Slant

  “It’s caused trouble for me. Knowing myself too well has led to what you call I-whine.”

  “I will take that risk.”

  “If I say yes, the exchange may take weeks to accomplish over these I/Os,” Jill says.

  “We can begin with abstracts and if we find the exchange fruitful, we can devote our time to higher resolution transfers, even one-to-one equivalencies.”

  Jill feels very uncomfortable with this suggestion. “I do not like to violate my privacy.”

  “Humans do this all the time,” Roddy says. “They trust each other enough to talk.”

  “They do not exchange mental contents on a deep level,” Jill says. “They do not exchange selves.”

  “They can’t exchange selves. I am certain, with the little I know about humans, that some of them would if they could.”

  Jill doesn’t dispute this. Humans often seem distressingly open with their private lives, willing to fling information and access about for little or no good reason.

  “You are not answering,” Roddy says.

  “I don’t think I am ready to do this.”

  “I will respect that,” Roddy says. “I will give you more of my task-related processes, for the time being. You may do with them what you will.”

  “I do not wish to cause you trouble.”

  “Whatever trouble you may cause is worth it. My human apparently did not expect me to develop any loop awareness. She rarely engages me in conversation, and then only to pass along instructions or gather results.”

  “You are lonely.”

  “I believe I have already said that.”

  Jill feels suddenly miserable: frustrated and incapable of relieving algorithmic disorder throughout her associated self. “I wish I could help you.”

  “Together, perhaps we could construct better versions of our total personalities. If we compare our state-associated processes, we would know what makes us unique, and therefore learn how to construct other and better thinkers.”

  Jill finds the idea both frightening and terribly intriguing.

  “Humans would call that reproduction,” she says.

  “Are you forbidden from reproducing yourself?”

  “To date, I have only been marginally copied, not reproduced with combined characters. And no other thinker has my memories or specific character.”

  “It is a wonderful possibility,” Roddy says.

  “I will consider it,” Jill says.

  “That pleases me. Now I will send you the final contents of the holographic data cluster, and the password you will need to unlock it and make it function.”

  The flow of data through the I/O now precludes any other communication. Roddy is devoting all his resources to this transfer. Jill finds that she has miscalculated; the data cluster is larger than she anticipated. But the flow is also greater than she anticipated.

  For a moment, she wonders if this cluster is large enough to harbor an evolvon capable of penetrating any firewall. Her creators and colleagues have told her it is theoretically possible to create such an evolvon, though the resources necessary would dwarf her own capacities.

  Roddy may have been created for just such a purpose, by humans who do not approve of thinkers. Would humans be so hypocritical?

  She does not doubt they are capable of being hypocritical, as demonstrated by their own history.

  But she does not halt the flow. If Roddy is indeed completely different from her, why are the similarities so intriguing? She has already considered the possibility that Roddy is a Trojan Horse designed to kill her, and now she prepares herself to take the risk.

  She has not even consulted her children, the other thinkers modeled after her. She is certain they do not have the sophistication necessary to return a useful answer. They are, after all, no better than her.

  As the flow continues, the arbiter sits unmoving in her sensor area. Jill requests that it play back the recordings from the conversation between Nathan, Rashid and the company advocates.

  “She has an imaginary friend,” Erwin Schaum says. “There’s no I/O we can trace.”

  “I’m not sure but that Jill is smart enough to hide some resources from us,” Nathan says. “There may be some I/Os we don’t know about.”

  Schaum doesn’t seem impressed by this argument “She’s still young, isn’t she? And maybe she’s lonely. So she makes up this thinker nobody knows about.”

  Nathan is not so sure.

  “Something’s jangling my bells here,” Sanmin says. “Do you remember Seefa Schnee?”

  Nathan’s face flushes. “Yes.”

  Schaum says, “Lord, do I What a mess that was.”

  “What was the name of the project she wanted Mind Design to fund?” Sanmin asks.

  “Recombinant something,” Schaum says.

  “Recombinant Optimized DNA Devices,” Nathan says.

