Wingrove, David - Chung Kuo 02 (35 page)

Her face was all
concern. "Oh, Ben, I'm sorry ..."

Then they were
laughing, clutching each other, Ben's hand held out to one side as he
embraced her. And outside, more distantly, moving away from them now,
the call came again.

"Ben . . .
! Meg . . . !"

* *
*

BETH STOOD in
the gateway at the bottom of the lower garden, relaxed, her apron
tied loosely about her dress, waiting for them. She had let her hair
down and she was smiling.

"Where were
you?" she said as they came up to her. "I was looking
everywhere. Didn't you hear me calling?"

Meg looked away,
but Ben went straight to his mother. "We were in the barn,"
he said casually. "It was warm in there and musty. We were
talking, then we fell asleep. We must have missed you calling."

"I see,"
she said, smiling, ruffling his hair.

"I'm
sorry," he said, falling in beside her while Meg walked on
ahead. "Lunch isn't spoiled, I hope."

Beth smiled and
shook her head. "I wasn't calling you for lunch. It's your
father. He's home."

Meg turned.
"Daddy . . ." Then, without a further word, she raced up
the slope and disappeared inside the house.

Ben walked
beside his mother, taking her arm. "Is he okay?"

"What do
you mean?"

Ben stopped,
looking at her. Her voice had seemed strange, her answer too
defensive. His query had been politeness, but she had taken it for
something more meaningful.

"What's
wrong with him?" he asked.

Beth looked
away. "I don't know. He seems much older, somehow. Tired."
She shrugged.

"Perhaps
it's overwork. Things have been bad in there."

"Yes . . ."
She smiled wistfully. "Maybe that's it."

They walked on.
Up ahead, from inside the cottage, they could hear Meg's squeals of
delight. Then she appeared, cradling what looked like a tiny,
animated fur hat. She thrust the bundle at Ben.

"Isn't he
just adorable?"

Ben held the
kitten up to his face, meeting its strange, alien eyes. "Hello
there, Mog. I'm Ben."

Meg took the
kitten back at once. "Don't hurt him. And it's not Mog. It's
Zarathustra."

"Of
course." Ben reached out and rubbed the kitten between the ears,
then moved past Meg into the doorway.

His father was
sitting just inside, in the deep shadow of the hallway. Seeing Ben,
his face creased into a smile.

"Ben! How
are you, lad?"

"I'm fine,"
he answered, moving inside, feeling his mother's hand on his
shoulder. "And you, Father?"

"I've been
busy. Run ragged, you might say. I feel like I've put the whole world
to rights these last few days."

Hal Shepherd sat
back in the tall-backed, armless chair, his arms stretched wide in a
gesture of expansiveness. The old fire still burned in his eyes, but
Ben could see at once that he was ill. He saw the lines of tiredness
and strain, the redness at the comer of his eyes, the way his muscles
stood out at his neck when he spoke, and knew it was more than simple
fatigue.

"The
kitten's beautiful. What is it? GenSyn?"

Hal shook his
head. "No, Ben. It's a real kitten. We confiscated its parents
from Madam Moore the day the warrant was signed for her husband's
arrest. It seems there are a few cats left in the Wilds. Moore must
have smuggled it in through quarantine for her."

"Or bribed
his way."

"More
likely . . ." Hal took a deep breath—awkwardly, Ben
thought—then smiled again. "I brought something back for
you, too, Ben."

"A dog?"

Hal laughed, for
a moment almost his old, vital self. "Now that
would
be
something, wouldn't it? But no, I'm afraid not. Although I've a
feeling that, as far as you're concerned, you. might find it a lot
more interesting than a dog."

"What is
it?"

Hal's smile
remained while he studied his son; as if this was a sight he had not
expected to see again. Then with a brief glance past him, at Beth, he
said, "It's downstairs. In the cellar workrooms. I've rigged one
of them up ready for you to try."

Ben frowned,
trying to work out what his father meant, then he understood. "It's
a
pai pi!
You've brought back a
pai pi
!"

"Not one,
Ben. Eight of them."

"Eight!"
Ben laughed, astonished. "Christ! Where did you get them? I
thought they'd all been destroyed years ago. They've been banned for
more than sixty years, haven't they?"

