Transhuman (31 page)

"I know grandfather lied," Lyda said. "Our ancestors were made in vats and grown in artificial wombs. They never had a choice."

"No," Alessandro said. And to his mind, though he knew there weren't laws about it, or not exactly, that was where the crime lay. These people were pawns of fate and had no choice. "I want to rescue your people," he said. Strangely it was true, despite the men who'd pursued them, despite the fact that they had wanted to eat him. It was true. They did what they did with what they knew, and what they knew wasn't much. "I must get out of here. I don't know how long it will take me to make my way to civilization, but I must get out of here—I must get my link to the virtus activated." She shook her head. "Wouldn't going to the gods' mountain be enough?"

"The gods' mountain?"

"We're beneath it now. It is a real mountain," she said. "But above it, it is increased by a tower. It is where we take babies every spring to be blessed. At their blessing, they are injected."

"Sensors," Alessandro said. "Sensis harvesters." He had to feel reluctant admiration for the conspirators who, in this way, convinced the savages to wire themselves. A sudden suspicion made him look at Lyda again. Perhaps they couldn't be rid of the eyes. Perhaps—

"No." She shook her head. "My grandfather wouldn't let them take me. Only his odd powers and his ability to heal them convinced them to not take me. That and the fact that he'd convinced my grandmother to hide my father, and no harm had come of it."

"But you have a connection to the virtus," he said, and waved her protests away before she could do more than open her mouth. "Of a sort."

"Unreliable," she said.

"Yes, but if I give you someone's name, can you locate his virtus space and relay a message?" Lyda nodded. "A short message," she said. "My presence always fades very fast, like it did when I met you in virtus."

"Find the man named Blaise Range. Tell him I've been cut off from the virtus. Tell him to try to establish my link again."

She nodded. "And then?" she said.

Lyda of the golden hair, the glancing-eyed maiden walked in the halls of the gods. She walked in
her true form, tall and limber as daughters of the people could be. Her spirit in the world of gods
looked like herself with her homespun tunic and cloak. She found the second god of justice and
she spoke thus, "Your friend and liege, Alessandro Palermo, he sends me to you with this
message—lo, the halls of the gods are barred to me, their gate fortified against me. By treason
was I cast out and among the powerless. Open the door for me and let me in, and I will tell you of
evils you will not comprehend and by which your people have been oppressed."
But the second god of justice answered not.

Lyda blinked, as she woke from the virtus state. It wasn't sleep, Alessandro thought, but it wasn't so different from the first stages of sleep. He'd seen people go into them and out of them before, and suddenly he thought the problem Lyda had was not with her contact chip but with the fact that the nearest portal into the Lifenet must be thousands of miles away, in the nearest big city. There might be a beacon up on the mountain, but he doubted it. Whatever portal there was in the facilities there, it would be triggered to those living there only.

Still her going under and coming back again had been so fast, he didn't need the twitching of her lips and her sigh to know she had failed. "I don't think he heard me," she said. "He looked startled at first, so he might have glimpsed me. But all I saw of him was his face—nothing more. The rest of his virtus never came into focus, and I was disconnected almost immediately."

"When you have time," he said, "if there is a pause or a moment you can try, try to reach Charlie Cavlar or Lynn Hut. They are the other two people who work with me, trying to make sure those who disappear are well and that no one has fallen slave to anyone else in the real world or in the virtus. Also that virtus spaces aren't stolen—that sort of thing. If you reach either of them, give them the same message I gave you before. But I see we can't count on them."

"I told you my connection was weak," she said, looking so distraught that he smiled to reassure her, though he didn't feel any reassurance himself.

"I knew your connection was weak," he said. "I saw it myself, remember? It was an off chance. For the main chance, I think we're going to need to find our way up this damned mountain of the gods of yours, and, at the top, find a way in, somehow."

"What will that do?" she asked.

"They're bound to have a portal attuned to the chips of those who live there," he said. "They're bound to know how to attune it to the chips of newcomers too. It will have more power," he said. "With it we can break in."

