Limit of Vision (7 page)

Speak quickly play remote talk with . . . Gabrielle.
The other not you.
“Other” served as the class of objects that interacted with the colony but was not the colony. Gabrielle was “other.” So was Virgil. But the colony could recognize that Gabrielle was not Virgil—“the other not you.”

Again he nodded to Panwar to transmit his words: “There was remote talk with Gabrielle?”

Quick talk
.

“What the hell is ‘quick talk’?” Panwar muttered.

Virgil touched the
L
ov
s hidden beneath his hairline. Panwar watched him, his eyes growing wide as understanding dawned. Usually they hid their
L
ov
s from Epsilon colony, blurring that segment of the visual transmission to avoid the very feedback reaction that Gabrielle had been seeking.

Virgil addressed the colony: “Does quick talk use words?”

No
.

“Does quick talk use light?”

Light yes.
Thought is sense inside is trapped is meaning move not.
Get it out.
Question: How?

Again Virgil looked at Panwar—and saw a reflection of his own surprise. “The colonies almost never ask questions,” Panwar explained in answer to Summer’s inquisitive look. “Epsilon-3 and its direct parent are the only ones ever to do it.”

“Do you have any idea what the question is about?” she asked.

Panwar shrugged. “Frankly, no.”

“Rephrase question,” Virgil said.

The voice that was like his spoke again:
Rephrase.
Thought is here.
Thought is sense inside here.
This auditory output is not thought.
Thought is trapped.
Meaning does not move.
How will thought get out?

In the following silence Virgil could hear his heart pounding. Sweat stood out on his arms. “Your farsights are recording, right?” he asked Summer.

“Yes.”

“So answer it quick,” Panwar urged. “Its metabolism is so much faster than ours. Its time sense might be faster too. Don’t give it a chance to forget, Virg. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Virgil nodded. “It took something from Gabrielle. It learned something important from her.”

“Answer it,” Panwar repeated.

Virgil turned back to the colony. “Auditory output is not thought,” he confirmed. “It is words. Words are the way to share thoughts between there and here, between two beings, Epsilon and Virgil.”

Words are way of meaning-passing.
Passing meaning.
Eyes are better windows to meaning.
Said this.
Other.
Gabrielle other.
Measure excitement in blue-green flash.
Thought.
This is thought but not thought here.
But it is not thought here.
But it thought is not here.
Not within.

“It is another’s thought,” Virgil said, his voice taut with fear that he had got it wrong. Still, he plunged ahead. “This is an awareness of another’s thought, but the thoughts cannot be sensed.”

That is here question.
The eyes show thoughts not here
.

Panwar said, “You know what it’s getting at, don’t you, Virgil?”

“I think so.” He closed his eyes, taking a moment to steady himself. Then he looked at the colony and asked: “What are eyes?”

Light receptors.
Blue-
green best eyes.
Other eyes dull
.

Virgil held up his hand, fingers splayed. “Here is my hand. Here are my fingers. This finger”—now he held out only the index finger, moving it slowly until it touched the corner of his right eye—”touches an eye. Which eye?”

Right dull
.

He moved his pointing finger, using it to lift away the neat cords of his hair. At the same time he pointed to an implanted
L
ov
tucked against his hairline. “Which eye is this?”

Seven from right bright blue-green
.

“Can thoughts be seen here?”

Thoughts indicated.
Not understood.
Question: Integrate?

“How?”

Talking reaches integration.
Not words.
Light
.

Talking with light: That was what Gabrielle had been doing. He and Panwar had suspected it. Now it was confirmed. Virgil felt the temptation to follow her, to uncover what she had learned, but the smell of her was still in his nostrils. “Words for now,” he said softly, letting his hair fall back across his forehead.

Afterward
he sat with Panwar and Summer in the lunchroom, holding a cold glass of breakfast-balance in his hands. “So what do you think?” he asked her. “Is it a mind?”

