Read Halo: First Strike Online
Authors: Eric S. Nylund
Tags: #Science Fiction - Adventure, #Fiction - Science Fiction, #Video & Electronic, #Action & Adventure, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Imaginary wars and battles, #Space Opera, #Halo (Game), #General, #Space warfare, #Science Fiction - General, #Human-alien encounters, #Games, #Adventure, #Outer space, #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Computer games
He turned back, trying to find dry ground, and soon his feet thumped against the hard-packed soil of a path. Looking down, he could see the path as a glowing gray, outlined in red. He ran along it until he heard the sound of rushing water. He came to a series of steps alongside a falls, where the River cascaded onto rocks, then quickly spread out into pond and marsh. The waters were alive with light, and he ran up and down the steps, following streams of energy that burst forth in red and yellow and purple and green and whitecolors that shifted in hue and intensity, grew lighter and darker, intertwined with one another "This grows!" he shouted, feeling the waters' energy rise and fall, seeing it spread to where plants could feed on it, animals could drink it. The fog glowed with an opalescence from high above. He followed the steps down to where the river's noise quieted, and its waters flooded the plain. He turned onto a path that led into the woods, and he came to a small clearing where the faint ambient light gleamed on fallen logs. Mushrooms seemed to be everywhere in this small space, covering dead wood and spreading in profusion over the ground. He got on his knees to look at the mushrooms. They were alive with veinlike arabesques in red, ghosts of electricity across the spongy flesh. He picked them up, kind by kind, inhaling deeply, and the odor he had smelled earlier came to him again, a composty mix rich with the odors of transformation. Gonzales shivered with something like discovery: he stood and looked up into the impenetrable sky and the fog. This place stood a quarter of a million miles from Earth, yet life had begun to extend its web here, and though the web was fragile and small by comparison to Earth's dense lacework of billions of living things, its very existence amazed Gonzales, and he felt the surge of an emotion he had no name for, a knot in his throat made of joy and sorrow and wonder. And he seemed on the brink of some illumination regarding this world of spirit and matter mixed Thoughts emerged and dispersed too quickly to catch among the videogame buzz and clatter in his brain as he stood in the clearing, paralyzed with a kind of ecstasy and watching life- electricity play among the trees. # The room said, "You have a call." "Who is it?" Lizzie asked. "She says her name is Trish. The mushroom woman, she says." "Oh yes. I'll take the call." On the wallscreen came Trish's familiar face, and Lizzie |
said, "Hello." Trish woman waved and said, "The twins brought me a friend of yours, named Gonzales, and I gave him mushrooms." "Really?" Lizzie said. "Yes, and I sent him out about seven hours ago." "Thanks for letting me know. I'll find him." The screen cleared, and Lizzie thought, you silly bastards, what did you get him into? To the room she said, "Put out a call for information. Ask any sams who are out and about if they've seen Gonzales." # A sam waited at her front door. "Are you the one who found him?" Lizzie asked. The sam said, "No, that one waits with him, to provide assistance if needed. Please come with me." "I'll be right there." Lizzie and the sam started out on the Ring Highway, and then it apparently gave an electronic signal to a passing tram, because the vehicle stopped so that the two could climb on. Lizzie stepped quickly up, and the sam clumsily pulled itself aboard by grasping a chrome railing with one of its extensors. The tram let them off near Spoke 4. A stand of trees was just visible through the fog; beyond, Lizzie knew, were marshes bordering "soup bowls"ponds where the flow from rice paddies mixed with the River's waters. Using both visible range and infrared sensors, the sam led her through the trees. They came to a clearing where another sam stood to one side. Gonzales sat on a fallen log, watching a mechanical vole chew small pieces of wood. His clothes were wet and spattered with mud and dirt. Next to him, a large orange cat also watched the vole. "Hi," Gonzales said. "Are you all right?" Lizzie asked. "I don't know," he said. He reached out absent-mindedly and stroked the orange cat, which turned on its back and batted at his hand; apparently it didn't use its claws, because Gonzales left his hand there for the cat to play with. "Is our presence required?" asked the sam who had accompanied Lizzie. She said, "No." The two sams scurried away single-file, their passage almost silent. Lizzie sat on the log next to the cat. She said, "How are you?" He was giving off a near-audible buzz, and Lizzie resisted veering into his drug-space; she'd had problems herself since coming out of the eggnot as severe as Gonzales's, Charley said, because she hadn't been under as long. "Still a bit jittery?" she asked. "I feel all right," he said. "Just, I don't know scrubbed. Why are things like thiscold and dark?" "That's not clear. Things haven't been working right since Diana and HeyMex were disconnected." Gonzales looked confused but not overly concerned. She said, "There's other news, too. Showalter's been relieved of her position as head of SenTrax Halo; Horn's the new director." Now he looked totally befuddled. "You can worry about these things later," she said. "Why don't you come back to my house? You can get some sleep." "Okay," he said. "But I don't understand " He stopped again, as if trying to find words to express all the things he "didn't understand." "Nobody understands right now. Aleph's just not working right, and we don't know whywe can't