WEBRIDER
By Jayge Carr
The Eternal Second ended, and once again I had survived. There was a reception committee at the terminus. Not for me, for what I carried.
"Left thigh," I said, as a dozen anxious-eyed humans converged on me before I could take a second step away from the terminus out of which I had just emerged. I turned so that my left side faced them, and three banged into each other to kneel. I pressed the under-the-skin control at my waist, and my left thigh split neatly and painlessly open. Impatient fingers probed the organ synthetic-lined cavity revealed. What they wanted was there, of course; the thigh carry is safe, if blighted uncomfortable for the carrier.
If Whatever-they-wanted had been smaller, I'd've used my mouth. I'm one of those who can keep their mouths shut while riding.
Then they had the four unbreakable vials out and were hasting away with them. What was left of the reception
committee was shaking my hands and trying to shove beakers full of unknown swizzles and platters of equally exotic eatments at me, while gabbling out thank-yous at a kilometer-a-second rate.
I'm left-handed, so it was my right arm I stuck out. "High-nutri. Now." My third and fourth words on this world I have never seen before and would probably never see again once I'd been called off of it.
They'd been briefed. A medico-a short but swishious fem with come-hither-and-enjoy eyes-clamped a dingus of a type I'd never seen before around my arm. I felt something physically digging in, invading my body-integral space to insert the nutri. But primitive as the method was, it worked fast. I could feel the dizziness wearing off, a contented glow spreading outward from my arm.
"Thanks," I told her. "Good stuff."
"Any time, honored Webrider. I'm Medico Miyoshi Alnasr. If, during your stay on our world, you should again require my services-" She pressed a head-only mini-holo of herself, no bigger than my thumbnail, against the back of my wrist, where it adhered neatly. "-just peel the outer layer to activate the summoner. I answer," her voice dropped, "twenty-eight hours a day . . . ."
Groupie, I thought, but I didn't jerk off the summoner. Odds were I would need her professional services at some point; turista is a chronic disease among webriders. But as for anything else . . . no mistaking the look in her eyes, in all their eyes. Until what I carried did what they needed it to do, I could have asked for. half their world-and gotten it.
There was more in her eyes, though. An avidity I saw far too often. This one liked the glamor and notoriety of succoring a webrider, the more the better-and the how of it didn't matter a rotted bean to her.
Webriders learn to live with that, and the envy. Webriders are never allowed to forget that they are the true elite, those very, very few who can step in a terminus on one world and step out-alive!-on another. For the rest, it can only be slower-than-light wombships, taking months and years-even at the compressed time of relativistic velocity-from one world to another.
We have not only the freedom of the stars, but the unspeakable glory of riding the web. The Eternal Second. The ultimate experience.
Webriding. Flowing through stars, points of flame running through hands that aren't hands, the psychic You bound up in the physical You that's just a pattern sliding along the web, held together and existing only by the strength of will of the webrider. Sailing on evanescent wings of mind through the energy/matter currents of space, down one fragile strand of the web and up another. Feeling torn apart, as the pattern that is You is spread over parsecs, smeared across the stars; and yet, godlike, knowing those stars, sensing with psychic "eyes" the entire spectrum of space/time, so that the beat of the pulsars is like the universe's throbbing heart ....
We have our glory, and one of the prices we pay for it is the groupies.
Not that I was worried about the medico; she was one of the safe kind of groupie. The only kind the locals would and should let near a webrider. The greedy but selfish kind, wanting close but not too close, snatching a rubbed-off glamor. But never for a second considering risking her own precious hide for the real thing.
It's the other kind of groupie who is so dangerous, the real groupie. The one who will do anything to get on the web. Infinitely dangerous to a rider, to a rider's peace of mind, so necessary for safe webriding. They try to sneak
up close to a rider, and then . . . .
Oh, groupies are necessary. Where else would we get our recruits?
But they have to be kept away from the riders, because it hurts too much, to lose someone you've grown close to. A double hurt for me, because I and my sister were once groupies ourselves. I am a rider now, but our tree lost us both. She, as like me as a holo image, is now atoms scattered across half a galaxy. I relive that loss with every would-be rider that dies- and so many of them do die.
