Still he kept himself to himself.
Shower.
Food from the small store of snacks he kept in his room. Drinks from a wall dispenser. No alcohol, at Bartholomew’s orders, though he had never needed a beer more. At any rate, not since the night he’d found out Emma was lost, back in 2005.
Hours wasted on more channel-surfing.
He lay on his bed, staring at the old Shit Cola can on his bedside table, its gaudy twenty-first-century colours as bright as they ever were, but as out of place here as he was.
It took him a long while to sleep.
17
In the morning, he went through his med checks and physio routines, without Bartholomew.
Then he went in for breakfast. He was a few minutes late. Mica and Deirdra sat side by side, plates of food before them. Bartholomew stood back by the wall, waiting, attentive – he reminded Malenfant of a butler in some cheesy old British drawing-room drama.
And this morning Prefect Morrel Jonas was here, in his pale grey robes, standing back too, hands folded before him, watching Malenfant intently.
Malenfant took a coffee from the dispenser and faced Deirdra. ‘You don’t need to be here.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘I’m angry. I’m pissed as hell. But not at you. In fact I specifically asked Bartholomew to keep you away.’
She glared at him now. ‘In that case I’m pissed too. You can’t give me orders, and nor can Bartholomew. Look, Malenfant, it was my idea more than anybody else’s to bring you here. If you’re unhappy then I’m responsible too.’
‘OK. You’re right, I can’t order you out. But I’m not blaming you.’ He turned on Mica and the Prefect. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about the Answerers?’
Mica looked away.
The Prefect grinned. ‘You didn’t ask.’
‘Don’t get smart. And the Codex. Major sources of information. Right? Pastor Kapoor says I have a right to data, just as much as I have a right, in this society, to food, water, shelter.’
‘So you do,’ Mica said. ‘And we are honouring those rights. But, Malenfant, you just weren’t ready for a flood of information. So we decided.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Deirdra said miserably. ‘I should have thought about what you would want. But I’ve never been in this situation before.’
‘I told you,’ Malenfant said to her firmly, ‘it’s not your fault.’
‘My mother took me to the Answerer for the first time when I was six years old. It was just so I could see it and get used to it. You can ask it anything, but it might not be able to give you a sensible answer. You have to learn. It was scary, well, it was when I was six, but Mum held my hand, and it had a kind voice.’
Bartholomew put in, ‘What was the first thing you asked?’
She smiled. ‘Who was going to win the big end of year quickball game at school. We used to bet on that for toys and such.’
Malenfant had to smile. ‘Ha! Your first question, and you ask for a betting tip. Good for you. What did it say?’
‘That it couldn’t predict the future. But if I went back in with more information, about the players and their records and such, it would give me a “probabilistic assessment”. My mum wrote that down for me. But she convinced me it would be kind of cheating, so I didn’t . . . You see, you have to learn that to get a sensible answer, you have to ask a sensible question. And you have to learn how to use the information you get – well, responsibly. Morally.’
‘There you are,’ Morrel said. ‘The Answerers are a powerful technology. Algorithmic only, but still, along with the Codex AIs, surely the smartest artificial intelligences on the surface of the Earth. Which is why,’ he said heavily, ‘it’s necessary for us to introduce our children to them cautiously. And in your case, Malenfant—’
‘I’m not a damn child.’
‘No,’ said Mica, with what sounded to Malenfant like a kind of weary patience. ‘No, but you’re just as new to our culture as Deirdra was when she was six years old – more so, in fact. We really were trying to protect you from being overwhelmed.’
‘Seriously? I already know this damn world of yours is going to get itself wrecked in a thousand years. I already know that everybody I knew before is long dead.’ Except, maybe, Emma. Except her. Just possibly . . . ‘How much worse can it get? I mean, it’s not as if I’m going to go in and ask how to create a virus that might wreck the food printers.’
Mica winced.
Morrel glared. ‘There you go. The very fact that you can speculate about such possibilities is alarming to us, Malenfant. You really are a man out of time – a man from a much more savage age. And that raises another issue with all this, aside from any harm that might come to you personally. Look, the Answerers were designed to deal with human beings, flawed as we are. An Answerer knows there is some information that shouldn’t be given to children, or adults with – problems. It doesn’t censor, exactly. If it’s not sure it just shuts down and asks for help from a higher authority.’
Malenfant snorted. ‘Such as a Prefect, you mean?’
Mica sighed. ‘Generally a parent, Malenfant. Or a teacher. A doctor. A pastor, maybe.’
Morrel leaned forward. ‘But you, Malenfant, are an anomaly. Do you see? You don’t fit into the world view of an Answerer, any more than you fit into mine. And so it might unintentionally give you information or advice of some kind that could be harmful. To you, or others.’
Mica said, ‘We aren’t trying to deny you your fundamental rights, Malenfant. We’re just trying to protect you – and those around you.’
