The Artificial Kid

by Bruce Sterling

  We all saw it; a scattering of dim phosphorescence, deep beneath us; it was impossible to tell how far. It seemed to be murky nodes or lumps scattered across the back of some huge animal.

  “Is that the ocean floor?” Anne asked. “Is the water that shallow here?”

  “It’s too big to be an animal,” Moses said. “It looks like some kind of web. See how the glowing spots spread out. Are they moving?”

  “No,” I said. “We’re moving.” We heard another series of mellow booms. “They’re coming from those spots of light,” Anne said.

  “I think I’ll swim down for a closer look,” I said.

  Anne said, “No, Kid! What if it’s dangerous?” Moses and I both laughed hollowly; it made no difference, of course.

  “Here, Mr. Chairman; hold my weapon, if you please.” I handed him my nunchuck and began to hyperventilate. I reset my cameras. When I had taken a dozen deep breaths I felt the peculiar effects of excess oxygen in dizziness and tingling fingers. I half-emptied my lungs, doubled over to dive down headfirst and began swimming strongly. My ears popped; I held my nose and blew to equalize the pressure. My ears shrieked. At twenty feet I lost my buoyancy as the pressure compressed my lungs; I began sinking slowly, then more rapidly. Quickly, I cupped both hands over my brows and blew out a little air, to form a shallow air pocket over my eyes. The phosphorescent spots leapt into sharp focus; they were below me, about a dozen feet. I could see now that the glowing green blobs were spots on a tense web or skein of some dim, filmy material. The structure, or whatever it was, was huge. Even the spots looked five or six feet across, and there were dozens of them. Bubbles escaped from my fingers and sea water stung my eyes. The water was strangely warm and my lungs felt crushed. I struck out for the surface. It was a lot farther away than I had thought, but I made it anyway. I had to call out for Anne and Moses and follow their voices in the darkness.

  “Well, what was it? What did you see?” she asked eagerly.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. It looks like some kind of titanic jellyfish. It was odd—as I got closer the water seemed to get a little warmer. I could feel currents moving over it. I only saw a piece of it. I got the impression that it covers whole acres. An incredible area.”

  “Is it some kind of undersea mountain, then? A guyot, or something?”

  “No, it looked like skin,” I said. There came another rush of booms, the loudest yet. A stream of immense dirty bubbles that smelled like muck burst through the dark water around us.

  “God, is it breathing?” Anne shouted. “It smells awful!” The booms merged into a crescendo. We could hear bubbles geysering up all around us. We seemed to hear a sort of strumming and straining and rumbling, half-muffled by water. We looked into the sea. The phosphorescent spots were moving in unison, shifting back and forth in a sort of straining undulation, and of a sudden they seemed to break free and began to float up toward us with a slow, horrible purposefulness.

  “Here it comes!” Moses shouted. “Swim for it!”

  “Stop!” I said. “It’s too big for us, it’s all around us!” And it was true. The bulk of the thing was unbelievable. We grabbed one another’s arms and waited for the end.

  We drew up our feet in panic but it came to get us anyway. We all cried out at once when the hot fabric touched us; and then it was lifting us up. We sprawled out on the hot webby surface like beached whales, and our pitiful little float collapsed like a burst bladder. We heard the thing below us popping and snapping and making sounds like damp sails flapping full of wind as it carried us up, and up, and up into the dark Reverid night. By that time we had stopped screaming and were merely clinging to the taut pale seaweed membrane with hands and feet. We had risen at least a thousand feet above the sea when a breeze blew up. Slowly, the immense bulk beneath us began to drift to the west, with the wind. Then we realized what had happened.

  We were beached on a flying island.

  10

  We could see our surroundings fairly well, because of the yellow-green glow from the round patches of phosphorescence on the island’s skin. The island’s titanic flotation bag was made of hundreds of cells of thin, taut skin, clustered tightly together like a compressed froth of bubbles or the pips of a mulberry. Each of the dozens of outer gas-cells had its own broad, glowing node.

  The three of us had slid half-into the dimpled margin between two large gas cells. The seaweed membrane of the cells was very taut and still slick with sea water; it was difficult to hold. We were not quite at the apex of the great dredge-balloon, but we were in no danger of sliding off. In fact, for the moment we were in no danger at all. The relief was incredible.

