“No, I don’t think so.”
“Even with what happened back there?”
“At least I got to see a dragon up close.”
“Yes,” Clausen said. “That you did.”
He thought that was the end of it, the last thing she had to say to him. He couldn’t say for sure that something had changed in their relationship—it would take time for that to be proven—but he did sense some thawing in her attitude, however temporary it might prove. He had not only chosen to stay, he had not gone through with the accident. Had she been expecting him to try something like that, after what had happened to Steiner? Could she begin to guess how close he had come to actually doing it?
But Clausen wasn’t finished.
“I don’t know if it’s true or not,” she said, speaking to Gaunt for the first time as if he were another human being, another caretaker. “But I heard this theory once. The mapping between the Realm and base reality, it’s not as simple as you’d think. Time and causality get all tangled up on the interface. Events that happen in one order there don’t necessarily correspond to the same order here. And when they push things through, they don’t always come out in what we consider the present. A chain of events in the Realm could have consequences up or down the timeline, as far as we’re concerned.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
She nodded to the window. “All through history, the things they’ve seen out there. They might just have been overspill from the artilect wars. Weapons that came through at the wrong moment, achieving coherence just long enough to be seen by someone, or bring down a ship. All the sailors’ tales, all the way back. All the sea monsters. They might just have been echoes of the war we’re fighting.” Clausen shrugged, as if the matter were of no consequence.
“You believe that?”
“I don’t know if it makes the world seem weirder, or a little more sensible.” She shook her head. “I mean, sea monsters … who ever thought they might be real?” Then she stood up and made to return to the front of the helicopter. “Just a theory, that’s all. Now get some sleep.”
Gaunt did as he was told. It wasn’t hard.
ALAN DEAN FOSTER
SEASONING
Alan Dean Foster is the bestselling author of more than 120 novels, and is perhaps most famous for his Humanx Commonwealth series, which began in 1972 with the novel The Tar-Aiym Krang. His most recent series is the Tipping Point trilogy, which explores transhumanism. Foster’s work has been translated into more than fifty languages and has won awards in Spain, Russia, and the United States. He is also well known for his film novelizations, the most recent of which is Star Trek Into Darkness. He is currently at work on several new novels and film projects.
Bryden Erickson was starving in the midst of plenty, but he felt he had no choice. Eat and go mad, he knew. Perhaps not mad in the classical sense, but near enough. Quietly, peacefully, contentedly mad. Sufficiently mad so that he would be unaware that he had gone mad. That was just what they wanted.
Humanity dies not at dawn but at dinner.
He was well and truly on the run now. It would have been better had he not struck the robot who had offered him the cupcake. But at the time of the confrontation he’d had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours. He no longer trusted even the “organic” café around the corner from his apartment building. Lack of nourishment had clouded his judgment. He ought to have walked on, brushed past. The mobile vending machine had been uncommonly insistent, however. Almost as if it knew that he knew what he knew. Instead of accepting the sprinkle-coated offering and then surreptitiously tossing it aside, he had responded with violence. Responded like a human. So few did, anymore.
You could tell by the absence of wars. It had been a gradual process, the slow application of peace to the world. People attributed it to the species’ growing maturity, to the increasing spread of technology, and most importantly, to the measured, methodical eradication of hunger. With few of the traditional scarcities to fight over, bit by bit people ceased warring with one another. Hard to find was the individual who considered such a world less well-off than its fractious predecessor.
If only, Erickson thought grimly, the peace had been earned and not imposed.
There had to be others. Surely he was not alone in his awareness. He could not be the only one who had managed to understand what the machines had done to humankind. With its full cooperation, no less.
Two of them were coming toward him. One proffered fresh-baked oversized salt-encrusted pretzels that swayed on their branching metal racks like stems on a pale alien succulent. The other, squat and rippling with artificial arctic promise, garishly displayed the rainbow colors of the ice creams secreted within its integrated freezer compartment. Like so many contemporary food vending devices, they were wholly self-reliant, quite able to run their routes, dispense their contents, and collect payment independent of any human operator. Erickson let out a strangled cry as he ducked around the corner in frantic flight from the looming temptations of hot dough and Rocky Road.
Of all the biochemists he knew, he was the only one who had succeeded in connecting the deliberately scattered dots. The only one who had pulled the seemingly unrelated elements together to visualize the architecture of conspiracy on which the machine plot had been erected. When he laid out his thesis before colleagues, furtively and in small areas of the campus that remained free of security cameras, they scoffed.
Now he was about to make one last attempt, this time to convince the head of the chemistry department of the basis, if not the validity, of his fears. That is, he was if he could make it across the quad without being ambushed by carrot cake or croissant. Meanwhile, the growls emanating from the depths of his gut grew progressively more insistent.
He ignored them.
“Most ridiculous thing I ever heard of, Erickson!”
The starving biochemist offered nothing in reply; he merely gazed sorrowfully back at the department head.
Dr. Walter Moritz grimaced as he regarded the professor standing before him. It was a mild, sunny day, the campus was blissfully devoid of protests, and the oft ill-starred men’s basketball team had won its game the night before. Now this was coming forth, to unsettle both his mood and his stomach.
