Archform Beauty

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Her eyes softened. Not much. "How do you think so?"

  "Privacy barriers. Not that many filch. Can't get death breakdowns. So you can't spot any trends there. We're looking into it.” I smiled.

  "You think the filch have more accidents?"

  I shrugged. "Shouldn't have. They have more safeguards.”

  "More gadgets means more to go wrong.”

  "Could be.”

  "No one bets against you, Lieutenant…” She left the implications there.

  Understood what she meant. I'd better have more than a feeling if I wanted to push into filch territory. "Just looking at what everyone can see.”

  Darcy nodded.

  I walked back down the ramps to the garage-level foyer. Then walked back up the ramps to my corner office. Walked slowly, thinking.

  Chapter 12

  Words evolve, perhaps more rapidly and tellingly than do their users, and the change in meanings reflects a society often more accurately than do the works of many historians. In the years preceding the first collapse of NorAm, the change in the meaning of one word predicted the failure of that society more immediately and accurately than did all the analysts, social scientists, and historians. That critical word? "Discrimination.” We know it now as a term meaning "unfounded bias against a person, group, or culture on the basis of racial, gender, or ethnic background.” Prejudice, if you will.

  The previous meaning of the word was: "to draw a clear distinction between good and evil, to differentiate, to recognize as different.” Moreover, the connotations once associated with discrimination were favorable. A person of discrimination was one of taste and good judgment. With the change of the meaning into a negative term of bias, the English language was left without a single-word term for the act of choosing between alternatives wisely, and more importantly, left with a subterranean negative connotation for those who attempted to make such choices.

  In hindsight, the change in meaning clearly reflected and foreshadowed the disaster to come. Individuals and institutions abhorred making real choices. At one point more than three-quarters of the youthful population entered institutions of higher level learning. Credentials, often paper ones, replaced meaningful judgment and choices… Popularity replaced excellence… The number of disastrous cultural and political decisions foreshadowed by the change in meaning of one word is truly endless…

  Was that merely an aberration of history? Hardly, for the same changes in language today reflect our own future. Take the word "filch,” now applied to the wealthiest of the wealthy. The original meaning was "to steal slyly in small amounts, to pilfer.” When the longer term ("filthy rich") previously used was resurrected after the second collapse, the contraction and the theft "overtones" of the original meaning of "filch" fit admirably the social needs of the time. The growing application of this term to those who are more than moderately successful clearly reflects a widespread social unrest and dissatisfaction with those who control the wealth and power of our present-day society…

  T. Eliot Stearns Historical Etymology Lanta, a. d. 2241

  Chapter 13

  Parsfal

  I came in early on Wednesday to make some time to chase filch murder and death stats, before Bimstein started Unking every ten minutes. It didn't matter. I'd barely gotten into the background when the link buzzed.

  Parsfal? Take a few minutes this morning or early this afternoon and get me some updated stuff on hurricanes and recent and historic shifts in the Gulf Stream. Paula Lopes is doing a piece tomorrow on the impacts on the Caribbean and on why the last five years have seen arctic winters in the British Isles.

  Who gets the feed?

  Kirenga. Also, see if you can run a twenty-second comparison/contrast between Cannon and that old historic governor—Vanderhoff, was it?—on the Southern Diversion, something with a twist. Work in Patroclas if you can. Have to run.

  I knew what he wanted on the comparison—either paint Cannon as a principled man in line with the past or a schemer betraying the past—and Patroclas as well-meaning, but ineffectual. That meant more work on Cannon and Patroclas, to see where their votes lay on diversion and environmental issues. I added the water and weather assignments to my "to-do" list, and went back to where I'd been.

