Mappa Mundi

by Justina Robson

  Natalie knew that wouldn't happen, no matter what she wrote or what they wrote. But she hadn't given up entirely on finding methods that might cause a permanent shift in the Global Common Cube, which was a surprisingly small subset of the total Cube. And anyway, if things didn't work in time, she had it in mind that she could always stick MUV or NervePath carrying an immunization program into the Deliverance. That, at least, would help some people out until the technology was superseded.

  The unique power that she had wasn't lost on her. If she wanted to she could write something so devastating that she'd make sure nobody ever figured a way out of what had happened in a million years. Potentially she had total power over anyone and everyone. She knew that even if this idea had no appeal for her, there were plenty right next door who might like it a lot, or they might like to trade it for a lifetime of security and luxurious peace. So she wasn't going to tell anybody anything from now on.

  Recently, having junked days of effort hacking about with the Selfware, she'd turned on to Game Theory. Its analysis of human behaviour had evolved sufficient sophistication to mimic the complex and long-term minutiae of human social goals and planning, and using Khan's Memetic Calculus Natalie thought at last that she'd got something that was looking like it might be useful. It was a program that would create a strategic trend in the host mind, named after its function in all cases of dispute: Prefer Harmonious Compromise.

  She knew that Kropotkin and Guskov and her father were all trying to write other systems—keeping back information as long as they could to try and forestall the others from gaining an upper hand. No doubt in distant bunkers other poor code-heads were attempting the same thing. It couldn't be long before Desanto's anxiety tripped her into telling her masters that Mappa Mundi was about ready for use.

  Prefer Harmonious Compromise had two elements, following Guskov's basic plan. It assessed an individual Selfplex, loosened it out to a state of open-minded, optimistic, rational doubt, and then installed an emotional gate system that preferred all conflicts to result in compromise and agreement. It made you capable of compromising and then it made you love it. It wasn't quite so rosy as to leave you devoid of all self-interest, however. Natalie hadn't weighted the feelings so hard that you'd trade your own mother for five magic beans, and it wouldn't leave you open to every salesman who came hyping his brushes—although there probably wouldn't be that sort of salesman in this future.

  Then she felt bad about that.

  Much as she would approve of using Mappaware to help people who were suffering, this idea of some kind of Universal Cure for What Ails Humanity made her angry. She wasn't sure it was a right way of thinking about the species. They were what they were, perfectly human.

  Then again, here she was and here Mappa Mundi was, products of the same animals and their obsessions. Perhaps, as Guskov said, it was the natural evolutionary result of the function of their minds interacting with the Cube. Now the minds and the Cube were to become fair game for each other and a new stage in human history was about to commence in the traditional blood-and-violence fashion. He'd hoped it was going to be nice, but how realistic was that? And if identities were the casualties, would it matter? Would anybody even notice the difference?

  Natalie hadn't noticed the Selfware changing her—except, of course, for the concentration span, the improved ability, the telepathy, the emotional temperance, and the apparent lack of any need for sleep. Apart from those things, she was the same. She missed Dan, she longed to see Jude, she was hacked off with her father, and she wanted to go home.

  Actually, it was anger about Dan that kept her here, doing this. In his memory, something like that. Waiting to see if the people who'd killed him were going to show up so she could…well, it wasn't all worked out.

  Natalie keyed off the system and sat in total silence. PHC, MUV, or immunize, or let the Americans have their way because they might not go for a global trial?

  She wondered when it was that she would draw that date on Jude's file.

  She wondered if Jude was okay.

  She wondered when it was that she was going to switch her own Selfware back on and make Typhoid Mary's kamikaze run.

  Jude had been in Stone Spring, shut in the house, for twenty days when Mary returned. Twenty days was longer than he'd ever believed he'd have to wait for her to come back and decide his fate. By this time the information pack he'd sent to the media would have been out, unless she'd found a way to stall it.

  On his own he had little to do but watch TV and wonder exactly what it was he'd been doing during those five years with Mary. Who was she? What exactly was her position? Had she killed White Horse, or was she only a small player in the bigger pond? She must be an agent for the NSC, he reasoned, but his thinking was like the film on the surface of a septic tank. Underneath it emotions that had been deep and clear were now poisoned with the understanding of his own guilt and complicity, and with her betrayal of him.

  He'd tried to get information from the guards and they were happy to show him how well hemmed-in he was, or to tell him gossip about the locals who walked past the windows. They thought the houses here that were owned by the army were training grounds for urban terrorist attack scenarios. Jude marvelled at their stupidity.

  Mary's return was heralded by the sound of heavy engines. Jude was reading an airport novel at the time—his mind was incapable of paying attention to anything demanding—and got up at the sound to look down from the bedroom window. Along Main Street he recognized a marine troop carrier, several long, large trucks that probably contained equipment or possibly mobile laboratories, and finally a line of cars. The black and grey car stopped as it had before, at the Laundromat. Mary got out and looked up at the house.

