Exodus

by Julie Bertagna

  Mara sips the warm, frothy, bittersweet brew that has popped out of a hidden compartment in her cupule. She’s not sure if she likes it but it seems to give her a much-needed buzz of energy. Dol is gesturing upward and Mara glances above her head at the Thought For Now slogan that beams above the heads of the workers in the cybercath. The huge No enemy in New Mungo slogan has started to scramble.

  “Hackers,” grins Dol. “Watch.”

  The letters scramble at top speed. The hum of the cybercath falls quiet as everyone holds their breath. A great cheer erupts as the letters settle and the workers break up in laughter at the Thought For Now, which proclaims there’s No meeny in New Mungo.

  Mara laughs too and settles in her hug chair till Dol is ready. She has agreed to give Mara a short training session. It turns out that Dol is not as dull as she looks. Quite the opposite. The dullness is a veil of boredom, behind which lives an ace wizzer. Real life bores Dol, Mara now knows, after watching her come alive on the dive into cyberspace. With a pang she recognizes the fierce, feral excitement on the girl’s face. It’s what she used to feel in the Weave.

  Perhaps Dol feels trapped inside the walls of New Mungo, just as Mara did inside the walls of her home in the storm season on Wing. Perhaps luxury means little when there’s no real freedom in the world.

  She has told Dol that she is a trainee cyberworker on an apprenticeship from New Wing, a northern city still under construction; that she has been sent here to get updated on the New World technology—she claims to have been stuck on an out-of-date system. Dol has questioned none of this story; she seems to have no interest in anything much beyond the cyberworld she works in. And Mara is anxious to learn about that as fast as she can. It’s clear that the cybercath is the nerve center of New Mungo, so gaining access to the system is surely her best means of locating the slave workers and finding a way to rescue Gorbals and Wing.

  “Put on your godgem and I’ll help you link in,” Dol instructs.

  Mara picks up the tiny box and the green gem. “I thought it was a godbox and headgem,” she says, eyeing the notice in her cupule.

  Dol points with extreme patience to the little godbox. “This is your power, it gets you whatever you ask for.” Then to the crystal headgem. “This is your mind’s eye, it gives you cybervision. Godbox, headgem—godgem for short. You must know that?” says Dol a touch crossly. “Don’t they give even basic training to newcomers?”

  “Sorry,” says Mara humbly, as she puts on the godgem. “I couldn’t come to grips with it at all the other day. My teacher in my own city sent me here because she said the best way to learn was from a top Noosrunner,” she flatters, “like you.”

  Dol brightens at the compliment. “Really? Well, okay, I’ll log you in on my password. Now just say ‘be’ to your godgem …” Dol’s voice hits a melodic note as she says the word, “then jump in and voice-steer to whatever or wherever you seek. See, you get a deeper level of control if you use your voice tonally to steer. If you’re stuck, hop on a help platform, they’re all over the Noos, and send out a search ball if you know what you’re looking for.” Dol glances at Mara. “But you haven’t a clue, have you? Well, just freefall till you get a feel for it. You can be as you are or you can call up a help wizard and be anything you want—any creature, any form. Ready?”

  No, Mara sighs to herself. Dol will find her out, she is sure, but she has to risk that. Even more than unquestioning dullness, Mara needs a wizzer like this who can teach her what she needs.

  Dol sighs too and Mara feels spectacularly small-brained.

  “Well, I’ll knit you into the system,” she says with weary patience. “But I can’t hang around, I’m on the track of that new stuff I told you about—I want to try and get in ultraquick in case there’s a world trade rush.”

  “But if you could just—oh, never mind,” says Mara, catching Dol’s impatient expression.

  “I’ll start you off then you’re on your own,” says Dol, clearly itching to lose such a tedious ignoramus. “Now jump!”

  “Jump where?” Mara panics. “Be!” she instructs the godgem, then cries out in fright as she freefalls into the strangest experience she’s ever had. In realworld she stops breathing as she spins out of her cupule in the cybercath, far away into another dimension, into a world of utter beauty, grace, and chaos. Mara feels a rush of cyberjoy zip through her like electricity, as she drops into the wonders of this stunning, strange, new, live universe.

