Distress

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 even know what it meant—until I had to tell her who was trying to kill her daughter.'

I heard Akili, still on the floor at my feet, inhale sharply. And then I understood, too.

Free fall.

Sarah frowned, irritated by the distraction. 'She's lying.' She took out her own notepad and checked something, still holding the gun on me. 'Break the connection, Andrew.' I did.

Akili said, 'Sarah? Have you been following Distress?'

'No. I've been busy.' She examined her notepad warily, as if it were a bomb that needed defusing. Mosala's work was all there in her hands now, and she had to be sure she destroyed it, thoroughly and irrevocably, without letting it taint her.

Akili persisted. 'You've lost, Sarah. The Aleph moment has passed.'

She glanced up from the screen at me. 'Would you shut ver up? I don't want to hurt ver, but—'

I said, 'Distress is a plague of mixing with information. I thought it was an organic virus, but Kaspar proves that it can't be.'

Sarah scowled. 'What are you saying? You think De Groot read the finished TOE paper, and became the Keystone?' She held up her notepad triumphantly, with an audit trail displayed. 'Nobody's read the paper. Nobody's accessed the final results.'

'Except the author. Wendy sent Violet a Kaspar clonelet. It wrote the paper, it pulled all the calculations together. And it's become the Keystone.'

Sarah was incredulous. 'A piece of software?'

Akili said, 'Scan the nets for lucid Distress victims. Hear what they have to say.'

'If this is some kind of ridiculous bluff, you're wasting—'

Sisyphus interrupted cheerfully, 'This pattern of information requires itself to be encoded in germanium phosphide crystals, in an artifact designed in collaboration with organic—'

Sarah screamed at me wordlessly, waving the gun above her head, casting wild belligerent shadows on the walls of the tent. I hit the MUTE button and killed the audio; the declaration continued silently, in text flowing across the screen. My mind was reeling at the implications—but I'd lost my death wish, and Sarah had my full attention.

Akili spoke calmly but urgently. 'Listen to me. Distress numbers must be exploding already. And with a software Keystone—a machine world view—the mixing's going to keep wrecking people's minds until someone reads the TOE paper.'

Sarah was unmoved. 'You're wrong. There is no Keystone. We've won: we've left the last question unanswered.' She smiled at me suddenly, radiantly, lost in some private apotheosis. 'It doesn't matter how small the loophole is, the residue of uncertainty; in the future, we'll know how to enlarge it. And we'll never be brute machines, we'll never be mere physical beings… so long as there's still that hope of transcendence.'

I kept my expression deadpan. The music swelled. The two tall Polynesian women—militia members?—