by Tad Williams
"I will not bore you with how my years at university changed me. Meeting young people who did not call their mothers 'Sister-in-God,' and who had grown up sleeping in a bed of their own in a room of their own was like being introduced to creatures from another planet. Not surprisingly, I came to view my up- bringing differently than before I left Harmony Camp, to be more critical of what I had learned, less accepting of the truths of Doctor Marius Traugott. What may surprise you, however, is that I still returned home when my schooling was finished. Even though I had no formal doctor's degree, I had learned enough to become the chief medical authority of Harmony Camp.
"I feel I must explain this, or you will all misunderstand, as people generally do. It is true that Traugott's ideas were largely nonsense, and that many of the people drawn to his doctrines, and thus to the commune, were those without the strength or resources to compete in the great commercial struggle outside the gates. But did this mean they had no right to live? If they were foolish, or credulous, or simply tired of trying to climb up a ladder that had many times already proved too slippery for them, did that mean they were without value?
"My mother was one such, you see. She had chosen to turn her back on the politics of the street, but she did not want simply to replace that with the values of the bourgeoisie, either. What she wanted was a bed, a safe place to raise her daughter, and the company of people who did not shout at her that she was ignorant or spineless because she was frightened to go out and throw bricks at police.
"My extended Harmony Camp family were mostly kind people. They were frightened of many things, but if fear makes people hateful, it had not yet risen to a sustained pitch with them. Not then. So after university I busied myself with helping them, and although I no longer blindly accepted Harmony Camp's guiding beliefs, I had no qualms about trying to make the lives of its people better. And I did make things better—very quickly, too. I was fortunate enough to have made a friend in school whose father was an executive in a large medical supply company, and at his urging—and much to my surprise—the company donated us some excellent equipment.
"Listen to me." She snorted. "I have already taken too long to get to the point. I started out to tell you of my life at Harmony Camp only because it explains much about me in a few words. But I also wanted you to know that my mother was taught, in part by her own experiences in Munich, in part by Doctor Traugott, to fear the modern life of instant communications and imaginary worlds—in short, the life of the net. I learned to partake freely of that life in my university days, but a part of me still feared it. It was the opposite of all we had been taught to revere, the raw, the tangible, that which lived. When I underwent my quiet rebellion against Marius Traugott's teachings, I undertook to face that which I feared, and I began to spend almost as much time connected to the information world as all but the most die-hard enthusiasts among my university friends. When I returned to Harmony Camp, I even had a showdown with the council, threatening to leave if they did not agree to allow me at least one line which could handle greater bandwidth than voice-only. I told them I could not be their doctor without one, which was only partially true. My blackmail worked.
"So I opened up Harmony Camp to the net. No one touched that system station but me, and after a while the council became less uneasy. Eventually, it was all but forgotten, although I would eventually pay for my pleasures, and pay very heavily. But at the time, once my own initial absorption with the novelty of it began to fade, even I used it only seldom. I kept in touch with a few friends from the university. I did my best to stay current with general medical information. On rare occasions I experimented with some of the other things the net had to offer, but my work at Harmony Camp kept me very busy. In many ways I was almost as disconnected from the modern world as you, !Xabbu, in your early life on the Okavango.
"What changed it was my child, and a man named Anicho Berg."
"My mother died in an accident—as yours did, Renie. It happened in the winter, twelve years ago. The heater in the cabin she shared with some of the older Harmony Camp women malfunctioned and they were asphyxiated. There are far worse ways to die. In any case, though, for the first time I began to feel that my fellow communards were perhaps not family enough—that with my mother dead, I lacked any deep personal connection to the world, even to my own life, if that makes sense.
"It was not very difficult for a woman in her forties to begin thinking about bearing a child. It was even less difficult for a woman with medical training and control over the health services of several hundred people to arrange an artificial insemination. I considered briefly just a parthenogenetic cloning of one of my own cells, but I did not want simply another version of myself. I took what I knew to be several healthy sperm samples from different donors, unfroze them, and mixed them together.
"Considering the clinical nature of her conception, you may be surprised to know that I bore my daughter Eirene full-term, and that she was beautiful to me beyond anything I can say. You may be less surprised to learn that someone who had spent her entire life in communal living found herself fiercely jealous and protective of her child.
"I could not continue living in Harmony Camp without allowing her to join the other children in their communal schooling, and I had no wish to leave—it was the only home I had ever really known. But I made sure that I taught her, too, and that I was not an essentially uninvolved figure like my own mother, who had been only a small degree more loving and intimate to me than any of the other Sisters-in-God. I was Eirene's mother, and she knew it. I told her every day. She felt it."
Florimel's clipped narrative came to a startlingly sudden halt. It took a moment before Renie realized that the woman was struggling with tears.
"Excuse me." She was clearly embarrassed. "We are coming to the things that are very hard for me to say, even to remember.
