“Do you see rampant poverty anywhere — except perhaps by choice among the netless or the faithies? Do we have starving children anywhere in the Union?”
“Starving children?” came a stern voice from behind my shoulder. “Don’t tell me that one of your instructors is dragging out that moldy lemon?”
Gerrat smothered a smile as we turned to face Father.
“No, sir,” I replied. “That was Gerrat’s phrase. He just said that starving children are something of the past.”
“You wouldn’t think so the way some of the edartists attack UniComm.” Father snorted. “Or the way the naturists whine about pre-selection.”
“What a surprise.” Mother’s bright tones filled the hallway. “All my gentlemen waiting for me. That hasn’t happened … in …” She smiled at the three of us. With her slender figure and youthful face, she almost could have passed for our older sister.
“Since last night,” I suggested.
My father’s eyebrows furrowed, and he no longer looked like an older brother, at least not his eyes.
I half-bowed to my mother.
“That’s all right, Daryn. I appreciate the humor. Your father’s just hoping you maintain a certain decorum once you head off to The College.”
“Longer than that, dear,” confirmed my father, the most honorable Henson Gerrat Alwyn. “Much longer than that. Young fellow has the family to think of.”
“They won’t think much of us,” my mother said with a gentle laugh, “if he doesn’t have a sense of humor.”
We stepped through the golden wooden archway from the upper hallway into the family dining room. The table was set for four, since Elora had already taken the suborbital shuttle from the Bay and was on her way back to Mancha. She never stayed long.
Father had never been totally pleased when she had decided against taking a position with UniComm. She’d told him she’d never work in the family business until she proved she could operate someone else’s operations — better than anyone else he had. She was an ops-manager for NEN — NordEstNet, and from what Gerrat had gathered and passed on in his first year with UniComm, she was actually taking accounts from UniComm.
“What’s for dinner?” asked Gerrat.
“Coq-au-vin.”
“Straight from the replicator?” I asked.
“No. The uncooked bird was, but it’s a new recipe for Naria,” Mother replied.
That made sense. The replicator could only replicate. Original prepared food was always different, and Father and Mother prided themselves on always serving something original at their dinners, sort of like a uniquery, if more private. We, of course, tasted them first, and until they were perfected.
Gerrat eased out mother’s chair, and then we all sat down. Naria carried in the platter with the pheasant, and Father prepared to carve in the dignified old-fashioned style that was making a resurgence.
Dinner would be good. It always was.
* * *
Chapter 10
Raven: Vallura, 458 N.E.
* * *
I sat in my study, before the holo scene that cloaked the east end of the room. Then I pulled on the headset, and put my fingers on the small oblong keyboard that controlled the vyrtor, my wrists on the flat table.
For a moment, I watched the net scene — a golden eagle swooping down on a raven as both crossed a canyon — green junipers clinging to steep walls of red Navaho sandstone. Usually, I just watched the East Mountains, but it had been raining all day, and so, before I got back to work, I called up a scene of sunshine, except, of course, just like on the net itself, the holo sunshine was without warmth — largely because of the energy costs for most people, especially norms. I suppose I could have programmed in directional heating units, but what was the point of adding one simulation on top of another?
Some methodizers direct their vyrtors verbally, some with visualization, but I found I was more precise with the keyboard or the pointer. When he wanted to needle me, my brother Gerrat claimed that was because I was a throwback. Compared to him, I probably was.
The sorting and re-sorting of lists, and the additional searches, had yielded little beyond the first rough cut of the week before, and no real pointers as to which or if any of the multis might have actually been involved. The name search hadn’t done much better, since the permutations of names based on the two lines of the Arabic physician’s name had turned up more than ten thousand possibilities. At some point, I’d have to rethink that — in my copious spare time.
All that wasn’t progress, but at least my lungs didn’t burn with every breath. Every really deep breath, there was a touch of a stinging sensation, but even those had gotten milder, and my sense of smell and taste had returned, and I could again access the nanite monitors of my health.
After looking blankly at the eagle’s pass at the raven, and the single black feather that remained, slowly twisting downward toward the Virge River that lay below the bottom of the image that seemed to hang before me, I banished the holo scene. Some day, if I ever had time, I wanted to reprogram the scene so that the raven won. Ravens were smarter than eagles, but everyone except me, it seemed, found ravens unattractive. I’d always preferred the intelligence and the way of the raven.
Lions roamed in prides; geese clustered in gaggles; but ravens? Ravens together merited the term “unkindness of ravens.” While I liked the intelligence of ravens, most cultures in human history had identified with eagles. Because of the eagle’s raw power? Because intelligence unchecked is always suspect? Or because humans were still hardwired from a million years of hardscrabble existence to respect strength?
I took off the headset to readjust it, then looked to my right, out through the window into the late rainy afternoon, and the featureless gray clouds that hung barely above the lower hill on which perched my modest villa. The clouds had brought mostly a light drizzle, and swirling winds, but little real moisture to either the lower Hill, or to the valley below.
