Heavy Weather

Martha returned and collapsed sweating into the second deck chair. "What a mega-hassle, man, banks are the most paranoid goddamn networks in the universe. I hate banks, man." She shot Alex a narrow glare of squinting anger. "I even hate outlaw banks."

"Did you get through?" Alex said, standing at her elbow.

"Yeah, I got through-I wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't get through! But I didn't pull much real use out of that tower, so we're go

"You'd think they'd at least give you some of their solar power," Alex said. "It just goes to waste otherwise."

"Only a fuckin' bank would want to sell you sunshine," Martha said bitterly.

Alex nodded, trying to please. "I can hear those racks humming from here."

Martha sat up in her chair. "You hear humming?"

"Sure," Alex said.

"Real low? Electrical? Kind of a throbbing sound?"

"Well, yeah."

Martha reached out and poked the virch-blind Buzzard between the ribs. Buzzard jumped as if gun-shot and angrily tore off his goggles and phones.

"Hey, Buzz!" Martha said. "Medicine Boy hears The Hum!"

"Wow," Buzzard said. He got up from his chair. "Here, take over." He helped Martha out of the chair and into his own. Martha began wiping the phones down with a little attached Velcro pack of antisePtic tissues.

Buzzard fetched up his shades and cap. "Let's get well away from the truck, dude. C'mon with me."

Alex followed Buzzard as they picked their way down the western slope of the hill, down the dirt track. Off in the distance, a broken line of squat grayish clouds was lurking on the horizon. The approaching violent storm front, if that was indeed what it was, looked surprisingly unimpressive.

"Still hear the hum?" Buzzard said.

"'SI0."

"Well, listen."

Alex strained his ears for half a silent minute. Insect chirps, a feeble rustle of wind, a few distant bird cries. "Maybe. A little."

"Well, I hear it," Buzzard said, with satisfaction. "Most people can't. Martha can't. But that's the Taos Hum."

"What's that?"

"Real low, kind of a wobbling sound... about thirty to eighty hertz. Twenty hertz is about as low as human hearing can go." He spread his arms. "Sourceless, like it's all around you, all around the horizon. Like an old-fashioned motor, or a fuel-burning generator. You can only hear it when it's really quiet."

"I thought it was the solar rack."

"Solar racks don't hum," Buzzard told him. "They hiss a little, sometimes...

"Well, what is it?"

"They call it the Taos Hum, 'cause the first reports came out of New Mexico about fifty years ago," Buzzard said. "That was when the first real greenhouse effects starting kicking in... . Taos, Santa Fe, Albuquerque...hen parts of Florida. Y'know, Jerry was born in Los Alamos. That's where Jerry grew up. He can hear The Hum."

"I still don't understand what it is, Boswell."

"Nobody knows," Buzzard said simply. "Jerry's got some theories. But The Hum doesn't show up on instruments. You can't pick up The Hum with any microphone."

Alex scratched his stubbled chin. "How d'you know it's really real, then?"

Buzzard shrugged. "What do you mean, 'real'? The Hum drives people nuts, sometimes. Is that real enough for ya? Maybe it's not a real sound. Maybe it's some disturbance inside the ear, some kind of resonant power harmonic off the bottom of the ionosphere, or something.

Some people can hear the northern lights, they say; they hear 'em sort of hiss and sparkle when the curtains move. There's no explanation for that, either. There's a lot we don't understand about weather." Buzzard clutched the lump of blackened metal on the leather thong around his neck. "A lot, man."

They stared silently at the western horizon for a lQng moment. "I'm sending the 'thopters out to scan those towers," Buzzard said. "They're go

"You don't happen to have a spare pair of those shades, do you?" Alex said. "This glare is killing me."

"Naw," Buzzard said, turning back toward the truck. "But I got some spare virching goggles. I can put you under 'em and patch you in to the 'thopters. Let's go."

They returned to the truck, where Martha was remotely wrapped in flight. Buzzard rummaged in a tool kit, then produced a pair of calipers. He measured the distance between the pupils of Alex's eyeballs, then loaded the parameters into a laptop. He pulled spare goggles and phones from their dustproof plastic wrap and sterilized them with a swab. "Can't be too careful with virching equipment," he remarked. "People get pinkeye, swimmer~s ear... in the city arcades, you can get head lice!"

"I got no chair," Alex pointed Out.

"Sit on some bubblepak."

Alex fetched his bubblepak mat and sat on it, sweating. There was a faint hot wind from the southeast, and he couldn't call it damp, exactly, but something about it was suffocating him.

A lanky mosquito had landed u

"Here ya go," Buzzard said, handing him the goggles. "Telepresence is kind of special, okay? You can get some real somatic disturbance, 'cause there's no body sensation to go with the movement. Especially since you won't be controlling the flight. You'll just be riding shotgun with me and Martha, kinda looking over our wings, right?"

"Right, I get it."

"If you start getting virch-sick, just close your eyes tight till you feel better. And for Christ's sake, don't puke on the equipment."

"Right, I get it, no problem!" Alex said. He hadn't actually thrown up during his ultralight experience. On the contrary: he'd coughed up about a pint of blue goo from the pit of his lungs, then passed out from oxygen hyperventilation. He thought it was wiser not to mention this. If they thought it was merely vomit, so much the better.

Alex slipped the goggles on and stared at two tiny television screens, a thumb's width from the surface of his eyes. They were input-free and cybernetic blue, and the display had seen some hard use; the left one had a light pepper sprinkling of dead black pixels. He felt sweat beading on his goggle-smothered eyelids.

"Ready?" came Buzzard's voice from the distant limbo of the real world. "I'm go

"Yeah, okay."

"Remember, this is going to be a little disorienting."

"Would you just shut up and do it, man? You people kill me!"

White light snapped onto his face. He was halfway up the sky, and flying.

Alex immediately lost his balance, pitched over backward, and thunked the back of his head onto the hard plastic of the truck's rear tire.

Eyes wide, he squirmed on his back with his shoulders and heels and flung out both his arms to embrace the drifting sky. He felt both his arms fall to the bubblepak with distant thuds, like severed butcher's meat.

He was now soaring gut-first through space. The ground felt beautifully solid beneath his back, as if the whole weight of the planet was behind him and shoving. The outline of distant clouds shimmered slightly, a hallucinatory perceptual crawl. Computational effects; when he looked very closely, he could see tiny dandruff flakes of pixel sweeping in swift little avalanches over the variants in color and light intensity.

"Wow," he muttered. "This is it. Mega, mega heavy . .

Instinctively, he tried to move his head and gaze around himself. There was no tracking inside the goggles. The scene before him stayed rock steady, welded to his face. He was nothing but eyeball, a numbed carcass of amputated everything. He was body-free.