Slant

by Eikeltje

"I design autopoietic software structures," Cadey says. "Self-making and

  maintaining business tools for INDAs, mostly. We should have a lot to talk

  about comes the time--but you don't have many details yet, do you?"

  "None," Jonathan says. "I have no idea what I've sworn myself to."

  "Hits us all that way at first," Cadey says. "You've heard of the Omphalos

  concept?"

  "Yes, of course," Jonathan says cautiously. He's been interested in longevity

  and freezing down, even warm sleep, for several years now, though he's never

  told Chloe.

  "We have five of them in the works so far, two in Russia, one in Pakistan,

  one in Southern China, and one in Green Idaho." Cadey's eyes twinkle. "The

  public knows nothing, really."

  Marcus finds the two of them beside the bar. "Jamal spilling secrets already?"

  he asks, smiling.

  "He's earned some answers," Cadey says, and pours himself another glass of

  wine.

  / SLANT 219

  five minutes. Beate's coming home and she wants us out of here. We Spock

  her, poor woman." Marcus smiles with almost malicious enjoyment.

  Cadey resumes. "The Omphaloses are not tombs, not at all. Each can hold

  ten thousand live individuals for cold or warm sleep

  Very comfortably,

  with all the amenities."

  "Continuous pleasant dreams--education--even keeping track of the outside

  world, though that might be depressing," Marcus says. "A little bit of

  heaven before we get to work in a new world."

  "Space travel?" Jonathan asks, dissembling behind a dumb question.

  "No-ooo," Cadey says, with an uncertain grin. "We stay right on Earth.

  We'll have over a hundred of them built by the end of this decade--the

  funding is already in place, and we're purchasing land all the time. Room for

  a million subscribers. Ten thousand of us have already volunteered to take the

  plunge, around the world."

  "In Green Idaho?" Jonathan asks. He glances at Marcus.

  "That's the first and the largest. It's almost finished. The land is in my

  name, but its communal," Marcus says. "We're all together in this."

  "In what?" Jonathan asks.

  "I'll explain tomorrow," Marcus says. "We're going to fly there this afternoon

  and have a tour." He takes Jonathan by the shoulder. "Excuse us,

  Jamal."

  "Certainly," Cadey says, and hastens away with a casual bow.

  Marcus prims his lips in sympathy. "You have another day of compassionate

  leave, right?"

  "Yes," Jonathan says.

  "And Chloe--she's okay where she is, right?"

  Jonathan nods. "She doesn't want to see me."

  "How about your kids?"

  "They're in school . . . They have club meetings. I should be there when

  they get home, of course, at six or seven."

  "We'll be back by early evening. You, me, Jamal, and two others you haven't

  met yet."

  "I think that will work."

  "Of course it will." Marcus grips Jonathan's shoulder tightly and breathes

  a residue of fine scotch into his face. "Jamal has a tendency to spill things

  prematurely, but let me up the ante a little. I happen to know you've looked

  into longevity. Privately, just out of curiosity of course..."

  Jonathan is so empty and open that this intrusion evokes no other reaction

  than a small tingle.

  "What Jamal was describing... Jonathan, all of us, we're going to live

  forever. In a world of our own making. We don't have to conquer nations, we

  don't have to drop bombs ... We just have to sit and wait."

  Jonathan stares at Marcus as if he is demented. "What?"

  The man in Martin's office this day is broad-shouldered, handsome in a stolid

  way. His walk as he entered was efficient, yet almost mincing, his legs a little

  short for such a powerful body; everything else about him is self-assured, pos

  itive, relaxed yet alert. He wears a pale brown longsuit in a slightly old-

  fashioned cut, and his eyes are roughly the same color as the suit: pale brown,

  penetrating but not insinuating. He blends very well into most professional

  crowds, Martin guesses.

  "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Burke. My name is Philip Hench." He

  pulls up his right shirtsleeve to reveal a federal tattoo. It sparkles green and

  red in spaced dots on his forearm. "Federal Bureau of Investigation."

  Martin stares at him, having murmured the necessary polite responses to

  the introduction.

  "You were at Northwest Inc's offices yesterday when they had a dataflow

  intrusion."

  "Yes."

  .,

  "I'm curious why you were there, Mr. Burke."

  "Miz Carrilund, Dana Carrilund, asked me to advise them on a problem

  unrelated to the, ah, intrusion."

  "Did you speak with her after the intrusion?"

  "No. She's been very busy."

  "What did you do after the intrusion yesterday?"

  "I was escorted out of the building. They obviously have other problems

  to deal with. I returned to my office, and then went home in the

  evening."

  Hench nods, sympathetic. "Some of my colleagues in Free Data are working

  on that intrusion. But I'm here on another case. You were visited yesterday by

  Terence Crest."