She leaned back in her chair, studying him for several long seconds. Her farsights had gone opaque gold. “You ask me that, but you don’t ask me if I think it’s dangerous?”

“I know it’s not dangerous.”

“If it is a mind,” Panwar said, “it can’t be sterilized. That would be murder.”

Her brows crested the rim of her farsights. “What surprises me most is that the two of you seem to be more worried about the
L
ov
s than you are about yourselves.”

“The wonder,” Panwar said, “is that you don’t feel the same way.”

“Stop it,” Virgil told him. “That isn’t helping.”

Panwar shook his head. “Does it matter? She made up her mind before she came in here.”

Virgil turned to her. “But you’ve changed your mind, haven’t you?” She had made the
L
ov
s. She could not be unaffected by what she had seen in Epsilon-3.

Summer didn’t answer right away, studying him with the calm, thoughtful expression that seemed to be her default mode. “Tell me, Virgil, does it bother you to cull a mind?”

At first he didn’t understand her question. He cocked his head, puzzling it out. “You mean when we cull the old colonies?”

“Exactly. If
you
don’t think of the colonies as sentient—”

“That doesn’t matter anymore!” Panwar snapped. “It’s all changed now. You saw it.”

“That’s right,” Virgil said. “You agree, don’t you? The
L
ov
s must be preserved . . . whatever happens to us.”

But Summer was shaking her head. “No, I don’t agree. I’m not even sure you’re rational.” Her gaze shifted to his forehead.

Virgil raised a hand, self-consciously touching the
L
ov
s hidden behind his hair. “You think it’s the
L
ov
s talking?” he asked. “That they’re some kind of Hollywood body snatcher, using me to get around?”

“Could it be that way?”

“No! It’s not like that. Not at all. What it’s like is feeling more, perceiving more, being more alive in every day-to-day moment. Being less dependent on our machines.”

“Machines are a crutch,” Panwar said. “They let us increase our intellectual speed, our competence, but at the cost of moving our intelligence off-site, where it’s vulnerable to damage, or corruption, or some fundamentalist revolution. Machines will never be part of us, but the
L
ov
s already are.” He tapped his forehead. “They
are
us. The whole world is getting faster, smarter. Without your
L
ov
s, Summer, how will we ever keep up?”

She considered this for several seconds. Then she stood. “I want to thank you both for being honest with me.”

Virgil saw through to her true feelings. “You think we’re crazy.”

She didn’t argue. “Before I go, I’m supposed to let you know . . . your status as biohazards makes you difficult prisoners to handle. So you’ll continue to be held here”—she gestured at the suite—”while arrangements are made with a neurosurgeon to remove your
L
ov
s. That could take time. No one has been trained in the procedure of course, so guidelines will have to be—”

Panwar was the first to find his voice. “
No
. They can’t take our
L
ov
s.” He slammed his chair back and stood, touching his brow where the illicit grains glittered. “Haven’t you heard anything we’ve been saying? Our
L
ov
s are part of us! You can’t carve up our minds.”

Virgil envisioned the laser, hunting among his cerebral cells, resculpting his personality, leaving . . . what? Even if no mistakes were made, it wouldn’t be him anymore. Not without the
L
ov
s. “They can’t do this,” he said. “They can’t force it on us. Not without some specific legal authority. And we haven’t been before a judge yet. We haven’t seen a lawyer.”

“I’m sorry,” Summer said. “But no one has any choice in this. No one. It’s an artificial life-form. The guidelines are clear.”

6

Ela sat cross
-
legged
on Phuong’s platform, watching one of her peeper balls float past. No bigger than her fingertip, the little sphere was held aloft by micropumps in its shell that kept its internal air pressure low. Reflections slid with oily grace across its smooth surface: the last gray glimmer of twilight, chased away by the bright orange spark of a cooking fire exploding to life on a neighboring platform.

