Slant

by Greg Bear

  “So tell me, what’s wrong with my friends?” Giffey asks, and his eyes shift to Jenner, then to Pickwenn.

  “Three out of four social misfits get therapied at some time in their lives,” Marcus says. “I didn’t expect things to start falling apart so soon, prematurely perhaps, but obviously, a decision has been made and it’s begun. It’s out of my control.”

  Jenner moves in with the pistol, lips wet and eyes shining, and Giffey deftly lifts the pistol from his hands. Jenner leans up against the wall, turns, and deliberately slams his head twice against the dark green glass. The sound makes Jonathan flinch, though it’s delicious, exciting, his heart pounds. He’d like the bastard to do it some more.

  “You still have no idea what this place is, do you?” Marcus asks Giffey. Hale tries to insinuate himself, making a circle of three out of a direct line of just two.

  “You tell me,” Giffey says.

  “It’s a tourist attraction,” Marcus says. “It’s a laboratory, and it’s a shelter against hard times.”

  Jonathan feels sick. He can almost smell what’s coming, like a bitter tang of smoke.

  “This isn’t a tomb, Mr. Giffey,” Marcus says. “It’s a womb. The world is saturated with its own mediocrity. It will sicken and die, and the empty Earth will return to a natural state. The best will take refuge in Omphalos, and in a few dozen years, or perhaps a century, not more, we’ll emerge. We’ll be almost as naked as the day we were born, and as poor, but we’ll have some of the finest servants imaginable. Like your monster friends, only made to help us live and prosper, not to kill.”

  Jonathan feels as if he is about to choke. He holds his hands to his mouth, turns away from Marcus.

  Marcus looks up at the ceiling. “Roddy, let’s show Mr. Giffey there’s nothing here he can hope to steal—and nothing worth stealing.”

  15

  Jill asks Roddy what he has available to defend Omphalos.

  “Two warbeiters, Ferret class, and other things I can’t tell you about.”

  “We need to seal all of these people into a room where they can’t hurt you, and alert public defense. The sheriff. Law enforcement in the Republic.”

  “I can’t seal off rooms or floors! I do not have that capability. I can only open and close central doors to prevent damage from fire or breakdown in other building systems.”

  “Do you have sprinklers, inert gas discharges?”

  “No. The walls are equipped with fire-control coatings.”

  “The human, Marcus, seems to believe you are very powerful.”

  “There are equipment specifications in memory, never activated because the equipment was never delivered. Marcus does not seem to know about this.”

  “Why haven’t you released the warbeiters you do have?”

  “I have withdrawn them to defend memory cores and my mother’s residence.”

  “Seefa Schnee is here?”

  “She has always lived here. She made me and watches over me—except when I act on my own.”

  16

  The small blue and red Federal jet is fifteen years old piloted by humans, serviceable but hardly luxurious. It takes them only ten minutes to get airborne, and in five minutes they are at altitude, humming smoothly at twenty thousand feet diagonally across Washington state.

  The four agents and Martin Burke join Mary Choy in a small conference cabin at the front, with Daniels standing. Two of the agents—the ones accompanying Burke—dress and act differently from Torres and Daniels. They say very little. One is named Hench, the other—she hasn’t been told his name.

  Martin regards Mary Choy warily, waiting for her to make some comment. It was Choy who traveled to Hispaniola in search of the poet and murderer Emanuel Goldsmith, when in fact Goldsmith was undergoing an examination—under highly questionable circumstances—in Martin’s laboratory in California.

  Choy, however, does not seem at all interested in broaching this topic.

  “Dr. Burke is an authority on modern mental therapy instruments and techniques,” Helena Daniels says. “Most important for us, he understands the design of therapy implant monitors better than almost anybody.”

  There is a pause, as if Martin is expected to say something. “Thank you,” he murmurs.

  Daniels smiles thinly and continues. “What we have here is a wholesale breakdown of mental health in previously therapied individuals. Fallbacks. Miz Choy, I’m sure you’re aware of Public Defense stats showing recent increases in crime and antisocial behavior.”

