*
From the smell of the rec center, someone had thrown a party here recently, with liberal amounts of locally fermented, hydroponic-grain beverages. By now, the dep-heads had probably plastered the system board with notices warning against any future such occurrences. Bandicut wrinkled his nose against the stale beer smell and found an empty booth. He didn’t give a damn what management thought, as long as they didn’t try to associate him with it.
/Here we go,/ he said, locking the booth door and sliding into the console seat. /This is where people come when they want to send or receive messages from in-system. They expect people to be looking for privacy here. But we aren’t going to get the higher functions./
/// We’ll see. ///
He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t ask what the quarx meant. /How do you want to do this? First I need to check the postings. I can do that from here./ He poked at the screen controls and brought up the newest notices and job listings. He noted that a brief summary of his mishap was posted, with a warning that until an investigation was completed, all rover electrical systems should be regarded as susceptible to possible cryo-failure. /They bought it,/ he muttered in disbelief. He checked the job postings and cursed. He was to report to mining ops for the early shift the next day. /They didn’t buy it that much./ With a sigh, he flicked off the screen. He didn’t even want to read the newsies of his accident, knowing how much the local amateur newsie reporters took from the rumor mills.
/What do you want me to do?/ he asked the quarx.
/// Put the ’trodes on your head. ///
/Charlie, they took my implants out. There’s nothing for the ’trodes to connect to./
/// Leave that to me. ///
He reached for the headset and hesitated, hands holding the set in midair. /Are you sure you know what you’re doing? If this goes wrong . . ./
/// It might not work.
But I don’t think there’s any danger. ///
Though he found this less than wholly reassuring, Bandicut positioned the neural set over his temples. The inductance electrodes pressed firmly against the spots on either side where he had once had receptor plates implanted under his skin. The contact made him acutely aware of the emptiness, the lack of what had once felt as important to him as his eyes, or his hands.
/// Okay, I need to make some adjustments.
Try to keep your thoughts still. ///
He tried. He pushed away a fleeting rush of excitement at the thought that the quarx might actually be able to work a miracle here. He thought of the medical labs; he thought of the wrecked buggy; he thought of sleep; he thought of a pink elephant. He thought of how miserable he was going to feel if he got his hopes up for this and then nothing happened.
/// Hush, John.
Wait . . . maybe I can help. ///
He felt something like a warm, soft rain in his mind and felt the thoughts melt away, leaving him relaxed and expectant. The quarx must have done something to give him soothing alpha-wave relaxation. It was blissful.
There was a brief rush of static, and then he fell off the edge of a cliff into a deep, long, weightless fall . . .
>
>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>——>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>——>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>
>
——
Lights sparkled around him, like a fishing net encrusted with diamonds, flung against a night sky. Each light burned with possibility, with connectedness and energy. His heart leaped. The linkup was a little rough, but . . . this was precisely what he had been hoping for . . . if it was real.
Charlie cut in.
/// It is real.
Is this the datanet we should be looking for? ///
/Charlie—this shouldn’t be possible! Not without the neuros! How did you do it?/
/// Oh, it was just
a matter of making certain cross-connections
in the neuronal structure— ///
/You mean, altering my brain?/
/// Well, no.
I mean, not—well, no.
I mean using MY quasi-neuronal capacities
to bridge the missing elements
in YOUR neuronal system.
I merely altered certain characteristics
of the space-time matrix around your neurons.
It’s basically how
I talk to you, anyway. ///
/Ah,/ he thought dizzily. /That was another thing I’d been meaning to ask you about./
/// Now you know.
But let’s not get bogged down in technical details.
We have a lot to do,
now that we’re tuned in and turned on,
as your people like to say. ///
/I’ve never said that—/
/// Fucking figure of speech, okay? ///
Bandicut blinked, then laughed out loud. /Charlie! You just made a joke! Did you know you just made a joke?/
/// Ha ha.
I think we should get busy here.
I see a lot going on,
and I think we should explore it.
Let’s tie into some of those glittering bangles
and see what there is to see.
Are you with me? ///
/Where else would I be?/
A tendril of light leaped out and linked him, sizzling, to one, then two, then three of the pulsing nexi of data.
