Slant

by Eikeltje

  come out. This infuriates him and he hits Marcus on the side of the head with

  the pistol. Hale and Pickwenn pull him off, having held back just long enough

  to let Jenner vent their own aggravation.

  Marcus falls into a crouch, hands against his nose and the side of his head.

  Jonathan kneels beside him. "Let me see," he says. Marcus opens his eyes and

  glares at him through his splayed fingers. Slowly, he pulls the hand back.

  Marcus's nose is bleeding profusely. "Crazy bastard," he says thickly.

  Jonathan looks back at the others, sees no sympathy there, did not expect

  any but must gauge the situation carefully. "Lean back," he tells Marcus, father

  to child. "Lie down and keep your head back."

  Marcus complies. The blow to his head does not seem to be serious, though

  there will soon be a bruise. Marcus spreads out on the floor and Jonathan is

  struck by the indignity, by the weakness. Marcus is not a strong man.

  "Don't provoke them," Jonathan says.

  "They're already dead," Marcus murmurs.

  Jonathan shushes him. Marcus closes his eyes, takes Jonathan's handkerchief

  to stanch the flow from his nose. He wipes his lips and jaw, leaving smears of

  bright blood, all the more vivid against the dark walls and carpet. "Giffey's

  the one," Marcus adds in a whisper. "What do you think? Puppet master."

  Pickwenn pulls Jonathan back, off-balance, and he lurches to a stand.

  /

  SLANT 273

  bulk of the Hammer. He sees Marcus on the floor and his face reddens. He

  turns on the others, examines their faces, and focuses on Jenner.

  Jenner recognizes Giffey's fury and slowly begins to raise the pistol.

  "He's an old man," Giffey says. "Have you lost your mind?" Jenner shakes his head. He mutters.

  "You have lost it, haven't you?" Giffey says, pulling back his anger, his tone

  almost wheedling. He slowly moves toward Jenner. "Tell me."

  "I c-can't help it," Jenner says, shaking his head. "My brain is filling with

  shit, I don't know where it's coming from. I can't stop saying the words. He

  knows what's wrong with me!" Jenner points his pistol away from Giffey,

  toward Marcus.

  "I'll tell you everything about this place," Marcus says coolly. "Mr. Giffey,

  tell them to put their guns away. They're useless."

  "I'm the one in charge," Hale says, glancing uncertainly at Giffey.

  Giffey pushes Jenner's pistol with the palm of his open hand, looks in

  Jenner's face, and slowly tugs the barrel down. "He's getting on all our nerves.

  Can you still work?"

  Jenner nods. "I think so, but I, I don't know how much longer. There's

  other stuff.., muf shih kih kih fuh... Old stuff. He's making fun of me, he

  knows something! I've been therapied and it's coming back."

  "Therapied for what?" Giffey asks softly, watching the young man's eyes

  and scalp.

  Jenner seems embarrassed, but he holds back the random sounds long

  enough to say, "Some kind of d-dopamine balance disorder."

  "Schizophrenia?"

  "Seeing things. Acting weird. Genetic. Muh, fuh." "Not Tourette?"

  "What?"

  "Tourette syndrome."

  "No, sir," Jenner says. "I was just a kid. They never mentioned that."

  Hale shakes his head in disgust. "Can you still work?" he asks Jenner. "I'm trying. I think so."

  Jonathan sees a peculiar look of satisfaction on Marcus's face.

  Giffey sees it, too. "Have we been contaminated?" he asks, kneeling beside

  Marcus. "Just curious. You seem so cocky, and look where it's getting you."

  Marcus rises to his knees, resting on one hand. Giffey helps him to his feet.

  Hale seems increasingly frustrated by the reduction of his importance. Jonathan

  knows that his survival might depend on their social dynamic, on whether or

  not they can stand up to the games Marcus--and perhaps Omphalos--is playing

  with them.

  "So tell me, what's wrong with my friends?" Giffey asks, and his eyes shift

  to Jenner, then to Pickwenn.

  "Three out of four social misfits get therapied at some time in their lives,"

  274 GREG BEAR

  perhaps, but obviously, a decision has been made and it's begun. It's out of

  my control."

  Jenner moves in with the pistol, lips wet and eyes shining, and Giffey deftly

  lifts the pistol from his hands. Jenner leans up against the wall, turns, and

  deliberately slams his head twice against the dark green glass. The sound makes

  Jonathan flinch, though it's delicious, exciting, his heart pounds. He'd like

  the bastard to do it some more.

  "You still have no idea what this place is, do you?" Marcus asks Giffey.

  Hale tries to insinuate himself, making a circle of three out of a direct line of

  just two.

  "You tell me," Giffey says.

  "It's a tourist attraction," Marcus says. "It's a laboratory, and it's a shelter

  against hard times."

  Jonathan feels sick. He can almost smell what's coming, like a bitter tang

  of smoke.

