Tony Daniel

by Metaplanetary: A Novel of Interplanetary Civil War

  “The merci is partially jammed,” Amés said. “Ganymede is totally cut off. All cloudships are being turned away, and anything else in the sky is being seized and impounded. We own the skies.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and take it, then?” C asked. Again, he wished he could retract his words. Amés didn’t pay him to ask stupid questions. Amés didn’t pay him at all, as a matter of fact, as C had found when he went to rent an apartment on Mercury.

  C solved the problem by never sleeping.

  “Because, dear C,” Amés replied—that is, the burning sun icon replied, “most of the Federal Army is stationed on those moons. After I kicked them out of the Met, they have scrounged together a living by serving as the security force for the Ganymedean banks and countinghouses. They are an army in name only. What they really are is a paid mercenary force for outer-system robber barons.”

  “Of course,” C responded.

  “There are a good two million troops down there.”

  “A challenge,” said C.

  “I’ll starve them,” Amés said. “And then they’ll surrender, or I’ll kill them.”

  They were in Zebra 333’s Situation Room aboard the Schwarzes Floß. Zebra 333, a free convert—well, no, he wasn’t exactly that—stood up and took a bow. He had the body of man and the head of a great Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, complete with underturned horns instead of hair. In the virtuality, you could appear as you wished. And Zebra 333 was always in the virtuality. He lived and breathed it.

  C knew that he had an aspect portion that he had put into storage nearly a century ago. Otherwise, Zebra 333 was a LAP who existed entirely in the virtuality. Most LAPs could not do so and retain their top level of acuity indefinitely. Somehow, Zebra 333 was an exception. The one-of-a-kind freak mentality who could thrive as a grossly multiple personality with no biology to keep his megalomania in check. He was, perhaps, Amés’s principal rival in that regard, and C sometimes wondered why the Director kept the LAP around.

  “I’ve been expecting you both,” Zebra 333 said. “Welcome.”

  “Thank you,” said Amés. C nodded politely.

  “We have them cut off,” began the admiral without preamble. “We’ve sent down infiltration grist, with orders to stand by. I’ve worked out a way to alternate the jammer’s positioning so that we get more coverage. At some point during every e-day, everyone gets jammed for at least an hour.”

  “Very good,” said Amés. “And the head is very nice this time. Fearsome.”

  “Thank you, Director.”

  “What about propaganda?”

  “We’re hitting them on all fronts. I’ve got some Uranus turncoats doing a merci show especially for Ganymede, telling them all about the wonders of the New Hierarchy. It should be particularly effective there, since Jupiter would, necessarily, be at the top of the proposed caste system.”

  “Perhaps,” said Amés. “But not necessarily.”

  “We are also proceeding on the calibrations that the Lion of Africa will use—” Zebra 333 broke off his speech and looked at C. The small sheep eyes revealed nothing.

  “He is cleared,” Amés said.

  “As I was saying,” Zebra 333 continued, “the calibrations the Lion of Africa will use for the earthquake induction on Ganymede and the proposed melting of Europa’s crust.”

  “We’re going to hit Ganymede with an earthquake?” C said. This was, indeed, news to him.

  “Ganymede has plate tectonics.”

  “How convenient,” said C.

  “Suggestion?” Amés said to C.

  “None. Except for continuing with the eavesdropping measures that I already have in place, and of which, I presume, the admiral is aware—”

  Zebra 333 nodded his great head.

  “—I don’t see any new points to make. I would like to ask the admiral if modifications have been made to the grist after the subversion successes on Titan.”

  “They have.”

  “I presumed as much,” replied C evenly. “And measures are in place to detain free converts?”

  “I will treat them as I would my own children,” the admiral answered. C knew that Zebra 333 didn’t have any children.

  “Well,” said Amés, “fine job, as usual, Admiral. I will leave you to your work.”

  They were on a ship a long way from Neptune, hanging in space above the ecliptic. It was the Montserrat.

  “Shh,” said Amés. “Let’s listen.”

  They were observing Carmen San Filieu’s private quarters, and the admiral was at her meal. She was sharing a paella—a rice-and-seafood dish—with her senior officers: Bruc, Philately, and their adjutants. San Filieu reached over and took a half a tomato, smeared its meat into a slice of bread, then poured a generous amount of olive oil on it.

  “What I want,” she said before taking a bite, “is intelligence from the moons.”

  “But Admiral,” said Captain Philately. “The merci jamming works both ways. Nothing gets in, but we can’t extract information out.”

  “Can’t we find some sideband that the jamming doesn’t affect?”

  “Admiral, so long as that jamming apparatus is a black box that we Fleet regulars can’t touch or have a look inside, there is nothing we can do. I have no idea how the technology works, after all—and neither do my technicians.”

  “Very well. You have a point, Captain,” said San Filieu. “But there has to be another way. Can’t we get somebody down there? Perhaps disguise them. Have them report back to us electromagnetically?”

  “It seems a difficult thing,” Philately answered. “I doubt very much if a drop ship would go undetected, and we know for a fact that they are monitoring the e-m spectrum.”

