Marooned In Realtime Part 12

"We had stability, but we weren't s.h.i.+pping quite everything out. Something near a tonne per second began acc.u.mulating over the south pole. We needed a quick fix or we'd lose performance bonuses. I took the repair boat across to work on it. The problem was just ten thousand kilometers from our station-a thirty-millisecond time lag. Intellect nets run fine with that much lag, but this was process control; we were taking a chance. We'd acc.u.mulated a two-hundred-thousand-tonne backlog by then. It was all in flicker storage-a slowly exploding bomb. I had to repackage it and boost it out."

Tunc shrugged. "That's the last I remember. Somehow, we lost control; part of that backlog recombined. My boat bobbled up. Now, I was on the sun side of the brew. The blast rammed me straight into Sol. There was no way my partners could save me.

Bobbled into the sun. It was almost high-tech slang for certain death. "How could you ever escape?" It was almost high-tech slang for certain death. "How could you ever escape?"

Blumenthal smiled. "You haven't read about that? There is no way in heaven I could have. On the sun, the only way you can survive is to stay in stasis. My initial bobbling was only for a few seconds. When it lapsed, the fail-safe did a quick lookabout, saw where we were heading, and rebobbled-sixty-four thousand years. That was 'effective infinity' to its pinhead program.

"I've done some simulations since. I hit the surface fast enough to penetrate thousands of kilometers. The bobble spent a few years following convection currents around inside. It wasn't as dense as the inner sunstuff. Eventually I percolated back to near the surface. Then, every time the bobble floated over a blow-off, it was boosted tens of thousands of kilometers up... For thirty thousand years a d.a.m.n volleyball I was, flying up to the corona, falling back through the photosphere, floating around awhile, then getting thrown up again.

"That's where I was through the Singularity and during the time the short-term travelers were being rescued. That's where I would have died if it hadn't been for Bil Sanchez." He paused. "You never knew Bil. He dropped out, died about twenty million years ago. He was a nut about Juan Chanson's extermination theory. Most of Chanson's proof is on Earth; W. W. Sanchez traveled all over the Solar System looking for evidence. He dug up things Chanson never guessed at.

"One thing Bil did was scan for bobbles. He was convinced that sooner or later he'd find one containing somebody or some machine that had escaped the 'Extinction.' When he spotted my bobble in the sun, he thought he'd hit the jackpot. Their latest records-from 2201-didn't show any such bobbling. It was just the weird place you might expect to find a survivor; even the exterminators couldn't have reached someone down there.

"But Bil Sanchez was patient. He noticed that every few thousand years, a really big solar flare would blast me way up. He and the Korolevs diverted a comet, stored it off Mercury. The next time I was boosted off the surface, they were ready: They dropped the comet into a sun-grazing orbit. It picked me off at the top of my bounce. Fortunately, the s...o...b..ll didn't break up and my bobble stuck on its surface; we swung around the sun, up into the cool. From there, the situation was much like their other rescues. Thirty thousand years later, I was back in realtime."

"Tunc, you lived closer to the Extinction than anyone else. What do you you think caused it?" think caused it?"

The s.p.a.cer sat back, crossed his arms. "That's what they all ask... Ah, Wil Brierson, if I only knew! I tell them I don't know. And they go away, seeing each his own theory reflected in my story." He seemed to realize the answer was not going to satisfy. "Very well, my theories. Theory Alpha: Possible it is that mankind was exterminated. What Bil found in the Charon catacombs is hard to explain any other way. But it can't be like Juan Chanson says. Bil had it better: Anything that could b.u.mp off the intellect nets in Earth/Luna would needs be superhuman. If it's still around, no brave talk will save us. That's why Bil Sanchez and his little colony dropped out. Poor man, he was frightened of what might happen to anything bigger.

"And Theory Beta: This is what Yelen believes, and probably Della too-though she is still so shy, I can't tell for sure. Humankind and its machines became something better, something... unknowable. And I saw things that fit with that, too.