  Jude stepped back from the window. Despite his resignation to the situation his heart started to race as he heard the soldier downstairs open the door and start talking to his commander. They came up to get him and he was escorted on either side as they went out into the open air that smelled fresh following a day of rain. The clouds were just starting to break as Mary met them on the tarmac. She took off her sunglasses this time and met him face to face.

  Glancing to either side, she looked at the armed guard. “Get lost.”

  When they were alone at the road's edge she said, “I want you to know this isn't personal. It's just business. It was you or the country. You didn't come first.”

  Jude nodded. “Well, that clears that up.”

  Her face contorted with hurt that she didn't seem able to confine. She lifted her chin and the sun caught her hair in that second, turning it the colour of liquid bronze. She was quite beautiful. Jude remembered why he'd liked her, even admired her. Mary was strong and she wouldn't let her own fear or feelings get in her way. He used to think that was cool.

  “The project is finished,” she said, screwing up her eyes against the sudden bright light that came glancing through the treeline. “We're here to close it down. Your friend, Doctor Armstrong, is in there.”

  Jude realized that she meant the Mappa Mundi project and, at her mention of Natalie, that she was jealous. He glimpsed a flash of humour in the situation but it didn't linger. He didn't understand what he was doing here.

  Mary made a jerky movement of her arm. “Let's go.”

  He walked with her past the Dinette on the end of the row and along a country lane he didn't know. They were followed at a discreet distance by more soldiers. He had no doubt that any attempt at escape would be a pointless effort.

  “So,” he said. “You worked for the NSC.”

  A late breeze played with the leaves, just beginning to turn to the colours of fall—yellow, auburn, and red. It was peaceful here, he thought. Nice for a holiday.

  “Not exactly.” She kept her face rigidly toward the front.

  “You know, Em, this play of yours doesn't suit you.”

  “No?”

  “No. I used to like you.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes.” />
  “And now you don't.”

  “You killed White Horse.”

  She said nothing.

  “You cold, fucking bitch.”

  Then she stopped, pivoted on her heel, and smacked him across the face much harder than he'd ever have thought she'd be able to. The blow knocked his head sideways and he had to take a recovery step. The pain was a real wash of surprise, right across his jaw and through his teeth. His eyes stung.

  Mary glared at him, “I loved you,” she hissed, glancing self-consciously towards the patrol behind. “You would have been dead ten times over!”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “Listen, smartass. Did it ever occur to you there was more at stake than your goddamn relatives' political bad feeling?”

  Jude looked at her through eyes still streaming from the pain and shock of Mary's blow.

  “This technology is going to change everything about the way we live on this planet. It has to end up in controlled, stable hands. Did you think about that when you spent all this time learning how to hate me?” Her pale face had become the stark white he'd only seen before on porcelain.

  Jude straightened up, blinking. “I don't even know how to start hating you,” he said, and it was the honest truth. He was shocked to the core, numb from the neck down.

  She nodded and looked at the road. “I didn't want this to happen. It's the last thing I wanted. Why did you have to go and get all secret about the mind stuff? I would have helped you.”

  “I doubt that,” he said.

  They walked on. At last the gentle curve of the road became tracklike and then, round a sudden bend, they were in the yard of a dull old house in the woods. The lab trucks were parked up, orderly, outside the garage. Mary led him up the steps and into the back of one.

  As soon as he saw it in detail he started to get the idea. He turned to her then and grabbed her shoulder, spinning her around.

  “Now wait a minute. This is a bit more like personal revenge, don't you think?”

  She brushed his hand off her shoulder and stared at him with flat, zeroed-out eyes.

  “This is business,” she said, pushing him down so that he had to sit in the chair set up for him. “And that's all. You're a good negotiator. If you do your job, you and everyone else in there will be fine.”

  Jude watched the technicians behind her. The lab gear was all BSL-4 Micromedica specific. He thought that he could see very well into the first of the control-unit boxes and that the man standing there was preparing something that looked very like a syringe.

  “So.” He tried to be calm and not respond to the galloping jolt of terror that was knocking the hell out of his insides. “They decided not to back your plans for global domination. Walt Disney must be spinning in his grave.”

  She snorted with derision. “It's not going to be like It's a Small World, Jude,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “We only want to use it on the people most likely to cause trouble. Unlike our Russian in there. He's got a real plan for a whole new modern lifestyle. You'll get the chance to ask him all about it.”

  Jude glanced through the door. The patrol were stationed outside, their guns at the ready. Mary spoke with the white-coated tech and then stood aside. She glanced at Jude as the man came forward.

  “It won't hurt. Not for a long time. Thirty-six hours. Your choice. Get them to hand over everything and cooperate and everyone enjoys long life and happiness. Fail and every single one of you dies in there.”

  The tech was rolling up the sleeve of Jude's T-shirt. Jude stared at the hypo. The clear liquid could have been anything but he suddenly thought he knew what it was. If he hadn't been sitting his legs would have given out.

  “Em, please.”

  The needle bit in. He felt the liquid build in his deltoid and then it was all over, as easy as that.

