The ice transmitted a gentle thud to his feet and the satellite flew away. For a moment it was a brief, glittering speck, then he lost it among the stars. He looked up into the sky and thought about the satellite. At a predetermined point in its flight a pyrotechnic device would fire, briefly, gases spurting forward, and the thing would jolt to a sudden stop and hang there, magically, dead center above Ocypete's near side. As soon as the satellite was ensconced overhead, John called in. "Hello. Hello. Just testing the Clarke here. Anyone feel like answering me?" An image of warm femininity came to him suddenly, unexpectedly commanding. It was a strong, unusual overlay on the com i/o. "Beth?" he thought, enjoying the sudden presence. "Are you sending in standard mode? I'm getting a lot more than I'm supposed to. . . ." There was a trace of gentle amusement flooding onto him from the carrier wave. "Not exactly standard," she thought to him. "But the i/o telltales are registering full - arieshere. Are you coming on back?"
"Yes . . . but . . . something, uh . . . strange . . ." He looked behind him, feeling odd, and found a place to sit on the edge of one of the MPT's footpads, an insulated spot where the ice wouldn't be able to steal his warmth. The sensations grew stronger. "What is this?"
The thing grew within him, and he could feel tendrils reaching out across the intervening spaces, warm, delicate probes reaching out to hook up with his mental circuitry. Something had him in its grasp, weak in the absence of physical connection, but taking him away from the real world nonetheless. . . . Across all the stark immensities, she became the world. Beth's image roared over him like a breaking tsunami, carrying ecstasy with it. Knowledge came. This was no malfunction. It was no fantastic coincidence. She was enabling full
Downlink Rapport, risking its use on an open channel. Others might be listening, but he found that he didn't care.
Dimly, somewhere in the background, he sensed the presence of a GAM, regulating things, maintaining and strengthening the rapport.
Why? he wondered, transmitting that wonder to her, but the only answer was stronger intimacy. He felt overwhelmed, briefly frightened. The obstacles that had stood between them for so long and made them strangers were pushed aside like phantoms. How could they be anything but . . . sentiences, human and different, everythings, a catalog of the world, and its mirror? For a moment they seemed to be one. If it hadn't been for the slight time lag of the satellite, they felt as though they might have irrevocably merged. Sexuality came, and was sated, and then vanished, wafting away on the wings of a storm. Time passed, and the GAM program kicked them down into a less intimate mode. It knew the dangers, even if they did not.
Fiery sun speck at zenith, catching little irregularities on the meshwork of the MPT and highlighting them with brilliant reflection. Blackness and random eye-feedback colors melting into more and more horrible caricatures of faces. Organizing randomness into horror. Stop it. What's happening? was a sort of odd, impenetrable fear, trying to pull them apart, but failing. I am so happy . . . but something is there. What? I am breaking through. . . . Memory. A memory.
It was a bright gray day, the sun shining through hazy white stratus, a silver circle shedding various degrees of shadowless light. They were comfortably seated in two plush couches, facing each other, a large window to his left. The cushion-train they rode was heading down to Chilliwack , where Uncle David had a condo. His mother was watching the scenery and tapping a collection of illustrated poems from Comnet.
His father, sitting next to him, pointed to a small-looking mountain on the dark horizon. "That's Mount Baker over there, Johnny," he said. "They say she's shaking right now, getting ready to erupt. It's getting to be a regular event, hereabouts." He was a small, dark man with a Vandyke beard, the Innuit written deep into his squinting, crack-radiating eyes. John watched it for a while, and, indeed, he could just make out a wisp of something, lighter than the clouds behind it. Then, as he stared in amazement, the mountain seemed to burst. Huge fountains of steam and ash shot up, and, though at this range it was a slow, stately billowing, he understood that up close it was fast and tremendously violent. The train had closed somewhat on the mountain, and it was now less than thirty kilometers away. There would be a long time before the shock wave got to them. A voice came crackling over the train's antique intercom, the engineer, perhaps, or a conductor: "I have just received word that the Baker eruption has started. We're going to have to stop the train in order to weather the high winds that will be sweeping over us in a few minutes. There is no reason to be concerned. I will be giving you a further report in about five minutes."
The whole southern sky was being enveloped in an ashen cloud, sporting a complement of turrets and domes. The train slowed in an even deceleration. As they stopped, the sun was completely hidden, and John noticed a small bush, made unnaturally important by the fact of its being here, in the dimming light. A man in the seat behind them said, "Those bloody scientists can't get anything right. And after a hundred years of trying, too! I heard just last week that this thing was going to quietly spill its guts in a couple of years. I hope they had the evacuation plan down."
"If not," said a woman's voice, "I hate to think what will happen." The intercom began again. "This is no simple eruption. The best I can piece together is that there's been some sort of terrorism. Someone planted a weapon in the opening and the thing is . . ." A dull thudding grew out of the stillness, and the trainbegan to rock. "Everyone keep calm!" said the intercom. "This is it," said the man behind them.
John had been watching the flat landscape beyond the river, as it was progressively swallowed by dim, boiling fog. He wanted to go outside and feel the wind, just like he'd wanted to be in a hurricane, to feel its power. He felt no fear.
With a huge, broken jolt, the world fell on its side. They fell fifteen feet to the hard, cold windows on the other side of the train. Screams in many different tones punctuated the bass thrumming all around. He didn't hear his mother's screams. He lay crumpled against the cold glass and felt his hand under his upper arm in a funny way.
The thudding grew less. It was over, he knew. Again, the thing he wanted to do most was go outside. The screaming resumed for a moment, two or three voices, then subsided. "Fucking shit," said his father. He rolled onto his back and looked up at the topsy-turvy train, the seats and blank windows above his head. His father was kneeling over a form that he easily recognized as his mother. Her head was turned away.
"She's dead. Her neck's broken." His father didn't look at him. A muzziness overtook him, but he still wanted to get out. He stood up and then fell down.
In the now, with Beth inside him, he felt strong, yet almost unconscious. A quiet sense of communion and change was encompassed.
It had to be over. The GAM needed to modify its OS.
John stood cautiously, hoping that the cold had not made his suit brittle. He felt exhausted, and frozen through, more likely from pressure-inhibited circulation than actual cold . . . and joy was there as well. Again, he thought to her, knowing the answer: "Why?"