Iris

by William Barton

  "All right," she said sharply. "There are other times. Let's get back outside. We're missing the party." She felt astonished that she could deal out pain so easily.

  The program was at a loss. Strong embarrassment formed an overlay and its parameters were overloaded again. It had been designed for a dominant/submissive psychiatric environment, and the maintenance of a strictly mutual gestalt seemed impossible for any length of time, especially at this sensitivity. It needed a closer association with its GAM, a simultaneity, a sharing. They were back in the cubicle. John, too, was surprised and hurt, almost as if he'd been Angelo instead of Beth. He opened his eyes on moist darkness. "But why?" he said, and it did not echo. No answer was forthcoming. This isn't what I expected. . . .

  He felt Beth bumping against his side, still motionless, but the program was concealing her thoughts, denying him access. He assumed it was at her request, and imagined he understood. It must be very hard for her. Somewhere in the machinery, ideas behaved reflexively.

  Podarge was a much smaller satellite than Ocypete, less than seven hundred kilometers in diameter, not much larger than Enceladus. Sealock and Krzakwa were plugged into their duodecimal element, looking out through the exterior stereovidicon as if through their own eyes. They weren't asterologists, so there wasn't much to see, though its status as a "new" world compelled their interest. It was a white, meteoroid-blasted ice moon, its surface an indistinct turmoil of circles, gaining in apparent relief as one looked toward the terminator, now near the leftmost limb. Brendan reached out through the optical circuitry and imposed an appropriate set of judgmental color filters. With the color-gain stretched, with a bit of magnification, Iris IIbecame a pale world, blue-green and brown, with definite continents and patches of diverse terrain. Like many of the outer-System satellites, Podarge had experienced periods of resurfacing, when volatile materials had bubbled out of the interior, making fresh plains that were ready to be cratered anew. They were all very different in composition and degree of pock-saturation, and made an overlapping patchwork of colors on the enhanced moon. The little world, composed of a greater variety of volatiles than anything in the Solar System, had a turbulent history during its first aeons. As it cooled, one material after another had solidified, either on the surface or at the bottom of some cold epeiric sea. In the end, there had been periods during which impacts and tidally produced fractures had brought the last of the liquids pouring out onto the surface. Most of these new terrains were masked by meteoric gardening, but the differences were still there. In the northern hemisphere, near the pole, there were cirruslike wisps strung along a barely visible fracture, fresh neon ice that had been expelled from the mantle during the last quiescent phases of Podarge's freezing.

  Polarisslipped toward the nightside slowly. The moonlet's minuscule gravity made their orbit seem terribly sluggish, and they were tempted to accelerate, to go into forced-orbit mode, but the notion of conserving fuel was there to be pondered. Shadows began to grow long beneath them, and the blackness closed down like a helmet visor. Brendan turned up the ship-optics gain and changed over to a view dominated by imaging radar and deep infrared. Krzakwa kept following his protocols, watching. This hemisphere, which trailed in Podarge's revolution about Iris, was somewhat less cratered than the other, and there were even some small gaps in the rubble, areas which looked pristine. To the south, Brendan saw a large, new-looking astrobleme, darkish in the IR, with tall, clean walls and a complex pinnacle at its center. It was surrounded by an asterisk pattern of black rays, composed of new, fine-grained material, which could be traced across much of the visible globe. He liked the pattern it made.

  "It really is rather pretty, imaged like this," said Tem. "I didn't notice it in Jana's data." He rummaged through their memory device and pulled out a sunlit version. "It's not so prominent in the daytime. Jana called it ' Soderblom,' after an early planetologist."

  "Southern Flower? That's pretty appropriate."

  He looked at it, admiring a faint rillelike structure that cut through the pattern of rays. "You know, we are the first ones here. We ought to get to name something." Sealock sighed. "So, what do you want to call it? Hole-in-the-Floor?" The other man smiled. "Really. No, it should be something consistent with the harpies, unless you want to use one of Demo's names."

  "I don't. I thought that was a stupid idea when it was first brought up. The Illimitor World mythology is largely a random scrambling of French and Arabic phonemes, based on a few simple rules that I made up. They mean something to him because of his history. . . . Anyway, if the harpies' story has any complexity, I don't know it."

