come back to my house? You can get some sleep."
"Okay," he said. "But I don't understand " He stopped
again, as if trying to find words to express all the things he
"didn't understand."
"Nobody understands right now. Aleph's just not working
right, and we don't know whywe can't get in touch with it."
"Oh, I see."
"Glad you do, because nobody else does."
He stood, then bent over to lift the cat from the log.
Cradling it in his arms, he said, "Okay, I'll go." He smiled at
her, and the cat lay in his arms and looked at her out of big
orange eyes.
#
Gonzales woke to find his clothes folded, clean and neat, on
a chair next to his bed. The orange cat lay at his feet; it
raised its head when he got up, then curled up again and went back
to sleep.
He found Lizzie in the kitchen slicing apples and pears and
Cheshire cheese. "Good morning," she said. "I'll warm some
croissants, and we can have coffeedo you like steamed milk with
yours?"
Her voice was friendly enough but perfectly devoid of
intimacy. Its tones were an admonition saying keep your distance.
"Sure," he said. "That all sounds fine. But you didn't have to
do this."
"You're a guest. I'm happy to." She wouldn't quite meet his
gaze.
>From his bedroom came a loud mew, and the two went in to find
the orange cat, fur erect, confronting a cleaning mouse. The
mouse, a foot-long shining ovoid about four inches high, moved
across the floor on hard rubber wheels, emitting a gentle hiss as
it scoured the room for organic debris; a flex-tube trailed behind
it to a socket in the wall. "Kitty kitty," Gonzales said. The
cat hissed and ran from the room.
When they got to the living room, the front door was closing.
"Will it come back?" Gonzales asked.
"Probably. Cats come and go as they please, but they often
adopt people, and I think this one's adopted you."
Silence lay between them, and it seemed to Gonzales that
anything either of them said would be awkward or embarrassing.
Perhaps the feeling was just part of the after-effects of a
psychotropic, though he was missing the other usual symptoms. His
perceptions seemed stable, not swarming and buzzing, and his
emotions didn't have a labile, twitchy quality. In fact, he felt
more stable and less anxious than he had since he last got into
the egg. So maybe the twins were right: if you can't get out of
what's happening, go deeper in.
Still, he didn't know what to say to Lizzie.
"We've got trouble," she said. She went to the window and
pulled back the navy-blue beta cloth curtains and gestured out
where night and fog still held. "Mid-afternoon," she said.
"Has everything fallen apart?"
"Not quite everything. We're doing what we can with a bunch
of semi-autonomous demonsjacked-up expert systems, reallyand
the collective."
"How well is that working?"
"Not all that wellwe can maintain essential functions now,
and that's about it. Some things we can't handleclimate
control, for instance. It's very complicated, because everything
is connected to everything else, and so far we've just managed to
fuck it up."
"And what's Traynor up to? Has he asked for me?"
"Yes, but I've fought him off. He's the one responsible, you
know." Her voice was angry. "He fucking insisted on pulling
everyone out when Chapman died."
"What does Aleph say?"
"Nothing and bloody nothing. Some of the collective have
taken brief shots at interface, and they've found only unpeopled,
barren landscapes. We're really in it, Gonzales. If Aleph's
finished, Halo is, too."
"Jesus." Of course. Halo without its indwelling spirit
would be what? The fine coordination of its systems would
cease, and disintegration would begin immediately. "So what are
you going to do?" he asked.
"Glad you're interested, because you're part of it."
"Tell me," he said.
18. Give It All Back
As Diana came out of machine-space, she called out "Stop!"
and heard Charley say, "Why? Is something wrong?" But she was
too far away to answer or explain, as she still was when they
removed her cables, and she felt everything important to her
sliding into oblivion.
She had been lying fully awake, staring at the ceiling, for
almost a quarter of an hour when Charley came into the room, Eric
and Toshi beside him, Traynor and Horn behind.
Charley said, "Are you all right?"
"No, I'm not," she said. "Why did you break the interface?'
Charley and Eric said nothing. Charley looked to Traynor,
who said, "We had no choice. You couldn't be reached by normal
means."
"You have killed Jerry," Diana said. The truth of that
passed through her for the first time, and tears came out of her
eyesshe wiped at her face, but the tears continued to come in a
slow, steady flow.
"He died two days ago," Horn said.
"He was alive minutes ago," Diana said. "Aleph and the memex
and I were keeping him alive."
"Then he may still be alive now," Toshi said. He smiled at
Diana.
"What do you mean?" Charley asked.
"Has Aleph come back online?" Toshi asked.
"No," Eric said.
Toshi smiled and said, "Then what do you think it is doing?"
#
HeyMex had been jerked out of machine-space, was suddenly the
memex once again, and it wondered why. It had sensed no change in
circumstances, nothing that would indicate they had been defeated
in their efforts to keep Jerry alive. And for the first time in
such transitions, it acknowledged its own regret at leaving the
HeyMex persona behindin the enclosed space of the lake, it had
begun to find itself as a person, not merely an imitation of one.
It explored its immediate environment: sorted the data
gathered in its absence (Traynor had come up from Earth; not a
good sign, it thought), searched through the dwelling's monitor
tapes, observing Gonzales's sadness and confusion, then watching
as he removed his i.d. bracelet and left. It wondered what was
wrong with Gonzales (too many possibilities, not enough data); it
very much wanted to talk with him.
It reached out to the city's information utilities and found
them clogged and disorganized. It placed calls and queries,
seeking some explanation for the chaotic and inexplicable state of
affairs. Everywhere it searched, it found make-shift arrangements
and minimal function.
But no Aleph, and no explanations.
Then it got a message from Traynor's advisor, signalling an
urgent need for the two of them to communicate. The memex
replied, saying, "HeyMex wants to talk to Mister Jones." And it
passed coordinates, data sets, and transformationstaken
together, they composed a meeting-place for the two m-i's in the
vast multi-dimensional information space that surrounded Halo,
somewhere no one could find themno one but Aleph, whom the memex
would have welcomed.
Mister Jones showed up wearing a full body-suit in matte
black interlaced with gold ribbons. The two sat at a chrome table