Malenfant grunted. ‘Sure. And that benevolent impulse just happens to fit in with the way you two have been trying to control me ever since my ass was hauled out of the coldsleep pod. Well, enough is enough. I’ve got my rights, and I’ve got questions to ask, and I’m going to the nearest Answerer. Which is at the nearest Pylon, the pastor told me.’ He glanced around. ‘Anyone volunteering to take me? Or do I need to walk?’
Deirdra made to speak, but Bartholomew stepped forward quickly. ‘I’ll take you, Malenfant.’ He faced Mica and Morrel. ‘It is for the best – even clinically speaking. This issue will fester unless it’s resolved soon. And we can deal with any fall-out later.’
Deirdra said, ‘I’ll come too.’
‘No,’ Malenfant said firmly. ‘But – thank you, Deirdra.’ He looked at Mica. ‘Believe me, I’m motivated to do as little harm as possible. To you, your family. It may have been Deirdra’s idea to haul my ass down here, but it’s your home, Mica. I don’t want to disrupt it. Truly.’
Mica glared, then looked away. ‘Well, I’ll hold you to that.’
Prefect Morrel stepped forward, his stance threatening. ‘And I, Malenfant, will hold you to a similar responsibility. My job is to keep the peace. To maintain harmony. You and your self-obsessed quests mean nothing to me, and if you disturb my world I will contain you.’
Malenfant murmured, ‘Watch the blood pressure.’
Deirdra coughed, as if concealing a laugh.
Bartholomew was openly grinning. ‘So,’ he said, ‘are you ready?’
Malenfant shrugged. ‘All I need bring is my bangle and my famous self-obsession, right? I’m packed. Let’s get out of here.’
18
The nearest Pylon, it seemed, had been set up over the ruins of a Birmingham suburb called Walsall.
Bartholomew told him that the Pylons were a common feature – just as Malenfant had spotted from the air, during the flight from London, even if their significance hadn’t been obvious to him then. The Pylons had been set up as the post-Chaos Common Heritage administration was organised. The design goal had been that they should be no further than thirty kilometres apart.
‘But they are a bit more sparse where the population is low. On the other hand, people have tended to move closer to the Pylons, if they found themselves too far away. They are just too useful. So the distribution sorted itself out, over time.’
Malenfant frowned.
‘How much time?’
‘Oh, half a century or so.’
Malenfant grunted. Here was a society that had worked on projects with long timescales, from the beginning. Maybe that was a deliberate recoil after all the short-term thinking that had led, in the end, to Peak Carbon.
Soon the Walsall Pylon loomed over the horizon. This glassy road arrowed straight for it. Gleaming white like most of the architecture of the twenty-fifth century, broad at the base, narrow at the waist, and widening above with that eerie crucifix-style crossbar near the top, the Pylon reminded Malenfant of a church of some modern design – ‘modern’ for Malenfant meaning about 2010, he reminded himself ruefully.
‘Or maybe God’s golf tee.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Never mind.’
There was more traffic on the road now, coming and going from the base of the tower. And as they got closer, Malenfant made out a cluster of smaller buildings set out around that base. Some of these seemed to back onto the great pillar itself, as if they had been designed in from the start. Others were scattered more widely, more haphazardly, presumably developments attracted to this enigmatic hub just as Bartholomew had described.
Bartholomew parked up maybe half a kilometre from the foot of the Pylon. They walked in the rest of the way, the tower increasingly looming over them.
Malenfant judged it was at least four hundred metres high, maybe as much as five. That was based on his memories of the Empire State Building, for instance; this huge sculpture might have topped out that great old monument, but not by much. It shone white, a flawless ceramic sheen. He could not have told how old it was.
The buildings around the base seemed to have a variety of functions, he saw as they walked closer. Everything was brilliant white, separated by swathes of grass and the usual shady trees. There were restaurants, bars, what looked like hotels or hostels, play areas for the kids. The more functional outlets were obvious too, adorned with signs and symbols, some of them smart enough to illuminate when he looked at them. There were general stores and dispensaries of the usual kind, but also what looked like more specialist centres, for tools, clothes, building supplies. This was a place people would come visit for a day or two, then, and for a purpose.
Malenfant spotted a dental surgery.
He said, ‘So there’s more to this place than just the Answerer.’
‘As you can see,’ Bartholomew said drily.
‘I think I get it. In my day you might have lived out in the country, in some poky town with a bar and a hotel and one fat old cop, but you’d come into the city to get your teeth fixed. Now there are no cities, as such.’
‘No,’ Bartholomew said. ‘But people still need to get their teeth fixed. And, while once there was a very highly developed urban technological culture that would fix your teeth for you, the old way of living had to end – well, it imploded by itself. But—’
‘But nobody wants to go back to the dentistry of the Middle Ages.’
‘You’ve got the idea. The Pylons were intended to replace the cities as centres of service, of expertise. Dentistry. But also as hubs of learning – universities and colleges have clustered here. People are just as bright as they ever were, Malenfant, and just as inventive. It’s just that we take more care about the impact of those inventions.