  There was a long silence, then Krzakwa said, " Kickaha!"

  Sealock opened his eyes and looked at the man in realtime. "Son of a bitch. I read that too."

  "Want to land?"

  He closed his eyes and looked out at the little moon thoughtfully, watching a sliver of daylight start to ooze over the horizon. "No. I don't think so. We can let Jana be first." The Selenite nodded, his beard floating up before his face, to be pushed down with a wave of an abstracted hand. "OK. It's off to Aello, then."

  "Right." Sealock stretched and said, "You know, with a little mass-wastage, we can boost a fast Hohmann and get there in eighteen hours. She's near opposition now."

  Beneath a silver dome, Axie, Ariane, and Jana sat at the edge of a pool that hadn't existed four hours earlier. Jana said: "I think he's a damned hypocrite! It amazes me that, after all his talk of abandoning pair bonding, he can get caught up like this without even noticing the contradictions!" Axie looked up. "Maybe. The thing that bothers me is the danger involved. . . . I've heard there can be permanent disorientation.... It seems to me that 'Deers' risk a great deal."

  "There's always the danger of a discharge when you interface with something that complex. I don't care how good the program is," said Jana.

  "Possible, yes," said Ariane, "but it's not very likely. I don't know. John seemed so unhappy before. Now . . ."

  Axie laughed softly. "It's that old black magic, I guess. Beta's the one thing I can handle. I don't know about DR, or love."

  Ariane stood and ran a finger down a seam of her fullbodies and the garment fell to the ground with an exaggerated speed as she stepped clear. "I'm going to try a swim." She seemed to tiptoe into the air, an almost vertical leap that carried her a third of the way to the top of the dome. When she reached the water it parted with languorous ease, then closed over her just as easily. The ripples cascaded back and forth across the limpid pool as she resurfaced.

  "Not bad," she said. "Come on in."

  "I want to try to get in touch with Polaris again," said Jana. She turned, walked to the dome's entry foyer, and was gone.

  Axie looked back at Ariane. "You look like you're having a good time."

  "This is very different from being in a zero-g tank. It seems like the surface tension is strong enough to lift you up." She carefully placed her palms down on the water and pushed, raising up until she was exposed to mid-thigh. She grinned. "Interesting, huh? Maybe it's just trapped air."

  "I wish I had my circlet," said Axie. "This seems completely counterintuitive. I'd've thought the water would slosh out of the pool when you dove in from so far up."

  "Ah, but did you notice? I hit the water so slowly I didn't impart much momentum to it. Elementary physics."

  "Can I climb up on the surface tension? My fullbodies won't adsorb the water."

  "I don't know. Try it and see."

  It worked, though it was difficult to present sufficientsurface area to support her bare half kilogram, especially since, after a first failure, she was giggling like a maniac. Finally she was riding dry on the tension of the shiny liquid, cradled in her little dimple like an ungainly water strider. Laughing, Ariane struck at the surface of the water with a cupping arc of her hand and sent a horde of silver globules racing across the surface, many of which were caught in Axie's depression. They popped and merged silently. She began to laugh harder, and she brok
e through, a leg first, then an arm, until she slipped into the hole she'd made and sank up to her chest. She flopped around, suddenly aware that any violent action might empty the pool. "You know," she said, "this is fun."

  "Yeah," said Axie, "but how long can it last?"

  Jana was sitting in her room, circlet on. She'd been trying to reach Polaris now for several minutes. Obviously they were ignoring her signal, unless their electronics were dead. "Come on, you idiots," she said aloud. "I know you're receiving this transmission, so answer me!" There was a little burst of circuitry being activated, and then a presence came into her head. "Hey! I thought you were going to cooperate with me on the planetology report, you bastards. What's going on out there?" This time the presence was clearly identifiable as Krzakwa. "Oh, Jana. Well, we looked around Podarge for you; didn't land, didn't see much. We named a crater—what you called Soderblom is now Kickaha ."

  "Kick-a-what?" asked Hu incredulously. "What the . . ." Sealock: "Look, Jana, we decided this is purely a fun trip for us. No science this time. When we get back I'll take you wherever you want. From now on, if we see anything interesting, we'll give you a call."