"And do you know?" Lyda said. "How to get in? Yourself?"

"No," Alessandro said. "We must take care not to kill the guards, is all. But first—how do we get to the top of this mountain?"

"The path the people take every year, in spring, is safe," Lyda said. "They climb the path and they get to the top safely."

"And I suppose it's watched too?" Alessandro asked.

She nodded. "There are eyes. And the path has no vegetation anywhere near it. It is exposed to all. Of course it is. The gods above—I think there are only two, or at least, everyone speaks only of two—have to be able to see how many are coming. And it's forbidden to take weapons on the path, arrows and knives and–"

"So the path is in effect out," Alessandro said.

"But there is no other way," Lyda said. "Every other way is blocked. There are horrible things waiting for you—monsters and illnesses and poison. People have tried, you know? When they were mad at the gods, for sending us plague and wars. They sent groups of warriors, and young men with fire in their hearts climbed up. They never came back, and they never reached the top. Sometimes, if the gods were generous, their bodies were returned to us, months later. You can't climb the mountain any way but through the path."

"But if we climb through the path they will kill us also," Alessandro said. "Do you doubt it? As well to go back to your city and be eaten."

Lyda, granddaughter of the gods, a maiden of the people answered the god and said, "As well die
trying then, for try we must."

And they walked beneath the Earth in tunnels so narrow that they had to crawl along them. While
they were in the tunnels yet, Lyda of the golden hair tried to call onto the gods, but none listened
to her. She crept along the tunnels, then in silence, till they came to a place on the face of the
mountain, where freezing cold winds blew.

Alas, cried the god. Alas for my magical coat. But he had it not.

But he had senses men had not—hearing and sight beyond the mortal ken. With them he spied
around and with his god-strong fingers he held onto the side of the mountain. Calling on his
magic to multiply his strength, he folded Lyda in his right arm, and he carried her, up the sheer
mountain where there was nowhere to rest.

Long they climbed, till his fingers ached, till his fingers bled, till he felt as though he must die. But
his magics supported him, and he went on.

In a sheltered crevice on the rock they rested, her warm body against his.
She smelled of sweat. Not the old, unwashed smell of flesh that never saw soap, but of the sweat of their exertions. And she leaned against him, warm and soft in the small crevice. He could feel her heart beat fast through her back held against his chest. He wondered how long they had. If he was right, then the alarms on this part of the mountain were not actively controlled. They would be controlled by sensors that set them off when any signs of life approached. And that, he thought, meant that though the people at the top might not know they were here—and at that they might because surely they would know when their defenses activated—and yet he doubted there were many safe places along the mountains.

The place where they were seated was little more than a rounded indentation in the rock, big enough only for their bodies to press together into it, in a seated position, their legs folded under them. They were far up enough that they could see treetops extending into the distance. The new economy had meant fewer people living in the real world at any time. Many of the younger people, who had spent little enough time in the world outside the virtus, didn't even live in it at all. Their physical bodies were merely the holders of their virtus persona. They lay in coffinlike structures in the big cities, while nanos kept them alive and fed and healthy and their minds traveled the world or worlds of their or others' making.

Fewer people were born, too. Sex in virtus was just as good as the real thing. Or perhaps not, but it involved much less of the real thing's drawbacks—the unpredictable feelings, the awkwardness. It was perfect all the time. And sterile.

Alessandro leaned his chin against Lyda's blond hair, smelling her herbal scent, feeling her heartbeat as a faster echo of his own, and tried to remember how long it had been since he'd held a real woman like this—how long since he'd touched a real body like this.

"We are going to die, aren't we?" Lyda asked, her voice a little sob at the back of her throat.

