Solis

by Attanasio, AA

  fallen-and within those vitreous black depths are the spaces where he has lived with the deathless ones alone together. Closer, Munk is telling of The Laughing Life and the viperous Aparecida, and how Jumper Nili gambled her life on his C-P program. And though Buddy is listening, he is listening deeper to the freedom of his nightmare, the fright dream that strapped him in to night wings for a day glide and that sent him plummeting into the incalculable abyss.

  Buddy looks up at Munk and nods at the courage that it took for this androne to be here in the trees' quiet drizzle of sunlight, telling his story so

  matter-of-factly, his silicon mind wrapped around memories of near-death and madness as if oblivion and chaos shared a neutral equality with life and reason.

  He nods. Overhead, in the lordly blue distances, flyers spin on rings of wind, milling the emptiness.

  4

  The Avenue of Limits

  WHEN MUNK FINISHES HIS STORY, BUDDY STANDS AND CASTS A long, sweeping look at the parkland with its willow manes, hackled reeds, glassy pond, and, all around them, wheels of sunlight riding among the trees. "After a lifetime in space, this must all seem very strange to you."

  "Not at all. My C-P program is packed with terrene images I downloaded from the archives." He listens for the crystal atonalities of the city's silicon

  mind, and satisfied that the andrones he detects are not near, he tastes the air with his sensors. The wind-woven and complex organic chemistries of heather,

  leaf rot, pond mulch, and lawn dew mingle the stoichiometry of their busy atoms in his mind's eye. But he ignores that and focuses instead on the bird raptures in the ferny holts, the cygnets gliding shyly across the pond, the solitary and strung-out clusters of people strolling along the mown fields. "It is beautiful," he declares, feeling a soft elation at actually being here in the leafy, loamy moment.

  "Take this beauty with you," Buddy advises. "This is the Maat's jewel, cut and polished by them. It doesn't get any better."

  "Where are we going?"

  Buddy juts his jaw to the side as he ponders this. "Now that I know about Jumper Nili, it's clear you can't just take Mr. Charlie and march across the wilds to Solis." He sinks his mind into the spangled sunlight on the pond and makes a decision. "I'll take you to the exurbs of Terra Tharsis. From there, you can contact Jumper Nili when she leaves the city. Come on."

  Munk follows Buddy up the chine of the hill, past the last chrome wisps of the dissolving night wings lacing the shrubs, and they enter a thick grove, where daylight dims to dusk. The cushiony leaf duff beneath their feet silences their passage, and Munk looks through the gloom of hawthorn and oak moss for the park. Heraldic sun shafts gleam like spectral crowns high in the forest canopy, but

  the radiant threads that pierce the dense undergrowth reveal only confounding reaches of bracken, vetch, and dodder vines among the pillared trees.

  Ahead, the cold, crystal chimes of the silicon mind grow louder. "Buddy, there's an androne ahead."

  "Yes," Buddy confirms, not looking back as he shoulders among the clatter and scarves of dried branches and vines. "There's security at every droplift that exits the city."

  "Security?" Munk stops in the gray light pooling among the trees. "I don't dare confront security andrones. They will try to take Mr. Charlie."

  "Yes." Buddy turns around in the burdock and nettles and holds out his arms. "Give him to me."

  "Why?"

  "The plasteel capsule is disputed property," Buddy says, leaning through the weeds. "You removed it from the Moot, and security will apprehend you if they find you with it. But, since it's not stolen goods, there's no crime in my taking it out of the city. You follow after me."

  "I don't understand." Munk scans Buddy for signs of prevarication, increased bloodrush, sweat scent, blink rate, and voice-pattern stress and detects none. "Won't I be arrested?"

  "Security won't stop you if you don't have Mr. Charlie. You committed no crime."

  "Obstructing a legal proceeding, threatening violence, absconding with evidence, destruction of property-" Munk's voice drones nervously in the blurred shadows of the estranged sun.

  Buddy shakes his head. "The fault lies with the Moot for placing an androne of

  your capability in the presence of property that the court took from you. I know the law. The court misjudged your C-P program and can't condemn you for being true to yourself."

  "Then I am not a criminal?"

