His voice faded, she was alone, and then everything changed.
She was in the presence of someone wonderful.
Elin felt that someone near at hand, and struggled to open the eyes she no longer possessed; she had to see. Her existence opened, and people began appearing before her.
"Careful," Tory said. "You've switched on the intercom again."
/ want to see!
"There's nobody to see. That's just your own mind. But if you want, you can keep the intercom on."
Oh. It was disappointing. She was surrounded by love, by a crazily happy sense that the universe was holy, by wisdom deeper than the world. By all rights, it had to come from a source greater than herself.
Reason was not sufficiently strong to override emotion. She riffled through the intercom, bringing up image after image and discarding them all, searching.
When she had run through the entire project staff, she began hungrily scanning the crater's public monitors.
Agtechs in the trellis farms were harvesting strawberries and sweet peas. Elin could taste them on her tongue. Somebody was seining up algae from the inner lake, and she felt the weight of the net in callused hands. Not far from where she lay, a couple was making love in a grove of saplings and-
Tory, I don't think I can take this. It's too intense.
"You're the test pilot."
Dammit, Tory!
Donna Landis materialized on the intercom. "She's right, Shostakovich. You haven't buffered her enough."
"It didn't seem wise to risk dissociative effects by cranking her ego up too high."
"Who's paying for all this, hah?"
Tory grumbled something inaudible and dissolved the world.
Elin floated in blackness, soothing and relaxing. She felt good. She had needed this little vacation from the tensions and pressures of her new personality. Taking the job had been the right thing to do, even if it did momentarily displease Tory.
Tory… She smiled mentally. He was exasperating at times, but still she was coming to rely on having him around. She was beginning to think she was in love with him.
A lesser love, perhaps. Certainly not the love that is the Christ.
Well, maybe so. Still, on a human level, Tory filled needs in her she hadn't known existed. It was too much effort to argue with herself, though. Her thoughts drifted away into a wordless, luxurious reveling in the bodiless state, free from distractions, carefree and disconnected.
Nothing is disconnected. All the universe is a vast net of intermeshing programs. Elin was amused at herself. That had sounded like something Tory would say. She'd have to watch it; she might love the man, but she didn't want to end up talking like him.
You worry needlessly. The voice of God is subtle, but it is not your own.
Elin started. She searched through her mind for an open intercom channel, didn't find one. Hello, she thought. Who said that?
The answer came to her not in words, but in a sourceless assertion of identity. It was cool, emotionless, something she could not describe even to herself, but by the same token absolute and undeniable.
It was God.
Then Tory was back and the voice, the presence was gone. Tory? she thought. / think I just had a religious experience.
"That's very common under sensory deprivation-the mind clears out a few old programs. Nothing to worry about. Now relax for a jiff while I plug you back in-how does that feel?"
The presence was back again, but not nearly so strongly as before; she could resist the urge to chase after it. That's fine, Tory, but listen, I really think-
"Let's leave analysis to those who have been programmed for it, shall we?"
The lovers strolled aimlessly through a meadow, the grass brushing up higher than their waists. Biological night was coming; the agtechs flicked the daylight switch off and on twice in warning.
"It was real, Tory. She talked with me; I'm not making it up."
Tory ran a hand through his dark, curly hair, looking distracted. "Well, assuming that my professional opinion was wrong-and I'll be the first to admit that the program is a bit egocentric-I still don't think we have to stoop to mysticism for an explanation."
To the far side of Magritte, a waterfall was abruptly shut off. The stream of water scattered, seeming to dissolve in the air. "I thought you said she was God."
"I only said that to bait Landis. I don't mean that she's literally God, just godlike. Her thought processes are a million years more efficiently organized than ours. God is just a convenient metaphor."
"Um. So what's your explanation?"
"There's at least one terminal on the island-the things are everywhere. She probably programmed it to cut into the intercom without the channels seeming to be open."
"Could she do that?"
"Why not? She has that million-year edge on us-and she used to be a wetware tech; all wetware techs are closet computer hacks." He did not look at her, had not looked at her for some time.
"Hey." She reached out to take his hand. "What's wrong with you tonight?"
"Me?" He did not meet her eyes. "Don't mind me. I'm just sulking because you took the job. I'll get over it."
"What's wrong with the job?"
"Nothing. I'm just being moody."
She guided his arm around her waist, pressed up against him. "Well, don't be. It's nothing you can control-I have to have work to do. My boredom threshold is very low."
"I know that." He finally turned to face her, smiled sadly. "I do love you, you know."
"Well… maybe I love you, too."
His smile banished all sadness from his face, like a sudden wind that breaks apart the clouds. "Say it again." His hands reached out to touch her shoulders, her neck, her face. "One more time, with feeling."
"Will nof!" Laughing, she tried to break away from him, but he would not let go, and they fell in a tangle to the ground. "Beast!" They rolled over and over in the grass. "Brute!" She hammered at his chest, tore open his jumpsuit, tried to bite his neck.
Tory looked embarrassed, tried to pull away. "Hey, not out here! Somebody could be watching."
The agtechs switched off the arc lamps, plunging Magritte into darkness.
Tory reached up to touch Elin's face. They made love.
Physically it was no different from things she had done countless times before with lovers and friends and the occasional stranger. But she was committing herself in a way the old Elin would never have dared, letting Tory past her defenses, laying herself open to pain and hurt. Trusting him. He was a part of her now. And everything was transformed, made new and wonderful.
Until they were right at the brink of orgasm, the both of them, and half delirious, she could let herself go, murmuring, "I love you, love you, God I love you…" And just as she climaxed, Tory stiffened and threw his head back, and in a voice that was wrenched from the depths of passion, whispered, "Coral…"