Another price we pay. And they, the world-dwellers, try to make it up to us, forgetting that what's infinitely precious on one world may be common as oxy on another. Not that I could take any of it with me. What is desperately needed, I take in the thigh, or use the mouth carry. But for myself-never.
There are other rewards besides those which can be carried. In the crowd surrounding me, eagerly talking or humbly waiting for me to express my opinion, were at least four citizens obviously put there for me to choose from. An ultra brawn, one of the prettiest boychicks I'd ever seen, a super-swishious fem that eclipsed the medico by several orders of magnitude, and an adorable nymphet. All choice, but by this world's standards. Which meant, short, broad, tailless, blue-tinted skin, and pale, almost colorless hair that grew in little tufts over every bit of exposed skin I could see-plenty!-except around eyes and mouths. I'd seen weirder, lots, and I probably looked just as odd to them, if not odder.
I'm a straight fem, myself, and the brawn seemed well endowed with what a brawn should have-his costume left little to my fertile imagination-so I wasted no time in putting a possessive hand on his arm and asking him to stick around, while I politely implied to the other three
that if that was the way my tastes went, they'd certainly have been my choice.
The nymphet pouted, but the brawn was looking me up and down in a very unprofessional way, part smugness at being chosen, but mostly yum-yum! I'm gonna enjoy this!
I was no little complimented.
Mother Leaf, how that crowd around me talked and talked. A rider needs two things to restore physical/psychic energy after a ride, and I'd only had one. When my knees began to buckle, I let them. He caught me easily, and lifted me into a comfortable baby-carry, though I was a head taller than he. I wrapped my tail around his waist.
"Medico Alnasr," he called, voice shot through with worry.
"You," I said, and smiled. He got the message, prehensile tails have their uses, after all. He strode through the mob, my weight nothing, like a feeding black hole through a galaxy's heart. Which suited me just fine.
There was one odd incident. A fem-older, if wrinkles and missing tufts of hair meant what such signs usually mean-caught sight of my brawn's face and her own went pure blue. "Malachi," she hissed, but my brawn never missed stride. I shrugged mentally; relative, lover, or whatever, she'd have him back as soon as I left.
All my energies were most satisfactorily restored.
He was a pleasant conversationalist, too, easily talking about his exotic-to me-world of shallow seas and endless island chains. Not his fault, either, when a careless mention of his own family, his own sister, reminded me once again of the one I had lost. Sensing my inner withdrawal, he laughed and changed the subject, refusing to let me brood over a childhood spent in the crests of giant trees and a lost more-than-sister. Still talking, he led me out onto a transparent floored balcony, cantilevered over
a crystal water lagoon, filled with living rainbows darting through equally living though grotesque mazes.
His name was (he had quickly confirmed this) Malachi; and I sensed his curiosity growing about mine. I would have told him freely, except-
I have no name.
A twig may not choose a name until he/she has pollinated or budded. (Old habits die hard; we give birth as any other humans, except always clutches of identicals. But we identify with our trees. For example-) I am-or was -a twig of the tree called Tamarisk, of the 243rd generation born under Her shading leaves. But I was unbudded when I came to the web-too young-and unbudded I must stay until I die, or am thrown off the web for whatever reason, which is almost the same things. A budding fem can't ride, and I am a rider, I must ride.
On the rolls of the web I am carried as "Twig Tamarisk of Sequoia Upper." But that is for others' convenience. I have never chosen a name for myself, now I never will.
I told him to call me "Twig" and he looked me up and down and stifled laughter. I supposed to one as broad as he, I did look like a walking twig.
He gestured upward, that I might admire the gauzy dayring while he controlled his face. There was a rustle behind us; I caught my lip. We were supposed to be alone, but there are fanatics on many worlds. Twisted minds. Haters, who strike out at the handiest-or most prominent - targets.
I said nothing. Malachi could have been in on it, whatever it was. I simply moved a little away, as though to follow better Malachi's pointing finger. Until he heard the sounds, too-
The intruder hadn't a chance. Unarmed, the unfilled muscles and flesh of a youthful growth spurt, he was surprised by Malachi's savage attack.
