Iris

by William Barton

  Suddenly the dam burst. The simple circulation of their weather pattern gave way to the extraordinary pressure at its center and broke into chaos. Strong currents slammed across the armored men. Tem hadn't reset his inertial control secondaries, and he began to tumble until he did so. The gas pressure that surrounded him, his only real protection, began to shudder violently.

  As he felt his body begin to pogo inside the suit, Brendan carefully analyzed their position—they couldn't take much more of this. They had penetrated the surface to a depth of about four hundred meters. It wouldn't be long until they broke into the weird cavity, if that's what was going to happen. The tumult grew stronger, and even the gyroscopes were having a difficult time keeping them stable. Another thirty meters or so, thought Brendan, and we will be there. . . . Unexpectedly, they hit bottom. Something soft gave way beneath their feet and, if the instruments were correct, rebounded slowly, without secondary flexes. The neon, now mixed with a hundredth part of argon and methane, still boiled and swirled around them, but it was growing weaker. Brendan bent down and jabbed a steel-rigid finger into the surface. It was resilient, almost like a kind of soft wood. He scored it and the depression quickly healed itself. He shared his findings with Krzakwa. He generated an image of the man's face for himself and studied its convolutions. "So. Now what do you think?"

  The Selenite shook his head. "I ... refuse to speculate." He studied the data that were being reported to him. Some light was making its way down through the piled-up gases above. The vapors were rapidly dissipating as he watched.

  "Doesn't matter if you do or not. I think . . ."

  "Shut up, damn you!" Krzakwa was biting at his lower lip, sucking in some hairs from his beard. Sealock grinned to himself. "Right," he said.

  It cleared. They were standing on a flat surface of a dull blue-gray color, almost obscured by a thin layer of small, glassy nodules. The walls of the hole they had dug rose up and up, seemingly solid, about three hundred meters around. Tem looked up and saw a shaft of sunlight slanting across the mouth of the hole.

  "Well," said Sealock, "does this look like rock to you?"

  "No." Krzakwa let out a long, slow whisper of breath. "It's time to say it. Artifact."

  "I guess we've found a little adventure, after all."

  Brendan cleared a small area, scraping the surface with his foot to knock the little beads flying in slow arcs. When he was satisfied that a large enough area was clean, he bent over and played his photochips over it, straining his suit systems to tell him anything they could about the material. He looked up at Tem.

  "Again: what do you think?"

  "We need better instruments." He pulled a geologist's hammer from its waist clip and, kneeling also, slammed the pointed end down. It left a small dimple that slowly sprang back to normal. "You tell me, Brendan. What inert material stays pliable at 43 degrees Kelvin?"

  "I might as well be the one to say it this time: alien artifact. This is not our tech."

  "Sayyarrin's floor is relatively uncratered—but even so, that surface is old. If Jana's right, we're talking millions of years. Maybe billions."

  "What's that?"

  Brendan pointed to a place on the hole's wall, where a thin, dark, ruler-straight line over 250 meters high was embedded. It went almost all the way back to the surface. Tem was laughing uncontrollably. He finally got control of himself, breathing heavily, tears running down his face. "That's a fucking fin. This is getting ridiculous."

  "Guess so. I feel peculiar." Brendan stood, followed by the other.

  "Want to dig it out with Polaris?"

  "No. We might get killed—that would be an irony I could do without. Let's go home and get the ion drill—also some friends."

  "Good thought. Shall we call ahead?"

  "Uh . . . somebody might be listening."

  The idea penetrated, and they turned to go.

  FOUR

  Brendan ate the last of his sandwich as he looked back at Aello. Returning to Polaris had been fairly easy, though the jets had thrown enough heat to widen the hole even further. When they got to the level of the surface, it was obvious they wouldn't have to go out of their way to obscure the Artifact— neon snow had taken care of that. A naked-eye view showed just the tiniest blemish at the center of Sayyarrin—and any telescopes that happened to be trained on Iris I would have poorer resolution than his eyes from this distance. The blurring of Aello's surface might be attributed to equipment malfunction. The first thing they had done was tightbeam an "incommunicado" signal back to the colony. If they had agreed upon an encryption formula for their communications, all this silence wouldn't have been necessary. But they couldn't have had the foresight to predict a situation like this. They had not brought sufficient fuel to take a quick route back to Ocypete. The modified Hohmann would take days. . . . Speculation about what they had seen was futile: an ancient artifact . . . How did it get here? Was it related to the heat source on Ocypete? Did it just so happen that the Iridean system accreted from material already laden with the throw-offs of some alien race? Or is it something else? Is it a spaceship?

