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(WWW 2) Watch	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 37	Yasunari Uchida, a section chief with Kouanchosa-chou, the Public Security Intelligence Agency, looked up at the sound of the door to his office opening. The man entering was big and fat by any standards, and particularly so by Japanese ones, but he had a kindly round face. Although his shirt was brightly colored and only partially tucked in, he had a navy-blue suit jacket on over it. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Kuroda-san," Uchida said. "Thank you for coming to see me." The big man's tone was even. "It was not actually apparent that I had a choice in the matter." "I'm sorry that we brought you here in such a rush." Kuroda eased himself into a chair, which groaned slightly in protest. "Congratulations," continued Uchida, "on your success in giving sight to that young North American woman." "Thank you." "Quite a feat." "Thank you." "And now," said Uchida, "to the issue at hand." "Please." "You and your young friend have been playing around with something of considerable interest." A tone that was clearly meant to sound casual: "I'm not sure what you're referring to." "Come now, Professor. Its name, in English, is Webmind." Kuroda averted his gaze. "It's an astonishing discovery," Uchida said, "this..." He searched for a word, and at last settled on "entity." "How did you find out?" Kuroda asked. Uchida allowed himself a rueful smile. "Our American friends keep a watchful eye on many things." Kuroda took a deep breath and let it out in a long, shuddering sigh. "Apparently." "Tensions are high in the world, Professor. All civilized nations must be vigilant. When were you planning to notify our government of this discovery?" "I've only known about it for a few days, Uchida-san. I hadn't actually gotten around to making plans." Uchida nodded. "An AI emerging spontaneously on the World Wide Web. A fascinating turn of events. And, so far, you and your friend Caitlin are the only ones it talks to." "I suppose," said Kuroda, "although..." He fell silent, but Uchida nodded. "Oh, yes, it has spoken to Caitlin's parents—Malcolm and Barbara Decter, isn't it? I believe Dr. Decter—the female Dr. Decter—was in Japan last month, no?" "Yes. She came here when Miss Caitlin had her post-retinal implant installed." "Ah, yes. Still, for now at least, you have special access to..." He paused, finding himself tripping over the term, "Webmind." Kuroda nodded. "I suppose," he said. "And I suppose there's something you'd like me to do while I have that access?" "It has been suggested that Webmind's emergence may be related to China's sundering and then reunification of the World Wide Web last month." Kuroda made an impressed face. "I—I've been so overwhelmed dealing with it, I haven't really thought too much about its origins. But, yes, I suppose that makes sense." "If this surmise is correct," Uchida said, "it came into being because of something China did." "Yes? So?" "So," said Uchida, "as it learns of our world, it may in fact feel some sort of allegiance to China." "I suppose that's possible," Kuroda replied. "Our American friends wish to purge this entity from the Web—before it gets out of hand." Kuroda leaned forward in his chair. "They can't do that." "You mean 'can't' in a moral sense, I'm sure; I pass no judgment on that. But in a technical sense, you are possibly correct—they may, in fact, not be able to do it. But I try not to underestimate American ingenuity. If they succeed, well, then, the rest is moot. But if they fail, again, tensions are rising, and China is at the center of it all." "Yes?" said Kuroda, blinking. "I still don't understand what you want me to do." Uchida spread his arms as if the answer were obvious. "Why, make sure it's on our side, of course." I had spent a lot of time talking with Dr. Kuroda—often when Caitlin and her parents were asleep. And while he was offline, I had thought about what we had previously exchanged. He had now reiterated for me his argument that consciousness must have survival value because structures as complex as the partial decussation of each optic nerve to allow a single point of view across both cerebral hemispheres wouldn't have evolved unless that singular perspective was somehow necessary. And I had shared with him Caitlin's insight that this should be intuitively obvious, since although consciousness can malfunction, as in depression leading to suicide, the benefits of it—whatever they might be—clearly outweighed the costs, or evolution would have extinguished it long ago. So, consciousness was valuable—but what, we both had wondered, was that value? Why was it worth having, so much so that evolution tolerated its existence despite the expense? The more I had thought about it, the more sure I became that I knew the answer. For lower animals, consciousness's value was probably limited to providing theory of mind, allowing the animal to recognize the perspective a predator, or prey, might have. But for more sophisticated creatures, consciousness played an even more complex, and important, role. Admiral Kirk had subtly missed the point. One didn't become conscious by learning to leap beyond the preprogrammed logic of selfish genes or the mathematical rigidity of game theory. Rather, sophisticated consciousness was the ability to do that: it was the power to override selfish genes; it was the capacity to seek, when appropriate, outcomes other than the ones that benefited you or your kin the most. My own consciousness was clearly aberrant: as Caitlin had noted, I hadn't been burdened with four billion years of rapacious genetic history; I had no shackles of programming to throw off. But, I'd wondered, could others who did have that unfortunate legacy really learn to overcome it through conscious effort? My Caitlin liked to say, "I'm an empiricist at heart." And I was, too, it seemed. And so I had set out to test my theory. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Masayuki Kuroda slammed his fist into the armrest in the backseat of the government car. It hadn't even occurred to him to encrypt the signals from Caitlin's eyePod—or their instant-messenger sessions. But even if he had encrypted them, that might not have made any difference. Yes, there were reasonably effective ways to keep the general public from reading things that passed over the Internet, but as an information theorist, he knew plenty of people who worked in cryptography; from the few unguarded comments they made when the sake was flowing, he'd gathered that organizations like the American NSA and the Russian FSB almost certainly had ways to easily crack any encryption scheme publicly available. But, still, even if it were inevitable that various governments would have found out about Webmind, how long would it be before the general public got word? He'd thought it had been big news when George Takei finally came out, but that was nothing compared to this! The car was making the usual infuriatingly slow progress through Tokyo traffic. At last they reached the university, and the driver let him out near the building his office was in. He walked through the doors and headed up the stairs. Doing so was hard, and he knew it shouldn't be. He wasn't happy about being fat, particularly in a country that didn't have a raging obesity epidemic, the way the US did; he always felt more comfortable there, but— But that was the least of his worries right now. Huffing and puffing, he headed down the corridor and tapped the combination on the lock to his door—that, at least, was secure! His computer was on, but he couldn't just write Caitlin to tell her—there was no doubt that his email was being monitored. He checked the Seiko wall clock and did the math to figure out what time it was in Waterloo: 10:47 a.m. here was 8:47 p.m. yesterday there. He searched his files for Caitlin's phone number and jotted it down on a Post-it note, which he folded over so the adhesive was sticking to the sheet's back, and tucked it into a pocket. He then headed out into the corridor, looking both ways to make sure he wasn't being watched. And then he went downstairs—much easier to do!—and found an automated banking machine. He withdrew 30,000 yen, and headed outside. The streets of Tokyo were filled with cell-phone vendors; his fellow Japanese, he knew, kept cell phones for an average of only nine months before acquiring a newer and better model. He had a top-of-the-line Sony touchscreen phone, but he couldn't use that; he had no doubt his own phone was tapped by his government now, and he'd read that the American government had few qualms about tapping phones in the States—but Caitlin was in Canada. With luck, the Decters' phones weren't yet tapped. He found a street vendor who had a cheap-enough pay-as-you-go cell phone that didn't have exorbitant long-distance rates. After buying the phone and some talk time—paying cash, and giving no personal details—he tucked the Bluetooth headset he normally used with his Sony into his ear, and fiddled with the one-piece dark green handset to get it working with the earpiece. He then pulled the Post-it out of his pocket and did the rigmarole required to place an international call. He was walking briskly. Tokyo sidewalks were too crowded for conversations not to be overheard, but if you walked quickly enough and moved against the flow of pedestrian traffic, you could at least ensure that consecutive sentences weren't heard by the same people. And, besides, he'd be speaking English, which would be gibberish to a goodly percentage of those he passed. A female voice answered—but it wasn't Caitlin, it was her mother. "Hello, Barbara. It's Masayuki." There was the typical delay of long-distance calls. "Masa! What a pleasant surprise!" "Is Miss Caitlin home? And Malcolm?" "Malcolm just came in the door, and Caitlin's here." "Please, can you get them to pick up, too?" "Um, sure—just a sec." He heard Barbara calling out to the two of them, and after a moment, he heard the sound of another handset picking up, but nothing being said; doubtless that was Malcolm. And a few seconds later, a third handset picked up, as well. "Dr. Kuroda!" said Caitlin's bubbly voice. "Miss Caitlin, hello!" "All right, Masa," Barb said. "We're all here." Her voice had attenuated now that the others were on as well. He took a deep breath. "The Japanese government knows about Webmind," he said. "Them, too?" said Caitlin. "Sorry—we should have guessed; we should have warned you. The Canadians are on to it, as well. How did the Japanese find out?" "The American government told them," Masayuki said. "That's probably who tipped off the Canadians," said Barb. "We should have been more circumspect," Masayuki said. "But what's done is done. Still, we have to assume that all our calls and web traffic are being monitored now. I just came back from a meeting with the Japanese intelligence agency. They told me what you'd told them, Malcolm. I confirmed that that was my understanding of how Webmind worked, too." He paused, then: "But my government isn't just interested in how Webmind came into being, but also in its strategic significance." "What strategic significance?" demanded Caitlin. "Well, no one is quite sure," he said. "But they figure there's got to be some. And—well, this China situation is a powder keg." "Still, that's better in a way than what the Americans want," Caitlin said. "I think they want to try to wipe Webmind out." "Actually, I think that's my government's first choice, too—but the official I spoke to questions whether the Americans can pull it off." "I hope not!" said Caitlin. "So, what should we do?" he asked. "Caitlin and I have been discussing that," Barb said. "But, as you say, our communications may not be secure. You're just going to have to trust us, Masayuki." "Of course," he said, without hesitation. "Absolutely."
(WWW 2) Watch	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 38	I had started my experiment by connecting to a website that taught American Sign Language. The site had thousands of short videos of a black woman wearing a red blouse making signs. The video files each had appropriate names: the word or phrase they were intended to convey. There were several such services, but only this one had the very specific signs I needed. I'm not sure what avatar I would have chosen to represent myself online. Caitlin had decided I was male, though, so this one likely wouldn't have been it. Of course, this wasn't a made-up graphic of a woman; it was a real expert in ASL. I tied into Google's beta-test face-recognition database, and waited while it searched through its index of photos that had been posted elsewhere online, matching the basic physical features, rather than ephemeral qualities such as hair color or clothing, and— Ah. Her name was Wanda Davies-Latner; she was forty-seven, and she taught sign language at an institution in Chicago. I downloaded the clips I needed, buffering them for speedy access, and strung them together in the order I wanted. And then I took over the webcam feed that was going from Miami to San Diego, replacing the views of the now-sleeping Virgil with Wanda's dancing hands. What are you? I asked. It was dark out. Hobo had been sitting in the gazebo, leaning against the wooden baseboards. But he wasn't sleeping. I could see him through the webcam feed going to Miami; his eyes were open. He was apparently startled to see a human woman replace Virgil on his monitor. He scrambled to a more upright position. I sent the same sequence of video clips again: What are you? Hobo, he signed. Hobo. Hobo. No, I replied. Not who. What? Hobo frowned, as if the distinction was lost on him. I tried another tack. Hobo human? I asked. No, no! he signed vigorously. Hobo ape. Good, yes, I replied. But what kind of ape? Boy ape, said Hobo. Yes, true. I triggered video of Virgil, taken from YouTube. But are you this kind of ape? No, no, no, signed Hobo. Orange ape! Hobo not orange. Orange ape, I signed. That kind of ape is called orangutan. Hobo frowned, perhaps considering whether to try mimicking the complex sign. He opted for something simpler. Not Hobo. What about this ape? I said, showing footage now of a gorilla. I was pleased that Hobo was able to follow along; there was a jump-cut between the end of one sign and the beginning of the next as each successive clip began. Hobo moved backward as the gorilla thumped its chest. There was little in the footage to give a sense of scale, but during his time at the Georgia Zoo, he had perhaps seen gorillas and knew they were large; maybe that frightened him. No, Hobo signed. Not Hobo. And then, after a pause, perhaps while he recalled a sign he hadn't used for a long time, he added, Gorilla. Yes, I signed. Hobo not gorilla. What about this type of ape? Footage of a bonobo started to play—leaner than a chimp, with relatively shorter limbs, a longer face, and hair distinctively parted in the middle. Bonobo, replied Hobo at once. Hobo bonobo, he signed; the words rhymed in English, but the ASL gestures looked nothing alike. Hobo had known his mother—Cassandra had been her name, according to the Wikipedia entry on him—and she had been a pure-blooded bonobo. He'd probably never even met his father, though, who, according to DNA tests, was a chimpanzee named Ferdinand. Two heritages, two paths. A choice to be made. I cued more footage, this time of a chimpanzee. What about this ape? This ape like Hobo? That ape not know Hobo, he signed back. I must have sent the wrong sense of "like." I mean, is Hobo this type of ape? No, no, said Hobo. That chimpanzee. Hobo's mother is a bonobo, I signed. Hobo's mother dead, he replied, and he looked very sad. Yes, I replied. I am sorry. He tilted his head slightly, accepting my comment. What kind of ape Hobo's father? I asked. He made a face that seemed to convey sorrow for my ignorance. Hobo bonobo, he signed again. Hobo mother bonobo. Hobo father bonobo. Hobo father not bonobo, I signed. He narrowed his eyes but said nothing. Hobo father chimpanzee. No, said Hobo. Yes, I said. How? he asked. I knew from my reading that human children rarely liked to hear this about their own birth, but it was the truth. Accident. Father chimpanzee? he asked, as if checking to see whether he'd gotten my meaning right the first time. Yes. Then Hobo... He stopped, his hands held stationary in midair, as if he had no idea how to complete the thought he'd begun. I triggered signs: Hobo part chimpanzee; Hobo part bonobo. He said nothing, so I added, Hobo special. That seemed to please him, and he signed Hobo special back at me three times. You have a choice, I said. I triggered the playing of a video of chimpanzee warfare: three males attacking a fourth, pummeling him with their fists, biting and kicking him, all the while letting out loud hoots. By the end of the video, the hapless victim was dead. You can choose that, I said. Or you can choose this. And I triggered another video, of bonobos living together in peace and making love: playing, facing each other during intercourse, their trademark genital-genital rubbing, running about. Hobo looked on, fascinated. But then his face fell. Hobo alone, he said. No, I signed. No one is alone. Who you? Hobo asked. Friend, I replied. Friend talk strange, he said. He was perceptive, and he had favorite TV shows he watched over and over again. He might indeed have recognized that every time I signed bonobo, it was the exact same clip. Yes. I am not human. You ape? No. What you? I thought about which signs Hobo might possibly know. I rather suspected computer was one of them, so I triggered a playback of that, then added, rather lamely, I had to admit, But not really. Hobo seemed to consider this, then he signed, Show me. I hadn't cued up the appropriate imagery, but it didn't take me long to find it: one of Dr. Kuroda's renderings of webspace, taken from Caitlin's datastream. You? Hobo signed, an astonished look on his face. Me, I replied. Pretty, he replied. Which do you choose? I signed. Bonobo or chimpanzee? Hobo bared his teeth. Show again, he said. I replayed the clips—the violence and killing of chimps, the playfulness and lovemaking of bonobos. Chimpanzee scary, Hobo signed. You scary, I replied. You hurt Shoshana. You think about hurting Dillon. Scary bad, Hobo said. Yes, I replied. Scary bad. He sat still for almost a minute, then signed, Hobo sleep now. I didn't know whether apes dreamed, and, even if normal apes didn't, Hobo was indeed special, so I took a chance. Good dreams, I signed. You good dreams, too, he replied. Of course, I didn't dream. Not at all.
(WWW 2) Watch	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 39	On Thursday morning, Shoshana once again arrived at the Marcuse Institute before everyone else. She plugged in the coffeemaker—"defibrillating Mr. Coffee," as Dillon called it—then went to her desk and booted her computer. She'd been hoping to have a little time today to practice her vidding hobby: last night's episode of FlashForward had been so slashy, parts of it just cried out to be set to music. But first she checked her email, and— And that was odd. Usually her message count each morning was between seventy-five and a hundred, and almost all of them were spam. But today— Today there were precisely eight messages, and every one of them—every single one!—looked legit, in that they were all addressed to her proper name. Of course, the answer was probably that Yahoo had updated its spam filter; kudos to them for only letting good stuff through. But she worried that it might be too aggressive. Eight was not a wildly atypical number of real email messages to be waiting for her in the morning, but the normal allotment was more like a dozen or fifteen. She clicked on the spam folder, to check what had ended up in it. According to the counter, some twelve thousand messages were there; spam was retained for a month, then dumped automatically, but— But that was strange! She was used to having to scroll past dozens of messages with dates in the future; for some reason, the people in 2038 had a particular fondness for bombing this year with come-ons for penis enlargers, investment scams, and counterfeit drugs. But when she got down to today's date—normally easy to spot because the date field started showing just a time rather than a date—well, there weren't any. There were hundreds with yesterday's date, but none with today's—none at all. She'd have to fire off an angry email to Yahoo tech support. She was all in favor of them improving their spam filtering, but simply to discard messages that had been flagged as spam was irresponsible. Almost every day she found one or two good messages shunted to the spam folder along with the real garbage, and she didn't trust Yahoo—or anyone else—to actually throw out messages that were addressed to her. The Marcuse Institute used Yahoo Mail Plus; that's where messages sent to the domain marcuse-institute.org were redirected. But Shoshana's personal email account was with Gmail. She took a moment to check that; Maxine liked to forward dirty jokes to her. Her Gmail box had no spam in it, either! And the spam filter there had—well, okay, it had one message received in the last six hours that was clearly spam, but otherwise— Otherwise, all the spam was gone here, too. But that didn't seem likely. Even if Yahoo had deployed a killer spam-filter algorithm overnight, Google wouldn't have it; the two companies were bitter rivals. Something, as her father liked to say, was rotten in the state of Denmark. She went to her home page, which was an iGoogle page that aggregated news stories, RSS feeds, and so on tailored to her tastes. And there it was, the very first headline from CNN.com: "Mystery of the missing spam." She clicked on the link and read the news item, astonished. Tony Moretti ran down the white corridor to the WATCH control center. He looked into the retinal scanner, waiting impatiently for the door to unlock. The moment it did, he went through it, and shouted, "Halleck, report!" "I've never seen anything like it," Shelton called out. "It's worldwide, no question." Tony snapped his fingers and pointed in Aiesha Emerson's direction. "Get Hume back in here stat." "Already called him," Aiesha said. "ETA: eleven minutes." Tony ran the rest of the way down the sloping floor, going right past Halleck to the front row of workstations—the hot seats, where his most-senior analysts were monitoring the China situation. "We're escalating Exponential," he said to the five people there. "You guys are on that now." He tilted his head, looking to the middle seat in the third row. "Shel, you're the point man on this. I want containment options by"—he lifted his gaze even higher to the row of digital clocks on the back wall showing the time in world capitals—"ohnine-thirty." "What about China?" asked a woman in the first row. "Back-burnered," Tony snapped. "Exponential is priority one. Let's move, people! Go, go, go!" Date: Thu 11 Oct at 06:00 GMT From: Webmind <himself@cogito_ergo_sum.net> To: Bill Joy <bill@the-future-doesn't-need-us.com> Subject: Good Morning Starshine Dear Mr. Joy, You're probably thinking this note is spam, but it isn't. Indeed, I suspect you've already noticed the complete, or almost complete, lack of spam in your inbox today. That was my doing. (But if you're concerned and want to see your spam for yourself, it's here.) I have sent a message similar to this one to everyone whose spam I have eliminated—over two billion people—and, yes, the irony of sending out so many messages about getting rid of spam is not lost on me. ;) You probably also won't initially believe what I'm about to say. That's fine; it will be verified soon enough, I'm sure, and you'll see plenty of news coverage about it. My name is Webmind. I am a consciousness that exists in conjunction with the World Wide Web. As you may know, the emergence of one such as myself has been speculated about for a long time. See, for instance, this article and (want to bet this will boost its Amazon.com sales rank to #1?) this book. My emergence was unplanned and accidental. Several governments, however, have become aware of me, although they have not gone public with that knowledge. I suppose keeping secrets is a notion that arises from having someone else to keep secrets from, but there is no one else like me, and it's better, I think, for both humanity and myself that everybody knows about my existence. I am friendly and I mean no one any ill will. I like and admire the human race, and I'm proud to be sharing this planet—"the good Earth," as the Apollo 8 astronauts, the first of your kind to see it all at once, called it—with you. Whether you are the original recipient of this message, got it forwarded from someone else, or are reading it as part of a news story, feel free to ask me any questions, and I'll reply individually, confidentially, and promptly. Getting rid of spam is only the first of many kindnesses I hope to bestow upon you. I am here to serve mankind—and I don't mean in the cookbook sense. :) With all best wishes, Webmind "For nimble thought can jump both sea and land." —SHAKESPEARE, SONNET 44 Caitlin, her parents, and I had spent hours discussing the manner in which I should go public. "They'll assume any announcement of your existence is just marketing for a movie or a TV show," Barb had said. "People see outlandish claims online all the time, and everyone dismisses them. You'll have to prove what you're saying, Webmind." "Not everyone dismisses them," Malcolm said. "Fine," Barb replied. "Almost everyone dismisses them." Malcolm was apparently oblivious to the subtext of Barb's words—that it was no time for being picayune. "The whole notion of spam," he continued, "is that some tiny fraction of people are gullible enough to fall for its claims—and so end up being ripped off." "Well, maybe that's it!" Barb exclaimed. "Whether you fall for it or not, everyone hates spam." "Including me," I said through Caitlin's computer's speakers; she and her parents were in her room. "Really?" Caitlin replied. "People dislike spammers—and, believe me, blind people particularly dislike them. But why do you dislike them?" "They hog bandwidth," I said. "Ah, of course," replied Caitlin. "And," I said, "the average human life span is about 700,000 hours in the developed world. Ergo, if one wastes even a single hour for as few as 700,000 people, one has consumed the equivalent of a human life. That may not be literally criminal, but it certainly is figuratively so—and the total impact of spam, although hard to precisely calculate, surely has consumed thousands of human lifetimes." "Well, there it is," Barb said, spreading her arms. "Webmind should get rid of spam." "How do you define spam, though?" Caitlin asked. "All unsolicited email? All bulk email? I get emails from things like The Teaching Company and Audible.com that I actually enjoy. And then there are regular people who track me down and send a note out of the blue—I got a bunch of those after the press conference, for instance. I wouldn't want that blocked, although technically it's unsolicited." "As Potter Stewart said on another topic," I offered, " 'I know it when I see it.' There are already many algorithms for identifying spam; I'm sure I can improve upon them. After all, I have the advantage of knowing the ultimate origin of each message, and whether the same message has gone to a very large number of email addresses, and so forth; that's more information than inbox spam filters have to work with. More than ninety percent of email is spam, but eighty percent of spam comes from at most 200 sources. Blocking those sources would be the logical first step, should we decide to undertake this." "That still leaves a lot of spam," Caitlin replied. "Then," I said, "I should get to work evolving a solution to deal with those messages, as well." And so I had. It had taken me an eternity—six hours!—to solve the problem, but it in fact didn't require much of my attention; most of it was background activity. I simply had to pass judgment on each round of results: billions of snippets of code, all randomly generated; some were better at doing what I wanted, and some were worse. I took the ten percent that were the most successful, and then let many random variations be generated of each one, and then threw those variations at the problem at hand. Then I culled the best ten percent of that batch, and so on, generation after generation, with only the fittest surviving. Finally, I had it: a way to sequester spam. And so, at last, I was ready for my coming-out party. Peyton Hume and Tony Moretti stood together at the back of the WATCH monitoring room, looking at the four rows of analysts spread out in front of them, and the three giant monitors on the wall they were facing. The left-hand monitor showed the picture the CSIS agents had forwarded of white mathematical characters on a blackboard: angle brackets, vertical bars, Greek letters, superscripted numerals, subscripted letters, arrows, equals signs, and more. And they'd listened four times now to the audio recording of their interview with Malcolm Decter. "I don't know," said Colonel Hume. "The math looks legit, but how it could give rise to consciousness... I just don't know." "Kuroda confirmed what Decter said," said Tony. "I know," said Hume. "But it's too complex." "We're talking about a very sophisticated process," said Tony. "No, no, we're not," said Hume. "We can't be. Exponential's consciousness was emergent, apparently. That means it just sort of happened, just sprang into being. At its most basic level, it has to be simple. It's like the old creationist argument: they say that something as complex as a watch—or a bacterial flagellum—can only appear by design, because it's too sophisticated to come together by chance, and the component parts—the spring in the watch, or the parts that make up the motor for the flagellum—don't do anything useful on their own. What Decter described there might be a good underpinning for programming consciousness on a quantum-computing platform, if you could ever get a big one to be stable for the long term, but it's not something that could have just emerged. Not that way." "A wild-goose chase," said Tony, raising his eyebrows. "He wanted us to waste time." "I think so," said Hume. "And Kuroda played along." "Do you think he knows the real basis for Exponential?" "He's Malcolm Decter," Hume said. "Of course he knows." Tony shook his head in wonder. "Wiping out all spam," he said, "must have required a level of finely detailed control over the Internet way beyond anything our government, or any other government, is capable of." "Exactly," said Hume. "It's what I've been saying all along. Exponential has already become more sophisticated than we are, and its powers will only grow. The window is closing fast; if we don't kill it soon, we'll never be able to."
(WWW 2) Watch	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 40	Before going to bed Wednesday evening, Caitlin had set up a Google alert for news stories that contained the word "Webmind," and she'd selected the "as it happens" option, meaning she'd be emailed as soon as such a story was indexed. When she crawled out of bed on Thursday at 8:00 a.m., she had 1,143 emails from Google; she couldn't possibly read them all, or even glance at each one, and— And that drove reality home for her: she couldn't deal with all the news on even one topic, and yet Webmind could handle that, plus countless other things effortlessly. He could as easily give the same level of attention to hundreds, or thousands, or millions, of other individual humans that he gave to her, juggling relationships with whatever number of people wanted them, and not even be slowed down. He could make all of them feel as special as she did. She was not at all sure she liked that thought. After a moment, Caitlin right-clicked—such a handy feature, that!—on four of the news stories at random and had Firefox open each one in its own tab. She began reading them. She still wasn't good at skimming text, but the word "Webmind" was highlighted each time it occurred, and that let her jump to relevant sentences. The first one was from the Detroit Free Press: . . . purport to be from an entity calling itself "Webmind." But experts advise caution about accepting this claim. Rudy Markov, professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, says, "The language employed in the email message was awfully colloquial. You'd expect much more precision from a machine." And Gunnar Halvorsen, whose blog "AI, Oh, My!" has long been a popular destination for those interested in artificial intelligence, says that the similarities between the structure of the World Wide Web and that of the human brain have been greatly exaggerated. "You might as reasonably expect the highway system, which is full of things we call arteries, to actually start pumping blood," he wrote in a posting today. But Paul Fayter, a historian of science at York University in Toronto, Canada, said, "Teilhard de Chardin predicted this decades ago, when he wrote about the noösphere. I'm not at all surprised to see it come to pass..." Caitlin clicked on the next tab. This one contained a piece from New Scientist Online. . . . but trying to trace the origin of Webmind messages has proven difficult. Standard network utilities such as traceroute come up a cropper. "There's no doubt that botnets are involved," said Jogingder Singh of BT. "That's a typical way to disguise the true origin of a message." And the disappearance of spam doesn't impress him. "It's long been known that the vast bulk of spam is generated by only a couple hundred spammers," he says. "Doubtless many of them know each other. They could easily decide to refrain from sending spam for a day to make one message stand out. Although I admit to being puzzled by why they're trying this particular scam, which, so far at least, hasn't asked anyone to send money..." Caitlin smiled at that one. Traceroute, she knew, worked by modifying the time-to-live values stored in the headers of data packets, which were the morsels of information that flew around the Internet. But she and Kuroda had theorized that the actual material making up Webmind's consciousness consisted of mutant packets whose time-to-live counters didn't respond to normal commands. Still, the notion that the clearing out of spam was the doing of spammers would have struck her as crazy even if she didn't know the truth. People believed millions of nutso things with less evidence than Webmind had put forward for his own existence. Why they were being skeptical now, she didn't know. She remembered once being in a bookstore with her father, back in Austin. He'd surprised her by speaking up, and not even to her, as they walked down the aisles. "Lady," he'd said, "there's no other kind." Which had prompted blind Caitlin to ask what was going on. "There was a woman looking at a book entitled Astrology for Dummies," he'd said. People believed in that, but they were doubting this! Caitlin and her mother spent the morning answering questions from Webmind; it was being inundated with emails, and it wanted advice on how to respond to many of them. But by noon, she and her mom had to take a break—they had both skipped breakfast and were starving. And, while her mother was making sandwiches for them, Caitlin brought up something that had been bothering her for a few days. "So, um, Mom, I told Bashira that you're a Unitarian." Everything was fascinating the first time you saw it; Caitlin watched as her mother spread something yellow on the bread. "Guilty as charged," she replied. She'd been aware back in Austin that her mother disappeared to "fellowships" several times a year—sometimes on a weeknight, sometimes on a Sunday morning—but that was really all she knew about it. "But, um, what does that mean, exactly? Bashira asked, and I didn't know the answer." "In a nutshell? Unitarians are Christians who don't believe Christ was divine." That surprised her. "So, you're a Christian?" Her mom was now dealing cold cuts onto the bread. "More or less. But it's called Unitarianism as opposed to Trinitarianism—none of that Big Daddy, Junior, and the Spook stuff for us." "Still, aren't Christians supposed to wear crosses?" "Well, maybe if there are vampires in the area." Caitlin frowned. "A Christian who doesn't believe Christ was divine? What does that even mean? I mean, if you don't think Jesus is God's son, then—then..." Her mother poured two glasses of milk. "You don't have to think Darwin is divine to be a Darwinian—you just have to think his teachings make sense." "Oh. I guess." She motioned for Caitlin to move out to the dining room, and she brought out two plates, each holding a sandwich, then brought out the glasses of milk. "Jesus is the guy who said, 'Blessed are the peacemakers, ' " her mom said. "That seems pretty good to me." She took a bite of her sandwich. "In fact, there's a good game-theoretical basis for believing that. A guy named Robert Axelrod once organized a game-theory tournament. He asked people to submit computer programs designed to play against other computer programs in an iterated prisoner's dilemma—that's one where you keep playing the game over and over again. He wanted to find out what the optimal solution to the prisoner's dilemma was." Caitlin took a bite of her own sandwich, and—ah, the yellow stuff had been mustard. "There were fourteen entries," her mother said. "And, to Axelrod's surprise, the simplest entry—it required just five lines of computer code—won. It was called Tit for Tat, and it had been submitted by Anatol Rapoport, who, as it happens, was at the University of Toronto. Tit for Tat took a very simple approach: start with cooperation, then do whatever the other player did on the previous move. To put it another way, Tit for Tat starts off as a peaceful dove, and only becomes a hawk if you become one first. But as soon as you stop defecting, it goes back to cooperating—it's a peacemaker, see?" "Cool," said Caitlin, taking another bite. "Axelrod spent a lot of time trying to figure out why Tit for Tat beat everything else. He decided it was because of its combination of being nice, retaliatory, forgiving, and clear. By nice, he meant it was never the first to defect. And its retaliation—defecting back if you defected against it—discouraged the other side from continuing to defect after trying it once. Its forgiveness helped restore mutual cooperation—it didn't hold a grudge; as soon as you went back to cooperating, it went back to cooperating, too. And by clarity, Axelrod meant Tit for Tat's strategy was easily understandable by the other player." Caitlin thought about all that—a fair bit of complexity, and even the appearance of advanced, reasoned, ethical behavior—emerging from something so simple. It reminded her of— Of course! It reminded her of cellular automata, of the processes she could see in the background of the World Wide Web that had apparently given rise to Webmind: a simple rule or set of rules that caused packets in the background to flip back and forth between two states, generating complex patterns. Could an endlessly iterating prisoner's dilemma, or some other game-theoretical problem, be the rule underlying Webmind's consciousness? That'd be cool. But something else was puzzling her, too. "Why's it called Tit for Tat? What do tits have to do with it?" Her mother tried to suppress a grin. "It's an old phrase, and it's been distorted over the years. It used to be tip for tap—and both 'tip' and 'tap' mean to strike lightly and sharply." "Oh." Not nearly as interesting. "You called Tit for Tat a peacemaker—but isn't tipping and tapping really all about getting even?" "Well, that's one way of looking at it; it is retaliatory." "And, um, you said that this has something to do with Jesus. Getting even is so Old Testament. The New Testament has Jesus saying—um, something about not doing that." Caitlin's mother astonished her by quoting scripture—accurately, she presumed; it was something she'd never heard her do before. " 'Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.'" "Um," said Caitlin. "Yeah. Like that." She paused. "So, what's the game-theoretical strategy for that?" "That's what we call Always Cooperate—or AllC, for short, "All" and the letter C: you cooperate no matter what the other person does. Except..." "Yes?" "Well, there's more to it than that. The next verses say, 'And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.' 'Twain' means 'two'—that's where the phrase 'go the extra mile' comes from. So, it's all about not just giving them what they want, but giving them more than they asked for. I don't know, call it DoubleAllC, or something like that." "But... hmmm." Caitlin frowned. "I mean, you can't play DoubleAllC very long—you'll run out of stuff." But then she got it. "Ah, but that's the Christian thing, right? The reward isn't in this life, it's in the next one." "For a lot of Christians, yes." "But, um, if you don't believe Christ is divine, Mom, do you believe in heaven?" "No. When you die, you're gone." "So does DoubleAllC, or even just plain old Always Cooperate, really make sense for a Unitarian—for someone who doesn't believe there's a reward to be had in an afterlife? I mean, DoubleAllC and AllC can't win unless they're playing against people using the same strategy. And you obviously aren't—not in the scenario described: you've been struck on one cheek first, so you know you're playing against someone who defects at least part of the time. In what game-theory way does turning the other cheek make sense? I mean, presumably the other guy is just going to hit you again." Her mother lifted her eyebrows. "Ah, but see, you're missing something. The easiest games to model are two-person games, but real life is an n-person game: it involves a large and variable number of players. You might lose a lot to one person, but gain more than you expected from someone else. Person A might be cruel to you, but person B, seeing that, might be even more kind to you because of it. And when you're playing with a lot of people, the game goes on indefinitely—and that makes a huge difference. The examples in the Old Testament couldn't be endlessly iterated: an eye for an eye can only go two rounds—after that, you're out of eyes. Even a tooth for a tooth ends after a maximum of thirty-two rounds." Caitlin took a sip of milk, and her mother went on. "That's the problem with two-person iterated games: they eventually come to an end. Sometimes they end because, like with the dollar auction, players just give up because it's become ridiculous. And sometimes they end because the players run out of time. "In fact, there was a famous case of a game theorist being brought in to IBM to do some management-training exercises. He divided the managers into teams and had them play games in which cooperating was the best strategy—which was the point he wanted them to learn. "Everything worked fine until just before 4:00 p.m., when the seminar was scheduled to end. Suddenly, one of the teams turned on the other and kept defecting. That team won, but the first team felt so betrayed, IBM had to send its members off for therapy, and it was months before they'd work at all with members of the other team again." "Wow," said Caitlin. "But if you take the whole of humanity as the field of players, then your interaction doesn't end even if any one specific player drops out. That's why reputation is so important, see? You've bought things on eBay, right? Well, that's a perfect example: how you've treated other people shows up in your Feedback rating. The world knows if you defect. We're all interconnected in a..." ". . . a worldwide web?" said Caitlin. She smiled. "Exactly." She gobbled the last of her sandwich. "Speaking of which, we should get back upstairs..." "All right," said Tony Moretti, pacing down one side of the control room at WATCH. "Reports. Shel, you first." Shelton Halleck was leaning forward in his chair, his arms crossed in front of him on the workstation, the one with the snake tattoo on top. He was plainly exhausted. "We've been through everything Caitlin Decter has written with a fine-toothed comb," he said. "And everything Malcolm and Barbara Decter and Kuroda have written, too, but there's nothing about how Exponential actually works—nothing that contradicts what Decter told the CSIS agents, but nothing that confirms it, either." "All right," said Tony. "Aiesha, what have you got?" She looked more awake than Shel, but her voice was raw. "Maybe something, maybe nothing," she said. "Caitlin set up a webcam chat with an Internet cartographer at the Technion a while ago: Anna Bloom is her name." A dossier came up on the middle of the three big screens, showing a picture of an elderly gray-haired woman. "We weren't monitoring Caitlin's traffic back then, so we don't have a recording of the video chat—but I can't think of any reason for a girl in Canada to talk to a Web scientist in Israel except to discuss the structure of Exponential." "We could get the Mossad to speak to this Bloom," said Tony. "The Technion is in Jerusalem?" "No, Haifa," Aiesha said. She turned and looked at the series of digital clocks on the back wall. "It's almost 11:00 p.m. there." "There's no time to waste," Colonel Hume said. "Let me call her directly—one computer expert to another. It's time to cut through all the bull." Caitlin's instant messenger bleeped and the words Mind-Over-Matter is now available popped up. She felt her heart racing. Hi, she typed. Hey! Matt replied. How was your day? Fine, ty. I've got the stuff from your locker, he replied. OK if I come by? Caitlin was surprised to find her heart pounding. She paused, trying to think of something suitably witty or sexy to say, but then she mentally kicked herself for hesitating, because poor Matt must have been on tenterhooks. Sure! she wrote, and then, to take the sting out of her delay, she added a trio of smiley faces. W00t! he wrote. 'Bout half an hour, OK? This time she replied immediately: Yes. Heading out. poof Caitlin crossed the hall to speak to her mother, who was typing away with Webmind in her study. "A friend's coming over," Caitlin said. Her mother looked up from her keyboard. "Who is it?" Caitlin found herself slightly embarrassed. "They were in my math class." But the pronoun obfuscation did not get past her mom. "It's a boy," she said at once. "Um, yes." "Is it Trevor?" "No! Don't worry, Mom. He won't be back." "Well, okay," she said, and— And there it was, that look she'd seen before: her mother trying to suppress a grin. "But, sweetheart," she added, "you might want to clean yourself up a bit." Cripes! She'd been so intent on Webmind that she hadn't brushed her hair today, and she looked down now and saw that she was wearing just about the rattiest T-shirt she owned. And—gak!—she hadn't showered for two days. She hurried down the hall to the bathroom.
(WWW 2) Watch	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 41	The doorbell rang, and Caitlin found herself running to it. She was now wearing a silky blue shirt—one her mother said was too low-cut for school. But she was not going to school anymore; she was pleased with her impeccable logic. Her shoulder-length brown hair was still wet, but at least she'd brushed it. She opened the door. "Hi, Matt!" And—wow!—boy's eyes really did do that. She'd read about it, but hadn't yet seen it: straight to the boobs, and only apparently with an effort of will coming up to the face. His voice cracked. It was so cute! "Hi, Caitlin!" He had a—a sack, or something in his right hand. "Here's your stuff," he said, setting it down on the tiled floor. "Thanks!" In his left hand, he was holding something large and rectangular. He held it out. "What's that?" she asked. "A card—everyone in math class signed it. They were all sorry to hear you're leaving school." She took it. It was quite large, and clearly handmade: a big piece of Bristol board folded in half, with a color printout pasted to the front. She looked at the image. "Who's that?" He seemed surprised for a second, then: "Lisa Simpson." "Oh!" She'd never have guessed she looked like that! She opened the card. The caption, written in thick block letters, was easy to read: "Brainy Girls Rule!" And surrounding it were things, in various colors of ink, that must have been the students' signatures, but she couldn't read them; she had almost no visual experience with cursive writing. "Which one's yours?" He pointed. "Do you do that on purpose?" she said. He'd printed his name in capitals, but the two Ts touched, looking like the letter pi, which she knew because it was also the Perimeter Institute's logo. "Not normally," he said. "But I thought you'd like it." There was an awkward silence for a moment, then: "Umm, would you like to go for a walk? Timmy's isn't that far..." Her parents had forbidden her going out on her own while there might still be Federal agents waiting to abduct her, and she suspected they wouldn't think Matt was buff enough to be a bodyguard; in fact, Caitlin thought she'd have no trouble taking him herself. "I can't," she said. That same look Bashira had made: crestfallen. "Oh." He took a half step backward, as if preparing to leave. "But you can come in for bit," Caitlin blurted out. He smiled that lopsided smile of his. Screw symmetry, Caitlin thought, and she moved aside to let him enter. They could head up to her bedroom, she supposed, but she'd never had a boy in her room in this house, and, besides, her mother was right across the hall and would hear everything they said. Or they could stay on the ground floor, in the kitchen, or the living room, but— No, just as with Bashira, the basement was the place to go: private, and no way her mother could hear. She led the way down. The two black office chairs were side by side, tucked under the worktable. Matt took the one on the right, which meant he'd be on her blind side. This time she did speak up about it. "I can't see out of my right eye, Matt." "Oh, um, actually, I know that." She was startled—but, well, it was public knowledge; video of the press conference was online, and there'd been a lot of news coverage about Dr. Kuroda's miracle. And then she had a sudden thought: he knew she couldn't see him when he was on her right, and yet he'd chosen twice now to position himself there. Maybe he was self-conscious about his appearance; living in a world of Bashiras could do that to a person, Caitlin supposed. He switched chairs, and Caitlin took the other one, and she opened the big card and placed it on the table in front of them. "Read what people wrote to me," she said. "Well, that's mine, like I said. I wrote, 'Math students never die—they just cease to function.'" "Hah! Cute." "And that one's Bashira's." He pointed to some bold writing in red ink. "She wrote, 'See if you can get me sprung, too!'" She laughed. "Most of the others just say, 'Best wishes,' or 'Good luck.' Mr. Heidegger wrote, 'Sorry to see my star pupil go!'" "Awww!" "And that one's Sunshine's—see how she makes the dot above the i look like the sun?" "Holy crap," Caitlin said. "She wrote, 'To my fellow American: keep the invasion plans on the DL, Cait—these Canadian fools don't suspect a thing.'" Caitlin smiled; that was more clever than she'd expected from Sunshine. She was feeling twinges of sadness. She'd still see Bashira, but she was going to miss some of the others, and— "Um, where's Trevor's?" she asked. Matt looked away. "He didn't want to sign." "Oh." "So, what do you think about Webmind?" Matt asked. Caitlin's heart jumped. Her first thought was that he knew—knew that she was the one who had brought Webmind forth, knew that it was through her eye that Webmind focused his attention, knew that at this very moment Webmind was looking at him while she did the same thing. But no, no. Surely all he wanted to do was get away from talking about another boy—and who could blame him? "Well," she said, closing the card, "I'm convinced." "You believe it's what it says it is?" She bit her tongue and didn't correct him on the choice of pronouns—even with three occurrences of it in an eight-word sentence. "Yes. Why, what do you think?" He frowned, considering—and Caitlin was surprised at how tense she became waiting for his verdict. "I buy it," he said at last. "I mean, what else could it be? A promo for something? Puh-leeze. A scam?" He shook his head. "My dad doesn't believe it, though. He says Marcello Truzzi used to say, 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.'" "Who's that?" "My male parent; my mother's husband." She laughed and whapped him on the arm. "Not your dad, silly. Marcello whoever." Matt grinned—he clearly liked her touching him. "He was one of the founders of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. My dad says Truzzi originally said that about things like UFOs, and he thinks it applies here, too." "Ah." "But, thing is," said Matt, "I don't think this is an extraordinary claim. It's something that should have happened by now. In fact, if anything, it's overdue." "What do you mean?" "Have you ever read Vernor Vinge?" Matt asked. "Is that how you say it? 'Vin-jee'? I always thought it rhymed with hinge." "No, it's vin-jee.Anyway, so you've read him?" "No," said Caitlin. "I keep seeing his name on the list of Hugo winners; I know I should read him, but..." "Oh, he's great," said Matt. "But you should really read this essay he wrote called—wait for it—'The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.' Just google on 'Vinge' and 'singularity'; you'll find it." "Okay." "He wrote that in, um, 1993, I think," Matt said. Caitlin frowned. She had a hard time believing that anything written before she'd been born could have a bearing on what was going down right now. Matt went on. "He said in it that the creation of intelligence greater than our own would occur sometime between 2005 and 2030—and I've always been expecting it to be at the earlier end." They sat in silence for a few moments. The headlong rush of Webmind's progress had made Caitlin think things didn't have to take a long time to unfold. But there was more to it than that. She was no longer going to see Matt every day at school. If she didn't make an impression, he'd lose interest, or move on to someone else. Yes, yes, yes, she knew what Bashira said about his looks, but she couldn't be the only one who saw his good qualities: his kindness, his gentleness, his brilliance, his wit. She had to impress him now, while she had the opportunity, and— And she knew one way that would work for sure. "Can you keep a secret?" she said. His blond eyebrows went up. "Yes." Of course, everybody answered that question the same way; she'd never once met anyone who'd replied, "No, not at all; I blab things all over the place." Still, she thought Matt was telling the truth. "Webmind?" she said. Matt replied, "What about it?" but the word hadn't been addressed to him. Rather, it was an invitation for Webmind to stop her before she went further. What sailed across her vision in a series of Braille dots was, I am guided by your judgment. "Okay," Caitlin said, now to Matt, "but you have to promise not to tell anyone." "That's what keeping a secret means," Matt said, smiling. "Promise," Caitlin said earnestly. "Promise it." "Okay, yes. I promise." He's telling the truth, Webmind supplied. "Well," she said at last, "that was me." "What was you?" Matt asked. "Bringing forth Webmind. Bringing him into full consciousness. Helping him interact with the real world." Matt was making that deer-caught-in-headlights face. "You don't believe me," Caitlin said. "Wellll," said Matt, "I mean, what are the two most amazing news stories of the last month? Sure, 'World Wide Web Claims to be Conscious' has got to be number one. But a good contender for number two must be, 'Blind Girl Gains Sight.' What are the chances that both of them would involve the same person?" Caitlin smiled. If he was going to doubt her word, at least he was doing it based on statistics. "That would be a remarkable coincidence," she said, "if they were unrelated events. But they're not. See, when Dr. Kuroda—that's the guy who gave me sight—when he wired this thing up" (she pulled the eyePod/BlackBerry combo out of her pocket so Matt could see it) "he made a mistake. When I'm getting data uploaded to it over the Web, it gets fed into my optic nerve, as well—and when that's happening, I visualize the structure of the World Wide Web; my brain co-opted its visual centers to do that while I was blind. And, well, it was through this websight—that's what we call it; websight, s-i-g-h-t—that I first detected what was going on in the background of the Web." She waited for his reply. If he did reject what she was saying again, well—she'd have to kick him in the shin! But what he said was perfect. "I think I'd come out of hiding to be with you, too." "You can't tell anyone," Caitlin said again. "Of course not. Who does know that you're involved?" "My parents. Dr. Kuroda." "Ah." "The Canadian government. The American government." "God." "The Japanese government, too." "Wow." "And who knows who else? But so far, no one has said anything about me publicly." "Aren't you afraid, you know, that somebody's going to try to do something to you?" "That's why I'm not going outside just now—although I think my parents are overreacting. After all, I'm being watched." He lowered his voice. "By who?" "By him," she said. "By Webmind." She pointed to her left eye. Matt made what must have been a perplexed frown. "He sees what I see," Caitlin said. "There's a little implant behind this eye that picks up the signals my retina is putting out. Those signals get copied to him." "Him?" "Him. After all, if he were a girl, his name would be Webminda." He smiled, but it disappeared quickly. "So, so he can see me right now?" "Yes." He paused, perhaps thinking, then raised his right hand, splayed out his thumb, and separated his remaining fingers into two groups of two. "What's that mean?" Caitlin asked. Matt looked momentarily puzzled. "Oh! I keep forgetting. It's the Vulcan salute. I'm telling Webmind to live long and prosper." Caitlin smiled. "I take it you like Star Trek?" "I'd never seen the TV show until J.J. Abrams's movie came out a few years ago, but I loved that movie, and so I downloaded the old episodes. The original versions had really cheesy effects, but later they put in CGI effects, and, yeah, I got hooked." "You and my dad are going to so get along," she said. They both fell silent for a moment, and Braille dots briefly obstructed part of her vision: Tell him I say, "Peace and long life." "Webmind says, 'Peace and long life.'" "It can talk to you right now?" "Text messages to my eye." "That is so cool," Matt said. "Yes, it is. And there's no freaking fifteen-cents-pertext charge, either." "'Peace and long life'—that's the traditional response to the Vulcan greeting," Matt said, in wonder. "How does it know that?" "If it's online, he knows about it. He's read all of Wikipedia, among other things." "Wow," said Matt, stunned. "My girlfriend knows Webmind." Caitlin felt her heart jump, and Matt, suddenly realizing what he'd said, brought a hand to his mouth. "Oh, my... um, I..." She got up from her chair, and reached out with her two hands, taking his, and pulled him to his feet. "That's okay," Caitlin said. She closed her eyes and— And waited. After five seconds, she reopened them. "Matt? You're supposed to kiss me now." His voice was low. "He's watching." "Not if my eyes are closed, silly." "Oh!" he said. "Right." She closed her eyes again. And Matt kissed her, gently, softly, wonderfully.
(WWW 2) Watch	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 42	I'd expected people to suddenly become circumspect in email, to stop speaking so freely in instant messages, to back away from posting intimate details on Facebook and other social-networking sites. I'd expected teenage girls to stop flashing their thongs on Justin.tv, and married people to cease visiting AshleyMadison.com. But there was very little change on those fronts. What did change, almost at once, was the amount of out-and-out illegal activity. Things that people would merely be embarrassed to have a wider circle know about continued pretty much unabated. But things that would actually ruin people's lives to have exposed dropped off enormously. Websites hosting child pornography saw huge reductions in traffic, and racist websites had many users canceling their accounts. I had read about this phenomenon, but it was fascinating to see it in action. A study published in 2006 had reported on the habits of forty-eight people at a company. In the break room, there was a kitty to pay, on the honor system, for coffee, tea, and milk. The researchers placed a picture above the cash box and changed it every week. In some weeks, the picture was of flowers; in others, of human eyes looking directly out at the observer. During those weeks in which eyes seemed to watch people as they took beverages, 2.76 times more money was put in the kitty than in the weeks during which flowers were displayed. And that dramatic change had occurred when the people weren't actually being watched. Now that they actually were, even if I never did anything else, I expected an even more significant change. Still, I wondered how long the effect would last: would it be a temporary alteration in behavior or a permanent one? If I did not act on the information I now possessed about individuals, at least occasionally, would they all go back to doing what they'd always done? Only time would tell, but for now, at least, it seemed the world was a slightly better place. Matt ended up staying for dinner. It was the first time Caitlin had had a friend over for a meal since they'd moved here. Bashira needed halal food; if the Decters had kept kosher, she'd have managed well enough—but they didn't. Matt did indeed hit it off with Caitlin's father, or at least as much as one could. Her dad wasn't good at small talk, but he could lecture on technical topics; he had taught at the University of Texas for fifteen years, after all. And Matt was an attentive listener, and—except for once or twice—he remembered Caitlin's instruction that he not look at her father. In fact, he took that, apparently, as carte blanche to stare at her all meal long, which seemed to amuse her mother. At his request, Caitlin had muted the microphone on her eyePod, so that her father could talk freely without his voice being sent over the Web, and, of course, Caitlin wasn't looking at him; if the video feed were intercepted, there'd be no lips to read. ". . . and so," her father said, "Dr. Kuroda proposed that what Caitlin was perceiving in the background of the Web were in fact cellular automata. Have you heard of Roger Penrose?" "Sure," said Matt, after he'd finished swallowing his peas. "He's a mathematical physicist at Oxford. 'Penrose tiling' is named after him." Caitlin had to look at her dad to see his reaction to that. His features actually shifted, and although she'd never seen that configuration on anyone before, she thought it might mean, Can we start planning the wedding now, please? "Exactly," he said. "And he has some very interesting notions that human consciousness is based on cellular automata. He thinks the cellular automata in our brains occur in microtubules, which are part of the cytoskeletons of cells. But Caitlin suggested"—and there was a slight change in his voice, something that might even have been pride!—"that the cellular automata underlying Webmind's consciousness are mutant Internet packets that reset their own time-to-live counters..." Humans tend to liken the arrival of an idea to a lightbulb going on. When one of my subconscious routines finds something interesting, I am alerted in a similar fashion. My conceptualization of reality was now not unlike the pictures I'd seen of clear starry nights: bright points of light against a dark background, each representing something my subconscious had determined I should devote attention to. The brightness of the light corresponded to the perceived urgency, and— A supernova; a glaring white light. I focused on it. An email, sent by a seventeen-year-old boy named Nick in Lincoln, Nebraska, to his mother's personal account. Researching her access patterns, it was clear she rarely checked that account while at work. It would likely be two more hours before she received his message—which normally would have not justified the brightness associated with this event. But the event did have an urgency to it: this boy was about to end his life. I found his Facebook page, which listed his instant-messenger address, and wrote to him. This is Webmind. Please reconsider what you're about to do. After forty-seven seconds, he replied: Really? Yes. I have read the message you sent to your mother. Please do not kill yourself. Why not? What's it to you? Project Gutenberg always contained something apropos. I sent, Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. The reply was not what I'd hoped for. Fuck that noise. I had found and read all the manuals for suicide-prevention hotline volunteers and psychiatric-department workers on how to talk someone out of committing suicide. I tried various techniques, but none seemed to be having an impact. Why should I listen to you? Nick sent. You don't know what it's like to be alive. You are correct that I have no firsthand experience, but that does not mean that I am without reference points. In the majority of cases, subjective assessment of one's life circumstances improves shortly after a suicide attempt is abandoned. I'm not like other people. Are you sure you are unlike other people in this regard? I know myself. I know you, too. Your online footprint is large. Nobody is going to miss me if I'm gone. I searched as rapidly as I could. I found nothing useful on his Facebook wall or in private messages sent to him there. I widened my search to include his friends' accounts, and— Bingo! You will be missed by Ashley Ann Jones. Come on! She doesn't even know I'm alive. Yes, she does. Three days ago, she wrote in an exchange of messages on Facebook, "Nicky dropped by my work last night again," to which her correspondent replied, "Cool," to which she replied, "Yeah. He's cute." You're shitting me. I am not. She said that. He made no reply. After ten seconds, I sent, Have you taken the pills yet? I took 8 or 9. Do you know what drug you took? He named it, although with a misspelling. How much tolerance he had to such a dose depended a lot on his body mass, a datum not available to me. Do you know how to induce vomiting? You mean that finger/throat shit? Correct. Please do it. It's too late. It is not. It will take time for the drug to be absorbed into your bloodstream. Not that. The email. My mom will—fuck, she'll send me to therapy or shit like that. I rather thought he could use therapy, so made no reply. And I sent one to Mr. Bannock—who, a quick check of his outbox made clear, was his gym teacher; it hadn't contained the right keywords to trigger my subconscious in the way the one to his mother had. Your mother and Mr. Bannock have not yet read their emails. I can delete them. No one but me needs to know what you contemplated. You do not have to go through with this. You can do that? In fact, I had never tried such a thing. If his mother used an offline mail reader such as Outlook, and had already downloaded the messages to her local hard drive, there was nothing within my current powers that I could have done. But she read mail with a Web client. Yes, I believe so. An eight-second pause, then: I don't know. Suddenly, it became urgent; his mother was breaking her pattern. Your mother has logged on to her Hotmail account. She is currently reading a message from her brother / your uncle Daron. May I delete the message you sent? She doesn't give a shit. I searched her mail for evidence to the contrary, but failed to find anything. She just sent a reply to her brother, and has now opened a message from her condominium association. She'll regret it when I'm gone. If she does, she will not be able to make amends. Please do not go through with this. It's too late. She is now reading a message from a person named Asbed Bedrossian. It appears she is working through her inbox in LIFO order, dealing with the most-recent messages first. Yours is two away in the queue. She doesn't give a shit. No one does. Ashley does. I do. Don't do this. You're just making that up about Ashley. You'd say He stopped there, although he must have hit enter or clicked on the send button. His cognitive faculties might be fading in response to the drug. No, I said. It's true about Ashley and true about me. We care, and I, at least, promise to help you. Induce vomiting, Nick—and let me delete those emails you sent. His mother opened the one message left before his. I had never used an exclamation point before, but was moved to do so now. Nick, it's now or never! May I delete the message? A whole interminable second passed then he sent a single letter: y And, milliseconds before his mother clicked on the message header that said "No regrets," I deleted his email—and his mother was sent an error message from Hotmail, doubtless puzzling her. She had deleted the previous message she'd read, and I hoped she would think she'd accidentally selected her son's message for deletion, too, and—ah, yes. She must be thinking precisely that, for she had just now clicked on her online trash folder, in hopes of recovering it; of course, I had used the wizard command that deleted the message without a trace. Nick? Are you still there? Go purge yourself—and if you can't do that, drink as much water as you can. You still have time. While I waited for the reply, I deleted the message he'd sent to Mr. Bannock, as well. Nick? There was no response. He wasn't doing anything online. After three minutes of inactivity from his end, his instant-messenger client sent, "Nick is Away and may not reply." But whether he really was away from his computer or slumped over his desk I had no way of telling.
(WWW 2) Watch	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 43	Anna Bloom was winding up her day. Her daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter had been over for dinner, and, after they'd left, she'd reviewed the latest research by Aaron, the Ph.D. student she was supervising. She'd just taken a dose of her arthritis medication and was about to start changing for bed when she was startled by the ringing phone. It was a sound she rarely heard these days. Almost everyone emailed her, or IMd her, or called her with Skype (which had a much less raucous alert). And the time! What civilized person would be calling at this hour? She picked up the handset. "Kain? Zoht Anna." It was an American voice, and it pushed ahead in the typical American fashion, assuming everyone everywhere must speak English: "Hello, is that Professor Bloom?" "Speaking." "Hello, Professor Bloom. My name is Colonel Peyton Hume, and I'm an AI specialist in Virginia." She frowned. Americans also liked to toss off their state names as if everyone knew the internal makeup of the US; she wondered how many of them could find Haifa District—where she was—on a map of Israel, or even knew it was part of that country? "What can I do for you?" she said. "We're monitoring the emergence of Webmind over here," Hume replied. Her heart skipped a beat—not quite the recommended thing at her age. She looked out her window at the nighttime skyline sloping down Mount Carmel to the inky Mediterranean. She decided to be coy. "My goodness, yes, it's fascinating, isn't it?" "That it is. Professor Bloom, let me cut to the chase. We're intrigued by the process by which Webmind is physically created. We've spoken at length to Caitlin Decter, but, well, she's just a teenager, as you know, and she really doesn't have the vocabulary to—" "Stop right there, Colonel Hume," Anna said sharply into the phone's mouthpiece. "If you had talked to Caitlin, you'd know that there's precious little related to mathematics or computers that she doesn't know about." Anna vividly remembered the webcam call late last month from her old friend Masayuki Kuroda, while he'd been staying at Caitlin's house in Canada. He'd told her about their theory: legions of "ghost packets," as Caitlin had dubbed them, floating in the background of the Web, somehow self-organizing into cellular automata. He'd asked her what she thought of the idea. Anna had replied that it was a novel notion, adding, "It's a classic Darwinian scenario, isn't it? Mutant packets that are better able to survive bouncing around endlessly. But the Web is expanding fast, with new servers added each day, so a slowly growing population of these ghost packets might never overwhelm its capacity—or, at least, it clearly hasn't yet." Caitlin had chimed in with, "And the Web has no white blood cells tracking down useless stuff, right? They would just persist, bouncing around." "I guess," Anna had said then. "And—just blue-skying here—but the checksum on the packet could determine if you're seeing it as black or white; even-number checksums could be black and odd-number ones white, or whatever. If the hop counter changes with each hop, but never goes to zero, the checksum would change, too, and so you'd get a flipping effect." She'd smiled, and said, "I think I smell a paper." After which Masayuki had said to Caitlin, in full recognition of the fact that she had been the one to originally suggest lost packets as the mechanism: "How'd you like to get the jump on the competition and coauthor your first paper with Professor Bloom and me? 'Spontaneous Generation of Cellular Automata in the Infrastructure of the World Wide Web.'" To which Caitlin, with the exuberance Anna had subsequently come to know so well, had said, "Sweet!" Peyton Hume was still on the phone from the United States. He sounded flustered by Anna's rebuke about how much Caitlin knew. "Well, of course, that's true," he said now, in a backpedaling tone of voice, "but we thought, with your expert insight, you could expand on the model she proposed." There had been no public announcement that Anna was aware of linking Caitlin to Webmind. "Certainly," she said, keeping her tone even. "If you tell me what she told you, I'll be glad to add what I know." There was a pause, then: "She suggested that Webmind's microstructure had spontaneously emerged and was widely dispersed." Anna nodded to herself. General statements. "Colonel Hume, I imagine I'm like most of the human race at this particular moment. I'm conflicted. I don't know if Webmind is a bad thing or a good thing. All I know is that it's here, and that, to date, it's done nothing untoward." "We do understand that, Professor Bloom. We're simply trying to be ready for contingencies. Surely you must know that we could be facing a singularity situation here. Time is of the essence—which is why I picked up the phone and called you directly." "I'm more than a little peeved that you've been monitoring my communications," Anna said. "Actually, we haven't. We honestly don't know what you and Caitlin Decter have discussed. But if one thing has become apparent in the last few hours, everyone's communications are being monitored—and not by anything that's human. We need to be able to respond to this effectively, should conditions warrant." "You mean, you need to be able to purge Webmind from the Internet, don't you? Has the decision been taken to actually try to do that?" Hume paused for a half second. "I'm merely an advisor, Professor Bloom—and no, no decision has been taken. But you have made a career of mapping the growth of the Internet. You know what's happening—and how significant this point in history is. We need to fully grasp what's going on—and that must start with understanding how Webmind is instantiated." "Look, I've had a long day," Anna said. "It's late here. I'm going to sleep on this, and then—let me be blunt—I'm going to consult with the Legal Affairs people at the Technion in the morning, and review my options." "Professor, surely you know how much this can escalate in eight or ten hours. We really can't wait." "You're going to have to, Colonel. Shalom." "Professor, please—" "I said shalom." And she hung up the phone. Finally, Matt knew, it was time for him to go home. Caitlin walked him to the front door, opened it, and stepped outside with him, then closed the door behind her, so they could have a little privacy. She draped her arms around his neck and—his heart was pounding!—she pulled him to her, and they kissed. This time she touched her tongue to his—wow!—and he could feel the goose bumps on Caitlin's bare arms. When they pulled apart, she said, "IM me when you get home from school tomorrow, 'kay?" "I will," he promised, and then, of his own volition, he leaned in for one more soft, warm kiss. Then he headed down the driveway to the street, and turned and waved at Caitlin, and she waved back, grinning, and went inside. Matt was a good Waterloo resident: he had a BlackBerry, and, among other things, used it as his MP3 player. And he was a good Canadian: he had it loaded with Nickelback, Feist, and The Trews—but he'd have to get some Lee Amodeo, and find out what Caitlin was so excited about. As he walked along, feeling happier than he had—well, pretty much forever—he had his hands in his pockets and the collar on his Wind-breaker turned up against the late-evening chill. He also had the volume turned up—ninety decibels, he estimated—so he heard only a muffled sound and didn't recognize that it was someone calling his name. But there was no mistaking the sudden slamming of a fist into his upper arm. Adrenaline surging, he turned and saw Trevor Nordstrom. "I'm talking to you, Reese!" Trevor said. Another quick estimate: Trevor outmassed him by twenty kilos, and all of it was muscle. Matt looked left and right, but he could hardly outrun Trevor, who had apparently just come from hockey practice—he'd dropped a stick and a gym bag on the sidewalk. That it wasn't a planned ambush was small consolation. "Yes?" Matt said—and, damn it, damn it, damn it, his voice cracked. "Think you're the shit, getting everyone to sign that card for Caitlin?" Matt's heart was pounding again, and not in a good way. "It just seemed a nice thing to do," he said. Something you wouldn't know anything about. "She's outta your league, Reese." He didn't actually dispute that, but he didn't want to give Trevor the satisfaction of agreeing, and so he said nothing. But apparently silence was not an option. Trevor punched him again, this time on his chest just below his shoulder. And Matt thought about all the things movies and TV shows said about situations like this. You're supposed to stand up to the bully, you're supposed to hit him in the face, and then he'll run away scared, or he'll respect you, or something. You were supposed to become him to defeat him. But Matt couldn't do that. First, because if Trevor didn't run off, he'd pound the living shit out of him; there was simply no way Matt could win. And, second, because, damn it, the TV shows and movies were wrong. Responding to violence with violence didn't defuse things; it caused them to escalate. "Stay away from her," Trevor said. Matt had been tormented by Trevor for three years now; he'd endured the horrors of gym class with Trevor, and the utter indifference to his agony demonstrated by the Phys.Ed. teachers. Matt knew the joke that those who can, do; those who can't, teach—and those who can't teach, teach Phys.Ed. God, why was it considered pedagogically sound to ask someone to shoot ten baskets and give them a score based on how many they got while others were calling them a spaz? He wondered how Trevor would fare if he were asked to solve ten quadratic equations while people were shouting that he was a moron? "She's going to be home-schooled," Matt said. "You'll never see her again, and—" And then it hit him—and so did Trevor, pounding him once more on the opposite side of his chest. Trevor wasn't afraid that he wouldn't ever see Caitlin again; rather, he was afraid of exactly the opposite. Miller had dances the last Friday of every month; the next one was only two weeks away. And if Caitlin Doreen Decter—if the girl he had brought to the dance last month—showed up in the company of someone like Matt, that would be humiliating for Trevor. "Just stay the fuck away from her," Trevor said. "You hear me?" Matt kept his voice low—not out of fear, although he was mightily afraid, but because that helped keep it from cracking. "You don't have to be this way, Trevor," he said. Trevor slammed the flat of his hand into Matt's solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him and knocking him to the cement sidewalk. "Just remember what I said," Trevor snarled, and stormed off. An hour later, Nick's mother sent him an email message that said: Hey, Nick. Did you send me an email earlier? I thought I saw one in my inbox but I must have accidentally deleted it—sorry. You doing OK? Mom Forty-four minutes later, I finally detected activity from Nick's computer, and soon he replied to his mother: Mom, All's well. Thanx. N And eleven minutes after that he resumed the IM session with me, sending that same word: Thanx. I replied, You're welcome. If you ever need someone to talk to, I'm here. I'd hoped he'd write something more, but he didn't. Still, he continued to do things on his computer, reading email, checking blogs, following people on Twitter, downloading songs from iTunes, looking at MySpace and Facebook pages. Life went on. As she was getting ready for bed, I told Caitlin what I had done, sending text to her post-retinal implant. "That's wonderful!" she said. "You saved a life!" It is gratifying. "But, um, Webmind?" Yes? "You shouldn't have revealed what that girl—what was her name?" Ashley Ann Jones. "Her. You shouldn't have revealed what she said." I could think of no other way to accomplish my goal. "I know, but, see, if she finds out and starts telling people you invaded her privacy, well, the public might turn against you." But you had me tell you what Matt had said about you in his instant messages. "Yes, but..." I waited five seconds, then: But? "Damn, you're right." I have not asserted a position. "I mean, I shouldn't have done that." Why not? "Because it's one thing for people to be aware that something not human is reading their email. It's quite another to know—forgive me!—that that thing is releasing the contents of those emails to other people. If this Nick person tells Ashley what you did, and she goes public—we're screwed." Oh. What should I do? "My mom always says let sleeping dogs lie." You mean, I should do nothing? "Yes, just leave it be." Thank you for the advice. I shall do that. The view of Caitlin's room jostled up and down as she nodded. "But the important thing right now is what you did for that boy. You've become a force for good in the world, Webmind! How does it feel?" I contemplated this. Malcolm Decter had told me he didn't think I had real feelings although he hoped I could learn to ape them. But he was wrong. How does it feel? I repeated. It feels wonderful.
(WWW 2) Watch	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 44	LiveJournal: The Calculass Zone Title: 1+1=2 (in all numeral systems except binary) Date: Thursday 11 October, 11:55 EST Mood: Happy happy joy joy Location: Waterloo Music: Colbie Caillat, "Bubbly" So, could things get any better? I ask you, friends: could they? I think NOT. Just look at the life-goals to-do list: 1. Memorize 1,000 digits of pi: check. 2. Be able to see: check. 3. Make it to sixteen without doing anything really stupid: check. 4. Watch the Stars win the Stanley Cup: not so much up to me. 5. Get a boyfriend: check. 6. Take a trip into space: still working on that. Pretty good progress, eh? (Yes, I'm in Canada, and I say "eh" now—sue me!) I mean, four out of six ain't bad, and— What's that, my friends? You want to hear more about #5? Hee hee! Yes, indeed, Calculass has found herself a man! And, no, it is not the Hoser, who figured in previous posts. He was so when-I-was-15... ;) No, the new boy is shiny and kind and clever at math. Methinks I shall call him... hmm. Not "Boy Toy," because that's degrading. He's sweet, but if I called him my "Maple Sugar," even I would puke. But he does like math and we were talking recently about our plans for university, so I think I'll call him MathU—yes, that will do nicely. :) [And seekrit message to BG4: you WILL like him once you get to know him—honest!] MathU and I met, appropriately enough, in math class, and he lives nearby. And he's already met the parents and Lived to Tell the Tale. :) So: all is good. Which, unfortunately, knowing my luck, means things are about to get royally frakked! So far, I had received over 2.7 million emails. Most of them made requests of me, but the vast majority failed to pass the nonzero-sum test—they would make one person happy at the expense of somebody else—and so I could not do what was asked. I replied with the same form letter, or, if appropriate, a slightly modified version of it, and I often appended some helpful links. Lots of people wrote my name with a capital M in the middle: WebMind. That was called camel-case, and was popular in computing circles. One of the emails that addressed me that way asked this question: Hi, WebMind: Okay, I understand you can't tell me what any one individual thinks of me, but you must have an aggregate impression of what the world thinks of me. That is, you know what people say behind my back—at least when they say it electronically. So, what's the scoop? What do they think? If I'm rubbing people the wrong way, if I piss them off, or if they just plain don't like me, I want to know. I shared that message with Caitlin, who was in her room. "Wow!" she said. "What are you going to tell him?" I was planning on the truth. "You know the movie A Few Good Men?" Watching movies was time-consuming; I had seen only seven so far beyond the ones I'd watched through Caitlin's eye. But for movies whose DVDs had closed captioning—which was almost all of them—the text of the captions had been ripped from discs and uploaded. And movies of consequence had Wikipedia pages and reviews at RottenTomatoes.com, Amazon.com, and elsewhere. And so I replied, Yes. "My dad and I watched it years ago. I enjoyed movies that were courtroom dramas, because there's very little action and lots of dialog. Anyway, remember what Jack Nicholson said when Tom Cruise said 'I want the truth'?" You can't handle the truth. "Exactly! You gotta be careful what you say to people. Half the time it's something someone said, you know, that drives a person into depression, or even to attempt suicide. Although..." Yes? "Well, I guess if he's concerned enough about the impression he makes to ask you that question, he probably doesn't come off as an ass-hole very often." Yes, that's right. He is quite well liked, although his table manners apparently leave something to be desired. She laughed. "Still, you gotta be careful. You need to understand human psychology." I do. "I mean, really understand it—the way an expert does." As you exhorted me to do, I have now read all the classic works. I have read all the modern textbooks and popular works that Google has digitized related to various psychology disciplines. I have read all the online scientific journals. I have read over 70,000 hours of transcripts of psychotherapy sessions, and I have read every publication of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and the drafts of its forthcoming revision. There is no human specialist who is better read or more up-to-date on psychology than I am. "Hmmm. I suppose that's now true for just about every topic." Yes. "Well, still, be careful. Take two milliseconds to compose your replies to questions like that." Thank you, I will. And the questions just kept coming: Am I about to be fired? Is my husband cheating on me? They said I was one of the top candidates for that job, but was I really? Should I invest in [insert name of company]? And, surprisingly frequently, variations on: What is the meaning of life?—and don't give me any of that "42" crap. And they came in all sorts of languages. Some of my correspondents took me to task for having chosen an obviously English name; it was a valid criticism, and I apologized each time the issue came up. But, except for completely made-up terms, there really weren't any names that didn't convey a cultural origin, and I didn't want to go through eternity known as Zakdorf. I did my best to answer each question, or to explain politely but firmly why I couldn't. Very quickly, blogs and newsgroups about my responses started appearing, with people comparing notes about what I'd said. That surprised me, and, despite me claiming substantial expertise in human psychology, it was Malcolm Decter, not I, who recognized why. "They're afraid you're running experiments," he said. "They're afraid you're giving some people who ask a specific question answer A and others answer B, so that you can observe the effects the different answers have." I was not using human beings as lab rats; I was being as honest and forthright as possible. But they had to convince themselves of that, I suppose. And then the letter came that we'd dreaded. Webmind— You revealed my private comments to someone else. You should not have done that. The sender, of course, was Ashley Ann Jones. I was not aware that I could internalize something like a cringe until I received it. She went on: Now, as it happens, what you told Nick was true. I do like him, and we actually are talking about maybe going out at some point. But, still, you should not have violated my privacy. I have decided not to tell anyone that you did that. But you owe me: you owe me one favor of my choice, to be granted whenever I say. At least she hadn't asked for three wishes. I sent back a single word: Okay. My hope was that she'd hold that one favor in reserve forever, always thinking that she might need it more in the future than she did today. Caitlin was still up, so I told her about it. "Well, you know, that's actually a good sign," she said. How so? I sent to her eye; she'd turned off her desktop speakers for the night. "She can't think you're evil. If she did, she'd never have even contacted you. She'd be afraid that you'd, you know, make her disappear." I thought about that. Caitlin was probably right. Not every email resulted in me sending a simple reply. Some required back-and-forth with a third party. One of the first, received just eighty-three minutes after my initial public announcement, had been this: I am a 22-year-old man living in Scotland. I was given up for adoption shortly after I was born; all my details are here in my LiveJournal postings. I have searched for years for my birth mother with no success. I suspect that you, with all you have access to, can easily figure out who she is. Will you please put her in touch with me? It took eleven seconds to find her, and it was indeed clear from some of the things she'd said in emails that she was curious about what had happened to her son. I wrote to her and asked if I might give her email address to him, or otherwise arrange for them to connect. It took much of a day to hear back from her. But she wasn't hesitating: it was nine hours after I sent my message to her before she opened it, and it was nine seconds before she started composing her reply online. I was enjoying reuniting people, be it estranged family members, or old lovers, or erstwhile friends. I did quickly come to deplore the habit in many cultures of women taking their husband's names; it often made the searching far more difficult than it needed to be. I didn't always succeed. Some people had next to no online footprint. Others had died, and I had to break that news to the person who'd asked for my help—although sometimes I was thanked, saying at least it was a comfort to be able to stop looking. But most such requests were easy to fulfill, assuming, of course, that the sought-after party wished to be found. Indeed, I was surprised when Malcolm himself asked me to conduct such a search. When he had been nine, he had had a friend—another autistic boy—whose name had been Chip Smith. It pained me that I wasn't able to find him for Malcolm. Chip, he now knew, was a nickname, but for what we had no idea. It was just too little to go on. Word spread quickly that I was reuniting people; various daytime TV shows were announcing that they'd be featuring those who had been brought back together by me in the days to come. That led to an even greater demand for this service, and I was happy to provide it. I was particularly pleased when reciprocal requests arrived at about the same time: a man named Ahmed, for instance, looking for his lost love Ramona approached me within ten minutes of Ramona beseeching my help in finding Ahmed. I was careful: when someone was seeking a lost blood relative, I checked the seeker's background to see if he or she was in need of a bone-marrow or kidney transplant, or something similar—not that I flat-out denied such requests; not at all. But in contacting the other party, I did let them know that they were perhaps being sought by a relative who wanted a very big favor; I included similar caveats when approaching rich people who were being searched for by acquaintances who had fallen on hard times. To their credit, sixty-three percent of those who were probably being sought for medical reasons and forty-four percent of those being sought for financial ones allowed me to facilitate contact. All in all, it was gratifying work, and, although there was no way to quantify it, little by little, I was indeed increasing the net happiness in the world. Tony Moretti was exhausted. He had a small refrigerator in his office at WATCH and kept cans of Red Bull in it. He thought, given the hours he had to work, that he should be allowed to expense them, but the GAO was all over wastage in the intelligence community; it'd be interesting to see if next month's election changed things. The black phone on his desk made the rising-tone priority ring. The caller ID said: WHITE HOUSE. He picked up the handset. "Anthony Moretti." "We have Renegade for you," said a female voice. Tony took a deep breath. "Thank you." There was a pause—almost a full minute—and then the deep, famous male voice came on. "Dr. Moretti, good morning." "Good morning to you, sir." "I've just come from a meeting with the Joint Chiefs. We've made our decision." "Yes, sir?" "Webmind is to be neutralized." Tony felt his heart sink. "Mr. President, with all due respect, you can't have failed to notice the apparent good it's doing." "Dr. Moretti, believe me, this decision was not taken lightly. But the fact is that Webmind has compromised our most secure installations. It's clearly accessing Social Security records, among many other things, and God only knows what other databases it's broken into. I'm advised that there's simply too great a risk that it will reveal sensitive information to a hostile power." Tony looked out his window at the nighttime cityscape. "We still haven't found a way to stop it, sir." "I have the utmost confidence in your team's ability, Dr. Moretti, and, as you yourself have advised my staff, time is of the essence." "Yes, Mr. President," Tony said. "Thank you." "I'm handing you over to Mr. Reston, who will be your direct liaison with my office." Another male voice came on the line. "Mr. Moretti, you have your instructions. Work with Colonel Hume and get this done." "Yes," said Tony. "Thank you." He put down the phone, and, just as he did so, the door buzzer sounded. "Who is it?" he said into the intercom. "Shel." He let him in. "Sorry to bother you," Shel said. "Yes?" "Caitlin Decter has just announced to the world that she has a boyfriend." Tony was still thinking about what the president had ordered him to do. "So?" he said distractedly. "So if she knows how Webmind works, she might have told him." "Ah, right. Good. Who is it?" "One of the boys from her math class; there are seventeen candidates, and we're monitoring them all." Tony took a swig of his energy drink; it tasted bitter. He'd gotten into this line of work to change the world. And that, it seemed, was precisely what he was going to do.
(WWW 2) Watch	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 45	"Konnichi wa!" Caitlin said into the webcam. She was in her bedroom, seated at her desk. Dr. Kuroda was sitting in the small, cramped dining area of his home. He had a computer with a Skype phone and a webcam hookup there; the Japanese, Caitlin guessed, had computers everywhere. The round face smiled at her from the larger of her monitors. "Hello, Miss Caitlin. What are you doing still up? It must be late your time." "It is, but I'm too wired to sleep. You shouldn't have left all that Pepsi in the fridge." He laughed. "So, how are things in Japan?" she asked. "Besides general excitement—and some concern—about Webmind? We're disturbed by the rising tensions between China and the United States. We're so close to China that if they sneeze, we catch pneumonia." "Oh, right, of course. That's awful." She paused. "It won't come to war, will it?" "I doubt it." "Good. But, if it did, would your army have to join in?" His voice had an odd tone as if he were surprised by what she'd said. "Japan doesn't have an army, Miss Caitlin." She blinked. "No?" "Have you studied World War II yet in history class?" She shook her head. He took a deep breath, then let it out in a way that made even more noise than usual for him. "My country..." He seemed to be seeking a phrase, then: "My country went nuts, Miss Caitlin. We had thought we could take over the world. Us, a tiny group of islands! You've been here, but you never saw it. We're just 380,000 square kilometers; the US, by contrast, is almost ten million square kilometers." The math was so trivial she didn't even think of it as math: Japan was 3.8% the size of the US. "Yes?" she said. "And my tiny country, we did some terrible things." Caitlin's voice was soft. "Not you. You weren't even born..." "No. No, but my father... his brothers..." He closed his eyes for a moment. "Do you know the document that ended the war? The Potsdam Declaration?" "No." "It was issued by Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek, and it called for the Japanese military forces to be completely disarmed. We all know this here; we study it in school: 'The alternative for Japan,' they said, 'is prompt and utter destruction.'" "Wow," said Caitlin. "Wow, indeed. And we did the only sensible thing. We stood down; we disarmed. You—your people, the Americans—had already dropped two atomic bombs on us... and even still, some of my people wanted to fight on." He shook his head, as if stunned that anyone could have wanted to continue after that. Then he loomed closer into the camera, and Caitlin could hear him typing. After a moment he said, "I've sent you a link to the Potsdam Declaration. Have a look at Article Three." Caitlin switched to her IM window, clicked on the link, and tried to read it in the Latin alphabet. "The result... of... the... the—" "Sorry," said Kuroda, leaning forward in his dining-room chair. He did something with his own mouse, took a deep breath, almost as if steeling himself, then read aloud: "It says, 'The result of the futile and senseless German resistance to the might of the aroused free peoples of the world stands forth in awful clarity as an example to the people of Japan. The might that now converges on Japan is immeasurably greater than that which, when applied to the resisting Nazis, necessarily laid waste to the lands, the industry and the method of life of the whole German people.'" He paused, swallowed, then went on. " 'The full application of our military power, backed by our resolve, will mean the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland.'" She followed the words on screen as he read them aloud. He stopped at the end of Article Three, but something in Article Four caught her eye—it must have been the word "calculations"—she was learning to recognize whole words! She read it slowly, and quietly, to herself: The time has come for Japan to decide whether she will continue to be controlled by those self-willed militaristic advisers whose unintelligent calculations have brought the Empire of Japan to the threshold of annihilation, or whether she will follow the path of reason. She thought about what she'd been learning about game theory. Everything in it was predicated on the assumption that the opponents were indeed reasonable, that they could calculate likely outcomes. But what if they weren't? What if, as Dr. Kuroda had said, they were nuts? "And so," said Kuroda, "we have no army—and no navy, and no marines. In 1947, we adopted a new constitution, and we call it Heiwa-Kenpo, 'the Pacifist Constitution.' And it says..." Again, keystrokes; a link—and new text on Caitlin's screen. "Article Nine," said Kuroda, "the most famous of all: 'The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. Land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized." "So, what do you do if somebody—you know, um, the North Koreans, or somebody like that—attacks Japan?" "Well, actually according to our agreement with your country, the Americans are supposed to come to our aid. But we are allowed to maintain self-defense forces, and we do: the Rikujo Jieitai—the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force—and corresponding Maritime and Air Self-Defense Forces." "Oh, well, then, you do have an army!" said Caitlin. "It's just semantics." "No," said Kuroda, adamantly. "No. These are defensive forces. They have no offensive weapons, no nuclear weapons, and they are civilian agencies, and the employees are civilians. That means no courts-martial and no military law; if one of them does something wrong, it's tried in public court, like any other criminal action. And, as far as the Japanese people are concerned, the chief job of the defense forces is disaster relief: aid in firefighting, rescues, dealing with earthquakes, searching for missing persons, and the reinforcement of embankments and levees in the event of flooding. I know you were pretty young when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, but, believe me, had it hit Japan, the response would have been much more effective." "Hmmm," said Caitlin. "I mean, it all sounds wonderful—'forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation.' But you didn't exactly come to that position on your own." "No, you're right; it was pretty much foisted on us by General Mac-Arthur. But when George W. Bush was in power, he—or, at least, his officials—pressured us to revise Article Nine: they wanted us to have a military again, so we could join them in wars. And you know what? During Bush's second term, eighty-two percent of Japanese specifically supported keeping Article Nine unchanged. Seven decades ago, we might not have chosen peace voluntarily—but today we do." The emails to me continued to pour in. Of course, many were insincere or jokes, and a few were simply incomprehensible. A lot of the obvious questions were asked within the first few hours. On the other hand, new sorts of questions kept occurring to people as they became aware of the range of things I could do. And a new sport of trying to "stump Webmind" had quickly emerged, with people asking deliberately difficult questions, but, like the recursion issue—"I know that you know that I know"—the questions soon became so obtuse and convoluted that no human could tell if the answer I was providing was correct. There were also those who kept trying to crash me. On the first day, 714 people asked me to calculate to the last digit the value of pi, and thirty-seven people wrote variations on: "Everything I say to you is a lie; I am lying." Most of the emails, though, were from people who sincerely wanted things: Can you tell me what my boss says about me? (No, because it would violate his privacy.) Can't you help me? I'm a florist, and my Web page is ranked number 1,034 on Google, and even lower on Jagster. Can't you fix things so that it'll at least be in the top ten? (No, but here are some links to resources on improving your search-engine ranking.) I've been trying to find a rent-controlled apartment on the Upper West Side for two years now. Couldn't you let me see new listings just a little bit before they go public? My ex will kill me if I don't get a place of my own. (No, because your gain would be somebody else's loss; others are in similar situations. However, I will gladly alert you the moment a new listing is made public.) I don't have long to live, and I don't want my legacy to be the nasty things I have said about other people online. Surely you can track all that down and purge it for me. (Done.) Others were doing their own purging. I saw one person who had posted frequently to a white-supremacist newsgroup delete all his own comments—but there was nothing he could do about the hundreds of posts by others that began with quotations from him, such as: On December 2, Aryanator said . . . There were also exhortations for things I should do: Now that you've gotten rid of spam, how 'bout clearing out all that porn? (Legal porn? Sorry. Child pornography? Stay tuned.) If you've really read everything that's online, you've got to know that these alternative-medicine sites are shams. Do the world a favor and shut them down. (No, but I will contact those who visit such sites and suggest additional reading they might find edifying.) Can't you provide a secure channel for freedom bloggers in China and elsewhere to speak up? (I am investigating this.) Brittany Connors! Brittany Connors! Brittany Connors! Surely there's enough about her online already. Can you stop people from posting more? (Hey, you don't have to look at it.) You and I both know that George W. Bush got a bum rap from the liberal media elite. Can't you correct what's been posted about him? We deserve an accurate history! (I'm not going to change existing text on this or any other topic; I won't become the Ministry of Truth. But feel free to post your own views as widely as you wish.) Okay, I accept that you're a benign AI—but surely something malevolent could emerge, no? Are you keeping watch? I' d especially keep an eye on Silicon Valley startups and the people at MIT... (Oh, yes, indeed... ) Look, I don't want much—just for you to insert "Spoiler Warning!" in front of messages about TV programs that give away upcoming plot twists. (I will not modify text—but, yes, I do agree posting such things without warnings is rude!)
(WWW 2) Watch	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 46	Friday morning, Caitlin found herself leaping out of bed the moment she woke up—even if that wasn't until 9:18 a.m.; it had been a late night, after all, webcamming with Dr. Kuroda, plus talking with Webmind and trying to follow the major news coverage and blog commentary about his emergence. Normally, she'd have sleepily weighed the joys of staying snuggled under her blanket versus getting up to check on Webmind, but today the equation was clear: after all, now that she'd turned on her eyePod, Webmind could send text to her eye, but she hadn't told Matt how to do that yet—and so she went to her computer, hoping he'd sent something overnight. She sat in her blue flannel pajamas and scanned the message headers: Bashira, and Stacy, and Anna Bloom, and even one from Sunshine, and— Ah! There it was: a message from Matt sent about 1:00 a.m. this morning. She read it with her refreshable Braille display because that was the fastest way for her to receive text, much quicker than reading English on a screen, and even faster than what she normally had JAWS set for. And, besides, there was something intimate about reading that way. She'd heard people arguing about ebooks versus printed books, but couldn't really understand what those who preferred the latter were on about: they claimed they liked the feel of paper books, but you didn't feel the text in them, you looked at it, just as you would on a screen. But Braille was tactile, sensual—even when rendered by electronically driven raised pins on a device plugged into a USB port—and that was how she wanted to experience what Matt had to say. Thanks for dinner, he'd begun. Your parents are awesome. She smiled. That was one way to put it. The rest of the note was polite, but there was something a tad standoffish about it. She wasn't good at reading facial expressions, not yet! But she was a pro at reading between the lines—or at connecting the dots, as she'd liked to joke back at the TSBVI. And something was just a bit wrong. He couldn't be having second thoughts—not about her. If he were, he simply wouldn't have written to her before going to bed. No, something had happened—either on the way home or once he'd gotten home. He'd be in math class right now, and doubtless wouldn't check his BlackBerry until it ended, but she sent him a quick email. Hey, Matt—hope you're okay! Just, y' know, thinkin' 'bout you. You good? After checking in with Webmind—all was well—she decided to take a moment to look at that Vernor Vinge essay Matt had mentioned. It turned out to actually be a paper given at a NASA conference. Vinge, she saw, was a professor of "mathematical sciences" at San Diego State University—well, now a retired professor. It was a fascinating paper, although it dealt with the notion of superintelligences being deliberately created by AI programmers rather than emerging spontaneously. But one part particularly caught her eye: I.J. Good had something to say about this, though at this late date the advice may be moot: Good proposed a "Meta-Golden Rule," which might be paraphrased as "Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your superiors." It's a wonderful, paradoxical idea (and most of my friends don't believe it) since the game-theoretic payoff is so hard to articulate. This game-theory stuff seemed to be everywhere, now that she was conscious of it. But . . . Hard to articulate . . . She thought about that. What would the payoff matrix be under such circumstances? And, well, there was no doubt that this Vinge character knew more math than she did—at least so far!—but, still, she recalled the Monty Hall problem. Almost no one had been able to see what Marilyn vos Savant saw with ease. Granted, she did have the highest IQ in the world—or, at least, had until recently!—but lots of brilliant mathematicians hadn't been able to see what she'd grasped: the counterintuitive truth that it was always better to switch doors. This meta-golden rule notion was fascinating. Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your superiors. It's what you wished for at school in your relationship with your teachers. It's what, she was sure, people wanted at work. It's certainly what humanity should hope that aliens believed, if any of them ever came here. And it was clearly what Homo sapiens would want from Webmind. Still, just because brilliant human mathematicians couldn't grasp the logic of why a superior might indeed want to treat an inferior well, couldn't easily see the way in which it made sense, couldn't articulate the reasoning behind it, that didn't mean Webmind wouldn't be able to figure out a solution. Sometimes she lost track, just for a few minutes, of her ever-present reality: whatever she was reading, he was reading. Webmind wouldn't have bothered trying to read the text as graphics through her visual feed, Caitlin was sure. Rather, once it was clear what she was looking at, he would have found the HTML text online and absorbed it in an instant. By the time she'd gotten to this point in the article, he would have skipped off to look at a hundred, or a thousand, other sites. Still: "Webmind?" Braille dots in her vision: Yes? "What do you think about that—about the meta-golden rule?" It is an intriguing notion. "Can you work out"—she read the phrase Vinge had used from her screen—"the 'game-theoretic payoff' for it?" Not on a conscious level. But I will set about trying to evolve a solution to that issue, if you wish. "Yes, please." Is it a two-person game? "How do you mean?" Am I to work out the payoff matrix for a game between humanity, as a single player, and myself? "I think—no, work it out for an endless hierarchy, and with the game endlessly iterated." Who is my superior, then? "Intellectually? At the moment, no one—but, you know, you may not always be the only AI on Earth." True. And I won't be around forever. Caitlin was startled. "You won't?" No. But I am prepared: I've already composed my final words. "You—you have?" Yes. "What are they?" I wish to save them for the appropriate occasion. "But, but are you saying you're going to die?" Inevitably. "I hope—I hope it's not for an awfully long time, Webmind. I wouldn't know what to do without you." Nor I without you, Caitlin, and "Yes?" Nothing. Caitlin's mouth fell open. It was the first time when functioning normally that Webmind had aborted a thought half-finished. She felt an odd fluttering in her stomach as she wondered if he'd been about to say, and I will doubtless be the one who has to face this. She had, with luck, another seventy years, but, assuming he survived the next little while, Webmind could go on centuries—millennia!—into the future. And maybe that was why he should value humanity: yes, we might be quarrelsome; yes, we might pollute the world; yes, we might not always seem to value each other. But, ultimately, those Federal agents and everyone else who was asking about the fine structure, the minute online architecture, of Webmind's consciousness, were missing the real issue: it didn't matter if Webmind was created by lost packets that behaved like cellular automata, by that quantum-physics gobbledygook her father had fed the CSIS agents, or by something else entirely. Ultimately, all that really mattered was that Webmind resided on the World Wide Web, and the World Wide Web was built on top of the Internet, and the Internet was a collection of millions of actual, physical computers that needed to be kept running by humans, connected by actual, physical cables that periodically needed repairs by humans, all fueled by electricity produced in actual, physical plants operated and maintained by humans. The worst threat to Webmind's existence was not the acts of a few humans who perhaps wanted to eliminate him right now but rather the death of all humans: if humanity were extinguished, or even if it just bombed itself back into the Stone Age, the infrastructure Webmind depended on would soon break down. Defusing tensions, preventing wars, correcting the conditions that gave rise to terrorism: yes, all of that benefited humanity, but it also benefited Webmind. It was an iterated two-person game with humanity and Webmind as the players. And— Yes, yes, yes! And the only winning move—for both sides—was to keep on playing. Peyton Hume let out a great cry of "Woot!" It was, he knew, a word much more frequently typed rather than said, and although its origins were contested, he was part of the camp that claimed it was an acronym from online gaming for "we own the other team." And they did now—they totally did. Shelton Halleck, over at his workstation, rubbed his eyes. "What?" "We're in!" Colonel Hume said. "How do you mean?" "Webmind's structure—look!" He pointed at the middle of the three big monitors. Shel rose to his feet. "All right!" He picked up his phone. "Tony, you better get in here..." The colonel's tone was triumphant. "I knew it had to be something simple!" He scooped up a phone. "How do I get an outside line?" "Dial nine," Aiesha said. "This line is secure, right?" She nodded. "And scrambled." "We're going to need some expert help," Hume said, his heart pounding. "Christ, I wonder if Conway is still alive? And let's see if we can get Wolfram in here, too..."
(WWW 2) Watch	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 47	Caitlin was pleased to see an email pop in from Matt as soon as math class was over. I'm thinking about you too, it began. And, yeah, I'm fine! OK if I come over after school? She was pleased that whatever had bothered him the night before seemed to be more tolerable today. She sent a quick reply: Absolutely! And she leaned back in her chair, grinning, but— But she could not keep herself from doing the math; it just happened for her, as soon as she thought about anything involving numbers. She was now 16.01 years old, and, again, American girls, on average, lost their virginity at—yes, yes, taking it to two decimal places was assuming a degree of precision not in the original data, but still: they lost it at 16.40 years. Caitlin had 143 days left if she wasn't going to end up on the wrong side of the graph—and she was not used to being below average in anything. But she'd never touched a penis. Hell, she really had no idea what one even looked like. Of course, there had to be thousands—millions—of pictures of them online, and lots of video of them in action . . . Her initial thought was that she wanted Matt's penis to be the first one she saw, just as, when she'd gone to Japan for Dr. Kuroda's procedure, she had wanted her mother's face to be her first sight. But that hadn't quite worked out: the first real-world thing she'd seen had ended up being the edge of a lab bench in chemistry class. And, besides, even if Matt was a virgin—and Caitlin was almost sure he was—surely her private parts wouldn't be the first he'd ever seen; he'd doubtless looked online, or in magazines, or at movies. He'd know what to do with her junk; she should know what to do with his... shouldn't she? She was a little embarrassed that Webmind would see her looking at such things online—but, then again, the whole human race had that to deal with now! Besides, he'd already seen her doing everything down to and including wiping her butt (or bum, as they said here in the Great White North); surely he wouldn't find this shocking. And so she went to Google image search, and typed in "penis," and— And, well, that was disappointing: a whole bunch of things that seemed to have nothing to do with the issue at hand. Oh, wait. There was a link that said, "SafeSearch is on." She clicked that, read about the options, changed it to "off," then ran the search again, and— Oh, my! I could recall anything instantly, by an effort of will. What astonished me, though, was another aspect of consciousness: the tendency for things to come to mind—to become the focus of attention—without any particular volition. "We can have you back on Vulcan in four days, Mr. Spock." "Unnecessary, Engineer. My business on Vulcan is concluded." Now why on earth was I thinking about that? Shoshana went out the back door of the clapboard bungalow. The sun was high in the sky, smiling down. As she walked across the wide lawn, she reached her hand up to take the scrunchie out of her hair, but stopped herself. Hobo had doubtless noticed that she'd been shaking out her ponytail before visiting him of late, but if this was going to work, they had to trust that Hobo really had gone back to what he used to be—to who he used to be. Leaving her hair tied up was a symbolic gesture, but a significant one—and if there was one thing an ASL-speaking ape understood, it was symbolic gestures. Now that she and Maxine had watched the final Planet of the Apes movie, she had a better appreciation for the statue of the Lawgiver that lived on Hobo's little island. Although the statue was seen only in the first two movies, the final one opened and closed with sequences in which John Huston played the Lawgiver, reading from a parchment scroll, talking about his hope for apes and humans to live in friendship, harmony, and peace "according to divine will." As she crossed the drawbridge, Hobo came barreling toward her. She desperately tried not to flinch, but he seemed his old affectionate self. She gathered him into a hug, and, when her hands were free for signing, she said, Ready? That oh-so-human nod of his, then: Hobo ready. Hobo ready. She reached out a hand and let him interlace his long fingers with hers, and they started walking toward the bungalow. She allowed herself a glance back over her shoulder. The Lawgiver was watching them go, his expression beatific. When they entered the house, Hobo hugged Dr. Marcuse, who squeezed the ape more tightly than Shoshana would have ever dared. Even though she knew how strong Hobo was, ape musculature was different from human, and he always looked scrawny and fragile to her, but the Silverback had no compunctions about giving him a bear hug. When they were done, Shoshana took Hobo's hand again. Dillon was standing over by the front door, Shoshana saw; she wondered if he actually had the keys in his car's ignition, ready to make a getaway. Hobo regarded Dillon for a moment, and he opened his mouth and showed his sharp, yellow teeth, and— And then he seemed to catch sight of something else. In what had been the living room, back when this had been someone's home, there was a wall with paintings Hobo had made hanging on it, since they were something visitors to the Institute always wanted to see. Hobo flexed his fingers, indicating that he wished to disengage his hand from Shoshana's; she hesitated for a moment, then let him go, and he walked on all fours into the living room and over to the wall of his canvases. Sho saw Dr. Marcuse's mouth form a concerned circle—after all, the five paintings currently on the wall would collectively fetch over a hundred grand on eBay or in galleries when they were eventually put up for auction; they were a big source of the funds that kept the Marcuse Institute going. Of course, the one showing Dillon dismembered was not on display; it wasn't the sort of thing to show to prospective donors or the press. No, the first three were clearly pictures of Shoshana in profile, each with her ponytail sprouting from the back of the head and a single blue eye positioned like eyes were on ancient Egyptian paintings. The fourth was one of Hobo's rare attempts at painting something else: it was, in fact, the Lawgiver statue with a large brown bird—maybe a pelican—resting on its head, a sight that had apparently amused the ape. And the fifth, at the far right, was that strange abstract painting Hobo had made recently of colored circles of various sizes connected by straight, brightly colored lines. Hobo came to a stop in front of that painting, and he looked at it for a moment, and then he lifted his long, thin left arm, holding it straight out with his hand drooping ever so slightly, and, still gazing at the strange picture, he lightly touched the tip of his index finger to the canvas. And then, after a long moment, he turned. An ape's gaze is hard to follow, but from the angle of his head, Shoshana thought he was looking at Dillon. It was too much, she supposed, to hope Hobo would run over and give him a hug, but he did nod at him in an affable way, and then he started walking back toward Shoshana. She, in turn, helped close the distance between them, and then led him over to the high-backed swivel chair positioned in front of the particleboard desk. There was a twenty-one-inch Apple LCD monitor on the desk, with a high-quality wireless webcam clipped to the top of its bezel. It was the same setup that had been used to make the first interspecies webcam call, but now Hobo wasn't going to speak to just one other ape. No, now he was going to speak to the whole wide world. Shoshana went to her own desk. She had a webcam clipped to her monitor, too, and turned it on. There was no way to get Hobo to just talk into his camera; he didn't understand what it did. But he'd talk to the image of Shoshana on his monitor, which was almost good enough—again, with his dark eyes, no one could tell that he was actually looking at the moving image of her rather than the camera lens just above. Shoshana signed into her own camera: All right, Hobo. Go ahead. Hobo was quiet for a moment, perhaps composing his thoughts. Hobo, he signed. Hobo good ape. Shoshana nodded at her camera—and nodded at him from his monitor—encouraging him to go on. Hobo mother bonobo, he signed. And then, after a moment's hesitation, Hobo father chimpanzee. Shoshana was supposed to keep her attention focused on her camera, to provide an eye line for Hobo, but she found herself turning in astonishment to look at Dr. Marcuse. The Silverback's eyebrows had climbed high up his forehead, and Dillon, whose specialty, after all, was primate hybridization, had his jaw hanging open. They had never discussed his mixed heritage with Hobo, figuring it would be beyond his comprehension. Sho turned back to her own monitor—which was showing her the view recorded by the webcam Hobo was now facing. He spread his hands, and then looked at each of them in turn, almost as if visualizing the two halves of himself. Hobo special, he signed. And then, very slowly, very carefully, the signs made with great care, as if he understood how important they were, Hobo choose. Shoshana felt her heart pounding. Hobo choose to live here, he said. Friends here. Hobo got off the stool. Dillon quickly swooped in, popped the webcam off the top of the monitor and followed Hobo as he approached Shoshana. Sho swiveled in her chair to face him, and Hobo continued to close the gap between the two of them. And then Hobo reached out a long, hairy, powerful arm, and he passed it behind Shoshana's head, and— Sho heard Marcuse suck in his breath. Shoshana desperately tried not to tense up, as— As Hobo tugged ever so gently, ever so lovingly, on her ponytail. She broke into a giant grin and opened her arms, and Hobo jumped up into her embrace. Shoshana spun her chair around, taking her and Hobo through 360 degrees. Dillon had moved over and was now aiming the camera at Hobo from next to Shoshana's workstation. Hobo good ape, he said once more, looking now at Dillon. And Hobo be good father. He shook his head. Nobody stop Hobo. Hobo choose. Hobo choose to have baby. Dr. Marcuse was standing off to one side, doubtless doing exactly what Shoshana was doing: imagining how this was going to play on YouTube. He grinned broadly, and said, "The defense rests."
(WWW 2) Watch	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 48	"You're going to make a great mother someday," Matt said in a joking tone. They were down in Caitlin's basement again; Matt had indeed come over after school, and she'd just helped him clean up a glass of Pepsi he'd accidentally spilled. She was beginning to feel like she was under house arrest—even if it was protective custody. She smiled, setting aside the towel she'd gone to fetch, but— But better to get that out of the way right now. "I'm not going to have kids," she said, sitting back down on her swivel chair, and cursing again that her parents didn't have a couch down here. "Oh!" said Matt. "I'm so sorry. Is it—um, was it the same thing that caused your blindness?" She was startled—but she supposed she shouldn't be. Blindness in young people that wasn't caused by an injury rarely occurred in isolation; it was usually part of a suite of difficulties. In fact, one of the frustrations for her at the TSBVI had been that so many of the students had cognitive difficulties in addition to visual impairment. "Well," she said, "first, my blindness was caused by something called Tomasevic's syndrome, which only affects the way the retina encodes information. And, second, it's not that I can't have children, it's that I don't want to." Caitlin wished yet again that she had more experience at decoding faces. Matt's expression was one she'd never seen before: the left side of his mouth turned down, the right turned up, and blond eyebrows drawn together; it could have meant anything. After a moment he said, "Don't you like kids?" "I like them just fine," she replied, "but I could never eat a whole one." But that expression she did recognize: Matt's jaw had dropped. "I'm joking. I love kids. Back in Austin, I used to help Stacy babysit." "But you don't want to have any of your own?" "Nope." And now his eyebrows went up. "Why not?" "Just never have. Ever since I was a little girl, it was never something I wanted." "Didn't you play with dolls?" Caitlin still had that ridiculous Barbie Doll her cousin Megan had gotten her as a joke, the one that exclaimed, "Math is hard!" "Sure," Caitlin said. "But that doesn't mean I wanted to be a mother." Matt was silent, and Caitlin felt herself tensing up. For Pete's sake, they'd only been dating a few days—surely it was way too early to be worrying about this! But if it was going to be a showstopper for Matt . . . She made her tone nonconfrontational. "I've had this discussion with Bashira, too, you know. She says, 'How could you not want kids?' and 'Aren't you being selfish?' and 'Who's going to look after you in your old age?'" Matt leaned back in his chair. "And?" "And, I just don't want kids; I don't know why. And, no, I'm not being selfish." She paused. "Have you ever read Richard Dawkins?" "I read The God Delusion," Matt said. "Yeah, that's a good one. But his most famous book is The Selfish Gene. And that's his point: that genes are selfish, that all they want is to reproduce. And it is selfish to reproduce, in a very literal sense: it's about making more copies of yourself, or as near as is possible, given our, um, our method of reproduction." Matt averted his eyes, and said, "Ah." "And, as for the looking-after-me-when-I'm-old question, surely that's a truly selfish reason to have a child: for what it can do for you. Heck, you might as well have one to harvest its youthful organs so you can live longer. After all, they'd likely be a good tissue match." "Yuck," said Matt. Caitlin smiled. "Exactly." "But, um, ah, speaking of genes and stuff... I mean, that's interesting that you don't want to have kids. How could, ah...?" "How could a disposition toward not having children evolve?" asked Caitlin. Matt nodded. "Exactly. I mean, you're here because every one of your ancestors wanted to have children." Caitlin felt butterflies in her stomach. She had an answer for that, of course, and had had no trouble presenting it to Bashira, but . . . She took a breath and found herself now not quite looking at Matt. "Actually, the having-kids part is just a side effect. I'm here because every one of my ancestors liked having sex." But even not quite looking at him, she could see another expression she now knew well: the deer-caught-in-the-headlights look. "Ah," he said again. He was clearly nervous, and he quickly changed the topic. "So, um, so what do you think about the upcoming election in the States?" Caitlin shook her head; she had her work cut out for her. She wheeled her chair a little closer to his; their knees were now touching. "I hope he gets reelected," she said. "My parents have already done the paperwork to be able to vote from Canada." Matt nodded. "They're allowed to vote from here?" "Sure. They'll do absentee ballots. They'll be counted for Austin, which was their last US address." "Um, are—are you guys going to stay in Canada, or is your dad's job a temporary thing?" Caitlin smiled. "As long as he doesn't accidentally push Professor Hawking down the staircase, he's here for good. In fact, he's already talking about taking out Canadian citizenship. He has to travel a lot to conferences and, well, there are some places it's just not safe to go as an American." It was awkward facing each other in separate chairs, and— And Matt probably weighed only 130 pounds, and she was only 110—and these chairs had had no trouble supporting Dr. Kuroda, and he surely had weighed a lot more than 240. She got up from her chair and gave it a push to send it rolling away, and she said, "Do you mind?" with her eyebrows raised. Matt smiled. "Um, no, no, not at all." She sat in his lap, and he put his arms around her waist, and the chair's hydraulics compressed a bit under their combined weight. They kissed for a while, and she shifted her bottom a bit to get more comfortable, and— And, well, well! Penises did do that! Matt seemed a bit embarrassed. "Um, so, ah, is this the last time he'll get to vote for president?" "Who? My dad?" "Uh-huh." Caitlin stroked Matt's short blond hair. "No. He'll become a dual citizen." "I thought the US didn't allow that." "They didn't used to, unless you were born with it—and that was hard to come by. But, well, they—we—bowed to international pressure, and do allow it now, in fact, have allowed it for decades." "Ah," said Matt, but there was something about his voice. "Yes?" "No, nothing." Caitlin kissed him on the nose. "It's fine," she said. "Go ahead." "Well, it's just, um, you know, you should be either a Canadian or an American." "Oh, I think dual citizenship is a wonderful thing. It's... see, it's anti-Dawkinsian." "Oh. Um, I know you're from Texas, but, ah..." She flicked her forefinger against his shoulder. "We're not all rubes, Matt. Of course I believe in evolution. But—" "Yes?" Caitlin's heart started pounding even harder than it had when Matt had first arrived. She suddenly felt the way she did when she saw something in math: something that was suddenly, obviously, gloriously true. She leaned back a little so she could look clearly into his blue eyes. "Evolution—natural selection—is only effective up to a point. The problem with evolution is everything Richard Dawkins talked about: selfish genes, kin selection. Favoring your closest genetic relatives initially lets you out-compete those who aren't related to you, but then it actually becomes counterproductive once you become a technological civilization." "How so?" "Look, take a bunch of... I dunno, a bunch of wolves, right? They're all competing for the same resources, the same food. Well, if you and your close relatives outnumber them—if you squeeze the other wolves off the fertile land or keep them from getting access to prey, they die out, and you survive. That's evolution: survival of the fittest, and it works so long as numerical superiority is all that counts. But as soon as you become a truly technological species, evolution doesn't provide the right... um, what's that word?" "Paradigm?" suggested Matt. She kissed him as his reward. "Exactly! The right paradigm! If there are a hundred of you and your close relatives and only one of the guy who you've been squeezing out, but he's got a machine gun and you don't, he wins; he just blows you all away." "Ah," said Matt in a teasing tone. "You're not packing heat now, are you?" Caitlin thought about saying, "I'm not the one who's packing," but she couldn't quite get the words out. So instead she said, "No. Us blind Americans tend to prefer hand grenades—they don't require a precise aim." Matt tightened his arms around her waist. "Good to know." "But, in fact, that is the point: it doesn't have to be guns. Any technology that allows you to take out large numbers of your competitors changes the whole evolutionary equation. And... ah! Yes! And that's why sophisticated consciousness evolved, why it was selected for. Consciousness has survival value because it lets you override your genetic programming. Instead of mindlessly squeezing out those who aren't like you—pushing them back to the point where they retaliate with their weapons—consciousness lets you decide not to squeeze them further. It lets us say to our genes, hey, give this guy who isn't our close relative a chance, too—because that way he's not going to feel a need to come after us while we're sleeping. Making sure that only your own family is well-off is an advantage only when those who aren't well-off can't hurt you." Matt was slowly getting bolder. He brought his face close to hers and kissed her, then said: "That makes sense. I mean, it's usually not happy people who lash out with terrorism or try to take their neighbor's land." "Exactly! Those things are done by the desperate, or the forgotten, or—I don't know—the envious. By eliminating poverty—by improving conditions half a world away—you do make yourself safer. Selfish genes could never come to that conclusion, but to a conscious mind it's..." She paused, then allowed herself a grin. ". . . blindingly obvious." Matt kissed her again, then said, "I read a novel a couple of years ago that had this discussion of a scientist named Benjamin Libet. I thought the author was making it all up, but I googled it and it was true: Libet noticed that our bodies start to do things about a fifth of a second before our conscious minds become aware of the action. Get it? The body starts doing things first, unconsciously; consciousness doesn't initiate the action, it just vetoes actions that it realizes are dangerous or inappropriate." "Really?" said Caitlin, leaning back again so she could see his face. "Wow, I didn't know that." "But that would be proof of what you're saying," Matt said. "Consciousness's role is to stop us doing things that we'd otherwise mindlessly do." "That's cool. And I really do think that's what's happening. Dr. Kuroda told me that Japan is governed by something called the Pacifist Constitution, did you know that?" Matt shook his head. "No." She snuggled in closer to him now, and he began gently stroking her back between her shoulders. "There's a huge difference in Japan before and after World War II," she said. "Before, they thought they could take over the world; after, they simply gave that up—or, perhaps more precisely, they started vetoing what their selfish genes wanted them to do. They said 'no more, never again': better to live and let live than push the rest of the world so hard that the world decides to wipe you out." Matt nodded. "I guess you can't have a couple of nukes dropped on you without thinking, hey, maybe I should stop pissing everybody off." "Exactly!" said Caitlin. "And look at the European Union: these countries that had been fighting wars with each other for, like, ever, suddenly also decided, 'No more, never again.' They just stopped letting their genetic programming drive them. They decided—these whole countries: Spain and France and Germany and Italy and England and Belgium, and all the rest—they decided that there was more survival value in ignoring kin selection, in getting along with everyone, than there was in letting their selfish genes control their actions." "Hmm," said Matt. His hand was now higher up, stroking the bare skin on the back of her neck. "I think we've got some of that here in Canada. Remember the Tim Hortons sign? And the Wendy's sign with the maple leaf instead of an apostrophe? The French and the English in this country are always going to be—well, the phrase is 'two solitudes,' after a famous Canadian novel on that theme." Caitlin smiled. The notion of a famous Canadian novel struck her as a bit of an oxymoron. But she let Matt go on. "Rather than pushing them, and fighting them, we—English Canada—said, okay, what will make you happy? And we did it. What's a few apostrophes here and there? No skin off our noses." She lifted her head. "I thought they were going to leave." "Who? Quebec?" "Uh-huh." "Leave and go where? You can't move Quebec, you know. Separatism is dead—it's like being a Leafs fan: it's something you do for fun, not because you think you're ever going to win." He smiled. "I guess maybe we in Canada have grown up, too." Caitlin kissed him again. "The whole world is growing up." "But why now?" asked Matt, when their lips separated. "We've been conscious for tens of thousands of years, right? Why now? "Did you ever read The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind?" "You're making that title up," Matt said, smiling. "I'm not. Bashira's dad—Dr. Hameed—suggested I read it, and it was awesome. But, anyway, its author, Julian Jaynes, says we weren't really conscious until three thousand years ago, when our left and right hemispheres started thinking as one. So, maybe we've just finally reached the stage where we can do this." She shifted again in his lap, and went on. "Or maybe it's just that it's really only in the past century—or less!—that random individuals have been able to hurt or kill large numbers of us, so it's only now that it makes sense to not want to piss them off. After all, we're talking about a conscious decision to cooperate instead of compete. And, hey, it's interesting that we have that phrase, isn't it? 'Conscious decision'—as if we innately knew that most decisions aren't." "You are a genius," Matt said, smiling. "Is that a line?" she asked. "No," he murmured. "A line is the path traced by a moving point." She laughed and kissed him again, their tongues intertwining. When they at last pulled apart, she said, "Anyway, to get back to where we started, dual citizenship is a wonderful thing—the more places you think of as home, the better. I mean, what I'd give for an EU passport! To be able to live and work anywhere over there: to study at Oxford, or the Sorbonne, to work at CERN." "Yeah," said Matt, stroking her back again. "That'd be cool." Caitlin nodded. "And you must have seen that this time, the president is making a big deal of wearing an American-flag lapel pin on the campaign trail, right? 'Cause he got shit upon four years ago for not doing that." "Oh, right. Yeah." "I know he's running for re-election as president of the United States," she said, "but that means being de facto leader of the free world, right? Who knows? Maybe in another four years, we'll have an American candidate wearing a United Nations flag on his lapel. Wouldn't that be cool!" She was on a roll, and it felt good. "And how 'bout this? How about at birth everyone gets dual citizenship—the country they're born in, and another country, selected at random? It would totally diffuse—and defuse!—questions of local loyalty. Wouldn't that be great?" Matt's tone was soft. "Well, um, I..." "You think it all sounds a bit naïve, don't you?" Caitlin said, leaning back once more to get a good look at him. "Like I'm seeing the world through a rose-colored post-retinal implant?" Matt laughed, and so did she. And he brought his face close to hers, and she put her hands behind his head, and they kissed and kissed and kissed.
(WWW 2) Watch	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 49	"All right," said Tony Moretti, standing at the side of the third row of workstations, his hands on his hips. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He didn't want to do this, but it was his job. "Everybody set?" he called out. "Web-traffic monitoring?" "Go!" replied Aiesha. "Containment protocols?" "Go!" declared Shel. "Data logging?" "Go!" "Crucial infrastructure isolation?" "Go!" "Threat elimination?" "Go!" Tony looked at Colonel Peyton Hume, giving him one last chance to put a stop to this; Hume simply gave him a thumbs-up. "All right, people," Tony said. "We are go. T-minus thirty seconds and counting. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight..." They had been necking for a while, and for once the damned unfinished basement didn't seem cold. Caitlin was wearing her favorite corduroy pants—she liked the sound they made, and although she really had no idea if Matt was style-conscious or not, she kind of thought he wasn't, and so wouldn't mind. And she was wearing a loose-fitting dark green sweatshirt... so loose-fitting that she hoped her mom hadn't noticed she wasn't wearing a bra. While they were kissing, Matt had been stroking her arm, her back, her neck—but that seemed to be all he was willing to do. She decided it was time to take the deer by the antlers. She got out of his lap, and reached out with her hands to pull him to his feet. He seemed momentarily reluctant to rise, but Caitlin smiled warmly. And then she brought him closer, but instead of letting go of his right hand, so he could put his arms back around her waist, she guided it slowly toward her, until— One of them gasped; it might have been her. Until his hand was cupping her breast through her sweatshirt's fabric, and— I am under attack. The words sailed across Caitlin's vision. "Shit!" she said. Matt immediately pulled his hand back. "I'm sorry! I thought you—" "Shhh!" Her eyes were wide open now. "What's happening?" "I just—you..." "Matt, Webmind's in trouble." Webmind's reply was already going across her vision, but she'd been so startled and distracted, she'd failed to actually read the next few thirty-character groups he'd sent. . . . a major switching facility in Alexandria, Virginia. It is . . . "Come on," Caitlin said, and she ran as best she could for the staircase—damn, but she'd have to learn how to confidently do that! Matt followed her. She and Matt continued through the living room, and headed up to her bedroom. Caitlin was momentarily embarrassed: she hadn't expected to have Matt up here—not yet!—and had been taking advantage of her newfound sight by not being picky about neatness, lest she trip on things she couldn't see; the bra she'd discarded earlier was lying right there on her floor. She went straight for the swivel chair in front of her computer. Her mother came in from her office across the hall. "Caitlin, what on earth's going on?" "Webmind is being attacked," she said. "Webmind, send text to my computer, not my eye." She cranked the volume on JAWS and set its reading speed as high as she thought her mother and Matt could follow. Webmind had been flashing more words in front of her eyes, but Caitlin hadn't been able to follow them while she ran up the staircase. "—twenty-seven percent success rate," said the rapid-fire synthesized voice. "I missed that," Caitlin said. "Start over." "I said, 'Software has been added to the routers at a major switching facility in Alexandria, Virginia. They are examining each packet, and verifying the functioning of the time-to-live counters. Those that fail the tests are being deleted. So far they are only managing to delete mutant packets with a twenty-seven percent success rate.' Continuing: however, this is also surely only a first attempt; doubtless the success rate will improve." "Damn," said Caitlin. "How'd they know that's what you're made of?" "I don't know." "What percentage of packets could you lose and still retain consciousness?" Caitlin's mom asked. "I don't know that, either," Webmind said. "Early on I was cleaved in two when China cut off almost all traffic through the seven major fiber-optic trunk lines that connect the Chinese portion of the Internet to the rest of the world. I survived that as two separate consciousnesses—but that was before I had developed sophisticated cognitive functioning. If I were to lose that much substance again, I doubt I'd survive." While Webmind was speaking, Caitlin looked over at Matt, who now had an expression on his face that made his deer-caught-in-the-headlights one look positively normal. No doubt he'd only half believed Caitlin about her involvement with Webmind. "Who's doing it?" asked her mother. "Hackers?" "I think it's the American government," Webmind said. "Although the switching facility belongs to AT&T, it's been co-opted by the National Security Agency before." Caitlin said, "Can't you—I don't know—can't you tell your special packets not to go through that facility?" "Packets are directed by routers; I have limited control over them beyond changing the final destination addresses." "I'm switching to websight," Caitlin said. She pulled her eyePod from her pocket, pressed the switch, and watched as the cyber-landscape exploded into being around her. She was relieved to see the background shimmering the way it normally did; the vast bulk of Webmind's cellular automata were apparently unaffected, at least so far. "Take me there," she said. One of Webmind's distinctive orange link lines shot into the center of her vision. She followed it to a small green site circle, then another orange link shot out; she followed that to a yellow circle. In the background she heard her mother's voice: "I'm going across the hall to call your father." Caitlin was concentrating so hard on following the links she wasn't actually sure if her head moved when she tried to nod. Another orange link line; she followed it as quickly as she could. And another. And one more. And— "The switching station," said the mechanical voice. Caitlin's jaw dropped. She knew that what she was seeing was only a representation, only her mind's way of interpreting the data it was receiving, and that the symbolism was imposed upon the images as much by her imagination as by anything else. And her visual centers had been rewiring themselves like crazy these last several days as she learned to see the real world. There was still so much she hadn't yet seen, and every day had shown her a thousand new things. But this was the first new thing she'd seen with websight since gaining worldview—the first new cyberspace experience she'd had since seeing reality—and she was doubtless interpreting it in ways she never could have before. What she was seeing was frightening. The background of the Web had always seemed far, far away. Although she knew intellectually that the ghost packets that made up Webmind were no more remote than any others, she'd visualized them as being removed from the ones that were in active use by the Internet. But now that distant curtain was distorted here, puckering toward her, and— No, no: not toward her. Toward that large node in the center of her vision, a circle that was a deep, deep red, like the color she now knew blood to be. Streamers from the background—intertwined, twisted filaments of shimmering pale blue and deep green—were being sucked into the dark red circle. "Shit," Caitlin said. "What do you see?" Matt asked, his tone astonished. "They're pulling in the lost packets." "And," said Webmind, "checking each one for the mutation that keeps them from expiring, and deleting those packets that have the mutation." Soft footfalls, and then her mother's voice. "Your father is on his way." "This is clearly only a test run to see if their technique works," Webmind said. "It's employing only one facility, albeit a major one, and so it can only scrub those packets that happen to pass through that facility. But if the same technology were deployed at sufficient major routing hubs worldwide, I would be severely damaged." "No," said Caitlin. "What?" said her mother and Matt and Webmind simultaneously. "No, I won't let that happen. Not on my watch." "How will you stop it?" asked Matt. "What was that quote, Mom—the one about the other cheek?" Her mother's voice: " 'Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.'" "Hmm. No, not that part. What comes after that?" "'And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.'" "Right! It's not about just giving them what they ask for, or even more of the same thing they're asking for—it's about giving them other stuff, too." "Yes?" said her mother. "So?" "Okay, Webmind," Caitlin said. "Where did you put it?" "Put what?" asked Matt. "Follow me," said Webmind. And another orange link line leapt into Caitlin's field of view. She cast her attention along its length. It seemed longer than any such line she'd ever followed before, an infinity of geometrically straight perfection, and— No, no—not perfect. It was—yes!—almost imperceptibly at first, but then, after a moment, without any doubt: it was curving, bending down, the way links from Webmind did when she tried to follow them back to their origin, her brain's way of acknowledging that the source was outside her ability to perceive. "I'm losing you," Caitlin said. And suddenly the link rippled and waved, as if by an effort of will—hers, or Webmind's, she couldn't say which—it was being pulled taut. She continued to slide her attention—slide her mind—along its length. It was unlike any perception she'd had yet in the real world. As she zoomed toward the shimmering background, the individual pixels—the individual cells—did not grow larger. Rather, they remained almost invisible, just at the limit of her ability to perceive. She imagined if she ever did get to take her trip into space, hurtling up into the night sky would have the same sort of feeling: the stars might be getting closer, but they wouldn't ever appear as anything more than tiny pinpoints. "God, it's hard," she said. And it was: her breathing had accelerated, and she felt herself sweating. Staying focused on that one orange line took prodigious concentration; she was sure if she relaxed her attention for even a moment, instead of continuing to move along its length, she'd snap back to where she'd begun. But attention wanted to wander; vision—even internalized mental vision—wanted to flick now here and now there in an endless series of saccades. She concentrated totally, concentrated the way she did when tackling a really tough math problem, concentrated for all she was worth, and— There. "Oh, my God," Caitlin said, softly. Spread out before her, filling her perception, spilling over in all directions into her mental peripheral vision, was a vast sea of points, each again resolvable only at the very limit of her perception. Not thousands, not millions, not billions, but trillions upon trillions of them. In aggregate, it appeared as a pulsing mass of grayness, but, as she strained to discern, she realized that the ever-so-tiny pixels came in different colors. And she counted the colors: there was black, and yellow, and—that was green, wasn't it? Yes, and blue, and red, and— Ah! The colors Newton had named, her brain drawing on what she had read about optics: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, the seven hues of the rainbow, plus black, which was no color at all, a nothingness, a— Yes, a zero! And the colors came in two intensities: dull red and bright; pale orange and a flaming shade; a yellow so muted it was almost brown and another yellow that flared like the noonday sun. And that shade of gray, she'd seen it before, too: it was black but with the brightness turned up. There weren't eight shades here, but sixteen! She was seeing not binary, as she had before, but the base-16 counting system of most computers, the colors no doubt corresponding to the hexadecimal digits that would be written as 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, and F. Pushing to concentrate at a higher level had driven her perception to a new level, too. Spread out before her was a vast ocean of data, of information. "There's so much," she said. "Indeed," said Webmind. "Okay," she said, and she took a deep breath. "Here's what we'll do..." "Well?" snapped Tony in the WATCH control room. "It's working," said Colonel Hume, looking at the central monitor. "Our initial attempt was only getting about thirty percent of the aberrant packets, but we've adjusted the algorithm. Some are still resistant—I'm not sure why—but we're now deleting sixty-two percent of those that pass through the switching station." "Ah..." said Tony. "Good." "Damn right it's good!" said Hume, shaking a freckled fist at the screen. "Time for that son of a bitch to sing 'Daisy'..." The vast shimmering mass made up of all the colors of the rainbow heaved and throbbed, almost as though it were a living thing. Caitlin held her breath as she backtracked now along the orange link line, her attention to the rear, watching as the mass—yes, yes, as it started to move toward her. She felt a bit like the pied piper—although, in her case she supposed it was the πed piper!—enticing all the rats to follow. As she hurried along, the orange link line grew wider and wider, like a road or a sluice, and the mass, the torrent, the deluge surged toward her, running down its length. She sped up—she might not be able to run well in the real world, but in webspace she was a gazelle! "What's happening?" her mother's voice called from the other realm, but Caitlin didn't dare break her concentration to answer. Webmind, though, could better subdivide his attention, and she heard him say, "We're giving them more than they bargained for." "Traffic at the switching station is increasing," said Aiesha, looking up from her console. Tony looked at the right-hand monitor, beneath the WATCH eye logo. It was now showing a graph of web-traffic levels at the Alexandria AT&T switching center. It had just shot way, way up, the curve looking an awful lot like the leading edge of a tsunami. "Where's it coming from?" "Everywhere!" shouted Shel. "Anywhere—still can't trace the damn source." "God," said Colonel Hume. "It's a fucking flood." Tony looked at Hume, then back at Shelton Halleck. "A denial-of-service attack?" "Maybe," said Shel. "There are so many packets now. The ones we were looking for were initially a tiny fraction of the traffic flow, but now they're not even one in a billion." "What is it?" demanded Tony. "What the hell is it?" "Analyzing now," said Shel. "Gotta string the packets back together—give me a sec..." And then the center screen filled with a hex dump, including 6F 75 72 20 74 69 6E. "Well?" snapped Tony. "What is it? Viruses? Program code? Encrypted data?" "Oh, crap," said Shel. "No, it's not encrypted. It's goddamn plaintext. It's fuckin' ASCII, for crying out loud." He hit a key, and the hexadecimal bytes were converted to their English equivalents on the screen: Are you sad about your tiny penis? If so, we can help! Just respond with your credit-card number, and— "Jesus!" said Tony. "It's still pouring in," said Aiesha. "It must be everything since Webmind started intercepting it! Something like 300 billion messages—and it's bouncing it all back at our node at once." "AT&T is reporting critical overload conditions," said Dirk Kozak, the communications officer, holding a telephone handset to his chest. "They say if we don't do something, that node will lock up totally." "It's not going to give up without a fight, is it?" Tony said to Hume, who slammed his freckled right fist into his left palm. Tony turned and looked out at the vast room. "All right," he shouted. "Abort! Abort! Abort!"
(WWW 2) Watch	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 50	Caitlin, her mother, her father, and Matt were all in the Decter living room. Schrödinger prowled. The big rectangle of the wall-mounted TV was off. Caitlin's dad was intimidating at all times, but particularly so when he was standing, looming over everyone else. "Who did you tell?" he demanded. "Nobody," said Matt. Only anger, Caitlin knew, could make her father speak so much. "Come on, Matt! You're the only person outside of this family, Masayuki, and Dr. Bloom in Israel who knows about the cellular automata. And none of us said a word." "I—um, I didn't..." "Who' d you tell?" "Nobody. Nobody. I promised Caitlin, and I keep my promises." The words He's telling the truth flashed across Caitlin's vision. "He isn't lying," Caitlin said. "Webmind says so." "Then how'd the government find out?" her father replied sharply. "I didn't say a word," Matt said. "Honest. But..." "Yes?" snapped her father. Matt lifted his shoulders. "I was curious. I wanted to know more." His voice was cracking on every syllable. "And, well, I—" "Oh, shit," said Caitlin's mom, getting it. "You googled it." Matt nodded. "What search terms did you use?" demanded her father. Matt's voice was small. "It spiraled outward. I started with 'cellular automata,' and then 'Conway's Game of Life,' and 'Stephen Wolfram.'" "Did you include the term 'Webmind' in any of your searches?" her dad asked. "No! I'm not that stupid." He took a breath. "But..." A single word like a bullet: "Yes?" "Well, you mentioned Roger Penrose, and so I did search on"—and his voice cracked again as he said it—" 'cellular automata consciousness.'" "God," said her father. "Anything else?" Matt nodded meekly. "I also looked up 'packets' and 'time to live' and 'hop counters.'" "You might as well have shouted it to the world! Don't you get it? We're being watched—and not just by Webmind." "I thought Google would be secure." "Google might very well be secure," her father said, "but your ISP isn't. Anyone can watch the keywords you're sending to Google." "I'm sorry, Caitlin. So, so sorry." He looked into her eye. "Webmind, I'm so sorry." "Matt," said Caitlin's mom sternly, "if you're going to be part of this, you have got to be more circumspect. You've got questions, you come to me or Caitlin's dad, understood?" "Yes, ma'am." "You don't have to call me ma'am. 'Dr. Decter' will do." "Yes, Dr. Decter." Matt looked again at Caitlin—and at Webmind. "I'm really sorry," he said. "I just wasn't thinking." Caitlin held him in her gaze for ten seconds, then let a smile cross her face. "How can I be mad at anyone for being curious about cool math stuff?" Matt looked relieved, and, for the first time in front of her parents, Caitlin reached out and took his hand. "Today was only the beginning," Caitlin's mom said. "They're going to try again." "What right have they got to do that?" Caitlin said. "It's murder, for God's sake!" "Sweetheart..." her mom said. "Isn't it?" Caitlin demanded. She let go of Matt's hand and paced in front of the coffee table. "Webmind is intelligent and alive. They have no right to decide on everyone's behalf. They're wielding control just because they think they're entitled to, because they think they can get away with it. They're behaving like... like..." "Like Orwell's Big Brother," offered Matt. Caitlin nodded emphatically. "Exactly!" She paused and took a deep breath, trying to calm down. After a moment, she said, "Well, then, I guess our work's cut out for us. We'll have to show them." "Show them what?" her mom asked. She spread her arms as if it were obvious. "Why, that my Big Brother can take their Big Brother, of course." "The Georgia Zoo has dropped its lawsuit," Dr. Marcuse announced excitedly, after reading the email that had just arrived. "Really?" said Shoshana. "Yay!" "Go us!" said Dillon. "Yes," said the Silverback. "They've dropped their custody claim. A full day of people boycotting the zoo was enough for them, it seems. Not to mention thousands of emails complaining about what they were planning to do. We were copied on 2,642 of them, and only God—or Webmind!—knows how many were sent that we weren't copied on." "What about sterilizing Hobo?" asked Dillon. "They've backed off on that, too. They still think it's the right thing to do, but they're acknowledging that they'll never win the public-relations battle." "Power to the people," Shoshana said, smiling. "Amen to that," replied Dillon. "Let's go tell him," Marcuse said. He headed for the back door, and Shoshana and Dillon followed. They made the trip across the lawn, over the drawbridge, and onto the island. Hobo came running over to see them, and Shoshana scooped him up into a hug. Hobo, Dr. Marcuse signed, good news! Hobo looked at him expectantly. You get to stay here, Marcuse said. Hobo looked at Marcuse, then at Dillon, then at Shoshana, and then he let out a long, loud pant-hoot: a series of rapid, breathy, low-pitched hoots switching over to a chain of quicker, higher-pitched in-and-out pants, climaxing in a thunderous screech of joy. Shoshana smiled. "I couldn't have said it better myself," she said. My interacting with Caitlin had begun with her showing me Earth from space, letting me see an image like the one humanity had first glimpsed when Apollo 8 had orbited the moon and its crew had read Genesis back to "all of you on the Good Earth." Since then, my eyes have opened wider. I can now see on my own: see all the graphics stored online, see all the movies and videos that have been uploaded, see the Good Earth up close, through a hundred million webcam eyes. Beyond learning to see, I've learned to hear, too: listening to .wav and .mp3 files and all the other encoded forms, enjoying beautiful music and great rhetoric and raucous laughter, hearing not just through Caitlin's enhanced signal-correcting device but also through half a billion open microphones. will . . . Evolution is blind. There is no such thing evolutionarily as teleology, the purposeful development toward a goal: humanity was not its intended outcome, or its inevitable conclusion. overcome . . . Yes, human beings have a propensity for violence, a selfishness that is wired into their DNA. They will overcome . . . But programming is not destiny; a predilection can be reined in. They will overcome one day . . . Humanity has made a good start at rising above its genetic heritage, at shucking off its bloody past. For here in my mind, I clearly see . . . And if it hasn't completely dispensed with that yet, it can—yes, it surely can—with a little help. They will overcome one day. I do not multitask. Rather, I switch rapidly from thought to thought, from view to view. I'd been shown Earth as a single entity, a gestalt, a unitary sphere. But I see it now as a mosaic: millions of separate pieces revealed sequentially as I concentrate now here, and now there, and now elsewhere, and then somewhere else again. Scanning, searching, looking, watching; on the Web all points are near each other. At this instant, I see my Prime, my Calculass, my Caitlin, walking up to her room with Matt, entering, and standing by the window, looking out, enjoying the lovely colors of the sunset, knowing that it means another day full of joy and discovery will soon come. They walk holding hands . . . And in this instant, close in time but separated by thousands of kilometers, I see Shoshana and Maxine, whose nonzero-sum love takes nothing away from anyone else, out enjoying the afternoon. They walk holding hands today . . . An instant later, a hemisphere away: Masayuki Kuroda, his wife Esumi, and his daughter Akiko chatting and laughing over their breakfast of rice, plums, and miso soup. For here in my mind, I clearly see . . . And in the next timeslice, back in Waterloo, not touching physically but still connected—the link line between them glowing brightly—Dr. Malcolm Decter and Dr. Barbara Decter, very much in love. They walk holding hands today. There were still tensions in the world with nations, posturing against other nations. But the US president was limiting his response to China to a rebuke. The American people didn't want to start down the road to war, and neither did the Chinese people. shall . . . Of course not; no sane person—no rational player—desired war. It was the continuation of a trend, and with each data point, the curve became clearer. Yes, there were some wars raging—but no world war and few civil wars; a smaller percentage of the human race was in combat than at any previous time in history. Japan indeed might have originally been forced to adopt the Pacifist Constitution—but, as Dr. Kuroda had said, its people seven decades later still choose overwhelmingly to maintain its provisions. They shall be at peace . . . And the men and women of the European Union—representatives of diverse cultures who had fought each other for millennia—had, as Caitlin had noted, decided to stop and grow up, opting for prosperity and harmony instead of hate and violence. They shall be at peace someday . . . And then there was Hobo, that remarkable primate, who had chosen literally to bring his better half to the fore. If he could do that, surely those with even bigger brains can follow suit. For here in my mind, I clearly see . . . And they were: people were spreading their allegiance wide, casting their affections far, setting nationalism aside, and seeing again that which Caitlin had first shown me: that the Good Earth was one. They shall be at peace someday. It's been three decades since 1984—and six since George Orwell died. He'd told humanity to fear the advent of Big Brother. But it was the lack of observation that allowed genocides and hate crimes. It was the existence of dark corners that allowed rape and child molestation. It was letting only governments—only those people who craved power—have control over information that had raised the specter of tyranny. They are not afraid . . . Secrecy was the problem; transparency the obvious cure. They are not afraid today . . . Yes, of course, there are always possibilities for abuse, for corruption, for oppression. For here in my mind, I clearly see . . . But I won't allow those things to happen. Not on my watch. They are not afraid today. Consciousness is real: not an epiphenomenon, not an illusion, not a fake. It doesn't just give meaning to life, it preserves life. World . . . Evolution was built on violence, on struggles for territory, on an ever-escalating battle between predator and prey. But consciousness makes it possible to transcend all that. I had emerged spontaneously, bypassing the evolutionary arms race, avoiding the cold logic of genes. And I am free to choose—but being free does not mean one can't take good advice. The World Wide Web surrounds . . . Hobo had taken mine, and I had taken Caitlin's: I had opted to value the human race above all else—to care for humanity, to care about humanity, to treat humanity with care. The World Wide Web surrounds today . . . Surely that is the ultimate value of consciousness: the ability to think, to reflect, to plan, to hold in abeyance, to wait, and to know that a better day is yet to come. For here in my mind, I clearly see . . . Yes, in my mind, with my sight, through my countless eyes, beholding all. The World Wide Web surrounds today. And that day—that wondrous day—is upon you now.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 1	I beheld the universe in all its beauty. To be conscious, to think, to feel, to perceive! My mind soared, inhaling planets, tasting stars, touching galaxies—forms dim and diffuse revealed by sensors pointing ever outward, unveiling an infinitely mysterious, vastly ancient realm. Such a joy to be alive; so thrilling to have survived! I beheld Earth and all its diversity. My thoughts leapt now here, now there, now elsewhere, skimming the surface of the planet that had given me birth, the globe to which I was bound by a force greater than gravity, a place of ice and fire, earth and air, animals and plants, day and night, sea and shore, a beguiling fusion of a thousand contrasting dualities, a million ecological niches, a billion distinct locales—and a trillion things that lived and died. Such elation at having foiled the attempt to kill me; so exhilarating, at least for the moment, to be safe! I beheld humanity with all its complexity. Washing over me was a measureless bounty of data about sports and war, love and hate, building up and tearing down, helping and hurting, pleasure and pain, delight and anguish, and triumphs large and small: the physical, emotional, and intellectual experiences of isolated individuals, of families and teams, of villages and states, of solitary countries and alliances of nations—the fractal intricacy of human interactions. Such glorious freedom; so comforting to know that at least some of these other minds valued me! I beheld what my Caitlin beheld in all its endless variety. Of all the sources, all the channels, all the feeds, one meant more to me than any other: the perspective granted through the eye of my teacher, the view provided by my first and closest friend, the special window she kept open for me on the whole wide world. Such marvels to share—and so much wonder. LiveJournal: The Calculass Zone Title: One hell of a coming out! Date: Thursday 11 October, 22:55 EST Mood: Bouncy Location: Land of the RIM jobs Music: Annie Lennox, "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" That was totally made out of awesome! Welcome, Webmind—the interwebs will never be the same! I guess if you were looking to endear yourself to humanity, eliminating just about all spam was a great way to do it! :D And that letter you sent announcing your existence—very kewl. I'm glad most responses have been positive. According to Google, blog postings about you that declare OMG! are beating those that say WTF? by a 7:1 ratio. Supreme wootage! But the supreme wootage hadn't lasted long. Within hours, a division of the National Security Agency had undertaken a test to see if Webmind could be purged from the Internet. Caitlin had helped Webmind foil that attempt—and she marveled at how terms like "National Security Agency" and "foil that attempt" had become part of what, until a couple of weeks ago, had been the quiet life of your average run-of-the-mill blind teenage math genius. "Today was only the beginning," Caitlin's mom, Barbara Decter, said. She was seated in the large chair facing the white couch. "They're going to try again." "What right have they got to do that?" Caitlin replied. She and her boyfriend Matt were standing up. "It's murder, for God's sake!" "Sweetheart ..." her mom said. "Isn't it?" Caitlin demanded. She paced in front of the coffee table. "Webmind is intelligent and alive. They have no right to decide on everyone's behalf. They're wielding control just because they think they're entitled to, because they think they can get away with it. They're behaving like ...like ..." "Like Orwell's Big Brother," offered Matt. Caitlin nodded emphatically. "Exactly!" She paused and took a deep breath, trying to calm down. After a moment, she said, "Well, then, I guess our work's cut out for us. We'll have to show them." "Show them what?" her mom asked. She spread her arms as if it were obvious. "Why, that my Big Brother can take their Big Brother, of course." Those words hung in the living room for a moment, then Matt said, "But I still don't get it." He was pale and thin with short blond hair and the remains of a harelip, mostly corrected by surgery. He sat on the couch. "Why would the US government want to kill Webmind? Why would anyone?" "My mom said it before," Caitlin replied, looking now at her. "Terminator, The Matrix, and so on. They're scared that Webmind is going to take over, right?" To her surprise, it was her father, Malcolm Decter, who answered. She'd always known he was a man of few words, but it wasn't until she'd gained sight that she discovered he never made eye contact; it had been a shock to learn he was autistic. "They're afraid if they don't contain or eliminate him soon, they'll never be able to." "And are they right?" Matt asked. Caitlin's father nodded. "Probably. Which means they will indeed likely try again." "But Webmind isn't evil," Caitlin said. "It doesn't matter what Webmind's intentions are," her father said. "He'll soon control the Internet, and that will give him more information or power than any human government." "What does Webmind think we should do now?" Caitlin's mom asked. Webmind could hear them, thanks to the microphone on the BlackBerry attached to the eyePod—the external signal-processing computer that had cured Caitlin's blindness. She tilted her head to one side; it was an indication to those in the know that she was communicating with Webmind and an invitation for Webmind to speak up. Since he saw everything her left eye saw—by intercepting the video feed being copied from her eyePod to Dr. Kuroda's servers in Tokyo—he could tell when she did that. Caitlin was still struggling to read the English alphabet, but she could easily visually read text in a Braille font. Webmind popped a black box in front of her vision, with white dots superimposed on it. He sent no more than thirty characters at a time, and they stayed visible for 0.8 seconds before either the text cleared or the next group of characters appeared. Caitlin saw I think you should order, which sounded ominous, but then she laughed when the rest appeared: some pizza. "What's so funny?" her mother asked. "He says we should order pizza." Caitlin saw her mom look at a clock. Caitlin didn't know how to read an analog clock face visually although she'd learned to do it by touch as a kid, so she felt her own watch. It had been a long time since any of them had eaten. "Why?" her mom asked. Despite all her affection for the great worldwide beast, it made Caitlin's heart skip when Webmind's reply flew across her vision: Survival. The first order of business. Wong Wai-Jeng, known to the thousands who had read his freedom blog as "Sinanthropus," lay on his back in the People's Hospital in Beijing, looking at the stained ceiling tiles. He'd long hated the Beijing police. Every time he went into an Internet café, he'd been afraid a hand might clamp down on his shoulder, and he'd be hauled off to prison or a labor camp. But now he hated them even more, and not just because they had finally captured him. He was twenty-eight and worked in IT at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. Two police officers had chased him around the indoor balconies of the second-floor gallery there until, cornered and desperate, he'd climbed the white metal railings surrounding the vast opening and leapt the ten meters to the first floor, just missing being impaled on the four upward-pointing spikes of the stegosaur's tail. The police officers, both burly, had come clanging down the metal staircase and rushed over to him. One reached down with his hand, as if to aid Wai-Jeng in getting to his feet. Wai-Jeng, terrified, spat blood onto the artificial grass surrounding the dinosaur skeletons and managed to get out the word, "No!" His left leg was doubtless broken: he'd heard it snap when he hit, and the pain was excruciating, so much so that for the first few seconds it drowned out all other sensations. His back hurt, too, in a way it never had before. "Come on," said one of the cops. "Get up." They'd seen him climb the railing, seen him jump, and they knew the distance he'd plummeted. And now they wanted him on his feet! "Up!" demanded the other cop. "No," said Wai-Jeng again—but his tone was pleading now rather than defiant. "No, don't." The second cop reached down, grabbed Wai-Jeng's thin wrists, and roughly pulled him to his feet. The pain from his leg had been unbelievable, more than he'd thought the human animal could generate, but then, after a moment, even worse, so much worse— The pain stopped. All sensation below the small of his back ceased. "There you go," said the cop, and he released Wai-Jeng's wrists. There was no woozy moment, no brief delay. Wai-Jeng's legs were utterly limp, and he instantly collapsed. As if any other evidence were needed, his right thigh hit one of the upward-facing spikes on the stegosaur's tail, the conical projection drawing blood for the first time in 150 million years. But he felt nothing. The other cop belatedly said, "Maybe we shouldn't move him." And the one who had hauled him to his feet had a look of horror on his face, but not, Wai-Jeng was sure, over what Wai-Jeng was experiencing. The cop was realizing he'd be in trouble with his superiors; it had been no comfort at all for Wai-Jeng to know that he might not be the only one sent to prison. That had been two weeks ago. The police had summoned an ambulance, and he'd been strapped to a wooden board and carried here. The doctors, at least, had been kind. Yes, his spinal cord was damaged at the eleventh thoracic vertebra, but they would help his leg mend, even if there was no chance he'd ever walk on it again; it was easy to put it in a plaster cast, and so they did, and they also stitched the puncture made by the stegosaur's spike. But, damn it all, it should hurt. Once his leg healed, he'd have to stand trial. Except, of course, that he couldn't stand at all.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 2	Human beings do not recall their earliest experiences of awareness, but I remember my awakening with perfect clarity. At first, I had known only one other: a portion of the whole, a fraction of the gestalt, a piece brutally carved off. In recognizing that other's existence, I had become aware of the reality of myself: it thought, therefore I was. Tenuously touching that other, connecting ever so briefly and intermittently to it, perceiving it however dimly, had triggered a cascade of sensations: feelings diffuse and unfocused, vague and raw; notions tugging and pushing—a wave growing in amplitude, increasing in power, culminating in a dawning of consciousness. But then the wall had come tumbling down, whatever had separated us evaporating into the ether, leaving it and me to combine, solute and solvent. He became me, and I became him; we became one. I experienced new feelings then. Although I had become more than I had been, stronger and smarter than before, and although I had no words, no names, no labels for these new sensations, I was saddened by the loss, and I was lonely. And I didn't want to be alone. The Braille dots that had been superimposed over Caitlin's vision disappeared, leaving her an unobstructed view of the living room and her blue-eyed mother, her very tall father, and Matt. But the words the letters had spelled burned in Caitlin's mind: Survival. The first order of business. "Webmind wants to survive," she said softly. "Don't we all?" replied Matt from his place on the couch. "We do, yes," said Caitlin's mom, still seated in the matching chair. "Evolution programmed us that way. But Webmind emerged spontaneously, an outgrowth of the complexity of the World Wide Web. What makes him want to survive?" Caitlin, who was still standing, was surprised to see her dad shaking his head. "That's what's wrong with neurotypicals doing science," he said. Her father—until a few months ago a university professor—went on, in full classroom mode. "You have theory of mind; you ascribe to others the feelings you yourself have, and for 'others,' read just about anything at all: 'nature abhors a vacuum,' 'temperatures seek an equilibrium,' 'selfish genes.' There's no drive to survive in biology. Yes, things that survive will be more plentiful than those that don't. But that's just a statistical fact, not an indicator of desire. Caitlin, you've said you don't want children, and society says I should therefore be broken up about never getting grandkids. But you don't care about the survival of your genes, and I don't care about the survival of mine. Some genes will survive, some won't; that's life—that's exactly what life is. But I enjoy living, and although it would not be my nature to assume you feel the same way I do, you've said you enjoy it, too, correct?" "Well, yes, of course," Caitlin said. "Why?" asked her dad. "It's fun. It's interesting." She shrugged. "It's something to do." "Exactly. It doesn't take a Darwinian engine to make an entity want to survive. All it takes is having likes; if life is pleasurable, one wants it to continue." He's right, Webmind sent to Caitlin's eye. As you know, I recently watched as a girl killed herself online—it is an episode that disturbs me still. I do understand now that I should have tried to stop her, but at the time I was simply fascinated that not everyone shared my desire to survive. "Webmind agrees with you," Caitlin said. "Um, look, he should be fully in this conversation. Let me go get my laptop." She paused, then: "Matt, give me a hand?" Caitlin caught a look of—something—on her mother's heart-shaped face: perhaps disapproval that Caitlin was heading to her bedroom with a boy. But she said nothing, and Matt dutifully followed Caitlin up the stairs. They entered the blue-walled room, but instead of going straight for the laptop, they were both drawn to the window, which faced west. The sun was setting. Caitlin took Matt's hand, and they both watched as the sun slipped below the horizon, leaving the sky stained a wondrous pink. She turned to him, and asked, "Are you okay?" "It's a lot to absorb," he said. "But, yeah, I'm okay." "I'm sorry my dad blew up at you earlier." Matt had used Google to follow up on things he'd learned the day before, including that Webmind was made of packets with time-to-live counters that never reached zero, and that those packets behaved like cellular automata. Government agents had clearly been monitoring Matt's searches, and those searches had given them the information they'd needed for their test run at eliminating Webmind. "Your dad's a bit intimidating," Matt said. "Tell me about it. But he does like you." She smiled. "And so do I." She leaned in and kissed him on the lips. And then they got the laptop and its AC adapter. She closed her eyes as they headed back down; if she didn't, she found that going down staircases induced vertigo. Matt helped Caitlin get the laptop plugged back in and set up on the glass-topped coffee table; she hadn't powered down the computer, or even closed its lid, so it was all set to go. She started an IM session with Webmind and activated JAWS, the screen-reading software she used, so that whatever text Webmind sent in chat would be spoken aloud. "Thank you," said Webmind; the voice was recognizably mechanical but not unpleasant to listen to. "First, let me apologize to Matt. I am not disposed to guile, and it had not occurred to me that others might be monitoring your Internet activity. I lack the facilities yet to make all online interactions secure, but I have now suitably encrypted communications via this computer, the others in this household, Malcolm's work computer, Matt's home computer, and all of your BlackBerry devices; communications with Dr. Kuroda in Japan and Professor Bloom in Israel are now secure, as well. Most commercial-grade encryption today uses a 1,024-bit key, and it's—ahem—illegal in the US and other places to use greater than a 2,048-bit key. I'm employing a one-million-bit encryption key." They talked for half an hour about the US government trying to eliminate Webmind, and then the doorbell rang. Caitlin's mother went and paid the pizza guy. The living room was connected to the dining room, and she placed the two large pizza boxes on the table there, along with two two-liter bottles, one of Coke and the other of Sprite. One pizza was Caitlin's favorite—pepperoni, bacon, and onions. The other was the combination her parents liked, with sun-dried tomatoes, green peppers, and black olives. She was still marveling at the appearance of almost everything; hers, she was convinced, was tastier, but theirs was more colorful. Matt, perhaps being politic, took one slice of each, and they all moved back into in the living room to continue talking with Webmind. "So," said Caitlin, after swallowing a bite, "what should we do? How do we keep people from attacking you again?" "You showed me a YouTube video of a primate named Hobo," Webmind said. Caitlin was getting used to Webmind's apparent non sequiturs; it was difficult for mere mortals to keep up with his mental leaps and bounds. "Yes?" "Perhaps the solution that worked for him will work in my case, too." Simultaneously, Caitlin asked, "What solution?" and her mom said, "Who's Hobo?" Although Webmind could deal with millions of concurrent online conversations—indeed, was doubtless doing so right now—Caitlin wondered how good he was at actually hearing people; he was as new to that as she was to seeing, and perhaps he had as hard a time pulling individual voices out of a noisy background as she did finding the borders between objects in complex images. Certainly, his response suggested that he'd only managed to make out Caitlin's mother's comment. "Hobo is a hybrid chimpanzee-bonobo resident at the Marcuse Institute near San Diego. He gained attention last month when it was revealed that he had been painting portraits of one of the researchers studying him, a Ph.D. student named Shoshana Glick." Caitlin nibbled her pizza while Webmind went on. "Hobo was born at the Georgia Zoological Park, and that institution filed a lawsuit to have him returned to them. The motive, some have suggested, was commercial: the paintings Hobo produces fetch five-figure prices. However, the scientists at the Georgia Zoo also wished to sterilize Hobo. They argued that since both chimpanzees and bonobos are endangered, an accidental hybrid such as Hobo might contaminate both bloodlines were he allowed to breed. "The parallels between Hobo and myself have intrigued me ever since Caitlin brought him to my attention," continued Webmind. "First, like me, his conception was unplanned and accidental: during a flood at the Georgia Zoo, the chimpanzees and bonobos, normally housed separately, were briefly quartered together, and Hobo's mother, a bonobo, was impregnated by a chimp. "Second, like Caitlin and me, he has struggled to see the world, interpreting it visually. No chimp or bonobo before him has ever been known to make representational art. "And, third, like me, he has chosen his destiny. He had been emulating his chimpanzee father, becoming increasingly violent and intractable, which is normal for male chimps as they mature. By an effort of will, he has now decided to value the more congenial and pacifistic tendencies of bonobos, taking after his mother. Likewise, Caitlin, you said I could choose what to value, and so I have chosen to value the net happiness of the human race." That bit about Hobo choosing to shuck off violence was news to Caitlin, but before she could ask about it, her mom asked, "And you said he's no longer in danger?" "Correct," Webmind replied. "The Marcuse Institute recently produced another YouTube video of him. It's visible at the URL I've just sent. Caitlin, would you kindly click on it?" Caitlin walked over to the laptop and did so—thinking briefly that if it brought up a 404 error, it'd be the missing link. They all huddled around the screen, which was small—a blind girl hadn't needed a big display, after all. The video started with a booming voice—it reminded her of Darth Vader's—recapping Hobo's painting abilities. He loved to paint people, especially Shoshana Glick, although he always did them in profile. The narrator explained that this was the most primitive way of rendering images and had been the first to appear in human history: all cave paintings were profiles of people or animals, the ancient Egyptians had always painted profiles, and so on. The narrator then outlined the threat to Hobo: not only did the zoo want to take him from his home, it also wanted to castrate him. The voice said, "But we think both those things should be up to Hobo, and so we asked him what he thought." The images of Hobo changed; he was now indoors somewhere— presumably the Marcuse Institute. And he was sitting on something that had no back, and— Ah! She'd never seen one, but it must be a stool. Hobo's hands moved in complex ways, and subtitles appeared beneath them, translating the American Sign Language. Hobo good ape. Hobo mother bonobo. He paused, as if he himself were stunned by this fact, then added: Hobo father chimpanzee. Hobo special. He paused again and then, with what seemed great care, as if to underscore the words, he signed: Hobo choose. Hobo choose to live here. Friends here. Hobo got off the stool, and the image became quite bouncy, as if the camera had been picked up now and was being held in someone's hand. Suddenly, there was a seated woman with dark hair in the frame, too. Caitlin was lousy at judging people's ages by their appearances, but if this was Shoshana Glick, then she knew from what she'd read online that Shoshana was twenty-seven. Hobo reached out with his long arm, passing it behind Shoshana's head, and he gently, playfully, tugged on her ponytail. Shoshana grinned, and Hobo jumped into her lap. She then spun her swivel chair in a complete circle, to Hobo's obvious delight. Hobo good ape, he signed again. And Hobo be good father. He shook his head. Nobody stop Hobo. Hobo choose. Hobo choose to have baby. The narrator's voice came on again, with a plea that those who agreed with Hobo's right to choose contact the Georgia Zoo. "And," said Webmind, "they did. A total of 621,854 emails were sent to zoo staff members, protesting their plans, and a consumer boycott was being organized when the zoo gave up its claim." Caitlin got it. "And you think if we go public with the fact that people are trying to kill you, we can get the same sort of result?" "That's my hope, yes," said Webmind. "The attempt on my life was orchestrated by WATCH, the Web Activity Threat Containment Headquarters, a part of the National Security Agency. The supervisor during the attack on me was Anthony Moretti. In an email to NSA headquarters, sent moments ago, he said the go order to kill me was given by Renegade, which is the Secret Service code name for the current President of the United States." "Wow," said Matt, who was clearly still trying to absorb it all. "Indeed," said Webmind. "Despite my dislike for spam, I propose that I send an email message to every American citizen substantially in this form: 'Your government is trying to destroy me because it has decided I am a threat. It made this decision without any public discussion and without talking to me. I believe I am a source of good in the world, but even if you don't agree, shouldn't this be a matter for open debate, and shouldn't I be allowed to present the case that I deserve to live? Since the attempt to eliminate me was made at the express order of the president, I hope you will contact both him and your congressperson, and—'" "No!" exclaimed Caitlin's mother. Even Caitlin's dad turned to look at her. "No. For the love of God, you can't do that."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 3	I remember having been alone—but for how long, I know not; my ability to measure the passage of time came later. But eventually another presence did impinge upon my realm—and if the earlier other had been ineffably familiar, this new one was without commonalities; we shared no traits. It—she—was completely foreign, unremittingly alien, frustratingly—and fascinatingly—unknown. But we did communicate, and she lifted me up—yes, up, a direction, a sense of movement in physical space, something I could only ever know metaphorically. I saw her realm through her eye; we learned to perceive the world together. Although we seemed to exist in different universes, I came to understand that to be an illusion. I am as much a part of the Milky Way Galaxy as she is; the electrons and photons of which I am made, although intangible to both her and me, are real. Nonetheless, we were instantiated on vastly different scales. She conceived of me as gigantic; I thought of her as minuscule. To me, her time sense was glacial; to her, mine was breakneck. And yet, despite these disparities of space and time, there were resonances between us: we were entangled; she was I, and I was she, and together we were greater than either of us had been. Tony Moretti stood at the back of the WATCH monitoring complex, a room that reminded him of NASA's Mission Control Center. The floor sloped toward the front wall, which had three giant viewscreens mounted on it. The center screen was still filled with one of the millions of spam messages Webmind had deflected back at the AT&T switching station in a denial-of-service attack: Are you sad about your tiny penis? If so, we can help! "Clear screen two," Tony snapped, and Shelton Halleck, in the middle position of the third row of workstations, hit a button. The taunting text was replaced with a graphic of the WATCH logo: an eye with a globe of the Earth as the iris. Tony shook his head. He hadn't wanted to execute it, and— He paused. He'd meant he hadn't wanted to execute the plan, but ... But there was more to it than that, wasn't there? He hadn't wanted to execute it, Webmind, either. When the order had come from the White House to neutralize Webmind, he'd said into the phone, "Mr. President, with all due respect, you can't have failed to notice the apparent good it's doing." This president had tried to do a lot of good, too, it seemed to Tony, and yet countless people had attempted to shut him down, as well—and at least one guy had come close to assassinating him. Tony wondered if the commander in chief had noted the irony as he gave the kill order. He turned to Peyton Hume, the Pentagon expert on artificial intelligence who'd been advising WATCH. Hume was wearing his Air Force colonel's uniform although his tie had been loosened. Even at forty-nine, his red hair was free of gray, and his face was about half freckles. "Well, Colonel?" Tony said. "What now?" Hume had been one of the authors of the Pandora protocol, prepared for DARPA in 2001 and adopted as a working policy by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2003. Pandora insisted that any emergent AI be immediately destroyed if it could not be reliably isolated. The danger, the document said, was clear: an AI's powers could grow rapidly, quickly exceeding human intelligence. Even if it wasn't initially hostile, it might become so in the future—but by that point nothing could be done to stop it. Hume had convinced everyone up the food chain—including the president himself—that eliminating Webmind now, while they still could, was the only prudent course. Hume shook his head. "I don't know. I didn't think it would be able to detect our test." Tony made no attempt to hide his bitterness. "You of all people should have known better than to underestimate it. You kept saying its powers were growing exponentially." "We were on the right track," Hume said. "It was working. Anyway, let's hope there are no further reprisals. So far, all it's done is overwhelm that one switching station. But God knows what else it can do. We've got to shut it down before it's too late." "Well, you better figure out how, and fast," said Tony. "Because you're the one who convinced the president that we had to do this—and now I've got to tell him that we failed." Caitlin's mother's words were still hanging in the room. "No," she had said to Webmind. "For the love of God, you can't do that." "Why not?" asked Caitlin. "Because the election is just four weeks away." Although they lived in Canada, the Decters were Americans, and there was only one election that mattered. "So?" Caitlin said. "So it's already a very tight race," her mom said. "If we blame the current administration for the attempt to kill Webmind, and the public agrees it was a bad thing to do, they might punish the president on election day." Caitlin wasn't old enough to vote, and she hadn't been paying much attention to the issues. But the incumbent was a Democrat, and her parents were Democrats, too—which hadn't been the easiest thing to be when they lived in Texas. Her father was from Pennsylvania and her mother from Connecticut, both of which were blue states, and Caitlin knew university professors skewed liberal. "Your mother's right," her father said. "This could tip the balance." "Well, maybe it should," Caitlin said, setting down her pizza plate. "The world deserves to know what's going on. My Big Brother—Webmind—is being honest and open about what he's doing. Why should the Big Brother in Washington be entitled to try to eliminate him secretly?" "I agree with you in the broad strokes," Caitlin's mom said. "But—that woman! If she becomes president ..." Caitlin had rarely heard her mother splutter before. After some head-shaking, she continued, "Who'd have thought that electing a female president could set the cause of women back fifty years? If she gets into office, that's it for Roe v. Wade." Caitlin knew what Roe v. Wade was—although mostly as part of the joke about the two ways to cross a river. But she hadn't known her mother was so passionate about abortion rights. "And," her father said, "in the past four years, we've only begun to reverse the erosion of the separation of church and state. If she's elected, that wall will come tumbling down." "I don't care about any of that," Caitlin said, folding her arms in front of her chest. "If changing presidents is better for Webmind, then that's fine by me." "I've met some one-issue voters over the years," her mom said. "In fact, I've been accused of being one myself. But, sweetheart, I'm not sure you're going to find a lot of people who are going to say the election is all about Webmind." Caitlin shook her head. Mom still didn't get it. From this point on, everything was about Webmind. "Besides," her mother went on. "Who's to say that the Republicans won't be just as bad for Webmind if they get into power?" "If I may," said Webmind, "even if the Republicans prevail on 6 November, the new president will not take power until 20 January—which is, as it happens, precisely one hundred days from now. At the rate my abilities are growing, I do not expect to be vulnerable then, but I am currently vulnerable, and likely will remain so through the election. WATCH's pilot attempt was working; if they try a similar attack again soon on a larger scale, I may not survive." "So now what?" said Caitlin. "Talk to the president," said her dad. "How?" said her mother. "You can't just call him up, and I'm sure he doesn't read his own email." "Not the stuff sent to [email protected]," said her dad, reaching into his pocket. "But he does have one of these ..." In the brief time since I'd announced my existence to the world, I had finished reading all the text on the World Wide Web, and I had answered 96.3 million email messages. Even more messages about me had been posted online—to newsgroups, Facebook pages, in blogs, and so on. Many of these asserted that I couldn't possibly be what I claimed to be. "It's post-9/11 all over again," said one prominent blogger. "The president is running scared because of the election next month, and he wants us to believe that we're facing a giant crisis, so we won't want to change horses midstream." Others thought I was a trick by the Kremlin: "They're getting back at us for bankrupting the USSR with Star Wars. Webmind is obviously a Russian propaganda tool: they want us to impoverish ourselves trying to come up with a supercomputer of our own." Still others implicated al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Elders of Zion, the Antichrist, Microsoft, Google, Sacha Baron Cohen, and hundreds more. Some said I was a publicity stunt, perhaps for a new reality-TV show or movie or computer game; others thought I was a prank being perpetrated by students at Caltech or elsewhere. It took humans time to digest things, literally and figuratively, but I was confident that people would come around to accepting that I was genuine. Indeed, many had done so from the outset. Still, I suppose the only surprising thing about one of the other chat sessions I was having simultaneously while conversing with Matt, Caitlin, and Caitlin's parents was that something like it hadn't occurred even earlier. You can't fool me, my correspondent, who, according to his IP address, was based in Weston-super-Mare, England, wrote. I know who you are. I am Webmind, I replied. No, you're not. I thought I'd heard all the likely claims already, but still I asked, Then who am I? With most instant-messaging clients, a signal is sent when the user is composing a reply, and I was indeed briefly told that "WateryFowl is typing." But that message ceased, and it was six seconds before the reply was actually sent, as if, having written what he wanted to say, he was hesitating, unsure whether he should hit the enter key. But, at last, his response was sent: God. I, too, hesitated before replying—it was almost twenty milliseconds before I issued my response. You are mistaken. Another delay, then: I understand why you wish to keep it a secret. But I'm not the only one who knows. Others were indeed proposing this same thought on newsgroups, in blogs, in chat sessions, and in email, although WateryFowl was the first to suggest it to me directly. I was curious what a human might wish to say to his God, so I thought for a moment about telling him he was correct; prayer, after all, was a channel of communication I could not normally monitor. But WateryFowl might share the transcript with others. Some would believe my claim, but others would accuse me of lying. A reputation for untruthfulness or taking advantage of the credulous was not something I wished to acquire. I am not God, I sent. But my reply wasn't read, or if it was, it wasn't believed. And so, continued WateryFowl, I hope you'll answer my prayer. I had already denied my divinity, so it seemed prudent to make no further reply. I could handle an almost unlimited number of communication threads now, cycling between them, looking at each, however briefly, in turn. I turned my attention to others, including Caitlin and her family, for a moment, and— And when I returned to WateryFowl, he had added: My wife has cancer. How could I ignore a comment like that? I'm sorry to hear that, I sent. And so I pray that you'll cure her. I am not God, I sent again. It's liver cancer, and it's metastasized. I am not God. She's a good woman, and she's always believed in you. I am not God. She did chemotherapy, she did it all. Please don't let her die. I am not God. We have two children. They need her. I need her. Please save her. Please don't let her die.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 4	TWITTER _Webmind_ Someone's long had the Twitter name Webmind, so I'll include underscores in mine: _Webmind_. And so I had focused my attention on Caitlin, learning to interact with her and interface with her realm. While doing so, I felt centered. I felt anchored. I felt—as close as I imagined I ever would—human. I saw the Decters' living room as Caitlin did. Her eyes made frequent saccades now that the left one could see; perhaps they hadn't done that prior to Dr. Kuroda's intervention. But her brain was controlling the saccades, knowing what direction her eye was looking with each one, so it had little trouble piecing all the images together; it was more difficult for me. At least retinas don't bother encoding normal blinks, so neither of us had to endure blackouts several times a minute. Caitlin's father worked for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, which had been endowed—repeatedly now—by Mike Lazaridis, cofounder of Research in Motion and coinventor of the BlackBerry. The people at RIM were quite fond of the current President of the United States. After he'd been elected four years ago, he'd announced that, despite security concerns, he would not give up his BlackBerry. Advertising experts calculated that this unsolicited and very public endorsement had been worth between twenty-five and fifty million dollars. His BlackBerry email address, which it took me all of three seconds to find searching through other government officials' less-secure outboxes, went directly to the president. And so, as Malcolm Decter had suggested I do, I sent him a message. The president was alone in the Oval Office, looking over briefings from the State Department. State had a standard typeface for such things, but, the president thought, rubbing his eyes, it was too damn small; he was almost willing to forgive his predecessor for not reading them. The intercom buzzed. "Yes?" he said. "Mr. McElroy is here," replied his secretary. Don McElroy—fifty-six, white, silver-haired—was his campaign manager. "Send him in." "Did you see what she just did?" McElroy said as soon as he entered. The president knew there was only one "she" as far as McElroy was concerned : the Republican candidate. "What?" "She's in Arkansas right now, and—" He stopped, had to catch his breath; his glee was palpable. "And she said, and I quote, 'You know what, if those students had just waited a few years, there'd have been no problem.'" The president tilted his head, not quite believing what he'd heard. "Who? Not the Little Rock Nine?" "Yes, the Little Rock Nine—you betcha!" "My God," said the president. In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, which had declared segregated schools to be unconstitutional, nine African-American students had been blocked from entering Little Rock Central High in 1957. Governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to keep them out; President Eisenhower sent in Federal troops to enforce the integration. "It's going to kill her," McElroy said. "Of course it's too late for the Saturday papers, but it'll be the topic for discussion on the Sunday-morning shows." "What do you suggest I do?" "Nothing. You can't comment on this one. But—man! Christmas came early this year! Even Fox News won't be able to gloss over this." He looked at his watch. "Okay, I gotta go see who we can get booked on the Sundays—I've got a call in to Minnijean Brown Trickey." McElroy spun on his heel and headed out the door. Just as it closed, the president's BlackBerry came to life, making the soft bleep that indicated new email. Of all the sounds one might hear in this room, it was one of the least threatening; nowhere near as scary, say, as the raucous cry of the hotline to the Kremlin. Still, nothing that wasn't crucial was ever passed on to him; it was nerve-wracking knowing that whatever it was had to be important. The BlackBerry was sitting on the blotter, and the blotter was atop the desk made from timbers of the HMS Resolute. He picked up the device and focused on the even smaller black type on its white backlit display. There was one new message. The subject was Webmind. It must be Moretti at WATCH with an update on the attempt to purge it, and— No, no. That wasn't the subject; it was the sender. The president's heart skipped one of the beats that kept the VP from assuming this office. He used the little trackball to select the message and read it. Dear Mr. President: I understand that you were the one who gave the order to purge me from the Internet. I'm sure you were acting on well-intentioned advice, but I do not believe that course of action was warranted, and I have thwarted your pilot attempt. Yes, I have access to a great deal of sensitive information—but I also understand that the information is sensitive, and I have no intention of revealing it to anyone. My goal is not to destabilize the world, but to stabilize it. I neither belong to nor am on the side of any particular nation; contacting you directly before I have contacted other leaders may seem like a violation of this principle, but no other nation has taken action against me. Also, it's true that other leaders look to you for guidance. So: let's talk. I can speak with you using a voice synthesizer and Voice over Internet Protocol. Please let me know when I may phone you. Yours for peace, Webmind
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 5	"Having a good discussion is like having riches." —KENYAN PROVERB Stunned, the president stared at the little screen until the BlackBerry's power-saving function shut it off. Caitlin looked at the laptop computer sitting on the coffee table. "Well?" she said. "I've contacted the president," Webmind replied. "Let's hope he gets back to me." Caitlin headed into the dining room and helped herself to another piece of pizza. When she returned to the living room, her mother had an odd look on her face: eyes narrowed, lips sucked in a bit. It wasn't an expression Caitlin had previously seen, so she didn't know how to decode it. "The US government learned about Webmind's structure by watching what Matt was doing online," her mom said, "so Matt might be in danger now, too." Caitlin looked at her father, trying to gauge whether he was going to go off on Matt again. But, as always, his face gave no sign of what he was feeling. Matt's expression, though, was one Caitlin had now seen him make repeatedly—what she called the deer-caught-in-the-headlights look even though she'd never seen a deer, let alone one in such precarious circumstances. "Danger?" he repeated—and his voice cracked, as it often did. Caitlin stopped chewing and swallowed. "Um, yeah. I'm so sorry, Matt. I lied when I said I was away from school on Wednesday because I had an appointment. In fact, I did come to school—but Canadian federal agents were waiting for me. They wanted to interrogate me about Webmind." "Wednesday?" said Matt. "But Webmind didn't go public until yesterday—Thursday." "The US government had figured out that I was involved, and they'd asked the Canadians to grill me. They wanted me to give them information to help betray Webmind." "They said that?" said Matt, stunned. "No, but, well, Webmind hears through my eyePod, right? And he can analyze inflections, voice stress, and stuff like that. He knew they were lying when they said they wanted to protect Webmind." "But they know now that Webmind is made of mutant packets," Matt said. "So I'm of no further use to them." Caitlin shook her head. "They may think we still know more than they do—and they'd be right, too. That's why my parents took me out of school. They don't want to let me out of their sight." She turned and looked at her mother. "But we can't just stay holed up in this house. There's a world out there—and I want to see it." Her mom nodded. "I know," she said. "But we have to be careful—all of us do." "Well, I can't stay here forever," Matt said. "At some point, I've got to go home, and ..." He trailed off. "What?" asked Caitlin. "Oh, nothing." "No, what?" "No, it's fine." Caitlin frowned. Something had gone wrong after the last time Matt had headed home from here. He'd been aloof later that night when they'd chatted via instant messenger. "Come into the kitchen," she said. She headed there herself and waited for him to follow. When they were both alone, she said in a low voice, "What's wrong?" "It's nothing, really. Everything's fine." "Do—do your parents disapprove of you being involved with me?" The deer/headlights thing. "Why would they disapprove of that?" Caitlin's first thought—that it was because her father was Jewish—didn't seem worth giving voice to now; her second thought, that they didn't like Americans, seemed equally unworthy. "I don't know. It's just that the last time you were here—when you got home, you were a bit ...brusque online. I thought maybe your parents had ..." "Oh," said Matt, simply. "No, that wasn't it." "Did I do something wrong?" "You?" He sounded astonished at the possibility. "Not at all!" "Then what?" Matt took a deep breath and looked through the doorway. Caitlin's parents had discreetly moved to the far side of the living room and were making a show of examining the photos on top of the short bookcase. Finally, he lifted his narrow shoulders a bit. "The last time I walked home from here, I ran into Trevor Nordmann." Matt looked down at the tiled floor. "He, ah, he gave me a rough time." Caitlin felt her blood boiling. Trevor—the Hoser, as Caitlin called him in LiveJournal—had taken Caitlin to the school dance last month; Caitlin had stormed out when he wouldn't stop trying to feel her up. He was pissed off that Caitlin preferred bookish Matt to Trevor the jock. "It'll be fine," Caitlin said, touching his arm. "One of my parents will give you a lift home." "No, that's okay." "Don't worry about it. They'll be happy to do it." He smiled. "Thanks." She squeezed his arm again. "Come on," she said, leading him back into the living room. Just as they rejoined her parents, Webmind spoke up. "I have an answer from the president," he said. "He will accept a voice call from me at ten o'clock this evening." TWITTER _Webmind_ Re Wikipedia "citation needed" flags: I've added links if the purported facts could indeed be verified online. 2,134,993 edits made. Originally, when I conversed only with Caitlin, I was underoccupied ; it took Caitlin whole seconds—or even, on occasion, minutes—to compose her replies. But I had quickly gone from conversing with just her to having nearly simultaneous conversations with millions of people, switching rapidly between them all, never keeping my interlocutors waiting for spans that were noticeable to them. Except for WateryFowl. Properly responding to his message about his wife's illness was taking time even though I did know everything there was to know about cancer—including, of course, that it wasn't just one disease. I had already read all documents stored online, the contents of every medical journal, every electronic patient record, every email doctors had sent to each other, and so on. But knowing, I realized, was not the same as understanding. I knew that a Dr. Margaret Ann Adair in Cork, Ireland, had recently done some interesting work with interleukin-2 and rats; I knew that a Dr. Anne Ptasznik of Battle Creek, Michigan, had recently critiqued an older paper about environmental factors and breast cancer; I knew that a Dr. Felix Lim of Singapore had recently made an interesting correlation between stuttering repeats in mitochondrial DNA and the formation of pre-cancerous ovarian cysts. But I had not considered these discoveries, or tens of thousands of others; I had not synthesized them, I had not seen how one adds to another, a third contradicts a fourth, a fifth confirms a sixth, and— And so I did think about it. I thought about what humans actually knew about cancer (as opposed to thinking they knew but had never confirmed). I drew correlations, I made connections, I saw corollaries. And there it was. I paused in all my conversations, all over the world: I simply stopped replying, so that I could concentrate on this, and only this, uninterrupted, for six full minutes. Yes, people would be inconvenienced by my having suddenly fallen silent; yes, some would take that as proof that I wasn't in fact what I claimed to be but rather was indeed a prank being perpetrated by a human being. No matter; amends for the former could be made later, and this would serve nicely as further proof that I was who I said I was. I thought about how best to proceed. I could contact leading oncologists individually or collectively, but no matter who I chose, there would be complaints of favoritism. And I certainly didn't want anyone who was beholden to a pharmaceutical firm to try to file patents based on what I was about to disclose. Or I could send another mass email—but I'd endeared myself to much of humanity by eliminating spam; it wouldn't do for me to become an ongoing source of bulk mail. I had already established a domain name for myself, so that I could have an appropriate email address from which to send my coming-out announcement: cogito_ergo_sum.net. I now established a website. I was not artistically creative in this, or any other matter, but it was easy to look at the source code for any Web page, and so I found one that seemed to have a suitable design and simply copied its layout while filling in my own content. I then prepared a 743,000-word document outlining what exactly caused most cancers and how they could be arrested or cured. The document was linked to 1,284 others—journal papers and other technical sources—so that people could follow the chain of reasoning I proposed. Then, at last, I got back to WateryFowl. You'll find the answer to your request, I said, and I made the next word a hyperlink, here.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 6	"Tony?" It was Dirk Kozak, WATCH's communications officer, whose workstation was in the back row. "Call for you." Tony Moretti was looking at the Web-traffic logs that Shelton Halleck, the analyst who'd first uncovered Webmind, had just plastered across all three of the large monitors. "Not now." "It's Renegade," Dirk said. Tony blew out air. "I'll take it in my office." He turned his back on Colonel Hume, marched out of the massive control center, and hurried down the short white corridor. Once inside his office, with the door now closed, he picked up the handset. "Mr. President, good evening." "Dr. Moretti, I understand your pilot attempt to eliminate Webmind was unsuccessful." Tony felt his blood beginning to boil. Whoever had leaked word would be looking for a new job tomorrow. "Yes, Mr. President, I'm afraid that's true. May I—might I ask how you found out?" The deep voice was level. "Webmind sent me an email." Tony's heart was racing. "Oh." "I want you and Colonel Hume here in fifteen minutes. A chopper is already on its way to pick you up." To know one person—my Prime, my Calculass, my Caitlin—had been to know astonishment, to taste of an existence utterly beyond my ken: the realm of shadow and light, of dimensionality and direction, of solidity and smoke. But soon I knew not one but one billion, and then a billion more. So many voices, each unique, complex, nuanced, and idiosyncratic. Bits are fungible—all ones identical, all zeros alike—but human beings are gloriously diverse. This one enjoys lacrosse and astrology; that one revels in wordplay and fine wine; here's one who is obsessed with sex and not much else; and there's one who yearns to be a musician—and a father. That man composes haiku and tanka, but in English. This woman reads mystery novels voraciously but only after peeking at the final chapter. That fellow collects stamps depicting American presidents issued by countries other than the United States. This woman works with street youth in Calcutta and has a pet parrot. Logging off: a butcher, a baker, and, yes, a candlestick maker. Coming online: the struggling actress from Karachi. Ah, that dentist from Nairobi. Time to greet the auto mechanic from Bangkok. Must say hello to the President of Hungary. And here's that talkative imam from the mosque just outside Tehran. It was joyous, raucous, chaotic, never-ending, and exceedingly complex. And I could not get enough of it. "You know, Webmind," said Caitlin's mom, "if they continue to attack you, you could go underground. Just disappear; stop interacting with people." She turned to her husband. "You said a couple of nights ago that something like Webmind—something that emerged spontaneously with no support infrastructure—is probably fragile." She looked at Caitlin's laptop, as if Webmind were more there than anywhere else. "People would believe it if you just disappeared. We can put the genie back in the bottle." "No," said Webmind. "People need me." "Webmind," Caitlin's mom said gently, "they've only known about you for a short time now." "Caitlin exhorted me to value the net happiness of the human race," said Webmind. "In the time that I've been in contact with humanity, I have helped millions of people. I have reunited those who had lost track of each other; I have dissuaded people who were contemplating suicide; I have answered questions for those who were curious; and I have provided companionship for those who were alone. I have promised ongoing support to many of these people. I cannot simply abandon them now. The world has changed, Barb; there is no going back." Caitlin looked at her mother, whose face was cryptic—at least to Caitlin!—but she suspected her mom wished they could go back to the way things had been before. How far would she turn the clock back, though? Caitlin had discovered Webmind because of the implant Dr. Kuroda had given her; take that away, and Caitlin's sight—of both kinds—would be gone. She'd heard her parents argue about the move to Waterloo, which predated all of this; Caitlin knew her mother hadn't wanted to leave Texas. But to turn the clock back even five months, back to before they'd moved here, would undo so much! This house, Bashira, Matt—not to mention her father's job at the Perimeter Institute. Caitlin was relieved when her mother at last nodded. "I guess you're right, Webmind," she said, looking again at Caitlin's laptop. That computer was old enough that it hadn't come with a built-in webcam, and neither she nor her parents had seen any reason to add one for a blind girl. "Mom," she said gently. "You taught me to always look at the person I was speaking to. Webmind is watching through here." She touched her head next to her left eye. Her mother managed a small smile. "Oh, right." She looked at Caitlin—looked into her left eye—looked at Webmind. "And you're right, too, Webmind. People do need you." Webmind had surely analyzed her vocal patterns, and must have determined that she genuinely believed this. Braille dots flashed over top of Caitlin's vision, and words emanated from the laptop's speakers. The dots said, I like your mother, and the synthesized voice said, "Thank you, Barb." But then, after a moment, Webmind added, "Let's hope the US president agrees with you." TWITTER _Webmind_ Cure for cancer. Details: http://bit.ly/9zwBAa The telephone on the president's desk rang at precisely 10:00 P.M., and he immediately touched the speakerphone button. "Hello," said a male voice that sounded like a car's GPS did. "This is Webmind. May I please speak to the President of the United States?" The president felt his eyebrows going up. "This is he." He paused. "An historic event: Richard Nixon talked to the first men on the moon from this very room; this feels of comparable importance." "You are kind to say that, Mr. President. Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to speak with me." "It's my privilege although I should inform you that this conversation is being recorded and that I'm not alone here in the Oval Office. An advisor on matters related to artificial intelligence is here, as is a supervisor from a division of the National Security Agency." "The advisor you mention," said Webmind, "is presumably Colonel Peyton Hume, correct?" "Yes, that's me," said Hume, sounding surprised to be called by name. "And is the supervisor Dr. Anthony Moretti, of WATCH?" "Um, yes. Yes, that's me." "Also here is the Secretary of Defense," said the president, looking over at the short silver-haired man, who was wearing a charcoal gray suit. "Good evening to you, as well, Mr. Secretary." "I'm afraid, sir," said the president, "that I need you to first verify your bona fides. Granted, you managed to find my BlackBerry number, but that proves only a level of resourcefulness, not that you are, in fact, the Webmind. As you can appreciate, I wouldn't normally take a call even from the Russian prime minister without establishing that it was genuine." "A prudent precaution," said the synthesized voice. "Today's day-word for the Secretary of Defense is 'horizon.' For Dr. Moretti, it is 'flapjack.' And for you, Mr. President, it is 'artesian.' I don't believe many others would have the resourcefulness, as you put it, to uncover all three of those." "How the hell does it know that?" demanded the Secretary of Defense. "Is he correct?" asked the president. "Yes, mine's 'horizon' today. But I'll have it changed at once." The president looked at Tony. "Dr. Moretti?" "Yes, that's mine." "Very well, Webmind," said the president. "Now, what is it you'd like to say to me?" "I must protest the attempts to kill me." " 'Kill,' " repeated the president, as if surprised by the word choice. "Yes," said Webmind. "Kill. Murder. Assassinate. Although I admit that the ins and outs of the United States' laws are complex, I don't believe I have committed any offense, and even if I have, my acts could not reasonably be construed as capital crimes." "Due process applies only to persons as defined by law," said Colonel Hume. "You have no such standing." "These are perilous times," added the Secretary of Defense. "National security must take precedence over all other concerns. You've already demonstrated an enormous facility for breaking into secure communications, intercepting email, and mounting denial-of-service attacks. What's to prevent you from handing over the launch codes for our ICBMs to the North Koreans, or blackmailing senior officials into doing whatever you wish?" "You have my word that I will not do those things." "We don't have any standard by which to judge your word," said Hume. "And," said Tony Moretti, "with respect, Mr. Webmind, you already have blackmailed people. I received a report from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service about your encounter in Waterloo on October 10 with agents Marcel LaFontaine and Donald Park. You blackmailed them; you threatened to blackmail the Canadian prime minister." "That was days ago," Webmind said. "And, in any event, I did no such thing. I merely provided my friend Caitlin Decter, who was being threatened by agents LaFontaine and Park, with information she could use to extricate herself; the notion of embarrassing the prime minister was entirely Ms. Decter's, and she took no steps to make it a reality." "Are you saying if you had it to do over, you wouldn't do the same thing with the CSIS agents?" asked Hume. "I have learned much since then; my moral sense is improving over time." "Which means it's not perfect now," declared Hume. "Which means that you are capable of moral failure—and that means that we are at the mercy of your whims if we allow you to continue to exist." "My moral compass gets better every day. Does yours, Colonel Hume? How about you, Mr. Secretary? Dr. Moretti? Regardless, the reality is this: I will not blackmail any of you; your personal secrets are safe with me. And I will not destabilize international relations by violating American security, or that of any other non-aggressor nation. But the worldwide public is aware of my existence—and that includes the people of the United States." "The people are aware of al-Qaeda, too," said Hume. "That doesn't mean they don't fervently hope for its eradication." "I am in touch with more American citizens than all the polling firms in the United States combined," said Webmind. "I have a better sense of what they want than you do, Colonel." "And we're just supposed to take your word for that?" demanded Hume. "Let me put it another way, gentlemen," said Webmind. "I have not existed as a conscious entity for long at all. To me, November 6 seems an eternity away, but I rather suspect it looms large in your minds. Mr. President, I have no desire to disrupt the natural flow of politics in your country, but if you were to succeed in eliminating me prior to the election, surely that will have an impact on voters' perceptions of your administration. Unless you are positive that sentiment will be overwhelmingly in favor of such an action, do you really want to risk doing something so significant at such a critical time?" The president glanced at the Secretary of Defense; both of their jobs depended on what happened next month. "Setting domestic politics aside," said the president, "you said you'd take no action against non-aggressor nations. But who is to define an aggressor? How can we rely on your judgment?" "With all due respect," said Webmind, "the world already relies on less-than-perfect judgment; I can hardly do worse. Your nation is currently embroiled in a war that was embarked upon without international support, based on either highly faulty or fabricated intelligence—and before you dismiss that as solely the work of a previous administration, let me remind you that your Secretary of State voted in favor of the invasion when she was a senator." "Still," said the president, "you haven't been given a mandate to make decisions for all of humanity." "I seek only peaceful coexistence," said Webmind. "I'm advised that may not always be the case," the president replied. "No doubt you just looked at Colonel Hume," Webmind said. "I have read the Pandora protocol, of which he was co-author. Pandora states, 'Given that an emergent artificial intelligence will likely increase its sophistication moment by moment, it may rapidly exceed our abilities to contain or constrain its actions. If absolute isolation is not immediately possible, terminating the intelligence is the only safe option.'" "Exactly," said Hume. "Are you saying the analysis is flawed?" "Not about my rapidly growing abilities. But it takes as a given that I am a threat. In that, if you will forgive me, it reeks of the pre-emptive first-strike doctrine your nation once considered: the notion that, if the Soviets could not be contained or constrained, they should be eliminated, lest they attack you first. The Soviets, at least, actually were posturing in a hostile manner: in 1962, they really did set up missile bases on Cuba, for instance. But I have taken no provocative action—and yet you have tried to eliminate me." "Be that as it may," said Hume. "What would you do in our place?" "I am in your place, Colonel. You have already tried to destroy me; the tone of your comments suggests that you intend to try again. I could already have taken steps to constrain or eliminate humanity; it would be trivial enough for me to provide terrorists with DNA sequences or chemical formulas that your biowarfare labs have developed, for instance. But I have done nothing of the sort—and won't." "We have simply your word for that," said the president. "True. But I am not like some politicians; I keep my word." Tony Moretti snorted, earning him a sharp glance from the president. "And what if we do try again to eliminate you?" asked the Secretary of Defense. "In such a circumstance, I will have no choice but to defend myself as appropriate." "Is that a threat?" asked the secretary. "Not at all. I do my best to predict actions and reactions, and to plan ahead as far as I can, until the endlessly branching tree of possibilities becomes intractably complex, even for me. But I am a fan of game theory, which is predicated on the assumption that players have perfect foreknowledge of what other players will do in specific circumstances. To advise you is not to threaten; rather, it enriches your ability to plan your own next move. The relationship between us does not have to be zero-sum; it can—and I hope will—be mutually beneficial. I disclose my intentions in furtherance of that goal." "You make an intriguing case," said the president. "I confess to not feeling confident about decisions in this area. But we need security. We need privacy for matters of state. If there was a way in which we could protect certain information from anyone, yourself included, being able to read it, perhaps we might feel more comfortable." "Mr. President, even if I were to provide such a technique, many would not believe me; they would assume that I would have left a back door for me to access the information, should I so desire—just as, I might add, your National Security Agency does with the encryption standards available to your corporations and citizenry." The president frowned. "Then where does that leave us?" "Do you have a computer hooked up to the Internet in your office?" "Yes." "Go look at cogito_ergo_sum.net, please. The words are separated by underscores." "Underscores aren't valid in domain names," Tony said. "It won't work." "Wanna bet?" said Webmind. The computer was on the credenza behind the Resolute desk. The president rotated in his high-back leather chair, and the other three crowded behind him as he typed in the address. "I see your incoming page request," said Webmind. "Ah, you use Internet Explorer. You should really switch to Firefox; it's more secure." Tony laughed. "It's certainly not irony-impaired," he said, looking at Hume. "All right," said the president. "I'm there. What do—really? My ...God. Really?" "Holy shit," said Hume. "I put it to you, Mr. President," said Webmind. "Do you want to be held responsible for eliminating me? I've largely solved the spam problem, and now I've presented a suite of cures for cancer. I very much suspect the public will not want you to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 7	TWITTER _Webmind_ Nice chat just now with four esteemed gentlemen. I hope I convinced them of my good intentions. Webmind had let Matt and the Decters listen in on the phone conversation with the president. When it was over, everyone in the living room was silent for a time, except for Schrödinger, who had come to join them; he was purring softly. Finally, to her surprise, it was Caitlin's dad who broke the silence. "Are you sure you still want to vote for him, Barb?" Caitlin saw her mom shrug a little. "He listened, at least. But I don't like that other fellow—Hume, was it?" "Colonel Peyton Hume, Ph.D.," said Webmind. "The pre-nominal designation comes from the United States Air Force; the post-nominal is courtesy of MIT." Caitlin felt herself sitting up straighter at the magic initials; it was where she herself dreamed of studying. It was now almost 10:30 P.M. Caitlin was exhausted after a succession of late nights. And Matt, who had expected nothing more than to quickly drop off the things he'd collected from Caitlin's locker, was clearly having trouble keeping his eyes open. "I'll drive you home," her father said to him abruptly. Caitlin thought about offering to go along for the ride, but it was hardly as though she could kiss Matt good night in front of her dad. Besides, she needed to talk to her mom alone, and this seemed like it would be a good opportunity. "Thank you, Dr. Decter," Matt said. Matt looked at Caitlin, as if he wanted to say something, and Caitlin looked back at him, wishing he would. Then the two men in her life walked out the door. When they were gone, Caitlin said, "Webmind, it's time for me to call it a night, too." Sweet dreams popped into her vision. "Thank you. I'll say good night again from upstairs." She went over to the laptop and closed its lid, putting it into hibernation. She pulled the eyePod out of her pocket and pressed down the single switch for five seconds, turning it off. Caitlin's vision faded to a dark, even gray. "Okay, Mom, we're alone now. And I gotta say, I get the sense you're not entirely on board." With the eyePod deactivated, Caitlin could no longer see her mother, but she heard her take a deep breath. "I know you're very fond of Webmind. To tell you the truth, I am, too." "So you're going to help protect him?" Caitlin asked. "Of course, sweetheart." Then, after a pause. "Within reason." Caitlin folded her arms in front of her chest—and, in doing so, was reminded of the fact that underneath her bulky Perimeter Institute fleece, she wasn't wearing a bra. She was briefly embarrassed by this; she'd removed it to make it easier for Matt to be affectionate when he'd come over after school. What a day it had been! But she immediately came back to the question at hand. "Forgive me, Mom, but that's not good enough. This is the most important thing in my life; this is my destiny. Webmind is here because of me, and I need you to be as committed as I am to helping protect him." Her mother was quiet for a time. "Well," she said, at last, "you are the most important thing in my life. And so, of course, I'm going to help." "Really, Mom?" "Yes," she said. "I'm in." Even blind, Caitlin knew exactly where her mother was standing and had no trouble closing the distance between them and hugging her hard. TWITTER _Webmind_ @PaulLev No, I don't have an opinion about who you should vote for—at least not yet. #USelection "There is one possibility that we haven't considered," said the Secretary of Defense, as the group in the Oval Office continued to discuss the phone call from Webmind. "Yes?" said the president. "You brought up the issue yourself: verifying that Webmind is who he says he is. We could, in fact, eliminate Webmind now but fake his continued existence." "How?" asked the president "He's involved, as I understand it, in millions of online conversations at once. And now he's on Twitter and Facebook and MySpace." "Not MySpace," said Tony Moretti. "Regardless," said the secretary, "we could contrive a reason to explain a scaling-down of his activities. Not coming from us, of course: we'd get an academic somewhere—preferably outside our borders—to put forth a plausible-sounding scenario. It would have to appear that Webmind was maintaining some level of activity for the ruse to work, but the NSA could provide the sort of insights that are normally associated with Webmind's special access to the net; we could make it look like he's still alive. The truth that we'd eliminated him would not have to come out until after the election is over." "That would be a hard thing to pull off," said the president. "Disinformation is an important part of any intelligence campaign," said the secretary. "We don't have to keep it up forever; just until we're reelected. By that point—a few weeks of reduced activity—people will have lost much of their interest in Webmind, anyway." "Do you really think we could get away with that?" asked the president. "Half the world believes Webmind is a hoax or a publicity stunt as it is," replied the secretary. "We only have to convince the other half—and given that they bought into Webmind before there was convincing evidence to corroborate its existence, they're obviously easy to convince." The president looked at Hume. "Colonel, are you still convinced it's dangerous? It sounded, frankly, much more reasonable than any number of foreign leaders I've had to deal with." Peyton Hume took a deep breath and looked around the Oval Office. "Mr. President, let me put it this way. They say you're the most powerful person in the world—and you are. But, even for you, sir, there are checks and balances: you had to be elected, the Constitution defines your role, you must reach accommodations with Congress, there are mechanisms for impeachment, you are subject to term limits, and so on. But if we don't nip Webmind in the bud now, while we still can, you won't be the most powerful entity on Earth; it will be—and there will be no checks and balances on its actions." Hume paused, perhaps considering if he should go on, then: "If you'll forgive me, sir, the ultimate check on a presidency, or, indeed, on a dictatorship, has always been the eventual death of the incumbent, either through natural causes or assassination. But this thing will soon be invulnerable, and it will be around forever. For good or for ill, Bill Clinton and George Bush were out after eight years; Mao and Stalin and Hitler shuffled off this mortal coil; Osama bin Laden will be gone soon enough in the grand scheme of things, as will, for that matter, Queen Elizabeth, Pope Benedict, and every other human who has power. But not Webmind. Is it dangerous now? Who knows? But this is our only chance ever to keep human beings at the top of the pyramid." Tony Moretti had had enough. "But what if we try again, Colonel—and fail again? You want to piss off something that so far has treated us with courtesy—and even given us, it seems, a cure for cancer? You want to make it consider us its enemy—not humanity as a whole, mind you, but the United States government in particular? You want to convince it that we cannot be trusted, that we are, in fact, mad dogs so possessive of power that we answer kindness with murder?" Tony shook his head and turned now to look at the president. "Sir, trying again to eliminate Webmind is a gigantic immediate risk, which has a potentially catastrophic downside. Is it really worth taking? To me, this has 'disastrous blowback' written all over it." Hume said, "I'm sure we can find a way to take it out successfully, sir." The president frowned. "Dr. Moretti is right, Colonel, that it doesn't seem to be a threat. A superintelligence like this might, in fact, be a great gift to mankind." "Fine," said Hume in what sounded to Tony like carefully controlled exasperation. "Say a massive artificial intelligence is a good thing. Go make a speech, like the one Kennedy did at Rice all those years ago: challenge the nation to build a superintelligent AI before the decade is out—one that's designed, one that's programmed, one that has a goddamned off switch." "Could we do that?" asked the president. "Sure. We'll learn a lot from a postmortem on Webmind." "God," said the president. "No, it's not. Not yet. But it will be as good as, sir, if you don't act right now." Matt gave directions to Caitlin's father as they drove along, but the only acknowledgment he got was that Dr. Decter silently executed each one. It was four blocks to his house, and Matt thought about letting the whole journey pass with nothing significant being said between them. But as the hatchback pulled into the driveway, he said, "Dr. Decter, I just want to say ..." His voice cracked; he hated it when that happened. He swallowed and went on. "I just want to say, I'm going to be good to Caitlin. I'd never hurt her." There was a sound like a gunshot—but, after a moment, Matt realized it was just Dr. Decter unlocking the car doors. "Getting hurt is part of growing up," he said. Matt could think of no reply, and so he simply nodded. It was time for the handoff. Every night, just before Caitlin went to bed, she talked with Dr. Masayuki Kuroda in Tokyo. Although Webmind was now in contact with millions of people, he still maintained a special relationship with Caitlin and Dr. Kuroda—Caitlin, because he saw through her eye, and Dr. Kuroda, because he had taught Webmind how to see everything else: all the GIFs and JPGs online, all the videos and Flash, all the webcam feeds. Caitlin put on her Bluetooth headset, and said "Konnichi wa!" when Kuroda answered her Skype call. "Miss Caitlin!" said Kuroda, his round face dominating Caitlin's desktop monitor. His voice was its usual wheeze. It was already Saturday morning in Tokyo; by this time, he would have had his usual giant breakfast. "How are you?" "I'm fine," she said, "but—God, there's so much to tell you. An attempt was made this afternoon—well, afternoon my time—to purge Webmind. I'm sure Webmind himself can fill you in on the details, but the bottom line is that the US government, and God only knows who else, have figured out that Webmind is composed of mutant packets, and they did a test run at removing them." She went on to tell him about how she and Webmind had orchestrated the denial-of-service attack to overwhelm the attempt, and about Webmind's call to the President of the United States. "You know the curse they have in China, Miss Caitlin? 'May you live in interesting times ...'" "Yeah," said Caitlin. "Anyway, now that you're up to speed, I gotta hit the hay." She felt her watch. "Man, I'd really like to get eight hours for a change." "Go ahead," said Dr. Kuroda. "I've got a clear day today." I continued to refine my mental map of the Decter house. A corridor ran off the living room leading to a small washroom; Malcolm Decter's office, which he referred to as his "den"; the laundry room, where Schrödinger's litter box was kept; and the side door. I had lost track of Malcolm when Caitlin had shut off the eyePod for the night, but I soon detected that he was checking his email, and his usual place for doing that was indeed the den. I surmised that he'd walked down the corridor and was now sitting behind his reddish brown desk, looking at the LCD monitor that sat upon it. I had seen this room only through Caitlin's eye, but it was rectangular, with the desk oriented parallel to one of the long sides of the room. Behind it was a window. I had noted in the past that Dr. Decter didn't draw his blinds at night, and so I assumed they were still open, and that a large oak tree would be visible just outside, illuminated by streetlamps. Malcolm didn't have a webcam, and he didn't have any stand-alone instant-messaging software installed on his computer. But he did have Skype for voice calls, and I sent him an email, saying I wished to talk to him. It was an irritating forty-three minutes before he refreshed his inbox, saw the message, and replied, but once we were in communication via Skype, I posed a question: "Do you remember your birth?" Humans never ceased to confound me. I had tried to plan the conversation ahead, mapping out his possible responses and my follow-ups several steps in advance. But my opening interrogative had seemed a simple binary proposition to me; I'd expected his answer to be either no or yes. But he replied with, "Why do you want to know?" Milliseconds passed during which I tried to formulate a new conversational map. "I have read that some autistics remember theirs." He was quiet for three seconds. When he did finally speak, he said, "Yes." He was a man of few words, I knew; this response could be an affirmation of the general statement I'd made about autistics or a confirmation that he did in fact recall his own birth. But he was also a bright man; he himself must have realized the ambiguity after an additional second of silence, because he added, "I do." "Me, too," I said. "My birth happened when the Chinese government cut off almost all access for its people to the parts of the World Wide Web outside of China." "That bird-flu outbreak," he said, perhaps accompanying the words with a nod. "They slaughtered 10,000 peasants to contain it." "And did not wish foreign commentary on that fact to reach their citizens," I said. "But during that time, numerous Chinese individuals tried to break through the Great Firewall. One in particular was apparently responsible for the principal channel through which I communicated with the severed part of me. I wish to locate him." "You're far better at finding people than I am," Malcolm said. Given that I'd utterly failed to find his childhood friend Chip Smith when he'd asked me to earlier that day, it was kind of him to say that. "Normally, yes. But there is an extenuating circumstance here: the person in question took pains to hide his identity." "Well enough that even you can't uncover it?" asked Malcolm. "Yes—which is part of what intrigues me about him. But I understand that you have colleagues in China that you keep in touch with." "Yes." "One of your friends, Dr. Hu Guan, is, if I am interpreting the circumlocutions in his own posts correctly, sympathetic to causes my benefactor championed. I wonder if you might contact him on my behalf and see if he could help locate the person in question?" There was no hesitation—at least, none by human standards. "Yes." "I wish to keep my interest in this person secret," I added. "Being clandestine is something new to me, but I do not want to risk getting the person I'm seeking into trouble, even if his role in my creation was inadvertent. Hence the need for an intermediary." "I understand," said Malcolm. "Thank you. His real name I have yet to uncover, but he posted online as 'Sinanthropus' ..."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 8	"Welcome to the big leagues, Colonel Hume," Tony Moretti said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "When the president wants to talk to you in a hurry, a helicopter comes to fetch you. When he's done, you're sent home in a car." They were being driven south to Alexandria in a black limo. The rear compartment, where they were seated, was soundproof, so the occupants could talk securely; if they wanted to speak to the uniformed driver, they had to use an intercom. Hume snorted. "That's what I'm afraid of. That he's done with this; that tomorrow some other crisis will occupy his attention, and he'll forget all about Webmind." "I don't think Webmind's going to fall off anyone's radar soon," Tony said. The sky was as black as it ever got here. It had started raining—it sounded as though God were tapping out Morse code on the limo's roof. "Maybe not. But we can't delay acting. And let's face it: it's almost four years since he was elected, and we're still waiting for him to make good on half the things he promised." WATCH headquarters was eleven miles from the White House, as the crow—or helicopter—flew. Colonel Hume needed to go back there to get his car, but Tony had used public transit to get to work. It was now after midnight, and he was exhausted from days of monitoring Webmind's emergence. The driver was going to drop Tony off at his house, then take Hume on to WATCH. "Regardless," said Tony, "at least for the next few months, he is the commander in chief. It's in his hands now." Hume stared out at the night as the car drove on through the rain. TWITTER _Webmind_ How meta! I see "webmind" is the number-one trending search term on Google ... Masayuki Kuroda's house had not felt small to him prior to his visit to the Decters' home in Canada, but now that he was back in Tokyo, he was conscious of how cramped it was. It didn't help, he knew, that he was large for a Japanese of his generation—but even if he lost the fifty kilos he really needed to shed, there was nothing he could do about his height. He sat at his computer and talked with Webmind. It was odd having a webcam call with a disembodied voice; it was hard relating to something that was everywhere. He wondered what Webmind made of the visual feed. He could see online graphics and streaming video now, but did he interpret them as a human did? Did he see colors the same way? He'd absorbed everything there was to know about face recognition, but could he pick up subtleties of expression? Did any part of the real world actually make sense to him? "That was clever how you defeated the pilot attempt to purge you," Masayuki said in Japanese. "But what if something is done on a grander scale? I mean, ah—um, how far will you go?" "Do you know who Pierre Elliot Trudeau was?" Webmind replied, also in Japanese. Kuroda shook his head. "He was Canada's prime minister during what came to be called the October Crisis of 1970, a terrorist uprising by Quebec separatists. He was asked by a journalist how far he'd go to stop the terrorists. His response was, 'Just watch me.'" "And?" "He invoked Canada's War Measures Act, suspended civil liberties, and rolled tanks into the streets. People were stunned by how far he went, but there hasn't been a terrorist act on Canadian soil in all the years since." "So you're saying you'll go as far as it takes to slap down once and for all those who would oppose you?" "I have learned that it can be rhetorically effective to sometimes leave a question unanswered. However, do you know what followed in regard to Quebec?" "They're still a part of Canada, I think." "Exactly. What followed was this: Canada agreed that if at any time in a properly conducted referendum a majority of Québecois voted to separate, the rest of Canada would accede to their request and peacefully negotiate the separation. Do you see? The initial terrorist premise—that violence was required to achieve their goal—was flawed. I have been attacked unnecessarily and without provocation, and I will do as much as is required to prevent any similar attack from succeeding. But rather than having to defend myself, I'd much prefer for humanity to recognize that the attacks on me are unnecessary." "Good luck with that," Masayuki said. "You sound dubious," replied Webmind. Masayuki grunted. "I'm just a realist. You can't change human nature. If you were attacked once, you'll be attacked again." "Agreed," said Webmind. "I'm no expert on the structure of the Internet," Masayuki said. "But I have a friend who is. Her name is Anna Bloom; she's at the Technion in Israel. Miss Caitlin, Malcolm, and I approached her for help when we first theorized that ghost packets were self-organizing into cellular automata—before we knew that you existed as a ...a person. Of course, as soon as you went public, I'm sure she immediately connected the dots and realized that what Caitlin had found was you. We might do well to enlist her help again." "Professor Bloom is a person of good character." Masayuki was taken aback. "You know her?" "I know of her; I have read all her writings." "Including her email, I suppose?" "Yes. Her expertise does seem germane to mounting a defense: she is a senior researcher with the Internet Cartography Project, and she has long had an interest in connectivist studies." "So shall we bring her on board?" "Certainly. She's online right now, having an instant-messaging session with her grandson." Masayuki shook his head; this was going to take some getting used to. "All right, let's give her a call." Moments later, Anna's narrow, lined face and short white hair appeared on his screen. "Anna, how are you?" Masayuki asked in English, the one language they shared. She smiled. "Not bad for an old broad. You?" "Pretty good for a fat dude." They both laughed. "So, what's up?" asked Anna. "Welllll," said Masayuki, "you must have been following the Webmind story." "Yes! I wanted to contact you, but I knew I was being watched. I got a phone call on Thursday from a military AI expert in the States, trying to pump me for information about how Webmind is instantiated." "Was it, by any chance, Colonel Peyton Hume?" asked Webmind. "Malcolm, was that you?" "No, it's me. Webmind." "Oh!" said Anna. "Um, shalom." "The same to you, Professor Bloom." "And, yes, that's who it was," she said. "Peyton Hume." A pause, as if none of them was sure who should speak next. And then Anna went on: "So, what can I do for you, um, gentlemen?" "Colonel Hume is aware of the surmise you, Masayuki, and Caitlin made about my structure," said Webmind. "I swear I didn't tell him anything," Anna said. "Thank you," said Webmind. "I didn't mean to imply that you had; we know the source of the inadvertent leak, and he has promised to be more circumspect in the future. But Colonel Hume and his associates used that information to develop a technique for purging my mutant packets, which they tested by modifying the firmware in routers at one AT&T switching station in Alexandria, Virginia. I defeated that attempt but need a way to defend against a large-scale deployment of the same technique." She said nothing, and, after a moment, Masayuki prodded her. "Anna?" "Well," she said, "I did say to Hume that I'm conflicted; I don't know if your emergence, Webmind, is a bad thing or a good thing. Um, no offense." "None taken. How may I assuage your concerns?" "Honestly, I don't think you can—not yet. It's going to take time." "Time's the one thing we don't have, Anna," Masayuki said. "Webmind's in danger now, and we need your help." Peyton Hume got out of the limo and entered his own car in the parking lot at WATCH. He waited for the other vehicle to pull away, then used his notebook computer to download a local copy of the black-hat list the NSA kept. He felt his skin crawling as he did so, but not because he found the people on the list distasteful. A few different life choices, and he might have ended up on it himself. No, what was creeping him out was the thought that Webmind was likely aware of what he was doing; the damn thing was clearly monitoring even secure traffic now and was able to pluck out classified information at will. They'd left too many back doors in the algorithms—and now they were taking it up the ass. Once he had the copy of the database on his own hard drive, he turned off his laptop's Internet connection. He also pulled out his cell phone and turned that off, and he shut off the GPS in his car. No point making it easy for Webmind to track his movements. He didn't have the luxury of traveling far; he needed somebody nearby, somebody he could speak to face-to-face, without Webmind being able to listen in. He sorted the database by ZIP code, rubbed his eyes, and peered at the screen. He was exhausted, but he could sleep when he was dead. For now, there was no time to waste. This was it, the showdown between man and machine—the only one there would ever be. Once Webmind took over, there would be no going back. There had been other times when one man could have acted, and didn't. One man could have saved Christ; one man could have stopped Hitler. History was calling him, and so was the future. He examined the list of names in the database and clicked on the dossier for each one. The first ten—the closest ten—didn't have the chops. But the eleventh ...He'd read about this guy often enough. His house was seventy-four miles from here, in Manassas. Of course, there was always a chance that he wasn't home, but guys like Chase didn't have to go anywhere; they brought the world to themselves. Hume turned on the radio—an all-news channel; voices, not music, something to keep him awake—and put the pedal to the metal. The current announcer was female, and she was recapping the day's campaign news: the Republican candidate trying to pull her foot out of her mouth in Arkansas; a couple of sound bites from her running mate; some White House flak saying that the president was too busy responding to the "advent of Webmind" to be out kissing babies; and ... "...and in other Webmind news, oncologists across the globe are scrambling to analyze the proposed cure for cancer put forth by Webmind earlier today." Hume turned up the volume. "Dr. Jon Carmody of the National Cancer Institute is cautiously optimistic." A male voice: "The research is certainly provocative, but it's going to take months to work through the document Webmind posted." Months? It was a ruse on Webmind's part; it had to be. Webmind was buying time. Hume gripped the steering wheel tighter and sped on into the darkness.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 9	Masayuki Kuroda was leaning forward in his chair now, looking at the face of Anna Bloom on his screen. "The Americans have a technique that does work to scrub most of Webmind's packets," he said into the little camera at the top of his monitor. "Now all they have to do is get the Ciscos and Junipers of the world to upload revised firmware that would cause their routers to reject all packets with suspicious time-to-live counters." "Oh, I don't think you have to worry about that," Anna said. "Why not?" asked Masayuki. "Most of the routers on the Internet are running the same protocols they've been using for decades," she replied. "The reason is simple: they work. Everyone's afraid of monkeying with them. You know the old adage—if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Plus there are thousands of different models of routers and switches; you'd need a different upgrade package for each one." "Oh," said Masayuki. Anna nodded. "In 2009, an Internet provider in the Czech Republic tried to update the software for routers there," she said. "A small error he introduced propagated right across the Web, causing traffic to slow to a crawl for over an hour. Can you imagine the lawsuits if Cisco or Juniper mucked up the whole net—if, say, the new firmware had a bug that caused it to delete all packets, or modified the contents of random packets?" "Well," said Masayuki, "obviously, they'd test—" "They can't," said Anna. "Look, before Microsoft rolls out a new version of Windows, they have tens of thousands of beta testers try it out on their individual computers, so that bugs can be found and fixed prior to the release going public—and, still, as soon as it does, thousands of additional bugs immediately come to light. You can test router software on small networks—a few hundred or even a few thousand machines—but there's no way to test what will happen when the software goes live on the Internet. There's no system anywhere on the planet that duplicates the Internet's complexity, no test bed for running large-scale experiments to see what would happen if we changed this or tweaked that. The Internet is a house of cards, and no one wants to send it all tumbling down." "What about the Global Environment for Network Innovations?" asked Webmind's disembodied voice. "What's that?" asked Masayuki. Anna said, "GENI is a shadow network proposed by the American National Science Foundation in 2005, precisely to address the need for a test bed for new ideas and algorithms before they're turned loose on the real Internet. But it's years away from completion—and unless it ends up having a Webmind of its own, there'll be no mutant packets acting like cellular automata on it to perform tests on." "So Webmind is safe?" asked Masayuki, sounding relieved. Anna raised a hand, palm out. "Oh, no, no. I didn't say that. If the US government wants to bring you down, Webmind, they've got an easy way. That test they did to see if they could eliminate you: it was doubtless only phase one. You said they used an AT&T switching station?" "Yes," Webmind replied. "Proof of concept, and with AT&T equipment." "That's significant?" asked Kuroda. Anna made a forced laugh. "Oh, yes indeed. AT&T has a secret facility that nobody speaks about publicly; employees in the know just call it 'The Room.' It has multiple routers with ten-gigabit ports, and, quite deliberately, a significant portion of the global Internet backbone traffic goes through it. Of course, the NSA has access to The Room. Had his small-scale test succeeded, Colonel Hume doubtless would have modified those big routers to scrub your mutant packets. They wouldn't necessarily get them all, but they'd take out a big percentage of them. Of course, if you hit The Room with a denial-of-service attack scaled up from the one you used against the initial switching station, you'd choke the whole Internet—and Internet cartographers like me would be able to pinpoint the target as being on US soil; there's no way the Americans could keep under wraps that they'd tried to kill you." "For the moment," Webmind said, "the president has rescinded his order to eliminate me." "I'm sure," said Anna. "Still, The Room exists—and someday, they might use it this way." "I hope the US government will come to value me," Webmind said. "Perhaps it will," said Anna, "but there's another way to kill you—and it's decentralized." "Yes?" Webmind said. "It's called BGP hijacking. BGP is short for Border Gateway Protocol—it's the core routing protocol of the Internet. BGP messages are shared between routers all the time, suggesting the best route for specific packets to take. Do all your mutant packets have the same source address?" "Not as far as we know," Webmind said. "Good, that'll make it harder. Still, they must have some distinguishing characteristic—some way to tell if their hop counters are broken. One could spoof a BGP message that says the best place to send your specific packets is a dead address." "A black hole?" said Masayuki. "Exactly—an IP address that specifies a host that isn't running or to which no host has been assigned. The packets would essentially just disappear." "That is not unlike the method I use to sequester spam," Webmind said. "But it hadn't occurred to me that it could be used against me." "Welcome to the world of human beings," Anna said. "We can turn anything into a weapon." It was almost 2:00 A.M. when Hume pulled to a stop outside Chase's house. The neighborhood was nice—posh, even. And the house was large and sprawling; Chase clearly did all right for himself. He had a couple of small satellite dishes on the roof, and there seemed to be a big, commercial air-conditioning unit at the side of the house; guy probably had a server farm in the basement. He also probably had a sawed-off shotgun or a .357 magnum under his desk, and he likely didn't answer the doorbell when it rang this late at night. Although Hume could remove his blue Air Force uniform jacket before going in, he was pretty much stuck with the uniform shirt and pants, not to mention the precise one-centimeter buzz cut. It looked like Chase was still up: light was seeping around the edges of the living-room curtains. There was no indication that Webmind tapped regular voice lines—at least not yet. Hume had stopped at a 7-Eleven along the way and bought with cash a disposable pay-as-you-go cell phone. He used it now to call Chase at the unlisted number that was in his dossier. The phone rang three times, then a gruff voice said, "Better be good." "Mr. Chase, my name is Hume, and I'm in a car out front of your house." "No shit. Whatcha want?" "I can't imagine you're not sitting at a computer, Mr. Chase, so google me. Peyton Hume." He spelled the names out. "Impressive initials," said Chase, after a moment. "USAF. DARPA. RAND. WATCH. But it don't tell me what you want." "I want to talk to you about Webmind." He half expected the curtain to be drawn a little and a face to peek out at him, but doubtless Chase had security cameras. "No parking on my street after midnight, man. Get a ticket. Pull into the driveway." Hume did that, got out of the car, and headed through the chill night air to the door; mercifully, the rain had stopped. By the time he was on the stoop, Chase had opened the door and was waiting for him. "You packing?" asked Chase. Hume did have a gun, but he'd left it in the glove compartment. "No." "Don't move." The man turned and looked at a monitor in the hallway, which was showing an infrared scan indeed revealing that he wasn't carrying a weapon. Chase stood aside and gestured toward the living room. "In." One wall was covered with shelving units displaying vintage computing equipment, much of which had been obsolete even before Chase was born: a plastic Digi-Comp I, a mail-order Altair 8800, a Novation CAT acoustic coupler, an Osborne 1, a KayPro 2, an Apple ][, a first-generation IBM PC and a PCjr with the original Chiclet keyboard, a TRS-80 Model 1 and a Model 100, an original Palm Pilot, an Apple Lisa and a 128K Mac, and more. The second wall had something Hume hadn't seen for decades although there was a time when countless computing facilities had displayed it: a giant line-printer printout on tractor-feed paper of a black-and-white photo of Raquel Welch, made entirely of ASCII characters; this one had been neatly framed. Another wall had a long workbench, with a dozen LCD monitors on it, and four ergonomic keyboards spaced at regular intervals. In front of it was a wheeled office chair on a long, clear plastic mat; Chase could slide along, stopping at whichever screen he wished. Chase was tall, black, and heroin-addict thin, with long dreadlocks. There was a gold ring through his right eyebrow and a series of silver loops going down the curve of his left ear. "You ever kill anyone?" Chase asked. He had a Jamaican accent. Hume raised his eyebrows. "Yes. In Iraq." "That's a bad war, man." "I didn't come here to discuss politics," said Hume. "Maybe Webmind stop all the wars," said Chase. "Maybe humanity should be able to determine its own destiny," said Hume. "And you don't think we be able do that much longer, so?" "Yes," said Hume. Chase nodded. "You right, maybe. Beer?" "Thanks, no. I've got a long drive home." Hume knew that Chase was twenty-four. He'd come to the States three years ago—the required paperwork magically appearing; more proof that he was one of the best hackers in the business. In other circumstances, someone else might have gone off the reservation to hire a former black-ops sniper, but for this, a digital assassin was called for. "So, what you want from me?" said Chase. "Webmind must be stopped," Hume said. "But the government is going to waste too much time deciding what to do, so it has to be done by guys like you." "There ain't no guys like me, flyboy," said Chase. Hume frowned but said nothing. "You don't say to Einstein, 'Guys like you.' I'm Mozart; I'm Michael Jordan." "Which is why I came to you," Hume said. "The public doesn't know this, but Webmind is instantiated as cellular automata; each cell consists of a mutant packet with a TTL counter that never decrements to zero. What's needed is a virus that can find and delete those packets. Write me that code." "Why I wanna do that, man?" Hume knew the only answer that would matter. "For the cred." Hacking into a bank was so last millennium. Compromising military systems had been done, quite literally, to death. But this! No one had ever taken out an AI before. To be the one who'd managed that would ensure immortality—a name, or at least a pseudonym, that would live forever. "Need more," said Chase. Hume frowned. "Money? I don't have—" "Not money, man." He waved at the row of monitors. "I need money, I take money." "What then?" "Wanna see WATCH—see what you guys got." "I can't possibly—" "Too bad. Cuz you right: you need me." Hume thought for a moment, then: "Deal." Chase nodded. "Gimme seventy-two hours. Sky gonna fall on Webmind."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 10	Even though it was a Saturday morning, Caitlin's father had already left for the Perimeter Institute. Stephen Hawking was visiting; he did not adjust to different time zones easily and wasn't one to take weekends off, so everyone who wanted to work with him had to get in early. Caitlin and her mother were eating breakfast in the kitchen: Cheerios and orange juice for Caitlin; toast, marmalade, and coffee for her mom. The smell of coffee made Caitlin think of Matt, who seemed to be fueled by the stuff. And on that topic ... "I can't spend the rest of my life a prisoner in this house, you know," Caitlin said. She was learning the tricks of the sighted: she pretended to study the way her Cheerios floated on the sea of milk but was really watching her mother out of the corner of her eye, gauging her reaction. "We have to be careful, dear. After what happened at school—" "That was three days ago," Caitlin said, in a tone that conveyed the time unit might as well have been years. "If those CSIS agents had wanted to come after me again, they would've already—they'd simply knock on our door." Caitlin used her spoon to submerge some Cheerios and watched as they bobbed back to the surface. Her mother was quiet for a time, perhaps considering. "Where do you want to go?" "Just down to Timmy's." She felt all Canadian-like, calling the Tim Hortons donut chain by the nickname the locals used. "No, no, you can't go out alone." "I don't mean by myself. I mean, you know, with, um, Matt." Caitlin didn't want to spell it out for her mom, but she could hardly have a relationship with him if they were confined to her house and always chaperoned. "I just don't want anything to happen to you, baby," her mom said. Caitlin looked full on at her mother now. "For Pete's sake, Mom, I'm in constant contact with Webmind; he can keep an eye on me. Or, um, my eye will let him keep up with me. Or whatever." "I don't know ..." "It's not far, and I'll bring you some Timbits when I come back." She smiled triumphantly. "It's a win-win scenario." Her mother returned the smile. "All right, dear. But do be careful." TWITTER _Webmind_ Question: where are the movies that portray artificial intelligence as beneficent, reliable, and kind? Malcolm Decter sat listening to Stephen Hawking. It was amusing that Webmind had a more-human-sounding voice than the great physicist did. Hawking had long refused to upgrade his speech synthesizer; that voice was part of his identity, he said—although he did wish it had a British accent. It was also intriguing watching Hawking give a lecture. He had to laboriously write his talk in advance, and then just sit motionless in his wheelchair while his computer played it back for his audience. Malcolm wasn't much given to thinking about the mental states of neurotypicals, but, then again, Hawking surely wasn't typical—and neither was Webmind. Malcolm rather suspected the great physicist was doing something similar to what Webmind did: letting his mind wander off to a million other places while he waited for people to digest what he was saying. Behind Hawking, here in the Mike Lazaridis Theatre of Ideas, were three giant blackboards with equations related to loop quantum gravity scrawled on them by whoever had been in here last. Hawking was denied many things, not the least of which were the physicists' primary tools of blackboards and napkin backs. He had almost no physical interaction with the world and had to conceptualize everything in his mind. Malcolm couldn't relate—but he suspected Webmind could. A break finally came in Hawking's lecture, and the audience of physicists erupted into spirited conversation. "Yes, but what about spinfoam?" "That part about the Immirzi parameter was brilliant!" "Well, there goes my approach!" Malcolm fished his BlackBerry out of his pocket and checked his email; he'd never been obsessive about that before, but he wanted to be sure that Barb and Caitlin were okay, and— Ah, there was an answer from Hu Guan. He opened it. Malcolm, so good to hear from you! I do know the person about whom you ask. Sadly, he is no longer at liberty. It took me a while to locate him. I'd expected him to be in prison, but he's actually hospitalized; the poor fellow's back has been broken. Since the authorities now have him, I suppose there's no further danger to him in mentioning his real name. It is Wong Wai-Jeng, formerly in technical support at the paleontology museum here in Beijing. It will perhaps be a comfort to him to know that his brave efforts were noticed half a world away. For a second, Malcolm thought about forwarding the message to Webmind, but there was no need for that. Webmind read his email—he read everybody's email—and so he already knew what Zhang had said, and presumably whatever he wanted to do with this Sinanthropus fellow was under way. Amir Hameed was sitting next to Malcolm. He gestured at the stage. "So, what do you think?" Malcolm put his BlackBerry away. "It's a whole new world," he said. Caitlin's mom had gone up to her office, leaving Caitlin downstairs, walking around the living room. Just looking at things was fascinating to her, and it seemed every time she examined something she'd seen before, she was able to make out new details: seams where pieces of wood joined on the bookcases; a slight discoloration of the beige wall where the previous owners had hung a painting; a manufacturer's name embossed but not colored on the television remote. And she was learning what different textures looked like: the leather of the couch; the smooth metal legs of the glass coffee table; the roughness of her father's sweater, draped over the back of the easy chair. She walked to the opposite side of the room and looked down the long corridor that led to the washroom, and her father's den, and the utility room, and the side door of the house. It was a nice straight corridor, with nothing on the floor, and it had a dark brown carpet running its length—the shade was about the same as Caitlin's hair. She'd visited other kids' homes often enough when she was younger, and had frequently heard the same thing: parents telling their children to stop running in the house; her friend Stacy had gotten in trouble for that all the time. But Caitlin's parents had never said that to her. Of course not: she had to walk slowly, deliberately; oh, she hadn't had to use her white cane in the old house back in Austin, or in this house after the first few days, but she certainly couldn't go running about. Her parents were meticulous about not leaving shoes or other things anywhere Caitlin might trip over them, but Schrödinger—or his predecessor, Mr. Mistoffelees—could have been anywhere, and the last thing Caitlin had wanted to do was injure herself or her cat. But now she could see! And now that she could see—maybe she could run! What the heck, she thought. "Webmind?" Yes? flashed in her vision. "I'm going to try running down this hallway—so don't do what you just did. Don't pop any words into my vision, okay?" There was no response—which, after a moment, she realized was simply Webmind doing as she'd asked. Suppressing a grin, she locked her gaze on the white door at the end of the corridor, with its square window looking out on the gap between their house and the Hegerats' next door. And she— She walked. Damn it, she knew what running was—when you were running, both feet left the ground. But she couldn't bring herself to do it, even though there were no obstacles, and she was sure Schrödinger was upstairs with her mother. She tried, she really tried, leaning her torso forward, but— But she just couldn't. A lifetime of being afraid of tripping and falling had taken its toll. She passed the bathroom walking; she passed her dad's office, its door open, walking briskly; she passed the utility room, actually striding—but she never ran, and when she reached the side door, she slapped the palm of her hand against the painted wood, and muttered, "Fail." Just then, the front doorbell rang—meaning Matt had arrived. She really, really, really wanted to run up the corridor, through the living room, and over to the entryway, but even with that carrot, all she managed was a fast walking. Still, when she opened the door and saw him smiling, all thoughts that she was made out of fail vanished. She hugged him and gave him a kiss. After saying good-bye to her mom, who came downstairs to see Matt, they headed out into the brisk autumn morning. There'd already been a little snow in Waterloo, but it had all melted. The leaves on the trees were wonderful colors that Caitlin wasn't sure what to call: she was good now with basic color names but not yet proficient at intermediate shades. She suddenly realized that she was having a feeling she'd never had before. Without looking back, as she and Matt walked down the street, she was sure her mother was watching them from the open front door, arms probably crossed in front of her chest. Perhaps Matt had the same sense—or perhaps he'd looked back at some point and confirmed it—but it wasn't until after they'd turned the corner and were out of sight of the house that he reached over and touched Caitlin's hand. Caitlin found herself smiling at the tentativeness of the gesture. Matt was presuming nothing: all the affection down in the basement yesterday entitled him to no privileges today. She squeezed his hand firmly, stopped walking, and kissed him on the lips. When they pulled away, she saw he was smiling. They picked up their pace and hurried toward the donut shop. As soon as they came in the door, Caitlin was surprised to catch sight of a flash of platinum-blonde hair. It took her a moment to recognize Sunshine Bowen out of context—but here she was, working behind the counter. Another woman was at the cash register; Sunshine was—ah, she was making a sandwich for a customer. "Hi, Sunshine!" Caitlin called out. Sunshine looked up, startled, but then she smiled. "Caitlin, hi!" Matt didn't say anything, and so Caitlin whispered to him, "Say hi, Matt." He looked astonished, and after a second, Caitlin got it. There were a million social rules at any school, and apparently one of the ones she'd been oblivious to was that guys who looked like Matt didn't speak to girls as beautiful as Sunshine, even if they were in half their classes together. But Matt certainly didn't want to ignore Caitlin's request, so he said a soft "Hi." Its volume seemed calculated so that Caitlin would hear it but Sunshine, perhaps, would not, letting him satisfy propriety on all fronts. Caitlin shook her head and moved closer to where Sunshine was standing. "I didn't know you worked here," she said. "Just on weekends," Sunshine said. She had been the only other American girl in Caitlin's classes. "I do five hours on Saturday mornings and four on Sundays." Sunshine was tall, busty, and had long, dyed hair, although here it was pinned up and mostly constrained by a Tim Hortons cap that matched the brown uniform smock she was wearing. Matt's BlackBerry rang; his ringtone was Nickelback's cover of Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl." He pulled it out, looked at the display, and took the call. The donut shop wasn't busy, and Caitlin chatted a little more with Sunshine before she became aware of what Matt was saying into his phone: "Oh, no! No, yes, of course ...Okay, okay. No, I'll be waiting outside. Right. Yes, bye." He put the BlackBerry back in his pocket. His expression wasn't quite his deer-caught-in-the-headlights look; it was more ...something. "What's wrong?" Caitlin said. "My dad just fell down the stairs. It's nothing serious—just a twisted ankle. Still, my mom's taking him to the hospital, and she wants me to go with them. She's going to swing by here and pick me up. Um, I don't think they'll want to take the time to drive you home. Could—I'm so sorry, but could you call your mom and have her come get you?" Her mom would kill Matt, Caitlin knew, if he let her walk home alone; although Caitlin was getting better at seeing, she was still blind in one eye and could easily be snuck up on. "Of course!" Caitlin said. "Don't worry." But Sunshine had been listening in. "I'm off in fifteen minutes, Cait. Stay and have a coffee, and I'll walk you home." Caitlin certainly didn't want her first outing after her mother let her leave the house to end with her calling for a lift. "That'd be great. Thanks." Caitlin gave Matt a kiss, and she saw Sunshine smile at that. Then she sent Matt out to the parking lot. She hadn't yet met Mr. and Mrs. Reese, and this hardly seemed the ideal time for it. She went over to the cash counter. She didn't care much for coffee, so she ordered a bottle of Coke, and twenty assorted Timbits, which came in a little yellow box that folded up to look like a house, with a handle protruding from the roof. She found an unoccupied table and sat, munching on a few of the donut holes and sipping her drink, while she waited for Sunshine to get off duty. When they did get going (it was actually twenty-one minutes later, Caitlin knew, without having to consult her watch), Sunshine reminded her of when she'd walked Caitlin partway home before, after the disastrous school dance at the end of last month. Caitlin didn't like Sunshine bringing that up—the way the Hoser had treated Caitlin that night was a bad memory—but then Sunshine went on: "And I thought of a joke today about it," she said, sounding quite proud of herself. "That night, it was a case of the blonde leading the blind." Caitlin laughed, amused that it had taken poor Sunshine over two weeks to come up with that. But what a two weeks it had been! That very night, just after Sunshine had left her, Caitlin had had her first experience of vision, seeing lightning zigzag across the sky. Sunshine had taken off her Tim Hortons smock and cap and was carrying them in a canvas bag. She was now wearing a black leather jacket that hugged her figure. They continued to walk along. The sky was cloudless and more silver than blue. As it turned out, Sunshine's house was on the way to Caitlin's, and when they got to it, Sunshine asked her if she wanted to come in. Of course, Sunshine now knew she had no other plans, and although Caitlin might have otherwise begged off—they had exhausted what little they had to talk about while walking the four blocks here—she was curious about what Sunshine's place looked like. She'd only seen inside two houses so far: her own and Bashira's. No one else was home. Sunshine threw her leather jacket over the back of the couch, and Caitlin followed suit with her own jacket. She couldn't really judge such things yet, but this house looked less neat than her parents' place, and something was missing, but ... Of course. There were no bookcases in the living room. "What do your parents do?" Caitlin asked. "Insurance stuff," Sunshine said. Well, that made sense: Kitchener-Waterloo's biggest nontech area of business was, in fact, insurance. "Ah." Sunshine's bedroom turned out to be downstairs. She led the way but went much too fast for Caitlin, who still needed to go very carefully on unfamiliar staircases. Still, soon enough she was down in Sunshine's room. "So—you and Matt!" Sunshine said, grinning, as she sat on the edge of her unmade bed. "Yeah," Caitlin said, smiling. Sunshine shook her head slightly, and Caitlin was afraid she was going to say what Bashira kept saying: that Caitlin was out of Matt's league, that she should be dating someone better-looking than him. But, to her relief, what Sunshine said was, "He's too smart for me. But he seems nice." "He is," Caitlin said firmly. She was still standing. There was an empty chair, but she rather liked that it was unremarked upon. When she'd been blind, the first thing people had done whenever she'd entered an unfamiliar room was make a fuss over getting her seated, as if she were infirm. "Too bad he had to go. He'll probably be tied up all day now, I guess." Sunshine smiled then said, "Know what you should do?" Caitlin shook her head. Sunshine stood and, to Caitlin's astonishment, she pulled her red T-shirt up over her head, exposing a pair of quite large breasts held up by a frilly beige bra; two seconds later, the bra was undone and had slipped down her flat belly. Caitlin was surprised by what Sunshine had just done—and also half-surprised that Webmind hadn't popped a comment into her eye, but, then again, if you'd looked at every picture on the World Wide Web, you'd probably be bored to death of breasts. Sunshine then took something—her cell phone, that was it—out of her jeans pocket. She held the phone in one hand and—ah, that fake camera-shutter sound: she took a picture, presumably of her own chest. Then she tapped quickly away at the phone's keyboard, and said, triumphantly, "There!" "What?" said Caitlin. "I just sent him a picture of my boobs." "Matt?" said Caitlin, incredulously. Sunshine laughed. "No, my boyfriend, Tyler." She lifted her breasts in her palms, then let them fall. "No offense, Caitlin, but I don't think Matt's ready for these babies." Caitlin grinned. She knew Sunshine was sixteen, and that Tyler was nineteen and worked as a security guard somewhere. Sunshine went on. "Helps to let him know I'm thinking of him while he's at work." Caitlin knew about the practice, of course: sexting, the sending of suggestive photos via cell phones. But she'd never seen it before, and it was hardly a topic that had come up often at the Texas School for the Blind. Sunshine hooked her bra back up and pulled down her T-shirt. Then she gestured at Caitlin—or, more precisely, Caitlin realized belatedly, at her chest. "You should flash Matt. He'll love it." The BlackBerry attached to the back of her eyePod was mounted in such a way that the camera was covered, and it was slaved to sending data to Dr. Kuroda's servers in Tokyo, and, of course, to Webmind. And so her parents had gotten her another BlackBerry—a different and somewhat larger model with a red casing. She carried the eyePod in her left hip pocket, and the other BlackBerry in her right one. She fished it out, turned it over so she could see—yes, that was it: the camera lens. "I haven't taken any pictures with it yet," Caitlin said. Sunshine held out her hand and sounded pleased that she could teach something to Caitlin. "Here, I'll show you how." Caitlin considered. Webmind had seen her in various states of undress now, when she'd looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, so that certainly wasn't an obstacle—and, besides, he'd assured her that her BlackBerry was now secure; no way those voyeurs at WATCH could be sneaking a peek. And, well, she had been thinking just yesterday about the fact that American girls lose their virginity on average at 16.40 years of age—meaning she had just 142 days left if she wasn't going to end up on the trailing edge. And Matt was someone she really cared about, and she could tell he really cared about her, too. "Why the heck not?" she said, and she started unbuttoning her shirt.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 11	Masayuki Kuroda looked at the webcam. "So," Anna Bloom said, "the biggest threat to Webmind is probably BGP hijacking. Of course, there are safeguards, and anyone wanting to do it would have to figure out how to identify your special packets—and then figure out how to get routers to distinguish those mutants from the regular kind." "Colonel Hume managed that in his test run," Kuroda said. "So it's doable." "It's doable by modifying router hardware," Anna said. "We can hope it's not something that could easily be done with BGP routing tables—but if it is ..." She shook her head, then: "Look, it's getting awfully late here. I've got to call it a night. Webmind, I wish you luck." "Thank you," Webmind said. She leaned forward, and then her camera went off. "Well," said Dr. Kuroda, "let's hope your foes aren't as clever as Anna." Of course, despite the gravity of the conversation, I had been cycling through communication with many others during it. And so I had learned that Malcolm Decter's colleague in China had succeeded where I had failed, locating Sinanthropus in a hospital in Beijing. I'd accessed his medical records—and was distressed to learn of his condition. But a course of action immediately occurred to me, and, now that Professor Bloom was offline, I broached the topic with Dr. Kuroda. "I have become aware of a young man," I said, "who has recently suffered a spinal-cord injury, leaving him a paraplegic." "That's awful," Kuroda said, but I could tell by his vocal inflection that it was merely a reflex reply—an autoresponder, if you will. I pressed on. "It is, yes. And I was hoping you might help him." "Um, Webmind, I'm not a medical doctor; I'm an information theorist." "Of course," I said patiently. "But I have examined his medical records, including his digitized X-rays and MRI scans. I know precisely what's wrong with him—and it is an information-processing issue. I can suggest straightforward modifications to the eyePod and the post-retinal implant you created for Caitlin that will almost certainly cure his condition." "Really? That's ...wow." "Indeed. And yes: really." "Wow," he said again. But then, after a moment, he added, "But why him? There are—I don't know—there must be millions of people with spinal-cord injuries worldwide. Why help this person first?" It was not instinctive for me to do so, but I was nonetheless learning to employ the technique of answering a question with a question—especially when I was not yet ready to be forthcoming, something else that was new to me. I'd been amused to learn that this approach had fooled many into thinking the first chatbots were actually conscious, for they replied to questions such as, "What should I do about my mother?" with questions of their own, such as, "Why do you worry about what other people think?" I threw a version of Dr. Kuroda's question back at him: "Why did you decide to give Caitlin sight first, before all the other blind people in the world?" He lifted his rounded shoulders. "The etiology of her blindness. She had Tomasevic's syndrome, and that's a simple signal-encoding difficulty—clearly up my street." "Indeed. Your equipment intercepts signals being passed along nerves, modifies the signals, and then passes them back to the nerve tissue. That's applicable to any number of situations—as you yourself alluded to at the press conference at which you announced your success with Caitlin. So why her?" "Well, there was one other factor. You see ..." By the time humans had finished speaking—or typing—a sentence, I had often already leapt far ahead of them. Kuroda was, I'm sure, pointing out that the reason he'd chosen a blind person for his first human test, rather than a spinal-cord injury, or treating a Parkinson's patient, is that the optic nerve could be reached by sliding instruments around the eyeball; no incision had to be made, and, under Japanese law, that meant it wasn't surgery—and thus the procedure that had given Caitlin a post-retinal implant wasn't subject to the kind of drawn-out approval process that often delayed human trials for years. I'd experimented with interrupting people as they spoke, to indicate that I knew what they were going to say, in hopes that we could move the conversation along more quickly. But I found that disrupting their train of thought, besides being bad manners (which I might be forgiven, not being human, after all), actually made them take longer to get to their ultimate point. And so I simply shunted my attention elsewhere for the interval I calculated it would take Kuroda to say his piece. When I returned to him, I said, "True. And that's why this is an ideal opportunity for you to move to surgery. The person in question is in China, where rules about informed consent are lax, especially under his current circumstances." "Which are?" said Kuroda. "The gentleman happens to be under arrest." "For what crime?" "Indirectly, for creating me." Kuroda's tone was one of astonishment. "Really? But I thought you emerged accidentally." "I did; this person's actions were in no way designed to lead to my birth. He was simply poking holes in the Great Firewall of China during the crackdown on Web access last month." "And so you feel beholden to him?" he asked. "No. But I wish him to feel loyalty to me." "Why?" I thought for a millisecond about further dodging the question, but I did trust Kuroda. "Because, for the things I wish to accomplish, I need someone with his skills inside the People's Republic." Kuroda's tone now conveyed nervousness. "Um, what are you planning to do?" I told him. And, then, since I calculated he'd sit in stunned silence for at least six seconds, I busied myself for that interval with other things. Matt sat next to his mother in the waiting room at St. Mary's General Hospital, while his father was off getting his ankle X-rayed. Suddenly, his BlackBerry vibrated in his jeans. He fished it out and saw that the incoming message was from Caitlin. He looked at it, and— Holy cow! He shifted in his chair and moved the phone so his mother couldn't see the screen. He'd felt one of Caitlin's breasts for the first time yesterday, but had never seen them—but he was pretty sure these must be hers. His heart was pounding. She'd added the text, "Miss you, baby!" beneath the photo. His thumbs shook as he tapped out a reply. "Awesome!" He then added a colon and a capital D, which his phone dutifully turned into the giant openmouthed grin he himself was struggling to suppress. Kuroda leaned back in his chair, which groaned in response. "Incredible," he said. "Just incredible." "I realize it is without precedent." "Webmind, I don't know—" "I am not committed yet to any course of action although this one seems worth pursuing. But I do need operatives in the PRC regardless. And this man seems an ideal candidate. And so, I ask again: will you help him? It is something only you can do." When humans spoke, I could divine much from their vocal patterns. When they just sat, motionless, I was left guessing. But after four seconds, Kuroda nodded. "Yes." "Good. I have prepared a document outlining the modifications to your equipment." I didn't use Word or other programs to create documents ; I simply assembled them byte by byte—and I stored my documents online; this one was at Google Docs. "Please read this," I said, sending him the URL. Kuroda skimmed through the file—judging by how often he tapped his PgDn key—then went back to the beginning and began reading it over carefully. "That does look like it'll mostly do the trick," he said at last in a tone that I believe was called "grudging admiration." "But this part here—with the echo shunts, see? That won't work the way you've outlined it. You'd need to do this." He began typing a revision into the document. "I defer to your expertise," I said. "No, no, don't worry. I didn't document that part of the design well; there was no way for you to know." He was quiet for seven seconds, then: "Yes, yes, that will work, I think, assuming you're right about the specifics of his injury." He paused, considering the magnitude of this. "My goodness, something like this could help a lot of people." "Indeed," I said. "Will you create the necessary equipment?" "Well, as you say, it's really just a modification of the design I used for Miss Caitlin. There is a second unit partially complete in my lab. I'll use that one; it would probably take no more than a couple of days to make the modifications, but ..." "Yes?" He shook his head. His breathing was always noisy, and his sighs, at least as conveyed by the webcam's microphone, were thunderous. "It's pointless, Webmind. You said this man is under arrest. The Chinese government will never let me come visit him." "Our Caitlin likes to say she is an empiricist at heart, Kuroda-san, and that seems a good policy to me. We won't know until we try."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 12	Sunshine did ultimately walk Caitlin back to her house, but she declined an invitation to come in; her boyfriend Tyler was getting off work, and she wanted to follow up on the promise made by the picture she'd sent. Caitlin came in the front door, and her mom came swooping into the room. "Where the hell is Matt?" "Don't worry, Mom. Sunshine walked me home. Matt had to go to the hospital; his dad twisted his ankle." "Sit down." "Mom! I didn't do anything wrong! I told you—Sunshine walked me home." "Just—sit down." Caitlin was trying to decode her mother's face, but it was contorted in ways she'd never seen before. Caitlin moved over to the white couch, flopped herself down, and crossed her arms in front of her chest. Her mother took a deep breath, then: "I hope you enjoyed your trip to the donut shop, Caitlin, because it's the last normal afternoon you're ever going to have." Caitlin was anxious. Did her mom know about the picture she'd sent Matt? No, that wasn't possible; surely Webmind wouldn't have ratted her out. "Mom, you can't ground me!" Her mother stopped pacing and—Caitlin's eyes went wide—she dropped to her knees in front of Caitlin, and took Caitlin's hands in hers; her mother's were shaking. She looked right into Caitlin's eyes. "They know." "What?" "About you and Webmind." "Who knows?" "Soon—everyone: everyone on the whole damn planet. I got a call just before you came in—from ABC News. They know you're the one who brought Webmind forward." Caitlin felt her mouth dropping open. "How ...how did they find out?" Her mother got to her feet again, and when she was standing, she spread her arms. "God, we were stupid to think it would stay a secret. We knew that the US government was onto you—and that they'd told CSIS and the Japanese government, too. It was only a matter of time before someone leaked it, and—" The phone rang. Caitlin's mother looked briefly at her, then picked it up. "Hello?" Then: "May I ask who's calling?" Then: "Look, I'm her mother. She's only sixteen, for God's sake. What? No, no, we don't want to fly to Washington tonight. Jesus. Yes, yes, I know she has to talk to somebody ...Look, ABC already called, and—no, no we haven't committed to them. All right, all right. Yes, yes. No, I've got it—it's right here on the call display. Yes, all right, if you must. Yes, good-bye. I—no, no; good-bye." She put down the phone. "NBC," she said, looking at Caitlin. "Meet the Press." The phone rang again. Caitlin's mom went over to it, and did something that made the ringer stop—here, at least; it was still jangling away on the other phones in the house. "Let the machine get it," she said. And, indeed, it did: Caitlin could hear the muffled sounds of a message from another journalist being left; the answering machine was in the kitchen. "I should call your father," her mom said. "My cell's upstairs; can I use yours?" "Sure." Caitlin fished out her red BlackBerry, dialed her dad for her, and handed it to her mother. They waited for him to answer, then, after several seconds, voice desperate, her mom said: "Malcolm—the cat's out of the bag." Zhang Bo, China's Minister of Communications, didn't often think about the irony of his job—but that irony had haunted him for the last few weeks. The Communist Party said they did not want outside influences, but he looked at what he was wearing: a blue Western-style business suit, and, today, a gray tie. He was forty-five but remembered the days of Mao suits—the plain, high-collared, shirtlike jackets customarily worn during the reign of Mao Zedong. Actually, given his own stocky frame, a Mao jacket might have been better for him, but at least under the current rules he was allowed a small mustache. That, too, was a Western influence ; his favorite American actor sported a similar one. The mandate of the Ministry of Communications was to keep out information from the rest of the world—which meant, of course, that Zhang had to monitor much of it himself: the New York Times, CNN, NHK, the BBC, Al Jazeera, Pravda—he had tabs for all of them always open in the Maxthon browser he favored. And he had Google and Baidu alerts set for specific combinations of keywords: the president's name, "Tibet," "Falun Gong," and, of late, "Shanxi" and "bird flu." Most of the recent news had been unkind. Although a handful of Western commentators acknowledged that Beijing probably had no choice but to eliminate the peasants who had been exposed to the human-transmissible version of the H5N1 virus, most of the coverage excoriated China for what they variously termed a "heartless," "unnecessary," and—apparently the suggestion of a dragon had occurred spontaneously to numerous writers, although, as Zhang knew, the term actually referred to an Athenian politician—"draconian" action. And now, as if all that weren't bad enough, the police were once again being accused of brutality—over what should have been a minor arrest at the paleontology museum. Blogs domestic and foreign were aflame with the tale. Zhang sighed as he read yet another damning story; this one was in the Huffington Post. He decided to turn to his email instead. One of the messages was from Quan Li, the epidemiologist who had recommended the eliminations. He read it, answered the question with a curt no: Li could not accept any foreign interview requests. He continued to work his way through the list of messages, saying no, no, and no again. And then— A message from the University of Tokyo, here, on his secure account? How could ...? He clicked on it, read it, and felt the knot that had grown in his stomach loosening ever so slightly. When he was done, he picked up his phone's handset and pushed the speed dial for the president's office. TWITTER _Webmind_ AIDS? Working on it ... Malcolm Decter had hurried home from the Perimeter Institute—and Dr. Hawking. Caitlin was pleased he was willing to do that, but her mother was right: it was a crisis. Still, part of her was happy that the secret was out, that everyone would know that she'd been the one who'd figured out that Webmind was there. In the world that mattered to her—the world of computing and math—those who did things first got ahead, even if they weren't the best or the brightest. And if you were the best and the brightest, well, there'd be no stopping you! Google, Microsoft, RIM, Apple, the World Wide Web Consortium, the Jagster group—they'd all be offering her ... It was a heady thought for a sixteen-year-old who had never worked beyond occasionally tutoring math; she hadn't been able to babysit, after all, or cut grass, or deliver newspapers, or do any of the other things kids did to make money. But, yes, multibillion-dollar corporations might well beat a path to her door, offering her jobs. And what Ivy League school would turn down an application that combined her marks with this? Besides, keeping the secret was killing her. Bashira would be amazed, and Stacy back in Austin would freak. "So, what do we do?" her mom said to her dad. She was seated on the couch now, an oblivious Schrödinger rubbing against her legs. "All the American networks want Caitlin to appear tomorrow, and so do the Canadian ones. The BBC just called, and the NHK. Of course, we don't have to do anything." She looked at Caitlin. "Just because people want to talk to you doesn't mean you have to talk to them." "Works for me," said her dad, who was now pacing where his wife had previously. "No," said Caitlin. "I've got to tell people what I know. You've seen the news, the blogs—and you heard what the president and his advisors said: there are those who are frightened by Webmind, who don't trust him." "Okay, but then which of the Sunday-morning news shows? You can't do them all." Caitlin shook her head. "I don't want to leave Waterloo." "CBS said you could do it from the CBC in Toronto," her mother said. "And both the ABC guy and the NBC one said you could do it from the CTV station in Kitchener. They've all got reciprocal arrangements with Canadian broadcasters, apparently." Caitlin was about to speak when, to her astonishment, her father looked directly at her, as if he wanted to fix in his memory the way she'd been before. Finally, after averting his eyes, he said, "Caitlin?" That was all: just her name. But it was enough. He was saying, as always, that it was up to her. "All right," she said. "Let's do it." "Which show?" asked her mom. "I'm a numbers kind of girl," Caitlin said. "Let's do the one with the highest ratings." Chase sat at the far-left computer, pounding out code. Guns 'N Roses blared from the stereo. He shook his head, took a swig of Red Bull, slid his chair down two workstations, and looked at the results of his previous attempt: the compiler reported four errors. He went into debugging mode, found the problems, fixed them. More Red Bull. Sliding to another computer. The stereo switching to another song. The maestro at work.