The Shaktra (32 page)

Amma was not offended. “Things will become clear when you reach the kloudar.”

“There are so many up in the sky. How will I know which one to visit?”

“I will show you.”

Ali felt her heart accelerate. At the same time, the ache in her palm increased. Thoughts of Ra’s opium were tempting her more than ever.

“Do you know where my mother is?” Ali asked quietly.

Amma looked at the black water. “It is not the way you think.”

“Then explain it to me!”

“I cannot. You have to . . . you have to understand yourself better.”

Ali was confused. “What does that have to do with finding my mother?”

“Everything.” Amma gestured to her bulging pocket. “You took the stardust.”

“I might need it before all this is over.”

“Take it now and it will kill you.”

“You said in my room that you did not know that for sure.”

“The stardust affects more than the body. It alters the mind. Right now—you have admitted it—you don’t know your own mind. You can hardly remember Geea. How, then, can you swallow her most powerful potion?”

“She left it out for me to find.”

“You
left it out for you to find. See, you cannot even speak of her as identical with yourself.”

“Try being human and you’ll know why,” Ali said, an edge in her voice.

“How do you know I have never been human?”

The question threw Ali off balance. “Have you?” she gasped.

Amma looked away again. “I cannot talk about it. Not now.”

Ali was impatient. “Why not?”

Amma put a finger in the black water, stirred a small wave. “You ask me to trust you, and that is fine, you are my queen. I trust you with all my heart, Geea. But you have to trust me as well.”

“It is hard when you keep speaking in riddles.”

Amma stared at her. “Your life is one long riddle. Your questions are endless, but my words, my answers, they are not so important. Only you can solve the Geea riddle, the Ali riddle.”

Ali considered. “Are they identical?”

Amma nodded. “You are making progress.”

Perhaps because she was human, Ali was not ready to drop all her questions.

“When I was on Earth three days ago, I met a strange man in town—in our local barbershop. He looked like a wizard. He knew about the Yanti, and he demanded that I show it to him. It was like he cast a spell on me, and I almost gave it to him. Somehow I managed to hold on to it and then, when I tried to get a look at him in the mirror, there was an explosion of light and he vanished. I might have blacked out for a moment, I’m not sure.” Ali paused. “Do you know who he was?”

Amma’s face fell. “Did he wear gloves?”

“How did you know that? He had on white gloves.”

“He wore the gloves because he did not want you to touch him.”

“Why not?” Ali asked.

“Because one touch would have revealed who he was.”

“I don’t understand,” Ali said.

“You will understand before this day is over.”

“But do you know who he was?” Ali insisted.

“He was not a he,” Amma replied.

Another riddle, Ali was sick of them. “At least tell me if I’ll find my mother before this day is over,” she said.

Amma turned away. “Perhaps.”

As the watery miles slowly passed, Ali reflected back on the time she had spent with Mike Havor at Omega Overtures’s headquarters in Toule. When he had taken her into the back offices, he had shown her the cover for their new game called Armageddon. Since it was a sequel to Omega Overlord, it was about the end of the world and the artwork reflected as much. It was dark
and gray and depicted a battlefield where men and women and robots were locked in a fight to the death. Studying its dismal mood, Ali felt compelled to ask why he liked such disheartening themes. He sat down behind his modest desk and smiled at her question, his blind eyes hidden by his dark glasses.

“The superficial answer is because it sells,” he said.

Ali sat across from him. “But you don’t just do this for the money, I can tell. You do it because you like it.”

He nodded. “You’re a perceptive young woman, Lisa.”

“But how can you enjoy so much death and destruction?”

“You play Overlord all the time? Why do you enjoy it?”

Ali reddened, glad he could not see the color in her cheeks. “Playing it for a few hours here and there is one thing. You spend years designing these games. Don’t they depress you?”

“No. I’ll tell you why. I think our games are educational.”

“How so?”

“Because I think they show where we’re heading as a race.”

“You don’t really think we’re going to destroy ourselves, do you?”

