Halo | Page 7

okay," the memex whispered through the room's speaker. "It's okay."
Some time later Gonzales awoke again, lay in gloom and considered
his condition. Some nausea, legs weak, but no apparent loss of gross
motor control, no immediate parapsychological effects (disorientations,
amnesias, synesthesias) ...
Gonzales got up and went to the bathroom, stood amid white tile,
polished aluminum and mirrors and said, "Warm shower." Water hissed,
and the shower stall door swung open. The water ran down his skin and
the sweat and paste rolled off his body.
----
3. Dancing in the Dark
The next morning, Gonzales stood looking out his front window, down
Capital Hill to the city and the bay. After a full night's sleep, he felt

recovered from the egg. "Halfway down the hill stood a row of
Contempo high-rises--half a dozen shapes in the mist, their sides laced
with optic fiber in patterns of red, blue, white, and yellow.
From the wallscreen behind him, a voice said, "The Fine Arts Network,
showing today only: the legendary 'Rothschild Ads-Originals and
Copies,' a Euro/Com Production from the Cannes Festival; also
showing, NipponAuto's 'Ecstasy for Many Kilometers.'"
"Cycle," Gonzales said. He turned to watch as the screen split into
windows, showing eight at a time in a random access search. In the
screen's upper-right corner, the Headline Service cycled what it
considered important: worsening social collapse in England; another
series of politico-economic triumphs for The Two Koreas. And the
Ecostate Summaries: ozone hole 2 over the Antarctic conforming to
predicted self-repair curve, hole 3 obstinately holding steady; CO2
portions unstable, ozone reaching for an ugly part of the graph;
temperature fluctuations continuing to evade best predictions ...
Why call it news? wondered Gonzales. Call it olds. Christ, this stuff
had been going on forever it seemed ...
He said, "Memex, what do you think about the attack?"
"A bad business," said the memex. "We are lucky to have survived." It
seemed a bit subdued in the aftermath of the trip in the egg, as though it,
too, had come close to dying. Gonzales didn't know how it experienced
such things, given its limited sensory modalities and, he presumed, lack
of a fear of death.
"What's happening in the real world?" Gonzales asked.
"Your mother left a message for you. Do you want to look at it now?"
"Might as well."
On the screen she lay back in a lawn chair, her face hidden behind a
sun mask, her mono-bikinied body a rich brown. She sat up and said,

"Still in Myanmar, huh, sweetie? When are you coming back? I'd love
to talk, but I just won't pay those rates."
She removed her sun mask. She had dark skin and good bones; her face
was nearly unlined, though her skin had the faint parchment quality of
age. Her small breasts sagged very little. Body and face, she appeared
an athletic fifty year old who had perhaps seen too much sun. She
would turn eighty-seven next month.
Since Gonzales's father had died in a flash flu epidemic while the two
were visiting Naples, his mother had turned her energies and interests
to maintaining her health and appearance. Half the year she spent in
Cozumel's Regeneration Villas, where tissue transplants and genetic
retailoring kept her young. The rest of the time she occupied an entire
floor of a low-res condo on Florida's decaying Gold Coast, just north of
Ciudad de Miami. Top dollar, but she could afford it.
She and his father had been charter members of the gerontocracy, that
ever-expanding league of the rich and old who vied with the young for
their society's resources. The young had the strength and energy of
youth; the old had wealth, power and cunning. No contest: kids under
thirty often stated their main life's goal as "living until I am old enough
to enjoy it."
Gonzales's mother draped a blue-and-white print cottonrobe over her
shoulders and said, "Call me. I'll be home in a week or so. Be well."
Their talks, her taped messages--both usually made him feel baffled
and angry--but today her self-absorption pricked sharper than usual. I
almost died, he wanted to tell her, they almost killed me, mother.
But he was far away from her, as far as Seattle was from Miami. And
whose fault is that? a small voice asked. He had chosen to come here,
as distant Southern Florida as he could get and remain in the
continental United States. Sometimes he felt he'd come a bit too far. In
Florida, people cooled down with alcohol in iced drinks; here, they
warmed their chilly selves with strong coffee. Gonzales often felt lost
among the glum and health-conscious Northerners and craved the

Hispanic sensuality and demonstrativeness of Southern Florida.
Still, how he hated the world he'd grown up in. He had seen the