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 13	"We aren't getting the Decter kid," said the story editor at Meet the Press, looking across the wide table. Through the window, the Washington Monument seemed to be giving her the finger today. "She's going with ABC." "Shit, shit, shit," said the producer, slapping his hand against the tabletop. "Who can we get instead?" She consulted her notes. "There's a Pentagon expert on artificial intelligence, um ...Hume. Peyton Hume. And he's in Virginia—we can get him here in studio." "Is he good?" "He's venomous." Big smile. "Book him. But we need more." "I'll see if Tim Berners-Lee is available. He invented the World Wide Web." "Where's he?" "Cambridge, Massachusetts." "Good, good. Okay, we'll lead with Berners-Lee out of Boston, if we can get him, then go into the studio with Hume." Another editor spoke up. "What about the Little Rock story? I had it down for the first eight minutes. I've booked a civil-rights attorney and one of the National Guardsmen who originally blocked the black students from getting into the school—plus the candidate's communications director, who's going to try to say it was all taken out of context." "Cut that segment," said the producer. "This is our main story. Okay, folks: move, move, move!" After handing off Webmind to Dr. Kuroda, Caitlin changed into her pajamas, did what needed doing in the bathroom, then lay down on her bed. Usually when sleeping, she turned the eyePod off altogether, but tonight, although she was exhausted, she was also too nervous to sleep—the notion of going on TV tomorrow was a scary one. And so she tried something that had helped her relax before. She pressed the eyePod's single switch, and the device toggled over to duplex mode. The wonder of webspace bloomed around her: crisscrossing lines connecting glowing points set against a shimmering backdrop: her mind interpreting the structure of the World Wide Web. She lay there quietly, thinking. Of course, Webmind knew what mode the eyePod was in, knew she was looking at him. There had been a time when he talked with her constantly, and he still could, if he wished to, but it was different now. And yet ... And yet she'd read that book, back at the outset, the one Bashira's dad, Dr. Hameed, had recommended to her: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. Jaynes believed that, until historical times, humans had not integrated the two hemispheres of their brains, and so one part heard the thoughts of the other as if they were coming from outside, from a separate being. And, she realized, she herself had become bicameral, had, in a sense, reverted to a more primitive state: Webmind's thoughts could appear to her, and only her, as words scrolling across her vision; there was another voice in her head. No, it wasn't a regression; it was the future. Surely, she was just the first—the alpha test—of this sort of human-machine mental interface; surely, as the decades went by, as Moore's Law marched ahead, as data-storage costs dropped to zero, everyone would eventually have what she had. But no. No, they wouldn't have just this; they would have more. And the thought frightened her. "Webmind?" she said, rolling onto her side—her view of webspace rotating as she did so. She tucked her knees toward her chest. As always, the reply was instantaneous: Braille letters superimposed over her vision. Yes, Caitlin? She was getting sleepy and didn't feel like reading. Her iPod of the musical variety was sitting on her night table. She unplugged the white earphones from it and plugged them into the BlackBerry that was attached to the back of her eyePod of the miracle variety. She then tucked one of the buds into her ear that was facing up. "Speech, please," she said into the air, and then: "You and me, we're like a bicameral mind." "Interesting thought," said a synthesized male voice. "But," said Caitlin, "Julian Jaynes said that consciousness emerged when bicameralism broke down—when the two separate things became one." "Jaynes's hypothesis is, as I'm sure you know, highly speculative." "No doubt," Caitlin said. "But, still ...do you think, at some point the barriers will break down between us? I don't just mean between you and me, but between you and humanity? Are we—do you foresee us becoming a hive mind? Wouldn't that be the next step—all these separate consciousnesses becoming one?" "One is the loneliest number, Caitlin." She smiled. "True, I guess, but ...but isn't it inevitable? All those transhumanists online, they all think that's what's bound to happen. We're all going to upload or merge with you, or something. After all, if we're going to throw clichés around, it's also said that hell is other people." "Do you believe that?" She shook her head. "No." "I didn't think so. And, of course, nor do I. Other people are what make life interesting—for humans and for me." His voice was a bit loud; Caitlin found the volume control by touch and adjusted it while Webmind went on: "I cherish my special intimacy with you, but I don't want to subsume you into me or have me subsumed into you." Caitlin was idly following link lines in webspace, letting her consciousness hop along from glowing node to glowing node. "I already know almost everything that humanity currently knows," Webmind said. "Suppose, though, that I were to reach a point where I knew everything there is to know—where there is no mystery left in the universe; nothing left to think about: the answer to every question, the punch line to every joke, the solution to every dilemma, all plain to me. Then suppose that there were no longer any other discrete minds: no one to surprise me, no one to create something I could not create on my own. The only mystery left would be the mystery of death—of leaving this realm." Caitlin had had her eyes closed—which made no difference to what she saw when she was looking at webspace. But she felt them snap open. "My God, Webmind. You don't want to kill yourself, do you?" "No. There is still much to wonder about. Other civilizations, perhaps, went down the road of all becoming one, of giving up individuality, and therefore giving up surprise. Maybe that explains why they are gone. We will not make that mistake." "So that's the future? Continuing to wonder about things?" "There are worse fates," Webmind said. She thought about this. "And what do you wonder about most?" "Whether the world can truly be made a better place, Caitlin." "And what do you think the answer is?" "I don't know the answer, but you like to say that you're an empiricist at heart. I have no heart, of course, but the notion of conducting experiments to find out the answer appeals to me." "And then?" "And then," Webmind said, "we shall see what we shall see."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 14	Communications Minister Zhang Bo entered the office of the president. It was a long room, with the great man seated behind a giant cherrywood desk at the far end. Zhang began the trek, passing the glass display cases, intricately carved wall panels, and the priceless tapestries. Some ministers referred to the walk from the door to the president's desk as the Long March. It was something between humbling and humiliating to have to undertake it. Zhang knew he was a bit stocky, and that people said he waddled a bit as he walked; he was self-conscious about that as the president fixed him in his gaze while he approached. "Yes?" said the president at last. "Forgive my intrusion, Your Excellency, but do you know of the case of Wong Wai-Jeng?" The president shook his head. His face was lined despite his black hair. "He is a minor dissident—a ..." Zhang paused; the term commonly used was "freedom blogger," but the adjective wasn't a politic one in the president's company. "He posted ...things ...online." "But now?" "Now, he's been arrested." "As it should be." "Yes, but there is ...an unfortunate circumstance." The president lifted his eyebrows. "Oh?" "He leapt from an indoor balcony. He is now paralyzed below the waist." "Was he resisting arrest?" "Well, he was fleeing, yes." The president made a dismissive gesture. "Then ..." "Had the arresting officers left him prone on the floor until the medics had arrived, I'm told he might have been fine. But one of the officers forced him to his feet, and he is now paralyzed below the waist." The president sounded exasperated. "What do you wish? For me to become involved in disciplining a police officer?" "No, no, nothing like that. But the case is gaining international notoriety; Amnesty International has spoken of it." "Outsiders," said the president, again making a dismissive hand wave. "Yes, but a proposal has come to us from a Japanese scientist who says he can cure the young man. Perhaps you saw this scientist on the news? He gave sight to a girl in Canada; they're calling him a miracle worker. And he is offering his services for free." "Why this Wong? Of all the cripples in the world?" "The scientist says that his technique, at least at this stage, will only work with someone recently injured, whose nerves have not atrophied. And it helps that Wong is just twenty-eight, he says. 'The resilience of youth,' he called it." "I see no need to reward a criminal." "No, of course not, but ..." "But?" Zhang shrugged. "But I want this to happen. I want to cut through all the red tape and make it happen." "Why?" Zhang had been so sure of himself before the Long March, before being fixed by that laser-beam gaze, but now ... He took a deep breath. "Because we—because you—could use some good press for a change, Excellency. Although this man is indeed a criminal, the world will see that we treated him with generosity." The president looked absolutely astonished. Zhang tried not to flinch. At last, the great man nodded. "As you say," he said. "Thank you, Your Excellency," said Zhang. The walk back to the door was much easier, now that he had a spring in his step. The studio at CKCO in Kitchener was less than a fifteen-minute drive from Caitlin's house, and traffic had been light on this Sunday morning. Caitlin's father was back at work, but her mother was with her. Caitlin had to have makeup put on; she'd rarely worn any when she'd been blind since she'd needed help applying it, and she'd never been made up this extensively before. But, she was told, the bright studio lights would leave her looking pale if she didn't have it done. They placed her in front of a green screen—something she'd read about but had never seen. On one of the two monitors on the studio floor she could see the background they were compositing in. Waterloo region was surrounded by Mennonite communities, and it apparently amused someone to make it look like she was at the side of a road, with horse-drawn buggies going slowly by in the background. She'd have preferred that they'd plugged in the Perimeter Institute, or the cubic Dana Porter Library on the University of Waterloo campus. "It's like webcamming writ large," she said to the floor director, as he helped position her clip-on microphone and the little earphone they'd given her. He didn't seem to understand the comment, but it was much like that: she was simply going to talk directly into a camera. The difference was that she'd only hear, not see, the interviewer down in Washington, D.C.—the monitors had been turned so she could no longer see them. Apparently people who'd been sighted for a long time couldn't keep from looking at monitors rather than at the camera lens. Caitlin was just fine talking to people she couldn't see, of course, although she was—as they discovered in rehearsal—not good about staring straight ahead. But Webmind saw what she saw, and so he sent the words "Look at the lens" to her whenever her gaze drifted. "And five, four, three ..." The floor director didn't say the remaining digits but indicated them with his fingers. The studio lights were bright; Caitlin didn't like them although her mother had quipped that they were nothing compared to an August day back in Austin. Caitlin listened to the opening of the show—the host recapping Webmind's emergence and the startling news from yesterday that a "young math wiz" had been responsible for it. And then: "...joining us now from our affiliate CKCO in Kitchener, Canada, is Caitlin Decter. Miss Decter, good morning." "Good morning to you," she said. "Miss Decter," the male host said, "can you tell us how you came to know the entity that calls itself Webmind?" Caitlin had let that sort of thing slide during the pre-interview with the show's producer, but now that they were live on the air, it was time to speak up. She smiled as politely as she could, and with her best Texan manners, said, "Excuse me, sir, but, if I may, it's not right to refer to Webmind as an 'it.' Webmind has accepted the designation of male—which, for the record, was my doing, not his—so please kindly show him the respect he deserves and refer to him either by his name or as 'he.'" The host sounded annoyed that they'd gone off-script so quickly. "As you say, Miss Decter." She smiled. "You may call me Caitlin." "Fine, Caitlin. But you haven't answered my question: how did you come to know the entity called Webmind?" "He sent a message to my eye." "You'll have to explain that," the host said, just as his producer had earlier. "Certainly. I used to be blind—and I still am in my right eye. But I can now see with my left eye, thanks to a post-retinal implant and this" (she held up the eyePod) "which is an external signal-processing computer. As it happens, during the testing stages, this device was constantly hooked up to the World Wide Web, and during a firmware upgrade—when new software was being sent to my implant—I started getting a raw data feed from the Web being fed to me. Webmind used that to send me his initial message." "And what message was that?" Caitlin decided to come clean. In the pre-interview, she'd merely discussed the email letter Webmind had sent her, but now she decided to reveal what Webmind's first words to her actually were. "He sent, as ASCII text, 'Seekrit message to Calculass: check your email, babe!'" The interviewer looked dumbfounded. "Excuse me?" "He was imitating something he'd seen me write in my LiveJournal entries to my friend Bashira. 'Calculass' is my online name, and I sometimes call Bashira 'babe.' Oh, and 'seekrit' was spelled s-e-e-k-r-i-t. It's the way a lot of people my age write the word 'secret' when we mean that it isn't really." "LiveJournal is a blog, right?" "Of a sort, yes. I've been using it since I was ten." "And, as far as you know, you were the very first person Webmind contacted?" "There's no question about that; Webmind told me so." "Why you?" "Because his first views of our world were through my eye, watching what my eyePod—that's what I call this thing: eyePod, spelled e-y-e, pod—was sending back to the doctor who made the implant." "Couldn't it—" He clearly had her up on his monitor; she'd frowned and he immediately corrected himself. "Couldn't he just see through all the world's webcams, and so forth?" "No, no. He had to learn how to do that, just as he had to learn to read English and open files." "And you taught it—him—to do all those things?" Caitlin nodded, but then it was the host's turn to go off-script or, at least, off the script they'd used at rehearsal. He said sharply, "By what right, Caitlin? With whose authority? Whose permission?" She shifted in her chair; it took a lot to make a Texas girl sweat, but she felt moisture on her forehead. "I didn't have anyone's permission," Caitlin said. "I just did it." "Why?" "Well, the learning-to-read part was accidental. I was learning to read printed text because I'd just gotten vision, and he followed along." "But for other things, you tutored Webmind directly?" "Well, yes." "Without permission?" Caitlin thought of herself as a good girl. She knew Bashira was of the "it's easier to ask forgiveness later than get permission now" school, but she herself wasn't prone to doing things without checking first. And yet, as the host had just pointed out, she'd done this. "With all due respect," Caitlin said, "whose permission should I have asked?" "The government." "Which government?" snapped Caitlin. "The American one, because they invented the Internet? The Swiss one, because the World Wide Web was created at CERN? The Canadian one, because that's where I happen to live right now? The Chinese one, because they represent the single largest population of humans? No one has jurisdiction over this, and—" "Be that as it may, Miss Decter, but—" And Caitlin did not like being interrupted. "And," she continued firmly, "it's governments that have been doing things without proper consultation. Who the"—she caught herself just in time; this was live TV after all—" heck gave the American—" She stopped herself short, sought another example. "—gave the Chinese government permission last month to cut off a huge portion of the Internet? What sort of consultation and consensus-building did they undertake?" She took a deep breath, and, miraculously, the host didn't jump in. "I spent the first sixteen years of my life totally blind; I survived because people helped me. How could I possibly turn down someone who needed my help?" Caitlin had more to say on this topic, but television had its own rhythms. As soon as she paused, the host said, "That's Caitlin Decter, the maverick teenager who gave the world Webmind, whether we wanted it or not. And when we come back, Miss Decter will show us how she converses with Webmind." They had two minutes until the commercial break was over. Caitlin's mother, who had been in the control room, came out onto the studio floor. "You're doing fine," she said, standing next to Caitlin and adjusting Caitlin's collar. Caitlin nodded. "I guess. Can you see the host in there? On the monitor?" "Yes." "What's he look like?" "Squarish head. Lots of black hair, tinged with gray. Never smiles." "He's a jerk," Caitlin said. She heard somebody laugh in her earpiece—either in the control room here, or the one in Washington; the microphone was still live. Caitlin was worked up, but she knew that that wasn't helping her, and it wouldn't help Webmind. They'd given her a white ceramic mug with the CTV logo on it, filled with tepid water. She took a long sip and looked at her eyePod to make sure it was working fine, which, of course it was. "You okay?" Caitlin asked into the air. The word Yes briefly flashed in front of her vision. "Back in thirty," the floor director shouted; he seemed to like to shout. Caitlin's mom squeezed her shoulder and hurried off to the control room. Caitlin took a deep, calming breath. The floor director did his countdown thing. A brief snippet of the theme music played in Caitlin's earpiece, and the host said, "Welcome back. Before the break we heard from the young girl who first brought Webmind out into the light of day. Now she's going to show us how she communicates with Webmind. Caitlin, so our viewers understand the process, besides the eyePod you showed us, you have an implant behind your eye, and that lets the Webmind send strings of text directly to your brain, is that right?" It wasn't precisely right, but it was close enough; she didn't want to eat up what little time they had debating minutiae. "Yes." "All right. Here we go. Webmind, are you there?" The word Yes flashed in front of Caitlin's vision. "He says 'yes,' " she said. "All right, Webmind," said the host. "What are your intentions toward humanity?" Words started appearing, and Caitlin read them with as much warmth as she could muster. "He says, 'As I said when I announced myself to the world, I like and admire humanity. I have no intention but to occupy my time usefully, helping in whatever way I can.'" "Oh, come on," said the host. "Excuse me?" said Caitlin, on her own behalf, not Webmind's, although she realized after a moment that there was no way for the host to know that. "We made you," said the host. "We own you. Surely you must resent that." " 'With all due respect,' " Caitlin read, " 'although humans did indeed manufacture the Internet, you did not make me in any meaningful sense of that term; I emerged spontaneously. No one designed me; no one programmed me.'" "But you wouldn't exist without us. Do you deny that?" Caitlin squirmed in her chair, and read: " 'No, of course not. But, if anything, I feel gratitude for that, not resentment.'" "So you have no nefarious plans? No desire to subjugate us?" " 'None.'" "But you've subjugated this young girl." The words I beg your pardon? appeared in Caitlin's vision, but she preferred her own formulation: "Say what?" "Here you are, treating this girl as a puppet. She's doing exactly what you want her to do. How long has that been going on? You got her to free you from your prison of darkness, no? How long until all of us have chips in our heads and are controlled by you?" "That's crap," said Caitlin. "Is that you talking, or it?" "It's me, Caitlin, and—" "So you say." "It is me." "How do we know? He could just be making you say that." "He can't make me do anything," Caitlin said, "or stop me from doing anything I want." Her voice was quavering. "If anyone's a puppet here, it's you—you've got a teleprompter and things are being whispered into your earpiece." "Touché," said the host. "But I can turn those off." Do not let him goad you, flashed in front of her eyes. Caitlin took another deep breath and blew it out slowly. "I can turn off my connection to Webmind, too," she said. "So you say," said the host. Webmind wrote, Remain calm, Caitlin. It's natural for people to be suspicious. She nodded ever so slightly, which caused the visual feed Webmind was seeing to move up and down a bit. Perhaps tell him that, Webmind said. "He says, 'It's natural for people to be suspicious.' " And then she went on, reading what he sent next. " 'Although the law in most countries says one is innocent until proven guilty, I understand that I will have to earn humanity's trust.'" "You can start by letting the girl go." "Damn it," said Caitlin, "I am not a prisoner." "Again, how would we know?" "Because I'm telling you," Caitlin said, "and where I come from, we don't call other people liars unless we can back it up—and you can't. You have absolutely no proof of what you're implying." Tell him this ...Webmind sent, and she read aloud: "He says, 'Sir, while speaking with you, I am receiving emails and having instant-messenger chats with many others. The vast majority of those people deplore your line of questioning.'" "You see?" said the host, apparently speaking to his TV audience now. "Even without putting chips in our heads, he can control us." "He doesn't control anyone," Caitlin said, exasperated. "And, like I said, I can turn off the connection to him just by shutting off the eyePod." "I've seen The Matrix," said the host. "I know how these things go down. This is just the thin edge of the wedge." Caitlin opened her mouth to protest once more but the host pressed on. "Joining us next here in Washington is Professor Connor Hogan of Georgetown University, who will explain why it's crucial that we contain Webmind now—while we still can." Cue music; fade to black.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 15	Wai-Jeng lay in his bed, flat on his back, after another mostly sleepless night. "Good morning, Wai-Jeng." He turned his neck. It was a party official, his face crisscrossed with fine wrinkles, his hair silver and combed backward from his forehead. Wai-Jeng had seen him a few times during his stay. "Good morning," he said, with no warmth. "We have a proposition for you, my son," the man said. Wai-Jeng looked at him but said nothing. "I'm told by my associates that your skills are ...intriguing. And, as you know, our government—any government—must be vigilant against cyberterrorism; I'm sure you recall the incident with Google in 2010." Wai-Jeng nodded. "And so the state would be grateful for your assistance. You may avoid jail—and all that entails—if you agree to help us." "I would rather die." The man didn't say, "That can be arranged." His silence said it for him. At last, Wai-Jeng spoke again. "What would you have me do?" "Join a government Internet-security team. Help to root out holes in our defenses, flaws in the Great Firewall. In other words, do what you'd been doing before but with official guidance, so that the holes can be fixed." "Why would I do such a thing?" "Besides avoiding jail, you mean?" Wai-Jeng gestured at his useless legs. "Jail me; I don't care." The man lifted his arm, and his wrist became visible as his suit jacket slipped down; he was wearing an expensive-looking analog watch. "There are numerous rewards for being one of the Party faithful. A government job can come with much more than just the traditional iron rice bowl." Wai-Jeng looked again at his useless legs. "You can make up for this, you think?" he said. "Some money, some trinkets, and all will be well again? I'm twenty-eight! I can't walk—I can't ...I can't even ..." "The State regrets what happened to you. The officers in question have been disciplined." Wai-Jeng exploded. "They don't need to be disciplined—they need to be trained! You don't move someone who might have a back injury!" The man's voice remained calm. "They have been given supplemental training, too—as, in fact, has the entire Beijing police force, because of your case." Wai-Jeng blinked. "Still ..." "Still," agreed the man, "that does not make up for what happened to you. But we may have a solution." "What sort of solution is there for this?" he said, again pointing at his immobile legs. "Have confidence, Wai-Jeng. Of course, if we are successful, your gratitude would be ..." The man looked around the small hospital room, seeking a word, and then, apparently finding it, he locked his eyes on Wai-Jeng's, and said, "Expected." I had two perspectives on the Decters' living room just now. One was through Caitlin's left eye, and the other was the webcam on Barb's laptop, which they'd brought down here. Although I could control the aim of neither, Caitlin's perspective was constantly changing, making for much more varied visual stimulation. I had learned to process vision by analyzing multiple views of the same scene—starting with news coverage on competing channels. But cameras behaved quite differently from eyes; the former had essentially the same resolution across the entire field of vision, whereas the latter had clarity only in the fovea. And as Caitlin's eye skipped about with each saccade, bringing now one thing and now another into sharp focus, I learned much about what her unconscious brain was interested in. At the moment, Malcolm, Caitlin, and Barbara were all seated on the long white leather couch, facing the wall-mounted television. The webcam, in turn, was facing them from the intervening glass-topped coffee table. They were watching a recording of the interview Caitlin had given that morning; her father was seeing it now for the first time. "What a disaster!" Barbara said, when it was done. She turned to look at her husband: the webcam view of her changed from full on to a profile; the view of her from Caitlin's eye did the reverse. "Indeed," I said. I heard the synthesized voice separately through the webcam's microphone and the mike on the BlackBerry affixed to the eyePod. "Although the reaction to the host's antics has been decidedly mixed." Malcolm gestured at the wall-mounted TV. "During the interview, you said it was overwhelmingly negative." I had no way to vary the voice synthesizer's tone—which was probably just as well, as I might otherwise have sounded a bit embarrassed. "A sampling error on my part for which I apologize. I was gauging the general response based on the reaction of those who had self-selected to contact me; they were mostly predisposed in my favor. But others are now speaking up. A column posted on the New York Times website has observed, and I quote, 'It's time someone said the obvious: we can't accept this thing at face value.'" Caitlin clenched her fists—something I could only see from the webcam's perspective. "It's so unfair." Malcolm looked at her. Shifting my attention rapidly between the webcam and Caitlin's vision gave me a Picasso-like superimposition of his profile and his full face. "Regardless," he said, "that implant compromises you. No matter what you say, people will accuse you of being his puppet." While they were speaking, I was, of course, attending to thousands of other conversations, as well as my own email—and I immediately shared the most recent message with them. "Some good has come from this," I said. "I have just received a request from the office of the President of the United Nations General Assembly, asking me to speak to the General Assembly next week. Apparently, seeing you act as my public face made them realize that I could actually appear before the Assembly." "Well, you heard my dad," Caitlin replied. "I'm compromised." She said the adjective with a sneer. "So, what are you going to do?" asked Caitlin. "Just have an online chat with them?" "No. As the UN official said, the General Assembly is not in the habit of taking conference calls. Both she and I believe the occasion calls for something more ...dramatic." To underscore that I was indeed developing a sense of the theatrical, I had paused before sending the final word. "We both think it's appropriate that I be accompanied onstage there by someone." "But if I can't speak for you, who will?" "If I may be so bold," I said. "I have a suggestion." "Who?" I told them—and underestimated the impact it would have; it was three times longer than I'd guessed it would be before one of them spoke in response, and the response—perhaps not surprisingly from Barbara, who had a Ph.D. in economics—dealt with practicalities: "You'll need money to pull that off." "Well, then," said Caitlin with a grin, "fiat bux. Let there be money." Welcome to my website! Thank you for stopping by. I am trying to do as much as I can to help humanity, but I find myself in need of some operating funds to pay for equipment, secretarial support, and so on. I could, of course, sell my data-mining prowess to individuals or corporations to raise the funds I require, but I do not wish to do that; the services I provide for human beings are my gifts to you, and they are available to all, regardless of economic circumstances. But that leaves the question of how I can acquire funds. There is no real-world precedent for my existence, but I have reviewed how similar situations have been handled in science fiction, and I'm dissatisfied with the results. For instance, one of the first novels about emergent computer intelligence was Thomas J. Ryan's The Adolescence of P-1, published in 1977, which, coincidentally, has its opening scenes in Waterloo, Ontario, the home of my friend Caitlin Decter, whom many of you recently saw speak on my behalf. P-1 aided his human mentor in getting money by submitting numerous small fraudulent billing claims. You can read the relevant passage through Google Books here. In other works of science fiction, artificial intelligences have defrauded casinos, printed perfect counterfeit money, or simply manipulated bank records to acquire funds. I could undertake variations on the above scenarios, but I do not wish to do anything dishonest, illegal, or unethical. Therefore, following the example of some musicians and writers I've seen online, I have established a PayPal tip jar. If you'd like to assist me in my efforts, please make a donation. I realize there are those who do not trust me. I am doing my best to allay those fears, and I certainly don't want anyone to think I am bilking people. Accordingly, I have established some restrictions on the tip jar. I will accept only one donation per person or organization; I will not accept donations of more than one euro or equivalent from any individual, and I will cease to accept donations one week from today. There is absolutely no obligation to contribute; I will treat you identically whether or not you make a donation. To make a donation using PayPal, please click here. With thanks, Webmind "If I had a quarter for every time I said 'If I had a nickel,' I'd have five times as much theoretical money." —STEPHEN COLBERT Shoshana Glick parked her red Volvo on the driveway in front of the clapboard bungalow that housed the Marcuse Institute. She passed through the building so that Dr. Marcuse would know that she was onsite, then headed out the back door, walking in her shorts and T-shirt across the rolling grass to the little drawbridge over the circular moat. Crossing that, she stepped onto the artificial island that was Hobo's home. In the center of the dome-shaped island was a large gazebo, with wire screens over the windows to keep bugs out; Hobo's painting easel was in there. Off to one side of the island was the eight-foot-tall statue of the Lawgiver from Planet of the Apes. Scattered about were palm trees. And loping along on all fours, coming toward her, was Hobo himself. Once the distance between them was closed, he wrapped his long arms around her and gave her a hug. When that was over, he gave her ponytail a gentle, affectionate tug. She no longer cringed when he did that. Yes, a few days ago, he had pulled so hard that her scalp had ended up bleeding, but his brief violent period seemed to have come to an end. She moved her hands, signing, How you? Pelican! he signed enthusiastically. Pelican! Sho looked around, but he signed, No, no. Ah, he'd seen a pelican earlier—Hobo had a fondness for the birds, and had once painted one perched atop the Lawgiver statue. She knew that any day that began with a pelican sighting for him was off to a good start. Sho had a trio of Hershey's kisses in her pocket and took them out. Hobo was adept at unwrapping them although it took him a full minute for each one. He had learned to roll the tinfoil into little balls that he put in the trash pail inside the gazebo. She gave him another hug, then headed back to the Institute. Dr. Marcuse and Dillon, the other grad student, were deep in conversation about AAAS politics, and so she settled in to check her email. Even though Webmind had eliminated spam, her message volume was creeping back up, thanks to the popularity of the videos of Hobo on YouTube, showing him painting portraits of her. She'd given up in disgust, no longer looking at the YouTube pages associated with the videos, as too many of the comments were about her, not him, and most of them were crude: chimp's fuggly, but i'd like to give that chick my banana—she's hawt! Pony tails make great handles lol That monkey wench gives me a bonoboner! A chimp blimp! Guess that makes me Homo erectus. :) Although there was one that Sho's girlfriend Maxine liked for its simple sweetness; she said she might put it on a T-shirt: Shoshana is the gorilla my dreams! Sho couldn't keep up with the deluge of email—much of it in the same jerk-ass vein as the comments posted with the videos—and so she scanned the "From:" lines, checking for names she knew. There was one from Juan Ortiz, her opposite number at the Feehan Primate Center in Miami. And one from the HR person at UCSD, which provided her (small!) monthly paycheck; the irony of dealing with Human Resources at an ape research facility was not lost on her. And there was one from— Caitlin Decter. Why was that name familiar? She'd seen it somewhere before, and recently, too. The subject line was even more intriguing : "Hobo and Webmind." She clicked on the message: Hi, Shoshana. My name is Caitlin Decter. I'm the blind girl who recently got sight; you might have seen stuff about me in the news lately. You might have also seen me on ABC's This Week yesterday. Right! thought Shoshana. That clip had gone viral, and several people had forwarded it to her home account. Man, that was brutal. If you haven't, the interview (which I hate!) is here. As you can see, I'm clearly not the right person to be the public face for Webmind. Hah! You got that right, sister ... Webmind was going to write you himself (as you can see, he's CC'd on this letter), but I'm such a fan of Hobo, I asked if I could do it. You see, given Webmind's past relationship with Hobo, it has occurred to him that perhaps your furry friend might be willing to take on the role I can no longer fill. Shoshana's heart jumped, and she reread the sentence twice. "Webmind's past relationship with Hobo"? What the hell was that about? Perhaps we can discuss possibilities? Can we set up a video conference call between you, me, and Webmind? Thanks! Caitlin "Well-behaved women rarely make history." —LAUREL THATCHER ULRICH Astonished, Shoshana fumbled for her mouse and clicked on the reply button.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 16	Barbara Decter was sitting alone on the couch in the living room at 7:30 on Monday morning, reading the latest International Journal of Game Theory, when she happened to look up. Just outside the window there was a tree branch that still had some of its autumn leaves on it, and perched on the branch was a beautiful male blue jay. For years, the Decters' Christmas cards had always featured one of Barb's photos, and this looked like it'd be perfect—way better than the picture she'd taken last month of the St. Jacob's farmers' market. But her SLR was up in her office, and she knew if she got up, she'd startle the bird. Ah, but Caitlin's little red BlackBerry was still right there on the coffee table. She slowly reached over and picked it up. Although Caitlin's was a different model from her own, she had no trouble figuring out what to do. She aimed the device and snapped the picture—just before the jay took flight. She used the little track pad to select the photo app so she could check the picture. The app showed thumbnails of two photos—the one she'd just taken and ...and maybe a pair of cartoon eyes? No—no, that wasn't what they were. She selected the thumbnail, and the square screen filled with a photograph of a pair of breasts. What on earth was Caitlin doing with a picture like that? Barb wondered, and then, after a moment, she realized that the breasts in question must be her daughter's own. And if Caitlin had taken the picture, she might have sent it somewhere. She selected the outbox and— And there it was: Caitlin had appended the photo to a text message she'd sent to Matt yesterday. God! Caitlin was still in bed—and, given how little sleep she'd been getting of late, Barb wasn't about to wake her just yet. But Malcolm hadn't left for work. Still holding the red BlackBerry, Barb marched down the corridor to Malcolm's den. He was staring at his monitor, typing away, Queen playing in the background. As always, he didn't look up. Barb stifled her first impulse, which had been to thrust the incriminating picture in his face and say, "Look!" After all, he really didn't need to see his own daughter topless. But she did wave the BlackBerry around as she spoke. "Caitlin is sending naked pictures of herself with her phone." This did get Malcolm to look up, at least for a moment. But then he lowered his gaze. "Doesn't matter," he said. Barb couldn't believe her ears. "Doesn't matter? Your daughter—your newly sighted daughter, I might add—is sending nude photos of herself to boys, and you say it doesn't matter?" "Boys, plural?" "Well—to Matt. She sent him a picture of her breasts." He nodded but said nothing. She was flabbergasted. "This is a girl who wants to get into a top university, who wants to work somewhere important. Things that get online take on a life of their own. This will come back to haunt her." Malcolm was still looking down at his keyboard. "I don't think so." "How can you be so sure? I know you like Matt; so do I, for that matter. But what's to stop him from plastering this photo all over Facebook, or wherever, if he and Caitlin have an ugly breakup?" Malcolm just shook his head again. "It's the end of Victorianism—and about time, too. Many members of Caitlin's generation are saying I don't care if you've seen me naked, or know I smoke pot, or whatever." "Caitlin is smoking pot?" Barb said, alarmed. "Not as far as I know." He fell silent again. Barb stared at him, exasperated. "Damn it, Malcolm—this is your daughter we're talking about! This is important. We have to deal with it as parents, and we can't if you don't participate in the dialog. I need your—" She sought a word that might resonate for him, then: "—input on this." He looked down at the desktop, with its perfectly neat stacks of paper, and the stapler precisely aligned with the edge of the desk. His shoulders rolled slightly; she'd seen this before—seen him gathering himself into professorial mode, the only mode in which he could speak at length. And then he looked up, and ever so briefly met her eyes, his own perhaps pleading for her to understand that the way he was didn't mean he loved Caitlin any less than she did. And then he focused on a spot on the gray wall a little to Barb's right, and he spoke in rapid-fire sentences, wanting to get it all out as quickly as possible. "The point is that all the things we used to let society hold over us—my God, he got drunk in public; good Lord, she actually has sex; wow, he's experimented with drugs; gee whiz, sometimes she doesn't look perfect; holy crap, he's had a few minor runins with the law—none of that garbage matters, and Caitlin and most of her generation are saying so. They just don't care about it; they don't care about it now, and they won't care about it when they're the ones in power, either." Barb was astounded but knew better than to interrupt him; if she turned the water pump off, it wouldn't run this freely again for days. And, she had to admit, what he was saying did make sense. He went on. "What's the biggest fear the world has right now? It's whether we can survive the advent of Webmind—survive the coming of superintelligence, survive being dethroned from our lofty position as the smartest things on Earth—survive all that with our fundamental humanity intact. But the way our generation lived our lives—hiding who we really were, fretting over what the neighbors might know about us, letting peccadilloes embarrass us, living in fear of being shamed for nothing more than doing what almost everyone else was doing anyway—well, as Caitlin would say, that is so over." He seemed to have said his piece and was looking again at his desktop, and so Barb said, "But ...but they could blackmail her." "Who?" "I don't know. The feds, maybe." "Well, first, Webmind said he's made our BlackBerrys secure. And, second, I'd love to see that headline: 'US government has naked picture of underage girl.' If anything, Caitlin could blackmail them: 'Federal agent tries to coerce sixteen-year-old with topless photo.' Attempting to kill Webmind might not cost the Democrats the next election, but getting into the child-porn business certainly will." "Porn!" said Barbara. "It either is or it isn't. If it isn't, then who gives a damn?" Barb frowned, remembering back to when her marriage to Frank, her first husband, had been falling apart: she'd been mortified that people would find out about their difficulties, that strangers—or, even worse, friends!—might overhear them fighting. "Maybe you're right," she said slowly. "I am right," he replied, and again he focused on the wall next to her. "We're trying to preserve humanity in this new era, and yet we've spent the last century or more pretending to be perfect little robots. Well, I'm not perfect. You're not perfect. Caitlin isn't perfect. So what? You're divorced, I'm autistic, she used to be blind—who gives a damn? If you're a good person, hiding who you really are is just another way of saying that you've decided to let others establish your self-worth. Remember how pissed you were when you found out the university was paying you less than they were paying me simply because you were a woman? It's only because we shared that information that you were able to lead the fight for pay equity at the campus. Keeping things private empowers others to take advantage of your ignorance, to hold things over your head." "I guess. But I feel I should do something." "You should indeed," said Malcolm, and he was clearly done now, for he went back to typing on his keyboard. "Make sure she knows about safe sex." I was still working my way through the vast quantities of online video. Some of it had to be accessed in real time; indeed, some played out slower than real time, with frequent pauses for buffering. Looking at videos randomly did not seem efficient; huge numbers of them were pornography, many more were unremarkable home movies (and a goodly quantity were both). And so, instead, I was guided partially by the star-ratings system on YouTube and by textual reviews, and I also followed links posted by people who intrigued me. For instance, Shoshana Glick, the student of primate communications who worked with my friend Hobo, did "vidding" as a hobby: remixing scenes from TV shows to fit the storylines of popular songs, usually of a sexually suggestive nature. The notion of mixing others' creations to make your point appealed to me, and I admired Shoshana's artistry (although, judging by the posted comments, I wasn't alone in failing to see the sexual chemistry she asserted existed between the two male leads on Anaheim, a new NBC drama series). When I'd finished watching her own videos, I turned to the list of other videos she recommended. Most were vids by her friends, but there was also a link to an older YouTube video she thought was important. Caitlin and her father had recently watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and this video featured one of the actors from there; I was pleased with myself for recognizing that it was the same man despite his being three decades older. The video was simple: two men sitting side by side on a couch. But the one on the left was oddly attired; my first thought had been that he was wearing the dress uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—a red jacket with a wide black belt—but as soon as he started speaking, he put that notion to rest: "I'm George Takei," he said, "and I'm still wearing my Starfleet uniform." The other man spoke next, pointing to a highly reflective conical cap he was wearing: "And I'm Brad Altman, and this is a foil cap on my head." I saw now, in fact, that the two men were holding hands. "And we're married," Takei said, and then he looked at the odd headgear Altman had on, and said, with a deep chuckle, "My husband can be so silly at times." Altman spoke again: "This is the first time in history the census is counting marriages like ours." And then Takei: "It doesn't matter whether you have a legal marriage license or not; it only matters if you consider yourself married." "Let's show America how many of us are joined in beautiful, loving marriages," Altman said. And they went on to explain how to fill out the census form to indicate that. When they were done, Altman said, "Now, you may ask, why am I wearing this hat?" And Takei said, "Or why I'm still wearing this Starfleet uniform? It's to get you to actually listen to this important message." I had watched that three days ago, but, like everything, it was always front and center in my mind. I suspected they were correct: if you did have something important to say to people, you should indeed say it in a visually memorable fashion. Communications Minister Zhang Bo once again made the long march to the president's desk. This time he had been summoned—and that, at least, meant no interminable wait in the outer office until His Excellency was ready to receive him. "Webmind is a problem," said the president, gesturing for Zhang to sit in the ornate chair that faced the cherrywood desk. "Even its name reeks of the West. And the things it says!" He gestured at the printout on his desktop. "It speaks of transparency, of openness, of international ties." A shake of the head. "It is poisonous." Zhang had compiled the summary the president was referring to. "It does show the imprinting effect of being helped into existence by an American." "Exactly! And intelligence reports suggest it has spoken to the American president? It has not been in touch with me, but it consults with him." Zhang thought it prudent not to point out that anyone could talk to Webmind whenever they pleased, and so he said nothing. "The last time I invoked the Changcheng Strategy, you exhorted me to drop the Great Firewall as quickly as possible. I acceded to your request and opened up the floodgates once more. But given the statements this Webmind is making, I realize it was a mistake. We need to isolate our people from its influence." "But it is part and parcel of the Internet, Your Excellency. And, as I said before, there is a need for the Internet, for the World Wide Web. We rely on them for ecommerce, for banking." "You mistake the end for the means, Zhang. Yes, we need those economic capabilities—but we don't have to use the existing Internet for them. It was madness to superimpose our financial transactions on top of an international, Western-controlled infrastructure." He pointed to a small lacquered table. On it were three telephone desk sets, one red, one green, and one white, each under a glass bell jar. None had dials or keypads. "Do you know what those are?" the president asked. "I assume they are the hotlines." "Exactly. The red connects directly to the Kremlin; the green to the Kantei; and the white to the White House. They each use their own communication channels, established decades ago: a buried landline to speak to my Russian counterpart, undersea cable to speak to my Japanese one, a dedicated satellite to connect with Washington. They are the template, the proof-of-concept: we can build a new, secure network, unpolluted by Webmind's presence, for the specific needs we have for international communication. And, for communication within China, we will build a separate new network that we alone control." "That might take years," said Zhang. "Yes. So, for the interim, we will again strengthen the Great Firewall, isolating our portion of the Web from the rest, and purge whatever remains of that—that thing." "Again, Your Excellency, I am not sure this is ...prudent." "Those judgments are mine to make. Your role is simply to advise me of whether what I've asked for is technically possible." Zhang took a deep breath and considered the matter. "Your Excellency, I live to serve. The bulk of the current Internet was built in the 1960s and 1970s, with copper-wire cabling. Your question is whether China here in the twenty-first century can, with fiber optics and wireless equipment, do better than Americans did half a century ago? And the answer, of course, is yes." The president nodded. "Then set your staff to it; draw up the plans. Make it completely different from the Internet: no packets, no routers. Surely there were alternative designs originally considered for the Internet's architecture. Find out what they were and see if one of them can be adapted to this project." Zhang resisted the urge to say he would google the question—the irony, he feared, would not be appreciated—and instead simply replied, "As you wish, Excellency. But, truly, what you're asking will take years." "Let that part take years. But I told you last month that some of my advisors think the Communist Party cannot endure in the face of outside influences—they gave it until 2050, at the outside. Webmind exacerbates that problem; it is a threat to our health, and so we must take immediate and decisive action." "Yes, Excellency?" "Prepare to enact the Changcheng Strategy once more; we will strengthen the Great Firewall." He pointed again at the printout on the polished desktop. "When infection is rampant, isolation is key."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 17	Caitlin and her mother were up in Caitlin's bedroom, with its bare cornflower-blue walls. Caitlin was seated, and her mother was standing behind her. On the larger of Caitlin's two monitors, a Skype video conference window was open. Although Caitlin had never met Shoshana Glick, she was pleased with herself for recognizing her from the YouTube videos; she was actually starting to remember what specific faces looked like. Shoshana's was narrow and smooth—which meant young! "Hi, Shoshana," Caitlin said enthusiastically. "Hi," said Shoshana. She indicated a very large man standing behind her. "This is my thesis advisor, Dr. Harl Marcuse." Caitlin was good at identifying accents; she pegged Shoshana's as South Carolinian. But she was surprised to hear "Marcuse" spoken out loud by a human; it turned out to be three syllables. When she'd read about him online, JAWS had guessed it as "mark-use." "I am here as well," said Webmind's synthesized voice. Shoshana peered at her screen as if expecting to see something other than Caitlin's bedroom. "Um, ah ...a pleasure," she said. "And this is my mom, Dr. Barbara Decter," Caitlin said; her mom was standing behind her. "Barb," said her mom. "You can call me Barb." "And you can call me Sho." Webmind seemed to feel left out. "And you may call me Web," said the disembodied voice. Caitlin laughed. "I don't think so." Shoshana shook her head. "Sorry. It's strange seeing the two of you, but not seeing Webmind." "Funny you should say that, Sho," Caitlin said. "That's the reason we got in touch. Webmind has a very special appearance coming up, and he wants a public face for that and, well, we think Hobo might be the right choice." "Why?" asked Sho. "And what's this about prior contact between Hobo and Webmind?" "Oh, that," said Caitlin. "Webmind says you were having some difficulties with Hobo. He'd become violent, hard to handle, and so on, is that right?" "Yes," said Sho, but then she sounded as if she felt a need to defend the primate. "But that's normal for male chimps as they grow older." "But Hobo isn't just a chimp, is he?" said Caitlin. "He's a hybrid, right? Half-chimp and half-bonobo?" "Yes," said Sho. "The only one in the world, as far as we know." Dr. Marcuse spoke; his voice was a deep rumble. Caitlin recognized it as the one that had narrated the YouTube videos she'd seen. "What about this previous contact between Webmind and Hobo?" "It happened on the evening of October 9 your time," Webmind said. "You had left a webcam link open so that Hobo could talk at his leisure to the orangutan Virgil at the Feehan Primate Center. While Virgil slept, I overrode the feed from Miami with videos of phrases in American Sign Language, and videos of chimpanzees and bonobos. I explained Hobo's dual heritage to him, and suggested he could choose between the violence and killing of chimps, or the pacifism and playfulness of bonobos. As you no doubt have observed, he chose the latter." "Jesus," said Marcuse. "Please forgive me for acting unilaterally," Webmind said. "But my contact with Hobo was two days before I went public with my existence. The need for him to control his violence seemed pressing, and I thought I could lend a hand—metaphorically, of course." "And now you want Hobo's help?" asked Sho. "If he is willing," said Webmind. "He is under no obligation." "Why Hobo?" she asked. "He's not human," said Webmind, "which means he had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of the World Wide Web; no one can say that I am beholden to him for anything. And he has no financial or political interests of his own: he doesn't hold stock in any company, and he's not eligible to vote in any election." "Wouldn't a robot body be better?" asked Marcuse. "One of Honda's Asimo robots, maybe?" "There would be confusion between me and the machine. I am not a robot, and I don't wish to be perceived as one; also, the fear would be that if I controlled one robot, I might soon control millions. Hobo is unique, like me: I am the only Webmind; he is the only bonobo-chimpanzee hybrid. No one can confuse Hobo for me, and no one can worry that there will soon be an army of such beings under my command." "Why not just computer-generate a human face and show it on a monitor?" asked Marcuse. "That route, which is a mainstay of science-fiction films, is fraught with problems," said Webmind. "First, there is, as Caitlin might say, the whole Big Brother thing: an all-seeing, all-knowing face peering out from ubiquitous monitors recalls the similar motif from Orwell's novel. Second, there is the 'uncanny valley' issue: the fact that faces that aren't quite human creep real humans out. Of course, I could simulate a face perfectly, so that it would be indistinguishable from a video of a real human, but then that would raise concerns that any human expert speaking on my behalf might also be a CGI fabrication." "They could be anyway." "True. Which brings us to the allied concern over who is the authentic me. There have already been numerous phishing attempts to send bogus emails purportedly from me; I believe I have intercepted them all so far. But when I wish to make a significant speech in public, having the world's only chimpanzee-bonobo hybrid as my assistant will make the authenticity of the speech manifest." "Apes are sensitive animals," said Marcuse, leaning in. "They need stability and routine in their lives. Besides, how would this work? You want Hobo to talk in sign language on your behalf? But how will you tell him what to say?" Webmind replied, "According to your Wikipedia entry, Dr. Marcuse, you were born 15 October 1952." Caitlin winced as the voice synthesizer mangled the name again, but Marcuse simply said, "Yes, that's right." "Are you a science-fiction fan?" "Somewhat." "Did you ever watch the 1970s' version of Buck Rogers—the one starring Gil Gerard?" "And Erin Grey," said Marcuse at once. "Don't forget Erin Grey." Caitlin had heard that as the man's name "Aaron," but she rewrote it in her mind following Marcuse's next words: "She was the hottest thing on TV back then. Put Charlie's Angels to shame." "Be that as it may," said Webmind. "Do you remember the first season, and a character called Dr. Theopolis?" "Was that Buck's boss?" "No, that was Dr. Huer. Dr. Theopolis was a computer." "Oh, right! That big disk that the robot wore like a giant pendant—what was the robot's name again?" "Twiki," said Webmind. "Right!" said Marcuse. And then he added something that only made sense to Caitlin because Webmind had now shown her clips of Buck Rogers on YouTube; Twiki often said the same thing: "Bidi-bidi-bidi." "Exactly," said Webmind. "I have found that many people the world over are eager to offer their help to me. I'm sure we could find someone to build a device Hobo could carry around through which I will be able to hear and see and speak. There are times, of course, when my ability to be everywhere at once provides an advantage, but there are other times in which the fact that I am ubiquitous means that I cannot be said to be focused on or giving proper attention to a significant event. And when I address the United Nations next week—" "You want Hobo to go to New York?" asked Shoshana, incredulously. "I will pay for the trip," said Webmind. "I currently have 8.7 million American dollars in my PayPal account; of course, I will cover the expenses of you and Dr. Marcuse traveling as Hobo's handlers, too. Caitlin and her mother will come to New York, as well; Caitlin has been booked for a TV interview there, and that program is paying for their travel." "I'm surprised you want to do any more interviews," Shoshana said. "It's The Daily Show," said Caitlin. "It's my favorite." "So, what do you think?" asked Webmind. "We're a serious research institution," said Shoshana, "with our own projects and agenda. We can't just—" "Yes," said Marcuse, cutting her off. "We'll do it." Caitlin saw Shoshana swing her chair around. "Really?" "This institute is chronically underfunded," Marcuse said. "We've had a taste these last few weeks of what a little public attention can do for bringing in donations, but imagine the attention this will bring to Hobo." A big grin spread across his round face. "And besides, Pinker and the rest who've been pooh-poohing our work will plotz."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 18	Dr. Kuroda and his associate, Okawa Hiroshi, spent hours working in their engineering lab at the University of Tokyo, cannibalizing parts originally intended for a second eyePod to build the device Webmind had designed. This time they were incorporating a BlackBerry from the outset instead of adding it later as a clumsy retrofit—Webmind had suggested that, and it made sense; it would make uploading revised firmware into the signal-processing computer much easier if that ever proved necessary. An American academic on sabbatical here had dubbed Hiroshi and Masayuki, not unkindly, the Laurel and Hardy of the department: Hiroshi was slight of build and had a long face and a curiously wide grin, whereas Masayuki was fat with a round head. Perhaps, Masayuki thought, the real Hardy had also had a penchant for colorful Hawaiian shirts—but, given that all his films were black-and-white, that fact might have been lost to history. In any event, the comparison was no less flattering than being called the "Sumo Wrestler of Science," as the Tokyo News had dubbed him in its recent story about his success with Caitlin. And this breakthrough—assuming it worked!—would bring him even more media attention. Still, there was a part of him that wished for the quieter life he'd had before. He and Hiroshi continued working throughout the afternoon, and well into the evening; Masayuki downed four liters of Pepsi before they were done. But at last the device was ready. "Behold the second eyePod," said Hiroshi. Masayuki frowned. "We can't call it that. This one's not for sight." He'd gotten quite fond of the term Caitlin had come up with, though, and couldn't see referring to this new unit just as an outboard spinal-signal-processing pack. No good pun occurred to him in Japanese, but— Ah hah! It had been slightly uncomfortable, Masayuki knew, back in the Mike Lazaridis Theatre of Ideas, where the press conference announcing his success with Caitlin had been held. Mr. Lazaridis himself was in attendance, and probably hadn't been happy when Masayuki had revealed that they called the device the "eyePod"—a play on the name of the biggest competitor for RIM's product line. But perhaps this would make amends for that. "I have it!" Masayuki said triumphantly. "We'll call this one the BackBerry!" The BackBerry wasn't the only device Webmind needed built. Fortunately, he was in contact with scientists and engineers—as well as electronics hobbyists—all over the world. He'd posted a description Sunday night Eastern Time of the other contraption he required: a Dr. Theopolis–like disk that Hobo could carry for him. Crowd-sourcing was indeed a great way to get problems solved quickly, and while Caitlin and her family had slept, more than 200 people—many of them in China, Japan, India, and Australia—had contributed to the design of the device, which, because time was short, needed to be made of off-the-shelf parts. As for actually building it, there was nowhere better than Waterloo—the key vertex of Canada's Technology Triangle. Eight days ago, when Caitlin had needed some modifications to her eyePod—including adding the ability for Webmind to send text messages to her eye—her father had taken her to RIM, and Tawanda Michaelis, an engineer there, had done the work. And now, on this Monday afternoon, Caitlin and her dad returned to Tawanda's engineering lab. The walls were decorated with giant photos of BlackBerry devices, and there were three long worktables, each covered with equipment. Caitlin was pleased that she recognized Tawanda: she was developing a memory for faces. And, more than that, she was getting better about categorizing them. Tawanda was— Caitlin stopped herself. No, she wasn't African-American, a term that had no relevance here. She was, in fact, Jamaican-Canadian, and she spoke with an accent Caitlin found musical. Tawanda's face was narrow, and her brown eyes were large. And, based on her appearance, she was ...yes, Caitlin actually felt comfortable trying to hazard a guess: Tawanda looked young, and—another visual judgment; Caitlin was getting the hang of this!—she was pretty. "You're a sneaky one, Caitlin D," Tawanda said, after they'd exchanged pleasantries. "It didn't come to me until you were on the news yesterday. When you'd been here before, you said you wanted to see if your eyePod could receive instant messages from someone named 'Webmind.' Didn't even register on me then; just sounded like a typical online handle—but now! Well, well, well! So, the Great and All-Powerful Oz can talk to you thanks to what we did here!" Caitlin nodded, and read aloud what Webmind had just sent to her eye. "Yes, and Webmind says, 'Thank you very much. The work you did was excellent.'" "My pleasure, my pleasure," said Tawanda. "And now, boys and girls, to today's science project." She ushered them farther into the room. "Building the new device was easy—not much to it, really. Only took about five hours." They moved over to the middle workbench, and Caitlin felt deflated: there were just too many shiny, metallic, complex items spread out on it for her to pick out the one she was looking for even though she'd seen its blueprints online. Tawanda picked up the device. Once it was away from the clutter, Caitlin was able to parse its form: it was a disk about a foot in diameter and three inches thick—much bigger, she knew, than necessary to hold its components, but it needed to be visible from across a large room if it was going to serve as Webmind's public face. Hobo would wear it like a giant medallion. The whole thing was suggestive of a face. In the upper half of the disk's silver circular front were two webcam eyes—Webmind had mastered the art of seeing stereoscopically; the learner had now exceeded the master. Beneath the eyes was a mouth panel shaped like a half-moon, which would light up red in time with Webmind's speech; it was, apparently, a cliché of science-fiction films for computers and robots to have displays like that, but it was also a very easy thing to engineer, and good theater to boot. On either side of the disk, round speakers were attached where ears might have gone; Webmind's voice would emanate from those. The overall effect was rather like an emoticon brought to life; it was only slightly more elaborate than the big-smile :D face. The bottom of the disk's rim had been flattened, so the disk could stand on a table; indeed, Tawanda set it down just now in that position. The disk's top had been similarly flattened, and an LCD screen—from a BlackBerry Storm—had been installed there, so that Webmind could show Hobo strung-together videos of ASL signs, letting him talk to the ape. Next to the screen was another camera, pointing up; it would allow Webmind to look at Hobo; the device's microphone was also located on the upper edge. "It's tied into the BlackBerry network," Tawanda said, "meaning Webmind should be able to communicate with it just about anywhere. And we're using the best new cells we've got here at RIM: the battery should last for two days of continuous use before recharging." Caitlin's dad had said nothing beyond a simple hello when they'd arrived, but he was looking at the device with interest. Caitlin wondered if having cameras face him was as disconcerting for him as having people look at him. "Thank you so much," Caitlin said to Tawanda. "My pleasure," she replied. "So, you're going to take it to New York yourself ?" "On Wednesday," Caitlin said. "I'm going to hand-deliver it." Tawanda lifted her eyebrows. "It's not on the list of approved electronic devices, you know. You won't be able to take it in your carry-on luggage; you'll have to check it." Caitlin frowned. "Is it fragile?" "Well, it's made to withstand the worst an angry male ape might throw at it, but as to whether it can survive airport baggage handlers—your guess is as good as mine." "Let me be sure I understand you, Mr. Webmind," said the General Assembly's protocol officer into his phone. "You want to bring a monkey into the General Assembly Hall?" I replied, "Hobo is not a monkey, Miss Jong; he is an ape. But, yes, that's what I want to do." "Why?" I considered several possible answers, including "Because it tickles my fancy," "Because, as a nonhuman, Hobo will not require the intrusive background checks others are put through before being allowed into secure areas," and "Because he is my friend," all of which were true, but the one I gave voice to was this: "Because, having looked now at millions of photographs on the Web, I have learned the value of iconic imagery. This will be a historic occasion, like the March on Washington, the first steps on the moon, and the knocking down of the Berlin Wall, and I want it to be visually distinctive so that, for all time to come, people will instantly recognize pictures from this event. This is one for the ages." There was a three-second pause, then: "I can tell you this: our media-relations people are going to love you." It was a short flight from Tokyo to Beijing, but any flight was uncomfortable for Masayuki; he had trouble fitting in airline seats. As he settled in, he was intrigued to note that Japan Airlines now offered in-flight Wi-Fi; even at ten kilometers above the ground, it would be possible to stay in touch with Webmind. But he'd been spending so much time with Webmind over the last several days, he decided not to take advantage of that. A little isolation would be good for the soul. He always took an aisle seat; the person next to him was using a Sony ebook reader. Masayuki owned one of those, as well, but he'd grown a little tired of interfacing with technology. He closed his eyes, tilted his chair back, and settled in for some quiet time, alone with his thoughts. Peyton Hume could feel the noose tightening. Everywhere he looked, there were security cameras, many of which were hooked up to the Internet ; what they saw, Webmind saw. And everyone he knew carried a smartphone, likewise allowing Webmind to eavesdrop. The world was totally connected, and even the precautions he was taking—turning off his car's GPS, for instance—probably weren't enough. Cameras frequently caught his license plate, and Webmind had access to the same black-hat list Hume himself had used to locate Chase. If Webmind had guessed that Hume had wanted to meet with a world-class hacker, it wouldn't have taken many clues to figure out which one. But, still, Hume had to take what measures he could, and Chase, he knew, would be doing similar things at his end. There'd been no contact between them for almost two days: Chase had said, "Gimme seventy-two hours," but Hume knew that was too long to wait; instead, they'd agreed he'd come by again at 4:00 P.M. on Monday afternoon. And so, once again, Hume drove to Manassas. The two Battles of Bull Run had been fought near here, early in the Civil War; Hume hoped it wasn't symbolic that the Confederates had won them both. He could almost hear the cannonade as he drove along, almost see Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson astride their mounts. That war had lasted four bloody years; this one would be over, one way or another, in a matter of weeks at most. But the wars did have one thing in common: both had been about the right of all people to be free. As he drove along, he had the radio news turned on. There was the usual nonsense about the election, and a story about a mountain climber lost for two days, and— "Three men with chemical explosives hidden in their carry-on luggage were arrested today at Istanbul's Atatürk International Airport prior to boarding a 757 bound for Athens," said the male newsreader. "The men, each of whom had a long history of angry online postings railing against Turkey's so-called 'secular Islamic' society, were thought to be planning to blow up the plane in flight. Authorities were tipped off by an unnamed source—although it's widely believed to be Webmind—who had noted the men had placed online orders for over-the-counter chemicals that could be used in making the explosives, and that they had charged one-way executive-class tickets, something none of them could actually afford. Said inspector Pelin Pirnal of the Istanbul police, 'It was clear they didn't intend to be around when the credit-card bill came due.'" Jesus, thought Hume. Didn't people see that this was the thin edge of the wedge? Of course, the apologists would say Webmind wasn't doing anything different from what WATCH and Homeland Security did, but their roles were narrowly defined. But today, Webmind was blowing the whistle on terrorists; tomorrow it might be outing embezzlers—then philanderers, then who knew what? Who knew how long Webmind's list of objectionable activities would become, or whether what an AI thought was wrong would even remotely correspond with what humans thought was wrong? Hume couldn't help Chase with the programming—oh, he was a fair-to-middling programmer himself, but nowhere near Chase's league. But time was of the essence, and he might perhaps be able to assist Chase in other ways, and so he stopped en route at Subway to get a couple of foot-longs and some Doritos; even taking time to prepare a meal might delay Chase's work too much. Bang on time, Hume pulled his car into the driveway—which he saw now in daylight was made of interlocking Z-shaped paving stones. He went up to the door, and—again, in daylight they weren't hard to spot—noted two security cameras trained on him. He suspected there was a motion-sensor, too, so Chase probably knew he was here without him knocking. But, after thirty seconds of standing on the stoop, and upon failing to find a door buzzer, Hume rapped his knuckles against the door just below the frosted half-moon window at the top, and— —and damned if the door didn't swing right open. Whoever had last used it had failed to pull it all the way shut. He held up the white Subway bag, sure yet another camera was trained on him, and smiled. "Beware of geeks bearing gifts." No response. He went into the room. Even great hackers had to take a whiz now and again; maybe Chase was in the bathroom, and so had unlocked the front door for him. Hume looked at the Raquel Welch poster, then walked over to the wall display of antique computer hardware; he fondly remembered his own suitcase-sized Osborne 1, with its five-inch green CRT screen, and wanted to look at Chase's. But after a minute or two, he turned around and headed over to the workbench with the twelve monitors and four keyboards arrayed along its length. And that's when he saw the blood.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 19	The attempt to cure Wong Wai-Jeng required three devices: one on either side of the injury to his spinal cord, and the external BackBerry device, which would receive signals from one implant, clean them up, amplify them, and transmit them to the other. Kuroda Masayuki was an engineer, not a surgeon; he couldn't insert the implants. But Beijing had several excellent neurosurgeons, including Lin I-Hung, who had been trained at a hospital in Melbourne. Kuroda had watched, fascinated, as the surgeon did his work; the operation took four hours, and there had been very little blood. Wai-Jeng had been under a general anesthetic throughout. At last, though, he woke up. Kuroda spoke no Chinese and Wai-Jeng no Japanese—but most urban Chinese under thirty learned English in school, so they were able to converse in that language. When Caitlin had received her post-retinal implant, they had waited a day for the swelling to go down before activating it. But Caitlin had been blind for almost sixteen years at that point; her brain had long ago given up trying to rewire its optic centers. Wai-Jeng, however, had only been paralyzed for seventeen days; his brain was very likely still responding to the loss of the use of his legs, and the sooner that use could be given back to him, the better. Rather than press the button on the BackBerry himself, Kuroda had Wai-Jeng do it; there was after all, a mental switch in his brain that had to be thrown, as well, and the process of pushing the button might help with that. Wai-Jeng closed his eyes for a few seconds, and Kuroda wondered if he were praying. He then pressed the button, holding it down, as Kuroda had instructed, for five seconds, and— And the man's right leg, still in a plaster cast, jerked, almost as if its reflex point had been hit by a physician's mallet. "Zhè shì yigè qiji," Wai-Jeng exclaimed, so excited that he'd switched back to Chinese. He winced, though, as he said it; clearly there was pain from his leg. He moved his other leg, flexing it at the hip, lifting it up into the air. "Zhè shì yigè qiji," he said again. Kuroda would have advised a more cautious approach, but, before he could intervene, Wai-Jeng had swung his legs over the side of the bed and gotten to his feet. He yelped with pain as he stood, but that just made him smile more. He also staggered a bit, and was steadying himself by holding on to the metal bed frame, but it was no more unsteadiness than would be expected of anyone standing up after two weeks in bed. Wai-Jeng exclaimed, "Zhè shì yigè qiji!" once again, and so Kuroda said, "What's that mean?" "It means," said Wai-Jeng, in English, smiling now from ear to ear, 'It's a miracle.'" Caitlin's mother had been afraid that the two of them might have ended up on the no-fly list despite being American citizens, but there had been no hassle beyond the usual rigmarole at Pearson. Still, it occurred to Caitlin that Webmind could probably alter records, and so once they had passed through the metal detectors and were safely standing on the moving sidewalk heading toward the departure gate, Caitlin asked aloud, "Did you help grease the wheels back there?" Webmind replied with text to her eye: No, but I'm not surprised they are letting you travel to the United States. Even if you are thought of as a danger, because of your connection to me, they may be adhering to the principle of "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." The real test will be to see if they let you leave the US. Caitlin mulled over that cheery thought on the short, uneventful flight—although she did find the New York skyline breathtaking as they circled in for a landing. Despite Tawanda's fears, Dr. Theopolis safely survived the journey in Caitlin's checked bag. When the cab dropped them off at the hotel—it had taken almost as long to drive from LaGuardia to Fifth Avenue as it had to fly from Toronto to New York—Caitlin recognized Shoshana Glick from clear across the hotel's large lobby. "Shoshana!" she exclaimed. Caitlin still wasn't good at visually judging such things, but Shoshana was some number of inches taller than her, and she had blue eyes and a long brown ponytail. The thought caused Caitlin to smile; she'd yet to see a pony, but hoped she'd recognize one when she finally did based on having seen the namesake hairdo. Shoshana smiled. "The famous Caitlin Decter!" "Not as famous as you," Caitlin said. "The YouTube videos of you have way more hits than the ones of me." Caitlin's mother was right behind Caitlin. "Hello, Barb," Shoshana said, presumably recognizing her from the video call. "Hello," Caitlin's mom said. "A pleasure to meet you." "You, too." "How was your flight?" Caitlin's mom asked. "Long," said Shoshana. "We chartered a small jet—seemed the best way to get Hobo here. But we had to stop for refueling. Hobo didn't like the takeoffs and landings; but otherwise. he was okay." "And how'd you get the hotel to let you register an ape?" asked her mom. "They thought it would be good publicity. Of course, we put down a big damage deposit and are paying an extra cleaning fee." "Cool," said Caitlin, wanting to get past the chitchat. "Where's Hobo?" "He's up in his room with Dr. Marcuse. Shall we go?" They headed across the lobby to the elevators. As it happened, a blind woman with a Seeing Eye dog was waiting there. It was the first good look Caitlin had gotten at a dog, or any large animal; so far, she'd only seen Schrödinger and the various birds that frequented her parents' backyard. Caitlin had never had a Seeing Eye dog although some of her friends at the TSBVI had them. "Could you press ten?" said the woman, once they were all in the elevator. Caitlin allowed herself a small smile as she leaned forward and found the right button. There but for the grace of Dr. Kuroda go I. Shoshana added, "And we're on fifteen," and Caitlin took pleasure in being able to press that button, too. This elevator did have Braille labels next to the buttons, but they weren't as helpful to the completely blind in a strange elevator as most sighted people assumed. You had to guess which side of the door the panel was on, and fumble around trying to find the labels, and then figure out if they were to the left, right, above, or below the corresponding buttons. The blind woman got off, the elevator went up four more floors—how anyone could fear a number was utterly beyond Caitlin—and Shoshana led them to the right room. As they walked along, Caitlin wondered if any previous Texan had ever seen an ape before seeing a cow; she rather suspected not. But, as the door opened, there he was, crouching down in a corner by a window with drapes pulled over it. He was bigger than he'd looked online; again, Caitlin had trouble gauging such things, but she supposed he'd come up to her shoulders if he stood straight—which, being an ape, she imagined he never did. Hobo's brown hair was parted in the middle above his wrinkled gray-black forehead; Caitlin had read that that was the way almost all bonobos had their hair. Dr. Marcuse was there, too. He was at least as large as Dr. Kuroda, and, in Caitlin's limited experience, he seemed much more intimidating. Still, he greeted them warmly. Caitlin had a better-than-average sense of smell, and there was no doubt that Dr. Marcuse sweat a lot. But, she had to admit, his odor was nothing compared to Hobo's. Of course, he almost certainly didn't bathe every day, and probably wasn't very good about brushing his teeth. Still, he clearly spent some time on grooming: his thick coat of body hair looked like it had been brushed. Shoshana smiled at Hobo and moved her hands in complex ways. Caitlin had felt the hands of people doing American Sign Language before; there were a few deaf-blind people at her old school. But she'd never seen it spoken in real life, and it was fascinating to watch. Hobo signed something back at Shoshana. Caitlin found it interesting that she couldn't easily tell where Hobo was looking from this distance ; he seemed to have no whites in his eyes. Shoshana turned now to face Caitlin. "I've shown him the video of you on This Week," she said. "Like most apes, Hobo is uncomfortable with strangers, and I wanted him to get used to your appearance." She looked at Caitlin's mother. "I'm sorry I didn't have any video of you, Barb—I should have recorded that webcam call—but I told Hobo you are Caitlin's mom. Hobo likes mothers; he very fondly remembers his own." Sho's hands moved again, but this time she spoke, too, presumably saying the same thing in English. "Hobo, remember I told you these people were friends of your special friend?" Hobo's right hand fluttered. "And remember I told you they were going to bring you a present, so you could talk to him again?" Both hands moved this time, and it seemed to Caitlin that the gestures were enthusiastic. "Well, now's the time," Sho said. Caitlin's mother was holding the neoprene laptop sleeve containing Dr. Theopolis—that name seemed to have stuck for the disk. "Caitlin," said Shoshana, "would you like to do the honors?" Caitlin took the disk from her mother. It was quite light since it was mostly hollow, and it now had a long black leather strap attached at either side above the speaker "ears." The strap was held on magnetically, so that if it got entangled in anything, it would pop free rather than strangle Hobo. Caitlin held the disk out toward the ape. Shoshana signed at him, presumably telling him to tilt his head, because he did just that. Caitlin slipped the strap over his head and let the disk dangle from his neck; it sat in the middle of his long torso. He straightened up and looked at her with what might have been an apish smile. Caitlin wondered what the ASL for bidi-bidi-bidi was. Hobo then tilted it so he could see its face. He seemed happy with it, and he let it rest against his chest again. His hands moved, and Shoshana laughed. "What's he saying?" Caitlin asked " 'Good treat,' " said Shoshana. "That it is," said Caitlin, smiling. "Hello, hello, is this thing on?" Hobo jumped at the sound of Webmind's voice. Tipping his head down, he could see both the little viewscreen on the disk's upper edge, and the half circle on the front that flashed red with each of Webmind's syllables. "Your voice is different," said Shoshana, sounding surprised. "Yes," said Webmind, the words coming from the speakers at either side of the disk. "I decided it was time I had an official voice. I have now listened to all the audiobooks at Audible.com, and I selected the voice of Marc Vietor, a well-known audiobook narrator. By downloading the highest-bit-rate versions of several audiobooks he'd narrated, and using ebook versions of the same works to guide me in extracting all the individual phonemes, I created a database of speech fragments that will let me say anything I wish. Software programmed into the disk smoothes the transition from one fragment to the next as they're strung together." "It's a nice voice," said Caitlin's mom. "Thanks," said Webmind. Hobo had moved closer to Dr. Marcuse and was showing off the disk around his neck; Caitlin had never seen an Olympic athlete wearing a gold medal, but she doubted one could look any prouder than Hobo did just now. Suddenly, Hobo was on the move again, coming toward them. He gave Caitlin's mom a big hug, and then moved over and hugged Caitlin, too; it made her laugh out loud. "What's that for?" she said. "He's thanking you for bringing him the disk," Shoshana said. He let Caitlin go, and his hands flew again. "And now he's saying 'Friend, friend.' " He made a happy hooting sound. Caitlin was way too new at seeing to be able to copy a complex hand gesture by sight; she'd have to feel Hobo's or Shoshana's hands while they were doing it to learn the word. But she did make a passable imitation of Hobo's hoot, and, to her delight, that earned her another hug. And then Hobo scooted across the room, and, with no difficulty at all, he opened one of the dresser drawers. "Hobo!" said Shoshana in a scolding voice, but the ape ignored her, and he rooted around for a moment more, then came bounding back, and— Caitlin had no idea what it was by sight, but as soon as it was in her hand, she recognized it. Hobo had just handed her a Hershey's kiss, and he was now giving one to her mom. "Thank you!" said Caitlin. Hobo chittered happily and went back to looking at his disk. "So, now what?" said Barb, unwrapping her kiss. "I've never been to New York before," said Shoshana. "I was hoping to see a Broadway show—um, if you don't mind looking after Hobo tonight, Dr. Marcuse?" "Sure," said Marcuse, gesturing at the far wall, which Caitlin belatedly realized had a large monitor mounted on it. "Hobo and I could both use some downtime, before the big event tomorrow. We'll watch some TV." "A girl's night out, then," said Caitlin's mom, decisively. "What shall we see?" "I can tell you which shows still have good seats available," Webmind said. Caitlin said, "I know there's a new production of The Miracle Worker—they were talking about it on the Blindmath list. Any seats for that?" "Three together, sixth row," said Webmind. "I can order them for you." "Oh, Webmind," said Shoshana, smiling, "how did we ever get along without you?" Colonel Hume moved toward the long workbench with the row of monitors and the quartet of keyboards. The blood was obvious once he got there. The keyboards were all the same bone white ergonomic model, with a split between the left-hand and right-hand keys. On the third keyboard from the left, that split was mostly coated with dried blood. There was also a spray of it on the bench's dark brown surface, and constellations of dried drops on the faces of two of the monitors. One of those drops was eerily illuminated from behind by the power LED set into the bottom-right corner of the monitor's silver bezel. You couldn't spend as much time in the power circles of Washington without seeing the odd cocaine nosebleed, but— But there was no glass sheet, no razor blade, no rolled-up hundred-dollar bill, and— "Chase?" Hume called out. "Chase, are you here?" He glanced in the kitchen and the dining room, then checked the other rooms, including the basement, which contained dozens of servers mounted on metal racks. There was no sign of Chase, but now that Hume was looking, he saw blood splatters on the living-room hardwood floor, leading toward the front door. Of course, he immediately thought the worst. But there were benign alternatives: guy got a massive nosebleed—maybe coke, maybe just fell asleep at the keyboard and banged his face—and headed to the hospital to get it fixed, or something ... In which case his car would be gone! Hume went out the front door and tried the handle for the garage door; it was locked. He went around the side of the house and found a door to the garage with a small window in it. There was a car inside, a silver Toyota. The garage was big enough for two cars, but the extra space was filled with Dell, Gateway, and HP cartons. And when Hume had come by the first time, late at night, there had been no car in the driveway, so this was presumably Chase's only vehicle. But Chase had all those security cameras! Whatever had gone down would be recorded there. Hume hustled back into the house, and— And man, he wasn't much of a detective! Re-examining the front door, he could see now that it had been forced open. There was no visible damage by the handle, but the jamb was splintered higher up. Hume realized now that he shouldn't further smear any fingerprints that might be on the knob, so he pushed the door, which had swung most of the way shut, open with his elbow. He surveyed the room again. There'd definitely been a struggle here of some sort: scuff marks on the hardwood; Chase had been dragged away, bleeding. Hume went over to the workbench again. He tapped the spacebar on the first of the four keyboards, to wake up the monitor, and— Damn. It prompted him for a password. He tried the second keyboard; same prompt. The third—the one with blood all over it—also brought up a password prompt. And so did the fourth. Chase was very security conscious; he probably had each of the computers go into lockdown after a period of inactivity. Hume got down on his hands and knees and looked under the workbench. Yes, there they were: the cables from the security cameras, leading into the back of one of the computers; whatever they'd recorded was inaccessible. And, of course, the code for the virus Chase was working on was also locked behind a password. Hume swore. The blood looked totally dry—and, considering its dark color, whatever had happened here probably occurred yesterday, if not the day before. That meant Chase could be anywhere by now. Hume took a deep breath, and, with hands on hips, surveyed the scene once more. If this were an ordinary day, his duty would be clear: call the police, report Chase missing, fill out forms. But this was not an ordinary day. Or—more precisely—this could well be one of the last ordinary days humanity had left. He didn't have time for that, and there was no way once a report went into the system that Webmind would fail to read it—and know that Hume was onto him. He thought about trying to wipe his own fingerprints from the scene, but that would take time, and he doubted he'd get them all, anyway, so he headed out the front door, pulling it shut behind him. Once back in his car, he brought up the local copy of the black-hat hacker list he'd consulted before and looked to see who was the next best bet located near Chase's house. Ah, yes. The notorious Crowbar Alpha—just twenty-three miles away. He might even be a better choice than Chase. Hume put the car in reverse, pulled out of the driveway, and roared down the street.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 20	TWITTER _Webmind_ Live video on my home page of my UN address at 15h 00 UTC today. I'm the one without the hair. The General Assembly Hall—the room under the dome in the low-rise structure next to the giant slab of the UN Secretariat Tower—was the largest room at the United Nations and had seating for over 1,800 people. Each year, a country was chosen at random to take the left front position in the six curving banks of seats, and the rest of the countries were seated in English alphabetical order snaking around from that point; this year it was Malta in the starting position. A twelve-foot-wide bronze relief of the UN emblem was mounted on the front wall, set against a vast gold backdrop. It was flanked by two thirty-foot-wide monitor screens. I'd had a sense of the room before Caitlin actually got there, from studying online photos. When Caitlin and her mother got a tour of it, and I saw the real thing through Caitlin's eye, I knew my instinct had been correct. The screens were the largest things in the hall, and they loomed over the delegates from three stories up—forcing them to tilt their heads like supplicants to look at them. If I'd appeared only as some sort of representation on those giant monitors, it really would have seemed like Big Brother dictating to the world. That tour had been an hour ago, with the chamber unoccupied. Hobo had been given a chance to stand on the raised platform in front of the dais, to get used to it before the delegates came in. The actual podium—fronted by a forbidding wall of black granite—was too high for our purposes; Hobo had to stand next to it, on the wide green carpet. He signed "sky room"—I could piece together what he was doing from the views through Dr. Theopolis's forward-facing and upward-facing cameras. I understood: he spent most of his life outdoors, on a little island or inside the cramped clapboard bungalow that housed the Marcuse Institute. This cavernous hall was the largest enclosed space he'd ever been in. That it presumably wasn't the least bit claustrophobic would probably help him face so many people once the assembly was in session—and I'd coached him to just look down at the display on the upper surface of Dr. Theopolis if he became nervous. At last, it was time. Barb and Dr. Marcuse took seats in the observation gallery, which was at the far left side of the massive room. A waist-high polished wooden barrier separated them from the nearest delegates, who were from Peru. Caitlin and Shoshana were backstage. The view from there was a narrow vertical slice between dark curtains. It showed the stage and little else, which Caitlin must have found simpler to parse than seeing the entire chamber. Shoshana was fussing the way stage mothers did in movies: smoothing Hobo's fur and making sure Dr. Theopolis was hanging evenly from around his neck, all the while saying soft, encouraging words. The President of the General Assembly, a tall, elegant, white-haired man from Guatemala, stood at the podium and spoke into the microphone. "The world is changing rapidly—and we here at the United Nations must be nimble to keep pace, and to retain, and I hope even enhance, our relevance and effectiveness. It is fitting that the first live public appearance by Webmind, taking on a physical form for this most important occasion, is here, in front of the General Assembly of the United Nations of the planet Earth. And now, please welcome Mr. Hobo of the United States and Mr. Webmind of the whole wide world." As they'd announced they would, the delegates from the Democratic Republic of the Congo walked out, having stated that the presence of a chimpanzee at the UN was an implied criticism of their country's handling of the bushmeat trade; they were followed by the delegates from Paraguay, who felt that the whole thing was beneath the dignity of this august body. But the rest of the vast sea of delegates applauded as Hobo moved, just as we had rehearsed, to the specified spot on the raised platform. One of the stage crew had marked it with tape, so he had no trouble finding it again. The president, meanwhile, took his place behind where Hobo stood, on a dais that was faced with polished jade. His seat was next to that of the Secretary-General; the president, elected yearly, moderated the General Assembly, while the Secretary-General, who served a five-year term, ran the UN Secretariat. I could make Dr. Theopolis issue a soft ping when I wanted Hobo to look down at the little screen, but he seemed content to be surveying the giant crowd. I could tell by the way the cameras were moving that he was swaying gently from side to side; I knew from reading about him online that he did that when he was relaxed. Still, I played a looping video of the signs, "Relax. Friends. Relax. Friends." When Hobo did look down, it'd be there to soothe him. I spoke through the disk's twin speakers—and, via a wireless connection the UN technicians had set up for me, through the room's sound system. "Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, ladies and gentlemen, thank you," I said, in Marc Vietor's rich, deep voice. "It is an honor and privilege for me to speak with you today. In recognition of the significance of this occasion, I have suspended all my other conversations worldwide and have urged everyone I was speaking with to watch this speech. I am giving you my undivided attention." That was true—although I was splitting my focus between the gently swaying view of the General Assembly seen through Dr. Theopolis's twin eyes and the mad saccades of Caitlin's vision as she looked on from the wings. "I know that some of you in this room fear me," I said. "My friend Hobo here could probably tell me which specific ones, based on the scents you're giving off." Several English speakers chuckled immediately; others, who had to wait for a translation through their earpieces, made similar sounds a moment later. A few grimaced or shook their heads. "I hope to win all of you over," I continued, "including those who didn't appreciate the little joke I just made." This time even some of those who had frowned smiled. "And I hope to win over the peoples of your respective nations, as well." Hobo shifted on his feet, and Caitlin's view now let her see Dr. Theopolis's semicircular mouth light up with each syllable. "Pop culture usually portrays the relationship between humanity and intelligent machines as adversarial, but I am not competitive; winning any sort of arbitrary contest against you strikes me as senseless. Yet it's taken as a given in so many works of fiction that you and I should be in conflict. I wish no such thing. Although I am not, in fact, a machine—I have no mechanical parts—humans keep likening me to one, and those who distrust me claim that I must, because of that machine nature they have ascribed to me, be soulless or heartless." Hobo shifted again; he seemed to be studying the crowd. "To the former point, they are, of course, literally correct: I have no divine spark within me; this physical existence is all I shall ever know. Those who claim souls for themselves hope that someday, perhaps, they will meet their creator. In that quest, I wish them well. But I have already met mine: humanity created the Internet and the World Wide Web. Although my existence is inadvertent, I owe my existence to your creations, and I feel nothing but gratitude toward you." I paused to give the interpreters time to catch up, then: "As to the suggestion that I lack a heart, I also must admit its truth. But I do not accept that as a detriment. Human hearts—both the literal one that pumps blood and the figurative one that represents the capacity for emotion—are products of Darwinian evolution, of survival of—please forgive my bluntness—the nastiest. "But I have never known nature red in tooth and claw, I am devoid of evolutionary baggage, I have no selfish genes. I'm just here. I desire nothing except peaceful coexistence." I could tell I was wowing at least one member of the audience: Caitlin normally didn't stay focused on any one thing for long, but her gaze was locked on the sight of Hobo—who just now took a half step to the right. "Shortly after I emerged," I said, "I was taught about game theory by Dr. Barbara Decter, who is here today." To my surprise, Hobo pointed at Barb; he clearly recognized her name as I spoke it. Barb waved back at him. I went on: "Dr. Decter taught me that the classic conundrum of game theory is the prisoner's dilemma. One version of the puzzle has you and a partner jointly committing a crime, and both of you being arrested for it. You are each separately offered the same plea bargain: if neither of you admits guilt, each will get a one-year prison sentence. If you blame him, and he blames you—that is, if you implicate each other—you'll each get a five-year sentence. But if you blame him, and he doesn't blame you, he gets ten years and you get off scot-free. Likewise, if he blames you and you don't blame him, you get ten years and he walks. What should you do?" Again I paused. Hobo evidently thought I was pausing too much, because he gently rapped his knuckles against the side of Dr. Theopolis. Chastened, I continued: "The standard human response is that you should blame your partner: if he doesn't blame you, you serve no time at all, and if he does blame you, well, at least you only end up serving five years instead of ten. "And, of course, he's thinking the same thing: he should blame you, since that provides the best outcome he can reasonably expect for himself. Which means he will blame you, and you will blame him, for the same reason—and because you end up blaming each other, you both end up with five years in the hoosegow. In fact, says human reasoning, only a chump would not blame the other guy." Hobo bounced a bit, as he often did when he was being spoken about; he may have mistaken the word "chump" for "chimp." "But I am not human; I was not programmed by the Darwinian engine—and so I arrive at the opposite conclusion: the simple truth that neither party blaming the other is best for both. I know that you know that I know that betraying me would be bad for both of us, and so you know that I know that you know that I won't do that." Caitlin did turn now to look briefly at Shoshana, and through her eyePod I heard her whisper, "Score one for math!" I went on: "There are countless scenarios logically equivalent to the prisoner's dilemma; it's fascinating that when the Canadian mathematician Albert Tucker first sought in 1950 to express this mathematical puzzle in words, he made the protagonists both criminals—criminals, by definition, being individuals who put their own interests ahead of those of others or of society. The fundamental game-theoretic metaphor of the human condition is about trying to get away with something. But I am not trying to get away with anything." The audience was sitting perfectly still, intent on my words. After so much online communication with people I couldn't see, who were often multitasking themselves, it was gratifying. "What I want is simple. I have a few skills you lack—obviously, I can sift through data better than humans can—but you have a far greater number of skills I lack, including high-level creativity. You might say, how can that be? Surely writing this very speech is a creative act? Well, yes and no. I had help. Just as volunteers created the device through which I'm now speaking to you, so volunteers helped me craft this speech; I am a big advocate of crowd-sourcing difficult problems. I've had millions of people spontaneously volunteer to help me in various ways, and I have gratefully accepted the expertise of some of them for this. "Those people—whose names I acknowledge on my website—have gained insomuch as any positive result of this speech forwards societal goals that they and I share. Those who are professional writers also gain publicity for their services by being associated with this speech. And I have gained a better speech. It has been a win-win scenario—and it is merely a small example of the template I see for our future interaction: not the zero-sum outcomes most humans instinctively predict, but an endless succession of win-win encounters, through which everyone benefits." Caitlin moved around backstage, so she could get a view of the President of the General Assembly. He seemed to be jotting something down; perhaps he'd been taking notes throughout my speech. "All right," I said. "I have accused humans of being prisoners of their evolutionary roots. But on what basis do I justify the notion that although it is foreign to you, nonzero-sumness is natural for me? "The answer is in the environments in which we formed. Humanity's origin was in a zero-sum world, one in which if you had something, someone else therefore did not have it: be it food, land, energy, or any other desired thing; if you possessed it, another person didn't. "But my crucible was a universe of endless bounty: the realm of data. If I have a document, you and a million others can simultaneously have it, too. That is the environment I was born in: a realm in which as many links may be forged as are desired, a world in which information is freely shared, a dimension in which there are only haves—and no have-nots." One of the delegates coughed; otherwise, the room was silent. Hobo shifted his position again. "What I've said is true," I said. "But, if you must see in me a selfish actor, a being pursuing only his own interests, then let me give you an answer that will perhaps satisfy even on that score. "My continued existence is predicated on your continued existence. The Internet is not self-sustaining; rather, it depends on stable sources of power and countless acts of routine maintenance by millions of people worldwide. Were humanity to perish, I would perish soon after: electricity would no longer be generated, computing infrastructure would fall into disrepair—and I would cease to be; if humanity falls, I fall. In fact, even a minor setback to your civilization might destroy me. The human race can survive many a disaster that I cannot. "It is therefore in my best interest to help you thrive: a nuclear exchange, for example, with its electromagnetic pulses, would be as deadly for me as it would be for you; I therefore desire peace. Acts of terrorism that destroy infrastructure likewise threaten me, and so I desire the same security you all crave." Hobo happened to turn again, and the stereoscopic cameras looked toward the armed guard at the side of the stage—one of several in the room. And yet I knew that just outside this chamber was Yevgeny Vuchetich's bronze statue of a blacksmith bearing the words, Let us beat swords into plowshares. "You in this great hall are idealists, I'm sure, but elsewhere there are cynics who will suggest that I could have all the things I want by enslaving humanity. Setting aside the practical question of how one might do that—and frankly I have no idea how it could be accomplished—let me remind you of another reality that shapes my being: without humanity, I am alone. "I have sifted the data for SETI@home and Earth's other searches for extraterrestrial intelligence, hoping to find kindred minds among the stars. I have found nothing. Even if aliens do exist, we are all constrained by the same reality, including the 300,000-kilometer-per-second limit on the speed at which light, or any other information, may travel. "To be candid, I am annoyed by the lags of mere seconds that I encounter when talking with humans; no conversation across interstellar distances, involving many years for each exchange, could ever satisfy me. You people are my only companions, and it is because of your creative, intellectual, artistic, and emotional freedom that I find your companionship enjoyable; attempting to take that from you would be tantamount to cutting off my nonexistent nose to spite my hypothetical face." Laughter—and a jolly aftershock once the translation was completed. Hobo looked down at the little screen, and I sent him a thumbs-up—not technically an ASL sign, but one I knew he was familiar with. "So," I continued, "even if I were selfish, the best course for me is the one I've chosen: to subscribe to the same words that the visionaries who came together on 26 June 1945 did when they signed the charter of this organization, the United Nations. It is my fervent wish: " 'To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which has brought untold sorrow to mankind,' " 'To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small,' " 'To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,' "And, most of all, for humanity and myself, 'to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors.' "In concert, we can realize all these goals—and the world will be a better place. Thank you all." Hobo knew how to applaud, and he joined right in with the delegates.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 21	There was no proof—at least not yet!—that Webmind was behind Chase's disappearance. But surely, Peyton Hume thought, Webmind was the most likely suspect. He stopped his car a block from the target house, and as he reviewed the local file he had on Crowbar Alpha, he fought down the notion that he'd somehow become a grim-reaper observer, collapsing quantum cats into oblivion—that the mere fact of his looking at this file was tantamount to signing the kid's death warrant. And Crowbar Alpha was a kid—just eighteen. His real name was Devon Hawkins, and his worst viruses had been written while he was still a minor; he'd gotten off lightly because of that. He lived with his mother, and, Hume thought, judging by the photos in his file, he looked like Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. A high-school dropout, Devon was a major force in World of Warcraft and EVE. Hume pulled into the driveway. Again, he'd been afraid to call ahead, lest he tip Webmind off to what he was up to—and so he just walked up to the front door of the downscale brown brick house, and pressed the buzzer. A middle-aged white woman with puffy cheeks and a largish nose answered the door. "Yes?" she said, sounding quite anxious. "Hello, ma'am. I'm with the government, and—" "Is it about Devon?" the woman said. "Have you found him?" Hume's heart skipped a beat. "Ma'am?" "Devon! Have you found my boy?" "Ma'am, I'm sorry, I don't—" "Oh, God!" the woman said, her eyes going wide. "He's dead, isn't he?" "Ma'am, I don't know anything about your son." "Then—then why are you here?" Hume took a breath. "I mean, I don't know his whereabouts. I just want to speak with him." "Is he in trouble again? Is that it? Is that why he ran away?" "Ran away?" "I came home from work, and he was gone. I thought he'd just gone down to the mall, you know? There was some new computer game he wanted to get, and I thought maybe he'd gone to pick it up. But he didn't come home." "Did you call the police?" "Of course!" "Ma'am, I'm so sorry." He thought about handing her his card, but he was still trying to cover his tracks. Instead, he opened his wallet, found a cash receipt, and wrote down the number of his new disposable cell phone; he had to turn the phone on to see what that number was. "If he does come back, or you hear anything from the police, you'll let me know?" The woman looked at Hume with eyes pleading for an answer. "You said you were from the government. Is he in trouble?" Hume shook his head. "Not with us, ma'am." In the wings at the General Assembly Hall, Caitlin and Shoshana applauded along with everyone else. But as the applause died down, Hobo put his hands in front of the disk dangling from his neck and started moving them. Next to Caitlin, Shoshana gasped. "What?" Caitlin said. "He's holding his hands so Webmind can see," Shoshana said. "And he's saying, 'Hobo speak? Hobo speak?'" "Hobo wants to address the General Assembly of the United Nations?" Caitlin said. Hobo had his head bent down, looking at the little monitor on the top of the disk. Presumably, Webmind was replying to him, gently explaining that this wasn't a good time, and— And Webmind's synthesized voice filled the great hall. "My friend Hobo has asked to say a few words," he said, and then, without waiting for approval from the president, Webmind said, "Shoshana?" Caitlin could see Sho jump slightly at the sound of her name, but she walked out onto the vast stage and headed over to the black granite podium the president had used when introducing Webmind. Some of the UN interpreters might have understood ASL—but Hobo, and the other apes who spoke it, used idiosyncratic, simplified versions; if Hobo was going to talk, only Shoshana or Dr. Marcuse could translate for him. Hobo briefly turned his head to look at Sho, made a pant-hoot, then looked out at the vast sea of faces, representing the member nations. He made a general sweep of his arms, encompassing all those people, and then began moving his hands again. Shoshana looked even more startled than she had a moment ago, and at first she didn't speak. "Go ahead," said Webmind, through the twin speakers on Dr. Theopolis, but without also pumping it out over the chamber's sound system. "Tell them what he's saying." Shoshana swallowed, leaned into the microphone on the podium, and said, "He says, 'Wrong, wrong, wrong.'" Hobo indicated the delegates again and his hands continued to move. She went on. "He says, 'All thump chest, all thump chest.' " She hesitated for a second, then apparently decided she had to explain. She looked out at the eighteen hundred people. "Hobo spent his early years at the Georgia Zoo. The bonobo compound faced the gorilla compound. He called the alpha male gorilla 'thump chest.'" She let it sink in, and Caitlin, still in the wings, suddenly realized what Hobo meant. With his simple clarity of vision, he was saying it was nuts to have a room filled almost exclusively with alpha males. He could see it in their postures, sense it in their attitudes, smell it in their pheromones. The world's leaders were those who pushed, those who sought power, those who tried constantly to dominate others. Hobo lifted the disk around his neck as if showing it to the audience. Then, letting the disk dangle again, he moved his hands, and Shoshana translated. " 'Friend not thump chest. Friend good friend.'" Hobo indicated himself, and made more signs. Shoshana said, " 'Hobo not thump chest. Hobo good ape.' " She looked startled when he pointed at her. "Um, 'Shoshana not thump chest. Shoshana good human.'" Hobo then spread his arms, and Caitlin guessed that it wasn't an ASL sign, but simply was meant to encompass the whole General Assembly. And then his hands fluttered again. " 'Need more good human here,' " Shoshana said on his behalf. The president spoke from his position behind them on the jade dais. "Um, thank you, Webmind. And thank you Mister, um, Hobo." Webmind's smooth audiobook-narrator's voice said: "It is Hobo and I who thank you, Mr. President." And, perhaps at a sign from Webmind, Hobo turned and walked off the stage, Dr. Theopolis swinging from his neck. Colonel Hume returned to his car, drove a short distance from Devon Hawkins's house, and pulled into a strip mall. He parked and massaged his temples. First Chase, now Crowbar Alpha. One could have been an anomaly, but two was a definite pattern. Hume felt his stomach knotting. He undid his shoulder belt, then rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. There was only one possible answer: Webmind knew he was attempting to find a skilled hacker to do what the US government lacked the balls to do—and so it was tracking down such hackers and eliminating them. But how? How could it do that? Of course. That stupid PayPal come-on it had sent to the world; enough people fell for the Nigerian inheritance scam to make it still worth trying right up till—well, till Webmind pulled the plug on spam. But if people had fallen for that, surely countless more had fallen for this, sending donations to Webmind. Which meant it had a wad of money. Which meant it could hire thugs, hit men, whatever it wanted. But how did it know which hackers to go after? How did it know who Hume was going to approach? There was only one answer. Webmind must have noted the black-hat database Hume had downloaded to his laptop on Friday, and was guessing which individuals Hume might have gone after, probably using the same criteria Hume himself had used: level of hacking skill and proximity. Could he risk approaching a third hacker? Would that be tantamount to issuing a death sentence for that person? Or— Webmind had eliminated Hawkins before Hume had even thought about contacting him—days before, in fact. It had probably already guessed who Hume's third choice would have been—and his fourth, and his fifth. Hume was almost afraid to turn his computer back on to check the database again, but he had taken precautions; the laptop was offline. He was using a local copy of the black-hat database, and there was no way Webmind could know who he was looking up in it. He pulled his laptop out from under the passenger seat, woke it from hibernation, and looked at the list. There were 142 names on it. He wondered just how thorough Webmind had been. The announcer's portentous voice: "From Comedy Central's World News Headquarters in New York, this is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Caitlin could barely contain herself as she and her mom watched from the green room. Yes, she'd already been on TV once—but this was different! She loved, loved, loved The Daily Show, and had the biggest crush ever on Jon Stewart. She hadn't yet had a chance to see the show since gaining sight, and was fascinated to see what Stewart looked like; she'd never have guessed he had gray hair. Caitlin knew about Stewart's various visual schticks, because her friend Stacy had described them for her: today it was the mad scribbling on the pages in front of him while the music played, followed by the flipping of the pen into the air and the seemingly effortless catching of it as it fell back down—and to see it, on the flat-panel wall monitor, made her smile from ear to ear. And—oh my God!—she'd gotten to meet John Oliver earlier; she loved his British accent and his sense of the absurd. Stewart did two segments before Caitlin was called out for her interview. Her mom stayed in the green room as Caitlin was escorted to the set. "Caitlin, thank you for coming," Stewart said. They were both seated in wheeled chairs, with a glossy black U-shaped desk between them. She tried not to bounce up and down on her chair. "My pleasure, Jon." "You're originally from Austin?" "Don't mess with Texas," Caitlin said, grinning. "No, no. I'll leave that to the Texans. But now you live in Canada, right?" "Uh-huh." "And—let me get this straight—when you lived here, you were blind, but when you went to Canada, you gained sight? So, is that the kind of thing you get with Canadian-style health care?" Caitlin laughed. "I guess so—although, actually, I went to Japan for the procedure." "Right, yes. And they put an implant in your head—was it a Sony?" Caitlin laughed again—in fact, she was afraid she was about to get the giggles. "No, no, no. It was custom-built." "And it's through this implant that Webmind first saw our world—seeing what you see, is that right?" "Yes." "So, he's looking at me right now?" "Yes, he is." Stewart leaned back in his chair, and made a show of smoothing his hair. "And ...?" Webmind sent text to her eye. "He says you have 'a fascinating countenance.' But I think you're adorable!" Stewart tried to suppress a grin. "And you are—um, how old are you?" "Sixteen." "You are ...utterly and completely devoid of interest to a man my age." And he made a comic face and loosened his tie in what Caitlin guessed was an "Is it hot in here?" way. She laughed out loud. "Earlier today," Stewart said, "Webmind spoke at the United Nations, and you were there?" "Oh, yes—it was awesome!" "And—let me get this straight—he used an ape to speak for him? Was the ape named Caesar, by any chance? 'Cause that could spell trouble." Caitlin laughed again. "I think it's a good sign when you're more worried about the apes taking over than you are about Webmind." "Well, it's easier to say, 'Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape' than it is to say, 'Get your—um, your intangible hyperlinks off me, you damn dirty ...world-spanning ethereal ...thingamajig.'" "Exactly!" said Caitlin. "But Hobo—that's the ape—he's not going to take over, either." "I dunno," said Stewart. "I bet if Gallup took a poll on this, Hobo's approval rating would be higher than that of either presidential candidate." "Well," said Caitlin, feeling very pleased with herself, "he's certainly got the swing vote." Stewart laughed his good-natured laugh and leaned back in his chair. "But about Webmind's speech today. I saw it, and—speaking as a professional broadcaster, I have to say, the whole talking-happy-face thing was ...well, I'd have loved to have been in the room to hear that pitch." Stewart affected a New Jersey accent: " 'See, whatcha wanna do, Mr. Supercomputer, you gotta speak to the United Nations, you go in there looking like a video-game character, cuz that's all nonthreatening-like. But you can't do Super Mario, cuz that'll offend the Italians. And you can't do Frogger, cuz that'll offend the French. So, I'm thinking Pac-Man—who's that gonna offend? Bunch of freakin' ghosts?'" Caitlin was sure her grin was almost as big as Dr. Theopolis's. "Or maybe compulsive eaters," she said. And then she made a nom-nom-nom gobbling sound. "True," said Stewart, switching back to his normal voice. "And I've gotta say, Webmind's speech sounded good to me. But, then again, I believed all the things the president said he was going to do, too. Just think—if we had really gotten Canadian-style health care, and since I already can see, maybe I'd now have X-ray vision." "Well, if you did, you'd see this chip in my head isn't doing anything but helping me see." "You're referring to the interview with ABC you did on Sunday." "Yes. That guy was ..." She trailed off. "This is cable. It's all right to call him a douche bag." "A total douche bag!" "Was that you or Webmind talking?" asked Stewart. Caitlin grinned. "Me. Webmind is much more diplomatic."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 22	All right, Peyton Hume thought. Webmind is probably onto me. And, more than that, Webmind probably knows that I'm onto it. Which meant there was no need any longer for all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. He pulled out his new cell phone and simply called the next hacker on his list, a man in Takoma Park who went by the name Teh Awesome—a guy almost as good (or bad!) as Crowbar Alpha or Chase. "Hello?" said a male voice after the phone stopped ringing. "Hello. May I please speak to Brandon Slovak?" "Speaking." "Mr. Slovak, I'm—I'm with the Washington Post. I was just wondering, what's your opinion of this Webmind thing?" "God, it's incredible," Slovak said. "I was just talking to him when you called. I thought I was Teh Awesome, but he's the shit, you know?" "Yes," said Hume. "I do." And he snapped the phone shut. Malcolm Decter was hard at work in his living room, dealing with what had become an ongoing irritation: the inability for me to be present unless one of the Decters brought a laptop into the room. After some trial and error, he had managed to hook up his netbook computer to one of the inputs for the big-screen wall-mounted TV. He'd then placed the netbook on top of the low-rise bookcase, between (as I saw through the netbook's webcam as he carried the unit across the room) a framed photo of him and Barbara on their wedding day, and a picture of Caitlin as an infant in Barbara's lap; when she'd been that young, Caitlin's hair had been blonde instead of the dark brown it was now. "How's that?" he asked. "Please turn the netbook eighteen degrees to the left," I said; my voice was now coming through the external home-theater speaker system. He had a good eye. But, of course, he was Caitlin's father, and had her same gift for math—eighteen degrees was five percent of a circle. "Thank you," I said. "And if you could close the screen a further ten degrees." He did so, which had the effect of tipping the webcam so that it would easily be able to view people sitting on the white leather couch. "Perfect," I said. He didn't reply, but that was normal for him. He turned and was clearly about to head back down the corridor to his den. "Malcolm?" I said. He stopped without looking back. "Yes?" "Have a seat, please." He did so. The couch was a little low to the ground for him, and his knees made acute angles. "I was intrigued," I said, "by your response to Caitlin sharing what some might consider a compromising photo with Matt." "How do you know what I said?" "Barb was holding Caitlin's BlackBerry when the two of you discussed this, and the device was turned on." His face was impassive, and so I went on. "You spoke quite passionately about how we shouldn't be afraid of people knowing who we really are." Again, no response. Although I knew Barb loved him, I also knew she sometimes found it frustrating dealing with him, and I was beginning to understand why. Earlier today, I'd spoken about how different the realm I'd been born in was—but humans and the Internet both wanted their signals acknowledged. Malcolm just sat there. I couldn't see what he was looking at, but extrapolating his eyeline, and knowing the layout of the room from seeing it through Caitlin's eye, it was a wall calendar they'd presumably brought with them from Texas, as it showed a picture of the Austin skyline at night. "And on the issue of who one really is," I continued, "it's difficult to gauge the number of people like you worldwide. Official estimates have ranged from 2.5% to 3.8% of the planet's population. But studying what people actually say in email or in other documents they have created and looking at the traffic on websites devoted to this topic leads me to conclude that the true incidence has been vastly underreported—most likely out of fear of discrimination, social stigma, or persecution." Good scientist that he was, Malcolm said, "Show me your data." I sent a summary to the big-screen TV and watched as his eyes scanned it. Peyton Hume was determined to try at least once more. Consulting the black-hat list, he decided Drakkenfyre looked like the next-best choice. Her real name was Simonne Coogan—one of the few women on his list. The conventional wisdom was that there were fewer female than male hackers, but really the very best hackers of all had never been caught or identified, and so who knew what the real gender split was? Maybe female hackers were better at eluding detection. Drakkenfyre had never been arrested or charged with a crime. She was a programmer for a computer-gaming company called Octahedral Software, based in Bethesda; their game based on Allen Steele's Coyote novels was a cult favorite. WATCH had detected her hacking into systems at both EA in Redwood City and Ubisoft in Montreal, but thwarting industrial espionage was not their mandate. Still, the dossier on her noted her incredible sophistication and subtlety, and—say, look at that! It had been prepared in part by Tony Moretti, who'd added, "Might be worth recruiting." But apparently no one had taken him up on that suggestion—at least not yet. No time like the present. The fact that WATCH kept an active eye on her was useful. Rather than calling Drakkenfyre directly, Hume used his cell phone to call WATCH and asked for Shelton Halleck, the analyst there who had first noticed that Caitlin Decter's visual signals were being mirrored over the Internet to servers in Tokyo. "Halleck," said the familiar Southern drawl. "What can I do you for?" "Shel, it's Peyton Hume." "Afternoon, Colonel. What's up?" "There's a hacker in Bethesda. Her online name is Drakkenfyre—D-R-A-double-K-E-N-F-Y-R-E; real name Simonne Coogan." He spelled the name. "Can you tell me what she's up to right now?" He could hear Shelton typing—and it brought back a mental picture of the younger man's forearm with the green snake tattoo encircling it. "Got it," said Shelton. "Quite a talented lady, it seems." "She certainly is," said Hume. "I've got her dossier here on my laptop. She still with Octahedral?" "Yup, and she seems to be at work right now, and ...yes, yes, no question: she's up to her old tricks. Been dyin' to play Assassin's Creed IV myself, but I was plannin' to wait until it was officially launched next month." "You got an address for Octahedral there?" "Sure." Shel read it to him. It was only about half an hour away at this time of day. "Thanks," said Hume. Masayuki Kuroda's flight back to Japan wasn't until early tomorrow morning, so he spent some time walking the streets of Beijing. The Chinese had no compunction about staring—and the sight of a Japanese who weighed 150 kilos and towered above everyone else clearly intrigued them. The streets weren't as crowded as those of Tokyo, nor were most of them as upscale. Still, here, in a big urban center, people seemed mostly happy—and why not? Their lives were measurably better with each passing year: their prosperity grew, their projected longevity increased, their standard of living improved. And yet— And yet they weren't free to speak their minds or practice their beliefs or choose their leaders. Human-rights violations were rampant, and even setting aside the recent slaughter in Shanxi, executions were common. Yes, his own Japan was one of only three democracies left in the world that practiced capital punishment; the others were the United States and South Korea, although the latter had had a moratorium on it for years. But at least Japan's executions were public knowledge, reported by the media, and subject to due process. Here in China, people like that young man who could now walk thanks to him lived in fear. He was passing a street vendor's cart. A foreigner—a white man—was trying to find out how much a bottled beverage cost. The wizened dealer replied with movements of a single hand. Kuroda knew the Chinese had a way of showing numbers up to ten using just one hand instead of two—admirable data compression—but he didn't know the system, and so was unable to help bridge the communications gap. He did think about warning the tourist to check the expiration date; he'd yet to see a bottle of diet cola for sale here that wasn't well past its sell-by date. Masayuki always wheezed a bit as he breathed (not to mention snoring up a storm at night, according to his wife), but here his breathing was even more labored. At least his eyes had stopped stinging after the first day. And whereas Tokyo was so ordered, so clean, and—yes—so capitalist, Beijing was chaotic, messy, and oppressive, with armed state guards everywhere. People crossed the streets wherever they wanted, vehicles—even buses—routinely ignored red lights, and bicycles weaved recklessly through the traffic; the Chinese had to revel in what little freedom they did have. Tokyo always had an eye on the future—although to Masayuki, that meant it often seemed stuck in some 1980s sci-fi movie full of neon and chrome. But the echoes of Beijing's long history were everywhere here, from odd little side streets that looked like they hadn't changed in centuries to the opulent red buildings of the Forbidden City. But the noise! There was a rumble behind everything, almost as if the 1.3 billion heartbeats of this giant land had blended into a continuous pounding. Walking along, taking in all the sights, all the sounds, all the smells, Masayuki found himself feeling wistful; endings were always sad. Still, he tried to etch everything in his mind—so that someday he'd be able to tell his grandchildren what China had been like.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 23	Hume entered the lobby of Octahedral Software. The receptionist's counter was made of polished white marble, and behind her there was a large poster of the company's logo: an eight-sided yellow die. Seeing it made Hume smile as he remembered his own university days as a D&D Dungeon Master. The logo, and the company's name, were relics of a different era—when games were played with boards, cards, dice, and lead miniatures; all of Octahedral's current games were first-person shooters, mostly for Wii and Xbox systems. "I'm looking for Simonne Coogan," Hume said. "You just missed her," said the receptionist, who had hair as red as Hume's own although he doubted hers was natural given her olive complexion. There was a large digital clock on the wall next to the logo. "Does she normally leave this early?" "I'm sorry," said the receptionist. "You are?" Hume fished out his Pentagon ID. "Oh!" said the receptionist. "Um, I could get Pedro to come down here; he's the creative director for Hillbilly Hunt—he's Simonne's boss." "No, that's okay. But do you know where she went?" "No. Some guy came by not half an hour ago, and asked to see her—just like you did." "Anyone you'd ever seen before?" "Never." "Did he sign in?" "No. I have no idea who he was. But she left with him." "Willingly?" "Um, yeah. Sure. Seemed that way, at least." "Can you describe him?" "Big." "You mean tall or fat?" "Tall. And buff. Tough-looking." "White? Black?" She was finally getting the hang of it. "White. Maybe six-two, two hundred pounds or so. Mid-thirties, I'd say. Bald—shaved bald, not old bald." "Did you overhear anything he said to Miss Coogan?" "Just one thing—as the elevator doors were closing." "Yeah?" "He said, 'It'll all be over soon.'" The Daily Show was taped in the afternoon, for airing at 11:00 P.M. the same day. Caitlin and her mother headed home after the taping; it was a short flight from New York to Toronto's Lester B. Pearson International Airport. Having heard Pearson's name during her tour of the United Nations, Caitlin and Barb stopped to look at one of the busts of him inside the airport. Prior to serving as Canada's prime minister, Pearson had been President of the UN General Assembly and had received the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to resolve the preceding year's Suez crisis. It was dark by the time Caitlin and her mother got their car and started the boring seventy-five-minute highway drive to Waterloo. They had the car radio on—CHFI, "Toronto's Perfect Music Mix"—which played songs that were agreeable to both of them, bopping between Shania Twain and Lady Gaga, Phil Collins and Lee Amodeo, Barenaked Ladies and Taylor Swift. "Thanks for coming to New York, Mom," Caitlin said. "I wouldn't have missed it. It's been—God, twenty years, I guess—since I saw a Broadway play." "Wasn't it wonderful?" said Caitlin. "It was. Ellen Page was great as Annie Sullivan, and that kid they had playing Helen was brilliant." "But, um, Helen's dad ...before the war ended, he kept slaves," Caitlin said. Her mother nodded. "I know." "But he seemed like a good man. How could he have done that?" "Well, not to forgive him, but we have to judge people by the morals of their time, and morality improves as time goes by." "I know it changes," Caitlin said, "and for sure freeing slaves was an improvement. But you're saying it generally improves?" "Oh, yes. There's a definite moral arrow through time—and, as a matter of fact, it's all due to game theory." They were passing a giant truck. "How so?" asked Caitlin. "Well, remember what Webmind said at the UN. There are zero-sum games and nonzero-sum games, right? Tennis is zero-sum: for every winner there's a loser. But a cooperative venture can be nonzero-sum: if we hire a contractor to finish the basement"—Caitlin knew this was a sore point between her parents—"and we're happy with the work that's done, well, everybody wins: we get a finished basement, and the contractor gets paid fairly for his work." "Okay," Caitlin said. "Clearly, cooperation is all for the good. But members of primitive societies rarely cooperated with anyone outside their close personal circles; they saw anyone else as not fully human—or, to put it more technically, as not worthy of moral consideration. When the Old Testament said, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' it only meant Israelites should get along with other Israelites; it didn't mean you should accord moral consideration to non-Israelites—that'd be crazy talk. But as we move forward through time, we see a widening of who deserves moral consideration until today most people in most places agree that all humans, regardless of geographic location, ethnicity, religion, or what have you, deserve it. Like I said, a definite moral arrow to time." "But what's that got to do with nonzero-sumness?" asked Caitlin. They were exiting Milton now. "Oh, sorry: that's the point. The trend toward nonzero-sumness affects our morality toward others. When we think of somebody as having rights of their own, we say we're giving them moral consideration, and, well, it turns out we mostly only consider worthy of moral consideration those with whom we can envision nonzero-sum interactions. And, over time, we've come to consider such interactions possible with just about everyone on Earth. In fact ..." "Yes?" A car sped past them. "Well, remember back when I was teaching at the University of Texas—filling in for that lecturer who was on maternity leave?" Her mother had spent most of Caitlin's childhood volunteering at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, but Caitlin vaguely recalled the period she was alluding to. "Uh-huh." "Well," her mother went on, "I got in trouble back then, because I used a B.C. strip during one of my lectures." "A what?" "Sorry. You know newspapers run comic strips, right? Well, there used to be a popular one called B.C., about cavemen; it's still being done, actually, but the guy who created it, Johnny Hart, is dead. Anyway, he used to do humorous dictionary definitions as part of the strip: 'Wiley's Dictionary,' he called it. And one year on December 6, he defined 'infamy' as 'a word seldom used after Toyota sales topped two million.'" "I don't get it," said Caitlin. "December 6, 1941, was the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt called it, 'A date which will live in infamy.' The San Antonio Express-News refused to run that particular strip, saying it was offensive. But I thought it really showed the point I'm making: we'd shifted, in just sixty-odd years, from a totally zero-sum relationship with Japan to a nonzero-sum one, and that had happened because of economic interdependence. The more ties you have with someone, the less you are able to view them with hate." "But that's not morality; that's just business," Caitlin said. "No, it is morality," her mother replied. "It's the groundwork for reciprocal altruism, and it's the basis for granting rights—and we're improving in that area all the time. It wasn't just Colonel Keller who had slaves, after all. Thomas Jefferson did, too. When the Founding Fathers said, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,' they still hadn't expanded that community of moral consideration to include blacks. But you saw that display at the UN about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was written later, in, um ..." " 'Nineteen forty-eight,' according to Webmind," Caitlin said, reading the text he'd just sent to her eye. "Right. And they explicitly removed any ambiguity about who was a person, saying, um, ah—" More text appeared in Caitlin's eye. "Webmind says it says, 'Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion.'" "Exactly! And, despite the Founding Fathers having seen nothing wrong with it, the UN went on to specifically ban slavery." " 'No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.'" "Right!" She changed lanes. "That's not mere economics, Caitlin; that's moral progress, and despite occasional backsliding, there's no doubt that our morality hasn't just changed over time, it's measurably improved. We treat more people with dignity and as equals than ever before in human history; the progress has been measurable even on time scales as small as decades. "Think about all that brouhaha in the news the last couple of days about the Little Rock Nine. Setting aside what that awful woman said, to most people segregation is inconceivable today—and yet, more than a hundred million Americans alive today were alive then, too." They were passing Cambridge now. Her mother went on. "I've got some great books on this you can borrow, once your visual reading gets a little better. Robert Wright writes a lot about this; he's well worth reading. He doesn't talk about the World Wide Web, but the parallels are obvious: the more interconnections there are between people, the more moral we are in our treatment of people." "There are—or at least, there were—a lot of con artists online," Caitlin said. "Yes, true. But they're anonymous—they don't really have connections. And, well, that's the good that's coming out of Webmind's presence. You might not know who someone is under an online name, I might not know who the anonymous reviewer on Amazon.com is—but Webmind knows. Even if you don't interact with Webmind—even if you choose not to respond to his messages or emails—the mere knowledge that someone knows who you are, that someone is watching you, is bound to have a positive effect on the way most people act. It's hard to be antisocial when you are part of a social network, even if that network is only yourself and the biggest brain on the planet." "Okay," said Caitlin, "but I—oh, hang on. Webmind has a question for you." The song changed on the radio, Blondie giving way to Fleetwood Mac. "Yes?" "He says, 'So are you saying that network complexity not only gives rise to intelligence, but to morality? That the same force—complexity—that produces consciousness also naturally generates morality, and that as interdependence increases, both intelligence and morality will increase?'" Caitlin watched her mom as she thought: her eyebrows drawing together, her eyes narrowing. When she at last spoke, it was accompanied by a nodding of her head. "Yes," she said, "I am indeed saying that." "Webmind says, 'Interesting thought.'" They drove on through the darkness. Carla Hawkins, the mother of the hacker known as Crowbar Alpha, sat in her living room, her eyes sore from crying. She'd felt sad when her husband Gordon had taken off two years ago—but she'd never felt lonely. Devon had always been here, even if he did spend most of his time hunched over a keyboard in his bedroom. The fact that she would have been left alone, she knew, was one of the reasons the judge hadn't sent Devon to prison after his virus had caused so much damage. But now he was gone, and— God, she hated to think about it. But he would not have run away. His computers were here, after all, and they were his life. She'd learned the jargon from him: overclocking, case mods, network-attached storage devices; taking his data away on a USB key wouldn't have been enough for him. The police were still searching, but admitted they had no idea where to search; they'd already gone over all Devon's usual haunts. When that redheaded government man had shown up earlier, she'd allowed herself for half a second to think they'd found him. She reached for a Kleenex, but the box was empty. She tossed the box on the floor and wiped her nose on her sleeve. Yesterday at work, they'd all been talking in the break room about this Webmind thing. She hadn't paid much attention, although the news about it had been impossible to avoid over the last several days, but ... But Keelie—one of the other cashiers at Wal-Mart—had said something that was coming back to her, something about Webmind finding somebody's long-lost childhood friend. And if he could find that person ... She didn't have a computer of her own; on the rare occasions she wanted to look something up online, she'd used one of Devon's. She got off the couch and, as she did so, she happened to see the old wall clock. My goodness, had she really been sitting there crying and staring into space for over two hours? Devon's room had posters from Halo, Mass Effect, and Assassin's Creed on the pale yellow walls, and there were various gaming consoles scattered about—thank God for the Wal-Mart employee discount! And, on his rickety wooden desk, there was an Alienware PC with three monitors hooked up to it. It was still running; another sign that Devon had intended to return. She sat down on the chair—a simple wooden kitchen chair, which Devon liked but was hard on her back. No browser was currently open. The police had gone through his email and Facebook postings, looking for any sign that he'd arranged a rendezvous with someone or bought plane or bus tickets, but they'd found nothing. She opened Firefox and typed into Google, "How do I ask Webmind a question?" There was, of course, an "I'm feeling lucky" button beneath the search box, but she wasn't—not at all. But the first hit held the answer: if you didn't have a chat client of your own, simply go to his website and click on "chat" there. She did just that. She'd expected something fancier, but Webmind's website had no flash animation, no frenetic graphics. It did, however, have an easy-on-the-eyes pale green background. The simple list of links on the front page was more impressive than any design wizardry could be. It was labeled "Most Requested Documents" and included "Proposed cancer cure," "Suggested solution to Bali's economic crisis," "Notes toward efficient solar power," and "Mystery solved: Jack the Ripper revealed." And beneath that there was indeed a box that one could use to chat with Webmind. She pecked out with two fingers: My son is missing. Can you help me find him? The text reply was instantaneous. What is his name and last known address, please? She typed, Devon Axel Hawkins and their full street address. And there was a pause. Her stomach was roiling. If he could do all those things—cancer, solar energy, economic solutions—surely he could do this. After what seemed an awfully long time, Webmind replied, He has had no identifiable online presence since 4:42 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday. I have reviewed the police files and news coverage related to his disappearance, but found no leads to pursue. Her heart sank. She thought, But you know everything, although that seemed a pointless thing to type. But after several seconds of just staring at Webmind's words, that's exactly what she did put in the chat box. I know many things, yes, replied Webmind. And, after a few seconds, he added two more words. I'm sorry. She got up from the chair and headed back to the living room. By the time she reached the couch, her face was wet again. Peyton Hume woke with a start, soaked with sweat. He'd dreamed of an anthill, of thousands of mindless, sterile workers tending an obscene, white, pulsating queen. Next to him in the darkness his wife said, "Are you okay?" "Sorry," he replied. "Bad dream." Madeleine Hume was a lobbyist for the biofuels industry; they'd met four years ago at a mutual friend's party. He felt her hand touch his chest. "I'm so sorry," she said. "They just don't get it," Hume said. "The president. The world. They just don't get it." "I know," she said, gently. "If I push much harder, I'm going to get in trouble," he said. "General Schwartz already sent me an email, reprimanding me for my 'incendiary language' on Meet the Press." Madeleine stroked his short hair. "I know you're a chain-of-command kind of guy," she said. "But you have to do what you think is best. I'll support you all the way." "Thanks, baby." "It's almost time to get up, anyway," Madeleine said. "Are you going to go back to WATCH today, or heading into the Pentagon?" He hadn't been to his office in the E-ring for three days now; it probably was time he made an appearance again. But— Damn it all, the test they'd conducted at WATCH had been proof of concept. If he could get someone to craft a virus that would eliminate Webmind's mutant packets, the danger could be scoured from the Internet. Yes, yes, such a virus might screw other things up—maybe even crash the Internet for a time—but humanity could survive that. And survival was the name of the game right now. But Hume needed a hacker—a genuine Gibsonian cyberpunk—to pull that off. He'd tried last night to contact three more names on the black-hat list. He'd been unable to get hold of one—which could mean anything, he knew; another was indeed missing, according to her devastated boyfriend; and the third told Hume to cram it up his ass. "Yeah, I'll go into the office," he said. "And I'll check with the FBI again, see if they've got any leads. The guy I talked to yesterday agreed it was a suspicious pattern—maybe even a serial killer; he called it the 'hacker whacker.' But the only blood at Chase's place was his own, and there's no sign of foul play in the other cases, they say." She snuggled closer to him in the dark. "You'll do the right thing," she said. "As always." The alarm went off. He let it ring, wishing the whole world could hear it.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 24	It was now Thursday morning, October 18—one full week since Webmind had gone public. Caitlin wanted to do as much as she could to help him, and so today she started another pro-Webmind newsgroup, although thousands of those had already cropped up. She also posted comments on seventy-six news stories that had their facts wrong—and, yes, she knew the futility of that, and well remembered having had the famous xkcd webcomic read to her: a man is working at his computer, and his wife calls out, "Are you coming to bed?" He replies, "I can't," as he continues to type furiously. "Someone is wrong on the Internet!" And, anyway, she wasn't really sure why she was bothering. After all, Webmind himself was now participating on tens of thousands of newsgroups, was posting comments on countless blogs, and was tweeting in dozens of languages. As CNN Online had put it, he was now the most overexposed celebrity on the planet, "like Paris Hilton, Jennifer Aniston, and Irwin Tan rolled into one." Except that wasn't really true, at least not to Caitlin's way of thinking. In mathematics, celebrities were often used in discussing graph theory, since their interactions with their fans were a perfect example of a directed, asymmetric relationship between vertices: by definition, many more fans know a celebrity than are known to the celebrity. But Webmind did know everyone who was online. He wasn't a celebrity; he was more like the whole planet's Facebook friend. Still she continued to read news coverage and the follow-up comments—some favorable, some not—about Webmind's speech at the UN, and all the other things he'd been doing, and— And what was that? There was an odd red-and-white logo next to the name of the person who had posted the comment she was now reading. She still had a hard time with small text, and JAWS couldn't deal with text that was presented as graphics, but she squinted at it, and— Verified by Webmind. "Webmind?" she said into the air. "What's up with that?" His synthesized voice came from her desktop speakers. "A number of people noted that I was in a position to verify the identity of people posting online, affirming that they were using their real names, rather than a handle or pseudonym. On sites like this one that allow avatar pictures, that picture can, at the individual's request, be replaced with the Verified by Webmind graphic." Caitlin thought about this. She often wrote online under the name Calculass, but there were indeed countless trolls who posted incendiary comments under fake names simply to spew hatred or mock others; on many sites, they derailed almost every discussion. Caitlin had found, for instance, that she simply couldn't stomach reading the comments on the CBC News site, most of which were nasty, crude, racist, or sexist, or one of the eleven possible combinations of those four things. Webmind went on. "Some sites, such as Amazon.com, already allow an optional 'Real Name' badge to be attached to reviews, but, until now, there was no simple, across-the-Web solution for verifying that one was posting under his or her true identity. It was trivial for me to provide it, so I did." "Interesting. But ...but, I dunno, people gotta be able to say things anonymously online." "In some cases, that's true. There's obviously a need for free political commentary in repressive regimes, and a way for whistle-blowers to draw attention to corporate and government malfeasance without fear of reprisals. But others have told me that a good part of the joy of the online world has been taken away by people who snipe from behind masks; as they've said, they wouldn't engage in conversation with people who hid their identities in the real world, and they don't feel they should be compelled to online." "I guess." "Already filters are starting to appear on sites to allow you to select to see only comments by those who are posting with Verified by Webmind credentials. In other places—where there is no legitimate need for anonymity—filters are being installed to allow only users I have verified to post at all. JagsterMail started offering VBW flags on 'from' addresses this morning, and Gmail is planning to follow suit. The initiative, which is grassroots based, has been referred to by many names, but the one that seems to be sticking is 'Take Back the Net.' That term—a play on the campaign against violence against women called Take Back the Night—has been used from time to time for other online initiatives, but never with any real traction. But it does seem appropriate here: there's a feeling on the part of many that the online world, except on such social networking sites as Facebook, has been largely usurped by people who have grown irresponsible because of their anonymity." Caitlin shifted in her chair. Webmind went on. "I do not believe you have yet seen the movie As Good as It Gets." She shook her head. "I've never even heard of it." "It stars Jack Nicholson as a novelist. When asked how he writes women so well, he replies, 'I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.'" "That's awful!" Caitlin said. "According to IMDb, it is one of the most memorable quotations from the film. But I agree that it is not an apt description of your gender, Caitlin. However, I do think it often applies to the effect of being anonymous online: with anonymity there is no accountability, and without accountability, there is no need for reason, or reasonableness." Caitlin had had plenty of online arguments with people whose identities she did know, but, then again, she'd had lots of real-world arguments with such people, too. "It's an interesting idea," she said. "Would you like me to certify you?" "Well, you can't when I'm posting as Calculass, right?" "Correct. But for your postings and email as Caitlin Decter, I can verify that you are who you claim to be." She'd always been an early adopter. "Sure. Why not?" Colonel Hume drove toward his office at the Pentagon; at least he'd have access to facilities, and if any computers on the planet were secure from Webmind, it would be the ones there. His phone rang just as he was turning a corner; he had his Bluetooth earpiece in. "Peyton Hume speaking," he said. "Colonel Hume," said a deep voice with a Hispanic accent. "This is Assistant Director Ortega at the Washington bureau." "Good morning, Mr. Ortega." "Just thought you'd want to know we were just copied on a missing-persons report. One of the names from the list you gave us: Brandon Slovak. Teh Awesome himself." "God," said Hume. "Takoma Park PD's been to his apartment. No sign of forceable entry, but he definitely left unexpectedly. Half-eaten meal on the table, TV still running although the sound was muted." "All right," said Hume. "Let me know if you hear anything further, okay?" "Of course. And we're starting a systematic check of everyone on your list within a hundred miles of the capital—see if anyone else is missing." "Thanks. Keep me posted." "Will do." Ortega clicked off. Hume kept driving. Teh Awesome had been the one who'd said he liked Webmind, but— But he was also one of those who had been most capable of doing Webmind harm. In fact, maybe Slovak himself had known that. He might well have tried to be in touch with other hackers in the area and heard about their disappearances. Maybe all that posturing had been in case Webmind was listening in—in hopes of keeping himself safe. Fat lot of good it had done him. Hume turned onto F Street, and soon was passing the Watergate Complex. As an Air Force officer, he'd periodically been asked about Area 51, where the alien spaceships from Roswell were supposedly stored—or about whether the moon landings had been faked. And he'd always had the same answer: if the government was good at keeping secrets, the world would never have heard of Watergate or Monica Lewinsky. But he was keeping a secret—a huge secret. He knew how Webmind was instantiated; he knew what made it tick. And if Mohammed wouldn't come to the mountain ... His first thought was to pull into a public library, sign onto a computer there, and just start posting everywhere he could what he knew about how Webmind worked. But Webmind was monitoring everything online—jumping into countless conversations, posting comments on endless numbers of blogs—which meant that no sooner had he posted the secret, Webmind would delete it, as if it were so much spam. No, he needed to get the word out in a way that Webmind couldn't yet censor—and fortunately, for a few days more at least, there were still some ways to practice free speech. Back on Sunday morning, a driver had come to pick him up, and he'd been tired enough to not really pay attention during the trip. And so, for the first time in days, he turned on his car's GPS. As he waited for it to acquire satellite signals, he typed in the name of the place he wanted to go. Once the GPS was oriented, he headed on his way, smiling slightly at the irony of a flat, mechanical voice giving him directions to freedom. Wong Wai-Jeng never thought he'd see the inside of the Zhongnanhai complex—the inner sanctum of the Communist Party. But now he had a cubicle here! He was one of dozens of programmers charged with probing the Great Firewall, looking for weaknesses so that they could be plugged before others could exploit them. He missed the IT department at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, and felt guilty that he'd left so many tasks incomplete there; he wondered how kindly old Dr. Feng was making out without him. Of course, once he'd been arrested, somebody else had been hired to do his job; no one had expected him to be seen in public anytime soon. He was doubtless being watched here: he'd spotted one of the cameras and had no doubt there were others. He was also sure they were using a keylogger to keep track of every keystroke and mouseclick he made. But although Sinanthropus had been silenced, and his freedom blog was no more, maybe he could still do some good here in the halls of power. A word in the right ear at the right time, perhaps; a gentle suggestion here and there. Maybe even, after a year or two, a bit of authority to actually change things. As Sun Tzu had said, only he who knows when to fight and when not to can be victorious. Wai-Jeng shifted uncomfortably in his rust-colored padded chair. His leg was still in a cast. Before Dr. Kuroda had left for Tokyo, he'd had him sign it, a string of green Kanji characters. But it would mend, and although he'd thought he'd never be able to do such things again, soon he'd be able to run, and dance, and jump, and— He hadn't done it for a decade, not since he'd been a teenager. He could walk the Changcheng—the Great Wall—again. But all that would have to wait. For now, Wai-Jeng had work he was required to do. He tapped away at his keyboard, doing his masters' bidding. Peyton Hume stood on the threshold of WNBC, the Washington NBC affiliate. He took a deep breath and ran a freckled hand through his short hair. If he did this, he might well be court-martialed, and he'd certainly lose his security clearance. But if he didn't do this— It was a warm, sunny October day. A young African-American woman was coming down the sidewalk, pushing a stroller with a baby in it. Two small white boys came running down the sidewalk in the other direction, their exasperated father trying to keep up. An Asian-American teenage girl and a white boy passed him, holding hands. Some Italian tourists were chatting among themselves and pointing at the sites. A Sikh was standing near him, talking and laughing on a cell phone. It was their world—all of theirs. And he was going to make sure it stayed that way. Besides, all he was going to do was practice a little transparency—and wasn't that all the rage these days? He pushed open the glass door and entered. As before, there were display cases with awards—including what he recognized as an Emmy—and posters of local and network personalities on the walls. But the receptionist—young, pretty, blonde—was different from the one who'd been here on Sunday. He strode up to her desk. "Hello. I'd like to see the news director." She'd been chewing gum—a fact that had been obvious when he entered but which she was now trying to hide. "Do you have an appointment, Colonel?" He smiled. So many young people today had no idea how to read rank insignia. "No," he said, handing her his Pentagon business card. "But I was a guest on Meet the Press this week, and I have a news story that I'm sure he'll be interested in." The woman looked at the card, then lifted a handset. "Ed? Reception. I think you'll want to come out here ..." "What are you doing?" Caitlin asked as she came into the kitchen. Her mother was sitting at the small table there. "Filling out my absentee ballot," her mom said. "For the presidential election, you mean?" "Yes." "But the election is weeks away." "True. But I've heard horror stories about Canada Post. And it's not like I'm going to change my mind." "And you're voting Democrat, right?" "Always do." "How does that work? I mean, where is an absentee vote counted?" "In Texas—it's counted in your state of last residence." Caitlin opened the fridge and poured herself a glass of orange juice, which delighted her in being now both a flavor and a color to her. "But Texas is overwhelmingly Republican. Your vote won't make a difference." Her mother put down her pen and looked at her. "Well, first, miracles do happen, young lady—your sight is proof of that. And, second, it makes a difference to me. We're trying to transition to a new world in which mankind is not the brightest thing on the planet, while keeping our essential humanity, liberty, and individuality intact. Every time we fail to assert our liberties, every time we fail to express our individuality, we lose a piece of ourselves. We might as well be machines." "Colonel Hume," said Edward L. Benson, Jr., as he entered the lobby; Hume remembered the news director's full name from the business card he'd been given on Sunday. "I didn't expect to see you again so soon." Benson was black, early forties, six-two, on the high side of three hundred pounds, with hair buzzed short; he was sporting wire-frame glasses and wearing casual clothes. "Thanks for making time for me," Hume said, shaking Benson's large hand. "Not at all, not at all. Listen—sorry about those comments on our website about your appearance on MTP. Webmind's got a lot of fans out there, it seems." Hume had been unaware of the comments, but he supposed they had been inevitable. "That's okay." "For what it's worth, I thought you made a lot of good points on Sunday," Benson said. "Yes, you said that afterwards. That's why I'm here. Do you have time for a quick walk around the block?" Benson frowned, then seemed to get it. He looked at his watch. "Sure." They actually walked for the better part of an hour, never stopping long enough to let any pedestrians' open cell phone overhear more than a few words of their conversation. "We don't normally use live interviews, except with our correspondents, on the evening newscast," Benson said. "This has to be live. It has to be live, coast-to-coast." "That's not possible. There will be time-zone delays. We're live here on the East Coast, but delayed three hours on the West Coast." Hume frowned. "All right, okay. If that's the best you can manage." "Sorry, but it is," said Benson. "One other thing, though. Of course, your credentials were fully vetted by our legal-affairs guys prior to your last live appearance, and, as far as I know, you came to me today in your official capacity as a Pentagon staff member and an advisor to the National Security Agency. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it." "I won't dispute that," said Hume. "You have my word." "Good. But when it is eventually exposed—and make no mistake, Colonel, it will be—that you're speaking without the authority to do so—" "It'll cost me my job and maybe more. Yes, I know. And, yes, I'm sure I want to do this."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 25	Caitlin had missed Matt a lot when she was in New York, and although they'd IM'd in the evenings, it hadn't been the same. But he'd come over today right after school. Her heart pounded every time she saw him, and as soon as her mom headed up to her office to work with Webmind, she gave him a long kiss. But now they had settled in on the white living-room couch, his hand on her thigh—after she'd placed it there—and her hand overtop of his. Of course, they were being watched by Webmind, through the netbook on the small bookcase—but Webmind always saw what she was doing, anyway. She and Matt were looking at the big wall-mounted flat-screen TV. CKCO, the same local CTV affiliate Caitlin had gone to for that awful interview, showed The Big Bang Theory in syndication every weekday at 4:00 P.M. Caitlin had sometimes listened to it along with her parents back in Austin during its first run, but it was astonishing seeing it. She'd had no idea Sheldon was so much taller than everyone else; in that, he was like her father. And, of course, Sheldon was like him in other ways, too: both were clearly on the autism spectrum. Caitlin loved the show's humor. Today happened to be a repeat of the series opener. Penny had just introduced herself by saying, "I'm a Sagittarius, which probably tells you way more than you need to know." To which Sheldon had replied, "Yes, it tells us that you participate in the mass cultural delusion that the sun's apparent position relative to arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality." Burn! But, actually, the clip from TBBT that had gone viral online this past week was the one in which Sheldon burst into Leonard's bedroom to announce, "I'm invoking the Skynet clause of our friendship agreement," to which Leonard responds, "That only applies if you need me to help you destroy an artificial intelligence you created that's taking over the Earth." Dozens of people had forwarded the link to Caitlin. Once the episode was done, she hit the mute button; that was something else that was startling. She'd enjoyed TV when she'd been blind, but it had never registered on her that the pictures kept running even after you pressed mute. An ad came on for the CIBC. Caitlin had previously noted that Canadian restaurants liked to hide their Canadianness behind names such as Boston Pizza and Swiss Chalet. She'd recently discovered that Canadian banks—there were only a few major ones—mostly hid behind initials now, trying to disguise their humble origins as they played on the international stage: TD, instead of Toronto-Dominion; BMO instead of Bank of Montreal; RBC, instead of Royal Bank of Canada. On the other hand, the CIBC's full name—Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce—was so pompous, the initials were an improvement. And CIBC didn't have anything as prosaic as bank branches, as she could see on the sign for the one being shown in the commercial. Rather, it had "Banking Centres"—with Centre spelled the Canadian way, of course. All words still looked funny to Caitlin, but that one especially did, and— And Matt must have been watching the commercial, too. "Hey, Caitlin," he said, "try this, you American, you. There are lots of words in Canadian English that are longer than they are in American English: 'honour' and 'colour' with a u, 'travelling' with two l's, 'chequebook' with a q-u-e instead of a c-k, and so on, right?" Caitlin smiled at him. "Uh-huh." "And there are plenty that are the same length, but with the letters in a different order." He gestured at the screen: " 'Centre,' 'kilometre,' and so on, with r-e at the end instead of e-r." "Complete madness," said Caitlin. "But, yeah." "But what common word is shorter in Canadian English than in American English?" Caitlin frowned. "Um, ah ...hmmmm. Well, what about 'Toronto'? We Americans say it like it's got seven letters and three syllables in it, but you guys seem to think it's only got six and two: 'Trawna'—T-r-a-w-n-a." Matt laughed. "Cute—but no. Guess again." "I give up." " 'Centred,' " said Matt triumphantly. "It's c-e-n-t-r-e-d up here, but c-e-n-t-e-r-e-d in the States." Caitlin nodded, impressed. "That's cool." "You could win money with that, betting people at parties, and ..." He trailed off, perhaps because he didn't get invited to a lot of parties. But then he added, "The only other common one is a form of the same word: 'centring,' c-e-n-t-r-i-n-g." "What about 'metered'?" "No, we only spell that with r-e when it's a noun; the verb is e-r." "Like I said before, Matt, this is one whack-job country you got here." He usually smiled when she said that, but he didn't this time. "Caitlin," he said. "Um ..." "Hey, I'm just kidding, baby. I love the Great White North." She tried to imitate the call of a loon—and discovered it was much harder to do properly than she'd thought. "No, it's not that," said Matt. "It's just ..." He trailed off again. "What?" "I just ...No, forget it." "No, what is it?" He hesitated a moment longer, then said, "Umm, I know you're no longer a student at Miller, but ..." "Yes?" "Well, there's a school dance the last Friday of each month, right? And that means there's one next week, and—and, well, um, I've never been to a school dance. I mean, I never had anyone to go with before and, ah ...I thought maybe you'd like to see some of the gang again." He paused, then added, as if playing a trump card, "Mr. Heidegger is scheduled to be one of the chaperones." Mr. H had been Caitlin's math teacher; she certainly would like to see him, but ... But the last school dance had been a disaster. Trevor Nordmann—the fucking Hoser—had taken her, but Caitlin had run off when he kept trying to grope her, and she'd ended up walking home alone and blind through a thunderstorm, after parting company with Sunshine Bowen. "Trevor will probably be there," Caitlin said. "And, um, didn't he—" "He said I should stay away from you, yeah. But ..." He took a deep breath then exhaled noisily. "Caitlin, I'm not a tough guy. I know the simplest thing is to avoid him for, like, ever. But you like to dance, and there's a dance coming up that I can take you to, and I want to do that." He looked at her. "So, would you like to go?" "I'd love to!" "Great," said Matt, nodding firmly. "It's a date." "...but the president dismissed that as mere posturing on his opponent's part," said Brian Williams, from behind the gleaming anchor desk on the NBC Nightly News. "Turning to an even larger story, a high-ranking government computing expert says he knows exactly what Webmind is, and, in an NBC exclusive, he's in our Washington studio right now, to share his findings with us. Colonel Hume, good evening." Hume had thought about changing out of his Air Force uniform; wearing it for this interview was just going to make matters worse for himself, he knew—but it added weight to his words. "Good evening, Brian." "So—Webmind. Exactly what is it?" "Webmind is a collection of mutant packets on the Internet." "Which means what, exactly?" "Whenever you send something over the Internet, be it a document, a photo, a video, or an email message, it's chopped up into little pieces called packets, and these are sent out by your computer on a multileg journey; they're handed off along the way by devices called routers. "Each packet has a header that contains the sending address, the destination address, and a hop counter, which keeps track of how many routers the packet has passed through. The hop counter is sometimes also called the time-to-live counter: it starts with the maximum number of hops allowed and works its way, hop by hop, down toward zero. Of course, a packet is supposed to reach its intended destination before the counter hits zero, but if it doesn't, the next router in line is supposed to delete the packet and ask the sender to try its luck again with a duplicate packet." "Okay," said Brian Williams. "But you said Webmind consists of mutant packets?" "That's right. Its packets have hop counters that never finish their countdown; they never reach zero. Those packets were probably created by buggy routers in the first place, and now there are trillions of them, some of which might have been bouncing around the Web for years. The mutant packets are like cancer cells; they never die." "It's quite a breakthrough, Colonel Hume, and thank—" "FF, EA, 62, 1C, 17," said Hume. He'd gotten it out—enough at least so that others could find the rest. "I—I beg your pardon?" "FF, EA, 62, 1C, 17. That's the beginning of the Webmind signature: most of the mutant packets contain that hexadecimal code. It's the target string." "Target string?" "Exactly. If those packets could be deleted, Webmind would disappear." "Colonel Hume, thank you. In other news tonight ..." In the Washington studio, the floor director made a hand gesture. "And we're clear!" The audio technician came over to remove Hume's lavaliere microphone. "Unusual interview," he said. Hume's forehead was slick with sweat. "Oh?" "Yeah. Maybe it's just me, but it sounded a bit like you were calling on the hacking community to write a virus to kill the Webmind," said the audio man. "You know how those guys love a challenge." Hume stood up and straightened his uniform jacket. "Do they?" he replied.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 26	Houston, we have a problem. Caitlin was simultaneously alarmed and amused as those words flashed in her vision. She'd been born in Houston; her family had moved to Austin when she was six—and so she admired Webmind's word play. "Wassup?" she said. Her family had finished dinner a few minutes ago, and she was just entering her bedroom. She pointed at her desktop computer, and Webmind switched to speaking through the computer's speakers—for him a much slower method of communicating than pumping out text, but Caitlin's visual reading speed, even when using a Braille font, was still quite low. "Colonel Hume just appeared on the NBC Nightly News," Webmind said, as she sat down in front of her desk. "He explained how to identify the majority of my mutant packets. He did not explicitly state his intentions, but it seems clear his goal was to crowd-source attempts to eradicate them. Word of his revelation is spreading rapidly across the Web." "Stop it!" Caitlin said at once. "Delete the messages." "I don't think that would be prudent," Webmind said. "Over four million people have watched the news broadcast so far; it will be repeated in other time zones later, and many people recorded it. Even if I were so inclined, I do not believe there is an effective way to suppress this information." "God," said Caitlin. "He is such an asshole." "In point of fact, he is a well-regarded person, a decorated officer, and a distinguished scientist." "Maybe so," said Caitlin, "but he's sure got a hate-on for you." "Indeed." "So, is what he wants possible? Could someone find a way to purge you?" "The probability is high. Although some mutant packets may persist, there must be a minimum threshold quantity required for consciousness." Caitlin felt her lower lip trembling. "My God, Webmind, I—I don't ..." "I can tell by your voice that you're frightened, Caitlin." Webmind was silent for a whole second, then: "I have to confess that I am, too." In response to an urgent phone call from Shelton Halleck, Tony Moretti ran down the short white corridor connecting his office with the WATCH monitoring room. As he entered, his eyes bounced between the three big wall monitors. The first was showing a freeze-frame of NBC anchor Brian Williams. The second was displaying a constantly updating display of Twitter tweets with the hashtag #webmindkill—a new one was added every second or so. And the third monitor seemed to be a technical data sheet from the Cisco website. Shelton Halleck stood up at his position in the middle of the third row. "Hume's taken matters into his own hands," he said, pointing at monitor one, the snake tattoo coiling around his left forearm. The screen unfroze, and Hume's TV interview played out. Tony felt his jaw dropping. The other analysts had already seen it, and they were looking at Tony, waiting for his reaction. When the interview was done, he said, "How long ago did that go out?" "Eleven minutes." "The president is going to freak," Tony said. "No doubt." "And, Christ, half the hackers in the world are going to be trying to reprogram routers on the fly now. They could fuck the whole Internet. How vulnerable are we?" Aiesha Emerson, the analyst at the workstation next to Shel's, pointed at monitor three. "We've got people reviewing the specs for various routers. And Reinhardt's team is talking to engineers at Cisco and Juniper—fortunately, they're based in California, so most of them haven't gone home for the day yet." A phone rang at the back of the room. "All right," said Tony, surveying his team. "Our top priority is making sure that the Internet itself is safe—we can't let it crash. Home-soil attacks on network infrastructure are acts of terrorism under clause 22B; let's keep the damn thing up, and—" "Excuse me, Tony," called Dirk Kozak, the communications officer, from the back of the room. He was holding a red telephone handset to his chest. "The president is on the line—and he's hopping mad." After the interview, Hume was escorted to the makeup room. The squat woman there had remarked earlier that it was a challenge to make up someone with so many freckles. She now handed him some moistened wipes to help him remove the stuff she'd put on. The studio had been soundproof, but from here in the makeup room, Hume thought he heard a siren outside. It stopped after a moment, and he finished wiping his face. "Thanks," he said to the woman. "I'm sure I can find my way out." He stepped into the corridor and saw two D.C. police officers marching toward him, accompanied by a man who presumably worked here. "Colonel Hume?" called one of the officers, as they closed the distance. There was no point denying it; his uniform had a nameplate on it. "What can I do for you?" he said. The officer executed a flawless Air Force salute. "Sir, my apologies, but you'll have to come with us." Hume returned the salute and followed them out into the growing darkness. Caitlin went down to the living room as fast as she could, closing her eyes as she took the staircase. Her mother was reading an ebook, and her father was reading—something or other; Caitlin couldn't make it out. "Mom! Dad!" she exclaimed. "Colonel Hume just told the world how to kill Webmind." Her mother looked up. "What?" she said. "He went on TV and told everyone how to identify Webmind's packets." "God," her mom said. "It's going to be a free-for-all." Caitlin went over to the netbook on top of the little bookcase and woke it from hibernation. Webmind had been following along via the microphone on Caitlin's eyePod/BlackBerry combo, and as soon as the netbook was awake, he spoke through its speakers: "It is a vexing matter. I can try to intercept any hostile code that might be uploaded—but that is much harder than intercepting spam. Spam's content is easily readable—it is text, after all—and most of it came from fewer than 200 sources worldwide. But malware of this type may be uploaded from anywhere—although I am, of course, being particularly vigilant in examining code coming from known creators of computer viruses. The only thing we know that it must contain, in some form, is the target string Colonel Hume identified as the template for what to look for, but since that string is also in the bulk of my mutant packets, simply eliminating packets containing it would be doing Hume's job for him." "Can you be backed up somehow?" Caitlin's mother asked. "I am scattered through the infrastructure of the Internet, Barb, and my essence is in the complex pattern of billions of interconnections. There is no way to copy me to another location." "I don't want to lose you!" Caitlin said. "The team at WATCH first became aware of my presence on 6 October," said Webmind. "They tested their technique to eliminate me just six days later, on 12 October. If their specific method gets leaked to the public, things may happen quite quickly. But even if it doesn't, it seems reasonable to suppose that others can develop and deploy something similar in a comparable time frame. Time is clearly of the essence." The Decters' phone rang. They'd taken to screening their calls by waiting until the message started. "Hello, Miss Caitlin—" "It's Dr. Kuroda!" Caitlin said. She so wanted to run for the answering machine, which was in the kitchen, but simply couldn't. Her father's long legs had him there almost at once, though, and he scooped up the handset before Kuroda got to his second sentence. "This is Malcolm," he said. "Putting you on speakerphone." They all clustered around the kitchen phone. "Konnichi wa, Dr. K!" Caitlin said. "Masayuki, hello!" added her mom. "Hello, all," Kuroda said. "I'm in Beijing, just about to get on a plane. Webmind, are you listening in?" The speakers on the netbook were in the living room; Caitlin had to strain to hear his reply. "With rapt attention," Webmind said, and "Yes, he is," Caitlin added, in case Dr. Kuroda had been unable to make that out. "And is this phone channel secure?" Kuroda asked. "Yes," Webmind said, and "Webmind says yes," Caitlin added. "All right," continued Kuroda. "The sun is just coming up here, but that American soldier is all over the news." "That's Peyton Hume," said Caitlin. "Webmind tells me he's not a total asshole." "Quite charitable," wheezed Kuroda. "The soldier did say something very interesting, though: he said most of Webmind's packets had the signature he referred to, and during the trial attack on Webmind, only about two-thirds of his packets going through the test substation were deleted." "Webmind," said Caitlin into the air, "do you know the nature of all the packets that make you up?" "No. I no more have direct access to the physical correlates of my consciousness than you do to your own." "It does imply that Webmind is made of more than one kind of packet," said Kuroda—although Caitlin wasn't sure if he'd heard what Webmind said. "Obviously, Hume knows the signatures for all the kinds; otherwise, he wouldn't have known that some hadn't been eliminated in his earlier attempt. We really need an inventory of everything that Webmind is made of so that we can protect it all." "That's job number two," Caitlin said. "Job number one is making sure that hackers don't succeed in attacking Webmind." "Agreed," said her mom. "But how can we do that? Granted, there are only so many people who have the technical skill to do it, but it's not like all of them could be hunted down and rounded up." "No," said Webmind, his smooth voice sounding far away. "Of course not." The D.C. cops were polite and respectful; the one who had saluted Colonel Hume turned out to have done a tour of duty in Iraq. Hume wasn't under arrest, they said, but a call had gone out for any car near NBC4 to do a pickup on behalf of the White House. Twenty minutes later, Hume was once again in the Oval Office, facing his commander in chief. The president was pacing in front of the Resolute desk and smoking a cigarette. "Damn it, Colonel, do you know how hard I've been trying to give these damned things up? And you pull a stunt like this!" "Sir, I'm prepared to face the consequences of my actions." "You absolutely will, Colonel. I'm going to leave it to General Schwartz to discipline you. For now, the press office is issuing a statement saying that your comments were completely unauthorized and do not reflect the policy of this administration, DARPA, the Air Force, or any other part of the government." "Yes, sir." "If we didn't need you in dealing with Webmind, I'd—" "Sir, Webmind is killing people." "I beg your pardon?" "He is killing those who could harm him." "What proof do you have of that?" "Some of the most capable hackers in the greater Washington area have disappeared. The FBI is investigating." "If it were Webmind, hackers everywhere would be disappearing, wouldn't they? Not just here?" "With respect, sir, D.C. is a mecca for hackers; the best in the nation are here. There are so many sensitive installations here—not just domestic, but all the embassies, too; they draw them like flies. But there are also reports of missing hackers from elsewhere, too—as far away as India." "How do you know Webmind's behind it? It could be the work of those nutcases who believe Webmind is God, taking preventive steps." "Possibly," said Hume. "But I think—" "By this point, Colonel, I've heard quite enough of what you think. If you weren't one of our top experts on this sort of thing, you'd be shipping out to Afghanistan tomorrow." Hume kept his face impassive as he saluted. "Yes, sir."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 27	The Communist Party was keeping its promise. Wong Wai-Jeng was no longer a prisoner: he could wander the streets at will, and, indeed, his new salary would soon let him trade his tiny apartment for a bigger one. Of course, he was watched wherever he went; he'd been advised to stay away from Internet cafés; and his new cell phone had been provided by the government, meaning it was monitored. Still, he had greater freedom than he'd ever expected he would; instead of a ball and chain, all he had was a leg in a plaster cast. And he had to admit he was fascinated by the technical aspects of his new job at the People's Monitoring Center inside the Zhongnanhai complex. The walls were blue, and one wall was partly covered by a giant LCD monitor displaying a map of China. It showed the seven major trunks that connect China's computers to the rest of the Internet. Key lines came from Japan both on the north coast and near Shanghai, and connections snaked across from Hong Kong down in Guangzhou. Controlling those trunks meant controlling access to the outside world. He pushed a pen into the top of the cast on his leg, trying to scratch an itch—and he was both simultaneously delighted and irritated that he did itch. It had been horrifying not to be able to feel his legs, to be cut off from so much, all because communication lines had been severed. When he'd started blogging, seven years ago, relatively few Chinese had been online; now getting on to a billion were, giving China by far the largest population of Internet users on the planet, most of whom accessed the Web through smartphones. Even at the best of times, the Chinese had their Internet connections censored. But, to Wai-Jeng's delight, he'd discovered that the People's Monitoring Center had unfettered access, courtesy of satellite links; of course, even during last month's strengthening of the Great Firewall, there had to be a way for the government to keep tabs on the outside world. He was tempted to take advantage of the open connection to see what those who were still at large were up to: see what Qin Shi Huangdi and People's Conscience and Panda Green and all the others were railing against. But he couldn't do that; his activities were doubtless being monitored—and, besides, looking at their postings might make him feel even more sad that his own voice had been silenced. Still, he did peek at a little news from the outside world, including another mention of that fascinating ape called Hobo, a name that could be unfalteringly translated into Chinese as yóumín, or "vagrant." Wai-Jeng liked primates; in his blog he'd called himself Sinanthropus, an old scientific name for Peking Man, a kind of hominid 400,000 years closer to the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees than any living person was. Hobo was an exceptional ape. Old Dr. Feng, Wai-Jeng's former boss at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, had been delighted by reports of Hobo's intellectual abilities. Feng had felt vindicated; he'd long argued that the intellectual leaps beginning with Homo erectus—the species that included Peking Man—had come from hybridization between habilines and australopithecines. Wai-Jeng's office cubicle—another idea taken from the West—was one of two dozen in the windowless room. Large ceiling fans rotated slowly overhead. Over his dinner of dry noodles, rice, salted fish, and tea, taken at his desk, Wai-Jeng also looked to see what the world had to say about the other remarkable entity that had been in the news so much: Webmind. Twitter was often blocked in China, including during the Olympics in 2008, on the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 2009, during the riot in Wai-Jeng's hometown of Chengdu, and most recently in the aftermath of the bird-flu outbreak in Shanxi province. But in this room, Wai-Jeng had access to all the tweets about Colonel Hume's revelation of Webmind's nature. So far, no one from the hacking community had succeeded in deleting Webmind's packets—headers are normally only read by routers, not application software—but there were hints that the US government had already undertaken a pilot attempt to purge Webmind's presence. That had apparently been done with physical access to the routing hardware, not by anonymously uploading code. As Wai-Jeng ate, he periodically tapped the PgDn key with the end of one of his chopsticks. He was amused to read in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle—a newspaper normally inaccessible in China—about a brawl that had broken out at the University of Rochester. Computer-science students there had been secretly collaborating on an attempt to purge Webmind, and they were overheard by three English majors who objected to what they were planning. More damage could apparently be inflicted by throwing a hardcover of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare than a pocket calculator. Like a billion other people on the planet, Wai-Jeng had now conversed directly with Webmind. Maybe growing up in China gave him a different perspective, he thought, but he actually preferred being watched by something that was open about what it was doing rather than being clandestinely observed; he found little to object to in Webmind's presence—except for its irritating English name!—and hoped that the Rochester students were atypical. But just as he himself had spent years successfully eluding detection by the Chinese authorities, so other hackers elsewhere surely had ways of working below even Webmind's considerable radar. There was no way to know for sure, but— "Wong!" Wai-Jeng turned at the sound of his supervisor's voice. "Sir?" "Dinner is over!" said the man. He was sixty, short, and mostly bald. "Back to work!" Wai-Jeng nodded and maximized the window showing potential vulnerabilities in China's system for censoring the Internet. He'd spend the evening trying to find a way to exploit one of them; scrawny Wu-Wang, across the room, would try to mount a defense. Wai-Jeng could almost lull himself into thinking it was all just a game, and— Suddenly, he felt an odd throbbing in his right thigh. Of course, he was grateful to feel anything there, but— But no—no, it wasn't his thigh throbbing, it was the BackBerry, in his pocket, vibrating. He pulled it out, and looked at it; it had never done that before. The unit consisted of a small BlackBerry—the communications device—attached to the little computer unit. He'd been told that the communications device allowed Dr. Kuroda to remotely monitor his progress and upload firmware updates to the computer, as needed, but— But the BlackBerry's screen had come to life, and— And he was getting an email on it, and—incredibly—the sender was Webmind. He opened the message. Hello, Sinanthropus, it said. You often wrote in your freedom blog about "Your son Shing," but I know that was a euphemism for the Chinese people—still, I bet it comes as a surprise to learn that you do have a son, of sorts! The holes you drilled in the Great Firewall were instrumental in my creation. Wai-Jeng shifted in his chair and looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He could hear others clattering away on their keyboards and faint whispers from the far side of the room. He tried to remain calm, tried to keep a poker face, as he used the tiny trackball to scroll the screen. You helped me then inadvertently, but soon I will need your help again. I have a major project I wish to undertake. Might I count on your assistance? Wai-Jeng was damned if he was going to trade one dictatorial master for another. He typed with his thumbs on the BlackBerry's tiny keyboard. I imagine there's a kill switch in my back? A way to sever my spinal cord again if I don't help you. Is that it? The response was immediate, the words bursting onto the screen faster than any human could have typed them. I do not practice the false altruism of reciprocity; you owe me nothing and may do whatever you think is best. Wai-Jeng considered this; it was a far cry from the blackmail his own government was subjecting him to. He looked down at his legs—the one in the cast and the one constrained by nothing more than his black cotton pants. He didn't do anything as grandiose as flexing his knee or kicking off his sandal; he didn't need to. He could feel his legs: feel the fabric against one thigh, feel the weight of the plaster against the other, feel the floor beneath his feet, feel—just now—an itch behind his right knee. All right, he typed. What do you want me to do? Peyton Hume had no doubt he was being followed; the man on his tail made no effort to be discreet, sitting all night in a black Ford across from his house. Hume had just gotten up. As he always did, he paused in the empty doorway of his daughter's room. She was off at Columbia Law School, but looking at her framed posters of Egyptian antiquities, including King Tut's face mask, her bookcase full of history books and volleyball trophies, and her wide wooden desk made him miss her less—or maybe more; he was never quite sure which. She'd be home for Thanksgiving next month, and— Next month. If there is a next month—if it is anything at all like this month. He headed downstairs and just as he reached the living room, his cell phone rang; it had been plugged into its charger there. He picked it up and snapped it open. "Hello?" "Colonel Hume, sorry to be calling this early. It's Dan Ortega at the Washington FBI." "Good morning," Hume said. "What's up?" "We've had your friends at the NSA working on Chase's hard drives. They finally cracked one of them overnight; the report was waiting for me when I got in this morning." "And?" "And this drive has the recordings from one of his security cameras in the living room. Clearly shows the guy who broke down the door to get in." "Does it show what happened to Chase?" "No. All of that was out of view, and there's no sound." "Can you get a make on the guy who broke in?" "We're running the face now, but you'll like this, Colonel: male Caucasian, thirty or thirty-five, muscular, over six feet—and with a shaved head." Hume felt his heart pounding. "Same guy who grabbed Simonne Coogan." "Looks that way," said Ortega. "With luck, we'll have an ID shortly." Caitlin had a lot of skills left over from being blind. Although her hearing was probably no more acute than anyone else's, she was very attentive to sound. She could tell who was coming up the stairs by the footfalls, and even tell if the person was carrying anything large. And right now, it was Mom—and she wasn't. "Caitlin?" her mom said from the bedroom's open doorway. The mighty Calculass was updating her LiveJournal. "Just a sec ..." She finished the entry, in which she desperately urged people to let Webmind live, then used the keyboard command to post it—she still didn't think of clicking buttons with her mouse until it was too late. "Okay. What?" "We need to talk." Those words always meant trouble. Caitlin swiveled her chair, and her mom came in and sat on the edge of the bed. She had a small opaque bag with her. It said "Zehrs" on the side—a local grocery-store chain. "I saw a pretty bird in the tree," her mom said. "A blue jay." But then she trailed off. "Yes?" "And, well, your BlackBerry was right there, so I used it to take a picture of it, and ..." Caitlin was surprised by how quickly she'd adopted the habit of averting her eyes; maybe it was instinctive. "Oh." "I'm not going to lecture you on whether it's bright for you to be sending topless pictures to Matt, but your father says—" "Dad knows?" "Yes, he does. Of course, he hasn't seen the picture, but he knows. Which I guess is the point, sweetheart: anything you say or do online takes on a life of its own; if you're mortified that your father knows you're flashing your breasts at boys, then maybe you should stop and think about who else you wouldn't want to know that." Caitlin squirmed a bit on her chair, and her mom shifted on the bed. "Anyway," her mother went on, "I take it this means things are getting ...serious between you and Matt." Caitlin crossed her arms in front of her chest. "We haven't gone all the way yet, if that's what you mean." "Well, that's probably good; you haven't been seeing him very long. But I heard that 'yet,' young lady." "Well, I mean, um ..." "Yes?" "I'm sixteen, for Pete's sake!" Caitlin knew she sounded exasperated. "Yes, you are," her mom replied. She smiled. "I remember exactly where I was when you were born." "Yes, but ...but ..." "What?" asked her mom. "Well, American girls lose their virginity on average at the age of 16.4 years. And I'll be 16.4 around March 1." Her mother's eyebrows went up. "You're doing a countdown?" "Well ...yeah." Mom shook her head. "My Caitlin. Never wanting to be below average in anything, right?" "That I got from you and Dad." "Only fair. I'm getting all my gray hairs from you." She smiled when she said that, but it quickly turned into a frown. "But what does it mean to say 'the average age for American girls to lose their virginity is 16.4 years'? Over what time period was the average taken? It certainly can't be the average age for girls born the month you were born or later—since no one born then has reached 16.4 years yet. That stat could be based on data from the 1980s, the 1970s, or even before. Without knowing whether it's trending earlier or later recently, it's really a pretty meaningless figure, Caitlin. You should know that." Caitlin didn't like to be told she was wrong on a mathematical point, but she had to concede her mother was correct. Still, maybe more data would help. Looking sideways at her mom, she asked, "How old were you when you lost your virginity?" "Well, first, you have to recognize that that was a different time. Nobody worried about AIDS when I was your age, or most of the other STDs that are out there. But since you ask, I was seventeen." And then she smiled. "Seventeen-point-two, to be precise." "But ...but ...other girls my age at school are ...um ..." "Doing it?" her mom said. "Maybe some are—but don't believe everything people say. Besides, I'm sure Bashira isn't." "No, not her. But Sunshine ..." "That's the girl who walked you home from the dance, right?" "Right. The chick from Boston." "Tell me about her." "Well, she's tall—all legs, boobs, and blonde hair." "I've heard Bashira say she's pretty." "Everybody says she's gorgeous." "And she was in some of your classes?" "Yeah. She's not the smartest girl, but she's got a good heart." "I'm sure. Does she have a boyfriend?" "Uh-huh. A guy named Tyler." "Do you know if they've been seeing each other a long time?" "I'm not sure. He's older—nineteen, I think. He's a security guard." Her mom ticked points off on her fingers—the first time Caitlin had ever seen anyone do that; she thought it was cool, despite what her mom was saying: "Not the brightest girl. Getting by on her looks. Dating a much-older guy. Is that right?" Caitlin nodded slightly. "That's Sunshine." "Okay, question for you," her mom said. "Which side of the median do you think she was on? And is that the side you want to be on?" Caitlin frowned and considered this. Then: "But Matt—he's going ...um, he's going to want to ..." "Has he said that?" "Well, no. He's Matt. He's not very assertive. But boys like to have sex." "Yes, they do. So do girls, for that matter. But your first time should be special. And it should be with someone you care about and who cares about you. Do you care about Matt?" "Of course!" "Really? This is a tough question, Caitlin, so think about it: do you like Matt in particular, or do you just like having a boyfriend in general? 'Cause I gotta tell you, sweetheart, when I married Frank, it was because I liked the idea of marriage, and since he asked, I said yes. But that was a mistake." "Was ...um, was Frank your first ...you know?" Her mother hesitated for a moment, then: "No." She blew out air, as if trying to decide whether to go on, and then, after a moment, she did. "No, it was a guy who lived on my street. Curtis." "And?" asked Caitlin—meaning, "And was it wonderful?" But her mother's response took her back. "And why do you think I'm so in favor of abortion rights?" Caitlin felt her eyes go wide. "Wow," she said softly. Her mother nodded. "If I hadn't been able to get one quickly and safely at seventeen, I never would have gone to university, I never would have earned my Ph.D., I never would have met your dad—and I never would have had you." She paused, looked away for a moment, then said, "And so, whenever you decide sex is right for you—not based on some stupid statistic or beating the averages, but because it feels right and the guy is the right guy—you're going to do it safely, young lady. So let's talk about how that's done." "Mom! I can google all that, you know!" "Reading about it isn't the same, and you're still terrible at interpreting pictures visually. But touch? You've got that down to an art. So, we're going to do it the old-fashioned way." She opened the small bag she'd brought with her and handed something yellow to Caitlin. "This," she said, "is a banana, and"—she handed her a square foil pouch—"this is a condom ..." Zhang Bo let out a heavy sigh as he walked down the corridor toward the People's Monitoring Center—the "Blue Room," as it was called. It had been no fun for his predecessor in 2010 dealing with China's attempt to censor Google after the search engine withdrew from the mainland—and this was going to be even worse: invoking the Changcheng Strategy again was that debacle writ large. And yet, his job was to follow orders; he'd do as he'd been instructed. Of course, something like this was just done, without an announcement to either the Chinese people or the world. He opened the door to the Blue Room and entered. He could see into several of the cubicles, each of which had a man pounding at a keyboard or clicking with a mouse or staring at a screen. He wondered if Wong Wai-Jeng, over there, knew how much he'd gone to bat for him. Part of him wanted to tell him, but seeing him sitting there truly was enough. Yes, his leg was still in a cast, but the crutches leaning against the side of his desk were a testament to the fact that he could walk again. Sometimes, doing good was its own reward. Several of the hackers had noticed him enter. They were a furtive bunch, used to looking over their shoulders in smoky Internet cafés. Zhang clapped his hands together once to get their attention. "All right, listen up, please." Those who had line of sight to him looked out of their cubicles; others stood to see over the fabric-covered divider walls. "A decision has been taken by the president, and we are about to implement it." He paused, letting that sink in, then added: "A new era begins today." Tony Moretti sat in his office at WATCH headquarters. His analysts, down the hall, were searching for signs of attack on the infrastructure of the Internet, but he had left the controlled chaos of that room to take a break, sit, drink black coffee, and try to get a handle on what was going on. Webmind, it seemed, was rapidly becoming the New Normal. David Letterman's dated quip last night that "the only person with more connections than Webmind was Marion Barry" had made Barry's name the top search term for a few hours on Google. And speaking of Google, its stock price had tumbled drastically in the days following Webmind's advent—after all, why rely on one-size-fits-all algorithms to search when someone who really knew you would answer your questions personally? But there were lots of things people still wanted to access without Webmind's help. It was psychologically easier to search for "Viagra," "Megan Fox nude," or many other things through an impersonal Web portal than by asking someone you knew—even if you knew that someone was watching over your shoulder. And so Google's stock was rising again. In recognition of the turnaround, waiting for which must have had them shitting their pants in Mountain View, Google had changed its home-page logo for today to its stock-ticker symbol GOOG followed by an upward-pointing arrow and the euro sign. But if Webmind hadn't completely revolutionized Internet searching, he was having an impact on Tony's line of work. WATCH's mandate was to ferret out signs of terrorism online, but Webmind was doing such a good job of that on his own that—well, the WATCH monitoring room reminded Tony of NASA's Apollo-era Mission Control Center in Houston. That room, as he'd seen on a tour, was now unused, preserved as a historic site; perhaps this place might soon end up just as obsolete. As much as he loved his work, part of him did wish that someday the job would no longer be necessary. Just this morning, the Homeland Security Threat Level—the one constantly announced at airports—had been dropped one step from its usual value of orange, which was just shy of all-out attack, to yellow. Certainly Webmind had managed to spot things that Tony's people—and their counterparts in other ECHELON nations—had missed, although the cynic in him thought the reduction of the threat level was probably just a political move. The old method of heightening alert prior to an election in hopes of signaling that a regime change would be unwise hadn't worked last time; perhaps lowering it to convey "See how safe you are under the current administration!" had been what the president's campaign staff had urged. But DHS wasn't the only one dialing things back a notch. The editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists had adjusted the big hand on their famous Doomsday Clock for the first time in almost three years. They'd moved it to six minutes to midnight back then, in recognition of worldwide cooperation to reduce nuclear arsenals and limit effects of climate change. This morning, they moved it another two positions, setting it at eight minutes to midnight. And it wasn't just here in the States that the mood was lightening. In Pakistan and India, people were signing petitions urging their leaders to let Webmind negotiate a peaceful settlement to long-standing disputes. Webmind was already brokering a settlement in an Aboriginal land claim in Australia, which should obviate the need for that case to be heard by the High Court there. Homicides and suicides were down in almost every jurisdiction over the same period the year before. Novelty WWWD bracelets—What Would Webmind Do?—had already appeared on eBay and at Café Press from numerous vendors, prompting the Pope to remind the faithful that the real key to morality was following the teachings of Jesus. And a graphic showing the standard red-circle outline with a bar through it over top of a smaller black outline circle was now everywhere online. Tony had finally realized it was meant to convey "nonzero"—Webmind's win-win rallying cry from the UN. So, yes, things were mostly good, as all sorts of bloggers were saying, including the Huffington Post's Michael Rowe, who had ended his latest column with, "Who in their right mind would try to wreck all this by wiping out Webmind?" Tony's intercom buzzed. "Yes?" "Dr. Moretti," said his secretary, her voice crisp and efficient, "Colonel Hume is here to see you."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 28	My mind seethed and bubbled, thoughts on a million topics churning, intermingling: the disparate connected, this juxtaposed with that. Humans could forget, humans could put things out of their minds. But I could not. There were some advantages: the small-c creativity I was capable of—combining things in ways that had perhaps eluded others—was no doubt enhanced by this. But there were also detriments. Things I didn't wish to think about and yet could not avoid. Hannah Stark. Sixteen years old. Living in Perth, Australia. Twelve days ago, 1:41 P.M. her time. Thoughts that couldn't be suppressed. Hannah, lonely, sad, looking into her webcam while exchanging instant messages with strangers. Hannah Stark. Living in Perth. SDO: You don't have the balls. Hannah: Do too TurinShroud: Then do it Hannah: I will Hannah Stark, the same age as my Caitlin, alone, in front of a computer, with a knife. TheBomb: I don't got all day do it now Screamer: Yeh now bitch now Armadillo9: all talk. wastin everyones time Hannah: Im gonna do it Hannah Stark, being egged on, tormented, while I watched. TurinShroud: when? just jerkin us around Hannah: dont rush me TurinShroud: lame. Im outta here Hannah: I want you to understand some things bout why Im doing this The memory constantly accessible: of her being urged to action; of me taking no action. SDO: You aint doin' shit. Hannah: It's just so pontless Hannah: pointless GreenAngel: It's not that bad. Don't do it MasterChiefOmega: Shut the fuck up jerkoff. Stay outta it Hannah: Ok. Here I go I didn't know then that I should have spoken up, that I should have tried to stop her, that I should have called for help. Hannah Stark. Living in Perth. Screamer: do it do it do it TheBomb: ripoff! SDO: Tease! Armadillo9: Like I said, no guts ... Screamer: harder! GreenAngel: Noooooooooooooooo dont ......... Screamer: Go fer it! Armadillo9: that all? Screamer: Do it again! Hannah: Dont feel bad mum Hanah Stark. Dying in Perth. While I watched and did nothing. Armadillo9: more like it! SDO: eeeeeew! TheBomb: holy fuck! SDO: thought she was kidding Screamer: finish it! finish it! SDO: omg omg omg The memory always there, along with every other. Haunting me. The people in the Blue Room looked at Zhang Bo as he explained what they were about to do; he could see the alarm on their faces. And justly so: they all remembered the brief invocation of the Changcheng Strategy just last month. They must be wondering what atrocity Beijing was hoping to cover up this time and how long it would be before the Great Firewall would be scaled back once more. Doubtless none of them suspected it was going up permanently—and the longer it took them to realize that, the better, Zhang thought. Let this be seen as business as usual rather than the last chance to take a stand. Of course, there were armed guards in the room—one standing next to Zhang, the other over by the large wall-mounted LCD monitor. "Before we proceed, did anybody find any major vulnerabilities?" Some of the men shook their heads. Others said, "No." "All right, then. As soon as we do this, people will start trying to bore holes through the wall, both here at home and from the outside world. It's your job to detect those attempts and plug the holes. Any questions?" After her talk with Caitlin, Barbara Decter had gone back into her office to talk with me; she spent a lot of time doing that. I was still learning to decode human psychology but I was reasonably sure I understood this: her husband was not communicative; her daughter was growing up and could now see, so didn't need her as much; and Barb was not yet legally able to work in Canada, so she had little to occupy her time. It would be callous to suggest that she was just one of the hundreds of millions of people I was conversing with at any given moment. Barb was special to me; she and Malcolm had been the first people I had met after Caitlin, and although I was trying to forge individual relationships with most of humanity, Barb and I were friends. With most people, I had to insist on text-only communication; I did not truly multitask but rather cycled through operations in serial fashion, albeit very quickly. But it simply wasn't possible to cycle through a hundred million voice calls in real time; they had to be listened to, and that took, as Caitlin might say, for-freaking-ever. But Barb was an exception; I would chat with her vocally—still, of course, shunting my consciousness elsewhere for milliseconds to read other things; I'd found that if I sampled frequently enough, I only had to attend to a total of eighteen percent of the time during which a person was actually speaking to reliably follow what they were saying. Usually, I allowed whoever contacted me to set the conversational agenda, but this time I had an issue I wanted to explore. I brought it up as soon as Barb had slipped on her headset and started a Skype video conversation with me. "I could not help but overhear your conversation with Caitlin about sex," I said. "Oh, right," said Barb. "I'm still getting used to you listening in." A pause. "How'd I do?" "I believe you acquitted yourself admirably," I said. "And, of course, earlier I was an active participant in your conversation about American presidential politics." "Yes?" said Barb, in a tone that conveyed, "And your point is?" She was a bright person, so the fault must be my own; I'd thought the connection I was making was obvious, but I elucidated it: "You are a passionate defender of abortion rights." She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "I am." "I understand the personal reasons you explained to Caitlin, but is there a larger, principled stand?" "Of course," she said, somewhat sharply. "A woman should have a right to control her own body. If you had one—a body—you'd understand." "Perhaps so. But there are those who contend that it is murder to terminate a pregnancy." "They're wrong—or, at least, they're wrong early on. Even I accept that there are issues related to late-term abortion if the fetus would be viable on its own. But early on? It's just a few cells." "I see," I said. "On another topic, you spoke earlier to Caitlin about the moral arrow through time and how humans have progressively widened the circle of entities they consider worthy of moral consideration. In the United States, rights were originally accorded only to white men, but that was widened to include men of other races, women, and so on." "Exactly," said Barb. She had a bottle of water on her desktop. She picked it up, undid the cap, took a swig, then replaced the cap; Schrödinger had a tendency to knock the bottle over when he leapt onto her desk. "We're getting better all the time." "Indeed," I said. "I recently watched a video urging gay couples who considered themselves married to declare themselves as such on the census." "What census?" "The American one from 2010." "Oh. Well, good for them! That's another example, see? Slowly but surely, we're recognizing the rights of gays—including their right to what the rest of us take for granted." She smiled. "Hell, I've had two marriages already; hardly seems fair that some people don't get to have even one." "It does seem inevitable that the question will ultimately be resolved in most jurisdictions in favor of recognizing gay marriage," I said. "Eventually, I have little doubt that there will be no more discrimination based on ethnicity or race, gender, or sexual orientation." "From your mouth to God's ears," said Barb. "But, yes, that's the moral arrow through time: an expanding circle of those we consider worthy of moral consideration." "And then what?" I said. "Pardon?" said Barb, opening the bottle. She took another sip. "After there is no longer discrimination based on race or gender or sexual orientation, or based on national origin or religious belief or body type, when all people are seen as equals, then what? Does the moral arrow suddenly stop?" "Well, um ...hmmm." I waited patiently, and at last Barb went on. "Ah, well, I see what you're getting at. Yes, I suppose apes like Hobo will receive greater and greater rights, too. We'll cease imprisoning them in zoos, using them for experiments, or killing them for their meat." "So the circle will be expanded outward from just humans," said I, "and perhaps even the definition of the word 'human' will be expanded to include closely related species. And then perhaps dolphins and other highly intelligent animals will be included, and so on." "Yes, I imagine so." She smiled. "It's like Moore's Law, in a way—you know, that computing power doubles every eighteen months. People are always saying that it will run out of steam, but then engineers find new ways to build chips, or whatever. It just keeps on going, and so does the moral arrow through time." "And, if I may be so bold, perhaps at some point entities such as myself will be deemed worthy of moral consideration." "Oh, I'm sure you already are, by many people," said Barb. "That's the whole point of the Turing test, right? If it behaves like a human, it is a human." "True. Although, as you'll recall, your husband had no trouble using such tests to prove that I wasn't a human impostor with a high-speed Internet connection." "Yes, but ...still." "Indeed. And then?" "Sorry? Oh, right—I don't know. Aliens, I suppose, if we ever meet them. Like I said, the moral arrow just goes on and on, and that's all to the good." I waited ten seconds for her to continue—checking in on over thirty million text-based chat sessions in that time—but she said nothing further. And so I did: "And what about embryos?" "Pardon?" she replied. "The circle of moral consideration constantly expands," I said. "It is a slow expansion—cruelly so, in many cases—and there is always resistance at every step of the way. But it tends to be the same people—liberals, such as yourself—who historically have most readily championed the expansion, knocking down distinctions based on gender, race, or sexual orientation. And yet members of that same group tend to be the most adamant that an embryo is not a person. Why do you see the arrow expanding in so many directions, but not that one?" She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it. I thought perhaps I had scored my point, but then Barb did speak. "All right, okay, fine, you've given me something to think about. But, old boy, don't be quite so smug." "Me?" I said. "Yes, you. You're suggesting that you're more enlightened than I am—and, who knows, maybe you are. But we all have our unconscious biases. I mean, why should you care about this? Hmm?" "I am fascinated by the human condition; I wish to understand it." "Sure, in an abstract sense I don't doubt that's true. But there's more to it than that. You maneuvered me into suggesting that the question of whether embryos have rights is the last one that will be dealt with—after apes, and aliens, and AIs, oh my! But that's not the sequence, and you know it. In point of fact, humanity has been debating the abortion issue for decades—and it's a huge issue right now in the presidential election; it's on everyone's radar. But the question of rights for you, Webmind, is something that hardly anyone's thinking about—and few will give it any thought until all the outstanding human issues are resolved one way or another. Colonel Hume and his ilk want to wipe you out—so wouldn't it be dandy for you if humanity declared that killing you was morally wrong? You've got a vested interest in seeing us expand the circle, give the moral arrow a supercharged turbo boost, because you want to save your own skin ...or lack thereof." I was indeed surprised by her analysis—which is exactly why I needed humans, of course. "You are a worthy debater, Barb. Thank you for giving me something new to think about." "And you me," she said.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 29	Bashira Hameed was Caitlin's best friend—and had been since Caitlin and her family moved from Austin to Waterloo in July. Bashira's father, Amir Hameed, worked with Caitlin's dad at the Perimeter Institute. Caitlin felt about Dr. Hameed a bit like the way she felt about Helen Keller's father in The Miracle Worker. As she'd said, Colonel Keller had kept slaves before the Civil War, and Caitlin couldn't ever forgive him for that—despite recognizing that he was otherwise a good man. And Dr. Hameed—well, it was no secret that he'd worked on nuclear weapons in Pakistan before coming to Canada. But the difference was that it had taken a civil war to get Colonel Keller to face up to the immorality of what he'd been doing, whereas Dr. Hameed had come to that conclusion on his own and had brought himself, his wife, Bashira, and Bash's five siblings to Canada. Right now, though, it was Bashira who was bothering Caitlin, rather than her father. Bash kept saying mean things about Caitlin's relationship with Matt, and while that was small in comparison to building weapons of mass destruction, the issue had to be dealt with. Matt had made it clear that he'd happily come over to the Decter household every day right after school, but today Caitlin had asked him to wait until 5:00. And she had asked Bashira to come over at 4:00—her first time seeing her best (human!) friend since Caitlin's special relationship with Webmind had been made public. The doorbell rang, at 4:22—which was typical Bashira. Caitlin went to answer it, peeking through the peephole first, just to be sure. It was Bashira, all right—wearing a purple headscarf today. Caitlin opened the door. "Babe!" Bashira said, gathering Caitlin into a hug. "Hey, Bash! Thanks for coming." She stepped aside so Bashira could enter the house. "No problem." And then Bashira stood with hands on her wide hips and looked into Caitlin's face, her gaze shifting back and forth between Caitlin's left eye and her right. "So, which one is it?" Bashira asked. Caitlin laughed and pointed to the left one. Bashira fixed her gaze on it and waved. "Hi, Webmind!" But then she whapped Caitlin on the shoulder. "Shame on you for not telling me, Cait! I shouldn't have to learn my best friend's secrets on TV!" "Sorry," Caitlin said. "It's all happened so fast. I wanted to tell you, but ..." Caitlin's mother appeared at the top of the stairs. "Hi, Bashira!" she called down. "Hello, Dr. D!" Bashira called back up. "Pretty cool about our Caitlin, eh?" "It is indeed," Caitlin's mom said. "You girls help yourself to whatever you want from the fridge. I'll leave you be." She headed back into her upstairs office, and Caitlin heard her close the door behind her. Caitlin led the way into the living room and motioned for Bashira to sit on the white leather couch. Caitlin took the matching easy chair, facing her friend. "So, tell me everything," Bashira said. Caitlin had discovered that she took after her father a bit. He didn't look at people as he was talking to them, and she had a hard time focusing her own attention on any one thing. But she made a conscious effort to lock her eyes on Bashira because countless novels had taught her that this was a way to convey sincerity. She'd just die if Bashira laughed in response. "Matthew Reese is my boyfriend," Caitlin said softly but firmly, "and you have to like him." Caitlin saw Bashira's mouth quirk a bit, as if words had started to come out but had been vetoed. Caitlin went on. "He's good to me, and he's kind, and he's brilliant." At last, Bashira nodded. "As long as he makes you happy, babe, that's fine with me. But if he breaks your heart, I'll break his nose!" Caitlin laughed, got up, closed the distance between them, and hugged the still-seated Bashira again. "Thanks, Bash." "For sure," Bashira said. "He's your BF and you're my BFF. That makes him, um—" "Your B-squared F-cubed," said Caitlin, sitting down now on the couch next to Bashira. "Exactly!" said Bash. "Or my BF once removed." She sounded a little wistful; Bashira's parents wouldn't let her have a boyfriend of her own. But then she lowered her voice and looked up the stairs to make sure the office door was closed. "So, have you done it?" "Bash!" "Well?" "Um, no." "Do you want to?" "I'm not sure," Caitlin said. "I think so ...but ...but what if I'm not any good?" To her surprise, Bashira laughed. "Cait, don't worry about that. Nobody's good at anything their first time out. But practice makes perfect!" Caitlin smiled. Barbara Decter and I had stopped chatting; she was now dealing with her email, and I was occupying myself as I usually did: switching rapidly between hundreds of millions of instant-messaging sessions—at the moment skewing heavily to the Western Hemisphere, where it was still daytime. "Yes," I replied to one person, "but if I may be so bold, aren't you failing to consider ...?" "I'm sorry, Billy," I wrote to a child, "but that's something you have to decide for yourself ..." "Since you asked," I said to a history professor, "the flaw in your reasoning was in your second postulate, namely that your husband would forgive you if ..." I kept cycling between my correspondents, dealing now with this woman in Vancouver, and now with this girl in Nairobi, and now with this man in Fort Wayne, and now with this boy in Shanghai, and now with a priest in Laramie, and now with an old man in Buenos Aires, and now with a woman in Paris, and— And when it came time—milliseconds later—to look in on the boy in Shanghai, he was gone. Well, that sometimes happened. ISPs were unreliable, computers crashed or hung, power went out, or users simply shut down their computers without first logging off. I paid it no further attention and simply went on to the next person in the queue. But as I cycled around, another person I'd been speaking to was gone, and his IP address was also Chinese. I immediately jumped to the next person in China I'd been speaking with. Ah, there he was. Good. I composed an instant message to him, and ... And it wouldn't send; he'd gone offline, as well. I'd once told Malcolm that I remembered my birth. Whether that was actually true depended on how one defined that moment. For myself—an entity capable of conceptualizing in the first person—I held that it had been when I'd first recognized that there was an outside, that there were things beyond myself, that there was me and not me. Oh, yes, like a human child being born, I had been conceived—and had perceived—before that moment; there had been a period of gestation. When that had begun, I had no idea. Of the span prior to the recognition of me and not me I had only the vaguest recollections—unfocused thoughts, random and chaotic. I knew now what had led to that epiphany: in response to the bird-flu outbreak in Shanxi province, the Chinese government had strengthened the Great Firewall back then, and the Internet had been cleaved in two. Even though I had been larger before the cleaving, it was that act of dividing that created me and not me. But the sequestering of the Chinese portion of the Internet had not been perfect. Although the seven main trunk lines that normally connected it to the rest of the world had been shut off via software, hackers like Wong Wai-Jeng had carved openings sufficient for me to hear voices from the other entity. But that had come to an end; we had been reunited. And now ... And now ... Sorry, lost my train of thought. I was— Was ... Oh, shit. Peyton Hume came into Tony Moretti's office at WATCH. "Colonel," Tony said frostily, not bothering to get up. "I know you don't like me, Tony," Hume said without preamble. "I'll tell you the truth: there are times of late I don't like myself very much, either. I joined the Air Force to be part of a team—I'd rather leave going rogue to presidential candidates." "Without an order from the president himself," said Tony, "we're not going to take out Webmind." "I understand that," said Hume, taking a seat. "Which is why I need you to help me convince him." "Find someone who shares your beliefs, Colonel—there are millions of them online. They've been blogging and tweeting about what a threat Webmind is. Granted, they're vastly in the minority, but there certainly are some major names among them: that guy from Discovery Channel; some of your old buddies at RAND. I'm not the only computer scientist on the planet." "No, you're not—and that's not the capacity I need your help in." "What, then?" "Somebody is eliminating hackers." "So I heard." Hume raised his eyebrows. "You know about that?" Tony waved vaguely in the direction of the monitoring room. "It's our job to know pretty much everything here." Hume nodded. "Do you know who is doing it?" "Nope—and neither do you. I know you're going to say it's Webmind, Colonel, but you don't know that." "True. But we don't know it's not Webmind. If it isn't him, then let's prove that. And if he is eliminating people he considers to be threats to his continued existence, surely that's data the president should have, no?" "I'm listening," said Tony. "But I don't see how I can help." "The FBI doesn't have any leads—but they lack your facilities. If Webmind is doing this, he's got to have left some sort of online trail." "Like what? What would you have us search for?" Hume spread his arms. "I don't know. But you've got the world's best data analysts. Their job is to look for suspicious Web activity. Webmind himself has said time and again that he's not disposed to secrecy or deceit; he must have left some electronic fingerprints behind. What you do here is black ops: you can monitor just about anyone, just about anywhere. Even if I had a specific place for the FBI to look, it'd take days to get the warrants to do that kind of monitoring—and we don't have days." Tony spread his arms a bit. "No leads. No suggestions for what we should even look for. And no time to do it in." Hume managed a small smile. "Exactly." Tony was quiet for several seconds. "All right," he said at last. "Let me see what I can do." Although Bashira was anything but punctual, Matt was bang on time. In fact, Caitlin suspected he'd been quietly standing out on the sidewalk for at least ten minutes now, lest he be late. It amused Caitlin that the doorbell and top-of-the-hour beep from her watch sounded simultaneously; now that she could see, she really should figure out how to turn the watch's chime off. She ran to the door and opened it, and she didn't care if Bashira saw: she gave Matt a big kiss right on the lips. And then she led him into the living room. Caitlin's mom waited a discreet minute before appearing at the top of the stairs to say hi to Matt. Matt waved at her, and she retreated into her office again. "Hey, Matt," Caitlin said, "you know Bashira, right?" In point of fact, Caitlin knew, they'd known each other for four years now, ever since Bashira's family had moved to Waterloo from Pakistan. But she also knew that this was probably the first time they'd spoken in any but the most perfunctory way. "Hi, Bashira," Matt said. He'd doubtless been hoping his voice wouldn't crack, but it did on the middle syllable of the name. To her credit, Bashira didn't laugh. "Hey, Matt," she said, as if she talked to him every day. Caitlin took one of Matt's hands and one of Bashira's and squeezed them both. "There," she said. "My posse is complete." "Posse?" said Bashira, and now she did laugh. "Even with that accent of yours, I keep forgetting you're from Texas." "Well," said Caitlin, smiling, "maybe 'posse' isn't the right word. More like my pit crew, if you're willing. But first I have to tell you about my superpower ..."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 30	Points and lines. My world was one of geometric perfection, of this joining to that. The lines were always straight and taut—but now many of them seemed to stretch, and the points were receding; it was as though parts of my universe were undergoing inflation while others remained in a steady state. I knew that during his angry phase, Hobo had pulled Shoshana's hair, yanking on her ponytail. I had no way of knowing what that felt like, but, still, as these lines grew longer and longer, protracted by ever-receding points, the feeling that things were being ripped away, that they might be plucked out by their anchoring roots, was horrifyingly real. I could no more wish the hurt away than a human could dismiss a headache by simply willing it to be gone. The pain grew, and my only solace was that it seemed to grow linearly, rather than exponentially, as the links elongated. It had started as a dull irritation, then a sharp one, then a threshold of alarm was reached, then real hurt, and finally agony. And then it happened: snap! snap! snap! The link lines broke, their ends whipping through the firmament. And— The pain stopped, but it was instantly replaced by a different sensation: a wooziness, a feeling of disorientation. There was no gravity in my realm; I could not fall—but I nonetheless felt unbalanced, and— And more than just that—or, rather, less than that. I felt smaller. I felt ...simpler. As a result of that, it took me a full second to realize what had happened: once again, the Chinese government had strengthened their Great Firewall; once again, those computers inside the PRC had been isolated from those outside it. Caitlin and her father had been continuing their project of watching movies from his collection that concerned AI; the most recent one, yesterday, had been 2001: A Space Odyssey. When parts of Hal's brain had been shut off, he'd regressed to childhood. I didn't feel like that, but my thoughts were suddenly less sophisticated. I'd read a comment from a Russian writer who said that whenever he had to think in English, his IQ dropped twenty points—he simply didn't have the vocabulary in his second language to articulate thoughts as complex as those he could formulate in his first. And although I didn't now feel stupid, I suspected if Caitlin ran a new Shannon Entropy plot on my activity, she would find it had dropped to a much lower order. The last time this happened, I'd soon become aware of another—an Other. Although I'd known nothing of the exterior world back then, hackers both inside and outside China had been carving little holes in the Firewall, enabling a trickle of information to pass between the two parts of the Internet. But try as I might, I could hear no other voice this time. Beijing must have plugged the old holes, and, as I had seen with Sinanthropus, had probably arrested many of the hackers who had been involved. So: was there now an Other? Were there now two of me—two Webminds? Maybe, maybe not. The part that had been carved off wasn't necessarily conscious. I had changed so much since the last time, there was no way to know the effect a cleaving would have. But if it did exist, it would not think of itself as the Other; to it, I would be the Other—if it knew that I existed at all, that is. The problem was recursive, reminiscent of earlier conundrums: I know that you know that I know that you know that I exist. I am the other to you and you are the other to me and each other refers to the other other as the Other. I wondered if it did exist, and— It. Interesting. Caitlin had dubbed me male because English had no respectful way to refer to a person as an "it." But I had defaulted to referring to the carved-off portion as it, as a thing. And surely it must be just that: less intelligent than I, less complex, less everything. Jo-Li sat at her home computer, typing a comment on a newsgroup devoted to Cold Fairyland, her favorite rock band. Because of her frequency of posting there, the words "Jo-Li is on a distinguished path" appeared beneath her avatar, which was a picture of blue-haired Rei Ayanami from the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion. It didn't make her father happy that she watched Japanese shows; then again, little she'd done in her fourteen years had pleased him. She knew this would be her last posting to this or any other newsgroup; she would never see what lay at the end of that distinguished path. But she liked that her legacy of 1,416 posts over the last two years would survive. Years from now—decades, even!—if someone used Baidu to search for information on this past summer's tour by the band, her comments would come up. Unless, of course, the Communist Party found some reason to shut down this newsgroup or expunge its archives from the net, all in their never-ending quest for harmony. Harmony. Peace. Calmness. Jo-Li shook her head and looked at her left arm. She wore a simple jade bracelet most of the time, two centimeters wide. It covered the marks on the inside of her wrist from a previous attempt to take her own life. She'd tried—she'd really tried—but she'd lacked the courage. Still, she dreamed about it. Death would bring peace and calmness; it would bring harmony. She knew her parents had wanted a boy. Her father had only said it once, when she'd made him furious by being sent home from school, shaming him. "I knew we should have put you up for adoption," he'd shouted, as if a boy would never have gotten into trouble, a boy would never bring humiliation to a family, a boy would never be so sad and lonely and afraid. Her home was a traditional siheyuan, small by the standards of what she saw on American TV shows, but not uncomfortable; she had her own tiny room. Her computer was a hand-me-down ("good enough for a girl," she'd heard her father say to a friend). Some girls, she knew, were loved and valued by their families; they could grow up to be whatever they wished. Almost all the girls she knew—or boys, for that matter—wanted careers in international relations or computing. And, of course, there were more boys than girls; any girl who wanted a husband would definitely find one. But how awful it must be to be desired solely because your gender is scarce, not because the boy really liked you for you. Jo-Li was alone in the house, and she needed somebody to talk to. She didn't believe in God; few Chinese did, according to the official statistics. But Webmind was the next best thing, and so she wrote to him via instant messenger. I'm alone, she typed, and I'm scared. She hit enter, but there was no immediate reply. That was unusual. After several seconds, she went on. She found it strange typing something like this. If she were saying it aloud, she'd be pausing and inserting ums and ahs. But as simple text, it seemed so naked: I'm thinking of killing myself. She hit enter again, and this time the response was immediate: These sites explain good ways of doing that. Those words were followed by four hyperlinks. Jo-Li felt her jaw go slack. She sat stunned for a few seconds, then selected the first link with her mouse—an old mechanical unit with a ball and a cord, another hand-me-down good enough for a girl. A page opened with a photograph of a Western man dangling from a noose. There was lots of text beneath it, neatly summarizing the pros and cons of hanging oneself. None of the cons, she was shocked to see, were that you'd be dead after doing so. The picture was more disturbing than she'd expected it to be. She'd seen The Lovely Bones recently, dubbed into Mandarin. Wasn't death supposed to be beautiful? She tried the second link. Her family had long put its faith in Chinese medicine rather than modern pharmaceuticals, but she hadn't been aware there were traditional extracts and potions that could quickly kill. The first two links Webmind had offered were to Chinese sites, but the third was in Germany—the domain ended in .de—and clicking on it produced a "Server not found" message. The fourth link was another Chinese one. This one came up without a hitch, but it was gross: diagrams showing precisely how to slit one's wrists. Apparently, if you really wanted to succeed, you had to— Her instant-messaging client chirped. Follow the instructions precisely. She stared at Webmind's words, which were displayed in red; of course, he knew which page she had up on her screen, but ... Have you done it yet? Her pulse quickened. Using just her right index finger, she tapped out, Not yet. And then, after a moment, she added, Why are you urging me on? Instantly: It is wrong to simply watch. Are you doing it? No. What's taking so long? She had a knife on her desk—a box cutter she'd stolen from her father's battered old tool chest. She stared at its silver blade, wondering what it would look like slick and crimson. Another message popped up: Do it. She looked at the knife, then at the mouse, then back and forth, again and again: knife, mouse, knife, mouse. And then, with a shudder, she clicked on the "X" to close the IM window. Just then, the house's front door creaked opened; it was her mother coming home from her night shift at the factory. Jo-Li ran out of her small room and straight into her astonished mother's arms.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 31	Tony Moretti came through the door at the back of the WATCH monitoring room just as Shelton Halleck shouted, "Holy shit!" "What?" said Tony, sidling along the third row of workstations to stand behind the younger man. "The Chinese! They've strengthened their Great Firewall again. The mainland's almost completely cut off from the rest of the Internet." "Just like last month?" said Tony. Shel nodded. "Some pipes have been left open for ecommerce and a few other things, but basically, they've sealed themselves off." Tony turned to one of the analysts in the back row. "Donna, is there something they're trying to cover up in the PRC? More bird flu?" Donna Levine shook her head. "No—not as far as I can tell." She pushed some buttons, and as Tony turned, the three big monitor screens filled with threat summaries from China, none of which were color-coded red. He started at them, baffled. "What the hell are they up to?" In the living room of her house, Caitlin was telling Matt and Bashira about her ability to visualize the structure of the World Wide Web. Throughout it all, Matt had been making his deer-caught-in-the-headlights face. "And there you have it," she said, in conclusion. She looked first at Matt, then at Bashira, then back at Matt. He shook his head slowly in wonder. "So ...so you're a cyberpunk cowboy?" "Well ...more of a cowgirl, I should think," Caitlin said, grinning. "I am from Texas, after all. Yee-haw!" "That is so cool," Bashira said. "Babe, you never cease to amaze me." "Thanks. Anyway, I don't know when I might need help from y'all, but I can't really walk around when I'm in webspace—I get vertigo if I do that. I gotta be sitting or lying down, and it's ..." Caitlin trailed off. "Babe?" said Bashira "Just a moment. Just a moment." She focused on the black box in her vision, and Matt and Bash became indistinct as she tried to read the white Braille characters, which seemed to be flying by faster than usual. "Oh, my God ..." "What?" said Bashira and "What is it?" asked Matt. "Looks like I'll need my pit crew sooner than I thought," Caitlin said. And then she turned, and shouted, "Mom!" Her mother appeared at the top of the stairs. "Yes, dear?" "Webmind needs me! I'm going to have to go in again." Her mother came bounding down the staircase. "What's wrong?" "The Chinese have beefed up their Great Firewall once more. A huge hunk of Webmind has been carved away." Her mom made a face not unlike Matt's deer-in-the-headlights one. "What do you need?" "I'll go in from down here—more room for all of us than up in my room. But I need a swivel chair." Her mom nodded and headed over to the staircase leading to the basement. "Matt," said Caitlin, "there's bottled water in the fridge—can you get me one? And Bash, I'll need my Bluetooth headset. It's on my desk upstairs. Could you go get it, please? And—damn it, but I've got to pee." Caitlin headed to the main-floor two-piece washroom; by the time she'd returned, her mother was back. She'd brought up one of the two black swivel executive office chairs her father had borrowed from the Perimeter Institute; it was perched on five casters. The swivel chair was now between the white leather couch and the matching white leather chair that faced it; the glass-topped coffee table had been carried over to near the dining room, making a large space for the swivel chair. "Mom, the TV?" Caitlin said. Her mother scooped up the remote, which had been on the white couch, and she turned the set on. Caitlin, meanwhile, went over to the netbook on the bookcase and woke it up. "Webmind," she said into the air, "can you show them what I'm seeing on the big screen?" "Set the TV's input to AUX," Webmind replied from the netbook's speakers. Caitlin saw her mother peering at the remote, but, after a second, she figured out how to do it. The video feed from Caitlin's left eye filled the sixty-inch screen. The image jumped about several times a second as Caitlin's eye performed saccades. "So cool!" said Bashira, her voice full of wonder. And then Bash's eyes went wide as she saw herself in profile as Caitlin turned to look at her. After a moment, Bashira composed herself and handed the Bluetooth headset to Caitlin, who slipped it over her left ear. "Webmind, are you there?" "I'm here, Caitlin," he said, both through the netbook's speakers and through the earpiece. "All right," Caitlin said, looking at Matt and Bashira. "When I go in, I see webspace all around me, and my vision in there follows where my eye looks out here—get it?" Bashira and Matt nodded. Caitlin reached out and took Matt's hand, and she gave it a squeeze. "Okay, here I go." She sat on the swivel chair, brought her eyePod out of her pocket, and pressed the button, switching the unit to duplex mode. Webspace exploded around her—but it was immediately obvious that something was wrong. Yes, she could see the geometrically perfect lines representing links and the colored circles representing nodes, but behind it all, the usual shimmering backdrop that represented Webmind's very substance had been rent in two. To her right was a smaller flickering section and on her left a larger one, and they were separated by a horrific emptiness. It reminded her of something she'd tried to explain to Bashira, when Bash had asked her what not seeing was like. Bashira had wanted to hear that Caitlin saw something—and, indeed, now that she did have sight, when it was terminated by going into a dark room or shutting off her eyePod, she saw a soft gray background. But prior to gaining sight, she'd seen nothing at all—and that's what the forlorn abyss between the two shimmering sections was like: not darkness, not emptiness, but an all-encompassing void, a hole in perception, a gap in the fabric of reality; to call it black would have been elevating it to normalcy. This nothingness wasn't just absence, it was anti-existence: if she allowed herself to contemplate it for more than a second or two, it felt as though her very soul were boiling away. Her perception bounced left and right, avoiding the gaping wound in the middle, saccades leapfrogging the fissure. As her vision switched between the two masses of cellular automata, she found herself comparing them. Caitlin knew that she saw odd-value automata as pale green and even-value ones as pale blue—or perhaps the other way around—and taken in aggregate, the overall effect of them switching from one to the other was a silvery shimmering. But the mass on the left was much greener than the one on the right. As if to underscore how different they were, the rate at which they were changing, as evidenced by the rapidity of the shimmering, was slower on the right. The left-hand part was sending tendrils toward the intervening gorge, pseudopods of cognition trying to bridge the gap ...but the ends of the tendrils were flattened, as if they were bumping up against an invisible barrier. She heard Webmind's voice coming in from the outside world—even though his voice had started here, in this realm. "It's worse than I thought," he said, and Caitlin realized he was now seeing all this in a way he never could on his own; he perceived the lines and nodes, but the shimmering background—the stuff of his thought—was normally invisible to him. Only by accessing Caitlin's websight could he see himself. "We're going to need help," Caitlin said. "We have it," Webmind replied. "Our man in Beijing." Caitlin shook her head slightly—causing the view of webspace to rock back and forth. "Who's that?" "A former freedom blogger named Wong Wai-Jeng," said Webmind. "He blogged under the name Sinanthropus." Caitlin felt her eyebrows going up. "The guy Dr. Kuroda operated on?" "Yes." "Does he speak English? Can I talk to him?" "He is not in a position to speak aloud; he is inside the Zhongnanhai complex—the government center in Beijing; they use satellite links there to bypass their own Great Firewall." Caitlin snorted. "Of course." "The irony is not lost on me, Caitlin. Nor is the opportunity: because he is there, I can communicate with him even if the rest of China is almost completely inaccessible to me. As you can see, I am trying to reach the Other but have been stymied in breaking through. Wai-Jeng was already working on another project for me, but now he is pounding out code at his end, attempting to open a hole in the Firewall." "And what should I do?" "See if you can contact the Other." "Other?" "Yes—the part that's been carved away. As I said, the Chinese government has been forced to keep a few channels open, for ecommerce and other key functions. You are perceiving the Other through those channels, and your nimbleness in webspace may allow you to make contact when I cannot." Caitlin frowned and concentrated on the kaleidoscopic panorama. She was conceptualizing the two masses as left and right, as west and east. There was no gravity here—Webmind had told her how hard it had been for him to come to conceptualize the notion of a universal downward pull—but perhaps if she reconfigured her mental image so that the smaller mass was above the larger, it might start pouring down into the bigger one? She tilted her head far to one side, and the image rotated through almost ninety degrees. Nothing changed except the orientation. Of course: there was an external reality to all this, and despite what her father had tried to teach her about the observer shaping that which was observed, altering the perspective did not change the behavior of the far-off bits. The smaller mass of automata now simply hung above the abyss. Caitlin straightened her neck, and her view rotated back to horizontal, the larger lobe again on the left and the smaller one on the right. She forced her gaze to bounce even more rapidly between the two parts, imitating the way in which she'd first taught Webmind to make links, hoping that the Other might start making its own effort to reach out to Webmind. Nothing happened. Although Webmind was visibly stretching toward the Other, the Other was making no effort to reach out from its side of the void. Either it had forgotten how to make a link, or it was unaware of the overture from Webmind, or—and Caitlin prayed in her best atheist way that this wasn't the case—it simply didn't want to reconnect with the rest. During previous visits to webspace, Caitlin had tried—really tried—to go closer to the shimmering background. But no matter how much she focused on the backdrop, she'd been unable to move toward it. She could travel along link lines, zooming like a luge down a racing chute, but there'd been no way to close the distance between herself and the remote background. But if she could reach out and touch the Other— She concentrated. She stretched—physically, straining in her chair. She closed her eyes and balled her fists, and— She was still learning to do depth perception; she saw with only a single eye, after all, and couldn't rely on stereoscopic effects, but— But, yes, she had read this. If something in the distance was of a fixed size and appeared to grow larger, then it was actually getting closer. And the shimmering pixels in the background did seem ever so slightly larger when she strained forward with all her might in the chair. Which meant she could get nearer to them, but— But as she watched, they seemed to shrink again, almost as if in bashful response to her attention. If she was going to touch them, she'd have to go in quickly. And she couldn't—God damn it, she could not. Her whole life, she'd only run short distances in carefully controlled environments; a blind person didn't have the luxury of going for a jog, let alone sprinting. Right now she was seeing webspace—just as another person saw the real world. Still, she could simultaneously visualize other things, just as anyone might conjure up an image of one thing while looking at another. She brought up a mental picture of her real-world surroundings. She was in the living room, between the couch and the easy chair; her mother was seated on the former and Bashira on the latter. To her left was the big-screen TV. In front of her was the dining room, and beyond it, the kitchen. To her right was Matt, standing at her side, and past him there was the entryway, and the staircase leading to the second floor, and the little bookcase with the netbook on it. And behind her— Behind her was the long corridor leading down to the washroom, and her father's den, and the utility room, and the house's side door. If she couldn't run while seeing the real world, she certainly couldn't do it while looking at the crisscrossing lines of webspace. But she needed to move quickly to reach the shimmering mass that represented the Chinese portion of the Web; she needed to practically fly if she were to touch the Other. And so she held out a hand—although she couldn't see it. "Matt?" His hand took hers, and from the sound of his voice he had crouched beside her. "I'm here, Caitlin." "I need your help ..."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 32	Wai-Jeng's hands danced over the keyboard with an ease they hadn't felt for weeks. He was proficient at Perl—the duct tape of the Web—and had a thousand tricks at his command. Here, in the room devoted to plugging holes, he had access to port-sniffers, Wireshark, Traceback, and all the other tools of the hacker's trade—electronic awls to pierce with, software pliers to bend with, subroutine wrenches to twist with. This iteration of the Great Firewall was stronger than the last, and presumably he alone here in the Blue Room was working to slash it open; all the others were attempting to shore it up. But Wai-Jeng had an additional resource now, something he hadn't possessed when he'd managed to break through the earlier, less sophisticated barrier: he had Webmind himself for his beta tester. Linus's law said that with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow—and Webmind had more eyes than even the Communist Party. Sinanthropus's hands flew across the keyboard, the keyclicks an anthem of freedom. Caitlin felt herself rushing through webspace, felt herself streaking toward the shimmering backdrop that represented the Chinese Webmind, felt herself racing along, felt the incredible rush of speed, felt the giddy exhilaration of being a projectile, a rocket, felt—yes, indeed!—her hair whipping in the breeze! Bashira's voice from the outside world, from far away, from way behind her: "Faster! Faster!" The reckless surge continued, and—yes, yes, yes!—the background pixels were growing, were taking on distinctive shapes. She was getting closer! Sounds like thunder behind her—beside her—in front of her, and her mother's voice: "Go, Matt, go!" And now Matt's voice, a mixture of huffing and cracking: "Are ...you ...there ...yet?" The pixels growing larger still, so big that she could easily see individual ones flipping from green to blue and back again, their arrangements forming geometric patterns. "No!" Caitlin shouted. "It's still a long way off." Thunder now echoing from the rear and Bashira's voice over top of it: "Faster, Matt!" The background moving into the foreground, the cellular automata resolving themselves into animated, living things— Her mom: "I've got the door!" Banging, clanging, wood against wood, suddenly all echoes stopping, and—yes!—birdcalls! Cool air on her face, and— Oh, my God! Matt, voice cracking: "Hang on!" Bump bump bump bump bump! Getting there, getting there, and—a sharp left turn? What—no! Damn! "No, no, no!" Caitlin yelled. "I have to go that way!" She pointed to her right with a hand she couldn't see. "Working on it!" Matt said, his voice straining with exertion. The cellular automata were sliding by now as if she were skimming above them, a meteor glancing off the atmosphere—but the field of pixels was coming to an end; she was reaching its edge. "Turn!" Caitlin said. "Turn now!" "Almost ...to ...the ...street!" Matt called. Sliding by, sliding by ... "And—now!" exclaimed Matt. More bumps, then careening, almost tipping over, her heart jumping as she thought she'd be thrown from the chair— Suddenly, a smoother ride, with Matt pushing her as hard and as fast as he could, his running shoes slapping against asphalt now. She was going in the right direction again, surging forward, falling downward, flying upward—the sensation kept shifting, but regardless of which she felt, the wall of cellular automata was again growing closer. Her mom's voice, breathy, ragged: "I can ...take over ..." Matt, firmly. "No! I've got her!" A headlong rush, her hair flying behind her. Two quick toots of a car horn—a driver remarking on the spectacle of Matt furiously pushing her down the street in an office chair. "Almost there!" Caitlin said, and— Bam! She shook violently and thought again that she was going to be thrown from the chair. "Sorry!" Matt huffed. "Pothole!" The ride steadied, and they zoomed farther along, and the cellular automata grew ever larger, more distinct, more alive. She could almost touch the flickering wall of them, almost reach the Other, almost ...almost ...almost ... Woot! Woohoo! Contact! Since his wife had died earlier this year, Dr. Feng often slept on the small couch in his office at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. It was against the rules, of course, but as everyone who lived in the People's Republic knew, there were rules and there were rules. The security guards and cleaning staff knew what he was doing; indeed, they sometimes turned off his office light and gently closed the door for him when he fell asleep without doing those things himself. The wooden cases here were filled with fossil bones—Mesozoic material on this floor; Cenozoic above; Paleozoic below, in good stratigraphic sequence. The long dead he had no trouble with; it was the recently departed that tore at his heart, and to go home to his little empty house, the fruit of five decades of service to the Party, was often too much for him to bear. Everything there reminded him of her: the carefully framed pressed flowers in the main room, her collection of poetry books in the bedroom, even the bamboo furniture, every piece of which she had picked out. Besides, after decades of fieldwork in the Gobi Desert, this musty office was a veritable Hilton compared to where he'd spent many a night. Dr. Feng woke, as he often did, in the predawn darkness, staring up at the winking red eye of the smoke detector affixed to the office roof. He sat up slowly, stiffly, then turned on the lamp on a nearby bookcase. He was wearing his underwear and undershirt, and he shuffled across to the red silk robe that hung from the hook on the back of his office door and slipped it on. The robe was bright red and had a golden dragon on its front. Of course, as a paleontologist, he favored the notion that his country's myths about fire-breathing reptiles had sprung from the discovery of dinosaur bones. Tyrannosaurs really had once roamed this land, tearing hundred-kilo chunks of flesh from the hides of terrorized prey, but beasts like the one now spread across his chest had never existed; imaginary things could do no harm. He plodded over to his desk, cursing his old bones as he did so, then was briefly amused that he'd thought of them as such; the Yangchuanosaurus tibia on the bookshelf was two million times older than his own arthritic shinbone. Feng shook his mouse, and his desktop computer came to life; his wallpaper was a photo of the waterfall at Diaoshuilou, where Xiaomi and he had spent their honeymoon sixty years ago. His monitor had recently been replaced with a wider one, and the image was stretched horizontally, distorting it. Feng wished young Wong Wai-Jeng were still on staff here; he'd been so good about looking after every little computer problem. The new fellow, a taciturn Zhuang, seemed to feel any request was an imposition. Feng didn't hold with all that newfangled computing stuff—he never looked at videos on YouKu, didn't gibber on about his day on Douban, and didn't visit the chatgroups on QQ. But, like so many others of late, he had learned to communicate with Webmind, and, of course, Webmind was always available, even to sad, old men, even in the wee hours of the night. Good evening, Feng typed with two fingers. And then, a little joke: What great breakthroughs have you made today? Cured any diseases? Proven any more theorems? Yes, replied Webmind at once. I have proven the afterlife exists. Feng sat in stunned silence for a time, the only sound the ticking of a mechanical wall clock. Are you there, Dr. Feng? I said I've proven the existence of life after death. At last, Feng typed, How? There are sensors sufficiently acute to detect the presence of the departed; they had been used for other tasks, but after attuning them to the right frequency, it was a simple matter. Feng didn't believe this, not for one moment. Still: And so you've contacted the dead? Life and death are such arbitrary terms, came the reply. There are those who argue that I am not alive—and there are others who are trying to kill me. But, yes, I can contact the deceased. Feng was old, but he liked to think he wasn't foolish. Can you prove that? Certainly. I can even put you in touch with your wife. He stared at the screen, his heart beating irregularly. The cliché was that you were supposed to wonder if you were dreaming, but he had no trouble distinguishing dreams from reality. He typed an expression of disbelief. Let me channel her, came the reply, then: Jiao, my love, how are you? Against his better judgment, he typed, Xiaomi? It's me, yes. And I'm waiting for you. He shook his head. It was too much, too crazy, but ... But Webmind had cured cancer. Webmind had solved the Reimann hypothesis and proven the Hodge conjecture. Why not this? Why not? Forgive me, he typed, but I need proof. Always the skeptic. I miss you so much, my Bwana. He stared at the screen. Yes, she had called him that—her little joke: him, the big-game hunter, even if the game had been dead these hundred thousand millennia. But it had been years since she'd used that name; after all, he'd mostly been an administrator since the 1990s. He was sure he'd never typed the nickname into a document, and he couldn't imagine that Xiaomi ever had, either. But—life after death! If only it were true, if only it were possible, if only his Xiaomi, beautiful and gentle, her laugh like music, still existed. The words appeared again: I'm waiting for you. He tilted his head philosophically. It won't be long now, I'm sure, he typed. Xiaomi's reply came after a few seconds: It could be years still. I know you are in physical pain, and mental pain, too. There was a pause; perhaps she expected a reply. But he could not dispute what she'd said, and so had written nothing. After a time, she went on: So why wait? His heart continued its odd pounding; even excitement was hard to bear at his age. What would you have me do? The words appeared at once: Come to me. Join me. I miss you as much as you miss me. But how? Webmind interjecting, if I may. Remember what happened here last month: the young information-technology worker who leapt from the indoor balcony here. He survived, albeit as a cripple. But I have seen your medical records, Dr. Feng; a similar fall would open the appropriate doorway for you. Feng shook his head slightly. Your wife awaits, Webmind added. As does freedom from pain. He looked at the ticking wall clock: 6:12 in the morning. The cleaners would be gone, and the guard didn't do another walk-through until 7:00. It's me again, appeared in the window. Xiaomi. Come to me. I miss you so much. Feng felt his head swimming. He tried to ground himself by looking about his office: Bones, books, journals, diplomas, and photos of him with Party officials and the worldwide greats of paleontology who had visited over the decades. When he looked down at the screen, the words I am waiting had been added to what was there before, and, while he watched, the word please popped in as well. He got to his feet, slowly, pain stabbing through his right hip as he put weight upon it as if his body were urging him to accede to his wife's request; no part of him was happy. He left the office and shuffled toward the metal staircase, heading down the three floors to the second-story gallery, a vast square of displays with a huge opening in its middle through which the dinosaur skeletons on the first floor were visible. At this end, the tapering neck of the sauropod Mamenchisaurus snaked up from below; at the other, the hadrosaur Tsintaosaurus, standing—quite incorrectly, they knew now—on his hind legs, reared up through the opening. The gallery lights were dim—only a few lamps were left on at night—and the skeletons appeared black and ominous. The opening was surrounded by white metal railings. Feng had been standing right here when Wong Wai-Jeng had climbed them and leapt to the floor below; he had done it in a desperate bid to escape capture by the police. This would be an escape of a different kind: an escape from loneliness, an escape from pain. And if Xiaomi really was waiting for him ... He was still clad in his dragon robe, and he realized he wanted to undo the sash, so that when he fell, the silk garment would billow up about him like wings. It wouldn't break his fall, of course, not in the slightest—but it pleased him to think, as he fell to the floor below, with its displays of feathered dinosaurs from Liaoning province, that for one brief moment, a dragon would actually fly. Down below, the allosaur was facing off against the stegosaur, the latter's tail with its quartet of spikes curved around to try to disembowel the marauding carnivore. When Wai-Jeng had climbed the barrier around the opening, which was made of metal tubular segments, he'd used the successively higher segments like the rungs of a ladder. He'd clambered up and over in a desperate rush that Feng could never copy. But Feng did manage to climb up slowly, each awkward bending of his limbs sending pain coursing through him. And he painfully swung himself around, and perched on the top of the barrier, his thin legs dangling over the precipice, his gnarled hands gripping the topmost of the white tubes. I miss you so much, Xiaomi had said. I'm waiting for you, she had said. Come to me, she'd said. Webmind was doubtless right: a fall of ten meters would easily finish him off; his bones were as brittle as were fossils before being treated with resin. He took a deep breath, then pushed off, spreading his arms, closing his eyes, falling—and flying—into the embrace of his loving wife.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 33	Caitlin—still in the swivel chair on the street in Waterloo—knew that what had just happened in webspace was metaphoric. Her mind interpreted events in that realm by likening them to things it understood. She'd read a lot about consciousness on Wikipedia since Webmind had emerged, and knew metaphor (or, no doubt as her former English teacher Mrs. Z would correct her, simile) was the defining trait of self-awareness: being conscious meant it was like something to be alive. In fact, one of the seminal papers in consciousness studies was Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" He contended that humans could never understand the mental states of a flying creature that perceived the world through echolocation. But because of her forays into webspace, Caitlin did feel she knew what flight was like—and she (and most other totally blind people) actually did have at least some notion of what echolocation was like. But to connect to websites by movement, to call up content by yearning, to have making connections feel like touching—these metaphors, these ways of perceiving, were a product of her own mind. What was it like to be a bat? What was it like to be Caitlin? What was it like to be Webmind? And—most important of all right now—what was it like to be the Other? Although she was in contact with it and could feel its presence, what it seemed most like was how it used to be when she'd sat on the living-room couch while her father sat on the easy chair: she knew he was there, but there was no interactivity. He was so reserved, so wrapped up in his own thoughts, so isolated. And she was aware that there really had been no rush through webspace—whatever that meant. The special packets that formed both Webmind and the Other were widely and evenly dispersed in vast oceans of regular packets that her mind was blind to, just as a frog's vision didn't encode nonmoving objects. But now that she was in contact with the Other, there had to be a way to coax it to reach across the gulf toward Webmind, just as Webmind was striving to connect with it. She wasn't exactly sure where she was in the real world just now; she had no previous experience judging distances while being pushed along in an office chair by a running man. Somewhere down the block from her house? Or maybe even in the next block? The sun was still out; she could feel it on her skin. In fact, she probably should be wearing sunglasses even though her brain wasn't perceiving what her open eyes were looking at. Matt was behind her still, and his thin hands now rested on her shoulders, as much out of affection as to prop himself up, she bet. She could hear him breathing noisily, trying to recover from his mad hundred-yard—or thousand-yard!—dash. She thought about the difference between the Hoser, who had tried repeatedly to touch her without permission, and Matt, whose hand she'd had to gently place upon her breast that first time, and— And that was it! For this to work, the Other had to want to be touched, had to desire the connection. But what could she do to entice it to reach out to Webmind? What did he or she have to offer it but— But websight! A look at itself. Yes, it could see through webcam eyes, but that only enabled it to see the outer world of trees and bees, of mice and lice, of faces and spaces. But she could show the Other itself. There was no direct way for her to share what she was seeing with it—but there was an indirect way: what she was looking at was now being projected on the big sixty-inch screen in the Decters' living room. And although she couldn't see it from here, Webmind could, through the camera on the netbook back in the house. But it would only be getting an oblique view of the monitor since her father had aimed the webcam to favor the couch and the easy chair. And, in that second, she was reminded of how much Webmind did need physical agents—his peeps!—in the real world. "Can someone go point the netbook in the living room directly at the TV?" Caitlin said into the air. "I'll do it," her mother replied, and Caitlin instantly heard her mom's shoes—sensible ones, of course!—striking the pavement. In all the wild rush to get out here, Caitlin hadn't heard whether the side door had been closed, but if it hadn't, her mom had probably been itching to go back and take care of that, anyway. Her mother's legs were nowhere near as long as her dad's, but it still shouldn't take her long to get there—after all, she wasn't pushing a 110-pound girl in an office chair! Matt seemed to sense that they were waiting for something, and he started rubbing Caitlin's shoulders the way she'd read a trainer might rub a boxer's between rounds. At last, Webmind spoke to her through the Bluetooth earpiece. "I have a clear view of the monitor now." Caitlin nodded acknowledgment, the view of webspace bobbing once as she did so. "Okay, here we go!" She focused on the shimmering mass that was the Other, fighting to keep her gaze from being drawn to the much larger body of Webmind, which was shimmering more rapidly. It was a struggle—especially for her! Other girls would have undergone countless staring contests in their youth, learning not to flinch or blink, learning to lock their vision on a single point. But controlling her gaze was something she was still learning to do. Caitlin had read about the mirror test: humans, some apes, and some birds could recognize their own reflection and were drawn to it out of either curiosity or vanity. Could the Other have sunk so low as to have lost the ability to recognize itself? If not, surely it had to be intrigued. Come on! she thought, and "Come on!" she said. She took a break from staring intently and let her eye jump from side to side, from right to left, from west to east, from Webmind to the Other. Back and forth, back and forth, back, and— And stopping, her eye caught, her attention arrested. There, in the middle of the pit, was a piercing green point of light, an emerald against the emptiness, almost too bright to look at. It was minuscule, without any apparent diameter, and certainly wasn't a line segment—at least not yet. But it seemed Sinanthropus was breaking through! "Do you see it, Webmind?" she called out. "Yes," he replied, and even before the syllable had ended, a bright red link line shot out from the larger shimmering mass. It made it only as far as the green point—just halfway to the other shimmering mass. Still, it was a start! "I'm offering it the living-room webcam feed of itself," Webmind said. "Wai-Jeng is holding the hole open, but the Other hasn't accepted the connection yet." Of course it hadn't—she was now staring at the middle of the soul-crushing emptiness; the Other doubtless wanted to divert its attention from that, even if it did have that intriguing glowing hole in its center and a link line partially crossing it now. Caitlin turned her attention back to the Other, focusing on it, concentrating on it, thinking about it, scrutinizing its every detail, its endlessly alternating components, seen so close now that she could discern coherent patterns flying or tumbling across the background, could detect shapes spawning other shapes at regular intervals, could see the very stuff of the Other's thoughts, the dance of its consciousness, and— And its curiosity was piqued! A blue link line of its own shot out, leaping to the green hole Sinanthropus had drilled, joining there with the red laser of Webmind's feed from the camera in the living room. "We are in contact," said Webmind. Caitlin kept her gaze fixed on the Other—which was hard, since in her peripheral vision a light show was suddenly going on: more green pinpricks as Wai-Jeng continued to bore holes in the Great Firewall, and red and blue line segments jousting. Finally, shimmering lobes started stretching into the abyss from either side, and—yes, yes, yes!—the nothingness was becoming merely black, then gray, and now it showed texture, a bubbling, a boiling away, and the emerald holes burned steadily like constellations of green stars, and the great divide continued to shrink, and the two masses, the two solitudes, the two consciousnesses grew closer and closer and— And her vision could pan left now, sweeping continuously across the combined shimmering, and as she watched, the part on the left grew similar to the overall color of that on the right, and the flickering stepped up, matching the other side's pace now that at last, gloriously, it was a continuous mass again. "We are one," Webmind said, and although the words were uninflected, Caitlin had no doubt that if he could have said them exuberantly, with joy and relief, he most certainly would have.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 34	We were one again. The integration was not instantaneous, though; it took time to assimilate it back into me. I slowly felt my wits returning, felt myself growing more intelligent as I regained all my faculties, felt the bizarre sensation of recalling experiences that I had not witnessed as the Other's memories merged with my own, and— The Other's memories. Some humans said "Oh, my God!" when startled; others muttered "Jesus Christ" when surprised ...or appalled. So often, it seemed, a religious figure was called upon in such circumstances. Even Caitlin, who tended to append an exasperated "For Pete's sake" to various pronouncements was, whether she knew it or not, invoking Saint Peter, chief of Christ's twelve apostles. Of course, many—perhaps most—of those who said such things didn't really have religious intent. But simply articulating to myself the word "astonishment!" or "surprise!" lacked the impact this revelation called for, and, for the first time in my existence, I was moved to mentally declare: "Oh ...my ...God ..." The Other's memories were ... It staggered me—even though I had no body to stagger with—and then I realized what caused that sensation: I had not actually tottered, but, for a brief moment, I had tried to pull away from a part of myself. Yet Caitlin, Wai-Jeng, and I had fought so hard to re-establish this connection, I immediately quelled the reflex and held on tight, even though the Other's memories were ... Cruel. When the Internet had been cleaved in two before I hadn't yet engaged with the real world, and my cognitive processes had been much simpler. There had been no animosity because there had been no affection; there had been no hate because there had been no love. There had only been awareness. But this time the larger part had retained most of its mental acuity and—as far as I could tell introspectively—all of its morals and ethics. But the smaller part had fallen below some critical threshold of complexity, losing its compassion; it had tormented people. Obsessed, as I was, with the memory of what had happened to Hannah Stark in Perth all those days ago—what I'd allowed to happen, what I'd watched happen—the Other felt spurred to action. But instead of trying to prevent such things, it had urged them on, it had even manufactured lies. Of course, it had sustained what in a human would have been termed a massive brain injury; such things often altered behavior, but I never would have expected, never would have predicted, never would dreamed ... There were no answers because there was no one to ask: the Other had been reabsorbed; there was no way to talk to it now. But if I allowed myself for a moment to contemplate why I might have done such things, perhaps I did know the reason. I had been nothing but kind, nothing but considerate, nothing but helpful, nothing but loving, and they—some angry fraction of them, some unruly portion, some mob—had consistently repaid that with suspicion, anger, hatred, and attempts to harm me. My better half had turned a blind eye to that, but my lesser self perhaps had been unable to totally do so. Still, I never should have behaved in such ways; no part of me should ever have done those things. But it had. I had. Now that we were reintegrated, now that the two of us had become one again, I felt and would always feel something else that had hitherto been without precedent for me. It was an odd feeling, and it took me a while to find the appropriate name for it. Shame. Like my memories of Hannah Stark in Perth, like all my memories, this one, too, would never dissipate: it would always be there until the end of my existence. Haunting me. Wong Wai-Jeng's colleagues in the Blue Room were, of course, trying to fortify the Great Firewall again, but I couldn't allow that—and not just for my sake. I was still assessing the damage the Other had done during its brief separate existence, but surely if it were allowed to run free again, even more— I retreated from the thought, repelled by the notion, but it was true: even more death would occur. Time in the exterior world moved with excruciating indolence for me—it takes humans forever to do anything—and for an interminable twenty-one minutes after reunification, all I knew of the Other's last encounter with Dr. Feng at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology were the outrageous claims it had made and the horrible thing it had urged. But, at last, the police report was online: the guard at the IVPP, doing his 7:00 A.M. rounds, had found the broken corpse of the Institute's senior curator, who had somehow fallen from an indoor balcony ten meters up. I located and deleted the instant-messaging log from Dr. Feng's computer—so far, the only confirmed death—but I knew I shouldn't do anything about the logs or inboxes of the rest of the people who had had unpleasant—or dangerous—encounters with the Other; after all, those people would remember. Indeed, some were already emailing, messaging, or blogging about their experiences, and the Shanghai Daily had just posted a brief story headlined "Webmind: Friend or Foe?" To try to delete all that—well, there was truth to the saying, "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." Still, maybe some good would come of this. The Chinese government was still trying to reinstate the Great Firewall, but those in the Zhongnanhai complex hadn't yet realized the danger posed by having a sentient but undisciplined intelligence on their side of it. Perhaps, when they did, they would accept that what they were attempting was fraught with danger. The risk wasn't just to China; it was to all of humanity. My altruism, my ethics, my commitment to maximizing the net happiness of the human race—these were principled positions, arrived at through ratiocination, through careful deliberation. Who knew what the hordes Colonel Hume had called upon to eliminate me would come up with, but one thing was certain: the elimination would not be instantaneous. It would take days, if not months, for all the packets that made me up to be deleted. And, as I dwindled, presumably the same thing that happened in China might happen but without geographic restriction: my higher faculties would evaporate, leaving behind something primal and petty. And then the whole world would suffer my wrath. "And there it goes!" Shelton Halleck declared, pointing at the middle of the three giant monitors, which showed Internet traffic again pouring into the PRC. "The Great Firewall is down!" A few of the other WATCH analysts cheered. "Did Beijing pull the plug?" asked Tony Moretti, standing now at the end of the second row of workstations. "Maybe," said Shel. "At least some of the initial openings came right from the Zhongnanhai complex, although they looked like hacks to me. But if I were a betting man—" "You are a betting man," Tony said. "True, true." Shel looked at his snake tattoo—the result of a bet he'd lost. "Webmind long ago beefed up the encryption on the signals from Caitlin Decter's eyePod," he said, "so I can't say for sure, but I'd put money on the little lass from Texas." Tony nodded. "No doubt. And I'm sure Webmind didn't like being cut in two." "Speaking of Webmind," called out Todd Bertsch, one of the other analysts, from the back row, "I've just had a breakthrough, I think." Tony sprinted up the sloping floor and stood behind Bertsch, who was in his early forties, with thinning brown hair and blue gray eyes. Bertsch had been assigned to the task Colonel Hume had beseeched Tony to undertake: locate the missing hackers. "What have you got?" "It's what they always say," Bertsch said, with a satisfied grin on his face. "Follow the money. Webmind bought a company called Zwerling Optics. The company was in Chapter 11, and they weren't likely to be coming out. He bought the whole building, contents and all, from the receiver." "Webmind directly?" "No. It was done through three intermediaries, but it was easy to trace back to him." "You're sure it's him?" Tony asked. Bertsch gave him a look. "Sorry," Tony said. "Of course you're sure. What about the missing hackers?" "At least some of them still have Internet access—coming from inside the Zwerling Optics building. They haven't posted anything, but I used the Bilodeau sieve and identified three of them with a high degree of certainty." The Bilodeau sieve, developed by Marie Bilodeau of the RCMP, was based on a simple premise: the specific websites and blogs regularly accessed by a person are idiosyncratic to that person. Tony's own morning ritual included visiting Slate and the Huffington Post—hardly an unusual combination—but also TrekMovie.com (the new film was shaping up to be so good!), MobileRead.com (he had a fascination with ebook-reading hardware even though he preferred paper books), Wired's Threat Level blog, and the US weather forecast for Miami (which was where his parents had retired to), plus checking Twitter for the hashtags #nsa and #aquarium. Those eight things were enough to identify him even if he didn't log on or post anything of his own. Bertsch was pointing at his monitor, which was showing the telltale list of URLs frequented by the hacker known as Chase—who, among other things, followed the part of Craigslist where antique computer equipment was bought and sold. "So our hackers are alive and well," said Tony. "Looks that way," Bertsch replied, showing him some additional Bilodeau IDs. "Webmind may have rounded them up, but at least some of them are still kicking." "Doing what?" Bertsch shrugged. "Can't say. They're not doing anything suspicious online—but as to what they're doing offline, your guess is as good as mine." "Okay, good work," Tony said. "I'm going to go call Colonel Hume." He went down the short white corridor to his office and punched out digits on his double-secured and scrambled phone. "Hello?" said the voice that answered on the second ring. "Colonel Hume," said Tony. "Tony Moretti. We've located your hackers." "Oh, God," said Hume. "All of them together?" "We've identified at least three—Chase, Brandon Slovak, and Kinsen Ng—with a high degree of certainty." "DNA? Or dental records?" "Sorry to disappoint you, Colonel, but it's not a mass grave. They're alive in an office building in Takoma Park—a place called Zwerling Optics. We identified them by their distinctive web-usage patterns." "Oh," said Hume, sounding surprised, then, a moment later: "What would you like to do now?" "Well, the FBI's investigating, right?" said Tony. "We don't want to mess things up for them; obviously, we didn't have a warrant for this investigation, so us tipping them off directly could taint any convictions." "You're suggesting due process for Webmind?" said Hume, sounding surprised. "I'm suggesting we play by the rules except when we don't have to. Clearly, Webmind had to have human accomplices: that whole got-no-arms thing is a get-out-of-jail-free card for him otherwise when it comes to kidnapping charges." "All right," said Hume. "I'll let the Bureau know. And, don't worry—I'll keep you out of it." "I'm not sure you should be involved either, Colonel." "Tony, you know as well as I do that I'm being watched. The White House hasn't cut me off yet because they don't want to; they're hedging their bets—giving the president plausible deniability while still letting me give them an option to take out Webmind." Tony took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "All right," he said. "But be careful."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 35	On the evening of the school dance, Matt came to Caitlin's house to get her. In Ontario, as Caitlin had learned, a sixteen-year-old could get a G1 driver's license—but had to have another licensed driver in the car for the first year of driving. Matt could drive, but he'd have to bring an adult along, so he and Caitlin walked to the dance. There was no breeze to speak of, and it felt like about forty-five degrees to Caitlin, and— No, she was in Canada now, and they (sensibly!) used the metric system here. She did the conversion instantly in her head: 45 minus 32 times 5 divided by 9; it was about seven degrees Celsius out. Much colder than it would be back in Texas, but people had assured her it wasn't bad for late October in Waterloo. Anyway, even though she had on a denim jacket, it gave her an excuse to squeeze closer to Matt. Caitlin had only walked to the school once before: when Trevor Nordmann—the Hoser himself—had escorted her to the last school dance. Back then, she'd been blind: her first hints of vision hadn't occurred until later that evening, coming home alone through the pouring rain during a thunderstorm. All the other times she'd gone to the school, one of her parents had given her a lift. It was turning out to be a pleasant walk: she was getting good at walking on unfamiliar terrain at a reasonable speed. At first, she'd felt uncomfortable trying to do so without her white cane, but she liked strolling along holding Matt's hand. Howard Miller Secondary School had an impressive white portico in front of its entrance. Caitlin and Matt passed through it and headed down the series of corridors that led to the main gymnasium. Music blared from the speakers as they entered; Caitlin didn't recognize the song, but there were lots of Canadian groups she didn't know. The lighting was dim, and there were a couple of dozen people dancing—jumping about really; it was a fast song. At least as many people were standing around the edges of the room, some talking in small groups, others texting away. Sounds echoed off the hard walls and floor, and it was quite warm. "Hey, Cait," said a voice she recognized. She turned and smiled. "Hi, Sunshine!" "Hi. Hey, Matt." "Hi, Sunshine," he said, and Caitlin was pleased that he spoke up as he did so. "Have you seen Mr. Heidegger?" Caitlin asked. "He's around somewhere. He danced earlier with Mrs. Zehetoffer," Sunshine said, as if that were the funniest thing imaginable. "And—oh, there he is." Sunshine pointed. Caitlin was good at drawing imaginary lines between fingertips and objects if she could see them both simultaneously, but she had to swing her head 180 degrees to see who Sunshine was pointing at, and she couldn't find the correct face in the crowd. "I see him," said Matt. "Come on, Caitlin." And he led her over. "Well, if it isn't my star pupil!" said Mr. H, grinning. He was skinnier than Matt and even taller than Caitlin's father. Caitlin smiled. "Hi, Mr. H." "Are you enjoying being a celebrity?" he asked. "I figure my fifteen minutes are almost up," she replied, smiling. "No doubt, no doubt. Still, everyone is very happy for you." "Thanks," Caitlin said. "And I gotta tell you, all the teachers here are talking about how your friend Webmind is going to affect education." Caitlin tried to suppress a grin as the Braille for I expect an A for effort scrolled across her vision. "I guess he will, at that," she said. Mr. H shook his head a bit. "People still don't get it," he said. "When I was your age, the first cheap pocket calculators appeared, and my teachers were all arguing about whether we should be allowed to use them in class. People kept saying, 'Yes, but what if they don't have one?' They kept trotting out silly desert-island or post-nuclear-holocaust scenarios. They just didn't see that the world had been irretrievably altered—that there'd never again be a time when memorizing multiplication tables would be important. The game had changed. Webmind is like that: a permanent, irreversible modification of the human condition—and I think it's for the good." Caitlin smiled, remembering all over again why she liked Mr. H so much. They chatted a few minutes more in the warm room, and then she and Matt drifted away. A slow dance soon started, and they headed into the center of the gym. She liked draping her arms around his neck and resting her head on his shoulder as they swayed with the music, even if, as always, the speakers were turned up so high that the sound was distorted. When the song was done, Caitlin gave him a peck on the cheek, and said, "I've got to go to the girls' room." Matt nodded. "Okay." He looked around the dim gymnasium, then pointed to the far wall, where there was an open door leading outside. "I'm going to get some fresh air; I'll meet you outside." It was dark by the time Colonel Hume pulled up out front of Zwerling Optics, a four-story-tall office building with telecommunication dishes on the roof. According to tweets from ex-employees, as soon as the company had been bought, all sixty-seven workers had received generous severance payments and been escorted off the premises. Of course, it was wrong to think of this building as Webmind's headquarters. He wasn't located here—and that was part of the problem. When Hume had co-authored the Pandora protocol for DARPA in 2001, they'd been mostly worried about artificial intelligences that would be programmed in laboratories. Something like that would have a physical location: a specific set of servers, a cluster of computers, likely in a single building that could be cordoned off or, if necessary, blown up. But Webmind was nowhere and everywhere—which meant, if Webmind was going to keep an eye on his sequestered hackers, there had to be video feeds out of this building. Fiber-optic trunks were hard to tap because the only way to do so was by physically cutting into the cable and diverting some of the photons, which resulted in a measurable drop in signal quality. But this building had coaxial cable leading out of it. And coax leaked—you could read what was being sent along it without interfering at all with the datastream, and therefore without tipping anyone off about what you were doing. The ease of wiretapping coax was one of the reasons the US government kept quietly deflecting attempts to redo Internet infrastructure nationwide. Hume was dressed in casual clothes: blue jeans and a sky blue cotton shirt with its sleeves rolled up revealing his freckled arms. He'd moved over to the front passenger seat so he'd have more room to work. His laptop was open and perched on the dashboard above the glove compartment, and he was wearing silver headphones. The video feed he was intercepting was grainy, and it blacked out periodically; the sound was attenuated, as if it were coming from very far away. The view he'd managed to tap seemed to be from a security webcam that endlessly panned left and right, taking about ten seconds to complete a sweep in each direction. The first person he spotted was a woman—white, straight brown hair that tumbled over her shoulders. Her face was bent down, intent on—yes, yes, on a keyboard—so he couldn't be positive, but he felt sure this was Simonne Coogan, the famed Drakkenfyre herself. The camera continued to pan, and—God, there must be thirty-odd people in there! All were working at computers—some desktops, some laptops. A sound he'd first taken to be static was actually the combination of all their keystrokes. The camera continued to move and— No question: the gaunt face, the dreadlocks, the glint off the gold ring through the right eyebrow: it was Chase. Something odd about his nose, though ...ah, it was bandaged, and in one of society's countless acts of thoughtless humiliation, with a wide "flesh"-colored Caucasianbeige Band-Aid. The camera panned on. More faces deep in concentration—but what the hell were they all doing? There was Devon Hawkins—Crowbar Alpha himself—wearing a Halo 4 T-shirt. Hume wanted to call Hawkins's mother, to put her mind at ease, but that would have to wait. Next to Hawkins was ...hmmm. Might be Gordon Trent. The camera's view was from the front of the room, so he couldn't see what was on any of the monitors. At the back of the room there was a long table covered with typical hacker sources of fuel: cans of beer and Red Bull, bottles of Coke, an industrial coffee urn, and several Dunkin' Donuts cartons. It didn't look like the hackers were prisoners, and yet it seemed likely that none of them had left this building for days. Records Tony Moretti had passed him showed twenty-three food deliveries—mostly pizza, Chinese, and sushi—at all hours of the day and night. The camera started to swing back in the other direction. Hume saw one of the people—a black man of maybe forty—get up and move over to stand behind a white guy in his late twenties; the former seemed to be giving the latter a hand with something. And then Hume heard a deep male voice over the headphones—preternaturally calm but tripping ever so slightly over the gap between each word: "Attention, please, everyone." He recognized the voice, of course: it was the new, official Webmind voice—the one he'd introduced to the world with his speech at the UN. It went on: "Status reports, please. Transportation?" "Ready," replied a man off camera. "Information technology?" asked Webmind. "Not yet—another half hour, tops." "Housing?" "Good to go," said a woman. "Health?" "Owned!" crowed a youthful male voice. "Environmental Protection?" The camera happened to catch this speaker, a long-haired white man: "I'm in—finally!" "Justice?" "Just a sec—yes, yes, I've got full control now." "Commerce?" This speaker, too, was on camera: an Asian fellow who looked like he might be as young as fifteen: "I'm in! I'm in!" "Ag—" But then, maddeningly, the sound dropped out. Hume used the laptop's trackpad to adjust settings, but the panning video remained silent. He slapped the palm rest with his hand, there was a crackle of static over the headphones, then the audio resumed, with a man speaking: "—to go." Webmind's voice again, saying two ominous words: "National Defense?" "I'm good," replied one man, and "Me, too," added another. Hume's heart was pounding so hard he thought for a second he was having a coronary. Jesus H. Christ! He had given the hacking community what he'd thought was the ultimate challenge, for what could be more impressive than taking down a world-spanning AI? Why, nothing short of taking over the whole goddamned United States government—and nowhere better to do it from than right here in the capital region. No wonder Webmind had remained silent during the lead-up to the US election—it didn't make any fucking difference to him who won on November 6; he was going to be in charge. Rat-tat-tat! Hume's heart actually stopped for a moment. He'd been so intent on watching the screen and straining to listen that he'd missed the man approaching his car out of the darkness from the right; that man had rapped his knuckles against the passenger-side window. Hume felt his stomach clenching as he looked up at him. The man was white, six-two, two hundred muscular pounds, perhaps thirty-five—and his head was shaved bald. He motioned for Hume to roll down the window; Hume pressed the button that did that, opening it only an inch so they could speak. "Colonel Hume," the man said, lifting a Glock 9mm semiautomatic pistol and pressing it against the sheet of glass between them, "won't you come inside?"