"Ever since the Peace War there have been more or less autonomous devices. For centuries, folks had been saying that machines as smart as people were just around the corner. Most didn't realize how unimportant such a thing would be. What was needed was greater greater than human intelligence. Between our processors and ourselves, my era was achieving that. than human intelligence. Between our processors and ourselves, my era was achieving that.

"My own company was small; there were only eight of us. We were backward, rural; the rest of humanity was hundreds of light-seconds away. The larger s.p.a.cing firms were better off. Their computers were correspondingly bigger, and they had thousands of people linked. I had friends at Charon Corp and Stellation Inc. They thought we were crazy to stay so isolated. And when we visited their habitats, when the comm lag got to less than a second, I could see what they meant. There was power and knowledge and joy in those companies... And they could plan circles around us. Our only advantage was mobility.

"Yet even these corporations were fragments, a few thousand people here and there. By the beginning of the twenty-third, there were three billion billion people in the Earth/Luna volume. Three billion people and corresponding processing power-all less than three light-seconds apart. people in the Earth/Luna volume. Three billion people and corresponding processing power-all less than three light-seconds apart.

"I... it was strange, talking to them. We attended a marketing conference at Luna in 2209. Even linked, we never did understand what was going on." He was quiet for a long moment. "So you see, either theory fits."

Wil was not going to let him off that easily. "But your project-you say it would have meant faster-than-light travel. Is there any evidence what became of that?"

Tunc nodded. "Bil Sanchez visited the Dark Companion a couple times. It's the same dead thing it always was. There's no sign it was ever modified. I think that scared him even more than what he found at Charon. I know it scares me. I doubt my accident was enough to scuttle the plan: our project would have given humanity a gate to the entire Galaxy... but it was also mankind's first piece of cosmic engineering. If it worked, we wanted to do the same to a number of stars. In the end, we might have built a small Arp object in this arm of the Galaxy. Bil thought we'd been 'uppity c.o.c.kroaches'-and the real owners finally stepped on us...

"But don't you be buying Theory Alpha just yet. I said the Singularity was a mirrored thing. Theory Beta explains it just as well. In 2207, we were the hottest project at Stellation Inc.

They put everything they had into renting those eas.e.m.e.nts around the sun. But after 2209, the edge was gone from their excitement. At the marketing conference at Luna, it almost seemed Stellation's backers were trying to sell our project as a frivolity frivolity."

Tunc stopped, smiled. "So you have my thumbnail sketch of Great Events. You can get it all, clearer said with more detail, from Yelen's databases." He c.o.c.ked his head to one side. "Do you like listening to others so much, Wil Brierson, that you visit me first?"

Wil grinned back. "I wanted to hear you firsthand." And I still don't understand you. And I still don't understand you. "I'm one of the earlier low-techs, Tunc. I've never experienced direct connect-much less the mind links you talk about. But I know how much it hurts a high-tech to go without a headband." All through Marta's diary, that loss was a source of pain. "If I understand what you say about your time, you've lost much more. How can you be so "I'm one of the earlier low-techs, Tunc. I've never experienced direct connect-much less the mind links you talk about. But I know how much it hurts a high-tech to go without a headband." All through Marta's diary, that loss was a source of pain. "If I understand what you say about your time, you've lost much more. How can you be so cool cool?"

The faintest shadow crossed Tunc's face. "It's not a mystery, really. I was nineteen when I left civilization. I've lived fifty years since. I don't remember much of the time right after my rescue. Yelen says I was in a coma for months. They couldn't find anything wrong with my body; just no one was home.

"I told you my little company was backward, rural. That's only by comparison with our betters. There were eight of us, four women, four men. Maybe I should call it a group marriage, because it was that, too. But it was more. We spent every spare gAu on our processor system and the interfaces. When we were linked up, we were something... wonderful. But now all that's memories of memories-no more meaningful to me than to you." His voice was soft. "You know, we had a mascot: a poor, sweet girl, close to anencephalic. Even with prosthesis she was scarcely brighter than you or I. Most of the time she was happy." The expression on his face was wistful, puzzled "And most of the time, I am happy, too."

NINETEEN.

Then there was Marta's diary. He had started reading it as a casual cross-check on Yelen and Della. It had become a dark addiction, the place he spent the hours after his late-night arguments with Yelen, the hours after returning from his field trips.

