Asimov's SF, June 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Susanna stood up straight, took two deep breaths, and raised her voice over the crackle of flames. “As the Blind Spot shrinks, more secrets are revealed.” Another zap echoed around the hills. “When the nanocams found a drugs plantation, American satellites fried it."

  A gust of wind fanned aromatic smoke toward her, and Susanna suppressed a tickle in her throat. She wiped her brow with a sponsored sweatband. “I can smell the burning from here. With the sun and the fire and the lasers from the sky, I'm roasting like an ant under a magnifying glass.” She included these sensory details to emphasize that she reported from the spot, unlike all the bloggers who'd comment on the nanocam footage from the comfort of their own homes.

  “In the last few days, soldiers have arrested dozens of terrorists as soon as the cams spotted them. But who else—and what else—is still out there?” She left a dramatic pause before signing off. “This is Susanna Munro reporting from Zaire."

  Now she let herself cough volcanically. Her eyes watering, she stumbled up the bare slope, following Ivo to his battered Land Rover.

  The vehicle, parked in the shade of a huge rock, was a blessed harbor from the heat and smoke. Ivo started the engine and turned up the air-conditioning, then returned her glasses with a grimace of distaste.

  “Thanks,” said Susanna, smiling. “They won't bite you."

  “It's not me I'm worried about,” Ivo said, and she felt that he only barely refrained from adding “old chap.” Despite the heat, he wore a formal shirt and waistcoat as if he were starring in a twentieth century movie about a nineteenth century explorer.

  Susanna played the recording. The obsolete glasses pixellated the image on zoom shots, and Ivo had jiggled his head while filming her. But the segment was usable. Watching her spiel, she winced at the sight of her grey hair. The last time she had used these glasses—or their backup system—her hair had been Pre-Raphaelite red. And in those days, simple moisturizer had kept wrinkles at bay. Throughout the past week she had felt the tropical sun beating through her high-factor sunblock, scouring crevasses in her skin, tanning it like old leather.

  But that hardly mattered now. There would be no more stories after this one, no more dispatches from the field. The advancing nanocams made images accessible to everyone, and frontline journalism redundant.

  A black helicopter roared overhead, spraying its invisible cargo. Inside the Land Rover, both their comps beeped to signal Net access. Susanna plugged in her glasses, uploading all the footage recorded this morning and last night—when the doomed hippies had got high for the last time, vowing that the Man could have their joints when he pried them from their cold dead hands. She sent the update to various channels she freelanced for, then began scanning her mail.

  Ivo interrupted. “That's where we're going,” he said, pointing to a map on his laptop screen. An overlay showed nanocam coverage at 98 percent, and the Blind Spot shrank by a few more pixels as she stared. “Are you ready?” he asked. “'Forward, forward, let us range.’”

  Susanna hesitated, thinking of the desperate criminals who could still be out there, hiding from the advancing cameras. If she met them, she might be giving them their last chance to commit rape, torture, murder.

  And yet this was her last chance too, her last opportunity for an old-fashioned scoop, here in the continent where scoops began when New York Herald reporter Henry Stanley said, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

  She nodded. “Let's go."

  Ivo revved the engine, and the Land Rover shot forward into the glare of the sun. Susanna's comp chirped indignation as they left the Net behind and re-entered the Blind Spot. She read the mail she'd downloaded. Her husband had sent a Happy Birthday message, in case she stayed out here another week. Her daughters were baking cookies—chocolate for Michelle, and almond for Vanessa. In the background, the kitchen looked like chaos, as always, and she saw Toby scooping chocolate dough from an abandoned mixing bowl.

  Susanna took off her glasses and put them in the pocket of her once-white blouse, now stained with sweat and smoke and dust. The children, she thought. The children were one reason she had stopped chasing stories across the globe. But it wasn't just that. It had seemed a promotion to become the anchorwoman in the studio, to become an armchair pundit filing expert opinions from home. And yet, as the nanocams spread, everyone became a pundit. Anyone could bookmark footage and post comments, edit montages and record a voiceover. Susanna had once been proud to call herself a journalist, but the label meant nothing now.

