Existence (17 page)

Clutching the Artifact with both knees, he fumbled, using the fingers of his right hand to release the wrist catch on his left glove, letting a rising sense of excitement draw him toward yet another violation of rules. What he had in mind wasn’t kosher. Direct, personal contact could lead to contamination. Always a concern with samples recovered from space.

Except.

In moments, the main chute would deploy. Then—with luck—a VSTOL recovery bird would appear, to snag him out of the air for the brief trip to NASA Marti Space Center, in Havana. Whereupon, who knew when there would ever be another chance?

This is not professional,
a part of him chided, as he contemplated his bare left hand.

True enough. But I haven’t felt “professional” in years.

Bare fingertips hovered over the translucent surface, causing ripples to flow, as if preparing to meet him at the point of contact. Whatever lay within … it somehow knew. It sensed the nearness of living flesh.

What if it really is alien? And dangerous?

He couldn’t help suddenly imagining the oblong ovoid—gripped between his thighs—as something out of science fiction. A cuckoo’s egg. Perhaps a Trojan horse. “Contamination” could work both ways. Might it be a terrible mistake to touch the thing?

And if the tech people think that way, in Havana, it might never be tried. They could study it for decades behind glass, without ever getting around to this one, simple test.

Another sudden jolt bounced his little craft as the main parasail popped from its canister, rapidly unfolding and then auto-warping in order to steer the descent. His little capsule began swaying to a jaunty rhythm, as one less failure mode lay between Gerald and terra firma. The crazed gyrations of
Mars Needs Women
gave way to more stately, steady, and moralistic passages, from the score of
Batman.

Was the ai trying to say something? About responsibility?

All right then. Let’s have a compromise.

“Akana Hideoshi,” he said, adding a tooth click for
TRANSMIT
.

It didn’t take long for her face to reappear, this time free of static, filling a quarter of the tiny cabin, in holographic detail.

“Sorry about that, Gerald. There’s been a distraction. Some rich doofus crashed his suborbital phallus, not far from here. Had to fend off demands from his lawyer, his mother, and a whole aristo-bestiary, that we drop everything and search for the trillie-clown.”

She tossed off a derisive shrug.

“
Okay then. You’re on target. The osprey will snag you in…”

Akana blinked, finally taking in the sight of Gerald, with his hand poised over the Artifact on his lap.

“Wait a second. What do you think you’re … Now just hold on there, Gerald. Don’t do anything you’ll…”

He offered a rueful smile.

“General, I’m invoking full quarantine.

“Better put up a cot for me, inside the specimen lab.

“And bring on the shrinks.”

“Gerald, put your glove on. That’s an order. Put that thing back in its—”

Polychrome patterns swirled toward the nearest fingertip, as if eager.

Or else—he suddenly pondered—preparing to defend itself.

Well. Why not find out?
Suddenly eager, he bypassed any timid finger touch, firmly planting his whole hand upon the cool, curved surface. And …

And so?

There was no sudden jolt or electric arc, or any cheap-movie disturbance. Just another set of ripples, no more spectacular than dropping pebbles into an oil slick. And even those then began to shrink, coalescing to produce a fringe, an outline, roughly the shape of his hand.

Not perfect, by any means. In fact, as he (and Akana) watched, Gerald realized that the match was defective. Several of the finger impressions crumpled, a bit too short to match his own. Another pair drew outward, like dough, centimeters too long for any kind of match.

Knuckles bulged. Then he realized—

There are six.

Six fingers.

And—

It’s a hand that’s … thinner than mine.

And so is the wrist.

A tapered wrist, leading to a slender forearm that emerged into view as more of the murk parted, revealing greater depth. Instead of a bulky, yellow spacesuit, that opposing arm appeared to be clad in a loose white sleeve.

From the surface where two hands touched, his own arm rose toward his shoulder, while its strange-looking counterpart descended
into
the cylinder’s tightly limited interior.

Limited?

More mist fell away and his perspective shifted. Abruptly, Gerald was no longer looking
down
at an object in his lap, or into a cramped cylinder. Rather, it felt like peering
through
a lens at another world equal in size to this one—a weird perspective, but one that made eerie sense. His hand remained planted against an imaged hand, as that other forearm met an elbow, oddly jointed … leading to a stout and strangely lithe shoulder … part of a torso draped in shimmering cloth …

… and then—as he held his breath—a head, as long and wedgelike as that of a horse, only with paired eyes that aimed forward, above a rounded mouth. There seemed, even, to be a semblance of a smile.

Sudden jerks rocked his little space capsule, as the recovery plane snagged its chute. But Gerald’s sole concern was to keep his left hand in place—not breaking contact as the figure within seemed to stride or float closer, halving the ersatz distance between them, bringing that alien head near enough to peer outward at him with a gaze that seemed oddly familiar.

The mouth did not move, but a fringe of flapping cheek membranes did. And what emerged then surprised Gerald more than anything so far.

Not sound, but
letters
. Roman alphabet letters, sans serif, propelled from those gill-like openings, emanating like waves of inaudible sound to flutter up against the barrier between two worlds—his outer one and the other universe within. Plastering themselves, as if upon the inner surface of a curved window, they jostled and formed a single word, right next to the place where hand met hand.

Greeting.

That was all.

For now, it was enough.

PART THREE

A THOUSAND NATURAL SHOCKS

There’s a reason why kings built large palaces, sat on thrones and wore rubies all over. There’s a whole social need for that, not to oppress the masses, but to impress the masses and make them proud and allow them to feel good about their culture, their government and their ruler so that they are left feeling that a ruler has the right to rule over them, so that they feel good rather than disgusted about being ruled.

