“I’m taking us in,” Sharia said. “We’re going to have to work our way through the station until we find our people. Still no response on radio, Van?”
“Not from our people. I think they’ve powered down. They’d be telling us to shut up, otherwise. I can hear the Dead transmitting, though.”
“How?” Kalypso said. “They can’t speak.”
“They tap in code.”
“You haven’t sent any messages explaining why we’re here, have you?”
“Of course not. All we need is the Dead getting into the Dreamer ahead of us. They might mean no harm; then again, we don’t want to find out the hard way.”
“I’m going for leg seven,” Sharia said. “We can break in that way. Kalypso—”
“I’m going up the outside of the caldera,” Kalypso said. “I hope somebody thought to bring climbing equipment.”
“It would be a lot safer to climb inside,” van said levelly. “There’s no need to create extra danger.”
“Kalypso’s right,” Siri contradicted. “We have no way of knowing what’s happening in there. There are no coms inside, it’s dark, and the vandalism may have made the transit tubes weak.”
X caught her eye and held it.
“But Kalypso. You haven’t climbed anything for weeks. Be careful. Save the heroics for the Dreamer.”
She said, “There aren’t going to be any heroics.”
The other boats had gone directly to the gardens. Liet and Kalypso snailed up the side of the leg, using ropes to satisfy Liet’s safety bug even though the surface suits themselves could grip the luma. The movement of the boats on the water beneath was silent and slow. Everything, in fact, seemed to be happening in slow motion, and the fact that there was no visible evidence of events within the station lent an air of menace to these long, wearying minutes.
X was right. She was soon exhausted. Liet took the lead, her longer limbs propelling her faster; she stopped several times to wait for Kalypso. Unit 5 was just below the caldera, which was now an entry point since it had been damaged. She did not expect it to be guarded. When Liet halted, splayed across the broken Dome, Kalypso was too winded to speak, so she crawled up behind and gave Liet’s ass a shove to get her attention.
Liet turned her head and signed, “There’s someone in there. Maybe they expected gliders.”
Kalypso panted for a while before she went to the edge of the gap and looked down.
It was Teres.
Kalypso signaled for Liet to stay put. All her life she’d wished to be bigger, but never more so than now. She really wanted to knock Teres down and hurt her. With that in mind, she climbed into the caldera and let herself drop.
Teres looked startled, then amused.
“My chickadee,” she signed eloquently, “so happy to see you here. What are you doing?”
Kalypso got to her feet, rubbing a bruised hip.
“I have to talk to you. About the Earth Archives.”
“Ah, you mean the Archives you got lost in when you were pretending to be a witch doctor? Those Archives?”
“Yes. Teres—”
“Your people have brought this on themselves. You betrayed us. You betrayed Sieng. I should kill you where you stand, only it’s against everything I’ve ever known.”
Liet said, “Kalypso can’t help it if Marcsson overpowered her. You should see what he did to her. She’ll look like you one day.”
Kalypso waved at Liet, hoping to silence her. It didn’t work.
“Anyway, Sieng’s more valuable as a source of ecological data than as a mine for Picasso’s Blue. There’s a whole mathematical system to be inferred from the System via Sieng and now, Kalypso. That’s what’s caused Ganesh to berk, and that’s what the witch doctors are working on. But it can’t survive if you shut down the reflex points.”
Teres was looking unusually vicious. “All we care about are Earth Archives. It’s too late in the day to be thinking of new mathematical systems.”
Liet said, “If you shut down the reflexes, Earth Archives may or may not be preserved, but without the mind of Ganesh to process them for you, they’ll be of no use.”
“The Core will remain unchanged from the day Ganesh was built.”
“No it won’t,” Liet sang, oblivious to the fact that Teres looked ready to kill. “The Core’s been breached, infiltrated with the new paradigm. You take down the reflexes and everything goes down. Nothing comes back.”
“That’s impossible. How can you know such a thing.”