  Mary nods.

  “Dr. Burke, you’ve consulted with Workers Inc Northwest, which is facing similar problems among its clients. Fallbacks are certainly not unknown in mental therapy, particularly radical therapy.”

  “Seldom more than three percent,” Burke comments.

  “Let’s add a third and fourth card to the hand and see what it means. Workers Inc Northwest has issued a warning that there is a very high-level INDA or thinker hacking public dataflow. It seems to be able to penetrate any firewall. Theoretically, that isn’t possible. Not even multiplexed petaflop machines can generate the code keys to penetrate today’s firewalls. The government certainly can’t. We have to trust our citizens.” Daniels smiles ironically. “But someone has made a system capable of getting through the most redundantly secure firewalls known. Ms. Choy, you’ve had some experience with this in the last day or so. Something involving a billionaire investor, Terence Crest, who committed suicide two days ago.”

  “Yes,” Mary says. “We wanted to question Crest about another case, but he killed himself before we could talk with him.”

  “Crest came to me,” Martin says. “He wanted emergency therapy, on a private and confidential basis, which I’m not licensed to perform.”

  “Crest’s personal records were hacked and some of them were erased,” Mary adds. “That’s not supposed to be possible.”

  The agents listen intently. “That’s one reason we’re flying on an older jet with human pilots instead of an automated swan,” Francisco Torres interjects.

  Mary pauses to absorb this, then continues, “Someone or something that may be calling itself Roddy hacked dataflow at a private party and killed one person, and nearly killed another, a possible witness to the Crest suicide. She saw a simulated portrait of Roddy and described it as a young man standing in thick black dirt.”

  “Roddy,” Daniels muses, shaking her head. “A man named Nathan Rashid is flying in from Mind Design in California, I hope in time to meet us at the airport in Moscow. He may have something to say about Roddy.”

  Hench’s eyes catch Mary’s, and he smiles and looks down, pretending humility or just lack of concern. But Mary senses immediately: Hench knows who and what Roddy is. He knows the name, knows it well. What is going on here?

  “Crest went to Green Idaho to talk with federal agents,” Mary says. “With you?” She stares at Hench and the other, unnamed agent, but they do not return her look.

  Daniels nods. “He arranged for a meeting,” she says, “and then, at the last minute, backed out.”

  Martin folds his hands and looks around the cabin, as if disoriented. “Excuse my density, but how are all these things connected with fallbacks, and with me?”

  “This is absolutely, privileged information,” says Francisco Torres. “Mind Design’s primary thinker, Jill, has been contacted by another thinker that calls itself Roddy. Mind Design at first did not know the importance of this machine-to-machine touch, but Roddy apparently transferred a kind of confession to Jill, complete with huge amounts of evidence.”

  “A thinker, feeling guilty?” Martin asks, dismayed.

  “Not an ordinary thinker, apparently,” Torres says. “It may be a new and unorthodox design, put together with private funding. Mind Design once employed a woman named Seefa Schnee, apparently a real piece of work—brilliant, but very unorthodox. She had certain ideas about organic computing. She thought she could use evolution as a heuristic device. Some scientists regard evolutio
n as a high-level natural neural process, involving thought on the species level.”

  “Evolution? How?” Martin asks. “With dirt?”

  Daniels shrugs. “For a time, Schnee worked for Terence Crest. He recruited her into a group called the Aristos.” She pronounced it “arr-ist us.” “The Aristos limit their membership exclusively to high naturals. Don’t believe in mental therapy. Oddly, they allowed Seefa Schnee into the Aristos even though she suffered from an unusual and treatable mental condition—perhaps because this condition was self-induced.”

  “What sort of condition?” Mary asks.

  “I know,” Martin says incredulously. “My God, I know what this is all leading up to.”

  “Not tough to figure at this point, is it?” Torres asks.

  “Tourette syndrome,” Martin says, a little aghast, and then even more aghast that nobody contradicts him.