"That's
right. But there are collectors among the Above. Men who secretly
hold on to banned technology. These were found in the collection of a
First-Level Executive."

Ben understood
at once. "The Confiscations . . ."

"Exactly.
The man was a Dispersionist. We were going to destroy them; but when
I told Li Shai Tung of your interest, he signed a special order
permitting me to take them out of the City. Here in the Domain, you
see, the Edict has no power. We Shepherds can do as we wish."

"Can I try
one now?"

Beth, her hand
still on Ben's shoulder, answered for her husband. "Of course.
Meg and I will get dinner ready while you're downstairs."

Meg, coming in
from outside, protested. "That's unfair! Why can't I join them?"

Hal laughed.
"Well . . . Ben might be a bit embarrassed."

"What do
you mean?" Meg asked, cuddling the struggling kitten under her
chin.

"Just that
it's a full-body experience. Ben has to be naked in the harness."

Meg laughed. "Is
that all?" She turned away slightly, a faint color in her
cheeks. "He was practically naked when he was working with the
morph."

Hal looked at
his son, narrowing his eyes. "You've been using the morph, Ben?
What for?"

"I'll tell
you," Ben said, watching Meg a moment, surprised by her sudden
rebelliousness. "But later. After I've tried the
pai pi."

* *
*

the cellars
beneath the cottage had been added in his great-greatgrandfather's
time, but it was only in the last decade that his father had set up a
studio in one of the large, low-ceilinged rooms. Beneath stark
artificial lighting, electronic equipment filled two-thirds of the
floor space, a narrow corridor between the freestanding racks leading
to a cluttered desk by the far wall. To the left of the desk a
curtain had been drawn across, concealing the open space beyond.

Ben went
through. The
eight pai pi
lay on the desk, the small, dark,
rectangular cases small enough to fit into the palm of his hand. He
picked them up, one at a time, surprised by the weight of them. They
looked like lozenges or like the "chops" executives used to
seal official documents, each one imprinted with the logo of the
manufacturing company.
Pai
pi
—the name meant,
literally, "a hundred pens"— provided full-body
experiences, a medium that had blossomed briefly in the earliest days
of the City as an entertainment for the very rich. The cassettes
themselves were only the software, the operational instructions; the
hardware stood off to one side.

Hal pulled back
a curtain. "There! What do you think?" The couch was a work
of art in itself, its curved, boatlike sides inlaid in pearl and
ivory, the dark, see-through hood shaped like the lid of an ancient
sarcophagus. At present the hood was pulled back, like a giant
insect's wing, exposing the padded interior. Dark blue silks—the
same blue-black the sky takes on before the dark— masked the
internal workings of the machine, while depressed into the padded
silk was a crude human shape. Like the instruments of some delicious
mechanism of torture, fine filaments extended from all parts of the
depression, the threadlike wires clustered particularly thickly about
the head. These were the "hundred pens" from which the art
form derived its name, though there were only eighty-one in
actuality. When the machine was operational, these input points fed
information to all the major loci of nerves in the recipient's body.

"It's
beautiful," said Ben, going close and examining the couch with
his fingers. He bent and sniffed at the slightly musty innards. "I
wonder if he used it much?"

It was a
deceptively simple device. A tiny, one-man dream palace. You laid
down and were connected up; then, when the hood was lowered, you
began to dream. Dreams that were supposed to be as real as waking.

He turned,
facing his father again. "Have you tried it out?"

"One of the
technicians did. With permission, of course."

"And?"

Hal smiled. "Why
don't you get in? Try it for yourself."

He hesitated,
then began to strip off, barely conscious of his father watching, the
fascination of the machine casting a spell over him. Naked, he
turned, facing his father. "What now?"

Hal came up
beside him, his movements slower, heavier, than Ben remembered, then
bent down beside the machine and unfolded a set of steps.

"Climb
inside, Ben. I'll wire you up."

Fifteen minutes
later he was ready, the filaments attached, the hood lowered. With an
unexpected abruptness it began.

