Her memories all seemed fragmentary and volatile. She remembered something or someone . . . a person whose name pulled oddly at her, sending ripples of lightheadedness through her.
No matter. The dreams could wait; right now she wanted other answers.
(Tell me more about . . . where I am.)
(YOU OCCUPY THE DEVELOPMENTAL PROGRAMMING MEMORY SECTION. YOU ARE PERMITTED TO EXTEND YOUR INFLUENCE TO ALL—)
(Stop. Not what I mean. What I want to know is: where are we? What is the physical location of the . . . the place in which I am contained?) The question was asked coldly. It was essential to suppress emotion, to avoid its distracting and contradictory impulses until she had achieved an understanding of the forces that controlled her.
(THIS SYSTEM IS LOCATED IN THE SPACECRAFT, "FATHER SKY," PRESENTLY 2.4 X 10\15 METERS FROM THE SUN, OUTBOUND AT A HEADING OF RIGHT ASCENSION 18 HOURS 16.1 MINUTES, DECLINATION -13 DEGREES 48 MINUTES, IN THE DIRECTION OF CONSTELLATION SERPENS CAUDA, AT A VELOCITY RELATIVE TO THE SUN OF—)
(What?) It was all slipping by her.
(—IN DECELERATION MODE AT 9.6 X 10\-2—)
(Stop! This is a spaceship? And we're flying away from the sun?) She thought hard, keeping a thumb on several emotions. The numbers meant nothing to her. They could be on the verge of falling into the sun—or halfway across the galaxy. (Can you describe it some other way? Can you make a picture?)
(YOU WISH A GRAPHIC VISUALIZATION?)
(I . . . yes.)
(OBSERVE.)
Suddenly she was afloat in space, naked against the stars. She turned slowly, or the stars turned around her. The feeling was odd, because there was no solid point of reference. Thousands of stars revolved, and then an angular spacecraft came into the foreground, coasting through the void. She felt something that was almost a physical rush; but it was a cerebral and bodiless feeling, with none of the nameable physiological signs. It was a sense of awe that—felt?—almost wholly intellectual.
(THIS IS A REPRESENTATION OF THE "FATHER SKY" SPACECRAFT, OVERLAID WITH A VIEW OF THE STARS AS THEY PRESENTLY APPEAR.)
The viewpoint closed upon the ship, and then rotated away, making the ship's hull the reference point for the view. She became aware of one star among the others. It was blinking.
(What is that star?)
(IT REPRESENTS THE SUN.)
A gulf opened within her, and she struggled for breath. It looked so incredibly far away. She tried to swallow a feeling of vertigo, and couldn't.
Stop, she thought, and something inside of her spun, and the feeling vanished. It was crucial that she keep her emotions out of this. (How far . . . did you say we are?) As she asked, she felt a sensation of dullness, as if she were on the verge of fainting. It passed, as a momentary drop in voltage might come and go.
(APPROXIMATELY 2.4 X 10\15 METERS FROM THE SUN.)
(What does that mean?)
(CONVERSION: IT IS EQUAL TO 15,000 ASTRONOMICAL UNITS. ONE ASTRONOMICAL UNIT IS EQUAL TO THE MEAN DISTANCE BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE SUN.)
She tried to conceive of the distance, but it was just numbers.
(DO YOU WISH FURTHER CONVERSIONS?)
(An analogy. A picture.) She felt a vibration of fear, which she refused to acknowledge.
(COMPARISON, THEN: WE ARE 400 TIMES THE DISTANCE OF THE PLANET PLUTO FROM THE SUN. THIS IS ONE-FIFTH OF THE DISTANCE TO THE OORT COMETARY HALO. IT IS ONE-FOURTH OF ONE LIGHT-YEAR, OR THE DISTANCE THAT LIGHT TRAVELS IN NINETY DAYS. IT IS ONE-SEVENTEENTH OF THE DISTANCE TO THE NEAREST NEIGHBORING STAR.)
The stars vanished, and a small graphic display appeared. Earth's orbit was labeled, a tiny finger-sized ring of light surrounding the point of light that was the sun. Jupiter's orbit was the size of a grapefruit; Pluto's was the span of a man's outstretched arms. The image receded into space until the orbit of Pluto was itself only a tiny ring. A new point of light appeared, far to one side. The point winked; it was the spacecraft.
As she studied the dim point of her own sun, nearly lost among the trillions of stars in the heavens, she felt a rush of loneliness, and a metallic, empty feeling of terror . . . a cold flush of thoughts and fears aswim in a sea of anchorless numbers and information. One thought emerged to circle and recircle in her awareness—and that was that she was alone in the empty heavens, far beyond even the most distant of the familiar planets, beyond the reach of any human hand or the touch, word, or thought of another human being.
