And, suddenly, they were elsewhere. . . .
Vana Berenguer and Ariane Methol ran along the roof of Tupamaro Arcology, flying a kite. This part of the building was almost a mile high and had an immense park of many acres on its roof. There was deep soil here, supporting grass and trees and little streams, fields of flowers and little ponds. There were many people, children and poets, and there was a lot of laughter. The sky was pale blue, supporting a herd of fleecy clouds that kept pace with each other against the background of the sun. A sense of universal summer pervaded their insensate feelings.
They ran, and the diamond shape of paper grew away from them on its downward-bulging, white string stem. It was dark green, with a red, grinning face against the sky. They stood still, panting, and watched it fly. 'Good day for it,' said Ariane, holding the roll of filament. 'Just enough wind.' Vana nodded and watched it grow tiny, falling into an invisible distance. The string tautened, rising into the sky and disappearing long before it reached the kite, which seemed to float unsupported, far away yet held to them by some sort of inanimate loyalty. She felt the sweat trickling between her breasts, felt the delicate skin of her nipples engorged, rubbing against the inside of her halter. She stood closer to Ariane, touching flesh with her in little taps of breathing movement. The space inside her shorts seemed steaming, moistened by the exertion and rubbings of the run. She exhaled, a long breath, and relaxed. She dropped to the grass, sitting cross-legged.
Nothing to say, nothing to think, nothing to reason about, she smiled brightly at the land and sky and clouds. Light and shadow played on Ariane's skin, outlining her strong, delicate muscles. She was nice to look at. She stretched, arching her back, and, standing again, twirled about, letting impressions of the parkscape flood in upon her. She stood still and watched a group of small girls playing jump rope nearby, saying loud rhymes in Spanish to each other and giggling when one faltered of fell rolling to the grass. She whacked Ariane on the buttocks, eliciting a yip of surprise, and ran away. She ran away across the park to the edge of the roof, up a flight of stairs to the top of the wall, and fled along a chain-link fence, looking down at the blue and gold of her world. She grinned as she ran, breathing freely, sweating all over herself and her clothes, limbs swinging in an animal freedom, lubricated by the juices of an unthinking aliveness. She ran on and on until darkness fell down the sky and then went home to a man and more muscular thrusting in the dark and light. Images without form dazzled her consciousness and time stretched on to eternity.
Seven Red Anchorelles awoke to himself with a startled pheromonic cry: I still live?
His body still seemed real, the same hard-squid shape and form that had always, it seemed, existed, but he had memories. Life in the ship in the shadows of a Starseeder ghost. Life and work and the end. The last despairing moments as Centrum soaked in his oil flooded over him: death in Unity, his oil dispersed and turned to the irrevocable electronic incantations of the immortal brain that controlled his life. Why am I here? And how?
He looked about him. Row on row of sleeping Seedees were stacked against the sky, awaiting the command to awaken. This was not supposed to be possible. They were all gone forever, he knew that. Somehow, they were all to live again, subjected to some kind of mysterious resurrection process, brought to life again in the complexes of an eternal circuitry. How? He thought about it, his renewed oil, if such itwas, coursing with excitement. Obviously, something new had been added to the dark equations of reality.
Centrum began to speak within him, a thing it had never been able to do before. A curious double entity tracked along its voice, a different being, writ large with it, a new, unconscious dominance in the old being.
You have work to perform, it said, its voice echoic in nature, two thought-tracks merging with his consciousness in a strange, intractable fashion. Centrum seemed angry with itself, almost schizoidal. Mother Ocean has been invaded by a disease. The product of the Grand Design has gone wrong. Things must be rectified. The invaders must be repelled.
Sent away?
No. We must have all that is within them. There is a greater cosmos waiting without and we must have a way of dealing with it. Absorb them all. I will reach out and take what is theirs into myself. I must be supreme once again.
7red wondered at the meaning of it all, but the voice of God said, Go thou! and he went. He sailed away from the massed, sleeping ranks of all the beings that ever lived, the first scout of his renewed kind, to be in the proud vanguard of an unending, everlasting horde. He should have been overjoyed, but a shadow of unhappiness followed him, troubling the smooth flow of his liquid thoughts. What was wrong? He pondered as he flew, marveling at the changes in his world. Something had gone wrong. . . . No, he realized. Something had always been wrong. He merged with a waiting work vacuole and fled into the limpid depths of the blue sky, staring hard through its enhanced senses. Something was happening ahead, and he squinted to see what it was, eager to discover the form of the invaders. The sense of wrongness left him disquieted. He had no reason to live again, but here he was. Something had happened to Centrum. What?
He wondered if Cooloil would live again and wished for her presence. He had always missed her. He could feel the circuits all about him, and suddenly realized he could remember bits and pieces of that great dark time when he had beenpart of the unified mind. I am not real! he thought. His own oil had long ago dissipated. The body he inhabited now wasjust an image, held in the cold imagination of Centrum. It recreates me as a mere subroutine! He wondered at the source of this new terminology. I am dead, still, never to liveagain. But he felt real within himself, even knowing thatconsciousness was an illusion. Maybe it had alwaysbeen. . . . He felt a flood of horror course through him, but the battlewas before him now, already joined.
Harmon Prynne was lying on his bed in the darkness alone, hands laced behind his head, staring into the black depths of an invisible ceiling and waiting for sleep to come. He'd been living in Tupamaro Arcology for seven months now, and sometimes wondered why he'd come. He and Vana were more or less living together, as much as anyone ever did in the free-wheeling life of a modern urban monad, but it was a troublesome state. She came and went as she pleased and his complaints about her behavior were not only ignored, they seemed to go unnoticed.
He reached down under the comforting sheets and rubbed a hand slowly across his crotch, feeling a responsive stiffening, and wondered about himself. I'm a human itch, he thought reflectively, waiting to be scratched. He
