She took off the interface and looked at the floor.
It didn’t make sense. She had been rescued. Saved. This was the time for fulfillment, relief, recovery. In the Wild with Marcsson she had felt she would never need anything again, as long as she could get away.
She took a deep breath. Put the interface back on. Well, she needed this.
It was Bartok. Hour after hour, she let it take her over. It elevated her and convinced her she was caught up in something tragic, which was absurd but what else was there? The cluster, orphaned from Ganesh, sitting around looking at each other — how could she help but find them stupid, for they didn’t know what she knew. Kalypso didn’t know what she knew, either, or couldn’t express it. She went in and out of the music, alternately seeking and rejecting numbness.
They watched her closely. They watched her as if she were a rabid animal. Just as they had been conditioned all their lives to do, the clusters hung together in family groups, isolated by piles of equipment and conduits; something in their poses made her think of bats in a cave and this made her think of Ganesh which made her sad but that wasn’t the problem, she didn’t mind that not really. What she minded were the looks on the faces of her cluster as she came out from under the music interface. Herself reflected in their collective demeanor.
She smiled and felt her cheeks stiffen with disuse. She shifted position to sit closer to them, next to Xiaxiang, and cast about for something to do. Her eyes fell on a makeshift pack of cards someone had made from used food-storage containers.
“Hey,” she said. “Anybody up for a little five-card stud?”
Her voice sounded really deep. She cleared her throat and started to shuffle. She could feel everybody staring at her but all her concentration went into the rhythm of moving the cards, the slip of them and the ease with which her fingers remembered what to do. She had a kind of sense of holding something back, but she didn’t know what it was until Xiaxiang put his hand on the back of her neck and she was crying. Ridiculously, uselessly, pointlessly; but she couldn’t stop.
Of course it was too late, now. It meant nothing.
She kept seeing Marcsson floating among the algaics. His peaceful face, like Ophelia in the flowers . . .
Eventually Sharia found some zzz and pressed it against her forearm. She swam in and out of consciousness, aware of the buzz of activity around her, rising and falling as crises came and went. They settled her in an unoccupied space among storage crates, where she slumped idly studying the muscles of her legs, which seemed to have atrophied some since leaving First. As the day went by, at least one member of the cluster was always with her, no matter what. She couldn’t speak, of course, but from time to time her head cleared enough to admit an understanding of the conversations around her. There were frequent meetings, some involving only a few people, and others, it seemed, attended by virtually the whole colony.
Rumors had begun to circulate among the clusters. She heard them as through a veil.
“Ganesh has probably murdered the witch doctors.”
“An AI that sophisticated was bound to develop cognitive problems. Jacovitz predicted it on Earth ten years before Ganesh was even designed.”
“The Dead are just waiting for their chance to infect us.”
“Yeah, did you see Kalypso?”
“Shh, don’t—”
“Robere’s plotting something. I think the Grunts have made up their minds.”
“The Mothers have run out of Picasso’s Blue.”
“The Mothers are stoned senseless on alcohol, Siri. It’s up to us to make a move. We can’t rely on them anymore.”
At length the sedatives wore off and no one remembered to dose her again, so she sat in some rigging several feet above the floor of the common space, which was littered with puddles, and watched the action unfold. Her imagination had been captured by the doings of her comrades, as if she were watching a play.
Word had gotten out that a strike was being planned against the Dead; suddenly the atmosphere was galvanized. The difference between the Grunts and the Mothers was that the Grunts never engaged in histrionics. They never even discussed what they were going to do: they thought for a long time, quietly, and then just acted with a minimum of fuss. All of a sudden, things were happening fast. A knot of bodies had formed in the largest open floor space. The alpha-types of each cluster had gotten themselves down with the action, and the balance of the younger generation hung around the fringes, listening. The Grunts could scarcely conceal their euphoria at the idea of leading a knock-down-drag-out against the Dead.
