Pink Noise - Leonid Korogodski [25]
Their shared dreamspace transformed, the sunlight playing gaily on the surface of a lake, a bare inch above them. Bare microns of untreated skin concealing as of yet inactive metasilk. How far, between their minds?
“Lough-an-Leagh,” the girl spoke. “Lake of Healing. The black mud from its bottom cures all the world.”
Black mud? Indeed, all things are in reverse in Heaven.
In reverse? the girl said.
So, they already shared the space of thought. Yes, in reverse. He gave a mental smile. Up where shadows are white.
After today, the two of them would never be the same. It wasn’t totally unlike two deaths, one birth. It was the time of their coming out, their twasa. For their initiation ceremony, every novice isangoma had to learn a special dance. Smeared with medicine and ashes, trembling with their entire bodies.
The confession dance—for every dream they had forgotten.
It was hard to learn. He hoped they had done their best.
Will it be painful? the girl asked.
No, not really. Their nerves were sure to complain, all over the body, at the time of their transformation when he activated metasilk and the internal mods. But he prepared to block certain pathways in their brain’s anterior cingulate cortex—just for a short time, till he trained the neurons to accept the new reality. Pain wasn’t a sensation. Pain was an emotion that came together with sensation. But they could be separated.
We’ ll feel everything, except it won’t hurt.
No, no. I mean the Fairy.
He sighed. What if the Fairy was sentient? And yet, they had no chance without her help. They had to let the Fairy loose in the internal networks of the castle. How long until the Fairy breakout would be neutralized?
Perhaps, she will escape? He tried to smile.
She won’t.
The girl appeared before his inner eye, in white—an apparition floating above inverted waters, red loose hair streaming. Close as they were already, Nathi found that he missed the distancing aspect of sight.
I have forgotten much, she said. About my family. But I remember our bean sidhe. Among my people, many ancient families are followed by one.
Yes, Nathi knew what a banshee was. She warns when someone is to die.
I know many think that she is evil, but she’s not! The apparition frowned. If she was, why would she cry them so mournfully? She is a friend.
Like an ancestor shade.
Old stories say she used to visit our world, just like the fairies. These days, she only keens over e- World connections, said the girl. I heard her once.
When you…?
She shook her head. No. Those doomed to die can’t hear her. The apparition reached for him. A touch. Keep watch for mine.
He hoped he would not succumb to the temptation not to die—but to run back into e-World, to live. For him, to die or not to die would always be a choice. For one last time, he looked at the girl’s face through the impassive monitors. Serene. While outside their locked room, the castle—their high-tech prison—waited, quiescent.
The first few milliseconds may decide their fate.
A brief scan, final checks. He had injected some water just below their skin, in preparation for the trip. He’d also left a few backdoors in the control equipment of the transport tubes. It was his job to hack their way around electronic obstacles.
He wondered if any posthumans guarded their prison, thinking this was just a game. What would they think he was, a zombie breaking with its masters? An escaping revenant?
He sent a signal out, “Entering phase one,” and gave the final orders to the nanobots, initiating their transformation.
Time to dance.
Sina, sangoma! he said. Sina, kubengathi awukaze wasina maphambilini.
Dance, as you have never danced before.
Their breathing stopped.
In front of monitors, the girl in a coma opened her eyes.
6
EVEN AS A HUMAN, GILLES WAS CURSED WITH THE PECULIAR ability to feel the angst, despair, pain of others as his own. So while the other posthumans flocked to rollercoaster sims like Apocalypse or