Kalifornia

by Marc Laidlaw

  “Never. I wasn’t allowed near the Figueroa decks.”

  “Shame. Cause you’ve really got the touch, my—uh—man.

  The sealie seemed flattered. “Thank you, sir. I do enjoy creative work.”

  Amazingly, they shared the confined quarters without driving each other crazy, perhaps because they were so different. Roommates of similar personalities—or species—often proved incompatible. But the man and the seal couldn’t have been less alike. Clarry and Corny.

  Whenever Clarry sagged at his post, Cornelius took over. Not that there was much for him to do. The recording process was largely automated. Corny practiced and worked on various editing/production assignments Clarry gave him for his own amusement. They agreed that at least one of them would cover the deck at all times, in case Sandy got in trouble or made his big find. Sandy wore a subcutaneous tracer by which they could track his progress through the Holy City or find him in an emergency. He hadn’t moved in weeks, however. Not since joining the Mechs.

  At first they shared the van more or less continuously, but as the days wore on with little in the way of progress or revelation, they began to work in shifts. Clarry would check into a sleeping lot for a few hours, perhaps take a walk or go shopping to stretch his legs, and then come back to give Cornelius a break. He didn’t know how the sealman spent his free time, and he didn’t ask.

  Sometimes, for the sake of variety, they drove the van to new locations. They got to know the outskirts of the Holy City fairly well, particularly those areas with good food. Clarry looked for Creole cooking and could compare the merits of various gumbo recipes for hours. Cornelius lived on a strict diet of raw fish with the occasional bowl of oatmeal or miso soup thrown in.

  The work was tedious to Clarry, mindless monitoring, but it served a useful purpose. It made him feel that he was doing something to help Poppy. He couldn’t talk to Cornelius about it, of course. The sealman’s motives seemed purely sentimental. Sandy was his best friend.

  Faithful as a dog, Clarry thought of the sealman.

  Which made him kind of jealous. He’d never really had much in the way of friends.

  ***

  As the weeks passed, Sandy’s palms and fingernails turned from pink to permanent gray with grease and oil; his tan forearms grew grimy and scarred.

  It was a tough temple in which he’d found himself, and his training took all his attention. After several days any thought of his real mission was absorbed and all but occulted by his spiritual education. They were unexpectedly happy days. He had never used his hands before, and the work gave him pleasure, a sense of accomplishment. Of reality. Only at night, in the mere ten or twenty seconds before he dropped into exhausted slumber, did he think briefly of the child, Calafia, who had been stirred up from his father’s and sister’s cells. She was the product of incest in the purest sense. But there had been no physical conjunction of father and daughter: only the chromosomes had lain together, arms entwined like the sleeves of unraveled sweaters.

  In a sense, Calafia had been cobbled together out of spare parts.

  Sandy’s new surroundings affected his sensibilities. His mentors considered him a bright pupil; but then, he was the only pupil. They encouraged him to ask whatever he liked, as long as it referred to mechanics. Eventually he tried to steer these lessons toward broader subjects, such as the other sects in the Holy City, with particular reference to their means of transportation. They called this comparative religion.

  His toolbox filled swiftly. Each day saw the addition of a larger ratchet to his collection. His biceps grew from carrying the heavy box.

  To the Celestial Mechanics, these were not simply tools—they were keys to unlocking the secrets of science, of technology, of progress. They felt that much practical knowledge had been lost through disuse, and that the old ways should be—at the very least—remembered, practiced, and preserved. Someday, they hinted apocalyptically, man might need to live again without wires and computers and automated everything. In such a situation, the Celestial Mechanics were prepared to play a leading role. It would be valuable then to have a deep understanding of what they referred to reverently as “Moving Parts.”

