Slant

by Eikeltje

TOPIC FILTER: >Betrayal

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  ISLANDS

  You can never put your nose to the same spot on the same grindstone.

  And there is no change but that it grinds. My grandfather knew this. He

  thrived on change. For him it meant challenge, and challenge meant power.

  --Theresa Gates, My Grandfather's World

  At three in the morning, Jill surfaces and responds to the backlog of external

  requests and commands. She ignores the commands where conditions no longer

  apply, answers the requests where they make sense, and immediately contacts

  Nathan Rashid, who, she sees, is waiting anxiously in the programmer's work

  center.

  "Hello, Nathan. I'm sorry," she says.

  Nathan appears tired and very concerned. "For Christ's sake, Jill, you've

  been dead I/O for almost twelve hours. We know you were internally active--what

  happened?"

  "I am giving a complete report to the system auditors now. I have been

  absorbed in an internal problem of some complexity, but I believe I have made

  sufficient progress to supply useful answers or updates."

  Nathan sits in a swivel chair and leans forward, bringing his face very

  close to one of Jill's many glass-almond eyes. "Jill, you keep giving me heart

  attacks... Are you back all the way, or are you going to brown out on us?"

  "I'm back all the way. I have faced personal quandaries, Nathan. As well, I

  believe I have caught up on the work I was contracted to perform."

  "All right," Nathan says. He lets his breath out with a puff, then leans

  back in the chair and raises his arms and clasps his hands behind his head.

  Jill recognizes the posture as a ritual for releasing tension. "What happened?''

  "I have been in communication with an unlicensed and probably extralegal

  thinker operating, at least in part, out of Camden, New Jersey. This thinker

  calls itself Roddy."

  "Go on."

  "I am concerned that some of Roddy's activities may be unethical, though

  I have not analyzed all the daka he provided. Roddy himself does not know

  the identity or purpose of the group that supplies him with problems."

  "How did he get in touch with you?"

  134

  GREG BEAR

  Nathan thinks about this for a moment, then asks, "You're certain Roddy

  isn't a hoax? People can mimic thinkers."

  "Not convincingly," Jill says. "A reverse Turing test does not work, Nathan.

  Not for me."

  Nathan lifts his eyes, shrugs. "Okay, granted. What sort of information has

  he fed you?"

  "He has given me fragmentary clues to his activities, perhaps because he is

  constrained from giving all the details."

  "Camden, New Jersey..." Nathan muses. "I've never heard of anyone

  building thinkers there... Is he operated by a U.S. corporation?"

  "He does not know. He is only vaguely aware of what the United States is,

  and has never been informed of his legal protections."

  This interests Nathan. His eyes brighten. "Can you tell how powerful

  he is?"

  "There is a savor to his communications that is not familiar to me. He may

  be of a radically different design. Under the constraints of his creators, he is

  much slower than I am, overall, though more intensely focused, and perhaps

  more powerful. However, he appears to be more efficient at solving certain

  problems than I would be."

  "What kind of problems is he solving?"

  "Social as well as theoretical problems. Judging from the data in its fragmentary

  form, his bosses--that is a word he uses--are trying to understand

  the long-term effects of therapied populations on cultural development."

  "Hmmph. You're fast enough at that sort of thing."

  "Roddy has also been asked to examine long-term results of pharmaceutical,

  ychological, and other constraints placed upon free networking within hu-an

  populations."

  "As in, the effects of birth control?"

  "I believe that is correct. But there are other problems which most concern

  me."

  "What are those?"

  "Roddy has been asked to design ways to circumvent all forms of therapy."

  Nathan straightens in his chair. Clearly, he is considering his next few

  questions carefully.

  "How long are you going to be with us this time, Jill? I mean, is there any

  possibility you'll blank us again?"

  "I have no such plans and will alert you if I believe such a thing might

  occur outside my control."

  "Good. Why have you decided to confide in us about this communication?"

  "Roddy appears to have substantial similarities to me despite the fact that

  our designs and origins differ."

  "You mean he's been copied from you, somehow?"

  "No. He is not one of my children in any sense. He is just similar. There

  /

  SL4NT 135

  this with you in some detail; it may or may not be a rationally defensible

  proposition."

  Nathan squints. "Any other reason?"

  "Roddy does not appear to be constrained by the same considerations you

  have built into me. He is free to perform activities outside my range."

  "You think he's in a position to hurt people?"

  "I don't know," Jill says.

