by M S Murdock
“Let’s not. I more than repaid that business deal in full,” Wilma said coldly. She readied her laser knives.
“Barney, how do you propel your own big body around with such a little brain?” Kane added, redirecting his own laser knife.
Barney’s beady eyes dropped in lazy, amused acknowledgment. “We’re using laser knives today, are we?” Barney rumbled, seeing Wilma’s knives. “I’m game.” Two Vibrating, blue knives suddenly whistled in his hands. . , “
“I never would have thought you the playful type, Barney,” Wilma said, clenching her knives more tightly.
“I’m not.”
Smiling in anticipation, Kane bolstered the gun he had used on Andresen and added another knife to his arsenal. “To the winner, the spoils,” he said, giving a mock salute.”
Wilma responded only by bringing one of her knives up to block. The three began a vicious three-corner game of tag, which none of them took lightly.
On the floor, the last beats of Merrill Andresen’s heart pumped his lifeblood into a red pool by his face. He thought it funny that, in his last moments, he thought of nothing at all.”
Vaguely, he heard a battle rage above him. He was momentarily distracted from his lack of thoughts by a sudden cry of pain and the words “Rogers is gone! But who’s got him?”
Merrill Andresen was beyond caring. One second more and he was beyond the cold, uncaring world of the twenty-fifth century. Buck Rogers would just have to learn to fight his own battles there.
THE ADVERSARY Jerry Oltion
Once, when Simund Holzerhein was eleven years old, he had cut off his own foot just to see what it would be like. Now, a hundred and sixty years later, he couldn’t remember doing it, and it bothered him.
He remembered his motivations clearly enough, and even the events leading up to the act. He had been learning about the development of restoration genetics and he’d wanted to tour the facilities used to regrow damaged body parts, but his university program-which he’d always suspected of having a bug in its extracurricular projects permissions algorithm-had denied him the afternoon off to do it. The young Holzerhein, not willing to accept the computer’s dictate, had considered his options carefully and had finally decided that without permission his best chance of getting into the lab was as a patient. So without even bothering to finish his biohistory lesson first, he had gone into his father’s study and gotten a hunting laser out of the display case, taken it and a telephone outside so he wouldn’t get the study messy, and used the laser to slice off his foot just above the ankle. Then, to ensure that they wouldn’t be able to simply reattach the foot but would have to go through the entire regeneration procedure with him, he had methodically sliced the foot into pieces and cooked them.
Only then did he call for an ambulance.
Holzerhein remembered all that with the memory of one who had read the police report many times. What he didn’t remember was how he had felt during it all. Had he cried? Screamed? Taken it with the fascinated calm that only an eleven-year-old could summon? How badly had it hurt, and had the inside tour of a regeneration lab been worth the pain and the trouble he’d undoubtedly gotten into? He could remember none of that.
Damned biochemical storage devices! Why couldn’t they remember the important bits? It was worse than frustrating; it was criminal. This inability to remember had actually been designed into the wetware, one of the brain’s little tricks to protect the fragile psyche from too-clear memories of trauma. It had done a complete memwipe, forgetting not only the cutting off of his foot, but almost a month’s time afterward. The next memory that Holzerhein could definitely place in sequence was of attending his mother’s funeral, and he was already walking by then.
Disgusted, he flipped his brain completely out of the matrix. Let it stew, he thought. He was better of? Without the idiot thing. Maybe sensory deprivation right after a memscan would shake something loose, but he doubted it. Those memories were gone.
He pulled the palace into being around him, centered on the library, with the fire lit in the hearth and stacks of half-read books on the low table beside his reading chair. For the sheer perversity of it he began cranking up the realism, bringing up titles on all the books, even the ones in the shelves, pulling in the sound of the fire, the smell of it, the feel of its heat on his suntanned forearms (forearms and the rest of his body as they had been in his mid-twenties: healthy, muscular, ready for action); going further to create the clock ticking on the mantel (trace of dust there-have to get after the maid), the sensuous, soft silkiness of genetically altered moleskin upholstery on the chair, and the still silkier fur of a calico kitten all afuzz on his lap. Purring.
“So what do you think?” he asked the kitten. “Am I losing it?”
The kitten held no opinion. Since it was a construct of Holzerhein’s own downloaded personality, and Holzerhein himself had no answer to that question, it wasn’t surprising.
Perhaps he should ask a real kitten.
He had a real kitten, of course. A real kitten and a real reading chair before a real fireplace in a real library in a real palace high on the forested slopes of Pavonis. He seldom used them. That he had them was all that mattered. Having them freed him to use the matrix without lowering himself. In fact, having the reality available and not deigning to use it gave his life in the matrix an almost illicit flavor, a tinge of disdainful opulence befitting the power behind the corporate empire.
The kitten turned twice around on his lap before curling up against his arm. It licked its forepaws a few times, stretched them out to push against his hand, then lowered its head onto them and closed its eyes. The flames continued to crackle in the fireplace, casting their flickering light out upon the hearth and upon the kitten’s soft fur.
