Halo

by Tom Maddox

  began to make a noise, a quarter-tone keening, once it was through

  the door.

  Steel boxes twenty meters high loomed amid concrete piers

  reaching up to darkness. Soil pipes came out of the boxes and

  threaded the piers; duct work held in place by taut guys crossed

  beneath.

  Still making its lament, the sam stopped at one of the boxes

  and extended a piece of sheathed fiberoptic cable with a metal

  fitting at the end; it plugged the fitting into a panel where

  tell-tale lights flickered. It stood for perhaps half a minute,

  exchanging information with the recycling furnace's control

  mechanisms, then unplugged its cable and hissed across the metal

  floor to the gurney. Behind it, a furnace door swung open.

  Keening loudly, it pushed the gurney to the mouth of the open

  door, stopped and was silent for a moment, then slid the bag from

  the gurney into the furnace door.

  PART IV. of V.

  The privileged pathology affecting all kinds of components in this

  universe is stresscommunications breakdown.

  Donna Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs"

  16. Deeper Underground

  Gonzales had awakened that morning to the sounds of the city

  coming through the walls: distant creaks and crunches and faint,

  almost sub-sonic rumbles, the voices of the great circle of metal

  and crushed rock spinning across the night. Now he sat on his

  terrace, one of half a dozen climbing the side of Halo's hull,

  each built on the roof of the dwelling below. Five-petaled

  frangipani blossoms, brilliant red and purple, exploded from the

  thick, stubby branches of a tree just outside his front window.

  The air smelled rich and moist this morning, sign of a high point

  on the humidity curve, just before the start of a major

  reclamation cycle; one of the smells of a city where everything

  organic had to be preserved and transformedwater, oxygen, and

  carbon, all rare and dear.

  Below him, Ring Highway carried Halo's trafficin its

  outside lanes, people on foot and bicycle; in the center lanes,

  trams and freighters moving along magnetic rails. A young couple,

  man and woman, knelt beside a rose bush growing beside the roadway

  and examined its leaves. The woman laid a hand on the man's arm,

  and he glanced up at her and smiled, then brushed her cheek with

  his hand.

  He was struck by the strangeness of this city, where the

  small pieces of people's lives were elevated to the extraordinary

  by their taking place in an artificial city and under an

  artificial sky.

  As a child he had flown into Tokyo with his family, back when

  the trip took the better part of a day, and the incredible neon

  density of the city had swept through him like a virus, and he had

  thrown up the first meal (fish and noodles with chrysanthemum

  leaves, he remembered) and stayed pale and feverish through most

  of the first two days he'd spent there.

  Tokyo he'd come to terms with quickly; about Halo, he didn't

  know. Though he could read Halo's language and read its signs, he

  knew the city was much farther awayin miles from home, yes, but

  also along axes he could not measure. Halo contained an infinite

  number of cities, an infinite number of possibilities, and so to

  participate fully in Halo required opening yourself to a reality

  that had gone multiplex, uncertain, frightening.

  In fact, he was having trouble coming to grips with anything.

  Since being taken from the egg, he had felt odd and uncomfortable,

  and he continued to trod a hallucinatory edge, one he occasionally

  stepped overlast night, as he lay trying to sleep, abstract

  figures drawn in thin red lines played across his ceiling,

  sweeping arabesques in an alien or fictive alphabet just beyond

  human understanding

  And there was Lizzie: she would not see him or talk to him

  and gave no explanation except that she had problems of her own

  right now. Gonzales felt an unspeakable sadness at the distance

  between them. To the mocking voice that asked, what have you

  lost? he could only answer, possibility. He had come back around

  to where he was just a few days ago, but now that place seemed

  unacceptable.

  Gonzales put his coffee cup down and sat staring at it. Made

  of lunar-soil ceramic, colored a robin's egg blue, it stood

  nondescript yet somehow foregrounded, apart from its surroundings

  and projecting a numinous quality, an internal, entirely non-

  visible shimmer, an indeterminacy of form

  Click, Gonzales heard, a noise the universe made to itself

  when it thought no one was listening, and he thought Christ, what

  is going on here?

  Feeling sick anxiety rising in his chest, he got up and went

  into his bedroom; there he undid the complicated latch on his

  wrist bracelet and placed it on the white-painted metal surface of

  his dresser.

  Anonymous, unmonitored, he passed through the living room and

  out the door and walked away.

  #

  Gonzales strolled alongside Ring Highway, drawn to nothing in

  particular but absolutely unwilling to go back to the empty block

  of apartments and the isolation and anxiety waiting there.

  He found himself in the Plaza, where Lizzie had taken him and

  Diana their first night at Halo. He passed across the square, by

  the sign that read VIRTUAL CAF, then stood motionless, watching

  the flow of people around him. Some walked alone, striding

  purposefully, or moving slowly, lost in thought; others walked

  together, talking cheerfully or intently: monkey business,

  Gonzales thought, wondering what HeyMex would say about these

  people and their movementswhat did it all mean?

