Earthweb

by Marc Stiegler

  The General clapped. "Congratulations. You have gotten much closer to the truth than most people." He sipped his tea. "You said earlier, you had originally thought the 'castpoints were big gambling games. Aren't they, really, just a form of gambling, like the office football betting pool?"

  Jessica gave him a sidelong glance. "You're trying to trick me, I can tell. When the 'castpoints first went into operation, a kind of gambling fever did sweep the markets. You might say that the 'castpoints first got their energy from their similarity to a football pool. But it didn't last."

  "Why not?"

  Jessica took a deep breath. "An office betting pool has a very limited selection of participants, and in general the participants are not experts who can discriminate small differences in probabilities and risks. But the 'castpoints are inherently global. Statistics guarantee that over the long run the money will flow to the people who make the best predictions. It doesn't work out for the amateur the way a small, closed football pool does." She shook her head from side to side the way she did when she was pretending to be a blonde. "Of course, the first wave of gambling fever on the 'castpoints ended sort of suddenly. One of the billionaires at the time—a guy who had made a fortune in computer software before the Crash—made a claim in public about the demise of the most popular operating system of the day. There were gales of laughter at the time, and a lot of people said, 'Hey, if you really believe that, back a 'cast on it.' " Jessica laughed. "The old geezer must have been in his eighties at the time, but he was still pretty savvy. He went ahead and backed the 'cast. A lot of people lost their shirts on that one."

  The General steepled his fingers. "So that was the end of the gamblers?"

  "Well, the end of the fever, anyway; I'm sure there are still gamblers out there playing the 'castpoints for kicks. But now the commercial 'castpoints work a lot like the commodities futures markets—engineering companies and insurance companies that need to hedge their bets in the face of technological change use them, the same way they use commodities futures to protect themselves from sudden changes in materials availability." She shrugged. " 'Course, at this point, there are billions of people who are experts in some aspect of some technology, so the world-wide pool of participants for the 'castpoints is much larger than the pool of commodities experts, even without the Earth Defense interest. So there are more people involved, and more money at stake."

  The General sat back in his chair. "Whew! You really did learn a lot about this, didn't you? I'll have to be more careful in the future, if I'm going to keep any secrets at all."

  Jessica frowned. The General's eyes twinkled as he said it, but in back of the twinkle there was something . . .

  The General's aide knocked on the open door and looked in. "Sir, General Dehnad is on the line."

  The General looked back at Jessica. She took a last drink of her coffee, snatched a last danish, and departed as the General picked up the line.

  * * *

  With slow, careful motions, the Dealer held up his palmtop to unlock his apartment door. He could feel his hand trying to shake. He refused to let it.

  He could not, however, stop the chill that went down his spine. He knew, just knew, that they were still watching him.

  Cops. He hated the damn creatures. Well, that wasn't quite true. The cops were just trying to make a living too, after all. And when you got right down to it, even he liked having the cops around—without the cops who watched over his apartment complex, all kinds of lowlifes might threaten him.

  But the apartment cops worked for him, and they knew it. They were always polite—polite in that warm, helpful way. The cops working for the Shao Lin Computer Parts Company did not work for him, however, and they also knew it. So though they'd been polite when they accosted him on the street in front of the apartments, it'd been tainted with the coldness that they'd always shown when talking to his father.

  The cops couldn't rough him up—indeed, the Dealer was sure they'd stopped him in front of the complex just so the Dealer's own security people could watch and see how nice they were. But it had been unpleasant nonetheless.

  Somehow, those bastards had fingered him as the fence for that truckload of motherboards. They couldn't prove it—if they could, they'd have had a chat with the Dealer's residential cops and dragged him to an arbiter in a flash—but they knew.

  The Dealer closed the door behind him and took a slow deep breath. The room seemed cold. He turned down the air conditioning a couple of notches. He sat down at his desk and stared at his blank touchscreen, deep in thought.

  Considering the risks involved, fencing stolen goods had a pathetic profit margin. He'd always figured it was a stepping stone on the way to something bigger. But he'd never figured out exactly what that bigger thing might be. Now he had to seriously consider the possibility that, unless he figured it out really quickly, the fencing operation would be a stepping stone to something smaller. Something a lot smaller, like a plasfoam box in a cold doorway.

  Unconsciously, the Dealer open the middle right drawer of his desk. He kept his old palmtop there, his first one, the one he'd gotten from the government when he was eight years old. It had been the one thing he had taken with him when he left his father at the age of twelve, his one contact with people whom he could consider friends because they couldn't hurt him through the simple electronic interface. He picked it up. The dull gray surface of the plastic box, once textured, was now worn smooth. The screen surface, once smooth, was now scratched from too much writing, too many commands entered in rough haste. He flipped it over and saw the seal of the Republic of Guangdong, big and bold. Beneath that, in very tiny English characters, lay the real truth behind the box: Earth Defense Agency. Earth Defense had supplied the Republic's government with enough of these to make sure everyone had a chance to hook into the Web and educate themselves. The Dealer discounted the wild claims for the difference the palmtops had made. Nevertheless, for the Dealer himself the program had worked, though the successes he'd had with his palmtop could not have been part of the EDA plan. He smiled despite his predicament. His successes would have turned the EDA bureaucrats inside out with horror.