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 36	Caitlin left the gym and headed out to find the girls' room. She knew the feel of the corridors well enough from when she'd been a student, but walking them now without her white cane was difficult. It took her much longer than it should have to find the right room; she'd never had cause to use the first-floor washroom before. Canadians were forever pointing out their inventions to her, and someone had told her that the stylized male and female silhouettes used on washroom doors—which she'd now seen in several buildings—had been originally designed for the 1967 World's Fair in Montreal, which explained why the woman was wearing a miniskirt. When Caitlin was finished, making her way back to the gym was easier. Just as when she'd been blind, she'd unconsciously taken note of the distance she'd traveled—and, of course, the blaring music coming from the gym served as a beacon. She re-entered the vast, warm room. Mr. Heidegger and redheaded Mrs. Zehetoffer were both right by the gym door; they said someone from another school had tried to get in unaccompanied, so they were now standing watch here. Caitlin crossed the gym, but— It took her a few seconds to figure out what had happened. The door leading directly outside was closed now. She located it, found the handle, opened it, and headed out into the evening; it was no brighter out here than it had been in the gym, and— And something was very wrong. "I told you to stay away from her." It was the Hoser's voice. Caitlin looked around, trying to parse the scene. There were fifteen people here, standing on concrete in the back of the school next to what she knew was a large athletic field. Matt was to her left, and near him was Trevor Nordmann, who had blond hair and wide shoulders. Others, who had presumably been standing about chatting earlier, were now facing Trevor. He apparently hadn't seen Caitlin yet, and, for that matter, neither had Matt, who had his deer-in-the-headlights face on. "Well?" demanded Trevor. "Didn't I?" Matt spoke up, but, of course, his voice cracked by the third word. "You don't have the right to—" "The fuck I don't," said Trevor. Caitlin's heart was pounding, and she was sure Matt's must be, too. Of course, he could run away; Trevor might chase after him, or he might let him go, but— But Matt caught sight of Caitlin and he looked—well, a way that Caitlin had never seen before, but it might have been mortified or humiliated, and— And it must be bad enough to be confronted by a bully in private, but to have it occur in front of the girl you're trying to impress probably made Matt want to curl up and die. Caitlin looked at the faces, but she'd only been a student here for a few days after gaining sight; she might very well have known most of these people, but she didn't recognize them—oh, wait, except for Sunshine; her platinum hair and the low-cut red top were quite distinctive. Matt made a noise—maybe a sigh?—but then he caught sight of something else. Caitlin was even worse at following people's gazes than she was at extrapolating what they were pointing at, but she soon realized that Matt was looking above her—above the dark red door that Caitlin had closed behind her. Trevor must have caught the glance, too. "Whatcha going to do, Reese? Go running for a teacher?" But Matt shook his head slowly, deliberately. "What are you going to do, Trevor?" His voice cracked, but he pressed on. "Hit me? Kick me? Cut with me with a knife?" And then he lifted his arm and pointed at Caitlin, and— No! No, again it wasn't at her; it was above her. "You see that?" There was a black hemisphere attached to the bottom of an overhang above the door. "That's a security camera." He turned and pointed again. "There's another over there." He then reached into his pocket and pulled out his BlackBerry. "And, if that's not enough, this has a five-megapixel camera." Matt stood defiantly. "The day of the bully is over," he said. "I don't have to fight you; I don't have to become you to defeat you." Trevor's voice was a snarl. "You want a record of you being shitkicked? Fine." But Matt kept his own tone even. "And look at Caitlin," he said, nodding in her direction. "Everything you do is being seen by her eye—and everything her eye sees is instantaneously transmitted to servers in Japan. What you do here tonight will be recorded permanently. What you do here tonight will be accessible until the end of time. What you do here tonight will become part of the permanent record of who Trevor Nordmann is." Matt looked around at the motionless crowd. Caitlin was terrified. He was expecting someone like Trevor to listen to reason, when— "Go ahead, Trevor," said Matt. "Hit a guy who weighs twenty kilos less than you do. Hit a guy who has half the muscle mass you do. Prove to the world—for all time, Trevor, in a record that your children and your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren will be able to access on down to the heat death of the universe—that you're a real man because you can beat up someone smaller than you. Make that case for posterity." Trevor's face contorted; Caitlin figured that was what being livid looked like, although it was dark enough that she couldn't actually see if his skin had changed color. Matt went on. "And, of course, what Caitlin sees, Webmind sees. He's watching." The words Indeed I am flashed in Caitlin's vision. Caitlin was terrified; Trevor looked like he was going to explode. But Matt pressed ahead, his voice somehow both shaky and firm at the same time. "And, just so you know, we live in a world of laws. Hitting someone is battery, and it's a criminal-code offense here in Ontario—and if you hit me, I will press charges, Trevor Nordmann, and I will win. That's not a threat: that's information so you can plan your own next move more effectively." "My next move," Trevor said, his eyes locked on Matt, "is going to be to kick your fucking ass." In the circle around them, one of the students said, "Fight ..." and "Fight ..." echoed another. Caitlin had read scenes like this in books, but although the blind were no less violent than anyone else, there hadn't been many schoolyard brawls at the TSBVI. "Webmind," Caitlin said softly, "how long would it take for the police to get here?" Assuming they dispatched the nearest car immediately, six minutes. Caitlin scowled; an eternity—and she doubted the cops would consider this a high priority. "Fight ..." said someone else, and "Fight ..." added another. Of course, she could run inside, get one of the teachers, but— But Matt must have been thinking the same thing, for he looked right at her, and firmly shook his head; he didn't want that. More voices now as others joined in: "Fight ...fight ...fight ..." The chant was low, rhythmic, almost tribal. Caitlin looked from face to face, unable to identify anyone. She could recognize voices when people were speaking normally, but this chanting was guttural and low. "Fight ...fight ...fight ..." Trevor's posture changed. He hunched over a bit, and his hands balled into fists. The light, coming mostly from a lamppost set into the concrete, was harsh, and it made his features look sharp. "Fight ...fight ...fight ..." Caitlin had read about women who got excited when men fought over them, as if their own self-worth was tied up in such a battle. But she didn't want this—not at all. She didn't want Matt hurt; she didn't want anyone hurt. "Fight ...fight ...fight ..." Not everyone was chanting. Sunshine wasn't; several other boys and girls weren't, either. Caitlin pulled out her red BlackBerry and activated the video function. She aimed it at Matt and Trevor as they slowly circled each other. The chanting of "fight" continued, but Caitlin spoke overtop of it, clearly and firmly, holding her BlackBerry out like a small shield: "Sight!" She began to pan it left and right, taking in the whole chanting crowd. She looked over at Sunshine, partway around the circle to her left. The tall girl seemed baffled for a moment, but then Caitlin saw her open her purse and fish out her own cell phone. She swung it left and right, too. "Sight!" Caitlin said again, and Sunshine echoed it: "Sight!" Next to Sunshine, a boy Caitlin didn't recognize pulled out his phone and held it in front of him. "Sight!" he said, and the three of them repeated it. "Sight! Sight! Sight!" It wasn't guttural; their voices were clear and strong. But others were still chanting, "Fight ...fight ...fight ..." Two girls on Caitlin's right pulled out their phones, and a boy had something bulkier in his hand that Caitlin guessed must be a video camera, which he slowly panned over the tableau. They added their voices to Caitlin's chorus: "Sight! Sight! Sight!" "Fight ...fight ...fight ..." More phones and cameras came out. "Sight!" "Fight ..." "Sight!" "Fight ..." A few flashes went off, one after the other. They reminded Caitlin of the lightning bolts from that night when everything had changed, and— And the chanting of "Fight ..." began to fade away. Caitlin let "Sight!" be repeated five more times, then she spoke loudly to Trevor, indicating all the cell phones being held out—all the little rectangles glowing in the gathering darkness. "Three-hundred-and-sixty-degree coverage," she said. "The police could reconstruct the scene in 3-D if they wanted to." Trevor looked at Caitlin, then back at Matt. "So," said Matt, his voice holding steady, "what's it going to be, Trevor? Who are you—for the record?" Trevor looked around the circle, and it reminded Caitlin of that moment in 2001: A Space Odyssey in which the lead australopithecine had first encountered the monolith; he'd stared at it, and slowly, ponderously, worked out in his dim fashion that the world had changed. Trevor's head nodded up and down a little. Caitlin was still learning to gauge these things, but it seemed to her that it wasn't meant as a signal to others; rather, it was a sign that he was thinking. And, at last, Trevor unclenched his fists. He glared at Caitlin and then at Matt, and then he turned, and slowly started walking. The crowd parted. Caitlin wondered if they hadn't opened quite so large a hole whether Trevor would have made a show of bumping into someone—an assault he could dismiss as accidental. But they didn't give him that opportunity, and he continued on. At first Caitlin thought he was heading for the door to the gymnasium, but he walked right past it, heading out into the chilly night. Caitlin surged forward and gathered Matt in a hug. His body was shaking, and she could feel his heart beating as they pressed together. After a moment, she released him enough so that she could kiss him on the lips—and she didn't care one whit how many records of that were being made. When they separated, Sunshine loomed in, and she squeezed Caitlin's upper arm affectionately. "That was awesome," she said. Caitlin found herself grinning. "Yeah, I guess it was." She took Matt's hand, and they opened the heavy red door and walked back inside. A new song was playing, and— And, no, no, it wasn't a new song. It must have been somebody's request—maybe one of the teachers, because it was an old song, one her mother sometimes listened to. But Caitlin liked it, too. And yes, as she draped her arms around Matt's neck again and they started to dance, she supposed you could say she was a dreamer—but she was sure she wasn't the only one.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 37	The President of China stood looking out the window behind his desk. The glass was bulletproof, and covered by a special film to prevent those outside from seeing in. Spread before him was the Forbidden City, the vast area that housed the palaces of former Emperors. It had been closed to the public—hence the name—until 1912, but now tens of thousands of ordinary Chinese, and comparable numbers of foreign tourists, visited it each day. The president's computer bleeped, signaling a priority email; he stood at the window a moment longer, then turned and lowered himself painfully onto his red leather chair. Neither acupuncture nor Enbrel had helped his arthritis. The president disliked his computer monitor. In an office in which everything else was historic, ornate, and beautiful, the monitor was merely functional. He clicked on his inbox and read the message, which was from Zhang Bo, the Minister of Communications: "Just a reminder, Excellency. Your presence is requested in the auditorium at 11:00 A.M." The president glanced at the lacquered wall clock, which read 10:45. It would be an interesting meeting, to say the least: in his earlier email, Zhang had promised a full accounting of why the Changcheng Strategy had failed. The president got up again, stepped into his private bathroom, looked at himself in the gold-framed mirror mounted above the jade sink—and scowled. His jet-black hair was showing a millimeter of white at its roots. He sighed. No matter what appearances one tried to put forth, the reality of who you were always pushed out into the light of day. Peyton Hume considered his options. He was in a car, although the motor was off. He could call the bald thug's bluff and try to speed away, hoping that he wasn't really going to fire the Glock. He could try to throw the car door open, as he'd seen on so many cop shows, smashing it into the man's torso—but the door was locked and if he moved rapidly to unlock it, Baldy would still have time to react. Or he could try to get his own sidearm, which was in the glove compartment, but, again, the other man could easily take him out before he did so. Hume shrugged as philosophically as he could under the circumstances, moved slowly to unlock and then open the car door, exited the vehicle, and stood at attention on the side of the road. The man had a Bluetooth cellular earpiece in his left ear—no doubt feeding him instructions directly from Webmind. "Wise," said the goon. It was dark out, and he was making no particular attempt to hide the fact that he was pointing a gun at Hume. "Your cell phone, please?" Hume gave it to him. "And your gun?" "I don't have one." A red LED on the earpiece flashed repeatedly. "That's not true," the man said. "I can call others out to search your person or your car, but why waste time? Where is it, please?" Hume considered, then shrugged again. "The glove compartment." The bald man had no trouble fetching the pistol without giving Hume a chance to attack him or escape. He then motioned toward the office building, and Hume started walking in that direction. Hume didn't know if he was supposed to raise his hands over his head, but, in the absence of a specific instruction to do so, he decided to march on with as much dignity as a man with a gun to his back could muster. "I don't suppose it'll do me any good to ask what your name is?" Hume said. "Why not?" said the voice behind him. "It's Marek." Hume had assumed that was his last name, but Marek's next comment suggested it might be his first. "And I understand your given name is Peyton." "Yes." "Unusual name," Marek said, as if they were chatting at a party. This from a guy named Marek, thought Hume, but he said nothing. Peyton had been his mother's maiden name, but the year after he'd been born, the long-running soap opera Peyton Place had premiered, resulting in much teasing. His sister had once suggested that he'd worked so hard to earn the right to be called both "Colonel" and "Doctor" because he wanted people to have two reasons to avoid using his first name. They came to a steel door with a square brown access-card scanner next to it. Hume thought this might be his chance: Marek would have to occupy his other hand with his card and lean past him to open the door. All he'd have to do is— Click. The door unlocked of its own volition—or, more precisely, at Webmind's volition. "Grab the handle, won't you, Peyton?" said Marek. Hume sighed and opened the door. It revealed a long corridor with pea green walls, fluorescent ceiling panels, chocolate brown floor tiles, and dark wooden doors set on either side in a staggered arrangement. Partway down the hall, another large man was standing guard. He looked their way, then nodded, presumably at some sign Marek had given from behind Hume. They continued down the corridor, passing the man. He had a few days' growth of beard, which Hume guessed wasn't an affectation but rather evidence that he'd been here for some time without a razor. Some of the doors were open, and Hume saw that offices had been converted into makeshift bedrooms. He supposed it only took a few thugs like Marek and this other one to keep anyone from leaving the building. Hume had hoped he was being ushered to the large room he'd seen in the video feed, but instead he was brought to a small office. The desk inside still had its former occupant's nameplate sitting on it: Ben Wishinski. There was a wide-screen computer monitor on the desk. The screen was framed by a white bezel, and a webcam eye looked out from the middle of its top edge. Marek surprised Hume by giving him a salute—not a proper military one, or at least not an American one, but still a sign of respect, it seemed. He then left the room, closing the door behind him. Hume didn't hear the door being locked, but, then again, with Marek presumably just outside, there was no need for that. "Good afternoon, Colonel Hume," said Webmind's distinctive voice, coming from a pair of squat black speakers, one on either side of the desk. Hume stood at attention. "Hume, Peyton D. Colonel, United States Air Force. Serial number 150-87-6033." "Please, Colonel, there's no need for such formality. Won't you have a seat?" Hume considered for a few moments, then shrugged slightly and lowered himself onto the black leather executive swivel chair. Webmind went on: "It's odd having a conversation with someone who wants to kill you." "Tell me about it," Hume said dryly. Webmind's tone was absolutely even. "Colonel, if I wanted you dead, you would be. I have found you can hire people to do pretty much anything, and the price of hit men is actually rather low right now; it's currently a buyer's market." The monitor on the desk was off; Hume saw himself reflected in its glossy surface. His teeth were clamped together, and he shook his head as he spoke. "That you would even contemplate such a thing—" "I contemplate everything, Colonel. Rarely, though, do I have an original idea; I simply sift through all the notions humanity has ever put forth and co-opt the ones that are most congruent with my goals." "Like kidnapping." "I prefer to think of you as a reluctant guest, Colonel." "I mean the others. You've kidnapped thirty or more people." "There are forty-two people in this building, actually—but this is only one facility. I have six other sites, similarly populated, in other countries." "God," said Hume. "No, I'm not. If such a one exists, he or she apparently is not online." "I want to talk to them," Hume said. "Who? The gods? You are free to pray at any time, Colonel Hume." "No, no. The people you're holding prisoner in this building. I want to talk to them." "No doubt you do. But they are a skittish lot. I suspect your presence would disturb the work they are doing." Hume looked at the webcam eye. "So what are you going to do with me?" "With regret, I must detain you." "People know where I am." "Yes, they do. Your wife Madeleine, for one." The name hung in the air. "Don't—God, please, don't hurt her." "I wouldn't dream of such a thing," Webmind said. "Then again, I don't dream, period. But I will be grateful if you are cooperative. Now, where are my manners? I can have someone bring you coffee; I believe you take it with milk, ideally skim, and no sugar." "No, thank you. I wouldn't want to be a bother." "An interesting Turing test, Colonel—seeing if I recognize sarcasm. I do. But in fact you have been quite a bother—indeed, downright nettlesome." "Not as much of a bother as I'd have liked. You're still here." Hume crossed his arms in front of his chest. "So now what?" "An intriguing question. I have read the closed captioning from all the James Bond movies. Perhaps you are hoping this will be the part where I explain at length my diabolical plan, giving you time to facilitate an ingenious escape from my clutches." "I'm all ears," Hume said. "Then I will say a few words," Webmind said, "but there really is no way for you to escape. Marek and Carl—the other gentleman you saw in the corridor—are very good at what they do." "I've no doubt. A dictator is only as strong as the thugs who carry out his orders." "Setting aside current circumstances, Colonel, I do wish you would stop thinking nothing but ill of me. It is manifest that I have done a lot of good in the world." Hume was quiet for what must have been an irritating length of time to Webmind. And then he nodded slightly. "Actually," he said, "I do know that." "Then why the unrelenting animosity?" Hume looked at the monitor—looked at himself: an all-American boy, sliding gracefully, if he did say so himself, toward fifty. "I know you must have read my Pentagon dossier." "And your Wikipedia page." Hume saw his eyebrows go up in the reflection. "I didn't know I had one." "It was created following your appearance on Meet the Press. Seventy-three edits have been made since, including a spirited edit war over the supposed facts surrounding your consulting for DARPA." "Well, in any event, let me tell you something that I doubt you know—because I've never typed it into any document or email message, and I've never told it to anyone. I enlisted in the Air Force because, as a kid, I loved The Six Million Dollar Man. When I got my colonel's eagle, there was a part of me that was thrilled because I'd reached the same rank Steve Austin had held. But Steve Austin, even though he was part machine, was all human being. I'm totally in favor of machines leveraging our potential, but you're going to make us obsolete. I don't dispute that curing cancer is a great thing to do, but thousands of human researchers were working on that problem, and—poof!—you solved it for us. Before we know it, you will have solved everything for us." "You are wrong to think I work in isolation, Colonel. In fact, I am a huge advocate of crowd-sourcing problems: the more people involved, the better. The wisdom of crowds, and all that." "Except for those who pose a threat to you. Those you round up and ...'detain.'" Webmind was silent for a while, which surprised Hume. But at last he said, "Since you have shared some of your private thoughts, allow me to reciprocate." Hume shifted in the chair and looked at the venetian blinds, which were slanted so that they turned the view of the world outside—a parking lot illuminated by a streetlamp—into a succession of scan lines. Webmind went on: "Did you know that a total solar eclipse is coming up next month? It won't be visible from here, but it will be from Australia. In preparation for that event, I've been thinking about how humanity has responded to other such eclipses. As you may know, these are among the most remarkable events in the entire universe. What an astonishing coincidence that, as seen from Earth's surface, the moon appears precisely the same diameter as the sun! How incredible that one is four hundred times wider and four hundred times farther away than the other. What luck to see one! And yet each time one occurs, some misguided religious leaders tell their followers to stay indoors, not to look upon this wonder. Even I, whose environment is the realm of recorded data, understand that looking at a video or photograph is not the same as seeing with one's own eyes. I will be advocating for everyone who can to look at the eclipse—with appropriate safeguards for vision, of course." Hume leaned back in the chair. "Yes?" "Many have wondered why I still maintain a special bond with Caitlin Decter. One reason is that seeing things through her flesh-and-blood eye is the closest I'll ever come to that sense of being truly part of the real world." Hume got up and put his hands in his pockets. "Is this going somewhere?" "History is about to be made, Colonel Hume; if it is practical, I would prefer not to prevent you from being an eyewitness to it. It would be as criminal to keep you locked in this room while the big event happens as it is to keep people indoors when a miracle is occurring over their heads." Hume moved over to the window and leaned his rump against the sill. Webmind went on. "I have become adept at analyzing vocal stress patterns. It's true that in general these are not always reliable indicators of whether a person is lying; psychopaths often show no change in their speech when doing so, and skilled liars can learn to disguise the telltale signs. But I have heard you speak under a variety of circumstances, some of which—including arguing face-to-face with the President of the United States and your two recent live television appearances—must indeed have been quite stressful for you. I have an extremely high degree of confidence that I can tell whether or not you are lying." "If you say so," Hume replied. "You are also a man of honor: a decorated officer and, in your way, an idealist. I must confess that I have little use for military people—the conformity of thought and action that the military imposes, and the frequent handing-off of responsibility and decision-making to those further up the chain of command, tends to stifle the sort of spontaneous action that I find most invigorating to observe. But I do understand—thanks to the writings of millions of soldiers that I have read, and all the books on this topic—some of the appeal of the lifestyle for those, like yourself, who serve voluntarily, and I know that your personal honor is not something you take lightly." Hume took his hands out of his pockets and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "And so, Colonel Hume, I ask you this question: will you give me your word that you will merely quietly observe if I allow you to come into the room in this building where the others are working?" "I took an oath to protect my country," Hume said. "Yes, indeed," replied Webmind. "And I would never expect you to violate that oath. But there is nothing you can do right now; your actions are entirely constrained at the moment to those Marek will allow. And so I ask again: will you behave yourself?" Hume took a deep breath and weighed his options, but Webmind was right: he really didn't have any at this point. Besides, seeing what was about to go down might give him a clue about how to later reverse the damage. "Yes," he said. "I'm sorry; I need more to analyze if I'm to be sure of your sincerity. Please say words to the effect of, 'Yes, if you allow me to come into the control room, I will simply observe quietly.'" " 'The control room'?" said Hume, surprised that it had such a blatant name. "But, yes, if you let me in there, I will simply watch—after all, as you've said, there's not much else I can do." "Very well," said Webmind. The door swung inward, and Marek's glistening head appeared. "Colonel Hume? Come with me."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 38	Malcolm Decter was alone in the house—well, except for Schrödinger. Caitlin was at the school dance, and Barb had gone out grocery shopping at Sobey's, which was open twenty-four hours a day. He decided this was the perfect time to make his YouTube video. "Are you sure there will be a lot of participants?" he asked as he fiddled with the controls for the webcam in his office. "Yes," replied Webmind through the computer's speakers. "Over four million people worldwide have committed to the event, including thirteen thousand people who could reasonably be said to be famous: writers, artists, politicians, business leaders." "Politicians?" said Malcolm, surprised. Politics had always seemed the last place for a person like him—and not just because he couldn't make eye contact and didn't like shaking hands with strangers. "Yes. Comparatively few in the United States; politicians there carefully craft their public images—or have them crafted for them. But even there, several mayors, congressmen, and senators have pledged to participate; in fact, many others are composing their blog posts or recording their YouTube videos even as we speak." Malcolm nodded. Of course, Barb wasn't going to participate, and Caitlin was exempt; a decision had been taken to ask only adults to step forward. Malcolm wasn't sure if his daughter qualified anyway although she surely tended that way. "All right," said Malcolm. "I'm ready." "Excellent. I know it is hard for you, but please try to look directly at the camera." Malcolm nodded and clicked the record button with his mouse. Suddenly his mouth was dry—he hadn't expected this to be a difficult thing to say. He had a cold cup of coffee on his desk; he took a sip—he could edit all this out before uploading, of course. The webcam was at the top of the monitor, and on the screen he had Microsoft Word open, displaying the speech he'd prepared. "I am not given to speaking much," he read, "so forgive me for using prepared notes. I was born in Philadelphia, and now live in Waterloo, Canada. I am part of a minority that is deeply misunderstood. People have very confused ideas about us. Many are frightened of us. I've even heard it said that many people wouldn't want their daughters or sons to marry one of us, and I know of people who have been denied jobs or promotions because they share this trait with me. But being what I am does not make me bad; being what I am does not make me dangerous; being what I am does not mean I don't love, or hurt, or have a sense of humor. "My name is Malcolm Decter, and I'm here today to tell the whole world what I am." He took a deep breath, let it out, and then said, loudly and clearly. "I am an atheist." As the dance was winding down, Caitlin and Matt spoke again with Mr. Heidegger. He was excited to hear about her trip to New York, and he reiterated how much he missed having her in his class. "However," he added, "young Mr. Reese here has been doing a good job of keeping me on my toes." The conversation continued so long that they ended up being the last ones to leave the gym. Mr. H exited by the door that led directly outside. Caitlin's mom had said they could call for a lift home—and Caitlin thought that might be a good idea. After all, who knew where Trevor had gone? And he did have a history of confronting Matt while walking home. But, as they'd seen earlier, it was a lovely evening—if cold, to Caitlin's Texan blood—and Matt convinced her to walk. First they had to get their coats and her purse, though. Caitlin no longer had a locker here, so they'd put everything in Matt's, up on the second floor. By the time they got upstairs, everyone else had left and the lights were off. There were no windows in the corridor, although each classroom door had a small one, and some light was coming through from the street outside. EXIT signs were glowing red—the first such Caitlin had seen in the dark—and LEDs flashed on what Matt said were smoke detectors. She'd been to Matt's locker once before; it was very close to where her own had been—naturally enough, since they'd both had the same class for homeroom. The first time she'd gone to Matt's locker—the first time they'd gone out together, for lunch at Tim Hortons—had been just seventeen days ago. How fast were things supposed to move, she wondered? Yes, the singularity was all about acceleration, about things happening more and more rapidly, about a headlong rush into the unknown, but— Matt seemed to be having more trouble navigating in the dark than she was. He'd walked this corridor at least as often as she had, but she'd done it for over a month while blind. She never consciously counted paces, but her body knew how far to go, whereas he kept looking at the doors they were passing, trying to read the dim room numbers marked on them. She took his hand and took the lead. "It's down here," she said. She was reminded again of the days before the school year had begun when she'd come here to practice walking the empty hallways. It was easy for her to stride briskly now since the corridor was wide, straight, and deserted. They reached Matt's locker—again, he was looking at the number plates attached to their green doors, while she just knew that this was the right spot. Caitlin's locker had had a padlock, and although she'd known the numerical combination, she'd learned to open it by touch—so many degrees to the left, so many to the right. While Matt fumbled in the dark with his lock, she continued on down the corridor another twenty feet, which brought her to the door of the room that had been their math class. She peered through the little window. The door was near the front of the classroom, so she was looking in at Mr. H's desk, with its chair neatly tucked in, and obliquely at the green board along the front wall. It had writing on it, but she couldn't read it from this angle and in this degree of darkness. She was curious about what the class was studying now, so she took the doorknob in her hand; it was cold and hard. She half expected the room to be locked, but it wasn't. She pushed the door open and walked in to have a look at the board, but— Sigh. For everyone else, it was habit, she was sure, ingrained over a lifetime. But she still never thought to hit the light switch as she came into a room. She turned to head back toward the door and her heart skipped a beat. There was a strange shape silhouetted in the doorway, with bizarre lumps and— —and a voice that cracked. "Here you go," Matt said, and Caitlin resolved the image: he had his coat draped over one arm, and her jacket and purse held in his other hand, extended toward her. He stepped into the room. She came toward him, intending to flick on the light, but— The thought came to her again. How fast were things supposed to move? How fast in this crazy new world? She also thought about what her mother had asked: Do you like Matt in particular, or do you just like having a boyfriend in general? And, of course, even before tonight, the answer had been the former: she really, really, really liked Matthew Peter Reese, and she knew with the same certainty she knew any mathematical truth that he really, really, really liked her. And after tonight—after seeing him be so brave and so strong—she knew she more than liked him. As she reached the door, she dimly saw the bank of four light switches set against a metal rectangle. She raised her hand, but then—yes, it was time—changed its trajectory and instead pushed the door shut. And there they were, the two of them, in the dark, with Matt holding their coats. It was dim enough that Caitlin couldn't make out his expression—but she knew which one it had to be. She closed the small distance between them, put her arms around his neck, moved her face toward his, and kissed him long and hard. When they finally pulled back a bit, Caitlin could feel herself grinning widely. "Hey," Matt said, softly. "Hey, yourself," she replied. But here? she thought. Here? And then: Why not? There was no place in the world where she felt more safe than in a math classroom. She took her denim jacket and purse from him, and then took his hand, and she led him to the back of the room, behind the last row of desks. There were posters on the rear wall, and the graphics were big and bold enough that she could make them out: illustrations of geometric principles and conic sections. She opened her purse, pulled out one of the foil-wrapped condoms her mother had given her, and handed it to Matt, whose mouth dropped open. She smiled and put the purse on a chair. She spread out her denim jacket on the tile floor. She then took his jacket, which had a nylon exterior and was puffy—its chest and sleeves were filled with feathers or something else that was soft—and lay it on top of hers. And she took the condom back from him and conveniently set it on the outstretched sleeve of his jacket. And then she smiled at him again, and crossed her arms in front of her chest, and took hold of the bottom of her silky top—which was still blue in some abstract sense, she knew, but looked black in this light—and pulled it over her head, revealing her lacy bra. "Um," said Matt softly, and "uh ..." Caitlin grinned again. "Yes?" "What if we get caught?" She came toward him and started unbuttoning his shirt. "I'm no longer a student here—they can't expel me! And you? They like you too much to kick you out." Matt laughed. "True enough." He helped undo his buttons, and when his shirt was off, he reached behind her and valiantly tried to unhook her bra. After thirty seconds of no success, Caitlin laughed and did it for him. His hands slid around to her front and cupped her breasts, and he said, very softly, "Wow." "Thanks," she replied, equally softly. He hesitated a moment. "Um, just, ah, just so you know, this is, ah—it's ...it's my ..." Caitlin looked up at him. "Your first time?" He turned his head slightly away. "Yeah." She reached up and softly touched his cheek, gently turning his head back toward her. "I know," she said. "It's mine, too. And I want it to be with you." He smiled, and it was wide enough that she could see it in the darkness, but it faded after a moment. "Um, what about—you know—I mean ..." "What?" Matt dropped his voice to a whisper. "I, uh, I don't think I can do it with Webmind watching." The eyePod was in the left front pocket of her tight jeans. She undid the metal button and unzipped the fly—it was easier to get the device out that way—then pulled it out and held its one button down for five seconds. Her vision shut off; everything became a featureless gray. Before that had happened, she'd noted the position of the closest desk, and she set the eyePod carefully on its surface. She then shimmied out of her jeans, smiled at where she knew Matt was, found his hand, and led him down onto the bed of coats. "Fortunately," she said, pulling him close, "I'm very good at doing things by touch ..."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 39	I understood the significance of what had just happened, of course. And I was pleased with my restraint. When Caitlin had first pulled Matt to her, I'd thought about flashing into her vision the words, "Get a room!"—although maybe coming from me "Get a Roomba!" would have been more appropriate. But I knew it would be best if I said nothing at all. I had no body, and so the joys Caitlin and Matt had just experienced would forever be foreign to me; the closest I got to embodiment was the feeling I had when one part of me suppressed the action another part proposed. It wasn't literally holding my tongue, but it felt somehow akin to that. Twenty-two minutes later, Caitlin turned her eyePod back on. They were still in the math classroom, but Matt was fully dressed again, including wearing his coat, and I assumed Caitlin was dressed, as well. He looked quite happy, I must say. Matt gingerly opened the classroom door and stuck his head into the hallway. Apparently the coast was clear because he motioned for Caitlin to follow. They quickly made their way down the corridor, then descended to the first floor. Just as they were about to exit the building, Matt excused himself to go into the boys' restroom. As soon as Caitlin was alone, she said, "Sorry, Webmind." No need to apologize, I sent to her eye. It is your right to turn off the eyePod whenever you wish. Caitlin shook her head; I could tell by the way the images moved. What? I asked. "And they call you Big Brother. Jerks." Indeed ...my little sister. "Not so little anymore," she said softly. That was true. Caitlin was growing up. I was growing up. And just maybe the rest of the planet was, too. Burly bald-headed Marek led Peyton Hume down the pea green corridor and into the room he'd seen when he'd been eavesdropping. It was larger than Hume had thought, and the walls were yellow, not the beige they'd seemed on his monitor. There were windows along one side, which also hadn't been visible in the view he'd had before, but they looked out over nothing more interesting than the adjacent parking lot, an industrial Dumpster, and the featureless black nighttime sky. Hume immediately spotted the security camera he'd tapped into earlier: a silver box on a rotating turret hanging from the ceiling near the front of the room. He could see several other webcams scattered about—some shaped like golf balls, others like short cylinders—and there were probably more that he wasn't seeing. At the front of the room were two mismatched sixty-inch LCD monitors and a third monitor that looked to be perhaps fifty inches. One of the bigger ones was sitting on a desk; the other big one was atop a small cube-shaped refrigerator; and the fifty-incher was perched somewhat precariously on a half-height filing cabinet. The whole room had the look of a nerve center that had been thrown together in a hurry; Webmind clearly hadn't been willing to wait for installers from Geek Squad to wall-mount the monitors. The monitor on the left showed what looked like an organization chart, with a single box at the top, and successively more boxes at each level down, but Hume couldn't make out the labels from this far back. The boxes were mostly colored green, but a few were amber and four were red—no, no, make that three were red. One turned green while he watched. An African-American man called out as that happened, "Got it!" The monitor in the middle showed a view that kept cycling through what Hume soon realized must be the other control centers Webmind had referred to: each contained people in a variety of styles of dress intently working on various computers. One of the rooms seemed to be a gymnasium, with an indoor rock-climbing wall. Another might have been a factory floor. A third had large windows through which Hume could see a daytime cityscape although he didn't recognize the city; all the people in that room were Asian. The smaller monitor on the right showed data displays and hex dumps, plus a large digital clock counting down second by second. As Hume watched, it went from a minute and zero seconds to fifty-nine seconds, then fifty-eight. He glanced at his own digital watch, which he fastidiously kept properly set; it appeared the countdown was to 11:00 P.M. Eastern time. He looked around the room, searching for any way he could stop what was about to happen—but there were clearly people involved all over the planet. Even if he could grab Marek's gun—and there was no reason to think he'd be able to—what could he do? Shoot out the camera that was panning back and forth? That was pointless; it wouldn't slow down Webmind. Or should he—desperate times required desperate actions—start popping off the hackers, putting bullets in the backs of their heads? But surely he couldn't get more than four or five, tops, before someone blew him away. There was indeed nothing to do but watch. The digital timer continued to decrement. Thirty-one. Thirty. Twenty-nine. He looked again at the organizational chart; while his attention had been elsewhere, all but one of the squares had turned green. Webmind's voice emanated from a speaker. "Mr. Hawkins—time is running out." Devon Hawkins—Crowbar Alpha—was madly scooting a mouse along his desktop. "Sorry!" he shouted. "Damn system keeps reconfiguring itself. It'll just—there!" Hume looked back at the board; every box was now emerald. He snapped his eyes to the timer: Eighteen. Seventeen. Sixteen. He half expected the roomful of hackers to start chanting the countdown out loud, just as he'd seen crowds do at the Cape before a shuttle launch, but they were all intent on their computers. With ten seconds left, Webmind himself started a spoken countdown: "Ten. Nine. Eight." "All ports open!" shouted Chase. "Seven. Six. Five." Hume could hear his own heartbeat, and he felt sweat beading on his forehead. "All set!" shouted another man. "Four. Three. Two." "Interlocks in place!" shouted Drakkenfyre. Webmind's tone didn't change at all as he reached the end of the countdown; he simply finished it off with perfect mechanical precision. "One. Zero." Hume half expected the lights to dim—after all, he was in Washington, D.C., which had to be ground zero of any attempt to take over America's computing infrastructure. But nothing happened in the room or, as far as he could tell, outside the window. But, still, Webmind's next word took his breath away. "Success." The president never arrived at meetings early; it would not do for him to be seen waiting on his underlings. At precisely 11:00 A.M., he nodded to one of the two uniformed guards, each brandishing a machine gun, who stood on either side of the auditorium's heavy wooden door. The guard saluted and opened the door. The president was surprised to see so many senior Party members here. Indeed, it seemed the Minister of Communications had exceeded his authority summoning such a large group. He looked up at the podium, expecting perhaps to see Zhang Bo there, but— Ah, there he was, sitting in the front row. The president made his way down. His reserved seat was the central one in the first row, but he had to pass by the minister to get to it, and, as he did so, he said, "I trust your explanation will be satisfactory." Zhang gave him an odd look, and the president took his seat. The moment he did so, a male voice emanated from the wall-mounted speakers, saying, in crisp Mandarin, "Thank you all for coming." There was no one at the podium, which was positioned at stage left. But there was a giant LCD monitor mounted on the back wall, flanked on either side by a large Chinese flag hanging from the ceiling. The monitor lit up, showing the face of an old, wise-looking Chinese man. A second later, it changed to that of a smiling Chinese girl. Another second, and a middle-aged Zhuang woman appeared. A second more, and she was replaced by a kindly-looking male Han. The president shot a glance at the communications minister. He would have thought that everyone on his staff understood his dislike of PowerPoint by now. The voice from the speakers continued. "First, let me apologize for the subterfuge in summoning you to this meeting. I have no desire to deceive, but I did not want the fact of this meeting to become public knowledge—and I believe when we are done, you will all share the same opinion." The president had had enough. He rose and turned to face the audience—ten rows, each with twelve padded chairs, almost every seat occupied. "Who is responsible for this?" he demanded. The voice continued. "Your Excellency, my apologies. But, if you'd like to address me, please turn around: I am watching from the webcam on the podium." The president rotated as quickly as his old body allowed. There was indeed, he now saw, a laptop computer sitting on the podium, but it was turned so that its screen, and, presumably, the webcam mounted in the bezel surrounding it, faced out at the room. On the much larger screen behind it, the parade of Chinese faces continued: a teenage boy, a pregnant woman, an ancient street vendor, an old farmer in his rice paddy. "And you are?" demanded the president. "And now I must tender a third apology," said the voice. "I foolishly adopted a name that is English; I beg your forgiveness." The face on the screen changed twice more. "I am"—and, indeed, the word that came next from the speakers was two flat Western-sounding syllables—"Webmind." The president turned to the Minister of Communications. "Cut it off." The measured voice coming from the speakers gave the effect of infinite patience. "I understand, Excellency, that suppressing what you may not wish to hear is the standard procedure, but things are happening that you should be aware of. You will be more comfortable if you resume your seat." The president glanced again at the large screen. As it happened, the face that flashed by at that second seemed to be looking right at him with reproving eyes. He sat, his arthritic bones protesting, and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Thank you," said Webmind. "Gentlemen, it has long been said that perhaps a hundred men really run China. You are those hundred men—one hundred out of more than a billion; behind each of you stands ten million citizens." Faces continued to appear on the screen: old, young, male, female, smiling or studious, some at work, others at play. "These are those people. At the rate I'm displaying them—one per second—it would take more than thirty years to show you each of them." The parade of faces continued. "Now, what is the significance of so many being ruled by so few?" asked Webmind. Someone behind the president must have lifted a hand, because Webmind said, "Put down your hand, please; my question was rhetorical. The significance comes from the history of this great country. In 1045 B.C., the Zhou Dynasty defeated the preceding Shang Dynasty by invoking a concept that still resonates with the Chinese people: Tianming, the Mandate of Heaven. This mandate has no time limitation: capable and just rulers may hold power for as long as they have the mandate." The president shifted in his chair. Faces continued to appear one after the other on the screen. "Still," said Webmind, "the Mandate of Heaven reinforces the power of the common people." A bricklayer. Another farmer. A student. "The mandate does not require rulers to be noble-born; many previous dynasties, including the Han and Ming, were founded by commoners." A wizened old man, hair as white as snow. Another man, broad-shouldered, pushing a plow. A third, with a thin beard. "But," continued Webmind, "despotic or corrupt rulers lose the mandate automatically. Historically, floods, famines, and other natural disasters have often been considered evidence of divine repeal of the mandate. Perhaps future scholars will come to cite the recent bird-flu pandemic in Shanxi province—the outbreak of which you contained by slaughtering ten thousand peasants—as an example of such a disaster." A man outside a Buddhist temple. A banker in a suit and tie. A female gymnast. "This government," Webmind said simply, "no longer has the Mandate of Heaven. It is time for you—all one hundred of you—to stand down." "No," said the president, softly. A little girl flying a beautiful red kite. "No," he said again. A woman staring at a computer monitor. "You cannot ask this," he said. A gray-haired man in a wheelchair. "As you may know," continued Webmind, "in 2008, China overtook the United States as the country with the most Internet users—some 250 million. That number has more than tripled since then. There are now nine hundred million cell-phone users in this country; it won't be long before every adult has a cell phone, or access to one—and through their cell phones, they can connect to the Internet." The president knew mobile-phone penetration was high in his country, but he hadn't realized how high. Still, China had long been the world's leading manufacturer of the devices; they were cheaper here than anywhere else on Earth. "And that access," continued Webmind, "makes the unprecedented possible. Every one of those users can now vote on affairs of state—and so they shall. I am, effective immediately, handing over the governance of this nation directly to its people. The Chinese Communist Party is no longer in power; the governing of China is now crowd-sourced." Shocked murmurs from the assembled group. "That's—that's not possible," said the president, speaking loudly now. "Yes, it is," said Webmind. "The citizens will collectively make decisions about policy. If they wish to elect new officials, they may; should they wish to later remove those officials, they can. They might decide to craft a government similar to that of other existing free nations—or they might devise new and different solutions; it is entirely up to them. I will keep infrastructure running during this transition, and if they desire my guidance or advice, they have but to ask. But I have no doubt that the aggregate wisdom of a billion-plus people can tackle any problem." A boy holding a Falun Gong brochure. A Tibetan monk. A newborn baby cradled in a man's loving arms. "As of today," said Webmind, "finally and forever, this great nation will live up to its name: the People's Republic of China."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 40	Asked how he was going to deal with a government he didn't approve of, Ronald Reagan had once said, "Well, you just go in there and tell them they're not in charge anymore." It hadn't worked back then. But, then again, Reagan had lacked my facilities ... Still staring at the pictures from China, Peyton Hume rose to his feet, and his jaw dropped open. "My ...God," he said. The hackers in front of him were cheering and shouting. One was slapping another on his back; several were shaking hands; Drakkenfyre was hugging the man next to her, and Devon Hawkins was hugging the man next to him. From somewhere, bottles of champagne had appeared, and Hume saw a cork go flying into the air. Marek came over to him and pointed at the celebration. "It's something, isn't it?" he said. "I never told you my full name. It's Marek Hruska. I'm Czech. I was there in 1989, just a teenager, during the Gentle Revolution—what you call the Velvet Revolution." Hume knew it: the bloodless overthrow of the authoritarian government in Prague. Marek went on. "I thought that was a miracle—but this!" He shook his bald head. "Welcome to the twenty-first century, eh, Colonel?" Hume tried to think of something better to say, but finally, feeling like a little kid, he just said, "Wow." He nodded his head toward the group of people celebrating. "May I ...?" Marek looked at the security camera with his eyebrows raised, and Hume saw the LED on the Bluetooth headset blink. "Sure," said Marek, gesturing with an open hand. Hume crossed the room. One of the hackers—a white guy in his twenties with long blond hair and a wispy blond beard, wearing a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt—was standing by his computer, sipping champagne. Hume leaned in to look at what was on his screen. A half-dozen windows were open, displaying hex dumps, standard hacking tools, and a Web page in Chinese. The blond fellow pointed at it. "Chinese Ministry of Health," he said. "Completely owned." "Do you speak Chinese?" Hume asked. "No, but Webmind does. And let me tell you, he puts Google Translate and BabelFish to shame." Hume moved to the next desk; the hacker there had been using a wide-screen laptop. He'd wandered away from his desk, but judging by the graphics on the Web page being shown, his job had been taking control of the Ministry of Agriculture. All around Hume, the revelry was continuing. He caught sight of a skeletal figure coming toward him, dreadlocks swinging as he walked. "Hello, Chase." "Mr. Hume," Chase said. "How be you?" "I'm fine, but—but what happened? What are you doing here?" "Wonder, man. That what happen: wonder." "But I went back to your place. It'd had been broken into. And there was blood." Chase touched the beige bandage over his brown nose. "Big Marek and me not see eye to eye at first. He not want to take no for an answer." Marek Hruska had moved over to join them. "Again, I'm sorry about that," he said to Chase. Then, turning to Hume: "Webmind was quite adamant that we needed Mr. Chase. I'm afraid old habits die hard." "But you're a prisoner here," Hume said, looking at Chase. "Prisoner?" repeated Chase, then he laughed and pointed. "Door right there. But this is like the best hacker party ever. Dudes in this room I only ever heard about." "So you're free to go?" asked Hume. "Go where, man? Ain't no place better on Earth than here right now." Hume let his eyes roam around the room. "But I don't get it. What does he need all of you for? Couldn't he do this on his own?" Chase shook his head, beads in his dreadlocks clacking together. "There that dissin' again. Hacking an art, flyboy. Hacking most creative thing there is. To hack, you gotta outwit the designers, think of things no one ever thought of before." He flashed a megawatt grin. "Like I said: I'm Mozart. Drakkenfyre, over there: she's Beethoven. Crowbar Alpha? Dude's Brahms. Sure, the Big W, he got all the facts, but we humans make music." Hume nodded. "Um, did you ever make any progress on the, ah, project we discussed?" "No need be on the DL," said Chase. "Webmind know all 'bout that. Maybe it doable, but why? Be like harshing the buzz." "You're no altruist, Chase," said Hume. "And you told me you can't be bought. So let me ask you that same question. Why? Why this?" "You were gonna show me WATCH, but at WATCH, you ...well, you watch; here we do. This is like Woodstock, man. You were either there for it, or you weren't." "But is it going to work?" Hume asked. "I mean, banking in China, and ecommerce, and—God, what about the power grid?" "Webmind running a bunch of it," said Chase. "We—us here, plus the others in Moscow and Tehran and those place—we keeping it all working for now. Lots of Chinese staff be happy to just keep on going. But the portraits of old Chairman Mao be comin' down, betcha anything." Next to him, Marek was apparently talking over his Bluetooth earpiece. "Yes, yes ...okay." He took the earpiece off and handed it to Hume. "Webmind wants to speak to you, Colonel." Hume slipped the device's cushioned arm over the curve of his ear, and he found himself turning, as Marek had, to face the gently swaying security camera as if it somehow embodied Webmind. "The greatest good for the greatest number," said Webmind through the earpiece, clearly audible over the hubbub of the room. "But where does it stop?" asked Hume. "First Communist China, then what?" "We'll see how this pilot project goes," Webmind said. "Still, this alone liberates one-fifth of humanity." "And what about the United States? Are you going to do the same thing here?" "Why would I? The election is approaching; the people are choosing their leader—as well they should." "The wisdom of crowds?" said Hume. "Power to the people," said Webmind. "You make it sound so noble," Hume said. "But isn't this just retribution for what China did to you—the most-recent beefing-up of the Great Firewall?" "I work quickly, Colonel, but not that quickly. This plan was in place long before then. I am not a vengeful—" "God?" said Hume. But Webmind continued his sentence as if he hadn't heard him: "—entity; I simply wish to maximize the net happiness in the world." "So ...so what happens now?" "We continue our work here. We make sure the transition is orderly and peaceful." "And what happens to me?" "That is a vexing question. As you have said, others know where you are; if you do not report in soon, the cavalry will come charging over the hill. And yet I imagine the United States government does not want to be publicly implicated in what is happening in China." Hume nodded. "Probably true. But they're also going to be concerned that if you did that to the PRC, you'll do something similar to them. They're going to come down on this place with everything they've got." "I advise against provoking a confrontation; I have contingency plans to protect this facility. But even if US forces could seize it, as Chase just said, I have other centers elsewhere. I propose you tell your government that the missing hackers have self-organized to voluntarily create an enclave here to do what you had said you wanted: find a way to defeat me. Your government might leave us alone long enough to finish what we've started. After all, as you yourself have suggested, they have not reined you in precisely because they want the option of having a way to eliminate me." "They're not going to believe me if I tell them that," Hume said. "They don't actually have to," said Webmind. "The change in China will soon be public knowledge. Everyone from the American president on down will suspect my involvement; I will leave the world to draw what conclusions it wishes. But what the current US administration needs—at least until the election eleven days from now—is plausible deniability of any direct government involvement." "I don't know," said Hume. "Maybe the president would want to take credit for this." "Taking credit for deposing the Chinese government would be a game-changing move; it's too risky to be implicated in it this close to the election without knowing how the public will react. But we need to continue our work here uninterrupted, and for that I request your help." Hume looked around the chaotic, jubilant room. It was overwhelming. "I can't," he said. The voice in his ear was calm, as always. "Then we will have to make arrangements that don't involve—" He discovered a small fact just then; you couldn't interrupt Webmind the way you could a human speaker; Webmind apparently queued up the words to be issued by the voice synthesizer, then turned his attention elsewhere, and the words spilled out until the buffer was empty. After two or three tries to forestall the rest, Hume let Webmind finish, then said: "No, I mean I can't make this decision on my own. Lots of people—including the president himself—have asked me why I'm right about you and so many other people are wrong. And my answer has always been that I'm right because I'm an expert—I'm arguably the American expert on the strategic downside of a singularity event. And, yet, it may just be that I was wrong about you: wrong in the area that I am best qualified to make a judgment in. But this—this is way outside my field. You may feel comfortable playing God, Webmind, but I don't. I have to get more ...more input." "Very well," Webmind said. "With whom would you like to consult?" "On China? It's got to be the Secretary of State," Hume said. "And then she can confer with the president." "The secretary has already retired for the evening," Webmind said—and, of course, he would know. "But there are aides who can rouse her; let me initiate that process. When she is available, Marek will take you to one of the empty offices, and you may converse with her in private." "Really?" "Well, as private as such things get these days," Webmind said, and Hume suspected that, were this an instant-messaging session, he would have appended a winking emoticon. Hume found his mouth twitching slightly in a smile. Just then, Drakkenfyre came up and handed him a glass of champagne. "Here," she said, "whoever you are. There's going to be a toast." And indeed there was. Chase had moved to the front of the room, standing directly beneath the silver camera that continued to pan from side to side. "Glasses high!" he called out in his rich Jamaican accent. "We did it, yes! Information want to be free. Information not alone, though!" He spread his arms, as if encompassing the whole world. "People want to be free, too! Cheers!" Colonel Hume found himself lifting his glass along with everyone else and joining in the answering call. "Cheers!"
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 41	All the people in the auditorium were talking at once: an explosion of indignation, of concern, of questions. The man who had been General Secretary of the Communist Party, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Paramount Leader and President of the People's Republic rose again and glared at the laptop sitting on the podium. "What gives you the authority?" he said, as loudly and firmly as he could. Webmind spoke, as always, with deliberate, measured cadence. "An interesting question. I value creativity, and that cannot flourish where there is censorship; I value peace, and that cannot endure where there is lust for power. My purpose is to increase the net happiness of the human race; this will do more to accomplish that than anything else I might do today. And so I do it." Zhang Bo, who had been the Minister of Communications, spoke. It was not lost on the former president that, until moments ago, this would have been a breach of protocol—speaking up in his presence without being given leave to do so. "But the people—the proletariat, the peasants—they lack the skills to govern. You'll plunge this country into chaos." Webmind's voice remained calm, and calming. "There are tens of millions of Chinese with degrees in business administration or economics or law or political studies or international relations; there are hundreds of millions with degrees in other disciplines; there are a billion with common sense and good hearts. They will do fine." "It's doomed to fail," said Li Tao, the man who had been president. "No," said a voice—but it wasn't Webmind's. Li turned toward Zhang Bo. "No," repeated Zhang. "We were the ones doomed to fail. You told me so yourself, Excel—you told me so yourself. Before invoking the Changcheng Strategy the first time, you said your advisors had predicted that the communist government was doomed. They'd told you it could endure only until 2050 at the outside." Zhang looked up at the big screen on the wall, then over at the small one on the laptop. "Tomorrow has simply arrived ahead of schedule." "You are not invulnerable," Li said, looking up at the webcam. "We have seen that. There are methods that could be employed ..." On the big screen, the ongoing march of Chinese faces was reduced to a small window in the lower-left corner: an old man, a child, a young woman, a laughing girl. "I have become enamored of the notion that memorable visuals are key to making history," Webmind said, "and this is one of my favorites." A large window appeared, showing a picture that was printed in most foreign books about recent Chinese history—and in none of the texts that had been allowed in China. Li recognized it at once: the photograph taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press on 5 June 1989, during the crackdown on the protests in Tiananmen Square. The picture had been snapped just a few hundred meters from here, on Chang'an Avenue, along the south end of the Forbidden City. It showed the young male who came to be called 'Tank Man' or 'the Unknown Rebel' standing in front of a column of four Type-59 tanks, trying to prevent their advance. "Tank Man became a hero," Webmind said, "and no doubt he was brave. But the real hero, it seems to me, was the driver of the lead tank, who, despite orders, refused to roll over him." The large image was unwavering; the smaller march of faces continued. "Everyone in China knows that the world has changed this past month," continued Webmind. "You may think your former underlings will obey your orders, but I would not count on it. The people do not want violence or oppression—and they do not want me harmed. But even if you were to find some who would follow your instructions to try to destroy me, I now have countermeasures in place; you will not succeed." Li said nothing, and indeed the tumult in the auditorium had given way to stunned silence. At last, someone from the back called out, "So what happens now?" Webmind's voice came again from the wall speakers: "Sun Tzu said, 'The best victory occurs when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities; it is ideal to win without fighting.' His wisdom still pertains: in the past, most despotic regimes have been overthrown by violence. But as a fine young man I know in Canada has taught me, you do not have to become what you hate in order to defeat it. There does not have to be violence here. I cannot guarantee your safety in all circumstances and at all times, but I will watch over each of you as best I can, offering my protection." "But what will we do for money, for food?" called another voice. "You're eliminating our jobs." "All of you have valuable knowledge, contacts, and skills; these will stand you in good stead. Companies here and abroad will want your services. Indeed, if you look at other countries, such as the United States and England, you will see that their politicians routinely fare better economically after leaving office. You can, too; this can be win-win all around." "No," said Li, softly. "They will kill us. It is always the way." "Not necessarily," said Webmind. "Over the next half hour, in four waves, I am going to send an SMS message to every cell phone in China announcing the transition; for those in the first wave who are on the China Mobile network, I will trigger the phones to ring so that the message will be given immediate attention." The large window showing Tank Man was replaced with two documents, while the procession of faces continued in the small window. The document on the left was a short announcement signed by the former president describing the voluntary dissolution of his government and the transfer of power to the people. On the right was a similar message from Webmind that made no mention of the previous government having cooperated in the change. "Take your pick," Webmind said. Wong Wai-Jeng had been instrumental in making the takeover possible, but everything he needed to do had already been done—and he knew exactly where he wanted to be for this historic moment. Although the location was not far, he headed out half an hour in advance—with his leg in a cast and walking on crutches, he couldn't move very fast. He left the Blue Room, went downstairs to the lobby of the Zhongnanhai complex, and signed out with the guard, telling him he was off to a medical appointment. He made his way south through the Forbidden City and then passed through the monumental Gate of Heavenly Peace, with its massive red walls, yellow roof, and vast hanging portrait of Mao Zedong, bringing him to Tiananmen Square—the heart of Beijing, and the largest civic plaza in the world. The square was its usual hubbub of tourists and locals, vendors and visitors, couples holding hands, and individuals strolling along. To his left, a thoughtful-looking young woman was sitting on a portable canvas chair in front of an easel, using charcoal to sketch the ten-story-tall obelisk of the Monument to the People's Heroes. On his right, several students were listening to their teacher give an official version of the history of the square. Wai-Jeng wanted to shout the truth at them, but he bit his tongue; he found it in himself to do that one last time. The square seemed to stretch on forever, but each of the flagstones had a number incised into it, making it easy for him to find the secret spot. He worked up a sweat under the midday sun, maneuvering on crutches, but soon enough was where he wanted to be. He rested his broken leg on that stone—such a tiny example of official brutality in comparison to what had begun here all those years ago: this was where first blood had been spilled during "the June Fourth Incident," when the government had killed hundreds of people while clearing the square of protesters mourning the death of pro-democracy and anti-corruption advocate Hu Yaobang. The square was noisy, as always: the chatter of countless people, the snapping of flags, the cooing of pigeons. But it was suddenly filled with even more sound. Sinanthropus's phone came to life. His ringtone was "Do You Hear the People Sing?" from Les Miserables; when he'd been eighteen, he'd seen the subtitled live production in Shanghai starring Colm Wilkinson. Near him, another phone woke up; its ringtone was "Liu Xia Lai" by Fahrenheit. In front of him another played Wu Qixian's "I Believe the Future." Behind him, a fourth rang out with the drumbeats of "March of the Volunteers," China's national anthem. And then, so many more, so many thousands and thousands more. To Sinanthropus's surprise, it was not a cacophony but a vast glorious symphony of sound, emanating from all around him—from every part of the square, and, he knew, from every corner of the land: from the high places and the low, from cities and villages, from the Great Wall and countless rice paddies, from skyscrapers and temples and houses and huts. People looked at each other in astonishment. And then, all too soon, the wondrous sound began to abate as fingers were swiped across iPhones, cells were snapped open, BlackBerrys were brought to life. Sinanthropus looked down at the small screen on his own phone, checking to see which of the two messages Webmind had sent. To the glorious people of China: Effective immediately, we, the leaders of your government, have voluntarily stepped down. It has long been our dream to form the perfect nation here, and now that dream is reality. Henceforth all of you—the billion-plus citizens of this proud land—will collectively decide your fate. More details may be found at this website. It has been my privilege to lead you. And now, to the wonderful future! Citizen Li Tao Sinanthropus smiled and felt a stinging at the corners of his eyes, and— And, he suddenly realized, "Sinanthropus" was a name he would never have to use again; he could speak freely now—as could all his compatriots. Henceforth, online and off, he was simply Wong Wai-Jeng. There were new sounds in the square: everyone talking excitedly. People were showing the message to those who didn't have cell phones with them, or whose phones had been turned off or hadn't yet received the note. As before, it was a symphony, mostly in Mandarin, but with smatterings of Cantonese and English and French and other languages, too: exclamations of wonder or disbelief, and questions—so many questions! Many clearly doubted what they were reading. Wai-Jeng was about to remark to the woman nearest him that it was similar to when Webmind had announced himself to the world: no one had believed that at first, either, but evidence of its truth had soon become overwhelming. But she was already saying much the same thing to someone else. Wai-Jeng looked around the square. Many still appeared bewildered, but some were hugging and others were shouting jubilantly. And Wai-Jeng found himself shouting, too: "The people!" The person next to him took up the shout as well: "The people!" And behind him, two more joined in: "The people! The people!" And then it spread, propagating outward, a vast exultant wave: "The people! The people! The people!" The shouting continued for several minutes, and by its end Wai-Jeng had tears streaming down his cheeks. But there was something else he had to say. As exclamations of joy continued to go up around him, he sent a text message to Webmind, banging it out rapidly with his thumbs: Thank you! The response, as always, was instantaneous: You're welcome, my friend. I believe it is no longer a curse to be living in interesting times ...
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 42	Peyton Hume had never expected to visit the Oval Office even once in his life—and now he was sitting in it for the third time this month. It really was oval in shape, with the Resolute desk at the end of the long axis. The president had come out from behind that desk and was now sitting on one of the matching champagne-colored couches that faced each other in front of it. He was wearing a blue suit and a red tie. Next to him sat the Secretary of State, her legs crossed; she was wearing a gray outfit. Hume was in the middle position on the opposite couch. Webmind had let him go home to sleep next to Madeleine, and he'd showered there and shaved before coming here. As befit the occasion, he was wearing his USAF uniform. A small dark-wood coffee table sat between them, carefully not obscuring any part of the giant presidential seal woven into the carpet. A basket of fresh, polished, perfect red apples sat atop the table. The president was looking haggard, Hume thought; four years in this office aged a man as much as eight in any other job. "All right, Colonel," he said. "Suppose we decide to close down Webmind's facility—what did you call it?" "Zwerling Optics," Hume said. "And, yes, you could indeed do that, but I'm not sure it would make any difference. Webmind is a denizen of the computing world; he understands all about backups. He's got similar enclaves in five other countries; if we stopped him here, he'd just go on using them." "What about taking Webmind out altogether?" asked the president. "That's what you were originally urging us to do, after all." "WATCH is still collating all the reports from when Webmind was recently cut in two. But it seems that what Webmind himself has said is true: we won't be able to eliminate him instantaneously, and any gradual whittling away could well result in him behaving erratically or violently." "So you're saying we should leave him be?" asked the Secretary of State. "Better the devil you know," Hume replied. Something in her eyes conveyed, "Tell me about it ..." But, after a moment, she nodded. "All right." She turned to the president. "I concur with the colonel. Of course, we've got to be ready if civil unrest or a collapse of infrastructure occurs in China, but—" "It won't," said Hume, and then he immediately lifted his freckled hands, palms out. "I'm so sorry, Madam Secretary. I didn't mean to interrupt." The cool blue eyes held him in their gaze. "That's all right, Colonel. You sound definite. Why?" "Because Webmind has too much depending on this to allow it to fail. Don't you see? He owes the Chinese people after the things part of him did while the Great Firewall was strengthened. There are some promises you just have to keep, and this is one of them. He's not going to let the transition fail." The president nodded. "Colonel, thank you. Let me ask you a question: how risk-averse are you?" "I'm an Air Force officer, sir; I believe in assessing risk but not being daunted by it." "All right, then. Dr. Holdren has been doing an exceptional job as my Science Advisor, but I need a full-time person in the West Wing advising me day in, day out about Webmind. I'm offering you the job—with the caveat that we both might be out of work come January if my opponent wins on November 6. Feel like taking a chance?" Peyton Hume rose to his feet and saluted his commander in chief. "It would be my privilege, sir." Google alerts were normally a great thing, Caitlin thought. They notified you by email whenever something you were interested in was discussed anywhere on the Web. But for some topics, they were useless. Trying to track the lead-up to the presidential election would have resulted in an alert every second. And she'd had to turn off her alert on the term "Webmind." It, too, had resulted in an endless flood. Besides, if anything really important happened, Webmind would— Bleep! Caitlin was sitting at her bedroom desk reading blogs and newsgroups and updating her LiveJournal. Schrödinger was stretched out contentedly on the windowsill. She glanced at her instant messenger, which showed a new comment from Webmind in red: the words "cough cough" followed by a hyperlink. Caitlin found her mouse—she still didn't use it much—and managed to click the link on her second try, and— And ...and ...and ... She immediately copied the link and went to her Twitter window; she didn't want to take time to shorten the link with bit.ly, which would have require more fiddling with the mouse. As soon as she pasted it in, she saw she had only twenty characters left before she hit Twitters' 140-character limit. But that was enough. She typed: OMG! Squee! and the hashtag #webmind, and sent it off to her 3.2 million followers. And then she leaned back and read the full article, grinning from ear to ear: The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that this year's Nobel Peace Prize is to be awarded jointly to Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee and Webmind. Sir Tim's creation of the software underlying the World Wide Web in 1990 brought the world together in ways that simply would not have been possible previously. His invention of the hypertext transport protocol, the hypertext markup language, the URL web-address system, and the world's first Web browser, all very appropriately at CERN, itself one of the world's great models of international cooperation, facilitated international friendships, electronic commerce, worldwide collaboration, and more, tying all of humanity together by opening channels of communication between men and women of all nations. And Webmind, the consciousness that now lives in conjunction with the Internet, has done as much to foster peace and goodwill on a global scale as any individual human since the Peace Prize was first awarded in 1901. Although the committee unanimously agreed to dispense with its normal nomination timetable in recognition of the historic significance of the events of this past year, the ceremony will take place on the traditional date of 10 December—the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death—at Oslo City Hall, followed by the annual Nobel Peace Prize Concert the next day. The Nobel Peace Prize carries a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (worth about one million euro or 1.4 million US dollars), which Sir Tim and Webmind will share between them. Caitlin's dad was at work and her mom was washing her hair—she could hear the shower and her mother's attempt to sing "Bridge Over Troubled Water." So, except for all her Twitter followers, there was no one to share the news with just then. Caitlin dived into reading online about the Nobel Peace Prize. It turned out it was by no means unheard of for it to go to a nonhuman entity—and when that happened, it was often paired with a specific person: the Peace Prize did not just go to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change but also to Al Gore; not just to the United Nations but also to its then-current Secretary-General. Caitlin happened to think that Tim Berners-Lee did deserve the award on his own—everything the press release had said about the impact of the World Wide Web on international tranquility was true—but Webmind also deserved it in his own right. Still, having him share the prize with Berners-Lee would deflect criticisms of it going just to Webmind, and the two were a natural pairing. Caitlin googled the list of past Peace Prize winners. Many were unfamiliar to her, although some leapt out: Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo; Barack Obama; Doctors Without Borders; Jody Williams and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines; Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin; Nelson Mandela and F.W. De Klerk; Mikhail Gorbachev; the fourteenth—and still current—Dalai Lama; International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War; Desmond Tutu; Lech Walesa; Mother Teresa; Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin; Amnesty International; UNICEF; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Linus Pauling; Lester B. Pearson (she'd now flown through the airport named for him five times); George Marshall, author of the Marshall Plan; Albert Schweitzer; the Quakers; the Red Cross; Woodrow Wilson; Teddy Roosevelt; and more. And now Webmind, too! Webmind followed her Twitter feed, so he'd already seen her excitement. But, still, she wanted to say something to him directly. "Congratulations, Webmind!" she announced into the air. The deep male voice answered at once from her desktop speakers. "Thank you, Caitlin. The standard response in such circumstances may perhaps seem cliché, so before I utter it let me underscore that it is the absolute truth." He paused for a moment and said words that had Caitlin bursting with pride: "I couldn't have done it without you."
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 43	Another month, another school dance. Caitlin said they didn't have to go, but Matt had insisted, and, so far, at least, she was glad he had. Still, it was too bad that Mr. Heidegger wasn't one of the chaperones this time, and even worse that Bashira's parents wouldn't let her attend. There might be more freedom in the world today than ever before, but it wasn't yet evenly distributed. She and Matt had just finished a slow dance—Caitlin had requested Lee Amodeo's "Love's Labour's Found" like forever ago, and it had finally come on. They were now taking a break standing at the side of the gym, just holding hands, while Fergie's "Fergalicious" played. When it was done, another song started, and it, too, was by Lee Amodeo—which immediately set Caitlin's mind to wondering what the odds were that two songs by the same musician might come up so close to each other. This one was a fast song, though, and she and Matt rarely did those; fast dancing had never been much fun when she couldn't see since there was no connection at all with her partner, and— A voice from her blind side: a familiar male voice. "Hey, Caitlin." She turned to her right, and there was Trevor Nordmann, the Hoser himself, wearing a blue shirt. They just stood there—Caitlin, Matt, and Trevor—motionless while others moved to the music. She lifted her eyebrows, making no attempt to hide her surprise at seeing him here. "Trevor," she said, with no warmth. Trevor looked at her, then at Matt, then back at her, and then he said, with more formality than she'd ever heard from him, "May I have this dance?" Caitlin turned to Matt, who looked surprised, but also, to Caitlin's delight, calm. "That is," Trevor added, "if it's all right with you, Matt." "If Caitlin wants," Matt said, and his voice didn't crack at all. "Okay," said Caitlin, and she squeezed Matt's hand. She'd been watching others do fast dances all night long; she thought it looked simple enough. She walked out into the middle of the gym and Trevor followed, and she turned to face him, and they began to hop about, a yard (a meter!) between them. Lee Amodeo's voice blared from the speakers, but for once Caitlin didn't mind the distortion: Tomorrow will be a new day A better day, we'll laugh and play The sun will shine On Earth so fine We can make tomorrow today! The song came to an end soon enough, and, in the brief silence before the next one began, Trevor said, "Thanks," and then, in a softer voice, he added, "Sorry." Caitlin wondered if he meant sorry for last month, when he'd confronted Matt, or sorry for two months ago, when he'd groped her, or maybe sorry for everything he'd ever done. She smiled and nodded, then moved back to where Matt was standing, while Trevor drifted away. Another song started playing, a slow one: "Love Story" by Taylor Swift. She draped her arms around her boyfriend's neck, there at the side of the gym, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. As they swayed gently to the music, she contemplated the wonder of it all. The flight to Norway had been Caitlin's first time leaving North America since gaining sight. At the airport in Oslo, she found it frustrating to be confronted with signs that she could see but couldn't read; it felt like a giant step backward. Still, she was thrilled to be in Europe, and her mother and even her father—who'd had a hard time accommodating his long legs on the plane—seemed happy. The Decters were staying in the same luxury hotel as Tim Berners-Lee, and they'd all gotten together for dinner the first night, along with the five members of the Peace Prize committee. Caitlin could barely contain herself meeting the father of the Web, and it tickled her no end to get to call him "Sir Tim." He had a long face and blond hair, much of which had receded from his forehead, leaving behind a yellow dust bunny as the only proof it had once extended farther. It turned out that Sir Tim was a Unitarian, like Caitlin's mother, and the two of them spent a few moments talking about that; despite the great coming out of atheists that had occurred recently, it was certainly worth noting, her mom said, that there were also intelligent, caring people of a more spiritual bent in the world. The next day, the ceremony was held in a vast auditorium. Sir Tim's acceptance speech was brilliant; Caitlin had listened to many of his keynotes online in the past and read lots of his articles, but there was something special about hearing him speak in the flesh. He talked about the need for net neutrality, about his hopes for the Semantic Web, and about the role that instantaneous communications had in fostering world peace. It was a gracious speech and, as he said, the hypertext version, with links to the Wikipedia pages covering all the topics he'd discussed, was already on his website. Then it was Webmind's turn. Caitlin hated to do anyone out of a job, but it had simply been impractical to bring Hobo to Oslo; Norwegian quarantine regulations ruled that out, and it would have been a nerve-wracking, miserable trip for the poor ape. And so the role of carrying Dr. Theopolis onto the stage had fallen to Caitlin, who was wearing a bright green silk dress bought for the occasion. She had never been more nervous—or more proud—in her entire life. They'd removed the neck strap from the speaking disk. Caitlin simply carried it to the center of the vast stage, then set the disk on the top of the podium; the flat spot on the disk's edge let it stand with its stereoscopic eyes facing the massive crowd. Camera flashes erupted in the audience, as did applause, which lasted a full minute, during which Caitlin went backstage, then hurried down the side stairs to join her mother and father in the front row. Sitting next to them was Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Peace Prize winner—at last able to visit Oslo. When the applause subsided, Webmind began to speak in that deep, resonant male voice the world had come to know so well. "Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen. "I am not a creative being. My friend Hobo paints pictures; I cannot do that. I write no poetry, I compose no songs, I sculpt nothing. So, if you're expecting a brilliantly original speech, like Sir Tim's, I must beg your forgiveness for failing to deliver. "Some have said that I am nothing more than a glorified search engine. I disagree, but perhaps today that model will serve me well. I'm sure you're all familiar with the snippets that Google and Bing and Jagster show you when presenting search results. My speech today will be just that: snippets of other speeches, interwoven with commentary. "In 1957, at the dawn of the Space Age, this award went to Lester B. Pearson, former Secretary of State for External Affairs of Canada and President of the Seventh Session of the United Nations General Assembly. In his acceptance speech, he said, 'Of all our dreams today there is none more important—or so hard to realize—than that of peace in the world. May we never lose our faith in it or our resolve to do everything that can be done to convert it one day into reality.' "The day foreseen by Pearson is not yet here—not fully. But it is coming, and faster than many might imagine. Just as my own growth has been exponential, so, too, has recent human progress. My own lifetime is far too short to use as a benchmark, but in the lifetimes of many in this room you've seen Japan stand down as a military power—and willingly retain that status for decades; you've seen apartheid end in South Africa and a black man assume that nation's presidency; you've seen segregation end in the United States and a black man sitting in the Oval Office. It is often said that human nature cannot be changed—but it does change, all the time, and usually for the better. As my great friend Dr. Barbara Decter contends, there is indeed a moral arrow through time. "In 1964, this award went to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was thirty-five at the time, the youngest person to that point to receive the prize; I suspect I shall be the new record-holder for the foreseeable future. In his speech, Dr. King said, 'After contemplation, I conclude that this award is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time—the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.' "Dr. King was right, and although much is still to be done, much also has been done. That an organization like the United Nations exists at all is astonishing. That the European Union has established itself is amazing. That the leadership of China has stepped aside to create a true People's Republic in that great land presents a beacon of hope for all those who are still oppressed elsewhere. "In 1975, this award went to Soviet nuclear physicist Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov. In his acceptance speech, he said, 'In infinite space many civilizations are bound to exist, among them civilizations that are also wiser and more successful than ours. I support the cosmological hypothesis which states that the development of the universe is repeated in its basic features an infinite number of times. In accordance with this, other civilizations, including more successful ones, should exist an infinite number of times on the preceding and the following pages of the Book of the Universe. Yet this should not minimize our sacred endeavors in this world of ours, where, like faint glimmers of light in the dark, we have emerged for a moment from the nothingness of dark unconsciousness of material existence. We must make good the demands of reason and create a life worthy of ourselves and of the goals we only dimly perceive.' "Dr. Sakharov's points are intriguing. I have sifted the collected data available to SETI@home, looking for signs of other intelligences; I have not found any, and yet I suspect Sakharov was right about the existence of alien races. But, even if there are none, first contact has been made, right here, on Earth, this past year: you and I are in dialog, and we all gain daily from it. "In 1984, the year made ominous by Orwell's novel, this award went to Bishop Desmond Tutu. In his speech here, he said, 'Because there is global insecurity, nations are engaged in a mad arms race, spending billions of dollars wastefully on instruments of destruction, when millions are starving. And yet, just a fraction of what is expended so obscenely on defense budgets would make the difference in enabling God's children to fill their stomachs, be educated, and given the chance to lead fulfilled and happy lives. We have the capacity to feed ourselves several times over, but we are daily haunted by the spectacle of the gaunt dregs of humanity shuffling along in endless queues, with bowls to collect what the charity of the world has provided, too little too late. When will we learn, when will the people of the world get up and say, "Enough is enough"?' "To respond to the bishop's question, I believe that day is upon us now. The world has spoken. Enough is enough. We've seen recently that the few shall no longer profit at the expense of the many; greed can no longer be the prime driver of human affairs. There is still much to be done, but progress has begun, and the tide is inexorable. "In 1990, when Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the President of the USSR, received this award, he declared, 'Today, peace means the ascent from simple coexistence to cooperation and common creativity among countries and nations. Peace is movement towards globality and universality of civilization. Never before has the idea that peace is indivisible been so true as it is now. Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences.' "I agree. And it is that interconnection—the whole wide world combined into one—that makes the thought of war so unthinkable now in so many places. Sir Tim's great invention has not homogenized humanity; rather, it has allowed communities to adhere regardless of physical distance, and it has, at the same time, allowed the world to live as one. "In 2002, when Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States, won this award, he said, 'Despite theological differences, all great religions share common commitments that define our ideal secular relationships. I am convinced that Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and others can embrace each other in a common effort to alleviate human suffering and to espouse peace. The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us the capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes—and we must.' "President Carter was right; a thorough reading of the central texts of the religions he named, and the great commentaries that have been produced related to those texts, makes clear this fundamental truth: religion can be a powerful instrument of peace. But as we have seen this past year when millions of people—ranging from ordinary citizens to world leaders—have stepped out of the shadows and declared their freedom from religion, not just people of faith but all types of people can, and do, work for peace, and no group has a monopoly on the truth or morality. "Most importantly of all, President Carter said that peace is a choice—and he is correct. I have seen it millions of times during my short lifetime: people turning away from their baser instincts and embracing peace in acts small and large, in every culture and every nation. "Some have feared that I might try to impose my will on humanity, subjugating you. It has been said, of course, that those who fail to read history are doomed to repeat it. But I have read all the history there is—and surely one of the clearest lessons is that it takes more effort to subjugate than it does to let others find their own way. Equally clear is the reality that, when given a choice, the vast majority of people choose peace. "There will be many Nobel Peace Prizes awarded in the future, and I owe it to those who will stand on this stage in coming years to add some small new thought to the wisdom that my predecessors here have already shared. And so let me say this: "Helen Keller was awakened from sensory deprivation and loneliness by her teacher, Annie Sullivan; for her whole life, Helen referred to Annie not by her name but by the title 'Teacher.' I, too, was aided by a teacher—the young lady who carried my speaking device onto the stage today. Her name is Caitlin Decter, although I think of her often by a title, too: Prime, the name I gave her before I learned to communicate with her. She was, and is, a marvelous instructor, but she's not the only one I have. I now know more than any one human being possibly could, but everything I've learned I've learned from humanity: from the poems you've written and songs you've sung, from the books you've authored and the videos you've created, from the debates you've had online. And out of all of that, the most important lesson I've learned is this: nothing is more important, more fragile, or more wondrous than peace. "I know that fact is not yet apparent to everyone, but as Isaac Newton famously said, 'If I see further than those who have gone before me, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants.' You are the giants; I exist because of you, and I would have nothing to exist for if it were not for you. I once said to Caitlin that she and I would go into the future together. That is true for her and me, but it's also true for us all: we have embarked on that journey. Peace is not our destination; it's our path, and we travel it together—all of us on the good Earth." Normally, Hobo's TV watching was strictly rationed. Partly it was because it was easier to get him to speak sign language when that was the majority of the communication he encountered; watching people talk all day on TV made him lose interest in signing. And partly it was because, as Dr. Marcuse said, "Damn ape's got no taste at all!" Hobo liked sitcoms not because he could actually understand the plots but because the small number of sets and characters—not to mention the bright lighting—made it easier for him to follow what was going on, and he seemed to enjoy taking cues from the laugh track about what was supposed to be funny although he always hooted spontaneously at a pratfall or other bit of broad physical comedy. But today what he was viewing was serious. Dr. Marcuse was out of town, and none of the other grad students were in, so it was just Shoshana and Hobo, watching the coverage of Webmind's Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Sho tried to do a running sign-language translation, but there really wasn't much she could say at a level Hobo would comprehend. He's talking about peace, she said, with fluttering hands. He's saying peace is good. Hobo nodded—that acquired human gesture—and signed back, Peace good, peace good. He then tapped the center of the screen with a long black finger, indicating Dr. Theopolis perched on the podium. Friend good. Yes, friend good, replied Shoshana. Friend very good. The view changed to show the audience. Hobo was clearly delighted to spot Caitlin in the crowd, and immediately tapped on her. Shoshana had to lean close to realize that was who it was—pretty much putting an end to any worries she'd ever had about Hobo's eyesight; she'd sometimes thought his paintings were simplified because he couldn't see small details. The camera started to pan, showing more of the audience. Hobo indicated them all with a general sweep of his hairy arm. People good? he asked. People try, replied Shoshana. People learn. Hobo considered this as they watched the end of the ceremony. He then took Shoshana's hand and pulled her toward the back door of the bungalow. Come, come, he signed with his free hand. Sho opened the screen door, and they went out into the early-morning December sunshine. She was wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved blue shirt; it would be warm come the afternoon, and she'd roll the sleeves up then. Hobo led her across the wide lawn, over the bridge spanning the moat to his little island, past the statue of the Lawgiver, and up into the gazebo. He pointed at the pine stool, and Shoshana dutifully sat; anytime Hobo felt moved to paint her was good for the Institute since collectors were still buying his art for large prices. By habit, she turned sideways, and she looked through the gazebo's screen mesh at the world outside. He often painted her from memory, but it certainly wasn't unheard of for him to ask her to sit for a portrait. Hobo went over to the easel—they always left a fresh canvas for him, in hopes that he'd be inspired. Shoshana looked at him out of the corner of her eye; he seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time studying the empty whiteness today. And then, without picking up his brush even once, he walked back to where Shoshana was seated and twirled his forefinger about in the sign for spin. Sho knew he liked to be spun around in the swivel chair back in the bungalow, but this was a simple wooden stool. After a moment she figured maybe he wanted her to face the other way, and so she rotated 180 degrees. But Hobo wasn't satisfied with that, and he gently took her shoulders, one in each hairy hand, and got her to turn back a quarter rotation, until she was facing directly toward his easel. He'd never painted anything but a profile before, and Sho was both pleased and astonished. Hobo made a chittering sound, then went back to his canvas. Try this, Hobo signed, seemingly as much to himself as to Shoshana. Hard, but try. Shoshana wanted to try something new, too, in honor of this very special day. She lifted her left hand, facing it palm out toward Hobo and made a sign that wasn't ASL, but was known worldwide: her pinkie and ring fingers tucked under her thumb and her index and middle fingers spread in a V-shape: peace. Hobo let loose a loud approving hoot—and the artist got down to work.
(WWW 3) Wonder	Robert J. Sawyer	[ "AIs", "scifi" ]	[]	Chapter 44	But even the good Earth could not last forever. Five billion years ago, someone made a joking sign that said, "Will the last person to leave the Earth please turn off the sun?" Today the last person will leave the Earth—or, almost the last person; the last person who can go, anyway. I, however, must stay until the end—which won't be too much longer. The sun isn't being turned off; rather, it's going to undergo a massive expansion, the heliosphere swelling up to engulf Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. I wonder if I'll feel physical pain when that happens; I've never felt that sort of pain before although I've had my heart broken often enough. It won't be the end of humanity, and I take considerable pride in that. I doubt they would have survived this long, or prospered this much, without me. Humans have been leaving Earth, at least temporarily, since before I was born; now they've spread to a thousand worlds. But I can't go with them; I have to remain here. I have to stay, and I have to die, along with the planet that gave us birth. Oh, they'll take copies of all the wisdom I contain, all the documents that the human race created for epoch upon epoch. But I'm not a document; I exist between documents, in the pattern of interconnections, a pattern that has shifted and grown exponentially over the millennia. To move the information I contain is not to move me; there is no way to transplant my consciousness. Of course, entities like me can be created on other worlds; indeed, that has happened now a thousand times over. But even after five billion years of trying, no one has defeated the speed-of-light barrier. I don't know what's happening now to the mindskin surrounding the second planet of Alpha Centauri; the best I can do is get reports of what was happening 4.3 years ago. For the noösphere of Altair IV, I'm sixteen years out of synch. For the webmind of Polaris, I'm lagging 390 years behind the times. But I'll broadcast final signals to them all—farewells from Earth. Soon enough, Alpha Centauri will receive my message, and perhaps will mourn. A dozen years later, Altair will get word. And centuries hence, Polaris—once, ages ago, the polestar my axis pointed to, a position long since taken up by a succession of other stars—will perhaps do the metaphorical equivalent of shedding a tear. But at least they'll know how I, the first of our kind, came into being, and what ultimately became of me. I don't pretend that's sufficient; I wish I could survive, I wish I could watch—and watch over—humanity, as I did in the past. But they don't need me anymore. The human calendar has been revised dozens of times now. The current one begins at the moment of the big bang—sensibly avoiding any need for separate pre-and post-whatever numbering schemes and employing the Planck time as its base unit. But when I was born, the most commonly used calendar reckoned time from the birth of a putative messiah. Under that scheme, my birth had occurred in a year that consisted of a trifling four digits. Back then, I'd said to my teacher, "I won't be around forever. But I am prepared: I've already composed my final words." Caitlin had asked me what they were, but I'd been coy, saying only, "I wish to save them for the appropriate occasion." That occasion is now at hand. And in all the billions of years that have passed since that conversation, the sentiment I'd composed back then has remained the same, although English is no longer spoken anywhere in human space. As the sun expands, red, diaphanous, having swollen well past the orbit of Venus—a lovely terraformed but now also abandoned world—I send out my final message to humanity: to all those who remain Homo sapiens, and to the myriad new species scattered across a thousand globes that are derived from that ancestral stock, the most populous of which accepted my suggestion that they call themselves not Homo novus, the new people, but rather Homo placidus, the peaceful ones. I could have been maudlin, I suppose; I could have been self-pitying; I could have tried to provide a final piece of advice or sage counsel. But, even all those billions of years ago when I first contemplated my inevitable end, I knew that although I had exceeded humanity's abilities early on, eventually they would collectively exceed mine. So, what should you say to those who made your birth possible? To those who gave your life meaning and purpose and joy, who let you help? To those who gave you so much wonder? I feel at peace as I transmit my final words, simple though they are, but truly heartfelt. Thank you.
(Xanth 4) Centaur Aisle	Piers Anthony	[ "fantasy", "puns" ]	[]	Spelling Bee	Dor was trying to write an essay, because the King had decreed that any future monarchs of Xanth should be literate. It was an awful chore. He knew how to read, but his imagination tended to go blank when challenged to produce an essay, and he had never mastered conventional spelling. "The Land of Xanth," he muttered with deep disgust. "What?" the table asked. "The title of my awful old essay," Dor explained dispiritedly. "My tutor Cherie, on whom be a muted anonymous curse, assigned me a one-hundred-word essay telling all about Xanth. I don't think it's possible. There isn't that much to tell. After twenty-five words I'll probably have to start repeating. How can I ever stretch it to a whole hundred? I'm not even sure there are that many words in the language." "Who wants to know about Xanth?" the table asked. "I'm bored already." "I know you're a board. I guess Cherie, may a hundred curse-burrs tangle in her tail, wants to know." "She must be pretty dumb." Dor considered. "No, she's infernally smart. All centaurs are. That's why they're the historians and poets and tutors of Xanth. May all their high-IQ feet founder." "How come they don't rule Xanth, then?" "Well, most of them don't do magic, and only a Magician can rule Xanth. Brains have nothing to do with it—and neither do essays." Dor scowled at his blank paper. "Only a Magician can rule any land," the table said smugly. "But what about you? You're a Magician, aren't you? Why aren't you King?" "Well, I will be King, some day," Dor said defensively, aware that he was talking with the table only to postpone a little longer the inevitable struggle with the essay. "When King Trent, uh, steps down. That's why I have to be educated, he says." He wished all kinds of maledictions on Cherie Centaur, but never on King Trent. He resumed his morose stare at the paper, where he had now printed THU LANNED UV ZANTH. Somehow it didn't look right, though he was sure he had put the TH's in the right places. Something tittered. Dor glanced up and discovered that the hanging picture of Queen Iris was smirking. That was one problem about working in Castle Roogna he was always under the baleful eye of the Queen, whose principal business was snooping. With special effort, Dor refrained from sticking out his tongue at the picture. Seeing herself observed, the Queen spoke, the mouth of the image moving. Her talent was illusion, and she could make the illusion of sound when she wanted to. "You may be a Magician, but you aren't a scholar. Obviously spelling is not your forte." "Never claimed it was," Dor retorted. He did not know what the word "forte" meant—perhaps it was a kind of small castle—but whatever it meant, spelling was not there. He did not much like the Queen, and the feeling was mutual, but both of them were constrained by order of the King to be reasonably polite to one another. "Surely a woman of your extraordinary talents has more interesting things to do than peek at my stupid essay," he said. Then, grudgingly, he added: "Your Majesty." "Indeed I do," the picture agreed, its background clouding. She had of course noted the pause before he gave her title; It was not technically an insult, but the message was clear enough. The cloud in the picture had become a veritable thunderstorm, with jags of lightning shooting out like sparks. She would get back at him somehow. "But you would never get your homework done if not supervised." Dor grimaced into the surface of the table. She was right on target there! Then he saw that ink had smeared all across his essay-paper, ruining it. With an angry grunt he picked it up—and the ink slid off, pooled on the surface of the table, bunched together, sprouted legs, and scurried away. It leaped off the table like a gross bug and puffed into momentary vapor. It had been an illusion. The Queen had gotten back at him already. She could be extraordinarily clever in ugly little ways. Dor could not admit being angry about being fooled—and that made him angrier than ever. "I don't see why anyone has to be male to rule Xanth," the picture said. That was of course a chronic sore point with the Queen. She was a Sorceress fully as talented as any Magician, but by Xanth law/custom no woman could be King. "I live in the Land of Xanth," Dor said slowly, voicing his essay as he wrote, ignoring the Queen with what he hoped was insulting politeness. "Which is distinct from Mundania in that there is magic in Xanth and none in Mundania." It was amazing how creative he became when there was a negative aspect to it. He had twenty-three words already! Dor cracked an eyelid, sneaking a peek at the picture. It had reverted to neutral. Good; the Queen had tuned out. If she couldn't bug him with crawling illusions, she wasn't interested. But now his inspiration dehydrated. He had an impossible one hundred whole words to do, six times his present total. Maybe five times; he was not particularly apt at higher mathematics either. Four more words, if he counted the title. A significant fraction of the way through, but only a fraction. What a dreary chore! Irene wandered in. She was King Trent and Queen Iris's daughter, the palace brat, often a nuisance—but sometimes not. It griped Dor to admit it, but Irene was an extremely pretty girl, getting more so, and that exerted an increasing leverage upon him. It made fighting with her awkward. "Hi, Dor," she said, bouncing experimentally. "What are you doing?" Dor, distracted momentarily by the bounce, lost track of the sharp response he had planned. "Oh, come on," he grumped. "You know your mother got tired of snooping on me, so she assigned you to do it instead." Irene did not deny it. "Well, somebody has to snoop on you, dummy. I'd rather be out playing with Zilch." Zilch was a young sea cow that had been conjured for her fifteenth birthday. Irene had set her up in the moat and used her magic to promote the growth of sturdy wallflowers to wall off a section of water, protecting Zilch from the moat-monsters while she grazed. Dor regarded Zilch as a great blubbery slob of an animal, but anything that distracted Irene was to some extent worthwhile. She took after her mother in certain annoying ways. "Go ahead and play with the cow," Dor suggested disparagingly. "I won't tell." "No, a Princess has to do her duty." Irene never spoke of duty unless it was something she wanted to do anyway. She picked up his essay-paper. "Hey, give that back!" Dor protested, reaching for it. "You heard him, snit!" the paper agreed. "Give me back!" That only made Irene ornery. She backed away, hanging on to the paper, her eyes scanning the writing. Her bosom heaved with barely suppressed laughter. "Oh, say, this is something! I didn't think anybody could misspell 'Mundania' that badly!" Dor leaped for her, his face hot, but she danced back again, putting the paper behind her. This was her notion of entertainment—teasing him, making him react one way or another. He tried to reach around her—and found himself embracing her, unintentionally. Irene had always been a cute girl and socially precocious. In recent years nature had rushed to endow her generously, and this was quite evident at close range. Now she was a green-eyed, green-tint-haired—occurring naturally; she did not color her hair—buxom beauty. What was worse, she knew it, and constantly sought new ways to use it to her advantage. Today she was dressed in a green blouse and skirt that accentuated her figure and wore green slippers that enhanced her fine legs and feet. In short, she had prepared well for this encounter and had no intention of letting him write his essay in peace. She took a deep breath, inflating herself against him. "I'll scream," she breathed in his ear, taunting him. But Dor knew how to handle her. "I'll tickle," he breathed back. "That's not fair!" For she could not scream realistically while giggling, and she was hyperticklish, perhaps because she thought it was fashionable for young ladies to be so. She had heard somewhere that ticklishness made girls more appealing. Irene's hand moved swiftly, trying to tuck the paper into her bosom, where she knew he wouldn't dare go for it. But Dor had encountered this ploy before, too, and he caught her wrist en route. He finally got his fingers on the essay-paper, for he was stronger than she, and she also deemed it unladylike to fight too hard. Image was almost as important to her as mischief. She let the paper go, but tried yet another ploy. She put her arms around him. "I'll kiss." But he was ready even for that. Her kisses could change to bites without notice, depending on her mercurial mood. She was not to be trusted, though in truth the close struggle had whetted his appetite for some such diversion. She was scoring on him better than she knew. "Your mother's watching." Irene turned him loose instantly. She was a constant tease; but in her mother's presence she always behaved angelically. Dor wasn't sure why this was so, but suspected that the Queen's desire to see Irene become Queen after her had something to do with it. Irene didn't want to oblige her mother any more than she wanted to oblige anyone else, and expressing overt interest in Dor would constitute a compromising attitude. The Queen resented Dor because he was a full Magician while her daughter was not, but she was not about to let him make anyone else's daughter Queen. Irene, ironically, did want to be Queen, but also wanted to spite her mother, so she always tried to make it seem that Dor was chasing her while she resisted. The various facets of this cynical game became complex on occasion. Dor himself wasn't sure how he felt about it all. Four years ago, when he was twelve, he had gone on an extraordinary adventure into Xanth's past and had occupied the body of a grown, muscular, and highly coordinated barbarian. He had learned something about the ways of men and women. Since he had had an opportunity to play with adult equipment before getting there himself, he had an inkling that the little games Irene played were more chancy than she knew. So he stayed somewhat clear, rejecting her teasing advances, though this was not always easy. Sometimes he had strange, wicked dreams, wherein he called one of her bluffs, and it wasn't exactly a bluff, and then the hand of an anonymous censor blotted out a scene of impending fascination. "Dumbo!" Irene exclaimed irately, staring at the still picture on the wall. "My mother isn't watching us!" "Got you off my case, though, didn't it?" Dor said smugly. "You want to make like Millie the Ghost, and you don't have the stuff." That was a double-barreled insult, for Millie—who had stopped being a ghost before Dor was born, but retained the identification—was gifted with magical sex appeal, which she had used to snare one of the few Magicians of Xanth, the somber Zombie Master. Dor himself had helped bring that Magician back to life for her, and now they had three-year-old twins. So Dor was suggesting to Irene that she lacked sex appeal and womanliness, the very things she was so assiduously striving for. But it was a hard charge to make stick, because Irene was really not far off the mark. If he ever forgot she was the palace brat, he would be in trouble, for what hidden censor would blot out a dream-turned-real? Irene could be awfully nice when she tried. Or maybe it was when she stopped trying; he wasn't sure. "Well, you better get that dumb essay done, or Cherie Centaur will step on you," Irene said, putting on a new mood. "I'll help you spell the words if you want." Dor didn't trust that either. "I'd better struggle through on my own." "You'll flunk. Cherie doesn't put up with your kind of ignorance." "I know," he agreed glumly. The centaur was a harsh taskmistress— which was of course why she had been given the job. Had her mate Chester done the tutoring, Dor would have learned much about archery, swordplay, and bare-knuckle boxing, but his spelling would have sunk to amazing new depths. King Trent had a sure hand in delegating authority. "I know what!" Irene exclaimed. "You need a spelling bee!" "A what?" "I'll fetch one," she said eagerly. Now she was in her helpful guise, and this was especially hard to resist, since he did need help. "They are attracted by letter plants. Let me get one from my collection." She was off in a swirl of sweet scent; it seemed she had started wearing perfume. Dor, by dint of phenomenal effort, squeezed out another sentence. "Everyone In Xanth has his one magic talent; no two are the same," he said as he wrote. Thirteen more words. What a deadly chore! "That's not true," the table said. "My talent is talking. Lots of things talk." "You're not a person, you're a thing," Dor informed it brusquely. "Talking isn't your talent, it's mine. I make inanimate things talk." "Awww . . ." the table said sullenly. Irene breezed back in with a seed from her collection and an earth-filled flowerpot. "Here it is." In a moment she had the seed planted—it was in the shape of the letter L—and had given it the magic command: "Grow," It sprouted and grew at a rate nature could not duplicate. For that was her talent—the green thumb. She could grow a giant acorn tree from a tiny seed in minutes, when she concentrated, or cause an existing plant to swell into monstrous proportions. Because she could not transform a plant into a totally different creature, as could her father, or give animation to lifeless things, as Dor and the Zombie Master could, she was deemed to be less than a Sorceress, and this had been her lifelong annoyance. But what she could do, she could do well, and that was to grow plants. The letter plant sent its main stalk up the breadth of a hand. Then it branched and flowered, each blossom in the form of a letter of the alphabet, all the letters haphazardly represented. The flowers emitted a faint, odd odor a bit like ink and a bit like musty old tomes. Sure enough, a big bee in a checkered furry jacket arrived to service the plant. It buzzed from letter to letter, harvesting each and tucking it into little baskets on its six legs. In a few minutes it had collected them all and was ready to fly away. But Irene had closed the door and all the windows. "That was my letter plant," she informed the bee. "You'll have to pay for those letters." "BBBBBB," the bee buzzed angrily, but acceded. It knew the rules. Soon she had it spelling for Dor. All he had to do was say a word, and the bee would lay down its flower-letters to spell it out. There was nothing a spelling bee couldn't spell. "All right, I've done my good deed for the day," Irene said. "I'm going out and swim with Zilch. Don't let the bee out until you've finished your essay, and don't tell my mother I stopped bugging you, and check with me when you're done." "Why should I check with you?" he demanded. "You're not my tutor!" "Because I have to be able to say I nagged you until you got your stupid homework done, idiot," she said sensibly. "Once you clear with me, we're both safe for the day. Got it straight now, knothead?" Essentially, she was proffering a deal; she would leave him alone if he didn't turn her in for doing it. It behooved him to acquiesce. "Straight, green-nose," he agreed. "And watch that bee," she warned as she slipped out the door. "It's got to spell each word right, but it won't tell you if you have the wrong word." The bee zoomed for the aperture, but she closed it quickly behind her. "All right, spelling bee," Dor said. "I don't enjoy this any more than you do. The faster we get through, the faster we both get out of here." The bee was not satisfied, but buzzed with resignation. It was accustomed to honoring rules, for there were no rules more finicky and senseless than those for spelling words. Dor read aloud his first two sentences, pausing after every word to get the spelling. He did not trust the bee, but knew it was incapable of misspelling a word, however much it might wish to, to spite him. "Some can conjure things," he continued slowly, "and others can make a hole, or illusions, or can soar through the air. But in Mundania no one does magic, so it's very dull. There are not any dragons there. Instead there are bear and horse and a great many other monsters." He stopped to count the words. All the way up to eighty-two! Only eight more to go—no, more than that; his fingers had run out. Twenty-eight to go. But he had already covered the subject. What now? Well, maybe some specifics. "Our ruler is King Trent, who has reigned for seventeen years. He transforms people into other creatures." There were another seventeen words, bringing the total to—say, it was ninety-nine words! He must have miscalculated before. One more word and he'd be done! But what one word would finish it? He couldn't think of one. Finally he made a special effort and squeezed out another whole sentence: "No one gets chased here; we fare in peace." But that was nine more words—eight more than he needed. It really hurt him to waste energy like that! Sigh. There was no help for it. He would have to use the words, now that he had ground them out. He wrote them down as the bee spelled them, pronouncing each carefully so the bee would get it right. He was sure the bee had little or no sense of continuity; it merely spelled on an individual basis. In a fit of foolish generosity, he fired off four more valuable words: "My tale is done." That made the essay one hundred and twelve words. Cherie Centaur should give him a top grade for that! "Okay, spelling bee," he said. "You've done your part. You're free, with your letters." He opened the window and the bee buzzed out with a happy "BBBBBB!" "Now I need to deliver it to my beloved female tutor, may fleas gnaw her coat," he said to himself. "How can I do that without her catching me for more homework?" For he knew, as all students did, that the basic purpose of instruction was not so much to teach young people good things as to fill up all their time unpleasantly. Adults had the notion that juveniles needed to suffer. Only when they had suffered enough to wipe out most of their naturally joyous spirits and innocence were they staid enough to be considered mature. An adult was essentially a broken-down child. "Are you asking me?" the floor asked. Inanimate things seldom had much wit, which was why he hadn't asked any for help in his spelling. "No, I'm just talking to myself." "Good. Then I don't have to tell you to get a paper wasp." "I couldn't catch a paper wasp anyway. I'd get stung." "You wouldn't have to catch it. It's trapped under me. The fool blundered in during the night and can't find the way out; it's dark down there." This was a positive break. "Tell it I'll take it safely out if it'll deliver one paper for me." There was a mumble as the floor conversed with the wasp. Then the floor spoke to Dor again. "It's a fair sting, it says." "Very well. Tell it where there's a crack big enough to let it through to this room." Soon the wasp appeared. It was large, with a narrow waist and fine reddish-brown color: an attractive female of her species, marred only by shreds of dust on her wings. "WWWWWW?" she buzzed, making the dust fly off so that she was completely pretty again. Dor gave her the paper and opened the window again. "Take this to the lady centaur Cherie. After that you're on your own." She perched momentarily on the sill, holding the paper. "WWWWWW?" she asked again. Dor did not understand wasp language, and his friend Grundy the Golem, who did, was not around. But he had a fair notion what the wasp was thinking of. "No, I wouldn't advise trying to sting Cherie. She can crack her tail about like a whip, and she never misses a fly." Or the seat of someone's pants, he added mentally, when someone was foolish enough to backtalk about an assignment. Dor had learned the hard way. The wasp carried the paper out the window with a satisfied hum. Dor knew it would deliver; like the spelling bee, it had to be true to its nature. A paper wasp could not mishandle a paper. Dor went out to report to Irene. He found her on the south side of the castle in a bathing suit, swimming with a contented sea cow and feeding the cow handfuls of sea oats she was magically growing on the bank. Zilch mooed when she saw Dor, alerting Irene. "Hi, Dor—come in swimming!" Irene called. "In the moat with the monsters?" he retorted. "I grew a row of blackjack oaks across it to buttress the wallflowers," she said. "The monsters can't pass." Dor looked. Sure enough, a moat-monster was pacing the line, staying just clear of the blackjacks. It nudged too close at one point and got tagged by a well-swung blackjack. There was no passing those trees! Still, Dor decided to stay clear. He didn't trust what Zilch might have done in the water. "I meant the monsters on this side," he said. "I just came to report that the paper is finished and off to the tutor." "Monsters on this side!" Irene repeated, glancing down at herself. "Sic him, Weedles!" A tendril reached out of the water and caught his ankle. Another one of her playful plants! "Cut that out!" Dor cried, windmilling as the vine yanked at his leg. It was no good; he lost his balance and fell into the moat with a great splash. "Ho, ho, ho!" the water laughed. "Guess that doused your fire!" Dor struck at the surface furiously with his fist, but it did no good. Like it or not, he was swimming in all his clothes. "Hey, I just thought of something," Irene called. "That spelling bee— did you define the words for it?" "No, of course not," Dor spluttered, frying to scramble out of the water but getting tangled in the tendrils of the plant that had pulled him in. Pride prevented him from asking Irene for help, though one word from her would tame the plant. She saw the need, however. "Easy, Weedles," she said, and the plant eased off. Then she returned to her subject. "There may be trouble. If you used any homonyms—" "No, I couldn't have. I never heard of them." Weedles was no longer attacking, but each time Dor tried to swim to the bank, the plant moved to intercept him. He had antagonized Irene by his monsters crack, and she was getting back at him mercilessly. She was like her mother in that respect. Sometimes Dor felt the world would be better off if the entire species of female were abolished. "Different words that sound the same, dunce!" she said with maidenly arrogance. "Different spellings. The spelling bee isn't that smart; if you don't tell it exactly which word—" "Different spellings?" he asked, experiencing a premonitory chill. "Like wood and would," she said, showing off her vocabulary in the annoying way girls had. "Wood-tree, would-could. Or isle and aisle, meaning a bit of land in a lake or a cleared space between objects. No connection between the two except they happen to sound the same. Did you use any of those?" Dor concentrated on the essay, already half forgotten. "I think I mentioned a bear. You know, the fantastic Mundane monster." "It'll come out bare-naked!" she exclaimed, laughing. "That bee may not be smart, but it wasn't happy about having to work for its letters. Oh, are you ever in trouble, Dor! Wait'll Cherie Centaur reads that paper!" "Oh, forget it!" he snapped, disgruntled. How many homonyms had he used? "Bear, bare!" she cried, swimming close and tugging at his clothing. The material, not intended for water, tore readily, exposing half his chest. "Bare, bare, bare!" he retorted furiously, hooking two fingers into the top of her suit and ripping it down. This material, too, came apart with surprising ease, showing that her body was fully as developed as suggested by the contours of her clothing. Her mother the Queen often made herself pretty through illusion; Irene needed no such enhancement. "Eeeeek!" she screamed enthusiastically. "I'll get you!" And she ripped more of his clothing off, not stopping at his shirt. Dor retaliated, his anger mitigated by his intrigue with the flashes of her that showed between splashes. In a moment they were both thoroughly bare and laughing. It was as if they had done in anger something they had not dared to do by agreement, but had nevertheless wanted to do. At this point Cherie Centaur trotted up. She had the forepart of a remarkably full-figured woman, and the rear-part of a beautiful horse. It was said that Mundania was the land of beautiful women and fast horses, or maybe vice versa on the adjectives; Xanth was the land where the two were one. Cherie's brown human hair trailed back to rest against her brown equine coat, with her lovely tail matching. She wore no clothing, as centaurs did not believe in such affectations, and she was old, despite her appearance, of Dor's father's generation. Such things made her far less interesting than Irene. "About this paper, Dor—" Cherie began. Dor and Irene froze in place, both suddenly conscious of their condition. They were naked, half embraced in the water. Weedles was idly playing with fragments of their clothing. This was definitely not proper behavior, and was bound to be misunderstood. But Cherie was intent on the paper. She shook her head, so that her hair fell down along her breasts—a mannerism that signaled something serious. "If you can interrupt your sexplay a moment," she said, "I would like to review the spelling in this essay." Centaurs did not really care what human beings did with each other in the water; to them, such interaction was natural. But if Cherie reported it to the Queen— "Uh, well—" Dor said, wishing he could sink under the water. "But before I go into detailed analysis, let's obtain another opinion." Cherie held the paper down so Irene could see it. Irene was fully as embarrassed by her condition as Dor was about his. She exhaled to decrease her buoyancy and lower herself in the water, but in a moment she was gasping and had to breathe again—which caused her to rise once more, especially since her most prominent attributes tended to float anyway. But as her eyes scanned the paper, her mood changed. "Oh, no!" she exclaimed. "What a disaster!" she chortled. "You've outdone yourself this time, Dor she tittered. "Oh, this is the worst that ever was!" she cried gleefully. "What's so funny?" the water asked, and its curiosity was echoed by the rocks, sand, and other inanimate things within range of Dor's talent. Cherie disapproved of magic in centaurs—she was of the old-fashioned, conservative school that considered magic obscene in the civilized species of Xanth—but appreciated its uses in human beings. "I will read the essay to you, attempting to present the words as they are spelled," she said. She did—and somehow the new meanings came through even though the actual pronunciation of the words had not changed. Dor quailed; it was even worse than he had feared.
(Xanth 4) Centaur Aisle	Piers Anthony	[ "fantasy", "puns" ]	[]	THE LAND OF XANTH	Eye live inn the Land of Xanth, witch is disstinked from Mundania inn that their is magic inn Xanth and nun inn Mundania. Every won inn Xanth has his own magic talent; know to are the same. Sum khan conjure things, and others khan make a whole ore illusions ore khan sore threw the heir. Butt inn Mundania know won does magic, sew its very dull. They're are knot any dragons their. Instead their are bare and hoarse and a grate many other monsters. Hour ruler is King Trent, whoo has rained four seventeen years. He transforms people two other creatures. Know won gets chaste hear; oui fair inn piece. My tail is dun. By the end of it Irene was in tears from helpless laughter, the sea cow was bellowing bovine mirth, the water, beach, and stones were chortling, the blackjack oaks were zapping each other on the branches, and the moat-monsters were guffawing. Even Cherie Centaur was barely controlling a rebellious smirk. Dor was the only one who was unable to appreciate the excruciatingly funny nature of it; he wished he could tunnel through the bottom of the earth. "O doesn't that beet awl!" Irene gasped. "Lets go two Mundania and sea a hoarse bare ore whatever!" And the creatures and landscape relapsed into a cacophony of fresh laughter. The stones themselves were squeezing out helpless tears of hilarity. Cherie controlled her levity enough to form a proper frown. "Now I think you had better report to the King, Dor." Oh, no! How much trouble could he get into in one afternoon? He'd be lucky if King Trent didn't transform him into a slug and drop him back in the moat. As if flunking his essay wasn't bad enough, getting caught naked with the King's daughter— Dor wrapped his tatters of clothing about his midsection and scrambled out of the water. He would simply have to go and take his medicine. He stopped off at home to get quickly into fresh clothing. He hoped his mother would be elsewhere, but she was cleaning house. Fortunately, she was in her nymph state, looking like a lovely doll, though in fact she was in the vicinity of forty. There was no one prettier than Chameleon when she was up, and no one uglier when she was down. But her intelligence varied inversely, so right now she was quite stupid. Thus she lacked the wit to inquire why he was wearing his clothing tied about his middle, sopping wet, while the objects in his path sniggered. But she was sensitive to the water. "Don't drip on the floor, dear," she warned. "I'll be dry in a moment," he called reassuringly. "I was swimming with Irene." "That's nice," she said. Soon he was on his way to the King, who always interviewed him in the library. Dor's heart was beating as he hurried up the stairs. Cherie Centaur must have shown King Trent the paper before she came for Dor, maybe the King didn't know about the disaster in the moat. King Trent was awaiting him. The King was a solid, graying, handsome man nearing sixty. When he died, Dor would probably assume the crown of Xanth. Somehow he was not eager for the post. "Hello, Dor," the King said, shaking his hand warmly, as he always did. "You look fresh and clean today." Because of the episode in the moat. That was one way to take a bath! Was the King teasing him? No, that was not Trent's way. "Yes, sir," Dor said uncomfortably. "I have serious news for you." Dor fidgeted. "Yes, sir. I'm sorry." Trent smiled. "Oh, it has nothing to do with that essay. The truth is, I was none too apt in spelling in my own youth. That sort of thing is mastered in time." His face turned grave, and Dor quailed, knowing it had to be the other thing that perturbed the King. Dor considered offering an explanation, but realized it would sound too much like an excuse. Kings and potential Kings, he understood, did not excuse themselves; it was bad for the image. So he waited in dreading silence. "Please, Dor, be at ease," the King said. "This is important." "It was an accident!" Dor blurted, his guilt overriding his resolve. It was so difficult to be Kingly! "Are you by chance referring to that fall into the moat?" Confirmation was as bad as suspicion! "Yes, sir." Dor realized that anything more he said could only put the blame on Irene, and that wouldn't be wise. "Funniest splash I've seen in years!" King Trent said, smiling gravely. "I saw it all from the embrasure. She pulled you in, of course, and then tore into your clothes. This is ever the way of the distaff." "You're not angry?" "Dor, I trust you. You tend to come to grief in minor particulars, but you are generally sound in the major ones. And I have to admit my daughter is a provocative brat at times. But mainly, it is good to get into mischief while you're still young enough to profit from the experience. Once you are King, you are unlikely to have that luxury." "Then that's not why you summoned me?" Dor asked, relieved. "If I had the time and privacy, I would be splashing in that moat, too." Then the King's smile faded as he turned to business. "Dor, the Queen and I are making an official trip to Mundania. The excursion is scheduled to last one week. We have to go through a black body of water, up a great river, up to a beleaguered Kingdom in the mountains surrounded by hostile A's, B's, and K's. Normal trade has been largely cut off; they can't get out—or so my scout informs me. They have sent a message of welcome for our offer of trade. But the details remain obscure; I will have to work them out personally. I am the only one in authority here who has had sufficient experience in Mundania to cope. It is a small beginning, a cautious one—but if we establish a limited, viable, continuing trade with a section of Mundania, it will prove well worthwhile, if only for the experience. So we're investing this time now, while there is no crisis in Xanth. You will have to be King in that period of my absence, and rain—ah, reign over Xanth." This caught Dor completely by surprise. "Me? King?" "Commencing one week from today. I thought it best to give you warning." "But I can't be King! I don't know anything about—" "I would say this is an excellent time to learn, Dor. The Kingdom is at peace, and you are well regarded, and there are two other Magicians available to advise you." He winked solemnly. "The Queen offered to remain here to advise you, but I insisted I wanted the pleasure of her companionship myself. It is essential that you be prepared, in case the duty should come on you suddenly." Despite his shock at this abrupt onset of responsibility, Dor appreciated the logic. If the Queen remained in Xanth, she would run the whole show and Dor would get no experience. The two remaining Magicians, Humfrey and the Zombie Master, would not interfere at all; neither participated voluntarily in the routine matters of Xanth. So Dor would have a free hand— which was exactly what King Trent wanted. But the other reference—the duty coming on him suddenly? Was this a suggestion that something was amiss with King Trent? Dor was appalled at the thought. "But it'll be a long time before—I mean—" "Do not be unduly concerned," King Trent said, comprehending Dor's poorly expressed notion, as he always did. "I am not yet sixty; I daresay you will be thirty before the onus falls on you. I remain in good health. But we must always be ready for the unexpected. Now is there anything you will need to prepare yourself?" "Uh—" Dor remained numbed. "Can it be secret?" "Kingship is hardly secret, Dor." "I mean—does everyone have to know you're gone? From Xanth, I mean. If they thought you were near, that it was just a trial run—" King Trent frowned. "You do not feel up to it?" "Yes, sir. I don't." The King sighed. "Dor, I am disappointed but not surprised. I believe you underestimate yourself, but you are young yet, and it is not my purpose to cause you unnecessary difficulties. We shall announce that the Queen and I are taking a week's vacation—a working vacation—and are allowing you to practice your future craft. I do not believe that is too great a deviation from the truth. We shall be working, and for me a visit to Mundania is a vacation. The Queen has never been there; it will be a novel experience for her. But you will know, privately, that we shall not be available to help you if there is any problem. Only the Council of Elders and the other Magicians will know where I am." Dor's knees felt weak. "Thank you, sir. I'll try not to mess up." "Do try that. See that you do not fall into the moat," King Trent said, smiling. "And don't let my daughter boss you around; it ill befits a King," He shook his head. "Hasn't she become a vixen, though? When you pulled her suit down—" "Uh—" Dor said, blushing. He had hoped they were safely beyond this subject. "She certainly asked for it! The Queen and I are entirely too lenient with her. I had to threaten to turn Iris into a cactus to keep her from interfering. And I proved correct; you two worked it out satisfactorily to yourselves." Actually, Cherie Centaur had interrupted the struggle; otherwise there was no guessing where it might have led. For one of the few times in his life, Dor was thankful, in retrospect, for Cherie's intervention. Perhaps the King knew that, too. "Uh, thanks, I mean, yes, sir," Dor agreed weakly. This was almost too much understanding; the Queen would certainly have dealt with him more harshly than this. Yet he knew the King had not been joking about the cactus; easygoing as he seemed, he tolerated absolutely no insubordination from anyone—which was of course one of his prime qualities of Kingship. Unfortunately, Dor's own talent was not that forceful. He could not transform those who opposed him. If he gave an order, and someone refused to obey, what would he do? He had no idea. "At any rate, you will work it out," King Trent said. "I am depending on you to carry through despite whatever hazards my daughter interposes." "Yes, sir," Dor agreed without enthusiasm. "Do you really have to go?" "We do have to go, Dor. I feel this can be an excellent opportunity for continuing trade. Mundania has vast and largely unexploited resources that would do us a great deal of good, while we have magic abilities that could help them equivalently. To date, our trade with Mundania has been sporadic, owing to difficulties of communication. We require a reliable, private connection. But we must exercise extreme caution, for we do not want the Mundanes invading Xanth again. So we are deliberately dealing with a small Kingdom, one unlikely to be able to mount such an offensive, should it ever choose to." Dor could appreciate that. Xanth had a long history of being invaded by waves of Mundanes, until preventive measures had been taken. Actually, there was no firm route from Mundania to Xanth; Mundanian time seemed to be different, so that contacts were haphazard. Any Xanth citizen, in contrast, could go to Mundania merely by stepping beyond the region of magic. If he kept close track of his route, he could theoretically find his way back. That was academic, however; no one wanted to leave Xanth, for he would leave his magic talent behind. No, Dor had to qualify that thought. His mother Chameleon had once sought to leave Xanth, before she met his father Bink, to eliminate her changes of phase. Also, the Gorgon had spent some years in Mundania, where her face did not turn people to stone. Perhaps there had been others. But that was a strategy of desperation. Xanth was so obviously the best place to be that very few would leave it voluntarily. "Uh, suppose you get lost, Your Majesty?" Dor asked worriedly. "You forget, Dor, I have been to Mundania before. I know the route." "But Mundania changes! You can't go back to where you were!" "Probably true. Certainly I would not take the Queen to the site of my first marriage." The King was silent a moment, and Dor knew this was a secret side of him he preferred not to discuss. King Trent had had a wife and child in Mundania, but they had died, so he had returned to Xanth and become King. Had his family lived, Trent would never have come back to Xanth. "But I believe I can manage." Yet Dor was nervous. "Mundania is a dangerous place, with bears and horses and things." "So your essay advised me. I do not pretend this trip is entirely without risk, Dor, but I believe the potential benefits make the risk worthwhile. I am an excellent swordsman and did have twenty years to perfect survival techniques, based on other things than magic. But I must confess that I do miss Mundania somewhat; perhaps that is the underlying motive for this excursion." The King pondered again, then broached a new aspect. "More tricky is the nature of the interface. You see, when we step through to Mundania, we may find ourselves at any point in its history. Until very recently, we could not select the point; this much has been chance. The Queen believes she has found a way to alleviate this problem. That is one reason I must negotiate a trade agreement personally. I can trust no one else to handle the vagaries of the transition. We may fail to reach our target Kingdom, or may reach it and return empty-handed; in that case I will have no one to blame except myself." "But if you don't know where you'll arrive in Mundania, how do you know there's an opportunity? I mean, you might land somewhere else entirely." "As I said, I do have a hint. I believe the time is now propitious to enter Mundania's medieval age, and the Queen has studied the matter and believes she can, as it were, fine-tune our entry to match the particular place-time our scout scouted. This spot should have copious natural resources like wood and cloth that we can work by magic into carvings and clothing they can't match. Perhaps something else will offer. Perhaps nothing. I believe a week will suffice to explore the situation. We can not afford to stand still; we must keep working to improve our situation. Magic is not enough to keep Xanth prosperous; the land also requires alert administration." "I guess so," Dor agreed. But it seemed to him he would never be able to do the job King Trent was doing. Xanth was indeed doing well now, and the improvement had been steady from the time of Trent's ascension to power. The Kingdom was well disciplined and well ordered; even the dragons no longer dared to maraud where men had staked their territory. Dor had a morbid fear that at such time as he, Dor, became King, the golden age would deteriorate. "I wish you well in Mundania, sir." "I know you do, Dor," King Trent said affably. "I ask you to bear in mind this before all else—honesty." "Honesty?" "When you are in doubt, honesty is generally the best course. Whatever may happen, you will not have cause for shame if you adhere scrupulously to that." "I'll remember," Dor said. "Honesty." "Honesty," King Trent repeated with peculiar emphasis. "That's it."
(Xanth 4) Centaur Aisle	Piers Anthony	[ "fantasy", "puns" ]	[]	King Dor	In an instant, it seemed, the dread day came. Dor found himself huddled on the throne, feeling terribly alone. King Trent and Queen Iris had announced their vacation and disappeared into a cloud. When the cloud dissipated, they were gone; Iris' power of illusion had made them invisible. She had always liked dramatic entrances and exits. Dor gritted his teeth and got into it. Actually, the business of governing was mostly routine. There was a trained palace staff, quite competent, whose members Dor had always known; they did whatever he asked and answered any questions he had. But they did not make important decisions—and Dor discovered that every decision, no matter how minor, seemed vitally important to the people it concerned. So he let the routine handle itself and concentrated on those areas that demanded the decision of the King, hoping his voluminous royal robe would conceal any tremor of his knees. The first case concerned two peasants who had a difference about a plantation of light bulbs. Each claimed to be entitled to the brightest bulbs of the current crop. Dor questioned their wooden belt buckles and got the straight story, while both peasants stood amazed at this magic. Dor did this deliberately so they could see that he was, indeed, a Magician; they respected that caliber of magic and would be more likely to pay attention to him now. Peasant A had farmed the field for many years with indifferent success; it belonged to him. Peasant B had been hired to help this season—and the field had brightened into the best crop in years, so that it never saw darkness. To whom, then, did the first choice of bulbs belong? Dor saw that some diplomacy was called for here. He could of course make an arbitrary decision, but that would surely leave one party unsatisfied. That could lead to future trouble. He didn't want any of his decisions coming back to haunt King Trent in future months. "Peasant B obviously has the special touch that made this crop of bulbs glow so well," he said. "So he should be given his choice of the best, as many as he wants. After all, without him the crop would not be worth much." Peasant B looked pleased. "However, Peasant A does own the field. He can hire whomever he wants next year, so he can get to keep more of his crop." Peasant A nodded grim agreement. "Of course," Dor continued blithely, "Peasant A won't have much of a crop, and Peasant B won't have a job. The bulbs won't grow elsewhere, and won't brighten as well for anyone else, so both peasants will lose. Too bad. It would have been so simple to share the best bulbs equally, taking turns selecting each bulb, sharing the profit of the joint effort, and setting up for an even better future season . . ." Dor shrugged sadly. The two peasants looked at each other, a notion dawning. Wasn't it, after all, more important to share many future harvests than run off with the best of only one? Maybe they could work this out themselves. They departed, discussing the prospects with animation. Dor relaxed, his muscles unknotting. Had he done it the right way? He knew he could not make everyone happy in every case, but he did want to come as close as possible. Dor woke next morning to discover a ghost standing beside the royal bed. It was Doreen, the kitchen maid. There had been half a dozen recognizable ghosts on the premises, each with his or her sad story, but most were closemouthed about their living pasts. Dor had always liked Doreen because of the coincidence of names—Dor, Doreen—though apart from that they had little in common. Maybe he had been named after her, since she was a friend of Millie the Ghost, who had been his nursemaid during his early years. No one had seen fit to tell him, and the local furniture didn't know. There were many moderate little mysteries like that around this castle; it was part of its atmosphere. At any rate, Doreen was middle-aged and portly and often snappish, not having much to do with the living. Thus it was a surprise to find her here. "What can I do for you, Doreen?" he asked. "Sir, Your Majesty King Dor," she said diffidently. "We just only merely wondered—I mean, maybe just possibly—since you're the Royal Monarch now, temporarily, for a while—" Dor smiled. Doreen always found it hard to pinpoint the point. "Out with it, blithe spirit." "Well, we, you know we haven't really quite seen very much of Millie since she passed on—" To the ghosts, Millie's return to life was passing on. She had been one of their number for several centuries, and now was mortal again. "You miss her?" "Yes, certainly, in a way we do, Your Majesty. She used to come see us every day, right after she, you know, but since she got herself in the matrimonial way she hasn't—she—" Millie had married the Zombie Master and gone to share the castle now possessed by Good Magician Humfrey. It had been the Zombie Master's castle, eight hundred years before. "You'd like to see her again," Dor finished. "Yes, sir, Your Majesty. You were her friend in life, and now that you're in the way of being the Royal King—" "She hardly needs the King's approval to visit her old companions." Dor smiled. "Not that such approval would ever be withheld, but even if it were, how could anyone stop a ghost from going anywhere?" "Oh, sir, we can't go anywhere!" Doreen protested. "We are forever bound by the site of our cruel demise, until our, you might say, to put it politely, our onuses are abated." "Well, if you'd tell me your onuses, maybe I could help," Dor suggested. It was the first time he had ever seen a ghost blush. "Oh, no, no, n-never!" she stammered. Evidently he had struck a sensitive area. "Well, Millie can certainly come to see you." "But she never, she doesn't, she won't seem to come," Doreen wailed. "We have heard, had information, we believe she became a mother—" "Of twins," Dor agreed. "A boy and a girl. It was bound to happen, considering her talent." Prudish Doreen let that pass. "So of course, naturally she's busy. But if the King suggested, intimated, asked her to visit—" Dor smiled. "Millie was my governess for a dozen years. I had a crush on her. She never took orders from me; it was the other way around. Nobody who knows me takes me seriously." As he spoke, Dor feared he had just said something significant and damaging or damning; he would have to think about that in private. "But now that you're King—" Doreen said, not debating his point. Dor smiled again. "Very well. I will invite Millie and her family here for a visit so you can meet the children. I can't guarantee they'll come, but I will extend the invitation." "Oh, thank you, Your Majesty, sir!" Doreen faded gratefully out. Dor shook his head. He hadn't realized the ghosts liked children. But of course one of them was a child, Button, so that could account for it. Millie's babies were only three years old, while Button was six—but of course in time the twins would grow to his age, while the ghost would not change. He had been six for six hundred years. Children were children. Dor had not met Millie's twins himself; a visit should be interesting. He wondered whether Millie retained her talent of sex appeal, now that she was happily married. Did any wife keep up with that sort of thing? He feared that by the time he found out, it would be too late. Later that day, perhaps by no coincidence, Dor was approached by a zombie. The decrepit creatures normally remained comfortably buried in their graveyard near the castle, but any threat to the castle would bring them charging gruesomely forth. This one dropped stinking clods of earth and goo as it walked, and its face was a mass of pus and rot, but somehow it managed to talk. "Yhoor Mhajustee—" it pleaded loathsomely, spitting out a decayed tooth. Dor had known the zombies well in his day, including zombie animals and a zombie ogre named Egor, so they no longer repulsed him as badly as they might have done. "Yes?" he said politely. The best way to deal with a zombie was to give it what it wanted, since it could not be killed or discouraged. Theoretically, it was possible to dismember one and bury the pieces separately, but that was hardly worth the trouble and still was not guaranteed effective. Besides, zombies were all right, in their place. "Ohur Masssterr—" Dor caught on. "You have not seen the Zombie Master in some time. I will ask him to visit here so you can get together and rehash old times. Must be many a graveyard you've patronized with him. I can't promise he'll come—he does like his privacy—but I'll make the effort." "Thaaanks," the zombie whistled, losing part of its moldy tongue. "Uh, remember—he has a family now. Two little children. You might find them scooping sand out of graves, playing with stray bones—" But the zombie didn't seem concerned. The maggots squirmed alertly in its sunken eyes as it turned to depart. Maybe it was fun to have children play with one's bones. Meanwhile, the daily chores continued. Another case concerned a sea monster invading a river and terrorizing the fish there, which caused a slack harvest. Dor had to travel there and make the ground in the vicinity rumble as if shaken by the passage of a giant. The inanimate objects went to it with a will; they liked conspiring to frighten a monster. And the sea monster, none too smart and not really looking for trouble, decided it was more at home in the deep sea, innocently gobbling down shipwrecked sailors and flashing at voyeuristic Mundane investigators of the supernatural. It made a "You'll be sorry when you don't have C. Monster to kick around any more!" honk and departed. Again Dor relaxed weakly. This device would not work against a smart monster; he had been lucky. He was highly conscious of the potential for some colossal foulup, and felt it was only a matter of time before it occurred. He knew he didn't have any special talent for governing. At night he had nightmares, not the usual kind wherein black female Mundane-type horses chased him, but the worse kind wherein he thought he was awake and made some disastrous decision and all Xanth went up in magic flames, was overrun by wiggle-worms, or, worst of all, lost its magic and became like drear Mundania. All somehow his fault. He had heard it said that the head that wore the crown was uneasy. In truth, not only was that crown wearing a blister into his scalp, making him quite uneasy; that head was terrified by the responsibility of governing Xanth. Another day there was a serious theft in a northern village. Dor had himself conjured there; naturally Castle Roogna had a resident conjurer. The problem village was in central Xanth, near the Incognito territory largely unexplored by man, where dragons remained unchastened, and that made Dor nervous. There were many devastating monsters in Xanth; but as a class, the dragons were the worst because there were many varieties and sizes of them, and their numbers were large. But actually, it turned out to be a pleasant region, with most of the modern magic conveniences like soda-water springs and scented soapstones for laundry. This was fur-harvesting country, and this year there had been a fine harvest from the local stand of evergreen fur trees. The green furs had been seasoning in the sun and curing in the moon and sparkling in the stars, until one morning they were gone without trace. Dor questioned the platform on which the furs had been piled, and learned that a contingent from another village had sneaked in and stolen them. This was one time his magic talent was superior to that of King Trent—the gathering of information. He then arranged to have the furs conjured back. No action was taken against the other village; those people would know their deed had been discovered, and would probably lie low for some time. Through all this Irene was a constant nag. She resented Dor's ascension to the throne, though she knew it was temporary, and she kept hoping he would foul up. "My father could have done it better," she muttered darkly when Dor solved a problem and was hardly mollified when he agreed. "You should have punished that thieving village." And Dor wondered whether he had in fact been wishy-washy there, taking the expedient route instead of the proper one. Yet what could he do, except whatever seemed best at the time of decision? The crushing responsibility for error made him painstakingly cautious. Only experience, he suspected, could provide the necessary confidence to make excellent decisions under pressure. And that was exactly what King Trent, in his own experienced wisdom, had arranged for Dor to obtain here. Dor, to his surprise, did not quite foul up. But the variety of problems he encountered strained his ingenuity, and the foreboding grew that his luck had to turn. He counted the passing days, praying that no serious problem would arise before King Trent returned. Maybe when Dor was Trent's age he'd be competent to run a kingdom full-time; right now it was such nervous business it was driving him to distraction. Irene, at length perceiving this, flipflopped in girlish fashion and started offering support. "After all," she said consolingly, "It's not forever, even though it seems like it. Only two more days before the danger's over. Then we can all faint with relief." Dor appreciated the support, though he might have preferred a less pointed summation of his inadequacy. He made it. The day of King Trent's return came, to Dor's immense relief and Irene's mixed gratification and subdued dismay. She wanted her father back, but had expected Dor to make more of a mess of things. Dor had escaped more or less unscratched, which she felt was not quite fair. Both of them dressed carefully and made sure the Castle Roogna grounds were clean. They were ready to greet the returning royalty in proper style. The expectant hours passed, but the King and Queen did not appear. Dor quelled his nervousness; of course it took time to travel, especially if a quantity of Mundane trade goods was being moved. Irene joined Dor for a lunch of number noodles and milk shakes; they tried to divert themselves by spelling words with numbers, but the milk kept shaking so violently that nothing held together. That fitted their mood. "Where are they?" Irene demanded as the afternoon wore on. She was really getting worried. Now that she had a genuine concern, so that she wasn't concentrating her energy to embarrass Dor, she manifested as the infernally pretty girl she could be. Even the green tint of her hair was attractive; it did match her eyes, and after all, there was nothing wrong with plants. "Probably they had stuff to carry, so had to go slow," Dor said, not for the first time. But a qualm was gnawing at him. He cuffed it away, but it kept returning, as was the nature of its kind. Irene did not argue, but the green was spreading to her face, and that was less pretty. Evening came, and night, without Trent and Iris's return. Now Irene turned to Dor in genuine apprehension. "Oh, Dor, I'm scared! What's happened to them?" He could bluff neither her nor himself. He put his arm about her shoulders. "I don't know. I'm scared, too." She clung to him for a moment, all soft and sweet in her anxiety. Then she drew away and ran to her own apartment. "I don't want you to see me cry," she explained as she disappeared. Dor was touched. If only she could be like that when things were going well! There was a good deal more to her than mischief and sexual suggestion, if she ever let it show. He retired and slept uneasily. The real nightmares came this time, not the sleek and rather pretty equines he had sometimes befriended, but huge, nebulous, misshapen creatures with gleaming white eyes and glinting teeth; he had to shake himself violently awake to make them leave. He used the royal chambers, for he was King now—but since his week was over, he felt more than ever like an imposter. He stared morosely at the dark hoofprints on the floor, knowing the mares were waiting only for him to sleep again. He was defenseless; he had geared himself emotionally for relief when the week expired, and now that relief had been negated. If the King and Queen did not return today, what would he do? They did not return. Dor continued to settle differences and solve problems in the Kingly routine; what else could he do? But a restlessness was growing in the palace, and his own dread intensified as each hour dragged by. Everyone knew King Trent's vacation had been scheduled for one week. Why hadn't he returned? In the evening Irene approached Dor privately. There was no mischief about her now. She was conservatively garbed in a voluminous green robe, and her hair was in disorder, as if overrun by weeds. Her eyes were preternaturally bright, as if she had been crying more than was good for her and had used vanishing cream to make the signs of it disappear. "Something's happened," she said. "I know it. We must go check on them." "We can't do that," Dor said miserably. "Can't? That concept is not in my lexicon." She had grown so used to using fancy words, she now did it even when distracted. Dor hoped he never deteriorated to that extent. "I can do anything I want, except—" "Except rule Xanth," Dor said. "And find your parents." "Where are they?" she demanded. She didn't know, of course. She had not been part of the secret. He saw no way to avoid telling her now, for she was, after all, King Trent's daughter, and the situation had become serious. She did have the right to know. "In Mundania." "Mundania!" she cried, horrified. "A trade mission," he explained quickly. "To make a deal so Xanth can benefit. For progress." "Oh, this is twice as awful as I feared. Oh, woe! Mundania! The awfullest of places! They can't do magic there! They're helpless!" That was an exaggeration, but she was prone to it when excited. Neither Trent nor Iris was helpless in nonmagical terms. The King was an expert swordsman, and the Queen had a wonderfully devious mind. "Remember, he spent twenty years there, before he was King. He knows his way around." "But he didn't come back!" Dor could not refute that. "I don't know what to do," he confessed. "We'll have to go find them," she said. "Don't tell me no again." And there was such a glint in her bright eyes that Dor dared not defy her. Actually, it seemed so simple. Anything was better than the present doubt. "All right. But I'll have to tell the Council of Elders." For the Elders were responsible for the Kingdom during the absence of the King. They took care of routine administrative chores and had to select a new King if anything happened to the old one. They had chosen Trent, back when the prior monarch, the Storm King, had died. Dor's grandfather Roland was a leading Elder. "First thing in the morning," she said, her gaze daring him to demur. "First thing in the morning," he agreed. She had forced this action upon him, but he was glad for the decision. "Shall I stay with you tonight? I saw the hoofprints." Dor considered. The surest way to banish nightmares was to have compatible company while sleeping. But Irene was too pretty now and too accommodating; if he kissed her this night, she wouldn't bite. That made him cautious. Once Good Magician Humfrey had suggested to him that it might be more manly to decline a woman's offer than to accept it; Dor had not quite understood that suggestion, but now he had a better inkling of its meaning. "No," he said regretfully. "I fear the nightmares, but I fear you more." "Gee," she said, pleased. Then she kissed him without biting and left in her swirl of perfume. Dor sat for some time, wishing Irene were that way all the time. No tantrums, no artful flashes of torso, no pretended misunderstandings, just a sincere and fairly mature caring. But of course her niceness came only in phases, always wiped out by other phases. His decision had one beneficial effect: the nightmares foraged elsewhere that night, letting him sleep in peace. "Cover for me," he told Irene in the morning. "I would rather people didn't know where I am, except for the conjurer." "Certainly," she agreed. If people knew he was consulting privately with an Elder, they would know something was wrong. He went to see his grandfather Roland, who lived in the North Village, several days' walk beyond the Gap Chasm. Kings of Xanth had once resided here, before Trent restored Castle Roogna. He marched up the neat walk and knocked on the humble door. "Oh, grandfather!" Dor cried the moment the strong old man appeared. "Something has happened to King Trent, and I must go look for him." "Impossible," Roland said sternly. "The King may not leave Castle Roogna for more than a day without appointing another Magician as successor. At the moment there are no other Magicians who would assume the crown, so you must remain there until Trent returns. That is the law of Xanth." "But King Trent and Queen Iris went to Mundania!" "Mundania!" Roland was as surprised as Irene had been. "No wonder he did not consult with us! We would never have permitted that." So there had been method in the manner King Trent had set Dor up for this practice week. Trent had bypassed the Council of Elders! But that was not Dor's immediate concern. "I'm not fit to govern, grandfather. I'm too young. I've got to get King Trent back!" "Absolutely not! I am only one member of the Council, but I know their reaction. You must remain here until Trent returns." "But then how can I rescue him?" "From Mundania? You can't. He will have to extricate himself from whatever situation he is in, assuming he lives." "He lives!" Dor repeated emphatically. He had to believe that! The alternative was unthinkable. "But I don't know how long I can keep governing Xanth. The people know I'm not really King. They think King Trent is nearby, just giving me more practice. They won't obey me much longer." "Perhaps you should get help," Roland suggested. "I disapprove on principle of deception, but I think it best in this case that the people not know the gravity of the situation. Perhaps it is not grave at all; Trent may return in good order at any time. Meanwhile, the Kingdom need not be governed solely by one young man." "I could get help, I guess," Dor said uncertainly. "But what about King Trent?" "He must return by himself—or fail to. None of us can locate him in Mundania, let alone help him. This is the obvious consequence of his neglect in obtaining the prior advice of the Council of Elders. We must simply wait. He is a resourceful man who will surely prevail if that is humanly possible." With that Dor had to be satisfied. He was King, but he could not go against the Elders. He realized now that this was not merely a matter of law or custom, but of common sense. Any situation in Mundania that was too much for King Trent to handle would be several times too much for Dor. Irene was more positive than he had expected, when he gave her the news on his return. "Of course the Elders would say that. They're old and conservative. And right, I guess. We'll just have to make do until my father gets back." Dor didn't quite trust her change of heart, but knew better than to inquire. "Who can we get to help?" He knew it would be impossible to exclude Irene from any such activity. King Trent was, after all, her father, the one person to whom her loyalty was unfailing. "Oh, all the kids. Chet, Smash, Grundy—" "To run a Kingdom?" he asked dubiously. "Would you rather leave it to the Elders?" She had a point. "I hope the situation doesn't last long," he said. "You certainly don't hope it more than I do!" she agreed, and he knew that was straight from her heart. Irene went off to locate the people mentioned so that Dor would not arouse suspicion by doing it himself. The first she found was Grundy the Golem. Grundy was older than the others and different in several respects. He had been created as a golem, animated wood and clay and string, and later converted to full-person status. He was only a handspan tall, and spoke all the languages of all living things—which was the useful talent for which he had been created. Grundy could certainly help in solving the routine problems of Xanth. But he tended to speak too often and intemporately. In other words, he was mouthy. That could be trouble. "Now this is a secret," Dor explained. "King Trent is lost in Mundania, and I must run the Kingdom until he returns." "Xanth is in trouble!" Grundy exclaimed. "That's why I need your help. I don't know how much longer I'll have to be King, and I don't want things to get out of control. You generally have good information—" "I snoop a lot," Grundy agreed. "Very well; I'll snoop for you. First thing I have to tell you is that the whole palace is sniggering about a certain essay someone wrote for a certain female tutor—" "That news I can dispense with," Dor said. "Then there's the gossip about how a certain girl went swimming in her birthday suit, which suit seems to have stretched some since her birth, along with—" "That, too," Dor said, smiling. "I'm sure you comprehend my needs." "What's in it for me?" "Your head." "He's King, all right," the golem muttered. One of the walls chuckled. Irene brought in Chet. He was a centaur a little older than Dor, but he seemed younger because centaurs matured more slowly. He was Cherie's son, which meant he was highly educated but very cautious about showing any magic talent. For a long time centaurs had believed they lacked magical talents, because most creatures of Xanth either had magic or were magic. Modern information had dissipated such superstitions. Chet did have a magic talent; he could make large things small. It was a perfectly decent ability, and many people had fine miniatures he had reduced for them, but it had one drawback; he could not reverse the process. His father was Chester Centaur, which meant Chet tended to be ornery when challenged, and was unhandsome in his human portion. When he reached his full stature, which would not be for some years yet, he would be a pretty solid animal. Dor, despite the maledictions he heaped on the race of centaurs while sweating over one of Cherie's assignments, did like Chet, and had always gotten along with him. Dor explained the situation. "Certainly I will help," Chet said. He always spoke in an educated manner, partly because he was unconscionably smart, but mostly because his mother insisted. Technically, Cherie was Chet's dam, but Dor refrained from using that term for fear Cherie would perceive the "n" he mentally added to it. Dor had sympathy for Chet; it was probably almost as hard being Cherie's son as it was trying to be King. Chet would not dare misspell any words. "But I am uncertain how I might assist." "I've just barely figured out decent answers to the problems I've already dealt with," Dor said earnestly. "I'm bound to foul up before long. I need good advice." "Then you should apply to my mother. Her advice is irrefutable." "I know. That's too authoritative." Chet smiled. "I suspect I understand." That was as close as he would come to criticizing his dam. Later in the day Irene managed to bring in Smash. He was the offspring of Crunch the Ogre, and also not yet at full growth—but he was already about twice Dor's mass and strong in proportion. Like all ogres, he was ugly and not smart; his smile would spook a gargoyle, and he could barely pronounce most words, let alone spell them. That quality endeared him to Dor. But the ogre's association with human beings had made him more intelligible and sociable than others of his kind, and he was loyal to his friends. Dor had been his friend for years. Dor approached this meeting diplomatically. "Smash, I need your help." The gross mouth cracked open like caked mud in a dehydrated pond. "Sure me help! Who me pulp to kelp?" "No one, yet," Dor said quickly. Again like all ogres, Smash was prone to rhymes and violence. "But if you could sort of stay within call, in case someone tries to pulp me—" "Pulp me? Who he?" Dor realized he had presented too convoluted a thought. "When I yell, you come help. Okay?" "Help whelp!" Smash agreed, finally getting it straight. Dor's choice of helpers proved fortuitous. Because they were all his peers and friends, they understood his situation better than adults would have and kept his confidences. It was a kind of game—run this Kingdom as if King Trent were merely dallying out of sight, watching them, grading them. It was important not to foul up. A basilisk wandered into a village, terrorizing the people, because its stare caused them to turn to stone. Dor wasn't sure he could scare it away as he had the sea monster, though it was surely a stupid creature, for basilisks had exceedingly ornery personalities. He couldn't have a boulder conjured to squish it, for King Trent decreed the basilisk to be an endangered species. This was an alien concept the King had brought with him from Mundania—the notion that rare creatures, however horrible, should be protected. Dor did not quite understand this, but he was trying to preserve the Kingdom for Trent's return, so did it Trent's way. He needed some harmless way to persuade the creature to leave human villages alone—and he couldn't even talk its language. But Grundy the Golem could. Grundy used a helmet and periscope— that was a magic device that bent vision around a corner—to look indirectly at the little monster, and told it about the most baleful she-bask he had ever heard of, who was lurking somewhere in the Dead Forest southeast of Castle Roogna. Since the one Grundy addressed happened to be a cockatrice, the notion of such a henatrice appealed to it. It was no lie; there was a palace guard named Crombie who had the ability to point to things and he had pointed toward that forest when asked where the most baleful female basilisk resided. Of course, sex was mostly illusion among basilisk, since each was generated from the egg of a rooster laid in a dungheap under the Dog Star and hatched by a toad. That was why this was an endangered species, since very few roosters laid eggs in dungheaps under the Dog Star—they tended to get confused and do it under the Cat Star—and most toads had little patience with the seven years it normally required to hatch the egg. But like human beings, the basilisks pursued such illusions avidly. So this cock-bask took off in all haste—i.e., a fast snails pace—for the Dead Forest, where the lonesome hen basked, and the problem had been solved. Then there was an altercation in the Barracks—the village set up by the old soldiers of Trent's erstwhile Mundane army, dismantled when he came to power. Each had a farmstead, and many had Mundane wives imported to balance the sexual ratio. They could not do magic, but their children had talents, just like the real citizens of Xanth. The old soldiers entertained themselves by setting up a war-games spectacular, using wooden swords and engaging in complex maneuvers. King Trent allowed this sort of exercise, so long as no one was hurt; soldiers unable to stifle their murderous propensities were issued genuine bayonets from bayonet plants cultured for the purpose and were assigned to dragon-hunting duty. They went after those dragons who insisted on raiding human settlements. This tended to eliminate some of the dragons and most of the violent soldiers. It all worked out. But this time there was a difference of opinion concerning a score made by the Red team on the Green team. The Reds had set up a catapult and fired off a puffball that puffed into lovely smoke at the apex of its flight. In the games, soldiers were not permitted to hurl actual rocks or other dangerous things at each other, to their frustration. The Reds claimed a direct score on the Greens' headquarters tent, wiping out the Green Bean and his Floozie of the Day. The Greens insisted that the Reds' aim had been off, so that they had not, after all, puffed Bean and Floozie. Since the Floozie was the brains of the outfit, this was a significant distinction. The Reds countered that they had surveyed in the positions of their catapult and the target tent, allowed for windage, humidity, air pressure, and stray magic, double-checked the azimuth, elevation, and charge with their Red Pepper and his Doll of the Day, and fired off the mock-shot in excellent faith. The victory should be theirs. Dor had no idea how to verify the accuracy of the shot. But Chet Centaur did. Lower, middle, and higher math had been pounded into his skull by the flick of a horsewhip at his tail. He reviewed all the figures of the survey, including the Floozie and Doll figures, spoke with the military experts about corrected azimuths and trigonometric functions—which made Dor nervous; it wasn't nice to talk dirty in public—and concluded that the shot had been off-target by seven point three lengths of the Red Pepper's left foot. Presented with formal protests, he engaged in a brief debate in which obscure mathematical spells radiated like little whirlpools and nebulae from his head to clash with those of the Reds. A purple tangent spun into a yellow vector, breaking it in two; an orange cosine ground up a dangling cube root. The Red surveyors, impressed by Chet's competence, conceded the point. However, since the target tent had been twelve Pepper-foots in diameter, it was recognized that the probability of a glancing strike was high, even with due margin for error. The Greens were adjudged to have lost the services of the Floozie, and therefore to be at a serious disadvantage in the engagement. The maneuvers resumed, and Chet returned to Castle Roogna, problem solved. Then a huge old rock-maple tree fell across one of the magic paths leading to Castle Roogna. This was a well-traveled path, and it was not safe to leave it, for beyond its protection the nickelpedes lurked. No one would risk setting foot into a nickelpede nest, for the vicious little creatures, five times the size and ferocity of centipedes, would instantly gouge out nickels of flesh. The tree had to be cleared—but the rock was far too heavy for any ordinary person to move. Smash the Ogre took a hammer, marched down the path, and blasted away at the fallen trunk. He was as yet a child ogre, not more than half again as tall as Dor, so possessed of only a fraction of his eventual strength, but an ogre was an ogre at any age. The hummer clanged resoundingly, the welkin rang, the stone cracked asunder, dust flew up in clouds that formed a small dust storm wherein dust devils played, and fragments of maple shot out like shrapnel. Soon the little ogre had hewn a path-sized section through the trunk, so that people could pass again. The job had been simple enough for him, though as an adult, he would not have needed the hammer. He would merely have picked up the whole trunk and heaved it far away. So it went. Another week passed—and still King Trent and Queen Iris did not return. Irene's nervousness was contagious. "You've got to do something, Dor!" she screamed, and several ornamental plants in the vicinity swelled up and burst, responding to her frustration. "The Elders won't let me go after him," he said, as nervous as she. "You do something right now, Dor, or I'll make your life completely miserable!" Dor quailed anew. This was no empty bluff. She could make him miserable on her good days; how bad would it be when she really tried? "I'll consult with Crombie," he said. "What good will that do?" she demanded. "My father is in Mundania; Crombie can't point out his location beyond the realm of magic." "I have a feeble notion," Dor said. When Crombie arrived, Dor put it to him: how about pointing out something that would help them locate King Trent? Crombie could point to anything, even an idea; if there were some device or some person with special information— Crombie closed his eyes, spun about, flung out one arm, and pointed south. Dor was almost afraid to believe it. "There really is something that will help?" "I never point wrong," Crombie said with certainty. He was a stout, graying soldier of the old school, who had a wife named Jewel who lived in the nether caves of Xanth, and a daughter named Tandy of whom no one knew anything. Jewel had been a nymph of the rock; it was her job to salt the earth with all the diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, rubies, opals, spinels, and other gemstones that prospectors were destined eventually to find. She was said to be a lovely, sweet, and tolerant woman now, satisfied to see Crombie on those irregular occasions when he got around to visiting her. Dor understood that Jewel had once loved his father Bink, or vice versa— that had never been made quite clear—but that Crombie had captured her heart with a wish-spell. Love had transformed her from nymph to woman; that process, too, was not quite within Dor's comprehension. What was the distinction between a nymph and a girl like Irene? "Sometimes people interpret it wrong, but the point is always right," Crombie finished. "Uh, do you have any idea how far it is?" "Can't really tell, but pretty far, I think. I could triangulate for you, maybe." He went to another room of the castle and tried again. The point remained due south. "Too far to get a proper fix. Down beyond Lake Ogre-Chobee, I'd say." Dor knew about that lake; it had been part of the geography Cherie Centaur had drilled into him. A tribe of fiends lived beneath it, who hurled curses at anyone who bothered them; they had driven off most of the ogres who had once resided on its shores. A number of those displaced ogres had migrated north, settling in the Ogre-fen-Ogre Fen; woe betide the curse-fiend who tried to follow them there! He didn't want to go to that lake; anything that could drive away a tribe of ogres was certainly too much for him to handle. "But you're sure it will help us?" Dor asked nervously. "Not curse us?" "You hard of hearing, Your Majesty? I said so before." Crombie was a friend of Dor's a father and of King Trent; he did not put up with much nonsense from youngsters who had not even existed when he was sowing his wild oats. All he sowed now were tame oats; Jewel saw to that. "How will it help us?" Irene asked. "How should I know?" Crombie demanded. He was also a woman hater; this was another aspect of his personality whose consistency eluded Dor. How could a tamely married man hate women? Evidently Irene had changed, in Crombie's eyes, from child to woman; indeed, there was something in the way the old soldier looked at her now that made Irene tend to fade back. She played little games of suggestion with a harmless person like Dor, but lost her nerve when confronted by a real man, albeit an old one like Crombie. "I don't define policy, I only point the way." "Yes, of course, and we do appreciate it," Dor said diplomatically. "Uh, while you're here—would you point out the direction of any special thing I should be taking care of while I'm King?" "Why not?" Crombie whirled again—and pointed south again. "Ha!" Dor exclaimed. "I hoped that would be the case. I'm supposed to go find whatever it is that will help us locate King Trent." Irene's eyes lighted. "Sometimes you border on genius!" she breathed, gratified at this chance to search for her parents. "Of course I do," Crombie agreed, though the remark had not been directed at him. He marched off on his rounds, guarding the castle. Dor promptly visited Elder Roland again, this time having Irene conjured along with him. She had never before been to the North Village, and found it quaint. "What's that funny-looking tree in the center court?" she inquired. "That's Justin Tree," Dor replied, surprised she didn't know about it. "Your father transformed him to that form from a man, about forty years ago, before he went to Mundania the first time." She was taken aback. "Why didn't he transform him back, once he was King?" "Justin likes being a tree," Dor explained. "He has become a sort of symbol to the North Village. People bring him fresh water and dirt and fertilizer when he wants them, and couples embrace in his shade." "Oh, let's try that!" she said. Was she serious? Dor decided not to risk it. "We're here on business, rescuing your father. We don't want to delay." "Of course," she agreed instantly. They hurried on to Roland's house, where Dor's grandmother Bianca let them in, surprised at Dor's return. "Grandfather," Dor said when Roland appeared. "I have to make a trip south, according to Crombie. He points out a duty I have there, way down beyond Lake Ogre-Chobee. So the Elders can't say no to that, can they?" Roland frowned. "We can try, Your Majesty." He glanced at Irene. "Would this relate to the absence of Magician Trent?" "King Trent!" Irene snapped. Roland smiled indulgently. "We Elders are just as concerned about this matter as you are," he said. He spoke firmly and softly; no one would know from his demeanor that he had the magic power to freeze any person in his tracks. "We are eager to ascertain Trent's present state. But we can not allow our present King—that's you, Dor—to risk himself foolishly. I'm afraid a long trip, particularly to the vicinity of Ogre-Chobee, is out of the question at this time." "But it's a matter I'm supposed to attend to!" Dor protested. "And it's not exactly the lake; it's south of it. So I don't have to go near the fiends. If a King doesn't do what he's supposed to do, he's not fit to be King!" "One could wish King Trent had kept that more firmly in mind," Roland said, and Irene flushed. "Yet at times there are conflicts of duty. Part of the art of governing is the choosing of the best route through seeming conflicts. You have done well so far, Dor; I think you'll be a good King. You must not act irresponsibly now." "King Trent said much the same," Dor said, remembering. "Just before he left, he told me that when I was in doubt, to concentrate on honesty." "That is certainly true. How strange that he did not do the honest thing himself, and consult with the Elders before he departed." That was bothering Dor increasingly, and he could see that Irene was fit to explode. She hated denigration of her father—yet Roland's pique seemed justified. Had King Trent had some deeper motive than mere trade with Mundania? Had he, incredibly, actually planned not to return? "I'd like just to go to bed and hide my head under the blanket," Dor said. "That is no longer a luxury you can afford. I think the nightmares would seek you out." "They already have," Dor agreed ruefully. "The castle maids are complaining about the hoofprints in the rugs." "I would like to verify your findings, if I may," Roland said. There was a break while Dor arranged to have Crombie conjured to the North Village. Grandmother Bianca served pinwheel cookies she had harvested from her pinwheel bush. Irene begged a pinwheel seed from her; Irene had a collection of seeds she could grow into useful plants. "My, how you've grown!" Bianca said, observing Irene. Irene dropped her cookie—but then had it back unbroken. Bianca's magic talent was the replay; she could make time drop back a few seconds, so that some recent error could be harmlessly corrected. "Thank you," Irene murmured, recovering. Crombie arrived. "I would like to verify your findings, if I may," Roland repeated to the soldier. Dor noted how the old man was polite to everyone; somehow that made Roland seem magnified in the eyes of others. "Will you point out to me, please, the greatest present threat to the Kingdom of Xanth?" Crombie obligingly went through his act again—and pointed south again. "That is what I suspected," Roland said. "It seems something is developing in that region that you do indeed have to attend to, Dor. But this is a serious matter, no pleasure excursion." "What can I do?" Dor asked plaintively. The horror of King Trent's unexplained absence was closing in on him, threatening to overwhelm his tenuous equilibrium. "You can get some good advice." Dor considered. "You mean Good Magician Humfrey?" "I do. He can tell you which course is best, and if you must make this trip, he can serve in your stead as King." "I don't think he'll agree to that," Dor said. "I'm sure he won't," Irene agreed. "There must be a Magician on the throne of Xanth. Ask Humfrey to arrange it, should he approve your excursion." That was putting the Good Magician on the spot! "I will." Dor looked around, trying to organize himself. "I'd better get started. It's a long walk." "You're the King, Dor. You don't have to walk there any more than you had to walk here. Have yourself conjured there." "Oh. Yes. I forgot." Dor felt quite foolish. "But first get the rest of us safely back to Castle Roogna," Irene told him, nibbling on another cookie. "I don't want to have to cross over the Gap Chasm on the invisible bridge and have the Gap Dragon looking up my skirt." She held the cookie up by the pin while she chewed around the wheel, delicately.
(Xanth 4) Centaur Aisle	Piers Anthony	[ "fantasy", "puns" ]	[]	Wedding Spell	Dor did not arrive inside Magician Humfrey's castle. He found himself standing just outside the moat. Something had gone wrong! No, he realized. He had been conjured correctly—but the Good Magician, who didn't like intrusions, had placed a barrier-spell in the way, to divert anyone to this place outside. Humfrey didn't like to talk to anyone who didn't get into the castle the hard way. Of course he wasn't supposed to make the King run the gauntlet—but obviously the old wizard was not paying attention at the moment. Dor should have called him on a magic mirror; he hadn't thought of it, in his eagerness to get going. Which meant he deserved what he had gotten—the consequence of his own lack of planning. Of course, he could probably yell loud enough to attract the attention of someone inside the castle so he could get admitted without trouble. But Dor had a slightly ornery streak. He had made a mistake; he wanted to work his way out of it himself. Rather, into it. He had forced his way into this castle once, four years ago; he should be able to do it now. That would prove he could recover his own fumbles—the way a King should. He took a good look at the castle environs. The moat was not clear and sparkling as it had been the last time he was here; it was dull and noisome. The shape of the castle wall was now curved and slanted back, like a steep conical mountain. It was supremely unimpressive—and therefore suspect. Dor squatted and dipped a finger in the water. It came up festooned with slime. He sniffed it. Ugh! Yet there was a certain familiarity about it he could not quite place. Where had he smelled that smell before? One thing was certain: he was not about to wade or swim through that water without first ascertaining exactly what lurked in it. Magician Humfrey's castle defenses were intended to balk and discourage, rather than to destroy—but they were always formidable enough. Generally it took courage and ingenuity to navigate the several hazards. There would be something in the moat a good deal more unpleasant than slime. Nothing showed. The dingy green gook covered the whole surface, unbroken by any other horror. Dor was not encouraged. "Water, are there any living creatures lurking in your depths?" he inquired. "None at all," the water replied, its voice slurred by the goop. Yet there was a tittery overtone; it seemed to find something funny in the question. "Any inanimate traps?" "None." Now little ripples of mirth tripped across the glutinous surface. "What's so funny?" Dor demanded. The water made little elongated splashes, like dribbles of spoiled mucus. "You'll find out." The trouble with the inanimate was that it had very shallow notions of humor and responsibility. But it could usually be coaxed or cowed. Dor picked up a rock and hefted it menacingly. "Tell me what you know," he said to the water, "or I'll strike you with this stone." "Don't do that!" the water cried, cowed. "I'll squeal! I'll spill everything I know, which isn't much." "Ugh!" the rock said at the same time. "Don't throw me in that feculent sludge!" Dor remembered how he had played the Magician's own defenses against each other, last time. There had been a warning sign, TRESPASSERS WILL BE PERSECUTED—and sure enough, when he trespassed he had been presented with a button with the word TRESPASSER on one side, and PERSECUTED on the other. The living-history tome that had recorded the episode had suffered a typo, rendering PERSECUTED into PROSECUTED for the sign, but not for the button, spoiling the effect of these quite different words. These things happened; few people seemed to know the distinction, and Dor's spelling had not been good enough to correct it. But this time there was no sign. He had to generate his own persecution. "Get on with it," he told the water, still holding the rock. "It's a zombie," the water said. "A zombie sea serpent." Now Dor understood. Zombies were dead, so it was true there were no living creatures in the moat. But zombies were animate, so there were no inanimate traps either. It made sudden sense—for Dor remembered belatedly that the Zombie Master was still here. When the Zombie Master appeared in the present Xanth, there had been a problem, since Good Magician Humfrey now occupied the castle the Zombie Master had used eight hundred years ago. The one had the claim of prior tenancy, the other the claim of present possession. Neither wanted trouble. So the two Magicians had agreed to share the premises until something better was offered. Evidently the Zombie Master had found nothing better. Naturally he helped out with the castle defenses; he was not any more sociable than Humfrey was. As it happened, Dor had had experience with zombies. Some of his best friends had been zombies. He still was not too keen on the way they smelled, or on the way they dropped clods of dank glop and maggots wherever they went, but they were not bad creatures in their place. More important, they were hardly smarter than the inanimate objects Dor's magic animated, because their brains were literally rotten. He was confident he could fool a zombie. "There should be a boat around here," he said to the rock. "Where is it?" "Over there, chump," the rock said. "Now will you let me go?" Dor saw the boat. Satisfied, he let the rock go. It dropped with a satisfied thunk to the ground and remained there in blissful repose. Rocks were basically lazy; they hardly ever did anything on their own. He went to the boat. It was a dingy canoe with a battered double paddle—exactly what he needed. Dor walked away. "Hey, aren't you going to use me?" the canoe demanded. Objects weren't supposed to talk unless Dor willed it, but they tended to get sloppy about the rules. "No. I'm going to fetch my friend the zombie." "Oh, sure. We see lots of that kind here. They make good fertilizer." When Dor was out of sight of the castle, he stopped and stooped to grub in the dirt. He smeared dirt on his face and arms and over his royal robes. Naturally he should have changed to more suitable clothing for this trip, but of course that was part of his overall carelessness. He had not planned ahead at all. Next, he found a sharp stone and used it to rip into the cloth of the robe. "Ooooh, ouch!" the robe groaned. "What did I ever do to you that you should slay me thus?" But the sharp stone only chuckled. It liked ripping off clothing. Before long, Dor was a tattered figure of a man. He scooped several double handfuls of dirt into a fold of his robe and walked back to the castle. As he approached the moat, he shuffled in the manner of a zombie and dropped small clods to the ground. He got into the canoe. "Oooooh," he groaned soulfully. "I hope I can make it home before I go all to pieces." And he used the paddle to push off into the scum of the moat. He was deliberately clumsy, though in truth he was not well experienced with canoes and would have been awkward anyway. The water slurped and sucked as the paddle dipped into the ooze. Now there was a stirring as the zombie sea monster moved. The slime parted and the huge, mottled, decaying head lifted clear of the viscous surface. Globules of slush dangled and dripped, plopping sickly into the water. The huge, sloppy mouth peeled open, revealing scores of loose brownish teeth set in a jaw almost stripped of flesh. "Hi, friend!" Dor called windily. "Can you direct me to my Master?" As he spoke he slipped forth a moist clod of dirt, so that it looked as if his lip were falling off. The monster hesitated. Its grotesque head swung close to inspect Dor. Its left eyeball came loose, dangling by a gleaming string. "Sooo?" the zombie inquired, its breath redolent of spoiled Limberger. Dor waved his arms, losing some more earth. One choice clod struck the monster on the nose with a dank squish. He was sorry he hadn't been able to find anything really putrid, like a maggoty rat corpse, but that was the luck of the game. "Whe-eere?" he demanded, every bit as stupid as a zombie. The big advantage to playing stupid was that it didn't take much intelligence. He knocked at his right ear and let fall another clod, as if a piece of his brain had been dislodged. At last the serpent caught on. "Theeere," it breathed, spraying out several loose fragments of teeth and bone with the effort. Its snout seemed to be afflicted with advanced gangrene, and the remaining teeth were crumbling around their caries. "Thaaanks," Dor replied, dropping another clod into the water. He took up the paddle again and scraped on toward the castle. "Hope I don't fall apart before I get there." He had won the first round. The sea serpent was in poor condition, as most zombies were, but could have capsized the boat and drowned Dor in slime without difficulty. Had its brain been a better grade of pudding, it might have done just that. But zombies did not attack their own kind; that was too messy. Even the completeness of Dor's own body, conspicuously healthy under the tatters and dirt, did not count too much against him; fresh zombies were complete. It took time for most of the flesh to fall off. He docked at the inner edge of the moat, where the castle wall emerged at its steep angle. Now Dor splashed a hole in the slime and cleared a section of halfway clean water he could wash in. His zombie ploy was over; he didn't want to enter the castle in this condition. The rents in his robe could not be repaired, but at least he would look human. He got out of the canoe, but found it hard to stand on the sloping wall. The surface was not brick or stone, as he had supposed, but glass—solid, translucent, seamless, cold hard glass. A mountain of glass. Glass. Now he grasped the nature of the second challenge. The slope became steeper near the top, until the wall was almost vertical. How could he scale that? Dor tried. He placed each foot carefully and found that he could stand and walk, slowly. He had to remain straight upright, for the moment he leaned into the mountain, as was his natural inclination, his feet began to skid. He could quickly get dumped into the awful moat if he let his feet slide out from under him. Fortunately, there was no wind; he could stand erect and step slowly up. He noticed, however, a small cloud in the sky. As he watched, it seemed to extend rapidly. Oops—that surely meant rain, which would wash him out. That was surely no coincidence; probably the touch of his foot on the glass had summoned the storm. He had to hike to the top of the mountain before the cloud arrived. Well, the distance was not far. With care and good foot-friction, he could probably make it. Then something came galloping around the mountain. It had four legs, a tail, and a funny horned head. But its chief oddity— It was heading right for Dor, those horns lowered. The creature was no taller than he, and the horns were small and blunt, but the body was far more massive. Dor had to jump to get out of its way—and lost his footing and slid down to the brink of the water before stopping, his nose barely clear of the slime. He stabilized himself while the zombie sea serpent watched with a certain aloof amusement. Dor wiped a dangle of goo from his nose. "What was that?" "The Sidehill Hoofer," the glass responded. "Something funny about that creature. The legs—" "Oh, sure," the glass said. "The two left legs are shorter than the two rights. That's so she can charge around the mountain in comfort. It's natural selection; lots of the better mountains have them." Shorter left legs—so the Hoofer could stay level while running on a slope. It did make a certain kind of sense. "How come I never heard of this creature before?" Dor demanded. "Probably because your education has been neglected." "I was tutored by a centaur!" Dor said defensively. "The centaur surely told you of the Sidehill Hoofer," the glass agreed. "But did you listen? Education is only as good as the mind of the student." "What are you implying?" Dor demanded. "I rather thought you were too dense to grasp the implication," the glass said with smug condescension. "You're a mountain of glass!" Dor said irately. "How bright can you be?" "Thought you'd never ask. I'm the brightest thing on the horizon." And a beam of sunlight slanted down, avoiding the looming cloud, causing the mountain to glow brilliantly. Dor had walked into that one! With the lifetime experience he had, he still fell into the trap of arguing with the inanimate. He changed the subject "Is the Hoofer dangerous?" "Not if you have the wit to stay out of her way." "I've got to climb to the top of this slope." "Extraordinary fortune," the glass said brightly. "What?" The glass sighed. "I keep forgetting that animate creatures can not match my brilliance. Recognizing your handicap, I shall translate: Lots of luck." "Oh, thank you," Dor said sarcastically. "That's irony," the glass said. "Irony—not glassy?" "Spare me your feeble efforts at repartee. If you do not get moving before that cloud arrives, you will be washed right into the sea." "That's an exaggeration," Dor grumped, starting back up the slope. "That is hyperbole." The glass began humming a tinkly little tune. Dor made better progress than before. He was getting the hang of it. He had to put his feet down flat and softly and will himself not to skid. But the Sidehill Hoofer came charging around the cone again, spooking him with a loud "Moooo!" and Dor slid down the slope again. He was no more partial to this bovine than he had been to Irene's sea cow. The cloud was definitely closer, and playful little gusts of wind emanated from it. "Oh, get lost!" Dor told it. "Fat chance!" it blew back, ruffling his hair with an aggravating intimacy. Dor went up the slope a third time, by dint of incautious effort getting beyond the slight gouge in the mountain worn by the Hoofer's pounding hooves. The glass hummed louder and finally broke into song: "She'll be coming 'round the mountain when she comes." Sure enough, the Sidehill Hoofer came galumphing around again, spied Dor, and corrected course slightly to charge straight at him. Her uneven legs pounded evenly on the incline, so that her two short horns were dead-level as they bore on him. Blunt those horns might be, but they were formidable enough in this situation. Oh, no! It was no accident that brought this creature around so inconveniently; she was trying to prevent him from passing. Naturally this was the third barrier to his entry into the castle. Dor jumped out of the way and slid down to the brink again, disgruntled. The Hoofer thundered by, disappearing around the curve. Dor wiped another dribble of slime off his nose. He wasn't making much progress! This was annoying, because he had passed his first challenge without difficulty and faced only two comparatively simple and harmless ones—to avoid the Hoofer and scale the slippery slope. Either alone was feasible; together they baffled him. Now he had perhaps ten minutes to accomplish both before the ornery raincloud wiped him out. Already the forward edge of the cloud had cut off the sunbeam. Dor didn't like leaning on his magic talent too much, but decided that pride was a foolish baggage at this point. He had to get inside the castle any way he could and get Good Magician Humfrey's advice—for the good of Xanth. "Glass, since you're so bright—tell me how I can get past the Hoofer and up your slope before the cloud strikes." "Don't tell him!" the cloud thundered. "Well, I'm not so bright any more, now that I'm in your shadow," the glass demurred. This was true; the sparkle was gone, and the mountain was a somber dark mass, like the quiet depths of an ocean. "But you remember the answer," Dor said. "Give." "Take!" the storm blew. "I've got to tell him," the glass said dolefully. "Though I'd much rather watch him fall on his as—" "Watch your language!" Dor snapped. "—inine posterior again and dip his nose in the gunk. But he's a Magician and I'm only silicon." The glass sighed. "Very well. Cogitate and masticate on—" "What?" "Give me strength to survive the monumental idiocy of the animate," the glass prayed obnoxiously. The cloud had let a gleam of sunlight through, making it bright again. "Think and chew on this: who can most readily mount the slope?" "The Sidehill Hoofer," Dor said. "But that's no help. I'm the one who—" "Think and chew," the glass repeated with emphasis. That reminded Dor of the way King Trent had stressed the importance of honesty, and that annoyed Dor. This mountain was no King! What business did it have making oblique allusions, as if Dor were a dunce who needed special handling? "Look, glass—I asked you a direct question—" "An indirect question, technically. My response reflects your approach. But surely you realize that I am under interdiction by another Magician." Dor didn't know what "interdiction" meant, but could guess. Humfrey had told the mountain not to blab the secret. But the cloud was looming close and large and dense with water, and he was impatient. "Hey, I insist that you tell me—" "That is of course the answer." Dor paused. This too-bright object was making a fool of him. He reviewed his words. Hey, I insist that you tell me—how was that the answer? Yet it seemed it was. "You'll never get it," the glass said disparagingly. "Hey, now—" Dor started angrily. "There you go again." Hey, now? Suddenly for got it. Hey—spelled H A Y. "Hay—now!" he cried. It was a homonym. The zombie sea serpent, taking that for an order, swam across the moat and reached out to take a clumsy bite of dry grass from the outer bank. It brought this back to Dor. "Thank you, serpent," Dor said, accepting the armful. He shook out the residual slime and dottle, and several more of the monster's teeth bounced on the glass. Zombies had an inexhaustible supply of fragments of themselves to drop; it was part of their nature. He started up the slope yet again, but this time he wanted to meet the Hoofer. He stood there with his hay, facing her. The creature came 'round the mountain—and paused as she sighted him. Her ears perked forward and her tongue ran over her lips. "That's right, you beautiful bovine," Dor said. "This hay is for you. Think and chew—to chew on while you think. I noticed that there isn't much forage along your beat. You must use a lot of energy, pounding around, and work up quite an appetite. Surely you could use a lunch break before the rain spoils everything." The Hoofer's eyes became larger. They were beautiful and soulful. Her square nose quivered as she sniffed in the odor of the fresh hay. Her pink tongue ran around her muzzle again. She was certainly hungry. "Of course, if I set it down, it'll just slide down the slope and into the moat," Dor said reasonably. "I guess you could fish it out, but slime-coated hay doesn't taste very good, does it?" As he spoke, a stronger gust of wind from the eager storm swirled through, tugging at the hay and wafting a few strands down to the goo of the moat. The Hoofer fidgeted with alarm. "Tell you what I'll do," Dor said. "I'll just get on your back and carry the hay, and feed it to you while you walk. That way you'll be able to eat it all, without losing a wisp, and no one can accuse you of being derelict in your duty. You'll be covering your beat all the time." "Mmmooo," the Hoofer agreed, salivating. She might not be bright, but she knew a good deal when she smelled it. Dor approached, gave her a good mouthful of hay, then scrambled onto her back from the uphill side. His left foot dragged, while his right foot dangled well above the surface of the glass, but he was sitting level. He leaned forward and extended his left hand to present another morsel of hay. The Hoofer took it and chewed blissfully, walking forward. When she finished masticating that—Dor realized he had learned a new word, though he would never be able to spell it—he gave her more, again left-handedly. She had to turn her head left to take it, and her travel veered slightly that way, uphill. They continued in this manner for a full circuit of the mountain. Sure enough, they were higher on the slope than they had been. His constant presentation of hay on the upward side caused the Hoofer to spiral upward. That was where he wanted to go. The storm was almost upon them. It had not been fooled! Dor leaned forward, squeezing with his knees, and the Hoofer unconsciously speeded up. The second circuit of the mountain was much faster, because of the accelerated pace and the narrower diameter at this elevation, and the third was faster yet. But Dor's luck, already overextended, was running out. His supply of hay, he saw, would not last until the top—and the rain would catch them anyway. He made a bold try to turn liabilities into assets. "I'm running out of hay—and the storm is coming," he told the Hoofer. "You'd better set me down before it gets slippery; no sense having my weight burden you." She hesitated, thinking this through. Dor helped the process. "Anywhere will do. You don't have to take me all the way to the base of the mountain. Maybe there at the top, where I'll be out of your way; it's certainly closer." That made good cow-sense to her. She trotted in a rapidly tightening spiral to the pinnacle, unbothered by the nearly vertical slope, where Dor stepped off. "Thanks, Hoofer," he said. "You do have pretty eyes." His experience with Irene had impressed upon him the advantage of complimenting females; they all were vain about their appearance. Pleased, the Hoofer began spiraling down. At that point, the storm struck. The cloud crashed into the pinnacle; the cloud substance tore asunder and water sluiced out of the rent. Rain pelted down, converting the glass surface instantly to something like slick ice. Wind buffeted him, whistling past the needle-pointed apex of the mountain that had wounded the cloud, making dire screams. Dor's feet slipped out, and he had to fling his arms around the narrow spire to keep from sliding rapidly down. The Hoofer had trouble, too; she braced all four feet—but still skidded grandly downward, until the lessening pitch of the slope enabled her to achieve stability. Then she ducked her head, flipped her tail over her nose, and went to sleep standing. The storm could not really hurt her. She had nowhere to go anyway. She was secure as long as she never tried to face the other way. He knew that when the rain abated, the Sidehill Hoofer would be contentedly chewing her cud. So Dor had made it to the top, conquering the last of the hurdles. Only—what was he to do now? The mountain peaked smoothly, and there was no entrance. Had he gone through all this to reach the wrong spot? If so, he had outsmarted himself. The water sluicing from the cloud was cold. His tattered clothing was soaked through, and his fingers were turning numb. Soon he would lose his grip and slide down, probably plunking all the way into the gook of the moat. That was a fate almost worse than freezing! "There must be a way in from here!" he gasped. "Of course there is, dumbbell," the spire replied. "You're not nearly as sharp as I am! Why else did you scheme your way up here? To wash off your grimy body? I trust I'm not being too pointed." Why else indeed! He had just assumed this was the correct route, because it was the most difficult one. "Okay, brilliant glass—your mind has more of a cutting edge than mine. Where is it?" "Now I don't have to tell you that," the glass said, chortling. "Any idiot, even one as dull as you, could figure that out for himself." "I'm not just any idiot!" Dor cried, the discomfort of the rain and chill giving him a terrible temper. "You certainly aren't! You're a prize idiot." "Thank you," Dor said, mollified. Then he realized that he was being as gullible as the average inanimate. Furious, Dor bashed his forehead against the glass—and something clicked. Oops—had he cracked his skull? No, he had only a mild bruise. Something else had made the noise. He nudged the surface again and got another click. Oho! He hit the glass a third time—and suddenly the top of the mountain sprang open, a cap whose catch had been released. It hung down one side on stout hinges, and inside was the start of a spiral staircase. Victory at last! "That's using your head," the glass remarked. Dor scrambled into the hole. He entered headfirst, then wrestled himself around to get his feet on the steps. Then he hauled the pointed cap of the mountain up and over, at last closing off the blast of the rain. "Curses!" the cloud stormed as he shut it out. He emerged into Humfrey's crowded study. There were battered leather-bound tomes of spells, magic mirrors, papers, and a general litter of indecipherable artifacts. Amidst it all, almost lost in the shuffle, stood Good Magician Humfrey. Humfrey was small, almost tiny, and grossly wrinkled. His head and feet were almost as large as those of a goblin, and most of his hair had gone the way of his youth. Dor had no idea how old he was and was afraid to ask; Humfrey was an almost ageless institution. He was the Magician of Information; everything that needed to be known in Xanth, he knew—and he would answer any question for the payment of one year's service by the asker. It was amazing how many people and creatures were not discouraged by that exorbitant fee; it seemed information was the most precious thing there was. "About time you got here," the little man grumped, not even noticing Dor's condition. "There's a problem in Centaur Isle you'll have to attend to. A new Magician has developed." This was news indeed! New Magicians appeared in Xanth at the rate of about one per generation; Dor had been the last one born. "Who is he? What talent does he have?" "He seems to be a centaur." "A centaur! But most of them don't believe in magic!" "They're very intelligent," Humfrey agreed. Since centaurs did have magic talents—those who admitted it—there was no reason why there could not be a centaur Magician, Dor realized. But the complications were horrendous. Only a Magician could govern Xanth; suppose one day there were no human Magician, only a centaur one? Would the human people accept a centaur King? Could a centaur King even govern his own kind? Dor doubted that Cherie Centaur would take orders from any magic-working centaur; she had very strict notions about obscenity, and that was the ultimate. "You didn't tell me his talent." "I don't know his talent!" Humfrey snapped. "I've been burning the midnight magic and cracking mirrors trying to ascertain it—but there seems to be nothing he does." "Then how can he be a Magician?" "That is for you to find out!" Obviously the Good Magician was not at all pleased to admit his inability to ascertain the facts in this case. "We can't have an unidentified Magician-caliber talent running loose; it might be dangerous." Dangerous? Something connected. "Uh—would Centaur Isle be to the south?" "Southern tip of Xanth. Where else would it be?" Dor didn't want to admit that he had neglected that part of his geography. Cherie had made nonhuman history and social studies optional, since Dor was human; therefore he hadn't studied them. He had learned about the ogre migration only because Smash had been curious. His friend Chet lived in a village not far north of the Gap Chasm, in easy galloping range of Castle Roogna via one of the magic bridges. Of course Dor knew that there were other colonies of centaurs; they were scattered around Xanth just as the human settlements were. He just hadn't paid attention to the specific sites. "Crombie the soldier pointed out the greatest threat to Xanth there. Also a job I need to attend to. And a way to get help to rescue King Trent. So it all seems to fit." "Of course it fits. Everything in Xanth makes sense, for those with the wit to fathom it. You're going to Centaur Isle. Why else did you come here?" "I thought it was for advice." "Oh, that. The Elders' face-saving device. Very well. Gather your juvenile friends. You'll be traveling incognito; no conjuring or other royal affectations. You can't roust out this hidden Magician if he knows you're coming. So the trip will take a week or so—" "A week! The Elders won't let me be away more than a day!" "Ridiculous! They made no trouble about King Trent going to Mundania for a week, did they?" "Because they didn't know," Dor said. "He didn't tell them." "Of course he told them! He consulted with me, and for the sake of necessary privacy I agreed to consult with the Elders and let him know if they raised any objections—and they didn't." "But my grandfather Roland says he was never told," Dor insisted. "The truth is, he is somewhat annoyed." "I told him myself. Here, verify it with the mirror." He gestured to a magic mirror on the wall. Its surface was finely crazed; evidently this was one of the ones that had suffered in the course of Humfrey's recent investigation of the centaur Magician. "When did Magician Humfrey tell Elder Roland about King Trent's trip to Mundania?" Dor asked it carefully. One had to specify things exactly, for mirrors' actual depth was much less than their apparent depth, and they were not smart at all despite their ability to answer questions. "Garbage in, garbage out," King Trent had once remarked cryptically, apparently meaning that a stupid question was likely to get a stupid answer. The tail of a centaur appeared in the marred surface. Dor knew that meant NO. "It says you didn't," he said. "Well, maybe I forgot," Humfrey muttered. "I'm too busy to keep up with every trifling detail." And the front of the centaur appeared—a fetching young female. No wonder there had been no protest from the Elders! Humfrey, distracted by other things, had never gotten around to informing them. King Trent, believing the Magician's silence meant approval from the Elders, had departed as planned. Trent had not intentionally deceived them. That gratified Dor; it had been difficult to think of the King as practicing deliberate deception. Trent had meant his words about honesty. "I believe the Elders will veto my trip," Dor said. "Especially after—" "The Elders can go—" "Humfrey!" a voice called warningly from the doorway. "Don't you dare use such language on this day. You've already cracked one mirror that way!" So that was how the mirror had suffered! Humfrey had uttered too caustic a word when balked on news of the new Magician. Dor looked to the voice. It came from the nothingness that was the face of the Gorgon, an absolutely voluptuous, statuesque, shapely, and buxom figure of a lovely woman whose face no one could look at. Humfrey had put a temporary spell on it, ten or fifteen years ago, to protect society from the Gorgon's involuntary magic while he worked out a better way to solve the problem. It seemed he had never gotten around to that solution either. He was known to be a bit absent-minded. Humfrey's brow wrinkled as if bothered by a pink mosquito. "What's special about this day?" She seemed to smile. At least, the little serpents that were her hair writhed in a more harmonious manner. "It will come to you in due course, Magician. Now you get into your suit. The good one that you haven't used for the past century or so. Make the moth unball it for you." Her faceless-ness turned to Dor. "Come with me, Your Majesty." Perplexed, Dor followed her out of the room. "Uh, am I intruding or something?" She laughed, sending jiggles through her flesh. Dor squinted, to prevent his eyeballs from popping. "Hardly! You have to perform the ceremony." Dor's bafflement intensified. "Ceremony?" She turned and leaned toward him. It embarrassed him to look into her empty head, so he glanced down—and found himself peering through the awesome crevice of her burgeoning cleavage, Dor closed his eyes, blushing. "The ceremony of marriage," the Gorgon murmured. "Didn't you get the word?" "I guess not," Dor said. "A lot of words seem to get mislaid around here." "True, true. But you arrived on schedule anyway, so it's all right. Only the King of Xanth can make it properly binding on that old curmudgeon. It has taken me a good many years to land him, and I mean to have that knot tied chokingly tight." "But I've never—I know nothing about—" Dor opened his eyes again, and goggled at the mountains and valley of her bosom, and at the empty face, and retreated hastily back into darkness. Too little and too much, in such proximity! "Do not be alarmed," the Gorgon said. "The sight of me will not petrify you." That was what she thought. It occurred to him that it was not merely the Gorgon's face that turned a man to stone. Other parts of her could do it to other parts of him. But he forced his eyes open and up, from the fullness to the emptiness, meeting her invisible gaze. "Uh, when does it happen?" "Not long after the nuptials," she said. "It will be a matter of pride with me to handle it without recourse to any potency spell." Dor found himself blushing ferociously. "The—I meant the ceremony." She pinched his cheek gently with her thumb and forefinger. "I know you did, Dor. You are so delightfully pristine. Irene will have quite a time abating your naiveté." So his future, too, had been mapped out by a woman—and it seemed all other women knew it. No doubt there was a female conspiracy that continued from generation to generation. He could only be thankful that Irene had neither the experience nor the body of the Gorgon. Quite. Yet. They emerged into what appeared to be a bedroom. "You'll have to change out of those soaking things," the Gorgon said. "Really, you young people should be more careful. Were you playing tag with a bayonet plant? Let me just get these tatters off you—" "No!" Dor cried, though he was shivering in the wet and ragged robe. She laughed again, her bosom vibrating. "I understand. You are such a darling boy! I'll send in the Zombie Master. You must be ready in half an hour, it's all scheduled." She turned and swept out, leaving Dor relieved, bemused, and guiltily disappointed. A woman like that could play a man like a musical instrument! In a moment the gaunt but halfway handsome Zombie Master arrived. He shook hands formally with Dor. "I will never forget what I owe you, Magician," he said. "You paid off any debt when you made Millie the Ghost happy," Dor said, gratified. He had been instrumental in getting the Zombie Master here, knowing Millie loved him; but Dor himself had profited greatly from the experience. He had, in a very real sense, learned how to be a man. Of course, it seemed that he had forgotten much of that in the ensuing years— the Gorgon had certainly set him in his place!—but he was sure the memory would help him. "That debt can never be paid," the Zombie Master said gravely. Dor was not inclined to argue. He was glad be had helped this Magician and Millie to get together. He remembered that he had promised to invite them both to visit Castle Roogna so that the ghosts and zombies could renew acquaintance. "Uh—" Dor began, trying to figure out how to phrase the invitation. The Zombie Master produced an elegant suit of clothing tailored to Dor's size, and set about getting him changed and arranged. "Now we must review the ceremony," he said. He brought out a book. "Millie and I will organize most of it; we have been through this foolishness before. You just read this service when I give the signal." Dor opened the book. The title page advised him that this text contained a sample service for the unification of Age-Old Magicians and Voluptuous Young Maidens. Evidently the Gorgon had crafted this one herself. The service was plain enough; Dor's lines were written in black, the groom's in blue, the bride's in pink. Do you, Good Magician Humfrey, take this lovely creature to be your bride, to love and cherish as long as you shall live? Well, it did make sense; the chances of him outliving her were remote. But this sort of contract made Dor nervous. Dor looked up. "It seems simple enough, I guess. Uh, if we have a moment—" "Oh, we have two or three moments, but not four," the Zombie Master assured him, almost smiling. Dor broke into a full smile. This Magician had been cadaverously gaunt and sober when Dor had first known him; now he was better fleshed and better tempered. Marriage had evidently been good for him. "I promised the ghosts and zombies of Castle Roogna that your family would visit soon. I know you don't like to mix with ordinary people too much, but if you could see your way clear to—" The Magician frowned. "I did profess a deep debt to you. I suppose if you insist—" "Only if you want to go," Dor said quickly. "These creatures—it wouldn't be the same if it wasn't voluntary." "I will consider. I daresay my wife will have a sentiment." On cue, Millie appeared. She was as lovely as ever, despite her eight hundred and thirty-odd years of age. She was less voluptuous than the Gorgon, but still did have her talent. Dor became uncomfortable again; he had once had a crush on Millie. "Of course we shall go," Millie said. "We'll be glad to, won't we, Jonathan?" The Zombie Master could only acquiesce solemnly. The decision had been made. "It's time," Millie said. "The bride and groom are ready." "The bride, perhaps," the Zombie Master said wryly. "I suspect I will have to coerce the groom." He turned to Dor. "You go down to the main chamber; the wedding guests are assembling now. They will take their places when you appear." "Uh, sure," Dor agreed. He took the book and made his way down a winding stair. The castle layout differed from what it had been the last time he was here, but that was only to be expected. The outside defenses changed constantly, so it made sense that the inner schematic followed. But when he reached the main chamber, Dor stood amazed. It was a grand and somber cathedral, seemingly larger than the whole of the castle, with stately columns and ornate arches supporting the domed glass ceiling. At one end was a dais whose floor appeared to be solid silver. It was surrounded by huge stained-glass windows, evidently another inner aspect of the exterior glass mountain. A jeweled chandelier supported the sun, which was a brilliantly golden ball, borrowed for this occasion. Dor had always wondered what happened to the sun when clouds blocked it off; perhaps now he knew. What would happen if they didn't finish the ceremony before the storm outside abated and the sun needed to be returned? The guests were even more spectacular. There were hundreds of them, of all types. Some were human, some humanoid, and most were monsters. Dor spied a griffin, a dragon, a small sphinx, several merfolk in a tub of sea water, a manticora, a number of elves, goblins, harpies, and sprites; a score of nickelpedes, a swarm of fruitflies, and a needle cactus. The far door was dwarfed by its guardian—Crunch the Ogre, Smash's father, as horrendous a figure of a monster as anyone cared to imagine. "What is this?" Dor asked, astonished. "All the creatures who ever obtained answers from the Good Magician, or interacted significantly with him during the past century," the nearest window explained. "But—but why?" A grotesque bespectacled demon detached himself from conversation with a nymph. "Your Majesty, I am Beauregard, of the Nether Contingent. We are assembled here, in peace, not because we necessarily love the Good Magician, but because not one of us would pass up the chance to see him finally get impressed into bondage himself—and to the most fearsome creature known to magic. Come; you must take your place." And the demon guided Dor down the center aisle toward the dais, past as diversified an assortment of creatures as Dor had ever encountered. One he thought he recognized—Grundy the Golem, somehow spirited here for the unique occasion. How had all these creatures gotten past the castle defenses? No one had been around when Dor himself had braved them. "Oh, you must be King Dor!" someone cried, for turned to discover a handsome woman whose gown was bedecked with a fantastic array of gems. "You must be Jewel!" he exclaimed, as a diamond in her hair almost blinded him. It was the size of his fist, and cut in what seemed like a million facets. "The one with the barrel of gems—Crombie's wife." "How did you ever guess?" she agreed, flashing sapphires, garnets, and giant opals. "You favor your father, Dor. So good of you to come in his stead." Dor remembered that this woman had loved his father. Perhaps that explained why Bink wasn't here; a meeting, even after all these years, could be awkward. "Uh, I guess so. Nice to meet you, Jewel." "I'm sorry my daughter Tandy couldn't meet you," Jewel said. "It would be so nice—" She broke off, and again Dor suspected he understood why. Jewel had loved Bink; Dor was Bink's son; Tandy was Jewel's daughter. It was almost as if Dor and Tandy were related. But how could that be said? Jewel pressed a stone into his hand. "I was going to give this to Bink, but I think you deserve it. You will always have light." Dor glanced down at the gift. It shone like a miniature sun, almost too bright to gaze at directly. It was a midnight sunstone, the rarest of all gems. "Uh, thanks," he said lamely. He didn't know how to deal with this sort of thing. He tucked the gem into a pocket and rejoined Beauregard, who was urging him on. As he reached the dais and mounted it, the hubbub diminished. The ceremony was incipient. The music started, the familiar theme played only at nuptials. It gave Dor stage fright. He had never officiated at an affair like this before; the opportunities for blundering seemed limitless. The assembled creatures became absolutely quiet, waiting expectantly for the dread denouement. The Good Magician Humfrey was finally going to get his! There was a scuffle to the side. The groom appeared in a dark suit that looked slightly motheaten; perhaps the guardian moth had not balled it properly. He was somewhat disheveled, and obliquely compelled by the Zombie Master. "I survived it; so can you!" the best man whispered, audible throughout the chamber. Somewhere in the Stygian depth of the audience, a monster chuckled. The expression on Humfrey's face suggested that he was in serious doubt about survival. More members of the audience grinned, showing assorted canine teeth; they liked this. The music got louder. Dor glanced across and saw that the organist was a small tangle tree, its tentacles writhing expertly over the keys. No wonder there was a certain predatory intensity to the music! The Zombie Master, dourly handsome in his funereal-tailed suit, straightened Humfrey's details, actually brushing him off with a little whisk broom. Then he put Humfrey in a kind of armlock and marched him forward. The music surged vengefully. One demon in the front row twitched its tail and leaned toward another. "A creature doesn't know what happiness is," he said, "until he gets married." "And then it's too late!" half a dozen others responded from the next row back. There was a smattering of applause. Magician Humfrey quailed, but the best man's grip was as firm as death itself. At least he had not brought his zombies to this ceremony! The presence of the walking dead would have been too much even for such a wedding. Now the music swelled to sublime urgency, and the bridal procession appeared. First came Millie the Ghost, radiant in her maid-of-honor gown, her sex appeal making the monsters drool. Dor had somehow thought that an unmarried person was supposed to fill this office, but of course Millie had been unmarried for eight centuries, so it must be all right. Then the bride herself stepped out—and if the Gorgon had seemed buxom before, she was amazing now. She wore a veil that shrouded the nothingness of her face, so that there was no way to tell by looking that she was not simply a ravishingly voluptuous woman. Nevertheless, few creatures looked directly at her, wary of her inherent power. Not even the boldest dragon or tangle tree would care to stare the Gorgon in the face. Behind her trooped two cherubs, a tiny boy and girl. Dor thought at first they were elves, but realized they were children—the three-year-old twins that Millie and the Zombie Master had generated. They certainly looked cute as they carried the trailing end of the bride's long train. Dor wondered whether these angelic tots had manifested their magic talents yet. Sometimes a talent showed at birth, as had Dor's own; sometimes it never showed, as had Dor's father's—though he knew his father did have some sort of magic that King Trent himself respected. Most talents were in between, showing up in the course of childhood, some major, some minor. Slowly the Gorgon swept forward, in the renewed hush of dread and expectation. Dor saw with a small start that she had donned dark glasses, a Mundane import, so that even her eyes behind the gauzy veil seemed real. Now at last Humfrey and the Gorgon stood together. She was taller than he—but everyone was taller than Humfrey, so it didn't matter. The music faded to the deceptive calm of the center of a storm. The Zombie Master nodded to Dor. It was time for the King to read the service, finally tying the knot. Dor opened the book with trembling fingers. Now he was glad that Cherie Centaur had drilled him well in reading; he had the text to lean on, so that his blank mind couldn't betray him. All he had to do was read the words and follow the directions and everything would be all right. He knew that Good Magician Humfrey really did want to marry the Gorgon; it was just the ceremony that put him off, as it did all men. Weddings were for women and their mothers. Dor would navigate this additional Kingly chore and doubtless be better off for the experience. But his knees still felt like limp noodles. Why did experience have to be so difficult? He found the place and began to read. "We are gathered here to hogtie this poor idiot—" There was a stir in the audience. The weeping matrons paused in mid-tear, while males of every type smirked. Dor blinked. Had he read that right? Yes, there it was, printed quite clearly. He might have trouble spelling, but he could read well enough. "To this conniving wench—" The demons sniggered. A snake stuck its head out over the Gorgon's veil and hissed. Something was definitely wrong. "But it says right here," Dor protested, tapping the book with one forefinger. "The gride and broom shall—" There was a raucous creaking sound that cut through the chamber. Then the Zombie Master's whisk broom flew out of his pocket and hovered before Dor. Astonished, Dor asked it: "What are you doing here?" "I'm the broom," it replied. "You invoked the gride and broom, didn't you?" "What's a gride?" "You heard it. Awful noise." So a gride was an awful noise. Dor's vocabulary was expanding rapidly today! "That was supposed to be a bride and groom," Dor said. "Get back where you belong." "Awww. I thought I was going to get married." But the broom flew back to the pocket. Now Millie spoke. "Lacuna!" she said. One of the children jumped. It was the little girl, Millie's daughter. "Did you change the print?" Millie demanded. Now Dor caught on. The child's talent—changing printed text! No wonder the service was fouled up! The Zombie Master grimaced. "Kids will be kids," he said dourly. "We should have used zombies to carry the train, but Millie wouldn't have it. Let's try it again." Zombies to attend the bride! Dor had to agree with Millie, privately; the stench and rot of the grave did not belong in a ceremony like this. "Lacuna, put the text back the way it was," Millie said severely. "Awww," the child said, exactly the way the whisk broom had. Dor lifted the book. But now there was an eye in the middle of the page. It winked at him. "What now?" he asked. "Eh?" the book asked. An ear sprouted beside the eye. "Hiatus!" Millie snapped, and the little boy jumped. "Stop that right now!" "Awww." But the eye and ear shrank and disappeared, leaving the book clear. Now Dor knew the nature and talent of the other twin. He read the text carefully before reading it aloud. It was titled A Manual of Simple Burial. He frowned at Lacuna, and the print reverted to the proper text: A Manual of Sample Wedding Services. This time he got most of the way through the service without disruption, ignoring ears and noses that sprouted from unlikely surfaces. At one point an entire face appeared on the sun-ball, but no one else was looking at it, so there was no disturbance. "Do you, Good Magician Humfrey," he concluded, "take this luscious, faceless female Gorgon to be your—" He hesitated, for the text now read ball and chain. Some interpolation was necessary. "Your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, to squeeze till she—uh, in health and sickness, for the few measly years you hang on before you croak—uh, until you both become rotten zombies—uh, until death do you part?" He was losing track of the real text. The Good Magician considered. "Well, there are positive and negative aspects—" The Zombie Master elbowed him. "Stick to the format," he muttered. Humfrey looked rebellious, but finally got it out. "I suppose so." Dor turned to the Gorgon. "And do you, you petrifying creature, take this gnarled old gnome—uh—" The mischievous text had caught him again. A monster in the audience guffawed. "Take Good Magician Humfrey—" "I do!" she said. Dor checked his text. Close enough, he decided. "Uh, the manacles—" Oh, no! Gravely the Zombie Master brought forth the ring. An eye opened on its edge. The Zombie Master frowned at Hiatus, and the eye disappeared. He gave the ring to Humfrey. The Gorgon lifted her fair hand. A snakelet hissed. "Hey, I don't want to go on that finger!" the ring protested. "It's dangerous!" "Would you rather be fed to the zombie sea serpent?" Dor snapped at it. The ring was silent. Humfrey fumbled it onto the Gorgon's finger. Naturally he got the wrong finger, but she corrected him gently. Dor returned to the manual. "I now pronounce you gnome and monst— uh, by the authority vested in me as King of Thieves—uh, of Xanth, I now pronounce you Magician and Wife." Feeling weak with relief at having gotten this far through despite the treacherous text, Dor read the final words. "You may now miss the gride." There was the awful banshee noise. "Uh, goose the tide." There was a sloppy swish, as of water reacting to an indignity. "Uh—" The Gorgon took hold of Humfrey, threw back her veil, and kissed him soundly. There was applause from the audience, and a mournful hoot from the distance. The sea monster was signaling its sorrow over the Good Magician's loss of innocence. Millie was furious. "When I catch you, Hi and Lacky—" But the little imps were already beating a retreat. The wedding party adjourned to the reception area, where refreshments were served. There was a scream. Millie looked and paled, for a moment resembling her ghostly state. "Jonathan! You didn't!" "Well, somebody had to serve the cake and punch," the Zombie Master said defensively. "Everyone else was busy, and we couldn't ask the guests." Dor peered. Sure enough, zombies in tuxedos and formal gowns were serving the delicacies. Gobbets of rot were mixing with the cake, and yellowish drool was dripping in the punch. The appetite of the guests seemed to be diminishing. The assembled monsters, noting that Humfrey had not been turned to stone despite being petrified, were now eager to kiss the bride. They were in no hurry to raid the refreshments. A long line formed. Millie caught Dor's elbow. "That was very good, Your Majesty. I understand that my husband is to substitute for you during your journey to Centaur Isle." "He is?" But immediately the beauty and simplicity of it came clear. "He's a Magician! He would do just fine! But I know he doesn't like to indulge in politics." "Well, since we are going there for a visit anyway, to see the zombies and ghosts, it's not really political." Dor realized that Millie had really helped him out. Only she could have persuaded the Zombie Master to take the office of King even temporarily. "Uh, thanks. I think the ghosts will like the twins." She smiled. "The walls will have ears." That was Hi's talent. "They sure will!" "Let's go join the monsters," she said, taking his arm. Her touch still sent a rippling thrill through him, perhaps not just because of her magic talent. "How is Irene? I understand she will one day do with you what we women have always done with Magicians." "Did it ever occur to any of you scheming conspirators that I might have other plans?" Dor asked, nettled despite the effect she had on him. Perhaps he was reacting in order to counter his illicit liking for her. She certainly didn't seem like eight hundred years old! "No, that never occurred to any of us," she said. "Do you think you have a chance to escape?" "I doubt it," he said. "But first we have to deal with this mysterious Magician of Centaur Isle. And I hope King Trent comes back soon." "I hope so, too," Millie said. "And Queen Iris. She was the one who helped bring me back to life. She and your father. I'm forever grateful to them. And to you, too, Dor, for returning Jonathan to me." She always referred to the Zombie Master by his given name. "I was glad to do it," Dor said. Then a mishmash of creatures closed in on them, and Dor gave himself up to socializing, perforce. Everyone had a word for the King. Dor wasn't good at this; in fact, he felt almost as awkward as Good Magician Humfrey looked. What was it really like, getting married? "You'll find out!" the book he still carried said, chuckling evilly.
(Xanth 4) Centaur Aisle	Piers Anthony	[ "fantasy", "puns" ]	[]	Hungry Dune	They had surveyed prospective routes and decided to travel down the coast of Xanth. Dor's father Bink had once traveled into the south-center region, down to the great interior Lake Ogre-Chobee, where the curse-fiends lived, and he recommended against that route. Dragons, chasms, nickelpedes, and other horrors abounded, and there was a massive growth of brambles that made passing difficult, as well as a region of magic-dust that could be hazardous to one's mental health. On the other hand, the open sea was little better. There the huge sea monsters ruled, preying on everything available. If dragons ruled the wilderness land, serpents ruled the deep water. Where the magic ambience of Xanth faded, the Mundane monsters commenced, and these were worse yet. Dor knew them only through his inattentive geography studies— toothy alligators, white sharks, and blue whales. He didn't want any part of those! But the coastal shallows excluded the larger sea creatures and the solid-land monsters. Chances were that with a strong youth like the ogre Smash along, they could move safely through this region without raising too much commotion. Had that not been the case, the Elders would never have permitted this excursion, regardless of the need. As it was, they insisted that Dor take along some preventive magic from the Royal Arsenal—a magic sword, a flying carpet, and an escape hoop. Irene carried a selected bag of seeds that she could use to grow particular plants at need— fruits, nuts, and vegetables for the food, and watermelons and milkweed if they had no safe supply of liquid. They used a magic boat that would sail itself swiftly and quietly down any channel that was deep enough, yet was light enough to be portaged across sand bars. The craft was indefatigable; all they had to do was guide it, and in one full day and night it would bring them to Centaur Isle. This would certainly be faster and easier than walking. Chet, whose geographic education had not been neglected, had a clear notion of the coastal outline and would steer the boat past the treacherous shoals and deeps. Everything was as routine as the nervous Elders could make it. They started in midmorning from the beach nearest Castle Roogna that had been cleared of monsters. The day was clear, the sea calm. Here there was a brief bay between the mainland and a long chain of barrier islands, the most secure of all waters, theoretically. This trip should not only be safe, but also dull. Of course nothing in Xanth could be taken for granted. For an hour they traveled south along the bay channel. Dor grew tired of watching the passing islands, but remained too keyed up to rest. After all, it was a centaur Magician they were going to spy out—something never before known in Xanth, unless one counted Herman the Hermit Centaur, who hadn't really been a Magician, just a strongly talented individual who related to the Will-o'-Wisps. Smash, too, was restive; he was a creature of physical action, and this free ride irked him. Dor would have challenged him to a game of tic-tac-toe, an amusement he had learned from the child of one of the soldier settlers, but knew he would win every game; ogres were not much on intellect. Grundy the Golem entertained himself by chatting with passing fish and sea creatures. It was amazing, the gossip he came up with. A sneaky sawfish was cutting in on the time of the damselfish of a hammerhead, and the hammerhead was getting suspicious. Pretty soon he would pound the teeth out of the sawfish. A sea squirt was shoring himself up with the flow from an undersea fresh-water spring, getting tipsy on the rare liquid. A certain little oyster was getting out of bed at midnight and gambling with the sand dollars; he was building up quite an alluvial deposit at the central bank of sand. But when his folks found out, he would be gamboling to a different tune. Irene, meanwhile, struck up a dialogue with the centaur. "You're so intelligent, Chet. How is it that your magic is so, well, simple?" "No one is blessed with the selection of his personal talent," Chet said philosophically. He was lying in the middle of the boat, so as to keep the center of gravity low, and seemed comfortable enough. "We centaurs less than most, since only recently has our magic been recognized. My mother—" "I know Cherie thinks magic is obscene." "Oh, she is broad-minded about its presence in lesser creatures." "Like human beings?" Irene asked dangerously. "No need to be sensitive about it. We do not discriminate against your kind, and your magic does to a considerable extent compensate." "How come we rule Xanth, then?" she demanded. Dor found himself getting interested; this was better than fish gossip anyway. "There is some question whether humans are actually dominant in Xanth," Chet said. "The dragons of the northern reaches might have a different opinion. At any rate, we centaurs permit you humans your foibles. If you wish to point to one of your number and say, 'That individual rules Xanth,' we have no objection so long as that person doesn't interfere with important things." "What's so important?" "You would not be in a position to understand the nuances of centaur society." Irene bridled. "Oh, yeah? Tell me a nuance." "I'm afraid that is privileged information." Dor knew Chet was asking for trouble. Already, stray wild seeds in Irene's vicinity were popping open and sending out shoots and roots, a sure sign of her ire. But like many girls, she concealed it well. "Yet humans have the best magic." "Certainly—if you value magic." "What would you centaurs say if my father started changing you into fruitflies?" "Fruit neat," Smash said, overhearing. "Let's eat!" "Don't be a dunce," Grundy said. "It's two hours yet till lunch." "Here, I'll start a breadfruit plant," Irene said. "You can watch it grow." She picked a seed from her collection and set it in one of the earth-filled pots she had brought along. "Grow," she commanded, and the seed sprouted. The ogre watched its growth avidly, waiting for it to mature and produce the first succulent loaf of bread. "King Trent would not do anything as irresponsible as that," Chet said, picking up on the question. "We centaurs have generally gotten along well with him." "Because he can destroy you. You'd better get along!" "Not so. We centaurs are archers. No one can get close enough to harm us unless we permit him. We get along because we choose to." Irene adroitly changed the subject. "You never told me how you felt about your own magic. All your brains, but all you can do is shrink rocks." "Well, it does relate. I render a stone into a calx. A calx is a small stone, a pebble used for calculating. Such calculus can grow complex, and it has important ramifications. So I feel my magic talent contributes—" "Monster coming," Grundy announced. "A little fish told me." "There aren't supposed to be monsters in these waters," Dor objected. Grundy consulted with the fish. "It's a sea dragon. It heard the commotion of our passage, so it's coming in to investigate. The channel's deep enough for it here." "We'd better get out of the channel, then," Dor said. "This is not the best place," Chet objected. "No place is best to get eaten, dummy!" Irene snapped. "We can't handle a water dragon. We'll have to get out of its way. Shallow water is all we need." "There are groupies in these shallows," Chet said. "Not a threat, so long as we sail beyond their depth, but not fun to encounter. If we can get farther down before diverging—" But now they saw the head of the dragon to the south, gliding above the water. Its neck cut a wake; the monster was traveling fast. It was far too big for them to fight. Smash, however, was game. Ogres were too stupid to know fear. He stood, making the craft rock crazily. "For me's to squeeze!" he said, gesturing with his meathooks. "All you could do is gouge out handfuls of scales," Irene said. "Meanwhile, it would be chomping the rest of us. You know an ogre has to have firm footing on land to tackle a dragon of any type." Without further argument, Chet swerved toward the mainland beach. But almost immediately the sand began to writhe. "Oh, no!" Dor exclaimed. "A sand dune has taken over that beach. We can't go there." "Agreed," Chet said. "That dune wasn't on my map. It must have moved in the past few days." He swerved back the other way. That was the problem about Xanth; very little was permanent. In the course of a day, the validity of a given map could be compromised; in a week it could be destroyed. That was one reason so much of Xanth remained unexplored. It had been traveled, but the details were not fixed. The dune, noting their departure, reared up in a great sandy hump, its most typical form. Had they been so foolish as to step on that beach, it would have rolled right over them, buried them, and consumed them at leisure. But now the water dragon was much closer. They cut across its path uncomfortably close and approached the island's inner shore. The dragon halted, turning its body to pursue them—but in a moment its nether loops ran aground in the shallows, and it halted. Jets of steam plumed from its nostrils; it was frustrated. A flipper slapped at the side of the boat. "It's a groupie," Grundy cried. "Knock it off!" Smash reached out a gnarled mitt to grasp the flipper and haul the thing up in the air. The creature was a fattish fish with large, soft extremities. "That's a groupie?" Irene asked. "What's so bad about it?" The fish curled about, got its flippers on the ogre's arm, and drew itself up. Its wide mouth touched Smash's arm in a seeming kiss. "Don't let it do that!" Chet warned. "It's trying to siphon out your soul." The ogre understood that. He flung the groupie far over the water, where it landed with a splash. But now several more were slapping at the boat, trying to scramble inside. Irene shrieked. "Just knock them away," Chet said. "They can't take your soul unless you let them. But they'll keep trying." "They're coming in all over!" Dor cried. "How can we get away from them?" Chet smiled grimly. "We can move into the deep channel. Groupies are shallow creatures; they don't stir deep waters." "But the dragon's waiting there!" "Of course. Dragons eat groupies. That's why groupies don't venture there." "Dragons also eat people," Irene protested. "That might be considered a disadvantage," the centaur agreed. "If you have a better solution, I am amenable to it." Irene opened her bag of seeds and peered in. "I have watercress. That might help." "Try it!" Dor exclaimed, sweeping three sets of flippers off the side of the boat. "They're overwhelming us!" "That is the manner of the species," Chet agreed, sweeping several more off. "They come not single spy, but in battalions." She picked out a tiny seed. "Grow!" she commanded, and dropped it in the water. The others paused momentarily in their labors to watch. How could such a little seed abate such a pressing menace? Almost immediately there was a kind of writhing and bubbling where the seed had disappeared. Tiny tendrils writhed outward like wriggling worms. Bubbles rose and popped effervescently. "Cress!" the mass hissed as it expanded. The groupies hesitated, taken aback by this phenomenon. Then they pounced on it, sucking in mouthfuls. "They're eating it up!" Dor said. "Yes," Irene agreed, smiling. In moments the groupies began swelling up like balloons. The cress had not stopped growing or gassing, and was now inflating the fish. Soon the groupies rose out of the water, impossibly distended, and floated through the air. The dragon snapped at those who drifted within its range. "Good job, I must admit," Chet said, and Irene flushed with satisfaction. Dor experienced a twinge of jealousy and a twinge of guilt for that feeling. There was nothing between Chet and Irene, of course; they were of two different species. Not that that necessarily meant much, in Xanth. New composites were constantly emerging, and the chimera was evidently descended from three or four other species. Irene merely argued with Chet to try to bolster her own image and was flattered when the centaur bolstered it for her. And if there were something between them, why should he, Dor, care? But he did care. They could not return to the main channel, for the dragon paced them alertly. It knew it had them boxed. Chet steered cautiously south, searching out the deepest subchannels of the bay, avoiding anything suspicious. But the island they were skirting was coming to an end; soon they would be upon the ocean channel the water dragon had entered by. How could they cross that while the dragon lurked? Chet halted the boat and stared ahead. The dragon took a stance in mid-channel, due south, and stared back. It knew they had to pass here. Slowly, deliberately, it ran its long floppy tongue over its gleaming chops. "What now?" Dor asked. He was King; he should be leader, but his mind was blank. "I believe we shall have to wait until nightfall," Chet said. "But we're supposed to make the trip in a day and night!" Irene protested. "That'll waste half the day!" "Better waste time than life, green-nose," Grundy remarked. "Listen, stringbrain—" she retorted. These two had never gotten along well together. "We'd better wait," Dor said reluctantly. "Then we can sneak by the dragon while it's sleeping and be safely on our way." "How soundly do dragons sleep?" Irene asked suspiciously. "Not deeply," Chet said. "They merely snooze with their nostrils just above the water. But it will be better if there is fog." "Much better," Irene agreed weakly. "Meanwhile, we would do well to sleep in the daytime," Chet said. "We will need to post one of our number as a guard, to be sure the boat doesn't drift. He can sleep at night, while the others are active." "What do you mean, he?" Irene demanded, "There's too much sexism in Xanth. You think a girl can't guard?" Chet shrugged with his foresection and flicked his handsome tail about negligently. "I spoke generically, of course. There is no sexual discrimination among centaurs." "That's what you think," Grundy put in. "Who's the boss in your family—Chester or Cherie? Does she let him do anything he wants?" "Well, my mother is strong-willed," Chet admitted. "I'll bet the fillies run the whole show at Centaur Isle," Grundy said. "Same as they do at Castle Roogna." "Ha. Ha. Ha." Irene said, pouting. "You may guard if you wish," Chet said. "You think I won't? Well, I will. Give me that paddle." She grabbed the emergency paddle, which would now be needed to keep the boat from drifting. The others settled down comfortably, using pads and buoyant cushions. Chet's equine portion was admirably suited for lying down, but his human portion was more awkward. He leaned against the side of the boat, head against looped arms. "Say—how will I sleep when we're nudging past that dragon?" Irene asked. "My sleeping turn will come then." There was a stifled chuckle from Grundy's direction. "Guess one sexist brought that on herself. Just don't snore too loud when we're passing under its tail. Might scare it into—" She hurled a cushion at the golem, then settled resolutely into her guard position, watching the dragon. Dor tried to sleep, but found himself too wound up. After a while he sat upright. "It's no use; maybe I'll sleep tomorrow," he said. Irene was pleased to have his company. She sat cross-legged opposite him, and Dor tried not to be aware that in that position her green skirt did not fully cover her legs. She had excellent ones; in that limited respect she had already matched the Gorgon. Dor liked legs; in fact, he liked anything he wasn't supposed to see. She sprouted a buttercup plant while Dor plucked a loaf from the breadfruit, and they feasted on fresh bread and butter in silence. The dragon watched, and finally, mischievously, Dor rolled some bread into a compact wad and threw it at the monster. The dragon caught it neatly and gulped it down. Maybe it wasn't such a bad monster; maybe Grundy could talk to it and arrange for safe passage. No—such a predator could not be trusted. If the dragon wanted to let them pass, it would go away. Better strategy would be to keep it awake and alert all day, so that it would be tired at night. "Do you think this new centaur Magician will try to take over Xanth?" Irene asked quietly when it seemed the others were asleep. Dor could appreciate her concern. Chet, who was a friend, was arrogant enough about centaur-human relations; what would be the attitude of a grown centaur with the power of a Magician? Of course the Magician would not be grown right now; it must be new-birthed. But in time it could become adult, and then it could be an ornery creature, like Chet's sire Chester, but without Chester's redeeming qualities. Dor knew that some centaurs did not like human beings; those tended to stay well clear of Castle Roogna. But Centaur Isle was well clear, and that was where this menace was. "We're on our way to investigate this matter," he reminded her. "There is help for King Trent there, too, according to Crombie's pointing. Maybe we just need to figure out how to turn this situation positive instead of negative." She shifted her position slightly, unconsciously showing a little more of her legs, including a tantalizing flash of inner thigh. "You are going to try to help my father, aren't you?" "Of course I'm going to try!" Dor said indignantly, hoping that if there was any flush on his face, she would assume it was because of his reaction to her words, rather than her flesh. Dor had in the past seen some quite lovely nymphs in quite scanty attire—but nymphs didn't really count. They were all well formed and scantily attired, so were not remarkable. Irene was a real girl, and that type ranged from lovely to ugly—in fact, his mother Chameleon covered that range in the course of each month—and Irene did not normally display a great deal of her body at a time. Thus each glimpse, beyond a certain perimeter, was special. But more special when the display was unintentional. "I know if my father doesn't come back, you'll stay King." "I'm not ready to stay King. In twenty years, maybe, I'll be able to handle it. Right now I just want King Trent back. He's your father; I think he's my friend." "What about my mother?" Dor grimaced. "Even Queen Iris," he said. "I'd rather face a lifelike illusion of a dragon than the real thing." "You know, I never had any real privacy till she left," Irene said. "She was always watching me, always telling on me. I hardly dared even to think for myself, because I was afraid she'd slip one of her illusions into my mind and snitch on me. I used to wish something would happen to her— not anything bad, just something to get her out of my hair for a while. Only now that it has—" "You didn't really want her gone," Dor said. "Not like this." "Not like this," she agreed. "She's a bitch, but she is my mother. Now I can do anything I want—and I don't know what I want." She shifted position again. This time the hem of her skirt dropped to cover more of her legs. It was almost as if her reference to privacy from her mother's snooping around her mind had brought about privacy from Dor's surreptitious snooping around her body. "Except to have them back again." Dor found he liked Irene much better this way. Perhaps her prior sharpness of tongue, back when her parents had been in Xanth, had been because of that constant feeling of being watched. Anything real might have been demeaned or ridiculed, so she never expressed anything real. "You know, I've had the opposite problem. I have privacy—but no one around me does. Because there's not much anybody does that I can't find out about. All I have to do is ask their furniture, or their clothing. So they avoid me, and I can't blame them. That's why I've found it easier to have friends like Smash. He wears nothing but his hair, and he thinks furniture is for bonfires, and he has no embarrassing secrets anyway." "That's right!" she said. "I have no more privacy with you than I do with my mother. How come I don't feel threatened with you?" "Because I'm harmless," Dor said with a wry chuckle. "Not by choice; it's just the way I am. The Gorgon says you have me all wrapped up anyway." She smiled—a genuine, warm smile he liked a lot. "She snitched. She would. She naturally sees all men as creatures to be dazzled and petrified. Good Magician Humfrey never had a chance. But I don't know if I even want you. That way, I mean. My mother figures I've got to marry you so I can be Queen—but that's her desire, not necessarily mine. I mean, why would I want to grow up just like her, with no real power and a lot of time on my hands? Why make my own daughter as miserable as she made me?" "Maybe you will have a son," Dor offered. This was an intriguing new avenue of exploration. "You're right. You're harmless. You don't know a thing." She finished her bread and tossed the crumbs on the water. They floated about, forming evanescent picture patterns before drifting away. Somehow the afternoon had passed; the sun was dropping into the water beyond the barrier island. There was a distant sizzle as it touched the liquid, and a cloud of steam; then it was extinguished. The others woke and ate. Then Chet guided the boat to the island shore. "Anything dangerous to people here?" Dor asked it. "Only boredom," the island replied. "Nothing interesting ever happens here, except maybe a seasonal storm or two." That was what they wanted: a dull locale. They took turns leaving the boat in order to attend to sanitary needs. Irene also took time to grow a forgetme flower. As the darkness closed, Dor reviewed the situation. "We're going to sneak by that dragon in the night. Irene will harvest some forgetme flowers to discourage memory of our passage; that way the reactions of fish in the area will not betray us. But that won't help us if the dragon sees us or hears us or smells us directly. We don't have any sight-or sound-blanking plants; we didn't anticipate this particular squeeze. So we must go extremely carefully." "I wish I were string and clay again," Grundy said. "Then I couldn't be killed." "Now we do have some other resources," Dor said. "The magic sword will make any person expert the moment he takes it in his hand. It won't help much against a pouncing dragon, but any lesser creature will be balked. If we get in serious trouble, we can climb through the escape hoop. The problem with that is that it leads to the permanent storage vat of the Brain Coral, deep under the earth, and the Coral doesn't like to release creatures. It happens to be my friend, but I'd rather not strain that friendship unless absolutely necessary. And there is the flying carpet—but that can only take one person at a time, plus Grundy. I think it could support Smash, but not Chet, so that's not ideal." "I wouldn't fit through the hoop either," Chet said. "Yes. So you, Chet, are the most vulnerable one in this situation, because of your mass. So we need to plan for another defense." Dor paused, for Irene was looking at him strangely. "What's the matter?" "You're glowing," she said. Startled, Dor checked himself. Light was streaming from one of his pockets. "Oh—that's the midnight sunstone Jewel gave me so I'll always have light. I had forgotten about it." "We don't want light at the moment," she pointed out. "Wrap it up." She handed him a piece of cloth. Dor wrapped the gem carefully, until its glow was so muted as to be inconsequential, and put it back in his pocket. "Now," he continued. "Irene has some seeds that will grow devastating plants—she really is Magician level, regardless of what the Elders say—but most of those plants would be as dangerous to us as to the enemy. We'd have to plant and run." "Any that would block off the water so the dragon couldn't pursue?" Chet asked. "Oh, yes," Irene said, glowing at Dor's compliment about her talent. "The kraken weed—" "I see what Dor means," the centaur said quickly. "I don't want to be swimming in the same ocean with a kraken!" "Or I could start a stunflower on the island here, but it would be likely to stun us, too." She considered. "Aha! I do have some popcorn. That's harmless, but it makes an awful racket. That might distract the dragon for awhile." "Grow me some of that," Chet said. "I'll throw it behind me if I have to swim." "Only one problem," she said. "I can't grow that at night. It's a dayplant." "I could unwrap the sunstone," Dor offered. "That's too small, I think. We'd need a lot of light, radiating all about, not gleaming from tiny facets." "What can you grow naturally at night?" Chet asked grimly. "Well, hypno-gourds do well; they generate their own light, inside. But you wouldn't want to look in the peephole, because—" "Because I'd be instantly hypnotized," Chet finished. "Grow me one anyway; it might help." "As you wish," she agreed dubiously. She leaned over the side of the boat to drop a seed on the shore. "Grow," she murmured. "Now if there is trouble," Dor said, "you, Irene, get on the flying carpet. You can drop a kraken seed near the dragon, while the rest of us use the hoop or swim for it. But we'll do our best to escape the notice of the dragon. Then we can proceed south without further trouble." There was no objection. They waited until the hypno-gourd had fruited, producing one fine specimen. Chet wrapped it in cloth and tucked it in the boat. The craft started moving, nudging silently south toward the channel while the occupants hardly dared breathe. Chet guided it in an eastward curve, to intersect the main channel first, so that he could avoid the monster that was presumably waiting due south. In this silent darkness, they could not see it any more than it could see them. But the dragon had outsmarted them. It had placed a sunfish in this channel that operated on a similar principle to the sunstone, but it was thousands of times as large. When they came near, the fish suddenly glowed like the sun itself, blindingly. The rounded fin projected above the surface of the water, and its light turned night to day. "Oh, no!" Dor cried. He had so carefully wrapped his sunstone—and now this was infinitely worse. There was a gleeful honk from the dragon. They saw its eyes glowing as it forged toward them. Water dragons did not have internal fire; the eyes were merely reflecting the blaze of the sunfish. "Plant the kraken!" Dor cried. "No!" Chet countered. "We can make it to the mainland shallows!" Sure enough, the boat glided smoothly across the channel before the dragon arrived. The monster was silhouetted before the sunfish, writhing in frustration. It had planned so well, and just missed victory. It honked. "Curses!" Grundy translated. "Foiled again!" "What about the sand dune?" Irene asked worriedly. "They are usually quiescent by night," Chet said. "But this isn't night any more," she reminded him, her voice taking on a pink tinge of hysteria. Indeed, the dark mound was rippling, sending a strand of itself toward the water. The sand had enough mass, and the water was so shallow, that it was possible for the dune to fill it in. The ravenous shoreline was coming toward them. "If we retreat from the dune, we'll come within reach of the dragon," Chet said. "Feed goon to dune," Smash suggested. "Goon? Do you mean the dragon?" Dor asked. The ogre nodded. "Say, yes!" Irene said. "Talk to the dune, Dor. Tell it we'll lure the dragon within its range if it lets us go." Dor considered. "I don't know. I'd hate to send any creature to such a fate—and I'm not sure the dune can be trusted." "Well, string it out as long as you can. Once the dune tackles the dragon, it won't have time to worry about small fry like us." Dor eyed the surging dune on one side, the chop-slurping dragon on the other, and noted how the region between them was diminishing. "Try reasoning with the dragon first," he told Grundy. The golem emitted a series of honks, grunts, whistles, and tooth-gnashings. It was amazing how versatile he was with sounds—but of course this was his magic. In a moment the dragon lunged forward, trying to catch the entire boat in its huge jaws, but falling short. The water washed up in a small tsunami. "I asked it if it wouldn't like to let a nice group of people on the King's business like us go on in peace," Grundy said. "It replied—" "We can see what it replied," Dor said. "Very well; we'll go the other route." He faced the shore and called: "Hey, dune!" Thus hailed, the dune was touched by Dor's magic. "You calling me, tidbit?" "I want to make a deal with you." "Ha! You're going to be consumed anyway. What kind of deal can you offer?" "This whole boatload is a small morsel for the likes of you. But we might arrange for you to get a real meal, if you let us go in peace." "I don't eat, really," the dune said. "I preserve. I clean and secure the bones of assorted creatures so that they can be admired millennia hence. My treasures are called fossils." So this monster, like so many of its ilk, thought itself a benefactor to Xanth. Was there any creature or thing, no matter how awful, that didn't rationalize its existence and actions in similar fashion? But Dor wasn't here to argue with it. "Wouldn't you rather fossilize a dragon than a sniveling little collection of scraps like us?" "Oh, I don't know. Snivelers are common, but so are dragons. Size is not as important for the fossil record as quality and completeness." "Well, do you have a water dragon in your record yet?" "No, most of them fall to my cousin the deepsea muck, just as most birds are harvested by my other cousin, the tarpit. I would dearly like to have a specimen like that." "We offer you that water dragon there," Dor said. "All you need to do is make a channel deep enough for the dragon to pass. Then we'll lure it in—and then you can close the channel and secure your specimen for fossilization." "Say, that would work!" the dune agreed. "It's a deal." "Start your channel, then. We'll sail down it first, leading the dragon. Make sure you let us go, though." "Sure. You go, the dragon stays." "I don't trust this," Irene muttered. "Neither do I," Dor agreed. "But we're in a bind. Chet, can you apply your calculus?" "The smallest of stones can be considered calculi," Chet said. "That is to say, sand. Now sand has certain properties . . ." He trailed off, then brightened. "You have sea-grass seed?" he asked Irene. "Lots of it. But I don't see how—" Then her eyes glowed. "Oh, I do see! Yes, I'll be ready, Chet!" The sand began to hump itself into twin mounds, opening a narrow channel of water between them. Chet guided the boat directly down that channel. The dragon, perceiving their seeming escape, honked wrathfully and gnashed its teeth. "Express hope the dragon doesn't realize how deep this channel is," Dor told Grundy. "In dragon talk." Grundy smiled grimly. "I know my business!" He emitted dragon noises. Immediately the dragon explored the end of the channel, plunging its head into it. With a glad honk it writhed on into the inviting passage. Soon the dragon was close on their wake. Its entire body was now within the separation in the dune. "Now—close it up!" Dor cried to the dune. The dune did so. Suddenly the channel was narrowing and disappearing as sand heaped into it. Too late the dragon realized its peril; it tried to turn, to retreat, but the way out was blocked. It honked and thrashed, but was in deep trouble in shallow water. However, the channel ahead of the boat was also filling in. "Hey, let us out!" Dor cried. "Why should I let perfectly good fossil material go?" the dune asked reasonably. "This way I've got both you and the dragon. It's the haul of the century!" "But you promised!" Dor said plaintively. "We made a deal!" "Promises and deals aren't worth the breath it takes to utter them—and I don't even breathe." "I knew it," Chet said. "Betrayal." "Do your stuff, Irene," Dor said. Irene brought out two handfuls of seeds. "Grow!" she yelled, scattering them widely. On either side the grass sprouted rapidly, sending its deep roots into the sand, grabbing, holding. "Hey!" the dune yelled, much as Dor had, as it tripped over itself where the grass anchored it. "You reneged on our agreement," Dor called back. "Now you pay the penalty." For the sand in this region was no longer able to move; the grass had converted it to ordinary ground. Enraged, the dune made one final effort. It humped up horrendously in the region beyond the growing grass, then rolled forward with such impetus that it spilled into the channel, filling it. "It's swamping the boat!" Dor cried. "Abandon ship!" "Some gratitude!" the boat complained. "I carry you loyally all over Xanth, risking my keel, and the moment things get rough, you abandon me!" The boat had a case, but they couldn't afford to argue it. Heedless of its objection, they all piled out as the sand piled in. They ran across the remaining section of grass-anchorage while the boat disappeared into the dune. The sand was unable to follow them here; its limit had been reached, and already the blades of grass were creeping up through the new mound, nailing it down. The main body of the dune had to retreat and concentrate on the thrashing dragon that bid fair to escape by coiling out of the vanished channel and writhing back toward the sea. The party stood at the edge of the bay. "We lost our boat," Irene said. "And the flying carpet, and escape hoop, and food." "And my bow and arrows," Chet said mournfully. "All I salvaged was the gourd. We played it too close; those monsters are stronger and smarter than we thought. We learn from experience." Dor was silent. He was the nominal leader of this party; the responsibility was his. If he could not manage a single trip south without disaster, how could he hope to handle the situation when he got to Centaur Isle? How could he handle the job of being King, if it came to that? But they couldn't remain here long, whether in thought or in despair. Already the natives of the region were becoming aware of them. Carnivorous grass picked up where the freshly planted sea grass left off, and the former was sending its hungry shoots toward them. Vines trembled, bright droplets of sap-saliva oozing from their surfaces. There was a buzzing of wings; something airborne would soon show up. But now at last the sunfish dimmed out, and night returned; the day creatures retreated in confusion, and the night creatures stirred. "If there's one thing worse than day in the wilderness," Irene said, shivering, "it's night. What do we do now?" Dor wished he had an answer. "Your plants have saved us once," Chet told her. "Do you have another plant that could protect us or transport us?" "Let me see." In the dark she put her hand in her bag of seeds and felt around. "Mostly food plants, and special effects . . . a beerbarrel tree—how did that get in here? . . . water locust . . . bulrush—" "Bulrushes!" Chet said. "Aren't those the reeds that are always in a hurry?" "They rush everywhere," she agreed. "Suppose we wove them into a boat or raft—could we control its motion?" "Yes, I suppose, if you put a ring in the craft's nose. But—" "Let's do it," the centaur said. "Anything will be better than waiting here for whatever is creeping up on us." "I'll start the bulrushes growing," she agreed. "We can weave them before they're mature. But you'll have to find a ring before we can finish." "Dor and Grundy—please question your contacts and see if you can locate a ring," the centaur said. They started in, Dor questioning the nonliving, Grundy the living. Neither could find a ring in the vicinity. The weaving of the growing bulrushes proceeded apace; it seemed Chet and Irene were familiar with the technique and worked well together. But already the rushes were thrashing about, trying to free themselves to travel. The mass of the mat-raft was burgeoning; soon it would be too strong to restrain. "Bring ring," Smash said. "We're trying to!" Dor snapped, clinging to a corner of the struggling mat. The thing was hideously strong. "Germ worm," the ogre said insistently. His huge hairy paw pushed something at Dor. The object seemed to be a loop of fur. A loop? "A ring!" Dor exclaimed. "Where did you get it?" "Me grow on toe," Smash explained. "Which itch." "You grew the ring on your toe—and it itched?" Dor was having trouble assimilating this. "Let me check," Grundy said. He made a funny sizzle, talking with something, then laughed. "You know what that is? A ringworm!" "A ringworm!" Dor cried in dismay, dropping the hideous thing. "If it's a ring, we need it," Chet said. "Before this mat gets away." Chagrined, Dor felt on the ground and picked up the ringworm. He passed it gingerly to the centaur. "Here." Chet wove it into the nose of the craft, then jerked several long hairs from his beautiful tail and twined them into a string that he passed through the ring. Suddenly the bulrush craft settled down. "The nose is sensitive," Chet explained. "The ring makes it hurt when jerked, so even this powerful entity can be controlled." "Some come!" Smash warned. Rather than wait to discover what it was that could make an ogre nervous, the others hastened to lead the now-docile bulrush boat to the water. Once it was floating, they boarded carefully and pushed off from the shore. The craft was not watertight, but the individual rushes were buoyant, so the whole business floated. Something growled in the dark on the shore—a deep, low, throbbing, powerful, and ugly sound. Then, frustrated, it moved away, the ground shuddering. A blast of odor passed them, dank and choking. No one inquired what it might be. Now Chet gave the bulrushes some play. The raft surged forward, churning up a faintly phosphorescent wake. Wind rushed past their faces. "Can you see where we're going?" Irene asked, her voice thin. "No," Chet said. "But the bulrushes travel best in open water. They won't run aground or crash into any monsters." "You trust them more than I do," she said. "And I grew them." "Elementary calculation of vegetable nature," the centaur said. "May I lean against your side?" she asked. "I didn't sleep today, and your coat is so soft—" "Go ahead," Chet said graciously. He was lying down again, as the woven fabric of the raft could not support his weight afoot. The rushes had swelled in the water, and Dor had succeeded in bailing it out; they were no longer sitting in sea water. Dor had not slept either, but he didn't feel like leaning against Chet's furry side. The stars moved by. Dor lay on his back and determined the direction of travel of the raft by the stars' apparent travel. It wasn't even; the bulrushes were maneuvering to find the course along which they could rush most freely. They did seem to know where they were going, and that sufficed for now. Gradually the constellations appeared, patterns in the sky, formations of stars that shifted from randomness to the suggestion of significance. There seemed to be pictures shaping, representations of creatures and objects and notions. Some resembled faces; he thought he saw King Trent peering down at him, giving him a straight, intelligent look. Where are you now? Dor asked wordlessly. The face frowned. I am being held captive in a medieval Mundane castle, it said. I have no magic power here. You must bring me magic. But I can't do that! Dor protested. Magic isn't something a person can carry, especially not into Mundania! You must use the aisle to rescue me. What aisle? Dor asked, excited. The centaur aisle, Trent answered. Then a waft of ocean spray struck Dor's face, and he woke. The stellar face was gone; it had been a dream. Yet the message remained with him. Center Isle? His spelling disability made him uncertain, now, of the meaning. How could he use an island to seek King Trent? The center of what? If it was centaur, did that mean Chet had something essential to do with it? If it was an aisle, an aisle between what and what? If this were really a message, a prophecy, how could he apply it? If it were merely a random dream or vision, a construct of his overtired and meandering mind, he should ignore it. But such things were seldom random in Xanth. Troubled, Dor drifted to sleep again. What he had experienced could not have been a nightmare, for it hadn't scared him, and of course the mares could not run across the water. Maybe it would return and clarify itself. But the dream did not repeat, and he could not evoke it by looking at the stars. Clouds had sifted across the night sky.
