Iris

by William Barton

  He wondered if Cooloil would live again and wished for her presence. He had always missed her. He could feel the circuits all about him, and suddenly realized he could remember bits and pieces of that great dark time when he had beenpart of the unified mind. I am not real! he thought. His own oil had long ago dissipated. The body he inhabited now wasjust an image, held in the cold imagination of Centrum. It recreates me as a mere subroutine! He wondered at the source of this new terminology. I am dead, still, never to liveagain. But he felt real within himself, even knowing thatconsciousness was an illusion. Maybe it had alwaysbeen. . . . He felt a flood of horror course through him, but the battlewas before him now, already joined.

  Harmon Prynne was lying on his bed in the darkness alone, hands laced behind his head, staring into the black depths of an invisible ceiling and waiting for sleep to come. He'd been living in Tupamaro Arcology for seven months now, and sometimes wondered why he'd come. He and Vana were more or less living together, as much as anyone ever did in the free-wheeling life of a modern urban monad, but it was a troublesome state. She came and went as she pleased and his complaints about her behavior were not only ignored, they seemed to go unnoticed.

  He reached down under the comforting sheets and rubbed a hand slowly across his crotch, feeling a responsive stiffening, and wondered about himself. I'm a human itch, he thought reflectively, waiting to be scratched. He grinned in the darkness and took his hand away, enjoying the weight of an unused erection. Couldn't do it in Key West, he remembered. Couldn't do it at all. I wonder why? Was it the racing?

  An image came to him that filled the world with light. He was walking along a corridor in Tupamaro's ElComPod complex, carrying a bag of tools, headed for the engineer's station. He'd been hired to come here and fix up some waveguide panels by a contractor, and he came to get the purchasing credit for his work.

  He entered the immaculate room and stared. The engineer was a slim, beautiful Spanish woman with strikingly intelligent eyes clad in a crisp linen dress that highlighted her eye-clutching breasts. He stared at her, eyes sweeping up and down her frame. God! She was a total beauty! "Engineer Methol?" he asked, a catch in his voice. She nodded, turning away, and he felt slightly nauseous, lust tearing at him against his will. How could he work with something like this?

  There was another woman there, sitting in the corner behind a console, and when he turned to look at her they locked eyes, his head canting sharply downward to face her, as if forced by a hand. He stared into her black-dark eyes, almost oblivious to the ripeness of her somewhat stocky form. Her arms were brown and supple.

  This woman grinned at him. "Hi!" she said. "I'm Ariane's friend, Vana Berenguer!" The door of his bedroom popped open suddenly, spilling light from the hall and calling him back from his dreamland. It was Vana, springing lightly toward him, shedding clothes as she came. The door closed by itself, plunging them into darkness again, but the rustle of cloth continued. She sprang on the bed, bouncing and naked, and nuzzled against the skin of his chest. She was hot, drenched with sweat, and he wondered where she'd been. She ran her face down his chest, nibbling at his stomach and giggling.

  Rhythmic motions drew him out of himself and made him unable to think, made him a slave. He didn't mind at all just then. . . .

  What he felt, as her hips pounded up and down atop him, was a sense of belonging, not just to her but to the human race. It gave him a delicate sense of self-worth to know that this woman desired his flesh, when she could have any flesh that she wanted. He laughed into the face of the night and clasped her writhing form tight against him, feeling the muscles of her back straining under his hands. She was panting, short, sharp breaths through her open mouth. At these moments he knew he loved her above all else in the world.

  It overcame him. His orgasm began, throbbing heavily, and she cried out briefly, shuddering as she settled down into a quiet, sweating stillness.

  Unaccountably, they said nothing more, and Prynne imagined that it was because nothing needed to be said. After a while Vana got up and went to the bathroom. She came backto bed with a snack, crackers, cheese, and some sweet beverage. They shared it and he dozed in her arms.

  Seven Red Anchorelles hovered a long way from the battle, watching carefully through the amplified senses of his old work vacuole. He knew it wasn't the same one, that reality was a long time dead, but it seemed the same and that was all that counted. His released oil circulated in the narrow space outside his shell and reported to him all that was happening.