  “It’s a flying island,” I heard Moses mutter. “A flying island,” and I heard him dig his blunt fingers into the skin with a wet squeak, as if he couldn’t trust the evidence of his senses.

  “Yes,” I said hoarsely. “We’re safe! We’re up in the air and we’re safe!” A great wash of release from tension swept through me. My spirits rose up like the island itself and I burst into hysterical laughter. My throat was so dry and sore, though, that I heard a weak, wretched cackling that alarmed me.

  “Oh, it’s real water!” I heard Anne say in a voice of rapture. “Look, water oozing out!”

  Moses and I both immediately scrambled to the spot with pitiful haste. It was true. A wet, sappy-tasting, brownish moisture was oozing up from the juncture of the membranes of two gas-cells. All three of us stuck our faces into it and lapped and sucked it up with a complete lack of dignity. There wasn’t much of it. We had to run our noses along the trough, slurping vigorously, for several feet to get enough to fill our mouths. But it was wonderful.

  After a minute or so I had soothed my tortured throat with the vented sap and I stood up. My legs wouldn’t support me. After several efforts I managed to stand, and I felt the taut, hot skin of the balloon dimpling under my feet. I took a few springy steps and reached one of the glowing, phosphorescent spots.

  The glowing node in the center of the cell was about six feet across. The gas-cell itself was roughly hexagonal and about twenty or twenty-five feet across. I prodded the glowing spot with the handle of my nunchuck. It broke through a thin crust and came up glittering with yellow-green paste. There was a sharp chemical reek and a slight sensation of heat when I held it up to my face. I showed it to one of my cameras and then wiped it off on the pale white cell-skin.

  Standing up, I could get a rough estimate of the island’s size. I could see a horizon all around me, about three hundred yards away in every direction. There were hundreds upon hundreds of glowing disks, one in every cell. It reminded me strongly of some of the round, multicellular organisms I had seen in Professor Crossbow’s microscopes—“volvoids,” he had called them. They had floated as serenely in their drops of water as this dredge balloon did in its ocean of air.

  Moses Moses and Saint Anne were still worming their way across the juncture of membranes with their heads down and their haunches up. It would be hard to conceive of a posture less fitting for the Founder of the Corporation, or for a saint. I made sure that I caught both of them with my cameras.

  “We’re safe,” I said. “And I’ve got it all on tape.” My knees grew weak and I collapsed with a springy rebound onto my back, then slid slowly down to the broad crevice between membranes. The hydrogen beneath me was deliciously warm. I spread out my arms in sybaritic ease, pillowed up by the thin skin over the hot, explosive gas. I pulled off my combat jacket and padded, sopping groin-brace. A warm breeze curled over my naked skin. I yawned, helplessly, looking at the stars. Instant Death had failed. Angeluce had failed. The Cabal had failed. My vengeance would be terrible. I slept the smug and peaceful sleep of hopeful, murderous ambition.

  I awoke at dawn, after eight hours of chaotic dreaming. The air was cold and noticeably thinner, but the balloon was still warm. I sat up. I was thirsty and terribly hungry and my pounded muscles ached abominably. The incredible panorama of fleecy sea-clouds far below us distrac
ted me, but only for a moment.

  Moses Moses was sitting nearby. “I’m starving,” I said. “What’s for breakfast?”

  He laughed hollowly and my growling stomach sank. “What do you think?” he said. “I tried a taste of the glowing paste in those phosphor dots. I should have known better. It burned my tongue. As for water, there’s still a little sap left, but it’s been drying out all night. The island is venting its ballast.” He shrugged. “I explored a little last night. The balloon’s about two thousand feet across. There’s probably something edible down in the mud it’s carrying. Starfish maybe. But how can we get to it? We can’t cling to the membrane. We can’t climb down. We’d slip, and it’s a long way down to the sea. We’re marooned on the top of this thing.”

  I shook my head impatiently. “What do we do, then? Sit here and starve to death?”

  “Not so loud,” he said. “Anne’s asleep, poor girl. She’s exhausted.” He considered. “I’ve thought of one possibility. We could rupture some of the cells and try to break our way through the center of the balloon down to the bottom. However, if we don’t blow up, we’ll probably smother in the hydrogen, or get squashed between two expanding cells when we’re in the balloon’s center. It doesn’t look good, Kid.”