“All right.” Robere raised his hands and addressed the group just as if he were announcing a drill or exam. “We’ve formed a team which will be leaving at dawn for the station. Repairs need to be made to the Gardens, and we’ll be harvesting as much as we can carry. If you’re on the team, I’ve already spoken with you about your objectives. If you’re not on the team, I’m about to give you the chance to get a piece of this.”
He paused.
“What about the Dead?” someone from Siri’s cluster shouted.
“I’m coming to that. As some of you will have heard by now, we’ve just had an incident with the Dead this morning. Lassare contacted them and informed them that we have control of the corpse of Sieng. She offered to return it to them and to admit them to the colony with full powers if they would stop attacking the station and provide Picasso’s Blue.” He paused, and his expression spoke volumes about what he thought of the second condition. “They refused.”
Murmurs.
“In fact, they threatened to shut down reflexes if Sieng’s body is not supplied immediately. They believe we intend to use it for some nefarious purpose of Marcsson’s. They don’t believe he’s in a coma.”
“Haven’t the witch doctors gotten through to them?” asked Siri. “Don’t they understand that if they shut down the reflexes, they’ll ruin any chance for Ganesh to recover?”
“I believe,” Robere answered, “that they figure if they can’t play, we can’t play. That’s why we have to take them out.”
“You mean fight?” Whoever had said it sounded incredulous.
“If they force a confrontation, yes. There are only seven of them. They can’t stand up to us. I don’t think anyone here advocates violence, but the Dead have gone too far. What I’m looking for now are about five or six people to act as protection for the expedition tomorrow. Kessel will be leading the repair and recovery squad, and I’ll be leading security. You need to be strong, aggressive, and not afraid of the Dead. I already have some of you in mind, but I’m going to make this announcement openly so nobody can say afterward that I was part of some kind of conspiracy. None of us”—he gestured to the other Grunts — “are trying to coerce anybody into doing anything. So. A show of hands?”
Kalypso couldn’t help but laugh as a thicket of hands went up. Who wouldn’t want a chance to act after being stuck here all this time?
Ahmed stepped forward.
“Robere, why are we fighting over Sieng’s body? If they want it so badly — and, you have to admit, they probably have a right to it—why not just give it to them?”
Noise. Everybody talking at once. The echoes shot up the sides of the enclosure; partials flew among the piping like butterflies. Kalypso stopped her ears.
Robere held up a hand again and waited for quiet.
“Because it wouldn’t end there. They have not offered us any terms. They have merely made demands. If we give them Sieng’s body, they will control everything. And they will be able to make as much Picasso’s Blue as they want, which means that the Mothers will play right into their hands.”
“They’re sitting on the reflex points, Robere. You think they’re bluffing?”
“Wait for the witch doctors!” the small botanist called Lila interrupted in a weak soprano.
“Wait for the witch doctors?” countered Siri in a withering tone. “We haven’t heard shit from the witch doctors for days. For all we
know they’re dead. It’s time to go in and get the Dead away from First before there’s another thermal. If they shut down Ganesh, we’ll knock them out and boot it back up again. At least that will give us some control of manual emergency systems.”
“Jianni was supposed to have done this,” someone else put in. “He was going to turn off the nerves.”
“Jianni died trying,” Robere said. “Look, we can’t all talk at once. Let me make a proposal without interruptions, and then we can fight about it. All right?”
Silence.
“Now. What Siri says is correct. We’ve avoided risking a shutdown of Ganesh, but given that the witch doctors have not succeeded in getting the station up and running again, the risk no longer seems so great in comparison to the chances that the Dead will permanently disable the station with their vandalism— or that there will be heat damage to the farms and Gardens. We’ve been lucky so far, but luck doesn’t last forever. I know that the witch doctors have got a few nodes back on their feet, but they aren’t the essential functions we need. And some of the nodes have suffered a second Crash. Obviously there’s a problem with com, or we’d be able to get Tehar on the line and let him have his say. We simply haven’t had contact, and we can’t just sit here and do nothing. We’re going to recover everything we can. We’ll get the bridge of the ship shielded and secured before the reflex points come down. So—you want to debate? Go ahead. I’m taking volunteers, though, because we don’t have time to make a decision by committee.”
