A hundred meters further on, they came to a second door, which opened to admit them into a well of darkness.
Take it easy. Step step step, two more … In pitchdarkness, ‘4712425’ was guiding Bobby and Kate down a short staircase.
He could sense the room before him, from echoes and scent: it was large, the walls hard-plaster, painted over perhaps-with a sound-deadening carpet on the floor. There was a scent of food and hot drinks. And there were people here: he could smell their mixed scent, hear the soft rustle of their bodies as they moved around.
I’m getting better at this, he thought. Another couple of years I won’t need to use my eyes at all.
They reached the base of the stairs. Single room maybe fifteen meters square, ‘4712425’ handspelled now. Two doors off at the back. Toilets. People here, eleven twelve thirteen fourteen, ail adults. Windows opaqueable. That was a common ruse; rooms which were kept dark continually were liable to become renowned as nests of Refugees.
Think okay, Kate spelled out now. Food here and beds. Come on. She began to tug at her ‘Shroud, and then at the jumpsuit she was wearing beneath.
With a sigh, Bobby began to follow suit. He handed his clothes one by one to ‘4712425,’ who added them to a rack he couldn’t see. Then, naked save for their heat masks, they joined hands once more and entered the group, all of them anonymous in their nudity. Bobby expected that he would even exchange his heat mask before the meeting was over, the further to confuse those who might choose to watch them.
They were greeted- Hands-male and female, noticeably different in texture-fluttered at Bobby’s face. At last somebody picked him out-he had the holistic impression of a woman, fiftyish, shorter than he was-and her hands, small and clumsy, stroked his face, hands and wrists.
Thus, touching in the darkness, the Refugees tentatively explored each other. Recognition-sought with difficulty, confirmed with caution, even reluctance-was based not on names, or faces, or visual or audible labels, but on more intangible, subtler signs: the shape of a person in the dark before him, her scent-ineradicable and characteristic despite layers of dirt or the most vigorous washing-her firmness or weakness of touch, her modes of communication, her warmth or coolness, her style.
At his first such encounter Bobby had cowered, shrinking in the dark from every touch. But it was a far from unpleasant way to greet people. Presumably-Kate had diagnosed for him-all this nonverbal stuff, the touching and stroking, appealed to some deep animal level of the human personality.
He began to relax, to feel safe.
Of course the anonymity of the Refugee communities was sought out by cranks and criminals-and the communities were relatively easy to infiltrate by those seeking others who hid, for good or ill. But in Bobby’s experience the Refugees were remarkably effective at self-policing. Though there was no central coordination, it was in everyone’s interest to maintain the integrity of the local group and of the movement as a whole. So bad guys were quickly identified and thrown out, as were federal agents and other outsiders.
Bobby wondered if this might be a model for how human communities might organize themselves in the wired-up, WormCammed, interconnected future: as loose, self-governing networks, chaotic and even inefficient perhaps, but resilient and flexible. As such, he supposed, the Refugees were no more than an extension of groupings like the MAS networks and Bombwatch and the truth squads, and even earlier groupings like the amateur sky watchers who had turned up the Wormwood.
And, with their taboos and privacy being stripped away by the WormCam, perhaps humans were reverting to an earlier form of behavior. The Refugees spoke by grooming, like chimpanzees. Suffused by the warmth and scent and touch and even the taste of other people, these gatherings were extremely sensual, and even at times erotic-Bobby had known more than one such gathering descend to a frank orgy, though he and Kate had made their (nonverbal) apologies before getting too involved.
Being a Refugee, then, wasn’t such a bad thing. And it was certainly better than the alternatives on offer for Kate.
But it was a shadow life.
It was impossible to stay in one place for very long, impossible to own significant possessions, impossible even to grow too close to anyone else, for fear of betrayal. Bobby knew the names of only a handful of the Refugees he’d met in his three years underground. Many had become comrades, offering invaluable help and advice, especially at the beginning, to the two helpless neophytes Mary had rescued. Comrades, yes, but without a minimum of human contact, it seemed, they could never be true friends.
