Harbinger

by Jack Skillingstead

  It was safe in there with my books and barriers. Barriers against emotional involvement. Barriers around that most vulnerable organ—my heart.

  I had an hour to kill before George began screwing with Infinity in a noticeable way. Whenever there was an open space I tended to fill it with dope. So I started preparing my usual answer to any uncomfortable possibility. Standing before my plant collection I picked up the little shears and started snipping likely buds. My hands moved slowly, then stopped, and I thought: The hell with it. I dropped the shears and switched off the grow lights. That closed my most reliable escape hatch. I could still feel the heat on the backs of my hands.

  So when Laird Ulin came for my eyes, I wasn’t there. Around the time he was expecting me in surgical prep, I was strolling through Venice. Someone had turned the canal water periwinkle. Since no real water was involved, such a transformation was easily accomplished and did no harm, except to the verisimilitude.

  Two biomechs sat in front of a café façade (which was real) sipping from demitasses of espresso (which was synth). They were supposed to resemble a man and a woman. And they did, too, if the light was sufficiently dim and you squinted and were perhaps drunk or a little blind. BUZZ and ROCHELLE. A cute couple. I wished they would go away. Venice usually was unpopulated at this hour.

  I sat at a nearby table under the shade of a Cinzano umbrella. The biomechs glanced over by turning their necks in little jerks and auto-focusing their doll’s eyes. I smiled and waved, and they turned away again, no doubt conversing on a closed channel.

  I said “Espresso” and a thing like a traffic light with four erector set legs clickety-clacked out of the café and placed a thick, white saucer with a demitasse of black synth on my table. You didn’t need periwinkle canal water to spoil verisimilitude.

  I sat sipping synth (not out of a seashell by the sea shore, thank goodness), pinky extended at the proper angle, and directed my strongest Get Lost! vibe at BUZZ and ROCHELLE. They ignored me. And their bodies made percolating sounds, as if they were brewing the wretched synth in whatever passed for their intestinal tracks—which is how the stuff tasted.

  “Lovely day,” I remarked.

  They didn’t like me, and showed it by not deigning to acknowledge my presence beyond their initial glance. None of the biomech population liked me, though, so I wasn’t offended. I inhaled deeply and said:

  “It feels good to be alive!”

  BUZZ jerked his mannequin head in my direction again. His range of facial expression was nil, so who knows what he intended to convey. Without speaking, he and ROCHELLE stood up together and, holding hands, walked toward the Scrim. They could remember being alive, but that didn’t count. Their fourteen percent organics allowed them to ingest synthetic espresso and even taste it. They could hold hands if they wanted to, but coitus was a technical conundrum beyond their design.

  It was good to be alive. And perhaps not so good to be BUZZ and ROCHELLE. From now on I was all for life.

  After a short distance they passed through the Scrim that presented the illusion of a street continuing in diminishing perspective. The street scene shivered, and two instantly created figures strolled in place of the biomechanical couple.

  I put my demitasse down.

  The street scene continued to shiver and wobble. Then the canal turned black, which gave the parked gondolas the appearance of projecting over a Stygian abyss.

  After that, the whole damn thing crashed.

  Presently there came the sharp clack of magnetic locks releasing. A panel opened in the velvet blackness before which the image of the canal had resided moments ago.

  I moved quickly. My perusal of the ship’s design database had informed me that from this point I would be very near the port to a kilometers-long access tube running from the Command Level to the floor of The County. Picture Infinity as a giant armadillo, twenty kilometers long, half again as tall and five wide. In between the Command Level and The County was a middle section devoted to farms and resource reclamation. The access tube pierced all three levels. It was long.

  Orienting myself, I turned right and followed the corridor between bulkheads until I came to a wider place and a hatch recessed into the deck.

  I knelt on the deck and retracted the hatch by turning a hand-operated wheel. The purpose of this tube, as well as several others located along the outer hull of Infinity was to provide direct access between deck levels in the event of a catastrophic systems failure. At such a time one might also assume a loss of gravity, which would make traveling the tubes a somewhat less harrowing experience than it was likely to be now, with full gravity—full gravity on Infinity being roughly eighty-eight percent Earth normal. It was a very long way to The County.

