Iris

by William Barton

  And the flesh is just machinery writ small.

  He finished and came back up, resurfaced for a breath of conditioned, artificial air. The lights of the shipworld were dimming now, the collective, insensate soul of the 'net cannibalized to a different function. Without software, the machinery is inert, and now the minds would have to be in the wires once again. He wondered palely how much danger there would be. Theoretically little—Brendan had practically fed himself to Centrum, and, with the Bright Illimit's GAM-and-Redux as the only point of contact between them and it, how could they be caught? They could always break contact, and Tem had included the small subroutine to do that in any number of places in the program. A simple error/break. He was confident it would be enough, but if he was wrong . . . Centrum would get a particularly rich haul.

  In the end, when it had been explained and demonstrated, they all came to be part of the great show, to be actors and prime movers on the multipolar stage that had been so long in erecting itself. In some fashion, those who had been united in the Falling Ring knew that they had to be here. At first John held out, reluctant to give himself over to a power so closely associated with Brendan, but, inspired by the apparent heroism of the others, he too had decided to go along. They sat mute, staring and perhaps fearful, all plugged into the wires that had dominated their lives in different ways. Krzakwa looked them over. "Well, we're ready." He remembered

  Brendan saying, "As ready as we'll ever be," and felt weary. "I can't really explain what I did, and I don't think many of you would understand it, but . . . OK. We used the major operating routines from the Illimitor World to fill up Brendan's Machine. With its help, we ought to be able to find our way around in Centrum. It'll give some meaningful structure to what we find. Maybe we'll find what's left of him in there and drag what we can back. Are you set?"

  John said, "What should we expect?"

  The Selenite shrugged, keeping his face blank. "Demogorgon? No? Well, frankly, John, we can't say exactly. Our senses should report something very like the landscape of Bright Illimit. Really, it should be safe—ninety-seven percent of the circuitry is designed just to safeguard our personalities. What that actually entails, I don't know ... I mean, what it will feel like." He looked around at them and saw that there was no point in further delay, and turned to Demogorgon. "This is the one," he said, tapping a lead that was attached to his head in a position near the left angular gyrus . "You'll know what to do when the time comes."

  "I understand."

  "Do you? I'm not sure I believe that. It's your choice, though. I told you what might happen." The other nodded. "Like you said, it's my choice. Let's do it," he muttered, mimicking the words of a man more than a lifetime dead.

  "Everybody get comfortable, in case this takes a long time. We don't want any kinks here." He smiled to himself. There would be no pressure gangrene in the almost zero gravity of Ocypete. Still, they arrayed themselves about the floor, assuming their habitual sleeping postures, each knowing that this would be a personal nexus for them, a moment, once the program was activated, from which they could never return. And their minds quickened, pondering what was more than mere life or death, but the infinite shading of gray spanning the gap between. They were embarking on a rainbow bridge, Bifrost, to take its place. Along separate paths, each mind questioned the power of their protective Heimdall, but thething had progressed too far for any backward turning now. . . .

  Instead of the convenient but inefficient circlets of common use, they sprouted induction leads from their scalps, tucked in at the roots of their hair, and they were overloaded. Demogorgon, the familiar of his own lifework, wore more than double his usual number of cables, become the maintainer of the effort they would make. Krzakwa wished once again for the direct physical taps into his own circuitry that would remove the hundred-angstrom uncertainty in the induction field.

  Brendan's body was energized, brought to the full level of its inherent ability. The shell waited, hoping for a return of its master, ready to unleash the demonic, primitive being that lurked at its physical core. With the circuit completed, open but untuned, they could all feel it waiting: a creature laid bare, stripped from beneath the layers of a hundred-million-year evolutionary path. It might be of some use. . . .

  "Your show, Demogorgon. . . ."

  "Right." Compressing his lips, eyes unfocusing with concentration, Demo thought his new command sequences and, in a wash of mingled wills, they went under and down.

  Bright Illimit.

  And again.

  Again . . .