  Martin is slow to answer. "Yes," he says finally.

  "What did Mr. Crest want?"

  "I don't give out information--"

  "Crest wasn't a patient. Was he?"

  "No, but I extend the right of privacy to anyone who enters that door,

  including you, Mr. Hench."

  "Good," Hench says, unconcerned. "He was having problems. His conscience

  was bothering him. Did he tell you why, Mr. Burke?"

  "As I said, I'd rather not discuss it."

  "Did he talk about the Aristos?"

  / SLANT 221

  "He belonged to a group called the Aristos," Hench continues, not waiting

  for Martin's answer.

  "I did not know that," Martin says.

  "He didn't mention them?"

  "No," Martin says.

  "Did he talk about your therapy devices, Mr. Burke? Did he warn you about

  something?"

  Martin feels stiff. His neck gives him a twinge. "No warnings, no threats.

  He's a well-known man, Mr. Hench."

  "Yes. A billionaire." Hench pushes out his lips. His face is surprisingly

  flexible, and for a brief moment, he resembles a chimp. The transformation is

  unexpected and makes Martin's neck even more tense.

  "Rich folks aren't anybody's friends, really," Hench says. "Too much power,

  too much freedom, yet far too many restrictions. It distorts them."

  "'The rich, they are not like you and I,' "Martin quotes.

  "'They have more money,'" Hench finishes the quote. "Fitzgerald and

  Hemingway, as I recall. Crest was divorced just recently, quietly, in private,

  but under real pressure."

  "I assume this is official," Martin says, and clears his throat.

  "Yes, and nothing to do with you, personally. You're not in trouble with

  my agency, Mr. Burke, though in the next few minutes, if you're any kind of

  decent man at all, you're going to feel a little sick to your stomach. Are you

  free for the rest of the day?"

  "No. I have appointments."

  "Cancel them," Hench says, casually rubbing thumb and forefinger to
gether,

  as if rolling an insect to death. "We're going to have a brief chat, and

  then I'm going to introduce you to some friends. We'll need your help, Mr.

  Burke. We need you to join us on a short trip out of state. You'll be compensated

  for lost time at your standard professional rates, minus citizen obligation

  percentage, and of course all expenses will be taken care of."

  Hench looks at Martin steadily, seriously, his flexible face stolid once more

  and a little tired.

  "I'm not sure how this sort of thing is done," Martin says. "I assume you

  have court orders, paper or sig?"

  "Nope," Hench says. "Make your arrangements, and then we'll need about

  five minutes, in complete privacy, to have a little briefing."

  "No choice?"

  "I'll leave it up to you. After you hear me out."

  Martin's instincts tell him he had best follow Hench's suggestions. He calls

  up the outer office and gives Arnold and Kim the rest of the day off. The

  INDA will call all his patients and reschedule their sessions.

  "All clear, Mr. Hench," Martin says smoothly. "I'm listening."

  Hench leans forward, elbows resting on splayed knees, hands folded in front

  2,2

  GEO E.4'

  "We'll see," Martin says.

  "Crest is dead. Suicide."

  The agent goes on with his story. Martin does not believe any of it.

  At first.

  Then, he feels sick to his stomach, sick at heart, even irrationally guilty.

  Once again he has walked through the lion's cage, this time without even

  knowing.

  He nods, agrees, acquiesces. Anything to get it over with.

  "Sorry about this, Mr. Burke," Hench says.

  "If you weren't sitting there, all manly and competent, I'd cry my eyes out,"

  Martin says, tilting his head to one side and squinting off through the windows.

  "Very decent of you, sir. Me, I just want to start strangling people."

  3

  Mary and Nussbaum stand before the city stat board, watching the city's lines

  and graphs exhibit more ragged behavior. Mary has had to wait while Nussbaum

  took a briefing from the Chief of Public Defense on adapting defender

  readiness teams for what might prove to be a daunting crisis.

  Nussbaum is very quiet. He does not want her to be here; silently, his look

  tells her, What now? Can't you handle it?

  4

  "Crest met with undercover Federals in Boise three weeks ago," Mary begins

  n a low voice. "Before going to Green Idaho."

  Nussbaum's face loosens in surprise. "In my office," he says. They walk

  through the staff room into his cubicle. Nussbaum sits behind his desk, using

  it as a shield.

  Mary Choy ports her pad's contents to Nussbaum's and he looks it over, his

  face getting a little grayer, a little older. The office is quiet and cold, the staff

  room outside the glass partition is lightly populated, it's late and nobody's

  going to bother them. "Where did you get this?"

  "Please don't ask. I decided to call in a favor from my time in LA. My house

  manager has been reprogrammed and my records exported. Crest's personal

  vid records were erased. Fibeside got a report from Worker's Inc Northwest

  that their personnel center files have been hacked."

