The Artificial Kid

by Bruce Sterling

  “Professor, I’m overjoyed to see you, but I wasn’t looking for you, I swear! We were marooned here by accident! We were shipwrecked!”

  Crossbow’s almost hairless brows drew together and it looked at us querulously. “Arti, you wouldn’t trick your old professor, would you?”

  “It’s true, Professor, really! Tell him, Mr. Chairman.” I turned to Moses Moses, who had unobtrusively stepped behind me. He had half-pursed his bearded lips and I realized that his nudity embarrassed him. “Yes, it’s quite true,” Moses mumbled indistinctly. I understood his chagrin. He and I both looked like naked ragamuffins while Crossbow was quite spruce in an iridescent blue bodytight and slim, embroidered belt hung with pouches and waterproof metallic instruments. It looked well enough, but there were lines in its face that alarmed me. The neuter looked old and worn. Years had passed since its last age treatment. Some of its bushy blond hair was threaded with white and gray.

  “Now, Arti,” Crossbow said patiently. “You wouldn’t persist in a practical joke, certainly? This means a great deal to me; it’s my scientific work. You shouldn’t have interfered unless it was absolutely necessary.”

  “Professor, please!” I said. “Can’t you see that I’m stripped right down to my cameras? Can’t you see our sunburns? Can’t you hear our rumbling bellies? Good God, we’re collapsing of hunger and thirst!”

  “We’re in desperate straits, sir,” Moses said politely. “Your presence here is a godsend. We beg your assistance for ourselves and our companion. We had no intention of interfering, I assure you.”

  Crossbow looked flustered. “Well,” it said. “I must take you to my study station, then. There’s water there, a few medical supplies.… Of course I wasn’t expecting visitors, the place is … well …”

  “Oh, no need for apologies from you, sir,” Moses said winningly. “We are entirely at fault. Let me fetch our companion and we’ll go there at once; we’re at your orders.” He turned and raced away over the rounded, inflated landscape.

  Crossbow folded its arms and ran its tongue along the inside of its left cheek. It was a typical gesture that brought back the eight-years-past as if it were yesterday. “Now Arti, we’re alone now,” it said with a martyr’s patience. “You know I can always tell when you fib. Now what are you really doing here? And where are your clothes?”

  I brushed its doubt away with an impatient gesture of my hand. “I told the truth, Professor.”

  It blinked once or twice. “Really? How can I believe that? What are you doing shipwrecked, anyway? And who are these people with you? Now confess, Arti. Are you sure this has nothing to do with the Academy? Nothing at all?” It looked at me keenly. “Perhaps not you, but your friends then. Have they never spoken of me? Never asked you to help them find me?”

  “No, Professor, of course not. Believe me, I’m really astonished to find you here. We were sure that we were going to starve to death. And I haven’t seen anything of you in eight years. Not a note. Not even a whisper.” I looked up at it curiously. “Haven’t you heard anything about me, Professor? Seen my pictures in the gossip tapes? Or my combat art? Or read my work in the journals?”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t had much leisure time for amusement tapes,” Crossbow said.

  “I’m pretty well known now, Professor. Famous even.”

  “That’s fine, Arti. I’m glad for you.”

  “Maybe you’ve heard of me by the name ‘Artificial Kid.’ That mean anything to you?”

  “I wish I could say it did,” Crossbow said. “I haven’t seen much of people lately, these last, well, six or seven years. I don’t spend much time above the surface. Not much time at all. Just my reports to the Academy. My own tapes, you know … that’s a nice set of cameras you have, by the way.”

  “Thanks, Professor. Luckily, I can afford the best.”

  “I’m afraid my new reports may have re-opened some old wounds. The Gestalt Dispute was never quite settled, you know. At least, not to my satisfaction. Or your father’s.”

  “Really?” I said. “Well, I’m in a position to help you politically, again. I’m running in pretty exalted circles now. In fact, that naked man you saw is the …” I hesitated, not wanting to further strain my old tutor’s credulity. “Well, I’ll let him tell his own story. It’s pretty incredible. But it’s true.” I looked at him earnestly. “It’s no trick, Professor. I’m mature now. I’m beyond that sort of thing. I have my reputation to uphold.”