Joanie Liu had called to announce the surrender of both the Coastal Society and Ky Xuan Nguyen. “The propagandists have been paid off, while Mr. Nguyen will be sponsoring your next project. He would like you to prepare a historical document describing this village, though there is one unusual clause in the agreement. The document is not for publication. Therefore, it cannot be resold. Because of this, I have negotiated for you a slightly higher fee.”

Ela had frowned over the restriction, wondering aloud why Nguyen would pay for an article and then bury it. If he truly was concerned for these people, wouldn’t he want their plight advertised as widely as possible?

Joanie did not respond well to her musings. “You may investigate that question if you like, Ela Suvanatat, but only
after
you finish the project,
after
you are paid, and
after
you find a new job broker.”

“Undo, Joanie. I was only wondering.”

So now she was working for Nguyen, creating a profile of village life that would never be accessed by anyone. It was a stupid project, but at least she would not have to start selling her equipment just to buy her next meal.

Under Kathang’s remote guidance, the peeping ball drifted away, off to eavesdrop on some unsuspecting villager. Ela smiled to herself. Unsuspecting? Who was kidding who? These people knew exactly what the peeping balls were for. Whenever the kids spotted one they would run after it, telling dirty jokes or love secrets to embarrass their friends. Kathang had been schooled to compensate for that behavior by lofting the balls until they vanished into the sky, then letting them descend somewhere else, where they might go unseen, at least for a little while. The
R
osa
would sort through every thread of stolen conversation, seeking choice quotes.

Ela listened to the rising bustle and hum in the village. The population of the little shantytown had quadrupled since the fisherfolk returned at sunset. They had carried their boats into the village, laying them upside down on the platforms. Wet hulls gleamed in the light of flowscreens ablaze with opera programs and kung fu films. Phuong had disappeared, now that the last of the children in her care had been turned over to their parents. Ela decided she would take a walk too.

First though, she had to protect her belongings against theft. She hid her backpack and diving gear under some of Phuong’s empty boxes, leaving a button camera on top of the pile so that Kathang could monitor. Then just for luck, she added a stink trap primed to explode with a noxious odor if Kathang gave the signal. After that, Ela felt ready to explore.

With her farsights in recording mode she strolled between the shacks, capturing the sound of phones trilling, and the sight of fish roasting on sticks, or on grills set over charcoal beds, and of the many people eating vacuum-packed meals.

Nguyen had insisted that any data she collected be stored in an account on his server. Ela felt uneasy with the arrangement. She had no guarantee the data would not be wiped or pirated. Then again, what did it matter? Ky Xuan Nguyen was paying her to go through the motions without producing anything real. It was an insult to her integrity, but in the circumstances, it was the best she could do.

She stopped to watch a kid with a synthesizer as he doubled, then redoubled his voice until he had a whole chorus of selves singing a heartbreaking teen suicide anthem. Farther on, it was oldies night: a pack of kids bounced ecstatically to the aggressive rhythm of
Burn Out
.

On the inland side of the shantytown several women had set up trading tables, where fresh fish was exchanged for commercially prepared foods. Relative values fluctuated as the women eyed the pace of one another’s business. The scene rivaled the Can Tho marketplace for noise. Ela examined the catch, surprised there were still so many fish to be found in the overworked water. Some of the better-looking specimens were being hawked as produce of the fish farms, though Ela didn’t believe it. She had seen the robo-sub. Poaching would have taken more resources than she saw on display here.

Beyond the trading tables, a tall coastal levee rose in dark silhouette against the night sky. Ela climbed its steep face, to look out over a checkered field of fishponds glittering in the light of a rising moon. Tiny campfires sparkled on the narrow strips of land between the ponds. Who was out there?

“Kathang: Nightvision.”

Now her farsights multiplied every incoming photon, so that Ela looked out on a ghostly green landscape nailed in place by fierce points of fire. Several seconds passed before she spotted a slender figure moving between the ponds, swift and graceful, making for the levee on which she stood. After a few seconds she saw another, and then another. They popped into her awareness like hidden creatures in a puzzle drawing.