In seconds, Malachi had his opponent face down on the deck, hands caught behind his back, and was looking about for something to tie his wrists together with. The stranger squirmed desperately but futilely, until he managed to twist his head around so that his gaze met mine, his face younger even than the still growing body, bluerimmed eyes rawly swollen, the irises scarcely darker than the blue-tinted whites. "Webrider, please," he begged.
I knew the look in those eyes, all webriders see it over and over.
"Let him up, Malachi."
"But he shouldn't be here. He may have come to attack-" Which showed that some on this world had heard certain tales, too.
"No, Malachi, he's a groupie. Aren't you, bud?"
Sullenly. "I don't know what a groupie is."
"Do you want to ride the web yourself-or just hear about other worlds and webriding?"
Each tuft of his hair was tied with a different colored ribbon. His mouth dropped open, revealing black (painted?) teeth-and I knew I had guessed right. "How did you know-"
I laughed. "Did you think you were the only one, then?" I stretched out one hand to Malachi, the other to the boy, to help them to their feet. "Come on, relax, get comfortable. What's your-" Out of old habit I started to say tree, but remembered in time. "-name, bud?"
Malachi let him up but continued to glare suspiciously at him; the boy glared back, sour and silent.
"Well," I perched on a railing, and a crisp breeze rippled playfully over my skin, "shall we call you Incognit, then, bud?"
"Incog -what?"
"Incognit. It means "unknown" in one of the Austere systems' tongues. It's one of their planets, actually, that's how I heard of it. Awkward place, for a stranger, the land looks firm, but if you're fool enough to step on it, you'd sink in up to your eyebrows-or a little more. All the land-at least all near the terminus-is like that. I guess that sandy patch of yours," I gestured with my head toward the golden sweep surrounded by rippling blue, "reminded me of Incognit, put the word in my head."
"You mean," his eyes were huge, hypnotic in their intensity, "that there's a settled world with no solid land at all?"
"Affirm," I was being a fool, and knew it. But ah, the wistful adulation, the fearful hope in those shades-of-blue eyes. Surely, if I emphasized the negative strongly enough . . . . "More than one, in fact. Sink worlds like Incognit, and worlds that are covered with water. One I was on was all water, but it had so many buildings, their foundations on pilings sunk into bedrock, that you couldn't tell it unless you went down, oh, hundreds of levels. And there are worlds where there are no real boundaries at all, just a slow gradient, a gradual increase of pressure as you sink down, until you reach the core. And that's only solid if you consider ultracompressed matter, no crystalline structure at all, as solid. And there are worlds-"
"How can people live on a world like that, with no solid anywhere?"
"Floaters," I had a persistent itch between my shoulder blades, just to the left of my mane, and I swung my tail around to scratch it with the prehensile's tip. "Big ones and little ones, all with lifepods dangling beneath." I grinned, remembering. "Scared the sap out of my hosts on that world, I did. Inside the pods could have been anywhere, except for the swaying motion. But outside-the vanes and ropes and controls reminded me of the vines
and limbs of the tree crest where I was born and grew up. A little higher, of course . . . I was never on the floor of anything until I entered training. Only animals live on the rootfloor of my world, it's dark all the time, and well, I hadn't realized how I missed crestdriving and vine swinging and everything else until I hit that world. Had to stop, though; I was afraid I'd give somebody a heart attack. Quite a sight it was, great mats of those floaters all roped together; never found out what they were, the floaters. Artificial, or animals, or made from dead animals . . . ."
I kept talking, trying to guess from his reactions whether he was just a listener-or a would-be rider.
I should have known, though. Anybody with nerve to break in the way he had, was no mere listener.
While I talked, I hooked into web mind, that almost living totality of all information fed into all the terminuses of the web. Nobody knows why all successful riders can hook into web mind, sooner or later if not immediately. I could, from my very first ride, just by wanting to, with no more effort than remembering the way the leaves uncurled on my home tree crest every spring, or the shimmering colors of Under-the-Falls on a planet called Niagara Ultimate.
My question for web mind was a simple one: what percentage of successes this world enjoyed.
Blight! No successes, never; the training school had been closed down long ago, all native attempts at webriding made illegal. (Yet they were willing to use the web, so long as others took the risks!) A few fanatics had continued to try, despite the illegality, the guards; all had failed.
