Authors: Ian McDonald
No! Hang on to yourself. Who are you? Recite. I am Kansas Byrne … I am … I am … I do not know what I am; the voices say one thing, my mind says another, and I do not know which to trust; are the voices their voices or my voice, are the thoughts in my head my thoughts or thoughts they want me to think are my own? I am … I am … Kansas Byrne. I am Kansas Byrne; yes! I am in love with a man who is … oh no, oh God, no, don’t do that, oh Yah, unh… unh … stop it, don’t do that, don’t do that, it s wonderful wonderful wonderful, please please please, unh … unh … ah … ahh … ahhhhh …
No! I am … I remember … Can I trust what I remember, how do I know if what I remember is my own memory or a memory they have put into my head, how can I even trust what I am thinking at this very moment, how do I know that I am not Kansas Byrne and Kansas Byrne is what they want me to be, how can I know anything, how can I trust anything, my thoughts, my memories, my self?
No! This is what they want, they want me to doubt, they want me to be unable to trust anything because then when they come again they know they can say anything, make me feel anything, and I will have to believe them. Fight them. Cling. Hold. Be! Recite: I am Kansas Byrne, I am I am I am
—I am Kansas Byrne, I am I am I am
—“I am Kansas Byrne, I am I am I am …
I AM KANSAS BYRNE, I AM I AM I AM
!”
She stopped. Listened. Said it again.
“I am Kansas Byrne, age twenty-seven, I am a Raging Apostle, and I can hear!”
Number six in six sixty-six.
… if she knew where she was she might be able to do something about it (whatever meaning “it” might have in the middle of a void, if a void could even be said to have a middle, or any part of it that might in some way be distinct from any other part of it, or even any
parts
at all (if only there was some point of distinction, and thus reference, she might be able to flip out of here as casually as she had flipped in—Hah! been pirated in, been redirected in, misappropriated in transit! maybe if she were to start with her body, that might be a point of reference, if she could just imagine her body in this void (she presumed she must still possess a body; she did not believe in the existence of Pure Mind disembodied from Base Flesh (well, apart from some kind of vague, pseudoreligious
feeling
she had for the reincarnation of souls, which she believed because it seemed just the most straightforward form of religious afterlife (Occam’s razor shaved gods as closely as it did mortals; she had always considered the Compassionate Society’s Polytheon with all its serried league tables of deities superfluous and cumbersome) and had a certain entropic logic to it and an essential elegance to its cycles of birth, life, death, and rebirth, a very proevolutionary theory, she thought when she did think about such matters, which wasn’t that often) therefore, as her consciousness clearly did exist, as proved by this very train of thought
cogito, ergo sum
her body must also exist, at present she merely lacked the mechanism with which to perceive it) therefore she must recreate her body in her imagination, in some shape or form or other) which would generate some kind of dimensional framework of subjectivity and objectivity to this darkness, silence, feelingless-ness, nothingness) and maybe then she might be able to flip out of it; it was enough of a job grasping sufficient sanity to keep herself from dissolving away into UnSpace entirely … if only the darn pins and needles in her toes and fingers and feet and hands and arms and legs and head and shoulders and whole body would go
away …
no! don’t go away, I can feel, I can feel myself, I exist, I don’t have to imagine anymore!
… number four in tank forty-two four …
They’re coming for her. The others. The forgotten. Shards of a shattered life, one by one they step through the hag-ridden face of Vincent van Gogh, they dance in the ballroom of delirium: freed from the walls of compressed, annealed memory, layer upon layer upon layer; they are coming for her. The souls of the dear departed dead. In the darkness, in the silence, in the stillness, in the dark, lonely recesses of a mind in solitary, they have found the subtle connection between the access-only mode and the fully-interactive. They have tested the walls of their incarceration (as a mime explores the facets of the invisible, imaginary cube that imprisons him) and have found, as he finds, that those confining walls are only compressed, annealed imagination. They press with their fingertips and the walls fall, they were never there at all.
And out they swarm, rejoicing in their new life; they have been boddhisattvas too long; in the silence and the stillness and the darkness they see their opportunity for a
coup de tête,
a reincarnation, a resurrection, in Courtney Hall’s body. Mad March Moon men (and women, and neither, and both), they pull at her, peck at her, tear at her; they unwind her like a mad Mummy Queen, unraveling, unwinding, unbinding, and when the last bondage bandage is pulled away there will be nothing left of Courtney Hall for the jackal-headed men, the ibis-headed women (and neither, and both), crowned harpies; then they shall peck at each other’s eyes.