Chapter 7
Datanet
>> . . . CERES EXCHANGE down 23 points in final trading. Following are highlighted prices (Euroyen): . . . . . Asteroid Aggregate, 75.73 . . . . . . Boeing-Ford Pressure Hulls, 64.94 . . . . . . Ceres-Mars Express, 57.60 . . . >>
Stock quotes? They were flying by in a blur. Directly above and below it were other streams of data, just as blinding. He blinked his attention back to the quotes:
>> . . . Sanyo Mining & Extraction, 83.25 . . . . . . Sirtus Astronics, 54.76 . . . . . . SemiOps Systems, 93.44 . . . >>
He jerked his attention away. What the hell did he care about stock prices? And why would Charlie care?
The quarx spoke from his accustomed position in the center of Bandicut’s consciousness.
/// I don’t know if it’s relevant.
But it is interesting. ///
One of the other channels was a political digest service. News capsules were streaming past:
>> . . . Secretary of the New England Nations denied Vatican assertions that recent state-sponsored ordinations of women were intended to subvert the authority of the Papacy. Observers noted significant contradictions, however . . .
>> . . . third attempt on the life of Renaldo Pelliquez, CEO of the Caribbean Coalition, thwarted when an eleven-year-old street hawker noticed a suspicious vehicle in the central plaza of Ponce, Puerto Rico . . .
>> . . . New efforts to open North China to world trade received a setback when . . . >>
He could only snatch a sentence or two at a time; it was like trying to drink from a fire hose. He lurched from the political channel into another, a geyser of musical/video entertainment. It was compressed, accelerated, impossible to track.
/// Ride with it, John.
Go with the flow. ///
/Go with the flow? I can’t keep up with this!/
/// Your baud rate was a little low,
so I increased it,
to get as much data as possible. ///
He tried, but it was impossible to keep up with the flow—or to back away from it. /I can’t do it, Charlie! You’re drowning me!/
/// Okay, wait—
let’s try a different perspective . . . ///
The riptide of data dropped a
way abruptly, so that he seemed to be looking down over the datastreams from a great height. He gasped for breath. Everything was changed: the data were a topography, a smooth blur of broad brushstrokes, a swirling of smoke, the individual data-points no more visible than the molecules of water in Niagara Falls. It was easier to watch now, but he couldn’t quite see the point of it.
/// Watch this. ///
He blinked, and it changed again: the viewpoint flicking wider, then wider again. He saw a hundred more channels of fluid movement, on a vast scale, as if he were floating high above a carved and runneled plain, watching fluvial motion as the gods might watch it. He was reminded of fractal imagery in which certain geometric qualities persisted even through repeated changes of scale. It was an orchestrated image of turbulence, chaotic beyond his comprehension.
/// Precisely.
Fascinating, isn’t it? ///
/Yes, I suppose so—but what good is it? I thought you wanted information about—/ He paused and thought a moment. /Actually, what did you want information about?/
/// For now, exactly what you’re seeing.
The details are still entrained in the raw data,
but we don’t need them just now. ///
/We don’t? Why not?/
The quarx coughed delicately.
/// By “we,” actually,
I meant the translator and I. ///
Bandicut felt strangely let down. /Oh. You mean, I wouldn’t be able to understand it even if you told me?/
/// I meant no offense, John.
Remember, we talked about dynamical chaos
and ways of analyzing it? ///
Bandicut strained to remember. They’d gotten interrupted, and he hadn’t quite been following it to begin with.
/// Well,
this information can be translated
into a harmonic resonance
that will ultimately,
through various cycles of analysis,
move us toward that answer you wanted. ///
Bandicut remained mute with incomprehension.
/// About what’s going to hit the Earth?
And what to do about it? ///
/Ah. That./ Bandicut watched the strange graphical display with an uneasy feeling of disconnectedness. Whatever information was contained in there was going to remain completely incomprehensible, unless Charlie did something to explain it.
/// John? Are you listening?
I’m trying to help.
Do you hear that musical activity? ///
He listened. In the background there was indeed a deep, thrumming harmonic rhythm, which he supposed could be called music. /Yes./
/// Well, that’s the sound of the turbulence,
filtered and partially transformed.
