Georgia on My Mind and Other Places (16 page)

As we ascended Miriam’s bloodstream toward the three meninges, the membranes that surround and protect the brain, it occurred to me that my two partners would soon know my own weaknesses. I could handle my nanodoc better than Belinda and far better than Tom, but I was missing something they both had: a good working knowledge of human anatomy or microstructure. Abernathy had given me a lightning briefing, of which I remembered only a fraction. I peered around us. The minute compound eyes of the nanodocs couldn’t see much at all. They delivered a blurry, red-tinged view of surroundings illuminated by the nanodoc’s own pulsed light sources, enough so that I could see that we were being carried along a wide tunnel whose sides were barely visible. All around swam a flotsam of red blood cells, not much smaller than we were, interspersed with the occasional diminutive platelets. Through that swirl a white cell would occasionally come close, extend a testing pseudopod, and then retreat. Tom Abernathy’s preliminary work on the nanodocs was satisfactory. The prowling leukocytes had no great interest in us.

I knew that the blood also carried an unseen flux of chemical messengers, taking status information from one part of the body to all the rest. Tom Abernathy could probably have explained all that to me, if our nanodocs had been capable of better communication. They were better than most
Adestis
units, because they did possess a primitive vocal interface; but it was at a bit transfer rate so low that Abernathy, Lee, and I were practically restricted to single word exchanges. We would mostly convey our meaning by stylized gestures.

Our progress through the internal carotid artery was far slower than I had expected. As we drifted from side to side and occasionally touched a spongy wall, I had time to explore every function of my nanodoc. And to reflect on its present owners.

Three years ago I was convinced that the Pearce family had acted in direct reprisal for what I had done to Miriam. It took a long time to realize that nothing
personal
was involved, that anger at the family made no more sense than rage at the gravid Sphex wasp who takes and paralyzes a live grasshopper as feeding ground for its hatching larva.

I doubt if Miriam herself was aware of what had happened. Through her the Pearces had been alerted to the existence of a highly valuable tidbit, in the form of the
Adestis
patents. Miriam wanted and needed those for her own medical work, but that was irrelevant. It was the desire to increase assets that controlled group action, and to the family there was nothing more natural than the use of wealth to acquire my patents. They had simply turned on an existing machinery of scientists, lawyers, lobbyists, and political influence. I doubt if any one of them ever suspected that the owner of the patents also happened to be the man who had hurt Miriam. For if she had never talked of me to her present lover, would she have spoken to her family?

I liked to think that she would not.

The nanodoc hooked tightly to my four left legs started to tug gently at them. I turned and saw Tom Abernathy’s gesturing digit.

“Cir-cle—of—Will-is,” said a thin, distorted voice.

We had reached Checkpoint One. After passing along the internal carotid artery we were through the protective membranes of the
dura mater
and
pia mater
and were now at the
circulus arteriosus
, the “Circle of Willis,” a vascular formation at the base of the brain where all the major feed arteries meet. Abernathy was steering us into the anterior cerebral artery, which would take us into the cerebral cortex.

From this point on it would be up to me. Abernathy had made it clear that he could guide us no farther.

I had not told him that I too had little idea where we would go once we were within the cerebral hemispheres. He had worries enough.

And I was not quite ready to mention, to Tom Abernathy or to Belinda Lee, that something seemed to be slightly wrong with my simulacrum.

The change was so subtle that I doubted if Belinda, and still less Tom, could notice it. Only someone who had developed the original
Adestis
circuits and lived with them, through every good or bad variation, would sense the difference. The motor response was a tiny shade off what it had been when we were outside Miriam’s body.

“Ex-peri-ment.” I released my hold on the other two, then deliberately reduced motor inputs within my simulacrum to absolute zero.

I should now be floating like a dead leaf in the arterial tide, carried wherever the blood flow wanted to take me. But I was not. Not quite. There was a tiny added vector to my motion, produced by faint body impulses that I was not creating. I was angling over to the left, away from the broad mainstream of blood flow. When the artery divided, as it would shortly do, I would be channeled into the left branch.

Tom Abernathy and Belinda Lee were following, not knowing what else to do. I restored motor control to my simulacrum, and noted again the difference between my directive and the unit’s response. Slight, but not so slight as before.

“Mov-ing,” said Belinda’s faltering and attenuated voice. She was noticing it too, and she was frightened. That was good. I did not want on my hunts anyone who was not scared by the inexplicable. The force did not feel external, either. It was arising from
within
, a phantom hand affecting our control over the simulacra.

“Stay.” I halted, and laboriously sent my instruction. “I—go—on. You wait—for me.” I believed we were surely heading for the missing nanodocs, and just as surely it might be dangerous for all to travel together. If I did not return, Abernathy and Lee could find their way to the left or right jugular vein exit points. Equipment was waiting there to sense, capture, and remove from Miriam’s body any returning nanodoc units.

I again reduced motor inputs and allowed myself to drift with the arterial flow. Soon the channel branched and branched again, into ever-finer blood vessels. I had no idea where I was, or where I was going, but I had no doubt about my ability to return to the safe highway of the jugular veins. Every road led there. All I had to do was follow the arrow of the blood, down into the finest capillary level, then on to the fine veins that merged and coupled to carry their oxygen-depleted flow back toward heart and lungs.

And while I was filled with that comforting thought, I noticed that the motion of my simulacrum was changing. Without input from me the left and right sets of legs were twitching in an asynchronous pattern. Their movement added a crablike sideways component to my forward progress. Soon my nanodoc was squeezing against the wall of the blood vessel. It pressed harder, and finally broke through into a narrow chamber filled with clear cerebrospinal fluid.