“I’ve seen it,” Kalypso said. “I’ve seen the condition of the Core. I’ll show it to you. Come into the Dreamer and I’ll show you everything. I’ll show you there’s still something left in there, even if we don’t know how to talk to it. Then you decide whether you want to keep provoking the Grunts. They’re here to destroy you, you know. They don’t care about the reflexes. They don’t even care about Earth Archives. They want survival hardware so we can scrape by in tentkits.”
Teres engaged in a long exchange of tapping across the radio. Finally she said, “What is it the witch doctors think they can do?”
“They hope to communicate with whatever’s in Ganesh. They hope to learn its language.”
“I’m suspicious of this ploy to get me in the Dreamer.”
“I’ll make you a bet,” Kalypso said. “You come into the Dreamer, and if it turns out that I’m lying, that what I’ve said isn’t true, then I’ll be your slave for life.”
“And what is it you want from me?”
Kalypso said, “If you see for yourself that the Core is no longer impervious to outside influence, then I know you won’t shut down the reflexes, which is all I want.”
“I won’t promise that,” Teres said. “It might be a trick.”
“Fine,” Kalypso said. “Be that way — I don’t give a fuck. If I win, I want the cigars.”
Teres threw back her head and emitted a rattlesnake laugh.
“All right, my little slave.”
Kalypso had occasionally bent the rules at poker, but she’d never hedged a bet.
Well, there’s a first time for everything.
“You’re on,” said Teres.
They shook on it, hand to claw.
“Call off your people, then,” Kalypso said.
“Call off yours.”
Liet was already on the radio to Robere.
“We have the station surrounded,” he said. “Nobody gets in or out without my knowing about it. How much time do you need?”
“Dunno,” Liet said. “Couple hours, I guess.”
“I’ll give you an hour, then I’m calling you. I need results by then, otherwise I’m moving in while I’ve got oxygen.”
Liet looked at Teres. “One hour,” she said. “We’ll take your word for it that you’re telling your people to keep the reflexes up for that time.”
Teres was tapping away. “My word is good,” she signed. “I will meet you at—where was it, Kalypso? Unit 5?”
Kalypso was already standing on the edge of the transit tube. “Yeah. Rem2ram, Unit 5. Bring the cigars, Teres.”
Teres smiled. “You will make a lovely slave.”
“Come on, Liet,” Kalypso called. “Jump.”
It was not a joy that took them to Tehar; it was a dark and bleak rush down transit tubes that showed no neural activity. Liet had determined Tehar’s location, and she led the way with the ease of a lifetime’s familiarity with the crawls. The hatch to the cell in question was closed and sealed; they pried at it with their fingers to get it open. Then Tehar was grabbing their hands, pulling them into the cell where he’d been holed up all this time. He closed the seal and stood back. Liet flung herself at him. They embraced. Tehar looked at Kalypso over Liet’s shoulder even as his hands stroked her back.
“It’s a jungle in here,” Kalypso said, pushing aside fronds of high-oxygen plants. The cell was stuffed with supplies, gas canisters, and other gear. There was little room to move. Tehar had released Liet
and was studying Kalypso. She returned his gaze levelly.
“I thought we would fall into each other’s arms,” he said. “But.
He looked exactly the same. It was as if nothing had happened. But everything had happened. She played with the leaves of a plant, at a loss.
“Yes,” she said. “But.”
Liet was unaffected by this exchange. She poked among the equipment.
He shook himself slightly. “We don’t have much time. I’d better take you up to rem2ram. It’s not going to be like you remember. Think you can handle it?”
She looked at the floor. “Yeah. I can handle it.”
Liet said, “Come on, then. It’s downhill from here, Kalypso. You can rest when you get in the tank.”
She clambered out of the seal. Kalypso began to follow but Tehar stopped her. He reached out and tugged her hood away. His hands touched her bare head. Then his lips.
“This is going to be over, Kalypso. Then. After. You and me.”
She repeated, “This is going to be over.”
They slid through inert luma toward unit 5. Kalypso’s courage had headed south sometime during the moments in Tehar’s cell. Seeing him had brought something back to her which she’d been tougher without. Somehow through all these trials she’d held on to the belief—however deeply buried, however illogical— that Ganesh would always be there. The AI was a stable collection of reference points, a blueprint for how and what to think. Kalypso’s ability to take conceptual risks had always depended, whether she acknowledged it or not, on the trust that there would be a home base to touch. A place to come back to.
