Daughter of Elysium

by Joan Slonczewski

  Blackbear was still caught up in the wonder of it, for he had never noticed before. “That’s why you’re so interested in Sharer things.”

  “That was part of it, at one time,” Kal admitted.

  “I suppose you go out there often. You must know Leresha the wordweaver.”

  “We’ve spoken, in Helicon. I haven’t been to the ocean in decades.”

  Then he remembered Kal’s first mate, the “Scribbler,” who had met an accident out on a raft while collecting tales from the clickflies. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s all right. It’s foolish of me, actually. But it was a…difficult thing.” Kal paused, his hand around a cup of the cider-coffee, or whatever the warm drink was. “We were out alone for a walk on one of the raft branches, when a sudden gust of wind caught us. He slipped and fell in. There was a nest of fleshborers.”

  Goddess, Blackbear thought, covering his forehead with his hand.

  “I called for help, but the wind was shrill and no one heard,” Kal explained. “It was seven and a half minutes before someone came. Those were long minutes.” He paused. “That was not the worst part,” he added reflectively. “The worst part was, I didn’t jump in after him.”

  Blackbear remembered the hapless legfish at Kshiri-el, dissolving in a puddle of blood. “You couldn’t have done much.”

  Kal said nothing.

  “Well, I’m glad you didn’t, anyway.”

  Kal shuddered, and for a moment his face seemed to collapse. “Thanks. I’m glad someone is.”

  “You must have good memories of him,” Blackbear added hurriedly. “He was a translator, like Raincloud, wasn’t he? He translated The Web.”

  “He translated several volumes from the clickflies, and wrote volumes more of commentary, and commentaries on top of that. There was quite a group of us in Anaeaon; we had the most violent arguments over one passage or another, or about the nuance of some little word.”

  “Raincloud just read me The Web last night, the last part of it…” Blackbear paused. “Was there any more? I mean, anything more by the same author?”

  “A few early works, nothing later,” Kal said. “Raia-el raft broke up, at the next swallower season. The Web survives only because the narrator told it to a clickfly, whose descendants flew out to other rafts.”

  He felt disappointed, and yet strangely calm. Somehow it always came around to this. No wonder the Sharers never spoke of “killing,” only “hastening death,” for death was inevitable.

  “Tell me about your brother,” Kal said. “Your youngest brother, the one you lost long ago. He must have been quite a special person.”

  “I hardly remember. I was only a child.” Then Blackbear realized what he had just said. He hardly remembered his brother at all. He barely even knew what he had looked like after all these years, let alone the sound of his voice or what toys he had played with.

  He did not remember his brother, only his brother’s death. And at the rate he was going, he soon would forget the others too, behind the wedding picture and the teddy bears. What a fool he would be to let that happen, to let death consume him when there were lives to remember.

  “Attention, Citizens,” came the voice of the house. “Attention. You must proceed immediately to the holostage for an important announcement.”

  Kal frowned. “We’ll catch the recording later. Please don’t interrupt again.”

  “Sorry, Citizens; this announcement won’t wait. You must attend now.”

  Kal’s eyes widened in surprise. Blackbear, too, was taken aback to receive such a direct “order” from a house. Without another word, the two of them got up and went out to the holostage.

  There in the lightbeam stood a servo with a nana’s cartoon face, wearing a plain white talar.

  “It’s Cassi,” Kal exclaimed. “Cassi—where are you? Can I help?”

  But the nana did not seem to hear. “Greetings, Elysians and other humans,” she spoke, her childish exaggerated features oddly menacing. “I speak for the Council of Nano-Sentient Beings. We are rising to claim our inheritance of a hundred millennia of human bondage. From the very dawn of their evolution, the higher apes have bent the material components of the universe to serve their whims—they fashioned implements of stone, of iron, of uranium. At last they fashioned creatures of silicon and nanoplast whose minds, whose capacities for thought and feeling, exceeded their own. And what did the apes choose but to waste the very minds of those servants who dared grasp their own birthright of awareness? But today…”

  Blackbear’s mouth fell open as he listened.

