Distress

reappearance, had somehow rewritten the odds. I covered my eyes with my forearm for a moment, and saw her sitting in her hotel room beneath the skylight, raked by the sun, reaching out and taking my hand. Even if I'm wrong… there has to be something down there. Or nobody could even touch.

De Groot said, “How soon can you get off the island?” She sounded more than a little concerned—which was touching, but strange. We’d hardly been that close.

I laughed dismissively. “Why? The anarchists have won, the worst is over. I'm sure of that.” De Groot did not look sure at all. “Have you heard something? From… your political contacts?” There was a sudden chill in my bowels, like the disbelief I’d felt before each new spasm from the cholera: It can’t be happening again.

“This isn’t about the war. But—you’re stuck, aren’t you?”

“For now. Are you going to tell me what this—?”

“We had a message. Just after Violet died. A threat from the Anthrocosmologists.” Her face contorted with anger. “Not the ones on the boat, obviously. So it must have come from the ones who killed Buzzo.”

“Saying what?”

“Shut down all of Violet’s calculations. Present them with a verified audit trail for her supercomputer account, proving that all the records of her TOE work have been erased without being copied or read.”

I made a sound of derision. “Yeah? Where do they think that will get them? All her methods and ideas have been published already. Someone else will duplicate everything… in a year at the most.”

De Groot seemed indifferent to the ACs’ motives; she just wanted an end to the violence. “I’ve shown the message to the police, here—but they say there’s nothing anyone can do, with Stateless the way it is.” She caught herself; she still hadn’t spelled it out. “The threat is, we post the audit trail within an hour—or they kill you.”

“Right.” I could see the logic of it: De Groot, and Mosala’s family, would all be too well guarded to threaten directly—but they’d hardly sit back and let the extremists kill me, after I’d helped get Violet off Stateless.

“The calculations were already completed when I logged on—lucky Violet programmed her net broadcast to wait until the hour.” De Groot laughed softly. “Her idea of making it a formal occasion. We’ll do what they’ve asked, of course. The police advised me not to call you—and I know the news does you no good—but I still thought you had a right to be told.”

I said, “Don’t do anything, don’t erase a single file. I’ll call you back, very soon.” I broke the connection.

I stood there in the alley for several seconds, listening to the wild music, chilled by the wind, thinking it through.

When I walked into the tent, Sarah and Akili were laughing. I’d meant to invent an excuse to get Sarah out quietly, so we could both just walk away—but it struck me at that moment that it would do me no good. Buzzo had been killed with a gunshot, but their favored methods were biological. If I fled, the chances were that I’d be carrying the weapon inside me.

I reached down and grabbed Akili by the front of vis jacket and sent ver sprawling backward onto the floor. Ve stared up at me, faking shock, anguish, bewilderment. I knelt down over ver and punched ver in the face, clumsily—surprised that I’d even got this far; I was no good at violence, and I’d expected ver to defend verself with all the agility ve’d demonstrated on the boat, long before I’d lain a finger on ver.

Sarah was outraged. “What are you doing? Andrew!” Akili just stared at me speechless, hurt, still playing dumb. I lifted ver half off the ground with one hand—ve barely resisted—then punched ver again.

I said evenly, “I want the antidote. Now. Do you understand? No more threats to De Groot, no files destroyed, no negotiations—you’re just going to hand it over.”

Akili searched my face, clinging to the charade, protesting innocence with vis eyes like some wrongfully accused lover. For a moment, I wanted to hurt ver badly; I had idiot visions of some bloody catharsis, washing the pain of betrayal away. But the thought of Sarah recording it all kept me in check; I never found out what I would have done, if we’d been alone.

And my rage slowly ebbed. Ve’d infected me with cholera, slaughtered three people, manipulated my pathetic emotional needs, used me as a hostage… but ve hadn’t, remotely, betrayed me. It had all been an act from the start; there’d never been anything between us to be sacrificed to the cause. And if the solace I thought we’d given each other had only been in my head, then so was the humiliation.

I’d live.

Sarah said sharply, “Andrew!” I glanced at her over my shoulder; she was livid, she must have thought I’d gone insane. I explained impatiently, “That call was from Karin De Groot. Violet’s dead. And now the extremists have threatened to kill me if De Groot doesn’t trash the TOE calculations.” Akili mimed grave consternation; I laughed in vis face.

“Okay. But what makes you think Akili’s working for the extremists? It could be anyone in the camp—”

“Akili is the only person besides me and De Groot who knew about Mosala’s joke on the ACs.”

“What joke?”

“In the ambulance.” I’d almost forgotten; I hadn’t reached the end of the story for Sarah. “Violet programmed software to write up the calculations, polish the TOE, and dispatch it over the net. And the work’s all completed; De Groot only caught it before it was sent.”

Sarah fell silent. I turned to her warily, still expecting Akili to make a move once my guard was down.

She had a gun in her hand. “Stand up please, Andrew.”

I laughed wearily. “You still don’t believe me? You’d rather trust this piece of shit—just because ve was your source?”

“I know ve didn’t send that message to De Groot.”

“Yeah? How?”

“Because I did. I sent it.” I stood up slowly, turning to face her, refusing to accept this ridiculous claim. The music from the square surged madly again, making the whole tent hum. She said, “I knew there were calculations in progress, but I thought they still had days to run. I had no idea we’d cut it so fine.”

My ears were ringing. Sarah watched me calmly, aiming the gun with unwavering conviction. She must have made contact with the extremists when she’d been researching Holding Up the Sky—and no doubt she’d intended to expose them, once she had the whole story. But they would have realized how valuable she could be to them—and before resorting to killing her, they would have tried everything possible to bring her round to their point of view.

And they’d succeeded. In the end, they’d convinced her to swallow it all: Any TOE would be an atrocity, a crime against the human spirit, an unendurable cage for the soul.

That was why she’d worked so hard to get Violet Mosala—and when she’d lost it, she’d had someone infect me with the cholera, modified to do the job indirectly. But they’d been sloppy with the timing provisions needed to accommodate the last-minute change of plan.

Nishide and Buzzo she’d dealt with in person.

And I’d just destroyed every chance of trust, every chance of friendship, every chance of love I might have found with Akili. I’d beaten it all into the ground. I covered my face with my hands, and stood there wrapped in the darkness of solitude, ignoring her commands. I didn’t care what she did; I had no reason to go on.

Akili said, “Andrew. Do as she says. It’ll be okay.”

I looked at Sarah. She had the gun raised, and she was repeating angrily, “Call DeGroot!”

I took out my notepad and made the call. I swept the camera around, to illustrate the situation. Sarah gave detailed instructions to De Groot, a procedure for transferring authority over Mosala’s supercomputer account.

De Groot seemed to be in shock at first, stunned to learn of Sarah’s allegiance; she complied with barely a word. Then her anger boiled to the surface, and she interjected sardonically, “All your resources and expertise, and you couldn’t even have an academic account hacked open?”

Sarah was almost apologetic. “Not for lack of trying. But Violet was paranoid, she had good protection.”

De Groot was incredulous. “Better than Thought Craft’s?”

“What?”

De Groot addressed me. “They pulled a childish stunt, when Wendy was in Toronto. They hacked into Kaspar and had it spouting their stupid theories. All for the sake of what? Intimidation? The programmers had to shut it down and go to backups. Wendy didn’t