  "Gonzales," he heard, his name called in a high-pitched,

  unfamiliar singsong. He turned and saw the twins.

  As they approached, one was muttering in a fast, low,

  gibberish; she wore black coveralls and stared sadly at the

  ground. The other was smiling; her face was daubed with white

  paint, and she wore a white blouse and a peculiar skirt of light-

  blue cloth that had been rough-cut and stitched together without

  benefit of measurement or seams; on its front a crude likeness of

  a rabbit had been drawn in red neon paint.

  The smiling twin, the one whose dark skin was streaked with

  white, said in clear tones and formal cadence, "Today she is

  Alice." She pirouetted clumsily, her skirt billowing around her.

  She said, "Her sister is Eurydice." She pointed to the other

  girl, who buried her face in her hands. She said, "Alice is

  sweetness and smiles, small steps and starched crinolines;

  Eurydice is sorrow and languorous repose and black silk. Between

  them they measure the poles of dream." She stepped back and

  smiled; her twin smiled with her. "Are you having problems,

  Mister Gonzales?" she asked. "The collective believe so. We

  believe you are lost between worlds. Is this so?"

  "Perhaps I am," he said.

  "Well, then," she said. She put the index finger of her

  right hand to pursed lips an
d her eyes looked back and forth.

  "I'm thinking," she said. Seconds passed, then she said, "I know

  what you must do."

  "What's that?" Gonzales asked.

  "Follow us," she said. The other twin nodded, spoke

  gobbledygook, looked at Gonzales through a mask of intense sorrow,

  as if on the verge of shedding endless tears.

  "To where?" Gonzales asked.

  "Don't be stupid," the Alice twin said. "Where would Alice

  and Eurydice take you?"

  "Down the rabbit hole?" Gonzales asked.

  The Alice twin smiled; the Eurydice twin shook her head

  "Underground?" Gonzales asked again.

  The twins smiled in what seemed to be perfect

  synchronization.

  #

  At the bottom of Spoke 2, where a lighted sign announced

  ELEVATOR ARRIVES IN 10 MINUTES, the twins led Gonzales through

  an arched tunnel under the spoke. As they walked, the two ahead

  of him muttering back and forth in their unintelligible patter, he

  realized the floor must be curving downward, passing underneath

  the main level of the ring. Blue globes down the center of the

  ceiling provided soft light. After about another hundred steps,

  they came to a door at the tunnel's end. Across the door, bright

  red lighted words said:

  CASUAL SIGHTSEEING DISCOURAGED BEYOND THIS POINT.

  DO YOU WISH TO ENTER?

  The Alice twin turned and pointed to the sign. She shrugged

  elaborately, as if to say, well?

  "I want to enter," Gonzales said.

  "Come in," the door said, and it slid sideways into its

  frame.

  The three stepped into a dim vastness, a world beneath the

  world, and followed a central walkway marked with flashing arrows

  and an intermittent legend that flashed, UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL

  FOLLOW LIGHTED PASSAGE.

  They passed a series of workshops, partitioned cubicles

  screened behind containment curtains. Light came from one open

  doorway; the twins stopped, and the Eurydice twin gestured for

  Gonzales to look inside.

  Hundreds of pots stood on shelves that lined the small room's

  walls from floor to ceiling. Many were simple, almost spherical

  containers with wide top mouths, in baked red clay. Others of the

  same shape were glazed and painted and marked with a single band

  of color around the waist: bright primaries against clear pastels.

  Still others were of complex shape and design, difficult to take

  in at a glance.

  An old woman sat bent over a potter's wheel. She crooned

  tuneless gibberish as her large hands shaped the wet, spinning

  clay. She looked up at Gonzales standing in the doorway. Her

  face was deeply-lined, her skin pale; she had straight brows above

  dark eyes. She wore an off-white dress that fell to the floor and

  an apron of a black rubbery material. Her hair was covered by a

  dark blue scarf that was pulled tight and tied at the back.

  The old woman laughed, turned back to her wheel, and began to

  croon once more. Under her hands the clay began to grow upward

  and acquire form. She shaped it inside and out, demiurge reaching

  into the heart of matter, until it became a squat-bottomed pot

  rotating on the wheel.

  The wheel stopped, and with quick, delicate movements she

  placed the new-formed pot on a stand next to the wheel. She

  reached inside the pot and her hands worked, but Gonzales couldn't

  see precisely what she was doingher body screened him. Then she

  took a rack of paints and brushes from a shelf above her head and

  began to paint the surface of the pot.

  As she worked, she looked up occasionally, but didn't seem to

  mind the three of them standing there, so they stood and watched

  Gonzales was fascinated by the quick intensity of her movements,

  eager to see what the pot would look like.

