He, She and It (46 page)

Joseph pauses, his back to the building. “Get out of here while you can, or I’ll kill you all.”

He is half glad when three men come at him. The woman has abandoned her watch to run close, shouting encouragement to her men. “Take him from both sides at once, both sides,” she shouts. The ex-swordsman gestures for her to bind up his broken wrist. She tears off a piece of her muddy petticoat to oblige. The man whose left knife hand Joseph has broken advances swinging the nailed club, the pain not disabling him but putting him into a berserk fighting frenzy. The club sings in the air. Joseph ducks under it, seizes the man as the club hits him a gouging blow on his shoulder. Then Joseph swings him wildly through the air as the man had slung his club and dashes him against the building, smashing his skull like a rotten melon.

Now Joseph picks up the fallen club of nails and wields it, slashing the face of the first oncoming thief to blind meat, catching the second right in the chest and caving it in like an old barrel, staves of ribs cracking. He likes the heft of the weapon. It is well suited to his big hands. It sings in the air as if it likes to kill. It sings of the strength and power of Joseph, against whom none can stand. He keeps swinging it, advancing on the swordsman, who draws a dagger with his still usable hand. The woman slides a knife from her sleeve and flings it. It comes straight and true. The knife sticks into Joseph’s arm, but he scarcely feels it. He keeps striding forward, swinging the club that laughs in his hand. Down goes the man, and then the woman falls in a bloody heap. Joseph pauses, with the club silent and heavy in his hand and the five bodies crumpled and still on the pavement. His own black blood is oozing from the wounds on his shoulder and his arm. He pulls the knife free and the blood spurts out. He begins shambling down the street, the club dangling loose from his hand. He should not have killed the woman. But he could not help it. He had started and he could not stop.

Maybe there is a demon in the club itself. As he crosses the bridge, he tosses it high, arcing over the river, and then he hears
a loud satisfying splash as it hits. Almost at once he regrets the loss of that fine weapon. He will make himself one like it.

The rabbi is waiting up for him, along with Perl and Chava. Perl exclaims as she sees the blood on his clothes. But his blood has long since coagulated, and his wounds are already healing. The Maharal insists that Perl leave them and go to bed. Chava tends his wounds. Then the rabbi sends her off also.

Joseph reports on his delivery of the emerald and the message. But the rabbi persists: “So how came you by these wounds? All your garments are covered with red blood as well as yours.”

Joseph cannot lie to the Maharal. He tells the entire story, one slow sentence at a time, not leaving out the death of the woman and the throwing of the nailed club into the Vltava.

The Maharal is silent a long time, his head buried in his hands. “I have much to answer for. But we still need you.”

The Maharal’s words frighten Joseph. “Master, I was outnumbered and they were professional killers. I did what I had to do.”

“And then you continued killing. You continued.”

He cannot endure the Maharal’s displeasure. It burns him. It is a torment like fire in his mind. “It was a mistake, Rabbi.”

“You’re too strong, too powerful, to make mistakes. No more mistakes, Joseph. No more.”

The Maharal paces to and fro, and as he paces he begins to pray. Joseph remains in the corner, quiet, but as the rabbi prays, so does he. He hardly ever thinks of ha-Shem when he prays; he thinks of the Maharal. He prays to be forgiven; he prays to be accepted. He prays to be loved just a little, as Judah might love his good cloak or a little dog.

The Maharal stops suddenly. “This is Thursday night before their Good Friday. Go, patrol! This is the time of maximum danger.”

Not knowing if he should be pleased to be put back to work or sad for being banished from the Maharal’s presence, Joseph runs to obey.

THIRTY-ONE

The Shape-Shifters

Entering the Net was an individual matter; they must find each other immediately inside, once they had projected. Often while using the Net in her usual work or relaxation, Shira would simply employ visual or audio. She would be reading menus, talking with the computer, scanning files, just as someone looking up a subject in an encyclopedia in printed form need not suspend attention to the outside world.

