Grazing The Long Acre Read Free Page B

in which she walked, though apparently by her own will. It was a remote function of the AI out in space, like the lobster things but less useful.
    The development that had made a crewed probe possible was a technique for transferring the whole of a human subjective entity into electro-chemical storage. As pure information then, the passengers could disintegrate and reintegrate without injury: stitching in and out through the vastness of space/time. The process was a genuine transfer, not replication. A brain-dead body remained on Earth , while that which was Sasha felt itself to be here and intact: filling this suit with arms, hands, belly, fingers, like some Kirlian ghost. In a way it did. They had been told that EVA ‘in’ these humanoid shells was important for their survival: analog of the endless exercises with which earlier spacefarers had warded off bone death. But where was she in reality? She had been able to accept, just about, the consensual reality which they created inside the lander (very small, for five people, as the Ma’atian child had so naively observed): and been able to stretch that reality to include their earlier excursions. It was Ma’at that was giving her problems, breaking her up.
    None of them knew how anything worked. Cheops was supposed to run a life support system, giving them anything they needed in the way of perceptual construct to keep them sane. How far would it go? Sugi Ohba had always cared least—or, at any rate, seemed to think least—about their existential predicament. Since the landing on Ma’at she’d been behaving exactly as if her suit actually contained her body. She picked flowers! What did the AI out in orbit make of that?
    Sasha felt the vertigo which they had been warned to avoid. Like Orpheus they must not look at what they were doing, or it would vanish….She trembled (and that seemed real). She had accepted the bargain willingly, embracing a heroic destiny as they said on her country’s television. She had felt that she hardly deserved all the approval: after all, she didn’t have a lot to lose.
    Sasha chewed miserably on her non-existent lip.
    To dance.
    To touch someone’s hand…to touch even a leaf or a flower….
    They must keep the consensus going. That was why Merle’s cynicism was as dangerous as Sugi’s thoughtlessness. It was true that sexual equality still had to be achieved, especially in the former ‘Western’ nations. It was true they all had hard-luck stories. But life is always better than death.
    Beyond the farm patches, forested hills began, but there was a well-trodden path. A plump terracotta figure was watching her, leaning on a kind of hoe in one of the last vegetable gardens.
    “Is there another village?”
    Sasha pointed down the path and sketched roofs in the air. The woman (close up you could tell from the clothes) left her hoe and came over. She gestured, and whistled “Schoo.”
    Sasha and Bob had decided that that one meant something like ‘far’. They were compiling a tentative glossary.
    The woman looked her dead in the eye (another shared cultural gesture, like the concept of heaven). She crouched, and drew in the dirt. Houses: a little cluster of turned up roofs. “Schoo, schoo…” Down the path…several strides. Another tiny sketch of roofs. The scale was clear.
    “Heesh! Heesh!”
    The woman jerked her hands in the affirmative sign: and again looked at the invader straight: firmly, undeniably intelligible. We like it that way, she said. We like to be friendly, but we like people to keep their distance.
    Sugi was by the lander, looking lost. She was waiting for a mealtime, guessed Sasha. Sugi could not snack, she had lost the ability in institutional years.
    “These people are so nice,” she burst out. “You know the boys who come and hang around the ship?” Those were girls and boys, but Sugi didn’t understand that. “They were here earlier. And the one I call Charlie, he sort of asked me—clear as