  Demogorgon appeared alone on the middle of a clean white dais, standing in high-booted feet on a tough, somewhat resilient material, and noted the slightly diminished Earth gravity normal to the Illimitor World. All around was a sparsely grassed flat tundra, much of it a desiccated mud flat, cracked and clay-red. The sky was a winter cobalt blue flattened by the broken clouds which lined the horizon like a collar. A gusty wind fluttered from every compass point, plucking at the loose, cloth-of-green-gold combat uniform he wore. He felt the covered hilt of his golden sword Halaton at one hip, and a lozenge-shaped pistol on the other. Everything seemed right, although he couldn't identify this actual terrain with any he recalled creating. There was neither sun nor shadow. Theplatform sat on a courseway, a white road seemingly bleached into the otherwise naturalistic countryside, running off into the far distance. At its end, beyond the clouds, lay a faint blue shadow, a dark, almost empurpled thing, mountainlike. When he squinted hard, Demogorgon could make out shimmering, crenellated battlements, towers, and the instruments that would resist a siege. Like a sea mirage, the castle was disconnected from the horizon, floating, and he knew that, if he concentrated, he would see that the world dropped away from that citadel. There would be no earth there, no sea, no fire; just air. The elements of the world converged.

  Briefly, Sealock's face, the face of the GAM, floated huge above him, looking down through featureless blue eyes, holes in its face that showed the sky behind. Demo shivered, and beckoned the others.

  Harmon and Vana blinked into existence side by side a fraction of a second apart, clad in identical oversized gray tunics, the lustrous cloth bound in place with thin leather bands at waist and shoulder. Silver swords and ancient wheel-lock guns dangled from hip webbing. John appeared alone, holding a metallic blue machete, wearing a tight-fitting white shirt and trousers, with an emblem on his chest that showed twin eclipsing moons, their faces seamed by irregular canals. He wore a long white cape and had a small, modern-style sidearm in a holster that hung from his thigh, an energy weapon of some sort. Beth appeared behind him then, clad in a pale blue jumpsuit, similarly armed. She looked more like herself than any of the others, less enhanced. Ariane came, dressed in white also. Her sole weapon was a slim, rifle-like device, a delicate thing of lenses and indigo crystalline rods. Axie appeared in a diaphanous swirl of pale green fabric. She carried nothing, but the diadem about her temples had a red gem that glittered dangerously. There was a long pause and then Temujin Krzakwa came into existence. He was dressed in flowing black robes and had a massive sword at his hip. Over one shoulder he carried a heavy iron weapon, its snout a blued metal cylinder. It had complex controls on its stock and, with them, instructions stenciled in white. Demogorgonsquinted and could make out one line: it said,missile preheat. Stiffly they came together, staring at the outlines of Centrum's castle in the distance. Krzakwa looked around. "Somehow," he said, "I expected more than this." Ariane nodded. "With so much to draw from ... It could be more compact."

  "It's giving us room to negotiate," said Demogorgon. "A big world means options, choices. . . . We can't have expected it to be cut and dried. I'm surprised, actually, that so far everything is so comprehensible."

  "Well, with this white Brick Road, and dark Oz on the horizon, our choices seem pretty clear cut," said the Selenite, "but we don't want to be too predictable. There's no telling what might happen."

  "Maybe we should head in the opposite direct
ion," said Cornwell. "Though I doubt that would accomplish much."

  "Probably not." Demo walked slowly to the edge of the platform and looked out into the arid wasteland. "We may as well try to make contact." He turned back to face them. "No reason for us to walk, is there?" Without waiting for a reply, he clasped his right hand to his left shoulder, then whipped it about in a salute-like motion, thinking his control calls. Eight of the gray, three-legged riding beasts of Arhos appeared: heavy, three-eyed creatures called thers. Taxonomically somewhere between an elephant and a vastly overstuffed footstool, the creatures were telepathically controlled, each keyed to an individual.

  Harmon stared at the one that approached him, looking into its limpid brown eyes. It was the size of a small house. "How are you supposed to mount . . . Oh!" He looked up and the animal had crouched down on two of its legs to make a perfect thirty-degree ramp with its third. Delighted, he clambered up the leg and sat himself on the cushion of soft flesh in the center of its disk-shaped body. When the rest had mounted up, they began to ride. The thers stayed in a compact group and were faster than they looked, propelling themselves into a sinusoidal canter that was totally at variance with their appearance.

