Now what the hell's going on? Ramo wondered. There was a shudder through the field, dropping him into darkness. [System! Turn the lights back on!]
There was no answer; but far off, something glimmered. A planet sprang into view before him, very near, its atmosphere a yellowish ochre swirl. Clouds drifted by as the framing viewpoint moved around the planet. There was no sign of human activity.
[Okay, system, I'll play,] he said, trying to sound good-humored, because who the hell knew what would make it cooperate—and what would set it off in a fit of pique? [Could you please tell me what planet this is and why we're looking at it?]
A flood of data filled his head. He reeled, caught his breath, controlled a rush of emotions. It was an unfamiliar world: there was no explanation of context. He struggled to ask questions calmly: [System—excuse me—but do you suppose you could . . . illuminate?] Silence. [System?] Silence. [Why did you let me in here if you're not going to tell me anything?]
Seconds ticked by. [Sage,] he called suddenly. [Are you there?] He looked around; he didn't much like the whiny little fellow, but he was the official guide here. But Sage was no longer in evidence.
Ramo explored further. In a dim, distant corner of the rap-field, he noted signs of Sage's presence—so ghostly faint that he almost wondered if he were imagining it. He hesitated. Even from here, he could see that he was being shunned. Fuck it, then. He'd get by on his own.
[System!] He glared at the silent, cinematic image of the planet turning before him. [How about showing me something that means something!]
There was a flicker of light on the planet's horizon, at the edge of the atmosphere where daylight and the dark of space converged. He felt a jarring sensation, and the viewpoint began to move. The planet began to loom closer. He felt as though he was dropping into the atmosphere. He tensed, caught between irritation and curiosity. A sense of anticipation brushed over him; but he realized that it was not entirely his own feeling. Whose, then? Was this a senso-simulation?
Wisps of vapor began whipping by, and he began to feel the physical sensations of entry into the atmosphere: the pressure of air against his face, the heating, the trembling in his body of reentry stresses. Why was he feeling this?
A burst of energy lanced across his left eye. He jerked back with a flash of pain and felt himself angling more steeply downward. Two more flashes of heat and light crackled by. What the hell was going on? Behind and a little above him was a spacecraft—and it was shooting at him.
It's a game, he thought, instinctively taking control and jerking hard over to the right. It's a damn simulation! His spine began shaking as the reentry stresses mounted. He hesitated, then kicked himself back into a climb. Three tracers flashed harmlessly past, but a fourth raked him amidships, and he felt an agony in his side. The pain burned in his blood; he wanted to fight back. He accelerated upward for ten heartbeats, then cut the boost and turned to fire.
Two bolts flared out of his weapons. Clean misses. The enemy, an alien-looking thing, was climbing out of the atmosphere behind him, but at a slower rate. It was actually moving ahead of him in orbit, at a lower altitude. Ramo calculated furiously how to drop behind it.
For the next two minutes, he coasted, and in the silence, it dawned on him: I'm flying this thing—I'm calculating orbits! It had to be a simulation, but it was so incredibly realistic. He felt the spacecraft's movement; he was the spacecraft; and without quite knowing why, he was grimly, fiercely determined to carry this battle to victory.
[I'll play your game,] he muttered, [but at least tell me the ground rules.]
The answer was a whisper. [The ground rule is to win. To survive.]
Win. Yes. He was itching, burning to beat that other ship. Dimly he wondered: what were these emotions? Something like anger—but different. He felt adrenaline surging, his breath growing shallow and rapid. His eyes followed the enemy craft with the acuity of an animal following its prey. That was it, he realized dimly—feral hunting instincts. His questions were fading, replaced in his brain by a cold deliberation, a merciless wedding of reflex and intuition. But what sort of instinct? Wolf? Wildcat? Falcon?
Falcon, he thought. He was tracking, coiled for an abrupt maneuver, talons at ready.
But why?
Because, a voice within him said, if you fail you could die.
As though awakening to the glittering eyes of a foe, he realized that he was in fact so tightly bound to this craft, to its mind and its spirit, that its death could indeed mean his own. He felt it with a cold certainty that only hardened his resolve to take the prey.
Against the ochre-yellow clouds, the alien craft was climbing out of the atmosphere. He noted its course, and retrofired to drop himself down. The maneuver he had in mind would be difficult, but if he could catch it during boost . . .
His nose and belly bit the atmosphere and started to glow. The alien rose as he fell, and the range closed sharply. He held his fire, even as a bolt from the enemy crackled through the haze of ionization, just missing. He held fire as the glow around him intensified . . . then let go with all weapons as he felt the alien passing . . . and felt a distant concussion. The glow of reentry blinded him then, and only slowly did it abate. Finally he broke into a clear layer of atmosphere, between two blankets of clouds. He flew straight and level, guessing that the foe would be back.
