Propulsion myofibrils ripped away from the left COfiber-polysaccharide lattice wing with a sound like a cleaver through a slab of lapinovine.
The abnormal sound instantly reawakened the River Master’s full awareness.
With a sinking feeling, Dos Santos realized his ladybug was going down.
The sudden threat to his life triggered a criticality flash that cascaded across his Sphinxco wetware mods: this mission was deeper than a simple repair call.…
Dos Santos knew better than to try to wrest control away from the kibe unit under emergency conditions—although a gut response still jerked his hands toward the control ganglia. Instead, he quickly snugged the wrist-dangling gloves of his millipore survival suit on, effectively disabling his CamNeuro digiface.
The kibe unit spoke as the gloves sealed themselves, and by then it was too late to do anything even if he had known what to do.
“I am sorry Peej Dos Santos, but conditions require your immediate immobilization.”
Nodules studded around the sides of his organiform chair burst like spore capsules. Compressed somatropic lianas sprayed out, wrapping him in an sticky biolastic net.
Out the windscreen, Dos Santos could see the line of jungle on his left rising up and around like a wall.
Dos Santos barely had time to utter the start of a prayer to the goddess of his Camspanic ancestors: “Holy Mary Kannon, Highest of Dakinis—” And then he felt the dose of
Sandman perfuse his skin.…
* * *
The birds resumed their singing slowly. The loud crack of a damaged branch finally giving way stopped them again, but they quickly found their multifarious voices once more.
One fauxvian called out over and over in a raspy human voice: “Shop here, shop here, shop here.…” An escaped urban adbird …
Fronds of orange foliage starred with orchidenias lay across the intact single-crystal windscreen, obscuring Dos Santos’s view of his new surroundings. As he struggled to free himself from the safely restraints, the kibe unit spoke.
“Please allow me, Peej Dos Santos.”
A fine mist dispersed from the ladybug’s ceiling, dissolving the vines: Catalytica Calmbalm. At the same time, Dos Santos felt various aches and pains he had hardly realized he was feeling disappear, as the mist was recognized and allowed in through his smartsuit.
He climbed out of the chair, suit slick and hair damp, and stood tentatively on the canted floor. The craft seemed stable.
“What happened?”
“The left wing suddenly lost all haemocyanin flow, and the tissue immediately degenerated below the functional threshold. Probability of spontaneous failure, point one percent. Probability of maintenance error, thirty percent. Probability of deliberately induced failure, sixty-eight percent … Wait. Abnormal protease traces registering. … Revised probability of sabotage, ninety-nine-point-six percent.”
“Sabotage …” muttered Dos Santos. “But why?”
“I have no answer to your question, Peej Dos Santos. However, despite the overwhelming evidence of nonculpability, I am required by law to supply you with the metamedium address of my manufacturer, should you wish to file a suit against them. Synergen is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Primordium Chaebol. Telecosm address is At-prim-kay—”
“Forget it.” Dos Santos began to gather equipment and supplies from an overhead ovoid locker. “How far are we from our destination?”
“Contact with Global Positioning’s navsats remains firm, and I have us located within the standard three-meter deviation. Machine Lake is approximately fifty klicks to the north. However, I managed to set us down only a hundred yards from River Seven.”
“And we’re still on the upstream bank?”
“Yes.”
“Good job.”
“Thank you, Peej Dos Santos. I hope you will take my actions into account in the event of any possible lawsuit.”
“Don’t worry, there’s not going to be any legal action. It’s plain that whoever stopped the River doesn’t want me coming to investigate. There’ll have to be a purge of all the splices on the maintenance crew back at the base.”
“Organics are inherently less trustworthy and more liable to be compromised than kibernetika, if I may say so.”
Dos Santos cracked the ladybug’s hatch, and warm, wet air blew in past a curtain of bamboon.
“Where are you going, Peej? I’ve sent out a distress call and received an acknowledgement. Would it not be wise to wait here?”
