beyond even Aleph's capabilities. However, when cyborged to an
existing I, even one as damaged as Jerry Chapman, Aleph can create
a virtual person, one who functions as a human being, not a
disembodied intelligence, one who is capable of all the somatic
possibilities he had when healthy. The physical Jerry Chapman is
a shattered thing, but the Jerry Chapman latent in this hulk can
live."
Looking at Diana, Chow said, "We want you to share Jerry's
world. He must invest there, must experience other people and the
bonds of affection that engage us in this world. Otherwise he
will languish quickly; his neural maps will decay, and he will
die."
Gonzales easily followed that line of reasoning: monkey man
had to have other monkey men or women around or else go crazynot
an absolute rule, perhaps, but good in most circumstances.
Diana said, "Assuming that he becomes at home in this world,
what then? For how long can this simulated reality sustain him?"
The Aleph-figure spoke for the first time. It said, "I have
only conjectural answers to these questions but would prefer not
to entertain them right now. First we must rescue him from the
degenerative state he lives in and the certain death it entails."
"I understand that," Diana said. "That's why I am here, to
help in any fashion I can. It's just that I have questions."
Lizzie said, "And you'll get whatever answers Aleph wants to
give. Get used to it; we all do."
"Of course you do," the creature of light said. "And how
about you, Mister Gonzales? Do you have questions?"
"Not really. I'm an observer, little more."
"A difficult position to maintain," the Aleph-figure said.
"Epistemologically, of course, an untenable position."
Lizzie laughed. She said, "It is indeed. Look, how about I
take you two out to dinner tonight, Mister Gonzales, Doctor
Heywood?"
"Call me Diana," she said.
"You bet," Lizzie said. "And I'm Lizzie, you're ?" She
looked at Gonzales.
"Mikhail," he said. "But call me Gonzalesmy friends do."
"Good," Lizzie said. "We've got work to do, so let's cut the
shit. This thing, I'm still not a believer about it, but I know
it's got to happen quickly or not at all. Tomorrow Charley does
his preliminary examination of Diana, then we move."
9. Virtual Caf
Gonzales and Diana sat in Halo's Central Plaza with Lizzie.
Colored lightsred, blue, and greenclustered in the branches of
thick-leaved maples that ringed the square. The smoke of vendors'
grills filled the air with the smells of grilled meat and fish.
In the middle distance, elevators in pools of yellow light climbed
Spoke 6. Some people strolled across the Plaza; others sat in
small groups; their voices made a soft background murmur.
"Waiter," Lizzie said, and a sam came rolling toward them.
It stopped by their table and stood silently. "What do you have
tonight?" she asked.
It said, "Ceviche made just hours ago, quite good everyone
says, from tuna out of marine habitatyou can also have it
grilled. For meat eaters, spit-barbecued goat. Otherwise, sushi
plates, salads, sukiyakis."
"Ceviche for everyone?" Lizzie asked.
Diana said, "That's fine," and the Gonzales nodded.
Lizzie said, "And bring us a couple of big salads, sushi for
everyone, and a stack of plates. Local beer all right?" The
other two nodded.
"Yes, Ms. Jordan," the sam said. "And lots of bread as
usual?"
"Right," she said. "Thank you."
Strings of lights marked off the area where they sat. Above
a white-trellised gate, letters in more red faux neon said
VIRTUAL CAF. Perhaps twenty tables were scattered around, as
were two-meter high, white crockery vases with wildflowers
spraying out of them. About half the tables had people seated at
them, and the sam waiters moved silently among the tables, some
carrying immense silver trays of food. Other sams stood at low
benches in the center of the tables, where they chopped vegetables
at speed or sliced great red slabs of tuna, while others stood at
woks, where they worked the vegetables and hot oil with sets of
spidery extensors. One sam from time-to-time extended a probe and
stuck it into the dark carcass of a goat turning on a spit.
The waiter rolled up with a massive tray balanced on thin
extensors: on the tray were plates of French bread and a bowl of
butter, dark bottles of Angels Beeron the silver labels, an
androgynous figure in white, arms folded, feathery wings unfurled
high over its head.
Lizzie raised her glass and said, "Welcome to Halo." The
three clinked their glasses together, reaching across the table
with the usual sorts of awkward gestures.
#
After dinner, the three of them found empty chairs out in the
square's open spaces and sat looking into the close-hanging sky.
Lizzie looked at them both, as if measuring them, and said,
"What I was asking about earlier either of you folks got a
hidden agenda? If so, you tell me about it now, we'll see what
can be done, but if you spring any unpleasant surprises later on,
we'll hang you out to dry."
"I know what you mean," Diana said. "But I don't think you
have to worry about us. Gonzales is connected, but I think he's
harmless; and I'm out of the loop entirelyhere on strictly
personal business."