  "How?" Nussbaum asks. "They're supposed to be foolproof."

  "I don't know," Mary says. "Back to Crest. He met with the Federals in a

  data-secure outpost set up to coordinate surveillance in Green Idaho. Nobody

  can tell me what they talked about. I have Alice Grale under protective cus-

  /

  S L A N T 223

  She's saved this for last and it has the desired effect on Nussbaum. He sits

  straight up in his chair. "Why?"

  "She was almost killed at a party last night. She plugged into a Yox with

  a man named Minstrel. New interface, full spinal, beta but not radical

  work... A party promotion. Someone didn't show up and she substituted as

  a favor for a colleague. A paid favor."

  "Was it porn?"

  Mary blinks. This is stunningly irrelevant. "I don't know. The program, a

  Yox, was switched or scrambled, nobody knows by who or what. They reacted

  as if strapped into hellcrowns, and the man named Minstrel died. Someone at

  the party pulled off Grale's interface before it could kill her, but she spent at

  least twenty seconds--"

  "Yeah," Nussbaum interrupts. His distaste is apparent; hellcrowning, however

  it is done, makes any public defender feel sick in the pit of the stomach.

  "Comm and homicide teams from Eastside are investigating the death. I've

  linked it with the Crest investigation.., in its extended form. I think someone

  wanted to kill her in case Crest said anything indiscreet while they were alone."

  Nussbaum runs his ringer over the flat surface of his pad. "I thought you

  were going to do this on your own."

  "You want to know, sir."

  "The hell I do. It doesn't make my life any easier." Nussbaum stands. "I'm

  taking this to Federal, but I have to go through the state bureau. Are you

  flying to Green Idaho?"

  "Yes," Mary says. "In about an hour."

  "I may have to pull you back if Federal takes it over."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Where's Alice Grale now?"

  "She's staying in my apt. I've cut off all the apt's fibe links and put two of

  your fifth-ranks in there to guard her."

  "You're not keeping her in police custody, because we can't shut down our

  ribes. You think someone's going to hack through to get her?"

  "It's very possible, sir."

  "What sort of someone?"

  "Very clever and very persistent."

  "Impossibly clever. These systems are not supposed to be breakable, even

  by God:" He bumps his desktop with the heel of his hand. "This someone

  thinks Crest told Alice Grale something important."

  Mary inclines.

  Nussbaum's direct gaze is startling: clear gray eyes, sharp and intelligent,

  in an otherwise weary and not very attractive face. Any PD must be a kind of

  artist, specking humanity in its most basic and primal nature. The strain on

  ideals and personal illusions can be shattering. "Did she do anything else to

  deserve this? Make some enemies, make somebody jealous?"

  224

  GREG BEAR

  "Nice clean girl, hm? She just spread her legs at the wrong time. An occupational

  hazard, I suppose. I'll ask Federal to search for all instances of

  peculiar hackers. But what in hell does this have to do with Workers Inc?"

  "Maybe nothing, sir."

  "Keep in close touch, Choy."

  "Yes, sir."

  Nussbaum looks away and asks his pad to put a live touch through to the

  sig of Federal Emergency Notification.

  PR

  Conservative elitists rule much of modern religion, making it a

  branch of the Entertainment State. So sayeth the evangelistic moneychanger

  in the dataflow temple: Money can buy peace and salvation! Good

  works count for nothing against an ever-growing pile of status.

  Conservatism is not about tradition and morality, hasn't been for many decades

  It is about money and the putative biological and spiritual superiority of the wealthy.

  The honor and glory of the past, as always, are just symbols--and as such they />
  can be (and some say should be) bought and sold on the open market.

  Kiss of X, Alive Contains a Lie

  Jonathan stands in the cleaning bubble as the purposeful billows of foam clear

  from the swanjet. The private charter airplane gleams white and gray and dull

  silver, with tiny red stripes on its forward vertical stabilizer. The plane is an

  ingenious deltoid with a central bulge of passenger compartment smoothly

  curving to razor wing tips. Along the upper and lower wing surfaces, tens of

  thousands of tiny nano-controlled bumps hint at its radical design. The bumps

  can form tiny vanes or dips in the wing's surface to control the coefficient of

  friction of air passing over and under the wing, adjusting the lift on each wing

  without ailerons. The single low vertical stabilizer is shoved forward nearly to

  the nose, rising from the pilot's compartment, just behind the windscreen, the

  leading edge curving back and then sharply forward. It gives these aircraft

  their characteristic shape and name: swans. Swans came into general service

  /

  S L A N T 225

  For the time being, Jonathan is alone in the bubble. He's waiting for Marcus

  to return with their fellow passengers. He looks up through the membrane at