Klevyl should have zapped me the revised environmental specs package to go with the first cut that I’d already received, but when I touched the comm plate, the only message that tingled in my head was: You have no new messages. I’d already left fullface messages everywhere Klevyl might access, and there wasn’t much else I could do on his project without the latest parameters. I wasn’t about to guess and then have to redo everything, especially since I’d taken on his work freelance, and in addition to the OneCys contract.
My lips quirked into a smile as I eased on the headset and my fingers called up the latest edart piece, the unfinished one I’d started after the Holst piece. I hadn’t posted the Holst piece, either. I’d made more revisions, but it still didn’t feel right.
So I listened to my newest set of words as they scrolled down one side of the projected holo, with the images of hungry and wide-eyed children burning their way across the foreground of the display area.
When the ancients developed the entire basis of nanotechnology, few if any of them envisioned the world they created. They were too preoccupied with eliminating the evils of the world that surrounded them.
I nodded at the recreated image of the hollow-eyed children scrabbling toward the smiling woman extending some form of ration packs — a woman flanked by uniformed soldiers in the antiquated mottled green and brown camouflage fatigues with rifles leveled. Then came the scenes of the bombed out cities, and the broken bridges, and then the smoldering ruins of Hylanta.
To us, those days seem all too raw — barbaric, if you will. People being shot on the streets with projectile weapons … others starving because there was no way to transport food or convert the raw organic material into foodstocks.…
I froze the image, and the words. How could I make the transition? After a moment of indecision, I moved ahead to the next section, letting those words roll past me as the holo image depicted an aerial view of a pleasant town, not Vallura or Cedacy, although it could almost have been either.
… today … w
e think of starvation, of wars that pitted nation against nation, or sometimes family against family within the same nation, as something from the remote past, as something before the millennium of chaos, as almost inconceivable Yet … has our mindset changed all that much from that terrible past? Or have we merely adopted a different and less obvious set of distinctions which still pit individual against individual?
The next image set depicted a tall and lithe couple, intelligence radiating from their eyes, poise from their movements as they walked down a set of steps outside the municipal building at Porlan. Then that image shrank into the left half of the projected viewing area, and a second couple appeared, set against the same backdrop. While they were also well-dressed, they were nearly a head shorter, and their movements appeared hesitant by comparison, their eyes duller, their carriage subdued.
This is Daryn Alwyn … offering observations from the hill.
I frowned. The idea was good, but it wasn’t even close to being ready, and I wasn’t sure I had the insights yet to finish it. Then, I hadn’t finished the Holst piece, either. Was it because I worried about Elysa … or what she represented? Or the fact that I couldn’t figure out why someone wanted me dead?
There was also the cost aspect. Commercial posting cost creds, and posting something incomplete or not up to my standards would be costly in more ways than one.
So I called up the VR that showed Elysa. What Kharl had sent showed her walking in his front entry, talking to him and waiting. She looked like a natural redhead, just like the silver and jade combs in her hair appeared natural, and the deep muted green gown accentuated her color. The image swirled on transitions, but nothing seemed to have been edited as the system marked my entry. When we had walked into the great room, the view switched to a panorama of the entire room. I switched the focus to Elysa and to me, and the resolution got fuzzier, but what happened was exactly as I recalled it — except that the VR switched once more when we had stepped onto the terrace. I watched that closely again. I couldn’t see Elysa do anything except talk to me, no hidden hands, no tube, no nothing. I staggered, and tottered toward the door. Elysa watched. Once I collapsed in the great room, she turned and walked quickly away from the house, into the darkness, her image fading away as she left the scanning field.
What was surprising to me was that there was essentially nothing that I had not already remembered — nothing at all. I turned off the VR and let my eyes rest on the East Mountains as I thought.
I suppose Kharl and I could have gone to the Civil Authorities, but what good would that have done? We couldn’t even prove anything for the CAs, not from what I knew. I’d had a supra-allergenic reaction after stepping onto a terrace with a strange and beautiful woman who claimed to be a distant relative. There was no physical or visual evidence that showed she had done anything. That was attempted murder? Kharl had only been able to find a few strange nanites, and they didn’t even cause harm to norms.
I shook my head.
For a short time I sat, then called up the accounting on the edart pieces — for some sort of inspiration. The most popular one had been a fluff piece on the struggle between the established Snoma vineyards for credit as the oldest … with my own sardonic outtakes about why no one seemed to be able to prove who was the oldest or the best. Then there was the one on the terraforming of Venus — the three hundred year project that was already entering its seven hundredth year.
My favorite of the older pieces had been the one I had done on the forerunner Gate, only about two years before. I’d hesitated to touch on that until the newsies and other commentators had, although I’d known about it as soon as anyone had, and that had been years earlier, back when I’d been in Federal Service.
