Ione.
A chaotic moan fluttered out between her lips. She was sprawled on her bed, sliding quietly into sleep. In her drowsy state, the pillow she was cuddling could so easily have been Joshua. Oh, now what, for Heaven’s sake? Can’t I even dream my fantasies anymore?
I am sorry to disturb you, but there is an interesting situation developing concerning the Kiint.
She sat up slowly, feeling stubbornly grumpy despite Tranquillity’s best efforts to emphasise its tender concern. It had been a long day, with Meredith’s squadron to deal with on top of all her normal duties. And the loneliness was starting to get to her, too. It’s all right.she scratched irritably at her hair. Being pregnant is making me feel dreadfully randy. You’re just going to have to put up with me being like this for another eight months. Then you’ll have postnatal depression to cope with.
You have many lovers to choose from. Go to one. I want you to feel better. I do not like it when you are so troubled.
That’s a very cold solution. If getting physical was all it took, I’d just swallow an antidote pill instead.
From what I observe, most human sex is a cold activity. There is an awful lot of selfishness involved.
Ninety per cent of it is. But we put up with that because we’re always looking for the other ten per cent.
And you believe Joshua is your ten per cent?
Joshua is floating somewhere between the ninety and the ten. I just want him right now because my hormones are completely out of control.
Hormonal production does not usually peak until the later months of a pregnancy.
I always was an early developer.a swift thought directed at the opaqued window allowed a dappled aquamarine light into the bedroom. She reached lethargically for her robe. All right, self-pity hour over. Let’s see what our mysterious Kiint are up to. And God help you if it isn’t important.
Lieria has taken a tube carriage to the StClément starscraper.
So bloody what?
It is not an action which any Kiint has performed before. I have to consider it significant, especially at this time.
Kelly Tirrel hated being interrupted while she was running her Present Time Reality programs. It was an activity she was indulging more often these days.
Some of the black programs she had bought were selective memory blockers, modified from medical trauma erasure programs, slithering deep into her natural brain tissue to cauterize her subconscious. They should have been used under supervision, and it certainly wasn’t healthy to suppress the amount of memory she was targeting, nor for as long. Others amplified her emotional response to perceptual stimuli, making the real world slow and mundane in comparison.
One of the pushers she’d met while she was making a documentary last year had shown her how to interface black programs with standard commercial sensenvirons to produce PTRs. Such integrations were supposedly the most addictive stim you could run. Compulsive because they were the zenith of denial. Escape to an alternative personality living in an alternative reality, where your past with all its inhibitions had been completely divorced, allowing only the present to prevail. Living for the now, yet stretching that now out for hours.
In the realms through which Kelly moved, possession and the beyond were concepts which did not nor could ever exist. When she did emerge, to eat, or pee, or sleep, the real world was the one which seemed unreal; terribly harsh by comparison to the hedonistic existence she had on the other side of the electronic divide.
This time when she exited the PTR she couldn’t even recognize the signal her neural nanonics was receiving. Memories of such things were submerged deep in her brain, rising to conscious levels with the greatest of reluctance (and taking longer each time). It was a few moments before she even understood where she was, that this wasn’t Hell but simply her apartment. The lights off, the window opaqued, the sheet on which she was lying disgustingly damp, and stinking of urine, the floor littered with disposable bowls.
Kelly wanted to plunge straight back into her electronic refuge. She was losing her grip on her old personality, and didn’t give a fuck. The only thing she did monitor was her own decay; overriding fear saw to that.
I will not allow myself to die.
No matter how badly the black stimulant programs screwed up her neurones, she wouldn’t permit herself to go completely over the edge, not physically. Before that would be zero-tau. The wonderful simplicity of eternal oblivion.
And until then, her brain would live a charmed life, providing pleasure and excitement, and not even knowing it was artificial. Life was to be enjoyed, was it not? Now she knew the truth about death, how did it matter how that enjoyment was achieved?
Her brain finally identified the signal from the apartment’s net processor. Someone was at the door, requesting admission. Confusion replaced her dazed resentful stupor. Collins hadn’t called on her to present a show for a week (or possibly longer); not since her interview with Tranquillity’s bishop when she shouted at him, angry about how cruel his God was to inflict the beyond upon unsuspecting souls.
The signal repeated. Kelly sat up, and promptly vomited down the side of the bed. Nausea swirled inside her brain, shaking her thoughts and memories into a collage which was the exact opposite of the PTR: Lalonde in all its infernal glory. She coughed as her pale limbs trembled and the scar along her ribs flamed. There was a glass on the bedside table, half full of a clear liquid which she fervently hoped was water. Her shaking hand grabbed at it, spilling a quantity before she managed to jam it to her lips and swallow. At least she didn’t throw it all back up.
Almost suffocating in misery she struggled off the bed and pulled a blanket around her shoulders. Her neural nanonics medical program cautioned her that her blood sugar level was badly depleted and she was on the verge of dehydration. She cancelled it. The admission request was repeated again.
“Piss off,” she mumbled. Light seemed to be shining straight through her eye sockets to scorch her fragile brain. Sucking down air, she tried to work out why her neural nanonics had stopped running the PTR program. It shouldn’t happen just because someone datavised her apartment’s net processor. Perhaps the slender filaments meshed with her synaptic clefts were getting screwed by her disturbed body chemistry?
“Who is it?” she datavised as she tottered unsteadily through into the main living room.
“Lieria.”
Kelly didn’t know any Lieria; at least not without running a memory cell check. She slumped down into one of her deep recliners, pulled the blanket over her legs, and datavised the door processor to unlock.
An adult Kiint was standing in the vestibule. Kelly blinked against the light which poured in around its snow-white body, gawped, then started laughing. She’d done it, she’d totally fucked her brain with the PTR.
Lieria lowered herself slightly and moved into the living room, taking care not to knock any of the furniture. She had to wriggle to fit the major section of her body through the door, but she managed it. An intensely curious group of residents peered in behind her.
The door slid shut. Kelly hadn’t ordered it to do that. Her laughter had stopped, and her shakes were threatening to return. This was actually happening. She wanted to go back into the PTR real bad now.
Lieria took up nearly a fifth of the living room, both tractamorphic arms were withdrawn into large bulbs of flesh, her triangular head was swinging slightly from side to side as her huge eyes examined the room. No housechimp had been in for weeks to clean up; dust was accumulating; the door to the kitchen was open, showing worktops overflowing with empty food sachets; a loose pile of underwear decorated one corner; her desk was scattered with fleks and processor blocks. The Kiint returned her gaze to Kelly, who curled her limbs up tighter in the recliner.
“H-how did you get down here?” was all Kelly could ask.
“I took the service elevator,” Lieria datavised back. “It was very cramped.”
Kelly started. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Use an elevator?”
“Datavise.”
“We have some command of technology.”
“Oh. Yes. It’s just . . . skip it.” Her reporter’s training began to assert itself. A private visit from a Kiint was unheard of. “Is this confidential?”
Lieria’s breathing vents whistled heavily. “You decide, Kelly Tirrel. Do you wish your public to know what has become of you?”
Kelly stiffened her facial muscles, whether to combat tears or shame she wasn’t sure. “No.”
“I understand. Knowledge of the beyond can be disturbing.”
“How did you beat it? Tell me, please. For pity’s sake. I can’t be trapped there. I couldn’t stand it!”
“I am sorry. I cannot discuss this with you.”