Read Halo: First Strike Online
Authors: Eric S. Nylund
Tags: #Science Fiction - Adventure, #Fiction - Science Fiction, #Video & Electronic, #Action & Adventure, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Imaginary wars and battles, #Space Opera, #Halo (Game), #General, #Space warfare, #Science Fiction - General, #Human-alien encounters, #Games, #Adventure, #Outer space, #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Computer games
She put her hands on the touch-sculpture in the center of the floor, the work of a blind sculptor named Dernier, then closed her eyes and felt its familiar rough texture and odd curves let her hands trace a form other than the visual. Behind her Jerry's voice said, "Diana." She turned to him, and there he stood as he had more than twenty years agohe was younger than she'd ever have imagined, and beautiful, and filled with the same desire as she. Blind and seeing, young and old, Diana went across the room to him, but he held up a hand and said, "Stop. If you come to me now, then you take up an obligation that you can never put down." "I can't let you die." "I have lived long past any reasonable reckoning; I am dead." "I can't leave you dead." "Can you stay with me in the unreal worlds, forever? Until the city stops turning or its animate spirit dies? Until one or the other of us disappears, caught in some freakish storm or catastrophe? Until one self or the other or both are dissipated in time?" (Something prompted her, then, counselled her, asking in an unspoken voice, Do you think rationally about such an election adding and subtracting the credits and debits and settling upon that which is most to your advantage? Or do you use some organ of choice beneath the purview of consciousness and the articulate self? Saying, Remember, mind is a make-shift thrown together out of life's twitching reflexes, and over it consciousness darts to- and-fro, unfailingly over-estimating its own capabilities and reach; thinking itself proper arbiter or judge. Choose as you will: what will be, will be.) And she said, "Yes, I can stay with you." There was one more question: Jerry asked, "Why would you do this?" All her life's moments funneled into this one. Her voice light, final inflection upward, the older, sighted woman said: "Oh, for love." "Well, then" # Gonzales stood next to her on the endless plain, HeyMex next to him, then Lizzie. The Aleph-figure and Jerry hovered above them, and a voice came from the suspended figures: "Diana, wake for a few moments. Tell everyone to come here who can, and we will do certain things." Before she could ask for clarification or question the voice's intent, she heard herself say these words, then saw Toshi's face in front of her and heard him ask, "What things?" Sitting up on her couch, she said, "Save a life, build a world, redeem an extraordinary self." "Indeed," Toshi said. She lay back down and was once again among the unreal worlds. They gathered on the endless plain, coming in quickly, one- by-one: first one twin, then another, then Stumdog, the Deader (her white hair streaked with red, crying, "Blood party"), Jaani 23, the Judge (huge and hairless, looming over them all), the Laughing Doctor, J. Jerry Jones, Sweet Betsy, Ambulance Driver, T- Tootsie all of the collective who could be spared. The Aleph-figure and Jerry still hovered, with light storms bending and breaking around them in crazy patterns of reflection, refraction, diffraction; phosphorescing and luminescing, dancing an omniluminal photon jig. All were there who would be there, so it began. # Patterns more complicated and colorful than any Gonzales had ever seen filled all creation. Rosette and seahorse and seething cloud, nebulosities on the brink of determinate form, cardioid traceries of the heart the patterns wrapped around him until he became a fractal tapestry, alive, every element in constant motion. He put his hands together, and they disappeared into one another, then something urged him to keep pushing, and he did so until he entirely disappeared And felt the stuff of Jerry's past and present mingling in him, seemingly at random, from the store of memory and capacity: throwing a particular ball under a particular blue sky, yes, and catching it, but also ball-throwing and catching themselves, the solid presence of muscular exertion coupled to the almost-occult discriminations required to make an accurate throw or a difficult catch As it later became known, each of them received portions of the vast fluent chaos that manifested "Jerry," dealt to them by Aleph according to principles even it could not articulate. What it was to be "Jerry" mingled among them, and they among it and the vast medium that supported