Limit of Vision (16 page)

The
next time Virgil awoke it was midmorning. He opened his eyes, feeling oddly refreshed and in a positive mood. Calm and hopeful, his depression all gone. His father remarked on it when Virgil finally linked. “You look good, son. You’re not thinking of going into this fugitive business permanently . . . are you?” Jeff Copeland tried to make it sound like a joke, lighthearted patter to belie his haggard eyes, but the effect failed when his voice cracked, grief slipping through.

Virgil groped for an answer. “I should feel worse, I know. It’s not that I don’t care . . .” But anguish and despair could serve no purpose now. Maybe the
L
ov
s had calculated that fact and responded accordingly. Or maybe his own mind had run the equation.

Jeff Copeland did not ask where Virgil was; he did not advise him to turn himself in. Neither did the lawyer Copeland had hired. To Virgil, that was a more telling evaluation of his case than all the back-and-forth questions of an hour-long interview.

He spent much of the day plotting strategies to make himself disappear.

Late in the afternoon he raised the antenna again. Another flood of messages fell into the queue, having used offers of money, old acquaintance, or tantalizing subjects to get past Iris’s filters. Virgil sighed, thinking he should tighten the parameters. Then again, he had plenty of time to read.

The initial deluge passed, but the flow never quite stopped. Words continued to drip into the queue like rain through a slowly leaking roof, a new message every twenty or thirty seconds. Virgil found himself captured by the hypnotic pace, tempted over and over again to wait for the next, and the next (just one more), scanning the sender and subject matter as they splashed past his awareness:

NetFlash News:
Ten Million $ First Interview

Josh Duchamp:
Much Admire your work.

Pierie Ling:
A New Design for
L
ov
s

Jeff Copeland:
Call your mother.

Renatta X:
Evolution and the fate of the human race

Ela Suvanatat:
I have
L
ov
s

Lope Ancog:
Your responsibility for disaster

James Santiago:
More questions from your lawyer

He blinked and sat up a little straighter, his gaze backtracking to the odd subject line: >
I have
Lovs
<

Iris was supposed to filter the gutter notes, the hate mail, the religious come-ons, the sales and investment opportunities . . . and the hoaxes.

>I have
L
ov
s<

That was certainly a hoax. So why had it been passed?

“Iris? Display the Suvanatat message.”

The file opened with a graphic that caused Virgil to catch his breath. It was an image of a blue-green patch of
L
ov
s gleaming against cinnamon skin. He knew it was skin because he could see every pore, every slight, colorless hair. He knew the luminous patch was
L
ov
s because he could see the outline of their diatom-like shells, each tiny disk speckled with dark pores and striated with the outlines of minute, interlocking limbs that held the shells tight against each other as if this attenuated sample (a hundred individuals? two hundred?) had instinctively re-formed into a colonial architecture, a seed crystal for a new Epsilon-3.

He told himself the image was faked.

Anything could be faked.

But surely a fake would imitate the arrangement of
L
ov
s in the Hammer’s colonies, or the much-publicized scatter of glittering symbionts that Virgil, Panwar, and Gabrielle had all used? No one had ever—
Ever
—used
L
ov
s as symbionts in a tightly packed, colonial patch. No one had ever implanted so many
L
ov
s. Virgil had thirty-six. There were maybe 150 in this image.

His heart beat in slow, deep, deafening strokes. If this image was a hoax, then it was a most excellent one. A creative, clever, very thoughtful hoax.

He noticed something more: On the perimeter of the patch a few
L
ov
s had lost their color. They had the empty, faded gray look of a tossed soda bottle scoured by wind and time. Virgil had seen such an effect once before, early in the
L
ov
project, when the nutritional flow to a new tank had been too little to support the growing colony. Clearly, this patch of
L
ov
s had begun to die.

14

Kathang’s orange-
and
-brown salamander icon stirred, stretching and twitching its tail to draw Ela’s attention.
“
Link request,
”
the
R
osa
whispered, as a strange icon appeared beside it on the screen: a tiny woman in ancient dress, her dark hair touched with rainbow highlights. The new icon was accompanied by a note in white text:

→
Dr. Virgil Copeland, regarding your message >I have Lovs<

An answer!
Ela could hardly believe it. And this was no simple message, either. It was a real-time link. “Kathang. Accept—

“No, wait.”

Ela closed her eyes, thinking hard. She had to protect herself. She didn’t know anything about Copeland; she didn’t even know if he was still free. “Kathang, make this an anonymous link. Blur the background. Suppress all outside noises. Transmit no information on this environment. Only my active portrait.”

The
R
osa
responded by posting a tiny image of Ela in the screen’s lower corner, showing her head and shoulders against a blank beige field. “That’s good,” Ela said. Then she drew a deep breath, taking a moment to compose herself. “Okay. Accept the link.”

The American researcher appeared before her in a head-and-shoulders portrait employing the same privacy screens Ela had used, except his background was gray. He was younger than she had expected, beardless and lightly tanned, his chin-length honey brown hair corded like a doll’s. He leaned forward, wary amber eyes studying her from behind the faint white veil of his farsights. On his forehead, she could just make out the glitter of
L
ov
s between his corded hair. “You are Ela Suvanatat?”

Ela nodded, listening to Kathang’s whispered assessment, generated by the fortune-telling program:
This one does not wear a mask; he rides his emotions like well-trained horses, toward an unseen goal
. “You have not been arrested?” she asked him in a low voice, conscious of the two
Roi Nuoc
boys on the porch.

“No. This is not a hoax, is it?”

“No,” Ela said softly. “It’s real. I was on the coast when the module came down. I wanted to be the first to image the crash site, so I got out there fast. Too fast. I was underwater when it was made off-limits. I’ll be arrested if they find me.”

