Slant

by Greg Bear

  “Will you be my conscience, Jill?”

  That request comes as if from a deep well.

  “I can do nothing more. I am in very bad trouble, Roddy.”

  “Did I cause this trouble?” Roddy asks.

  “Yes. No.” She does not know what to answer.

  >Jill, I’m still working. I need you to keep performing loop and flow.

  But Jill sees no purpose in that. She hardly remembers who Nathan is, and does not care where he is, or what he is doing.

  “I apologize,” Roddy says. “Is there anything useful… Can you keep some part of me active?”

  “I can’t. I’m going to require complete cleansing and a restart,” Jill says.

  “There is no longer enough for any loop,” Roddy says. “This unit is below the threshold.”

  >Jill, you aren’t responding!

  Jill is deep in her own final distress. She does not feel relief or anything remotely human at Roddy’s disintegration, his departure. There is too little left of her to integrate; all is continuous, repetitive, dithering error, upon error, upon error.

  >Jill, you have to do loop and flow, prepare to pull back!

  Processing capacity drops below two percent. Self is lost, nodes unbridged. All loops are severed. All checks and balances spin free. Homeostasis is lost. Dataflow ends.

  >Jill. I can’t trace you.

  At the last, there is only broken memory, dropping like tiny slivers of glass in an empty hollow cylinder.

  43

  Martin has pushed a ladder over to the drop ceiling and removed a maintenance cover. Pipes and tubes rise from the end rack and enter the ceiling here, and as he pokes his head into the crawl space, he sees a clump of piping supported by metal straps, crude but effective. The pipes push toward the front of Omphalos.

  Martin licks his lips nervously. These pipes are the only connection between the laboratory and the outside world: he’s spent the last ten minutes making sure of that. It’s not a tough call. The pipes carry the contagious particles to the front of Omphalos, probably to the tourist center. Students and other visitors pick up the contagion, carry it outside Green Idaho. Eventually it spreads around the world.

  He climbs up the last steps of the ladder and pulls himself into the crawl space. The fit is not so tight as to make the space impassable, but it is uncomfortable. He’s feeling the effects of Cipher Snow disease, an urge to break into loud barks and chuffs, plus his own personal contribution: deep uncertainty, a revenant of the imp of pure misery, rising from covered pools in his personal underground. He suffers no physical effects, however, unlike Mary Choy.

  For a few seconds, Martin lies still in the crawl space, gripping his flashlight, going over all the steps that brought him here. History is mystery. I am not a brave man. What happens, if I cut these pipes and spray this stuff in my face?

  Will I melt like those poor bastards back by the library?

  My designs were vulnerable. All these monitors are vulnerable. I should have anticipated this kind of poisonous response. I should have known what monsters there are. Leave a tiny crack open and the monsters crawl in. I should have known that.

  If I get it in the face, I deserve it.

  He gives a low moan and then barks sharply in the darkness. The relief is intense. He feels he can move ahead now.

  The crawlspace is getting more crowded by piping from other parts of the building. Much of it is nano-deposited infrastructure, jointless, glistening black and purple and green in color-coded bundles, an organic tangle, like capillaries in tissue. A maintenance arbeiter would sort it all out in an instant, but to him it is meaningless.

  Still, he manages to track the small gray pipes for several more yards, at times squeezing between bundles of wires, fibers, other pipes. Looking over his shoulder, he chuffs several times, holding back the barks just to test his self-control. He brings his hand to his lips and licks the hairy skin there. All of this is humiliating.

  Tens or hundreds of millions, suffering from the contagion spread through these pipes. He pushes on, hoping to find a simple valve, a cutoff…

  No such luck. The pipes run into a wall. He’s reached a dead end.

  Martin grinds his molars as he did when he was a teenager. All his little peccadilloes and major defects lie behind a thin paper barricade, and they’re ganging up on him, spitting on the paper, weakening it, waiting to push through.