"Anicho Berg was not at first anything to fear. He was a thin, serious young man who had been part of Harmony Camp for a long time, since his youth. At one point he and I even had a short affair, but that meant little because none of us went outside the commune for our relationships, and although we were not one of those groups that emphasizes free love, neither had Doctor Traugott been anti-sex—he was much more concerned with people's dietary habits and bowel movements. We were normal, healthy people. Many of us had our flings over the years, and some married. But something in Anicho was ambitious, and could not bear things in the commune to be as they were and himself just one of many. He began to take more power on the council, which was not difficult—few at Harmony Camp wanted power of any kind. Had we not retreated from the world where such things were important? But perhaps by making ourselves a peaceful flock, we thus became an irresistible lure to a cunning predator. And that is what Anicho Berg was.
"I will not stretch out this portion of the story, because it is sad and unsurprising. Those of you, like Martine, who are familiar with the newsnets may have even heard of Harmony Camp's messy ending—a shoot-out with the authorities, several people dead, including Berg, and several others arrested. I was not there—Berg and his cohorts had driven me and Eirene away months before. Ironically, it was my possession of net gear that Anicho used to make me unpopular—what was I doing, he demanded to know, late at night when others of the commune were abed? Using electricity, talking with strangers and thus generally up to no good, was his insinuation. I am sad to say that in the climate he and his friends fostered, my fellow communards believed it.
"Again I have gone on longer than I intended. I suppose it is that I have kept this quiet for so long I had almost forgotten it, as though these events happened to a stranger. But now that I speak of it the wounds are once more fresh.
"What I was doing, of course, and what rapidly took over my entire life, was trying to find out what was wrong with my daughter. For like so many others, as we all now know, she had been struck down suddenly and terribly by a mystery disease. I had no idea at first it could have anything to do with the net, because at f
irst I thought that she had only ever used my connection under my supervision. I was a fool, of course, and knowing that I was not the first busy parent to realize that does not make it any the less painful. Eirene was fascinated, and used every opportunity when I was out doing my rounds in Harmony Camp to explore the virtual world beyond the camp walls. I only discovered later, by tracing the records of my account, how far she had roamed. But at first I only knew that my daughter had succumbed to something as abrupt and brutal as a stroke, and that doctors far more knowledgeable than me could do nothing for her.
"But even as I was forced to have more and more dealings with hospitals and clinicians and neuromedical specialists, Berg and others had begun to make the people of our commune fear the outside world. These things happen, I suppose, with closed societies. Even large, open societies are prone to waves of paranoia, but because of their nature, the paranoia usually dissipates.
But in a tight community like Harmony Camp, especially when some among the group are fanning its embers, paranoia can smolder and smolder until it bursts into flame. Berg and his closest followers, many of them young men who had joined in only the last few months, began to target those with influence, trying to force them either to join Berg or to stay silent. In other circumstances, I might have resisted, might even have led the opposition to hold onto what was, after all, my home. But I could not care about anything except finding a cure for Eirene. Hours of every day, all through the night, I roamed the net—a path that eventually, after two years, led me to the Atascos' make-believe world.
"But long before that I found my home changing into something I did not recognize. When I actively began to fear for my safety—which I did not care about for my own sake, but rather because of Eirene—I left Harmony Camp.
"I make it sound easier than it was. I was frightened of Anicho Berg by then, and I went through quite vigorous steps to make sure no one knew I was leaving until I was gone, and I also did my best to cover my tracks. I was instantly denounced as a traitor, of course, the more so because I took much of the expensive medical equipment with me, but I had no choice, since I also took Eirene out of the local hospital so that I could care for her myself after we went into hiding. We moved to Freiburg, the only other place I knew, and where I felt there was a lessened chance of encountering any of the Harmony people. What I did not know was that as paranoia rose higher in Harmony Camp, Anicho Berg used my escape to denounce me as a proven spy. When Berg himself was killed by federal police, in what began as little more than a land-usage dispute but quickly became a small but violent war, several of his disciples escaped the camp's collapse, convinced that I had sold them out to the government.
"So I have been in hiding ever since, with very little contact with the outside world. I do not know whether Berg's disciples are still hunting for me, holding me responsible for their leader's death, but I would be surprised if they have given up—they are not very imaginative types and do not take in new ideas easily, especially if giving up their old ideas means facing up to the fact that they have been led astray.
"I can do nothing about that. I may still be able to do something about Eirene. And if not, then I have no reason to go on living . . . but I will at least try to spit in the face of the people who have done this to her before I die."
The dramatic ending of Florimel's recitation left everyone stunned into silence. Renie found herself obscurely ashamed at the German woman's ferocity, as though somehow her own sincerity in trying to solve the riddle of her brother's illness had been cast into doubt.
