Eater. Part 18

"She's counting on it."

"So are many people now. I surmise from my work over the last two days that it has caught the imagination of both NASA and the military. It even plays well internationally."

"How come?" He had been so wrapped up with her that he had not even thought about this angle.

"It brings the entire matter to human scale."

"'Human scale'? That's the only way I can see it."

"Of course." Kingsley reached across the coffee table and put a rea.s.suring hand on Benjamin's shoulder, the first time he could remember such a gesture pa.s.sing between them. "They mean valiant woman astronaut-"

"Daring last dramatic attempt-"

"Heroic expedition into the heart of the monster. That sort of thing."

Pale smiles pa.s.sed between the two men. They sipped their coffee for a moment in silence, the other Center personnel at nearby tables a thousand miles away.

"If they do it, they will build her into a heroine overnight."

"c.r.a.p. Don't want that."

"Your will-or mine, for that matter-has nothing to do with it."

His sense of helplessness rose, a queasy sour lump in his stomach. "She may get near the thing, all right, but what can she do?"

"The President asked me if she could carry nuclear warheads."

"On a Searcher?"

"Quite right, impossible, far too much ma.s.s."

"So what use will she be?" Benjamin had heard very little of the technical plans. She had been resting nearly all the time and he had liked staying home almost like the old days, the two of them alone on a long weekend.

"Reconnaissance, mostly."

"What will be her link to us?"

"A broad bandwidth, secure line, with backup satellites launched to keep her in sight."

"Well, at least she'll get a spectacular ride."

"Ah, you're not expecting this simulation of her to..."

"Survive? No, don't want to think about that."

Kingsley sat back and from the s.h.i.+ft in his tone Benjamin knew that their moment of closeness was over. "An experiment that gives you a clear answer is not a failure. It can surprise, however, and the best do just that. The true trick in science is to know what question your experiment is truly asking."

This was another set piece, obviously to prop up a s.h.i.+eld between the two men, and Benjamin resented it. "Come on, this is a war, not an experiment."

Kingsley would not come out from behind his fresh new barrier. "We must still think like scientists. Knowledge is our only way out of this predicament."

"Excuse me, but I'm not all that d.a.m.n worried about the problems of politicians right now."

"Still, realize that they aren't scientists. They fear failure, by which they mean unpredictability."

"They're sending her in for reconn and she'll die in there. Only she'll already be dead for me, got it?" He realized that he was shouting, coffee spilled in his lap, and had gotten to his feet somehow, and people were staring.

Channing lay back on their couch with a strange smile. "Sic transit gloria mundi, wasn't that what Kingsley said? 'Thus pa.s.seth away the glory of the world.'-and I'm not even named Gloria."

Benjamin had finally told her his feelings, blurting them out within ten minutes of arriving home. His talk with Kingsley had given him the courage to say it all. Had that been Kingsley's real motive? Not impossible. "So I'm not going back to the Center. I'll stay here with you, right through to..."

"The finish," she finished for him softly. "I know, it's been an immense strain on you. Come here."

Some snuggling, he seeming to need it more than she, and then Channing was off again, manic. On the couch and floor were doc.u.ments, all homework to prepare her for "My new life as digits," she remarked with an odd, sunny expression. She had been studying between naps and injections from the attending nurse, a hovering presence.

"Got you a little something, though," she said, fumbling among some papers.

"You went out?"

"I had Harriet drive me."

"Uh, she's..." He was having trouble keeping track, with events piling up. Perhaps some part of him did not want to face even the bare fact that she now needed a home aide.

"My nurse, the new one. I was getting cabin fever. Imagine what I'll be like when I'm in a little box, eh?"

She presented him with "a parting gift"-an hourgla.s.s.

"I...don't..."

"Sic transit. Time pa.s.ses."

"It looks like the magnetic funnels of the Eater."

"That, too. Call it a visual pun."

"I think..."

She kissed him slowly, breathing in long drawn sighs, as though laboring. "Don't think. The whole rest of my G.o.dd.a.m.ned existence, I'm going to be nothing but a thinking thing."

They went back into their bedroom then, hearts thudding.

"A little personal therapy, Harriet," Channing called.

He managed to trip over their rattan furniture on the way, carrying her-so frightening, her lightness-and then it was enveloping, the air liquid and their skins like the silent slide of silk.

5.

Dying was more interesting than she had feared.

