can hold off a bitI'll let you know when we're ready."
There was a sharp knock at the door, and it swung open to
admit Traynor and Horn.
"Good morning, all," Traynor said.
"Good morning," Charley said. Gonzales nodded; everyone else
pretty much ignored the man.
"I take it you are preparing for another excursion with
Aleph," Traynor said.
"That's right," Lizzie said.
"You =have no authorization," Horn said.
"I have the collective's endorsement," Lizzie said. "Also
the concurrence of the medical team, and the consent of the
participants. We will replace the resources you took from Aleph.
It is a consensus."
"One excluding any vertical consultation," Traynor said.
"Point granted," Lizzie said. "But we didn't think it
necessary. We'll report to Horn in due course."
Gonzales stood looking into the open egg and began taking his
shirt off. "Mikhail," Traynor said. "What are you doing?"
"What I came here for," Gonzales said. "The same as these
people."
"You're out of it," Traynor said. "Put your shirt back on
and go homeyou can take the shuttle out this afternoon."
"I don't think so," Gonzales said. He put his folded shirt
on the back of the chair.
"You're fired," Traynor said. His voice shook just a little.
"By you, maybe," Lizzie said. "Gonzales, welcome to the
Interface Collective."
"I'll never confirm that," Horn said.
Toshi said, "I have a question for you, Mister Traynor, and
you, Mister Horn. What do you intend to do about Aleph and the
existing crisis? Do you have a plan of action that makes what is
planned here unnecessary?"
"Yes, we are bringing in an entire staff of analysts,"
Traynor said. "We will follow their recommendations concerning
the present difficulties; we will also institute arrangements that
will prevent anything of this kind from happening again." He
nodded to Horn.
"By effecting a decentralization modality," Horn said. "The
various functionalities and aspects of the Aleph system will be
reorientated to allow of individualized project performance."
"We're going to replace Aleph with a number of smaller,
controllable machines," Traynor said.
"Are you?" Lizzie said, and she laughed.
"That is impossible," Charley said.
"Or has already been done," Toshi said. "Aleph itself
instituted a dispersal of functions to independent agents.
However, all must ultimately be supervised by a central
intelligence."
"That's what people are for," Traynor said. "Halo's reliance
on a machine intelligence has proved unworkable."
Toshi said, "As that may be. However, your remarks
concerning the immediate circumstances lack substance."
"Does your advisor agree to this plan?" Gonzales asked.
"Why do you ask?" Traynor asked.
"Curious," Gonzales said. Traynor said nothing. "Well, I
didn't think it would," Gonzales said.
Lizzie said, "One thing at a time. You bring on your
analysts, and we'll fight your silly scheme when we have to. But
in the meantime, stay away from us and perhaps we can fix what you
have broken."
"That will not be possible," Traynor said. "As your previous
efforts caused the situation, any further involvement on your part
will likely worsen it; therefore, as representative of SenTrax
Board, I am denying you authorization for any connections to Aleph
other than those required to maintain essential functions at
Halo."
"Someone here is a fool," Diana said. Dressed in a long
white cotton gown, she stepped from behind her screen, neural
cables trailing down her back. "Presumably this one." She
pointed to Horn. To Traynor she said, "Horn has lived and worked
here; he has no excuse for his ignorance of the facts of life at
Halo. You, on the other hand, have come into a situation you do
you cannot disperse Aleph or replace it with what you think are
the sum of its parts. You cannot even locate Aleph."
"What do you mean?" Horn asked.
"Where is Aleph?" Diana said. "It and Halo are so deeply
intertwined that you cannot separate them. Halo's breath is
Aleph's breath. Halo sees and hears and feels and moves with
Aleph."
"Poetic but unconvincing," Traynor said.
"More than poetry," Diana said. "No one knows where Aleph's
central components are."
"Is that true?" Traynor asked.
"Yes," Horn said.
"This complicates matters," Traynor said. "No more."
"I am not interested in this discussion," Lizzie said.
"Anyone who wishes may pursue it later, but we have things to do.
Building monitor, this is Lizzie Jordan; please notify Halo
Security that we have two intruders in the building and wish them
removed." To Traynor she said, "If you think we can't enforce
this, ask Horn about Halo Central Authority and who they'll side
withcorporate wankers who can do nothing to keep this city
running, or us. Better yet, ask your machine."
Traynor stood looking at them all, apparently doing just
that. For a couple of long heartbeats, everyone waited. Then
Traynor smiled through pain, like a man trying to hide a broken
bone. He said, "We cannot prevent you from this unauthorized
connection to Aleph, but we can and will put on the official
record that proper SenTrax authority has forbidden this attempt.
