Distress - A Novel Part 27

Huddled on the ground behind the latrines, not ready to face the demoralized people of the camp, I dispatched the footage of the murder to SeeNet. I tried to compose some narration to go with it, but I was still in shock, I couldn't concentrate. I thought: War correspondents see much worse, day after day. How long will it be, before I'm inured to this?

I scanned the international coverage. Everyone was still talking about "rival anarchists"-including SeeNet, who'd broadcast nothing I'd sent them.

I spent five minutes trying to calm myself, then called Lydia. It took me half an hour to get through to her in person. All I could hear around me was people sobbing with grief. What would it be like, after the tenth attack7 The hundredth7 I closed my eyes and fantasized about Cape Town, Sydney, Manchester. Anywhere.

When Lydia answered, I said, "I'm here, I'm covering this-so what's happening to my footage?" She was not in charge of news, but she was the only person likely to give me a straight answer.

But Lydia was stony-faced, cold with anger. "Your 'obituary' of Violet Mosala had a whole scene cooked up out of thin air. And it said nothing about the cult which killed Yasuko Nishide-and now Henry Buzzo. I've seen your deposition to the security firm, about the cholera, about the fishing boat. So what are you playing at?"

I clutched at excuses, trying to find the right ones, knowing that Mosala would have died if I hadn't used you was not good enough. I said, "Everything I faked, she really said. Off the record. Ask her."

Lydia was unmoved. "It's still unacceptable, it still violates all the guidelines. And we can't ask her anything. She's comatose."

I didn't want to hear that; if Mosala was brain-damaged, it had all been for nothing. I said, "I couldn't tell you the rest . . . because I couldn't tip off the Anthrocosmologists by broadcasting everything." I was ranting; the ACs had already known exactly how much I would have told the authorities.

Lydia's expression softened-as if I was clearly so far gone, now, that I deserved to be pitied, not rebuked. "Look, I hope you find a way to get home safely. But the doc.u.mentary's canceled-you've broken the terms of the contract and News isn't interested in your coverage of the political problems on the island."

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"Political problems? I'm in the middle of a war being funded by the biggest biotech company on the planet. I'm the only journalist on the island who seems to have a clue what's going on. And I'm SeeNet's only journalist, period. So how can they not be interested?" "We're negotiating coverage from someone else." "Yeah? Who? Janet Walsh?" "It's none of your business."

"I don't believe you! EnGeneUity are slaughtering people, and-" Lydia held up a hand to silence me. "I don't want to hear any more of your . . . propaganda. Okay? I'm sorry you've been through so much unpleasantness. I'm sorry the anarchists are killing each other." She spoke with genuine sadness, I think. "But if you've taken sides, and you want to churn out. . . polemics against the boycott and the patent laws, full of forged material. . . then that's your problem. I can't help you. "Be careful, Andrew. Goodbye."

As dusk fell, I wandered through the camp, filming, transmitting the signal in real-time to my console at home-guaranteeing a record of everything, for what it was worth.

The model refugee village was still intact, the pumps still working, the sanitation impeccable. Lights shone everywhere, haloed with orange and green through the fabric, and the aroma of cooking wafted out of every second doorway. The tents' stored photovoltaic electricity would last for hours, yet. No great damage had been done-no source of physical comfort had been lost.

But the people I pa.s.sed were tense, fearful, silent. The robot could return at any time, night or day, and kill one more person-or a thousand.

By sending the robots out of the city to strike at random, the mercenaries could rapidly undermine morale and drive people even further away, closer to the coast. Greenhouse refugees forced to cling to the sh.o.r.eline, waiting for the next big storm-the fate they'd come to Stateless to avoid-might be ready to abandon the island altogether.

I couldn't imagine what had happened to the so-called militia- maybe they'd all been slaughtered already, in some brave idiotic stand back in the city. I scanned the local nets; there were bleak reports of dozens of attacks like the one I'd witnessed, but little else. I didn't expect 298.

the anarchists to broadcast all their military secrets on the nets, but I found the absence of bl.u.s.tering propaganda, of morale-boosting claims of imminent victory, strangely chilling. Maybe the silence meant something, but if it did, I couldn't decipher it.

It was growing cold. I was reluctant to ask for shelter in a stranger's tent-I wasn't afraid of being turned away, but I still felt too much like an outsider, despite all my feeble gestures of solidarity. These people were under siege, and they had no reason to trust me.

So I sat in the restaurant, drinking hot thin soup. The other customers talked among themselves, keeping their voices low, glancing at me more with measured caution than open hostility, but excluding me nonetheless.

