Year's Best Scifi 2 Part 15

For a minute I was too frightened and sick to move.

Then, rocked with a sense of my own vulnerability, I got out of there-fast.The next day, I learned what had happened to Sammy Hood. He had been disconnected, violently and for-ever.

I had to see Bloom. I went out to the Grit. The Grit is totally off-line. It was slapped together during a Warhol-burst of eco-chic. It burned bright for about as long as it took people to realize that they were really off the Broad Highway, really without Access. Now the Grit was nothing but bottom-dwellers, G.o.dtalkers, crazies. And my goofy partner Bloom. It was the last place you would expect to find a virtual freak like Bloom.

I asked him about that. "It makes the rest realer," he said, looking around the place like he'd just noticed it himself.

Blobm was living in an old two-mod sprawl off a dirt road. There was tall gra.s.s in the yard, twisted, spindly trees, gra.s.shoppers. It made me want to laugh. Organic is so G.o.dd.a.m.n sincere. Look, I'm a real tree, a dirty, sap-leaking, crooked, bug-infested real tree. Love me. Yeah, sure.

Bloom hadn't shaved since I last saw him, and-if it were possible-he had grown even paler.

I told him about Sammy Hood. Someone had stuck a pressure bomb to the side of Sammy's Deprive chamber. Sammy Hood was floating in the Big R, blood oozing from his ears, while I watched his mock-up disintegrate.

I'd gleaned that info from a deep sink planted at Sony Corp. It was news that would never make the Window. Imagine the panic, the failure of faith, if ComWick wasn't safe?

Until now, it had been safe.

"You can't get past Security at ComWick," I said.

Bloom nodded. "Yeah. Unless you are Security. Or unless you own Security."

This was poison info. Pick it up, and you are instantly irradiated, a walking leper. No thanks. I let it lie.

I told Bloom about the interference on the Highway, the crying.

Suddenly, Bloom looked lost, looked like he was about three years old, an orphan waking on one of Jupiter's smaller moons. He looked like I'd sucker-punched him in the gut.

"That's Zera," he said. "That's Zera rifting."

Zera. I was hoping that glitch in his brain had healed. Not so. He'd done considerable brooding. He was convinced that Zera Terminal was causing the disturbance.

Theoretically, a surge could activate peripherals. Holos were free-functioning artificials, and one AI could react to another. An amok could cause turbulence in related programs. In practice, it just didn't happen.

I said as much to Bloom. How did he explain it?

Bloom rubbed his palms on his thighs and rocked in his chair. He seemed embarra.s.sed by what he had to say. He studied the floor. "I think they were having a s.e.xual, uncontracted relations.h.i.+p in Big R. I think that's what did it. When the actors updated, the artificials couldn't handle the new information; it rifted them."

Real s.e.x with a holo fantasy co-star's source would have been a Morals violation, and it would have offlined Trumble forever, and it was, of course, disgusting, the sort of perversion that could cause anesteem devaluation throughout all of Entertainment.

It would explain Jell Baker's hysteria. If that scandal leaked to the Window, Baker would be out of work. Legals would be the only humans he talked to for the next fifty years.

"She's still out there, Marty," Bloom said. "She's still out there, and she's hurt."

Bloom wanted to go under the Highway right away.

"Tomorrow's soon enough," I said.

I went home. I retreated to my rain forest, jacking the oxygen way up, lowering the temp, setting the rain for a slow drizzle. I contacted Jell Baker.

"Who is Zera Terminal's source?" I asked. "You want help, you have to give me what you've got. I need that information."

"That's privileged," he said. "No way do you get that."

"I can't work in the dark," I said. "You want things smoothed or not?"

"Sorry," Baker said. "I got plenty of troubles without a source-privilege violation."

I sit in my room and ran the collapsed videos of American Midnight. I'm not a holoshow fan; I'm in the business. I had watched these only after Armageddon went amok and the job came my way. Then I'd been focused on Armageddon. This time around I studied his co-star, Zera.

You've seen her, those big eyes and the fullness of her mouth. Her features are almost too lush for the chiseled oval of her face, but somehow it works, probably because of the innocence. This is a woman, you think, who trusts. This is a woman who finds everything new and good.

There is usually some chill to a holo, some glint of the non-human intelligence that runs the programs.

Zera almost transcended that. There was a human here, lodged in that sweet, surprised voice, that gawky grace, that wow in her eyes.

It came down to a single quality, always rare, rarer in a land of artifice: Innocence.

I slept and dreamed of Zera Terminal. I held her in my arms, felt the warmth of her as she pulled closer to me, heard her small, s.h.i.+ning voice in my ear. She was singing, singing a children's song.

Sally has a sweetheart, cold as ice, Johnny has a girlfriend don't like mice.

She giggled.

In the morning, Bloom and I went under the Highway. We entered through private Deprive tanks, a rich man's club called Mannikin. Their security was top notch, but I hired additional AI failsafes. Better paranoid than dead.

The under-Highway was calm when we arrived, brighter than usual. It felt like the eye of the storm, and itwas. We were on the street when the sky broke open, and hard, cold rain pounded us. The rain was gritty, as though there were sand in it. We fled the downpour, darting into a small slacker bar.

The place was crowded-other refugees from the rain and some AI Personalities flas.h.i.+ng smiles and phony resumes.

"I'll get us a table," I said, and I started out.

I heard Bloom shout, and I turned and saw him dive back out into the rain. I pushed through the crowd and went after him.

He was running flat out, and the sideways rain had slicked his s.h.i.+rt to the somehow ardent, yearning bones of his spine. This single detail pierced the blur of rain and low-res shadows and wavering storefronts. It frightened me when I recalled it later: Bloom, the skinny, dream-struck kid, urging his skeleton through the virtual storm. It frightened me, as did the single word he shouted: "Zera!"