  Finally she turned it so they could see her work. On the

  pot's side was a face, its nose and mouth just painted

  protuberances in the clay, its eyes painted oval dimples. The

  pot's bulbous shape distorted the features of the face, but as

  Gonzales looked more closely at it, he saw

  His own face, in malign parody, its features hideously

  contorted.

  The woman laughed, gleeful at his sudden recoil. She picked

  up the pot and looked at the face, then at him, then at the pot

  again, and she laughed again, very loudly, and squeezed the pot

  between her clay-spattered hands, squeezed it again and again,

  until it was a shapeless lump of color-shot clay. She threw the

  lump across the room into a large metal bin that sat against the

  far wall.

  "Ohhhh," from the twins, their voices in unison. "Ohhhh."

  "We're not frightened," the Alice twin said. The other twin

  covered her face with her hands. "Silly old woman," the Alice

  twin said.

  The old woman's eyes stayed on Gonzales as she reached into a

  plastic bag full of wet clay and separated out another clump to

  work on. She was working it on the unmoving wheel when the twins

  started making shrill hooting noises, and ran away.

  Her crooning had begun again as Gonzales followed them down

  the path.

  #

  Next to the path was a gateway, with a sign that said, in

  glowing letters:

  HALO MUSHROOM CULTIVATION CENTER

  ABSOLUTELY NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL

  BEYOND THIS POINT!

  About a hundred feet from where Gonzales stood, a metal

  stairway led up to a catwalk that passed over the mushroom farm.

  He looked back along the shadowed way he'd come, then forward to

  where small, isolated shafts of bright sunlight slanted down into

  the mushroom farm, and beyond, to where shapes faded into

  darkness. Either the twins had left him, or they had gone in

  here.

  Gonzales stepped up to the gateway and said, "Hello, I'm

  looking for two girls, twins."

  "One moment, please," the gateway said. As Gonzales had

  expected, common courtesy would dictate that a gatekeeper

  mechanism respond to those who didn't have the access key.

  Gonzales stood bemused in the semi-darkness for some time,

  until a woman came to the other side of the gate and said,

  "Hello." She was small and darkher skin a delicate brown, eyes

  black under just the slightest epicanthic fold. She wore black

  boots to the knee, a long black skirt, a loose jacket of rose silk

  with butterflies in darker rose brocade. She was exquisite, the

  bones of her face delicate, her movements graceful. She said, "My

  name is Trish. The twins are inside, waiting for you."

  "My name is Gonzales."

  "I know. Come in." As she said the final words, the gate

  swung open. She waited, watching, as Gonzales stepped through,

  and the gate closed behind him.

  "How do you know my name?" he asked.

  "From the collective. I am friends with many of them the

  twins, of course, and others Lizzie." She stood solemnly

  watching him, then said, "What do you know about mushroom

  cultivation?"

  "Nothing." All over Washington state, he was aware,

  mushrooms grew
, and people hunted them with great dedication,

  sometimes bringing back what they regarded as enormous successes:

  chanterelle, boletus, shaggy mane, morel. In fact, to someone

  from Southern Florida, the whole business had seemed not only

  quaint and Northwestern, but also dangerous: Gonzales knew that

  what seemed a lovely treat could be a destroying angel.

  "All right." Trish stopped, and he stopped next to her. She

  turned to him, and he was aware now of her deep red lips and white

  teeth. She said, "Halo needs mushrooms as decomposersthey're

  incredibly efficient at converting dead organic matter into

  cellulose." Gonzales nodded. She said, "In a natural setting

  whether here or on Earthspores compete: many die, and some find

  a place where they can flourish, grow into a mycelial mass that

  will fruit, become a mushroom. As mushroom growers, we intervene,

  as all cultivators do, to isolate certain species and provide

  favorable conditions for their growth. But our 'seeds,' if you

  will, the spores, are very small things, and to locate them,

  isolate them, bring them to spawn, this requires delicacy and

  techniquein a word, art."

  She paused, and Gonzales nodded.

  They came to a low structure of plastic sheets draped over

  metal walls and stopped in front of a door labeled STERILE

  INOCULATION ROOM. They passed through a hanging sheet into an

  anteroom to the sterile lab beyond. She said, "Take a look

  through the window here." Beyond the window, small robots worked

  at benches barely two feet high. Like the robot he'd seen in the

  Berkeley Rose Gardens, they had wheels for locomotion and grippers

  with clusters of delicate fibroid fingers at their ends.

  She said, "Their hands have a delicacy and precision no human

  being can achieve. And they are single-minded in their

  concentration on the jobthey preserve our intentions completely

  and purely."

  "They are machines."

  "If you wish." She pointed through the window, where one of

  the robots manipulated ugly looking inoculation needles as it

  transferred some material into Petri dishes. She said, "By their

  gestures I can identify my sams, even in a crowd of others."

  Gonzales said nothing. She went on, "The pure mushroom

  mycelium is used to inoculate sterile grain or sawdust and bran.

  The mycelium expands through the sterile medium, and the result is

  known as spawn."