he heard himself asking, “Why were you angry with me just now?”

  She drew back, rising in the water so that her breasts emerged, draped in the slick wet fabric of her long-sleeved T-shirt. “What are you talking about? I wasn’t—” She stopped the lie. Perhaps she’d felt his disbelief. “It’s not really anger. It’s the way I am.”

  Why? he wondered, though he didn’t ask. Not in words. Did she feel the weight of his question just the same?

  He looked again at the globe. “Can you find another one?”

  She sank back into the water, this time using her toes to boost a second globe from the bottom.

  “Hold them close together,” Virgil said. “Yes. Like that.” He lowered his hand between the two, blocking their exchange of light. Meaning was made in the flickering of individual LOVs.

  Ela asked, “Are you recording their reaction?”

  “Yes. What am I looking for?”

  She thought it over. “To see if they react … to see if they don’t like an interruption.”

  “And to see if they both have similar reactions. Are they speaking the same language?”

  “Could they have different languages?”

  “People do.” It was full dark, and the sky was studded with stars.

  “Then there could be a different language for each globe?” Ela asked. “Or maybe a different language in each pond?”

  Virgil shrugged. “We could encourage one language everywhere, if we spread these LOVs around.”

  Each LOV was a tiny mind, a minute computer, a demon—storing fragments of knowledge. If the LOVs were broken apart and moved, those fragments of knowledge might move with them …

  “Like the no-oct trait?” Ela whispered.

  He nodded, wondering why he was making this suggestion. They should be isolating traits, not mixing them.

  Ela looked amused at his hesitation. “Don’t feel guilty like that. If we don’t spread this trait, the Roi Nuoc will.”

  Even as she spoke, a figure moved on the bank: a preteen boy, one of the kids who watched over this pond. His brow glimmered with LOVs. Virgil faced away from the anonymous child. “I don’t want these globes torn to pieces,” he whispered.

  “There are nine.”

  “Sacrifice
one, then.”

  “It’s not up to me.”

  Virgil sighed. It was up to the Roi Nuoc, of course, but surely they would see the need? They were growing more focused, more resourceful with every hour. Under the tutelage of Mother Tiger their daily studies continued as before, but now, with the LOVs to adjust their mood, tempers were better, and fear was kept at bay, so that learning came faster, and insight blossomed.

  He released the first globe, allowing it to sink back to the bottom. Ela let the second globe drop beside it. “Your ROSA is studying the LOV language, right?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Have you thought to leave your farsights here in the water? So it can observe these globes, and maybe, decode their language faster?”

  Virgil stared at her, stunned by the suggestion. Not because it was a bad idea. It wasn’t. He saw immediately that it might work. But … leave his farsights? The thought left him hollow. The Heroes were stolen, but they were his now. How was he supposed to get by without them? “I-it’s a great idea, Ela. It really is. But I—”

  He froze as Mother Tiger stirred, its powerful feline image like a silvery watermark rippling across the landscape. He watched the ROSA stretch and purr, conveying in its half-seen motion a sense of immense mass, immense span. “Let this be done,” it whispered.

  Virgil heard this command and felt afraid. Mother Tiger did not behave as a ROSA was supposed to behave. A ROSA should not have the motivation to seize on original ideas all on its own. It was not an entity to launch a plan of action and expect its human wards to follow. But somewhere in its complex architecture, spread over many servers, Mother Tiger had diverged from the ROSA norm.

  As Virgil considered these things it also occurred to him that he had never heard anyone directly contradict Ky Xuan Nguyen’s peculiar ROSA. Nevertheless: “I can’t leave my farsights.”

  Ela touched his shoulder, a shy, fleeting moth-touch before her hand retreated. “It doesn’t have to be your farsights,” she said. “Farsights are only a window, an interface. It could be any farsights coded to let your ROSA look through.”

  “Roi Nuoc farsights,” the boy on the bank suggested. He waded into the pond, meeting Ela halfway and handing her a Mystery-brand.

  Virgil took it from her. “I’ll have to program it,” he said. “Find out the codes, and then message Iris—”

  Mother Tiger’s purr sounded like soft laughter. “Iris is part of me now. Access is already achieved.”

  chapter

  24

  VIRGIL WAS WET, walking in the dark with his T-shirt wadded in his hand and mud squishing under his sandals. Not paying attention to much. Lost in thought? Summer watched the vid and wondered.

  When Virgil noticed Nash standing motionless on the edge of the path to the medical tent, he flinched and drew back, a startled look on his face. His farsights cast a green gleam over his eyes. His embedded LOVs sparkled. “Nash?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”

  Summer scowled. It was one of those questions guilty children ask: Is something wrong?

  A mask of innocence.

  When Nash spoke, his voice was soft and slow, freighted with anger. “How long have you known about the no-oct mutation?”

  Virgil drifted back. Not far. Half a step. Framed in the green glow of his farsights, his eyes held steady. “A few days. No more.”

  “Did you engineer it?” Nash demanded.

  “No. How could I? You’ve seen the medical tent, Nash. There’s no equipment in there for bioengineering.”

  “Then someone did it for you.”

  Virgil shook his head. “I wish it were so.” He didn’t look frightened. He didn’t look worried. Just … resigned. But resigned to what?, Summer wondered. To the fact of this unpleasant confrontation? To the telling of lies? Or to being misunderstood … ? “The truth, Nash, is that the LOVs are evolving just as they did on the Hammer—but this isn’t evolution as we know it. There’s some element of design involved. They’re redesigning each new generation.”

