When Sage stumbled out of the rapture-field, the only thing that kept him from falling headlong to the floor was a nearby console. He grabbed and steadied himself, breathing heavily. He had never before felt such exhaustion. His vision was doubled and blurred. He closed his eyes and rested for a moment with his head bowed. Then he looked up. Who was that at the control board?
He forced himself upright. "Who are y—?" He caught himself, squinting. It was nothing but a shadow, a wall partition. He was alone here.
He collapsed, shivering, into a chair and rubbed his eyes. What in God's name had he just been doing? He was sweaty and chilled, and he felt a sharp tension-pain in the back of his neck. It was the middle of the night. Why was he here? Memory hovered just out of reach as he struggled to think. He had been with Ramo . . .
And they had done something . . . (what?) . . . to the core of the gnostic system.
Or was that all a dream? It was a preposterous notion, except that he was here, and there was a dim memory edging into his consciousness of the core's telling him of danger, and need . . . and thanking him when they were done. Beyond that was a blur. If only he could remember . . .
Had he really been with Ramo? How?
What had they done in the core?
He ought to try to find out. But he was so tired, and his head hurt, and it was all he could do just to sit upright. Maybe after he'd rested a few minutes—if no one came in—he'd see if he could reconstruct the details. Yes. But first, rest . . .
* * *
Ramo blinked his eyes open as he floated across the senso-field, and found himself sailing into Kyd's arms. Kyd? She caught him before he could form another thought; then she pushed him to arm's length, steadying him in the senso-field.
"What's going on?" Ramo whispered. "What are you doing here?" His own voice sounded odd to him, and Kyd looked at him curiously, and he shivered and looked around. They were alone in the senso. But that was impossible. It had been full of people when he was dancing, before he—
Before he what?
Kyd was staring at him as if he had two heads.
He twitched. Before he what? Before he had been contacted by the core of the gnostic system . . . before he'd been drafted into some insane—
"Ramo, what were you doing?" Kyd asked suddenly, her voice cutting through his thoughts.
"What?" he asked stupidly.
She shook him by the shoulders. "I've been trying to get your attention for an hour! What were you doing?"
"Well . . . I don't . . ." It was starting to come back to him now—not the details, but the central fact. Dear God, had he really been shanghaied by the gnosys? Had they done . . . something . . . to the core?
"Ramo—" Kyd's gaze narrowed, and for a moment he thought she must know everything; she could read it in his eyes; maybe everyone who had been in the senso knew. But that couldn't—
"Ramo, snap out of it!"
He blinked rapidly. He couldn't quite seem to focus on her, couldn't get his mind off that fuzzy image of what he and Sage had done. Wait a minute: Sage?
"Come down out of the field with me," Kyd said. "The club is closing, and I want to talk to you."
He agreed wordlessly and followed her down the glowing shaft of light. The sudden return of gravity, his own weight, made him stumble—he was unaccountably weary . . . if only he could sit down—but Kyd propelled him directly toward the exit. He followed in a daze, oblivious to other people; he felt as though he had been fighting all night (fighting something—but what? and why?) and he did not want to fight any longer. From the lobby, Kyd flagged a cab and they climbed in together. "Tell it where you live," Kyd said.
Ramo started to ask why—then shrugged and told the autopilot and fell back in his seat as the cab rose into the air. "You don't have to kidnap me if you just want to come home with me," he murmured lamely.
"I'll keep that in mind," Kyd said without humor. "All I want right now is to know whether you've talked to anyone about your rap-session with Sage the other day."
Ramo sighed, gazing out the window at the passing city. He suddenly wished he could get away from this aggravating woman. "No," he said finally. "Why would I?"
"I don't know. But that's why I came tonight—to talk to you, to make sure you knew to keep mum. Ramo, are you listening to me?"
He shrugged. The cab tilted, altering course for its descent toward the north side of the city. He peered across the gloomy interior at Kyd. She looked meek and small in the near darkness, but he knew better. "What's the big deal?"
Kyd stared at him, unblinking. "That's what I'd like to know. What were you doing back there in the senso?"
He shrugged again, thinking it would sound crazy, it would sound criminal. Should he tell her? "I don't think you'd believe me," he answered. She gazed at him without reply. A tone of accusation crept into his voice. "It's because of your hiring me that this happened," he said. And without consciously deciding to do so, he found himself telling her—as much of it as he could remember.