  The answers were more a reflection of imagination than any hard evidence. Tem came forward and got into his rigging. "Brendan. Let's talk about it." Sealock said, "OK. You go first."

  "What I want to know is, how are we going to play this? Are we going to reveal this to the Union?"

  "Not for a while."

  "It's going to be a hard secret to keep—especially after we blast it out of the ice. Even from Smith they'll be able to tell something funny is going on."

  "Let 'em wonder. The real problem is the USEC ship. That shortens our time considerably."

  Walking across the blank, black floor of the second dome, Ariane Methol was trying to understand just what was happening to them all. She was not unintelligent, yet it was as if she had to think long and hard to unravel the simplest of connections where her behavior was concerned. At times her memories provided her only clues as to who, or what, she was. It was frustrating. Just when she believed that she had discovered something important about herself, Brendan would start to work on her, to turn everything around. . . .

  Now she was alone, with the time to think. Not only were Brendan and Tem gone, the others were wrapped up in their own emotions. Beth and John were totally out of reach, Jana was morose and hostile, Axie spent her time reading and sleeping and was generally too drugged to be of any use. Even Vana, upon whom she could usually depend, was spending more and more of her time in Demo's electronic world, at times even without his guidance. Some society they had created here!

  The evening before she had been trying to find areas of mutual interest with Harmon and they had ended up in bed. He'd been competent enough, but it was easy to tell that his mind was elsewhere—and that he was probably just trying to take revenge on Vana. Afterward he seemed ill at ease with her and, violating her preconceptions of his placid, all-accepting nature, almost angry. Any attempt she made at talking about his problem directly was shunted aside. It was frustrating and, worse yet, it made her think about her own relationship with Brendan.

  "Ariane, up here."

  A voice from somewhere above her head made her look up. It was Demogorgon, sitting alone within the light-spreading mirror at the apex of the girder tower.

  "So you decided to visit the real world?" she said. "What are you doing here?"

  "Just bringing a little bit of fantasy out with me. I've been designing the colors of the holograph that will fill out the dome. I'm importing a bit of the Illimitor World, compressing it. Want to help?"

  "Certainly," Ariane said, and leaped halfway up the tower, clambering lightly the rest of the way. She had known it was the plan for this dome: a simulated environment that would bring a little of home into this world of ice. For some reason she hadn't realized they wouldn't just be using one of the commercially supplied ones from Comnet. It was easy to forget that Demogorgon was skilled at precisely this art. Beneath them, the dark irregular
floor of the structure spread like the bleak surface of a carbonaceous asteroid. The slight rises and hollows had been built in to afford a more realistic appearance to the natural setting that was to come.

  "You're wearing your circlet," said Demogorgon. "Good. Just sit down and I'll show you the template. I'd like to get your opinion."

  Ariane linked into his program. There was a moment of nothingness, and then the world opened up before her like a great multicolored flower. It was mainly deep green and azure—the image of a Scottish moor stretched out in all directions to a horizon of smooth, bare hills under a clear morning sky. A pleasant, darkly sweet odor was carried to her nostrils by a cool breeze. "This is Yvelddur, which I modeled on Northumbria. It's one of my favorite places."

  "Is Vana here?"

  "No, she's halfway across the world, in Arhos ." He chuckled to himself. "I mean, she would be if we were inhabiting the same software. This is a cutout...."

  "I had no idea it would be like this."

  "That's what everyone who has experienced it so far has said. Comnet uses old technology and has stalled any attempts to use the refinements that have been developed."

  "Well, if you're going to use this as the model for the dome, I don't think I can suggest anything further."