What might have happened if Wil had been less a gentleman the night of the Robinson party? Marta was dead before he really knew her; but she looked a little like Virginia... and talked like her... and laughed like her. The diary was the only place where he could ever know her now. And so every night ended with new gloom, matched only by the dreams of morning.

Of course Marta found the West End mines bobbled. She stayed a few months, and left some billboards. It was not safe country. Packs of doglike creatures roamed. At one point she was trapped, had to start a gra.s.s fire and play mirror tag with the dogs among the bobbles. Wil read that part several times; it made him want to laugh and cry in the same breath. For Marta, it was just part of staying alive. She moved northwards into the foothills of the Kampuchean Alps. That was where Yelen found her third cairn.

Marta reached the Peacer bobble two years after she was marooned. She had walked and sailed around the Inland Sea to do it. The last six hundred kilometers had been a climb over the Kampuchean Alps. She was still an optimist, yet her words were sometimes tinged with self-mockery. She had started out to walk halfway around the world, and ended up less than two thousand kilometers north of where she started. Despite her year's layover, the shattered bones in her foot had not healed perfectly. Till she was rescued (her usual phrasing) she would walk with a limp. At the end of a long day's walk she was in some pain.

But she had plans. The Peacer bobble was at the center of a vitrified plain 150 kilometers across. Even now, not much life had returned. Her first walk in, she carried all her food on the travois.

* The bobble isn't super large, maybe three hundred meters across. But its setting is spectacular, Lelya; I had not remembered the details. It's in a small lake bordered by uniform cliffs. Concentrically around those cliffs are rings of ridges. I climbed to the edge of the cliffs and looked across at the bobble. My reflection looked back and we waved at each other. With its moat and the ringwall, it looks like a jewel in a setting. Equally s.p.a.ced along the wall are five smaller gems-the bobbles around our lookout equipment. Whoever-whatever-marooned me has locked them up, too. But for how long? Those five were supposed to have a very high flicker rate. I still can't believe anyone could subvert our control systems for a jump of longer than a few decades.

* Wouldn't it be a joke if I were rescued by the Peacers Peacers! They thought they were making a fifty-year jump to renewed dominion. What a shock it would be to come out on an empty world, and find exactly one taxpayer left. Amusing, but I'd rather be rescued by you, Lelya...

* The jewel's setting is cracked in places. There's a waterfall coming into the lake on the south side. The water exits through a break in the north wall. It's very clear; I can see fish in the lake. There are places where the cliff has collapsed. It looks like it could make decent soil. This is probably the most habitable spot in the whole destruction zone. If I have to stop, Lelya, I think this is really the best place it could happen. It's the most likely to be monitored; it's at the center of a glazed flatland that should be easy to mark up. (Do you think our L5 autons would respond to KILROY IS HERE written in letters <1 kilometer="" long?)="" *="" so.="" this="" will="" be="" my="" base,="" forever="" till="" i'm="" rescued.="" i="" think="" i="" can="" make="" it="" a="" nice="" place="" to="" live,="">

And Marta did. Through the first ten years she made steady improvements. Five times she trekked out of the glazed zone, sometimes for necessities like seed and wood, later to import some friends: she hiked three hundred kilometers north, to a large lake. There were fishermonkeys on that lake. She understood their matriarchal scheme now. It wasn't hard to find displaced trios wandering the sh.o.r.es, looking for something bigger than they that walked on two legs. The fishers loved the ringlake. By year twelve, there were so many that some left every year down the river.

From her cabin high on the ringwall she watched them by the hour: * Back and forth in water and bobble there are reflections of the ringwall and my cabin and our bobbled monitors. The fishers love to play with their reflections. Often they swim against its surface. I'll bet they feel the reflected body heat, even through their pelts. I wonder what mythology they have about the kingdom beyond the mirror... Yes, Lelya. Sentiment is one thing, fantasy another. But, you know, my fishers are smarter than chimpanzees. If I'd seen them before we left civilization, I'd have bet they would evolve human intelligence. Sigh. After all our travels, I know better. In the short term, the marine adaptation is more profitable. Another five megayears, they'll be as agile as penguins-and not much brighter.