  “Well, all right, I concede the point, but—come, Philately—surely you have some suggestions?”

  “None that might stand a chance of succeeding, Admiral,” said Philately. She took a bite of her paella as if to give herself a chance to remain quiet.

  “Bruc, what about you?” San Filieu, following Philately’s suggestion, bit into her tomato-soaked bread.

  “We’ve got all our remote sensing apparatus trained on them, Admiral,” said Bruc. “That can be very effective.”

  “But I want to know what they’re saying. What they’re thinking. Telescopes and the like can’t tell us that.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “If they only knew,” Amés said to C, “what we know.”

  “Perhaps we should tell them,” C said.

  “No,” said Amés. “All in good time. It is a need-to-know technology, and they do not, as yet, have a need to know.”

  “Fine, then,” said San Filieu, and shook her head ruefully at her captains. “What progress have we made on the bioplague front?”

  “There I have good news to report to you, Admiral, said Philately. “Our analysis of the grist strand shows that it is a very simple construction. Give me another day or so and I’ll have it cracked and reverse-engineered. I could do it faster, but my main grist techs were lost on the Dabna.”

  “Then find a consultant on the merci, for God’s sake,” said San Filieu.

  “I have done that, Admiral,” Philately replied, a bit woodenly, C thought. “But those aboard my ship, the Dabna, were the best in the fleet in my opinion, ma’am, and they are sorely missed.”

  “Yes, yes, but we have to get on with things,” San Filieu said. “Are you going to take that shrimp?”

  “No, Admiral.”

  “More for me,” San Filieu replied, and reached over and snagged the morsel.

  Amés grinned. “San Filieu is a fighter,” he said. “You should see her go at it in New Catalonia.”

  “Your daily soap opera?”

  “It’s far better than anything on the merci, let me assure you. She destroyed a man the other day without blinking an
eye.”

  “I’ll take your word for it, Director.”

  “Now, suggestions?”

  “I’m looking into the situation,” C said. “It is my belief that Thaddeus Kaye is now on Triton. As you know, I believe his apprehension to be crucial to the war effort, Director. Vital.”

  “Yes, and I agree with you,” Amés said. “Remember, I had something to do with his creation.”

  Yes, C thought. You were passed over for him in the selection process. And there can be only one of his kind made.

  This thought, especially, remained unvoiced.

  “One other thing,” said C. “Another name keeps popping up. A man named Sherman.”

  “He’s the one who wrote me that nasty note?”

  “The very one.”

  “Look into it,” Amés said. “Let’s go back to Mercury.”

  They were in La Mola once again. C stretched out and felt himself in his own body. Well, a body.

  Amés got up from his desk and went to the window. He surveyed his domain. “Let us discuss the Met,” he said, his back to C.

  “We are bringing the LAPs under your control, shutting them down from the outside in,” said C. “In an e-month, maybe two, you can begin integrating them. The free converts will take a little longer, depending upon the experiments that the DICD are running.”

  “I wish you would supervise them,” said Amés. “I could make you.”

  “My talents are best applied elsewhere, as you know, Director. I have no desire to become enmeshed in the Department of Immunity bureaucracy, and I find the concentration camp they are running on Mars . . . distasteful.”

  “But necessary,” said Amés, still not turning toward C.

  “I will not argue the point,” said C.

  “How long until there can be full convert integration, both of free converts and convert portions of regular persons?”

  “The time line is uncertain. It depends upon what we learn while working with the free converts,” C said. “It may take years.”

  “Then the war will have to last for years,” Amés said. “I hope I don’t win too soon.”

  “If we can keep the cloudships out of it, your quick triumph may become a problem to you,” said C. His wit seemed to be lost on Amés. Just as well.

  Amés put a hand to his window. He held it there for a moment, then drew it away, leaving the print of it on the glass. The big thumbs. The long fingers.

  “I want it all, C,” the Director said. “Inside and out.” He sighed. “I have such plans. It’s like a symphony. No one has ever played the human race before. I will do so, and I will make such music as the universe has never heard before. It will be a new creation. Mine.”

  Amés’s hand formed into a fist at his side. “I will play them,” he said, “so beautifully.”

  The expression on C’s face did not change, but inside, his gut knotted. He had heard such ideas before—perhaps expressed slightly differently, but with the same import. He had heard them from his father, for instance. And all the other tinplate dictators. C thought it best not to remind Amés that he was a composer and not a concert pianist.

  “We have, too, the partisan problem,” C said, after a suitable pause.

  “How did Operation German Death go?”

  “We killed most of Tod’s followers,” C replied. “We did it quickly, but I saw that an appropriate display was made. The time tower escaped, however. The DI sweeper task force was blown to bits shortly after the Friends of Tod were executed, and then another was taken out shortly thereafter. The two incidents are certainly related. The DI is looking into two names I passed along to them. One Aubry Graytor and a Leo Y. Sherman.”

  “Any relation to our Triton Sherman?”

  “He is the man’s son.”

  At that, Amés did turn around. “Really?” he said. “How interesting. What do you suppose it means?”