He was walking
in a park, the solid shapes of trees and buildings surrounding him on
every side. Overhead the sky seemed odd. Then he realized he was
inside the City and the sky was a ceiling fifty
ch'i
above
him. He was aware of the ghostly sense of movement in his arms and
legs, of the nebulous presence of other people about him, but nothing
clear. Everything seemed schematic, imprecise. Even so, the overall
illusion of walking in a park was very strong.

A figure
approached him, growing clearer as it came closer, as if forming
ghostlike from a mist of nothingness. A surly-looking youth, holding
a knife.

The youth's
mouth moved. Words came to Ben, echoing across the space between
them.

"Hand over
your money or I'll cut you!"

He felt his body
tense, his mouth move and form words. They drifted out from him,
unconnected to anything he was thinking.

"Try and
get it, scumbag!"

Time seemed to
slow. He felt himself move backward as the youth lunged with the
knife. Turning, he grabbed the youth's arm and twisted, making the
knife fall from his hand. He felt a tingle of excitement pass through
him. The moment had seemed so real, the arm so solid and actual. Then
the youth was falling away from him, stumbling on the ground, and he
was following up, his leg kicking out, straight and hard, catching
the youth in the side.

He felt the two
ribs break under the impact of his kick, the sound—exaggerated
for effect—seeming to fill the park. He moved away—back
to normal time now— hearing the youth moan, then hawk up blood,
the gobbet richly, garishly red.

He felt the urge
to kick again, but his body was moving back, turning away, a wash of
artificial satisfaction passing through him.

Then, as
abruptly as it began, it ended.

Through the
darkened glass of the hood he saw the dark shape of his father lean
across and take the cassette from the slot. A moment later the
catches that held down the hood were released with a hiss of air and
the canopy began to lift.

"Well? What
do you think?"

"I don't
know," Ben answered thoughtfully. "In some ways it's quite
powerful. For a moment or two the illusion really had me in its
grasp. But it was only for a moment."

"What's
wrong with it, then?"

Ben tried to sit
up but found himself restrained.

"Here, let
me do that."

He lay back,
relaxing as his father freed the tiny suction pads from the flesh at
the back of his scalp and neck.

"Well. . ."
Ben began, then laughed. "For a start it's much too crude."

Hal laughed with
him. "What did you expect, Ben? Perfection? It was a complex
medium. Think of the disciplines involved."

"I have
been. And that's what I mean. It lacks all subtlety. What's more, it
ends at the flesh."

"How do you
mean?"

"These . .
." He pulled one of the tiny suckers from his arm. "They
provide only the vaguest sensation of movement. Only the shadow of
the actuality. If they were somehow connected directly to the nerves,
the muscles, then the illusion would be more complete. Likewise the
connections at the head. Why not input them direct into the brain?"

"It was
tried, Ben. They found that it caused all kind of problems."

"What kind
of problems?"

"Muscular
atrophy. Seizures. Catalepsy."

Ben frowned. "I
don't see why. You're hardly in there longer than three minutes."

"In that
case, yes. But there were longer tapes. Some as long as half an hour.
Continual use of them brought on the symptoms."

"I still
don't see why. It's only the sensation of movement, after all."

"One of the
reasons they were banned was because they were so addictive.
Especially the more garish productions, the sex and violence stims,
for instance. After a while, you see, the body begins to respond to
the illusion: the lips form the words, the muscles make the
movements. It's that unconscious mimicry that did the damage. It led
to loss of control over motor activity and, in a few cases, to
death."

Ben peeled the
remaining filaments from his body and climbed out.

"Why were
the tapes so short?"

"Again,
that's due to the complexity of the medium. Think of it, Ben. It's
not just a question of creating the visual backdrop—the
environment—but of synchronizing muscular movement to fit into
that backdrop."

"Nothing a
good computer couldn't do, surely?"

"Maybe. But
only if someone were skilled enough to program it to do the job in
the first place."

Ben began to
pull his shirt on, then paused, shaking his head. "There were
other things wrong with it, too. The hood, for instance. That's
wrong. I had a sense all the while of the world beyond the machine.
Not only that, but there was a faint humming noise—a
vibration—underlying everything. Both things served to
distance me from the illusion. They reminded me, if only at some
deep, subconscious level, that I
was
inside a machine. That it
was
a fiction."