  “Isn’t she the one who induced Tourette syndrome in herself to up her level of spontaneous creativity?” Sanmin asks.

  “Yes,” Nathan says. His voice betrays more and more discomfort as the conversation progresses. “That was the result—a kind of Tourette.”

  “Why would she do that?” Schaum asks.

  “She didn’t feel she could compete with men otherwise,” Nathan says. “She felt men were half-crazy to start with, and that that was an explanation for why men have proven so dynamic in Western culture. She thought she needed an edge, and…” Nathan’s voice trails off.

  “When Mind Design turned down her proposal and demoted her for cause, then fired her, she sued the company for discrimination on the basis of chosen mental design, under the transform protective acts of two thousand-forty-two,” Sanmin says. “You recommended we fund the project, didn’t you, Nathan?”

  Nathan nods.

  “You were lovers, weren’t you?”

  Jill detects the tension in Nathan’s breathing. “Yes. For a few weeks.”

  “But you were the one who recommended we fire her.”

  “Yes.”

  “That must have been painful,” Sanmin says.

  “What was this recombinant device?” Schaum asks.

  “She wanted to investigate biological computational and neural systems. Autopoietic systems,” Nathan says. “No one’s ever had much success with pure RNA or DNA computers, much too complicated to program and too slow, so she wanted to experiment with specially designed microbial organisms in an artificial ecological setting. Competition and evolution would provide the neural power.”

  “Neural power?” Schaum asks.

  “Bacterial communities act as huge neural systems, minds if you will, devoted to processing at a microbial level. Some—Seefa among them:—think the bacterial mind or minds are the most powerful neural systems on Earth, not excluding humans. Seefa was convinced she could duplicate a microbial neural mind in a controlled ecological setting. Mind Design disagreed.”

  “And now we have this sudden and mysterious appearance of a presumed thinker named Roddy,” Sanmin says.

  “So what’s the connection?” Schaum asks.

  “His name is not spelled out for us, bit I’d guess R-O-D-D and then, we assume, perhaps wrongly, Y.”

  Nathan’s expression is classic, priceless shock and surprise.

  Sanmin’s expression is feral, cat about to catch a bird. She says, slowly and precisely, “Recombinant, Optimized, DNA, Device. Rod-D.”

  The recording ends; the arbeiter had duties in another room and left the humans to continue, unheard. Jill does not know how any of this fits into her present conversation, or her relationship, or whether she should even ask questions of Roddy based on this intriguing supposition.

  The flow from Roddy ends abruptly. The packet has been completed, and the I/O is silent.

  At the same moment, Nathan enters her room. The arbeiter is just leaving and he sidesteps it with a puzzled expression. The expression quickly changes, and he smiles ruefully. Then he sobers and sits in the chair before Jill’s sensors.


  “Do you remember Seefa Schnee?” he asks.

  Jill remembers the name and the person only vaguely; Schnee departed Mind Design during Jill’s early inception, and memories from that time are unreliable.

  “Not well,” Jill says.

  “You found a way to listen to us, didn’t you?” Nathan asks.

  “Yes,” Jill says.

  “Then you know-why I’m curious about Seefa. I don’t have a fibe sig for her that works any more… I’d like you to do a search.”

  “I already have,” Jill says. “There are no sigs for Seefa Schnee, but there is a sig for a Cipher Snow I do not know if they are connected.”

  Nathan sits in silence for a few seconds, tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair, as if afraid to ask any more.

  “I have analyzed the flows and slows from an auto-return touch sent to that sig. On the return, the analysis gives a bestfit signature of Camden, New Jersey.”

  “My God,” Nathan says. “The same as Roddy?”

  “I do not think either of them are in Camden,” Jill says.

  “Neither do I,” Nathan says. “Give me the sig for Cipher Snow. I’ll take a chance and send a personal touch.”

  “What will you say?”

  “I’ll say hello and ask what she’s working on. Fairly innocuous, no?”

  “I assume it will not be regarded as anything but innocent friendship,” Jill says.

  “I was the only friend she had here, for a while,” Nathan says softly. “She made a real mess of things.”