I ran after him, the gritty rain clawing my face. Bloom raced down an alley. I lowered my head against the rain and dashed across the street. I looked up just in time to see the buildings stretch and to hear the cold smack of mes.h.i.+ng programs as the alley disappeared. Bits of trash, old readouts and superfluous machine imagings fluttered from the new wall.

I ran on down the street, hesitated at the entrance to another alley, and plunged into it. I came out on another street, empty, swept by clattering rain.

Bloom had disappeared from the under-Highway. I spent the rest of the day seeking him.

I returned to the Big R with a sense of dread. What would I find? In Deprive, Bloom floated like an drunken angel.

"No problem," the private tech told me. "Everything is in order."

I nodded to this tech; said nothing. I increased security.

Two weeks after Bloom's disappearance, Gloria and I had dinner to celebrate my success.

"Smile," Gloria said.

"That would be dishonest," I said. "A smile would not reflect the true state of my emotions. I'd be subject to a failure-to-disclose fine."

"It is sweet of you to worry about Bloom," she said. "But he was never very stable. Perhaps he is happy wherever he is. He has nothing to do with us."

"Maybe he does," I said. "Jell Baker just gave me a fortune for cleaning up the Highway. I didn't do it."

Gloria smiled blandly. She raised her eyebrows in a gesture that said And so?

She leaned forward, close enough for demerits if a peep had been watching. "I've been thinking of an amendment to our latest contract," she whispered.

I didn't respond.

Gloria giggled. "A foreplay clause."

I didn't say anything. I wasn't in the mood.I waited for the Highway to explode, for chaos to come roaring down every byway. Nothing happened.

A month went by and nothing happened. Bloom floated in luxury Deprive at the Mannikin.

I kept going in, kept looking for him, but there wasn't a sign, not a word. He'd gone down the rabbit hole and left no trace.

Seven weeks and a day after he went in, I heard from him.

He contacted me over the little ComLink, an archaic alpha-terminal that I still used occasionally for failsafe codes. It was a secure line, being rarely traveled.

The message came in on my personal mix: I MARTY, I AM FINE.

ZERA GETS BETTER EVERY DAY. BLOOM.

I got another message two days later.

MARTY. I AM IN LOVE.

THERE ARE NO CONTRACTS HERE, BUT.

THAT DOESN'T MAKE MY LOVE ANY LESS.

ZERA AGREES.

YOU MUST COME AND VISIT.

There were coordinates this time, and I went in immediately. I didn't know how deep the trauma was, how impaired he would be. I felt responsible. I had known he was delusional when I had let him accom-pany me that last time.

The young couple were living in a cottage in the small rural mock-up that had been stored in the under-Highway when the holoshow Country Ways had dropped in the ratings and been retired.

They were holding hands when I came into the yard. Bloom waved, turned and said something to Zera, then ran to me.

He put an arm around my shoulder and led me back. "Don't spook her," Bloom whispered. "She's fine, but be cool, okay?"

"Zera," Bloom said, "this is Marty."

Zera smiled, extended a hand. I felt the moth-touch of her fingers, then she giggled and turned away.

She was lovely, breathtakingly so. She wore a yellow cotton dress and her hair was tied back with a green ribbon. A sudden image, crude and disorienting, came to me: Zera Terminal writhing in celebrity s.e.x, back arched, thighs glistening with sweat.

I shoved the vision away, heard Bloom speaking.

"Come look at our garden," he said.

We walked around the cottage and into the back yard. Insects whirred in front of us. I s.n.a.t.c.hed one from the air. It was an undetailed, buzzing program, a blur that tickled my palm.Zera ran into the garden, knelt, returned with a red tomato. "Here," she said.

"Thank you," I said. Politely, I took a bite, and was surprised by the authenticity of the simulation.

As the day went on, and Bloom realized that I was not going to do anything outrageous or hurtful, he relaxed.

"It's good to see you," Bloom said. "It's really great."

"You too," I said.

"Zera's looking great, isn't she?" he said.

"Yes."

"I think I'm good for her."

We watched Zera kneel in the garden. She was utterly lost in the business of weeding. The ribbon in her hair had come undone, and long, raven coils spilled over her shoulders. The effect was at once wanton and innocent. I was on guard for prurient thoughts and so kept them at bay.

Bloom went out to help her. Together they watered the garden. Zera turned the hose on Bloom and they laughed and wrestled for possession and the spume of water droplets enclosed them in bright, impossible protection.

Their laughter came to me where I sat under the live oak.

I did not say any of the things I had come to say. I did not take Bloom back with me. I did not threaten to have the Neuros come in and forcibly disconnect him from Deprive.

I wished the young couple well. I told Zera how good it was to meet her.

I saw the way blue electric lights skittered behind her eyes, and I said nothing about that either.

"Isn't she beautiful?" Bloom said.

"She is," I said. "She is the world's most beautiful woman."

I left them to their dream cottage, to their small, fragile section in the V, and I busied myself in Big R and waited for the great, rolling doom to come. I knew it was coming-I was born knowing that-and that, finally, was why I had left Bloom there without an argument. Let him have whatever nourishment illusion offered, I thought. It would be brief enough.

I didn't hear from him for two weeks. Then I received another message on the ComLink, arriving with new coordinates.

That message came the day after the Broad Highway began to burn. The day after Baker called and said he would kill me. The day after every holoshow suffered static, earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, and plagues of locusts and flies.

Just words on a screen. But I felt his anguish.