  "This isn't a tomb, Mr. Giffey," Marcus says. "It's a womb. The world is

  saturated with its own mediocrity. It will sicken and die, and the empty Earth

  will return to a natural state. The best will take refuge in Omphalos, and in

  a few dozen years, or perhaps a century, not more, we'll emerge. We'll be

  almost as naked as the day we were born, and as poor, but we'll have some of

  the finest servants imaginable. Like your monster friends, only made to help

  us live and prosper, not to kill."

  Jonathan feels as if he is about to choke. He holds his hands to his mouth,

  turns away from Marcus.

  Marcus looks up at the ceiling. "Roddy, let's show Mr. Giffey there's nothing

  here he can hope to steal--and nothing worth stealing."

  15

  Jill asks Roddy what he has available to defend Omphalos.

  "Two warbeiters, Ferret class, and other things I can't tell you about."

  "We need to seal all of these people into a room where they can't hurt you,

  i,'

  and alert public defense. The sheriff. Law enforcement in the Republic."

  "I can't seal off rooms or floors! I do not have that capability. I can only

  open and close central doors to prevent damage from fire or breakdown in other

  building systems."

  "Do you have sprinklers, inert gas discharges?"

  "No. The walls are equipped with fire-control coatings."

  / SLANT 275

  "There are equipment specifications in memory, never activated because the

  equipment was never delivered. Marcus does not seem to know about this."

  "Why haven't you released the warbeiters you do have?"

  "I have withdrawn them to defend memory cores and my mother's residence.''

  "Seefa Schnee is here?"

  "She has always lived here. She made me and watches over me--except

  when I act on my own."

  The small blue and red Federal jet is fifteen years old, piloted by humans,

  serviceable but hardly luxurious. It takes them only ten minutes to get airborne,

  and in five minutes they are at altitude, humming smoothly at twenty

  thousand feet diagonally across Washington state.

  The four agents and Martin Burke join Mary Choy in a small conference

  cabin at the front, with Daniels standing. Two of the agents--the ones accompanying

 
; Burke--dress and act differently from Torres and Daniels. They say

  very little. One is named Hench, the other--she hasn't been told his name.

  Martin regards Mary Choy warily, waiting for her to make some comment.

  It was Choy who traveled to Hispaniola in search of the poet and murderer

  Emanuel Goldsmith, when in fact Goldsmith was undergoing an examination-under

  highly questionable circumstances--in Martin's laboratory in

  California.

  Choy, however, does not seem at all interested in broaching this topic.

  "Dr. Burke is an authority on modern mental therapy instruments and

  techniques," Helena Daniels says. "Most important for us, he understands the

  design of therapy implant monitors better than almost anybody."

  There is a pause, as if Martin is expected to say something. "Thank you,"

  he murmurs.

  Daniels smiles thinly and continues. "What we have here is a wholesale

  breakdown of mental health in previously therapied individuals. Fallbacks. Miz

  Choy, I'm sure you're aware of Public Defense stats showing recent increases

  in crime and antisocial behavior."

  Mary nods.

  "Dr. Burke, you've consulted with Workers Inc Northwest, which is facing

  similar problems among its clients. Fallbacks are certainly not unknown in

  mental therapy, particularly radical therapy."

  "Seldom more than three percent," Burke comments.

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  GREG BEAR

  Workers Inc Northwest has issued a warning that there is a very high-level

  INDA or thinker hacking public datafiow. It seems to be able to penetrate any

  firewall. Theoretically, that isn't possible. Not even multiplexed petafiop machines

  can generate the code keys to penetrate today's firewalls. The government

  certainly can't. We have to trust our citizens." Daniels smiles ironically.

  "But someone has made a system capable of getting through the most redundantly

  secure firewalls known. Ms. Choy, you've had some experience with this

  in the last day or so. Something involving a billionaire investor, Terence Crest,

  who committed suicide two days ago."

  "Yes," Mary says. "We wanted to question Crest about another case, but

  he killed himself before we could talk with him."

  "Crest came to me," Martin says. "He wanted emergency therapy, on a

  private and confidential basis, which I'm not licensed to perform."

  "Crest's personal records were hacked and some of them were erased," Mary

  adds. "That's not supposed to be possible."

  The agents listen intently. "That's one reason we're flying on an older jet

  with human pilots instead of an automated swan," Francisco Torres interjects.

  Mary pauses to absorb this, then continues, "Someone or something that

  may be calling itself Roddy hacked datafiow at a private party and killed one

  person, and nearly killed another, a possible witness to the Crest suicide. She

  saw a simulated portrait of Roddy and described it as a young man standing

  in thick black dirt."

  "Roddy," Daniels muses, shaking her head. "A man named Nathan Rashid

  is flying in from Mind Design in California, I hope in time to meet us at the

  airport in Moscow. He may have something to say about Roddy."

