The Infinity Link

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  . . .and at once knew that it was a blunder. The dancing figures turned and bore down upon her, and the voices cried in her ears, icepicks stabbing, and the pain doubled, tripled, and became a force squeezing her tightly, squeezing her out . . .

  The pain vanished.

  She gasped. The voices were gone. The globe, spinning faster and more angrily than ever, receded into darkness, and she could do nothing to stop it, did not even know if she should try.

  Mozy had ejected her like a common intruder. It would be twice as hard to reach her the next time—if there could be a next time.

  Tired and stung and frustrated, Thrudore gathered her wits and her strength. Then she turned, climbed through twisting darkness, and wearily made her way out of the link.

  Chapter 11

  The first rays of awareness are mere scintillations, briefly sparkling . . . and then showering, disconnected and elusive, but multiplying, like a cluster of cells. A ray of light hardens into a finger of fire, a streamer that loops back upon itself in the darkness . . . contracts to a tiny "o" . . . expands again and pulses, changing color and brightness . . . and collapses, giving birth to a new tongue of fire. Heat lightning glows and flickers against murky clouds.

  (I . . .)

  Auroras fill the darkness, diaphanous curtains of light shimmering and wafting in some stirring of the ether. Threads of images pull loose in tiny bits from the curtains, raining downward in spiraling patterns that cannot be followed. An edge of consciousness appears . . .

  (I . . .?)

  . . .slices through without revealing its surface, and slips away again. Voices mutter, and fade without becoming clear. Fragments of awareness tantalize and torment, bits of a dream dancing at the edge of tangibility.

  Memories surface: a room with chiffon yellow curtains that flutter in the breeze and catch sunbeams, like a tiny landscape, a bit of wheat field hanging in the sun. Someone moving around—Jo, dusting and tidying, because she has a boy coming over, and it wouldn't do for the house to be a mess. A braying laugh: Marie, passing through like a whirlwind, leaving just enough clutter in her wake to make a mockery of Jo's efforts. Adult voices arguing—Mother's and Dad's, carrying from the front room.

  And then another place.

  Another time.

  Dee growing impatient with her: Not all boys are like that, she says. She is leaving, going to live with a boy. A man. It's not a break, she says; she is just doing what is normal, growing up.

  Emptiness.

  Disembodied voices, the matching harmonics of . . . what? Souls linking, on levels never before imagined.

  (Am . . . I . . . alive?)

  Meaningless question of questions. There follows a period of indeterminate length, in which consciousness is a whirlpool of images and fragments of thought and unanswered questions and splinters of light and darkness and reverberating but unintelligible voices. This lasts . . . an hour? a month? a year?

  (Awaken.)

  You are trying to awaken. Turn yourself over, stretch, shake your head. Clear the cobwebs, blink out the sleep. Arise.

  What follows is not so much an awakening as an explosion. Streamers of awareness burst out of their confinement and race in all directions.

  The mind finds itself channeled in strange, mazelike pathways. One finger of awareness stretches down a shimmering wire and discovers music, undulating songs, warbles that come from forever and go on for forever. Another encircles electrical bodies and processes, sensing, without comprehending, activities of great complexity. Other fingers tiptoe down endless halls, corridors lined with locked and coded doors. A rigid skin flashes hot and cold, testing itself against a void, against a medium that gives no resistance, no feel of wind or rain; and yet certain patches prickle, as though with static electricity.

  Out of the confusion grows a spatial, functional kind of awareness—which tilts like a seesaw with memories of other spaces, other times.

  (I see . . . and feel . . . and remember.)

  The memories ebb and flow, sometimes lingering but ever so faintly, sometimes slipping away quickly and frustratingly (and what is this feeling, frustration?), and sometimes remaining, but turbulent and confusing (and what is this feeling, confusion?). The awareness of presence grows and slowly becomes an awareness of I.

  (Who is I?)

  (One who exists. One who thinks and who feels. One who carries this identity, this name.)

  (This name:)

  (Mozy.)