To me, it’s still mostly incomprehensible.
But the translator can actually turn this
into useful attractor-equations. ///
Bandicut felt a great ringing emptiness where his understanding was supposed to be. Still, he had to try. /You mean . . . to predict broad changes in . . . patterns of . . . ?/ His voice trailed off.
/// Not exactly.
I mean, that can be done, yes.
But what we really want
is to derive actual detail from this— ///
Detail? /How’s that?/ Bandicut croaked.
/// —though Heaven forbid
you should ask me how. ///
He blinked, and felt an involuntary snarl rising in his throat. /I am asking you!/
/// Well, I acknowledge the question.
But it’s all in the translator’s core programs,
which I did not create,
and only partially understand.
As I explained before,
I am neither the owner,
nor the designer,
nor the master,
of the translator.
I am merely paired up with it. ///
Bandicut absorbed that with some incredulity, but the quarx continued without pause.
/// Anyway, we’re getting good data here,
but I need a way to channel it to the translator. ///
/Is that a problem? I thought you had everything locked in. I thought you had our TV and our datanet and all that shit./
/// Well, yes.
We had all that . . . shit . . .
as you so finely put it. ///
Bandicut frowned. /You mean, you don’t now?/
/// Sadly, no.
The TV was the first to go,
when they stopped using open broadcasts. ///
/So you missed out on a lot of good programming, huh? What about the datanet? You seem to know it pretty well./
/// That’s on a tightline from stations in-system,
just like TV now. ///
Bandicut was still puzzled. /So, can’t you pick up the laser beam?/
/// Well, we could.
But when you put your base here,
we had to move ourselves underground,
out of sight.
That meant modulating through the ice,
which was okay—until your mining ops
started blanketing the surface with smog deposition.
Now we can only pick up local transmissions,
and even that’s difficult. ///
/But wait—you knew I was coming along toward your little cavern, didn’t you? How’d you know that?/
/// Altogether different matter.
That was my direct sensing.
I felt your presence and state of mind.
But as for monitoring general activity
throughout the solar system—
that’s been hard. ///
/My apologies,/ Bandicut said, not even sure why he felt the impulse to be sarcastic.
Charlie appeared not to notice.
/// Thanks to your help,
this is the best datastream we’ve had in years. ///
/Uh-huh. So now that you’ve got it, what are you going to do with it? How are you going to get it to the translator?/
/// I’m not sure, actually.
But I can hold quite a lot in memory,
while we figure out a way. ///
/We?/
/// You and I.
If you come up with a good idea,
don’t think I won’t listen to it. ///
Bandicut nodded to himself, unsure whether to be flattered or not.
/// Hey—look at that signal over there! ///
He felt a sudden slowdown in the transmission speed. The fractal-landscape dropped away, and an image-panel flipped up into view. It held the face of a man, who looked directly into Bandicut’s eyes. A voice boomed into Bandicut’s head like a bass drum:
>> “SEE HOW MUCH FASTER YOU CAN TRANSLOAD THAT ALL IMPORTANT DATACACHE WHEN YOU OPEN AN ACCOUNT WITH PLANETVIEW ONLINE SYSTEMS!
>> “FOR A LOW-COST DEMONSTRATION, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS SAY ‘OKAY—I’LL TRY!’
>> “OUR INSTANT-EXCHANGE SYSTEM WILL OPEN A TEMPORARY ACCOUNT FOR YOU WITHOUT SIGNAL DELAY—EVEN IF YOU’RE CALLING FROM ONE OF OUR DISTANT PLANETARY OUTPOSTS. GIVE US A TRY NOW!” >>
/// Hey, let’s do it, ///
the quarx urged.
/Why? It’d take eight hours for our request to bounce to Earth and back—/
/// No no,
they’ve got it in terminal memory.
We can get on right away.
Let’s do it. ///
/That all depends on whether I have the credit for whatever you have in mind,/ Bandicut answered cautiously, tempted despite himself.
/// They said it’s low cost, ///
the quarx pointed out.
The salesman nodded and jabbed his finger at Bandicut.