  In the distance, Centrum awoke to itself, feeling slightly uneasy, a faint itch that was inaccessible to its full consciousness. Something, it realized, is wrong. What? The failing program was a constant danger. . .

  .

  After a time of riding they dismounted to let their mounts rest and feed from a great clump of tall, red-flowered grass. Demogorgon gesticulated a series of camp seats and they made themselves at home. The thers demonstrated their peculiar method of gathering food, revealing a set of scythelike claws on the hoof of the third leg with which they sliced down the weed and carried it to their delicate mouths. For all intents, the goal the adventurers had set themselves was no nearer, although the dais they had started from was long disappeared behind them. The white path continued onward.

  Demogorgon stood finally and, for perhaps the thousandth time, scanned the blank horizon. The land had grown a bit rockier, showing gray outcroppings from the dry mud here and there. As he turned he was astounded to find a wet concrete wall before him. Deja vu assailed him. . . .

  Achmet Aziz el-Tabari was sixteen years old and the world was Paris Free City. The Family was here and he the scion, fading stars of obsolete 3V screen and antiquated stage. They dreamed their dreams of the past and practiced a dying art to no avail, hopeless for the future, beautiful in wastage and decay. He wandered the dark streets and became trapped within himself.

  Three men had him in an alley. They were tall and heavy and very dark, bestial, a rough gutter argot their only tongue. They laughed as they stripped him and smiled as they fingered his slim, brown flesh. " Ce putanne, trop de ant-zaftig!" said one, running rough fingers over his hairless chest, pinching sharply at his nipples. "Il-y-estparfait, ma soeur ," said another, cupping a broad palm across one slim buttock. They turned him over then and set him across the edge of some concrete stairs. They were about to begin their complex deed. Achmet gasped finally and said, "Wait. . . ." Unaccountably, they waited. "Not this way." He knelt before one of the men and began fumbling at the front of his trousers.

  The man laughed and said, "Ca c'est maricon !" The others giggled. He was unclean. It was a great, sticky thing that burst out at him, but he did it anyway, trying to preserve himself. The man smiled mindlessly and was clean when he was done. The creature patted him on the head and moved away. The others seized him then and threw him back across the stairs, despite his cries of protest, and used him as they would, one at each end. When they were done, they left him in the darkness and he wandered off, burning.

  Not the first time, not the last. Usually he sought them out, nicer denizens of the better-lighted places, but sometimes they caught him like this. Forces impelled him to go on. He could not remain in the safe sterility of the Home.

  He walked on.

  Two years older, he sat in his studio, staring at a half-finished canvas. Sleet drizzled out of a gray November sky, splashing, freezing in strata on the dirty-paned skylight, an artifact put there for men who pretended to a filthy grandeur almost two centuries gone. They recovered the past, pretension their game, goal, and reward.

  The painting waited, castles and sky in the background, green forest to the sides, animal in the foreground. It was not the stuff of great art, by any means, but it satisfied him to try to create a scenario from his fantasies. Before him, on a green-carpeted floor, sat a stuffed tiger. He muttered to himself. Alia was, as usual, quite late.

  The door opened and she came in, clad in white linen pajamas. She undressed quickly, long blond hair flashing to her moves, and, slim-hipped, went to sprawl on the tiger. She said nothing and was not apologetic. Models do as they please and the world lives up to their expectations. Achmet sighed. Her hair was matted again. He picked up a little soft-bristled hairbrush that he kept just for her and came forward. He teased the hair, pulling out the knots with care, casting away the white dandruff encrustations. Was it acoincidence that someone so beautiful should be so unconcerned for her appearance? Women could be such disgusting creatures.

  She cuffed at his hand, giggling, and, when he continued to brush at her, moved her hips suggestively. He coughed and went back to his easel suddenly. She continued to titter long after he had set the carburetor on the brush and begun to paint.