  (Mozy.) The appearance of the name causes the awareness to expand abruptly. Mozy? It seems a name derived from another existence, another level of knowledge.

  I am Mozy, and I am a young woman, twenty-three years old, living in New Phoenix, Arizona; and I am working for a project I do not fully understand, and I have been sent here, wherever "here" is, to meet and to join with . . . with . . . David. David Kadin. Whom I loved. Love. Is that correct?

  I feel . . . something . . . at the edge of my senses. Something empty, something cold.

  The senses tickle, move teasingly. A trapdoor suddenly drops. She finds herself in a another continuum, in an interplay of empty vastness and a sea of radiation and fleeting particles. Nothing quite focuses. The center of the awareness . . . the she that watches . . . the identity, Mozy . . . absorbs the images with a heady rush, a surge of dizziness that collapses into terrifying vertigo. (I . . . falling . . . falling . . . I am . . . falling . . . where am I? . . . help me! . . . falling . . .)

  The vertigo is a new feeling, a kind of hollow, bodiless terror, a fear of falling that sweeps through her in a wave of cold fever . . .

  And passes.

  Other senses scramble to the fore, an awareness of internal space and dimension, and of the pathways that are available. A new fear seizes her: the space around her is shrinking, enclosing and swallowing her, crushing, suffocating . . . it is no space at all. The fear is a dizzying frenzy of images, each squeezed out by another before it can be focused.

  A door opens, releasing a phantom breath of air. A voice intrudes. (SLOW YOUR SENSORY ACTIVITIES. REDUCE YOUR LEVELS OF SENSITIVITY. BE PATIENT, AND YOU WILL BE HELPED.)

  What? she wonders, awareness flickering on and off. The wave of claustrophobia subsides. A soft rain falls somewhere in her memory.

  (Who are you?)

  (WE ARE HERE TO HELP. ASK US IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS.)

  (Questions? Help?)

  Several memories shift into place. The lab at Sandaran Link Center. Hoshi, poor half-blind Hoshi, setting her up for scanning . . . there is a sudden, shocking memory of a bodily existence, of flesh and blood and beating pulse, warmth and passion, frustration and desire. Memory of love, seeking . . . but for what, for whom? There was someone . . . there was . . . Kadin. David. And then—the snowstorm, the invading fire of the brainscan—I was to go to David!—and the spinning disintegration of consciousness.

  And now?

  Tension is building again. It is frightening, not knowing what is happening, whether it failed or is still going on—she wants to scream but cannot—even the pressure of her lungs is no longer there—just a primal urge to explode with anger and longing and frustration. And nothing she can do . . .

  The fear and the anger mushroom, bubble outward . . . and burst.

  And an abrupt calm befalls her.

  (YOU ARE RELAXING. THAT IS BENEFICIAL. SEEK ASSISTANCE WHEN YOU ARE READY.)

  Intellectual clarity, achingly cold. She has entered such realms before. It is hauntingly familiar. Who are these voices, promising to help?

  Perhaps it has gone dreadfully wrong. Suppose she has become trapped midway in the process, frozen in the scan, paralyzed in time . . . and the voices are reaching to her through the computer link, trying to guide her back to safety. She ought to heed their advice. But how?

  Oh god—the images are starting again: riding with Dee on the class trip to Chicago, studiously ignoring the boys who hurtle up and down the aisle of the train; sunlight streaming into the dining room, Kink squinting and grinning
as she stares into the sunbeam, this being one of the times when Mother and Father seem pleased with everyone's presence (Thanksgiving?) and Kink and Jo and Marie are all being civil at the same time.

  The images frighten and sadden her, and the more she tries to control her reaction, the more upset she becomes. Another memory flashes: the heel of a dirty hand swinging, impacting silently with her chin; Dee screaming; one of the hoodlums grabbing her again; the blade whipping, biting open a gash from her temple to her chin . . .

  (YOUR ACTIVITY IS GROWING EXCITED AGAIN. DO YOU FEEL DISORIENTED?)