Marta gave names to the friendliest, and the weirdest. There was always a Hewey and a Dewey and a Lewey. Others she named after humans. Wil found himself chuckling. Over the years, there were several Juan Chansons and Jason Mudges-usually the most compulsive chitterers. There was also a succession of Della Lus-all small, pale, shy. And there was even one W. W. Brierson. Wil read that page twice, a trembling smile on his lips. Wil the fishermonkey was black-furred and large, even bigger than a dominant female. He could have run the whole show, but kept mostly to himself and watched everyone else. Every so often his reserve broke and he gave a great screeching display, rus.h.i.+ng along the edge of the ringwall and slapping his sides. Like the first Dewey, he was odd man out, and especially friendly to Marta. He spent more time with her than any of them. They all played at imitating her, but he was the most successful. She actually got some useful work out of him, pulling small bundles. His most impressive game was the building of miniature versions of the pyramidal cairn Marta used to store the completed portion of her diary. Marta never said he was her favorite, yet she did seem fond of him. He disappeared on her last big expedition, around year fifteen.

* I'll never name one of my little friends after you, Lelya. The fishers live only ten or fifteen years. It's always sad when they go. I don't want to go through that with a fisher named Yelen.

As the years pa.s.sed, Marta concentrated on the diary. This was where the words piled into the millions. She had lots of advice for Yelen. There were some interesting revelations: It had been Phil Genet who persuaded Yelen to raise the Peacer bobble while the NMs were in realtime. It had been Phil Genet who was behind the ash-shoveling incident. Genet consistently argued that the key to success lay in the explicit intimidation of the low-techs. Marta begged Yelen not to take his advice again. * We will be hated enough, feared enough, even if we act like saints.

In the middle decades, her writing was scarcely a diary at all, but a collection of essays and stories, poems and whimsy. She spent at least as much time with her sketches and paintings. There were dozens of paintings of the ringlake and bobble, under every kind of lighting. There were landscapes done from sketches she had made on her trips. There were portraits of many of the fishers, as well as pictures of Marta herself. In one, the artist knelt at the edge of the ringlake, smiling at her own reflection as she painted it.

It came to Wil that though there were periods of depression, and physical pain, and occasional moments of stark terror, most of the time Marta was having a good time. Marta was having a good time. She even said so. She even said so.

* If I'm rescued, all this becomes a diversion, a few decades on top of the two centuries I have already lived. If I'm I'm not... well, I know you'll be back sometime. I want you to know that I missed you, but that there were pleasures. Take all the pictures and poems as my evidence and as my gift. not... well, I know you'll be back sometime. I want you to know that I missed you, but that there were pleasures. Take all the pictures and poems as my evidence and as my gift.

It was not a gift for W. W. Brierson. He tried to read it straight through, but the afternoon came when he couldn't go on. Someday he would read of those happy, middle times. Perhaps someday he could smile and laugh with her. Just now, all he felt was a horrid need to follow Marta Qen Korolev through her last years. Even as he skipped the data set forward, he wondered at himself. Unlike Marta, he knew knew how it all ended, yet he was forcing himself to see it all again through Marta's eyes. Was there some crazy part of him that thought that by reading her words he could take some of the pain from her onto himself? how it all ended, yet he was forcing himself to see it all again through Marta's eyes. Was there some crazy part of him that thought that by reading her words he could take some of the pain from her onto himself?