  “What about the cell walls?” I said. “Have you tried eating them?”

  “Too tough,” he said. “It’d be like chewing cloth. I admit I haven’t tried it yet. I’m afraid to rupture one of the cells for fear of a detonation.”

  “So what?” I said. “The thing’s going to blow up eventually anyway; they’re built to blow up so they can drop their mud on the continent. I’m willing to give it a try.” I yawned and prodded experimentally at the cell-skin with the handle of my ’chuck. “Wish I had a knife.”

  Moses Moses looked speculatively at one of my cameras. “You might smash one of your cameras,” he said. “We could probably batter some of the metal into a crude edge.”

  “Smash my cameras?” I yelled. “Forget it, doll! Over my smuffed-out body!”

  Moses spread his hands apologetically. “Just a suggestion, Kid.”

  “Well, maybe if it was life and death.” I looked up at my cameras with a protective frown. The very idea of breaking them unsettled me. I’d rather break an arm, any day.

  “I’ll give it a try with my nunchuck,” I said. “Maybe you’d better stand well back.”

  “Wait!” Moses yelped. “Get those cameras out of the way first, for death’s sake! They might ignite the gas!”

  “No, they’re airtight,” I said. I stood up, grabbed both handles in a reverse grip, and fell to my knees, stabbing into the fabric with both swivel-heads. The skin dimpled. I pushed down with all my strength. Suddenly it ripped open and I fell through the opened slash. I dropped thirty feet to bound resiliently off an interior cell. Hot gas whooshed out. I coughed convulsively. “God, it stinks!” I said, my voice squeaking.

  “It’s not pure,” I heard Moses shout. “Smells like something rotting! Are you all right, Kid?”

  I had no time to answer. The walls of the other cells were bulging in toward me as the broken cell deflated. I dropped my ’chuck around my neck and with a scramble and lunge I managed to grab an edge of trailing skin. I pulled myself hand over hand toward the surface of the balloon again, pushing away at the encroaching walls with my bare feet.

  After a few moments the other cells reached the limit of their expansion, and a pit ten feet deep was left where the first cell had burst. I heard shredding sounds as the sealed junctions between the surrounding membranes adjusted themselves. I pulled my legs up as the interior cell membranes rejoined stickily just beneath my feet. I was now at the bottom of the pit, but I could climb out easily enough once I gathered the strength. The hunger and thirst had badly weakened me.

  Moses cautiously approached the edge of the pit. “So much for that idea,” I said.

  “Oh, it wasn’t wasted,” he said. “With this skin from the burst cell we can make a kind of shelter out of this pit. It’ll keep us out of the sun, at least. Anne needs that badly. Come on out, Kid, and help me spread it out.”

  I climbed sluggishly out of the dimple and helped Moses stretch out a section of the ruptured skin to serve as a crude tent or cave. The lightweight stretched skin felt peculiarly damp and elastic in my fingers. “Nice place to starve,” I said.

  “Nonsense,” said Moses. “If worse comes to worst, you can fire your gun into the bulk of the island. We’ll die painlessly in a second or two. And we’re not without hope. Birds may roost here. I’m very hungry. My word, do you realize how long it’s been since I last had a meal?”

  “The last things I ate were some moldy bars of chocolate,” I said wistfully. My mouth watered uncontrollably at the thought.

  “Let’s go wake Anne,” Moses said. “She’ll sleep more comfortably in there. The sun is fierce at this height; less cloud, you know. If she doesn’t get shade she’ll blister.”

  We found Anne sprawled out at the dimpled junction of three cells. Her face was vivid red and her eyes were almost swollen shut.

  Moses shook the scorched fingers of one of her outstretched hands. “Anne, wake up.”

  Anne forced her eyes open and frowned painfully. “I had the oddest dream,” she said. “I dreamed I heard something bouncing and thumping around beneath me. Inside the island.”

  “Oh?” Moses said. He looked down at the cell beneath his feet, but the white film was opaque.

  “Kid! You’re naked!” She averted her face.

  “Get used to it,” I said.