The enemy did not disappoint him. It hurtled out of the clouds like a stone, tiny against the enormous orange ceiling. It dodged and fired. Ramo banked, but the enemy dropped in an arc and spattered three shots across his nose. Enough! Ramo thought, and he pulled up savagely and jerked into a high loop, leaving his foe sliding through the air in a vain attempt to follow.
As he crested the loop, momentarily back in the clouds, he was aware of a terrible feeling of unreality. He shook the feeling—no time for that—and allowed himself to stall . . . and snapped quickly into a powered dive. As he dropped out of the clouds, he spotted the enemy sweeping laterally. He was moving too fast now to be hit, and he held his own fire, plummeting below the other before flaring out and up in an arc so tight that his stubby wings screamed in protest. He swept directly up into the alien's underside as it banked, trying to escape.
He fired point-blank and rolled away. The concussion of the blast caught him and nearly shook him apart before he could get clear. By the time he circled back, the ball of smoke that was the enemy was already dissipating. Long-range scanners noted debris dropping toward a lower layer of clouds. The smoke stung his eyes as he passed through it.
He circled, recording the scene. That wasn't so hard, he thought, thinking not of the tactics, but of having engaged and killed. There was a deep feeling of satisfaction, of hunger satiated—and a moment later, a shiver of surprise. What was he thinking? There were too many conflicting impulses in his mind. He focused on the wind and the clouds, and kept a vigil for the enemy.
Finally he lifted his nose and lit the boosters. There was a lead weight in his belly as he shot skyward; the cloud ceiling came down to meet him. Orange mists whipped his face, and then were gone, and blackness and stars returned as he climbed once more into space.
* * *
The web separated, a strand at a time. Ramo was dizzy and shockingly confused, floating in a luminous void. Where was the spacecraft? The stars? There had been a battle . . .
The internal connections that were his feelings and memories slowly reassembled, but left him with a curious emptiness. Gone were the prowling and tracking instincts, the lightning reactions; gone was the ability to fly a spacecraft. And gone was the incredible battle-lust. He was stunned by the fading memory of it. I am Ramo, an artist. I am floating, not in space, but in rap with the gnostic system. All that has happened has been internal to the system.
[You won the battle,] said a low voice, [but lost the ship.]
[What?] Ramo was startled by the voice. [What do you mean?]
[You had insufficient fuel to achieve orbit. The craft reentered the atmosphere and was lost.]
Ramo was stunned. [You're saying I flunked the simulation?]
[Why do you call it a simulation?]
[Come on—wasn't it? A test?]
[It was a test,] the voice agreed.
Ramo let the memory wash through him. It must have been a simulation, and yet—it was a very good simulation, with full senso. He recalled the animal instincts that had overtaken him, and shuddered. [Why was I connected to . . . the mind of a falcon?]
The voice said softly, [It is time now to conclude this session.]
Ramo felt the field shifting. [Wait! How about an answer?] He felt himself floating outward through the layers of the gnostic system. [If that's the way you choose to deal with it—] he snapped.
There was nothing visible now except the luminous green of the rap-field. As the glow faded and his feet touched the floor, the outlines of the room became visible; and finally the field darkened and he stood tottering on the platform, blinking and trying to focus on the two women who were reaching out to him. "Easy, there," he heard through a ringing in his ears.
Kyd and Pali guided him to a chair. He protested, wobbling, until he was seated. "All right!" He sighed. "I'm okay. Give me room to breathe."
"Are you sure you're okay?" Pali said.
"Yes! Didn't you see—?"
"Sage was pretty shaky coming out," Pali said, interrupting. He blinked, following her gaze. The young designer was seated nearby, staring at the floor. "We wanted to make sure that you were—"
"I'm fine," Ramo insisted. "Do you want to hear what I found?"
"Of course," said Kyd.
Ramo stared at her for a moment, then smiled. "I've just been through the sweetest pilot's simulator you could hope to see," he said. "A star pilot trainer. Don't ask me what it's for, and don't ask me how I got into it—but it was one fantastic simulation."
"Oh?" Pali said. She looked surprised. "That's not what Sage . . ." Her voice trailed off.
Ramo continued as though she hadn't spoken. "I don't know what to say about your sculpture, though. We must have tied into the wrong section somehow, because when we gave it the problem, it just came back with this weird interstellar stuff. And then it dropped me into that simulation. Maybe Sage saw something different—" He stopped, realizing that Kyd was gazing worriedly in Sage's direction.
"He saw something, that's for sure," Kyd murmured.
Ramo finally looked more closely. Sage's face was ashen; his hands were trembling in his lap. "What's wrong with him?" he asked.
"That's what we were hoping you could tell us," Pali said softly.