  Chan Kam Yin returned to his current problem. If the cops nailed him to the crime, victim reimbursement plus investigation costs plus damages would strip him clean. He'd be back on the street again with nothing but his once-loved, now-antiquated palmtop. He couldn't risk that. He'd have to find another scam, at least till the heat died down. Fortunately, he had a plan.

  He just had to figure out how to find the Predictor. It wouldn't be easy. Anybody like the Predictor, who did that kind of successful, insightful, but expensive analysis, would want to maximize his profit from it. That meant using a series of anonymous identities to buy and sell your forecasts. After all, if you used a consistent brand, people would watch your reputation grow and start tailriding once it became obvious you were a winner. Once that happened, you'd never get good odds.

  Furthermore, to keep your tracks hidden, you'd use multiple anonymous identities for each forecast, spanking-new each time, each betting only a little money rather than making a big purchase. After all, even an anonymous identity that bought a big position on a 'cast would draw attention. Who but an expert with deep analytical knowledge would take a chance like that, particularly with long odds? Even such a hint as this would pick up riders that would send your odds to the toilet.

  So the Predictor would surely be subtle about his purchasing. Consequently the Dealer would have to be subtle too. He'd been watching for patterns in the anonymous bets but hadn't found any yet. He had to take this seriously, now, and nail it down.

  With fresh, fear-driven enthusiasm, he flipped his touchscreen to life and poured over the results of the recent forecasts.

  * * *

  The car wove back and forth across the road, dodging the potholes and the people on bicycles as they hurtled along Interstate 93, down the long sloping hill from Boulder City to Lake Mead. The taxi driver, complacen
t about the whole matter, ventured another look at his fare; Reggie saw the man's eyes staring at him in the mirror. "You aren't one of the Faithful," he asserted confidently.

  Reggie smiled weakly; he was getting carsick. Funny, he never got airsick in a skycar, but the stop/start weaving of the groundhuggers invariably left him quite undone. He answered, "You hit the jackpot on that 'cast. 'Course, the odds left you the heavy favorite, wouldn't you say?"

  The driver chuckled. "Yeah. You're too normal for the Faithful."

  Being normal certainly did make Reggie stand out here. Even the taxi, a nondescript Ford, stood out, though not for its archaic use of wheels instead of turbofans. Most of the crowd was coming by ground transport. Though not all, as he could see by pressing his face to the window and looking up. Numerous skycars homed in on his destination as well, and he watched them enviously. Though, he reluctantly confessed, even if he had been able to get one of the handful of landing permits authorized by the Church Of Stellar Light, he would have had to come by groundhugger anyway. Most of the participants were taking the road from McCarran InterPlanetary in Las Vegas. For his story he needed the full experience.

  Reggie turned green as the cab swerved again. At last he saw the break in the old fencing along the interstate and the crude dirt path snaking off to the left, down to the revival's extensive site on the lake front. He could hear the music from here, even with the windows closed. He groaned quietly; he hadn't brought any earplugs.

  He was still not quite sure why he was here. Rather, he knew, but didn't like admitting it. The editor of the Newsweek website had begged him to do a story about lost souls and the Month of Shiva, challenging Reggie's assertion that their numbers were declining. Reggie had apologetically said no, and had held to it . . . until all nine full-time members of the Newsweek staff had sent him a singing email, reiterating the request. They were all friends from earlier in his career. How could he refuse? Besides, the singing was awful. He'd do anything to avoid another email like that.

  The coming of Shiva set off a host of contradictory trends. The high end of the economy and the low end gained strength as the middle dwindled. Top-flight sports cars—particularly the new supersonic twelve-fan models—sold so fast it was hard to get a test drive. But you couldn't sell a used family skycar no matter how fine its maintenance record. People were buying fantasies—why not, if you've got only a month to live?

  At the other end of the spectrum, sales of microwave dinners suffered as people ate more meals at restaurants, sharing some kind of herd instinct . . . but brown rice and dried beans sold well as born-again survivalists stocked up for the post-apocalyptic siege.

  Each of these trends suggested distinctive individual coping strategies. Another trend had emerged as well, however. The Church of the Stellar Light faced dramatic growth in devotees.

  The Church knew the truth, and broadcast throughout the world for anyone who would listen: Shiva would one day destroy all the weapons of Earth. It would then proceed to wipe every trace of evil human habitation from the planet. Finally Shiva would collect the Faithful from the six safepoints scattered around the globe. Lake Mead, just south of one of the most sinful cities of the planet, was such a safepoint.

  To Reggie, though, this safepoint looked more like Hell.

  The cabbie stopped; Reggie left a tip and stepped out. He stopped as if hit by gunfire—the burning sun slapped his face like a hot metal hand. The dust kicked up by the cab itself choked him.

  Come on, people now/Smile on your brother/Everybody get together/Try to . . .

  Reggie listened to the music. The beat had a classical cadence to it. Something from before the Crash. It was catchy in its mellow sort of way. He just wished they could turn it down a little; even mellow music drummed like a war cry at that many decibels.