  Well, the bloggers weren't out here, breathing the parched air, clutching a broken seat belt as the Land Rover bumped over stones and fallen branches. There was hardly any trail, just a network of goat tracks and dry stream beds. Ivo zigzagged up the mountain, leaving the contour-hugging helicopter behind. The nanocams could only advance slowly and methodically, needing to knit together in a network. From their inception as an anti-terrorist measure in the USA, they had spread remorselessly across the world. War and disease had kept this remote corner of Africa clear, a haven for the hunted, but now the last Blind Spot would disappear—Ivo's laptop predicted—in less than two days.

  She watched Ivo drive. Every few minutes he turned his head for a sudden glance out of the side window, as though trying to catch something by surprise.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “We've been through this already,” he said. “I'm not telling you what could be out there. The power of suggestion might make you imagine anything I mentioned. I'm bringing you because I need an independent pair of eyes. You're the journalist—shouldn't you see for yourself ?"

  Susanna thought of pressing him, but decided to wait. Sometimes silence created its own pressure. People gripped by an obsession—and Ivo's had brought him to the remotest corner of the Earth—could rarely shut up for long.

  But he didn't speak again until the Land Rover crunched to a halt. Susanna hopped out and helped Ivo heave a dead shrub from their path. She swallowed hard, trying to relieve the pain in her left ear. They had climbed many hundreds of meters, but even in the thin air, the midday sun still broiled the landscape. The rocky hillside, pockmarked with tufts of dry grass, felt hot through her shoes, as if the long-extinct volcano plotted a comeback.

  Ivo said, “Can you see anything?"

  She paused and looked around. Bar the Land Rover, she saw no sign of human presence. The only movement came from a single bee darting between small purple flowers.

  “Can you see anything in the corner of your eye?” Ivo asked. “Can you feel anything brushing past you—running from the nanocams ‘like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing'?” He spoke with the intensity of a true believer, though she still hadn't figured out precisely what he believed in.

  “Maybe you inhaled too much of that burning dope,” said Susanna. She hoped this might sting him into saying more, but he only shrugged and joined her back in the Land Rover.

  They crawled on, stopping more frequently as the slope grew rugged. Eventually a huge jumble of boulders halted their progress.

  “From here, we walk,” said Ivo.

  Susanna rummaged in her holdall. “Coke?” she offered.

  Ivo stared in disbelief. “Where did you get this? There's not a bar or a vending machine in two hundred kilometers.” When he opened the can, froth spurted out and soaked him with cola.

  They both laughed. “Sorry,” said Susanna. “I guess we're pretty high up. And you just wasted about a hundred dollars worth of Coke, by the way. Some guy airlifted it all in and charged me one thousand dollars for a six-pack.” She tried to ease open her own can, and relieve the pressure gradually, but she only succeeded in spraying foam out of the window. Bubbles hissed as they fell on the Land Rover's sun-heated metal.

  “Unless the forex markets just exploded, that's a lot of money for Coke.” Ivo wagged a finger in mock disdain. “And it's not even chilled!"

  “Yeah.... “She sighed. “It was my little nostalgia trip. Back in the old days, when there were
dozens of reporters chasing every story, we used to compete to see who could get the most outrageous item through expenses.” She remembered Pink-Slip Pete, the BBC veteran who'd mentored her through early assignments. He would have applauded the thousand-dollar Coke, and topped it with some ludicrously expensive taxi or minibar tab. Pete had died before the newsroom started sourcing all their pictures from the nanocams.

  Ivo clinked his can with hers. “Cheers.” He started checking the contents of his rucksack. “Are you going to hump your bag up the rest of the hill?” he asked.

  Susanna frowned. “How far is it?"

  “The more you carry, the farther it'll feel."

  She hefted the holdall, which contained exactly what she used to pack in the old days. “I'll give it my best shot."

  “Fair enough.” Ivo pointed to her blouse pocket. “But you're leaving those behind."

  Susanna pulled out the thick-framed glasses. “These? Why?"

  “Because they're a camera. Okay, they're not the nanocams, but they're a camera nonetheless. Why do you think I'm here in the Blind Spot?"

