by Greg Bear
“To the means deployed by the group and the ends sought by us all.”
“On all you value and hold dear.”
“On all I value and hold dear. I will…”
“To forfeit all these things should you violate the oath or back away from its goals.”
“I swear to forfeit all these things should I violate the oath or back away from its goals.”
“Good,” Marcus says. “You’re now a man with real purpose in life.”
“Thank you,” Jonathan says. He feels faint. Marcus supports him. The others smile broadly and gather around, offering him their hands. They are brothers. He shakes hands one by one, but his face feels cold and his whole body is sweating.
“Back off, guys,” Marcus says gently. “This was tough on all of us. He needs some room to breathe.”
“Thank you,” Jonathan says. But inside, Oh, God, I don’t feel any better.
They have drinks in the dining room, Marcus serving from behind a small wet bar, dispensing excellent (so he says) single malt scotch and fine New Zealand and French wines. The men are all laughing and cracking jokes; the tension is broken. They tell their names to Jonathan and he loses all of the names within minutes, except for the short brown man with the amused face, whose name is Cadey, Jamal Cadey. He is not usually so forgetful. He is just very stretched.
Cadey takes him aside. “That went rather well,” he says to Jonathan. “Marcus tells us you have a special business degree in micro-mechanics. But he wasn’t any more specific than that—and that could be anything from protein synthesis to full-blown nano.”
“Mostly food synthesis research. Feeding nano and people. That’s what my company does,” Jonathan says. Right now, any of these men could ask him the size of his prick and he’d tell with hardly a blink.
He does riot feel alive; but then, neither is he dead. This lack of any inner quality bothers him like a missing tooth.
He wonders if this is how Chloe feels.
“I design autopoietic software structures,” Cadey says. “Self-making and maintaining business tools for INDAs, mostly. We should have a lot to talk about comes the time but you don’t have many details yet, do you?”
“None,” Jonathan says. “I have no idea what I’ve sworn myself to.”
“Hits us all that way at first,” Cadey says. “You’ve heard of the Omphalos concept?”
“Yes, of course,” Jonathan says cautiously. He’s been interested in longevity and freezing down, even warm sleep, for several years now, though he’s never told Chloe.
“We have five of them in the works so far, two in Russia, one in Pakistan, one in Southern China, and one in Green Idaho.” Cadey’s eyes twinkle. “The public knows nothing, really.”
Marcus finds the two of them beside the bar. “Jamal spilling secrets already?” he asks, smiling.
“He’s earned some answers,” Cadey says, and pours himself another glass of wine.
“I suppose it’s time for a few goodies,” Marcus allows. “But we’ve only got five minutes. Beate’s coming home and she wants us out of here. We spook her, poor woman.” Marcus smiles with almost malicious enjoyment.
Cadey resumes. “The Omphaloses are not tombs, not at all. Each can hold ten thousand live individuals for cold or warm sleep… Very comfortably, with all the amenities.”
“Continuous pleasant dreams—education—even keeping track of the outside world, though that might be depressing,” Marcus says. “A little bit of heaven before we get to work in a new world.”
“Space travel?” Jonathan asks, dissembling behind a dumb question.
“No-ooo,” Cadey says, with an uncertain grin. “We stay right on Earth. We’ll have over a hundred of them built by the end of this decade—the funding is already in place, and we’re purchasing land all the time. Room for a million subscribers. Ten thousand of us have already volunteered to take the plunge, around the world.”
“In Green Idaho?” Jonathan asks. He glances at Marcus.
“That’s the first and the largest. It’s almost finished. The land is in my name, but it’s communal,” Marcus says. “We’re all together in this.”
“In what?” Jonathan asks.
“I’ll explain tomorrow,” Marcus says. “We’re going to fly there this afternoon and have a tour.” He takes Jonathan by the shoulder. “Excuse us, Jamal.”
“Certainly,” Cadey says, and hastens away with a casual bow.