—George Lucas,
New York Times
, 1999

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

—Adam Smith,
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
, 1759

It’s good to be the king.

—Mel Brooks,
History of the World
, Part II

SPECIES

nervous normalpeople
+
/- building careers
+
/- building houses - civilizations - families … breeders-breeders linear thinkers obsessed with time. reason-not-rhyme -/-

animals live threaded in spacetime’s warp n’ woof -/ never stand outside and criticize like cro-magnon cro-mutants—always whining how things oughta be different -/- striving to MAKE things different
+
and they call us auties mental?-!

one theory says auties are throwbacks —- visual visceral skittish reactive
+
/- Temple said it’s no blame or maim to be closer to mother-mammal-nature!/
+
Neanderthals probly lived embedded like us
+
allied with cobblies the way men use dogs
+
!

do they live again
+
/- in us? normal(mutant)people slew the poor thals—will cro-mags do same to us?/? by “curing the autism plague”
+
when nature seems to say “make more auties, not less!”
+
?

who did the grunt coding that made the internets?
+
built software empires?
+
aspies and borderlines did … then normals thronged to the games
+
the virtworlds
+
OUR worlds
+
/
+
and we true-auties are all over the nets and webs!/
+
emerging from our prisons—rissons—frissons—missions—permissions—stopit stopit stop stop stop stop—

it was the electric hum. poormom left open the door of my candle-lit room -/- i glimpsed a lightbulb in the hall
+ + +
fifty-cycle flicker —- (world should switch to DC) … that flicker traps me in here.…

my realhands flutter / realvoice squawks
+ + +
in the “real” world I’m helpless
+
moan and slap the window -/- poormom must pry my jaw to give medicine I need to stay alive
+
/- while I thrash and she gets older -/
+
poormom

but hand-flutters matter! words/meanings flow
+
my-ai translates
+
sending a bright-feathered bird-avatar roaming the virtcityscape
+
unafraid of cars bars or guitars
+
graceful
+
a me that’s far more real than this ungainly
+
fluttering stork-woman
+
!
+
but there’s a price—hard black ice.

—i sense a disturbance
+ + +
something’s coming
+ + +

cobblies are nervous too

some are getting out of town

16.

KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

The world still shook and harsh straps tugged his battered body. That much was the same. It had been going on for a very long time.

Only now, as Hacker drifted toward consciousness, he gradually realized—the
rhythm
of abuse had changed. Instead of a punishing, pounding beat, this swaying motion seemed almost restful, if you ignored the pain. It took him back to childhood, when his family would escape civilization on their trimaran wingsail yacht, steering its stiff, upright airfoil through gusts that would topple most wind-driven vessels.

“Idiots!”
His father would grumble, each time he veered the agile craft to avoid colliding with some day-tripper, who didn’t grasp the concept of right-of-way.
“Used to be, the only ones out here were people like us, raised for this sort of thing. Now, with nine billion damn tourists crowding everywhere, there’s no solitude!”

“The price of prosperity, dear,”
his mother would reply, more soft-heartedly.
“At least everyone’s getting enough to eat. There’s no more talk of revolution.”

“For now. Till the next bust-cycle turns them radical again. Anyway, look at the top result of this prosperity surge. A mad craze for hobbies! Everyone’s got to be an expert at something. The best at something! I tell you it was better when people had to struggle to survive.”

“Except for people like us?”

“Exactly,”
Father had answered, ignoring his wife’s arch tone.
“Look how far we must go nowadays, to have somewhere to ourselves.”

The old man’s faith in rugged self-reliance extended to the name he insisted on giving their son. Hacker also inherited—along with twelve billion New Dollars—the same quest. To do whatever it took to find someplace all his own.

And now … after fifteen minutes of a very expensive ride … plus God knows how long drifting unconscious … here I am. On my own.

At sea, yet again.

That much was obvious, even though his eardrums were still clamped, and it took considerable effort just to get one eyelid open. Squinting, as blurry vision gradually returned, Hacker grew dimly aware of a number of things—like the fact that all the expensive ailectronics in his expensive capsule seemed to be stone-cold dead. A failure that somebody was sure going to pay for! It meant there was no way to answer his first question—
How much time has passed?

He knew it was a lot. Too much.

He also saw—through barely separating eyelids—that crystal waters surrounded the bubble canopy of his suborbital space pod, which rocked and swayed, more than half tilted over.
It’s not supposed to do that
.
I should be floating upright … nose up out of water … till the recovery team …

A glance to the left explained much. Ocean surrounded the phalloid-shaped craft, but part of its charred heat shield was snagged on a reef of coral branches, speckled with bright fish and undulating vegetation. Nearby, he saw the parasail chute that had softened final impact. Only now, caught by ocean currents, the chute blossomed open and shut, rhythmically tugging Hacker’s little sanctuary.

And with each surge, the crystalline canopy plunged closer to a craggy coral outcrop. Soon, it struck hard and Hacker winced. He did not hear the bang, of course, or any other sound. Not directly. But impact heaved him hard against the chest straps and made the sono-implant in his jaw throb.

Fumbling with half-numb hands, he managed to release the harness catch, only to fall over the left-hand instrument panel, cringing in pain. That awful reentry would leave him bruised for weeks. And yet …

Yet, I’ll have the best story to tell. No one will ever match it!