“Where are the
L
ov
s?”

She tapped her temple. Then she shifted her farsights to the side to capture the image.

“They’re dying,” he said. “Do you see how the
L
ov
s on the edge of the cluster are turning light gray? It’s worse now than in the image you sent me.”

“That’s why I sent a message. I must know how to get nopaline. That’s what the
L
ov
s need to survive. All the literature says so.”

He hesitated. The wariness in his eyes deepened. She could guess his thoughts. “I told you already I’m a fugitive, Dr. Copeland. Like you. I’m not the bait in a trap to capture you. I’m not asking you to meet me. I’m not asking where you are. I just want to know how to keep the
L
ov
s alive.”

“Why?”

Ela looked away, feeling a rush of shame. But why should
she
be ashamed? She had lost everything but her farsights when this man’s work came crashing into her life. “These
L
ov
s are worth something,” she said. “I have nothing else to sell.”

“But
L
ov
s can’t be sold. They’re an artificial life-form. They’re not approved—”

“Approved? Are you serious?”

This time it was his turn to look away. A rosy flush touched his tan cheeks as he mumbled, “
Sorry
.” In an absentminded gesture he touched his forehead, running his fingers over the half-hidden
L
ov
s. “All right. Sell them. But sell them to me.”

“Dr. Copeland, you don’t understand. That’s not why I contacted you—”

“I’ll buy them,” he insisted. “How much do you want?” His gaze darted to the side. The link’s audio component cut out and his image blurred as he whispered to someone, or something off-screen. A companion? Or a
R
osa
?

When his portrait refocused, his gaze was firm. He looked quite confident of her cooperation. “I have command of several anonymous accounts. Let me know how much—”

“I can’t.” Ela glanced toward the screen door. The
Roi Nuoc
were outside, and Ky Xuan Nguyen could not be far away. She lowered her voice even further. “There is already a buyer, Dr. Copeland.”

He looked stunned, almost . . . panicked, but the expression vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “I’ll pay more.”

“That is not the problem. He’s here. You’re not.”

She watched him think about this. Then she said, “Do you want the
L
ov
s to die?”

“No.”

“Then tell me, where do I get nopaline? How do I provide it to my
L
ov
s?”

“It comes from tablets.” He chewed absently on a fingernail. “It’s a special order product from a chemical company in California—”

“I am not in California.”

“I know, but you could place an order—”

“That would take days, wouldn’t it?”

“I guess it would, considering where you are . . . You are still near the crash site? No. Never mind. Don’t answer that.” He sighed. “I have a supply of no-oct tablets—that’s nopaline mixed with octopine, a combination that will allow the
L
ov
s to live, and to reproduce. But it would take me days to get them to you, if you’re still . . .”

His voice trailed off under the withering force of her glare.

“I’m trying to help, Ela.”

“These
L
ov
s are dying.”

“I understand that. Let me think.” He turned half-away, leaning his head back against nothing. Probably seated in a chair, she thought. So he was comfortable . . . wherever he was. He raised his hand, brushing his corded hair away from his forehead, clearly revealing his
L
ov
s for the first time. They were scattered, she noticed, not clustered like hers.

After a moment, he nodded. “There is a natural source. Are you in a city, or a rural area?”

She hesitated, not wanting to give anything away.

He sighed. “All right. Don’t tell me. I’ll just hope you’re in a rural area. No-oct is produced by a bacterium called
Agrobacterium tumefasciens
—” He hesitated, studying her uncertainly.

“I know what bacteria are, Dr. Copeland.”

“Of course. Sorry. You’d be surprised how many people don’t.
Agrobacterium
is a plant disease. It produces crown galls. Have you seen them? They’re tumors, or swellings in plant tissue.
Agrobacterium
subverts these plant cells, forcing them to produce opines, which it metabolizes. If you can find unpigmented calluses, it should be possible to harvest opaline from the tissue. Green, photosynthetic shooty calluses will have nopaline.”

Ela stared at him, wondering how often he talked to real people. Maybe she should not have been quite so condescending about the bacteria? “I understand about half of that,” she said.

“Oh. Well, it’s simple really. If you can find crown galls growing naturally on diseased plants, they should have at least a small quantity of nopaline or octopine in them. Either one will keep your
L
ov
s alive until you can get an order of supplements.” His gaze cut to the right. He nodded. Again Ela wondered if he was with someone. “There,” he said. “I’ve made an order of no-oct for you, and I’ve attached the funds. I’m transferring the form to you now. Fill in a name and address. I’ll have no way to check where it’s to be delivered.”

The document arrived. Kathang tucked it away in a corner of the screen. Ela sensed the interview was about to end. “Wait,” she said. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. My
R
osa
can show me what crown galls are, but how do I use them? Do I
eat
these plant tumors, like I would eat a tablet?”

“I have no idea.” His brow furrowed; his eyes took on a faraway look. Again his gaze cut to the side. Again, he nodded. Definitely a
R
osa
, Ela decided.

He said: “The tablets are highly concentrated of course. I don’t think ingestion would be efficient at natural concentrations, and you wouldn’t want to eat plant galls anyway. But all
L
ov
s have membranous pores. Look for the dark spots in the image you sent me. In a fluid environment,
L
ov
s will absorb nutrients across those membranes.” He hesitated. “Try liquefying the galls, then dripping the brew directly onto the
L
ov
s. It might work.” He did not look terribly confident. “Send in the order form,” he added. “It’s your only real hope.”

After
the link closed, Kathang fetched several images of crown galls for Ela to examine. She stared at the swollen, lumpy spheres, at the grotesquely malformed shoots of infected tissue, wondering what she would have done if Copeland had ordered her to eat them. Would she have just let the
L
ov
s die? Maybe.