Thus you must all be considered insubordinate, and as soon as
proper means can be devised, you will be removed from your
positions with SenTrax. Also, any further damage done to the
Aleph system or Halo City, directly or indirectly, must be
considered your individual responsibility, given that proper
SenTrax authority has forbidden your intended actions."
"You take nice dictation," Lizzie said. "Consider your
statement duly noted and get the fuck out of here.
21. Drunk with Love
Waiting in the egg, Gonzales smelled strange smells and felt
electric quiverings of the flesh, saw an instant of pure blue
light, and with a sudden rush
He flew cruciform against the sky. The horizon's flat line
seemed thousands of miles away. Far below, people scurried
aimlessly across a sandy plain, and voices called in unknown
languages. Massive machinery lumbered to nowhere among the
crowds, metal arms thousands of feet long folding and unfolding in
random seizure, improbably threading their behemoth way among the
delicate flesh without harm.
The wind rushed across him, its force inflating his lungs.
Accelerating with a glad cry, he passed through an electric
membrane, a translucent, shimmering curtain that stretched
vertically from the floor below up to infinity and spread out
across the entire horizon. Beyond it, titanic figures loomed
above a landscape of rocks and hills. Next to a monstrous lute, a
head in profile reclined; from its mouth came a wisp
of smoke that
curled into a curlicued ideogramwhat it meant or what language
it came from Gonzales didn't know. Twin white horses rose into
the air in unison and neighed as he passed. A nude woman lay
inside a shellboth woman and shell were colored pink and rose
and pearl. A giant cyclops strode toward him; its doughy head
seemed half-formed, its mouth just a slash, its nose a mere bump.
It called to him with inarticulate cries.
He passed through another curtain, and the world turned black
and white. Above a featureless sea, a head flew toward him; it
had dark curly hair and a beaky nose, and it was tilted forward to
look down on the sea, as if searching for something there. He
came to a bell that covered almost a quarter of the sky. A
skeletal figure with just an empty mask for a face hung beneath it
from the bell-rope; the figure lurched, and the bell's gonging
sounded through his bones.
He came to the final curtain. The sky had turned the bright
blue of dreams. Beyond, the Point of Origin towered, its sides
pierced by an infinite number of holes. Gonzales flashed through
the curtain and felt an electric buzz down to his bones, then he
entered a hole in the vast ramparts of the dark cube.
#
Sitting behind a low bamboo table, the old man spooned
noodles into a wooden bowl, then as Gonzales nodded his assent to
each choice, added coriander, fried garlic, bean crackers, chopped
eggs, fish sausage, and sesame nuts. He ladled fish soup over it
all, finished with a shake of chili powder and a squeeze of lime,
and handed the bowl to Gonzales with a smile. Gonzales gave a
handful of cheap-looking kyat bills to the man. Mohinga, this
breakfast is called, and Gonzales loves ithe has eaten it every
morning since he discovered it weeks ago.
Gonzales found a stone bench in front of a nearby pagoda and
sat eating with a pair of crude chopsticks and watching the
passers-by. Already the day had grown warm and humid, and he knew
that any physical exertion would make him sweat. A line of boys
filed by, led by a monk; their heads were newly-shaven, their
saffron robes bright and stiff, their begging bowls shiny. They
were twelve year olds who had just completed their shin pyu, their
making as monks, a ritual most Burmese boys still went through,
even in the middle of the twenty-first century.
After breakfast he had no desire to return to the shed he
worked in; he set out for a walk through the countryside around
Pagan.
Half an hour later, walking a cart track across the arid
plain, he came to a platform built high off the ground. On it
were garlands of bright flowers and plates of rice, offerings to
propitiate the nats, spirits that had animated this land even
before the arrival of Buddhism. They were mischievous and could
be quite nasty; in the past, they had demanded human sacrifice.
The nats were strong around Pagan. At Mount Popa, just
thirty miles away, Min Mahagiri, brother and sister, "Lords of the
High Mountain," ruled. Gonzales had heard their story but
remembered only that as humans these nats had been caught in an
intrigue of envy and murder, with a neighboring king as the
villain.
A young person came walking up the path toward Gonzales,
dressed in the usual Burmese "western" garb of dark slacks and
white cotton shirt, head and face a shining sphere of light. Odd,
thought Gonzales. Wonder how that happened: this person has lost
both face and gender.
"Hello," the young person said, and the two of them found a
low stone bench in front of a nearby pagoda and sat.
"Why are you here?" the young person asked.
