The Artificial Kid

by Bruce Sterling

  I regarded their insane behavior as a betrayal of all our hopes. Anne and I pointed out their folly in terms that a three-year-old could understand, but no; they were rapt in one another. I was ready to beat them both up, and, if that failed, to tie them up and threaten to drop them off the island. But Anne dissuaded me, and it would have looked rather mean and paltry on tape. After all, the two of them were obviously in no condition to fight. They ate almost nothing. They slept little. They looked pasty-faced and anaemic and both of them were given to fits of inexplicable trembling. We heard the two of them mumbling in their sleep at times: bits and pieces of garbled stuff, recited most horribly in one another’s voices.

  We took to sleeping on different shifts. Anne and I stayed up far into the day after Moses and Crossbow announced their decision, holding long fruitless discussions on how to get them to reverse the process. I blamed Crossbow for it; I was sure that the actual transferral mechanism was Crossbow’s invention. Its knowledge of the chemical basis of mental processes was vast. For instance, it had programmed Tanglin’s memory eraser. I was sure that this mind-exchange was something much deeper than mutual hypnosis, or mutual suggestion. It had something to do with the mysterious Crossbow Body, I was certain. If the Body could capture chains of DNA, as Crossbow said, then why not RNA, which was the basis of memory? Crossbow must have found some way to activate the Body, to make it behave as Crossbow wished. And who was better qualified to do this than its discoverer?

  It was a risky and unprecedented venture. Only the looming specters of their own deaths could have driven them to it. Moses and Crossbow were old and exhausted. They faced the worst challenges of their lives without the confidence and energy to meet them. But they were too proud, cunning, and stubborn to die. There was one chance left to regain their lost vigor, and that was in an amalgamation of personalities. Their new composite selves would see the world with fresher eyes, defeating the weary staleness of extreme old age.

  It would mean a descent into madness, with no guarantee of success. But Crossbow and Moses insisted on taking that risk, not caring if they gambled away our futures as well.

  Without speaking to them, without making any formal arrangement, the four of us separated. Crossbow and Moses took over the study room, except for the brief moments when Anne and I heated our meals, and that usually occurred while they slept. Anne and I moved down to the island’s payload, where we could escape the intolerable burden of their presence.

  In two days, life had swept over the island like wildfire. It was a brief, ephemeral life, frantic and delicate. Perhaps most remarkable were the mosses and molds. Most of them must have been carried by airborne spores, but at least a few of them were borne in on the feet of birds; Anne and I found the muddy tracks of three-toed shrikes filled up within hours by bright orange fur. By the evening of the second day, a carpet of green mold covered the mud, giving the illusion of grass without its substance. It burst into powder under our feet. Curly red mosses appeared in clumps on the thickest support cables, and tiny bluish-white mushrooms sprouted in profusion, spreading out day by day into wider and wider fairy rings, like atolls. They too were tenuous; they crumbled at a touch.

  Insects arrived in profusion, starting with a plague of tiny, lace-winged midges. For a few hours on the third day they were everywhere, “like snow,” Anne said; by sunset they had vanished without a trace. There were a number of larger flies as well, and a large population of small, round, iridescent beetles, no larger than the nails of my little fingers. There were a few dragonflies, too, of the large, ocean-going size, big as forearms; and once I saw a small mantis, though how it reached that dizzy height on its filmy little wings I’ll never know.

  On the evening of the third day Anne discovered a series of damp footmarks in the dried mud. It was some large, four-footed animal; the marks of its blunt flippers were spread as wide as my hand. The tracks led to the edge of the island. They did not return.

  Just before dawn on the fourth day, Crossbow Moses, as it was now calling itself, came to wake us. It did so by the simple expedient of shaking the cables on which Anne and I had strung our hammocks. I sat up and turned on my cameras. I looked at it bleakly. “So,” I said sourly. “Back in the land of the living, are we?”

  “No need for pointless recriminations, Kid,” said the neuter tolerantly, its voice a distorted echo of Moses Moses’s. It had never called me Kid before. It was then, bleary-eyed with sleep, feeling faintly sick, that I realized that my old tutor was dead. “What’s done is done,” it said. It had slipped past death, but at a price. Its old self had been destroyed; the old, muscular body was now animated by a strange, conglomerate personality. It looked weak, but whole, as if it had recovered from a long illness.