More likely, this was like his daughter Anne's reaction to The Worms Within. The Worms Within. The movie had been in a festival of twentieth-century film that came with the kid's new data set. It turned out that part of the festival was horror movies from the 1990s. The old USA had been at the height of its power and wealth then; for some perverse reason, slash-and-splash had its greatest flowering the same decade. Wil wondered if they would have spent so much time inventing blood and gore if they had known what was waiting for them just around the corner in the twenty-first; or maybe they feared such a future, and the gore was their way of knocking wood. In any case, Anne rushed out of her room after the first fifteen minutes, almost hysterical. They trashed the video, but she couldn't get the story out of her mind. Unknown to Wil and Virginia, she bought a replacement and every night watched a little more-just enough to make her sick again. Afterwards she said she kept watching it-even though it got more and more horrible-because there had to be The movie had been in a festival of twentieth-century film that came with the kid's new data set. It turned out that part of the festival was horror movies from the 1990s. The old USA had been at the height of its power and wealth then; for some perverse reason, slash-and-splash had its greatest flowering the same decade. Wil wondered if they would have spent so much time inventing blood and gore if they had known what was waiting for them just around the corner in the twenty-first; or maybe they feared such a future, and the gore was their way of knocking wood. In any case, Anne rushed out of her room after the first fifteen minutes, almost hysterical. They trashed the video, but she couldn't get the story out of her mind. Unknown to Wil and Virginia, she bought a replacement and every night watched a little more-just enough to make her sick again. Afterwards she said she kept watching it-even though it got more and more horrible-because there had to be something something that would happen that would make up for the wounds she'd already suffered. Of course, there was no such redemption. The ending was even more imaginatively grotesque than she feared. Anne had been depressed and a little irrational for months afterwards. that would happen that would make up for the wounds she'd already suffered. Of course, there was no such redemption. The ending was even more imaginatively grotesque than she feared. Anne had been depressed and a little irrational for months afterwards.

Wil grimaced. Like daughter like father. And he didn't even have Anne's excuse; he knew how this one ended.

In those last years, Marta's life slowly darkened. She had completed her great construction, the sign that should alert any orbital monitors. It was a clever scheme: She had journeyed out of the glazed zone, to where a few isolated jacarandas grew. She gathered the spiders she found on the display webs and took them into the desolation. By this time she had discovered the relation of those webs to tree and spider reproduction. She set spiders and seeds at ten carefully selected sites along a line from the center of the glazed zone. Each was on a tiny stream: at each she had broken through the glaze and developed a real soil. Over the next thirty years, the spiders and their sprouts did most of the construction. The seedlings spread a small way down the streams, but not as much as ordinary plants. The spiders saw the faraway display webs of their brethren and thousands of seeds were deposited on the path between, each with a complement of arachnid paratroopers.

In the end, she had the vast green-and-silver arrow that did eventually alert an orbiter. But a problem came with that line of trees. They broke the glaze, made a bridge of soil from her base to the outside. The jacs and spiders were awesome defenders of their territory, but not perfect ones-especially when strung thin. Other plants infested the sides of their run. With those plants came herbivores.

* The little b.u.g.g.e.rs have added a couple of hours' work to each day, Lelya. And some of my favorite fruits I can't grow at all now.

Ten or even twenty years into the abandonment, this would have been an inconvenience. At thirty-five years, Marta's health was beginning to fail. Competing with the rabbity thieves was a slowly losing proposition for her.

* Somewhere in a cairn on the far side of the sea, I said some very foolish things. Didn't I figure an unaided human lived about a century? And then I said something about being conservative and expecting I could last only seventy-five years. What a laugh.

* My foot has never gotten better, Lelya. I walk with a crutch now, and not very fast. Most of the time, my joints hurt. It's funny what not feeling good does to your att.i.tude and your notion of time. I can scarcely believe there was a day when I expected to walk to Canada. Or that just fifteen years ago I still hiked out of the glazed zone regularly. Lelya, it's a major effort to climb down to the lake now. I haven't done it for weeks. I may not do it again. But I have a rain cistern... and the fishers are always happy to visit me up here. Besides, I don't like to see my reflection in the lake anymore. I'm not doing any more self-portraits, Lelya.

* Is this what it was like for people before decent medical care? The failed dreams, the horizons that shrink always inwards? It must have taken guts to do all they did.

Two years later: * Today the neighborhood went to h.e.l.l. I have a pack of near-dogs camped just over the ringwall. They look a lot like the ones at the mines, though these are smaller. In fact, they're kind of cute, like big puppies with pointy ears. I'd like to kill the lot of them. An un-Marta-like thought, granted, but they've driven the fishers away from my cabin. They killed Lewey. I got a couple of the little murderers with my pike. Since then, they've been extremely wary of me. Now I carry a pike and knife when I'm out of doors.