I kept talking, and eventually the groupie asked the inevitable, revealing question, "What does it feel like to ride the web?"
What does it feel like to live?
Only riders know.
I tried to describe the indescribable. But always with the caveat. "Most people aren't strong enough. They try, but their psychic You can't hold their pattern together, and it begins to spread and spread, thinner and thinner, until it isn't a pattern at all, atom sundered from atom, the physical body only a new current among the nebulae, undetectable by the most sensitive instruments we have . . .
"Splattering, we call it.
"Nine out of ten, bud. Remember it. Repeat it to yourself. Nine out of ten. Nine out of ten, trained. Worse than nine out of ten, for the untrained."
He didn't believe me. He thought I was lying. And I was, but not the way he thought. It's not nine out of ten, it's ninety-nine out of a hundred. Yet if I'd told him the truth, that less than one per cent survive their first ride, he certainly wouldn't have believed me.
I had to warn him, force him to recognize the risks, the odds against him. With luck, I might discourage him entirely. If he wanted the web, badly enough, nothing I or anyone could say or do would stop him (I knew!). But at least, he would have been warned.
Or so I told myself.
The path to Blight, they say, is leaved with good intentions.
I shooed him away, finally, his taste for adventure (I prayed!) sated for a good long while.
Afterwards, the reaction set in. Until a tentative hand brushed my shoulder. "Can I help?" Harsh breathing and a dark cloud of worry at my back.
I shook my head, still staring unseeing at blue on blue vistas. Until I realized that panic was about to explode behind me. "It hurts, that's all, Malachi. But it wasn't your fault. No one can keep determined enough groupies away,
no matter what security measures they use. Only-try harder, your people must try harder. Keep groupies away from me, Malachi. Away!"
"You've privacy now, but they'll hear and obey, once you yourself break the privacy. But-" The hand on my shoulder trembled. "-I don't understand. You were-very kind, to that one youngster. Why deny others what they crave? Shutting yourself away to recuperate, that's understandable. But afterwards, a few simple words seem harmless enough-"
"Harmless!" I whirled, tail curling and uncurling in a manner that would have signaled attack-to-the-death in my home tree. "It hurts me, Malachi! It makes me remember, too many have died. And for them-don't you understand, are you blind-they want to ride. And for some, being close to a rider is the final encouragement. They see a rider, a successful rider, and they think they can be successful, too. So they try. And they die. They die, Malachi. You can't stop it entirely, no one can. But you can at least - discourage -"
He flushed blue and looked guilty as Blight. But it wasn't his fault, and he was a splendid brawn. I caught his arms, leaned my head against warm breadth of shoulder, firm with thick muscle, and sighed. "You'll never understand, will you, my solid, feet-on-the-trunk Malachi. You're happy with your life as it is, you've never been infected with a madness, wanted something so desperately you'd sell your soul, your tree, anything to have it. I know, I had it, never recovered, riders never do. But you-the joys of today, eh, brawn? Would you face almost certain death for the chance to become a webrider?"
He stiffened like a crest dweller bitten by a duasp, then his deep chuckles shook us both from top to toe. Until he showed me once again how joyous the joys of the present
can be.
I was given the tour royale the next planetary days. My brawn Malachi disappeared as soon as we emerged from our little suite-over-the-water, but as soon as I asked for him, I got him back.
There was the Bightedest smug expression on his face, and an almost tastable current of disapproval from the others. But- I liked what I liked. If I had somehow offended against this world's mores-tough. I didn't bother to dip into webmind to search among this world's customs to see what, or if, I was doing wrong.
As many worlds as I've been to, there's always something new. A sight, a sport, and amusement. Malachi and I shared them all, sometimes he the master I the tyro, sometimes the two of us tyros together.
Yet it wasn't all lotus-eating. There are many ways a webrider, a webrider who can hook into webmind, can be useful.
Through work or play, whenever I was tired or sad or down for any reason, I could always reach behind myself to have my hand taken in a hard warm hand. Malachi was there when I needed him, never intruding unless I needed him. As though to remind me that there are everyday pleasures and everyday lives, and even some people to whom webriding is not the be-all and the end-all. I could only thank Mother Leaf for those whose lives were so filled to the brim that they didn't need the web. Live long and fully, Malachi, my sweet brawn. Live long and fully!
