Greg Bear: Mariposa

Maybe it was unique to him.

But he didn't think so. His thoughts jumbled, tumbled all over each other like acrobats or hyperactive children. He felt great but he could not think straight. The confusion did not cause him actual pain but it scared him.

He felt great but he was scared to death.

He loved being scared to death.

Stop it.

The fear went away-but only for a moment.

A bank of dust blowing up from the south obscured the brilliant morning sun. It was going to be a murky day in Dubai. All the glittering steel and glass, and yet the desert still ruled.

Nathaniel felt a sudden urge to test himself, test this new awareness and see how physically in control and adaptable he was.

Get away from the luxury and the air-conditioning. Walk out into the desert. Feel the hot sand on his bare feet. Strip off his clothes and directly face the sun's rays. See if his skin grew a new silvery layer and his nose became broad to radiate heat.

Probably not a good plan, he told himself-the desert would leach him in an hour. He had been incredibly thirsty of late, drinking gallons of Masafi well water and peeing like a race horse.

Yesterday the pee was tinted purple. Then it turned bright yellow and opaque-like paint. Who knew what would happen to him under the pounding glare and the wind-blown grit.

Still…

Baby steps.

He let the curtain drop and closed his eyes. Before he lost his last lick of sense-before he decided to actually leave the city and walk out into the desert-he decided he should ride out this part unconscious. This part of whatever was happening to him. But it was all so fascinating. He didn't want to miss a thing.

This new person he was becoming might be human or might not-but he promised more real adventure and change and fun than anything Nathaniel had ever experienced.

He consciously willed his heart to speed up-then slowed it down.

Good.

More!

He picked up a long brass bird sculpture from the desktop near the window and, with a slight grunt, bent it double. The effort popped two of his knuckles and strained a ligament in his right arm, but there it was-the sculpture twisted into a pretzel. Something he could never have done before-at least not consciously.

He had read that in an emergency, people can increase their strength tenfold. A frightened mother can lift a car off her injured child. Drugs can have the same effect.

Nathaniel no longer needed the excuse of an emergency-nor drugs.

The needs of the body no longer ruled.

He gripped the two fingers and popped one back into place, then the other. The arm would have to take care of itself-he didn't mind the pain.

I have a cosmic mind, he told himself. He could make himself believe every word-and then smile in perfect awareness that this was crazy. That he was going insane.

But whatever-I am bringing a lot more systems online and under my conscious control than is humanly possible.

He took the sedative with another glass of water-the water tasted like pink platinum, whatever that might be-and lay down on the bed in the condo's coolness, privacy, and extraordinary luxury.

Leased through the efforts of that poor blown-up, beaten-down, guilt-ridden son of a bitch who was being paid, along with the rest of the Turing Seven, to corrupt the world's finances-but couldn't hear a motorbike rip past without breaking into a rank sweat.

His past self.

There was still plenty of money left. The Quiet Man had trained them well. Millions of dollars in hidden bank accounts, just in case. However this turned out, he would soon be leaving it all behind-United Arab Emirates, the Middle East, the desert.

All but the money.

He would make his way back to America. There, with what he knew, and this new sense of liberation, maybe he would finally be able to do something different.

Meet important people outside the usual circles.

Spill the beans. Tell the world what he had been up to. Tell them all about the incredible nastiness that was in the works.

Do some good for a change.

Although doing more evil would certainly be exciting.

14 DAYS

Spider/Argus

Tyson's Corner, Virginia

Jane Rowland climbed down from the humming blue-and-green bus and walked with three colleagues, known to her only by their badge numbers, across a walkway through plantings of young trees and turf-squared grass, around a small fountain, to her home away from home.

Under a gray canopy of moody humidity, the new headquarters of Spider/Argus blended with all the other blandly efficient buildings of Tyson's Corner: gray modern architecture both blocky and tidy.

Hotels and malls and restaurants spread throughout the small city catered to some of the most powerful and anonymous people on the planet.

Typically Jane worked the nightshift. Her personal monitor bots were even now preparing reports that only she would see-until she passed them along to her director, who had permanently commissioned her last year to do what she did best.

Spider/Argus had been conceived twenty years ago as a supplement to the National Security Agency, which had proved slow to transition from SigInt-Signals Intelligence: landlines, satellites, cell phones, radio-into the dataflow age of Internet Everywhere.

In the eight years since its creation, S/A had budded off completely from its parent, taking on not just Internet and Web-based research and intelligence, but defensive CPI: counterintelligence, prevention, intervention.

Letting a highly trained watchdog off its leash.

Spider/Argus was not even its official name. Jane knew of just a small fraction of its operations.

Security barricades surrounded all. Nobody approached the building without clearance at the highest levels. Hidden sonic disrupter and microwave heat and pain projectors had been installed at all entrances and in undisclosed locations around the grounds-capable of incapacitating attackers at a distance of several hundred yards.

Lethal force was authorized inside the barbed-wire flanked corridors, patrolled by roller bots and dogs and soldiers. The tunnels of wire that covered nearby freeway overpasses were monitored by thousands of bug-eye cameras.

At regular intervals along all the local freeways and access roads, concrete arches hid.50 caliber, high-speed, radar-guided gun mounts, similar to those used to shoot down missiles and capable of cutting cars and trucks-even armored, military-style trucks-to hamburger-filled scrap within seconds.

Jane passed through the automatic steel and glass doors and submitted her badge and arm chip at the two security gates beyond.

"You'll need a code refresh by tomorrow evening," the female guard told her in a droop-eyed monotone.

For the guards, this had to be one of the most boring jobs in the greater DC/Maryland/Virginia area. Nobody interesting passed their way. Nobody spoke to them other than brief pleasantries.

Not even sports or weather could be discussed.

But the droop eyes stayed alert and sharp.

Jane waited for her assigned elevator at the automated station, then rose to the third floor. No music and no smell-clean, cool, purified air. Elevators carried singles at all times. Conversation in other than work areas was not just discouraged, it was tracked and fined. Posted lists of recent fines glowed from monitors over the elevator doors-though of course with no names or numbers attached.

There was fun to be had, of course. Floors and divisions with the highest levels of fines had to buy Christmas gifts for charities in the DC metro area. Top analysts with the highest fines had to spring for hallway treat tables.

No holiday parties, however.

Those guilty of prohibited violations spent three months in "time-out" at comfortable locations in the Adirondacks, until their cases were processed. Most did not return.