Marta spent most of her last year in the cabin. Outside, her garden went to weeds. There were edible roots and vegetables still, but they were scattered around. Getting out to gather them was an expedition as challenging as a hundred-kilometer walk had been before. The near-dogs grew bolder; they circled just outside the diamond tip of her pike, darted occasionally inwards. Marta had several pelts to prove that she was still the faster. But it could not last. She was eating poorly. That made it harder for her to gather food... A downward spiral.

Wil paged the display and found himself looking at ordinary typescript. He felt his stomach drop. Was this the end? An ordinary entry and then... nothing? He forced his eyes through the words. It was a commentary from Yelen: Marta had not intended the next page to be seen. Her words had been rubbed out, then overwritten by a later diary entry "You said you'd walk if you didn't see everything, Brierson. Well, here it is. d.a.m.n you." He could almost hear the bitterness in Yelen's words. He looked down the page.

* Oh G.o.d Yelen help me. If you ever loved me save me now. I am dying dying. I don't want to die. Oh please please please Oh G.o.d Yelen help me. If you ever loved me save me now. I am dying dying. I don't want to die. Oh please please please He paged again, and was looking at Marta's familiar script. If anything, the letters were more finely drawn than usual. He imagined her in the dark cabin, patiently rubbing away the words of her despair, then overwriting them, cool and a.n.a.lytical. Wil wiped his face and tried not to breathe. A deep breath would start him sobbing. He read Marta's final entry.

* Dearest Lelya, * I suppose there must be an end to optimism, at least locally. I've been holed up in my cabin for ten days now. There is water in the cistern, but I'm out of food. d.a.m.n dogthings; without them, I could have lasted another twenty years. They cut me up pretty bad the last time I was out. For a while, I thought to make a grand stand, give them a last taste of my diamonds. I've changed my mind about that; last week I saw them take on a grazer. Yes, one of those: bigger than I am, with a horn almost as effective as my pike. I couldn't see all of it, just when they were in view from my windows, but... At first it looked like they were playing. They nipped at it, sending it scurrying round and round. But I could see the blood. Finally, it weakened, tripped.

* I never noticed this when they got smaller animals, but the dogs don't deliberately kill their prey. They just eat them alive, usually from the guts out. That grazer was big; it took a while to die.

* So, I'm staying inside. "Forever until you rescue me" was how I used to say it. I guess I don't expect a rescue anymore. With lookabouts scheduled every few decades (at best), the odds are against one happening in the next few days.

* I figure it's been about forty years since I was marooned. It seems so much longer, longer than all the rest of my life. Nature's kindly way of stretching mortals' meager rations? I remember my fisher friends better than most of my human ones. I can see the lake through one window. If they looked, they could see me up here. They rarely look. I don't think most of them remember me. It's been three years since they were driven away from the cabin. That's almost a fisher generation The only one I think remembers is my last Juan Chanson. This one's not as loud as my earlier Juans. Mainly, he sits around, taking in the sun... I just looked out the window. He's there now; I do think he remembers.

The handwriting changed. Wil wondered how many hour-or days-had pa.s.sed from one paragraph to the next. The new lines were crossed out, but Yelen's magic made them clear.

* I just remembered a strange word: taphonomy. Once upon a time, I could be an expert in a field just by remembering its name. Now... all I know... it's the study of death sites, no? A crumple of bones is all these mortal creatures leave... and I know that bones get swept away so fast. Not mine. though. Mine stay indoors. I'll be here a long time, my writing longer... Sorry.

She didn't have the energy to erase the words. There was a gap, and her writing became regular, each letter carefully printed.

* I have the feeling I'm saying things I've written you, before, contingencies that now are certainties. I hope you get all my earlier writing. I tried to put all the details there, Lelya. I want you to have something to work for, dear. Our plan can still succeed. When it does, our dreams live.

* You are for all time my dearest friend, Lelya.

Marta did not finish the entry with her usual sign-off. Perhaps she thought to write more later. Further down, there was a pattern of disconnected lines. 'Through an exercise of imagination, one might see them as the block letters L O V.