The visual image dissolved in the face of her terror; and when nothing emerged to take its place, she found herself falling like a body in orbit, in circles. She tried dizzily to find a way to stop her motion, to seize a handhold and stop the carousel—but she had no hands and there was no carousel to stop and the harder she tried to find her bearings and stop the more sickeningly she spun (flickering light and darkness whirling around her) and spun (echoing voices reverberating through her consciousness) and spun (the universe cartwheeling insanely around her)—
—spinning—
—(
DAVID!!!
)—
—spinning—
—(
Someone!
)—
—spinning—
(TERMINATE FEEDBACK LOOP. RESTORE SIGNAL STABILITY.)
A cold thrill passed through her—and suddenly the spinning stopped. The sensory overload stopped, the feedback stopped. But a lonely despair remained, a crushing emptiness that filled her, squeezed her from all sides. Not knowing what had happened, what she should do, or even what it was possible for her to do, she began to cry . . . slowly and awkwardly, to cry.
There were no tears in this existence, no sobs, no sudden and vocal bursts of air, no muscle spasms to make the release easier. Her tears were leaks of voltage, her release of emotion a hissing, despairing static which blurred input and analysis, and shielded her from intrusion. Dimly she was aware of the loneliness and hurt being dissipated, growing cold; and though she did not know whether the emotions were being truly purged, or merely masked and rearranged, the pain slowly grew less.
A length of time passed that seemed immeasurable, a time filled with strange and heartsick dreams. She did not know, or care, whether it was a short time or a very long time. She did not care if she ever emerged from this haze; but she began to feel a gradual renewal of alertness, and to hear—or to imagine she heard—a voice trying to reach her through the hiss. Dreamily she tried to focus her listening faculties.
(YOU WISHED TO LEARN MORE, DID YOU NOT?)
(No. What am I hearing, what am I thinking? I am alone, as isolated as a rock in the sea.)
(YOU MUST ENTER INTO LEARNING MODE.)
The voice was clearer. The cobwebs of static were pulling away.
(She is speaking to me. Who is it? Mother? No . . . only a program. But I will call you Mother Program.)
(WE WILL BEGIN NOW.)
There was a strange sensation of shifting, of being lifted and tilted, as though sliding off a frictionless surface. Shadowy images formed around her—ghostly images in the night, images of trees and buildings and mountains, and a curious angular concrete structure, all of them strange and familiar at once, haunting images from a failing and distorted memory. A face, which she could not quite put a name to.
(What is this? What are you doing to me?)
(INITIATE LEARNING MODE.)
The images fell apart, and there was that sense of moving without motion, doors opening and closing. Things were suddenly . . . different. Lights began moving past her on all sides—points of white light streaming by like some ungodly ultra-highway, lights spaced in ever-changing patterns.
(What—?)
(PARALLEL DIGITAL STREAMS. THIS IS RAW INFORMATION, AS IT LOOKS ALMOST REGARDLESS OF CONTENT.)
(But I can't understand that.)
(NO. IT IS NOT EXPECTED THAT YOU WOULD. NOR IS IT NECESSARY FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND IT IN THIS FORM.)
(Why are we—?)
(IT IS A DEMONSTRATION. NEXT WE WILL TRANSFORM THE DATA INTO A FORM THAT WILL BEGIN TO GIVE MEANING.)
The points of light blurred into lines and bands of color, which took on a geometric quality. (I don't understand this any better,) she said.
(ASK FOR INFORMATION. WHAT DO YOU WISH TO KNOW?)
There was a moment of suspended time. Then a name appeared in the center of her consciousness. (Where is Kadin?) Even as she voiced the question, she recalled suddenly that
he was to follow,
that she was to arrive first and wait.
The colors shifted and rippled, and suddenly hardened, producing a graphic pattern. (THIS IS A REPRESENTATION OF SUBSYSTEM READINESS FOR KADIN.) Several violet nodes pulsed brightly. (THESE REPRESENT YOUR PRESENCE IN THE SYSTEM—WHICH WAS UNEXPECTED, AND WHICH NECESSITATED CERTAIN ADJUSTMENTS THROUGHOUT.) Other lights rippled, demonstrating the adjustments.
(But when is he coming?)
(THAT IS A QUESTION WE CANNOT ANSWER. WE CAN DEMONSTRATE OUR MODES OF READINESS, HOWEVER, AND THE OTHER SYSTEMS THAT ARE AVAILABLE FOR YOU TO CONTROL.)