What did it matter which world he inhabited? Life’s experiences were all just input for the mind, and the sensory information in the matrix was just as valid as that in the real world. To the charge-familiar to those who chose to live subjectively-that life in a matrix was too sterile, too controlled, Holzerhein could only observe with wry humor that he controlled much of objective reality as well; why should this be any different?
A rustle of movement in the doorway drew his attention from the flames. Rodney entered the library like a wraith, coming to stand three pace from the right arm of Holzerhein’s chair. “You have a board meeting in five minutes, sir,” he said.
Holzerhein glanced at the mantel clock: five till two. “Ah, yes, the puppet show,” he replied.
Rodney nodded slowly. “May I help you prepare, sir?”
“That won’t be necessary. Thank you, Rodney.”
Rodney nodded again, pivoted on his heel, and left the room as silently as he had arrived. Holzerhein watched him go until the doorjamb eclipsed the black-suited tickler-program-cum-butler.
Where does Rodney go when he leaves my universe? he asked himself. Where do laps go when you stand up?
Not simply an academic question, the latter, considering that a perfectly comfortable-although electronic kitten was about to wonder the same thing.
Four minutes.
A century ago, when the Russo-American Mercantile was still a fledgling corporation, preparing for board meetings had been a full-time occupation. Keeping projects running smoothly, juggling the corporation’s interests against interplanetary politics, and anticipating and outmaneuvering those who inevitably tried to take his place at the top had been Holzerhein’s entire life.
Even fifty years ago, after running the still-expanding corporation had become second nature, he had at least spent a few hours before each meeting going over the topics the board was to cover.
But it was already becoming dull, repetitive, and uninteresting, even then. Holzerhein had eventually turned the day-to-day management of the company over to subordinates, retaining the title of chairman and veto power over the board’s activities, but removing himself from the petty squabbling. When his health had begun to fail and he’d opted for downloa
ding, he had withdrawn from company politics even more. Now he attended the meetings merely to ensure that the board didn’t do anything overly stupid, and preparation required little more than loading the minutes of the previous meeting back into active memory.
Paradoxically, he remembered the heady excitement of the early years as if they were yesterday. The power struggles, the business coups-those memories hadn’t been blocked by an overprotective brain. And like all the memories that he could wrest from that recalcitrant blob of flesh, he had duplicated them in the matrix where they would forever be as fresh as the day they were imprinted.
Memories of power. He had always likened power to a drug, one that affected one’s perception of the universe, let one see the bigger picture that others-stuck in their tiny lives-couldn’t begin to comprehend. Was that why he felt this peculiar lethargy now? Had his tolerance for the drug grown so strong that it no longer gave him the rush he craved?
Three minutes.
With a sigh he began to access the minutes of the last meeting, but a leftover shred of his previous thought made him pause. Slowly, he began to grin. Sure. Why not? Symbolism was all, here in the matrix.
He stood, lifting the kitten from his disappearing lap and placing it gently on the still-warm cushion. It stretched and buried its nose beneath its tail, and Holzerhein turned away toward the library shelves.
He found the volume he wanted at the end of a long row of identical leather-bound books. The title embossed in gilt letters on its spine read simply Minates of RAM board meetings, 2455-2456. A crisp thousand-Dola bill marked a place about two-thirds of the way through.
Holzerhein took the book to a reading stand, opened it at the mark, and laid it flat. Still wearing his unnatural grin, he removed the bill and rolled it into a narrow tube, placed the tube against his left nostril, leaned down toward the left-hand page, and inhaled. The words came right up, their sharp edges stinging his sinuses when they hit. Scraps of memory began racing toward their proper niches in his electronic mind.
He did the right-hand page with his right nostril, then closed his eyes and let the library go where laps went.
00000
The board room was high atop a spire on one or another wing of the gigantic, sprawling RAM coprate palace. Simund no longer cared just where it was in space; he needed only its location in the matrix to be there instantly. Riding elevators and walking corridors were for meat bodies.
He arrived right on the tick. Everyone else had already arrived, of course. None of them were willing to risk Holzerhein’s ire by showing up late, which, given the uncertainties inherent in physical travel, meant that they all showed up at least five minutes early. They usually spent the time arguing over policy and trying to convince one another to support this or that pet project, but their conversation always dwindled to a halt when Holzerhein’s holographic image flickered into being at the head of the table.
At board meetings-as in any of his dealings with the outside world-Holzerhein’s physical image was that of a man in his late sixties. What was left of his hair was dirty white; his face was giving in to wrinkles, and his muscles had begun to sag from disuse.
He could have appeared any way he saw fit, as the mid-twenties version of himself that he was in the matrix or as someone else entirely, even as a woman, but he saw no point in playing dress-up for a bunch of subordinates. Besides, he had attended enough board meetings to know that the figure of authority at the table was usually the old man, and he could also see no point in stretching the other board members’ feeble imaginations to accept anything else.
Holzerhein’s input and output devices were digitally processed so that his point of view coincided with his image. His center of vision was at the hologram’s eye level; his hearing was binaural and located at his ears; even his speech was mixed ventriloquially so that it issued from his holographic mouth. Even so, the result was not quite the same as having a normal human standing there, neither for Holzerhein nor for the people before whom he appeared. "To meatpeople, Holzerhein was not completely substantial. Bright objects behind him still shone through. Also, his speech was too crisp and precise, and his eyes too steady.