That was all.

It didn't matter; Wil wasn't reading anymore. He lay with his face in his arms, sobbing on empty lungs. This was the daytime version of the dream in blue; he could never wake from this.

Seconds pa.s.sed. The blue changed to rage, and Wil was on his feet. Someone had done this to Marta. Someone had done this to Marta. W. W. Brierson had been shanghaied, separated from his family and his world, thrown into a new one. But Derek Lindemann's crime was a peccadillo, laughable, hardly worth Wil's attention. W. W. Brierson had been shanghaied, separated from his family and his world, thrown into a new one. But Derek Lindemann's crime was a peccadillo, laughable, hardly worth Wil's attention. Compared to what was done to Marta. Compared to what was done to Marta. Someone had taken her from her friends, her love, and then squeezed the life from her, year by year, drop by drop. Someone had taken her from her friends, her love, and then squeezed the life from her, year by year, drop by drop.

Someone must die for this. Wil stumbled across the room, searching. In the back of his mind, a rational fragment watched in wonder that his feelings could run so deep, that he could truly run amok. Then even the fragment was swallowed up.

Something hit him. A wall. Wil struck back, felt satisfying pain shooting through his fist. As he pulled his arm from the wall, he noticed motion in the next room. He ran towards the figure, and it towards him. He struck and struck. Gla.s.s flew in all directions.

Then he was in sunlight, and on his knees. Wil felt a penetrating coldness in the back of his neck. He sighed and sat down. He was on the street, surrounded by broken gla.s.s and what looked like parts of his living-room walls. He looked up. Yelen and Della were standing just beyond the pile of debris. He hadn't seen them in person and together for weeks. It must be something important. "What happened?" Funny. His throat hurt, as though he'd been shouting.

Yelen stepped over a fallen timber and bent to look at him. Behind her, Wil saw two large fliers. At least six autons hung in the air above the women. "That's what we would like to know, Inspector. Were you attacked? Our guards heard screaming and the sounds of a fight."

... and every so often he gave a great screeching display, rus.h.i.+ng about and slapping his sides. Marta had named her fishers well. Wil looked at his b.l.o.o.d.y hands. The tranq Yelen had used on him was fast-acting stuff. He could think and remember, but emotions were distant, muted things. "I, I was reading the end of Marta's diary. Got carried away." Marta had named her fishers well. Wil looked at his b.l.o.o.d.y hands. The tranq Yelen had used on him was fast-acting stuff. He could think and remember, but emotions were distant, muted things. "I, I was reading the end of Marta's diary. Got carried away."

"Oh." Korolev's pale lips tightened. How could she be so cool? Surely she had gone through this, too. Then Wil remembered the century Yelen had spent alone with the diary and the cairns. Her harshness would be easier to understand in the future.

Della walked closer, her boots crunching on broken gla.s.s. Lu's outfit was dead black, like something from a twentieth-century police state. Her arms were folded across her chest. Her dark eyes were calm and distant. No doubt her current personality matched her clothes. "Yes. The diary. It's a depressing doc.u.ment. Perhaps you should choose other leisure-time reading."

The remark should have done something to his blood pressure, but Wil felt nothing.

Yelen was more explicit. "I don't know why you insist on mucking around in Marta's personal life, Brierson. She said everything she knew about the case right at the beginning. The rest is none of your d.a.m.ned business." She glanced at his hands, and a small robot swooped down. Wil felt something cold and soft work between his fingers. Yelen sighed. "Okay. I guess I understand; we are that much alike. And I still need you ... Take a couple of days off. Get yourself together." She started back to her flier.

"Uh, Yelen," said Della. "Are we going to leave him here alone?"

"Of course not. I'm wasting three extra autons on him."

"I mean, when the GriefStop wears off, Brierson may be very distressed." Something flickered in her eyes. She looked momentarily puzzled, searching through nine thousand years of memories-perhaps more important, nine thousand years of viewpoints. "When a person is like that, don't they need someone to help them... someone to, uh, hug hug them?" them?"

"Hey, don't look at me!"