  "No? Go ahead, tap into the design function and make a few swipes. It's easy." Ariane called up the Bright Illimit design supermenu and paged through the commands. The words were dark letters and verbal explanations, flowing through her, superimposed over a three-coordinate system, itself superimposed over the world. She tried a simple command, molded a hill into a slightly more humpbacked shape, and added a few summer cumulus clouds at random. The program backtracked and rationalized all of her changes until they were fully integrated. Emboldened, she added a stream to the many that here and there fed a scattering of bright silver-blue pools, then admired the effect. "Demo, I think that's enough. I don't want to get carried away and spoil your landscape."

  Demogorgon laughed. "OK—it's time to cut the ribbon. Shall we precede the image into the world or just go with it?"

  "Let's watch it appear."

  Slowly, the scene faded, and they were once more perched atop the tower, looking down on the drab domescape. "Shall we let it fade in or snap it on like a light?"

  "Snap it on."

  The dome went green. In an instant the scene from Demogorgon's imagination was there before them. Across the invisible plastic, heather and gorse were in flower; the babble of little brooks coursing into crystalline lakes filled the air. The down-curving dome had broken into the bright blue sky, and at their feet clouds the size of throw rugs gathered. They were the clouds Ariane had designed. It was perfect in every respect and its designers were pleased. Demogorgon gazed outward, feeling Ariane's arm on him, and thought, I can control what's going on. Evade it entirely if I wish . . .

  "Come on," said Ariane, slipping from the edge of the tower into a slow-motion fall. "Let's inspect our handiwork."

  Demogorgon pushed off and began to accelerate toward the ground. The fall took only a few moments, and he landed in a graceful leonine crouch beside the rim of the real pool, now encased in marble imagery, with the look of an ancient monument. He watched as Ariane ran lightly through the dethorned gorse and plunged through a stream that could not wet her. It acted like water in 1 g, disconcertingly natural in this unnatural environment.

  Polarissailed on. Iris slowly shrank in a real-perspective view, and Aello disappeared behind it. When talking failed and speculation gave way to inane guessing games, silence opened up their minds to internal monologues. After a time Sealock succeeded in willfully eliminating the giddy thinking that kept welling up, but what took its place was no more comforting. He knew it was time to fall back on the device of the memory presentations that had diverted them on the way out, but he didn't want to go on to the next logical step in the progression of his story. Remembering the Game, of playing sun-bronzed in the desert heat, was wonderful. What came afterward was not.

  They'd tried to teach him. The communal tutor had worked with him more than with any of the others, finally trying desperate measures, but he'd resisted. The time spent learning what he was supposed to learn was hateful, precious time taken from the valued play and, more importantly, from the rapidly growing world inside his head. At the end of that long summer he'd been declared hopeless by the tutor and was sent once a week to the special school Uncompaghre maintained for "difficult" students, mostly functionally illiterate children who were unable to master even the rudiments of binary, but with a sprinkling of gangly boys and pudgy girls whose puberty had come too early for local convention to accept. Brendan could be part of neither group, so he spent free time alone. The teachers assumed an air of condescension that was awful. His rebellion had grown stronger until that dreamlike day when he'd burst into a terrible white-hot rage. It had been in the gymnasium, and he'd hit the physical culture instructor across the face with a baseball bat, the nearest weapon handy. He remembered his amazement at the bright, spurting blood and the woman's high, gargling screams. After that things had gone swiftly. The last day was etched even more vividly into his memory: the school psychologist had spoken before a council of Manti-La Sal adults, and they'd let him be present, as if his feelings didn't matter anymore. The man had said, "There's nothing further we can do for him. In cases of this kind, the only solution is the Exile School in Phoenix." It was as simple as that. They had taken a vote and agreed to send him away, and only his mother, Kathleen, voted no. It was majority rule. Brendan had cried, begging them to let him stay, had promised them that he'd be good, would behave as they wished, but it was all to no avail. He was banished, and it turned out to be forever. He cut off this train of thought with a shudder. Perhaps it was all for the best that it had led him out here, cast him, ultimately, into what could turn out to be the greatest adventure of all time. But he could not bring himself to think this through. He looked at Krzakwa, wondered what thoughts were producing his peculiar look. "Tem?" The man looked over at him. "I need to be entertained. . . ." Concern replaced the other expression, and Krzakwa nodded. "Okay. My turn, huh?" They hooked up, settled down, and went under.

  All the little boys and girls on the Moon were fully regimented. It was said they liked it that way, that it was appropriate to their social development. . . .