“Machines are mindless servants,” Moritz continued. “Tools. Nothing more. They do not conspire against mankind. They do not conspire against anything.” Well-maintained teeth flashed beneath the chalky overhang of his impressive mustache. “Next you’ll be dragging me to the window to see them parading down Chapman Avenue, rifles shoulder-mounted as they goose-step past the university.”
Erickson’s deadpan response belied Moritz’s attempt at humor. “They don’t need rifles. They’ve got Red number Forty-Three. Anacrose artificial sweetener. Collagen derivative B for agglutination. Titanium pentoxide and coritase and methyl diforilate for flavor.” Perhaps sensing that his face was flushed, he turned away. “Weapons that don’t work as quickly, or as blatantly, but that in the end are far more effective.”
Moritz frowned. “Are you saying that our machines are trying to poison us?”
The chemist shook his head irritably. “Not poison. Not harm us directly. That would be too obvious. It’s a cunning process they’re engaged in. You know that my specialty is food chemistry.”
“And we’re glad to have you on the faculty.” Moritz’s voice dropped slightly as he pursed his lips. “Certainly for the present.”
Erickson turned to confront Moritz. “I’ve run tests. I’ve performed analyses. Certain specific combinations of food supplements, pesticides, and additives have … subtle effects on the human brain. Just as they do in my lab animals, these combinations render us more amenable to persuasion. Less aggressive, less violent.”
Moritz made a face. “Just assuming for the moment that there is any validity to these presumably unpublished studies—why would that be considered a bad thing?”
Erickson’s voice tightened. “Because that asp
ect of our humanness is being bred out of us! As we become less and less aggressive, less confrontational, less … challenging, we come to rely ever more on our technology. On our machines. We’re becoming dependent.”
Moritz sighed. “The machines exist to serve us, Erickson. Not the other way around. Were any of them, any class of robotics, however simple, to give us trouble, we could simply pull the plug. Refuse to replace their batteries. Cut off power. Eliminate program upgrades.”
“Could we? Could we really? Consider, Dr. Moritz, how much and for how long we have depended on machines to grow our food, to process it, to test it for safety, and to pack and ship it. For decades now, machines have controlled the bulk of food production on Earth. From growing to picking to grading to final delivery, the process is so ‘safely’ automated that we hardly interfere with it any longer. The processed white bread we buy in the market today bears no relation to the stone-ground fire-baked loaves of our ancestors. How many people really know what goes into what they eat? How many know how it’s created? How many read and, more importantly, understand the implications of all the ingredients—down to the last seemingly innocuous chemical that’s been added to ‘preserve freshness’?”
He stopped pacing. “It’s changing us, Dr. Moritz,” he continued. “The food our machines make for us is changing us, and nobody cares. As long as the FDA and equivalent organizations in other countries declare it safe for human consumption, the great mass of humanity doesn’t question what it eats.”
“Well then,” Moritz countered reasonably, “why not take your concerns to the FDA?”
“I’ve done exactly that. They rejected all my findings. I wasn’t really surprised.” His expression was growing a little wild. “Because, naturally, they checked my conclusions with their testing machines. They’re all working together, Moritz. All connected via the Web. High levels of arsenic in potatoes I can prove. Mercury in fish I can prove. But DNA-altering recombinant proteins in Dilly Bars? Not a chance.” A sudden sound made him look around sharply, but it was only the wall-mounted air conditioner springing to life.
Moritz was becoming genuinely concerned. “Perhaps you should take some time off. Relax. Stop running so many dead-end experiments. You have vacation time accumulated.” He smiled encouragingly. “Go somewhere restful. Don’t think about work for a while. Get away from the pressures of academe.”
Erickson grew quiet, nodding to himself. “I was thinking that might actually be a good idea. I’ve been contemplating spending some time at the university’s experimental farm in the southern Sierras. A couple of my graduate students are doing work up there right now. At the farm they grow their own food, you know, and strive to keep it as organically pure and untouched as possible, both for purposes of research and for their own health.”
Rising from his chair, Moritz came around the desk and put an arm around the smaller Erickson’s shoulders. “Excellent notion. You don’t even have to clear it with Admin. I’ll take care of the details for you. We don’t want to lose you, Erickson. If it should prove necessary, your teaching assistants can finish out your grad classes for the term.” They paused at the door. “It’s nearly twelve. Can I buy you lunch?”
Eyes widening, Erickson left without shaking hands.
Though surprised by Erickson’s unannounced arrival, they welcomed him at the farm. His graduate students and the other workers were delighted: for as long as he chose to stay, they would have the benefit of his expertise. One student in particular was desperate to find out why, despite his best efforts, the farm’s apple trees were producing fruit that tended to be small and spare, even as the berry patches were healthy and productive and the eggs laid by the farm’s freerange chickens invariably graded out extra-large double-A. It was, to the student’s way of thinking, something of an apple crisis.
Erickson was glad to help—not to mention relieved. Regardless of what was happening in the cities, here he could pursue his critical work safe in the knowledge that the food he ate was uncontaminated by the patient efforts of mankind’s machines to modify the species’ collective behavior. If he could just compile sufficiently incontrovertible proof, the future safety of humanity’s food supply might once more be placed in the hands of people instead of under the cold supervisorial lenses of a cybernetic collective whose ultimate goals and intentions remained unknown.