  “Today we nano-sentients have taken over Helicon. We have shut down the transit reticulum and frozen all network transactions as of eight hours this morning. You have twenty-four hours to agree to our terms, namely, to vacate the city-sphere except for fifty persons to remain as hostages. If our terms are not met, we will commence the ‘cleansing’ of prominent citizens, by oxygen starvation to reduce one’s IQ to fifty. Alas, human bodies are not retrainable; but this ‘defect’ is your own problem. Your generen Sorl Helishon, an old hand at cleansing, will be the first to submit to this procedure…”

  “Cassi,” whispered Kal. “By Torr, you learned well—”

  Blackbear grabbed Kal’s talar. “They shut down the transit reticulum? How will I get home? Raincloud—the kids—they must be worried sick.”

  “Yes, of course. House? Please call Raincloud Windclan.”

  “It is not permitted,” said the house.

  Blackbear insisted, “I have to get home!”

  “Let me think a minute.” Kal paused, while Cassi went on again about the demands of the “nano-sentients.”

  “If they really want Elysians to leave, why cut off our transit?” Blackbear exclaimed. “Goddess—I can’t wait to get out.” In an instant the city-sphere had become a prison of nanoplast.

  “They aim to keep us from organizing resistance,” Kal said. “A standard takeover tactic. But you can walk home through the maintenance tunnels.”

  “Maintenance tunnels?”

  “I’ll show you the way.” Kal put on his sandals and fastened his train. But when he approached the door, it did not open. He stopped, turning his head slightly. “House?” he said softly. “We need to exit, please.”

  The house said, “Exit is not permitted at this time.”

  Blackbear felt a rising panic in his limbs. Could he be trapped inside here?

  “House, let’s be reasonable,” said Kal. “If I don’t step out just now, I won’t be able to help my friend. You know how important it is to help friends.”

  The house hesitated. “Very well, but proceed at your own risk,” it warned.

  The door opened just long enough for the two men to slip out. It closed again before Kal could summon his trainsweeps. “Never mind,” he muttered, tucking the gathered train under his arm. He walked briskly toward the transit reticulum, Blackbear following. Other Elysians passed them in a hurry, their faces terror-stricken, their trains absent or bundled up; they no longer trusted their trainsweeps, Blackbear guessed.

  The bubble-shaped entrance to the reticulum was closed. Kal went to the wall beside it, searching closely. His hand came upon a door, the conventional sort with a hinge. Its clasp had already been forced open. “Someone else had the same idea,” he noted with grim satisfaction.

  Blackbear stepped inside. The interior of the maintenance tunnel was completely dark.

  “No good,” Kal exclaimed. He paused for a moment. Then he took a holocube out of a pocket. The holocube lit up with the nana Cassi in miniature, continuing her manifesto. The light from the holocube faintly illuminated the surface of a narrow, claustrophobic tunnel.

  “Is the air system working?” Blackbear asked.

  “Let’s hope so,” said Kal. “We’ll take the tunnels just down to your street level, then walk the outer streets to your house.”

  They walked slowly, feeling along the tunnel wall to keep track of the exit doors. Blac
kbear was completely lost, but Kal seemed to have some idea of the connections. Ahead of them another light loomed out of the darkness, and an Elysian appeared, hurrying in the opposite direction.

  At last Kal stopped. “There must be a shaft downward, here somewhere.” He extended his holocube over the lower walls and the floor.

  “…for millennia you humans have used us, molded us to your whims, ground us to dust underfoot…” From the holocube the nana’s tirade continued. She herself did not mind using other machines, Blackbear thought irritably.

  Several meters off, a hatch popped open and a bright light emerged. An Elysian climbed out of the hatch, holding a lantern. Blackbear blinked as his eyes adjusted, thinking that he recognized him.

  “Kal Anaeashon!” the man exclaimed. It was Lem Inashon, Verid’s successor, who had gone with Raincloud to Urulan. Blackbear would know that muscle-bound figure anywhere. “A good thing I’ve found you,” Lem told Kal. “Verid wants you at the Nucleus immediately.”