  "Of course not. Give me the capsule, and let's get out of here."

  In the instant's wide theater of decision, Munk twice reviews everything he has learned from Charles. His imagination, true to its natural duplicity, counsels trust and suspicion simultaneously. He wants the human experience of trust but cannot shake his wariness. Who is this man who requires his trust? Is he, in fact, a security agent sent to connive Mr. Charlie from him? Perhaps. Escaping with Mr. Charlie had been a supreme risk from the start. Perhaps it

  ends here. Or not. If Buddy is his ally, Munk must trust him. If-there is no way to know. It is time to tread emptiness again, the androne realizes in a flush of dread and excitement. Time to endure more uncertainty--to act human again.

  Munk passes Charles to Buddy. "Thank you for helping me preserve him."

  Buddy holds the capsule to his chest, and in the ruined light his expression is warped with sadness. "You're good to trust me."

  "I detect no prevarication from your body's signals," Munk admits. "And as the archaic poet Blake wrote, 'There is no Soul distinct from the Body.' I trust

  your soul."

  Buddy's small smile flares briefly in the shadows. He pushes through a tattery gap in the veil moss hanging from the groping boughs, skids down a dirt track on a steep, tree-clenched bank, and bratdes through a cane brake. With the canes clacking, he runs directly toward the icy tissues of sound that Munk knows are the unreadable codes of another androne.

  He follows, sick with fear. If the security androne challenges him., he knows he will not submit. He doesn't want to kill anything ever, ever again. Aparecida's silhouette slouches out of the liquid shadows of the tufty canes. No, it's the flutter of an attention gap-fear usurping his imagination. The silhouette is the thermal halo from a covey of birds seeking shade and insects.

  Munk stares up at the underbellies of the trees, and the internal faces he sees cut in the leaf patterns convince him to shunt his imagination and revert to simple motor programming. Quickly, he crashes through the canes, closing the gap between himself and Buddy, until he is running in precision tandem a few centimeters behind the man.

  When he exits the thicket in this alert, neutral state, Munk sees without any emotion the security androne guarding the droplift. The sentinel resembles an armorial statue, a human figure in transparent cuirass with a turtle-browed, mirror-flat mask. A hanging garden of rocky outcrops and flowery cascades rises above the droplift, a marble cupola in a grove of black, tapered poplars. The billowy indigo shine of the droplift glosses the marble ramp and even glows on the dewy sward where the sentinel stands unmoving.

  Without hesitation, Buddy walks across the lawn and past the guard toward the droplift. Munk stays in close lockstep, until they reach the security androne. He pauses, unable to move. No physical force holds him. It's his own deep-level fascination that's immobilized him.

  He snaps out of simple motor programming and realizes that he has stopped because some part of him recognizes this androne. A swift search shows that Charles encountered andrones much like this one when he was first revived on Earth. Their masks carried watery reflections of faces.

  A face now appears in the fiat pan of the mask-the soft, roguish features of Sitor Ananta. "You are in violation of Commonality law, Androne Munk. Return Mr. Charlie at once to the Commonality agent in Terra Tharsis."

  "Munk!" Buddy calls. "Let's go."

  Munk hurries to Buddy's side. "Sitor Ananta came through that androne." "Ignore him," Buddy says and strides over to the directory, a plastic cube

 
balanced on one point. Ice-green vapors spiral at its core, faster and brighter at the touch of his hand and the plasteel capsule. "The Commonality has no jurisdiction in Terra Tharsis, Solis, or the wilds between them."

  Munk reads the code lights in the cube and sees that Buddy has ordered a short droplift, up and over the wall. Reassured by this simple route, he follows the

  man into the indigo light of the cupola and hears no more the thriving, brittle music of the city's silicon mind.

  Shau Bandar leaves his credit cuff on the lacquered table in the narrow house haunted by music. The cuff is useless outside the city. He looks around a last time at the faded walls with their pastel print of lobster pots and cacti. Someone else now will have to make sense of that or redecorate. No one is allowed to hold property in Terra Tharsis if they leave, even temporarily, and though he's unhappy about giving up this house, he's excited by his

  decisiveness. He is finally making something grand of his life. He tells himself that when he returns he'll have enough credits for a house twice as large and each room replete with the most expensive shapeshift furniture.