“How do I know all the other ’bugs haven’t been tampered with too? I could wait for days. No, I’ve got to finish my mission. I’m too close now to wait. And the River can’t stay down much longer.”
Patting his left breast pocket, which held the vital vial of Instruction Set which would repair the River, and adjusting the bandoliers that held his Intratec splat-pistol, extra lysing cartridges and other equipment, Dos Santos placed one booted foot over the sill.
“I must protest, Peej. Under Regulation Two-Ten of the Riparian Administration Handbook—”
“Listen,” interrupted Dos Santos. “Who’s the River Master here, you or me?”
Somehow the TL-4 kibe managed to sound wounded and resigned. “You are, Peej.”
“Correct.”
“May I make a suggestion, then?”
“Certainly.”
“At least let me accompany you. I am more capable than your low-level suit assists. Also, if you are terminated and I am later recovered, I shall be able to make a full report.”
“What a cheerful notion.”
“I am simply trying to fulfill my autofac-implanted imperatives, Peej.…”
“All right.”
Dos Santos stepped to the console and ejected the kibe, a featureless silver wafer the diameter of a hockey puck, but only half as thick. Fitting it flat into the appropriate sticktite slot on his harness, he turned to leave the disabled ladybug.
“I am now fully integrated with your suit sensors, Peej. They are of high quality.”
“I have a feeling we’ll need them,” said Dos Santos. “Activate my retinal displays, please.”
“Done.”
Dos Santos’s peripheral vision filled with translucent shimmerstats, and he stepped tentatively into the jungle.
2. Infoslam
The first report indicating that something was seriously wrong with River Seven had come a mere twelve hours ago, emanating from the kibe unit captaining one of the numerous floating autofacs-cum-general-stores that supplied the indigenous Riverside population. The unit, a mere hundred klicks fromM achine Lake, had messaged that the River’s downstream velocity was decreasing radically, dropping toward ancient baseline values or below; probes launched into the upstream side, however, still registered normal values. Continued updates revealed a steady decline in the force of the artifical current.
When other reports from further downRiver began to flood in—a tourist vessel, a passenger ferry, a fleet of sport skimmers and striders—it became obvious to Dos Santos that River Seven—his River—was dying.
Naturally, he had been in Lagos on official business at the worst possible time. Had the trouble found him at his normal post—his HQ on the shores of Machine Lake—he would have been at the source of the problem and able to take immediate action. As it was, a long trip back had been necessary first.
Now, knowing that his craft had been sabotaged, it became obvious that the attack on River Seven had been timed to take place in his predictable absence.…
Toward the unexpected abrupt end of his flight, Dos Santos knew that the downstream portion of River Seven must have been approaching total shutdown. The death of the current, as he had plotted it in Lagos, had been propagating faster than the current itself, a shut-down message of some unknown sort, passed from one flagellum-flailing silicrobe to its neighbor, and then to its neighbor’s neighbor, thus outracing the physical flow as a sheer information wave.
The continued functioning of the upstream th
ird of River Seven was explainable by the deliberately engineered lack of communication between the two currents. Only along the nearly 2000-klick length of the upstream-downstream interface, where a thin layer of specialized downstream silicrobes performed an elaborate ciliary doesy-doe with a matching layer of upstream silicrobes, exchanging energy in a friction-eliminating dance, did any mixing occur. And the incompatible nature of the two currents, designed to avoid command snafus, had apparently succeeded in keeping the up River current alive a little longer.
But the ultimate source of upRiver silicrobes wad the downstream current, and the death of the smaller, still functioning portion of River Seven was inevitable.
From the feedstocks of Machine Lake were born all the silicrobes which comprised 50 percent by volume of the downstream River Seven channel. (The other half of the downstream channel was the traditional H2O from traditional sources: feeder streams, rainfall, underground aquifer connections. The missing volume of water had been long ago diverted for human consumption.) From Machine Lake the silicrobes exited, mingling with the available water in a synthetic gunmetal-colored broth. (Nanosmall, the silicrobes were of course invisible individually, presenting an homogenous appearance en masse.) Programmed to churn downstream at a steady speed, each maintaining a constant distance from the downstream shore and its neighbors, the silicrobes carried the water molecules along with them faster than mere gravity ever had.