  All around, above and below, as far as she can see, the godgems of the New World have merged to create an organic frenzy of color and pattern. Fractals and feathers, frosts and ferns and flowers, crystals and corals, constellations and cloudbursts and galaxies, shells, stars, strata, streamers and spirals, bird flocks and bubble clusters and butterfly wings, roses and acorns, loops and spheres, lichen, rainbows and honeycombs, fungus, snowflakes, spheres, pyramids and prisms, webs and jungle weaves, knits and knots, and so much, much more. Everything imaginable and beyond. All of it linked by an endless pattern of connections. A living world of info and data within each pattern. All of it endlessly changing and mutating and repatterning. All dying and recreating every microsecond.

  It’s like looking into the mind of the universe.

  Mara’s eyes fill with tears at the wild and savage beauty of it all. It’s miraculous. And a whole world had to end before she could see it.

  It is Noospace, the stunning new universe. The Noos, they call it; the amazing creation of the global Supermind that has sprung into being among the cities of the New World. Like a genie let loose from a bottle, the beautiful Noos has wrapped itself invisibly, powerfully, around the Earth. And holds its world spellbound.

  In time to the music, but out of time with everyone else, Mara waltzes through swarms of zappers. Sparks fly from their feet as they race at frightening speeds through the gleaming maze of the nexus. The combination of too-tight shoes that nip her feet and the pair of zapeedos she has borrowed from Dol being several sizes too big, so that they keep slipping, doesn’t help. She’d like to buy a pair of shoes and zapeedos that fit properly but she has no idea what rations she can buy with the stolen disks. And she must be careful—the young policewoman’s absence will surely be noted by now. Will her ration disks be canceled? Maybe not immediately, but Mara decides she can’t risk any extra purchases that might lead to her discovery. She’ll have to make do with ill-fitting shoes and zapeedos and only use the ration disk for essential food. And hope for the best.

  For now, Mara tries to keep up with the fleet feet of Dol and her friends, but it’s almost impossible. She’s had a few nasty smashes but at last she seems to be finding her own feet.

  Well, I seem to have found my balance, at least, Mara congratulates herself. Now all I need to do is get the hang of speed and steering.

  The bright lights and speed of New Mungo make her eyes ache and her head spin after weeks in the dim netherworld and fifteen years on tranquil Wing. She yearns for natural light and for Wing’s long, still horizons. At the very least she could do with one of the colored vizzers the zappers wear to protect their eyes from each others’ sparks as they surf the sides and loop the loop, zipping hazardous circles around the walls. All Mara can see as she looks through the nexus are bodies—upright, sideways, and upside down, and every angle in between. The silver tunnels smoke, spark, and crackle with friction.

  Suddenly Mara’s own zapeedos flash with sparks and she lets out a scream as she takes a bend far too fast and wide. But wait—amazingly, she’s done it! She grins in triumph as she rounds the bend and manages to stay on her feet.

  “Hey, Dol, look! I’ve really got the hang of this.”

  “Mara! Stop!”

  Dol is just a blur as Mara zooms past. She does the worst thing possible, tries to turn in the middle of a tunnel and makes a spectacular crash against the metal wall, smashing through a cluster of nearby zappers. Mara screams again as the tunnel fills with sprawling bodies and erupts with an outburst of zapeedo
rage. Dol speeds over, but before she gets there Mara is pulled to her feet and steered out of the way of the chaos she has created.

  “Lethal, you are,” says her rescuer, a tousle-headed boy. He rubs a reddening lump on his forehead.

  “Sorry,” Mara gasps.

  “She’s a learner,” says Dol, apologetically. She puts her hand on the boy’s head and gazes into his eyes. “You okay, David?”

  “Apart from the concussion,” he replies drily.

  Mara tries to stammer an apology but Dol pushes her toward a door marked ENTRANCE.

  The word pulsates. The door zips open and shut every couple of seconds as throngs of brightly clothed people rush in and out.

  “Entrance to where?” asks Mara dazedly.