  “I don't know. You won't tell me what you're looking for."

  “No ... but the reason I'm looking here is that there are no cameras. Not yet, anyway.” Ivo looked up, as if to check for helicopters, but silence shrouded the mountain. “And that's why you can't bring your glasses."

  “But I'm a journalist,” Susanna said. “When I find the story, I need to film it."

  “Ah, but what I'm looking for can't be filmed."

  She turned to stare at him. “Run that by me again."

  Ivo drained his can of warm Coke. “In ancient times,” he began, “when people made maps, they wrote ‘Here Be Dragons’ at the edge, and drew sea-monsters in the ocean. Over the centuries the dragons got pushed back and back.

  “Even in the scientific era, people still saw strange sights. Giant apes, rains of frogs, lights in the sky, fairies at the bottom of the garden. All sorts of stuff, but with one thing in common—they didn't show up too well on film. When the nanocams blanketed North America, you didn't hear much about Bigfoot any more.

  “So there are two possibilities. Anyone who ever saw anything weird was mistaken or lying—or all those weird things retreated from the cameras, just as expanding civilization has always made wildlife retreat."

  “Or die out,” Susanna said.

  “Cheery soul, aren't you?” said Ivo. “Yes, many creatures have died out. But wildlife isn't all extinct. And there were so many different weird things, they can't all have died, just as those witnesses can't all have been wrong."

  “So we're looking for Bigfoot?” she said, pleased to have finally winkled out Ivo's obsession, and a little amused by it.

  He shook his head. “I knew I shouldn't have mentioned anything specific. No, unless Bigfoot managed to swim all the way across the Atlantic, it seems unlikely he's here—if he ever existed. The same applies to most of what used to be called the unexplained, before the nanocams showed exactly how rains of frogs occurred.

  “But if there's anything left, if there's just one single weird thing left in the world, it's right here. The nanocams have driven it back and back, and now the Blind Spot is the edge of the Earth. And that's why you can't bring your camera-glasses. The weird is like a superimposed state in quantum mechanics—when you record it, you destroy it.” He said the last sentence as if it made sense.

  “So you invited a journalist along, and now you're asking her to leave her camera behind?"

  “'Full many a flower is born to blush unseen'—but what if it can only blush unseen by mechanical eyes?"

  “Then I wonder what it has to hide.” Yet Susanna felt sympathetic to Ivo's bizarre request. Journalism wasn't just about taking pictures, otherwise she could have stayed home and let the nanocams get the footage. Journalism was about being on the spot, talking to the locals, getting the real story rather than just a picture of it. Yes, she could leave her glasses behind.

  After all, she still had her backup system.

  “Okay,” she said, putting her glasses into the Land Rover's glove compartment. “Let's go."

  They clambered over the boulders that had blocked the vehicle's ascent, and then began trudging the rest of the way up the mountain. Susanna kept transferring her holdall from one shoulder to the other, in ever-diminishing intervals as the weight grew harder to bear. She wanted to rush to the top, to get the climb over with, but found herself panting for breath in the thin air. She felt dizzy, and saw black spots floating in her vision.

  Were they what Ivo was looking for? When she asked, he smiled and shook his head. “You're just trying too hard, using too much energy. It's easier if you take small steps.” He demonstrated walking with tiny heel-to-toe steps that Susanna remembered from childhood games.

  “Let's catch a yeti, hitch a ride,” she said.

  Ivo disdained to reply, and climbed onward. She followed him, grateful for the nanobots maintaining her osteoporosis-stricken bones. The sun descended the empty sky.

  Susanna only noticed that Ivo had stopped when she bumped into him. “Take a rest,” he said. “From here it's easier."

  They'd reached the rim of the ancient volcano. Before them a vast lake stretched as far as Susanna could see. She sat on her holdall, too tired to even speak. Ivo, ten years younger, looked just as glad to take a breather. She watched him staring out into the lake, and wondered what he had expected to find. Only wind-blown ripples broke the surface.