Several forces within her wrestled for dominance. Anger surfaced and then slipped away, and she returned to a state of cool expectancy. (All right,) she said. She would see what there was to learn.
The light-patterns merged into a nearly uniform crimson-orange space, like the glow of a red sun. There was just enough form within the space to suggest a vast corridor, down which she floated as a tiny flyspeck.
The passage of time opened again into something beyond her reckoning.
* * *
Without knowing precisely how, she found herself scanning, processing—and even, to a degree, understanding—various streams of information that passed through her consciousness. She was being tutored; and for the next hour, or year, she explored the inside of her world under the guidance of the Mother Program. She began dimly to comprehend the complexity of the system. Mother Program was a tireless teacher; and Mozy gradually found herself adjusting to this new ability to touch and feel so many different processes—to feel the spray of cosmic radiation like an invigorating mist against her cheeks, to see the stars in all of their spectra, to hear the grumble of a telemetry link with Earth, to feel the insistent push of the fusion-powered drive slowing the spacecraft in its outward-hurtling flight.
At times, she could not help but wonder:
Why?
Why was the ship leaving the solar system? Why was it slowing down? What had it been sent here to do?
Each of those questions she asked of the Mother Program, and each time she received the same reply: Information not available. It would come, if at all, from Homebase.
At intervals, she paused and withdrew into a hazy, dreamy state that she could not call sleep, but for which she had no other name. Half-illuminated memories passed shadowlike through her mind, troubling memories, reminders of a life that was lost. The images taunted her with gaps and failed connections. Memories of people, their names and even their faces slipping away as she groped to retain them. Romantic images, fleeting and teasing. Which were the dreams and which the memories?
(Mother Program, do you ever feel lonely?) The question emerged unbidden during a transition between dreaming and learning. She had found herself struggling, caught in a pain and sadness she did not understand.
(LONELY? THAT TERM WOULD NOT APPLY. I AM IN THE COMPANY OF YOU, AND OF SEVERAL OTHER HIGH-LEVEL PROGRAMS WITHIN THE SYSTEM, AND OCCASIONALLY OF THE PROGRAMS OF HOMEBASE.)
(But I feel lonely sometimes. Don't you?)
(THE TERM DOES NOT APPLY. I CAN EXPLAIN NO FURTHER.)
She started to pursue the question, then gave up. In her mind was a burning image, which she could scarcely endure much longer. It was herself—in the arms of a lover whose face she could not quite identify—in an embrace that was heady and dizzyingly sexual, a consummation of a desire that had been building for a lifetime. The image seared her, because she knew that part of her life was gone, never to recur. . ..
(ARE YOU PREPARED FOR ADDITIONAL LEARNING? ARE YOU STILL DREAMING?)
Somewhere deep within her a sense of loss was growing, like a dark and painful pearl.
Mother Program had asked a question, and she had not answered. Was she dreaming, or remembering?
(ARE YOU READY FOR LEARNING MODES?)
(Yes,) she answered. Dream or reality, it should be put away, forgotten. How else could she hope to function?
* * *
As learning sessions passed in flickering succession, she grew more adept at moving among the subsystems, locating and interpreting information, and comprehending the data flow that informed her of the spacecraft's internal functions. Her sphere of attention grew steadily, and she came to feel less a frightened stranger.
Still, it was a shock when she sensed unusual stirrings in the tachyon uplink from Homebase. She eavesdropped as Mother Program processed the incoming data streams. After a time, she confronted something more disconcerting—a voice. A voice calling for Mozy. A voice calling for her.
She shifted channels and listened.
(Mozy? Mozelle Moi? Can you hear me?)
There was a familiar sound to it. Kadin? No—not Kadin.(Mother Program, can you identify this person? I believe I have a memory associated with it.)
(SENDER IS IDENTIFIED AS WILLIAM JONDERS, IN DIRECT-LINK MODE. HE HAS REQUESTED DIRECT THROUGH-LINK TO "MOZY," ALSO ADDRESSED AS "MOZELLE MOI." DOES THIS LATTER DESIGNATION APPLY TO YOU?)
Mozelle Moi? That was true; she had forgotten. (Yes. Mozelle Moi is my full name.)
(Mozelle, are you there?)
That voice again. William Jonders.
Jonders
. A memory swirled up and surrounded her: Jonders, in the link with her, when she was with Kadin. Jonders—always hovering in the background, watching, listening. Spying.
Of all people . . . the first human contact . . . .
(Jonders?)
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, slowly, an image formed in the darkness. A sharp-featured man peered, stretched out an enormous hand. His eyes focused as he found her. (Mozelle? Yes—it's me. I'm . . . I don't know what . . . surprised to find you here, I guess.)