Transcendence (74 page)

“
So. What were you doing by the river? Nooa seemed concerned.”

Jonathan shot him one of those unreadable glances, then looked at the ceiling. He dropped onto the circular bed and began fumbling a scar on his neck.

“
Just thinking about stuff.”

“
Trouble?”

Jonathan sat up straight. “C’mon, you’re kind of
. . .
kind of like my hero, you see? Don’t fuck it up with lousy questions like that. I don’t need a parent, just a friend.”

“
I’m sorry,” Pehr said. He studied his hands, noticing that the dirt beneath the nails had vanished. Then he thought about his apology. “No, I’m not sorry. You want trouble? Ha! I know trouble. It’s not so great, believe me.”

“
I didn’t mean anything,” the boy said. He made fists and shoved them against his eye sockets. “Crash it all, man! Fuck, I can’t do anything right. I’m sorry. See, I’m just a little
. . .
touchy about things. I’m kinda screwed up.”

Pehr leaned forward in the chair, feeling a mile away from the boy, sensing his pain, wanting to do something. But he had no idea what. He dearly wished he were back inside the artifact-space, where everything was straightforward and pure, where he could take honesty for granted and where two people could communicate without barrier. Mundane existence seemed a pale, filthy thing.

“
You want to talk about it?” Pehr asked.

Jonathan lowered his fists but held his eyes tightly shut. Nooa, only visible from the corner of Pehr’s eye, remained motionless. He felt the eyes of that inhuman Brain peering in all around him—From where? The projectors? Every modern room sported at least one pov camera for people and their 3VRD visitors to use. Certainly the Brain could tap into any of them. He shivered and wondered if telling that AI so much about the artifact had been wise.

“
No,” Jonathan said. Then he opened his eyes. “I mean, yes.” He sat up.

“
You know, Captain, you’re the one who always gave me hope when life was on the cable. I thought, hey, this guy’s way out there, far away from this fucking Earth, free to really live it up, you know? It must be great, huh?”

Pehr grinned and noisily let out a little breath. “That’s something I learned about myself—inside the artifact, I mean. Just getting away from Earth doesn’t make you any happier. Getting away from shit doesn’t make it smell better.You take your own shit with you wherever you go. Only, when you’re stuck in a spacecraft for months, you get really sick of smelling your own rot. It gathers near the ventilators and has nowhere to go.”

“
Oh, man, don’t talk like that.” Jonathan appeared on the verge of tears. Pehr felt crappy for blowing the kid’s romantic image of EConautics—but he had to say those things.

“
But it’s okay, Jonathan. I found something real out there.”

“
The alien thing, you mean.”

“
Yeah.”

Jonathan looked up again. His fists clenched and unclenched the bedcover at his sides, on which was a printed circuit. “I was working on a
. . .
program.”

It took Pehr a moment to realize how this connected to their conversation. “What kind of program?” As he waited for an answer, he glanced around the spacious room, knowing the boy couldn’t take much eye contact. He caught a waft of spice, something like cinnamon.

“
There are a few meatfucks that
. . .
well, that, ah, have done some shit to me. I was gonna show ’em how it feels.”

“
I know about that kind of thing,” Pehr said, picturing what he and Miru and Lonny—especially Lonny—had experienced.

“
Oh, man, you have no idea.”

“
You’d be surprised,” Pehr said, a little angrily.

Jonathan’s lips moved like two separate animals, his teeth clenched behind them, but no words formed, only incoherent sounds. Suddenly, the boy’s face collapsed into the most pained expression Pehr could imagine a human face capable of.

“
Oh, man, Captain.” The boy’s voice was like the cry of birds, like the sorrow of a flock of cranes cognizant that they are about to become extinct. Pehr’s chest began to ache.

“
Oh, man,” Jonathan said. The muscles of his face tightened until he looked like a crumpled ball of clay. “Is the world really as lonely as it seems?” The boy tilted back his head and gasped for breath.

“
Everyone’s so fucking isolated from everyone else, and the better our cards,” Jonathan rapped the side of his head, “the more we get isolated. I can’t bear it anymore, the loneliness
. . .
oh crash, the sadness feels like crude oil . . .
I’m drowning, Captain, I’m drowning, and the only thing that’ll make me feel better is to hurt. . .” He faced Pehr again, but now the boy’s face was a wad of hate.

“
. . .to hurt the lousy fucks who’ve hurt me, man, burn their fucking cards so bad that they’ll never think again, never feel anything again, never hurt anyone ever again, man, you know what I mean? I’m desperate, Captain, and I feel like I could destroy the whole fucking world!” He held out a white-knuckled fist between them.

And then the hand went limp, and the arm fell. Pehr watched that face sag until only the boy’s brows showed any emotion, those and his eyes. It was all Pehr could do to keep looking into those eyes.

Jonathan’s eyes filled up with tears, which he blinked away with an angry shake.

“
Go ahead,” Pehr said. “There’s nothing wrong with crying.”

“
I think
. . .
I’ll die.”

Pehr smiled gently. “Dying’s not so bad. I’ve done it a few times now, in the artifact, or at least it’s felt like it. You emerge a little worn out, yeah, but you can see so much more.”

“
But it won’t do me any good to cry. How can I become anything but empty and evil, after all I’ve seen and done?”

Pehr grew angry. “Dammit, boy! Let me tell you something. Hopelessness is one of the reasons that the world has only been getting worse. You stop feeling hopeless and maybe then you’ll become something full and good!”

