Diaspora

They set off north, the drone buzzing behind them: their one link to the polis, offering the chance of a rapid escape if anything went wrong. It followed them for the first kilometer-and-a-half, all the way to the edge of the enclave. There was nothing to mark the border—just the same thick jungle on either side—but the drone refused to cross the imaginary line. Even if they'd built their own transceiver to take its place, it would have done them no good; the satellite footprints were shaped with precision to exclude the region. They could have rigged up a base station to re-broadcast from outside… but it was too late for that now.

Inoshiro said, "So what's the worst thing that could happen?"

Yatima replied without hesitation. "Quicksand. We both fall into quicksand, so we can't even communicate with each other. We just float beneath the surface until our power runs out." Ve checked vis gleisner's energy store, a sliver of magnetically suspended anticobalt. "In six thousand and thirty-seven years."

"Or five thousand nine-hundred and twenty." Shafts of sunlight had begun to penetrate the forest; a flock of pink-and-gray birds were making rasping sounds in the branches above them.

"But our exoselves would restart our Konishi versions after two days—so we might as well commit suicide as soon as we're sure we wouldn't make it back by then."

Inoshiro regarded ver curiously. "Would you do that? I feel different from the Konishi version already. I'd want to go on living. And maybe someone would come along and pull us out in a couple of centuries."

Yatima thought it over. "I'd want to go on living—but not alone. Not without a single person to talk to."

Inoshiro was silent for a while, then ve held up vis right hand. Their polymer skins were dotted with IR transceivers all over, but the greatest density was on the palms. Yatima received a gestalt tag, a request for data. Inoshiro was asking for a snapshot of vis mind. The gleisner hardware was multiply redundant, with plenty of room for two.

Entrusting a version of verself to another citizen would have been unthinkable, back in Konishi. Yatima placed vis palm against Inoshiro's, and they exchanged snapshots.

They crossed into the Atlanta enclave. Inoshiro said, "Update every hour?"

"Okay."

The interface software wasn't too bad at walking. It kept them upright and steadily advancing, detecting obstacles in the ground cover and shifts in the terrain via the gleisners' tactile and balance senses, and whatever vision was available—without actually commandeering the head and eyes. After stumbling a few times, Yatima started glancing down every now and then, but it was soon clear how useful it would have been if the interface had been smart enough to plant an urge to do so in vis mind at appropriate times, like the original flesher instinct.

The jungle was visibly populated with small birds and snakes, but if there was any other animal life it was hiding or fleeing at the sound of them. Compared to walking through an indexscape for a comparable ecosystem, it was a rather dilute experience—and the thrill of interacting with real mud and real vegetation was beginning to wear thin.

Yatima heard something skid across the ground in front of ver; ve'd inadvertently kicked a small piece of corroded metal out from under a shrub. Ve kept walking, but Inoshiro paused to examine it, then cried out in alarm.

"What?"

"Replicator!"

Yatima turned back and angled for a better view; the interface made vis body crouch, "It's just an empty canister." It was almost crushed flat, but there was still paint clinging to the metal in places, the colors faded to barely distinguishable grays. Yatima could make out a portion of a narrow, roughly longitudinal band of varying width, slightly paler than its background; it looked to ver like a two-dimensional representation of a twisted ribbon. There was also part of a circle-though if it was a biohazard warning, it didn't look much like the ones ve recalled from vis limited browsing on the subject.

Inoshiro spoke in a hushed, sickened voice. "PreIntrodus, this was pandemic. Distorted whole nations' economies. It had hooks into everything: sexuality, tribalism, half a dozen artforms and subcultures… it parasitized the fleshers so thoroughly you had to he some kind of desert monk to escape it."

Yatima regarded the pathetic object dubiously, but they had no access to the library now, and vis knowledge of the era was patchy. "Even if there are traces left inside… I'm sure they're all immune to it by now. And it could hardly infect us—"