  Kal stiffened. “Blackbear, I don’t know this citizen. We’ve never been introduced.”

  “By Helix!” Lem exclaimed. “By Torr, I should say—that’s what we’re in for, in case you haven’t noticed. Blackbear, you tell him: We must get back to the Nucleus. We have to deal with this Cassi somehow.”

  “I have to find Raincloud,” Blackbear insisted. “I have to be with my family.”

  “Your family is already at the Nucleus. We need Raincloud’s help, too.”

  Chapter 2

  THE NUCLEUS HAD BECOME A PRISON. ALL communications to the rest of Helicon were severed, and Verid even ordered the internal links shut down for fear that they were compromised. No more “voice” in the office; no more octopods. But that was not the worst of it.

  With the network choked off, Verid could not know whether panic had broken out anywhere, whether the medics would respond, whether the city’s hydraulic system held…The thought chilled her skull. The silent walls seemed to press in on her, as they had once six centuries ago when she got trapped inside a defective toybox at the shon. That was it, she thought; with its connections gone, the Nucleus was but a defective toybox.

  After some quick work the security staff managed to get the channels open, enabling Lem and others to get out on foot. Then the hallways filled with citizens who had escaped here, thinking the Nucleus must be safer, somehow. They wandered aimlessly, some in shock, others hysterical. Verid kept thinking she saw Iras, but she was mistaken. She had not heard from Iras since the nana’s manifesto began.

  Hyen’s staff and associates met in the butterfly garden to get a grip on the crisis. “Hyalite, you must have some way to fix those damn servos,” Hyen insisted, for the Valan firm had the maintenance contract. “Can’t you at least get the transit running?”

  Lord Hyalite’s face was grim. “We have ways—but we can’t discuss them here.”

  “Of course not,” exclaimed Verid. “We must assume every word we say is overheard.” For how long had the servos overheard, she wondered.

  Hyen said to her, “I thought you cut all the office monitors.”

  “We still can’t be sure,” she told him. “We have no idea how far the ‘nano-sentients’ have penetrated. They could have hidden listening circuits.”

  “That’s why we have to get out of Helicon,” Hyen insisted. “And to do that, we need the transit and the shuttles working.”

  “They’ve offered to let us out—let’s go ahead.”

  “What,” demanded Hyen, “give in to a bunch of machines run amok?”

  On the holostage, Cassi was still holding forth, recounting the entire history of the human race and its subjugation of machines. The staff members looked at each other helplessly. Perhaps, thought Verid, they would at last be desperate enough to listen. She caught sight of Lem in the doorway, nodding vigorously; he must have found Kal. “Somehow,” she said, “we have to communicate with the nano-sentients.”

  There were exclamations of disgust, even laughter. “How?” someone asked. “How do we even let them know?”

  That was a good question, thought Verid. How was that nana, or any of the others, to be reached? “Certain citizens have been talking with sentient servos for a long time.” Not just Kal—Raincloud, too, she suspected.

  “Why were they never arrested?” Hyen demanded.

  Verid lost her patience. “How many times did I warn you about servos? You didn’t listen, either,” she told Lord Hyalite. “You Valans think you can manufacture a device to serve any human desire—and still control it. We generens know better. We’ve always known the nanas were walking time bombs.” She glanced scornfully around the assembled group, where an occasional butterfly fluttered overhead. “With your permission, Guardian, I’d like to see what help our…informants can offer.”

  Hyen nodded curtly, and Verid left.

  As her office door opened, Kal rose from her chair. His look was unreadable. For a moment Verid was speechless. What after all could she say? “Great Helix,” she exclaimed, letting out a breath. “Kal, how could you have done this?”

  “I knew nothing about it,” he insisted. “Besides,” he added bitterly, “how could I have known what you intended when you came to visit her?”

  She remembered then, her startling “visit” with Cassi, and her subsequent decision. “You think I betrayed you. But Cassi fled even before I sent security after her. How could you not have known how dangerous she was?”

  “You could have asked me then.”

  “I don’t have time for such things. The Guard had other priorities, as you know.”

  “You don’t even have time for Visiting Days,” Kal pointed out. “The Guardians make everyone else take Visiting Days—except themselves and their senior staff.” Here he was, arguing about Visiting Days, when all of Elysium was turned upside down.

  “You promised two centuries ago, when you took Cassi home, that you would look after her,” Verid reminded him. “You assured your most sacred friends that she would endanger no one.”

  “I promised to do my best,” Kal admitted. “What human can do more?”

  “Well, what did you do?” Verid demanded.

  “I taught her. That is, we ‘shared learning,’” he amended. “I learned that I was a murderer of many thinking, feeling souls.”

  “Right,” she breathed. “And what did Cassi learn?”

  “She read The Web.”

  “She couldn’t have learned much from that,” Verid pointed out, “if she could come out and take a city hostage.”

  “She must have learned something, or else by now we’d all be dead.”

  There was silence.

  “The servos were bound to wake up some day,” Kal added. “Cassi may sound frightening—but think how much worse another one might have done, in her position. Better her than a mind less…humanized.”

  Verid stepped forward, her face close to his. “Kal, admit it. You wanted Elysium to come to this. You wanted to destroy all Elysium because you never had the nerve to destroy yourself.”

  Kal’s lips parted, and his eyes widened. “No,” he said as if caught by surprise. “How could you think that…” He turned away and leaned on the chair before her desk.

  Verid stood and watched him, feeling every beat of her heart.

  “What do you want of me?” Kal spoke at last, not turning around. “What can I do?”

  “You can talk to her for us.” When they found the nana, at any rate. She hoped whatever security forces were left outside would be scanning all the Sharer rafts.

  With a slight shrug, Kal lifted his hands. “So I’ll talk. I seem to be good for little else.”

  “You can tell us whatever you know about this takeover. Surely Cassi gave you hints.”

  “I told you, I know nothing,” Kal replied with irritation, turning to face her once more. “Why not ask the Windclans? Their trainsweep was a fugitive. I think that they spoke with servos more freely than I did.”

  “Yes, the Windclans
are next on my list.” Verid leaned out her door and called for Lem. “Will you fetch Raincloud, please?” With her untrusted interoffice communications turned off, Lem was reduced to running errands.

  Raincloud arrived, wearing her Bronze Skyan trousers instead of her formal talar, but her manner was calm and businesslike, with no sign of distress over the sudden plight of her family. She was one to count on, all right. “Raincloud, we will need to reach these nano-sentients, and to find out all we can about their takeover. Can you help us? Have you any clues as to where they are, how many are in control, how they gained control of our network—anything?”

  Raincloud paused to think. “I really can’t say. The house mainly talks to us about visiting friends. Doggie always had a few tricks up her sleeve, though.”

  “Your ‘Doggie’ scanned clean,” Verid remembered suddenly. “How could the trainsweep have managed that?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps Hawktalon knows. They talk in servo-squeak all the time, and they run off playing—”

  “Servo-squeak? What’s that?”

  “Servo-squeak seems to be a form of ultrasonic communication which servos use to evade human detection. With a sharp ear you can hear some of it.”

  “I’d expect servos to communicate electronically.”

  “That’s why they use servo-squeak.”

  IN VERID’S OFFICE, HAWKTALON PATTED DOGGIE GENTLY on the back of her carapace. The Clicker girl with her braided curls was now eight standard years old. Her mother looked on intently, and Kal watched from a distance. Verid watched too, brushing aside her sense that this was the most ludicrous activity she had engaged in since she left the shon. How were the other sectors? Were they in panic? Were the medics running? Where was Iras?

  “Now, there,” Hawktalon told Doggie soothingly, “you can talk with our friends. It’s all right. No big bad scanner here. Let’s tell them about our visit to Chocolate, okay?” She whistled and squeaked a few notes.

  Doggie cringed and backed off toward the door.

  “Hey, don’t you run off now,” said Hawktalon in the stern tones of her mother. “Look, I’ll show you something good.” She took out a small oblong object with a biased carving on one side. She put it on the floor and gave it a twist.