Mirror Space - Marianne de Pierres [56]
The taxi was surrounded. The detrivores had stopped buffeting it and had latched on to different parts, spraying it with their metal-dissolving saliva as they prepared to feast.
Tekton, sobbing now, regained some thought control and tried to employ logic-mind to find a solution to his impending death. But it remained stubbornly resistant and preoccupied.
Chaos theory. Prediction. Prediction. Balance. Logic-mind reflected on a range of concepts. Balance, Farr had emphasised. Balance had unlocked his shrine. Balance.
Then it became quite excited. Farr must have some device for prediction that could help him keep the balance. It was the only explanation.
Got it! logic-mind announced.
Too frigging late, free-mind whispered.
Tekton heard a hissing noise like hot metal plunged into water and a cold shaft of wind blew straight up between his legs.
He glanced down. The slick, insectile head of a detrivore poked up through a melted gap in the floor. He screamed and kicked at it, but the detrivore’s carapace snagged into the sole of his shoe and tore it from the upper. Another shaft of wind. Its wings unfolded through the crack.
Jump, ordered logic-mind.
What in—? But free-mind didn’t get to finish.
Jump! logic-mind insisted.
Then the floor gave way, and he and the detrivore fell free from each other.
JO-JO RASTEROVICH
Jo-Jo was alive. Conscious. That much he knew.
That was all he knew. Other than that his head felt weird; full of a kind of buzzing that wasn’t painful yet but might be, like the beginning of a narc hangover right before you got the headache.
He tried shifting his limbs.
He felt unconstrained, sort of. . . but he had no sense of movement. Or vision. His eyes were open, he thought, but he saw nothing.
Smell? No. Crap. What? He remembered that he’d run for the egress scale and the floor had trapped him like an insect fallen in something sticky. Then nothing ...
A flash of fear informed him that his brain chemistry remained the same. He wondered if he was in the floor of the chamber, subsumed into the Extro the same way the grenade had been.
The idea of it made him want to puke, if only he knew where his mouth was. He tried licking his lips but sensation eluded him.
The sense-deprivation caused his mind to fracture: one thought stream devoted solely to worrying while another began reasoning furiously.
The-Extro-had-formed-out-of-the-chamber-wall-So-if-I’ve-been-eaten-by-the-same-chamber- then-it’s-likely-that-it’s-a-part-of-something-larger-Maybe-the-whole-damn-drum-is-an-extro-the-size-of-a-space-station-How-fucking-scary-is-that-But-does-that-mean-a-single-consciousness?-or-many?-or-something-else—
The frantic thoughts were interrupted by the intrusion of a loud buzzing in his head. It sounded like an appliance about to run out of energy, a noisy, dysfunctional sound designed to grab the consumer’s attention.
You’ve-got-mine, he told the buzzing. Fuck-all-else-to-do-when-you-can’t-even-feel-your-dick.
A mournful thought, that one.
He grappled to mend the split in his conscious thought by pooling all his concentration towards the sound. It seemed to get louder as he gave it his full attention. After a time - who knows how long really, maybe no time? - the buzz turned into a wider sound. Now it was more like the random intonations of someone jackassing with their voice through an amplifier.
Moooooawwwwwoooooooaaaaa
The jackassing was worse than the buzz and Jo-Jo listened harder, hoping that it might transform again.
The next change came without warning: a sudden plunge from amplified wail into the clamour of voices, thousands, millions of them. He wanted to clamp his hands to his ears - if he could find his ears.
Shut up, he mind-screamed.
Obligingly, the voices vanished but the buzz came back, louder now, as if he’d somehow sensitised to it. He tried to think over the top of the noise but the sound seemed to have seeped into