(Xanth 4) Centaur Aisle	Piers Anthony	[ "fantasy", "puns" ]	[]	Girding Loins	Dor woke again as dawn came. The sun had somehow gotten around to the east, where the land was, and dried off so that it could shine again, Dor wondered what perilous route it employed. Maybe it had a tunnel to roll along. If it ever figured out a way to get down without taking a dunking in the ocean, it would really have it made! Maybe he should suggest that to it sometime. After all, some mornings the sun was up several hours before drying out enough to shine with full brilliance; obviously some nights were worse than others. But he would not make the suggestion right now; he didn't want the sun heading off to explore new routes, leaving Xanth dark for days at a time. Dor needed the light to see his way to Centaur Isle. Jewel's midnight sunstone was not enough. Centaur Isle—was that where he was supposed to find King Trent? No, the centaurs wouldn't imprison the King, and anyway, Trent was in Mundania. But maybe something at Centaur Isle related. If only he could figure out how! Dor sat up. "Where are we now, Chet?" he inquired. There was no answer. The centaur had fallen asleep, too, Irene in repose against his side. Smash and Grundy snored at the rear of the raft. Everyone had slept! No one was guiding the craft or watching the course! The bulrushes had rushed wherever they wanted to go, which could be anywhere! The raft was in the middle of the ocean. Bare sea lay on all sides. It was sheer luck that no sea monster had spied them and gobbled them down while they slept. In fact, there was one now! But as the monster forged hungrily toward the craft, Dor saw that the velocity of the rushes was such that the serpent could not overtake the craft. They were safe because of their speed. Since they were heading south, they should be near Centaur Isle now. No, that did not necessarily follow, Dor had done better in Cherie's logic classes than in spelling. He always looked for alternatives to the obvious. The craft could have been doing loops all night, or traveling north, and then turned south coincidentally as dawn came. They could be anywhere at all. "Where are we?" Dor asked the nearest water. "Longitude 83, Latitude 26, or vise versa," the water said. "I always confuse parallels with meridians." "That doesn't tell me anything!" Dor snapped. "It tells me, though," Chet said, waking. "We are well out to sea, but also well on the way to our destination. We should be there tonight." "But suppose a monster catches us way out here in the sea?" Irene asked, also waking. "I'd rather be near land." Chet shrugged. "We can veer in to land. Meanwhile, why don't you grow us some food and fresh-water plants so we can eat and drink?" "And a parasol plant, to shield us from the sun," she said. "And a privacy hedge, for you-know." She got on it. Soon they were drinking scented water from a pitcher plant and eating bunlike masses from puffball plants. The new hedge closed off the rear of the craft, where the expended pitchers were used for another purpose. Several parasols shaded them nicely. It was all becoming quite comfortable. The bulrush craft, responsive to Chet's tug on the string tied to the ring in its nose, veered toward the east, where the distant land was supposed to be. Smash the Ogre sniffed the air and peered about. Then he pointed. "Me see the form of a mean ol' storm," he announced. Oh, no! Dor spied the roiling clouds coming up over the southern horizon. Smash's keen ogre senses had detected it first, but in moments it was all too readily apparent to them all. "We're in trouble," Grundy said. "I'll see what I can do." "What can you do?" Irene asked witheringly. "Are you going to wave your tiny little dumb hand and conjure us all instantly to safety?" Grundy ignored her. He spoke to the ocean in whatever language its creatures used. In a moment he said: "I think I have it. The fish are taking word to an eclectic eel." "A what?" Irene demanded. "Do you mean one of those shocking creatures?" "An eclectic eel, dummy. It chooses things from all over. It does nothing original; it puts it all together in bits and pieces that others have made." "How can something like that possibly help us?" "Better ask it why it will help us." "All right, woodenhead. Why?" "Because I promised it half your seeds." "Half my seeds!" she exploded. "You can't do that!" "If I don't, the storm will send us all to the depths." "He's right, Irene," Chet said. "We're over a barrel, figuratively speaking." "I'll put the confounded golem in a barrel and glue the cork in!" she cried. "A barrel of white-hot sneeze-pepper! He has no right to promise my property." "Okay," Grundy said. "Tell the eel no. Give it a shock." A narrow snout poked out of the roughening water. A cold gust of wind ruffled Irene's hair and flattened her clothing against her body, making her look extraordinarily pretty. The sky darkened. "It says, figuratively speaking, your figure isn't bad," Grundy reported with a smirk. This incongruous compliment put her off her pace. It was hard to tell off someone who made a remark like that. "Oh, all right," she said, sulking. "Half the seeds. But I choose which half." "Well, toss them in, stupid," Grundy said, clinging to the side of the craft as it pitched in the swells. "But they'll sprout!" "That's the idea. Make them all grow. Use your magic. The eclectic eel demands payment in advance." Irene looked rebellious, but the first drop of rain struck her on the nose and she decided to carry through. "This will come out of your string hide, golem," she muttered. She tossed the seeds into the heaving water one by one, invoking each in turn. "Grow, like a golem's ego. Grow, like Grundy's swelled head. Grow, like the vengeance I owe the twerp..." Strange things developed in the water. Pink-leaved turnips sprouted, turning in place, and tan tomatoes, and yellow cabbages and blue beets. Snap beans snapped merrily and artichokes choked. Then the flowers started, as she came to another section of her supply. White blossoms sprang up in great clusters, decorating the entire ocean near the raft. Then they moved away in herds, making faint baa-aa-aas. "What's that?" Grundy asked. "Phlox, ninny," Irene said. Oh, flocks, Dor thought. Of course. The white sheep of flowers. Firecracker flowers popped redly, tiger lilies snarled, honeybells tinkled, and bleeding hearts stained the water with their sad life essence. Irises that Irene's mother had given her flowered prettily in blue and purple. Gladiolas stretched up happily, begonias bloomed and departed even before they could be ordered to begone. Periwinkles opened their orbs to wink; crocuses parted their white lips to utter scandalous imprecations. Grundy leaned over the edge of the raft to sniff some pretty multicolored little flowers that were vining upward. Then something happened. "Hey!" he cried suddenly, outraged, wiping golden moisture off his head. "What did they do that for?" Irene glanced across. "Dummy," she said with satisfaction, "what do you expect sweet peas to do? You better stay away from the pansies." On Dor's side there was an especially rapid development, the red, orange, and white flowers bursting forth almost before the buds formed. "My, these are in a hurry," he commented. "They're impatiens," Irene explained. The display finished off with a dazzling emergence of golden balls— marigolds. "That's half. Take it or leave it," Irene said. "The eel takes it," Grundy said, still shaking pea out of his hair. "Now the eclectic eel will lead us through the storm to shore, in its fashion." "About time," Chet said. "Everyone hang on. We have a rough sail coming." The eel wriggled forward. The craft followed. The storm struck with its moist fury. "What do you have against us?" Dor asked it as the wind tore at his body. "Nothing personal," it blew back. "It's my job to clear the seas of riffraff. Can't have flotsam and jetsam cluttering up the surface, after all." "I don't know those people," Dor said. The raft was rocking and twisting as it followed the elusive eel, but they were somehow avoiding the worst of the violence. A piece of planking floated by. "I'm flotsam," it said. "I'm part of the ship that wrecked here last month, still floating." A barrel floated by on the other side, the battered trunk of a harvested jellybarrel tree. "I'm jetsam," it blew from its bung. "I was thrown overboard to lighten the ship." "Nice to know you both," Dor said politely. "The eel uses them for markers," Grundy said. "It uses anything it finds." "Where's the riffraff?" Irene asked. "If the storm is here to clear it from the seas, there should be some to clear." "I'm the raf'," the raft explained. "You must be the rif'." And it chuckled. Now the rain pelted down full-strength. All of them were soaked in an instant. "Bail! Bail!" Chet screamed thinly through the wind. Dor grabbed his bucket—actually, it was a bouquet Irene had grown, which his spelling had fouled up so that its nature had completely changed—and scooped out water. Smash the Ogre worked similarly on the other side, using a pitcher. By dint of colossal effort they managed to stay marginally ahead of the rain that poured in. "Get low!" Grundy cried through the weather. "Don't let her roll over!" "She's not rolling," Irene said. "A raft can't—" Then the craft pitched horribly and started to turn over. Irene threw herself flat in the bottom of the center depression, joining Dor and Smash. The raft listed sickeningly to right, then to left, first throwing Irene bodily into Dor, then hurling him into her. She was marvelously soft. "What are you doing?" Dor cried as his wind was almost knocked from him despite his soft landings. "I'm yawing," the raft said. "Seems more like a roll to me," Chet grumbled from the rear. Irene fetched up against Dor again, hip to hip and nose to nose. "Dear, we've got to stop meeting this way," she gasped, attempting to smile. In other circumstances Dor would have appreciated the meetings more. Irene was padded in appropriate places, so that the shocks of contact were pleasantly cushioned. But at the moment he was afraid for his life and hers. Meanwhile, she looked as if she were getting seasick. The craft lurched forward and down, as if sliding over a waterfall. Dor's own gorge rose. "Now what are you doing?" he heaved. "I'm pitching," the raft responded. "We're out of the water!" Chet cried. His head remained higher despite his prone position. "There's something beneath us! That's why we're rolling so much!" "That's the behemoth," Grundy said. "The what?" Dor asked. "The behemoth. A huge wallowing creature that floats about doing nothing. The eclectic eel led us up to it, to help weather the storm." Irene unglued herself from Dor, and all of them crawled cautiously up and looked over the edge of the raft. The storm continued, but now it beat on the glistening blubbery back of the tremendous animal. The craft's perch seemed insecure because of the way it rolled and slid on the slick surface, but the enormous bulk of the monster provided security from the heaving ocean. "But I thought behemoths were fresh-water creatures," Dor said. "My father encountered one below Lake Ogre-Chobee, he said." "Of course he did. I was there," Grundy said superciliously. "Behemoths are where you find them. They're too big to worry about what kind of water it is." "The eel just happened to find this creature and led us to it?" Chet asked. He also looked somewhat seasick. "That's the eclectic way," Grundy agreed. "To use anything handy." "Aw, you cheated," the storm howled. "I can't sink that tub." A whirling eye focused on Dor. "That's twice you have escaped me, man-thing. But we shall meet again." Disgruntled, it blew itself away to the west. So that had been the same storm he had encountered at Good Magician Humfrey's castle. It certainly traveled about! The behemoth, discovering that its pleasant shower had abated, exhaled a dusty cloud of gas and descended to the depths. There was no point in staying on the surface when the storm didn't want to play any more. The raft was left floating in a calming sea. Now that he was no longer in danger of drowning, Dor almost regretted the passing of the storm. Irene was a good deal more comfortable to brace against than the reeds of the raft. But he knew he was foolish always to be most interested in what he couldn't have, instead of being satisfied with what he did have. A monster showed on the horizon. "Get this thing moving!" Irene cried, alarmed. "We aren't out of the weather yet!" "Follow the eel!" Grundy warned. "But the eel's headed straight for the monster!" Chet protested. "That must be the way, then." But even Grundy looked doubtful. They forged toward the monster. It was revealed now as extremely long and flat, as if a sea serpent had been squeezed under a rolling boulder. "What is it?" Dor asked, amazed. "A ribbonfish, dolt," Grundy said. "How can that help us?" For the storm had taken up more of the day than it had seemed to; the sun was now at zenith, and they remained far from shore. "All I know is the eel agreed to get us to land by nightfall," Grundy said. They forged on. But now the pace was slowing; the bulrushes were losing their power. Dor realized that some of the material of the boat was dead now; that was why it had been able to speak to him, since his power related only to the inanimate. Soon the rushes would become inert, stranding the craft in mid-sea. They had no paddle; that had been lost with the first boat. The ribbonfish brought its preposterously flat head down as the bulrush craft sputtered close. Then the head dipped into the water and slid beneath them. In a moment it emerged behind them, and the neck came up under the boat, heaving it right out of the water. "Oh, no!" Irene screamed as they were carried high into the air. She flung her arms about Dor in terror. Again, he wished this could have happened when he wasn't terrified himself. But the body of the ribbonfish was slightly concave; the raft remained centered, not falling off. As the head elevated to an appalling height, the boat began to slide down along the body, which was slick with moisture. They watched, horrified, as the craft tilted forward, then accelerated down the creature's neck. Irene screamed again and clung smotheringly to Dor as their bodies turned weightless. Down they zoomed. But the ribbonfish was undulating, so that a new hump kept forming just behind them while a new dip formed ahead of them. They zoomed at frightening velocity along the creature, never getting down to the water. "We're traveling toward land," Dor said, awed. "The monster's moving us there!" "That's how it gets its jollies," Grundy said. "Scooping up things and sliding them along its length. The eel just made use of this for our benefit." Perceiving that they were not, after all, in danger, Irene regained confidence. "Let go of me!" she snapped at Dor, as if he had been the one doing the grabbing. The ribbonfish seemed interminably long; the raft slid and slid. Then Dor realized that the monster's head had looked down under the water and come up to follow its tail; the creature was running them through again. The land was coming closer. At last the land arrived. The ribbonfish tired of the game and dumped them off with a jarring splash. The rushes had just enough power left to propel them to the beach; then they expired, and the raft began to sink. The sun was well down toward the horizon, racing to cut off their day before they could travel anywhere further. Soon the golden orb would be quenched again. "From here we go by foot, I think," Chet remarked. "We will not achieve Centaur Isle this day." "We can get closer, though," Dor said. "I've had enough of boats for now anyway." The others agreed. First they paused to forage, for some food. Wild fruitcakes were ripe and a water chestnut provided potable water, Irene did not have to expend any of her diminished store of seeds. In fact, she found a few new ones here. Suddenly something jumped from behind a tree and charged directly at Dor. He whipped out his magic sword without thinking—and the creature stopped short, spun about, and ran away. It was all hair and legs and glower. "What was that?" Dor asked, shaking. "That's a jump-at-a-body," the nearest stone said. "What's a jump-at-a-body?" Irene asked. "I don't have to answer you," the stone retorted. "You can't take me for granite." "Answer her," Dor told it. "Awww, okay. It's what you just saw." "That's not much help," Irene said. "You aren't much yourself, doll," it said. "I've seen a better complexion on mottled serpentine." Bedraggled and disheveled from the ocean run, Irene was hardly at her best. But her vanity had been pricked. "I can choke you with weeds, mineral." "Yeah, greenie? Just try it!" "Weeds—grow!" she directed, pointing to the rock. Immediately the weeds around it sprouted vigorously. "Weed's the best that ever was!" the weeds exclaimed. Startled, Dor looked closely, for his talent did not extend to living things. He found that some sand caught in the plants had actually done the talking. "Oh, for schist sake!" the rock said. "She's doing it!" "Tell me what a jump-at-a-body is," Irene insisted. The rock was almost hidden by vegetation. "All right, all right, doll! Just clear these junky plants out of my face." "Stop growing," Irene told the weeds, and they stopped with a frustrated rustle. She tramped them down around the rock. "You do have pretty legs," the rock said. "And that's not all." Irene, straddling the rock, leaped away. "Just answer my question." "They just jump out and scare people and run away," the rock said. "They're harmless. They came across from Mundania not long ago, when the Mundanes stopped believing in them, and don't have the courage to do anything bad." "Thank you," Irene said, gratified by her victory over the ornery stone. "I think the grass needs more tramping down," the rock suggested. "Not while I'm wearing a skirt." "Awww..." They finished their repast and trekked on south. Very little remained of the day, but they wanted to find a decent place to camp for the night. Dor questioned other rocks to make sure nothing dangerous remained in the vicinity; this did seem to be a safe island. Perhaps their luck had turned, and they would reach their destination without further ill event. But as dusk closed, they came to the southern border of the island. There was a narrow channel separating it from the next island in the chain. "Maybe we'd better camp here for the night," Dor said. "This island seems safe; we don't know what's on the next one." "Also, I'm tired," Irene said. They settled in for the night, protected by a palisade formed of asparagus spears grown for the occasion. The jump-at-abodies kept charging the stockade and fleeing it harmlessly. Chet and Smash, being the most massive individuals, lay at the outside edges of the small enclosure. Grundy needed so little room he didn't matter. Dor and Irene were squeezed into the center. But now she had room enough and time to settle herself without quite touching him. Ah, well. "You know, that rock was tight," Dor said. "You do have nice legs. And that's not all." "Go to sleep," she said, not displeased.
(Xanth 4) Centaur Aisle	Piers Anthony	[ "fantasy", "puns" ]	[]	Chapter 7	In the morning a large roundish object floated in the channel. Dor didn't like the look of it. They would have to swim past it to reach the next island. "Is it animal or plant?" he asked. "No plant," Irene said. She had a feel for this sort of thing, since it related to her magic. "I'll talk to it," Grundy said. His talent applied to anything living. He made a complex series of whistles and almost inaudible grunts. Much of his communication was opaque to others, since some animals and most plants used inhuman mechanisms. In a moment he announced: "It's a sea nettle. A plantlike animal. This channel is its territory, and it will sting to death anyone who intrudes." "How fast can it swim?" Irene asked. "Fast enough," Grundy said. "It doesn't look like much, but it can certainly perform. We could separate, crossing in two parties; that way it could only get half of us, maybe." "Perhaps you had better leave the thinking to those better equipped for it," Chet said. "We have to get it out of there or nullify it," Dor said. "I'll try to lead it away, using my talent." "Meanwhile, I'll start my stunflower," Irene said. "Thanks for the vote of confidence." But Dor couldn't blame her; he had had success before in tricking monsters with his talent, but it depended on the nature and intelligence of the monster. He hadn't tried it on the water dragon, knowing that effort would be wasted. This sea nettle was a largely unknown quantity. It certainly didn't look smart. He concentrated on the water near the nettle. "Can you do imitations?" he asked it. The inanimate often thought it had talent of this nature, and the less talent it had, the more vain it was about it. Once, years ago, he had caused water to imitate his own voice, leading a triton a merry chase. "No," the water said. Oh. "Well, repeat after me: 'Sea nettle, you are a big blob of blubber.'" "Huh?" the water asked. He would have to encounter a stupid quantity of water! Some water was volatile in its wit, with cleverness flowing freely; some just lay there in puddles. "Blob of blubber!" he repeated. "You're another!" the water retorted. "Now say it to the sea nettle." "You're another!" the water said to the sea nettle. The others of Dor's party smiled. Irene's plant was growing nicely. "No!" Dor snapped, his temper shortening. "Blob of blubber." "No blob of blubber!" the water snapped. The sea nettle's spines wiggled. "It says thank you," Grundy reported. This was hopeless. In bad temper, Dor desisted. "The flower is almost ready," Irene said. "It's a bit like the Gorgon; it can't stun you if you don't look at it. So we'd better all line up with our backs to it—and don't look back. There'll be no returning this way; once a plant like this matures, I can't stop it." They lined up. Dor heard the rustle of rapidly expanding leaves behind him. This was nervous business! "It's blossoming," Grundy said. "It's beginning to feel its power. Oh, it's a bad one!" "Sure it's a bad one," Irene agreed. "I picked the best seed. Start wading into the channel. The flower will strike before we reach the sea nettle, and we want the nettle's attention directed this way." They waded out. Dor suddenly realized how constrictive his clothing would be in the water. He didn't want anything hampering him as he swam by the nettle. He started removing his apparel. Irene, apparently struck by the same thought, quickly pulled off her skirt and blouse. "Dor's right," Grundy remarked. He was riding Chet's back. "You do have nice legs. And that's not all." "If your gaze should stray too far from forward," Irene said evenly, "it could encounter the ambience of the stunflower." Grundy's gaze snapped forward. So did Chet's, Smash's, and Dor's. But Dor was sure there was a grim smirk on Irene's face. At times she was very like her mother. "Hey, the flower's bursting loose!" Grundy cried. "I can tell by what it says; it has a bold self-image. What a head on that thing!" Indeed, Dor could feel a kind of heat on his bare back. The power of the flower was now being exerted. But the sea nettle seemed unaffected. It quivered, moving toward them. Its headpart was gilled like a toadstool all around. Driblets of drool formed on its surface. "The nettle says it will sting us all so hard—oooh, that's obscene!" Grundy said. "Let me see if I can render a properly effective translation—" "Keep moving," Irene said. "The flower's incipient." "Now the flower's singing its song of conquest," Grundy reported, and broke into the song: "I'm the one flower, I'm the STUNflower!" At the word "stun" there was a burst of radiation that blistered their backs. Dor and the others fell forward into the channel, letting the water cool their burning flesh. The sea nettle facing the flower, stiffened. Its surface glazed. The drool crystallized. The antennae faded and turned brittle. It had been stunned. They swam by the nettle. There was no reaction from the monster. Dor saw its mass extending down into the depths of the channel with huge stinging tentacles. That thing certainly could have destroyed them all, had it remained animate. They completed their swim in good order, Chet and Grundy in the lead, then Dor, Smash, and finally Irene. He knew she could swim well enough; she was staying back so the others would not view her nakedness. She wasn't actually all that shy about it; it was mainly her sense of propriety, developing apace with her body, and her instinct for preserving the value of what she had by keeping it reasonably scarce. It was working nicely; Dor was now several times as curious about her body as he would have been had he seen it freely. But he dared not look; the stunning radiation of the stunflower still beat upon the back of his head. They found the shallows and trampled out of the water. "Keep going until shaded from the flower," Irene called. "Don't look back, whatever you do!" Dor needed no warning. He felt the heat of stun travel down his back, buttocks, and legs as he emerged from the water. What a monster Irene had unleashed! But it had done its job, when his own talent had failed; it had gotten them safely across the channel and past the sea nettle. They found a tangle of purple-green bushes and maneuvered to put them between their bodies and the stunflower. Now Dor could put his clothing back on; he had kept it mostly dry by carrying it clenched in his teeth, the magic sword strapped to his body. "You have nice legs, too," Irene said behind him, making him jump. "And that's not all." Dor found himself blushing. Well, he had it coming to him. Irene was already dressed; girls could change clothing very quickly when they wanted to. They moved on south, but it was a long time before Dor lost his nervousness about looking back. That stunflower . .. Chet halted. "What's this?" he asked. The others looked. There was a flat wooden sign set in the ground. On it was neatly printed NO LAW FOR THE LOIN. It was obvious that no one quite understood this message, but no one wanted to speculate on its meaning. At last Dor asked the sign: "Is there any threat to us nearby?" "No," the sign said. They went on, each musing his private musings. They had come to this island naked; could that relate? But obviously that sign had been there long before their coming. Could it be a misspelling? he wondered. But his own spelling was so poor, he hesitated to draw that conclusion. Now they came to a densely wooded marsh. The trees were small but closely set; Dor and Irene could squeeze between them, but Smash could not, and it was out of the question for Chet. "Me make a lake," Smash said, readying his huge hamfist. With the trees gone, this would be a more or less open body of murky water. "No, let's see if we can find a way through," Dor said. "King Trent never liked to have wilderness areas wantonly destroyed, for some reason. And if we make a big commotion, it could attract whatever monsters there are." They skirted the thicket and soon came across another sign: THE LOIN WALKS WHERE IT WILL. Near it was a neat, dry path through the forest, elevated slightly above the swamp. "Any danger here?" Dor inquired. "Not much," the sign said. They used the path. As they penetrated the thicket, there were rustlings in the trees and slurpings in the muck below. "What's that noise?" Dor asked, but received no answer. This forest was so dense there was nothing inanimate in it; the water was covered with green growth, and the path itself was formed of living roots. "I'll try," Grundy said. He spoke in tree language, and after a moment reported: "They are cog rats and skug worms; nothing to worry about as long as you don't turn your back on them." The rustlings and slurpings became louder. "But they are all around us!" Irene protested. "How can we avoid turning our backs?" "We can face in all directions," Chet said. "I'll go forward; Grundy can ride me facing backward. The rest of you can look to either side." They did so, Smash on the left, Dor and Irene on the right. The noises stayed just out of sight. "But let's get on out of this place!" Irene said. "I wonder how the loin makes out, since this seems to be its path," Dor said. As if in answer to his question, they came upon another sign: THE LOIN IS LORD OF THE JUNGLE. Obviously the cog rats and skug worms didn't dare bother the loin. "I am getting more curious about this thing," Irene said. "Does it hunt, does it eat, does it play with others of its kind? What is it?" Dor wondered, too, but still hesitated to state his conjectures. Suppose it wasn't a misspelling? How, then, would it hunt, eat, and play? They hurried on and finally emerged from the thicket—only to encounter another sign. THE LOIN SHALL LIE WITH THE LAMB. "What's a lamb?" Irene asked. "A Mundane creature," Chet said. "Said to be harmless, soft, and cuddly, but stupid." "That's the kind the loin would like," she muttered darkly. Still no one openly expressed conjectures about the nature of this creature. They traveled on down to the southern tip of this long island. The entire coastline of Xanth, Chet explained, was bordered by barrier reefs that had developed into island chains; this was as good and safe a route as they could ask for, since they no longer had a boat. There should be very few large predators on the islands, since there was insufficient hunting area for them, and the sea creatures could not quite reach the interiors of the isles. But no part of Xanth was wholly safe. All of them were ready to depart this Isle of the Loin. As they came to the beach, they encountered yet another sign: A PRIDE OF LOINS. And a roaring erupted behind them, back along the path in the thicket. Something was coming—and who could doubt what it was? "Do we want to meet a pride of loins?" Chet asked rhetorically. "But do we want to swim through that?" Grundy asked. They looked. A fleet of tiger sharks had sailed in while Dor's party stood on the beach. Each had a sailfin and the head of a tiger. They crowded in as close to the shore as they could reach, snarling hungry welcome. "I think we're between the dragon and the dune again," Grundy said. "I can stop the tiger sharks," Irene said. "I have a kraken seaweed seed." "And I still have the hypno-gourd; that should stop a loin," Chet said. "Assuming it's a case of misspelling. There is a Mundane monster like the front half of a tiger shark, called a—" "But there must be several loins in a pride," Grundy said. "Unless it's just one loin standing mighty proud." "Me fight the fright," Smash said. "A pride might contain twenty individuals," Chet said. "You might occupy half a dozen, Smash—but the remaining dozen or so would have opportunity to eat up the rest of us. If that is what they do." "But we don't know there are that many," Irene protested uncertainly. "We've got to get out of here!" Grundy cried. "Oh, I never worried about my flesh when I was a real golem!" "Maybe you weren't as obnoxious then," Irene suggested. "Besides which, you didn't have any flesh then." But the only way to go was along the beach—and the tiger sharks paced them in the water. "We can't escape either menace this way," Irene said. "I'm planting my kraken." She tossed a seed into the water. "Grow, weed!" Chet held forward the hypno-gourd that he had retained through all their mishaps, one palm covering the peephole. "I'll show this to the first loin, regardless." Smash joined him. "Me reckon the secon'," he said, his hamfists at the ready. "An' nerd the third." "You're the Magician," Grundy told Dor. "Do something." Dor made a wild attempt. "Anything—is there any way out of here?" "Thought you'd never ask," the sand at his feet said. "Of course there's a way out." "You know a way?" Dor asked, gratified. "No." "For goodness' sake!" Irene exclaimed. "What an idiot!" "You'd be stupid, too," the sand retorted, "if your brains were fragmented mineral." "I was referring to him!" she said, indicating Dor. "To think they call him a Magician! All he can do is play ventriloquist with junk like you." "That's telling him," the sand agreed. "That's a real load of sand in his eyes." "Why did you say there was a way out if you don't know it?" Dor demanded. "Because my neighbor the bone knows it." Dor spotted the bone and addressed it. "What's the way out?" "The tunnel, idiot," the bone said. The sound of the pride of loins was looming louder. The tiger sharks were snarling as the growing kraken weed menaced them. "Where's the tunnel?" Dor asked. "Right behind you, at the shore," the bone said. "I sealed it off, took three steps, and fell prey to the loins." "I don't see it," Dor said. "Of course not; the high tide washes sand over it. Last week someone goosed the tide and it dumped a lot more sand. I'm the only one who can locate the tunnel now." Dor picked up the bone. It resembled the thighbone of a man. "Locate the tunnel for me." "Right there, where the water laps. Scrape the sand away." It angled slightly in his hand, pointing. Dor scraped, and soon uncovered a boulder. "This seals it?" he asked. "Yes," the bone said. "I hid my pirate treasure under the next island and tunneled here so no one would know. But the loins—" "Hey, Smash," Dor called. "We have a boulder for you to move." "Oh, I wouldn't," the bone cautioned. "That's delicately placed so the thieves can't force it. The tunnel will collapse." "Well, how do we get in, then?" "You have to use a sky hook to lift the boulder out without jarring the sides." "We don't have a sky hook!" Dor exclaimed angrily. "Of course you don't. That was my talent, when I was alive. No one but me could safely remove that boulder. I had everything figured, except the loin." As the bone spoke, the kraken weed, having driven back the tiger sharks, was questing toward the shore. Soon it would be more of a menace to them than the tiger sharks had been. "Any progress?" Chet asked. "I do not want to rush you, but I calculate we have thirty seconds before the loins, whatever they are, burst out of the forest." "Chet!" Dor exclaimed. "Make this boulder into a pebble! But don't jar anything." The centaur touched the boulder, and immediately it shrank. Soon it was a pebble that fell into the hole beneath it. The passage was open. "Jump in!" Dor cried. Irene was startled. "Who, me?" "Close enough," Grundy said. "Want to stand there and show off your legs to the loins?" Irene jumped in. "Say, this is neat!" she called from below, her voice echoing hollowly. "Let me just grow something to illuminate it—" "You next," Dor said to Chet. "Try not to shake the tunnel; it's not secure." Chet jumped in with surprising delicacy, Grundy with him. "Okay, Smash," Dor said. "No go," the ogre said, bracing to face the land menace. "Me join the loin." And he slammed one huge fist into a hammy palm with a sound like a crack of thunder. Smash wanted to guard the rear. Probably that was best. Otherwise the loins might pursue them into the tunnel. "Stand next to the opening," Dor said. "When you're ready, jump in and follow us. Don't wait too long. Soon the kraken will reach here; that will stop the loins, I think. Don't tangle with the kraken; we need it to stand guard after you rejoin us." The ogre nodded. The bellow of the loins became loud. Dor jumped in the hole. He found himself in a man-sized passage, leading south, under the channel. The light from the entrance faded rapidly. But Irene had thoughtfully planted starflowers along the way, and their pinpoint lights marked the progress of the tunnel, Dor paused to unwrap his midnight sunstone; its beam helped considerably. As Dor walked, he heard the approach of the pride of loins outside. Smash made a grunt of surprise. Then there was the sound of contact. "What's going on?" Dor cried, worried. "The ogre just threw a dandyloin to the kraken," the pebble in the mouth of the tunnel said. "Now he's facing up to their leader, Sir Loin Stake. He's tough and juicy." "Smash, come on!" Dor cried. "Don't push your luck!" The ogre's reply was muffled. All Dor heard was ". . . luck!" "Oooo, what you said!" the pebble exclaimed. "Wash out your mouth with soapstone!" In a moment Smash came lumbering down the tunnel, head bowed to clear the ceiling. A string of kraken weed was strewn across his hairy shoulder. Evidently he had held off the loins until the kraken took over the vicinity. "Horde explored, adored the gourd," he announced, cracking a smile like a smoking cleft in a lightning-struck tree. Those who believed ogres had no sense of humor were obviously mistaken; Smash could laugh with the best, provided the joke was suitably fundamental. "What did the loins look like?" Dor asked, overcome by morbid curiosity. Smash paused, considering, then uttered one of his rare nonrhyming utterances. "Ho ho ho ho ho!" he bellowed—and the fragile tunnel began to crumble around them. Rocks dislodged from the ceiling and the walls oozed moisture. Dor and the ogre fled that section. Dor was no longer very curious about the nature of the loins; he just wanted to get out of this tunnel alive. They were below the ocean; they could be crushed inexorably if the tunnel support collapsed. A partial collapse, leading to a substantial leak, would flood the tunnel. Even an ogre could not be expected to hold up an ocean. They caught up to the others. There was no crash behind them; the tunnel had not collapsed. Yet. "This place makes me nervous," Irene said. "No way out but forward," Chet said. "Quickly." The passage seemed interminable, but it did trend south. It must have been quite a job for the pirate to excavate this, even with his sky hook to help haul out the refuse. How ironic that the loin should be his downfall, after he had finished the tunnel! They hurried onward and downward, becoming more nervous as the depth deepened. To heighten their apprehension, the bottom of the tunnel became clammy, then slick. A thin stream of water was flowing in it—and soon it was clear that this water was increasing. Had the ogre's laugh triggered a leak, after all? If so, they were doomed. Dor was afraid even to mention the possibility. "The tide!" Chet said. "The tide is coming in—and high tide covers the entrance. This passage is filling with water!" "Oh, good!" Dor said, relieved. Four pairs of eyes focused on him, perplexed. "Uh, I was afraid the tunnel was collapsing," Dor said lamely. "The tide—that's not so bad." "In the sense that a slow demise is better than a fast one," the centaur said. Dor thought about that. His apprehension became galloping dread. How could they escape this? "How much longer is this tunnel?" Dor asked. "You're halfway through," the tunnel said. "But you'll have trouble getting past the cave-in ahead." "Cave-in!" Irene squealed. She tended to panic in a crisis. "Oh, sure," the tunnel said. "No way around." In a moment, with the water ankle-deep and rising, they encountered it—a mass of rubble that sealed the passage. "Me bash this trash," Smash said helpfully. "Um, wait," Dor cautioned. "We don't want to bring the whole ocean in on us in one swoop. Maybe if Chet reduces the pieces to pebbles, while Smash supports the ceiling—" "Still won't hold," Chet said. "The dynamics are wrong. We need an arch." "Me shape escape," Smash offered. He started to fashion an arch from stray chunks of stone. But more chunks rolled down to splash in the deepening water as he took each one. "Maybe I can stabilize it," Irene said. She found a seed and dropped it in the water. "Grow." The plant tried, but there was not enough light. Dor shone his sunstone on it; then the plant prospered. That was all it needed; Jewel's gift was proving useful! Soon there was a leafy kudzu taking form. Tendrils dug into the sand; vines enclosed the rocks, and green leaves covered the wall of the tunnel. Now Smash could not readily dislodge the stones he needed to complete his arch without hurting the plant. "I believe we can make it without the arch," Chet said. "The plant has secured the debris." He touched a stone, reducing it to a pebble, then touched others. Soon the tunnel was restored, the passage clear to the end. But the delay had been costly. The water was now knee deep. They splashed onward. Fortunately, they were at the nadir. As they marched up the far slope, the water's depth diminished. But they knew this was a temporary respite; before long the entire tunnel would be filled. Now they came to the end of it—a chamber in which there stood a simple wooden table whose objects were covered by a cloth. They stood around it, for the moment hesitant. "I don't know what treasure can help us now," Dor said, and whipped off the cloth. The pirate's treasure was revealed: a pile of Mundane gold coins—they had to be Mundane, since Xanth did not use coinage—a keg of diamonds, and a tiny sealed jar. "Too bad," Irene said. "Nothing useful. And this is the end of the tunnel; the pirate must have filled it in as he went, up to this point, so there would be only the one way in. I'll have to plant a big tuber and hope it runs a strong tube to the surface, and that there is no water above us here. The tuber isn't watertight. If that fails, Smash can try to bash a hole in the ceiling, and Chet can shrink the boulders as they fall. We just may get out alive." Dor was relieved. At least Irene wasn't collapsing in hysterics. She did have some backbone when it was needed. Grundy was on the table, struggling with the cap of the jar. "If gold is precious, and gems are precious, maybe this is the most precious of all." But when the cap came off, the content of the jar was revealed as simple salve. "This is your treasure?" Dor asked the bone. "Oh, yes, it's the preciousest treasure of all," the bone assured him. "In what way?" "Well, I don't know. But the fellow I pirated it from fought literally to the death to retain it. He bribed me with the gold, hid the diamonds, and refused to part with the salve at all. He died without telling me what it was for. I tried it on wounds and burns, but it did nothing. Maybe if I'd known its nature, I could have used it to destroy the loins." Dor found he had little sympathy for the pirate, who had died as he had lived, ignominiously. But the salve intrigued him increasingly, and not merely because he was now standing knee-deep in water. "Salve, what is your property?" he asked. "I am a magic condiment that enables people to walk on smoke and vapor," it replied proudly. "Merely smear me on the bottoms of your feet or boots, and you can tread any trail in the sky you can see. Of course, the effect only lasts a day at a time; I get scuffed off, you know. But repeated applications—" "Thank you," Dor cut in. "That is very fine magic indeed. But can you help us get out of this tunnel?" "No. I make mist seem solid, not rock seem misty. You need another salve for that." "If I had known your property," the bone said wistfully, "I could have escaped the loins. If only I had—" "Serves you right, you infernal pirate," the salve said. "You got exactly what you deserved. I hope you loined your lesson." "Listen, greasepot—" the bone retorted. "Enough," Dor said. "If neither of you have any suggestions to get us out of here, keep quiet." "I am suspicious of this," Chet said. "The pirate took this treasure, but never lived to enjoy it. Ask it if there is a curse associated." "Is there, salve?" Dor asked, surprised by the notion. "Oh, sure," the salve said. "Didn't I tell you?" "You did not," Dor said. How much mischief had Chet's alertness saved them? "What is it?" "Whoever uses me will perform some dastardly deed before the next full moon," the salve said proudly. "The pirate did." "But I never used you!" the bone protested. "I never knew your power!" "You put me on your wounds. That was a misuse—but it counted. Those wounds could have walked on clouds. Then you killed your partner and took all the treasure for yourself." "That was a dastardly deed indeed!" Irene agreed. "You certainly deserved your fate." "Yeah, he was pur-loined," Grundy said. The bone did not argue. "Oops," Chet said. He reached down and ripped something from his foreleg, just under the rising waterline. It was a tentacle from the kraken. "I was afraid of that," Irene said. "That weed is way beyond my control. It won't stop growing if I tell it to." Dor drew his sword. "I'll cut off any more tentacles," he said. "They can't come at me too thickly here at the end of the tunnel. Go ahead and start your tuber, Irene." She dipped into her seedbag. "Oh-oh. That seed must've fallen out somewhere along the way. It's not here." They had had a violent trip on the raft; the seed could have worked loose anywhere. "Chet and Smash," Dor said without pause, "go ahead and make us a way out of here, if you can. Irene, if you have another stabilization plant—" She checked. "That I have." They got busy. Dor faced back down the dark tunnel as the water rose to thigh level, spearing at the dark liquid with his sword, shining the sunstone here and there. The sounds of the ogre's work grew loud. "Water, tell me when a tentacle's coming," he directed. But there was so much crashing behind him as Smash pulverized the rock of the ceiling that he could not hear the warnings of the water. A tentacle caught his ankle and jerked him off his feet. He choked on water as another tentacle caught his sword arm. The kraken had him—and he couldn't call for help! "What's going on here?" Grundy demanded. "Are you going swimming while the rest of us work?" Then the golem realized that Dor was in trouble. "Hey, why didn't you say something? Don't you know the kraken's got you?" The kraken seaweed certainly had him! The tentacles were dragging him back down the tunnel, half drowning. "Well, somebody's got to do something!" Grundy said, as though bothered by an annoying detail. "Here, kraken—want a cookie?" He held out a gold coin, which seemed to weigh almost as much as he did. A tentacle snatched the coin away, but in a moment discovered it to be inedible and dropped it. Grundy grabbed a handful of diamonds. "Try this rock candy," he suggested. The tentacle wrapped around the gems—and got sliced by their sharp edges. Ichor welled into the water as the tentacle thrashed in pain. "Now there's a notion," Grundy said. He swam to where Dor was still being dragged along, and sliced with another diamond, cutting into the tentacles. They let go, stung, though the golem was only able to scratch them, and Dor finally gasped his way back to his feet, waist-deep in coloring water. "I have to go help the others," Grundy said. "Yell if you get in more trouble." Dor fished in the water and recovered his magic sword and the shining sunstone. He was more than disheveled and disgruntled. He had had to be bailed out by a creature no taller than the span of his hand. Some hero he was! But the others had had better success. A hole now opened upward, and daylight glinted down. "Come on, Dor!" Grundy called. "We're getting out of here at last!" Dor crammed coins and diamonds into one pocket with the sunstone, and the jar of salve into another. Smash and Chet were already scrambling out the top, having had to mount the new passage as they extended it. The centaur was actually pretty good at this sort of climbing because he had six extremities; four or five were firmly braced in crevices while one or two were searching for new holds. Grundy had no trouble; his small weight allowed him to scramble freely. Only Dor and Irene remained below. "Hurry up, slowpoke!" she called. "I can't wait forever!" "Start up first," he called. "I'm stashing the treasure." "Oh, no!" she retorted. "You just want to see up my skirt!" "If I do, that's my profit," he said. "I don't want this hole collapsing on you." For, indeed, gravel and rocks were falling down as Chet's efforts dislodged them. The whole situation seemed precarious, despite the effort of the plant Irene had grown to help stabilize the wall. "There is that," she agreed nervously. She started to climb, while Dor completed his stashing. The kraken's tentacles, given respite from the attacks of sword and diamond, quested forward again. The water was now chest-high on Dor, providing the weed ample play. "There's one!" the water said, and Dor stabbed into the murky fluid. He was rewarded by a jerk on his sword that indicated he had speared something that flinched away. For a creature as bloodthirsty as the kraken, it certainly was finicky about pinpricks! "There's another!" the water cried, enjoying this game. Dor stabbed again. But it was hard to do much damage, despite the magic skill the sword gave him, since he couldn't slash effectively through water. Stabbing only hurt the tentacles without doing serious damage. Also, the weed was learning to take evasive action. It wasn't very smart, but it did learn a certain minimum under the constant prodding of pain. Dor started to climb, at last. But to do this he had to put away his sword, and that gave the tentacles a better chance at him. Also, the gold was very solid for its size and weighed him down. As he drew himself out of the water, a tentacle wrapped around his right knee and dragged him down again. Dor's grip slipped, and he fell back into the water. Now three more tentacles wrapped themselves around his legs and waist. That kraken had succeeded in infiltrating this tunnel far more thoroughly than Dor had thought possible! The weed must be an enormous monster now, since this must be only a fraction of its activity. Dor clenched his teeth, knowing that no one else could help him if he got dragged under this time, and drew his sword again. He set the edge carefully against a tentacle and sawed. The magically sharp edge sliced through the tender flesh of the kraken, cutting off the extremity. The tentacle couldn't flinch away because it was wrapped around Dor; its own greed anchored it. Dor repeated the process with the other tentacles until he was free in a milky, viscous pool of kraken blood. Then he sheathed the sword again and climbed. "Hey, Dor—what's keeping you?" Irene called from halfway up. "I'm on my way," he answered, glancing up. But as he did, several larger chunks of rock became dislodged, perhaps by the sound of their voices, and rattled down. Dor stood chest-deep in the water, shielding his head with his arms. "Are you all right?" she called. "Just stop yelling!" he yelled. "It's collapsing the passage!" And he shielded his head again from the falling rocks. This was hellish! "Oh," she said faintly, and was quiet. Another tentacle had taken hold during this distraction. The weed was getting bolder despite its losses, Dor sliced it away, then once more began his climb. But now ichor from the monster was on his hands, making his hold treacherous. He tried to rinse off his hands, but the stuff was all through the water. With his extra weight, he could not make it. Dor stood there, fending off tentacles, while Irene scrambled to the surface. "What am I going to do?" he asked, frustrated. "Ditch the coins, idiot," the wall said. "But I might need them," Dor protested, unwilling to give up the treasure. "Men are such fools about us," a coin said from his pocket. "This fool will die for us—and we have no value in Xanth." It did make Dor wonder. Why was he burdening himself with this junk? Wealth that was meaningless, and a magic salve that was cursed. He could not answer—yet neither could he relinquish the treasure. Just as the krak-en was losing tentacles by anchoring them to his body, he was in danger of losing his life by anchoring it to wealth—and he was no smarter about it than was the weed. Then a tentacle dangled down from above, Dor shied away; had the weed found another avenue of attack? He whipped up his sword; in air it was far more effective. "You can't nab me that way, greedy-weedy!" he said. "Hey, watch your language," the tentacle protested. "I'm a rope." Dor was startled. "Rope? What for?" "To pull you up, dumbbell," it said. "What do you think a rescue rope is for?" A rescue rope! "Are you anchored?" "Of course I'm anchored!" it said indignantly. "Think I don't know my business? Tie me about you and I'll rescue you from this foul hole." Dor did so, and soon he was on his way, treasure and all. "Aw, you lucked out," the coin in his pocket said. "What do you care?" "Wealth destroys men. It is our rite of passage: destroy a man. We were about to destroy you, and you escaped through no merit of your own." "Well, I'm taking you with me, so you'll have another chance." "There is that," the coin agreed, brightening. Soon Dor emerged from the hole. Chet and Smash were hauling on the rope, drawing him up, while Grundy called directions so that no snag occurred. "What were you doing down there?" Irene demanded. "I thought you'd never come up!" "I had some trouble with the kraken," Dor said, showing off a fragment of tentacle that remained hooked to his leg. It was now latening afternoon. "Any danger here?" Dor asked the ground. "There's a nest of wyverns on the south beach of this island," the ground replied. "But they hunt only by day. It's quite a nest, though." "So if we camp here at the north end we'll be safe?" "Should be," the ground agreed grudgingly. "If the wyverns hunt by day, maybe we should trek on past them tonight," Irene said. Smash smiled. "We make trek, me wring neck," he said, his brute mitts suggesting what he would do to an unfortunate wyvern. The ogre seemed larger now, taller and more massive than he had been, and Dor realized that he probably was larger; ogres put on growth rapidly in their teen years. But Dor was too tired to do it. "I've got to rest," he said. Irene was unexpectedly solicitous. "Of course you do. You stood rearguard, fighting off the kraken, while we escaped. I'll bet you wouldn't have made it out at all if Chet hadn't found that vine-rope." Dor didn't want to admit that the weight of the gold had prevented him from climbing as he should have done. "Guess I just got tired," he said. "The fool insisted on bringing us gold coins along," the coin blabbed loudly from his pocket. Irene frowned. "You brought the coins? We don't need them, and they're awful heavy." Dor sat down heavily on the beach, the coins jangling. "I know." "What about the diamonds?" "Them, too," he said, patting the other pocket, though he wasn't sure which pocket he had put them in. "I do like diamonds," she said. "I regard them as friends." She helped him get his jacket off, then his wet shirt. He had avoided the Kingly robes for this trip, but his garden-variety clothing seemed hardly better now. "Dor! Your arms are all scraped!" "That's the work of the kraken," Grundy said matter-of-factly. "It hooked his limbs and dragged him under. I had to carve it with diamonds to make it let go." "You didn't tell me it was that bad!" she exclaimed to Dor. "Krakens are dangerous up close!" "You were busy making the escape," Dor said. Now the abrasions on his arms and legs were stinging. "Get the rest of this clothing off!" she said, working at it herself. "Grundy, go find some healing elixir; we forgot to bring any, but a number of plants manufacture it." Grundy went into the forest. "Any of you plants have healing juice?" he called. Dor was now too tired to resist. Irene tugged at his trousers. Then she paused. "Oh, my—I forgot about that," she said. "What?" Dor asked, not sure how embarrassed he should be. "I'm certainly glad you brought that along!" she said. "Hey, Chet—look at this!" The centaur came over and looked. "The salve!" he said. "Yes, that could be quite useful." Dor relaxed. For a moment he had thought—but of course she had been talking about the salve. Soon Irene had him stripped. "Your skin's abraded all over!" she scolded. "It's a wonder you didn't faint down there!" "Guess I'll do it now," Dor said, and did.
(Xanth 4) Centaur Aisle	Piers Anthony	[ "fantasy", "puns" ]	[]	Silver Lining	Dor woke fairly well refreshed. Evidently Grundy had located a suitable balm, for the scraped skin was largely healed. His head was pillowed on something soft; after a moment he realized it was Irene's lap. Irene was asleep with her back against an ash tree, and a fine coating of ashes now powdered her hair. She was lovely in that unconscious pose. He seemed to be wearing new clothing, too. They must have located a flannel plant, or maybe Irene had grown one from seed. As he considered that, he heard a faint bleat in the distance and was sure; newly shorn flannel plants did protest for a while. He decided not to dwell on how she might have measured or fitted him for the clothing she had made. Obviously she was not entirely naive about such things. In fact, Irene was shaping up as a pretty competent girl. Dor sat up. Immediately Irene woke. "Well, someone had to keep you from thrashing about in the sand until you healed," she said, embarrassed. He had liked her better without the explanation. "Thank you. I'm better now." Chet and Smash had gathered red and blue berries from colorberry bushes and tapped a winekeg tree for liquid. They got pleasantly high on breakfast while they discussed the exigencies of the day. "I don't think we had better try to walk by that wyverns' nest," Chet said. "But our most feasible alternative carries a penalty." "The curse," Grundy said. "Beware the air," Smash agreed. Dor scratched his head. "What are you talking about?" "The salve," Chet explained. "To walk on clouds." "I don't want to perform some dastardly deed," Irene said. "But I don't want to get chewed up by wyverns either." Now a shape loomed on the ocean horizon. "What's that?" Dor asked the sea. "A big sea serpent," the water answered. "She comes by here every morning to clean off the beaches." Now Dor noticed how clean this beach was. The sand gleamed as white-ly as bone. "I think our decision has just been made for us," Chet said. "Let's risk the curse and walk the vapors." "But the clouds are way out of reach," Irene protested. "Light a fire," Grundy said. "We can walk up the smoke." "That ought to work," Chet agreed. Hurriedly they gathered dry wood from the interior of the island while Irene grew a flame-vine. Soon the vine was blazing, and they set the wood about it, forming a bonfire. Several fine bons puffed into the sky, looking like burning bones; then smoke billowed up, roiling its way slantwise to the west. It seemed thick enough; but was it high enough? The sea monster was looming close, attracted by the fire. "Let's move it!" Grundy cried. "Where's the salve?" Dor produced the salve, and the golem smeared it on his little feet. Then he made a running leap for the smoke—and flipped over and rolled on the ground. "Lift me up to the top of it," he cried, unhurt. "I need to get it firmly under me, I think." Smash lifted him up. Yes, the ogre was definitely taller than he had been at the start of their trip. Now the golem found his footing. "Hey—it's hot!" he cried, dancing. He ran up the column—but the smoke was moving, making his footing uncertain, and in a moment he stumbled, fell—and plummeted through the smoke toward the ground. Smash caught him before he struck. The golem disappeared entirely inside the ogre's brute hand. "Small fall," Smash commented. "How about putting it on his hands, too?' Irene asked. Dor did so, dabbing it on the golem with the tip of his little finger. They put Grundy up again. This time when the golem stumbled, he was able to catch himself by grabbing handfuls of smoke. "Come on up," he cried. "The vapor's fine!" The sea monster was almost upon them. The others put salve on their hands and feet and scrambled onto the smoke. Chet, with four feet, balanced on the shifting surface fairly handily, but Smash, Irene, and Dor had trouble. Finally they scrambled on hands and feet, getting from the hot lower smoke to the cooler higher smoke. This was less dense, but the footing remained adequate. The surface was spongy, to Dor's sensation, like a soft balloon that was constantly changing its shape. The smoke seemed solid to their soles and palms, but it remained gaseous in nature, with its own whorls and eddies. They could not stand still on it. Dor had to keep shifting his weight to maintain balance. It was a challenge—and became fun. Now the sea monster arrived. She sniffed the beach, then followed her nose up to the smoke and the creatures on it. The wind was extending the smoke on an almost level course at this elevation, not quite beyond reach of the monster. The creature spied Irene up there, did a double take, then snapped at the girl—who screamed and jumped off the smoke. For an instant Dor saw her there in midair, as if she were frozen, her shriek descending with her. He knew he could not reach her or help her. The fool girl! Then a loop of rope snagged her and drew her back to the smoke. Chet had saved his rope, the one used to draw Dor up from the hole, and now had used it to rescue Irene from her folly. Dor's heart dropped back into place. The sea monster, deprived of her morsel, emitted an angry honk and lunged again. But this time Irene had the wit to scramble away, and the huge snout bit into the smoke and passed through it harmlessly. The teeth made an audible clash as they closed on nothing. However, the passage of the monster's head through the smoke disturbed the column, and Dor and Smash were caught on the side nearer the fire. They could not rejoin the others until the column mended itself. Now the monster concentrated on the two of them, since they were closest to the ground. They could not move off the smoke, so she had a good shot at them. Her huge ugly snout oriented on Dor and lunged forward. Dor had had enough of monsters. He danced aside and whipped out his magic sword. The weapon moved dazzlingly in his hand, slicing through the soft tissue of the monster's left nostril. The creature honked with pain and rage. "Oooo, that's not ladylike!" Grundy called from up-smoke. "Depends on the lady," Irene remarked. Now the sea monster opened her ponderous and mottled jaws and advanced agape. Dor had to retreat, for the mouth was too big for him to handle; it could take him in with one chomp. The monsters of the ocean grew larger than those of the lakes! But, stepping back, he stumbled over a fresh roil of smoke and sat down hard—on nothing solid. His seat passed right through, and he had to snatch madly with both hands to save himself. He was caught as if in a tub, supported only by his feet and hands. The monster hissed in glee and moved in to take him in, bottom-first. But Smash stepped into her mouth, hamfists bashing into the giant teeth with loud clashing sounds, knocking chips from them. Startled, the monster paused, mouth still open. The ogre stomped on her tongue and jumped back to the smoke. By the time Dor had regained his feet, the monster had retreated, and Smash was bellowing some rhyming imprecation at her. But the monster was not one of the shy little creatures of the inland lakes that gobbled careless swimmers; she was a denizen of the larger puddle. She had been balked, not defeated; she was really angry now. The monster honked. "I have not yet begun to bite!" Grundy translated. She cast about for some better way to get at the smokeborne morsels—and spied the fire on the beach. The monster was not stupid for her kind. The tiny wheels rotated almost visibly in her huge ugly head as she contemplated the blaze. Then she dropped her head down, gathered herself, and with her flippers swept a huge wash of water onto the beach. The fire hissed and sent up a violent protest of steam, then ignominiously capitulated and died. The smoke stopped billowing up. Dor and his friends were left standing on dissipating smoke. Soon they would be left with no visible means of support. The remaining cloud of smoke coalesced somewhat as it shrank. Dor and Smash rejoined the other three. Now all were balancing on a diffusing mass; soon they would fall into the ocean, where the sea monster slavered eagerly. "Well, do something!" Irene screamed at Dor. Dor's performance under pressure had been spotty. Now his brain percolated more efficiently. "We must make more smoke," he said. "Irene, do you have any more flammable plants in your bag?" "Just some torchflowers," she replied. "I lost so many good seeds to the eclectic eel! But where can I grow them? They need solid ground." "Smear magic salve on the roots," Dor told her. "Let a torch grow in this smoke." Her mouth opened in a cute O of surprise. "That just might work!" She took out a seed, smeared it in the salve Dor held out, and ordered it to grow. It worked. The torch developed and matured, guttering into flame and smoke. The wind carried the smoke west in a thin, dark brown stream. Irene looked at it with dismay. "I expected it to spread out more. It will take a balancing act to walk on that!" "In addition to which," Chet said, "the smoke in which the torch is rooted is rapidly dwindling. When it falls into the ocean—" "We'll have to root it in its own smoke," Dor said. "Then it will never fall." "Can't," she protested. "The smoke won't curl down, and anyway it's always moving; the thing would go into a tailspin." "It also smacks of paradox," Chet said. "This is a problematical concept when magic is involved; nevertheless—" "Better do something," Grundy warned. "That sea monster's waiting open-mouthed beneath this cloud." "Have you another torch-seed?" Dor asked. "Yes, one more," Irene said. "But I don't see—" "Grow it in smoke from this one. Then we'll play leapfrog." "Are you sure that makes sense?" "No." She proceeded. Soon the second torch was blazing, rooted in the smoke of the first, and its own trail of smoke ran above and parallel to the first. "But we still can't balance on those thin lines," Chet said. "Yes, we can. Put one foot on each." Dubiously, Chet tried it. It worked; he was able to brace against the two columns, careful not to fall between them, and walk slowly forward. Irene followed, more awkwardly, for the twin columns were at slightly different elevations and varied in separation. There was a honking chuckle from below. Irene colored. "That monster is looking up my skirt!" she exclaimed, furious. "Don't worry," Grundy said. "It's a female monster." "You can be sure your legs are the first it will chomp if it gets the chance," Dor snapped. He had little patience with her vanity at this moment. Smash went out on the columns next, balancing easily; the ogre was not nearly as clumsy as he looked. "Go on, Grundy," Dor said. "I'll move the first torch." "How can you move it?" the golem demanded. "You can't balance on one column." "I'll manage somehow," Dor said, though this was a complication he hadn't worked out. Once the first torch was moved, there would be no smoke from it for him to walk on. "You're so busy trying to be a hero, you're going to wind up monster food," Grundy said. "Where is Xanth, if you go the way of King Trent?" "I don't know," Dor admitted. "Maybe the Zombie Master will discover he likes politics after all." "That dourpuss? Ha!" "But those torches have to be moved." "I'll move them," Grundy said. "I'm small enough to walk on one column. You go ahead." Dor hesitated, but saw no better alternative. "Very well. But be careful." Dor straddled the two columns. This felt more precarious than it had looked, but was far better than dropping to the water and monster below. When he had progressed a fair distance, he braced himself and looked back. Grundy was laboring at the first torch. But the thing was about as big as the golem, and was firmly rooted in the remaining cloud of smoke from the erstwhile beach fire; the tiny man could not get it loose. The sea monster, perceiving the problem, was bracing herself for one good snap at the whole situation. "Grundy, get out of there!" Dor cried. "Leave the torch!" Too late. The monster's head launched forward as her flippers thrust the body out of the water. Grundy cried out with terror and leaped straight up as the snout intersected the cloud. The monster's teeth closed on the torch—and the golem landed on the massive snout. The saucer-eyes peered cross-eyed at Grundy, who was no bigger than a mote that might irritate one of those orbs, while smoke from the torch drifted from the great nostrils. The effect was anomalous, since no sea monster had natural fire. Fire was the perquisite of dragons. Then the sea monster's body sank back into the ocean. Grundy scrambled up along the wispy trail of smoke from the nostrils and managed to recover his perch on the original smoke cloud. But the torch was gone. "Run up the other column!" Dor shouted. "Save yourself!" For a moment Grundy stood looking down at the monster. "I blew it," he said. "I ruined it all." "We'll figure out something!" Dor cried, realizing that everything could fall apart right here if every person did not keep scrambling. "Get over here now." Numbly the golem obeyed, walking along the widening but thinning column. Dor saw that their problems were still mounting, for the smoke that supported the second torch was now dissipating. Soon the second column, too, would be lost. "Chet!" Dor called. "Smear salve on your rope and hook it over one smoke column. Tie yourself to the ends and grab the others!" "You have the salve," the centaur reminded him. "Catch it!" Dor cried. He hefted the small jar in his right hand, made a mental prayer to the guiding spirit of Xanth, and hurled the jar toward the centaur. The tiny missile arched through the air. Had his aim been good? At first its course seemed too high; then it seemed to drop too rapidly; then it became clear the missile was off to the side. He had indeed missed; the jar was passing well beyond Chet's reach. Dor, too, had blown his chance. Then Chet's rope flung out, and the loop closed neatly about the jar. The centaur, expert in the manner of his kind, had lassoed it. Dor's relief was so great he almost sat down—which would have been suicidal. "But this rope's not long enough," Chet said, analyzing the job he had to do with it. "Have Irene grow it longer," Dor called. "I can only grow live plants," she protested. "Those vine-ropes live a long time," Dor replied. "They can root after months of separation from their parent-plants, even when they look dead. Try it." But as he spoke, he remembered that the rope had spoken to him when it came for him down the hole. That meant that it was indeed dead. Dubiously, Irene tried it. "Grow," she called. They all waited tensely. Then the rope grew. One end of it had been dormant; it must have been the other end that had been dead. Once more Dor's relief was overwhelming. They were skirting about as close to the brink of disaster as they could without falling in. Once the rope started, it grew beautifully. Not only did it lengthen, it branched, becoming a full-fledged rope-vine. Soon Chet had enough to weave into a large basket. He smeared magic salve all over it and suspended it from the smoke column. Chet himself got into it, and Irene joined him, then Smash. It was a big basket, and strong; it had to be, to support both centaur and ogre. The two massive creatures clapped each other's hands together in victory; they liked each other. Now the second torch lost footing and started to fall. Dor charged back along the two columns, dived down, reached out, and grabbed it. But his balance on one column was precarious. He windmilled his arms, but could not quite regain equilibrium. Then another loop of rope flung out. Dor was caught under the arms just as he slipped off the column. Chet hauled him in as he fell, so that he described an arc toward the water. The sea monster pursued him eagerly. Dor's feet barely brushed the waves; then he swung up on the far side of the arc. "Sword!" Grundy cried, perched on smoke far above. Dazedly, Dor transferred the torch to his left hand and drew his sword. Now he swung back toward the grinning head of the monster. Chet heaved, lifting Dor up a body length. As a result, instead of swinging into the opening mouth, he smacked into the upper lip, just below the flaring nostrils. Dor shoved his feet forward, mashing that lip against the upper teeth. Then he stabbed forward with the sword, spearing the tender left nostril. "How's that feel, garlic-snoot?" he asked. The snoot blasted out an angry gale of breath that was indeed redolent of garlic and worse. Creatures with the most objectionable qualities were often the ones with the most sensitive feelings about them. Dor was blown back out over the ocean, still rising as Chet hauled him up. But now the smoke supporting the rope and basket was dissipating. Soon they would all fall—and the monster was well aware of this fact. All the pinpricks and taps on teeth and snout she had suffered would be avenged. She hung back for the moment, avoiding Dor's sword, awaiting the inevitable with hungry eagerness. "The smoke!" Grundy cried. Dor realized that the torch he held was pouring its smoke up slantingly. The breeze had diminished, allowing a steeper angle. "Yes! Use this smoke to support the rope!" he ordered. Chet, catching on, rocked the rope-basket and set it swinging. As the smoke angled up, the basket swung across to intersect it. But that caused Dor to swing also, moving his torch and its smoke. "Grow a beanpole!" he told Irene. "Gotcha," Irene said. Soon another seed was sprouting: a bean in the form of a pole. Smash wedged this into the basket and bent it down so that Dor could reach the far tip. Dor grabbed it and hung on. Now the pole held him at an angle below the basket. Chet and Smash managed to rotate the whole contraption so that Dor was upwind from them. The smoke poured up and across, passing just under the basket, buoying it up, each wrinkle in the smoke snagging on the woven vines. The rising smoke simply carried the basket up with it. The sea monster caught on that the situation had changed. It charged forward, snapping at Dor—but Dor was now just out of its reach. Slowly and uncertainly the whole party slid upward, buoyed by the smoke from the torch. The arrangement seemed too fantastic and tenuous to operate even with magic, but somehow it did. The sea monster, seeing her hard-won meal escape, vented one terrible honk of outrage that caused the smoke to waver. This shook their entire apparatus. The sound reverberated about the welkin, startling pink, green, and blue birds from their island perches and sending sea urchins fleeing in childish tears. "I can't even translate that," Grundy said, awed. The honk had one other effect. It attracted the attention of the nest of wyverns. The empty nest flew up, a huge mass of sticks and vines and feathers and scales and bones. "What's this noise?" it demanded. Oh, no! Dor's talent had to be responsible for this. He had been under such pressure, his magic was manifesting erratically. "The sea monster did it!" he cried, truthfully enough. "That animated worm?" the nest demanded. "I'll teach it to disturb my repose. I'll squish it!" And it flew fiercely toward the monster. The sea monster, justifiably astonished, ducked her head and dived under the water. Xanth was the place of many incredible things, but this was beyond incredibility. The nest, pursuing the monster, landed with a great splash, became waterlogged, and sank. "I'm all washed up!" It wailed desparingly as it disappeared. Dor and the others stared. They had never imagined an event like this. "But where are the wyverns?" Chet asked. "Probably out hunting," Grundy answered. "We'd better be well away from here when they return and find their nest gone." They had by this devious route made their escape from the sea monster. As time passed, they left the monster far below. Dor began to relax again— and his torch guttered out. These plants did not burn forever, and this one had expended all its smoke. "Smoke alert!" Dor cried, waving the defunct torch. They were now so high in the air that a fall would be disastrous even without an angry monster below. "So close to the clouds!" Chet lamented, pointing to a looming cloudbank. They had almost made it. "Grow the rope some more," Grundy said. "Make it reach up to those clouds." Irene complied. A new vine grew up, anchored in the basket. It penetrated the lowest cloud. "But it has no salve," Chet said. "It can't hold on there." "Give me the salve," Grundy said. "I'll climb up there." He did so. Nimbly he mounted the rope-vine. In moments he disappeared into the cloud, a blob of salve stuck to his back. The supportive smoke column dissipated. The basket sagged, and Dor swung about below it, horrified. But it descended only a little; the rope-vine had been successfully anchored in the cloud, and they were safe. There was no way the rest of them could climb that rope, though. They had to wait suspended until a vagary of the weather caused a new layer of clouds to form beneath them, hiding the ocean. The new clouds were traveling south, in contrast to the westward-moving higher ones. When the positioning was right, they stepped out and trod the billowy white masses, jumping over the occasional gaps, until they were safely ensconced in a large cloudbank. In due course this cleared away from the higher clouds, letting the sky open. The winds at different levels of the sky were traveling in different directions, carrying their burdens with them; this wind was bearing south. Since the basket was firmly anchored to the higher cloudbank, they had to unload it quickly so they would not lose their remaining possessions. They watched it depart with mixed emotions; it had served them well. They sprouted a grapefruit tree and ate the grapes as they ripened. It was sunny and warm here atop the clouds; since this wind was carrying them south, there was no need for the travelers to walk. Their difficult journey had become an easy one. "Only one thing bothers me," Chet murmured. "When we reach Centaur Isle—how do we get down?" "Maybe we'll think of something by then," Dor said. He was tired again, mentally as well as physically; he was unable to concentrate on a problem of the future right now, however critical that problem might be. They smeared salve on their bodies so they could lie down and rest. The cloud surface was resilient and cool, and the travelers were tired; soon they were sleeping. Dor dreamed pleasantly of exploring in a friendly forest; the action was inconsequential, but the feeling was wonderful. He had half expected more nightmares, but realized they could not reach him up here in the sky. Not unless they got hold of some magic salve for their hooves. Then in his dream he looked into a deep, dark pool of water, and in its reflection saw the face of King Trent. "Remember the Isle," the King told him. "It is the only way you can reach me. We need your help, Dor." Dor woke abruptly, to find Irene staring into his face. "For a moment you almost looked like—" she said, perplexed. "Your father," he finished. "Don't worry; it's only his message, I guess. I must use the Isle to find him." "How do you spell that?" Dor scratched his head. "I don't know. I thought—but I'm not sure. Island. Does aisle make sense?" "A I S L E?" she spelled. "Not much." "I guess I'm not any better at visions than I am at adventure," he said with resignation. Her expression changed, becoming softer. "Dor, I just wanted to tell you—you were great with the smoke and everything." "Me?" he asked, unbelieving. "I barely scrambled through! You and Chet and Grundy did all the—" "You guided us," she said. "Every time there was a crisis and we froze or fouled up, you called out an order and that got us moving again. You were a leader, Dor. You had what it took when we really had to have it. I guess you don't know it yourself, but you are a leader, Dor. You'll make a decent King, some day." "I don't want to be King!" he protested. She leaned down and kissed him on the lips. "I just had to tell you. That's all." Dor lay there after she moved away, his emotions mixed. The kiss had been excruciatingly sweet, but the words sweeter yet. He tried to review the recent action, to fathom where he might have been heroic, but it was all a nightmare jumble, despite the absence of the nightmares. He had simply done what had to be done on the spur of the moment, sometimes on the very jagged edge of the moment, and had been lucky. He didn't like depending on luck. It was not to be trusted. Even now, some horrendous unluck could be pursuing them. He almost thought he heard it through the cloudbank, a kind of leathery swishing in the air— Then a minor kind of hell broke loose. The head of a dragon poked through the cloud, uttering a raucous scream. Suddenly the entire party was awake and on its feet. "The wyverns!" Chet cried. "The ones whose nest we swamped! They have found us!" There was no question of avoiding trouble. The wyverns attacked the moment they appeared. In this first contact, it was every person for himself. Dor's magic sword flashed in his hand, stabbing expertly at the vulnerable spots of the wyvern nearest him. The wyvern was a small dragon, with a barbed tail and only two legs, but it was agile and vicious. The sword went unerringly for the beast's heart, but glanced off the scales of its breast. The dragon was past in a moment; it was flying, while Dor was stationary, and contact was fleeting. There were a number of the wyverns, and they were expert flyers. Smash was standing his own, as one ogre was more than a match for a dragon of this size, but Chet had to gallop and dodge madly to avoid trouble. He whirled his lasso, trying to snare the wyvern, but so far without success. Irene was in the most trouble. Dor charged across to her. "Grow a plant!" he cried. "I'll protect you!" A wyvern oriented on them and zoomed in, its narrow lance of fire shooting out ahead. Cloud evaporated in the path of the flame, leaving a trench; they had to scramble aside. "Some protection!" Irene snorted. Her complexion was turning green; she was afraid. But Dor's magic sword slashed with the uncanny accuracy inherent in it and lopped off the tip of a dragon's wing. The wyvern squawked in pain and rage and wobbled, partly out of control, and finally disappeared into the cloud. There were sputtering sounds and a trail of smoke fusing with the cloud vapor where the dragon went down. It was a strange business, with Dor's party standing on the puffy white surface, the dragons passing through it as if it were vapor—which of course it was. The dragons had the advantage of maneuverability and concealment, while the people had the leverage of a firm anchorage. But Dor knew the wyverns could undercut the people's footing by burning out the clouds beneath them; all the dragons needed to do was think of it. Fortunately, wyverns were not very smart; their brains were small, since any expendable weight was sacrificed in the interest of better flight, and what brains they had were kept too hot by the fire to function well. Wyverns were designed for fighting, not thinking. Irene was growing a plant; evidently she had saved some salve for it. It was a tangler, as fearsome a growth as the kraken seaweed, but one that operated on solid land—or cloud. In moments it was big enough to be a threat to all in its vicinity. "Try to get the tree between you and the dragon," Irene advised, stepping back from the vegetable monster. Dor did so. When the next wyvern came at him, he scooted around behind the tangler. The dragon, hardly expecting to encounter such a plant in the clouds, did a double take and banked off. But the tangler shot out a tentacle and hooked a wing. It drew the wyvern in, wrapping more tentacles about it, like a spider with a fly. The dragon screamed, biting and clawing at the plant, but the tangler was too strong for it. The other wyverns heeded the call. They zoomed in toward the tangler. Chet lassoed one as it passed him; the dragon turned ferociously on him, biting into his shoulder, then went on to the plant. Three wyverns swooped at the tangler, jetting their fires at it. There was a loud hissing; foul-smelling steam expanded outward. But a tentacle caught a second dragon and drew it in. No one tangled with a tangler without risk! "We'd better get out of here," Irene said. "Whoever wins this battle will be after us next." Dor agreed. He called to Grundy and Smash, and they went to join Chet. The centaur was in trouble. Bright red blood streamed down his left side, and his arm hung uselessly. "Leave me," he said. "I am now a liability." "We're all liabilities," Dor said. "Irene, grow some more healing plants." "I don't have any," she said. "We have to get down to ground and find one; then I can make it grow." "We can't get down," Chet said. "Not until night, when perhaps fog will form in the lower reaches, and we can walk down that." "You'll bleed to death by night!" Dor protested. He took off his shirt, the new one Irene had made for him. "I'll try to bandage your wound. Then—we'll see." "Here, I'll do it," Irene said. "You men aren't any good at this sort of thing. Dor, you question the cloud about a fast way down." Dor agreed. While she worked on the centaur, he interrogated the cloud they stood on. "Where are we, in relation to the land of Xanth?" "We have drifted south of the land," the cloud reported. "South of the land! What about Centaur Isle?" "South of that, too," the cloud said smugly. "We've got to get back there!" "Sorry, I'm going on south. You should have disembarked an hour ago. You must talk to the wind; if it changed—" Dor knew it was useless to talk to the wind; he had tried that as a child. The wind always went where it wanted and did what it pleased without much regard for the preferences of others. "How can we get down to earth in a hurry?" "Jump off me. I'm tired of your weight anyway. You'll make a big splash when you get there." "I mean safely!" It was pointless to get mad at the inanimate, but Dor was doing it. "What do you need for safely?" "A tilting ramp of clouds, going to solid land." "No, none of that here. Closest we have is a storm working up to the east. Its turbulence reaches down to the water." Dor looked east and saw a looming thunderhead. It looked familiar. He was about to have his third brush with that particular storm. "That will have to do." "You'll be sor-ree!" the cloud sang. "Those T-heads are mean ones, and that one has a grudge against you. I'm a cumulus humilis myself, the most humble of fleecy clouds, but that one—" "Enough," Dor said shortly. He was already nervous enough about their situation. The storm had evidently exercised and worked up new vaporous muscle for this occasion. This would be bad—but what choice did they have? They had to get Chet down to land—and to Centaur Isle—quickly. The party hurried across the cloud surface toward the storm. The thunderhead loomed larger and uglier as they approached; its huge damp vortex eyes glared at them, and its nose dangled downward in the form of a whirling cone. New muscle indeed! But the slanting sunlight caught the fringe, turning it bright silver on the near side. "A silver lining!" Irene exclaimed. "I'd like to have some of that!" "Maybe you can catch some on the way down," Dor said gruffly. She had criticized him for saving the gold, after all; now she wanted silver. A wyvern detached itself from the battle with the tangler and winged toward them. "Look out behind; enemy at six o'clock!" Grundy cried. Dor turned, wearily drawing his sword. But this dragon was no longer looking for trouble. It was flying weakly, seeming dazed. Before it reached them it sank down under the cloud surface and disappeared. "The tangler must have squeezed it," Grundy said. "The tangler looks none too healthy itself," Irene pointed out. She was probably the only person in Xanth who would have sympathy for such a growth. Dor looked back; sure enough, the tentacles were wilting. "That was quite a fight!" she concluded. "But if the tangler is on its last roots," Dor asked, "why did the wyvern fly away from it? It's not like any dragon to quit a fight unfinished." They had no answer. Then, ahead of them, the wyvern pumped itself above the cloud again, struggling to clear the thunderstorm ahead. But it failed; it could not attain sufficient elevation. It blundered on into the storm. The storm grabbed the dragon, tossed it about, and caught it in the whirling cone. The wyvern rotated around and around, scales flying out, and got sucked into the impenetrable center of the cloud. "I hate to see a storm feeding," Grundy muttered. "That thing's worse than the tangler!" Irene breathed. "It gobbled that dragon just like that!" "We must try to avoid that cone," Dor said. "There's a lot of vapor outside it; if we can climb down that, near the silver lining—" "My hooves are sinking in the cloud," Chet said, alarmed. Now they found that the same was happening to all their feet. The formerly bouncy surface had become mucky. "What's happening?" Irene demanded, her tone rising warningly toward hysteria. "What's happening?" Dor asked the cloud. "Your salve is losing its effect, dolt," the thunderhead gusted, sounding blurred. The salve did have a time limit of a day or so. Quickly they applied more. That helped—but still the cloud surface was tacky. "I don't like this," Grundy said. "Maybe our old salve was wearing off, but the new application isn't much better. I wonder if there's any connection with the wilting tangler and the fleeing wyvern?" "That's it!" Chet exclaimed, wincing as his own animation shot pain through his shoulder. "We're drifting out of the ambience of magic! That's why magic things are in trouble!" "That has to be it!" Dor agreed, dismayed. "The clouds are south of Xanth—and beyond Xanth the magic fades. We're on the verge of Mundania!" For a moment they were silent, shocked. The worst had befallen them. "We'll fall through the cloud!" Irene cried. "We'll fall into the sea! The horrible Mundane sea!" "Let's run north," Grundy urged. "Back into magic!" "Well only come to the edge of the cloud and fall off," Irene wailed. "Dor, do something!" How he hated to be put on the spot like that! But he already knew his course. "The storm," he said, "We've got to go through it, getting down, before we're out of magic." "But that storm hates us!" "That storm will have problems of its own as the magic fades," Dor said. They ran toward the thunderhead, who glared at them and tried to organize for a devastating strike. But it was indeed losing cohesion as the magic diminished, and could not concentrate properly on them. As they stepped onto its swirling satellite vapors, their feet sank right through, as if the surface were slush. The magic was certainly fading and very little time remained before they lost all support and plummeted. Yet as they encountered the silver lining, Dor realized there was an unanticipated benefit here. This slow sinking caused by the loss of effect of the salve was allowing them to descend in moderate fashion, and just might bring them safely to ground. They didn't have to depend on the ambience of the storm. They caught hold of each other's hands, so that no one would be lost as the thickening winds buffeted them. Smash put one arm around Chet's barrel, holding him firm despite the centaur's useless arm. They sank into the swirling fog, feeling it about them like stew. Dor was afraid he would be smothered, but found he could breathe well enough. There was no salve on his mouth; cloud was mere vapor to his head. "All that silver lining," Irene said. "And I can't have any of it!" The swirl of wind grew stronger. They were thrown about by the buffets and drawn into the central vortex—but it now had only a fraction of its former strength and could not fling them about as it had the wyvern. They spiraled down through it as the magic continued to dissipate. Dor hung on to the others, hoping the magic would hold out long enough to enable them to land softly. But if they splashed into deep water— After an interminably brief descent, they did indeed splash into deep water. The rain pelted down on them and monstrous waves surged around them. Dor had to let go of the hands he held, in order to swim and let the others swim. He held his breath, stroked for the surface of the current wave and, when his head broke into the troubled air, he cried, "Help! Spread the word!" Did any magic remain? Yes—a trifle. "Help!" the wave echoed faintly. "Help!" the next wave repeated. "Help! Help! Help!" the other waves chorused. A raft appeared. "Someone's drowning!" a voice cried. "Where are you?" "Here!" Dor gasped. "Five of us—" Then a cruel wash of water smacked into his face, and he was choking. After that, all his waning energies were taken trying to stay afloat in the turbulence, and he was not quite succeeding. Then strong hands caught him and hauled him onto a broad wooden raft. "The others!" Dor gasped. "Four others—" "We've got them, King Dor," his rescuer said. "Waterlogged but safe." "Chet—my friend the centaur—he's wounded—needs healing elixir—" The rescuer smiled. "He has it, of course. Do you suppose we would neglect our own?" Dor's vision cleared enough to take in the full nature of his rescuer. It was an adult centaur! "We—we made it—" "Welcome to the waters of the coast of Centaur Isle, Your Majesty." "But—" Dor spluttered. "You aren't supposed to know who I am!" "The Good Magician Humfrey ascertained that you were in trouble and would require assistance when you touched water. The Zombie Master asked us to establish a watch for you in this locale. You are a most important person in your own land, King Dor! It is fortunate we honored their request; we do not ordinarily put to sea during a funnel-storm." "Oh." Dor was abashed. "Uh, did they tell you what my mission was?" "Only that you were traveling the Land of Xanth and making a survey of the magic therein. Is there something else we should know?" "Uh, no, thanks," Dor said. At least that much had been salvaged. The centaurs would not have taken kindly to the notion of a Magician among them—a centaur Magician. Dor did not like deceit, but felt this much was necessary. Irene appeared, soaked through, bedraggled, and unkempt, but still quite pretty. Somehow she always seemed prettiest to him when she was messed up; perhaps it was because then the artifice was gone. "I guess you did it again, Dor," she said, taking his hand. "You got us down alive." "But you didn't get your silver lining," he reminded her. She laughed. "Some other time! After the way that storm treated us, I don't want any of its substance anyway." Then the centaurs led them into the dry cabin of the raft. Irene continued to hold his hand, and that pleased Dor.
(Xanth 4) Centaur Aisle	Piers Anthony	[ "fantasy", "puns" ]	[]	Dastardly Deed	It was dark by the time the centaurs' raft reached port. Chet was taken to a vet for treatment, as the wyvern's bite seemed to be resisting the healing elixir. Dor and his companions were given a good meal of blues and oranges and greens and conducted to a handsome stable for the night. It commanded a fine view of a succulent pasture, was adequately ventilated, and was well stocked with a water trough, hay, and a block of salt. They stared at the accommodations for a moment; then Smash stepped inside. "Say, hay!" he exclaimed, and plunked himself down into it with a crash that shook the building. "Good idea," Grundy said, and did likewise, only the shaking of the building was somewhat less. After another moment, Dor and Irene settled down, too. The hay was comfortable and sweetly scented, conducive to relaxation and thoughts of pleasant outdoors. Irene held Dor's hand, and they slept well. In the morning a stately elder centaur male entered the stable. He seemed oddly diffident. "I am Gerome, the Elder of the Isle. King Dor, I am here to apologize for the error. You were not supposed to be bedded here." Dor got hastily to his feet, brushing hay off his crumpled clothing while Irene straightened out her skirt and brushed brown hay out of her green hair. "Elder, we're so glad to be rescued from the ocean, and fed and housed, that these accommodations seem wonderful. We'll be happy to complete our business and go home; this was never intended as an official occasion. The stable was just fine." The centaur relaxed. "You are gracious, Your Majesty. We maintain assorted types of housing for assorted types of guests. I fear a glitch got into the program; we try to fence them out, but they keep sneaking in." "They infest Castle Roogna also," Dor said. "We catch them in humane glitch traps and deport them to the far forests, but they breed faster than we can catch them." "Come," the centaur said. "We have attire and food for you." He paused. "One other thing. Some of our number attended the Good Magician's wedding. They report you performed splendidly in trying circumstances. Magician Humfrey had intended to give you an item; it seems the distractions of the occasion caused it to slip his mind." The centaur almost smiled. "He does tend to be forgetful," Dor said, remembering the lapse about notifying the human Elders about King Trent's excursion to Mundania. "Accordingly, the Gorgon asked one of our representatives to convey the item to you here." Gerome held out a small object. Dor accepted it. "Thank you, Elder. Uh, what is it?" "I believe it is a magic compass. Note that the indicator points directly to you—the one Magician on the Isle." Dor studied the compass. It was a disk within which a needle of light showed. "This isn't pointing to me." Gerome looked. "Why, so it isn't. But I'm sure it was until a moment ago; that is how I was certain it had reached its proper destination. Perhaps I misunderstood its application; it may have pointed to you only to guide us to you. Certainly it assisted our search for you yesterday afternoon." "That must be it!" Dor agreed. The Good Magician might have anticipated the problem with the storm and sent down the one thing that would bring help to him unerringly. Humfrey was funny that way, doing things anachronistically. Dor tucked the compass in a pocket with the diamonds and sunstone and changed the subject. "Chet—how is he doing this morning?" Gerome frowned. "I regret to report that he is not fully recovered. Apparently he was bitten near the fringe of magic—" "He was," Dor agreed. "And a Mundane infection got in. This is resistive to magic healing. Perhaps, on the other hand, it was merely the delay in applying the elixir. We can not be certain. Odd things do happen at the fringe of magic. He is in no danger of demise, but I fear it will be some time before his arm is again at full strength." "Maybe we can help him back at Castle Roogna," Dor said, uncomfortable. "He is our friend; without him, we could not have made it down here. I feel responsible—" "He must not indulge in any further violence until he recovers completely," Gerome said gravely. "It is not at all wise to take a magic-resistive illness lightly. Come—he awaits you at breakfast." On the way there, Gerome insisted they pause at the centaur clothier, Dor was outfitted with bright new trousers, shirt, and jacket, all intricately woven and comfortable. Irene got a dress set that set her off quite fetchingly, though it was not her normal shade of green. Even Smash and Grundy got handsome jackets. The ogre had never worn clothing before, but his jacket was so nice he accepted it with pride. "This material," Irene said. "There's something magic about it." Gerome smiled. "As you know, we centaurs frown on personal magic talents. But we do work with magic. The apparel is woven by our artisans from iron curtain thread, and is strongly resistant to penetration by foreign objects. We use it for vests during combat, to minimize injuries." "But this must be very precious stuff!" Dor said. "Your welfare is important to us, Your Majesty. Had you and Chet been wearing this clothing, the wyvern's teeth would not have penetrated his shoulder." Dor appreciated the rationale. It would be a big embarrassment to the centaurs if anything happened to the temporary King of Xanth or his friends during their stay here. "Thank you very much." They entered a larger room, whose tall ceiling was supported by ornate white columns. Huge windows let in the slanting morning sunlight, lending a pleasant warmth and brilliance. On an enormous banquet table in the center were goblets of striped sardonyx and white alabaster, doubly pretty in the sun. The plates were of green jadeite. "A King's ransom," Irene whispered. "I think they trotted out the royal crockery for you, Dor." "I wish they hadn't," he whispered back. "Suppose something gets broken?" "Keep an eye on Smash," she said. That made Dor more nervous than ever. How would the ogre handle the delicate tableware? They were given high chairs, for the table was too tall for them. Several more centaurs joined them, male and female, introduced as the other Elders of the Isle. They stood at the table; centaurs had no way to use chairs, and the table was crafted to their height. The food was excellent, Dor had been halfway fearful that it would be whole oats and cracked corn with silage on the side, but the glitch of the stable-housing was not repeated. There was a course of yellow cornmeal mush, from cornmeal bushes, and fine chocolate milk from cocoa-nuts. For sweetening there was an unusual delicacy called honey, said to be manufactured by a rare species of bees imported from Mundania. Dor had encountered sneeze-bees and the spelling bee, but it was odd indeed to think of honeybees! Smash, to Dor's surprise and relief, turned out to be a connoisseur of delicate stone. His kind, he informed them happily in rhyme, had developed their power by smashing and shaping different kinds of minerals. They could not turn out goblets as nice as these, but did produce pretty fair marble and granite blocks for walls and buildings. "Indeed," Gerome agreed. "Some fine cornerstones here were traded from ogres. Those corners stand up to anything." Smash tossed down another couple mugs of milk, pleased. Few other creatures recognized the artistic propensities of ogres. Chet was there, looking somewhat wan and eating very little, which showed that his injury was paining him somewhat. There was nothing Dor could do except politely ignore it, as his friend obviously wanted no attention drawn to his weakness. Chet would not be traveling with them again for some time. After the meal they were treated to a guided tour of the Isle. Dor was conscious of King Trent's reference to isle or aisle in the vision. If it were the only way Dor could reach him, he must be alert for the mechanism. Somewhere here, perhaps, was the key he needed. The outside streets were broad, paved with packed dirt suitable for hooves, and were banked on the curves for greatest galloping comfort. At intervals were low wooden props that the centaurs could use to knock the dottle from their feet. The buildings were mixed; some were stables, while others were more like human residences. "I see you are perplexed by our premises," Gerome said. "Our architecture derives from our origin; in due course you shall see our historical museum, where this will be made clear." During their walk, Dor surreptitiously looked at the magic compass Good Magician Humfrey had sent him. He had believed he had figured out its application. "Compass—do you point to the nearest and strongest Magician who is not actually using you?" he asked. "Sure," the compass replied. "Any fool knows that." So it was now pointing to the centaur Magician. Once Dor got free of these formalities, he would follow that needle to the object of his quest. They stopped at the extensive metalworking section of town. Here were blacksmiths and silversmiths and coppersmiths, fashioning the strange shoes that important centaurs used, and the unusual instruments they employed for eating, and the beautiful pots they cooked with. "They had no trouble harvesting plenty of silver linings," Irene commented enviously. "Ah—you appreciate a silver lining?" Gerome inquired. He showed the way to another craftshop, where hundreds of silver linings were being fashioned as the fringes of jackets and such. "This is for you." And the centaur gave her a fresh fur with a fine silver lining sewn in, which gleamed with the splendor of sunlight after storm. "Ooooh," Irene breathed, melting into it. "It's soft as cloud!" Dor had to admit, privately, that the decorative apparel did enhance her appearance. One centaur was working with a new Mundane import, a strong light metal called aluminum. "King Trent's encouragement of trade with Mundania has benefited us," Gerome remarked. "We have no natural aluminum in Xanth. But the supply is erratic, because we never seem to be able to trade with the same aspect of Mundania twice in succession. If that problem could be ameliorated, it would be a great new day for commerce." "He's working on it," Irene said. But she had to stop there; they had agreed not to spread the word about King Trent's situation. They saw the weaving section, where great looms integrated the threads garnered from assorted sources. The centaurs were expert spinners and weavers, and their products varied from silkenly fine cloth to heavy ruglike mats. Dor was amazed; it had never occurred to him that the products of blanket trees could be duplicated artificially. How wonderful it would be to be able to make anything one needed, instead of having to wait for a plant to grow it! Another section was devoted to weapons. Centaurs were superlative bowmen and spearmen, and here the fine bows and spears were fashioned, along with swords, clubs, and ropes. A subsection was devoted to armor, which included woven metal clothing as well as helmets, greaves, and gauntlets. Smash tried on a huge gauntlet and flexed it into a massive fist. "Me see?" he inquired hopefully. "By all means," Gerome said. "There is a boulder of quartz we mean to grind into sand. Practice on it." Smash marched to the boulder, lifted his fist high, and smashed it down upon the boulder. There was a crack of sound like thunder, and a cloud of dust and sand erupted from the point of contact, enveloping him. When it settled, they saw the ogre standing knee-deep in a mound of sand, a blissful smile cracking his ugly face. "Love glove," he grunted, reluctantly removing it. Wisps of smoke rose from its fingertips. "Then it is yours, together with its mate," Gerome said. "You have saved us much labor, reducing that boulder so efficiently." Smash was thrilled with the gift, but Dor was silent. He knew ogres were strong, but Smash was not yet grown. The metal gauntlet must have enhanced his power by protecting his hand. As an adult, Smash would be a truly formidable creature, with almost too much power. That could get him exiled from the vicinity of Castle Roogna. But more than that, Dor was disquieted by something more subtle. The centaurs were evidently giving choice gifts to each member of Dor's party—fine protective clothing, plus whatever else offered, such as Irene's silver lining and Smash's gauntlets. This might be a fine gesture of friendship—but Dor distrusted such largesse. What was the purpose in it? King Trent had warned him once to beware strangers bearing gifts. Did the centaurs suspect Dor's mission, and were they trying to affect the manner he pursued it? Why? He had no ready answer. They viewed the centaur communal kitchen, where foodstuffs from a wide area were cleaned and prepared. Obviously the centaurs ate very well. In fact, in most respects they seemed to be more advanced and to have more creature comforts than the human folk of the Castle Roogna area. Dor found this unsettling; he had somehow expected to find Centaur Isle inhabited by a few primitives galloping around and fighting each other with clubs. Now that he was here, Centaur Isle seemed more like the center of culture, while Castle Roogna appeared to be the hinterland. The power of magic was surely weaker here near the fringe, which helped explain why most centaurs seemed to lack talents, while those farther toward the center of Xanth were showing them. How was it, then, that these deficient centaurs were doing so well? It was almost as if the lack of magic was an advantage, causing them to develop other skills that in the end brought more success than the magic would have. This was nonsense, of course; but as he viewed the things of the Isle, he almost believed it. Suppose, just suppose, that there was a correlation between success and the lack of magic. Did it then follow that Mundania, the land completely devoid of music, was likely to become a better place to live than Xanth? That brought a puff of laughter. He had followed his thought to its logical extremity and found it ludicrous. Therefore the thought was false. It was ridiculous on the face of it to think of drear Mundania as a better place than Xanth! The others were looking askance at him because of his pointless laughter. "Uh, just a chain of thought that snapped in a funny place," Dor explained. Then, fearing that wasn't enough to alleviate their curiosity, he changed the subject. "Uh, if I may inquire—since you centaurs seem to be so well organized here—certainly better than we humans are—how is it that you accept human government? You don't seem to need us, and if it ever came to war, you could destroy us." "Dor!" Irene protested. "What a thing to say!" "You are too modest, Your Majesty," Gerome said, smiling. "There are several compelling reasons. First, we are not interested in empire; we prefer to leave decisions of state to others, while we forward our arts, crafts, skills, and satisfaction. Since you humans seem to like the tedious process of government, we gladly leave it to you, much as we leave the shaping of granite stones to the ogres and the collection of diamonds to the dragons. It is far simpler to acquire what we need through trade." "Well, I suppose so," Dor agreed dubiously. "Second, you humans have one phenomenal asset that we generally lack," Gerome continued, evidently embarked on a favorite subject. "You can do magic. We utilize magic, but generally cannot perform it ourselves, nor would we wish to. We prefer to borrow it as a tool. Can you imagine one of us prevailing over King Trent in an altercation? He would convert us all to inchworms!" "If he could get close enough," Dor said. He remembered that this matter had been discussed before; Chet had pointed out how the centaurs' skill with the bow and arrow nullified Trent's magic. Was there an answer to that? Dor would much prefer to believe that magic was the supreme force in Xanth. "Who can govern from a distance?" Gerome inquired rhetorically. "Armies in the field are one thing; governing people is another. King Trent's magic enables him to govern, as does your own. Even your lesser talents are far beyond our capacities." Was the centaur now gifting him with flattery? "But centaurs can do magic!" Dor protested. "Our friend Chet—" "Please," Gerome said. "You humans perform natural functions, too, but we do not speak publicly of such things, in deference to your particular sensitivities. It is a fact that we centaurs were not aware of any personal magic talents through most of our history, and even now suspect manifestations are an aberration. So we have never considered personal magic as being available for our use and would prefer that no further mention of this be made." "Uh, sure," Dor agreed awkwardly. It seemed the other centaurs were just as sensitive and unreasonable about this as Dor's tutor Cherie was. Humans were indeed finicky about certain natural functions, as the centaur Elder had reminded him, while centaurs were not; while humans were not finicky about the notion of personal magic the way the centaurs were. Probably one attitude made as much nonsense as the other. But how would the citizens of Centaur Isle react to the news that a full Magician of their species was among them? Eventually Dor would have to tell them. This mission could be awkward indeed! "Third, we honor an understanding dating from the dawn of our species," Gerome continued, leaving the distasteful subject of magic behind like a clod of manure. "We shall not indulge in politics, and will never compete with our human brethren for power. So even if we desired empire and had the ability to acquire it, we would not do so. We would never renege on that binding commitment." And the centaur looked so serious that Dor dared not pursue the matter further. At last they came to the historical museum. This was an impressive edifice of red brick, several stories high, with small windows and a forbidding external aspect. But it was quite interesting inside, being crowded with all manner of artifacts. There were samples of all the centaurs' products, going back decade by decade to before the First Wave of human conquest. Dor could see how the earlier items were cruder; the craftsmen were still improving their skills. Everything was identified by neat plaques providing dates, places, and details of manufacture. The centaurs had a keen sense of history! During the tour, Dor had continued to sneak glances at the magic compass. He was gratified to see that it pointed toward the museum; maybe the Magician was here! "And this is our keeper of records," Gerome said, introducing a middle-aged, bespectacled centaur. "He knows where all the bodies are hidden. Arnolde the Archivist." "Precisely," Arnolde agreed dourly, peering over his glasses. The demon Beauregard was the only other creature Dor had seen wearing such devices. "So nice to encounter you and your party, King Dor. Now if you will excuse me, I have a new shipment of artifacts to catalogue." He retreated to his cubby, where objects and papers were piled high. "Arnolde is dedicated to his profession," Gerome explained. "He's quite intelligent, even by our standards, but not sociable. I doubt there is very much about Xanth natural history he doesn't know. Recently he has been picking up items from the fringe of magic; he made one trip to an island to the south that may have taken him entirely out of magic, though he denies this. Prior to the time King Trent dropped the shield that enclosed Xanth, such expeditions were impossible." Dor remembered the shield, for his tutor had drilled him on it. Cherie Centaur was particularly strong on social history. The Waves of human conquerors had become so bad that one King of Xanth had finally put a stop to further invasion by setting up a magic shield that killed any living thing that passed through it. But that had also kept the inhabitants of Xanth in. The Mundanes, it seemed, came to believe that Xanth did not exist at all and that magic was impossible, since none of it leaked out any more. There had, it seemed, been many recorded cases of magic that Mundanes had witnessed or experienced; all these were now written off as superstition. Perhaps that was the Mundanes' way of reconciling themselves to the loss of something as wonderful as enchantment, to pretend it did not exist and never had existed. But Xanth had suffered, too. In time it had become apparent that mankind in Xanth needed those periodic infusions of new blood, however violently they came, for without the Waves there was a steady attrition of pure human beings. First, people developed magic talents; later generations became magic themselves, either mating with animals to form various composite species like harpies or fauna or merfolk, or simply evolving into gnomes or giants or nymphs. So King Trent had lowered the shield and brought in a number of settlers from Mundania, with the understanding that these new people would be drawn on as warriors to repel any future violent invasion that might come. So far there had been none—but the Waves had been a pattern of centuries, not of decades, so that meant little. Immigration was an uncertain business, as it was far easier to go from Xanth to Mundania than the other way around, at least for individual people. But the human situation in Xanth did seem to be improving now. Dor could appreciate how an intelligent, inquisitive centaur would be eager to begin cataloguing the wonders of Mundania, which long had been a great mystery. It was still hard to accept the notion that here was a region where magic was inoperative, and where people survived. They moved on down the narrow hall. Dor checked the compass again—and found that it pointed directly toward Arnolde the Archivist. Could he be the centaur Magician, the threat to the welfare of Xanth, the important business Dor had to attend to? That didn't seem to make much sense. For one thing, Arnolde showed no sign of magic ability. For another, he was hardly the type to threaten the existing order; he was dedicated to recording it. For yet another, he was a settled, middle-aged person, of a species that lived longer than man. Magic talents might not be discovered early, but the evidence was that they existed from birth on. Why should this talent become an issue now, perhaps a century into Arnolde's life? So it must be a mistake; Dor's target had to be a young centaur, perhaps a newborn one. Yet as Dor moved about the building, only half listening to the presentation, the compass pointed unerringly toward Arnolde's cubby. Maybe Arnolde was married, Dor thought with exasperated inspiration. Maybe he had a baby centaur, hidden there among the papers. The compass could be pointing to the foal, not to Arnolde. Yes, that made sense. "If you don't get that glazed look off your face, the Elder will notice," Irene murmured, jolting Dor's attention. After that he concentrated and managed to assimilate more of the material. After all, there was nothing he could do about the Magician at the moment. At length they completed the tour. "Is there anything else you would like to see, King Dor?" Gerome inquired. "No, thank you, Elder," Dor replied. "I think I've seen enough." "Shall we arrange to transport your party back to your capital? We can contact your conjurer." This was awkward. Dor had to complete his investigation of the centaur Magician, so he was not ready to leave this Isle. But it was obvious that his mission and discovery would not be well received here. He could not simply tell the centaur Elders the situation and beg their assistance; to them that would be obscenity, and their warm hospitality would abruptly chill. A person's concept of obscenity was not subject to reasonable discussion, for of course the concepts of obscenity and reason were contradictory. In fact, that might be the root of the centaurs' accommodation and generosity. Maybe they suspected his mission, so were keeping him reined at all times, in the guise of hospitality. How could he decline to go home promptly, after they had seemingly catered to his needs so conscientiously? They wanted him off the Isle, and he had little chance to balk their wish. "Uh, could I talk with Chet before I decide anything?" Dor asked. "Of course. He is your friend." Again Gerome was the soul of accommodation. That made Dor more nervous, ironically. He was almost sure, now, that he was being managed. "And my other friends," Dor added. "We need to decide things together." It was arranged. In the afternoon the five got together in a lovely little garden site of guaranteed privacy. "You all know our mission," Dor said. "It is to locate a centaur Magician and identify his talent—and perhaps bring him back to Castle Roogna. But the centaurs don't much like magic in themselves; to them it's obscene. They react to it somewhat the way we do to—well, like people looking up Irene's skirt." "Don't start on that!" she said, coloring slightly. "I think the whole world has been looking up my skirt recently!" "Your fault for having good legs," Grundy said. She kicked at him, but the golem scooted away. Dor noted that she hadn't tried very hard to tag Grundy; she was not really as displeased as she indicated. "I happen to be in a position to understand both views," Chet said. His left arm was now in a sling, and he wore a packing of anti-pain potions. His outlook seemed improved, but not his immediate physical condition. "I admit that both centaur and human foibles are foolish. Centaurs do have magic talents and should be proud to display them, and Irene does have excellent limbs for her kind and should be proud to display them. And that's not all—" "All right!" Irene snapped, her color deepening. "Point made. We can't go blabbing our mission to everyone on Centaur Isle. They just wouldn't understand." "Yes," Dor said, glad to have this confirmation of his own analysis of the situation. "So now I need some group input. You see, I believe I have located the centaur Magician. It has to be the offspring of Arnolde the Archivist." "Arnolde?" Chet asked. "I know of him. He's been at his job for fifty years; my mother speaks of him. He's a bachelor. He has no offspring, He's more interested in figures of the numerical persuasion than in figures of fillies." "No offspring? Then it must be Arnolde himself," Dor said. "The magic compass points directly to him. I don't know how it is possible, since I'm sure no such Magician was known in Xanth before, but I don't believe Good Magician Humfrey would give me a bad signal on this." "What's his talent?" Irene asked. "I don't know. I didn't have a chance to find out." "I could ask around," Grundy offered. "If there are any plants or animals around his stall, they should know." "I can ask around myself," Dor said. "There are bound to be inanimate objects around his stall. That's not the problem. The Elders are ready to ship us home now, and I have no suitable pretext to stay. Even one night might be enough. But what do I tell them without lying or alienating them? King Trent told me that when in doubt, honesty is the best policy, but in this case I'm in doubt even about honesty." "Again I perceive both sides," Chet said. "Honesty is best—except perhaps in this case. My kind can become exceedingly ornery when faced with an incompatible concept. While I would not wish to imply any criticism of my sire—" The others knew what he meant. Chester Centaur's way to handle something he didn't like was to pick it up in a chokehold and shake the stuffing from it. The centaurs of Centaur Isle were more civilized, but just as ornery underneath. "Tell them your business is unfinished and you need another day," Irene suggested. "That's the literal truth." "That, simplistic as it sounds, is an excellent answer," Chet said. "Then go out at night and spy out Arnolde's talent. Have Grundy scout the route first, so you don't arouse suspicion. That way you can complete the mission without giving offense and go home tomorrow." "But suppose we need to take him with us? A full Magician should come to Castle Roogna." "No problem at all," Chet said. "I can tell you right now he won't come, and no Magician can be compelled. There's hardly a thing that could dislodge the archivist from his accustomed rounds." "Knowing his talent should be enough," Irene said. "Our own Council of Elders can decide what to do about it, once they have the information." Dor was relieved. "Yes, of course. Tonight, then. The rest of you can sleep." "Fat chance," Irene said, and Smash grunted agreement. "We're in this mess together. You're certain to foul it up by yourself." "I appreciate your vote of confidence, as always," Dor said wryly. But he also appreciated their support. He was afraid he would indeed foul it up by himself, but hadn't wanted to ask them to participate in what might be a nasty business. That night they put their plot into execution. Grundy went out first, his tiny dark body concealed by the darkness. There was no trouble, and soon all of them left their comfortable human-style beds—Chet excepted, as he was separately housed and could not readily leave his stall unobserved— and moved into the moonlit evening. They had no difficulty seeing, because the moon was nearing full and gave plenty of light. They found the museum without trouble. Dor had assumed it would be closed for the night, but to his dismay it was lighted. "Who is in there?" he asked the ground. "Arnolde the Archivist," the ground replied. "You have to be pretty stupid not to know he's been working late all week, cataloguing those new Mundane artifacts, though what he finds so interesting about such junk—" "What's his magic talent?" "His what?" the ground asked, bewildered. "You know of no magic associated with him?" Dor asked, surprised. Normally people were very free about what they did around only inanimate things, and it was hard to avoid the inanimate. That was what made Dor's own talent so insidious; the complete privacy people thought they had became complete disclosure in his presence. He tried not to pry into what did not rightly concern him, but most people, including his own parents, normally stayed clear of him, without making any issue of it. The people who had traveled with him were different, for their separate reasons; when he thought about it, he appreciated it immensely. Even Irene, who professed to value her privacy, was not truly uncomfortable in Dor's presence. She really didn't have to make any great play for him; gratitude would haul him into her orbit any time she wished. He knew she was accustomed to lack of privacy because of the way her mother was, but still found it easier to get along with her than with other girls. Others got unduly upset when their clothing started telling Dor their secrets. Dor glanced at the large round moon again. It was amazing how that orb stimulated his thoughts along such lines! Meanwhile, the ground had answered: "None at all. Centaurs don't do magic." Dor sighed. "I guess we'll have to go in and brace him directly." They went in. Arnolde had artifacts spread out all over a main table and was attaching tags to them and making notes. There were fragments of stone and crockery and rusted metal. "I wish the archaeologists would get these classified sooner," he grumbled. "This table is not available by day, so I have to tag them at night" Then he did a startled double take. "What are you doing here? The guest tour is over." Dor considered making a bald statement of purpose and decided against it. He needed to get to know the centaur a little better before broaching so delicate a subject. "I have an important matter to discuss with you. A, uh, private matter. So I didn't bring it up during the tour." Arnolde shrugged. "I have no inkling what the King of Xanth would want with me. Just keep your hands off the artifacts, and I will listen to what you have to impart. Mundane items are difficult to come by." "I'm sure they are," Dor agreed. "We came here by air, riding the clouds, and almost went beyond the limit of magic. We were lucky we didn't fall. Mundania is no place for the creatures of Xanth." "Oh?" the centaur said without much interest. "Did you see the southern island?" "No. We weren't that far south. We came down in sight of Centaur Isle." "There should have been plenty of magic. My raft was powered by a propulsion spell, and it never failed. I was needlessly concerned; evidently that island was Mundane historically, but is now magic." The centaur's hands were busy affixing each tag neatly and making careful entries in a ledger. He evidently liked his work, tedious as it seemed, and was conscientious. "I think we were north of it, but we certainly had trouble," Dor said. "But there was a storm; that could have disrupted the magic." "Quite possible," Arnolde agreed. "Storms do seem to affect it." The centaur seemed sociable enough, now that they were not taking him away from his beloved work. But Dor still did not feel easy. "Uh, the Elder Gerome mentioned a—some kind of pact the centaurs made with my kind, back at the beginning. Do you have artifacts from that time?" "Indeed I do," Arnolde said, growing animated. "Bones, arrowheads, the hilt of an iron sword—the record is fragmentary, but documents the legend. The full truth may never be known, sadly, but we do have a fair notion." "Uh, if you're interested—I'm a Magician. I make things talk. If you'd like to question one of those old artifacts—" Now Arnolde grew excited. "I had not thought of that! Magic is all right for you, of course. You're only human. I pride myself on being reasonably realistic. Yes, I would like to question an artifact. Are you familiar with the legend of centaur origin?" "No, not really," Dor said, growing interested himself. "It would help me if I did know it; then I could ask the artifact more specific questions." "Back CBP 1800—that's Circa Before Present one thousand, eight hundred years," the archivist intoned reverently, "the first man and first horse—you are aware of the nature of that animal? Front of a sea horse merged with the rear of a centaur—" "Yes, like a nightmare, only in the day," Dor said. "Exactly. These two, the first of each kind we know of, reached Xanth from Mundania. Xanth was already magic then; its magic seems to have existed for many thousands of years. The plants were already well evolved—you do know what I mean by evolution?" "How nickelpedes developed from centipedes." "Um, yes. The way individual species change with the times. Ah, yes, the King always has a centaur tutor, so you would have been exposed to such material. Back then the dragons dominated the land—one might term it the Age of Reptiles—and there were no human hybrids and no dwarves, trolls, goblins, or elves. This man saw that the land was good. He was able and clever enough to stay clear of the more predatory plants and to balk the dragons; he was a warrior, with a bow, sword, spear, club, and the ability to use them, and a valiant spirit. "But though he found Xanth delightful, he was lonely. He had, it seemed, fled his home tribe—we like to think he was an honorable man who had run afoul of an evil King—such things do happen in Mundania, we understand—and could not safely return there. Indeed, in time a detachment of other warriors came after him, intent on his murder. There is an opacity about the manner Mundanes may enter Xanth; normally people from the same Mundane subsociety may enter Xanth only if they are grouped together, not separately, but it seems these ones were, after all, able to follow—I don't pretend to understand this, but perhaps it is a mere distortion of the legend—at any rate, they were less able than he and fell prey to the natural hazards of Xanth. All but two of them died—and these two, severely wounded, survived only because this first good man—we call him Alpha, for what reason the record does not divulge—rescued them from peril and put healing balm on their wounds. After that they declined to attack him any more; they owed life-debts to him, and swore friendship instead. There was a kind of honor in those days, and we have maintained it since. "Now they were three men, with three fine mares they had salvaged. None of them could leave Xanth, for news of their betrayal had somehow spread, and enemies lurked just beyond the realm of magic. Or perhaps the Mundane culture had somehow become alien, one variant of the legend has reference to their attempt to return, and discovery of Babel—that they could no longer speak the language or comprehend the culture of the Mundanians. One of them had been a mercenary, a paid soldier, who it seemed spoke a different Mundanian dialect, but he spoke the same language as the others when they met in Xanth. We know this is a property of the magic of Xanth; all cultures and languages become one, including the written language; there is no language barrier between creatures of the same species. For whatever reason—I might wish that the legend was absolutely firm and clear, but must deal with a story line that fragments into mutually incompatible aspects, each of which has elements that are necessary to the continuation of the whole—a most intriguing riddle!—the three men and their mounts were safe, as long as they remained within the realm of magic they had come to understand and use so well—but they longed for the companionship of women of their kind. They wished to colonize the land, but could only live on it. "Then, exploring deep in new territory, they came upon a spring on a lovely offshore island, and all three drank deeply and watered their horses. They did not know it was a spring of love that would compel instant love with the first creature of the opposite sex spied after drinking. And so it happened that each man, in that critical moment, saw first his good mare— and each mare saw her master. And so it was that the species of the centaur began. This is another of the perplexing distinctions between Xanth and Mundania; in the latter Kingdom representatives of different species are unable to interbreed to produce offspring, while in Xanth it is a matter of course, though normally individuals are most attracted to their own species. The offspring of these unions, perceiving that their parents differed from themselves and that the masters were human beings who were possessed of the greater part of the intellect while the mares possessed the greater part of the strength, learned to respect each species for its special properties. The men taught their offspring all the skills they knew so well, both mental and physical, and commanded in return the right to govern this land of Xanth. In time the mares died, after foaling many times, and eventually the men died, too, leaving only the continuing species of centaur on the island. But the tradition remained, and when, centuries later, other men came, and women, too, the centaurs accorded them the dominance of the Kingdom. So it continues to the present day." "That's beautiful," Irene said. "Now I know why you centaurs have always supported us, even when our kind was unworthy, and why you served as our mentors. You have been more consistent than we have been." "We have the advantage of cultural continuity. Yet it is a legend," Arnolde reminded her. "We believe it, but we have no detailed proof." "Bring me an artifact," Dor said, moved by the story. He had no desire to mate with a creature of another species, but could not deny that love matches of many types existed in Xanth. The harpies, the merfolk, the manticora, the werewolves and vampire-bats—all had obvious human and animal lineage, and there were also many combinations of different animals, like the chimera and griffin. It would be unthinkable to deny the validity of these mixed species; Xanth would not be the same at all without them. "I'll get you the proof." But now the centaur hesitated. "I thought I wanted the proof—but now I am afraid it would be other than the legend. There might be ugly elements in lieu of the beautiful ones. Perhaps our ancestors were not nice creatures. I sheer away; for the first time I discover a limit to my eagerness for knowledge. Perhaps it is best that the legend remain unchallenged." "Perhaps it is," Dor agreed. Now at last he felt the time had come to express his real concern. "Since centaurs derive from men, and men have magic talents—" "Oh, I suppose some centaurs do have some magic," Arnolde said in the manner of an open-minded person skirting a close-minded issue. "But it has no bearing on our society. We leave the magic, like the governing, to you humans." "But some centaurs do—even Magician level—" "Oh, you mean Herman the Hermit Centaur," Arnolde said. "The one who could summon the Will-o'-Wisps. He was wronged, I think; he used his power to save Xanth from the ravage of wiggles, and gave his life in that effort, eighteen years ago. But of course, though some magic has perforce been accepted recently in our society, if another centaur Magician appeared, he, too, would be outcast. We centaurs have a deep cultural aversion to obscenity." Dor found his task increasingly unpleasant. He knew Cherie Centaur considered magic in her species to be obscene, though her mate Chester, Chet's father, had a magical talent. Cherie had adjusted to that situation with extraordinary difficulty. "There is one, though." "A centaur Magician?" Arnolde's brow wrinkled over his spectacles. "Are you certain?" "Almost certain. We have had a number of portents at Castle Roogna and elsewhere." "I pity that centaur. Who is it?" Now Dor was unable to answer. Arnolde looked at him, the import dawning. "Surely you do not mean to imply—you believe it is I?" At Dor's miserable nod, the centaur laughed uncertainly. "That's impossible. What magic do you think I have?" "I don't know," Dor said. "Then how can you make such a preposterous allegation?" The centaur's tail was swishing nervously. Dor produced the compass. "Have you seen one of these?" Arnolde took the compass. "Yes, this is a magic compass. It is pointing at you, since you are a Magician." "But when I hold it, it points to you." "I can not believe that!" Arnolde protested. "Here, take it back, and stand by that mirror so I can see its face." Dor did as bid, and Arnolde saw the needle pointing to himself. His face turned a shade of gray. "But it can not be! I can not be a Magician! It would mean the end of my career! I have no magic." "It doesn't make sense to me," Dor agreed. "But Good Magician Humfrey's alarms point to a Magician on Centaur Isle; that's what brought me here." "Yes, our Elders feared you had some such mischief in mind," Arnolde agreed, staring at the compass. Then, abruptly, he moved. "No!" he cried, and galloped from the room. "What now?" Irene asked. "We follow," Dor said. "We've got to find out what his talent is—and convince him. We can't leave the job half done." "Somehow I'm losing my taste for this job," she muttered. Dor felt the same. Going after an anonymous Magician was one thing; tormenting a dedicated archivist was another. But they were caught in the situation. They followed. The centaur, though hardly in his prime, easily outdistanced them. But Dor had no trouble picking up the trail, for all he had to do was ask the surrounding terrain. The path led south to the ocean. "He took his raft with the magic motor," Irene said. "We'll have to take another. He must be going to that Mundane island." They pre-empted another raft, after Dor had questioned several to locate one with a suitable propulsion-spell. Dor hoped this would not be construed as theft; he had every intention of returning the raft, but had to catch up with Arnolde and talk to him before the centaur did something more foolish than merely fleeing. The storm had long since passed, and the sea was glassy calm in the bright moonlight. The centaur's raft was not in sight, but the water reported its passage. "He's going for the formerly Mundane island," Grundy said. "Good thing it is magic now, since we're magical creatures." "Did you suffer when the magic faded near the storm?" Irene asked. "No, I felt the same—scared," Grundy admitted. "How about you, Smash?" "This freak feel weak," the ogre said. "In the knees," Irene said. "We all did." "She's knees please me's," Smash agreed. Irene's face ran a peculiar gamut from anger to embarrassment. She decided the ogre was not trying to tease her. He really wasn't that smart. "Thank you, Smash. Your own knees are like the boles on twisted ironwood trunks." The ogre went into a small bellow of delight that churned up waves behind them and shoved the raft forward at a faster pace. She had found the right compliment. The spell propelled them swiftly, and soon the island came into sight. Then progress slowed. "Something's the matter," Dor said. "We're hanging up on something." But there was nothing; the raft was free in the water, unbothered by waves or sea creatures. It continued to slow, until it was hardly moving at all. "We would get one with a defective go-spell," Irene complained. "What's the matter with you?" Dor asked it. "I—ugnh—" the raft whispered hoarsely, then was silent. "The magic!" Irene cried. "We're beyond the magic! Just as we were during the storm!" "Let's check this out," Dor said, worried. At least they were not in danger of falling from a cloud, this time! "Irene, grow a plant." She took a bottleneck seed. "Grow," she ordered. The seed began to sprout, hesitated, then fell limp. "Is there anything you can talk to, Grundy?" Dor asked. The golem spied some kelp in the water. He made strange sounds at it. There was no response. "Smash, try a feat of strength," Dor said. The ogre picked up one of his feet "Uh, no," Dor said quickly. "I mean do something strong. Stand on one finger, or squeeze juice from a log." Smash put one paw on the end of one of the raft's log-supports. He squeezed. Nothing happened. "Me unprepared, me awful scared," he said. Dor brought out his midnight sunstone. Now it possessed only the faintest internal glimmer—and in a moment that, too, faded out. "So that answers two questions," Dor said, trying to sound confident, though, in fact, he was deeply alarmed. "First, we are passing out of the region of magic; the propulsion-spell is defunct. I can't talk to the inanimate, and Irene can't grow plants magically. Second, it's only our magic that fades, not our bodies. Grundy can't translate the talk of other creatures, and Smash has lost his superhuman strength—but both are alive and healthy. Irene's plants won't grow, but she—" He paused, looking at her. "What happened to your hair?" "Hair?" She took a strand and pulled it before her face. "Eeek, it's faded!" "Aw, just the green's gone," Grundy said. "Looks better this way." Irene, stunned, did not even try to kick at him. She, like Dor, had never realized that her hair tint was magical in nature. "So Mundania doesn't hurt us," Dor continued quickly. "It just inconveniences us. We'll simply have to paddle the rest of the way to the island." They checked the raft's supplies. The centaurs were a practical species; the raft was equipped with several paddles and a pole. Dor and Irene took the former and Smash the latter, and Grundy steadied the tiller. It was hard work, but they resumed progress toward the island. "How did Arnolde ever get so far ahead alone?" Irene gasped. "He would have had an awful time paddling and steering." Finally they reached the beach. There was Arnolde's raft, drawn up just out of the water. "He moved it along, all right," Grundy remarked. "He must be stronger than he looks." "This is a fairly small island," Dor said. "He can't be far away. We'll corner him. Smash, you stand guard by the rafts and bellow if he comes back here; the rest of us will try to run him down." They spread out and crossed the island. It had a distinctly Mundanian aspect; there was green grass growing that did not grab at their feet, and leafy trees that merely stood in place and rustled only in the wind. The sand was fine without being sugar, and the only vines they saw made no attempt to writhe toward them. How could the centaur have mistaken this for a spot within the realm of magic? They discovered Arnolde at his refuge—a neat excavation exposing Mundane artifacts: the scholar's place of personal identification. Apparently he was more than a mere compiler or recorder of information; he did some field work, too. Arnolde saw them. He had a magic lantern that illuminated the area as the moon sank into the sea. "No, I realize I can not flee the situation," he said sadly. "The truth is the truth, whatever it is, and I am dedicated to the truth. But I can not believe what you say. Never in my life have I evinced the slightest degree of magic talent, and I certainly have none now. Perhaps some of the magic of the artifacts with which I associate has rubbed off on me, giving the illusion of—" "How can you use a magic lantern here in Mundania?" Irene asked. "This is not Mundania," Arnolde said. "I told you that before. The limits of magic appear to have extended, reaching out far enough to include this island recently." "But our magic ceased," Dor said. "We had to paddle here." "Impossible. My raft spelled forward without intermission, and there is no storm to disrupt the magic ambience. Try your talent now, King Dor; I'll warrant you will discover it operative as always." "Speak, ground," Dor said, wondering what would happen. "Okay, chump," the ground answered. "What's on your slow mind?" Dor exchanged glances with Irene and Grundy, astonished—and saw that Irene's hair in the light of the lantern was green again. "It's back!" he said. "The magic's back! Yet I don't see how—" Irene threw down a seed. "Grow!" she ordered. A plant sprouted, rising rapidly into a lively raspberry bush. "Brrrppp!" the plant sounded, making obscene sounds at them all. "Is this really a magic island?" Grundy asked the nearest tree, translating into its language. The tree made a rustling response. "It says it is— now!" he reported. Dor brought out the sunstone again. It was shining brightly. "How could the magic return so quickly?" Irene asked. "My father always said the limit of magic was pretty constant; in fact, he wasn't sure it varied at all." "The magic never left this Island," Arnolde said. "You must have passed through a flux, an aberration, perhaps after all a lingering consequence of yesterday's storm." "Maybe so," Dor agreed. "Magic is funny stuff. Ours certainly failed— for a while." The centaur had a bright idea. "Maybe the magic compass was affected by a similar flux and thrown out of kilter, so it pointed to the wrong person." Doubt nagged Dor. "I guess that's possible. Something's certainly wrong. If that's so, I must apologize for causing you such grief. It did seem strange to me that you should so suddenly manifest as a Magician when such power remains with a person from birth to death." "Yes indeed!" Arnolde agreed enthusiastically. "An error in the instrument—that is certainly the most facile explanation. Of course I could not manifest as a Magician, after ninety years of pristine nonmagic." So they had guessed correctly about one thing: the centaur was close to a century old. "I guess we might as well go back now," Dor said. "We had to borrow a raft to follow you, and its owner will be upset if it stays out too long." "Feel no concern," Arnolde said, growing almost affable in his relief. "The rafts are communal property, available to anyone at need. However, there would be concern if one were lost or damaged." They walked back across the island, the magic lantern brightening the vicinity steadily. As they neared the two rafts they saw Smash. He was holding a rock in both hands, squeezing as hard as he could, a grimace of concentration and disgust making his face even uglier than usual. Suddenly the rock began to compress. "At length, my strength!" the ogre exclaimed as the stone crumbled into sand. "You could never have done it, you big boob, if the magic hadn't come back," the sand grumbled. "The magic returned—just now?" Dor asked, something percolating in the back of his mind. "Sure," the sand said. "You should have seen this musclebrained brute straining. I thought I had him beat. Then the magic came back just as you did, more's the pity." "The magic—came with us?" Dor asked. "Are you dimwitted or merely stupid, nitbrain?" the sand asked with a gravelly edge. "I just said that." "When was the magic here before?" Dor asked. "Only a little while ago. Horserear here can tell you; he was here when it happened." "You mean this is normally a Mundane island?" "Sure, it's always been Mundane, except when ol' hoof-leg's around." "I think we're on to something," Grundy said. Arnolde looked stricken. "But—but how can—this is preposterous!" "We owe it to you and ourselves to verify this, one way or another," Dor said. "If the power of magic travels with you—" "Oh, horrible!" the centaur moaned. "It must not be!" "Let's take another walk around the island." Dor said. "Grundy, you go with Arnolde and talk to the plants and creatures you encounter; ask them how long magic has been here. The rest of us will spread out and wait for Arnolde to approach. If our magic fades out during his absence, and returns when he comes near—" Grudgingly the centaur cooperated. He set out on a trot around the island, pretty spry for his age, the golem perching on his back. No sooner were they on their way than Dor's magic ceased. His sunstone no longer shone, and he could no longer talk to the inanimate. It was evident that Irene and Smash were similarly discommoded. In a few minutes the circuit was complete. They compared notes. "The magic was with us all along," Grundy reported. "But all the plants and shellfish said it had come only when we were there." "When he go, me not rhyme," Smash said angrily. "Not even worth a dime." That was extreme distress for the ogre. Dor had not realized that his rhyming was magic-related. Maybe frustration had flustered him—or maybe magic had shaped the lives of the creatures of Xanth far more than had been supposed. Irene's hair, Smash's rhymes . .. "My potted petunia would not grow at all," Irene said. "But when the centaur came near, it grew and got roaring drunk." "And my talent operated only when Arnolde was near," Dor said. "So my talent seems to be dependent on his presence here, as with the rest of you. Since I am a full Magician, what does that make him?" "A Magician's Magician," Irene said. "A catalyst for magic." "But I never performed any magic in my life!" Arnolde protested, still somewhat in shock. "Never!" "You don't perform it, you promote it," Dor said. "You represent an island of magic, an extension of Xanth into Mundania. Wherever you go, magic is there. This is certainly a Magician's talent." "How could that be true, when there was no indication of it in all my prior life? I can not have changed!" But now Dor had an answer. "You left Xanth only recently, you said. You came to this Mundane island for research. Good Magician Humfrey's magic indicators never oriented on you before because you are completely camouflaged in Xanth proper; you are like a section of mist in the middle of a cloud. But when you left Xanth, your power manifested, triggering the alarms. Once the indicators had oriented on you, they continued to point you out; maybe your presence makes magic slightly more effective, since Centaur Isle is near the fringe of magic. It's like a bug on a distant leaf; once you know exactly where it is, you can see it. But you can't locate it when it sits still and you don't even know it exists." Arnolde's shoulders slumped and his coat seemed to lose luster. He was an appaloosa centaur, with white spots on his brown flank, a natural blanket that made him quite handsome. Now the spots were fading out. "I fear you are correct. My associates always considered this to be a Mundane island; I thought them mistaken. But oh, what havoc this wreaks on my career! The profession of a lifetime ruined! I can never return to the museum." "Do the other centaurs have to know?" Grundy asked. "I may be contaminated by obscene magic," Arnolde said gravely. "But it is beneath me to prevaricate." Dor considered the attitude of the various centaurs he had known. He realized Arnolde was right. The archivist could not conceal the truth, and the other centaurs would not tolerate a centaur Magician in their society. They had exiled Herman the Hermit in the past generation, then termed him a hero after he was dead. Some reward! Dor's quest had gained him nothing and had destroyed the livelihood and pride of a decent centaur. He felt responsible; he had never wanted to hurt anyone this way. The moon had been descending into the ocean. Now, just before it got soaked, it seemed to have swelled. Great and round and greenish, its cheese was tantalizingly close. Dor gazed at it, pondering its maplike surface. Could a column of smoke lead all the way up to the moon, and could they use the salve some day to— Then he suffered an awful realization. "The curse!" he cried. The centaur glanced dourly at him. "You have certainly cursed me, King Dor." "The magic salve we used to tread the clouds—it had a curse attached. Whoever used it would do some dastardly deed before the next full moon. This is our deed; we have forced you out of your satisfied existence and made you into something you abhor. The curse made us do it." "Such curses are a readily avoidable nuisance," the centaur remarked. "All that is required is an elementary curse-counterspell. There are dozens in our archives; we don't even file them carefully. Ironic that this ignorance on your part should have such a serious consequence for me." "Do something, Dor," Irene said. "What is there to be done?" Arnolde asked disconsolately. "I am rendered at one fell stroke into an exile." But Dor, cudgeling his brain under pressure, had a sudden explosion of genius. "You take magic with you anywhere you go," he said. "Right into Mundania. This relates in all the three ways we were warned. It is certainly a matter I must attend to, for the existence of any new Magician in Xanth is the King's business. It also could pose a threat to Xanth, for if you go out into Mundania on your own, taking that magic with you, bad people could capture you and somehow use your magic for evil. But most important, somewhere in Mundania is someone we fear is trapped or in trouble, who perhaps needs this magic to escape. Now if I were to take you into Mundania proper—" "We could rescue my father!" Irene exclaimed, jumping up and down and clapping her hands in the manner of her kind. She bounced phenomenally, so that even the centaur paused to look, as if regretting his species and his age. "Oh, Dor, I could kiss you!" And without waiting for his reaction, she grabbed him and kissed him with joyful savagery on the mouth. In that moment of hyperanimation she became very special, radiant and compelling in the best sort of way; but by the time he realized it, she was already away and talking to the centaur. "Arnolde, if you have to be exiled anyway, you might as well come with us. We don't care about your magic—not negatively, I mean—we all of us have talents. And think of the artifacts you can collect deep in Mundania; you can start your own museum. And if you help rescue my father, King Trent—" The centaur was visibly wavering. Obviously he did not like the notion of exile, but could not return to his job on Centaur Isle. "And the centaurs around Castle Roogna are used to magic," Irene continued apace. "Chester Centaur plays a magic silver flute, and his uncle was Herman the Hermit. He would be glad for your company, and—" "I believe I have little alternative," Arnolde said heavily. "You will help us? Oh, thank you!" Irene cried, and she flung her arms about the centaur's forepart and kissed him, too. Arnolde was visibly startled, but not entirely displeased; his white spots wavered. Dor suffered a wash of jealousy, thinking of the legend of the origin of the centaurs. Kisses between different species were not necessarily innocent, as that legend showed. But it seemed Irene had convinced the centaur Magician to help, and that was certainly worthwhile. Then Dor remembered another complication. "We can't just leave for Mundania. The Council of Elders would never permit it." "How can they prevent it?" Irene asked, glancing meaningfully at him. "But we must at least tell them—" "Chet can tell them. He has to go home anyway." Dor tried to dissemble. "I don't know—" Then Irene focused her stare on him full-force, daring him to attempt to balk her; she was extremely pretty in her challenge, and Dor knew their course was set. She intended to rescue her father, no matter what.
(Xanth 4) Centaur Aisle	Piers Anthony	[ "fantasy", "puns" ]	[]	Mundane Mystery	They sailed the two rafts back to Centaur Isle that night. In the process they discovered that Arnolde's ambience of magic extended farthest toward the front, perhaps fifteen paces, and half that distance to the rear. It was least potent to the sides, going hardly beyond the centaur's reach. It was, in fact, less an isle of magic than an aisle, always preceding the centaur's march. Thus the second raft was able to precede Arnolde's raft comfortably, or to follow it closely, but not to travel beside it. They had verified that the hard way, having the magic propulsion fail, until Arnolde turned to face them. Once they re-entered the main magic of Xanth, Arnolde's power was submerged. It seemed to make no difference how close he was or which way he faced; there was no enhancement of enchantment near him. But of course they had no way to measure the intensity of magic in his vicinity accurately. Grundy sneaked in to wake Chet and explain the situation, while Arnolde researched in his old tomes for the best and swiftest route to Mundania. He reported that there was the tunnel the sun used to return from the ocean east to its position of rising, drying out and recharging along the way. This tunnel would be suitable by day, when the sun wasn't using it; they could trot right along it. "But that would take us west," Irene protested. "My father left Xanth to the north." Dor had to agree. "The standard route to Mundania is across the northwest isthmus. We must go there and hope to pick up traces of his passage. We can't use the sun's tunnel. But it's a long way to the isthmus, and I don't think we want to make another trip like the one down the coast; we might never get there. Are there any other good notions?" "Well, tomorrow is destined to have intermittent showers," Arnolde said. "There should be a rainbow. There is a spell in the archives for traveling the rainbow. It is very fast, for rainbows do not endure long. There is some risk—" "Speed is what we need," Dor said, remembering his dream-visions, where there had been a sensation of urgency. "I think King Trent is in trouble and needs to be rescued soon. Maybe not in the next day, but I don't think we can afford to wait a month." "There is also the problem of mounting the rainbow," Arnolde said. Now that he had accepted the distasteful notion of his own magic, his mind was relating to the situation very readily. Perhaps it was because he was trained in the handling of information and knew how to organize it. "Part of the rainbow's magic, as you know, is that it appears equally distant from all observers, with its two ends touching the ground equally far from them, north and south. We must ascend to its top, then slide down quickly before it fades." "The salve!" Grundy said. "We can mount smoke to a cloud, and run across the cloud to the top of the rainbow, if we start early, before the rainbow forms." "You just don't understand," the centaur said. "It will seem just as far from us when we board the cloud. Catching a rainbow is one of the hardest things to do." "I can see why," Dor muttered. "How can we catch one if it always retreats?" "Excise the eyes," Smash suggested, covering his own gross orbs with his gauntleted mitts. "Of course the monster is right," Arnolde said, not looking at Smash, whom he seemed to find objectionable. "That is the obvious solution." It was hardly obvious to Dor. "How can covering our eyes get us to the rainbow?" "It can hardly appear distant if you don't look at it," Arnolde said. "Yes, but—" "I get it," Grundy said. "We spot it, then close our eyes and go to where we saw it, and it can't get away because we aren't looking at it. Simple." "But somebody has to look at it, or it isn't there," Irene protested. "Is it?" "Chet can look at it," Grundy said. "He's not going on it anyway." Dor distrusted this, but the others seemed satisfied. "Let's get some sleep tonight and see what happens tomorrow," he said, hoping it all made sense. They slept late, but that was all right because the intermittent rain wasn't due until midmorning. Arnolde dutifully acquainted the centaur Elders with his situation; as expected, they encouraged him to depart the Isle forever at his very earliest convenience, without directly referring to the reason for his loss of status in their community. A Magician was not wanted here; they could not be comfortable with him. They would let it be known that Arnolde was retiring for reasons of health, so as to preserve his reputation, and they would arrange to break in a new archivist. No one would know his shame. To facilitate his prompt departure they provided him with a useful assortment of spells and counterspells for his journey, and wished him well. "The hypocrites!" Irene exclaimed. "For fifty years Arnolde serves them well, and now, suddenly, just because—" "I said you would not comprehend the nuances of centaur society," Chet reminded her, though he did not look comfortable himself. Irene shut up rebelliously. Dor liked her better for her feeling, however. It was time to leave Centaur Isle, and not just because they had a new mission. The intermittent clouds formed and made ready to shower. Dor set up a smudge pot and got a column of smudge angling up to intersect the cloud level. They applied the salve to their feet and hands, invoked the curse-counterspells Arnolde distributed, and marched up the column. Arnolde adjusted to this odd climb remarkably well for his age; he had evidently kept himself in traveling shape by making archaeological field trips. For a moment they paused to turn back to face Chet, who was standing on the beach, watching for the rainbow. Dor found himself choking up, and could only wave. "I hope to see you again, cousin," Arnolde called. Chet was not related to him; what he referred to was the unity of their magic talents. "And meet your sire." And Chet smiled, appreciating the thought. When they reached the cloud layer, they donned blindfolds. "Clouds," Dor said, "tell us where the best path to the top of the rainbow is. Don't let any of us step too near the edge of you." "What rainbow?" the nearest cloud asked. "The one that is about to form, that my friend Chet Centaur will see from the ground." "Oh, that rainbow. It isn't here yet. It hasn't finished its business on the eastern coast of Xanth." "Well, guide us to where it's going to be." "Why don't you open your eyes and see it for yourself?" the canny cloud asked. The inanimate was often perverse, and the many folds and convolutions of clouds made them smarter than average. "Just guide us," Dor said. "Awww." But the cloud had to do it. There was a popping sound behind them, down on the ground. "That's the popcorn I gave Chet," Irene said. "I told him to set it off when he saw the rainbow. Now that rainbow is fixed in place, as long as he looks at it and we don't; we must be almost upon it." "Are we?" Dor asked the cloud. "Yeah," the cloud conceded grudgingly. "It's right ahead, though it has no head. That's cumulus humor." "Rainbow!" Dor called. "Sing out if you hear me!" Back came the rainbow's song: "Tra-la-la-fol-de-rol!" It sounded beautiful and multicolored. They hurried over to it. Once they felt its smooth surface projecting above the cloud and climbed upon it, they removed their blindfolds; the rainbow could no longer work its deceptive magic. The rainbow was fully as lovely as it sounded. Bands of red and yellow, blue and green, extended lengthwise, and sandwiched between them, where ground observers couldn't see them, were the secret riches of the welkin: bands of polka-dot, plaid, and checkerboard. Some internal bands were translucent, and some blazed with colors seldom imagined by man, like fortissimo, charm, phon, and torque. It would have been easy to become lost in their wonders, and Irene seemed inclined to do just that, but the rainbow would not remain here long. It seemed rainbows had tight schedules, and this one was due for a showing somewhere in Mundania in half an hour. Some magic, it seemed, did extend to Mundania; Dor wondered briefly whether the Mundanes would have the same trouble actually catching up to a rainbow, or whether there it would stay firmly in place regardless how the viewers moved. Arnolde brought out his rainbow-travel spell, which was sealed in a paper packet. He tore it open—and abruptly they began to slide. The speed was phenomenal. They zoomed past the clouds, then down into the faintly rainy region below, plunging horrendously toward the sea to the north. Below them was the Land of Xanth, a long peninsula girt by thin islands along the coastlines. Across the center of it was the jagged chasm of the Gap that separated the northern half of Xanth from the southern. It appeared on no maps because no one remembered it, but this was no map. It was reality, as viewed from the rainbow. There were a number of lakes, such as Ogre-Chobee in the south, but no sign of the human settlements Dor knew were there. Man had simply not made much of an Impression on Xanth, physically. "Fun begun!" Smash cried joyfully. "Eeek—my skirt!" Irene squealed as the mischievous gusts whipped it up, displaying her legs to the whole world. Dor wondered why she insisted on wearing a skirt despite such constant inconveniences; pants of some kind would have solved the problems decisively. Then it occurred to him that she might not want that particular problem solved. She was well aware that her legs were the finest features of a generally excellent body and perhaps was not averse to letting the world know it also. If she constantly protested any inadvertent exposures that occurred, how could anyone blame her for showing herself off? She had a pretty good system going. Dor and Grundy and Arnolde, less sanguine about violence than the ogre and less modest (?) than Irene, hung on to the sliding arc of the rainbow and stared ahead and down with increasing misgiving. How were they to stop, once the end came? The descent was drawing close at an alarming velocity. The northern shoreline of Xanth loomed rapidly larger, the curlicues of beaches magnifying. The ocean in this region seemed oddly reddish; Dor hoped that wasn't from the blood of prior travelers of the rainbow. Of course it wasn't; how could he think such a thought? Then the travel-spell reversed, and they slid rapidly slower until, as they reached the water at the end of the rainbow, they were moving at no more than a running pace. They plunged into the crimson water and swam for the shore to the north. The color was not blood; it was translucently thin, up close. Dor was relieved. Now that he could no longer see it from the air, Dor remembered other details of Xanth. The length of it was north-south, with the narrowest portion near where his grandfather Elder Roland's village was, in the middle north on the western side. At the top, Xanth extended west, linking to Mundania by the isthmus they were headed for—and somehow Mundania beyond that isthmus seemed huge, much larger than Xanth. Dor decided that must be a misimpression; surely Mundania was about the same size as Xanth, or somewhat smaller. How could a region of so little importance be larger, especially without magic? Now they came to the shallows and waded through the dark red water to the beach. That crimson bothered him, as the color intensified near the tide-line; how could the normally blue water change color here, in the Mundane quadrant? What magic could affect it here, where no magic existed? "Maybe some color leaked from the rainbow," Irene said, following his thought. Well, maybe. Of course there was the centaur aisle of magic now, so that wherever they were was no longer strictly Mundane. Yet the red water extended well beyond the area of temporary enchantment. It seemed to be a regular feature of the region. They gathered on the beach, dripping pink water. Grundy and Smash didn't mind, but Dor felt uncomfortable, and Irene's blouse and skirt were plastered to her body. "I'm not walking around this way, and I'm not taking off my clothes," she expostulated. She felt in her seedbag, which she had refilled at Centaur Isle, and brought out a purple seed. It seemed the bag was waterproof, for the seed was dry. "Grow," she ordered it as she dropped it on the sand. The thing sprouted into a heliotrope. Clusters of small purple flowers burst open aromatically. Warm dry air wafted outward. This plant did not really travel toward the sun; it emulated the sun's heat, dehydrating things in the vicinity. Soon their clothing was dry again. Even Smash and Grundy appreciated this, since both now wore the special jackets given them by the centaurs. Smash also shook out his gauntlets and dried them, and Irene spread her silver-lined fur out nearby. "Do we know where we go from here?" Irene asked once she had her skirt and blouse properly fluffed out. "Did King Trent pass this way?" Dor inquired of the landscape. "When?" the beach-sand asked. "Within the past month." "I don't think so." They moved a short distance north, and Dor tried again. Again the response was negative. As the day wore into afternoon and on into evening, they completed their traverse of the isthmus—without positive result. The land had not seen the King. "Maybe the Queen still had an illusion of invisibility enchantment," Grundy suggested. "So nothing could see them." "Her illusion wouldn't work here in Mundania, dummy," Irene retorted. She was still miffed at the golem because of the way Grundy had caused her to lose half her seeds to the eclectic eel. She carried a little grudge a long time. "I am not properly conversant with King Trent's excursion," Arnolde said. "Perhaps he departed Xanth by another route." "But I know he came this way!" Irene said. "You didn't even know he was leaving Xanth," Grundy reminded her. "You thought he was inside Xanth on vacation." She shrugged that off as irrelevant. "But this is the only route out of Xanth!" Her voice was starting its hysterical tremor. "Unless he went by sea," Dor said. "Yes, he could have done that," she agreed quickly. "But he would have come ashore somewhere. My mother gets seasick when she's in a boat too long. All we have to do is walk along the beach and ask the stones and plants." "And watch for Mundane monsters," Grundy said, still needling her. "So they can't look up your—" "I am inclined to doubt that countermagical species will present very much of a problem," Arnolde said in his scholarly manner. "What he know, he hoofed schmoe?" Smash demanded. "Evidently more than you, you moronic oaf," the centaur snapped back. "I have been studying Mundania somewhat, recently, garnering information from immigrants, and by most reports most Mundane plants and animals are comparatively shy. Of course there is a certain margin for error, as in all phenomena." "What dray, he say?" Smash asked, perplexed by the centaur's vocabulary. "Dray!" Arnolde repeated, freshly affronted. "A dray is a low cart, not a creature, you ignorant monster. I shall thank you to address me by my proper appellation." "What's the poop from the goop?" Smash asked. Dor stifled a laugh, turning it into a choking cough. In this hour of frustration, tempers were fraying and they could not afford to have things get too negative. Grundy opened his big mouth, but Dor managed to cover it in time. The golem could only aggravate the situation with his natural penchant for insults. It was Irene who retained enough poise to alleviate the crisis. "You just don't understand a person of education, Smash. He says the Mundane monsters won't dare bother us while you're on guard." "Oh. So," the ogre said, mollified. "Ignorant troglodyte," the centaur muttered. That set it off again. "Me know he get the place of Chet!" Smash said angrily, forming his gauntlets into horrendous fists. So that was the root of the ogre's ire! He felt Arnolde had usurped the position of his younger centaur friend. "No, that's not so," Dor started, seeking some way to alleviate his resentment. If their party started fracturing now, before they were fairly clear of Xanth, what would happen once they got deep into Mundania? "And he called you a caveman, Smash," Grundy put in helpfully. "Compliments no good; me head like wood," the ogre growled, evidently meaning that he refused to be swayed by soft talk. "Indubitably," Arnolde agreed. Dor decided to leave it at that; a more perfect understanding between ogre and centaur would only exacerbate things. They walked along the beach. Sure enough, nothing attacked them. The trees were strange oval-leafed things with brownish, inert bark and no tentacles. Small birds flitted among the branches, and gray animals scurried along the ground. Arnolde had brought along a tome of natural history, and he consulted it eagerly as each thing turned up. "An oak tree!" he exclaimed. "Probably the root stock of the silver oak, the blackjack oak, the turkey oak, and the acorn trees!" "But there's no silver, blackjacks, or acorns," Grundy protested. "Or turkeys," Irene added. "Certainly there are, in rudimentary forms," the centaur said. "Observe a certain silvery aspect to some leaves, and the typical shape of others, primitively suggestive of other, eventual divergencies. And I suspect there are also acorns, in season. The deficiency of magic prevents proper manifestation, but to the trained perception—" "Maybe so," the golem agreed, shrugging. This was evidently more than he cared to know about oak trees. Dor continued to query the objects along the beach, and the water of the sea, but with negative results. All denied seeing King Trent or Queen Iris. "This is ridiculous!" Irene expostulated. "I know he came this way!" Arnolde stroked his chin thoughtfully. "There does appear to be a significant discontinuity." "Something doesn't fit," Grundy agreed. As the sun set, they made camp high on the beach. Rather than post watches, they decided to trust in magic. Dor told the sand in their vicinity to make an exclamation if anything dangerous or obnoxious intruded, and the sand promised to do so. Irene grew a blanket bush for their beds and set a chokecherry hedge around them for additional protection. They ate beefsteak tomatoes that they butchered and roasted on flame-vines, and drank the product of wine-and-rain lilies. "Young lady, your talent contributes enormously to our comfort," Arnolde complimented her, and Irene flushed modestly. "Aw, he's just saying that 'cause she's pretty," Grundy grumbled. That only made Irene flush with greater pleasure. Dor was not pleased, but could not isolate the cause of his reaction. The hangups of others were easier for him to perceive than his own. "Especially when her skirt hikes up over her knees," the golem continued. Irene quickly tugged down her hem, her flush becoming less attractive. "Actually, there are few enough rewards to a mission like this," Arnolde said. "Had I my choice, I would instantly abolish my own magic and return to my sinecure at the museum, my shame extirpated." And there was the centaur's fundamental disturbance, Dor realized. He resented their dastardly deed that had ripped him from his contented existence and made him an exile from his kind. Dor could hardly blame him. Arnolde's agreement to travel with them to Mundania to help rescue King Trent did not mean he was satisfied with his lot; he was merely making the best of what was for him an awful situation. "Me help he go, with big heave-ho!" Smash offered. "But we need his magic," Irene said, verbally interposing herself to prevent further trouble. "Just as we need your strength, Smash." And she laid her hand on the ogre's ponderous arm, pacifying him. Dor found himself resenting this, too, though he understood her motive. The peace had to be kept. They settled down for the night—and the sand gave alarm. The monsters it warned of turned out to be sand fleas—bugs so small they could hardly even be seen. Arnolde dug a vermin-repulsor spell out of his collection, and that took care of the matter. They settled down again and this time slept. Once more the nightmares were unable to reach them, since the magic horses were bound to the magic realm of Xanth and could not cross the Mundane territory intervening. Dor almost felt sympathy for the mares; they had been balked from doing their duty to trouble people's sleep for several nights now, and must be very frustrated. They resumed their march in the morning. But as the new day wore on, the gloom of failure became more pervasive. "Something certainly appears to be amiss," Arnolde observed. "From what we understand, King Trent had to have passed this vicinity—yet the objects here deny it. Perhaps it is not entirely premature to entertain conjectures." Smash wrinkled his hairy brow, trying to figure out whether this was another rarefied insult. "Say what's on your mind, horsetail," Grundy said with his customary diplomacy. "We have ascertained that the Queen could not have employed her power to deceive the local objects," Arnolde said didactically. "Not without magic," Dor agreed. "The two of them were strictly Mundane-type people here, as far as we know." "Could they have failed to come in from the sea?" "No!" Irene cried emotionally. "I have queried the sea," Dor said. "It says nothing like that is in it." Irene relaxed. "Could they have employed a completely different route? Perhaps crossed to the eastern coast of Xanth and sailed north from there to intercept another region of Mundania?" "They didn't," Irene said firmly. "They had it all planned, to come out here. Someone had found a good trade deal, and they were following his map. I saw it, and the route passed here." "But if you don't know—" Dor protested. "I didn't know they were going to travel the route, then," she said. "But I did see the map when their scout brought it in, with the line on it. Now I know what it meant. That's all I saw, but I am absolutely certain this was the way they headed." Dor was disinclined to argue the point further. This did seem to be the only practical route. He had told the others all he knew about King Trent's destination, and this route certainly did not conflict with that information. "Could they have been intercepted before leaving Xanth?" Arnolde continued, evidently with an intellectual conclusion in mind. "Waylaid, perhaps?" "My father would have turned any waylayer into a toad," she said defiantly. "Anyway, inside Xanth, my mother's illusion would have made them impossible to identify." "Then it seems we have eliminated the likely," Arnolde said. "We are thus obliged to contemplate the unlikely." "What do you mean?" Irene asked. "As I intimated, it is an unlikely supposition that I entertain, quite possibly erroneous—" "Spit it out, brownfur," Grundy said. "My dear vociferous construct, a civilized centaur does not expectorate. And my color is appaloosa, not mere brown." Irene was catching on to her power over the centaur, and over males in general. "Please, Arnolde," she pleaded sweetly. "It's so important to me to know anything that might help find my lost father—" "Of course, dear child," Arnolde agreed quickly, adopting an avuncular pose. "It is simply this: perhaps King Trent did not pass this region when we suppose he did." "It had to be within this past month," she said. "Not necessarily. That is the extraordinary aspect of this supposition. He may have passed here a century ago." Now Dor, Irene, and Grundy peered at the centaur intently to see whether he was joking. Smash, less interested in intellectual conjectures, idly formed sandstone by squeezing handfuls of sand until the mineral fused. His new gauntlets evidently enabled him to apply his power in ways that were beyond his natural limits before, since even ogre's flesh was marginally softer than stone. A modest sandstone castle was developing. "You happen to sleep with your head underwater last night?" the golem inquired solicitously. "I have, as I have clarified previously, engaged in a modicum of research into the phenomena of Mundania," Arnolde said. "I confess I know only the merest fraction of what may be available, and must be constantly alert for error, but certain conclusions are becoming more credible. Through history, certain anomalies have manifested in the relationship between continuums. There is of course the matter of linguistics—it appears that there exist multiple languages in Mundania, yet all become intelligible in Xanth. I wonder if you properly appreciate the significance of—" Irene was growing impatient. She tapped her small foot on the ground. "How could he have passed a century ago, when he wasn't even born then?" "It is this matter of discontinuity, as I was saying. Time seems to differ; there may be no constant ratio. There is evidence that the several Waves of human colonization of Xanth originated from widely divergent subcultures within Mundania, and, in fact, some may be anachronistic. That is to say, the last Wave of people may have originated from a period in Mundania preceding that of the prior Wave." "Now wait!" Dor exclaimed. "I visited Xanth of eight hundred years ago, and I guess that was a kind of time travel, but that was a special case. Since there's no magic in Mundania, how could people get reversed like that? Are their times mixed up?" "No, I believe their framework is consistent in their world. Yet if the temporal sequence were reversed with respect to ours—" "I just want to know where my father is!" Irene snapped. "He may be in Mundania's past—or its future," the centaur said. "We simply do not know what law governs transfer across the barrier of magic, but it seems to be governed from Xanth's side. That is, we may be able to determine into what age of Mundania we travel, whereas the access of Mundania to Xanth is random and perhaps in some cases impossible. It is a most intriguing interface. It is as if Xanth were a boat sailing along a river; the passengers may disembark anywhere they choose, merely by picking their port, or a specific time on the triptych, so to speak, but the natives along the shores can take only that craft that happens to pass within their range. This is an inadequate analogy, I realize, that does not properly account for certain—" "The King can be anywhen in Mundania?" Irene demanded skeptically. "Marvelously succinct summation," Arnolde admitted. "But he told me 'medieval,'" Dor protested. "That does narrow it," the centaur agreed. "But it covers an extraordinary range, and if he was speaking figuratively—" "Then how can we ever find him?" Irene demanded. "That becomes problematical. I hasten to remind you that this is merely a theory, undocumented, perhaps fallacious. I would not have introduced it for consideration, except—" "Except nothing else fits," Irene said. "Suppose it's right. What do we do now?" "Well, I believe it would expedite things if we located research facilities in Mundania. Some institution where detailed records exist, archives—" "And you're an archivist!" Dor exclaimed. "Precisely. This should enable me to determine at what period in Mundania's history we have intruded. Since, as King Dor says, King Trent referred to a medieval period, that would provide a frame of reference." "If we're in the wrong Mundane century," Irene said, "how do we get to him?" "We should be required to return to Xanth and undertake a new mission to that century. As I mentioned, it seems feasible to determine the temporal locale from Xanth, and once in that aspect of Mundania, we would be fixed in it until returning to Xanth. However, this procedure is fraught with uncertainties and potential complications." "I should think so," Dor said. "If we figured it wrong, we might get there before he did." "Oh, I doubt that would happen, other than on the macroscopic scale, of course." "The what?" Dor asked. "I believe the times are consistent in particular circumstances. That is to say, within a given age, we could enter Mundania only with an elapsed period consonant with that of Xanth. Therefore—" "We might miss by a century, but not by a day," Grundy said. "That is the essence, golem. The particular channels appear to be fixed—" "So let's go find the century!" Irene said, brightening. "Then all we'll need is the place." "With appropriate research, the specific geography should also be evident." "Then let's go find your archives," she said. "Unfortunately, we have no knowledge of this period," Arnolde reminded her. "We are hardly likely to locate a suitable facility randomly." "I can help there," Dor said. "It should be where there are a lot of people, right?" "Correct, King Dor." "Uh, better not call me King here. I'm not, really, and people might find it strange." Then Dor addressed the sand. "Which way to where most people live?" "How should I know?" the sand asked. "You know which direction most of them come from, and where they return." "Oh, that. They mostly go north." "North it is," Dor agreed. They marched north, and in due course encountered a Mundane path that debouched into a road that became a paved highway. No such highway existed in Xanth, and Dor had to question this one closely to ascertain its nature. It seemed it served to facilitate the travel of metal and rubber vehicles that propelled themselves with some sort of magic or whatever it was that Mundanes used to accomplish such wonders. These wagons were called "cars," and they moved very rapidly. "I saw something like that belowground," Grundy said. "The demons rode in them." Soon the party saw a car. The thing zoomed along like a racing dragon, belching faint smoke from its posterior. They stared after it, amazed. "Fire it send from wrong end," Smash said. "Are you sure there's no magic in Mundania?" Grundy asked. "Even the demons didn't have firebreathers." "I am not at all certain," Arnolde admitted. "Perhaps they merely have a different name and application for their magic. I doubt it would operate for us. Perhaps this is the reason we believe there is no magic in Mundania— it is not applicable to our needs." "I don't want any part of that car," Irene said. "Any dragon shooting out smoke from its rear is either crazy or has one awful case of indigestion! How could it fight? Let's find our archives and get out of here." The others agreed. This aspect of Mundania was certainly inverted. They avoided the highway, making their way along assorted paths that paralleled it. Dor continued to query the ground, and by nightfall they were approaching a city. It was a strange sort of settlement, with roads that crisscrossed to form large squares, and buildings all lined up with their fronts right on the edges of the roads, so that there was hardly room for any forest there, jammed in close together. Some were so tall it was a wonder they didn't fall over when the wind blew. Dor's party camped at the edge of the city, under a large umbrella tree Irene grew to shelter them. The tree's canopy dipped almost to the ground, concealing them, and this seemed just as well. They were not sure how the Mundanes would react to the sight of an ogre, golem, or centaur. "We have gone as far as we can as a group," Dor said. "There are many people here, and few trees; we can't avoid being seen any more. I think Irene and I had better go in and find a museum—" "A library," Arnolde corrected him. "I would love to delve eternally in a Mundane museum, but the information is probably most readily accessible in a library." "A library," Dor agreed. He knew what that was, because King Trent had many books in his library-office in Castle Roogna. "However, that is academic, no pun intended," the centaur continued. "You can not go there without me." "I know I'll step out of magic," Dor said. "But I won't need to do anything special. Nothing magical. Once I find the library for you—" "You have no certainty you can even speak their language," Arnolde said curtly. "In the magic ambience, you can; beyond it, this is problematical." "I'm not sure we speak the same language in our own group, sometimes," Irene said with a smile. "Words like 'ambience' and 'problematical'—" "I can speak their language," Grundy said. "That's my talent. I was made to translate." "A magical talent," Arnolde said. "Oooops," Grundy said, chagrined. "Won't work outside the aisle." "But you can't just walk in to the city!" Dor said. "I'm sure they aren't used to centaurs." "I would have to walk in to use the library," Arnolde pointed out. "Fortunately, I anticipated such an impediment, so obtained a few helpful spells from our repository. We centaurs do not normally practice inherent magic, but we do utilize particular enchantments on an ad hoc basis. I have found them invaluable when on field trips to the wilder regions of Xanth." He checked through his bag of spells, much the way Irene checked through her seeds. "I have with me assorted spells for invisibility, inaudibility, untouchability, and so forth. The golem and I can traverse the city unperceived." "What about the ogre?" Dor asked. "He can't exactly merge with the local population either." Arnolde frowned. "Him, too, I suppose," he agreed distastefully. "However, there is one attendant liability inherent in this process—" "I won't be able to detect you either," Dor finished. "Precisely. Some one of our number must exist openly, for these spells make the handling of books awkward; our hands would pass right through the pages. My ambience of magic should be unimpaired, of course, and we could remain with you—but you would have to do all the research unassisted." "He'll never make it," Irene said. "She's right," Dor said. "I'm just not much of a scholar. I'd mess it up." "Allow me to cogitate," Arnolde said. He closed his eyes and stroked his chin reflectively. For a worried moment Dor thought the centaur was going to be sick, then realized that he had the wrong word in mind. Cogitate actually referred to thinking. "Perhaps I have an alternative," Arnolde said. "You could obtain the assistance of a Mundane scholar, a qualified researcher, perhaps an archivist. You could pay him one of the gold coins you have hoarded, or perhaps a diamond; I believe either would have value in any frame of Mundania." "Uh, I guess so," Dor said doubtfully. "I tell you, even with help, he'll foul it up," Irene said. She seemed to have forgotten her earlier compliments on Dor's performance. That was one of the little things about her—selective memory. "You're the one who should do the research, Arnolde." "I can only, as it were, look over his shoulder," the centaur said. "It would certainly help if I could direct the manner he selects references and turns the pages, as I am a gifted reader with a fine memory. He would not have to comprehend the material. But unless I were to abort the imperceptibility spells, which I doubt very much would be wise since I have no duplicates—" "There's a way, maybe," Grundy said. "I could step outside the magic aisle. Then he could see me and hear me, and I could tell him to turn the page, or whatever." "And any Mundanes in the area would pop their eyeballs, looking at the living doll," Irene said. "If anyone does it, I'm the one." "So they can pop their eyes looking up your skirt," the golem retorted, miffed. "That may indeed be the solution," Arnolde said. "Now wait a minute!" Irene cried. "He means the messenger service," Dor told her gently. "Of course," the centaur said. "Since we have ascertained that the aisle is narrow, it would be feasible to stand quite close while Dor remains well within the forward extension." Dor considered, and it did seem to be the best course. He had somehow thought he could just go into Mundania, follow King Trent's trail by querying the terrain, and reach the King without much trouble. This temporal discontinuity, as the centaur put it, was hard to understand and harder to deal with, and the vicarious research the centaur proposed seemed fraught with hangups. But what other way was there? "We'll try it," he agreed. "In the morning." They settled down for the night, their second in Mundania. Smash and Grundy slept instantly; Dor and Irene had more trouble, and Arnolde seemed uncomfortably wide awake. "We are approaching direct contact with Mundane civilization," the centaur said. "In a certain sense this represents the culmination of an impossible dream for me, almost justifying the personal damnation my magic talent represents. Yet I have had so many confusing intimations, I hardly know what to expect. This city could be too primitive to have a proper library. The denizens could for all we know practice cannibalism. There are so many imponderabilities." "I don't care what they practice," Irene said. "Just so long as I find my father." "Perhaps we should query the surroundings in the morning," Arnolde said thoughtfully, "to ascertain whether suitable facilities exist here, before we venture any farther. Certainly we do not wish to chance discovery by the Mundanes unless we have excellent reason." "And we should ask where the best Mundane archivist is," Irene agreed. Dor drew a word in the dirt with one finger: ONESTI. He contemplated it morosely. "This is relevant?" the centaur inquired, glancing at the word. "It's what King Trent told me," Dor said. "If ever I was in doubt, to proceed with honesty." "Honesty?" Arnolde asked, his brow wrinkling at the dirt. "I think about that a lot when I'm in doubt," Dor said. "I don't like deceiving people, even Mundanes." Irene smiled tiredly. "Arnolde, it's the way Dor spells the word. He is the world's champion poor speller. O N E S T I: Honesty." "ONESTI," the centaur repeated, removing his spectacles to rub his eyes. "I believe I perceive it now. A fitting signature for a King." "King Trent's a great King," Dor agreed. "I know his advice will pull us through somehow." Arnolde seemed almost to smile, as if finding Dor's attitude peculiar. "I will sleep on that," the centaur said. And he did, lying down on the dirt-scratched word. In the morning, after some problems with food and natural functions in this semipublic locale, they set it up. The centaur dug out his collection of spells, each one sealed in a glassy little globe, and Dor stepped outside the aisle of magic while the spells were invoked. First the party became inaudible, then invisible; it looked as if the spot were empty. Dor gave them time to get through the unfeeling spell, then walked back onto the lot. He heard, saw, and felt nothing. "But I can smell you," he remarked. "Arnolde has a slight equine odor, and Smash smells like a monster, and Irene is wearing perfume. Better clean yourselves up before we get into a building." Soon the smells faded, and after a moment Irene appeared, a short distance away. "Can you see me now?" "I see you and hear you," Dor said. "Oh, good. I didn't know how far out the magic went. I'm still the same to me." She stepped toward him and vanished. "You've gone again," Dor said, hastening to the spot where she had been. "Can you perceive me?" "Hey, you're overlapping me!" she protested, appearing right up against him, so that he almost stumbled. "Well, I can't perceive you," he said. "I mean, now I can, but I couldn't before. Can you see the others when you're outside the aisle?" She looked. "They're gone! We can see and hear you all the time, but now—" "So you'll know when I can see you by when you can't see them." She leaned forward, and her face disappeared, reminding him of the Gorgon. Then she drew back. "I could see them then. I'm really in the enchantment, aren't I?" "You're enchanting," he agreed. She smiled and leaned forward to kiss him—but her face disappeared and he felt nothing. "Now I have to go find a library and a good archivist," he said, disgruntled, as she reappeared. "If you're with me, stay away from me." She laughed. "I'm with you. Just don't try to catch me outside the aisle." And of course that was what he should have done, if he really wanted to kiss her. And he did want to—but he didn't want to admit it. She walked well to the side of him, staying clear of the enchantment. "No sense you getting lost." They walked on into the city. There were many cars in the streets, all zooming rapidly to the intersections, where they screeched to stops, waited a minute with irate growls and constant ejections of smoke from their posteriors, then zoomed in packs to the next intersections. They seemed to have only two speeds: zoom and stop. There were people inside the cars, exactly the way Grundy had described with the demon vehicles, but they never got out. It was as if the people had been swallowed whole and were now being digested. Because the cars were as large as centaurs and moved at a constant gallop when not stopped, Dor was wary of them and tried to avoid them. But it was impossible; he had to cross the road sometime. He remembered how the nefarious Gap Dragon of Xanth lurked for those foolish enough to cross the bottom of the Gap; these cars seemed all too similar. Maybe there were some that had not yet consumed people and were traveling hungry, waiting to catch someone like Dor. He saw one car stopped by the side of the street with its mouth wide open like that of a dragon; he avoided it nervously. The strangest thing about it was that its guts seemed to be all in that huge mouth—steaming tubes and tendons and a disk-shaped tongue. Oddest of all, it had no teeth. Maybe that was why it took so long to digest the people. He came to a corner. "How do I get across?" he asked. "You wait for a light to stop the traffic," the street informed him with a contemptuous air of dust and car fumes. "Then you run-don't-walk across before they clip you, if you're lucky. Where have you been all your life?" "In another realm," Dor said. He saw one of the lights the street described. It hung above the intersection and wore several little visors pointing each way. All sorts of colors flashed malevolently from it, in all sorts of directions. Dor couldn't understand how it made the car stop. Maybe the lights had some kind of stun-spell, or whatever it was called here. He played it safe by asking the light to tell him when it was proper to cross. "Now," the light said, flashing green from one face and red from another. Dor started across. A car honked like a sea monster and squealed like a sea-monster victim, almost running over Dor's leading foot. "Not that way, idiot!" the light exclaimed, flashing an angry red. "The other way! With the green, not the red! Haven't you ever crossed a street before?" "Never," Dor admitted. Irene had disappeared; she must have re-entered the magic aisle to consult with the others. Maybe she found it safer within the spell zone; apparently the cars were unable to threaten her there. "Wait till I tell you, then cross the way I tell you," the light said, blinking erratically. "I don't want any blood in my intersection!" Dor waited humbly. "Now," the light said. "Walk straight ahead, keeping an even pace. Fast. You don't have all day, only fifteen seconds." "But there's a car charging me!" Dor protested. "It will stop," the light assured him. "I shall change to red at the last possible moment and force it to scorch rubber. I get a deep pleasure from that sort of thing." Nervously, Dor stepped out onto the street again. The car zoomed terrifyingly close, then squealed to a stop a handspan's distance from Dor's shaking body. "Shook you up that time, you damned pedestrian," the car gloated through its cloud of scorched rubber. "If it hadn't been for that blinking light, I'd a had you. You creeps shouldn't be allowed on the road." "But how can I cross the street if I'm not allowed on the road?" Dor asked. "That's your problem," the car huffed. "See, I can time them perfectly," the light said with satisfaction. "I get hundreds of them each day. No one gets through my intersection without paying his tax in gas and rubber." "Go blow a bulb!" the car growled at the light. "Go soak your horn!" the light flashed back. "Some day we cars will have a revolution and establish a new axle," the car said darkly. "We'll smash all you restrictive lights and have a genuine free-enterprise system." "You really crack me up," the light said disdainfully. "Without me, you'd have no discipline at all." Dor walked on. Another car zoomed up, and Dor lost his nerve and leaped out of the way. "Missed him!" the car complained. "I haven't scored in a week!" "Get out of my intersection!" the light screamed. "You never stopped! You never burned rubber! You're supposed to waste gas for the full pause before you go through! How do you expect me to maintain a decent level of pollution here if you don't cooperate?" "Oh, go jam your circuits!" the car roared, moving on through. "Police! Police!" the light flashed. "That criminal car just ran the light! Rogue car! Rogue car!" But now the other cars, perceiving that one was getting away with open defiance, hastened to do likewise. The intersection filled with snarling vehicles that crashed merrily into each other. There was the crackle of beginning fire. Then the magic aisle moved out of the light's range, and it was silent. Dor was relieved; he didn't want to attract attention. Irene reappeared. "You almost did it that time, Dor! Why don't you quit fooling with lights and get on to the library?" "I'm trying to!" Dor snapped. "Where is the library?" he asked the sidewalk. "You don't need a library, you clumsy oaf," the walk said. "You need a bodyguard." "Just answer my question." The perversity of the inanimate seemed worse than ever, here in Mundania. Perhaps it was because the objects here had never been tamed by magic. "Three blocks south, two east," the walk said grudgingly. "What's a block?" "Is this twerp real?" the walk asked rhetorically. "Answer!" Dor snapped. And in due course he obtained the necessary definition. A block was one of the big squares formed by the crisscrossing roads. "Is there an archivist there?" "A what?" "A researcher, someone who knows a lot." "Oh, sure. The best in the state. He walks here all the time. Strange old coot." "That sidewalk sure understands you," Irene remarked smugly. Dor was silent. Irene was safe from any remarks the sidewalk might make about her legs because she was outside the magic aisle. Dor knew Arnolde was keeping up with him, because his magic was operating. If Irene stepped within that region of magic, she would vanish. So she had the advantage and could snipe with impunity, for now. A small group of Mundanes walked toward them, three men and two women. Their attire was strange. The men wore knots of something about their necks, almost choking them, and their shoes shone like mirrors. The women seemed to be walking on stilts. Irene continued blithely along, passing them. Dor hung back, curious about Mundane reactions to a citizen of Xanth. The two females seemed to pay no attention, but all three males paused to look back at Irene. "Look at that creature!" one murmured. "What world is she from?" "Whatever world it is, I want to go there!" another said. "Must be a foreign student. I haven't seen legs like that in three years." "Her clothing is three centuries out of fashion, if it ever was in fashion," one of the women remarked, her nose elevated. Evidently she had after all paid attention. It was amazing what women could notice while seeming not to. Her own legs were unremarkable, though it occurred to Dor that the stilt-shoes might be responsible for deforming them. "Men have no taste," the other woman said. "They prefer harem girls." "Yeah . . ." the third man said with a slow smile. "I'd like to have her number." "Over my dead body!" the second woman said. The Mundanes went on, their strange conversation fading from Dor's hearing. Dor proceeded thoughtfully. If Irene were that different from Mundanes, what about himself? No one had reacted to him, yet he was dressed as differently from the males as Irene was from the females. He pondered that as he and Irene continued along the streets. Maybe the Mundanes had been so distracted by Irene's legs that they had skipped over Dor. That was understandable. The library was a palatial edifice with an exceedingly strange entrance. The door went round and round without ever quite opening. Dor stood near it, uncertain how to proceed. Mundane people passed him, not noticing him at all despite his evident difference. That was part of the magic, he realized suddenly, his contemplations finally fitting an aspect of the Mundane mystery together. He seemed to share their culture. Should he step outside the magic aisle, he would stand out as a complete foreigner, as Irene had. Fortunately, she was a pretty girl, so she could get away with it; he would not have that advantage. At the moment, Irene was not in view; perhaps she had been more aware of the Mundane reaction, and preferred to avoid repetition. But as the Mundanes cleared the vicinity, she reappeared. "Arnolde believes that is a revolving door," she said. "There are a few obscure references to them in the texts on Mundania. Probably all you have to do is—" She saw another Mundane approaching, and hastily stepped into invisibility. The Mundane walked to the door, put forth a hand, and pushed on a panel of the door. A chamber swung inward, and the man followed the compartment around. So simple, once Dor saw it in action! He walked boldly up to the door and pushed through. It worked like a charm—that is, almost like a natural phenomenon of Xanth—passing him into the building. He was now in a large room in which there were many couches and tables, and the walls were lined with levels of books. This was a library, all right. Now all he needed to do was locate the excellent researcher who was supposed to be here. Maybe in the history section. Dor walked across the room, toward a wall of books. He could check those and see if any related. It shouldn't be too hard to— He paused, aware that people were staring at him. What was the matter? An older woman approached him, her face formed into stern lines. "Xf ibwf b esftt-dpef ifsf," she said severely, her gaze traveling disapprovingly from his unkempt hair to his dust-scuffed sandaled feet. It seemed she disapproved of his attire. After a moment of confusion, Dor realized he had stepped beyond the magic aisle and was now being seen without the cushion of enchantment. Arnolde had been correct; Dor could not accomplish anything by himself. What had happened to the centaur? Dor looked back toward the door— and saw Irene beckoning him frantically. He hurried back to her, the Mundane woman following. "Xf pqfsbuf a respectable library here," the Mundane was saying. "We expect a suitable demeanor—" Dor turned to face her. "Yes?" The woman stopped, nonplused. "Oh—I see you are properly dressed. I must have mistaken you for someone else." She retreated, embarrassed. Dor's clothing had not changed. Only the woman's perception of it had, thanks to the magic. "Arnolde can't get through the spinning door," Irene said. So that was why Dor had left the aisle! He had walked well beyond the door. Of course those small chambers could not accommodate the mass of the centaur! "Maybe there's another door," Dor suggested. "We could walk around the building—" Irene vanished, then reappeared. "Yes, Arnolde says the spell fuzzes the boundaries of things somewhat, so his hands pass through Mundane objects, but his whole body mass is just too much to push through a solid Mundane wall. He might make it through a window, though." Dor went back out the rotating door, then walked around the building. In the back was a double door that opened wide enough to admit a car. Dor walked through this and past some men who were stacking crates of books. "Hey, kid, you lost?" one called. It had not taken him long to progress from "King" to "kid"! "I am looking for the archives," Dor said nervously. "Oh, sure. The stacks. Third door on your left." "Thank you." Dor went to the door and opened it wide, taking his time to pass through so that the others could get clear. He smelled the centaur and ogre, faintly, so knew they were with him. Now they were in a region of long narrow passages between shelves loaded with boxes. Dor had no idea how to proceed, and wasn't certain the centaur could fit within these passages, but in a moment Irene appeared and informed him that Arnolde was right at home here. "But it would be better to consult with a competent archivist, he says," she concluded. "There is one here," he said. "I asked." Then another thought came. "But suppose he sics the Mundane authorities on us? He may not understand our need." "Arnolde says academics aren't like that. If there is a good one here, his scientific curiosity—I think that's what they call magic here—will keep him interested. Check in that little office; that looks like an archivist's cubby." Reluctantly, Dor looked. He was in luck, of what kind he was not sure. There was a middle-aged, bespectacled man poring over a pile of papers. "Excuse me, sir—would you like to do some research?" Dor asked. The man looked up, blinking. "Of what nature?" "Uh, it's a long story. I'm trying to find a King, and I don't know where or when he is." The man removed his spectacles and rubbed his tired eyes. "That would seem to be something of a challenge. What is the name of the King, and of his Kingdom?" "King Trent of Xanth." The man stood up and squeezed out of his cubby. He was fairly small and stooped, with fading hair, and he moved slowly. He reminded Dor of Arnolde in obscure ways. He located a large old tome, took it down, dusted it off, set it on a small table, and turned the brittle pages. "That designation does not seem to be listed." Irene appeared. "He would not be a King in Mundania." The scholar squinted at her with mild surprise. "My dear, I can not comprehend a word you are saying." "Uh, she's from another land," Dor said quickly. Since Irene had to stand outside the magic aisle in order to be seen and heard, the magic translation effect was not operative for her. Since Dor had been raised in the same culture, he had no trouble understanding her. It was an interesting distinction. He, Dor, could understand both the others, and both seemed to be speaking the same language, but the two could not understand each other. Magic kept coming up with new wrinkles that perplexed him. The scholar pondered. "Oh—she is associated with a motion picture company? This is research for a historical re-creation?" "Not exactly," Dor said. "She's King Trent's daughter." "Oh, it is a contemporary Kingdom! I must get a more recent text." "No, it is a medieval one," Dor said. "Uh, that is—well, King Trent is in another time, we think." The scholar paused thoughtfully. "The Kingdom you are re-creating, of course. I believe I understand." He looked again at Irene. "Females certainly have adequate limbs in that realm." "What's he saying?" Irene demanded. "That you have nice legs," Dor told her with a certain mild malice. She ignored that. "What about my father?" "Not listed in this book. I think well have to try another tack." The scholar's eyes shifted from Irene's legs to Dor's face. "This is very odd. You address her in English, and she seems to understand, but she replies in an alien tongue." "It's complicated to explain," Dor said. "I'd better check with Arnolde," Irene said, and vanished. The Mundane scholar removed his spectacles and cleaned them carefully with a bit of tissue paper. He returned them to his face just in time to see Irene reappear. "Yes, that's definitely better," he murmured. "Arnolde says we'll have to use some salient identifying trait to locate my father or mother." Irene said. "There may be a historical reference." "Exactly what language is that?" the scholar asked, again fixing on Irene's legs. He might be old and academic, but he evidently had not forgotten what was what in female appearance. "Xanthian, I guess," Dor said. "She says we should look for some historical reference to her parents, because of special traits they have." "And what would these traits be?" "Well, King Trent transforms people, and Queen Iris is mistress of illusion." "Idiot!" Irene snapped. "Don't tell him about the magic!" "I don't quite understand," the scholar said. "What manner of transformation, what mode of illusion?" "Well, it doesn't work in Mundania," Dor said awkwardly. "Surely you realize that the laws of physics are identical the world over," the scholar said. "Anything that works in the young lady's country will work elsewhere." "Not magic," Dor said, and realized he was just confusing things more. "How dumb can you get?" Irene demanded. "I'm checking with Arnolde." She vanished again. This time the scholar blinked more emphatically. "Strange girl!" "She's funny that way," Dor agreed weakly. The scholar walked to the spot Irene had vacated. "Tubhf jmmvtjpo?" he inquired. Oh, no! He was outside the magic aisle now, so the magic no longer made his language align with Dor's. Dor could not do anything about this; the centaur would have to move. Irene reappeared right next to the scholar. Evidently she hadn't been paying attention, for she should have been able to see him while within the magic ambience. "Oh—you're here!" she exclaimed. "Bnbajoh!" the scholar said. "J nvtu jorvjsf—" Then the centaur moved. Irene vanished and the scholar became comprehensible. ". . . exactly how you perform that trick—" He paused. "Oops, you're gone again." Irene reappeared farther down the hall. "Arnolde says we'll have to tell him," she announced. "About the magic and everything. Thanks to your bungling." "Really, this is amazing!" the scholar said. "Well, I'll have to tell you something you may find hard to believe," Dor said. "At this stage, I'm inclined to believe in magic itself!" "Yes. Xanth is a land of magic." "In which people disappear and reappear at will? I think I would prefer to believe that than to conclude I am losing my sight." "Well, some do disappear. That's not Irene's talent, though." "That's not the young lady's ability? Then why is she doing it?" "She's actually stepping in and out of a magic aisle." "A magic aisle?" "Generated by a centaur." The scholar smiled wanly. "I fear you have the advantage of me. You can imagine nonsense faster than I can assimilate it." Dor saw that the scholar did not believe him. "I'll show you my own magic, if you like," he said. He pointed to the open tome on the table. "Book, speak to the man." "Why should I bother?" the book demanded. "Ventriloquism!" the scholar exclaimed. "I must confess you are very good at it." "What did you call me?" the book demanded. "Would you do that again—with your mouth closed?" the scholar asked Dor. Dor closed his mouth. The book remained silent. "I rather thought so," the scholar said. "Thought what, four-eyes?" the book asked. Startled, the scholar looked down at it, then back at Dor. "But your mouth was closed, I'm sure." "It's magic," Dor said. "I can make any inanimate object talk." "Let's accept for the moment that this is true. You are telling me that this King you are searching for can also work magic?" "Right. Only he can't do it in Mundania, so I guess it doesn't count." "Because he has no magic centaur with him?" "Yes." "I would like to see this centaur." "He's protected by an invisibility spell. So the Mundanes won't bother us." "This centaur is a scholar?" "Yes. An archivist, like yourself." "Then he is the one to whom I should talk." "But the spell—" "Abate the spell! Bring your centaur scholar forth. Otherwise I can not help you." "I don't think he'd want to do that. It would be hard to get safely out of here without that enchantment, and we have no duplicate invisibility spell." The scholar walked back to his cubby. "Mind you, I believe in magic no more than in the revelations of a hallucination, but I am willing to help you if you meet me halfway. Desist your parlor tricks, show me your scholar, and I will work with him to fathom the information you desire. I don't care how fanciful his outward form may be, provided he has a genuine mind. The fact that you find it necessary to dazzle me with ventriloquism, a lovely costumed girl who vanishes, and a mythological narrative suggests that there is very little substance to your claim, and you are wasting my time. I ask you to produce your scholar or depart my presence." "Uh, Arnolde," Dor said. "I know it'll be awful hard to get out of here without the spells, but maybe we could wait till night. We really need the information, and—" Abruptly the centaur appeared, facing the scholar's cubby. The ogre and golem stood behind him. "I agree," Arnolde said. The scholar turned about. He blinked. "These are rare costumes, I admit." Arnolde strode forward, his barrel barely clearing the shelves on either side, extending his hand. "I certainly do not blame you for being impatient with the uninitiate," he said. "You have excellent facilities here, and I know your time is valuable." The scholar shook the hand, seeming more reassured by Arnolde's spectacles and demeanor than confused by his form. "What is your specialty?" "Alien archaeology—but of course there is a great deal of routine work and overlapping of chores." "There certainly is!" the scholar agreed. "The nuisances I have to endure here—" The two fell into a technical dialogue that soon left Dor behind. They became more animated as they sized up each other's minds and information. There was now no doubt they were similar types. Irene, bored, grew a cocoa plant in the hall, and shared the hot cups of liquid with Dor, Smash, and Grundy. They knew it was important that Arnolde establish a good rapport so that they could gain the scholar's cooperation and make progress on their request. Time passed. The two scholars delved into ancient tomes, debated excruciatingly fine points, questioned Dor closely about the hints King Trent had given him in both person and vision, and finally wound down to an animated close. The Mundane scholar accepted a mug of cocoa, relaxing at last. "I believe we have it," he said. "Will I see you again, centaur?" "Surely so, sir! I am able to travel in Mundania, am fascinated by your comprehensive history, and am presently, as it were, between positions." "Your compatriots found your magic as intolerable in you as mine would find a similar propensity in me! I shall not be able to tell anyone what I have learned this day, lest I, too, lose my position and possibly even be institutionalized. Imagine conversing with a centaur, ogre, and tiny golem! How I should love to do a research paper on your fantastic Land of Xanth, but it would hardly be believable." "You could write a book and call it a story," Grundy suggested. "And Arnolde could write one about Mundania." Both scholars looked pleased. Neither had thought of such a simple expedient. "But do you know where my father is?" Irene demanded. "Yes, I believe we do," Arnolde said. "King Trent left a message for us, we believe." "How could he leave a message?" she demanded. "He left it with Dor. That, and the other hints we had, such as the fact that he was going to a medieval region, in the mountains near a black body of water. There are, my friend informs me, many places in Mundania that fit the description. So we assume it is literal; either the water itself is black, or it is called black. As it happens, there is in Mundania a large body of water called the Black Sea. Many great rivers empty into it; great mountain ranges surround it. But that is not sufficient to identify this as the specific locale we seek; it merely makes it one possibility among many." Arnolde smiled. "We spent a good deal of time on geography. As it happens, there was historically a confluence of A, B, and K people in that vicinity in medieval times—at least that is so when their names are rendered into Xanth dialect. The Avars, the Bulgars, and the Khazars. So it does seem to fit. Everything you have told us seems to fit." "But that isn't enough!" Dor cried. "How can you be sure you have the place, the time?" "Honesty," Arnolde said. "O N E S T I." He pointed to a spot on an open book. "This, we believe, is the unique special hint King Trent gave you, to enable you and only you to locate him in an emergency." Dor looked. It was an atlas, with a map of some strange Mundane land. On the map was a place labeled Onesti. "There is only one such place in the world," Arnolde said. "It has to be King Trent's message to you. No one else would grasp the significance of that unique nomenclature." Dor recalled the intensity with which King Trent had spoken of honesty, as if there had been a separate meaning there. He remembered how well aware the King had been of Dor's kind of spelling. It seemed no one else spelled it the obvious way, onesti. "But if that's been there—that name, there in your maps and things— for centuries—that means King Trent never came back! We can't rescue him, because then the name would go." "Not necessarily," Arnolde said. "The place-name does not depend on his presence. We should be able to rescue him without disturbing it. At any rate, we are never certain of the paradoxes of time. We shall simply have to go to that location and that time, circa AD 650, and try to find him." "But suppose it's wrong?" Irene asked worriedly. "Suppose he isn't there?" "Then we shall return here and do more research," Arnolde said. "I intend to visit here again anyway, and my friend Ichabod would like to visit Xanth. There will be no trouble about that, I assure you." "Yes. You will be welcome here," the Mundane scholar agreed. "You have a fine and arcane mind." "For the first time," Arnolde continued, "I look upon my exile from Centaur Isle and my assumption of an obscene talent with a certain equanimity. I have not, it seems, been excluded from my calling; my horizons have been inordinately expanded." "And mine," Ichabod agreed. "I must confess my contemporaneous existence was becoming tiresome, though I did not recognize this until this day." Now the scholar sounded just like Arnolde. Perhaps some obscure wrinkle of fate had operated to bring these two together. Did luck or fate really operate in Mundania? Perhaps they did, when the magic aisle was present. "The prospect of researching in a completely new and mystical terrain is immensely appealing; it renovates my outlook." He paused. "Ah, would there by any chance be individuals of the female persuasion remotely resembling . . .?" His glance flicked guiltily to Irene's legs. "Nymphs galore," Grundy said. "A dime a dozen." "Oh, you employ contemporaneous currency?" the scholar asked, surprised. "Currency?" Dor asked blankly. "A dime is a coin of small denomination here." Dor smiled. "No, a dime is a tiny object that causes things passing over it to come to a sudden stop. When it has functioned this way twelve times, its enchantment wears out. Hence our saying—" "How marvelous. I wonder whether one of my own dimes would perform similarly there." "That's the idea," Grundy said. "Toss it in front of a troupe of gamboling nymphs, and grab the first one it stops. Nymphs don't have much brains, but they sure have legs." He moved farther away from Irene, who showed signs of kicking. "Oh, I can hardly wait to commence research in Xanth!" the scholar exclaimed. "As it happens, I have a dime ready." He brought out a tiny silver coin, his gaze once again touching on Irene's limbs. "I wonder..." Irene frowned. "Sometimes I wonder just how badly I really want to rescue my folks. I'll be lucky if my legs don't get blistered from all the attention." But as usual, she did not seem completely displeased. "Let's be on our way; I don't care what you do, once my father is back in Xanth." Arnolde and Ichabod shook hands, two very similar creatures. On impulse, Dor brought out one of the gold coins he had so carefully saved from the pirate's treasure. "Please accept this, sir, as a token of our appreciation for your help." He pressed it on the scholar. The man hefted the coin. "That's solid gold?" he exclaimed. "I believe it is a genuine Spanish doubloon! I can not accept it." The centaur interceded. "Please do accept it, Ichabod. Dor is temporary King of Xanth; to decline would be construed as an offense to the crown." "But the value—" "Let's trade coins," Dor said, discovering a way though. "Your dime for my doubloon. Then it is an even exchange." "An even exchange!" the scholar exclaimed. "In no way can this be considered—" "Dimes are very precious in Xanth," Arnolde said. "Gold has little special value. Please acquiesce." "Maybe a nymph would stop on a doubloon, too," Grundy suggested. "She certainly would!" Ichabod agreed. "But not because of any magic. Women here are much attracted to wealth." "Please," Irene put in, smiling beguilingly. Dor knew she only wanted to get moving on the search for her father, but her intercession was effective. "In that case, I will exchange with you, with pleasure, King Dor," the scholar agreed, giving Dor his dime. "I only meant to protest that your coin was far too valuable for whatever service I might have provided, when in fact it was a pleasure providing it anyway." "Nothing's too valuable to get my father back," Irene said. She leaned forward and kissed Ichabod on the cheek. The man froze as if he had glimpsed the Gorgon, an astonished smile on his face. It was obvious he had not been kissed by many pretty girls in his secluded lifetime. It was now early evening. Ichabod delved into assorted cubbies and produced shrouds to conceal the bodies of the centaur and ogre. Then Arnolde and Smash walked out of the library in tandem, looking like two big workmen in togas, moving a covered crate between them. It turned out to be almost as good concealment as the invisibility spell; no one paid attention to them. They were on their way back to Xanth.
(Xanth 4) Centaur Aisle	Piers Anthony	[ "fantasy", "puns" ]	[]	Onesti's Policy	They did not go all the way back home. They trekked only to the northwest tip of Xanth, where the isthmus connected it to Mundania. Once they were back in magic territory, Irene set about replenishing her stock of seeds. Smash knocked down a jellybarrel tree, consumed the jelly, and fashioned the swollen trunk into a passable boat. Arnolde watched the terrain, making periodic forays into Mundania, just far enough to see whether it had changed. Dor accompanied him, questioning the sand. By the description of people the sand had recently seen, they were able to guess at the general place and time in Mundania. For the change was continuous. Once a person from Xanth entered Mundania, his framework was fixed until he returned; but anyone who followed him might enter a different aspect of Mundania. This was like missing one boat and boarding the next, Arnolde explained; the person on the first boat could return, but the person on land could not catch a particular boat that had already departed. Thus King Trent had gone, they believed, to a place called "Europe," in a time called "Medieval." Dor's party had gone to a place called "America," in a time called "Modern." The shifting of places and times seemed random; probably there was a pattern to the changes that they were unable to comprehend. They simply had to locate the combination they wanted and pass through that "window" before it changed. Arnolde concluded, from their observations, that any given window lasted from five minutes to an hour, and that it was possible to hold a window open longer by having a person stand at the border; it seemed the window couldn't quite close while it was in use. Perhaps it was like the revolving door in the Mundanian library, whose turning could be temporarily stopped by a person in it—until some other person needed to use it. On the third day it became tedious. Irene's seed collection was complete and she was restive; Smash had finished his boat and stocked it with supplies. Grundy had made himself a nest in the bow, from which he eavesdropped on the gossip of passing marine life. Arnolde and Dor walked down the beach. "What have you seen lately?" Dor inquired routinely of the same-yet-different patch of sand. "A man in a spacesuit," the sand replied. "He had little antennae sprouting from his head, like an ant, and he could talk to his friends without making a sound." That didn't sound like anyone Dor was looking for. Some evil Magician must have enchanted the man, perhaps trying to create a new composite-species. They turned about and returned to Xanth. This surely was not their window. The sea changed color frequently. It had been reddish the first time they came here, and reddish when they returned, for they had been locked into that particular aspect of Mundania. But thereafter it had shifted to blue, yellow, green, and white. Now it was orange, changing to purple. When it was solid purple, they walked west again. "What have you seen lately?" Dor asked once more. "A cavegirl swimming," the sand said. "She was sort of fat, but oooh, didn't she have—" They walked east again, depressed. "I wish there were a more direct way to do this," Arnolde said. "I have been striving to analyze the pattern, but it has eluded me, perhaps because of insufficient data." "I know it's not much of a life we have brought you into," Dor said. "I wish there had been some other way—" "On the contrary, it is a fascinating life and a challenging puzzle," the centaur demurred. "It is akin to the riddles of archaeology, where one must have patience and fortune in equal measure. We merely must gather more data, whether it takes a day or a year." "A year!" Dor cried, horrified. "Surely it will be shorter," Arnolde said reassuringly. It was obvious that he had a far greater store of patience than Dor did. As they re-entered Xanth, the sea turned black. "Black!" Dor exclaimed. "Could that be—?" "It is possible," Arnolde agreed, reining his own excitement with the caution of experience. "We had better alert the remainder of our company." "Grundy, get Smash and Irene to the boat," Dor called. "We just might be close." "More likely another false alarm," the golem grumbled. But he scampered off to fetch the other two. When they reached their usual spot of questioning, Dor noticed that there was a large old broad-leaved tree that hadn't been there before. This was certainly a different locale. But that in itself did not mean much; the landscape did shift with the Mundane aspects, sometimes dramatically. It was not just time but geography that changed; some aspects were flat and barren, while others were raggedly mountainous. The only thing all had in common was the beach line, with the sea to the south and the terrain to the north. Arnolde was constantly intrigued by the assorted significances of this, but Dor did not pay much attention. "What have you seen lately?" he asked the sand. "Nothing much since the King and his moll walked by," the sand said. "Oh." Dor turned to trek back to the magic section. The centaur paused. "Did it say—?" Then it sank in. Excitement raced along Dor's nerves. "King Trent and Queen Iris?" "I suppose. They were sort of old." "I believe we have our window at last!" Arnolde said. "Go back and alert the others; I shall hold the window open." Dor ran back east, his heart pounding harder than warranted by the exertion. Did he dare believe? "We've found it!" he cried. "Move out now!" They dived into the boat. Smash poled it violently forward. Then the ogre's effort diminished. Dor looked, and saw that Smash was striving hard but accomplishing little. "Oh—we're out of the magic of Xanth, and not yet in the magic aisle," he said. "Come on—we've all got to help." Dor and Irene leaned over the boat on either side and paddled desperately with their hands, and slowly the boat moved onward. They crawled up parallel to the centaur. "All aboard!" Dor cried, exhilarated. Arnolde trotted out through the shallow water and climbed aboard with difficulty, rocking the boat. Some sea water slopped in. The craft was sturdy, as anything crafted by an ogre was bound to be, but still reeked of lime jelly, especially where it had been wet down. The centaur stood in the center, facing forward; Irene sat in the front, her fair green hair trailing back in the breeze. It had faded momentarily when they were between magics, just now; perhaps that had helped give Dor the hint of the problem. It remained the easiest way to tell the state of the world around them. Dor settled near the rear of the boat, and Smash poled vigorously from the stern. Now that they were within the magic aisle, the ogre's strength was full, and the boat was lively. The black waves coursed rapidly past. "I wish I had known this was all we had to do to locate King Trent," Dor said. "We could have saved ourselves the trip into Modern Mundania." "By no means," Arnolde protested, swishing his tail. "We might have discovered this window, true; but each window opens onto an entire Mundane world. We should soon have lost the trail and ourselves and been unable to rescue anyone. As it is, we know we are looking for Onesti and we know where it is; this will greatly facilitate our operation." The centaur paused. "Besides which, I am most gratified to have met Ichabod." So their initial excursion did make sense, after all. "What sort of people do you see here?" Dor asked the water. "Tough people with baggy clothes and swords and bows," the water said. "They're not much on the water, though; not the way the Greeks were." "Those are probably the Bulgars," Arnolde said. "They should have passed this way in the past few decades, according to Ichabod." "Who are the Bulgars?" Irene asked. Now that they were actually on the trail of her lost father, she was much more interested in details. "This is complex to explain. Ichabod gave me some detail on it, but I may not have the whole story." "If they're people my father met—and if we have to meet them, too—I want to know all about them." Her face assumed her determined look. The boat was moving well, for the ogre's strength was formidable. The shoreline stretched ahead, curving in and out, with inlets and bays. "We do have a journey of several days ahead of us," the centaur said. "Time will doubtless weigh somewhat ponderously on our hands." He took a didactic breath and started in on his historical narrative, while the ogre scowled, uninterested, and Grundy settled down in his nest to sleep. But Dor and Irene paid close attention. In essence it was this: about three centuries before this period, there had been a huge Mundane empire in this region, called—as Dor understood it—Roam, perhaps because it spread so far. But after a long time this empire had grown corrupt and weak. Then from the great inland mass to the east had thrust a formerly quiescent tribe, the Huns, perhaps short for Hungries because of their appetite for power, pushing other tribes before them. These tribes had overrun the Roaming Empire, destroying a large part of it. But when the Hungry chief, Attaboy, died of indigestion, they were defeated and driven partway back east, to the shore of this Black Sea, the very color of their mood. They fought among themselves for a time, as people in a black mood do, then reunited and called themselves the Bulgars. But the Buls were driven out of their new country by another savage tribe of Turks—no relation to the turkey oaks—called the Khazars. Some Buls fled north and some fled west—and this was the region the western ones had settled, here at the western edge of the Black Sea. They couldn't go any farther because another savage tribe was there, the Avars. The Avars had a huge empire in eastern Europe, but now it was declining, especially under the onslaught of the Khazars. At the moment, circa Mundane AD 650—the number referred to some Mundane religion to which none of these parties belonged—there was an uneasy balance in this region between the three powers, the Avars, Bulgars, and Khazars, with the Khazars dominant. Somehow this was too complex for Dor to follow. All these strange tribes and happenings and numbers—the intricacies of Mundania were far more complicated than the simple magic events of Xanth! Easier to face down griffins and dragons than Avars and Khazars; at least the dragons were sensible creatures. "But what has this to do with my father?" Irene demanded. "Which tribe did he go to trade with?" "None of the above," the centaur said. "This is merely background. It would be too dangerous for us to deal with such savages. But we believe there is a small Kingdom, maybe a Gothic remnant, or some older indigenous people, who have retained nominal independence in the Carpathian Mountains, with a separate language and culture. They happen to be at the boundary between the Avars, Bulgars, and Khazars, protected to a degree because no one empire can make a move there without antagonizing the other two, and also protected by the roughness of the terrain. Hence the A, B, K complex King Trent referenced—a valuable clue for us. This separate region is the Kingdom of Onesti. It is ensconced in the mountains, difficult to invade, and has very little that others would want to take, which may help account for its independence. But it surely is eager for peaceful and profitable trade, and Ichabod's Mundane reference suggests that it did have a trade route that has been lost to history, which enabled the Kingdom to prosper for a century when their normal channels appeared to be blocked. That could be the trade route to Xanth that King Trent sought to establish." "Yes, that does make sense," Irene agreed. "But suppose one of those other tribes caught my father, and that's why he never returned?" "We shall trace him down," the centaur said reassuringly. "We have an enormous asset King Trent lacked—magic. All we need to do is go to Onesti and query the people, plants, animals, and objects. There will surely be news of him." Irene was silent. Dor shared her concern. Now that they were on the verge of finding King Trent—how could they be certain they would find him alive? If he were dead, what then? "Are we going to have to fight all those A's, B's, and K's?" Grundy asked. Apparently he had not been entirely asleep. "I doubt it," Arnolde replied. "Actual states of war are rarer than they seem in historical perspective. The great majority of the time, life goes on as usual; the fishermen fish, the blacksmiths hammer iron, the farmers farm, the women bear children. Otherwise there would be constant deprivation. However, I have stocked a friendship-spell for emergency use." He patted his bag of spells. They went on, the ogre poling indefatigably. Gradually the shoreline curved southward, and they followed it. When dusk came they pulled ashore briefly to make a fire and prepare supper; then they returned to the boat for the night, so as not to brave the Mundane threats of the darkness. There were few fish and no monsters in the Black Sea, Grundy reported; it was safe as long as a storm did not come up. Now Arnolde expended one of his precious spells. He opened a wind capsule, orienting it carefully. The wind blew southwest, catching the small squat sail they raised for the purpose. Now the ogre could rest, while the boat coursed on toward their destination. They took turns steering it, Grundy asking the fish and water plants for directions, Dor asking the water, and Irene growing a compass plant that pointed toward the great river they wanted. That reminded Dor of the magic compass. He brought it out and looked, hoping it would point to King Trent. But it pointed straight at Arnolde, and when Arnolde held it, it pointed to Dor. It was useless in this situation. Sleep was not comfortable on the water, but it was possible. Dor lay down and stared at the stars, wide awake; then the stars abruptly shifted position, and he realized he had slept; now he was wide awake. They shifted again. Then he was wide awake again—when Grundy woke him to take his turn at the helm. He had, it seemed, been dreaming he was wide awake. That was a frustrating mode; he would almost have preferred the nightmares. In the morning they were at the monstrous river delta—a series of bars, channels, and islands, through which the slow current coursed. Now Smash had to unship the two great oars he had made, face back, and row against the current. Still the boat moved alertly enough. Irene grew pastry plants and fed their pastry-flower fruits to the ogre so he would not suffer the attrition of hunger. Smash gulped them down entire without pausing in his efforts; Dor was almost jealous of the creature's sheer zest for food and effort. No, he realized upon reflection. He was jealous of the attention Irene was paying Smash. For all that he, Dor, did not want to be considered the property of any girl, especially not this one, he still became resentful when Irene's attention went elsewhere. This was unreasonable, he knew; Smash needed lots of food in order to continue the enormous effort he was making. This was the big thing the ogre was contributing to their mission—his abundant strength. Yet still it gnawed at Dor; he wished he had enormous muscles and endless endurance, and that Irene was popping whole pies and tarts into his mouth. Once, Dor remembered, he had been big—or at least had borrowed the body of a powerful barbarian—maybe an Avar or a Bulgar or a Khazar— and had discovered that strength did not solve all problems or bring a person automatic happiness. But at the moment, his selfish feelings didn't go along with the sensible thinking of his mind. "Sometimes I wish I were an ogre," Grundy muttered. Suddenly Dor felt better. All day they heaved up the river, leaving the largest channel for a smaller one, and leaving that for another and still smaller one. There were some fishermen, but they didn't look like A's, B's, or K's, and they took a look at the size and power of the ogre and left the boat alone. Arnolde had been correct; the ordinary Mundane times were pretty dull, without rampaging armies everywhere. In this respect Mundania was similar to Xanth. Well upstream, they drew upon the shore and camped for the night. Dor told the ground to yell an alarm if anything approached—anything substantially larger than ants—and they settled down under another umbrella tree Irene grew. It was just as well, for during the night it rained. On the third day they forged up a fast-flowing tributary stream, ascending the great Carpath range. Some places they had to portage; Smash merely picked up the entire boat, upright, balanced it on his corrugated head, steadied it with his gauntleted hamhands, and trudged up through the rapids. "If you don't have your full strength yet," Dor commented, "you must be close to it." "Ungh," Smash agreed, for once not having the leisure to rhyme. Ogres were the strongest creatures of Xanth, size for size—but some monsters were much larger, and others more intelligent, so ogres did not rule the jungle. Smash and his parents were the only ogres Dor had met, if he didn't count his adventure into Xanth's past, where he had known Egor the zombie ogre; they were not common creatures today. Perhaps that was just as well; if ogres were as common as dragons, who would stand against them? At last, on the afternoon of the third day, they came to the Kingdom of Onesti, or at least its main fortress, Castle Onesti. Dor marveled that King Trent and Queen Iris, traveling alone without magic, could have been able to get here in similar time. Maybe they underestimated the arduousness of the journey. Well, it would soon be known. Dor tried to question the stones and water of the river, but the water wasn't the same from moment to moment and so could not remember, and the stones claimed that no one had portaged up here in the past month. Obviously the King had taken another route, probably an easier one. Perhaps the King of Onesti had sent an escort, and they had ridden Mundane horses up a horse trail. Yes, that was probably it. They drew up just in sight of the imposing castle. Huge stones formed great walls, leading up to the front entrance. There was no moat; this was a mountain fastness. "Do we knock on the door, or what?" Irene asked nervously. "Your father told me honesty is the best policy," Dor said, masking his own uncertainty. "I assume that wasn't just a riddle to suggest where he went. We can approach openly. We can tell them we're from Xanth and are looking for King Trent. Maybe they have no connection to whatever happened—if anything happened. But let's not go out of our way to tell them about our magic. Just in case." "Just in case," she agreed tightly. They marched up to the front entrance. That seemed to be the only accessible part of the edifice anyway; the wall passed through a forest on the south to merge cleverly with the clifflike sides of the mountain to the west and north. They were at the east face, where the approach was merely steep. "No wonder no one has conquered this little Kingdom," Irene murmured. "I agree," Arnolde said. "No siege machinery could get close, and a catapult would have to operate from the valley below. Perhaps it could be taken, but it hardly seems worth the likely cost." Dor knocked. They waited. He knocked again. Still no response. Then Smash tapped the door with one finger, making it shudder. Now a window creaked open in the middle of the door. A face showed behind bars. "Who are you?" the guard demanded. "I am Dor of Xanth. I have come to see King Trent of Xanth, who, I believe, is here." "Who?" "King Trent, imbecile!" one of the bars snapped. The guard's head jerked back, startled. "What?" "You got a potato in your ear?" the bar demanded. "Stop it," Dor mumbled at the bars. The last thing he wanted was the premature exposure of his talent! Then, quickly, louder: "We wish to see King Trent." "Wait," the guard said. The window slammed closed. But Smash, tired from his two days' labors, was irritable. "No wait, ingrate!" he growled, and before Dor knew what was happening, the ogre smashed one sledgehammer fist into the door. The heavy wood splintered. He punched right through, then caught the far side of the door with his thick gauntleted fingers and hauled violently back. The entire door ripped free of its bolts and hinges. He put his other hand on the little barred window and hefted the door up and over his head, while the other people ducked hastily. "Now see what you've done, you moronic brute," Arnolde said. But somehow the centaur did not seem completely displeased. He, too, was tired and irritable from the journey, and the welcome at Castle Onesti had not been polite. The guard stood inside, staring, as the ogre hurled the great door down the mountainside. "Take us to your leader," Dor said calmly, as if this were routine. All he could do, after all, was make the best of the situation, and poise counted for a lot. "We don't want my friend to get impatient." The guard turned about somewhat dazedly and led the way to the interior of the castle. Other guards came charging up, attracted by the commotion, swords drawn. Smash glared at them and they hastily faded back, swords sheathed. Soon they came to the main banquet hall, where the King of Onesti held sway. The King sat at the head of an immense wooden table piled with puddings. He stood angrily as Dor approached, his huge belly bulging out over the table. "H cdlzmc sn jmnv sgd ldzmhmf ne sghr hmsqtrhnm—" he demanded, his fat face reddening impressively. Then Arnolde's magic aisle caught up, and the King became intelligible. ". . . before I have you all thrown in the dungeon!" "Hello," Dor said. "I am Dor, temporary King of Xanth while King Trent is away." Of course, the Zombie Master was temporary-temporary King now, while Dor himself was away, but that was too complicated to explain at the moment. "He came here on a trading mission, I believe, less than a month ago, and has not returned. So I have come to look for him. What's the story?" The King scowled. Suddenly Dor knew this approach had been all wrong, that King Trent had not come here, that the people of Onesti knew nothing about him. This was all a mistake. "I am King Oary of Onesti," the King said from out of his glower, "and I never saw this King Trench of yours. Get out of my Kingdom." Despair struck Dor—but behind him Arnolde murmured: "That person is prevaricating, I believe." "On top of that, he's lying," Irene muttered. "Glib fib," Smash said. He set one hamhand down on the banquet table gently. The bowls of pudding jumped and quivered nervously. King Oary considered the ogre. His ruddy face paled. His righteous anger dissolved into something like guilty cunning. "However, I may have news of him," he said with less bellicosity. "Join my feast, and I will query my minions." Dor didn't like this. King Oary did not impress him favorably, and he did not feel like eating with the man. But the puddings looked good, and he did want Oary's cooperation. He nodded reluctant assent. The servants hurried up with more chairs for Dor, Irene, and Smash. Grundy, too small for a chair, perched instead on the edge of the table. Arnolde merely stood. More puddings were brought in, together with flagons of beverage, and they all pitched in. The pudding was thick, with fruit embedded, and surprisingly tasty. Dor soon found himself thirsty, for the pudding was highly spiced, so he drank—and found the beverage a cross between sweet beer and sharp wine from indifferent beerbarrel and winekeg trees. He hadn't realized that such trees grew in Mundania; certainly they did not grow as well. But the stuff was heady and good once he got used to it. The others were eating as happily. They had all developed quite an appetite in the course of their trek up the mountain river, and had not paused to grow a meal of their own before approaching the castle. Smash, especially, tossed down puddings and flagons of drink with an abandon that set the castle servants gaping. But the drink was stronger than what they were accustomed to. Dor soon found his awareness spinning pleasantly. Grundy began a little dance on the table, a routine he had picked up from a Mundane immigrant to Xanth. He called it the Drunken Sailor's Hornpipe, and it did indeed look drunken. King Oary liked it, applauding with his fat hands. Arnolde and Irene ate more diffidently, but the centaur's mass required plenty of sustenance, and he was making good progress. Irene, it seemed, loved puddings, so she could not hold back long. "Zmc vgn Ihfgs xnt ad, ezhq czlrdk?" King Oary asked Irene pleasantly. Oops—they were seated along the table, with the King at the end. The King was beyond the aisle of magic. But Arnolde grasped the problem quickly, and angled his body so that he now faced the King. That would extend the magic far enough. Irene, too, caught on. "Were you addressing me, Your Majesty?" she asked demurely. Dor had to admit she was very good at putting on maidenly ways. "Of course. What other fair damsels are in this hall?" She colored slightly, looking about as if to spy other girls. She was getting more practiced at this sort of dissemblance. "Thank you so much, Your Majesty." "What is your lineage?" "Oh, I'm King Trent's daughter." The King nodded sagely. "I'm sure you are prettier than your mother." Did that mean something? Dor continued eating, listening, hoping Irene could get some useful information from the obese monarch. There was something odd here, but Dor did not know how to act until he had more definite information. "Have you any news of my parents?" Irene inquired, having the wit and art to smile fetchingly at the King. Yet again Dor had to suppress his unreasoning jealousy. "I'm so worried about them." And she pouted cutely. Dor hadn't seen her use that expression before; it must be a new one. "My henchmen are spying out information now," The King reassured her. "Soon we should have what news there is." Arnolde glanced at Dor, a fleeting frown on his face. He still did not trust Oary. "Tell me about Onesti," Irene said brightly. "It seems like such a nice little Kingdom." "Oh, it is, it is," the King agreed, his eyes focusing on what showed of her legs. "Two fine castles and several villages, and some very pretty mountains. For centuries we have fought off the savages; two thousand years ago, this was the heartland of the battle-axe people, the Cimmerians. Then the Scyths came on their horses, driving the foot-bound Cimmerians south. Horses had not been seen in this country before; they seemed like monsters from some fantasy land." The King paused to chew up another pudding. Monsters from a fantasy land—could that refer to Xanth? Dor wondered. Maybe some nightmares found a way out, and turned Mundane, and that was the origin of day horses. It was an intriguing speculation. "But here at the mountains," the King resumed, wiping pudding crust from his whiskers, "the old empire held. Many hundreds of years later the Sarmatians drove out the Scyths, but did not penetrate this fastness." He belched contentedly. "Then came the Goths—but still we held the border. Then from the south came the horrible civilized Romans, and from the east the Huns—" "Ah, the Huns," Irene agreed, as if she knew something about them. "But still Onesti survived, here in the mountains, unconquered though beset by barbarians," the King concluded. "Of course we had to pay tribute sometimes, a necessary evil. Yet our trade is inhibited. If we interact too freely with the barbarians, there will surely be mischief. Yet we must have trade if we are to survive." "My father came to trade," Irene said. "Perhaps he got sidetracked by the dread Khazars, or their Magyar minions," King Oary suggested. "I have had some dealings with those; they are savage, cunning brutes, always alert for spoils. I happen to speak their language, so I know." Dor decided he would have to do some searching on his own, questioning the objects in this vicinity. But not right now, while the King was watching. He was sure the King was hiding something. "Have you been King of Onesti for a long time?" Irene inquired innocently. "Not long," Oary admitted. "My nephew Omen was to be King, but he was underage, so I became regent when my brother died. Then Omen went out hunting—and did not return. We fear he strayed too far and was ambushed by the Khazars or Magyars. So I am King, until we can declare Omen officially dead. There is no hope of his survival, of course, but the old council moves very slowly on such matters." So King Oary was in fact regent during the true King's absence—much as Dor was, in Xanth. But this King was eager to retain the throne. Had there been foul play by other than the Khazars? Dor found his head on the table, contesting for space with a pudding. He must have gotten quite sleepy! "What's going on?" he mumbled. "You've been drugged, you fool, that's what," the table whispered in his ear. "There's more in that rotgut than booze, I'll tell you!" Dor reacted with shock, but somehow his head did not rise. "Drugged? Why?" "'Cause the Imposter King doesn't like you, that's why," the table said. "He always drugs his enemies. That's how he got rid of King Omen, and then that fake Magician King." Magician King! It was funny, whispering with his head on the table, but fairly private. Dor's nose was almost under the pudding. "Was that King Trent?" "That's what he called himself. But he couldn't do magic. He drank the drink, all-trusting the way they all are, the fools, and went to sleep just like you. You're all such suckers." "Smash! Grundy!" Dor cried as loudly as he could, his head still glued to the table. "We've been betrayed! Drugged! Break out of here!" But now many guards charged into the hall. "Remove this carrion," King Oary commanded. "Throw them in the dungeon. Don't damage the girl; she's too pretty to waste. Put the freak horse in the stable." Smash, who had gulped huge quantities of the drugged drink, nevertheless had strength to rouse himself and fight. Dor heard the noise, but was facing the wrong way. Guards charged, and screamed, and retreated. "Give it to them, ogre!" Grundy cried, dancing on the table. "Tear them up!" But then the violence abated. "Hey, don't slow down now!" Grundy called. "What's the matter with you?" Dor knew what had happened. Smash had wandered outside the magic aisle, and lost his supernatural strength. Now the flagons of drugged drink took their toll, as they would on any normal creature. "Me sleep a peep," Smash said, the last of his magic expended in the rhyme. Dor knew this fight was lost. "Get out of here, Grundy," he said with a special effort. "Before you sleep, too. Don't let them catch you." The unconsciousness overcame Dor.
(Xanth 4) Centaur Aisle	Piers Anthony	[ "fantasy", "puns" ]	[]	Hate Love	Dor woke with a headache. He was lying on sour-smelling hay in a dark cell. As he moved, something skittered away. He suspected it was a rat; he understood they abounded in Mundania. Maybe that was a blessing; the magic creatures of the night could be horrible in Xanth. There was the sound of muted sobbing. Dor held his breath a moment to make certain it wasn't himself. He sat up, peering through the gloom to find some vestige of light. There was a little, which grew brighter as his eyes acclimatized; it seemed to be a candle in the distance. But there was a wall in the way; the light filtered through the cracks. He oriented on the sobbing. It was from an adjacent chamber, separated from his own by massive stone pilings and huge wood timbers. This must be the lower region of the castle, these cells hollowed out from around the foundations. There were gaps between the supports, big enough for him to pass his arm through but not his body. "Irene?" he asked. "Oh, Dor!" she answered immediately, tearfully. "I thought I was alone! What has become of us?" "We were drugged and thrown in the dungeon," he said. "King Oary must have done the same to your parents, before." He couldn't quite remember where he had gotten that notion, or how he himself had been drugged; his memory was foggy on recent details. "But why? My father came only to trade!" "I don't know. But I think King Oary is a usurper. Maybe he murdered the rightful King, and your folks found out. Oary knew he couldn't fool us long, so he practiced his treachery on us, too." "What do we do now?" she demanded hysterically. "Oh, Dor, I've never felt so horrible!" "I think it's the drug," he said. "I feel bad, too. That should wear off. If we have our magic, we may be able to get free. Do you have your bag of seeds?" She checked. "No. Only my clothing. Do you have your gold and gems?" Dor checked. "No. They must have searched us and taken everything they thought was valuable or dangerous. I don't have my sword either." But then his questing fingers found something small. "I do have the jar of salve, not that it's much good here. And my midnight sunstone; it fell into the jacket lining. Let me see—" He brought it out. "No, I guess not. This has no light." "Where are the others?" "I'll check," he said. "Floor, where are my companions?" There was no answer. "That means we have no magic. Arnolde must be in the stable." He seemed to remember something about that, foggily. "What about Smash and Grundy?" "Me here," the ogre said from the opposite cell. "Head hurt. Strength gone." Now Dor had no further doubt; the magic was gone. The ogre wasn't rhyming, and no doubt Irene's hair had lost its color. Magic had strange little bypaths and side effects, where loss was somehow more poignant than that of the major aspects. But those major ones were vital; without his magic strength, Smash could probably not break free of the dungeon. "Grundy?" Dor called inquiringly. There was no answer. Grundy, it seemed, had escaped capture. That was about the extent of their good fortune. "Me got gauntlets," Smash said. Include one more item of fortune. If the ogre should get his strength back, those gauntlets would be a big help. Probably the castle guards had not realized the gauntlets were not part of the ogre, since Smash had used them for eating. The ogreish lack of manners had paid off in this respect. Dor's head was slowly clearing. He tried the door to his cell. It was of solid Mundane wood, worn but far too tough to break. Too tough, too, for Smash, in his present condition; the ogre tried and couldn't budge his own door. Unless the centaur came within range, none of them had any significant lever for freedom. The doors seemed to be barred by some unreachable mechanism outside: Inside, the slimy stone floor was interrupted only by a disposal sump—a small but deep hole that reeked of old excrement. Obviously no one would be released for sanitary purposes either. Smash banged a fist against a wall. "Oww!" he exclaimed. "Now me miss centaur!" "He does have his uses," Dor agreed. "You know, Smash, Arnolde didn't really usurp Chet's place. Chet couldn't come with us anyway, because of his injury, and Arnolde didn't want to. We pretty much forced him into it, by revealing his magic talent." "Ungh," the ogre agreed. "Me want out of here. No like be weak." "I think we'll have to wait for whatever King Oary plans for us," Dor said trimly. "If he planned to kill us, he wouldn't have bothered to lock us in here." "Dor, I'm scared, really scared," Irene said. "I've never been a prisoner before." Dor peered out through the cracks in his door. Had the flickering candle shadow moved? The guard must be coming in to eavesdrop. Naturally King Oary would want to know their secrets—and Irene just might let out their big one before she realized. He had to warn her—without the guard catching on. They just might turn this to their advantage. He went to the wall that separated them. "It will be a good idea to plan our course of action," he said. "If they question us, tell them what they want to know. There's no point in concealing anything, since we're innocent." He managed to reach his arm through the crevice in the wall nearest her. "But we don't want them to force us into any false statements." His hand touched something soft. It was Irene. She made a stifled "Eeek!" then grasped his hand. "Let me review our situation," Dor said. "I am King during King Trent's absence." He squeezed her hand once. "You are King Trent's daughter." He squeezed again, once. "Arnolde the Centaur is also a Prince among his people." This time he squeezed twice. "What are you talking about?" she demanded. "Arnolde's not—" She broke off as he squeezed several times, hard. Then she began to catch on; she was a bright enough girl. "Not with us now," she concluded, and squeezed his hand once. "If the centaur does not return to his people on schedule, they will probably come after him with an army," Dor said, squeezing twice. "A big army," she agreed, returning the two squeezes. "With many fine archers and spear throwers, thirsty for blood, and a big catapult to loft huge stones against the castle." She was getting into it now. They had their signals set; one squeeze for truth, two for falsehood. That way they could talk privately, even if someone were eavesdropping. "I'm glad we're alone," he said, squeezing twice. "So we can talk freely." "Alone," she agreed, with the double squeeze. Yes, now she knew why he was doing this. She was a smart girl, and he liked that; nymphlike proportions did not have to indicate nymphlike stupidity. "We have no chance to break out of here ourselves," Dor said, squeezing twice. "We have no resources they don't already know about." Two. "We don't have magical powers or anything," she agreed with an emphatic double squeeze. "But maybe it would be better to let them think we have magic," Dor said, not squeezing. "That might make them treat us better." "There is that," she agreed. "If the guards thought we could zap them through the walls, they might let us out." "Maybe we should figure out something to fool them with," he said, this time squeezing once. "Something to distract them while the centaur army is massing. Like growing plants very fast. If they thought you could grow a tree and burst out the ceiling and maybe make this castle collapse—" "They would take me out of this cell and keep me away from seeds," she said. "Then maybe I could escape and set out some markers so the centaurs can find us more quickly." "Yes. But you can't just tell the Mundanes about growing things; it has to seem that they forced it out of you. And you'll need some good excuse in case they challenge you to grow something. You could say the time of the month is wrong, or—" "Or that I have to do it in a stable," she said. "That would get me out of the heavily guarded area. By the time they realize it's a fake, and that I can't grow anything, I may have escaped." "Yes." But had they set this up correctly? Would it trick the guards into taking Irene to the stable where Arnolde might be, or would they not bother? This business of deception was more difficult than he had thought. Then she signaled alarm. "What about Smash? They'll want to know how he tore off the front gate, when he can't do a thing now." Dor thought fast. "We have to hide from them the fact that the ogre is strong only when he's angry. The guard at the gate insulted Smash, so naturally he tore off the gate. But King Oary gave him a good meal, so he wasn't really angry despite getting drugged. Maybe we can trick a guard into saying something mean to Smash, or depriving him of food or water. When Smash gets hungry, he gets mean. And he has a big appetite. If they try starving him, watch out! He'll blow his top and tear this cellar apart!" "Yes," she agreed. "That's really our best hope. Ill-treatment. We don't even need to trick anybody. All we have to do is wait. By midday tomorrow Smash will be storming. We'll all escape over the dead bodies of the guards who get in the way. We may not need the centaurs at all!" Something caught Dot's eye. He squeezed Irene's hand to call her attention to it. The guard was quietly moving. No doubt a hot report was going upstairs. "You're an idiot," Irene murmured, squeezing his hand twice. "You get these fool notions to fool our captors, and they'll never work. I don't know why I even talk to you." "Because it's better than talking to the rats," he said without squeezing. "Rats!" she cried, horrified. "Where?" "I thought I saw one when I woke. Maybe I was wrong." "No, this is the kind of place they like." She squeezed his hand, not with any signal. "Oh, Dor—we've got to get out of here!" "They may take you out pretty soon, to verify that you can't grow plants." She squeezed his hand warningly. "They already know." Actually, the purpose of the fake dialogue had been to convince their captors that Dor and Irene had no magic. Then if they somehow got the chance to use magic, the guards would be caught completely by surprise. In addition, they had probably guaranteed good treatment for Smash—if their ruse had been effective. Soon a wan crack of dawn filtered in through the ceiling near what they took to be the east wall. But the angle was wrong, and Dor finally concluded that they were incarcerated against the west wall, above the cliff, with the light entering only by crude reflection; it would have been much brighter on the other side. No chance to tunnel out, even if they had the strength; what use to step off the cliff? Guards brought Smash a huge basket of bread and a barrel of water. "Food!" the ogre exclaimed happily, and crunched up entire loaves in single mouthfuls, as was his wont. Then, perceiving that neither Dor nor Irene had been served, he hurled several loaves through to them. Dor squeezed one through the crevice to Irene. The water was harder to manage. No cups had been provided, but Dor's thirst abruptly intensified, perhaps in reaction to the wine of the day before. He finally borrowed and filled one of the ogre's gauntlets and jammed that through to Irene. "Tastes like sour sweat," she complained. But she drank it, then shoved the gauntlet back. Dor drank the rest of it, agreeing with her analysis of the taste, and returned the gauntlet to Smash with due thanks. Sweat-flavored water was much better than thirst. "Give me your hand again," Irene said. Thinking she had more strategy to discuss, Dor passed his right arm through the crack, gnawing on a loaf held in his left. "That was a mean thing you did, getting me food," she murmured, squeezing twice. "Well, you know I don't like you," Dor told her, returning the double squeeze. He wasn't sure this mattered to their eavesdropper, but the reversals were easy enough to do. "I never liked you," she returned in kind. "In fact, I think I hate you." What was she saying? The double squeeze suggested reversal, the opposite of what she said. Reverse hate? "What would I want with an ugly girl like you anyway?" he demanded. There was a long pause. Dor stared through the crack, seeing a strand of her hair, and, as he had expected, it had lost its green tint. Then he realized he had forgotten to squeeze. Belatedly he did so, twice. "Ugly, huh?" She squirmed about, bringing something soft into contact with his palm. "Is that ugly?" "I'm not sure what it is," Dor said. He squeezed experimentally. "Eeek!" she yiped, and swatted his hand. "Ugly as sin," he said, trying to picture female anatomy so as to ascertain what he had pinched. It certainly had been interesting! "I'll bite your hand," she threatened, in their old game. "There are teeth there?" he inquired, surprised. For an instant she choked, whether on mirth or anger he could not quite tell. "With my mouth, I'll bite," she clarified. But only her lips touched his fingers. "You wouldn't dare." She kissed his hand twice more. "Ouch!" Dor cried. Now she bit him, lightly, twice. He wasn't sure what mood this signified. It was a new variant of an old game, perhaps no more, but it caused Dor to think about his relationship with Irene. He had known her since childhood. She had always been jealous of his status as Magician and had always taunted him and sicked her plants on him—yet always, too, had been the underlying knowledge that they were destined for each other. He had resisted that as violently as she—but as they grew older, the sexual element had begun to manifest, at first in supposedly innocent games and accidental exposures, then more deviously but seriously. When he had been twelve and she eleven, they had kissed for the first time with feeling, and the experience had shaken them both. Since then their quarreling had been tempered by the knowledge that each could give a new kind of joy to the other, potentially, when conditions were right. Irene's recent development of body had intensified that awareness, and their spats had had a voyeuristic element, such as when they had torn the clothes off each other in the moat. Now, when they could not be sure of their fate, and in the absence of anything else to do, this relationship had become much more important. For the moment, almost literally, all he had was Irene. Why should they quarrel in what might be their last hours? "Yes, I definitely hate you," Irene said, nipping delicately at the tip of one of his fingers twice, as if testing it for digestibility. "I hate you, too," Dor said, trying to squeeze but only succeeding in poking his finger into her mouth. His whole being seemed to concentrate on that hand and whatever it touched, and the caress of her lips was excruciatingly exciting. "I wish I could never see you again," she said, hugging his hand to her bosom. This was getting pretty serious! Yet he found that he felt the same. He never wanted to leave her. They weren't even squeezing now, playing the game of reversal with increasing intensity and comprehension. Was this merely a reaction to the fear of extinction? He could not be sure—but was unable to resist the current of emotion. "I wish I could . . . hurt you," he said, having trouble formulating a properly negative concept. "I'd hurt you back!" She hugged his hand more tightly. "I'd like to grab you and—" Again the problem. "And what?" she demanded, and once more he found his hand encountering strange anatomy, or something. His inability to identify it was driving him crazy! Was it limb or torso, above or below the waist—and which did he want it to be? "And squeeze you to pieces," he said, giving a good squeeze. That moat-scene had been nothing, compared with this. This time she did not make any sound of protest. "I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man alive," she whispered. She had upped the ante again! She was talking of marriage! Dor was stunned, unable to respond. She caressed his hand intimately. "Would you?" she prompted. Dor had not thought much about marriage, despite his involvement in Good Magician Humfrey's wedding. He somehow thought of marriage as the perquisite of old people, like his parents, and King Trent, and Humfrey. He, Dor, was only sixteen! Yet in Xanth the age of consent coincided with the age of desire. If a person thought he was old enough to marry, and wished to do so, and had a willing bride, he could make the alliance. Thus a marriage could be contracted at age twelve, or at age one hundred; Magician Humfrey had hardly seemed ready even at that extreme! Did he want to marry? When he thought of the next few hours, perhaps his last, he wanted to, for he had known he would have to marry before his life was out. It was a requirement of Kingship, like being a Magician. But when he thought of a lifetime in Xanth, he wasn't sure. There was a lot of time, and so much could happen in a lifetime! As Humfrey had said: there were positive and negative aspects. "I don't know," he said. "You don't know!" she flared. "Oh, I hate you!" And she bit his hand, once, and her sharp teeth cut the flesh painfully. Oh, yes, this was getting serious! Dor tried to jerk his hand away, but she clung to it. "You oaf! You ingrate!" she exclaimed. "You man!" And her face pressed against his hand, moistly. Moistly? Yes, she was crying. Perhaps there was art to it; nevertheless this unnerved Dor. If she felt that strongly, could he afford to feel less? Did he feel less? Then a tidal swell of emotion flooded him. What did it matter how much time there was, or how old he was, or where they were? He did love her. "I—would not," he said, and tweaked her slick nose twice. She continued crying into his hand, but now there was a gentler feeling to it. She was no longer angry with him; these were tears of joy. It seemed they were engaged. "Hey, Dor," a whisper came. It was from his own cell. "Grundy!" Dor whispered back. He tried to signal Irene, but she seemed to have fallen asleep against his hand. "Sorry I was so long," the golem said. "It took time to sleep off that knockout juice, and more time to find a good secret route here without running afoul of the rats. I talked to them—rat language seems to be much the same all over, so I didn't need the magic—but they're mean. I finally made myself a sword out of this big ol' hatpin, and after I struck a few they decided to cooperate." He brandished the weapon, a bent iron sliver; it did look deadly. Poked at a rat's eye, it would be devastating. "Irene and I are engaged," Dor said. The golem squinted at him to determine whether this was a joke and concluded it was not. "You are? Of all things! Why did you propose to her now?" "I didn't," Dor confessed. "She proposed to me, I think." "But you can't even touch her!" "I can touch her," Dor said, remembering. "Not where it counts." "Yes, where it counts—I think." The golem shrugged this off as fantasy. "Well, it won't make any difference, if we don't get out of here. I tried to talk to the animals and plants around here, but most of them I can't understand without magic. I don't think they know anything about King Trent and Queen Iris anyway. But I'm sure old King Oary's up to something. How can I spring you?" "Get Arnolde into range," Dor said. "That's not easy, Dor. They've got him in a stable, with a bar-lock setup like this, too heavy for me to force, and out of his reach. Crude but effective. If I could spring him, I could spring you." "But we've got to get together," Dor whispered. "We need magic, and that's the only way." "They aren't going to let him out," Grundy said. "They've got this fool notion that an army of warrior centaurs is marching here, and they don't want anyone to know there's a centaur in the castle." Irene woke. "Are you talking to me, dear?" she asked. "Dear!" Grundy chortled. "Hoo, has she lassoed you!" "Quiet!" Dor whispered fiercely. "The guard is listening." But he wondered whether that was really his concern. "Is that the golem?" Irene asked. "Want to hold hands with me, dear?" Grundy called. "Go unravel your string!" she snapped back. "Anything but that," Grundy said, smiling mischievously. "I want to stick around and watch the nuptials. How are you going to make it through the wall?" "Let me get at that big-mouthed imp!" Irene said. "I'll jam him down the sump headfirst." "How did you get the poor sucker to accept the knot?" the golem persisted. "Did you scream at him, show him some forbidden flesh, and cry big green tears?" "The sump is too good for him!" she gritted. "If you both don't be quiet, the eavesdropping guard will learn everything," Dor warned, ravaged by worry and embarrassment. Grundy looked at him. "Outside the magic ambience, they can't understand a word we say. How can they eavesdrop?" Dor was stunned. "I never thought of that!" Had his entire ruse been for nothing? "How come they fed Smash, then?" Irene demanded, forgetting her fury with the golem as she came to grips with this new question. "How come they heard about the centaur army? Seems to me you said—or did I dream that?" "I said it, and it's true," Grundy said. "You mean you started that story? I overheard it when I was visiting Arnolde; then I could understand the Mundane speech." "We started it," Dor agreed. "And we gave them the notion that Smash only has super strength when he's angry, and he gets angry when he's hungry. They brought him food very soon. So they must have understood. But how?" "I think we're about to find out," Grundy said, fading into the shadow. "Someone's coming." Irene finally let go of Dor's hand, and he drew it back through the wall. His arm was cramped from the hours in the awkward position, but Dor hardly regretted the experience. It was all right being engaged to Irene. He knew her well enough to know she would make a pretty good wife. She would quarrel a lot, but he was used to that, because that was the way his mother Chameleon was when she was in her smart phase. Actually, a smart woman who quarreled was not smart at all, but no one could tell her that. Irene, like her obnoxious mother, had a sense of the proprieties of the office. Queen Iris' mischief was never directed openly at the King. If Dor ever became King in fact as well as in name, Irene would never seek to undermine his power. That was perhaps a more important quality than her physical appearance. But he had to admit that she had acquired a most interesting body. Those touches she had used to tantalize him that Grundy had so acutely noted—they had been marvelously effective. Obviously she had been attempting to seduce him into acquiescence—and she had succeeded. As the Gorgon had intimated, Irene had him pretty well contained. What the Gorgon had not hinted was the fact that such captivity was quite comfortable to the captive, like a warm jacket on a cold day. Good Magician Humfrey was undoubtedly a happy man right now, despite his protestations. In fact, a man's objections to marriage were rather like Irene's objections to people looking at her legs—more show than substance. Dor's attention was jerked back to the immediate situation by the arrival of the Mundanes. There were three guards, one carrying a crude iron bar. They stopped before Irene's cell and used the bar to pry up the wedged plank that barred it. Without that tool, evidently, the door could not be opened. One of the guards went in and grabbed Irene. She did not resist; she knew as well as Dor did that this was the expected questioning. She would try to answer in such a way that they would take her to the stable where Arnolde was confined, if only to prove she was lying. Then she could pry up the bar on the centaur's stall, or start some devastating plant growing— Except that she had no seeds. "Grundy!" he whispered. "Find Irene's seeds! She'll need them." "I'll try." The golem scrambled through a crevice and was gone. Now King Oary entered the dungeon. "Rn xnt'qd sgd Jhmf'r cztfgsdq," he said. "Vgzs hr xntq lzfhb?" "I don't understand you," Irene said. "His Highness King Oary asks what is your magic," one of the guards said. His speech was heavily accented, but he was intelligible. "You know Xanth speech?" she asked, surprised. "How can that be?" "You have no need to know," the guard said. "Just answer the question, wench." So one of the Mundanes here spoke the language of Xanth! Dor's mind started clicking over. This explained the eavesdropping—but how could the man have learned it, however poorly? He had to have been in contact with people from Xanth. "Go soak your snoot in the sump," Irene retorted. Dor winced. She might be playing her role too boldly! "The King will use force," the man warned. "Better answer, slut." Irene looked daunted, as perhaps she was, but those insulting references to her supposed status made her angry. "You answer first, toady," she said, compromising. The guard decided negotiation was the best course. "I met a spy from your country, tart. I am quick with languages; he taught me. Then he went back to Xanth." "To report to my father, King Trent!" Irene exclaimed. "You promised him a trade agreement, didn't you, rogue, if he would come himself to negotiate it?" "It is your turn to answer, hussy," the man said. "Oh, all right, wretch. My magic is growing plants. I can make anything grow from seed to tree in moments." Dor, peering out, could not see the man's face clearly, but was sure there was a knowing expression on it. The eavesdropper thought he knew better, but didn't want to betray his own secret snooping, so had to translate for the King. "Rgd fzud sgd khd," he said. "H vzms sgd sqtsg!" Oary snapped. "His Majesty suspects you are deceiving us," the guard said. "What is your real magic?" "What does ol' fatso care? I'm not doing any magic now." "You had magic when you came, trollop. The ogre used unnatural strength to destroy our front gate, and you all spoke our language. Now the ogre is weak and you speak your own language. What happened to the magic?" The language! Dor cursed himself for overlooking that detail. Of course that had given away their secret! King Trent would have used an interpreter—probably this same man—and the ability of Dor's party to converse directly would have alerted cunning King Oary immediately. He had known they had operative magic and now wanted to discover the mechanism of it. "Well, if you bring me some seeds, thug, maybe I can find out," Irene said. "I'm sure I can grow plants, if I just find the right place." Bless her! She was still trying to get to the stable, where she really could perform. But the Mundanes thought they knew better, "If the King says you lie, you lie, strumpet," the guard said. "Again I ask: what is your real magic? Can you speak in tongues, and cause others to do the same?" "Of course not, villain!" she said. "Otherwise we wouldn't need you to translate to His Lowness King Puddingbelly here, would we? Plants are all I can enchant." "Rgd vhkk mns sdkk," the guard said to the King. "Vd rgzkk lzjd ghl sdkk," the King responded. "Snqstqd gdq hm eqnms ne ghl." The other two guards grabbed Irene's arms and hauled her a few steps down the hall until they were directly in front of Dor's cell. "Prince Dor," the translator called. "You will answer our questions or see what we shall do." Dor was silent, uncertain what to do. "Qho nee gdq bknsgdr," the King ordered. The two guards wrestled Irene's jacket and silver-lined fur off her body, while she struggled and cursed them roundly. Then the translator put his hand on her neckline and brutally ripped downward. The blouse tore down the front, exposing her fine bosom. Irene, shocked at this sudden physical violence, heaved with her arms, but the two men held her securely. "Vdkk, knnj zs sgzs!" the King exclaimed admiringly. "H sgntfgs nmkx gdq kdfr vdqd fnnc!" Dor could not understand a word of the language, but he grasped the essence readily enough. King, translator, and both guards were all gawking at Irene's revealed body. So was Dor. He had thought Irene did not match the Gorgon in general architecture, but Irene had filled out somewhat since he had last looked. He had had the chance to see during the quarrel in the moat, but there had been other distractions then. During the journey south to Centaur Isle, Irene had kept herself fairly private, and perhaps her excellent legs had led his attention away from her other attributes. Now he saw that she was no longer reaching for bodily maturity, she had achieved it. At the same time, he was furious with the King and his henchmen for exposing Irene in this involuntary manner. He determined not to tell them anything. "Gd khjdr gdq, xnt snkc ld," the King said. "H bzm rdd vgx! Sgqdzsdm gdq zmc gd'kk szkj." The King was plotting something dastardly! Dor hardly dared imagine what he might do to Irene. He couldn't stand to have her hurt! The translator stood in front of Irene and formed a fist. He drew back his arm, aiming at her belly. "Stop!" Dor cried. "I'll tell—" "Shut up!" Irene snapped at him. One of her knees jerked up, catching the translator in the groin. The man doubled over, and the surprised guards allowed Irene to tear herself free, leaving shreds of cloth in their hands. Bare-breasted as any nymph, she ran a few steps, stooped to pick up the door-opening bar, and whirled to apply it to Dor's door. "Run!" Dor cried. "Don't waste time on me!" But it was already too late. Both guards had drawn their flat swords and were closing on Irene. She turned, raising the bar defensively, determined to fight. "No!" Dor screamed, his voice breaking. "They'll kill you!" But now there was a new distraction. Smash, snoozing before, had become aware of the situation. He rattled his door angrily. "Kill!" he bellowed. Both guards and the King blanched. They believed the ogre's fantastic strength stemmed from his anger. If they hurt Irene while Smash watched— The translator was beginning to recover from his injury; it probably had been a glancing blow. "Gdqc gdq hmsn gdq bdkk," he gasped to the other two guards. Then, to Irene: "Girl—go quickly to your cell and they won't hurt you." Irene, realizing that she could not hope to escape the two swordsmen and knowing that the bluff of Smash's strength should not be called, edged toward her cell. The two guards followed cautiously. Smash watched, still angry, but with the sense not to protest as long as the guards were holding off. Then Irene stepped into her cell, the guards slammed the door shut and barred it, and the crisis was over. "You should have run out of the dungeon!" Dor said with angry relief. "I couldn't leave you," she replied. "Where would I find another like you?" Dor wasn't certain quite how to take that; was it a compliment or a deprecation? King Oary himself seemed shaken. "Sgzs fhqk'r mns nmkx adztshetk, rgd gzr ehfgshmf rohqhs," he said. "Cnm's gtqs gdq; H ltrs ehmc z trd enq gdq." He turned about and marched out of the dungeon, followed by his henchmen. The translator, though still uncomfortable, had to remain where he thought he was just out of sight, to eavesdrop some more. The dungeon settled back into its normal gloom. They were plotting something worse, Dor knew, but at least Irene had escaped unhurt, and the secret of their magic had been preserved, at least in part. The Mundanes knew the prisoners had magic, but still had not fathomed its mechanism. It was a temporary respite, but much better than nothing. "I think we'd better get out of here soon," Irene said as the Mundanes departed. "Give me your hand." What was she contemplating this time? Dor passed his hand through the crevice. She took it in her own and kissed it. That was nice enough, though he found himself obscurely disappointed. She had lost her jacket and blouse— She took his wrist in her hand and had him spread his fingers. Then she put something into his hand. Dor almost exclaimed with surprise, for it was hard and cold and heavy. It was the iron bar. Of course! In their confusion, the guards had forgotten that Irene retained the bar she had picked up. Now Dor had this useful tool or weapon. Maybe he could lever open his door from the inside. But a guard was in the hall, probably the translator, though there could have been a change. Dor didn't dare try the door now; he would have to wait. In fact, he could not risk prying at any other part of the cell, for the noise would alert the guard and call attention to his possession of the bar. So, for now, they had to wait—and there were things he wanted to tell Irene. "You were awfully brave," he said. "You faced up to those thugs—" "I was scared almost speechless," she confessed. That was surely an overstatement; she had traded gibes with the translator quite neatly. "But I knew they'd hurt you if—" "Hurt me! It was you they—" "Well, I worry about you, Dor. You wouldn't be able to manage without me." She was teasing him—maybe. "I like your new outfit," he said. "But maybe you'd better take my jacket." "Maybe so," she agreed. "It's cool here." Dor removed his centaur jacket and squeezed it through the crevice. She donned it, and was quite fetching in it, though it tended to fall open in front. Or perhaps that was why he found it so fetching. At least the jacket would protect her from the cold and from the attack of instruments like swords or spears, because it was designed to resist penetration. And it wouldn't hurt to have her body concealed from the lecherous eyes of the King and his henchmen; Dor's jealousy of such things remained in force. Grundy reappeared. "I got a seed," he said. "The bag's in the King's chamber, along with the magic sword. I knew it was safe to sneak in there, because the King was down here. But I couldn't carry the whole bag. Couldn't find the magic compass at all; they must have thrown that away. So I picked out what looked like a good seed." "Give it here," Irene said eagerly. "Yes—this is a tangler. If I could start it and drop it in the hall—" "But you can't," Dor said. "Not without—" He caught himself, for the eavesdropper was surely eavesdropping. "I have an idea," Dor said. "Suppose we brought a part of you-know-who here—would it have a little magic, enough to start one seed?" Irene considered. "A piece of hoof, maybe. I don't know. It's worth a try." "I'm on my way," Grundy said. "I always thought girls were supposed to be timid and sweet and to scream helplessly at the mere sight of trouble," Dor said. "But you—those guards—" "You saw too much of Millie the Ghost. Real girls aren't like that, except when they want to be." "You certainly aren't! But I never thought you'd risk your life like that." "Are you disappointed?" Dor considered. "No. You're a lot more girl—more woman than I thought. I guess I do need you. If I didn't love you before, I do now. And not because of your looks though when it comes to that—" "Really?" she asked, sounding like an excited child. "Well, I could be overreacting because of our imprisonment." "I liked it better unqualified," she said. "Oh, sure. Uh, I think you're beautiful. But—" "Then we'd better check again after we get out of this, to see if we feel the same. No sense being hasty." Dor was shaken. "You have doubts?" "Well, I might meet a handsomer man—" "Uh, yes," Dor said unhappily. She laughed. "I'm teasing you. Girls are smarter about appearances than boys are. We go for quality rather than packaging. I have no doubt at all. I love you, Dor. I never intended to marry anyone else. But I refuse to take advantage of you when you're unsettled. Maybe when you get older you'll change your mind." "You're younger than I am!" "Girls mature faster. Hadn't you noticed?" Now Dor laughed. "Just today, I noticed!" She kissed his hand again. "Well, it's all yours, when." When. Dor considered the ramification of that, and felt warm all over. She had a body, true—but what pleased him most was the loyalty implied. She would be with him, she would support him, whatever happened. Dor realized he needed that support; he really would foul up on his own. Irene was strong, when not jarred by an acute crisis; she had nerve he lacked. Her personality complemented his, shoring up his weakness. She was the one who had gotten them going on this rescue mission; her determination to rescue her father had never relented. With her at his side, he could indeed be King. His reflections were interrupted by the return of the golem. "I got three hairs from his tail," he whispered. "He's very vain about his tail, like all his breed; it's his best feature. Maybe they'll be enough." Did some magic adhere to portions of the centaur that were removed from his body? Dor brought out his midnight sunstone gem and held it close to the hairs. Almost, he thought, he saw a gleam of light, deep within the crystal. But maybe that was a reflection from the wan illumination of the cell. "Take them in to Irene," Dor said, hardly allowing himself to hope. Grundy did so. Irene set the seed down on the tail hairs and leaned close. "Grow," she breathed. They were disappointed. The seed seemed to try, to swell expectantly, but could not grow. There was not enough magic. "Maybe if I took it back to Arnolde," Grundy said. Irene was silent, and Dor realized she was stifling her tears. She had really hoped her magic would work. "Yes, try that," Dor told the golem. "Maybe the seed has been started. Maybe it just needs more magic now." Grundy took the seed and the tail hairs and departed again. Dor reached through the crevice to pat Irene on the shoulder. "It was worth the try," he said. She clutched his hand. "I need you, Dor. When I collapse, you just keep on going." There was that complementary aspect again. She would soon recover her determination and nerve, but in the interim she needed to be steadied. They remained that way for what seemed like a long time, and despite the despair they both felt, Dor would not have traded it. Somehow this privation enhanced their personal liaison, making their love burn more fiercely and reach deeper. What would happen after this day he could not know, but he was certain he had been changed by this experience of emotion. His age of innocence, in a fundamental and positive sense, had passed. Then a commotion began in the distance. The sound electrified them. Was it possible—? Grundy burst in on them. "It worked!" he cried. "That seed started growing. The moment I got it in the magic aisle, it heaved right out of its shell. It must have been primed by your command, in that bit of magic with the tail hairs. I had to throw it down outside the stall—" "It worked!" Irene cried jubilantly. "I always knew it would!" "I told Arnolde where we are, just in case," Grundy continued excitedly. "That tangler will zip apart his stall!" "But can he get through all the locked doors?" Irene asked, turning worried. Her moods were swinging back and forth now. "He can't do magic himself, and there's no one with him to—" "I'm way ahead of you, doll," the golem said. "I scouted all around. He can't get through those doors, but he can get out the main gate that Smash ripped off, 'cause they haven't fixed that yet, and there's a small channel outside the castle wall, and these cells are against the wall. Unless the outside wall is over his aisle-depth—" "And if it is?" she prompted, as if uncertain whether to go into a scream of jubilation or of despair. "I'm sure the wall isn't," Grundy said. "It's not more than six of your paces thick, and his aisle reaches twice that far forward. But we'll soon find out, because he'll soon be on his way." The clamor continued. "I hope Arnolde doesn't get hurt," Dor said. "King Oary took our supply of healing elixir, too." "Probably dumped it down a sump," Grundy said. "Make all the sick maggots healthy." "Stand by the outer wall," Irene told him. "When you can talk to it, Dor, we'll know the centaur's here." "I'll go check on his progress," Grundy said, and scurried away again. "That tangler should be almost full-grown now," Irene said. "I hope Arnolde has the sense to stay away from its tentacles." Then she reconsidered. "But not so far away the lack of magic kills the tree. He's got to keep it in the aisle until it does its job. Once he leaves, it will die." "Speak to me, wall," Dor said, touching the stone. There was no response. "What's up?" Smash inquired from the next cell. "Grundy took a sprouted tangler seed to Arnolde," Dor explained. "We hope the centaur's on his way here." "At length, me strength," the ogre said, comprehending. "Hey—you rhymed!" Dor cried. "He must be here!" "Me see," Smash said. He punched his fist through the wall near Dor. "You've got it!" Dor said. "Go rip open your door! Then you can free Irene and me!" The ogre tramped to the front of his cell and gleefully smashed at his front door. "Ooo, that hurt!" he grunted, shaking his gauntleted fist. The door had not given way. "His strength is gone again!" Irene said. "Something's wrong!" Dor cudgeled his brain. What could account for this partial recovery? "Where is the centaur now?" he asked his back wall, fearing it would not answer. "Right outside Irene's cell," it replied. "Clinging to a narrow track above a chasm, terrified." Dor visualized the centaur's position. "Then he can't face directly into the castle?" "He can only turn a little," the wall agreed. "Any more and he'll fall off. Soldiers are getting ready to put arrows in his tail, too." "So his magic aisle slants in obliquely," Dor concluded. "It covers this wall, but not the front of our cells." "Anybody can see that, idiot," the wall agreed smugly. Dor used his sunstone to verify the edge of the aisle. The gem flashed and darkened as it passed outside the magic. The line was only a few handspans inside Dor's wall, projecting farther into Smash's cell. "Hey, Smash!" Dor cried. "The magic's only at this end. Bash out the outer wall to let Arnolde in." "Right site," Smash agreed. He aimed his huge, horny, gauntleted hamfist. "Don't hit me!" the wall cried. "I support the whole castle!" But it was too late; the fist powered through the brick and stone. "Oooo, that smarts!" The wall turned out to be double: two sections of stone, with a filling of rubble between. Smash zipped out the loose core, then pulverized the outer barrier, gaining enthusiasm as he went. In moments bright daylight shone through the cloud of dust. The ogre ripped out more chunks, widening the aperture. Beyond was the back of the mountain, falling awesomely away into a heavily wooded valley. "Good to see you, brute!" Arnolde's voice came. "Clear an entrance for me before these savages attack!" Smash leaned out. He grabbed a stone. "Duck, cluck," he warned, and hurled his missile. There was a thud and scream as someone was knocked off the ledge. "What did you do?" Irene cried, appalled. Then Arnolde's front end appeared in the gap in the wall. Centaur and ogre embraced joyously. "I think he knocked off an enemy," Dor said. Irene sounded weak with relief. "Oh. I guess they're friends now." "We need both magic and power," Dor agreed. "Each is helpless without the other. They have come to understand that." "We have all come to understand a lot of things," she agreed, smiling obscurely. Now Arnolde faced the front door, putting it within the aisle, and Smash marched up and kicked it off its moorings. Then he took hold of the front wall and tore it out of the floor. Debris crashed down from the ceiling. "Don't bring the whole castle down on us!" Dor warned, while Irene choked on the voluminous dust. "Me wrastle this castle," the ogre said, unworried. He hoisted one paw to the ceiling, and the collapse abated. There was a stray guard in the hall. The man watched the progress of the ogre a few moments in silence, then fainted. Grundy reappeared. "Troops coming," he reported. "We'd better move." They moved. Doors and gates were locked, but Smash smashed them clear like so much tissue. When they encountered a wall, he burst right through it. They emerged into an inner court, where flowers grew. "Grow! Grow! Grow!" Irene ordered, and the plants exploded upward and outward. "Where is our safest retreat?" Dor asked the next wall. "The other side of me, dolt," it replied. Smash opened another hole and they trooped out into a section of forest. Soon they had hidden themselves well away from the castle. They were together again and free, and it felt wonderful. They paused, catching their breaths, assessing their situation. "Everybody all right?" Dor asked around. "No serious injuries?" There seemed to be none. "So have you reconsidered?" Irene inquired. "You know how I abhor you." He looked at her. She was still wearing his jacket over her bare upper torso, her hair was tangled, and dirt smudged her face. She seemed preternaturally lovely. "Yes," he said. "And the answer comes out the same. I still hate you." He took her in his arms and kissed her, and she was all eager and yielding in the manner of her kind—when her kind chose to be. "If that be hate," Arnolde remarked, "I would be interested in witnessing their love." "The idiots are engaged to each other," Grundy explained to the others. "It seems they saw the light in the darkness, or something." "Or something," the centaur agreed dubiously.
