‘They dumped your memory,’ the senior forensics officer said. ‘That’s why the array’s down.’
‘Dumped it?’
‘Yeah. Everything, management programs, files, the lot. They’ve all gone. Presumably into the burglar’s own memory store. I hope you kept back-ups?’
‘Yeah.’ Dudley looked round the study, scratching at the OCtattoo on his ear. ‘Most of it, anyway. I mean, it’s only a house array.’
‘Was there anything valuable on it, sir? I mean, your work, and everything?’
‘Some of my work was there, but I wouldn’t call it valuable. Astronomy isn’t a secretive profession.’
‘Hum, well, it might be an attempted blackmail, someone looking for something incriminating. You’d be surprised what stays in an array’s transit memory cache, stuff from years ago. Whoever they are, they’ve got all that now.’
‘I don’t have anything incriminating to keep. I mean, bills paid late, some traffic tickets when I was driving on manual – who doesn’t?’
‘Nonetheless, sir, you are in the public eye now. It might be an idea to think about extra security, and you certainly ought to change all your access patterns after this.’
‘Of course, yes.’
‘We’ll notify the local patrol car,’ Constable Brampton said. ‘They’ll include you on their watch detail in future.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re sure there’s nothing else missing?’
‘No. I can’t see anything.’
‘We’ll sweep for DNA fragments, of course, and try and trace the car. But it looks like a professional job. Chances are, if there’s nothing to worry about in the array memory, then there won’t be any follow-up.’
8
After the Commonwealth ExoProtectorate Council finished with its unanimous vote to send a starship to the Dyson Pair, Ozzie Fernandez Isaacs excused himself and took the elevator down to the lobby. Outside, it was warm for spring, with just some slim banks of dirty snow lingering in the gutters where the civicservicebots had pushed it. He started down Fifth Avenue, one of a handful of people to be using the broad sidewalk, the time of day and time of year were against pedestrians. There were none of the street vendors he could remember from even a couple of centuries ago; the burger and coke stands on every intersection, T-shirt sellers, stalls with quasi-legal software fixes, sensepimps with pornomemories. That would be too untidy now, too low down for the city and its cultured inhabitants. These days quaint booths and boutiques occupied the ground floor of all the skyscrapers, with quirky objects imported from every planet in the Commonwealth – all so strangely unappealing. It was all a sad decline, as far as Ozzie was concerned. You couldn’t sanitize a great city like New York without losing its original quality, the dynamism and grubby edges which made it an exciting vibrant place to live. Despite the buildings, which still impressed him, it was becoming just another suburb of Earth. Its manufacturing industry had long since moved off-planet, leaving just the research and design consortiums that remained on the cutting edge, staffed by billionaire partners. The advertising agencies remained along with media company headquarters; there were even some artists down in SoHo, though Ozzie regarded them as talentless dinosaurs. It was the finance sector and government offices who dominated the employment market, for those who had to work. Many didn’t, having their idle lives taken care of by the innumerable supply and service companies that encircled Manhattan Island, all employing offworlders on medium-term visas.
Visits like this reminded Ozzie why he so rarely came back to the world of his birth these days. When he looked up, there was a jagged strip of cool-steel sky a long way above him, pushed away by the grand towers. Even in midsummer, the sun was a near-stranger to the ground in this part of town, while today the trees and shrubs planted in the expensive plazas all had artificial lighting to help them grow.
Glancing down the impressive vertical canyon at one of the intersections, he saw the ancient Chrysler building secure inside its protective glass cage, shielded from the elements. ‘And which of us is going to outlast the other?’ he asked it quietly.
The cars and cabs and trucks were sliding past him on the road, their axle motors making almost no noise at all. People in thick coats or black-tinted organic filament ponchos hurried past, not even looking at him. They were almost all adults. As far as he could see up and down Fifth Avenue, there were no more than three or four kids under ten years old. That was what he missed most of all; and Earth’s birth rate was still declining year after year as the rich eternal sophisticates that populated the planet found other things to spend their time and money on.
