"No. Climb out and get help."
"You don't have time." Ve yelled toward the loading bay; vis cry sounded weak to me—either my hearing was fading, or ve'd inhaled enough of the toxin to affect vis voice. I tried turning my head to see if there was any response; I couldn't.
Cursing my stubborness, Kuwale raised verself up and dragged me over the edge.
I sank. I was paralyzed and numb, unsure if we were still connected. The water would have been transparent if not for the air bubbles; it was like falling through flawed crystal. I desperately hoped that I wasn't inhaling—it seemed impossible to tell.
Bubbles drifted past my face in contradictory wavering streams, refusing to define the vertical. I tried to orient myself by the gradient of light, but the cues were ambiguous. All I could hear was my heart pounding— slowly, as if the toxin was blocking the pathways that should have had it racing in agitation. I had a weird sense of déjà vu; with no feeling in my skin, I felt no wetter than when I'd stood on dry land watching the image from the tunnel diver's camera. I was having a vicarious experience of my own body.
The bubbles suddenly blurred, accelerated. The turbulence around me grew brighter, then without warning my face emerged into the air, and all I could see was blue sky.
Kuwale shouted in my ear, "Are you okay? I've got you now. Try to relax." Ve sounded distant; all I could manage was an indignant grunt. "A couple of minutes, and we should be safe. My lungs are affected, but I think that's passing." I stared up into the unfathomable sky, drowning in reverse.
Kuwale splashed water over my face. I was improving; at least I could tell that I was swallowing most of it. I coughed angrily. My teeth started chattering; the water was colder than I'd imagined. "Your friends are pathetic. One amateur burglar, caught out by a backup alarm. Cholera that gets confused by a melatonin patch. Toxins that wash off in seawater. Violet Mosala has nothing to fear."
Someone grabbed my foot and dragged me under.
I counted five figures in wetsuits and scuba gear; they were all clad in polymer from ankles to wrists, and all wore gloves and hoods as well. No skin exposed. Why? I struggled weakly, but two divers held me tight, trying to thrust some kind of metal device into my face. I pushed it away.
The harvester emerged from the translucent distance, barely visible against the sunlit water, and I felt my first real shock of visceral fear. If they'd poisoned the tentacles—restored the natural gene to the engineered species—we were dead. I broke free long enough to turn and see the other three divers thrashing around Kuwale, trying to hold ver still.
One of my captors waved the device in front of me again. It was a regulator, attached to an air hose. I turned to stare at her; I could barely make out her expression through the faceplate, though Witness instantly recognized another target. The air hose led to a second tank on her back. I had no way of knowing what the tank contained—but if it was harmful, I was only minutes away from drowning anyway.
The diver's eyes seemed to say: It's your decision. Take it or leave it.
I looked around again. Kuwale's arms were tied behind vis back, and ve'd given in and accepted the unknown gas. I was still weak from the toxin, and short of breath. I had no chance of escaping.
I let them bind my hands together, then I opened my mouth and bit hard on the regulator tube. I sucked in air gratefully, reeling between panic and relief. If they'd wanted us dead, they would have run a fishing knife through our ribs by now—but I still wasn't ready for the alternative.
The harvester approached, and the divers swam forward to meet it, dragging us along. I wanted to shield my face with my hands, but I couldn't. The medusa s knot of transparent tentacles opened up around us, writhing like the pathological topologies of pre-space, like the vacuum come to life.
Then the net closed tight.
21
The harvester's toxins were enervating, but not painful. If anything, they made the ride more bearable: relaxing muscles tensed in revulsion and claustrophobia, dulling the sense of being eaten alive. The creature was probably just a commercial species, not the privately engineered weapon I'd imagined. Belatedly, I started recording; my eyes stung from the salt, but closing them gave me vertigo. I could see Kuwale and the divers guarding ver, blurred as if through frosted glass. Pacified by the toxins, cocooned in translucent jelly, we moved through the bright water.
I pictured us being winched into the air and dropped unceremoniously onto the deck, like the catch I'd seen disgorged earlier. Instead, someone relaxed the harvester with a hormonal wand while we were still in the water, and the divers hauled us up over the side, climbing rope ladders. On deck, Witness matched three more faces. No one spoke to us, and I was still too spaced-out to compose an intelligent question. The woman who'd offered me the regulator bound my feet together, then tied my hands, already joined, to Kuwale's, linking us back-to-back. Another of the divers took away our notepads, wrapped a length of (non-living) fishing net around us—threading it under our arms—then hooked it to the winch and lowered us into an empty hold. When they closed the hatch, we were in total darkness.
