Distress

Was my whole life encoded in this moment—the memories I possessed, the circumstances I found myself in? Taking this much and no more as given… could I have reconstructed all the rest?

It didn't feel that way. My childhood in Sydney was unimaginable, as remote and hypothetical as the Big Bang—and even the time I'd spent in the hold on the fishing boat, and the encounter with the robot at the airport, had receded like fragments of a dream.

I'd never had cholera. I possessed no internal organs.

The stars glinted icily.

At one in the morning, the streets were still crowded, shops and restaurants still trading. Nobody seemed as somber as they should have been; maybe they still believed that they were facing nothing more than the kind of harassment they'd survived before.

There was a group of young men standing around a fountain in the square, joking and laughing. I asked them if they thought the militia would attack the airport soon. I couldn't imagine why else they'd be in such high spirits; maybe they'd be taking part, and were psyching themselves up for it.

They stared at me in disbelief. "Attack the airport? And get slaughtered?"

"It might be your only chance."

They exchanged amused glances. One of them put a hand on my shoulder and said solicitously, "Everything's going to be fine. Just keep an ear to the ground, and hang on tight."

I wondered what kind of drugs they were on-When I returned to the hospital, De Groot said, "Violet's awake. She wants to talk to you."

I went in alone. The room was dimly lit; a monitor near the head of the bed glowed with green and orange data. Mosala's voice was weak, but she was lucid.

"Will you ride in the ambulance with me?"

"If that's what you want."

"I want you to record everything. Just make good use of it, if you have to."

"I will." I wasn't sure exactly what she meant—framing EnGeneUity for her death, if it came to that? I didn't press her for details; I was weary of the politics of martyrdom.

"Karin said you went to the airport and petitioned the mercenaries on my behalf." She searched my face. "Why?"

"I was returning a favor."

She laughed softly. "What did I ever do to deserve that?"

"It's a long story." And I was no longer sure, myself, whether I'd been trying to repay Adelle Vunibobo, doing it all for technoliberation, acting out of respect and admiration for Mosala, or hoping to impress Akili by "saving the Keystone"—even if the role was beginning to sound less like a revered creator than a kind of information-theoretic Typhoid Mary.

De Groot came in with news of the flight; everything was on schedule, and it was time to leave. Two medics joined us. I stood back, filming with the shoulder camera as Mosala was moved to a trolley, monitor and drug pumps still attached.

In the garage, on the way to the ambulance, I saw half a dozen balloon-tired vehicles being loaded with medical equipment, bandages, and drugs. Maybe they were moving supplies to other sites around the city, in case the hospital was captured. It was heartening to see that not everyone was taking the invasion lightly.

We rode through the city slowly, without the siren wailing. More people were on the streets than I'd ever seen by daylight. Mosala asked De Groot for a notepad, then put it on the mattress beside her, and turned onto her side so she could type. Whatever she was doing seemed to demand intense concentration, but she spoke to me, without looking away from the screen.

"You suggested that I appoint a successor, Andrew. Someone to make sure that the work was finished. Well, I'm arranging that now."

I couldn't see the point anymore, but I didn't argue. A high-resolution scan in Cape Town would yield structures for all the viral proteins almost immediately, and precision drugs to block their actions could be designed and synthesized in a matter of hours. Proving the moderates wrong and then begging them for the cure was no longer any kind of shortcut.

Mosala glanced up at me, and spoke for the camera. "The software is working on ten canonical experiments. A full analysis of all of them, combined, will yield what used to be thought of as the ten parameters of total space—the details of the ten-dimensional geometry which underlies all the particles and forces. In modern terms… those ten experiments reveal, between them, exactly how the symmetry of pre-space is broken, for us. Exactly what it is that everything in this universe has in common."

"I understand."