The WormCam couldn’t necessarily deprive him of his liberty or his privacy, but, it seemed, it could wall off his humanity.
Suddenly Kate was tugging at his arm, ramming her fingers into his palm. Found her. Mary, Mary is here. Over here. Come come come.
Startled, Bobby let himself be led forward.
She was sitting alone in a corner of the room.
Bobby explored the setup, lightly, with his fingers.
She was clothed, wearing a jumpsuit- There was a plate of food, cooling and untouched, at her side. She wasn’t wearing a heat mask.
Her eyes were closed. She didn’t respond to the touches, but he sensed she wasn’t asleep.
Kate poked grumpily at Bobby’s palm … Might as well wear neon sign here I am come get me …
Is she okay?
Don’t know can’t tell.
Bobby picked up his sister’s limp hand, massaged it, and handspelled her name, over and over. Mary Mary Mary, Mary Mays, Bobby here, Bobby Patterson, Mary Mary-
Abruptly, she seemed to come awake. ‘Bobby?’
He could sense the shocked, deepened silence around the room. It was the first word anybody had spoken aloud since they had arrived here- Kate, beside him, reached forward and clamped her hand over Mary’s mouth.
Bobby found Mary’s hand and let her spell to him.
Sorry sorry. Distracted. She lifted his hand to her mouth, and he felt her lips pull up into a smile. Distracted and happy, then. But that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Happy meant careless.
What happened to you?
Her smile broadened. Not supposed to be happy, big brother?
Know what I mean.
Implant, she replied simply.
Implant what implant?
Cortical.
Oh, he thought, dismayed. Rapidly he relayed the information to Kate.
Shit bad shit, Kate signed. Illegal.
Know that.
… Jamaica, Mary signed to him now.
What?
Cell friend in Jamaica. See through his eyes, hear through his ears. Better than London. Mary’s touch in his hand was delicate, an analogue of a whisper.
The new cortical implants, adapted from neural implant VR apparatus, were the final expression of WormCam technology: a small squeezed-vacuum wormhole generator, together with neural sensor apparatus, buried deep in the cortex of the recipient. The generator was laced with neurotropic chemicals so that, over several months, the recipient’s neurons would grow pathways into the generator. And the neural sensor was a highly sensitive neuron activity pattern analyzer, capable of pinpointing individual neuronal synapses.
Such an implant could read and write to a brain, and link it to others. By a conscious effort of will, an implant recipient could establish a WormCam connection from the center of her own mind to any other recipient’s.
Armed with the implants, a new linked community was emerging from the Arenas and the truth squads and other swirling maelstroms of thought and discussion that had come to characterize the new, young, worldwide polity- Brains joined to brains, minds linked.
They called themselves the Joined.
It was, Bobby supposed, a bright new future. What it amounted to here and now, however, was an eighteen-year-old girl, his sister, with a wormhole in her head.
You scared, signed Mary now. Horror stories. Group mind. Lose soul. Blah blah.
Hell yes.
Fear unknown. Maybe-
But suddenly Mary pulled back from him and got to her feet. Bobby reached out blindly, found her head, but she pulled away, was gone.
All over the room, at exactly the same moment, others had moved. It was like a flock of birds rising as one from a tree.
There were slivers of light as the front door was opened.
Come on, Bobby signed. He grabbed Kate’s hand and they made their way with the rest toward the door.
Scared, Kate signed as they walked, hurriedly. You scared. Cold palm. Pulse. Can tell.
He was scared, he conceded. But not of the abrupt detection; they had been through situations like this before, and a group in a safe house like this always had an elaborate system of WormCam-equipped sentries. No, it wasn’t detection or even capture he was scared of.
It was the way Mary and the others had acted as one. A single organism. Joined.
He slid into his ‘Shroud.
Chapter 26 – THE GRANDMOTHERS
In the Wormworks, David sat before a large wallmounted SoftScreen.