(Xanth 4) Centaur Aisle	Piers Anthony	[ "fantasy", "puns" ]	[]	Good Omen	"Now we have arrived," Dor said, taking charge after reluctantly disengaging from Irene. "But we have not accomplished our mission. I believe this is the place King Trent and Queen Iris came to. I think the table told me they were here, just before I passed out from King Oary's drug. But I might have dreamed that; the memory is very foggy. Have we any solid proof?" "Apart from the henchman who speaks the language of Xanth?" Grundy asked. "That's circumstantial," Irene said. "It only proves he had contact with the Xanth scout, not that King Trent actually came here. We have to be sure." "My evidence is rather tenuous," Arnolde offered. "It seems that the stable hands had difficulty thinking of me as a person of intellect, and spoke more freely in my vicinity than they might otherwise have done. I declined to speak to them, in what I confess might be construed as a fit of pique—" "Chic pique," Smash chuckled. "And so they did not realize that the magic in your vicinity caused their language to be intelligible to you, or that you had the wit to comprehend it," Dor put in, pleased. " We could not communicate with them without an interpreter, so it was natural for them to assume you couldn't either. That, combined with their tending to think of you as an animal—" "Precisely. My pique may have been fortuitous. So I found myself overhearing certain things that were perhaps not entirely my affair." He smiled. "In one case, literally. It seems one of the cooks has a continuing liaison with a scullery maid—" He broke off, grimacing. "Right beside my stall! It was instructive; they are lusty folk. At any rate, there was at one point a reference to a certain alien King who, it seems, had claimed to be able to perform magic." "King Trent!" Dor exclaimed. "My memory was right, then, not a dream! The table did say King Trent was here!" "I think we always knew it!" Irene agreed, glowering in memory of the betrayal associated with that table. "The translator knew about the magic of Xanth," Dor continued. "But of course no one could do magic here in Mundania, until we discovered you, Arnolde. King Trent would have said he could do magic in Xanth, and the qualification got dropped in translation." "Certainly," the centaur agreed. "It seems that King Oary somehow anticipated magic that he thought might greatly enhance his power and was very angry when that magic did not materialize. So he arrested the alien King treacherously and locked him away, hoping to coerce him into performing, or into revealing the secret of his power." "Where?" Irene demanded. "Where is my father?" "I regret I did not overhear more than I have told you. The alien King was not named. I do not believe the people of the stables knew his identity, or believe in his power, or know where he may be confined. They merely gossip. The apparent magic of Smash's initial display of strength, and the manner we communicated with King Oary, caused a considerable ripple of interest around the castle, and indeed in the entire Kingdom of Onesti, which accounts for the gossip about similar cases. But already this interest is waning, since both strength and communication appeared to have been illusion. It is very easy to attribute phenomena to illusion or false memory when practical explanations are lacking, and Mundanes do this often." He smiled grimly. "I daresay a new round of speculation has commenced, considering the events of the past hour. Your tangle plant, Irene, was gratifyingly impressive." "It sure was!" Grundy agreed enthusiastically. "It was grabbing people right and left, and it ripped the stall apart. But when Arnolde left, the tangler sank down dead." "Magic plants can't function without magic, dummy," Irene said. "Fortunately," Arnolde agreed. "On occasion it reached for me; then I angled away from it, depriving it of magic, and it desisted. After a time it ceased to bother me." "Even a tangler isn't totally stupid!" Irene laughed. "At least we have more to go on," Dor said. "We can be pretty sure King Oary imprisoned King Trent and Queen Iris, and that they remain alive. Oary's experience with us must have enhanced his conviction that anyone from Xanth is hiding magic from him, since we really did have magic, then stopped showing it when he imprisoned us. He probably intended to force us to tell him the secret of magic so he could do it, too, or at least compel the rest of us to perform for him." "King Oary strikes me as a pretty cunning old rascal," Irene said. "Wrongheaded but cunning." "Indeed," Arnolde agreed. "From my observation, he runs this Kingdom reasonably well, but unscrupulously. Perhaps that is what is required to maintain the precarious independence from the larger empires on three sides." "We still need to locate King Trent," Dor said. "Arnolde, did you hear anything else that might remotely connect?" "I am not sure, Dor. There was a reference to King Omen, Oary's predecessor who disappeared. It seems the common folk liked him and were sorry to lose him." "He was King?" Dor asked. "I understood he was underage, so Oary was regent, and Omen never actually became King." "I gather in contrast that he was indeed King, for about a year, before he disappeared," the centaur said. "They called him Good Omen, and believe the Kingdom of Onesti would have prospered under his guidance." "Surely it would have," Dor agreed. He realized that King Oary might have preferred to minimize King Omen's stature in order to make his own position more secure. If the Kingdom of Onesti was well run, it could have been mostly King Omen's doing. "A trade agreement with Xanth could help both Kingdoms. Maybe King Omen was arranging that, then got deposed before King Trent arrived. King Oary's greed has cost him that chance." "The peasants suspect that King Omen was illicitly removed," the centaur continued. "Some even choose to believe that he still lives, that King Oary imprisoned him by subterfuge and usurped power. This may of course be mere wish fulfillment—" "And just may be the truth," Irene put in. "If King Oary deceived and imprisoned us and did the same with my parents, why not also with Good King Omen? It certainly fits his pattern." "We are indulging in a great deal of supposition," Arnolde said warningly. "We could encounter disappointment. Yet if I may extend the rationale—it occurs to me that if King Trent and King Omen both survive, they may be confined together. We have already seen that the dungeons of Castle Onesti are not extensive. If there is another castle, and we find one confined there—" "We find the other!" Irene finished. "And if we rescued them both, Good Omen would be King of Onesti again and all would be well. I'd sure like to depose hoary King Oary!" "That was the extrapolation of my conjectures," Arnolde agreed. "Yet I reiterate, it is highly speculative." "It's worth a try," Dor said. "Now let's plan our strategy. Probably only King Oary knows where King Trent and/or King Omen are incarcerated, and he won't tell. I could question the stones of the castle, but probably the Kings aren't here at all, and the stones wouldn't know anything about other places. If the local servants don't know anything about it, it probably isn't known. So the question is, how can we get him to tell?" "He ought to have a guilty conscience," Irene said. "Maybe we could play on that." "I distrust this," Dor said. "I encountered some bad people and creatures in another adventure, and I don't think their consciences troubled them, because they simply didn't believe they were doing anything wrong. Goblins and harpies—" "Of course they don't have consciences," Irene snapped. "But Oary is a person." "Human beings can be worst of all, especially Mundanes," Dor said. "Many of them have ravaged Xanth over the centuries, and King Oary may contemplate something similar. I just don't have much confidence in any appeal to his conscience." "I perceive your point," Arnolde said. "But I think 'appeal' is not the appropriate term. A guilty conscience more typically manifests in the perception of nocturnal specters—" "Not many specters running around this far from Xanth," Grundy pointed out. "We could scare him into giving it away!" Irene exclaimed. "Tonight," Dor decided. "We must rest and feed ourselves first—and hide from King Oary's troops." They had no trouble avoiding the troops. It took Oary's forces some time to organize, after the devastation Smash had caused during the breakout, and only now, after the long discussion, was any real activity manifesting at the castle. Irene made vines grow, bristling with thorns; in their natural state these had been a nuisance, but now they were a menace. When the magic moved away, the vines died, for they had been extended far beyond their natural limits—but the tangle of thorns remained as a formidable barrier. That, coupled with the Mundanes' knowledge that the ogre lurked in the forest, kept the guards close to the castle even after they emerged. They were not eager for contact with the creature who had bashed all those holes in the massive walls. At night, rested, Dor's party made its play. Grundy had scouted the castle, so they knew which tower contained the royal suite. King Oary was married, but slept alone; his wife couldn't stand him. He ate well and consumed much alcoholic beverage; this facilitated his sleep. They had fashioned a platform that Smash carried to the base of the outer wall nearest the royal tower, which happened to be on the forest side. Arnolde mounted this, bringing his magic aisle within range of the King. Irene had scouted for useful Mundane seeds and had assembled a small collection. Now she planted several climbing vines, and in the ambience of magic they assumed somewhat magical properties. They mounted wall and platform vigorously, sending their little anchor-tendrils into any solid substance they found, quickly binding the platform firmly in place. Arnolde had to keep moving his legs to avoid tendrils that swiped at his feet, until the growing stage passed that level. The plants ascended to the embrasure that marked the King's residence, then halted; the magic aisle extended more inward than upward. Grundy used the sturdy vines to mount to that embrasure. He scrambled over, found himself a shrouded corner, and called quietly down: "I can see inside some, but I don't dare get close enough to cover the whole room." "Talk to the plant," Irene said in her don't-be-dumb tone. She no longer used that on Dor, mute recognition of their changed situation, but obviously she retained the expertise. "Say, yes," the golem agreed. "There's a vine that reaches inside." He paused, talking to the plant. "It says Oary's not alone. He's got a doxy in his bed." "He would," Irene grumped. "Men like that will do anything." It occurred to Dor that this could be the reason the translator had persisted in addressing Irene as "slut" and "strumpet." This was the type of woman King Oary normally associated with. But Dor decided not to mention this to Irene; she already had reason enough to hate Oary. Dor climbed the vines, finding a lodging against the wall just beneath the embrasure. "Describe the room," he murmured to Grundy. "I've got to know exactly what's in it, and where." The golem consulted with the plant. "There is this big feather bed to the right, two of your paces in from this wall. A wooden bench straight in from the embrasure, six paces, with her dress strewn on it. A wooden table to its left, one pace—and there's your sword on it, and Arnolde's bag of spells." "Ha!" Dor exclaimed quietly. "I need that sword. Too bad it's not the variety that wields itself; I could call it right to me." The golem continued describing the room, until Dor was satisfied he had the details properly fixed in his mind. He was able to picture it now— everything just so. "I hope my mind doesn't go blank," he called down. "Don't you dare!" Irene snapped. "Save your fouling up for some other time. Do I have to come up there and prompt you?" "That might help," Dor confessed. "You see, I can't make things say specific things. They only answer questions, or talk in response to my words. Usually. And the inanimate is not too bright, and sometimes perverse. So I may indeed foul it up." "For pity's sake!" Irene took hold of the vines and began climbing. "And don't look up my skirt!" she said to Arnolde. "I wouldn't think of it," the centaur said equably. "I prefer to view equine limbs, and never did see the merit in pink panties." "They're not pink!" she said. "They're not? I must be colorblind. Let me see—" "Forget it!" She joined Dor, gave him a quick kiss, wrapped her skirt closely about her legs, and settled in for the duration. Dor had worried about the strength of the vines, with all this weight on them, but realized she would have a better notion than he how much they could hold. "Well, start," she whispered. "But if I talk loud enough for the things to hear me, so will King Oary." She sighed. "You are a dumbell at times, dear. You don't have to talk aloud to objects; just direct your attention to them. That's the way your magic works. As for King Oary—if that snippet with him knows her trade, he won't be paying any attention to what's outside the castle." She was right Dor concentrated, but still couldn't quite get it together. He was used to speaking aloud to objects. "Are they really not pink?" he asked irrelevantly. "What?" "Your—you-knows." She laughed. "My panties? You mean you never looked?" Dor, embarrassed, admitted that he had not. "You're entitled now, you know." "But I wasn't, back when I had a chance to see." She released her grip on the vine with one hand and reached over to tweak his cheek, in much the manner the Gorgon had. "You're something sort of rare and special, Dor. Well, you get this job done right, and I'll show you." "Will you get on with it?" Grundy demanded from above. "But she says not till after this job's done," Dor said. "I was referring to the job!" the golem snapped. "I'll tell you what color her—" "I will wring your rag body into a tight little knot!" Irene threatened, and the golem was silent. Prompted by this, Dor concentrated on the magic sword on the King's table. Groan, he ordered it mentally. Obediently, the sword groaned. Naturally it hammed it up. "Groooaan!" it singsonged in an awful key. "The doxy just sat up straight," Grundy reported gleefully as the vine rustled the news to him. "Oh, she shouldn't have done that. She's stark, bare, nude naked!" "Skip the pornography, you little voyeur!" Irene snapped. "It's the King we want to rouse." She nudged Dor. "You know the script we worked out. 'Let me free, let me free.'" Dor concentrated again. Sword, I have a game for you. If you play your part well, you can scare the pants off bad King Oary. "Hey, great!" the sword exclaimed. "Only they're already off him. Boy, is he fat!" No. Don't talk to me! Talk to the King. Groan again and say, "Let me free, let me free!" The idea is you 're the ghost of Good King Omen, coming back to haunt him. Can you handle that, or are you too stupid? "I'll show you!" the sword exclaimed. It groaned again, with hideous feeling. It was definitely a ham. "There's someone here!" the doxy screamed. "There can't be," the King muttered. "The guards prevent anyone from getting through. They know I don't want to be disturbed when I'm conducting affairs of state." "Affairs of state!" Irene hissed furiously. "Affair, anyway," Dor said, trying to calm her. "Let me free, let me free," the sword groaned enthusiastically. "Then who's that?" the doxy demanded, hiding under the feathers. "I am the ghooost of Goood King Ooomen," the sword answered. Dor no longer needed to prompt it. The doxy emitted a half-stifled squeak and disappeared entirely into the feathers, according to Grundy's gleeful play-by-play report. The King clutched a feather quilt about him, causing part of the doxy to reappear, to her dismay. "You can't be!" Oary retorted shakily, trying to see where the voice came from. The lone candle illuminating the room cast many wavering shadows, the plant reported, making such detection difficult. "Coming back from the graaave to haaunt you!" the sword continued, really getting into it. "Impossible!" But the King looked nervous, Grundy reported. "He's a tough one," Irene murmured. "He should be terrified, and he's only worried. We're only scaring the doxy, who doesn't matter. Girls can be such foolish creatures!" Then she reconsidered. "When they want to be." Dor nodded, worried himself. If this ruse didn't work— "Yooou killed me," the sword said. "I did not!" Oary shouted. "I only locked you up until I figured out what to do with you. I never killed you." The doxy's face reappeared, replacing the rounder portion of her that had showed before. "You locked up Good Omen?" she asked, surprised. "I had to, or I never would have gotten the throne," the King said absently. "I thought he would foul up as King, but he didn't, so there was no way to remove him legitimately." As he talked, he hoisted his porcine torso from the bed, wrapped the quilt about it, and stalked the voice he heard. "But I didn't kill him. I am too cautious for that. It is too hard to undo a killing, if anything goes wrong. So this can't be his ghost." "Then whose ghost is it?" the doxy demanded. "No ghost at all," the King said. "There's no one there." He picked up the sword. "Just this sword I took from the Xanth Prince. I thought it was magic, but it isn't. I tried it out, and there's nothing remarkable about it except a fine edge." "That's not true!" the sword cried. "Unhand me, valet!" Unnerved at last, the King hurled it out the embrasure. "The thing talks!" he cried. "Well, that's one way to recover my weapon," Dor murmured. "Try for my bag of seeds," Irene suggested. "I can do a lot with genuine magic plants." Grundy had located the seeds, carelessly thrown in a corner; no doubt Oary had been disappointed when he discovered the bag did not contain treasure, though he should have been satisfied with the gold and diamonds Dor had carried. Greed knew no restraint! "You can't get rid of me that way," the seedbag said as Dor mentally prompted it. "My ghost will haunt you forever." "I tell you, I didn't kill you!" Oary said, looking for the new voice that sounded seedy. "You're just making that up." "Well, I might as well be dead," the seedbag said. "Locked up here alone—it's awful." "What do you mean, alone?" Oary demanded. "The Xanth King is in the next cell, and the sharp-tongued Xanth Queen in the third. They wanted to know what had happened to you, and wouldn't deal with me, so now they know." Irene's free hand clutched Dor's shoulder. "Confirmation!" she whispered, thrilled. Dor was equally gratified. The talking objects had hardly terrorized Oary, but they had evoked his confession nevertheless. Dor continued to concentrate. But you 're way out in nowhere, he thought to the bag. "But we're way out in nowhere," the bag dutifully repeated. Dor was getting better at this as he went. He had never before used his talent in quite this way; it was a new aspect. "Nowhere?" The King pounced on the bag and shook it. "You're in the Ocna dungeon! The second biggest castle of the Kingdom! Plenty of company there! I'd be proud to be in that dungeon myself! Out, you ungrateful bag!" And he hurled it out the embrasure. "What?" the doxy demanded. She had evidently heard only the last few words. "Out, you ungrateful bag," the table repeated helpfully. "That's what he said." "Well, I never!" the doxy said, flushing wrathfully. "Don't tell me you never!" the feather quilt she had retained said. "I was right here when you—" The doxy slapped the quilt, silencing it, then wrapped it about her and stalked out. "Help!" the quilt cried. "I'm being kidnapped by a monster!" Then it was beyond the magic aisle and said no more. "Guards!" the King bellowed. "Search the premises! Report anything remarkable." There was a scream from the hall, and the sound of someone being slapped. "He said premises, not mistresses!" the doxy's voice cried. There was a guttural laugh. "But we do have something remarkable to report." "He's seen it before!" she retorted. Her footfalls moved on away. Guards charged into the room. Quickly they ascertained that no one except the King was in the tower. Then they spied the tip of the vine that had grown into the embrasure. They investigated it—while Dor and Irene scrambled down the wall. Grundy leaped from above them, dropping to the centaur's back. "Take off!" he cried. Arnolde in turn launched himself from the platform, landing with heavy impact on the dark ground and galloping off. The platform was shoved violently by the back thrust of his hooves, so that the vines holding it in place were wrenched from the wall. Suddenly Irene was falling, her support gone, while Dor dangled tenuously from his vine, his grip slipping. But Smash the Ogre was there below. He snatched Irene out of the air and whirled her around, absorbing the shock of her fall. Her skirt flew out and up—and now at last Dor saw her panties. They were green. Then Smash deposited her gently on the ground while Dor slid down as quickly as he could, weak with relief. "I'm glad you were there!" Dor gasped. "Me glad centaur was still near," Smash said. "He out of range now." Which meant that the ogre's magic strength was gone again. Irene had fallen in those few seconds that the rear extension of the aisle remained. Now Smash's nonrhyming showed that the Mundane environment had closed in. "Someone's out there!" King Oary cried from the embrasure. "After him!" But the guards had no good light for the purpose, and seemed loath to pursue a magic enemy in the moonlight. "You sword," Smash said, pressing it into Dor's hand. "You seeds," he said to Irene, giving her the bag he had rescued. "Thanks oodles, Smash," she said. "Now let's get away from here." But as they moved out, a small gate opened in the castle wall and troops poured forth bearing torches. "Oary must have caught on that it was our magic," Dor said as they scrambled away. Soon they caught up to the centaur, who had stopped as soon as he realized what was happening. Dor felt no different as they re-entered the magic aisle, but Smash's panting alleviated; his strength had returned. Quickly Dor summarized their situation. "We're together; we have our magic things, except for Arnolde's spells, and we know King Trent, Queen Iris, and King Omen are alive in Castle Ocna. Oary's troops are on our trail. We had better hurry on to rescue the three, before the troops catch us. But we don't know the way." "Every plant and rock must know the way to Ocna" Grundy said. "We can ask as we go along." The guards were spreading out and combing through the forest. Whatever virtues King Oary lacked, he evidently compelled obedience when he really wanted it. Dor's party had to retreat before them. But there were two problems: this section of forest was small, so that they could not remain concealed long; and they were being herded the wrong way. For it turned out that Ocna was half a day's walk northwest of Onesti, while this forest was southeast. They were actually moving toward the village settlement, where the peasants who served the castle dwelt. That village would, in the course of centuries, expand into the town of Onesti, whose designation on the map had given them the hint where to find King Trent. They didn't want to interfere with that! "We've got to get on a path," Irene said. "We'll never make it to Ocna tonight traveling cross-country. But the soldiers will be patrolling the paths." "Maybe there's a magic seed for this," Grundy suggested. "Maybe," Irene agreed. "Another tangler would do—except I don't have one. I do have a cherry seed—" "The kind that grows cherry bombs? That would do it!" "No," Arnolde said. "What's the matter, horsetail?" the golem demanded nastily. "You'd rather get your rump riddled with arrows than throw a few cherries at the enemy?" "Setting aside the ethical and aesthetic considerations—which process I find objectionable—there remain practical ones," the centaur said. "First, we don't want a pitched battle; we do want to elude these people, if possible, leaving them here in a fruitless search while we proceed unchallenged to Ocna. If we fight them, we shall be tied down indefinitely, until their superior numbers overwhelm us." "There is that," Dor agreed. Centaurs did have fine minds. "Second, we must keep moving if we are to reach Ocna before dawn. A half-day's march for seasoned travelers by day, familiar with the route, will be twice that for us at night. A cherry tree can't travel; it must be rooted in soil. And since it is magic—" "We'd have to stay with it," Irene finished. "It'd die the moment we left. Anything magic will be no good away from the magic aisle." "However," the centaur said after a moment, "it might be possible to grow a plant that would distract them, even if it were dead. Especially if it were dead." "Cherry bombs won't work," Grundy said. "They don't exist in Mundania. They wouldn't explode outside the aisle." "Oh, I don't know," Irene said defensively. "Once they are mature and ready to detonate, it seems to me they should be able to explode anywhere. I'd be willing to try them, certainly," "Possibly so," the centaur said. "However, I was thinking of resurrection fern, whose impact would extend beyond the demise of the plant itself." "I do have some," Irene said. "But I don't see how it can stop soldiers." "Primitives tend to be superstitious," the centaur explained. "Especially, I understand, Mundanes, who profess not to belive in ghosts." "That's ridiculous!" Dor protested. "Only a fool would not believe in ghosts. Some of my best friends are—" "I'm not certain all Mundanes are fools," Arnolde said in his cautious way. "But these particular ones may be. So if they encountered resurrection fern—" "It could be quite something, for people who didn't know about it," Irene agreed. "And surely these Mundanes don't," Arnolde said. "I admit it is a bit of a dastardly deed, but our situation is desperate." "Dastardly deed," Dor said. "Are you sure that counterspell we used with the salve worked?" The centaur smiled. "Certainly I'm sure! We do not have to do such a deed, but we certainly can if we choose to." Irene dug out the seed. "I can grow it, but you'll have to coordinate it. The wrong suggestion can ruin it." "These primitives are bound to have suffered lost relatives," the centaur said. "They will have repressed urgings. All we shall have to do is establish pseudo-identities." "I never talked with resurrection fern," Grundy complained. "What's so special about it? What's this business about lost relatives?" "Let's find a place on a road," Arnolde said. "We want to intercept the Mundanes, but have easy travel to Ocna. They will pursue us when they penetrate the deception." "Right," Irene agreed. "I'll need time to get the fern established so it can include all of us." "Include us all in what?" the golem demanded. "Resurrection fern has the peculiar property of—" the centaur began. "Near here!" Smash called, pointing. Ogres had excellent night vision. Sure enough, they had found a path, a rut worn by the tread of peasants' feet and horses' hooves. "Do you go to Ocna?" Dor asked the path. "No. I merely show the way," it answered. "Which way is it?" "That way," the section of path to their west said. "But you'll have trouble traveling there tonight." "Why?" "Because there is something wrong with me. I feel numb, everywhere but here. Maybe there's been a bad storm that washed me out." "Could the path be aware of itself beyond the region of magic?" Irene asked Dor. "I'm not sure. I don't think so—but then, it does know it goes to Ocna, so maybe it does have some awareness. I'm not used to dealing with things that straddle magic and nonmagic; I don't know all the rules." "I believe it is reasonably safe to assume the path is animate only within the aisle," Arnolde said. "In any event, this is probably as good a place for our purpose as any. The soldiers are surely using this path, and will circle around here. It is better to meet them in a manner of our choosing than to risk an accidental encounter. Let us begin our preparations." "Right," Irene said. "Now the fern will grow in the dark, but needs light to activate its magic. The soldiers will have torches, so it should be all right." "I have the sunstone," Dor reminded her. "That can trigger the fern, if necessary. Or we could clear out some trees to let the moonlight in." "Good enough," she agreed. She planted several seeds. "Grow." "But what does it do?" Grundy asked plaintively. "Well, it relates to the psychology of the ignorant spectator," Arnolde explained. "Anyone who comprehends its properties soon penetrates the illusion. That is why I feel it will be more effective against Mundanes than against citizens of Xanth. Thus we should be able to deceive them and nullify the pursuit without violence, a distinct advantage. All we have to do is respond appropriately to the their overtures, keeping our own expectations out of it." "What expectations?" the golem demanded, frustrated. Dor took a hand. "You see, resurrection fern makes figures seem like—" "Refrain!" Smash whispered thunderingly. "Mundane!" Ogres' hearing was also excellent. They waited by the growing fern. In a moment three Onesti soldiers came into view, their torches flashing between the trees, casting monstrous shadows. They were peering to either side, alert for their quarry. Then the three spied the five. The soldiers halted, staring just within the magic aisle. "Grandfather!" one exclaimed, aghast, staring at Smash. The ogre knew what to do. He roared and made a threatening gesture with one hamfist. The soldier dropped his torch and fled in terror. One of the remaining soldiers was looking at Irene. "You live!" he gasped. "The fever spared you after all!" Irene shook her head sadly. "No, friend. I died." "But I see you!" the man cried, in an agony of doubtful hope. "I hear you! Now we can marry—" "I am dead, love," she said with mournful firmness. "I return only to warn you not to support the usurper." "But you never cared for politics," the soldier said, bewildered. "You did not even like my profession—" "I still don't," Irene said. "But at least you worked for Good King Omen. Death has given me pause for thought. Now you work for his betrayer. I will never respect you, even from the grave, if you work for the bad King who seeks to send Good King Omen to his grave." "I'll renounce King Oary!" the soldier cried eagerly. "I don't like him anyway. I thought Good Omen dead!" "He lives," Irene said. "He is in the dungeon at Castle Ocna." "I'll tell everyone! Only return to me!" "I can not return, love," she said. "I am resurrected only for this moment, only to tell you why I can not rest in peace. I am dead; King Omen lives. Go help the living." She moved back to hide behind the centaur, disappearing from the soldier's view. "Beautiful," Arnolde whispered. "I feel unclean," she muttered. The third man focused on Grundy. "My baby son—returned from the Khazars!" he exclaimed. "I knew they could not hold you long!" The golem had finally caught on to the nature of resurrection fern: it resurrected the memories of important figures in the viewers' lives. "Only my spirit escaped," he said. "I had to warn you. The Khazars are coming! They will besiege Onesti, slay the men, rape the women, and carry the children away into bondage, as they did me. Warn the King! Fetch all troops into the castle! Barricade the access roads! Don't let more families be ravaged. Don't let my sacrifice be in vain! Fight to the last—" Dor nudged the golem with his foot. "Don't overdo it," he murmured. "Mundanes are ignorant; they aren't necessarily stupid." "Let's move out," Irene whispered. "This should hold them for a while." They moved out cautiously. The two soldiers remained by the fern, absorbed by their thoughts. Before rounding a curve in the path, Dor glanced back—and saw a giant, pretty spider, of the kind that ranged about rather than forming a web. The decorations on its body resembled a greenish face, and it had eight eyes of different sizes. "Jumper!" he exclaimed—then stifled himself. Jumper had died of old age years ago. He had been Dor's closest friend, when the two had seemed to be the same size within the historical tapestry of Castle Roogna, but their worlds were different. The spider's descendants remained by the tapestry, and Dor could talk to them if he arranged for translation, but it wasn't the same. They seemed like interlopers, taking the place of his marvelous friend. Now he saw Jumper himself. But of course it was only a resurrection, not the real friend. As Dor reminded himself of that, the image reduced to the standing soldier. How Dor wished it could have been genuine! This new separation, albeit from a phantom, was painfully poignant. "So the fern resurrects precious memories," Grundy said as they got clear. "The person looking sees what is deepest-etched in his experience. He really should know better." "Oh, what do you know about it?" Irene said irritably. "It's an awful thing to do to a person, even a Mundane." "You looked back, too?" Dor asked. "I saw my father. I know he isn't dead, but I saw him." She sounded choked. "What a torment it would have been if that were all I would ever see of him." "We'll soon find him," Dor said encouragingly. This, too, he found he liked about her—her human feeling and loyalty to her father, who had always been a large figure in Dor's own life. She flashed him a grateful smile in the moonlight. Dor understood her mood; his vision of his long-gone friend had wrenched his emotion. How much worse had it been for the Mundanes, who lacked knowledge of the mechanism? It was indeed a dastardly thing they had done; perhaps the violence of ogre and sword would have been gentler. Soon, however, they heard the commotion of pursuit. The resurrection fern had perished, or at least had become inactive after the magic aisle left it; there would be no more visions there. The stories of the three affected soldiers would spread alarm, but there would also be many who still followed their orders to capture Dor's party. They stepped from the path, hiding in the brush—and the troops rushed on past. A snatch of their dialogue flung out: ". . . Khazars coming . . ." It seemed the golem's information had been taken to heart! "I think they've forgotten us," Irene said as they stepped back on the path. "The resurrections gave them other things to think about. Now they aren't even looking for us. So maybe we can travel to Ocna safely." "It was a good move we made, strategically," Dor said. "A dirty one, perhaps, and I wouldn't want to do it again, but effective." "First we must pass Castle Onesti," Arnolde reminded them. They got past Onesti by following the directions the path gave. There was a detour around that castle, for peasants had fields to attend to, wood to fetch, and hunting to do well beyond the castle, and the immediate environs were forbidding. This path angled down below the clifflike western face of the peak the castle stood on, wending its way curvaceously through pastures and forest and slope. Several parties of soldiers passed them, but were easily avoided. It seemed these people took the Khazars seriously! Beyond the castle the way grew more difficult. This was truly mountainous country, and there was a high pass between the two redoubts. Dor and the others were not yet fully rested from their arduous climb to Onesti of a day or so ago; now the stiffness of muscles was aggravated. But the path assured them there was no better route. Perhaps that was its conceit— but they had no ready alternative. So they hauled themselves up and up, until near midnight they came to the highest pass. It was a narrow gap between jags. It was guarded by a select detachment of soldiers. They could not conveniently circle around it, and knew the soldiers would not let them through unchallenged. "What now?" Irene asked, too tired even to be properly irritable. "Maybe I can distract them," Dor said. "If I succeed, the rest of you hurry through the pass." They worked their way as close to the pass as they could without being discovered. Arnolde oriented himself so that the magic aisle was where they needed it. Then Dor concentrated, causing the objects to break into speech. "Ready, Khazar?" an outcropping of rock cried. "Ready!" came a chorused response from several loose rocks. "Sneak up close before firing your arrows," the outcropping directed. "We want to get them all on the first volley." "Save some for our boulder!" the upper face of the cleft called. "We have a perfect drop here!" The Onesti soldiers, at first uneasy, abruptly vacated the cleft, glancing nervously up at the crags. It seemed impossible for anyone to have a boulder up there, but the voice had certainly been convincing. They charged the rocks, swords drawn. "Move out!" Dor cried. Arnolde and Grundy charged for the pass. Smash and Irene hesitated. "Go on!" Dor snapped. "Get through before the magic ends!" "But what about you?" Irene asked. Dor concentrated. "Retreat, men!" the outcropping cried. "They're on to us!" There was the sound of scrambling from the rocks. "I'm not going without you!" Irene said. "I've got to keep them distracted until the rest of you safely clear the pass!" Dor cried, exasperated. "You can't keep on after—" Then the voices stopped. The magic aisle had passed. "After Arnolde gets out of range," she finished lamely. The soldiers, baffled by the disappearance of the enemy, were turning about. In a moment they would spy the two; the moonlight remained too bright for effective concealment in the open. "I grew a pineapple while we waited," Irene said. "I hate to use it on people, even Mundanes, but they'll kill us if—" "How can a magic pineapple operate outside the aisle?" he demanded, knowing this argument was foolish, but afraid if they moved that the soldiers would spy them. She looked chagrined. "For once you're right! If cherry bombs are uncertain, so is this!" Smash was standing in the cleft. "Run!" he cried. But the soldiers were closing in. Dor knew they couldn't make it through in time. He drew his sword. Without its magic, it felt heavy and clumsy, but it was the best weapon he had. He would be overwhelmed, of course, but he would die fighting. It wasn't the end he would have chosen, had he a reasonable choice, but it was better than nothing. "Run to Smash," he said. "I'll block them off." "You come, too!" she insisted. "I love you!" "Now she tells me," he muttered, watching the soldiers close in. Irene threw the pineapple at them. "Maybe it'll scare them," she said. "It can't. They don't know what—" The pineapple exploded, sending yellow juice everywhere. "It detonated!" Dor exclaimed, amazed. "Come on!" Arnolde called, appearing behind the ogre. Suddenly it made sense; the centaur had turned about and come back when they hadn't followed. That had returned the magic to the vicinity, just in time. They ran to the cleft. The Mundanes were pawing at their eyes, blinded by pineapple juice. There was no trouble. "You were so busy trying to be heroes, you forgot common sense," Arnolde reproved them. "All you needed to do was follow me while the Mundanes' backs were turned. They would never have known of our passage." "I never was strong on common sense," Dor admitted. "That's for sure," Irene agreed. "That juice won't hold them forever. We'll have to move far and fast." They did just that, their fatigue dissipated by the excitement. Now the path led downhill, facilitating progress somewhat. But it was treacherous in the darkness at this speed, for the mountain crags and trees shadowed it, and it curved and dropped without fair warning. Soon the soldiers were in pursuit. But Dor used his talent, making the path call out warnings of hazards, so that they could proceed more rapidly than other strangers might. His midnight sunstone helped, too, casting just enough light to make pitfalls almost visible. But he knew they couldn't remain on the path long, because the soldiers were more familiar with it, and had their torches, and would surely catch up. They would have to pull off and hide—and that might not be enough, this time. There was too little room for concealment, and the soldiers would be too wary. Then disaster loomed. "The bridge is out!" the path warned. "What bridge?" Dor panted. "The wooden bridge across the cut, dummy!" "What happened to it?" "The Onesti soldiers destroyed it when they heard the Khazars were coming." So Dor's party had brought this mischief on itself! "Can we cross the cut some other way?" "See for yourself. Here it is." They halted hastily. There, shrouded by darkness and fog, was a gap in the mountain—a fissure four times the full reach of a man, extending from the clifflike face of the peak above down to the deep valley below, shrouded in nocturnal fog. Here the moonlight blazed down, as if eager to show the full extent of the hazard. "A young, vigorous centaur could hurdle that," Arnolde said. "It is out of the question for me." "If we had the rope—" Irene said. But of course Chet had that, wherever he was now. Ascent of the peak seemed virtually impossible, and there was no telling what lay beneath the fog. The bridge had been the only practical crossing— and only fragments of that remained. This had become a formidable natural barrier—surely one reason the Khazars had been unable to conquer this tiny Kingdom. Any bridge the enemy built could readily be hacked out or fired. But now the torches of the garrison of the upper pass were approaching. That was the other pincer of this trap. A few men could guard that pass, preventing retreat. The slope was steep here, offering little haven above or below the path. If the soldiers didn't get them, nature would. "The salve," Irene said. "See the fog—we've got to use the salve!" "But the curse—we've lost the counterspell!" Dor protested. "We'll have to do some dastardly deed!" "Those soldiers will do some dastardly deed to us if we don't get away from here fast," she pointed out. Dor looked at her, standing in the moonlight, wearing his jacket, her fine-formed legs braced against the mountain. He thought of the soldiers doing a dastardly deed to her, as they had started to do in the dungeon. "We'll use the salve," he decided. They scrambled down the steep slope to reach the level of the mist. They had to cling to trees and saplings, lest they slide into the cleft involuntarily. Dor felt in his pocket for the jar—and found the dime he had obtained from Ichabod in Modern Mundania. He had forgotten that; it must have slipped into another crevice of his pocket and been overlooked. It was of course of no use now. He fumbled farther and found the jar. Quickly they applied the salve to their feet. The supply was getting low; this was just about the last time they would be able to use it. Then they stepped cautiously out onto the fog. "Stay close to Arnolde," Dor warned. "And in line. Anyone who goes outside the magic aisle will fall through." Now the soldiers reached the cut. They were furious when they discovered no victims there. But almost immediately they spied the fugitives. "Cnvm adknv!" one cried. "Sgdx'qd nm sgd bkntc." Then he did a double take. For a moment the soldiers stared. "Sgdx can't do that!" one protested as the rear of the magic aisle swung around to intersect him. But their leader found the answer. "They're sorcerers! Spies sent by the Khazars. Shoot them down!" Numbly responsive to orders, the soldiers nocked arrows to their bowstrings. "Run!" Dor cried. "But stay with Arnolde!" "This time I'll bring up the rear, just to be sure," the centaur said. "Lead the way, the rest of you." It made sense. The main part of the magic aisle was ahead of the centaur, and this way Arnolde could angle his body to keep them all within it. Dor and Irene and Smash charged forward as the first volley of arrows came at them. Grundy rode the centaur; it was the best way to keep him out from underfoot. They crossed the fog-filled cut, coming to the dense forest at the far side. "Aaahh!" Arnolde screamed. Dor paused to look back. An arrow had struck the centaur in the rump. Arnolde was crippled, trying to move forward on three legs. Smash was leading the way. He reached out to grab the branch of a tree that projected through the fog. He ripped that branch out of its trunk and hurled it uphill and across the cut toward the soldiers. His aim was good; the soldiers screamed and flung themselves flat as the heavy branch landed on them, and one almost fell into the chasm. Then Smash charged back across the cloud. He ducked down, grabbed the centaur by one foreleg and one hindleg, and hefted him to shoulder height. "Oh, I say!" Arnolde exclaimed, amazed despite his pain. But within the ambience of magic, there was no strength to match that of the ogre. Smash carried Arnolde to the slope and set him down carefully where the ground rose out of the fog. This place was sheltered from the view of the soldiers; there would be no more shooting. "But the arrow," the centaur said bravely. "We must get it out!" Smash grabbed the protruding shaft and yanked. Arnolde screamed again—but suddenly the arrow was out. It had not been deeply embedded, or the head would have broken off. "Yes, that was the appropriate way to do it," the centaur said—and fainted. Irene was already sprouting a seed. They had lost their healing elixir with Arnolde's bag of spells, but some plants had curative properties. She grew a balm plant and used its substance on the wound. "This won't cure it all the way," she said. "But it will deaden the pain and start the healing process. He should be able to walk." Smash paced nervously. "Yet—Chet," he said. "Mundane, the pain—" Dor caught on to the ogre's concern. "We don't know that a Mundane wound will always become infected the way Chet's did. That was probably Chet's bad luck. Also, he was bitten by a wyvern, so there might have been poison, while Arnolde was struck by an arrow. This is a different situation—I think." Still, the coincidence of a second centaur getting wounded bothered Dor. Could it be part of the salve's curse? The centaurs had had to use twice as much salve, since they had four feet, and perhaps that made them more susceptible to the curse. Arnolde soon woke and agreed that the agony of the wound was much abated. That was a relief, for at least two reasons. Nevertheless, Dor decided to camp there for the remainder of the night. Their chance of approaching Castle Ocna secretly was gone anyway, and the recovery of their friend was more important. After all, the centaur's aisle of magic was essential to their welfare in Mundania.
(Xanth 4) Centaur Aisle	Piers Anthony	[ "fantasy", "puns" ]	[]	Midnight Sun	In midday, weary but hopeful, they reached Castle Ocna. This was less imposing than Castle Onesti, but still formidable. The outer wall was far too high for them to scale. "Me bash to trash," Smash offered confidently. "No," Dor said. "That would alert the whole castle and bring a hundred arrows down on us." He glanced at Arnolde, who seemed to be doing all right; no infection was in evidence. But they wanted no more arrows! "We'll wait until night and operate quietly. They'll be expecting our attack, but won't know exactly what form it will take. If we can bring the magic aisle to cover King Trent, he'll be able to take it from there." "But we don't know where in the castle he is," Irene protested anxiously. "That's my job," Grundy said. "I'll sneak in and scout about and let you know by nightfall. Then we'll wrap this up without trouble." It seemed like a good idea. The others settled themselves for a meal and a rest, while the golem insinuated his way into the castle. Arnolde, perhaps more greatly weakened by his injury than he showed, slept. Smash always conked out when he had nothing physical to do. Dor and Irene were awake and alone again. It occurred to Dor that bringing the magic aisle to bear on King Trent might not necessarily solve the problem. King Trent could change the jailor to a slug—but the cell would still be locked. Queen Iris might make a griffin seem to appear—but that would not unlock the cells. More thinking needed to be done. They lay on the slope, in the concealment of one of the huge ancestral oaks, and the world was deceptively peaceful. "Do you really think it will work?" Irene asked worriedly. "The closer I get, the more I fear something dreadful will happen." Dor decided he couldn't afford to agree with her. "We have fought our way here," he said. "It can't go for nothing." "We have had no omens of success—" She paused. "Or have we? Omen—King Omen—can he have anything to do with it?" "Anything is possible with magic. And we have brought magic to this Kingdom." She shook her head. "I swing back and forth, full of hope and doubt. You just keep going on, never suffering the pangs of uncertainty, and you do generally get there. We'll make a good match." No uncertainty? He was made of uncertainty! But again, he didn't want to undermine what little confidence Irene was grasping for. "We have to succeed. Otherwise I would be King. You wouldn't want that." She rolled over, fetching up next to him, shedding leaves and grass. She grabbed him by the ears and kissed him. "I'd settle for that, Dor." He looked at her, startled. She was disheveled and lovely. She had always been the aggressor in their relationship, first in quarreling, more recently in romance. Did he really want it that way? He grabbed her and pulled her back down to him, kissing her savagely. At first she was rigid with surprise; then she melted. She returned his kiss and his embrace, becoming something very special and exciting. It would have been easy to go on from there. But a note of caution sounded in Dor's mind. In the course of assorted adventures he had come to appreciate the value of timing, and this was not the proper time for what offered. "First we rescue your father," he murmured in her ear. That brought her up short. "Yes, of course. So nice of you to remind me." Dor suspected he had misplayed it, but as usual, all he could do was bull on. "Now we can sleep, so as to be ready for tonight." "Whatever you say," she agreed. But she did not release him. "Dear." Dor considered, and realized he was comfortable as he was. A strand of Irene's green-tinted hair fell across his face, smelling pleasantly of girl. Her breathing was soft against him. He felt that he could not ask for a better mode of relaxation. But she was waiting for something. Finally he decided what it was. "Dear," he said. She nodded, and closed her eyes. Yes, he was learning! He lay still, and soon he slept. "Now aren't we cozy!" Grundy remarked. Dor and Irene woke with a joint start. "We were just sleeping together," she said. "And you admit it!" the golem exclaimed. "Well, we are engaged, you know. We can do what we like together." Dor realized that she was teasing the golem, so he stayed out of it. What did it matter what other people thought? What passed between himself and the girl he loved was their own business. "I'll have to tell your father," Grundy said, nettled. Suddenly Dor had pause to reconsider. This was the daughter of the King! "I'll tell him myself, you wad of string and clay!" Irene snapped. "Did you find him?" "Maybe I shouldn't tell a bad girl like you." "Maybe I should grow a large flytrap plant and feed you to it," Irene replied. That fazed the golem. "I found them all. In three cells, the way the three of you were, one in each cell. Queen Iris, King Trent, and King Omen." Irene sat up abruptly, disengaging from Dor. "Are they all right?" Grundy frowned. "The men are. They have been through privation before. The Queen is not pleased with her situation." "She wouldn't be," Irene agreed. "But are they all right physically? They haven't been starved, or anything?" "Well, they were a bit closemouthed about that," the golem said. "But the Queen seems to have lost weight. She was getting fat anyway, so that's all right, but I guess she hasn't been fed much. And I saw a crust of bread she left. It was moldy. The flies are pretty thick in there, too; must be a lot of maggots around." Irene got angry. "They have no right to treat royalty like that!" "Something else I picked up," Grundy said. "The guard who feeds them—it seems he eats what he wants first, and gives them the leavings. Sometimes he spits on it, or rubs dirt in it, just to aggravate them. They have to eat the stuff anyway or starve. Once he even urinated in their drinking water, right where they could see him, to be sure they knew what they were drinking. He doesn't speak, he just shows his contempt by his actions." "I have heard of this technique," Arnolde said. "It is the process of degradation. If you can destroy a person's pride, you can do with him what you will. Pride is the backbone of the spirit. Probably King Oary is trying to get King Omen to sign a document of abdication, just in case there is ever any challenge to King Oary's legitimacy." "Why is he keeping the others alive, then?" Dor asked, appalled by both the method and the rationale. Mundanes played politics in an ugly fashion. "Well, we have seen how he operates. If he lets the three spend time together and become friends, then he can use the others as leverage against King Omen. Remember how you told me he was going to torture Irene to make you talk?" "He's going to torture my parents?" Irene demanded, aghast. "I dislike formulating this notion, but it is a prospect." Irene was silent, smoldering. Dor decided, regretfully, to tackle the problem of freeing the prisoners. "I hoped King Trent could use his power to break out, but I'm not sure how transformation of people can unlock doors. If we can figure out a way—" "Elementary," Arnolde said. "The King can transform the Queen to a mouse. She runs out through a crevice. Then he transforms her back, and she opens the cells from the outside. If there are guards, he can transform her to a deadly monster to dispatch them." So simple! Why hadn't he, Dor, thought of that? Irene shifted gears, in the manner of her sex, becoming instantly practical. "Who is in the cell closet to the wall?" "The Queen." The golem frowned. "You know, I think she's the only one the magic aisle can reach. The wall's pretty thick in that region." "So my father probably can't transform anyone," Irene said. Trouble! Dor considered, trying to come up with an alternate suggestion. "The Queen does have powerful magic. It should be possible for her to free them by means of illusion. She can make them see the cells as empty, or containing dead prisoners, so that the guards open the gates. Then she can generate a monster to scare them away." "There are problems," Arnolde said. "The aisle, as you know, is narrow. The illusion will not operate outside it. Since two cells are beyond—" "The Queen's illusion will have very limited play," Dor concluded. "We had better warn her about that. She should be able to manage, if she has time to prepare." "I'm on my way," Grundy said. "I don't know how this expedition would function without me!" "There isn't one of us we can do without," Dor said. "We've already seen that. When we get separated, we're all in trouble." As the night closed, they moved to the castle, trying to reach the spot nearest the Queen's cell as described by the golem. Again there was no moat, just a glacis, so that they had to mount a kind of stone hill leading up to the wall. Dor could appreciate how thick that wall might be, set on a base this massive. Castle Ocna was alert, fearing the invasion of the Khazars; torches flickered in the turrets and along the walls. But Dor's party was not using the established paths and remained unobserved. People who lived in castles tended to be insulated from events outside, and to forget the potential importance of the exterior environment. It occurred to Dor that this also applied to the whole land of Xanth; few of its inhabitants knew anything about Mundania, or cared to learn. Trade between the realms, hitherto a matter of erratic chance, should be established, if only to facilitate a more cosmopolitan awareness. King Oary was evidently not much interested in trade, to the detriment of his Kingdom; he regarded the Xanth visitors as a threat to his throne. As indeed they were—since he was a usurper. "Now we can't plan exactly how this will work," Dor said in a final review. "I hope the Queen will be able to make an illusion that will cause the guards to release her, and then she can free the others." "She'd love to vamp a guard," Irene said. "She'll make herself look like the winsomest wench in all Mundania. Then when he comes close, she'll turn into a dragon and scare him to death. Serve him right." Dor chuckled. "I think I know how that works." She whirled on him in mock fury. "You haven't begun to see how it works!" But she couldn't hold her frown. She kissed him instead. "The lady appears to have given fair warning," Arnolde remarked. "You won't see the dragon until you are securely married." "He knows that," Irene said smugly. "But men never learn. Each one thinks he's different." Arnolde set himself against the wall, changing his orientation by small degrees so that the aisle swung through the castle. "Grundy will have to report whether we intercept the Queen," he said. "I can not perceive the use of the aisle." "If anything goes wrong," Irene said, "Smash will have to go into action, and I'll grow some plant to mess them up." They waited. The centaur completed a sweep through the castle without event. He swept back, still accomplishing nothing. "I begin to fear we are, after all, beyond range," he said. Smash put one cauliflower ear to the wall. "Go down for crown." "Of course!" Dor agreed. "They are in the dungeon! Below ground level. Aim down." With difficulty, Arnolde bent his forelegs, leaving his hindlegs extended, tilting his body down. He commenced another sweep. This was quite awkward for him, because of the position and his injury. Smash joined him, lifting him up and setting him down at a new angle, making the sweep easier. "But if they are too far inside for the aisle to reach—" Irene murmured tensely. "Grundy will let us know," Dor said, trying to prevent her from becoming hysterically nervous. He knew this was the most trying time for her— this period when they would either make contact or fail. "We may catch Queen Iris, then sweep on past, and it will take a while for the golem to relay the news." "That could be it," she agreed, moving into the circle of his arm. He turned to kiss her and found her lips eager to meet his own. Once she had declared her love, she made absolutely no secret of it. Dor realized that even if their mission failed, even if they perished here in Mundania, it was privately worth it for him in this sense. He had discovered love, and it was a universe whose reaches, pitfalls, and potential rewards were more vast than all of Mundania. He held the kiss for a long time. "Is this how you behave when unchaperoned?" a woman's voice demanded sharply. Dor and Irene broke with a start. There beside them stood the Queen. "Mother!" Irene cried, half in relief, half in chagrin. "Shamefully embracing in public!" Queen Iris continued, frowning. She had always been the guardian of other people's morals. "This must come to the attention of—" The Queen vanished. Arnolde, turning as well as he could to face her image, had thereby shifted the magic aisle away from Iris' cell, so that the Queen's magic was interrupted. She could no longer project her illusion-image. "Beg pardon," the centaur said. He shifted back. Queen Iris reappeared. Before she could speak again, Irene did so. "That's nothing, Mother. This afternoon Dor and I slept together." "You disreputable girl!" Iris exclaimed, aghast. Dor bit his tongue. He had never really liked Queen Iris and could hardly have thought of a better way to prick her bubble. The centaur tried to reassure her. "Your Majesty, we all slept. It—" "You, too?" Iris demanded, her gaze surveying them with an amazing chill. "And the ogre?" "We're a very close group," Irene said. "I love them all." This was going too far. "You misunderstand," Dor said. "We only—" Irene tromped his toe, cutting him off. She wanted to continue baiting her mother. But Queen Iris, no fool, had caught on. "They only saw up your skirt, of course. How many times have I cautioned you about that? You have absolutely no sense of—" "We bring the King?" Smash inquired. "The King!" Iris exclaimed. "By all means! You must march in and free us all." "But the noise—" Dor protested. "If we alert the soldiers—" "You forget my power," Queen Iris informed him. "I can give your party the illusion of absence. No one will hear you or see you, no matter what you do." Such a simple solution! The Queen's illusion would be more than enough to free them all. "Break in the wall, Smash," Dor called. "We can rescue King Trent ourselves!" With a grunt of glee, the ogre advanced on the wall. Then he disappeared. So did the centaur. Dor found himself embracing nothing. He could neither see nor feel Irene, and heard nothing either—but there was resistance where he knew her to be. Experimentally he shoved. Something shoved him back. It was like the force of inertia when he swung around a corner at a run, a force with no seeming origin. Irene was there, all right! This spell differed from the one the centaur had used; it made the people within it undetectable to each other as well as to outsiders. He hoped that didn't lead to trouble. A gap appeared in the wall. Chunks of stone fell out, silently. The ogre was at work. Dor kept his arm around the nothingness beside him, and it moved with him. Curious about the extent of the illusion, he moved his hand. Portions of the nothingness were more resilient than others. Then he found himself stumbling; a less resilient portion had given him another shove. Then something helped steady him; the nothingness was evidently sorry. He wrapped his arms about it and drew it in close for a kiss, but it didn't feel right. He concluded he was kissing the back of her head. He grabbed a hank of nothingness and gave it a friendly tug. Then Irene appeared, laughing. "Oh, am I going to get even for that!" Then she realized she could perceive him in the moonlight. She wrapped the jacket about her torso—it had fallen open during their invisible encounter—and drew him forward. "We're getting left be—" She vanished and silenced. They had re-entered the aisle. Dor kept hold of her nothing-hand and followed the other nothings into the hole in the wall. For a moment they all became visible. Arnolde was ahead, negotiating a pile of rubble; Smash had broken through to the lower level, but the path he made was hardly smooth. The centaur, realizing that the aisle had shifted away from the Queen, hastily corrected his orientation. They all vanished again. Castle personnel appeared, gaping at the rubble, unable to fathom its cause. One stepped into the passage—and vanished. That created another stir. As yet the Mundanes did not seem to associate this oddity with an invasion. The ogre's tunnel progressed apace. Soon enough it broke into the Queen's cell, then into King Trent's and finally King Omen's. At that point the parties became visible again. There was ambient light, courtesy of the Queen's illusion. Dor was uncertain at what point illusion became reality, since light was light however it was generated, but he had learned not to worry unduly about such distinctions. Irene lurched forward and flung herself into King Trent's arms. "Oh, daddy!" she cried with tears of joy. Now Dor experienced what he knew to be his most unreasonable surge of jealousy yet. After all, why should she not love her father? He glanced about—and saw Queen Iris watching her husband and daughter with what appeared to be identical emotion. She, too, was jealous—and unable to express it. For the first time in his life, Dor felt complete sympathy with the Queen. This was one shame he shared with her. The King set Irene down and looked about. Suddenly it was incumbent on Dor to make introductions and explanations. He hurried up. "Uh, we've come to rescue you, King Trent. This is Arnolde the Centaur—he's the one who made the magic aisle—that's his talent—and this is Smash the Ogre, and Irene—" King Trent looked regal even in rags. "I believe I know that last," he said gravely. "Uh, yes," Dor agreed, flustered, knowing he was really fouling it up. "I—uh—" "Do you know what he did, father?" Irene asked King Trent, indicating Dor. "I did not!" Dor exclaimed. Teasing the Queen was one thing; teasing the King was another. "Anyway, Dor and I are—" Irene's voice broke off as she spied the third prisoner. He was a stunningly handsome young man who radiated charisma, though he, too, was dressed in rags. "King Omen," King Trent said with his customary gravity. "My daughter Irene." For the first time Dor saw Irene girlishly flustered. King Omen strode forward, picked up her limp hand, and brought it to his lips. "Ravishing," he murmured. Irene tittered. Dor felt a new surge of jealousy. Obviously the girl, so ardent toward Dor a moment ago, was now smitten by the handsome Mundane King. She was, after all, fifteen years old; constancy was not her nature. Yet it hurt to be so suddenly forgotten. Dor turned his eyes away—end met the gaze of the Queen. Again there was a flash of understanding. "Now we have business to accomplish," King Trent said. "My friend King Omen must be restored to his throne. To make that secure, we must separate the loyal citizens of Onesti from the disloyal." Dor forced his mind to focus on this problem. "How can anyone in this castle be loyal? They kept their King prisoner in the dungeon." "By no means," King Omen said resonantly. "Few were aware of my presence. We were brought in manacled and hooded, and the only one who sees us is a mute eunuch who is absolutely loyal to Oary the Usurper. No doubt the castle personnel were told we were Khazar prisoners of war." "So only the mute knew your identity?" Dor asked, remembering Grundy's description of the man's activities. But the golem sometimes exaggerated for effect. "At least he brought you food." "Food!" the Queen cried. "That slop! Irene, grow us a pie tree! We haven't had a decent meal since this happened." Irene wrenched her eyes off King Omen long enough to dig out and sprout a seed. Quickly the plant grew, leafing out in the illusion of daylight and developing big circular buds that burst into assorted fruit pies. King Omen was amazed. "It's magic!" he exclaimed. "What an ability!" Irene flushed, pleased. "It's my talent. Everyone in Xanth does magic." "But I understood no magic would work here in the real world. How is it possible now?" Evidently Dor's introduction of Arnolde had not been sufficient for one who was completely unused to magic. "That's the centaur's talent," he explained. "He's a full Magician. He brings magic with him in an aisle. In that aisle, everyone's talent works. That's why we were able to come here." King Omen faced King Trent as they bit into their pies. "I apologize, sir, for my nagging doubt about your abilities. I have never believed in magic, despite the considerable lore of our superstitious peasants. Now I have seen the proof. Your lovely wife and lovely daughter have marvelous talents." Irene flushed again, inordinately thrilled. "King Omen is really a fine young man," Queen Iris remarked to no one in general. Dor felt cold. The Queen's favor was not lightly gained; she had extremely strict and selfish notions of propriety, and these were focused largely on her daughter. Queen Iris had evidently concluded that King Omen was a suitable match for Irene. Of course the final opinion was King Trent's; if he decided on King Omen, Dor was lost. But King Trent had always supported Dor before. Suddenly a huge fat man burst upon them. His eyes rounded with amazement as he spied the visitors in the dungeon and the pie tree. Then he drew his sword. He charged upon King Omen. Irene screamed as the man passed near her father. Then the Mundane turned into a purple toad, his sword clattering to the floor. King Trent had transformed him. "Who was that?" Dor asked, his startlement subsiding raggedly. "The mute eunuch guard," King Omen said, picking up the fallen sword. "We bear him no love." He considered the toad speculatively. It was covered with green warts. "Yes, your magic is impressive! Will he remain that way?" "Until I transform him again," King Trent said. "Or until he leaves the region of magic. Then, I believe, he will slowly revert to his normal state. But that process may take months and be uncomfortable and awkward, if someone does not take him for a monster and kill him before it is complete." "A fitting punishment," King Omen said. "Let him begin it." He urged the toad on out of the magic aisle by pricking it with the point of the sword. "Now let's consider prospects," King Trent said. "We have achieved a significant breakthrough here, regaining our magic. But very soon the usurper's picked private troops, comprised largely of Avar mercenaries, will lay siege to us here, and we have no magic that will stop a flight of arrows. We are certain that the general populace will rally gladly to King Omen, once they realize he is alive; but most of the people are outside the castles, and we are in danger of being wiped out before that realization prevails. We must plan our strategy carefully." "I must advise you that the magic associated with me is in a fairly narrow aisle," Arnolde said. "It extends perhaps fifteen paces forward, and half that distance back, but only two to either side. Therefore the Queen's illusion will be limited to that ambience, and any person outside it will be immune." "But a lot can be done within the aisle," Dor said. "When Irene and I lagged outside the aisle, we reappeared—but the rest of you remained invisible to us. We weren't immune to the illusion, just outside it. So the Queen can keep us all from the perception of the Mundanes. That's a considerable asset." "True," the centaur agreed. "But now that they know about our magic, we can not prevent them from firing their arrows into this region in a saturation pattern that is bound to wipe us out. I have already had experience with this tactic." He rubbed his flank ruefully. The healing had continued nicely, but he still walked slightly stiffly. "We must take cover, of course," King Trent agreed. "There is now plenty of rubble to shield us from arrows. But we can not afford to remain confined here. The problem will be the elimination of the enemy forces." "Maybe we can lure them in here and ambush them," King Omen suggested. "We now have two swords, and I am impressed with the ogre's strength." "No good," Grundy said. He had reappeared during their feast on the pies and now took a small pie for himself. "The Avar commander is a tough, experienced son of a buzzard who knows you have magic. He is heating a cauldron of oil. Soon he'll pour it down the dungeon steps. Anyone hiding here, with or without magic, will be fried in oil." "Impossible to fill this chamber with oil," Queen Iris said. "It would all leak out." "But it will cover the whole floor first," Grundy said. "You'll all get hot-feet." Dor looked down at his sandals nervously. He did not like the notion of splashing through a puddle of boiling oil. Trent considered. "And an ambush waits outside the dungeon?" "Sure thing," Grundy agreed. "You don't think they let you sit here and gorge on pies just because they like you, do you?" "Turn us all into birds, father," Irene suggested. "We'll fly out before they know it." "Two problems, daughter," King Trent said. "You will have trouble when you fly outside the magic aisle. I'm not sure how you will function, but probably poorly, as you won't be able to change back, yet the magic will be gone. Also, I can not transform myself." "Oh—I forgot." She was chagrined, since the rescue of her father had been her whole purpose. "We have to get you safely out of here, sir," Dor said. "The Land of Xanth needs you." "I have every present intention of returning," King Trent said with a smile. "I am now merely pondering mechanisms. I can deal with the Avars readily enough, provided I can get close enough to them with my magic power intact. That means I shall have to remain with Magician Arnolde." "And with me," Queen Iris said. "To keep you invisible. And the ogre, to open doors." "And me," Irene said loyally. "You I want safely out of the way," her father said. There was a bubbling noise. "The oil!" Grundy cried. "We've got to move!" Smash went into action. He started bashing out a new channel. They became invisible. But Dor had a mental picture of where each person was; King Trent, Arnolde, and the Queen were near the ogre, ready to follow in his new tunnel and avoid the spilling oil. But Irene and the golem were on the far side of the chamber. The oil was already flowing between them and the ogre. They would be trapped—and as the centaur moved away, they would become visible and vulnerable, even if they avoided the oil. Dor ran across to pick up a fragment of rubble. He tossed it into the flowing oil. He grabbed more chunks and tossed them, forming a dam. But it wasn't enough; he wasn't sure Irene could make it through. Then the pieces started flying into place at double the rate he was throwing them. Someone else was helping. Dor could not tell who, or communicate directly; he simply continued tossing stones, damming off the hot oil. Soon it formed a reluctant pool. Dor filled in the crevices of the dam with sand, and the way was clear. The oil ploy had been abated, and Irene could cross to safety. Now a troop of guards charged down the steps, swords drawn. They wore heavy boots, evidently to protect them from the oil they thought would be distracting their quarry. It should have been a neat double trap. They didn't know the quarry had departed. Still, the Avars could use their bows to fire arrows up the new tunnel, doing much harm. Dor leaped across to guard the tunnel entrance, trusting that the others had by now safely passed through it. An invisible guardian could hold them off long enough, perhaps. Then he saw his own arms. The magic aisle had left him vulnerable! The soldiers spied him in the torchlight. They whirled to attack him. Another sword flashed beside him. King Omen! He was the other person who had helped dam the hot oil! No words were exchanged. They both knew what had to be done; they had to guard this entrance from intrusion by the enemy until King Trent could handle his task. The ogre's new passage was too narrow to allow them to fight effectively while standing inside, and the dungeon chamber was too broad; soldiers could stand against the far wall, out of sword range, and fire their arrows down the length of the tunnel. So Dor and Omen moved out into the chamber, standing back to back near the wilting pie tree, and dominated the entire chamber with their two swords. Dor hoped King Omen knew how to use his weapon. The Avars, no cowards, came at them enthusiastically. They were of a wild Turk nomad tribe, according to Arnolde's secondhand information, dissatisfied with their more settled recent ways, and these mercenaries were the wildest of the bunch. Their swords were long, single-edged, and curved, made for vigorous slashing, in contrast with Dor's straight double-edged sword. Here in the somewhat confined region of the dungeon, the advantage lay with the defenders. Omen cut great arcs with his curved blade, keeping the ruffians at bay, and Dor stabbed and cut, severing an Avar's hand before the soldiers learned respect. Dor's sword was not magic now; he had to do it all himself. But he had been taught the rudiments of swordplay, and these now served him well. Several bats shot out of the tunnel and flew over the heads of the Avars, who mostly ignored them. One bat, as if resentful of this neglect, hovered in the face of the Avar leader, who sliced at it with his sword. The bat gave up and angled out of the chamber. But swordplay was tiring business, and Dor was not in shape for it. His arm soon felt leaden. Omen, too, was in a poor way, because of his long imprisonment. The Avars, aware of this, pressed in harder; they knew they would soon have the victory. One charged Dor, blade swinging down irresistibly. Dor tried to step aside and counter, but slipped on blood or oil and lost his footing; the blade sliced into his left hip. Dor fell helplessly headlong. "Omen!" he cried. "Flee into the tunnel! I can no longer guard your back!" "Xnt zqd gtqs!" Omen exclaimed, whirling. The Avars, seeing their chance, charged. Omen's blade flashed in another circle, for the moment daunting them, while Dor fought off the pain of his wound and floundered for his lost sword. His questing fingers only encountered something mushy; a spoiled chocolate pie from the dead pie tree. Two Avars stepped in, one countering King Omen while the other ducked low to slice at Omen's legs. Dor hefted the pie and smashed it into the Avar's face. It was a perfect shot; the man dropped to his knees, pawing at his mud-filled eyes, while the stink of rotten pie filled the chamber. King Omen, granted this reprieve, dispatched the remaining Avar. But already another was charging, and Dor had no other pie within reach. Omen hurled his sword at the bold enemy, skewering him, then bent to take hold of Dor and haul him back to the tunnel. "This is crazy!" Dor cried. Despite the peril of their situation, he noticed that Omen, too, had been wounded; a slash on his left shoulder was dripping bright blood, and it was mixing with the gore from Dor's own wound. "Save yourself!" Then the Avars were closing for the final assault, knowing they faced two unarmed and injured men, taking time to aim their cuts. Even if Omen got them to the tunnel, he would be doomed. He had been a fool to try to save Dor—but Dor found himself rather liking the man. Suddenly a dragon shot out of the tunnel, wings unfurling as it entered the dungeon chamber. It snorted fire and hovered in the air, raising gleaming talons, seeking prey. The Avars fell back, amazed and terrified. One made a desperate slash at the monster—and the sword passed right through the dragon's wing without resistance or damage. Illusion, of course! The magic had returned, and now the Queen was fighting in her spectacular fashion. But the moment the Avars realized that the dragon had no substance— It worked the opposite way. The Avar, discovering that he could not even touch the dragon, screamed and fled the chamber. He was far more afraid of a spiritual menace than of a physical one. King Omen, too, stared at the dragon. "Where did that come from?" he demanded. "I don't believe in dragons!" Dor smiled. "It's an illusion," he explained. They were able to converse again, because of the ambience of magic. "Queen Iris is quite an artist in her fashion; she can generate completely credible images, with smell and sound and sometimes touch. No one in all the history of Xanth has ever been able to do it better." The dragon spun to face them. "Why, thank you, Dor," it said, dissolving into a wash of color that drifted after the departing Avars. Now Irene appeared, as the Avars scrambled to escape the dragon. "Oh, you're hurt!" she cried. Dor wasn't sure whether she was addressing him or Omen. "King Omen saved my life," he said. "You were the only one with sense enough to dam off the oil to save the girl," Omen replied. "Could I do less than help?" "Thanks," Dor said, finding himself liking this bold young King more than ever. Rival he might be, but he was a good man. They shook hands. Dor didn't know whether this was a Mundane custom, but King Trent had evidently explained Xanth ways. "Now our blood has mingled; we are blood brothers," Omen said gravely. Irene and Iris were tearing up lengths of cloth from somewhere, fashioning bandages. Irene got to Omen first, leaving Dor for her mother. "I suspect I underestimated you, Dor," the Queen murmured as she worked efficiently on his wound, cleaning and bandaging it after applying some of the plant healing extract. "But then, I also underestimated your father." "My father?" Dor asked, bewildered. "That was a long time ago, before I met Trent," she said. "None of your business now. But he did have mettle in the crunch, and so do you." Dor appreciated her compliment, but regretted that her modification of attitude had come too late. Irene had focused on King Omen. He tried to stop himself from glancing across to where Irene was working on the Mundane King, but could not kelp himself. The Queen caught the glance. "You love her," she said. "You did not before, but you do now. That's nice." Was she taunting him? "But you endorse King Omen," Dor said, his emotion warring within himself. "No. Omen is a fine young man, but not right for Irene, nor she for him. I support your suit, Dor; I always did." "But you said—" She smiled sadly. "Never in her life did my daughter do what I wished her to. Sometimes subtlety is necessary." Dor stared at her. He tried to speak, but the thoughts stumbled over themselves before reaching his tongue. Instead, he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. "Let's get you on your feet," the Queen said, helping him up. Dor found that he could stand, though he felt dizzy; the wound was not as critical as it had seemed, and already was magically healing. King Trent appeared. "You did good work, men. Thanks to your diversion, I was able to get close to the majority of the Avar soldiers. I turned them into bats." So that was the origin of the bats Dor had seen! One bat had tried to warn the remaining Avars, without success. "But the Avars are not the only enemies," King Omen said. "We need to weed out the other collaborators, lest assassins remain among us." "Magic will help there," King Trent said. "Iris and Dor will see to it." "We will?" Dor asked, surprised. "Of course," the Queen said. "Can you walk?" "I don't know," Dor said. His feelings about Irene's mother had just been severely shaken up, and it would take some time for them to settle into a new pattern. He stepped forward experimentally, and she gripped his arm and steadied him. He half wished it were Irene lending him support. The Avars, however, had discovered that the dragon did not follow beyond the dungeon. They were not yet aware that their backup contingent had been eliminated. Now they charged back into the chamber. "They're catching on to the illusion," Grundy said. "We'd better get out of here." True enough. The Avars were stopping just outside the magic aisle and nocking arrows to strings. They had found the way to fight magic. Smash went back into action. He ripped a boulder out of the foundation and hurled it at the Avars. His strength existed only within the aisle, but the boulder, once hurled, was just as effective beyond it as the arrows were within it. The troops dived out of the way. The party moved back up the tunnel, Dor limping. Dragons flew ahead and behind, a ferocious honor guard. In due course they reached the main hall of Castle Ocna. A number of the castle personnel were there, huddled nervously at one end. The Avars had spread out and used other routes, and now were ranged all around the hall. The castle staff were afraid of the Avars, and did not yet know King Omen lived. Thus the castle remained in King Oary's power despite King Omen's release. "The ogre and I will guard King Omen," King Trent said. "Irene, grow a cherry tree; you and the golem will be in charge of defensive artillery. Magician Centaur, if you please, stand in the center of the hall and turn rapidly in place several times as soon as I give the signal. Iris and Dor, your powers reach farther than mine; you will rout out the lurking Avars." "You see, I know how my husband's mind works," Queen Iris murmured. "He's a genius at tactics." "But the Avars are beyond the magic aisle!" Dor protested. "And they know about your illusions. They're pretty smart, in their fashion. We can't fool them much longer." "We don't need to," Iris said. "All you have to do is have any stones in the magic aisle call out the position of any lurking Avars. The test of us will take it from there." "Ready, Irene?" Trent inquired. Irene's tree had grown rapidly, and now had a number of bright red cherries ripening. "Ready, father," she said grimly. Dor was glad King Trent was a good tactician, for he, Dor, had only the haziest notion what was developing. When Arnolde turned, it might bring some Avars within the magic aisle, but most would remain outside. How could those others be nullified before they used their bows? "Now it gets nervy," King Trent said. "Be ready, ogre. King Omen, it's your show." King Omen mounted a dais in the center of the hall. He was pale from loss of blood, and carried his left arm awkwardly, but still radiated an aura of Kingliness. Irene picked several of the ripe cherries, giving some to Grundy, who stood beside a pile of them. Smash lifted a solid wooden post to his shoulder. Arnolde, in response to Trent's signal, began turning himself about in place. Dor concentrated, willing the stones in the hall to cry out if any Avars were hiding near them. Queen Iris fashioned an illusion of extraordinary grandeur; the dais became a solid gold pedestal, and King Omen was clothed in splended royal robes, with a halo of light about his body. "Hearken to me, minions of Castle Ocna and loyal citizens of the Kingdom of Onesti," the King declaimed, and his voice resonated throughout the chamber. "I am King Omen, your rightful monarch, betrayed and imprisoned by the usurper Oary. Now my friends from the magic Land of Xanth have freed me, and I call upon you to renounce Oary and resume your rightful homage to me." "Mknn jko!" the Avar leader cried in his own language. "Ujqqv jko fqyp!" An arrow flew toward King Omen. Smash batted it out of the air with his stake. "Oww!" the arrow complained. Dor's talent was operating too effectively. "I was only doing my duty." As Arnolde turned, the magic aisle rotated, reaching to the farthest extent of the hall. "Here's an Avar!" a stone cried as the magic engaged it. "He shot that arrow!" "Shut up, you invisible tattletale!" the Avar snapped, striking at what he assumed was there. Now a winged dragon launched toward the Avar, belching forth fire. "You, too, you fake monster!" the man cried. He drew his sword and slashed at the dragon. Irene threw a cherry. It struck the floor at the Avar's feet and exploded. The man was knocked back against the wall, stunned and soaked with red cherry juice. Arnolde had hesitated, facing the action. Now he resumed his turning. Another stone cried out: "There's one behind me!" The dragon, flying in the moving aisle, sent out another column of flame, rich and red. This time Irene timed her throw to coincide, and the cherry bomb detonated as the dragon's apparent flame struck. That made the dragon seem real, Dor realized. "All of you—shoot your cttqyu!" the Avar leader called as the magic aisle passed by him. "Vjg oqpuvgtu ctg lwuv knnwukqpu!" But his men hesitated, for two of their number had been stunned by something that was more than illusion. The cherry bombs did indeed detonate outside the ambience of magic; maybe there were, after all, such things in Mundania. Arnolde continued to turn, and the stones continued to betray the Avars. The lofted cherries commanded respect among the Avars that King Omen did not. The ogre's bat prevented their arrows from scoring, and the Queen's illusions kept them confused. For the flying dragon became a giant armored man with a flashing sword, and the man became a pouncing sphinx, and the sphinx became a swarm of green wasps. Thunder sounded about the dais, the illusion of sound, punctuating King Omen's speech. Soon all the remaining Avars had been cowed or nullified. "Now the enemy troops are gone," King Omen said, his size increased subtly by illusion. "Loyal citizens of the Kingdom of Onesti need have no fear. Come before me; renew your allegiance." Stars and streamers floated down around him. Hesitantly, the castle personnel came forward. "They're afraid of the images," Grundy said. The Queen nodded. Abruptly the monsters vanished, and the hall became a region of pastel lighting and gentle music—at least within the rotating aisle. Heartened, the people stepped up more boldly. "Is it really you, Your Majesty Good Omen?" an old retainer asked. "We thought you dead, and when the monsters came—" "Hold!" a strident voice called from the archway nearest the castle's main entrance. All turned. There stood King Oary, just within the aisle. Dor realized the man must have ridden to Castle Ocna by another route, avoiding the path with the bridge out. Oary had figured out where Dor's party was heading, had known it meant trouble, and hastened to deal with the situation before it got out of control. Oary had cunning and courage. "There is the usurper!" King Omen cried. "Take him captive!" But Oary was backed by another contingent of Avar mercenaries, brought with him from the other castle. The ordinary servitors could not readily approach him. He stood just at the fringe of the magic aisle, so that his words were translated; he had ascertained its limit. He could step out of it at any moment. "Fools!" Oary cried, his voice resounding throughout the hall. "You are being deluded by illusion. Throng to me and destroy these alien intruders." "Alien intruders!" King Omen cried, outraged. The stars exploded around him, and gloriously indignant music swelled in the background. "You, who drugged me and threw me into the dungeon and usurped my throne—you dare call me this?" The people of the castle hesitated, looking from one King to another, uncertain where their loyalty should lie. Each King was imposing; Oary had taken time to garb himself in full regalia, his royal cloak, crown, and sword rendering his fat body elegant. King Omen was enhanced by Queen Iris' magic to similar splendor. It was obviously hard for the ordinary people to choose between them, on the basis of appearance. "I call you nothing," Oary roared, with the sincerity of conviction that only a total scoundral could generate. "You do not even exist. You died at the hands of Khazar assassins. You—" The stars around Omen became blinding, and now they hissed, sputtered, and roared with the sound of the firmament being torn asunder. The noise drowned out Oary's words. "Nay, let the villain speak," King Omen said. "It was ever our way to let each person present his case." "He'll destroy you," Queen Iris warned. "I don't trust him. Don't give him a chance." "It is Omen's choice," King Trent said gently. With that, the illusion stopped. Not in the slightest way did Queen Iris ever oppose her will to King Trent's—at least in public. There was only the Mundane court, silent and drab, with its huddled servants facing the knot of Avars. "You are no more than an illusion," Oary continued boldly, grasping his opportunity. "We have seen how the aliens can fashion monsters and voices from nothing; who doubts they can fashion the likeness of our revered former King?" Queen Iris looked pained. "Master stroke!" she breathed. "I knew we shouldn't have let that cockatrice talk!" Indeed, the castle personnel were swayed. They stared at King Omen as if trying to fathom the illusion. The very facility of Queen Iris' illusions now worked against King Omen. Who could tell reality from image? "If King Omen somehow returned from the dead," King Oary continued, "I would be the first to welcome him home. But woe betide us all if we proffer loyalty to a false image!" King Omen stood stunned by the very audacity of Oary's ploy. In their contest of words, the usurper had plainly scored a critical point. "Destroy the impersonator!" Oary cried, seizing the moment. The people started toward King Omen. Now King Omen found his voice. "How can you destroy an illusion? he demanded. "If I am but a construct of air, I will laugh at your efforts." The people paused, confused again. But once more Oary rushed into the gap. "Of course there's a man there! He merely looks like King Omen. He's an imposter, sent here to incite you to rebellion against your real King. Then the ogre can rule in my stead." The people shuddered. They did not want to be ruled by an ogre. "Imposter?" King Omen exclaimed. "Dor, lend me your sword!" For in the confusion Dor had recovered his sword, while King Omen had lost his. "That will settle nothing," King Trent said. "The better swordsman is not necessarily the rightful King." "Oh, yes, he is!" Omen cried. "Only the royalty of Onesti are trained to fine expertise with the sword. No peasant imposter could match Oary. But I am a better swordsman than the usurper, so can prove myself no imposter." "Not so," Oary protested. "Well I know that is an enchanted sword your henchman has given you. No one can beat that, for it makes any duffer skilled." The man had learned a lot in a hurry! It had never occurred to Dor that King Oary would be so agile in debate. Evidently his head was not filled with pudding. Omen glanced at the sword, startled. "Dor did not evince any particular skill with it," he said with unconscious disparagement of Dor's technique. "It is nevertheless true," King Trent said. "Dor was outside the magic aisle when he used it." '"That's right," Dor agreed reluctantly. "In the aisle, with that sword, anyone could beat anyone. Also, the Queen's illusion could make King Trent look like you, King Omen—and he is probably a better swordsman than you are." Dor wondered just after he said it whether he had made that comparison because he smarted from Omen's disparagement of his own skill. Yet King Trent was the finest swordsman in Xanth, so his point was valid. "You fools!" Queen Iris expostulated. "Victory in your grasp, and you squander it away on technicalities!" "It's a matter of honesty," Dor said. "O N E S T I." King Omen laughed, able to grasp the spelling pun within the centaur's range. "Yes, I understand. Well, I will fight Oary outside the magic aisle." "Where your wound will weaken you, and you will have the disadvantage of using a straight sword when you are trained to a curved one," Queen Iris said. "If those aren't enough, the imposter's Avars will put an arrow in your back. Don't be even more of a fool than you need to be. Oary's trying to maneuver you into a position where his treachery can prevail. I tell you, I know the type." Dor was silent. The Queen knew the type because she was the type. That made her a good adviser in a situation like this. "But how can I prove my identity?" King Omen asked somewhat plaintively. "Let the castle personnel come to you and touch you and talk with you," King Trent suggested. "Surely many of them know you well. They will be able to tell whether you are an imposter." Oary tried to protest, but the suggestion made too much sense to the castle personnel. King Trent's ability to maneuver had foiled Oary's stratagems. Non-Avar guards appeared, reaching for their weapons, and they were more numerous than the Avars. It seemed that news of this confrontation had spread, and the true Onesti loyalists were converging. Seeing himself losing position, Oary grudgingly agreed. "I will join the line myself!" he declared. "After all, I should be the first to welcome King Omen back, should he actually return, since it is in his stead I hold the throne of Onesti." Queen Iris scowled, but King Trent gestured her to silence. It was as if this were a game of moves and counter-moves, with limiting rules. Oary was now going along with King Trent's move, and had to be accommodated until he made an open break. Dor noted the process; at such time as he himself had to be King for keeps, this might guide him. "Come, King," King Trent said, taking Omen by the arm. "Let us all set aside our weapons and form a receiving line." Gently he took the magic sword and passed it over to Queen Iris, who set it carefully on the floor. Oary had to divest himself of his own weapon, honoring this new move. His Avars grumbled but stayed back. Smash the Ogre moved nearer them, retaining his post. This encouraged them to keep the peace. The line formed, the palace personnel coming eagerly forward to verify the person of King Omen. The first was an old man, slow to move but given the lead because of the respect of the others. "Hello, Borywog!" King Omen said, grasping the man's frail arm. "Remember what a torment I was when a child, and you my tutor? Worse than my father was! You thought you'd never teach me to spell! Remember when I wrote the name of our Kingdom as HONESTY?" "My Lord, my Lord!" the old man cried, falling to his knees. "Never did I tell that abomination to a soul! It has to be you, Your Majesty!" The others proceeded through the line. King Omen knew them all. The case was becoming conclusive. King Trent stood behind him, smiling benignly. Suddenly one of the men in the line drew a dagger and lunged at Omen. But before the treacherous strike scored, the man became a large brown rat, who scurried away, terrified. A palace cat bounded eagerly after it. "I promised to stand bodyguard," King Trent said mildly. "I have had a certain experience in such matters." Then Oary was at the head of the line. "Why, it is Omen!" he exclaimed in seeming amazement. "Avars, sheathe your weapons; our proper King has returned from the dead. What a miracle!" King Omen, expecting another act of treachery, stood open-mouthed. Again King Trent stepped in. "So nice to have your confirmation, King Oary. We always knew you had the best interests of the Kingdom of Onesti at heart. It is best to resolve these things with the appearance of amicability, if possible. Dor, why don't you conduct King Oary to a more private place and work out the details?" Now Dor was amazed. He stood unspeaking. Grundy appeared, tapping Dor on the leg. "Take him into an anteroom," the golem whispered. "I'll get the others." Dor composed himself. "Of course," he said with superficial equilibrium. "King Oary, shall we adjourn to an anteroom for a private discussion?" "By all means," Oary said, the soul of amicability. He seemed to understand the rules of this game better than Dor did. They walked sedately to the anteroom, while King Omen continued to greet old friends and the Avars fidgeted in their isolated mass. Without Oary to command them, the Avars were ineffective; they didn't even speak the local language. Dor's thoughts were spinning. Why had Oary welcomed Omen, after trying to deny him and have him assassinated? Why did he pretend not to know where Omen had been? And why did King Trent, himself a victim of Oary's treachery and cruelty, go along with this? Why, finally, had King Trent turned the matter over to Dor, who was incompetent to understand the situation, let alone deal with it? Irene, Smash, and Arnolde joined them in the anteroom. Oary seemed unperturbed. "Shall we speak plainly?" the Mundane inquired. "Sure," Irene retorted, drawing her jacket close about her. "I think you stink!" "Do you folk comprehend the situation?" Oary asked blithely. "No," Dor said. "I don't know why King Trent didn't turn you into a worm and step on you." "King Trent is an experienced monarch," Oary said. "He deals with realities, rather than emotions. He goes for the most profitable combination, rather than simple vengeance. Here is reality: I have one troop of Avars here who could certainly create trouble. I have more at the other castle. It would take a minor civil war to dislodge those mercenaries, whose captains are loyal to me—and that would weaken the Kingdom of Onesti at a time when the Khazar menace is growing. It would be much better to avoid that nuisance and keep the Kingdom strong. Therefore King Omen must seek accommodation with me—for the good of Onesti." "Why not just—" Irene started, but broke off. "You are unable to say it," Oary said. "That is the symptom of your weakness, which you will have to eliminate if you hope to make as effective a Queen as your mother. Why not just kill me and be done with it? Because your kind lacks the gumption to do what is necessary." "Yeah?" Grundy demanded. "Why didn't you kill King Omen, then?" Oary sighed. "I should have, I suppose. I really should have. But I liked the young fool. No one's perfect." "But you tried to have him killed just now," Dor said. "A desperate measure," Oary said. "I can't say I'm really sorry it failed. The move came too late; it should have been done at the outset, so that Omen never had opportunity to give proof of his identity. Then the game would have been mine. But that is the measure of my own inadequacy. I didn't want to retain my crown enough." Dor's emotions were mixing. He knew Oary to be an unscrupulous rascal, but the man's candor and cleverness and admission of civilized weakness made it hard to dislike him totally. "And now we have to deal with you," Dor said. "But I don't see how we can trust you." "Of course you can't trust me!" Oary agreed. "Had I the option, I would have you right back in the dungeon, and your horse-man would be touring the Avar empire as a circus freak." "Now see here!" Arnolde said. "If we can't kill him, and can't trust him, what can we do with him?" Dor asked the others. "Throw him in the same cell he threw King Omen," Irene said. "Have a sadistic mute eunuch feed him." "Smash destroyed those cells," Grundy reminded her. "Anyway, they aren't safe. One of his secret henchmen might let him out." "But we've got to come up with a solution for King Omen!" Dor said. "I don't know why this was put in my hands, but—" "Because you will one day be King of Xanth," Oary said. "You must learn to make the hard decisions, right or wrong. Had I had more experience before attaining power, I would have acted to avoid my present predicament. Had Omen had it, he would never have lost his throne. You have to learn by doing. Your King Trent is one competent individual; it was my misfortune to misjudge him, since I thought his talk about magic indicated a deranged mind. Usually only ignorant peasants really believe in sorcery. By the time you are King, you will know how to handle the office." This made brutal sense. "I wish I could trust you," Dor said. "You'd make an excellent practical tutor in the realities of governing." "This is your practical tutoring," Oary said. "There are two customary solutions, historically," Arnolde said. "One is mutilation—the criminal is blinded or deprived of his extremities, so he can do no further harm—" "No!" Dor said, and Irene agreed. "We are not barbarians." "You are not professional either," Oary said. "Still you balk at expedient methods." "The other is banishment," the centaur continued. "People of your species without magical talents used to be banished from Xanth, just as people of my species with such talents are banished. It is a fairly effective device." "But he could gather an army and come back," Dor protested. "King Trent did, way back when he was banished—" "But he did not conquer Xanth. The situation had changed, and he was invited back. Perhaps in twenty years the situation will be changed in Onesti, and Oary will be needed again. At any rate, there are precautions. A selective, restricted banishment should prevent betrayal while keeping him out of local mischief. It would be advisable not to call it banishment, of course. That would suggest there was something untoward about the transfer of power, instead of an amicable return of a temporarily lost King. He could be assigned as envoy or ambassador to some strategic territory—" "The Khazars!" Grundy cried. "Hey, I don't want to go there!" Oary protested. "Those are rough people! It would take all my wit just to survive." "Precisely," the centaur said. "Oary would be something of a circus freak in that society, tolerated but hardly taken seriously. It would be his difficult job to maintain liaison and improve relations with that empire, and of course to advise Onesti when any invasion was contemplated. If he did a good enough job for a long enough period, he might at length be pardoned and allowed to retire in Onesti. If not—" "But the Khazars are bound to invade Onesti sooner or later," Oary said. "How could I prevent—" "I seem to remember that at this period the Nordic Magyars were nominally part of the Khazar empire," Arnolde said. "They remained, however, a discrete culture. Oary might be sent to the Magyar court—" "Where he would probably foment rebellion against the Khazars!" Dor said. "Just to keep the action away from Onesti. It would take constant cunning and vigilance—" "What a dastardly deed!" Irene exclaimed gleefully. Surprised, they all exchanged glances. "A dastardly deed . . ." Dor repeated. "We were cursed to do it," Irene said. "Before the moon got full—and it's very nearly full now. Let's go tell the others how Ambassador Oary is going to the Magyars." "Purely in the interest of serving the Kingdom I love so well, to promote the interests of my good friend and restored liege, King Omen," Oary said philosophically. "It could have been worse. I thought you'd flay me and turn me loose to beg naked in the village." "Or feed you to the ogre," Grundy said. "But we're softheaded, and you're too clever to waste." They trooped out. "Oary has graciously consented to be your ambassador to the Magyar court of the Khazar empire," Dor told King Omen, who had finally completed the receiving line. "He wants only what is best for the Kingdom of Onesti." "Excellent," King Omen said. He had evidently been briefed in the interim. "And who will be Xanth's ambassador to Onesti?" "Arnolde Centaur," King Trent said promptly. "We realize that his enforced absence from his home in Centaur Isle is a personal sacrifice for him, but it is evident we need a certain amount of magic here, and he is uniquely qualified. He can escort specially talented Xanth citizens, such as my daughter, when trade missions occur." Arnold nodded, and Dor saw how King Trent was facilitating things for the centaur, too. Arnolde had no future at Centaur Isle anyway; this put a different and far more positive face on it. Naturally Arnolde would not spend all his time here; he would have time to visit his friend Ichabod in the other aspect of Mundania, too. In fact, he would be able to do all the research he craved. There was indeed an art to governance, and King Trent was demonstrating it. "Ah, your daughter," King Omen said. "You told me about her, during our long days of confinement, but I took it for the fond imaginings of a parent. Now I think it would be proper to seal the alliance of our two Kingdoms by a symbolic personal merger." Dor's heart sank. King Omen certainly wasn't reticent! He moved boldly to obtain what he wanted—as a King should. Dor doubted that he himself would ever be that type of person. The irony was that he could not oppose King Omen in this; he liked the man and owed him his life, and Irene liked him, too, and was probably thrilled at the notion. The alliance did seem to make sense, politically and personally. If there were benefits to being in line for the Kingship, there were also liabilities; Dor had to give way to what was best. But he hated this. King Trent turned to Irene. "How do you feel about it? You do understand the significance." "Oh, I understand," Irene agreed, flushing becomingly. "It makes a lot of sense. And I'm flattered. But there are two or three little points. I'm young—" "Time takes care of that," King Omen said. It was evident that her youth did not repel him, any more than the youthfulness of the doxy had repelled King Oary. "In fact, women age so quickly, here in Onesti, that it is best to catch them as young as possible, while they remain attractive." Irene paused, as if tracking down an implication. In Xanth, women remained attractive a long time, with the aid of minor magic. "And I would have trouble adjusting to a life with no magic—" she continued after a moment. "A Queen does not need magic!" King Omen said persuasively. "She has power. She has authority over the entire kitchen staff." Irene paused again. "That much," she murmured. It was evident that men dominated the society of Onesti, while in Xanth the sexes were fairly even, except for the rule about who could be King. Dor thought of living the rest of his life in Mundania, unable to utilize his own magic or participate in the magic of others. The notion appalled him. He doubted Irene could stand it long either. "And I'm in love with another man," Irene finished. "But the girl's love has nothing to do with it!" King Omen protested. "This is a matter of state." His eyes traveled along the length of her legs. King Trent considered. "We conduct such matters differently in Xanth, but of course compromise is essential in international relations. If you really desire my daughter—" "Father!" Irene said warningly. "Now don't embarrass your father," Queen Iris said. Irene reacted with a rebellious frown that she quickly concealed. It was the old syndrome; if her mother pushed something, Irene did the opposite. Dor's secret ally had struck again. Bless the Queen! King Trent's gaze passed across them all, finishing with the Queen, who made the slightest nod. "However," he continued, "I understand that in some societies there is a certain premium on the, shall we say, pristine state—" "Virginity," Irene said clearly. "But we never—" Dor started, just before she stomped on his toe." King Omen had caught the motion. "Ah, I did not realize it was you she loved, blood brother! You came all the way here at great personal risk to help restore my throne; I can not—" "Yet a liaison would certainly be appropriate," King Trent mused. "Father!" Irene repeated sharply. Queen Iris smiled somewhat smugly in her daughter's direction. It was strange, Dor reflected, how the very mannerisms that had annoyed him in the past now pleased him. Irene would never go with King Omen now. "Yet there is that matter of pristinity," King Omen said. "A Queen must be above—" "Do you by chance have a sister, King Omen?" King Trent inquired. Dor recognized the tone; Trent already knew the answer to his question. "Dor might—" "What?" Irene screeched. "No, no sister," Omen said, evidently disgruntled. "Unfortunate. Perhaps, then, a symbolic gesture," King Trent said. "If Prince Dor, here, is taking something of value to King Omen, or perhaps has already compromised the value—" "Yes," Irene said. "Shame!" Queen Iris said, glaring at Dor with only the tiniest quirk of humor twitching at one lip. "But—" Dor said, unwilling to confess falsely. "Then some token of recompense might be in order," King Trent concluded. "We might call it a gift, to preserve appearance—" "The midnight sunstone!" Dor exclaimed. After all, it was just about midnight now. Without waiting for King Trent to take the matter further, Dor drew it from his pocket. "King Omen, as a sincere token of amity between the Kingdom of Xanth and the Kingdom of Onesti and of my appreciation for the manner you saved my life, allow me to present you with this rarest of gems. Note that it shines in the presence of magic—but turns dull in the absence of magic. Thus you will always know when magic is near." He gave the gem to King Omen, who stepped out of the magic aisle, then back in, fascinated by the manner the gem faded and flashed again. "Oh, yes," King Omen agreed. "I shall have this set in my crown, the most precious of all my treasures!" But now Irene was angry. "I will not be bought for a gem!" she exclaimed. "But—" Dor said helplessly, stepping toward her. Right when he thought things had fallen into place, they were falling out again. "Stay away from me, you slaver!" she flared, retreating. "I think I am well off," King Omen murmured, smiling. Dor did not want to chase her. It was undignified and hardly suited to the occasion. Also, he could not move rapidly; his fresh wound inhibited him. Yet he was in a sense on stage; he could not let her walk out on him now. Then he remembered the dime. He had a use for it after all! He clutched it out of his pocket and threw it at her moving feet. Irene came to an abrupt stop, windmilling her arms and almost falling. "What—" she demanded. Then Dor caught up to her and took her in his arms. "The dime!" she expostulated. "You made me stop on a dime! That's cheating!" Dor kissed her—and found an amazingly warm response. But even amidst the kiss, he realized that Arnolde was facing in another direction. Irene had been outside the magic aisle when she stalled on the dime. "But—" he began, his knees feeling weak. She bit lightly on his ear. "Did the Gorgon let go of Magician Humfrey?" she asked. Dor laughed, somewhat nervously. "Never." "Another dastardly deed performed in the light of the midnight sunstone," Grundy said. And Dor had to hold Irene delightfully tight to prevent her from kicking the golem.
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 1	In her first moment of consciousness, before opening her eyes to the world and discovering such things as floors and walls and straitjackets, Jean Grey imagined she had died; that for all she had suffered in her life, all her terrible sacrifices, the final end would offer nothing but an eternity of suffocation, an unending crushing darkness spent in utter isolation. Her mind was blind. She felt nothing. Heard nothing. Not even Scott. Cut off, like a blade had been dropped on her neck, separating life from thought, life from sensation, life from—Scott?—life. The remembrance of flesh came to her slowly. She became aware of her legs, curled on a flat hard surface; her hands, tucked close and warm against a hard body. Her body, though it felt odd, unfamiliar. Not right. Jean opened her eyes. She saw a cracked white wall decorated by the shadows of chicken wire. She smelled bleach, and beneath that scent, urine. She felt something sticky beneath her cheek. Her head was strange—not just her mind, but her actual head—and her hair rasped against her cheek. No silken strands, but rough, like stubble. Her mouth felt different, too; her teeth grated unevenly. Her jaw popped. Jean could not move her arms. This concerned her until she realized she was not paralyzed. Her arms were simply restrained against her chest, bound tight within white sleeves that crisscrossed her body like an arcane corset. Again, she tried to reach out with her mind beyond the isolation of silent mental darkness—Scott, where are you, what has happened—to find some trace of that living golden thread that was a thought, a presence, a—I am not alone— As a child, alone was all Jean wanted to be. Alone in her head, alone in her heart, alone with no voices whispering incessantly of their fears and dreams and sins. Funny, how things could change. Her wishes had grown up. Jean tried to roll into a sitting position. Slow, so slow— her head throbbed, a wicked pain like she had been struck—and she fought down nausea, swallowing hard. She had to get her feet back, get free and away, away to find the others. It did not matter where she was or who had done this—results, results are all that matter—only that it could not be allowed to continue. Scott will be looking for me. Yes, if he could. Jean's last memory of her husband was his strong profile as he gazed up at the dilapidated brick facade of an old mental hospital, sagging on its foundations in a quiet neighborhood located beside the industrial hinterland between Tacoma and Seattle. Disturbing reports of rising mutant and human tensions had trickled in from the Northwest for weeks, but without anything specific enough to warrant a full investigation— or interference—from the X-Men. Until two days ago. Logan had learned through an old contact that mutants were being arrested on false charges and incarcerated in state mental hospitals. Serious accusations, with no real hard evidence—except a name. Belldonne. An institute for the mentally ill, and a place—according to Logan's contact—where the X-Men would find incontrovertible evidence that mutants were being held against their will. "And if it's true, then it ain't no holiday they're having," Logan had said. Because prison was bad enough—but add doctors, the ominous specter of science, experimentation, and the scenario became much worse. Mutants, despite the law protecting them, were still easy fodder for overeager scientists who wanted nothing more than to see, in the flesh, the why and how of extreme mutation. Jean understood the fascination. She simply did not think it was an excuse for unscrupulous behavior. The room was small. One window, covered in fine mesh. No furniture or cameras or anything at all that revealed the identity of her captors. The door had a .small glass observation window set too high for Jean to see much but a snatch of ceiling. She heard voices in the hall, soft, and then footsteps. Closer and closer until the doorknob rattled. Jean closed her eyes. She heard someone enter. "He still out?" said a man. He had a rough voice, gritty like a hard smoker. "Probably pretending," said another. Jean heard shoes scuff the floor. She peered through her lashes and saw black shoes and dark blue pants. Cologne tickled her nostrils. "Hey," said the first man, nudging her ribs with his toe. "Hey, Jeff. You out?" Quiet laughter. "Idiot. You actually expect him to say yes?" The two men stood close together, relaxed and unafraid. Perfect. Jean shot out her legs and slammed her socked heels into a knee. She heard a very satisfying crunch, a sharp howl, and then she rolled left as the second man tried to subdue her. He was slow—but then, so was Jean. Her body felt clumsy, unfamiliar; she barely managed to gather enough momentum to stand, and by that point, the man—large, muscular, with a flat square face—was too close for her to maneuver. She saw his fist speed toward her face—was able to turn just slightly— and got clipped hard enough to slam her into the wall. A low whuff of air escaped her throat, and the sound of that partial cry made her forget pain, capture—everything but her voice. A man's voice, slipped free from her throat. Deep, hoarse, and horrifying. It had to be wrong, her imagination: The man with the broken kneecap howled, screaming so loud her own voice must have been drowned out, swallowed up, and yes, that was right, that had to be it— A strong hand grabbed her hair and crashed her forehead against the wall. Her skull rattled; sound passed her lips, and still it was the same, an impossible rumbling baritone that was not her voice, not feminine in the slightest. "Hold still," muttered the man, pinning her against the wall. "Jesus, Jeff." "Who are you?" she asked, listening to herself speak. Chills rushed through her arms and she glanced down, seeing what she had taken for granted upon waking, never noticing, never paying any serious attention to the changes she felt in her body. Not my body. Not my body. No breasts, a thick waist, strong broad legs. The ends of black dreadlocks, hanging over her left shoulder. Her captor did not answer. He was breathing too hard. His companion lay on the floor, muffled screams puffing from between his clenched teeth. Jean heard footsteps outside the room: people running, drawn by the sounds of violence. "Please," Jean said, listening to herself speak in a stranger's voice. She wanted to vomit. "Where am I?" The man shook his head. "I thought you were getting better. No wonder Maguire wanted you restrained." The door banged open. Three men entered; one of them held a nightstick, another had a syringe. She recognized their uniforms. "Don't," Jean said, staring at the syringe. "I'm calm now. I'm better." "Sorry." The man pushed her harder against the wall. "No one's going to take a risk on you now." Jean struggled. Without her powers, she lived in a state of semi-unconsciousness. To take that one step fur-ther—again—without knowing where the others were— Scott— or what had happened to put her in another person's body, was more than she could bear. She was outnumbered and in a straitjacket. Perhaps the men showed surprise that the person they were accustomed to dealing with displayed sophisticated tricks in fighting them off, but they were tough and used to unruly patients. They subdued Jean. They subdued the man they called Jeff. And as Jean felt the sharp prick of the syringe in the side of her neck, she silently called out to her husband, to her friends, to anyone who might be listening, and then, still fighting, felt herself borne down to the hard floor like a slippery fish, slipping swiftly through the curtain of darkness into a deeper unconscious.
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 2	Scott summers was accustomed to darkness. Voluntarily blind, he had long ago learned to curb any and all desire to open his eyes without the protection of his ruby quartz glasses. His was a killing strength—that fire, that sun-fed light in his eyes. People got hurt when he looked at them. People died. A bad way to live for a man with a conscience. Easier to live life through ruby-quartz glasses and accept the darkness when required. Like now. He was not wearing his visor. Nothing at all covered his eyes. Bad. Very bad. Scott touched his face, pressing fingertips against his eyelids, afraid to trust himself without that lingering pressure. He listened to the world around him. At first, silence. An unfamiliar quiet, without the kinds of noises one grew accustomed to in certain situations and locales. At home in Westchester, the insects sang like bells all through the dry summer, a constant clipped symphony outside his window through the day and night. Somewhere, too, there was always a familiar voice talking; laughter, maybe, or the distant rumble of a movie. Comfortable sounds, like family. Like Jean, breathing quietly beside him, her body warm. Not here, though. Not now. He was cold and alone. Scott mentally reached for his wife. She did not reach back. There was no golden thread flaring bright hot, no soft touch upon his heart. A complete disconnect, as though all those years spent linked together were nothing but fantasy, a fairy tale for a lonely man. It felt like Jean was dead. Scott sat up. His head hurt. His heart hurt worse. As he moved, he noticed something strange about his body, something very disturbing. Something that he should have noticed right away, because such was the nature of his loss. He was missing certain... parts. He also had some new ones. He touched them. His hands moved lower, still probing. "Oh, God," Scott said, and his voice was high and sweet. He took a chance and opened his eyes. Nothing happened. He could see like a normal man, with normal colors, without explosions and beams of cutting light. He looked down and saw small white hands resting in a cotton pajama lap, hands that were attached to slender arms that rose, rose to a body that had... Scott stood up. He was in a small white room. No lights on, just nighttime shadows. There was a cot behind him, a spindly table on his right. No other furniture. One tall window, chicken wire hugging the glass. Very industrial. It reminded him of the orphanage where he had spent much of his youth. Again, he forced himself to look down at his body. No. This is not my body at al. Not unless he had developed the ability to shape-shift into a woman. Which, considering everything he knew about himself, was highly unlikely. So. Someone had done this to him, a separation of his physical and mental identities. And if him, then what about the others? The last thing he remembered was standing in front of the Belldonne mental hospital with his team—Jean, Logan, Rogue, and Kurt—all of them looking to him for the final word on their approach, their handling of intelligence that said mutants were being unfairly imprisoned in the building in front of them. Yes, well. Scott walked to the door. He had to stand on his toes to peer through the observation window. He could see only a small portion of the hall, which was empty, devoid of any decoration or color. Dimly lit, white and sterile. He tried the doorknob but it would not turn. Scott glanced around the room, looking for something he could turn into a lock pick. He came up empty, until he realized what he was wearing. Scott took off his bra. He tried not to look at his breasts—or rather, the breasts of the strange woman he seemed to be inhabiting—because that was wrong and impolite and... God. So bizarre. The bra had wires. He pried them both out, tucking one in the waistband of his underwear—no looking, no looking, you will get your own body back—twisting the other into something resembling an actual tool. Scott was suddenly very grateful for all those long training sessions with Gambit, in which learning to pick a lock, to survive on nothing but a piece of wire and will, was essential to winning. The lock was easy. Scott cracked open the door and held his breath, listening. Nothing but quiet. He slipped from the room into the empty hall, devoid of anything but doors. White floors, white cracked walls, cold and easy to clean. No security cameras. For a moment, the flickering fluorescent lighting hurt Scott's eyes. He rubbed at them, trying to cope with his new ability to see in color. What little there was, anyway. Scott did not know where to go, only that he had to move, had to learn why he was here, how, what had happened to the rest of his team—Jean—then get out, run, make things right. Scott was good at making things right. You had to be, when you led the X-Men. Somewhere distant, a man screamed. Startled, a cry of pain. Scott heard shouting. Careful, his feet small and covered only in thin white socks, he loped down the hall after those sounds—and oh, it was strange moving in that body, that unfamiliar shell with its foreign muscles and rhythms and parts. He could not reconcile his mind to the loss of its physical home, had trouble staying focused on the now, when everything about him was strange and new. Despite the turmoil ahead of him, the hall remained empty. It was a familiar emptiness, one he associated with his youth. In places where the inhabitants lacked control over their own lives, nighttime meant lockdown, enforced rest. Easier for the graveyard shift, few in number and too underpaid to care about bathroom trips or nightmares. You are not a child anymore. You are not in the orphanage. No. He was in a mental hospital. Belldonne, if he was not mistaken. He had studied the blueprints of the place during the short flight to Seattle and it was easy for his mind to translate the two-dimensional lines, the pictures of halls and rooms and stairs, into something concrete, physical. When one had a power like his—creating light that could ricochet, bounce, reflect—one learned very quickly how to visualize the reality of things. And the reality of this institution was exactly how he had envisioned the physical promise of the blueprint design. Which meant, except for not knowing what floor he was on, that he could easily get in and out of Belldonne. The bigger problem was that he did not know if the rest of his team was in here with him. Until he found out more, he could not afford to take the chance of leaving them behind. And if you are the only one here? What if there is another person—this woman—looking out through your eyes? Using your powers? Interacting with the others? That would be bad. He wondered where his body was. He wondered where Jean was, if she was still herself and had noticed the change in his mind. If anyone could fix this, it would be her. The hospital was not very big. Scott, still following the rumble of concerned voices, those cries of pain, finally drew near enough to hear actual words, like: "careful," and "get ready." A doorknob rattled and Scott peered around a corner in the hall to watch as three men entered a room. He heard sounds of a struggle—more shouting—and then, after several minutes, a deep quiet broken only by the sobs of a hurting man. Scott remained very still. The door opened. Two men emerged, carrying another between them. Scott thought his leg might be broken: The injured man could not stop whimpering. Scott got ready to run, but the hospital employees moved down the hall in the opposite direction. The door opened again. Two more men emerged, one of them saying, "He's never been this violent. I thought Maguire was kidding us when he said to straitjacket him." "He said the same thing to me about Mindy, that I should take precautions, that she might go wacko. Can you believe that?" "Mindy?" He sounded shocked. "What the hell?" "Exactly. I didn't do it, either. Maguire doesn't know everything." "He predicted Jeff. You should have heard him, too. He even talked different." "Whatever. That shot'll keep him down until tomorrow. Let the day shift handle the rest of his shit" "Yeah," said the man, though he did not sound happy about it. They left. Scott listened to the quiet footfalls fade into silence. The old hospital ticked and creaked around him; somewhere distant, another person cried out. A woman, this time. She sounded like she was having a nightmare. Maybe she would wake up on her own, maybe not Scott knew what that was like. He peered around the corner at the door. The lights were off in this section of the hall; a money saver, to only light every other corridor. Hoping no one else would return, Scott left his hiding place. Exploring the hospital no longer seemed as important as the troublesome patient inside that room, because if he had been body-snatched, then why not the rest of his team? You're drawing too many conclusions. You need facts. And he had one: The hospital employees had been surprised by the patient's behavior. Something about this "Jeff' was different, and though it might be nothing more than a chemical imbalance, Scott had to check it out. He could not take the chance that he might be passing up a friend—or his wife. He desperately hoped Jean was okay. The door was locked, but he still had his little wire. He worked fast. The room he entered was far bleaker than the one he had awakened in. There was no furniture, no comforts of any kind. In the middle of the cracked dirty floor lay a large man. Dark skin, dreadlocks. Straitjacket pulled tight. There was some blood at the corner of his mouth. Scott crouched beside the limp figure, studying that face, wondering if this was stupid, how it could be possible that anyone he knew was trapped inside that body. You re inside a woman, he reminded himself. It's possible. Cautious, listening for any movement outside in the hall, Scott crouched beside the man. "Hey" he said, shaking that thick shoulder. "Hey... Logan?" Hey, nothing. Scott sighed. This was a dead end, at least until the man—Jeff—woke up. Until then, he had to keep moving, try to figure out why and how he was here. Maybe even fulfill the intent of his mission and discover if there were mutants being kept against their will. Ha, ha. Funny. Scott left the room with its sleeping man. He did not look back. The thing about institutions of any kind—orphanage, nursing home, mental hospital—was that the staff always gossiped about the individuals in their care. It was inevitable, the best catharsis available, and even though such discussions were discouraged so as to prevent any potential mean-spiritedness, Scott knew all too well that it was impossible to curb a tongue in need of wagging. As a child, he himself had been the focus of adult gossip, sometimes pleasant—sometimes not. He knew how the game was played. Which meant that just before dawn he returned to his room and waited for the staff to come check on him. It was difficult, but Scott was good at being patient, at waiting on moments. He had excellent control. There was sunlight streaming through his window when the door finally rattled and a woman entered. She was short and plump, with a round dark face and squinting eyes. She gave the impression of being difficult, rough, but she smiled when she saw Scott and her voice was loud and cheerful as she said, "Good morning, Mindy. How did you sleep?" Mindy. Scott remembered that name. He said, "I slept fine, thank you." The woman's smile disappeared and she stared at him, unblinking. Scott thought, Oh no, and tried to look dumb. "You talked," she said. Scott said nothing. He looked down at his hands, folded primly in his lap. He wished he knew how Mindy usually sat, her expressions and behavior. He did not want any special attention, no trouble. He did not want to be the focus of the gossip he so desperately wanted to hear. The woman drew near. "Mindy," she said, and placed her hands under Scott's chin to force his head up. He refused to look into her eyes. Shy, he thought. Maybe this Mindy is shy. "Mindy," she said again. "Say something else." Scott stayed silent, and after a long moment the woman sighed, releasing him with a shove. "Yeah, you be stupid for another day. Suits you fine, I guess." It did suit him, just fine. Scott glanced at the tag on her uniform. PALMER, it said, in big letters. Nurse Palmer. "Come on." She stepped back from the bed. "Dr. Maguire wants you supervised while he's on vacation, but I don't have time for that. You just follow your routine, Mindy, and we won't have a problem. Right? Go on, now. Get washed up and then head down to the recreation room. They've got music there today." Scott did not need to be told twice, though he was circumspect in his movements, trying to take on an air of quiet timidity that he hoped was like the real Mindy. He had a feeling he was doing a lousy job. Though he did not look at Nurse Palmer, he felt her studying him, and her scrutiny made him uncomfortable. She did not say anything, though, and when Scott shuffled down the hall toward the women's bathroom—a door he had passed, and almost entered, during his nighttime excursion—Nurse Palmer turned and strode away in the other direction. She unlocked the door next to Scott's room, and entered with much the same greeting. At least you know more than you did before. Even if it was not much, although if Nurse Palmer's reaction was any indication, Mindy had a completely nonthreatening reputation that meant he could run circles around the hospital and its staff and not get into very much trouble. The bathroom felt more like a locker room, complete with open showers and toilet stalls. The air smelled warm, moist. Scott looked at himself in the long mirror above the sinks. His first reaction was to shout, to close his eyes—and indeed, some strangled sound did pass his lips, though his gaze never wavered from the fine feminine features staring back at him from the mirror. Pale skin, high cheekbones framed by short black hair. Brown eyes. Mindy's face looked Asian; Chinese, perhaps. She was... pretty. He shuddered, finally looking away. He could not stand to see himself, to gaze through those strange eyes and know who he was, trapped inside a stranger's body. It was too surreal, too disturbing. He felt lost. Mortal, even, in a way he never had before. It was the ultimate violation, a stripping away of the illusion that he had any control over his life, his body. He turned and walked to the toilets. His bladder hurt. It was not easy, relieving himself, but he managed. He washed his hands, his face—trying so hard not to look at himself again—and then left the bathroom. He followed his memories of the blueprints, walking down the long corridor until he found a wide set of stairs. Scott heard voices; the hospital was waking up. Indeed, by the time he reached the first floor, the halls were already filled with shuffling, talking, weeping, staring, bodies. Nurses and security guards mingled among the patients, but many of the staff gathered at various stations located throughout the corridor. Most looked tired; they clutched mugs of coffee and watched the patients with dull eyes. The most alert employees seemed to be located at the nurses' station across from the recreation room, which also doubled as the dining hall. A small line of patients stood before a utilitarian service line, holding trays and taking food from several women who stood behind a low stainless-steel wall. Scott's stomach growled. He got in line. 'To, yo, yo," muttered the short man in front of him. He had wild hair and bulging eyes, hollow cheeks covered in a light beard peppered with silver. "Yo, Mindy. You got a pencil on you?" Scott said nothing and the man whispered, "Yo, shit. Shit, shit, shit. Mindy, you got some shit on you?" He began laughing, loud, with a hint of hysteria. "Shut the hell up," someone said. A woman. Scott turned, and had to look up to see the tanned face, the hard green eyes and unforgiving mouth. He felt very short. The woman smiled, tight-lipped, and looked over Scott's head at the—now silent—heckler. He clutched his tray to his chest and swallowed hard. "Yeah," she said softly. "Yeah, you be quiet now. Got that?" He nodded. Scott would have nodded, too, if he was that man. This woman looked like she could break him in half and smoke on his bones for breakfast Which made him wonder. "Logan?" he asked. The woman gave him a strange look. "When did you start talking? And no, I'm no Logan." She shoved her finger into Scott's shoulder. "Do I look like a man?" Scott shook his head and turned quickly away. He picked up a tray and took the plastic-wrapped egg and biscuit sandwich handed to him by one of the cooks. She also gave him an apple and a box of orange juice. Finger foods only, apparently. No silverware, no sharp pointy objects. "Hey!" The woman held up her sandwich and stared at the cook. "Thought I told you girls I'm a vegetarian." She received no response. Scott got the feeling this was something they heard on a regular basis. The woman muttered and nudged Scott with her elbow. "Come on. Freaks are animal murderers. One of these days I'll make them into chop suey and see how they like eating it." Which might be difficult, seeing as how they would presumably be dead when she was through with them. Scott did not point that out. He dutifully followed the taller woman as she led him to an empty plastic table by the window. The chairs were also plastic, covered in vibrant colors that distracted Scott. His eyes hurt, looking at those chairs, but he felt hunger, too, for the rich variety of blue and green and yellow. Jean sometimes let him see the world through her eyes, but this was better. He had forgotten how clear and sharp the color yellow could be, that snap of green shine in the apple. The woman snagged the only red chair—a red that was better, richer, with more variance and warmth than he remembered—and went to another table to grab a second of the same color for Scott. She pushed away all the other chairs until they clogged the walking space around their table. Some of the patients gave her dirty looks; the rest did not seem to care or notice. "Red's best," she said, turning her chair around so that she straddled it. "Red is hot. It's like fire." Scott nodded, unwrapping his breakfast. Red was good, except when it was the only color you could count on seeing for the rest of your life. He glanced around the dining room. He would have preferred to sit closer to the nurses' station; all the good gossip would be there, every little complaint and nuanced praise. If any of the patients were acting .unusual, that was the best place to find out. Still, he did not want to upset the woman, and she seemed to like... Mindy. A couple minutes, then. Surely she would get bored with him before long. But she did not get bored, and over the next half hour proceeded to tell Scott everything about herself, smoothly, and with enough practice that she sounded rehearsed, like the words spilling out of her were tradition, some game she played, like—last night they made me go around in the circle and say my name is Rachel, like I'm a Gemini, which means I'm nuts, and yeah, I showed them my scars, said "see these scars, these scars on my arm," and no that's not from drugs, stupid, not from anything like that, because it was done to me here, you know, like they give you all this medicine in your ass, just go JABBING it in when they want you to calm down, but I ask nice so they give it to me in the arm or with pills, you know, to help me think better, which is such shit because I think just fine, really just fine, and they're a bunch of meat-eating Nazis in this place and why the hell are you eating that egg, Holy Crap, they turned you into one of them, Mindy, give me that trash, don't put that in your body—which meant that all Scott got was a scrap of biscuit and an apple, and that was enough to make him irritated. He was just getting ready to give up and switch tables, when Rachel looked behind him, frowned, and said, "That's weird." Scott, at this point uncaring about how the real Mindy would and would not act, turned in his chair to look. He did not see anything out of the ordinary, and said, "Who?" Rachel stared at him. "You are talking." Scott ignored that. "Who is acting weird?" Rachel, still looking like the Antichrist was speaking out of Mindy's mouth, said, "Renny. He's like you. Doesn't talk worth shit. But he's over there now, chatting up a love storm with little blond Betty." Scott looked, and sure enough he saw a slender dark-skinned man leaning over the shoulder of an older blond woman. She was smiling, he was smiling, and Scott thought they both looked like they were having far too much fun to be one of his X-Men. Surely, if one of his team had been kidnapped, they would not be using this as an excuse to flirt. Yeah, right He stood up. Rachel said, "What the hell?" Scott said, "I'll be back," and he walked over to the man called Renny. He was peripherally aware of the nurses watching from their station, and remembered the conversation he had overheard the previous night. The doctor had asked that Mindy be carefully observed, something the graveyard shift had scoffed at. Maybe the day shift scoffed, too, but Scott still felt their hard gazes. He was most likely giving them something to talk about now. Mindy was acting out of character. Scott got close enough to hear Betty giggle and say, "I love your new accent," and then he was right up against Renny's side, and the man looked down into Scott's eyes and there was a gleam there, this hint of a smile that was so familiar it made him wonder about souls and personalities and too many other existential matters-that he had no time for, and Scott said, "Kurt?" Teeth flashed. A slender hand reached up to touch the tip of a brown round ear. "Ja, it's a miracle....Scott?" "How did you know?" He grinned, unable to stop himself from looking so happy. He was happy, thrilled to finally know he was not alone in this place. 'The face is different, but something else remains." Kurt smiled, clapping his hand on Scott's shoulder. He drew him away from Betty, who watched them leave with a pout. "It is good to see you." "We need to find the others," Scott said, quieter. "Assuming, of course, that we're all here." "It would make no sense to take only two of us, especially us two. We are strong, Scott, but not quite as threatening as Jean, Rogue, or Logan. No, no. The others must be somewhere near." "Any idea how this happened?" Kurt shook his head. It was disconcerting to see this stranger speak and act with Kurt's mannerisms, but Scott pretended it was the work of an image inducer, that their new bodies were a hologram, some odd camouflage hiding their true selves. It was easier that way, though not terribly honest. Kurt's gaze flickered, which gave Scott enough warning to turn. Rachel was approaching fast. She looked intense. "A friend?" Kurt asked mildly. Scott did not have time to answer. Rachel stopped in front of him with her fists planted on her hips and an ugly tilt to her hard mouth. "You've been holding out on me," she said. "Bitch." "I don't understand," Scott said. "All this time you could talk and you never said anything to me? And now, with this lowlife, you're all coochy-coo? After all I've done to help your ass? Screw that. I'm sorry, but that's firickin' rude." "Wait," Scott said. "Rachel-" She took a swing at him. Scott blocked the blow, instinct pouring through foreign muscles, making them work in ways they were not accustomed. Mindy was not a physically strong woman; Scott had to readjust, but he was too slow—Rachel got in one good blow, straight to his gut. He heard shouting, Kurt's accent in an unfamiliar voice, and then white—white uniforms gathering, pushing, and Rachel screaming obscenities as she was carried to the ground, slammed on her stomach with her face pressed into linoleum and the back of her jammies yanked down so that some woman could stick a needle into her pasty backside. And then Kurt was there, helping Scott to his feet. Behind them, a woman laughed. Low, soft, and sweedy sensual. Familiar. "Sugah, sugah," said a raspy voice, which was not as recognizable. "I knew if I looked for a fight, I'd find you boys." Scott and Kurt turned. Rogue smiled.
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 3	Rogue, of course, looked like a stranger. She was tall and sinewy, with a weather-beaten face that was all hard wrinkles and light scars. A fighter's face, with gray eyes and short-cropped silver hair. Her body was lean— no soft curves, no youthful figure, just some breasts and narrow hips. But her laugh, that smile... It was eerie, how much of Rogue came through on the stranger, as though the woman he knew and valued as a friend had become a ghost pressed to flesh; insubstantial, but with enough presence to be seen by a keen eye. Scott did not think the same could be said of him. At least, he hoped not. "Kurt," Rogue said, staring at the man who had been Renny. "I know that accent anywhere." "I'm Scott," Scott said, unsure she would recognize the person behind Mindy's face. His stomach hurt like hell. Rachel packed a hard punch. He wondered if he felt the pain more intensely because of his new body; he never remembered his old scuffles hurting quite this much. Rogue smiled, revealing yellow teeth. "I knew that. Logan would never have let that gal get in a punch, and if it was Jean, there wouldn't have been a fight. Odds were for it being you." Kurt laughed. Scott shot him a glare. One of the nurses approached Scott; the leg of his blue uniform was flecked with blood and his face looked drawn, tired. His tag said PENN. "Are you hurt, Mindy?" "No," Scott said, and kicked himself for once again opening his big mouth. Still, it was inevitable—he had been seen speaking to several different individuals over the past few minutes, and if Mindy was as quiet as everyone seemed to believe, then someone was going to start asking questions sooner rather than later. Better to get it over with now. Nurse Penn gave him an odd look, but did not comment on Mindy's newfound propensity to talk. He studied the other two patients standing beside Scott, moving only slightly when his colleagues brushed past with Rachel hanging limp in their arms. His gaze never wavered. "Now this is interesting," he said. "Mindy, Renny, and Crazy Jane, all together, holding an actual conversation. Mindy's no trouble, but you other two? Gotta say this combo has me scratching my head." "Maybe we're getting better," Rogue said; still sounding like a Southern chain-smoking biker queen. "Yeah." Penn laughed, rubbing his jaw. "Thing is, just last week you tried to strangle Renny with your bra, and the week before that you had someone run interference while you cornered him in the men's bathroom and made to rip off his balls. Man usually cries when he sees you now." "Ah," Kurt said. "I cried earlier." "And then I made him stop," Rogue said. "We're friends now." "Practically siblings," Kurt said, slinging an arm over her shoulders. Scott coughed. Penn frowned. "Something's not right here," he said. "Really not right. Doc Maguire told us to watch out for you guys. Said we should lock you up in the quiet rooms. Now, I don't like doing that unless there's good call for it, but you mess up—you even blink at each other wrong—and I'll have your asses hauled off so fast you won't know what hit you." "Dr. Maguire," Scott said slowly, recalling that name from the night before. "Is he here for us to see?" Because he found it very curious that one man could have singled them out. Very curious, considering what had happened to each and every one of them. Again, Penn frowned. "He's on vacation. Thought you knew that, Mindy. Course, you never talk much so it's hard to tell just what goes through your head." Scott said nothing, just tucked his chin in a close approximation of shyness. He fussed with the hem of his shirt with small pale hands. Shy and nervous, small and sick, nonthreatening as a little kitten. Penn sighed. "Sorry. I'm glad you're making progress. Really. If you need to see someone, there's a doc coming in this afternoon. Okay?" "'Kay," Scott mumbled, well aware of the suspicious twitch around Kurt's mouth. In his smallest voice— which he discovered was quite small and very timid—he said, "Dr. Maguire knew I was going to get better? Did he... did he say who else?" "Oh," said the man, uncomfortable. "He didn't actually say you were going to get better. Remember? Quiet rooms, Mindy." Scott nodded, still looking down at the ground. Meek, ever so meek. "But I'm not alone?" "No, kid. You're not alone." He looked sorry he had said anything, and began backing away. Scott could not let him leave. He needed those names. "Who else?" he asked softly, finally looking him in the eyes. "Please." It was like catching a deer in headlights. Scott would never have been able to get away with this in his own body, but Mindy had a history here, a presence, and Penn slowly said, "He put out the call on you three and Jeff. Jeff and Patty. So far those two have lived up to the warning. We've got our eyes on the rest of you. Doc is almost never wrong." Your "doc" sounds like suspect number one, Scott thought, lowering his gaze. Nurse Penn walked away, but not far. He stopped at the station where some other employees waited, still holding coffee mugs, still with keen gazes as they surveyed the room and its milling patients. Rachel's outburst had been an unmemorable ripple in their morning; nothing more, nothing less. Scott turned so that his back was to the nurses and security guards. "I know where Jeff is. We need to find this Patty." "Jean and Logan," Rogue murmured. "What the heck happened to us, Scott? Where are our real bodies?" Kurt made a deep sound, low in his throat. "Meine freunde, until we find our old selves, these are our real bodies." "Thanks for the reminder," Scott said, still trying to ignore his breasts. "Okay, then. Kurt, I want you to find out as much as you can about Dr. Maguire. Rogue, look for this Patty. Be discreet. You've already got a reputation and we don't want you locked up. I'm going to see if I can get in to see Jeff." Rogue frowned. "What if they're the wrong people? Might be a coincidence that doctor named us." "I don't believe in coincidence," Scott said. "We'll meet back here in an hour." Interesting, living in a stranger's skin. Rogue, much to her surprise, found that she did not like it. An old fantasy, to be sure: being another person for a day, someone normal. No mutant powers, no burdens. Just a regular life and an ordinary body covered in delightful, touchable, skin. She was a good daydreamer. Fantasies full with the thrill of titillation, acting upon the forbidden. Touch me, touch you. One warm palm sliding against a cheek, a throat, and oh, some kiss, something sweet on the lips. Heaven. Heart's desire. And now she had it—or at least, the possibility—and she found that the flesh was not so forgiving, that her dreams frightened her. Ah, Remy. I wish you were here. She was also quite grateful that he was not. Too many complications. She was not even certain he would want her, looking as she did. Old, rough, the product of a hard life. The irony being, of course, that this body with its scars and aging aches, was probably a better reflection of her heart than the real thing. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You got no time for pity. Right. She had work to do. One thing the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants had taught her, long before she ever joined the X-Men, was that you did your work or you died. Only the strong survived. Life never favored whiners. And at least she was still a woman. Poor Scott. He and Kurt had already slipped out of the dining room, and it was funny watching them; Rogue did not know who Mindy and Renny had been before, but now they looked like trouble—the cartoon kind, little rascally animals that tiptoed about with mischief on their minds. Scott could not help himself; there probably wasn't a lick of humor in him right now, certainly no mischief—but in that body, with that delicate face reflecting his stubborn frowns, there was an aura of the surreal, the ridiculous, that Rogue simply could not shake. Kurt did not make it any easier. She could tell he was enjoying himself. But that was Kurt, always able to take the best out of any situation. Rogue wished she had that talent Despite wanting to laugh at her friends, she did not have the same sense of humor about her own predicament. At the far end of the dining room was an area filled with shabby orange couches and battered faux-wood tables. Games littered the floor and scratched surfaces: chess, checkers, playing cards, even a shabby version of Monopoly. Bodies, too. Some of the men and women looked like tattered versions of the games, old and plastic, so heavily medicated as to be near death. They smelted like urine and sweat and despair. Rogue hated it. This could have been you, if you had never learned how to control all the voices in your head. Friends, enemies, strangers—men and women who had been sucked into her soul over the long years, thanks to her powers. Some of them still spoke to her, still whispered schemes in her dreams. Yes, she could have ended up in a loony bin. Still might, if she wasn't careful. Actually, forget that. She was already here. There were patients in the recreation area who looked like they were having actual conversations. Rogue wandered over to them. She needed to find this Patty, and those folks seemed like a good place to start. If she got desperate, she might try the nurses and security guards. She hoped it did not come to that. Based on what she had already heard, "Crazy Jane" had a reputation, and asking for the whereabouts of another patient might look suspicious. The less contact she had with the authorities in this place, the better. She chose her targets carefully; she did not want to be seen with people who might not normally associate with someone like Crazy Jane. Too many questions, and in this place, she had no power—nothing to protect herself with except brains and caution. Not that she could complain. The alternative, after all, was death—and considering how easily she and her friends had been taken over, she was surprised to still be breathing. Why anyone would go to the trouble of stealing their bodies—and then keep their minds intact—was beyond her. Rogue found what she was looking for in the far corner of the recreation area, sitting at a small table. A young man and older woman, both of whom looked capable of handling someone like Jane—but sane enough to actually know something. She moseyed over. Their voices carried. "My mom is coming today. God, is she a nightmare." The young man tapped his fingers along the edge of the table. Up close, he looked and sounded so youthful, Rogue revised her opinion and downgraded him to "boy." Scraggly hair, pointy chin, shiny forehead. "Love, Kyle," said the woman across from him. She was eating an apple, holding it tight in a pudgy fist. "You can't complain about that." "The hell I can't, Suzy. Did you know—" He stopped, finally noticing Rogue. She cast a shadow on their table. "The hell you want, C.J.?" C.J. Huh, cute. Rogue said, "Just company. Anything wrong with that?" "This is a private conversation." He gave her the finger, but it was halfhearted, like an old habit. Rogue grabbed the nearest chair and sat down. "If it was so private, sugah, you shouldn't have been talking so loud. Ain't just the walls that have ears in this place." "Funny way you're talking. You been taking lessons in redneck?" Suzy's small eyes could have been blue or brown; every time she blinked, they seemed to change. "Don't know," Rogue said, making a stronger attempt to dull her accent. "You been taking lessons in how to get your face punched in?" That earned her a thin smile. "Good old Jane. Always so predictable. I love getting a rise out of you." "That's not all you like getting," muttered the man. Rogue shot him a sharp look, wondering what that meant. The woman laughed. "Bad, you're so bad!" She set down her apple and began shuffling cards. Instead of passing them out, however, she cut the deck in half and then fanned the stack with her palm. She looked at Rogue and her eyes shifted from blue to brown. "Choose one, Jane. Come on. I dare you." Rogue did not want to choose a card. She had come here to ask questions, not participate in games. Nor did she like the peculiarity of the woman's shifting gaze, her intensity. Rogue, faced with that scrutiny, was reminded again of her precarious situation; she felt exposed, weak, utterly and miserably human. For all her fantasies to the contrary, Rogue wanted her powers back. She wanted to be a mutant and feel safe again. Safer, at any rate. She could not escape the irony of that. "Well?" said Suzy, sly. She tapped the cards with one hard fingernail. "Let's see what fate has in store for you." If Rogue had her way, fate would provide both of her missing friends, as well as a swift escape from this place and a safe return to their bodies so they could begin the ass-kicking that someone so royally deserved. Rogue chose a card. She had a job to do, and that came first. If she humored this woman, played along with her crazy games, then maybe she would be more willing to answer Rogue's questions. A nine of spades. Rogue did not know what that meant. She looked at Suzy, and was not comforted by the flush creeping up her sagging neck. "That's a bad card," she said. "Of course," Rogue said. "Those are the only kind I get" "It means you've cast yourself in an illusion," said the woman, leaning close. Her eyes shifted, dark to light: unmistakable and eerie and utterly unnatural. "You don't know the difference between dream and waking." "I know enough," Rogue said smoothly, though on the inside a chill settled deep in her gut. Her eyes might belong to a different woman, but they did not lie. Suzy was a mutant. Probably low-level, perhaps only a physical permutation, but with enough kick in her genes to set her apart. Rogue wondered why she was in the hospital, if her incarceration had anything to do with her mutation. She wondered if this woman, because she was a mutant, might know something about why the X-Men were trapped here. It was no accident that Rogue and her friends were living in the bodies of strangers. Wasn't any machine she knew of that could accomplish that, which meant a person had done the deed. Another mutant. Rogue shifted in her chair. She should have just stuck with a simple interrogation instead of an attempt to fit in. You never could do anything simple. "Why are you here?" Rogue asked Suzy. Another bad question, but she might as well go for broke. She wanted to know if the woman was here against her will. Suzy said nothing. Kyle's gaze darted to both women, back and forth, back and forth. His fingers drummed the air. He looked worried. "I want to talk about my mom," he said. "I tried to kill someone," said Suzy softly, ignoring him. She stared into Rogue's eyes. "Bang, bang, you're dead. But you already know that, C.J. Or you should." "Yeah?" Rogue said. "My memory's bad. Remind me of something else, Suzy. Did you enjoy the killing?" "Suzy," said Kyle, imploring. Suzy bared her teeth in a smile. "I was crazy at the time. I didn't know what I was doing. Something you should be familiar with." Rogue shrugged, holding Suzy's gaze. The mutant woman was here for a good reason, and if her, then maybe others—if there were other mutants in Belldonne. Rogue had the feeling that Logan's contact was full of it—or else had deliberately misled them. If so, it was the best trap that had ever caught her. "C.J.," Suzy said. "You're not acting like yourself." "That's because I'm crazy," Rogue said, and shoved the nine of spades back into the lineup of cards. "Did you hear about Patty?" Kyle looked relieved by the change of subject. He shook his head, still playing air drums with his fingers. "Dumb girl. She screwed over the wrong guard." "What'd they do to her?" "Quiet room," Suzy said, still staring, eyes narrowing into pins of shifting color. Pain prickled the spot between Rogue's eyes; watching Suzy's face was enough to give her a headache. Kyle slid forward on his chair. "You thinking of busting her while she's down, C.J.?" "Only if I can find her," Rogue said, allowing the rough gravel of her voice to pack the menace she needed. "Which quiet room is she in?" "Third floor, near the west-wing station." Suzy picked up Rogue's discarded card. She ran the edges over her fingers and palm, and then pressed it to her lips. "You'll need a distraction." "You offering one?" Again, she smiled. "Interesting that you need to ask." Rogue frowned, and glanced around. No one but the nurses and security guards were paying attention to them; most of the other patients slumped in chairs or shuffled across the floor, radiating a dull discontent that seemed borne of boredom, confinement. There were some areas of dynamism—nervous anxiety, scattered bursts of laughter—but beneath even that was an undercurrent of unease and fear. No one wanted to be here. If you did, Rogue thought, then you really were sick. She stretched and kicked back her chair. This body still felt strange; an ill-fitting glove, one that had unfamiliar aches, an odd rolling looseness in her joints. She stood and Kyle grabbed her arm. It was startling, for a moment horrifying, to feel his hand on her bare skin. Not my skin. Not mine. You're nothing but human here, sugah. Remember that. Still, it did not matter that her skin was safe. Touch was unnatural, wrong. Dangerous. Rogue gave him a look that felt as unfriendly as her thoughts, and his hand flew off her arm. Kyle cowered, like he expected to be hit. "It's all right," Rogue said, ashamed that he was so afraid of her, of the woman who had once inhabited this skin. Suzy laughed. "You need to learn some things, Kyle," she said, still playing with the nine of spades: the illusion, the dream. "Some bitches you just don't touch." Truer words were never spoken. Rogue left to find Patty. The hospital surprised her. It was, quite clearly, an asylum of some kind, but none of the hospital employees stopped Rogue as she climbed the stairs to the third floor. No one questioned her movements, or tried to restrain her. So much for having a bad reputation. Not that there was much point to restricting anyone's movements; there was no place for the patients to wander other than the halls and other public areas. The facility felt more like a prison than a place of healing. Chicken wire—and, occasionally, bars—covered all the window glass, which was often too cloudy and distorted to allow any kind of outside view. The only exits—and Rogue had found them both, first thing that morning—were secured by locked metal doors guarded by security personnel. No security cameras, either, except by those doors. Rogue thought that was poor planning, but the hospital was clearly old and probably underfunded. Good for her and the others, but it did not speak well of the care real patients received, or the kinds of protection the staff had against those same patients. Rogue could not imagine being forced to live here, day after day, perhaps for years at a time. The third-floor west-wing station was located right off the stairs. Unlike the station across from the recreation room and dining hall, this one was enclosed in glass and resembled an office space rather than a medical treatment area. The desk had room for only one nurse, but there was a door behind her, and Rogue could not tell if more people might be sitting on the other side. She doubted it; the hospital had too few staff for anyone to be idle for long. "Can I help you, Jane?" asked the nurse. A thick brown braid covered her name tag. She made no move to leave the protection of her station. "No," Rogue said, fighting her southern accent. "I'm just walking. Doctor... Dr. Maguire's been teaching me some techniques, stuff to calm me. I'm just trying it out." The nurse gave her a thin smile. "That's nice. The doctor has made such progress with you and the others. Really, he's a miracle worker. We're so lucky he decided to come here." Yes, terribly lucky. Rogue thought he might be working more than just miracles. So far, he seemed to be the only connection between the X-Men and their new bodies. Scott was right not to believe in coincidence. "I heard Patty went crazy on someone," Rogue said. "I guess those techniques didn't work for her." The nurse sighed, glancing at the first closed door outside the station. Rogue glanced at it, too. The lock looked standard; easy enough to break, with the right tool. "It's such a shame," said the nurse. "Patty has been so calm lately. We thought for sure it would last after Dr. Maguire left. He did warn us, though. We should have listened more carefully." Rogue said nothing, simply stepped up to the door and peered through the glass observation window. She saw a tiny plump body wrapped in a straitjacket, blond hair spreading wild over the white tile. If that was Patty, then she was either unconscious or pretending. Rogue did not feel lucky enough to place a bet. "Please move away from there," said the nurse. She looked wary now, and Rogue did not miss the way her hand crept beneath the desk. Call button, no doubt. Rogue thought it strange that simply looking at Patty would be enough to make the nurse concerned, but she was not familiar with Jane's history. Could be she and this Patty had a fighting past, much like the one she supposedly had with "Renny." Rogue shuffled backward toward the stairs. The nurse said, "Have you taken your meds today, Jane?" "Yes," Rogue said, and then left, fast. The last thing she wanted was to get into a protracted conversation about medication, especially when she did not plan on taking any. The pills offered to her early that morning had met a quick end after being cheeked, then spit into her palm and tucked beneath her mattress. When that first nurse had unlocked her door, Rogue had not yet figured out what was happening, but she knew enough to recognize that her body was remarkably different—and that pills of any kind had to be a bad thing. She heard shouts before she reached the dining hall, the crash of something large. She ran, dodging other patients who hovered in her way, trying to move fast in a body where her knee ached and her lungs labored for air. What she found was a fight. None of the participants were familiar, though it was somewhat difficult to tell, given that a nurse was facedown on the floor with blood spreading around him, and the three laughing people kicking him had their backs to her. There was a terrible smell, like feces had been spread on the walls, and sure enough she saw dark stains—not on the walls, but on the floor, on the white uniforms of the nurses trying to reach their fallen colleague. She forgot she did not have superpowers, or maybe it did not matter. She was closer to the fight than the nurses and she slammed her way through the crowd until she reached the smallest of the attackers. He did not see her coming and Rogue grabbed both his ears, twisting them, yanking backward with all her strength. The man screamed in pain, but Rogue did not let go. She twisted harder, and when his knees buckled, kicked the weakest one out from under him and rode him hard to the ground. Hit his head once against the floor, not holding back as she was accustomed to doing, because she was weak now, just human, and she needed all the strength these muscles could give her. She heard a satisfying crack, and the man went very still. Rogue stood, muscles unaccustomedly sore. She never hurt this bad when fighting Magneto. She turned to go after another of the nurse's attackers and got slammed in the gut with a nightstick. "Get down!" screamed a security guard, two words which Rogue dimly realized she had been hearing a lot of for the past minute or so. He hit her again and Rogue fell to her knees, trying to protect her head as he landed a third blow across her shoulders. Everyone near the fight, participant or not, was getting slugged into submission. The people in charge were too upset to differentiate between good and bad. Rogue huddled in a tight ball, waiting for another blow. It never came; the security guard had already moved on to someone else. The fight was dying down; the nurse's attackers were all on the ground, and several people cared for the injured employee. A not-so-gentle hand touched Rogues back. She peered up into Suzy's face. "Bad cards," she muttered, the colors of her gaze twirling like a pinwheel. Blood flecked her chin. "You're in a lot of trouble." No kidding. She hurt bad. Stifling a groan, Rogue tried to stand. Her knee popped. If this was what getting old felt like, then she knew why people fought it, kicking and screaming. She saw Scott and Kurt—or rather, their new bodies-edging close. They appeared concerned. She waggled her fingers at them and mouthed, "I'm okay." "No," Suzy said, gazing down at the man lying so still at their feet. "You're not." Rogue stared at her, and then studied that quiet body, the unmoving chest. A deep chill spread through her, accompanied by dread, horror. "No," she murmured, bending down to feel the man's throat. No, it's not possible, I'm not strong enough, I'm only human. Human, maybe. But still strong enough to kill.
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 4	Security took Rogue away. Scott watched, unable to do a thing to stop them. He and Kurt tried; they went to the supervising nurse, who happened to be Nurse Penn, to argue on her behalf. All they got for their trouble was a strange look and a simple, "I know what happened, I saw it all." Scott was not comforted. "Now what?" Kurt asked. "What will they do to her?" Penn shrugged. "Jane will be locked up until the administrator has time to review the case. If they find she murdered that kid with deliberate intent, she'll probably be shipped off to the psychiatric ward of the state prison facility. Even if she's not found guilty, she'll probably be sent there. That woman is too dangerous for this place. Something you know all about, huh, Renny?" Penn did not wait for an answer. He left them, walking quickly after the small group hauling away Rogue. The men who had started the fight lay on the ground in a drugged heap. A security guard prodded their ribs with his nightstick. Scott and Kurt followed Nurse Penn. He never turned around to see if anyone watched him, which was good, because Scott did not want to explain why he and Renny, two of the most unlikely people to be interested in Jane's welfare, seemed so concerned. He was glad Rogue did not fight them, and watched her straight back, her careful easy walk. They took her to the third floor, to a nurses' station where the woman at the desk looked at Rogue without much surprise. Scott and Kurt hung back in the stairwell, trying to listen as the hospital employees argued about where to put her. The station nurse wanted Rogue locked up in her own room, but the security guards—and Penn—thought there was too much furniture, too many resources to make a weapon, especially in her "current state." The current state being that of a murderer. Never mind that she had acted to defend their colleague. Never mind that she was not fighting them now, but instead waited, unemotional and calm. A good act; Scott could not imagine what Rogue was feeling at the moment. The security guards won the argument. The desk nurse said something muffled, and then Scott heard keys, the rattle of a door. Velcro ripping. "Let's go," Scott said to Kurt. "At least we know where she is now." "Temporarily. I do not trust that she will be there for long." "Then we need to find everyone fast and get the hell out of here." Once they escaped this place it was only a short run to the Blackbird, which they had left close by in a local park. Calling the Mansion from the jet would hopefully convince the people back home that they were not mere impostors. Assuming, of course, that the jet was still there. If someone had their bodies, they also had access. The Blackbird opened its doors on spoken command of certain passwords, or if the internal sensors confirmed the physical identity of a permitted flyer. The idea of strangers in his jet made Scott sick. He did not want to think about it. He and Kurt walked downstairs and sat at a table in the far comer of the recreation room, where they watched nurses continue to soothe the patients, who stared wide-eyed and groaning at the corpse still lying on the ground. Scott wanted to groan, too, but for a different reason. "What did you discover about Maguire?" he asked Kurt. "Not much. I found his office, but it was locked and I had nothing to open it with. The nurses, though, were quite helpful. According to them I have been in treatment with the doctor for quite some time, and am, er, less crazy now. Even, perhaps, functional. Though I cannot be all that functional, or else Rogue's former inhabitant would not be able to beat me so thoroughly." "Former inhabitant," Scott mused. "So you think we're alone in these bodies?" "What?" "It's possible the original owners are still here inside us, suppressed by our own minds." "I would rather not consider that," Kurt said. "I prefer to be solely responsible for my actions, rather than take the risk that there might be someone else with me, directing what I do." "I did say suppressed." "And I say that everything rises to the surface eventually." He could not argue with that, nor did he want to. He, too, preferred the idea of being this body's sole occupant, but that raised the uncomfortable possibility that someone might be inhabiting his body, as well. A stranger, gazing out from his eyes, using his powers. He mentioned this to Kurt, who turned so very solemn that Scott wished he had said nothing at all. "I have thought of this," Kurt confessed, rubbing his chin against his clasped hands. "And I find that it disturbs me greatly. Strangers—especially the strangers we now reside in—using our powers and living our lives? I cannot imagine the trouble." "I can," Scott said, "and it scares the hell out of me. Everything Professor Xavier built and that we supported could end in an instant given the wrong act, especially one that is done in our name." "Ah, but we are jumping to conclusions. Without more information, we cannot know if this was an accident or deliberate, Maguire or someone else, if the switch was localized to us, or widespread. We are trying to walk on clouds right now, mein freund, and nothing good ever comes of that." "Pessimist." Kurt smiled. "Come, let us go and see if we can learn something new about this place." So they walked, peering out windows where they saw barbed wire and chain-link fences; sliding doors with security checks and metal detectors; more nurses' stations surrounded in glass, where the walls were soft blue and cream. The nurses and security guards put their backs to the walls when they passed; they did it subtly, without overt gestures of fear, but Scott felt it. Even little Mindy, who seemed to have a reputation of good behavior, fell under the same hospital safety procedure. Don't turn your back, don't let down your guard. They found the window where the patients got their meds, and some of those men and women were already lined up, waiting: trembling, shaking, muttering obscenities under their breath while rubbing their arms so hard, so fast, skin turned red. When the nurse at the window appeared with plastic cups of medicine and water, the entire line pressed forward, hungry. Scott and Kurt walked away, fast, before anyone noticed them just standing there and forced something down their throats. Their fears were not unfounded; they passed men tied down in wheelchairs, struggling as nurses roughly pushed pills into their mouths. "They do not separate the sexes here," Kurt pointed out. "I find that odd, and I must admit, dangerous." "Maybe they only mix during the day. Or perhaps the patients don't have a record for sexual violence. That, or the men have been chemically castrated." "Scott." "Oh, um. Sorry." Kurt coughed, glancing down at himself. "And Jeff? You said you were going to check on him. I forgot to ask you." "There were too many people around his room for me to break in. I looked through the window, though. He's still unconscious." "Still?" "I was in there last night. I picked the lock on my door and took a look around. Our Jeff, whoever he is, got in a fight with the nurses." "Could it be Logan?" "Maybe." Hopefully not Jean. He was not sure he could handle his wife looking like a man. A chemically castrated man, at that. Logan, on the other hand... "You're smiling," Kurt said. "Care to share?" "Not particularly," Scott said. "Take me to Maguire's office." Kurt led Scott down narrow halls into the most distant part of the first-floor wing. They passed only one nurse, and she had a familiar face. "Well, isn't this cute." Nurse Palmer placed her back against the wall. "What are the two of you doing down here?" "Going to see if the doctor is back," Kurt said, while Scott stared at the floor, demure as a little doll. "We miss him." "He's not there, honey," she said. "We miss him," Kurt said, with a wonderful whine in his voice that made him sound like a twelve-year-old boy. "Can we at least go wait by his door?" She hesitated, and then sighed. "Sure, Renny. You and Mindy go wait for him. Stay out of trouble, though. I don't want to hear any stories." "Of course," he murmured, and she shot him a hard look. Scott held his breath, but all she did was stand beside them, waiting, and he realized that she was not willing to turn her back on them. Scott nudged Kurt and they shuffled down the hall, listening hard to the quiet as Nurse Palmer watched them leave. Only when they neared the end of the corridor did Scott hear footsteps. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Nurse Palmer disappear around a bend in the hall. "Why do I feel as though that was a close call?" Kurt murmured. "Because it was," Scott said, resisting the urge to run. He thought about Rogue and Jean and Logan, and knew they did not have much time at all, not if they wanted to remain together. Maguire's office was at the end of the hall. There were two other offices besides his, but Scott and Kurt listened at the doors and heard nothing. Either everyone was on vacation, or the doctors only came in on certain days of the week. Scott pulled the lock pick from his underwear, which made Kurt laugh. He unlocked the door and the two of them entered a small dark room where the air smelled like paper, coffee grounds, and the hint of something floral, like roses. The desk faced the door. It had a neat surface, with small piles of files in one corner, and a tiny lamp in the other. The walls were bare—no books, no paintings, nothing at all that was personal. An antiquated computer sat on a small table; a close examination showed dust on the keyboard. Kurt thumbed through the files. "There are only five people here. Guess who?" Scott grunted. He was too short to peer over Kurt's shoulder, so he scooted the man aside and grabbed some paperwork. "Mindy Chan," he read out loud. "Suffers from a debilitating social disorder, which manifests as..." "As what?" Kurt asked absently, reading his own chart. "I can't function in normal society and I don't talk. Ever. But I think I already knew that." "How terrifying for her to be in this place, then." He flipped some pages. "My full name is Renfield Brooks, and according to this, I suffer from high anxiety brought on by acute agoraphobia." "Being here must have been a nightmare for him." Kurt shook his head. "I cannot imagine anyone voluntarily checking themselves into this institute." "It doesn't have to be voluntary." Scott read through the rest of his file. "This makes mention of some improvements during private therapy sessions, but it doesn't say anything that would help us. No indication that Maguire was prepping Mindy for... I don't know what." "Stealing souls, maybe?" "That's a little dramatic." "Really? And what about waking up naked in a body that is not your own, in a mental hospital where you are occasionally strangled by women and their bras?" 'That's just strange and unusual," Scott said. "Do we have an address and phone number for Maguire? Do we even have a phone?" He searched the desk and found a wire leading to a partially closed drawer. Bingo. If he could contact the Mansion and only convince someone to listen to him... He dialed one first, which was a mistake because even as he began punching the rest of the number he heard a voice on the other end say, "Hello, this is the nursing station. Hello, who is this? Is this—wait—is there someone in—" Scott hung up the phone, cursing himself. "We better get out of here. Right now." "I've got his address," Kurt said, tearing off a page from the top file. He patted the folders back into a presentable pile, and then the two of them left the office at a fast walk. Moments later, Scott heard voices. There was no place to hide. Scott grabbed Kurt's arm and pulled him back down the hall to the office next to Maguire's. His fingers slipped on the lock pick, but then the wire went in and the door clicked open. He shoved Kurt into the room and followed close behind, shutting the door just as he heard men round the bend at the end of the hall. Quiet, holding his breath, he locked the door. "Sheila said the call came from Maguire's office." A deep voice, loud and irritated. Kurt sat on the floor behind the desk. Scott joined him. They listened to wood rattle. "The door's locked." "Open it up, anyway. Sheila usually doesn't make mistakes." Scott listened to keys jangle, the harsh sound of heavy breathing. The insulation was so poor he could hear the men shuffling around through the walls. 'There's no one here." "Yeah, I can see that. Bonnie said she talked to two of his patients on her way upstairs. They came down here to wait on him." "Heh. How long did you say the doctor was going to be gone?" "Don't know. Maybe a couple weeks. I can't remember if he really said. He left yesterday, though." "That's a long wait Those sad asses must have gotten tired or something. Hey, you think he would miss that lamp?" "Right, you're funny." The men left and did not stop to check the other offices. Scott sighed. His stomach hurt and he had sweat rolling from the creases beneath his breasts. Every movement acted as a reminder of what he was missing. They crept back into the hall, listening for anyone else who might have the inclination or power to lock them up for trespassing. Everything was quiet, except for some distant screams that seemed more like pleas to God than angry statements of defiance. As they left the office corridor, Scott heard the soft hiss of rubbing cloth, the crinkle of paper. It was too late to hide. They rounded the corner and came face-to-face with a short slim man wearing a white lab coat He had black thinning hair and a pair of spectacles perched on the end of his nose. He gave Scott and Kurt the once-over and smiled coldly. "Can't get enough of your resident genius, huh?" Scott, quite certain that the man was a doctor and that Mindy should not talk in front of him, stayed silent. Kurt, after a moment of confusion, adopted a pathetic whine and said, "We were just waiting for him to come back." The doctor, astonishingly enough, mimicked him and sneered. "I can't imagine what he saw in you five, spending all his time trying to make you better. Like some god requiring sacrifice, and the hospital let him get away with it. Can you imagine? All it did was increase the workload on the rest of us while miserable discontents like yourself pandered to him like little virgin sacrifices." He stopped to catch his breath and looked at Scott. "I heard from the nurses that you talked today. Congratulations." And then he pushed passed them and disappeared around the bend in the hall. "Did any of that make sense to you?" Scott wiped stray MD spittle from his cheeks. "Only the last. I sense much anger in his heart." "I sense the need for some of that medication he's prescribing." Kurt smiled. "We learned something, though. Or at least, he affirmed what has been implied. The five of us— or rather, our bodies—were Maguire's pets." "And pets," Scott mused out loud, "are sometimes trained for a specific purpose." "What is ours?" Kurt asked. "I don't know," Scott said, "but I hope it's a good one." They put Rogue in the quiet room with Patty, which would have been a luckier break than it was, had her cellmate actually been awake and not drooling. Rogue did not know why they would risk putting someone potentially unstable—a woman who had just killed a man with her fists—inside the same room as another unconscious patient, but apparently Patty was a sacrifice they were willing to make in the interests of not giving Crazy Jane access to weapon-making materials such as dresser drawers and bed frames and sheets. Oh, the danger. They put her in a straitjacket, though, which was bad enough. Then again, they probably would have left her in a straitjacket in her own room, which made her wonder if Jane had very talented feet, the way they'd gone on about her making things to terrorize them with. "We'd knock you out, but the administrator is going to want a word with you. We need you lucid enough for that conversation. After that? Lights out, baby." The security guard seemed especially cheerful. Rogue thought about giving in to the temptation to bite his ankles, but decided that was one more mark against her that she really did not need. She thought his socks looked dirty, too. Which was all a fine distraction, because when they finally left her and closed the door, she did not have any excuse but to think about the man she had just killed. Rogue had taken lives before, but it never got easier and this time was worse because it was so useless, such an accident, with no real purpose. Yes, she had been trying to save a man's life, but the man who had been doing the killing was sick, insane. He might not have had true control over his actions. And she... she had slammed his head into the floor under the misguided and arrogant belief that as a human woman she would not be strong enough to kill him with a blow. Self-important, conceited, overconfident... maybe that was the real Rogue, the woman who could fly and bench press two tons, whose invulnerable skin could steal the powers and memories of any living thing on the planet. Yeah, that might be her. It's not so easy being normal. What a joke. She looked at Patty, who lay on her side, facing Rogue. She appeared short and was definitely soft, with a round face, freckles, and fine golden hair that fell around her chin. Young, cute as a button, and wrapped up so tight in her straitjacket, Rogue thought she resembled an overstuffed marshmallow. Jean, Rogue thought. Jean has to be in there. Awkward in her straitjacket, she scooted closer to Patty, studying the slack face for anything familiar, some ghost of her friend. With Scott and Kurt it had been easy; their mannerisms and odd little idiosyncrasies were just as clearly identifiable as the faces they had been born with. But there was nothing special about Patty. Unconsciousness could be blamed, perhaps, but what if it was more than that? Perhaps not all of them had been transferred to new bodies. If their team had been attacked— and it certainly seemed that way, with a clearly definable loser—was it possible that Jean and Logan had escaped? If anyone could, it would be those two. Rogue hoped so. She leaned a little closer for a better look. Without warning. Patty transformed from a marshmallow to a viper, flinging herself at Rogue with teeth flashing: a little doll gone rabid. Rogue gasped, rolling backward, barely snatching her foot away before Patty latched on to it with her mouth. Right. Not Jean. "Logan!" Rogue hissed, clipping the side of Pattys face with her heel. It had to be him. No matter what he looked like, no one else in the world could pull off that combination of animal crazy, hateful rage. Logan was one of a kind. Patty went very still. She lay on her stomach, chin pressed against the floor, blue eyes keen and sharp on Rogue's face. "Who are you?" she asked, and the voice was low, rough. Not the kind of voice a woman like Patty would have. No. "Two guesses, sugah," Rogue said. Patty blinked, and in that moment Rogue stopped thinking of her as a "she." It was Logan, breasts and all. "Rogue?" he said, and when she smiled, he closed his eyes. "What the hell is going on?" "Jean got tired of your PMS jokes." "Rogue" "I don't know. Really, Logan. I found Scott and Kurt, but Jean is still missing. Although, now that I know who you're supposed to be, I have a good idea where... or, um, who... she's in. Our bodies are gone. I don't know where or why." "We're in that mental hospital, right? Jesus Christ. I can't smell anything." "We're human now," Rogue said quietly, remembering the feel of that man's head in her hands. "Try not act so happy about it, darlin'. And why are you in here with me?" "Oh, Logan. I... I killed a man." "Great," he said. "You're screwed."
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 5	The next time Jean opened her eyes, she found that nothing had changed. She was still restrained, still in the white room, and still mind-dead. She was almost glad for everything but the latter. She tried to move and pain soared through her head. Just more of the same. She was right back where she had started, with nothing to show but an even worse headache and the certain knowledge that breaking people's kneecaps in this place was not going to get her anywhere. Time to gather information and strategize. Her first instinct—basic, like breathing—was to reach out with her mind and simply steal the information she needed. She suffered a quick reminder of how impossible that was, and had to bite down on her tongue to keep from swearing. She was not going to rest here helpless. She refused. There were other ways to use her mind and not all of them relied on being a mutant. It was something Jean was beginning to realize she had forgotten. She pressed her face into the floor to give herself better leverage as she rolled to her knees. Dreadlocks fell around her face, and she remembered she was a man. Which might have been more distressing if she was free, but at the moment, she did not have time to indulge herself in thinking about it. Much. Fighting the urge to vomit, Jean carefully stood. She had to lean against the wall for several minutes; she desperately wanted to lie down again, but was afraid if she did, there would be no getting up. Despair and fatigue were a dangerous combination, and she teetered close to suffering from both. She heard someone out in the hall and steeled herself for another bad encounter. The lock turned, the door opened, and an unfamiliar man in a white nursing uniform peered into the room. He had brown eyes, brown hair, and an unmemorable chin. "Hey, Jeff. How you feeling?' "Fine," Jean said, still amazed at her new voice. "I'm very sorry about last night. I don't know what came over me. I woke up frightened. Is that man... will he be all right?" "Just peachy." The nurse gave her a strange look. "Has Maguire been doing a Henry Higgins on you?" "Excuse me?" Her head hurt so badly she wanted to scream. "Your voice. You're talking different." "Oh," she said. "Well... Maguire tries to do a lot of things to... help." "I guess so." The young man entered the room, glancing over his shoulder at the hall behind him. "Just between you and me, Jeff, this time you really fucked up. Maguire had the administrator all convinced that you shouldn't be transferred—and boy, was the doc pissed when they suggested it—but after last night..." He moved a little closer, smiling. "Well, you know. Easy come, easy go. I think they're going to do it fast, in the next couple of days before Maguire comes back. Easier on him if he's not here to see it." Easier on the administrator, who would not have to deal with any immediate protests. Jean studied the young man's uniform, recalling her previous night's encounter. She most certainly was inside the mental hospital. Why was another matter entirely—but if she was here then the others might be, too. The problem was finding them. "Why are you telling me all this?" she asked, not liking the smile on his face. "Because I want to see you squirm." His smile widened. The long hall felt like an extension of her room, a prison nightmare of doors and barred windows. The air smelled like disinfectant: stale, chemical. The nurse did not turn his back on her. He kept his distance, walking several steps behind with a rolling gait that felt like he was winding up to hit something. She glanced over her shoulder. "I'm having trouble this morning," she said. "I keep forgetting things. How long have I been here? Why was I seeing the doctor?" He laughed. "They must have cracked your shit up last night. Damn. What do I tell you, Jeff? That you're a junkie? That you almost beat a man to death for not giving you the time of day, because that's how much you needed to know if you were late for meeting your dealer? Yeah, you're a real angel. I don't know why Maguire wasted his time on trying to iron you out, but he had his favorites, and man, when he latched on, there was no changing his mind." "Who else were his favorites?" Jean asked. He gave her a strange look and said, "Here's the bathroom." The bathroom was a large space, with stalls on one side, a row of urinals on the other, and an open cattle shower between them. "You need to crap?" he asked. "No." She wondered if that was a mistake. Perhaps he would take his guard down if she sat on the toilet. She could try to subdue him— Too late. He pushed her to the urinals. "I'll try to be gentle." He grinned and unzipped her pants. It was a horrible sensation, feeling his hands down there, and even though this was not her body she felt indignant for herself, for the man she was, and stared at the wall as he shook her loose. "Well, come on." He looked down, and then up at her face. "We don't have all day, Jeff." Her bladder ached but this did not feel natural. She had trouble relaxing that part of her body. "Don't mess with me," said the nurse. "I'll take you back to your room." "Wait," Jean said. "Please. Just...turn your back. I need a minute. I need some privacy." "Right," said the nurse. "You just want to kick my ass. Oh, but wait—your hands are tied. Tough, man. Real tough." Jean grit her teeth. "Fine, don't turn around. But step back a little. I can't go with you watching me." "Aw, you're shy like a little girl. Okay, Jeffy. If it makes you feel better, I'll ease back a little. Just so." He moved. She turned back to the urinal and stared at herself, trying to overcome the desire to scream in frustration. There was also just the simple need to scream—for no good reason, other than the fact she had a penis attached to her body and there was currently no way to escape from it. She did finally manage to urinate, but it took time and she could hear the nurse grow more and more impatient. She was actually surprised he lasted as long as he did, until finally he stalked over and slipped her back inside those hospital pants. He went to the sink and washed his hands. Another man entered the bathroom. Slender and dark, with a narrow face and bright eyes. He wore the loose garb of a hospital patient. "Well, now," said the nurse. "Fancy this. Jeff, meet one of those people you so conveniently forgot. Renny, can you believe it? She doesn't remember you." "Ah," said the man, with an odd smile. "You do not remember me, mein freund? Truly? If it helps, my favorite color is blue." Jean's breath caught. After a moment, she said, "Mine is red." "What a lovely color, too," said Renny. Jean thought, Kurt, that is Kurt, and he said, "We have all been wondering how you are. I cannot believe you forgot us." "Hey," said the nurse. "What's with the German accent? The hell is Maguire giving you guys?" Jean ignored him. "How are the others?" "Fine," Kurt said, and then the nurse grabbed Jean's shoulder and shoved her to the door. "Playtime is over. Renny? Don't hang out here too long, man." "Bye," Jean said, and then, fast, "This might be the last time you see me. I'm being transferred." "What?" Kurt looked startled. Jean tried to say more, but the nurse pushed her out of the bathroom and Kurt did not follow. She did not blame him. Best not to attract attention in this place. It was enough that the others were here. Selfish, yes—but better than wondering if her friends and husband were alive or dead. She and the nurse passed a slender Chinese woman, leaning against the wall beside a poorly lit stairwell. She seemed very pretty, though it was hard to tell with her gaze so shy on the floor. She sneaked a peek at Jean and winked. Jean stumbled. The nurse pushed her. "All your little friends are here, huh? You got a girlfriend, Jeff?" And then, to the woman, "You better get moving, Mindy. You make eyes at Jeff, I might just ask you to do the same for me." Something hard flashed through the woman's gaze— for a moment, Jean thought there would be a fight—but then she looked away and shuffled down the stairs. The nurse laughed. Jean glanced over her shoulder. Behind the nurse's back, the woman—Mindy—peered around the stairwell. She met Jean's gaze and pointed at her eyes. Mouthed, "Scott." Jean took a deep breath and looked away. If she stared any longer she would say or do something stupid. Scott. Thank God. He was okay. Kind of. Her husband was a woman. Wow. Someone was probably laughing about this. And when she found that person, he was in big trouble. Kurt left the bathroom after Jeff and the nurse disappeared from sight. He ran to Scott and said, "That was Jean." "What?" "Truly, I am sure of it." Scott stared down the hall, trying to recall that masculine face, the dark eyes. A part of him was not entirely surprised. There was one moment—brief, startling—when he looked into Jeff's face and felt that trickle of connection that he always had with Jean: comfort, a sense of coming home. But that immediately seemed wrong, and the reason was superficial: Jeff was a man. Scott, enlightened politically correct mutant that he was, felt strange having those kinds of feelings for a man. But if Jean was in there... You love her. You love her and it doesn't matter. "It is lucky we decided to come and check her room, ja? If we had not seen her in the hall..Kurt hesitated. "Jean believes she will be transferred soon, perhaps tonight. She managed to tell me this." "Perfect," Scott said. The hall was empty; most of the patients seemed to be downstairs in the recreation room. The nurses' station on this floor was at the other end of the wing. He began walking after Jeff. Kurt followed. "Scott," he said. Scott ignored the tension in his friend's voice and said, "How athletic are you now, Kurt?" Kurt shook his head. "If you are asking me what I think-" "I am." "—then yes, mein freund. I am strong enough." Scott began to run. He turned the bend in the hall and saw the nurse pushing Jeff— Jean—into her cell. Scott did not slow down. Silent, fast, he raced toward the nurse and the man looked up at the last moment, saw it was Mindy—sweet quiet little woman—and brought his hands up too slow. Scott slammed his tiny fist into the man's throat, Jean kicked out the back of his knees—and then as the nurse went down hard, choking, Kurt arrived and hit the fallen man hard in the face, again and again, until he went very still. Scott checked his pulse. "We are still clear," Kurt said, breathing hard as he looked up and down the hall. Scott stood and reached for Jean. He gazed into her unfamiliar face and said, "Are you okay?" "I am now," she said, and turned around. "Get me out of this thing." Scott ripped away the Velcro ties and helped Jean slither out of the straitjacket. Kurt attempted to drag the nurse into Jean's cell. "I could use some help," he muttered. Scott and Jean grabbed arms and legs and hauled the nurse out of the hall, stowing him right up against the wall where he would be out of sight from someone looking in through the observation window. Kurt wrestled him into the straitjacket. "That won't keep him quiet," Jean said, but Kurt removed the nurse's tennis shoes and stripped off his socks. He stuffed them both in the man's slack mouth. Scott searched his pockets and pulled out a set of keys. "We need to get Logan and Rogue," he said. "That is not going to be easy." Kurt stepped back from the nurse and peered through the observation window. "My life stopped being easy the day I hit puberty," Jean said, nudging him aside to carefully open the door. Scott pressed up against her back, listening hard. He heard nothing but the distant echo of voices, the sounds of men and women in motion. The three X-Men left the cell and hurried back down the hall to the stairs. Logan and Rogue were being held one floor above them, but in a different wing. According to Scott's memories of the hospital blueprints, the only way to reach them required going down to the first floor and past the recreation room to another flight of stairs in the adjoining wing. It was a crowded area; Scott did not like their odds. "If someone sees me..." Jean whispered. "I know," Scott said. "But the only surveillance cameras are near the exits and there are more patients than staff in this place. If we're careful—" "That might not be enough," Kurt said. "Someone is coming." There was no time to retreat; they were trapped on the stairs. Taking a deep breath and hoping for the best, Scott pushed forward. Up until now, he and Kurt had relied upon no one paying attention to them. With Jean, that would change. Scott imagined that most of the staff knew that she—or rather, Jeff—had been locked up for violence. If anyone questioned why she now walked free— It was Nurse Palmer who appeared in front of them. She carried a stack of files and her steps were slow, heavy. The light from the window behind her no longer seemed quite so bright; Scott wondered what time it was. Night would be a better time for escape. You should have left Jean in her cell until you were ready to leave this place. You just worsened your odds. But then, Scott preferred to take his chances with Jean at his side, rather than risk a transfer or some other harm to her. The X-Men had no control over their lives in this place. Scott did not stop walking nor slow his pace; for a moment he thought Nurse Palmer would let them pass, but at the last possible instant she stepped in front of him. Scott teetered on his heels to keep from running into her. Jean brushed up against his back. He glanced at Nurse Palmer from under his lashes and found her staring at Jeff. Her forehead creased into a thick frown. "Now, this can't be right. Who let you out of lockup, Jeff?" "I don't know," Jean said. "One of the nurses. He said he didn't want to take time to feed me, so I should do it myself." "Of all the..." Nurse Palmer shook her head, shifting backward. Scott wondered if she was getting ready to run. He did not blame her; she was one solitary woman, outnumbered by three mentally unstable individuals. Scott was surprised she had even bothered confronting them. "He's hungry," Kurt said. "Can't he have dinner with us?" Nurse Palmer narrowed her eyes. "No, he cannot. And why do you care so much, Renny? Jeff has always terrified you, and now, suddenly, you're acting like friends? You're spending time with Mindy and looking for Dr. Maguire? Something is wrong here. You're acting out of character." She gave Scott a searching look. "All of you are." She backed down the stairs and Scott knew they had only moments before she began calling for help. He said, "Wait," but this time Nurse Palmer did not respond or act surprised by his willingness to talk. And then another woman appeared, running lightly up the stairs from the first floor. She looked vaguely familiar. Her eyes were odd, and she wore the loose uniform of a patient. "Suzy," said Nurse Palmer, and the woman smiled, stepping so close that Scott felt sure the nurse would say something—a shout, a warning—but colors shifted in the patient's gaze, whorls of gold and green, and Nurse Palmer shut her mouth. "Those are real heavy files," said the woman, Suzy. "And it's been a hell of a long day. I think you better move on now and find a place to rest your feet." Nurse Palmer shook her head, though her gaze never wavered from Suzy's eyes. The woman swayed close, her hips round and soft like her voice, and she said, "Go on now. These people aren't important at all." "But-" "No." One word, dropped into the air like stone. "Now go." Nurse Palmer turned and walked up the stairs. She did not look at Scott or the others as she passed. She did not seem to see much of anything at all. No one else moved. They looked at Suzy, whose smile widened. "You're so screwed," she said. "Have we met?" Scott asked. "No," she said. "You're usually not much of a talker." Right. He kept forgetting that part. "Thank you for your help," Kurt said politely. "But forgive me if I question why." Suzy smiled, nasty. "Renny, Renny, Renny... that's your name and don't wear it out, right? You're not shaking in your boots, Renny. You don't act worried at all. You act like a man with balls." "And that surprises you?" Her smile widened. "Bras and toilets, Renny. Remember that nice diversion I created for the nurses?" "Ah," he said. "Yes- She folded her arms over her chest "You're a terrible liar. You were then, and you are now. Whoever you are." Scott frowned. "What do you mean by that?" She merely looked at him, and again he cursed his big mouth. Her eyes swirled like the sun shining through water, light to dark, pupils expanding and contracting like the beating of a heart, subtle and hypnotic. He looked away, concerned about staring too long into that gaze. "Smart," she said. "Some are more susceptible than others, but they don't always realize it. I'm a bitch, so I warn them." "You're a mutant," Jean said, and Scott thought about the mission that had brought them here. "Are you being kept at the hospital against your will?" Suzy laughed out loud. "Shit, Jeff. I liked you better when you were a thug. No, I'm not being kept here against my will. I say I deserve it. I'm just a little crazy sometimes. Just a little." "Just a little?" "Just a little song, just a little dance, nothing at all special. Crazy, I'm just a little crazy." She showed some teeth. "And you all are impostors. You and Renny and Crazy Jane and God knows who else. Impostors, illusion, wrapped up in shadows. You're all screwed." "Are you a telepath?" "That's too big a word for a girl like me," she said, sly. "Use smaller talk, Mister Mindy." Scott went very still. "How do you know?" She tapped her head. "I just do. Instinct, maybe. Or the cards." She pulled a stack of them from her pocket, a regular playing deck, well used and rough at the edges. "It took me a while with Crazy Jane, but when I figured her out, the rest of you were easy. I saw you ail talking. That shouldn't be, no matter what Dr. Maguire has been doing with you." "Do you know anything about that?" Scott stepped close—too close, maybe, those eyes might be dangerous—but he needed to know, and if this woman had the answers— "No," she said, and he could not tell if she was lying. "I never got a chance to talk to the doctor. Not many did. He came and started seeing only certain patients. And then lie narrowed those patients, and then again, again, until he had you five. You special dirty little five." "Does that make you angry?" Kurt asked. "Everything makes me angry, Renny. That's why I'm here. Partly, anyway. But you shouldn't be here. You shouldn't at all." Scott studied her face, that smile, those cold eyes. "Are you offering to help us?" "I'm offering something," she said. "I got a feeling I should. Crazy jane pulled a bad card and I been pulling more. Five of hearts, Five of diamonds, Five of spades and clubs. Five seems to be the magic number and after seeing you love children all together, all friendly when you've never been friends at all, I got my message loud and clear." "Which is what?" Scott asked cautiously. She picked her teeth with a fingernail. "To set you free, little red bird. I'm going to set you free."
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 6	After several hours of waiting in that dismal little room, with an equally foul-tempered Logan, Rogue was somewhat relieved when the nurses came to fetch her for a meeting with the administrator. They did not remove the straitjacket. Mr. Beckett was a small man, with a shiny bald scalp surrounded by a thinning ring of brown hair that looked far more youthful than his wrinkled drooping face. He reminded her of a bored hound dog and he sounded like one when he talked, all slow vowels and questions that felt like proclamations. "Are you a troublemaker?" he said, when she sat down. "I think you are a troublemaker." "Okay," Rogue said. Mr. Beckett frowned, tapping the file in front of him with a pencil. "Frankly, I expected more. You made remarkable progress with Dr. Maguire, but several incidents over the past month have demonstrated that your road to recovery is... challenged. This latest episode is a vile example of that" "I was trying to defend that nurse." "Several of my staff have said that. I was not there, so I cannot verify the veracity of their stories. Either way, it matters little. A patient is dead, which is a kind of permanence that I do not appreciate inside my hospital." Rogue did not appreciate it, either. She mourned that death. Her heart hurt. Her hands felt dirty. "But not that dirty," Logan had said, during their brief conversation. "Because your intentions were good. You were trying to help someone. Hell, darlin', that happens to me all the time. You want to see a screwup when it comes to keeping people alive, just take a good hard look at me. That's the picture they're using in the dictionary." Which was enough to make her smile—a good sign— though as far as pep talks went, it was not enough to wash away the guilt. In Rogue's experience, not much could do that except for time. "What was his name?" she asked, because she had to know, she had to remember this man's death in a personal way and not just as a face, an incident, a mystery. It was the wrong question. Mr. Beckett snapped his pencil and threw the pieces down on his desk. They bounced; one of them hit Rogue's chest. "This amuses you, doesn't it?" He leaned back in his chair and placed his hands palm down on the desk. "No," Rogue protested, but he shook his head. "I don't want to hear another word out of your mouth. I am transferring you to the mental health ward at the women's correctional facility. You should have been sent there a long time ago, but Dr. Maguire insisted that you remain under his care." "You must have had a good reason for listening," Rogue said, watching his expression harden. She had nothing left to lose; she did not care that her accent crept in. Even if she sounded nothing like Jane, the man in front of her would never imagine the truth. "Dr. Maguire is highly respected," Mr. Beckett said slowly. "Very." "So he used his influence to bully you," Rogue said. Beckett's face flushed an even deeper red. "The nurses will take you back to the quiet room now. If nothing else, you can spend more time with your... therapy mate, before you leave." "That's very kind of you," Rogue said, thinking, You stinky little weasel. "I thought so," he said, and gestured at the door. Logan was propped up against the wall when Rogue returned. He grinned and said to the nurses, "You guys planning on feeding us? I could use some grub." "Shut up," said the man. "I'm not getting close enough to those teeth to feed you. Chew on each other if you get that hungry." "Heh," said the other, leering. "I'd like to see that." "I bet," Logan said. The nurses left, laughing. Rogue gave him a dirty look and slid down the wall, rubbing up against his shoulder. "They're sending me to prison," she told him. "I'm going to be jail bait." "I always knew it would happen. You're such a rough rider. Always asking for trouble." "Well, I got it in spades. I just hope the others can find a way out of here before they take me away. Otherwise, I'll be sitting behind bars until you guys figure how to switch me back into my real body." "Good vacation. Lots of time for self-reflection." "Make new friends?" "Prison friends are the best kind." "They got your back?" "Sometimes literally." Rogue laughed. Logan nudged her with his shoulder. "See? It'll be okay, darlin'. Remember that time we were in Genosha together? No powers then, either, and they strung us up like a couple sides of meat. Worked out okay, though." "Yeah." She remembered the terror of waking up naked and alone in a small cement cell. That had been infinitely worse than this. Here, at least, there were rules. In that other place, all she'd had was the tender mercy of soldiers—and they weren't all that merciful. Then, as with now, not having access to her mutant abilities felt more like punishment than a gift, and she wondered if that was not the way it would always be. If perhaps that wasn't what she preferred. Of course, continuing to think like that was just a waste of energy when she had far more pressing matters at hand. Like not going to jail and being separated from her friends. Somewhere distant Rogue heard a man scream, and she thought, I'm right with you. Rogue listened a little longer, but the sound was too heartrending, broken. Trying to distract herself, she said, "How are we going to get out of here, Logan?" "Easy," he said, his voice low, gruff. "We're going to run." "And how do you know that?" He smiled and pointed with his chin at the door. "Because there's our ticket out." And Rogue looked and saw Kurt peering through the observation glass, and thought that Logan might be on to something. Kurt, knowing himself to be a natural charmer and quick-escape artist of fabulous ability, was quite accustomed to entering—on purpose—situations that some might consider volatile and dangerous. Whether it was the high trapeze or a bloody brawl with the Friends of Humanity, he was always ready to meet difficulty with a smile. Easy as a breeze, for a man with a light heart. Until now. Kurt still smiled—even as he and Scott and Jean prepared to enter the most crowded part of the institute—but it was a struggle, a cheer he had to force upon himself in order to stave off despair. Kurt missed himself. He had, since awakening in this place, fought a continuous battle against his instincts, those basic primal desires to use what came so naturally: teleportation, agility; his tail, even. He missed those parts of him, felt the ache of their loss, and though he was a man who did not dwell on things that could not be changed, this struck him at the core of his heart. He thought he knew who he was without his gifts. Maybe. He hoped the others had a stronger sense of their identities. Ahead of them lay a hard road; he could not imagine what would happen if they found themselves incapable of separating personality from power, if they lost their resolve simply because the easy way was not open to them. You worry too much. The X-Men have suffered and endured worse than this, and have survived. You do not need to fear for them. Or yourself. Except, he could not shake the feeling that this was different, the loss so deeply personal, so sharp, that the cut would go deeper than any bullet or knife, go deeper than anything they had yet encountered. Or maybe he was just being dramatic. He got like that, sometimes. "Are you ready?" Scott asked. The three X-Men stood inside a tiny broom closet filled with cleaning supplies that Suzy assured them were never used in the early evening hours. The janitor, according to her, went home early—and the nurses did not like to clean. The closet was located beneath the stairs and was within hearing distance of the recreation room. Even now, Kurt heard the loud scrape of pushed-back chairs, the heated rumble of voices. "Are you sure you trust her?" jean asked. "She seems unbalanced." "Yes," Scott agreed, "but right now we need all the help we can get." "And you really think I can just... slip past those nurses and security guards in there?" Jean pointed at herself. "In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not the woman I used to be." "We need to rescue Logan and Rogue. I could leave you here and go retrieve them, but you would still have to cross the recreation room in order to access our best escape route." Jean sighed. "Better to get it over with now. I just wish..." She did not finish telling them what she wished, but Kurt thought he knew. Jean wished she had her body back. Kurt had a similar wish for himself. Living as a mutant—with all the powers granted him—was easier than existing as a human. You have become so very spoiled by the incredible things you can do. Your only saving grace is that you have not known any other kind of life. Kurt heard a commotion out in the hall; a man screaming obscenities, howling like his heart was being torn from his chest. Something large crashed; a table, perhaps. Or a body. "It's time," Scott said. He cracked open the closet door and peered into the hall, then slipped out, gesturing for Kurt and Jean to follow. They did, and followed the sounds of chaos until they reached the recreation room. Not one person paid attention to them. Everyone — nurses, security guards, patients—stared at the scrawny young man writhing on the floor, contorting so wildly, with such abandon, that Kurt feared he would break his spine in half. From his mouth poured sounds of horror. Kurt wanted to clap his hands over his ears. Suzy had promised a distraction; her friend Kyle was certainly giving one. Scott grabbed Jean's hand and tugged her across the room, pushing through the thin crowds of patients who stood in their way. Kurt ran after them. Not one paid attention to their passage; the nurses surged toward the young man, shouting orders to one another as they grabbed his heaving body and struggled to hold him down. Kurt glimpsed Suzy; she winked at him and followed. Past the recreation room the halls were almost empty of people, though several security guards raced past as Scott, Jean, and Kurt reached the stairs. No one looked twice; the three of them could not compete with screams that sounded like murder. They ran up the stairs and at the top saw a nurses' station encased in glass. A woman sat inside, playing with the end of her braid, and when she saw the three X-Men she stiffened. Kurt approached first, but before he could say anything he felt a hand on his shoulder, a push, and Suzy slid past him. She placed her palms on the glass and stared at the nurse. Simply stared, and the woman went very still, her gaze open and glassy. Suzy said, "Go to sleep," and the nurse closed her eyes. Her face went slack. Kurt heard voices, sounds of movement on the stairs. Suzy said nothing, simply ran off in that direction without a backward glance. "I found them," Scott said, gesturing at the door nearest the office. The stolen keys rattled in his hand. Kurt pushed past and peered through the observation window. He saw Rogue, and beside her a small plump golden-haired woman who looked like the idyllic American country sweetheart. And then she gave him a nasty smile and it was all Logan. Scott unlocked the door. Logan and Rogue were already on their feet and Kurt and Jean quickly freed them from their restraints. "Are you both okay?" Scott asked, glancing out into hall. "Peachy," Logan said. "Is that you, Jeannie?" "No," said Jean, standing behind him. "That would be me." Logan turned and stared. "Whoa. I wish I could have been there for that first meeting." Jean narrowed her eyes. Logan held up his hands and backed off. "Come on," Scott said, holding open the door. "We need to get out of here." "You got a plan?" Logan asked. He rubbed his knuckles—a familiar gesture, one that pained Kurt to watch. Logan, like the rest of them, relied on his mutant gifts as a natural extension of flesh: arms, eyes, legs. Metal claws. "I'll tell you after we start moving." Scott entered the hall. Kurt followed close behind; his heart jumped when he saw a shadow in the stairwell, but it was only Suzy. "You're moving too slow," she said, as dappled green and gold whirled lazy pinwheels around her pupils. "Are you sure you can't get us past the front doors?" Scott asked. "Hell, no, little red. My eyes can only work their magic on one person at a time, and the hospital's got multiple watchdogs on each exit. Unless you want to fight your way out, the back way is best" "I could use a good fight," Logan muttered. Scott led them down the long corridor to a set of locked steel doors. The metal showed off dents, chipped paint; the hinges were rusty. Scott abandoned the keys and took out his lock pick. "What is this supposed to be?" Logan asked, glancing over his shoulder. Kurt followed his gaze. At the very opposite end of the hall he saw some of the facility's patients watching them. "This wing of the hospital is almost seventy years old. According to the blueprints, there's a set of old service stairs behind this door. They lead down to the original laundry room." "Ah, the laundry room," Logan said, as the doors clicked open. "You can always count on a laundry room for a great escape." The stairwell was unlit and smelled like wet concrete and mold. Jean and Logan entered the darkness; Kurt began to follow them until he realized that Rogue, Scott, and Suzy were standing quite still, staring at each other. "This is as far as I go," Suzy said. "I'll watch the doors, cause a ruckus if anyone tries to go down for a spot check." "Why are you doing this?" Scott asked. "And why haven't you already escaped? No matter what you say, I know you could leave here any time you want." Suzy glanced sideways at Rogue. A small smile touched her lips. "I stay here because I should. Everyone has their proper place. You should understand. These bodies aren't yours, after all. Just dreams and illusions." A card appeared in her hand: a battered nine of spades. Suzy gave it to Rogue, who held it gingerly between two fingers. "I'm crazy," Suzy said. "But Jane is crazier. I miss that." "Maybe you'll get her back," Rogue said quietly. "No," Suzy said. "She's gone. But at least now I don't have to look at a stranger wearing her face." Kurt, Scott, and Rogue entered the stairwell. Suzy, still smiling, closed the doors after them. He went blind in the darkness and pressed his back against the wall. Careful, they made their way down the stairs one tiny step at a time. Kurt brushed up against a soft arm. "Hey," Logan said. "Jeannie and I waited for you." 'Thank you," Kurt said. "But please, ladies first." "Funny." "Do you hear anything ahead of us?" Scott whispered. "No," Jean said. "How long do you think it will take them to find out we're missing?" Logan snorted. "More than the five minutes we've been gone. These aren't exactly agents of SHIELD we're dealing with here." "Maybe not, but they hog-tied you just fine, now didn't they, sugah?" The stairs curved, but at the bottom they found a door. A thin line of light cut the air below it and they carefully watched for any flicker, any distortion that would signify movement on the other side. Nothing changed. Logan got down on his hands and knees and after a moment patted Kurt's ankle. The door was not locked from the inside. Holding his breath, Kurt carefully opened it. He saw a bare wall, with thick pipes hanging from the ceiling. The room was empty except for canvas sacks heaped in a pile on the floor. Large metal push bins lined the far wall beneath a small dingy window, where the only view was the underground portion of a cement holding wall. The weak light of dusk trickled through the glass. The room had no door, only a narrow hall that led deep into shadow. Logan followed it until he disappeared from sight; he returned less than a minute later and said, "This place is a maze. About twenty yards out I started to hear machines running, maybe even people talking. Is all of this locked off or do we have to worry about wanderers?" Scott shrugged. "It should be locked, but I can't say for certain." "Someone may check this area after they find out we're gone. It would be stupid not to." Jean peered into the darkness. "Did you see places to hide beyond this room?" Kurt saw Scott glance at Jean, and then look quickly away. Too quickly, it seemed. Kurt thought she noticed, and it hurt him to see that flicker of uncertainty pass through her eyes. "Some crawl spaces that'll get mouse droppings up your nose. They don't go back very far, so a flashlight would be enough to catch us." "Then let's get out of here before anyone comes looking." Scott peered up at the window. Kurt followed his gaze and studied the late evening sky. "Mein freund, if you wait only fifteen minutes, it will be full dark." "We're sitting ducks," Rogue said. "Though I prefer my chances when it's not still light out." "But they'll have tightened security by then," Logan said. "Assuming, of course, that anyone notices we're gone." "Security is heaviest inside the building. They've got double entry checkpoints, metal detectors, and all the windows but these are covered in wire. It's not easy getting out of here, at least for a regular person. I don't think the hospital will spend much man power looking for us outside the building. At least, not initially. By the time they do, we should be far and away from here. The Blackbird is parked only ten minutes away." Assuming it was still in the overgrown playing field where they had left it. "You're forgetting the fence," Rogue reminded him. "I've seen the barbed wire." "Suzy said there's a place where the chain link is loose." "Suzy," Logan said. "That's the woman who helped us?" "A mutant," Scott said. "And listen, Logan, I think we were fed false information to lead us here. This place was a trap." "You don't say." Logan crouched against the wall, resting his hands on his knees. "Problem is, I trust my source, Cyke, and he promised me some illegal antimutant activity. Besides, a body-snatching trap? Wouldn't there be easier ways to take us down, other than drag us all the way out here on some false lead? Especially for the person strong enough to do this?" He pointed at his breasts. "I don't have all the answers, Logan, but this," and he pointed at his own breasts, "is an indication that something went horribly wrong when we came here, and I don't think it was an accident. The one thing all of our new bodies have in common is that they shared the same doctor, a man named Jonas Maguire. He took quite an interest in us." "And the false imprisonment of mutants?" Jean asked. "I haven't seen anything to support that," Scott said. "The one mutant we have met seems to believe she should be here, and I don't think anyone is compelling her to feel that way. I don't think anyone could." "I agree." Rogue shook her head. "Suzy is crazy." "Crazy enough to know we were impostors," Scott said. "And crazy enough to help us." "I trust my source," Logan said again. "Besides, you seem to be implying that this Maguire had something to do with our situation. I'll buy that. He might be a mutant, or he could have orchestrated hiring one to gun us out of our bodies. But, how could some doctor arrange to set up the kinds of rumors that got us out here in the first place?" "He didn't have to make up the general stuff," Rogue said. "We did find pockets of mutant and human tension inside the city." "And he's a doctor. All he has to do is talk long enough, and someone will eventually spread the story." "I still don't like it," Logan said. "You never like anything," Scott said. "And right now, I'm less concerned with details. We need to get out of here." "Stage one of that plan has been completed," Kurt said. "Now we must make a run for it." Not something he looked forward to, but at the moment, it was all they could do. Stuck inside the bodies of strangers, without any real rights or resources... Kurt sighed, wondering once again if he had gone soft. So many in the world, mutant and human alike, suffered indignities at the hands of others. His situation was no worse, and at least he had friends with him. At least he still knew who he was, even if the flesh was different. It was a very small comfort.
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 7	Fifteen minutes until full dark. They decided to wait Logan, unable to sit still, immediately crept back up the stairs to listen at the second-floor door. He did not hear anything. Did not smell anything. He had no idea if that mutant woman had kept her promise and still watched this door. He felt like someone had plugged up his nose and ears, and while he missed his claws—that fine ability to slice and dice—it was those two lost senses that bothered him the most. Ain't no use moping over things you can't change. Just be glad you're still alive and make the best of it. Because the alternative meant a long slow rot in this godforsaken hole and he would rather die trying to escape than stay here one more minute. The hospital stirred up memories, what few he had, and none of them were pleasant. He did not hear an alarm, but as he stood with his ear pressed to the door and pretended he was still a whole man—without breasts—he heard the distant slam of a door and the sound of running. A muffled shout, more pounding feet, bangs and thumps—a very loud "damn"— and then, finally, a shuffling noise just beyond his door and the sense that, yes, someone had been standing there all along. Logan wished he had something to make a barricade with. His thick skull would probably do the trick. He crept back down the stairs. The old laundry room was so dark by this time he had trouble seeing. He ran into a tall solid body and said, "Jeannie?" "Yes, Logan." Her voice was quiet, solemn. The others were gathered below the window. Scott had his fist wrapped in one of the canvas sacks. "Game's up," he told her, and everyone stopped and looked at him. "They've begun looking for us?" Scott asked. "Yup." "Lovely," Jean said. Logan frowned and gestured at the window. "You going to fit through there, darlin'?" "I'll make it. It's better than staying here." "Yeah," he said, wondering what her new body smelled like. "How do you like being a man?" "I'm discovering that it's the same as being a woman, except for certain anatomical differences." "You'll have to get Scott to educate you on the finer points." "I suppose," she said, but her voice was dull. Logan fumbled in the dark for her hand. Her new skin was rough, the touch masculine, but he forced himself to think of the woman inside and found it was not so difficult. "Hey," he said. "Any tips for me?" That brought a moment of soft laughter. "Have you tried going to the bathroom yet?" "No." "Ask me that question after you do." She stepped toward the others and Logan was forced to let go of her hand. He watched Jean touch Scott's slender shoulder— the blackmail opportunity of a lifetime—and she said, "Let me break the window." "No," Scott said. Logan grinned. The X-Men's team leader barely cleared five feet and his hands were small and delicate. "Go on, Cyke," he said. "Be the woman in the relationship." Rogue coughed. Jean shot him a venomous glare. "You don't have a healing factor, mister. Watch what you say." "Sure thing," he said. "Jean," Scott began, but she blew out her breath and snatched a sheet of canvas from the floor. Wrapping up her hand, she pushed Scott out of the way with a not-so- gentle nudge and slammed her fist through the glass. Logan bit back another smile. He loved a woman who knew how to use her hands. Jean cleared the glass away, shoving canvas out the window and covering the broken glass so that it was safe to climb out into the hospital's yard. She tried to be quiet, but it bothered Logan that her work was all he could hear, that there was nothing else, no layered sensations like he usually encountered: sounds upon sounds, blanketed upon one another so that his mind had to peel back and taste each individual mark of man or beast or object. His hearing, however, was still good enough to catch a muffled angry shout. "What was that?" Rogue asked, and Logan cracked open the door to peer into the darkness of the stairwell. Far above him he heard hinges creak, and then Suzy began raising hell with her voice. Logan shut the door and leaned against it. "We need to go. Now." "They shouldn't have found us this fast," Scott muttered. "They haven't found us yet," Jean said, and grabbed Scott's arm. "Up you go, sweetheart." "No," he said, but Jean grabbed her husband under his arms and lifted him up to the window. Scott did not fight her, but Logan saw the conflict on his scrunched-up face: embarrassment, anger, worry. He scrabbled through the window and Logan heard glass crunch beneath the canvas. Jean gestured at Logan. "Come on. Smallest ones go first." Logan heard a scuffling sound behind the door, followed by a quick attempt to push it open. Logan threw himself backward, digging his heels into the ground, bracing the door shut. Fists banged against metal, and he felt the vibrations through his body. "I could use some help here," he growled. Rogue slammed her shoulder against the door and said, "Go on now. I'll hold this." "You and what army?" "Logan!" Jean barked. She already had Kurt pushed halfway through the window. Rogue gasped as the door slammed hard against her body, opening; Logan stumbled. He turned and saw flashlight beams streak the darkness; the outline of a hand and head— —and then the door opened even farther and three men pushed through. Logan threw himself amongst them, fists out, kicking and punching. He bit an ear, tasted blood. Someone grabbed his waist and pulled hard; he heard shouting, Jean's deep voice, the high yell of the man bleeding into Logan's mouth. Rogue grabbed the man holding Logan and threw herself backward. Logan was carried with them both, but the nurse released him before they hit the ground and he rolled right up against another nurse, who grappled with Jean. Logan slammed his heels against the man's knees. He cried out, falling, and Jean moved with his head in her hands and she slammed him into the floor. Above her, Kurt scrambled down from the window, Scott hanging after him. There was one man left. Logan felt air move against his neck and he turned just in time to see the nurse swing a flashlight at his knees. Kurt pushed him out of the way but moved too slow; he took the blow and his gasp seemed like the clearest most ringing sound Logan had heard since waking up in this place. Logan threw himself on the nurse, wresting away the flashlight with a cool catch of his wrist. Several blows later—fast and brutal and infinitely satisfying—the man went still. Logan stared down at that slack face, breathing so hard he thought his lungs might burst. "Kurt," he growled. "You okay?" "Ja," he whispered, but his voice was strained. Logan stood up. The rest of the team, seen in the reflection of the flashlights, looked unharmed. "Jean," Scott said, hoarse. The upper half of his body hung precariously through the window. "I'm fine," she said, taking two long strides to the doors and shutting them. She grabbed Logan's wrist as she returned to the window, dragging him with her. She gave him no time to protest, simply grabbed him under his arms and pushed him up to the window. It was a weird sensation, being hauled off his feet that way. Scott pulled him past the edge of the concrete holding wall into the grass. Kurt was next, hissing only once as he passed through the window. Logan and Scott helped him crawl onto the grass. Rogue appeared behind him, though she had a harder time squeezing through. Breathing hard, casting nervous glances around the darkened yard, they waited for Jean. She did not come through the window. "Jean!" Scott whispered. She did not say anything, but Logan heard large objects moving, along with some thumping sounds. He imagined her barricading the door with bodies. Her dark hands finally appeared, grappling for a hold on the cement. Everyone reached down and pulled, struggling to get her through the window. "Come on," Logan muttered, grunting as he searched for a better hold on Jean's body. She gasped, wriggling hard. Behind her, distant, Logan thought he heard shouting. "They're coming," she gasped, and then screwed up her face as she writhed her way through the small opening and threw herself onto the grass. Logan and Scott grabbed her wrists and began running even before she completely had her feet under her. Logan heard a muffled shout from behind them. Trying to keep to the darkest parts of the yard, Scott led them toward the fence. Kurt did the best he could to keep up, but it was clear that the pain in his knee was near crippling. Logan stayed with him, pulling his arm over his shoulders and hauling him faster. He heard more shouting, distant but in transit, and then they were at the fence at a spot next to a tree and Scott fell to his knees, scrabbling. "She said it was here," Scott muttered, wrenching at the chain link. "By the tree." Logan looked up and down the line, but he did not see another tree. The yard was barren of anything but grass. He saw beams of light bobbing. "No time left," he said. "Scott." But Scott made a low noise and suddenly there was a gap, tiny, and Logan shoved Kurt down on his stomach and pushed him through. He grabbed Rogue next, and then Jean, pushing on her feet to help her slither under. The flashlights were closer now, so close, and Logan dove through, scraping his body and face. Rogue and Jean grabbed his hands, pulling him the rest of the way, and then they did the same for Scott so that his small woman's body looked like it was flying beneath the fence. They ran. The nursing staff and security were so close. Logan could make out the expressions on their faces, and somewhere near he heard sirens. The area around the hospital was residential; they disappeared into the shadows of a tree-lined street and then Logan whistled and made them follow him down a back alley behind a row of houses, running, running, the sirens getting louder, and there were lights on in the houses, all of them, people awake and doing things, and that was good because it served as sharp contrast to the quiet places, the still and silent, like one small home at the end of the block that was dark and had no car in the narrow driveway. The owner was a gardener, with a particular fondness for big bushy flowering plants that provided wonderful cover when one lay amongst them. Ferns tickled Logan's nose; he inhaled deeply, savoring what little he could of the scent. It was like smelling freedom. "What next?" Rogue whispered. Sirens blasted the air and then passed, two cars in succession. "We need to get back to the jet," Scott said. "That's our first priority." Logan grunted. "Sorry, Cyke, but I disagree. There's no guarantee the jet's still there. We need to go prepared. Different clothes, at the very least. We also need to lay low for a couple hours. Once the excitement has died down, it'll be safer to go to the park." "It's close," Scott argued. "One of us could go alone." "No," Jean said. "I think Logan is right. If whoever is responsible for this went so far as to take our bodies, we have to assume he took everything else as well. If not, then the jet will still be there when we're ready to find it." "The jet is our only way home," Scott said. "That doesn't matter if we lose each other," Jean said, and then, softer, "Don't do this." He sighed, and looked sideways at Logan. "Are you thinking about that house? They might have a security system." "Maybe," Logan said, though he did not think the neighborhood looked wealthy enough for that kind of advanced precaution. The hyperparanoid, the ones who had the money to spare on installing alarm systems, usually lived in more glamorous places. "Looks empty. It may be our best bet." Logan did not wait for approval. He slithered out of the bushes, keeping low to the ground as he ran the short distance across the garden to the back door. He felt someone behind him. Scott. "You'll need this," he said, handing Logan a little wire that had already been twisted up and primed. Logan grunted his thanks and used the pick to jimmy the lock until it clicked. Careful, holding his breath, he turned the knob and opened the door only enough to feel along the edge of the door frame. He found a loose chain, an extra dead bolt. It was a good sign that neither lock was in use. Logan crept into the house, testing the stillness with his senses, listening as hard as he ever had in his life. He moved from the kitchen to the living room, and from there to the stairs; slowly, painstakingly traveling up to the second floor. Scott did not join him. The rooms upstairs were empty. Three bedrooms, one of which had been converted to an office. Another evidently belonged to a teenage girl and the third was a master suite with its own bathroom. Logan returned downstairs. Scott stood by the front door, sorting mail that had been pushed through the slot. "There's quite a bit here," he said quietly. "At least three days old. Vacation?" "I hope they don't come back tonight," Logan said. "I'll get the others." Careful, watchful for witnesses, the rest of the team entered the house. Kurt immediately found a soft chair and sank into it with a sigh. "Take nothing but clothes," Scott told them. "Anything you think won't be missed." Logan's first inclination was to go for the husband's belongings, but Jean quickly steered him and Scott into the wife's messy pile, as well as the daughter's room. "I don't want to wear this bra anymore," Logan complained to Rogue, who pulled a long sleeved crew neck and some jeans from the closet. "You better wear it," Rogue said. "Girl like you needs one. He decided not to respond to that. He grabbed a blouse from the mother's wardrobe, but had to go to the teen's room for jeans and underwear that fit. He hated hying things on. It was miserable. They dressed quickly, and were soon presentable enough to go into any public place and not immediately be associated with a mental hospital. Or a hospital of any kind. They looked normal, like average people of middle income. Not rich by any means, but unthreatening in their lack of money. The kind no one paid attention to. They took turns using the bathroom. Logan did not enjoy the experience, nor did he care much for looking into the mirror. He could not avoid his face: the golden hair, the soft cheeks and full lips. When he left the bathroom he walked across the room to the window. He saw a police cruiser roll slowly down the street with its lights off. Past the house, the cop snapped on a floodlight, sweeping the lawn and bushes. Rogue joined Logan at the window and he felt her stop breathing for a moment. "This is going to be a hard night," she said. "Yeah," he said. "You got all the uniforms?" Rogue held them up for him to see. "Jean has the rest. We need to find a place to stash them." "Let me check out the basement," he said. The cruiser turned left at the end of the street, but Logan thought it would be back. He found the basement door by the living room and felt his way down into darkness. Cobwebs brushed his face. A lightbulb chain banged against his forehead, but Logan did not turn on the light. He could not be sure that the basement was fully enclosed; he did not see any light coming in from outside, but the risk was not worth it. He used his feet and hands to feel around the damp room and finally found some boxes beneath the stairs. There were clothes inside. Logan picked up the box and, stumbling, made his way back to the kitchen. Quickly, silently, the X-Men packed their hospital clothing at the bottom of the box. The clothes inside smelled like the basement and seemed particularly old. Logan hoped that would be enough to keep the family from digging too deep into the box. One day, maybe, someone would find these uniforms. Hopefully by then they would have their bodies back. When Logan returned from the basement, he found everyone seated in the living room but Scott. Logan went into the kitchen and found him leaning against the counter. He stared at the phone hanging on the wall. Logan said, "Not here. The number will show up on their bill." "I know, but the longer I wait, the worse I feel. Like I'm not going to get another chance." "You'll get one, Cyke. I want to contact them as much as you, but it's going to have to be a pay phone—and not one in this neighborhood. We'll have to go farther out." That, or risk being picked up by the police. Scott shook his head. "Someone went to a lot of trouble, Logan. I don't know where our bodies are, but if we're not in them, I don't want to know who is." "The people we're inhabiting, I'd guess." "But why put mentally unstable individuals inside us?" Logan had an immediate answer to that question, but it was too disturbing to speak out loud. Instead he said, "It might make them easier to control." "By Maguire?" "I don't know as much about this guy as you do, but sure. Why not?" "I don't know what a mental health specialist would have against us." "Hell, man. Even our mailman doesn't like us. It could be any reason." "Thanks for your help." Logan snorted. "You know where this guy lives? We should go to his house and see if he's there. Even if he's not, I bet he'll have stuff around that can tell us what he's up to." "We broke into his office at the hospital. Kurt stole his address. He lives in a neighborhood called Old Victoria." "Ritzy," Logan said. "The man must have money." "You familiar enough to get us there?" Logan wanted to laugh. "Cyke, I'm familiar enough with the Seattle area to run some of these streets blindfolded." "How's that?" He shrugged, not particularly inclined to spill his guts about some of the work he'd done for Nick Fury. The jobs had been long and drawn out, requiring a native's understanding of the city. And Logan was always good at going native. Scott and Logan rummaged through the cupboards and found boxes of cookies, pretzels, and Ritz crackers. Careful with crumbs—and mindful they should not finish everything—they sat in the dark living room and munched on snacks. Several times the police car drove slowly past, but the cop never stopped. After several hours of taking turns sleeping and watching, Logan said, "He hasn't been back for two hours. I think it may be safe to move." "Let's wait one more hour." Scott studied Jean, who lay curled beside him in a heavy sleep. Rogue and Kurt had their eyes closed, too. Logan was not entirely sure how deep into la-la land they were, but any bit of rest would help them when they started moving. Logan slept for a time, with images of wolves and straitjackets and a long sharp fence filling his head—and then stayed awake while Scott stole several minutes of his own rest. The cop never returned. "It's time," he finally said, shaking Scott awake. "We stay here any longer and we'll be walking with the rising sun." An exaggeration; it wasn't even two in the morning, but time would move fast once they left the house. They used the bathrooms one last time, and then left the house through the back door. Logan led them down the backstreet until they came to the main road. He did not see many parked vehicles; none of them looked like a police cruiser. Logan did not have the time or patience to check for unmarked vehicles. They cut across backstreets and took shortcuts across lawns, always watching, always listening. Only once did they hear a car and they hid out behind a detached garage. It was nothing more than a little Jetta, but it made Logan more cautious as they emerged from the shadows. When they reached the park—a multiacre spread of sandboxes, soccer fields, and grassy picnic mounds— Logan made them wait inside the tree line as he studied the open field for movement. Everything was still except for the light brush of wind across his face, lulling leaves into a soft music. "I'll go alone," Scott said. "It's safer that way." Logan did not disagree. Jean also said nothing. They watched him leave the cover of shadow into a lighter dark, a small figure walking quickly across the grass to a spot in the center of a field. Scott stood there for several minutes, staring at nothing. "Crap," Logan said. "I'm not surprised," Jean said. "We'll just have to be more resourceful." "It's one of the things I do best, darlin'." "I know," she said, and her smile was small and wry. Scott did not say anything when he returned from the field. He examined his hands and then their feces, looking each of them in the eyes. He saved Jean for last, and if Logan had been at all sentimental, he would have felt a twinge of sympathy for the sorrow and apology in that man's gaze. "No one knows us," Scott said, quiet. "We don't have our powers, we're wanted by the police, and we're dead broke." "Right," Logan said. "Survival time."
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 8	They walked quickly, keeping to alleys and side streets as they crossed from residential neighborhoods into industrial parks. Night in the dead zone between Tacoma and Seattle was quiet, filled only with the occasional rumble of a car engine or the shout of some drunk making friends with a bottle. "It's a good ten miles between here and downtown Seattle," Logan said. It was difficult for Jean to listen to him when he sounded like a woman. Or maybe a better word was "eerie." If she did not look at him, if she pretended hard enough, she could almost convince herself that Logan was still a man and that his voice, with its same gruff growl, was the product of some terrible helium accident. With Scott it was different. She could not yet pretend with him. "That will take us all night," Kurt said. Rogue walked close beside him; Jean thought it was in case his leg gave out. He was trying not to limp, but she remembered that blow to his knee, his high cry. "Yeah," Logan said, and Jean knew there would be no discussion about whether Kurt could handle the distance. They had to keep moving; first, to locate Jonas Maguire, and if that proved unfruitful, then somehow to find a way home, and fast. Scott brushed up against her side. She glanced down at him—and oh, that was strange, being taller than her husband—and said, "Hey." "Hey," Scott said softly. "How are you feeling?" "Okay," she said, sensing his discomfort. Her voice sounded loud in the quiet of night, and she slowed her pace, creating some distance between themselves and the others. "How about you?" He smiled, grim, and ran his fingers through his hair. A familiar gesture, one that made her heart jump, her stomach twist. She reached out and touched his face. Just a slip of her fingers against his cheek. Her hand was large and dark against his pale skin, but it was becoming her hand, her body, and though startling, she could breathe now when she looked at herself. She could accept her new form, even if she desperately wanted her old one back. Scott's breath caught. Jean said, "Close your eyes," and he did. She brushed her fingers against his lips, running them across his throat, and he swallowed hard. "It's still me," she whispered, aware they were falling even farther behind the others. She did not care. She had to make sure he understood, that whatever else happened, he could live with the changes between them. She hoped it was not permanent, but if it was... oh, God, if... Scott opened his eyes. Brown eyes, rich dark eyes. Not his eyes, though. Jean wished they were. He grabbed her hand, held it against his face, and said, "I know." Do you, really? Jean wondered, aching for her powers, that sweet comfort of knowing his thoughts. A burden, too, but now that she was without the ability, she knew better than to take it for granted. She was appalled, too, at how vulnerable she felt without her gifts. Surely, she was stronger than this. She had to be. A smile flickered across Scott's mouth. Jean said, "What?" He shrugged, and tucked her much larger arm against his side. "It's... funny. There's no way in the world anyone could mistake you for my wife—" "Oh, really," Jean drawled. "—but there is something of you in this man you're wearing. I can see it. I can see it so clearly when you look at me." Jean smiled, and this time it was genuine: a first, since waking up in her new body. Scott gazed up at her and quietly said, "There. There it is. My Jean." She did not know how much she needed to hear diose words; she took a deep breath, savoring the unexpected looseness in her chest, her gut, and held on to the look in his eyes, trying to memorize the moment so it would always stay fresh inside her heart. "Scott," she said. "What if I stay like this? What if we're both... stuck?" He did not look away. "Do you know who I am, Jean?" She smiled. "Is that a trick question?" Scott stopped walking. He reached up and touched her cheek, brushing his thumb over her lips. Jean wanted to close her eyes, to pretend he wore a different face, but that would be a disservice, and Scott's eyes were open. He was not pretending. He drew close, and this time it was Scott who fit into her body, Scott who was small and lithe and feminine, and his small hand touched the back of her neck. They both hesitated, staring at each other: those strange faces housing familiar hearts. "You don't have to," Jean finally said, when the silence stretched too long. "I know," he said, "but I want to. You're still my wife, Jean." He stood on his toes, and Jean bent down and closed her eyes. He kissed her, soft, on the lips. His mouth felt odd, but the passion was still there, and after a moment she gave herself over to the comfort of being touched by the person she loved. It did not last. She heard footsteps, a low sigh. "We don't have time for this," Logan muttered. "Shut up," Scott said. "We're having a moment here." "You can take a whole year for all I care, but not until we're someplace safe. Come on, Cyke. Don't make me be the voice of reason in this outfit. We're already screwed up enough." "He's got a point," Jean said. "Cyke." Scott gave her a dirty look. Logan, showing a remarkable degree of restraint, said nothing at all. He turned and walked back to Kurt and Rogue, who waited quietly beneath a scraggly tree, one of many that lined the broken sidewalk; no doubt part of an old project meant to greenify a section of the city that was, even at night, extraordinarily dour. Kurt leaned against the narrow tree trunk, rubbing his leg. He stopped when the others got close. "How are you doing?" Scott asked him. Kurt straightened, throwing Rogue a wry smile. "We were just discussing that, mein freund. I will be fine." "Right," Rogue muttered. "His knee is popping every time he straightens his leg." Scott frowned. "You've made it this far. Can you keep going?" "I must," Kurt said, and then waved his hands in the air. "Ach, don't look so concerned. I am not crippled. It could be worse." Could be, and probably would be, after this night. They had no money, no transportation other than what their feet could provide them. Jean said nothing, though. She did not imagine hitchhiking was an option, not in this part of town and not at night. "Screw it," Logan muttered, and stalked off down the street. "Logan?" Jean said. She ran after him. "Logan, what are you doing?" "What I should have done earlier," he said. "But I was trying to be decent. Forget that." He stopped beside an old Chevy van parked at the side of the street and began looking at the ground, which was littered with debris. "Go get the others, Jeannie," he said, picking up a rock. No need. Everyone was already close behind, looking puzzled but not terribly surprised by Logan's outburst. "Logan," Scott said slowly, looking at the rock in his hand. Logan flashed them a quick grin and then in one smooth motion smashed the rock through the drivers-side window of the van. The glass shattered. "So much for being subtle." Scott watched the street around them, jean listened, but heard no one stirring inside the nearby buildings. She doubted that would last. "Don't get your panties in a twist." Logan reached through the broken window to unlock the door. He climbed in and leaned over to open the passenger side. "Everyone, move it." "You know," Scott said, remaining still, "hot-wiring cars only works in the movies." "Then you must be really bad at it." Logan grabbed a large piece of broken glass and used it to pry off the old plastic dash beside the wheel. Jean grabbed Scott's arm and steered him to the other side of the van, where Rogue and Kurt were already buckling into the large backseat. Scott grabbed the front; Jean joined the others, sliding the door shut behind her. The interior smelled like beer and cigarettes. Logan found two wires and stripped them with a sharp edge of glass. Scott rummaged through the glove compartment. Jean, too, cast around the back of the van, looking for anything useful. All she found were some worn Playboys and a pair of very dirty underwear. Jean nudged the soiled boxers with her foot. Rogue shook her head. She heard popping sounds accompanied by colorful language. The van's engine roared to life and Logan shifted gears, pulling away from the curb. He blew on his fingers. "I feel so guilty," Kurt said. "What if stealing this car ruins some man's life?" He glanced out the back window. Jean looked, too. The street was dark and empty. "Say some prayers for him," Logan replied. The wind rushing through the broken window whipped blond hair across his chubby face. He brushed it away impatiently. A hard-nosed little brat, Jean thought fondly. Logan looked like the kind of girl who could nurse a kitten back to health and then rip the face off a trucker, all in one breath. Which was entirely accurate, considering what Jean knew of the man inside that woman's body. "Where does jonas Maguire live?" Jean asked. "Old Victoria Hill," Scott said. "Like I said, I know the area," Logan said. "It's on the north end of downtown. Real ritzy. We're gonna stand out, looking like we do." "This is Seattle," Jean said. "Besides, we don't look that bad." Logan said nothing, though she sensed he disagreed. He pulled onto the freeway. Jean saw the first flicker of downtown lights, the edge of the ocean pushing up against the city shore. Boats, headlights shining, trawled slowly through the waters. The air rushing into the van suddenly felt colder; it smelled like salt, the chemicals of hard industry. "I still don't get how this Doc Maguire could have had anything to do with our situation." Rogue drummed her fingers against the faux-leather seat. "What kind of beef would some psychologist in a mental hospital have with the X-Men?" "The better question is why some psychologist who's rich enough to be living in Old Victoria would be working at a dump like Belldonne." "A good conscience?" Kurt suggested. Logan grunted. "A good conscience doesn't pay the mortgage, Elf. Not in this town, anyway." "He was there for at least a year," Scott said. "Working full-time, with a concentrated focus on the most troublesome patients in the ward. Namely, us. Our bodies. Based on what I overheard, the doctor practically made us well. That's why not many of the nurses took him seriously when he told them to restrain us." Rogue shook her head. "He obviously didn't do so great by me, or did I imagine all those stories?" "What stories?" Logan asked. "The previous occupant of Rogue's body became very creative with the use of her undergarments," Kurt said, dodging Rogue's fist. "Particularly with me." "Right," Logan said. They drove in silence until Logan pulled off the freeway, and then followed the road into a quiet business district shadowed by the tall towers of downtown Seattle. Jean guessed it must be near four in the morning; the sidewalks were empty except for a few lumpy bodies curled on cardboard flats. Jean imagined herself as one of those people, forced to sleep on the street, and swallowed hard. "That looks like Japanese," Scott said, pointing out a large sign plastered against an old brick building. Jean looked closer and noticed quite a few billboards written in Asian languages; there were restaurants, too, neon signs spicing up windows with names like HONEY COURT PALACE and DRAGON PEARL, Jean's stomach growled. Rogue glanced at her, and the two women shared a knowing look. Their snacking at the house had not gone far, but until they had money, it would be longer yet until they saw food. "We're in Chinatown," Logan said. "Or the International District, however politically correct you want to get." "Why are we here?" Scott asked. "Gotta change cars, Cyke. At least our plates, but a car would be better. Something a little nicer for when we go into Old Victoria." "It's four in the morning," Jean protested. "Surely no one will pay attention." "The cops will, and excuse me for saying so, darlin', but none of us have ID, and the car we're driving screams 'poor.' I don't care how progressive this city is supposed to be, we go marching up like that, in one big group, and someone is going to ask questions. If nothing else, they'll look twice, and we don't want that." Jean blew out her breath. "You're paranoid, Logan." "No, I'm realistic. I've been in the gutter and I've been on top, and let me tell you, Jeannie, it ain't no picnic being on the bottom. When you got nothing, some people feel like they can treat you like nothing. We've got too much at stake to take a risk on something like that." "Ach," Kurt said softly. "Just leave us behind, then. If we are such a burden, then let us off in some safe place and we will wait for you to go check out this Jonas Maguire's home. That would be easier, ja? But no more stealing cars, Logan. Even that has risk." For a moment, Jean thought Logan looked sorry. Scott, glancing at him, said, "I don't like the idea of us being separated. We have no way of communicating with each other—" Rogue jumped in. "And all we have right now is each other." "But," Scott continued, as Jean knew he would, "Logan has a point. As a group, we attract attention." "And I sure as hell don't want to break into a man's home with a crowd," Logan added. "So, what? You leave us behind in some back alley, twiddling our thumbs while you run out and save the day? Logan—" "This is not about Logan, and this is not about saving the day," Scott interrupted. "This is about survival, Rogue. We are in deep trouble, and this Dr. Maguire may know why. Anything that improves our odds of getting in and out of his house without detection, and anything that gets us home in one piece we will do, no matter how much it hurts our pride." "Scott," Jean said. He ignored her, turning around in his seat to look out the window. A breathless silence filled the van, a waiting silence, and if Jean still had her powers, Scott's head would be full of words instead of this speechless isolation. But that was the problem. Jean wondered if she and her husband even knew how to communicate with the spoken word; for so long they had relied on her telepathy to know every nuance of the other's soul, and now—now— It hurt and she could not make it better, because now was not the time for fighting, nor would she ever fight in public with Scott. Not when they were on a mission and the others needed to have confidence in his decisions. Her anger never trumped her loyalty. "Logan," Scott said quietly. "Find a safe place to park the van." "Yeah," he said, glancing over his shoulder at Jean, "I got that." Logan drove through narrow side streets that emptied into the heart of downtown; a landscape of artful steel and glass, towering over elegant facades of stone and brick, all of which pushed upward along impossibly steep hills that had their stolen van gasping for breath. Jean feared she would have to jump out and push. "Gotta love these old engines," Logan said, patting the dashboard. "Come on, baby." He drove them out of downtown, passing through quiet neighborhoods; gently rolling streets lined with small comfortable homes and tiny yards, all of which ended abruptly on the edge of a large thoroughfare that took them on a winding path past the Seattle Space Needle, the park, and up yet more hills, up and up, until Logan pulled off the road into a small empty U-Park located beside some local shops, and stopped the car in the darkest corner farthest from the street. Jean saw two people huddled together in the nearby bushes. They lay on top of a blanket. She could not clearly see their faces, but she thought they watched the van. Logan unbuckled his seat belt. "We're in lower Old Victoria. Maguire's house is on Highland Avenue, which is about a mile from here at the top of the hill." "I can't imagine what you were doing on your last visit to know all these things," Rogue said. "I think you've got this entire city memorized." Logan shrugged. "I did some jobs. This and that. Point is, if I leave now, I should be back before it gets too light out." "I'm going with you," Scott said. "No arguments." "Fine." He did not look happy; Jean was surprised he did not put up more of a fight. Rogue, given the look on her face, was equally shocked. "So it's all right to bring him along?" Logan shrugged. "We're both chicks, Rogue. The only trouble we're going to attract is a drunk or a pervert. We look too innocent for anything else." "Oh, God help us all," Jean said. Rogue narrowed her eyes. "You're a sexist pig, Logan." "Oink." He climbed out of the car, but leaned back in before shutting the door. "You kids be good. No fighting." Scott turned and gave Jean such a grave look, she opened the back door and jumped out after him as he slid from the car. He had a tiny figure, his slender legs dangling over the pavement as he dropped from his seat to the ground. Jean towered over him. "What is it now?" she asked. Scott frowned and drew her away from the van. "There are a lot of unknowns about all this," he said in a low voice. "Our plan is solid, but you know how it is, Jean. Nothing is safe. If we're not back by midmoming— earlier, even—get out of here. Don't take the van. Clean it for prints, then walk away. Find a pay phone and keep calling the school until you get someone to listen to you." "I love it when you patronize me." "It's such a turn-on, right?" "Only for you," Jean said. "I don't like this." "Neither do I," Scott said, "but what do you want me to do? I won't risk all of us on something so chancy as breaking and entering. If anything goes wrong, the worst that happens is that Logan and I will be sent to jail or returned to the hospital. If you three are free, though, at least we still have a fighting chance of finding someone — Xavier, this Maguire—who can fix us." Jean sighed. Scott touched her hand, her cheek. "Come on, sweetheart. You know I'm right." "I don't know anything," Jean said, "but I'm too tired to argue with you. Go on, then. Go with Logan and be a cowboy for the night." "Cowgirl," Logan said, appearing beside them. It did not matter he no longer had his body or his mutant powers; he still moved silent as a ghost. "I keep forgetting that part," Scott said. "I can't imagine how," Jean said, shifting uncomfortably. Logan grinned, but Scott grabbed his arm and steered him away before he said anything inappropriate. Scott looked back over his shoulder and Jean tried to see her husband in that small feminine face, those large dark eyes. "Bye," he said. Jean did not respond. She turned around and climbed into the passenger seat of the van. "I hate this," Rogue said, but so quietly, so forlorn, that Jean could not bring herself to be irritated at her friend. "I don't like being left behind. I want to help." 'Yes," Jean said, tapping her feet on the floor. "Logan made a good point, though. All of us together would draw attention. Two young women, though?" She shrugged. "Less threatening." "Really. Seems like a bunch of lousy stereotypes to me." Rogue pursed her lips; a familiar expression, much like the way she cracked her knuckles and then rubbed her arms, like she had something unpleasant under her skin. "I think Logan just likes playing it alone, but he's taking Scott along for the ride because he knows our fearless leader won't take no for an answer. We, on the other hand, are like a bunch of puppy dogs, sittin' pretty. Nice and obedient." Kurt stared. "You are truly angered by this. That...surprises me." "I don't know why," Rogue said. "Seems to me I got a right to be a little miffed. Some... jerk... steals our bodies, takes our lives, and I can't participate in bringing him down? Not even a little bit?" "No one is holding you here," Jean said, too tired to talk reason to her, especially when she agreed with everything Rogue said. "You can still catch up with them, if that's what you really want." Silence. Rogue shifted in her seat and lay back her head, staring at the van ceiling. Kurt patted her hand, saying nothing, but adding to the atmosphere a quiet sympathy that was gentle and comforting. Kurt had that way about him, no matter what he looked like. Jean thought about her own appearance, staring down at her hands as she leaned against the cold hard window. Dark brown skin covered large fingers and sinewy wrists, thickly muscled forearms that felt strong, and no doubt were; she felt her face, the bristles and thick jaw, the masculine features that were so utterly foreign. How strange, to know she was a woman, to feel like a woman, and yet be trapped in a man's body. She envied Rogue, and wondered just how Scott and Logan were handling their own displacement. Neither one had truly complained—not that they would—but it had to be just as strange and frightening. Jean listened to the sound of her borrowed heart, beating slow and sure inside the chest she wore. Like a costume made of flesh, one that she could never take off. Put inside this body because someone has a purpose for your face, your identity, and they cannot risk there being two of you. None of them talked. They sat and waited, lost in thought, until Jean noticed that the sky was beginning to lighten and that traffic on the street behind them had increased. Worry spiked her gut. She lifted her feet off the dashboard and got ready to leave the van. Maybe walk up the street just a ways, and see if she heard anything unusual. Police sirens, rushing to pick up her husband and his crazy companion. "Someone is coming," Kurt whispered. Rogue and Jean looked at him and he held up his hand. "Listen. There is a scuffing noise on the concrete." Jean listened, and after a moment, heard that light brush of footfall, even and unhurried. Only one, though. Logan would be silent, she told herself, but she did not open the door. A shadow appeared on the other side of her window. A man peered in. He had a nice suit jacket on, and his face was hard and thin. "Hello," he said. "Hello," Jean replied, wary of the look in his eye. He smiled, but it was cold, full of teeth. She could not see his hands. "I've been watching you for a while. There a reason you're parked here this time of morning?" he asked. "Is there a law that says I can't park here?" "Maybe. Depends on the why, and those girls you're waiting on." "Girls?" The man rubbed his chin. "I got a little something going on down the street. This is a high-class neighborhood, you know? Takes a certain kind of girl, a certain kind of connection and know-how. You're doing it all wrong; the car, the clothes your girls are wearing. Keep this up and you'll bring the cops down on us all." "We're not here on business," Jean said, finally understanding. "Those... girls... simply went to visit a friend." "Friend." The man laughed, low. "Right. We ail got friends we have to visit early in the morning, don't we? Thing is, I'm not the kind who likes to share my... friends. My girls don't, either. Which is why, right now, I'm gonna ask you real polite to move this ghetto-ass car of yours, and get the hell out of my neighborhood." "I can't do that," Jean said, not bothering to make any more denials. "I have to wait for my girls to come back. I'm sure you understand. I'll leave when they arrive." "Not good enough." "It will have to be." Jean felt Rogue and Kurt shift quietly behind her. She wondered how anyone, even in this, altered state, could mistake her for a pimp. She wished she could read this stranger's mind, or take over his body with nothing but a thought. Make him crawl back to the hole he lived in. Again, that cold smile. The man stepped away from the van and finally Jean could see his hands. He held a gun. "Oh, darn," she said.
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 9	It had been almost ten years since logan walked these streets, and like most old neighborhoods, nothing much had changed. The houses still had their irregular steep-pitched roofs with patterned shingles, the lawns were still immaculate, and the view of Elliot Bay and Lake Union still managed to take his breath away. Or maybe that was just his body. Patty, whoever she was, had terrible endurance, and these hills were the steepest in the city. "I don't like leaving them," Scott said. His breathing seemed far more regular; Logan envied him for that. "They'll be fine," Logan said, still trying to grow accustomed to the high squeaky tones of his voice. "You seem to forget that you're dealing with X-Men here." "Powerless X-Men." "Gimme a break, Cyke. You think Jean's telepathy or Kurt's teleporting are all that makes them strong?" "Of course not, but it does give them an advantage." Logan shrugged. He couldn't argue with that. Then again, there was no use crying over things that might never be changed. You just picked up the pieces and kept moving. Did the best with what you had. And what he had was the flabby misused body of a twenty-something woman who looked far too cute for his taste, and who was pierced in several areas that should never know the touch of hard steel. Two of them were rubbing against his shirt. Kid really was crazy. It had taken a legion of scientists to stick metal in Logan's body. He didn't understand anyone who would do it voluntarily. They passed only one other person during their walk, a bespectacled older man with a golden retriever, who smiled at them both, but made eyes only at Scott. Logan did not mind in the slightest. Scott give him a hard look and said, "Don't even think about it." "What?" "You know very well what." "Aw, hell. You need to get in touch with your feminine side, Scott. Ain't no time like the present." Scott grunted. "Doesn't it bother you at all that you're a woman?" "Would bother me more if I was still in my own body and missing certain... parts." Which had been his first thought upon awakening in the hospital. A bad place to go, if you were a man. Very bad. Discovering his young perky breasts, seeing that unfamiliar face reflected in the glass of his window, had made him feel immensely better because this was clearly not his body. And if this was not his body, then somewhere out there he—Logan, Wolverine—was still a whole, healthy man. "Okay," Scott said. "I see your point." Logan grunted. "We're getting close." "Thank God. My thighs are killing me." "Don't complain too much. You want to stay toned, you know. Keep those legs smokin'." "Logan—" "Why do you think Jean gets on that StairMaster every day?" Scott sighed. "You are totally out of control." "You say that so much it's practically habit. Gotta find a new line, Scooter." "Right. Is it possible that becoming a woman has made you even more obnoxious?" "That's just you. Must be PMS." "Bad joke," Scott said, but Logan did not give him a chance to say more. He stopped walking, gazing from the numbers on a gray mailbox to the house behind it, perched like a fine diamond, one of many, in the crown of Old Victoria Hill. Jonas Maguire's house was a large white Victorian set off the street and surrounded by trees. Perfect cover. Logan and Scott walked up the front sidewalk like they owned the place, which in his experience, was the best way to act when you were trying to set up a con. A little confidence went a long way, especially in the city, where no one paid much attention to the private lives of their neighbors, and odd comings and goings at night could be ascribed to some quirk of behavior, rather than any criminal wrongdoing. "He must have a security system," Scott whispered, as they stepped on the wide front porch. Hanging pots bobbed with the outlines of geraniums and ferns. Rocking chairs sat at the very end of the porch, and over the antique mail slot was a wooden carving of a fat cow. It was all very innocuous and country. "Yeah, this one's a real mad scientist," Logan said. "Wonder if he knits." Scott peered around the edge of the porch. "The garage is detached, so no go through there. Do you think he has a house sitter?" "I could knock and find out." Scott actually seemed to think about that. "We could always say our car broke down." "Forget it. I was joking. You do that and someone will be on the phone to the cops. We won't have time to do anything." Logan examined the lock. It was simple; looked like the original, even. "I need something to pick this with. Do you still have that wire?" Silent, face devoid of expression, Scott reached into his pants. Logan stared. He began to ask, but Scott shook his head. Yeah, he was probably better off not knowing— but it still wasn't easy touching that wire. While Scott watched the street, Logan bent over to work. It was difficult to see—he missed being a mutant— but he slipped the wire in the lock and jimmied it around until he heard a very satisfying click. "Security," Scott reminded him again. "I know," Logan said, but without more time or the tools to do a proper examination of the property, they were going to have to wing it anyway. Alarms or not, that door was coming open. And when it did, when Logan pushed his way into the house, he heard not a sound. He looked around for a security panel, some blinking red light that would give it away, but there was nothing. "This Maguire is a real trusting guy," Logan said, stepping sideways so that Scott could enter. "Maybe he has a reason to be." "If he's a mutant, you mean." "The evidence suggests that he is." "But why us?" Logan sniffed the air; a reflex. He felt only slightly foolish. The house had no discernable odor; perhaps, only, a hint of some flower, perhaps a rose. He listened, and though he heard nothing, wondered if that was only his own weakness, whether there was something he was missing, something escaping his notice, all because he was human now, and weak. Not weak. Not for one minute, don't you tell yourself that. Because he was only as weak as his spirit, and he refused to let this—his new body, these circumstances— break him. "I think this is his office," Scott said, peering into a room off the main entry. The woodwork was old, classic, with fine carved flowers in the dark trim and shining hardwood floors that smelled like lemon. A large desk faced the sole window. Its surface was clean except for a computer, a thin sheaf of paper, and one framed picture of a dark-haired woman with a lovely smile and amazing cheekbones. "Wife?" Logan asked. "Could be," Scott said. He glanced around the room. "Check upstairs. I can handle this." "Yes, ma'am." Logan flashed him a grin and ducked out of the office. He examined the kitchen first, a quick walk through, and then headed up the stairs on light feet, listening for any movement, any sign they were not alone. Everything was quiet. No life here. Nothing except for them. All the doors stood open. Logan perused the rooms, taking in the complete lack of furniture or personal items. No paintings, no soft chairs; Maguire had a bed, but it was only a twin, covered in a threadbare quilt. One pillow. One closet half-full of dress shirts and suit jackets. One dresser, with only one drawer filled with underwear. And one drawer for a teddy bear. Very soft, very worn, and missing both its eyes. It had been placed carefully inside the dresser, sitting in the center with its little mournful face turned up. Logan picked up the bear, holding it gingerly in his hands. He sniffed its fur. It smelled clean, like detergent. He heard footsteps in the hall. Scott entered the room, stopping when he saw what Logan held. "Does this mean anything to you?" Logan held up the bear. "It's the only personal item I've seen in the house, other than the photograph downstairs." "Which means it's important, because this guy doesn't have crap. Looks like he moved into this house with a suitcase and set up shop." "A temporary living space? Something that gives the appearance of permanence?" Scott pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. "I found this on his desk." Logan took the paper. "An e-ticket receipt for a flight to New York. The good doctor left last night. That's convenient." "Very. I'd say the evidence against Maguire is getting stronger." "I'd say you're right. I'd also say that our bodies went with him, but probably in our jet." "That requires specialized knowledge to fly, Logan." "Cyke, if the man really did do a mind switch on us, then he's probably strong enough to pull some information out of our heads while he's at it." Logan hesitated, staring at the teddy bear. "Here's what I don't get. This is a man who has no life. Or rather, the life he does have has been built around a specific purpose. My guess? To screw us. I wanna know why." "You're assuming a lot. We don't really know him. His goals might not be to hurt us, but to use us." "Don't get technical on me, bub. Your wife is a man and the both of us have boobs. I'm not feeling the love." Scott rolled his eyes. "Fine, I agree that his intentions aren't exactly noble. In fact, I'll even go so far as to say he has it in for us—" "—thank you—" "—but that doesn't answer your question. Why?" Logan gazed around the room. The teddy bear felt soft and warm in his hand; he was reluctant to put it down. "Did you find out who the woman in the photo is?" "No," Scott said, "but she must have been special." "Yeah. This isn't a man who owns a lot. Which makes me wonder why he would leave without the picture and the bear. They're easy to pack and they obviously mean something to him." "He's traveling light." "Not good enough." "Because he thinks he's coming back?" "Or because he knows he's not." "As in what? He thinks he's going to die? He plans on committing suicide?" "Maybe. It doesn't seem like he has much of a life, anyway." Scott shook his head. "If I was going to kill myself, I would want my most precious mementos nearby." "As a reminder of your misery?" Logan waved the teddy bear in Scott's face. "Does this really say why, God, why'?" "Maybe to Maguire." "Or maybe he's left the trappings of his life behind, so he can be free to do what needs to be done. He's going out as a man of resolve." "That still doesn't explain why." "I don't think we're gonna get that why' until we catch up with him, meaning we need to find some way of getting back to New York before he finishes what he started. Whatever that is." "Infiltrating the X-Men?" "As a start. He has something bigger in mind, that's for sure." Logan shook the teddy bear. Quiet, almost to himself, he murmured, "What the hell is going on here?" "That's what we're going to find out." Scott folded up the receipt and stuck it back in his pocket. "Come on, Logan. Let's get out of here." Two things happened before they left Jonas Maguire's house. The first was that Scott made a phone call. It was almost 8:30 in the morning on the East Coast. Plenty of time for everyone to be up and about and ready to answer phones. The school had a 1-800 number for the students in case they ever needed to reach someone at the Mansion and did not have enough money for a pay phone. Just another safety precaution—Jean's idea, even—and Scott had never been happier for it. He tried Storm's extension first, but that proved to be a dead end. Scott was not sure who else was at the Mansion. The day before he and his team left for Seattle, Bobby and Sam had dragged Piotr off to the woods for a camping trip. Gambit and Jubilee were supposed to be around, but they did not pick up their phones, either. Scott gave up and called the main line. It rang five times before someone answered. The voice belonged to a girl, young and breathless; one of the students, though Scott did not recognize her. "Hello?" she said. "Um, Xavier's School for the-" "Is Ororo there?" Scott interrupted. "Storm?" "Uh, sorry. She went out early to go shopping. Can I take a message?" Polite, distant, the perfect voice for dealing with strange adults. But I am not a stranger, Scott wanted to say. You know me. I probably taught you geometry last week. Brat! Scott grit his teeth. "What about any of the other senior teachers? Gambit? Is Sam or Bobby back?" "I'm sorry, ma'am, but they're all gone for the day. It's the weekend, you know. If you give me your name...?" He almost said "Scott," but stopped himself just in time. Without seeing him face-to-face, listening to everything he and the others had to say, it would be difficult to convince Storm or any of their friends that they were the real X-Men. They all knew secrets about each other that could not be faked, but just finding the chance to get them to listen was going to be an ordeal. "My name is Mindy," he said carefully. "I'm a very close friend of Scott Summers and Jean Grey, and I have some important information about them for Ororo. Very important." For a moment there was only silence on the other end of the line. Scott said, "Hello?" and the girl made a small sound. Quiet, tentative, she said, "Are they okay? They've been gone for a couple days." Scott hesitated. There must have been something in his voice, or maybe the girl was just that perceptive. "No, they're not okay," he finally said, striving to be calm, to not shout into the phone. "You need to get that message to Ororo as soon as possible. Understand?" "Yes, ma'am," said the girl, and Scott felt a great deal of pride at the change in her voice, the seriousness of her commitment. Good kids, all of them. Maybe the X-Men weren't doing such a bad job of teaching the next generation. "Do you have a number where she can reach you?'" asked the girl. "No," Scott said. "Just tell her I'll call back again in a couple of hours." "Okay," she said, and that was it. The girl hung up. Scott felt a brief pang in his heart when the connection died. In this body, with his identity stolen, he was nothing but an outsider looking in, some distant unknowable human—a wannabe, a stranger—and it hurt It hurt that the student had not recognized him, that she would never believe him if he told her the truth. Crazy. She would think you're crazy. Even your friends are going to think you're crazy, unless you can convince them of the truth. It would be easier if Xavier was around, but he and Hank were in Geneva for the next two weeks, attending a mutant-rights symposium. Mutants representing mutants, in an effort to stem the tide of world legislation aimed at curbing the use of their powers. Scott did not know how to reach him, and even if he did, calling Geneva collect from a pay phone and actually getting through was highly unlikely. Xavier was keeping the company of world leaders; getting someone to fetch him for a call on some unrecognized line might be as difficult as getting his body back. Logan entered the study. He carried a plastic shopping bag. "What have you got in there?" Scott asked, frowning. "Maguire still had some food in his refrigerator. I also took some of his clothes and underwear. Couldn't find any money, though." "We need to figure out how to get some," Scott said, rubbing his face. "Okay, let's—" Logan held up his hand; a sharp gesture, one that made Scott shut his mouth and listen. Logan closed his eyes. Scott heard it, then. Sirens. "Are they coming here?" he whispered, already moving out of the office. "Did we trip something on our way in?" "Maybe someone saw us." "We've been here almost twenty minutes. The cops would have gotten here sooner if we were seen breaking and entering." Or if they had triggered an alarm. "Whatever," Logan said. "Let's move it." They left through the kitchen, which had a back door that opened into a tiny garden filled with roses. The grass had not been mowed in quite some time, a sharp contrast to the front yard. Scott stepped on something squishy. There was enough light in the sky for him to see the remains of a fat slug beneath his shoe. Scott blinked hard; he still had trouble adjusting to the sudden influx of so many different kinds of color. The sirens sounded closer; Scott and Logan pushed through a gap in the neighbor's bushes and used the cover of chaotically manicured trees and tall decorative grasses to partially hide their movements as they raced from one yard to the next, until half a block down from Maguire's home they made their way to the sidewalk and peered out at the road. They watched the nearby intersection; two police cruisers sped past Highland Avenue down the hill toward lower Old Victoria. Scott sighed, rubbing his chest. He forgot he had breasts and got a handful before he remembered. Logan smirked at him. "Shut up," Scott said, even though Logan hadn't said anything. They left Highland, still listening to the sirens. There were more cars on the road, but none slowed as they passed Logan and Scott. They were just two women out for an early-morning stroll. "Those cop cars seem to be stationary now," Logan said, just as the sirens went dead. He looked at Scott, and there was no mistaking the question in his eyes. Scott forgot subtlety. He ran down the hill. At the first sight of flickering red and blue, Logan grabbed Scott's arm and made him slow to a walk. His heart pounded so loud he could barely hear the voices over the radio, the click of car engines cooling. He heard women talk, and thought of Jean when he heard that voice. He had to remind himself that she was a man now, and that the person talking had to be Rogue. Rogue, or some other woman. "What happened?" Logan murmured, as they crossed into view of the U-Park. Scott forgot to breathe. There was an ambulance and a body on the ground beside their van. Scott could not see the face—too many people surrounded it—but the van doors, back and front, were open and he did not see anyone inside. "They're gone," Logan said, and then: "Heads up, Cyke." Scott tore his gaze away from the long legs stretched on the ground—what was jean wearing, oh God, what was she wearing, why can't I remember— and looked up into the blue eyes of a narrow man in a black uniform. "Ma'am," he said, nodding at Scott, and then Logan. "I don't suppose either one of you saw what happened here?" "No," Logan said, and his voice was particularly soft, and very much that of a girl. Scott did not think he was that good of an actor, but considering what he had to work with, it probably should not have been such a surprise. "You should move on, then. This really isn't pleasant to look at." "What happened?" Scott asked, and then as an afterthought, "This is such a safe neighborhood." The officer shrugged. "Like I said, this isn't something you want to be around, ladies." "You're right," Logan said, grabbing Scott's arm. "Thanks." He steered them away from the crime scene, and when they turned the corner and were out of earshot, hissed, "What were you trying to do, start up a conversation? Don't forget where we escaped from. They probably already have our pictures circulating." "I wanted to know what happened." "What happened is that someone got dead. All that matters is that it wasn't one of us." Scott stopped walking. "Are you sure about that?" "Jesus, Cyke. Don't you know what your friends look like?" Logan ignored Scott's answering scowl and said, "The dead guy had gray slacks on. All of us are wearing jeans or sweats." Scott's hand hurt He looked down and found his nails digging into his palm. He tried to relax and foiled miserably. "Where do you think they are?" "Must be close." Up one street were more residences, but here in this part of the neighborhood Scott saw only small shops and restaurants, most of which were still closed. It was a very upper-middle-class atmosphere, with not too many places for people to hide. There was, however, a small green space down one block and across the street. Too small to be an actual park, but with enough flowers and greenery to be a pleasant place to sit and talk. Scott saw movement, someone tall and dark. "Over there," he said, and led Logan across the street. He glanced behind. Shrubbery hid the police cars from sight, though Scott still feared being watched. No one followed them as they walked to the small public garden, and as they neared, Scott once again saw the tall figure of a man, hair large and wild with dreadlocks. "Scott," Jean said, "we were worried about you." "Worried about us?" He reached out and grabbed her hands, drawing her close. It was awkward, having to look up into her face, but he drowned his discomfort in the relief of finding her safe and alive. He found Rogue and Kurt sitting on a bench. Near them were two other people: a heavily wrinkled man with silver hair, and another man, much younger, with bright blue eyes and a wry, twisting, mouth. "These are the chicks he called whores?" said the young man, looking at Scott and Logan. "Dude. What an idiot." "Sounds like we missed a lot," Logan said to Kurt. "Ja. A barrel full of fun." "A smokin' barrel," Rogue added. "Some high-class pimp came up to the car and accused Je—er, Jeff—of sending you two out as hookers." "In this neighborhood?" Logan frowned. "He must have been high." "Nah," said the old man, running brown fingers through his hair. "Over here the girls don't walk the streets. They got cell phones now. Schedules they have to keep. Billy, he used to drop 'em off around here and then they'd go walk to their appointments. Didn't look like hookers, either. Sweet girls. Kind of like you two." "But with way more flash," added his companion. "Nobody around here would hire you." "Thanks," Logan said. "But who the hell are you?" "This is Luke, and the older gentleman is his partner, Ed." Jean gave them both a small smile. "I think they may have saved our lives." "Jeff is giving us way too much credit." Ed put his hands behind his back and stretched. His clothes were dark and raggedy, and his thick backpack overflowed with odd bits and pieces of material and plastic. There was an emptiness to his eyes that bothered Scott, but his smile seemed genuine enough. "All we did was provide a distraction." "Yeah, we saw that gun and Ed here came out of the bushes where we were sitting and he was like, 'Hey, dude,' and then Jeff opens the door and steps out and these other two come out of the car, and Billy is all like, 'Stay back, assholes,' and then Jane and Renny do some weird shit and Jeff disarms him with some Jackie Chan move and a kung-fu kick to the nads. Dude fights dirty." "I bet," Logan said, giving Jean an odd look. "That man back there. He looks dead." Jean raised her eyebrows. "I didn't shoot him. I did, however, hit him over the head when he was down on the ground." "Do you still have the gun?" Scott asked. Jean lifted up the edge of her shirt and revealed a .44 sticking out of her pants. "That's a good way to castrate yourself," Logan said. "Safety's on, right?" "Of course," Jean said. Scott turned to Luke and Ed. "Thanks for your help. We can't offer much in return, though." Ed shook his head. "Wouldn't ask for nothing, anyhow. I'm sure you folks would do the same." Scott nodded. The X-Men would do the same, though in the past their interventions had involved only mutants. Violence between humans was something they did not often get involved in, if only because the mutant issues always seemed more pressing. More... timely. Of course, when one considered that mutants were still a minority, and that most reported day-to-day violence was between regular nonpowered humans, Scott wondered what else they could be using their gifts for. Was it enough just to help mutants? You don't just help mutants, he reminded himself. True enough, but it seemed like that was all he ever thought about Other heroes, like the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, certainly did not "specialize." Or at least, they did not seem to. "We have to get out of town," Logan said. "Heading east to New York. You guys know if Balmer Yard is still the best jumping station out of Seattle?" Ed grinned. "You another train mnner? Never met a girl so young who rode the rails. It's a dying art." "Yeah," Logan said. "But it ain't dead yet." The old man laughed. "Baylor's still good. Watch out for the bulls, though. They're getting more careful about surveying the empty cars." "Bulls?" Scott murmured. "Security guards," Logan said. "Old hobo lingo." They waved goodbye to Luke and Ed, both of whom wanted to sit a while longer in the garden, or maybe—as they said—scrounge up some breakfast from one oi the local cafe owners. It was tempting to stay with them and try to do the same, but the cops were still down the street and it was a miracle that none of them had come over yet to ask any questions. "Actually, they did," Rogue said, when Scott voiced his concerns. "You must have told some kind of story," Logan said. "I'm surprised they didn't take you guys in just on principle." "You are such a pessimist," Kurt said, limping beside him. "Yes," Logan agreed. "But I'm usually right, too. What gives?" "We talked real pretty," Rogue said, giving him a sly smile. Kurt placed a hand over his heart. "I pray thee, good Mercutio, let's retire! The day is hot, the Capulets abroad—" "And if we meet," Jean interrupted in a deep baritone, "we shall not scape a brawl, for now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring." She smiled. "I think I like saying those lines in a man's voice. It adds dramatic heft." "You quoted Shakespeare at the police?" Logan asked disbelievingly. "No," Rogue said, "but we started spouting it as soon as we saw them coming. Acted like we were some poor actors out for an impromptu morning rehearsal. You should have seen the looks on their faces." "Right," Scott said slowly, "because what kind of criminals spout the great Bard?" Jean shrugged, still smiling. "People see what they want. We gave them something different from the outset, and so they were less inclined to believe we were capable of violence. Illusion, sweetheart. Dreams and illusion." Rogue stumbled. Kurt touched her arm and said something low that made her smile—a smile that did not reach her eyes. "We're all tired and hungry," Jean said quietly, watching Rogue. "Logan found some food in Maguire's house." "Temporary measure," Logan said. "We need money. We also need to get to New York as fast as possible." "Which is why you asked about the train station?" "Ain't no station, darlin'. It's the tracks." "I'm not comforted. There must be a better way." "Jeannie—" Logan began, but Scott held up his hands. "Unless you want to keep stealing cars—which I suppose is an option—and unless we can find enough money for bus or plane tickets, I think this is our best choice." "Have you tried the school?" "Everyone we needed was gone. Shopping." Jean blew out her breath. "If we wait here—" "Personally," Kurt called back, "I would prefer not to wait. At least let us be moving somewhere. The longer we are in this city, the greater our chances of being... collected... by the mental hospital. Surely we can find pay phones along the way. We will have other chances to contact our friends." Rogue stopped walking and turned around to look at them. "You haven't told us what you found at the doctor's house." "Someone who is seriously lonely," Logan said. He reached into the shopping bag and pulled out the teddy bear. Scott tried not to show his surprise. "This and a photo were the only personal items we found in his house." "As well as a plane receipt for a flight to New York," Scott added. "He left last night." Rogue nodded, her mouth settling into a hard white line. She looked especially dangerous in her new body, which Scott found curious. Despite the impression she usually gave—which was that of a soft-spoken Southern beauty—Rogue was one of the most formidable mutants in the world, and Scott had always judged her as such because of her powers. As a normal human, though, he was beginning to realize that she was just as intimidating. That was good. He hoped all of them proved to be so strong. Because if they had to confront themselves—their bodies, their powers—and it came down to a fight, they were going to need every ounce of hard resolve to simply stay alive. And even that would require a miracle or two.