“Speaking of which,” Ahmed said wryly, “what do the Mothers say? Why aren’t they speaking?”
Everyone looked around. The Mothers had removed themselves from the scene and were scattered around in odd corners of Oxygen 2. At length, Rasheeda stood up.
“We don’t support this action,” she said. She opened her mouth as if to add more, closed it, and sat down with a drunken air of dignity.
Kalypso happened to be looking at Kessel; his expression was homicidal, and for a second she flashed a memory of Jianni and wondered what would be different if he were here now.
Robere said, “We leave at dawn. Those who want to have a debate, I don’t need you. I need people who can contribute. I’ll assemble a team just inside the main doors.”
He turned and pushed through the crowd. As hell began breaking loose, Kalypso’s cluster retreated in the space they had established in the shadows beside some water barrels, leading Kalypso softly by the hand. She could feel them thinking around her, but they seemed impenetrable to her now. The cluster had finally become a unit: the plans created for them long ago on Earth had been fulfilled. They were a single thing that grouped around itself, a whole made of pieces that had fused over time thanks to proximity and good psychology. Now they were limping toward something with each other: some understanding that would make them powerful.
But they couldn’t understand the Wild, no matter how they tried. And she couldn’t understand them— not anymore. She had been scrubbed too close to the home, shaped into something that no longer fit among people.
She regarded them each, Xiaxiang. The giver. He couldn’t help it—his generosity was compulsive. You wanted to make him stop but then you’d realize that without him you would implode under the weight of your own self-absorption. So you’d try to penetrate his focus on you and turn it back on him, to find out what he was really thinking underneath that kindness and goodwill. And you’d find out he was like that all the way through.
Liet, who always seemed to have misplaced her own head until you asked her something she knew, and then you found out she knew everything and would tell you. Sharia: alpha female and Class A worrywart. Sharia would never drop the ball. Each of them registered inside Kalypso almost as an archetype, but she saw them now from outside the circle.
Ahmed, who could always be counted on to be direct.
He appeared from out of the crowd and said, “We have to make a decision. Either we back the decision to invade, or we throw our lot in with the Mothers.”
Tehar. No way of knowing what to think about him.
And Kalypso.
“Decision? What decision?” Sharia was flushed with emotion. “Did you see the Mothers? They’re . . . they’re . . . they’ve finally—”
“Loco,” Liet put in. “Deep-fried calamari.”
X said, “We need to get Tehar out of First. It bugs me that we haven’t heard from him.”
“Ganesh,” Kalypso heard herself say.
Ahmed touched her face and made her look at him. “We know you tried to kill Marcsson. What we want to know from you is why.”
“Is he going to live?”
“Last I saw, he was in a coma. His interface was still functioning, but they have no idea whether he’ll regain consciousness. He was taken to First at Tehar’s insistence. Kessel had to smuggle him in when the Dead were distracted dealing with Lila and her cluster.”
Kalypso nodded.
“Tell us why you did it.”
“It must have been terrible,” Liet offered, her melting eyes following Kalypso. “To make you do it.”
Kalypso drew a breath and found herself saying, “No, there’s nothing gut-wrenching at all about destroying another person if you’re convinced it’s either you or him. It’s like a switch.”
Kalypso could hear herself breathing, fast and loud, as if she were climbing hard in First, doing a big, fast climb before a big, fast joy.
Liet pursed her perfect red lips and said, “Could you be more specific.”
“Killing’s a form of bondage. I still wish I’d done it. I want to be bound. Held down. Pressed to the ground. It would give me something to be, somewhere to go. I could be a killer.”
She knew what she meant but even in her own ears she sounded berkers. They were all staring at her.