  “Then you no longer put crabs in people’s beds? Or tie them down with seaweed while they sleep? Or make fake insects out of glue and thread and leftover wings and legs?”

  I laughed with forced casualness. “No, Professor, I’ve changed a lot, seriously. I’m the Artificial Kid now. I have hundreds of fans. Thousands. I have my own house. I own four shares.” I hesitated again. “Of course, the situation’s changed a little recently. In fact it’s changed a lot.” I coughed drily. “Let me have a little water and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “Of course. But here come your friends. Introduce us, Arti, do.”

  “Of course, Professor. The lady in white is Saint Anne Twiceborn.”

  “The Anne Twiceborn?” Crossbow said. “Incredible! But it is! It is she!” He started to walk clumsily toward them, holding his arms out a little to balance himself in the unfamiliar medium of air. I was glad that he had spared me the trouble of introducing the Founder of the Corporation. It would have been too much.

  I saw that Moses Moses had slipped painfully back into his one-piece.

  “You’re Anne Twiceborn,” Crossbow said. “Do you remember me? We met once briefly many years ago. At a reception in Peitho.”

  Anne shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember. But I’ve heard about you, Professor, of course. And I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Crossbow smiled shyly. “This is the least expected pleasure in my long lifetime, I must say. And you, sir?”

  “I’m travelling under the name of Amphine Whitcomb,” Moses Moses said with bland caution. “I’m very glad to meet a person so well known in the field of learning. The pursuit of knowledge is the one truly preeminent human endeavor. As was once said, ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’”

  All three of us looked at Moses, impressed. “The pen is mightier than the sword.” It was the kind of blunt, pithy aphorism that had made his perception and wisdom famous on two planets.

  Professor Crossbow looked pleased and flattered. “I thank you, sir. Let’s waste no more time, but hurry to your rescue and sustenance. I can see that you are all fatigued.” It looked at us kindly. The sight of Saint Anne seemed to have temporarily relieved its suspicions.

  Anne was no longer wearing her saint’s garb. Instead, using no other tools than her hands and teeth, she had ripped a kind of crude poncho out of the pale, striated balloon fabric. She had stuck her head through it and cinched it around the waist with a long, ragged belt. It should have looked ludicrous, but she wore it with a kind of brazen dignity that made me stifle my smiles. When she walked it unveiled her pale, unshaven legs almost to the knee.

  “Come along this way and we’ll slip through the airlock,” Crossbow said, walking unsteadily to the very top of the balloon. “I believe that two of us can fit through at one time, if we squeeze. I’m trying to conserve air pressure. Mr. Whitcomb, will you accompany me?”

  “A privilege,” Moses said quickly. The two of them squirmed through the long slash in the top of the cell and into a small, fabric antechamber just beneath it. Crossbow reached out, accidentally jabbing Moses with his elbow, and pulled the long slash shut. It was zippered. He must have opened another zipper inside, for the flaccid fabric blew out tight with a snap. We heard thumping and bumping.

  “So that’s what it was,” Anne said dreamily. “I heard that while I was asleep.”

  “I’ve got to get my camera controls,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. “Here they are, I brought them for you.” She produced my combat jacket f
rom beneath the voluminous folds of her poncho.

  Surprised, I took it from her. “You needn’t have done that for me. Thank you.”

  She smiled tentatively. “Why not? It’s as easy for us to be friends as enemies, isn’t it?”

  “Of course it is,” I agreed.

  She persisted. “And it’s as easy to please people as it is to hurt them.”

  “Now you’re gilding the lily,” I said. I turned off the cameras and they fell, bouncing off the pale stretched fabric and rolling and tumbling off for quite a distance. We chased them down and gathered all six of them up like ripe fruit. Then we unzipped the airlock and slithered into the little fabric cul-de-sac. I zipped it shut behind us.

  Anne drew a deep breath. “It’s rather nice in here,” she said cheerfully. “Like a womb, almost.”

  “I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been in one,” I said. I unzipped the long slash in the tight fabric beneath us and air rushed in. It was quite breathable. I peeked out.