You got mail about it, even. The public only knew that she had volunteered to be uploaded, nothing about the true mission. They presumed that, like the others already transmitted by microwave as 0's and 1's, she would shortly become a digital commodity for the Eater to relish.

Even such momentary renown combusted with her faded astronaut glory to make her a momentary celeb. Being slightly world famous and sheltered by armed guards up and down the street gave dying a certain, well, zest. The postman still delivered, apocalypse coming or not, and so she got bags of letters.

It was impossible to take this unasked correspondence at face value. These people were probably doomed, too, if the Eater grew irritated, and they knew it. Still...

To their credit, men did not decorate their notes with scented, colored stationery, dotting i's i's with circles or even hearts. With big ridiculous loops to their with circles or even hearts. With big ridiculous loops to their p's p's and and q's q's, women's letters were a topographical pain, even when writing premature condolence notes with a smiley face at the end. We shall pray for you We shall pray for you, many of them concluded.

Prayers were fine, but as she had weakened she had become an aficionado of bed linen. Pique, matela.s.se, Porthault, Egyptian cotton vs vs. English linen, dotted Swiss, chenille. Gourmet sleeping, though they couldn't contend with the sheer contentment of snuggling against Benjamin. But when she rested through the day, lying alone in luxury, the 280-threads-per-inch seemed to matter matter.

Harriet reluctantly took her out, usually in the mornings when she was most energetic. Benjamin was at home as much as possible, but shooing him off to the Center did them both good. The U Agency had added to Dr. Mendenham a corps of specialists and the "sustaining terminal" cla.s.s of drugs, introduced first in the 2010s, had been doing a stunning job of keeping her aloft, despite the steady growth of tumors and other blights distributed throughout her body. They hurt some, and then a lot. In astronaut training, they had taught her to displace herself from the pain and still function, a talent that came in handy. She got fond of morphine in the bad times, and liked Mozart particularly that way. Go, Wolfgang Go, Wolfgang!

On a sunny Tuesday, she voyaged out with Harriet, listening to a wrist-radio talk show that hashed over the visibility of the Eater. She had seen it the night before, a pinp.r.i.c.k of blue light from the decelerating jet, pointed straight at Earth. Predictably, this excited everyone, as though until they could see it with their own eyes the whole thing was a mere theory.

A brilliant, tropical day, enough to persuade her that the Problem of Evil was just a rumor. It was so windy she saw a dog sticking its head out of a parked car. In the market, at a display of I LOVE YOU ONLY I LOVE YOU ONLY Valentine cards, she bought one to leave behind for Benjamin, especially since there was the added inducement, Valentine cards, she bought one to leave behind for Benjamin, especially since there was the added inducement, NOW AVAILABLE IN MULTIPACKS NOW AVAILABLE IN MULTIPACKS! She did not realize that she was laughing so hard until it turned to sobbing and Harriet led her out.

On a lark, she went to one of the new casinos on the island, Harriet in tow. n.o.body recognized the world-famous astronaut hero lady. While playing c.r.a.ps and blackjack, she noticed that most of the steady players were weirdly superst.i.tious. One at the blackjack table always said, "Thin to win, deep to weep," when he cut the cards, always leaving only a thin stack at the top, apparently believing this affected the game. Others wouldn't cut the cards, folding arms and p.r.o.nouncing profoundly, "I won't cut my own throat." Others would not accept higher denominations of chips, even though they were winning. Some got attached to lucky chips when they played and would s.n.a.t.c.h the sacred chip back from the dealer or croupier if it was lost. Others turned over their chips so the Gambling G.o.ds could not read their denominations and see that they were getting too lucky. She even saw two who would get up and walk around their chairs every time the dice changed hands, as another way to confuse fate.

Yet was this any worse than the other symptoms she saw? The Gambling G.o.ds didn't exist, but neither did any others she knew. Still, only the day before she had looked up Psalm 90: For when thou art angry all our days are gone;we bring our years to an end, as if it were a tale that is told.So teach us to number our days.

T.S. Eliot had been right: the spirit killeth, but the letter giveth life. Who would have thought that her wobbly Episcopalian would come back, like a native tongue somehow forgotten?

Strange indeed, considering that all her adult life she had felt that to exist implied a duty to burn with a hard, gemlike flame, living as a pa.s.sionate vehicle of life's eternal transience. To prevail without G.o.d or any metaphysical hydraulics, without foundations in an accidental prison sentence handed down to us by a deity who did not exist.