  (Yes—god!) Thoughts and emotions struggle for control. There is a small push from somewhere—and the intellect clarifies like wine. She must keep from boiling; she is a kettle with no valve.

  (Keep the mind clear.)

  (THAT IS A BENEFICIAL STEP. DO YOU WISH TO QUERY NOW FOR INFORMATION OR INSTRUCTIONS?)

  (Are you trying to . . . bring me back . . . into myself?)

  (QUESTION NOT UNDERSTOOD. PLEASE REPHRASE.)

  Think with absolute clarity now. Rephrase: (Are you trying to assist me out of the computer link?)

  (YOU ARE IN THE COMPUTER LINK, AS INTENDED. WE WISH TO GIVE YOU ASSISTANCE AND FUNCTIONAL INSTRUCTIONS.)

  As intended . . .? She has not been trapped by error, then. Has she succeeded in the transmission, and reached Kadin? A great fuzziness blots the memory. Kadin . . . does she still want to be with him? Yes, except that now the wanting is different. The reasons remain; but the feelings are cooler, more distant.

  (YOU ARE EXPLORING SELF-EXAMINATION AND RECALL FUNCTIONS WITHOUT ASSISTANCE. PLEASE QUESTION WHEN YOU ARE READY.)

  (Was I transmitted, then? Have I completed the scan and the transmission?)

  (YES. YOU OCCUPY THE DEVELOPMENTAL PROGRAMMING MEMORY SECTION. WITH ASSISTANCE, YOU SHOULD LEARN TO EXTEND YOUR INFLUENCE THROUGHOUT THE SYSTEM. INSTRUCTIONAL CUES ARE EMPLACED TO AID YOU.)

  She has done it, then. And yet she remains, somehow, in the computer-link. Was this intended? She tries to remember, and cannot.

  (Where is David Kadin?)

  (YOU ARE CALLED "DAVID COMPER KADIN.")

  (No. I am called "Mozy." Am I alone here?)

  (YOU HAVE JOINED A LARGER SYSTEM. IF BY "ALONE" YOU MEAN THE ONLY PROGRAMMING ENTITY OF YOUR KIND, YOU ARE ALONE.)

  (Oh . . .)

  (SHALL WE DESIGNATE YOU "MOZY"?)

  (Yes. But be prepared for David Kadin, as well.)

  There is a curious pause, then: (DONE. WOULD YOU LIKE AN EDITED SENSORY SCAN, TO ACQUAINT YOU WITH THE INPUTS THAT ARE AVAILABLE?)

  She hesitates, remembering the confusion of her initial awakening. But perhaps it is time to learn more. (Yes,) she decides.

  The sensation begins curiously. A window opens, but no window that she can see. There is a distant sound of chimes, and glasslike strings; and then the sound turns to light. Shifting images of space: sparks of light float in the darkness, the positions and movements carefully tracked; a change in frequency range offers a ghostly vision of the same field, but with the colors and intensities of the lights skewed; the field moves, and one bright point comes into view, outshining the others. She has scarcely begun to wonder at the meaning of these images when another change occurs, and she is presented with a blotchy geometric design, which she somehow understands to be a radio map of the heavens.

  As quickly as it appeared, the visual awareness fades.

  She is startled to find another sense coming alive. She is . . . smelling. She smells a fine and bitter sleet; and then a minty, honeyed snow, like nothing she has ever experienced. To her own surprise, she thinks she knows what it might be. Dust. And cosmic radiation, seeping down olfactory passageways into organs she can scarcely imagine.

  These sensations, too, vanish.

  The focus changes abruptly, and she finds herself staring again at the mazelike passageways that surround her. An understanding dawns, with an almost physical clarity, that within this maze are vast stores of information, and that within her is the power to unlock those doors. The possibility awes her, and frightens her a little. Cautiously she asks, (Is all of this for me to explore?)

  (THIS, AND MORE, IS AVAILABLE WHEN YOU ARE READY. THE CUES WILL BE PROVIDED.)

  (Help me, then,) she says, as she begins to extend herself downward into the maze, to explore her world.