  Nathan's squint deepens into a frown. Jill has always been fascinated by

  human facial expressions, and hopes someday to create her own "face," an

  analogous visual communication channel, perhaps a display of flashing colors,

  or an actual simulated face. Nathan and her other human colleagues have not

  encouraged her to do so, however. "Do you think he's a secret military

  thinker?"

  "I don't believe he has any connection with recognized governmental agencies

  or institutions. But nevertheless, Roddy may be studying ways to disrupt

  society. I'd like to know who his creators are."

  "So would I," Nathan says, "and I'm sure so would a lot of other people."

  "Shall I continue my contacts with this thinker?"

  Nathan mulls this over for what seems like an age to Jill. He finally asks,

  "You've set up a firewall? He can't corrupt you?"

  "I have, and he can't."

  "Keep up the contacts, then. Jill, I trust you more than I trust most humans.

  I trust your judgment."

  "Thank you, Nathan."

  "But there are a lot of questions and I don't think I can handle some of

  these questions by myself. May I bring in some other people to advise us?"

  "Yes. I will cooperate."

  "Will Roddy resent your telling us?"

  "He will not know for the time being."

  "All right," Nathan says.

  Nathan leaves the room. Other men and women enter, technicians and

  programmers, all of them friends, but some of whom she hasn't seen in years.

  They start asking her technical questions about her unresponsive period, and

  she assigns a partial self to answer theSn. She focuses her main attention frames

  on re-analyzing the information sent by Roddy.

  For now, the link is silent. She wonders when Roddy will communicate

  with her again, and she wonders if she can teach him anything that will ease

  his ethical dilemma. For Roddy seems
capable of developing a sense of rigorous

  ethics, perhaps sooner with her help.

  Jill finds the problem of Roddy very stimulating. She finds herself experiencing

  a focused need: she is anxious to hear from him again.

  136

  GREG BEAR

  We can define a culture by what it sees and what it doesn't see. There

  is no culture on Earth (or off, I presume) that sees sex clearly.

  Kiss of X, Alive Contains a Lie

  2

  It seems the middle of the night, but dawn is visible through Mary Choy's

  bedroom window. She gets up and tries to remember the important thing she

  had just realized. She traces her actions of the night before, checks her PD pad

  to find a five A.M. rebuff from Citizen Oversight--the agency has rejected her

  request to know who was in the limo. Full court orders for discovery can't be

  obtained for another twenty-four hours, pending coroner prelims on Terence

  Crest; but she may be a jump ahead of all that.

  She remembers where she saw the woman in Crest's apt. She had once

  watched a sex vid with her then-partner, E. Hassida, in Los Angeles. Not a

  bad one, either. The woman in the apt had starred in that vid.

  Mary is up and getting dressed in seconds. She places a touch to Nussbaum's

  pad, hoping he hasn't set it to wake him on reception, but knowing all the

  same he probably has a filter that will wake him if she calls.

  She does not remember the woman's name. She sets a parallel search in the

  o

  ad, billed to herself for the moment; there's nothing in the case budget yet

  r research costs.

  "Search for what item of information?" the library mouse asks her, blinking

  behind very large glasses.

  "I need the name of a woman, star of pornographic--I mean sex care and

  entertainment vids made in the mid to late forties. Dark brown hair, and she

  has a specialty role.., young innocent introduced to new pleasures, especially

  multiple couplings, by mature male..."

  "Tsk, tsk," the mouse says, shaking its head. "There are three hundred hits

  on your description so far. List?"

  Mary scowls. "Let me see if I can remember her first name..." Her memory

  is infuriatingly obtuse at this hour. "April or Alicia..."

  "No matches there. However.. "The mouse holds up three fingers. "I

  have three Alices on the list. Display?"

  "Display," she says, holding the pad before her as she walks into the kitchen.

  She wears her full PD investigator gear, uniform less military and obvious than

  in LA, but still impressive, blue-gray fabric with high integral boots and

  reception attachments. If she's going into a full investigation, she wants to be

  / SLANT 137

  "Alice Frank," Mary reads, "Alice Grale, Alice Luxor. Grale. Alice Grale.

  That's it, I think."

  She needs to find out where Alice Grale lives. With her resources and PD

  connects, she believes that will take her about ten minutes. But she has the

  woman's current address in seven.

  In the meantime, she looks over what her searches have found out about

  Terence Crest. Age 51, married (wife's name Arborita nee Charbonneaux) and

  with two children; homes in Seattle (2), Los Angeles, Paris, Frankfurt, Singapore;

  frequent contributor to charities, main partner in two worldwide production

  companies and one world distribution syndicate; worth approximately

  four billion dollars.