Gonzales was glad to be asked. He told of the information
audit about to finish, about Grossback's lack of cooperation
told what would happen next: that in just a few days he, Gonzales,
would leave Burma and almost be killed in an air attack by Burmese
guerrillas.
"Well, then, let's be on our way. Your aircraft is waiting
for you nowtime passes very quickly today, it seemsand you
should be going. Would you mind if I joined you?"
"No," Gonzales said. "Not at all. If you don't mind almost
being killed."
"Oh, that's happened to me lately. I don't mind. Besides, I
need to experience these things. Like you, I do wish to exist."
#
Gonzales sat in the plane's near-darkness, beside him the
young person with the shining face, both waiting for
"Kachin attack group, it looks like," the pilot said.
The miniatures on the screen moved toward them.
"Extremely small electronic image," the young person said.
"Very good for air attack against superior technology. Young
warriors ride them; they carry missiles on their own bodies, slung
like babies."
The pilot yelled, "Fuck, they launched!"
The plane began its air show leaps and dives and turns, and
at the instant of his terror, Gonzales felt the young person's
hand on his arm. "They fire too quickly," the young person said.
"Except for that one." The young person pointed to one of the
miniature aircraft on their plane's display and said, "It comes
closest, and I think its pilot will wait until we are at point-
blank range."
"Won't that kill him, too?" Gonzales asked.
"Oh yes," the young person said. "Let's look. Better yet,
let's be."
The pilot was a young woman wearing a night-flying helmet
that enabled her to see in infra-red and carrying beneath her, as
the young person had said, a one-shot heat seeker in a sling.
Gonzales and the young person looked through her eyes at the scene
of battle and thought her thoughts and felt her surge of adrenals.
In her glasses, the plane's image was clear, a white shape
outlined in red; she let her guidance system keep her with it,
closing the distance between them as it maneuvered and avoided the
missiles fired by those around her.
She felt excited, yet calm; she had been in combat before,
and things were going as their briefing had said. Though this
plane could outfly them so easily, could accelerate up or away,
into the night, first it had to evade their missiles; just a few
seconds of straight flight would be all they needed. She would
wait and grow closer; she would wait until the plane was so close
she could not miss, or until the others had failed.
Then all around her the others began to die, in explosions
that made white flowers in her overloaded night-glasses
The plane of her enemies stood before her, perhaps near
enough, perhaps not, but she knew there was no time left, that
there was another player in this game and it was killing them all.
So she was ready, her fingers reaching for the launch trigger,
when she saw an object coming toward her, already too close and
growing closer with impossible quickness, the heat of its exhaust
another flower in her glasses, then it burst and she felt the
smallest imaginable moment of q
uite incredible pain
Back inside the plane, Gonzales and the young person died
with her, then Gonzales began sobbing, his body hunched over, as
this woman's death and his own survival fought inside him grief
and terror and gratitude and joy and triumph and loss all mixed
and cycling through him. He could also hear the young person next
to him weeping. The light from a Burmese Air Force "Loup Garou"
played over the interior, over the two of them and the shocked
pilot, who looked back at them in amazement.
Time stopped all around them. The pilot's strained face had
frozen, all the instruments on the pilot's panel were locked onto
a single moment, and out the window, the dark river beneath them
had ceased to flow. Gonzales and the young person sat in a cell
of life amid stasis.
"Don't worry," the young person said. "This gives us a place
to talk without being bothered. What do you think just happened?"
"The attack, you mean?" The young person nodded, light from
its face giving off small shimmering waves of red and blue.
"Grossback arranged it," Gonzales said. "He wants to kill me."
"I don't think so. However, assume that what you say is
true. Is it important?"
"Yes, of course."
"Why?"
"Because " Gonzales halted, trying to think of all the ways
in which this was important: to SenTrax, Traynor
"But not to you," the young person said. "The young woman
died, and her comrades died with her: that is important. You and
the pilot lived: that, too, is important. The Burmese politics,
the multinat corporate intriguethese are makyo, tricks, nothing
more. Life and death and their traces in the human heart, these
have meaning to you. This woman's death lives in you, and your
life shows its meaning. Forget Grossback, Traynor, SenTrax; fear,
ambition, greed." The young person looked closely into his face
and said, "I am weaving words around your heart to guide it,
nothing more."
#
Lizzie crawled in darkness through a tunnel in the rock.
Chill water ran down grooves in the floor and soaked her blouse
and pants. She tried to stand but lifted her head only a few
inches when she bumped into the top of the chatire, the small
passage she crawled through. She did not feel at all alarmed or
disoriented. The low tunnel would lead somewhere, and they would
emerge. This was a test of some kind, it seemed.