  The defensive spheres were gathered about the invaders now, subunits of Centrum's newly expanded consciousness attacking the alien program segments in swift movements of artificial thought. Like me, thought 7red, things of the imagination. The invaders fought back with their own electronic weaponry, bending the inner world to their will, providing an imagery that satisfied their mysterious needs. By all rights, the spheres should win, for they were closer to the source of their power. And yet ... Something was happening. A sense of greater power at immense distance pervaded the scene. It was as if a giant, invisible cable stretched upward to near infinity, providing a link with some massive entity lurking beyond the gentle blue of the sky. 7red expanded his horizons.

  A tenuous being stood over the battle, watching. It had the same strange, mobile appearance as the aliens, and blank space where its eyes should have been. There was something familiar about it. ... There was some resemblance that connected the thing with the weird echo that dogged the voice of Centrum. It seemed to be looking at him.

  It ended suddenly, shockingly. The brooding presence, the overseer, abruptly transformed itself into a great leathery creature that looked a bit like the memory of unknown origin identified with the ancient, extinct Starseeders. The being's mouth opened, a yawning, fiery pit, and the spheres were sucked away into nothingness.

  7red felt stunned. How well prepared they were! Now he knew why Centrum had brought them all back from the grave. This was no ordinary menace that they faced. . . .

  And yet . . .

  Another presence made itself felt, not the invaders but something connected with Centrum itself. A pair of immense, cold, blue-stained eyes opened out of the void next to him and stared, a glittering, icy, emotionless look of measurement. The phenomenon lasted only the briefest instant, but 7red was chilled. I know it now, he thought. No matter what happens, this imaginary life I and all my kind have been granted will be all too brief. If the aliens win, we are lost. And even if Centrum triumphs, we will all be put away again, probably forever. We are here as mere weapons, to be used and discarded. He felt the beginnings of rage. Had it always been thus?

  In the hierarchy of things, this requisition was perhaps little better than a note for the Suggestion File. Temujin slipped his hand into the warm sanctuary of his armpit and flexed the fingers until they began to lose the frozen stiffness. Another breach drill had left this section of Peirce a low-pressure icebox. No, there would be no official link with the Comnet people. Despite their continued advances in practical hard mathematics, despite the ease with which an exchange could be set up, it would not be. And to ask for even a brief contact with someone down there could be viewed as dangerously heterodoxical. Fuck them, he murmured, then repeated the phrase to himself for maximum adumbration. He chuckled. Tem was glad he could amuse himself so easily.

  He sat, with a fart quickening in his bowels, and stuck an induction lead to his head. He hoped it wasn't a particularly smelly one, since the circulation system was probably cycled down. He held tight the sphincter of his anus and the gas came out slowly, silently. No odor. Good. There was nothing he would've liked less than to have Margaret come upon him alone, an aroma of unquestionable origin making the room even less habitable.

  Data about the overflow of neutrons from the high-density containment field that was his pet project began to come into his brain, arrayed in a four-dimensional histogram of his own devising. With methodical dispatch he began tugging at a datum here, pushing there, h
oping to pull some hidden asymmetry from the information that would explain the anomalies. Equations of flux, representing possible new theories of chromodynamic interaction, were fitted into the hypergraph like the meshing of an antique clock. He keyed in a systematized differential and, waiting for realtime changes, finally saw a flag indicating the match of the equation with the data. Ah, Tem thought: is this the beginning of Krzakwa Space? Or is the old spanner in the machinery showing itself?

  Damn it! That's why these things have to be compared with the work on Earth. There is absolutely no way to tell. I'd have to build an entire duplicate to tell. What a joke. "There's no redundancy on the Moon." So another cat stays in its bag.