get in touch with it." "Oh, I see." "Glad you do, because nobody else does." He stood, then bent over to lift the cat from the log. Cradling it in his arms, he said, "Okay, I'll go." He smiled at her, and the cat lay in his arms and looked at her out of big orange eyes. # Gonzales woke to find his clothes folded, clean and neat, on a chair next to his bed. The orange cat lay at his feet; it raised its head when he got up, then curled up again and went back to sleep. He found Lizzie in the kitchen slicing apples and pears and Cheshire cheese. "Good morning," she said. "I'll warm some croissants, and we can have coffeedo you like steamed milk with yours?" Her voice was friendly enough but perfectly devoid of intimacy. Its tones were an admonition saying keep your distance. "Sure," he said. "That all sounds fine. But you didn't have to do this." "You're a guest. I'm happy to." She wouldn't quite meet his gaze. >From his bedroom came a loud mew, and the two went in to find the orange cat, fur erect, confronting a cleaning mouse. The mouse, a foot-long shining ovoid about four inches high, moved across the floor on hard rubber wheels, emitting a gentle hiss as it scoured the room for organic debris; a flex-tube trailed behind it to a socket in the wall. "Kitty kitty," Gonzales said. The cat hissed and ran from the room. When they got to the living room, the front door was closing. "Will it come back?" Gonzales asked. "Probably. Cats come and go as they please, but they often adopt people, and I think this one's adopted you." Silence lay between them, and it seemed to Gonzales that anything either of them said would be awkward or embarrassing. Perhaps the feeling was just part of the after-effects of a psychotropic, though he was missing the other usual symptoms. His perceptions seemed stable, not swarming and buzzing, and his emotions didn't have a labile, twitchy quality. In fact, he felt more stable and less anxious than he had since he last got into the egg. So maybe the twins were right: if you can't get out of what's happening, go deeper in. Still, he didn't know what to say to Lizzie. "We've got trouble," she said. She went to the window and pulled back the navy-blue beta cloth curtains and gestured out where night and fog still held. "Mid-afternoon," she said. "Has everything fallen apart?" "Not quite everything. We're doing what we can with a bunch of semi-autonomous demonsjacked-up expert systems, reallyand the collective." "How well is that working?" "Not all that wellwe can maintain essential functions now, and that's about it. Some things we can't handleclimate control, for instance. It's very complicated, because everything is connected to everything else, and so far we've just managed to fuck it up." "And what's Traynor up to? Has he asked for me?" "Yes, but I've fought him off. He's the one responsible, you know." Her voice was angry. "He fucking insisted on pulling everyone out when Chapman died." "What does Aleph say?" "Nothing and bloody nothing. Some of the collective have taken brief shots at interface, and they've found only unpeopled, barren landscapes. We're really in it, Gonzales. If Aleph's finished, Halo is, too." "Jesus." Of course. Halo without its indwelling spirit would be what? The fine coordination of its systems would cease, and disintegration would begin immediately. "So what are you going to do?" he asked. "Glad you're interested, because you're part of it." "Tell me," he said. 18. Give It All Back As Diana came out of machine-space, she called out "Stop!" and heard Charley say, "Why? Is something wrong?" But she was too far away to answer or explain, as she still was when they removed her cables, and she felt everything important to her sliding into oblivion. She had been lying fully awake, staring at the ceiling, for almost a quarter of an hour when Charley came into the room, Eric and Toshi beside him, Traynor and Horn behind. Charley said, "Are you all right?" "No, I'm not," she said. "Why did you break the interface?' Charley and Eric said nothing. Charley looked to Traynor, who said, "We had no choice. You couldn't be reached by normal means." "You have killed Jerry," Diana said. The truth of that passed through her for the first time, and tears came out of her eyesshe wiped at her face, but the tears continued to come in a slow, steady flow. "He died two days ago," Horn said. "He was alive minutes ago," Diana said. "Aleph and the memex and I were keeping him alive." "Then he may still be alive now," Toshi said. He smiled at Diana. "What do you mean?" Charley asked. "Has Aleph come back online?" Toshi asked. "No," Eric said. Toshi smiled and said, "Then what do you think it is doing?" # HeyMex had been jerked out of machine-space, was suddenly the memex once again, and it wondered why. It had sensed no change in circumstances, nothing that would indicate they had been defeated in their efforts to keep Jerry alive. And for the first time in such transitions, it acknowledged its own regret at leaving the HeyMex persona behindin the enclosed space of the lake, it had begun to find itself as a person, not merely an imitation of one. It explored its immediate environment: sorted the data gathered in its absence (Traynor had come up from Earth; not a good sign, it thought), searched through the dwelling's monitor tapes, observing Gonzales's sadness and confusion, then watching as he removed his i.d. bracelet and left. It wondered what was wrong with Gonzales (too many possibilities, not enough data); it very much wanted to talk with him. It reached out to the city's information utilities and found them clogged and disorganized. It placed calls and queries, seeking some explanation for the chaotic and inexplicable state of affairs. Everywhere it searched, it found make-shift arrangements and minimal function. But no Aleph, and no explanations. Then it got a message from Traynor's advisor, signalling an |