Marcus prims his lips in sympathy. “You have another day of compassionate leave, right?”
“Yes,” Jonathan says.
“And Chloe—she’s okay where she is, right?”
Jonathan nods. “She doesn’t want to see me.”
“How about your kids?”
“They’re in school… They have club meetings. I should be there when they get home, of course, at six or seven.”
“We’ll be back by early evening. You, me, Jamal, and two others you haven’t met yet.”
“I think that will work.”
“Of course it will.” Marcus grips Jonathan’s shoulder tightly and breathes a residue of fine scotch into his face. “Jamal has a tendency to spill things prematurely, but let me up the ante a little. I happen to know you’ve looked into longevity. Privately, just out of curiosity of course…”
Jonathan is so empty and open that this intrusion evokes no other reaction than a small tingle.
“What Jamal was describing… Jonathan, all of us, we’re going to live forever. In a world of our own making. We don’t have to conquer nations, we don’t have to drop bombs… We just have to sit and wait.”
Jonathan stares at Marcus as if he is demented. “What?”
“Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of us. Forever.”
2
The man in Martin’s office this day is broad-shouldered, handsome in a stolid way. His walk as he entered was efficient, yet almost mincing, his legs a little short for such a powerful body; everything else about him is self-assured, positive, relaxed yet alert. He wears a pale brown longsuit in a slightly old-fashioned cut, and his eyes are roughly the same color as the suit: pale brown, penetrating but not insinuating. He blends very well into most professional crowds, Martin guesses.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Burke. My name is Philip Hench.” He pulls up his right shirtsleeve to reveal a federal tattoo. It sparkles green and red in spaced dots on his forearm. “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Martin stares at him, having murmured the necessary polite responses to the introduction.
“You were at Northwest Inc’s offices yesterday when they had a dataflow intrusion.”
“Yes.”
“I’m curious why you were there, Mr. Burke.”
“Miz Carrilund, Dana Carrilund, asked me to advise them on a problem unrelated to the, ah, intrusion.”
“Did you speak with her after the intrusion?”
“No. She’s been very busy.”
“What did you do after the intrusion yesterday?”
“I was escorted out of the building. They obviously have other problems to deal with. I returned to my office, and then went home in the evening.”
Hench nods, sympathetic. “Some of my colleagues in Free Data are working on that intrusion. But I’m here on another case. You were visited yesterday by Terence Crest.”
Martin is slow to answer. “Yes,” he says finally.
“What did Mr. Crest want?”
“I don’t give out information—”
“Crest wasn’t a patient. Was he?”
“No, but I extend the right of privacy to anyone who enters that door, including you, Mr. Hench.”
“Good,” Hench says, unconcerned. “He was having problems. His conscience was bothering him. Did he tell you why, Mr. Burke?”
“As I said, I’d rather not discuss it.”
“Did he talk about the Aristos?”
Martin folds his hand on the table. First Carrilund, and now this man.
“
He belonged to a group called the Aristos,” Hench continues, not waiting for Martin’s answer.
“I did not know that,” Martin says. “He didn’t mention them?”
“No,” Martin says.
“Did he talk about your therapy devices, Mr. Burke? Did he warn you about something?”
Martin feels stiff. His neck gives him a twinge. “No warnings, no threats. He’s a well-known man, Mr. Hench.”
“Yes. A billionaire.” Hench pushes out his lips. His face is surprisingly flexible, and for a brief moment, he resembles a chimp. The transformation is unexpected and makes Martin’s neck even more tense.
“Rich folks aren’t anybody’s friends, really,” Hench says. “Too much power, too much freedom, yet far too many restrictions. It distorts them.”
“The rich, they are not like you and I,’“ Martin quotes.
“‘They have more money,’“ Hench finishes the quote. “Fitzgerald and Hemingway, as I recall. Crest was divorced just recently, quietly, in private, but under real pressure.”
“I assume this is official,” Martin says, and clears his throat.
