Richard Powers - Operation Wandering Soul

"Oh. Sorry, ma'am. I mean dumb-fu…"

"Cut! That's enough out of you. Somebody fill me in."

But the other kids are too cowed now to give a synopsis, and His Nibs is pulling this royal sulk to punish the woman. So just kick back and watch a while. Linda settles in, tries to catch the drift of this installment's saga. It's set in that obligatory, endless High Chaparral of Space. She can tell it's the outermost Outer, because the guns, bombs, and assorted vehicles of outrageous intricacy are all proton-powered.

Wider and wilder skeins, eternally higher levels of energy manipulation: that's, like the immortal hokey-pokey, what it's all about.

On the one hand, they've got the matter transporter — the be-all and end-all of the whole civilized shooting match. On the other hand, galactic destiny still comes down to a slew of hand-to-hand combats with what amount to electrified meter sticks. The story takes place in two different worlds. One world just doesn't cut it with discriminating audiences anymore. Seems on one of these two, there's this combination architect, civil engineer, and voice crying in the wilderness…

"Hold it. Who is this guy? I can never understand it when they talk through those echo machines."

Suzi Banks peers up suspiciously, steals a glance at Nicolino and then back at Ms. Espera. "Beezaholi," she murmurs, in a coy, little-girl drawl as impenetrable as the cartoon sound effects.

"Say who? Beet-aholic? Would you mind spelling that?"

A violent shush from Nico cannot quell the ranks' revival. Suddenly, paraphrase flies at Linda from all directions, almost as if recounting gives as much pleasure as watching the wrinkle of event unfold in the first place.

"Beezaholi."

"He's eviir

"He's not evil. He's the one's gonna save M-31."

"What's M-31?"

"That's where the Dromedaries live."

"Andromedans, pissbag."

"Oh, them," Linda says. "I remember them. We go way back. What's bugging them this time?"

Childhood's hair-trigger tone detectors threaten to set off a chain reaction of suspicion, jamming all the communicator channels. Linda is rescued by the beautiful Chuck, who says, "They're facing Galactic Heat Death something fierce."

"Sun blowing up on them?"

An exasperated quartet shouts, "No! Dying out slowly." Dummy. Get your stellar thermodynamics straight.

Their spark is going cold, motionless, still. A race against the last ticks of the thermal buzzer before life fades into the freezing vacuum. The fable's appeal is as familiar as the planet-encroaching ice caps visible even from here, in the smogged semitropics of Angel City. Every day, a little trickle of available use escapes irreversibly through the cracks of the system. Cars slow, appliances rust out, neighbors capitulate in a hush. If Linda herself feels it, these kids must be frantic.

These, the fresh heat litmuses, the thermostatic coils still factory mint, must long ago have registered the approach of absolute zero and are left to go about astonished that the planet makes no preparation.

Beezaholi chooses this lull to mumble to himself: "The Cyclogeneron must be assembled on a scale no one has jet imagined. It must span the entire diameter of the star system! Only then mil it be capable of accelerating particles to the velocity needed to give us final power over the very laws of…"

"What's a Cyclogeneron?" Linda asks.

More irritation at her unending trouble with the obvious. But facts are as boundless as their unassuageable underpinning. The more they give to her, the more they have.

"It's this humongous metal ring…"

"More of a torus, really. A doughnut."

"I'm sure. A galaxy-sized metal doughnut. Give me a break."

"Arm or a leg?"

"And it's lined with these awesome hyperelectric solenoids that accelerate these subatomic…"

"And truly brutal cosmic forces come shooting out the other end."

"End? How can a doughnut…?"

"Beezaholi tried to tell the 'Dromedans about it. But that Rathgor, who's got control of the Planetary Radix…"

"Not just Rathgor. All the Phagolytics. It's like they simply don't want to…"

"The whoozy-whats?"

"Rathgor," Beezaholi says, "you must listen. If we don't begin at once to redirect the energy we squander on Amorphicoms into the construction of…"

"Did he say 'Amorphicom'?"

"They're like these immense private jets…"

"I thought they could transport themselves."

"The vehicle part is just a fringe bennie. They're really these ultra-cool live-in pods that you connect yourself to for the most intense…"

"Give up our Amorphicoms, Eee^aholi? You're joking. Why, the mere mention of the idea at the People's Council would…"

"Right on, R. No way! The Amorphi is the coolest thing this side of…"

"And why should we give them up, you bellowing old fool? Just to humor your delusions?"

"Beezy's right. They need the Cyclogeneron, or it is Heat Death City. The end of M-31 as we know it."

"Our people will never surrender the pleasures they have struggled so hard for centuries to secure. People mil kill for the possession ofanAmorphi. To bodypilot is the most rewarding experience known to…"

"They are wickedly wasteful," Jorge concedes.

"And addictive as sin," adds Roberto, Jorge's twin and sometime needle sharer.

"A massive drain on the Grid."

"The Grid?" Linda whispers.

"It's no use. Even if I managed to win over the whole Planetary Radix, we still wouldn't possess more than a fraction of the energy we need to manufacture the Cyclogeneron. The entire tappable Grid wouldn't provide…"

"Could someone tell me why he needs an accelerator the size of a…?"

"Man! You get particles to that speed and collide them: you can Do It All. Make a new star. Create new forces. Name it."

"Only — one hope — left. Must — renew interplanetary contact — with Heli-otria."

"I give up."

"Heliotria. The other world."

"That's it! I knew it. Bishop Perpetuus. The Touring Monks. The Ikonankh."

"Sure, Mr. Massive Brain Case. I could have told you that a half hour ago."

"Much has changed since Andromeda last made contact with Heliotria. The good Bishop Perpetuus must have died generations ago."

"Will somebody please rescue me?"

"Shh! A long time ago they hyper-tapped this other planet, where these monks went about in robes chanting all the time and the head abbot gave them this jewel thing… "

"More like a little metal statue."

"And so long as they had this figure from the monks on Heliotria, the Andromedans could open up the space-time fabric between the planets. Only that was in the past, and now it's the distant future."

"I must return the Ikonankh to Helio…"

"Don't risk it, dude. You'll never get the thing back."

"… where it will act as a powerful beacon, drawing into our galaxy, across the space threshold, all those with special abilities. The ones the Heliotrians call… "

A minor emergency with Suzi Banks's new hardware precludes Linda's witnessing the polychrome passage of the Ikonankh through the opening it tears in space. She returns just in time to exclaim, "Oh, lo-lo-look! See what it's doing! How come the thing is only going after kids?"

"Because" — the shortcut Methuselah at last condescends to address her—"that's the core commercial market for this kind of bullshit. Real adults don't waste their lives watching this Gerber drool."

"Well, you're still hanging around."

"Dodgers don't start for another two hours," Nico says, with the barest giveaway glint. "Quit. You tickle me, lady, you die a slow death."

"Wait a minute." Linda breaks off the brawl. "I just got it. They're all ancient there in M-31, aren't they? They have no…?"