“I think as a species we have to go down to rise up. The president of this country is talking about putting weapons in space to shoot down incoming missiles. This morning on the news I heard a scientist predict that within twenty years, over two dozen nations on Earth would have nuclear bombs. With all that going on, how do you think we’re going to avoid World War Three?”

“I have faith in human nature. We’ll never let it go that far.”

“I hate to tell you this, but it has already gone past the point of no return.”

“In your opinion.”

Mike shrugged. “Everything I say is only my opinion.”

Ali tried another approach. “But all this cyborg stuff you have
in your games—you don’t believe that’s going to happen, do you? I mean, no one is going to attach all that junk to their bodies. It won’t happen in a million years.”

“It will happen in the next twenty years. Let me give you an example, and play along with me for a few minutes and be completely honest—that is the most important thing. Say twenty years from now you are happily married and you have a wonderful ten-year-old daughter named Debbie. Now next door to you lives another happy family and they have a ten-year-old daughter named Sally. Debbie and Sally go to school together, but they’re not really in the same classes because your Debbie is smarter than Sally. In fact, she has an IQ twenty points higher, which is a lot, trust me.” Mike paused. “How does this sound?”

“So good so far,” Ali said.

“But then one day Sally’s parents hear about a new device that has the ability to boost their daughter’s mental capabilities. It works by training the brain waves to stay in the alpha state. That’s where your brain is relaxed, and most receptive to learning new things. The catch is this device has to be
implanted
in the brain to work most effectively. But once it’s there, the person’s IQ shoots up over thirty points. So when Sally gets it, she immediately begins to do better in school than your daughter.”

“I get it. You’re going to ask if I would buy it for my daughter so she could keep up with Sally?”

“Yes. But first I was going to add that all the kids at school end up getting it.”

Ali shook her head. “I wouldn’t let my daughter get the implant.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s my daughter! I wouldn’t let someone stick something foreign in her brain.”

“I hear you. But what if as the years pass, Debbie begins to fall
way behind all her friends, so that she has to be put in a special education class?”

“I can’t imagine that would ever happen.”

“Stretch your imagination further. Because in two decades there will be devices on the market that will boost the IQ by
over
thirty points. They will probably arrive sooner than that. They’re already in the preliminary stages of development. The scenario I’m laying out for you is going to happen. If you deny your daughter the implant, she will fall so far behind in school that her entire self-image will be destroyed. And when she does get out in the real world, she probably won’t be able to get a job anywhere.”

“You exaggerate to make a point,” Ali said.

“I tell it like it’s going to be to make a point. Let me ask you again. Would you let Debbie get the implant?”

Ali hesitated. “Could it harm her brain?”

“No. It would just make it work more efficiently.”

Ali considered. “I guess it’s possible I might let her get it.”

“Let’s take it a step further. Have you heard about nanotechnology?”

“I’ve seen it in sci-fi movies. That’s where they make molecular-size machines?”

“Yes. Have you seen how they inject them in people?” Mike asked.

“On Star Trek.”

“Good. Say in our story that Debbie has finally got her implant, and she is doing much belter at school, and keeping up with all her friends. The only problem is, she gets more than her fair share of flus and colds, and some of these turn into bronchitis, or even pneumonia. But then you read about this nanotechnology injection that she can get that will kill all the invading viruses and bacteria that enter her system so that she will not
have to suffer from a cold or flu for the remainder of her life. Would you get it for her?”

“Probably.”

Mike chuckled. “This time you don’t hesitate. Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t sound as scary as the brain implant.”

“You are mistaken. The nanotechnology will bring about a deeper and more profound change to your daughter’s body. She will not have one machine inside her, but millions, maybe billions.”

“But just to keep her blood clean?”

“Exactly. Just to keep her blood clean.” Mike paused. “You are bright enough to know where all this is headed.”

“You’re saying that the technological boosts will be too tempting to pass up. And that once we start down that road, we’ll keep going.”