Lizzie nodded at Gonzales and said, "You're the corporate
handler, right?" She was looking hard at Gonzales but seemed
amused.
"Yes," he said.
"You plan to fuck anything up?" Lizzie asked.
"How should I know?" Gonzales said. Lizzie laughed. He
said, "You people have your problems, I have mine. I don't see
how we come into conflict, but unless you're willing to tell me
all your little secrets, I can only guess."
Lizzie said, "I will tell you one home truth: the Interface
Collective look to one another and to Aleph; then to SenTrax Halo,
then to Halo and that's about it. What happens on Earth, we
don't much care about. Particularly those of us who have been
here a long time. Like me."
Gonzales nodded and said, "That's what I figured. And it
looks like you've got a little tug of war for control of Aleph
with Showalter and Horn."
"We do," Lizzie said. "Insofar as anyone controls Aleph."
"How long have you been here?" Diana asked.
"Since they buttoned it up and you could breathe," Lizzie
said. "From the beginning." She pointed across the square and
said, "There's going to be some music. Let's have a look."
Under a splash of light from a pole on the edge of the
square, a young woman sat at a drummer's kit. She wore a splash-
dyed jumper, crimson and sky blue; her hair stood in a six-inch
high spike. She placed a percussion box on a metal stand, opened
its control panel, and gave its kickpads a few preliminary taps.
Two men stood next to the percussionist. One, nondescript in
cotton jeans and t-shirt, had the usual stick hanging from a black
straplong fretboard, synthesizer electronics tucked into a round
bulge at the back end. The other stood six and a half feet tall
and was so thin he seemed to sway; his skin was almost ebony, and
his close-shaved head looked almost perfectly rectangular. He
wore a long-sleeved black shirt buttoned to the neck, black pants.
A golden horn sat dwarfed in his enormous hand.
The percussionist hit her keys, a slow shuffle beat played,
and a fill machine laid a phrase across the beat: "Bam! Ratta
tatta bam! Bam bam! Ratta bam!" The stick player joined the
drummer with his own lo-beat fillswalking bass, sparse piano
chords, slow and syncopated. The horn player stood with his eyes
closed, apparently thinking. After several choruses, he started
to play.
He began with hard-edged saxophone lines, switched to trumpet
then back to saxophone, played both in unison, looped both and
blew electric guitar in front of the horn patterns. Scatting
voices laced through the patternsGonzales couldn't tell who was
making them. The drummer's hands worked her keyboards, her feet
the various kickpads below her; the song's tempo had speeded up,
and its rhythms had gone polyphonic, African.
The woman stood and danced, her body now her instrument, feet
and hands and torso wired for percussion, and she whirled among
the crowd, her movements picking up intensity and tempo. The
song's harmonies went dissonant, North African and Asiatic at
once, horn and stick player both now into reeds and gongs and
pipes, the ghostly singing voices gone nasal, and the dancer-
percussionist laying out raw clicks and hollow boomings, cicada
sounds and a thousand drums.
The crowd clapped and whistled and called, except for the
group from the Interface Collective. "Hoot," they said in unison.
"Hoot hoot hoot." Very loud. Lizzie was smiling; Diana sat rapt,
staring into space, and Gonzales got a sudden chilly rush: this
was what she looked like when she was blind.
"Hoot," said the Interface Collective, "hoot hoot hoot." And
the whole group had made a long chain or conga line, each person's
hands on the hips of the person in front. They shuffled forward
until a circle cleared, then surrounded the drummer, the whole
line still moving, most of them still calling out rhythmic hoots.
Back-and-forth and side-to-side, they swayed as the line lurched
ahead, and the drummer continued her dervish dance.
When the night had filled with all the sounds, the drummer
broke through the line, then finished the song with a series of
rolls and tumbles that brought her next to the other two
musicians, where she came to her feet and flung her arms up to the
sound of an orchestral chord, then down to chop it the sound, up
and down again and again, and so to the end.
The drummer climbed up the backs of the two men, who stood
with their arms linked; balancing with one foot on each of their
shoulders, she brought her palms together beneath her chin and
bowed to the audience, then raised her arms above her head and
somersaulted forward to land in front of the other two.
"Hoot hoot hoot," said the collective, their line now broken.
The three musicians stepped together and bowed in unison.
Gonzales caught Lizzie looking at him, and their gazes
crossed, held for an extra, almost unmeasurable instant, and she
smiled.
The musicians bowed for the last time to the Interface
Collective's hooting chorus. Okay, thought Gonzales. I like it.
Hoot hoot hoot.
#
Lying in her bed, Lizzie turned from side to side, lay on her
back and stretched.