I'd destroyed my career-for Mosala, for technoliberation-but I'd achieved nothing. Mosala was in a coma. Stateless was on the verge of a long and b.l.o.o.d.y decline.

I felt numb, and paranoid, and useless.

Then a message arrived from Akili. Ve'd escaped the city unharmed, and was in another camp, less than a kilometer away.

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28."S it down. Anywhere that looks comfortable."

The tent contained nothing but a backpack and an unrolled sleeping bag; the transparent floor looked dry, despite the hint of dew outside, but almost thin enough for the grit beneath it to be felt through the plastic. A black patch on the wall radiated gentle heat, powered by the solar energy stored in the charge-displacement polymers which were woven into every strand of the tent's fabric.

I sat on one end of the sleeping bag. Akili sat cross-legged beside me. I looked around appreciatively; however humble, it was a vast improvement on bare rock. "Where did you find this? I don't know if they shoot looters on Stateless. . . but I'd say it was worth the risk."

Akili snorted. "I didn't have to steal it. Where do you think I've been living for the past two weeks7 We can't all afford the Ritz."

We exchanged updates. Akili had heard most of my news already, from other sources: Buzzo's death; Mosala's evacuation, and uncertain condition. But not her joke on the ACs: the automatic dissemination of her TOE around the world.

Akili frowned intensely, silent for a long time. Something had changed in vis face since I'd seen ver in the hospital; the deep shock of recognition at the news of the supposed mixing plague had given way to a kind of expectant gaze-as if ve was prepared, now, to be taken by Distress at any moment and was almost eager to embrace the experience, despite the anguish and horror all its victims had displayed. Even the few who'd been briefly calm and lucid in their own strange way had swiftly relapsed; if I'd believed that the syndrome was everyone's fate, I would not have wished to go on living.

Akili confessed, "We still can't fit our models to the data. No one I've been in contact with can work out what's going on." Ve seemed resigned 300.

to the fact that the plague would elude precise a.n.a.lysis, in the short term-but still confident that vis basic explanation was correct. "The new cases are appearing too rapidly, much faster than exponential growth."

"Then maybe you're wrong about the mixing. You made a prediction of exponential growth and now it's failed. So maybe you've been reading too much Anthrocosmology into four sick people's ranting."

Ve shook vis head, calmly dismissing the possibility. "Seventeen people, now. Your SeeNet colleague isn't the only one who's seen it; other journalists have begun to report the same phenomenon. And there's a way to explain the discrepancy in the case numbers."

"How?"

"Multiple Keystones."

I laughed wearily. "What's the collective noun for that? Not an arch of Keystones, surely. A pantheon? One person, with one theory, explaining the universe into existence-isn't that the whole premise of Anthrocosmology?"

"One theory, yes. And one person always seemed the most likely scenario. We always knew that the TOE would be broadcast to the world- but we always a.s.sumed that every last detail would be worked out in full by its discoverer, first. But if the discoverer is lying in a coma when the complete TOE is dispatched to tens of thousands of people, simultaneously . . . that's like nothing we ever contemplated. And nothing we can hope to model: the mathematics becomes intractable." Ve spread vis hands in a gesture of acceptance. "No matter. We'll all learn the truth, soon enough."

My skin crawled. In Akili's presence, I didn't know what I believed. I said, "Learn it how7 Mosala's TOE doesn't predict telepathy with the Keystone-or Keystones-any more than it predicts the universe unraveling. If she's right, you must be wrong."

"It depends what she's right about."

"Everything? As in Theory of?"

"Everything could unravel tonight-and most TOEs would have nothing to say about it, one way or another. The rules of chess can't tell you whether or not the board is strong enough to hold up every legal configuration of the pieces."

"But every TOE has plenty to say about the human brain, doesn't it? It's a lump of ordinary matter, subject to all the ordinary laws of physics.

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It doesn't start 'mixing with information' just because someone completes a Theory of Everything on the other side of the planet."

Akili said, "Two days ago, I would have agreed with you. But TOEs which fail to deal with their own basis in information are as incomplete General Relativity-which required the Big Bang to take place, as but then broke down completely at that point. It took the unification of all four forces to smooth away the singularity. And it looks like it's going to take one more unification to understand the explanatory Big Bang."

"But two days ago-?"

