Dante's Equation Part 41

Nate spread out his hand. "Naturally. I'm a product of my culture. So give me another example."

"What about modern medicine?"

Nate didn't even have to think about it. "Uh-huh. Modern medicine is cool, 'specially if you're the one having the heart attack. But overuse of antibiotics has led to immune microbes, blood transfusions give AIDS, our health care system is in crisis, we have a zillion old people hanging on now, like,forever, eating up their kids' resource and the government's, and medical technology has allowed us to engineer nifty new plagues like anthrax. . . . I mean, don't you find it incrediblyelegant ? No matter what we do, no matter what we invent to make life easier, there's bound to be a catch in there somewhere. That is so incredibly cool. Scary as h.e.l.l, but cool."

Jill was taking it as a personal challenge now. She wracked her brain. "Mother Teresa? Gandhi?"

"For every one of them there's a Ted Bundy?" He shook his head, eyes narrowing. "No. Check that. I have a better answer. I was raised Greek Orthodox, right? So look at Jesus Christ. During his lifetime he taught pacifism, equality, charity . . . Yet the religion created in his name caused some of the bloodiest, most ignorant centuries ever. And even Gandhi-a lot of the PakistaniIndian hostility came out of that whole period."

"Hmmm."

Nate spun to walk backward, facing her. He had the energetic bounce of a twelve-year-old, even in this heat. "Anything else? Come on. You've got more."

Jill threw up her hands. "Nope. You're too smart for me, Socrates."

"Come on!"

"Huh-uh. I'm done."

"Please? Please, please, please?" he wheedled, making a pout face designed to bug the c.r.a.p out of her.

It was good to see him come back to life again, even if there was a tinge of mania about it. She sighed. "Oh, all right. What about being a big celebrity? You're telling me that life as Nate Andros, physics student, is just as fifty-fifty as, say, being Keanu Reeves?"

Nate made apsah gesture. "Keanu Reeves? Are you kidding? Oh, sure, there's the money and the glamour and the chicks, but on the downside you can't go out in public without being mobbed, critics lambaste you, you have to keep in incredible shape and compete with about a thousand up-and-comers who are even more gorgeous than you are, you struggle with egomania, question your own ident.i.ty, are terrified of growing old, and are pretty much stuck with dating actresses who are even vainer and more screwed up than you are! Jeez, that wasn't even hard."

Jill laughed. "Anyone ever tell you you're a pessimist?"

"Nah, I'm not a pessimist. I still hold out hope for you and me, don't I?"

He abruptly stopped walking backward and looked away after he'd said it, for which Jill was grateful. They walked in silence for a while. It was Jill who broke it, in a very neutral voice.

"It's a clever theory. But I'm not sure how you'd quantify it. And if you can't quantify it, it's not-"

"I know. It's not science. So shoot me." Nate bounced the metal capsules in his hand. "What I don't get is this place, though. At seventy percent good, why is this civilization dying? Shouldn't this be Paradise? It's not consistent."

Jill felt a spark of excitement. "Itis , though. Remember the mice, what happened when we pushed the one pulse too far? How lethargic they got? It maytake certain levels of . . . of challenge and stress to make life vital and interesting."

"Well,I'm dying of boredom, and I've only been here a few days." Nate yawned hugely and juggled the metal capsules in the air like fruit.

"Quit that!" Jill grabbed one of them and looked at it. It was shaped like an aspirin except it was more slender, and tiny holes perforated the metal in a grid design. "For all you know it's a bomb."

"I think it's something you swallow," Nate said, bringing it up to his face.

"Don't you dare!"

But Nate only sniffed it. "Doesn't smell like anything."

"Those holes remind me of a telephone mouthpiece or a speaker." Jill turned it over in her fingers.

"Really?" Nate held it up to his ears to listen. Then he began to scream.

"Nate, what is it? Nate!" He was screaming and jerking around, bent over at the waist, head tilted to one side, fingers scrabbling at his ear.

"Oh my G.o.d, I knew those things were dangerous! Nate, talk to me!"

"It flew in my f.u.c.kingear ," he screamed.

"Let me see!"

"No!"

He was trying to push a finger into his ear ca.n.a.l, as if he could dig it out.

"Nate,let me see !"

He finally stopped his panicked dance, but he remained bent over at the waist, his wounded ear tilted

down, panting hard. Jill put her hand on his arm. "Let me look." "I don't want to move my head," he said through gritted teeth. "Does it hurt?" He was reluctant to say. "No." "No? What's it feel like?" He shook his head, gingerly at first, then harder. He remained bent over. "I can't feel it now, but I felt it go in." "Well, let me see!" "If I move my head it will just go in more!" Jill rolled her eyes. "So you're going to hold your head like that for the rest of your life?" With great reluctance Nate straightened up, an inch at a time, pausing to wait for sensation. When he was almost upright, Jill moved in, placing one hand on his jaw and the other on his hair near his ear.