  The industrious Crossbow had burst through all the central cells of the balloon, evacuated the hydrogen, and replaced it with fishy-smelling, slightly stale air. I had no idea how he had managed this while the balloon was growing underwater.

  Crossbow and Moses were already thirty or forty yards down a long, swaying rope ladder. The top of the ladder was glued securely to a long section of fabric. Tightened ropes attached the ladder to connecting cells every thirty or forty feet, and kept the ladder from swaying too violently.

  The ladder itself was slightly twisted, like a DNA chain. In several places down this long, long central chamber, there were safety membranes, also equipped with air locks, that blocked our descent temporarily. They were obviously there to prevent the whole chamber from evacuating at once in case of an accident. They also made good places to sprawl out, sweating, and rest.

  I turned on my cameras as soon as Anne and I began our descent. Anne went first, as she insisted on it. After forty feet of descent the pain in my pounded muscles was simply too great and I took some smuff. Buzzing filled my head. After managing a few more rungs I lost my grip and fell with a scream, almost knocking Anne from the ladder and narrowly missing both Moses and Crossbow. I hit the first safety membrane, which bowed deeply under my impact and then snapped back, flinging me into the air again. After some smaller subsidiary bounces I got to my hands and knees and dry-retched. My cameras, floating along sedately, caught up with me about this time, and I hid my face in my arms so that I would appear to be merely stunned. I had fallen almost two hundred feet.

  I reached into my drugpak and injected the last of my stimulant. Sea water had somehow seeped inside my combat jacket and ruined my tranquilizers and some really good, mild, social hallucinogens that I habitually carried. All I had left was my smuff, a little quikclot, a packet of skinseal, and some pellets of powdered nicotine that Chill Factor had given me over a year ago. The rest was a pasty mess. “Well, death sucks it dry,” I said with bitter profanity.

  By the time the others had climbed down to me, my teeth were chattering with stimulant. Nodding uncontrollably I assured them that I was all right and raced through the airlock and down the ladder ahead of them. I went through four more airlocks at a tremendous pace and through a final skein to the Professor’s study chamber, where I collapsed on the fabric floor with my heart racing and pulsating black spots devouring my vision. I couldn’t even sit up until the Professor arrived and gave me water. All three of us castaways drank with many a gasp for breath. We then took salt tablets and ate some leftover fish that the Professor had prepared in his little pressure cooker. The food took the sharp biting edge off the stimulant and I stopped trembling and was able to look around without seeing spots.

  With truly Reverid ingenuity—for Crossbow had been cloned on Reverie—the Professor had adapted itself to its surroundings without damaging their peculiar charm.

  The cells were smaller on the underside of the flying island and the little cell that held the Professor’s living quarters was no more than fifteen feet across. It smelled strongly of fish and sea water. The walls were of triply-reinforced fabric, neatly sewn together, and the room was cooled by a small fan set in the floor with a conduit to the outside. It was much cooler in the room than it had been in the long passageway through the balloon.

  The Professor had not been expecting visitors. Fish scales and bits of cast-aside edible kelp were everywhere. The walls were decorated with frightening photomicrographs blown up big as doors: the immense slavering jaws of sand fleas, the spiny threatening elbows of water beetles, the cruel, jagged feet of barnacles. Two of the Professor’s favorite mobiles dangled from the fabric ceiling.

  Another wall held a mounting board with a number of specimens preserved in little square blocks of transparent plastic. The rest of the small round room was crowded with the Professor’s machines: a generator, a refrigerator, a pressure cooker, a compressor, a small sewage recycler, a distillery with a large water tank, a microscope, an old tape screen and its antique cameras. The machines sat on tough mats of woven seaweed that prevented them from ripping through the layers of fabric in the floor.

  There were other miscellaneous items about. There were kitchen knives and a cutting block, the Professor’s foot fins and speargun, a few books and journals, no more than a couple of dozen; his clothing, his hammock, and suspended from the ceiling, an incredibly intricate framework of hundreds of thousands of colored beads linked with wire, glistening in the mellow light from a number of small yellow bulbs. The bulbs looked like transparent fish bladders stuffed with phosphorescent plankton.