  A fellow in faded camos drifted past him. Stoned. A striking woman arrayed in silk scarves circled close to him, one breast ornamentally displayed. Biosculpted. She was chanting in a singsong voice.

  He could see litters of discarded trash here and there amongst the Faithful. The wind picked up a plastic bottle and whirled it across the field, bouncing off the participants in a reticulated dance similar to the whirling motions of the younger, more enthusiastic members of the crowd. The whole scene looked to be straight from that old documentary he had seen about Wood-something. A pause came in the music. For a moment he could think clearly. The dust and the people faded from view as, with his mind's eye, he could see the one person he most wanted to talk to: Mercedes Ossa. Yes, he needed her here, her eyes laughing as she turned her clean incisive wit on the people inundating him. Standing alone in the crowd, he felt neither the clever laughter Mercedes might supply, nor the primitive joy of the Faithful dancers.

  A gap separated him from these people, a chasm he doubted he could ever cross. Did they believe in some deep, subliminal fashion that if they denied Shiva's existence vehemently enough the ship would disappear? Or did they feel themselves so helpless, only denial remained for them?

  The idea of denial was as hopelessly foreign to him as the idea of fighting might seem the people around him. He'd spent his teenage years as a fierce competitor. Just ask the guy who'd had to settle for the Olympic silver medal.

  Did the Faithful think the race with Shiva was already over? Who had won?

  The lake drew his eye. Like Mercedes, it too was clean and incisive. A lone waverunner skimmed the surface on the far side of the lake, as far from the Faithful as it could get. Soon the music would begin again, and Reggie yearned to join the runner.

  A rumbling sound bellowed down the hillsides behind him. It was a sound mostly heard in old movies–the sound of a gasoline-powered motorcycle engine. Only one group still wandered the desert lands with honest-to-God motorcycles. Reggie didn't have to turn or look to know who had just arrived, who now gazed over the crowd like a hawk studying baby mice. The Brute Squad motorcycle gang and their leader Chuck "Wire" Goldstar had just arrived. A very different subculture had just come to the party. Reggie's story was about to get more exciting. He hoped he'd live through it.

  Reggie had met Chuck once before. Reggie had been doing a story about the Defenseless, people who didn't have arrangements with any conventional security agencies. Sort of like the pre-Crash homeless people. An impoverished Defenseless girl, terrified of her violent possessive boyfriend, had been going through Chuck's initiation ritual. It looked more like a gang rape. But the girl didn't object; she judged the boyfriend the greater of the dangers.

  Reggie and the Wire had both walked away from that encounter with whole skins. Neither had been entirely happy about it.

  Reggie reached for his palmtop, to call for help. He could feel the skin tighten on the back of his neck as multiple pairs of biker eyes turned on him, picking him out easily as one of the few people there who might defy them.

  But the Church had apparently anticipated the Brute Squad's arrival. A dozen blue-and-gold skycars, all with the BKM logo embossed on the side, swept down out of the sun. They filled the sky with the low drone of a million hummingbirds. And though they might sound like hummingbirds, they had more in common with T. Rex. The cavalry had arrived.

  Reggie pocketed his palmtop. His security agency in Britain, Velvet Glove, had cross-contracts with BKM. The Church had made his call for him. Reggie turned, and looked out at the bikers for the first time. Most of the bikers were now looking up at the BKM skycars. A few sat back on their bikes so he could see metal tubes aiming into the sky—enough missile launchers to start a war.

  The thin chap in a leather vest and yellow bandana had his arm pointing to the sky, but he still watched Reggie. Muscles like thin steel ropes whipped beneath his skin. Reggie stared into the man's angry brown eyes, a contest of wills, eyeball to eyeball. "Well, Wire, we meet again," Reggie muttered.

  For several moments the situation hung in a delicate tableau. It could not last.

  Reggie found himself working through the logic the leader of the Brute
Squad now faced. The Squad had no mutual arbitration contracts with the BKM. So if a fight broke out, it would go to a government court rather than an arbiter. The case would take a tremendous amount of time, cost a lot of money, and produce uncertain justice. All these problems weighed on BKM more than the Brute Squad—uncertain justice favored the aggressor, not the victim.

  However, the BKM, understanding this scenario, would engage in massive intervention if the bikers started a fight—massive enough so that it would be the BKM, not the bikers, who owed damages at the end of a long court battle. The BKM would do just about anything to minimize unreclaimable damages to their clients.

  The Wire would have to go for the total destruction of the BKM contingent to come out ahead. Very unlikely. And worse for the Wire would be to succeed—BKM would surely pay Pinkerton a big premium to finish the job if BKM got chewed up.

  The Wire lowered his hand and spoke into the microphone in his helmet. The rocket launch tubes rotated on the bikes of the owners, to point down to the ground. There would not be a war today.

  The Wire smiled at Reggie, displaying jagged teeth that had seen too many fists, not enough dentists. He reached into his saddle pack, pulled out two long-necked, dark beers, and walked on over to Reggie. "You get around," the Wire commented, offering him the beer.