Transhuman (30 page)

But he felt the wind on his uncovered skin, felt the skin prickling up in response. He heard the chant of the city warriors in the distance stop abruptly. The night was full of sounds of chattering, whimpering, thrilling creatures. Virtus wasn't like that. Oh, it simulated all the senses, but like the old movies were to the visions of real life, it was never quite right. It was too conscious of only the needed sensations, just enough to make it right. That was why those criminals stole the lives of these primitives. Alessandro felt his gorge rise, and realized he'd been looking at the woman, in silence. He looked away.

"The eyes of the gods?" he said.

She nodded. "My grandfather set this space with something he said would stop them from entering. I've set the stones in, and I come here and make fires. They"—she nodded her head in the direction of the city—"are afraid to come in. There's little I can do to them, to be truthful, but I know things. I can use the eyes too," she said, and blushed, as if afraid he would reprimand her. He was thinking only she was unusual. She smelled clean, an herbal perfume of some sort that he had not been able to discern until they'd left the hut and its smell of old misery behind. And her hair, though loose and falling in front of her face, glimmered. She was . . . "What is your true identity?" he asked.

"And what are you doing here?"

She shook her head. "This is my true identity. I was born in that city and there raised. My name is Lyda, the daughter of Lief, the great king of the golden hair." Looking up, she allowed him to see something like mischief in her eyes. "But his father was Lars Anglome."

Even through the shock of hearing this—though if he had not been shocked he'd have suspected it—Alessandro was amused at that mischief. She had a sense of humor. It hit him more forcibly than ever that these people were human. Normal humans. Kept in unimaginable squalor and fear for no reason. No reason other than to allow others to experience at a remove what they were too cowardly or too protected to experience on their own.

"Can I speak to Lars?" he said.

Her eyes widened a little. "No." She shook her head. "He died when I was young. Before I became a woman. You can speak to my father, but he won't do you much good. He's wandering in his wits and confused as old people are. Timods, son of Erclat has taken over the kingship. Erclat was my father's minister and–" Her lip curled. "The people will not accept a woman for a ruler." She looked suddenly very tired. "We have wars, you see, and they do not think a woman is fit to lead them in war." Alessandro nodded. He knew they had wars and plagues. And he could curse himself for having forgotten the normal span of life of a normal human. But it had been so long since he knew what it was like to live without the repairing bots and the rebuilding ones. He supposed without them he would, himself, be dead now. Or at least very old. He remembered seeing old people in his childhood: the wrinkled skin, with muscles withered beneath, the reedy voices.

He shuddered. The romantics who wondered what life was like before and if they'd lost some essential quality of humanity since the change should see that. Worse, they should be made to understand that such a state would apply to them as well, save for the enhancements of science.

"Why do you want to talk to them?" Lyda asked. "Do you too not trust the word of a woman?" Alessandro shook his head almost before the words were out of her mouth. "It is not that," he said. "It's that I want someone to whom I can talk of the tech and the things that have been done. Someone who can help me get back."

"You mean to get back, then," she said. "You mean to fight for our cause in the council of the gods."

"In virtus," he said.

She tilted her head. "I know both names and live in both worlds," she said. "I do not know the tech, you know, not like my grandfather did. But he gave my father and me what enhancements he could manage, and links to connect to the lifenet. Old links, and they never stay connected for very long. It was the links he had with him, at that moment, when he was brought here. They didn't search him. Something he always said was fortunate. He had links he'd been working on. Trying to improve."

"So you grew up in the virtus too," Alessandro said, trying to integrate that with this young woman wearing homespun and talking airily of gods and the people.

She shook her head. "Visited," she said. "Now and then. Like a different world. For one, as I said, our links were not new, not very well adapted to the Lifenet now. And besides, my father's father was afraid it would be noticed—our linking. He was afraid someone would track us down. So when I've linked, I've lurked. I only revealed myself to ask for help."