them all, Aleph, in a promiscuous rendering of self-to-self. Female was suffused with male, male with female, both with the ungendered being of Aleph and HeyMex. They were all changed, then, something deep in the core of each made drunk in this vast frenzy or bacchanal of Spirit. With each dispersal of Jerry's self among its human helpers, Aleph recovered its own. In a process of steadily accelerating momentum, the city's parts and states began to flow through it, restoring self to self, until Aleph acknowledged itself (I am that I am), looked back again over Halo, and in a triumphant manifestation of the Aleph-voice, began to speak what only it could hear, the words of the sentence that defined it unfolding in every dimension of its being. # Still sitting watch over Diana, still meditating on his koan, Toshi felt something rise like electricity through his spine, and all the contradictions of in fact dissolved in satori. "Hai!" Toshi called, laughing as he was enlightened. 22. Out of the Egg Gonzales's egg split, and he saw from the corner of his eye that Lizzie's was coming apart at the same time. Standing between the eggs, Charley said, "Congratulations." He turned to Eric, who waited at a console across the room, and said, "Let's do it." He, Eric, and a pair of sams began to disconnect Lizzie. Toshi appeared briefly, coming from behind the screen where Diana lay, then returning. Oddly, Gonzales felt better than he ever had coming up from the eggmentally clearer, emotionally stronger. He couldn't see Lizzie, could hear only whispers as she was moved onto a gurney and wheeled away. "Is Lizzie all right?" Gonzales asked as soon as the tubes were out of his throat and nose. "And what about Diana?" "They're both fine," Eric said, his high-pitched voice welcoming and familiar. "But we have to take more time with Doctor Heywood. You and Lizzie we're moving into the next room. You can sleep here tonight and go home in the morning. "What about the memex?" "It's still working with Aleph but left a message for you that all is well." # Sitting in full lotus on a mat beside the couch, Toshi heard a change in Diana's breathing and looked up to see her open her eyes. "I'll get Charley," he said. "He's with Lizzie and Gonzales." "Don't bother. I'm all right." "They must disconnect you." "No, not now almost never, in fact." "What do you mean?" "We have saved Jerry, but there are conditions." Her head lying sideways on the pillow's rough white cloth, she smiled at Toshi, and said, "When I sleep there, I can wake here, as I do now, and for very brief periods leave that world. But I can only visit here; I must live there. Otherwise, Jerry will die." "You have resurrected your dead, then, but at what price, what sacrifice?" "Nothing I would not willingly give. There was no choosing." "No?" "I am only doing what I want." "So the arrow finds the target," Toshi said. # Gonzales woke the next morning, showered, dressed, and was drinking coffee when the room said, "Mr. Traynor is here to see you." "Send him in," he said. One account about to be reckoned up, he thought. When he came in, Traynor looked chastened, a state Gonzales would not usually have associated with the man. "Good morning," Gonzales said. Traynor looked around as if unsure of himself. He said, "I am leaving this evening. You may come with me, if you wish." Gonzales was looking for his i.d. bracelet, found it on the nightstand next to the table, and said, "I don't understand. I'm not fired?" "I said that only in the heat of the moment, you know this place, these peopleI'm afraid I did not handle things well." "I see." Gonzales snapped closed the bracelet's clasp. "Is that my only choice?" "No. Showalter's been reinstituted as Director SenTrax Halo Group, and she's gotten the board to agree that you may take the position offered by the Interface Collective. The choice is yours." "Really? And what about Horn?" "He will be returning to Earth." Traynor laughed. "I will have to find something to do with him." "Indeed. That all seems clear enough. When do I have to tell you my decision?" "Soonbefore I leave." "I'll let you know." Traynor left, and Gonzales took a last look around and went to see what was happening. He found Charley looking at monitor screens dense with lists of data. The two eggs had been removed, but the screen around Diana's couch remained. "What's up, Charley?" Gonzales asked. "Look" Charley pointed to the hologram displays of superimposed wave-forms, red and green. He said, "The green curves show the calculated limits of Diana's interface, the red ones the actual state." To Gonzales, the red curves seemed huge, perhaps twice the size of the green ones. He said, ""What does it mean?" |