  The tube was three meters in diameter. As soon as the hatch was fully retracted, three linked platforms, each large enough to accommodate a single passenger, rose out of the opening. The platforms were attached to pairs of skinny rails on the side of the tube. They were powerless contraptions operated on an elaborate arrangement of counter weights and had been built with no very great expectation of ever being utilized.

  I stepped onto one, secured myself with a strap, released the lock, gripped the handrails and began utilizing the hell out of it.

  I dropped at a moderate rate. Amber light illuminated the tube. Looking up made me feel like I was inside a giant straw, slipping back after the big suck.

  As I slowly descended, my stomach fluttered with anticipation. Images of Delilah inhabited my mind. Even at this point a long-frightened child inside me clamored to get off this ride before it was too late. Below me lay a world that had moved on only a short number of years. But if I stopped, went back to my quarters, back to my books and dope and timeless retreat, that world below would eventually cycle all its present population, including Delilah, into the next generation. And I could go on and dwell in semi-blissful numbness until Infinity completed her long journey.

  I shook off the fear and stayed with the ride.

  After ten minutes or so the lights began to flicker up and down the endless tube. I gripped the handrails tighter. Was George making his broader acquaintance with Infinity’s intimate architecture?

  The lights stuttered a final time and went out. It wasn’t too bad at first, but after a while a flashlight would have been nice. The long black fall gave me an uneasy feeling. I hadn’t planned on any lights going out. Perhaps George had some plans of his own. Perhaps “plan” was the wrong word altogether. All I’d wanted to do was unlock some doors and disrupt a few nonessential functions. But I was no genius when it came to tampering with SuperQuantum Core technology. Perhaps no one was. Not even Laird himself. There was something a little magical and unpredictable about SuperQuantum.

  Eventually the platform encountered a pneumatic brake and shushed to an uneventful halt. I locked it down, fumbled my safety strap loose, and began groping for the exit.

  I emerged behind one of the giant holographic Scrims that provided The County with a portion of horizon. It was like standing behind an old-fashioned cinema screen. I craned my neck but could not see the top, which curved almost imperceptibly with the hull.

  I stepped forward, through the Scrim, and stumbled slightly with the disorientation of a sudden transition in perspective. I found myself a few miles “east” of Bedford Falls. Grassland spread out in all directions. It felt too warm. Generally The County maintained a climate not unlike that which used to be found in suburban shopping malls of the late twentieth century.

  I gazed skyward. Clouds were already beginning to gather, and some of them might have been real. Down here Infinity generated her own limited weather phenomenon; the rest was vivid illusion. However, embedded in my virus was a tutorial on stormcraft, which I hoped to see manifested shortly after my arrival and—fingers crossed—reunion. Just a mild thunderstorm, a little sound, not much fury. It was the romantic in me. Tinkering around with the idea, I’d felt positively Byronesqe.

  I started walking fast
er.

  chapter twelve

  The little girl with choppy yellow hair pointed and said, “The sky’s broken.”

  Infinity was a ship full of skies. And sometimes they ‘broke.’ But this was of a different magnitude. A large rectangular section had turned black. Even though I knew it only indicated that a Scrim projection grid had gone offline, it was still vaguely disturbing. And much more so to this child, of course.

  It was hot. I had come upon the girl in the Town Square of Bedford Falls, sitting on a bench in a red jumpsuit eating a vanilla ice-cream cone. I guessed she was about six. She made such a pretty picture that I approached her and said hi. It had been quite a while since I’d last talked to a child. Up close this one looked familiar. As soon as I greeted her she got a look on her face and started pointing at the sky, pale lips puckered worriedly.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s probably just a minor malfunction. Hey, watch out, you’re melting all over the place.” I sat beside her. She wouldn’t stop staring at the black section above us. Those eyes.

  “The sky’s wrong,” she said.

  “What flavor’s your cone?”

  “Huh?”