I felt my biochemical stupor lifting; the odor of decaying seaweed seemed to help. I waited for Kuwale to volunteer an assessment of our situation; after several minutes of silence, I said, "You know all their faces; they know all your communications codes. Now tell me who's winning the intelligence war."
Ve shifted irritably. "I'll tell you this much: I don't think they'll harm us. They're moderates; they just want us out of the way."
"While they do what?"
"Kill Mosala."
My head swam from the stench; the smelling-salts effect had outlived its usefulness and gone into reverse. "If moderates want to kill Mosala, what do the extremists have in mind?"
Kuwale didn't answer.
I stared out into the blackness. Back on the docks, ve'd insisted that the threat to Mosala had nothing to do with technoliberation. I said, "Do you want to clear up one small point of Anthrocosmological doctrine for me.
"No."
"If Mosala dies before becoming the Keystone… nothing happens, nothing changes. Right? Someone else will take her place—eventually— or we wouldn't even be here to talk about it."
No reply.
"Yet you still feel responsible for keeping her safe? Why?" I cursed myself silently; the answer had been staring me in the face ever since I'd spoken to Amanda Conroy. "These people are not the political enemies of someone who just happens to be a potential Keystone. Are they? They're a walking affront to every mainstream Anthrocosmologist— because they've stolen your ideas, and pushed them to their logical conclusion. They're AC, just like you, except that they've decided they don't want Violet Mosala as creator of the universe."
Kuwale responded venomously, "It's no 'logical conclusion.' Trying to choose the Keystone is insanity. The universe exists because the Keystone is given. Would you try to change the Big Bang?"
"No. But this act of creation still hasn't happened, has it?"
"That makes no difference. Time is a part of what is created. The universe exists—now—because the Keystone will create it."
I persisted, "But there's still room left to change things, isn't there? No one knows yet exactly which TOE is true."
Kuwale shifted again; I could feel vis body grow rigid with anger. "That's the wrong way to look at it! The Keystone is given! The TOE is fixed!"
I said, "Don't waste your breath defending the mainstream to me. I think you're all equally braindead; I'm just trying to come to grips with the more dangerous version. Don't you think I have a right to know what we're up against?"
I could hear ver breathing slowly, trying to calm verself. Then ve explained, reluctantly: "They believe that the identity of the Keystone is determined, preordained… along with everything else in history, including the killing of any 'rivals.' But determinism doesn't take away the illusion of power—have you ever known an Islamic fatalist to be passive? It's not as if the hand of God is going to reach out of the sky and make sure that they spare the Keystone—or some improbable conspiracy of fate will frustrate them, if they go after the wrong physicist. There's no need for supernatural intervention, when the whole universe and everyone in it is just a conspiracy to explain the Keystone's existence. Whoever they murder, for whatever reason, they can't get it wrong.
"So… if they kill all the rivals of the theorist with the TOE they favor, then that TOE must be the one that brings the universe into being. And whether they've really chosen anything or not, the result is the same. The TOE they want, and the TOE they get, end up being identical."
It hit me, belatedly. "And they're in Kyoto, too? You think they got to Nishide—that's why he's sick? And they got to Sarah, before she could expose them?"
"Most likely."
"Have you told the Kyoto police? Do you have people, there—?" I stopped; ve could hardly discuss countermeasures, when we were almost certainly being monitored. I said wearily, "What's so wonderful about Buzzo's TOE, anyway?"
Kuwale was derisive. "They think it leaves open a chance of access to other universes, seeded from pre-space by other Big Bangs. Mosala and Nishide both rule that out completely; other universes might still exist, but they're unreachable. Black holes, wormholes, in their TOEs, all lead back to this one cosmos."
"And they're willing to kill Mosala and Nishide—because one universe isn't enough for them?"
Kuwale protested sardonically, "Think of the infinite riches we'd be throwing away, if we chose a self-contained cosmos. Take a long-term perspective. Where would we flee to, when the Big Crunch came? One or two lives is a small price to pay for the future of all humanity, isn't it?"
I thought of Ned Landers again, trying to step outside the human race, in order to take control of it. You couldn't step outside the universe—but out-explaining every TOE theorist with Anthrocosmology, and then playing choose-your-own-creator, came close.
Kuwale said despondently, "Maybe Mosala is right to despise us, if this is where our ideas have led."
I wasn't going to argue. "Does she know? That there are ACs who want to kill her?"
"She does and she doesn't."