  He bounds down the cricketing steps of the skinny house without looking back and meets Mei Nili among the walnut trees, where she's been waiting while he spent his last moment with the house. "Are you sure you want to do this?" she asks gruffly. "I have nothing to lose, but I'm not so sure about you."

  "Never more sure of anything," he answers and briskly leads the way along the sinuous flagstone path. He salutes the skewed sundial and clogged birdbath and barges through the crooked gate. On the walk down the stony lane beside the creek, he explains that Softcopy has arranged for a droplift to the Outlands where a skim car will take them to the caravansary. All expenses are covered. "There's always credit available for an insider willing to risk everything on the outside. Even a lazy, impoverished lichen like me will get a big run in the news clips."

  "Especially if you die," Mei points out.

  The journalist agrees with a fatalistic shrug. "It's the biggest thrill of all-the shadow of death."

  On the walk through the oak cloisters down to the pave, Shau Bandar talks nervously about what lies ahead, recounting news clips of caravans eaten by sandstorms and shreeks, voracious, bristle-fanged biots created in the vats of Solis to scavenge the wilds and discourage pilgrims.

  Mei only half listens, attentive to the supernatural beauty of the hills. She has had to relearn the future too often since she last felt beauty. She has no idea where or even if she will be tomorrow, but for now, the heavenward towers and the shafts of sunmist on the hazy, cluttered hillsides are enough.

  Autumnal shimmers of wind sweep the pave with smoked brightness and a radiant chill. Mei is still staring up at the gusty heights of sparkling onyx when Shau leads her into a tight alley. In the dark, a boast of indigo light breathes.

  The city's vallation is a four-kilometer-high rampart, twelve spans deep. It rims the caldera brink of Olympus Mons, enclosing the great skytowers of Terra Tharsis and their hillside purlieus. The barrier has the seamlessly smooth and black-green luster of jasper but is composed of a Maat alloy impervious to sensors. The mirror-vanes atop the encircling parapet serve as both detectors and signal scramblers so that from outside the vallation contact with the city is impossible.

  Despite this isolation, an extensive community thrives outside the city under the stupendous wall. Sustained by the gravity shadow of Terra Tharsis, which provides near-terrestrial conditions, exurbs sprawl across the broad slopes of the extinct volcano in a coruscating expanse of solar mills and antennae. The mills amplify the weak sunlight that bleeds through the perpetual cloud banks churning in the penumbra of the city's magravity field. The Maat weather system stores heat and moisture in this surrounding area, and so, while there is no dearth of water for the Outlands, energy must be milled from the thermals and the wan sun.

  Shau Bandar explains this and more to Mei Nili on the long drive through the skimways outside the city. Displacing his anxiety about the safety he has abandoned for this rich adventure, he points out the gigantic, androne-managed farms on the watery horizons. He has been out here on assignment before and knows the names of all the districts: Sky-Bowl with its power factories, the agrarian pastures and fish hatcheries of Willow, the congested thorpes of Britty, and the elegant estates in an opulent district called the Honor of

  Giants.

  "Where do all these people come from?" Mei wonders. Even in the cool interior of the rented car, the air smells of swamp and thunder. Mountainous blue clouds hang in eerie stillness above the chain of hills and their clusters of hamlets and silver-foil roofs. "They aren't protected here by the Maat, are they?"

  "No. They live in jeopardy of their lives, all of them." The car drives itself, preprogrammed for their destination at the very fringe of the exurbs, and Shau stares disconsolately at the smoky hills and the heat ripples on the skimway. "Actually, two hundred years ago-over four hundred terrene years

  ago-the exurbs were much larger. That was during the frantic Exodus of Light, when millions came here from all the colonies literally wanting to die in the rarefied air of Mars. Death passages were all the rage back then. The population here are remnants of that weird faith that got It, the idea that consciousness

  is light liberated into a glorious and rapturous field state called the tesseract range when the physical organism dies. Bizarre, huh?"

  "Lately, it's living that seems bizarre to me," Mei mutters, pressing her fingertips to the cool plastic dome. She touches the speed-blurred images of the low stone houses with their shiny roofs and asks, "Why do these people live

  here? What do they want?"