Calling up the forerunner piece, I watched and listened, hoping I could capture the feel of what had made it so popular.
The first image was that of darkness. Then points of light appeared — stars — bright, but with just hints of color, the way they really looked in deep space, not with the false color enhancement that remained so popular. The music was from Jetecayst’s Deep Space Suite, low and lonely, with a single oboe just slightly louder than the rest of the orchestra, not quite plaintive, nor complaining … but suggesting a separateness.
… deep space … lonely space … Even millennia before the development of the Gates that are opening the Galaxy to us, men and women looked into the night skies and wondered if we were alone … statisticians and astronomers cited numbers and the size of the universe as proof that we could not be alone.…
The image shifted to show a Gate — a human Gate — and a ship passing through it at the moment of incandescence that preceded translation.
… We traveled our system, and then found a way to reach others. Finally … we discovered another kind of proof — an ancient artifact similar to our own Gates in shape and size.
The stars jumped, and another star-field appeared, and in the foreground loomed a dull octagonal shape, re-created as well as I could recall.
Is it a Gate? Was it once? We do not know. Who made it? We do not know that, either, nor from what star they came. We have an object, a few scattered suggestions from that artifact that whoever built it was not much larger nor much smaller than are we, and that they required an atmosphere, probably similar to what we breathe.…
Next came a close-up of an exterior black octagonal airlock door, and with the octagon-within-octagon lock control panel.
… the only clear and convincing conclusion that leaps from this artifact is that its builders based everything on octagons. While this ancient Gate-like artifact looks like ours from a distance, it is not a torus, but an octagon, with an octagonal cross-section … even the octagonal doors are operated by octagonal panels … octagons everywhere. We build with arcs, rectangles, circles, cubes … but seldom if ever with octagons.…
Every forerunner entry and every exit is guarded and controlled through octagons.… One might almost imagine that these forerunners had octagonal shapes, or octagonal cells … but imagine is all we can do … for now.… We can ask, we do ask, “Who were these forerunners with their octagons?”
The image shifted back to the star-field.
We can ask. We continue to ask, but neither stars nor ancient Gates provide answers to our questions.…
I flicked off the image, my thoughts back on the present and incomplete edart composition about differences, trying to focus on what it was about differences that seemed to draw humans into conflict.
What about some phrases on skin color … or background tests? I cleared my throat and began to speak.
Once, human beings categorized the worth of others, selling them as chattels if their skin colors were not of an accepted shade. Other cultures defined superiority in the ability to master arcane symbolic languages. Later, still others tried using written symbolic tests as a measure of superiority.… Scientific studies later suggested that virtually all of these were being used as mere pretexts … and when there was a scientific basis, actual usage and education tended to emphasize the cultural background of those in power and disparage sheer ability in favor of artificial credentials.…
Today, it is said that we have come far from those bad old times. Have we? Or is genetic pre-selection merely the current test of superiority being adopted by a race that seems to need magical means to ascertain who is fitted to control society?
I paused. The transitions weren’t right, and some logic was missing. But I saved what I had and released the VR images before my eyes went back to the window again. The clouds had darkened and dropped lower over the valley. I still didn’t have a finished edart piece or the specs I needed from Klevyl — or the feedback from Myrto. Either way, my income would suffer if I didn’t finish one or the other soon … and the time I’d lost to Elysa’s nanites had scarcely helped.
It wasn’t so much the creds, but the pride. I’d been able to survive, even prosper, without touching the funds from my inherited interests in UniComm. Part of
that was from my early retirement from Federal Service, but the pension was far from enough to cover my expenses. I didn’t want to touch the UniComm assets, but unless I got the specs soon, or could put another edart piece on the nets, I was going to be severely tempted. Although the number of viewers and the royalties from their viewing were growing, I needed the continuing methodizer contracts. The royalties from sysnet subscribers from all my past presentations still amounted to less than a third of my annual income, and they tended to sag if I didn’t keep producing.
I looked from the valley to just outside the study window. There, below the shimmering tube that was the bird feeder, a handful of juncos scrabbled across the stone looking for the few seeds that the feeder dispersed nearly randomly. The old verse that had once crystallized a part of who I was came to mind as I watched.
When ravens reigned, eagles dipped their wings,
and juncos foraged cold winters and colder springs.…
I don’t know who said it — it was one of those fragments that came out of the Noram collapse — but I’d always liked it, and now, when the juncos returned to their winter feeding spots almost before fall had arrived, it boded ill for all who flew.
Then … I certainly had never thought of myself as an eagle. Gerrat — with his adaptation of sensoria to vyrtor projections and his machinations to try to merge the subnets of Afrique, Mercosur, and Etunie — was certainly aiming to be the highest flying in the family — except for Father, of course. I paused. Elora wasn’t that far behind, for all of her modesty.
The Octagonal Raven Page 5