"I don't see anything."

"Um, that's because it'sin my ear ." He put his fingers at the base of his ear, pressing carefully. "I can't feel it. But, Jill, it's in myhead . That can't be a good thing."

She didn't know what to say. She couldn't say "we'll get it out" because she had no idea how and there wasn't exactly an emergency room down the street. In fact, she was as alarmed as Nate.

"Let's get back to the main artery and we can find an apartment with power and rest. Okay? Can you make it?" She put her hand on his arm for support.

He didn't answer, but he started walking, cautiously, like an old man. He kept moving his jaw, trying to feel the capsule.

"You're only working it in deeper," she commented.

He stopped doing it.

Nate's arm was over Jill's shoulder and hers was around his waist, helping him along. He didn't seem to be suffering from any specific complaint, could no longer feel the thing in his ear. She realized this, recognized that their contact was completely unnecessary, and held on to him anyway.

It was nice to have an excuse to touch him, to allow herself to be close to him without worrying about what he might think. She liked the way it felt as they walked together, how they fit. She liked that he winced every once in a while so that they could maintain the farce. And she was scared enough about what had actually happened to him to make her reluctant to let go. The fingers of her left hand felt the muscles of his waist working as he walked. His arm over her shoulder was warm and heavy, even in this light gravity.

She was so distracted by these unusual sensations that it took her a while to realize that something was bothering her ears. It had started out as white noise, but they had to be approaching the source, because it grew louder. It sounded like high-pitched feedback, squeaking and squawking.

"What is that?" She grimaced. "It sounds like the feedback from an amplifier or-"

Nate stopped, abruptly. No, not just stopped, he jerked back, detaching them. She turned to look at his face. It had gone pale as milk.

"Nate? What is it? Are you in pain?" She could only think of the thing in his ear, praying to G.o.d it wasn't burrowing into his brain or doing something equally gruesome.

"Nate, answer me!"

He shushed her. He was listening, and she realized it was the sound he was responding to. She listened, too. It occurred to her that the squeaking and squawking could only be alien speech. It was being broadcast from someplace nearby. That might have been interesting, if she weren't so worried about Nate falling dead at her feet any second now.

"What do you hear?" he asked her, with emotion held deliberately at bay.

"Um . . . a high-pitched noise. Almost like radio feedback. I was thinking it might be alien speech."

"Oh my G.o.d." His forehead went smooth as his brow pulled back in amazement.

"What?"

But with a jolt, she knew what he was going to say.Knew. Her heart turned over, then began to race. She waited for him to tell her. He walked forward slowly, like a man in a dream. A smile started first in his dark eyes, then spread to his lips. He t.i.tled his head back and crowed.

"Nate?" she asked, smiling herself. "Nate? Is it-"

He grabbed her arms, pulling her close. "My G.o.d, Jill! I'mhearing English."

The source of the voice was a metal sheet on a post stuck at the side of the street. It was blank until they approached; then the sheet turned transparent, revealing alien text on a screen. Jill watched Nate with a mixture of excitement and disbelief. It was difficult to accept he was actually hearing anything other than what she was hearing-that G.o.d-awful racket. But if he was acting, it was a h.e.l.luva performance. He stood at the post, an expression of happy confusion on his face, like someone trying to place a familiar tune.

"What's it saying, Nate?" "Um. 'Remember your duty, citizens. Report to the fertility clinic today.' " "What?" " 'This is not an optional activity. Your identification will be recorded. Penalties will be enacted on any citizen . . . um . . . not recording sufficient time at the clinic, per Standard 10-39714-something something something. . . .' Then it starts over." Jill was skeptical. "Fertility clinic? Are you sure?" "That's what it says." "And you'rereally hearing it in English?" "Yes!"He gave her a goofy smile. "That thing in my ear-it's a translator!"

She bit her lip, nodded. "Yeah, I got that much. What does itsound like though?" He listened, as if sorting it out. "Like, uh, a very high, weird voice, except I'm actually hearing it form words in English. I mean, it's funky, because it's definitely not a human voice, but I can understand it."

"And your ear doesn't hurt?"