  All I'd come up with the night before on the McCall background was pretty typical. A former associate with O'Bannon and Reyes, an honors graduate of UDenv Law, with two grown children, he had just started his own office as a solicitor. Handsome and apparently personable, at least from the comparatively few bytes available on him. He'd been a featured speaker at a number of solicitors' conferences, and he made a habit of publishing articles on his specialty, which was privacy law. I read one of them. He could write, assuming he was the one who wrote it. And he was careful. Solicitors had to be, reportedly, but every word was used and chosen with care. Not a poet with words—more like an accountant. Not so much beauty there as economy and precision. Certainly nothing like Yeats or Keats or even Exton… it reminded me of an old poem…

  Was he free? Was he happy?

  The question is absurd.

  Had anything been wrong,

  We should certainly have heard.

  Except Evan McCall hadn't been happy about his wife, apparently, and perhaps more. Yet, in the end… I had nothing. There wasn't even anything specific about his children or their names in anything. I'd wanted to have something on the follow-up with the indictment. It was a juicy sort of case. Everyone loved to watch a filch get it—or escape it, if he did so with style. McCall and his wife had been the vid-perfect couple, and there hadn't been a sign of trouble. All that meant was that Evan McCall was not only personable, but very bright, even beyond the letter of the law.

  I tried his office, but only got a simmie, and a very simple message. "The offices are closed until further notice. If you have an urgent legal problem, you may reach Marc Oler…”

  I tried that link code, but just got Oler's simmie, promising to return any calls. I asked him to contact me.

  After that, I did call up the death stats, and even cross-indexed them by income and cause. For most of the population, the numbers were just as I'd have expected. Except that in the higher income categories, there were no breakdowns by income and cause—just a notation—

  "Privacy Protected.” There were so few filch deaths that any data would reveal the families? Unless I could find an angle, it looked like I'd have to drop that for a time.

  Unless… maybe that could be a sidebar story, something about the fact that, in just another way, the filch were different. Our lives are open screens. All we see of the filch are beautifully decorated covers, like the covers of old-style books. They're shielded by the privacy laws, even statistically, by their nanite-protected houses, by their credits, and by other filch—like McCall himself.

  I hated the direct route, but there was no help for it. So I had to try McCall's old firm. I put through the link, full VR, if edited to show me in a tidy office with bookcases behind me.

  "O'Bannon and Reyes, may we help you?" The dark-haired and dark-eyed woman answering the VR link was a real person, not a simmie. That in itself was impressive, and doubtless meant to be.

  "This is Jude Parsfal, from NetPrime. Is Mr. O'Bannon available?"

  "Just a moment, Mr. Parsfal.” The holo image blanked and then reappeared, images of a modernistic building, a large dwelling, filch style, a small dwelling, and what looked to be an antique machine shop.

  "Whatever your legal needs, O'Bannon and Reyes is here to help you…”

  The staid old-style commercial blanked off, to be replaced by a dark-skinned and distinguished-looking man of considerable size. "James O'Bannon, Mr. Parsfal.” After the briefest of pauses, he added, "I've already talked with Les Kerras. I don't know that there's much more that I can add, Mr. Parsfal. Or should. Mr. McCall's case rests with the Justiciary.”

  "Les is the one who gets the on-net images. I'm the one who gets backgrounds and facts, that sort of thing. I've
read through some of Evan McCall's articles and presentations. He seems to be regarded as an expert in the field of privacy law.”

  O'Bannon laughed. "If there are any aspects to privacy law Evan does know, I'd be very surprised. He is very good.”

  "He set up an independent practice. Isn't that a little odd, given how all aspects of law tend to intermesh?"

  "Hardly. Privacy law is one of the handful of areas where it makes sense. Clients who feel they have a need for privacy will feel more comfortable in dealing with a single solicitor. Also, privacy issues can usually be handled discretely from other legal issues. Evan does have two junior associates, for areas that might be related.”

  "Related?"

  "Intellectual property, and disposal or direction of property—wills, bequests, gifts, powers of attorney, that sort of matter.”

  "Mr. McCall seems extraordinarily personable. Is that an asset for privacy solicitors?"