In the silence that followed, guilt flooded through Pehr.
Shit, good job, big hero Jackson
. The room’s ventilator hissed in a melodic rhythm, matched by a subsonic pulse in the air. The walls did strange things to the edges of his vision, as if they were emanating light just below the level of perception—subcard projection, that was called.

But Pehr didn’t have long to feel guilt. “What do you care?” Jonathan asked, each word tremulous upon the verge of collapse.

“
Don’t you see?” Pehr answered. “You’re me, fifteen years ago. You gotta care about yourself, or else nothing matters.”

Jonathan sagged forward and began to heave. But instead of vomiting, the boy started crying. He wept in full volume, like a baby, so long and hard that he had to gasp for breath. At one point, he managed to get out a few words:

“
All
. . .
all I’ve really wanted
. . .
is to be loved, goddammit!” The sobs grew less severe and less frequent.

Pehr knew he had to do something, say something, but he didn’t know what. Nooa, still motionless near the gold-plated sink, offered nothing—What does a computer know about human feelings? She clearly expected Pehr to take care of everything.

So Pehr slowly rose and crossed to the boy. He kneeled before him and leaned forward. Careful not to seem threatening, he put out his arms and encircled Jonathan. He recalled the little boy in the handkerchief, the boy who had always given him comfort during the bad times, the boy who helped resolve feelings of guilt over something he couldn’t control. This, however, was real. This was the thing he had imagined when he thought of the handkerchief boy.

Pehr placed his arms—so big and clumsy-seeming when compared to this small thin boy—around Jonathan. Jonathan stiffened for just a second, then broke into a new bout of tears as he threw his own arms around Pehr.

“
It’ll be all right,” Pehr said, lightly patting the boy’s back. “You’ll get all you want, and more. I’ll never abandon you, that’s one thing you can trust.”

It hurt that, with every word, Jonathan only cried harder. But the boy’s arms remained as tight around him as ever, pulling the jacket collar tight around Pehr’s neck. He continued to soothe the boy for several minutes.

Finally, Jonathan pulled back, but not violently. Pehr stood and walked to the washbasin. He picked up a towel and tossed it to Jonathan, who wiped his face.

“
Well, I’m ready to crash,” the boy said into the towel.

“
See you in the morning,” Pehr said.

Jonathan looked up with exactly the kind of need and mutual understanding Pehr had always hoped he’d see in a
. . .
son?
Damn
, he thought,
I’ve become a father
. He couldn’t help but smile.

“
Yeah,” Jonathan responded, his voice flat, “in the morning. Don’t wake me; I’ll wake you.”

Pehr laughed, softly but honestly, and caught a glimpse of a smile cross Jonathan’s face. That face seemed to have transformed, as if a mask had been torn free, as if something artificial that had locked it in place for years had broken loose. He looked young again. At least, younger.

Pehr nodded and turned away, aware that boys this age need time to recover their cool—and that Jonathan hadn’t yet experienced the freedom of completely smashing loose the burdens of the “shell,” as Miru said.

As he closed the door behind him, Pehr suddenly felt he weighed a thousand kilos. He tapped on the door where he and Janus would sleep, and began to wonder if she, too, wanted a room to herself.

The door opened. Janus smiled up at him from heavy lids. She had put on a silk robe embroidered with cardactive holos that triggered subconscious images; Pehr recalled past romances, real and virtual.

“
Hey, Captain. Want someone to keep the bed warm?”

Pehr didn’t say a word. He took Janus’ hand, held it to his chest, and closed his eyes as he shut the door with his back. The room’s lights were set to low-yellow. Janus slid her arms around his lower back and pressed herself close to his chest.

“
I’ve wanted to be near you for so long,” she said. “I want to share my everything with you, Jack.” She looked up into his eyes. “But can we just sleep tonight? I—”

“
Of course.” Pehr took her hands and held them out before him. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

She smiled. He led her to the bed and saw that the printed circuit design on the covers wasn’t just decoration: They pulsed deep red, a color that made him think of sleep and sensuality. He looked back at Janus again, drew her down beside him into vaguely tingling sheets, and fell asleep before he had a chance to think of what it was he wanted to tell her.

The fastest craft began landing on the graffitied, poured marble field surrounding the Pentagon—EarthCo War Command—just across the Potomac River from the United States’ historic capitol. Columns of black smoke spiraled up from several buildings, and Hardman Nadir wondered if this is how the city always looked or if it was under attack. Even so, being here made him recall the romantic dreams of his youth, when he thought serving what this place represented was the way to serve the good of the corp.

He frowned and jumped out of the whirlyjet; Paolo followed close behind, his boots slapping American ground for the first time in four months. They still hadn’t encountered any resistance, though Nadir had watched meteoric fallout from two separate dogfights in space, and had glimpsed several laser or microwave beams stretching from sky to sea and land. But none in his army could feed any news programming, even so close to massive transmitters.

One of the big hoverships rumbled to the field beside Nadir and began spewing soldiers. Whirlyjets took off as they emptied of their human cargo. Not a single shot from the Pentagon building.
What?
Nadir thought.
Are they blind, too?
The tall windows could have been nothing more than slabs of stone for all the reaction they were getting.

“
Tilden,” he 3-verded to his net tech, “get a team to tap into this place’s feed. Do it manually if you have to.”

The woman’s 3VRD only nodded and vanished. More and more craft landed and spilled out their soldiers like a conveyer belt. EarthCo Warriors, NKK regulars, and Sotoi Guntai milled about, gathering their units the way they had been assembled in Africa. Nadir’s Chinese co-leader finally 3-verded him.