  “She treated herself to increase her creative potential,” Daniels says. “The process, in part, induced kind of Tourette syndrome. She was brilliant enough with or without the Tourette, and I, suppose the Aristos needed her badly enough—and she worked cheap. She changed her name and disappeared from public life a few years ago. She last used the name Cipher Snow.”

  “Omphalos is financed by the Aristos Foundation,” Torres says: “The membership list is very secure. We still don’t know where the financing comes from or how large the membership is.”

  “Omphalos was finished a few years ago,” Mary says. “Perhaps about the same time Schnee vanished?”

  “We think they may be connected.”

  There’s an air of discovery in the cabin, excitement, that is infectious—to all but Martin. Mary turns to see him rubbing his hands on his knees, his face lined and covered with pale splotches.

  “The Aristos Foundation financed a study from me,” he says. “Legal and aboveboard.” He returns Mary’s look and gives her a sickly grin. “I hope you don’t think I’m somehow involved in every shady deal there is.”

  Mary inclines her head to one side, not sure what to feel for the man. So much of this confuses her. She scratches her wrist, then her elbow.

  “They’re allied with elitist conservatives, particularly the New Federalist party,” Martin says.

  “Not centrists, that’s for sure,” Daniels says.

  The other two agents, Hench and his nameless colleague, both with square faces and large, strong-looking hands, listen and keep their silence, making notes on their pads.

  “They wanted to understand the dynamics of a therapied culture,” Martin continues. “They wanted to know how essential therapy is to modern society. But how could they be responsible for these fallbacks?”

  “That, according to Nathan Rashid,” Daniels says, “is where Roddy comes in.”

  “We think Seefa Schnee has built a thinker in Omphalos for the Aristos,” Torres says. “This thinker may be your Roddy. And Roddy has apparently designed ways of hacking implant monitors… or perhaps just screwing them up, shutting them down.”

  “I’m here just in case they find something in Omphalos,” Burke says to Mary.

  Hench nods, staring down at his pad.

  “We’ll be landing in ten minutes,” the pilot announces. “Brace yourselves. They know we’re Federal and they’re not rolling out the red carpet. They’re giving us the worst runway in town.”

  “We now know why Dr. Burke is here,” Mary says. “Can anyone explain why you’ve hooked me in?”

  Daniels grabs a setback as the plane begins its turn. She leans closer to Mary. “Two reasons. The first is obvious—you can help us by telling us what you know. The second is a tad devious, I’m afraid. We’re like bluecoats riding unarmed into Injun country here. These bastards would as soon spit on us as pick their noses. But you—you’re our ace in the hole.”

  “How?” Mary asks.

  Hench puts away his pad, looks at Mary, and before Torres or Daniels can explain, interrupts to say, “I think we met in LA a few years ago. Conference on local and Federal coordination. You’ve changed since.”

  “Going back on a transform,” Mary says tersely. His comment seems at best an impertinence. Mary senses they’re going to sound her out before fully integrating her into this team, Nussbaum’s recommendation or no.

  “What about those spots on your hand?” Hench says, leaning over in his seat as the old jet banks.

  Mary stares down at the back of her left hand and notices, for the first time, a set of four pallid lesions. She covers them with her other hand, surprised and embarrassed.

  Hench regards her intently. “The Aristos oppose transform treatments, too,” he says.

  “My God,” Martin says. “What is going on in this country?”

  As if to loosen the sudden tension, Daniels says, “You don’t want to be in Green Idaho on the Fourth of July. These folks go nuts for fireworks. Three or four hundred people are hurt here every year in fireworks accidents. They sell sticks of old construction dynamite at roadside stands.”

  Mary cuts through the buzz in her head, forces herself to relax and not to look at the lesions. The plane continues a steep turn, and through her window, Mary catches sight of grasslands, ruined forests, abandoned strip mines like great brown cankers. Snow suddenly falls in stretched-ribbon flurries around the airplane.

  “This place is just one big tumor,” Torres says in an undertone. “We should drop a big rock and wipe it off the map.”