  "Most have come from the Commonality range towns on Luna," the journalist answers, stifling a yawn. "They believe the work is easier here. And they're probably right. You know how tight the labor strictures are in the Commonality. Also, work here affords each of them the chance of admittance to the Pashalik."

  Among vegetable plots and sodden, sunken fields, roundhouses in unrendered concrete slip past. "Do many actually get in to Terra Tharsis?"

  "If they accrue enough credits and an insider like myself leaves."

  Mei hears the edginess in his voice. "Do you regret leaving? You know you can go back now. Just call Munk for me."

  "Go back to what?" He crosses his lanky legs and clasps his hands over his knee. "You saw my elegant house that I'm about to lose unless I go to work for the Pashalik monitoring andrones. No. I want adventure-and credits. This is what I want." He puts his olfact ring to his nostrils, then presents it to her.

  She declines by turning her attention from him to the pastel roundhouses with their foil roofs and red-dirt gardens. "How long have you lived in Terra Tharsis?"

  "I'm forty-two." "Mars years?"

  He nods, distracted by the electrical nearness of the purple clouds with their flutters of lightning. "You'd think with all these hopefuls teeming out here to get in the city, they'd shut down the vats."

  "The Maat have a life-type agenda."

  "Is that what they believe on the reservation? Ha." He looks at her naked face, smells her sweet-sour body odor, and feels once more his sorrowing astonishment at her rustic mien. "The Maat have no agenda. If the commune didn't insist on racial parities, the whole city would have gone plasmatic centuries ago. The Maat don't care."

  With violet tremors in the piled clouds and trundling thunder, a dazzle of rain sizzles toward them on the skimway and pummels the clear top of the car. "Have you ever had an encounter?"

  "Nope. And all the encounters I've followed up for Softcopy were bogus. The Maat are so far inside now they're not even bodies anymore. That's what I think. They have no more truck with us than we do with apes in the aboriginal forests."

  Veils of rain smoke off the hot rooftops and steam along the empty road. For a long while, they ride in silence, Mei worried about Munk and Mr. Charlie, Shau still debating the merits and dangers of the impending trek. In the blue darkness,
under the hammering rain, the world draws closer.

  Buddy, holding Charles Outis in his arms, stands with Munk in a grassy verge under the giant vallation of Terra Tharsis. The droplift that carried them out of the city has deposited them on a hummock overlooking low, tinsel-roofed cities strewn brightly under toppling clouds. The androne glances up at the indigo blur of the vanishing droplift vortex, relieved that his creative

  willingness to trust this stranger has indeed delivered him from the city of his makers. The noise of the city's silicon mind has vanished entirely, and he

  senses no other andrones using Maat codes nearby.

  "Where do we go from here?" he asks, scanning the cluttered plain. On the steep horizon, lizards of lightning squirm among the mauve thundetheads of an isolated storm.

  "I think I know, Munk." Buddy hands Charles to the androne and removes his chamois strap-jacket. "If the jumper you came in with wants to make the trek, she'll have to start from the Avenue of Limits. We'll go there." He slings his jacket over his shoulder and wades through the tall grass.

  Munk cradles Charles in the crook of one arm but does not budge. He senses waftings of ozone from the storm and the distant chatter of thunder. "You have kept your word, Buddy. Show me the direction to the Avenue of Limits, and we can part here."

  Buddy stops among the feathery grass. "I'd like to come along," he says, almost apologetically. "The Avenue of Limits is at the fringe of the Outlands, on the edge of the wilds. It's a big place and a long walk from here. But

  there's a skim station in Sky-Bowl, not far away. From there, we can ride to the Avenue of Limits and you can use the reponer's codes to contact him. What do you say?"

  Munk regards the man for a full level second, playing various motives though his anthropic model again and again, until finally he must admit, "I don't understand why you should care at all about me."

  "It's a new one for your anthropic model, isn't it?" Buddy's strong face with its imprint of sadness nods once. "Anomie."

  "A psychic state of isolation and disorientation," the androne recites. "That is the unhappiness you confessed to me."