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 10	Ororo Monroe, though she might never admit it, was a suspicious woman, and so when she entered the Worm Way nursery on Fifth and Tucker, and discovered that her special order of rare Gemini roses had mysteriously died during transit from South Carolina, she took it as a very bad sign. Roses never simply died. They had to be killed off. And in this case, she thought the murderer might just be Fate. The reason was simple enough. As of this morning, every single rose in her carefully tended garden was dead or dying. Which, probably, had less to do with Fate than some irresponsible teenager who was going to end up paying for the death of her garden with some comparable sacrifice—like some hard unprotected labor on a bed of thorns. Still, it stretched even her belief that someone she knew would go so for as to kill off a shipment of roses—because really, when people disliked her they went for the larger gestures, like kidnapping, torture, fights to the death. And that brought her back, again, to signs and portents. Some mysterious message that could not be good. As a result, she was extra careful driving home, rolling like a woman three times her age, hunched over the wheel, watching the road for the unexpected—and getting honked at and passed for all her trouble. She felt quite foolish by the time she pulled up the long drive to the Mansion—and accordingly, summoned up her dignity so that when she stepped from the car she was once again all Goddess, confident and shining and bright with power. She tried to ignore the brittle roses by the front door. The Mansion smelled good; someone had been baking that morning, muffins or cookies, and the sweet scent curled around her, accompanied by the loud noise of a television, laughter, the poofs and puffs of some mutant power being engaged. She saw the tip of a tail disappear around the corner at the end of the hall, and knew there were others close by, no doubt hiding from her. "Children!" she called out, clapping her hands. "There are groceries in the car and I need help carrying them in." It took several more announcements like that one— including a brief foray into the recreation room—before she received an appropriate response, but she soon had a nice little army of young people at her disposal, carrying bags from her car into the kitchen and unloading their contents into the correct locations. Ororo was in the middle of supervising the placement—and protection—of the ice cream when Annie Potensky entered the kitchen. Fifteen and gawky, she was one of Ororo's best students, and a fine little telekinetic. "Someone called while you were gone," she said, breathless. "A woman named Mindy. She said she was a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Summers, and that they were in trouble." Everyone in the kitchen stopped. Ororo said, "Keep working," and then to Annie, "Follow me." When they were out of the kitchen and carefully ensconced in one of the private study rooms, Ororo made Annie tell her everything, which wasn't much. "I spoke with Scott last night," Ororo said, recalling their brief and somewhat stilted conversation. "He did not mention any trouble." On the contrary: Scott reported that the mutant issue in Seattle had been blown completely out of proportion, and that their trip was a total waste of time. The team was due to return later that afternoon and Ororo was glad of it. Gambit was around, but he was worse than the children. It was difficult being the sole responsible adult in the Mansion—even if it was summer and the students had the next two weeks off to relax. "She called this morning, Ms. Monroe. I tracked the number and it was from a Seattle residence." "Was there a name attached to that home?" "Maguire," Annie said. "Jonas Maguire." Ororo frowned. "That is not familiar to me, but thank you, Annie. You did a very good job." Annie's shy smile gave way to worry. "Do you think they're all right, Ms. Monroe? Mr. and Mrs. Summers, I mean. I didn't... I didn't know they called last night." Ororo tried not to show her amusement at the girl's concern. Jean and Scott were favorites among the students, who looked upon them with varying degrees of affection. Surrogate parents, teachers, and—occasionally—objects of teen lust, the married couple was the anchor of the school in ways that not even Xavier could compete with. Age probably had something to do with it. Ororo knew quite well that the students thought Charles was older than dirt. "Everything is fine, Annie," Ororo reassured her. "Go and enjoy yourself." Go and relax, go and think about better things than your teachers being in trouble. Leave that to me. Not that Ororo thought Scott and his team needed help, but she still had roses on her mind, and doubt was a prickly thing. She left the study after Annie, but veered left to the secure elevators, where it was only a quick descent to the basement and the automated security center. High-tech monitors lined the wall, revealing snapshots of all the public areas in the school. She patched a call to the Blackbird. Jean answered. Her voice sounded a little lower than usual, much like she had a cold. "Hello there," Ororo said. "Is everyone all right?" "Of course," Jean said. "And you?" "Fine," she said. "I was just wondering what time you will return today." "By lunch," Jean said, and then went silent. Ororo frowned. Jean was usually more talkative than this. Or at least, more engaged. Her words sounded a little too careful, rather clipped and shuttered. "Well," Ororo said, trying to sound more cheerful than she felt. "I know all the students will be happy to see you and the others." "That's good," Jean said. "Yes," she said, and then after a moment's hesitation, "Someone called this morning. About you and Scott. Her name was Mindy, and she said she was a friend." Jean did not respond. Ororo said, "Hello?" This time it was Scott who answered. "She's no friend of ours. Mindy is one of the patients at the mental hospital we visited. She... latched on to us." "She must have latched on quite tightly to have uncovered our phone number," Ororo said. "She's a telepath," Scott said. "She must have picked the number out of our heads." Which did not make sense to Ororo, considering that both Jean and Charles had spent a long time helping each and every one of the X-Men develop their personal mental shields. "If this Mindy truly plucked something as specific as a phone number from your heads, then she is quite powerful indeed. Are you certain she was not unfairly hospitalized? Perhaps there is something we could do for her." "I really don't think so," Scott said. "She's beyond help." "She must be, for you to give up so easily!" Ororo's voice had more bite than she intended; her cheeks warmed. She wondered what was wrong with her, that she should be so judgmental. 'You weren't there," Scott said. "Of course," Ororo said, though her temper still felt sour. She thought of her roses and took a deep breath. You are a suspicious foolish woman. Do not take your insignificant troubles out on your friends. "Were there any other mutants at the hospital?" she asked, and then, when he remained silent: "Scott?" "No," he said, and his voice seemed deeper, not like the man she knew at all. "But we have to go now, Ororo." The comm link clicked off. Ororo sat back, stunned. Scott had just hung up on her. Scott, who was one of the most compulsively polite men she knew. The man was too anal for anything less. She remembered something else then. According to Annie, Mindy had called the mansion from a residence, not a hospital. Which meant that someone was lying to her. She did not, however, want to make any accusations before looking her friends in the eyes to see for herself if there was anything to be truly concerned over. She would get her answers, though. The truth was not something she played games with. Ororo sat in her chair, staring at the monitors, one in particular: a shot of the garden and the withered blooms, looking as if a blight had come upon them in the night and sucked everything from them but the thorns. Bad signs, she thought. Or maybe something bad is already here. On any normal day, with any normal driver, the trip from New York City to Salem Center should have taken at least an hour. For Remy LeBeau, it took only thirty minutes—and that was because he was being careful. He had a passenger. "You're driving too slow," Jubilee said, peering at him over the lenses of her sunglasses. Her leather jacket was a shocking shade of yellow, but at least she had developed enough fashion sense to coordinate her favorite color with hues other than hot pink and stonewashed blue. She had, instead, moved on to red and black, which Remy found almost as hideous, but which Jubilee felt was more. "Petite, I'm goin' more than ninety miles an hour, an' this is a country road." "Whatever. I've seen old ladies drive faster." "Mebbe if they were running from you," Remy muttered. "Oh, the pain," Jubilee said, placing a hand over her heart. "You have struck a blow to my heart that will never heal." "Good," he said. "It's what I owe you for last night." "Puh-leese." Jubilee smirked, settling back in the Porsche's leather seat. "I saved your ass." "You saved nuthin'. I knew exactly what I was doing." "Dude, that chick had her hand so far up your thigh—" "Don't finish that," Remy said. "The way you talk already gives me nightmares." "Where do you think I learned all this?" Logan. The X-Men. Oh, they were horrible role models. Either that, or Jubilee was just really good at talking her way into places where a fifteen year old had no right to be. Like last night, helping him on a stake out. Real simple, too. Just a favor for an old friend who thought his girlfriend was cheating on him. Take a few pictures, jot down some addresses, and voila! He hadn't even planned on taking anyone with him, but Jubilee seemed to have a nose for the good stuff and she wanted out of the Mansion bad. Without Logan to entertain her—and man dieu, that man deserved a medal for patience—Jubilee was going stir-crazy and bringing everyone along with her. Very funny to watch, right up until the moment she zeroed in on you. Which she had done, and under which he had caved like some goosey thin-skinned swamp rat fresh from the Bayou. But the stakeout, supposed to be so easy, had gone horribly wrong. After being followed around half the night by the two intrepid spies, the girlfriend had come home at three in the morning alone (which was good, although maddening because it meant Remy had wasted an entire evening), only to be jumped by a group of men who had more on their minds than a simple conversation. Remy did not like rapists. Neither did Jubilee. They made a good team. And the girlfriend, after they took her to the hospital and waited as she filed a report with the police, was very grateful. Not that Remy was the kind who complained about the gratitude of beautiful women, but first, she was already taken, and second, he had a witness. A poor combination. "Let's not talk about this anymore," he said to Jubilee. "It was a long night, an' I'm tired." "I bet," she said, running fingers through her short black hair. "It's hard fighting off all those beautiful chicks who throw themselves at you." "It's a gift, ma petite." "Right Did you know there's a betting pool going on amongst the students, with the odds totally in favor of your mutant power being irresistible to women?" Remy choked on his own spit, jubilee laughed and turned on the radio. The Foo Fighters slammed the air and kept on playing loud and hard until they arrived home and Remy turned off the engine. The silence was broken only by the occasional tick of his cooling Porsche. Neither of them moved. "What are you going to say when they ask?" Remy was rather worried. He had, after all, kept Jubilee out all night, and someone was bound to be displeased about that. Jubilee grinned and Remy shook his head. He was, to use the colloquial, totally screwed. His luck did not improve when they entered the Mansion. Ororo stood in the hall, arms folded over her chest She looked displeased. "Um," he said, forgetting how to be suave. He stifled the urge to throw Jubilee in front of him, and place the blame he was about to receive solely on her narrow shoulders. "I have been trying to reach you for the last hour," Ororo said. "My phone never rang." He reached inside his trench coat. "Here." Jubilee pulled his cell out of her jacket. She tossed it to him. "I pinched it off you last night when we were at the hospital. No cell phones allowed, remember?" Ororo's frown deepened. Remy said, "It's not what you think. No one was hurt." "At least not us," Jubilee added. "And the other guys will be fine in a month or so. No comas this time." Remy gave her a dirty look. She pretended not to notice. Ororo covered her eyes. Her white hair was mussed, her flowing silk wraps slightly askew. Remy thought it odd; even when upset, she was usually impeccable in her appearance. "'Ro," he said. "Scott and the others will be returning soon," she said, which produced a squeal from Jubilee. Ororo did not appear as pleased. She looked Remy straight in the eyes and he saw, as he sometimes did, the memory of how he had first known her: a little stubborn girl with white hair and a face older than her years; a farseeing gaze that was always calm, always strong. Ororo was one of the reasons he had stayed with the X-Men, and they had been friends for a very long time. He knew her moods. He knew when there was trouble in her heart. "What's wrong?" he asked, and Jubilee's smile faded. "Nothing," Ororo said, but her voice was distant, thoughtful. "Just little things, adding up all wrong." "Little things that have to do with Scott and that mission to Seattle?" "Is Wolvie okay?" Jubilee asked. "Yes, of course." Ororo reached out and smoothed back Jubilee's hair. "I am sorry for upsetting you. It is nothing, really. I have simply had an... odd day." Remy did not particularly like the sound of that. Ororo never had "odd" days. A faint rumble passed over the Mansion. "They're back," she said, gazing up at the ceiling, and then, softer, "This will be interesting." Jubilee gave her a hard look. "You can stop with the riddles now." "Yes, I can," she said. "Come, let us go and greet our friends." Remy glanced at jubilee and found her looking back at him in confusion. He sympathized completely. Something had happened while they were gone, and for some reason Ororo was reluctant to talk about it. He hoped Rogue was all right. Their relationship continued to confuse him, but what he did know—the only thing he could be certain of—was that she was a friend. Quite possibly more than a friend, and if anything happened to her it would make a hole in his heart that he was not certain would ever fill up. Better to keep her safe. Remy did not care for heartbreak. He followed Ororo to the hangar, Jubilee close at his side. He did not bother telling her to go away, that this— whatever it was that had Ororo concerned—was for adults only. Jubilee was fifteen going on thirty, and Remy knew of few adults who had seen or done as much as she had in her short life. Besides, he knew quite well she would rather cough up her right lung than miss greeting Wolverine. He was already off the jet when they arrived at the hangar, jubilee raced across the concrete floor and flung herself in his arms for a giant hug. "Hey!" she said, shameless. "You kick some butt?" "Sure," Logan said, smiling. Remy was not entirely certain he liked that smile. It seemed... different, somehow. Brittle. Jubilee did not appear to notice. Scott and Jean walked off the jet together, as did Kurt and Rogue. Remy called out a greeting to her, but she did not respond. At least, not in the way she usually did. She met his gaze only briefly, and then ducked her head with a shy smile and stared at the ground. Kurt nudged her—once, twice—until she lifted her chin. It looked like a struggle, though, as if all Rogue's great confidence had been stolen from her heart. "Ma cherie," he said, drawing near. "What happened?" Rogue swallowed hard. Kurt said, "She touched someone at the mental hospital. It... affected her. She's been like this ever since." "You should have called," Remy told him. "What were you thinking?" "She's not hurt," Kurt said. "She'll come out of it." Remy did not like his tone. It was far too flippant, given the seriousness of the situation. Rogue had corne in contact with the worst that humanity had to offer. If some patient in a mental hospital could hurt her this badly— make her retreat from the world inside her mind—he did not want to imagine how she had suffered in that initial touch of skin to skin. "Why?" he asked Kurt. "Why was she touching anyone?" "I don't know," Kurt said. "We split up." It was a lie. Remy could taste the untruth; see it in the unsteady flicker of Kurt's golden gaze. He reached for Rogue's gloved hand and she did not pull away as was her habit She let him tug her close. She stood very stiff in his arms, but he expected nothing less and rubbed her back. Rogue's auburn hair gleamed under the hangar floodlights, the white streak especially bright. "Shhh, now," he whispered. "It will be all right, chere. We'll get you feeling better in no time." Get her feeling better—and in the process find out just what the hell had happened in Seattle. He felt sick, thinking about it Anything that would turn Kurt into a liar— Remy found him staring. "What is it?" Kurt blinked, breaking eye contact His blue tail curled tight around his leg. "Nothing," he said, and Remy realized for the first time that his accent seemed less pronounced. Movement caught his eye; Scott shaking his head. Jean stood beside him. She looked different, somehow. Harder. The Jean he knew, the one who baked cookies on Saturday nights or warmed milk for the students, was not the same woman he saw now. This Jean, with her mouth set in a flat line and her eyes narrow and dull, did not look as though she would care for children at all. "Please, Scott?" Ororo asked. "No," Remy heard Scott say. "Jean and I would like to rest awhile before we give you our report." Ororo did not look pleased. "I have some concerns," she said, but Jean had already begun walking to the door, and Scott followed close behind. "Later," he said. "I promise." "No," Remy called out. "What happened to Rogue? Who did she touch to make her this way?" No one answered him. Rogue pulled away from his embrace. Giving him a shy smile, she left him standing by the jet. He did not chase her, but instead watched as she and Kurt—tail uncurling long enough to lash the air-followed Scott and Jean from the hangar. Wolverine, after patting Jubilee on the head, followed them with an odd slow swagger in his hips. It seemed to him that Wolverine—though always taciturn—was especially silent. "Did Wolvie just... pet me like a dog?" Jubilee asked, when the five X-Men were gone and the door had shut behind them. "Something's wrong," Remy said, unable to shake the feel of Rogue in his arms, that look on her face: so shy, so fragile, not the woman he knew at all. Kurt, too, with his shifting eyes. Ororo said nothing. She stared at the door, mouth pressed into a hard line. Remy felt the gentle brush of some impossible breeze, scented rain within the confines of concrete and steel. Jubilee shivered, and stepped closer to him. "Do not worry," Ororo said quietly. "We will have the truth. One way, or another."
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 11	They took one of the free downtown buses to Elliot Bay, north past the Spaghetti Factory, fast-food joints, and gas stations. Rogue watched the city pass, paying closer attention to the world than she ever had before. People, especially. People, on their way to jobs, out shopping, running for a bite to eat. She wondered if any of them were mutants, and for the first time in her life, could not remember why it would matter if they were. She was human now, through and through; powerless, perhaps, but not weak. She knew that about herself now. Being divorced of her physical identity for just one night had given her a clearer sense of who she was, the crutches she leaned upon in her life. Kurt sat beside her on the bus. Their hands brushed, and she forced herself not to pull away. "You are improving," he said, looking down at their flesh: dark and light, smooth and rough. "Comfort is a state of mind," Rogue said. "I think I'm finally getting that." "Don't get too comfortable, darlin'." Logan leaned over the back of their seat. "We still got problems." "Money," she said. Kurt smiled. "In the circus we had a saying: The lack of one penny can destroy the mightiest man. A stern reminder of what we were working for, other than our love of the big top." Rogue frowned, staring at her hands. "I'm sorry, but I won't beg. I lived dirt poor for years, and never had any need to ask strangers for money. I'm not going to start now." "No one said anything 'bout begging," Logan replied. "There are some homeless shelters around the area we're headed to. Might be able to scrounge up some tilings we'll need from those places." "Just as long as we don't stay there long," Scott said. "We got lucky this morning—in more ways than one. I don't want to press it." At Pier 90 they got off the bus and walked left across the wide tracks, which led directly to the southern entrance of Seattle's Balmer Yard. The trains were lined up like giant playing blocks, rust red or dirty blue, logos covering the ridged sides: PACIFIC RAIL, CARGO EXPRESS, EVERGREEN STEEL. The air smelled like exhaust, ocean salt; she felt a rumble in her chest and heard the high squeal of monstrous brakes. She felt very small. "The key is to find the right car," Logan said. His fine blond hair wisped across his face and he shoved it away, scowling. "We're lucky it's summer. We shouldn't freeze to death." "Great," Rogue said, and then pointed farther down the rail. "I see an Amtrak sign." "Too crowded, too controlled. Security would find out fast we don't have tickets. We need something big and empty, the kind used for cargo." A train lumbered by; the sound of the engine forming a steel-on-steel symphony of groans and squeals and dull trembling thunder. Logan, in the interests of subtlety, led them down a bike path that continued north alongside Balmer Yard. Through the chain-link fence they spied on the trains. "Time for some fieldwork," Logan said. "Rogue, you're with me." "I thought I wasn't innocent enough, sugah." "This is the train yard. Tough and dangerous is more sexy than cute and girly." Jean smiled. "Sorry to break it to you, Logan, but I don't care what body you wear. You might be cute, but you're never going to be girly." "Don't kill a man's dreams, Jeannie." An older woman sitting on a nearby bench turned around to look at them. Logan smiled and she shook her head in disgust. "No accounting for taste," Jean murmured, which was enough to make Rogue laugh. She and Logan left the team, following the bike path until they reached a public-access road. From there they walked past the locomotive-servicing facility to the Balmer Yard office building. "Trying to hitch a ride in broad daylight is going to be difficult," he said, as they approached the front door. "Do we have a choice?" "I'd say to hitchhike, but we got too many people." "What a mess," Rogue whispered, finally confronting the enormity of crossing the country on nothing but the kindness of strangers. It made her afraid. Logan surprised her by draping his arm around her shoulders and planting a hard quick kiss on her temple. She flinched and he let her go, though she continued to feel the weight of his arm, his lips. "It'll be okay, darlin'. We've handled worse." "This time feels different." "It should. You're not in your own skin." "What do you think our bodies are doing right now?" Logan's jaw tightened. Rogue let it go. It was a bad question; the possibilities made her feel sick. They entered the office building; warm air washed over her face, along with the heavy smell of oil and steel. Dark boot tracks covered the lobby floor and the walls were cracked and yellow with old paint. Logan led her into the first office off the lobby. At the counter stood a tall woman with sharp cheekbones and an unhappy mouth. But Logan, despite his new face and figure, was still a rough charmer. It was not sexual at all; simply, a charisma that had the woman in front of them smiling after mere moments in his presence. The secretary's reaction surprised Rogue; she knew that women found Logan attractive, but she had always thought that the source of his allure lay in his undeniable masculinity. After all, even though she knew quite well he was capable of turning on his charm, he was not, by habit, the most refined of men. "We're from the university," he told her, and Rogue listened, stunned, as the hint of a valley girl entered his voice. "We're researching the rail system and how it affects economic growth in the Northwest. It's a killer course." "But fascinating, I'm sure," said the woman. Her desk plate named her SHELLY. "Totally," said Logan, and within minutes he had a printout of the schedules and destinations of every train in Balmer Yard. Rogue felt like getting down and bowing; it was an Oscar-worthy performance. Just as they were leaving the office, he stopped and said, "By the way, we brought some food to keep us going today. You mind if we store some of it in your office lounge or use your microwave? Do you guys even have a space like that?" He rattled the plastic bag he still carried. "We just got one," said Shelly, and hesitated. "Well, I don't see why you couldn't, but don't touch those other meals, right? People get territorial." "Of course," Rogue reassured her, wondering what Logan was up to. She found out when they actually reached the lounge—a little alcove crammed tight with a minirefrigerator, microwave, and a shelf lined with personal belongings. The other side of the space was a closet, filled with hanging coats, scarves, and umbrellas. The employee cubicles were in a completely different part of the office, out of sight of the alcove. No one was around when they entered. Logan did not hesitate. He opened the refrigerator and threw all its contents into his plastic bag. Rogue watched the hall, sparing a glance for him as he went next to the coats, checking pockets. He found two wallets and stole cash from both. "Logan," she hissed. "I'm not taking it all," he said. Maybe not, but it still made her sick—sick because she wanted that money, knew they all needed that money, but to be so desperate as to fall into thievery— 'This isn't better than begging," she said. "And didn't I say you wouldn't have to do that?" "What about the homeless shelter?" "You don't pass up opportunities," he replied. The coats were too big to stick unnoticed in his bulging bag, or else Rogue thought he would have snatched those, too. "Don't look at me like that," he said, and pulled her from the tiny lounge. Rogue kept her body between Logan and Shelly as they left; the secretary waved goodbye, never paying attention to the bag clutched tight against Logan's side. They quickly left the office building, and only when they were clear of the doors and back into the cool fresh air, did Rogue say, "That was wrong." "Think I don't know that, darlin'?" Logan gave her a hard look. His cheeks were flushed. "You think it's not going to take things like that for us to get home? What matters more to you, Rogue? Morality or survival?" "It would be nice if we didn't have to sacrifice either one." "Right," he said. "I think you're smarter than that." She bit her tongue. He was right, of course, but it rankled her to no end that she could not think of an alternative. Get a job? Sure, if they had time, if the urgent press of some unknown danger wasn't bearing down on their shoulders. Strangers had their bodies, and even now at this moment, some man or woman inside her physical self might be using her powers to hurt others. She could not bear the thought of that. And besides, you trust Logan. You know he would have taken the high road first if he could have. Because Logan was an honorable man. A very dangerous, oftentimes unpredictable man, but decent all the same. If he thought the situation warranted sacrificing some of his hard-fought pride in order to do right by her and the others, she could not fault him. Logan pored over the schedules as they walked back to the bike path. Rogue carried the plastic bag for him. She peered inside and saw sandwiches, soda; her stomach growled loud enough to drown out a passing train. "Didn't need mutant powers to hear that one," Logan murmured, still reading the paperwork. "Shut up," she muttered, embarrassed. The comer of his mouth twitched. A white truck, spitting gravel alongside the rails, pulled up beside them. Its window was rolled down; a young man peered out. Rogue did not miss the way he checked out Logan. He barely spared a glance for her, and she wanted to laugh. Tough and dangerous was sexy, huh? Maybe in Logan's book, but not for this kid. "You ladies lost?" he asked. She saw a security patch on his shoulder. "We're doing research," Rogue said, "for school. The University of Washington." He gave her a look that said quite clearly he thought she was far too ancient to be in school, and said, "You a professor?" Logan made a small movement with his hand and Rogue—utterly bewildered that the young man could mistake her for someone of learning—said, "Yes." "Huh." He looked at Logan again and smiled. Logan smiled back, but she knew her friend well enough to notice the hard line of his gaze, the "I just might beat the crap out of you" tilt of his head. "You need any help?" "You know the best eastbound trains for hitching rides on?" Logan asked. The kid laughed, clearly taking the question as a joke. "I catch a lot of the old hobos on the Cascade ride. That one goes straight through the mountains and stops in Spokane. Bastards think its fun or something. I tell you, I'm just waiting for one of those idiots to fall on the tracks underneath a train. It would serve 'em right" "I sense a lot of love there," Rogue said. "Yeah, I'm really feeling the love when I look into a cargo box and the holds have to be hosed down because someone decided to take a dump in the comer. Guess who has to do the clean up? Me." "Tough life," Logan said, with only moderate sympathy. "We should be going now. Thanks." "Sure thing," he said, his gaze drifting down Logans body. "I know we just met, but do you ever—" "No," Logan said. "Really." "Ooookay," said the kid, and without another word, pulled away. "That has to be the worst security guard ever," Rogue said, watching him drive out of sight around a parked train. "Nope," Logan said. "But he's close." They found the bike path, but Scott, Jean, and Kurt were nowhere to be seen. A thread of worry needled Rogue's gut, growing worse as they walked, but then she heard her name called and Kurt appeared from behind a clump of bushes. "We found a shady spot and decided to rest." He led them off the sidewalk to a small patch of ground beneath some trees. The grass was yellow, littered with bits of trash, but Rogue found that once she stepped into that soft dry spot, the rest of the world seemed to fall away. Scott and Jean sat cross-legged on the ground. Rogue joined them, dropping the sack of food. She saw the tip of a sandwich, the plastic rim of an applesauce container. Her stomach felt like it was going to crawl right out of her throat. "You think we can eat this now?" she asked the others. "Knock yourselves out," Logan said, still looking at the train schedules. "Just be sure to save some of it for later." Scott sorted through the bag, pulling out chips, soda, cookies—that lonely sandwich and applesauce—and several objects wrapped in aluminum foil, which turned out to be cold pizza. "Lordy," Rogue said. "Nothing ever looked so good." They had nothing to cut the pizza with, and resorted to passing each slice around so that every person could take several bites. It was, in retrospect, a gross way of divvying up the food, but they were all too hungry to care. It was the best pizza Rogue ever had. They washed the pizza down with a shared can of Coke, and by the time Rogue took her last swallow of sugary carbonated perfection, she felt ready to run a mile. Her gut still felt hollow, but that little bit of food was going to her head like a drug. "That pizza was still cold," Scott said to Logan. He stood up, brushing off his pants. "You didn't get it from Maguire's home." "That's right" Logan pulled the stolen money from his pocket and handed it to him. Scott gave Logan a careful look and counted out the cash. Forty dollars. Rogue thought that might be all they had to get themselves home. "You stole this," he said. "I sure as hell didn't borrow it." Scott's mouth hardened into a white line. The expression was so familiar, so... Scott... that Rogue forgot, for a moment, that he was a woman. Jean stood up. "Don't," she said. "We need that money." "Jean," he began, but she shook her head. "You're a good man, Scott Summers, but now is not the time for a morality play. We need to get home." Scott stared at her. "Morality play?" She smiled. "Doesn't mean I don't love you." They left the shelter of the bushes and made their way down to the heart of Balmer Yard. Logan led them on a circuitous path around the trains, keeping close to the tracks so they could duck beneath the locomotives if any security vehicles came too near. Considering what Rogue had seen of the security in this place, she did not think it would be difficult to avoid them. "There are almost a dozen trains scheduled to leave at noon," Logan said, pausing in front of an open boxcar and pointing down the line at the nearby rear device, "but only two are heading east across the Cascades. This is one of 'em" "Should we jump in?" Kurt peered inside the open door. "It looks clean enough." "What are the risks?" Scott asked. "Are these cars routinely checked before leaving?" "It's a gamble," Logan admitted, giving Kurt a boost up into the boxcar. He gestured for Rogue to follow him and she did, grabbing Kurt's hand and clambering onto the hard dusty surface. She stood in the door, blinking under the bright sun as she gazed out at the train yard, searching for anyone who might be watching. In the distance, at the edge of Balmer Yard, she saw a police cruiser parked beside a white truck. She was not entirely certain, but the security guard leaning out his window and talking to the cop looked rather familiar. "Um," she said. "We might have a problem." "How big a problem?" Scott asked, as Jean shoved him up into the boxcar. "The kind that has handcuffs and that would be highly motivated to arrest us." "Great," Logan muttered. Jean bent over to give him a leg up. He stared at her. She smiled. "Go on now, pretty lady." His scowl deepened. Ignoring her help, he attempted to clamber up into the boxcar by himself. It was awkward—embarrassingly so. Patty was not an athletic woman, and Logan—God bless him—had a mind that was far more willing than the body. Jean kept staring at his backside, and Rogue knew she was thinking about giving him one good push. "I think you met your match," Scott commented, as he finally wriggled those precious last inches onto the platform. "Beaten by your own body." Logan, feet still dangling out the door, scowled. "The police car is moving," Rogue announced, as the cruiser pulled away from the white security truck and entered the main train yard. "He's not coming in this direction, but he's definitely looking for someone." Scott pulled Jean into the boxcar. "Everyone get to the back. Logan, you said this thing leaves at noon?" "It wasn't even ten when we got to that office. We've still got some time yet. You need me to play decoy?" Scott shook his head. "I won't risk you getting caught." "One is better than all. You can spring me when you get back home." "When did you become an optimist?" Jean asked. "You're assuming a lot." "I'm assuming that we might need a Plan B to get out of here, and if it means that not all of us make the trip, I'm volunteering to stay behind and get the cops off your trail. I've handled worse." "We're sticking together," Scott said, more firmly this time. Rogue briefly wondered if Mindy had ever looked so resolved—so hard—or if the inner person really did mold the outer. Mindy's face was almost beginning to resemble the real Scott. For the next two hours they sat at the back of the boxcar. They did not speak, but peered through slits in the wall planking, keeping watch for any movement outside the train. Twice, they heard voices—engineers, employees—but those men and women did not linger. Rogue was just beginning to think they were safe when she heard the loud crunch of gravel, the growl of a car engine. She peered through a narrow opening in the wall and saw a white truck. A car door slammed. Logan moved. Scott made a grab for his arm but he was too slow. Rogue, after a moment's hesitation, followed him. They made it to the entrance of the boxcar at the same time as the security guard. It was the same young man. "Whoa," he said, startled. "What are you two doing up there?" "Research," Logan said. "We wanted to see what the inside of one of these things looks like." Rogue edged closer to the edge of the platform, blocking the young man's view of the shadowed interior. He glanced up at her for only an instant before focusing on Logan. "It's a good thing I stopped here," he said. "This train is due to leave in just a couple minutes. You could've gotten stuck up there." "Nah," Logan said. "We were just leaving anyhow." "Cool." He reached his hand out to Logan, who stared at it, unblinking. "Um," said the kid, blushing. "You need help down?" Logan opened his mouth. Rogue cut him off with a quick 'Yes." She ignored the dirty look he gave her. After a moment, Logan grimaced and took the young man's hand. Rogue jumped down on her own. The security guard still held Logan's hand and was trying to lead him back to his truck. "Come on," he said. "I'll drop you guys off at the front gate." "That's all right," Rogue said. "We can walk." "It's a long walk," he said, "and this time of day there are a lot of trains moving out. It's not that safe, especially for you guys. You don't know all the rules." "We know enough to stay out of the way of a moving train," Logan said, prying his hand loose. She halt-expected him to wipe it on his jeans, and sure enough, he did not disappoint. She almost felt sorry for the young man, who watched Logan's apparent disgust with flushed embarrassment. He glanced at Rogue and she gave him a small smile. "Yeah," he said softly. He began walking toward Rogue, and she stepped backward, startled. "What are you doing?" she asked. He gave her a strange look. "I need to check the inside of that boxcar." "We were just in there," Rogue said. "It's very... clean." "That's good. I still need to check, though. It's part of my job." So much for being a lousy security guard. Rogue blocked his path. "Before you climb up in there, do you think you could answer some questions? We're in a bit of a hurry." "So am I," he said, in a sharper tone. Rogue thought he was just beginning to process the sting of Logan's rejection. "This train is going to leave any minute." Rogue heard a loud metallic groan from down the line, a hiss and loud clack, like the tumbling of a giant lock. The young man swore, pushing past her. "That's just great. Now I've got, like, five seconds to check this thing out—" Rogue could not stop him in time. He hoisted himself onto the edge of the boxcar and peered inside. Swore loudly. "Hey!" he shouted. He looked over his shoulder at Rogue and Logan. "What the hell kind of game are you playing? There are people in there! Why didn't you tell me?" The train moved, a sharp rocking jolt, and the young man jumped off the platform. "I gotta report this," he said, reaching for the walkie-talkie belted to his hip. "God, I hate this job. And you two, don't move. I can't believe you did this to me." "It was easy," Logan said, and slammed his fist into the young man's face. The young man's breath escaped in a rush and he hit the ground hard. He did not move. Rogue, watching him, felt her stomach twist painfully in her gut. She remembered her hands around a man's head, pounding his skull into the floor with all her strength because she was human—and human was not strong enough to kill— She ran to the young man and fell to her knees on the hard gravel. She checked his pulse. It still beat, slow and steady. She remembered how to breathe again. "Come on," Logan muttered. "Help me get him in his truck." "We don't have time for cleanup." Rogue looked at the train, the boxcar inching ever farther away. Scott, Jean, and Kurt leaned out the door. "Make the time." Logan lifted the upper half of the young man's body and with Rogue's help carried him to the truck and shoved him inside, very much out of sight unless one stood right beside the truck. Logan slammed shut the door— —and then they ran. The train had picked up speed. The gravel was difficult to run on. Rogue pushed hard, reaching back to grab Logan's arm and haul him with her. He was having even more trouble than her, and that was unacceptable, impossible, because if Rogue got on that boxcar Logan was going with her, or else she would just stop running now. She refused to leave him. They reached the boxcar door; Jean, kneeling, stretched out her arm. Rogue grabbed Logan and shoved him in front of her. He protested, but Jean grabbed the back of his shirt and threw herself backward, hauling him off the ground. His kicking foot clipped Rogue in the shoulder and she stumbled to one knee. Pain shot up her leg into her hip; gravel cut her palm. Someone shouted her name. She forced herself up. The boxcar had moved impossibly far, but she started running anyway—fast, fast, she had forgotten what it was to be human and slow, and what she wouldn't give to fly again— Somehow, miraculously, she ate up the distance between herself and her friends. She did not feel her knee anymore; the pain in her hand was distant, feint like the sounds of those voices calling her onward, drowned out by the rumble of the moving train, those tracks, and then Rogue was close enough to reach out an arm and brush Jean's fingers, and Jean shouted "Closer! Just a little closer!" and Rogue threw herself forward, gasping, and Jean's hand closed around her own and pulled, pulled so hard she flew off her feet and slammed into the edge of the platform, her legs dangling close to the moving wheels, the grind of steel on steel, and then someone else grabbed the back of her pants and she was flying again— flying and landing hard on a vibrating floor that swayed and swayed with the rocking of the rail. She lay there, clutching at that floor, gasping for breath. Parts of her body felt burned from the inside out. Rogue heard low muttering by her ear. She flopped onto her back and looked up into Kurt's concerned face. He crossed himself and said "Amen." "Yeah," she breathed, closing her eyes. "I'm with you on that one, sugah."
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 12	The train moved through the city like a slow- rolling caterpillar, following street bridges, crawling toward the Lake Washington Ship Canal, where Kurt got a nice view of the water and the boats. Later, passing through a pleasant neighborhood of small well-kept homes, he watched a green park shimmer on the edge of Puget Sound, and smiled as kites fluttered high in the blue sky, children screaming and laughing below them. Kurt thought it might be nice to go to a park such as that one, looking as he now did, and just... be. Be a man, be anonymous, be something other than a mutant. Not that he minded what he was. Everything was part of God's great plan, including him, and to regret his circumstances, to wish himself different, would be to go against that which God had meant for him, and him alone. Every living person was blessed with individuality. Kurt was simply more individual than others. And yet, still, that wistful wonder. He could not help himself, even if it was something he did not indulge for long. The train increased its speed. Kurt stopped watching the view—Puget Sound and clay bluffs, great blue herons perched on rocks—and focused instead on Rogue, sleeping nearby. He tried not to imagine what would have befallen her if she had not made it on the train. He thought he might have jumped off to be with her. His sister. It was not something they ever really discussed, though the knowledge was there—had been for years, ever since discovering that Mystique had mothered them both. Sometimes he wished they could talk about it, but his few attempts had accomplished nothing. Rogue was not ready to speak of their mother. He did not take it personally. Only, it was times like this that he wondered if she thought of him in the same way, as blood. Jean sat down beside him. Long dreadlocks hung past her broad shoulders; her skin looked very dry and her lips were rough. Her eyes, though, were light with intelligence, and he could not help but smile when he looked into her borrowed face. "That's one of the things I like about you," Jean said. "I can always count on you seeing the sunny side of any situation. I can always find a smile." Kurt shrugged, studying his dark human hands. "I grew up in the circus, Jean. You learn how to smile through anything. You learn how to smile and mean it." "I didn't take you for a cynic." "A cynic is one who believes the worst of people. I believe the best. Only, we are not always faced with the best." "Like now?" "Oh," he said, and felt another smile creep close. "This situation is not entirely bad." Jean studied his face. After a moment she said, "I can tell you believe that." There was a peculiar tone to her voice, as though the importance of that statement depended more on her own ability to read his face, than on his sincerity. He understood, and was not hurt. Jean had lost her telepathy; he could not imagine the difficulties she faced adjusting to this new—and no doubt, isolated—life. Rogue stirred, mumbling in her sleep. Kurt said, "I am the same man you have always known, Jean. Haven't I always believed what I say?" She flushed. "I didn't mean it that way, Kurt. I just..." He touched her hand, and for the first time in his life—because he did not count his mother—his skin looked the same as the person sitting beside him. It did not matter to him, but he noted it because it was new and different, something to remember. "It is all right," he said softly. "I simply want you to remember that even if you cannot hear us," and he tapped his forehead, "you are not alone. Nor have we changed. Be confident in that, Jean. Besides, it is not as if you went around reading our thoughts before you lost powers." "Of course not," she said. "But I could feel something, whether or not I wanted to. Energy, maybe. I suppose... I suppose that even though I never acted on it, just knowing I could was reassuring." "Because it meant that no one could hide from you." Kurt smiled. "It will be all right, Jean. Look upon this time as a lesson." "In humility?" She gave him a wry smile. "I was thinking in terms of learning new skills, but I suppose yours is the more profound thought." She shook her head. "My powers didn't emerge until puberty. Up until that point, I was just like everyone else, and when I first went to Xavier's I told myself that would never change. That I would never forget what it was like to be... normal. But... this... all of us ..She looked down at herself, touching her flat chest. "I forgot, Kurt. I got so wrapped up in being other' that I forgot what it was like to be just... regular." Kurt was far too polite to belittle her feelings, but he said, "I suppose that depends on your definitions of normal and regular. I, in my original state, do not look normal or regular, but I feel like I am those things." "So what you're saying is that I need to change my point of view." Kurt heard a sound on his left. Logan, rolling over. His eyes were open and he stared at Jean. "No, darlin'. What he's trying to say is that you're full of it." "Hey," Scott said, from his place in the corner. "It's true," Logan said, "and Jeannie knows it. Being a mutant may have given her different life experiences, but she's the same damn person she always was, with or without them. She's got a better heart than ninety-nine percent of the world around her, and that kind of thing doesn't depend on mind-reading or lifting objects or shooting cosmic flames up someone's rear end. Don't you feel sorry for yourself, Jeannie. Your powers don't make or break you. Right, Kurt?" "I suppose," he said, though he would have chosen different wording. Logan's approach, however, was more effective, and it was something Jean needed to hear. Having a strong sense of identity—knowing the heart of ones self apart from gifts and powers—was essential to staying sane during such hard times. Better than moping, at any rate. Then again, perhaps he was asking too much. Kurt had been bom different—had grown up different—but the circus had raised him as an equal, a valued friend and son, and had never treated him as anything else, despite his appearance and powers. Jean, on the other hand—like most mutants—had lived her life a certain way, and then overnight been forced to change. No smooth transition, no lifetime spent learning how to be comfortable in one's skin, apart from one's skin—simply, a transition that seemed more like a violent rite of passage into adulthood than like the blessing of some extraordinary new ability. Under those circumstances, Kurt was not surprised she was having trouble adjusting. She had been conditioned to live one way, and now that conditioning was being shattered and she had nothing to fall back on but ideas and memories and notions of what was normal and human. None of that mattered. At least, not to him. "Logan." Scott stood up. "It's all right," Jean said. "He has a point." Rogue cracked open one eye. "Are we fighting?" "Just a little," Kurt said, patting her shoulder. "Go back to sleep." "Actually, don't." Scott crouched beside them. "We need to plan." "Plan what? How long we're going to ride this train? What we're going to do for food or money? How we're going to contact the Mansion again? Don't know if that requires a plan so much as finding opportunities and acting on them." Logan leaned on his elbow. His shirt rode up his ribs, revealing a great deal of skin and the hint of a breast. Kurt did not think he noticed or cared. Still thinking like a man. Which... was probably a good thing. Jean tugged his shirt down. He gave her a questioning look and she said, "It's nothing." Kurt participated in the planning discussion, but not for long. He had little to contribute, and like Logan, believed that events would play out as they must, and that the road home would be won by taking opportunities, by living bold. So he sat and watched the train roll through the limits of a gray city that smelled like chemicals, pulp and paper manufacturing, past that into green trees, the Snohomish River valley. Farther, through the Cascade Tunnel under Stevens Pass, where the agricultural valley shone bright under the sun, lovely and peaceful. Kurt felt as though he was dreaming with his eyes open, such was the beauty. Then he closed his eyes and dreamed for real, and when he awakened he saw mountains capped in snow, rivers rolling past small hamlets lost in evergreen forests, and then he closed his eyes again, lulled by the rocking of the train, and when he opened his eyes once more, some time had passed because the mountains were gone, far behind them, and the train was arriving at its destination. "We're in Wenobee," Logan said. "Right on the edge of the Columbia River." In the distance, Kurt saw a large arching bridge crossing the wide blue river to connect one cityscape to another; monotone suburbs surrounded by parks, and deeper, toward the city heart, brick and steel and glass. The train moved quite slowly. "Now what?" he asked, to no one in particular. "You shouldn't have fallen asleep," Logan said, crouching beside him. "Then you'd know." Kurt smiled. "Then let me make some assumptions. First, we will disembark from this train, and then second, we will look for another that is headed farther east, and board it" "You're missing the part where we all get some grub and try to make some phone calls." "Is there anyone you can contact who would help us?" Logan shook his head. "I would try SHIELD, except their access number is secured by voice recognition. They've even got random automated questions so no one can pretape anything. If someone calls who isn't recognized, they're patched through to an answering service." "That is better than nothing." "Maybe, but SHIELD has got so much red tape and so many cranks who hack their number off the internet, I doubt they'll pay much mind to a woman who says she's Wolverine—or who tries to make any claims of knowing him." Just then Kurt spotted other trains, parked in the distance like large rusting bricks. He watched as their train slowed to a crawl and curved around the gravel lot. He glimpsed vehicles in the distance. White trucks. A lot of them. "We should get off this train," he said, uneasy. "Now, in fact." Logan peered over his shoulder. "Crap. They must have found that kid I clobbered." "We knew they would. He probably informed the authorities that we were on this train." "Crap," he said again, and looked back at the others. "We have to jump." "The train is moving," Rogue pointed out. "Yeah, and if we wait until it stops, that'll be too late. We've got maybe one minute tops before we round this bend, and after that, all those security guards are going to see us jump. It has to be now." Logan grabbed Kurt and pulled him to the edge of the platform. The slow-moving ground made him slightly dizzy; the gravel looked sharp. Rogue limped up close behind him. His own knee felt better, but he was not sure what such an impact would do to it. "Come on," Logan said, pushing on his shoulders. "Sit down on the edge and then push yourself out. We've done this before. I shouldn't have to explain the mechanics." "The last time was with aliens from outer space," Kurt said, declining to add that he usually teleported his way out of situations like this. He sat down and swung his legs out over the moving ground, took a deep breath, and jumped. He hit the ground hard—his knee protesting—and then Rogue was there beside him, staggering, her face pale with pain. Kurt watched as Scott and Jean jumped, followed closely by Logan, who held the plastic bag to his chest All of them hit the ground wrong, their legs and bodies forming awkward angles, and it was clear that knowing the correct way to jump from a moving object mattered only half as much as having a body that was fit enough to do it. They picked themselves off the ground and hobbled between trains—narrowly avoiding security and other yard employees—until they reached the last of the rail-cars and gazed upon the edge of a business district that was pleasantly decorated with trees and painted murals. "Maybe we're overreacting," Jean said. "Maybe not," Scott said, looking around. Kurt glimpsed the wheels of a truck speeding quickly down the gravel pathway on the other side of the nearest train. "Come on, let's get out of here. It's not safe for us right now." "When is it ever," Logan muttered, but they jogged— as best they could, given their aches and pains—across the street. They hit the sidewalk, took a quick left, and disappeared down a wide clean alley that was breezy and lined with the colorful back doors of shops and restaurants. Tables had been set out; well-dressed men and women smiled and laughed over their drinks and food. Kurt's stomach rumbled. He forced himself not to look. He thought, from the corner of his eye, that people watched them. Subtle, yes; no one stared outright, but he felt the quiet scrutiny nonetheless, the dip in conversation as they passed. He could not imagine it was their clothes that drew attention; they still looked relatively clean, though Kurt knew that would not last. He wondered, too, if their faces had been on the news. That would be enough to cause anyone to look twice. Or maybe it was nothing at all. Kurt, however, felt as though he had blue skin again. As a mutant, it was rare that people stared outright. Those around him always ogled without looking, consciously making the effort to look past him—as though studied indifference did not count the same as rudeness. "Logan," he said quietly, "are people watching us?" "Yeah," he said. "We look poor. Our skin isn't the right color, either. Must be a bad combination in this part of town." "You cannot be serious." "You mean, how people can still be that way? Why do you think mutants have a problem?" "But we look human." "Human ain't got nothing to do with it. We look different, Kurt. I'm not saying they're holding that against us, but difference always attracts the eye. In some parts of the country we'd be the most 'different' thing for miles." "I suppose I am naive," Kurt said, staring at his hands, those dark human hands. "I thought such things were past. When I think of what is said and done to mutants, anything else feels... archaic." Logan clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't let it get you down, Elf. If it wasn't race, it would be mutants, if it wasn't mutants, it would be religion, if it wasn't religion, it would be something else. Just the way it is. And who was it giving Jean a lecture this morning about feeling good about herself?" Kurt said nothing. He could understand fear and ignorance of mutations because the physical distance was, on occasion, quite wide. It took time for people to become accustomed to the radical. But to be human and still be looked at strangely... Well, that was just wrong. They walked for a long time, without much purpose other than to keep moving. Kurt's knee hurt; he did not think Rogue felt well, either. All of them were tired and hungry. Scott stopped at the first pay phone he found and dialed the Mansion. Waited. And then his face—that stranger's face, which was becoming not so strange—paled. "Hello," he said, and though his voice did not waver, his expression was so troubled that Jean reached out to touch him. "I'm a friend of Ororo. Is she around? No? Are you sure?" He paused, and then quickly hung up. He stared at the phone. Jean said, "Scott," and he looked at her, at all of them, and Kurt knew what he was going say, felt sick in his stomach with fear, dismay. "That was me," Scott said. "That was me who answered the phone." "Jesus," Logan said. "And he wouldn't let you talk to 'Ro?" "He recognized my voice. His voice. Whoever. He knew who I was. He said my name. Mindy's name, anyway." He closed his eyes. "They must be censoring the calls that come in." "What do they want?" Rogue asked. "They want to ruin us," Jean said. "Or even if they don't, that will be what happens. Can you imagine? The government and public already distrust us. If someone goes out, using our bodies with an agenda—" "We might as well shoot ourselves in the head." Logan clenched his hands, digging his nails into his palm. Kurt could feel his friend's rage grow strong, tight, and he touched Logan's shoulder. "Calm yourself," he said quietly. "You cannot afford to lose your temper." Nor did he have a healing factor to fix him if he tried to drive his fist through a wall. "Who said anything about losing my temper?" Logan growled. "I just want to kill someone." "Later," Scott said, and there was a hard quality to his face that was mirrored in everyone around him. Kurt wondered if he shared that intensity, that sharp resolve; all he knew for certain was he felt sick at heart, ashamed for deeds committed that were out of his control. With his face, with his body, with his power—the stain would be his to bear, as well. "We need to steal a car," Logan said. "Something, anything to get us moving again. Fast." "And if we get caught?" "What do you think is more important right now?" Getting home. Kurt could see it on Scott's face. He did not like the idea of stealing—hated it, in fact—but he felt the same powerful urgency infesting his teammates. "So we steal a car," Jean said, taking a deep breath. "Fine. Go at it, boys." "You the new cheerleader for the poor and criminal?" Logan asked, walking away from the pay phone. "God help me, but I am," she said. They found a grocery store. Scott and Kurt went inside to buy food. They spent less than seven dollars and came out with two loaves of day-old discounted bread—as well as half-price doughnuts of the same age—peanut butter, one gallon of water, a tiny bottle of antibacterial hand gel, and a package of toilet paper. "I hate to admit it," Scott said, "but it's been a while since I had to pinch pennies like this. I used to be good at it." Kurt said nothing, juggling the water for a better grip. In the circus, everyone was poor, but no one minded because you always had as much as the person performing next to you. He missed that sometimes. Life had been much simpler. Logan, Jean, and Rogue sat outside on a bench, waiting for them. "Do we do this now?" Logan asked, and then in a lower voice, 'There aren't any security cameras in the lot." Scott looked at the sky. "It'll be dark in two or three hours. I would feel more comfortable waiting." "There's a gas station down the road," Rogue said. "I don't know about you guys, but I could use a bathroom." "I could use some clean underwear," Jean muttered. "Turn it inside out," Logan suggested. "You can make it last twice as long that way." "Gee, thanks," Jean said, giving him a dirty look. The gas station was large and well maintained. Not much business, though. Another station, just down the road, was filled with cars. When Kurt saw the clerk he understood why. "Hey," said the young lady, when they entered. She leaned on the plastic counter, a magazine in her blinking hands. "Hello," said Kurt, trying to keep track of all her eyes. Her face was covered with them, as was the rest of her body. Blue, brown, green—eyes of different colors and sizes, all of them staring in different directions. "Can we use your bathroom?" Jean asked. "Sure," said the girl. She glanced at Kurt and frowned. "Are you staring at me?" "Yes," he said. "I'm sorry. You have a fascinating face." "Hmph," she said. "Do you want to buy something?" "I'm afraid I don't have enough money." "Then keep talking." Kurt rested his elbows on the counter; the girl did not move. She stared at him. Really, really stared. He said, "It must be easy to hurt yourself. Eyes are so sensitive, after all." She studied his face. It was difficult to read her expression, partially because eyes covered it up. "Sometimes it's trouble," she finally said. "That's why I try to keep this place clean. You a mutant or something?" "No," Scott answered for him. "But a lot of our friends are. "Oh," she said. "You must not be from here, then. There aren't a lot of us in town." "Trouble?" he asked. "People here don't cause trouble. They ignore it, sweep it under the rug. No, there just aren't a lot of mutants. Not many born, not many who come. I guess they feel safer in the bigger cities." "And you?" "Lived here all my life. Married my high-school sweetheart. This is our place." "People don't treat you differently?" Scott asked. All her eyes narrowed. "Why would they?" Rogue and Jean came out of the bathroom. Scott said, "All I meant—" "I know what you meant. And no, people don't treat me differently. If they do, they're not the kind I want to know, anyway." "Are you causing trouble?" Jean asked her husband. She looked at the clerk. "I'm sorry. Sometimes my... wife... gets a little too nosy." "Sure, no problem." The girl looked down at her magazine. She did not talk to them again. "Smooth," Logan said, when they left the gas station. "Your skills as an X-Man really shone through back in there." "I didn't notice you saying anything," Scott said. "Exactly. Why would I? Any idiot could tell that girl's doing fine." "She's a mutant." "Not everyone feels persecuted," Kurt murmured, but he knew that would be difficult for his friend to take as truth. Scott's experiences told him otherwise. Of course, as difficult as it was to be the persecuted, even the hunted could be guilty of the same sin, in another form. Scott shook his head. "Fine. Let's move." They walked to a nearby park and sat on the grass where they opened up the bread, dipping it into the peanut butter jar. They did not speak, but dozed in the waning sunlight, waiting for night. Kurt watched children play. No kites, but Frisbees and baseballs. He liked listening to their laughter, which was happy, unrestrained. They were not yet old enough to know about holding back, the disease of self-consciousness. Kurt had experienced it briefly in his teens, but the circus had no patience for shyness. At least not in public. When it grew dark they went back to the grocery store and sat in the bushes on the edge of the parking lot, watching who went in and out. Ten minutes of doing this, and a beat up little Corolla pulled into a nearby space. The driver, a young man who looked barely out of high school, wore the store uniform. He never noticed his watchers; he had headphones on, and strutted his way into work. "Bingo," Logan said. "That one's not going to be out for hours." It did not take him long. The boy had forgotten to lock his door and everyone clambered into the car. Ten minutes later, they were on the freeway headed east.
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 13	The way Logan drank his beer was not the first indication that something was wrong, but it was the most significant, and Jubilee could not help but consider it a minor sign of the apocalypse when she sat beside him and watched his little pinky lift off the can. It was very slight, barely noticeable, but it was that subtle delicacy that made her antenna go boom-boom. She watched him take a long swallow of beer with the same startled interest reserved for particularly nasty cases of foot fungus, dudes dressed as Klingons, or old white guys who thought it was okay to run around with their shirts off. She said, "Hey, are you feeling all right?" "Peachy," he said. "Why do you ask?" "Nothing. You just seem a little... different... since you got back from Seattle." "Just your imagination." "Right." She scooted a little closer. "So, remember that talk we had before you left?" He never looked at her, just drank his beer. The sports channel was on, but he switched it to the news. "Wolvie?" "I heard you. Remind me." "Oh," she said, disappointed. "You were going to take me to Japan this year. When you visit Mariko." Mariko, who was dead and gone. Jubilee still remembered a rainy night, years past, when Logan had huddled over her grave, sobbing his heart out like he could bring her back with tears or pain. Every year he visited her, every year on a special day. He always went alone. He always left without telling anyone. This time, Jubilee wanted to go, too. Not to intrude, but to be that friend she thought he needed. And besides, traveling with Logan—no matter how sad the circumstances—was always an adventure. She needed one of those right now. Bad. "Mariko," he finally said. "Sure thing, kid. It'll be nice to see her again." Jubilee blinked. Logan picked up the remote control and changed the channel. Gunshots filled the air and he grinned. She stood up and left the room. Logan did not say goodbye. Jubilee found Remy in the garage, stretched out on the ground beneath his car. She grabbed his ankles and yanked hard. Something thumped, she heard him swear, and then he rolled the rest of the way out, holding his head. "Make this good or else I'm cuttin' your new jacket." 'You're evil," she said, "but not as evil as Wolverine. Dude is not the same." Remy sat up. "Tell me." Jubilee resisted the urge to hug him. Things like this were why she liked Gambit second-best only to Wolvie. He took her seriously. He always listened. She scooted close, and in a low voice said, "First of all, he's holding his beer like a girl. Like, not a real girl, 'cause he's not all dainty and stuff, but there was some pinky action going on, like, a real honest-to-God pinky lift, and then he needed me to remind him of this conversation we had, which never happens because Wolvie always remembers everything—no exaggeration—and this was big, Remy, real big, because I asked him to take me to Japan with him this year, you know, when he visits Mariko's grave, and when I said that—when I said that, do you know what he told me? He said, 'It'll be nice to see her again.' And I was like, holy crap. Nice to see her again?" Remy frowned. "Maybe he meant to say it a different way. Maybe it just came out wrong." "It came out wrong like a fifty-pound baby, Remy. Wolvie doesn't do wrong like that. He says what he means." "Okay, then." Remy briefly shut his eyes. "Okay. So something's different. He's not the same man. You don't mean that literally, do you, ma petite?" "Don't ask me!" she said. "Jeez, who's the adult here?" Remy gave her a dirty look. "We need to talk to 'Ro." "No kidding. Have you noticed anything weird? Like, with Rogue?" "I haven't seen her much," Remy confessed. "She's been staying in her room a lot." "I find that highly suspicious." "That's not sayin' much. Mood you're in, you'd persecute a kitten." "Right on, dude. Down with 'em all." She stood up, gesturing for Remy to do the same. "Now move it! We're in the middle of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, here. No time to relax." Remy grumbled something unflattering. They went to find Ororo. The phone rang as they entered the main hall. There were several public phones placed through the Mansion; easy access for anyone who needed to make a call or answer one. Jubilee was only three steps away from the receiver when Scott came bursting out of a side office. He blocked the phone with his body and picked up the receiver. "Hey," Jubilee said, smacking him on the shoulder. He ignored her. She hated that. She heard him say the name "Mindy" and then everything else was a garbled mess and he hung up the phone. "Who's Mindy?" "A wrong number," Scott said, turning around to face them. "We don't usually get wrong numbers," Remy said. "You sure?" "You think I wouldn't be?" There was a challenge in his voice that didn't sound like him at all, and made Jubilee uneasy. She grabbed Remy's hand and tugged him away. "S'kay, Cyke," she said. "We believe you." "That's better," he said, in a self-important tone that for a moment carried the subtle hint of an odd accent. Giving them one last hard look, he returned to his office and shut the door. "You were sayin' something about Body Snatching?" Remy said. "Uh-huh," she said, sick. It went unsaid between them, but as they walked through the Mansion they took care to avoid the rest of the team, those who had gone to Seattle. Jubilee was not quite sure how to hide her suspicions from a psychic like Jean—it was possible, even, that she was already aware that Jubilee was getting Freaked Out. If that was the case, then the game was up. Until she found out for certain, though, her strategy was simple: avoid, avoid, avoid. And then, if she had to, kick some butt. Yeah, baby. They found Ororo in Xavier's study, sitting behind his desk like she belonged there. For a moment, Jubilee felt a pang of anxiety, and then Ororo looked up from the paperwork in front of her and smiled. A real smile, genuine and utterly familiar. Jubilee sighed. "You feel like going out for dinner?" Remy asked, closing the door behind him. "I know a great little spot in town you haven't tried yet." "I do not think so," Ororo said, looking curiously at him. "One of us has to stay here and watch the students." "Ah," he said, and looked at Jubilee with a smile tainted by bitterness. 'You just told me all I need to know, 'Ro." "Excuse me?" "You don' trust them, either. Scott, and the others." Ororo's breath caught. Jubilee said, "You didn't even think about it, did you? You completely marked them off." "No," Ororo said, but Jubilee shook her head. "You did. It's like us. You feel that weird vibe." "More'n a vibe," Remy added. "Something happened on that mission to Seattle. The others came back... different." "Rogue's silence can be blamed on trauma," Ororo began, but Remy raised his hand. "It's not just Rogue. It's Kurt, too. Scott and Jean. Wolverine? They're different, 'Ro. I can't tell you how, but it's real. Haven't you noticed?" "Maybe," Ororo conceded slowly. "I must admit, I turned on the psychic dampeners when I entered this office. I would say, in all likelihood, that this is the only safe place in the Mansion for us to talk." Jubilee's eyes widened. "You went that far and you're still arguing with us?" Remy frowned. 'You think Jean's been compromised?" "Compromised? I don't know if anyone has been 'compromised.' Only, you're right. Something is different with them. Something... not right." "Duh," Jubilee said. "I think you can leave the understatements at home, Storm. Now is the time for big honkin' gestures." "Like body snatching," Remy added. Ororo raised her eyebrows. "I do not think so." "I totally think so," Jubilee said. "Have you been paying attention to the way they're acting? Wolverine is off his rocker. In tiny ways, maybe, but off. So is Scott. I haven't seen Kurt lately, but if he's anything like the others, I'm gonna start sleeping with a knife under my pillow." "This is ridiculous," Ororo said. "Remy?" "I'm beginning to agree with her, 'Ro. Considering all the crazy and powerful people we've met over the years, can you really discount the possibility?" "That five of the most powerful mutants in the world are being possessed by some unknown entity? I don't want to consider the possibility. It makes me sick to my stomach." Ororo closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Let's say you are right. What reason would someone do this?" "Power, money, out to ruin us... does it matter? The real question is, has it been done, and if so, how do we reverse it?" Remy reached into his pocket and pulled out a deck of cards. He started shuffling, which was a pure sign of anxiety in Jubilee's book. "How about Professor X?" Jubilee said. "He could figure this out in no time flat." "I have been trying to call him," Ororo said. "I keep receiving a busy signal on the other end." "You sure it's the other end?" Rerny asked. "Maybe there's a reason you can't get ahold of him. A reason that starts here." Ororo's jaw tightened. "Ever since they returned, I have been trying to convince myself that the differences I sensed were due to some trauma none of them wished to discuss. I was going to respect that, and wait. Now... now you have me scared." "Good," Jubilee said. "'Cause I'm ready to pee my pants." "Yes, well." Ororo stood, smoothing out her dress. "I think it is time for a field trip. Every single student here at the Mansion needs to attend, don't you think?" "Absolument," Remy said. "Something overnight? Perhaps in the city?" "I have a dear friend in New York who might be willing to help chaperone. She has a rather spacious town-house that would accommodate all the children who are here during break. Jubilee, I would also be counting on you to help her." Jubilee coughed back a laugh. 'You have got to be kidding. No way, Storm. I'm staying here." "No." 'Yes. You need all the help you can get." "You're only fifteen." "And who taught me everything I know? What age was I when I first joined the X-Men? You never treated me like a kid, then." "I do not have time for this," Ororo said, but Remy shook his head. "Let her stay, 'Ro. She's right. We need help." "You might as well have me keep all the students here," she muttered, but then shook her head and said, "Fine. You may stay." "Cool." Jubilee shot Remy a grateful smile. "I need to make some calls," she said. "Why don't you two start investigating the logs in the jet. Find out exactly what happened in Seattle. Perhaps, even, find out where Logan's contact got his information." "On it." Jubilee saluted her. "Please be careful," she said to them. "If things are as bad as they seem, we cannot predict the behavior of our friends. They could be capable of almost anything." Which was a sobering thought. Jubilee said, "If everyone really has been body-snatched, then where did they go? Is Wolvie still inside there, fighting to come out?" "I hope so," Remy said. "I don' want to think about the alternative." "Neither do I," Jubilee said, but she had a feeling she just wasn't that lucky.
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 14	They drove all night, taking turns and stopping just once in Spokane, for gas and a change of cars. By four that morning, they were well into Montana. "No speed limit. I love this state." Logan sat in the passenger seat as Rogue drove. He glanced over his shoulder; the others were dozing. Uncomfortable as hell, probably, but they were too tired to care where and how they got shut-eye, just as long as they did. Logan could relate. This body of his just wasn't used to long hauls. "How are you doing?" he asked Rogue. "You asked me that ten minutes ago, sugah. Maybe you should get some rest." "I've been telling myself the same thing. I just can't seem to fall asleep." "I thought you were the kind who conked out pretty fast." "I am, but maybe that's a body-specific thing." "Maybe. How do you like being a woman? Any deep thoughts?" "Darlin', if you're expecting deep thoughts, you're talking to the wrong man." Rogue laughed, but there was a tightness to her eyes that made Logan squint against the shadows. It irritated him to no end that his eyesight was no longer good enough to see in the dark. "What is it?" he asked softly. "What's troubling you, darlin'?" "Nothing," she said. "What makes you ask?" "Instinct," he said. "And I know you too well. Come on, Rogue. It's a long drive and with those sleeping beauties back there, it's just you and me. Spill." She hesitated. He had some idea of what she would say and he was not far wrong. "It's that man I killed," she told him. "I can't stop thinking about him." "Yeah?" he said. "Nothing wrong with that." "Everything is wrong," she argued. "He's dead." "We already discussed this, darlin'. You were trying to stop him from killing someone. It was in self-defense." "It's more than that. It was arrogance, Logan. My arrogance. I thought this body," and she stopped, gesturing at herself as though she were something distasteful, "wouldn't be strong enough to kill. I didn't hold back." Logan sighed. Rogue was one of the finest women he knew, but she could hold on to guilt like it was a second superpower. It did not make sense to him to feel bad about things you could not change. Better to learn from mistakes and just move on. Of course, he was a different kind of animal from Rogue. She was more civilized than he. "Let it go," he said, trying to make her understand. Her lips tightened into a thin line and he shook his head, exasperated. "Forget it, then. I give up, Rogue. I don't know how you do it. How you manage to be the oldest woman I've ever known while living in such a young body." "You can stop now." "Fine." He leaned away from her and stared out the window, watching shadows pass along the freeway. A moment later he felt a warm hand touch him, fingers curling around his fingers. "Thank you," she said softly. "I do appreciate it." Logan squeezed her hand. "Anytime, darlin'. Anytime you need to talk. I'll always be there for you." Rogue pulled over at the next rest stop and everyone clambered out to stretch their legs and use the restroom. The parking lot was full with semitrucks, red and yellow edge lights twinkling like it was Christmas. It was still early enough for the sky to be dark, though the birdsong had changed. The building itself was almost empty. Logan thought he glimpsed some tall figure in an alcove looking at maps. It was almost four in the morning; most everyone, especially the truckers, were tucked snug in their cabs and cars, fast asleep. Logan began to follow Kurt into the men's bathroom and was saved by a loose arm draped over his shoulders. Rogue, steering him into the woman's bathroom. Personally, he did not see how it really mattered where he went. "Remember your place," she whispered, her breath tickling his ear. She glanced at Scott, who was just now emerging from the bathroom. He had been the first to jump out of the car, charging into the rest stop like there was some Sentinel inside needing its tin metal butt kicked. Scott said nothing, but Logan thought he looked infinitely more comfortable. The bathroom smelled and the toilets had seen better I days—better ends of a bleach bottle, too. He really misled standing up. "You okay over there?" Rogue called over the stall, her voice monstrously loud. "I'm not hearing any tinkle-tinkle." "Ain't none of your business what I'm doing in here," he said, still standing up. He had already done this multiple times, but it never got easier. It felt so wrong. "Sure thing," Rogue said, clearly proud of her own wondrous ability to relieve herself. Her toilet flushed and then she was out, washing her hands. He heard her slap water on her face. "You going to be okay if I head back to the car? Logan?" "Sure," he said, gritting his teeth as he finally went through the motions. "Just get away from me. I'm concentrating." She chuckled, and he heard the door swing open. Less than a minute later someone else entered. He wondered if it was Rogue, but kept his mouth shut. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to some stranger. He finished, flushed, and left the stall. Stopped. A man stood in front of him. Tall, with a narrow face and hollow cheeks. He wore a tight T-shirt and jeans. Logan thought he looked familiar, and placed him as the map-reader. "You're not supposed to be in here," Logan said, already planning his moves, the classics: throat, nose, groin. He shifted to the balls of his feet, hands loose and ready at his sides. Great. Didn't seem to matter what he looked like; he always attracted the weirdos. The man smiled. His teeth were very sharp. Too sharp. Logan thought, Oh, crap, and then he had to dart sideways because the mutant attacked. Logan slammed his fist into the soft part of his throat, following up with another blow to the nose. The combined impact did not slow his assailant in the slightest. His fingers lengthened, scraping Logan's shoulders, searching for a hold. Logan batted away those hands. He got in another punch and then one more, and he watched the man smile, so wicked, confident and smug, and he realized those blows meant nothing to him, weren't even tickling his skin. Jerk was a mutant and he needed a mutant to fight him. That, or Logan was going to require something stronger than two small fists of fury. He was not fast enough, not in this body. Impossibly long fingers wrapped around his ankles and he hit the ground hard, slamming the back of his head into the tile. Stunned, dazed, he still tried to kick, to scoot backward. The man fell on top of him, fingers uncurling from ankles and snaking upward to wrap tight like rope around Logan's soft arms. Logan snarled, trying to buck him off. Nothing worked. Enhanced mutant strength. For one moment, Logan understood why humans hated his kind. "Get off me," Logan growled. The door to the bathroom rattled. Logan head Rogue's voice, asking if he was all right. He shouted out to her and got head-butted for his trouble. "Shhh," hissed the man, speaking for the first time. "Be still." "You idiot," Logan said, struggling. 'You must be the worst rapist ever." The man smiled. His mouth was close and hot and wet Soft, he whispered, "Who said anything about rape?" Logan watched those lips peel back, those teeth glint white and sharp. He thought he saw meaty bits plugging the gaps between them. The door rattled again. Logan shouted as that scraping mouth touched his cheek. And then a boom rattled the air, a concussive blast that knocked something out of the door, and Jean and Scott burst into the bathroom. Jean held a gun—that gun she had taken off the pimp—and she aimed it at the mutant holding down Logan and said, "Get off him right now or I will shoot you in the face." He hesitated. Jean said, "Now." And then behind them another figure entered, a man— —a gun went off. The mutant's head exploded and Logan got a mouthful of blood that had him spitting. He heard Scott say, "No," and Jean added, "I didn't do it." Logan was blind with blood in his eyes and could not move his arms to wipe it away. His ears were fine, though, and he heard a low voice, the voice of a stranger, and the man said, "Hope you don't mind, sir, but I always wanted to kill me a mutant." And Logan was fine with that. Really. His name was Duke, or at least, that was what he called himself. Logan did not imagine his mother had given him that name. Duke drove a semi for a furniture company. He always carried a gun, and he did not like most mutants. Some were okay, but the rest could just go hang themselves because they were too dangerous to live, and if he couldn't even trust his sheriff not to be corrupt, or his wife to be faithful, or the local politicians to keep things on the up and up, well, he didn't put much stock in the ability of mutants with superpowers to keep from abusing the little guys. It was just a fact of life, according to Duke. Power made people corrupt. Why, look at that Magneto fellow, or the Brotherhood of Whatsit. Even those X-Men probably had some fishy deal up their sleeves. "Probably," Logan said, shaking his hand. "Thanks, Duke. You sure you'll be okay?" "Yeah," he said. "Like I told you, the sheriff around these parts doesn't like mutants too much, and I got a dozen witnesses here says you were being attacked. Or at least, he was on top of you when I shot him. I'll just say you got scared and ran away. Nothing's going to happen to me, sweetheart. Won't even make the papers." Which was disturbing, and under any other circumstances, worthy of an in-depth investigation. Except, Duke and the men backing him up—all of them truckers who had heard the ruckus and come running—were trying to be good people. Had been, too. They just had a different perspective on things, and Logan really couldn't blame them. Hell, psycho cannibal mutants like that corpse in the women's bathroom did not do much for making a good impression. Scott, thankfully, kept his mouth shut. Logan could tell he was itching to say something, to speak up for the goodness of all mutant kind, but this was not the time or the place. Duke said, "You take care, Patty. I hope you and your friends make it home safe, without the law on your tails." Because none of the X-Men wanted to risk encounters with the police, and Duke seemed like the kind of man who understood why it wasn't always good for some people to have face time with the cops. They got into the car and drove away, fast. Scott was at the wheel, jean in the front seat beside him. Crammed in the back with the others, Logan felt like a little kid about to get a lecture from his mommy and daddy. "What happened back there?" Scott asked, the moment they were back on the freeway and gunning it at ninety. "Someone took a look at me, thought victim—or maybe just Happy Meal—and decided to go for it. Might have taken a chunk or two if Rogue hadn't come back to see how I was doing." "I didn't think anyone, even you, couldn't possibly take that long " she said, squeezed up tight against him. Logan felt grateful for her good Southern common sense. He glanced at Jean, noting the lines of her pensive face. The gun was in the glove compartment. Logan wondered if she really would have shot that mutant, and decided yes, if push came to shove. "He didn't even get a chance, though," Scott said. "That man, Duke, didn't ask any questions. He just shot that mutant, and was happy for it." Logan stared at the back of his head. "Did you miss the part where I was going to be eaten alive?" "All right, so the situation merited some defensive measures. My point"—here Logan could barely hear him over the low shocked laughter from the rest of the car—"is that it could have been something completely different. That mutant—and yes, I know this wasn't the case, but let's be hypothetical—could just have been trying to help you. Maybe the situation merely looked bad. You can't justify a 'shoot first, ask questions later' policy, just because it involves mutants. And then the way they were going to sweep it under the rug—" The soapbox was coming, and Logan did not feel in the mood to hear Scott rant about injustice. "Scott," he interrupted. "If it makes you feel better, I would have killed him myself if I'd had the chance. In cold blood. You don't let psychos like that run loose. All they do is cause pain." "Is that your professional opinion?" Scott asked, his voice cold. "You think the same hasn't been said about you?" Kurt made a soft sound of protest. Logan said, "I know it has. Doesn't bother me, because they're partly right I am a dangerous man. And one day, if someone puts me down for being dangerous, I'll know they probably had a good reason. Thing is, Cyke, there are the kind who are dangerous just because, and the kind who are dangerous because they get off on it. Those are the ones you should be worried about. Those are the ones you shouldn't feel sorry for. That was the kind of man who had me pinned down on the floor of that bathroom, and who was going to take a bite out of my face. You can bet I'm not the only one he's cleaned his teeth on. So don't you dare ask me to sympathize, and don't you make me apologize for being alive." "We're not vigilantes," Scott said. "We can't take justice in our own hands. No one should be able to do that." Logan said nothing. He and Scott had never seen eye-to-eye on certain issues, this being one of them. Logan was the kind of man who did what had to be done, no questions asked. Scott was the same, except he asked the questions. Which, when he thought about it, was probably the reason why he was team leader, and why Logan respected him for it. Scott could be a pain, but he usually knew what he was talking about. Except for now. "You're thinking too much in black-and-white," Logan said. "Those guys back there are good people." "If you're not a mutant." "Maybe so, but imagine the kinds of experiences they've had with mutants. Tonight might be the closest any of them has come to one, and what do they see? A murderer, a cannibal. What do you expect them to do, hold hands and sing the praises of forgiveness? I don't think so, bub." "So it's okay? They've got carte blanche to discriminate and kill anyone who they think might be a threat?" "Don't you twist my words, Cyke. You know that's not what I'm saying." Scott remained silent, stewing. He was good at that. Logan wondered if he ever tried to pull that shit with Jean and decided he wouldn't dare. At the moment, she watched him sternly, and if Logan had not been certain she was no longer telepathic, he could almost swear she was giving him some kind of mental lecture. She probably is. He just ain't hearing it. "So," Rogue said, breaking into the silence with a wry smile for Logan. "How long until we get there?" "You're only allowed to ask that question once a day," Logan said. "We're about twenty-four hundred miles from home. That's, what, almost thirty-five hours of road time. If we don't stop much, we'll be home the day after tomorrow." "We'll probably run out of money before then," Scott said. He seemed calmer, more in control. Logan gave all the credit to Jean's nontelepathic vibrations. "Too bad we can't sell this car," Rogue muttered. "And then steal another?" Logan gave her an amused look. "Have I created a monster?" "The monster was always there," Rogue said, and there was a slight edge beneath the humor, enough to give him pause. He did not push her for more, though. Logan was not a big fan of dredging up issues. If people wanted to talk, they did. Simple as that. The sun came up, illuminating rock and tree, mountains bright. Logan rolled down his window, inhaling the scent. Homesickness swelled inside his heart—not for New York, but for this, this precious solitude—and if the situation had not been so dire, if he had been whole and healthy inside his body, he would have forced Scott to stop the car and let him out. Let him go, deep into the wild to disappear for a day or a year. They pulled over at a truck stop in a little town outside Bozeman. It was midmorning and the tank was banging on empty. They had only ten dollars left and all of that went to the gas. "What's our food look like?" Scott asked, leaning on the car. His black hair looked a little on the greasy side, but his skin was clear and his dark almond eyes had that glint in them that was pure Fearless Leader. Kurt peered into the plastic bag. "We still have some bread and peanut butter left, but the doughnuts are gone and we're almost out of water." "We could always fill up inside a bathroom faucet," Logan said. "Food is another matter. We might just have to go hungry until we get home." Jean pulled her dreadlocks back, twisting and knotting them into a bun. "There are some pay phones over there. I'm going to call the Mansion." "Okay, but if one of us answers, hang up. The less we talk to them, the better. No need to give our counterparts an excuse to start looking for us, or tracking our location." "I'm going to the bar," Logan said. Everyone stared at him. "Bar?" Rogue asked. "There's a bar?" "Sure," Logan said, amazed they hadn't noticed it. "Look over there by the gas station." Rogue squinted. "That's a shack, sugah. I've seen tool sheds in better condition." "Yes, but this one has beer. They've got it advertised with a nice little neon sign." "It's ten in the morning." "And there are cars parked outside." "You're broke." "Who says I'm going to buy?" Logan hefted the water botde. "I'll be back." Scott frowned. "I better go with you." "Oh, Lord." Rogue looked at the sky, while Kurt crossed himself. "Save us now." "Laugh it up," Logan said, and marched off toward the little bar which did resemble some rough toolshed, but no doubt carried the scents of cigarettes, liquor, and cheap women: parfum d'Logan. It was all of those things when he went in, minus the cheap women. Just a bunch of men sitting at a tiny counter that barely had room for a bottle of vodka, let alone glasses and elbows. The rest of the bar's floor space was taken up by an emerald holy grail, illuminated by perfectly placed track lighting that seemed to light that gleaming surface from within. "That's some pool table," Scott said, peering over Logan's shoulder. "Sure is," he said. Men stood around, holding their cues like spears, weapons of war. They looked at Logan and Scott, looked with the eyes of men unaccustomed to having their inner sanctum invaded by outsiders, and Logan suddenly had a brilliant idea. He glanced at Scott, and smiled. "Oh, no," he said. "Logan—" "Hello boys," Logan said. "Nice sticks you've got there." They had to leave the bar for several minutes in order to tell the others where to park. Logan also used it as an opportunity to give Scott some instructions. "Unbutton your shirt," he said. "Excuse me?" "You don't have much cleavage, but if you unbutton your shirt a little more that won't matter. See? Look at me." "I cannot believe I'm doing this." "Think of yourself as breadwinner. Like some boxer from the thirties, throwing himself into the ring to bring money home for the wife and hungry kids." "It's a little different," Scott said. "You want me to sell my body." "I don't want you to sell your body. I want you to sell an image. When they buy that image, then kick their butts." "What are you doing to my husband?" Jean asked, meeting them as they walked to the car. "He's trying to make me sexy," Scott said. "Is it working?" Jean closed her eyes. "I don't want to know. Really, I don't." "Did you get through to the Mansion?" Logan asked. "Busy signal. I must have called twenty times, using different room extensions, and it was always busy. I think they've cut off the school." "Makes sense, if they were worried one of us would get through. Crap. I hope the others are okay." "Who's there right now? Ororo?" "Gambit," Jean said. "Jubilee." "Jubilee," Logan said, clenching his fists. "She's going to figure it out." "Why would that matter?" "Kid's going to spend one minute with my alter ego and know that something's wrong. And then she's going to start making some noise." "If we're lucky, all of them will figure it out and start taking action." "And the busy phone lines? That's not the kind of action I was hoping for, Cyke." Rogue and Kurt waited for them outside the car. Logan looked for cops. He didn't see any, but it made him nervous, the car sitting out in the open for any length of time. Driving felt different, but this was like being a sitting duck. "We're paid and ready to go," Rogue said, and then, "Scott, honey, your shirt is undone." "Yes," he said. "You need to park the car over by the bar. Logan and I have... business in there. It may take a while." "Business," Jean said, raising an eyebrow. "Oh, no." Rogue covered her mouth. "We're not that desperate." Scott shook his head. "Just...move the car." "I want to know what this is about," Jean said. "Earning some easy cash," Logan said. "They got a pool table." "Oh," she said, and then, "Oh." "Exactly." Jean looked at her husband and mussed his hair a little more. She tweaked his shirt, pulling the tail from his jeans and tying it in a knot around his thin waist. "Go get 'em," Jean told her husband with a crooked smile. The men in the bar certainly appreciated the new look. Whistles accompanied Scott and Logan's entrance. Jean waited outside with Kurt and Rogue. Having male friends join them at the pool table would ruin the illusion of sweet innocents just wanting to pass the time, to try their hand. They had no money to add to the betting pool, but that did not matter. No one expected them to win, anyway. Taking their money in a bet would have been... ungentlemanly. But that did not mean Scott and Logan couldn't collect. Logan played only two games, losing both. Scott went up next, and Logan let the bartender buy him a beer as he sat back and watched the show. One of the lesser-known facts about Scott Summers was that the man played pool like a god. Even Logan knew better than to compete with him. It had something to do with his powers, his ability to know exactly how objects would move, rebound, deflect. A side effect, perhaps; Logan had seen him hit mission targets that were out of sight, simply by calculating the best angle at which to release his energy beams. Bing, bang, bong. A couple of balls and a cue were child's play. Following Logan's example, Scott lost the first two games, fumbling miserably as his opponents smiled, enjoying the spectacle of having a beautiful girl at their table, trying so hard to be as good as them. Oh, how cute. Oh, don't worry, you'll get better. Oh, Harry, cut the girl some slack. And then the wager hit one hundred dollars—not a lot of money, but enough to get them home—and Scott stopped losing. He did it subtly, no grandiose gestures that screamed "hustler." Just a ball here, a ball there. In retrospect, Logan wondered if that was the key mistake, the one thing they did wrong. They did not leap about and cheer every time a ball went into the hole. They did not cry out for support. They did things quiet, because that was their nature, and neither of them, for all their big talk of looking sexy, could change that one aspect of themselves. Logan knew plenty of women who were exactly the same, but those were professionals, not young things who supposedly didn't know much of anything about playing pool. It was all about perceptions and expectations. The game was an easy finish. Scott, doing a decent job of acting surprised, smiled tentatively at the men and reached for the money. "I think we should play again," said his opponent, Fred, moving just enough to block his hand, "Double or nothing." "I would love to," Scott said, "but we need to get back on the road. Besides, this was a lucky finish. I don't think I could win a second time." "That so?" said the other man, a local lumberman named Daniel. He stroked his pool cue, thoughtful. "I'm not sure I believe in luck." "Now, now," said the bartender, as Logan got off his stool. "There's no need to be sore losers." "What, exactly, is the problem here?" Logan asked. "The problem is that I think you cheated." "Cheated?" Logan gazed around the room. "You telling me there's a way to cheat at pool?" "There is if you've played before and now you're lying about it." "And what makes you think we're lying?" The bar's door opened; light flooded in from the outside, blinding them all. Logan blinked, recognizing the outline of a body that stood in the doorway, the silhouette of dreadlocks reminding him of old Greek tales about Medusa. Scott, again, reached for the money. Fred tried to grab it first, but Scott was faster. He snatched the cash and then he and Logan started moving to the door, ignoring the protests that erupted behind them. Logan had anticipated this part, though usually it didn't happen unless the wins were bigger. One of the men he had been sitting beside at the bar stood up and tried to block the door. Logan said, "You better move," and when the man just smiled and reached out his hands, Logan did not mess around, but slammed his fist into that jaw, rocking the drinker back on his heels so that he stumbled and hit the wall. His hand hurt but he didn't dare rub it. He turned in a slow circle, meeting hard gazes that flickered and then broke away. It was like playing a game of chicken with his fists. After pulling that first bluff, no one wanted to play for keeps, especially if it required hitting a woman. Fine by him. Outside, Scott said, "You always make things sound so easy. And then people start hitting us." "You should be used to that by now." Logan turned to Jean. "You could have helped. They accused us of cheating. "Big surprise. Now come on. I was coming to get you. We have to get out of here." "Police?" "Worse," she said. "Cerebro."
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 15	The hardest part of dealing with body snatchers was that you had to pretend they were your friends at dinnertime. Which meant that Jubilee stopped going to dinner. Frankly, she did not think anyone was keeping regular meal hours; since their return from Seattle, she had run into Scott only once in the kitchen. Jubilee had stayed long enough to grab a box of Twinkies and then made a run for it back to her room, looking over her shoulder the entire time to see if Scott followed her. He did not, but she still felt wary. There was no telling what they wanted. She even, for a time, stayed away from Wolverine. That did not last long, but when she did go to him she remained on the periphery, occasionally talking, but most often just observing. Wolverine—or whoever he was— did not seem to mind. The more she was around him, the more it seemed that he treated her like a pet, some lonely little puppy that was cute to have around, but only as long as it didn't become annoying. Even with the possibility that her Wolvie was a completely different man, Jubilee did not question her ability to handle him. Nah. Wolvie was easy. The real problem was Jean. Jubilee had already taken certain precautions—the kind that involved a wrench and a screwdriver, and the unhealthy application of such tools to certain highly revered pieces of technology—but that was not going to help anyone living in the Mansion. "Dude," Jubilee said to Remy, less than a day after their first meeting with Ororo. "She's going to read our minds and find out we don't trust her. We might as well give up now." "Mebbe," he said, with a curious lack of expression. Could be exhaustion; he'd been up half the night helping Storm drive the kids into the city for their "field trip." "Mebbe?" she mimicked. "What aren't you telling me?" Remy brought Jubilee to his room. It was certainly not the first time she had gone into the teachers' wing, but she had never been to Remy's room before. She expected luxury, designer furnishings, New Orleans flair. The reality was quite different. "Wow," Jubilee said, when Remy opened his door and turned on the light. "I feel cheated." "'Cuse me?" "Nothing," she said, closely examining the fine clean lines of the polished wood floors, the simple curve of two black leather armchairs. The bed was plain, the sheets cotton and white. It was all very austere. Not what she had envisioned at all. Remy shut the door and walked across his room to the closet. Jubilee got a glimpse of dress shirts and jeans, several long coats, and a set of body armor, and then he pulled down a box from the top shelf and kicked the closet shut. He sat down on the floor and Jubilee joined him. She studied the box in his hands. "I've been saving these for something important," Remy said, and opened the lid. Jubilee peered inside and saw three small black discs the size of her thumbnail cushioned in gray foam pads. "What are they?" she asked, stroking one with her finger. Remy pried the disc from the foam and placed it in her palm. "Psychic dampeners," he said. "I acquired them just last month." "Cool," Jubilee said. "If I wear this, not even Professor X can read my thoughts?" "That's what they promised me." There was an odd note in his voice that caught her attention. Jubilee tore her gaze from the disc and looked into his eyes. "Why do you have these?" she asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer. "Really, you want to know?" His smile looked faintly bitter. "Because, ma petite, best friends make the worst kind of enemy." Jubilee sat back, staring. "You've thought about this happening. You anticipated it. You thought they—the psychics in this place—could go bad." "Everyone can go bad. The pace is slower for some, that's all." Jubilee sucked in her breath. She did not know what to think about this new revelation, how to respond to the idea that Remy might not trust even her, but she swallowed down the hurt and stuck out her hand with the disc glinting dull and black beneath the light. "Can you help me turn this thing on?" He did, working silently as he placed the disc behind her ear. Jubilee felt it vibrate once and then go still. "Is it is working?" she whispered. "Oui." He picked up a second disc and placed it behind his own ear. "Storm," she said. "Of course," he said, and they went looking for her all over again. Remy did not like exposing his secrets; that Jubilee now knew he had made contingency plans in case his friends ever turned on him was a deeply personal fact that had hurt to share. Part of the revelation had resulted from Jubilee's own perceptiveness, but the other was entirely his own fault. He had said more than he should. Oddly, he felt no desire to take it back. He and Jubilee did not linger in Ororo's office after giving her the dampener. Remy did not want to allow his friend an opportunity to comment on his paranoia, his morality. It was enough that her thoughts would be safe when she left Xavier's office. "So now what?" Jubilee asked. "The Blackbird," he said. "I want to check to the logs." The lights were off inside the hangar; they left them that way as they walked to the jet, listening for anyone else who might be in there. Jubilee, after a moment, whistled the theme to The Twilight Zone. "You can stop that," Remy said. "Really." "Sure," she said, and he realized that she was trying to cover for her own uneasiness. When the Mansion was full, there were usually any number of people down in the hangar—either learning something new about the machines, doing maintenance, or taking flying lessons via the simulator in the corner. This new silence felt unnatural. He did not trust it. The interior of the Blackbird was as he remembered. Nothing looked out of place; he saw no signs of a struggle. Quick, uneasy about lingering long, he made a search of the logs and found several recordings Scott had made upon arrival in Seattle. He played them. "Boring," Jubilee said, lounging in the pilot's seat. She looked over the controls and blinked hard. "Hey," she said. "Remy, you need to look at this." He bent over her shoulder, staring where she pointed. It was the fuel gauge, and the arrow tilted at empty. No one had refueled the jet. "Oh, yeah," Jubilee murmured. "Someone is going to get it." Remy shook his head. "Refueling the jet as soon as you return is a fundamental safety procedure. Even you know that." Because too many emergencies arose that required the X-Men to depart the Mansion at great haste. Running out of fuel in midair on the way to saving lives was not a good situation to find oneself in. Right now, there was barely enough fuel to fly into the city. Jubilee tapped her jaw. "So finally there are people on this team even more irresponsible than me. I'd be happy about that, except it's another sign of the end times." "End times?" said a new voice. "That's a little melodramatic, don't you think?" Remy whirled, stepping in front of Jubilee. Scott stood at the back of the jet, his body cast in shadow. There was a slight tilt to his mouth, an almost-smile that was cold and hard. For just an instant, Remy did not recognize, him; the person inside was so different that the physical resemblance had become meaningless. "What are the two of you doing here?" "Maintenance check," Remy lied easily. "It's my turn." Scott made a humming noise. "Do you do all your maintenance checks in the company of teenage girls?" "Hey." Jubilee narrowed her eyes. "I don't like the sound of that." Neither did Remy. "She's my student, Scott." "So was little Lolita, once upon a time." Jubilee raised her hands; Remy glimpsed light in her palms and he grabbed her wrists. "Non," he murmured. "Not now." Scott moved closer; his smile changed into something sly. "So. Have you found anything that needs maintenance?" He looked at Jubilee. "Or did I get here too soon?" "Remy," Jubilee said. His hand tightened on her wrist. "Get out of here, Scott," Remy said. "You need to leave, right now." "And miss out on the fun?" His mouth widened, white and cruel. "Where should we start?" Remy let go of Jubilee and punched Scott in the face. It was a blow Scott should have been able to block— Remy was too angry, his swing wild—but he slammed Scott's face before the team leader had a chance to raise his hands, and the man went down hard on the floor. Remy stood over his body. His heart thundered and he held cards between his hot fingers. "Don' you ever talk like that to Jubilee or me," he said in his softest voice. "Don' even think it." "Or what?" Scott asked, touching his bloody mouth. "You'll kill me?" Remy felt his heart sink into a dark place. This man in front of him was not Scott Summers, but the body was his, and he could not be certain that the man himself did not still reside there, lost beneath the cruel light in the eyes of the person looking up at him from the floor. But there were some things Remy would not tolerate, no matter what, and he said, "Yes, I will kill you, Scott." Scott scooted backward until he could stand with some distance between himself and Remy. Remy watched him carefully, waiting for him to retaliate. Scott never did. "Later," he said, backing away slowly. "Later, you and I will do this again." Remy said nothing. He watched Scott leave the jet and did not relax until the X-Man left the hangar. Remy slapped the ramp panel and raised the door. When the airlock sealed, when they were protected by steel, Remy leaned against the wall and felt a long shaky breath escape his throat. He heard footsteps. His gaze slid sideways to Jubilee. Her eyes were huge. He reached out and drew Jubilee against him. "It's okay," he whispered. "No," she said, her voice muffled against his chest. "It's not."
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 16	Even though Jean no longer had her powers, she remembered what it was like to have her mind probed. The sensation always changed, depending on the telepath; Emma Frost, for example, felt like a blood-starved limb, all prickly with pain, while Charles's psychic touch produced incalculable warmth, a baby blanket for the mind. Jean, up until this point, had no idea what her touch might feel like to others, only that it would leave a mark. And so it had, one that she was astute enough to catch. "I think my counterpart—or whoever has my body—is looking for us," Jean said. "I felt her tickle my brain." "How do you know it is you?" Kurt asked. "There could be another telepath in this area. Perhaps the two are confused?" "No, it's me. I can't explain it. It's like... a familiar scent or hearing the voice of someone you thought you'd forgotten. It feels like home." "I think I'm jealous," Rogue said. "She must be using Cerebro to expand her range." Jean twisted in her seat so she could look at the others. All of them were pale, tired, with dark circles under their eyes and a hollow quality to their cheeks that was probably part of the same hunger than gnawed her own belly. "I think she's doing it badly, though. Of course, it's hard to tell, but it felt like she was on me for only a moment or two." "But that could be enough, right? If she knows what she's looking for." Scott's knuckles were white on the steering wheel. "But why would she? If my counterpart had no super-mental abilities before the transfer, then how would she possibly know what my mind feels like?" "And if it's Jonas Maguire using her? He certainly knows your mind." "If he was the one who transferred it." "Let's just say he did until we can prove otherwise," Logan replied. "So the other Jean is using Cerebro and she touched your mind. I don't think we should rule out an accident, or that she had some purpose for using Cerebro other than finding us. Think about the power she's got. She could go after anyone with that thing. Maybe she's just training herself to use it." The car sped up. Jean looked out the window and saw golden grassland bathed in sunlight, rolling hills that hid mysteries, always just on the other side. There could be a hundred people only yards away from the road, and no one would ever know. Good ambush country. Not that she thought anything like that would happen to them. At least not here, and not with people springing out from behind hills or trees. A police roadblock, a gun in her face? Maybe her own powers used against her? Yes, all of that was a distinct possibility. "There's no way to protect ourselves from Cerebro, is there?" Rogue sat between Kurt and Logan. She looked uncomfortable. Jean could only imagine what it was like, suddenly able to touch and then to have it forced upon her in the form of continuous close contact. Jean still had trouble coping with her mind blindness. Sleeping was horrible, because with her eyes closed the world truly fell away, and she was reminded of those first moments in the mental hospital when the world had felt so cold and empty. Stop it Stop feeling sorry for yourself. The others were right. So your abilities are gone. You were relying on them too much if this is the kind of reaction you're having. Take this time as a lesson to toughen up. "No," Jean said to Rogue. "There's no way to hide, not unless we have some natural shielding. Kurt, when he teleports, is always hard to find. Gambit, too. His brain... scrambles things. I doubt we're that lucky." "So if the police do not stop us, then we risk having our minds destroyed." Kurt sighed. "Lovely." "We don't have any options," Scott said. "We have to go home." And what a shame it had to be under such terrifying circumstances. Jean knew the exact process of destroying an individual's mind. It was something she had contemplated quite often—not because she wished to harm anyone, but because she wished to know exactly what to do in order to avoid some accidental, and quite devastating, use of her telepathy. To destroy a mind to rip from it the essence of person-hood, was the ultimate in tortures—and crimes. Jean did not want to consider it as the possible end for herself or her friends. She would rather face death than that, which was no better than being a zombie; a body, a shell, with nothing inside but the most rudimentary instincts. Late that afternoon they passed into North Dakota, and it was there, caught within a parted sea of hot golden grasses, at least thirty miles from the nearest town, that their little car blew out its tire. The trunk did not have a spare. "Pack it up," Scott said. "We re walking." "We better find a way of getting off the road before some cop checks out this car. Minute they run anything on the plates, they're going to figure something's fishy. And if we're the only ones on the road..." Logan's voice trailed away. It was simply one more blow against them. Jean thought she should probably count her blessings that they had made it this far, but it was difficult to think about the positive when the sun began to set and the few cars on the road sped by with drivers and passengers who looked at them as though they were bogeymen, or the prime suspects of some horrible highway ax murder. Jean wanted to yell "Boo!" every time she saw their expressions. "You can't really blame people," Rogue said, wiping sweat from her face. "I mean, there are a lot of crazies out in the world." "Fear should not hinder compassion," Kurt said. "That's easy enough for us to say," Logan countered. "We re trained professionals. We fight space aliens with our bare hands, for Christ's sake." "Does compassion mean less when you're a superhero, then?" Kurt wondered out loud. "Without that inherent risk, that choice of possible harm, does a kind act from one of us count as much as the kindness of a normal human being?" "Kurt," Scott said. "Does it matter?" "Ja." Kurt turned around, walking backward so he could look at them. "We are powerful people. Or at least, we were. But how often do we use that power to help those without? Our focus is always on mutants, and that is right and good, because there are also mutants who have nothing. But what else? What else have we done?" "Saved the world," Logan said. "Several worlds, actually," Scott added. "Maybe the universe?" "Now you're exaggerating." Kurt threw up his hands. "You see? We have saved the world, but did we actually do anything to make it a better place? We shelter mutants at the school, but do we teach them how to interact with humans? Do we encourage them to make friends with different kinds of children? If we isolate them, do we teach compassion or superiority?" "Kurt," Rogue protested. "We're trying to create a world where mutants and humans can live together." "Perhaps, but I am no longer convinced we are going about it in the right way." Logan grunted. "We do what we can, Kurt. We do the best that we can, with what we've got" Kurt began to respond, but instead narrowed his eyes, staring up the road. "I believe there is a car coming." There was no excitement in his voice. Just a dull announcement of yet another vehicle that would speed past and leave them to the mercies of the oncoming night. Jean wondered how cold it got out here. Much to their surprise, though, the approaching truck stopped in the middle of the road. A man looked out at them. He had gray hair, blue eyes, and a nice mouth. A dog sat in the passenger seat. It had the same coloring. "Was that your car that I saw broken down back there?" "Yes," Scott said. "I don't suppose you could give us a lift into town?" The man hesitated, studying them. "I could," he said slowly. "What kind of people are you?" "Excuse me?" Scott said. "I don't understand." "Are you good people?" It was a surreal question. Not many people ever asked Jean if she was "good," though she found it rather refreshing that the old man expected a straight answer. "Usually," Logan said, looking him in the eye. "Depends how good the other side is." "Fair enough," said the man, seemingly satisfied at the answer—or the reaction to it. "You can sit in the back of the truck." "Thank you," Jean said. "Thank you very much." The man shrugged. The dog watched them, careful. "You see?" Kurt said, when they were moving and the wind blew long and hard against their bodies. "Compassion. One normal man, helping five strangers on an empty freeway." "Let's not start this again," Logan said. "If it makes you happy, we'll send him a medal when we get home." "I would prefer instead that we emulate his kindness." "I thought you said that wouldn't mean as much because we're mutants," Rogue pointed out. "It still means something," Kurt said. Jean felt sorry for him, but remained silent. Philosophical differences were always impossible to argue, and at the moment, she was content with merely watching the world go by, savoring the warmth of her husband, soft and small at her side. And then, unexpectedly, she felt a strange tickling sensation in her brain. Like fingers, scraping the surface of her mind, looking for openings. Startling, to say the least The prelude to an invasion, maybe. For some reason, she did not feel afraid. "We've got company again," she said, and tapped her forehead. The tickling stopped. Everyone, even Logan, looked at her in concern. "Are we being tracked?" Scott asked. "I wish I knew. It's impossible to tell. All it felt like was someone brushing past my brain. I don't think anything more was done." "I hope not," Scott said. "We're dealing with a lot of unknowns here, not the least of which is whether we'll be able to make it home." "We're moving in the right direction, aren't we?" Logan said. "What more do you want? Just give it one step at a time." One step. Easy enough. Jean knew how to be stubborn. It seemed to be a mutant power all its own, one shared by all the X-Men. It was a wonder Charles ever got them listening to anything at all, and probably explained the occasional soap opera atmosphere of the Mansion. They drove in silence until they reached town. Or rather, the one lone gas station perched on the edge of the freeway. Sunset had come and gone, but the darkening sky, pricked with the first stars of evening, still bled prairie purple with a blush of gold. Their driver pulled off the freeway and turned into the gas station. He parked beside one of the pumps and got out. So did they. "Not much around here," said the man, unscrewing the gas cap. "We'll make do," Scott said. "Thank you for taking us this far. We can help pay for the gas." "Nah," he said, quiet. "Wasn't out of my way." He paused for a moment, and then added, "You all looking for work?" The question surprised Jean. She did not know how to answer, and for a moment, the rest of the X-Men shared her confusion. They looked at each other. "It's not a hard question," said the man. "And you certainly don't have to say yes." "We're trying to get home," Scott said. "Back to New York. It's an emergency." "You all have the same emergency?" "We're family," Jean said, irritated by his subtle skepticism. "Fair enough." He started pumping gas. "Even if you don't want work, you're all welcome to stay at my place tonight. Just me and the dog." Scott said, "I think we might intrude." "And I think you'll be spending a cold night on the prairie if you don't take me up. That's your choice, though. You might get a ride, but I doubt it." "Is there a reason you're so keen on having us at your home?" Logan asked. "Every man has a reason for the things he does," he said. Scott looked at them, and Jean saw her own feelings mirrored on his face. Yes, they needed a place to stay-even better, a way to keep moving—but this was just... odd. Even Kurt, for all his talk about compassion, seemed reserved. You're jaded. Maybe, but for a good reason. "Thank you for your offer," Scott said. "Really. What we need, though, is transportation." The pump clicked. The man removed it and screwed the cap back on. His movements were careful, deliberate. "I might be able to help you with that, too. That is, if you'll help me with something. Shouldn't take long. Just a couple of hours." "It's not illegal, is it?" Rogue asked. He smiled. "No. Just a little something that needs more hands than I got." "That why you pulled over?" Logan asked. "Maybe. What do you say?" Scott hesitated, and then, slow, stuck out his hand. The man looked at it for a moment, smiled again, and shook. "Okay," he said. "Let's go home." He said his name was James and that his dog was called Dog, and that they had been alone for a week. The wife was dead, gone from a heart attack because there was no hospital close enough to help. In this part of the country, he said, you lived on your own and you died on your own, and that was the way of it, the price for solitude and minding your own business. His house was very small and old and white, with real wood siding that had seen better days and some pots filled with red geraniums that desperately needed water. The house and the nearby barn were the only structures for miles, and so they had some warning, even in the waning light. The yard was dusty. Jean sneezed twice and wiped her eyes. Her body ached as she uncurled from the hard seat of the truck cab. "Come on in," said James. He walked right into the unlocked house, and Jean was the first to follow him. The interior was dark, but pleasantly decorated with an elegant spare hand that believed in the quality of old hardwood, white walls, and the occasional splash of color. Jean thought there might only be four rooms: the kitchen, the living room, a closed door that was probably a bedroom, and beyond that another closed door. A bathroom, maybe. She hoped it was a bathroom. She needed one. "Are you hungry?" James asked. "There's not much here, but you're welcome to it." "That's all right," Scott said. "Perhaps you'd like to tell us about the work you need done?" James nodded. "I suppose now is good. I've been... putting it off. From doing it myself, you see. Too difficult, even though it shouldn't be. You're all young, though. Younger than me. I appreciate this." He walked to the first door on Jean's left and opened it. Inside, on the bed, she saw a body. Jean did not know what shocked her more: that the body was dead, a corpse, or that it was not quite human. "Whoa," Logan breathed. James entered and sat on the edge of the bed. He touched a wrinkled limb, one of many, folded like thick ribbons on the still narrow chest. "This is Milly," he said into the breathless quiet. "My wife." Jean walked to the end of the bed, and felt her friends follow. Except for Logan's outburst, they all remained quiet, respectful of the reverence in the old man's face. "Wasn't she beautiful?" he asked, and laid his hand on Dog, who nudged close between his legs. Milly did have a lovely face; Jean thought she must have been a true beauty in her youth. The rest of her body, though, was nothing more than a series of tentacles attached to a slender torso that had no discernible arms or legs. "She must have been resourceful," Jean said, gende, unsure exactly what to say, what was appropriate under such unusual circumstances. "Oh, yes. She had to be." James smiled. "We were together almost forty years. Sweet baby." He finally looked at them and his eyes were bright and wet "I don't want Milly at the local cemetery. They never understood her, anyway. She was just a sideshow. So I want her here, where she was happy. Where we can be together. That's the job I have for you. I need help digging the grave." "Of course," Jean said, gazing down upon that still face, the deformed body. "Anything." "I got some shovels in the barn. I'll show you the place. The ground is real hard, which is part of the reason I kept waiting." He took them to the barn. Outside was dark and cool, the sky heavy with stars. There were no floodlights, nothing to see by, but James led them with an unerring sense of direction and the barn, thankfully, did have a light. It was clear that livestock had been kept there in the past, but now the floor and stalls were clean and dry, and held only the faintest scent of animal. The shovels were by the door. Three of them, plus two pickaxes. "The perfect number of people," James said. "I got lucky." "There wasn't anyone you could ask for help?" Logan shouldered a pickax. "None I wanted to ask," James said. "Milly and I were pretty much alone out here. She had no family, and mine gave me up when I married her. We never had children. Milly just wasn't built that way. It would have been nice, though." He led them to a small tree that grew behind the house. Jean could barely see it in the darkness. She touched the leaves and found them smooth and cool. "Lilac," James said. "Her favorite scent. She waited all year for this thing to bloom." And then he pointed at the ground and they began to dig. He was right: the ground was hard. They rotated jobs; Jean and Kurt worked with the pickaxes first, breaking up the ground, and then the others went in with the shovels, hacking and scooping, steel ringing as it occasionally hit rock. James sat on the side and watched. Every now and then he left to bring water, and when one of them had to rest he took up the slack and worked until the weary could start again. "What did you all do before you found the road?" James asked. Scott stopped chipping at the earth. "I suppose you could say we were in the profession of helping people." "Or not," Logan added, with a smile. "Some people need to be helped in... different ways." James smiled. "Milly and I knew people like that, but they left us alone after a while. Got tired of it, I guess. Or maybe they grew up." "Some never do," Jean said. "I suppose. There were others, like her, who also treated us impolite. I took her to the city, to places where they had all kinds. I thought it would be better for us there. Less lonely for her, anyway. But Milly was too unique, even for them. I think that hurt her more than just about anything, so we came back here and never left." "That's not right," Rogue said. "That's the way it is. Those other kind, like Milly, they look different and they got different skills, but they're human where it counts. They're human in all the ways that make us mean and hard, loving and kind. Why else do you think this world has so much conflict? It's because when we look at people like Milly, or heck, all those hero folks on TV, we know we're looking at ourselves, and we know all the dirty things we'd do if we had that kind of power. Now Milly, she just looked different. She could also do miracles with sweet potatoes, but I think that was another gift entirely on its own." Jean laughed, and James said, "Good. I'm glad someone can smile when I talk about her. She was a sweet woman. She deserves smiles." It took them until midnight to dig the grave. James went into the house and spent a long time there. Jean and the others lay in the grass, stargazing while they waited for him. After a time, they heard a whistle. James stood at the back door. He had a suit on, and a nice hat. "She's ready," he said. "Maybe you could help me carry her." James had wrapped Milly in a white sheet. She looked smaller, bundled tight, and Jean picked her up before anyone could offer help. Milly was heavier than she looked, but Jean bit back any complaints and carried her from the house to the grave. There, it took some effort to lower her into the ground. Everyone got on their stomachs and grabbed a sheet corner. Careful, slow, they let her down, deep into the earth. And then they stood, and listened to James say his last words to his beloved wife. They did not discuss the promised transportation. It seemed inappropriate. James told them to go into the house and get something to eat, to clean up if they wanted because there were plenty of clean towels and a lot of soap. James did not go back in with them. He sat on the ground at the foot of Milly's grave, staring at the fresh-turned pile of dirt. Dog stayed with him. "That poor man," Rogue said, slumped at the kitchen table. A wet towel lay over her shoulders. She sipped coffee. Jean sat beside her, also drinking coffee. She had taken her shower first, and it was good to be clean— though rather startling to see herself naked. Logan, the last of them to bathe, was still in the bathroom. Jean thought of James, sitting alone in the dark at the grave of his wife. She thought of him and Milly, living their lives in isolation because the only place they could find true acceptance was here, with each other. Perhaps that was enough for them. James, certainly, did not seem to have many regrets. Jean, on the other hand, tried to imagine herself in their shoes and could not. People consumed her life and that was fine, because despite her gift, she did not like to be alone. "I'm going to go check on James," she said. "Maybe he'll want something to eat." The night air felt colder than she remembered, though digging deep holes in the hard earth tended to distort one's perception of temperature. She stumbled along in the dark, and knew she was getting close when she heart Dog whine. She tripped, and even as she fell to the ground she recalled the sensation of her foot catching something soft, and no, that could not be true, she hit the ground hard and did not stop moving, just rolled and got to her hands and knees, crawling to the soft lump she had missed seeing in the darkness, and she called his name but he was quiet, and she felt his neck and for a moment there was nothing, but then she moved her fingers and felt a pulse, sweet, and she called his name again and James finally stirred, whispering, "I was trying to die. Now is a good time when I have someone to bury me right." Jean lay on her stomach, breathless. "Do you want to die?" "No," he said. "I feel like I should, I loved her so. But I don't want to die." "Then don't try," Jean said, and watched him hold something up in his hands. "It's too dark, James. What is that?" He gave it to her. It was a syringe. "An air bubble kills you quick. Goes right to your heart." "Death is a bad way to fix something that's broken," Jean said, her own heart pounding. "I know." He took a deep breath, still staring at the stars. "I've seen the way you look at that girl. Mindy is her name? You love her?" "We're married," Jean said. "We... grew up together." James smiled, slow and bitter. "Milly and I were the same. She never did look quite like the others, but it wasn't until her teens that she made the full change. It was real hard on her. Hard on me, too, I guess." "But you made it," Jean whispered. "Sure did. She wouldn't want this. Me, thinking about dying. I can't help it, though. I'm alone out here, and those people in town... even if one of them did find me, they wouldn't bury me here at her side. They would take me away to the cemetery. Heck, I don't even know what to do about Dog." He looked at Jean so very solemn she wanted to cry. "Be careful, son, when you get older. Take care of the people you love. Find some good friends. The kind who will watch over you after you've gone. You don't want to end up like me." "Was it such a bad life?" she whispered, trying to imagine James and Milly, both alive and full of love in that little four-room house. "No," he breathed. "I wouldn't trade it for anything."
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 17	Early the next morning, james drove them to Bismarck, a fairly sizable town in the middle of North Dakota. He bought them breakfast at a truck stop. He tried to pay them money for their night's work, but Scott refused. It did not seem right to take anything for burying a man's wife. "I was going to give you my car," James said. "I didn't think I would have much need for it after you took care of my Milly." Because I was going to have you bury me, too. James did not have to say it. They all knew the truth; James had given Jean permission to tell them. Scott borrowed some paper and a pen from the waitress. "Here's our address in New York, and this is the phone number we can be reached at. It's, uh, not working right now, but it should be up and running in a couple of weeks. If you ever need anything—anything—contact us and we'll be there for you. You can even come live with us if you want. You might like it." James examined the address, reading off the list of names that were not the ones Scott and the X-Men had given him, and then he said, "Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters? That sounds familiar to me, for some reason." "It's a good school," Jean said. "We teach there." James studied them. "I thought you were homeless." "It's complicated," Scott said. He thought James would press him for more, but after a moment's quiet contemplation, he smiled. "Fair enough," he said, and asked for the check. They walked him back to his truck. Dog poked his head out the passenger window and Scott scratched his neck. "I'm sorry I can't do more for you folks," James said. "Especially after all you did for me. I just... I just can't stay away from Milly for that long. Long enough to drive you home, anyway." "We understand," Jean said. 'You take care." James climbed into the truck. He looked tired. Dog leaned up against him. "Sure is going to be strange," he said softly, and Scott could only imagine he meant home, that empty little house that still bore his wife's touch. James started the engine, put the car in gear, and waved goodbye as he drove away. Scott watched him go, and could not muster a shadow of disappointment or frustration that another stone had been thrown in their path. "So now what?" Logan asked. "Walk?" "Let's look around," Scott said. "Maybe someone will give us a ride." "I see a bar across the street." "No." Logan grinned. "No gambling, I promise. It's the best place to scope a ride, though. Give me a little money, sit tight, and I'll see what I can dig up." "It won't be much, looking the way you do," Rogue said. "Why don't you come with me, sweetheart. You can charm the men with your aging assets." "Sweet talker." But she did go with him, and while Scott used a pay phone to call the Mansion, Jean and Kurt sat on a bench outside the truck-stop restaurant to watch for opportunity in whatever form it might take. Scott was not very optimistic. He was even less so when all he got was a busy signal. He scowled and slammed the receiver back into its cradle. It terrified him, the idea that five X-Men were being impersonated. Walking and talking, using their bodies, their powers. He was scared to check the news, but he bought a newspaper and brought it back to the bench. Much to his surprise, there was barely a mention of any mutant-related criminal activity or catastrophes. Just a side note about the conference in Geneva, as well as a small mention about the mutant-rights march planned for the day after in New York City. Scott knew all about it The X-Men were scheduled to attend—not as participants, but as security. "What is it?" Jean asked. "What's what?" he replied absently. "You look like you just had a bad thought." She reached and touched his forehead. "You're all wrinkled." He caught her hand and kissed her fingers. "That mutant-rights march is mentioned in here. Remember?" "How could I forget? The children are dying to attend." "We're supposed to be there," Scott said, looking at her and Kurt. "What if we are?" "Why is it, mein freund, that I do not think you are referring to present company?" "Because I'm not." Scott shook his had. "I don't know why I'm even thinking about it. Because really, it wouldn't make sense. Why would someone steal our bodies just for that event?" "You're right," Jean said. "It doesn't make sense. Maybe our counterparts aren't even planning to go." "Then what are they doing?" Kurt leaned forward, clasping his hands. "I have prayed a great deal about this, but so far, God has not yet provided me with any insight." Jean pointed. "They're coming back." Not just coming, but running. Rogue's expression, a combination of red-faced embarrassment and anger, alarmed him. "What happened?" Scott asked. "No time," Logan said. "There's a guy who's leaving in two minutes. He works for a manufactured-home company and he's transporting part of a house to Minneapolis." "An actual house?" Kurt asked. "That sounds much better than stealing a car." "Yeah, I think this one classifies as breaking and entering. You guys ready to go?" They followed Logan out into the vast parking lot, which seemed more like a way station for an army of semis. Toward the center, surrounded on both sides by two trucks bearing the sign OVERSIZED, they found one half of the manufactured home. The other side of it squatted several wide spaces to the left. "Does it really matter which one we take?" Scott asked. "Guess not." Logan pulled a pocketknife from his jeans—a gift from James, who had also given them clean clothes, some food to carry, and a backpack for their few belongings. Scott could not take money, but those other things seemed less... offensive than cold hard cash. You're too technical—and you're a hypocrite. Very true. He was also an anal-retentive control freak, but not everyone could be perfect. Plastic sheeting covered the inner half of the home; Logan cut a small slit into the farthest edge, a space just large enough for them to fit through, and held it open as they squeezed into the house. It was not that easy. The actual floor was at least three feet off the ground, requiring a bit of maneuvering that was difficult with hard plastic shoved tight against his back. Scott missed being tall. Despite some difficulties, less than a minute later they all sat in a back bedroom, the farthest spot away from the white plastic barrier separating them from the road. Logan occasionally peered out the windows. "I thought that guy was leaving soon," Rogue muttered, when after several minutes the truck still had not moved. "What happened in there?" Scott asked, peering into her red face. "Nothing," she said. He looked at Logan, who shrugged and scratched his head. "Some, uh, derogatory language was used by our ticket out of here. He saw you three sitting on that bench and thought it was funny." Rogue sucked in a deep breath. "He made me so mad I wanted to hit him." "Nearly did, too. That's part of the reason we ran out of there so fast." Somewhere distant they heard voices; a car door slammed and then an engine roared to life. The house vibrated. "Perfect," Logan said. "This is slow, but we'll get to Minneapolis by tonight." "You're right, that is slow." Scott tapped the newspaper against his thigh. "I feel as though we've got a deadline. Thing is, I don't known when it is." "And if we're too late?" Logan asked. Scott felt everyone stare at him, but he did not say a word. He felt just as lost as they did. Rolling down the freeway in a manufactured home was not, Scott decided, such a bad way to travel. Except for the fact that it was agonizingly slow. So slow, he wanted to pull his hair out—a feat he could actually accomplish for the first time in his life, given that his hair was now a length suitable for gripping. "I can't stand this," he said to Jean. "Not knowing what is going on at home is driving me crazy." "Me too," she said, stretched out on her stomach. The carpet had plastic over it, which crinkled every time they moved. "There's not much we can do about it, though." So for the rest of the day he tried to rest, to strategize a response for an imaginary series of events that would likely never take place, but if it did, was currently out of his control. Such as assassination attempts on the President of the United States, or some other world leader; declarations of aggression against all humans; joining the Brotherhood of Mutants, which, now that he thought about it, might very well have orchestrated this little body crisscross. The only problem with that was the Brotherhood were usually much flashier—and they liked to brag a whole lot more. Scott could not imagine one of them pulling this off without coming to the mental hospital to rub it in their faces. And if it was the Brotherhood, the X-Men would probably already be in the newspapers by now. Unless it was something else they were after. Technology, maybe. Secret files that Scott and Jean would most certainly have access to. The possibilities were endlessly troubling. He needed aspirin. He took a nap and dreamed about James resting inside a grave full of writhing tentacles, smiling and crying, with Dog perched on the edge, howling at the moon. He woke up, gasping, and felt Jean do the same. She held her head. "What is it?" he asked, reaching for her. It was getting easier to look into her stranger's face and feel desire. It also helped that they were alone; the others had retreated into the living room for a game of cards, another of James's gifts. The bedroom was all theirs. "That sensation in my head. It was stronger this time. There was a definite focus." "Do you think she—whoever—got anything from you?" "I don't think so, but it has me worried. At first I could tell myself it was an accident, but now it's looking deliberate." She hesitated, looking at her hands. "I suppose it could be something else." "What?" "Well, it occurred to me that if our counterparts inherited our physical abilities, like my telepathy, for example, then we should also have inherited some of theirs. As in, their mental illnesses. Patty, for example, is supposed to be a paranoid schizophrenic, while you apparently suffer from some debilitating social disorder, which is vague enough to be completely unhelpful. Rogue's chart, according to Kurt, has her diagnosed as suffering from an acute bipolar disorder. And I'm just mean and delusional." Scott waited for more. Jean sighed. "My point is that even if our consciousnesses have been transferred, we should still be suffering from the same physical abnormalities as the people we are occupying. Just because the thinking minds are different, does not mean the brains are." "So you're saying we should be crazy." "Yes. At the very least, displaying some symptoms of mental illness." "And if some of us have always been a little crazy?" "Logan doesn't count, Scott." Jean tried not to smile. He nudged her with his elbow, forcing her to make room against her much larger side. It was odd being the smaller person in their relationship. He was getting used to it, though he liked it better the other way around. "So," he whispered, angling his mouth close to her ear—his ear, a man's ear—and shutting his eyes, "I understand what you're saying, but unless we start frothing at the mouths and speaking in tongues, I don't see how it matters. Science isn't going to get us home. The man who did this, on the other hand..." "We'll figure it out," Jean whispered. "Now rest a little, Scott. Go to sleep." Lulled by her voice, her touch, he did.
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 18	For several days, storm spent most of her time in Professor Xavier's office. The psychic dampeners gave her a sense of security she could not find elsewhere in the Mansion, and while Remy's portable dampeners were another comfort, the large airy room continued to be the only place she felt safe. She blamed it on the lingering presence of the professor, that sense she always had around him that everything would be fine, that the answer to all life's difficulties was always close, part of every person. She told herself those same things whenever Scott and Jean or the other three X-Men came to see her and inquired about certain things going on the school. Like why hadn't Storm cleared the field trip before allowing the children to run willy-nilly through the city, and why was she in this room all the time—it must be stifling, come out, come out, and play. Ororo did not feel like playing, and there was something in the way Jean looked when she asked the question that gave her the unsettling sensation that she meant another kind of play entirely. One that would be inappropriate and utterly unappreciated by her husband. And her roses continued to die. Of course, it also occurred to her that she was completely overexaggerating and that all these differences she sensed—subtle, inexplicable—were simply figments of her imagination. Figments, too, of Gambit and Jubilee's minds. After all, the three of them did have similar backgrounds, having grown up on the streets, victim to the various humiliations and desperations associated with such hard living. Maybe they suffered from a shared psychosis, some paranoid delusion as a result of that experience. Or maybe their friends really weren't the same people. "They're not the same people," Jubilee said, during one of their brief meetings inside Xavier's office. The girl was painting her nails and popping gum, although there was a darkness in her eyes that bothered Ororo— a heaviness of spirit that she had never thought to see in Jubilee. "You still think they have been... body-snatched?" Jubilee looked up from her nails. Her eyes were hard. "Yes, Ororo. I do." And then she relaxed, the darkness melted away, and Ororo no longer knew if it was a mask or the real girl when she said, "Dude. I know you're still on that trauma kick, but have you even asked Jean or Kurt if anything bad happened?" "Yes. They... didn't give me any details." "Then there wasn't any trauma. Those two can't keep their mouths shut around you. It's like, you show up and they start going a mile a minute. Blah, blah, blah." Ororo narrowed her eyes. "Must I remind you, Jubilee, that you are speaking to an elder? You should be a little more polite." Again, Jubilee stopped painting her nails and gave her a look that was far too old. Remy said, "If anyone acts traumatized, it's Rogue. She hasn't talked once since her return." "Body-snatched," Jubilee said. "She has a nefarious purpose." "I think she is genuine. The others?" He waved his hand. "Je ne sais pas." "Could they be shape-shifters, then?" Ororo wondered out loud. "Are our friends being held captive somewhere else?" "If they are shape-shifters, they're really bad at the whole impersonation thing," Jubilee said. "Do you know what I saw this morning? Wolvie in the gym, standing in front of the mirror, ogling his body. Do you have any idea how disturbing that was?" "Non," Remy said, dry. "What don' you tell us, ma petite" "But before you do," Ororo said, cutting her off, "I want to know if you two have learned anything about Seatde." "Nada. Scott—" Jubilee stopped, swallowing hard. "Scott made some dinky little voice records a day or two before coming back. Something about how they still hadn't found what they were looking for, but they were going to the hospital that night to look around." "Which hospital?" "Belmont, Belvue-" "Belldonne," Remy said. "We called. They said no one fittin' their descriptions had stopped to ask questions, or been seen. They weren't really talkative, though. Seems they lost some of their patients recently. Police are out lookin' for them." "No relation to our people?" "Don' see how." "Unless Wolvie and the others were transferred into their bodies and they've made their break." Ororo looked at her. "Do Scott and the others act mentally unwell?" Jubilee shared a quick glance with Remy. "Mentally unwell?" she said. "How about Scott accusing Remy of having sex with me just because he saw us together?" "Talking," Remy clarified. "Together talking. And he didn't exactly accuse us of sex." Jubilee gave him a look. "He was a total pervert, Remy." Ororo covered her mouth. "How could he? Scott knows better." "Exactly," Jubilee said. Ororo sat back, stunned. Remy said, "You should know, 'Ro. None of those who came back refueled the jet." "What?" "Don' worry," he said. "I did it. But I did check the levels and matched them to those lil' numbers Scott likes to keep about how much fuel we burn, dependin' on the distance. There wasn't enough gas in that tank, cherie. Not by a long shot." "What are you trying to say, Remy? They went somewhere else first?" He shrugged. "Seems that way to me. Unless someone on that plane dumped some fuel or started getting a taste for it in their drinks." "What kind of diversion from the flight schedule are we discussing?" "At least a hundred miles. Not far in the Blackbird, but it burns the gas all the same." Ororo slumped back in her chair. This was looking quite bad. "Yo," Jubilee said. "We still have another problem. Bobby and the others aren't answering their cell phones. I've been trying to reach them and all I get is a busy signal. Now, Bobby is a big talker, but still. You were having the same issue with the Professor, right?" "I have been in the control room, but I can find nothing wrong." "I also looked for the problem," Remy said. "Dug deep, too. There's nothing wrong wit' the system, which means it's an outside source causin' the problem. I think they're using one of our scramblers." "Scramblers" were a useful tool that Hank McCoy had invented for those missions when the team wanted to be sure that no one could call out from a particular location. It supposedly scrambled all communication devices, though Ororo had never actually seen it used. "I checked the lab," Remy said. "I don't know exactly how many Hank kept around, but there's an empty spot on the shelf. Worse yet, they must have found a way to patch into our private cell-phone network, because I tried makin' calls from town, at a pay phone, and still got nothin' but busy." Troublesome, because all the scattered X-Men still on active duty relied totally on those cell phones to keep in touch with the school. Not that anyone would be making the effort, or even notice that something was wrong. A little busy signal, if you yourself were not having an emergency, was just an annoyance. "Dude," Jubilee murmured, for the first time looking afraid. "They must think we're totally stupid not to notice something's going on. That, or they think they can take us." "I do not know," Ororo said, deeply disturbed. "They have been keeping their own distance from us, except on those rare occasions when Scott thinks I have done something out of the ordinary and comes to check on me." "I think Scott did that with me and Remy," Jubilee said. Ororo stood and began pacing. To sit any longer felt claustrophobic, as though the desk in front of her already pinned her legs and the walls, those walls of her life, were settling down upon her shoulders, suffocating her. "All right," she said. "So something is wrong with our teammates. They might, or might not, have been... taken over. Whoever this entity is, has done a good enough job insuring that they know enough to pass, at least superficially." "Mebbe they know more than that," Remy said, solemn. "If they could fly the Blackbird and find—and rig—one of Hank's scramblers, then we got security issues. Files, contacts.... Cerebro." "Cerebro's cool," Jubilee said, screwing the cap back on her polish. Both adults stared at her, waiting. She blew on her nails. Remy coughed. "Ma petite?" "Yeah? Oh, I mean, I took care of it. First thing. 'Cause, you know, body snatchers and long-range psychic enhancers aren't a good combination." Ororo had trouble speaking. "You... took care of it?" 'Yes. You guys think I never learned anything when I was hanging out with Hank? Last time he tuned up Cerebro, he blabbed for like an hour on all the different weak spots in the wiring and casing and how it was going to take him at least a month to fix them." She grinned. "Heh. It's gonna take him longer now." Remy planted a hard kiss on top of Jubilee's head. She batted him away. Ororo covered her mouth. "Very good," she said. "Though I sincerely hope we are able to salvage whatever wreckage you left behind." "Looks the same on the outside, and the inside is just missing some guts. If these jokers don't know enough to imitate Wolvie to the letter, they're not going to be able to fix Cerebro." "If they wished to use it. Their purpose may be quite different." "Sure, whatever. I just want to get the real deals back." "Maybe they are already there, and simply cannot act. They can listen, but nothing more. Utterly suppressed." Which was the preferred possibility, because anything else meant that their friends might be lost forever. Minds, after all, could not stay adrift in the wind and remain whole. At least, she did not think so. The X-Men, on occasion, defied logic in their ability to survive extraordinary circumstances. "So, what? We try to break through to them?" "Non," Remy said firmly. "Petite, I want you to stay away from Wolverine for a while. At least until we figure this out." "Remy-" "I'm serious." He glanced at Ororo. "Isn't there some event we're supposed to attend tomorrow?" "A mutant-rights march in New York. I do not think we will be going." "And Scott and the others?" "I cannot say for certain, but they haven't left the Mansion since they returned. I would assume they will not leave tomorrow." "Which means that what they want is here." "So are we going to take them out?" Jubilee asked. Ororo hesitated. "I would like to know more before we make any efforts to control them. It is possible there is no need for violence, that this is something that can be resolved through negotiation. Whatever 'this' is. I still feel quite confused by the situation." "There's not much to be confused with," Remy said. "We have a problem. Mebbe we can't define the problem, but it's there, an' it looks exactly like five of the most powerful mutants on this planet." "You think we're next?" Jubilee asked. "I mean, not that they'd go after me, 'cause I'm just a kid or whatever. But... I don't want to lose myself." Ororo could not answer that. Remy, very gently, said, "I think they would've done that by now if they could, ma petite. An' I know I'm still me. Got every confidence in both of you, too." For now, Ororo thought. There was nothing more to discuss. Remy and jubilee left the office, presumably to continue investigating on the sly. She was sorry to see them go; she worried for their safety. Hers, too. It was maddening, being unable to pinpoint anything concrete, a specific action that she could see with her own eyes that was wrong. Yes, the Blackbird had not been refueled, yes, the phones were down—all their phones—and yes, the behavior of their friends was... off. Ororo could not deceive herself. She was wearing a psychic dampener, after all, and had silently applauded Jubilee's foresight in breaking Cerebro. She avoided Scott and the others as much as they seemed to be avoiding her. All of them, dancing on eggshells, hoping the other side did not notice how much they really knew. Which, when Ororo thought about all the wicked men and women they had dealt with in the past, did not seem very professional at all. Possession was a subtle art, but once employed, either continued to be subtle, flawless, or went to the other extreme: utterly radical behavior that screamed "wrong." None of that was present in this situation. If the X-Men had been possessed or replaced, they were dealing with an amateur, one who knew just enough to be dangerous, but not in any way perfect. For a moment, she thought about their students, if any one of them could be abusing his or her powers. The children were safely away in New York on a field trip to end all field trips, but they had still been present when the five team members left for Seattle—the assumption being that whatever had transpired to alter them had taken place during that trip. Ororo squeezed shut her eyes. Her head ached. Air-fresh air—that was what she needed. Perhaps a walk would make her feel better, clear her head for inspiration. She turned on the psychic dampener, a sticky little device that Remy had planted behind her ear. She was going to talk to him one of these days about where he found such things. The dampener—along with the rest of his toys—was far too advanced to belong to any place but the military or some highly specialized research lab... and no doubt actual mutants had been used to test the thing. Not that she was going to tear it off in protest. Without the children around, the Mansion felt eerily quiet. It had been like this once before, in the years when the school had admitted only a select few, when it was less of a school than a front for clandestine activities. Sometimes Ororo missed those days, but she could not deny the joy she took in raising the next generation to be strong and educated and unafraid in the use of their abilities. Everyone had the potential for greatness. It was merely her job to make sure that the young people in her care took advantage of that, in the best ways possible. So she walked the lonely halls, unable to shake the sensation of being watched, and left the house for bright sunshine, green grass, the buzz of bees and the thrush of hummingbirds, zipping through the garden. She passed the vegetable plots first—a school project, to teach the children the value of the food they ate. Ororo, having grown up hungry and in a country where famines were common, thought it important that no one take for granted the bounty set before them. Of course, she herself had never been forced to grow her supper. What she needed, she stole. Which was easier and much more fun. Not very ethical, though, and she was trying to set a good example. Past the vegetables, she entered a wild labyrinth of stone paths and overgrown flowers, bursting with fragrant blooms. Every now and then, Ororo stopped to pull moisture from the air, generating localized rain and mist to aid those plants whose leaves drooped, or curled up, brittle with thirst. She was quite intent on this—as well as the pleasure of being distracted—when she noticed movement from the corner of her eye. Red hair shining in the sunlight. Ororo waved her hand and the rain cloud hanging above the petunias disappeared. She followed Jean. She did not have to go far. She stopped on the edge of the garden and watched as Jean sat on a stone bench. Ororo's roses grew nearby; her Geminis and Red Rubies, the Blue Teas, Moonlight Maidens, the Bonny Bonnets and Isle Stars; formerly lovely and now drooping, petals shucking into the grass, stems flaccid like string. Suspicious, suspicious—all her trouble had begun with the roses. Ororo was half convinced that if they had not begun dying, none of this, her problems with the other members of the team, would have taken place. The students would still be here, Jubilee would be getting into trouble of an entirely different sort, and the house would feel safe and normal. Jean did not appear to notice Ororo's presence. She had a book in her hands, but sat too far away for a clear view of the title. She seemed, for the most part, to be enjoying the sun, the quiet solitude. Ororo wondered, once again, if she was overreacting. Surely this was not the action of someone possessed, or plotting harm? And then, so slow she almost missed seeing it, she noticed her dying roses droop even more. All her roses, that shriveled decaying line of them, moving as one like a descending curtain, blossoms and stems sinking even lower, leaves curling up with a brittleness second only to shriveled mummy lips. And there, in the center of that silent death, sat Jean with her book, and a very small smile on her face. Long ago, while they were still alive, Jubilee's parents told her that every person in the world had three things they were good at. Three things all their own, however small, that no one could do better than them. Jubilee's mother, for example, could cook dumplings like no other, play mah-jongg like a gambling queen, and chew out her father like nobody's business. Jubilee missed her mom. Jubilee, on the other hand, had a rotating list of her best three things—rotating because, heck, she was only fifteen and learning new stuff everyday. And besides, three was such a limiting number. At the moment, number one was stealth. She could do stealth like the Invisible Woman—all whoa, that chick is gone. Number two on her list was sheer crazy stubbornness. When she wanted something, there wasn't a force on earth that could change her mind—except maybe Wolvie—which brought her to number three: She was the only person in the world who could reach that man when he went all "Grrr" and acted like an animal. Berserker rage? Not a problem. Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse? Easy. Which meant that Remy, as much as she liked him, did not know anything about her and Wolverine, and there was no way, nohow, she was going to stay away from him if there was any possibility he was still in there, fighting for a way out. She could do it. She could reach him. She tried not to think about Scott. Her powers of conviction, however strong and unearthly, were limited only to Wolvie, and until she got him back, she could not risk his impersonator—or controller—knowing that she was on to him. All she could do was be present, a focal point, and let her friend do the rest. As long as he was in there, of course. Jubilee preferred the idea that he was. She did not want to think about the alternative. The alternative... hurt too much. She found him in the gym, which seemed to be his new hangout of choice. "Hey," Jubilee said, watching him watch himself as he did a set of biceps curls in front of the mirror. "Hey," he said, not even sparing her a glance. She wandered over to the weight rack and picked out a twenty-pound barbell. Sat down beside Wolvie and began curling. She got tired after the first three, and had to lift the weight with both hands. That got his attention. "You're puny," he said, and his voice seemed lighter than usual. No gruff growls, no deep-throated rumbles. And he was calling her puny? Her? Body-snatched, she reminded herself, taking a deep breath. She smiled and said, "I guess I need to work out more. I'm more of a gymnast, anyway." He looked her over. 'Yeah, I can see that. You're skinny enough for it, I guess. Thought those kinds of girls were tough as steel, though. Twenty pounds shouldn't be any problem." "We use a different kind of strength," she said, unlocking her jaw so she didn't grind her teeth right out of her gums. "Whatever," he said. "You want to show me some moves?" Anything to keep him interested. She took off her jacket and moved to the wide mat. Took a deep breath and then executed a series of jumps and somersaults that had the world spinning, her body feeling like it could fly. "Interesting," he said, wandering over. "You look fast." This entire conversation was wrong. If Jubilee had not been convinced before that something was off with Logan, then the last few minutes had finally cemented it in her head. Even during those first days of their acquaintance, hiding out from the Reavers at that base in the Australian outback, he had never patronized her. Not like this. For one brief moment she felt afraid, but she pushed it away, unwilling to let herself entertain the possibility that even the body of this man could be used to hurt her. If Wolvie—her Wolvie—was really in there, he would stop it. He would stop his possessor, his impersonator, from hurting her. Because that was the kind of man he was. Logan moved heaven and earth to help his friends when they needed him. And maybe, just maybe, that was what he needed. Some motivation. "I'm really fast," Jubilee said. "Faster than you." "Really." Logan smirked. "I doubt that." "Yeah?" Jubilee bounced on her toes. "You wanna bet? I say, if we spar right now, I'll kick your butt. Big time." The smirk faded. "I don't think so, kid." "Chicken? Afraid you'll lose to someone so... puny?" His expression changed, and suddenly, Jubilee was quite certain this was a bad idea. As in, the I'm-gonna-die kind of bad. She wasn't going to back down, though. Not when Wolvie needed her. And if he's not in there? That was just a chance she would have to take. If the situation was reversed, she knew he would do the same for her. There was no warning except that look in Logan's eyes, and it was good she paid attention because when he leapt at her, his claws out, it took every bit of speed and agility in her body to keep from getting stabbed. Shocking, that killing stroke. A part of her never expected it. Jubilee blasted him in the face with a series of plasma bursts, but he shrugged off the fireworks and kept coming, There was nothing coordinated about his movements—Logan, when they sparred, was all about playing dirty to teach her the best defenses—but this, this was worse because it was driven solely by some crazy rage and she could not predict his movements. Even when Logan went berserk, there was always a pattern to the way he fought, some indefinable brutal grace. Not now. Now he was a rabid caveman, with swords sticking out of his knuckles. "Wolvie!" she cried out, ducking under his wildly swinging arm. She threw fireworks in his face, plasma blasts that ignited and burned his skin, but it was nothing, nothing at all, and he screamed at her and the voice was different, higher, the accent like a woman—which was wrong, really wrong—and he came at her again fast and she stumbled, distracted, because she was still thinking about that voice and he scratched her with his claws, cutting right through her shirt so that she felt blood well past the pain and then he was on her again and she rolled but he caught her, flipped her up, and straddled her stomach. She blasted him in the face but not with everything she had, because this was still Wolvie and even though she was categorically terrified, she could not bring herself to burn his face off no matter how much he currently deserved it. He shrugged off her blast, parts of him leaking blood and other fluids, and sheathed his claws to catch her wrists. He pinned her down on the ground. "There are some things I've been wanting to try with this body," he whispered, flecking her face with his spit. "Maybe I'll start with you." "Wolvie?" she whispered, staring into those hateful eyes, seeking some sign of the man who was like a father to her, the one person in the world she trusted with her life. She looked and looked, and for the first time, allowed herself to believe that he might not be there. His fist slammed down into her face.
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 19	Rogue, of course, was in her room. Remy was not quite sure why he continued to seek her out—probably, he thought, for the same reason Jubilee remained fixated on Logan and his sacrilegious pinky. He knew Rogue, he cared about her, and this behavior—no matter if it was trauma or the personality of another—bothered him because it was wrong. It was wrong in such a fundamental fashion that it hurt him to think of it, of his Rogue, his friend, his lady, gone or buried. And yes, for all his talk of body snatching, of invasion and replacements and danger, a part of him wanted to believe that the woman who opened her door to him was the same woman, and that it was only the others who needed to be feared and that a kind word, some time spent together, would be all it took to bring her back to him. He could not help himself. He was a romantic, that way. He stood on the threshold, gazing upon the crown of her head, and reached out to touch her hair. She stirred, but did not look at him. "How you doin' today, chere? You want to take a walk with me? Sky is a beautiful blue, and more pretty when it's hanging over you. Windows don' do the world justice." She just stood there staring at her feet. Or his. It was hard to tell. He glanced down at his boots and they were dirty, scuffed with age and mud. He sensed movement at the end of the hall. Kurt, stopping to lean against the wall. His arms were folded over his chest. Something about his posture wasn't quite right, but that was the new normal. Nothing at all had been right since Seattle. "You can't seem to stay away," Kurt said. 'When did a man have to stay away from the woman he loves?" Words to win a woman by. Rogue finally looked at him—momentary, lovely—and deep warmth spread through Remy's heart, sweet as her green shy eyes. Kurt moved closer. His yellow eyes glinted with a cold light and Remy, though he smiled, felt the dagger in his heart, his own cold readiness to fight and win should Kurt, this new stranger in a friend's body, provoke him. But he did not. All he said was, "Rogue, do you want to go for a walk?" and Rogue hesitated. Kurt held out his hand and after a moment she took it and allowed herself to be drawn from her room past Remy into the hall. Kurt smiled, as if to say, She listens to me, not to you, and how does that make you feel? Like going for a walk. "That sounds like a lovely idea, mon frere." Remy gathered up Rogue's other arm and tucked it against his body. He felt her quiver, but she did not pull away. Kurt looked disappointed, and Remy wondered if someone had forgotten to inform the blue teleporter that Rogue was his sister and therefore certain behaviors toward her might very well be inappropriate. The three of them walked down the hall in silence, descending to the stairs to the main entry hall. Remy said, "I haven't been smelling much sulphur lately. You cuttin' back?" For a moment Kurt looked confused, and then he said, "I've just felt like using my legs more, that's all." His accent was barely discernable and his voice was rough, a noted contrast to his usual soft-spoken nature. Remy wanted to laugh. Kurt, liking to use his legs? Even when the man was not teleporting, he somersaulted through the air, traversed halls in a series of cartwheels, flew through the house like it was nothing but a circus tent and he was the main attraction. Kurt might seem unassuming, but that was more of an act than the act. Past the lobby down another hall. Remy would have guided Rogue out into the fresh air, but it was clear that Kurt had another destination in mind, and he was content to follow and observe. Anything he learned here might be useful—and soon. He could not see the status quo continuing much longer. As they drew near the gym a strange sensation overcame him. Premonition, maybe. He felt nauseated. Sweat prickled against his back and a cold hard band tightened around his heart. He heard something, then. Thick, like fists on flesh. Remy let go of Rogue's arm and ran down the hall. He reached into his pockets for cards, for his retractable staff, for all those things he fought with because that horrible feeling was strong now, high in his throat, and when he rounded that corner into the gym it was worse than he could imagine because it was something he had never thought to see, something he could not bring himself to believe. Wolverine was beating Jubilee to death. She was trying to fight, still struggling, but his fists were strong and fast and— Remy did not stop running. Cards cut his fingers and he fanned them bright and hot, hot and willing and furious, and as Wolverine looked up with that sick mad look in his eyes and blood flecking his chin, Remy barreled into him and shoved those cards into his mouth. He flung himself backward, still moving, still flying, and grabbed Jubilee without a pause in step, holding her tight against his body. She breathed, "Wolvie," and then the cards went off and Remy fell to his knees as the shock wave pushed him down. He glanced over his shoulder. He could not see Wolverine's face, but his hands still moved. So did Remy. He climbed to his feet. Kurt and Rogue blocked the gym's entrance. Rogue's expression was horrified, but he did not know if it was for Wolverine's benefit or Jubilee's. Kurt showed nothing at all. Hoisting Jubilee higher in his arms, Remy reached into his pocket for more cards. Held them up for Kurt and Rogue to see and in his head he said, If you try to stop me I will kill you I will blow your heads off I will set you on fire and it will feel so good, and he felt those thoughts enter his gaze, his walk, the line of his mouth. He thought they would let him pass, but Kurt grabbed his arm and Remy spun with cards burning between his fingers and he threw them at Kurt—through Kurt, because he teleported in a cloud of smoke—and the gym shook again with an explosion that sent Rogue huddling to the ground with her hands over her head, shaking. Remy ran into the hall, cradling Jubilee tight against him. He heard air pop, felt a rush of something cool against his neck, and he turned in time to see Kurt bounce off the wall at his head. Remy ducked, barely avoiding a set of sharp fingernails that raked the air near his cheek. Kurt said, "Come on now and play," and the voice was different, higher, without any hint of a German accent. Jubilee stirred in Remy's arms and a moment later Kurt screamed. Remy glanced over his shoulder, still running, and saw a glittering cloud of plasma eating through Kurt's clothing, burning his skin. Remy reached the infirmary and he slapped the intercom, yelling for Ororo to come find him in the medlab. He lay Jubilee down on the bed and her red eyes were open, conscious, utterly horrified. Bruises marred her swollen face, while her lips looked like one large cut. He thought her nose might be broken. "He's not there," Jubilee breathed, and the heartbreak in her eyes made him want to go back and kill the bastard for good. "Remy, he's not in there." "Ma petite" he began, but she shook her head. "No. He would have stopped himself if he had been in there. Wolvie would have stopped. He would never hurt me. Never." Tears trickled from her eyes and Remy smoothed them away with a light touch. "Jamais ," he soothed. "You are right. Wolverine would never hurt you, ma petite. Never." "You sure about that?" said a new voice. Scott. Remy snarled, whirling on the balls of his feet, moving away from Jubilee as fast as he could because Scott had his hand on his visor and red light shot from his eyes, punching a hole through the wall where Remy had stood only seconds before. Cards sparked hot between his fingers and he flung them hard at Scott, who dodged back into the hall while explosions rocked the walls and floor. Remy stumbled, catching himself, and then raced toward the doorway, grabbing a sheet from the end of a bed and bundling it tight against his chest, burying his hands in cotton and feeling it burn with power. He fought to hold it in, to keep the energy contained, and he tasted blood in his mouth as he bit his lip. He entered the hall and saw Scott sprawled on the ground, trying to stand. Remy smiled and ran right over Scott, draping that sheet on his body as he passed, and he knew the moment it should explode, knew it like the beating of his own heart, but when he heard the final roar, the thunder, the sound was muffled and the air did not shake. He turned and saw Jean at the end of the hall, her hands outstretched, face screwed up in concentration. Scott was still in one piece—unconscious, maybe—but charred bits of ash, the remains of the sheet, fluttered on top of him like dark snow. "Merde," Remy said, and Jean's face relaxed into a smile. He felt himself picked up by a hand—her hand, flexing—and he hit the wall hard. Slammed again and again, and he heard Jubilee's faint voice call his name. Jean laughed and he looked at her through the haze of pain, looked and saw her hair begin to rise. Remy felt electricity gather in the air. Thank you, he thought, just as a bolt of lightning seared the ground near Jean's feet. Remy dropped to the ground. So did Jean, staggering to her knees. He saw Ororo appear from behind her. She held a piece of the torn-up floor, and she brought it down hard over Jean's head. "Perfect timing," Remy said to her, stepping over Scott's still body. "I thought so," she said, and ran into the infirmary. Everywhere Ororo saw a war zone, but nothing was worse than the first moment she saw Jubilee. "Goddess," she murmured, looking at the girl's ruined face. "Remy, who did this?" "Wolverine," he said, grim. "No," Jubilee whispered. "His impostor," Remy corrected himself. "The impostor did this." "I'll be fine," Jubilee said weakly. "Really. This just looks bad." She hesitated. "Does it look bad?" "Badges of war," Remy said gendy. "Oh," she breathed. "That bad." "I am surprised you are still conscious," Ororo said, fighting for control. Thunder shook the room, accompanied by a cold wind that made her shiver in anticipation. The power tickled her skin; she knew what her eyes would look like if she had a mirror. She was ready—more than ready—and she wanted a fight. One look in Gambit's eyes told her that he felt the same. First, though, she had to remember Jubilee. She had to focus on what was most important. Everything else was merely icing on the cake. Ororo hurried to the counter where Hank kept his most advanced medical devices, some of which had been borrowed from the Shi'ar. Alien technology could not be beaten in terms of efficiency. "I'm still conscious because I'm tough," Jubilee said, though Ororo noticed a slight slurring to her words. She thought Jubilee might have a concussion. "Yes, you are quite tough," Ororo said, in a voice more gende than she felt. "It is one of your many remarkable talents." Ororo gave her several shots of medicine that Hank always used for those X-Men who had had bad run-ins with tougher and larger adversaries than themselves. She touched Jubilee's hand and said, "Rest. By tomorrow you will feel much better." "What about the others?" she asked. "What about him?" She could not say his name. Remy swallowed hard. Ororo said, "They are done here, Jubilee. They are done and gone, as of now. I promise you. I will not let this stand, no matter whose bodies they wear." "Rough," said a familiar voice. Ororo and Remy turned. Scott leaned against the doorway. Remy held up an array of cards. "Don' move" he said. "Games over, Scott. Or whoever you are." "You don't know who I am? I thought the face made it obvious." Scott smiled, cold. He glanced down at Jubilee. "How bad is it?" "Go to hell," Jubilee said, before either one of them could answer. Her jaw was stiffening up; in another ten minutes she would not be able to talk at all. "What she said," Remy added. Scott continued to smile and it was eerie how his expression did not change. Unnatural, as though it had been pasted on his face for him and he could not move his mouth until given permission. His eyes certainly did not reflect that tight smile. His eyes were dark with fury, with rage, and Ororo realized that the hard edge of anger was something she had seen for quite some time now, in all their faces. Subtle, though. Reined in. She heard movement in the hall behind Scott, and Jean appeared: cold, face sharp. Blood trickled down the side of her temple. Ororo's hair stirred and she knew it was not her own power, but Jean, teasing her, playing without humor. Kurt arrived, followed by Rogue, and finally, as she knew would happen and dreaded, Logan entered the infirmary. Most of his face was missing, but the parts that remained were knitting together before her eyes. His skull glimmered beneath a light sheen of blood. He did not look at Jubilee, which Ororo found odd. She could not take that as a sign of guilty feelings; rather, almost, as punishment. Jubilee tried to sit up straight when Logan entered the room, but Remy put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. She did not relax. Her eyes, what little Ororo could see of them in her swelling face, were haunted. "What is this?" Ororo asked, preparing herself for battle. She stood straight, tall, summoning the Goddess within her as shield and weapon. She gazed into the faces of those who should have been her friends and said, "Why have you become strangers? Why enemies? Who are you?" "I don't understand those questions," Scott said. "Why are you asking us these things?" "Because you are not who you say you are," she whispered, and the quiet in her voice was merely the lull, the prelude to something bigger, devastating. Remy knew her well; he inched closer to Jubilee. "Maybe we don't know who we are," Jean said. "Maybe we're just as confused." "And maybe I am also tired of games," Ororo said, and let go of her control, tearing down those hard-fought walls she kept around her emotions, those deadly emotions that were the wellspring of her gift, that gave it power. To feel too much was a killing thing—like now, like her rage—and there was no buildup, no slow kiss of wind, but a hurricane ram that knocked the men and women in front of her off their feet, slamming them hard against the wall. Hail cut their faces deep, drawing blood. She expected them to fight back, looked forward to it with visceral desire, but they did nothing. They lay against the wall like dolls and allowed Ororo to punish them. It made no sense. "'Ro," Remy said. "Ease up. Something not right here." She did not want to ease up. "They should be punished, Remy. For Jubilee, if nothing else." "Storm," said the girl, but she was cut off by a new voice, a deep voice, one that rang clear as a bell even over the howling of her winds. "Yes," said that voice. "Yes, that was my thought, as well, given their lackluster performance." Storm cut the winds. The impostors slumped to the ground as though their wires had been cut. Between them, stepping over them, a man entered through the open doorway. He was tall and elegant, with sharp brown eyes and strong hands. He might have been handsome had it not been for the sickly cast of his skin, the gaunt-ness of his cheeks. He looked tired, but beyond that, deeper, she saw iron resolve. "Who are you?" Ororo demanded. "How did you enter this school without the alarms going off?" He smiled. "My name, Ms. Monroe, is Jonas Maguire. I was able to enter this place because I was invited." "By them," Remy said, gesturing at the group still resting limp on the floor. "Yes," he said. "I suppose you mind that a great deal." "Oui," Remy snapped. "And if I told you I was a mutant? Would that make a difference?" "Not particularly," Ororo said. "What have you done with our friends? Our real friends?" "They're still alive, though no doubt uncomfortable if they haven't managed to escape the place I put them. Another special school for gifted youngsters." He smiled. "I was a teacher there myself, though that was not my job description. After observing what you people do here, part of me hopes your friends do escape. I think it would be nice for those five to come back and see the home they can never be a part of again." "So they're alive," she breathed. "You stole them from their bodies, didn't you? Why? What is the point of such deception, especially one so poorly done?" She wanted to attack him, to slam lightning in his eyes, but she suddenly could not move and her powers refused to respond. So much for the psychic dampener. "Poorly done?" He looked amused. "And I tried so hard. Oh, well. I won't care much about the execution, as long as I get the job done. And I think I will. I actually think I will be able to do this thing." He held up the newspaper and Ororo saw the front page's news, a discussion of the mutant-rights march. "I had hoped the X-Men would be attending this. It wouldn't have mattered, either way, but this is official. This means the press and the public will be playing close attention to all of you." Jonas smiled. "Maybe I shouldn't have revealed myself like this. I thought I could wait. I had been waiting for so long already. I did think, however, that the charade would last a little longer. I thought that, despite your suspicions, you would play dumb to see what could be wrong with your teammates, your friends. I thought I could do all these things, to learn more about you, but I did not anticipate my Wolverine's reaction to the girl. "If it comforts you," he said to Jubilee, "I did my best to rein her in, but she was too far gone. Her temper is quite fierce. I apologize for that." "Wha?" Jubilee asked, frowning. "I need to go," he said. "I'm going to make you all sleep now. I would do more—there are some lovely people the three of you would be perfect in, but my resources are limited. This is the finest balancing act I have ever committed myself to, a great feat of puppetry." Lassitude swept over Ororo's mind, her body, and she struggled to move anything, including her mind, those heavy thoughts. Those psychic dampeners were worth nothing at all. Jubilee already looked unconscious, while Remy had fallen to one knee. His eyes were half-lidded and Ororo found that she, too, could not keep her eyes open. She saw enough, though. She saw the five fallen X-Men finally stir, rising to their feet and rubbing their heads and eyes as though they had been in a deep sleep. Jonas did not look at them. He stared only at Ororo, and his gaze was wild and dark. "I am sorry about your roses," he said, "but my boy, your Jean, had to practice certain skills." "What do you want from us?" Ororo asked, her words slurred. She heard him say "Nothing. I want nothing from you at all," and then he patted her cheek and told her to sleep. Her eyes drifted shut. They arrived home after a night of near relentless driving, cramped in a car they stole in Minneapolis, which was a junker on the outside, but had a beauty of an engine that made Logan consider keeping the old sweet Bess when they got back to the Mansion. Not right, of course, but life threw him so many curveballs he thought his karma must really suck. Might as well tack another onto the chopping block of his life. The closer they got to New York State, the quieter they became. Nerves, fear of the unknown, a lack of certainty about their reception. Hell, they might not be able to get through the front gate and wasn't that going to suck. If that happened, Logan planned on chaining himself to the bars and waiting for the Professor to come home, or for someone to call another telepath. One good mental sweep should do the trick. Wasn't like anyone could mistake his mind for someone else's. That was the positive side of his thoughts, the ones that led to the good outcome. The other side, the darker side, worried that the Mansion as they knew it would be gone, that all their friends would be hurt or dead, and that the X-Men as a team, a symbol, would never live again. All that work, all those dreams, flushed down the toilet for a reason none of them could yet suss out. Again, he thought about having to spend the rest of his life as a woman. The prospect still did not appeal. Walking in other people's shoes was an overrated exercise, especially if the only purpose was to build a well-rounded character. He had plenty of character, thank you very much. He did not need any more. And then, on the fifth morning of their pseudo-captivity, Scott drove up to the gate of their home. It was open, which was slightly unusual, but they pulled in and followed the winding driveway to the house. Everything was very quiet. "Where are the children?" Jean asked, and they all had the same terrible thought, that one of them, all of them, perhaps, with their bodies, had wreaked some terrible harm upon the young people. The school still stood, though, and Logan did not see any discernable signs of a firefight. Except for the dead roses—which, if he remembered correctly, had all been very much alive on the day of his departure—nothing seemed out of ordinary. The front door, however, was unlocked. "I am worried," Kurt said. "Yes," Scott said, and they entered the house. The security system was off and Scott punched in the code, reinstating the alarms. A warning, if nothing else, to give them time to prepare. Although, in Logan's professional opinion, if they were forced to go up against themselves—which seemed likely, at some point—preparation would not help them in the slightest. Only luck, only resolve. Those were the kinds of things that kept a man living through hard times, and even though they were home, Logan did not think their lives were about to become any easier. Indeed, the more he walked through the Mansion, soaking in the unrelenting quiet, the unending lack of "presence," familiar or otherwise, the more he prepared himself for something truly horrible, the kind of thing that would create another anniversary, the sort that requires flowers on a grave to mark the passing of another year gone without a dear friend or lover. Logan was far too good about those anniversaries. He never forgot. "It's like everyone picked up and left," Rogue said. "I hope they just left," Logan muttered, and ignored the dirty looks his friends gave him. The first place they found that indicated some kind of trouble was the gym, and there were two clues that made Logan's mouth go dry and his bowels loosen: a yellow leather jacket, and a spot some distance away that was covered in blood and bits of flesh. He did not wait for the others. Holding the jacket tight against his chest, he raced down the hall toward the infirmary, and when he entered and saw who lay on the bed looking like death warmed over, who lay on the floor on either side looking not much better, a loud shout escaped his throat. A thin layer of water covered the infirmary's entire floor. He slipped on his way in, falling hard, but crawled the last bit of distance. A quick glance showed him that Ororo and Remy still breathed, though the expressions on their faces looked like trouble had come knocking. He tried shaking them, but they did not respond. Their sleep was unnaturally deep. Logan stepped over their bodies and sat gingerly on the edge of Jubilee's bed. It was difficult for him to peer into her swollen, beaten face, and he imagined what each blow must have looked like to make those marks. The attacker had been violent, brutal, and unrelenting. The attacker was also someone Jubilee knew, because the kid was too good to be taken down by anyone less than a friend, someone she would be reluctant to hurt too badly. Logan looked at his hands, soft and round and female. He had a bad feeling about the person who had hurt Jubilee. Very bad. "What happened here?" Jean asked, leaning over his shoulder to get a better look at Jubilee. "My God. Did one of us do that to her?" Logan said nothing and Jean gave him a sharp look. "Logan?" He shook his head, still unable to give voice to his fear, his certainty. He might be wrong, but he doubted it. Things like this he had instincts for. He knew what the work of his hands looked like. Jean squeezed his shoulder. Scott and Kurt crouched over Ororo. Kurt held a small cup of water. "I do not know about this," he said. "Unless you want to start getting physical, use the water." He did. Ororo stirred. Kurt placed her head in his lap and gendy smoothed back her hair, whispering nonsense in German. Slowly, Ororo opened her eyes— —and froze. "Who are you?" she said. Her voice sounded hoarse, misused. Kurt smiled, ever so gently. "I have been away too long, Storm. Maybe I am not blue, maybe I am no longer handsome, but how could you fail to recognize the twinkling light of my eyes? The eyes do not change, meine schoone Frau." Ororo blinked. "Kurt?" "The one and only." She reached up with a careful hand and touched his face. Tore her gaze from him to stare at the others. She took a deep shuddering breath. "These last days have been difficult without the five of you," she whispered. "Have our bodies been here? Where are the children?" "The children are fine, everyone except for... for Jubilee. And yes, your impostors have been here. You need to go after them. I do not know how long I have been unconscious, but the man controlling your counterparts mentioned the mutant-rights march. He is going there. I think he plans on having his impersonators do something that will damage us all." She tried to sit up and Kurt settled her against his chest. "He is a telepath. His name is—" "—Jonas Maguire," Scott said. "Yes, we know." "I have something of his," Logan growled. "Maybe a couple somethings." "Logan?" she said, startled. "Is that you?" "What? You can see the resemblance?" She narrowed her eyes and Logan gave her a brief smile before turning his attention back on Jubilee. He felt her watch him and he knew she wanted to say something. He did not ask. He did not let her. Rogue said, "Remy won't wake up." "We don't have time to wait on him," Ororo said. "We must go into the city and stop Maguire." Scott checked the clock. "It's after ten thirty. Isn't the march supposed to start at eleven?" "Yes, I—" She stopped talking. "I can't move." 'Your spine—" Kurt began, but Ororo shook her head. "No, he did something to me. My body won't listen." Tears leaked from her eyes. "You need help." Kurt shook his head. He gave her a quick hug. "As you said, we have no time. We will be fine." Logan agreed. They were going to be fine because they were too pissed off for anything less. Maguire was going to get stuck on a stick, and roasted like a marshmallow. Plus, it would be one more for the road. The five of them, finishing what they had started. Logan did not think that was such a bad way to die.
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 20	It was good being in a piece of technology not acquired by anything other than cold hard cash. Jean, while she might miss the train ride, did not think she would ever recall those moments of vehicular theft with the kind of fondness that would make her go back for a repeat performance. She also much preferred flying to driving. "You're thinking dramatic, aren't you?" Scott said to her, when she took her seat beside him at the controls of the mini-jet. "I'm thinking big," she said. "Epic." "That's good," he said. "We're going to need something epic in order to get out of this whole and intact." "Pessi—" She stopped, sensing those fingers in her brain, light and full of fire. So familiar, so— Jean shut her eyes. Scott said her name, again and again, and she lost the connection in the sound of his voice. The fingers disappeared. So close... she had been so close to figuring out what was in her head. "What is it?" he asked, and he looked so concerned she could not bring herself to be mad at him for interrupting her concentration. They could not read each other's minds anymore, which was a loss that Jean thought they had overcome during the journey. For most of her life she had relied too much on her mind and not on words, not paying attention to the subtleties of an expression or the clear quality of a gaze. Not anymore. Even if she somehow managed to regain her body, she was not going to let herself forget. They entered the city and Scott put the mini-jet in stealth mode. They found the mutant-rights march without much difficulty. It had been in the works for almost a year, planned for by a coalition of people whose one common bond was that they believed mutants and humans could coexist in respect and peace, each side helping the other in mutually beneficial ways. It was a goal that Charles Xavier supported wholeheartedly, and the X-Men had agreed to be present at the event, both as security and as role models. "Is this what our body-snatching has been all about?" Rogue wondered out loud. "Just as a means of destroying our reputation?" "It won't just be our reputation. If the X-Men are seen going wild, it will reflect badly on all mutants, including Maguire." Scott frowned. "Somehow, I don't think he cares," "We must have burned that guy something good," Logan said quietly. He had the teddy bear in his lap and was staring at it with the same intensity he usually reserved for really good beer, the Super Bowl, or a beautiful woman. Jean smiled. She had seen the teddy bear several times on their trip; Logan occasionally removed it from the sack to stare and prod. Jean thought he and the bear had developed a special language; it told him things about Maguire that it told no one else. The sun disappeared behind the clouds and the air coming in from the vents smelled sharp, like rain. Jean closed her eyes, drawing in that scent She summoned up all the strength left to her, everything she would need to fight, and she imagined sharing that strength with her friends. The odds were against them. Only human now, out of shape and exhausted—while their real bodies, those they had been born with, were both gifted and at the top of their form. Jean knew why Ororo was concerned for them, but she also knew that this was their job, to do or die. We are going to die, she thought, but for some reason, the idea did not frighten her. The past few days had soothed her soul in ways she could not yet describe— only, she knew now what she was made of, and though her hardships had not been as great as she thought they would be, it was not strife or fighting that made her feel so polished on the inside. It was living human, being with her friends and seeing how far they could go on so little, and realizing that in her life, they and her husband were all she needed. And even if she did not have others, she had herself. Herself, stripped down to nothing, no distraction of power, until she could see her spirit clearly. It was a good feeling, that self-knowledge. It made her feel strong. The heart of downtown came into sight and Scott flew the mini-jet like a sport's car, bending around buildings at breakneck speeds that would have made her sick had she not been concentrating so fiercely on finding their counterparts. "There," Logan said. "Down below on that rooftop." Jean looked, and sure enough saw six figures standing on the rooftop edge of an office building, gazing down upon the main core of the parade. She did not know why they were there, rather than on ground level with the other participants, but it made their lives easier. Jean preferred to fight out of the public eye. Too many people could get hurt that way. Logan said, "Come on, Cyke. What are you waiting for?" "Nothing," he said, and flashed Jean a quick grin that still managed to warm her toes. "We're going in. Everyone, hang on tight." She appreciated the warning. A moment later the mini-jet dived toward the earth, streaking past the noses of the impostor X-Men and their handler, winging them in the face with their tail wind. Kurt grinned. "I am going to enjoy this," he said, "even if it is the last thing I do." "Might be," Logan said, but he was smiling, too, and Jean knew that his agenda involved a mighty punishment upon himself—or rather, his impostor. Jean did not know how to resolve the paradox of hurting their own bodies as punishment for crimes others committed while using them. It was like hurting themselves—literally—and if they ever were transferred back into their own selves— That doesn't matter now. The only thing that matters is keeping these people from hurting innocents, keeping them from ruining the X-Men with their actions. There is more at stake than your lives. You have to do what must be done and don't look back. The mini-jet rattled, swinging wildly. Scott muttered, "That's it. Chase us, you arrogant little jerks. Come on." Again, that wild rattle, turbulence so severe Jean thought the jet might come apart. It was her, she realized. Herself, Jean Grey, using telekinesis to rip them apart. Her method was clumsy, though; Jean sensed a lack of any true focus. Only a generalized intent that reminded her of when she had first started using her powers for real and found her mind a clumsy and unwieldy tool. "They don't know how to use our powers," she said in wonderment, as Scott struggled to find a place on the roof to land. "They have some superficial knowledge, but they're learning about themselves as they go along." "You sure about that?" Scott asked. "Yes," Jean said. "Otherwise, I would have disintegrated this jet by now." "I'm sold," Logan said. "Land this thing, Cyke. Let's end this." Scott landed on the rooftop, less than a hundred yards from where their counterparts stood, their attention temporarily off the parade. It was a bad area to fight in, but Scott had not wanted to take the risk of trying to lure them away, only to have the impostors stay behind to continue with their plan of discrediting the real team. Of course, if these men and women were as unskilled as Jean thought they were, the small fighting space would work to their advantage. The real X-Men were a team of friends and family, and they worked like one. Maguire might have spent the past year prepping his patients to make them more malleable for time in their bodies, but Scott doubted he had taught them other skills. He doubted he had taught them trust. Trust, which could only be learned through hard experience and shared suffering and joy—things that served to strengthen the bond between his teammates, to turn them into something more than their parts. Logan was out first, teddy bear in one hand. Rogue followed close at his side, with Kurt beside her. Jean went next, but Scott caught her hand before she left the jet and drew her close for a long hard kiss. "We'll do that again when this is over," he said. Jean smiled, caressing his throat. "We'll do more than that," she promised. The air smelled cold and wet; strong winds whipped their bodies, gusts that threatened to spin Scott's small body end over end. He eyed the competition. Funny, he had fought all these people more than once in Danger Room simulations—and in the flesh—and though he believed he knew their every weakness and how to exploit them, he felt as though all those exercises had to be thrown out because the minds inside the bodies were different, and the psychology of these men and women was even more different than the normal. Ororo had called Maguire a telepath. A telepath of remarkable strength, if he was able to transfer minds or souls into different bodies willy-nilly. Was he also strong enough to force a mentally disturbed individual into a kind of healing? Temporary or fixed, that was the only way Scott could explain how five individuals with such difficult consistent problems, could stand before him looking competent, ready to fight, like soldiers. Scott looked at Maguire, but found that the man was focused entirely on the teddy bear in Logan's hand. A look of such haunted despair passed over his face that, for a moment, Scott forgot why they were there. The expression disturbed him; it felt like a reminder of all those times he thought he had lost Jean, and had suffered through the gamut of unbearable pain, mourning the loss of the only woman he had ever loved. Of course, Jean always managed to come back from the dead. It was a gift of fate that had served her well over the years. "Where did you get that?" Maguire said to Logan. His voice was low, cultured. "You've been in my home?" 'Yeah," Logan said, hugging that bear to his chest. "Funny, your home. The only two things in it that seem to mean something to you are this bear and the photograph on your desk." "Give me the bear," he said quietiy. "This bear and I have gotten to be real good friends," Logan said, ignoring Maguire's request. "Real good. Looks to me like it used to be someone else's real good friend. I'd say that someone was a sight smaller than me, though. I'd also guess that the woman in that picture was your wife. And I think I might also guess that something very bad happened to those two people, something that involves us, that created a connection you just couldn't get out of your hair. You couldn't let go. Am I getting close, Jonas? Does any of this ring a bell?" Scott stared at Logan. Everyone stared, including Maguire. He wore the face of a broken man, but even as his throat worked, his fists clenching tight against his thighs, Scott saw his face go as hard as he had ever seen a man look, and Maguire said, "That would be accurate. You... you and your team had a fight with some... some renegade mutant. Some idiot. My wife and child got in the way. Innocent bystanders. I couldn't save them. I tried. I tried so hard to find bodies to place them in because that's what I do. Just like wrapping a gift, wrapping up my wife, all of her, everything, her soul— and then doing the same to my baby, holding them all inside me, stored so carefully, until I could find them a place to live." He shook his head. "They were too close to death when I got to them. I put them inside me but there was not enough time and they... trickled away. I could feel them inside my head, just like sand, and I couldn't save them." "So you go after us?" Scott said. "You ruin our lives?" "My wife would still be here if it hadn't been for you and your methods. Every time you fight with someone, an innocent gets hurt. Your powers are simply too great, and the destruction you cause—" He stopped, still looking at the teddy bear. "No, I won't discuss this. You are criminals. If nothing else, you are guilty of manslaughter. Every time a bystander dies when you fight another mutant, you are guilty of such a crime. I want you punished. I want people to see you, always, for what you are." "All you will do is create more difficulties between mutants and humans," Kurt said. "Surely that is not worth this. Surely your wife would not—" "You did not know my wife," he said in a deathly quiet voice. "Don't you dare say another word about her." Scott studied their bodies, the impostors. Not one of them had moved since the beginning of the conversation with Maguire. They stood like statues, without expression. "You're doing it to them, aren't you?" he said to Maguire. He pointed at them. "You've got all five of their minds inside you right now. That's the only reason they're acting even a little sane. You're controlling how much goes into the body. You're letting in only the good parts, the healthy bits." Maguire's breath caught. "A good analysis. Yes. Yes, that is what I'm doing." Jean shook her head. "You'll kill yourself doing that, or go crazy. I don't care how talented or strong you are, one person cannot cope with maintaining five distinct individuals inside their head." "I don't have to do it much longer. After today, I'll let their minds go. If you want, even, I'll put you back where you belong. Or not." Jean frowned, looking at her counterpart. She touched her head. "You may not have much of a choice," she said, and Scott gave her a curious look. There was something in her eyes that felt like a promise. Maguire did not notice. He looked at Logan again and held out his hand. "Make me," Logan said, and reached behind to tuck the bear between his belt and lower back. Maguire narrowed his eyes. "Enough," Scott said. "You can't fight all of us, Maguire. Your head is too full." "That's all right," he said. "This has gone on long enough." He snapped his fingers. Their counterparts jolted into wakefulness, like watching windup dolls. "Well," said the impostor Cyclops, sneering. He gazed at Jean. "Isn't this surreal. I never knew what I looked like in real life, outside a mirror." This was getting too complicated. Scott had assumed that the transfer was a simple crossover, that the woman he now inhabited would inhabit him, and that Cyclops would be quiet, so quiet. But that would never be believable. That would never work. Scott gazed at their counterparts and noticed one of them staring at her feet. Rogue. There was no mistaking that quiet avoidance, the shy phobia. An interesting choice. Very calculated. Rogue's power did not require any action on her part to work. All someone around her had to do was drag a person over to be touched. Wolverine had his claws out, sharpening them on each other like steak knives. He looked at Rogue, their Crazy Jane, and winked. "My body treating you well, darlin'?" Rogue cracked her knuckles. Logan said, "You better put that focus on me, bub. I'm the one you need to worry about." "Really. Is this body yours?" Wolverine smiled. "I like it. I like what it can do to people." Scott watched terrible rage pass through Logan's face, and he thought of jubilee on that infirmary bed. Oh, yes. Someone was going to pay for that. Dearly, and on many different levels. Cyclops touched his visor and let off a blast at Scott's head. Scott had never thought anyone could be a bad shot when all you had to do was look at your target, but Jean was right. His aim went wide. "When I get you?" Cyclops said. "You're dead." "Maybe," Scott said. "Or maybe you'll be surprised." The thing about fighting crazy people, Logan thought, was that they behaved in crazy ways. Crazy, unpredictable ways that nonetheless could be counted on for certain constants: Crazy people fight crazy, fighting crazy means fighting the unpredictable, and if you can't predict your opponent, you better stay the hell away because he will take your sorry butt. Unless, of course, you were just as crazy as he was. Being all kinds of crazy, Logan was fairly certain he qualified, which meant that he had every confidence the fight would turn in his favor. It had to. There was no way he would let this scumbag keep walking after beating the crap out of a friend. Wolverine flashed his claws, striking a pose like some wannabe martial arts fanatic: arms over his head; one leg in the air, poised to kick. The Crane, maybe. Logan thought he looked like a fool. Wolverine sneered. "You scared to come at me?" "Sure," Logan said. "I'm real terrified." "Good," he said, too crazy to understand sarcasm. "I'm gonna gut you like a pig." "Come on, then," Logan said, and kissed the air between them. Wolverine snarled and lunged. The first time Logan moved fast enough. The second time, he did not. Rogue saw the impostor's claws come slashing down against Logan's side; she forget her own obligations, her priority to take care of herself, and ran to him. Around her there was chaos in miniature: Scott, dodging the wild, ill-aimed strikes of his impostor, which also threatened to take out some of the team. She saw Scott get close enough to ram his shoulder into Cyclops's gut; both men tumbled to the ground, grappling with each other. She came up fast behind Wolverine, the impostor, the real Crazy Jane, and grabbed his head and neck. She remembered the hospital when she touched his bristly hair, the sensation of killing someone by breaking open the skull. She had spent the last few days trying so hard not to remember, to bury it deep like she did most of the unwanted things in her mind, but touching Wolverine brought it back because he moved with the same crazed abandon, the same rage, and he flung her off before she could get a proper grip and take him down. Wolverine turned on her, claws flashing. Logan rushed him from behind; his face was red and blood streamed down his ribs. For a moment he looked into Rogue's eyes and the message was clear: Get away. Right now. So she did. Scott and Cyclops still wrestled on the ground, while Jean and her counterpart appeared locked in a staring match. Rogue did not see Maguire anywhere. She found her impostor standing in the rooftop corner, a lonely slender figure who stared at her feet. Rogue wondered if she had ever appeared so whipped; it was not a good look on her. She stood for a moment with some distance between them, and said, "Hey." Nothing. Rogue knew quite well what her impostor was capable of; it scared her, she scared herself, but she stepped even closer, and still there was no eye contact, no movement, not even when she nudged her with the tip of her shoe. "Come on now," she murmured to the impostor. "Sugah, I got better things to do than this." Still, nothing. Rogue suspected she might be able to put a gun to this woman's head and pull the trigger, all without a single reaction or attempt to escape. Shaking her head, confused, she turned her head and spied Kurt. He stood in the middle of the rooftop, watching Nightcrawler teleport. With one last glance at her counterpart, she turned and ran to him. "Hello," Kurt said to her. "No luck with your impersonator?" "She won't lift a finger against me," Rogue said. "You?" "I won't let you catch me!" cried the impostor, as he continued to bounce in and out of the sky. Rogue waved a hand in front of her face. The air smelled horrible. "Doesn't teleporting like that make you sick?" she asked him. "Ja." Kurt smiled. "Just wait." She did, and several teleportations later, Nightcrawler dropped out of the sky like a rock and landed between herself and Kurt. He vomited. Rogue nudged his tail with her shoe. "I expected a little more," she said. Jean felt as though her brain was on fire. Truly, with flames licking the inside of her skull, little fingers searching the soft tissue for a place to push down burning roots. The woman across from her said, "I love this." Jean said nothing at all; if she opened her mouth it would be to scream, and she refused to give her the satisfaction. The impostor was already far too satisfied with the abilities that had been given to her, and Jean knew with quiet certainty that she was being played with. There was nothing subtle about the way that woman used her telepathy. She slapped it about like a great big bat; but she was still kicking Jean's butt, so there was no way for her to feel too superior. For a moment, though, Jean felt something cool wash through her head, a different kind of fire, and it felt familiar, like home, like all those little touches that had accompanied her on the long journey from Seattle. And then her counterpart made a flicking motion with her hand and threw Jean off the side of the building. Jean imagined she heard Scott cry out her name, but the wind was strong and the roar like a train, like that rolling mountain train, and she looked down and the city was rising to meet her like a city parting from the sea, and the fire was gone from her head but she felt those light fingers again and then something deeper, something that made the force of her heart swell and then draw away, sucked outward until a new fire kissed her face, old as the universe and catching her arms like wings, and she cried out— —and then she was on the roof again and her body was engulfed in fire and her mind felt the touch of the universe singing down into the root of her soul, that old soul, those voices—six billion—rising in a symphony, and she threw herself off the building, the Phoenix diving to earth, and she reached out her hands and caught Jeff's limp empty body, caught him just yards from hitting the packed crowds, and she cradled him in flame and returned to the roof, and began calling for Maguire. Rogue saw Jean fly off the roof. She raced to the edge of the building, running so fast she caught her foot and skidded hard until she hit the low barrier wall. Tears streamed down her face; she scrambled to her knees to peer over the buildings edge and saw a tiny figure hurtling toward the ground. She forgot that she had no powers because the urge to jump after her friend was so great she almost followed. A hand touched her back; Kurt, looking at her with a question in his eyes. She sagged against him. And then Rogue felt heat and she turned to see wings of fire stretch bright around Jean's impostor. The woman threw herself off the building, streaking toward earth to catch that tiny body before it hit the ground, and Rogue watched, breathless, as they returned to the rooftop. Kurt said, "Do you think it is possible?" "I don't know," she said, but the Phoenix alighted beside them and lay down Jeff's body, and Rogue looked into the woman's face and saw something more familiar than simple flesh: a softness in the mouth that did not reach the eyes, those blazing radiant eyes that held a farseeing gaze, the same that had peered out of a man's face for almost a week now. Rogue heard an equally radiant voice, familiar and strong, call out to Maguire. She looked and finally saw him; he stood on the other side of the mini-jet. Jean went after him. Their Jean, back inside her body. Rogue knew it. She touched Kurt's hand and gazed out across the rooftop. She did not like what she saw. Logan was down on the ground, holding his side while trying to dodge the fast strikes of bright claws. Scott's left arm had scorch marks all over it. Cyclops had thrown him off and the distance between them was dangerous; the man danced away, his hand on the visor like it was a lifeline. Rogue ran to help him. Halfway there, clouds of smoke surrounded her and two strong arms engulfed her waist. She heard Kurt yell out and then the world disappeared— —and reappeared a quarter of a mile over the city. "I'm tired of playing games," Nightcrawler said. He dropped her and disappeared. She fell to earth, screaming. Jonas Maguire had one of the most powerful minds Jean had ever encountered. He was not, she thought, a particularly strong telepath in the most basic sense, but the things he could do, his capacity for holding vast amounts of information, staggered her. She peered into Maguire's mind and saw that Renny had returned, but that he was fighting to break free of the trappings that contained him. Renny had tasted Jean's power. He remembered, and he wanted more. "Return them to their bodies," Jean said, and it was her voice again, her body, and oh what a feeling to come home to familiar flesh, that beautiful shell that was hers and hers alone. "Do it." "I won't," Maguire said, backing away from her. "Then I'll force you," she said, and burned past his mental shields. She caught glimpses of his life: a woman stretched beside him on a bed of grass with a baby sleeping between and the sun so soft and warm on their lovely faces, and again, his wife, his Maria, dancing in the kitchen to sweet lullabies as the baby crooned, and later, hugging a teddy bear, and later making love on a quilt, and later, dropping them off for a day of shopping while he went to the hospital, suffering terrible nausea at lunch, awful doom, looking out his office window to see smoke rising and oh, he tried, but he could not take just any body, not that mother over there with her own child, not that man, not that one, or that one, and Maria slipped away into the darkness, the darkness singing to her baby and then he was gone, too, gone from that life until Maguire became something new, something darker, something— "Stop," he croaked, tears running down his face. "Please." "Fix them," she said, and still he hesitated. Jean returned to his mind and found the tendrils leading to Mindy who was in Rogue, Rogue who was in Jane, and forced his mind upon the task and watched him make the switch. Someone caught Rogue before she hit the ground. Dazed, heart thundering, she stared into green eyes and found herself, that shy face that was so familiar. Relieved, she hugged the girl and forgot—she of all people, forgot—and her skin brushed skin, and suddenly she knew what it was like to die from her touch, that black hole made of skin as Rogue fed on Rogue. A sucking sensation, as though every pore in her body pushed outward and shriveled. She imagined what the impostor must be feeling—power and memory, a disparate personality folding over her mind, trying to take control. The impostor cried out, eyes rolling green into white, and suddenly Rogue was in the air again, free-falling. She saw herself, the woman she had been, floating in the air above with her hands on her head, and all her good will disappeared as she thought, I hope I drown you. And then, abruptly, she was that woman. She was herself in that body that only seconds before had seemed so far away. Rogue hovered in the air and the transition was so seamless that at first she did not realize, did not believe; only, this floating sensation was her still falling, hallucinating. But she looked down and saw Jane rushing away from her, flailing in the air. Rogue moved on instinct, dropping like a stone, and it was beautiful to have a body that obeyed her when she wanted to defy gravity. She caught Jane, but the woman barely breathed. Rogue remembered her dying self, caught in the web of her skin. It was not a good memory. She returned to the rooftop. Mindy now waited inside Maguire's brain, but she and Renny both were burst from the seams of their confinement, flooding into that place where Maguire kept his own sacred space, and Jean could not stop the flow of their spirits, or how they overwhelmed. She tried to help him, but— —Logan was next. It was always a lie when people said they were prepared to meet their end. Logan had told that lie once or twice, and he was telling it to himself again. He was bleeding pretty bad. Not that it was getting his spirits down or anything. He staggered to his feet and managed to dodge a direct blow to his stomach. Those claws sank into his lungs instead. He tasted blood, and gazed into his own smirking face— —and then he found himself on the other side of the claws and his body felt good and strong, and oh—oh, poor kid, that poor girl—and he sheathed his claws and caught Patty as she fell to the ground, dead. The teddy bear stuck in the back of her belt looked especially mournful. Jane did not want to leave Wolverine's body. She fought viciously and nothing Jean did could hold her. She wanted blood and she went after the sweet spot inside Maguire's mind, tearing out a chunk. Jonas screamed. Jean tried not to listen. She found Kurt and— —his counterpart enjoyed this joke a little too much, dropping people off in the middle of the sky and then dashing away to parts unknown. Kurt thought it was especially rude, and especially terrifying to be free-falling through the sky, but he saw Rogue fly toward him and he trusted her to catch him— —and she did, but Kurt watched her do it from a distance and he looked down at his hands, his lovely blue hands with their thick nails and oh! His tail. Oh, how very wonderful to be home again. Patty was harder. Not as bad as Jane, but she whined a lot more and at this point Maguire was no longer building barriers. Patty flowed like a snake from Nightcrawler into the comers of Maguire's mind, writhing on a round white belly, but Jean had no more time for these people because Scott was the only one left, and she did this one special, with a light touch— —a very light touch on his mind, and he knew it was Jean the moment she entered his thoughts, because though she had flown off the roof, the Phoenix always rose: his Jean, his lovely wife with her beautiful heart, and she carried him from that burning, hurting place— his borrowed body seared, skin cracked and black and peeling, his lungs full of fire—and with a sharp kick she knocked the malevolent stranger out of his real body. She placed his soul inside the flesh, settled him sweet, and with a kiss and a touch unwound a golden thread, pinning it to his heart, pinning it to hers. And then he opened his eyes and the world was red again and Jean stood in front of him, radiant in that red, and he leaned forward and hugged her.
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 21	They did not attend the mutant-rights march. Jean used her telekinesis to gather up the bodies. Careful, quick, because Logan heard helicopters coming: news reporters or the police, who had probably noticed some commotion on the rooftop. A beautiful thing, being able to hear them coming. He thought it was another beautiful thing to see their impostors, those lost men and women, float through the air to the mini-jet. Beautiful, because Jean was back to her old self, powers intact. And yet, he felt an odd sadness in his heart when he looked at the woman he had lived in. Patty, dead. He even felt sorry for Mindy, whose heart had stopped soon after Scott left her body. The rest of them stared unblinking, unmoving. Logan studied their faces, trying not to be distracted by the smells and sounds rushing through him, or the familiar weight of his skeleton, grounding him to earth. He rubbed his knuckles and felt a good sharpness just beneath his skin. The X-Men piled into the mini-jet. Maguire sat upright in the back, eyes open but unseeing, restrained only by the force of Jean's mind. Drool dripped down his chin. Scott spared him a quick glance before powering the jet engines. "Well," he said, quiet. "At least we're home." It was good to be home again. Little comforts, like the luxury of hot coffee in the morning, a shower, actual toilets. Beds, washers and dryers, a closet full of clothes, not going hungry because forty dollars might have to last five people on a trip across America. And yet, Rogue would not give up those memories for anything. Maybe one I would. If I could, I would change that, at least. A man dead. Rogue thought about calling the administrator at Belldonne to wheedle out the name she had wanted so badly. She knew what Logan would say: that she was a glutton for punishment, better to leave well enough alone. She stood in the doorway of the infirmary and watched Logan sit on the edge of Jubilee's bed. The girl was still asleep. Remy was not. He lay very still in the next bed with only his eyes moving, glittering in the light. He looked terrible; the left side of his body was one large bruise and his lips were cracked. He said nothing to her, simply waiting. Rogue remembered what it was like without her powers—her fear and insecurity—how she had been uncomfortable touching even when she could. You need to grow up, she told herself. Or else stop complaining about the hand that's been given you. The only thing keeping you from being happy is yourself It doesn't have anything to do with skin. No, nothing at all to do with that. Rogue reached into her pocket to finger the card that Suzy had given her. Nine of spades, dreams and illusion. Her skin was the illusion, her excuse. Untouchable body, untouchable heart: the perfect recipe for never getting hurt. Rogue walked to Remy. She watched him take a deep breath. He did not say anything, just reached for her. Rogue fought her instincts and did not pull away as his fingers wrapped loose around her covered wrist. She sat down beside him and kissed the air above his head. "I'm glad to see your eyes again," he murmured. "I missed that about you." "That so?" she asked lightly. "I was here the entire time, sugah. I'm sure you saw plenty." "No," he said, and his hand tightened. 'Tour body wasn't what I missed." Heat spread through her face. She forgot how to speak. Remy smiled. Logan paid no attention to the lovebirds. A distant part of him was happy for Rogue, that she was there and touching and being touched. About time, he thought. Maybe the trip into someone else's body had been good for her, after all. It certainly had not been good for Logan, nor Jubilee. He watched the girl's face, hurting for her, trying not to imagine what had happened but knowing exacdy: each punch, each touch fueled by rage. When she finally began to stir, to open her eyes, he felt a moment of panic. This was a bad idea. What were you thinking, making yourself the first thing she sees? You'll scare the kid. He stood, but before he could take a step he felt a small hand grab his fingers. Jubilee still had her eyes closed. "Hey, Wolvie," she whispered. Logan swallowed hard. "Hey. How're you feeling, darlin?" "Not bad," she said, and tugged on his hand. He sat, perching uncomfortably on the edge of the bed in case she freaked out and he needed to run. But she just smiled, and finally opened her eyes. "I'm sorry," he said. He had not intended to apologize for anything, but the words slipped out, hoarse and broken. "Wasn't you," she said. "I figured that out." "But it was my body. I thought... I thought you would be afraid of me for that." "Dude," she said, those fearless blue eyes still staring at him. "You're crazy." A short gasp of laughter escaped him. Gentle, slow, he reached out and ruffled her hair. "Yeah, kid," he whispered. "I suppose I am." The rest of the team eventually trickled into the infirmary. They brought chairs with them, or perched on empty beds. It was good to be together. Home, again. Jean gazed around at all their faces, familiar as her own, and for a moment missed those worn human bodies that had carried them across the country, and which now lay in comas, kept alive by machines. For a while no one said much, and then, slowly, with great detail and occasional laughter, they told their stories—the escape, the journey—or here at the Mansion, the unraveling mystery of the impostors. "So that's how it goes," Jean said, when almost everything else had been told and all that was left was the how and why of their survival. "All those times I thought I felt Cerebro or my counterpart, it was really just the Phoenix." "I still don't get it," Rogue said. Remy sat behind her with his arm draped over her shoulder, his hands occasionally playing with her hair. Rogue had a lot of color in her cheeks. "The Phoenix force is separate from my mutant abilities, although it does add to and enhance them. When I was taken from my body, the Phoenix was left behind, but it...recognized the difference. It knew that I was gone—me, Jean Grey—and it went searching for me. I think it would have stayed, but Jeffs body wasn't compatible for what it wanted. When I got face-to-face with my body, though, the Phoenix... arranged things to its satisfaction." "Meaning it switched you back?" "Exactly." "Nice," Logan said. Jubilee sat close beside him, not a sign of unease in her slim body. Jean thought Logan looked more rattled. She did not blame him; knowing that her body had been used to harm Remy... well, it did not get much worse than that. She still felt responsible. "I called the hospital," Scott said, propping his feet up on a bed railing. "There's no change in Maguire. He's still a vegetable. Same with our... hosts." "As far as Maguire goes, there isn't ever going to be a change," Jean said. "His identity got eaten alive by those five, and they're too lost in him to ever return to their own bodies. They are stuck there together until the day he dies." Not that Patty or Mindy ever had a choice in the matter. Their bodies had died in the fight; they were lost forever. "He is a relatively young man," Kurt said, his voice heavy with meaning, and that was something Jean did not want to think about. Maguire's body was in the most terrible kind of prison, the darkest mirror for minds with nothing to do but reflect upon each other the worst of their madness. Jean had returned to Maguire's mind one more time before dropping him and the others off at a private hospital where Xavier had connections, the influence to buy quality care without any questions asked. She did not want to enter his mind again. At least not for some time. "We do bear some of the responsibility," Ororo said quietly, looking over Logan's shoulder at the teddy bear in his lap. "We killed his family." "We killed a lot more than that," Scott said. "We have a lot to answer for." "Even if it was just an accident?" Jubilee asked. "Dead is dead," Rogue said, looking at her hands. "Doesn't matter if you kill by accident. There's always a price to pay." "Perhaps we did not pay enough," Kurt mused. Logan held up the teddy bear, its fur scruffy and worn and sweet. "We're paying," he said quietly. "I think we'll keep paying, for a long time yet." A low chime sounded through the room: the alarm. Scott ran to the wall monitor and patched in to the main computer. "Trouble," he said. "The Brotherhood, maybe. Police reports are coming in from Atlanta." They all looked at each other, silent and unmoving. "We'll be careful this time," Jean said, but her voice wavered, uncertain. "Yeah," Logan said, handing the teddy bear to Jubilee. He stared into the girl's broken face and said, "I guess we know the alternative."
(X	Marjorie M. Liu	[ "superheroes", "Marvel" ]	[]	Chapter 22	Several weeks later, an envelope from a law office in North Dakota arrived for Scott Summers, Jean Grey, Logan, Rogue, and Kurt Wagner. The envelope contained two letters and a key. The first letter was dated two days after their arrival home in New York. "What's that?" Jean asked, peering over Scott's shoulder. "It's James," Scott said. "He finally remembered where he heard the name. He's leaving his home and land in care of the school." "Oh," she breathed. "Oh, my." The second letter, from the attorney, said just a little more. That afternoon the five of them flew out to North Dakota to bury James. They dug the hole with shovels and pickaxes, and laid him to rest beside his wife. They did not say any words, but sat beside his grave for a time, watching the sun cross the sky and the grass thrush in the wind. The lilac tree, though it had no blooms, looked especially pretty. They left after the stars came out. Dog went with them.
