“Is it too late? What are we doing? Does anyone have the faintest idea?”
Panic is virulently contagious. Suddenly everyone seemed unable to cope. The younger generation fell silent in the face of the Mothers’ emotion.
Lassare put her hands across her face as if to ward off the words, turning one cheek as she cried, “Don’t don’t don’t don’t turn that way. Just don’t. We can’t help but go on. We’ll paint by numbers over this planet’s ecology if we have to. We’ll make it ours.”
“Apres moi le deluge, homegirl,” said Rasheeda in a sister-amen tone.
“Guilt will consume you.”
“It’s not about guilt,” Rasheeda said.
“Why don’t we just overwrite our own programming? Wouldn’t that be easier? Write in suicide instructions and end it neatly.”
“Who cares about neat endings if everybody’s dead?”
“You must remember this: a kiss is still a kiss.”
“If Neko couldn’t convince herself to die, what makes you think we can? Or the children? They won’t—”
“They won’t survive without Ganesh,” Naomi persisted. “Look what happened to the little one. Kalypso.”
“Everything we do is destructive. We can’t help that. It’s our nature to destroy things but we might as well have pleasure in the bargain.”
Siri got in between Lassare and the radio. Her voice rang out through the amps.
“Tehar, there’s a team coming out there to get the Dead out of First before they can ruin it completely. Is that going to endanger you?”
“Get the Dead out? The Dead are sitting on the reflex points like they’re trying to hatch eggs.”
“Yeah, well, it might mean a temporary shutdown but since you say Ganesh is in trouble anyway—”
“No! Siri, don’t let them. You can’t shut it down now. We’ll lose the whole thing. We don’t even know what it is, or what it’s in the process of doing to the Core. It wouldn’t be safe to lose power.”
“Catch-22,” Siri answered. “What are you gonna do when the next thermal comes?”
“I need time,” Tehar said. “Look, let me talk to the others. Call off this attack on the Dead, though. Please. I’m going out now.”
Ahmed sighed. “That’s what I thought.”
“The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout.”
“The Myth of Syphilis, is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Maybe they’d do better without Ganesh,” Rasheeda said. “Maybe they need to make their own myths.”
“Make them out of what?”
“It’s a relief in a way,” Lassare said. “We can take our hands off now. Doesn’t matter what we do.”
“It’s not my fault,” Naomi shouted. “I was just doing what I could do. I won’t accept blame.”
The next thing everybody knew, Naomi was ripping off her clothes and kicking them in random directions. She began to howl and eventually collapsed in the fetal position, sobbing.
“I should be so lucky,” Lassare said. “Couldn’t we be more original, Naomi? That’s a textbook berk you’re indulging in.”
Rasheeda stood looking down on Naomi.
“Why you little animal,” she said.
“Should we help her?”
“I can’t be bothered.”
“Is there more booze somewhere?”
“No,” Siri said. “You’ve all had enough.”
“Is it true that you’re disenfranchising us then?”
“I’m afraid so,” Siri answered. “You have nothing useful to contribute.”
“Suicide is looking kind of spunky.”
“I didn’t push out seven babies just to commit suicide over a little. A little. You know. Whatever.”
“It would be an anticlimax.”
“Everything’s an anticlimax. Life is just this happened and then that happened and then nothing much happened and then something else happened. We never smoked our cigars. We never got our moment of glory.”
“What percentage of the station has actually been removed or ruined?”
“That’s scarcely an argument for suicide.”
“About 15 percent I guess.”
“You don’t need an argument for suicide. Arguments are irrelevant— therefore suicide. Not even therefore. You don’t have to involve logic at all. Just do it.”
“You go first.”
“I had no idea it was that bad. How long can the Works function?”
“And what are they doing with the parts?”
“The Works need Ganesh.”
“Some of that 15 percent has got to be melted luma. Attrition from the well.”
“I’m not saying I want to. I’m just thinking out loud.”
“Well, don’t.”
“I hate these meetings. We never get anything done. Can I go now?”
“Go where?”
“Oh yeah.”
“I want to play.”
“Ants don’t play. Azamat told me that.”
“Altruism only makes sense for haploid organisms.”
“Sssshhh — the O-word.”
“Organism? Organism organism organism. Eco-fucking nonsense. I’ll use the word if I want to. System bollix. Ants are organisms and so are we.”
“Ants are cuter.”
“Would it help if they were our kids.”
“If they looked and smelled like us you mean? DNA.”
“I doubt it.”
“Well social obedience can be carried too far.” The noise of someone vomiting broke up the conversation.
“Earth is gone forever.”
“It is safe to say that.”
“Better gone forever than present but unreachable.”
“I disagree.”
“Semantics.”
“I am overflowing with love and joy,” Rasheeda said. “My heart yawns wide and includes you all. I am not threatened. I am not broken.”
The vomiting stopped abruptly.
“I heal,” Rasheeda cried. “I am the light.”
“OK, suicide could be an option after all. But only if it’s violent.”
“That’s enough,” Siri shouted. “All of you shut up. We’re going to get on the radio and stop Kessel. It’s that simple.”
“They’re maintaining radio silence. So the Dead won’t detect them.”