There was nothing for him here any more, he decided morosely, nothing of interest, nothing of value. He stepped back towards the base of the nearest tower and told his e-butler to give him a link to his home’s RI. Once the RI was on line he gave it his exact coordinate. A circular wormhole opened behind him, expanding out to two metres in diameter, and he took a step backwards through the neutral grey curtain of the force field. The wormhole closed.
Ozzie didn’t have a whole network of private secret worm-holes linking the Commonwealth planets. He had precisely two wormholes; one standard CST micro-width connector to give his home a hyper-bandwidth link to the unisphere via Augusta’s cybersphere; and one highly modified version of the wormhole generator which CST’s exploratory division used, which provided him with independent transport around a good section of the Commonwealth. Nor did he live by himself on an H-congruous planet. His home was a hollowed-out asteroid that drifted along its long elliptical orbit around the Leo Twins.
As he walked through the gateway he was immediately enveloped by bright, warm light. The gateway mechanism had been built into a broad granite cliff with a wide awning of white canvas overhead, like a yacht sail that had been commandeered as a marquee roof. He stepped out from underneath it, and his domain stretched out before him.
The cavity, which automated diggers, CST civil engineering crews, and an army of various bots had excavated, was close to eighty miles long, and fifteen in diameter; the greatest enclosed space the human race had ever constructed. Its geography was a rugged undulation of hills and dales, broken by the silver veins of streams. A single range of huge rock-blade mountains spiralled down the entire length, the tallest pinnacles a mile and a half high, raw purple and grey rock capped with dazzling white snow. Nearly every hill had a waterfall of some kind, from magnificent torrents gushing over sharp-edged mantles, to foaming cascades which tumbled down long stony gullies. On the mountains, wide dark caves had been bored out below the ragged snowline. Water gushed out from the shadows within, sending massive jets to plummet down sheer granite sides, flinging off swirling clouds of platinum spray as they fell and fell. All of them curved gracefully as they sliced through the air, distorted by the asteroid’s ponderous gravity-inducing rotation before plunging into lakes and pools.
All the streams and rivers fed by the waterfalls wound away to empty themselves into the huge reservoirs that were hidden away in caverns behind the central cavity’s endwalls. From there the water could be pumped back into the intricate underground network of tunnels and pipes which led back to the waterfall outlets. Its pumps consumed the output from three of the fifteen fusion generators that powered the asteroid.
Away from the waterfalls, long dark lakes filled the floors of the deeper valleys, fringed by bulrush reeds, and surrounded by overhanging trees which trailed lush branches across the shallows. Great patches of water lilies bloomed across the surface, bringing the intense primary colours of their tissue-flowers to enliven the cool blankness of the water. Bracken and rhododendrons crowned most of the hills, while grass meadows besieged the lower slopes, their unkempt emerald carpets dappled by vivid speckles of scarlet, topaz, azure, violet, and tangerine wild flowers. Marble boulders were scattered on every incline, white as snow. Trees grew wild, singularly or in clumps; spinneys and small forests of oak, silver birch, beech, laburnum, ginkgoes and mapl
e meandered along the lower contours of most valleys. It was a vision of high summer in a temperate land, one which had now lasted for two and a half centuries. The deciduous plants had all been genetically modified into evergreens, forever throwing their leaves wide to the perpetual season. Far, far above them, a silicanium gantry was stretched down the axis, supporting rings of solarlights too bright to look at with unprotected human eyes.
Ozzie hurriedly unbuttoned his woollen coat and carried it over his arm. He made his way down the winding gravel path out of the sheltered lee of rock and into the wide valley which had the only surface structure in the asteroid. His bungalow was barely that – five rooms of plain white drycoral walls, with hardwood floors and a grey slate roof which overhung to provide cover for the encircling veranda. Below ground he’d constructed a big vault for his library of real books. Not that he ever ventured down there; modified maidbots brought up whatever he needed, so the cool dry atmosphere was disturbed as little as possible.