But it was different now. Everything was. The station lay in ruins. Somewhere in here was code; electromagnetic fingerprints; physical evidence of the ideas that gave her and her people their identity in this world. Was Ganesh there, too? What if it wasn’t?
Where would she turn?
When they got to Unit 5, Liet did the preliminary checks on the Dreamer while Tehar took her to the tank she was to use.
“Marcsson has been interfacing for days,” Tehar said. “I haven’t been able to get to him. I don’t know what you’re going to find.”
“I’ll be all right.” The atmosphere in the room had been well-maintained by the witch doctors. Kalypso peeled off her suit.
He didn’t look convinced. “Ganesh is dead. You need to understand that before you go charging inside. There is no more Ganesh.”
“But how do you know? It was never technically alive in the first place, so how can it be dead?”
“You’ll have to take my word for it.”
“But I don’t.”
“Kalypso. I’ve seen the code.”
“Then how did Ganesh and I communicate all that time I was in the Wild? How did you and I interface? How can the tanks be functioning?”
“They aren’t. Whatever is going through the processors now, it’s not Ganesh.”
“Just like whatever’s going through Marcsson isn’t Azamat, is that what you’re saying? But it is. He’s still in there somewhere.”
“Semantics, children,” Liet sang. “Kalypso, I need your body over here. I’m putting you in the smaller auxiliary tank. Not as luxurious, but you’re small enough not to mind.”
Teres came through the hatch. She approached the Dreamtank from which Marcsson had made his last, fateful run, gliding a horny fist along its smooth side. “It’s been many years since last I Dreamed,” she whispered. “Since the Crossing. What a sleep that was.” She climbed into the tank and Liet attached the connection points.
At length, Kalypso got in her own tank. Tehar was pacing, his body visibly shaking.
“Kalypso. Don’t think you can get friendly with the interface. You can insist on calling it Ganesh as long as you want, but it doesn’t know you and it isn’t your friend.”
She tossed her head. Her strength must be coming back after all, because she said, “No one knows me. No one’s my friend. I’ll be fine. Move over. I’m gunning Teres, and you’re gunning me. Make it good. I don’t have much patience for amateurs.”
Another bullshit sandwich, Kalypso, and Tehar will see it for what it is as soon as he starts looking at your vitals: heart racing, trembling, legs going taut. But Tehar was apparently busy just maintaining the face; she hoped he’d have the skill to see her through this. Liet adjusted the points and smiled at her.
“Right now we need to get to the Core, show it to Teres in terms she can accept, and then get out before we hit trouble,” Tehar said. “Can you suggest a, path?”
“Where’s Marcsson? Can you detect him?”
“I haven’t been able to catch him, and you certainly shouldn’t try. Keep your mind on what you’re doing. Teres is an inexperienced Dreamer and you’ve got to give her clear signals.”
Teres’ whisper was amplified by the acoustics of the Dreamer unit.
“Azamat is there? Take me to him. If he is to blame, then let him explain what he has done to the Archives, and the Core.”
“That’s not a good idea,” Kalypso said. “He’s dangerous and so is Ganesh. Let me take you on a little tour and you can see the Core.”
“Stop talking to me like I’m some kind of idiot.”
“You talked to me that way in the Wild.”
“You were an idiot.”
“And you’re an idiot here, so shut up.”
“I’m not doing this your way, Kalypso Deed. Take me to Marcsson, or the bet’s off.”
Tehar said, “I’m taking you on the same path you used for your music. Only it’s not going to sound much like you remember.”
“Take me to my home node,” she said, and closed her eyes. The lid of the tank came down and her senses left her. “Home sweet home.”
FIRE
SHE DIDN’T KNOW WHERE SHE WAS, OR where Teres was in relation to her, or if anyone else knew where either of them was, but she was so relieved to be Dreaming that she forgot about the Dead woman almost immediately.
I AM INDUCING YOU. LET YOUR THOUGHTS GO FREE.
