Buhle needed an organ, we'd make one right here. Print it out in about forty hours, pristine and virgin."
"So you're saying I'm not going to be harvested or hunted, then?"
"It's a very low probability outcome," she said, and pushed the crashbar.
It was darker in this room, a mellow, candlelit sort of light, and there was a rhythmic vibration coming up through the floor, a whoosh whoosh.
Ria said, "It's his breath. The filtration systems are down there." She pointed a toe at the outline of a service hatch set into the floor. "Circulatory system overhead," she said, and he craned his neck up at the grate covering the ceiling, the troughs filled with neatly bundled tubes.
One more set of doors, another cool, dark room, this one nearly silent, and one more door at the end, an airlock door, and another plainclothes security person in front of it; a side-room with a glass door bustling with people staring intently at screens. The security person -- a woman, Leon saw -- had a frank and square pistol with a bulbous butt velcroed to the side of her suit.
"He's through there, isn't he?" Leon said, pointing at the airlock door.
"No," Ria said. "No. He's here. We are inside him. Remember that, Leon. He isn't the stuff in the vat there. In some sense you've been in Buhle's body since you got off the chopper. His sensor array network stretches out as far as the heliport, like the tips of the hairs on your neck, they feel the breezes that blow in his vicinity. Now you've tunneled inside him, and you're right here, in his heart or his liver."
"Or his brain."
A voice, then, from everywhere, warm and good-humored. "The brain is overrated." Leon looked at Ria and she rolled her eyes eloquently behind her faceplate.
"Tuned sound," she said. "A party trick. Buhle --"
"Wait," Buhle said. "Wait. The brain, this is important, the brain is so overrated. The ancient Egyptians thought it was used to cool the blood, you know that?" He chortled, a sound that felt to Leon as though it began just above his groin and rose up through his torso, a very pleasant and very invasive sensation. "The heart, they thought, the heart was the place where the me lived. I used to wonder about that. Wouldn't they think that the thing between the organs of hearing, the thing behind the organs of seeing, that must be the me? But that's just the brain doing one of its little stupid games, backfilling the explanation. We think the brain is the obvious seat of the me because the brain already knows that it is the seat, and can't conceive of anything else. When the brain thought it lived in your chest, it was perfectly happy to rationalize that too -- Of course it's in the chest, you feel your sorrow and your joy there, your satiety and your hunger... The brain, pffft, the brain!"
"Buhle," she said. "We're coming in now."
The nurse/guard by the door had apparently only heard their part of the conversation, but also hadn't let it bother her. She stood to one side, and offered Leon a tiny, incremental nod as he passed. He returned it, and then hurried to catch up with Ria, who was waiting inside the airlock. The outer door closed and for a moment, they were pressed up against one another and he felt a wild, horny thought streak through him, all the excitement discharging itself from yet another place that the me might reside.
Then the outer door hissed open and he met Buhle -- he tried to remember what Ria had said, that Buhle wasn't this, Buhle was everywhere, but he couldn't help himself from feeling that this was him .
Buhle's vat was surprisingly small, no bigger than the sarcophagus that an ancient Egyptian might have gone to in his burial chamber. He tried not to stare inside it, but he couldn't stop himself. The withered, wrinkled man floating in the vat was intertwined with a thousand fiber optics that disappeared into pinprick holes in his naked skin. There were tubes: in the big highways in the groin, in the gut through a small valve set into a pucker of
"So you're saying I'm not going to be harvested or hunted, then?"
"It's a very low probability outcome," she said, and pushed the crashbar.
It was darker in this room, a mellow, candlelit sort of light, and there was a rhythmic vibration coming up through the floor, a whoosh whoosh.
Ria said, "It's his breath. The filtration systems are down there." She pointed a toe at the outline of a service hatch set into the floor. "Circulatory system overhead," she said, and he craned his neck up at the grate covering the ceiling, the troughs filled with neatly bundled tubes.
One more set of doors, another cool, dark room, this one nearly silent, and one more door at the end, an airlock door, and another plainclothes security person in front of it; a side-room with a glass door bustling with people staring intently at screens. The security person -- a woman, Leon saw -- had a frank and square pistol with a bulbous butt velcroed to the side of her suit.
"He's through there, isn't he?" Leon said, pointing at the airlock door.
"No," Ria said. "No. He's here. We are inside him. Remember that, Leon. He isn't the stuff in the vat there. In some sense you've been in Buhle's body since you got off the chopper. His sensor array network stretches out as far as the heliport, like the tips of the hairs on your neck, they feel the breezes that blow in his vicinity. Now you've tunneled inside him, and you're right here, in his heart or his liver."
"Or his brain."
A voice, then, from everywhere, warm and good-humored. "The brain is overrated." Leon looked at Ria and she rolled her eyes eloquently behind her faceplate.
"Tuned sound," she said. "A party trick. Buhle --"
"Wait," Buhle said. "Wait. The brain, this is important, the brain is so overrated. The ancient Egyptians thought it was used to cool the blood, you know that?" He chortled, a sound that felt to Leon as though it began just above his groin and rose up through his torso, a very pleasant and very invasive sensation. "The heart, they thought, the heart was the place where the me lived. I used to wonder about that. Wouldn't they think that the thing between the organs of hearing, the thing behind the organs of seeing, that must be the me? But that's just the brain doing one of its little stupid games, backfilling the explanation. We think the brain is the obvious seat of the me because the brain already knows that it is the seat, and can't conceive of anything else. When the brain thought it lived in your chest, it was perfectly happy to rationalize that too -- Of course it's in the chest, you feel your sorrow and your joy there, your satiety and your hunger... The brain, pffft, the brain!"
"Buhle," she said. "We're coming in now."
The nurse/guard by the door had apparently only heard their part of the conversation, but also hadn't let it bother her. She stood to one side, and offered Leon a tiny, incremental nod as he passed. He returned it, and then hurried to catch up with Ria, who was waiting inside the airlock. The outer door closed and for a moment, they were pressed up against one another and he felt a wild, horny thought streak through him, all the excitement discharging itself from yet another place that the me might reside.
Then the outer door hissed open and he met Buhle -- he tried to remember what Ria had said, that Buhle wasn't this, Buhle was everywhere, but he couldn't help himself from feeling that this was him .
Buhle's vat was surprisingly small, no bigger than the sarcophagus that an ancient Egyptian might have gone to in his burial chamber. He tried not to stare inside it, but he couldn't stop himself. The withered, wrinkled man floating in the vat was intertwined with a thousand fiber optics that disappeared into pinprick holes in his naked skin. There were tubes: in the big highways in the groin, in the gut through a small valve set into a pucker of
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