“Then we’ll go after them.”
People started to move; instinctively, the strong ones among Kalypso’s peers edged away from the Mothers, avoiding the scene of their breakdown. The conversation turned to practical matters. How to recall the two boats that had left. Who should go. What to do instead of attacking the Dead.
Kalypso sat down next to Lassare. At first she didn’t think the Mother even noticed her presence, but after a moment she began to talk quietly. The conversation rattled on, but Kalypso and Lassare sat in a bubble of mutual attention.
“You children talk of Dreamer deprivation; you talk of missing Ganesh. You want your environment, your context: it makes you yourself. You’d deprive us of our paradigm, just as we’re about to deprive this planet of its logic if we can. We were meant for Earth. Why do you think we use Picasso’s Blue? It gives us back what we lost. It brings our old memories closer, our hopes, and it pushes the nearby stuff away. We can tell the stories we want to hear about life on this planet; and Picasso’s Blue ratifies them. It’s—”
“Institutionalized delusionary,” Kalypso intercut.
“It’s what’s made us believe. Without it we couldn’t have gone on with taking care of you. We needed to believe what we were doing was right.”
“So you believed it by telling it to yourselves, with the aid of a drug. But it was all lies. Everything was a fiction created by you.”
“If you can maintain a fiction long enough, and well enough, it becomes a truth.”
“So that’s it? That’s your lesson to me? What about love?”
“Love? What makes you think I should care about you? I brought you into a
world I can’t control and I knew it. It was and is my responsibility. If I let myself care about you, I have to take you on, and you’re doomed. The grief of your life.”
“You’re supposed to be a mother to us. That’s what you’ve always purported to be. If you loved us, you would tell us the truth.”
“I am a mother, insofar as it’s possible to be under the circumstances. But mothers are not capable of love, not in the way you want to believe; and especially not on this planet. Men can love because none of this is really their fault. It’s out of their hands as far as they can tell because they have the capacity to stand once removed from the reality of existence. Men are at liberty and luxury to love. They stand bemused before the universe and wonder about it and feel love. Not us. Not a Mother.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Kalypso said, but she didn’t especially mind. “Just like Marcsson.”
“Poor Azamat never stood a chance. I remember him so well. We were practically kids, not even thirty when we were selected. He was picked for the team because his career was in ruins. He’d had an accident and ruined his eyesight. He couldn’t do close detail work anymore; had to start over.”
“His eyes are no good.” She remembered this much.
“He used to be a myrmecologist. Studied ants. That’s what brought ants to my mind just now; he never got enough of talking about them. You think he could put you to sleep talking about the System? You should have heard him talking about formicine ants. You could sleep for a year on his lectures.”
“How could he get so excited about such tiny little things?”
“Some people believe life’s in the details,” said Lassare. “Not you, of course. You like it big.”
“Ganesh was big. And if it’s ruined by this, what can replace it?”
“Your imagination fails you, Kalypso. The Wild of this planet is the biggest thing. The witch doctors are forming a bridge with an alien way of mind, a paradigm we’ve never known, but we’ll know it now, thanks to Ganesh. Thanks to abstraction, language, translation. Thanks to Marcsson, if he succeeds. This is the biggest thing you’ll ever know.”
“No,” Kalypso said suddenly. She could feel herself about to become stubborn and irrational. “You’re wrong. The biggest thing is a human being. We’re so big we can’t even be seen.”
Lassare stared at her. She gave a laugh that was half-scorn, half-uneasiness.
“We’re nothing, Kalypso. Haven’t you learned? Don’t you see how easily we’re shattered?”
Kalypso studied the lines and softnesses of Lassare’s face. “What’s going to happen to Azamat? This alien of yours has been eating his mind. What’s going to become of him?”
“He could be a hero, if Tehar uses him well. He’s going to teach Ganesh the meaning of the language that is rewriting it. And when Ganesh understands, we’ll be able to solve the Oxygen Problem.”
“What about Marcsson. Do you think this alien thing can rewrite his mind and he can still survive?”
Lassare wavered. “He should survive long enough to provide Ganesh with the correct associations. That’s what we’ve got to hope for.”
“But he’ll be destroyed. And the thing that’s eating him—it will die, won’t it? Because it will have killed its host. They’ll both be destroyed.”
“He’s already infected. It’s only a matter of time.”
“A priori fucked. Just like all of us. And you stand by.”
“Kalypso! After what he did to you. After the narrow escape you had. What are you saying? You should be glad it’s going to be over. You hate him.”
“Yeah.” She leaped up. “How many words for snow, Lassare?”
“On this planet? We don’t even have snow. Where are you going?”
HOME
SWEET
HOME
SHARIA WAS HAVING THE TIME OF HER life telling people what to do. Kalypso tapped her on the shoulder.
“Get me into contact with the Dead,” she said. “Now. If Teres understands that the Earth Archives are in danger, she’ll never shut down the reflexes.”
“The witch doctors have been trying to tell her this all along. The Dead don’t want to listen.”
“They’ll listen to me.”
Sharia, flushed with excitement, plainly was grabbing at any excuse she could find to deny Kalypso’s demand. “Your interface has been programmed to lock you out of everything but music.”