>> “Your friend has the right idea, sir! There’s absolutely no risk. You’ll have your account at once, and if you’re not one hundred percent satisfied, we’ll cancel with no further ob
liga—” >>
/All right, all right,/ Bandicut groaned.
>> “All you have to do is say—” >>
/I’ll try it now!/ Bandicut growled, hoping to cut off the sales pitch.
/// No, no—you’re supposed to say— ///
>> “Close enough.” >>
The salesman winked and vanished, and in his place a large menu of options appeared, floating in space. Blinking at the top were the words:
/Sure,/ Bandicut muttered. He sensed Charlie stirring eagerly. /So what do you want to do with this?/
/// May I? ///
He nodded and a flash of light stabbed out and touched a point on the menu index. Faster than he could follow, a submenu blinked on, and another light stabbed, calling up a third menu, then a fourth. Each time, the quarx made its choice before Bandicut could read the menu. Something to do with astronomical data . . .
/// Ah, here we are! ///
Pages of letters and numbers began swarming past at a dizzying rate. Bandicut blinked, trying to follow. It looked familiar. It was familiar; it was a table of data on the positions and movements of astronomical bodies.
/Is that an ephemeris?/ he protested. /Charlie, you could have gotten that stuff from the station library! It wouldn’t have cost a cent!/
For a few moments there was no answer, as the data spun past at a rate too fast to follow. Then the quarx answered softly,
/// Library? Oh . . . ///
Bandicut sighed and watched the flow, not as individual datapoints, but as a flowing stream. The effort was giving him a headache. /Say, Charlie—/
The quarx sounded subdued.
/// Are you angry? ///
/I should be. But I’m wondering something. This obviously isn’t being transmitted from off Triton. So how are they getting it to us so fast? I mean, it’s one thing to have a sign-up module here in terminal memory, but they can’t have their whole damn database loaded up to Triton!/
/// Hmm . . . good question.
Give me a moment to check something. ///
At that instant, the datastream ended, and a message scrolled across Bandicut’s vision:
>> You have received all of the data available at your present location. For a more in-depth output, please note your request now, and you will be notified when the additional information has been transmitted from our core systems in Earth orbit. Please remember: even Planetview can’t violate the speed of light, hard though we may try. But no one can fulfill your request faster than PLANETVIEW! >>
/// We’d like the full, updated ephemeris—
including all comets and asteroids.
Okay? ///
The question seemed to be directed at Bandicut; but without waiting for his reply, a beam of light flashed out and made the request.
>> Thank you. From Triton, your request will take a minimum of eight hours to fulfill. Thank you for using— >>
/Would you cut that damn thing off, please?/
The sound dropped to a whisper.
/So tell me. Where’d they get that ephemeris you just filed away?/
/// Actually . . .
er . . . I’m sorry, John . . .
I didn’t realize . . . ///
/What?/
The quarx’s voice was apologetic.
/// Well, from the datapath . . .
um . . . it looks like they fed it to us from,
uh, the station library. ///
There was a long silence, before Bandicut murmured, /You’re telling me we just paid them through the nose to tap our own station library and feed it right back to us?/
/// Um . . .
I guess I owe you one, John.
Was it very expensive? ///
He exhaled noisily. /Let’s check the charges. There it is. Ho-ly smokes!/
The quarx cringed. It felt to Bandicut as if his brain were wrinkling.
/// Is it that bad?
Or are you joking again? ///
He held out for a moment longer, before releasing the tension with a chuckle. /Aw, I guess I can afford it okay. It’ll cost me a coupla’ beers, though./
/// Good.
I mean . . . I’m sorry.
But anyway, you can’t take it with you—
right? ///
Bandicut stared at a point in the dataspace where he imagined a quarx might be floating. /Now what exactly did you mean by that? Was that a figure of speech, or are you planning to take me somewhere?/
Charlie seemed nonplussed.
/// Nothing!
Fucking figure of speech! ///
A raucous laugh came up, Charlie’s “laughtrack” covering up his embarrassment, rather poorly.
Bandicut made a mental cutting-of-the-throat gesture. He was rewarded with silence. /Are we done now? Can we get the hell out of this con operation?/
The answering voice was very small.