"Right." Her eyes were calm again. "It was just a thought." The two departed.

Wil watched their fliers disappear over the trees. Around him, broken gla.s.s was being vacuumed up, the torn walls removed. Already his hands felt warm and comfortable. He sat in the roadway, at peace. Eventually he would get hungry and go inside.

TWENTY.

After supper, Wil sat for a long time in the ruins of his living room. He was directly responsible for very little of the destruction: He had punched b.l.o.o.d.y holes in one wall and demolished a mirror. The guard autons had let that go on for perhaps fifteen seconds before deciding it was a threat to his safety. Then they bobbled him: The walls near the mirror were cut by a clean, curving line. A smooth depression dipped thirty centimeters below the floor, into the foundation. Even the bobbling had not caused the worst damage. That happened when Yelen and Della cut the bobble out of the house. Apparently they wanted their equipment to have a direct view when it burst. He looked at the wall clock. It was the same day as before; they'd kept him on ice just long enough to get him out of the house.

If Wil's sense of humor had been enabled, he might have smiled. All this supported Yelen's claim that the house was not infested by her equipment. The best the protection autons could do was bobble everything and call for help.

Things were different now. From where he sat, Wil saw several robots foaming a temporary wall. Beside his chair sat a medical auton, about as animated as a garbage can. Somewhere it had hands; they'd been a big help with supper.

He watched the reconstruction with interest, even turned on the room lights when night came. This GriefStop was great stuff. Simple drives like hunger weren't affected. He felt as alert and coordinated as usual. He was simply beyond the reach of emotion; yet, strangely, it was easy to imagine how things would affect him without the drug. And that knowledge did make for some weak motivation. For instance, he hoped the Dasguptas would not stop by on their way home. He guessed that explanations would be difficult.

Wil stood and walked to his reading table. The auton glided silently after him. Something smaller floated up from the mantel. He sat down, suddenly guessing that GriefStop had never been a hit on the recreational drug market. There were side effects: Everything moved a little bit slow. Sounds came low-pitched, drawn out. It wasn't enough to panic him (he doubted if anything could do that just now), but reality had a faint edge of waking nightmare. His silent visitors intensified the feeling... Ah well, paranoia was the name of the game.

He turned on his desk lamp, cut the room lights. Somehow the destruction had spared the desk and reading display. The last page of Marta's diary floated in the circle of light. He guessed that rereading that page would be very upsetting to his normal self-so he didn't look at it. Della was right. There ought to be better leisure-time activities. This day would hang his normal self low for a long time to come. He hoped that he wouldn't come back to the diary, to tear at the wounds he'd opened today. Perhaps he should erase it; the inconvenience of coercing another copy from Yelen might be enough to save his normal self.

Wil spoke into the darkness. "House. Delete Marta's diary." The display showed his command and the ideation net a.s.sociated with "Marta's diary."

"The whole thing?" the house asked.

Wil's hand hovered over the commit. "Unh, no. Wait." Curiosity was a powerful thing with Brierson. He'd just remembered something that could force his normal self to go against all common sense and retrieve another copy. Better check it out now, then then zap the diary. zap the diary.

When he first received the diary, he'd asked for all references to himself. There had been four. He had seen three; She'd mentioned calling him back from the beach the day of the Peacer rescue. There'd been the fisher she'd named after him. Then, around year thirty-eight, she'd recommended Yelen use his services-even though she'd forgotten his name lay then. That was the reference which hurt so much the first time he looked at the doc.u.ment. Wil guessed he could forgive that now; those years would have destroyed the soul of a lesser person, not simply blurred a few memories.

But what was the fourth reference? Wil repeated the context search. Ah. No wonder he had missed it. It appeared about year thirteen, tucked away in one of her essays on the plan. In this one, she wrote on each of the low-techs she remembered, citing strengths and weaknesses, trying to guess how they would react to the plan. In a sense it was a foolish exercise-Marta granted that much more elaborate a.n.a.lysis existed on the Korolev db's-but she hoped her "time of solitude" had given her new insights. Besides (unsaid), she needed to be doing something useful in the years that stretched before her.