"No." But he didn't look thrilled to be reminded that he had a foreign body in his head. His brow cleared. "What amazing luck." He touched the metal sheet, and the alien characters shifted. Then his face closed up-she could see it, going from ecstatic to thoughtful to grim. Jill thought he was feeling the magnitude of what had

just happened. She felt it, too. "This changes everything, Nate." Jill began to pace excitedly. "It'll be easy to make contact with the aliens now.d.a.m.n. As for their technology-I wonder if we can find a computer that will talk to us? Can you imagine? If we can get it to read aloud, we could understand everything! And even barringthat, after we make contact the aliens could-"

"Jill," Nate said quietly. "That won't be necessary."

She stopped pacing. "Why not?"

"Because I'mseeing English as well." His voice was numb.

"What?"

Nate reached out a tentative finger and pressed the screen. The screen changed again to a diagram. He laughed in a strangled voice and backed away from the monitor.

"Nate?"

He was laughing and crying at the same time, could hardly get the words out. "I p-pressed a b.u.t.ton labeled . . . 'directions' and g-got a street grid. Our current position-" He doubled over with laughter, his face red. "Our current position is . . . marked: 'You are here.' Oh my G.o.d! 'You are here'!"

"Nate, calm down."

Jill didn't-couldn't-believe him. He had to be mistaken. And he was getting hysterical, and it was really scaring her.

She had the metal capsule she'd grabbed from Nate in her pocket and she'd known, from the moment when it had become clear what was going on, what she would do. Without a thought, she brought it out now and looked at it. His eyes widened.

"Jill, no!"

She didn't even have to put the capsule in. As soon as her hand got close to her ear, the capsule slipped through her fingers and into her ear ca.n.a.l as if it were a living thing. It startled her, making her gasp. Her hands clenched at the very unpleasant sensation of the capsule traveling deeper, burrowing. It was all she could do not to scream. Then the movement stopped and she was left with a full, stuffed-up feeling in her ear that gradually began to fade.

Nate was watching her, wide-eyed. "Why did you do that? We have no idea if these things are safe or not, Jill. G.o.dd.a.m.nit!"

She gave him a defiant glare and held up a hand. She strained to listen.

At first nothing changed; then she was hearing English. It was weird, like a switch being thrown, as if her brain alwayshad been hearing English and she just hadn't recognized it as such. Nate was right, the voice had a high tone, but the words were unmistakable. She felt a rush of joy and terror at it-how simple it was, how cleanly it worked. Nowthatwas technology.

"Remember your duty, citizens. Report to the fertility clinic today."

"It works!" She had a hard time keeping her legs under her. She grabbed his shoulder for support and stepped closer to the monitor. Nate pointed to the screen. At first she just saw the incomprehensible alien characters, but from one blink to the next she was seeing English. It was as abrupt and integral as the speech had been, and no matter how her eyes strained, she couldn't see anythingbut English now. Unbelievable. Whatever that capsule was, it was altering the very sensory perceptions of her brain.

Nate pressed a b.u.t.ton that was labeled:DIRECTIONS and a map came up. The fertility clinic was a few blocks away, marked in green. And there was a red dot labeled:YOU ARE HERE showing their current position.

"Do you see it?" Nate asked.

Jill nodded dumbly.

Nate barked a laugh. "Explain that, Jill.Explain that. This is like some sick freakingjoke ."

"Nate-"

"Isn't it? I mean, what-are we dead after all?"

"We're not dead."

"But this place is like a dreamworld! Everything we say, everything we want, andsnap , it just happens. I feel like a rat in a maze! I mean this whole empty world, this feeling of being watched . . ." He backed away from the machine, scanning the buildings on either side of them, looking for Alien Funt again or perhaps Joseph Mengele.

Jill tried to remain calm, but her equilibrium was thrown off, too. She remembered how she had asked the computer at the s.p.a.ceport to locate her equation, the universal wave equation, and based on no more information than that it had printed it out. And the blank emptiness of the City, almost like . . . what had she thought that first day? A movie set.

She shook her head angrily. "No. Why would someone go to the trouble of running us through a maze? This City doesn't exist for our sake, Nate; I mean, it's pretty d.a.m.n vain for us to think so. 'Any technology sufficiently advanced will seem like magic,' remember?"

"I know that. And I can handle the audio translation and even, though G.o.d knows how they do it, thewriting . But 'You are here'? I mean, is this an alien planet or a shopping mall?"

She swallowed a lump in her throat. "Well . . . 'You are here', means pretty much what it says, doesn't it? Maybe it's just a coincidence."

"Why not 'This is your present location' or something? That's a pretty big coincidence!"

Jill did find it freaky, but she would never admit it. "Well . . . any good translator program uses colloquialisms. Right? So it must be familiar with that particular colloquialism, that's all. We don't have the technology to do this kind of thing, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible."