The Infinity Link (8 page)

The door whisked shut behind them. Mozy obeyed his instructions and climbed into the chair; but as Hoshi bustled about checking hookups to the scanning helmet, she felt a distinct and growing sense of unreality. Something was wrong—and it took her a few seconds to realize what it was. "Hoshi!" she hissed. "This can't be a matter transmitter—this is the brainscan setup! Where are the—" Her throat was suddenly empty of words. She wasn't actually sure what a matter transmitter looked like; but surely there had to be some sort of chamber, with scanning beams, and so on. There was nothing like that here.

"That's what I have to explain." Hoshi's voice slurred with urgency as he lifted the helmet up over her head. "We're going to do a complete scan—like this afternoon's, but much more complete.
All
of your memories,
all
of the patterns of your mind, everything that makes up your personality—"

She blocked his movements with her hand. "You mean you have to do that before the transmission, just to make sure—"

"No." He nudged her hand aside and seated the helmet over her skull. "This
is
the scanning for transmission. The matter transmitter doesn't—"

There was a sound outside the door, and he stiffened. Suddenly he seized her by the shoulders and kissed her, hard.

Mozy squirmed with fright. The helmet was claustrophobic to begin with, and now Hoshi's lips pressed in on her, blocking her air. Suffocating, fighting to breathe, she drove her fists up between Hoshi and herself, trying to push him away. He relaxed long enough to growl, "Fake it!" and then she was aware of a hiss and someone standing in the doorway. Understanding flashed upon her. Panting, she tried to imitate a passionate embrace.

An unfamiliar voice said, "Oh—excuse
me
. You don't need any help, I guess." The door hissed closed again, and the man was gone.

Mozy gasped for air as Hoshi pulled away. "I had to do that," he said roughly, turning to avoid her gaze.

"Why?"
she cried, trembling with embarrassment and anger.

Hoshi stumbled over his words. "Better than having them think . . . I don't know." He began checking the helmet hookup again; his hands were shaking, fumbling at the connections. His voice sounded hurt as he said, "I was just trying to cover for us." He turned away, then back. His eyes were wet, shining.

"Okay," Mozy said uncomfortably. "If we're going to do this, let's do it."

Working silently and efficiently now, Hoshi adjusted the helmet until it was seated snugly. When she spoke again, his voice was businesslike. "What I'm going to transmit is the imprint of all your memories, all the patterns of your personality."

She blinked her eyes wide. "What do you mean? You told me that you—"

"That I'd send you where you could be with Kadin," he said. "I'm doing that. You'll be with him—your
mind
will be with him—just as in the scenarios."

"But you said—"

"I said that I would help you join Kadin. Mozy, listen to me." He bent and gazed fiercely into her eyes. "Kadin is being sent the same way you are. There is no transmitter on Earth that can send you bodily, alive, to another place."

She shook her head, disbelieving. Tears filled her eyes. "But they said there was a transmitter! Are you telling me it's all a lie?"

"No, not a lie. Listen to me, damn it.
They can't transmit living things yet.
Rocks, yes. People, no. It's too crude." Mozy stared at him angrily as he continued. "The brainscans are different—they're further advanced. We can transmit a personality in digital form and reassemble it in a distant computer. That's what's being done with Kadin."

"What's this going to do to me?" she cried.

"Nothing! Nothing at all!" His voice became softer. "A part of you will be with him. You'll still be here—but you'll be with him, too. It's the best I can do, the best anyone can do."

She stared at him. His eyes seemed to be revolving as they peered back at her. "I'll still be here," she repeated, trying to understand. "You mean, I'll walk out of here and go home tonight?"

"No one will ever have to know. But the part of you at the other end will have to be careful. Don't give yourself away."

"He'll be there?"

"Trust me, Mozy. If we don't do it now, there won't be a second chance. Do you want to, or don't you?"

She struggled to think. She needed more time to absorb this information. It wasn't what she'd asked for, but maybe it was better than nothing. She thought of all the times she'd sat in this chair, linking with another human mind. But this was different; this was throwing herself into the arms of the other person, not knowing if she'd be welcomed or spurned. This was asking the most wonderful man in the world for an intimate date, forever.

"Will I know what's happening to the part of me that's with him?" she asked finally.

Hoshi gazed at her silently, with upturned hands. She imagined his eyes to be spinning, hypnotic disks. She stared back at him, could not evade those eyes that were spinning, spinning. She imagined them saying:
If you don't go through with this, you'll never see Kadin again.
She thought of Kadin, his gentleness and strength, and she was caught, helpless, in a rush of desire. "Let's get started," she whispered hoarsely.

Hoshi nodded and made the final adjustments. His hand touched hers, and they both jerked back nervously. Be done with it, she thought. Go turn the damn thing on. She looked away, unconsciously counting the seconds. Then he bobbed his head and said, "That's it. We're ready to run." He stepped backward, murmuring, and suddenly Mozy was alone in the booth and the lights were growing dim.

* * *

This is for you, Mozy. Just the way I promised.

Hoshi's fingers fly over the console, initiating the clandestine programs he's so carefully worked out. It should be a cinch, he thinks. It's been a cinch so far, getting past the codes and security blocks; he was amazed at what a piece of cake it was, anyone who knows the computers the way he does could have cracked those codes. Now it's all coming together, and suddenly he feels an enormous knot in his shoulders, almost as if he were scared. He
was
scared for an instant, there, when they were discovered in the booth. He almost lost his head.

Alone in the control room, his blood is running hot and excited. He's been aroused since the moment he kissed her—so innocently, thinking of nothing more than camouflage, throwing the others off the track. Ignore that now, he thinks, center and channel the energy, don't think about Mozy or desire. He'll show them, he'll prove what he can do with these programs, and no one will ever underestimate him again. Mozy, too—he'll give her exactly what she wants. Kadin for a lover—she can have him, no grudge. You'll see what it's all about, he thinks—you'll see. Won't you, Mozy, won't you?

With quick, savage movements, he drops the operator's helmet over his head and keys himself into the link. A firestorm of sparks swirls past him. Here he's at home. Here he's in control. A large ball of tension eases itself past some obstruction in his brain, releases some of the knots in his neck and shoulders, and allows him to breathe freely again. He can do it now; it's time.

A few privately coded triggers set into motion a cascade of programs. The scanning programs switch to the
ready
mode. No external display should betray him; but internally he sees an illuminated, three-dimensional grid in which a maze of circuits will open and close to create a pathway to transmission. Several links must function in unison: from the scanning computer to the transmitter; from the ground transmitter to Tachylab, overhead in synchronous orbit; from Tachylab, via modulated tachyon beam, to the spacecraft somewhere in deep space. If all goes well, Mozy's mindscan will flow in a continuous stream through all of those links, flashing from the subject booth to the receiving computer with scarcely a betraying sign.

The tachyon relay may be the riskiest part of the chain. The signal will be sandwiched into the regular transmission to the ship, but there will be a sharp increase in signal density, which could betray him. With luck and skill, he'll finish the transmission and erase his steps backward through the network before his tampering can be traced. He has been extremely careful, in breaking the security codes, to protect his tracks along the way.

A pathway is now lighted through the grid, with a single amber and a single red block remaining. A time check confirms that the tachyon link will open in fifty-three seconds.

The amber changes to green, the red to amber.

He keys in to Mozy. As the circuits connect him to his waiting friend, he thinks: Go to him, Mozy, and be happy. I'll have you here with me, still, and maybe now you'll take notice—maybe he'll be out of your thoughts.

As a final door creaks open in the darkness, he calls, (Are you ready?)

In the distance, he hears the soft answer: (Yes.)

(Sequence start,) he says, as the last amber light turns to green. The tachyon link is open. He is aware in the back of his mind that someone is entering the control room. He ignores that and nudges one final command. A fountain of sparks streams through the grid as the process begins.