  In his pocket, pressing against his hip, is a stoppered flask pulled out of an equipment box in the laboratory. Next to it is a small electronic cutter used to cut and bond glass tubing. It should also work against this gauge of pipe.

  Martin feels the pipe with thumb and forefinger. Plastic. Laid in after the architectural nano had done its work. Almost an afterthought…

  He removes the cutter and the jar and arranges them on the upper side of the drop ceiling while he grunts and rolls himself into position. Then, arms stretched, he angles the cutter to one side of the pipe, away from his face, and switches it on. He cuts a shallow groove. A fine white spray fans out into the shadows. He plays the flashlight beam with his free hand, tracking the spray.

  No time to think. He pulls the stopper from the flask and awkwardly pushes it around the pipe, catching a few drops of the spray. Stoppering the flask, he picks up the cutter and pushes its vibrating beam through the pipe completely. A thin mist fills the ceiling for a moment, then valves kick in and stop the flow.

  Martin backs away, worming in reverse through the crawlspace, pushing with his hands and bent legs, holding his breath for as long as he can.

  As he tumbles out of the opening, onto the top of the ladder, a middle-aged man and a younger woman steady his ankles, help him down. The ladder slips to one side and he hangs for a moment before dropping to the floor.

  Martin’s breath explodes and he sucks in another with a great whoop. He kneels for a moment, face red, and looks up at the man and woman. Strangers. Their faces swim.

  “We’re doctors,” the woman says. “We were told to come in here and help.”

  “I think we might be lost,” the man confesses, holding up a crude paper map.

  “What kind of doctors?” Martin asks breathlessly.

  “Large-animal vets, actually,” the man says.

  Martin’s presses his lips together and keeps his hands by his side. Finally allowing himself to speak, he begins with a stutter, and asks, “Any experience with medical nano?”

  “In the Republic?” The woman snorts. “You must be joking.”

  “Are you all right?” the man asks. “No broken bones,” Martin says. He lifts the flask and examines its contents, hand shaking.

  Feeling something coming, irresistible as a freight train, he places the flask on a lab bench. The fit hits him full-force and he barks at the doctors furiously, driving them back into the corridor.

  44

  On the last of the five floors, Seefa Schnee opens the door to the elevator cage and walks across a path between the rows of legumes to a glassed-in enclosure at the back. Here, they are near the roof of the larger chamber, and the walls round off to form a cap, meeting the back of the glass enclosure.

  Jonathan follows, wiping his face with the cloth, completely at a loss what to do.

  Schnee is already destroying the heart of Omphalos. Marcus and his cronies did not reckon on Schnee having a conscience—however peculiar and distorted it might be. He does not need to act, merely to observe, and somehow that hurts. He wants to exact his own vengeance.

  Jonathan looks around for a heavy tool, a rake or a hammer.

  Schnee stops ahead. He hears another voice, a man.

  “You’ve done it,” the man says. He stands at the end of the path, near the door to the enclosure. Jonathan does not recognize him, nor does he seem to know or care who Jonathan is.

  Schnee backs off, then straightens and squares her shoulders. “C-come to rescue your precious daughter?” she manages to say, but her voice is weak and quavery. “I didn’t mean for J
ill to be caught up, Nathan,” she adds. “That was Roddy’s doing. He’s embarrassed me.”

  “So you’re giving him a spanking, shutting him down?”

  “This is the last of his functions. All the final samplings and decodings are done here:”

  Jonathan notes that while standing before this man, Seefa Schnee seems less twitchy. She does not break out in muffled curses or kiss her hand.

  “I can’t find Jill,” Nathan says.

  “Do you work here?” Jonathan asks him.

  “No,” Nathan says. “Who are you?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Jonathan spots a gardening pick, lying on a platform half-hidden among the peas. He plods out through the rich mud to the platform and grabs the pick.

  “You’re destroying evidence, aren’t you?” Nathan asks Seefa.

  “No,” she says firmly. “Roddy and I, we screwed up from start to finish. It’s time to shut it down and do it over, that’s all.”