  “I said what flavor’s your cone?”

  “What flavor does it look like?” she asked.

  “Strawberry?”

  “It’s vanilla.”

  “That was going to be my next guess. What’s your name?”

  “Alice Greene.”

  I nodded. “I bet I know your mom’s name.”

  “Bet you don’t.”

  “Delilah.”

  She licked her cone. “Everybody knows everybody.”

  “Yeah? You don’t know me.”

  She shrugged, then shouted: “Mommy!”

  A woman had stepped out of the Bedford Falls Hotel and was crossing quickly in our direction. The resemblance was obvious, the hair, especially the violet eyes.

  “There’s my girl,” she said, picking Alice up and holding her.

  “Something’s wrong with the sky,” Alice said.

  “Don’t look at it, Honey.”

  “Why not? Will it unbreak if I don’t look?”

  “I’m sure it’s just a minor glitch,” I said. “Hello, Delilah.”

  She stared, bestowing upon me the same stupefied gawk her daughter had given the broken sky.

  “Ellis—”

  “I was on my way over when I bumped into your daughter.”

  “On your way over. It’s been ten years, Ellis.”

  “Nine, actually. But it feels like ten to me, too.”

  “Mommy I wanna go inside now,” Alice said.

  “Just a minute, baby.”

  “Cute kid,” I said.

  Delilah gave me a measuring look. “Ellis, what are you doing here?

  “Hey, I thought absence was supposed to cause various internal organs to grow fonder.”

  “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  “Neither have you. Beautiful as ever.”

  She smiled, but said: “Yes, I have. Changed.” She didn’t mean the crow’s feet, which I hated myself for noticing.

  A hot breeze scurried through the square. Since I had arrived the ambient temperature had risen by at least five degrees. That was at ground level. I estimated it was a lot cooler a kilometer or so above, where George was playing with alterations in the atmosphere, orchestrating temperature and pressures changes. Real clouds formed rapidly. There was something disturbingly aggressive about it. I thought of dark tubes and black wounds slashed into the sky.

  “It might not be a bad idea for you to get inside,” I said to Delilah.

  “Go inside, Mom!”

  “What’s happening, Ellis?”

  “I’m not sure. All I had in mind was a little wind and a rumble or two. This feels bigger.”

  She regarded me strangely, her fair brow was misted with sweat. “Come inside with us.”

  “I think I’ll sit and watch for a while.”

  Delilah hesitated a moment longer, glanced at the sky, then turned and walked swiftly toward the hotel. Alice hung over her shoulder and dripped a trail of creamy yellow-white spots, in case she wanted to find her way back to Uncle Ellis.

  The square was filling with people. They emerged from storefronts and restaurants and work centers. They halted on the sidewalks, stood straddling bicycles. They pointed. Now the sky hung low and threatening, pregnant with storm. The wind picked up. Everyone appeared uneasy. I wanted to pull a Jimmy Stewart, quell the citizenry’s incipient panic. But I didn’t have it in me. Perhaps I needed somebody to quell my incipient panic first.

  More than a few (Bedford Fallsians?) noticed me sitting on the bench looking at them. I was a stranger, so that was to be expected. What made me nervous were the flashes of recognition some of them threw at me. And it wasn’t happy let-me-shake-your-hand recognition, either.

  I got up and followed the drippy trail to the hotel, keeping my head down.

  Somebody gasped. There were some oh-my-Gods. I looked up from the steps of the hotel. The sky was tinted green. In the distance a narrow funnel cloud probed downward. Jesus.

  I went inside.

  “You’d better see this,” Delilah said. She handed me a unrolled Palmscroll. “The alert is running continuously. You seem to be a wanted man.”

  I activated the device. Laird Ulin’s face swam into focus. What lovely eyes!

  “This man—” Ulin said, and an image insert of yours truly opened in the lower right corner of the scroll. “—is Ellis Herrick. He is an unauthorized person at large in The County, and is personally and solely responsible for the disruptions now occurring. If you encounter Mr. Herrick you must detain him and immediately alert Command Level authorities.”

