Part 34 (1/2)
”So beautiful.”
”Real pretty for a suicide run.”
This jolted Benjamin a little. He craned to see the Eater, out somewhere near the moon. A blue speck.
”We've got boosters out the kazoo,” Sharon said. ”Hope you're ready for a roller coaster.”
”I've got a date with my girl,” he countered. ”Go ”Go.”
Now he knew why he felt so fine.
3.
Channing said, ”That phrase, 'my kernel intelligence'-I agree with Kingsley. That might be the Old One.”
”Could be. Can you reach it?”
She sensed Benjamin floating in the cowling of his sensaround as he watched/felt her. He was sending all sorts of secondary sensation-the headset pressure, visual processing cues, the wheeze of his shallow breathing. But these were just add-ons to his abstractions, or so they came to her. The miniboosters tugged at him as the craft accelerated and she heard their angry snarl. These she gobbled up, for they suddenly reminded her of how achingly far she was from her old, real body. Emotions washed over her aplenty, but she was sensation-starved.
”The cyberguys have identified a whole catalog of different 'signature' memory waves,” she said, accessing her crisp memories. ”The Old One has a trademark bunch of Alfven waves tagging its parts, as nearly as they can make out. Those tags are all over the dipolar shape of the fields. A diffuse storage method. Probably to give it a holographic quality.”
”So we can kill part of it, maybe, but not all.”
”Smart b.a.s.t.a.r.d, it is.”
”This 200 gigaHertz band works beautifully,” he said mildly, the mellow tones telling her that they had done a good job on him. He had weathered the trip untroubled. ”You're so...full.”
”I love having you so close.”
Somehow he was now more deeply embedded in the s.p.a.ce of her perceptions. Like pale sunlight beams lancing through her 3-D self. The cyberfellas had been sharpening the software again.
”What's that music?”
”Oh.” She felt the rhythm eddying through her, called up by his notice of it. ”I have it all the time, I guess. Music integrates parts of the mind that make sense of memory, of timing and language. It retools me. When I started up here, I thought it was pointless, working in areas with no real use, like motor control. Until I found that the designers used those parts to pilot my Searchers. Thrifty guys.”
”It's more than music, isn't it. It's...”
”Feeling? Yeah, I caught on to that once I used it some. The story they fed me is, there must've been neural mechanisms that deciphered music in the early hominid brain. That may have developed as a way to communicate emotion before language came along.”
”Wow, it feels different.”
”Yeah, somebody's going to make a bundle selling this, once it gets out of the R&D stage.”
Their chat flowed easily, part of reintegrating with him. Sensory input laced with meaning, weaving a comfy fabric around them both. Two of my favorites Two of my favorites-clothes and s.e.x...
An echoing voice boomed suddenly, ”Channing? Benjamin? This is Kingsley.”
It came as a dash of chilly rainwater on a hot skillet. They both flinched. ”Yuh, yes?” she managed.
”Sorry to break in-”
”I'm surprised you can,” Benjamin said. ”Pretty narrowband, though.”
”That's the point of having you up there. I may fall out at any time. All the monster has to do is throw a plasma screen between us.”
”Your signal's pretty jittery now,” Channing said. ”Losing the low frequencies. That checks with a plasma cloak just a little too low in density.”
”I'll be quick. Pretty rough here, it is. This signal has to go out on an undersea cable and then through a chain of satellites.”
”Everybody okay?”
His hesitation told her all she wanted to know. ”As well as can be expected.”
”Judging from what I can see,” Channing said, ”I'd say get away from the Center. There's a tube of plasma flow pinning the islands like a needle.”
”And low-frequency electromagnetic stuff,” Benjamin said. ”I can see it on the displays in front of me.”
”We have little choice. Arno's arranged a bolt hole for us if it gets bad.”
”Arno must be pretty pumped,” Benjamin said.
”Indeed. He wants me to provide interface on this.”
”You can see the Eater?”
”No, nothing. It's good at blinding us. But I do know that, using a relay through the Navy, we've started the plasma dumping.”
Channing felt/saw/smelled it already-a spike of barium ionization at the nearer edge of the Eater's magnetosphere. Like a puke-green worm eating at a fat blue apple. And the dwindling motes of Searchers who had delivered the barium, zapped by the Eater within moments. But they had worked.
”Think that'll drive it?” Benjamin asked. She could feel him sending edgy, exploring fingers through her sensorium.
”We hope so,” Kingsley said. His voice was flat, low-quality, riding a meager trail of bits. ”It's been following a slow trajectory outward, and Arno believes this will look like another ineffectual failure of an attack.”
Channing said doubtfully, ”To edge it around the moon.”
”I'll admit, this is wholly conjectural,” Kingsley said.
”Like me and my life,” she said.
Benjamin asked, ”We're sure sure it can't decode these transmissions?” it can't decode these transmissions?”
”They are going under a screen signal. Even if it can penetrate that, we have already laid down a pattern strongly suggesting that you are a feint. So it may very well discount what it can decipher.”
”More Waterloo thinking,” Benjamin said cryptically. ”I still-”