At the mouth of River Seven, the fingerlike delta around Port Harcourt, the downstream silicrobes were triggered by the increased salinity and by info from GloPos navsats, undergoing the transformation into upstream silicrobes. Separating from their partnered water molecules (which continued out to sea as of yore), the upstream silicrobes made a coherent U-turn and headed back. Without H2O partners, they needed a virtual channel only half the size of the downstream one to make their way back to Machine Lake and resorption. Upstream speed was 80 percent of the downstream current.
Except today.
3. Big Muddy
The last chunky frondtree fell to Dos Santos’s flashlight-machete with a sound like a watermelon hitting the floor from table-height, and sticky juice propelled by xylemic pressure sprayed his face and millipore suit. Then he stepped out of the jungle and onto the staymown vetiver turf of River Seven’s upstream bank.
“Peej—suit bladders are now full with purified water, and any further dermal suit-contamination will have to be exosonically evaporated.”
“Fine, fine,” said Dos Santos absentmindedly, his entire concentration, basal and add-on, devoted to his ailing wide River.
The bipartite line of hyperfluid was dramatically sick.
Consider the more distant downstream side.
From its border with the upstream virtual channel all the way to the far bank, the downstream two-thirds of the River was a stagnant dove-grey stripe. The deactivated silicrobes, apparently still remaining in suspension, now no longer contributed any motion to the flow and in fact hindered the water molecules from resuming even their old basal speed. The downstream waterway, until so recently an efficient Riverroad upon which millions relied, was now a turbid slurry.
Dos Santos looked to the left, downstream, but focused his gaze on the nearer third of the River, the upstream channel.
This portion of River Seven was still functioning. Being composed of pure silicrobes, it was matte black in color and stood out sharply, its border still cohesive, from the downstream mess. But this normal appearance was misleading, and Dos Santos knew—
With a sharp intake of breath, the River Master spotted it.
The failure wavefront.
He watched helplessly as the killer disinformation propagated swiftly upRiver, soon reaching his position and passing unstoppably on.
Behind it, silicrobes went offline by the hundreds of trillions. The black stripe instantly began to extend irregular fingers of darkness into the downstream portion of the River, silicrobes flowing “backwards,” and from greater concentration to lesser as the now-unthinking River—formerly considered an actual entity of Turing Level One—attempted to homogenize itself according to dumb physics.
“Damn. Damn, damn, damn!”
Momentary hopelessness washed over Dos Santos. He had dedicated his life to Riparian Admin, out of a love for these great semiliquid, semi-intelligent transport machines. For the past fifty years, he had worked self-sacrificingly on the Rivers of the world, the large and the small. River Eight (the old Volga), River Three (the old Mississippi), River One-Oh-Four (the old Ganges), River Twenty-Nine (the old Nile), even River One (the old Amazon)—First as apprentice, then as journeyman, finally as Master, he had lovingly tended these sinuous creations of humanity that snaked across the domesticated globe, carrying mankind’s freight and travelers, hosting its recreations, bathing its pilgrims. And never in that time had he experienced such a thing as this horror: the death of one of his charges.
It felt like he imagined the death of the never-met pairbond proxy and hypothetical zygotes he had never permitted himself to indulge in would have felt. There was a hole in his soul.
Anger and a determination for revenge replaced the hopelessness. Dos Santos would make someone pay.
And River Seven, he vowed, would live again.
He advanced to the edge of the banking, which sloped away steeply to the River, a forty-five degree stretch of crumbly red clay, and scrambled down.
A rush of small dislodged pebbles tumbled down to the River surface and sat atop the high-density gel-like silicrobe liquid, each rock centered in its own surface-tension dimple.
The kibe sounded alarmed. “Peej Dos Santos, you do not intend—”
Dos Santos reached the marge of the River and squatted down. The pebbles were drifting downstream.
