Eater (16 page)

At dawn she was weak with a numbing hollowness in her bones that cried out to be left alone. A separate child-self, wanting only the comfort it remembered from an impossibly distant time.

Channing gave it a few minutes to get used to the idea, and then very slowly and silently got out of bed. Going out through the kitchen, she grabbed a banana for energy. Opened slowly enough, the back door did not creak. In shadowy silence, the car started suddenly and she got out of the driveway before he could come running out, in case he woke. She drove up the hill behind one of the behemoth jobs from the cheap-gas decades, its plate proudly announcing VANZILLA. A hastily made sign on it carried the logo of a news network and she tromped down, enjoying the surge of acceleration as she shot around it.

Arno wasn’t in yet. Summoning more of what appeared to be her last energies, she snagged a muffin and coffee and found Kingsley. He wore the same clothes as yesterday. He even sat and listened to her whole case, his fingers steepled before him as if he were worshipping. Amy Major came in, looking equally bedraggled, touched Kingsley’s sleeve, then had the good sense to leave.

At last she was done, her voice trailing away before she could make herself frame a naked plea.

“I guessed yesterday,” he said from behind his fingers.

“Then you’ll support me?”

“I can’t imagine not doing so. But what I feel does not matter, surely, compared to Benjamin.”

“He’s thinking it over.”

“You bring it up before your own husband has—”

“There’s no time.”

He shook his head. “I cannot manage my personal feelings and give you reliable advice at the same time.”

“Look, you’ve faced my death. I’m
going
.”

“But certainly you cannot expect me or Benjamin to hasten that.”

“Think of it as an assisted suicide with a big upside.”

He finally broke down then, his façade crumbling. He bent slowly over his desk and his head bowed until it rested on a yellow writing pad. She let him sit like that, part of her wanting to comfort him and the other wanting to let the moment work upon him, in a cool and bloodless way that came back to her from somewhere in her years devoted to her own momentum. She had always had this streak, a compact, composed sense of self that let her know when, for example, she could let a man go, send him back for a fluff and fold while she went on with her life. She needed that now, and so she used it, letting the silence run on because it was running her way.

In time it worked. Kingsley had plenty to say, his fine long sentences purling out as she let him work his way to an understanding of what he would have to do to help her. But the cusp moment had passed in that silence and now he was the old Kingsley, put back together with hardly any of the cracks showing.

“I am of course aware of your tragic situation,” Arno said by way of preamble, “and that knowledge led me to consider the matter in detail.”

He was in his familiar perch on the edge of his desk. Here came his patented warm, understanding, yet commanding smile. “I like the idea. As you argue, this will give us a ‘dig
ital presence’ of higher order than anything available in existing Searcher craft.”

Benjamin was there by this time, still early morning. In the caverns of the expanded Center, there were no windows—for security reasons—so she readily lost sense of time. The stretches of memory lapse and simple stupor added to the effect.
I’ll be timeless pretty soon now, one way or the other
, she mused. Then she snapped awake, aware that she was drifting again, right in the middle of Arno’s speech.

He was dwelling on the technical details, on up to the grand questions. Would her simulation be bound by the craft’s programming? No, though the philosophical issue of whether a simulation behaved like a person was beyond anybody, at their primitive level of understanding. And so on.

She saw in Benjamin’s grim, set jaw his stifled anger at how she had outflanked him, going around to Kingsley. Well, she would make it up to him.
Something special, great meal, wine, a Victoria’s Secret evening, the works
. Then she blinked and knew she was beyond that, too, thoroughly out of it now, no body worth bothering with anymore. Or mind, either, to judge from her slippery hold on events.

Kingsley was speaking now, and Benjamin was arguing, and it was all under glass for her. Kingsley arguing that Benjamin was “too close to the issue,” then some military types coming into Arno’s office, earnest expressions turning to blank-faced when they realized she,
the one
, was there. Kingsley’s clashes with Benjamin had been personal, bitter in their tone, and she let all that sweep away from her. Pieces of the discussion came to her from the dozen men in the room.

“…barely technically possible…”

“…research in this area is still crudely developed…”

“…U Agency wishes to sequester her data…”

“…crash basis, can get the black box up to orbital rendezvous within a day…”

One of the Air Force generals she had seen interviewed on 3-D sat nearby and said, looking right at her, “The whole
world is on a war footing, after all—the first interstellar war.”