Seminars in the Net were conducted in projection, as was serious studying, most creative systems work and games-playing. Crossing the Net as they were about to do required projection. Therefore Shira plugged in. The familiar logo of the Tikva Base appeared, the reception room. She chose the door marked Net, entered, then faced a plan where the user requested a destination and a path lit up on a big display map.

Yod immediately appeared. He had already arrived and been exploring. He looked just like himself, just as he had been when she had turned from him and reached for the system plug. Malkah slipped through the doors to join them. Her image of herself was startling, because she looked as she had in Shira’s childhood. Shira was moved at the sight and stood a moment, staring. How vital and stunning Malkah had been. She had a slight hawkish look, vivid alert predatory eyes that missed nothing. She had the light fine bones of a bird too, and the swift movement. She looked about to soar and then stoop on whatever caught her attention. Malkah had aged so gradually that Shira thought of her as always looking as she did now, but this was the Malkah of the prime of life, her inner age. Not twenty, not thirty, but about forty-five. That was Malkah’s self-image, skin smooth and ruddy, body firm.

As soon as the three of them were gathered, Yod changed. It was uncanny, even though she tried to remain aware at all times in the Net that the images they presented of themselves were merely that. He began to turn translucent, so that she could see
the wall dimly through him. “I see no reason to retain my external form. After all, we’d prefer not to be recognized.”

“But how do you do that?” Malkah asked.

“Malkah, you must know already. You don’t look the same—I mean, not exactly,” Shira said gingerly.

“Nonsense. I just project myself. I know how to make myself other.” Suddenly Malkah was a natty tall man of perhaps forty, with black hair and a rakish grin. “But how can I become transparent?”

“Merely project yourself as transparency, just as you project your thoughts forward.” Yod made himself a large bright red box and then a cleaning robot and then a big black dog. Then he resumed the translucent form.

Malkah closed her eyes and concentrated. Shira watched her for a moment. Nothing happened. She closed her eyes, too, and focused on herself as the assassin who had attacked her, the woman who had broken her wrist. She was six feet two. She had long spidery arms and legs with the tensile strength of steel. She could not remember the woman’s face clearly, so she gave herself Nili’s face and skin. When she opened her eyes and looked down, she saw the woman’s claw hand on an arm half again as long as her own.

Malkah opened her eyes and looked down. She appeared just as she had before. “I seem not able to get the hang of it. I don’t want to waste any more time practicing now. I’ll go as my alter ego.” She was once again the natty man. He looked to Shira like a movie star from perhaps fifty years before, when flat films had been commonly projected in public, perhaps some cherished actor of Malkah’s youth.

The usual way to break into a base, the standard approach of data pirates, was to enter along the com-con channels, to pass in with messages. There was no way a base could distinguish between legitimate entering data and folks along for the ride. They rode in on the communications channels, past the otherwise impermeable shield that surrounded the Y-S set of bases. It was a matter of keeping a low profile in energy readings, not reacting, not speaking, simply moving along in the chain of data that appeared in the conventional imagery of the Net as packages whizzing on a very fast conveyor belt. The trick was to build up to speed and then slip in. It felt dangerous, but as the bits and you were both merely charges, there was little danger. The spatial dimensions of the Net were all metaphorical, mental conveniences. The dangers of the Net were real, but they were dangers caused by the human brain or
nervous system or by encounters with other humans or traps built into the systems.

All the real defenses were inside the perimeter of each base. They could not ride the com-con any further, since it connected with individual receptor areas. They would have wound up in somebody’s terminal. One by one they rolled off into darkness lit only by flashes of what appeared to be heat lightning. In the distance they could see a vast city glittering, surrounded by an energy field that was the source of the crackling light patterns. “How will we get in there?” Shira wondered.

“We won’t bother. It’s a chimera,” Malkah said confidently. “We’re on the wrong level. We need to go up or down.”