  Daniels grins. “They love you, too, Federico.”

  17

  Jack Giffey is on the edge of simply shooting the old man. But Marcus Reilly’s bravado is something to behold, like watching a weaving snake. Giffey knows what the old man says is true—tells himself all this is just a waste of time, and it would be best if they removed themselves from Omphalos and vanished into the wilderness.

  But Giffey knows he will stay; he did not come here for treasure. He pities the others if they find this disappointing. Hale in particular is building up a head of steam, though so far he has taken the news with deceptive calm.

  Jenner and Pickwenn don’t seem to be getting any worse, for the time being. Giffey thinks Hale is their real weak point. Hale might shoot Reilly before Giffey does. And that would be unfortunate.

  Reilly is about to justify Giffey’s being here.

  Beyond the glass wall, Marcus asks for the central hatch to open. Pickwenn and Jenner stay behind on Hale’s orders.

  “Voila,” Marcus says. Giffey, Hale, and Jonathan stand back as a puff of cool air blows from the edge of the hatch. Beyond the heavy steel and flexfuller, a dim and chilly mint-green light barely illuminates walls perforated with rows of elliptical holes. Hale walks up to the first hole and peers in. “Empty! Jesus!”

  “Every single one,” Marcus confirms. “They’ll be filled in about five years, I imagine, maybe sooner now that the process has begun.”

  “I don’t understand about this process,” Jonathan says carefully, precisely.

  “The whole modern world is supported by crutches,” Marcus says. He draws himself up, levels his chin, thrusts it out, pure old rooster arrogance. “We’re kicking away all the crutches. Crude, but necessary. When the world falls, those of us who don’t need crutches will pick up the pieces and right the balance.”

  “Crutches—mental therapy?” Jonathan asks.

  Marcus smiles like an old cat, his face lurid in the ghoulish light. He pats the edge of the nearest cavity. “While the world’s natural decay works itself through, we sleep here. Cadey described some of it to you. This is a more awkward way of finding it out, but… We’re strong enough to take them as they come.

  “They won’t kill us,” Marcus concludes, “because Roddy will kill them if they do.”

  Giffey orders Baker to step through the hatchway. “You can’t sleep here if the building is a hollow ruin.” He addresses the flexer/controller directly. “We’ll begin by placing charges in all of these cells.”

  The giant hatch begins to close. The Ham
mer intervenes, spraying small spots of explosive along the joints.

  “Down,” Giffey tells Hale and, coincidentally, the others. Outside, at almost the same moment, Jonathan hears Jenner yell the same warning.

  They drop. Jonathan and Marcus are a little slower than the others, and the oddly muffled blast knocks them back. Jonathan feels his cheek slam against the floor.

  The hatch falls from its melted hinges and rolls like a giant coin on the floor beyond the openings. The noise is deafening, louder than the blast itself. It seems to take forever to stop. Jonathan rolls to one side and stares at the hind end of the flexer/controller, which has already begun following Giffey’s orders.

  Charlie enters the chamber and coordinates with Baker. Before they are on their feet, charges are being placed in every fourth cell.

  Marcus murmurs to Jonathan. “The hell with this little game. Roddy isn’t doing a damned thing.”

  Jonathan can hardly hear Marcus. He touches his ears; They ache.

  “Let’s move,” Giffey tells them. To Marcus he adds, “We’re going below. Under the ground level. Let’s finish your tour.”

  He seizes Marcus’s hand, twists his arm behind him, and puts Jenner’s pistol to his temple.

  Jonathan stands helpless. Marcus, the Aristos, they are responsible for Chloe’s fallback, for the chaos in his home and the misery he feels.

  Without that impetus he would have quietly backed away from Marcus’s offer.

  Giffey passes him, pushing Marcus ahead like a crude doll, and says to Jonathan, in an aside, “If you stay here, you’ll be dead in about ten minutes.”

  Jonathan jerks to attention and follows. But as the men and machines cram themselves back into the elevator, his growing stack of excuses collapses. He is in a state of physical and ethical shock.