But currents were coursing through his chest—his heart. Muscles convulsed across his upper body. He was just another circuit ele ment.
He let go with his left hand. That stopped current flowing, but he still held charge. The sharp pains in his chest muscles eased, but they still ached.
Levels flashed by Hari’s dazed eyes. At least, he thought, he was getting away from his pursuers.
His right arm tired and he switched to his left. He told himself that hanging by one arm at a time probably did not tire them any faster than using two arms. He didn’t believe it, but he wanted to.
But how was he going to get out of this shaft? The e-cell stopped again. Hari peered up at the shadowy mass looming like a black ceiling. Levels were far apart in this archaic part of the palace. It would take several minutes to climb down to the one below.
The e-cell could ratchet up and down the length of this shaft for a long time before getting a call from the lowest level. Even then, he had no idea how the shaft terminated. He could be crushed against a safety buffer.
So his clever leap had in fact bought him no escape. He was trapped here in a particularly ingenious way, but still trapped.
If he did manage to slap one of the emergency door openers as they passed, he would again feel a jolt of current as charge leaped from him to the shaft walls. His muscles would freeze in agony. How could he then hold on to anything?
The e-cell rose two floors, descended five, stopped, descended again. Hari switched hands again and tried to think.
His arms were tiring. The jolt of charge had strained them, and now surges of current through the shell of the e-cell made them jump with twinges of pain.
He had not acquired precisely the right charge to assure neutral buoyancy, so there was some residual downward pull on his arms. Like silken fingers, tingling electrostatic waves washed over him. He could feel weak surges of current from the e-cell, adjusting charge to offset gravity. He thought of Dors and how he had gotten here, and it all surged past him in a strange, dreamlike rush.
He shook his head. He had to think.
Currents passed through him as though he were part of the conducting shell. The passengers inside felt nothing, for the net charge remained on the outside, each electron getting as far away from its repulsing neighbors as possible.
The passengers inside.
He switched hands again. They both hurt a lot now. Then he swung himself back and forth like a pendulum, into longer oscilla tions. On the fifth swing he kicked hard against the undercarriage. A solid thunk—it was massive. He smacked the hard metal several more times and then hung, listening. Ignoring the pain in his arm.
No response. He yelled hoarsely. Probably anything he did was inaudible inside.
These ancient e-cells were ornately decorated inside, he re membered, with an atmosphere of velvet comfort. Who would notice small sounds from below?
The e-cell was moving again, upward. He flexed his arms and swung his feet aimlessly above the shadowy abyss. It was an odd sensation as the fields sustained him, playing across his skin. His hair stood on end all over his body. That was when the realization struck him.
He had approximately the same buoyant charge as the e-cell—so he did not need the cell at all anymore.
A pleasant theory, anyway. Did he have the courage to try it?
He let go of the clasp rim. He fell.
But slowly, slowly. A breeze swept by him as he drifted down a level, then two. Both arms shouted in relief.
Letting go, he still kept his charge. The shaft fields wrapped around him, absorbing his momentum, as though he were an e-cell himself.
But an imperfect one. With the constant feedback between an e-cell and the shaft walls, he would not be exactly buoyant for long.
Above him, the real e-cell ascended. He looked up and saw it depart, revealing more of the blue phosphor line tapering far overhead.
He rose a bit, stopped, began to fall again. The shaft was trying to compensate both for its e-cell and for him, an intruder charge. The feedback control program was unable to solve so complicated a problem.
Quite soon the limited control system would probably decide that the e-cell was its business and he was not. It would stop the e-cell, secure it on a level—and dispense with him.
Hari felt himself slow, pause—then fall again. Rivulets of charge raced along his skin. Electrons sizzled from his hair. The air around him seemed elastic, alive with electric fields. His skin jerked in fiery spasms, especially over his head and along his lower legs—where charge would accumulate most.
He slowed again. In the dim phosphor glow he saw a level coming up from below. The walls rippled with charges and he felt a spongy sidewise pressure from them.
Maybe he could use that. He stretched to the side, curling his legs up and thrusting against the rubbery stretch of the electrostatic fields.
He stroked awkwardly against the cottony resistance. He was picking up speed, falling like a feather. He stretched out to snag an emission hole—and a blue-white streamer shot into his hand. It convulsed and he gasped with the sudden pain. His entire lower arm and hand went numb.
He inhaled to clear his suddenly watery vision. The wall was going by faster. A level was coming up and he was hanging just a meter away from the shaft wall. He flailed like a bad swimmer against the pliant electrostatic fields.
The tops of the doors went by. He kicked at the emergency door opener, missed, kicked again—and caught it. The doors began to wheeze open. He twisted and gripped the threshold with his left hand as it went by.
Another jolt through the hand. The fingers clamped down. He swung about the rigid arm and slammed into the wall. Another electrical discharge coursed through him. Smaller, but it made his right leg tighten up. In agony, he got his right hand onto the threshold and hung on.
His full weight had returned and now he hung limply against the wall. His left foot found an emission hole, propped him up. He pulled upward slightly and found he had no more strength. Pain shot through his protesting muscles.
Shakily he focused. His eyes were barely above the threshold. Distant shouts. Shoes in formal Imperial blues were running toward him.
Hold…hold on…
A woman in a Thurban Guards uniform reached him and knelt, eyebrows knitted. “Sir, what are you—?”
“Call…Specials…” he croaked. “Tell them I’ve…dropped in.”