“Well, reprogram it.”
“Kalypso, it’s not that simple. We’re in a Crash. What do you want?”
“Never mind,” Kalypso said. “I need the Dreamer anyway. Do you understand? I need to get Teres and then I need the Dreamer. Sharia. Get me in. You have to get me in.”
X felt her forehead.
“Cut it out,” she said. “I’m not sick, and I’m not joking. I have to get into Ganesh. Don’t you see this changes everything?”
“All right,” Sharia said. “Calm down. Let me see what I can do.” She stepped up on a storage barrel and whistled for attention. They were all well-trained to respond to such prompts, and they gazed up at her as if she were a conductor.
’“We need to buy the witch doctors some time,” Sharia said. “Look, Tehar’s getting a handle on this thing whatever it is in the System. It’s only a matter of time before he can work with the new code as well as the old code. We’re talking about solving the Oxygen Problem here, but more immediately we’re talking about returning Ganesh’s sovereignty. Once Ganesh has regained consciousness, it will be able to defend itself from the Dead and the weather and anything else this planet can throw at it.”
Listening to the conviction in her ringing tones, Kalypso couldn’t help thinking Sharia was going to make a hell of a Mother one day. If.
Van spoke up. “We don’t have time. Kessel and Robere are going to get in there and mix it up with the Dead. Sooner or later somebody’s going to hit the reflex points and whatever the witch doctors are doing is gonna get trashed. Whatever Robere says about diplomacy, we all know how it’s going to be.”
“Then we have to stop them,” Sharia said. “And save Ganesh.”
“Save Ganesh. You make it sound so simple.”
“It is simple,” Kalypso said. Her voice, lower and richer than the others’, cut through the talk. “Let me talk to the Dead. I know how their minds work. I need to reach them.”
She had by now acquired a certain mystique as a result of having been lost in the Wild and having subsequently berked off indefinitely to Some Other Place. The whites of their eyes showed when they looked at her.
There were a few inconclusive murmurs.
Sharia said, “OK, enough talk. It’s settled. We’re going to stop Kessel and Robere. We’ll figure out how as we go along. Now. Who’s in this with me?”
Another reshuffling of bodies as the clusters prepared for action. Kalypso stood in place while the tide of people moved around her. Someone was breathing on the top of her head. She glanced up. Liet was picking her lip and humming. She looked puzzled and a little dazed; not unusual.
“Kalypso, do you really think you can convince Teres?”
“I doubt it,” Kalypso whispered. “But I’m not going to sit back and let them blow the reflex points now. Liet, can you bring all the work you’ve done on Sieng and me?”
“You want me to come?” Liet looked terrified.
“Please.”
Liet’s eyes rolled up beneath her brows as she thought. “I’ve got lots of good stuff,” she said. “I’ve got everything I took from the boat.”
“Bring it all. It could be useful.”
Sharia brushed past, shouting instructions. She drew a quick breath and muttered, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Kalypso.”
Liet and Kalypso exchanged glances. Liet read Kalypso and sprouted a little smile.
“It’s OK,” she said softly. “I don’t usually know what I’m doing, either.”
She was back on a boat, one as crowded as the funeral boat where the De
ad had made Picasso’s Blue. Only the mood was distinctly upbeat: Kalypso’s peers still approached the Wild with the can-do attitude promulgated by the Earthborn, and Ganesh. They didn’t know any better. In a way, this made it easier for her, since otherwise all of the trauma she now associated with boats and the Wild would have surely undermined her confidence.
And she was — suddenly, unreasoningly, inordinately — confident. She felt almost reckless.
She was going back into Ganesh at last. Vows to stop Dreaming notwithstanding, it was all she knew how to do. The closer they drew to First, the stronger she felt. Several boats ranged across the water: no one had really wanted to stay behind, now that something was finally being done.
“I feel like a Viking,” Xiaxiang said. “All I need’s a blond wig.”
By some miracle, the Gardens were still alive. They radiated in the dim cloudlight, the emerald heart of a dead or dying city. Even from here she could see that enormous sections of luma were missing. The better parts of two legs were gone entirely, crippling the architecture: where they had been there was nothing now but steam.
Rain cascaded off the Works. If they were operating, they did so at a low level. As for power, all lights were out. It wasn’t a good sign, but it didn’t necessarily mean that the reflex points had been shut down yet, and when Siri interfaced she said there was still action on the System. She just didn’t know how to interact with it.
The boats of Robere’s team could be seen drifting at the base of the structure: they had probably entered through the Gardens. As for the boats of the Dead: one of these floated near a damaged leg. It was too distant for Kalypso to identify its occupant.
They conferred about the locations of reflex points and discussed the infiltration plans of Robere’s team. What would be the best way to get in communication? Could they attempt to negotiate with the Dead themselves, rather than simply botching what Kessel and Robere were trying to do?
The caldera had been ripped open and rain poured in. Sulfuric acid would be eating into the Earthmade structures, but sliding off the luma unscathing. Memories of Earth were being consumed, but the native substances would survive.
Dreaming in Smoke Page 26