He nodded again. "What do you mean by the eyes of the gods?" he said. "And why can't we just go back to the city and tell them I'm going to defend them, and ask their help? Why this escape in the night?" A fleeting smile pulled her lips upward. "Because their big plan was to eat you."

"To eat me?" he said. "Cannibalism?"

"Rational," she said. "You have medical bots they don't have. By eating you—raw—they will get them. It might keep them from plagues and diseases for years. You, alone, would be enough to make us stronger than all the cities around, to make us capable of winning all the wars for this generation. Timod has said we should eat you. They only didn't eat my grandfather—well, not till he died of old age—because he could contrive to pass on at least some of the enhancements and to share his med nanos, too. I don't suppose you can do that?"

"Anglome was an engineer," he said. "I am not."

She nodded. "I didn't think you could, and since I told them you were a god of justice, they have no reason to think you can do anything for their health."

"And they don't think I can do anything to change their lives for the better," Alessandro said, and, for a moment, felt a pang of doubt. He wasn't sure he could, in fact. He was trapped here, and as far as he could see, there was no way out. Which was why, he would guess, they hadn't bothered to kill him before dropping him from the flycar. Though to be honest, there was a good chance the fall would kill him. It would have, but for the trees.

He could see how the thoughts would have turned in their minds. He could imagine it. They'd disposed of Lars Anglome this way. They saw no reason not to dispose of him the same way. That he'd never found the names of the conspirators was one of his regrets, but he was sure they were the same people. His disappearance and Anglome's had happened for the same reason. They'd probed too far. She was getting something from under one of the rocks. She threw it at his feet. It was a bundle of wool, rolled and tied together with leather strips. "Put it on," said. "Take your clothes off and put these on. Quickly. The eyes of the gods were following us. They can't see in here or not very well. My father's father put a shield of some sort here. When we come out of here, you must look like the men of my city, so that the eyes won't pick you out."

"Eyes?" he said again. She had never answered him.

"Birds and . . . insects, and . . ." she tilted her head in the direction of a choir of frogs. "I think even the frogs in the swamps. They have enhancements that allow the gods to see through their eyes." He picked up the bundle. It felt rough to the fingers. It seemed folly to change his suit—form fitting, self adjusting for heat or cold and capable of thickening itself to protect him from sudden impact, for this . . . thing. A primitive covering that would do no more than hide his nudity—and which would be always it seemed to him too cold or too hot.

But he remembered the men he'd seen. Their legs were left bare and their arms. The tunics covered only from chest to midthigh. He could not disguise his suit under it.

Regretfully, he touched the suit power points to make it let go and remove it. But something in him rebelled enough that he asked, "What does it matter if they follow us? If they know who I am and where I am? I don't think they meant to kill me—or not really. For that, they could have slit my throat or poisoned me." He wondered if the reason they hadn't done that was the cringing dislike of seeing death, real death. It was possible none of them had ever been near anything that died. Not even an animal. It was possible they thought the same could be achieved by dropping him off the flycar.

"Of course," he said. "It is possible sensors of some sort would have picked up my death in any space inhabited by civilized people, and called the attention of my own people to it." He had a vague memory of hearing, when he was a child, back in the twenty-first, that public spaces had been wired with sensors and covered in micro-alarms that would sound off if someone were dying—to allow emergency services to arrive immediately.

He didn't know if that was still being done. After all, nowadays, they had the Lifenet. Your disappearance from it for long enough would cause questions. And if you died while connected, it would trigger alarms. It was the people who were wired and not the spaces. But were the spaces also wired still? Alessandro didn't know and didn't care. He would wager his captors did not know, either. He'd never seen them.

He remembered vaguely, as though in a dream, that he was in virtus when the attack had happened. He'd been drugged before he was disconnected. This in itself didn't cause any alarm, as the drug merely made him fall asleep. But when he came to, he was bound and gagged and blindfolded, on the floor of a flycar.