  Dol gives her the deadpan look that Mara gets from her quite a lot. The look that says: how thick are you?

  “Not entrance, Entrance,” says Dol as she shoves Mara through the door. “The best sensawave club in New Mungo.”

  “Oh,” says Mara, feeling every bit as thick as Dol must find her.

  Once inside, Mara feels she has entered a mirror world of the wild, electronic chaos of Noospace. She grabs on to Dol, reeling as if she’s in freefall.

  “Entranced?” Dol laughs as she kicks off her zapeedos. Then she speeds off into the swarm of dancers.

  Mara edges to a wall and looks around. Sound engulfs her. Color swamps her. Living patterns swirl all around and above. Scents and sensations sweep through her. Wave after wave in the mix of color, sound, and patterns cause pounding surges of excitement. The dancers seem to be constantly on the verge of some great event. Mara waits to see what—but nothing ever happens. It just goes on and on.

  Mara leans against the wall, feels nothing—and falls flat on her back.

  Stunned, she scrambles to her feet. The wall’s a lumen. Its surface patterns are gently mutating as if it’s alive. Mara looks around but luckily everyone seems so entranced by the scene that surrounds them they haven’t noticed. Except one—the boy who rescued her from her tunnel crash. He is standing alongside her, the chaotic lights dancing in his eyes. As Mara struggles to her feet the boy looks away, laughter making his lips twitch. She burns with embarrassment. He must think she’s a blundering clown.

  Gail’s voice echoes from what feels like a far distant time and place. What if we land up in some great new city looking like gawky peasants? Well, I’ve done it, Gail, thinks Mara. Gawky peasant just about sums me up—yet on Wing I felt so smart; I thought I was a world ahead of everyone else.

  Mara looks through a doorway in the lumen wall and sees an open mountaintop—a lumen illusion that makes the floor and walls fall away into a fake worldscape, roofed by an endless, glittering sky. Cool air breezes all around and dancers whirl colored lumen sticks above their heads, creating fronded waves of brightness. The mix of light and sound and illusion are softer here, the electronic spell broken by ghostly scraps of human voice. It’s simple and infinite. Multisensory, out of your mind, moment-to-moment being, no beginning or end, going nowhere.

  “Beautiful night,” says a voice close behind.

  Mara jumps then recovers herself to shoot her very best lumeny smile at the owner of the voice—a tanned, smooth-skinned boy, older than herself. But ages are confusing in New Mungo. Mara is sure, though she can’t exactly tell why, that many of the youthful-looking people are much older than they seem. It’s something in their voices, in their movements, and most of all in their eyes; something they have lost and something else gained that is different in nature to true youth. Noosrunners all appear to be roughly the same age—not too young and not too old. This boy, for instance—really more man than boy, now that she looks closely—he looks eighteen, twenty at most, but some deep instinct tells Mara he is much older—thirty, maybe even forty.

  “You’re not one of us, are you?” he says.

  Again, Mara jumps in fright. How can he tell? She has tried hard to look like everyone else here.

  “I’m on a training visit,” Mara answers, a trifle too sharply.

  “Ah,” says the man-boy. “Where’s your own city?”

  “In the north,” says Mara. “It’s very new, still under construction.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “New Wing,” she answers flawlessly.

  “Don’t know that one. Anyway, the more the merrier,” says the man-boy. He waves an arm around him. “So, how do we compare with New Wing?”

  “It’s all one world,” says Mara, mouthing one of the New World slogans that she’s seen flash above the heads of the workers in the cybercath.

  He smiles and nods. “By the way, I’m Tony. Tony Rex.”

  He leans closer and his hair shimmers. Beautiful, longish black hair that Mara is suddenly sure is not real; the sheen is too liquid and bright. His clothes are made of the sleekest material Mara has ever seen; like the oiled pelt of an animal. And yet it ripples like silk. He bares his teeth in a lascivious smile.

  “You haven’t told me your name.”

  Mara hadn’t. She wants to be rid of him, but she can’t risk saying or doing anything that will mark her out as different. Reluctantly, she answers him.