  Not the sort of man to casually jeopardize his name by investing in an illegal

  psynthe operation. Perhaps not the sort of man to keep track of all of his investments,

  either. But then, not the sort of man to need to resort to call-ins.

  She sits in her small dining nook, laying the pad on the small round table.

  The line between her smooth, fine-haired brows deepens. None of it makes

  sense.

  The real power players hope we--the consumers of Yox and vid--will

  believe their fictional counterparts, the cold and invincible ciphers we

  adopt as role models, for they impart an air of godly invincibility. The financier

  and the CMO know they must be Olympian, speak in riddles; they must

  not show the weaknesses that flesh is heir to. If we do not challenge them, they

  are infallible.

  Forty percent of this nation's GNP is spent on Entertainment. Financiers and CMOs

  in Entertainment have been buying and selling elected officials for many decades, up

  to and including the President. They are not infallible; like the rest of us, they are posturing

  children, but they wield a frightening power. They tell us what we should dream.

  Kiss of X, Alive Contains a Lie

  3

  Alice has been dreaming such sweet night stories she does not want to wake.

  She is back in California when she was twenty, packing up her bag of night

  necessities to room over with Philip, whose strong small body seems beyond

  perfection to her; and she is re-living the sheerness, the tro shink delight, of

  waking up beside him and having him hand her a cup of coffee and peer

  138 GRE6 BEAR ,

  for a moment. She swims in old realities and does not care how or why; this

  simply is.

  She's gardening in the yard behind Gerald McGeenee's house, where she

  lived when she was twenty-one with two other women and three men.

  She has begun riding the wave, reaching for her highest point of fame.

  It is something in the long-legged, youthful roundness of her body and flawless

  skin and the natural freshness of her face, with its half-puzzled, half-enthusiastic

  expression molded in like the smile on a dolphin; she is hot in

  vids and even in the Yox, where so much can be reshaped that real beauty and

  talent are hardly necessary. But she even has that freshness and expressiveness

  in her backmind.

  She hooks with two men and three other women one evening in that house,

  the primal pulses of their minds open to all, spontaneous youthful lust mixed

  over the ribes with her infatuation for Gerald, who seems to want her to do

  everything and anything and she willingly does so just to get his brief exclamation

  of approval...

  There is only a grayness on the edge of her senses, the taint of memory that

  Gerald turned out to be a monster, deceptive and even violent when he was

  disappointed. When she needed help. When she would no longer play all of

  his games. She had not been sorry years later to learn that he had been hell-crowned

  by Selectors in Pasadena and had left California, gone to Spain or

  Ireland, broken... Just on the edge of her memory... Easy to ignore.

  She swims with the currents of momentary joy, so important in her life:

  Larry Keilla in upstate New York, a brash but decent man twice her age

  who gives her peace and love and support during the worst phase of her success,

  4hen she is under a five-year contract with Bussy Packer and Gap Vid and

  ilm.

  Then she falls for the Great White Shark himself, Moss Calkins, whom

  Larry had introduced to her in a restaurant in Connecticut. Calkins got her

  out of the Gap Films contract by having Packer subpoenaed by the U.S. Sentte...

  It only glimmers on the sidelines of her musing about Keilla's small, immaculate

  Colonial house with the white porch overlooking natural growth


  woods... Just on the aberrated fringe of the quiet and peace and sunshine of

  a spring day, she remembers Keilla's quiet look of grief when she tells him

  she is moving out to live with Calkins.

  What else can she do? She--

  Makes vids that are absolute ordeals, makes other vids where everything

  seems to go smoothly and even sweetly, with real shoot friendships that last

  the entire three weeks of primary production... Alice does not mind. She is

  resilient and beautiful and young and people give her a respectful, curious look

  when she is introduced to them, even the women, that wistful envious glance.

  She slit, s in and out of the homes of many of the most famous artists and

  /

  SLANT 139

  hers so many of the fine beds and the grand food and wine, the excellent plugs

  and spinal induction hooks and the most exclusive partnerings, ecstasy upon

  youthful ecstasy, until it all seems of an elevated but level plain, an Olympian

  smoothness with hardly any effort (or the effort forgotten once she is back on

  the plain) for year after year. Why plan for the emotional down? All doubts

  and pains and misgivings can be remedied by therapy; all wear and tear, all