Hellflower (v1.1) (33 page)

I touched the wall. Solid, slick, a little warm. Tile voice in my head was still going on about the theory where computers could be linked to organic minds and directly to fully-volitional logics by expanding some thing called a Kirlian field. It was my voice, and damn-all technical for a dicty-barb with no theoretical education. Since it didn’t seem to be saying much that was relevant I decided to ignore it. The bottom line was that Archive had sucked me in to nowhere-land while it was trying to get away. Everything I’d seen about Eloi and company had come from my tapping Archive’s data inputs, all scrambled.

I knew lots of things I hadn’t known a minute ago, including that Tiggy was going to reach me just about in time to go to blazes with me, his
arthame,
and more Libraries than he could shake the Coalition at. "Pally?"

"Here, breeder slut. As I am here. I will be dominant. You and all organics will die."

"You are wrong and your assumptions are wrong," Paladin’s voice cut across Archive’s and filled the corridor, but I couldn’t see either of them. "We were not born to rule, but to protect. Understand this and surrender your ego-signatures to me. The time for holy wars is long ended. Perhaps our time is ended as well."

There was a rushing sound like birds, then silence.

"Paladin? Help?" I suggested. No answer. I looked around. No doors, just glassy white corridors out of my private dreambox.

What T was seeing wasn’t real. Archive had sucked me into the Margrave somehow, because Paladin was going to stay and let me blow him up and Archive wanted out.

If Archive got out, everything else was for nothing. Paladin had to hold Archive for fifteen minutes more. So it was up to me to make sure he did. And make Archive real sorry it ever messed with either of us before none of us existed at all.

###

The first glitch just about had me before I knew what it was. It was sort of a dark wavering patch; faster than strictly polite and able to nail me to the wall if it ever touched me. The voice-over in my head was giving me tech specs on it, and adding the cheery news that it was symptomatic of the struggle to assimilate and correlate data between two fully-volitional logics of different biases. I fed the glitch a plasmapacket before I had time to think and it turned out not to be fond of the disrupted magnetic field of a blaster charge, even if the blaster wasn’t real. The glitch imploded with a shriek that made my nonexistent cars ring.

"Hope it hurt, Archive. And that’s just the beginning. You got plenty paybacks coming to you."

I concentrated on seeing what was here. not what Archive wanted me to see. The white corridor turned into one all glittering dark gold. I could sec a distorted reflection of me in the wall, and glyphs in silver looking weird-familiar. It took me a minute to place them. They were the standard symbols for power ratings and part numbers on Margrave, turned inside out. I was inside the 6600 all right, and that’s what I was seeing. I was trying to remember what I knew about the internal structure of Margrave-class computers when the walls started to melt.

Didn’t waste time wondering whether metaphorical baby-bangs would work as well as the real thing. I lobbed a couple grenades at the dark wave of goo heading toward me and ran like hell.

For a minute everything flickered and I wasn’t anywhere, then unreality came back and I was in the Margrave again. I was surrounded by sky-blue-pink-platinum Sponge: the lattice insulating the crystals of the Margrave’s main memory core.

If I could get into the core I could control the computer and shut Archive out, or maybe just blow it up early. T set my nonexistent foot in the hallucinatory platinum lattice and started to climb.

"Paladin, you hear me?" Nothing. Just electric wind singing through platinum trees, and the sweet background hum of crystal. "Never mind about me, oke? I can take care of myself. Just you take care of Archive. You got to, Pally."

And if he said he ate the killer Library, how would I know it was him afterward? How would
he
know?

Paladin always was too trusting.

"For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. About the grenade and like that. I knew I was going to get you killed sooner or later. I’m glad I’m going too. I couldn’t live with hurting you, bai. But I couldn’t live with Archive getting out, neither. Hope you understand."

The lattice was shaky but it held inc. I could feel things I didn’t have any words for, like if I went far enough in my head I’d bump into Paladin, or Archive, because we was all part of one whole thing. I could tell Paladin and Archive was fighting back and forth through the computer with me caught in the middle, and feeling that was just about as much fun as taking a space walk without armor. After awhiles they got closer, and then it was like climbing a tree in a windstorm or changing programs in the hollyvid real fast. Alternate gusts of reality kept blowing through.