Kyd interrupted him halfway through. "Cab!" she snapped. "Circle—don't land." She prompted him to continue. He told her that he and Sage had altered something—what, exactly, he wasn't sure—in the structure of the gnostic core. "You and Sage?" she asked incredulously. He nodded. "Where is Sage?" she demanded. "Where was he working from?"
Ramo frowned. It hadn't occurred to him to ask. "I guess he was in the regular rap-field," he said. "I don't actually know."
"My God," Kyd murmured. "If the ComPol gets wind of this . . ." She leaned forward suddenly and punched out a number on the cab's phone. Ramo felt the cab bank, vibrating as it turned in a lazy figure eight. "Be there, Sage," she prayed.
Ramo heard the phone warble five times. Then there was a click. "Yes?" said a groggy-sounding voice.
"Sage?" Kyd said.
There was a hesitation. "Yes."
"This is Kyd. Are you alone?"
There was a tone of relief in his voice. "Yes."
"Ramo's with me, Sage. He's told me what happened." She paused, and Ramo was aware of the sound of air rushing past the cab. "Stay right where you are. Don't talk to anyone. We're coming over." She spoke to the autopilot and gave it a change of address. The cab rose, accelerating, as Kyd began punching a second number on the phone.
* * *
Sage rose as he heard the footsteps outside. This time, would it be them? He was a nervous wreck; three times already he had heard people moving through the halls and no one had come in.
When he heard Ramo's voice outside, he hit the door plate. The door blinked open, and Ramo and Kyd hurried in. "Pali's coming right over," Kyd said. She stopped and peered at him. "Christ, you look terrible! You'd better sit down!" She looked around uneasily. "Can we turn on some lights in here?"
Sage shrugged. He'd scarcely been aware that he was sitting in just a small pool of light in one corner of the room. He squinted as the lights came on, and he glanced at Ramo, who was looking around irritably. He met Ramo's brown eyes for an instant, and something like understanding passed between them; then it parted like smoke as Ramo's gaze shifted away. A moment of comradeship, anyway. Ramo looked as though he'd had a rough night, too. But he'd had Kyd to keep him company, Sage thought with a surge of envy.
"Sage, what happened?" Kyd asked, for what he realized suddenly was the second time.
"Well . . ." He cleared his throat. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "It's hard to explain." He tried to explain, anyway—haltingly—starting with the core's strange tap on his phone. Pali arrived midway through the story, and he had to start all over from the beginning, with Pali gazing from one person to another in horrified disbelief. He felt chilled telling the story, and warmed himself by rubbing his arms. He told them everything he could remember, but when he got to the actual changes they had made in the system, he began to falter. He had only a bewildering recollection of dozens, maybe hundreds, of disconnected actions.
Pali was distinctly unhappy with his account. "What about you?" she snapped to Ramo.
"I don't remember, either," Ramo said. His manner was unusually muted. He explained how he had gotten into the system in the first place—not at his own behest, he emphasized. Pali listened incredulously. She began pacing.
"I can't believe it," she said finally. "You're two bright guys, practically geniuses, and yet neither one of you can remember what you just did—which, by the way, could probably put you both away for twenty years. If they psych-scan you, do you think you'll remember then?"
Sage shuddered and tried to speak. He wanted to say that it was the core that had wanted all of this, and it was because of the war, and how could they be held responsible . . . ? He finally grunted, finding his voice. "Most of our knowledge was dependent on the enhancements," he whispered hoarsely. "When we left rap, we lost that—thousands of details. Even the basic strategy was locked in with the enhancements." And was that, he wondered suddenly, part of the core's plan? To keep them from remembering too much? There was one thing he did remember, but he was afraid to voice it. Free will.
"Let me get this straight," Pali said. She shook her head. "Oh, Jesus, this is crazy. It's just madness. Here it is, the middle of the night and none of us can think straight." She sighed grimly. "We're going to have to make a report on this, you know. I think it's safe to say that we're all going to regret what's happened. Maybe the fact that the core contrived to get you to do this . . . I don't know. If it has to do with that goddam secret war . . . Jesus, who knows?" She chewed her fingernails for a moment, then covered her face wearily with her hands.
Sage wasn't paying much attention. He was thinking about the core and wondering just what it was they had done, what kind of free will they had bestowed upon it.
He was wondering what the core was up to now while the four of them talked on into the night.