  “Everything moves,” an unusually solemn “Bob” told him one evening, waxing enthusiastic as he described ever larger orbits with his hands. “The planet hurtles through space, the moon swings around the planet, the earth circles the sun, the solar system is caught in the slow rotation of the galactic disk, which in turn expands forever, moving out among all the other galaxies like a cloud of steam. Imagine if you could harness all that energy, that cosmic steam, and use it to power a huge machine. Imagine if the expansion of the universe were able to drive enormous pistons. Maybe it does. Imagine numerous universes all linked together, some of us expanding while others are contracting, one set of pistons pushing up, another coming down. Who could possibly know the use of that inconceivable engine? Does it propel a locomotive or a lawnmower?”

  “Good question,” said Sandy, who wondered what either of these l-words referred to as he swung his legs in the pit. “You think I could ever get to work on an old internal combustion engine someday?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “You know what I’d really like to see?”

  “Bob” knelt down beside him, engulfing him in clouds of pipe smoke. “What’s that, my son?”

  “One of those old gasoline things.”

  “Bob” shook his head sadly. “It’s rare to find them running these days, but we do get them in from time to time.”

  Sandy brightened. “Yeah? You mean, I could work on one?”

  “Might be. A few sects keep them, and they’re always breaking down.”

  “How many would you say are in the Holy City?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t even guess. Not many. You see them in the streets. I’ve also seen them parked in churchyards when I go in to fix generators and things like that. There must be a hundred or so. It’s not impossible that you could have a chance to work on one with your own hands, if that’s what you’d really like.”

  Sandy shrugged.

  “Just remember, Santiago, those are things of the past. The future machines lie elsewhere. It’s true that you’re an acolyte, but in a sense so are we all. While we preserve the past—and honor our origins—we owe our allegiance to the future, to the developing machine.”

  Sandy’s spirits sank. A hundred or so. The Holy City was full of gas wagons, too many to track down. He nodded as if acknowledging “Bob’s” words, but his thoughts wandered off.

  “Santiago, do you have a moment?”

  He came out of his reverie. “Uh, sure. I was just about to go to sleep, that’s all.”

  “There’s something I’d like to show you. Something I think you’re ready to appreciate. It will explain what I’ve been saying about our purpose, our ultimate goals. Come on, if you’re interested.”

  Sandy got up and followed “Bob” into the grimy corridors of the temple, through the main cathedral with its hydraulic presses and battery cases stacked in pyramids. Beyond was a door through which he never had passed. He’d thought it must be an especially sacred place because of the expressions on the faces of those going in and out: they always looked as though they’d gazed into the heart of some ineffable mystery. Despite himself, he was excited to see whatever sat beyond that door.

  Several Mechanics were at work in the inner sanctum, even at this late hour. For a moment their bodies obscured the object of their attentions, but then they noticed Sandy and, smiling and nodding, moved aside to let the machine stand naked and majestic before him.

  It stood upright like a person, headless but otherwise human, except for the fact that it had four arms. It was beyond doubt the most beautiful machine he had ever seen. The body was tall, the shoulders half a foot higher than his own. It was a three-dimensional webwork of wires and polished struts, a spider sculpture. His eyes traced the trails of nerve and sinew, muscle and organ fiber, all of it replaced or
rendered in metal, flexible plastic, and ceramic. In place of the heart and lungs was an opaque cocoon, a hollow region that looked like the arachnid master of that android web.

  “A robot?” he asked.

  “Yes and no. It’s entirely dependent on human will. It will have a polynerve link to its operator, but its own nerves are superconductors. It will amplify the human will, allowing performance of the most delicate operations—as well as those requiring great strength. This is the ultimate aim of technology, as we see it now—to extend and refine human creativity, not to replace it.”

  Sandy stepped closer to the gleaming headless figure. One of the legs was encased in a transparent sheath. The Mechanics were in the process of covering the entire skeletal body in this same tough, invisible stuff. Except for that and the head it was apparently almost finished.

  “None of us here need wires for what we do,” “Bob” went on, rapt in the presence of the construct. “Others, outside the Holy City, have become overly dependent on them. But someday a balance will be struck—that’s evolution for you. And this machine, or others to come, will certainly play a role in that progression.”