  "That's an asset for anyone, don't you think?"

  "Does he have any hobbies or interests besides law?"

  "As almost anyone could tell you, Evan is very focused. I wish you well with your inquiries.” He smiled, and I was looking at the wall of my cube.

  About the only thing I'd gotten was what I already knew—that Evan McCall's practice dealt with people who didn't want anything known about them. And that he specialized in the kinds of law that dealt with things people wanted kept quiet.

  The rule of thumb is that no one is more than six people removed from anyone else. So who did I know that might get me closer?

  The first name that came to mind—that would do any good—was John Ashbaugh. We'd gone to school together, and he'd gone on to become a securities solicitor.

  I was lucky because he was in.

  "I can't help you much, Jude.”

  "Professional ethics?"

  "I don't know enough about Evan McCall to worry about professional ethics. I just know what everyone knows. He is the best privacy solicitor in Denv, and he's spent nearly all his career with O'Bannon and Reyes. He was the one who handled their top clients like Kemal, Ching, and Sandoval. He also has a sidelight in intellectual property. He mixes well with everyone, even some smaller fabricators like Brazelton, although Brazelton has expanded enormously since it was acquired by KC.” John smiled and shrugged.

  "Is there anyone you could suggest who might be able to tell me more?"

  He frowned. "I can't think of anyone, except Maeda Forsala, but she still would be bound by solicitor-client privilege—"

  "She an associate of his?"

  "The word is that she was retained by Nanette McCall. That was common knowledge.”

  I should have seen that coming. Three would get me five that Forsala was a domestic relations solicitor.

  "You might be able to find out something from Dean Smythers. He was at UDenv when McCall was on the Review there. The dean might be able to fill in something about his school years. And his regular tennis partner is Walt Kerrigan.” John shrugged once more. "That's about all I know.”

  And all he was about to say. "Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  The holo image vanished, and I mulled over what John had told me while insisting he hadn't told me anything—and how it fit the pattern with Kemal.

  Kemal was the head of KC Constructors, and KC had been the target of the guideway legislation that Cannon had rammed through. Kemal reportedly underbid the design, engineering, and construction, and got the maintenance contracts in return. It hadn't been that simple, of course, because certain of the guide assemblies had been proprietary, and Kemal wouldn't sell them to other contractors except at a price high enough to ensure they couldn't underbid him on maintenance. John had explained that to me, once, as well, and my understanding was simpler than the reality, but, essentially, that was what it had amounted to. Cannon's bill had required open architecture and applied the proprietary design laws to both NorAm and district public works and infrastructure projects.

  According to everyone, Kemal and his family had a shady background, but nothing had ever been proved. The more recent rumors were that Kemal had been expanding into everything, that he actually was the majority owner or silent partner in firms like Sandoval's and Brazelton's, and a good twenty others across NorAm. But so long as he had registered ownership of less than ten percent—or five in the case of military or PDF suppliers, privacy law shielded disclosure in the media, although the appropriate legislative committees had access, and so did the NorAm Advocate General. I shook my head. Kemal wasn't my problem at the moment.

  John had as much as told me that McCall's wife was about to start a divorce or separation, and that wasn't common knowledge, which meant I couldn't use it, because there was no way to prove it. He also was pointing out that McCall had some clients who were less than savory.

  Walt Kerrigan was an advocate who had once been an aide to former Senator Owen of Deseret. All I knew about Brazelton was that he was the head of a firm that specialized in nanite control systems and designs.

  Back to the files.

  Parsfal? Bimstein blasted through the link.

  Yes?

  Got anything on McCall?

  Some... tracking down some other leads right now.

  Put it aside. It'll hold. Start your routines looking up stuff on Super-C.

  Super-C? I didn't know what he was talking about.

  Old term. Supercavitation. Someone just blew a Russe maglev orbiter down… somewhere over the Pacific. Used an old-style Super-C torp-missile. Could have been anyone. Fingers are pointing at the Agkhanate.