One thing had been nagging at her, though. "But if you're hiding," Renie asked at last, "if you're worried that those people are still after you, why did you tell us your name?"
"I told you a first name only," Florimel said, then made an odd face, half scowl, half smile. "And in any case, what makes you think that is my real name? Did you go on the net to begin this search using your own name? If so, then I have lost some respect for you."
"No, of course I didn't," Renie said, nettled.
Little Emily leaned forward, eyes wide. She had paid far more careful attention to Florimel's story than anyone would have expected, although Renie wondered how much someone who apparently had only experienced life within one simulation of the network could make of such a tale. But the girl's question was a sharp one. "What about your baby? How could you leave her behind?"
Florimel, who knew the girl's recent history from Renie's tales of New Emerald City, looked at her as though she guessed what caught at Emily's interest. "My daughter?" She hesitated. When she finally spoke, some defensive barrier had dropped, and for a moment the unhappiness and vulnerability were clear, even on her sim face. "I have not left her behind. I told you that I brought my equipment with me when I escaped Harmony Camp. It is very fine equipment. She is connected to me, both of us sharing a telematic circuit. We are yoked to a throughline onto this network. So I know where she is, at least—that she lives. I can feel her in her terrible sleep, and . . . and she is always with me. . . ." Florimel drew a shaking hand across her face.
Martine broke the long, painful silence. "I sensed a second person," she said quietly, wonderingly. "I wondered how it could be, and to tell the truth, this was all so new to me I was not certain I was right, but I sensed another person with you from the very first."
"Where my real body lies, she lies beside me, in my arms." Florimel looked away, unwilling to meet the eyes of the others. "The machines keep our flesh healthy, our muscles functional. Eirene is with me, you see." She took a deep breath. "And when she leaves me . . . I will know. . . ."
It was T4b and Emily, oddly enough, who reached out to touch her. Florimel did not resist, but neither did she give any sign she was even aware of them. After perhaps half a minute unspeaking, she got up and walked away from the fire, out across the incomplete landscape, until she was little more than a small, dark figure against the eternal gray.
After Florimel's story, it was hard even to nudge T4b into speech. He answered Renie's questions at first only in sullen monosyllables. Yes, his name was Javier Rogers, as the voice of the Lost had announced, although he'd never liked it. Yes, he lived in the suburbs outside Phoenix, but he was actually from So-Phee—he pronounced it like the girl's name—from South Phoenix, Central Ave, the streets.
"Not no sayee lo 'burboy, me," he insisted.
Under further prodding, a rather strange and interesting story emerged, piece by garbled, Goggleboy-slanged piece. Despite his name he was half-Hopi, his mother a young reservation woman who had fallen in love with a truck driver. Her decision to run off with the man, Renie could see pretty clearly, had been the last romantic thing to happen to her: she and her lover had shortly thereafter begun a descent into drink and drugs, pausing only briefly along the way to bring several children into the world, of which Javier had been the first. After dozens of incidents, a sad list of drug-fueled batterings, petty crimes, and neighbors' complaints, social services had stepped in and taken the Rogers children away from their parents. Mama and Papa Rogers barely seemed to notice, so caught up were they in pursuing their own downward spiral. The younger children had been fostered to a family Javier had not liked, and after clashing several times with their new foster father, he had run away.
Several years on the South Phoenix streets had followed, running with Chicano and Amerind Goggleboy gangs, particularly one called "Lou Hisatsinom" or "Old Ones," named after an ancient Arizona tribe who predated even the Hohokam. The gang had a big old Krittapong Multiworx station in an abandoned apartment downtown, and they spent a lot of time on the net. Los Hisatsinom had a quasi-mystical bent, which T4b would only describe as "deep fen, man, deep and deepest," but they also kept themselves busy with the much more pragmatic occupation of buying discard or demo cartridges from Mexican charge factories and smuggling them across the border to sell in the black gear markets of Phoenix and Tucson.
Eventually, of course, and almost inevitably (although he clearly did not think of it
that way) T4b was arrested, a "minor card" as he put it, stopped while driving a van full of stolen merchandise without even the mitigation of possessing a driver's license. Because of his age he spent some time in a juvenile institution before being fostered, not to a family, but to a special halfway-house program for young offenders. When that had proved relatively successful, and he had been straight and more or less out of trouble for half a year, they released him to the custody of his father's parents, a couple in late middle age who had only seen their grandchild once in ten years. Grandma and Grandpa Rogers had belatedly tried to get custody of the younger children, but failed, and had received Javier instead as a sort of consolation prize. They were less than certain about inheriting a Goggleboy with a scalp-to-toe tracery of luminous subdermals, not to mention an arrest record, but they made the best of it. They put him back in school and bought him an inexpensive console, so he could put his Goggleboy tapping-and-napping skills to some use, perhaps even find a career someday.