  “Listen,” it said. “Do you hear the roar of the breakers?”

  I listened. I heard the murmur, far beneath us, carrying me back in memory to the beach at Telset. “Yes,” I said. I hopped out of my hammock. Anne sat up, rubbing her eyes.

  “Are we going to do the jump?” I said. “Is everything ready?”

  “It’s ready, but a new contingency has come up,” said Crossbow Moses. “There’s a heavy cloud layer lying low over the shoreline. We can’t jump blind. We might land in coral. The surf would catch us and dash us to ribbons against it.”

  “Then what happens now?” Anne asked.

  “We’ll be borne inland,” Crossbow said. “We might as well go up to the top of the balloon. If we see a momentary break in the cloud cover, we should go for it. Moses Crossbow did a star sighting an hour ago—we’ll soon be over the eastern fringe of the Mass.”

  “Maybe the morning sun will burn off the clouds,” Anne said hopefully.

  “Maybe,” Crossbow said.

  Following the neuter, we climbed up the rope ladder into the study chamber. Moses Crossbow was there, twiddling bits of beaded wire in his blunt fingers and studying the convoluted, glistening web of the Body before him. The little room had been carefully swept and put into meticulous order. It was as if a demon of energy and neatness had invaded the room. Even Moses Crossbow himself looked unusually polished and trimmed. He was wearing an embroidered belt hung with instruments, his bodytight had been brushed until it shone, and he had trimmed his beard. Even his round yellow eyes had an unnatural twinkle; they were filled with a sprightly, ingenuous alertness that made me feel rather sick. One of Crossbow’s books lay half-open near at hand; its spine showed a forty- or fifty-letter title that was all hexa-dexa-chloro-silico’s. Moses had been reading it.

  “Look at this, my dear fellow,” said Moses Crossbow. Twisting a small chain of a dozen beads, he slipped it adroitly into a small space in the web of the Crossbow Body. “There, you see?” he said. “It was inverted, levo rather than dextro! Now it fits perfectly. The data is confirmed!”

  “Why, how marvelous,” said Crossbow Moses, but its voice had a polite congratulatory tone rather than a genuine interest. “Be sure to fit that into the micronotes—you know where to find them. The three of us will make ready for the descent; with any luck, we’ll be gone indefinitely.”

  “Well, I wish you luck,” said Moses Crossbow, leaping with nervous grace to his feet. “I’d come along to see you off, but you well understand that time presses. I haven’t had much time during the transfer for note-taking, and my ecological records are in a frightful state. I must see to the Petri dishes; there are a number of molds that will expire at any time; specimens must be taken. And I’ve neglected my taping sessions. I’ll be very busy; delightfully busy, every moment.”

  “This is farewell, then,” said Anne. “We’ll see you no more. You’ll be alone.”

  “Oh, not alone, my dear,” said Moses Crossbow distractedly, picking a bit of lint from one sleeve. “I’ll be surrounded by life, you see. The whole planet hums with life. I will contribute my own small note to that vast orchestra.” Suddenly he embraced her and gave her a light social kiss on her peeling forehead.

  “Goodbye.” He shook my
hand, then embraced me as well; I could feel a light, tense trembling in his thick arms. He seemed to be keyed up to fever pitch. “Goodbye, my dear Kid,” he said. “No doubt I will see the two of you again; you are destined for fame, and if you deign to visit a humble professor, I will be very happy to see you. Goodbye, Mr. Chairman.”

  “I won’t fail you, Professor,” the neuter said, an iron resolution stiffening its beardless jaw.

  Moses Crossbow nodded. He folded his arms and ran his tongue along the inside of his left cheek. “Be so good as to put on these packs I’ve made,” he said. “I’ve doublestitched the seams, but if they fail to hold I’ve put extra needle and thread in your own pack, Mr. Chairman.”

  “Thank you, Professor, you are thoughtful as always,” said Crossbow Moses. It shrugged a heavy pack made of thick green plastic onto its muscular swimmer’s shoulders. Anne and I struggled into smaller packs made of white island fabric. They were heavy. “What’s in this thing?” I asked peevishly.