"It is possible. It is likely," Alessandro said. And this too was new, because it had been far too long since he'd thought of his own death as possible, much less as likely. He'd been looking at life as an unending panorama stretching to infinity, but it might end now, today. Somehow the thought made every feeling sharper—the hair against his chin, the prickly wool against his skin, the air he breathed. Lyda nodded. "Everyone dies," she said, in a tone of acceptance. "But at least we'll die trying to save others. If we can just get the gods to stop interfering with them—life is not so bad."

We'll fight the gods for the sake of the people, Lyda, the strong maiden said. And she pulled the
god with her out of the shelter, and up the mountain again.

Here, where they were now, the way was easier. It was easier to find a place for a foot or a hand.
Lyda climbed beside the god, and he no longer had to carry her. And for a moment she allowed
herself to think perhaps the freezing winds and nowhere to put her hand or foot had been the
challenge.

And then the birds came, with cruel beaks, flying at them and ready to kill them. The maiden's
flesh they pierced once and twice, till blood ran down the pale skin.
Then the god called upon his powers. With his unerring eyesight he guided stones thrown by his
strong arm. Once, twice, three times, and the birds fell, the stones splitting the skulls where the
gods' commands dwelled.

And yet they kept coming through the day, as morning turned to afternoon.
Any normal man would have perished. Impossible to kill all the birds fast enough. Impossible not
to succumb to the assault. But the god was not a man, and his hand moved faster, faster than it
should have been possible. One by one the birds fell, until there were no birds.
They stood, holding each other, waiting for the next onslaught. A few rivulets of blood had dried down her face, from where a bird had torn a little bit of scalp and another made a wound on her forehead.

"Isn't your arm tired?" she asked.

And he marveled that she could think of him when she must be hurting more. Her feet looked cold in their sandals, and her skin was abraded from the difficult parts of the climb. But she was worried about him, and he answered her, "It will pass."

He looked up the mountain where he now saw a tall, dark building. The top of it was a glass-enclosed tower, but the rest looked much like the official buildings anywhere, poured of liquid dimatough and allowed to harden. This one was black and looked like a dark, flowing piece of lava. Inside, it would be light—since the color was just a matter of polarization. In fact, from the inside it would look like the whole tower was glass. And if there were people there all the time—and not just at the time of the spring ritual—they would be watching them from up there. Following their every movement. The rest of the way up the mountain was bare of trees and made for a difficult climb. They would be exposed.

"I think," he said, "up from here it will be even tougher than what we have met with so far."

"Then we shall go forward," Lyda said. "For to turn back would be to meet the same perils for nothing."

"And I don't relish the thought of being eaten at the bottom of the mountain."

"And my people can't take much more of the wars and the plagues. The last gods-sent plague killed most of the older people—except my father—and more than half of the babies. We will now be easy prey for other cities and, depend upon it, the gods will incite them on us. I don't want to be led away as a slave."

Alessandro took a deep breath. "Let's climb," he said.

Up they went, up the sacred mountain. And the gods from their perch saw all and sent golden
warriors of metal and glass. Many of them, so many that there were tall ones, whose stature
obscured the stars, and tiny ones, crawling along the ground—so many that they made the ground
look as though it were covered in a golden, moving carpet. Each of them held a whirling and
sharp blade.

And the god cried out, "Lyda, granddaughter of the gods, what powers did the god your father's
father, he of the golden hair and the healing touch, give you? Save me now with your powers, for
I am undone."

From a distance, watching the automatons approach, Alessandro thought Lyda and himself were as good as dead. This was how he would meet his end. This was how he would die. He would be cut to pieces by the whirling blades of robots. He would die here and be forgotten. Lyda too must have thought the same, because he saw her reaching to her ankle strap for her stone knife. He envied her for a moment, wishing that somehow he'd thought to bring with him weapons or at least a thick tree branch with which he might defend himself from the assaulters. But then he realized it would be worse. Lyda, with her knife, would have hope. Foolish hope because there was not any way in which that stone knife could stop the onslaught of sophisticated dimatough robots. And it was worse, he thought, to have hope and lose it just before you died than to know you were doomed from the beginning.