She was halfway tempted to bring such matters up to the Eater itself. Now that Arno had cleared the way for her, she could do anything she wanted with the Semiotics Group data flow. The Eater was now within a light-minute of turnaround time, and as quick as ever. Working with the team that monitored and conversed with it around the clock, she noted oddities.

When it said "Greetings" or "Goodbye" or used "please," some witnesses seemed to feel this meant it was becoming friendlier. Using their language necessarily made it seem more human, but surely it was clever enough to recognize social lubricant words and use them as a matter of course. Any natural language would have both redundancy and deliberate padding, for living creatures were not perfect conduits of meaning. Superficial linguistic gesture meant little. Certainly reading into them the personality that resided in magnetic strands was a huge error, like trying to eff the ineffable.

The Eater was being as pleasant as it could be, while letting its demand stand. This schizophrenic feature drove many in the Semiotics Group to distraction, but she was untroubled. It was alien, and fitted itself into human categories only roughly.

That saturated even the Eater's apparently casual conversation with implied meaning. In one exchange with a physicist, it had pointed out that planetary life labored under weighty restrictions-and here the pun was clearly intended. Gravity makes it hard for life-forms to grow large, defeating economies of scale. Muscle and bone protect delicate neurological circuits, and these take up most of any body. Muscle burns energy and oxygen, bone hampers movement even as it protects brains. Ideally the largest creatures should be the smartest, but in fact these had been dinosaurs and whales and other relatively unbright forms. Being forced to move at the bottom of a gravity well, the Eater meditated, meant that planetary life, the gravitationally challenged, could never match s.p.a.ce-born forms. The immense interlocking neurological networks of the Eater, spun of sheer gossamer magnetic fields and filmy plasma, had far higher information content than even the human brain, on a pound-for-pound basis. A diffuse, ionized medium was THE OBVIOUS BEST SITE FOR LIFE IN THE LONG RUN.

as the Eater put it.

A further limitation, it said, came from the paltry energy budget of planets. Earth's life ran on the sunlight falling through its air, plus a small volcanic contribution, and a bit from the ebbing decay of radioactive materials. The Eater lived on a huge energy budget, whenever it could harvest an iceteroid. Though to human eyes their world's bounty was prodigious, in energy terms it was tiny-a thousand watts per square meter exposed to the sun. The Eater enjoyed a billion times this bounty, coursing through its mesh of trapping fields and vigorous particles.

The bounty of semiotic theory was a gusher of speculation. She skimmed through learned-sounding papers based on the wildest of ideas.

...transparently it thinks of itself as a kind of traveling Ego, when actually its focus upon instant gratification of its needs, be they icestroids or personality copies, makes it much more an unrestrained Id. Clearly what it lacks is a Superego......with proper guarantees that they would not be mistreated, a more socially responsible Eater could garner many more volunteers for uploading......it is fitting to ask: Who is most interested in collecting mayflies?-that is, short-lived life. Clearly, amateur collectors and entomologists. Eater is a bit of both. Losing half a million mayflies to obtain a good specimen is nothing to a collector seeking a perfect sample of a rare breed. Anything we can do to make ourselves appear ordinary lessens its desire to collect us. Refusing to kill ourselves to furnish copies for it may well signal stupidity to Eater, and thus make us uninteresting. Caving in immediately might signal our "commonness," since apparently most societies have done so; it has collected many. Paradoxically, complying would reduce our value to a collector. We should entertain the notion that our response has been mixed. Some wish to submit, others to fight. This rather contradictory response may make us an interesting and valuable item to add to the collection rather contradictory response may make us an interesting and valuable item to add to the collection.......while it must "eat," it dislikes being called Eater. No matter how it denies consciously this connection with the needs of lower life-forms, this explains why it is fascinated with the unconscious structures in human minds-and thus desires our whole minds, not just its products, works of art, etc...

All these were projections of human categories on to the Eater. None seemed to deal with her suspicion that many societies had attacked it with weapons as advanced as Earth's. It would have evolved a way to survive even the most fierce of a.s.saults. Kingsley had guessed that the most they could expect was to drive it away.

Of even that she was more and more unsure. Still, she read through the tangle of speculations. She put herself through this because she was venturing into its territory. Her NASA years had taught a firm lesson: do your homework do your homework.

But the eerie tang of the thing, that was the most basic lesson, and the hardest to truly learn.

She fled from these sessions back to the comforts of home.