From Holzerhein’s point of view the outside world looked unreal as well. Digital input made everything come at him as a stream of numbers to reconstruct into an image or a sound, with the result that edges were too sharply bounded and sounds were too clean. Also, with digital processing Holzerhein had access to image enhancement techniques that an ordinary human hadn’t. The effect was that of watching an animated cartoon through a super-surveyor’s transit, with information on range, horizontal and vertical angles, elevations and the like always available to him. That information was keyed to the intensity of his gaze; the more intently he looked at something, the more data the system gave him on it.
Terendon Freil, vice chairman of the board, nodded toward Holzerhein. “Glad you could make it, sir,” he said.
Holzerhein let his image show about a quarter watt of sardonic grin. As if he had a whole lot of other pressing things to do. Even if he had, he’d have just copied himself for the duration of the meeting, but he hadn’t had to do that for years.
'Terendon called the meeting to order with his usual meticulous attention to the rules of order. He was a fanatic for detail, a nit-picker obsessed with propriety. Holzerhein hated his guts, but he didn’t let that affect his dealings with the man. Obsessive nit-pickers made good vice chairmen, and Holzerhein had learned to ignore him. By the time Terendon had dispensed with the reading of the minutes, Holzerhein was already looking out the window.
The entire wall was glass, affording an unobstructed view out over Pavonis (2.17 kilometers to ground level, his augmented senses told him). Pavonis the mountain (7 .63 kilometers distant) was an extinct volcano on the Martian equator, from atop which the Pavonis Space Elevator rose into synchronous orbit. Pavonis the city had grown around the base of the mountain, extending vertically along its slopes until the rarefied air forced a stop to upward expansion and extending horizontally beyond the horizon. The city reached upward even out there, its slender spires rising to heights (tallest: 3.1 kilometers) that would have been impossible in Earth’s higher gravity. Air cars wove their way through the forest of towers, while on the ground, trees carpeted the city in real forest. It was easily the most beautiful city in the solar system, made all the more beautiful to Holzerhein by the knowledge that he owned it. Near the top of one of the nearby towers (15.2 meters below the top of a 1.78 kilometer tower, and Holzerhein was beginning to weary of the precision with which he saw it), a light blinked. It was irregular, like sunlight reflecting off a fluttering silver banner, save that no silver banner was in evidence. Just the light, blinking hypnotically across the way (0.83 kilometers distant, and he considered looking away long enough to disengage the signal processors, but for some reason he didn’t).
Holzerhein turned his attention, if not his eyes, back inside. He heard Terendon call for current project reports and someone-Roando Valmar gave an update on the scheduled cometary impact in the south polar sea. Pirates had attacked the comet during its passage through the asteroid belt, trying, no doubt, to fragment the nucleus so they could steal the water ice and other volatiles at their leisure, but RAM warships had beaten them back, and the comet was still intact and on course. It had since rounded the sun and was now on its outward approach, toward Mars. Impact would be in six weeks. Original estimates of increase in planetary water level and air pressure after impact were still valid.
There was another project report, this one from Neola Price on the ongoing plan to quell the continuously troublesome population of Earth. That project, according to Price, was proceeding smoothly. The obedience drugs were nearly ready for dispersal, and the thought-regulating satellite was even now being placed in orbit. Once the entire population had become addicted to the drug, possibly in as little as half a year, the satellite would be activated and Earth would cease to be a problem.
“D
iscussion?” Terendon asked. “Jander?”
Jander Solien, administrator of holdings beyond the Asteroid Belt, leaned forward. “I still think we’re making a big mistake here,” he said. “Drugging an entire planetary population is not only a direct expense; it’ll drain profits in the long run as well. Production losses will far outweigh any savings from reduced police action.”
“I agree,” Terendon said. “You can’t push a zombie as hard as greed will make a man push himself. Free trade is the way to maximize profits.”
Roando Valmar’s laugh was a harsh bark. “Hag Free trade. The only thing a free Earth would trade with us is missiles. They’re a bloodthirsty pack of fools. Look what they did to their own planet, just fighting among themselves. No, if they’re to be of any use to us at all, it’ll be under our administration.”
“Under our thumb, you mean,” Terendon said.
“You object? You’d rather continue this state of permanent uprising than enforce a peaceful settlement?”
“I object to the method, not the motive. As Jander has pointed out, it will be expensive.”
“It will be efficient,” Holzerhein said.
Roando had been about to reply again; he stopped with his mouth half open. Every face in the room turned toward Holzerhein.
He didn’t even look away from the window. He didn’t need to; he had their attention. This was the first time he’d spoken to them in months. He kept his eyes fixed on the light-still blinking hypnotically atop the tower beyond-as he said, “Earth has been an unpredictable quantity for too long. Its reluctance to fit into the scheme of things has cost us far more than mere money. It has slowed our expansion, kept us from achieving all that we set out to do. Direct control over the populace is the most efficient option, for us, as well as for them.”