She roused herself to quote a famous bureaucratic maxim. “You can get great things done as long as you don’t have to get credit for it.” Then she sank back and let them try to figure out what it meant.

She saw, from an airy distance, that she had slipped free of ambition, a clean escape. No longer did the fires of desire for fame or success burn in her; they were banked forever. Now much of her earlier striving seemed pointless, even contemptible. She could be a spectator now. But even in the End Game, as chess players called it, the old astronaut ambition governed.

Arno again, speaking to her. “We all respect your contribution. It is a very valiant thing you do, for all humanity.”

She gave him a long look that should have struck several centimeters out of his back. “No heroics. I’m doing this to
do
it.”

Then the Air Force and NASA types came in and she tried to hold on to the thread but failed.
Keep quiet, so they don’t know
, her good sense told her. Even that wasn’t easy.

Somehow the big stuff went by smoothly, but she snagged on vexing details. One of the NASA astronaut contingent described how the control systems of the Searcher craft would be refitted to accept her commands—or rather, the digital “her.” He outlined how this would be the ultimate in compact control systems, “…manned, I mean crewed,” with a nervous glance at Channing.

She said slowly and with shaky clarity, even though she was not really sure she was right, “The word ‘manned’ comes from the Latin for hand, I believe, as in ‘manipulate.’ Nothing sexist about it.”

Everyone smiled and she saw that they were on her side, as much as anyone could be. Comforting. But Benjamin was stern and dire, his big-eyed gaze full of fear and confusion.

“Agencies despise uncertainties, old fellow,” Kingsley said, “but we are scientists and know that knowledge is based upon doing experiments that can fail.”

Benjamin sensed that this was a set speech, well honed in the corridors of power, but let it do its work on him, anyway. Kingsley had a way of letting you in on the secrets of command. This last sentence filled him with hope. “You’re saying they aren’t going to go for her idea?”

“No, I am saying that Arno is going against the instincts of those above him. Our only chance lies in how rattled they are up there.”

Benjamin’s elation fizzled away. He might as well admit how he actually felt, even if it was to Kingsley. He could hardly say this to Channing: “I’m against it, y’know.”

Absolutely expressionless: “I suspected as much.”

“Yeah?” Somehow Kingsley’s razor precision made him use sloppy Americanisms in return. “I…don’t want her to suffer any more. This thing…”

“It won’t truly be her.”

“But it’ll be
like
her so much.”

“A copy is not the original.”

“If they map her, though, there’ll be two of her at once.” His confusion welled up in him like bile.

“The Air Force types say they cannot realistically fly it, her, before the, ah, original is…gone.”

“So there’ll be no direct comparison.”

Kingsley nodded. “If it works at all.”

“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 reassuring hand on Benjamin’s shoulder, the first time he could remember such a gesture passing 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 passed 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.”

“Crap. 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 mass.”

“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 shift 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 shield 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 damn 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 passeth 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 documents, 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 hourglass.

“I…don’t…”

“
Sic transit
. Time passes.”

“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 goddamned 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.

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
with circles or even hearts. With big ridiculous loops to their
p’s
and
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
, many of them concluded.

Prayers were fine, but as she had weakened she had become an aficionado of bed linen. Piqué, matelassé, Porthault, Egyptian cotton
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
.

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” class 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
!

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 pinprick 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
Valentine cards, she bought one to leave behind for Benjamin, especially since there was the added inducement,
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. Nobody recognized the world-famous astronaut hero lady. While playing craps and blackjack, she noticed that most of the steady players were weirdly superstitious. 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 pronouncing 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 snatch the sacred chip back from the dealer or croupier if it was lost. Others turned over their chips so the Gambling Gods 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 Gods didn’t exist, but neither did any others she knew. Still, only the day before she had looked up Psalm 90:

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 passionate vehicle of life’s eternal transience. To prevail without God 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 mon
itored 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 space-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

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.

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 assaults. 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
.

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
but welcomed them. The Polynesian blended here with Asian. She liked the rituals of this O Bon Odori, a Japanese 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 bumpy tar roads. She inhaled the aromatic air and wondered what it would be like to live as digital abstraction, free of body.

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