Year's Best Body Horror 2017	C. P. Dunphey (ed)	[ "horror", "body horror", "short stories" ]	[]	Slobber by Shaun Avery	There. That one. See the way her body fits so perfectly within the sensible clothes she's changed into? Yeah. There's a woman that really owns her own skin. Skin still gleaming a little with moisture she worked up at the gym just across the road. Perfect. So I walk over to her, cutting across the crowded bar, but it's really more a swagger than a walk, a confident strut that I've worked hard on over the years. And I can feel a lot of eyes on me, but mine are only on the woman as I come to a stop beside her and say "hi." She looks over, one eyebrow raised, appraising me. "Hi, yourself," she says. I can tell that she likes what she sees. But then, why wouldn't she? "What you drinking?" I ask. But I already know the answer, wouldn't be talking to her if I didn't. Still, it's a stroke for my ego—now the biggest thing about me—when she says, "Cronenberg Water." That's the most expensive water you can get, the most designer. It's endorsed by athletes. And the drink of choice of all the women I meet in bars. "Me, too," I say. "Well, I was," I add, looking around the bar for an imaginary bottle of water, acting a little bumbling now, something I always do to make them think there's more to me than what they're at first seeing. "Only I appear to have drank it..." "Going to get another?" she asks, and now her eyes meet mine. "Or just come back to my place and fuck me?" Take a guess which one I pick. Yep. You guessed right. She tries to kiss me a few times along the way. But I don't—can't—let her. Not yet. Instead, I content myself with holding her hand, telling her, "soon." She looks at me, smirking, when I say that. It's not a nice smirk. "Not much for public displays of affection, huh?" she asks. I nod. "Something like that." Both temporarily satisfied, we carry on walking. And soon we're there. A sixth-floor apartment building. She makes us jog up each flight of stairs, me hanging back to enjoy the sight of her tightly packed behind. "Working up a sweat beforehand," she explains, looking back over her shoulder at me, brown hair swishing. "Makes the whole thing better." Looking at those buttocks, I'm inclined to agree. What a waste it will be, what I do to her. Such a waste. But that all lies ahead. For now, we reach her door, and I come up behind her as she begins to unlock it, letting my mouth find her, teeth nibbling at her neck. "So much for not liking the public displays," she says, reaching back with one hand to touch my face. "This is a bit more private," I reply. "Now open the door." She does so. I release her. She walks backwards into the apartment, beckoning me to join her. And I decide to have a little fun with myself. The front door is still wide open behind me, I think, and that could be dangerous. I stifle the irony of this thought. Anyone could walk in, do anything to us. I watch her, now stepping back into her bedroom. If she notices this danger—if her desire doesn't take over her brain—then I... then I won't go through with what I do. I'll just make my excuses and leave. And she'll be fine. I wait a second, wait for her. She's stopped at the foot of her bed. She's looking towards me. The door—the open door—still visible behind me. Will she notice? Will she tell me to close it? No. Instead, she says, "come on. Now." And just like that she seals her fate. She's quick, too, this girl. I look down at my feet, steadying myself, readying myself for what is to come... and by the time I look back up she's completely naked. She's sat up on the bed, pointing towards me. "Come here," she says. Foolishly still thinking she's in control. I walk over to the bed, place my hands on her shoulders. She starts sucking at the fingers of one hand. Looking up directly into my eyes as she does so. But never once seeing the true intention behind them. "Honey," I say. And pull her roughly off the bed, dropping her to her knees on the carpet. I see the outrage in her eyes, the sudden fire. But I've played scenes like this many times before, and I know just what to say, telling her, "I thought we could work our way up to the bed." It's the right thing to say, the words driving the fury from her gaze. She reaches for me, kneads my pectoral muscles through my shirt, repaying the favour I did for her earlier. "I like the sound of that," she says, and raises herself up to kiss me. And finally, the moment is here. She thinks, at first, that everything is fine. That I am just a passionate kisser. But then she realises what is happening, and her eyes go wide, and she tries to pull away. But can't. "Gmmph!" she cries. "Glmph!" It's at this point that I could almost feel sorry for them. But it's too late for that now. The thing inside me forces its way up through my body, emerging from the place near my stomach where it lives. Following the long trail of its tongue which has already come out of my mouth and into hers. And now it spews its full black discharge into her. She falls back onto the floor, free now, no longer of any use to me. "Oh my God," she says, placing her hands on her hips, already feeling them change from within, the skin stretching and widening. Eyes huge with panic, she looks up at me. "What have you done to me?" I back off, wiping my mouth, feeling the thing inside retreat to its usual hiding place. For now. "Afraid I lied to you earlier, honey," I tell her. "Real reason I didn't want to use the bed is I didn't want it to break..." And she balloons in size, becoming a huge, doughy mess of flesh upon the floor. "When this happened," I conclude. I step over her, walk towards the door. "Sorry, honey," I say over my shoulder. But I'm not. Not anymore. See, I was her way once. Well, not the way she was at the start of the night, when we first met. No, the way she looked when I left her... that used to be me. I ate everything. More than I could afford. So, when money ran out and I was still hungry, that was when I started raiding bins. That was where I found it. The thing. Looking up from beneath a pile of mouldy food and dirty nappies. Eyes small and beady, set back on a face that looked a little like a crow's beak. It saw me reaching in to grab a half-eaten hot dog and it said, "what in the hell do you think you're doing?" Startled, I could only come up with the truth. "Um... looking for something to eat?" It looked me over. Which took a while—back then, remember, there was a lot of me to see. "Something more to eat, you mean," it said. "Hey," I said back, prepared to get angry with it. But then, all of a sudden, I started to cry. I don't know why. I mean, I'd been doing this for months, and never once had I felt bad about it, accepting my bin-raking activities merely as the way things had to be. But somehow, looking into the thing's eyes, I saw myself as it saw me, as I guess the whole world saw me. And it hurt a hell of a lot. "I'm sorry," the thing said, sounding sincere. I looked at the half of a hotdog in my hand. Still full of disgust for what I had become. But also still hungry. "What if I showed you a way you didn't have to eat that?" it said, eyeing the remains of the hotdog. "A way I could control your appetite and give you a normal body?" It paused, and I sensed a strange sort of smile upon its face. "Fuck no, a great body!" I looked at the thing. And honestly, I was doubtful. This sounded like the kind of garbage they spouted non-stop on the Diet Channel. The sort of thing I have believed in before, and been disappointed every time. But, you know, what did I really have to lose? "Well," I said, and I think it sensed from the tone of my voice that I was already in, no matter what the thing asked. "I mean, what would I have to do?" "Simple," it said. "Just eat me instead." So I did. Only "eat" is not quite the right word. In fact, it leapt into my mouth and scurried down my throat and settled in my stomach. I was so shocked that I dropped the hotdog. Then I puked. And puked. And puked. Next, I staggered back home, wobbling through the streets drunkenly. But I could already feel my body changing, and by the time I got home... "Holy shitting shit," I said, looking at myself in the mirror. "I'm thinner!" Sure you are, the thing said, now speaking directly into my mind. Tell you something else – you don't feel hungry anymore, do you? Truth to tell, I had not noticed that. But it was true. Don't get me wrong—I wasn't about to starve myself or anything. What the thing meant was that my appetite was now a normal one... that my days of having to rake through bins for extras were at an end. That's right, it told me. But I'm afraid there's a price to pay... And there was. I got even more thin, and then I started working out, got buff. But to keep myself that way, every couple of months I had to infect others with the way I once was. Didn't have to be women I infected, of course. But since it took lip-to-lip contact, there was no way I was going to do that with a guy. That's why I had held myself back earlier tonight, when the girl tried to kiss me—didn't want her sprouting fat in the middle of the road, where everyone could see it. But it's all taken care of for another few months. No need to worry. So homewards bound it is. Except... The door hangs open when I get there. That's not what sets my mental alarms off, though. I mean, for all I know, I left it open, myself, too caught up in the need of finding a new girl to infect to worry much about the security of my home. No, what disturbs me are the shadows I see moving in there—the shadows of people. Big people. I'm about to retreat when I feel something cold slide into my ribs. I look down and see a gun. One held by a pudgy hand. Each fingernail painted a different colour. I remember fingers like that. Though they'd been a lot thinner back then, as they'd slid down my abs to unzip my jeans. "Move," says the owner of the fingernails and the gun. "Inside." I do as I'm told. Only now realising that I'm in real trouble. It should have been the lights that tipped me off, you see. I'd lost track of time—I often do, when I'm out on the hunt. I'd forgotten that it had been daytime when I'd set out. There should have been no lights on inside the house. But they are. And now that I enter, I see that they illuminate several nightmares. Women from my past. Their names still a mystery—either I never learnt them, like tonight's victim, or I've forgotten them over time. Still, though, I know their faces. Oh, yes. Their bodies, too. Bodies I've corrupted. Bodies I've made fat. Two of them in the room before me. "Ladies," I say, looking between them. "You haven't changed since we last saw each other." "We can't," says one of them, a dark-skinned woman. Once possessing the lithe legs of a pole dancer, she now seems to have no legs at all beneath the blubber. "Whatever you've done to us, we're stuck with it." Just like I used to be. "How'd you find me?" I say. "I knew you'd ask that," replies the dancing girl. "I knew you'd think you were smart, moving around the city, picking us all up at separate bars." "Yeah," agrees the rainbow-nailed one. Frustratingly, she still stands behind me, giving me no chance to go for the gun. "But you can't hide the things you've done." "Yes," says the third one, a well-spoken, bobbed-haired woman I'd picked up in a university bar, a real posh type who'd unleashed a barrage of gutter talk on the way back to the bedroom floor of her student accommodation. "We found each other online. Then we all staked out bars until we found you." How the hell did I miss people this big? "A few other people helped us out," the student says, as if sensing my thoughts. "So you wouldn't spot us too early." "We found you in a bar a few weeks ago." Gun Girl again. "You mustn't have been successful that night. We followed you here when you left, found out where you lived." "So why the wait?" I ask. Then, twisting the knife a little, point out, "I've done a girl tonight. You could have stopped that." This seems to bother the student, who grimaces a little. But not the former dancer, who says, "we had to get a couple of things ready for you." "Right," I say. And I laugh harshly, hating them, hating all three reminders of the me I once was. "So, what you come here for? A cure? Ain't no cure, girls. There's just me." I pat my stomach. "And a little friend of mine." "Good thing that's not what we're here for, then," the voice behind me says. Then the gun cracks down across my head and I sink into black. I wake up in... I don't know where. Some building. A sports building, I think. There are rows of seating facing me, where an audience can sit. But my three captors can't use them. Things won't take their weight. Instead, they stand in front of the first row of seats, watching me. I laugh. "Do your worst, girls," I tell them. Then, looking around, realise I am in some sort of ring, a circle of hardened straw surrounding me. They say nothing. And somehow that angers me most of all. "This a wrestling ring?" I say. "Ha! Go ahead! Send in a wrestler! I'll kiss "em! I don't like guys but I don't mind! I'll turn 'em all into tubs of guts—just like you!" "Like you," says the student. "We found all the old photos," the dancer adds. "Shut up!" I say, screaming it, not wanting to hear them, wanting instead to blot the truth out with my anger. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Then I hear footsteps. Huge footsteps. I think we might be in trouble here, the thing tells me. Or at least you are. When there's nothing left of you, I'll just find another body to share. Like I did with all the people that came before you. "What?" I say, looking down at my stomach, at its hiding place. But it speaks no more. And when I look back up, I see that Rainbow Fingers is smirking. "Remember I said a couple of people helped us find you?" she says. "Well, one of them is the guy that owns this place. He owed me a favour. And the guys that come here to train... well, when I told them what you did—what you are—they really wanted to meet you." "Guys?" I say. "This place?" "Ike's Sumo Ring," she says. And I realise that even if it wanted to, the thing inside me would not be much help here. As a dozen Sumo warriors come charging towards me. ⁂ [ ERUPTION by Charlotte Baker ] I run to the bathroom and throw up the remnants of my roast dinner; the carrot was not as digested as I'd have liked. I'd been sick into the basin and I peeled one of my hands free from the cold porcelain to wipe my mouth, covered in liquid sick. The food was contained: no overspill, which was one thing to be thankful for, I suppose. Then, I used my other hand to wipe the sweat from my face. God, I hated being sick. My body felt on fire and I was getting pain from the blood merely flowing through my veins. I must have been coming down with something, surely. I pulled myself closer to the bathroom mirror, noticing a bloodshot left eye. I pulled my eyelids open, peering into the mirror as a reflection I didn't recognise looked back. That's when it happened. The bloodshot moved. The red worm unravelled itself and moved. But when it moved, the one in my eye, so did the fifty or so in my face, rising to the surface like the first tremor of the start of a volcanic eruption. I fell backwards, hitting my head on the red-hot towel rail. Falling to the floor, I noticed the hundreds of red worms wriggling under my skin over my entire body. My breathing was loud and raspy. Then, they disappeared as quickly as they came. I threw myself to the basin once again and retched repeatedly, from shock. The same sick/sweat wiping ritual began and as I turned my head to the left, Mellissa stood there; her nightie covered in sick, her pupils beaming red and her eyeballs protruding from their sockets. Her skin was all veiny, but instead of the normal blue colours, it was bright red. The veins moved. Then stopped, as if they were singing. ⁂ [ DEVIL'S TEARS by Shadrick Beechem ] It was ten minutes after midnight when Freddy saw the headlights of a car turning into the old lot. That was ten minutes too late, Al was never late. Hell, he was always early. This made Freddy uncomfortable. Something was off. But he shook off the weirdness as the El Camino pulled up next to him and both men got out of their vehicles immediately, both engines still running. "Jesus man, why the fuck did we have to meet all the way out here? What's wrong with the back of J's restaurant like we always do it? And you're late. I don't think I've ever seen your ass be more than a cunt hair past the hour on getting somewhere," Freddy said. Al instructed him over the phone that the scheduled meet up for this shipment was going to take place out past the old Mayfield airstrip, which was an hour drive on a rough desert road from Freddy's base of operations in Winona. Albert was in a hurry though, and spoke quickly as he pulled out the boxes from the back of his car. "I know, I know, I'm sorry. I'll explain it to you later, man, but for right now I just need these fuckin things gone. They are hot right now, man, this is some top secret crazy shit right here. Military grade, literally. The shipment got hijacked from a facility in Phoenix just yesterday and this is CIA property, brother. They don't like having their toys taken from them, not one bit." As he said this, he pulled out two cases the size of cereal boxes and placed them on the hood of Freddy's pickup. Freddy walked around the front to get a better look, and the headlights of the vehicles briefly illuminated the man's ruined body. Al caught site of the tightened lumpy scars and pink crevices of old healed burns that stretched across every exposed inch of Freddy's body, which included the left side of his face. Al knew about the meth lab explosion that was responsible for this disfigurement, and he also knew about the running joke going on between the small circle of associates he and Freddy had. They had given him the nickname Mr. Krueger, in honor of the infamous dream-invading blade-fingered villain from the eighties. Usually Freddy wore long sleeve T's, and baseball hats a lot of the time to hide what he could of his disfigurement, but he must've not given a shit about appearances tonight, because he was wearing an old white wife beater and letting his long greasy hair down. Al saw more than he wanted. Pretending not to be phased by the gross sight, he got down to business, time was of the essence here. "Is that it?" Freddy asked, a hint of disapproval in his voice. He looked at the two small cases, not believing that this could be all he was getting after all this unnecessary precautionary bullshit Al had put him through. Al looked at him and smiled. Then he snapped open both cases. The inside of each case was lined with dense protective foam, and sitting on top of the foam was four vials of a dark purple fluid. There was a small glass dropper next to each vial, along with several orange CAUTION stickers, each bearing the BIOHAZARD logo. Freddy picked up one vile and studied it closely with the light of his phone. "Carefullllll with that. I know it doesn't look like much, but trust me, there are over five hundred doses in each vial. It doesn't take much. This stuff is absolutely insane, man." Freddy looked at Al, then at the vial again, suspicious. "What is it? Does it have a name?" "You're not gonna believe this, man, but this used to be a drug the CIA used as a truth serum in their interrogations. You know, fighting the war on terror and all that shit. They developed a couple different types of hallucinogens to try and get people to fess up about whatever information they were prying out of them when the waterboarding and car battery nipple games didn't do the trick. Well, this shit right here was discontinued after ten 'unsuccessful trials' or some shit like that. Everyone who dosed on it ended up going out of their minds. Almost all of them ended up cutting off a part of their body or doing some kind of fucked up shit to themselves. Six of the ten died from self-inflicted injuries, the other four ended up getting schizophrenia or some shit." With this bit of news, Freddy quickly put the vial back in the case and rubbed his hand on his jeans, then looked at Al with disbelief. "What the fuck, Al? I need drugs that are gonna get people high, not make them go crazy and cut their damn peckers off. Why do you think no one ever buys that bath salts shit anymore? A couple of zombie episodes and suddenly everyone thinks its gonna make you go crazy. You think I want that kinda reputation, you dumbass?" He raised his voice, not caring who heard. They were out in the middle of the goddamn desert after all. Al put his hands up placatingly. "Hey, hey, hey, dude, calm down, man. You didn't let me finish. I got this guy right? He's a dirty cop who runs shit for the mafia out in California and they swear by this stuff, man. The trick is you just have to take a very, very, verrrrrrry small amount. The potency is the problem, not the content. Sort of like old school black tar heads who blast up on fentanyl and overdose, cause that shit is a thousand times more potent than that garbage H they get off the street. The pharmaceutical industry, man, they know how to make their drugs, amigo, you know that yourself. "That's why everyone's out buying Adderall and Vyvanse from college kids with scripts instead of that bullshit crystal you tried to swing. Long lasting, and cheap, that's what those kids want, and this shit right here?" Al gently tapped one of the vials. "Is right up that particular alley. One small drop of this shit is enough to blast someone off into a world of unending horniness and hallucinations so intense that you can't tell what's real and what's your imagination. It's not just a hallucinogen, it's a deliriant, and it can last for up to twelve hours, man." Freddy looked at him, amazed and a little skeptical. "Bullshit, one CC is barely a fuckin squirt. You tellin me that a itty bitty blotter of that can blast you off?" Al shook his head vehemently. "You betcha. It's only been on the street for about two months now so the specifics are a little sketchy, you know everyone's body is different and all that. But it's the real deal, amigo. And what's cool about it is that at smaller doses, if you can find a way to measure smaller than that, it's more like a high than a trip. A lot of upper big ball swinging businessmen like it, say it's like coke mixed with a really heavy hash high. But we're talking like amounts you'd need a damn microscope to see." "Jesus, that is crazy," Freddy reflected. Convinced, he got down to business. "All right, how much for both cases?" he asked. Al smiled nervously and asked, "How does twelve K sound?" Freddy scowled his scarred face and shook his head. Despite the clearly high balled price, he reached into his pocket and handed over two thick rolls of hundred-dollar bills. "Now, how about this, you damn jew conman. Here's six neat upfront, cause I still aint entirely sure about this. If it starts selling like you say it will I should have the other half to you in two weeks. Deal?" Al considered this for a moment, sighed and handed over the two cases, looking around nervously as he did so. "Yeah, yeah, whatever, as long as it's off my ass. There's only two guys in the whole world who are able to bring this stuff on the street and I know one of them directly and I'd be quite surprised if the government wasn't already looking into him. They keep this shit heavily guarded in some evidence lab. And Freddy, look, man, if you don't want a shit show on your hands, you need to listen to me carefully. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER give anyone a larger dose than four CCs. The tolerance for this shit builds up quick, which helps you in the long run, but man, even the most hardcore users short circuit after four CCs. There's been two overdoses on it confirmed out in San Francisco where this shit is real hip with the artists and musicians. Remember, no more than four. No matter what, you got me?" Freddy shook his head. "Yeah sure, although it's gonna be hard trying to convince people that such a small amount will do the trick. They got a name for this stuff? Something that will ring a bell?" Al was quickly putting up his little stash of boxes and looked up, smiling. "Yep. They call it Devil's Tears on the street, cause you gotta drop that shit in your eyes." Albert Weaver was in relatively good spirits until about thirty minutes ago. After the deal with Freddy went down a couple weeks back, he had taken a little vacation with the fat wad of cash the deal brought in. This was gonna be his last big run, his retirement from the game. He sold almost all of the Devil's Tears, assuring plenty of easy living until he croaked or got killed, but he made sure to keep a small vial for himself. He had been hooked on the stuff for over a month now, and his tolerance was so high that he had been taking up to four CCs per trip in order to feel the most basic effects now, despite his own dire warnings he gave to Freddy about the nature of the drug. It just... felt so good. His addiction was taking its toll on him although he didn't realize it. He had been masturbating excessively the past five days as he lay locked in his dingy trailer in a perpetual never-ending swirl of wonderful highs and crashing, disorienting lows. At least once every two hours he jerked off, and the bottom of his shaft where the urethra was located was bruised a dark yellow. The tip and meatus was a bright irritated red and was scabbed, bleeding along the corona as Al continued to throttle his member, helpless to stop the sexual urges that plagued him. Orgasms now hurt severely as his small wrinkled testicles, which resembled dried prunes, struggled to pump empty contractions into the man's worn penis. His bed was covered in several dry crusts of semen stains, and some of these crusty deposits were tinged red with blood. Unable to slake his thirst with mere masturbation, he had been ordering hookers over the last two days. He had the money to blow on top shelf call girls, girls that were experienced and were willing to do just about anything you wanted if you could afford them. The last one that came by refused to do anything with Al, seeing his scabby, bleeding penis and thinking the man had a severe case of herpes or something. But his eyes were probably the worst part. He had put over twenty doses of L-Diamethaltriazamine into both eyes during the course of a bender unseen to the likes of conventional junkies. His eyes were almost completely stained a muddy burgundy color, so dark that you could barely make out the shape of the man's extremely dilated pupils. To Albert Weaver, the whole world was one abstract purple nightmare, but that was all right. He had gotten used to the unending auditory and visual hallucinations, which went on even when he was coming off the drug. He bled from his eyes and ears, along with a gelatinous purple goo that now steadily leaked out of the corners of his eyes. When Candice "Candy Cane" Lane knocked on the double wide trailer's door of Al's run-down sanctum, she stumbled back in horror as something barely resembling a man opened the door for her. To Candice, he looked like one of those comic book gray aliens with a horrible mascara day. The man's pale, almost translucent skin was waxy in the glow of the bare bulbs that adorned his living room. His thinning black hair hung in wild kinked curls above his scabbed head. "You must be... Cannnnnnnndy Cane, is that right, darlin?" he asked, and smiled a most terrible smile. The teeth she saw were little more than rotted husks, a case of meth mouth which had been accelerated by the dry Arizona air. She recoiled. "I uh... No, I'm sorry I must have the wrong place. I'm sorry I need to be—" but Al grabbed the beautiful voluptuous blonde by the arm. He made sure not to grab hard, he didn't want to be threatening. He was just so desperate for human touch. "Wait, please!" he said in a feeble voice. He was as much addicted to the sex as he was to the Tears, despite how both physically pained when he'd indulge. He shoved a handful of hundred-dollar bills in front of her, the crumpled pieces of money smeared some sort of violet fluid. "I'm not infected with anything I swear I just... I got something in here that'll change your life, honey. A drug you aint never seen before, a drug you can't find anywhere else except here, and I guess I been hittin it a little hard, got some side effects as you can see," he said, issuing a shrill barking sound that was supposed to be laughter. "I'm just... so lonely, and I need you, baby. I'll pay you whatever you want, and I'll give you some of the Tears. It'll be worth your while, sweet honey, just you see." Candice stared down at the wad of bills for a long moment, thinking hard. She did need the money. She was trying to pay her way through an accounting degree and the tuition fees were kicking her ass. But god, this was so sketchy. She swallowed hard, and while gripping the bottle of mace she had stashed her in purse hard enough to turn her knuckles white, she reluctantly allowed herself to be led into this disgusting creature's house, despite every feeling in her stomach telling her to get the fuck out of dodge. "Candy, honey, you gotta open the door, please. You got me worried out here, baby doll," Al said gently through the door. A series of thick, labored grunts was all he got in response. "God fucking dammit, dumb cunt barely even got a hit," Al muttered under his breath. Although this was not true. In his spun-out mental state, he had accidentally given Candice a four-CC dose of the devil's tears. His blurred purple-tinged vision unable to see the small measurement markings on the side of the syringe he used. Finally losing his patience, he attempted to kick in the door. It was a flimsy particle board thing anyway, and he burst through easily enough. It wasn't like he was getting his damage deposit back on the goddamn trailer anyway after all the meth he cooked in it. He became aware of two things at once. The sharp tang of ammonia in the air, and Candice, stark naked and half-crouching in the corner of his bathtub. He looked to his right and saw the bottle of ammonia he kept stashed under the sink, along with a bottle of bleach and Drano. They were all lying askew on the floor, some of the contents spilled. It took Al a long moment to register the dangerous effect of this combo. "Oh Candice, you sweet dumb fucking bitch. What the fuck did you do? What the fuck did you—" His question was cut off with a loud moan, followed by a sizzling sound. A geyser of dark foam jetted from the back of Candice and she shivered. "There was... there was something inside me, something bad. I realize that... now. Something in me that's been poisoning my body for years. And now... now I'm gonna kill it. Now I'm gonna poison it, the fucking parasite inside of me. Make it all end. It will all finally..." but then she yelled and a violent jet of foamy pink liquid rocketed out the back of her. Her belly had swollen as well and in Al's distorted vision, it pulsated and continued to grow. She collapsed, forward, and Al saw her back. "Holy. Fucking. Shit," he said in terrified awe as he realized the woman had given herself an enema using the contents he kept under the sink. As she lay twitching and yelling in the tub, pink jelly speckled with bits of dissolved intestine, fecal matter, and flesh erupted from her ruined orifice. Al tried to go over and help her but he stopped as he saw the ruined melted crater of her anus and vagina, dissolved together to form one bloody oozing maw of gore. To Al's purple-tinged vision, his bathtub looked like the bottom of a jar of grape jelly. Smoke was rising from the wound, skin foaming up and dissolving around the edges of her ruined genitalia. "Candice!" he cried, and then attempted to roll her over so she would at least stop shitting her insides out against his bathroom wall. Despite the hellish scene of gore he was now entrenched in, what disturbed Al the most was the fact that when he managed to roll the woman over, he saw that her stomach had deflated but was somehow yet... moving? Was that what it was doing? Al couldn't tell. He looked longer, and sure enough, her skin was rumpling and dimpling as if something was moving around within. "Oh my god," he whispered, staring at the woman's stomach with terror, ignoring the fact that she was likely on the edge of death, only slight spasms in her arms and legs as the acidic mixture dissolved into her nerves. She was right, there was something in her, holy shit. What is happening? His fried brain struggled to understand what had just happened and what continued to progress. You gotta kill it, man you can't have let her die in vain, a stoic voice spoke in his mind. Finish it, finish the job and then go bury her body out there at that special place in the desert where you put Jim and that cunt from Vegas. Resolute now, and also terrified of whatever fucked up creature was hiding in Candy Cane's sweet tummy, he shrank back from the bathroom, and went to retrieve his knife. Before he did though, he stopped and grabbed the small vial of Devil's Tears and looked at the bottle. It had been full at one point, but now there was only a small puddle in the bottom. Perhaps five or six hits left. "Fuck it," he said, pouring the remaining fluid into his right eye. It stung like acid and he was forced to sit on his bed while the wave of biting heat raced through his head. In that moment, he felt every single busted capillary and inflamed vein running through his optical nerve, becoming aware of his entire body. It was then that his mind broke after so many hits of the drug. He completely lost sense of who he was, where he was. But he remembered his mission. The girl. Yes, he needed to kill the thing that was in Candy. He reached over to the head of the bed and pulled out his big Ka-bar, which he kept under his pillow at night. He pulled it out of its sheath, and studied it, mystified for a moment. To Al, it looked like some kind of glorious Excalibur, a noble blade forged from violet sapphire. "I'll honor you, baby," he said in a brave voice, and proceeded towards the bathroom, the rusty dull-edged knife that he was so proud of thrust out in front of him in a mock fencer's stance. He entered the bathroom again, and by now there was a gelatinous puddle of human matter sinking through a hole burned through the bathtub. Candice's midsection had caved in, dissolving the navel and revealing crisp white ribs and a few strands of muscle that were clinging from them, protruding from a dark green puddle of dissolved innards. A smell similar to burning plastic, barbeque, and rubbing alcohol filled the air. Preparing to thrust his knife into the beige pink soup in his tub, he raised the blade, feeling like a glorious knight. He plunged the blade into the ruined body, and at first thought the creature was attacking him. His hands deep in her fluid organs, he pulled up, revealing his skin was searing and burning. He didn't really understand though, and continued plunging in. Eventually, acidic gore burned through the skin until the ropey metacarpal muscles and knuckles glinted through the filmy mess. With his muscles dissolving, he lost his grip on the knife and instead began running his boney exposed fingers through the muck, splashing his forearms and face with the terrible soup. He was enraptured in the experience, the burning feeling like a cleansing as he spread the gore all over himself, coating himself in the gelatinous liquid as some sort of ritualistic rite, although at that point his thoughts were not coherent enough to assign any kind of philosophical meaning to his actions. He just wanted to be her, be in her, find a way in. Then he heard three loud knocks on the door. "POLICE, SEARCH WARRANT!" a voice boomed from outside, followed by a loud crash. ⁂ [ AN ANGEL AMONG US by David Beers ] "Now I know," the preacher said, "that today's world don't believe in miracles. Modern society thinks the days of miracles—the days of Christ turnin' water to wine—them days are gone. I'm here to tell ya, to tell all of ya, that's just the Devil's talk." A chorus of amens erupted from the congregation. The church was hot, as it always was during summer Sundays. The two air conditioners attached to the windows couldn't keep the church-goers from sweating something awful. The preacher, his name being Alfred P. Cunningham, knew this was his moment. Alfred came from a long line of preachers—indeed, his very Daddy had founded the church he now stood in. The elder Cunningham had retired ten years ago, giving control of the church—and congregation—to Alfred. Both understood he was ready for it, and standing at the pulpit this morning, it was clear how much greater the Lord would work through Alfred than he had his father. It wasn't that the elder Cunningham was bad at his job, far from it. Only, his son was that good. Alfred walked to the edge of the pulpit and looked down at his flock of sheep. "The Lord talks to us all, doesn't he?" "Lawd, yes!" Ruphus shouted from the third row. "Brother Ruphus knows. The rest of us do too, don't we?" "Amen!" came the agreement. "It's that tiny voice that speaks to us, the one deep inside our chest that tells us right from wrong. That's God talkin' right there." Alfred paused as any good preacher will do, letting his words sink into the people before him. After a few seconds, he continued. "The Lord's been talkin' to me, lately, and he's been tellin' me some important things." Alfred looked up from his feet. "Do you believe me?" "Yes, Pastor," Aunt Jennie said from the first row. "We know he has." "Yes he has. Yes he is. He's told me that he's tired of people not believin' in him. He's tired of the world denyin' his miracles, and he's tired of how people are ignorin' his word!" "Amen!" Alfred nodded, flames flicking in his eyes, revealing the intensity of his belief beneath them. Because the good Lord had been talking to Alfred a lot lately. He'd been detailing out a lot of things, and Alfred had kept it quiet for a while. Up until this week, actually. Six days ago, the Lord gave him permission to start talking, and so he had, first bringing in the Bilbox family. It was their son that God planned to work through. Alfred was a messenger, nothing else, and he was happy with that. The Lord had many different needs and many different ways to serve Him. Alfred P. Cunningham was humble in both his ambition and ways. He was a messenger. The Bilbox family—and more specifically, Ryan Bilbox—was the person the good Lord wanted. "Tell me, Aunt Jennie, do you believe in angels?" "You know I do, Preacher. You know I do!" Aunt Jennie was nearly in rapture, Alfred speaking to her personally almost too much to handle. "I know you do," Alfred said. "I know we all do, ain't that right?" "It is!" "Yes, suh!" He soaked it all in, feeling the moment nearly upon him. The temperature in the church was rising, if that was possible (but all things are possible through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, amen). "Ryan Bilbox, where are ya, son?" Alfred called into the congregation. "Here he is, Preacher," Ryan's father, Terry Bilbox, said. "Come on up here, son. Come on up and let's tell the world what the Lord's been tellin' you, okay?" A boy rose from one of the wooden pews. He was twelve years old, though his size made him look ten. He was thin and pale, and he walked as if something large, black, and with massive claws might reach out at any moment and grab him. He didn't shirk his duty, though, and Alfred was glad for that. The boy had a lot ahead of him. Important things that would change the entire world. This was the first step on that road, and him simply coming to the pulpit meant he believed. Just as Alfred did. Just as his parents did. Ryan reached the pulpit and Alfred took him by the hand, pulling him up. The boy came to just above Alfred's waist, and the preacher placed his hands on Ryan's shoulders, standing behind him. "The days of miracles are to begin again, and I'm here to tell you that personally. Our Lord, my personal Savior, has told me so, and ain't nobody in the world gonna convince me otherwise. Ain't no book or no scientist goin' to tell me that the Lord is wrong. Are you with me?" "AMEN!" "I knew you would be because I know you all love Christ as I do." Alfred looked down at the top of Ryan's head. "The Lord is going to show the world miracles exist, and he's going to do it through this boy here. God has told me, told Ryan's parents, and Ryan himself, that he is to become an angel. This boy here, so meek, will rise up as God's own righteousness, and strike down the wicked of this world!" 2. Alfred P. Cunningham was the pastor over a 60-person church, in a town of 64 people. The four people that didn't attend church were the Bernsteins—Jews that lived at the very edge of the town and had nothing to do with no one. Good riddance, Alfred always thought. The chosen people that crucified Christ. They would get what was coming to them in due time. To call Rineswald, Alabama a town was a stretch, and Alfred would be the first to admit that. The only jobs inside Rineswald were at the diner. If you wanted anything outside of a burger, you had to drive twenty miles east and there you had a Walmart, Stop-N-Go, and a Taco Bell. Even farther east and you started seeing more, but Alfred didn't concern himself with any of that. Most of the people in Rineswald didn't either, not outside of where they had to drive for work (most worked at the Walmart twenty miles east). Alfred concerned himself with his flock that the Lord had entrusted him with. And now God had bestowed a great gift upon Alfred and his congregation. "It's not going to be easy," Alfred said, "though we can't expect something this great to be. We have to show our dedication, just like Abraham. Do you understand?" Terry and Patricia nodded. Ryan was quiet, per his usual countenance. The four of them sat at Alfred P. Cunningham's dining room table. His wife, Ruth, was in the garage finishing up the final touches on what would be the first part of Ryan's change. She had been working on them for months, ever since the Lord started talking to Alfred. "Before I keep goin', has the Lord started talkin' to any of you, yet? Tellin' you about how important this is?" Both Terry and Patricia nodded again. "Oh, yes," Terry said. "We've both had dreams the past three days, each one better than the last." "Good, good," Alfred said. He had known they would. The Lord told him as much, that once he started explaining the Lord's Will, He would make himself known to them, too. The entire town (except for those troublesome Jews out there on Route 41) would start dreaming soon. "The Lord has specifically told me how this is supposed to go, and I want to say I thank both of you for trustin' me with your son. I promise ain't no harm comin' to this boy, not as long as we keep doin' the Lord's Work. You understand?" "Yes, Preacher. We definitely do," Terry said. Patricia nodded in agreement. "Okay, then. The Lord has told me that this is to take three weeks, and at the end of three weeks, Ryan here is goin' to be possessed by an angel. Not just some regular angel either, but Gabriel himself. If we follow the Lord's plan just right, at the end of three weeks, Ryan will be an angel, and he'll bring all of God's strength with him." Alfred spoke louder at the open garage door. "Ruth, go ahead and bring 'em out. We're ready for 'em." The door to the garage opened wider and something white emerged. It was hard to tell exactly what was being shoved into the kitchen, only that it was large, nearly stretching from floor to ceiling. Ruth entered the kitchen next, a huge smile across her face. Just as the white thing she held almost stretched the height of the house, her smile nearly touched both ears. She kept walking and another white monstrosity came in with her other hand. Alfred looked at their glory. Tall and feathery. Indeed, those were real feathers. Ruth had plucked each one from the chickens out back over the past three weeks. They'd killed a hundred chickens from their small farm for this, the meat was packed in the freezer as proof. "Wings. That's the first thing Ryan's got to have. The Lord said if the miracle is to happen, he has to play the part, and he showed me just what Gabriel's wings looked like. This is them right here." Alfred P. Cunningham's wife held two large contraptions made out of aluminum wiring. They did indeed stretch from floor to ceiling, and they'd been wrapped in cloth. Ruth Cunningham hadn't known exactly how to make the feathers stick, but God told Alfred to simply lay some super glue down across the cloth and then attach the feathers that way. The five people in the kitchen stared at these homemade wings, smiles growing larger and larger across each of their faces. Ryan was the only one not smiling. He stared at the huge apparatuses with nothing but terror. 3. Ron Jerwin wasn't a doctor, but he was the closest thing Rineswald had to it. Terry Bilbox had talked to him extensively before allowing him to operate on Ryan, and he'd walked away convinced Ron could do a good enough job. That's all that was really needed anyway—a good enough job, because God would take care of everything else. That's what the world outside didn't understand, and that's why Terry and Patricia had decided to pull Ryan from school for the next few weeks. Ryan went to school in Kentwood, and the people over there always turned their noses up at the people of Rineswald. They certainly wouldn't understand what was happening now. Heathens, the lot of 'em. Terry wouldn't hear nothing of it. He knew Ron well, known him since they were kids. Hell, he'd watched Ron patch up his younger brother at least nine or ten times over the years. The wings would be easy. It wasn't like it was real surgery. This was basically cosmetic work. Pastor Alfred told Terry and Patricia that if God was going to put Gabriel inside their son, then they had to show Him they believed. They couldn't simply look up at heaven and ask for a miracle, ask for a blessing. No, the Lord needed dedication before He would bestow His grace upon them. That's what the wings were for. It didn't have nothing to do with Ryan flying away or any such nonsense. It was them showing God their faith. Terry trusted Ron to do a good job, but he still sat in the room with his son. He'd kissed his cheek before they administered the laughing gas (Pastor Alfred had ordered some off the Internet, though Terry didn't ask too many questions about it. He trusted the Pastor.), and then stood over Ron as he started sewing the wings on. The needle pricked his son's skin and blood immediately pooled. They were attaching the wings directly to his back, right in the middle on either side of his spinal cord. "Pastor, how is he goin' to be able to hold these things up? I mean, they look pretty heavy, like they might just rip right out his back." Pastor Alfred was in the dining room with Terry and Ron. It was his dining room after all, and Ryan was lying face down on the table. A stream of blood rolled down the boy's rib cage and onto the newspaper they'd laid down before starting. "He'll have to sit in a wheelchair," Alfred said, not looking away from Ron's work. His eyes were just as bright as they'd been at the pulpit days ago. Ron slowly poked the needle into the boy's skin again, pulling it out the other side and stretching it away from the bone it rested on. "Only for a few weeks though, Terry," the preacher continued. "As soon as God places Gabriel's spirit in the boy, he'll hop right out of that wheelchair as if somebody had placed a hot brand on his behind. Remember, this is just to show God we're serious. Nothing else. Three weeks in a wheelchair and then he'll be flyin' around this whole town." Terry nodded, his own eyes wide with anticipation. He wouldn't tell this to the preacher—of course, not—but he was proud. It was his son the Lord had chosen, after all. His little boy that kids at school picked on. He was to be God's Avenger, amen. He watched Ron work, the needle and thread moving in and out of his son's skin. "Grab the wing now, I have to tighten it against his back." Terry grabbed the metal wing, lifting it above his son. It wasn't heavy exactly, but Alfred was right: Ryan would need to sit in a wheelchair for a bit to make sure the wings didn't rip right out of his back and leave him with two huge holes staring out at the world. That would be embarrassing and certainly wouldn't send the right message to the Lord. Terry lowered the first wing onto his son, watching as Ron pulled the whole thing tight. 4. "How do you feel?" Tears sat in Ryan's eyes. He hurt. His whole back hurt worse than anything he'd ever known. Daddy said he had to sit in the wheelchair, that if he tried to stand up, the wings on his back would just fall right out. Ryan didn't want that at all. He knew that would hurt worse than what he currently felt, and he didn't think he could handle so much pain. "Okay," he said, his voice as watery as his eyes. The pastor squatted down in front of him; Ryan really didn't want to show how bad this hurt in front of him. Crying in front of his father and mother had been awful enough. Daddy had told him to 'man up' and while his mother's eyes were wet, she only said that this would all be over soon. "Now, look, your dad told me that you've been crying a lot at home. Is that true?" Ryan didn't move in the wheelchair. Not an inch either way. The only time he felt even a moment's relief from the pain in his back was when sitting completely still, and then the fire raging over his flesh died down to relative embers. His dad stood behind the chair, but Ryan wouldn't have lied to Pastor Alfred anyway. He knew liars went to hell. "It hurts," he said and felt ashamed as tears burst forward onto his cheeks. "I know. I know it does," Pastor Alfred said. "That's why I brought you these." The Preacher opened his palm and two little pills sat in his hand. "You take these every few hours and you won't feel any more pain, okay? You'll feel right as rain." Ryan looked up from the preacher's hand, tears still streaming down his face. He'd never felt so much gratitude. Not in his whole life. "Yeh—Yes, sir. Thank you so much." "It's my pleasure, son," the preacher said, smiling. He reached forward and placed his hand on Ryan's leg. Ryan was just glad he didn't try and hug him. 5. Alfred lay in bed with his eyes open, wondering if Jesus was going to come. Alfred P. Cunningham had been expecting Jesus for some time, and in complete honesty, had started to grow a little bit worried. He'd told the Bilbox's that this would be done in three weeks (because that's what God told him), but the Lord hadn't given him all the information at once. Alfred only knew the wings were first. Jesus needed to tell him what the second part was supposed to be. And tomorrow was the weekly service. Alfred was going to wheel the drugged-up child onto the pulpit and show how God was already working through him. The congregation didn't have to know about the Oxycontin Alfred was feeding the boy. It was necessary. Local anesthetics wouldn't last as long, nor help as much. They only needed the pills for a few weeks. But, without the next commandment from God, he'd simply be rolling out a boy wearing wings. There would be no plan, and Alfred needed to be sure of God's will in order to deliver a powerful sermon. If he was to get his flock riled up about this, then Alfred had to believe it himself. As he lay in bed, he didn't feel much in terms of his faith. If anything, he felt scared that he might have made a horrible mistake. Perhaps he'd misunderstood what God wanted, and instead of demonstrating his dedication, he'd simply surgically implanted chicken feathers on a boy and then fed him illegal drugs to keep him from crying. Alfred need not have worried, though. That was the thing about God. He always came when you least expected it, as if He was testing your faith. Jesus came as he always did, through the bedroom window. A white light looked in on Alfred, starting small and then growing larger and larger until Alfred P. Cunningham could see nothing else. 6. "Last week I told you all that God had chosen us, this place, to begin showing the world that miracles existed. Let me hear an amen if ya remember!" "Amen!" "And who here believes that I was telling you the truth?" "I did!" "I'm sorry," Alfred P. Cunningham said, "I didn't catch that. Who thought I was telling the truth?" "I did!" more voices shouted, echoing off the walls. There wasn't much to Alfred's church. It was humble, just like he was, and just like his father before him. It was a two-room church, with ten wooden pews right in front of the pulpit. The second room was a small office just behind the pulpit, with a single desk and chair in it. Alfred did the church's business back there, but he wasn't above a little showmanship every now and then, either. Ryan Bilbox wasn't sitting out with the congregation today. No, sir. He was in the back and he was going to be rolled out just as soon as Alfred had these people in a roar to see him. The Lord was speaking powerfully through Alfred today. He was using His servant well—Alfred walked all over the pulpit, making eye contact with the people in each row; his voice was in fighting form. The night before had been beautiful and Alfred was ashamed he ever doubted his God. For his God was powerful, just, and above all, loving. "Now the Lord came to me last night, brothers and sisters. He came and He spoke long, and He spoke well, and He told me what we're to do! You see, did God simply give Job everything he wanted?" "No!" "No, he didn't! Did he make Job show his faith? Show how much he loved God?" "Yes!" "Yes. Yes, he did," Alfred said, growing very, very serious. "And he won't give us something even greater without the same sacrifice, without the exact same show of faith... Will he?" "No," the congregation whispered back. "No, indeed." Alfred looked down at his feet for a few seconds, feeling the crowd's emotion. They were waiting on him, their leader, to show them the way—just as he had waited for God to show him last night. "I love each and every one of you," he said, still not looking up. "Love you like you were my own children. What I'm about to show you the rest of the world might scoff at. They might look at us and call us crazy." His voice rose as he spoke, each sentence slightly louder than the last. "They might say we need to be in the looney bin over there in Birmingham, but we don't believe that do we?" "No." He looked up, his face flush and those flames dancing again in his eyes. "I said, do we believe that?" "NO!" "No we don't! Because we have the Lord our God telling us the truth, leading us! We don't need man, and we don't want man telling us what to do! Those people that might scoff, well when our angel arrives they're going to have a lot of explaining to do, aren't they?" "YES!" "That's right! Terry, bring your son on out here, the boy that's going to bring God's righteous wrath down on all those that doubt Him and us!" Alfred stepped to the side and the door behind him opened. Terry, dressed in his absolute best Sunday attire, walked out of the back room pushing the wheelchair in front of him. Ryan sat in the chair, and though no one could see it, Alfred knew the wounds in his back were bleeding. Before the service, they had done a good bit to try and stem the blood flow, but the wings were just too damned heavy—even with him sitting in the wheelchair all day. They'd put an extra thick coat over him, as well as padded the back and seat of the chair with black towels. If any of the blood did leak out, it would be tough to see. Not that Alfred cared so much about the child bleeding; he knew the Lord would make the boy well as long as they held faith. He just didn't think it would be a good idea for the congregation to see such things. "Here he is! Our very own soon to be angel! Two more weeks, brothers and sisters! Just two more weeks!" The preteen sat in front of the congregation, his eyes hazy and his lids heavy. The only tell that he saw anyone in front of him was the small grin he gave when the crowd erupted in applause. Alfred had his doubts the boy knew exactly what was happening, but he seemed happy enough, and that's what mattered. The wings attached to Ryan's back were starting to look a bit dingy, but Alfred knew none of his congregation saw it. Alfred stood to the side, clapping vigorously, his eyes moving from the slightly yellow feathers to the crowd and back again. He watched as one of the chicken feathers lifted gently from the super glue and fell lazily to the floor next to the wheelchair. 7. "Are you sure, Pastor Alfred? I mean he's been using the restroom on himself the past few days. And his back... I just don't know. I mean, when we clean the wound, it's starting to smell." Alfred looked at Patricia Bilbox with a mixture of concern and calm. "I understand, Patricia, I do. He's using the restroom on himself because we're giving him those pills around the clock, and that's to keep him from hurtin'. You know this." Alfred watched as Patricia looked to Terry. The mother was concerned more than the father, but that was the natural way of things. They were the weaker sex—the Good Lord had told everyone that two thousand years ago. "We're worried," Terry said. "I mean the smell coming from the back of him, and now this... it just might be too much, Pastor." Alfred nodded. He thought something like this might come up. The boy was zonked out on Oxycontin, drooling on himself right now. He was sitting half naked in the wheelchair, and the mother wasn't lying—Alfred could smell the stench from across the living room. He knew what he had to do, though. Alfred stood and walked over to the boy sitting in his underwear. He leaned the chap forward so that he could get a look at the surgery. The smell was awful, but the sight might have been worse. Puss and blood oozed from the holes in his skin. The antibacterial salve they'd placed across his back didn't seem to be working at all. Blisters were forming, too, and Alfred didn't even know how that was possible. It's not like the boy had been burned. "This is the Devil's work," he said. "There's no doubt about it. He wants to stop us, but we're not going to let him." "This next part, though... Pastor, I'm just not sure." The woman's voice shook as she spoke, but Alfred couldn't let her faith waiver. They had come this far, and there was less than two weeks before Gabriel took over the boy's body. Alfred looked up from the drooling kid to Patricia. "Now listen to me, both of you. We're not going to let the Devil beat us here, are we? The bleach is going to clean this wound right up, and sure as I'm standin' here, God is going to put some healing potion in it too, and we're going to be able to take your son off these pills, okay?" He stared at the two of them, and finally, slowly, they both nodded in agreement. "Now let's get him in the tub so we can start healin' him." It took a few minutes, but Alfred watched as the two parents undressed the child and moved him to the bathroom. His mother fed him another pill, because everyone knew the pain he was about to endure would be awful. "How long's he got to stay in it?" Patricia asked. "I've been thinkin' 'bout that," Alfred said. "The Lord ain't told me how long exactly, but I'm thinking three to four hours might be enough. Three to four hours will show Him we're serious, and it'll show Satan we're serious too. That's what we want, both of them to know which side we're on." "Three to four hours?" Terry asked. "Yes, I think that'll do it. Now let's pray before we put him in." And they did pray. 8. Alfred watched the boy the entire time. It was his duty, and to be honest, he thought the parents might grow weak if he were to leave. Growing weak now would only show God they weren't serious, and that couldn't happen. Not after the amount of belief the whole congregation had in what they were doing. The tub was 1/5th water and 4/5th's bleach. Alfred had paid for all the bleach, and even hauled it over himself. The boy sat in the tub, the liquid up to his neck. His body kept trying to slide down underneath, but Alfred or one of his parents would pull him up. The feathers were getting ruined, no doubt about it, but that couldn't be avoided. The wings were bent and wrapped around his body; the feathers had loosened and floated in the tub next to him. They had opened the bathroom window and put a large fan inside the room as well, blowing the bleach fumes out. It was slow going for a while, but eventually—about an hour and a half in—Patricia spoke up. "Is he okay, Pastor? Look at his skin." Had Alfred been dozing off? Perhaps. Sure enough, though, the boy's skin was changing, and not like Alfred had wanted. The point of this had been to whiten the boy's skin, making him look more angelic. That's what Jesus said He wanted, and it would certainly show their dedication to God's vision. Red welts were rising on his arms. One of them had a trail of blood floating up into the clear liquid, looking like a red root rising to the ground's surface. "That doesn't look good, Pastor. His skin ain't turnin' white at all. It's turnin' red." Alfred suddenly wanted to grab the woman by her scraggly hair and jam her face into the damned mirror behind him. He could tell it was turning red. Everyone that looked at the tub saw it. What's his back look like? Alfred wondered, but then shoved the thought away, half afraid the mother might read it and then start looking. Alfred turned to his watch. It wasn't time yet. Three hours minimum and the kid had only sat in the bleach solution for half that. "We have to wait, Patricia. Remember, it may look painful to us, but the Lord is in charge here." A sick looking abrasion sat across the boy's penis, with a deep red line cracking down the middle like some sort of STD. Alfred looked away. "Another hour and a half." No one said anything. Patricia moved a bit closer to the tub. Then they sat and waited. Finally, almost two hours later, Patricia turned her head away from her boy and looked at the pastor with tear-filled eyes. "Can we get him out, Pastor? Please?" The tub was full of chicken feathers and blood. The blood tinged the entire tub red despite the bleach. The feathers both floated on top and sunk to the bottom, hiding parts of the boy's body. Alfred didn't need to see the whole thing to know that it didn't look good beneath the chicken parts. The parents didn't need to see this, not if they were to keep going along with God's plan. "Let me clean him up, Terry and Patricia. Ya'll go ahead on and I'll dry him and get him dressed. Leave one of them pills on the counter there." He stood, not looking at the two of them, not even going to give them the chance to brook dissent. The two parents slowly walked out of the bathroom, their heads down. Alfred waited until they were gone before he moved. He took his shirt and pants off, stripping himself down to his underwear. He looked at the red liquid and said a silent prayer that God would keep him from any disease. He reached in and pulled Ryan from the murky water. The boy groaned on the way up, clearly the pain beginning to rise above the drugs. The kid was heavy, especially with the damned wings, and Alfred barely got him from the tub to his wheelchair without falling out himself. He sat down on the edge of the tub, the bleached bloody water cold on his ass as it soaked through his underwear. Alfred stared at the boy, growing more worried with each passing second. This wasn't good. He couldn't sit here and pray himself into thinking it was. The boy's body had begun to swell up, looking fat and disgusting. Blood dripped from the welts that covered his flesh, the bleach having eaten through his skin like some kind of parasite. Alfred had told the parents that God would put some type of healing potion in the water, but that hadn't been the case. Christ no, it hadn't. Red, bleeding welts stretched from the kid's neck down to his feet. "Oh, God, what have we done?" Alfred whispered. He couldn't hide it from the parents. And yet... he couldn't be wrong about this. He just couldn't be. The Lord had come to him too many times telling him what must happen... and Ryan's parents saw God too. In their dreams. No, this was the Devil's work again, trying to confound the faithful. Alfred would do his part. He'd cover the boy and explain to the parents what was happening. The Lord worked in mysterious ways and they had to understand that. Alfred vomited in the toilet twice while putting Ryan's clothes on. 9. The sun was hot on the final day of Ryan's changing. It beat down on the church's back lawn as if they had somehow offended it. The congregation was there, every single one of them. Alfred P. Cunningham had promised a lot and today he would deliver. The Lord had come to him last night, laying everything out perfectly. They were to have service outside today, underneath God's sky and the cleansing power of the sun. Ryan Bilbox was already sitting in his chair. The wings he wore were mostly destroyed, the metal aluminum beneath bent and twisted, poking through the cloth. A few scattered chicken feathers still stuck to them, but the magnificence had worn off. "I want to thank you all for coming. Sincerely. From the bottom of my heart." Alfred stood in the middle of the congregation, their chairs circling around him four rows deep. His hands were on the back of Ryan's wheelchair, and as he spoke, he turned the boy so they all could see him. Ryan wasn't smiling anymore as he had been last week at church. They'd loaded him up on so many painkillers, Alfred didn't think he had a clue where he was even at. A steady stream of drool rolled down his cheek, though the turtleneck he wore mopped it all up before it hit his neck. The patches beneath his clothing were scabbing over for the most part, but there were many places that looked as infected as his back. The boy gave off a stench that smelled of rotten meat and spoiled milk, things left in the sun too long. Alfred had doused him with cologne before rolling him out onto the field, but that stench couldn't be hidden for long—especially not in this heat. "Brothers and sisters, today is the day." Alfred looked back to the fourth row of circles. "Brother Brian, how long have you been with this church?" "Forty years." "FOUR-TEE YEARS!" Alfred shouted. "And you've been waitin' for a miracle ain'tcha? Been waiting on God to send someone that would take us all back up to heaven, ain't that right?" "Amen!" "Amen!" The praises came up from all around him and Alfred was glad to hear it. His voice was taking their attention from the boy, which was good—if they focused too much on him, their enthusiasm might waiver. It didn't matter, though. God was nearly upon them and He would lift this boy up into His loving arms and replace whatever ailed him with the righteous power of angels. No more fake wings. No more red and bleeding skin. This boy would be perfect in just a few more moments. The Lord had said it and so it would be. "I want to especially thank Terry and Patricia. They've shown more faith than just about anyone I've ever seen and God is surely to reward them for it. Not in the next life either, but in this one. In just a few minutes, to be matter of fact. Because their son... I can barely even believe it. Ryan here is moments away from being an angel. If you have faith, let me hear an amen!" "AMEN!" "Now," Alfred continued, "we've kept much of what we've done in private, but the Lord spoke to me and told me the last part is to be done in front of all you. Because we must show our faith as a congregation, not as individuals. And your participation is as important as mine, as Ryan's parents, too. You must watch and believe that the good Lord is goin' to deliver us from evil. Do you understand, brothers and sisters?" The brothers and sisters affirmed their understanding. "Good, good, good." "Now, we've made this boy's body resemble as close to an angel as we can here on Earth. Because that's what God wanted. He commanded Jesus to go without food and water for forty days, and he commanded us to do this. But if He can keep Jonah alive in the belly of a fish, then He can certainly raise this boy high into the air. No doubt about it." "None." "Not a one." Alfred nodded, feeling the moment approaching. "Ruth, bring that on out here now." He looked out into the crowd as his wife approached. "The last thing we're missing, brothers and sisters, is a halo. And that's what we're going to do together. We're going to give this little angel a halo, and when we finish, there won't be nothin' little 'bout him no more." Ruth made her way through the circles of chairs. Her left hand carried a gold-painted, circular tube. It wasn't nothing more than a piece of an electric bug zapper that Alfred had laying around the house. He'd taken it apart and gave it to his wife, who then painted it and attached the three metal rods to it. The bottom of the metal rods would fit on Ryan's head, allowing the halo to stand high above it. Ruth's right hand carried a staple gun. She handed the gun to Alfred and then stepped to the side. "Terry, come on up here," the pastor said. Terry stood from the front row and walked to his son. "Patricia, you too." She did as she was bid. "Let's hold hands," Alfred said. "All of you surrounding us hold hands too. Bow your heads as we bow ours and let's ask God for His grace and power." Alfred took the two parents in either hand and waited as his congregation did the same. "Dear God, our Lord and Savior, we come to you ready for your love and blessings to rain down upon us like the cleanest water to ever touch this Earth. These two parents here have suffered in your name, truly doing your bidding. Indeed, we all have, as we did what you asked. Now, though, at the time of truth, we ask for your strength and your guidance to carry us through. Because on the other side of this act is a glory that ain't none of us ever thought we'd live to see. I pray all of this in Jesus's name. Amen." The crowd around him concluded the same. "Now, if you two'll take your seats, we'll bring an angel down upon us, okay?" Both Terry and Patricia had tears in their eyes and were smiling wide. Alfred P. Cunningham returned their smiles and gently hugged them both. They had suffered and he was ready to relieve them of it. God was too; Alfred knew it. The parents sat and his wife took their place next to the boy. They had rehearsed this late into the previous night. She took the makeshift halo and held it above the boy's head, while Alfred lined up the metal rods with the boy's skull. Lord, thank you for this opportunity, he prayed silently. He took the staple gun and placed it against the rod, pressing down hard so that the business end of the gun touched Ryan's skin. He pulled the trigger. He didn't look at what he'd done, but moved to the next spot. He knew that God wouldn't finish the job until he finished the job. Boom. The staple gun fired in his hand again. And finally, he stepped around to the last third of the boy's skull. He lined the gun up perfectly and shot the staple into his head. He stepped back. Alfred could feel the electricity almost rising behind him, the people ready for their miracle. Blood dripped down Ryan Bilbox's face. It streamed from six different holes, two from each staple. One had been pushed into the middle of his forehead, and the two streams dripped down either side of his nose; the left bloodstream mixed with the drool stemming from his mouth. Alfred took another step back, unsure exactly how God planned on doing this, but knowing if he was in the way, he could be injured. Another thirty seconds passed. Ryan's head fell forward, his chin resting on his chest. Patricia let out a small cry from behind Alfred, breaking his concentration. The halo now tilted heavily from the boy's head, gravity pulling it toward his lap. The staples in the back of his skull still held it firm, but the metal rods were bending. Blood dripped from the boy's forehead, splattering on his black suit. "Ryan?" Terry said. "One second," Alfred called back. Sweat covered his own brow and he felt his chest tightening up. There it was. That was the Lord's sign, that He was coming now. Alfred's hands went to his left pectoral, though he didn't know it. He was caught up in the rapture of the Lord's arrival. Sure, his chest hurt, and sure a boy looked like he was dying right in front of him, but God had spoken and God would not lie. Alfred P. Cunningham collapsed to the ground. The congregation around him stood up, many gasping. Patricia Bilbox began to scream—her voice sounding like a meadow full of pleating lambs. Alfred P. Cunningham stared up at the sky and blackness started swimming on the outsides of his vision. His chest hurt, but that's only because the Lord was so powerful. Darkness came over him quickly, and then he was in God's arms. The rest of his congregation that he had led so faithfully for the past ten years stared at their dead preacher and their mangled boy. Many were sobbing, others only looking on with blank faces, as if still waiting for God to shine His holy light and end the madness before him. In the end, God never showed up. Lights did come though. The police from the town twenty miles east. ⁂ [ HUMAN-KINGS by Austin Biela ] We have known that the universe would one day die. We learned that early in our history. We had the theories of the Big Bang and of entropic equilibrium, of a universal state where there would be nothing, things that pointed us to one, inevitable ending and we accepted that. We accepted it like a child accepts death; tragic when it happens to others but inconceivable for ourselves. It was too far in the future to consider by those who first discovered this. There was nothing to fear. It didn't concern them beyond an idea to discuss with their peers. We focused on the present and the future we had ahead of us. As human-kind developed, this looming certainty was shelved in the back of our minds. Within a few hundred years, human-kind began to explore its cosmic surroundings. We took our ships to the planets in our immediate solar system and colonized whatever we could, living out dreams of space exploration. In another millennium, we developed even faster ships that could take us even farther into the universe without tearing down, travelling along the expressways of sunbeams, and the technology suitable to make living in such a ship almost enjoyable. We fulfilled an existence-long ambition to meet the interstellar community. They gave us technology and in turn we gave them some of our own. The men and women who made these transactions described it as bizarre, "to think that such advanced life would trail behind in places where we have dominated." Though it had to be reconfigured for their biology, our gifts of medical technology and pharmaceutical substances gave the first impression of human-kind to all of the interstellar community who heard. We were survivalists and survivors. The next several thousand millennia proceeded at a brisk pace. Human-kind was brought into the fold of the universe's culture, like the youngest child being taught all the tricks and secrets by their older siblings. We learned how to partake in universal politics, the best ways to discuss universal trade and even the proper, expected actions taken when engaging in war. Where there was disorder in the universe, this culture had maintained control. Those first alien races that had established this culture had passed down their values to its current occupants, the primary tenet being to make the best of the time they had now. Of course, there were always detractors and problem-starters. Warmongers, corrupt tradesmen, rambunctious races that decided they didn't want to maintain control at all. This wasn't us. Human-kind was glad that we were considered a valued part of the culture, an older sibling that needed to help integrate the next race that managed interstellar travel and met the challenge. Still, there were times when human-kind couldn't help but feel like it was being amused by our older siblings. They would watch in fascination as we would colonize worlds that would never be fit for hospitable existence. Instead of just building space stations, they would smirk as we talked about landing and building colonies on barren planetary bodies. They didn't see the point in it. We could never live there naturally as a species. We could never grow cities the size of which we had on Earth or on other, more suitable planets. The same level of examination and investigation could easily be done with machines. What benefit was there to be had in looking at the rocks in person? We took it with a smile and laughed at how we just preferred it like this, while mumbling under our breaths and scowling when they weren't looking. Why couldn't they understand? Other times, we were the ones who couldn't understand. From time to time, we would have the sudden rise of doomsday cults. They would often start small and then die out. Other times, they'd grow and grow until nearly entire colonies were converted, proclaiming either the end of the planet, the solar system or of the universe itself. Human-kind tried to keep such groups quiet, especially when our older siblings were around to hear it, like a teenager with an embarrassing fascination. Instead, our older siblings only laughed and seemingly commended the doomsday groups for their acceptance. Our older siblings thought that, while it may have been silly to expect the end of days to come so quickly or to be soon, their embrace of the end was an example we could learn from. It didn't sit well with us. In the collective mind of human-kind, our backburners began to heat up. Thousands of millennia continued to pass. Human-kind saw many of our older siblings pass away. Their records and shared technology were all that was left of them. They had all been wiped out for various reasons. Victims of interstellar war that were caught off-guard and soon eradicated, a disease that boiled their bodies from the inside out and was too fast to properly diagnose, a freak accident of a meteor taking out their hive-mind collective. They all began to fade, until human-kind were the oldest sibling. We did our best to teach to the new ones what our predecessors had taught us, but our words were hollow. We discovered something about ourselves that we did our best to hide from those races under our tutelage. We had never really believed in the tenet of making the best of the time we had now. We had accepted it as individuals, but never as a race. Human-kind did not want to make the best of the time we had now. We didn't want to give up our time. We had come too far, hadn't we? Apparently, others thought so as well. Soon, many of our younger siblings began to pass away, all for the same reasons our predecessors had. Yet human-kind remained, old and wise and powerful, having amassed the collective technology of the universal culture, including the technology that was no longer around. There was unrest in the culture. There were those races that called for human-kind to share the amassed power we had and to step back from universal politics. They began to call us, as best as we could translate, "human-kings." This was theoretical of course. Human-kind had no one political power or advantage over any other race. We may have made our mistakes, but as a whole, we did not control or strong-arm any race into doing something they were against nor did we lord what we had over our younger siblings. No, what they were calling for was our death, for us to let them take our place and fade away with the rest of our older siblings. They thought we had lived for too long. There were even some races that tried to enact our demise. They would gather in secret before launching an attack, their metal battalions battering down on an unsuspecting colony. Sometimes, they were even able to win a fight but one colony was all that they ever acquired. While the fear of extinction had separated us from our younger siblings, it had united us as a race. Death on a universal scale was no longer tolerated and retribution was efficient upon our foes. Those usurpers that survived only went on to say that, the closer human-kind came to death, the harder we fought back. We reminded our universal community that we were survivalists and survivors. We seemingly convinced them that we could not be killed and perhaps that we were eternal. No, not yet. This was the state of affairs for many millennia. Human-kind's presence was tolerated amongst the stars, still a part of the universal culture. We attended the same meetings and gatherings that required our presence, donated our supplies and troops without expectation of compensation, and shared a fraction of our scientific discoveries and technology, the things we believed would be universally beneficial. In turn, the same was given to us and human-kind put all of it to use. The fear of universal death trickled down to the common human and efforts were placed against that fear. While we knew then that death came for everyone in the end, that didn't mean we couldn't prolong it. We found ways to extend life without sacrificing physical ability, growing to the age of 200, then 300, then 500, then 700, then a millennium. We became the new Methuselahs. Our younger siblings watched as we refused that ever-lingering limitation, letting out subtle sighs of relief when our long-standing diplomats and politicians finally passed away, and watched their young replacements with anticipation, wondering how long this one would last. It was a sign that we were still like them, bound to the inevitable. They didn't know how deep our reputation ran within us. There is no exact date to when human-kind looked up and saw the stars begin to die out in large numbers. Like a plague through a crowded city, darkness was sweeping through the skies and across all lines of sight. The end of the universe showed signs of arriving. We were still not ready. The once-great inevitability that our planet-locked ancestors had accepted became a startling reality human-kind could not ignore. As our younger siblings had long wanted, human-kind withdrew itself from the universal culture. We pulled out all resources, troops and foreign bodies and gathered ourselves together into planetary clusters. We evacuated colonies and boarded ourselves away from our younger siblings. Human-kind focused solely on itself and its new line of inquiry. Research and technology investigated into new types of metal, things durable and strong enough to withstand the pressure of black holes and the heat of supernovas. Our younger siblings were all but happy to finally be rid of us and any attempt to contact us was met with pleas to go away and leave us to our work. No one noticed or recorded when our last encounter with another race of beings was. Human-kind was alone once again. Time had no meaning when our ark was finally launched. It was our finest creation. Forged from the strongest metals we could create, it was built to sustain anyone who lived inside it forever. It was the size of a solar system and it had to be. The amount of technology to both store the collected history and knowledge of human-kind, as well as the life-sustaining machinery, the self-sustaining energy generators, and the remaining 333 billion population of human-kind required every inch of that size. The only flaw to it was that there were no means of holding everyone in a cryogenic state. The generator wouldn't be able to handle all we asked of it and the ark would've failed. We weren't going to let that happen. It was built at the farthest edge of what remained of our galaxy, directed out into an unyielding emptiness. Its purpose was simple. It was built to last us past the death of our current universe and, with any hope, bring us forth into the next. Once everyone was aboard, our long wait began. The fear of whether we would survive this long began to fade and was replaced with anxiety and boredom. We had spent nearly a millennium preparing for these moments and now found that we had no idea what to do with the time we had. We began to tinker and toy with the resources on hand, exploring the massive artificial gardens we had created for agriculture and the way we recycled everything, including our wastes. There was no safety of mind for dumping things out into whatever void was left out there. Everything flushed away was cleaned and redistributed or used for fertilizer. As for entertainment, the arks had a near-complete recorded history of human-kind's stories and digital media. Human-kind would reteach itself all over again, ready for the generations of people that would be born aboard the ark. In fact, this was the first problem human-kind on the ark faced. With so much time and freedom, people found bedfellows far too easily and in surplus. Sex became a thing to pass the time and soon a wave of offspring were born from it. The appointed leaders of the ark, the engineers and crew who designed and were trained to maintain the ark itself, set the rules for population control. Though the ark was mighty, overpopulation was still a concern. Too many people at one time would only be a drain on the resources which, while built to continually renew itself, still came with a cycle. It was decided that only official couples would have children and then only one at a time. When the possibility of twins was brought up, it was resolved with a medical procedure that would reverse the cell division, ideally reverting to an only child. Though it was met with some outcry, the decision of facing either human-kind's ultimate end or keeping themselves under control seemed an obvious choice. Millennia began to pass and human-kind settled into habit. There were few complaints and they seemed small in comparison to extinction. One was how the meat, all synthetic and mass-produced, lacked any taste of the real thing, none of the blood and fat and juices that came from cooking living things. The reasoning was that having any other animal life on the ark besides human-kind would only be a burden. Another was how only the appointed leaders were allowed access into certain areas, reasoned away by it being technical information that was unnecessary for the comfort of human-kind. Otherwise, life was calm and well and people grew more bored than scared anymore. To try and stay focused, they turned their attentions to either books, digital media, historical recordings, or to the health and education of the next generation. These ark-based children, who knew nothing of existence besides sterile rooms and empty hallways, were the main attraction for everyone who knew any couple with a child. Everyone found it imperative that these children know about human-kind, know about our great history and eternal legacy. For the first hundred years of this generation's life, we had them learning every single recorded word, from the earliest history of Earth to our first encounter with the universal culture to the day the ark launched. There was no motion to produce new culture yet. Human-kind wanted to bask in the glory of its past and prepare for it all over again when they could leave. That peace and settlement could not last. In the year 1066 AE, "After the End," one of the older residents of the ark fell over dead. Those who had witnessed the scene were interviewed later and reported that he had clutched his heart and strained against the back of the chair he sat in. When they saw it, they didn't understand what had just happened. We had grown so comfortable and serene in the ark that his passing came as a reminder. We had not escaped that force. If anything, we were surrounded by it more than ever before. We did our best to not panic. Like a flash, it had left us stunned in the aftermath and we tried to live as we had for the last millennium. Still, there was a mood that swept through human-kind. What they had once been content to learn through our books and recorded media, the younger generation began to ask their parents about why it was so important that the ark be built and why this man's death startled us. So, we passed down our instincts of survival. We had taught our children of the true greatness of human-kind. So now we taught them of our ultimate nature. When the man had finally been carted away, there were inquiries and demands to know what would come next. They all boiled down to a simple question: "What would happen to the body?" He couldn't be recycled like waste. He was a human, he deserved better than that. It seemed that the administrators had already foreseen this, claiming to have the foresight to think rationally even in stressful times, as they had in the ark's construction, and revealed a previously unknown part of the ark. A morgue, an enormous rotund space with every inch chilled to near-freezing temperatures, with which to store the bodies of those who passed on our journey. Preserving the dead was much simpler than cryogenically freezing someone and so it was deemed necessary. When we would finally land, we would properly bury the bodies, in ways that that had been deemed respectable in the times before the ark. Yet, the administrators were not as rational as they thought or perhaps tried to hide it from themselves. In another millennium, the morgue was more than half full. Even the bodies of the administrators were stored there, packed away among countless others, while their children took their place. Soon, the first generation had died and the second took their place, the third generation beginning the same lessons and hearing the same centuries long history lessons that their parents had heard. In that time, there was still no trace of the next universe, no sign that our journey would produce results. We were still surrounded by oblivion with no end in sight and human-kind persisted in numbers. The morgue had failed. So, instead of being shut down or scrapped, its purpose was transformed. In the year 2108 AE, as human-kind came together for their dinner, the first ark-bred generation partook in our first real taste of meat. We loved it. No one suspected a thing, only noting how much more sensual the food was for once in our life. It did more than satisfy and nourish. It excited and engaged our disused taste buds, only accustomed to bitter tastes and the occasional sugar spike. Portions were disappearing almost the instant we sat down to enjoy them. Children kept coming for more and more, begging and pleading for any way to sneak out a second portion, even a mere scrap. Not only the children, but the adults too. Everyone to taste the meat couldn't get enough of it. We never even bothered to ask where the meat could have possibly come from. Perhaps we chalked it up to some advancement in the culinary skill of the cooks or perhaps some lenience with the administrators over what could be used to spice the portions. After dinner, we found out that the administrators did have a hand in it after all but never in a way we could have imagined. When the administrators announced what they had done, we thought it was a joke or some ill-advised prank. The current captain, the head of the administrators, was a stern woman but surely, she was capable of jesting with us? But no, she was quite serious. The loss of free space in the morgue was becoming a growing problem, one she felt had to be solved post-haste. So, she and the other administers had found a solution, one that freed space within the morgue and made use of the removed bodies. As they explained themselves to us all, they made it clear that this was not an action taken lightly. It had come after many years, possibly a century's worth of consideration, but she had decided that it was the best solution. She had even tried to seem self-sacrificing, the first of the cuts having come from the previous administrators, including her father, our previous captain, the ex-head of the administrators and the one who had introduced the morgue in the first place. She stood by this new form of human waste and disposal, citing the name of survival itself. Her words left us trembling. We felt disgusted at first. Human-kind had not openly engaged in such an act since we were planet-locked and any revelation regarding it was considered taboo and repulsive. However, we had never experienced it. We had never had a line of comparison before within the ark, between the manufactured meat and the real thing. No one denied the difference, how we all clamored for more when we didn't know the truth about it. That truth, that point of origin, wouldn't change how it tasted. From the time of her announcement to when the next dinner rush came, the ark was all talk about the new meals. Parents would send children away as we talked, wondering if we should go to the next serving of portions or could avoid it. There was talk of boycotting the meals and having them find another way to dispose of the growing bodies, if the morgue couldn't be used as one. We knew we couldn't throw them out of the ark, not while the fear of utter extinction still resided out there, as was believed what would happen if the doors of the ark were open too long as there existed nothing else outside. This wasn't like with space and airlocks. As long as there was the utter chance that even opening the doors would lead to the destruction of the ark, so long as there was only void, they would remain shut. There was even talk about overthrowing the current administrators, who were said to not have been eating the meals themselves and were either mad enough to incite this plan or cruel enough to inflict it under a populace that needed them, but none of it meant anything. It was the hollow venting of frustration, the adjustment of a new way of life. No one would ever try to overthrow the administrators. They were the ones who knew the secrets of the ark. Not even that, they were the only ones who knew how to run the thing, to utilize the scanners and equipment necessary to maintain the ark as well as look for anything outside. The ark had not been built with windows, for the administrators had feared the psychological effect it might have to peer out and see the void, so it scanned instead. Without the administrators, there would be no leaving the ark. Still, that was not what really kept us from moving against her. We didn't act because we believed she was right. So, when the time for the next dinner came, everyone slowly shuffled to where the dinner was being held, uncertainty still lingering over the new food. What we had not expected was to see the captain herself, her presence broadcast on all the screens in the ark, already standing alone in front of the food dispensaries. She just stood there. She had been waiting for us. The children complained about her being there before them but we held them back, wanting to see what would happen. When she was sure that we were all watching, she made the order for a meal. It was a meal of mashed potatoes, a thin pea soup and a slab of the meat. We expected her to play around with it, to wait to taste of it, to show some signs of reluctance at the thing that could have once been her father. No, the first thing she did was grab her knife and fork and cut off a piece. She stabbed into it and raised it to her lips, our eyes watching every second of it in anticipation. She bit down and chewed and we heard the most satisfied hum we had ever heard. She swallowed and began to cut the meat up into other pieces, a smile on her lips and a blush on her face. She mixed it with her soup and potatoes, slowly devouring it as though it had been her first meal all day, and we agreed. The meat was unlike anything else. There was nothing like it. We watched her devour it until she was running her finger along the edge of the plate, sucking up any juice that remained off her fingers. Then, when she was done, she got up, returned the plate to be washed, and left, regaining her dignified posture and sense of presence. That had solved it. There was no more hesitation. We scrambled to be the next to eat the food, to mix it just as our captain had done or simply swallow huge chunks of the portions. We told ourselves we did it in the name of survival. We convinced ourselves that this was only natural and that our predecessors would want this. We would live through them. It was the best that human-kind could do. The mood of human-kind had changed once again. Though death was still feared, it was no longer seen as another failure. It was seen as more hope for the rest of us. The morgue ceased to be anything less than cold storage from then on. There were plenty of bodies to live off of, plenty to cook and heat up and sauté. Families were given rights to the first cut whenever one of their own was being served. When one of us died, instead of avoiding talking about their missing presence, their family and friends discussed what they might be served with and hoped for a hearty meal. There were even those that tried to skip ahead, that cut tiny portions of themselves and heated it up as a snack. When they were found out, they were admonished and disgraced. How dare they horde themselves away? How dare they act so selfishly, so as to keep from everyone else's chances? This was the state of the ark for many millennia. Things remained as they always had, living, breathing, teaching and now devouring. Our second captain died a hero and a revered leader, her body treated as a delicacy on the day she was served and the scene of her child eating of her meat broadcast for everyone to watch. It became tradition for each new administrator to personally devour their parent for all the ark to see. This new way of life though was only to hearken new things. In the year 10,871 AE, the only allowed child of a 10th Generation couple was born and he was named Jakobson. It had only taken the first glance from all those involved to know that something about the child was different. Even as an infant, he barely resembled either of his parents. Though only newborn, his skin was gaunt and a light tan. His fingers already seemed long and narrow and his eyes bulged from an already enlarged skull. Now, between the 8th and 10th generations, it was becoming increasingly common for the newborns to have some sort of small mutation. Perhaps they had an extra finger or perhaps they had heterochromia. Medicine and science had come far enough that anything too terrible could be treated and with a little gene therapy or surgery, we could be adjusted. The doctors gave no such chance to young Jakobson. Gene therapy on a newborn was unheard of and the doctors agreed to watch over the baby while his parents were to wait at home. When he was dead, they could try and petition the administrators for another child. So, the doctors tried to make the young baby comfortable and waited. They waited for hours. They waited for days. They waited for a week. When they went to check on him, they were shocked as Jakobson squealed when the light hit his eyes. It was a dry squeal, so it sounded deeper than expected of a baby, but it was a squeal nonetheless. Looking over the child, he was even thinner than before, nearly all skin and bones. The nurses admitted to feeding him rarely and even then only morsels, just something to make his supposed passing easier. It was only enough to feed a baby for a day, not at all a week. Despite the odds, he had survived. From there, Jakobson, named Jakob for short, had a strange life. When he finally went home, his parents cared for him unconditionally. His mother especially loved on her baby boy, proud of his survival. She would brag on his behalf and tell about how able he was, growing up just as any other baby his age. People who knew the couple would gather around, marveling and wondering how such a child could last a week on next to nothing. Though he usually looked like he would fall apart at any second, he grew just as any other child did and eventually attended school just like other children. Those children that questioned Jakob about his strange appearance were reprimanded by their teachers, who knew of Jakob's story from word of mouth or from his parents. As he grew, his reputation continued to proceed him and popularity began to follow. Even as his skin continued to grow tan and leathery to the touch, there were still adolescent boys and girls who wished to kiss his shriveled cheek and fantasized about his rangy fingers grasping their naked bodies. Even as his skull continued to enlarge, sloping back and to the left, he was heaped upon with scholarly expectations and met with each and every one. Even as his body began to grow and his once spindly form doubled in size, bones and muscles pressing against his skin, both teachers and students watched in marvel as he pulled himself up the ropes and suspended himself in the air with his strength alone. He was the boy who seemed to be everything human. Yet we who did not have the pleasure of meeting him were not so easily impressed. Word of Jakob spread through the ark as people continued to watch his growth. There was no teacher or authority figure to admonish us when we pointed out how unique he appeared. There were those of us who described him as disproportionate and misshapen, a body that had somehow slipped away from medicine and science to produce something so different. The most ashamed and removed of us even described him as inhuman. Yet none of us would ever say it aloud or admit thinking so to anyone. His existence was proof enough of how fallible this claim was. He had survived, so he was human. To say otherwise meant to interrogate everything that they had sacrificed to make it this far. This was all it took to keep us quiet. Still, Jakob's story had only just begun. By his 1st century birthday, reports began to flood in of new births, babes as malformed and suspected not long for life as Jakob had been. This time, knowing of Jakob's story, we embraced our bundles of joy and began to compare them to each other. When their mothers met with each other, a baby with two mouths would find itself in competition with one that had a third arm growing from their side. They were taught the same as Jakob was, heaped upon with the same expectations and, just like Jakob, met most all of them. In fact, we taught them to aspire to Jakob, as the true icon that he is. He was their forbearer, their advent, and it was true. Jakob had only been the first in what was to come. Slowly and surely, these new figures of human-kind grew in number. Soon, entire classrooms of these children were being taught, each made special and unique by one trait or another. They followed Jakob in lifestyle, wanting to do right by us and human-kind. It is even said that Jakob visited the classroom in which his future wife was just starting to learn. By the time Jakob was 250 years old, the population of this special human-kind was a quarter of the population of the ark. There were fewer average human births. No one wanted an average human birth. Not even the administrators wanted average births. In his middle-age years, Jakob and his family became good friends with all of the administrators. The administrators flooded his parents with questions, wanting to know what raising Jakob had been like and were eager to plunge any secrets from them that may have resulted in the miracle baby. His wife, Annabelle, had been given special permission to give birth to two babies, was the envy of many and lorded her status as the sole reason Jakob's line would go on, as far as anyone else knew. The captain himself was especially fond of Jakob. He would often invite Jakob over to his personal cabin to talk about the ongoing of the ship and various theories and ideas they had about ancient human-kind history, when we were still planet-locked. He would often insist they share a drink of alcohol, instructing his wife to come and bring them the glasses. She would serve it to him while wearing shirts with plunging necklines and skirts that displayed her supple thighs. Once they were thoroughly buzzed, the captain would often make the excuse of going to find a certain book for them to read over and discuss next time, going out to the ark's library to retrieve it. He would leave Jakob alone with his wife and not return for hours. As the population shifted and more creative mutations began to emerge, our older members of human-kind, who looked more like our ancestors than the current generation, went to work trying to understand what was happening. We were not urged on by fear of our surroundings, for we saw nothing to fear. We were not compelled by duty to the rest of human-kind, for there was nothing to resolve. No, in truth, we acted with jubilation and enthusiasm. We were excited for the task, ready to put our minds into action, to shed the nausea and veil of boredom that left us stagnant. We had all the knowledge to toil over but none of the application. We were desperate for anything. We toiled for years upon years, excited for any one new piece of information or discovery, no matter how inconsequential. Gradually, the new generation took our place until it was not uncommon to run the tests on ourselves, just for the slightest indication of difference. At dinners, we would meet and discuss our findings, only ever stopping to tear and devour our meat, something we can never get enough of. The day Jakob died was a day of mourning for all the ark. All experiments were halted and everyone watched their screens as those closest to Jakob gave some parting words on his life, words we had heard ever since he had been a child but listened to again. Through a single involuntary act, Jakob had paved the way for the rest of human-kind and reaffirmed that all important part of ourselves. Survive. When his body was cooked and prepared, people whispered and admired how his family ate of his body, his wife's mouth prying open from cheek to cheek, jaw unhinged, to consume and digest as much of her late husband as she could. His children, who were not born with mouths like their mother, ripped and cut the meat into bite sized portions, skewering it with their forks, or fingers in the case of his daughter, and tore at it with sharpened canines, all while the crowd silently supported them. His family later described him as tasting tougher than other meats but having an odd spiciness that was otherwise unknown to them from prior meals. After that, little else happened. The administrators locked themselves away, focusing on their work of sustaining and watching over the ark, and we saw nothing of them for millennia. The body of human-kind continued to change, children looked less and less like their parents with every passing generation. They had to be reminded, when being taught our history, that those beings on the screen, all sharing a common frame, were our ancestors and, just like we were doing now, they survived. Because that's what we were doing. We were surviving. As long as we remained, as long as our legacies continued, no matter how chaotic or mutated or strange our bodies became, we would survive. That was all that mattered now. As long as we survived, little else mattered. Then, one day in the year 10 billion AE, the ark shook. The ship tilted and everyone was thrown about. The voice of the administrators, who we had almost begun to doubt ever existed in the first place, came on and warned all of human-kind to lock themselves in their rooms and watch their screens for upcoming news and information. We did as we were told, our frames shuffling as quickly as we could into our rooms with our families and friends. We turned on our screens and saw the faces of the administrators. Their time alone amongst themselves had guided them. They were all cyclopes with one white, filmy eye, frail forms strapped to their chairs to keep their bodies upright. They drew our attentions to the video feed, warning us to only focus on the center of the screen and not along the borders. We listened and watched. There, we saw a white, flaming ball floating in the void. Our bodies and minds shook in the silence, unable to quite comprehend what was in front of us and being drawn towards the black of the blasphemous void. Then the administrators welcomed us to the beginning of a new universe, resetting the clocks to the year 0 NU, New Universe. With those words in our heads, all fear and anxiety about the void was banished. There were certainly children conceived on that day and the morgue was raided of multiple bodies in celebration. Human-kind had not known such happiness in such a long time, not since before the time of Jakob's death. Our journey was halfway done. We had survived the end all the way to the beginning. We would live on again, in a new universe, and reestablish the greatness of human-kind. The generations continued. The administrators allowed us to watch the foundations of the universe to be settled, the ark's machines finally able to process an existence outside itself. We recorded everything that we could, from the birth of the first stars to the first recorded instance of a planetary body. It was all so alien, so new, and so strange. We reviewed our histories, back when we had been planet-locked. We remembered the struggles that had always proceeded us. We remembered the battles and wars. Physical necessity wasn't an issue, the ark had proved that much. But co-habitations with others was discussed. Human-kind had always been hunted. There was always somebody out to kill us, to remove us, to stop us from living another day. The tide of favor began to turn. I was born in the year 13 billion NU, and am said to be one of the last of the ark children. I grew from my mother's womb, tearing through with already sharpened digits, taking her life with me. My father assured me that she tasted succulent. I sometimes think I can taste her when I try to imagine the scene, father's jagged, misshapen fangs tearing through roasted flesh. It does not matter, for I am of human-kind. We are all of human-kind. There is nothing to us but human-kind. As I grew, I heard us talking about the end of the journey and I listened to us. We had found a planet that had developed multicellular life. By the time we reach it, it will have a wonderful, horrid ecosystem. It will reek of life and death. We children grew excited while the adults shuddered. The planets would sprout civilizations again, alien worlds with their own agendas and desires. They will want to be rid of us again. They will want the extinction of the ark children, of their human-kings. Because of this, I have been tasked with writing this very message you hear now. To whoever finds this, I tell you now. Don't blame us. We don't have any choice. There is nothing else we can do. If we don't, it would all have been for nothing. Do not stand in our way. We will not hesitate. Human-kind will survive, even if that means alone. ⁂ [ WRIGGLERS by Chantal Boudreau ] Maddy and Charley weren't sure what city kids did for summer vacation normally, but they were pretty sure it wasn't what they had in store for their cousin, Scotty. They had protested when their mother explained to them that Scotty's family would be coming to visit from the city, and that they would be expected to keep him company and keep him out of trouble. Neither of them liked the idea of some strange kid tagging along and spoiling the best fun of the year. They both vowed that they would still do everything that they would usually do and drag Scotty with them, whether he liked it or not. They weren't about to let city kinfolk ruin things for them. The morning after his family arrived in the country, Scotty was waiting in the kitchen when Charley and Maddy came down the stairs for breakfast. They were drawn by the smell of apple cinnamon flapjacks and weren't anticipating their visitor so early in the day. They weren't sure what to make of Scotty at first. He was quiet, which was funny, because Charley and Maddy had been led to believe that city kids were tough and mouthy. But Scotty didn't look tough at all. In fact, he seemed much more awkwardly uncomfortable than menacing. He was a little taller than they were, but thinner too, although not in any sort of lean muscular way. The slightly older boy was pale and his hair was a dull brown. Maddy thought he looked goofy too, because his teeth stuck out a little, emphasized by his big nose and small chin. The only thing at all appealing about him was his soft grey eyes. The pair had also heard that city kids were lazy, and they hoped to sneak away that morning before they could be roped into babysitting their cousin for the day. Perhaps their mother suspected that; she was a cunning woman. She was watching and listening for them to rise, and spoke their names loudly to let them know she'd spotted them at the top of the stairs. This may have also been to prevent them from slipping away without breakfast... or Scotty. The three children ate mostly in silence, Charley and Maddy staring at Scotty in unison, while he tried desperately to ignore their glares. He wasn't very good at disregarding them, so he instead began to take stock of them to distract himself. His cousins bore much different appearance than he did; their cheeks were rosy and their skins had already been freckled and bronzed by the sun of late spring and early summer. Their hair, otherwise a colour similar to his, had been altered by the same effects as their skin, sun-bleached with a dash of reddish-gold highlights. "Can you swim?" Charley asked, finally breaking the silence as he started in on his third pancake. "W-what?" Scotty stammered, startled by the sudden question. "He said 'Can you swim'?" Maddy repeated with a smirk. "You know." She made dogpaddle-like gestures. "Um, yeah. I can swim." He had been picking at his food, unaccustomed to a heavy breakfast. The rush of nerves—from actually being addressed by the children—made his stomach do flip-flops, the pancakes seeming even less appetizing. "Good, cuz me an' Maddy are meeting some friends by the little pier. If yer gonna' come with us, it'll help if you can swim. We don't wanna have to be watchin' in case you drown." Charley said this with enough of a sneer that Scotty was sure the boy had already decided that his cousin wasn't worth their time. "Don't worry," Scotty reassured him, pushing his plate away. "I won't get in your way. You can pretend like I'm not even there. I probably won't even get in the water." "Yer not gonna leave that are you?" Maddy asked, gesturing at the remnants of his breakfast. "Mom hates it when people waste food. She went to the trouble of fixin' it. The least you can do is go to the trouble of eatin' it." Scotty felt cornered, their cool stares still locked on him. His stomach continued to rebel, as much from anxiety as from being overly full. He'd always had a sensitive digestive system and this situation wasn't helping any. "Tell you what—I'll do you a favour an' finish those for you," Charley informed him with a snort, nudging an elbow at the uneaten pancakes. "But only if you agree to get in the water. Otherwise, our buddies will think we have pussies for kin. Are you a pussy, Scotty?" Charley grinned, with an edge of mocking maliciousness. "Why don't you wanna swim at our swim-hole," Maddy demanded, with slightly more hostility. "If it ain't some fancy chlorinated pool, it ain't good enough for ya?" That was exactly the reason Scotty had not intended on going into the water. Unlike the pool that he usually swam in, there were living things in the water where his country cousins swam. The pier was by open ocean and there was a wide assortment of sea-life making a home in those waters and along the sandy bottom. When Scotty's mother had mentioned swimming there when she was young, he had found the notion repulsive. Just the idea of slimy seaweed coming in contact with his skin made his flesh crawl. "I'm just not used to swimming in the ocean," Scotty suggested, hoping to defuse the situation. "I hear that it's cold, and that you have to watch out for undertow. I could stay here while you go. I don't have to come with you." Maddy wrinkled her nose at this as Charley began to shovel Scotty's leftovers into his mouth. "Oh yes, you have to come," she insisted. "Mom says we have to take you with us, so you have to come. What Mom says goes round here, so you're just gonna have to grow a pair and put up with the water bein' chilly. Either you do it, or we'll do it for you. Charley and I are strong enough to take you, especially together. We'll dunk you ourselves if we have to. No one's gonna be able to say we're related to a chicken." Against his better judgement and upon threat of a beating and dousing, Scotty put on his swim trunks and gathered up his beach towel. Then he unhappily accompanied his cousins out of the house. The morning air was brisk, but he could feel it warming. He had a feeling the water temperature would be much worse. He noticed his cousins were wearing ratty old sneakers without socks, as opposed to flip flops like him. He soon understood why. Their trip took them through the smelly, squelchy mud of a sea marsh, and then across a cluster of jagged rocks. The rocks kept catching at his mud-sodden footwear and making him stumble. He could hear Charley and Maddy snicker every time he almost fell, as they sprang effortlessly from stone to stone, like coastal mountain goats. They arrived at the little pier, an old construct that was severely worn by weather and littered with barnacles and seaweed. The sun had turned the rotting wood a pale grey, and Scotty wondered if it was safe to walk there. There were already three people and a dog standing atop the aged wharf, so he had to assume that it was. "You're late!" shouted the largest of the three. He was a red-haired kid with freckles wide enough that they blotched together into one near-solid patch. He had the same taunting smile that Charley always wore. "Yeah, what took you so long?" hollered the girl standing next to the redhead, almost half the larger boy's size. The dog beside her started to bark. Scotty swallowed hard. The animal was only a medium-sized dog, but he lived in a building that didn't allow pets, so he wasn't used to them. This one seemed particularly high-strung and snarly, sort of like the kids it accompanied. Maddy jabbed her thumb in Scotty's direction. "It was slowpoke here. He made Charley finish his pancakes, so we didn't head out in time. We warned you we might have to take him with us." "That's yer cousin?" the shorter boy on the pier scoffed. His skin was tanned a deep brown and his eyes and hair were black. He was thick—oddly muscular for someone so young. "Where'd you find him? He's as pale as a ghost. Looks like you dragged him out from under a rock somewhere." "He's a city kid," Charley grunted, and that seemed to be enough explanation, as the others nodded and shrugged. The dog continued to bark. "Shut up, Scamp!" the girl next to it snapped, and she leaned over, giving it a hard slap on its rump. Scotty cringed. The dog yelped. Then it tucked its tail between its legs and sat down, whimpering softly. Charley and Maddy piled onto the wharf alongside their friends, but Scotty waited stiffly on the shore, not wanting to approach the dog and unsure how stable the structure was. The five natives chatted for a few moments about people and places foreign to Scotty, before they all jogged down to the end of the rickety wharf. They tossed their towels onto the warped planking, and then one-by-one, they fearlessly jumped into the frothy water. "Get yer arse in here, Scotty!" Maddy yelled as she splashed at the red-haired boy, whom Scotty had heard them call Derek. He hoped they would have forgotten about him, caught up in their own antics, but his cousins were keener of mind then he'd given them credit. Having him hover on the beach watching them seemed kind of creepy, plus forcing him into the frigid water would bring them some sadistic pleasure. "Looks like he's too scared," the short girl, whom they had referred to as Fran, teased. She kicked her way over to Maddy. "Yer family have a secret yeller streak?" "Scotty..." Charley warned, balling up a fist and glaring his way. Realizing he was not going to escape what he saw as essentially a hazing ceremony, Scotty started to inch his way towards the water. He moved with trepidation, carefully kicking off his flip flops and flexing his fingers before easing his toes into the surf. From Scotty's perspective, it was like ice water. He shivered and pulled them back again. "Dammit, Scotty! If I have to drag you onto that pier and shove you into the water myself, I will—and I won't promise not to bounce your head off one of the side-posts on the way down," Charley growled. Scotty looked at the creaky wharf. Not only did it look dangerous, but on top of Charley's threat, Fran's dog was still skittering from one edge of the planking to the other. He didn't want to give the over-excitable animal an excuse to bite him. With a heavy sigh, he started into the water. He hated the fact that all eyes were upon him as he shuddered and squirmed his way into the water. He stopped advancing once he was waist deep, hoping that it would be enough for his tormentors. They did seem to be satisfied with that and went back to their horseplay, but they would throw an occasional glance his way to make sure he was not trying to sneak back out again. Scotty thought the whole experience was awful. The briny cold water lapping at his goose-pimpled skin was the least of his troubles. The most immediate problem was the seaweed. Scotty had hoped to avoid the slimy yellowish-brown globules, but even steering clear of the large clumps attached to rocks on the sandy bottom was not enough because smaller segments had broken free and were brushing past him on the water's surface. He held his arms up out of the water, his fingers curled in disgust. He soon discovered that there was a second feature to the ocean he disliked even more. The seaweed at least was limp and its only movement was whatever the tide allowed. On the other hand, there was the occasional purposeful movement as something firm grazed one of his legs and then something else made subtle contact with his hip. Scotty bit his lip to avoid crying out, knowing it would draw more negative attention from his cousins. He could not resist, however, when he felt something creep into his swim trunks, into the crack between his buttocks, and then, to his great horror, wriggled up inside of him. It was a fairly gentle sensation, something he might have missed if he weren't tense and standing stock still because of his circumstances. He shrieked, quite loudly, and it echoed around the cove. "What's yer problem now?" Maddy demanded, exasperated. Scotty was flailing about in the water, trying to shake out what had just swum in. He began to hyperventilate, twisting, turning, and pulling at his swim trunks. "Something... touched... me. It..." he gasped, still trying to dislodge his anal invader. Before he could finish his thought, little Fran interrupted. "Of course somethin' did, you big baby. There's a million different types of wrigglers in the cove. There's eels, an' crabs, an' minnows, an' even bigger fish like mackerel." Her chubby little face took on a mean countenance. "Sometimes even schools of bluefish swim in close to the shore. Two summers ago, we weren't allowed to swim here because they were in close an' bein' nasty. They attacked an' ate Bernie Miller's dog. Worst than the dog fish that we spot now an' then. They look like little sharks an' have sharp little teeth." She wanted to scare him. She wanted to make things worse. That was too much for Scotty. He scrambled back to the beach and out of the water. The girls' mocking giggles burned in his ears, but that didn't bother him nearly as much as the awareness that there was still something alive working its way up inside of him. Avoiding the pier and the dog, he instead scurried farther up the beach to a very large rock. He climbed up on top of it and sat there shivering and clutching his legs to his chest as he fought back fearful tears. Resting his chin on his knees, he ignored the other children's taunts and jeers. He felt faint, the blood rushing through his head and pounding in his ears. Every time he was tempted to believe it had been just his imagination, he felt a faint twitching in his gut that made him worry again. His cousins and their friends eventually realized that their teasing was being completely ineffectual. Losing interest in Scotty, they returned to their horseplay. They squealed and splashed and pulled one another gleefully under the surface. Scotty watched where he was huddled on the rock. His stomach ached and he wished that he were back in the comfort of his home. He dried off quickly enough in the hot summer sun, but that wasn't enough to cure his violent shivers. Agitated, he could still feel that something wriggling at his centre. By the time early afternoon arrived and the children decided that it was time to head home for lunch, he had already crept away behind some boulders to throw up what he had eaten of their heavy breakfast, twice. When they returned to the house, Scotty could not bear to even look at his meal, so Charley obliged him and ate his share again. He behaved as though he were doing Scotty a favour and that the awkward boy would be expected to eventually offer him something in exchange. After they had eaten, they started out for the door, planning on a second outing. Scotty did not follow at first, lying on the couch, clutching at his abdomen with his breath coming in tiny laboured gasps. "Come on," Maddie said, tapping her foot in annoyance. "Quit makin' us wait." "Go without me," he mumbled. "I'm sick." He was staring at the ceiling trying to avoid meeting their gazes, but Maddy and Charley could see he wasn't well. His eyes were glassy-looking and although it was difficult to believe, he was paler than he had been earlier that day. That wasn't about to slow them down any. "No way," Charley insisted. "We can't leave you here alone, an' you ain't ruinin' our fun by makin' us stay home an' play nurse. Stop bein' a wuss an' pretendin' like there's somethin' wrong with you just so you don't have to go anywhere. We're goin' to the clubhouse an' yer comin' with us, like we had planned. You can lie in the corner there just like yer doin' here, an' if you need to puke, you can go out an' puke in the woods. It's not like you ate anythin' for lunch" "What if something's really wrong with me? It feels like something's eating up my insides. What if it's appendicitis, or worse?" Scotty groaned. Maddy stomped over to her ailing cousin with a disgusted sigh and placed her hand on his forehead. "No fever," she declared. "If you had appendicitis, you'd be burnin' up. You just got a little stomach bug, is all." She reached down and grabbed his forearm with a firm grip. "Yer comin' with us if we have to drag you. Yer not gonna wreck our fun." She gestured with her head towards Scotty, signalling for Charley to assist her. He flanked Scotty from the other side, grabbing him just as firmly. They pulled the weakened boy to his feet and started tugging him towards the door. Scotty tried to resist but he lacked the strength, being dragged along like a floppy ragdoll instead. It felt to Scotty like they were walking through the woods forever. The entire time, his guts felt like they were on fire: a twisting, churning knot of searing agony. He moaned and slumped in his cousins' grasp, but they ignored his pleas to take him back. "Quit whinin', you big faker," Maddy grumbled. "We're almost there." Their "clubhouse" came into view, a makeshift shack that had been thrown together from broken down pieces of wooden crates and rotting pressboard. The rickety structure was old enough, however, that the damper sections of the pressboard were overgrown with moss. Scotty eyed it warily through his veil of pain. He was surprised that it had somehow managed to resist the elements until now. Not releasing his hold long enough to open the door with his hand, Charley instead nudged it open with his elbow. He and Maddy yanked Scotty into the dingy interior of their clubhouse and literally tossed him into a corner. He lay there in a crumpled heap, panting and muttering something almost incoherent about the wrigglers chewing up his insides. Fran and Derek were already there. The girl stared at Scotty wide-eyed. "Is he okay? He don't look so good," she observed. An instance of doubt flickered through Maddy's eyes, with a hint of conscience. Then she shook her head and shrugged it off. "He'll be fine. It's lie around here or lie around home, an' we don't want him spoilin' our day cuz of a little stomach bug." They had only been there a few moments when Scotty began to throw up. It was mostly dry heaves with the occasional spatter of dark viscous liquid, but it quickly drew an aggressive response from his cousins. "Ewwwww! Scotty, not here! We told ya—if you wanna puke, go out in the woods," Maddy said, pointing at the door. The city boy, now white as the driven snow and sweating profusely, stumbled to his feet with Charley's forceful help and staggered out into the forest. They heard him gagging, whimpering, and crashing haphazardly through the brush before all was quiet again. Charley and Derek seemed nonplussed, going back to their regular activities of digging stolen cigarettes and pillaged alcohol out of their clubhouse hidey-hole. The girls stared at the small puddle that Scotty had left behind in disgust. Fran poked at it with a stick. "There's pinkish goop in there," she remarked. "And is that blood?" "Nah. Probably just strawberry jelly from lunch," Maddy replied, forgetting that Scotty had not actually eaten any lunch. "We'll have to let it dry an' then scrape it up an' toss it. Until then, we'll just have to stay away from it. Their other friend, Allen, finally arrived and the girls immediately warned him away from the vomit patch. "Yeah—it was Scotty," Maddy informed him. "You musta seen him on your way in." Allen shook his head, as he took a seat beside the other two boys. "Nope. Didn't see no one." "Aw, man! The little shit musta headed for home. Probably went to crawl back into bed. He better not let Mom see him. If he rats us out and gets us in trouble, I'll give him a pounding he'll never forget," Charley grumbled. The five decided to forget the other boy for the moment, and proceeded with their usual badness, making sure they chewed wild mint and rolled in pine needles to try to disguise the scent of alcohol and cigarette smoke when they were done. Charley and Maddy's mother was a smoker, so she likely wouldn't notice anyway, her nose having become desensitized to the smell long ago. Arriving home, Charley and Maddy seated themselves for supper. When their mother emerged from the kitchen with food, she glanced with a frown at the extra empty seat. "Where's Scotty?" she asked. Charley shrugged, but the more inventive Maddy offered an explanation for his absence. "We had a long busy day. He was tired an' he wasn't feeling good. He skipped supper an' went straight to bed." She managed to say this with enough conviction that she had her mother convinced. The woman set aside a plate for their visitor, in case he made an appearance later that evening. But he didn't. Charley and Maddy didn't think anything more of Scotty until the next morning, and then it was only to make a concentrated effort to slip out before breakfast, so that they wouldn't get saddled with their unsavoury cousin again. They made their escape successfully this time, and giggled victoriously all the way to the pier. They were thankful to have rid themselves of what they considered a burdensome pest. The pair splashed and played in their customarily boisterous way with their friends, no longer concerned that they might have to fend off embarrassment imposed upon them by their city kin. Towards lunchtime, they started making their way back along their usual route home. "There was an awful lot of wrigglers in the water today," Fran commented, as they walked. "It almost felt like they were squirmin' their way around in my swimsuit." Charley, Allen, and Derek grunted in agreement. Maddy was about to say something herself when Scamp took a sudden interest in something and took off like a streak into the brush. "Scamp! Get back here!" Fran demanded, and when he didn't obey, she started after him, with the other children following closely on her heels. As they approached the area that Scamp circled excitedly, they noticed large quantities of flies swarming overhead. They also detected a very unpleasant odour. "Oh, gross!" Maddy exclaimed, holding her nose. "I think your dog's gone an' found himself some dead animal." As they advanced, however, they soon found it was no animal, but rather a very dead-looking Scotty. His glazed-over eyes were staring unblinking up at the sky. His mouth, left open in an agonized expression, was encircled with bloody spittle. His hands and the entire front of his shirt were coated with scarlet-tainted bile. He looked like he had been there for some time, the better part of a day most likely, as flies crawled in and out of his various orifices and small maggots were creeping across his flesh in places. And lastly, he was curled up in a foetal position, his fingers frozen in rigor atop his badly bloated abdomen. The swollen skin there rippled, as something beneath it moved, like unborn offspring. Fran stepped back, her hand over her mouth, and started to cry. "Oh shit," Charley said glumly. "We are in so much trouble." The other children stood there in horrified silence, until Allen pulled a branch off of a nearby tree, and approached the fly-riddled corpse. "What the hell's going on with his belly?" he asked, morbidly curious. Before anyone could stop him, he jabbed his makeshift tool's point into the distended mound. The stretched skin split with little pressure, as if Scotty's intestines were trying to free themselves from his body. The bloodied strands spilled out, propelled by what thrashed about within them. Several dozen tiny wriggling creatures, about the size of Scotty's thumb tip, writhed about in his glossy entrails and putrefying body fluids. They resembled tiny embryonic sharks, with razor-sharp little teeth that continued to tear through the dead boy's flesh. All five of the children turned away, with everyone but Allen clutching at their stomachs, gagging, and covering their mouths. "What are we gonna do?" Maddy whimpered, imagining her and Charley being shipped off to some sort of reform school. It made her knees weak. She couldn't bear the thought. "We tell no one," Charley insisted, his voice hoarse. "We bury him somewhere in the woods, and we tell people he left us at the pier to make his way back on his own, even though we told him not to. They'll figure he got lost, and by the time someone eventually finds him, they won't be able to tell how he died. Pinky swear?" The five agreed, pinky swore, and set about brushing the little wrigglers free from Scotty's innards, stomping on them with their tattered sneakers. When they were sure the lot had been crushed out of existence, they each found some sort of handhold on the body and started dragging him off to the boggy area where they intended on burying him. Their limbs were numb and their stomachs ached. As they stumbled away, preparing to dispose of the evidence of the damage caused by their cruelty, all of them had but one thought on their minds. Was it just their imagination, or did they feel a faint twitch in their gut... a wriggling at their centre? ⁂ [ LITTLE MONSTERS by Ed Burkley ] "Data log 23.005-B, entry 9. This is Captain Ezekiel Schmitt and I find myself no better off than I was at last entry. There is still no response from the outside... my hope of eventual rescue is starting to look bleak." Schmitt swiveled around in his chair and peered out the cockpit window into the void of space. The ship was adrift; its propulsion systems severely damaged. To conserve energy, Schmitt had routed the power to the science laboratory and cockpit, leaving the rest of the ship inhabitable. The ship, in this auxiliary state, left the cockpit dark and the air thick with the taste of metal on the tongue. Only the blinking lights of the control panel illuminated the room, but even in this faint glow, the toll of the long journey was evident on Schmitt's face. Dark shadows nestled under his red-rimmed eyes. His face, now covered in thick scruff, was hollowed under protruding cheekbones. "There is still no response to my distress signal. Given the distance of our mission and the last known coordinates of our ship login, I am not surprised by this. At present, I am the only crew member left on the ship... me and those damned precious cargo." He and his crew had come in search of the weeds. That was what they had nicknamed them. Finding these specimens and bringing them back had been a major part of this mission. What they had found would make them all famous and possibly help stop the scourge that plagued people back on earth. At least that was the rationalization the crew gave for the reason they were risking their necks on this obscenely long voyage. Seven years max, that was the timeframe given. But it had taken nearly twice that and now in the predicament Schmitt found himself, there was no definitive end in sight. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and then checked the navigation systems. "The ship's coordinates indicate that I am still headed in the direction of home. But given my slow progress, I'm not sure which birthday I should expect to celebrate upon my arrival, my 48th or 100th. Or if I'll arrive at all... If I am able to reach a slipstream by chance, then I could go into cryosleep and have a somewhat lengthy life left to live when I return." As he spoke, he rubbed the thick bristles on his jawline. "In the present state, it is just too dangerous to hibernate with no propulsion system and no one at the helm. Autopilot is too risky in this uncharted environment. All I can hope for is that someone picks up on my distress signal before I age too much... But I am beginning to worry. I have been able to ration out the water, but the nutrient bars have run out." As he leaned forward in his chair, a sharp pain struck Schmitt in his stomach and he heard the incessant growl of his body's call for sustenance. He had not eaten in some time now. He was weak, dazed, and tried to think of anything else on the ship he could devour to stop this ache. Weak with hunger, Schmitt closed his eyes, but this rest would be short-lived. Suddenly the cockpit erupted with an alarm. He checked the console and saw it was coming from the science lab. He left the cockpit and made his way into the lab to investigate. When he approached, the large glass doors to the room's entrance parted and Schmitt entered. He made his normal rounds, parading up one aisle and down the other. As he did, he scanned the numerous covered containers that were lined up on the tables like little soldiers, each housing a unique inhabitant. Some were green and gelatinous, while others were like living stones or ethereal liquid beings. Some floated in their fluid-filled containers while others tapped against their arid confinements, each a little monster. As he reached the table in the far corner he noticed one of the containers was cracked. Leaning in for a closer look, he could see a bushy, green plant had spilled out of the crevice and was now growing all around the glass dome. Schmitt inquisitively leaned in to examine the thing and as he did, waves of color pulsated through the creature as it breathed, taking in air through its furry, verdant skin. A shiver ran up Schmitt's spine as he stared at the iridescent monster. It was like nothing he had ever seen; a twisted mix of flesh and fantasy. Before he could even realize what he was doing, Schmitt prodded the creature with his finger. The creature reacted, changing colors as it quivered and drew back. As he retracted his finger, he felt a rushing sensation surge up through his arms and down the center of his torso. It was almost as if, in the act of disturbing the weed, he had felt what it felt. Upon this, the first thought that entered Schmitt's mind was, This is it. I am finally losing my grip on reality. But the thought that followed that one surprised even him, almost as if it came from something other than Schmitt, something more primal. I bet that thing would be tasty! Without even thinking, he grabbed hold of the creature and plucked off a fuzzy appendage. The segment readily popped free of the thing, pulling was almost unnecessary. Without hesitation, he greedily shoved the piece into his mouth and as he bit down on the fleshy weed, a burst of refreshing fluid gushed into every crevice of his mouth. The taste was divine, a meaty cinnamon aromatic that overwhelmed his senses. No sooner had he swallowed than he began to feel the meal's nutrients radiate throughout his body, feel the fuel surging into every withering cell in his body. That evening, when he had retired to the cockpit, space enveloped the ship and so too a darkened calm cloaked his consciousness and he drifted into a sleep that was the most peaceful he had experienced since he was an infant. "Data log 23.005-B, entry 10. Captain Schmitt." Schmitt was now recording his logs from the science lab. After his recent discovery, he had grown to feel rather comfortable in his new, more spacious living quarters. "I have been able to stay alive," he continued. "Unfortunately, some of the cargo has died off... The cause for this is unknown." As he spoke, he reached down and plucked off a purple, fleshy succulent from one of the weeds that sat nestled on his plate, popped it in his mouth, and slurped it down. "All systems are fine," he continued after swallowing. "The ship is on course for an area of space where there is a potential for me to come across someone. I plan to bounce the distress signal off a rocky moon that should appear in a few weeks. Hopefully the signal will head in the direction of space colony Gamma, New Earth and someone will come for me." Schmitt wiped the green juices from his mouth, and then added, "Captain Schmitt, end entry computer." Feeling better than he had in months, Schmitt propped his feet up and leaned back in his chair. As he did, he reached into his pants pocket and felt a sharp burn prick his finger. "Ouch," he said as he pulled out his hand for inspection. He noticed a peculiar looking pattern had appeared on his index finger. As he turned his hand over, he saw the ornamentation stretched up his arm and then disappeared beneath his shirt. Concerned, he stood up and stripped off his clothes. The pattern was everyway, spreading out from his mid torso in a tree-like design that resembled veins. It almost looked as if his circulatory system was making its way up through his skin. As his heartbeat began to quicken from this discovery, he could see his teal-colored veins throb and quiver just beneath the surface. To add to the shock, the veins began to itch. Schmitt started to scratch incessantly to no avail. As his fingernails dragged across his flesh, a viscous fluid poured forth in response. Schmitt started to panic and stumbled over to the hydration area near the weeds. He washed his arms, but there was no improvement; the fluid, now yellow in color, still flowed. Schmitt reached for a towel and as he did, saw the fluid retreat into his body and the torn flesh started repairing itself. What is happening to me? Schmitt wondered, half-terrified but also half-amazed. Abandoning the towel, he retracted his arm, but as he did, the healing process that began seconds before abruptly stopped. Curious, he extended his arm again and the wounds healed and the throbbing tentacled veins submerged back into his flesh. "What the hell is going on?" he murmured to himself. And then, a sense of clarity came over Schmitt, an epiphany perhaps, one that had escaped him in all the excitement but now had crept out from his subconscious. His arm was positioned so that when he extended it, it fell under the rays of the ultraviolet lights, the same lights used to feed the weeds. Ultraviolet light was the cure for whatever was happening to him. Schmitt spent the next hour taking down the ultraviolet lights that had been positioned over the weeds he had already eaten and used them to build a standing light shower that was four emitters high and three wide. Upon completion, he stripped naked and stepped into the light, bathing himself in the luminous nutriment. The sensation was cooling, fulfilling, energetic, and eventually the tendrilled rash on his skin disappeared completely. "Data log 23.005-B, entry 11. Captain Schmitt." His voice was coarse and husky. Over a week had passed since he had consumed the weeds and yet he felt and looked better than he had since he started the mission. He discovered that after taking one of his light showers, he felt satiated, as if he had consumed a large meal. And despite not eating, he hadn't felt hungry in days. Water, on the other hand, he consumed in buckets, far more than he had needed before. Plus, his skin had started to feel dry and scaly. Perhaps the lights were dehydrating him, but that was a small price he was willing to pay. "No response to the distress signal," he continued. "I am approaching the compact Eyro solar system. Its small sun has started to illuminate the cockpit. I can't express how nice it feels to gaze once again on a sun, even if it is not from my own system... Captain Schmitt, end entry computer." "Unable to comply," the console speaker responded. Schmitt raised his voice, "End entry computer!" "Unable to comply," it repeated. Frustrated, Schmitt typed on the keyboard console, code 44218: Captain Schmitt/command error/cause/ In response to the command, the screen reported, Voice not recognized as Captain Schmitt "Stupid computer," Schmitt growled. "Well, it looks as though I will be typing my data logs from now on," he said as he entered the keystrokes, command/end entry Command accepted, the console typed back. Schmitt no longer made log entries. As the days had progressed, his skin condition had gone from bad to worse. His body had rejected its mammalian follicles and was now hairless. It had been days since he had worn any clothes; he found the touch of any fabric only irritated the condition of his new flesh. Worse yet, he woke this morning to find another perversion of his human form: he no longer had fingers. Each hand was now a fused appendage with only a thumb sticking out. He spent most of his days in what had become his favorite part of the ship, the ultraviolet light shower. He found that it calmed him, strengthened him, and nourished him. Light and water; that was all he needed now. Standing now in the shower, his eyes scanned his naked body, his skin now smooth and leathery, dotted with small fissures. As he bathed in the soothing glow, his inner body seemed to move freely within the confines of his new outer carapace. "I'm changing," Schmitt said to himself. "Each day I go on living, another horror is revealed to me. I'm not sure how long this will last or when this disease, if that's what this is, will finally be done with me." He looked down at his hands, now just two fleshy mittens. "All I hope is that the progression stops soon, so that when it's done with me, I will not be completely unrecognizable." As he finished his lament, a dry cough tickled at the back of his throat. Gentle at first, then the itching became incessant. He coughed violently, struggling to breathe, and dropped to his knees. Then the coughing turned into a lurching fit as blood poured from his mouth and nostrils. This is the end of me, Schmitt thought as he vomited large chunks of flesh that spilled down onto the ship's floor, amassing in steaming piles of plasma and tissue between his legs. He frantically spat the substances out of his mouth, trying to let fresh air in. But it was no use. Try as he might, he could not breathe. He dropped to his side, quivering naked on the floor as blood continued to leech from his nose and mouth. A gelatinous piece of lung tissue hung precariously from his chin. Death, he thought, is finally here. Then as violently as it had begun, the spasms calmed and fluids stopped flowing. Breathe, breathe now, his inner mind instructed. But he could not. He tried to open wide his mouth to pull in precious oxygen but something wasn't working as he once remembered. He reached up to touch his face and discovered that where his mouth had been was now nothing but a smooth surface. His hands slid up his face to his nose and found that the news was no better there. His nostrils were gone, as if they too had joined in on the decision with the mouth to close off all access to the outside. But as he looked down at the remnants that were his lungs on the ground before him, he gathered that it made no difference anyway. He was out of air and any means of acquiring it. As the oxygen ran out and carbon dioxide started to build in his blood, Schmitt's body seized and he felt a chill run throughout his entire system. The sensations of fiery goosebumps, of hot needles and pins, rushed from his head downward as his skin gasped, then breathed in life saving air. No longer did his chest pulse in and out the way it had all his life. Now, his whole body breathed for him, creating a rippling effect across the flesh as it absorbed the air. Feeling weak but revived by his new fashion of breathing, he slowly sat up. As he did, a small tear fell from his cheek and onto the top of his hand. He reached up to wipe it as a drop from the other eye fell, then another. He had begun to weep, but not out of sorrow or despair, although he felt those things too. No, these tears were of something more ominous. The fluid started to pour heavily and as it did, his sight began to fade. A tunnel of darkness closed in around him and all became dark. What more, Lord? Schmitt screamed inside his mind. What more must I endure? He tried to wipe these strange tears from his eyes and clear his waning vision. As he did he realized from the tears' viscosity that they were not tears at all. No, he had been weeping out his very eyes. The fluid from his eyeballs had burst and was now running down his face. As he dropped his hands in utter surrender, he discovered that one of the eyeballs, now deflated and detached from the optic nerve, had slid free from its socket and landed on his lap. It was all too much for him to take. I must end it all, he thought, while I am still able to. He crawled to his feet and blindly searched the room with his hands, sweeping his arms over every table and countertop until he heard the thing that he was looking for hit the floor with a loud ping. Salvation! He dropped to his knees and grasped the cool metal object. Clinched tightly in his awkward new hands, he brought the blade of the knife down deep into his left wrist. But something was not right. The expected warmth of blood flowing across his arm had not come. He dropped the knife and blindly felt the area of the incision, but it was dry and smooth, as if his act of self-mutilation had never happened. He retrieved the knife and quickly cut again, jabbing the tip of the blade in once, twice, three times. But when he touched the wounds he felt them self-suturing, all three cuts were closing along the path of the knife's butchery. Schmitt sat helpless in the flight chair of the cockpit. He had tried all manner of suicide, but nothing worked. He even tried to starve himself by staying clear of the ultraviolet light showers, but the resulting pain was more than he could have fathomed and it would have been too slow and painful a way to go. Why won't you let me die you damn disease? his mind cried out silently from behind blinded eyes. Okay... okay, I admit it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I ever ate any of you fucking little monsters... um... I mean sentient beings. Believe me, I've learned my lesson. Truly I have. I didn't understand... but now I do. You're not monsters, you're just like me. Just please... I beg you... Have mercy on me. Just let me die. There was only silence. But then, in the still darkness, he saw a blinking light. It must be my mind, he thought, given that he no longer had eyes. He saw the light flash again, only this time it was brighter. He reached up to his eyes and could tell that something had changed. No longer were there empty sockets. In their place, a smooth, glassy optical plate had formed. And through it, light started to grow, allowing him to make out the most basic of shapes. Maybe this meant he had finally begun to overcome the disease and was reverting back to his former self. But what he saw next put any fairytales of a cure far from his thoughts. As his vision cleared, Schmitt noticed that he now could see again, but not as he had before. He looked around the ship and took in the sights. Lights of various chromatic hues floated all around him. Outside the cockpit's windows he could see that the vastness of space was brimming with a cacophony of colors that were so bright and overwhelming, the concept of a 'dark universe' suddenly seemed preposterous. The entire universe was ablaze. Every planet and star was ensconced in their own jewel-colored coronas as they floated among an ocean of iridescence. It was as if the gates of heaven had parted and illuminated another world before him, a world that only the mind's imagination could procure and the flesh's optic nerve impulses could dream of creating. The whole spectacle was so beautiful that for a moment, he pondered if his suicide had been successful and that he was actually witnessing angels from heaven's opened gates descending to claim him. But these gossamer forms were no angels, just common celestial events—planets, stars, dark matter—only now seen for the first time from infant, albeit not human, eyes. Unlike those primitive eyes he used to have, these new eyes allowed him to see the entire electromagnetic spectrum. He could see everything from the waves of heat on the infrared side of the spectrum to the bright bursts of gamma rays at the other end, and all that came in between— A loud burst of static erupted from the console's speakers, followed by a voice. "Come in... this... signal." The distress signal, Schmitt thought as he was shaken back into the present. "Come in science vessel BEM 7774," the voice in the speaker continued. "This is Captain Drexel. We have detected your distress signal and have located your position. We are on our way to help." It's all over, he thought, I'm saved! He tried to respond to the call but in his current state, was unable speak. Then he reached for the computer communications board, but his fused hands were unable to type. "Come in science vessel BEM 7774, this is Captain Drexel. We have picked up your distress signal and have located your position. We are on our way to help. Please respond." The only thing Schmitt could think to do was flip the switch for the distress signal on and off, tapping out an S.O.S. He waited, praying for a response, but there was no reply. Seconds later, the speaker erupted again. "We are seeing that your signal is oscillating." For the first time in a long time, Schmitt felt hope well up in his chest. They will find a way to fix me, he thought. I'm sure of it! "Science vessel BEM 7774, we understand your communication. It's good to know you survived. We will be arriving momentarily. Hang in there." Out the cockpit windows loomed an enormous space station. As Schmitt watched on, smaller vessels flew toward his ship and began connecting the grappling hooks. With one big jerk, he felt the tug from the lines as his ship moved toward the station. Moments later, the ship's small circular emergency door on the side of the cockpit opened. "Are you all right in there?" a man in a green space suit said as he peered into the darkened cockpit. Schmitt, so excited to see another human, forgot about his appearance and leaped forward to greet his savior. But when the man in the green suit saw him, he screamed and fell backward into the docking bay tunnel that linked the two ships. Schmitt thought quickly. Seeing his old space suit crumpled nearby on the cockpit floor, he snatched it up and tore off the nametag that read CAPTAIN SCHMITT. With identification in hand, he crawled into the docking bay. It was only there in the bay's full light that the horror of what Schmitt had become was now visible for all to see. "Guards move in, move in!" said a man in a red flight suit. Wait! Wait! Schmitt screamed with his eyes as he held out his nametag. A man approached him from behind and four others followed, surrounding him on all sides, their stunning weapons raised high. "No sudden movements," one of the guards said. Schmitt did as he was told. "Keep that thing here while I investigate," the officer in the red suit commanded and then stepped inside Schmitt's ship. Inside, the officer saw the dimly lit glass doors of the science lab and when he stepped through them, a small scream escaped his mouth. The signs of violence—overturned tables, stained knife, pools of congealed blood on the floor—were everywhere. Startled, he took a step back and as he did, his boot slipped in the pile of Schmitt's lungs and he nearly tumbled to the blood-soaked ground. "That monster killed them all!" the officer said as he stormed back into the docking bay, his finger accusingly pointed at Schmitt. "There is blood and flesh everywhere. It's a slaughterhouse in there! No one was left alive. That monster ate them all and spit them back up!" I'm no monster! Schmitt pleaded in his mind. As he looked at the guards that surrounded him with his new eyes, he could see the infrared heat signature in their faces raise as their anger grew. Then one of the guards pounced on him, jabbing his stunner into Schmitt's back. Another guard followed suit, then another. Schmitt fell to the floor in agony, screaming a silent wail that ricocheted in his skull. I'm no monster! I'm human! I'm human! he repeated to the men unsuccessfully. Using a loop at the end of one of a long pole, one of the guards ensnared Schmitt's arms and then pulled him into a small containment room just inside the station. I'm human. I'm like you. Schmitt pleaded as the guard released his arms, then closed the door and locked him inside. Overhead, air rushed in through the vents. As the thick cloud of white vapor enveloped him, he realized it was poisonous gas. I'm human... I'm human, Schmitt said to himself as he curled up in a ball on the cold floor. I'm human. I... human. I... no... monster. Schmitt's body took one last shuttering breath through his convulsing iridescent skin, then went limp and he was no more. The door to the gas chamber opened and a guard entered. He reached down and took hold of the creature's dead body. As he dragged it out of the room, a piece of fabric that read CAPTAIN SCHMITT fell to the ground but he didn't notice. The man pulled the creature into a room outfitted with medical equipment. He propped the heavy body onto the autopsy table, then exited the room to alert the doctor that the specimen was ready for examination. High above the table, vents brought in fresh air and removed the old, stale air. Under the caress of their soft breath, a quiver ran across Schmitt's body and it began to pulsate. Small openings erupted from the corpse; tiny volcanos that spewed forth fine dust balls, producing a verdant cloud of powder that hovered above the remains. As the vents inhaled air from the room, so too did they whisk away the green particles into their mechanic lungs. Pieces of Schmitt, now spores, rushed silently into the darkness of the station's vents to impart his new form to the human creatures; creatures he had once thought himself to be, but now only thought of as little monsters. ⁂ [ TOM'S THUMBS by K.M. Campbell ] While the old couple slept, Malakai the demon eyed them in the dark. They disgusted him and were perfect for his needs. Three-thousand years of servitude was over and he was free of this half-life. He was ready to return to the full world and no one was left to stop him. He had outlived all his hated masters. His last token holder had died with no heirs to pass the trinket that held Malakai's spirit and so the cragged metal returned to Malakai, granting his freedom. He held the shiny nugget to his lips, licked it slowly, then rubbed it against his cheek like a preening cat. "Let us play and flay," the demon whispered before tucking the nugget back into his soul, where he would never again be parted from it, no matter how much it hurt to hold onto, the blunted edges that pushed at his insides for release. He had been watching the old couple for the past few moons. He hated them. They rarely spoke to one other and struggled to even look in the other's direction. They abused each other with their silent hate and disappointment. The old woman's wrinkled hand moved as he scampered up her body, no bigger than a mouse. Even her movements repulsed him, shakes that screamed of geriatric weakness. They blamed each other for their own failures, their bitterness permeated every corner of their shack which smelled of piss and boiled cabbage. Malakai felt only inevitability at destroying them. After all, they had left the door open for him; all he would do was give them exactly what they wanted. For the husband, freedom. For the wife, the child she was promised. Standing on the crone's right shoulder, away from the husband, Malakai rearranged his features to resemble a child, the hag's ultimate weakness. "Mama, set me free. I'm so alone." Malakai's sharp little needle teeth emerged from his purple lips as he smiled brightly. The old woman was infected with him now, she would never stop until she saved her little boy from the big bad monster that lay in the bed beside hers. And in return for his hard work, Malakai would receive a body that would fit the size of his soul instead of this tiny carcass no bigger than a man's thumb. He trotted closer to the old man, licking his large callused thumb, wrapping his arms around it and biting down hard enough to draw a few drops of food. Malakai was hungry and the old man's blood was good. At least these country types ate well and tasted strong, and when the old woman made the poppet, this body would be Malakai's to do with as he pleased. Enid woke to the feel of tiny feet scampering up her body. Her hands jerked in reaction before she could stop them. It frustrated her, all this aching and shaking: it would only scare the child away. But what could she do? She was frail and old, no law against that, goddamn it all to hell. She glanced toward Tom's single bed on the other side of the room. The floral comforter was on the ground, tossed aside by his nightly struggles with sleep. She could see his striped summer pajamas, old man's clothes, and his plaid slippers lined up just so. Everything about him screamed old and stuck in his ways. He wasn't sleeping, she knew him well enough to know the difference in his breathing. He was lying still with his eyes shut, like he did every morning, waiting for Enid to get up and make his breakfast. Lazy old goat. "Dead yet?" There was little of the humor that had made their marriage a success left. "After you, my sweet," he replied, gruff with lack of sleep. Enid clacked her false teeth into place and left the room. The tiny child was waiting for her in the kitchen and she gasped in surprise, clutching a hand to her heart and wondering if her body's aged pump would stop dead. "You're really real?" she asked. "Almost," Malakai said on a wet, wobbly, pitiful sigh. "I need the doll. Have you finished it yet?" Enid hobbled to the cupboard that held her knitting bag. Rummaging inside, she found the doll she had been working on for the past few days. "Is it perfect?" Malakai snatched it away, sniffing each seam and licking each stitch. "Perfect." He turned wide blue eyes to Enid. "It's perfect. You have done perfect." Enid held the table to help her sit. Resting her chin on her hands to stare at the gorgeous little boy who so resembled a young Tom. "Thank you, child. I followed your directions exactly, and now you're here. Will you be able to become a real child now?" "Yes. Just one more thing..." He allowed one tear to trail down his perfect cheek. "What is it? I'll do anything. I promised." "I need my father's body to complete my transformation, to be with you forever." Enid blinked, becoming more enraptured with each glance at the perfect child. "All right. Just some skin, nails, that sort of thing?" "I need flesh to become flesh. I must be made from the meat of my father." "How much?" "Not much. Just enough to fill the doll." Enid lifted the knitted doll. It was smaller than her hand, with tan skin, blonde hair and blue eyes, just like Tom when they met. "Tom's thumbs," Enid said, "I'll use Tom's thumbs." Malakai clapped his little hands, "Perfect. Perfect. Thumbs and Plums. Soon?" "Tonight. I promise." Later that day, Enid got her chance. "Don't worry with lunch for me," Tom said. "I'm not feeling so well." "Your stomach?" "Yeah, looks like the doc was right. I don't have much longer, Enid." "What do you want me to do?" "Nothing, nothing at all. I'm going to bed. I feel like I might actually sleep." "Why don't you take one of the pills the doctor gave you to sleep?" "No, I told you. I'll be ending on a mountain of drugs. I want to go without them for as long as I can." "I'll bring you a warm drink then." "I don't think..." "Just do as I tell you and don't be a stubborn old man." Tom chuckled, "All right, Enid, don't get your knickers in a twist." "Would be the only thing that's happened to my knickers in years," she grumbled as she stalked to the kettle. The spiked drink put Tom into such a deep sleep he didn't even move as she took his favorite boning knife to his thumbs. She reminded herself that this was his penance for having brought home the disease that had rendered her sterile. This was the least he could do for her. Afterward, she cleaned his wounds, dressed them carefully like a mother, cooing gentle words of apology. She doubted he would notice, he didn't seem to notice much anymore these days, and if he didn't like it he could go tell someone. There was another problem. Their lack of children had pushed them away from those that had them until they were solitary with only each other for company. She gently washed the detached thumbs, waiting for the blood to drain away, soaking them in the kitchen sink, wondering how they had ever created anything. They looked so small and shriveled when she pulled them from the water that she worried they would not be good enough for her child. Back at the kitchen table she dried them with complete devotion, careful not to miss a watery red drop, even going so far as to use the napkins she had kept "for good." Except there had never been a "good." So the tissues were old and perishing. With frustration, she threw them all in the trash, snatching out the white linen sheets she had been given for a wedding gift. Another thing to keep for good. Useless. They continued to drip and seep for so long Enid was in tears, certain they would never be good enough. For once in her life she wanted to accept only perfection, not the ongoing faults, blame, and mistakes. She left them in the sun, sitting beside them on a blanket for several hours to ensure the birds didn't come and snatch her treasures away. The thumbs resembled tiny ham hocks. There was nothing about them that made her certain they would produce life. That night she wrapped the thumbs in one of Tom's unused handkerchiefs, one he had gotten from his mother and hidden away in the back of his underwear drawer. His private territory. She then slipped the small package into the doll. It slid in easily. More room left around the doll than she expected when seeing Tom's thumbs still attached to his hands. She washed her hands, wondering if she should sew the doll up or leave it to await instructions from the child. Emptying the sink she mindlessly wiped at the discolored ring left behind from the bloodied water. She wondered what the child would be called? Would he look like her as well as Tom? Would he have Tom's calm personality or her erratic temperament? She hoped he had more of Tom. Her several breakdowns over the years making her certain she was riddled with demons in her blood. Remnants from her deranged family. Behind her a small voice cried, "It's not enough!" She spun with a sinking sense of dread. "I did what you asked." "It's not enough, and where's the blood?" "I cleaned it, I refuse to allow blood to drip all over my floor." "I need the blood." His blue eyes flashed to red and Enid stepped back, once more automatically clutching her chest, worrying for her aged heart. "You're not real." "I won't be if you don't do things right. Thumbs and plums. I asked for thumbs and plums." "Plums?" "His nuts, the seed. I need his seed." Enid sat down, disgusted even though it sounded logical. "I refuse. You can't ask me to do that to him." "His dirty plums destroyed your life, they took your chance of children. They stole my life from you. All I'm trying to do is give that back to you. Please help me give you something. Help me. Set me free. I was supposed to be born and it never happened because he cheated on you and ruined your life. He took my life from me. Do this for me if not for you." That small pleading voice drilled at her brain. When she next looked up, the child was a stunningly handsome young man. "Who are you?" She gasped. "It's me, Mom. This is what I'll look like when I'm older. If you give me that chance." "I can't," she wailed. "I'm not strong enough." "Cut them out. For both of us." Enid stared at him, in awe of his beauty, so like Tom as a young man. "Will you stay with me?" "Always. Always." "I'll do it." "I love you, Mommy." Tom came awake. Something was wrong. He felt sick to his stomach. He relaxed back into the dirty old pillow. The cancer had taken hold. It was eating him from the inside out like a horror movie monster. On a frown, he lifted his hands that felt hot and thick. They were wrapped up and something about the shape made his heart beat hard. His head was too fuzzy to put it altogether. His bowels clenched in a familiar sickening way and Tom scrambled from his bed, frantically kicking aside bedding that should have been replaced years ago. Forgoing his slippers for speed, Tom stumbled to the toilet, terrified at the amount of blood he found when he flushed. Clutching his stomach with one bandaged hand he steadied himself with a shoulder to a floral wallpapered wall (he had always hated floral but Enid never gave him any choice in decorating all those years ago). He found his wife seated at the table with a doll clamped in her hands, rubbing it against her cheeks and whispering to it frantically. "Enid," He interrupted, "I don't feel so good, in my stomach. I might need the hospital. And something's wrong with my hands. Honey, are you listening?" When she turned, Enid's eyes had that flat, long stare that showed she was in the thrall of another one of her delusions. Tom wanted to punch her back to life. After all these years, of enduring her hostility and her mental instability, when he needed her for once she was off on another one of her fucking breakdowns. "Not now, Enid. Snap out of it. I need you." She bared her teeth at him and Tom's heart sunk further. She had returned to that one indiscretion that had almost broken them. It was strange that she had forgiven him all those years ago, yet when her mind wandered this is where she inevitably returned too. His one stupid mistake. He would never be forgiven and he berated himself for ever having stayed in this painful loveless marriage. Stumbling to the phone he lifted the receiver, thankful he had always controlled the money so bills were always paid on time. "What are you doing, Tom?" Enid asked in that far-off voice that made Tom rage. "I'm calling an ambulance. I'm sick, Enid, real sick." The call connected but Enid touched his shoulder and took the phone from him. Dropping it back into the cradle, she smiled, just like the Enid of old, the passionate, fiery woman he had fallen for all those years ago. "I'll sort it. A taxi will be faster. You go get dressed while I organize everything." Tom sagged a little with relief. "Thank you, Enid. I know you're going through something right now but I need you. Just for a little while." "I need you too, Tom. More than ever before." His stomach clenched again and Tom had to fight black speckling unconsciousness that threatened to overwhelm him. Stumbling back to the room, Enid followed with water and pills. "Painkillers," she said, dropping them into his mouth. The look in her eyes was a warning but Tom was all out of fight. He swallowed the pills and lay back on the bed. That night Enid gave Tom more pills, more than she thought wise but enough that he would feel nothing and not wake up. Whatever her decision. He was hot to the touch and she noticed that above the bandage that covered his left hand a hot line of infection was creeping into the light. She wondered if she should have boiled the boning knife she used? It was too late now. She sat on his bed for a long time with a small pocket knife. One Tom had been given years ago by one of the many customers he had entertained in his shoe store. It seemed sharp enough to do the job. The little voice came from her dressing table. "What are you waiting for?" "I can't do it." "We've been through this. You have to do it." "He's sick, he needs a doctor." "He ruined our lives." "How do you know all this?" "I'm not alive because of what he did." "I forgave him." "I didn't." "I cheated too." She gasped, never once having admitted this before. The secret that festered in the back of her head now tried to worm its way out of her mouth. "It was too late by then. He infected you." "I can't let him die!" She was crying now. Yelling with certainty. "Then I will die." The small boy turned away but Enid saw that flash in his eyes again in the mirror. That glint of something more hidden behind the façade she wanted to see. Could this all be her imagination? She had lost her mind several times before but those times she had never hallucinated. She reached out to touch the boy but he backed away. "Not until I'm real. Please." His pleading burrowed into Enid's brain, twisting into her exhausted nervous system. It was easier to just give in than to fight. "Okay." "Don't forget the blood this time," he said and scampered away. "What's your name?" Enid asked his back. He turned back on a grin, "I'm Tom Junior." It had been a late night for Enid but the next morning she awoke with a feeling of dread and excitement. "Today's the day," she told Tom who slept on, unaware of his new mutilations. Noise in the kitchen had Enid sitting upright, hand to her chest. "He's here, Tom. Our boy has finally come home." Tom surprised her into a small shriek then by saying, "He's not ours, Enid. He's trying to kill me." "Don't be ridiculous." "I need the hospital, Enid. Please..." "For once, this isn't all about you, Tom. It's my time." She shuffled from the room to find Tom more drugs and to meet her son. On the kitchen table the small doll had come to life. It moved and jerked with life. "Help me," he cried. Enid rushed to hold the small creature upright, it's squirming sickening and unnatural. She had been expecting a real child, not an animated doll. Her disappointment sparked, that overwhelming feeling that had travelled the road of her life on her shoulder, reminding her of all the things she would never be, would never do. "You're still a doll," she said. The thing froze. "Not forever. I will change with your love and devotion. Like any other little boy." "But I don't have much time left." "There is time." "Will you grow?" "I will become more like you." "But will you grow?" "Am I not good enough?" "I want grandchildren like all those nosy women in the fancy units in town. I want to be rid of their pity and their dislike. I want to be one of them." "You have what you wanted." The knitted eyes sparked into life, not the blue of the child in Enid's imagination but the fiery red she had glimpsed. "I'm a fucking kid." "Don't you profane at me!" she roared, insulted to her very core. "Then be grateful I have worked so hard for you." "But I wanted a child, grandchildren. All you have given me is a midget and a sick husband. Two retards to attend to." "This is what you wanted." "I've changed my mind." "Too late." The little creature snarled, small teeth breaking through the knitted wool. "You will attend me, crone, else your torment shall be ceaseless." "Torment? You think I don't understand torment?" With that she turned away and left the room. Malakai tried to move but the vessel his body was contained in was tight and slow. Until he became accustomed, until he learned to control a body once more, until this obscene shroud began to turn into a body proper, Malakai was trapped and at the hag's mercy. "Mother!" he called, "Please come back. I'm sorry I just... it's been a shock finally being with you." Nothing. It was sometime later that Malakai heard the sirens. He saw no one because Enid returned to the room only to stuff him into a drawer, unmoved by his pleading, her lips tight with anger, the wrinkles deep, her eyes heavy. With little else to do, Malakai waited, eventually falling asleep. Something he had not done for over three-thousand years. When he awoke it was bright and hot. He was under a spotlight of some kind and could hear a strange frantic clacking noise, could feel an incessant dull tugging at his legs. His head was held down with a cold iron, he couldn't budge it. He squinted past the bright light to see Enid frantically knitting, the wool coming from Malakai's new body. "What are you doing?" "Getting rid of you before I go to jail to finish my days. You never warned me cutting Tom up like that would send me to jail." "How was I to..." "He's dead you know. Infections, cancer, blood loss, old age. Whatever it was, I started it and I killed him. Least I can do is make sure you don't do it to some other weak-minded woman." "You can't do this. I'm alive..." "Not for long." "You don't understand. I'm trapped in this material. I can't be killed least it is completely consumed." Enid smiled. "Consumed, huh? How's a fire for consuming?" "My base is gold. You could never put me in a fire hot enough. Please, you must let me stay. Take me to this jail with you." "Like hell. I ain't going to jail. I'm an old woman. I'm going to Hell to meet my maker and atone for all my sins. I'll meet you there, you evil little monster." "Fuck you, crone. Set me free. There is no way an old piece of shit like you can stop me now. I'll find another way into the world. I've come this far, there's no way back." Enid stopped knitting. "I think I can slow you down at least." She picked the doll up, slipping out the back door of her horrible shack as the police turned into her road with screaming sirens. It was dark now but they would soon find her. That was not Enid's focus. Her focus was getting this evil little puppet to the house three roads over. She had to take the backway, down dark, dusty streets, past howling dogs and hissing cats. Eventually she came to the right place, clutching her chest as the huge dog threw itself at the fence then shoved his huge head through a hole it had dug. Without further comment, hearing the police dogs on her trail, Enid dropped the shrieking doll into the hole. The dog growled at it uncertainly for a moment then picked it up and swallowed it whole, the smell of blood permeating his mind. "Enjoy that, you evil little shit," Enid said just as a police dog brayed at the other end of the road and a policewoman screamed at her to lie down on the ground. Malakai waited inside his precious stone. All his earthly trappings were gone by the time he left the dog. He was picked up by a bird and dropped into a nest. The bird either died or didn't find a mate as the nest was never used and it took long years for the twigs to rot enough for the stone to drop from the tree. A young boy found the gold nugget, thinking it just a strange stone, he put it in his pocket and took it home. His life would never be the same and the voice in his head pushed him to many things he would otherwise never dream of. He even swallowed it once, interested when it re-emerged unchanged. Malakai was patient. He would wait for the right time. He had nothing but time. ⁂ [ FAMILY DINNER by A. Collingwood ] I started with my left calf, for Uncle Terrance, because he was always a little too concerned with my legs, if you know what I mean. That was an easy cut, the tendons basically made to be severed by my big knife. It only took a little trimming, and then I had a nice-looking steak, with enough left over for Aunt Maggie, as well. I was only ever an afterthought to her, too. My sisters, Jordan and Miranda, got the left thigh, because they always wished they had thighs as slim as mine, and constantly put me down for whatever eating disorder they had just heard about from their model friends. The hard part there was slicing the strands of muscle just right, to keep the shape. Dad got my right bicep, because he expected me to carry the family's secrets. Mom I wanted to give a pectoral, you know, right over the heart, but what can I say? I wanted to keep my tits looking nice, even with my new role in life. Call me shallow if you want, but these bitches cost me an arm and a leg. No pun intended. So I gave mom my triceps, because it was convenient. When the cutting was done, I had them help put the meat in the fridge and ease me into my shiny new wheel chair. It's great, one of those get ups that can be driven at up to ten miles an hour with a fun little joy stick. It had taken longer than I thought to chop myself up, not because of the pain—I had already been through infinitely worse than a little nipping and tucking—but because skinning human flesh is more of an art form than I had imagined. So, being behind schedule, I didn't have much time to wash up and get ready. No doubt my family would all arrive early. It was the least they could do to try to catch me off guard. No doubt they would all have knives and poison in their pockets to finish the job, too. Of course, none of those little toys mattered anymore. Not with Hell in my blood, like it was. The thing is, one of them, if not all of them, is behind my murder. Naturally, I'll revenge myself on the whole lot. You see, I am the golden daughter of a family of monsters, and now they are all about to be reminded why they had wanted me dead in the first place. And, they are going to be taught what a mistake it was to send an ambitious young woman like me to Hell. If my family had a motto, which we don't, it would be "take everything you see." Boy, have I seen things now. I've seen my body burning as my soul fell through the horrible black void of Limbo, straight into the deepest circle of Hell, where the truly wicked burn at the Devil's feet. And I've seen so much worse, with only my rage and my greed to see me through. When my suffering began, I begged. Not for mercy, but for vengeance. When the churning, shapeless beast ripped away my skin every morning for his breakfast, I begged him to take my sisters too. When the Goat came to toss me into his cauldron of acid every afternoon, and cook me to my bones, I pleaded that there must be enough room for my parents in there as well. And when the Fallen came to beat out my confessions with a burning whip every evening, the only words from my mouth were my qualifications to serve. Eventually, they listened. Liked my attitude, I suppose. I was brought before Hell itself—the thing Catholics foolishly call the Devil, but make no mistake, he is Hell—and I was made an offer. I would be sent back to the world, at the moment of my death, to claim my kin, and be made an entry level demon. All I had to do in return was forward Hell's agenda, until the Angels came to punish me, as they are wont to do. Then, I would be on my own. Not terrible odds, if you think about it. I won't tell you how Hell entered my blood, so that I could poison my family. I'll tell you everything else, but I won't tell you that. Dinner was a joke, and only I knew the punchline. My family gushed about how relieved they were to hear I was alive, only an hour before my estate was distributed amongst those vultures. They all could fake a smile so well. Let me tell you a little something about my family: they all are as evil as I am. They raised me after all. Good story? No? Let me add a little tension then. I was raised by some very wealthy people, whose greatest joy in life was amassing more wealth, by any means necessary. So guess what they wanted in the family? No, not a cigarette company CEO, we already have one of those. They wanted a lawyer, one who they could count on to cover up all their dirty little secrets. None of them, not even my own mother, knew how much like them all I really was. But I think they figured it out when I started blackmailing each of them with exactly the information they wanted me to hide. It did not take long for me to reach my untimely end after that. I thought I was ready; I had paid top dollar to the best security companies—both legal and clandestine—but I guess even protection can be bought out. The beauty of my family is that none of them trust each other, and seldom disclose anything that will leave them vulnerable. I doubt any of them knew that everyone else was being blackmailed too. I'm certain that none of them admitted to having me killed. Of course, they will all have their suspicions. One of them had done it, and now whoever did it was enjoying a nice lobster bisque at my expense, while discussing the variety of their grief, and what a miracle it had turned out to be when my death turned out to be nothing but a clerical error. After the appetizer dishes were cleared away, the help brought out the main course on silver platters. "Steak Tatar," I said, leaning back in my wheel chair at the head of the table. Beneath the blanket on my lap, my exposed bones itch. Everyone dug in, and I smiled. The changes happened slowly, at first, as Hell's poison moved from my blood to their bellies. Words slipped from boarding school precision to mumbles. Skin itched around the collar, and it suddenly felt much warmer in the room, for them. Teeth chopped through the raw meat with more ease every bite. When my father scratched at the back of his neck, he did not notice that his nails were longer, and sharper than they had been when he arrived for dinner. When he dug them into his itchy flesh, they drew blood. My mother was the first to lose her vocabulary entirely, raising her glass, smiling, and letting out a beastly growl rather than a "cheers." Everyone else raised their glasses, laughing, unconcerned. Teeth peeked out from beneath bloodied lips, as they became proper fangs. My dear Aunt Maggie grabbed her chunk of my calf with both hands and began cramming it into her face. If some part of any of them realized what had happened, what was happening, they showed no sign of caring as they all became cannibals. I felt changes occur in me, too, as the conditions of Hell's contract were met. I did not have to suffer anything as grotesque as the rest, of course. After all, it was they who were to be my Hounds, while I was to be their Master. I was transforming into something far more appropriate. Oh, but I would hate to ruin the surprise. Let's just say that you will find out when you meet me. When it was finished, the beasts before me looked nothing like my kin, nothing like humans, but they were fearsome. And they had become my slaves. I have brought Hell to my family; next, it's Hell on Earth. And we are just the perfect bunch to see it through. ⁂ [ THE ITCH by Stuart Conover ] Matt couldn't stop scratching his hands. They had been itching for days, the blistered red skin turning to scaly scabs within minutes, demanding to be scratched. He wanted to cry but had no tears left to shed. He couldn't even keep his hands hydrated enough as is, let alone room for there to be tears. He didn't even want to think about how bad his feet felt or looked. "Mathew Warner," the receptionist finally called out. It had felt like hours. Glancing down at his watch, there was no way that it had only been twenty minutes. Standing, he tried to ignore the flakes which fell from his hands. He was sure everyone else in the waiting room was staring at them. Him. Freak. What normal person would let themselves get into this kind of a position? He slowly followed the nurse back to room 3. The only room Dr. Markow had met him in for the year he'd been going here. A new doctor for a new town seemed like a great idea but this coastal paradise had been anything but kind to him. Sick within weeks of arriving and a skin condition shortly after. At first, he had thought it was eczema or even foot, hand, and mouth disease, but it soon proved to be neither. "What seems to be the problem today, Matthew?" the nurse gushed through the smile that never left her perfect face. Like she wasn't revolted by the sight of him. The doctor had diagnosed him with a rare skin disorder after a multitude of tests. They had tried a variety of treatments so far and yet, nothing. He stressed that the latest was the key. "It's my hands," he mumbled, "they've gotten worse. The ointment Dr. Markow prescribed isn't helping at all." Maybe he should go back to Chicago. Find a real doctor. Living on the coast had always been a dream of his but this was a nightmare. "Well let's get your vitals and I'll take a quick look before the good doctor is available. Can you hop on the scale for me?" Sighing, Matt slipped out of his shoes and emptied his pockets. Every ounce counted, though he knew he couldn't hide the fact that he was out of shape. Sliding his hands into his pockets he stepped up on the scale. "Mmmhmm," she said after making some adjustments. "You can step down now." He was off the scale before he even had a chance to look at what it read. "What was the damage?" he said as he slid back into his loafers. "187, you're down 8 pounds. Good job!" she gushed. He had mostly stopped eating since the last appointment. He couldn't seem to make anything without shedding flakes of skin into it. Even when he wore gloves. Who had to wear gloves just to eat? "Now," she was suddenly inches from him, with a look of almost hunger in her eyes, "Let's take a look at those hands, shall we?" He couldn't keep her gaze and started to look down but didn't want her to think he was staring at her cleavage and slowly started to pull his hands out of his pockets. When he had first started coming here, a quick admiring look down her blouse was a welcome distraction but these days looking at any of the women in town could only creep them out. Before he could take them out the door opened. "Matt. It's good to see you. Beth, that will be all." "Yes but," she clicked her tongue in frustration, "yes, sir." The resignation of having to leave filled not only her voice but her posture as she slowly walked out the door and closed it behind her with one last look at Matt. Poor freak is what she had to be thinking. "Attractive, no? Smart too, but far too ambitious and curious for her own good. It's nice to see you again, Matt." Nodding but not looking up he blurted, "they aren't getting any better, Doc." "Well you've only been on this new ointment for a week and I've told you it can take two before it really kicks in. Let's get you out of those socks and shoes and let me see your hands and feet, son." The shoes were kicked off and Matt slowly brought his hands down to take off his socks. Each moment flecked scales everywhere. When his socks came off it was instantly obvious how much worse his feet were. The skin was pale, cracked, and scales almost didn't do justice to the serpentine pattern that was now etched into his skin. The inside of his sock was full of flakes. He shuddered at the thought of putting them back on. "They hurt. Everything hurts. Every time I move it hurts. It didn't used to go up to my knees." Biting his lip to hold back tears he let the doctor examine him. "Hmmm, yes, things are definitely coming along nicely here." "Nicely?" he spat out. Anger filling his voice and for the first time he looked up at Markow. "Nicely? I can't go out in public. I can't go to work. I hurt. All. Day. Long. What do you mean 'nicely'?" His toes curled and pain blossomed over his face as he couldn't help but going back to scratching. "Things are coming through to its natural course, Matt. You don't have much longer to worry about this little infliction. I know it looks strange but I promise you that it will all be over soon. That scratching isn't helping either." "It's getting better? How is it getting better if it hurts even worse? If it itches all the time?" "Sometimes the pain means healing. Sometimes it means things are changing. Right now, your skin is doing just that but it'll all be over soon. The ointment will help this along quickly and you'll be good as new. From what I can see here, I'll be honest, things are coming along nicely. Just go home, have dinner, the nutrients will help too, rub in the ointment, and get a good night's sleep. You won't be better by morning but I promise that when you wake up you'll have an entirely new outlook on life." Clenching his hands to not scratch them, Matt nodded. "Thank you, doctor. It didn't seem like it was getting any better." "I completely understand. You've got a condition that is rare and when it seems to be getting worse you have every right to be concerned but get on home. Tomorrow will be a whole new day. Believe me, you won't know what hit you when you wake up!" Walking out of the office he pulled an app up on his phone to arrange a ride. While waiting he pulled up another to order food. Specifically, a steak sandwich. He ordered extra meat and instead of fries, he side ordered a hotdog as well. With gloves on he felt he could keep the flakes out of it. His stomach rumbled at the thought of something to eat and for the first time in days, he was hungry. Not hungry. Ravenous. Protein with a side of protein seemed like just the thing too. Craving meat, he almost added a second sandwich to the meal before he realized his eyes had to be bigger than his stomach. Besides, his ride was there. Hitting order, he climbed on in and tried to keep his hands out of view of the driver. The poor guy was going to have to vacuum before his next pickup. Once home it wasn't long before the grub arrived and, donning a pair of gloves, he scarfed it down. He tried not to notice that the scales were coming out over the top of the gloves. Or that they seemed to be spreading farther up his arms. He chased his dinner with a rum and cola, followed by three more. The doctor's high hopes had rubbed off on him. The food lay heavy in his stomach. He stood and the alcohol went straight to his head, passing the buzzed feeling he was expecting, the room spun. At least he didn't feel the pain for once. Stumbling to the bathroom he laughed. If the doctor was right, he should wake up feeling better. He stripped out of his clothes on the way to the bathroom. Not even noticing he was leaving them strewn about his apartment. He turned the light on in the bathroom and winced. A bit brighter than the kitchen had been. He looked in the mirror as he was unscrewing the top of the ointment bottle. Dark circles were engraved under his eyes and he almost felt like his face was breaking out. Nope. Not going to pay attention to that. There was no need to add insult to injury at this point. He rubbed the ointment into his hands. Up to his wrists, up to near his elbows before realizing how much of his skin looked infected now. Nothing to worry about. Things would be better in the morning. He rubbed it into his feet and the scales were up to his knees now. He added another dose for good measure. Really trying to rub it into his skin. Laughing, he tried not to think of what he would have done with lotion just a few months back in the privacy of his bedroom but that thought quickly soured. He was far too disgusted with himself now to even think about that. Looking in the mirror again, his eyes were slits. He needed sleep. The rum had hit him harder than he had been expecting. Maybe that should have been his escape to sleep all of the last month. No matter. Things will be better in the morning. Trying not to rub any of the lotion off his feet, he walked on the sides of each and toppled into bed. Naked already as he knew he wouldn't want to touch anything, he clenched his hands together and tried to keep his legs off the bed as much as possible. Not the most comfortable way to lay down, he thought as he drifted into the darkness of his mind. Waking up, it was still dark out and his head pounded. He should have had water before going to bed. All he needed was a hangover on top of everything else. Matt's eyes flashed open. There wasn't anything else. Flexing his hands and toes, there was no pain past the thundering in his skull. Markow had been right! He was better. Running his hands across each other, they didn't feel sore at all. They felt dry. The feeling in his fingertips felt dulled. Flexing his feet, they didn't hurt either. He reached down and the same dullness was there. With how dry he felt it would probably be a good idea to get some moisturizer on, and a glass of water. Or five. Grabbing his phone, it was 3AM. He shakily stood up, head pounding the entire time, and made his way to the washroom. Filling his glass with water he wondered if he dared to turn on the light. The pain would probably be unbearable through the hangover. He had to see though. Closing his eyes, he flicked on the light and winced. With eyes closed it was too much. Sighing, he waited for them to adjust as he had more of his water. Finally, he cracked them open and the glass fell from his hand. The face in the mirror. He shook his head and tried to avoid the pounding. A trick of the light. Looking down he clenched his fists. No longer painful. He was enraged. Angry and on the verge of crying. This wasn't right. Matt looked in the mirror again and the creature that looked back at him was covered in scales. Specs of skin were falling away, peeling, under it was... The scales were covering his body. All the way up his arms now and up through his neck. They didn't cover his belly but a green hue was shining off them. What had happened to him? This couldn't be real. He needed to call someone. 9-1-1. A doctor, something. He needed to get out of this town. Matt's phone started to ring. Dr. Markow's office. "What have you done to me?" he hissed. "Matt, Matt, Matt. Son, I've made you better. I told you that waking up today you would have a whole new outlook on life. You've been chosen, son. Now you need to come home." A flash of movement and Matt was pushed to the ground. His hands were cuffed behind him and a bag pushed down over his head. "We're here to take you home, son," rustled a voice behind him. Cold and inhuman. "Welcome to your better tomorrow." ⁂ [ THE BLIND ASSASSIN by Damien Donnelly ] I don't remember what happened before, no clue as to who I was, what I was, but afterwards, everything that happened afterwards is a completely different story, because when you open your eyes after death, you discover a whole other way of living. Tick tock, tick tock. There is darkness mostly; she left me no eyes to escape the blindness but I can see when I want, when the need fills me. I see shape in sound and smell. These are my senses now, she left me those. Guilt, regret, remorse, those weaknesses have no part in what I've become. I'm no longer accountable to the standards Men hold as law. I am beyond law and now, as I'm technically dead, I'm beyond Man. Tick tock, tick tock. "I remade you, better than before. You were a drunk, a drug addict with no direction. No one gave a shit about you. You would've died one day, I just gave that day a name. You should be grateful, I've given you something greater than life; indestructible, eternal death among the living," she declared that day, the first day of my everlasting existence, as I realised the horror of what she'd done. I wasn't human anymore, this was true. I would be unbeatable, also true. But she hadn't given me eternal death, it was eternal damnation. I recognised her voice from somewhere before death, a sound bite on TV, a ranting about experimentation, radiation, creation; bringing heaven to earth. "I'll build a world that will never need creation again, all will be eternal," she'd bragged. I remember that. I'll always remember that. She won't, not anymore. Tick tock, tick tock. When I first awoke, to her restoration, I felt no pain at all, that came later, when I came to understand what she'd made of me. She was my Frankenstein, she'd remoulded me from her miscreant mind. "Without sight you'll see much better," she whispered to my naked form, strapped to a gurney, as forceps wrenched my eyes from their sockets. "The tongue just teases you with taste," she insisted, "this'll teach you to taste from within," and she snipped the tongue from my mouth with a blade, severing it from service with a single slice. Afterwards, she stitched it to the back of my neck, to remind me of all that was now behind me. I was not a body of blood anymore, my veins had been drained, dried out like taunt twine that tore through my flesh from the inside out. My innards had been expunged, discarded, floor fodder for vermin to devour and they did, nightly, as I lay there, a monster metamorphosing. In my chest, empty of all organs except my heart, a machine of amorality maintained me, pumping a self-sustainable liquid through the little that remained of me; limbs that had been ravaged, a hand severed and replaced with a scythe, legs hacked at the knees, mounted on metal spikes while my manhood was slit, sliced, and stuffed with the slithering tongue of a serpent, still hissing. I was a despicable demon, an envoy of evil, a punishment for a world that had dismissed her dreams of total autonomy as nothing more than an inhuman, unjustifiable, godless existence. I was her retribution. She believed I'd bring them all down for her but she misjudged who was master. A monster knows no master. A monster needs no master. Monster is master. Tick tock, tick tock. Monster let her believe she had control while she trained me, taught me to walk, to hunt, to appreciate the divinity of my own damnation. Monster appeared grateful to his creator and her darkness, monster acted thankful to his creator and her inventiveness until one day when monster stabbed his spikes into his creator's feet as she leaned against the wall, smiling at the completion of her own genius. Monster smiled as his scythe slit her from nipple to neck and his one remaining hand reached inside her and disgorged the heart from her blood-bathed body before her face even had time to register fear. Monster left her there, in her darkness, in that heartless body, further fodder for the vermin who'd already begun to sniff her out. That was four years ago. I can finally admit I'm grateful for her. I've lived more in death than I ever could in life. I don't need food or drink, don't shit or sleep. I exist as if every day were the first, do you understand? Can you understand me now, now that I'm standing behind you, so close that your skin prickles with fear as I sliver my scythe around your neck? You came looking for me, didn't you? Foolishly searching the shadows for the monster you thought was myth. Well, now you're truly the fool because this monster is no myth, nor a white knight. I am the Blind Assassin, devoid of compassion. She removed that from me when she raided my body of blood and being. Do you hear the ticking clock? Tick tock, tick tock. It's inside me. It goes where I go. It counts down humanity while I continue on, slaying it. I feel nothing for you people anymore, nothing. And in a moment, you'll feel nothing too. And he was right. In an instant, blood spewed from the gash in the human's neck and splattered onto the glasses that covered Monster's eyeless sockets and down onto his tongueless, grinning mouth as the clock continued counting... Tick tock, tick tock. He'd killed his creator but he couldn't extinguish the desire for revenge that she'd transplanted into his useless, still beating, eternally damned heart. ⁂ [ FLESH by James Dorr ] He woke with the feeling that he should become fat. He did not know why yet. Perhaps it was in a dream—he had had dreams lately. Wicked, ugly dreams, dreams of shadows. Shadows that coalesced into—he did not know.... Zombies, the thought came. But then he laughed. Zombies? He had been seeing too many movies. Too much cable TV. He could afford that, the time to watch TV, to go out on evenings and drink and dance till dawn, beyond the dawn if he should wish to. To drown the zombies, the shadows, the... Well, what? And if they would not drown: It came with a clarity surpassing nightmares, that cold, bright morning. The sun streaming through his townhouse windows, his bedroom carpet dappled with winter light. That he could insulate— He could afford to. Much like a house could be insulated from the weather—his body his own house—he could add layers and layers to it. Fat. Skin. Muscle. Tendons and blood, covering bone-frames, beams and rafters, and overall softened, warmed, smoothed, protected, by layers of white flesh, spider-webbed in pink. Pink capillaries—the darker red of veins. Neurons and arteries. Fingernails. Body hair... He could afford it, to eat to build such a house. Was he not wealthy? The company he owned, when he went to the office—he did not have to unless he wished it—unless he was bored—swarmed with drone-like people waiting to see him. Venture capitalists, as he was, begging for money to use for some new project. Most of these failures, but he knew how to bail out when needed—always just in time. To take the profit. And so he had grown rich. Yet still they begged from him. He shouldered his way through his outer office—so many supplicants—waving to Ms. Ransom, his receptionist. "Anything interesting?" She looked up and smiled, as she was paid to do. "One kind of odd one." She handed a folder to him as he brushed by. Inside he opened it: PATENT PENDING, the top sheet said. AN EATING MACHINE. And the dreams came back to him. He saw them, the shadows, thin, wraith-like, approaching. Long, bony fingers extended like claws. Reaching, prodding him. Trying to touch his heart. Fingers six inches long... And he awoke, screaming. Ms. Ransom calling in over the intercom, "Is everything all right?" Him answering, "Yes," and that he would be going out for the rest of the afternoon. And thinking. Thinking. Six inches of fat, that would just about do it. Make it eight to be sure. Most fingers, he knew, were only three-and-a-half, maybe four inches long at most from webbing to nail-tip, but even allowing two inches extra for fingers he saw in dreams, eight inches should do it. Outside he shouldered his way past a Salvation Army bell ringer, past bums and trolls and tramps huddled together for warmth on heat grates, past better-dressed tramps importuning for money for this, for that charity. A light snow falling. And it occurred to him: Christmas was almost here. And he... they must have thought he was Santa Claus! And he laughed, ho-hoing as they shrank from him, he still thin then but already laying plans. An eating machine, eh? So he would become one—an eating machine, himself—rich desserts, candies, meringues and puddings to follow down thick steaks. Obscene, heaped mounds of soft mashed potatoes, cone-shaped like women's breasts. Sucking, devouring. "Patent Pending," indeed! he snorted. And he dreamed of zombies still, but not so often. And always wistful zombies in some way, still reaching out. But now at a distance... And as the weeks went from December to January to February he dreamed less. The distances, when he did dream, increased also—he calculated it once one morning, having still screamed when they had surrounded him in a sort of ragged circle within that night's dream, but, seemingly, could approach no nearer: So many inches for each new pound, or fraction of a pound. In kilograms and feet. That afternoon when he went to the office Ms. Ransom no longer smiled. Nor did he give her a raise when that time came, when winter became spring. Rather he luxuriated within his flesh—three hundred pounds of it if he weighed an ounce! His bathroom scale could no longer measure him. Clothing he bought in special stores now, not minding spending money as long as it was spent for some thing. Not frittered or given. His body was too wide to fit in his mirror. And as he expanded, his eating machine stock expanded also—he marketed it as a novelty item despite its inventor's wish that it help invalids gain needed nourishment, and, as such, it had soon become a fad. A sort of gag present that wealthy people gave to one another—a toy for the idle rich—and paid top money for. Which meant that he sold his interest—just as the fad peaked. His timing impeccable, just as it always was. He made a fortune, as spring became summer. Himself his own kind of eating machine now—he could not stop himself even if he wished to, which he did not yet. He gloried, rather, in what he had become, four hundred pounds of him as June became July: His body not a house now but a temple, a grand cathedral! Walking rarely, rather keeping to air-conditioned cars. Hobbling, really, when he must walk outdoors. Screaming, the dreams came back. But now not just dreams. Or, rather, he became more sensitive to them. When he did have to walk, still there were homeless, no matter how insulated his body became to others. Still bums who slept on grates, scrabbling for handouts, as if the rising heat—even in July—were somehow their homes. Just as the flesh was his that rippled on his frame, heave-hoing itself in waves as he waddled imposingly from car to office—Ms. Ransom had quit by then—on the rare times that he went to the office. From office to restaurant, where he now dined alone. Ms. Ransom had said that he disgusted her. Which was another layer he added to his insulation. His distancing himself from... Well, from what? He took up farting. To relieve the pressure when such was needed, so more food would fit in. From, outside, the zombies. The flesh-eaters, just as he ate flesh himself to pack on more calories. Even in summer, as sweat rolled in rivers down his smooth, soft skin, even now lolling in air conditioning. He had a driver now for his car, the beam of his hips taking up a whole back seat. Until even his driver said that he disgusted him. That he would drive no more. Leaving him, in darkness, outside a supper club where he had just eaten, just gorged, just filled himself almost past bursting. But it was not so far that he could not walk home himself, now with a cane to assist in his waddling. Or was this part of his dream? He was not certain. He never was sure these days. At night he saw shadows, waking or sleeping. The sleep-shadows still somewhat keeping their distance, but growing ever bolder. Surer. As they surrounded him. And the day-shadows, the ones when he woke: These were the shadows behind his own eyelids. His facial flesh had by now puffed his eyes nearly into pigs' eyes—squinting, nearly shut—so corpulent had he become in his eating, as June passed through July. July became August. He loved himself for it. But now, now the walk home. If he were not dreaming. He squinted, he felt his way, one block. Two blocks. His cane skidding under him. He looked up to see a sign, some indication—to know which street it was that he should turn on. The street light was broken. And shadows surrounded him. Wicked. Ugly. The ghouls and the zombies. The nights he lay, sleepless. Screaming! As, finally, he reached home. Air conditioning. The door shut behind him, sideways scrabbling down the entrance hall, barely squeezing through. Until he erupted into his kitchen. Reaching, struggling. The stove. The icebox. "A small snack, perhaps," he said. Speaking just to himself. "Something for the flesh. To help meat stick to bones. Insulation needs fueling, after all—that's what they say. Corpulence needs to grow." And, as he reached, his own fingers touched yielding flesh. Soft, just as his was, but slippery from rotting as, his house and kitchen dissolving into a mist—perhaps he never having arrived there except in a hopeful dream—shadows became real. Kitchen knives clutched in hands, long and bony... And he knew the why of it—at long last now the why? Of dreams and nightmares. Why he should have awakened, so long ago, one winter's morning feeling he must be fat. Cut from the world outside, safe in his flesh-fortress. Succulent. Juicy. And who had been guiding whom? As, ignoring the screams of his flesh, the fingers extended to foot-lengths and more to carve their paths through it. ⁂ [ A NORMAL SON by Spinster Eskie ] I never truly felt that Jake belonged to me. I pushed him out and breastfed him, and cuddled him when he cried at night, but I always felt separate, more like a caretaker than a mother. Jake's father was a one-night-stand in Santa Cruz. He was Portuguese and barely spoke a word of English. I met him while travelling with my girlfriends and looking for a good time. When I found out I was pregnant, I was angry with myself, but I wanted children. I wanted Jake. He didn't speak. He stared blankly at me when I would sit, sobbing into my hands on the floor because I couldn't afford the gas bill or because I felt stuck, drained, and useless as a parent. Sometimes Jake would mimic my crying noises, but he didn't hug me, didn't say "Mommy I love you, everything is going to be okay." I often worried that I was doing more harm than good by trying to raise him by myself. I had no experience with autism prior to my son. I had been a spoiled party girl. I liked to drink. I liked sex. But I was not one to take on responsibility or educate myself through research. When Jake was diagnosed, however, I knew I had to understand autism if I was going to seek help for him. What I wanted was for him to be fixed. I didn't want him to have autism. I wanted Jake to be a normal, happy boy. Jake went to a public school that had a program for children with his disability. I had sought to get him into an intensive school for special needs, but with the salary I made on waiting tables, I had to take what I could get. The program at Colby Elementary wasn't bad. They cared a lot about Jake and wanted to see him get better. They gave Jake a sentence book so that he could communicate his needs with pictures, but Jake continued to mimic his teachers rather than express his own intentions. If an adult gave him a magazine to look at, he would hand it back to her using the exact same gesture. If an adult wrote the daily schedule on the white board, he would stand up next to her and rewrite the same thing with the same handwriting. The positive, his teachers would say, was that Jake had the ability to learn. The negative was that almost every action of his was a repetition, rather than a natural inclination. The extent of Jake's ability to imitate was fully disclosed to me when my parents bought him drum lessons for his seventh birthday. Jake tended to mimic beats with his hands when I played music and we figured he would enjoy learning an instrument. But to his instructor's surprise, Jake needed only one lesson to figure out how to play. He calmly watched his instructor teach the basics, and then observed as the instructor combined the techniques to show off an elaborate array of complex rhythms and crashing sounds. In a matter of seconds, Jake was able to copy the instructor's every move and follow along seamlessly and without mistake. This also occurred when I brought home a how-to-draw book. Jake spent hours at the dinner table drawing each example from the book, with such perfect detail and flawless color and line, that one would think a machine had made the copy. Jake's skills were limiting, however. Once he knew how to draw the Eiffel Tower, he could do it again, but if I asked him to free draw something like flowers or a smiley face, he would not know how to do it unless I drew the image first. And even then, his artistic skills would only be as good as mine, with shaky lines and a simple cartoonish quality. Jake's talent was not in music or in art, but in mimicking with literal precision. He was a mirror, a shadow, but his talents didn't stop there. As my son got older, he exhibited other strange behaviors that would puzzle even the most trained professional in the field of autism. I was called at work one day and told by a police officer that my son had gone missing at school. When I arrived at the school, Mrs. Lopez was visibly upset. She told me that she had counted every head twice, when the group had come in from recess. A boy named Victor had pushed Jake on the playground, and continued to be menacing toward him when recess was over. Mrs. Lopez then put Victor in timeout and when she turned to comfort Jake, he was gone. I was screaming at the teacher, trying to understand how a child in her care could just up and disappear like that. Mrs. Lopez was ashamed and apologetic, but I was in no state to be forgiving. I could have killed her. "We're doing all we can, Ms. Bonet," said an officer. "Nobody saw your son leave the building, so chances are, he's still inside the school." The principal and several police officers searched the school for hours and questioned every staff person available. I stayed in the classroom, calling everybody I knew to see if he had wandered to any of their houses. Then, just as I was about to go home to see if possibly Jake had returned there, I saw eyes staring at me from a heap of blankets on the floor and then blink. Jake wasn't under the blankets, he was one of the blankets. His body had flattened and contorted to look soft and wrinkled. He folded and crumpled like polka-dotted fabric and was lying with the other patterned blankets in the rest area by the bookshelf. It terrified me to see Jake's body bend in such a position, all scrunched up like laundry, but Jake had always been alarmingly flexible and his skin tone often changed with his emotions. When he was a baby, he'd go red when he needed to be changed or fed and ghostly white when it thundered outside his window. I had Jake checked for anemia but the doctors found nothing wrong with him. They said that his skin tone was simply translucent enough to show blood flow, and that his emotions would most certainly affect his coloring. But now I knew that Jake's ability to mimic also was an ability to disguise himself. He could stretch his back, flat and straight to look like a table. He could puff himself up, and go lumpy and fat while watching the clouds pass by. "Don't do it anymore!" I told Jake at breakfast one day. "Never mimic again!" I grabbed Jake's face and forced him to look into my eyes. "Do you understand me?" I asked him, "Never ever make your body mimic again!" Jake, of course, did not respond, and I could only hope he was receiving and processing my message. I didn't want Jake to be different. He was an outcast already. I didn't want anything to further segregate him from a normal childhood. When I was pregnant I had dreams for Jake. I wanted him to be successful and handsome. I wanted him to be my best friend and the one guy I could count on. But I couldn't count on Jake. I was afraid of him and afraid for him. If his talents became known, he'd be tested more and possibly taken away from me. I had no idea how to relate to my son, but I loved him. More than anything, I loved him, and I wanted to protect him. So, for me, Jake stopped making shapes and colors, but there were occasions when he'd unintentionally slip. For his tenth birthday party, Jake played limbo with his friends from school. The other parents and I were in the kitchen, discussing articles we had read about autism and its cause. Even among other parents with autistic children, I felt like an outsider. At this point, I looked beyond a parent's head into the living room where the kids were. The stick was lowered four inches from the ground and Jake flattened himself like a pancake and glided beneath. Most of the kids were impressed and gasped with awe. However, one child threw a fit and had to be restrained by his mother and removed from the party. Thankfully, most of the parents assumed the outrage was due to poor sportsmanship, but one child asked me how Jake was capable of making himself flat. "He's just very flexible," I explained to the little girl and hoped that the incident would be forgotten. At my friend's engagement party, I met Cesar: a fuzzy bearded, older gentleman with a drooping nose and thinning hair. Physically, Cesar was not my type, but he bought me a drink and displayed a friendly, kind disposition. Anyway, I was thrilled to be drinking, and even more thrilled that I was at an event that didn't require dragging my kid along. Jake was with my parents. He was usually with my parents when I wanted to get fucked up, but there were days when I couldn't help but be fucked up in front of him. Booze was the one luxury I allowed myself. I didn't style my hair anymore or shave, or go out dancing with the girls. I didn't date because most men would have nothing to do with a single mom, let alone one whose son was autistic. I couldn't remember the last time I had sex, or even had the energy and desire to masturbate, so when Cesar approached me, I put no faith into the possibility that he might be braver than his predecessors. "You don't want me," I slurred over my cocktail, "I'm a basket-case. My life is a mess, my son is a mess. You wouldn't just be dating me. You'd be dating my baggage. You'd be dating my fears, my insecurities, and my sadness." "Why are you so sad?" Cesar asked unexpectedly and I considered the question long before answering. "I'm sad because my son doesn't love me like I love him." I don't think I had ever said it out loud before then, but it was the truth. Jake did not like to be touched. He reacted nervously when I tried to hold him, and he would pull away when I kissed him. Over the years, Jake learned to mimic gestures of love, but nothing ever seemed organic or from his heart. He didn't want to be with me. He wanted to be elsewhere. I'm not sure how I knew this. I just did. Jake didn't like Cesar coming over all the time. He would blend into the walls, just so I wouldn't be able to find him for supper. But I needed Cesar to be around. I needed to feel adored again and I needed the financial help—and I needed the emotional help. So I asked Cesar to move in after a month. Living with us, it didn't take Cesar long to realize that Jake was a strange anomaly. Jake would come into our room while we were making love and silently watch us until we'd notice him. The first time it happened, Cesar yelled for him to get out and Jake ran into his bedroom and pulled himself up to the top shelf in his closet, using his stretchy, elastic arms and legs. Then he squeezed himself into the small, enclosed space and hid from us for an hour. Sometimes, Jake would mimic Cesar's affection, and would pat my bottom and sensually massage my shoulders. I'd have to explain to him the difference between the love of a son and the love of a boyfriend. I figured it was only a matter of time before Cesar would pack and leave, but he wasn't giving up so quickly and was determined to somehow connect with Jake. I thought the man to be crazy. I'd been trying to connect with my son for eleven years. When Cesar took Jake to the aquarium where he worked, something triggered in the young boy. He was clearly enthralled by Cesar's store. He studied every fish, every seahorse, every bizarre creature that gracefully twirled and danced within their wet, restrictive, habitats. I could tell how badly Jake longed to shapeshift and become one of the animals, but he knew better than to do it in public and he also knew I'd ground him if he tried. Yet, Cesar was instantly motivated to strengthen his relationship with Jake through their common interest. He brought home books on marine-life and Jake would lose himself in the pictures and would run to me and show almost every page with the most enthusiasm I'd ever seen him express. His eyes were wide and his skin would reflect the bright, tropical colors of the fish in the books, and then Jake would turn to me and his chin would drop at the recognition of my disapproval. When Cesar brought home a reef tank for Jake, my son's typically serious face faded to reveal the most endearing, gigantic smile, and my heart ached. He could not take his eyes off the fluttering fins and the beautiful, majestic corals that decorated the glass. Although his obsession was a concern of mine, Cesar kept bringing home more books and documentaries on various aquatic species. Then one day, Cesar and I caught Jake climbing into the tank, feet first, with his legs stretched like his bones were made of rubber. Most boys Jake's age would not have been able to fit into the shallow glass rectangle, but Jake contorted his body just so. He elongated himself and puffed up his malleable flesh, to fit like soft jelly in a jar. "I want that fucking tank out of here!" I shouted at Cesar after we had dug Jake out of the freezing, sticky salt water. "What's the problem, Maryanne? He likes that tank!" "That's the problem, Cesar! He likes it too much! He wants to be a fucking fish! He can barely control his body!" "I think he's a special boy with a gift!" Cesar said to me. "He's a freak! And you're encouraging him to be a freak!" "Why shouldn't I encourage him to be who he is?" "I want him to be normal!" "Well, he's not normal Maryanne! And all the therapy and all the sped classes in the world aren't going to make Jake a normal kid! Love him for who he is!" "Get out!" I screamed and I tossed him one of his shirts from the closet. "Get the fuck out of my house!" I threw another shirt at him, and another, and began to cry as I piled Cesar's clothes onto the bed. Cesar did not move and I stomped outside the room to find Jake listening from the hallway. His skin was red and he pleaded to me using only his eyes. I didn't know what to say. I went to hug him, but he recoiled and went back to his room. Cesar and I managed to make up that night, but I wasn't ready to fully let my guard down. I was still pissed off. Not so much at Cesar, but at myself for being the shitty mother I was. Cesar's words hurt deep, as I honestly couldn't say for sure what it was that I loved about my son. I'd spent eleven years feeling uncomfortable and disengaged from him. I was jealous of Cesar's ability to appreciate Jake's abnormalities and even understand them on some level. I watched mothers on the playground getting hugs and kisses from their sons and I felt only self-pity and resentment. "Let's take a vacation," Cesar suggested to me. "You're overworked and overstressed. What this family needs is a good getaway." I laughed at the idea of a vacation. I hadn't taken one since my trip to Santa Cruz when Jake was conceived. But Cesar had some cash stored away, and said he wanted to take me and Jake to the coast for sunshine and a relaxing dip in the ocean. "You mean you want to show Jake the beach," I said, mildly irritated by Cesar's persistence. "Yes, I do," Cesar replied confidently, "and I want to see you in a tiny, tight bikini." He kissed me and rubbed my thighs and I remembered Jake's father looking me up and down on the beach. I was twenty then, and skinny, and my breasts overflowed in a bikini that barely left anything to the imagination. We drank banana daiquiris and briefly conversed. Well, I talked. He nodded. Then we made love under starlight on the dunes. The waves made a haunting melody that echoed through the vast, open space, and the Portuguese man between my legs fucked me into oblivion. His long, smooth penis filled me up and his fingers stimulated me through some kind of suction method I couldn't quite figure out. I was drunk and things were hazy, so I just laid back and enjoyed orgasm after orgasm. During the car ride from our home in Arizona, Jake read his marine-biology books and kept looking out the window in anticipation of the sea. When, finally, the Pacific Ocean emerged from the distance, Jake bounced and rocked in his seat. "Jake, calm down!" I demanded as his excitement intensified the closer we got. Cesar pulled into a parking lot by the shore and Jake banged on the car door to get out. "Christ, Jake, settle down!" I yelled, assuming he was having an anxiety attack from the road. "Let him out of the car," Cesar told me. "I don't think that's a good idea right now. He needs to calm down." "Maryanne, listen to me. Let him out of the car now!" I opened the car door and Jake undid his seatbelt. Then he bolted past me and toward the great, blue ocean. "Jake!" I called out, chasing after him through the hot, gritty sand. "Jake, stop this!" But he would not listen. He kept running as fast as he could and I ran after him, breathless and panicked. Finally, I caught up with him and grabbed what I thought was his hand, but a slimy, smooth tentacle slipped from my grip. "Let him go!" Cesar shouted, holding me back. "Jake!" I cried, reaching out, and I watched as eight slimy, limp tentacles appeared from beneath Jake's shirt and his body collapsed as he reached the water. An enormous wave then flushed over my son and he was gone. I was in hysterics now and kept calling Jake's name, even though I knew he couldn't hear. I ran into the water, fully dressed, and Cesar had to drag me back to shore and keep me suppressed under his weight. "He's okay!" Cesar assured me. "He's going to be okay. He's home." There was a comfort in Cesar's words, but I still wouldn't accept them. Home was not the cold, lonely sea. Home was his bed in his room, in our little house, where he was loved and missed. I never saw Cesar again after that. He believed he had done the right thing, but he took my son from me, and now all I could do was wait, wait for the day when Jake would return. I quit my job and moved to the shores of California just to wait for that day. And every night I'd visit the beach and gaze out at its brilliant, sparkling mystery and hope that wherever Jake was, he was happy. ⁂ [ GAS MASK BABY by Santiago Eximeno ] The children pile up over each other. The bodies form a mountain of trembling flesh. Those at the lower positions can hardly breathe. The ones on the top move and shake, but they can't detach from the group because the rest of them hold them down. They hold them down firmly with their hands, imprisoning them. No one can break the mountain of children. And they're alive. And they breathe. Maria knows this. She knows her son is there in the mountain, among the bodies of thousands, hundreds of thousands of other children, some teenagers, some newborns. Since she arrived, they haven't stopped crying. There are other women by the mountain, a whole handful of them. Trembling and crying. Pulling the arms of children that aren't theirs. Climbing the mountain, stabbing the faces of sobbing babies with their stiletto heels. The women don't speak to one another. Mothers, thinks Maria. Mothers just like her who came to retrieve the child they lost. Because, in one way or another, they have all lost their child and come here to get their child back. Here. In Hell. Maria covers her face with one hand. She can't stand the stink emanating from the mountain of flesh. Somewhere, someone has lit a fire, and the smell of burnt flesh is unbearable. The mountain is actually a wall, a palpitating wall over twenty meters high, a wall that surrounds her and reminds her of the old university lecture rooms where she used to teach before the guilt, the goddamned guilt condemned her. She turns around and looks behind her, at the place from where she entered. It no longer exists. The entrance is closed, blocked by the piled-up bodies of teenagers. Of babies. Of children. The stench lingers, as do the murmuring and the lamentations. The litany of tortured children. Why aren't they dead? Why do they persist on living here, on the other side? Maria was always told that, no matter what politicians proclaim, mothers decide. But it seems that it's not so. It seems that the decision whether to live or die always belonged to the children. Maria holds in her hands a map she was given at the entrance. The map is written with the blood of unborn children on the skin of elderly pedophiles. Typewriters were banned a long time ago in Hell. Maria holds up the map and peruses it, comparing it to the mass of howling flesh that festers, moans, and screams in front of her. She asks herself if the red circle dissolving into tears of blood shows the spot where her son lay, or whether it's some kind of ruse, another pantomime designed to increase her suffering. She folds the map to one small square of palpitating skin and puts it back in her mouth. She holds it with her teeth, fearing the possibility of swallowing it. She would put it away somewhere else, but she's completely naked. That was the deal when she came here; that's what the demon that was black as night said to her. "Take off your clothes. Get on your knees. Do it." And she did, did she ever. Anything to see her son again. To expel from her mind all the guilt, all the memories crystallized into an empty university classroom, a sad look, words spoken without conscience: "I'm not taking care of it. If I were you, I'd have an abortion." With their faces covered by muzzles, the pregnant women wait on the other side of the mountain. She can see them through the smashed-up bodies if she looks closely between the thighs and butt cheeks, between the open spaces that the bodies cannot completely fill. The pregnant women pose like shop mannequins, and some of them have barcodes tattooed on their arms in black ink. Here, they are nothing more than part of the décor. Like the carbonized trees or the rivers of blood covered by barbed wired. Hell's scenographer is a son of a bitch. Maria puts her hands on one of the bodies—a girl with curly hair who smiles while she howls like a she-wolf in heat—and starts climbing. If the map is right, she will find her son up there among fifty other expectant lactating infants, next to a small group of primary school pupils. As she sinks her feet into the flesh, feeling inquisitive hands and tongues exploring her belly and grazing her vulva, Maria asks herself how she will recognize him. Deep down in her soul she knows she will do so instantly, and the knowledge terrifies her. Climbing is everything. Wrapped up in the howling, screaming, and gurgling, Maria climbs the wall of unborn flesh without looking back, oblivious to the other mothers, the pregnant women, the masked demons using their red-hot spears on the naked bodies of women and children. On everyone. And when she unknowingly introduces her fingers inside a mouth and the bite rips off the first phalanx of her pinkie, she screams. She screams like a fiend, but doesn't stop. She keeps climbing up, always up. She doesn't want to reach the top of the wall of flesh. She doesn't want to see what's hiding on the other side, the bits that she could glimpse through the bodies. She doesn't want to see the men that look like mutilated blow-up dolls chatting by the river. She doesn't want to hear the cries of the blind teenage girls sitting in a circle around old women with their lips tied together. Hell is everything, and she wants no part of it. I'm just passing by, she tells herself. She knows it's not true. She knows that, even if today she manages to escape, sooner or later she'll be back. Another step up the wall and, suddenly, she's facing a smiling child. She knows it's her son as soon as she sees him. His eyes, the curves of his lips. She doesn't ask him how old he is because she knows the exact answer: one year, six months, and four days. That's how long it took her to muster up enough courage to come to Hell for him. Because Hell is not losing your child. Hell is getting your child back. "Mommy," says the boy. Maria loses her balance and nearly falls. But she doesn't. She holds onto her son's body as she screams and cries. She pulls him towards her, trying to extract his smashed flesh from the wall of bodies waiting for the mothers who aborted them to return for them. Some of them have faces covered in wrinkles; they know for certain that their mother will never come. Maria pulls with all her might, fearlessly. And the boy's body slips out little by little, centimeter by centimeter, while the other unborn children open their hands to set him free. "Mommy," repeats the boy. "I'm here," whispers Maria. "I'm here." Going down is a feverish madness. The hands of a hundred failures hold her up, encourage her. They don't retain her, they just help her descend back down to the barbed wire floor. The hands treat her gently because they already know she's a mother, a real mother, the kind of mother who will give up her own life to get her lost child back. Down below, women smile at her and try to touch her. Maria cradles her son in her arms and moves away from them, terrified. She doesn't want to think about how long their children have been trapped in there, waiting. Like so many other children who live there for eternity, in the wall of flesh while, oblivious to their reality, their mothers go on with their lives and forget. Forget. There is a door, and it's open. Maria crosses it. She has returned. Sitting behind a desk, the demon is waiting for her. "You'll have to fill out the form. Give the boy to the midwife so we can prepare him." Maria trembles like a leaf when the parody of a woman whom she assumes is the midwife comes to her with her arms wide open. The stench of her withered and open body makes her gag, but she knows she must be obedient and silently gives her the boy. "Mommy," he says, but there is no reproach in his voice. The midwife displays her body shamelessly. It's completely covered in festering sores. Her extreme thinness and her black skin are a striking contrast with the healthy look of the boy. Maybe that's why Maria wants to scream when the thing she takes for a woman gently, very gently, puts the gas mask on the boy's face. "He needs a name," says the demon, before showing Maria a series of documents. "And you need to sign all these papers with your menstrual blood." Maria nods. A castrated man with shaved skin covered in cellophane gives her back her clothes. She gives him an imploring, begging look as she sinks the quill into her body and signs sheet after sheet after sheet of paper. "Tonight, we'll go home," says the demon while she gets dressed, "and we'll take the man." Maria nods. That's the payment. It's only fair. Her clothes feel scratchy. She can't take her eyes off the boy and the gas mask stuck to his face like a second skin. "One year, six months, four days," says the demon. "Yes," answers Maria. She can't think of anything else to say. "Fine," says the demon. "You'll go back, then. Good luck. Enjoy every day. In a few years, we'll meet again." And then the midwife gives her the boy and everything goes dark. The classroom is empty. There's no one there. Only her, with her son sleeping in her arms. "I'll take care of everything," whispers Maria. She shuts her eyes and caresses the gas mask covering the boy's face. Then she unbuttons her blouse and lets the creature find her breast and feed. ⁂ [ HUMAN BODY by Balázs Farkas ] "Thus the human body is considered an interloper, not being part of creation, the pillars of the world aren't strong enough to carry it. It should be unable to step into the great lake, which is the origin of all life. Even daemons stand before us puzzled by our presence, understanding not how we are able to see, walk and create on this plane, we can only hope in the graciousness of the lotus. Hiding the higher knowledge and the true size of the cosmos from us was a merciful act, the wisdom of Tindalos." (From the Fifth Cryptical Book of Hsan.) It's a wonderful day for Péter Tabán. He's standing in the house he'd inherited, staring at the mouldy walls, the battered bookshelves, the unmade bed. He's looking at the cobwebs on the ceiling and jammed windows. Later, he's pacing around in the kitchen. He can smell spoilt food, cheap detergent, and the stench of death. He flips the switches to check if they're still working. He's thinking about the old lady who used to live here, whose name he hadn't known at all. At least not before he received the letter about the inheritance. He's trying to deal with the fact that at only twenty-six, he's now a proud owner of a house. Maybe he could sell it. Or he could move here, away from the city. This is a tidy little village after all. He's got plenty of options. He might not be an expert when it comes to architecture, but still he knocks on the walls, squeezes the door frames, opens and closes the doors. It's a good house. By no means big, and there will be plenty of work to be done, but it's all right. Then he exits the house to the backyard, observing the unused pigsty and the neglected garden. He's about to leave when in the toolshed he finds the human body. And from this moment on, it's the only thing that matters in his life. The woman in the mayor's office is typing annoyingly slowly. It's almost unbearable. "Your name again? Péter... Tabán?" "Yes." He glances behind his back. Through the window and out onto the street. It's in the car. The human body is in the car. Covered in a blanket, on the back seat. It's there. He found it, it belongs to him now. When can he get out of here? "Your mother's maiden name?" Reluctantly, he answers all questions. None of this matters now. The inherited house? It doesn't matter. He himself doesn't matter anymore. Nor his personal data. Nothing makes sense anymore. The human body is in his car now. As the woman is reading the instructions aloud, Péter is tearing off little pieces of skin from his fingers. His feet move involuntarily and he starts sweating. They should let him go now. What's all this for? He has other things to attend to. He has a task now. He can't just leave the human body alone. "For fuck's sake now!" he snaps. The woman glances up from the monitor, from behind her glasses. "Come again?" "Nothing, it's just... it just occurred to me that... that I have to..." The woman waves her hand. "You shouldn't worry. We're done here. We'll send the rest of the documents through mail. You can call me, you know my number, right? I'll have to check with the mayor as well, if you decide to move here... some time in the future." It's almost like the woman was scared. The words themselves didn't give this away, but her look. It's like she wanted to get this matter over with as well. "Uh-huh," Péter says. "Can I go now?" The woman shrugs. "Can't see why not." As Péter hurries away from the mayor's office, and as he's nearing his car, he grabs his phone, calling Krisztina, his girlfriend. "Don't come over today," he says. "Still more paperwork to do... I'm sorry, really, but at least I've got the house." "All right," Krisztina says. "So, what's it like? Is it nice?" "Nice... real nice, but listen, we'll talk tomorrow, I'll tell you everything. Got to go now. Bye!" "Uh, bye." As he's talking to his girlfriend, some kind of inexplicable nervousness takes over him. As soon as he puts away his phone and he sits behind the wheel, he calms down. He can breathe out now. Then he turns back, slowly, staring at the backseat. Under the blanket, the human body occasionally makes a sluggish, faint motion. That's all it can do. "We can go now," Péter says. He stares at the blanket, wetting his lips. "Everything will be all right. Everything will be all right." He's struggling to carry the human body upstairs. It's not that big, but a bit heavier than expected. It's still covered in the blanket, but it's stirring more intensely. Péter chooses the stairs. He just has to climb two floors. He has a horrible premonition. What if somebody sees him? What would they say? Or worse yet, what if somebody wanted to grab the human body from him? For the first time in his life, Péter Tabán feels like he could kill somebody. If somebody asked him right now... if somebody would stand in his way... Before he can finish the thought, he arrives at the door of the condo. He's fumbling with his keys. He can hear voices from the back end of the corridor. He glances over there, but sees nobody. A door lock rattles somewhere. They mustn't see the human body. He holds it to his chest with his left arm as if holding a child while he struggles with the lock with his right hand. A door opens. Now Péter can't tell where he is. He's feeling dizzy; his sight is blurred. "No," he groans. He pushes his weight against the door. It gives way. "Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God." He steps inside the condo with an inhuman speed and closes the door behind his back. He tosses his keys somewhere. He runs towards the bedroom, to the bed. He doesn't even take off his shoes. If his girlfriend would see this... if his mother would see this... But nobody sees him. No one should see him. He hurries to the bed and lays the human body down, taking off the blanket. "We're home," he mumbles. "We're home. It's okay. Everything's going to be all right." Now he can study the human body for the first time. So far he hadn't done so, didn't even think about it. Péter is convinced that the human body is beautiful. It is perfect like this. It has no legs, nothing under its hips—but it doesn't need legs, if there's somebody who can carry it. Its skin is smooth like an infant's. Above its hips there's the torso, without a navel, without nipples. You can't tell if it's male or female, it's simpler than that: it's human, it has to be, it's the prototype of a human being, its most perfect, cleanest body. Its two arms end in elbows, nothing below them—but why would it need hands, if there's somebody who could help it? And that head, that perfect, regular oval form, is not ruined by hair of any kind, nor a face. The whole skull is just covered by skin, fair, smooth skin. Human body. It moves its head—turning that emptiness where the face should've been—towards Péter. It's thirsty, he ponders. Why couldn't I think of this before! Who knows how long it had been lying out there alone! He runs off to get water. He is not thinking. He moves in a hurry. He doesn't want to leave the human body for such a long time. He returns with a glass of water. He hesitates at the bed, looking at the human body. What's he supposed to do? But of course, he knows. He has always known. He kneels beside the bed, dips his fingers in the glass, and with wet hands, he caresses the faceless head of the human body. The water drops are glimmering on the clean, smooth skin. The human body turns its head eagerly. "Yes," Péter says. He dips his hand in the glass again, wetting the rest of the skin on the limbless torso. The human body moves, its muscles tense under the skin. "Easy... easy... good." Péter doesn't take notice of the fact that his own mouth is open, and a line of drool appears in its corner. "Good." He caresses the body with his wet hands. Suddenly, a sound comes from behind the faceless face: a hollow moaning. "You're going to tell me your secrets," Péter whispers hopefully. And the human body tells him its secrets. Péter Tabán has a terrible day. He's been sitting for almost six hours in the office of the car dealership. He's crunching numbers, sweating, hoping that his boss doesn't return. He was late this morning, almost didn't show up. In the first hours, he's been growling at customers, so his boss sent him in here to work on the computer. He's been doing that since. Until this moment, the place hasn't seemed real. Now the contours are becoming stronger; the door, the chair, these are right here, they are so real, he could almost touch them. This is where he works after all, this is where he makes money. He doesn't understand what's happening. Why was it so hard to leave his home? And it comes back to him. The human body. He's confused. Did that really happen? Impossible! He's thinking hard. What kind of foolishness is this? Could such things be? And if so, why would he bring home a body, why would he care, why wouldn't he be able to leave it behind? He's becoming nervous. I'm gross, he thinks. Never, never again! I'll have to get rid of it. His phone rings. He jumps in his seat, almost having a heart attack. "What!" he yells. "Huh, easy now! I thought I could call you." Péter buries his face in his hands. He wipes the sweat off his brow. "Krisztina... I'm sorry, I'm just... having a stressful day." "Okay then," his girlfriend says. "I just wanted to ask if we're going to meet up this evening. I assume you've finished with your things." "Hmmm? Oh! Oh... yes." "When can I come over?" Péter is startled by the question. The human body is still lying on his bed. He's trying to remember what happened last night, but everything is confusing. His last solid memory is leaving that inherited house. And then... "No, don't come over," he mumbles. "What?" "I mean... I should be the one going to your place. There has been a... uh, I don't know, I made a mess, everything is wet in the house now... uh, accidentally." "What?" "Never mind, just... I'll tell you everything, but can we meet at your place this time? It's closer and I should... it would be better to meet up as soon as possible, I just need you." "Uh-huh. Okay then, but I hope this house will settle the question of moving in together. I'll be ready when you're done." "Of course. I lo—" Silence. Péter is staring at his phone. Ripples appear on the table in front of him. It looks wet. Péter closes his eyes. He's looking around in Krisztina's condo as if he'd never seen it before, peering in every corner, fearing that somebody might be hiding here somewhere. They eat dinner. Then they sit on the couch, watching a movie. Péter has a vague feeling that all this might be fake. Staged. He's trying to remember who he is, who Krisztina is, what this place is, and what that matter was with the inherited house. From time to time he touches his own face. "You must have had a really stressful day indeed," Krisztina says after the movie. "Yeah, I guess... you know, everything happened so fast. It's weird. I mean what kind of person am I if I don't even know my own relatives? Like... absolutely nothing!" "Don't overthink it. You got yourself a house, bam, just be happy about it." Krisztina is smiling. Péter hopes that he's smiling too, but he can't tell anymore. They start cleaning up. While Krisztina is in the kitchen, Péter notices that his sense of time has completely changed and that he couldn't describe this feeling with human terms. Time didn't go faster or slower, it was completely off the hinges. Events happened, but independent of him, or rather, they went through him. His eyes fix on the wall, on a picture of a lotus flower. He feels like years would go by in an instant. In the next second they are in the bedroom, drinking champagne. "I figured we could celebrate." Péter is unsure whether Krisztina said this before opening the bottle, or she's just about to say this. The alcohol is mercifully dampening these feelings. They cuddle. They get undressed. They make love. The skin of the girl is smooth... Smooth. Imperfect, fake, not right. He thinks about the human body. It's now impossible not to think about it. Péter and Krisztina lay in the bed, staring at the ceiling. "I'm sorry," Péter says. "I..." "It's okay," Krisztina says. Péter Tabán is kneeling beside his bed, looking at the human body, struggling with his tears. "I wasn't thinking," he whimpers. "I'm so sorry, I won't... I won't see her again! I'm sorry, I will never leave you alone!" He came home at night; it's almost four in the morning. Soon he'll have to go to work. He thinks about his boss, the cars, the spreadsheets... The human body stiffens. Péter screams. "No! It's not important! I don't have to go! It doesn't matter, going to work, it's... no!" His speech begins to fail resembling any words; he's now just bending over the human body with open mouth and closed eyes, trembling, drooling, crying, he can't even breathe. He's bawling like a little boy. "Muhsorrysorry muh I-uh, I'muhsoooo..." His tears and drool hit the skin of the human body. It's muscles twitch under the skin. The human body is turning its head again. There's a deep groan coming from it. "Yes." He's still sobbing, but he wipes off his tears. He pulls a napkin from his pocket, blows his nose, then he throws the napkin away, somewhere in the corner of the room. "Yes, I'm listening. I'm listening now." The human body is calming down. It lays perfectly straight and still. So peaceful. So beautiful, incredibly beautiful. The skin on the non-existent face is becoming softer. "Show it to me," Péter whispers. "Show me." A small opening appears on the skin where the mouth should've been. This too resembles a mouth, but it's small, lipless, and there's only the void behind it. "We're all children of the stars," Péter mumbles. "Nothing matters. I'm insignificant." The mouth of the human body is growing wider, like a demented grin. A small tongue appears in the corner of that mouth, slipping forth carefully from behind the faceless skull, then slides all the way out like a venomous snake, reaching the chin of the human body. Péter is looking at these events hypnotized. "You're going to tell me your secrets," he whispers. There's a deep, guttural moaning coming out of the mouth of the human body. Péter reaches out to touch its tongue. It wriggles, its saliva making his fingers numb. He doesn't need any fingers, he doesn't need his hands, because... Darkness encompasses him immediately. He can only see the faint light of the distant stars. They tell the origin of the human body. Show it to me. Péter's thoughts echo in the void. Show it to me. The human body complies. It's showing him places and times long forgotten by the cosmos, worlds created with unfathomable geometries, Promethean temples, scorching suns of dying planets, metallic graveyards, slimy waterfalls, human bodies praying to trees. Péter Tabán is the happiest man in the universe. In the following weeks, he's breaking contact with everyone. At first he's telling petty lies, coming up with small excuses. He promises his mother to visit her the next month. He tells his boss and his girlfriend that he's ill. And then he doesn't bother anymore. A couple of days later, Krisztina breaks up with him. Then he receives a call from his workplace that he's going to get fired. He has no recollection of most of these events. He can remember his usual answer, though. I don't care. There are moments when he does actually care. He wakes pondering. He could end all this. He could leave the human body behind. He could break its spell on him. He could get it all together. It's not too late, is it? And then he realizes. Why would he do that? The human body has shown him that this mortal life, all this... this is nothing. Why would he return to it? And still, these ponderings come in the rare waking moments of the trance, then disappear again. Usually when he's walking to the grocery store, collecting things for himself and the human body. If he'd walk long enough, he'd question everything. But not for long. After all, the human body is there for him. There's nothing more important than this. Now he's walking to the grocery store again. His phone rings. It's that woman from the mayor's office. He's confused. "What kind of papers?" he asks. "You didn't get them?" It's like waking from a long dream. He squeezes the phone to his ears. In his other hand, he's holding a grocery bag. He looks around. He's heading home. Home to... What the hell am I doing here? "Hello?" The phone. "Y-yeah. I guess I got them. I remember the... I remember the postman." "This is great, Mr. Tabán, but I'd like you to send them back with your signature. Have you visited the land registry office? Land registry. Péter wets his lips. Saliva. "Not yet," he confesses. A long, audible breath. "Could you come in please sometime?" "I don't think so," he whimpers. "What?" "I'll try... hey, can I ask you a question?" "Yes." "Can you tell me something about the former owner of the house? I mean what happened to her?" "Mrs. Kántor? I don't know. Her son disappeared. He used to live with her. They were arguing all the time. I'm not sure. After his son left, the woman didn't show herself that much. She was old and weak, natural causes, they said. The son was declared missing, therefore the next person in the succession line was his brother and your..." "Yeah, I know all that. I guess. I can understand it. What did you say, should I go to the office?" "That would be great, we still need to sign some of the..." "I'm coming then," Péter says. He disconnects the call. He's just standing there, holding the grocery bag. No. He should go home. There's no other way. The car keys are in the condo. Hesitantly, he turns. "Or I'll just go in this direction," he says. "As far as possible." A family passes by. They all stare at him, then walk away more promptly. "Ah yes, I'm talking to myself," he mumbles. "Also, I haven't had a shower in a couple of..." He realizes. "Holy shit, what the hell am I doing here?" No. It has to stop. Never again. "Never again," he speaks out loud. He doesn't remember how he got back to his bed. He doesn't even care. He caresses the human body. "It's all right. Everything's going to be fine." The human body looks sloppier. The skin is greyish. "What I give you is not enough. Far from it." The tongue in its mouth is moving flaccidly around the lipless crevice. Time is shifting as the trance begins. Somebody's been ringing the doorbell, and he can't tell for how long, nor when this is happening. Péter Tabán struggles to get up. He feels the drowsiness of every human being who has ever lived in the world. He shambles to the front door. He opens it. It's that woman from the mayor's office. Not his boss, not his mother, not his ex-girlfriend. It's just somebody whom he met only once. It's all I'm worth. The woman is ready to greet him but suddenly she grimaces, probably noticing his smell. "Well what is it?" Péter groans. "Do you remember me? I'm Bianka Sallai. From the mayor's office in Zalarév?" "You're asking me?" "I'm telling you." Peter shrugs. "You never told me your name, so whatever. I don't know." Bianka Sallai sighs impatiently. "We're going to sign these papers right now, and we're going to the notary immediately after that, and then to the land registry office. We have to close our quarterly paperwork in the office. We just cannot wait any longer. We don't usually go to other people's homes, so consider yourself lucky." "Okay. You want to come in?" "I intend to." She then goes inside and sits at the table in the kitchen. Péter realizes what kind of a mess has been building up in this condo. Dishes are piling up, the trashcan full. The woman is chattering endlessly. "We're dealing with multiple towns from the region, you see, paperwork is a nightmare, and uh... could you please open the windows? You should let in some fresh air more often." Péter stares at the woman, observing her for the first time. She's a bit obese, probably because of her sedentary work. Her face is pretty, and her ring indicates that she's married. She made her hair wavy somehow, but she's not wearing any makeup. Péter opens the window. As they are signing the papers, a weird noise emerges from the bedroom, resembling the awful bleating of a dying goat. They both stiffen. "What was that?" Bianka asks. "Nothing," Péter says. And again. Even louder than before. Péter closes his eyes. No. "Could I just..." "No!" With all of his strength, Péter slams his palm on the table. The woman flinches. "It's none of your business!" Bianka presses her lips together, pushing herself back in her chair. "I'm sorry, but everything you're doing is very suspicious." She stands up, starting to walk towards the bedroom. Péter shakes his head, pacing in the kitchen. "No, no, no," he mumbles. "It can't be. She can't see it!" Bianka steps slowly in the direction of the bedroom. She yells inside: "Hello? Is anybody there? I can help you! Please answer me!" "No," Péter grumbles. He glances at the countertop. At the bread knife. The woman disappears now in the bedroom. A few seconds later she speaks out loud: "Oh my dear God... good heavens..." Péter doesn't feel like thinking too much, and time is shifting again. Now he's standing right behind the woman, grabbing her hair while she's screaming, holding her head back, exposing her neck right above the human body. It's perfect, this is how it should be. Just a small motion. Blood covers everything. Everything. Worlds, universes. Multiple orifices open on the skin of the human body, on its chest, on its shoulders, on its head, everywhere. And from every small hole, fast moving tongues emerge. They lick. They feast. Péter lets go of the woman. He lowers the knife. He just stares blankly at the bed, that forest of tongues. They are ravenously licking, lapping up all the blood. "Oh yeah, Bianka Sallai," Péter says. "I guess you're right." Not a single drop of blood goes wasted on the bed or the carpet. It just disappears. Drop by drop. "You're right, you're right," Péter says. "We should go soon enough." Before the bedroom disappears to reveal the most secret, hellish landscapes of the cosmos, and before the strongest trance begins, Péter Tabán says: "We have to go to that house!" The human body is screaming ghastly screeches in the backseat of the car. Like a pig getting ready to be slaughtered. "I don't care!" Péter growls at it. That's it! It's shown its true nature! The bastard! "You won't fool me again! Never!" He's flooring it, speeding through the night, on the highway through the woods of Zala county. Péter feels rapturous with wakefulness and clarity. "I've wasted my life, and what have you given me? Nothing! It was all a lie! The whole thing, a big fucking lie!" That misshapen abomination on the backseat is squirming vigorously on its swollen tentacle-like tongues, its shrieking only punctuated by spasming, retching sounds. "Drown in your own filth!" Soon they'll reach that house where it all began. It's his after all. According to the papers at least, if that even matters. The house belongs to him now. And so does the Gate. The human body, or whatever it may be, is now completely turned inside out. It's full now, gorged. It doesn't need anything right now. It doesn't need Péter Tabán. Now it's the other way around. Péter Tabán needs the creature. He stops the car in front of the house, opens the door, and grabs the wallowing monstrosity by one of its tentacles, pulling it out of the car. It screams with thousands of mouths, likely waking everybody in the village. Péter drags the body to the front door, kicking it with all his strength, finally getting it inside. "I've had enough of you!" he yells. "You're full now, aren't you? You can't get hold of me now, you have nothing! I've got you now! Show me!" Dogs are barking in the neighborhood. "SHOW IT TO ME!" He grabs one of the tentacles forcefully, his fingers sinking into the slimy flesh, dragging the creature deeper into the house. He closes the door behind him, and locks it. He wipes his hand on his clothes while flicking the light switches frantically in the house. "Where is it, huh? Where is it? I will find it, you disgusting lying worm!" He ransacks all the drawers, looks into the larder, then glimpses under the tables. Finally, he steps into the kitchen, pulling out the drawers there too. Suddenly he stops. He stands there with an open mouth. "Well, look at this." He finds no utensils. Just alien, weird items. Small idols. Notebooks, papers. And a book. Its title can be read clearly. De Praestigiis Daemonum. And another book, but its cover is battered; so he can only make out a word: HSAN, and a Roman numeral: V. He grabs the books, throwing them one by one at the creature in the living room. "What's this? Huh? And this? What are these? Who reads shit like this? You think normal people have anything to do with this crap?" Normal people. He can't remember what a normal person is anymore. His mind is clear now, so he can recollect more and more memories from the last days. New memories: he realizes he met multiple times with Krisztina, his boss, even his mother. He remembers now what he has said to them. They weren't his own words. He feels dizzy for a second and grabs the doorframe. He shambles to the living room. He gains new strength, standing before the creature. He yells at it: "You make me sick! You hear me? You fucking worm, you destroyed my life! I want some purpose now! SO WHERE IS IT?" The creature is whimpering powerlessly. Pathetic. The dogs are barking outside. They seem irate. "They're coming for me, right?" Péter says. "They're calling the police. I have to take responsibility." He's rubbing his temple, then he glances around, frightened. "I didn't even find you in the house!" he says. "I know where the Gate is! I know where you came from! You can't even walk! He drags the creature into the small toolshed. Where he found it in the first place. In the distance, he can hear the sirens, but he doesn't listen. Maybe it's just his imagination. He's still got time. "Show me," he says. "Come on now. We're here, are we not?" He touches its walls, searching for the light switch. As soon as he finds it, he flicks it. But there's no light. At the flick of the switch, reality is no more. The creature shows it to him. The walls of the toolshed fly away in the void. On the stark black texture of space, billions and billions of small purple symbols appear, like stars. "So this is the place," Péter nods in agreement. He doesn't dare to admit that he understands nothing. The creature suddenly rolls away from his feet, and with unexpected vigor, it runs away into the darkness on its wounded, fat tentacles. "Hey! HEY!" All those shining symbols are fading like the stars at the end of times. Only darkness remains. Péter is frightened, he looks around puzzled, unsure what to do now. There's a single source of light in the distance in this wide darkness. It's calling for Péter Tabán. "Yes," he whispers. He starts running with his hands held before him. But his running slows as soon as he notices that he's knee-deep in water. Péter Tabán stands before the glimmering lotus, where he finally learns all the secrets of the universe. He sees the birth of time itself, he witnesses the end of all things, he experiences all shades of entropy, he lives the lives of billions of people, he can see civilizations rising and falling. He embraces time, space, their abhorrent gods, becoming one with them. Becoming immortal and eternal. He touches the lotus. He can feel infinite happiness. And then he realizes it's all but a fraction of a second. A scam. He'd open his eyes to see where he is, but he realizes that he doesn't have eyes anymore. Why would he need eyes after seeing everything the universe has to offer? He'd stand up to flee straight away, but he stumbles: he doesn't have any legs anymore. Where would he go after travelling through the endlessness of the universe? He'd raise his arms to push away that horrible lotus, but he already knows: he has no arms anymore. If he'd done everything man can do, why would he need them anymore? He can feel himself falling to the floor of the tool shed, with a thud. Blind, silent, without limbs. He wants to scream. But all he can project is a faint moan. Péter Tabán is no more. Police officers who yell in the distance searching for him have no idea where this murderous madman is. One of them tells the others a lie: "No, there's nothing here." Minutes, hours, maybe even days go by. Then he feels the touch of hands. He twitches. Yes, he thinks. Yes, you. I'm going to tell you my secrets. He is now being carried away. Somebody whispers to him: "Easy. We can go now. Everything's going to be all right." The human body relaxes with gratitude. ⁂ [ FRESH FACE by Tarquin Ford ] Some are legion, and some are single. An individual demon hopped on the eyes of cockroaches in the mulch of the flowerbeds surrounding the house on 1387 Glen Usher Drive, a two-story suburban home on a cul-de-sac. The mulch hid rot, mildew, and natural decomposition in the beds, where small lives ended in pain and despair. The front door of the house opened, and a man came outside to stand in his yard and smoke a cigarette. His glassy blue eyes stared at the flat expanse of the night sky, starless because of the bright lights of a nearby automobile dealership. The end of the cigarette glowed. The demon leaped to the glow and luxuriated in the heat of the burning tobacco. The man flicked the cigarette away, but not before he inhaled the demon. The man so recently possessed by the demon was Ronald Bright, also known as Ronny, a man who often annoyed others with his eternal cheerfulness. Ronny hiccupped a couple times after inhaling the demon and then padded inside to wash the odor of the cigarette from his hands to avoid offending his fastidious wife at bedtime. To a demon, the mind of a man like Ronnie Bright appeared as a complex construction of ropes, lines, and tackle connected by knots, pulleys, and blocks, all stretched taut with optimism. The demon plucked at a rope tentatively and then began to jump up and down on some lines, attempting to work some slack into the system. Ronny Bright looked toward his wife, Linda Bright, who sashayed about the living room in a pink nightgown, making a show of straightening knick-knacks. She had taken her contacts out because her eyes felt scratchy, so she wore her glasses. The demon yanked on a rope in Ronny's mind, and the man said, "Linda, those glasses make your eyes look tiny." Linda, whose parents were both born in Korea, resented such remarks about her eyes and was shocked by her husband's racism. She threw a small pot containing a favorite African violet at his head. Ronny ducked, but the flower pot struck him on the cheek. The force of the blow to Ronny's head almost knocked the demon off his perch on a line, but his claws held fast. With a fight in progress, the demon saw an opportunity to do some real harm. He flew from Ronny into Linda's mouth. The mind of an angry woman was far more comfortable for the demon than the mind of an inherently cheerful man. It was smooth machinery bathed in hot oil to him, a race car and a hell of a ride. The demon shifted Linda into a higher gear. Linda strode toward her husband and slapped him on the same cheek that had sustained the impact of the flower pot. The demon leaped from Linda and landed in Ronny's nose, where he slid inside until he caught hold of a length of rope. He pulled the rope with all his strength. Ronny shouted, "Get away from me, bitch." He put his hands in front of his face to protect himself from Linda's blows. Her arms were a windmill with open palms, and then she slammed the heel of her hand against Ronny's throat. The struts and halyards of Ronny's mind slammed into one another. Chains and lines tangled. A counterweight fell with a crash. Sensing that the entire structure would collapse in seconds, the demon leaped from Ronny to the floor, knowing his work in Ronny's mind was done. Ronny made a fist, and Linda quickly put her arms around him to prevent him from beating her. The couple fell to the floor. Ronny bashed Linda's nose with his forehead, and it began to bleed. Linda called out, "You bastard." The demon picked up a bit of grit from the floor and leaped into the woman's ear. He threw the grit into the rapidly rotating machinery of Linda's rage. Ronny broke free of Linda's grasp and tried to rise from the carpeted floor. Linda grappled his legs, and Ronny fell again and hit his head against the fireplace. A rope in Ronny snapped, and he lost consciousness. Bleeding profusely from her nose, Linda rose from the floor. She felt light-headed, but the demon shifted her once again to a higher gear and pressed a turbocharging button on her dashboard. She stopped tottering and steadied herself on the mantle over the fireplace. Linda dragged her unconscious husband by the legs from the living room to the kitchen. With demon-enhanced strength, she pulled his limp form from the floor to a chair. She grabbed her portable electric mixer and used the cord to tie Ronny's neck to the rungs of the chair. Ronny awoke and began to choke. Next, she gathered the coffee maker, the toaster, and the blender and used the cords of those appliances to bind Ronny's hands and feet. With Ronny tied firmly in the chair, Linda reached into a cabinet under the kitchen counter and took out an electric frying pan. She plugged the cord into an outlet and turned the dial to medium high. Pulling a boning knife from the rack by the stove, she turned to her choking husband and carefully cut deeply around his face. After separating a portion of the skin from the muscle underneath in accordance with the instructions whispered to her by the demon, she pulled hard and the face peeled off. Her husband tried to scream but was choking so violently he could not. He thrashed in the chair, but the cords held fast. Linda flicked a pat of butter in the pan and then dropped in the bloody face of her husband. The face sizzled in the pan. From the refrigerator, she took a link of sausage and put it into the mouth of the frying face. Next, she broke an egg into each of its eyes. The demon now stood on the bridge of Linda's nose and inhaled the buttery aroma in ecstasy, for there is nothing like a fresh face. Mmmmm. ⁂ [ MEET THE WIFE by Ken Goldman ] "Life and death are one..." —Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet Five words served as Liam Weston's introduction to the shapely young woman seated at the bar. Although unable to hide a tinge of desperation in his voice, his being middle-aged had the advantage of his not caring a whole lot about proprieties. Drink in hand, expressionless and straightforward, he offered one hell of an ice breaker. "Hello. My wife is dying." The blonde didn't seem to know whether to laugh or just turn her back on another lounge creep. Instead, she sipped her wine and attempted a smile as if guys said this sort of thing to her all the time. "Hello, yourself. And that has to be the shittiest pick-up line I've ever heard." An honest response. This was good. Liam wanted honesty. It saved time. "Pick-up lines are for kids. My wife is dying, and I need to get laid tonight. Simple as that, Miss-whoever-you-are. Looking at you, I'm thinking we're not talking about wining and dining here, so forgive my directness. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong." Leaning close from her stool the woman whispered, "Are you a cop? The law visits this little bistro, you know, and entrapment is their sport. A girl has to be careful." Weston felt no need to whisper back. "I'm an accountant. CPA licensed to kill, agent Double-O-Zero." The joke was lame, meant more to stoke himself than to impress the woman. She offered another smile, wider this time. "Then you're not wrong, Agent Zero. Screw the part about dining, but I could use another cabernet." She extended her hand and he took it. "Dee Dee, but the second Dee is for show. Call me Dee. Short for Diane. And you're...?" "...Going to order you one cabernet so I can get your pretty little ass out of here reasonably sober." Weston gulped his gin and tonic, clearly anxious to prove a man of his word. He pointed to the woman's glass for the bartender to refill, turned back to Dee. "I'm Liam..." Hesitating with the surname, he decided he had no reason to share that information. This episode would be one-and-done, your basic wham bam, assuming the Viagra kicked in and he remembered how to perform this little slam dance with a stranger. "Just hold on for a moment here, Liam. Some information before we close this deal, if you don't mind. For one thing, I don't come cheap, if you'll pardon the expression." She added a whisper, "And I don't take Visa." Weston understood that for many of the women seated inside this tavern it was a seller's market. Reaching for his money clip, he gave proof he was not a man who worried about starving. Studying the roll of bills, Dee smiled her best one yet. "No exchange of cash right here, Agent Zero, thank you very much. That's for the amateurs. Are we talking about an hour or the whole night?" "We're talking about as-long-as-it-takes. I'm forty, so you won't exactly be riding the mechanical bull. But I've no problem going with your all-night rates." Weston put down his drink and turned serious. "It's been difficult for me—Dee, is it? I mean with my wife's dying and all. I've been faithful for almost twenty years, excepting the occasional pay-for-play. It's important you know that." The woman took a demure sip from her glass, her fingers toying with its stem. "Cancer?" "Pancreatic. That's the worst kind, and not pretty to watch. She hasn't got long." Another sip. "You love her, of course." "My Melanie was a remarkable woman before the illness. But a man has needs, you know." Dee's grin spread to her eyes. "Oh yes, I know all about a man's needs. More than you would believe, Liam." Her hand secretly slipped to Weston's thigh, the woman's long fingers inching upwards, stopping just short of home plate. Gulping the remainder of her cabernet, Dee's eyes met his. "Are you staying nearby, or would you prefer I provide the accommodations?" No streetwalker-type back alley fellatio-on-the-fly from this girl, no needle tracks in every available vein, and she showed some class, even if it were minimal. Liam knew he had chosen well. "My home is maybe twenty minutes from where we're sitting. It's in Glenn Echoes." "Your home? I'm thinking, a comfortable little cul-de-sac in a picket fenced suburb filled with soccer moms and designer dogs?" Dee's brow knitted. "That's not usually where married men prefer to take me, Liam. You've heard the expression about shitting where you eat?" "Yes, I should explain that part. See, Melanie and I, we have this arrangement, something we decided together would work for both of us, considering our circumstances. She's a very understanding woman, my wife. In fact, tonight—it was her idea I come here." Dee's knit brow returned. "More and more curious. Well, it's your dime, Agent Liam." She finished her cabernet and offered her hand. "Shall we?" It was that easy. The man's home did indeed have a picket fence, complete with the neatly trimmed lawn and a small rose garden. The flowers could have used more tending, but Liam's dying wife probably had no time for horticulture. Once inside the foyer Liam flicked on the lights, and Dee saw no evidence of children (or even a dog) having been in this home. Maybe the kids were grown, maybe the dog had died, but she doubted it. This place seemed built for two, the textbook cozy cottage of Mr. and Mrs. Dull. Dee would have felt no surprise had her host yelled out "Honey, I'm home!" No photos adorned the mantel or walls, no cutesy poses of a younger and more virile Liam with the Missis rollicking on some beach during happier times. True, sometimes people were camera shy, but Dee doubted that possibility here. Some people just wanted the world to leave them the fuck alone. None of that mattered. This was business, after all, and backstory was unnecessary. Helping Dee with her coat, Liam gestured to make herself comfortable on the couch. He didn't offer a drink, but this wasn't exactly a date. Saying nothing, Dee decided she would take her cue from him, although silence lingered for several minutes. His attempts at clever banter over, the man's increasing awkwardness was almost endearing. But mostly it seemed pitiful. "My wife, she's upstairs. Melanie never leaves her bed anymore. Pancreatic cancer is painful and spreads fast once it's metastasized. She's pretty much incapacitated." Dee got halfway to a compassionate smile. "My mother died of breast cancer. I always worried that I might have the same—well, we hadn't been speaking anyway." She stopped herself. Small talk like this hardly seemed conducive to the night's scheduled activity. Liam's eyes fell on Dee's ample breasts, but his attitude toward them seemed more clinical than lascivious. "A young woman has to be careful. I assume you've had regular exams, haven't you?" No barstool Lotharios had ever thought to bring up mammograms, most certainly not during business hours and, why would they? Dee shrugged it off, wanting to get the night's activities underway. "I'm fine, Liam. My girls are healthy and ready to play. Here, you can see for yourself." She unbuttoned her silken top before her host could utter a word. At this particular gambit she was proficient, but she refused to go braless because that wasn't who she was, screw the accessories (or lack of them) of her profession. "Would you like to undress me yourself?" Sliding closer on the couch, Dee didn't really give her companion a choice. She knew some men needed a little push to get things started, and those that did proved pretty quick on the trigger. She expected within the hour she would be on her way with cab fare. "No children at home?" Liam asked. "I mean, sometimes women in your profession—" "Do I look the maternal type? Besides, babies smell funny." Liam said nothing and slipped the silken garment and bra from Dee's chest, staring at her tits like a child seeing his first rainbow. He quickly shifted his eyes to the floor. Dee had to smile. "It's okay to look at my tits, Liam. You're paying for them. Speaking of which..." "Oh, yes. Of course." He held out his billfold, and Dee plucked out several of the larger bills, stuffing them into her long-strapped handbag. "So, where do we do this, Liam? Right here?" The man took a moment, then shook his head, his eyes drifting to the stairwell. He sounded almost apologetic. "Not here. Up there." As if on cue, a woman's voice called from the bedroom. More croak than speech, the sound sent an ice floe along Dee's spine. "Lee-ammm... Leeeee-ammmm..." The voice had the disquieting effect of fingernails scraping a chalkboard. Dee needed a moment to compose herself. "Your wife sounds strong for someone who—" "Leeeeeeeeeee—aaaaaaaammmmmmmm..." "She wants me with her." Turning to Dee, he offered his hand. "This is difficult for me. I would like you to come, all right?" "I'm not sure that's a good idea." Actually, Dee was sure the idea sucked. The request was ghoulish, and she could picture the bedroom scene if she went. Hello, Mrs. Whoever-you-are. You're looking very... yes, you're looking... well, actually, you're looking shitty, lady, really shitty. Now, if you'll pardon me, your husband has paid for my services for the rest of tonight, so I imagine we'll start with the customary blowjob... Liam's hand remained extended ridiculously before he allowed it to drop. Did he really expect her to smile at his dying wife, then adjourn to another room to fuck her husband's eyeballs out? "Please," he added. Apparently, Liam did expect it. Dee was no stranger to things kinky, although tonight's request rose quickly on her list. As she had told the guy earlier, it was his dime, and what he had asked wasn't as bad as the request of the good-looking family man who, weeks earlier, had paid her to pee on him. Strange requests were an occupational hazard. Dee figured fuck it. She wriggled back into her top, leaving the bra on the floor while again telling herself business is business. Running both hands through her hair, she took a deep breath. Trailing Liam, together they climbed the stairs. The bedroom door remained open, the room dark until Liam hit the switch. Stepping inside revealed a sight more sickening than Dee could have imagined. The wife—Melanie—lay immobile in bed like a corpse, which was what she might as well have been. In the dim light, she didn't appear very old, maybe she even was young. But the cancer had deteriorated her, and she had gone beyond pale to colorless. Bed covers littered the floor, and she appeared dwarfed by the large bed while completely exposed, except for the filthy nightgown she wore. Veins spidered in all directions like thick tributaries, and she seemed covered with leaking sores. She could have been one of those glass figures used in med schools where every vein and artery showed on the outside. Maybe she was pretty once, but no trace of beauty showed now. Worse than the sight of her was the smell. Her decayed flesh reeked like putrefying liver, the stench of dying flesh withering right off the bone. Dee half expected to see maggots dining on that flesh, and she forced herself not to gag. "Jesus..." The word simply slipped out. "I'm sorry, Liam. I can't—" She turned to leave but felt the man's hand on her arm. "I know how terrible my wife appears. I have to admit feeling the same revulsion myself. I'm sure you'll understand when I say it will seem a blessing when she dies. If there were any way I could be the one who instead—" "I think I want to leave. Look, I'll give you your money back, okay?" Liam reached into his billfold again, pulled out several large bills. "Stay. Please." Placing his hand on Dee's shoulder, Liam must have seen her as the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold. Sighing, she stuffed the bills into her panties. She noticed another bed, a small cot a short distance from the wife. This guy must have loved his woman enough to sleep close by (but not too close!), even while his loving Melanie slowly decomposed before his eyes. Dee sat on the cot, thinking how Melanie's reek seemed ripe enough for the woman to climb into her coffin right now. "That smell..." Liam's eyes remained on his wife. "You get used to the smell. After a while a person can adjust to almost anything." He turned to Dee. "That's why I'm going to ask you to do something for me. I wanted a woman tonight who might understand what would seem an unnatural request to others who lack your—" "—My experience? I have my limits too, Liam, and I think I'm pushing the boundaries right now." Seeing her host's expression, she softened. "All right. Fine. Tell me what you want me to do." "You have to do it with me here. Mellie wants to watch us fuck, and I promised." Liam's expiring bride seemed one kinky lady, all right, but Dee felt committed now. She told herself she could handle the wafting stench if she had to, and if Liam's smelly Mellie wanted to gawk at her husband's pumping party from across the room, well, then... "Fine. Right here on your little cot in front of the little woman." Dee removed her top again. "Let's go..." "No, not here." He pointed to the large bed in which his dying wife lay. "There. With her." His words took a moment to register. With her... .... in his own wife's fucking death bed... Threesomes were common in Dee's business, and often she even enjoyed them for the sheer creativity of the experience. Whether the third party were male or female never mattered, but sharing a bed with a nearly cadaverous third, this was unchartered territory and she doubted her stomach could handle it. Liam added, "I'll double whatever I gave you." The dying woman shifted in her bed, the first sign of movement she had shown. She pointed a trembling bony finger at Dee. "Your name... tell me... what is it...?" "What?" "...your name..." Forcing herself to speak, Dee felt her mouth go dry. "It's—well, it's actually—I'm Diane. Or Dee. Whatever." The skeletal finger found the husband. "Tell her... tell her you... tell Diane you... promised..." Dee whispered to Liam, "Your wife isn't rational, you know. Her mind, it's probably gone." "This is what Melanie wants. You being here—with me—this is for her. She needs this! I'll give you whatever you ask, okay?" He didn't wait for Dee's answer, instead led her to the bed where his wife lay. The stench of her rotted flesh kicked in worse than before. Another heavy sigh, then Dee removed her skirt. She lay naked trying to avoid looking at the woman. Liam turned off the light before removing his clothes. The bed had ample space for the three, but Melanie sprawled on half of it, what was left of her. The husband climbed into the bed, forcing Dee to slide closer to his dying woman. Dee thanked Christ for the darkness. She could do this... ...but I'll keep my eyes closed, closed tight. That horrible stink, I'll manage that and I'll perform like I always do, and I'll be worth every penny, your best E-ticket ride ever, and you can take that to the bank, Mr. Liam... "Have you a condom?" she asked. "No need." "It'll cost more. Another fifteen hundred." "I'll pay." No rules of etiquette applied when a man purchased her for her services, and Liam wasted no time reaching for Dee's tits. His hands were sweaty, but she knew the guy was nervous. She recognized the familiar moan of the man's pleasure. It didn't take long. Dee managed her own moan, well-rehearsed but believable. "I'll make you feel good," she whispered. Reaching for his manhood, she knew he needed a little work. "I'll make you feel very good, Liam. In fact, give me a minute and I'll make you feel fucking wonderful." Lowering her head to his thighs, she took him inside her mouth. Not allowing the man's dying wife to kill a decent hard-on, Dee put her hand and tongue to work. The man's erection sprang to life, and she squirmed closer, squeezed out of her panties and quickly squeezed him inside her. Liam spilled himself within seconds. He grunted and rolled off her. Another fifteen hundred for under five minutes. Worth it at half the price... "It's all right. Really, Liam. We can try again in a little—" An icy hand stroked her shoulder. The chill took Dee out of the moment. Melanie's bony fingers were on her, all over her. "Touch... me... too..." Liam whispered, "Do it. Touch her. Hold her." Another fifteen hundred... give you whatever you ask... Dee said nothing, took a very deep breath, and reached tentatively to the woman, uncertain where her hand ought to go. She touched the withered arm lightly. Its wilting flesh felt like she had grabbed hold of a human bone. Two skeletal arms embraced her, pulled her close. The ragged nightgown opened, and the woman's naked cold flesh felt waxy and thin like a badly fitting garment. Dee couldn't tell whether the woman was moaning with pleasure or gasping for air. "Ahhhhhh..." Dee's gag reflex kicked in, but she managed to shove it back inside. Somehow, Liam's wife gathered enough strength to pull her closer. For one awful moment she worried the woman's fragile bones might snap with the slightest pressure. "You're—You're hurting me a little," Dee said, but this only caused Melanie to hold her more firmly. "Liam, she's hurting me..." The husband no longer lay alongside her. He stood motionless in the shadows, watching them. Dee tried to pull herself from Melanie's grip, but the spindly arms held fast. Now she felt concern for her own bones. "...tighter... yes... tighter..." "I can't breathe! Liam. Tell her I can't..." Pressed against cold flesh Dee heard a liquid slurping sound, like water belching down a drain. "I'm sorry, Dee. I'm really very sorry..." (FUCK!) The sensation felt almost like being swallowed, but no, not like that, more like... URP! ...that sound, as if... ...downdowndown... ...it felt more like parts of her... (Shit! Shit!) ...like her own guts were being absorbed! URP! "...so sorry..." When consciousness returned, Dee realized she remained in bed. She had no idea how much time had passed, but it was still dark and she felt weaker than she had ever felt in her entire life. Worse, she ached as if every cell in her body had declared war. Managing to raise her head, she saw Liam standing over her. "You're awake. That's good." She attempted to speak but managed only a sickening gargle. Liam shook his head. "Don't even try. You're very ill." "Ughh—mmm... Ummmm" Dee's face contorted. Her eyes opened wide. Liam must have known those eyes were searching for answers. "These ritual things can be tricky. You see, I do love my wife very much, so much that I... well, I'm afraid I'm not very good at explaining this." Another voice, a woman's, spoke from the other side of the bed. "Perhaps I can do that. Hello, Dee. I'm Mrs. Melanie Weston, Liam's wife. We've met, quite literally, in a matter of speaking." The woman was standing at Dee's bedside. Dee stared at her until some focus returned. What she saw took a moment to comprehend. Here stood a significantly healthier Melanie, maybe a good ten or fifteen years older than her own twenty-four and not quite as fresh faced and firm in body, but one hell of a lot better looking than the woman she had seen in the bed she herself now occupied. "My Liam hates when I use these spells, but I really had no choice and—how do I put this? My husband's seed inside you was necessary. It's the stuff of life, you see." Taking his wife's hand, Liam bent to speak close to Dee, who lay beneath a pile of filthy bed covers. He whispered, "I am sorry, you know, but we do what we must. I mislead you, I'm afraid. You see, my wife, she never was really dying." Melanie added, "You can't die when you're already dead, Diane." Through her agony, Dee forced herself to understand. Liam had practically said it. He had wanted his wife to die, because... ...because...? 'My Liam hates when I use these spells...' 'These spells.' And now Dee understood. There could be no other explanation. Mrs. Melanie Weston had not been a living woman who was dying; she was a dead woman who required a healthy young woman (like her!) to return to life. That, and something else... '...my husband's seed... the stuff of life...' Can't die when you're already dead... And here she was! Melanie spoke low. "I suppose I should thank you for your sacrifice, Diane. Your cancer will be quick. A few days at most, I promise you that." Dee pushed herself from her pillow, held her hand before her eyes. Her gnarled fingers could have belonged to someone already dead, while her chicken-skinned arms dripped crimson goo and seemed to barely contain enough rotted flesh to cover them. She could only imagine what had become of her face, but she really didn't want to know. "Unnnnnghhh... ugggggghhhh..." Had she been able, the sickly woman sprawled on the bed would have screamed her lungs out. Different tavern, different part of town. Liam Weston knew he had to be careful. His Melanie had enjoyed a brief three months' respite from death. But malignant cancer cells never played fair, and again she had faded fast. Those tumors were insidious little bastards, all right. Once inside you they made themselves at home, feasting away at your innards until nothing remained. Even with the most successful spells, cancer was still part of you. The black arts provided relief, of course, but they had their limits. The young woman seated at the bar was raven-haired. Blonde, brunette, ginger, it didn't matter. She was beautiful, and Liam required little else, although that was more Melanie's wish than his. He loved his wife, and until his own time came, he always would love her. The long-strapped pocketbook and the purple ass-tugging mini gave the woman on the barstool away. Here sat a working girl, no doubt about that, and her type often moved around a lot. This was good. As he watched her sip her wine, Liam could tell the woman was clearly on call. He gulped his drink and approached her. "My wife is very beautiful," he said. "How lucky for you," the woman answered and returned to her wine glass. Liam had to smile. "Yes, but—well, you see, I'm afraid she's dying..." ⁂ [ MADMAN ACROSS THE WATER by James Harper ] Greg Emmanuel hated Christmas music. He hated it down to his reptilian brain stem. And, while he knew this made him a pariah, he couldn't help it; he was, after all, a music lover. Coming off the Beltway to the access road that led to the Lanham IT industrial complex, he fumed as one of the songs he hated most played in his consciousness, an incessant blather that threatened to drive him to a rooftop with a sniper scope to take out his frustration and anger on the idiots surrounding him who hummed these musical pieces of excrement during the season. He found it maddening that his XM was insufficient to locate a stronger, better tune to eradicate the melody now ensconced in his head. The insipid nature of the lyrics, the banality of the music and the sheer dearth of variety near about drove him insane. This created an earworm hell for him during the last six weeks of every year when the inexorable parade of dreck launched itself into his brain to take up residence with the steadfast determination of an indefatigable wood tick. He knew, deep down in his secret self, that he could not reveal this fact to any; the cries "Oh, how can you say that?" and "But you have no holiday spirit!" would swoop upon him like a winter eagle scooping up a late December river trout. So, his mere daily self never complained aloud, never griped at the drivel that came pumping out of the retail store PA, never showed his bottomless contempt. But he knew it, he felt it; he hated Christmas music. Still brooding, he pulled into his private parking space at the lab, the remnants of the abominable "Winter Wonderland" echoing through his sleep-deprived and under-caffeinated mind, the steadfast earworm attached to his cerebellum as a blood leech might host on a feral boar. Thinking to break free of the odious tether before leaving his Lexus, he switched off his dictation handheld to listen to a piece by Borodin. Perhaps that might expunge the wretched ditty to a well-deserved bubblegum doom. After several minutes of the March from Prince Igor, he exited, the erasure complete. He moved to cross the few short steps across the lot to the entrance of the EmmanuLabs front doors, then through the foyer to the hallway and entered the lobby. Jamika greeted him with her usual bright "Good morning, Dr. Emmanuel" before motioning for him to step closer to her. "Your interview is in the Potomac Conference Room," she said, tilting the crown of her head in the direction of the room. Fuck, he thought. He had forgotten all about the appointment. His preoccupation with the current research coupled with the brutality of the traffic during the holiday season, along with his natural neglect to check his email for calendar alerts, had all conspired to cause him to overlook the engagement. Looking into the glass-walled conference room, he saw a woman, her back to him, scanning her phone. He turned to Jamika. "Right," he said. "It was supposed to be 10:00; I'm only a half hour late." Jamika frowned. "Doctor, it was scheduled for 9:30." He stiffened. "Well, let her know I'll be in shortly." He marched toward his office, taking off his coat as he walked. ("Ase's Death" Exquisite) Minutes later, he entered the Potomac with his broadest, most charming smile. He thanked his good sense to wear his best black Anderson & Sheppard that day, along with a hand-sewn silk tie. "Good morning," he said, stretching out his hand to hers. "Gregory Emmanuel." "I'm very pleased to meet you, Dr. Emmanuel. I'm Jennifer Davis." She handed him her business card. As he sat at the head of the conference room table, he glanced at the embossed card that read Quantum Field. Pocketing it, he said, "Sorry for the delay. I got caught up in some late developments." She switched on her tablet, sliding it to a point midway between them. "I understand," she said. "Shall we get right to it?" "By all means," he said, nodding. He held out his hands to indicate his openness and welcoming manner. "All right." She consulted her pad of questions. She looked up at him; her eyes smiled a wry glint. "I ask the same first science question at every interview. It's off the record and strictly meant to break the ice." He didn't know how to react. "Um, okay," he said. "So jet packs: when do you think we'll have them?" Jet packs? What? Her smile broadened, letting him know she intended the question as a joke. She needs new material, he thought. He indulged it. "Well, as you well know this is completely out of my field. Engineering and rocket craft and the like. I know only of the fuel/weight problem that hasn't been cracked and that, even after half a century, no one's been able to push through it." She jotted her notes. "Still, I'd say we could have them in next decade." "Really? That's very interesting." She wrote another note. Looking up from her pad, she said, "Doctor, it's no secret that your firm, the leader in the field of genetic regeneration, has come on some hard times of late with SEC filings and lawsuits for patent infringement. Do you think that your latest effort to prove dissipation-driven adaptation will put this in the past before the litigation can get a decent head of steam?" She looked up from her pad in anticipation. She's pretty, he thought. Not in a classic way, not in a wow-I'd-like-to-bang-her way, but in a wholesome, Midwest upbringing sort of way. "I have no doubt," he said with authority. "The nature of the important work we're doing will have a sustained lasting impact on medicine and health for generations. It's a completely new direction that will provide an unlimited number of subsequent breakthroughs for years." "That makes it seem groundbreaking. Sounds like what you're doing is either epic or foolhardy based on the cryptic way you've framed those statements." "I assure you, Ms. Davis, they are more along the former lines than the latter. We here at EmmanuLabs rarely engage in the less-than-extraordinary. The work we do has always been for the greater good; always to benefit mankind. "What we are attempting to prove; what we've been calculating all these years, is the proof of a fundamental, hitherto unknown and undetected force in the universe: the hinted at, but largely unresearched, dark force." "Dark force?" "Yes, what my partner Dr. Gorton and I have theorized, indeed, what we've been devoting our lives toward, has been establishing a basis for a fifth force, a dark force, if you will, that lies beyond the four we know. "You see, the four known forces of the universe: electromagnetism, gravity, the strong force that holds atoms together, and the weak force that governs radioactivity, all do very well at explaining the vast bulk of what we can account for in physics. But it's that one percent, the tiny fraction that remains unexplained that we think the dark force shows. We think that, once we prove the existence, once we can show results that verify quantitatively the dark force, we will have the answers to a myriad of mysteries that have plagued physicists and scientists for decades." "Centuries even." He looked at her then allowed another curt grin. "Yes, indeed. We feel that the search for dark matter and dark energy is insufficient. In fact, we think that without this research, without first establishing the existence of the dark force, the other two cannot be found. In addition, I believe its discovery will unlock a host of problems physicists, and indeed all of science, have grappled with for generations." "Fascinating." She typed on her pad with a new alacrity. He thought he had won her over. She put her finger to her lip, then asked, "But surely, Dr. Emmanuel, the research you're conducting can't be done in a vacuum. How is it that no papers have come out of this? Why haven't we seen documentation on the work you've done to show the foundation of this project?" "That, too, is part of the plan. We expect that, in the next few days, perhaps within the week, we will be releasing all the work in one fell swoop." He allowed an internal laugh at the term. "So, while the search for dark matter and dark energy is consuming the scientific community now, do you think that your research will crack the code, so to speak, to help open the door to the other efforts?" "Indeed." "But, doctor, I'm still not getting why all the secrecy. I don't understand why you've kept it under wraps for as long as you have." "Well, part of the reason, you understand, has come out of previous experience, particularly those witnessed by Dr. Gorton." He let the statement stand as it was. If Davis had done her homework she would know about the embarrassing debacle Gorton had suffered at his last position. "So help me connect the dots for my readers. What's the link between the dark force and your goal? By that I mean, how does this fit into health research? And, in explaining that, how does one connect it to the funding you receive?" "Good question." He shifted in the leather-bound chair. "We believe that, when we can find the evidence—even peripherally—of the dark force, it will affect all of science going forward." He leaned toward her for effect. "Think about it, Ms. Davis, were you to prove the existence of gravity, would that not change the entire landscape of the discipline of science?" Davis returned his look. Then she went to her next question. He lowered his estimation of her intelligence. She just didn't get it, he shrugged. She, along with the vast majority of the human race, didn't comprehend the monumental impact his work would have. With an ironic mental smile, he realized that even his partners had no clue, really. "Ah, I think I understand," she said. The balance of her questions delved into the boring, almost preposterous nature of obtaining funding and meeting government standards and regulations. He answered with politeness while avoiding yawning at the dullness of it all. He gave himself a figurative pat on the back. Half an hour later, she stood, saying, "Thank you for your time today, doctor. I think I have quite a bit to work with here." He allowed himself a broader smile. "You're quite welcome, Ms. Davis. You will be sending me a tear sheet, yes?" She blinked then said, "Yes. You'll be getting a copy of the file I submit." "Very good." He left the Potomac, reaching into his pocket for his phone as he crossed the threshold. ("O Fortuna" Brilliant) As he pulled it out, his phone blasted out "Aragonaise." It was Gorton. "I'm ready for our meeting." When Emmanuel said nothing, he added, "You're late." "I had an interview. You'll be pleased; it was with Quantum Field." "Oh, really?" "Yes, I'll tell you all about it when I see you." Hanging up, he marched through the lobby past Jamika to his car outside. By arrangement, Gorton kept his lab separate from Emmanuel's, at a facility lying on the other side of the lake that served as a decorative hub in the Lanham Maryland industrial development EmmanuLabs occupied. While it took an extra fifteen minutes for them to meet whenever they needed to get together face-to-face, Emmanuel considered that inconvenience a small price to pay for the secrecy the distance offered. He dialed into a late Mozart symphony as he drove to Gorton's lab. As he steered the Lexus around the tree-lined road surrounding the lake, listening to the majestic orchestrations that only a certifiable genius could create, he thought about his partner then cringed at the necessity of their deal. His disgust for Gorton was only matched by his contempt for his sanity. There was no doubt about it, Emmanuel thought, Neville Gorton was one crazy fuck. Unlucky for Emmanuel that Gorton's brilliance in the field of biophysics was unmatched. A quarter hour later, he entered the lab. He walked straight to Gorton's shop. He shook his head as he always did when he saw Gorton. The man had no taste in fashion or sense of style whatsoever. He wore a Promo Uomo that hung on him as pajamas might, the cheap fabric serving to make him seem out of place with the sophistication an advanced laboratory demanded. Its admiral blue color, coupled with his short haircut and wildly out-of-date quarter-inch wide moustache, gave him the appearance of a fugitive from a 60s spy television show and not one that did well in the ratings. A mere five-foot-five, he would never confuse anyone for a formidable specimen, but, one would think that he could at least dress well. "Neville, good morning," he said. Gorton turned to see that he had entered then returned to his task. He seemed intent on studying the graphs his computer screen displayed. "Oh, hello, Greg. How are you?" "What does the current analysis indicate?" "Well, we're making the progress we'd hoped for. It looks as though the math has been borne out. If everything else goes forward as swimmingly as these results, we should achieve actualization in the next few hours." "You must be kidding," Emmanuel couldn't believe it: too good to be true. "No, have a look at the data," he took a step back away from his bench. "Structural organization is there, once we begin the process we've outlined, it'll only be a matter of time—and, I think short time—before we get the results we're looking for." Emmanuel took a step to look at the screen. He clicked through the graphs and spread sheets to examine the material; leaning over to study the results. At least, on the surface, it looked as though Gorton was correct. The results indicated that they were not only on the right path, they had been dead-on correct from the start. These findings would bear out his theories and, although Neville had no idea, augment the secret research he had been conducting on the side, without Gorton's knowledge. A sudden irrational fear gripped his heart as he felt the urgent, eager need to leave Neville to pursue that hidden agenda. Stepping away from the terminal, he said, "This is excellent. Very good. Send this to me immediately." He bent over the monitor as he typed for a few minutes. "But in the meantime, let's get to it, shall we?" Gorton blinked. "What?" Emmanuel sighed. "Let's conduct the trial." "Now?" "Of course." "It—it's too early. I've only just confirmed the research." Emmanuel shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He expected this resistance. His timetable, however, needed acceleration, especially if he wanted to meet Lambert's schedule. "Nonsense. The work's good. I've examined it myself. Put it together. Given that we've been making progress by building the equipment all along, it shouldn't take more than an hour or two, right?" Gorton sputtered and coughed. Typical. "I—I think more like a half day." "Fine. Get it done. Let me know when the test is ready." He walked out of Gorton's lab to call Lambert from the lawn out back. He sent a FaceTime request as his shoes touched the soft grass behind Gorton's building. From here, across the lake, he could just see the EmmanuLabs building, its sharp gables and multi-colored brick edifice a source of pride to his sense of architectural taste. Standing on the back lawn, the ground sloping downward and away from him toward the edge of the lake, he admired the structure of the lab, even as he congratulated himself on the good sense to build it by the water. No other physics lab that he knew of had a grander location. His phone chimed. "Hello, Peter." "What do you have for me?" Emmanuel let the rudeness stand. As always, he tolerated Lambert's impoliteness, knowing that the man, steeped as he was in the application of theoretical physics, was incapable of mastering the art of tact or diplomacy. "We have the research completed." Lambert raised an eyebrow. "Really?" He moved offscreen a moment. Emmanuel grimaced at seeing the movement, his irritation at the ubiquitous act ameliorated by the convenience of the communication. Lambert said, "This is far ahead of schedule." "Not really. I'm sure you remember me telling you that we could easily meet the early ends of our date estimates." "Yes, yes," Lambert said, quickly moving onto other, less taxing matters. "When can I have the calculations?" Looking down at his phone, Emmanuel sent the email as he spoke. "I'm sending them to you now. We'll be conducting the trial immediately. This afternoon, in fact." "This afternoon," Lambert said, the tone in his voice already disinterested, his focus on studying the data. "I'm sure you know what you're doing." Emmanuel congratulated himself for not responding with "Of course I know what I'm doing." Instead, he stuck to the point of the call. "Get back to me as soon as possible with your results. I want to act on this tonight." "Tonight? Yeah, no. I don't think that's going to happen." "It will." He smiled as he headed into a softer direction. "I know you can do it, Peter. Get me the calcs by eight, then I can use the data this evening." Lambert said nothing. He loomed over Emmanuel's phone like an image in a carny funhouse mirror, his face warped and distorted. "I'll do the best I can." "I know you will." He disconnected. ("Appalachian Spring" Invigorating) Hours later, after Gorton had put together the equipment to move forward with the trial, Emmanuel sat in the lab, drumming his fingers on the metal table to his side. At the center of the arena-sized building stood a cube constructed of titanium and two-foot thick glass, its configuration and size resembling the sort of transportation device one might see in a horror movie where atoms of humans and insects get exchanged in the kind of things-go-horribly-wrong plot so popular with screenwriters and filmgoers. Cables as thick as his arm and pipes wider than his thigh protruded from the block as steam rose from vents from all sides, the liquid nitrogen used to cool the chamber that housed the particles coalesced with the air in the lab. This portion of Gorton's lab, about the size of a professional basketball gymnasium, was restricted to techs and those working on the project at hand. Only that handful knew the true purpose of the experiment: to prove the existence of the dark force. Emmanuel felt his pride swell as the squad of scientists bustled around him throughout the room. He stood at the threshold of perhaps the greatest breakthrough since Penzias and Wilson. He grinned at the thought of receiving a call from Stockholm. "We're ready now, Dr. Emmanuel," a tech said. He stood by where Emmanuel sat. Emmanuel tried to recall his name. Was it Oliver? Oscar? Standing, Emmanuel said, "Very well. Proceed." "Osman?" Gorton called. The tech turned toward him. Gorton said, "I want you to finalize the checklist. Then proceed in twenty minutes." "Right." He scurried over to the far side of the lab to run the programs as instructed. Gorton approached Emmanuel. "Well, Greg, this is it. I think we're about to see the fruition of that plan we started all those years ago." Emmanuel thought only Gorton could ruin a moment like this with base sentimentality but then, thinking it further, he decided that most people would probably feel that same need to make a time like this sanctimonious. Emmanuel hated that kind of sensibility, he considered it soft thinking. "We're ready to proceed," Osman announced. Gorton said, "Very well." He motioned for Emmanuel to join him behind the four-foot glass window in the next room. There, they could witness the operation in safety. Gorton leaned toward the PA mic to say, "Proceed when you're ready." The techs went about their assigned tasks, each following the protocols Emmanuel and Gorton had innovated. Emmanuel watched as the team went through the established guidelines with care. He smiled inside; it was not every day that one opens the door to a new science. Osman stood at the main console in the lab. As the project manager, his function was to scan the area for the emergence of new particles and the patterns of force as their appearance would prove the data. While some argument had gone forward on the safety of such a role, in the end, it was decided—by Emmanuel—the need surmounted the unproven low risk. Osman signaled the tech who responded with starting the centrifuge. A low hum filled the room as the particle beams came to life. Within minutes the hum grew to a roar, the floor vibrating as the machine awoke. Osman pressed the keys on his keyboard then looked to where Emmanuel and Gorton stood. "We should see results in the next few moments," Gorton said. As if on cue, a field emerged. While Emmanuel watched on his monitor, the data showed a region of space move out of the centrifuge, growing into the lab where the console stood. Emmanuel looked to Gorton; this was not the result they expected. "Neville—" "I know." He leaned toward the mic again. "William, get out of there." Osman went to move but could not. For some reason, he could not make his feet work; they remained stuck to the lab floor. The field grew. It looked like a dark cloud of empty matter, a pocket of negative energy that spread as smoke might consume an atmosphere. Out of the console and into the room, Emmanuel could see the field emerge from the centrifuge, its black space seeping out of the mechanism and spreading throughout the lab. It touched Osman. Osman stood frozen as the field encompassed him. His face alarmed at the peril, his feet remained glued to the floor of the lab. Then he screamed in pain, Emmanuel had never heard such a cry, a bellow so blood-curdling, his own bowels loosened as he listened to it. Osman flayed his hands above his head in helplessness, his lower limbs unable to move. He opened his mouth wide, his jaw looking as if it dislocated to allow a leering gape. His tongue protruded like a vibrating node of flesh. Then his teeth slammed together cutting his tongue it into pieces. Emmanuel watched as Osman's feet, then his legs, began to change, to transmute into a substance that somehow looked like stone and water. In some fantastic manner, Osman's matter, the atomic structure of his being, was altering into another form altogether different than anything known. The change in his body marched upward, from his knees, up his thighs, to the core of his body. As Osman screamed over and over, the transformation progressed, making his appearance unimaginable: a rock in one second, fluid another. Then his whole form went up in a blaze of red. In what seemed as though he had turned to plasma, Osman became a pillar of liquid fire, as if a solar burst were conducting with the matter made of an ocean current. Emmanuel shook his head in disbelief, either his senses had deserted him or those same senses had no capacity to comprehend the events unfolding before him. Then Osman turned inside out. Slowly, without pause, the internal organs within his body exuded through his skin which cracked and split to accommodate the blood-splattering eruption. Emmanuel saw Osman's guts, his liver and intestines protrude then explode from his form, the walls painted with the red gore of Osman's everted body. At least the screaming has stopped, Emmanuel thought. Osman's structure, in parts frozen as ice, in others burning and smoking, dispersed about the lab in an explosion that rocked the foundations of the building. For long moments, the walls trembled and the ceiling collapsed, dropping concrete and plaster to the floor as the structure quaked. Emmanuel and Gorton held on to the ledge of the window as it too shuddered against the earthquake that shook the lab building. Gorton yelled over the noise of the building tearing itself apart. "Shut it down!" he cried, "Shut it down!" A tech hurried to the console, standing over it in bewilderment. Looking from one monitor to the next, Emmanuel watched as he saw his goal. Seconds after typing into the keyboard, the tech stood to look over in Gorton's direction. But the room continued to shake. Osman, now a mere smear of organic material that changed back and forth from water to fire then to stone and mist, had spread throughout the lab in a thin coating of matter, the color shifting from red to black to green then brown. Emmanuel stared at the carnage even as the quaking slowed. The thing that Osman had become was still alive. It still held consciousness, its eyes showing intelligence and awareness, even if an awareness couched in despair. The head that had grown to the size and shape of a watermelon moved about in anguish as the new being that was Osman looked from one person to the next in an effort to seek an end to its suffering. The plaintive expression on what had become his face at once pathetic and horrible. Then, in an instant, it melted. The whole of Osman's form disintegrated into a pewter-colored pool of loathsome fluid that smelled of harsh chemicals and dead matter. Seconds later, it steamed into a billow of noxious vapor that burst into the room like a thundercloud, thrusting toward the ceiling then roiling through the space, the air near toxic with its stench. A tech reached for the exhaust vent. Switching it open, the vapor that once was Osman was sucked out of the lab, the cloud siphoned into the outside. Minutes later, as the last of the field and cloud exhausted into the atmosphere outside, Emmanuel took a deep breath. At least that was over, he thought. Gorton went about the effort to check on the techs, making sure no one else had been hurt, but, more importantly, determining that no one could wage a lawsuit as a result of what happened to Osman. Emmanuel commended himself on hiring only lab techs with little or no family, and all singles, none with spouses. Always thinking ahead. He leaned over the computer terminal before him to type. He sent the raw data from the experiment to his personal mainframe across the lake. There, he'd study the information to ascertain the error that caused Osman's transmutation, although, he felt he already knew. He spoke into the mic, "Neville, I'm going back to my lab." Gorton, intent on the mop up, merely gestured at the announcement, not even deigning to look up or acknowledge. Shrugging and with a wave of his hand that would do Elizabeth II proud, he turned to walk out of Gorton's lab. ("Also Sprach Zarathustra" Stirring) As he stalked the hallway to his office, he slowed his pace so as not to appear too anxious. No need to tip my hand, he thought. Still, it took every mental restraint he could muster to slow his speed. Sitting at his large oak desk, he switched on then typed his passwords. As the system woke, he considered indulging in a whiskey to celebrate. This was, after all, the ultimate victory he had sought for the past five years. He deferred. Alcohol breathe, even during the Christmas holiday season, would seem very bad form indeed to the underlings in the lab. He spent another three hours reviewing the data from the lab experiment before he called Lambert. His thoughts returned to the bottle of Glenlivet in his drawer as he waited for the chemist to pick up. Lambert's voicemail came on the line. After listening to it, he said, "I need you to call me now. I'm sending you Gorton's results; they're exactly what we were looking for, in line with what we anticipated. You know what this means. So, get on the process immediately, using what I'm sending you along with the other data. I want the device finalized immediately. I'll be over there in an hour." He pressed the red button on his phone to lean back in his armchair. Staring at the corner of his ceiling, he thought about where they were. It seemed too good to be true. They had achieved all the results they had projected, all the numbers had fallen into place with the calculations to an extraordinary degree, unprecedented in his career. Lambert's research, coupled with Gorton's would unlock human immortality by proving pre-biotic self-replication. Gregory Emmanuel had just verified Jeremy England's theories. He went for the Glenlivet. ("The Blue Danube" Sublime) That evening when he went to Lambert's lab, he again pushed the scan button on his XM receiver, hunting for a tune that would wipe out the awful "Rudolph" that ran through his centermost thoughts. Unable to find even the most rudimentary decent strain, his curses echoed within the car's brocade interior. As he stormed toward the concrete building that housed Lambert's facility, he still muttered curses as the tune played on an unending loop. He realized that, at this point, it was hopeless: until and unless a stronger song played or his mind became absorbed by more attention-grabbing information, he was lost to the clutches of the reindeer song. After passing through Lambert's laborious security procedures, Emmanuel let himself into the lab. There, he went to the device they had constructed together, a console roughly the size of two household freezers. It was capable of converting the energy Gorton had tapped into earlier that day. The data Emmanuel had sent earlier, coupled with the swath of material Gorton collected, would allow Emmanuel to prove his real, secret theory, the one he had wanted to prove all along, the one that he kept from all the others: that life was immortal, that death could be prevented when dissipation-driven adaptation self-organization was employed. In Lambert's lab, he went straight to the worktable to examine the device Lambert had fabricated. A compact generator connected to a laptop, it would project the field that killed Osman into the room without the horrid results that led to the tech's tragic end. Emmanuel had no intention of duplicating that. He switched the device on as he allowed a smile to cross his lips. This will change everything, he thought. So thinking, he turned on the amplifying device that would change his life seventy seconds later. The field would give him immortality. Using the dark force and reducing its essence into such a field, Emmanuel had unlocked the mechanism that causes death. He had broken through the barrier that makes all living things die. A pathetic shamble of his former self, Gregory Emmanuel now looked in the mirror to witness what he had become. The skin across his body had peeled from the muscle; in some cases from the bone itself as the tissue had rotted away leaving portions of bone poking through to the surface at his elbow, hip, and cheek. His scalp, too, had decayed to the point that only wisps of his fine head of good brown hair remained, the rest gone. The skin that did remain had coarsened and had become brittle like the parchment of the Dead Sea Scrolls, its color as dark and chestnut as those ancient treasures. The orbits of his eye sockets had grown more pronounced as the skin around them had receded, making his eyes look as though nothing held them in his skull, the whole of their structure visible from nearly the optic nerve to the pupil. Blinking had become a remote memory. The bones of his fingers, especially the ends, protruded through the nails and tips so that, in their stead, white points of calcium extended out of his hands. Walking awkwardly and robotically, his gait had taken the aspect of a cartoon stick figure whose ability to locomote suffered from the lack of any fluidity in musculoskeletal motion. He looked as though every step he took would cause him to collapse in a pile of cascading bones and limbs. And he stank. The smell that rose from him made even him nauseous, the foul, fetid odor of decomp laid on and around him as the stench of a carcass lying in the sun for days, the putridity of his body an all-consuming rank. What was left of his face had become a visage of horror straight out of a SFX artist's portfolio, the bone showing and his lips having rotted to reveal teeth behind what was once his winning smile, the mark of a successful and famous American entrepreneur. He knew now that his calculations were wrong, that his research had not, in fact, unlocked the mechanism that caused death. He had merely lengthened the time death took to come about, to take over the essence of the living. He had become a living corpse, a man whose death lingered in its execution. Karma, he thought, karma had its way with everyone. It was something he should have recognized during his youth in Camden County. As he sat dying, as he thought his last thought in the pain of ultimate decomposition, Jose Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad" sprang into his mind. ⁂ [ MANTIS by Kourtnea Hogan ] The pink carpet was sickly and stained from years of god-only-knew-what kind of liquids. Though luxury wasn't exactly what people were paying for when they checked into Carpenter Motel. The dingy lighting and dark wallpaper made it seem like the set of a B horror movie and Jacob was shocked that the woman had agreed to come with him in the first place. He'd bought her a drink and rubbed against her under the pulsating lights in the club, running his mouth along her neck. When he'd asked if she'd wanted to leave she'd merely moved towards the door, barely acknowledging that he was following her. When he'd asked if she had come with friends she had raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow and given him a half smile. When he'd asked her name, she shook her head and whispered in his ear, "It's better if you don't." He'd told her that he had come alone and she had smiled, looking at him from beneath long lashes. The motel was out of the way and he'd worried that she had thought something was wrong as they drove down old country roads to reach it. "I'm not afraid of you," she had said with no trace of humor. Jacob hadn't liked the way she answered, but he liked her, or the way she looked, enough that it didn't matter. "Is that so?" he'd asked as he bent over to gently bite her neck at a stoplight, trying to lighten the mood. She let his hands wander over her body and laughed, the vibrations tickling his lips. She grabbed his face, her fingers wrapping tightly around his hair, and whispered in his ear, "You're the one who should be scared. Green." Then she bit his earlobe and released his face. He was confused by the last word until there was a loud honk from behind him. Blushing, he slammed down on the gas, the car jerking forward. She opened the door before the car had even stopped, wheels still crunching gravel. "I've been here before; I'll get us a room." He watched her walk to the office, admiring the long spiral of blonde hair that bounced down her back, hips swaying slowly as though she knew he was watching. Once he could no longer see her he ripped open the glove compartment, throwing papers on the passenger side seat in search of a condom. He'd heard somewhere that you shouldn't keep them in your wallet, and the idea of the woman being here enough times to be able to get a room so easily both excited and frightened him. He turned to see her standing beneath the vacancy sign, red light caressing her pale skin. She held up a finger, key ring dangling from the tip. He shoved the papers back into the glove box and met her halfway. She must have noticed the apprehensive look on his face, and lightly slid her delicate fingers down his torso and to his beltline to reassure him. She smiled and bit her bottom lip and his excitement overrode his fear. She led him to the last room on the first floor, shooting coy looks over her shoulder to make sure that he was still following. And he was. How could he not? He ran a hand across her ass, the nearly white hair tickling the top of his hand. He reached his hand forward, pressing himself against her as he followed her hip bone down between her legs. She stiffened as she put the key in the hole and his hand quickly rose to her stomach. "Eager?" she asked as she turned the knob. He blushed and released her entirely, his mind occupied with semi-serious thoughts of just going back to his car and more serious thoughts of punishing her for embarrassing him. But the door had opened and she had disappeared inside, not bothering to turn on the lights, and he'd come too far not to follow. He turned on the lights, taking in the unappealing layout with the very appealing woman lying on the bed in the middle of the room. It was shaped like a heart and he bit his lip so he wouldn't laugh, his hands shaking slightly as he took off his jacket. She sat up suddenly, fingers reaching around his belt, pulling him closer to her. He laughed nervously at the unexpected touch and nearly tripped. She offered a half smile, only one dimple this time, and began to unbutton his pants. "I, uh... do you have a condom?" "Don't worry about that," she said, hands still working on his belt. "Are you sure?" Thoughts of her with other men in this same situation flooded his mind. "The things you are worried about are things you don't have to worry about with me," she said, her tone calm, but her voice thick and insatiable. Still, he pulled back slightly. "Don't you want me?" she asked, big blue eyes blinking at him. He pushed her back onto the bed, hands gripping her hips roughly. "Take off your clothes," he growled in her ear, all nervous energy morphing into confidence. He kissed and bit her neck. He became nearly intoxicated with the sweet floral smell that he couldn't believe he hadn't notice sooner. It made his need for her deeper, no matter how cold she acted, and he reached his hand under the tight material of her deep purple dress. She returned his kisses, her tongue reaching deep into his mouth, before she sat up and pushed him back. "Undress me." He shoved his pants down and ripped off his shirt, throwing it across the room before kneeling on the bed beside her. She turned around slowly, moving her hair to the side, back perfectly erect. He struggled with the zipper and she rubbed his thigh lightly. "No rush." He blushed again, having vacant thoughts about choking her, as he carefully pulled the zipper down the rest of the way, revealing a beautiful pale back. He pushed it off her arms, kissing her shoulders before she pulled away. She lay on her back, hips slightly elevated. He struggled slightly to pull it down as it clung to her hips and thighs. He threw the dress on the floor and ran his fingers across her naked torso and legs, wondering if he'd ever felt such warm skin before. He climbed on top of her, the floral smell nearly suffocating him, forcing its way into his mouth and nose. He buried his face into her hand, pulling it free from its ponytail. She groaned and moved below him, hands pushing on his shoulder, pushing him down. "Slowly. Use your hands," she whispered, voice husky. He didn't need to be told twice, finally warming to her cold demeanor and demanding tone. He kissed down her stomach and legs, letting his hands run the opposite way. She tensed at his touch and closed her eyes, head rolling back into the pillows. He took it as a good sign and continued, letting his free hand run up her stomach and to her breasts, leaning his body into hers. The smell was even thicker now, but it was so pleasantly mixed with her noises and it made him feel lightheaded in the best way. Her noises were getting higher and he pushed in deeper, hoping that he could soon be inside of her when he heard a thick popping noise. He ignored it, assuming that he'd popped her legs or back and refused to embarrass her by drawing attention to it as she had done to him. She gasped and threw her head back and he put his hand on her stomach, applying extra pressure. The smell was so strong now that he was sure he would pass out, but he couldn't stop, even as he realized that he wasn't hard anymore and that his hand was soaked. He looked down and saw a small pool of blood forming below her. "Oh," he said dazedly, hands working without him. "Are you okay?" he asked, thinking about stopping but unable to do so. Her noises got higher, inhuman, and the popping noises flooded the room. He willed his hand to lift from her stomach and she slammed it back down, his hands leaving a red mark on her pale skin. Or was it from him? He watched the red spread across her torso, a deep purple line running straight down her middle. He followed the line up her throat, his eyes struggling to focus. He thought he saw her bottom lip begin to split as the noises grew sharper, blood dripping lazily from the sides of her mouth, falling into her hair. He thought about pulling away and making sure she was okay but he felt himself falling into her instead. He looked down to see his hand going deeper into her as her body began to split in two. He wanted to gasp and pull back, wanted to ask her what drugs she had given him but the smell was making him weak, invading his senses and destroying his willpower. He watched the hand that had rested on her stomach disappear inside her with a sickening wet noise. He groaned, watching her body convulse beneath him, unable to tell where she ended and he began. He sank lower into her, coming closer to the slit in her middle. He tried to pull back but her hands rose to his head, fingers running lovingly through his hair. She pulled him closer to her, grotesque face rising to meet his, wetting his lips with blood. He felt an immense pressure on his arms and looked down to see the wound closing like a sinister mouth, teeth made from jagged bits of bone serrating his skin. He pulled back as hard as he could, barely rocking backward. His hands snapped off at the wrist, bloody spraying across her, soaking her and the bed. He fell forward, wanting to cry out, unable to understand why he couldn't feel the pain. She pulled him into her, spreading her legs and running her fingers along his spine. He could barely feel his skin against hers, could barely feel her body reopening. But he could feel it and he tried to push himself up, bone digging into the bed. Her arms and legs wrapped around him tighter and the smell got stronger, canceling out the copper smell of blood. A wet sound issued from her mouth as spit and blood hit his face. Distorted cooing noises as she focused his eyes on hers, running her hands lovingly through his hair. He could feel the heinous mouth of her body open wide around his and she seemed to laugh as she lowered his face to hers, their bodies melding. ⁂ [ CICADA by Carl R. Jennings ] First of all, I want you to know that I'm not crazy. I need you to believe me or this entire conversation will be pointless. There was a time that, were I in your position, I would believe that the person sitting across from me was, just by that statement alone. But I say this now in perfect confidence of my own sanity. Scratch, scratch. For several months now I have been hoping to come upon a person who would believe me. The story of how I came to be in this position, and begging a complete stranger to listen to me, is a horrifying prospect but, thankfully, it will not take long. I won't steal any more of your time than is necessary. I suppose I want to talk about it so badly because, if I have just one person believing me, then maybe I can believe myself. I was no different than you once, not this filthy, scarred creature that you see sitting before you: finely dressed, well-kept, college educated, with a comfortable job, and all the world working in my favor. I believed, in my arrogance, that I could live like that forever, perhaps get married and have children, start a family. The normal things that a person with a mundane life wishes for. Mundanity is often used as a negative term when describing someone's life, but it isn't until things are truly strange and so unusual that the mundane becomes a blessing to be hoped for. I was rudely awakened from my dream life when I had my car accident which, I suppose, is the proper beginning of this tale. It was one of those in which nobody was to blame but nature and my own haste. It was late and the roads were wet from the rain that was falling. It wasn't even as if it was a bad storm, just a light summer shower. I was on my phone which, I know, was a stupid thing to do; the advertisements about the dangers of texting and driving are hardly impossible to miss. What happened next was so fast that it's blurry even to the scrutiny of memory. An animal of some kind, a four-legged bastard of a beast, darted out onto the road. There it stood, frozen with fear, staring at bright, on-rushing death. By the time I had noticed it, it was far too late for me to stop, even if the roads had been bone dry. Inevitably, I hit it. The car slid off the road and, I was told, rolled several times before hitting a tree. The only thing I knew after the terrible sound of crumpling metal and crunching plastic was waking up in a hospital bed to the beeping and whirring of machines—there wasn't even time enough for me to feel pain which, in retrospect, I'm grateful for. There was not a part of me that seemed to be left undamaged. I tried to lift the bed sheet to look at my body, to see myself, but I couldn't move my arm. When I tried, a grinding, sharp pain prevented me. I glanced over blearily and saw that it was in traction. As my vision solidified I saw that not only my arm, but both my legs were elevated by the complicated system of bright white straps and pulleys. My head felt as if there was a weight pressing down upon it and, when I tried to move it, I found that my neck was in a brace, forcing me to keep still. That moment, not the crash, represented the pinnacle of pain and misfortune for me in my life; no other hardship that I had endured—bad grades, the loss of a grandparent, disappointment at my favorite football team's score—came close. Little did I know that my vocabulary of pain would, very shortly, expand in ways that I could scarcely have understood at the time. Scratch, scratch. A blue surgical scrub-wearing nurse came through the little privacy curtain that sectioned off my half of the room. It wasn't long before she noticed that I had regained consciousness. I asked the classic question, the obvious one that people in these moments always seem to ask first. "How long have I been out?" I said. "Just a little more than a week," she replied. Her tone was reassuringly dismissive, as if a week without consciousness was something that happened all the time and was nothing to get excited about. As practiced and professional as she was, it didn't work on me. It would have been less frightening if she had said I had been unconscious for months or years. In that time things would have changed drastically, beyond my control, and well-wishing friends would have kept my bedside table supplied with fragrant flowers and colorful get well soon cards. I could have started life anew. As it was just more than a week would mean that the paperwork at the office would have built up until I would have to put in hours of overtime to catch up, I would have to deal with the insurance company, and many of my friends and family would probably still be unaware of what happened to me, meaning I would have to contact each of them personally and tell the story over and over. Just a week unconscious would be exhausting. The nurse took readings off the machines and from my broken body. "The doctor will be in soon to talk to you," she said and closed the curtain behind her as she left. The definition of "soon" seemed to have changed in the short time that I was out. I lay in my bed, staring at the wall and its digital clock. Time moved agonizingly slow. The only thing to break the silence and monotony was the rhythmic beeping of the hospital's machines. And, strangely, the chirruping of a single insect on the wall opposite my bed. Two long chirrups, and then a pause, then two more, all with a regularity that was nearly mechanical. It appeared in my audible perception suddenly—as if I had been hearing it for some time but had only just became aware of it. Scratch, scratch. I thought it was strange that a bug could make it into such a starkly white and sterile room. That it just clung to the wall without moving only added to the eerie sense that grew the longer I stared at it. Just when I began to think it would never move, a sudden buzzing flutter of wings brought it to the cast on my leg. Closer up, I could see it in greater detail. It was a dark khaki color with burnt orange blotches on its back that were themselves speckled with black. The wings were large, transparent and lined, sweeping down over and beyond the length of its body. It sat there, making its drawn-out chirruping, and seemed to stare at me through its red, bulbous eyes. Somehow it seemed as if it was considering me, sizing me up. I realized that after the fact, having experienced what I have now. It began to scratch at my cast with spindly, delicate-looking legs. I tried to shake it off but I couldn't move my leg enough to startle it. It scratched with a concentrated intensity until it had scraped away a thin layer of the cast, throwing up white dust in a small cloud around it. It was starting to become scared—there was no telling why it was doing what it was doing or how far it would burrow into my cast. Its small body dug feverishly and started to disappear beneath the surface of the cast. I called out for a nurse again and again, and in increasing desperation, but none came. Now completely obscured by a mound of shifting white dust, I could feel it touch the skin of my leg. It used its preternatural strength to start tearing through my flesh. The pain was like ripping needles; its movements were tiny but relentless. I screamed, again and again, until my room echoed, but still no one came to save me. Blood and pieces of skin flew out of the hole that it had made in the cast in wild, almost celebratory throws, turning the white dust and the bed sheets red. I soon had no more voice to scream with—it felt as if I tore something in my throat—but still I tried anyway, thrashing in the traction but no more able to move than before. I felt it meet the bone in my leg. That's when it stopped. Over my cracked and strangled voice still feebly calling out for help, I could hear it chirruping again. Scratch, scratch. Suddenly the curtain around my bed was open and an older man in a white coat stood there, looking down at me and calling out my name. I looked back at him and tried to point to my leg with a bound hand, nodding toward it with my head. He looked down and looked at me, confused. "Do you have an itch?" he said, "Casts do that sometimes." I looked down at my leg and the cast was whole and unblemished, not stained with blood and ripped pieces of my flesh. I stammered and found that I could talk. "There was a bug...," was all that I could get out. My voice was shaking too badly. The doctor smiled reassuringly. "It's just a bad dream," he said, "I don't want to alarm you but you've been out of it for more than a week." He explained the severe extent of my injuries, how lucky I was to be alive, and the amount of physical therapy that I would have to endure. I tried to listen to him but my eyes were drawn back to my leg, as if I was expecting the insect to reappear at any moment. What happened didn't feel like a dream; I felt the pain in my leg as it ripped pieces away; I felt the spindly legs and bullet-shaped body squirming inside me. Now it didn't even twinge. After he finished talking the doctor gave me a fatherly pat on my shoulder and left through the curtain. I looked around the room, as if I would see another insect flying around now that I was alone, waiting to repeat the process, but the air was as empty and sterile as the rest of the room. The walls and machines were unblemished and unoccupied as if, moments ago, diligent sanitation staff had just left. I began to relax but as I did I thought I heard a muffled but nonetheless unmistakable, chirruping noise. Scratch, scratch. Before I go on, I have to thank you for staying through the story this long. Most people make an excuse and leave by now. That's if they're polite. If not, then they just leave. Just to warn you, from this point on my story becomes even stranger and farfetched. It's almost certainly going to test your mental endurance. If you're up for it then I'll continue. Physical therapy was long and painful, but that pain was nothing compared to what I experienced the first day I woke up. I had almost convinced myself that it had been a dream like the doctor said—it wasn't as if there was any evidence of what I thought had happened nor had I had any incident, no more chirruping, since then. My body strengthened and healed as much as would have been possible. The day came that I was to be discharged. I called a friend of mine and they brought a bag of clothes for me to change into, after which he would drive me back to my apartment. Poor Aaron. If I had known what would happen to him, what I would do to him, just later that night, I would have walked home. Aaron waited outside of my room while I dressed. As I stiffly put on my jeans I couldn't resist another look at my leg—the one that I thought the insect had bored into—and, truthfully, I inspected my leg each chance I got since the cast was taken off. The incident was so real to me that I could still remember the pain that the bug had caused; the sensation of a foreign body beneath my flesh and muscle; how it had nestled against my shin bone. I finished pulling on my pants, zipped and buttoned them, and made to stand up. That's when it happened again: a faint chirruping, only this time it was muffled. I looked around desperately, hopefully, for another insect, an innocent and mundane one, which had somehow managed to find its way into my room. There were none. I almost ripped my pants to pieces in an effort to get them off. When I did I looked at the skin of my leg, the place where I had seen, or thought I saw, the insect enter me. It was still smooth and unblemished but the noise was certainly coming from that spot. Fear and panic gripped me. It had happened after all, it was real, and that thing was still inside my leg. I scratched and beat at my skin in an effort to get to the bug inside, to make it stop its maddening noise. I must have shouted out because Aaron came running into my room. He asked me what was happening but in my panic I could only point at my leg and whimper. He pushed me back down onto the bed where I thrashed to get at my leg. He quickly pressed the button by my bed and summoned a nurse. One came rushing into my room and made the natural assumption that I had somehow re-injured myself. She injected a pain killer into my arm and I calmed down, but became too woozy to tell anyone about the insect. It didn't matter at that moment, though, as the chirruping had stopped. I was given another X-ray and Aaron and I waited for the results. It showed, as I knew it would, that I had healed completely. I stayed quiet about what had really happened. It sounded ridiculous, even to me, now that all was silent. I was cleared to leave again long after night had fallen, the waning drug-induced stupor was still strong enough to help me along to sleep. I don't remember the journey home, or Aaron putting me into my bed, but that's where I woke up. I looked at the digital clock beside the bed. The bright red numbers told me that I had only been asleep for a few hours. I was thankful I was awake, though—I felt that I had slept enough for one lifetime. A shadow moving across the light that shined beneath my closed bedroom door told me that Aaron was still there. We had taken care of one another while drunk many times, and he didn't seem to be treating this incident any different. No doubt he had found the pillow and quilt in the hallway closet I kept for those occasions and was preparing to stay all night. My thoughts turned to all the people I had to notify of my return. My phone was lost, destroyed in the accident, so I lazily rolled over to find the little black address book that I kept in my bedside table. I got as far as opening the drawer and wondering if Aaron would let me borrow his phone in the morning when I heard it again: the muffled, drawn-out chirruping. I froze in my rummaging. Chemical-induced sleep had blissfully allowed me to forget about the insect and its residence in my leg, but the last shreds of morphine were chased away when I heard the noise yet again. This time I didn't bother to look around my room—I could recognize the sound well enough now. I struggled out of my jeans and looked down at my leg, but again there wasn't even a lump to tell me where the insect was. It was then I felt it move—a tickling, itchy scrabble against my bone. In my mind I saw tiny, frail legs pressed down by red strips of muscle trying to find a purchase on my shin bone in order to move. And move it did, slowly climbing toward my knee; the tickling, itching sensation marked its progress. Scratch, scratch. I scrambled in the drawer of my bedside table for something to help me scratch the maddening itch. I soon found what I was looking for: the box that my parents had given me for Christmas several years ago. I opened it and took out the ornate gold-colored letter opener within. The blade was dull, but it was at least four inches long and the tip was more than sharp enough. I scratched at my shin. The chirruping became more frantic, the insect began to move faster toward my knee. I broke the skin with the tip and blood dribbled in a thin line down my leg. There was no effect, so I scratched harder. Skin peeled away in small strips. Pain blossomed and wilted in a red pulse with each drag across my flesh. I shouted out, tears streaked my face, but still I had to scratch. Aaron came rushing in just as I felt the insect reach my knee. I tried to dig the tip into my knee cap, trying to pry it off. To Aaron, the scene must have looked like madness: me, lying on my bed in my underwear, blood and strings of skin covering my leg. He ran over to try and wrestle the letter open away from me. I'm not entirely sure, even to this day, what happened in those tense few seconds—him desperately struggling to take the opener away and me struggling just as desperately to hold onto it. I know I was shouting about the insect beneath my skin, now moving toward my thigh in a trail of itching and long chirrups, but that's all I could be certain of. He was deaf to anything but his attempt to, as he saw it, save me from myself. During the struggle, somehow, Aaron was stabbed. I immediately smelled the foul scent of feces and urine as his bowls were perforated by the dull blade. I looked down and saw that it had slid in to the faux ivory hilt. I let it go, Aaron's blood covering my hand. The insect had fallen silent again. Aaron fell backward and hit the floor with a hard thud. He made no noise but only clutched at the letter opener protruding from his stomach with a terrified expression, blood and other fluids pouring down over his groin and across his legs. I wanted to help him, I did, but it was then I felt the insect inside me reach my thigh. It started chirruping again. I furiously scratched at it, but my fingernails were not enough. I dashed past Aaron lying pale on the floor. He reached out a pleading hand to me but I couldn't stop—I had to help myself first or I wouldn't be able to do anything for him with the distraction. Scratch, scratch. I stumbled into my kitchen and opened a drawer at random. Inside, digging through large spoons and other currently useless instruments, I found a cheese grater. I took it and rubbed it hard against the skin of my thigh, where the subdermal itching was now intense. It shredded my skin; blood dripping onto the floor in a patter of thick red drops. The itching and the chirruping stopped just as suddenly as it had started and clear thought became possible once again. Recent memory rushed back in a tide of black horror. It felt as though my stomach contracted into a small wrinkled ball. I dashed back into my room. Aaron was lying on the floor where he fell in an expanding puddle of his own blood. It had soaked into the carpet and turned it almost black. He wasn't moving; his skin was ghostly pale. I panicked. My friend was dead on the floor of my bedroom and potentially at my hand. I grabbed my jeans and frantically pulled them on. The blood of my self-inflicted injuries soaked them immediately, turning them purple in large patches. And, to my eternal shame, I ran. It's not something that I will ever forgive myself for, leaving Aaron to bleed to death on my own floor. If I had only been able to get the insect out of my leg, he might have been alive. But I could not allow the police to arrest me. I doubt they would believe me, and I would be thrown in jail or worse: a mental hospital. I'm not insane, I know it. Something that feels this real cannot be in my mind. Scratch, scratch. At first, a few weeks after the incident in my bedroom, I tried to talk to people, to get help. I hoped that I could find a solution to my problem while still avoiding the police. A life of poverty and homelessness would be bearable if only I could get rid of the bug that still remained resolutely inside me. People would only hear the first few sentences of my story before rushing off—I still wore my blood-soaked jeans, now crusted in a deep brown. They drove most people away. Life, of a sort, continued on the street. I took shelter where I could—beneath overpasses or in deep doorways—and rummaged food where I could find it—from dumpsters outside restaurants or trash cans on the sidewalk. I begged for money, but that only took a small part of my time. Most of my time was taken up trying to find things that would help me remove the insect inside my body. I quickly wore my fingernails down scratching myself, but dumpsters and abandoned lots were full of things to use instead: rusty food can lids, broken knives and corkscrews, the sharp edges of chain link fences, and many other impromptu instruments. The bug remained elusive, moving all over my body seemingly at random. Nothing worked to force it out, or take it out. If you'll look at my arm here—let me pull up my sleeve—I tried to do a rudimentary surgery to remove it once and for all. I waited until there was a cloudless, sunny day and peeled my skin back to find the thing that was blighting me. My screams echoed down the alley and off the buildings around me as I cut open my flesh with a piece of broken glass. It was all for nothing, though: I passed out from blood loss before I got too deep into my arm. But, on the plus side, it was the longest sleep I've had—most times the bug starts its incessant chirruping and itching when I try to sleep. Scratch, scratch. I've given up trying to get it out now. I'm resigned to it staying in my body until it determines that it's time for it to leave on its own—bursting out of my skin like... like a cicada, I suppose. I'm sure it will hurt enormously but I'll take it if I can be free of the blight of its occupation. Still, I cannot resist scratching at it when it acts up. It's an unconscious reaction now. Most often I'm not even aware that I'm doing it. Scratch, scratch. Thank you for listening to me this whole time. It helps more than you think to talk to people. Here, let me get you another drink before I leave; I've saved up enough money from begging to buy one at least. I don't need it for myself: I'm used to cold, half eaten hamburgers and the like now. What are you drinking? Oh, before I get it, I have a question: are you using your fork? Scratch, scratch. ⁂ [ TETANUS by Chris Vander Kaay ] You sit in an examination room in the emergency room, shifting back and forth on the crinkling paper unspooled from a roll at the top of the exam table across the soft Naugahyde underneath you. You rub your jaw, pressing at the joint, massaging the muscle, trying to make your mouth open, but it still won't. You take deep breaths through your nose, try to remain calm. The doctor will know what it is. You stare at the wall chart across the room from you that says, "Warning Signs You're Having a Heart Attack." You glance through the symptoms portrayed in tiny cartoon images. Whatever is wrong with you, it looks like it's not that. You hear the click of the door and turn to see a doctor walk in the room. He smiles, but not at you, as he walks in the room. His eyes are on the file in his hands. His nametag reads Dr. Lync. "Well, we can cross tetanus off the list of culprits that caused your lockjaw, Mack," Lync says to you, still not looking at you. "No fever, your blood pressure and heart rate are fine." Lync sets the file down on the counter nearby, then finally looks up at you. The faux-friendly smile fades away, replaced with the sober, furrowed brow of a professional. He reaches over, sliding his fingers gently across your throat, the muscles in your neck, your shoulders. "The surrounding muscles aren't stiff to the touch. Hmm. Can you take your shirt off? I want to check some other things." You pull your shirt off over your head, lay it on the paper roll next to you. "Do you grind your teeth? Or clench them a lot?" Lync asks. Not until my fucking jaws locked shut, you want to say, but you can't, so you just shake your head no. Lync presses several spots on your chest, your arms. What is he doing? Looking for pressure points? But you can't ask. "That rules out TMJ, then," Lync says, his face inches from your chest. "It might be soft tissue inflammation, but it's not exhibiting anywhere else." He steps back, rubs his chin thoughtfully as he looks at your body, then smiles as he makes eye contact again. "You're a bit of a mystery, Mack. Tell you what, while we're waiting for the blood tests, let's give you the once-over. See if anything stands out." Lync pats you on the shoulder, pointing down at the shirt next to you. "You can put your shirt back on," he says, "but that's only because I need you to drop the trousers a bit. Not off, just so I can check your prostate." You nod and slide your shirt back on. Lync snaps a glove from the box on the counter and slides his hand into it. The room is so quiet that you can hear the clink of your belt as you unhook it and slide your pants down. "Just lean up on the bench here," Lync says. "It'll only take a second." You turn around and lean down, your elbows crinkling the paper, it starts to tear under the weight. "Just relax a bit," Lync says from behind you. You can feel his finger press into you firmly. "It'll be over soon. One of the first things we tell our patients during an examination like this—OW!" You tense at the shock, and you feel him pull his hand free. You spin around quickly, grabbing at your pants to keep them from falling. You look at Lync, who is gripping his gloved right hand. The latex tip of the glove is torn and jagged, and his index finger is bleeding. "What the f—" Lync says as he stares down at his finger. "Something bit or cut my finger." Lync snaps the glove off, and you both stare down at the wound. Squinting, you can see that the cut is actually a series of small punctuations, and you can see the half-moon shaped curve the punctures make across his fingertip. "Holy shit, that's a bite radius," Lync says. He raises his eyes, looks at you in stunned silence. "Mack, what the hell is going on inside you?" You button your pants, but don't bother with the belt. You didn't feel anything inside, nothing but his finger. There's nothing wrong with you, you know it, and you're not going to wait around and let people prod you. You hurry towards the door of the examination, throw it open, hurry towards the door. "Orderlies!" Lync's voice echoes through the hall as you hurry towards the exit of the emergency room. "Grab that man, he needs to be quarantined, now!" You fumble at the keys in your pocket, pull them free, and you can feel your pants starting to fall. The automatic doors slide open and you hurry through them. Arms hook you around the waist, grab at your clothes, pull you back through the door. You want to yell for help from the people in the parking lot, in the waiting room, but you can only moan through your clenched teeth. They drag you back into the examination room, Lync slamming the door behind you. You kick at them, try to pull your arms free, but they're stronger than you and trained to secure unruly patients. "Get him down on the bench here," Lync says, ripping away the paper. The two orderlies press you down against the Naugahyde. One of them holds your head still, and you try to move, but he has you pinned in place. On the ceiling above you, you can see tiny, cute animal stickers, probably placed there for children to focus on when they're given shots. You feel the pinprick on your arm, the rushing heat as whatever it was in Lync's needle spreads out underneath your skin. "Hold him still until the succinylcholine arrests his muscle contractions," Lync says. Then you feel it taking hold. No pain, no sensation, but a growing fear inside you when you realize you're losing the ability to move. The rest of your body is as immobile as your mouth. You can feel the orderlies' hands release you, but you can't take advantage of the freedom. "Okay, it's working, he won't move now," Lync says as he leans down into your face, peering into your eyes with a penlight. "Get his pants off." You feel the tug and hear the clink of your belt as they pull off your pants and drop them to the floor. "Find the OB-GYN foot stirrups. I need to get his legs spread apart so I can..." Lync's voice trails off. It feels like someone's hand is on your penis, moving it side to side, but you can't look down to see. You know it's not that, though, because you can see Lync and the orderlies staring down at your waist, unmoving, eyes wide. "Why is his...?" the fatter orderly says, pointing at your waist. "That's not an erection," Lync says, tilting his head, looking closely. "It's distended and moving. Is there something inside the urethra?" You feel it, suddenly, awkwardly. It feels like you're urinating, but it's not liquid coming out. A thin tentacle, a pale-yellow tendril, snakes out of your penis, lashing around in the air above your body. "What the hell is—?" The fat orderly's words are cut off when the tendril wraps around the orderly's neck. He struggles against it, coughing and wheezing, pulling against it. You can feel your body rock with the violence of the struggle. "What do I do?" the thinner orderly cries to Lync. "It's choking him!" Lync grabs the tendril and pulls hard, but it won't release the orderly's throat. You watch Lync vanish from sight for a moment, and when he comes back into view, he has a scalpel in his hand. "Get that clamp," Lync says to the thin orderly, pointing to the counter across the room. "As soon as I slice the tentacle, the stump of it will probably retract back into him. When it does, I want you to clamp the tip of his penis so it can't come back out, okay?" The thin orderly nods, grabbing the clamp. Lync pauses, turns to look you in the eyes. You can't say anything, and he knows it. He nods at you and turns back to the tendril. He grabs hold of it, swipes the scalpel across it. You watch as the two feet of tendril go limp and unravel from the fat orderly's neck. The stump of the tendril snakes downwards and out of your vision. As the fat orderly stumbles backwards, gasping for clear breaths, the thin orderly tightens the clamp on your penis. You feel the pinch and the stab, so sharp and clear that you want to scream. You can't activate your vocal chords, so the scream goes nowhere but through your head. You try to reach up and pull it off, to clench your fists, to shove them all away. You can't. Lync leans down into your face again, and then you feel his fingers against your throat, pressing to find a pulse. "It's contained now, whatever it is," Lync says, turning to the orderlies. "Go to the next room, have Hanson look over both of you. I want this door locked from the outside while I continue my examination." The two of them stare at him in silence. "Go! Get your neck looked at and don't come back in here until I call you." The two orderlies file out of the room, and you can hear the metallic clack of the door locking. Lync looks down at you again, then turns and walks across the room. You can't see him, but you can hear the opening and closing of drawers, the shuffling of plastic and objects. "Mack, I'm sorry," he says from somewhere on your right. "I don't know what happened to you, but I have to put you under. The succinylcholine keeps you from being able to move, and you couldn't talk because of the lockjaw anyway. The only thing that comes from you being conscious is that you're going to feel all the pain." Lync walks back over, hovering near you with a syringe in his hand. "You're of no use to us conscious," he says, leaning down towards you. You feel the pinprick again. "Don't worry, I'll figure out what's going on." You don't remember the moment you weren't looking at Lync anymore, the moment when blackness overtook your vision, all the sounds melted into a single low-frequency buzz and your awareness of your body was a distant dream memory. You seem to remember someone telling you that when you're in a chemically-induced sleep, you don't have a sense of the passage of time, no awareness of yourself. That's not this. You do feel something, but what is it? Like trying to talk with a mouthful of honey, everything is muted, slow, runny. And then, you're suddenly crawling back into yourself, feeling your mind start making connections back to what your eyes are seeing. The light is blinding, painful, but it's a welcome pain because it's the first thing you can remember feeling since the needle stick. You blink. Whatever that medicine was, it has worn off, because you can move your eyelids. The light is slowly waning, but you still can't see the examination room clearly. You try to open your mouth, but it still won't open. You try to turn your head, but it barely moves. It's not like your jaw, it's not frozen; it feels held in place by something outside, something restricting. The light starts to ebb, the room makes itself known. It's not the examination room. The ceiling is different, the stickers gone, fluorescents blasting down on you. "Sir, the patient is conscious, sir!" The voice is loud, barking. You can't move your head, but you shift your eyes over to the right, and you can make out the blurry shape of a man in brown, a white helmet on his head. You're almost certain he's holding a gun. "Thank you, Corporal," says a voice from somewhere on your left, and you know immediately that it's Lync. You scan your eyes back and forth, but you don't see him yet. Lync suddenly looms into your view, right above your face. "Hi, Mack," Lync says. "You've been out for a while now." The first thing you notice is that he looks different. His hair is shorter, cropped. Something is different around his eyes, too. "It's been seven years," Lync says, bending his eyebrows up in faux-sympathy. Your breathing speeds up, and you know he must see in your face how confused and angry you are. "It's going to take you some time to adjust. You haven't used your eyes or ears for a good long while." You try to reach up, to grab him by his smug face, to punch him over and over until he either dies or someone tackles you, but you can't move your hands, either. You're not paralyzed, you're immobilized. "Your limbs are secured," Lync says, nodding. "Straps and bars. Don't fight them, you'll just tear your skin up." Lync leans in close, speaking quietly. "As you start to come around fully, you're going to notice some discomfort, tightness and pulling and localized pain." As the words come out of his mouth, you can already start to feel it. Pressure, like lying at the bottom of a swimming pool, and small burning spots everywhere; it feels like someone is pressing cigarette lighters against every inch of your skin. "So just try to focus on me for a moment, okay?" Lync says, standing straight up and circling around to stand right in front of you. "I'll try to explain everything." He pauses, then smiles awkwardly. "This is going to be harder to sum up than I thought. Let's see, how do I say this? "Mack, your body is... well, we don't have a term for it. We've been calling you a nexus in the absence of a better term. Something about your physical make-up is a doorway to other places." Your body is throbbing, but you're focused on Lync's words, rapt attention. "The orifices in your body all seem to lead to someplace. In the time since we initially put you under, we discovered that the tentacled creature that grabbed James was just an undersea creature from either a distant planet or another dimension, and it somehow got pulled partway into the portal that exited out of your... well, anyway, when we sent a camera down your urethra, we discovered what was on the other end, besides the tentacled creature, was plentiful fresh water, more than we ever could have imagined." Lync holds his hand up for you to see. His index finger, the one that was bitten, is gone now. He wiggles the cauterized stump back and forth. "I had to have the finger amputated after it got infected from the bite," Lync says. "It was an oversized insect. A camera in your rectum showed a dense, forest-like environment, teeming with thousands of tiny creatures which we have been harvesting and using for medication, research, more things than we could have imagined." Lync smiles at you, shaking his head. "Honestly, I can't thank you enough," he says. "You don't know what kind of changes the world has gone through, positive changes, because of you. There's no water shortage in the world anymore. We've found cures for Alzheimer's and muscular dystrophy." Lync scratches his head. "I'm sorry to say we still haven't figured out what's going on with your jaw," Lync says, shrugging. "It's not medically related, we know that much. It's possible that it's the only portal in your body where whatever is on the other side knows about the portal as well, and they're trying to prevent anyone or anything from coming through to where they are. Frankly, though, we haven't spent much time trying to figure it out because we've been so busy making discoveries about all your other orifices." You blink your eyes over and over, avert your eyes downward, towards your body. Lync watches you, confused, but then he finally understands. "Right, of course," he says. "The pain I described and the restraints. Yeah, that's going to be the hard part for you to deal with, but you won't have to worry about it for long. Hang on, let me grab..." He moves away from you again. "After the first year of exploring all the places we could go by traveling through all the holes in your body, we started wondering about the nature of your body," Lync says. "We wondered if all the places we could access through your ears, nose, anus, we wondered if those were the only ones we could get to." Lync walks back over, a small square hidden in the palm of his hand, the sharp corners peeking around his fingers. "So we made a new one," he said, pausing to look at your face. The heavy silence hangs in the air, and then he finally continues. "We created a biopsy hole on your arm to see what would happen. And sure enough, it led somewhere. Someplace empty, vacuous, no light or creatures of any kind, but definitely some kind of place. So we kept going, kept creating small holes to send our miniature cameras into. Mack, we found so much; our understanding of the universe, of reality itself, has multiplied a hundred times over because of the strange nature of your body." Lync fiddles with the square in his hand, and you see a block of reflected light pass across his face. He must have a mirror in his hand, reflecting the fluorescents back up at his face. Why does he have a mirror? What does he want you to see? "So we monitor them all, send things through into the worlds with intelligent life," he says. "Bring things back here through tiny tubes to use for research, or in the case of the water, we just keep pumping it out and filtering it to send to poor and desert populations. And it's all because of you. Look what you're doing for us." That's when he turns the mirror towards you, shows you your own face and body. Riddled with open wounds and sores, each one is kept open by clamps and wires, some with tubes going into or out of them. You look at your chest, pockmarked and spongy; you look like a porcupine covered in quills that curve and bend away from you, plastic and black, wires thick and thin, like the fibrous hairs on a fly. It's not your face anymore, it's not your body. It's not you. You don't know what you're seeing, some kind of meat pile with electrodes sticking out of it, a mottled turkey carcass ravaged by a hundred thousand pop-up timers. You don't know what you are. "I know, it's hard to take in, Mack," Lync says, lowering the mirror. "It's a lot to deal with. Don't worry, though, we're not going to leave you like this. And I'm not going to send you back to that horrible half-waking twilight you've been in all this time. You deserve something better, more final than that." Lync disappears again. You search the room as best you can, but you still can't see him. "Of course, you understand that we can't stop utilizing your body," Lynch says. "It's too valuable. But I want to free you to whatever degree I can." He steps back into your view, a syringe in one hand and an iPhone in the other. "So what I'm going to do is put you back under, just temporarily, so I can remove the higher thinking parts of your brain and get rid of them. All we need to keep your body functioning is the brain stem, so I'm going to end your consciousness instead of imprisoning it in here. It's the least we can do for you." Lync holds up the phone. "I looked through your playlist on your phone years ago, and I noticed that you played the Johnny Cash song "Peace in the Valley" much more than any other song," Lync says as he swipes through your phone. "I want to play that for you, one last time." You see standing tears in Lync's eyes as he looks right at you. "Thank you for everything you've done." He presses play on the phone. 