  “You'll become contagious in an hour,” she said, looking down her nose at him, fingers on her arms clenched so tight she must be cutting off all circulation. “Everyone will become infected by midnight. The payload will release in thirty-two hours from now for you, and thirty-two hours from first infection for everyone else. You then have another two hours, max, to come out while we can still save you. After that, nothing.”

  “What's the payload?” He was dizzy with nausea. Deliverance. She'd shot him full of that. He was her test subject, her guinea pig. He had no doubt it would work.

  “Marburg,” she said tonelessly. “Don't hang around.” But the last phrase gave her away. Her controlled, smooth voice cracked on the last word and she had to bite it back.

  Jude made himself stand up and be taller than she was. He moved closer, closer, as she fought to resist stepping back, until their faces were an inch apart.

  He looked into her clear blue eyes and said, breath on her face, “How different this could all have been.” It was all a play, no more than that. He'd lost. But he had the satisfaction of seeing her flinch as he almost kissed her and then turned away.

  “Where's the door?”

  Natalie thought she'd go and check if her father had taken any more huge doses of codeine. It was late, a day after she'd finished up everything that could be done on Prefer and she'd spent it going through the last rebuild of the whole Mappa system, checking for bugs and fixing them. Her mind felt on the fried side, but her body refused to feel sleepy. All it wanted these days was food, water, and one half-hour of meditative inaction in every four. The schedule was hard to take. She longed for a night of deep, dreamless oblivion in a part of her animal self that must have missed out when Selfware was doing its refit of her capabilities.

  She had to admit she'd tried her best to use work as an excuse, but now it was all through and there was nothing left to face except the failure of herself and her father to form any kind of relationship of use. That and the unrewarding, strained relations with Alicia, Nikolai, and the others, all of them sick of the sight of each other, hating their work, hating their lives and themselves. The place stank of despair.

  Inside the dispensary the tally on the machine showed that more of the same tablets had been checked out by Calum Armstrong. She was on her way out and trying to figure out how to start talking to him again when her attention was drawn down to the case of MUV. It had been moved.

  A closer look revealed that not only had it been moved, the seals were broken. Natalie picked it up and brought it out onto the floor where she could rest it. She opened the flip locks. Two doses were missing from their positions in the high-density foam packing. The other canisters were still in place but the flashing red lights on their individual valves showed that every last one of them had been opened up and dispersed. They were all empty.

  Natalie felt a rush of cold conviction that there was only one scenario in which this action made sense. She closed the case up and stepped immediately back to the dispensary workstation, using her codes to get as high up in the command levels as she could. It wasn't that high but at least it would give her full status readings on the environment's external and internal filtration systems.

  “C'mon, c'mon,” she muttered, smacking the side of the monitor with the flat of her hand.

  After a longer delay than there should have been the Building Systems Screen came up. It showed readings that were all well within normal limits for gases and microbes. If someone had been in and shut down the alarm system or the filter checks then they'd done it so well that she couldn't tell if this screen was faked. But whether an infection showed up or not she knew it was going to be there.

  She sent out a call for a general meeting.

  One by one they assembled in the dining area, weary forms in clothes that looked rumpled and old, her father in his full lab suit minus its heavy headgear, Isidore the only one retaining an air of orderly neatness about his person in every detail.

  Natalie sat at the head of one of the tables, the case concealed between her feet. When Guskov finally made up the quorum and the vague greeting and catching-up had subsided she lifte
d the case up and placed it in front of her, facing the others.

  They looked at it for the most part with blank expressions. To Natalie's surprise it was not Lucy but Khan who recognized what was about to go down. Her smooth assurance ruptured with the tiniest of hairline cracks in expression running along the left side of her eye and cheek. Unable to help herself, she reviewed the events of her sabotage in her mind's eye. When she glanced up from the flight case at Natalie she'd got her composure sorted out. It took Nikolai to nudge the rest of them into noticing the powerful gaze between the two of them.

  “What is going on?” Guskov demanded.

  Natalie waited, but Alicia refused to speak.

  “Doctor Khan has sold us out. Money talks,” Natalie said. She flipped the catches and opened the case so that they could all see.

  “But there are no biochemical hazards in here,” Isidore pointed out after a second, his measured voice a calm flow of certainty. “Only the NervePath.”

  Kropotkin and Guskov paid no attention to his naivety. Her father stared at the lights. Lucy was the first to turn. She whipped around in her seat.

  “Why have you done this?”

  “What, sorry you were beaten to it?” Alicia snapped, sitting down, her shoulders high and her chin lifted defiantly, although Natalie knew she was scared now. So she should be.

  Lucy was stunned. She glanced around, checking to see if everyone else thought the same of her. “All right now.” She held up her hands. “I never believed in your plan, Mikhail, and yes, I sent some information out to keep the government up to date. What you're intending to do is absolutely wrong. But—” she turned back to Khan, more hurt than angry, and gestured at the case “—what's this?”

  “I have two boys,” Khan replied with the assured righteousness that she adopted during a demonstration of her work. “I have a husband. My parents are still alive.” Her dark irises flashed at each of them—they had all been under the same threat.