  He stares at her, and Mara’s heart beats nervously. He looks her up and down, slowly, sleazily, grins, and leans even closer.

  “You should do an audition for Noostars.”

  Mara doesn’t ask what he means, just shakes her head and turns away. It doesn’t faze him.

  “You should give it a try,” he persists. “They’re short on this year’s quota. Imagine—you get to be famous right across the New World for a whole night! Can you sing? It’s no problem if you can’t. It’s the look that counts—they’ll give you a makeover and fix you up a voice in no time.”

  Mercifully, someone tugs him into the dancers. Mara heaves a sigh of relief and moves to the door. She’s really not in the mood for the Entrance scene. As she leaves she catches sight of Tony Rex once again, eyeing her through the crowd, and for a split second Mara sees something flicker across his bland, cheerful face—something that disturbs her.

  Suspicion?

  Mara skates back through the nexus. As she climbs into her sleep pod, her head is ringing with dance noise and from the tunnel waltzes, reeling too from the city sway, but she is thinking hard. She must watch her step. Something about Tony Rex has made her uncomfortable; something that shines out of his sharp, watchful eyes and defies his pleasant, young—but somehow not-so-young—face. Something dangerous, she’s sure.

  ONCE UPON A TIME

  Mara looks at her plateful of bright and beautiful noofood.

  Yuk.

  All around her in the café, people are happily tucking into exotic-looking platefuls of the stuff, but it turns Mara’s stomach. The aroma and flavor of real food haunts her. She lies in bed at night longing for a plateful of the Treenesters’s herby mushroom stew and some heartwarming hupplesup.

  There’s something wrong with noofood. It looks temptingly beautiful, comes in every color of the rainbow, yet it all leaves a salty aftertaste on the tongue. It turns to pulp in the mouth, and even a small plateful is strangely filling—yet somehow unsatisfying, as if it swells like an empty balloon in the stomach. And though the New World citizens obviously don’t agree, Mara feels there’s something unappetizing about blue beans and pink potatoes.

  Noofood is made from a mulch of seafood, fish, kelp, and plankton; the last two, she has learned, are grown and harvested in vast sea farms. Each city has its own noofood factory, where the mulch is pumped with bloating, fibrous texture, with added nutrients, flavorings, and color, then manufactured into this array of bright, bland fodder that parodies the real food of the old world.

  The city gives a lurch. Mara feels a wave of nausea and pushes her plate away. It’s not just the food—the constant movement of the city makes her queasy. Tonight, it feels as if they are all on board a ship in a tempest. And her feet are sore with blisters from her too-tight shoes.

  To tak
e her mind off sky sickness and sore feet, Mara runs through everything she has discovered about the workings of the city over the last few days.

  The New World cities are built on almost identical designs, all based on that feat of natural engineering that Cal, Candleriggs’s lost love, pioneered in the years when the Earth first began to drown. Each city is powered by a mighty mix of sun and wind and sea. The city nets all possible energy that comes its way. Solar power is soaked up, spongelike, through microscopic pores in the city’s titanmera fabric and channeled into great sunmills that turn it into lumenergy. Wavepower is churned through vast water-mills in the support towers. Windpower is flumed through the spiregyres—the hundreds of strange, twisting coils on the edges of the nexus of sky tunnels that Mara puzzled over in the boat camp. Immense spiregyres helter-skelter all down the sides of the great towers and pump out the city’s used air straight down into the netherworld.

  Mara’s stomach turns again. So that explains the sour, bad-breath odor of the netherworld air.

  She already knew that the massive central towers harbor the supply ships. The higher levels of the towers house the citizens and lower down are storehouses and production factories for noofood and all sorts of other goods. Everything else is shipped in from supply cities that manufacture whatever the New World needs or wants.

  In the cybercath, Mara has studied gleaming lumens that display 3-D plans to develop sea bridges out east to link up with the nearest of the Eurosea sky cities—dangerous, precarious work in the stormy thrust of the oceans that will surely require yet more slave labor. But there’s no hint of storms or slaves in the gleaming lumen plan; all danger and cruelty is made invisible for the citizens of the New World.