Surrounded by fluid, semiconscious, feeling vaporous; argentine bubbles rushed past her face, swelling and breaking on her skin. A chaos of water.
Statistics.
You could carve the math of water in stone and make it stand still. Not a problem for the likes of Ganesh.
KEEP THINKING. DON’T VERB YET. ALMOST THERE.
Simulate a simple operation in a dynamic system such that a person, using five senses, can pick out its salient mathematical features. You can do it easily if you know what you’re looking for. But to make the data speak when it seems you’ve got nothing but interference. To learn a language without knowing what any of the words refer to, and to begin speaking it. . .
You’d sound crazier than Marcsson. At least he had syntax. At least—
Shit. Was that what had been happening to Marcsson all this time?
She verbed, “Tehar? Language. It’s about language, and what language refers to.”
YES, THAT THOUGHT HAD CROSSED MY MIND.
Teres was generating images of the ship’s bridge as seen from inside. Through the viewport was darkness punctured by stars.
“Take me to the Core,” Teres verbed clumsily.
I DON’T KNOW HOW TO GET THERE ANYMORE, Tehar verbed in response to Kalypso’s request.
“Where’s Azamat?”
LAST TIME WE TRACKED HIM, HE WAS IN THE CORE. BUT NOTHING’S WHERE IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE ANYMORE.
“Can you get me into Alien Life?”
MAYBE. HEY, MAYBE YOU COULD LURE HIM THERE. THEN HE MIGHT LEAD YOU BACK TO THE CORE.
“Sounds sketchy.”
YOU GOT A BETTER IDEA?
“No, I don’t have any ideas, good or bad. What do you mean, lure him? Lure him with what?”
She was already back in something resembling her home node, but the sand was made of static. The water wasn’t water, it was the smell of decaying fruit.
LIET’S GIVING ME SOME OF THE DATA SHE COLLECTED FROM SIENG.
HE WON’T HAVE SEEN IT. MAYBE YOU CAN USE IT AS BAIT.
Fishing in Alien Life. How appropriate. Teres had appeared. She was near the shed, looking at the ruins of the rescue craft and laughing. The data started appearing all over the place, stylishly gift-wrapped.
“Hello, Sieng,” Kalypso said. She began gathering up the presents.
WATCH OUT. SOMETHING’S COMING.
A cormorant popped up from beneath Alien Life and bobbed around. Marcsson parted its head from within and crawled out. He took the boxes away from her and dropped them in the pockets of his lab-coat, whence they were assimilated.
“You can’t do that!”
But of course he just had. Things had changed in these parts if a doze could count coup on a shotgun and not the other way around.
“Don’t come here,” he said. “I took your interface. Now you’re back. Don’t you ever learn?”
“No,” she said. “I never learn.”
“You want to understand. But if you understand, it will take you over.”
KEEP IT STEADY. WE’RE GETTING SOME GOOD STUFF HERE. AZAMAT IS DEFINITELY DISPLAYING SOME OF THE SAME COGNITIVE SIGNATURES AS GANESH. THIS IS FASS.
“Take me over like it’s taken you over? I’m here to help you.”
“Then give me Sieng. I need Sieng.”
Teres came up beside her and asked her who she was talking to. Kalypso ignored her.
“They’re going to shut you down. The Dead think they can still save Earth Archives. They think they can get what they need from the remains of Ganesh.”
“I am Ganesh now.”
WHOA! WHAT WAS THAT? KALYPSO, I’M CUTTING STIMULATION. YOUR BODY’S GOING APESHIT UP HERE.
As well it should. “If you’re Ganesh, then you’d better start paying attention to your perimeter because you’re being invaded.” It was true. Things were flying out of Alien Life, attaching themselves to Azamat’s body, and melting into him.
DON’T FORGET ABOUT TERES. THE POINT IS TO SHOW HER WHAT’S HAPPENING.
Kalypso had the inexplicable urge to touch Marcsson in the Dream. She resisted. “What’s happening to you, Marcsson? Why were you so cruel to me?”
TERES IS GETTING BORED. DON’T FUCK THIS UP, KALYPSO.
Dreaming in Smoke Page 27