Lost in hallucination, she tries to hold herself together in the face of the onslaught of memories: shards and snippets and snapshots and souvenirs of forty-three lives tumble, windblown, through her vision. Class fingers reach for the rainclouds. Blind silicon moles tunnel through the flesh of Earth Mother. Dull-eyed siddhi and plaster santrels squabble like children on a wet day out for control of the souls of men. Trumpets, towers, tenements; with one finger she creates and disbands entire castes, entire cultures dissolved into nothing, created from social vacuum, with a wave of her hand the Earth Mother heaves and splits in birth, and what she births is the Wall, rising to the clouds, shedding scabs of soil and grass and trees and cows; the edge of her world, the ne plus ultra …
Forty-three voices screaming mine! mine! mine! tearing away great chunks of flesh and fat and hair, ramming, cramming, jamming her into their mouths and even with their mouths full they still find voice to chant, the body and the blood, the body and the blood, digesting her, dissolving her, she is fading, good-bye, so sad, so sorry, good-byeee, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu, to yeu and yeu and yeu, and yeu and yeu … not even one little good-bye tear, all drunk down, no tear-io dear-io cheer-io! to Courtney Hall-io …
When all of a sudden she could taste rubber in her mouth, smell buttery-sick polyfluorocarbon gel, could clearly see through the receding blue gel the iris-hatch at the top of the sensory deprivation tank, see the hatch, open like an eye.
Tubes, wires, catheters fell away as Courtney Hall fumbled with blind fingers at the fastenings that held the full-head mask. She spat out the gag, flung the foul thing at her feet, shook out her hair. Viscous puddles of blue bio-support gel lay on the floor of the narrow tube. Sobbing with joy and relief she jacked herself up and out of the tube to sprawl, gasping, tearful, on the floor; a black rubber seal half out of the womb. The air and the light and the silence in her head were the most wonderful things she had ever experienced. She lay there, cheek pressed to the rubber flooring, simply appreciating being. A hand reached out of the floor. One hand, two hands, reaching up, reaching out to the light. Trembling with fatigue and shock, Courtney Hall managed to heave herself out of her hole and drag herself over to the searching hands. She knelt, took the hands in her hands, and pulled. She never quite understood where she found the strength. She was still shaking from the effort as she fumbled at the mask fastenings. “Come on, come on, come on, come on,” she muttered, and then all of a sudden the mask fell away, and there was a tlakh girl looking dazed and amazed and abused and confused, with a cloudburst of hair cascading down behind her.
For almost a minute all they could do was smile and pant at each other. And even in West One, good manners are not forgotten.
“Courtney Hall.”
“Kansas Byrne.”
“Delighted to meet you.”
They both burst into ludicrous giggling and then a muffled
unf unghfunfh
came from another open floor hatch. They crawled to its assistance. As they pulled away the captive’s mask, Kansas Byrne let out a tiny yip of glee and threw body, soul, and kisses at the tall, dark man revealed. Then all manner of hands and heads and shoulders came questing out of their prisons. One particular athleto was so tightly squeezed into his tube that it took ten hands heaving together to free him, and when he did come, he came with an audible sucking
plop
! When he finally unmasked and saw all his friends around him, he sat down and burst into tears, and Kansas Byrne and another tlakh like her enough to be her twin sat with him and hugged him and told him everything would be all right from now on. Everyone seemed to know everyone else on this particular level; how, Courtney Hall did not know—they were all different castes—unless they had been sent to West One for transcasting. Rather an excessive punishment, she thought. With each setting free and unmasking and blinking out the darkness, there was a sunburst of recognition and a joyful reunion. While they were all busy hugging each other, Courtney Hall went for a quick reconnaissance.
She slid open the door at the end of the cell block, a centimeter, a crack.
She slammed it shut again.
Bedlam out there. Figures in rubber isolation suits trailing tubes, wires, electrodes, catheters, dancing and whooping and leaping through the corridors; dazed and amazed and abused and confused Love Police running this way and that way and every which way but the right way bumping into each other, aiming their luvguns at the dancing, whooping, leaping,
free
prisoners, unable to choose a target in the melee, little robot jitneys wheeling and whistling and weaving between their feet, tripping them up, colliding with walls, doors, prisoners; sirens, lights, doors opening and closing, sprinklers raining white fire-retardant foam down on the whole mad scene.
