“Condition Chaos . . . ?” she forced herself to say evenly. “When they run your climate model with your brain in the circuit, the predictive output won’t be Condition Venus?”
John Sri Davinda’s eyes shone with all the inhuman illumination of a pair of polished steel ball bearings.
“All iterations produce the same output.”
“Condition Chaos . . . ?”
“Condition Chaos.”
Davinda’s face was as calm and affectless as that of a golden Buddha, and whether it was the synergy of the music with the lighting, or some other effect, a palpable aura seemed to pulse off of him. But in spite of this, or perhaps because of it, it took an effort of the will for Monique to retain the clarity to refrain from slugging him.
To realize that the only way to get anything out of Davinda would be to enter
his
image system rather than fruitlessly attempt to dragoon him back into what
hers
told her was the “real world.”
“
What
is Condition Chaos, John Sri Davinda?” she intoned in a portentous guru voice.
“I am Condition Chaos,” said John Sri Davinda. “I model the Chao of the Tao.”
“
You
model the Chao of the Tao . . . ?”
Monique struggled to make
some
sense of this or at least, now that she had Davinda talking, to question this oracular presence along a line that might elicit useful information.
Enter his image system
, she reminded herself again,
don’t expect him to enter yours
.
“Okay, John Sri Davinda, we are all part of the Great Whole, the Wheel of Karma, and all that good Third Force stuff, the Dance of the Bits and the Bytes—”
And then the White Light hit her.
Then it was that two disjunctive image systems converged on an interface which was the Third.
Davinda had
already
interfaced his brain with the computer briefly. And it had turned him into . . .
this
.
Whatever this was.
A human climatologist with the better part of his neurons burned out and his personality destroyed? The software golem now occupying the vacant meatware? Some arcane amalgam?
Stay in the image system.
Stay in
its
image system.
Because whatever this . . . entity
really
was, it seemed to believe that it was John Sri Davinda’s climate model itself, not the human creator thereof.
“Okay, so I’m talking to a climate model,” Monique said. “So whyfor are you different from all other climate models?”
Was that a smile of perfect serenity or an expression of perfect acceptance of terrible fate on the face of John Sri Davinda? Was there anything human left in there at all?
“I am the last climate model.”
“The . . .
last
climate model . . . ?”
“No more definitive climate model is mathematically possible.”
“You’re the . . .
perfect
climate model . . . ?” Monique said softly. “You’ve got all the answers . . . ?”
The effect was unexpected and cataclysmic.
The serene indifference on the face of John Sri Davinda morphed into an expression of agonized horror.
“What did I say?” Monique groaned.
There was no reply. The twisted look of horror remained, but it was as if she had pulled the plug on whatever light had been shining through those inhuman eyes.
“Shit, shit,
now
what?” Eric observed as he watched Monique Calhoun trying to shake Davinda out of whatever fugue state he had suddenly fallen back into just as she seemed to have at least been getting
somewhere
.
“Is that an operational question, kiddo, or are you just unhappy to see me?” replied Ignatz.
“What do I do now,
that’s
the operational question!” Eric snapped back irritably. “Flush out the drugs? Change the prescription?”
“Remove Mohammed from the Mountain,” said Ignatz.
“Words of one syllable, goddamn it, Mom, don’t you start with that Third Force babble too!” said Eric, forgetting who, or rather what, he was really talking to.
“In
one
word of one syllable,
cut
, kiddo! Change the scene.”
“To what?”
“A blast from his past.”
“California?”
“You wanna bring the boy out, bring the boy back home.”
The virtual hour didn’t change, nor the blue clarity of the sky above, but the hue had become glorified with a subtle hint of gold, and now the background sound was that of the surge of breakers through the boulders and stony wave-etched tide pools of a rocky beach below.
Monique sat facing John Sri Davinda on the rough-planked porch of a neo-rustic redwood chalet. The peaked roof was a solar-panel array from which sprouted an impressive assortment of dish antennae.
The chalet was cantilevered out over a deep ravine or modest canyon descending from a coastal mountain range, and a river ran through its bottom to the sea. Palms and palmettos and succulents choked its depths and climbed its slopes, festooned with more chalets, cabins, domes, low-lying small factories, all unpainted wood, stone, green-tinted glass, weathered bronze, at one, somehow, with the tropical landscape.
And should Monique fail to recognize this as the idealized coast
of central California, homeland of John Sri Davinda’s roots, a syrupy orchestral remix of classic twentieth-century surfing music murmured in the background as a helpful hint.
California
kitsch this time, Monique thought.
But if
this
doesn’t work, I don’t know what will. . . .
“John . . .” she purred gently. “You’re back home now . . . back in California . . . back where it all began . . . remember . . . remember when . . . ?”
The musculature of Davinda’s face, frozen into a horrified mask, began to slowly relax. . . .
“Yes, John Sri Davinda, that’s who you are now, back when, way back when . . .”
Davinda’s face smoothed out, but not into anything Monique could recognize as an expression of human emotion. Rather it became another mask, this a tranquil one, but with nothing behind the eyes but an empty void.
“Come on, John, I know you’re in there, so come on out,” Monique said in a rather harsher tone of voice, fighting against her rising exasperation, and beginning to lose.
Nothing.
Damn!
Or damned.