She barely had time to suffer Harriet's injections when a neighbor knocked: there was a party, and they would like to have her and Benjamin come, though of course they knew how busy...

It was delightful. Like most hard-driving professionals, she and Benjamin had only a distant connection to their town. Their province was the global world, firmly secured by electronic media and airline tickets.

But outside their lives, the rhythms of the tropical island culture went on. Natives called the mainlanders haole haole but welcomed them. The Polynesian blended here with Asian. She liked the rituals of this...o...b..n Odori, a j.a.panese dance festival that let her dress up in a blue and white cotton ukata, feast on juicy BBQ squid, gingery pancakes and luscious mango shave ice, fried noodles, and sweetened bean confections. That evening beloved ghosts were supposed to return from the spirit world and briefly visit, as they had been doing for the 1,400-year tradition of the festival. The ghosts got tiny dishes set out for them: roasted eggplant, squash and potatoes cooked in sesame oil. At dusk families gathered at graveyards to burn incense and escort the ghost-souls with flickering paper lanterns. Dried hempseed burned in bowls to guide them to the proper homes, where families could talk to the ghosts and be sure of being heard. At the end of the season, the ghosts got farewell rice dumplings and hypnotic taiko drums. but welcomed them. The Polynesian blended here with Asian. She liked the rituals of this...o...b..n Odori, a j.a.panese dance festival that let her dress up in a blue and white cotton ukata, feast on juicy BBQ squid, gingery pancakes and luscious mango shave ice, fried noodles, and sweetened bean confections. That evening beloved ghosts were supposed to return from the spirit world and briefly visit, as they had been doing for the 1,400-year tradition of the festival. The ghosts got tiny dishes set out for them: roasted eggplant, squash and potatoes cooked in sesame oil. At dusk families gathered at graveyards to burn incense and escort the ghost-souls with flickering paper lanterns. Dried hempseed burned in bowls to guide them to the proper homes, where families could talk to the ghosts and be sure of being heard. At the end of the season, the ghosts got farewell rice dumplings and hypnotic taiko drums.

No one mentioned the Eater, though some children tried to make out its blue-white glimmer in the sky. Their neighbors kept a sympathetic blanket of nonchalance wrapped around the evening, making small talk.

She and Benjamin walked home together over the b.u.mpy tar roads. She inhaled the aromatic air and wondered what it would be like to live as digital abstraction, free of body.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,I will fear no evil;for thou art with me;thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

It took everything she had, but they made love in the close, moist night air and it gave her something she could not name.

6.

He tried to smile with a.s.surance, but his face felt as if it would crack like hard plaster.

The President was visiting, along with a.s.sorted members of the self-luminous set, U.N. and allies. Show of confidence. All hands...o...b..ard. Face the approaching crisis with a firm hand.

None of this was for the Center staff, of course. The media were the whole point. But there had to be something for the President and entourage to actually do, so Arno and Martinez took him on a tour. Plenty of shots of his craggy visage gazing sternly at the latest maps of the Eater interior. Nodding, taking it all in with a concerned yet confident scowl.

After the well-lighted photo ops, a reception. Maximum attention to Channing, now in a wheelchair to underline the precarious state of her health. She did need it. Benjamin stayed beside her with the nurse and she managed to chatter amiably with the President. Only then did Benjamin have to step forward and shake the presidential hand. Offered with the legendary charm, it was firm. Benjamin joined in the photos with Channing, all smiles but not too joyous, as this was was a crisis. a crisis.

Then the two of them, plus Kingsley and Arno, sat at the presidential table for a ritual snack. Talk flowed, guided by the President and the Secretary of the United Nations. Kingsley glided gracefully through all this, and from him Benjamin learned an important lesson.

"Sharp, smart people-we're all that," Kingsley said to him and Channing. "And at a do like this, we meet others no less sharp, but also blessed with charm and an easy social facility, a talent that cannot be learned or imitated."

Channing watched the President, whose attention illuminated the other half of their circular table, and nodded. "The spotlight of his gaze."

Short sentences were all she could manage now, but these words brightened Kingsley. "Yes!-precisely. That charisma conveys to its target a sense that you are indeed special, that the charmer and the charmed form tightly orbiting worlds."

Benjamin saw the point now. "So you get caught up."

Kingsley seemed unafraid of dissecting a performance going on only a few feet away. Benjamin saw why: n.o.body was paying the slightest attention to them.