Never having seen them, he'd wager they were people of his time and probably had the same suspicions he had about killing someone in a public space. Even if no one had created public sensors in years, what would it mean? The things had a way of replicating themselves. Of installing themselves. Who knew which spaces were alarmed?

He shook his head. "But in any case, they could have given me some slow-acting poison to ensure I died by the time I landed in your swamp. They could have made sure I wouldn't encumber them. If they sent me here, it was only because they were sure I could not threaten them from here. I could not come back to the virtus world and denounce them. So why would they follow me?" he asked. "What would their eyes matter?"

She made a sound of impatience, and closed the distance between them. Her body language was wholly alien to him, and her approaching him bore the marks of someone going against some societal taboo. He wondered if it was forbidden for men and women to mingle closely, in her city. Having crossed the space, though, she allowed impatience to carry her, and briskly took the bundle of clothing he held in his hands. Untying the straps that held it rolled, she shook it free. "It matters," she said, as she handed him a rough tunic. "Because they can talk to some of the men in the city, Timod most of all. And they must already be alarmed because I freed you. Or at any rate, they must be curious. They will send the men after us. Now dress. Quickly. They have a superstitious fear of this clearing, but it doesn't mean they won't cross into it. There's only so many secrets I can reveal—and always the chance a well-aimed arrow will end my life before I damage them."

His hands shaking, he removed his suit, and shivered at the cold breeze on his skin, then cringed at the discomfort of prickly wool against skin. She took the suit he'd dropped and rolled it up, and put it under the stone where the rolled up tunic and cloak—he tied the cloak with shaking fingers—had been. There were sandals inside the cloak—a simple leather sole with straps to be tied to the foot. He tied as fast as he could.

From the distance, approaching, came the chant of the men of the city. They were coming for Lyda and Alessandro.

Lyda heard it too and reached back, and pulled him along. The sandals felt odd on his feet, and didn't give him the sure-footed hold that the bottom of his suit did. Clumsily he followed, as Lyda ducked out of the clearing, following what appeared—from the twigs snagging at them and the grass catching at his feet—to be no established trail. She didn't speak and neither did he. Presumably the eyes could hear him now—and her—and there was no reason for this absurd disguise if they were going to give themselves away by word.

They walked in silence a while. At least as silently as they could walk, while Alessandro slipped and caught himself, and sometimes held on only by virtue of Lyda's hand holding his. Between the trees they walked, under the overarching canopy of vegetation. Invisible to anyone flying above. Not invisible, of course, to the bugs and the birds and the bees behind every bush. But Alessandro knew the limits of those. He'd looked through them—not these ones, but the ones in other places—at times. He knew the eyes were limited to the animal capability and that individual features and even such things as color of hair would be hard to discern. His suit had been something for them to home in on, but that was gone.

They walked in silence, amid the trees, as—behind them—the sound of the pursuing men grew more and more faint. The terrain became rocky under their feet, the trees more sparse. They came to a cave. He started to open his mouth, but Lyda pointed at the cave roof, where the shapes of bats clustered.

Alessandro didn't know if bats were used as eyes, but he saw no reason why not. So he kept quiet, as they started down a tunnel where they had to walk half bent. He kept quiet till they reached a deeper cave, where a river ran, gurgling in the darkness.

He spoke only when Lyda said, "Here they will not look for us. "At least not for a while—not unless some bug in the rock crevices gives us away, but bugs do not normally live here in the darkness, and the creatures that do have no eyes and no ears such as the gods can use."

"They are not gods," Alessandro said. He'd been meaning to say it, for a while, his mind rebelling every time he heard her speak of gods.

"No," she said. "But that's how Lars talked of them. The humans who chose to become gods. He made up poems and stories about them. It was, I think," she said, and frowned,"his way to make us understand. He said our ancestors had rejected godhood, had chosen to go on being human."

"I don't—" Alessandro started and stopped, before telling her that her ancestors had been—as far as he knew—vat-grown, just to provide savage slaves to the sensis trafficking ring. He realized Lars might have known it. He might have been kind.