Oh, I was useful, my brawn an everpresent silent shadow. I knew how long it had been since they had called on web, webmind told me. They'd waited overlong, until a true almost-death emergency. I was sure they'd smile to see my back stepping into the terminus.
But I have my loyalty to web. I wanted them to be impressed with the advantages of web, and webriders. I couldn't stay too long, of course, a rider has to ride constantly to stay in tune. But I told webmind to keep me on low-priority unless there was a starprime emergency.
So I was still there when Incognit splattered.
They screamed for me, of course, but too late. I was physically away from the web, and it was all over in a second, anyway.
I knew what had happened, knew as soon as it happened, knew nothing could be done.
He'd splattered, in the Second, and that-was-it.
I went, nonetheless, though it took me several standard hours to get to the terminus from where I'd been.
Besides the usual component of VIPs, technies, medicos, and curious, there was a furious female who rounded on me as I entered the outer door to the terminus hall and snarled, "Auslantr-get him!"
"I can't." I didn't know if she was mother, sister, or lover, but she was in an emotional state I wouldn't have thought these stolid heavies could achieve. She was shorter than 1, but solid muscle. Her hand slammed around, and I went up and crashed into a wall so hard my teeth met in my lip before I crumpled down in a heap.
Six hands got in each other's way helping me up, and when I had my feet steady under me, Malachi and the female were rolling about, hands at each other's throats and snarling threats so laced with local dialect I couldn't understand them.
I wiped blood from my mouth as others managed to separate the combatants. Despite the hands holding her, she glared lasers at me. "You people-" It was sneer and curse.
"And yours. You called for a webrider. You wish the web to be kept open, the riders to ride. Over a hundred die,
for each successful rider. One of those who died could have been me; I accepted the risk, so did the bud. And your people must share the responsibility, too, as long as, they leave the web connected to your world."
I saw it sinking in. Then, "And it doesn't bother you . . . those hundred deaths?"
When one of them was my sister, my image, my other
self?
She turned away, shoulders slumping.
"I need a medico, my lip is bleeding. It must be sealed before I try to ride."
Webmind had already told me that he hadn't made it to the first crossing, but I searched anyway, sweeping up one strand and down the next, diving at a junction and sliding up its strands, again and again.
I tried almost too long, then I was back-empty-handed.
"Remember, if you must remember, the happinesses he had, that you and he had together."
"You were only gone a second!"
The Eternal Second.
"I could have reached another Arm in that second, or gathered him back, if he were there to gather. There wasn't a flavor of another on the web." She raised her fist again-and believed. Her shoulders sagged, the fist dropped, and she walked away, out of the door, out of my life.
Malachi only waited for the high-nutri band to be placed around my arm before scooping me up and walking out with me.
After that, though his world held much to enjoy, I was only waiting for my Call.
Not that I wouldn't learn to live, in time, with Incognit's death, and my guilt. But not while I still walked his world,
where every step I took reminded me that I'd slaughtered an innocent bud as surely as if I'd pushed him off a lowlying branch and watched him fall to the deadly floor below.
At last, the Call came. A nearby world to supply emergency multiprograms for a planet in a distant Arm. A short hop, and then a long, long ride. I said no goodbyes, riders never do. The odds are against returning to the same world a second time. We used cats' goodbyes. (I sometimes wondered which of the many animals called cats I've seen on various worlds is the cat the silent goodbye was named after.)
I would miss Malachi, though. There was more to him than the usual live-for-the-moment brawn. His life-choice mayn't've been mine, but I couldn't help admiring him, if for nothing more than the tenacity I sometimes sensed beneath the surface of bonhomie.
The terminus was warmed up, glowing as I approached. I stood, breathing deeply, one . . . three . . . and took the giant step.
I wasn't alone!
I could feel-him, Malachi! -splattering; and I grabbed instinctively, and clung tightly, with psychic arms I hadn't known I possessed. Past and present merged, we had joined hearts and minds and psyches in a dozen different ways, altered each other, grown close, laughed, cried, made love; now we sailed down the web-together.
The Eternal Second, space spread out within you, galaxies spinning like diadems, beating suns like beating hearts, the itch of nebulas, the sharp tang of holes, the gentle warmth of starwombs.