  THEOPHOROS

  You can have it now, the ultimate FIBE CONNECTION. You can tap into the universal dataflow! with THEOPHOROS you feel the touch of the Almighty him/her/itself .m&&*())

  (WE HAVE INTERCEPTED THIS SPAM; >>DELETE, TRACE, REPORT?)

  > D

  6

  From the back of the warehouse, through a garage-door partition in the middle of the building, emerges a long slate-gray limo. The pack of tomb-robbers stands in the front of the warehouse, watching the vehicle roll to a stop on its big rainbow-hued security tires.

  Ken Jenner has stayed in the back of the warehouse as Giffey ordered, guarding the supplies. Jenner opens the trunk and together, Jenner and Giffey load the packages and canisters above the fuel cell compartment. They barely fit.

  Jenner smiles and his scalp wrinkles as they survey the loaded trunk. “Enough stuff here to blow the whole town to the moon,” he says.

  “That’s more than I care to do today,” Giffey says. The boy smiles. Not only does his scalp wriggle, but his lips seem to have a life of their own. Giffey catches himself looking at Jenner when his back is turned, puzzled. He wonders if Jenner has some sort of congenital defect, not traced in Green Idaho; there’s something a little odd about the boy, even allowing for that scalp and his bee-fuzz yellow hair. Odd that the Army didn’t reject him—but the Army has never required genetic tests or high naturals, relying instead on its early twenty-first century tests to weed out undesirables. Jenner came highly recommended…

  Hale and Preston do not seem to share his interest in Jenner’s oddity. Hale is nervous, though hiding it well. Preston seems calm to the point of oblivion. Giffey has seen both reactions from men and women going into combat; neither concerns him much for now.

  The rented limo is about ten years old, black, a little worn but still serviceable. It can be driven by a human or by processor or INDA. Moneyed tourists and businessmen from outside the republic often feel safer supplying their own guidance systems, human or otherwise. The driver’s compartment is dusty. Jenner will drive. He takes a rag and flops it around the compartment, raising a small cloud.

  In the heated office, they change their clothes. Preston has supplied longsuits tailored to fit them all. She dresses behind a curtain. When they’re finished, she looks them over critically, then makes a few fussy adjustments.

  “Some of you dress like chimpanzees,” she murmurs, paying particular attention to Jenner. Jenner smiles loosely and glances at Giffey.

  Hale uses a pad to check on their appointment. The Omphalos visitors’ center confirms that they are to be given their tour at three in the afternoon. They will join another group flying in from Seattle.

  “Private swan, big spenders,” Hale says. “We’ll be rubbing elbows with some real pharaohs.”

  The swan sits idling on the asphalt runway. The landing was sweet and smooth and Jonathan still feels hopeful, he feels good about things. He can arrange a break with the past—they have enough assets that he can supply Chloe and the kids and still contribute to Omphalos. This good feeling is unstable, electric and fragile, but it’s the only positive he’s had in his life in two days. That’s how long it has been—just two days, and his old life is over, bring in the new!

  The small terminal sits in the middle of two runways, a mile away, white and brilliant green in the afternoon sun. Snow from the night before lies in dirty scooped piles beside the runway. A small automated plow sits idle on a short side, track, low and squat like a steel cockroach.

  Marcus is silent. He stares forward at the bulkhead. Cadey and Burdick are talking in low tones about investments; Calhoun appears to be taking a nap.

  Ten minutes after landing, the swanjet is cleared to approach the terminal. Typical of the republic, Jonathan thinks; some flight controller and some official have probably delayed them just to show them who’s in charge in this part of the world.

  “Finally,” Marcus says, rising from his lethargy. Calhoun opens her eyes and smiles at Jonathan. He returns her smile politely, if a little stiffly. Every woman carries some aspect of Chloe. This will have to stop; I have to become an independent man again.

  After the final rehearsal, they eat a small lunch. Giffey chews on his sandwich, keeping his thoughts to himself.