  I handed the device back. “Feel like turning me in?”

  “Should I?” Delilah said.

  A gust of wind buffeted the building.

  “It might be more useful to point me in the direction of the nearest Core Access Interface. I think I need to turn the weather off.”

  “God makes the weather,” Alice said, shaking her head seriously.

  Perhaps she was mocking me? I reached down and wiped a daub of ice-cream off her chin.

  “Can you do that?” Delilah asked. “Turn the storm off?”

  “Maybe. By the way, where’s Mr. Delilah?”

  She wrinkled her nose. If you mean Alice’s father, he’s in Waukegan. And his name is Ben Roos.”

  “The name I remember.”

  “Ellis. You went away. Remember? For a long time. Besides, you knew I had to get pregnant.”

  “Ben’s my gene dad,” Alice piped up. “He’s old.”

  Kids say the darndest things.

  “I bet I’m older than your gene daddy,” I said to Alice.

  “He’s the mayor,” she said back, not sounding too impressed.

  “What a guy.”

  “He’s a water farmer, too.”

  “Now I’m getting all tingly.”

  Alice giggled.

  We were in the apartment behind the front desk of the hotel. A window looked out on the promenade. The light through that window suddenly dimmed, as if a giant shroud had been drawn over the town. There was a roaring. I closed the shades.

  “Hang on!”

  Something monstrous moved over us. The building shuddered. A woman screamed in the next room. My ears popped. Delilah’s face was tense and frightened. She hugged Alice against her breast, and I couldn’t see the child’s face. Then the window exploded. Sucked out the opening, the shade rattled and danced. I felt the breath drawn from my lungs. Outside in the weird purple-green light, a raggedy man swept by, arms and legs flailing like the limbs of a boneless doll. Son of a bitch!

  In a minute or two it was over.

  The light turned buttery, and shadows fled across the courtyard. I stepped to the window and ripped down what remained of the shade. The sky was blowing clear. Above the shredded clouds a holographic lie of serenity persisted
. My hands were trembling, and I made them into fists. There had been nothing in my virus that could have given birth to this. Nothing.

  I climbed through the window frame and went to the man. He lay sprawled and twisted. The grass was as vividly green as his blood was red. My hand unsteady, I touched the place on his neck that should have been pulsing and found it wasn’t.

  Behind me, Delilah said, “Ellis—?”

  “This is my fault,” I said.

  Then the man’s eyes fluttered, and I jerked my hand back. Hearts can be tricky things.

  *

  What a nice day for a bicycle ride. Delilah Greene (with Alice riding tandem) pedaled ahead of me on the winding, swooping path through the Oxygen Forest. With George running amok and the monorails dependent on the centralized computer system, it seemed best to take the scenic route. Also, I wanted to avoid being observed.

  It was an odd-looking forest, the trees engineered for maximum carbon dioxide-to-oxygen conversion, bulgy on top like big green cartoon poodle puffs. Whimsical. But I wasn’t feeling too whimsical myself. Not like the way I’d felt when I concocted a harmless little thunderstorm.

  We were on our way to Waukegan. There was an old water farmer in town who also happened to be mayor—and in the office of the mayor was a Core Access Interface. The one in Bedford Falls had exploded, unfortunately (Core interface, not water farmer/mayor). A lot of other things had, too. We left behind us a debris field of PerfectWood flinders but—luckily—no bodies. A black pillar of smoke, wind-smudged, climbed over the roofs of Bedford Falls. Whimsy.

  And George was already busy rearranging the atmosphere for round two. Before entering the forest we saw an impressive cell of mini thunderheads, gorgeously mauve and dimly aflicker from within, standing on the phony horizon like purple-robed clerics of doom.

  Suddenly darkness fell. Like a guillotine. One moment it was afternoon, the next deepest midnight. We stopped riding. I didn’t even bother holding my hand in front of my face, because I already knew I wouldn’t be able to see it. Riding was too dangerous, and even walking was problematical. We left the bicycles and blundered around until we found a soft spot to sit and wait.