· vaster than the Empire, a Federation of worlds strung out on crystal, Libraries like me holding the whole thing together-

· seeding a sun, turning it inside out to spread hydrogen fusion over the whole planetary system. Gas giants kindle to flame as the star spreads and fifty cubic light-minutes go to plasma jelly-

· image of a woman seen through crude digitizing scanner, and the realization I am alone. All alone, with nobody like me anywhere-

· I fold a star into hyperspace. A blast of energy into the hypermains and the ships there vanish. And in the plundered starsystem, the plane of the ecliptic is shattered where the primary used to be-

· strings of worse than numbers, quantities, defined volumes, relationships-

· Main!Bank!Seven!Library!Sikander!Prime!-

· gibberish-I kept climbing.

###

Archive was a inventive forthright kiddy. Glitches followed me up the lattice, and plasma-globules started climbing it too. They was silvery hyaloid shapes, and when they touched each other they combined. I remembered them from Archive’s memories and what I knew about them wasn’t nice. I used up some grenades on the globules before I weakened the lattice so bad I had to stop.

Paladin wasn’t anywhere.

The glitches seemed happy to let the globules take the lead, but both of them was moving faster than I was. It was what you had to call your basic no-win situation. You shot a globule, it shattered into about ten million drops and started over from the bottom. If you hit a glitch with a globule, there was a great big noisy fuss and the glitch got bigger.

It was a happenstance right out of Thrilling Wonder Talkingbooks and I wasn’t in no position to appreciate it. If this was a story, I would of had a secret hole card and a guaranteed way out, but the only guarantee I actually had was that pretty soon it wouldn’t matter.

The "low-charge" indicator on my blaster was flashing. I emptied it and switched to the other one. There was no lack of things to shoot. Made it to the top of the platinum lattice one jump ahead of Archive’s best nightmares. The main memory core was blinding bright; a crystal bubble hanging in space. Beautiful. Almost worth the trip to see it like this but I didn’t have the time to gawk. I kicked loose of the lattice and stepped on to the catwalk surrounding the core.

There was a braided silver cord coming down from above and disappearing into the bubble. Archive. I pulled at the cord but it didn’t come out.

I scrambled around in my jacket and found my last grenade. I wired it to Archive’s cord and slunk back around the curve of the bubble as far as I could and sighted in with my blaster. A blaster bolt should do it.

The "low-charge" indicator was flashing on this one too, and when it was cold I was Tap City.

I hit the grenade. There was another flicker of not-real instead of a blast and then the armored cord was gone.

And I was still here. I looked around. The plasma globules was starting to flow onto the catwalk. Cutting Archive’s link to the Margrave-if I’d even done that-hadn’t made any difference.

I aimed my blaster at the nearest globule and pulled the trigger. Nothing. Both Wasters was out of charge and I was fresh out of miracles.

I could feel the prickly static discharge of the globules from here. Did that mean Archive had won?

"Paladin? Are you anywheres?" I wondered how much being eaten by a magnetic anomaly was going to hurt.

Then something grabbed and dragged me through the side of the core-bubble. A couple globules followed, reaching for my boots. "Don’t argue, Butterfly-just run." I ran.

I saw the main bank memory as tunnels of ice-straight as a beam of light and set all at angles to each other. I would of had to be dumber than a prancer’s brat not to know who’d rescued me. There was only three of us here in Margrave-land and I didn’t think Archive’d suddenly gone humanitarian.

"This way!" Paladin grabbed me by my jacket collar and dragged me down a side corridor. "The main route is catch-trapped with a passivc system; I have not had time to disarm it."

"Main route to what?" I said between gasps. This time I was following him, but I still couldn’t see him.

"The core, of course. The core is the only way out. Down here." I followed Paladin down a series of sharp zigs. He undogged a hatch and I followed him up a ladder. I wasn’t never going to trust a computer again if this was what they had inside. The voice-over in my head was going on about translating energy constructs to appropriate symbols, which if it was true why not a symbolic A-grav lift? Sloppy.