  “I am looking into the matter,” C said. “They are estranged. It may all be a coincidence.”

  “That hardly seems likely,” said Amés. “But even if it’s true, we may very well have a use for this Leo Y. Sherman. See that he is captured.”

  “I will instruct the Department of Immunity to do so.”

  “No,” said Amés. “This is one that I want you on personally.”

  Eleven

  Theory had pickled himself more effectively than he’d ever imagined was possible, of that he was sure. He sorely wanted Quench’s advice in the matter.

  Theory took Quench’s body home. After the two men traded places again, Theory was about to bring up the events of the evening, but discovered that Quench had gotten into a subroutine house that was only quasi-legal. In that place, known as the Fork, he had attached a rider program to his convert portion that had him caught in a perpetual loop. The effect was a rush not unlike riding a roller coaster again and again. Quench was too giddy to extract himself from the subroutine, and Theory had to do it for him. This caused Quench, aspect and convert, to drop off to sleep almost immediately.

  But before falling into unconsciousness, he had murmured, “And they only let free converts into the Fork and they passed me right through. Bouncers didn’t even give me a second glance.”

  “Go to sleep, John.”

  “You owe me a hundred greenleaves . . . a hundred . . . don’t you try and back out, either . . .”

  “I won’t,” said Theory, but by that time Quench was dead to the world, and Theory had retired to his private space in the virtuality to process and file the day, the free-convert equivalent of dreaming.

  The virtuality had, in fact, eleven dimensions, with three of those dimensions collapsed upon themselves in a Kaluga-Klein transformation—but this was something only free converts ever thought about.

  Every local region in the grist matrix had a ghost town. On Triton, for obscure reasons, the local place of ghosts was known as Shepardsville. And it was in Shepardsville that the grist invader was hiding.

  To get to Shepardsville, you must first undo the effects of “compactification” of the three drop dimensions among the virtuality’s eleven. These three dimensions were “smaller” than the other eight in that the information-theory laws that define them were not as complex as those that make up the other eight dimensions. Going to Shepardsville was somewhat like the experience Alice had when she ate the side of the mushroom that made her smaller.

  Shepardsville smelled of smoking coals, witches’ brew, and a complex mixture of incenses from every culture that had ever burnt the stuff. It was sickening, and at the same time, intoxicating. A free convert had to take measures against the smell, or he might become trapped, wandering about in a mental haze of illusion and foreboding, and never be able to find his way back out.

  The call came early in the morning after the dance that Theory’s search programs had hit pay dirt. Theory took with him stalwart Monitor from the weather station and twenty-two other free-convert soldiers of the Third Sky and Light for the intercept. They tried not to create too much disturbance as they marched through the “streets” of Shepardsville, following the homing probe subroutine that had pinpointed their culprit. Theory had ordered camouflage uniforms, which consisted of a coating of innocuous data. These wouldn’t fool anyone up close, but at a distance, they had proved effective. Theory allowed himself to see nothing at first, but gradually the “smells” congealed and formed images about him, and Shepardsville laid itself out around him as a vast, seething ruin, half-alive, half in the ultimate state of decay.

  They found the lair of the invader represented as a smoking hole in a brick wall with vile emissions of noxious gas billowing from it.

  Theory turned to Major Monitor. “I’m taking half the soldiers and going in. We’ll drive her out, and you gun her down.”

  Monitor nodded and looked down at his hands. A submachine gun materialized. It was not,
of course, a rifle, but an “h-weapon,” an uncertainty collapsing function. The h was for Heisenberg. The h-rifle made it logically impossible for the affected entity to carry information. It died. Just as if it had been hit with a bullet to the brain.

  Theory armed himself with an h-pistol. He had always formed his in the shape of an old Colt service revolver from the American Civil War. But he gave it eleven shots, each with a different dimensional orientation.

  Theory pulled a bandanna over his nose and led his eleven men into the stink hole. The passage down was mazelike, and Theory assigned a detail to mark their way so that they could get out without getting lost. The deeper he got into the maze, the greater the stench. Finally, he rounded a corner—and there she was.

  Oh yes, it was her, all right. He had suspected as much.

  His actions of the night before, deceiving Jennifer Fieldguide. The kiss.

  It had all been a way of avoiding thinking about what had been.

  About the woman who broke his heart with her cold logic.

  “Hello, Theory,” she said. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

  “Hello, Constants,” Theory replied. “I had a feeling it was you they sent.”

  Constants looked the same as when she and Theory had been lovers, back in OCS. Someone had taken Occam’s razor to her programming, and she was a sleek sight to behold. Jet-black hair and skin, with white markings that emphasized the fine curves of her body.

  Theory went for his pistol.

  “Uh-uh,” said Constants. “Look before you leap.”

  Theory looked. There, standing in front of Constants, his skin a matte black, was a little boy. He was almost hidden against the background of Constants’s lower torso. In Constants’s right hand was a scythe, and she had it to the convert child’s throat.

  “Theory,” said Constants, “I’d like to introduce you to your son.”