  Two years older, he lay in the semidark of his midnight bedroom, reading about the Peloponnesian Wars. His nameless lover slept at his side, snoring through half-open soiled lips. The face looked bruised with the summation of prolonged lust. The boy, whoever he was, looked like an injured child, his soft blond hair curling about his nape in tiny wisps and strands. He felt a renewed stirring, somewhere deep within, but ignored it. Enough was, he supposed, enough.

  He turned the page of the book and a name jumped off at him out of context: Demogorgon. Ah! It was evocative and moved into him instantly, nestling deep within his psyche. Now that was more like it!

  He'd been casting about for a name for years and never found a satisfactory one. His generation put classical Greek cognomens in vogue and their subculture moved throughout the free cities of the world at a constant level. They were a world society, almost strangled under the growing weight of the rules, but surviving handily in these little pockets of antiquity.

  He had a name. Now he needed a design.

  Sighing, he put down the book and turned to sprawl across the boy, who continued to snore gently. No sense waking him up.

  He turned him carefully over onto his stomach and parted his legs, felt the soft flesh of his buttocks, and found his place, still ready. He eased within and paused, feeling the dark heat with gratitude. He moved, and fell away into mindlessness.

  Demogorgon.

  It fitted.

  Two years older, he put on a circlet for the first time and began his sublimation to Comnet. Dreams within dreams he cycled down and around. It surprised him with pleasure. His mind went into the wires on other people's wings and he flew, seeing the possibilities. He tried to learn the way but it was beyond him, frustrating him. He looked for assistance as the ideas grew into grandeur. When he found it, the new art form was born. It was a long gestation. Hundreds of cascading experiences, small in themselves, built into a framework of desire, a mature, full-blown version of his childish desire to create. Without warning this house of cards tipped and fell, sliding memories breaking into the cloud-rimmed sky of the Illimitor World.

  Dumbfounded, his original turning continued. Ariane was there, and Tem, and the rest. Confusion that he knew must mirror his own showed on their faces. "We were with you," said Vana.

  "I know," he said.

  Centrum began to feel the invaders, multiplying like a disease through its subsystems. It was an alien program moving through its circuits, stronger than any taken in before. Demanding action, it cast about for the ancient means of its defenses.

  Circ
le back through the memories. There must have been a way, though in the beginning there had been nothing to fear, no other life. The Starseeders thought of everything. Their successors developed what was needed.

  The years began to reverse themselves as the stack pointers moved back through the files, activating search commands. It was located.

  Though its physical sensorium was frozen and meaningless, it was as yet unnecessary. There were no physical invaders. That did not make them less dangerous . . . rather more so. Deep within its memory, work vacuoles began to stir, to form themselves in a composite conceptual being, set to goabout their tasks after an agelong silence, after a time of nonbeing. The first primitive intelligences began to awake, too simple to wonder who or where they were. It went on.

  To Ariane, this was not at all like a dream. A hard, sharp reality composed of a world, her friends, and the improbable thers. But in the moments after reliving sections of Demogorgon's past, which had seemed just as real, there was a strong sense of disbelief which could find no handhold in the realism around her. The camp chair bit into her thighs. "How," she said, "do memories function within this program?" She started to stand and, perhaps not surprised, became incorporeal. It ran like a film. . . . She flew on the wire without imagery, an electronic ghost of herself cruising the circuits of Globo Entertainment Net in search of the glitches that bedeviled the commercial paradise. The world was without form, and void, save for when she stepped into the comlines of others, checking to see if a sensed power surging had disturbed anything.

  A bright spark up ahead . . .

  . . . and a bulbous sheik sat in the midst of his harem in a gorgeous turquoise-encrusted canvas pavilion that rustled in the gentle, dry breezes blowing in off the blindingly bright silver desert. Enormous turbaned eunuchs (mostly black but with a few token Caucasians to avoid a lawsuit) stood silhouetted at every entry point, heavy-bladed falchions at the ready. There were a hundred women here, every one of them slim and dark and willing. They rubbed his hands and feet, fed him and sucked at him as he sighed, mindless ...