  An interrupt light glared red at him from the porta -desk. Mentally, Tem hooked into the communication and found a simple word message: "Meet me at the canteen at break— Hugo Sergio." It was rather odd: Tem knew that this was probably going to be one of the illicit gabs Hugo Sergio had been initiating recently and that, as usual, a few tidbits of gossip that he had somehow acquired would be passed. But the man had never contacted him through a standard link before. He was getting careless. Well, it was nearly break, and he was at a dead end, so Tem shut down his stem link and stood. The canteen Hugo meant was the one serving the twelve halls of Wedge 4, which was a good ten-minute walk. He pushed aside the now limp pressure seal and came out into the even colder hall, a glance showing him that it was awaiting renorming in its turn. He jogged, painfully out of breath almost immediately, down the endless-seeming corridor and at last reached the center concourse, passing through an energy portal into the heat and pressure of the crowded hub. He stood panting, slightly bent over, until the engirdling pains lessened. In the congested flow of the hub ring he was repeatedly bumped into and jostled until he felt as if he would be trampled. Slowly, he made his way to the canteen, which was extraordinarily crowded, and searched the faces that lined the standing tables until he found the hard, straight-nosed oval that was Hugo Sergio.

  Tem fought his way to the bar and ordered a double coffee,laying out the waxy paper bills. Two small reusable cups were exchanged for the money, and he made his way to the place that had been saved by his friend. In the heavy surf of a hundred people talking at once, there was no chance of being heard.

  "What's up, Hugh? Anything worth calling me like you did?" Hugo Sergio looked at Tem ironically, a childlike smile playing on his bare lips. "I should say so. They've made a new pact with the men who own Pallas. We should have water raining down from above any week now. Maybe that'll make them a little bit less heavy-handed, with the shortage ended."

  "Unseparated water? Or will they take the deuterium first?"

  "I don't know. But there will be some hard bargaining. Another thing—there's a civilian on Earth who is advertising for people to launch a commune on Triton. Says he's going to bring the best techs, latest marks, everything."

  "Mother Maria! Where'd he get the money? I didn't think they even minted enough for private space travel on that scale."

  "His name is Cornwell. Makes money from data music— they say he's quite well known."

  "I'd go if I could, you know. No regrets. Totally free from the Moon ... I'd go in a minute." Tem pulled a few straggles out of his beard and looked at them, stiff lines like tan tensors. He was thinking.

  The legions of the revived Seedees began to march, floating out on rank after orderly rank, flying formation to the commands of a Centrum under assault. The battle was shaping itself in earnest, but still Seven Red Anchorelles waited. In time, he knew, he would be forced to go, he couldn't hang back forever, but, for now, he waited. It was not in vain.

  She was there! 7red swooped down on the drifting army and plucked her from the ranks with his articulated arms. Cooloil! he cried, jetting oil. Though confused by her recent resurrection, she greeted him joyously, and they flew away together, exchanging happiness. The corridors of Centrumwere huge and dark, many of its ancient functions having died, and they found a place to hide. They coupled once again, their souls mixed together in joined bodies, and shared each other's thoughts. Pleasure at having come back to life, joy at having found each other again after so long an eternity, sadness at the reason for their return, horror at their probable fate. Ultimately, we die again, they thought.

  Time passed for them to the steady beat of a command counter's march, while their inner pheromones mixed until they were inextricably bound together, inseparable. When the time came, they would separate, they knew, but until then . . .

  Why should it be?

  In a bound state they could think and wonder as one, with the power of their minds magnified conjointly. They still had some sense of a separate self, but it was very small, hard to get a hold on. The marching orders came, and they drifted apart, valves closing, become two again. They flew to join the army, going near to its head, and traveled side by side, communicating with their little jets of oil, a sort of small conjunction.

  Why are we doing this?

  Because the Lord of our world so orders it.

  Is that the only reason?

  It is the only one that we can have.

  Agreement. It has always been so.

  A pity. Why do you suppose that is?

  Because the world was created thus.

  And who created the world?

  Centrum . . .

  Ah. And who created Centrum?

  The Starseeders.

  And where are they now?

  Dead.

  It is so.

  They flew on into a gathering night that frightened them beyond all reason, a thing that toyed with what passed in them for sanity and made them almost unreasoning beingsagain, but not quite. They had begun to think again, after ten billion years of fragmented, undreaming sleep, and they did not want to stop. We must go on.