The two from Earth seemed okay. Gonzales she would keep an
eye on, of courseaccording to Showalter, the man was Internal
Affairs and wired to a SenTrax comer, a board candidate named
TraynorChrist knew what script he was playing from. Diana
Heywood she didn't worry about: the woman was into something
stranger than she probably knew, but that was her problem, hers
and Aleph's.
As Showalter and Horn were her problem. They would yank the
plug on this one if anything looked like going wrong. In fact,
they would never have let it happen if Aleph hadn't insisted.
Aleph and the collective saw Jerry Chapman's condition as an
opportunity to extend Aleph's capabilities, but the whole business
just made Showalter and Horn edgy.
Aleph itself troubled herit had been unforthcoming about
the project and those involved in it, almost as if it were hiding
something from her why? with regard to a small project like
this, one apparently unimportant to Halo's larger concerns? What
was the devious machine up to?
So Lizzie lay, her thoughts spinning without resolution, and
she gave in and called her Chinese lover.
He wore a black silk robe embroidered across the front with
rearing crimson dragons; his straight ebony hair fell over his
shoulders. When he let the robe fall away, his skin shone almost
gold under lamplight, and his muscles stood with the clear
definition of youth and endowment and use.
Coarse white sheets slid away from her shoulders and breasts
as she rose to greet him, and she felt her desire rising through
needle-shot drug.
She pressed against him, and his rough, strong hands moved
across her body. She lay back as he ducked his head between her
legs, and she spread her legs and felt his first light, hot
caresses.
After she had come for the first time, she moved up to sit
astride him, then for some timeless time the two moved to the
exact rhythms of her needcock and lips and tongue and fingers
playing on her body.
Physically satiated, she dismissed him then, ghost from the
sex machine, and pulled the plugs from the sockets in her neck.
Then she lay alone, silent in her bed in Halo Cityisolated by
her job and, she supposed, by her temperament, dependent on
machines for love.
Maybe it was time to find a human lover.
#
Exhausted by travel and novelty, lulled by food and drink,
Gonzales fell quickly into sleep, and sometime later he dreamed:
He was with a lover he hadn't seen in years. In the
background violin and piano played, and the night was warm; all
around, artificial birds with golden, glowing bodies sang in the
trees. They leaned across a table, each staring into the other's
face, and Gonzales thought how much he loved every mark of passing
time on her facethey had taken her from a young girl's
prettiness to a mature woman's beauty. He and she said the things
you say to a lover after a long absencehow often I've thought of
you, missed you, how much you still mean to me. Aimless and
binding, their talk flowed until she excused herself, saying she'd
be back in just a minute, and she left. Gonzales sat waiting,
wat
ching the other tables, all filled with loving couples,
laughing, caressing. As the hours went on, the others began to
whisper to each other as they looked at him, and then the birds
began to sing that she was not coming back, and he knew it was
true, suddenly, painfully, ineluctably knew, the truth of it like
knowledge of a broken bone
The dream stopped as though a film had broken, and in its
place came a featureless, colorless absence. Imagine a visual
equivalent of white noise and in this space Gonzales waited,
somehow knowing another dream would begin
Red neon letters twisted into a silly but instantly
recognizable parody of Chinese characters read The Pagoda. They
stood above the head of a red neon dragon, now quiescent in
sunlight, that would rear fiercely come dark.
On this warm Saturday morning, men in felt hats and neatly-
pressed weekend shirts and pants carried brown paper bags out of
the Pagoda and placed them in the beds of pickup trucks or the
trunks of cars. They spat shreds of tobacco from Lucky Strikes
and Camels and Chesterfields, called their greetings. Women in
faded cotton, their arms rope-thin and tough, waited and watched
through sun-glazed windshields.
Gonzales passed among them. The sunshine had a certain
quality that of stolen light, taken out of time. And the
cigarette smoke smelled rough and strange. Gasoline engines fired
rich and throaty, kicking out clouds of oily blue. Gonzales stood
in ecstasy amid the smells and sights and sounds of this morning
obviously long gone by. He knew (again without knowing how) that
he was in a small town in California in the middle of the
twentieth century.
Gonzales passed into the main room of the Pagoda, where
narrow aisles threaded between gondolas stacked high with toys and
household goods and tools. Baby carriages hung upside down from
hooks set in the high ceiling. Dust motes danced in the cool
interior gloom. He walked between iron-strapped kegs of nails and
stacks of galvanized washtubs, then through a wide doorway into
the grocery section. Smells of fruits and vegetables mixed with
the odors of oiled wood floors and hot grease from the lunch
counter at the front of the store.
A couple in late middle age came through the front door, the
man small and red-haired and cocky, felt hat on the back of his