He did use the rest of the modest building, its lounge, kitchen, study, bedroom, and bathroom. There was nothing else he wanted, not to take care of his body’s requirements. While he was here he spent most of his time outside anyway. A comfy deckchair on the garden, shaded by a big copper beech; the pool where he swam was constantly refreshed by a brook that gurgled over broad flat stones as it ran through the middle of the lawn.
A big maidbot took his coat from him as he arrived, and rolled away to store it in the cloakroom. There were over a hundred thousand bots in the asteroid, all of them directed by the RI. The little artificial worldlet was self-sufficient, and self-maintaining thanks to the very large array which ran it. With its comprehensive manufacturing facilities below ground producing the majority of components used by the environmental support machinery, very little had to be imported. What did come in tended to be upgrades rather than replacements. The designers had spent years on refining the systems to the ultimate in low-maintenance sustainability. Even Ozzie had worried about the cost while the blueprints were being drawn up, but in the end he’d persevered. Now, total freedom was his reward. Engineers from CST still visited once every couple of years (under horrendously strict non-disclosure contracts) to inspect and occasionally modify the gateway machinery, but that was all. And if he withdrew from the human race entirely, the RI could conceivably keep it all going if he really wanted; it was the most powerful program composite the SI had ever written.
‘Any messages?’ he asked out loud as he went into the kitchen.
‘Several hundred thousand,’ the RI replied. ‘Only eight came through the filters.’
Ozzie opened the fridge and rummaged through the containers and hand-wrapped packages. His food was supplied by the same London greengrocer that held the warrant from the king of England. The shop’s snob value and cost was phenomenal, but he had to admit their delicatessen counter couldn’t be bettered anywhere in the Commonwealth. He found a bottle of mineral water and popped the top; despite the coffee he’d drunk at the council meeting he could still feel his hangover – product of a too-long stay at the Silvertopia Club on StLincoln last night (his timeframe). ‘Give them to me.’ His virtual vision showed the messages and their clusters; they were from CST, his finance lawyers, two from his newest children (under five), one from an antiquarian book dealer who thought he might have a first edition copy of Raft signed by the author, the results of data searches through superluminal cosmology theory papers. By the time he’d skimmed through them all he was out at the garden chair and kicking his shoes off. As usual he picked one message at random from the perennial mass which the filter had blocked. He laughed delightedly as he read the weird and wondrous proposal for cooling stars that came above G in the spectral classification; a paper called Solarforming the Galaxy by the nutter who’d sent it.
He lounged back in the chair and took a pair of sunglasses from a maidbot. It was a strategic view, his garden was high enough, and positioned so he could see down three quarters of the curving green wings that were the cavity’s interior. One of the mile-and-a-half-high mountains was directly ahead, its giant waterfall emerging from the snowfield a mere three hundred yards short of the deadly needle peak. The vast cataract of water performed an elegant twist as it fell through coils of mist and spume until it finally pounded into a lake at the bottom. That was just one of the vistas that washed over Ozzie with its colour-riot and soothing waters. He never did understand why people collected or even admired art, the greatest human artist could never hope to match what nature did with a single flower.
‘I’d like to talk to the SI, please,’ Ozzie told the asteroid’s RI. There weren’t many people in the Commonwealth who could talk to the SI direct. Ozzie and Nigel qualified, given their role in establishing the SI, and the President was also given the courtesy, along with senior Government departments, other-wise all communications had to be conducted at a very formal level through buffer programs. Of course, the SI did occasion-ally make exceptions, with people claiming to have struck deals with it, or getting a surprise call telling them where a lost kid could be found. Ozzie had heard that Paula Myo had some kind of arrangement with it – which didn’t surprise him.
‘We’re here, Ozzie,’ the smooth voice said immediately.
‘Yo, man, good of you to come visiting. So what’s new?’