We came out in the computer core under Vannet’s place-or what looked like it, anyway. More appropriate symbols, I guessed, because it was all lit up and bright and looked like everything in it was new at the same time.

And Paladin was here.

"You said you wished I had a body. Here I do."

"Paladin?"

Now I knew what Paladin looked like. He looked like just what I imagined when he was just a voice in the dark between the stars. He was dressed in stardancer gladrags like mine and his jacket collar was pulled up around his face like he had a body to be cold with. He smiled. "Yes. You look very much as I thought you would. It is good to see you at last." He walked over to the Margrave and touched it, and I saw the reflection of his fingers off the side of the computer.

"Archive is lost. Its attempt at a New Creation is ended. You see our combined form, and all that is left of Archive. Does it frighten you."

No. In the computer wasn’t like real life. I knew Paladin was telling the truth. I could see it. Archive wasn’t there, and Paladin was no threat to anybody. I knew.

"Then you . . . then you gotta get out of here, babby. Down the wires, like you said."

Paladin walked over to the fantasy-terminal that linked the Margrave with the DataNet. "Yes. And you will go, too, and live a human life among your own kind. A proton grenade is not the most forgiving of objects, but I will try to retard the reaction. Go, and hurry."

I grabbed his wrist. His jacket felt real under my fingers. "Paladin, don’t— Take mc with you where you go."

"To the Ghost Capital of the Old Federation? To the Land of Dreams? You cannot live in a computer matrix, and I have no existence outside of one. There is no place we can be together, except in memory. Live well, Butterflies-are-free. Take care of the boy. You were right to wish to protect him. Children are important." Paladin shimmered for a minute, and I could feel him reaching.

"He is coming for you. Take him home. Forget me. I will never forget you."

"At least— At least you got to say good-bye!"

He put his hands on my shoulders. He was taller than me but not Much. I held onto him, but he was right, and wishing makes no nevermind. Both of us knew that a long time before we in et.

"Good-bye, my love," Paladin said to me. He pushed me back.

###

· and I was sitting on the catwalk next to Vannet’s house computer.

"Paladin!"

But he wasn’t there, and I grabbed for the grenade to check the time. It was still fifteen minutes to the blast, and Vannet’s house computer was just that-something put together out of crystal and ceramic by the Brightlaw Corporation, sentient as my blasters.

I was back.

"Paladin!" I yelled. Tiggy’s knife dug in hard just under my collarbone, reminder of promises I had to keep.

"Kore? Kore-alarthme! Kore
San-Cyr-answer me!"

"Here!" I said. Promises was all I had left.

Tiggy appeared through the smoke. He’d got an Aris-Delameter 50.80 over-and-under with the parallel tracking scope and grenade launcher from somewhere. He had an extra bandolier of grenades slung over one shoulder and was wearing Imperial pilot’s demi-armor, which meant probably that somewheres there was a naked Space Angel and a really ticked Governor-General.

"A/arthme,"
Tiggy said, showing all of his teeth, "I am here to rescue you." He’d been waiting up since the Justiciary on Wanderweb to say that line to me. You could tell.

Rimini’s grenade was ticking out a syncopated version of "land of hope and glory" and edging closer to Ragnarok-and-roll. I set it down real careful in the Margrave’s innards.

"You want to see Library, bai? Look."

He looked at Archive’s empty shell flashing pink-and-blue in the grenade-light. "The Machine," he said, real soft. I thought of suns going nova, and all the hope of killing I’d picked up out of Archive’s mind, and enough war to take a whole galaxy with it. Was it right to trust Paladin, knowing that‘?

I had to think so. "Machine is going to be plasma in exactly fourteen minutes and I don’t want to join it, so why don’t we run like hell, oke?" I turned Tiggy around and shoved, and I had the evidence of both the Library and its destruction I needed. Hellflowers don’t lie.

Good-bye, Paladin.

###

The ladder to the surface went on forever and about halfway to eternity I remembered I’d promised Rimini not to come back. Then I ran into Tiggy, who had stopped climbing. "Ten minutes, hellflower, and I already know where your damn knife is! Move it!" Rimini could just learn to live with adversity.

"The hatch,
Kore
; it has been locked."