  "I don't expect you to understand this, but I made a commitment to the scientific community to get samples from I and II as soon as humanly possible. If you would just . . ."

  "I read your report, you phony. You told them it'd be at least half a year, and it's nowhere near that. You're just worried someone else might show up here and beat you to it.

  There's plenty of time for you to get your fucking samples. You haven't even finished Ocypete yet!"

  "There's something I have to tell you. About Aello."

  "It'll wait." Abruptly, there was nothing.

  For an hour Jana sat alone and listened to the void. There might just be a way ...

  Ariane Methol lay on her back in the cool water, staring upward with a blind gaze. She followed a train of thought, of things that she found perplexing in herself. The pool was something like the one in the Fitness Center of her arcology, its waters reflecting the light, throwing shards of moving brightness up onto the ceiling which were thrown back at her. The interplay of light and shadow shifted delicately, mirroring the soft cadences of her breathing, taking her back through time. . . . Montevideo recreated itself like a permanent haven. Arcologia de Tupac Amaral had been a wonderful place to grow up, and to live in as an adult. The great arcologies that had come to dominate the cities of South America, some of them inhabited by more than a million people, had everything that a civilized human being could want, everything but the spacious outdoors, and that was only an elevator ride away. They had a social milieu that afforded equal access to whatever benefits interaction could provide, in a word, fun. . . . And yet, somehow, when she met Brendan, it had no longer been enough. She remembered when it all started. The Pan-American Games were being held at last in the Grand Solarium of Tupamaro. Though it was the largest sports arena in SA, the usual site of the World Cup soccer matches, it was generally thought that South Americans were too "civilized" for the organized savagery of the Games. A poor turnout had been predicted. To Ariane, Vana, and their friends, it was a chance to see the athletes that they'd heard so much about, whose exploits were syndicated on Globo Sur.

  Some of them had gone together to see the various contests and had frequently found themselves sitting so far away that they'd ended up watching the huge 3V screens that wereeverywhere. For the free-style boxing matches, however, the luck of the draw had put them up close, in the third row. Initially, she had been disturbed by this atavistic, bloody sport; then, as match gave way to match, and her excitement grew, she had been disturbed at that. . . . Whatever it was, it had been in her all along, unsuspected, an ability to ... what? She didn't know. It grew inside her. It was then that she'd seen the man who was to become that year's silver medalist: Brendan Sealock, the program said, and New York Free City. She'd watched him savage a series of contenders, earning whistles of contempt from the audience as he smashed his opponents around, obviously intent on injury. How the people cheered when he'd been beaten in the final match by a swift, dark Cuban who was simply too fast for him. He'd charged his massive bulk around the ring, swinging wildly, while his opponent bloodied his face with quick jabs. Even then he almost won. The Cuban got overconfident at the beginning of the third and last round and came within reach of the thick arms: a hard blow to the temple sent him staggering to the mat. He got up, took a standing eight count, and then boxed carefully, jabbing and backpedaling until the bell put an end to things. The referee had smiled as he raised the Cuban's hand in victory, and the sour look on Sealock's face had provoked catcalls that echoed from the crystal dome as he left the ring.

  She never understood where she'd gotten the nerve to go to his room that night, but gone she had, Vana's cry of "You must be totally crazy!" going unnoticed. She'd hesitated before his door, strongly aware of a certain vaginal tightness that seemed -to signal her physical state, before nervously tapping on the call button. The door opened and he was there, glowering down at her, his face bruised and swollen from the Cuban's many blows. "Well? What do you want?"

  "I'm Ariane Methol. May I come in?"

  A glimmer of amused understanding crossed his face as he stood aside to admit her. She knew that there was a class of people contemptuously called "slinkers," who followed the athletic contests, waiting to do sexual service for the "animals." Even before her eyes could adjust to the gloom of hischamber he'd picked her up and dumped her unceremoniously on the bed, then he was squatting over her, robe open, not quite resting his weight on her chest, his penis dangling in her face. "OK. Go ahead." She lay frozen, and he said, "What? A novice? Well, it goes like this, kiddo." He pried her jaws open and put it in her mouth, then he had his hands on the sides of her head, organizing her movements, regulating the thrust and gradually deepening his penetration. It dawned on her that she was being raped, but she felt completely numb, helpless, and there seemed nothing to do but cooperate. She gagged a lot, but it was over quickly.