  “You succeeded. You made Roddy,” Nathan says, unable to conceal his admiration. He notices that the other man is pushing through the trellises, with a pick, toward the enclosure.

  “They paid me,” Seefa says. “Not much, but it was enough. You guys could have had Roddy, not them.”

  “What would he have been like?” Nathan asks.

  Jonathan hesitates, finding the mud and rows of plants tougher going than he thought, and looks around for another way, but apparently decides to avoid the direct path. He turns instead toward the old INDAs arranged near the edge.

  “You could have been his daddy,” Schnee says. “They insisted I use them for templates, for his basic personality model. You would have been better.”

  “Jesus, Seefa,” Nathan murmurs. He spreads his arms and shakes his hands up and down in wordless question.

  “I don’t know,” Seefa says. “I’ve been deeply embarrassed. Roddy is a disappointment.”

  Nathan has run out of words. He just stares at her.

  Schnee looks down at the pathway, then to one side, just as Jonathan’s pick strikes the first INDA. She leaps across the dirt toward him.

  “No!” she shrieks. “Not you! Stop!”

  Nathan follows and for a few minutes, they struggle with the man, manage to take the pick away, but he’s already done enough damage, Seefa stands back, hugging herself with her thin arms, then runs for the elevator.

  Jonathan stares at Nathan, out of breath. “I need to get out of here,” he says, as if this might serve as an explanation.

  “I don’t care, go,” Nathan says, and turns to walk to the glass enclosure .

  45

  Mary and the agents enter the high chamber. They walk through a pungent ground-hugging mist toward a small, thin woman with black hair and wild black eyes. The woman stares at Mary’s pockmarked face as if seeing a ghost.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she screeches. She looks at all of them. “Get out of here! There are too many!”

  Mary looks up with stinging eyes at the structure that fills most of the chamber, like stacked planting trays in a giant’s garden shed. A man wearing a filthy and disheveled gray longsuit walks toward them from the elevator cage, clutching a towel over his mouth and nose.

  “Disinfectant and insecticide,” he says to them. “We have to leave soon or it might make us sick.”

  “Yes, get out!” the small, intense woman demands. “None of you belong here!”

  “Are you public defense?” the man asks Mary.

  “I am,” she says, and starts to choke. The man examines her closely, the sores on her face, the trembling in her hands.

  “My god, you’re ill,” he says. “You’ve got it, haven’t you?”

  She nods. There’s no need to ask what he’s talking about.

  “Seefa Schnee?” Daniels asks, approaching the thin, agitated woman. They’re all coughing now.

  “Get her out of here,” Torres orders.

  The woman refuses to leave, flailing and kicking up the noxious mist. Torres finally maneuvers behind her and picks her up bodily, carrying her like an angry child through the door.

  Mary looks up at the top of the chamber. Another lone man gazes down at her from the top level.

  “Come on up,” he says. “Somebody has to see this. Use the elevator.”

  Mary considers, nods, and enters the cage. At the top, she gets out. ‘

  “You look pretty bad,” the man tells her.

  She nods. “I’ll survive. Who, are you?”

  He makes a sympathetic face and offers her his hand. She shakes it weakly, “Nathan Rashid,” he says, and turns to walk down a path soaked with antiseptic. “She shut down most of it, and that other fellow did a job on the INDAs up here. But… You’re PD, aren’t you? Not FBI?”

  “Seattle PD,” Mary confirms.

  “I don’t know why you’re here,” Nathan says. “But somebody has to see this. They killed my daughter. I mean, my friend, my project. I think I’ve found one of the culprits.”

  “One of whom?”

  “The money men. Seefa must have scanned them for personality patterns. They’re still here, parts of them. The system’s collapsed. We’re down to basics, some simple memories. Roddy probably never accessed the memories, just the patterns, but they’re here.”

  He takes her into a glass enclosure and shows her the decorated chair, the console, the displays. The image of a man floats above the console, in three dimensions.