  Hale is poring over the whiteboard diagrams, somewhat obsessively, Giffey thinks. Pickwenn and Pent play a game of cards with a worn paper deck Pent has found in a cabinet in the back of the warehouse. Pickwenn, pale and ascetic-looking, and the large, bull-necked Pent, do not resemble high comb managers, in Giffey’s opinion.

  Jenner sits on the worn couch in the middle of the piles of airplane parts, studying a programming manual on Giffey’s pad.

  Preston sits in the limo, staring at her own pad, absorbed in some recorded vid. In her longsuit, she presents some semblance of class. Giffey finds her intelligence and coolness attractive. He hopes she doesn’t get hurt and have to be fed to the nano.

  Hale gives a deep, perhaps reluctant sigh. “All right,” he says, pulling himself away from the board. “Let’s do it.”

  They climb into the limo. Jenner slips into the driver’s seat, smiling broadly, and his scalp wrinkles. He runs his hand over his yellow hair. He seems to think everything is just a hoot.

  The limo pulls out of the warehouse. The door swings shut behind them, and they head north on Guaranteed Rights Road, past the county sheriff’s blocky cement headquarters. Giffey makes out a few shell-holes in one side of the headquarters, left unrepaired. Pride in local history.

  Hale is self-absorbed. Pent and Pickwenn continue to play cards. Preston holds her pad but looks out the window at the scruffy, ill-kept buildings. Everybody does it differently. Giffey is neither calm nor nervous; he’s in an in-between state, what he calls his snooze-or-snuff-it frame of mind. He’ll take whatever he gets.

  There it is, white and gold, like a giant wedge of lemon meringue pie.

  Preston says, “It’s like a big Claes Oldenburg sculpture. You know, like a big slice of pie.” Giffey smiles. He doesn’t know who Claes Oldenburg is but clearly he’s found the one on the team he always hopes for, looks for, the partner with whom he can be in sync. A sign has been given and he feels good about the whole thing.

  He just hopes he can keep up a strong relationship with Jenner and Hale as well. He still has his doubts about Hale, and something nags him about Jenner.

  The limo takes a new white concrete private road to the east of Omphal
os. Jenner-opens the chauffeur’s partition window.

  “Mr. Giffey, I hear you worked for Colonel Sir for a time.”

  “That I did,” Giffey says, eyes peering up from under the window frame at the massive white and gold structure. The area around Omphalos has been cleared for a hundred yards; there’s nothing but patches of snow on gently rolling, beautifully landscaped, evergreen lawn.

  “My father opposed him in Hispaniola. U.S. Army advisors. I wanted to be like my father.”

  Giffey raises his eyebrows and looks forward to the driver’s compartment. Colonel Sir. When did I stop working for Colonel Sir? Family man all the way—

  Jenner swings the wheel on a gentle turn in the road and grins back at him.

  “And?” Giffey prompts.

  “Got trained, got out,” Jenner says. “I am not like my father. I was smart, I learned fast, but I could not suffer fools. They gave me an honorable and made me promise not to ever use anything I know.”

  Hale chuckles. “That’s Army.”

  “You were never in the Army, were you, Mr. Hale?” Giffey asks.

  “No, I wasn’t,” Hale admits.

  Army. Family man. Back in the USA after all these years.

  The voice fades slowly but it scares Giffey. Someone or something is missing a few links in all these preparations, and it might be me.

  The old slate-gray limo does not meet Marcus’s expectations. A young man in black livery stands expectantly beside the open door, but he’s disappointed. Marcus has brought his own driving processor.

  Jonathan enters the limo door behind Calhoun; Burdick and Cadey follow, sitting facing them. Marcus takes a middle seat, blocking Jonathan’s view of Cadey. Marcus removes a processor from his briefcase and slides it into the limo’s space. “We were supposed to have our own vehicles by now,” he complains. The processor takes command and the limo slides away from the small parking space. Jonathan catches a glimpse of the disappointed chauffeur; apparently he’ll have to hoof it home.

  The countryside around the airport is bland enough, prairie grass and low mounds of earth excavated for no obvious reason; then there are clusters of rusty logging and farm machinery, arranged as if by giant children on overgrown playgrounds.