  “He’s right, Anne,” Moses said. With an effort, he stripped off his one-piece underall and flung it aside. “The salt in our clothes will abrade our skins. You’d burn badly without your clothes, but the Kid and I have made a sort of shelter for you.”

  “I won’t take off my clothes,” she said with determination. “Not much water got inside, actually. I’m perfectly all right as I am.” The dried brine in her saint’s garb must have made it horribly scratchy and uncomfortable, but Anne’s bizarre modesty had martyred her. Moses looked at her doubtfully, then said, “Well, at least have a look at our tent. The sun’s already up. Doesn’t it hurt your face?”

  Still unwilling to look at our nudity, Anne hurried ahead of us, falling down once or twice but bounding back onto her white-slippered feet. She stopped at the pit.

  “Oh! This is fine!” she said. “Look at all this extra film. Why, we can make clothes from it. Hoods. Umbrellas.”

  “Good trick without any tools,” I said sourly. “Anyway, you won’t get me to wear any of that stuff. I have a tan.”

  “Stop taunting her and let her go back to sleep,” Moses said patiently. “Let’s go to the top of the balloon, Kid. We’ll get the best view there. I’d like to see it while it’s still cool, and while I still have the strength to walk around.” At this depressing note Moses and I struck out for the apex of the balloon. The phosphorescent spots on the flotation cells were still glowing, but the stronger sun had made them pale. It looked as if they would soon flicker out entirely and begin sucking up sunlight for another eighteen-hour night.

  The view from the top was incredible. There was no breeze, for we were being borne along at the same speed as the tradewind. “We’re at least a mile up,” Moses said analytically.

  “Look,” I said. “You can see Telset through those clouds.” I pointed and a twinge of pain ran up my battered arm.

  We could see the Gulf far below us, faintly wrinkled with waves, and a white, tenuous plateau of morning clouds over the water. Sunlight glittered off the sea to the east, blinding us. To the west, perhaps a hundred miles away, we could barely make out the dark smudge of the continental arm. “That’s our destination,” Moses said calmly. “I imagine we’ll reach it in four days. Maybe five.”

  “Plenty of time left to die of thirst, then,” I observed.

  “It may rain on us,” Moses said. “We’re still rising, and we should go higher and higher as
the sun heats the balloon. But we’re still not as high as a thunderhead. They go all the way to the troposphere.”

  “I’ve heard of flying islands destroyed by storms before,” I said.

  “Maybe we can collect some dew on the extra fabric,” he said.

  We heard a peculiar popping sound from the cell beneath our feet and we hurriedly retreated from its surface. “We’d better not put all our weight on one spot,” Moses said. “The balloon may be weaker in places.”

  “Look out, it’s ripping open!” I shouted. Before our eyes, the very topmost cell broke open in a neat slash, five feet long. We lifted our arms to shield our faces and pinched our noses shut, but there was no outrush of smelly, unbreathable air. Instead, a shaggy blond head and a pair of narrow shoulders pushed their way out of the opened slash, and their owner climbed out onto the top of the cell, clumsily, like a beached dugong. I would have recognized that red, gill-clad neck and those sleek swimmer’s muscles anywhere, even in a place as strange as this.

  It was my oldest friend, my tutor, my mentor, my only parent. I called out in stunned amazement and incredulous delight. “Professor! Professor Crossbow!”

  Crossbow started violently and scrambled back a couple of paces on its hands and knees. Its fingers were webbed. It squinted at us hesitantly and rubbed its bloodshot eyes with one long-fingered, webby fist. “How did you get here?” it said in a breathy, asthmatic voice. “How do you know my name?”

  “Professor!” I chided it. “It’s me, Arti! Don’t you recognize me?”

  “Arti?” it said. “My old ward, Arti? It is you, isn’t it? But what have you done to your hair?”

  I reached for my plasticized hair self-consciously but recovered at the last moment. Hearing the Professor’s voice had stirred many long-buried memories. “For death’s sake, Professor, never mind that now! What are you doing on this island? I can’t believe I’m actually seeing you! How did you get here?”

  Crossbow got to its feet uneasily, as if it had not done so for months or years. “I’ve been here all along,” it said. “Why did you come to my island? How did you know where to find me? This place is miles from the house. I haven’t even been to the house in ages!”