"I was wrong. The mainstream always a.s.sumed that an incomplete TOE was just the way things had to be. The Keystone would explain everything-except how a TOE could actually come into force. Anthro-cosmology would answer that question-but that side of the equation would never be visible." Akili held out both hands, palms pressed together horizontally. "Physics and metaphysics: we believed they'd remain separate forever. They always had, in the past, so it seemed like a reasonable premise. Like the single Keystone." Ve interlocked vis fingers and tipped vis hands to a forty-five-degree angle. "It just happens to be wrong. Maybe because a TOE which unifies physics and information- which mixes the levels, and describes its own authority-is the very opposite of unraveling. It's more stable than any other possibility; it affirms itself, it tightens the knot."

I suddenly recalled the night I'd visited Amanda Conroy, when I'd concluded, tongue-in-cheek, that the separation of powers between Mos-ala and the Anthrocosmologists was a good thing. And later, Henry Buzzo had jokingly postulated a theory which supported itself, defended itself, ruled out all compet.i.tors, refused to be swallowed.

I said, "But whose theory is going to unify physics and information? Mosala's TOE makes no attempt to 'describe its own authority.' "

Akili saw no obstacle. "She never intended it to. But either she failed to understand all the implications of her own work-or someone out on the net is going to get hold of her purely physical TOE, and extend it to embrace information theory. In a matter of days. Or hours."

I stared at the ground, suddenly angry, all the mundane horrors of the day closing in on me. "How can you sit here wrapped up in this bulls.h.i.t? Whatever happened to technoliberation7. Solidarity with the renegades? Smashing the boycott?" My own meager skills and connections had already come to nothing in the face of the invasion but somehow I'd 302.

imagined Akili proving to be a thousand times more resourceful: taking a vital role at the hub of the resistance, orchestrating some brilliant counter-attack.

Ve said quietly, "What do you expect me to do? I'm not a soldier; I don't know how to win the war for Stateless. And there'll soon be more people with Distress than there are on this whole island-and if ACs don't try to a.n.a.lyze the mixing plague, no one else is going to do it."

I laughed bitterly. "And now you're ready to believe that understanding everything drives us insane? The Ignorance Cults were right? The TOE sends us screaming and kicking into the abyss? Just when I'd made up my mind that there was no such thing."

Akili shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know why people are taking it so hard." For the first time there was a hint of fear in vis voice, breaking through the determined acceptance. "But . . . mixing before the Aleph moment must be imperfect, distorted-because if it wasn't flawed in some way, the first victim of Distress would have explained everything, and become the Keystone. I don't know what the flaw is-what's missing, what makes the partial understanding so traumatic-but once the TOE is completed . . ." Ve trailed off. If the Aleph moment didn't put an end to Distress, the misery of a war on Stateless would be nothing. If the TOE could not be faced, all that lay ahead was universal madness.

We both fell silent. The camp was quiet, except for a few young children crying in the distance, and the faint clatter of cooking utensils in some of the nearby tents.

Akili said, "Andrew?"

"Yes?"

"Look at me."

I turned and faced ver squarely, for the first time since I'd arrived. Vis dark eyes appeared more luminous than ever: intelligent, searching, compa.s.sionate. The unselfconscious beauty of vis face evoked a deep, astonished resonance inside me, a thrill of recognition which reverberated from the darkness in my skull to the base of my spine. My whole body ached at the sight of ver, every muscle fiber, every tendon. But it was welcome pain, as if I'd been beaten and left to die-and now found myself, impossibly, waking.

That was what Akili was: my last hope, my resurrection.

Ve said, "What is it you want?"

"I don't know what you mean."

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"Come on. I'm not blind." Ve searched my face, frowning slightly, puzzled but unaccusing. "Have I done something? To lead you on? To give you the wrong idea?"

"No." I wanted the ground to swallow me. And I wanted to touch ver more than I wanted to live.

"Neural as.e.x can make people lose track of the messages they're sending. I thought I'd made everything clear, but if I've confused you-"

I cut ver off. "You did. Make everything." I heard my voice disintegrating; I waited a few seconds, forcing myself to breathe calmly, willing my throat to unknot, then said evenly, "It's not your fault. I'm sorry I've offended you. I'll go." I began to stand.

"No." Akili placed a hand my shoulder, gently restraining me. "You're my friend, and you're in pain, and we're going to work this out."

Ve rose to vis feet-but then squatted down and began to unlace vis shoes.

"What are you doing?"

"Sometimes you think you know something, you think you've taken it in. But it's not real, until you've seen it with your own eyes." Ve pulled vis loose T-shirt over vis head; vis torso was slender, lightly muscled, vis chest perfectly smooth-no b.r.e.a.s.t.s, no nipples, nothing. I looked away, and then climbed to my feet, determined to walk out-at that moment, prepared to abandon ver for no better reason than to preserve a desire which I'd always known led nowhere-but then I stood there paralyzed, light-headed, vertiginous.