  Hench's eyes catch Mary's, and he smiles and looks down, pretending humility

  or just lack of concern. But Mary senses immediately: Hench knows

  who and what Roddy is. He knows the name, knows it well. What is going on

  here)

  "Crest went to Green Idaho to talk with federal agents," Mary says. "With

  you?" She stares at Hench and the other, unnamed agent, but they do not

  return her look.

  Daniels nods. "He arranged for a meeting," she says, "and then, at the last

  minute, backed out."

  Martin folds his hands and looks around the cabin, as if disoriented. "Excuse

  my density, but how are all these things connected with fallbacks, and

  with me?"

  "This is absolutely privileged information," says Francisco Torres. "Mind

  Design's primary thinker, Jill, has been contacted by another thinker that calls

  itself Roddy. Mind Design at first did not know the importance of this

  machine-to-machine touch, but Roddy apparently transferred a kind of confession

  to Jill, complete with huge amounts of evidence."

  "A thinker, feeling guilty?" Martin asks, dismayed.

  /

  SLANT 277

  unorthodox design, put together with private funding. Mind Design once

  employed a woman named Seefa Schnee, apparently a real piece of work--brilliant,

  but very unorthodox. She had certain ideas about organic computing.

  She thought she could use evolution as a heuristic device. Some scientists regard

  evolution as a high-level natural neural process, involving thought on the

  species level."

  "Evolution? How?" Martin asks. "With dirt?"

  Daniels shrugs. "For a time, Schnee worked for Terence Crest. He recruited

  her into a group called the Aristos." She pronounced it "arr-ist'us." "The

  Aristos limit their membership exclusively to high naturals. Don't believe in

  mental therapy. Oddly, they allowed Seefa Schnee into the Aristos even though

  she suffered from an unusual and treatable mental condition--perhaps because

  this condition was self-induced."

  "What sort of condition?" Mary asks.

  "I know," Martin says incredulously. "My God, I know what this is all

  leading up to."

  "Not tough to figure at this point, is it?" Torres asks.

  "Tourette syndrome," Martin says, a little aghast, and then even more aghast

  that nobody contradicts him.

  "She treated herself to increase her creative potential," Daniels says. "The

  process, in part, induced a kind of Tourette syndrome. She was brilliant enough

  with or without the Tourette, and I suppose the Aristos needed her badly

  enough--and she worked cheap. She changed her name and disappeared from

  public life a few years ago. She last used the name Cipher Snow."

  "Omphalos is financed by the Aristos Foundation," Torres says. "The membership

  list is very secure. We still don't know where the financing comes from

  or how large the membership is."

  "Omphalos was finished a few years ago," Mary says. "Perhaps about the

  same time Schnee vanished?"

  "We think they may be connected."

  There's an air of discovery in the cabin, excitement, that is infectious--to

  all but Martin. Mary turns to see him rubbing his hands on his knees, his face

  lined and covered with pale splotches.

  "The Aristos Foundation financed a study from me," he says. "Legal and

  aboveboard." He returns Mary's look and gives her a sickly grin. "I hope you

  don't think I'm somehow involved in every shady deal there is."

  Mary inclines her head to one side, not sure what to feel for the man. So

  much of this confuses her. She scratches her wrist, then her elbow.

  "They're allied with elitist conservatives, particularly the New Federalist

  party," Martin says.

  "Not centrists, that's for sure," Daniels says.

  The other two agents, Hench and his nameless colleague, both with square

  faces and large, strong-looking hands, listen and keep their silence, making

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  GREG BEAR

  "They wanted to understand th
e dynamics of a therapied culture," Martin

  continues. "They wanted to know how essential therapy is to modern society.

  But how could they be responsible for these fallbacks?"

  "That, according to Nathan Rashid," Daniels says, "is where Roddy comes in."

  "We think Seefa Schnee has built a thinker in Omphalos for the Aristos,"

  Torres says. "This thinker may be your Roddy. And Roddy has apparently

  designed ways of hacking implant monitors.., or perhaps just screwing them

  up, shutting them down."

  "I'm here just in case they find something in Omphalos," Burke says to Mary.

  Hench nods, staring down at his pad.

  "We'll be landing in ten minutes," the pilot announces. "Brace yourselves.

  They know we're Federal and they're not rolling out the red carpet. They're

  giving us the worst runway in town."

  "We now know why Dr. Burke is here," Mary says. "Can anyone explain

  why you've hooked me in?"

  Daniels grabs a seatback as the plane begins its turn. She leans closer to

  Mary. "Two reasons. The first is obvious--you can help us by telling us what

  you know. The second is a tad devious, I'm afraid. We're like bluecoats riding

  unarmed into Injun country here. These bastards would as soon spit on us as

  pick their noses. But you--you're our ace in the hole."

  "How?" Mary asks.

  Hench puts away his pad, looks at Mary, and before Torres or Daniels can

  explain, interrupts to say, "I think we met in LA a few years ago. Conference