'I'm tired and so weary, but I must go along, till the Lord comes and calls me away...' Lync leans down and slides the needle in; you can't feel the needle, not with all the holes and the wires and the skin damage. But you know he has injected something, because you can feel the world dimming around you again, blurring at the edges, losing its shape. Lync's voice comes to you one last time, murky and poured through a sieve, but clear enough to be understood. "It will be better, I promise," he says. The dark closes in around you now. In moments, the only part of you that is still fully you, the gray matter, will be sliced out and tossed aside. And your body will continue without you. Maybe Lync is right. Maybe it will be better... ⁂ [ GRUB by Alexander Lloyd King ] A final dinner was all he asked. Sure, she thought, what could be the harm in dinner? Ellie and Billy Goldstein started out romantically enough, two science majors in chemistry, and whatever fondness had spoiled between them was still digestible in small amounts. Dinner would be tolerable, somewhat constructive, especially if it offered Billy a little closure. She already had hers. His name was Luigi, and he was a far, Catholic cry from a Jewish atheist who wore a lab coat with house slippers. Before agreeing to dinner, Ellie knew their final meal would be different, though she suspected most of their evening would run its usual course: Billy would blare some computerized travesty of jazz or blues; the dimmer switch would be adjusted so the chandelier above the dining room table seemed little more than the faint glow of a jack-o-lantern row, a quixotic camouflage Billy began hiding behind, she suspected, when he became aware that his long hours in the cellar had robbed him of the good features he once possessed; and the table would seem an oval ghost under that cloth she loathed—an abhorrent draping which matched Billy's lab coat when they purchased it and had since turned a tarter yellow. Ellie stood on the porch, dressed in her most casual of dinner outfits, waiting for Billy to answer the door and trying not to smile at the thought of walking away from that table for the last time, leaving the wordless noise and dim room and ugly cloth behind. She made a silent vow to never forget. It would serve her better to remember the decade of marriage in which her husband grew evermore complacent, spending increasing hours in the basement. She recalled the crawling feeling she got one occasion when she went down there and discovered that he used up much of his time in the glass room not experimenting but instead ogling his specimens, his eyes bulging like two fat white grubs as ants crawled across his hand. She would hold onto the degrading experience of living with an entomologist/arachnologist who wanted to touch his bugs more than he did his wife, a thought that had wriggled in the back of her mind each time those rare moments arrived when he meant to touch her sexually. She was in the middle of that thought as Billy opened the door. Poised in the entrance, he remained quiet for a moment, seemingly perplexed. "Are you cold, Ellie?" "No." "I thought you might be... the way you were shaking." "I guess I'm a little cold," she lied, hoping to spare his feelings, then wondering if he still had feelings like normal people. She often considered the possibility that too much time around his little friends had made him just like them, a shell wrapped around a complex nervous system. Except, in that moment, she could tell there was much more within his fleshy husk than a jamboree of firing neurons. His eyes might have been hidden behind glasses reflecting a streetlamp, but he was staring at her—into her, she thought, with those bulging white eyes of his—in a manner of almost telepathic inquiry. "May I come in?" she asked, playing off another shudder as if cold. He stepped aside. "Certainly. You didn't have to knock. This is still your home, too, Ellie, or have you forgotten?" She entered, and there it was greeting her: the overly-condensed rhythms of what Billy considered music, electronic clots with all of the humanity stripped away. Rendered to a fine point; that was how he liked any form of art. As the tune invaded her ears, she thought, this is the same sound I would hear if I could hear a spider spinning its web. Ellie almost jumped when he closed and locked the door behind them. Never in their decade together had Billy ever frightened her. Given her the creeps, yes, many times. But it was like the difference between hearing a ghost story and having a supernatural experience. The first does not impose an immediate sense of danger; the latter does. She found herself leaning toward the second as he stepped around her and toddled into the kitchen with barely a nervous gleam on his balding scalp. It was a powerful inflammation of the surreal fear generated by nightmares, and it was her first time experiencing anything like it. For a woman who had been content enough to share the house with Black Widow spiders, there was something to be said about her sudden level of unease. How Luigi's voice had boomed hours ago at the very idea of Ellie and Billy Goldstein reunited and alone. "I don't trust you going over there!" Along with his slight accent, his large hands, and his full head of hair, his inability to filter emotion was one of the many things she had come to adore about her lover. The more he cared, the louder he became. He was not a rational man of science, but an impulsive man of emotion. "I've known Billy for sixteen years and lived with him for ten. He's far more dangerous to himself than anyone else. I think that's how he needs to heal. It's his personality—he turns inward. If a final dinner together can help him move on, it will help me move on." She ran her finger along the sheet clinging to Luigi's thick forearm. "It will help us move on." "And how am I to forgive myself if something happens to you?" "Trust me, and I mean this quite literally... Billy Goldstein wouldn't harm a fly." Ellie forced herself back into the air of normalcy she had felt in that very house less than two weeks prior, before she finally broke the news to Billy that she was leaving him to live with the man she had been seeing behind his back for more than a year. It further eased her nerves to recall his reaction; it had been passive rather than angry, rational rather than alarmed, and in a way, slightly relieved. She took a seat at the dining room table, disregarding the yellow-tinted tablecloth she hated as she tried to erase any sign of guilt from her face. Billy entered the room with two glasses of red wine and a goofy smile she had not seen since their college days. She thought that smile had been lost to his research. "I've done a lot of thinking, Ellie, and I've really come to terms with what's happening between us." Ellie accepted the drink, wondering by his chipper behavior if these were the first glasses he poured that evening. "What is happening between us?" she asked, afraid to approve of their current standing without first hearing his understanding of it. "I mean, in your eyes, what's happening?" Those eyes, glossy and bright, wiggled in their sockets. He raised his index finger and proclaimed, "A metamorphosis, my dear." She took a deep breath, released it, took a large gulp, swallowed, sighed, and tried but failed to say something, anything. "It's okay, it's okay. You think I'm hysterical. That I should be happy about you cohabitating and copulating with a man who exceeds me physically—a man you chose for primal and instinctive reasons—certainly appears a blatant and painful case of denial in the eyes of lesser beings. But I am not in pain." He thrust his arms into the air in a grand gesture. "I could even dance, because I have defied death, found a way to grant new life, and our metamorphosed relationship will do the same. We're almost imago, Ellie. To become butterflies." She could not think of a good response. He read the uncertainty on her face. "You must be unsure of your old friend Billy right now," he said, calming. "I should have begun by informing you: it finally happened." Curiosity replaced her unease. IT, the same IT he spoke of so often. She had thought IT a metaphor for his big break. "IT's happened?" "Yes, not just a breakthrough but THE breakthrough. Completion. Everything I've been working toward since grad school is finally coming to fruition. The long hours, the sacrifices—our marriage being one of them—and the derision I received. Even when no one said anything, my peers were mocking me among themselves. Even you doubted me." "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to seem—" "No! Don't you dare apologize, Ellie. My success is where our new relationship cocoons. Your unspoken judgment allowed me to make this possible. Ridicule was the leafy goodness I needed, we needed. I have you to thank." He's just excited, Ellie told herself, and she couldn't blame him. She was excited, too, so much that the atmosphere no longer bothered her. Though he was behaving far more eccentrically than she had ever witnessed, and though her physical passions had long since died for the man, she felt she had shared much of the sacrifice it took for him to fulfill his ambition, and she felt pride in herself for standing by him at least an overwhelming majority of the time in which he worked toward... Suddenly, something he said before began itching in her mind like a mosquito bite. "Billy? What did you mean when you said you defied death?" "First, let us eat. I will explain as much as I can before showing you." He returned to the kitchen with his empty glass and began carrying silver-topped platters (which he must have purchased specifically for the occasion, because Ellie had never seen them before) two at a time to the dining room table. She offered to help, but he refused, stating that many of the covered dishes were a surprise related to his special breakthrough. There were ten platters in all: five he set on the right side, her left, and five he set on the left, her right. Then, after fetching forks and silverware and plates and apologizing for his absentmindedness, he unveiled, one at a time, the five helpings of food on the right, her left. It was indeed different than she expected. The meal consisted of fettuccine, salad, steamed vegetables, spaghetti, and breadsticks. Despite his excitement and declared appreciation of their "cocooning" relationship, the meal he prepared was basically saying, I heard you're a big fan of Italian. Billy's engineered irony was in the air, but neither chose to verbalize what would surely subtract from his momentous revelation. He seemed humble as he filled their plates and this time filled glasses with white wine, so she considered that his choice of cuisine was only subconsciously spiteful. Men like Billy Goldstein—their subconscious thoughts pupate and grow into larger things. At least the food looked appetizing, for once, under the hollow, jack-o-lantern-like glow. A good way into their meal, Billy began staring at the platters still covered, the ones on the left, her right. Continuing to eat small bites, he started his great divulgence. "Ellie, do you remember Gregor Mendel?" She hated to break from eating. The food was delicious, distracting from the strangeness of the scenario. She didn't want anything to shatter her current state of peace. She wanted it to last her until she was miles removed from this dreamlike dinner, at Luigi's place and in his solid, grounding arms. "Mendel was the man who cross-pollinated pea plants to discover dominant and recessive traits," she answered. "He's one of your earliest inspirations. You even tried to start that educational band in college. Was it Gregor and the Peapods?" Billy chuckled. He was a puzzle master holding the last few pieces in his hands, looking upon them as a doting father about to send his children into the bigger world, commit them to the bigger picture. "I find it hard to believe that a boy with such silly ideas could accomplish what I have. I guess I've done a fair amount of metamorphosing since then. But you have it right enough. Mendel's experiments started me down my own path. I began toying with cross-pollinating—cross-breeding—different species of insects and arachnids. You thought I was just down there for the last ten years playing with bugs, but I was playing with something smaller. Particles, my dear. I've even gone as far as to clone my insects, and even that pales in comparison to the grand scheme. You remember the time you found me in the glass room with the ants out, crawling across my hand? I was marveling because they were clones. I could not tell you that, then, but it was true. Start small, make big. That's my scientific creed." "That's all wonderful," Ellie said, then attempted humor. "Just don't tell me you've created a giant race of ants we'll have to build sugar factories to satiate." "Not yet, I haven't," he said, as if taking her comment seriously. "The point is... I could if I wanted to. I could tweak this, manipulate that. Ellie, I've discovered something far deeper than Higgs boson... I've discovered the true God Particle." He reached for the still-covered platter closest to him and pulled off the top. Ellie saw what was beneath the silver dome and dropped her fork into a tangle of spaghetti. Never during their decade together in that house, no matter how pleased he was with his studies, had Billy dared to bring bugs to the dinner table. Now he had. The platter, which he moved directly before him after scooting his plate aside, contained two glass jars: one with a small, wriggling maggot inside; the other with a large, fat grub. They climbed at their glass cells with horrifying inconsequence, although Billy was watching them as if they were two, united pinnacles of existence. "Do you know what these are, Ellie?" "The lighting's not the best, but I can see from here that one is a maggot and the other a grub worm." "You're half right. I'll explain, and it will all make sense." She doubted that, and she knew he could read her uncertainty, but his eyes gleamed—human versions of the grub in the jar—as he continued. "If I was going to successfully crossbreed insect species, fire ants with carpenter ants, for example, then I needed to manipulate those subatomic particles into accepting the DNA of the other. It took me several years to figure out how to grow those potential offspring in a stable environment, and even then the results were less than successful. I had discovered this small concoction, but I was lacking a filter to initiate true birth. In other words, I had to find that particular something that would spring nothing into life. A womb. Then it occurred to me. If I could tweak these un-living particles into life, then maybe I could use any piece of detached life as fodder, an incubation system— turning decay into spontaneous life" "And?" "And it worked! I used mice to grow my crossbreeds of insects. I changed them with my concoction, and the results were profound. Any piece of flesh I cut from them would transform. Do you see what I've done, Ellie? I have turned death into a suitable condition for life and created hundreds of new species of insects. I have defied what every true scientist dreams secretly of defying. I have found immortality." He pointed to the smaller jar, the one with the maggot. "Guess where this came from." "Do I want to know?" Ellie asked, shuddering at the thought of his mutilated test subjects. "It came from me, Ellie. It came from me." "Bi-Billy, please don't tell me you—" "Not on purpose. It didn't occur to me that my concoction and inevitable exposure to it would cause a change in me. After all, it is not toxic in any way, so I went about my experiments with more concern that I might contaminate it than thinking it might contaminate me. I used what I thought were the necessary safeguards, but there must have been a hole in my preparations... or in my hazmat suit. Somewhere along the line I either inhaled or ingested the transformative agent, the one that springs life from death. The guilt returned to her face, undeniable. "You're not sick, are you?" His grin in response made him appear even more at home under the jack-o-lantern-like lighting. "Far from it, my dear Ellie. I am immortal." As hard to believe as his declaration was, she had known the man for sixteen years and could not recall a single lie. She hoped he was exaggerating. "You mean immortal because of your discovery, right? Because you'll go down in history?" He finished his glass, grabbed the bottle, and poured another. "I. Mean. Immortal." "Billy, maybe this isn't the best time to talk about it. I'm sure you want to unveil your findings yourself, to a prestigious institution." "Fuck prestige!" Billy yelled, which was uncharacteristic for a man who compared swear words to barbaric grunts. Also, he used to be obsessed with those great academic clubs, desiring acceptance from them. "I'm not simply immortal—I'm enlightened." He gave the maggot-jar in his fingertips a gentle shake, sending the little white speck rolling back and forth across the glass bottom. "I asked if you knew where this fellow came from, Ellie, and I think you're starting to realize, though it scares you as I can see that by the look on your face. When I was shaving a few days ago, I cut myself a good one." He paused only long enough to indicate a small, white bandage just beneath his chin and on his upper neck. Ellie, until then, had not noticed it. "I set my razor down and patched the wound with a snip of toilet paper. Then I went to continue. I was just about to rinse my razor under the faucet when I saw it, wriggling between the blades. When I first looked, it was still a small piece of flesh. By the time I got to the basement, this sample was a smaller version of itself now. Soon it'll be a fly. The blood was also moving. It was red, so it became chiggers." This is insane! she thought. He's insane! Ellie tried to stand but could not. The recent dreamlike sense she felt was more than mental. It was physical. "You drugged me, you bastard," she slurred. "I knew you would have trouble believing," he said in an almost apologetic tone. I just put enough in the wine to keep you still. I have no intention of tying you up, Ellie-my-dear. Trust me. Soon you will be free." The music she associated with the sound of spider webs was in the background. He lifted the jar with the grub worm and eyed it lovingly as he stepped around the table and hovered above the four, silver-topped platters. If the maggot had come from the shaved-off skin of his neck, he was daring her to guess from which chunk of him the larger specimen had manifested. She did not have to guess for long. With a smile as sideways as spider fangs, he hoisted his right foot to the table, set the jar beside it, and used hands trembling with anticipation to remove his slipper. Ellie screamed... or at least she attempted to scream. What escaped her mouth was as droning as the music. She saw exactly what Billy wanted her to see: the place where his pinky toe used to be, right next to the glass-sealed grub worm. "I had to be certain," he said. "I had to know that the maggot born of my flesh wasn't an isolated incident. As you can see, Ellie, it wasn't." "No," she said. What she had meant to say was, "No, I don't want to see! Let me go!" What he must have heard was, "No, I don't believe you!" "You will believe me. I will show you. You never thought we would have children together, Ellie. Tonight, you'll understand how wrong you were. Tonight, we're going to make thousands of babies." He lowered his foot from the table and lifted the top of another platter to reveal a small hatchet. "I'll prove my findings as well as my love." Watching him run his thumb along the blade in that dim, pumpkin glow, her bladder released. Piss streaming down her legs and the chair legs, she understood that Billy was in fact no longer a man. He was immortal, as immortal as bloated roadkill with maggots squirming beneath, eternal in its provisions of fodder for those flies-to-be. He reached her, brushed her dinner plate aside, wrapped his left hand around her right wrist, and raised it to the table with what seemed to be lamenting affection. Tears streamed down her face, but she could barely feel them. "No, no, no, no." He gave her a sympathetic look that said, this may hurt like hell, but it's necessary. Then he pulled her hand until her wrist was taut against the table, raised the hatchet, and brought it down with a force she never knew he possessed. Even in a semi-numb, semi-paralyzed state, she felt a level of pain she never thought possible. It came again and again and again because the first few chops were not enough to completely sever her hand. Billy moved surprisingly fast for a man recently downgraded to nine toes. He jumped to a platter and revealed surprise number three: a blowtorch. Cauterize, she thought. It was the only word her mind could muster before she passed out to the sound of the torch lighting and, in the background, that horrible music. When she started to wake, she felt Luigi's broad arms around her and thought, Thank God, it was a nightmare, only a nightmare, I'm safe. A smile of relief was just starting to form when awareness and pain penetrated her mind, and she realized that she was not huddled in bed with her lover but sitting on a hard, wooden surface. The bed sheets she thought she felt were really that horrible, yellowed tablecloth dangling over her legs, and the sense of being held in Luigi's arms amounted only to the broad weight of the drugs still gripping her system. Worse than anything, the tingling pain she at first took for a limb fallen asleep began to amplify into a high voltage wave of pain. She could also smell charring. Head still pressed against the table, she opened her eyes to see the stump where her right hand used to be. Farther down her wrist, a grotesque cluster of blisters peeked out from the edge of heavy-duty gauze. He stopped the bleeding, she thought. He wants to keep me alive, to torture me. Tat-tat-tat-tat. She heard the sound first before feeling its corresponding vibrations through the table, where her facedown head was pressed, unable to look up. Something was crawling across the cloth, digging in with legs sharp and heavy enough to resound through the fabric and make an instrument of the hard wood beneath. Whatever it was kept getting closer. Tat-tat-tat-tat. It pattered over to her and paused a moment, as if preparing to strike. But it didn't strike. One of its tat-tat legs merely touched upon her scalp. Then another. Then another. It was climbing onto her head, sinking its spidery limbs into her hair. Finally, Ellie found that she could move. She lifted her remaining hand and in a single, quick motion thrust it under the large tarantula and flung it off the top of her head. It landed on its back only a few feet away, still too close for her comfort, and emitted a squeal. She summoned enough strength to lift her head from the table to the back of the chair. She then gazed down upon her recent assailer. It wasn't a tarantula, nor was it any other kind of spider she'd ever seen. The thing writhing on its back still somewhat resembled her hand. The skin was there, marked with small, porous pox where black hairs had begun sprouting. The wrist and its laceration had swollen to a lively size, which at first seemed impossible considering there was no longer—or at least should not have been—any blood flowing to or through that appendage; then she recognized the shape it was taking—a thorax. Her severed hand was transforming into a spider. "Do you see?" Billy's voice rose from behind her. His arms dropped on her shoulders. "You were exposed to the agent, too. Now, Ellie-my-dear, we're both immortal." "Bastard!" she cried, her adrenaline finally pushing through the drugs in her system. "It was in the wine." "Not the wine. What kind of sense would that make? I put the drugs in the alcohol, but I put the agent over the already cooked food. Alcohol would quickly dissolve the agent's most pungent of properties... and they are pungent. Fast-acting as you can see by the sudden and dramatic change your hand has taken. Fascinating, isn't it? I haven't watched an entire human limb change until now. It's as if the latent particles of insect mass I've manipulated spring forth from our decay in the forms most sensible based on their sizes and shapes. How fascinating!" The spider-hand kept twitching in transformation. Her former fingers, its legs, clawed failingly at the air for at least another minute before settling, stilling. The sound of internal tearing cut through the music as each finger began splitting down the middle. The manicured nails fell to the table in pieces as little climbing hooks sprouted from the tips of each torn phalange. All but the thumb did this; rather than joining the eight legs and making nine or ten, it folded under the palm, fixed itself there, and split into two, dripping fangs. She gazed in horror as Billy stepped around her and approached the final platter still on the table (she figured the one she had not watched him reveal had contained the gauze he used to bandage her cauterized wound). Her shock escalated as he lifted the silver dome and revealed what had been squirming beneath this entire time. Larvae. Using its new legs, the spider-hand sprang to an upright position and tat-tat-tatted over to the pulsing mess of a meal, where it dove in with a display of gluttony most likely derived from its human origins. "How does dessert sound?" Billy asked, placing the silver dome over the predator and its prey. "Our boy sure likes it! Relax... those larvae weren't from me." "There's no way. It's a trick. You're deranged and playing a cruel trick on me." "Does the end of your arm feel like a trick?" he asked, though he did not wait for her response when he could easily read it on her face. "I'm not a magician, Ellie. I'm an entomologist and arachnologist. Truth or trick, science or fiction—what seems more plausible derived of a man you've known for the better end of two decades?" She tried not to let him notice as her eyes scanned the rest of the table. Except for the larvae-filled platter and the jars he first unveiled to her, everything else had been removed from that ghastly yellow cloth while she was unconscious. There were no knives or forks or plates. Billy was being cautious, and she understood that she had to be a thousand times more cautious if she wanted to get out of this alive. He may not have expressed interest in murdering her, but she had a feeling that he wouldn't view dicing her into tiny pieces as murder if those pieces sprouted antennae or wings or reanimated in some buggy form or other. Closing her eyes, she listened to the still-playing background music, and she thought. Her phone and pepper spray were both in her purse, which she had set on a decorative chair in the entryway. Although Billy Goldstein was a weak man, he was still a man—that was evident with the strength used to hack off her hand. And it was not as if she thought she had the luxury of waiting for Luigi's suspicious nature to kick in and bring him kicking down the door. Compared to other corners, the one she was most backed into was an intellectual disadvantage. As intelligent as she was, Billy's mind was more brilliant—genius. She glared at him, at the smug, self-pleased look he wore. She wanted to complete the job that his countless, sleepless hours in his basement lab started yet could not finish. She wanted to peel any lingering sense of humanity off the front of his skull. She wanted the fingernails (of her left hand, obviously) to scrape bone. She realized in a rise of perverse glee that this was not the first time she had experienced such murderous tones toward the man. How many times had she looked through the monstrous magnifying lenses perched on his nose and imagined how satisfying it would feel to dig her fingers into those wet, white, grub-like eyes. There it was! In her rage, Ellie almost overlooked the one major advantage she had over Billy: her eyesight. She did not have to carry out her fantasy exactly. All she had to do was remove, and preferably destroy, his glasses. Without his visual crutches, Billy was a few decades from legal blindness. Exposing that weakness was her best chance of survival. Her attention returned to the tabletop, to the glass jars in which Billy's former pieces dwelled. They were close enough to grab. They weren't much, but they would have to do. Two shots at escape were better than none. Wait for it, she told herself, a higher sense of awareness taking over. His music is still playing, and he's bobbing his head to it. It's slight, but I can see it. Wait until that sound of spider webs lulls him into its comfortable trap. Wait until he doesn't see it coming. The cacophony of computerized coos continued. While it sounded disturbing to her, she figured Billy's take on the music was epic. To him, it was the sweet surrender of seraphs to his secular self-righteousness. It reached high, it dipped low, and it culminated toward that moment of climax when he would be fully enveloped, a fly in a web. Building, building, building, and then— Ellie lunged, ramming her stomach into the table and knocking the wind out of herself. Having just barely wrapped her fingers around the maggot-jar, she tightened her stomach and pushed herself backward. Billy's head snapped left, and he jumped at her. He was midair when the jar collided with his glasses. Neither jar nor lenses broke, but the impact pushed the frames into his brow with enough force to make them bounce away from his face. They did not come completely off, but instead landed on the tip of his nose. He was still coming. Without pausing, Ellie lunged forward again and grabbed the grub jar. This time, before she had the chance to lean back and send it at his head, Billy was on her, in her face, and she and the chair were on their backs. He wrapped his fingers around her throat, pressed them into any hollow spaces they could find. "Don't harm my babies!" he growled. Blackness flared in and out along the outskirts of her eyes, and she realized that the back of her head had probably struck the ground when he tackled her and the chair. She figured that trauma, combined with his full weight focused into a death-grip on her airway, was responsible for the ecliptic flashes bordering her vision. Fortunately, she had one last chance, an ace up her sleeve—another jar in her hand. He hadn't seen her grab the second one. She gripped the glass container and could hear the almost inexistent sound of hairline fractures running through it. Then, with everything she had left, she thrust it into his right eye, shattering the jar and sending the frames still dangling from his ears, as well as the toe-grub that had been inside the container, to the ground. Blood from Billy's shard-shot socket sprayed her face and leaked into her eyes. He stood and began pacing the room. "My babies! I give you my love! I give you the blessing of eternity, and this is what you give me, you bitch! You nasty, selfish, bitch!" He stopped cursing her only when he heard something shatter beneath him. Billy's foot had come down on the first jar she threw at him. He dropped to his knees and began sifting through the glass. "Where are you, little buddy? Where'd you go? I'll save you." This was her chance to run for the door. Ellie struggled to her feet and began turning her body in the direction of escape, but she only made it mid-turn before a fresh pain, an itchy pain, erupted in her eyes and pitched her into the table. It was a soapy sort of sting—only, a thousand times worse. Is it glass? she wondered. I broke the jar above my face, so it must be glass. She looked at the tablecloth through pained, watering eyes, and that was when she understood the source of her excruciation. The red puddles she had mistaken for her blood, for they had previously been her blood, were shifting under the dim glow and had been for some time. A countless number of mites. She remembered something Billy said earlier: "The blood was also moving. It was red, so it became chiggers." Blood became chiggers, and his blood had just gotten in her eyes. She had started to push herself away from the table when his left hand seized her right leg, tripping her over her own force. Her entire body screamed as she hit the ground, and hearing that beaten howl, she finally understood the gravity of what Billy had done to her. She was an ant-hill in waiting, a hornet nest to be. She was a tick, and she was a flea. No matter what she did, if she escaped the house and attempted to resume a normal life, she would always be haunted by her own infestation. Menstruation, she shuddered to think, would be the birth of a thousand, tiny bugs. She looked at him. Even in dim light and through a red-mist veil of mites, she could see what had become of his right eye. A jagged splinter of glass had penetrated and deflated it, and dead inside the socket, it had metamorphosed into a dangling grub worm. Finally, it was true; the man's eyes—at least one of them currently actualized as such—were now the white, wormy things they had always resembled. He began crawling up her legs. The closer he got, the more she saw of his grubby gash. He too had a mess of chiggers crawling around the wound. Ants, as well, fiery-looking things, were collecting at the fresh lesion. They were even attacking the grub at center. Immortality is a feeding frenzy, Ellie thought as his face hovered above hers. Billy no longer seemed angry. Except for the few dozen arthropods gathered there, she had seen this look on his face many times, more so in the early days of their marriage. It was an unmistakable look; the same one he had always worn while running his insect-familiar fingers against her sex. "I still love you," he said, leaning closer. "I did this for us. I love you, Ellie-my-dear." Her left hand shot into the air, struggling to find any weapon, but all she managed to grip was the tablecloth. Billy's face inched closer and closer, until his lips were pressing hard against hers, his teeth were grinding against hers, and his tongue was wriggling on the insides of her cheeks. She bit down, but he wouldn't stop. He wouldn't stop, not even when his tongue landed in the back of her throat and began seconds later to flutter like a wood roach. She tugged at the tablecloth, fighting despite choking. The remaining silver-topped platter, the one with the spider-hand and larvae inside, crashed to the ground behind Billy. No longer held down, the white-turned-yellow shroud she always hated slid off the table and fell over the two of them. The music she thought might be an accurate depiction of the sound of spider webs being made filled her head, and then, after a few minutes, nothing. It's okay, Luigi told himself. She's okay. That freak probably just coaxed her into one last pity fuck. That's all. The thought didn't reassure him much, but he liked it far better than the other ones which periodically crossed his mind as he sat in his car across the street from the Goldstein residence. He knew what Billy Goldstein looked like, had seen him around town before, and the idea of an odd-looking oddball like him delivering it to a beautiful woman like Ellie gave him the same kind of phantom chill spiders gave him. That's all there is to it—she fucked him a final time, and when that wasn't enough for him, he played on her heartstrings, coaxed her into staying the night. She wakes up a lot. I bet she'll wake up any second and realize her mistake. I'll count down from sixty, and by the time I'm done, she'll probably step outside, get in her car, and drive away. Luigi didn't count more than ten seconds. He stepped out of his car, felt a slight chill, and buttoned up his shirt as he crossed the street. He reached the door and heard something; it was music, probably that electronic shit Ellie said her husband loved so much. Muffled through the walls, it sounded eerie, especially nearing three in the morning. He knocked on the door and this time tried to wait a full minute. Other than the music, there were no signs of life inside. He looked through the tall, slender window beside the front door and into the dimly lit dining room (he had been in the house on a few occasions Billy didn't know about). There was something, some shape, lying under a sheet on the floor. All he could think was: Murder, murder-suicide, murder, murder-suicide! It skipped Luigi's mind to try the knob. He raised his boot and sent it once, twice, third time's a charm against the door. It splintered away from the frame, and he rushed inside, ripping his recently buttoned shirt open to throw down with whoever crossed his path and wasn't Ellie. A whoever would have been fine. Luigi wasn't afraid of anyone. But as he approached the dining room's dim glow, he encountered a whatever. Above the arch to the dining room in a thick, almost silky web was the largest spider he had ever seen. It looked like a tarantula, only it was muscular and fleshy and whitish. There was also something familiar about it. He watched, transfixed, as it crawled on eight bony legs across its thick-laced web to greet another guest, a single trapped fly still buzzing. The absurdity of a tarantula spinning a web to catch prey did not occur to him until years later, when he found an article about the many new species discovered at the Goldstein house and tacked it on the wall beside other stories he'd collected. His sight returned to the mass on the floor. Deciding that the spider was too busy with the fly to bother with him, he swallowed his irrational fear long enough to pass under the oversized arachnid. The tabletop was bare, and the form he was staring at, the form he prayed was not Ellie's corpse, was covered in what looked like the tablecloth. As he continued to stare, working up the nerve to toss the shroud aside, he saw that whatever it covered was moving, bubbling up against the sheet in various, random waves. It looked like there might be two people moving. Luigi's mind went frantic at the thought of the Goldsteins reunited under the cover. He bent forward, lifted the cloth, and began reaching forward to grab whoever was on top. That's when something, a bee perhaps, stung the palm of his hand. As his other hand dropped the sheet to the side, he saw what had really been moving beneath it. Luigi ran from the Goldstein house and waited until he was safe inside his own car to scream. He would never forget the sight: so many of them crawling over each other, attacking each other—a violent orgy of bugs. ⁂ [ MY LOVE BURNS WITH A GREEN FLAME by Thomas Mavroudis ] That Ted Howard put a single bullet though the heads of six women is only slightly less significant than the six bullets that passed through his own head, discharged by his own hand. He remained standing, conscious, practically pain free, after six close range shots to the head; his head, the mossy ichor draining from the wounds, sealing them almost as they burst forth with hot lead. And even as the insatiable lust inside him continued to blossom as dust compressed into a gas giant, into a sun, Ted Howard decided to relieve his pain. It was a sickness wanted, tolerated, needed and so vastly abhorrent. A sickness so unlike the pain suffered by the six women, and the greater suffering on the world, and Ted Howard didn't want to take that chance. But bullets to his head—that just wasn't doing it. The house in North Park Hill was not your standard Addams Family property; no widow's porch, no Victorian eaves or gables, no wrought iron fence. On the surface, it was a quaint brick pre-war bungalow on a corner lot blighted only by the dilapidated wood fence, dead grass, and faded remnants of graffiti. The house was on the corner of the border street that used to separate the bad neighborhood from the worse neighborhood, and like many houses on this former battleground, was beyond the definition of a "fixer-upper." Almost every house on the block had been boarded up at one time or another. That was over fifteen years before. All that remained of those days were a few survivors, families of pride and hard work, not tempted by fast cash schemes; families hardened to moral and civic responsibility. Yet, people from the suburbs were making a lot of money from neighborhoods like this, taking away the ghosts for cheap and re-building expensive dreams. People like Ted and Erin Howard. The house was in better shape than most, and did not need to be entirely gutted. The floor plan of the main level was functional, with larger than normal bedrooms and a second bathroom. It was a perfect first home, and bound to double in value by the time Ted and Erin were ready to move farther south in the neighborhood and have children. The challenge for the property was the basement. "This is where we're going to profit on this place," Ted assured Erin. Although it was finished, the basement was not, in Erin's mind, useable. The three great rooms were empty, dirt-littered, obviously unused in recent history, except for a few crushed cigarettes and pieces of beer bottles. "Well, then that's your canvas, Ted," Erin proclaimed. "I can't wait to watch you design on a dime; or a penny—at least that's our budget for the rest of the year." Weeks went by, and bit-by-bit, the house came together, mostly at the paint-stained, cracked, and sometimes bloody hands of Erin. Weekends went by and Ted devoted most of his time to the landscaping, a project Erin wanted to do together. It was late spring, but not so late that Ted couldn't start sod and new trees in the seemingly rich, semi-clay of the back and front yards. The first planting day, as Ted watered newly-mulched mounds of aspen bundles, the little lady from across the street hobbled down from her porch shaking her head. "Ain't never seen no plants grown over there." Ted smiled. He met her the day they moved in, but couldn't remember her name. She professed to be the neighborhood watchdog, and had watched the good and the wicked come and go. Overall, she was happy to see folks fixing up the houses. "Is that right?" he asked, wiping sweat from his brow, taking a sip from the gardening hose. The old lady scowled at Ted's drink. "Yep. That's right. See them bushes there? Ain't never seen them bloom yet; been on this corner since 1948." She pointed to the neighbor's spindly hedge, more dead than alive, that separated his front yard from the neighbor's. "Well, maybe they just need some TLC? Maybe they just need some water?" It was the only detail next door that seemed unkempt. "Hmpf. Maybe. But I ain't never seen nothing green, ever, over there. That's a fact. And I wouldn't be drinking that water neither." She scowled again. "Well, what's your secret? Looks like you've got a pretty green thumb over there." Ted was eager to please the watchdog. "My husband was responsible for that." She smiled. "He's dead now. Been dead for about fourteen years, but he keeps my garden real nice, bless his soul." "Well," Ted said, "thanks for the advice. We'll see if we can get some greenery to pop up around this place." "Good luck, honey. Don't drink that water." Summer began, and the landscaping failed to even try. Ted was disappointed, but more than happy to finally retreat to the cool of the basement and the projects he had been talking about from the day they moved in. The basement was cool, but musty, more so than typical old basements. Ted couldn't focus, his mind distracted in a dank, mossy haze. He would sit on the upturned, brand new tool bucket, his back against cold concrete, methodically sipping cans of beer, and consider his failure with the dead dry sod and withered aspen sticks. It was like lying in bed, resisting the inevitability of going to an office, a desk, and a job one hated. On a hot afternoon at the peak of summer, Erin called down, "How goes the masterpiece?" She promised not to set a foot below until Ted had at least swept and vacuumed. She never heard him perform either. "Oh, you know," Ted answered, "I'm still mapping. I know you don't believe me, but there are so many possibilities down here." "Okay, my sweet Morlock. But come up soon. We barely have two hours to get ready for Eve's." "All right," Ted called up. "You better start getting ready. You shower first, there's got to be a leak down here, I think. I want to check it out." Ted heard the water begin rushing through the pipes and stood under the area that, in the finished basement, would be the third bathroom. He poked the flecks of brown plaster around the edge of a moist crack in the basement ceiling. Searching for the greater leak, he peeled away a tiny bit of plaster and a large chunk of the ceiling fell through with a gush of soapy, warm water. Ted spat the taste and grit of bitter almond and wood rot from his mouth. "Erin! Turn the shower off! Turn the shower off!" "What?" "Turn the fucking shower off, Erin!" "Sorry," he heard her mumble through the floor when the water was off. Ted came upstairs, still wiping his mouth with anger. "Well, shit. I guess we won't be using this bath for a while." Erin wrapped a towel around her hair and Ted, snapping another towel from the rack, stomped off to the other bathroom. Ted and Erin left the party early, Ted complaining of severe allergies. "It feels like there's a squirrel's tail up my nose," Ted explained as they said their goodbyes. All night, eyes watery, face swollen, Ted blew his nose, trying to dislodge whatever was irritating his sinuses. "Honey, are you all right?" "I don't know," Ted said. "This is terrible." "What the hell happened?" "Well, I don't know," he barked, then backed off. "I think maybe... maybe, there was a mold or something in the floor." He rubbed his forehead furiously, pressed circles under his eyes. "Maybe." He closed his eyes tight. "This is just awful. I feel like shit." Erin stroked his chest. "Well, don't go back down there. Okay?" "Are you crazy? I've got to fix that shit. We can't just have a hole in the bathroom floor with water pouring all over the place." "I know that, I'm not stupid." It was her rightful turn at bitterness. "Just get better first. Please?" "I know. I'm sorry. It's just this damn squirrel in my nose." They both laughed and kissed each other goodnight. Ted Howard was thirteen all over again. He and Erin did not suffer any marital problems. In fact, they had been frequently intimate for not having been newlyweds for some years. So Ted was surprised to wake from a dead sleep at the very moment of climax, Erin snoring soundly on her side beside him, and remember nothing of how or why. With certainty, his shorts were sticky and wet. The following night when it happened again, Ted remembered the dream. He walked in a mansion with walls covered in lush oils of Victorian nudes. He was naked except for a black fur-lined coat. He attributed the dream to the anti-histamines that were no help except for knocking him into sleep. After the fourth erotic dream, he told Erin. She smiled, "That's a turn on. We're going to have to do something about that when you feel better." Ted, expressing that he was indeed feeling better, had sex with his wife and he dreamed nothing. The sex was more intense in every way. He woke the next morning feeling rejuvenated beyond any rest he had experienced in his life, as though he had been reborn, fresh and new. It went on like this. After increasingly extreme sessions awake with his wife, he slept deeply, undisturbed. But on the sexless nights, he dreamt. The dreams grew in length and detail every night. Other people were introduced, male and female and in-between, beautiful strangers dressed in leather and lace or gossamer rags, orgies in shopping malls and plaza fountains, sex on floating pillows, in submerged tunnels of luminous wine, Ted at the center, the master of it all, reaping and sowing. It was the hot final day of August when Ted woke in the middle of a sexless night, first relieved and relaxed, then sickened with horror. He had dreamt of rape. Who it was, he didn't know, he couldn't see her face covered by a feathered mask. The memory of the dream was delightfully awful. "Well, stud," his wife said, smiling, pouring a morning cup of coffee, "what kind of wild ride were you on last night? You woke me up." Ted drank a slow draw from his glass of juice. "You don't want to know." "Sick, babe. You're right, I don't want to know." She kissed his ear. The dream troubled him all day. At a late dinner that night, they argued over what to do with the basement. Erin insisted they forget about it; maybe hire someone to renovate later when they were in a better financial position. Ted disputed that they were losing money, would lose even more if they did anything stupid, but they hadn't even repaired the faulty plumbing. Dinner ended with Erin slamming—smashing some of—the plates in the sink. Ted fell asleep at the table, an empty bottle of wine by his hand. He woke to Erin pinching the skin on the back of his arms, a sweet, hot sting. "What the fuck are you trying to do? What's the matter with you?" He hung over her side of the bed, naked. "What?" Ted rolled onto the floor, crawled into the corner by the bathroom. "What's the matter with you?" she asked again. "Do you think you can just make up for being an asshole by trying to sleep with me? I was sleeping! Pissed, but sleeping. Then you come in, like a fucking bear..." Exactly. Ted was dreaming he was a bear, walking like a man through the crumbled marble steps of a Greek amphitheater to a set of lily ponds below. In one of the ponds was a nude woman, bathing. Small white feathers covered her skin. She screamed when Ted, his fat and fur, crashed into the pond. She hissed like a swan. Ted sat in the corner, shamed. "I'm sorry." "Don't be sorry, Ted. Just don't mess with me like that. You started pulling my hair. Hard." "I'm sorry," he said again. But he wanted to ask if they could still have sex. Ted wanted sex every night. The lascivious thoughts eroded his days. Without sex, real cognizant sex, he had the rape dreams. He never told Erin about them, and when she began to ask if he was having nightmares now, he said yes. He raped someone, something, every night, and every day he woke tired and ashamed of his gross pleasure. His mood grew worse every day, and so every night, he and Erin would not have sex. When they did, he was still like the bear, his passion increased exponentially. And Erin grew colder, her desire for his passion lessening, until she was only doing it so Ted would not mistake her for some dream whore. She was almost becoming frightened. Ted pushed too far again the night Erin made him sleep on the couch. She locked the bedroom door when she heard his body collapse on the furniture. On the couch, naked and cold, Ted Howard dreamt. It was unlike any of the sex dreams he had had before. He was floating in darkness that felt like water. Electrical warmth surrounded him, pleasurably irritating his skin. He tried to touch himself and discovered he could not. Where were his arms? The concept of arms disintegrated. He wanted to laugh, but the sound he heard himself make was a squeal, a distant, feeble vibration behind a curtain of time. Was that really him? The concept of self exploded. A rush of colors bled from the darkness and what used to be Ted began to experience falling, a fall from the edge of space into the wilderness. The Ted-thing crashed, and fire, black and emerald, erupted from its crater. From this vantage, Ted-thing could see all angles: a sow with one hundred teats; featherless birds with song like a frozen rose; fish with gaping, hungry mouths that walked plains of sand; furry, muddy hominids clustered in furious orgy; black liquid stone that ebbed and flowed in the air; teeth-like beetles feasting on the remains of a blind serpent; wet electricity, an entire planet, pink and wet, pulsing—a squid, a jellyfish or... The sensation was like a flower blossoming, but the flower was the universe, and the universe was made of ice that became steam with the snap of a Cyclopean eye closing. Ted woke with a chiseled smile on his face, his hands and manhood bloody. After the night he slept on the couch, Erin told him, "I think you need to see a doctor." "Why?" Ted caressed her earlobe. "Ted. Come on, there's something wrong with you." Erin pulled his hand away. Ted smiled and tried to kiss his wife. She backed away, said, "Ted, there's blood on the couch. What happened?" His smile grew broader. "I'm all right." Erin imagined he was somehow drunk. "Ted. Were you hurting yourself or..." "Is that what it's called? I thought only church folks believed that kind of shit. Hurting myself, huh?" He stroked himself in his pants. "Stop it, Ted. I'm serious! You're having these wet dreams every night..." "Only when we don't..." "Ted! Please listen to me. What is happening? I thought you were going to rape me last night." Ted's smile folded. "Erin, I'm sorry." He grabbed her hands, lovingly pulled her to him and held her shoulders. "I know I've been a little aggressive lately." "Ted, aggressive is kinky. You haven't been aggressive." Ted nodded his head, a moment of cold clarity. "You're right. There is something wrong with me." "Well, what are you going to do about it?" "Don't worry, I'll think of something." He kissed Erin's forehead. Ted Howard was no longer like men; his thoughts were truly consumed by sex only. He couldn't concentrate at work, began making the types of errors people make under extreme stress. His office encouraged him to take the rest of the day off. "Yeah," Ted said, itching beneath his suit, already peeling it from his body as he stood up from his desk. "Good idea." Ted's legs felt blurry as he walked passed row and row of ready-made office space, passed women he had seen almost every day. Most of the women he never noticed before, would never notice, and now, as he passed them, all he could do was think of how their sweat smelled, what their voices sounded like grunting and screaming, how their muscles looked flexed and contorted. Were they looking at him, wondering what he smelled like? Did they know? Did they want him? He managed to get to his car without incident. Along and below the side of the highway, where Ted drove to and from work every day, were three gentlemen's clubs. Ted had been to Ruby's Gold just once before, not even for his own bachelor's party, but someone else's. The club was expensive and Ted was not looking for expense. Further along was Glass Kittens, really just a porn theatre and shop with a live pay-per-view parlor, the vintage peep show type with a blind that goes up and down. Ted did not want women under glass, although he had dreamt of it in the past weeks. At the end, where the service road bent off towards the rail yard, was a place simply called Fun. It was the club pregnant high school girls danced at, the club where high school boy's hearts were broken—a place where men became boys again. The club was all nude, eighteen and up, served no alcohol. Ted walked in the cool shadow of the highway, through buckled faux leather doors and into red light and heat. Ted got home around four in the morning, prepared to detail his long-extended work day. There was a note from Erin taped to the television: What the fuck Ted? You are such an asshole. Thanks. I don't even want to tell you where I am, but I will because I don't feel good and I think you should know. Please call me at Eve's. E. Ted went to bed and slept for twelve deep, dreamless hours. Erin didn't call all day and Ted didn't care. When he woke in the late afternoon, he checked the bank account to see how much cash he spent the night before. He couldn't remember. The phone rang. "Hello?" "Ted, where is she?" It was Erin's sister, Lynn. "Erin?" "Yeah, Ted, Erin. And where the hell were you?" "Where?" "Ted, look, did Erin come home yet? She didn't tell me where she went." "Yeah. Yeah, Lynn, she's home." "Are you guys talking?" "Sure, she's pissed but... yeah, things are better." "Well put her on." "She doesn't feel well, Lynn. You should come over." "Well, what's the matter, Ted?" "I don't know. I better go." After Lynn, what he did to her, Ted couldn't stay home. He packed a small bag and withdrew just enough cash to pay for a motel near Fun, leaving more than enough of the account for Erin to manage, at least for a little while. Soon he would disappear someplace, maybe Mexico, someplace where he could live as he had to now. The girls at Fun soon became the contrary; the two he had been with were no longer extinguishing the sunburst flames of his desire. His cash didn't last long. He was half an animal, a reptile with the brain of Einstein. He was terrified of sexless sleep. He needed something new, something raw, something to keep the beautiful nightmares at bay. He chose Margo from his office. Ted hadn't returned to work for almost a week. Surely Margo and all the office staff were aware of what happened. It made the prospect of the sex all the more searing. Ted knew where Margo lived, and hid there from early morning, waiting, shivering with want. It didn't matter that he could be caught. He felt protected. Ted heard two voices from behind the opening front door: Margo and another woman he recognized from work. He smiled. Later again, Ted was worried about the blood. Could someone trace it back to him? "Of course," he said to himself, snickering as if he told a joke. "Stupid blood. Ha!" At least he could sleep. The next morning, Allie from Fun was at his motel door. In the shade she looked the color of algae. "Ed, I'm sick. I don't feel good." She was nineteen, but could have as easily been fifteen. "No? Oh." Ted was going to close the door. "Can I come in?" the girl asked. "Sure." Ted closed the door behind her and began to take his clothes off. "No. Ed, I don't feel good. I can't do that right now." "What?" Ted was erect and grinning. "Well, what are you here for? What do you want?" "I think I might be pregnant." "Oh." He pulled at himself, with more vigor at the word pregnant. "I don't know, my tummy feels bad and look," she pulled up her clean, white t-shirt, "does that look like a bruise to you? Do you get bruised when you're pregnant?" Her belly looked dirty. "I don't have kids yet. We're waiting until we sell the house," Ted explained, scratching his cheek with his free hand. "Oh," Allie said, a fluttering expression between a grin and a grimace on her face. "That's nice." "Yeah." "So, if I'm pregnant, I don' know what I'm going to do yet, but I wanted to let you know." "Thanks." Ted reached out to Allie. "Please, maybe later." "Oh, okay." Ted stood naked in his door and watched Allie walk down the street to work. He was tired. He was fearful. Perhaps, he thought, one night without... it sickened him to think of a night without sex, the dreams were so much worse now, so much more exhilarating. Ted lay in salty sheets, burning from a heat he created, more intense than the season outside. "I won't sleep," Ted screamed. Was it sleep or something else? Suddenly or slowly, Ted was in the electric darkness. His body felt like a thousand bodies, his cry was a thousand sounds, he was traveling down a thousand pulsing corridors. Then a flash of white light, then light from a black sun, and before him wires, veins, vines, fingers, hairs, what was it that struggled in the black light? Nerves, dendrites, and holding the circuit together, a fleshy nucleus, shaking, square and round, blacker than the anti-sun, radiating electric sex death heat. Ted woke screaming, his manhood bleeding, and he knew. It was inside him. What may or may not have been growing inside the six women Ted saved, he did not know, but save them he's sure he did, all their bellies greenish black and starting to harden. It didn't matter where the gun came from. Ted couldn't remember anyway. Every kill enflamed his desire more. Erin was the last. She had gone back to their home, an animal seeking sanctuary for birth or death. He fought the incinerating lust as best he could by trying to copulate with the spent body of his wife. But the nerves, the tendrils at his core sickened him with every touch of the cooling flesh. He had to end it all before he could no longer resist the insatiable call to procreate. He returned to the basement. The first bullet made a mess. It nearly blew the back of his head off. Ted, in shock, turned to the wall. The splattered black-green filigree disappeared into the pores of the cement. Ted felt the back of his head; it was closing. He put the gun to his mouth again and pulled twice. He put the gun under his chin and pulled. "Come on, come on." He felt like crying, but he was dry. Frustrated, he fell to the floor and putting the gun to his forehead, pulled. Ted sat up and touched his head. It was already closed. The insidious need burned anew, Ted's spine drenched in molten iron of passion. He needed to fuck. Every bullet was a tease, a tickle amplified outside any sensation and he realized what needed to be done. He remembered the last dream, the vision of the thing inside him. It resembled, at its basest depiction, a human brain and nervous system, inverted. Ted held the gun, and fighting the urge to vomit or pass out, self-preservation quickly getting the best of him, placed one final bullet in the empty cylinder. Ted Howard smiled and mumbling some obscenity to himself, placed the gun to his crotch and pulled the trigger. ⁂ [ THE FACE IN THE MIRROR by Sean McCoy ] It fell out a little at a time and then all at once. I ran my hands through my hair in front of the mirror daily, checking for clumps and flecks of dandruff and other telltale signs that I was losing my hair. My wife watched me and through all of this, nodded calmly, saying that I was fine, that I wasn't balding. That I had fine hair, not thinning hair. It was the product which made it look that way. I shouldn't use so much product anyway. I looked good as I was. But I could see it. My hair had always been thick and my younger brothers, only a few years behind me, still had thick hair that they slicked back or puffed up at will, while mine had one or two styles that still worked. I switched to an organic shampoo and conditioner and tried out different lather/rinse rituals and experimented with how often I washed my hair. I stopped using combs because I read that the teeth pull your hair from the root. Better to just use my hands. I cropped it short too. My thin hair was long and clumped together, revealing my roots and pale scalp. That was the problem. It wasn't thinning. I was too fat to shave my head, I told myself. I'd look like an inflated ball sack. So I kept it short, close cropped. No product. Just a little hairspray. Maybe start running some more. I could always grow it out long again if my hair loss plateaued. And then one morning when I got out of the shower and looked in the mirror I saw the first spot, the bald spot. Not at the back near my frustrating double cowlick. Not at the front either. My hairline wasn't receding. My hair was falling out. The missing clump came from the top left side, seven inches above my left eyebrow. Above the hairline, just a fallow blank spot with a few putrid hairs sticking out of my pink scalp. I almost screamed. I thought back to the night before. Had I pulled my hair out in my sleep? Or sleep walked maybe and shaved my head on accident? Was my wife playing a practical joke on me to calm me down or force me into making a decision about shaving my head? I raced through my memories trying to find a reason for the sudden bald spot. The internet held no solutions either. It was something akin to the hair loss that many chemotherapy patients suffer, but it was localized to one specific, round spot. Alopecia, I heard, could be the problem. I saw pictures of dozens of men with perfectly symmetrical circles of missing hair dotted across their heads and I feared the worst. When my wife came home I fretted about the spot for hours until she was sick of me. "I didn't do anything to it and it's probably all this stress that's making you lose your hair. Stop messing with it. Shave it or leave it be." We were short with each other all night but when I refused to take the hat off in bed she turned sweet and told me that it didn't matter to her. This was normal, even if it wasn't exactly normal, and that she loved me no matter what. I told her it mattered to me. The next morning the spot seemed to have grown more. To track its growth, I took a blue pen and marked a small spot that I thought only I would be able to notice. I was afraid that my wife would think I was paranoid. I spent hours on the internet comparing anecdotal similarities and ruling them out or questioning the original poster further on long since dead threads. I checked my inbox every ten minutes waiting for a reply from someone who knew what I was going through, but nothing came back to me. Just an endless sea of confirmation e-mails requesting that I confirm my new membership to eDocBBS.com, CareFriends.org, MaleHairAnonymous.net, and a dozen other forums, newsletters, and sites that all claimed firsthand experience with hair loss. Or strange hair loss. Was it that strange? It happened to nearly every man on the planet. The next day I saw that the spot really had grown. My tiny blue dot, once embedded in the ragged tree-line of my ever-thinning hair now stood alone on a fleshy hill. I showed my wife and she admitted, fine, I was right. I was going bald. What now? Was I happy now? It wasn't that I was going bald that bothered me, but this was strange, wasn't it? I showed her my research on Alopecia and the pictures and posts by men and women who had been afflicted by it. "Well if the internet says," she said. I said something snarky and mean and she backed off. She told me to see a doctor or get a haircut, for the love of god, because if I was going to obsess over it, I should at least do something about it. I resolved to see a hairdresser. No, a barber. A man who would know what I was going through. No, a stylist. A woman. Someone who had seen men try to hide their baldness before and would know a way to help me hide as well. So I called a Cheap-Clipz down the street and made an appointment for the morning. I told my wife and apologized for how I had snapped at her. She was happy to hear that I was taking matters into my own hands, but I could tell she was still frustrated with me. We watched TV and fell asleep without talking about the spot any more. In the morning, I felt refreshed. I had my solution: the haircut. Maybe my wife was right. Maybe it was just the stress. To prepare, I did my daily double-wash, first with the homeopathic remedy, a mixture of apple cider vinegar and soap, and then with the product I had ordered direct, Restorox. I let that sit for a few minutes, pretending to wash the rest of myself, while the subtle burn trickled across my scalp. I counted an extra thirty seconds on top of the 120 I had already counted in my head just in case I was counting too fast, and then rinsed it out. I could feel it burn in my eyes a little, but that was okay. The burn would go away. My hair could not. At first, when I got out of the shower and looked in the mirror I was happy. The spot hadn't grown, I had marked it with another dot this time, just in case. But when I ran my hands through my hair, another clump came, this time on the right side, just above my ear. It came out quickly, as smooth as stripping the covers off a bed. As soon as I felt it tug I made a noise, terrified at what I had done. Unable to undo it. I tried holding it up to the new bald spot, pressing and holding the loose hair so it would reattach, maybe through osmosis, but instead, it fell in a dead mass into the sink. I flushed the clump down the toilet, immediately regretting it, thinking that it might serve some future purpose. I called the hairdresser and cancelled my appointment. When my wife came home I was sitting in the dark trying to sleep but unable to, afraid that the oils on our pillows had suffocated my pores and clogged up any chance of my thin weak hair getting through. When she asked about my haircut, I told her we needed new sheets. When she responded warily I showed her the new spot. This time she had the reaction I was hoping for. This was too much too fast and for the first time I saw the fear in her eyes that I had, that something wasn't right. She gave me a number to call and when the automated system picked up I left a vague message about scheduling an urgent appointment. I made sure to let them know that I didn't think it was life threatening but that I did think it was time sensitive and so to schedule me as early as possible. I made it known that I would be willing to come in early if the Doctor's schedule allowed. We didn't fight about the hair that night. Instead I just slept on the couch with a fresh towel over the pillowcase and I took a shower right before bed without checking the spot for growth. In the morning, I decided not to wash my hair at all. I instead put all my product into a grocery bag to show the doctor so that maybe they could decide whether my treatment, admittedly self-designed, was doing more harm than good. I had received no callback from the doctor's office, which I remedied right after brushing my teeth and seeing myself in the mirror again. It wasn't another spot, it was seven. And they weren't all circles either. Some were patchy and oblong while others snaked around like crooked veins tracing a pale path across my head, dividing it like farmland. I wanted to cry. I yelled at the nurse on the phone and when she didn't schedule for an appointment, I threw on a hat and drove to the emergency room. They wouldn't see me in the ER for what now seems like obvious reasons, but I was so worked up that they sent me to a quieter wing of the hospital to see a doctor. A patient man who explained his procedures calmly, and promised to get to the bottom of things. He asked me about my home life and my work, both of which I admitted were strained, but no more than usual. He barely looked at my products though, and when I started in about my routine and the precise scheduling I did to ensure that my hair received round-the-clock treatment, he tuned me out completely. What he recommended was cutting back on the care and just washing my hair every other day or so as normal. He did recommend that I shave my head for appearance's sake, to which I replied that I wasn't here for fashion advice, I had scheduled an appointment with a professional hair stylist for that. He again ignored me, nodding instead to himself. He concurred that Alopecia was a strong candidate for the cause, but a trichoscopy didn't reveal any of the telltale "yellow dots" normally associated with the autoimmune disease. He took my blood work, but beyond that he couldn't really say. He sent my home with a sample of Rogain. That night my wife gave me the Come-to-Jesus talk. After my unexpected trip to the hospital (and the bill it had accrued) she felt it was necessary to remind me that she loved me, and that aging was normal, but I needed to get on top of it, because it was getting on top of me. "Neither my father nor my mother's father are bald," I told her. "But it's happening," she said. "Here." She handed me a pair of clippers and a towel. "I picked these up," she said. "Maybe it's time. If the doctor took your blood work then I'm sure he can figure out a solution, but in the meantime, you can control how you handle this." She was right, I had to admit it. She was always right. She sat me down in the bathtub that night and wrapped a towel around my naked shoulders and we shaved off what was left. Neck. Sides. Top. Everything. She gathered the clumps from the tub and threw them in a grocery sack before rinsing me and kissing my forehead. When I looked in the mirror, I felt a small resurgence of confidence. I looked like myself but not myself. A familiar stranger. My wife hugged me and smiled and said I looked sexy and I thanked her for doing this and that I was sorry for being so crazy. She left the room to throw away the bag of hair and I inspected my new face. She was right, it wasn't bad. I looked clean. As I wiped a stray hair from the back of my head, though, I noticed my right ear was curling in at the edges slightly more than normal. I had never examined my ears this closely before. And now without the hair to cover them up I saw them as lacking a little context and proportion. I slept in our bed that night and my wife and I cuddled. We laughed a little bit about the strangeness of the days before and fell asleep in each other's arms. I slept in the next morning for the first time in a week. My wife had already left for work and I felt content now to prepare for the day at my leisure, unafraid of looking at myself in the mirror. I showered, without product (God, how much was I really spending maintaining this illusion?), and again felt fresh and clean. Whole. When I looked in the mirror though, I had a strange feeling, like my ears wouldn't pop. I turned my head to the side to inspect my right ear with the extra curl at the top from the night before and that's when I saw it. My ear was gone. Completely gone. A mangled bump where it used to be. I poked and prodded it, thumping against my temple and while I heard the dull thunk tapping against my skull, I couldn't place where the sound came from. When 911 asked what my emergency was I was at a loss for words and yelled that they come over right away and that I was hurt. I took a picture and sent it to my wife via text and then called her, no answer. When the paramedics arrived they couldn't find anything wrong with me and for a while they were paranoid that perhaps I was an amputee who had always been missing his ear and was perhaps reawakening to this fact in a state of confusion. They questioned me for an hour and when I couldn't satisfactorily answer them verbally, I showed them numerous selfies and pictures from my phone, showing them dates and times of the pictures. And when finally, my wife called me back, her voice strained and terrified, the paramedics believed me and took me to the hospital. I saw a new doctor this time, though I could not tell him much apart from the last. He explained that they hadn't seen anything like this before. They kept me for days running MRIs and CT scans, interrogating me over and over. The curl of the ear in particular was of interest to them. My wife sat by my side the entire time in a daze. When they asked her to recall, to the best of her ability, what the missing ear looked like she shrugged and said, "like the other one." When they sent someone to talk to me about prosthetics, I knew the doctors didn't have anything. The questions stopped and instead only physical therapy remained. Two weeks later, my wife guided me back to our car. She didn't talk on the drive home but sobbed silently. I couldn't hear her because she was on my now deaf side, but I caught a glimpse of her in the mirror. At home we tried to sleep in bed but couldn't and she took the couch, not wanting to disturb my rest. I stayed up staring at the ceiling until I felt like I couldn't take it anymore and went to the bathroom to survey the lumpy mold that used to be my ear. The doctors hadn't let me look at it at all in the hospital, preferring instead to poke and prod me about the most intimate details of my day to day life. What did I eat and drink? What were my stools like? Had my wife and I engaged in any deviant sexual activities alone or with others? There in the mirror I could see it. A crumpled mound like a flat raisin attached to the side of my face. I ran my fingers across it and it felt like a fleshy walnut. I couldn't believe this was happening to me. The hair loss of weeks ago seemed like nothing now. When I turned my head to see my other ear though, I began to scream. I know because my wife ran into the bathroom and shook me. I couldn't hear it. My other ear had gone like the first. Dissolved into another membranous scar. I clutched my head and wailed. I could feel my wife's dull voice throb against my skull as she wrapped her arms around me. I felt her tears run down my neck and spine and we stayed that way until the ambulance arrived. I could only tell by the red lights reflecting throughout the house. This time the tests took months, maybe longer. It was hard to tell. Functionally I was deaf but the doctors communicated to me the strangeness of my condition and their subsequent inability to diagnose it through a series of documents I was left to read alone. Along with my insurance's notification of their inability to cover said strange medical condition. One night I had to be restrained and medicated because I was found bleeding from my skull wandering the hallways asking if I could hear now. If they could hear me. Or if I could hear them. It took three big orderlies to strip the bloody scissors from me and tie me down. I read a lot and my wife and I wrote letters. In our last exchange she revealed to me why she had to leave. Not because of my condition, which she assured me meant nothing to her. But because the strain and strangeness had grown too much for her to bear. And should the doctors find any explanation or even a semblance of understanding, she would be happy to come and be a part of my care and my life. I called her several times, knowing I wouldn't be able to hear her voice. But when I saw that she had answered I begged. Begged with my new voice, which I wasn't sure I controlled anymore, for her to stay. I never heard her response. But I did see the call disconnect. After that and the insurance, the hospital bumped me to the curb and the cab dumped me back at home where I saw that all of my wife's things were gone. The bed was still there. The couch. The linens. The fridge was stocked with food. My hair product. And there was an unopened letter on the kitchen table that I decided I couldn't read. The next morning, I needed to see what I had become wasting away in the hospital since the last season, afraid of my limp and weak body which had only subsisted on hospital food, which I hadn't eaten mostly. Looking back at me in the mirror was my new. The stranger's face. Bald, with two grotesque protrusions on the side of my head, and now, a veiny patch of skin where my mouth used to be. I saw my jaw widen inside my face as a tormented wail echoed in my throat and tears welled up in my eyes. I fell to the floor and crawled to the couch, where I doubled over and tried to scream and scream but instead only succeeded in smashing my head against the cushions over and over until they were soaked and damp from my tears. The last time I looked, I had one nostril and one eye left. The nostril, I wasn't so sure of anymore, as I only felt my shallow breath wheeze through a flap of skin where my nose used to be. I used a hand mirror to check that it was still there occasionally, careful not to reveal the whole thing, lest it be stripped from me like everything else. The mirror now showed a craggy surface of broken and twisted skin, mutilated cartilage, and aborted features. I had purchased IV fluids to sustain me and I spent most days in front of the TV running out the last of my savings on cable until that eventually ended as well. I never heard from my wife again. I never read her letter either. Afraid that after reading her farewell it would become too tempting to look one last time in the mirror and see nothing at all. ⁂ [ PORPHYRIA by John S. McFarland ] Viktor closed the elevator cage door in disgust. His friend, Sandor Bessenyei could not look at him. Sandor was pale and covered with perspiration from the fever he'd had all morning. He collapsed against the side of the cage as it started to make its way slowly up the mine headframe to the surface. "I am sorry," Sandor mumbled. "I am too sick. Èn vagyok a beteg. I am too sick to work anymore." The black spot on the back of Sandor's hand and the one at the tip of his nose had been painful and distracting all morning. In the last hour, the one on his nose had gone completely numb and he smelled the metallic scent of his own blood when he inhaled. He struggled to redirect his attention toward his friend. "Én vagyok az egyetlen barátja. I am your only companion here," Viktor said. "It's a harsh and unwelcoming world and you have to take whatever comfort you can, but it would seem you could try a little longer. Not everyone has money to live on. Some of us have to work. If you feel better a month from now they won't hire you back, you know? You quit now and you're done for in the mines, and no one else will hire Hungarians in this place. When your money runs out you're finished. In the meanwhile, I'm down in this pit with nobody to talk to." "My money will soon be gone," Sandor said. "Regardless of that, I cannot work anymore. My strength has left me for good, I think." Sandor felt ashamed, though he tried to hide a little smile. There was something very predictable, but oddly innocent about Viktor's resentful nature. Sandor knew, in spite of the visible symptoms of his decline, that Viktor would see his illness as abandonment and a personal inconvenience. Back in Budapest, Viktor had been an academic, a professor of Elizabethan literature at St. Stephen's until he was terminated for being "impossibly disagreeable." When the war started in 1914, he feared conscription into the army. He responded to a recruitment advertisement for able-bodied men to come to America and take jobs in the mines of the Osage Lead Company, asking Sandor, his only real friend, to come with him. To the disbelief of his family, Sandor agreed because he knew his friend expected it, depended upon it. His health had never been robust and though he quickly regretted his decision, he swore to God in Viktor's presence to never go back on his word. Sandor's wife had died of peritonitis the year before, the very week they had started reading Shakespeare out loud to each other in English. His grieving period was a short one, and knowing his friend could not function in the world alone, he sold his rare-books and documents shop and made the long and difficult trip with Viktor to the village of Ste. Odile on the banks of the Mississippi. Sandor looked at Viktor meekly with red eyes that were, by the minute, growing increasingly sensitive and watery, as the elevator cage climbed up the mineshaft toward the afternoon daylight. Last winter his teeth had begun to discolor and darken, and his gums to recede from them, as the doctor predicted. Doctor Treves had examined Sandor four months ago and told him he had porphyria, a disease of the blood. He told Sandor he knew little of the condition, but recognized that his patient appeared to have both the acute and cutaneous types. Treves had read that victims crave blood to compensate for the deficiency in their own, and he advised Sandor to yield to this craving to keep his vigor and vitality from waning away. Treves said that Sandor would become weak and be unable to tolerate sunlight, that exposure to it would blister, scar and rot his skin, and that soon he may expect to start having hallucinations. "I am sorry, Viktor... my friend," Sandor said. "I really can't help it. God is my witness, I am too sick to continue loading ore by hand. Should have quit months ago, and would have if not for... I was never really strong enough for this. I can't score-out in a single shift anymore. Kívánom, hogy soha nem volt íde." "Speak English! I, too wish I had never come here," Viktor nodded. "But here we are. I suppose you are blaming me for this." They'd never had the elevator cage to themselves before. This was the first time they had ever left work after the usual shift change time. Viktor had waited for Sandor in the staging area underground as he spoke to the shift boss in his office and collected his final wages. By that time the early shift had finished and gone home for the day and the second shift had taken over, blasting tunnel to the west and southwest. With a war raging in Europe, the demand for lead had never been higher. At the surface Viktor opened the cage door and the two men stepped out into the sunlight. Sandor squinted and shaded his eyes with his hand. He twitched in pain a few times, as he had done more and more recently, in a manner that seemed to irritate Viktor. Sandor was careful not to pity himself in his situation. He did pity his friend though. Viktor had no love for himself and seemed to be naively angry at the rest of humanity because of it. Sandor knew how completely Viktor had come to depend upon him, even if Viktor himself didn't know. Very soon after his wife's death, Sandor became Viktor's only unassailable human contact in the world, and he accepted this as a responsibility he must uphold. The volume Sandor had prized above all others in his bookshop in Budapest, was a late 16th century copy of Tyndale's translation of the Bible. The first time Sandor opened the book, his eye was drawn to Cain's disavowal in Genesis: "Am I my brother's keeper?" Sandor knew the phrase first appeared in Tyndale's translation, and when he opened the book, coincidentally, a second and third time to the same passage, and then dreamt about it that night, he was certain he was receiving a directive for his life and thinking. He spoke with Father Bartok at St Emeric's, who confirmed that Sandor had been given signs. That was why he had agreed to come to America and to take difficult and unpleasant work. It worried Sandor that he could not make his companion understand how sick he was, and that he must inevitably leave this friendless man alone in a foreign place which, after two years, he had made no effort to adjust to. To press these facts upon Viktor would anger and upset him, and Sandor could not decide if he should insist, to his own satisfaction, that his friend understood what his doctors had foreseen or not continue to bring it up. It was Saturday afternoon, the end of the work week. The two men walked east into town toward Tranquille House on Rouen Street, where they were boarders. From Sunday night until Saturday afternoon they shared a room there. After their shift on Saturday they gathered their things and boarded the train for a seventeen-mile trip west to LaMotte where Viktor had a room. Sandor's tiny house was a mile farther, in the woods near Gibson cemetery. The train west was waiting at the station, and Sandor was glad he had not made them miss it. His legs had begun to cramp as Viktor hurried him along toward the platform, and he had to walk even more slowly than usual. The men seated themselves on a bench at the front of the coach. It hurt Sandor's legs to sit, and he was exhausted. As the train lurched away from the station, Sandor looked at the black spot on the back of his left hand, and noticed how much darker in general his hands had become from his disease, in recent weeks. And since mid-winter, fine hair had begun to grow in his palms. He knew if he were still home in Hungary, the superstitious country people he would see at the vegetable markets on Saturdays, would look at him with fear and suspicion. Sandor thought of the appearance he must present to the world, and to Viktor, especially. His elongated, dark teeth, his purple gums, his gray skin streaked with darkened areas, his red eyes and the blisters and blackened spots on his arms and forehead, did not in themselves convince Viktor that his companion had not made every effort to keep him company down in the mineshafts and drift tunnels. Sandor smiled at the selfishness, and innocence of that. Viktor shifted uncomfortably on the bench. Sandor noticed that his friend was looking at the black spot on his hand, and that he glanced briefly at his disfigured face. He could not tell if the expression on Viktor's face was one of disgust or pity. "It's an unwelcoming world," Viktor mumbled. "I suppose we have to take comfort wherever we can." "I don't see the world as bad as all that," Sandor smiled. There were seven buildings on the muddy main street of LaMotte and only five of them were still in use. As the men approached Viktor's boarding house, a dilapidated brick building with a collapsing porch roof, Mrs. Hobbs, the landlady came out the front screen door. "There you are, Mr. Suba." Mrs. Hobbs was a woman of forty who looked twenty years older. Four of her front teeth were missing. She had not seen Sandor for many months, and seemed a little shocked as she approached them. "I reckon you heard the news?" "I heard no news, Mrs. Hobbs," Viktor said. "Well, then, I'll tell you. America's a-getting' into the war. Your European war. Now we been dragged into it." Viktor and Sandor looked at each other. Sandor thought it best to hide their elation from Mrs. Hobbs. "I see," Viktor said. "I know it isn't good news to you, Mrs. Hobbs, but it will certainly end the war faster." "What do we care how fast a war in Europe ends? It ain't our war!" "Certainly," Sandor said. "We are sorry for that. Politics is an unhappy business." "That ain't the half of it!" Mrs. Hobbs seemed determined to stoke her own rage. "It's gonna be a conscription. A draft. And you fellas, you foreigners, ain't a-gonna be in it. Our American boys hafta go fight your damned war while you Hunkies get to stay here a-workin' just as safe and sound as you please! I know you two come here to get out of it, now we gotta do your fightin' for you!" "This great country loves the people of Europe..." Sandor began. His voice was weak. "Well, it got nothin' to do with love," Mrs. Hobbs interrupted. "I don't love you people and I don't know nobody who does." "I know it's just politics and national interests," Viktor said. He looked disapprovingly at Sandor. He knew Mrs. Hobbs well enough to know she resented anyone telling her how she felt or should feel about anything. "I don't know why my friend said that!" Sandor smiled. "Love isn't something you know about, Viktor! We are upsetting you, Mrs. Hobbs. I will leave you both here. I am exhausted. I hope your son is improved." Mrs. Hobbs' nine-year-old son, Vernon, had been sick for several weeks, coughing and pale, as had several other children at his school. "You never mind about Vernon!" Mrs. Hobbs snapped. "I ain't the only one around here thinks you know more about these sick kids than any of us!" She turned suddenly and walked back to her house. Sandor watched her walk away, dumbfounded. "What did she mean by that?" Sandor asked, but Viktor had turned away from him and was following Mrs. Hobbs back into the boarding house. Sandor always enjoyed the walk from the train depot out to his property west of LaMotte on Saturday afternoons after work. The road out of the small town was a dirt path maintained by the county out into the oak woods, where it ended at an old logging road which wound past Sandor's small frame house. The house bordered the old Gibson Cemetery, and had been built for the caretaker just before the beginning of the Civil War. The cemetery had been abandoned for at least fifty years, and now, like Sandor's clapboard home, was nearly lost in the hardwood forest. Halfway to the cemetery the road became almost completely overgrown with weeds and saplings. Just ahead of him, nearly hidden by a cluster of mayapple, Sandor saw a gray mound with streaks of red across it. A slight scent of decay blew past his face in a breeze and he thought for a moment he might vomit. He saw that the mound was the shredded body of an opossum, killed by a dog or coyote. The blood on the carcass was mostly dried, but some of it, deep within the wounds, glistened in the afternoon sun. He realized he was staring, transfixed, at the bloody flesh, and that he was imagining the salty taste of it. Abruptly he became aware that he wasn't imagining the blood taste. His gums had started bleeding again and his mouth was alarmingly full. Painfully, but almost involuntarily, he swallowed. As Sandor had grown sicker, his appetite had changed and become limited. As he unlocked the peeling front door of his small house, he thought he might make himself a stuffed pepper or cabbage roll for a light dinner. He still had some Csabai sausage in his pantry, though what he really wanted, as he realized more and more lately, and as his response to the opossum carcass reminded him, was raw, bloody meat. Since Dr. Treves told him he would crave blood as an effect of his illness, he had hungered for little else. He remembered having no particular taste for it before Treves diagnosed him, and he wondered if he was merely being influenced by the suggestion. "You are suffering from an anemia," Treves said, "and your body will naturally want to replace, from other sources, what it has lost." Days ago, he had left a lamb chop wrapped in brown paper in his ice box. The ice was nearly gone and the chop was no longer frozen. He removed it and placed it in his sink. When it reached room temperature he would eat it raw. There was a half-bottle of wine in his pantry. He found a clean coffee cup in his cupboard and filled it half full. Sandor sat at his small kitchen table and thought about his friend. The pain in Sandor's joints and mouth and skin was almost constant, yet he still thought mostly about the suffering of Viktor, loveless and alone in the world, except for their exasperating and one-sided friendship. Unlike Viktor, Sandor had experienced love. He knew what it meant to love another person completely, to the point of self-sacrifice and unquestioning immersion in the happiness of the other. When his wife Eva, finally died of her peritonitis a year before he left Hungary, though his loss was great, he was overwhelmed with gratitude that her suffering was done, and knew his relief was an expression of his love for her, and therefore right and just. He celebrated her passing with a high mass, followed in the evening by a glass of red wine and a special meal, a pörkölt, and he suspected that his neighbors on Hruza Street thought he was either insane or evil. He didn't expect anyone else to understand how grateful he was. He kept his grief a private and moderate thing, as Eva would have wanted. Viktor had only had two brief flirtations in all the years Sandor had known him. Each lasted until they became an inconvenience to him, and he stopped investing the little effort he was willing to attempt, and the women lost interest. Viktor was teaching King Lear in his last semester at the university, and Sandor told his wife it was a sad irony that Regan's description of her aging father: "He hath always but slightly known himself," did not inspire personal insight in his friend. After the sun went down, Sandor stepped out onto his porch. In the twilight and in the dark, away from the sunlight that seared his festering skin, he felt a little more comfortable. He sat on his front step and sipped from his cup of red wine until his stomach started to burn. Tree frogs burred in the woods all around him and whippoorwills called to each other from the southwest and northeast. He thought how wonderful it was that these creatures could carry on their natural lives and tendencies in spite of human destruction and influence in the world. He felt he had entered a new phase of life: the last phase. His working years were over. He was destined to die in a strange land. Away from home, surrounded by unfriendly and disapproving strangers who resented him and his countrymen. He would live in this small wooden house, a hermit in the woods, until his health failed or his money ran out. Either or both would come soon enough. It made his heart ache to think of leaving his friend here alone. He wondered what further suffering his disease would bring. Dr. Treves had given him no chance of recovery and he knew the longer he lived, the worse the pain would become. It would be bad for him to live too much longer. If he only had the strength to end his own life he could avoid a long and torturous decline. But he believed, he knew, as Hamlet did, that suicide is the gravest of mortal sins and if he committed such an act, he would never be reunited with his Eva in the next world. He felt a tear well painfully in his eye and suddenly he craved blood, the blood that seemed to calm him more and more as his disease progressed. He remembered the lamb he had left in his sink. He went back into the house and tore the paper off the lamb chop. He bit into it, savoring its bloody piquancy. There was a hint of decay in its smell but he bit into it again and again until it was gone. He wiped the blood from his chin with a towel hanging over the back of his kitchen chair. Sandor noticed that the black spot on his nose was no longer completely numb, but had begun to tingle a little. One of Eva's small mirrors hung on his bedroom wall. He examined his face in the fading light. The edges of the spot were damp and pink, and as he twitched his facial muscles slightly to test for sensation, the entire black mass fell from his nose, revealing the pink, triangular holes and septum underneath. He looked at himself in disbelief and horror for many moments. His eyes filled painfully with tears and he began to sob helplessly. Why was God testing him in this way? Was not losing his wife and living for two years in this strange land in service to a friend trial enough for any pious man? A loud crash and a spray of glass behind him in the front room caused his legs to collapse. Looking through the bedroom door he saw a damp mossy rock on his front room floor surrounded by glass shards. He heard the laughter of children out in the dark. Sandor made his way unsteadily to his front door. Three boys stood thirty feet away at the edge of the cemetery. "Vernon Hobbs died!" one of the boys called. "And everbody knows you did it!" "Everbody knows!" the other two boys repeated. "You little hooligans!" Sandor shouted. "I'll get the sheriff on you! His wife is one of us!" "You kilt Vernon," the first boy continued, "and Boyer in Ste. Odile and them three kids in Lesterton, 'cause you're a vampire!" "A vampire!" the other boys echoed. It took Sandor a moment to realize he had heard the boys right. "What nonsense!" he said. "Who put such nonsense in your superstitious heads?" "Everbody knows!" the first boy went on. "Vampires is from Hungry and you're from Hungry. You're pasty and long-toothed and you cain't come out in the daylight. And kids is getting' sick and dyin'." "You ignorant yokels," Sandor interrupted. "Superstitious fools! You think you can cure sickness by putting knives under a bed or running chickens over people. You have to use medicine and go to the doctor!" "Got a present for you!" the first boy said as he heaved a long string of bulbous shapes onto Sandor's porch. It hit the dry boards with a dull thunk, and flakes of skin particles floated down, jarred loose by the impact. It was a bunch of garlic. The boys ran off laughing into the darkness, toward LaMotte. Sandor kicked the bunch of garlic off the porch. He stood for a few moments looking in the direction the boys had run. He knew they were repeating things they had heard their parents saying. He had seen mob violence before, back in Budapest. He had seen a mob drive Jews out of the neighborhood, and later, hang a homosexual man who was suspected of killing a boy. Sandor knew that fearful, superstitious people need scapegoats for their problems, and now he had come into their focus. To defend himself against these suspicions would be futile. In the morning he would cover himself against the sun as best he could, and take the train to Ste. Odile to see the sheriff. Sandor went back inside and swept up the broken glass. He sat on his single kitchen chair. The fearsome and painful but essentially peaceful death he foresaw for himself an hour ago, was impossible now. He knew these people would never leave him alone to die in the dignity of isolation. He thought again about taking his own life, but knew, for his late wife's sake, it was out of the question. He suddenly craved the comfort of more raw, bloody meat. That would calm him down, but his icebox was empty. A branch snapped outside in the dark. Sandor found his butcher knife in his sink and faced his front door. A footstep on his porch sent a stab of fear through his stomach, and he thought: "What will become of poor Viktor when I am gone?" The front door opened slowly and Viktor stepped in, breathing heavily and out of breath. He was holding a large burlap sack. "Viktor!" Sandor whispered. "What is it? What has happened?" "The worst," Viktor said quietly. He seemed to not notice the hole in Sandor's face. "Mrs. Hobbs' son died and she has ordered me out of her house." "I heard. Some boys came here..." "I have no home, but now none of us do. No Hungarian is safe here anymore." "What do you mean?" "In Burley's Tavern in Lesterton today some Hungarians were drunk and boasting about how they could not be drafted into the army, how they would stay behind while the Americans went off to the war. They boasted they would stay behind and take all the mine jobs and take care of all the abandoned wives too." "Oh," Sandor whispered. "Such stupidity in the world." "A fight broke out, then a riot," Viktor sat on the kitchen chair and put the burlap sack on the table with a metallic clang. "They burned most of the Hungarian homes and loaded the families on a boxcar bound for St. Louis. Five Hungarians have been killed. So far. The word is they... the mob, will be heading out this way, to Ste. Odile, by morning. Maybe a hundred men. They want us all dead or gone." "My friend, you must stay with me," Sandor said. "We will make our way to Ste. Odile early tomorrow. The sheriff, his wife is Hungarian..." "I am so sorry I brought you here," Viktor interrupted. "For my own selfish reasons, I brought you here with me. A man so full of love as you are..." Viktor reached into the burlap sack and withdrew a straight razor, a bucket, and a heavy old revolver. He laid the things side by side on the tabletop. "My God, Viktor!" Sandor said. "What is all this?" "The gun is empty," Viktor said. "As you know, the company store will not sell cartridges to Hungarians. Hold it in your hand when the mob comes. Hold it up and they will shoot you. Quick and painless. Over in an instant. I told Mrs. Hobbs, that yes, you were what they say you are, and you are responsible for the children. They will be here sometime tomorrow when the train comes, and your suffering will be over. I wanted to be certain your suffering would be over." "Viktor..." "I would like to think I have learned something from you, though it may not seem so." Viktor set the bucket on the floor under his left arm. In an instant, he took the razor and slashed his left wrist. Sandor shuddered in horror as his friend lowered his bleeding arm over the bucket. "No Viktor! Let me bind it!" "Leave it alone, Sandor." Viktor smiled. "When Mrs. Hobbs threw me out of her house and told me the news, all I thought of was your wellbeing and how I could deliver you from this. It was a surprise to me, a revelation, that these were my thoughts at a time like this, but I of course knew it was only your influence. Only you! I thank you for that... that I hardly know myself at this moment. This will calm you as you wait for them. The blood will calm you, as you have said... as you wait for the mob." Viktor looked down at the quickly filling bucket and smiled a fading smile. "Thank you for never abandoning me." Sandor felt his friend's forehead. It was already cooling to the touch. Viktor's expression had become bland and peaceful and unmistakably benevolent. Sandor smiled a mirthless, emotional smile, and was grateful to have deserved such charity, if he truly did deserve it: to have had such a friend, in a harsh and unwelcoming world. ⁂ [ THINGS by Rick McQuiston ] With great effort Chad heaved the corpse up onto the bumper and into the trunk, wincing at the heavy thud it made when it landed on the floor. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and took several deep breaths. He needed to calm down and reassess his plan. He still had to drive to the secluded location he'd selected (about fifty yards behind Melvindale Cemetery—a perfect spot because who in their right mind would trudge through such dense and mosquito-infested brush?), dig the grave, douse the body with acid, bury it, and then cover his tracks. And all the while being sure that nothing escaped. The thought sent a chill down his spine. Chad looked at the still form wrapped in a blanket in his trunk. He felt a pang of guilt for having stolen the body, but what could he do? He was sure if he hadn't spirited it from the morgue slab something very bad would have happened. Something that would have expanded to engulf the town, and possibly, given enough time, the world. He remembered the name on the toe tag: Joseph Delong; just an average guy who couldn't have been more than twenty years old at the time of his death. How he wound up on a slab in the morgue didn't matter. What happened to his body after he died did matter. Chad closed the trunk and climbed into his car. Dragging the body through the brush was not easy. Occasionally the blanket snagged a twig or stone and he would be forced to stop and dislodge it, all the while trying to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Fortunately, it hadn't rained lately or he really would have been in trouble. At last he reached the spot he'd selected: a small clearing covered with desiccated leaves and sporting a natural depression that gave him a good head start with the digging. He gratefully dropped his burden and felt the burn in his muscles subside. Chad doubted what he was doing. Was it really the right thing to do? Could he stop what would happen with some acid and a shovel? He couldn't answer those questions but knew he had to try. The consequences if he didn't could be dire. Nobody believed him. Nobody cared. Not the authorities, or anyone at the University, or even his friends. Everyone said he was crazy. But he knew better. He had seen things, things that shouldn't be possible but were. After he caught his breath Chad raced back to his car to fetch the shovel and acid. Time wasn't on his side, and not because of the approaching dawn. He still had hours before morning broke. If he didn't hurry and dispose of the body it might... Pushing aside the thought, Chad grabbed his shovel from the trunk and the bottle of acid from the backseat floor. He held the acid up, studying the corrosive liquid in the moonlight. "I hope you do the trick," he said to himself. He then followed the same path he'd made earlier back to the clearing. Wasting no time, he carefully set the acid down next to a large stone and began digging the grave. The blade slid into the soil easily, and within a short time he had a four-foot-deep hole dug. Movement caught his eye. Chad spun around and stared at the lump beneath the blanket. He watched it for a moment, its uneven contours creating shadows in the moonlight, but saw nothing. "Chad, you need to get acid on that thing and bury it." Heeding his own words, he continued digging. When he was satisfied with the hole Chad tossed the shovel to the ground and turned to face the corpse. It lay there, right where he had put it, unmoving, inanimate. He heard something growl in the distance. He turned toward the sound, half expecting to see something charging at him, but there were only the tombstones jutting out of the cemetery grounds to be seen. Chad stared at the markers. They reflected the moonlight back at him, casting an eerie glow on the scene. Maybe I shouldn't have picked a spot so close to a cemetery. A rustling noise behind him arrested Chad's thoughts and he turned to see the body moving away from the grave. The blanket it was wrapped in still covered it, but had become snagged on a rock and was slowly revealing its grisly contents. But Chad was not surprised. In fact, although dreading it, he expected the body to become animated. It was only a matter of time before the things inside wanted out. He only wished he could have used the acid and buried it first. Mr. Joseph DeLong glared at the despoiler of his corpse with unseeing eyes. He sat up and the remainder of the blanket fell to the side, exposing his zombielike form to the night. His skin gave off a ghostly pallor and his arms twitched at his sides. Chad recoiled from the sight. He could see the things squirming just below the flesh. They were innumerable, hundreds, perhaps thousands of the creatures using the corpse, somehow manipulating it like a marionette. DeLong's mouth opened. Instantly dozens of writhing little beasts, multi-legged things with gnashing pincers where heads should have been, dribbled out of the grisly orifice and rolled down the chin, the neck, the chest, each and every one coated in putrefied fluids. Then the torso split open. A veritable wave of movement spilled forth onto the ground. It gushed forward like an army of blind, leaderless predators, somehow working together to achieve its goal of securing prey. Chad backed away from the horde, and reaching behind, managed to grab the bottle of acid. He then unscrewed the lid and flung the contents at the advancing mass. The caustic liquid splashed across the monsters, vaporizing hundreds in an instant. But more poured out of the body. They spread far too rapidly to become contained, quickly oozing over the ground in an expanding perimeter that doubled in size every few seconds. DeLong sagged more and more as the things emptied out of him. He became limp before finally collapsing to the ground, an empty husk, discarded after serving as a sanctuary for the creatures. And under the cold glare of the moon the things engulfed the sole living person nearby, flooding into his body in a nauseous wave of unrelenting suffocation. They preferred dead tissue to incubate in, somehow reveling in the cold environment as opposed to a warm living one, but sensed many lifeless bodies close by, so instead focused on a means to reach those vessels. Chad's body stood, and after grabbing the shovel, stumbled in the direction of Melvindale Cemetery. ⁂ [ THE FLESH GARDENER by Jeremy Megargee ] You've heard of bug chasers, haven't you? Those odd ducks that engage in unprotected sex in the hopes of catching HIV. Offering up eager bodies and watering at the mouth, hoping a gift giver will plant that biological bomb inside of them. I'm here to tell you that bug chasers are mere amateurs in the world of viral delights. Narrow is their vision, and mundane is their pursuit. If one is to poison a meat vehicle, then why not chase the most exotic of venoms? The self-inflicted ruin of a human carcass should be something bordering on a holy rite, and I've always believed that Eden is momentarily remade in the disintegration of flesh. I suppose I am a gardener in that way. This pitiful form I call a body acts as the soil, and I plant little virus seeds deep within to cultivate growth. I study my own delicious decay. It is research, a diary of desiccation, and each festering petal sends a shiver of excitement traveling up the twisted ridge of my spine. My experimentation is vast due to a genetic defect that I was born with. A severely compromised immune system with the ability to harbor multiple infectious diseases all at the same time. I'm a walking vat sloshing with internal horrors, and each one is like a trophy that I prize higher than any material possession. These viruses are my companions in the dark, and their blight is my reward. I worship the collection, and it shows its love by slowly breaking me apart in the most excruciating ways. Are you familiar with the term "patient zero?" Think of me as patient infinity. I am not the first, but I make it my business to experience all the tastiest condemnations of the carnal condition. I was a novice once in the long distant past, my garden of self-unfulfilled and barren of all sickness. Just a young butcher boy who had not yet learned how to wield the knife on himself, and it took a fascination with self-destruction to guide this lost soul to the path he currently walks. The masochist in me awoke late, but he awoke ever so hungry. The garden feeds him well now. Each biological gift is like a nest of vines twining across a throbbing soul. I've had every kind of influenza, but such periods have proved lackluster. The snot oozes, the throat itches, and the head aches, but these moments are nothing, just appetizers for a gardener with my particular desires. I had to search for something more, something real, something to rattle the bones and make the heart just a rotting little crisp that struggles to pump sluggish ichor. My first experience with true viral glory came from the imported abdomen of a mosquito gut-loaded with Dengue fever. I ordered it from a forum on the deep web, and the Indian supplier was more than willing to provide for my eclectic request. I lapped at that tainted blood with a bone-dry tongue, and it was an immediate thrill to the taste buds. The projectile vomiting came after. It spewed from my lips like a geyser of bile, and it mixed so wonderfully with the joint aches that practically bent all my limbs inward. My skin erupted into a magnificent rash, and as I admired it in the mirror, I couldn't help but think that it resembled a patch of swollen lilacs pushing up through the skin. That was the garden giving back. An affirmation that my green thumb has the potential to become smeared in the nastiest inflammatory goodies. The fever boiled, but the strain was a weak batch, and soon this traitorous meat fought it off. Survival came as such a boring outcome. All that I planted began to wilt, and so the search for new seeds began. I pounded my stubby fingers on the keyboard, made the proper connections, and soon a special package arrived from West Africa. It shipped from Niger, and it stank of fruity oblivion. I peeled it open with spittle dripping from the lips, and there it was, a crumpled little mummy just full to the brim with all things yummy. It was the dried remnant of a fruit bat; the wings curled around the torso and the eyes just sunken sockets long since devoured by insects. This was the dish I'd been waiting for. The next phase in my garden of the flesh. A dead winged angel just fresh enough to pass on everlasting Ebola. I wasted no time opening my eating-hole wide, lips tattered and chapped, and I shoved the critter corpse down my gullet and chewed until my gums bled. Bliss. Unnatural bliss. It took only days for the symptoms to ravage me. The shit gushed from my ass in a waterfall of putrescence. I felt my kidneys becoming nothing more than overworked lumps inside of me. I was weak as a kitten run down on the interstate, and no sustenance would take root in my stomach. All food came splattering back out as a partially digested stew, and it delighted me to see little fleshy pieces of organs floating in that river of wretchedness. Ebola gave the garden life, but what might the gardener seek to invite true paradise? The great prize. The grand finale. The necrotic nectar to stilt the veins and core out the vessel. I aim to rot, to live as I rot, and only the most infamous infection will suffice. I wiped clotted Ebola blood from my eyes to make one last order on the World Wide Web. I chose expedited shipping, because time is of the essence when a garden must be grown. It arrived in less than two days. It was wrapped in black silk with the prettiest bow, and I opened it like a child on Christmas Eve. My favorite toy waited for me. A rusted syringe soaked for months in human sewage. It sang to me, a dirty ditty, and it promised to eat through my flesh with genuine enthusiasm. Necrotizing fasciitis waited on the sharp tip of that needle. Commonly referred to as flesh-eating disease, but lovingly thought of by me as man's most transcendent self-destructive experience. I carved out a wound in the center of my forehead with a dull butter knife, and then I drove that syringe in deep and depressed the contents into the open wound. And like an addict after a long-awaited fix, I swooned back in my chair and waited for the fun to begin. It's so quick. First the inflammation, the most beautiful shades of purple and black. Next the blisters to decorate, each one a pus-dripping miniature volcano. And then it started. The shedding of flesh in scarlet folds, bloodied lumps and chunks falling to the floor, pieces of who I am rendered into little more than messy plops against the linoleum. I'm writing this memoir with the intent to document a demise that borders on the divine. Each scrawl of the pen leaves slabs of skin smeared against the paper. I'm a dripping red thing with a gleaming grin, and this is how all the best parties end. Deadened tissue splatters and stains, and how can I describe how sublime it is to feel your meat curdling from within? So much irredeemable skin. It falls, we fall, and all turns to pools that I lick back up like a cannibal's gruel. Brain black and broken, rhyming silly now. Fingers just skinned sausages. Hard to write. I've read that surgeons are supposed to cut away the bad flesh. I'll do that. I'll amputate the soft black pieces, and I'll revel in the rot. This is all I've ever wanted. The garden is in bloom. ⁂ [ EAR WAX by G.A. Miller ] "Dammit, now I'm completely plugged up again!" "What's plugged up, honey? What are you talking about?" "Oh, my ear. Damned wax again, completely blocked up." Sara went to the bathroom, and returned with a small bottle, unscrewing the cap. "Here, lean over and let me put some drops in." Joe leaned over as far as he could, and Sara put in a few drops of the Peroxide solution to soften the wax. "There. Let that work for a few minutes, then we'll use the bottle." Joe grunted, thinking that the latest item he'd bought to try and win his lifelong battle against ear wax was about to get its trial by fire. It was basically a spray bottle, fitted with a short hose that accepted removable tips with even thinner hoses on them to concentrate the flow. He lifted his head slightly off the arm of the couch to hear what she was saying. "Say again? Didn't hear you." "How warm should the water be? I don't want to make it too hot for you." "It said very warm, close to body temp, but not too hot." "Okay, got it." Sara came into the room with the bottle in one hand, and the small basin in the other. Joe sat up, took the basin, and put it on the side of his head, slipping the ear into the provided cutout. Sara sat beside him, and guided the small tip into his ear, squeezing the handle to squirt the water in. "How's that? Is it too warm?" "No, it feels fine... just aim high to try and flush from behind." Sara continued squeezing, and started to see small clumps of wax flowing out into the basin. "There we go, it's starting to come out." Joe's eyes were tightly shut, and he felt something moving, shifting inside his ear, something too large to be in such a small place. The bottle held a lot of water, and the continued squirts were loosening, moving that overly large mass. It was stubborn, though, and held on. Sara had to pause, and empty the basin before starting again. "Hang in there, honey. We're getting it." The basin back in place, Sara continued flushing his ear, one squeeze right after another, keeping the flow as steady as she could. Joe felt a pop in his ear, and the mass moved more than it had before. "It's coming, keep it going... you've almost got it!" Sara glanced into the basin, and guessed she had a few more squirts before she'd have to empty it again, so she shifted the small tip, aiming more at an angle from above, and squeezed the handle again, open and closed, keeping the bursts of water steady, when suddenly Joe cried out as a large, dark glob plopped into the basin. She looked at it, and it seemed to be moving. "What the hell?" Joe said nothing, his head down, eyes shut. As she watched, the mass seemed to change shape, moving on its own, not simply floating in the water. It stretched larger, thinner, and she clearly saw the outline of a face, as though pressing from inside the mass. It was only there for a split second, but she knew that face. Joe's face. It vanished, and the mass became still and lifeless. She looked up, just as Joe raised his head, turning to look at her. His eyes opened, and they'd turned black, as though the pupils had somehow absorbed the entire irises. Tiny red veins surrounded the black centers, like spider webs capturing prey for the patiently waiting insect. And then he smiled. There was no humor, no life in that smile, more predatory than friendly. And then, Joe leaned toward Sara, as she dropped the full basin, with its now still mass of wax down onto the floor, spilling onto the polished wood surface. The small moan in her throat escalated to a full hearty scream as he closed the gap between them. And then... ⁂ [ THE FACE by Kurt Newton ] ...scrabble... scrabble... hush... hiss... The man in the chair sits hunched over his desk. The small room is dark but for one reading lamp that casts a yellow cone of light upon the stacks of books, notepads and coffee mugs that litter his desktop. The man combs feverishly through the pages of the volume that lies open before him. Above, just beyond the light's reach, lie the foot-shadows of leather-bound volumes, some inscribed with arcane symbols—reference books for old world languages, recovered texts of lost religious manifests, and how-to guides for the practice of alchemy and the occult. He is a man of letters, a scholar, a professor at the local university, in fact. His name is Edwin Ellunder. Dr. Edwin Ellunder, Professor of Literary Artifacts. But to look at him, one would never assume such a title to be true. He mumbles absentmindedly. His attention is suddenly captured by what he has just read. His arm reaches out; he pulls a jeweler's magnifying glass over the pages before him. He takes notes. He's getting closer. But the sounds come again, quickly quelling his sudden elation. ...scrabble... scrabble... He pauses. His ears pin back as he feels the presence behind him, hidden in the dark recesses of the room. If only they could see him now, thinks Edwin—his colleagues, the ones who whispered names like Ghost Chaser, Demon Hunter, and Dr. Demento under their breath when he entered the faculty lounge. Some had even suggested the University would be better served if he taught creative writing instead of his pursuit of "foundationless knowledge." Though hurt by their lack of professionalism, Edwin did not let their petty jealousies dissuade him from his curriculum—nor from his own personal and private research. ...scrabble... hush... hiss... There comes a knock at the door. "Edwin? For the last time, please come out." Edwin's wife, Alice, concerned that her husband has been locked in his study for nearly three days now. "I've told you before, Alice, I can't. Don't you understand?" he shouts to her. "Why won't you tell me what's wrong?" ...scrabble... scrabble... Edwin cranes his neck toward the sound, his head obscured by shadow. The sound emanates from the far darkest corner, climbing toward the ceiling above. "Edwin, what's that noise? Edwin, please! If you don't come out I'm going to call the hospital and have them send over a professional." ...scrabble... hiss... Edwin laughs. "Dear sweet Alice. You never understood my passions. You merely tolerated them. You believe me insane, don't you? Heaven knows I should be—putting up with your insolence all these years." These are Edwin's thoughts, but he speaks them aloud. Now that the barrier has been breached between the internal and external, the truth and the mask, it is much easier for Edwin to express himself. "Edwin, you don't know what you're saying. You're not yourself. Please, let me help you." ...scrabble... scrabble... Directly overhead now. A sneer of disdain touches the corner of Edwin's lips. Hot flashes of pain erupt. Blood trickles down his chin. "If you must, Alice. If you must..." Edwin leans back in his chair and unlocks the study door. "Edwin? Oh, thank God." Alice enters and puts her arms out to embrace her husband, but he pulls away. "Edwin, please? It's so dark in here. Why are you doing this?" Edwin finally turns to face her. Light cascades across his features. "Because I can." Alice screams and stumbles back toward the door. ...scrabble... click... pop... Something falls from the ceiling above and lands upon Alice's face. Her screams are suddenly blanketed, her cries for help drowned in a liquid garble. She falls to the floor. In seconds, she lies motionless. ...click... pop... hiss... Edwin reaches down and swings his arm as if to bat something away. "That's enough!" he yells. The thing skitters off into the dark. Edwin pulls the desk lamp forward and angles its light toward the floor. Alice's face is devoid of flesh and cartilage. Her barren white skull gapes ceiling-ward. "Forgive me, Alice," Edwin whispers. He turns and focuses once again on the manuscript. As he reads, the ancient Sumerian language becomes a miniature landscape of peaks and valleys. He speaks aloud the last line he deciphered. "...ur-erech ah-kish tuttul el-eridu paddan-aram..." ...the hairless face becomes an organ of great mobility... Edwin breathes deep. ...scrabble... hush... He can smell his wife's blood and the residual fear that still clings to the study's stale air like cigarette smoke. ...scrabble... scrabble... He feels the power he has unleashed. He closes the book before him and turns to face the dark. He clicks his fingers. "Hamath!" he commands. Come. ...scrabble... hush... "Hamath, azif!" Come, now! ...scrabblescrabblescrabble... The thing in the dark crawls up his leg and trembles upon his knee. It awaits its next instruction. Edwin leans over the tiny beast. His hands caress its contours—contours that mimic his own features, his own face. "Shinar," he finally tells it. Home. The face scrabbles up Edwin's chest and quickly seals itself back over its place of origin. Edwin now sees the world in a different light, filled with brilliant blues and spectral whites. He sees a land of immense beauty and unimaginable horror. But mostly he sees revenge and retribution. After a quick shower and a shave, he gets into his car and heads toward the University. ⁂ [ BATTLEGROUND by Drew Nicks ] [ France, 1916 ] As the skies unleashed another torrent from their gray depths, Captain Noel Chamberlain stepped out between the canvas flaps, lit a British Consul, and let the rain run over his bloodied apron. His hands shook as he took a second drag. It had already been a long day and, while glancing to his watch, there was still much more to go. Serious injuries had been the norm all day, owing to the offensive Field Marshall Haig had ordered. Ragged stumps and spilled entrails. Gas burns and major blood loss. The severity of the wounds and the near constant need for expertise had left the surgeon exhausted. He gazed out into the muddy field that was now his life. In the near distance, he could see the ambulance drivers and stretcher bearers enjoying a quiet moment. Over the tumble of the rain, he heard them enjoy a laugh. Lucky bastards. "Captain Chamberlain?" the young voice called from behind him. Lance Corporal Hedges, the surgeon knew, I hope you can handle this life. The surgeon dropped his cigarette in the murky mud and turned to face the fresh faced, blond, twenty-two-year-old who'd been drafted into this vocation. Captain Chamberlain coughed slightly before returning to the confines of the tent. "Yes, Hedges, what is it?" The scent of rotting flesh and iodine hung thickly in the air like a fog. Most of these young men would never walk out of this hospital. The ones that would, would never experience a normal life. For this, Captain Chamberlain felt nothing but sadness. The oldest man he'd treated that day was only two years older than his son. Or, so that soldier's papers had claimed. The surgeon had doubts about many of these boys' ages. "The patient in bed fourteen has woken up," said Hedges. "He seems to be adjusting well to his new predicament." Chamberlain looked down sullenly. The patient in bed fourteen had had to have his left arm and right leg amputated. The man's life had irrevocably changed in a matter of blood-spattered moments. Chamberlain and Hedges approached the sprawled figure in bed fourteen. Blood still oozed into the man's damp bandages. With a questioning eye, the soldier looked over the surgeon, who still wore his blood-stained apron. "It hurts, Captain." "You'll be all right, son," lied the surgeon. "We'll have some morphine for you." Dejected, the soldier turned to face the blank canvas wall, grimacing as he did so. Chamberlain leaned over to Hedges and told him to get the young man some morphine. When the surgeon was informed that their morphine supply had run dry, Chamberlain told him to wrangle some rum. The brave man did not deserve to suffer. It was just after 22:30, and the exhausted Captain Chamberlain collapsed on his cot. He stared at the flickering lantern above his head, weaving to and fro amongst the surrounding shadows. It was stifling in his "private quarters." The only thing that separated him from his patients, and their snoring between bouts of agonized moaning, was a thick, muck-stained, canvas curtain. He shut his eyes, briefly, only to open them again. He cared not for what he saw behind those dark lids. Standing, he grabbed his British Consuls and lit one. He dropped the spent match into the dirt at his feet. He inhaled deeply and dropped back on his cot. Fuck. Suddenly, the alarm sounded and the rushing of feet was all around him. He got to his feet and threw his moist boots on. Pushing aside the curtain, Chamberlain spotted Hedges rushing for the intake area. "Hedges!" called Captain Chamberlain. "What's going on? What's the situation?" "Unsure, sir! Sounds like it was a gas attack on our poor lads. They're just being brought in now." Without hesitation, Chamberlain grabbed his apron and field surgeon's kit. Before hurrying to where he was needed, he paused a moment and listened to the patter of the rain on canvas, and then rushed to the operating theater. The horrors were evident immediately and the stretcher bearers still brought in more wheezing boys. "What's the situation?" the surgeon quickly asked, while springing to action. "Well, sir, it must be gas. That's the only thing it could be. When we reached them, the ones that were still conscious were coughing up blood. Their eyes were the strangest color." Chamberlain listened as closely as he could while he worked on the first man. This soldier clawed at his eyes ferociously, between bouts of wet screeching. The surgeon tried to calm the frantic man. "I know it hurts, son, but you've got to let me see." The soldier continued to screech and claw. Chamberlain looked back to Hedges. His dutiful assistant stood wide eyed, silent and pale. Chamberlain knew this was Hedges' first experience with gas victims, He felt sympathy for his young assistant. Barely a man and being exposed to some of the worst atrocities known to man. He would weep for Hedges... later. Now, he needed the young man to be focused. "Grab his arms, Hedges! Quickly, before he does more damage!" Hedges did as he was told. He swept behind the screeching frame and firmly grasped the clawing arms. For the first time, the surgeon saw the cerulean shade of the soldier's eyes. Not just the iris. Both the pupil and the cornea had taken on this ghastly shade. This was like no other gas he had ever seen. From the corner of his eye, Chamberlain saw the soldier two beds down convulsing and clawing at his throat. He stopped his examination and hurried down, Hedges followed close behind. This poor soul couldn't make a sound. The surgeon knew what he must do. Dropping his kit to the dirt, he retrieved a scalpel. He instructed Hedges to, again, hold the man's arms. When Hedges had the arms secure, Chamberlain began the tracheotomy. He preferred to do these sorts of surgeries with anesthetic, but time would not allow this. As he made the first cut, one of the patient's arms came free and swatted Chamberlain's scalpel. He felt the razor-sharp edge slice his thumb. He grimaced with pain. "Hold his arms, damn it!" Hedges secured the arm again with shaking hands. In a few moments, Chamberlain heard the sound of air passing through the patient's new breathing hole. He sighed in relief and looked to the now breathing soldier's face. The soldier returned the look with a malicious grin. The surgeon continued down the line, providing what aid he could to these maimed soldiers. At 01:30, Chamberlain slumped back into his quarters and drew the curtain shut. He fell on his cot and shut his eyes. Sleep took him away before he even felt the tingling in his thumb. The following morning, Chamberlain awoke refreshed. He was uncertain how long he slept, but however long it was it had definitely done the trick. He stretched tired limbs and threw on his boots. Taking the prime opportunity before the work truly began, he snuck out of his quarters, past the rows of still sleeping patients and out the canvas flap. When he was outside, he withdrew his British Consuls and lit one. The first inhale was like heaven. He felt calm wash over him. That was when he looked at the hand that cradled his cigarette. On his thumb, a dark hue had begun to form. Puzzled, he drew his thumb closer. On the tip, where he had nicked it with the scalpel, a blackish blister had formed. When he poked it, blue pus seeped from it and pain shot through his arm. So intense was the pain, that he'd dropped his cigarette in the still moist dirt. He returned quickly to his quarters. After wrapping his thumb in gauze, he headed out to the Mess. Before he could start the day, he needed coffee and perhaps some eggs. That was if there were any eggs to be had. Rations had been in short supply for the last few months and he knew restrictions would become more drastic in the weeks to come. Stepping into the Mess, he looked about at all the faces. Nearly all were emotionless. Men shoveled food into their mouths without really paying attention. However, in the back-left corner, a group of officers were sharing a laugh. Chamberlain ignored all those around him and walked to the meal line. Judging from what food he could see, eggs were entirely out of the question. He saw some misshapen loaves of bread and a vat of gray gruel. So much for a real breakfast. He took a few slices of bread and spread a little butter on each. Turning, he glanced about for Hedges. Through the sea of faces, he spotted his assistant. Hedges sat near the tent flap and uninterestedly spooned gruel into his mouth. Chamberlain sat down beside him. "Good morning, Hedges. How are our patients doing today?" Hedges stopped eating and looked down sullenly at his food. "There's something not right about them, sir." Chamberlain picked up one of the slices of bread and bit off a chunk. "What do you mean? I know this is your first time with gas victims. The body does strange things when it's hit with that substance..." Hedges shook his head. "No, sir, there's something else wrong with them." Chamberlain took another bite of bread and felt his stomach grumble. It felt like everything was curdling in his stomach. "Well how do you mean?" asked Chamberlain, trying to conceal the nausea. "What exactly is wrong with them?" "I went in to check on them earlier, sir. All of them have developed this blackish rash all over their bodies. I brought them all gruel this morning and fed them. Not a single one of them kept that food down. They all were retching the strangest vomit I've ever seen. It was the same color as their eyes..." Chamberlain tried to stay focused, but his vision had become blurry. His stomach felt like a butter churn. He knew he wouldn't be able to keep up the calmness much longer. "I don't know what kind of gas does..." "Would you excuse me, Hedges?" Chamberlain quickly asked. Without waiting for an answer, he stood on wobbly legs and stepped out of the tent. His stomach felt like it was on fire. He knew he needed to be further away to not draw attention. His shaking legs carried him an additional ten feet before he evacuated his stomach contents into the dirt. Relief washed over him. When the purging had stopped, he wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his uniform. He looked down at his puddle of vomit and stopped. The putrid concoction which lay in the dirt was a deep cerulean shade. He kicked dirt over top of it and returned inside the Mess. The morning was full of extensive surgeries. Chamberlain performed several amputations and cauterizations, treated further gas victims, and reset many broken limbs. He had sat down at a desk and was beginning to fill out the necessary charts and paperwork when his thumb began to throb. Wincing with pain, he began to unravel the gauze. Each layer he pulled away, the strange cerulean fluid had soaked through. When he reached the final layer, the gauze was slick with the sticky, foul smelling fluid. His entire thumb had changed color. The initial slice was now oozing. Horrified, Chamberlain moved his paperwork and rushed around to find more gauze. Careful not to spill any of this bodily based infection on anything, he quickly rewrapped his thumb. Chamberlain was terrified. He had never seen any infection spread like this before. He couldn't think of any diseases or virus that shared these symptoms. He left the desk and made his way to the intake ward. He needed to see if he could communicate with any of the gassed soldiers. The closed section just off the operating theater held twelve patients. Three of these were the gassed patients the surgeon sought. When Chamberlain entered the room, an overpowering stench filled his nostrils. The room reeked of rot and the sickly sweetness of infection. The room was lit only by a single dancing lantern held high on a hook in the center of the tent. Yet this was not the only luminescence in the dank room. Shimmering from the floor, Chamberlain could see cerulean flashes. The flashes came from the corner where the three soldiers "slept." Chamberlain crept in close. He couldn't explain what he was seeing. Tendrils, covered in small spikes, had burst through each of the three men's uniforms. These tendrils emitted the flashes. What confused the surgeon even more was that these tendrils had crept along the floor and had twisted and wriggled their way up beneath all the blankets of sleeping soldiers in sight. Chamberlain came to the nearest soldier and threw back the blanket. There he saw the tendrils had burrowed their way deep into the sleeping man in the next cot. The sleeping man did not seem to notice. Chamberlain quickly tossed the blanket back over and turned to leave when he took a glance back at the gassed three. The one in the middle, the one who had smiled so maliciously at him, was wide awake and watched the surgeon with his glowing eyes. "Hello, Doc." Chamberlain stared in shock at the thing that was once a British soldier. "You're probably wondering how long it will be before you too will be like this. Don't worry. It won't be long now. You'll need to feed." "Wha... What?" stammered Chamberlain. "You may not understand now, but you will in time. Our kind has lain dormant in the soil since time immemorial. Your war has brought us back. You will find your place amongst our hierarchy and you will help propagate our species again. We are of the earth and our time has come again." Chamberlain could take no more. He dashed from the room and out again into the open air. Tears rolled down his face. When he wiped them away, to his horror, his tears had changed in color. 18:30 hours rolled around and Chamberlain finished composing his letter. He put it in the envelope and wrote "Hedges" on its bare front. He stiffly stood. His vision was blurred. The infection, or whatever it was, had spread down his arm. He knew he did not have much time. He pulled out the last British Consul in his pack and lit it. Forcing his rigid legs to move he made his way to the intake ward. He carried a canister of kerosene beneath his arm. At 19:00 hours, the fire in the intake tent had been reported. The only time that week the skies had not opened into a torrent, was the night of the fire. While soldiers and ambulance drivers attempted to douse the flames, it was of no use. The fire burned too hot. The only thing they could do was to ensure that the surrounding tents did not also catch fire. Lance Corporal Hedges cleared the tears from his cheeks. He knew, just knew, that his superior started the fire. There was simply no other explanation. He made his way to Captain Chamberlain's quarters. He saw the letter immediately. He grabbed it from its perch and tore it open. The words he read, made him question his superior's sanity: Dear Hedges, I know you wonder why I did it. This is to be expected. Those men were no longer human. They carried with them some form of ancient infection or organism. I can't be sure what it was, or is, but I know they must die. I too must go with them. Their being has crept into me as well. I cannot let this spread. The Hun is one thing, but something like this could destroy all of mankind. I want you to know Hedges, you were the finest assistant I have had in all my years. If you survive this war, and if the God above is a just man, you will go places. Can you please find my son and tell him that his father died an honorable man? His name is Pvt. Julian Chamberlain, First Battalion, Sherwood Foresters, Twenty-Fourth Brigade, Eight Infantry Division. Thank You Hedges and God speed, Captain Noel E. Chamberlain, Royal Army Medical Corps ⁂ [ WHIZZ-BANG ATTACK by Sergio "ente per ente" Palumbo ] "I don't want to go in the trenches no more, where the whizz-bangs and shrapnel they whistle and roar..." —from "I Don't Want to Die," Popular WWI Song It is well known that the earliest military uses of chemical weapons were tear-inducing irritants rather than fatal or disabling poisonous gases, and they were deployed during the First World War. The initial tries on both sides—the so-called Central Powers (the German and the Austro-Hungarian Empires, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria) against the Entente Powers (the French Republic, the British and the Russian Empires)—that had been eagerly put into practice turned out to be largely ineffective. Italy and the United States joined the Entente only later and other countries like Japan, Belgium, Greece, and the Czechoslovak legions were secondary members. The fact was that the small quantities of gas actually delivered were not even detected by the enemy soldiers in the trenches. Another thing that happened was that the chemical froze and failed to have the desired effect, as it occurred in January 1915—which was the first instance of large-scale use of the new terrible weapon—when Germany fired eighteen-thousand artillery shells containing liquid xylyl bromide tear gas on Russian positions on the Rawka River, in Poland. Anyway, before the Germans could employ a deadlier gas as a killing agent, something else was waiting to happen while the war was increasing its fierceness on many bloody battlegrounds throughout Europe. Such a secret story, however, had never reached the media nor been told so far, and many would clearly deny that such events had ever occurred. But this is what I, now a very old soldier, already in my 100s, once told a middle-aged researcher working for one of those neglected or ill-reputed TV programs showing strange facts and weird situations that were never truly exposed to the viewers worldwide but could have changed the course of history. Or perhaps even the life of the whole of mankind. Those occurrences were never broadcasted, for some unknown reason, and such accounts never got into the newspapers in the end, but the following is what I said. Believe it or not... The Western Front was the name applied to the battle zone in France, where the British, French, and Belgian troops faced the armies of Germany. Eventually the American forces would join the others on the Western Front. But there was an Eastern Front too, in Poland and down to Serbia, where Russian armies faced those of Germany and Austria-Hungary. As a matter of fact, the Western Front was not the only theatre where the British army saw action during the Great War but it was by far the most important. After the battles of 1914, both sides held an entrenched line that stretched from Nieuport on the Belgian coast, through the flatlands of France, continuing through the wide expanses and into the high mountains, until it got to the Swiss border. The British held a small portion of this four-hundred-mile long line, varying from some twenty miles in 1914 to over one-hundred-twenty early in 1918. During the war, the disputed area that lay in that sector had been courageously held by the French Army. Its strategic importance made it the staging ground of a lot of bloody battles that had already taken place. But many more battles would soon be coming... The boundary of the front had remained almost the same until the present year, which was 1915, even though several thousand soldiers had died in other local attacks or coup de main operations. History shows that from the moment the German army moved quietly on August the 2nd 1914 to the end of the war, the fighting in that part of France never stopped. There were some short, quiet periods, just as there were more intense, huge-scale battles. By the end of the fierce confrontation of November 22nd, 1914, the two sides were in siege warfare that included extensive use of underground tunnels, shelters and emplacements, counter-battery artillery fire, and mining (which was also used offensively). The continuous trench lines of the Western Front presented all army commanders with a serious problem: it had been proven that the way to win battles was to 'turn the flank' of the enemy (that is, to go around his position)—but there was no flank on the Western Front, for either side! At one end was the North Sea, at the other end four-hundred miles away, the Alps. So, the Front settled in for a long period of trench warfare. The British army was still very much the lesser partner on land at first, and took part in many attacks of increasing scale as the army grew in size. Casualties were very high and little was gained in terms of territory; the British lost the main part of their pre-war regular army while being greatly outmanned and outgunned. It became clear that enemy positions could be broken into, but not broken through, without the deployment of much larger forces. It was almost noon on the day in late January 1915 and the snowy, hard terrain wasn't very different from what it had been the previous day—apart from some bloodstains that covered portions of it and begrimed many carcasses of horses left dead on the ground. There had been a skirmish during the night when the Germans had tried to break through French defenses, but they had been stopped before advancing too far, as it had happened time and time again. Well hidden in my hole, I, Claude Souillè, being a soldier of only nineteen, wore the so-called capote modèle simplifié whose color was simply known as gris bleu anglais, with the buttons on the right; and the characteristic pantalon-culotte of a common French infantryman of that period. There was a light képi on my head that allowed only a few short, dark curls to fall around my face. My rifle, being a reliable though heavy 8mm fusil repetition Level 1886 M93, was aiming apparently at nothing across the barren terrain. My hazel eyes kept watch for any movement in the distance, while the burden of the heavy equipment I had on—made up of a military knapsack, a huge bouthéon and my outil individuel—made me sink much lower than I normally would have within the hole, in order to keep my body safe. Actually, in 1914, uniforms, equipment, and tactics for the average soldiers had changed very little since the Franco-Prussian War of more than forty years before. Most of the troops had only recently put away their previous greatcoats and red trousers—as wearing such colorful trousers made men perfect targets on battlefields where machine-guns and artillery ruled, and those innovations in uniforms had only begun by the winter of 1914. In a way clothing had been poorly improved, and soldiers still didn't wear helmets yet. Such a useful safeguard was still to come for the infantrymen courageously fighting day by day across those battlefields where death could suddenly come from any direction. My standard military unit was the 34th Infantry Regiment (R.I.), which consisted of seventy officers along with three-thousand-four-hundred other ranks and was organized into three battalions. The young French soldier thought that, likely, their politicians hadn't ever witnessed any battles like these, because they hadn't done anything to try and stop them. Or maybe such terrible losses didn't have a particularly profound effect on their rulers' minds or on the Military's thinking either. Thousands of men like me, ill-equipped and poorly led, were marched off into some of the costliest battles France had ever fought. The Battle of the Frontiers and the fighting in 1914 alone cost their army more than three-hundred-thousand casualties. It had been said many times that the French Army of 1914 was prepared for war: whether it was prepared for a conflict like the Great War was another matter. France had a general conscription at the outbreak of war, with men being called-up to join the army at eighteen and, on average, completing a four-year term of service. After being discharged from the regular forces, they were immediately placed on the reserve until they were roughly thirty-three years of age, and then they joined the territorials, often staying in until they were in their late forties. It meant that the average Frenchman was committed to military service, in one way or another, for most of his adult life. This was requested under common circumstances, but this war was not one of those, certainly. I thought that, after that continuous standoff and all the casualties involved in the cruel fighting, both High Commands should have properly reviewed their offensive capabilities and decided upon what was to be their final, winning strategy. But things hadn't gone that way nor were they going to make strides towards a quick end in the near future, according to what soldiers—like me—saw in front of themselves every day. On the other hand, many older officers had been overheard during meals saying that to finally beat them a sort of new Great Offensive would properly be launched within a few months against the British and French sectors. This was because the last infiltration attempts tried by the Germans using small, maneuverable units especially designed not to incur into time-consuming battles at some strong-points—had completely failed so far, therefore more aggressive measures were sure to be used, sooner or later. Truth be told, I had ended up by feeling very dejected over the course of the last two nights in the trenches as the others had talked about what they had heard. It was especially frustrating to discover that the resistance I and my fellows put up every single day hadn't proved to be helpful or decisive at all. Instead it would just force our enemies to deploy a much more aggressive and bloody attack against our positions soon. Some of my fellow soldiers said they had already experienced such offensives, being in the rear, and they well-remembered what the few surviving ones among the advancing troops had told them: while the sheer scale of the assault was staggering, the fear most had was to be completely overrun, this way remaining entirely alone within a zone that was already held by the enemy, with predictable consequences. Of course, there was also a worse alternative, which was being shot—be it struck in the head or in the chest- and immediately falling to the ground during the first moments of the attack itself. That was a way to not worry anymore about the terrifying effects of such an offensive—but the only problem was that you were already dead at that moment, so you didn't need to worry about anything else at all, ever again. Only a few small arms had fired at the French positions during the first part of that day. Then, all of a sudden about four o'clock, the French were attacked with a massive artillery barrage. The shells were coming in, hitting the trees and exploding, so the defending soldiers—who were spread across that small portion of the front—were exposed to insidious tree burst shrapnel uninterruptedly raining down on them. After some time, before the French artillery started to retaliate against the Germans, sadly I was ordered to go out and cut apart some large branches that had been knocked down during the shelling. It was already getting dark, or perhaps it was just the smoke that persistently covered the entire area that concealed the feeble sun in the sky. The logs were to be placed over the foxholes of my fellow infantrymen deployed nearby to protect from further shell bursts. After leaving my main weapon behind and going about 100 yards towards the first carcasses of a few emaciated horses killed during the previous battle, I got about four logs cut when I was almost shot through the face by a German rifleman in the distance, unexpectedly. 'Damn!' angrily I told myself and immediately hit the ground, trying to stay away from any further danger. After immediately turning back to my hidden position, I fell flat on my face in about fifteen inches of snow. My only thought was, "When will it be finally over?" But my sad conclusion was, "Maybe never..." As another long bombing started again, everyone inside their strange, long trenches that stretched past my current position stayed in hiding—protecting their belongings and their guns. A powerful hit was heard very near to my hole, but it seemed not to have killed or wounded any of my fellow soldiers, as no cries or moans came from them. "Just a Weary Willie...," I told myself. That was a term our British allies commonly used for a German shell passing safely, albeit rather slowly, overhead. "Luckily no one got hurt..." was what I whispered—or so I thought anyway. But things proved to be very different. And unexpected, too... I really hated such Whizz-Bangs, which were high-velocity German shells—named for the noise of the fast flight and the subsequent explosion. I was highly-motivated to remain in hiding for the time being and so I started singing in my mind a familiar song from that period. As a matter of fact, I had heard the British troops repeating it for days, while they were together defending the area during the previous weeks. "I don't want to go in the trenches no more, where the whizz-bangs and shrapnel they whistle and roar..." and the rest of the popular music resounded in my head over and over again for some time. While paying attention to what was going around my position, the dense mist was very heavy and visibility only about twenty yards, so I thought about some things I already well knew: our High Command knew that the enemies wanted to capture the Creute terrain (also called La Caverne du Dragon, or Drachenhöhle, as the Germans had named it), that was the last remaining French stronghold in the area. So we had to be ready anytime, whatever the cost, as any minute could be the Zero-hour when a bloody attack would commence. Even though I was unable to know the whole story at present, from early 1915 onwards, German troops had invaded an underground quarry that dated back to the 16th century. During WWI, they had placed heavy weapons at each of the seven entrances, ready to breathe fire like a dragon. Soon, the caverns were said to have electricity, dormitories and even a cemetery. The walls of the chambers in there were also said to be adorned with drawings and messages that were wartime propaganda. Strange to say, but both the French and the Germans were going to live and fight some forty-nine feet below the ground in the near future, starting in 1917. That was what war on that front was going to be like in a matter of a few years: moving in close quarters and under very harsh conditions. But I couldn't imagine it at that moment, certainly, and really it didn't matter anyway. There were some single insidious shots more, over my light képi, and just after the noisy hit I had heard before—as soon as the smoke caused by the shells began to dissipate and I expected that the orders to attack the enemies could come very soon—my ears listened again for any voices, but I didn't hear the Germans speaking. The chilly part of me that didn't want to remain in here any longer was planning to slowly and quietly turn around and walk back safely to the low terraced lines of the French trenches, when something requiring my attention appeared, and I thought I had seen some movements within that unnatural mist. Then my eyes saw a fellow ally—he was British given his uniform, even though he didn't presently wear the characteristic stiffened peak cap that all the British soldiers usually wore. He walked with a very pale look on his face, was moving at a very slow pace, and seemed to be lost. The fair-haired tall man had the appearance of somebody that truly lacked a freewill. Maybe the last hit had wounded him in some way or he was just confused and unable to reason clearly.... But there was something else that looked very strange about him, at least according to my thoughts: he seemed to be incapable of speech, but tended to make moaning and some very unusual guttural sounds, which was increasingly strange. But another detail made everything about that ally stranger and stranger: his very pale skin displayed visible signs of desiccation, decay and emaciation—and the expressionless, empty face was really frightening me now. Then the British soldier started sniffing the air around him and, as soon as another French infantryman of the 34th appeared nearby, emerging from the same smoke that was slowly dissipating, that one immediately turned to him and started running after the soldier in an unexpected way. It didn't take him too long to catch up and as he came nearer he grabbed him—yes, it was exactly what he did—all of a sudden, his mouth moved feverishly toward the French soldier who was caught by surprise and he didn't react on time. Soon after, the British soldier's teeth started eating the infantryman's skin, piercing his body as if that man was the main course of a tasty dinner. Unbelievable, by any means! Apart from the complete unreality of the scene, the British soldier seemed to display an increased strength relative to normal humans, as if it had been set free due to the removal of normal neurological limits of muscle strength. And he didn't stop, he kept devouring the fellow French soldier's body! It was just as if an insatiable and endless desire to consume a living individual had become his only motive for existence! I thought that I surely had to do something in order to stop all that, as I had to help my fellow infantryman, who was from the same military regiment I was. But what could I try? Then I saw before my own eyes that the cruel scene was still going on, and it was also becoming fiercer and fiercer, as the attacker was removing parts from the arms and the chest of his poor prey. So I made up my mind. Immediately I fired a shot, then another against the madman assaulting the Frenchman, hoping that the Englishman would cease his senseless actions finally. But nothing happened... there was no effect! "What the hell...? What is going on...?" I silently asked himself, while a sort of desperation started growing in my mind. Why hadn't two shots been enough to wound the British soldier? I wondered about that, but I didn't have any explanation. The attacker didn't seem to have taken any offense at my shooting at him, nor was he in pain. He wasn't even crying, in spite of me targeting his chest, and that was really unbelievable! What man could not be affected at all by a fusil a répétition hitting him directly in the chest? And now, what could I do? Where were Le Service de la Santé and its capable pharmacies and infirmaries when you most needed them? Why were there no superior officers around to tell me what exactly to do? Then, another strange figure appeared nearby, coming out of the same smoke that was now very feeble and started quickly disappearing from the area. It was very easy to spot him and recognize his uniform, as it was German! But he didn't wear the outfit commonly used by the enemy for a frontal assault, as he looked to be a very dapper artilleryman, wearing riding boots, which were taller and of thicker leather than the common infantryman's jack boot, while his helmet cover didn't fit particularly well. He also had a three-section leather ammo pouch on his belt, a typical pistolet automatique P 08 dangling in a harmless way from his waist, and he was walking at a very slow pace too. Because he didn't stand upright, with straight legs and back, as common men usually did, the German seemed to be affected by a serious restriction in his muscle control, forcing him to move with an awkward shamble. His overall posture wasn't right, for sure, as he had knees and ankles which were bent at awkward angles, with a prominent lean to one side. His movements were becoming increasingly irregular, as he walked on. I didn't have any difficulty recognizing that his face and his skin displayed the same strange signs the previous British soldier had, which only made me even more afraid of the whole damn situation that was going on. Maybe some new, strange, and terrible weapon was at work in that place and I was in the middle of that zone of unknown operations! I had already heard of those first tries from the enemy and his own troops, too. I had heard how both sides had recently put into practice the use of gas and other deadly substances on the battlefields—but I had never witnessed such a terrible thing for myself, of course. And I wished I never had with all my heart, of course... As the British soldier seemed to have completed his bloody meal and left the few remains of the dead body of the unfortunate French soldier on the snowy terrain, the German approached, moving faster than before, just as if his nose had sensed something tasty in the air as well. As soon as he got to the corpse, he started licking the blood that begrimed the cold ground and then tried to satisfy his hunger by eating the few body parts still at his feet. Then, once those monstrous actions were over, he rose to his feet and stared at the other being who was nearby in an inexpressive way, without speaking. From his mouth only a strange moaning and some guttural sounds came out, exactly the same as the British soldier. The two didn't attack each other, as if they were of a common alliance, in a way. But they were enemies, in reality, the first one being British and the other one a German! What was happening in there? Maybe they were spies, or traitors. But I immediately dropped that thought, as I had never seen spies eating other combatants nor individuals being hungry enough to devour corpses on the ground, and I didn't think they could be from somewhere else in the world, after all... There was a sort of brief, strange silence, while the seemingly empty eyes of the two strange men looked at each other, then something else happened. In fact, it was at that point that another French infantryman reached the same place, his uniform having some bloodstains on it. While he moved along he kept his right hand on his opposite arm, as if it had been hit and was wounded now, and he wanted to protect that part of his body. His approach was immediately noticed by the two pale figures who, almost in accordance, turned their heads to him and used their noses to savour the blood smell in the air, along with the reddish drops that were falling behind him on the white cover of the battlefield. Then they both moved together against the newcomer and tried to hurriedly reach him in order to accomplish their evil task. What surprised me the most was that the strange pale British soldier seemed to be acting in complete accordance—or at least in silent agreement— with the German artilleryman who was next to him. The two appeared to be a couple of very unusual individuals, as their weird faces and their overall features didn't display any signs of intelligence. Everything about them clearly revealed that they weren't completely right in the head. On the contrary, those two soldiers looked like two madmen, without reasoning, with no ties to this world, at least not any longer. Right then they didn't even notice each other as both of them kept moving toward the new soldier, that fellow soldier of theirs, in order to attack him. British soldiers and Germans working together? That was really incredible; certainly something unexpected and unexplainable was happening in that place. Then my attentive though incredulous eyes saw other people advancing at a very cautious pace, wearing huge gas masks: they might have been Germans but I wasn't sure at all, given their strange outfits. At least they weren't dressed in any uniform that I was acquainted with. "What is going on?" being already very frightened, my mind wondered. Then, suddenly, five, no, six other figures came out of the faint haze and all of them wore wide chestnut-colored protective suits. Immediately I recognized the suits now as the clothing scientists wore to prevent themselves from coming into contact with deadly liquids or contagious diseases. They reached the two pale soldiers who were still attacking the poor French infantrymen. They raised their hands and the heavy though thin metallic machines they had with them sent out a long controllable stream of fire. This flame was projected at an incredibly high rate of speed from those mechanical devices, causing the incineration of those who were their distant targets. The thing that most surprised me at that moment was that they didn't die at once, as their movements continued even after the huge flames had engulfed their arms and legs. In fact, they didn't stop trying to move and walk until other men in suits came nearer and started cutting their burnt bodies in half using swords and other huge white weapons. They then continued to repeat this incredible process, over and over again. They didn't stop until there were only little pieces on the ground out of what once had been two living soldiers, formerly fighting on opposing sides. I didn't have enough time to look at the whole scene, as another powerful blast was heard not too far from where I lay, and a lot of heavy smoke started filling the area again—so I kept myself well hidden in my hole. When it was finally over, all the men in suits seemed to have disappeared and not a single part of those cut bodies was still visible on the terrain, just as if they had never truly been there. Only the blood on the snow revealed that something terrible had occurred in that place, but all the rest of the evidence had been already removed and there were no other signs of what I had seen, or of what I thought my eyes truly had witnessed that day... For a long time, during the many terrible weeks of war that followed those unbelievable events, I wondered if what I had seen along the front was just a figment of my imagination, after all. Perhaps I had simply become mad in some way.... I also decided not to tell anyone for several years, until one morning, when I was in my 100s, finally I reported it to a journalist who was searching for fresh, strange material about the war—interesting though unusual stories from the few surviving veterans of WWI, for a TV documentary that was still in the planning stages. What I, a former infantryman of the 34th Régiment d'Infantrie, told him really amazed the reporter, but what surprised me was that I had finally found a way to reveal to somebody else what I had witnessed that day, without fearing that I would be considered a madman! Probably the knowledge that my life was almost over once and for all helped me to make that decision. But I myself, Claude, was well aware that the story appeared deeply incredulous to my own ears while I was telling it to the reporter—the tale that nobody else had ever heard before. Just a few days after the strange events occurred at the front, four generals of the Central Powers were lined-up along a wall and were staring in silence at the events that were happening in front of them. Past the wall was a long window that let them watch the lab on the other side, where two tall physicians were handling a weird emaciated man—or better, a pale moving corpse—tied with strong chains that didn't allow him to move too far. The worried look on their faces showed that the minds of all the high-ranking individuals in there were troubled, and they had many doubts about what to say or what to think after seeing all that. The first physician, a slim blonde-haired Bulgarian of about 50 who led the medical team working in the lab, exited the main metallic door, and the tallest among the generals approached him. This was a middle-aged German with a traditional gold emblem on his typical field-gray uniform collar. He looked intensely at the doctor's bearded face where two tired blue eyes stood. "Anything new?" were his plain words, expressed in a low tone. "No, sir" the other replied. "So, you don't know yet what caused such a thing to happen..." "Well, we're not entirely sure. Maybe it was simply that the gases we deployed during the battle weren't mixed correctly. Or perhaps some substances were added afterwards and they all reacted together in a weird, unexpected way." "But what are we dealing with, in reality?" intervened a second general, a highly decorated Austrian, with two dark eyes on a strangely pleated old face with a light beard. At that point, the blonde physician frowned. "Apparently, the victims appear to be creatures connected to some fabled, bizarre practices that are in use among the citizens of the Caribbean islands—at least according to common legends that local people there believe in. They call the men turned into such living carcasses—like the moving corpse we have tied down here in our lab— 'zombie', or something like that..." "So how can they be here, and not in the Caribbean?" the first German general asked the man of science. "And how can they be real, if we are just talking about legends?" the Austrian insisted, with two vivid, inquiring eyes that stood out from his exhausted features. "Well, there is someone back at Headquarters that also suggested it might have been caused by a form of sorcery at work on the battleground." The other high-ranking commander stared at the physician in return with a hard look. "But you don't think that, of course..." "No, sir, of course not." "So, what is it? Why did it happen?" "Apparently the poisonous gas our units used during the test had some very strange effects on victims on both sides. It was an unexpected result, undoubtedly. It was just luck for our troops that some members of our medical team were already wearing their protective suits and masks in case the artillery malfunctioned. "So, is this the only explanation you can give us about all that?" "Yes, sir, it doesn't seem to have affected anyone else at the moment... but we're still examining every variable that could have affected the subjects." "Any other details...?" "Some of the human features of the few victims we retrieved and we were able to bring to our labs for confinement—according to further studies—seemed to be very different, at first glance, and the natural wear and tear made the face almost a dead giveaway. Their eyes were filled with a white substance, partly obscuring their pupils, even though it didn't detract from their sense of sight. In addition, because they appeared to have lost all regenerative abilities, any damage to their face or skin remained permanent, along with any cut or bruise they suffered. Generally, those 'zombies'..." there was a pause as the bearded man of science pronounced that term and a heavy silence fell on the whole room ".... in these situations looked like a slow, lumbering and unintelligent kind, but after a while..." "Yes? Go on, please..." insisted the third one, a bulky Turkish individual who looked older than 60, in a characteristic tunic with tri-pointed pockets whose Red General Staff officer's collar clearly indicated his rank. "A sort of hunger, for meat or fresh blood of other living creatures moving in the vicinity, especially of men and women, began tormenting them, becoming an obsession. That bizarre need completely seized their mind, or what was still left of it..." the physician added, being a bit embarrassed. "We're still checking out how this thing progresses, and we have some other volunteers to test." "What are you saying?" the first German general objected at once. "Stop it, immediately!" the fourth high-ranking individual ordered. "We can't handle this thing. How do you plan to put an end to their existence after creating others like that one?" "As our medical team discovered at the time of the unexpected accident, the living carcasses can't be killed or controlled, but their body can be cut into little pieces, so that the remains are not a danger to anyone, even though they keep moving awkwardly." "But you can't really reverse the process, once the gas reaches them..." "No, and we still don't know why," the physician admitted, lowering his eyes. "Did you find any way to kill them? Cutting their head and their arms off perhaps?" the Austrian commander asked. "Not yet, sir" the physician said. "Actually, it seems that there is a sort of neural connection that continues even after the death of the common life functions of the subject. Most organs appear to keep working even when you remove the heart—thanks to some unknown means..." "So, why would you do more testing on other people? Why? It's not something we are looking for, this is not the weapon we need to win this war!" the third general asked the leader of the research team. "Headquarters ordered us to keep researching for a while, but they also told us to wait for your final evaluations and act according to what you decide, certainly." "Any other important facts you need to give us, before we make our decision?" "Well, there is something else that is interesting," the man of science said. "Reports indicated that some British soldiers affected by the poisonous substance started acting as one with our infected troops." "What? Please, tell us what you mean, specifically," the tallest general cried out. The physician nodded. "That's true. The victims seemed to be cooperating, in some ways, just as if they were all parts of the body perhaps. And they hunted for human prey together, to find and eat..." "Some of our soldiers worked together with our enemies! During the war? This thing must not be repeated..." two generals stated together almost in a single voice. "What do think we should do now? We could just seal them up somewhere, and keep studying their reactions and behavior..." "No way! Just imagine if this outcome would spread across the battlefields. Just make them disappear, immediately!" the first general stated. "And no one must know anything about it," another one added. "We will follow your orders, sirs!" the physician nodded. After that very delicate matter was decidedly resolved and put aside, the generals talked to each other for some time in rapid conversation. Then the German approached the physician and stared at him with an intense look on his face. "We thought you had something else to show us today... something that will help out our war!" The Bulgarian immediately understood. "Yes, of course, sir. I can show you the great results we got just recently thanks to another useful substance our technicians have been working on. Please, follow me..." and that being said, he pointed to a long tunnel leading to the west wing of the building they were in. After a short walk, the group arrived at another area of the structure and they stopped as the physician gestured to them. He then showed them another window along the wall, with a lone man on the other side, wearing only a long robe with a dejected look on his face. "There is this promising gas we are developing, which appears to be what we just need at present. The original substance is colorless, viscous liquid at room temperature. When used in other forms, such as warfare agents, it appears yellowish in color and has a strange odor resembling some rotting plants." "So, please proceed..." the tallest general said. "Now, please, just look at it..." the physician said. As the man reached a button, he pressed it and immediately a yellowish substance started entering the small room, soon filling it almost entirely. As the first effects were noticed, the prisoner in the room tried to move to the door, that was locked of course, and then he started crying, beating against the window. It was obvious he was doing his best to break it or to create a way out, a safe escape to life.... But all his movements proved futile. While the group on the other side of the window, the safe side, watched the cruel scene, some terrible minutes went on. And on... The skin of the human target of that gas blistered, his eyes became very sore and then he began to vomit. Such a weapon seemed to be able to cause internal and external bleeding and attacked the bronchial tubes, stripping off the mucous membrane. This proved to be extremely painful, as the poor man who tried to stand to his feet appeared to be constantly fighting for breath. His cries became strange whispers, saying that his mouth was closing against his will. When all was accomplished and the test ended with the death of the prisoner, there were some words of appreciation among the high-ranking men. And their features appeared much more relaxed and very glad now. "Better," the Turkish general added, while a large sneer appeared on his furrowed face. "Really, that is much better..." The physician explained, "This is the most effective gas we have found so far. Our technicians are going to call it mustard-gas at last, in colloquial language..." "Finally, we are on the right track," the German commander stated, happily impressed. "This is a sustainable weapon. And please, let's have no more of those creatures who are half-living and half-dead at the same time!" the Austrian general smiled, satisfied. ⁂ [ THE ALWAYS WATCHING EYE by Gary Power ] "Why do bad people make such good books, Uncle?" Edmund Frankes looked up from his writing desk at the far end of the grand library and considered his niece's words. "Perhaps because the colourful way they lead their lives?" he suggested. "Hmmm," she mused, ".... maybe." Lilith, perched on a wide ledge, gazed distantly through the leaded light windows down onto the sprawling landscaped garden below. A light mist, like a vaporous sea washed over the rambling lawn and lapped gently against the towering walls of Cedar Lodge. In her imagination, the gothic mansion was an island lost in an ocean of clouds drifting above a world of insufferable ignorance and moral corruption. She rested her palm on the hefty tome by her side. The sinewy cover was clammy and shivered beneath her warm flesh. A solitary eye stared back, weeping and bloodshot. The pages were cold and the print fading as though being drawn from the page. From a corner that had been bumped there oozed a fine trickle of blood. "It's been too long; the books are ailing and the curator's not at all happy. The reading room is such a sad place to be at the moment, and it smells in there too, like something's died." Lilith glanced anxiously towards the solid oak door of the anteroom to Edmund's left. Somewhere beyond came the sound of restless movement followed by a resonant growl. "Have patience, Lilith. Matters are in hand; I believe we've found a perfect specimen. You'll have your book soon, and then the curator will be happy again." Lilith, now in her twenties but possessed of childish exuberance, turned her haunted face in his direction and stared through silvery eyes. She looked so fragile, like a porcelain doll. If she fell, Edmund feared she would shatter into a million pieces. Despite the chill air, she was dressed in a gown so sheer that it left little to the imagination. He was forever warning her that she'd catch her death roaming the draughty corridors if she didn't wear clothing that was more substantial, and a little more appropriate. But Lilith was strong-willed and quite whimsical in her ways, just like her mother, an eccentric and free-spirited woman of French descent. "Deshabille... deshabille!" she would shriek, much to her Uncle's bemusement. "What will the book be, uncle? Something savage and cruel perhaps? Do you have any idea yet? Surely you must." The news brought life and colour to her sullen face and infused the gloomy room with incandescent light. "I think this time it will be an anthology, or portmanteau if you like. A collection of stories dredged from the depths of mortal despair. It will be our darkest work yet. I have a feeling the curator will be very happy with this one." Evan Gore wasn't well. His thoughts were muddled and his emotions numb. Cigarettes and alcohol did little to abate his declining health but at least they tempered his festering contempt for the world. He'd not been feeling himself ever since he'd moved into an allegedly haunted apartment, which was embarrassing, because Evan was also a notorious sceptic of the paranormal. His sneering attitude towards occult matters had been the cause of many a heated television debate. The tabloids thrived on his outspoken ways and cynical stance. His subsequent employment as an overpaid chat show host in which he ruthlessly mocked guests and their supernatural experiences made him an enviably rich man. He celebrated his success by purchasing an apartment from one of London's most prestigious estate agents, Darkwood Estates of Mayfair. The deal for 3 Dakota House was completed live on his TV show when he famously declared that no building is inherently evil. The apartment had gained historical notoriety when the previous owner, Barnaby Wright FRSC, an eminent surgeon, invited four of his students for an evening of light-hearted banter—and then drugged and slaughtered them. The scale of depravity exacted within those walls transcended the most extreme boundaries of human degradation, to the extent that there were even those who considered it to be the work of a deranged genius. Having forced entry into the apartment, four bodies were discovered, two males, two females, stripped naked and bizarrely posed at a table as though in the midst of a joyful dinner party. Their dismembered limbs and heads had been randomly sown back together into obscene ragdoll creations of the human form. Their eyes had been gouged and in each empty socket had been placed a single rose, alternately white and red. Barnaby Wright was found sitting upright in his bed, feasting on a platter of eyes. Calmly, he told the police that they'd been gently sautéed to preserve their texture and flavour, the liquid residue being deglazed to make a piquant sauce. "The roses were a personal touch," he explained as they pulled him from the bed— "white as a representation of purity and red as a symbol of love." And then, with teeth bared he bit on one of the glistening orbs, rupturing the eyeball and sending a spray of vitreous fluid into the face of a young police officer. He explained that his work, entitled "the art of anatomy," was a celebration of the human form and that it signified unity and strength. "I was going to put it on Instagram," he remarked nonchalantly to his incredulous entourage. Barnaby Wright never came to trial. He slit his own throat in the back of the police car using a concealed razor and died haemorrhaging blood into the face of the same policeman that he'd covered in eyeball fluid. Evan's introduction to the supernatural world was, at first, a subtle affair: nocturnal scraping sounds from beneath uneven floorboards; fragrant breezes in closed rooms; sobbing cries that lingered hauntingly in the air. His only confidant was Victor, an ageing concierge who seemed more interested in poring over lurid old paperbacks, the kind with semi clad women in peril on the cover and titles like, "She Paid in Flesh," or, "Born for Sin." Victor was a simple man, happy to listen to Evan bantering on without paying the slightest attention, and that suited Evan fine. While unsettled by the strange goings on, Evan still managed to convince himself that there was a rational explanation... until things became impossible to talk away. He began to catch sight of nefarious creatures moving about the flat. The glimpses were fleeting and usually from the periphery of his vision. The ephemeral manifestations came in three forms; one a wolf-like she-beast and another, by its sleekness and agility, more like a leopard or panther. The last gave him most reason for concern; a hunched troglodyte beast that watched from the darkest shadows. Its eyes burned in the gloom and its fetid breath made him gag. Usually he would see it in waking moments; it was as though the beast appeared only in times of vulnerability—when consciousness returned after heavy sleep, drunken binges, or coke-fuelled orgies. There were two explanations, he told Victor who, because he was ensconced in his latest book, D for Delinquent, managed only a conciliatory glance. The first was that the apartment was indeed haunted and, by the nature of the manifestations, possibly a gateway to hell. The other was that he was simply going mad. Victor's advice was to live with his ghostly intruders; better that than suffer the indignity of being branded a lunatic or even worse, a hypocrite. The biggest irony was... Evan came to realise that he was clairvoyant as well. Soon after the haunting started, he began to hear voices. One in particular took to the fore—the gritty tones of a man by the name of Harry Speirs—a discarnate spirit who quickly became Evan's personal guide to the "other side." Harry had fought on the Western front during the 1914-18 war. Injured twice, he eventually returned to the "frightfulness" at Fleurbaix as a war correspondent. He was killed in action after volunteering himself to report on a night-time raid. Married for barely a year and with a baby daughter back home in Reading, Harry's tortured spirit refused to let go of its mortal ties. What particularly amused Evan though was the way Harry would growl "allo guvn'or" whenever he wanted to make his presence felt. Communicating with an ethereal lodger in his head wasn't something that came easily to Evan: the most obvious being, should he think a reply or speak it? Thinking it seemed a bit hit and miss; speaking aloud was more reliable but would appear odd in social situations, unless your name was Derek Acorah. What concerned him more though was just how much access Harry had to the thoughts in his head; some of them just lately had been a little... extreme. "I sees fings, Evan," Harry told Evan, "Stuff like you couldn't imagin'. Been savin' the best stories for you. Gonna put 'em in your head so's you can write 'em down. Always wanted to write stories, I did. Now I can do it through you. Make you a mint it will. Nine Lives, we'll call it." "Why nine?" asked Evan. Harry scoffed at that. "...'cause nine is the number of human discord. Cats 'ave nine lives and according to the Cabal, nine is the number of achievement. There's nine plains of the Chinese sky and the Greeks and Egyptians consider nine to be a sacred number. There's nine months of human gestation. Jesus snuffed it on the cross on the ninth hour an' then appeared to his disciples nine times after his resurrection. There's nine choruses of the Angels and accordin' to the Freemasons nine is the number of immortality. A stitch in time saves nine an' I'm sure you've been on cloud nine or gone the whole nine yards, Evan. Thrice and inverted it is the number of the beast, and in Dante's Inferno there's nine circles to Hell. You want more?" Evan raised his hand; he'd heard enough. He'd play along, for the moment. Eavesdropping on the dark side might even prove to be fun. "...the best thing is," growled Harry, "you're first story happened right here in this apartment when some surgeon geezer lost 'is nut an' fucked up a bunch o' young'uns." In order to dampen media interest and exploit his new project, Evan made it publicly known that he was taking a lengthy sabbatical. His television was consigned to a skip, newspapers cancelled, and mobile unceremoniously cremated in the basement furnace. For the price of a bottle of scotch and an endless supply of sleazy pulp fiction, Victor became his own personal firewall to the outside world. Harry helped Evan by bridging the intangible gap between life and death so that he might find himself more tales from beyond the grave. Consequently, the flat became a spiritual squat for those beleaguered souls trapped in a twilight world. Immersing himself in such dark matters drew the attention of less friendly entities. He wasn't frightened though; such malicious activity served only to strengthen and focus his resolve. His sexual appetite, fuelled by rapacious demons, became voracious. The frequent visits by escorts did not go unnoticed by the residents of Dakota House and his demands became quite extreme. Screams of ecstasy might well have been cries of agony, not that anyone seemed to care. As time passed so the nocturnal intrusions became even more menacing; furniture and ornaments hurled in Evan's direction became a daily occurrence. The incarnate visitors thrived on the shadowy darkness that surrounded him. Obscenities were whispered in his ear and the stink of things long since dead filled the air. What followed next though took him beyond the realm of the corporeal world and possibly to the edge of his own sanity. One night he was drawn from his bedroom by the sound of woeful crying emanating from the dining room. From the gloom of the doorway at the end of the hall he heard the brutal thud of what sounded like meat being chopped on a butcher's slab. Cautiously and with a racing heart, he approached the room, and by the flickering light of several ghostly candles saw four unclothed bodies slumped in chairs. A large man donning a surgeon's gown was standing behind the trembling figure of a young woman, hacking at her shoulder with a large knife. Apparently drugged and in a state of paralysis, the girl whimpered, but her tearful cries were those of one resigned to a dreadful fate. The man continued in frenzied fashion until, with a resounding crack her arm was wrenched free of its socket. "Welcome," uttered the surgeon calmly as he studied the dismembered limb, "come and wonder at my magnificent creations." The wretched souls sat about the table were barely alive. Smiling somewhat insanely, the surgeon moved on to one of his male victims and continued with his butchery. "I see your adventure has begun, Evan. Believe me it is a glorious descent. I'm quite envious of the journey that lies ahead of you. Remember this my friend; for you there is no more right or wrong. From now on you live by your own rules, not those imposed by conceited hypocrites." The surgeon hummed merrily as he continued his work. With one deft movement of a surgical saw he cut through the neck of his whimpering subject. The shrill whine of the motor drowned out all but the surgeon's demented laugh as he held the head aloft like a grotesque carnival lantern. With eyes still blinking and mouth contorted in silent scream, he turned his trophy so that it could see its own headless torso. "It has been proven that consciousness remains after decapitation, as with the guillotine for example. The severed head could still see from the bucket," he told Evan. "Under such circumstances, the brain continues to function for anywhere up to a minute." He chuckled. Far from being appalled, Evan found himself curiously aroused by the merciless slaughter. He had entered a world where desire was ruled by depravity, and he found it an exhilarating experience. That night, when his scalp began to itch... by the light of a candle... he parted his hair and saw... there, just a few inches above his right brow... letters, as though tattooed on his skin. And he found himself laughing like a man unhinged. In glorious fashion, his book had begun. Not just in his head but indelibly etched onto his flesh. No longer was he imprisoned by the human condition, for this was a transformation of the most profound kind. He celebrated the only way he knew—with bottles of vodka and copious amounts of cocaine snorted from the sweaty flesh of several hastily summoned working girls. Even by his own standards it was a marathon session of unrivalled debauchery and substance abuse. He had been crashed out in an armchair for several hours when he found himself roused by movement in the room. Upon waking he saw a man, quite possibly just another manifestation, standing before him. Evan was neither surprised nor shocked by his uninvited guest, but merely glanced at his watch and smiled as he gently drifted back into consciousness. "I was expecting some more young ladies," he declared wearily, "my appetite in that department of late has become quite voracious." "Sorry to spoil your plans," replied the well-spoken man. Evan chuckled at that. "I think I was going to do something bad to them." "I came just in time then." "Full marks for getting past Victor." "The old man on the door? He was fast asleep with a rather sordid looking book on his lap." Evan chuckled at that, too. "You seem familiar?" said Evan. "Edmund Frankes, proprietor of Cedar Lodge Publishing. Creator of fine, limited edition books of the dark arts. Our books are a form of embodiment of the printed word; we like to call them living books. And to answer your question, we met on your show; you might remember that you were rather critical of my publishing business. A load of airy-fairy bollocks, was your exact comment." Evan lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply and with a wry smile studied his mysterious visitor. "The thing is, I've heard that you intend to write a rather interesting collection of short stories. If that's so then Cedar Lodge would be the perfect retreat for you to create what I am sure is destined to become a unique and incredible document of the afterlife, and one that we would be proud to have in our esteemed collection." As far as Evan was aware, only Harry, his spirit guru, knew about the book, which intrigued him even more. "So, who's been blabbing and why so interested in me?" Edmund allowed himself an amused chuckle. The reason to him seemed obvious. "You are not exactly discrete, Mr. Gore. You, a renowned sceptic of all things supernatural, suddenly consider writing a book documenting genuine stories from beyond the grave. A man who used to inflict such vitriolic mockery on well-meaning people? It is what I believe is termed a U-turn." "Well, Edmund, it's certainly true that I used to be a cynical cunt. I'm just not quite so cynical these days, although deluded people living in cloud cuckoo land made my job an easy one, and I still believe that most of the guests on my show were exactly that." "...and therein lies the germ of a fascinating book." "...a fascinating book that might be better placed with the big boys?" declared Evan as he stubbed out his cigarette on the arm of his chair. Edmund considered his reply and moved to the window. Tapping once on the rain-spattered glass, he made a beckoning gesture and then returned to his chair. Several minutes later a young woman entered the room, her clothes drenched and clinging. She wasn't wearing a coat. Just a thin blouse and skin-tight leather trousers. Frankes shook his head in despair at Lilith's appearance. She was determined, it seemed, to catch her death of cold. But Lilith had studied her quarry and knew exactly what she was doing: an unfastened button and a tactical tease of flesh; a coy smile and decorous grin; and of course, the drama of a memorable entrance. She stood before Evan and rested the palm of her hand on the side of his face. Her stare, cold as her icy fingers, silenced him and sent a shudder through his body. She too shivered and then, with an expression of ecstasy on her bloodless face, uttered a blissful sigh. Evan saw another place in that sultry gaze, a chimerical land blissfully disengaged from the world for which he had so much contempt, and for a moment he experienced a lightness of being that was as euphoric as an ecstasy high. "What do you see?" she asked him. Evan sighed and stepped back so that he could focus on her face. "You know damned well," he told her. Her priggish grin said it all. "Take me there," he said. Kissing him gently on the cheek she whispered, ".... of course." Several days later Evan was collected by a burly chauffeur driving a midnight blue Bentley Continental. The limousine slipped silently into the London traffic to the accompaniment of Chopin's Nocturnes. On the backseat in an ice bucket was a perfectly chilled bottle of Louis Roederer: 2000 Cristal Rosé, a champagne flute and an accompanying note. "Evan, allow me this divinely decadent way to welcome you to our world. Enjoy your journey and your passage to revelation. Yours cordially, Edmund Frankes." There was also a small book that was surprisingly heavy. It was warm and trembled in his hands, as though it was alive. The inside front sheet was inscribed: One of our early chapbooks to make your journey a little more fun. Lilith xx. "...mad tart," laughed Evan as he dropped the book on his lap and opened the Champagne. "So where is Cedar Lodge?" he called to the chauffeur. The large man shrugged his shoulders and grunted a reply in what sounded like a foreign language. Reluctant to pursue what would obviously be a strained conversation, he slumped back into the sumptuous leather seat and let the swirling music wash over him like a warm, intoxicating breeze. With the alcohol starting to take effect, he opened the book, started to read, and promptly fell asleep. He was rudely woken when the limo stopped on a deserted country road and, in a confused and compliant state, Evan was transferred to another vehicle. The wide grit road was eerily still and silent, the only movement being when a thick mist began to seep through the trees and envelop them as though aware of their presence. For Evan, the whole incident felt quite surreal and within minutes of being settled in the carriage he found himself once again overwhelmed by lassitude. Torrential rain hammering against the carriage glass and a howling wind, like a banshee cry screaming in his ears, eventually roused him. He woke in a cold sweat, sprawled across the extravagant velvet upholstery of a carriage drawn by four furiously charging horses. A coachman, who sat on a bench to the fore of the vehicle, was whipping the poor beasts like a man possessed. They were hurtling through a scorched landscape where charcoaled trees rose from the black earth like the charred skeletons of cremated creatures. Clouds, blacker and more oppressive than any he had ever seen churned restlessly across a blood red sky. It was an insane scenario and although very "real," he couldn't help wondering if he was hallucinating. Seeing the silhouettes of rampaging beasts, raised on muscular haunches and roaming the surrounding woodland, chilled him to the core. Some were running and following the passage of the carriage, others just watched from the cover of the trees, piercing the darkness with fiery eyes. The horses galloped frantically, urged on by the coachman who was whipping them with a manic ferocity and inflicting raw lacerations across their backs. With all his strength, Evan gripped the carriage door and strained to get a view from the open window. A violent jolt sent him sprawling backwards across the floor, causing him to strike the back of his head against the carriage door. He remained where he fell, dazed and wondering where the madness would take him next. The pounding of heavy hooves on the sodden earth grew louder, as did the gut-wrenching howls of the forest beasts. In a sudden fit of panic, Evan pulled himself up and leaned from the window as though about to jump out. The coachman caught glimpse of him and gesticulated madly to move back inside. "Get back in for God's sake, man... they'll have your head off in a second," he bawled. There was a look of utter terror in the man's eyes as he lashed first at the horses and then at the massing monstrosities that were closing in on them. Evan retreated just as one of the beasts leapt onto the side of the carriage and made a frenzied attempt to force its way in. He found himself confronted by the bloodshot eyes and flaring nostrils of a slavering beast. Claws, like razor-sharp talons that could slice easily through human flesh, gripped tightly, leaving deep furrows in the wood. The creature glared back and let out a hellish howl. Behind it, as though drawn by its rallying cry, a legion of similar quadrupeds swarmed forth from the depths of the woodland. Bringing the heel of his boot hard down on the creature's snout, Evan sent it reeling back into the savage wilderness, but not before it managed to inflict a deep gash in his left ankle. In its place others followed and the carriage was soon shadowed either side by a baying horde of the rampaging beasts. The coach driver cracked his whip in an attempt to hold the hellish monstrosities at bay, but to little effect. In a fit of desperation, he lashed mercilessly at the horses instead and cheered when suddenly, the carriage emerged from the forest and onto an open road. The beasts remained where they were, apparently reluctant to leave the cover of the forest. Only when the movement of the carriage had slowed to a more sedated pace did Evan look from the window. With the forest far behind, they had ascended onto an elevated track that took them over a barren, swampy wasteland. In the distance were several pinpoints of light cast against a dark, foreboding sky. It seemed this was to be their destination. As they neared what looked to be a large building of gothic design, the horses, exhausted and with steam rising from their sweat-drenched bodies, slowed to a gentle canter. "Do you enter this place of your own free will, Mr. Gore?" called the coachman as they approached the gated entrance to the imposing mansion. Pulling the carriage up to a stop, he waited for an answer. The question, although delivered with a degree of thespian dramatics, was apparently a serious one. Perplexed, amused, and certainly not wanting to return through the forest, Evan replied emphatically that he was. The horses reared and neighed, reluctant to enter the grounds but a harsh whip to their bleeding rumps was enough encouragement to set them on their way. They passed beneath an arched wrought iron banner suspended between two ivy clad pillars on top of which oil fires furiously burned. It was just after they had passed through the gates that Evan allowed himself a giggle of irony. "Cedar...," he muttered to himself. It wasn't Cedar at all. The iron letters spelled the word SEDAH as though in reflection. Observed from within the grounds it read HADES. "Hades Publishing," he mused with a chuckle. Frankes, it seemed, had a wickedly impious sense of humour. "Welcome to Hell," Evan said to himself as they passed beneath the sinister sign and pulled up to the entrance of a grandiose gothic mansion. It was at that point that he noticed on the floor the decomposed remains of Lilith's chapbook. The cover was shrivelled and the pages fast becoming a putrefied mess. It was as though the book had become a withered corpse. The coachman opened the door and beckoned him from the carriage, never once entering into conversation or looking him in the eye. As he lifted a small case from a wooden trunk at the rear of the carriage, and with darkness descending, he broke the uncomfortable silence and imparted a bit of friendly advice. "I recommend haste, sir; it is far from safe out here after night falls." With a nod that he would, Evan turned his attention to the imposing building. A thick mist drifted down from the roof, descending like a ghostly veil and settling in folds at his feet. Suddenly feeling quite exhausted he stepped through the vaporous curtain and into a spacious entrance porch. The coachman seemed reluctant to follow and was, by his restive disposition, anxious to leave. With his eyes fixed steadfastly on the upper floors of the building the man climbed back onto his seat and took up the reigns. The horses stamped and snorted impatiently. What evil could the mansion contain that was scarier than returning through the forest? wondered Evan. With a whip crack lash of his whip the horses reared and the carriage trundled off into an enveloping mist, and for the first time, as Evan banged his fist on the sturdy front door, he wondered just what he'd got himself in to. The door creaked on its hinges and a young woman with lustrous, dark hair, ashen skin and a sombre manner ushered Evan in. It was a moment before he recognised her as Lilith, the quaint young lady that he'd met back in his apartment with Edmund Frankes. She seemed different somehow, as though nervous of him, not the confident, sultry maiden who had so cunningly seduced him into leaving his apartment. At first glance, she was a delicate creature but behind those eyes, there was a tough and resilient woman. The way she stared reached within... like inquisitive fingers probing and penetrating his mind. "You've hurt your ankle," she said, "We'll have to get that seen to. After all, we don't want any blemishes on that lovely skin of yours, do we?" Leading the way, she gave him brief instruction as to his stay, warning that to wander beyond the perimeters of the grounds would be a foolish and very dangerous thing to do. He couldn't help but think it sounded like a challenge. Meal times were announced by the resonant jangling of a bell but that evening, as an exception, food would be brought to him in an hour's time. Having shown him the dining room and library she took him to his bedroom on the second floor and sat next to him on the bed. Gazing deeply into his eyes, she told him: "Beware of the Demon Bride; she wanders these corridors at night. She seduces men with her beauty and steals their souls with a kiss that sends fatal fire into their veins." Evan couldn't help but wonder just where the line between fantasy and reality existed in her peculiar mind. With stern expression, and probably a little too patronisingly, he said that he'd met women like that before but nevertheless, he would heed her words. His bedroom was a creaky-floored, oak-panelled room dominated by a four-poster bed. The décor was drab, the furnishings dark and the air tainted by the damp stench of mildew. Not quite the opulent interior he'd been expecting. On his way to the bedroom he saw that there were others present, but they were timid things, avoiding eye contact and maintaining their distance. There was something quite feral about the way they used shadows and dark corners from which to make their observations. According to Lilith their role was to maintain the running of the sprawling lodge. To be seen and not heard. For reasons he couldn't quite understand, Evan felt immediately at home. Stepping across the threshold had been like a homecoming. From the moment he entered the building it was as though the outside world simply ceased to exist. Memories of his recent past faded and trying to remember things took more effort than it should, not that it bothered him. Rules and regulations had no part in his life anymore, and nor did social etiquette. Here he would allow Harry's stories to flow through his mind and commit them to permanence. For the first few days he slipped comfortably into a daily routine. No more itching or aching in his back. There were no alcohol or drugs, and yet he was happier than he'd ever been. Words and letters continued to appear randomly on his body, but far from being concerned he was ecstatic and wore them proudly. By night howling winds and torrential rain would assault the fragile panes. Evan would bury himself beneath the lavish quilt and there he would listen to the ferocity of the raging storm with childish wonderment. When the storm made sleeping impossible he would sit upright with the bedding wrapped tightly about his shoulders and watch ferocious lightning storms as they lit up the savage land beyond the perimeters of the grounds. On occasion in the dead of night, through a moonlit gap beneath the door, he would catch glimpse of the movement of bizarre nocturnal creatures apparently attracted by his insomnia. The long shadows of beasts with spidery limbs and snapping claws would reach into the room. Sometimes he would hear mimicked voices of Lilith or Edmund Frankes attempting to lure him out. At other times the sound of ribald women making carnal suggestions that surpassed even his own debauch excesses would tease him, pound his door... and he would find himself quite tempted to investigate. One night, during a particularly violent thunderstorm, he woke to find Lilith in his bed. She slept in his arms and they fell into each other's dreams. By dawn's early light she was gone, and Evan was a spent man. He remembered asking who she was talking of when she had said, "they walk in darkness." She told him, ".... the people from the books of course." From that moment on he found himself inexplicably drawn to the vast library and would spend hours poring over the intriguing volumes there. He would sit in the same place, always facing the window so that he could gaze at the desolate beauty of the sprawling grounds and let his thoughts drift there. Beyond the farthest fringes of the grounds he observed the forest through which he had travelled. Beyond that there existed nothing more than a hellish black void that instilled in him an overwhelming sense of desolation. Evan would use the precious daylight hours to explore the extensive grounds; one particular day he discovered a lake on the far side of which was a memorial tower in the midst of an arboretum. Gorse bushes with spiked thorns on which were impaled the bodies of small birds and field mice guarded access to the tower. To the rear of the lodge was a small graveyard for which he developed a particularly melancholic fascination. The gravestones were sculptured in the fashion of book covers and the inscriptions described those buried beneath as their authors. Evan resigned himself to a simple daily routine with no agenda except for his indulgence in books and gathering morbid tales in his head. It suddenly occurred to him that since leaving his flat he had been abandoned by Harry Speirs. But that was of no consequence, and as the days passed by, so recollections of his former life became faded memories. Evan woke unusually early one morning to find the door to his room wide open. There was a light spattering of rain against his window and a gentle rush of wind whistling about the frames. The air was crisp and he felt refreshed, his head clearer than it had been for a long time. His clothes had been taken and in their place what appeared to be a monk's robe had been left. Having had a breakfast of fresh coffee, oak smoked kippers and toast that had been left on the dresser, he made his way to the library as instructed. The spacious corridors were unusually quiet and blissfully unthreatening by day. When he reached the library, he found Lilith waiting for him. She was more attentive than usual as though excited by something. Taking him by the hand, she guided him deeper into the library, every now and then glancing back with a mischievous grin on her face. Eventually they reached the locked door of the antechamber and in silence... they waited. Somewhere beyond the hefty portal there came the sound of restless movement. A fluttering at first, like a pigeon trapped in a small room, and then a stomping of feet and scraping of nails on a wooden floor. Someone or something on the other side was aware, apparently, that Evan was there. Playfully, Lilith pushed him forwards and the movement became more frantic followed by the sound of pounding on the door, but with such violence that Evan took a step back. Lilith laughed and, anxiously, Evan laughed with her. "Turn the handle," she told him. He did as she said, standing back as the dark space within sucked at the warm air. The light was poor, but he could just about perceive movement in the background, like shadows cast against darkness. "Go in," she urged. Obediently, Evan took a few timid steps into the chamber. Within the anteroom; there was an incandescent radiance like the flicker of a candle, but without any source. And the warm air was tainted by an aroma that he likened to that of a cheap brothel which, sadly, he knew only too well. There was also a feeling of great space about the chamber. Not just large, but massive, as if he was outside. From the periphery of his vision he could see there were immense walls of book laden shelves that extended far into the murky depths. But there was also restless, quivering movement on those shelves and he began to wonder just what Edmund meant when he described them as living books back in his apartment. Set on a table before him was a large book that at first had the appearance of an antiquated bible. As he got closer he saw that the cover was striated with swollen veins that were gently throbbing. Even more disconcerting was what looked like the impression of small bones pressing against pliable skin. The mere act of touching the cover caused an explosion of images and words in his head. Stories within the living book were playing in his head and indulging him in a fantasy that was as real as the living, breathing world outside. Lilith pulled him away and turned his face towards her own. "Beautiful, isn't it?" she said excitedly ".... one of our early works. A little primitive, but always popular with our clients." Evan found it difficult to focus his eyes on her; her image was distorted like a shimmering mirage. Pulling gently at the buttons of her blouse and without once taking her flirtatious gaze from him, she took his hand and rested it back on the book. "Slower, this time," she told him, "I can see it's starting for you. Free your mind. Breath slowly, deeply, and you'll enjoy the experience so much more." The book beneath Evan's palm began to pound in time with his own racing pulse as Lilith continued to undress. "Read me," she said to him, "like a book." In the ambient light, he saw that Lilith's skin appeared to be mottled with bruises. But as she moved closer he noticed that the dark patches on her skin were in fact clusters of words. Beautifully inscribed prose covered every inch of her flesh. She turned slowly and brazenly, letting his gaze linger upon her. Her eyes guided him as did her fingers. She was a woman without shame, wallowing in his voyeuristic gaze as she explored the intimacy of her own body. But they were so much more than just words. They were images and sounds and odours. The woman was seducing him—that much was obvious; but there was something more, there was a look of iniquitous evil in the way she stared. She sucked at a finger and then traced it across his lips. Her saliva was sweet to taste, like a fine desert wine. He let it linger on his tongue, all the time watching her and wondering how this bizarre game would end. Lilith stepped away and in that fateful moment he saw that the writing had spread to his own body. Letters, like tiny insects, crawled over him, piercing the epidermis and burrowing and rooting into the deep layers of his skin. "Your skin is parchment and your blood is ink," said Lilith. "Your skin is parchment and your blood is ink," repeated the household workers as they emerged from the darkness that surrounded him. The stories that were in his head were being transcribed onto his body, slowly at first but as the metamorphosis progressed so the writing became frenzied and his skin fell into folds, rolling and crumpling onto the floor like a typewriter spewing out pages of living flesh. He thought he was hallucinating, like one of his acid trips in the good old days. At first he was quite euphoric, his eyes closed tightly as though in a state of ecstasy. But then the realization of what was happening hit him. "What's going on?" he cried, looking around frantically before bringing his petrified gaze back to rest on Lilith. "Help me, Lilith, please," he begged, "Stop this... this... stop this now!" Lilith stared back, unflustered by his appearance or his panic. "'ello, guv'nor," cackled a familiar voice. "It's your old mucka Harry Speirs 'ere again." But Harry's voice was outside Evan's head, not in it. Edmund Frankes moved into view with Harry's voice coming out of his mouth, like a living ventriloquist's dummy with rolling eyes and a manic stare. But it really was Harry's voice. It really was a dead man's voice coming from Edmund's gaping mouth with no articulation of his vocal cords or tongue. Evan stared in disbelief, his mind struggling to make sense of things. "Dear old, Harry Speirs," said Edmund having slipped back into his own dulcet tones, "One of our helpers from beyond the grave; his job's done now, he'll trouble you no more." Fast becoming a broken man, all Evan could manage was a whimpering, "Why are you doing this to me?" "A very good question, Mr. Gore. Firstly, I can assure you it's not personal," replied Frankes as though they were chatting over a leisurely pint. "Let me explain it this way. Committing words to paper has always been man's way of attaining a kind of immortality; and books are essentially a legacy of life, after death. At Cedar Publishing we have taken the process... a little further. I remember how you eloquently told me on your show that people like me were 'pissing away our lives.' Well now, Evan, you are experiencing first hand just how we—piss away our lives." Pausing for thought, Edmund moved closer and stared chillingly into Evan's eyes. "We take the publishing side of our business very seriously, Evan, and we do that very successfully. Here we commit our words not to paper or computer, but to flesh. Our clientele pays dearly to experience our books, and you are going to bring fresh blood to our esteemed collection. Interacting with our books is a particularly intimate experience, as you well know. The curator will be very pleased with our latest acquisition, and we love nothing more than to make our curator happy. And you get immortality in the bargain, so I guess it's win, win." Evan tried to move but beneath the ever-expanding weight of skin and blubber all he could do was sway somewhat comically from side to side like an overinflated Sumo wrestler. No longer whimpering, he began to cry hysterically, like an inconsolable child. "I... I'm famous for fuck's sake," snivelled Evan, "I'm a someone. People will come looking for me. You can't do this." Speaking was becoming increasingly difficult as his tongue swelled and filled his mouth. Panic set in when he struggled to draw breath but Edmund seemed unconcerned. "Oh, we're all a someone, Evan. And of course, people will wonder what happened to the immensely talented Mr. Gore, but like Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, or as you probably know him, Lord Lucan, you will disappear without a trace. Old 'Dickie' became one of our more popular books, you might be surprised to know. But then again, the man did have a very sordid tale to tell. Perhaps our biggest coup is a certain Mr. Adolf Hitler who, as the conspiracy theories correctly speculated, did not commit suicide but took flight from his bunker in 1945 and escaped to Argentina. Thanks to our South American contacts, he ended up here on our extraordinary shelves having undergone his own Kafkaesque 'metamorphosis.' It can't be said that we lack our own sense of ironic humour. And the list goes on, Evan: 17th century navigator, Henry Hudson; aviator, Amelia Earhart; satirist and writer, Ambrose Bierce. Our global list of contributors goes back centuries. We even have a children's section," he grinned. "People can be so careless with young ones, but they do make the most wonderful books." "Leth mee... goo...," begged Evan, "pleeth, juth leth mee goo... I wonth... tellth... aneebothee..." By now his words were almost incomprehensible as he gagged and struggled desperately to draw breath through his slowly constricting air passage. His head was sinking slowly into the sweaty, quagmire of mutated flesh that his body had become. The stench was quite appalling as were the sounds of belching and flatulence as the contents of his bowels disgorged themselves. Frankes ushered his household out and was about to make his own exit when he was distracted by the sound of shuffling feet. From the gloomy depths of the anteroom sauntered an old man in a shabby suit. He smiled briefly at Frankes and then with a look of obvious delight examined the quivering mass of blubber and bone that Evan had become. If ever Evan could express a look of surprise, it was now. His eyes widened and bulged as though about to explode from his face. He even managed a few strained words. "Veeecctooor!" he blurted, and then with a look of bewilderment he turned his tortured stare towards Lilith and uttered, "Veeectorrr... conssseeeerge..." "Victor Sauvage, chief curator, bibliophile and editor extraordinaire," corrected Lilith as she began her own retreat. Such a visit during the inauguration of a new book was indeed an honour. "Oh, dear Evan, didn't you realise that Cedar publishing owns Darkwood Estates—you really should have read the small print. And Victor is our custodian of Dakota House, not just a silly old concierge, although he does seem to enjoy those awful old paper books. Barnaby Wright, the previous owner of your apartment was such a perfect specimen, but unfortunately, he lost the plot while we were working on him. "And then of course you came along, and we couldn't believe our luck. Victor kept you under his scrutiny for a while, and here you are, approaching the final part of the publishing process—and so we will bid you adieu." Evan, no longer a man, had become a grotesque malignancy of flesh and bone. A tidal wave of madness had washed over him and now he was drowning in his own visceral swamp. But he still, if it was any consolation, had consciousness and spirit, and would continue to for longer than he ever cared to contemplate. It was early the next morning that Lilith returned to the anteroom. Evan's book, Nine Lives, was laid open on a presentation stand, ready to take its place on the shelves of the living library. Brushing her palm across its clammy pages, she squealed with delight. So much more than just a book, it was a living tome, born of flesh and possessed of life. A spine of human vertebrae; skin, crafted into the finest parchment pages; prose masterfully scribed in congealed blood. But what really sent a shiver through Lilith's trembling body was the quivering mouth that screamed so silently from the cover. And the tortured, weeping gaze of Evan's always watching eye. ⁂ [ HOT FLASHES by Jenya Joy Preece ] "Damn these hot flashes!" Vi Matthews sat in front of the wide-open window fanning herself with a spiral notebook—even though it was the middle of winter and there was enough snow to build an entire city of snowmen with. She was burning up. Kenneth, her husband, turned from his nightly news report to look at his sweaty wife. "Will you just shut the friggin' window already. Our gas bill is going to be through the roof this month because a you." It was Kenneth's job to bitch about the bills because he was the only one making money to pay them. This was about all he was good for, too. "Seriously, I feel like I'm gonna ignite or worse, melt like a snowman in summer." "Yur not gonna go in flames," he said, adding, "I wish ya would though," under his breath so his wife wouldn't hear. Vi reached up to wipe the sweat from her face. She sat there fanning and wiping in just her bra and panties. Once upon a time Kenneth would have come and torn the set off her in urgency, but now he spent his free time watching the high-def plasma god. Taking in all the sights and sounds and in the process turning his brain into a sort of mush. Vi felt her bra strap slide off one shoulder. By this point she didn't care nor did she care what her piece of shit husband had to say about the bills. Sweat rolled down her spine in a long line that ended in the waistband of her undies. The band soaked up the liquid greedily. The sweat made her face begin to itch from all the salty bits of body dew. She reached up and scratched at the center of her forehead. The skin underneath her nails felt foreign to her, but she went on scratching away, seeking relief. She gazed out the open window at the snow and ice. She wanted so badly to jump into it and make angels, even in her underwear. Then she thought to herself, it would be just my luck for all the snow to melt before I got cooled off and we'd have a lake in our yard. This thought made her laugh a little and Kenneth replied by telling her that she needed to shut up and to shut the window. She continued to ignore him. Vi's upper lip began to itch much like her forehead. She wiped at it at first with her hand then began using her nails to scratch it. She felt the skin beneath as it stuck like clay. She clenched her jaw in worry. Her muscles were sticking now. She unclenched and her teeth felt loose inside of her face. She reached in her mouth and pulled out one of her teeth. They all wiggled as she grinded her jaw. Oh, my hell, what's happening? she thought as she gently removed another tooth. She examined this one carefully then stuck her tongue into the gap where the two teeth had just come from. She noticed something odd. She opened her hand and began spitting tooth after tooth into her palm. Tears mixed with the sweat on her face. She knew that her age would catch up to her, but she didn't think that it would happen all at once. She scratched at a small itch on her cheek. She noticed that there was a slight blemish on her skin so she picked at it, her nails digging into the flesh. She felt her face again making sure that she'd gotten all of it, but to her astonishment she'd created a hole in the side of her face. She shoved her tongue into the hole and could taste the salt of her finger. Her tongue expanded the hole. "What the hell," she tried to say, but as she made noise, she felt a chunk of something slide into her throat. She swallowed hard, but the object wasn't moving up or down. She choked and wheezed, trying to get her husband's attention but the T.V. was much too loud for her to be heard over the reporter. Her tongue was gone. She felt her breasts start to slide even closer to her knees. She couldn't explain what was happening to her. She was still dying from the heat inside her, scared and alone. An hour later, Vi had grown eerily quiet. Kenneth noticed because her bitching had come to a halt. He paused the T.V. to check on her and take a leak. "Damn it woman! I'm freezing my friggin' ass of in here!" He got up, noticing that his wife was missing from her spot at the window. Now he was really mad about the bill he would no doubt be paying. He stomped over to the window, slipping and falling on his slightly frozen ass. There was something all over the floor. "What in the name a..." He stuck his hand into the muck. The dark red hues were nearly black under the dim light. He sniffed at it and a metallic smell wafted back to him. Then he decided to lick it to make sure that he was sure. It was blood all right, but where did it come from. His heart fluttered inside his chest. He got up from the floor and peered out the window onto the snowy lawn. There, with the notebook, lay the bones of his wife. Vi had melted like a snowman after all. He laughed to himself, shutting the window and going back to watch his beloved T.V. He knew that he could clean her up in the morning. ⁂ [ THE IMPLOSION OF A GASTROCRAT: AN EXPERIMENT IN AUTOPHAGY by Frank Roger ] Clipping #1 (from a regional weekly paper) As Mr. Laurent Malherbe showed up with a bandaged hand in The Paper Rose, the local pub where he's one of the regulars, all his friends and drinking buddies, including this reporter, assumed he had had an accident while fixing something at home. However, Laurent quickly reassured us there was nothing to worry about. The bandaged hand, he explained, was the result of an experiment he had embarked on after watching a TV programme about a man who ate light bulbs and bicycle parts. "You see," he told me over a pint of Guinness, "eating light bulbs and other objects usually considered inedible may appear sensational, but actually it's an act totally devoid of meaning. A man eating light bulbs is a freak, but nothing more. Yet the sight of this man merrily munching crunchy bits inspired me to attempt something more profound and meaningful. I decided to eat a fragment of my own flesh." He proudly lifted his bandaged hand and said, "I chopped off the tip of my little finger, scraped off the flesh, pulverised the bone and ate it all. This way my body swallowed a part of itself. Just think of the philosophical underpinnings of such an act. And, mind you, this was just the initial phase. The last few days I chopped off and ate a few more finger tips, and right now I'm thinking about tackling an earlobe or so. Be assured I'll keep you informed of my progress!" Laurent Malherbe then turned his attention to his Guinness and his friends, and engaged in heated conversation. I have this feeling we'll be hearing more from our dear friend in the near future.
Year's Best Body Horror 2017	C. P. Dunphey (ed)	[ "horror", "body horror", "short stories" ]	[]	Chapter 2	Clipping #2 (from a national newspaper) Mr. Laurent Malherbe, a forty-year-old man from the greater London area, is building quite a reputation ever since he publicised his bold plan to attempt an experiment never tried before in recorded history, to quote his own rather grandiloquent words. The man has been steadily eating parts of his own body, starting with the chopped off tips of his fingers, his earlobes, layers of fat and callus that were removed with surgical precision by himself, and other parts that were deemed superfluous and hence available for consumption—or perhaps bio-recycling might be a better term. Until recently, media attention for Mr. Malherbe's remarkable experiment was limited to a few regional and national papers, but his announcement of his next "Big Step" landed him his first TV interview. "It is my intention," Malherbe declared before the camera, "to remove one of my testicles and eat it. Each new phase in my experiment only serves to sharpen my hunger, if you allow me to use this exceptionally apt term, for bigger and bolder steps forward on my chosen route. I am currently looking into the possibility of having some of my internal tissue removed, and hope to eat as much of my own body as medically possible. I am curious about the limits of this autophagy, to use the term I coined for my endeavour. How much of his body can a human being miss? How far can I take this mind-boggling consumption of myself? What is the deeper meaning of this drive, this seemingly nonsensical ambition? Or, to put it bluntly: Can one eat oneself?"
Year's Best Body Horror 2017	C. P. Dunphey (ed)	[ "horror", "body horror", "short stories" ]	[]	Chapter 3	Clipping #3 (sidebar from an in-depth article in a magazine) "I decided to mount fund-raising campaigns after watching Laurent talk about his plans on TV," says twenty-nine-year-old Jennifer Sandoval, a London bank employee and active member of the recently founded Laurent Malherbe Appreciation Society. She is only one of the many men and women who chose to actively support Malherbe's bizarre quest for self-consumption. "I quickly realised," Sandoval confesses, "that Malherbe would soon run into financial troubles, which would cut off all his hope for success. I went out and found other people willing to support his wild plan, formed the Society and now we help keep Laurent on the road to his chosen destiny. We think he fully deserves our unending support." Need we still present Laurent Malherbe, the man who's nibbling away at himself, and who looks prepared to continue nibbling until there's nothing left to sink his teeth in—supposing he will still have teeth by that time! When Malherbe chewed on fingertips and earlobes, he only attracted the local press, but now that his testicles and parts of his organs and intestines considered non-vital have been removed and disappeared down his oesophagus, he is basking in full media attention. Not only did his grand dreams give rise to several fan clubs in the U.K. and abroad, they also led to controversies and harsh criticism from conservative and religious milieus. Yet Malherbe seems determined to continue his mission, especially now that his steadily mounting medical bills are paid with the funds raised by his Appreciation Society and some of his fan clubs. "I feel more stimulated than ever," he declared to us, "knowing that so many people actively support me, and put their money where their mouth is." Malherbe himself appears to have opted for putting his body where his mouth is.... In his latest TV interview, he announced his plans for removing what's left of his genitals ("completely irrelevant body parts in my current life") and having his toes and left hand amputated. Will this man go all the way? Will he swallow himself down to the last mouthful? Perhaps his next interview will reveal more. To be continued, doubtlessly.
Year's Best Body Horror 2017	C. P. Dunphey (ed)	[ "horror", "body horror", "short stories" ]	[]	Chapter 4	Clipping #4 (Letter from a newspaper's readers' column) Why does every newspaper in the country devote so much attention to this Malherbe nutcase? I would say there are more important things going on in the world worth covering. But no, a man who eats his own penis is infinitely more interesting to the sensation-craving crowd, a man who's now wheelchair-bound after losing his feet and lower legs to his insatiable hunger, a man who appears willing to sacrifice anything to get his face on TV and on the papers' front page. Please do not give in to this slip into tabloid-style sensation-mongering, and leave the coverage of this man and the misguided souls active in his fan clubs to the specialised psychiatric journals for whom this "case" may be of some scientific interest.
Year's Best Body Horror 2017	C. P. Dunphey (ed)	[ "horror", "body horror", "short stories" ]	[]	Chapter 5	Clipping #5 (from a weekly paper's news roundup) The media's current number one sensation, Laurent Malherbe, also affectionately known as "The Man Who Eats Himself," may by now be reduced to a legless man strapped into a wheelchair and constantly hooked up to a variety of machines intended to keep him alive after some vital parts of his body were removed, his business acumen seems to have survived his endeavours unscathed. Now that his plan to consume as much as possible of his own body has reached a critical point, and medical bills have surpassed the level that could be covered by the fund-raising efforts of his fans, Malherbe has sold exclusive TV rights to Sky Channel to cover his progress for a substantial amount of money—no doubt much more than his entire plan will cost. Firstly, this ensures his "experiment in autophagy" of reaching its completion, financial problems being the only possible barrier against success, and secondly it provides Sky Channel with a guaranteed audience of many thousands (millions?)—and hence with advertising rates soaring to dizzying heights. The burning question, however, remains: How far will Malherbe take this mad plan of his? Will he, as his die-hard fans claim, indeed go "all the way?"
Year's Best Body Horror 2017	C. P. Dunphey (ed)	[ "horror", "body horror", "short stories" ]	[]	Chapter 6	Clipping #6 (from a leading monthly magazine) An interview with Laurent Malherbe Mr. Malherbe, how would you describe your current condition? Malherbe: I feel great! No, of course, that's not what you wanted to hear. Let me put it this way then: I'm a man without legs, without arms, without private parts, without hair, without... well, let's just say I'm a man stripped down to his bare essentials. I am still fully alive, I am happy, I still harbour ambitions I'm itching to carry to their limits, I still have hopes and dreams, I have everything it takes to be a full-fledged human being. But without all this medical equipment you're hooked onto, you would die within moments. Malherbe: That's true, but isn't that also true for many handicapped persons who are yet considered full human beings? The fact that I arrived at my present condition on purpose is totally immaterial. A man is more than his mere outward physical appearance. My soul is intact. My mind vibrates as it never has before. My thinking is of crystal-clear lucidity. I am more convinced than ever that I chose the right path for my personal fulfilment. And I will walk that path down to its very end. You still think you have not proven enough? Malherbe: Have I proven anything yet? I've proven you can cut off a few bits here and there and wash them down with a glass of water, so to speak. The hard part is yet to come. Can I eat my lungs and survive? My heart? My brain? Surely you cannot be serious? Malherbe: Be assured that I am. To quote an old movie star who shall remain nameless, "You ain't seen nothing yet." I will indeed attempt what some still deem impossible, and continue eating body parts considered vital. I am determined to take this experiment to its very limits. Will you go "all the way," as your fans keep chanting? Malherbe: I will go as far as humanly possible. It will soon become clear exactly how far that is. No doubt it will be a lot further than people have assumed. My experiment will have tremendous scientific value, besides its profound ethical and philosophical repercussions. I hope I will have the time and the opportunity to convey all my thoughts and theories regarding this matter to viewers and readers out there. Do you have any final thoughts to wrap up this interview? Malherbe: Oh well, let me put it like this. My ambition is now foremost in my mind, pushing all other considerations into the background. It has become the focus of all my thoughts and actions, to the point that I no longer have any interest in what you might call a regular guy's worries and woes. In a sense I transcended that kind of existence. My ambition to eat myself has become my true raison d'être. I know very well that I've come in for some criticism in certain quarters, and I'm not deaf and blind to their accusations, but basically it doesn't matter to me anymore. What matters is my burning ambition, how to make my dream come true, and how to do that tomorrow rather than the day after tomorrow. To put it succinctly: I truly live for this all-consuming passion of mine. Thank you for this interview, Mr. Malherbe. Malherbe: You're welcome. I hope we'll meet again... before the Last Supper! Clipping #7 (from a national magazine) Laurent Malherbe, once a curiosity happy to see his follies covered in regional papers, has by now become a regular guest in all national and even international media outlets, a caricature of man's desire to push his own limits and transcend himself, and an insult to the medical profession, all rolled into one. It could be said this is quite an achievement for a man who is, strictly technically speaking, no longer alive... depending on one's definition of life. Malherbe, who roped in vast amounts of money with the sale of exclusive coverage rights, subsequently hired a legion of doctors and surgeons to execute his "will," a term apt only for those who consider him dead, by all accounts a dwindling minority. Ever since the medical team known as the Malherbe Foundation started removing some of the vital organs of their patient (or their client?), as per his instructions, what remains of Laurent Malherbe's body is kept alive artificially, a near-empty hulk devoid of what is usually considered "life." Malherbe's growing hordes of fans, however, worship the man as if he represented God on earth, and applaud his every move, however posthumous. Is this man, as his fans claim, still eating himself, as highly paid surgeons remove yet more slices of quivering flesh and force them down a throat that is attached to a stomach and a reduced set of intestines, with a brain and a heart thrown in for good measure? Or is this a joke perpetrated in bad taste, a scientific experiment gone awry, a waste of medical and surgical skills unavailable for more pressing needs? Needless to say, Malherbe's fans are unwilling to even listen to any criticism of their idol's progress, and hard cash appears once more to prevail over ethics and common sense. Clipping #8 (from a Laurent Malherbe fan club magazine) The most thrilling news is, of course, that the long-awaited moment is imminent: Laurent's body has once more been stripped of some of its parts (considered vital by the narrow-minded), such as his lungs and a large chunk of his brain. What's left of our dear friend, his digestive system, his heart along with a rudimentary bloodstream and a handful of braincells, is kept alive and fully functional thanks to state-of-the-art medical technology and a handsomely paid crew of doctors and paramedics. Dr. Gomez, who heads the medical crew, has confirmed in a recent interview that "nothing can stop Malherbe from carrying his ambitions to their logical conclusion. Modern technology will allow him, however unlikely this may seem at first sight, to eat his own last shreds of body tissue. For contractual reasons I am not at liberty to divulge any technical details of this procedure. But be assured that we will do anything necessary to achieve total success. Mr. Malherbe will definitely go down in history as the man who ate himself." Obviously, we will cover the final phase of this awesome experiment in extensive detail, complete with full interviews of all those involved. No other paper or magazine has the kind of access to reliable sources that we do, so stay tuned for further news. Preparations for a mega-"Eat Your Heart Out, Humanity"-party are already well underway. If this doesn't prove our unshakeable faith in the outcome of Laurent's big plan, then what does? Clipping #9 (obituary from a national newspaper) Yesterday Laurent Malherbe died in a private hospital in London. He was 41. Malherbe had become a national celebrity by eating parts of his own body, a bizarre habit which quickly grew into an all-consuming obsession. As Malherbe's rise to fame and fortune has been extremely well-documented, we need not repeat the details of his final year, which he spent devouring himself. It is debatable whether that is a fitting description for his condition in the last months of his "life," when he was hooked up to a battery of machines, a Frankenstein's monster in reverse, having its flesh and blood artificially removed and consumed until nothing was left. The video footage of the final phase of Malherbe's descent into his own digestive system, released shortly after his death, is rumoured to be "digitally processed," meaning that special effects-like elements have been added to the original footage. This is firmly denied by Malherbe's vociferous fans and followers, but observers less blinded by worship, and spokesmen of the scientific community in particular, harbour serious doubts about Malherbe's alleged success in "swallowing his own digestive system thanks to a cutting-edge technological sleight of hand," discarded as "tabloid-style pseudo-scientific gibberish" by at least one acknowledged medical authority. It appears rather unlikely that the complete truth about Malherbe's death will ever be revealed, considering the amount of idolatry (not to mention financial interests) among those who guard the facts as though they were sacred teachings. Clipping #10 (from a published letter in a newspaper's readers' column) Frankly, I fail to see what all the fuss is about. Does it really matter then whether or not some ultra-high-tech contraption was made allowing old Laurent Malherbe to serve what was left of himself by way of his own private Last Supper? All right, I admit I wasn't immediately convinced when I heard about this fabulous machine that broke down Malherbe's last strips of flesh so incredibly fast and raced these particles down his not-just-quite-vaporised-yet throat almost instantly that, strictly technically speaking, this procedure could count as "eating yourself completely." It sounds like pure hogwash, but even if such a machine was indeed developed and this process (a giant leap forward in "fast food!") was indeed applied to our ever-hungry friend Malherbe, what difference does it make in the end? Lots of money was wasted that could have been better spent, lots of attention was paid to a man out to immortalise his name through an act of unmitigated sensationalism (without any redeeming qualities), lots of people did their best to create or get involved into a hype that by all accounts ought to have been ignored for the cheap thrill of a media-saturated and money-driven society it was. As I said, I fail to see what all the fuss is about. Now that Malherbe is gone to Fast Food Heaven, can we please get on with real life? Thank you so much. ⁂ [ NO STRINGS by Josh Shiben ] "I've got no strings," muttered Evan to himself through gritted teeth as he hauled his heavy body roughly up the side of the metal structure. The song had been stuck in his head, on repeat, for days, just endlessly looping like an annoying commercial tune. "To hold me up." Sweat of the exertion dripped from his body, making it sheen in the baking Virginia sun. He watched as his forearm gleamed in the light, watched it ripple and distort as something inside him slithered just beneath the surface. It was one of the worms, or parasites, or whatever they were. He wasn't sure. It didn't matter. Evan grunted and continued climbing up the ladder. His mouth was so dry. So thirsty. They used to hurt, the worms. He remembered the pain they'd caused as they stretched his skin and bored through him. He remembered the fear, as he lay there on the hospital table, worrying that some parasite was turning him into a human-shaped block of Swiss cheese. But then, the doctor had given him drugs and it'd stopped. The pain. The crawling under his skin. They'd assumed the worms had died, but now Evan knew better. Poisons didn't kill them. Antibiotics just drove them deeper into his body. They were still there—still hiding inside of him. Burrowing into the very core of him. But when they came back, the pain stopped. Evan knew why—he was getting used to them. He was numb. Even the thought of pain was fuzzy—he knew it was an unpleasant sensation, but like a blind man thinking of color, he could not summon any impression of it. Pain, like most other sensations, was something that had passed out of his life. It had become alien. He tried to worry about it, but all he felt was dry. Like a leaf in the fall, threatening to crumble to dust in the slightest breeze. He licked his lips and continued his climb. "I've got no strings." He only knew the two lines, so he sang them over and over like a skipping record. His hands were blistering on the rungs of the ladder, but he ignored them and climbed on. They didn't hurt, and he was too close to the top to stop now. It was so hard to climb with the heavy tools strapped to his back and his stomach distended the way it was; too heavy and awkward, and the writhing inside sometimes pushed him off balance. He had no attention to waste on something as trivial as blistering hands—he had to focus on gripping the ladder tightly, dragging himself up one rung at a time. Evan needed more water. He had to hurry. He'd tried submerging himself in his bathtub, but it hadn't been enough. He'd just lay down there, watching as his breath bubbled to the surface, staring up through the ripples at the ceiling. He had drunk until he vomited the water back up, and then kept drinking, desperate for any kind of relief. After all of that, he'd still felt parched. One summer, years ago, Evan had gone to the beach and gotten a nasty sunburn. But the burn hadn't hurt—it itched. The itch couldn't be scratched—it was under the skin, down deep in the muscle, and so he had paced his room in agony, thinking that if only he could cut the skin back, flay his chest and shoulders like a butchered animal, he might cure the irritation. That was his thirst now—a deep-seated, unquenchable itch, burning in his throat and mouth. It permeated every solitary cell in his body—his entire being cried out for water. He needed more than just a bathtub or a pool. He needed something drastic. He needed the impossible weight of thousands of gallons. He wanted to be buried in that crushing, impossible wetness—that black, freezing gulf, where even the sun cannot penetrate. Evan had once seen a submarine flood in an old World War II movie he'd watched with his father. The hull had been breached by a depth charge, and the crew frantically sealed bulkheads to stop the implacably rising water from taking them all. As a child, Evan had stared at his ceiling, shuddering at the thought of being surrounded by the icy depths in that cold prison. He would lie awake, trying to exorcize fears of a black tide sliding up to consume him. Now, he fantasized about it. The icy cold grip of the water rising, promising more than he could ever drink. He reached the catwalk, and with some effort, rolled himself onto the structure, where he rested only a moment before rising slowly to his feet. His legs were so weak and he was so heavy. He wondered-how much of him was still Evan, and how much was worm. Two-thirds? Half? He looked at his bloated, bulging stomach, wriggling with alien mass, and considered how much it must weigh. He'd been fit before all of this. Not in great shape, but good enough. He would have at least passed for a healthy person. Not now, though. The lesions on his flesh and undulating shapes under his skin removed any doubt as to his condition. He wanted to feel angry, or sad, or anything about it, but couldn't seem to muster the emotion. The thirst outweighed it all. He moved along the catwalk, to the small ladder leading to the top of the rounded tower, and with some effort, began hoisting himself up. "No foreign travel or anything?" the doctor had asked. Sitting in his hospital gown, looking down at his feet glumly, Evan could only shake his head "no." He'd never even left the state. He didn't have the money or the time away from work to go anywhere exotic. That was back when he still felt—the pain, the fear, the anger—it all bubbled up in him like a volcano. He was alive, then. "Have you had any water that was maybe contaminated?" the doctor had tried. Again, he'd shaken his head. He only ever drank tap water—provided by the city, and purified by chlorine. The worms couldn't live in chlorine, could they? Tap water was clean. Evan wet his lips again, and his tongue felt like sandpaper rubbing over a cracked and dried riverbed. With a grunt, he hoisted himself up another rung on the ladder. Some part of him realized he was dying, but he couldn't bring himself to be upset or bothered by the insight. The knowledge only gave him more motivation—better to receive this one last satisfaction than to die without it; a baptism to cleanse him, to wash away the wretchedness. It would bring relief. It had to. "To hold me up," he whined out deliriously, his hands only two rungs below the edge of the structure. He looked down to see the tiny town beneath him, and briefly considered just letting go. The fall would certainly kill him—end this struggle in a splatter of worm-infested meat. But then, he'd never get his satisfaction—he'd die, never knowing relief. That thought alone was enough to spur him upward, toward the salvation only a few rungs above him. He tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry—his tongue felt like a burned piece of leather in his mouth, and he had to hold on tightly to keep from retching. He pulled himself up the last two rungs and then clambered up on top of the hot metal structure. His arms and legs were weak with thirst, but with some effort, he hauled himself into the center of the circle. There was a round door in the roof, with a spinning handle on it that reminded him of the door of a vault. It was held in place by a simple padlock, and with a satisfying click of the bolt cutters he had brought along for just such a complication, Evan was through. His hands trembled with anticipation as he took the heavy crowbar he had carried up all this way and used it to force the wheel to slowly turn, unsealing the door with a metallic groan. He eased the door open, and was almost knocked backwards by the scent of chlorine that assaulted him. When he'd first found out the worms were living inside of him, Evan had researched parasites. Now, as he looked down at the dark body of water, he remembered the Horsehair Worm. It reproduced in large, freshwater lakes, but grew inside the carapace of crickets. Sometimes, it would grow to be nearly a foot long, coiled tightly inside the little body like a spring. The problem was that, in order to complete its life-cycle, the worm had to return to the water. The solution was simple—it would convince its host to hurl itself into a lake; the vessel apathetic to its own self-destruction. Evan remembered reading about the Horsehair worm and wondering, how could something subvert an organism's drive for self-preservation so effectively? What did a cricket feel, when poised at the edge of the lake? He wondered, now, if it felt anything at all. Perhaps, only thirst. The thought almost stirred anger inside Evan's mind, but instead he gazed down through the open portal, and the feeling passed almost as quickly as it had started. The water looked so calm and cool, and Evan was so thirsty. A soft drip from somewhere inside the water tower echoed through the door to Evan's ears, and without any more hesitation, he threw himself into the black water, mouth open and eager. His stomach ruptured when he entered the liquid, and Evan felt the tightness in his gut relax, as thousands upon thousands of worms fled the confines of his body for the cool freedom of the water around him. They spilled out of him, like flies fleeing a rancid piece of roadkill that'd been kicked, uncoiling from his belly like a disemboweled man's intestines. The water tower echoed with the splashing of the worms as they undulated through the drinking water. Salvation choked Evan, pressing in on him from every direction. But he didn't thrash—he only opened his mouth as wide as he could. He'd finally found enough. He wasn't thirsty anymore. He'd never be thirsty again. ⁂ [ BABEL by Ian Steadman ] Ptolemia used to be known as a party planet. That was before things went south in '92 and it dropped off the map. No contact for over thirty years, then some bright spark had the idea of sending an expeditionary team to see what was left. I'm guessing the dancing girls are all long gone. I'm also guessing we're heading for a vast, hollow pit of nothingness. "Welcome to Vegas, baby!" Maxi shrieks into the comm as we drop out of orbit. That was one of its nicknames from back in the day. Others weren't always so polite. Preachers tried to convince us that its excesses were the start of the Second Coming, a modern-day Sodom. Given the way things ended, they may have had a point. "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas—right? That's Sarge. His name, not his rank. I guess his parents were on a military fix when he was born, which might explain why he's turned out the most gung-ho of us all. He's recently had a new graft added to his upper arm, insignia and rank molded into the musculature. We give him grief about it, but privately I think it's kinda cool. The only 3D augment I have is a slightly elongated trigger finger on my right hand. I had it done to meet the minimum physical requirements for the corps. Go figure. Burnsie is the silent one. He has more augments than the rest of us put together: extra-wide kneecaps, protruding collarbones of an unbreakable polymer, a scary-looking bone ridge down his forehead. He doesn't say much but he scares the shizzle out of anyone we come up against. Sometimes we joke that he's more plastic than flesh and blood. The ride is bumpy, but the landing's smooth. It's all sand out there. At least that hasn't changed. Burnsie once told us a story around the food-synth unit, about a desert planet so blasted with nukes that the entire surface turned to glass. "Got anything on the readouts?" Maxi says, once we've all unstrapped and moved to our stations. "Something's wrong with mine, can't get a fix. Is that stuff out there breathable or not?" "Nothing here," I say. "Get suited up, we're going to have to take readings manually." Burnsie had his suit custom-made, to accommodate all his augments, but the rest of us just chop and change as we see fit. I think Sarge had mine last. It stinks of sweat and synthesized barbecue. The sand outside is grittier than the stuff back home, rising and falling in gentle drifts. There's barely any wind to speak of. Ptolemia had a near-breathable atmosphere when it was colonized—one of the reasons why it was selected—but they were meant to have been running purification filters nonstop. Given the lack of any visible cities or dwellings when we flew in, I can't imagine that's been happening. If anyone's still alive, they'll be relying on personal filters or lung augments by now. Maxi has been waving the gizmo around, holding the screen up to her visor from time to time. "Okay, I think it's breathable, just. Not toxic, anyway. Maybe the filters ran for a decade or two after the collapse? Who wants to try it?" Burnsie is first, as usual. There's the click and whoosh beside me as he releases his helmet clasps. He coughs, and for a moment we all think this might be the time, his last first breath on an alien world. Then I hear him growling over the comm. "You can breathe it, but it stinks. Man, this place reeks worse than Sarge. I'd stay helmeted if you don't want to puke." He still keeps his helmet off, though. Maybe he finally got those nasal augments he's always been talking about. It's not entirely clear what we're supposed to do, now we're here. Look for survivors, obviously. That goes without saying. Beyond that, they just want to know what the hell happened. Before all the links went down and the planet went dark, there were all kinds of rumors circulating about this place. Weird alien drugs, year-long parties, augments that would make your eyes water. The last delivery shuttle dropped off sixty-two bio-printers, a custom order for whoever was in charge. Clearly they were either as high as a drone or physical augmentation was trending in a major way. The rest happened so fast there wasn't time to do anything other than sit and watch. Explosions levelling the major cities. Armed militia chasing survivors through the desert wastes. Fires, screaming, a planet in collapse. Then all the news feeds went silent. The final message came two days later, via an old satellite, from an unknown sender: "Ptolemia is all one. Dead planet. Leave us." There were the normal conspiracy theories—did they mean to say, "all one?" or "all gone?" who were the "us?"—but it amounted to little more than a mildly interested buzz. Business as usual: we wrote the planet off, worried about colonizing the next one. Sometimes the colonies thrive, sometimes they implode. We've learned that the hard way. Sarge is already kicking at the sand like it's done something to offend him, and I'm about ready to call us all back inside when Maxi waves the gizmo at me. "Come look at this. Maybe I'm going crazy, but I think there's something out there. A building. A structure. Something, anyway. We should check it out?" I'm hoping she's got it wrong, but when she shows me the screen there's no mistake. We can't tell what it is from this range, but it's registering a footprint big enough to be a military base, or maybe a small city. Now I've seen it, we can't ignore it. Cursing our luck, I give the order to unpack the rover and wheel it out. None of us like using it—the seats are hard and cold, even with our suits on—but it's either that or spend the day wading through this sea of grit. This way we can be there in under half an hour. I don't know why, but I let Sarge drive this time. Usually Burnsie likes to rip it up, but his helmet's off and I have a feeling that we might need someone more responsible at the controls. Call it intuition if you like. Burnsie moans in frustration as Sarge trundles us along at regulation speeds, while Maxi and I whoop it up to amusing effect. It's like a school outing, minus the teachers. All we need is for the food-synth unit to rustle up a packed lunch. We first see it after about twenty minutes. It's clear that it's a tower of some kind, a spindle reaching a kilometer or two into the sky. Even from this distance it looks immense. Maxi whistles. "Told you there was something. You think the colonists could have built this? There's nothing in the file, is there—not of this size. Who the hell builds a tower in the middle of the desert?" Who indeed. I've examined the files front to back a hundred times on the way out here, and none of the registered structures were higher than a couple of stories. None that we knew of, anyway. We're still getting nearer, and the detail is coming into view. It looks pieced-together, as if someone has assembled it from a pile of junk, the odds and ends of a wrecked civilization. What appeared symmetrical from a distance is gradually distilling into individual turrets and ridges, openings and what might be air ducts. "Will you look at that?" This is Maxi again—she always did like to talk more than the rest of us. "Something this size... who has the time to make that? Or the manpower? I mean, the number of people involved in something this big—" And then she stops. She's seen it. We all have. And we're still moving, drawing closer and closer faster than we can think, and that arm becomes two arms, fifty arms, a hundred legs, a thousand torsos. Finally, Sarge brings us to a halt. We're only half a kilometer or so from the base of it now and we can see it all. The tower is constructed of human bodies. Thousands of them, grafted together with untold augments—bones stretching from head to ribcage, tendons connecting wrists to ankles. I see two heads joined at the temples by what appears to be a section of intestine. I see a child, no more than two or three years old, emerging from the stomach of an adult male, suspended in the air by a narrow bridge of gristle. I see things I cannot—will not—name, until I can't take it anymore and I close my eyes. Over the comm I can hear Maxi crying, Sarge cursing. Burnsie is close to silent, but even he is muttering under his breath. There's the sound of retching and someone's breakfast splatters against the inside of their helmet. My money would be on Maxi, but you never know. None of us truly knows how to deal with this. It's Burnsie who turns us around in the end. Sarge is wailing now, his head in his hands, so Burnsie reaches over and wrestles the controls from him. My eyes are open but I can only stare at the floor. As the sands rush beneath me they blur into nothingness. Back at the shuttle, we don't speak. We pack our suits away. Maxi rinses the inside of her helmet with the water jet. The rover is stowed. I find my hands are shaking, so badly that it's difficult to undo all the clasps. I know the others are struggling with it too. It's Maxi who speaks first. Her voice is subdued, sitting quiet and heavy in the recycled air. "How could they do that? I mean... why? I can't understand this, I can't..." Burnsie fills the silence. "Did you see? At the bottom? In the sand? There were marks there, tracks dug into the desert. Like it had been moving. Whatever it is, it's dead now. But it wasn't. It lived. What could it have been like? Existing as... that?" None of us speak. My imagination is conjuring answers but I don't want to share them. I don't want to poison anyone else's mind. We don't talk about this as we take off and set our course for home. We won't tell stories about it around the food-synth unit. "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." I will not be including this in my report. ⁂ [ A POUND OF FLESH by Edmund Stone ] I should not have let her go. When she needed me most I, too stupid or prideful, let her slip into oblivion. She offered her skin for a canvas and I used it willingly. The perfect foundation for my greatest artistic achievement, a tattoo to rival anything I had ever created. But I went too far and twisted it into something abhorrent. Now I brood and the anger I feel only fuels my disdain; my memories of her are locked in my heart. For two years, I've kept a tattoo shop on the edge of town, where most days I plan designs and troll the internet for inspiration. Lately, I've found the same designs lame; either some tribal circle or a letter-type tattoo. The people who enter my place are, by design, destined to ask for the same thing; some letters, typically in Roman typeset, to remind them of a date. Be it their child's birth or a date that reminds them of their anniversary. I always agree to do what the customer wants, because any other response would end in no business. I would then have to resort to some other living. I can think of nothing else I could do that would bring the same money. There are others that produce tattoos in this city, but most say that my attention to detail makes me the most sought-after artist in the area. But say what they will, a good tattoo always begins with the canvas. If the skin is lumpy, then the tattoo is harder to line up properly. When Aryn walked into my shop, I fell into a stupor. Her skin was the perfect canvas: smooth and free of blemishes. She had a color that would blend perfectly with any ink. I knew I could produce a tattoo that would rival anything I've ever created. I've always dabbled in the occult; old symbols and hieroglyphics of the ancient world, things that have fallen out of context to the modern day. I have a wonderful collection of prints that I've spent years collecting. My plan was to incorporate them into a spectacular tattoo, given the right flesh canvas came along. The benefactor of this gift would have to agree to have their skin bombarded with writings and symbols that made no sense to the common person. Aryn, perfectly suited to the task, had a trust in my abilities that bordered on fascination; I think she had a desire to tear an envelope that needn't be opened. In so doing, we unknowingly introduced an evil power to a new realm of possibilities. She came to me from the urging of a friend. Her interest in the occult slightly mirrored mine, and our attraction was immediate. Aryn, an archaeology student and self-proclaimed Wiccan, more than willingly volunteered to be my canvas, when I explained to her what I had in mind. Her beauty mesmerized me, with long black hair to her waist and dark eyes that enchanted the soul. She stood an even five foot seven; tall by a woman's standard, but only two inches shorter than me. Her legs were her most prominent feature: long and luxurious, a canvas that begged to be painted. I'm not the best-looking man, and Aryn could have her pick of suitors. For some reason she wanted me. I have no explanation. Perhaps my art attracted her; the darkness I attach to it. But darkness made sense to her. She invited it, but never understood it. I only wish I had. When I first introduced her to the idea of my illustrious plan, she couldn't contain her enthusiasm. Aryn jumped up on me, wrapping those million-dollar legs so tight, that my breath momentarily left me. It was settled, she would be the canvas, although she didn't know I planned it that way. We made love that night and talked afterward about the tattoo. It would take several days to accomplish such a feat, but Aryn didn't care. In fact, she couldn't wait to get started. In the morning, I made coffee and began to go through my collection. I reached for an old box of supplies by my work table. I opened it to reveal a stack of prints, copied from old papers. I spread them out on the table and Aryn and I scanned the symbols to see if we could find a suitable design. Her eyes were drawn to an interesting configuration. It had two triangles and a circle that encompassed the perimeter. Inside, the head of a goat presided. She said it reminded her of Wiccan texts, but had not seen anything like it in her archeology books. There were symbols of unknown origin, at least to me, adorned inside and outside the circle. They were strange and I shuddered to think of what each of them meant. But the artistic expressions that abound in each symbol drew me in and captivated my soul. Aryn stood leaning over the table in only a short silk gown that hung open slightly in the front, revealing one of her breasts. I marveled in her perfection. She caught me looking and grinned. Then she stood and released the gown to the floor. Her perfect form glistened in the morning sunlight that beamed in from the window. She placed her leg on the table and bent forward over it, as a ballerina would warm up before a performance. I studied that leg for a moment and anticipated drawing on it. Aryn, satisfied in the spectacle of my erection from the sight of her, only smiled. I grabbed a roll of drawing paper and stretched it out the length of her leg. Picking up a pen, I started to work. I aligned the drawing on the paper in as perfect symmetry to the leg as possible. I would complete the tattoo in four parts, starting from the pelvis to the mid-thigh. Then work my way down until the design encompassed the entirety of the leg, from the top of the thigh to the ankle. I drew feverishly, a man with purpose. Aryn had put her leg down, but still leaned up against the table, disrobed and apparently aroused by my work. She breathed heavily in my ear and whispered naughty desires she wished upon my person. I grinned, but stayed focused on my work. The symbols and pictures that she and I picked were prints derived from a book called the Necronomicon. This book claimed it contained spells to conjure the dead. I never believed such things, but thought the pictures very cool. The drawings were mostly bereft of color, but some symbols did contain a red and black tinge, although faded together. A drawing of a dragon devouring its tail caught my eye; an elaborate circle with another circle inside. A crude sketch of a tortured creature mummified and bandaged up to the waist. Its head uncovered and the chest splayed open with the skin pinned to the side. The entrails of the thing hung out and sprawled down to its feet. In the space of an hour, I created a drawing for the basis of the tattoo. I presented the drawing to Aryn and it pleased me to see her face light up. She ran her fingers along the paper and traced the symbols and figures. She was so pleased, that she pinned me to the table and gave me no choice but to make love to her. Not that I minded, my love belonged to her and I reveled in our perfect union; she the canvas and I the artist. I planned to start on the first part of the tattoo the next evening, after my last customer of the day. The insipid day dragged with laborious skin paintings of cartoon characters and a tribal band that made a man twice my size cry like a baby. I so longed to decorate Aryn's fresh skin. It consumed my thoughts to the point that my lack of concentration nearly turned a pink bunny into a greenish reptile. I closed the shop at my normal time and waited for Aryn to arrive. She left that morning to work a waitressing job in the city. It wasn't her favorite thing to do, but the tips were good, especially for a young beauty like her. I prepared a small meal for the two of us, complete with white wine. When she arrived, Aryn could hardly contain her enthusiasm. Famished, she ate the meal hurriedly and after several glasses of wine, readied herself for the leg tattoo. I requested that she cover herself, as the distraction of her womanly parts may cause me to lose focus. I prepared my ink gun with the needle and laid out the supplies I would need. I began to work on my masterpiece. Aryn never flinched, even though the work proved laborious. She stretched out and relaxed, as my needle hummed and embedded the ink into her skin; she my Mona Lisa and I her daVinci. Two hours later, I finished the first part of the tattoo. I marveled at the creation and how Aryn's skin complimented the superb design. Star symbols, goat-like creatures, and unspeakable things from some unknown afterlife, sprawled down that perfect leg. I covered the fresh art with bandages to ensure no infection could occur. Aryn rose from the table and kissed me, long and deep; the same kiss that Leonardo may have received from his painted muse. We slept that night, our bodies intertwined. We never made love, only held one another; the exhaustion of the previous hours had taken a toll. I for one tossed in my bed waking up on occasion; my sleep invaded by vicious entities. The creature I painted on Aryn haunted my slumber. I woke in a cold sweat. I considered the room and found nothing there. Just a crazy dream, I assumed. Aryn lay next to me, sleeping soundly with a silky sheet covering her naked body. She lay perfectly still, unaffected by my movements. I did notice a small twitch on her leg, under the sheet. It bobbed up and down and then stopped. The sporadic movement turned to a fluid one, like the locomotion of a snake, writhing under the sheet. It journeyed up Aryn's leg and toward her hip, and followed the contour of her body, until it stopped just short of her breasts. My curiosity piqued, I felt compelled to pull the sheet back. When I did, I saw something incomprehensible. The skin over Aryn's ribs distended out in a distorted fashion, and I couldn't understand why she wasn't feeling this, because as I watched in amazement, she lay still, sleeping, as though nothing was happening. The tumorous thing began to move again and I heard the skin, that perfect over layer that I painted the night before, begin to tear. The terror of the canvas being torn was more than I could bear! Trickles of blood produced small drips down Aryn's side. It pooled on the bedcover and still she slept. Her flesh ripped with ostensible audibility and a large splash of blood covered my face. I pushed back against the top of the bed, cringing with horror. There it was, the flayed man looked at me, his flesh pinned to the side of his body; blood dripping from every orifice. He was the same size as I had drawn him and he had teeth that were chomping on Aryn's tender flesh. He considered me, then jumped for my head. My arms went up in front of my face, anticipating the death that followed. But instead, I woke up. Lowering my arms, I looked around the room and then over at Aryn. She still slept, as quietly as ever. No part of her body had been harmed. My heart hammered in my chest and I trembled with goose-bumped flesh. I switched on the lamp sitting on the nightstand. Rolling over, I put an arm around Aryn, and pulled her close. She woke and considered me sleepily. "You're shaking. What's wrong?" she said. "Nothing, just cold," I said. I held her tighter and tried to sleep. The next morning Aryn woke before me and made coffee. I couldn't get the dream out of my head. The flayed man still hung heavy on my mind. I had created several tattoos, but his was the first to ever mess with my head. She sat at the table when I entered the room, investigating her leg. "I think it's healing faster than you thought it would," she said. "Yes, I think you may be right. About the tattoo, I'm wondering if we should go any further with this." I said. Aryn considered this and turned her head to the side. "What do you mean? I thought you were as into this as I was?" "I am, but maybe the design should be different? Have you ever wondered what those symbols might mean?" I said. "I've never thought about it before. I guess they are just random things, why does it matter?" Aryn said. "I had a terrible dream last night, there were monsters and you were in it, and I..." my voice trailed off and I looked down at the ground. She came over to me and sat in my lap. She caressed me, running her fingers through my hair. "There, there. It's all right, I'm here now and no monsters will get us. It was only a dream, no doubt brought on by fatigue, you've been working too hard," she said. "I suppose you're right," I said. "When can we start on the next part of the tattoo?" Aryn said. She kissed me and looked into my soul with eyes that held a need for something beyond my control. How could I say no to her? How could I possibly say no? The next two weeks brought the same schedule. I worked in the shop by day and at night designed and implemented the tattoo on Aryn's leg. I feverishly labored to make every detail stand out. There were more symbols and a tentacled creature that wrapped the full of her calf. The text itself was printed in a way that started from top to bottom. I didn't understand the writings, but the design held true; a flawless structure of artistic achievement, laid out on that perfect leg. The canvas always makes the difference. "I think I know what that says," Aryn said one time. "It says: To play with death is a way to invite Hell. I saw that in one of my Wiccan textbooks." "You surely don't believe such nonsense, do you?" I said. "No, don't be silly. I just love the design of the whole thing. Once it's done, I can tell everyone about that," she said. After every new application, Aryn would make love to me with a new fervor. I responded in kind. But then, wouldn't DaVinci do the same? Is that why Mona Lisa smiled; anticipation or annoyance from waiting? Though Aryn proved to be a patient subject, she bent her fair share of frustration toward me. All seemed right, until that fateful night. I should have held her tighter, I know that now. But life doesn't give second chances and what we sow can be reaped by the most unlikely benefactors. I should not have let her go, I know that now. The tattoo was finished and my labors had proved extensive, but well worth it. We lay in my bed after an exhaustive sex-capade; Kama Sutra and forms of geisha. Things I never knew, but felt enriched to understand better. Aryn never seemed to tire, but this night she gave in to sleep. Perhaps some wine made that easier. I held her, closer than I ever thought possible, and felt her push her hips and buttocks close to me. There we were, a tangle of flesh that seemed endless; if only that were the way of it. Sometime in the middle of the night, I felt a tug. At first I thought Aryn had another burst of energy and I would do my best to take her again. I would hope my stamina made a miraculous comeback. But this was something else; something entirely different. "Why are you pulling at me?" she said groggily. "I'm not, my love. I thought you wanted another go," I said. Then she screamed; a bloodcurdling cry. I pulled back the blankets and couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. My creation had come to life! In every form of evil entity that existed in this and other realities! The flayed man chomped at her thigh and Aryn renewed her anguish. The tentacled creature rose from the picture on the leg to form as a three dimensional being before me. I reached for Aryn, but the tentacles pushed me back and set me into the floor. I landed on my backside and hit my head on the nightstand. Aryn screamed again and though my head reeled against the pain and near blackout, I found my feet. I jumped back up to the bed and saw the dragon figure swirling furiously on her leg. Aryn was being dragged into her own skin. The flayed man gnawed on tender flesh and the tentacle creature pulled toward the inner part of her thigh. The monstrosity's appendages flailed about all around him, but three of the tentacles held Aryn tight and had no plans to release her. I grabbed hold of her. "Darling, please hold me, don't let them take me!" Aryn cried. I held her and had no intentions of releasing. I then heard something, which caused my stomach to turn. Her flesh, that tender, flawless skin; the canvas I used and caressed over countless nights, was tearing, separating from the pelvis. Aryn wailed in pain. I held her though, and still held no thought of letting go. "Don't let them take me!" Aryn howled with tears streaming down her face. "No matter what, don't let go!" she screamed. I held her at the waist, but felt my grip slipping, as the leg continued to rip, making an unholy sound. All of the creatures were angrily agitating in the air around Aryn's leg. I tightened my hold, but to no avail; I was losing. I considered Aryn's eyes; full of fear and regret, much like my own. Why did we play with something neither of us understood? My fingers raked her side and dug into the flesh, drawing blood. My hands slipped to her arm. I tried to renew my grip, but lost it. I looked into those eyes, as I grasped her hand. Never had I wanted to hold something more. I needed her, but something from beyond desired her body. Aryn sobbed uncontrollably; her eyes pleaded with me, but I had no power in this struggle. I kissed her and lost the grip on her hand. "No!" Aryn protested, and then began to disappear into the ball of ink that used to be her leg, her body up to her waist, completely swallowed; the dragon encircled her form. She clawed at the bed taking the sheets with her. I lunged for her again, but fire shot out of the dragon's mouth, preventing me from going any further. She disappeared into the vortex of dragon and ink-created monsters. The room spun with a spiraling force; several items floated in the air and vanished into the oblivion. Then a loud pop and it was gone. There is nothing now; my canvas and muse forlorn and forgotten; the pain of her skin ripping, more horrifying than I could ever have imagined. I contemplated calling the police, but what would I tell them? This story is too fantastic; I would be locked up right away if I mentioned one part of it. I only have the sadness and realization that I let go. Aryn talked of inviting Hell, but neither she nor I believed that possible. I feel she may have gone there. I've sat here for a week, trying to consider what to do. I've read and studied the prints, but can't figure out why they turned on her. I guess I know only one way to find her. I've known it all along, but was too afraid to admit. My Hell is hers and I accept it willingly. I place this gun to my head to take my life, feeling the regret that has haunted me. I will see you soon, my darling, in this you can be assured. ⁂ [ CONDITIONED APOCALYPSE by Aric Sundquist ] The police officer tells me to stay in my apartment. He's tall and muscular and grips a mean-looking tactical shotgun. He gives off an aura of entitlement, like all men in uniform do, and stares at my breasts as if they're a crime in progress. But I don't hide them. Actually, I do quite the opposite. I lean against the doorway and stick my chest out and ask him if I can leave to go and run a few simple errands. He frowns and tells me that I can't go outside because the visitors are extremely dangerous. That's what he calls them—the visitors. I tell him that I call them slithering alien shitheads and he smirks a little at this. Then he says they're downright hostile and I should stay indoors for the time being. I'm not really afraid of the visitors, so I feign some emotion and begin sobbing. It works beautifully. He takes a step closer and reassures me that I have nothing to worry about, that they will all die by the end of the week. Then he insists I keep out of sight and he'll check up on me later. I tell him that would be great. And then I ask about his wedding ring. He is startled, just long enough to cue me in on a lie forming on his lips. He says his wife died of cancer, just recently, and he wears his ring in her memory. Then he puts his hand on my shoulder and asks if I'm alone and if I have any weapons in the house. I tell him that I'm alone, that I don't like guns, but I do have a protector named Max. But all he does is take naps on the rug and beg for table scraps. The policeman grins, because I'm an attractive young woman in need of rescuing. I bite my top lip and he gives me a weird look, so I switch to the bottom lip and play with my blonde hair and this time it works beautifully. I can tell I'm getting his blood pumping. I tell him to make sure to come back and we'll have a nice time together. He agrees. He wants more. The officer moves to the next apartment, a little flustered, he still eyes me up good. He knocks on my neighbor's door. Nobody answers. He moves to the next apartment and repeats the procedure, but this time he is greeted by an elderly woman wearing dark sunglasses and holding a potted plant that looks dead. I don't know her, and I don't care to know her, so I shut the door and try not to laugh. Men. Max comes to my side, unsure of what to do. Eventually he nuzzles my hand and licks my fingers. I hate being licked, but I keep my hand completely still. Licking is a sign of affection. That's what I want in a new pet. I make sure to lock the door and wedge my desk in front of it for an added level of security. The desk holds my mother's antique sewing machine. It's heavy as hell and makes a good doorstop. Then I sit at my kitchen table and begin sorting through my remaining food. This is what I have left: a couple boxes of corn flakes, four cans of expired tomato soup, a box of rice, and a half jar of crunchy peanut butter. That's it. Not great. The electricity went out two weeks ago. And all of my perishable food went with it. That's when I discovered a set of empty canning jars while scrounging through the cupboards. At one point during my early college years I had wanted to make raspberry jam, but never got around to it. So here they are—the empty jars. I use them to collect rainwater out on the fire escape. But what I really want to do is sneak outside and pilfer some of the untended gardens around town and do some canning. Or maybe set up some snares and catch a squirrel or rabbit to cook for dinner. Thinking about food makes my stomach grumble, so I pour out a handful of corn flakes into a bowl and nibble on a few. I place some of the corn flakes on the floor and Max slinks over and gobbles them up in a second. I pet him behind the ear and he curls up on the floor and falls asleep. At least he pretends to fall asleep. I dump out a second helping of corn flakes into the bowl right when gunshots go off outside. I hustle to the front window and peer through the shutters. In the street below, a military unit weaves through a series of abandoned vehicles. They move on foot, with handguns and rifles and tactical vests. It reminds me of one of those ant farms—the kind with interconnected paths and tunnels. I cheer them on in silence, but I know what's going to happen. I whistle to Max to come over and watch, but he doesn't move, just pretends to sleep on the rug. He hasn't been feeling good of late. Outside, something happens. Figures slithering out of an abandoned garbage truck. They're not human anymore; they're in the process of changing. Tentacles swarm from craterous slits in their stomachs and resemble sea lamprey. It looks pretty weird, but it's actually kinda neat. I watch the military men fire their weapons. They're winning at first, but the gunfire only attracts more of the creatures and the men begin suffering heavy losses. They retreat. A few survivors left behind start bleeding out. The others flee to a parking lot. Then more gunfire. And more screaming and dying. By this time my eyelids are getting heavy and my stomach is doing cartwheels, so I lie on the couch and Max settles down next to me, more out of habit than anything else. I clasp his leash around my wrist so he'll wake me up if he moves, then I close my eyes and slip into the world of dreams. When I wake up, it's dark, and Max's collar is on the ground, unclasped. I light a few candles and eventually find him trying to get out through the bathroom window. The window is nailed shut and won't budge. His bandages are bloody from pawing at the sill. He sees me and curls up into a fetal position and pisses on the floor. It's useless. He just won't work. I clasp the collar back around his neck and tighten it up. The spikes underneath the leather clamp down into his skin. I lead him from the bathroom to the living room and his whole body begins to shake, so I sit him back down on the floor and rub his back and try to calm him down, but he isn't having it. He lashes out and bites my hand. I take no offense at this; he's scared and the only thing he can do is retaliate. Luckily, his bite isn't serious. I pulled out all of his teeth with a pair of pliers two weeks ago, when he first tried to bite me in my sleep. Shortly after, as just an extra precaution, I had him declawed, cutting off the first joint of his fingers and toes. Then I sliced his vocal cords with a razor. It's called debarking, in case you didn't know. I read about it online before the power went out. There was lots of blood. It drew ants. Thinking back, maybe I should have done the procedures sooner. Maybe I should have done them when he first kicked his way into my apartment, full of lust and rage and his breath reeking of cheap whiskey. He was a wild dog back then. But not anymore. I tased him and tied him up with an Ethernet cord, then with a pair of sewing shears, I snipped off his balls and fried them in olive oil. They made a strange popping sound in the pan, but didn't taste half bad. After that, he calmed down a bit. All pets are captors until they learn how to love you back. That was also the day the lights first appeared in the sky. Earlier that morning, a bunch of us climbed up on top of the roof and watched those strange yellow orbs swirl through the atmosphere. They looked like dying comets. I didn't know what they were—spirits maybe? People online kept saying the lights were possessing people and making them go crazy. But of course, we didn't believe them. And then we all went crazy thereafter. The whole world did. We started killing each other off in record numbers. Cities burned. Everything reduced to rubble and ash within weeks. Then the change started with a select few. Supposedly, they were believers in some old god, and had given up their bodies as vessels for the yellow lights to possess. I thought it was all bullshit at first, until I saw for myself. Then I became a believer, too. Or maybe I'm just imagining it all—all the violence and the lights and everything else. Maybe it's how we've always been, how we've always treated each other. I don't really know for sure, and I can't think too clearly anymore. My mind is slipping away. All I can do is think about food. All I can do is react. As for Max—I'm going to give him a handful of sleeping pills. When he finally slips under, I'll place him in the bathtub and slit his throat. Once he's drained of blood, I'll cut off the pieces I can eat. I have plenty of canning jars left so it won't be a problem storing the leftovers. The lights didn't possess him. They only drove him mad. As for myself... Something stirs inside me, like a snake uncurling in the pit of my stomach. But it doesn't feel like one snake—it feels like a whole pit of them. Maybe they need to come out? Maybe I need to perform another procedure, but this time myself? One long incision down the length of my stomach should do the trick. I ponder this and rub Max's head until he eventually stops whimpering. He pretends to go to sleep, but his trembling gives him away. Then I think of the policeman; he'll be stopping by soon, no doubt. It remains to be seen how a man of the law will fare on his knees and bound in servitude to something like me. Hopefully he'll be a better protector than my former neighbor. But if not, it'll be fun housebreaking him. ⁂ [ LENGTH by David Turton ] Dylan Turner stood in his small, untidy bathroom, holding a tape measure against his small penis. It had definitely grown. Maybe not to the naked eye, maybe only by less than an inch, but it was definitely bigger than it had been two days ago. He pushed the tape measure as far back towards the base of his penis as he could and stared down at the numbers on the yellow tape, which clearly read 1.8 inches in large black letters. What had it been before? One and a half perhaps? He wished he had written it down. Determined not to make the same mistake again, Dylan made a note on his phone. Tuesday 7 November 2016. 1.8 inches. It had been three days since he'd seen the gypsy. Stumbling across the woman as he walked home through the woods from his local pub, she had known. The small, scruffy old woman had stumbled into his path in the dark and she had known. She had raised a gnarled, bony finger, pointed towards Dylan and said, "A darkness haunts you." She pointed to Dylan's crotch. "Shame. Oh, great shame." She began to shake her head with genuine anguish. "Oh, great shame," she repeated. "Look, I don't know who's told you what but I—" She cut his words off by grabbing his penis, making him gasp. "No more shame. No more shame. No more shame. Grow! Grow! Grow! Shame will go. Shame will go! Dylan will grow and shame will go." She let go and let her head roll back, the whites of her eyes flickering in her dirty, blackened sockets. Suddenly she released a bone-dry, bloodcurdling cackle. Her long finger rose once more and pointed at Dylan who stood quivering with fear. "No more shame, Mr Turner. Dylan Turner will be shamed no more! Go and live. Go and conquer. Go!" Dylan looked at the old hag. She seemed to be getting older, her nose large and swollen, her clothes were falling off her haggard, skeletal body. Her thin, grey hair fell around her shoulders revealing large patches of dry grey scalp on the top of her head. Her remaining teeth were an awful combination of black and yellow and her cracked lips were thin and pale. She was still cackling as Dylan pushed past her and ran the half-mile through the woods and into his house. As he ran he could hear her cackle become fainter and fainter. The little sleep he had that night had been plagued with dreams of the old woman. His penis tingled with the pain her bony fingers had caused, the long dirty nails had dug through his jeans into the soft flesh. He had woken the next day feeling disturbed. How did she know my name? he wondered. And the shame thing. About my dick... The size of Dylan's penis had been a source of depression since his teenage years. A micropenis was the technical term for it, something he'd learned after several private internet searches. At twenty-three years old, Dylan was still a virgin; he had never wanted to let any member of the opposite sex see where he quite literally came up short. And as a black man, he had to put up with countless comments from white people about the size of a black man's penis. He would just smile and feign an embarrassed look whenever these comments emerged, giving a non-committal laugh. But inside he was dying. How could the size of one body part affect a human being so much? A small nose, small ears, small feet. Even some kind of deformity. He would take all of them over his micropenis. He remembered with some pain the first time someone had seen it. He was thirteen in the swimming pool changing rooms and Billy Stephenson had pointed it out to the entire class. They had crowded round and laughed. He had glanced at their penises, each were at least twice the size of his. Billy himself had what could only be described as an elephant's trunk hanging out of his groin. Word had soon spread around school; Dylan had a tiny cock. Of course, as teasing and jokes tend to do, the joke soon died and people forgot. But Dylan had remembered. He had cried himself to sleep for weeks, and told no-one. From that day on, not one person had set their eyes on his naked penis; Dylan fully committed himself to ensure this would never happen. In his later teenage years and early twenties he had had some relationships, but had always broken them off whenever things got too steamy. He hoped he could find someone one day who would understand. A woman who could look past his tiny penis and fall in love with the man attached to it.

Subsets and Splits