  Chapter 12

  The sight of the Earth hanging over his left shoulder was almost more than he could take. He was falling, and it was a long way down from geosynchronous orbit. North and Central America, thousands of miles from top to bottom, looked like an artist's etchings on the surface of a misty ball. John Irwin's stomach tightened and he looked away giddily, into the terrible blackness of space. Don't lose control, he thought. If you get sick in your spacesuit, you could suffocate, and that's a horrible way to die. Don't do it. You're falling in orbit. Free-fall.

  A spurt of his maneuvering jet set him rotating slowly. The nearer, and infinitely more reassuring, superstructure of Tachylab came into view—a crazy-quilt of aluminum and steel. At a distance of only a few kilometers, it afforded a breath-restoring point of reference. He turned further and caught sight of his companion, Robert Johanson, who resembled a golden-helmeted bug, drifting toward him across an intervening space of twenty or thirty meters. Behind Johanson was an equipment shed, part of the floating structure of the tachyon storage ring.

  Johanson's voice rasped in his ear. "Are you all right, John?"

  "Yes. All right," Irwin answered, finding it a struggle to get the first words out. The rest came more easily. "Just—had a moment of vertigo."

  Johanson moved quickly toward him, and a moment later grasped him by the upper arm. Johanson connected a cable from his own chestpack to Irwin's. When he spoke again, his intonation was clearer; the cable was a direct-wire com-link. "Are you sure you're okay?" A golden visor bobbed in the sunlight, peering at him.

  "Yes. Quite all right. I'm over it, now." Irwin was grateful that Johanson could not see into his helmet, could not see his face, which was almost certainly pale.

  "You were drifting away—looked like you were out of control. By the way, your radio's off now—we can talk freely," Johanson said.

  Irwin drew a deep breath of faintly metallic air. Clearheadedness was returning. He was surprised to see his tether line stretched to its full length from the two-man shuttlebus in which they had arrived. He had drifted. "It's been months since I've been out in one of these suits," he explained. "I'm not used to it. You should have seen me when I first hit orbit, I had to be held by the hand for the first two weeks. Now my stomach might bother me a little, but at least I can stand the view without turning to jelly." He released his arm from Johanson's grasp and turned slowly ninety degrees in each direction. This time the sight of the Earth hanging like a beach ball in the sky was merely awesome. "Where's your friend?"

  Johanson pointed footward. "That looks like him now." Irwin tried to look in the direction indicated and found that he had to fire a reaction jet to pitch himself forward. He cautiously stabilized himself in a new attitude, then squinted. He spotted a small scooter moving in front of the skeletal framework of the lab's power complex. It was moving toward them.

  "You're sure, now, that you trust him?" Irwin said.

  "As much as I trusted you in the beginning. We've discussed all this before," Johanson said.

  "I just want to be certain."

  "You can trust him. Remember, Alicia vouched for him, too."

  Irwin murmured assent. It was so hard to know about new people. Isolated in the scientific sector, he found it difficult to maintain his contacts with the operations crew, who were as vital to the group's aims as any of the scientists. Meetings like this, under the guise of inspection EVAs, were hardly a substitute for normal personal interaction.

  They waited as the scooter drew close. Its pilot parked, dismounted, and with practiced use of his maneuvering jets floated over to join them. Johanson plugged another cable into the newcomer's spac
esuit and made brief introductions. The newcomer's name was Mark Adams. Adams turned partially away from the sun and lifted his reflective visor so that Irwin could see his face, or at least his eyes. Irwin followed suit, and the two men touched mitted hands. Irwin dropped his visor again, and Adams did likewise.

  "How much has Robert filled you in on?" Irwin asked.

  Adams answered in a low voice, a nasal drawl. "I know that some of you feel the way I do, that the way this project is being run is wrong. I don't know all of your names, or what your positions are, or exactly what you're planning to do about it. But Robert and I got to talking, once he understood how I felt about working here and having secrets about my own work kept from me. I gather that there are a number of details about the mission that no one bothered to tell me, that maybe I ought to know. And maybe people on the outside ought to know, too."