Slant
Page 30
in hell do diagnostic toilets have to do with this?" He shakes his head. He
asks for the display to cease for a moment and he turns to look at Carrilund.
"Is it possible we're seeing the results of some unknown disease agent? Something
not in the medical database? Microbial infections have been known to
produce thymic imbalances. Production of natural antivirals to fight infection
has been shown to produce depression in some people."
"It's possible," Carrilund says, "but if so, it will have to be non-viral, nonbacterial,
non-protist and non-mycotic, and even fall outside the range of
prions."
She's certainly up on this. Maybe she came out of the medical disciplines. "Something
going wrong in the equipment itself?"
"The equipment is fine."
Martin finds the problem oddly exhilarating. "I noticed some charts on
sexual harassment and domestic and sex-related abuse--" He pauses. "Let's
skip that for the moment. I wouldn't expect fallback to produce immediate
increases in these areas."
"But they have," Carrilund says. "Couples who have gone in for mutual
therapy in domestic abuse cases--mostly supermale territorial aggression--and
have been free of incidents for years, are coming back to their therapists
in alarming numbers. We don't have statistics available through this center
yet--members of some of the families and partner units work for different
temp agencies. We're trying to draw information from other agencies, but so
far that doesn't seem workable. We guess that such incidents have more than
doubled."
"My God," Martin murmurs. "If your members are arrested, do you track
news reports?"
"Of course," Carrilund says. "All that information has to be included in
their employment prospectuses, by federal law." She makes a sour face. "We
hate to do it, but the Raphkind amendments to our charter force us to."
"Can you show me vids on the more serious cases? I'd like to see facial
expressions, body language."
"I think I can bring that in. Let me ask the INDA."
It takes ten seconds, but the display returns with a simple text list of news
182
GREG BEAR
out two. The first is a flat vid of a well-dressed male, age thirty to thirty-five,
standing on a street corner. He is shouting at passersby, singling out the few
transforms for intense verbal abuse. The incident has been captured by a small
flying news sniffer. It slowly circles the man.
Martin notes the cocky angle of the man's head, his small, steady, confident
smile. He seems to think what he is doing is not only enjoyable, but beneficial.
He appears surprised and offended when a large black male accompanying a
small, delicate transform female threatens him with a raised fist and starts
shouting him down.
"This client received therapy for a minor thymic imbalance when he was
twenty-two, thirteen years ago," Carrilund says. "Depressive tendencies and
eating disorders."
"He's beyond that now," Martin observes. "Second vid."
This vid, also from a sniffer, shows a small, middle-aged woman--about
his age, Martin guesses--in a public plaza inside one of the larger towers. She
is pulling up her dress and masturbating. Her delighted expression is that of
a little girl revealing some lovely surprise to her friends. Two female mall
security guards take her by the arms and the vid ends.
"Therapied ten years ago for fear of public places," Carrilund explains. Martin
sighs.
The list returns and Martin clears the display. He leans toward Carrilund.
"The fusing of public misbehavior, shouting obscenities, uncharacteristic
racism, that's very interesting. Unfiltered antisocial inspirations. All of it could
be linked to difficulties in the Tourette organon."
"We haven't thought of that," she says.
e
Good. Maybe I can of Jr something useful after all.
"I've seen these expressions before, in my student days. You understand the
Tourette organon?"
"I know it's been intensely studied," Carrilund says. "I'm not up on the
latest."
"The original syndrome was discovered by a Frenchman, Georges Gilles de
la Tourette. It was characterized by involuntary tics and movements and by
coprolalia--uncontrolled speaking of obscenity, dirty talk. In 2013, another
Frenchman, Francois Cormier, extended the name to describe the actions of a
continuum of brain functions in the limbic system. He called them the 'imps
of the perverse.' He believed that much of the brain relies on impulses from
these imps to maintain a high level of invention and preserve the self. Skep
ticism, doubt, social defense mechanisms, even certain physical motions related
to disgust and rejection, all begin in the Tourette organon.
"The child acquires filters that select and screen out most of these impish
impulses, but for someone with Tourette syndrome, there are leaks in the filters
that allow sporadic outbursts."
,,L
n rhvrn in your ventures upcountry?" Carrilund asks.
/
SLANT 183
"Yes."
"I'm sorry if I'm intruding."
"Not at all. My former wife and I wrote several papers on the topic."
"Your demon acquired from an unnamed patient."
"You must know the details already," Martin says dryly.
"Only what you published. What was it like?"