* * *

A glittering band encircled her skull as she waited in the darkness. Time slid by like an imponderable mass of ice. What would time come to mean when her consciousness was frozen into a series of impulses in the computer? Every nerve was wired, every thought agitated; strangely, even the memory of Hoshi's clumsily feigned embrace aroused her with sexual excitement. She tried to bring it all to a focus, to corral her thoughts and memories like burning sparks, and to balance the musical tones of her hopes and fears into stable harmonics. The result was a blur of color, a cacophony of tones.

She thought of Kadin, the stable, good-humored man she had come to love; and she remembered the training for the linkup sessions. Go to him with a clear mind, centered and relaxed. Keep the pathways open, let the images and harmonics drift into their own order.

Hoshi's mind-voice came through, distant and a little fuzzy, asking if she was ready.

A heartbeat passed, then two. The circlet of fire around her forehead began spinning and twinkling, faster and brighter, and contracting. It tightened over the lobes of her consciousness like a glittering fist. In that instant, she was paralyzed, her awareness turning to crystal shot through with pulses like beacons in a starless night. Her emotions froze into a cold, white diamond. She felt a rush of sensations, and then icelike clarity, as her thoughts and memories became transparent straight through to the center of her mind and soul.

A vibration was building inside; forces were gathering, currents of life once bound were coming unleashed. Exhilaration and terror and vertigo flashed through her in a pulse. Somewhere within her, fierce streams were cutting new beds, winds were gusting and moaning, the earth shivering. There was a sun flaring, a candle guttering, a feeling of disconnectedness. From somewhere, a papery voice called: (You will be alone at first. Wait for him there.) They were words that made no sense, held no meaning. All real thought was lost in a whirlwind.

Then, for a breath, everything fell silent. There was no sound—

—no light—

—no motion—

—and then the world erupted with a thunderclap and a keening wail, driving a spike of pain straight through to the center of her consciousness. Hallucinating in agony, she wandered among the stars, heard the void speaking in tongues. The emptiness rang around her like an infinite gong, and then darkness crushed in upon her.

The waters became clearer, and tangier with the taste of salt, as the whales entered the warm fringes of the joining grounds, moving into seas where the sun rose high. Sunlight danced through the surface swells and angled into the abyss, turning from golden-belly pink near the surface to clearwater blue in the midrange. Far below, where only darkness met the eyes, the realm was mapped with whistling echoes. Even now, someone's cry reverberated dimly out of a watery canyon.

Theirs was a world filled with sounds: the mutter of the sea itself, the whistle of their own songs, the click and rasp of dolphins and other creatures. Earlier, several of the herd had caught the moan of a blue, its lonely song reverberating through the deep layers. Always, too, there was the drone of the manships plodding their courses back and forth across the sea, a minor but continual irritant.

Songs filled their thoughts. For some, a special restlessness accompanied their return to these waters—a renewed memory of the songs of last year's joining—songs that had come from a place they did not know and touched them in a way they did not understand—songs that had come to enchant them, songs whalelike and yet not-whale, filled with bewildering and intriguing harmonics, evoking images of emptiness and incalculable distances, and a migrational swim lifetimes long.

A godwhale, some said. Would the godwhale's visions return?

As the waters grew warm, the herd began to fragment. Some whales cavorted on the surface while others tuned their voices. The new year's songs began reverberating, and a change was at once felt, in new tones and rhythms, some of them not-whale rhythms. The altered strains were in their own voices—not from the outside, but from their own hearts, an echo and a harmony to the songs that had so haunted their sleep last year. Whatever those songs had been, they were now a part of the whales' own language.

The herd moved southward. There was no hint of the godwhale's song itself, and some wondered if it would ever be heard again, or if it and the mystery of its existence would become merely a part of the lore, embroidered and changed until the original was lost from memory.

As Joseph Payne's eyes adjusted to the gloom, a ghostly illumination welled up around him. Misty, blue-green space; the hiss and mutter of the sea. The tropical Pacific: depth, sixty meters. Translucent rays of sunlight slanted down like moonbeams in a forest. Below him, the blue deepened; and far below was the darkness of the abyss.