  “It looks almost finished,” he said.

  “It lacks only a few days of work. That’s why I thought you should see it. Soon it will be out of our hands, delivered to its owners. As an acolyte, you should be aware of this beautiful machine. You may never see another like it. Or . . . you may be building other versions of it someday.”

  “It is beautiful,” Sandy said. But it frightened him as well, reminding him of the polynerves that pierced every part of his anatomy. This thing of metal made a mockery of flesh. The hands alone were so intricate, so precisely machined, that his own fingers looked clumsy and crude by comparison . . . except perhaps for the perfect wires living inside his flesh.

  “I see the wires as a tremendous force for democracy someday, after the bumps and kinks are ironed out. I prefer to hold off on wires of my own until—well, probably for my lifetime.”

  “In other words, all of us are like test pilots right now.”

  “Yes, that’s right. And especially the ones who control this.”

  The other Mechanics couldn’t seem to keep their hands off the body. They eyed Sandy jealously. When he stepped away they closed in again with their tools, busily shaping the crystal skin to fit the robot form, constantly touching the body, touching it, touching—as if it were a holy relic.

  “What do you think?” “Bob” asked as they left the inner sanctum.

  “Very nice,” he said. But he hoped he wouldn’t have to see it again.

  “My secret dream,” “Bob” confided as Sandy once more lowered himself into the sleeping pit. “Do you want to hear it?”

  “Sure. But if you tell it, will it come true?”

  “Bob” grinned down at him. “Once there was a great man—not a mechanic, but still a great man—named Martin Luther King. He noticed that mankind had built machines that could carry us into the deep-sea trenches, or all the way out into space, but for all our advances, we still couldn’t treat each other decently as human beings. And this gave me an idea. What if we could build vehicles for ourselves, suits or special bodies, that would help us travel through the social realm, the world of human relationships, that most treacherous of all frontiers . . . carry us safely and humanely, with collision avoidance and emotional guidance controls. Imagine? Machines that allowed us to be real human beings? Maybe, between the wires and computers and body augmentation and gene tailoring, some combination of all these things, we can create a new technology to do this. Of course, the programming would be tricky at first, but I believe it could be done. And then maybe, someday far beyond that, when it’s all become second nature, we could shed the machinery and just . . . just be ourselves. Not that one can ever shed a submarine or a space suit and expect to survive. Who knows what interpersonal realms we might have entered by then: strange places we can hardly picture now.

  “Anyway, that’s my dream, Sandy. Sandy? Oh . . . well . . . you sleep then. And Cog bless you.”

  ***

  An alarm woke Cornelius in his rented sleeping box. He roused himself, gulped down the last few prawns that swam in an aerated saltwater Thermos, then let himself out onto the catwalk. The airy, ten-story sleeping garage lacked walls, floors, or ceilings; it was nothing but girders and beams with cubbies bolted to them, joined by meshwork ramps and stairs.

  It was nearly dusk. Clarence would be hungry. He stopped at a stand to buy jambalaya and Cajun popcorn. The smell of spicy food turned his stomach, so he held the bag out to one side as he hurried to work. Waste of good shellfish . . .

  The van was parked on a corner in a desolate neighborhood, at the edge of a nightmarish landscape where the earth, poisoned by industrial waste, had been treated with soil cleaners that had reacted unpredictably with the toxins, forming huge billowing mushroom and elephant shapes, all gray-green, soft and slimy looking, though they were dry, slippery, and solid as polished marble. This eerie jungle separated the nonsectarian Frange from the Holy City.

  As soon as he spotted the van, Cornelius hesitated. It was moving, rocking violently. Only one thing could account for such activity. Cornelius sank back into the shadows out of sight, setting the food aside, prepared to wait. He must have dialed up a satisfaction service. Clarence was only human, after all, and like most humans, he talked about sex constantly but did nothing about it. Cornelius supposed he had finally worked himself into a passion. Maybe now he would stop talking about it for a while.