"Well, of course, the transfer was not that of an actual demon or even an
aspect of the patient's personality. We believed that traumatic experiences
excited certain agents and sub-agents within our minds.., which assumed the
character of a dangerous sub-personality."
"Was this Emanuel Goldsmith?" Carrilund asks quietly.
Martin's face flushes and his hands tense on the edge of the couch. He does
not answer.
"Sorry," Carrilund says, turning away.
"Our own problems stemmed from..." He swallows, still angry but struggling
to maintain. "From our Tourette organons assuming the character of this
sub-personality. A bad influence, as it were."
Carrilund turns back. "When I was a teenager, I had an irritating voice in
my head, a character. It was a tramp, a filthy, disheveled male with a thin,
dirty face, demented. All it did was sit in the back of my thoughts and say,
'Give me some of that old Smoky Joe!' It said it over and over again, with real
enthusiasm. It wasn't a major problem by any means--just an image I sometimes
encountered, like a stupid tune you can't shake. Would you classify that
as a manifestation from my Tourette organon?"
"Perhaps," Martin says. He is suddenly very tired.
"Mr. Burke, I apologize. But it seems to me you might have personal experience
of what some of our clients are going through. If something is breaking
down their mental architecture, stripping away their protection from old
mental demons, you of all people will understand."
Martin still does not meet her eyes.
"Would you like to go a little further?" she asks.
"Sorry... what?" He is confused by this offer, thinking of something else,
of her seductiveness. He wants to get out of here, but his professional standing
"The next level of our tracking center is quite remarkable," she says.
"Yes, of course." He lifts his hand and waves it. "Let's go."
The blue void reappears, and the atonal hum.
"We'll enter a Pickover space," Carrilund says. "Twelve variables condensed
into four dimensions, using Lunde equations to join the state vectors."
Martin hardly hears her. The blue void fogs abruptly and he has a sensation
of rushing. Shadows pass in the fog; he knows a little of this kind of display.
He once sampled a Pickover space while trying out graphic interfaces for patient
mental stats; they are on the boundary of the real, in the murmurous potential
184 GREG BEAR
They are suddenly plunged into a lattice of massive twisted cellular shapes,
their skins visible in intense, crystalline detail, their interiors floating within,
hinting at infinite densities. The shapes seem to be longer than they are thick,
and weave together to form the lattice like strands in a basket viewed from
the perspective of a microbe; but as their perspective changes, the apparent
length of each cell changes as well.
In Pickover space, the viewer's orientation in the three dimensions is interpreted
as a request for compression and linking of new sets of variables, thus
shifting the domains and smoothly altering the results. This much he remembers,
though it has been a long time since he used such an interface.
"This is the entire Northwest, from the point of view of Workers Inc,"
Carrilund says. Her voice seems very distant. "Human stats only, reflecting
psychological, cultural, and economic conditions, with efficiency of datafiow
and mental vitality reflected in flow of money, both treated as the power to
command and accomplish work."
"I see," Martin said, overwhelmed by the scintillating surfaces, the vertiginous
shifts caused by even the slightesr motion of his head.
"Blue, green, and cream colors indicate variations within parameters considered
healthy. Red and dark red show problem territories. Black and gray
we call abscesses, or regions of severe instability leading to trenching of the
relevant variables--strains in the economy and consequently, the society."
"I presume we're at the beginning of a time period," Martin says.
"Right. Let's travel across the past month."
The "travel" is not through the lattice, like fish through kelp, but rather,
the lattice fluxes around them, as if the kelp is washed by subtle tides. Some
if the cell-like bodies thin to nothing and vanish, but remain green and blue
all the while: tiny spots of red appear like rash over the surfaces, and darker
reds pulse within the cells, but vanish. A small indicator always at the lower
right-hand corner of his visual field shows time passing, day after day.
The effect is hypnotic. Martin for a moment feels the startling sensation,
like the jerk of an engaged clutch, as his analytical mind meshes with the
display, and he understands the broad structure. The display is meant to fit
into the autopoietic learning methods of parallel and webbed neural nets, particularly
INDAs, human minds, and presumably thinkers. Given enough time
and study, he really could grasp all that he is being shown, and he feels a burn
of envy for this tool, made available to him for only a short while. So much could
be so/red, so much anticipated/
It is very much like going upcountry into the human mind, for this isa
display used much the same way the mind uses its dreamlike country; even
more like the extraordinary mandalas the mind uses to correlate its own health
and functionality. He is lost in childlike awe. The lives and efforts of tens of
millions pass before him: births and deaths, cultural ebbs and flows, trends
/ SLANT 185
ship, competition and cooperation, levels of maladaptive behavior including
the criminal and the culturally repressed...