Mike nodded. “Because it will be the easy thing to do. Because it will be the smart thing to do. Because we will be afraid to fall behind our peers. Because we will be afraid to grow old and die. Those are only a few of the reasons we will allow ourselves to merge with machines.”

“That doesn’t mean we’ll all end up as cyborgs. That’s just too wild an idea.”

“The instant you add any machine to your body—whether to your brain or your bloodstream—you are by definition a cyborg. Even today, right now in society, we have millions walking around with artificial joints and insulin pumps attached to their bodies. It is all a question of degrees.”

“Do you honestly believe that?”

“I am blind, and yet I can see this clearly. A hundred years from now we will be sitting at this same desk, you and I, and half our parts will be made of either plastic, polymers, or metal.”

“Even our hearts?”

Mike smiled. “Those will be the first to go.”

At one point, after hours in the boat, Ali felt the current increase. It was slight at first, and she did not pay it much heed, but then it accelerated drastically. Indeed, it grew as fast as Lestre above them, and they began to race along at a strong clip.

At least she assumed Lestre was still flowing above their heads. She asked Amma what was happening.

“The waters of Tiena are tied to the kloudar. That is how the river is able to flow uphill,” Amma said.

“We are going uphill?” AH asked.

“We have been climbing into the Youli Mountains since we left Uleestar. But now that the river closes on its source, it accelerates to join what you might call the antigravity of the kloudar.”

“The kloudar exert pressure on the water?”

“Yes.”

“They pull on the river?”

“Yes.”

“How come they don’t pull on us?”

“They do to some extent. When you stand directly beneath them, you feel lighter. But they have a special affinity for the waters of Tiena, which come from Lestre, and cycle around and around.”

“But the bulk of Lestre flows into Elnar, and then into the ocean. I saw that when I came out of the cave on top of Tutor.”

“True. But enough of Lestre remains to turn downward and feed Tiena.”

“That happens far south of here. I don’t understand how it works.”

“It doesn’t matter which end of the rope you pull on,” Amma said.

Ali smiled at the example. “You should teach physics at my school.”

What came next surprised her, scared her even, along with Farble, Paddy, and Ra. Ali suspected Amma deliberately didn’t tell them what to expect so as to heighten the thrill of the ride. One minute they were cruising along at a decent clip, the next they were in the middle of roaring rapids. The most amazing thing was that the rapids were racing
steeply
uphill. It was almost like riding a waterfall in reverse. In the other boat, Farble and Paddy were panicking. All she could do was shout out for them to hold on. She was holding on for dear life herself.

“You knew this was coming!” she yelled at Amma over the roar of the water.

The fairy laughed. “This is the best part!”

The river banked sharply, flowing upward at a forty-five degree angle. A bright green glow appeared up ahead. Their speed increased further—it was as if the floating kloudar had grabbed ahold of the water and didn’t want to lose it. Ali’s long red hair flew behind her head, like it used to when she rode her bike down from her trips into the woods behind her house. A fine mist brushed her cheeks, and she had to admit the ride was a rush.

Then they suddenly burst outside, into the day, onto a vast blue-green lake.

Mountains towered around the water, so rocky and steep they looked like stone sentinels that stood only to guard the lake. The sun was high in the sky but eclipsed by a massive kloudar, the green light flaring around the floating iceberg like a beam shone out of an alien jungle. The air was cold and thin, dry on Ali’s lips. The lake was as foaming as a seashore where they exited the
Tiena tunnel, but the water quickly settled as it was absorbed by the huge body of liquid. Yet several miles off to her right, she saw another river forming, this one heading down, and she asked Amma if that was the beginning of Lestre.

“Lake Mira is the beginning and the end of the two great fairy rivers,” Amma said.

Ali tilted her head back and studied the kloudar. The effect on her body weight was noticeable, but she did not feel ready to fly yet. The blue moon Anglar was higher in the sky, no doubt because they were farther north and, as they swept around the moon in a great arc, the circular path of the kloudar was easier to trace.