  Moses Moses looked up at the torus-shaped wire sculpture, then looked around the disconnected tangles of beaded wire on the floor; some with hundreds of linked beads, others with as few as five or six.

  “I’ve seen a structure like that once before,” he said politely. “You’ll pardon my asking, but is it an Elder Culture space sculpture, or perhaps a replica of one?”

  “No, Mr. Whitcomb,” said the Professor with an uneasy smile. “But it does resemble one, doesn’t it? How perceptive of you to point that out. The similarity had occurred to me before. But I doubt if there was an influence.”

  “I thought perhaps you had tackled the old problem concerning their reason for existence,” Moses said. Naturally, he had no way of knowing the Professor’s involvement in this problem.

  “What do you mean?” said Crossbow warily. “I thought that question had been explored long enough to sicken everyone.”

  “You’re in luck, Professor,” I said, hoping to cover Moses’ slip. “You’re in the presence of a man who has never heard of the Gestalt Dispute.”

  “Indeed,” Crossbow said. It ran its tongue along the inside of its left cheek again. “I take it that you don’t closely follow Academic controversies.”

  “Not recently, no.”

  Crossbow shrugged its muscular shoulders. “I won’t burden you with it, then. I’m hardly a dispassionate witness, as has been pointed out many times.”

  “No need for modesty here, sir,” said Moses alertly. “If you have a theory regarding those mysterious objects, I’d be delighted to hear it.” He squeezed water into his mouth from the nozzle of a compressible bulb. We had all been drinking out of them. I think they were fish bladders.

  Crossbow shrugged again with feigned indifference, but I could tell it was pleased.

  “It’s been generally accepted that these sculptures had a religious function,” Professor Crossbow said. “Most Academic archaeologists declined to speculate any further, but I did, and I suffered for it.” With a heavy sigh the old neuter seated itself on a square canvas pack on the bowed floor. With a start I realized that the pack was a parachute.

  “My field of expertise is taxonomic microbiology, but I have a more than slight acquaintance with reductionist doctrine,” Crossbow said. It slipped with ease into its lecturing attitude. “Reductionism has been the gospel of the Academy for many centuries. Essentially, this doctrine sta
tes that all mental and physical actions, no matter how grandiose or subtle, can be broken down into a set of simple chemical interactions. Thoughts, for instance, are electrochemical interchanges between groups of neurons, and nothing more. Life is a series of biological tropisms which can be reduced to the simple terms of physics. It is a very beautiful and elegant theory. It was the belief of our ancestors, so it is hallowed by custom; for centuries it was held by all men of learning. I believed it to be quite solidly established; as solid as, say, evolution, on which all thinking men agree. A doctrine which seems almost self-evident, even though our language still holds remnants from earlier beliefs.”

  Crossbow lodged its ankle on top of one knee and brushed adhering fish scales from the sole of its naked foot. “My researches here on Reverie, however, seemed to hint at a flaw in our theory. I found that flaw in the behavior of the Reverid ecosystem. It doesn’t behave like other ecosystems elsewhere. For one thing, it is vastly older. Life has existed on this planet for almost eight billion years. Life has even outlasted the planet’s era of geological activity. Continents here are artificially created—huge ring-shaped atolls. The sea long ago eroded away the original continents. All the dry land on Reverie is the work of organisms, like tower coral, mudcumbers, sea beavers, even flying islands, like this one.” It thumped the fabric floor beneath it with one webby hand.

  “I found it hard to account for this kind of behavior. Why didn’t life simply adapt to oceanic conditions, and let the shallow sea cover all the land? Why this apparent altruism of marine organisms for those on land? What genetic purpose did it serve?

  “I found these questions unanswerable, so I appealed to my superiors in the Academy for help in my research. I was called to one of the Academy’s deep-space oneill clusters to testify. I presented my evidence and a research team was sent to verify my findings. They took their time, of course; there is no rushing true scientific research. In the meantime I began to search for possible alternatives to a strictly reductionist world-view and it was then that I discovered the doctrines of Gestalt.