Greg Bear - Mariposa

His phone telling him he had a call.

Interrupting the lazy flow.

He scrunched his lids tight, then opened them wide.

Dark in the room.

Dark outside.

Tree patterns painted on dark walls, windows, furniture. He pushed back against the visuals. He had taken the sedative hours ago. It hadn't knocked him out-not completely.

Now the chemistry was conflicting with whatever else was happening in his body. He was starting to feel really bad. Afraid, and not excited about it. The fear was real. The evil was here, right beside him, right here on the bed, a dark, writhing tangle of tree limbs-he could feel them scrape and poke but he couldn't see them, not now.

The room lights came up to dim gold in response to his movement. He rolled over and stared at the empty, creased sheets. Bunched pillows filled with leering ghost faces.

The blinds were drawn. Airplane warning lights on skyscrapers blinked red between the cracks in the blinds.

Chimes again.

He grabbed the phone, an expensive EPR unit. His fingerprint confirmed him and the phone completed the connection. "Yeah," he croaked. "It's me. I think."

The screen demanded another answer code. He fumbled with the keypad projected from the phone's base onto the gray sheets.

Concealed number, but he knew the voice-slightly husked, soft and deep. Despite his discomfort, he sat up in bed and cleared his throat.

This was the boss of the Turing Seven-director of Mind Design and the genius behind Jones. They called him the Quiet Man. His real name was Chan Herbert, but they rarely used it.

Nathaniel had met him in person three times back in La Jolla, California. He was reclusive and cautious to a fault-hence the EPR phones, which could always detect someone unauthorized listening in.

"Where are you?" the Quiet Man asked. "Still in Dubai?"

"Yes sir. Way up in the sky. The Ziggurat."

"You sound drunk."

"I'm trying to get some sleep."

The Quiet Man produced a short, guttural hm. "Anybody from Talos call in the last twelve hours? Anybody asking about your health?" He sounded anxious. He did not much like people and rarely betrayed emotion.

"No." Nathaniel tried to keep a drowsy mirth out of his voice.

"Have you heard from Nick?"

"We've closed up shop. I think he's back in Texas."

"He called. He was weeping. Are you sure you're okay?"

"I feel great. Better than great."

"Don't bullshit me."

"A little loopy, that's all. Decompression from months of work."

Tell him: I think I'm taking control of my body, all the automatic bits. It sounds crazy but sometimes it feels wonderful. Sometimes…

"Nathaniel… "

"No, really."

"Talos knows where you are?"

"Probably," Nathaniel admitted, combing his ginger brush of hair with his fingers. "I'm off the clock and off the rez, but they know my habits."

He laid a hand over the bulge of his stomach. Too much luxury. Good food at the Galaxy Club-served by lovely Indonesian and Thai beauties.

Maybe I'll straighten out my morals.

Lose weight fast.

"Jones says something bad is heading our way. He's tied into both Talos's and MSARC's secure nets, but he won't tell me what's up until he's sure. That damned truth function-your work, if I remember correctly. I'm ordering everyone back to California."

"What's the hurry?" Nathaniel asked, stretching.

"Pay attention, Nathaniel. Since you're feeling strange-"

"What makes you say that?"

"-And Nick is feeling strange, it's probably something to do with Mariposa."

"Well, we did what we were told. What if it's not bad, but good?"

A pause. Then, with a real edge, "Do you have any idea how deep this is? How important the seven of you are-and how complicit? Price made us wealthy men. If he even suspects we can't be trusted, we're dead men. Get out now. Come to LA and call in secure when you arrive."

The connection was cut at the source.

Nathaniel fell back on the bed, tingling throughout his body.

Back to base camp. Back to LA.

He should start packing. He tried with all his might to lift his arms.

Nothing.

"I can't," he said to the wall.

A delayed effect. It might last seconds, minutes-or hours. He stared at the long shadows on the ceiling. Started to giggle, then stopped.

"What the hell have you done, you idiot?"

How much control did he really have of his formerly autonomous functions? Getting his blood moving faster, for example-as if he were running and not lying down.

Flushing the last of those sedatives through his liver. They should be down to minimum concentrations by now, anyway.

Could he actually control his liver?

He lay still for a while.

One of the shadows moved.

Someone was in his room.

He swiveled his eyes until his vision went muzzy.

A short, robed silhouette stood in the lighted doorway. A woman's voice murmured, "Excuse me. For morning house cleaning, inshallah-on time, sir?… Sir?"

She would probably call for assistance if he didn't answer-the Ziggurat emergency medical team, best in Dubai.

His jaw wouldn't move.

"Are you awake?"

"I'm fine," he finally croaked between clenched teeth. "Just the flu. Leave me alone. Get out."

The silhouette faded into all the other shadows.

The door closed. Maybe he had imagined it, like the trees in his bed. Maybe it had never been there.

Then: a steady inner voice. The same voice he had created soon after the slaughter in Arabia Deserta as a kind of psychic baseline-in remembrance of his former broken self.

Time to get moving, Mr. Trace. They have a lot of influence here. Very long fingers.

He had not heard from that voice in months.

He had presumed Mariposa had killed it off.

If, as the Quiet Man supposes, they want to find you, if they need to find you… This is the place. The desert across the water is wide and the sands are deep. They can do whatever they want here and no one would ever know.

His body jerked and then convulsed. He bounced himself off the bed, narrowly avoiding cracking his head on the nightstand.

Slowly twitching on the cold wood floor, he regained control. Finally he could move again, but his fingers felt numb. He got up on wobbly legs and stumbled into the bathroom, into the walk-in shower, where he stared groggily at the water selection nobs.

He chose desalinated, hot-hotter than hell.

Treading on art glass tiles set in the fish mosaic floor, he tolerated the scalding water until he just had to scream-then jumped out and toweled himself down.

Much better. The numbness had faded. Now his skin felt cool and electric.

Still naked, Nathaniel picked up his bag. Hardly anything here was important enough to pack. A few clothes. Toiletries. He could leave the rest without regret, as if it belonged to a different man.

He dressed slowly, luxuriating in the feel of fine linen on his arm hairs.

The fabric brushed his scars.

The condo intercom wheedled. The security system that watched over his class of people in the Ziggurat asked him if he would like to receive visitors-and displayed a picture of three men and a well-dressed, attractive woman.

They were waiting in the spacious lobby, hundreds of feet below.

He did not recognize any of them, and so he did not give permission for them to rise to his unit.

In the lobby, as he watched, the group split up.

Best to find an unobvious way out.

The Ziggurat's security system was accustomed to arranging for exits after dubious late night activities, or drinking in the many bars.

Talos Campus

Fouad emerged from the annex, put on his spex, and stood stiffly upright in the lounge-a slight heat pulsing through his torso. The prochines in his blood had never felt like much of anything before. Now, actively bumping up against each other-chock full of distributed data-they seemed to be coming up on the radar of his body's immune system.