“Quiet! If you want to be useful, prepare to analyze some telemetry.”
After peeling off both gloves, the River Master inserted his hands into the stagnant silicrobe soup.
The shimmerstats boiled with metagrafix in the corners of his eyes, fed by the subdermal mycotronix digiface sensors in his fingertips. Tapping the feed, the kibe added its verbal interpretation.
“It appears that the River has been contaminated with a dose of high-velocity instruction ribozymes based on the standard stepdown routines, but with subtle alterations that are not readily decodeable. The silicrobes are merely offline and apparently undamaged. If we could denature the invader, it would be a simple matter to restart the River—”
Dos Santos stood. “We’ll have to do it fast, though, and that means getting to the facilities at Machine Lake. Not only do we have to worry about the possibility of further attacks, but there are system constraints as well. Eventually, the ’crobes are going to drop out of suspension and settle to the bottom. A restart under those conditions would be chaotic. We’d kick up enough particulates to clog the whole delta and probably kill off all the lifeforms as well. And if the mixing of up River and downRiver ’crobes continues, the vortices that’ll form on a reboot will be orders of magnitude larger than normal—”
The kibe interrupted. “Speaking of vortices, Peej, here comes a Vortifish Hunter right now!”
4. Old Man River
The coracle glittered nacreously, catching glints of African sunlight, an upturned halfshell with rippled, purpled rim. (Its original seedstock, highly modified of course, had been the chambered nautilus.) Large enough to hold two basal humans, it now contained only one sophont, a cynocephali wearing a loin covering of plaid clothtree fabric.
Originally the cynocephali—or Anubians—had been bred and released only along River Twenty-Nine, the old Nile. Part tourist attraction, these bipedal dog-headed sophonts had been designed to occupy a new top niche in the food chain. So successful and popular had they proven that no River today, some ten Anubian generations later, was without them.
The furred humanoid splice stood at the rear of its tiny craft, the tiller that controlled the steering jets in its paw. It sailed midway down the form
er upstream channel whose black syrupy components were now uselessly and slowly heading downstream with all the rest.
The small vessel was plainly bearing toward Dos Santos.
As the craft drew nearer, Dos Santos could make out further details, including grown-bone spears racked across the bow. And as the lone sailor expertly beached its craft, Dos Santos recognized the tattoon icon beneath the skin of one canine ear as the mark of the Hyena Tribe of Vortifishers.
“Peej Human!” barked the splice, showing sharp teeth webbed with saliva. “Our River dying!”
At that moment, the kibe announced, “Incoming transmission via Global Telesis for the River Master.”
“Accept.”
The pleasant female voice of his Fon apprentice, Isoke, whom he had left behind in Lagos, sounded in Dos Santos’s right ear like a beacon from a saner world.
“Norodom! The saboteurs have been pinged and popped! They were greenpeacers calling themselves the Izaak Walton League. Only ten human members, but they managed to kill several Rivers and disrupt half the world’s gross shipping tonnage! Dai Ichi Kangyo has just issued an estimate of five billion time-dollars worth of loss. But the crickcops and the IMF blueboys are certain they’ve slagged them all! You shouldn’t have to worry about another disruption.”
As always, hearing Isoke’s eager voice and realizing his responsibilities to her, Dos Santos tried to imagine how Master Trexler would have responded. “That’s wonderful, Isoke. But we’re still left with the problem of getting Number Seven up and running.”
“Can’t you just dump the Instruction Set into the River right where you are?”
The Master patiently explained to his apprentice about the need to denature the ribozyme contaminants with the Machine Lake equipment first. Mixing the Instruction Set with the contaminant would simply produce undifferentiated glop.
“What can we do then? You were right about the remaining ladybugs being sabotaged just like yours. The RA has no other transports available. We can hire a private thopter or borrow a government one, but it’ll take hours to get to you, even from the closest point. You’re deep into the low-tech preserve around the Lake.…”
Ribofunk Page 20