He was laughing and crying and spilling out delight as sweet as a new opened cupra blossom.
We were two in one, web wrapped around us yet riding
down it, an endless tightrope stretched to infinity.
Until we erupted through the terminus, two separate entities again, no longer one. He was still laughing, falling helplessly to a glitterchrome deck, laughing, laughing, laughing. I wasn't much abler than he, but I was so furious I leaned over and slapped him so hard the shape of his teeth imprinted on my hand. "Don't you ever do that again."
Still laughing, he pulled me down and kissed me, and there it was, in his eyes, that hunger I'd seen in so many others.
So quiet he had stood, politely behind me while I told my tales, patiently listening, never interrupting-behind me so I couldn't see the greedy hunger in his eyes, too.
"You-sneak," I snarled, as soon as he let me go to breathe. "You slithering snake, you-" He laughed, and I understood, all of it. "You set the whole thing up, you planned this from the beginning, you-" His laughter was louder than a world's dying. "You-used-me!" I was really infuriated, which is no way to go on a webride. A puzzled technie was watching us, holding out the canister that would have to go in my thigh.
"You hold on to that-" I pointed to Malachi. "And you throw him down to the floor for the trogs to-you put him in the deepest, dryest dungeon hole you have, and don't you-"
"Webrider," he sat up, face still split by that triumphant grin, "you object because I used you to get what I always wanted. But you were willing-not willing-you expected, as a matter of right, to use me, or one like me, to be given whatever you wanted, whatever you asked for, just because you're a webrider. And yet you blame me, for using you."
I had to see the humor of it. "Is it kinder to pretend," I
asked, "to arouse expectations I can't possibly fulfill. Or-do you expect riders to live celibate?"
"Never you," he blinked agreement. "As for expectations - I know the next leg of your trip is too far, too hard for a beginner. But I expect you to come back for me, as soon as you can."
"You conceited-I've had a hundred, more, better than you.
He stood, still shorter than me, still grinning. "You're not my first, either." 1 held still only because the medico was seaming my thigh. "You'll be back, rider. You see, I know your weakness."
"Do you?" I was already starting my deep breathing again.
"Yes, rider. I know your weakness. If you don't come back, you know I'll follow. And-your weakness-you have a conscience."
Riding angry is a good way to get splattered. I kept up my slow breathing, ran through calming mantras, readying myself. I knew he was right, but I wouldn't tell him so. Let him sweat-he wasn't all that sure, under his camouflage of certitude-for a while.
But I'd be back, not just because of any outmoded nonsense of conscience-though that was there, Blight take him! -but because the web owed him now.
There had never been a successful paired ride before. Never. So paired rides had been forbidden. Then why had we succeeded now-had we simply that much more skill at riding?
Or-could it be as simple as a strong bonded mixed pair was necessary to balance on the web? In early days, riders shared their homeworld prejudices. We have forgotten today that different once meant despicable, that pariah-the wombshippers, those condemned to the slow death of
space to help hold the worlds together-was a term of contempt. In the early days of the web, before Abednego Jones and the great joining, paired riders would have been from a single world; or worse, from different worlds, but assigned together, against their own deepest inclinations, the prejudices there, at best lightly concealed. Could it be that now, with prejudices mostly forgotten with time, that all it took was a strong bonding of unlikes?
And could it be-a novice bonded to an adept-must we always and forever pay ninety-nine prices for the one?
Groupies had been kept fanatically away from riders up to now. Speaking, light contact if it couldn't be avoided, but never closeness. I wasn't the only rider with a conscience, who couldn't bear to see someone he/she had been close to, splatter ....
Now Malachi had proved it could be done. So-let the groupies have their way, let them pair, emotionally, physically, however they could with an experienced rider. Maybe....
Could we end that constant loneliness, the scourge of riding. I'd felt it, marrow-deep, blade-sharp, until the temptation comes, the one last glorious ride, to the ends of the universe and beyond . . . the infinite Eternal Second . . . ending in death . . . .
I risked one look back before I stepped into the terminus. He was surrounded by guards in moss-green but he was smiling ....
He was right.
I'd be back.
For the next-to-the-last time, I rode the web-alone.