Perhaps half a mile away a caretaker stepped out on the porch of a little prefab house balanced on the back of the levee, his open door blazing like a furnace in Ela’s farsights. He watched the silent migration. Ela wondered if these might be his workers. It didn’t seem so, though, for he did not raise a hand. He did not call a greeting, or even a warning as they began to climb the levee’s inland slope. A wind chime on his porch sang in a slow night breeze.

Ela shifted nervously, wondering if she should stay or go. But none of the figures was headed directly for her. They would pass to either side if they kept going as they were.

She stayed, watching as they reached the levee’s summit, as they spilled down the other side like rain rolling down a windshield. A green-tinted ghost of a face, smooth and fresh, slid by only an arm’s length away. A
child
, she realized, perhaps eight years old. They were all children—and every one of them wore farsights, just like the children she had seen working in the fishponds along the river.

The boat captain had called those children
Roi Nuoc
, a phrase Kathang translated as “water puppets.” Ela had ordered a search of the term and found two definitions. The first was a traditional theater using wooden puppets on a stage formed by the surface of a pool or lake, with the puppeteers half-submerged behind a bamboo screen. But in the delta
Roi Nuoc
had taken on a second meaning, referring to a mythically elusive clan of wild children, reputed to be half spirit, or half ghost in nature, but always recognizable by their ever-present farsights.

Ela turned to watch the graceful youths disappear into the shantytown’s crowded alleys, wondering if the
Roi Nuoc
could be the story that would finally get her work into the premiere markets of the west.

A masculine voice interrupted her speculations, speaking softly from her farsights: “
They emerge as if made of mud and darkness
.”

She recoiled, gasping in a spasm of panic—a reaction that drew a chuckle of mild amusement from the electronic intruder. “Forgive me, Ms. Suvanatat. This is your new employer, Ky Xuan Nguyen.”

Mr. Nguyen? How had he wormed in on her system? His icon was not even present on her screen. Then Ela grimaced, as she saw through the puzzle. “You are here through the recording link?”

Nguyen didn’t bother to answer. “Look at these children,” he said. “Why do you suppose they have come here?”

Ela watched a boy in a much-faded Nagoya Dragons baseball jersey move between the trading tables. She recognized him as a newcomer only because he wore farsights. Otherwise, he might have passed for one of the village children. Why had he come? Perhaps for food. Perhaps to trade.

“Maybe they come for company,” Ela said, too familiar with loneliness in her own life.

“Follow them,” Nguyen urged. “See what you can learn.”

Curiosity moved her, as much as Nguyen’s bidding. She climbed back down the levee. “On the river, the boat captain acted funny when we saw a group of children working on the shore. He called them
Roi Nuoc
.”

“There are rumors,” Nguyen said. “Some say these children of the delta have no parents—and never did. Never.”

Made of mud and darkness? Ela had heard ugly rumors like that before. “So I guess farmers have started planting embryos in the mud?”

Nguyen chuckled. “There are many ways to view the world. Watch.”

The farsighted boy in the Nagoya Dragons jersey—he couldn’t be more than ten or eleven—called out to a group of local kids even younger than himself. They shied away, but they didn’t leave. They listened at a distance as he talked to them in a soft stream of Vietnamese that Kathang could not hear well enough to interpret. He showed them something hidden under his shirt, and they drew closer.

“I can’t see what he offers them,” Ela said.

“It is always farsights.”

“Do you know why?”

“A private benefactor, I expect, interested in their welfare.”

“The boat captain said it was a youth cult.”

Nguyen laughed. “It is just the
Roi Nuoc
.”

A young man burst into sight between two shacks. His gaze was wild, and he held a heavy stick in his right hand. When he spotted the children, he plunged toward them, yelling something that Kathang translated as
“
Evil spirit!
Go!
Go away!
”
The village children scattered like a pack of dogs frightened off a carcass, while the
Roi Nuoc
boy ducked around the corner of a shanty and disappeared. The young man gave a fierce yell and sprang in pursuit.