For Monique was running out of ideas as well as patience, and she found her eyes being drawn downward to the purse beside her. Felt the invisible presence of the gun pulsing inside it.
Or not?
Might that not be another illusion?
If she just reached down and palpated the purse, might she not happily discover that there
was
no flechette pistol inside it?
Her hand started to move toward the purse. She yanked it back, and convulsively shook Davinda by the shoulder instead.
“Talk to me, talk to me, will you!” she shouted. “Before it’s too late.”
“It’s not working,” said Eric.
“No shit, Sherlock,” said Ignatz.
“Any more bright ideas?”
“Is that an operational question?”
“Yes, Mom, it’s an operational question,” Eric said testily, “and I’d appreciate an operational answer.”
“Maybe it’s time to
terminate
the operation, kiddo,” Ignatz suggested.
Eric pondered this for a long moment.
Sooner or later, if Monique failed to get any more information out of Davinda, he
was
going to have to go in there and terminate the operation. Was it now later than sooner? Was unprofessional sentimental romanticism the only thing preventing him from doing it?
“That’s the only operational advice you have?” Eric asked plaintively.
“What’s preventing you from taking it, kiddo? Why don’t you just ice him and get it over with?”
“Because I don’t want to make a terrible mistake that could end up maybe
frying
the whole world, damn it!” Eric snapped.
“That’s all, Eric?”
“That isn’t
enough
?”
“Come on, kiddo, you can’t bullshit a simulation of a bullshitter!”
“All right, all right,” Eric whined, “so the idea of framing Monique Calhoun for the hit turns my stomach! There, I’ve said it, are you satisfied, Mom?”
Mom?
Eric abruptly realized he was trying to justify himself to this . . . this
program
as if he really
were
arguing with his mother.
And losing as usual.
“Well, kiddo, there
is
one thing you
could
try,” Ignatz said. “You gotta remember, I’m only a simulation, and a female one at that, so it’s kind of hard for me to model how you’re gonna take this. . . .”
“I’m a big bad boy, Mom . . . I mean . . . jeez!”
“You got the place pumped full of
brain
stimulants, and the guy’s still tranced out,” said Ignatz. “So maybe you’re . . . playing the wrong organ. According to the database this simulation is supplied with kiddo, you wanna raise a male zombie from the dead, you gotta . . . grab him by the handle.”
When Monique felt the heat of her frustrated ire moving southward from her brain to her loins and becoming another form of warmth in the process, having no rational, emotional, or esthetic raison d’être for the transmutation and having experienced this illogical sexual arousal in similar circumstances before, she was certain that the effect had to be biochemical.
But while her first reaction was feminine outrage at Eric Esterhazy, this time around she knew exactly what he was doing, and found it difficult to argue with the why.
The why being the libidinal activation of John Sri Davinda and the effect on her being merely an unavoidable consequence, friendly fire as it were.
It hadn’t worked on Davinda the last time around, but the last time around, Davinda had been blotted on booze and dust to begin with. And this time around, the aphrogas in the atmosphere could be augmented with brain and somatic stimulants.
And thinking that very thought quite clearly with her loins afire, Monique realized that it probably was already. Which explained her mood swings and the sharpening of her insight.
Which also explained the logical clarity of her present thought under these extreme and unlikely circumstances. And even made her somewhat glad that she was under the influence of the aphrogas too.
It wasn’t going to make this fun.
But it might make it bearable.
“The climate model, John, this is where you created your climate model, tell me about the
climate model
. . . .”
Surely the queasy feeling Eric felt in the region between his stomach and his testicles wasn’t
jealousy
. He liked Monique Calhoun well enough, he found her sexually attractive, he had enjoyed their sexual fun and down-and-dirty games, but he certainly wasn’t
in love
with her.
Nor was the gruesome spectacle on the screen sexually arousing or anything to be jealous about. Monique had opened Davinda’s fly, withdrawn a semi-flaccid organ, and managed to massage it to a more-or-less erect state, thanks mainly, no doubt, to the aphrogas, given
that the still-vacant expression on Davinda’s face gave little evidence of the involvement of his cerebral centers in the proceedings.
Now she was working his phallic pump handle forcefully and mechanically. It was about as erotic as watching a machine milking a cow.
“Come on, John, I
know
you’re in there, come on out . . .” Monique wheedled, working her hand without looking, and trying unsuccessfully to force the ludicrously obscene visual image of what she was doing from the screen of her mind by focusing on the face, on the eyes, of John Sri Davinda.
Who seemed to be slowly coming to show some semblance of human life, a parting of the lips, a soundless moan, another, a rapid flickering of the eyelids . . .
And then Monique had a small satori.
If Davinda
was
a mole, then, to judge from the way the Marenkos kept repeating it to him, “Lao” was probably some kind of activation command.
And an activation command was certainly what she needed now.
“Lao . . . John . . . Lao . . . Lao . . . Lao . . .”
She moved her hand in time to the chant, took more care to halt teasingly on the upstroke, and bring it half-satisfyingly down on the beat. . . .
“Lao . . . Lao . . . Lao . . .”
“Lao . . .” Davinda finally muttered.
“Yes, John, Lao!”
Monique ceased her stroking and held her hand in place, clenching and releasing, clenching and releasing, trying, as it were, to squeeze it out of him.
“Lao, John, Lao . . .”
“Lao . . .”