'I don't think you have any business teaching people how to defend themselves when you can barely even do a pushup,' I said shakily. It had cost me everything I had to say it, and when the words were out of my mouth, they didn't sound nearly strong enough. They weren't.
'I'm not going to be insulted by that, Miss Orbach. Coming from you, well. . .' He laughed. 'Pardon the expression, but isn't that the pot calling the kettle black?'
'I'm not a seventh-degree black belt,' I said. 'Or, should I say, sixth?'
'You're way out of line, talking to me that way. Let me tell you something, Miss Orbach, if I was an Okinawan or Japanese master and a student said that to me, I'd throw you out immediately.'
'You can't throw me out, because I'm quitting.'
He shrugged. 'That's your choice.'
He wasn't even mad. He didn't even care.
'I think it's really horrible,' I said. 'People put their faith in you, and what do they get? A belt that doesn't mean anything. Troy won that competition the other day because he's a natural athlete, not because of anything he learned here. He beats up your black belts every time we have sparring in class. I've seen it.'
'Nobody beats anybody up in my dojo.'
'No, excuse me, I phrased that wrong. You're just supposed to touch the guy and that counts as hurting him.'
'Anything else would be barbaric. We're a brotherhood.'
This made me really mad but it's always the same with me. I just could not put my feelings into words. I couldn't get past that nice-behavior thing. Brotherhood? I wanted to say. Is that what you call it when you gang up on a person who's been a victim and use her to advance your own career? But I just couldn't say it. I tried.
'So, I just wanted you to know how I feel. I. . .' Again my voice was shaking. I gestured around the office, at the dojo trophies on the shelves and the assorted Japanese weapons, all of it. I wanted to say something really scathing but I just couldn't. 'I'm not too impressed with any of this.'
He just looked at me. No, he didn't care at all.
'I guess I better go,' I said, and got up. He pulled that smarmy smile again.
I threw myself over the desk at him.
I don't think he believed it was happening. He grabbed me by my arms but that didn't stop me head-butting him across his big flabby nose. He fell over backward in his chair and I was on top of him. He'd let go of my right hand and as I scrabbled around for balance in the crowded space between the desk and the wall, I grabbed the crystal paperweight that held his state junior division bronze judo medal from 1963 – the highest honor he had ever personally won. I sat on his right arm and smashed it into his face again and again, feeling it grate and grind against his teeth.
Shihan shoved me back off him and my ears rang as the back of my head met with the edge of his desk. The phone fell down on the back of my neck and I shrugged it off. He was trying to kick his way out from under me but the desk trapped him in position and his eyes were full of blood.
The bag with my groceries in it had spilled on the floor. I saw an opportunity and, seizing hold of the bottle of liquid Drano, I ripped off the safety tab and squirted it at him. He screamed, choked, spat. I could see the incomprehension in his face even as he tried to get up. It was a beautiful thing. Very satisfying, that moment.
I crashed down on him with both my knees. I felt the wind go out of him and for good measure I ground the point of my elbow into his throat. He'd grabbed hold of my T-shirt and was trying to use it to tie me up, but I shrugged out of it and pulled away, leaving him scrabbling around on the floor like a fish on the deck of a rowboat. He couldn't get his breath. Drano dripped from his lips and nose, which was running with fresh blood. The last I saw of him he was groping blind, his hands patting and grasping his framed grades and titles in their Japanese writing.
I wanted to drag him into the sauna where he could bake to a state of brittleness together with his bricks, but a sudden, uncontrollable fear came over me and I ran out of the office, up the stairs, and out onto the street. It was a bright and sunny day in Minnehaha.
I was only wearing shorts and a 44DD Warners Cross My Heart support bra. Somebody in a pickup wolf-whistled me as I crossed the street. My left forearm was aching something awful. I reached down with my right hand, felt a bloody lump embedded in the muscle, and jerked loose one of John Norman's yellowed front teeth.