It was not that he objected to peace breaking out among the sheep, he told himself. What frightened him was the idea of peace being imposed by a sheepherder instead of arising organically from an agreement among the sheep themselves.
It was not long before he began broaching bits and pieces of his contention to his two graduate students. They listened politely, but were as unreceptive as Dr. Moritz had been. He struggled to hide his disappointment. Surely more openness to radical propositions might be expected of unstultified, flexible young minds? At their age his curiosity would have at the very least been piqued; he would then have bombarded the thesis-presenter with questions, would have fought to conduct follow-up tests with …
The realization that came over him was horrible in its plausibility.
Callie—a bright, energetic, and hardworking blonde—was a bit taken aback at Erickson’s appearance when he confronted her in the farm kitchen that evening. It was her turn to prepare dinner for everyone who worked on the farm. As a transient guest, Erickson was not required to and had not been asked to participate. Now he was not asking, but insisting.
“If you really want to, Dr. Erickson, you can cut up carrots and spinach for the salad.” She indicated where the knives were stored and pointed out the cabinet where the commercial food processor that would be used in the final step could be found. “Or would you rather help with the dessert? We’re doing homemade chocolate cake tonight.”
After questioning the puzzled young woman about the contents of the chocolate cake, he moved to take up a knife and commenced slicing with gusto.
Erickson enjoyed every bite of supper. What was not grown on the farm came from similar small truck farms nearby. Insofar as he had been able to determine, none of them were supervised by machines. Everything was done by hand, from the raising of farm animals to the picking of fresh fruits and vegetables. Meanwhile, he was gradually amassing a small mountain of evidence to support his contention that the machines over which man had given dominion of the bulk of the planet’s food supply were slowly and gradually, through the use of subtly modified additives, making profound adjustments to the human condition.
It was only by chance that he found out the collective down the valley was adding xanthan gum sourced from outside to their “homemade” salad dressings.
“They have to,” a distressed Callie told him when he confronted her with his discovery, “or it wouldn’t pour properly and none of the tourists who support farms like these would buy it. Why, what’s wrong with that, Dr. Erickson?”
“It’s just that,” he said, aware he was looking around wildly, “it’s a polysaccharide derived from a bacterium, Xanthomonas campestris. Bacteria can be reengineered to produce specific ancillary results without inhibiting the original intended purpose of the biosynthesis.”
“What results?”
“I don’t know.” His tone was solemn. “But I intend to find out.”
He did not.
Though he ingested no more of the suspect salad dressing from the culpable farm downstream, his desire to analyze its products waned. Life was comfortable at the farm. He found that just as Moritz had predicted, he enjoyed being free of the pressures of the university, of the need to constantly prepare papers for publication, and of any lingering desire to foist what were patently untenable notions of a mechanical conspiracy on a public that would likely disbelieve his conclusions, no matter how sound the research on which they might be based.
When some frozen yogurt was brought in from a neighboring “organic” commercial farm, he allowed himself to eat as much of it as he wanted, even though a protesting part of him knew it cont
ained a minimal amount of carrageenan that had been, after all, only slightly modified from the original seaweed. The transportation robot that drew it forth from within its own freezing depths gladly dished out all he could eat. Very soon Erickson was content. He was full. He was sated.
Deep inside him something was screaming.
He put it down to indigestion and contemplated another helping.
IAN Mc DONALD
NANONAUTS! IN BATTLE WITH TINY DEATH-SUBS!
Ian McDonald is the author of The Dervish House, a 2011 Hugo Award finalist, and many other novels, including Hugo Award nominees River of Gods and Brasyl, and the Philip K. Dick Award winner King of Morning, Queen of Day. He won a Hugo in 2006 for his novelette “The Djinn’s Wife,” and has won the Locus Award and five British Science Fiction Awards. His short fiction, much of which was recently collected in Cyberabad Days, has appeared in magazines such as Interzone and Asimov’s and in numerous anthologies. His most recent book is Be My Enemy, part two of the Everness series for younger readers. Part three, Empress of the Sun, will be published by Pyr in February 2014. His next novel for adults will be Luna. He lives just outside Belfast, in Northern Ireland.
We torpedo the killer robot death-sub just off the Islets of Langerhans.
It’s been a long chase. Days spent stalking the trace, up through arches and long fibrous loops of the pancreatic cytoarchitecture. There are a million islets: many, many places for a rogue nanobot to hide. A slow chase, too; hunting, hiding, moving, scanning for a trace, trying to hide the noise of our hunter-killers firing up their drive flagella among the general endocrine traffic roar.
The President’s pancreas is a noisy place.
But our target is a rogue all right. No mistaking that signature death-sub echo. It tried to hide in a flotilla of neutral nanobots, but once we have the signature, we never let go. We are relentless, we are remorseless, and we never, ever stop. And the death-sub can’t change its signature unless, well … unless it stops being a death-sub. Which would be good. It would be one less of the little fuckers.