The Bringer of Light (2 page)

“Are you okay there?” he called back.

“Reckoned.” Joon’s voice was amplified, but was that a hint of interference he could hear?

“Any problems, you let me know.”

“Silly man. You’re the only one reckoning problems here.”

“Let’s keep going,” he snapped. On he went, his snowshoes dislodging deep lumps of thickening snow. A crevasse to his right was becoming more and more indistinct in the driving snow. He gave it plenty of room, veering towards the yawning cave hollowed out of the mountainside. The beast he longed to swallow him.

“Mind your hook-ups, now,” Joon said, brightly.

“Say again?”

“Your hook-ups. Your flickies. Friends.”

“Friends?”

“Regarding.” A pale red laser light shone through the walnut-sized flakes, illuminating was appeared to be a snow-clad outcropping about thirty yards away.

Part of the white wall flinched in the sudden light, and darted away.

Cutwater stopped in his tracks. “Jesus. Turn that light off!”

“Who’s Jesus?” The red light arced through the air, picking out another shape in the distance. This one was darker, thick with snow but still recognisably organic in origin, flinching away from the light. At the periphery of his vision, two or three more shapes darted through the grey. With a sinking feeling, he realised they were surrounded.

“Whee! This is funzies!” She traced the light on the rough hides, the monstrous shoulders.

“You’ve drawn them in, you idiot! They’ll rip us to pieces.”

“Ferals! For real.” The orange ball came closer, and Joon’s face shimmered much more violently than before. “Got three million flickies already…Three point one… Planet-populo.”

One of the shapes lurched forward, alarmingly quick. Thick, gnarled hands were raised, hooked into claws; deep inside the fur was a suggestion of small eyes, glinting like pennies. One of them lowed, an almost canine sound, alarmingly loud, very close.

Cutwater pulled out his baton. Almost too fast to be believed, one of them darted towards him, and he swung wildly, missing by a good distance. That one got the message and backed off, but two others came around from the other side. More of them surrounded Joon’s pedestal, cutting him off from her.

“Get out of here!” he cried, hoarsely, sweeping the baton through the air. “It’s you they’ve come for!”

“Boreds, now,” Joon sighed. Faces surged into view, bearded, rotten teeth bared. “Best you lie down, Cutwater.”

“What?”

“Lie down. Now.”

He did as he was told. He had an impression of thick booted feet breaking into a run over the hard-packed snow, within kicking distance of his head, and then a sudden explosion of Ionian blue light. He looked up in time to see a pale sapphire corona spreading outward into the distance, growing fainter as it travelled before disappearing like a ripple in a pond. It left the figures that had menaced them sprawled in the snow, as if a switch had been flicked. None of them so much as stirred.

A hollow boom echoed out across the mountainside.

“Easy when you know,” Joon said, giggling. “Look at you with your little stick! You would not have gold-medalled with that.”

Another hollow boom echoed back. A crackling, sighing sound followed, as if the mountain was unsettled in its sleep.

A vast white curtain began to roll down the mountain towards them.

“Best you come in now,” Joon said. “No feelsies, though.”

Cutwater did not hesitate. He lurched forward, and might not have made it had Joon not drifted towards him. He encountered no resistance, stepping into the blessed heat and light and collapsing onto the girl even as the frozen sea engulfed them both.

He clutched her, sinking to his knees, even as the avalanche piled up around them. They were safe, secure and static within the heat shield.

Joon sniffed at him. “Ugh! You’re so unfresh!”

-Thrillsies!

-Unbeatable thrillsies.

-Coming.

-Coming!

-Flick counter.

-Millions.

-Many millions.

-Mega megas.

-Going?

-Signal out.

-All black.

-Snow? Chuckles.

-Techs, signal out.

-Fixit.

-Where they now?

-Coming?

-Gone.

-Techs, fixit.

-Techs?

-Techs now?

-Fixit!
 

He broke the seal on the glowstick and dropped it to the stone floor. Although they were sheltered from the wind, the sound seemed amplified by the wide expanses of the cavern. The rock seemed to moan at them. There were no sign of the ferals; he had heard that they shunned this path, or that the inhabitants of Tegrit chased them off.

Although the fire was sheltered and healthy, he knew it would be touch and go. He had never before seen anyone so pale; she was near-translucent, with hardly any flesh on her bones. He had piled blankets, jackets, insulated foil, everything he could over her. But her chill was not merely physical, her tremor not just a reaction to the freezing cold.

“You have to rest,” Cutwater said, gently. He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she clutched at it with icy fingers.

“Like when a Unix goes down or misdirects, something something, no chuckles,” she said. “Need techs. You have techs? Any techs?”

There was no orange halo around her, now. Resting against a rock was her pedestal, a heavy burden which he had carried into the cave along with her only because it would save her life if it came back.

“There’s no techs,” he said gently. “Not out here. You’re going into shock. I’ve seen this happen before, with people who disconnect. I’ll do what I can to help. Do you have a help unit attached to the pedestal? Something battery powered?”

She had heard and understood him, although her subsequent babble might have been simple delirium. This is what passes through her mind, he realised. It might even be how she talks to her friends, if they actually talk at all. “Batteries nowise, nosense tools, always techs, why no techs?”

“There are no techs out here. You’ve gone out of range. I’m going to try to get help at the monastery. We’re nearly there. You need to be brave, alright?”

She clutched his hand, crushed it to her face. Her eye darted in the firelight. “Neverwarm. Never be warm. Cold nowise.”