The red rashes are breaking out all over now. He looks at his time indicator.
They are entering the past of one week ago. The cell-like bodies become as
gaudy as sea slugs, and some glow like hot embers, with burned-out black
spots and ashen surfaces expanding. He seems to be watching a fire in a dream
jungle canopy, the branches glowing and leaves withering under heat and
invisible flame.
"We'll extrapolate now, speeding forward two years." Carrilund's voice jars
him, like a pig's squeal in a symphony. The time indicator whirs past. He
turns his head and the green and blue and cream is chased by the red; the
forest wriggles and slithers as if trying to escape and is scorched and then
incinerated.
He drifts at the end of two years in a desolation of ash with a few subtle
spots of green, then these too wink out.
Gray gives way to darkness, like ashes wetted by rain.
"Enough," Carrilund says. The blue void and multicolored mist return, but
not in time to save Martin's dignity. He sits back on the couch, his cheeks
damp. Carrilund is moved as well. She hands him a handkerchief and he sees
something less cool, more sympathetic, in her expression as she watches him
wipe his eyes.
"I don't know what to say," Martin tells her.
"I've seen this three times now, and I don't know what to say, either."
"Is the whole culture getting sick--is it dying?"
"We've run this space twenty or thirty different ways, and the results come
out the same."
"Something is burning our people. There's a fire in our minds," Martin says.
"I'm glad you see it that way, too," Carrilund says. Her voice sounds fragile.
"I think to myself, someone is hurting my children. I think of our clients that
way... I have no children of my own."
She turns away, irritated at having revealed so much, but this allows Martin
to regain his own composure.
"It's a war, I don't know what kind of war," Carrilund says. "I wish I knew
who or what was doing this."
"I'd like to help, if I may," Martin says.
"We need all the help we can get," Carrilund says. "You hold the patent
on most therapeutic monitors. Who better to advise us?" She stands and off'rs
her hand. Martin slides off his couch a little awkwardly and shakes it.
As their hands touch, a loud and unpleasant horn alarm sounds in the room.
They pull back and stand several feet apart, hands still extended. Carrilund
glances at him, eyes wide.
A small but urgent female voice speaks out all around them: "Thi i an
186
GREG BEAR
Carrilund stiffens and cocks her head; she has never experienced this before. "This system has been breached. This system has been breached. All firewalls
have been penetrated and information is being transferred to an outside system.
Repeat: this is an emergency alert to human operators. Lockdown is not successful.
This system--"
Carrilund runs from the room. Martin follows at a discreet distance, knowing
the best thing he can do, for the time being, is stay out of the way.
Dinner is spare--hamburgers from a local takeout, a bottle of beer apiece, an
apple. Giffey doesn't mind. He's been waiting for Hale to say his piece, put
him in his place. Hale is low-key, no
t brash; preferring to bide his time rather
than bursting out with his accumulated concerns.
They eat separately, Jenner joining Giffey in the office. The team has not
yet found its center, nor does it have any sense of cohesion, and Giffey is sure
Hale will bring that up. He seems a managerial rather than a dictatorial type.
Giffey appreciates this, as far as it goes. But Giffey has his own agenda in this
effort, and he will not let Hale's sensibilities get in his way. There are bound
to be some conflicts.
Mercifully, Jenner eats in silence. But for the creaking of the steel walls as
j they contract in the evening's cold, the warehouse is quiet. Even in the over
heated office, drafts of cold air slip through like flows of ghostly ice.
Hale knocks and enters before anybody answers. He looks at Giffey and
smiles, a little falsely. "We need to have our talk now," he says. Jenner stops
in mid-chew, looks between them, then gathers up his plate and bottle and
leaves. Hale sits in the chair behind the desk.
"I thought you'd like to settle some things before tomorrow," Hale says.
"And I have a few more questions to ask."
"All right," Giffey says, putting down his burger half-eaten.
Having stated his purpose, Hale seems reluctant to leap right in. "Meat's
meat here," he says, pointing to Giffey's plate. "In New York, it's almost a
sin to eat beef."
"Yeah."
Hale folds his hands on the desktop. "We've had very little time to get
acquainted, Mr. Giffey. May I call you Jack?"
Giffey nods.