  What was called the children's dormitory at Picard was inreality a multipurpose room. The hexagonal bedchambers that lined the walls were in continuous occupation, and the twenty-four-hour "day" was divided into three eight-hour periods in which the children of Groups 1, 2, and 3 slept. But while the other thirds slept, classes were held below. It was safe to say that, during the five years between the time a child left the supervision of his parents and entered the apprenticeship of his trade, he might spend fully eighty-five percent of his time in this one large hall.

  The floor of the dormitory was partitioned into classrooms, a cafeteria, and a health maintenance facility. There were the needs of six hundred boys and girls to meet, and things had to be carefully organized. The population was regulated to assure that only six hundred children would be at the correct age at any given time, and seven-year-olds were continuously entering the system as twelve-year-olds left. Tem was in Group 2, eleven years old, going on the time when he would be transferred to Group 3

  for his last year there.

  He stood halfway back in the classroom row, supported by the thin column from which the keyboard and screen extended. Though standing was no hardship in Lunar gravity, and in fact was the preferred mode for the youngsters, the arrangement had been designed primarily as a way to save space. He was adjacent to four children, Akio Kurosawa and Sadie Klein in back and front, and Greg Indagar and Patrick Lore on either side. These four he had come to know very well, since almost all activities were organized in the same alphabetical way. Samwar Kirk had occupied Sadie's position until shortly before the memory began, and he had been Tem's best friend, but he had graduated to
3. The communication with this "gang of four" was remarkable, consisting mostly of furtive looks, stifled giggles, and hand signals. Tem understood that each similar group within the class had developed similar, or in many cases the same, methods. Individual children would move on, but the culture would stay. Now it was the time devoted to "socialization," and within certain limits they were free to roam about the classroom and talk to whomever they liked. They spoke in careful whispersand every now and again cast a look at the monitor, a short, fat old man with red skin and a broken nose, who sat, bored and wishing, Tem guessed, for a smoke. Some looked, instead, at the long metal dowel that he used as a prop, wondering if it would ever be used for something else.

  The old man whistled and called out "Time!" and they quickly returned to their assigned spots. The screens were already lit with a calendar and clock showing their progress and future assignments on both a long-term and short-term ruler. Tem sighed, keying in his presence, and responded to a series of questions carefully framed to determine his attitude. He lied without even thinking about it. Hour 4's goal was to master the beginning theorems of Euclidean geometry, and the learning programs ticked off, carefully leading him along to enter the correct answers and providing more detailed explanation when he was wrong. Tem had already found out that the simplest way was to concentrate and cooperate, blotting out everything but the programmed task at hand. In this way he was perhaps unique, because, talking to others about their progress, he had found that they were still doing lessons he had finished as much as a year before. He wondered whether the 3s on the lesson's serial numbers meant he was doing Group 3 work. It was probably so. It made him feel more than a little smug. The memory sequence jumped forward and it was time for exercise. A slim young woman with a pleasant smile took the place of the monitor and led them in a patriotic song, some of which was in a patois that Tem never could quite understand. They sang a more energetic song about pride in being a child, pride in being from Crisium , but most of all pride in being an inhabitant of this harsh, isolated world where sacrifices were absolutely necessary. As they sang this song, which went on interminably, they were led in rhythmic isometric exercises, writhing in comical ways, occasional laughter blotted out by the words of the song. After an hour of this, they were called back to their screens for a lesson on history. These lessons were much cruder than those on math and the sciences, since they couldn't use canned programs fromEarth, and everyone moved at the same pace. It was then that the hand signals began. . . . Time jumped forward again and it was supper. They filed in even queues toward the walls, climbing up the handholds past the descending Group 3'ers. Tem slid himself into the recess of his bedchamber, about halfway up, and closed the hatch behind him. The fluorescent light came on, revealing the foot of the bed on which he was sitting, the sink/toilet, and a screen and keyboard on a moving arm, not unlike those in the classroom. It was prohibited to personalize the cubicle in any way, since he shared it with two others, but he had an area of one gigabyte in the computer that he could do with as he wished. In fact he was encouraged to "play" on the computer for as long as an hour before sleep, and many programs both entertaining and educational were at his beck and call. It was one place upon which they had not stinted.