I said numbly, "You don't have to do this."

Akili walked up to me, stood beside me. I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead. Ve took my right hand and placed it against vis stomach, which was flat and soft and hairless, then forced my sweating fingers down between vis legs. There was nothing but smooth skin, cool and dry all the way-and then a tiny urethral opening.

I pulled free, burning with humiliation-swallowing a venomous barb about African traditions just in time. I retreated as far as the tent allowed, still refusing to face ver, and a wave of grief and anger swept over me.

"Why7 How could you hate your body so much?"

"I never hated it. But I never worshipped it, either." Ve spoke softly, striving for patience-but weary of the need to justify verself. "I didn't pick you for an Edenite. The Ignorance Cults all worship the smallest cages they can find: the accidents of birth, of biology, of history and cul- 304.

ture . . . and then rail against anyone who dares to show them the bars of a cage ten billion times larger. But my body is not a temple-or a dung-heap. Those are the choices of idiot mythology, not the choices of tech-noliberation. The deepest truth about the body is that all that restrains it, in the end, is physics. We can reshape it into anything the TOE allows."

This cool logic only made me recoil even more. I agreed with every word of it-but I clung to my instinctive horror like a lifeline. "The deepest truth would still have been true if you hadn't sacrificed-"

"I've sacrificed nothing. Except some ancient hardwired behavioral patterns buried in my limbic system, triggered by certain visual cues and pheromones . . . and the need to have small explosions of endogenous opiates go off in my brain."

I turned and let myself look at ver. Ve stared back at me defiantly. The surgery had been well executed; ve did not look unbalanced, deformed. I had no right to grieve for a loss which existed only in my head. n.o.body had mutilated ver by force; ve had made vis own decision with vis eyes wide open. I had no right to wish ver healed.

I was still shaken and angry, though. I still wanted to punish ver for what ve'd taken from me.

I asked sardonically, "And where does that get you? Does hacking out your base animal instincts grant you some . . . great, rarefied insight? Don't tell me: you can tune in to the lost wisdom of the celibate medieval saints 7".

Akili grimaced, amused. "Hardly. But s.e.x grants no insight, either- any more than shooting up heroin does-however much the cultists rant about Tantric mysteries and the communion of souls. Give an MR a magic mushroom or two, and they'll tell you, sincerely, that they've just f.u.c.ked G.o.d. Because s.e.x, drugs, and religion all hinge on the same kind of simple neurochemical events: addictive, euphoric, exhilarating-and all, equally, meaningless."

It was a familiar truth-but at that moment it cut deep. Because I still wanted ver. And the drug I was hooked on did not exist.

Akili half raised vis hands, as if to offer a truce: ve'd had no wish to hurt me, only to defend vis own philosophy. "If most people choose to remain addicted to o.r.g.a.s.m, then that's their right. Not even the most radical as.e.x would dream of forcing anyone to follow us. But I don't happen to want my own life to revolve around a few cheap biochemical tricks."

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"Not even to be made in the image of your beloved Keystone?"

"You still don't get it, do you?" Ve laughed wearily. "The Keystone is not some . . . teleological endpoint, some cosmic ideal. In a thousand years' time, the Keystone's body will be the same obsolete joke as yours and mine."

I'd run out of anger. I said simply, "I don't care. s.e.x can still be much more than the release of endogenous opiates-"

"Of course it can. It can be a form of communication. But it can also be the very opposite-with all the same biology in play. And all I've given up is that which the best and the worst s.e.x have in common. Don't you see that? All I've done is subtracted out the noise."

These words made no sense to me. I looked away, defeated. And I knew that the pain I'd thought of as an ache of longing had never been more than the bruising I'd received from the crowd as they fled the robot, and the throbbing of the wound in my stomach, and the weight of failure.

I said, without hope, "But don't you ever want some kind of... physical solace? Some kind of contact? Don't you ever, still, just want to be touched?"

Akili walked toward me and said gently, "Yes. That's what I've been trying to tell you."

I was speechless. Ve placed one hand on my shoulder, and cupped the other against my face, raising my eyes to meet vis. "If it's what you want, too-if it won't just be frustrating for you. And if you understand: this can't turn into any kind of s.e.x, I don't-"

I said, "I understand."

I undressed quickly, before I could change my mind, trembling like a nervous adolescent-willing my erection to vanish, without success. Akili turned up the heating panel, and we lay on our sides on the sleeping bag, eyes locked, not quite touching. I reached over and tentatively stroked vis shoulder, the side of vis neck, vis back.

"Do you like that?"

"Yes."