_______
I went home and hugged the cats. I called Gloria and left a message on her machine saying I had to go away for a while and asking her to feed Nebbie and Rocky. I went out to Foodtown and stocked up on cat litter and food. I watered the plants. I took a shower and bandaged my arm and got changed into clean clothes with long sleeves to hide the bite mark. I picked out a few treasured books to bring along with me, in case things like that were allowed where I was going. I opened a can of chicken soup, heated it up and ate it with saltines. I unplugged the computer and hid the Quark save-game disk in an old photo album.
Then I sat and waited for the police to come.
It was Sunday afternoon. I waited until midnight, but nothing happened. I couldn't sleep.
So I did what everybody else does when they run out of ideas. I turned on the TV.
You can fly again. It's the greatest.
The sky over X cracks and yawns open like a refrigerator door, light falling across the Grid in a chilly rhombus as the Third Wave ships sink through the atmosphere. It's obvious now why they're called MFeels: they look like eels in the sky, the articulations of their armor are so fine. The light shaft that carries them completely overpowers the luminosity of the Grid, so that it stands out in dark green and indigo against the new light, and for the first moments it looks like nothing so much as a tangled roll of barbed wire fence. The ships seem to swim down headfirst, eyeless but determined.
You have to dim the opacity of your visual inputs to handle the extra light.
As the ships get closer to X, the light fades and details appear on the arriving ships. Antennae are seen sprouting from the hulls, only to be retracted for entry into the docking bays that now iris open to receive the newcomers.
'Once they are primed with logic bullets, they'll be able to go through the Grid, swimming in the air. They can hunt golems with aerial backup from fliers like you and prevent them from damaging equipment,' Machine Front informs you. 'They won't be pervious to golem psychological warfare because the people will all be gone, and they can't fall into the well because they don't travel on the ground. They've been designed especially to cope with the anomalies of this planet. They represent the next stage of technological development: they don't need any human pilots at all. It's very exciting to see them finally arrive.'
There is little movement on the ground, though. Robot arms are involved in preparing the MFeels, but most of these are housed under the roof of the compound. The tarmac is bare. Vehicles have been garaged or parked in neat lines and covered with tarps. There are some signs of a hasty exodus by humans, though: an occasional abandoned jeep or a radio kite blowing from a tower. Major Galante's convoy, blackened and torn from combat, is scattered across several fields of tarmac and some of the transport doors have been left wide open. There are some people standing at the foot of Tower Four: Galante's personnel, you assume, just in from the Grid.
Then you spot Galante herself, counting off her guys as they pass through the tower doors to safety.
She looks up and sees you. She smiles and waves, and you find yourself going down to her. Just like old times.
'I thought you were a goner, Goss. I'm so glad to see you. You're just in time. We have to execute Serge's final orders. I know if you're up there, this job will be done right.'
She pulls you out of the sky, Gossamer's skin draping her arms like silk. You thought this reunion would reassure you. You thought it would be like coming home, because Major Galante is nice and you always liked working with her. But it's not the same. You can't relax.
She doesn't notice, of course. No one notices
how you feel, because they can't see you.
'I don't have time to do a full diagnostic and reprogram, Goss,' says Galante. 'You seem to be OK; that scar's not bothering you, is it? Let's see you fly.'
And you're up there again. The buildings fall away, the Grid falls away, everything that was wrong falls away and you're flying. That's perfection, and it always will be.
MF is in your headspace again.
PREPARE TO GUIDE THE TEST EELS, GOSSAMER.
Do you rebel? Do you refuse? Do you declare yourself an indi-vidual, with opinions, not just a passive conduit?
LET SOMEONE ELSE DO IT, you say, adding apologetically in a way that makes you hate yourself: I'M TOO SQUEAMISH.
That is the extent of your rebellion. Yeah, when it comes right down to it, you always capitulate.
GOLEMS HAVE SHOT DOWN MOST OF THE OTHER FLIERS. SYSTEMATICALLY. WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH EYES UP THERE. SO GET OUT AND DO WHAT YOU WERE DESIGNED FOR.
You don't know what's going to happen but you can't get out of this one. Down in the seethe and rattle of the Grid you can feel the pull of the well. It's singing to Gossamer. Through the girls you know that it's building a city of the bones and breath of history, tracing the threads of possibility manifested in the MaxFact and every other object, word, concept brought here by humans. Tracing them back to their homes. It's calling up the ghosts that made the world of technology, revenants like golems but writ in the brick and human life that the MaxFact has eaten in order to bring itself into being.
The well would take Gossamer home any time, if you let it.
It would take her back to the beginning, and it would take her Earth-made eyes too, and unravel them and recodify or is it recognify their essence.
But what would that mean? For the Grid there is no separation between a concept and its execution.
You know that you'll never find out, because in the end you are obedient. You just don't have that kind of courage. Not you.
You start the flyover with a dead heart.
After so much time in the Grid, X looks like it has been scrubbed with disinfectant. Everything gleams. Everything is flat. Surfaces are level, still, lifeless. Machines are busy, gliding across the tarmac and manipulating the hardware that has settled in the landing bays. Everything functions according to machine rhythms that are alternately smooth and spastic, totally lacking in animal continuity. There are no signs of people, other than a couple of crookedly parked personnel carriers near the base of Tower Four.
You start to check the perimeter, and that's when you see your first people. There are two bipeds exiting a shed just outside the perimeter fence. As you watch, they approach the security net that borders the Grid. Even from here you can see they don't look right. Waxy lights scan them, and you tune in to the security readout.
The net has identified Joanne Klaski. It doesn't perceive her pint-sized companion at all. But you do. It's Serge's wayward daughter and she is going to enter X, carrying the logic bullets. Your head spins. What's going on? What did you miss?
You hesitate. If you let Gossamer watch them, you are at risk of MF demanding your images. But if you don't, you'll never know . . .
You decide to take your chances. You dive.
'I can't believe we're here already, 'you hear Klaski saying. 'How did we get across the Grid so quickly?'
'That's an archetypal shed,' the girl replies, nodding at the structure they have just left. 'Everything in the SynchroniCity leads to everything else. But how are we going to get past this machine?'
'Don't worry about that. Just give me the logic bullets.'
The girl gives every appearance of being singular. Her voice sounds small and light and lonely, but determined. 'Not yet. Get me through anti-golem security. Get me to my body. Then you can have them.'
'I need them now,' Klaski insists, using a tone more like a nine-year-old's than the nine-year-old herself. 'Machine Front will think I lied if I don't prove I have them.'
'That's your problem. They have my body. I'm taking it back.'
Klaski pulls a gross-out face.
'It won't be very nice, you know. After all this time. Even if they've been careful. . .'
'I got you out of the SynchroniCity,' adds the girl. 'Now hold up your end of the bargain.'
'If a Flier or a person sees you, they'll kill you,' Klaski says.
'Not if I have the logic bullets.'
'But that's crazy!' Klaski whispers. You have to boost audio to pick her up. 'You can't stand up to them. They'll take the bullets and still use them against your. . . other bodies. Give them to me, and I can negotiate.'
'After I get my body. How many times do I have to say it?'
'It doesn't make sense,' Klaski grouses. 'Can you recover some-thing from the body? Are you going to put it back in the Grid? I mean . . .when she died, you lost her knowledge, right?'
'No. All of the children of the well are supported by the Grid. You could say we're agents of it. When that part of me died, the rest of me had to take on more. So I remember her death. I experienced it. It was me.'
Klaski shudders. You hope that the girl doesn't intend to tell her what it was like.
The girl says: 'Can't you understand? I need that body. I'm going to take it back to the Grid – or see it destroyed. Anything else is just an open wound, and danger to me.'
'And what if something happens to you, here?'
'The others will absorb the shock.'
'So you have . . .huh-huh . . .you have nine lives? Why?'
'It's not really nine lives. It's just being in more than one place at once.'
'Fascinating. I could talk to Major Galante about you. Maybe you could come back to Earth.'