  He got to his feet and stretched, his heavy, muscular body beautiful in the dim light. After a while she got up and went to his refresher console for a drink. He called to her, "You ready to go again?" She turned and looked at him, then said, "I'm not one of them."

  "What?"

  "I'm not a slinker. You just raped me."

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at her, looking puzzled. "Not a slinker—" he repeated.

  "What the hell are you doing here then?"

  She came over and sat down beside him, put her head in her hands, then said, "I don't know." His face grew heavy with suspicion. "You're going to have a hard time getting a conviction with that line. What the fuck was I supposed to think?" Exasperation colored his voice. "No one ever comes to see me but slinkers and some of the other athletes!"

  She looked up and saw the bewilderment on his face. "It's . . . not your fault, maybe . . ." She knew this was typical, victimish, but, "Maybe I am a slinker. I did come here to have sex with you, I guess.... I just didn't expect you to do something like that, something so ... preemptive."

  "Well . . . I'm sorry, for whatever that's worth to you."

  After that they'd talked, at first about what had happened, then about other things, and finally about their lives. She told him about her job with Globo as a 'net engineer and was stunned to discover that he was with Metro Design. It seemedthat full-time amateur athletes were rare and he was no exception.

  "Who the hell would want to be a pro boxer?" he said. "They all work for the entertainment 'nets and do what they're told."

  In the end they'd had sex again, gently, and he'd tried hard to do right by her. Later, when they fell in love, it was, surprisingly, on her terms.

  Her friends were mortified.

  Harmon Prynne and Vana Berenguer had finished making love and were silent as an assortment of tacky secretions dried on their bodies. Finally the man said, "Vana?" He was trying to frame his thoughts,
wondering how to bring the subject up once again, then lay back and turned his gaze to the ceiling. At length, when he had exhausted his capacity to make up a scenario that came out the way he wanted, he rubbed his eyes and said, "Tell me why you're keeping on with him." He heard her sigh—that same exasperated release of breath that he'd heard so often before, and had come to dread. "You mean Demogorgon, don't you?

  "Yes." He nodded slowly, not wanting to look at her again and realizing he was almost afraid to hear her answer.

  "Damn it, Harmon, I told you before. You should see it! The time I'm spending with Demo is in there

  —and it's . . . it's, well, it's not as if we're off fucking all the time. You can come too, if you want to."

  "It's his world, Vana. I'm no superhero."

  "You don't need to be. Besides, he needs someone!" Harmon put his back against the smooth, neutral plastic of the opaqued wall, bringing his knees up to his chest. "So do I," he murmured.

  "You dumb shit." She reached up and grabbed him by the chin, forcing his head around until he was facing her. "You've got someone!"

  He closed his eyes, almost involuntarily. "Yeah. So they tell me," he said, thinking, A small share of what they say comes in unlimited quantities but never does. "Sometimes I wish I'd let you come out here alone."

  Vana released him and, after a while, got up, got dressed, and left the room, leaving him with his bitter imaginings.

  From orbit, Aello was even more of a disappointment than Podarge had been. It was tiny, only a little more than four hundred kilometers in diameter, about the size of one of the larger asteroids. It had never been hot enough to melt any of its volatile constituents, so no regional differences were noticeable even in enhanced view. The primary surface was neon, for as Iris cooled from its initial contraction the last particles to be welded into the small gobs that rained down on the satellites were the most volatile. While Ocypete and Podarge were the result of aeons of geologic activity which had long ended, Aello was that asterologist's dream, a world on which the great majority of materials had never been processed by an active geology. Most things were still almost identical to the way they had been in the very earliest stages of planetary formations. In the Solar System, scientists had looked for such a world in vain. As they moved outward from the sun, the promise of tiny, cold, pristine bodies was shattered by the increasing amounts of volatile material scattered through them. Even the surfaces of Pluto and Charon had been melted in their early history, and still outgassed and changed when they were at perihelion. There were plenty of really small bodies that were in an unaltered state, but finding materials that had been emplaced on the surface of a moon-sized world at its birth had been the quest of scientists since the first days of the Apollo Moon landings. Aello was that world.