  “Provisions. Supplies.” said the neuter. “I’ve packed everything.”

  “Then I guess there’s nothing left for us, but to leave,” I said. I looked at the person who had once been Moses Moses. “Mr. Chairman,” I began.

  “Professor, please,” said Moses with a polite smile.

  I shrugged irritably. “Professor, then. I’m not sure why you did this, but I do have a parting word of advice, if you’re willing to listen. Don’t let anyone find you. Don’t use the name Moses or the name Crossbow. Both will be your death warrant, if I know the Cabal. Change your name. Change your face. Hide for as long as you can.”

  “Oh, my intentions exactly,” said Moses Crossbow, nodding blandly. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten the rules of strategy. I’m not so rash as to confront our enemy directly, you can be sure of that. I’ll disguise myself. And mind you follow your own advice, Arti, for your own transformation will soon be upon you.”

  With this last cryptic announcement, the ex-Founder of the Corporation turned away, dismissing us from his attention. Crossbow Moses leapt vigorously for the bottom of the rope ladder and we began the long, exhausting climb up through the bulk of the balloon. Anne used the sleeves of her fabric poncho to protect her blistered hands. My arms ached horribly, but I waited until we reached the top of the island before I took any smuff.

  As we collapsed, panting, on the bulging cells, it dawned. The rim of Reverie’s butter-yellow sun appeared on the horizon and we heard, faintly, screams of delight from the hundreds of birds resting amid the mud and cables of the payload below.

  Crossbow Moses was the first to sit up. “We must have a look at the cloud cover below us,” it said energetically. “I’ll have to peek over the edge of the balloon. The two of you will have to serve as my anchor, once I have this rope tied around me.” It slipped off its pack and pulled out a length of braided ceramic fiber. It tied the rope tightly but comfortably around its waist and we set off for the edge of the balloon.

  When the curvature grew steep Anne and I braced ourselves in the crevice between two cells and began to pay out line to the neuter, who continued descending. I sent a camera after it.

  “We’re definitely inland!” we heard it cry out faintly. “At least two miles!” This surprised me. Since we moved with the wind, it was hard to estimate our speed without seeing the ground. There was no sensation of movement at all.

  “How are the clouds?” I yelled at the top of my voice. Anne, sitting next to me, winced. “Terrible!” it answered. “We can’t possibly go through this. Perhaps they’ll get thinner overland.” There was a long silence. Anne and I wondered aloud how fast we were moving. We made ourselves comfortable and paid out more line. An hour passed. Finally we called out again.

  There was no answer. “Pull me up!” we heard it call at last. We did so; it came scrambling toward us as soon as it could get to its feet.

  “Hurry!” it shouted. “Phoenixes!”

  Anne and I leapt to our feet. “What shall we do?” she said. “The Chairman …”

  “There’s no time for that,” the neuter snapped. It was quite the brusque, hard-headed commander; my gentle old tutor was truly dead. “We’ve got to get to the mooring cables and cut free our descent cell. The whole island could detonate at any time!”

  “But we can’t just abandon him to die!” Anne insisted.

  “Don’t be a fool,” snapped Crossbow Moses. “It’ll take twenty minutes to get down the ladder; we’ll all burn. He should be out on the payload by now; he can recognize a phoenix if he sees one. We’ve got to jump now, despite the clouds. We’ve gone miles inland, anyway.”

  Anne hesitated, then made up her mind. “You go,” she said firmly. “I’ll go to warn him.” She set off at a run for the top of the balloon.

  Crossbow Moses and I ran after her. When we reached the moored descent cell, it gestured unmistakeably with one hand. “Kid!”

  I ran Anne down and hit her in the back of the head. Then I dragged her unconscious body to the mooring cables. “Good work, Kid,” it said. “Make her fast to the cable with the hooks you’ll find in the straps of the pack.” Following its example as it attached itself, I did so. “Now take this knife and cut her free.” I did that, too. The single-cell balloon rose a little, Anne dangling free and swaying like a pendulum.

  “Now attach yourself. Hurry! When I give the word, we’ll sever our lines together!” With our frantic haste, it was the work of a minute.

