it apparently gave an electronic signal to a passing tram, because
the vehicle stopped so that the two could climb on. Lizzie
stepped quickly up, and the sam clumsily pulled itself aboard by
grasping a chrome railing with one of its extensors.
The tram let them off near Spoke 4. A stand of trees was
just visible through the fog; beyond, Lizzie knew, were marshes
bordering 'soup bowls'ponds where the flow from rice paddies
mixed with the River's waters.
Using both visible range and infrared sensors, the sam led
her through the trees. They came to a clearing where another sam
stood to one side. Gonzales sat on a fallen log, watching a
mechanical vole chew small pieces of wood. His clothes were wet
and spattered with mud and dirt. Next to him, a large orange cat
also watched the vole.
'Hi,' Gonzales said.
'Are you all right?' Lizzie asked.
'I don't know,' he said. He reached out absent-mindedly and
stroked the orange cat, which turned on its back and batted at his
hand; apparently it didn't use its claws, because Gonzales left
his hand there for the cat to play with.
'Is our presence required?' asked the sam who had accompanied
Lizzie. She said, 'No.' The two sams scurried away single-file,
their passage almost silent.
Lizzie sat on the log next to the cat. She said, 'How are
you?' He was giving off a near-audible buzz, and Lizzie resisted
veering into his drug-space; she'd had problems herself since
coming out of the eggnot as severe as Gonzales's, Charley said,
because she hadn't been under as long. 'Still a bit jittery?' she
asked.
'I feel all right,' he said. 'Just, I don't know scrubbed.
Why are things like thiscold and dark?'
'That's not clear. Things haven't been working right since
Diana and HeyMex were disconnected.' Gonzales looked confused but
not overly concerned. She said, 'There's other news, too.
Showalter's been relieved of her position as head of SenTrax Halo;
Horn's the new director.' Now he looked totally befuddled. 'You
can worry about these things later,' she said. 'Why don't you
come back to my house? You can get some sleep.'
'Okay,' he said. 'But I don't understand ' He stopped
again, as if trying to find words to express all the things he
'didn't understand.'
'Nobody understands right now. Aleph's just not working
right, and we don't know whywe can't get in touch with it.'
'Oh, I see.'
'Glad you do, because nobody else does.'
He stood, then bent over to lift the cat from the log.
Cradling it in his arms, he said, 'Okay, I'll go.' He smiled at
her, and the cat lay in his arms and looked at her out of big
orange eyes.
#
Gonzales woke to find his clothes folded, clean and neat, on
a chair next to his bed. The orange cat lay at his feet; it
raised its head when he got up, then curled up again and went back
to sleep.
He found Lizzie in the kitchen slicing apples and pears and
Cheshire cheese. 'Good morning,' she said. 'I'll warm some
croissants, and we can have coffeedo you like steamed milk with
yours?'
Her voice was friendly enough but perfectly devoid of
intimacy. Its tones were an admonition saying keep your distance.
'Sure,' he said. 'That all sounds fine. But you didn't have to
do this.'
'You're a guest. I'm happy to.' She wouldn't quite meet his
gaze.
>From his bedroom came a loud mew, and the two went in to find
the orange cat, fur erect, confronting a cleaning mouse. The
mouse, a foot-long shining ovoid about four inches high, moved
across the floor on hard rubber wheels, emitting a gentle hiss as
it scoured the room for organic debris; a flex-tube trailed behind
it to a socket in the wall. 'Kitty kitty,' Gonzales said. The
cat hissed and ran from the room.
When they got to the living room, the front door was closing.
'Will it come back?' Gonzales asked.
'Probably. Cats come and go as they please, but they often
adopt people, and I think this one's adopted you.'
Silence lay between them, and it seemed to Gonzales that
anything either of them said would be awkward or embarrassing.
Perhaps the feeling was just part of the after-effects of a
psychotropic, though he was missing the other usual symptoms. His
perceptions seemed stable, not swarming and buzzing, and his
emotions didn't have a labile, twitchy quality. In fact, he felt
more stable and less anxious than he had since he last got into
the egg. So maybe the twins were right: if you can't get out of
what's happening, go deeper in.
Still, he didn't know what to say to Lizzie.
'We've got trouble,' she said. She went to the window and
pulled back the navy-blue beta cloth curtains and gestured out
where night and fog still held. 'Mid-afternoon,' she said.
'Has everything fallen apart?'
'Not quite everything. We're doing what we can with a bunch
of semi-autonomous demonsjacked-up expert systems, reallyand
the collective.'
'How well is that working?'
'Not all that wellwe can maintain essential functions now,
and that's about it. Some things we can't handleclimate
control, for instance. It's very complicated, because everything
is connected to everything else, and so far we've just managed to
fuck it up.'
'And what's Traynor up to? Has he asked for me?'