“What? What? Why do you stare?” She realized she had signed it when she could continue to hear her own rasping breaths as the words came out. She couldn’t seem to stop breathing. The more she did it, the more she had to do it. Things went pale and fuzzy.
Sharia grabbed her hand and slapped her face. Kalypso snarled, seized Sharia by the hair and threw herself at her cluster-sister, biting and scratching. Sharia screamed and doubled over, Kalypso was picked up bodily and dragged away, still writhing, spittle flying.
“Enough,” Xiaxiang was saying repeatedly in her ear. She was screaming, throat on fire, as they tied her up. She kept thrashing until everything hurt and she couldn’t breathe. Then she subsided into something like catatonia.
“You didn’t hurt her, did you?” Liet asked.
“She’s a danger to herself, and to us,” X replied. “She needs to be quiet. Let her alone. Maybe she’ll sleep.”
Tears oozed across her face.
“Don’t get upset,” she heard Ahmed said to Liet. “She’s just a little berky. She’ll come out of it.”
“He’s right,” Sharia said, recovering.
“Did you read that in the manual?” X snapped. Then: “Sorry. It’s just a little unnerving when someone loses it like that.”
“See what happens if you touch her now.”
“Leave her.”
“No. It’s not safe to leave her. She’s been traumatized. She needs contact.”
“You touch her.”
Ahmed’s hand on her back. Tears. His arms encircling her; his heat.
“Sharia, come here,” Ahmed commanded.
Sharia, trembling, sitting close and putting a finger on Kalypso’s wrist. Kalypso lifted her hand and put it on Sharia’s lap. Sharia held her.
A PRIORI FUCKED
THEY GAVE HER THE GREATEST GIFT THEY had. They immersed her in Earth—whatever had been salvaged from Ganesh and stored in their interfaces. Model airplanes and wooden furniture; lampshades and slowly spinning ceiling fans; bowls of grapes and silk-covered boxes; the sound of thousands of birds settling in the tops of oaks on their way north, blackening the sky (no, no — no black skies please) adobe and sage and empty plastic bott
les and tire tracks.
Teres said, none of it’s yours.
What was real then? The lines cut straight and true by Marcsson’s knife. The burn of bilgewater riding along her tensing thigh. Wind shuddering the canopy. Futility.
No one’s going to hurt you.
It will be all right.
Take care of Marcsson.
The ability to withstand paradox is overrated. It would be better to collapse and forever after eat with a spoon. Sometimes it’s good to be angry but at times like this it’s better to be quiet.
They had decided to back Robere. Ahmed, in fact, was going to be on the security team. No one mentioned Ganesh. No one said much of anything. It was going to be a long night. Liet occupied herself with her interface, probably still studying Sieng’s tissue. Sharia dozed off. Kalypso shivered but thought nothing.
X crooked his finger at her. “C’mere, Kalypso. Your body temperature’s all messed up. I’m going to give you a bath.”
There was no shortage of hot water, and the cluster had a barrel they used for washing. X made her get in. He handed her a piece of soap, which she examined dispassionately.
“You could pretend it’s a rubber ducky.”
“Go away X.”
He started humming “Take the A Train.”
“This is stupid. It’s a waste of water.” He plucked the soap out of the water and started scrubbing.
“The way I see it, Kalypso, is Better You Than Me. If you’re crazy, you’re crazy. But if I’m crazy, I can’t tell whether you’re sane anyway, and I probably don’t care, being too self-absorbed to notice even if you paint yourself a new color. No offense.” He poked gently at the yellow patch on her back.
“I am not insane.” Her voice vibrated oddly as he was rubbing her back hard. “I’m perfectly capable of washing.”
“Maybe I want to do this. Maybe it’s a grooming ritual left over from when we were pack animals and I was the pack leader and you were just some insignificant beta female.”
“We were never pack animals. This whole cluster thing is artificial.”
Dreaming in Smoke Page 24