  “Go!” said Crossbow Moses. We slashed through the last mooring lines. For a moment we rose into the air, then, with agonizing slowness, we dropped down again to the surface of the balloon. Crossbow, who weighed most, was the first to touch down. It scrambled along daintily on the ends of its slippered toes, frantically trying to get us over the edge of the balloon. Wriggling desperately, I was just able to help.

  “Hurry, hurry,” gasped Crossbow. The cell’s lift deprived us of the traction we needed to get up speed. We went through all kinds of panicked antics, which my cameras caught to embarrassing perfection. At least ten minutes passed before we reached the edge of the balloon. Anne began to come to just before we reached the steep, circular edge, but it took her a few minutes to gather her wits.

  “You hit me again,” she accused me groggily.

  “It’s too late to sacrifice yourself, so shut up and help us,” I wheezed. Crossbow and I kicked away at the edge of the balloon for all we were worth, trying to push ourselves away from it. The curvature was such that we would kick away, descend a little ways, kick again, descend some more, and gain perhaps ten feet each time. It seemed to take forever, and all this time we were being borne relentlessly inland. At last we drifted down past the balloon’s equator, and from then on we were free of it. However, we were still close enough to be engulfed in the fireball if the island went up.

  “Look!” Crossbow screeched. Anne and I both flinched in terror as a bullet-like flash of red zipped past us, banking just at the edge of the island and careening off at astonishing speed. Flocks of seabirds burst up like fireworks from the island, diving toward the clouds below in noisy panic flight.

  We also screamed a warning to the ex-Founder as we drifted past the bottom of the island, but we didn’t see him anywhere. For the first time we saw the bottom of the payload, a titanic mud-black mass of tangled roots and dripping slime. Immense toadstools as big as beds had sprouted on its undersurface.

  We continued to descend in a leisurely way, drifting farther from the island as we descended into a slightly slower wind. There was still no explosion. Minutes passed. Still nothing. We fell into a bank of clouds that shrouded us in white tenuous dampness. It was then that the explosion came, a flash that lit the cottony dimness followed by a deafening roar and a hot shock wave that half-flattened our little balloon and jerked us like puppets on strings. Our jaws dropped open as our whole bodies shuddered with the blast. We were too deaf to hear the squashy impact as the mud splattered to earth far below.

  My ears rang as if. I wa
s stuffed with smuff. The two others were dim forms in the fog; I yelled at them, but could barely hear my own voice. My cameras, brushed aside by the rush of hot wind, floated back to me. I thought of swinging over to Anne, but decided against it. The tension might rip my tether line.

  We continued to descend. It was impossible to judge our speed inside the cloud; we barely seemed to move, though I had to swallow several times to depressurize my ringing ears.

  Suddenly we began to fall faster. The balloon may have cooled, or a tiny rip may have opened it. After a few moments we dropped through the bottom of the cloud layer.

  A dizzying spread of land was beneath our feet, white and brown and green to my painfully contracted eyes. The sunlight was bright with morning and the sea was nowhere in sight. We couldn’t even see the splashdown point of the flying island.

  We were moving quite rapidly with a brisk wind, I could see that now. The tops of jungle trees were moving in the warm breeze, sweeping past under our feet. They were two hundred feet below us, and they looked tall.

  I heard an indistinct mumble; I turned to see Crossbow Moses shouting and pointing at the trees below us. It made grabbing and hugging motions with its slender, webbed hands. It wanted us to seize the branches of the trees when we were swept into the forest canopy. I nodded violently to show I understood.

  There were no signs of clearings or landmarks beneath us. This was part of the Mass; I could tell by the peculiar white blotchiness on some of the trees. The usual continental forests were every shade of green, but never white. As far as I could tell from our dizzy descent, the trees were otherwise normal.

  Crossbow Moses dangled down farthest among the three of us; its feet rattled through the thinnest top branches of a tree as we were swept over it. It grabbed at a branch but the leaves stripped off in its hand. We crashed solidly into the next one and grabbed branches. The balloon tugged mightily at us and ripped Anne free, but she caught another branch further down. Crossbow and I gripped our branches like demons. I still had Crossbow’s knife; I could have cut myself free, but that would only have increased the strain on the others.