  Who was on the orbiter?

  Just the Foreign Secretary of the Martian Republic, the ExSec of the Duma, and a dozen others equally exalted. Rehm is handling the people facts. Want some background on how and why someone could have gotten one of those old torp-missiles, how come it was still working, how they work… all the tech stuff you do so well. Half hour.

  I gulped.

  Do it! I winced at the volume. Then you've got another half hour on McCall, and not a minute more, before you get back on the orbiter story.

  I'm on it. But Bimstein was gone, understandably.

  Finding the background on supercavitation was easy. It had been first developed more than three centuries earlier by the old USSR before its collapse. Prototype rocket-propelled ocean torpedoes had been sold to whoever would buy them. The problem hadn't been speed; they'd been ten times faster than the old-style torpedoes. The guidance systems had been poor, and the range limited by the wire control system. The next breakthrough had been nanitic deformulation of water, adapted by Russian scientists. That allowed an easier bubble formation, but that development had apparently been abandoned with the development of maglev propulsion and the satellite surveillance and patrol system adopted under the PDF compact. Except it hadn't, not if someone had used the technology. But who?

  I shook my head. That wasn't my problem. Bimstein wanted more tech facts.

  I got to work. I was almost finished when he was blasting through my skull with his overboosted linking.

  Parsfal?

  Where do you want it fed?

  Kirenga's handling it. How much?

  Four minutes in thirty-second chunks.

  Any good?

  Fair. I had to be honest. There hadn't been time to do better.

  Try to do better for the follow cast.

  You want me to drop McCall for now?

  No. Still hot locally. No more than a half hour, and feed it to Metesta. Then dig up more tech stuff on terrorists and what the Agkhanate has done. Keep it on the tech side. Rehm's handling the people and politics.

  Stet.

  After that… there's something about another biowep that CDC says is hitting NorAm… ebol4… See what you can find on that.

  Another backgrounder was all I needed.

  After trying to sort out what I could find on Walt Kerrigan and Emile Brazelton, which wasn't much, I did take a few minutes off and watched the holo image of the orbite
r story as it went off live. I deserved that for all the sweat, before I got back to the McCall backgrounding.

  * * * *

  "Tragedy over the Pacific—and a high official of the Martian Republic is dead.”

  The image showed a night sky that could have been anywhere, followed by a blinding flare.

  "This is Les Kerras. A little more than an hour ago, an official Russean maglev orbiter was destroyed by an antique nuclear missile. The attack occurred as the orbiter returned from the geostat station above the Pacific. What you just saw was the re-creation of that destruction. Recsat surveillance confirms that the missile was launched from somewhere under the Pacific Ocean…

  "Early indications are that part of the design of the missile used dates from before the Collapse. The weapon used a technology known as supercavitation to travel a considerable distance underwater at high speeds before breaking the surface and accelerating to take out the orbiter. The acceleration was great enough to have required a custom-formulated monomolecular and multioxygenated metallic solid fuel…”

  * * * *

  I was proud to have dug up that one.

  Parsfal! Bimstein's link was tight, not loud.

  I froze, rather than sighed. The timing wasn't exactly wonderful.

  I'm here.

  I'm putting through a Commander Resoro of the PDF.

  Maybe I'd been too resourceful.

  Mr. Parsfal? There was no image, just a chill voice.

  Jude Parsfal. I acknowledged. What can I do for you?

  We'd be interested in knowing how you determined the fuel of the device that attacked the Russean orbiter.

  That was simple enough. The range of orbiter speeds is in a number of netfiles and research sources. I went to the OTA files. Then I used a nav program to determine the velocity required to intercept from a mid-Pacific location, and then I fudged around with the weights of old nukes, figured some modernization, and with that mass came up with the necessary ejv. Good old basic math indicated it had to be an exotic fuel, and one that probably had to have been formulated with an industrial formulator. That pretty much limited—