I thought that might signal the end of the disturbance, but after a few seconds it began again. Every thresh of the side limbs made the anomaly more obvious. I restored motor control and willed the leg movements to stop. They slowed, but they went on. My simulacrum was turning round and round, carried along in the colorless liquid of the new aqueduct until suddenly it was discharged into a larger space. After a moment of linear motion we started to spin around the vortex of an invisible whirlpool.

I had arrived in one of the larger cerebral
sulci
, the fissures that run along and through the human brain. Tom Abernathy could undoubtedly have told me which one. For the moment, though, I did not care. I had found the missing nanodocs.

They extended along the fissure, visible in the watery fluid as far as my crude optical sensors could see. Each one appeared to be intact. And each was obsessively turning on its own individual carousel, always moving yet never leaving the main chamber of the
sulcus
.

It took thirty seconds of experiment to discover that I too was trapped. I could think commands as well as ever. The simulacrum would start to respond. And before the movement was completed another component would reinforce my instruction. The result was like an intention tremor, a sequence of overcorrections that swung me into more and more violent and uncontrolled motion.

I dared not allow that to continue—I was deep in the delicate fabric of Miriam’s brain, where even light contact could cause damage. The only way I could stop the spinning in random directions was to inhibit the motor control of my nanodoc unit. Then we returned to a smooth but useless cyclic motion around an invisible axis.

There was no way to signal the other nanodocs except through gestures. Designed to be worked as a group by a single operator, they were of a more primitive design than the unit I inhabited. I tried to make physical contact with one, but I was balked by its movement. Each unit remained locked in its own strange orbit, endlessly rotating but never advancing within the fissure’s great Sargasso Sea of cerebrospinal fluid.

I was ready to try something new when I experienced my worst moment so far. In among the hundreds of nanodoc units I saw one different from the rest. But it was identical to my own; therefore it must belong to Tom Abernathy or Belinda Lee. A few seconds later I saw the other. Somehow they had been unable to follow my instructions. Like me they had been carried willy-nilly to this dark interior sea. Like me, they would be trying to assert control. And failing.

I knew how they must feel. The whole success of
Adestis
depends on the power of the mental link. When you are in
Adestis
mode you do not
control
a simulacrum, you
are
the simulacrum. Its limbs and body and environment become your own. Its dangers are yours, its pain is your pain. If it is poisoned by a prey, it dies—and you experience all the agony.

Without that total transfer,
Adestis
would be nothing but a trivial diversion. No one would pay large sums to go on a Small Game Hunt.

That same total immersion of self had been carried over, by design, into the nanodocs. I knew how helpless Tom Abernathy and Belinda Lee would be feeling now. They could not control their spinning simulacra, nor could they escape to or even recall the existence of their own bodies,
outside
the world of the nanodocs.

I knew that all too well; because three years ago Miriam Pearce and I had been in the same situation.

Our quarry was a first-time prey for both us and
Adestis.
No one had ever before hunted
Scolopendra.
Although Miriam and I knew it as one of the fastest and most ferocious of the centipedes, we started out in excellent spirits. Why should we not? We had hunted together half a dozen times before, and knew we were an excellent team. Shared danger only seemed to draw us closer.

And after it was over we planned to hold our own private posthunt party.

Scolopendra
came flickering across the ground toward us, body undulating and the twenty pairs of legs a blur. I took little notice of those. My attention was on the poison claws on each side of the head, the pointed spears designed to seize an unlucky prey and inject their venom. Between the claws I saw the dark slit of a wide mouth. It was big enough to swallow me whole.

We had agreed on the strategy before we entered
Adestis
mode: Divide and conquer. Each of us would concentrate on one side of the centipede. As it turned toward one of us, the other would sever legs and attack the other side of the body. The animal would be forced to swing around or topple over. And the process would be repeated on the other side.

But why were we hunting at all? Although we found the danger stimulating, neither Miriam nor I had a taste for blood sports for their own sake. As usual on our hunts, we wanted to refine a new piece of
Adestis
control technology. When it was perfected it would find a home in the world of the nanodocs.

The centipede picked me as its first choice of prey. It turned, and Miriam disappeared behind the long, segmented trunk. I caught a glimpse of jointed limbs
—
each one nearly as long as my body
—
then the antennae were sweeping down toward me and the poison claws reached out.

Scolopendra
was even faster than we had realized. I heard the crack of Miriam’s weapon, but any damage she might inflict would be too late to save me. I could not escape the poison claws by moving backward. All I could do was go closer, jumping in past the claws to the lip of the maw itself

It was ready. A pair of maxillae moved forward, to sweep me into the digestive tube.

I had never before hunted a prey able to swallow a victim whole. And I had never until that moment known the strength of my own claustrophobia.

I crouched on the lower lip of the maw, and thought of absorption into the dark interior of the body cavity. I could not bear it.

I threw myself backward and fell to the ground. A suicidal movement, with the poison claws waiting. I did not care.
Anything
was better than being swallowed alive.

The claws approached me. Shuddered. And pulled back. The antenna and the wide head turned.

Miriam’s shots were doing their job. I sprawled full-length, peered under the body, and saw half a dozen severed legs in spasm on the ground
.

Now it was my turn to shoot. I did it
—
halfheartedly. I dreaded the broad head swinging back, the mandibles poised to ingest me.

And it was ready to happen. I had shot off two legs. The body was shaking, beginning to turn again in my direction.

I stopped firing. For one second I stood while the centipede hesitated, unable to decide if I or Miriam provided the greater threat. The head turned once more to her side.

Then I was running away, a blind dash across dark and uneven ground. I did not look back.

I left Miriam behind, to die in agony in
Scolopendra
’s poison claws.

Three years, three bitter years of remorse and analysis and self-loathing; in three years I had learned something that maybe no other
Adestis
operator had ever known. If I had known it
then
, it might have saved Miriam.