PART 4
A SENSE OF SELF
SIMULATION SPACES—…decided personality problems could arise. Any simulation which knew its origins was forcefully reminded that it was not the Original, but a fog of digits. All that gave it a sense of Self was continuity, the endless stepping forward of pattern. In actual people, the “real algorithm” computes itself by firing synapses, ringing nerves, continuity from the dance of cause and effect.
This led to a critical problem in the representation of real minds—a subject under a deep (though eroding) taboo, in the closing era of the Empire. The simulations themselves did much of the work on this deep problem, with much simulated pain. To be “themselves” they had to experience life stories which guided them, so that they saw themselves as the moving point at the end of a long, complex line drawn by their total Selves, as evolved forward. They had to recollect themselves, inner and outer dramas alike, to shape the deep narrative that made an identity. Only in simulations derived from per sonalities which had a firm philosophical grounding did this prove ultimately possible…
—ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA
1.
Joan of Arc floated down the dim, rumbling tunnels of the smoky Mesh.
She fought down her fears. Around her played a complex spatter of fractured light and clapping, hollow implosions.
Thought was a chain unfixed in time and unanchored in space. But, like tinkling currents, alabaster pious images formed—restless, churning. An unending flux, dissolving structures in her wake, as if she were a passing ship.
She would be hugely pleased, indeed, to have so concrete a self. Anxiously she studied the murky Mesh that streamed about her like ocean whorls of liquid mahogany.
Since her escape from the wizards, upon whom the preservation of her soul—her “consciousness,” a term somehow unconnected to conscience—depended, she had surrendered to these wet coursings. Her saintly mother had once told her that this was how the churning waters of a great river succumb, roiling into their beds deep in the earth.
Now she floated as an airy spirit, self-absorbed, sufficient to herself, existing outside the tick of time.
Stasis-space, Voltaire had termed it. A sanctuary where she could minimize computational clock time—such odd language!—waiting for visions from Voltaire.
At his last appearance, he had been frustrated—and all because she preferred her internal voices to his own!
How could she explain that, despite her will, the voices of saints and archangels so compelled her? That they drowned out those who sought to penetrate her from outside?
A simple peasant, she could not resist great spirit-beings like the no-nonsense St. Catherine. Or stately Michael, King of Angel Le gions, greater than the royal French armies that she herself had led into battle. (Eons ago, an odd voice whispered—yet she was sure this was mere illusion, for time surely was suspended in this Purgat ory.)
Especially she could not resist when their spirit-speech thundered with one voice—as now.
“Ignore him,” Catherine said, the instant Voltaire’s request for audience arrived. She hovered on great white wings.
Voltaire’s manifestation here was a dove of peace, brilliant white, winging toward her from the sullen liquid. Blithe bird!
Catherine’s no-nonsense voice cut crisply, as stiff as the black-and-white habit of a meticulous nun. “You sinfully surrendered to his lust, but that does not mean that he owns you. You don’t belong to a man! You belong to your Creator.”
The bird chirped, “I must send you a freight of data.”
“I, I…” Joan’s small voice echoed, as if she were in a vast cavern, not a vortex river at all. If she could only see—
Catherine’s great wings batted angrily. “He will go away. He has no choice. He cannot reach you, cannot make you sin—unless you consent.”
Joan’s cheeks burned as the memory of her lewdness with Voltaire rushed in.
“Catherine is right,” a deep voice thundered—Michael, King of the Angel Hosts of Heaven. “Lust has nothing to do with bodies, as you and the man proved. His body stank and rotted long ago.”
“It would be good to see him again,” Joan whispered longingly. Here, thoughts were somehow actions. She had but to raise a hand and Voltaire’s numerics would transfix her.
“He offers defiling data!” Catherine cried. “Deflect his intrusion at once.”
“If you cannot resist him, marry him,” Michael ordered stiffly.
“Marry?” St. Catherine’s voice sputtered with contempt.
In bodily life, she had affected male attire, cropped her hair, and refused to have anything to do with men, thus demonstrating her holiness and good sense. Joan had prayed to St. Catherine often. “Males! Even here,” the saint scolded Michael, “you stick together to wage war and ruin women.”
“My counsel is entirely spiritual,” said Michael loftily. “I’m an angel and thus prefer neither sex.”
Catherine sputtered with contempt. “Then why aren’t you the Queen of Legions of Angels and not the King? Why don’t you command heavenly hostesses and not heavenly hosts? Why aren’t you an archangela instead of an archangel? And why isn’t your name Michelle?”
Please, Joan said. Please. The thought of marriage struck as much terror in her soul as in St. Catherine’s, even if marriage was one of the blessed sacraments. But then so was extreme unction, and that one almost always meant certain death.
…flames …the priest’s leer as he administered the rites…
crackling horror, terrible cutting, lickingflames …
She shook herself—assembled her Self, came a whisper—and fo cused on her saintly host. Oh yes, marriage…Voltaire…
She was not sure what marriage meant, besides bearing children in Christ and in agony, for Holy Mother Church. The act of getting children, begetting, aroused in her a thumping heart, weak legs, images of the lean, clever man…
“It means being owned,” Catherine said. “It means instead of needing your consent when he wants to impose on you—like now—were Voltaire your husband, he could break in on you whenever he likes.”
Existence without selfdom, without privacy…Bursts of Joan’s bright self-light collided, flickered, dimmed, almost guttered out.
“Are you suggesting,” Michael said, “that she continue to receive this apostate without subjecting their lust to the bonds of marriage? Let them marry and extinguish their lust completely!”
Joan could not be heard over the bickering of saints and angels in the musty, liquid murk. She knew that in this arithmetic Limbo, like a waiting room for true Purgatory, she had no heart…but something, somewhere, nevertheless ached.