“Yes, and nothing to do with you, personally. You’re not in trouble with my agency, Mr. Burke, though in the next few minutes, if you’re any kind of decent man at all, you’re going to feel a little sick to your stomach. Are you free for the rest of the day?”
“No. I have appointments.”
“Cancel them,” Hench says, casually rubbing thumb and forefinger together, as if rolling an insect to death. “We’re going to have a brief chat, and then I’m going to introduce you to some friends. We’ll need your help, Mr. Burke. We need you to join us on a short trip out of state. You’ll be compensated for lost time at your standard professional rates, minus citizen obligation percentage, and of course all expenses will be taken care of.”
Hench looks at Martin steadily, seriously, his flexible face stolid once more and a little tired.
“I’m not sure how this sort of thing is done,” Martin says. “I assume you have court orders, paper or sig?”
“Nope,” Hench says. “Make your arrangements, and then we’ll need about five minutes, in complete privacy, to have a little briefing.”
“No choice?”
“I’ll leave it up to you. After you hear me out.”
Martin’s instincts tell him he had best follow Hench’s suggestions. He calls up the outer office and gives Arnold and Kim the rest of the day off. The INDA will call all his patients and reschedule their sessions.
“All clear, Mr. Hench,” Martin says smoothly. “I’m listening.”
Hench leans forward, elbows resting on splayed knees, hands folded in front of him. “You’re not going to believe this, Mr. Burke,” he warns.
“We’ll see,” Martin says.
“Crest is dead. Suicide.”
The agent goes on with his story. Martin does not believe any of it.
At first.
Then, he feels sick to his stomach, sick at heart, even irrationally guilty. Once again he has walked through the lion’s cage, this time without even knowing.
He nods, agrees, acquiesces. Anything to get it over with.
“Sorry about this, Mr. Burke,” Hench says.
“If you weren’t sitting there, all manly and competent, I’d cry my eyes out,” Martin says, tilting his head to one side and squinting off through the windows.
“Very decent of you, sir. Me, I just want to start strangling people.”
3
Mary and Nussbaum stand before the city stat board, watching the city’s lines and graphs exhibit more ragged behavior. Mary has had to wait while Nussbaum took a briefing from the Chief of Public Defense on adapting defender readiness teams for what might prove to be a daunting crisis.
Nussbaum is very quiet. He does not want her to be here; silently, his look tells her, What now? Can’t you handle it?
“Crest met with undercover Federals in Boise three weeks ago,” Mary begin in a low voice. “Before going to Green Idaho.”
Nussbaum’s face loosens in surprise. “In my office,” he says. They walk through the staff room into his cubicle. Nussbaum sits behind his desk, using it as a shield.
Mary Choy ports her pad’s contents to Nussbaum’s and he looks it over, his face getting a little grayer, a little older. The office is quiet and cold, the staff room outside the glass partition is lightly populated, it’s late and nobody’s going to bother them. “Where did you get this?”
“Please don’t ask. I decided to call in a favor from my time in LA. My house manager has been reprogrammed and my records exported. Crest’s personal vid records were erased. Fibeside got a report from Workers Inc Northwest that their personnel center files have been hacked.”
“How?” Nussbaum asks. “They’re supposed to be foolproof.”
“I don’t know,” Mary says. “Back to Crest. He met with the Federals in a data-secure outpost set up to coordinate surveillance in Green Idaho. Nobody can tell me what they talked about. I have Alice Grale under protective custody.”
She’s saved this for last and it has the desired effect on Nussbaum. He sits straight up in his chair. “Why?”
“She was almost killed at a party last night. She plugged into a Yox with a man named Minstrel. New interface, full spinal, beta but not radical work… A party promotion. Someone didn’t show up and she substituted as a favor for a colleague. A paid favor.”
“Was it porn?”