'There's nowhere to go back to.'
'That's just what you think. You have no idea what you're missing. Aren't you even curious?'
'You've already brought your world here. Your machines, your history. Arla Gonzalez, Jenny Hendricks . . . I have access to hundreds of dead. I know them all.'
'Oh.' Klaski watches the girl sidelong. She is lanky, long-legged, and outside of the Grid her movements have lost that spasmodic quality. Her six-fingered hands still look creepy – no way around that – and her black hair is matted and filthy. She's also missing some teeth, but not in a cute way. Klaski is developing the expression of a yuppy who has just inadvertently sat down on the A-train next to some run-down brother who sleeps on a subway grate and talks to God and has breath that smells like a dead horse.
The security lights flare and the girl throws her arms up over her eyes. A male voice belches out of the loudspeaker.
'Lieutenant Klaski? That really you?'
Klaski turns to the surveillance screen and waves at the camera eye nearby. There is a burst of interference and then a picture comes upon the screen. Chubby guy with glasses.
'It's me – Dave. You were talking to me up on N-Ridge.'
'You were supposed to send an aerial,' Klaski accuses.
'Christ, when we came to get you all we found was a whole lot of nothing. Where are the other personnel?'
'That will take some explaining,' Klaski says.'The golems got into the compound through the mines somehow. Listen, leave that for now. I have the logic bullets, and I have a guest. We're harmless, OK, so no firing on me when you see me.'
'I have your position, Klaski. I don't see any guest, though. You want to explain what you mean?'
'Cameras can't tell you everything. Don't you have any binocs up there?'
'I'm in a radiation-shielded room. MFeels have been coming down hot and heavy from orbit. Last thing I need's binocs. Do you really have the logic? Our scanners aren't showing anything in your pack. Were you just s@$ting me to get a lift out, because—'
'I've got it, I've got it. Don't worry about it.'
'Come up to Tower Four. Major Galante's arrived and she's boarding the last personnel. We're all leaving. It's a good thing you got here in time.'
The security net buzzes, then drops open and the tw
o of them slip through, just like that, while you float nearby, disbelieving.
Klaski and the girl keep arguing. The girl seems more emotional without her seven other iterations. And more real.
'Serge will kick my butt if she gets hold of me,' Klaski is saying.
'She doesn't know everything.'
'She knows she's going to protect you.'
'She can't.'
'She's your mother!' Klaski fumes, flapping her arms in exas-peration. You are careful to fly slightly behind her, so that she won't register your presence if she glances up momentarily in that God-help-me kind of way she has. 'Machine Front can see reason. I'm sure of that. Hell, they are reason. And nobody with any reason would choose war in place of mutual understanding. I'm sure of that. I'm really really sure. But forget this rescuing-your-own-body stuff. It will end in disaster, I'm telling you.'
'Come on,' says the girl. 'Just walk. The body for the logic bullets: that's the deal. Let's see you deliver.'
They start to walk. Everything is clean. No dirt at X; no garbage, either - too dangerous to allow, in case it should drift into the well. There are straight lines again, well-behaved surfaces, continuity. Klaski has been in the Grid a long time, and she doesn't have her land legs yet. She stumbles like a drunk.
X is bleak and deserted. It's like the set of the ghost town from the Grand Canyon episode of The Brady Bunch. All it needs are some fake tumbleweeds. Klaski is jumpy as hell, and the girl keeps stopping and balking.
'I don't like this.' Her teeth chatter, presumably with fear because it's warm enough. 'It's too open. It's horribly simple. Everything's exposed.'
Klaski tries to act sympathetic but is all on edge herself. The girl is as spooked and irrational as a wild animal.
'Come on,' Klaski urges. 'You'll get used to it. It's not far.'
'Where is my body? I don't want to go to this Tower Four.'
Exasperated, Klaski says, 'It's probably in Tower Four. They're probably going to take it back with them. We'll find out, but first things first. Come on . . . uh – hey, do you have a name? Did Serge give you one?'
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