But I know better, she thought. I know better than to let my guard down, ever, and still sometimes I do it. What is it about people? Why do they prefer it when we claim we know everything? What's wrong with the truth, that not everything's been discovered?
'I understand what you were trying to do,' Satoshi said.
'But I wonder if there's any way to downplay it after the fact?'
'Oh, bull,' Stephen Thomas said. 'Don't do that! You said just what needed to be said, Victoria, and anybody who doesn't back you on it has shit for brains.'
'I can defend my comments. I can't retract them, Satoshi,
28 vonda N. Mclntyre
not if I was quoted correctly. And it sounds like what I said is what got reported.'
Victoria was glad of the privacy scramble that kept inquisitive types with backyard antennae from listening in on laser calls. She had more or less become accustomed to the casual profanity Stephen Thomas used, but in public it still embarrassed her. And the first time he swore in front of Grangrana . . .
'We just wanted to make sure you'd seen the articfe,'
Satoshi said. 'So you'd have some warning if people pounce on you about it. We'd better get off the line. I love, you. Goodbye.'
'Wait,' Stephen Thomas said. 'Did Sauvage finally show, or not? And I love you too.'
'Yes, she's on board. I'll tell all about that when I get home. It's complicated. I love you both. I wish we had a picture. Bye.'
She ended the connection.
Why did I feel so comfortable about telling the premier the cold hard truth about science? Victoria wondered. I was ready to back off if I picked up disapproval, if she wasn't prepared to hear it.
She had not picked up on disapproval because the premier had not shown any. Whatever her reactions to Victoria's comments, she had let Victoria make them. She had listened, and Victoria still believed she had understood.
Victoria closed her eyes, linked with the web, and let it play the article behind her eyes. When it ended, she decided it had been written without malice, but with an eye for the flashy line.
Victoria sighed and unfastened the restraint net. She wished she were already home, in bed with Satoshi and Stephen Thomas. She felt so lonely. She grabbed her shirt and struggled into it and swiped her sleeve across her eyes, pretending her vision had not blurred. Right now Satoshi and Stephen Thomas were almost as far out of her reach as Merry. But she was on her way home.
Chandra left the inn and used the pedestrian tunnel to cross beneath the highway. The cold damp tunnel smelled of cement. On the other side she stepped out into dry hot sunlight.
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Traffic rushed past on the magnetic road behind her. All last evening the other guests had babbled interminably about the good weather. Chandra, however, felt cheated. She had come to visit a rain forest. She expected rain.
She started recording, waited until the nerve clusters gnari-ing her face and hands and body started to throb, and stepped beneath the trees. The light dimmed to a weird gold-green, and the temperature dropped from uncomfortably hot to cool.
She hurried deeper into the forest, hoping to outdistance the
sound of the traffic as well as the next group of visitors. At first she walked gingerly, preparing for pain to catch up to her, waiting for the dullness of too much medication. To her surprise, her body worked fine, swinging along the trail. She had balanced the pills perfectly against the pain, astonishingly intense, of having spent all the previous day on horseback. This morning the muscles of her inner thighs had hurt like hell. Until she took a painkiller she could barely walk.
Time pressed too hard for her to give herself a day off to recover, so she masked injury with drugs and hoped to get the dosage and the mixture right. If she had to wipe any recordings because of distorted body reactions, those images would be lost forever.
Chandra intended never to repeat an experience. She could reMve them on recording, if she felt like it, but she wanted every bit of reality to be new.
The nerve clusters that ridged her face felt hot and swollen.
She left the sunlight behind. Inside the forest, the light possessed more dimensions. The trail led through cool green shadows. To her left, dusty gold light hung suspended in a shaft that passed through a rare break in the cover. In every direction, great tree trunks stretched a hundred meters high. Chandra stepped off the path, though she was not supposed to, and spread her arms against a tree she could not begin to span. Three people might have reached halfway around it.
Moss covered the bark. She rubbed her cheek against it.
Its softness astonished her. She compared the feel to feathers, to fur, but neither description acknowledged the gentle green irregularity. She looked up. Every branch bore a coat of moss that looked like it had dripped on, then begun to solidify.
The ends of the branches, the new year's growth of intense green needles, had begun to outdistance the relentless creep
30 voncfa N. Mcintyre
of the moss. When the branch stopped growing for the season, the moss would catch up. The cycle would continue, another turn.
Some other artist would have watched the tree long enough to detect the growth of the moss. With a few hours' observation, Chandra could have stored enough images for fractal extrapolation. But she had no interest in electronic manipulation of the images she collected. She edited when she wanted to—she despised no-cut purists —but her aim was to collect as many images as she could, as accurately as she could, to preserve every sensation and impression. She-rose and walked farther, deeper into the jungly forest.
The sounds of vehicles faded. The tourists passed beyond her hearing while she stood out of sight off the trail. More people would soon follow. She wanted and needed solitude.
Not even the Institute had been able to persuade the park service to close the park and the highway for a few hours while she made her recordings. It had been difficult enough to get an entry reservation out of turn. Ordinary people, tourists, signed up two years in advance.
Knowing she would be ejected, perhaps arrested and prosecuted, if anyone detected her presence off the trail, Chandra moved on.
She passed into a different silence than she had ever experienced. It was a cool, damp quiet, far from total. A stream, rushing steep from pool to pool, created a transparent wash of background. The electronic Doppler of a passing mosquito added a bright sharp line. An invisible bird warbled an intermittent curtain of sound. Chandra sat on the bank of the stream and let the smell and sight and sound and feel of the rain forest permeate her body. She gathered in the foaming rush of negative ions. The whole world smelled green.
At the top of the slope, the waterfall split. One rivulet splashed into a bubbling, swirling cauldron of water whitened by the agitation. The other spilled over a curved stone and ran smoothly into a still, clear pool. When she leaned over, her translucent gray eyes peered back at her.
Chandra stripped off her clothes. Naked, she climbed down the bank and slowly thrust herself into the frigid water. The numbing coldness crept up her gnarled feet and along her nerve-streaked legs. The flowing water rose into her pubic
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hair, lifting it as if with a static charge. She never hesitated when the icy stream touched her powerfully sensitive clitoris. She gasped and sank in deeper. Her nipples were always erect from the extra nerves; now they throbbed and ached as the water caressed her. Her toes dug in among the round, smooth stones.
She let the chill seep into her till all pleasure faded. She shivered uncontrollably, as if the glacier upstream had taken over her whole body. She turned and clambered awkwardly onto the bank. too numb to feel stones or roots, almost too numb to grab them and haul herself from the water.
The stream made a narrow break between the trees. A bit of sunlight crept in through the leaves. Chandra crawled to it and collapsed, exhausted and trembling and elated by what she had captured. As she sprawled in the sunlight, trying to regain the full use of her body, she could not resist replaying the stream's sensations.