  They couldn't afford to rest long; the sun hung low, with twilight brief in the tropics. Ivo led them round the shore of the lake, crunching grey sand underfoot. Ahead stood a small hut, built from mortarless stones and roofed with reeds.

  “I scouted out a few places,” Ivo explained. “When the nanocams began their final push, I didn't know exactly where the last Blind Spot would be, but I thought the lake was a likely spot.” He paused. “Um ... you might want to wait here for a minute."

  Ivo approached the doorway cautiously, and Susanna remembered that terrorists might be hiding beyond. But he gave her a reassuring wave, and she joined him inside.

  A few folding chairs surrounded a picnic table full of moldy Styrofoam cups and empty packets of rolling papers. “Some of the hippies used to come up here for the fishing,” Ivo said. “They had lots of stories about the things that got away."

  Susanna thought he referred to drug-inspired tales, until she realized that he meant weird things. What monsters might be wandering outside the stone walls? Was it safe up here?

  The hell with it, she thought. Bigfoot could scare off the terrorists—or vice versa. She was too tired to worry. She looked for a bed, but saw only a pile of dry reeds. From her holdall she took some spare clothes for a pillow.

  “Good thinking,” said Ivo. “We need to start early tomorrow, to beat the helicopters."

  If he said anything else, Susanna didn't hear it before she fell asleep.

  In the morning they walked further round the lake to a stretch of tall reeds growing in the shallows. A thin layer of cloud veiled the sun, but did little to restrain its heat from baking the landscape.

  Ivo splashed through the reeds until he shouted in triumph. Susanna stepped into the water—finding it colder than she expected—and joined Ivo as he heaved aside a faded tarpaulin. Underneath bobbed a motorboat, its off-white interior colonized by nesting spiders. Susanna threw in her holdall and clambered onto a bench, brushing arachnids aside. Oh, the joys of location reporting. She toweled off her wet feet while Ivo struggled to start the engine.

  The boat roared into the lake, flattening reeds on its way. Ivo throttled back to a gentler pace. He kept glancing from port to starboard, bow to stern. Susanna saw only birds wading near the shore, taking to the air when the boat came too close.

  She looked away from the shore, out into the lake. Beyond the boat's wake, the still water reflected the sky. She barely saw any boundary between them. No farther shore darkened the horizon.

 
; Susanna blinked, and peered into the distance. She still couldn't see anything.

  “How big is this lake?” she asked.

  Ivo shrugged. “I haven't been round it."

  “I thought we were in a volcano crater. Shouldn't we be able to see the other side?"

  “I'll check the map.” Ivo delved into his rucksack. But when he tried to boot up the laptop, nothing happened. He shook his head. “Batteries must have run out. They don't last long out here."

  “You don't have any spares?"

  “Sure, back in the Land Rover."

  Ivo looked more excited than concerned. “Let's get across and have a look,” he said, revving the boat like a boy racer.

  Susanna glanced back and watched the hut dwindle into an imperceptible speck. The loss of her only landmark disturbed her on a visceral level.

  You wanted to chase a story, she reminded herself. In the old days she'd survived dozens of disturbing moments. Back then she had almost relished being scared, because the most uncomfortable stories sometimes turned out to be the best.

  In those days, of course, she didn't have a family waiting back home.

  The engine cut out.

  “Shit!” said Ivo. He yanked the starter. The engine coughed and grunted, but wouldn't fire. “We must be out of gas. Stupid hippies! They promised me there was loads left."

  Susanna bent down to peer under her bench. She rejoiced at the sight of a red canister, but when she grabbed it, she could feel it was empty.

  Below the other bench, Ivo retrieved two long paddles. “I guess this is the emergency engine."

  “It's a long time since I did any canoeing,” said Susanna. Or anything much, she thought.

  The motorboat was no canoe. Susanna found the benches uncomfortably placed for paddling, as did Ivo. Nevertheless, after several minutes of splashing and swearing, they found they could move the boat if they had to. This made Susanna feel a little better, though she reflected that the few minutes the engine had driven them out would take a whole lot longer to paddle back.

  And where was “back,” exactly? In struggling to coordinate their paddling, they'd spun the boat so many times that Susanna had no idea which way they'd come.