Silence fell over the camp. Along with everyone else, Ela listened. Several seconds passed, and then she heard a child’s terrified cry. “Please no,” she breathed. Fear exploded in her mouth like a drug, and she found herself running toward the gap where the two of them had disappeared. She darted past several shanties, then pulled up short as the village came to an abrupt end.

Far out on the mudflat she saw two green ghosts, the lesser one fleeing down the coast, while the other pursued. The tide was out, and an early moon threw sparks of green fire across the wet land, while at sea a scattering of boats worked with blazing torches to draw squid and other nocturnal prey. Faintly phosphorous wavelets lapped at the shore, erupting in tiny fountains every time a green ghost foot splashed down.

Doubt breathed in her. Was it really the boy who was in trouble? Or was a phantom leading this man crazy into the night?

Then the boy was caught. Ela could not understand how it happened. The young man had been several paces behind when he somehow seized the boy by the hair, by the arm. He lifted his squirming, screaming captive over his head.

“No!” Ela shouted. “Put him down!” She bounded over the mudflat, rapidly closing the distance between them.

The man waded into the water, his green figure framed by green lights from the fishing boats, and fainter lights from fish farms on the horizon. He waded in to his waist, then he heaved the boy into darkness. There was a tremendous splash of phosphorescent water, and the boy’s cries ceased.

Ela ran on toward the shore, counting the seconds, waiting for him to surface again. She reached the water and plunged in, until she stood waist deep beside the man. She thought she saw a swirl of phosphorescence several yards away. She thought she heard a faint splash.

It might have been a fish.

The man spoke to her, or perhaps he spoke to himself, while Kathang whispered a translation in Ela’s ear. “
The ghost of my son haunts me.
He comes in spite, to steal away the children I have tried to keep
.”

Ela scanned the water, looking for a ripple of phosphor, listening for a slap, a splash. Several minutes passed. Then far down the beach she sighted two figures, slight, slender. They headed inland, moving silently and avoiding the village. The man beside her began to weep. Ela backed away, and waded toward the shore.

“I will tell you a story of these children,” Ky Xuan Nguyen said, startling her again with his voice so intimate in her ear. “It is said the
Roi Nuoc
are not human. Some say no children are truly human anymore. They are invaders, living in disguise among us. Aliens. They hope to keep us unaware until they reach breeding age, at which time they will bear only alien-type offspring. At that point the world as we know it will end. If we are unlucky, or undeserving, they will murder us all. If we have shown the proper deference and respect, they may choose to see us through an honored old age, but even so, we will be the last human generation. Any children we bear will belong to them.”

Ela caught herself barely breathing. She had heard this same story in Bangkok, after Sawong left with his lover and she was alone. “If you want to be afraid of something,” she said softly, “it’s easy to find an excuse.”

“I’m not afraid.”

No. Why should he be?

She spoke to the green-tinted mud. “People like to talk. But these are not evil spirits. Not alien invaders.”

“You’re sure?”

Her mouth felt dry. Sawong had left her with a thousand baht, a set of farsights, and the keys to his apartment. She’d been twelve. “They are just children.” She tapped her fingers, wishing she could see Nguyen’s face so Kathang could read him. “They
are
just children. I should do an article on them. That would be a good thing, if I show—”

“No, Ms. Suvanatat, that would not be good. You will not write about the
Roi Nuoc
. Not now. Not ever.”

Ela stood still, gazing back at the village and the silhouettes of distant women working in their platform houses, feeling as if she stood on the rotten floor of an abandoned tenement. Only a fool would take another step. So. “You think you can make it forever?”

“You are much like the
Roi Nuoc
, Ela. You are very like them. You could have found Sawong, or waited for him to return. But you didn’t. Why not?”

Anger blended with her surprise. He should not know about Sawong. He should not have bothered to know. “Say, did you want to do an article on me?”

“That would be difficult. There’s not much to tell, is there?”