‘Many things, but you are only interested in one.’
‘True. So how come you ganged up with my friend Nigel to get this stupid space cadet mission off the ground? That’s like the ultimate not-what-you-are.’
‘Our response was measured and prudent. What else did you expect?’
‘I don’t get it, you guys are normally so conservative.’
‘Investigation is a conservative option.’
‘Investigation is poking a sharp stick into a hornets’ nest. If we send a starship out there, then whoever put that barrier up is gonna know about it. They are so far ahead of us technologically it’s scary.’
‘If they are significantly advanced, they will know about the Commonwealth anyway. Wormhole generation creates a great deal of gravitational distortion as well as an easily detectable wave pattern within so-called hyperspace.’
‘If they’re all tucked up cosy inside the barrier they won’t . . .’ Ozzie put a hand on his head as he realized. ‘Wait, the ones inside are the defenders. It’s the aliens outside who are the aggressors. So if we’re that easy to detect, why haven’t they come looking for us?’
‘A very good question. Assuming the barrier is defensive, we propose three possible options. They have arrived, and we don’t know it, or realize it.’
‘The High Angel!’
‘Indeed. Or the Silfen.’
‘I dunno about that, man, they don’t seem the type. What’s the second option?’
‘The aliens have already been and examined us, after which they simply ignored us.’
‘Too low down for them to bother with. Yeah, I can dig that. And number three?’
‘Number three is the unknown. It is why we need to travel to the Dyson Pair and investigate what has happened.’
‘But why now? Hell, man, you can afford to wait; leave it a couple of thousand years until we’re like good and ready to go take a proper look. I mean, even I might still be around. What’s the hurry?’
‘In order to respond to a situation, it must first be under-stood.’
‘I’m not arguing that. But why now?’
‘Because now is where we are. This should be faced, whatever it is.’
‘Maybe you’re interested. I can dig you enjoy a puzzle, something for you to think over and solve. But it’s going to be our asses on the line if this goes all to hell.’
‘That’s not entirely true; ordinarily the physical world does not concern us—’
‘Hey! You live in it.’
‘Yes, but it does not concern us. The physical does not affect us, or interfere with us.’
‘I get it. The physical Commonwealth doesn’t affect
you, but superior aliens with ray guns and battleship flying saucers might.’
‘We accord the defence theory a high probability. In which case an aggressor will exist. If there is an entity so powerful and malevolent at loose in the physical universe, then we could very well be affected.’
Ozzie took a long drink of his mineral water. He could remember when the SIs came together at the end of the twenty-first century; people had been very frightened at the time. Frankenbrain was one of the terms bandied about, mainly by a minority of humans who wanted to pull the plug – just in case. Along with Nigel, he’d helped establish the new cyber-based intelligences with their own planet, Vinmar. After all, the majority of SIs had originated out of the AI smartware running in the very large arrays built to run CST wormhole generators, and some solution had to be found. The Commonwealth, and specifically CST, was dependent on big arrays, so Ozzie and Nigel negotiated with the SIs to format their replacements in the form of RIs.
Vinmar’s location was even more confidential than Ozzie’s own asteroid; a barren airless rock with no tectonic activity, alone in a star system without an H-congruous planet. It was linked to Augusta and the unisphere via a single wormhole. A great deal of equipment had been taken through at the start; very large arrays capable of running all the SIs then in existence, solar and fusion generators to give them independence. Once the SIs had withdrawn from the unisphere, leaving behind RIs to carry on their duties, they began to import equipment: bots, chemical refineries, assembly cells. First with human help, then with increasing autonomy, they started designing and building their own array systems, expanding themselves and their capacity, multiplying.
Ozzie knew that the wormhole had been reduced to micro-width in 2178 to maintain the link with the unisphere. Nothing physical had travelled to or from Vinmar since then. Popular speculation had the planet’s surface covered in vast crystal towers, the mega-arrays which ran continent-sized thought routines.