Mary blinks. This is stunningly irrelevant. “I don’t know. The program, a Yox, was switched or scrambled, nobody knows by who or what. They reacted as if strapped into hellcrowns, and the man named Minstrel died. Someone at the party pulled off Grale’s interface before it could kill her, but she spent at least twenty seconds—”
“Yeah,” Nussbaum interrupts. His distaste is apparent; hellcrowning, however it is done, makes any public defender feel sick in the pit of the stomach.
“Comm and homicide teams from Eastside are investigating the death. I’ve linked it with the Crest investigation… in its extended form. I think someone wanted to kill her in case Crest said anything indiscreet while they were alone.”
Nussbaum runs his finger over the flat surface of his pad. “I thought you were going to do this on your own.”
“You want to know, sir.”
“The hell I do. It doesn’t make my life any easier.” Nussbaum stands. “I’m taking this to Federal, but I have to go through the state bureau. Are you flying to Green Idaho?”
“Yes,” Mary says. “In about an hour.”
“I may have to pull you back if Federal takes it over.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where’s Alice Grale now?”
“She’s staying in my apt. I’ve cut off all the apt’s fibe links and put two of your fifth-ranks in there to guard her.”
“You’re not keeping her in police custody, because we can’t shut down our fibes. You think someone’s going to hack through to get her?”
“It’s very possible, sir.”
“What sort of someone?”
“Very clever and very persistent.”
“Impossibly clever. These systems are not supposed to be breakable, even by God.” He bumps his desktop with the heel of his hand. “This someone thinks Crest told Alice Grale something important.”
Mary inclines.
Nussbaum’s direct gaze is startling: clear gray eyes, sharp and intelligent, in an otherwise weary and not very attractive face. Any PD must be a kind of artist, speaking humanity in its most basic and primal nature. The strain on ideals and personal illusions can be shattering. “Did she do anything else to deserve this? Make some enemies, make somebody jealous?”
“No, I don’t think she did. She’s pretty straightforward, sir.”
“Nice clean girl, hm? She just spread her legs at the wrong time. An occupational hazard, I suppose. I’ll ask Federal to search for all instances of peculiar hackers. But what in hell does this have to do with W
orkers Inc?”
“Maybe nothing, sir.”
“Keep in close touch, Choy.”
“Yes, sir.”
Nussbaum looks away and asks his pad to put a live touch through to the sig of Federal Emergency Notification.
PR
Conservative elitists rule much of modern religion, making it a branch of the Entertainment State. So sayeth the evangelistic moneychanger in the dataflow temple: Money can buy peace and salvation! Good works count for nothing against an ever-growing pile of status.
Conservatism is not about tradition and morality, hasn’t been for many decades… It is about money and the putative biological and spiritual superiority of the wealthy.
The honor and glory of the past, as always, are just symbols—and as such they can be (and some say should be) bought and sold on the open market.
Kiss of X, Alive Contains a Lie
4
Jonathan stands in the cleaning bubble as the purposeful billows of foam clear from the swanjet. The private charter airplane gleams white and gray and dull silver, with tiny red stripes on its forward vertical stabilizer. The plane is an ingenious deltoid with a central bulge of passenger compartment smoothly curving to razor wing tips. Along the upper and lower wing surfaces, tens of thousands of tiny nano-controlled bumps hint at its radical design. The bumps can form tiny vanes or dips in the wing’s surface to control the coefficient of friction of air passing over and under the wing, adjusting the lift on each wing without ailerons. The single low vertical stabilizer is shoved forward nearly to the nose, rising from the pilot’s compartment, just behind the windscreen, the leading edge curving back and then sharply forward. It gives these aircraft their characteristic shape and name: swans. Swans came into general service less than five years ago. Now, they’ve transformed air travel.
For the time being, Jonathan is alone in the bubble. He’s waiting for Marcus to return with their fellow passengers. He looks up through the membrane at the nacreous blue sky. A tingling sense of suspension and newness is the limit of his emotions today. He is present but not quite accounted for, he thinks.
