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To that effect, he dressed and went outside.
In the flare of the compound lights, the jungle s purple vegetation
looked particularly unpleasant, like the swollen limbs of long-drowned
corpses. The usual skittering things made a racket. There was nothing in
the area inclined to attack a man, but the planet s evolution hadn t stinted on
biting and stinging vermin, and . . .
And one of the vermin was missing.
He had, as always, been frugal in his breathing, gather-ing into his
lungs as little of the noxious atmosphere as possible. The cloying mint
scent never failed to sicken him.
But the odor was gone.
It had been there earlier in the evening, and now it was gone. He
stood in jungle night, in the glare of the com-pound lights, waiting for his
brain to process this piece of information, but his brain told him only that the
odor had been there and now it was gone.
Still, some knowledge of what this meant was leaking through,
creating a roiling fear.
If you knew what to look for, you could find it. No vee was as detailed
as nature.
You only had to find one seam, one faint oscillation in a rock, one
incongruent shadow.
It was a first-rate sim, and it would have fooled him. But they had had
to work fast, fabricating and downloading it, and no one had noted that a
nasty alien-bug filled the Big-R air with its mating fragrance.
Dr. Marx knew he was still in the vee. That meant, of course, that he
had not walked outside at all. He was still lying on the flat. And, thanks to his
blessed paranoia, there was a button at the base of the flat, two inches
from where his left hand naturally lay. Pushing it would disrupt all current
and activate a hypodermic containing twenty cc s of hapotile-4. Hapotile-4
could get the attention of the deepest v-diver. The aftereffects were not
pleasant, but, for many v-devotees, there wouldn t have been an  after
without hapotile.
Dr. Marx didn t hesitate. He strained for the Big R, traced the line of
his arm, moved. It was there; he found it. Pressed.
Nothing.
Then, out of the jungle, a figure came.
* * * *
Eight feet tall, carved from black steel, the vee soldier bowed at the waist.
Then, standing erect, it spoke:  We deactivated your failsafe before you
embarked, Doctor.
 Who are you? He was not intimidated by this mili-tary mockup, the
boom of its metal voice, the faint whine of its servos. It was a virtual puppet,
of course. Its masters were the thing to fear.
 We are concerned citizens, the soldier said.  We have reason to
believe that you are preventing a client of ours, a client-in-good-credit, from
satisfying her constitu-tionally sanctioned appetites.
 Keel Benning came to us of her own free will. Ask her and she will
tell you as much.
 We will ask her. And that is not what she will say. She will say, for all
the world to hear, that her freedom was compromised by so-called
caregivers.
 Leave her alone.
The soldier came closer. It looked up at the dark blanket of the sky.
 Too late to leave anyone alone, Doctor. Ev-eryone is in the path of
progress. One day we will all live in the vee. It is the natural home of gods.
The sky began to glow as the black giant raised its gleaming arms.
 You act largely out of ignorance, the soldier said.  The god-seekers
come, and you treat them like aberra-tions, like madmen burning with
sickness. This is because you do not know the virtual yourself. Fearing it,
you have confined and studied it. You have refused to taste it, to savor it.
The sky was glowing gold, and figures seemed to move in it,
beautiful, winged humanforms.
Virtvana, Marx thought. Apes and Angels.
It was his last coherent thought before enlightenment.
 I give you a feast, the soldier roared. And all the denizens of heaven
swarmed down, surrounding Dr. Marx with love and compassion and that
absolute, impossible distillation of a hundred thousand insights that formed
a single, tear-shaped truth: Euphoria.
* * * *
Keel found she could stand. A couple of days of inac-tion hadn t entirely
destroyed the work of all that exercise. Shakily, she navigated the small
room. The room had the sanitized, hospital look she d grown to know and
loathe. If this room followed the general scheme, the shelves over the bed
should contain . . . They did, and Keel donned one of the gray, disposable
client suits.
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