It had happened not long after the pedestal had risen from their tight-packed ice tomb, a gentle, effortless ascent into the night air. They had floated close to the cave mouth, when it had simply dropped, spilling them both to the ground. The pedestal and the Unix tentacles had fallen into silence.

What scared Cutwater the most was the fact that she could do everything but scream; the mouth had fallen open, the visible eye had bulged, but she could not make a sound until he had carried her out of the snow.

“No-one,” she whispered. “GoneToReal. No-one. No techs.”

“I’ll do what I can for you. Keep talking to me, alright? I’m here.”

“Gone.”

The cave grew bright, and for a moment Cutwater thought some of the kindling had gone up. But the quality of the light was different, more regular than flame.

He spun around.

Another pedestal hovered into view over some jagged stalagmites on the floor of the cavern. A dark figure slowly came into focus on top of the unit, a face he recognised.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said.

The figure smiled. “Hello, Mr Cutwater.”

                                              **************

Synopticaps for revisers.

Sexface spread the concept of synchro. Dutton spread the virus that tapped into viddies around the world. Sex was the key.

Mazimdas harnessed the power of synchro. Once people had their sexfaces on the internet, Mazimdas knew that mental synch-ups were the way forward. Once the technology was released commercially, there was no stopping it. It happened fastwise. Within five years, the world was in synchro, and Mazimdas industries had control of the One True Software.

The first Unix units made Mazimdas the biggest company in the world, and Mazimdas the First Nominal worldwide. “Any language, any thought, anywhere, anyway: never wonder again” was the goal.

Reaction kicked in. Ferals – often living in remote communities, shunning light and techs – grew to be feared and hated on the edges of synchronisation. Many withdrew to caves, mountains and forests, only seen on viddies.

More sophisticated groups emerged, but mainly the Disconnected philosophy held sway among dissenters. Men and women who rejected sych-ups forged their own lives.

Mouth viddies said a monastery in either the Andes or the Himalayas, providing an analogue seat of learning, existed. It became a pilgrimage for the Disconnected, a retreat from synch life, a communal, nowise way of life. The name of the monastery was Tegrit. No viddies of Tegrit existed until the Cutwater-Joon Incident.

RECKON: Propagation of Deadly Myths of challenges to Mazimdas, especially rumours of the Split, or the Newcomers, are punishable by temporary Severance.

                                              **************

Cutwater carried the girl over to her dormant pedestal. She had fallen into unconsciousness. Cutwater was so cold himself, he couldn’t tell if she had a pulse or not.

The newcomer, a dapper little man dressed all in black, wearing shades beneath a swept-back hairstyle that spoke of an ancient era of glamour, hovered over Joon’s unit, playing a greenish laser over a panel on the base of Joon’s machine. Soon, it kicked into life, levelling out and rising into the air. The heatshield expanded into being again, and Cutwater longed to be inside it.

“Put her down,” the newcomer said. “She’ll be fine.”

“She’s weak. Are you sure it’ll work?”

“I’m sure.”

Cutwater laid her on the metal pedestal. The green laser light traced across her Unix implant. Instantly, her eye snapped open. “Mazimdas!” she cried, alert in the orange glow. “You came for me. You came for me…”

The man smiled benignly; then he clicked his fingers, and the girl sank down onto the pedestal. A zero-G field kicked in, raising her a few inches off the surface. Her long spiky hair relaxed, untethered and trailed as if underwater, parallel with her limbs, and she slept with a near-beatific expression.

“Good trick,” Cutwater said.

The newcomer’s heatshield mingled with Joon’s; he checked her Unix implant was secure, allowing his hand trailing across her cheek for a moment.

“Poor child,” he said. “She’d never known severance before. What a miracle she survived.”

“So I have to ask… Are you him?”

Mazimdas nodded.

“You sure? Not a hologram, or a double, or a clone..?”

“There’s only one Mazimdas, my friend.”

Cutwater sank to his haunches, digging into his pack for a tin of tuna. “You speak suspiciously well. Like, proper English.”

“I’m actually a traditionalist,” Mazimdas said, arms folded in front of his chest. “There are such communities among us, you know. Synchronisation is a broad church.”

Cutwater laughed. “Oh, I know it, brother. All communities, all thoughts, all fantasies, even dreams… everywhere, all the time. Nothing hidden, nothing restrained, nothing refined. What a nightmare.”

“It’s progress, Mr Cutwater. Evolution. You’re a throwback.”

“And you’re a maniac. What happens when there’s a mass failure? When we run out of power? Look what just happened, here. You’ll have millions of deaths on your hands.”

“I’ve heard these horror stories before. Apparently I was going to brainwash a generation. Apparently there’d be no political thought or theory ever again. It didn’t happen.”

“Oh you brainwashed a generation, alright. You got people so caught up with their synch-life that they forgot to achieve anything in the real world. You’ve got people glued to their sofas worse than TV ever managed. They all bought your funny little headsets, and fell into line. And you sold it to them as freedom. You are a genius, Mazimdas, I’ll give you that.”

“People are freer, better educated, well-nourished, and able to live their lives in leisure. Ignorance is banned. Empathy is second nature. I’ve ensured the human race will survive. I’ve demolished barriers between people.” Mazimdas grinned. Cutwater couldn’t help but grin back. “Sorry to brag.”

Cutwater held out the tin of tuna. “Care to dine? It’s not often I share my rations with living deities.”

“Not for me, thank you. I ate before I arrived.” He touched a food patch on his wrist.

“Not so traditional after all, then?”

“Needs must.”

“So… I’m presuming there’s a reason you’ve come out here?”

“Of course. I want Tegrit.”