“A space platform or an underground warren,” Shira guessed.

“There’s a space platform above and to the right.” Yod pointed. “Six hundred kilometers above this level.”

“How do we get up there?” she asked him.

“We can project ourselves. Remember, space isn’t real here,” Yod said patiently. He demonstrated by rising in a straight line about ten meters upward, then landing again with a light bounce.

Malkah said, “But to no end. That’s another chimera. No, we must go down.”

“Down?” Shira stomped her foot on the ground. It felt solid. “Are you telling me we can simply pass through earth?”

“No. No more than walls. They represent a lack of pathways. We must find an opening. Now, if this is designed anything like I’d design it, the entrance will be apparently unimportant. A hole, a cave, an abandoned tunnel, a mine shaft. Whatever was reasonable in the designed landscape.”

“Wait for me.” Yod rose and then darted forward. His translucence and speed made her think of a large dragonfly. Then they could not see him at all. Shira practiced fading to transparency.

Malkah closed her eyes and tried again. Shira said, “There, you blurred a bit. Try again.”

“I think I’ve got the knack. I can’t bear to think there’s any little trick of the trade I can’t master. My pride is leaking.” Again Malkah’s strange male body wavered as if it were painted on a flag in the wind. Then slowly it dimmed.

Malkah opened her eyes and looked down. “Well, I’m less visible—a personal fog.”

Yod alighted before them, still blurred. “How about a dump?”

“A dump?” Shira repeated blankly.

“An old-fashioned phenomenon of the idiot days,” Malkah
explained. “They used to take waste and simply put it in the earth or burn it into the air. They also dumped their feces and sewage in the water. Let’s have a look.” Malkah rose elegantly, her ankles crossed.

On a dark plain near the city, coruscating with colors and light, a valley had been dug in a range of low hills to accommodate old trash, the rusting appliances and vehicles of fifty years before, barrels of dangerous chemicals no doubt dumped here to leak at their leisure into the water table. They landed, gingerly, among mounds of old plastic. “Now, what’s that?” Malkah pointed. “Over there.”

“I believe it’s an incinerator,” Yod said. “A device for turning refuse into toxic smoke.”

“Let’s go in.” Malkah led the way briskly.

“Steps,” Yod said. He brushed past Malkah. “I’ll go first.”

“This is it,” Malkah said. “It’s just such a small and inconspicuous entrance as I design. You have to have various ways into your Base, but no one except a debugger or a trouble-shooter should ever use this one. I work the same way. Always disguise your alternate entrances.”

“We’d never have found this without you,” Yod said. “You were right. Now perhaps you should return.”

“Not on your life—or mine, to be more accurate. I want in, all the way. This is the chance of a lifetime.”

They climbed down and down and down. “Once, years ago—I was living in Prague then, and I was on vacation with my lover, your grandfather, Shira. We went to Paris during a school vacation. It was fall and everything was gray and gold. It was raining that day, and we decided to see the catacombs.” Before them the stairway corkscrewed down in total darkness. Yod raised his hand over his head. It became a bright flashlight. “You could only visit the third Sunday of every month, whatever. So down we went just like this, descending for what felt like hours. Remains had been moved there from old cemeteries, from charnel houses. Then the bones had been neatly stacked—all the thighbones together—and then a motto made of skulls. ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Remember thou art mortal.’ ”

“I love it when you talk about when you were younger,” Shira said.

“A sense of continuity,” Malkah offered.

“You are embedded in history in a sense that I can’t be,” Yod said, plunging ahead even faster. “What leads to me? Legends, theories, comic books. All my destroyed brother machines.”

Shira was abruptly jolted as they arrived at the bottom and fell into a well-lighted place, what felt like a landing strip for zips, a broad glaring expanse of concrete. Yod immediately thinned himself close to invisibility. With difficulty Shira and Malkah managed to imitate him. He was arrowing straight ahead. “Do you know where you’re going?” she called after him.