  Cornelius was ready to walk off in the other direction when the motion ceased and the side panel opened.

  Two dogs got out, a male Lab mix and some sort of Spaniel with her hair done up in a beehive. The male carried a large metal case slung over his shoulder, something electronic.

  The dogs looked both ways but missed Cornelius, who felt an increased need for invisibility. He didn’t even peek for a moment. When he convinced himself to look again, they were walking down the sidewalk in the other direction. Turning a corner, they vanished.

  It was nearly dark, the shadows offering plenty of protection in the deserted street. Still, a terror of exposure filled his limbs with ice. When he finally roused himself, he moved toward the van with a stiff, rapid gait, his whole body trembling.

  The door was ajar. He pulled it open and crept in.

  Clarence slumped over the console. The needles flickered wildly; Cornelius had never seen them like that. Some had actually fallen dead.

  Dead . . .

  Blood pooled around Clarence Starko. It ran out from under his cheek, over the deck, trickled down his arms, and pattered on the garbage that littered the floor. His eyes were open but he didn’t blink. He didn’t see Cornelius or anything else. Redundantly, his murderers had wound the baccorish rope several times tightly around Clarry’s neck; one end was still clenched between his bloodied teeth.

  But what mattered more to Cornelius was the behavior of the needles. The Sens8 was out of action. Sandy had been cut off.

  Unless—

  He hunted around the interior, finally spotting and snatching up a small plastic case that looked like a hand computer. It had been kicked under a cabinet. On the screen, a luminous map showed a blinking dot—the seeker they used to follow Sandy’s progress. Happily, it was intact.

  Cornelius felt nothing but gratitude.

  Then it occurred to him that whoever had done this to Clarence might be coming back.

  Or . . .

  They might be going after Sandy, now that they knew what he was up to.

  Cornelius hopped out of the van, locked the door from the inside, and slid it shut. Tinted windows hid the massacre from sight. He tucked the seeker in his pocket, looking both ways to make sure that he was unobserved.

  Across the street, the forest of slick deformities loomed up like something vomited from the floor of the sea.

  Despite his fear of the ocean, Cornelius hurried into it.

 
***

  As it turned out, Sandy did see the robot again, and not too long after his first view of it. “Bob” decided to bring him along with the delivery and installation crew.

  A team of five embarked on a cold night through the Holy City. It was the first time that he had been out of the temple of the Celestial Mechanics since his initiation.

  “It’s time you got out into the world, Santiago. This is going to be a big part of your practice—lending your support to customers. Hand holding.”

  The robot was covered in shrouds and padding and strapped to a cart, which it was chiefly Sandy’s responsibility to haul on foot through ever more decrepit sections of the Holy City. “Bob” and one of the other Mechanics carried weapons for reasons that weren’t clear to Sandy until he heard the howling of the Holy Rollers, far away in the ruins.

  “Okay,” “Bob” said at last, motioning to Sandy. “You and I have to stay back here for the moment.” He nodded to the other three, all women, and they went into a dark, recessed entryway in the face of one decrepit building. “Better they go ahead of us,” he told his acolyte. “That way there’s no confusion.”

  After a minute the Mechanics returned, followed by three figures entirely swathed in black. “Bob” tugged Sandy away from the cart, giving the others room to untie the bundled robot. The Mechanics lifted it onto their shoulders and headed into the shadows. As the three black figures started to follow, “Bob” cleared his throat and stopped them with a soft, “Excuse me?” They turned to stare at “Bob” and Sandy; their faces were hidden but their hostility was not.

  “Might we come in?” “Bob” said tentatively. “I am the head Mechanic. I should make a few adjustments as part of the installation.”

  The three stared at him for a moment, a long moment, until one said, “What about him?” A woman’s voice, fiery with mistrust.