  7red felt a surge of pity for her and wondered how all the other countless resurrectees were taking it. We must, he agreed, but we cannot.

  Why not? It was a cry that attracted the attention of those close about them, globules of oil rebounding for them to catch on their shells.

  Yes, why not? asked another mournfully.

  Because, said Seven Red Anchorelles, the Lord does not will it. How can we fight against our God?

  It made them fall silent. How, indeed? But they continued to think about the matter, for, though they were reborn as subunits of Centrum's vast mind, it had given them a strange sort of freedom for just a little while. For however brief a time, until it swallowed them whole again, they were independent, able to think for themselves in their own small fashion. While they lived, they could fear and, perhaps, try to flee.

  Aksinia looked around coldly. From the air above the Carnicom there was a smooth, clear view to the center city of Davenport, a crenellated monad crowning the rivered plain like half a broken bottle in which some complex crystal had grown. Morning mists shrouded the mildly undulating land like a floating film of milk. The squashed red sun had just cleared its belly from the city-dotted checkerboard that sat beneath it, and the beginnings of shadows etched in strange relief reached out to her. It was a view that should have astounded. She felt slightly nauseous.

  She had been here for a week and a half, as the guest of a near-moronic playwright named Jass. His last name had never been revealed, unless of course Jass was his last name. Jass had many acquaintances here and seemed to have spent most of his life in the amusement complex. His room was filled with personal gear and elaborate drug-taking devices that would be difficult to carry on the road. Perhaps he livedhere. She hadn't asked. Beta-2 almost seemed tame compared with the elaborate pharmacopoeia Jass accessed daily; and she had gone along, inhaling burning junk for an archaic thrill, popping the most esoteric brain-chemical derivatives, and hopping the fastest, most diverting of the Carnicom's rides. It had been a bit of a rush, but it was over.

  She reached into the nearest lattice of the energy matrix and pushed. The world slowly revolved, and the twenty or so others suspended in the fli
ght simulator were shown to her. They were puppets hanging from invisible wire, unsupported and limp. Jass was within a dekameter. "I'm going now," she said. He was a handsome man, bald-shaven with blond hair fanning out from his lower lip to hide a chin slightly double from overindulgence. His eyes seemed to reflect the icy illness that she felt. "Good-bye, then," he said. "It was fun." He reached out both hands and swooped upward and away. In his room Aksinia found the overgarment that she wore when it was cold, pulled it out of the crevice between bed and wall-screen, and put it on. The wrinkles in the otherwise form-fitting garment felt good. She liked looking like a misfit, someone who couldn't care less about her appearance. It was the look she cultivated. From around the room she gathered the other few articles she carried with her, stuffed them into a shopping bag, and rang for a taxi. Almost as a last thought, feeling furtive for some reason, she opened the origami drawer in which Jass kept his stimulants and grabbed a handful of Beta poppers. She did not enjoy registering with coms and this would keep her anonymous for at least a week. If she found a new host before then, maybe she could stay disappeared for a month or more. And, of course, that meant no calls.

  The light came on over the balcony door, and she quickly slipped through the dilating energy port and hopped into the floater without even noticing the concrete and metal integrated circuit forty stories down.

  "This will be an entitled trans," she spoke into the microphone grid decal in the bubble wall, and settled into the plush cushioning, the air cold on her neck. "Go—direct to ground."

  "More information is needed," said the floater in a perfectly modulated voice, neither male nor female.

  "Address or building name is necessary." The floater lurched slightly as it pulled away from its mooring.

  "Please repeat or clarify."

  It was not easy to escape the address grid with a com floater, though some had not been reprogrammed since a free-form flight and thus could be sent anywhere. In any case, you couldn't survive without some knowledge. "Go Rebreak," she said, "test/checkup go." And, after a pause, "WhiteCode Zero zero four go." The floater obediently dropped, and Aksinia watched as the windows and balconies fell upward. Half a meter from the ground, the craft came to a stop and reported an obstacle that prevented further motion. "Go Release," she said, leaping with a thud to the pavement. The floater immediately began to rise, much like a soap bubble being blown by the wind, until it vanished behind the Carnicom obelisk.