Weissenbaum's Eye - Stetten

Weissenbaum's Eye - Stetten - Chapter 27

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

When not improving Judy's dresser top cathedral, Sand spent most of his time and effort on The Stream Through The Trees, as he modestly called it now. It was in full flood, and sound was all around. The tricks he had learned from Benjamin Holly were his own now. Each leaf was a different color. The water really flowed around each stone, emitting a separate little gurgle all its own. There was plenty of detail now because Judy's spheres, although not at full capacity, were faster and more efficient than anything ever built on Earth. The total sight and sound was even richer than Holly's, although the total number of blocks was less.

Above and beyond it all, whispered the music in the treetops, a strange empty chime that Sand could not recall creating. It seemed to happen naturally, as if a part of the medium itself.

He was, of course, alone, as Don Andrews had commanded, but where he once might have longed for company, he rarely even thought about that now. When he was done, he always gave Tarni a copy of the latest version of The Stream Through The Trees, so she could practice. But for the first time in his life, Sand wasn't afraid or ashamed to savor solitude.

When he was eating with the others, or simply passing them in the corridor, they'd ask him questions, especially Judy whose simulated cathedral had become completely functional. Sand would explain some trick Holly had taught him about eye movements, feedback, or concentration.

Judy could now run the huge claws as if they were her own hands. Likewise, with the program for the micro-manipulators, her hands could touch and test circuits smaller than she could see. Although she was not concerned with creating like Tarni was, Judy appreciated what the medium could do for her. Only Don Andrews asked for no instruction.

Sand sat one day on the river bank, tinkering with The Stream Through The Trees when Tarni appeared, wandering along the water's course into his program. She stopped and gazed up at him.

"So, is this how you picture yourself, or is this my memory of you?" she asked with a slight smile, and then added, "Or are you really there?"

He had not connected the two copies of the scene, and neither had he consciously created her. "I'm here," he replied. "Are you?"

"How did you do this?" she asked back, sitting down beside him on the bank. "Don Andrews said the spheres were built with separate channels."

"Our programs must have merged somehow," Sand noted, and would have speculated further on this unexpected turn of events, but Tarni's image was so incredibly true to life, down to the details of how beautiful she really was. In fact the depth of her existence stood out from all he had created in the background. This was what the whales must feel when knowing someone else was real, Sand was sure.

Not thinking of the wrongness of their actions, not mentioning the rules, they did not ask each other what could be the source of that sweet music in the treetops. Where did it come from, then, that both could have been listening so long before they realized? Neither had said a word about it, for fear of interrupting it, or finding that the other couldn't hear it.

But there it was, and each did hear the same. It was between them, above them, within them. It was for them alone. It came from the water and the stone, from the light and the depth of space behind the soft white sky. It was their breathing and their swallowing, their heartbeats, and the open singing silence that tied them to each other.

Their hands touched and did not move apart. Tarni turned to the stream and said, "Look what I've learned, Sand." The water churned into a fountain, not spraying but flowing up into the air, cool towers of clear water. But Sand was looking at her face instead, at the joy of self discovery in her expression.

In his room, with the fury of a gladiator, and the jealousy of a eunuch, Don Andrews watched the dark colored scratches on his wall, and saw the channel between Sand and Tarni swell. The music, which he could not hear, he could detect as data on the wall. Never had he felt another person's medium inside himself. He, who had stood all alone upon the Earth, keeping his hordes of numbers honest against the world. He, who had planned for Tarni to be there, to share it all.

He hit his fist against the wall. Why couldn't he control his temper? But why should he? Even now the mad voice within him was barely quiet, as though the walls might leak his rage like acid. He laughed. As if he had to worry. These tunnels were still his. They were rats in his maze.

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