  “You’re saying they’re out of control!”

  “Yes. That’s it. Exactly.”

  SUMMER tapped her fingers, sending the vid back to the beginning, that moment when Nash first sighted Virgil returning along the path. She watched it again. Nash watched it with her, through his own farsights, sixty-five hundred miles away. “Daniel predicted this,” she said softly. It was night in the Mekong, but bright morning in Honolulu.

  Nash said, “Tell that to Virgil. His attitude scares me more than any no-oct mutation. He’s not afraid anymore. Not at all. Not of me. Not of the IBC. Not of what he’s doing.”

  “It’s fatalism. He doesn’t believe he’s doing anything now, except observing. He tells himself it’s out of his hands.”

  “He’s not trying to stop it though, is he?”

  “No.”

  “His judgment is gone,” Nash insisted. “It was corrupt from the beginning, but now it’s gone. He refuses to see the danger in what he’s doing.”

  Summer froze the video, capturing a still of Virgil’s face: his smooth skin, corded hair held back by a twist of wire. His indifferent eyes, calm among green shadows. Obsessed.

  She said, “I’ve had a LOV-specific virus ready for two weeks now.”

  This drew a grunt of surprise from Nash. “And your Nazi hasn’t gotten permission to deploy it?”

  “Daniel’s worried it won’t be enough. That a few resistant LOVs might survive. So I’m working on a second viral agent, one with a different line of attack. He wants to release them together.”

  “It’s not a bad idea,” Nash said grudgingly. “The odds of any LOV being resistant to both weapons have got to be pretty low.”

  “The theory is good, I agree …” Summer hesitated, choosing her next words with care. She and Nash went back a long way. They’d started together at EquaSys. She trusted him. She needed to trust him. “Maybe Daniel’s right. Maybe it would be better to wait for another virus … but it worries me. I’m not used to seeing this level of patience in him.”

  Nash reflected on this for several seconds. Then, “Has he got his own agenda? Is that what you’re thinking?”

  Summer could hear the thready beat of her own heart. “It’s not that I’m accusing him of anything.”

  “No. Of course not.”

  Her voice grew whispery as she put her fear into words. “But there has been a lot of interest in the LOVs, among some very powerful people. The way they evolve, the way they change … no one understands it. Not yet. But the implications are extraordinary. If the Hammer mutants truly did evolve on their own, then Virgil is right—the LOVs must have developed a level of molecular control far beyond anything our technology has ever achieved. Could we learn to imitate that kind of control? And if we could, how much would the resulting technology be worth?”

  Nash looked pale. The set of his face was grim. “It would be bigger than anything that’s come before.”

  Summer nodded. “I want you to know that I’ve had offers. Seven-figure offers, just to slow down my research, just to put off the day when the LOVs are brought down.”

  “My God.”

  The horror in his eyes was real, she was sure of it. “Nash? You understand the dynamics, don’t you? The longer this goes on, the more we learn. The more we learn, the closer we are to reproducing whatever molecular tricks the LOVs have developed. That’s nanotechnology, Nash. We’re standing on the threshold.”

  There. She had said it. But now Nash was eyeing her warily. A guarded expression had slipped over his face. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I want it to end, now, before it goes any farther. I resigned from EquaSys because I thought we had already gone too far. But what’s happening in the Mekong makes our work back then look like child’s play.” She closed her eyes briefly, striving to calm the tremor that she could feel building in her voice. “I can’t say anything in public. If I do, I’ll be off this project in a minute. I can’t take that chance. I
need to be here. I need to know that work is being done on counteragents. But the kind of money that’s in play … Nash, it messes with people’s minds—and it always finds a place to settle.”

  “So you want me to do something.”

  “Yes. I want you to use your influence. I want you to scare people. I want you to lobby for immediate action. Ninety nine point nine percent of the world will be behind you.”

  “Of course the rest will see me as a target.”

  “It is dangerous.”

  He sighed. “But you’re right. It’s more dangerous to do nothing.”

  “You’ll help, then?”

  “Anyway I can. After all, this mess is my fault too.”

  chapter

  25

  “NOW THAT THE no-oct mutation is known, everything will change,” Ky said. His gaze moved from Virgil, to Oanh, to Ninh, and finally to Ela.

  Crowded together as they were in this dimly lit room of the medical tent, Ela felt a nervous thrill, imagining them to be a secret cell, a radical conspiracy out to overthrow the corrupt status quo. Except there was nothing secret about this meeting. Each one of them was wearing farsights and any Roi Nuoc inside or out of the reservation could be monitoring what they said.

  “The affable Nash Chou,” Ky continued, “has already presented the UN with strongly worded testimony calling for the IBC to act immediately and unilaterally to control the LOVs, and to control us—despite our government’s sovereign claims.” He shook his head. “We cannot expect Hanoi to resist such pressure for long. We are tolerated now because of nationalist sentiments and the promise of financial returns. But as pressure mounts, our support must crumble. We will be given up, turned over to our persecutors—unless we find stronger allies.”

  Virgil stirred, leaning over the examination bench so that the light from the fluorescent ceiling strips fell directly on his face. “I won’t start a war over this, Ky. I won’t make a deal with another government, or sell out to corporate pirates.”