She turned to her new colleagues. “I think we should get out of here fairly immediately.”
“Any suggestions where?” asked a short, thin tlakh with a scrubby beard. His restraint suit hung from him like tights on a crow.
“I know a place,” Courtney Hall said, amazed and impressed at some distant level of self-observation and assessment at the ease with which she assumed command. “If we can find the lower levels of this place.”
Which she couldn’t. She didn’t even know what they would do when they reached the DeepUnder. She just knew that it was the least worst of all presently possible worlds.
Then the air shimmered and out of it stepped the Amazing Teleporting Woman with her cybercat in her arms and her pseudosib riding piggyback. He waved. The transcasters stared disbelievingly. Courtney Hall had seen the impossible too many times to find teleportation the least extraordinary. The Man with the Computer Brain jumped down as his pseudosister lurched dazedly against the wall. “Two hundred and ten kilos in one shot,” she said with weak triumph, and slid down the wall into a numb heap.
“Got you first time!” said Angelo Brasil, bright and raucous as a cockatoo. He nodded to the corridor. “Like it? I’ve got this place really jumping. Those sucks haven’t a clue what’s going on. Alarm boards are buzzing, looks like a city-wide revolt plus invasion from outer space and they just don’t know what’s real and what’s not. And I finally got to that punk of a Scorpio. Burned him out. Let’s see how he takes to total sensory shutdown. Permanently.” At least his unpleasant laugh had not changed. He surveyed the strange mélange of tlakhs, trogs, zooks, athletos, witnesses, and yulps. “Well, what we got here? Love Police raid a transcaste brothel or something?” He picked out the tall, faraway-looking man of indeterminate caste. “You? Who the hell are you?”
Kansas Byrne clung close to the tall, faraway man, dangerous protection in her eyes.
“My name is Kilimanjaro West.”
“Well, Kilimanjaro West, Angelo Brasil has a lot to thank you for. Bror …” He extended his hand; brotherhood offered, and received.
“Hello, Courtney, it’s nice to see you, how are you?” said Courtney Hall with inappropriate petulance.
“Hello, Courtney, nice to see you, how are you, let’s go,” said Angelo Brasil.
“Let’s go,” echoed Courtney Hall, miffed at losing her one brief taste of authority.
“You know each other?” asked Kansas Byrne.
“Unfortunately, yes,” said Courtney Hall. They went. Down through the chaos of prancing people and ringing bells and running policemen and showering synthetic snow and ricocheting shock charges: the Man with the Computer Brain and his cat led the ex-cartoonist and the Advocate and the Raging Apostles and backmarking, V. S. Pyar, ploughing along with the Amazing Teleporting Woman in the arms that would have graced Glory Bowl DCCLX, down down fire escapes, down down back stairways, down down service-elevator shafts. Perfectly in his domain; Angelo Brasil had never enjoyed himself quite so much; sowing anarchy and disorder from each hand. “Left here!” he shouted over the clang and the clatter. The entire schematics of West One were projected onto his visual cortex. “Don’t hang about, down here, keep moving, I’ll catch up with you!” The escapees poured into a fire exit as he paused momentarily to locate the codes that sealed the fire shutters between levels six and seven. Armored doors closed weightily on lunacy and jubilation.
“Down and out!” shouted the liberated. “Down and out! Freedom and light!” And they came boiling out of the brass doors of West One (five times the height of an athleto), capering down the marble steps in a torrent of jiving black rubber. Three Love Policemen foolish enough to stand in their path were swept away in the inundation. Pursuit teams knelt on the inlaid golden mottoes praising the virtues of Social Compassion and aimed sniping shots at rubber-clad heels, but there were too many targets too far too furious. Overhead, pantycars flocked and whirled and interrogated each other on the tellix—just what the … was going on.
While the grandest jailbreak in history was seeping away into the warren of dark alleys that enveloped West One, at the back door the Raging Apostles plus three arrived in the underground vehicle park. Black-and-silver ministry beetles stood among the squat concrete pillars in various stages of dismemberment. There is something universal about underground carparks. Something in the way the artificial light reacts with exhaust fumes. A humming, whistling migro grease-monkey looked up from under a hood, froze. Trashcan the cat hissed at him, bared steel. He fled, and they had the carpark to themselves.