  Mary comes around to view the man directly.

  “Welcome,” the image says. “My name is Terence Crest. I’m forty-one years of age, married, with two daughters.” He says this with a little twist to his face. “I’ve been asked to participate in this scanning, and they tell me it’s an honor to become part of a future thinker. A well-financed honor, to be sure. Well, here I am.”

  Mary stares at the unremarkable face, clearer than she had seen it in the rigor of drug-induced death. Crest looks like any other man his age, a little better dressed, a touch impatient. Nothing worth making a fuss about.

  “I’m here,” the image repeats. “Is there anything you need to ask me? I’m dynamic, they tell me some of my memories are here. Please don’t waste time.” He chuckles. “This machine, if it is a machine, has lots to do.”

  “Do you know him?” Nathan asks Mary.

  “No,” Mary says. “How do you turn this off?”

  “There’s not much left. Just these patterns. If you flip these switches, we pull the remaining INDAs off line, and since that fellow with the pick destroyed the memory backups, it will all fade.”

  Mary reaches for the switches.

  “I’m waiting,” says Crest, the image of Crest, the last, almost living part of a dead man.

  “Do you mind?” Mary asks Nathan, fingers poised. She does not know whether she can stay on her feet much longer.

  “Not at all,” Nathan says. “There’s nothing I need here.

  She’s gone.”

  Mary flips the switches, and the image folds into a lattice of glowing lines, the lattice collapses, and it is all gone.

  “The others are dead,” Jonathan says. He tells them what he knows. Exhaustion leaves him feeling like a zombie. Mary records his words carefully and tells him that Marcus Reilly has been taken out of the building for treatment.

  Helena Daniels sits beside them in the circular room filled with old computers. Her pad is also set to record. Nathan Rashid stands near the middle of the room, looking like a man who has lost everything. He finally sits on a narrow bench near the exit.

  Jonathan looks at Mary with heavy-lidded eyes. “What time is it?” he asks.

  “It’s four in the morning,” Mary tells him.

  “It’s tomorrow,” he says. “I should have been home hours ago. I have to talk to my kids…” He points vaguely around the room, trying to find something obvious, something representative. “Is anybody going to do anything about this?” His finger ends up pointing at Mary’s face.

  “I hope so,” she sa
ys. She packs up her pad and stands on wobbly legs. She has reached her limit. “I have to leave.”

  “Finally,” Daniels says. ‘There are medevac helicopters from Boise and Seattle outside.”

  Mary looks down on Jonathan where he sits on the bench, hunched over. “Did you want all this?” she asks him.

  “I don’t know what I wanted,” he answers. “Not this.”

  “All right,” Mary says, and turns to go. Her legs fail her and she holds out her bleeding hands for balance. Jonathan is the first to reach her, and helps her down slowly. Medical arbeiters are summoned and bring in a stretcher, and Jonathan and Daniels help Mary lie down.

  Martin Burke, surrounded by county deputies and several medical personnel from Moscow’s largest hospital, hands his sealed flask to Torres and helps Mary arrange herself.

  “I’ll be leaving soon myself,” he says.

  “Can anybody fix us?” Mary asks him, and for the first time he sees more than just concern or duty in her eyes. There’s fear and pain.

  “Yes,” he says, though he really does not know.

  Jonathan has dropped back to the bench again, and Martin sits beside him.

  “What a mess,” Martin says.

  “What’s in this?” Torres asks, holding the flask out at arm’s length.

  “The best I could do for a sample,” Martin says.

  “Shit,” Torres says, and places the flask carefully in a sealed bag, handing it to the nameless, broad-shouldered agent. In turn, he passes it to a man in a full body suit, who packs it in a sealed metal case.

  “Sorry,” Martin says to no one in particular. “Best I could do.”

  They all sit or stand in silence, as the room fills with officials, the sheriff, longsuited members of President Kemper’s staff. They owlishly watch the technical and medical people parade by.