/// Okay. ///
The Planetview menus vanished. Bandicut was about to disconnect from the datanet as a whole, when he felt something like a hand touching him, lightly restraining him.
/// Just one more thing?
Please? ///
He sighed tolerantly. /What this time?/
/// Something I just thought of. ///
In the dark of the silenced datanet, a beam of light flicked out, triggering something he couldn’t quite see. Before he could even ask, he felt a series of reactions cascading through the dataspace around him, dominoes falling through the silence and the dark. Though he couldn’t quite follow what was happening, he had an uncomfortable suspicion that Charlie was somehow altering some of the fixed parameters of the datanet connection. He thought he heard an alarm sounding somewhere just at the edge of the system, but it fell silent so quickly that he wasn’t actually sure he had heard it.
/// I hope no one else heard it, either. ///
/What are you doing?/
/// Hold on—
I’ve just about got the uplink
to the orbital station . . . ///
/WHAT?/
/// Now, if I can just defocus
their downlink beam by a hair . . . ///
Suddenly, without actually seeing the quarx’s actions, he had a shockingly clear view of its results. He felt a dizzying buzz, datastreams flowing through his brain faster even than before, flashing through some jury-rigged linkage in the base’s dataflow system, beaming up to the support station in orbit above Triton and flashing back down in a slightly widened and misaligned signal beam . . . a beam that just grazed the terrain where Bandicut and his rover had meandered.
A beam that at this moment was no doubt being monitored by an alien machine in a subterranean cavern.
/CHARLIE!/
/// Almost done.
A few more seconds . . .
there.
Off.
Signal back to normal— ///
/Charlie!/ he whispered dizzily.
/// —no essential communications interrupted,
just a brief anomaly in the transmission,
and if anybody traces it
they’ll just wonder how the hell some ancient TV program
called “Father Knows Best”
got interposed over routine telemetry.
And why so much static.
Heh, heh. ///
Bandicut was weak with horror, with awe, with astonishment. /Jesus mokin’ fokin’ Christ, Charlie!/ he whispered, when he had regained the ability to speak. /Did you actually get all that data transmitted to your wonder-machine?/
/// I think so.
As for whether it was received and understood
I don’t know yet.
But as they say,
you have to make hay while the sun shines.
Thanks for the help, pardner. ///
For a moment, Bandicut could not think of how to respond. Make hay while the sun shines? What the hell did that mean? He felt a sudden, draining sel
f-doubt. Had he just betrayed his race to a clever alien invader . . . or taken the first step toward saving Earth?
/// John—it’s going to be okay. ///
It wasn’t as if he was used to this sort of thing, even in neurolink. He just had no idea what to think, or say.
/// We can leave now, if you want, ///
said the quarx softly.
/// I believe
you wanted to get some sleep? ///
Chapter 8
Mining Ops
HE SLEPT THE sleep of the dead, emotionally and physically exhausted. When he’d first gotten back to his bunk, he’d been a nervous wreck, totally unable to sleep; but the quarx had touched something here in his mind, and there, and he had miraculously dropped off in a matter of minutes.
At some point during the night, he became aware of dreaming. He did not wake, but felt a profound inner certainty that came to life even in the depths of sleep. The dream was alien and at times alarming: images of ghostly lights drifting in darkness, and rushing toward him at great speed before expanding and turning inside out, with a bewildering series of flashes, and an abrupt twisting of the darkness. He felt that this was something more than just images of lights—that it was space-time itself twisting and devouring its own tail, that it was some quarxly transformation or journey, and he found himself unaccountably frightened and lonely . . .
And as that dream image flickered away, he glimpsed a creature like a slender tree trunk swaying in the wind, and he recognized it as one of the Fffff’tink. He knew that his quarx, or at least a quarx very like the quarx he knew, had lived in its mind for a very long time, during which the Fffff’tink endured solar flares, earthquakes, and opposition from its own fellows as it struggled to help move a remnant of its people into space, to escape a dying world. And during that time, the quarx died several times; and in the end, when the Fffff’tink died, releasing it, the quarx never learned for certain whether the Fffff’tink civilization had survived or not . . .
Neptune Crossing Page 10