‘Come on. Let’s go face the Answerer.’
The interior of the Pylon, cooler than the outside world, was softly lit by glowing panels on roof and walls. As Bartholomew led him along a wide, blank-walled corridor, Malenfant heard no hum of fans, felt no breeze; the air conditioning in here must be subtle.
They reached a room: a wide, circular chamber, a low domed roof. The walls and roof were of the ubiquitous ceramic. But grass grew in beds of open earth, evidently sustained by the light from walls and roof. And a path of stone slabs led from the entrance door to a low wall, also of stone.
Malenfant and Bartholomew followed the path, side by side. This wasn’t a ruin, or restoration of any kind that Malenfant could see. It was supposed to be like this. The stone and the earth. It seemed very out of place within the seamless tower.
Malenfant heard the murmur of a voice, a woman’s, and Bartholomew touched his arm to hold him back.
Now Malenfant glimpsed, over the low wall, a woman, her back turned, speaking softly – too softly for Malenfant to make out her words. There were gaps in her speech, as if she was listening to some entity too quiet for Malenfant to hear at all.
Bartholomew whispered, ‘We need to wait our turn. It’s a private business. Sometimes they lock the doors.’
After a few minutes, the woman clearly called, ‘Thank you,’ and turned away and walked out.
As she passed Malenfant and Bartholomew, she nodded, politely enough. She was perhaps fifty, and, despite Bartholomew’s warning, seemed in the mood to chat. ‘We’re building a roundhouse. You know, Iron Age style. Wanted to know how to soften the wood so we can plait it to make our adobe walls, and how deep to dig our big structural post holes.’ She held up grubby palms. ‘Messy job, especially if you do it wrong.’
Malenfant asked, ‘Did you get the answers you wanted?’
‘The Answerer knows.’
That sounded like a slogan.
Now she looked more closely at Malenfant. ‘Wait. You are—’
‘I’m not.’
‘Tall, bald, a bit thin. You look just like him.’
‘I’ve been told that before.’
‘Hmm. Well, have a good day.’ But she stared at him again, before walking out.
Bartholomew murmured, ‘There’s a lesson there. We’re not all that close to home here, where people have been seeing you in person every day. If that random stranger recognised you, so will half of humanity.’
‘Yeah. I still see myself showing up on TV. I’m not that much of a star. But it’s a small world, without many stars . . .’ He filed that observation away in the back of his head. His instinct so far had been to hide away. But things were different now. He was developing a purpose. His fragment of fame could be useful, at some point.
Bartholomew shepherded him forward. ‘Let’s go in.’
Through the waist-high wall, they came to a kind of courtyard, also floored with pale grey stone slabs.
As they walked, Bartholomew murmured, ‘Most of these installations are laid out like this. I guess you’re seeing all this with an engineer’s eye. The outer shell of the Pylon, and the main internal structures, would have been an automated build. Matter printers printing. But in this inner space, the stone was set by hand. Human hand, natural stone.’
‘Why?’
They had reached another, higher wall, in which was set a blank screen, maybe a metre across. That was all.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps it just felt right to do it this way. But why ask me? Here is the Answerer. Ask her.’
Malenfant stepped forward. He looked around at the empty courtyard.
His gaze was drawn back to the screen. ‘Are you the Answerer?’
Is that a question?
He jumped. The voice had been soft, feminine, the accent a bland American English that might have come from Malenfant’s own time.
But it had sounded like it spoke in the inside of Malenfant’s skull. ‘Wow. I had a pair of headphones once with quality nearly as good as that.’ This was how Karla had spoken to him on the Moon, he supposed. ‘Some extension of the bangle brain-writing tech, I guess?’
Is that a question?
‘No. Sorry. Are you the Answerer?’
I am.
‘Are you – what, behind the screen?’
I am all. This building. Connections beyond it, to the other Pylons, other institutions, processing facilities, data stores. I am an interface. The screen is a delivery mechanism, in case visual displays are necessary.
‘Necessary to answer questions.’
Yes. There are also audio systems, printers of various kinds. Even guides, human and android.
‘What’s the
most common first question people ask?’
Are you the Answerer?
Bartholomew snorted a laugh.
I know who you are, Colonel Reid Malenfant.
‘Call me Malenfant. How do you know? Visual recognition, DNA traces?’
I saw you on the news.
Malenfant eyed Bartholomew. ‘Is every machine in this benighted age a smartass?’
‘Ask a foolish question, Malenfant.’
‘Answer me this, then. Who made you?’
Many parties. Many humans, many automata. That is a vague question which allows only of very large and imprecise answers. I believe, however, that you are asking what agency caused me to be constructed.
‘And your siblings around the country. Around the planet, as I understand it. Yeah, that’s what I meant. You aren’t as dumb as you look, then.’
Nor are you, Malenfant.
Bartholomew rolled his eyes. ‘I am so glad I came to hear this.’
Malenfant ignored him. ‘Tell me who, then.’
The Planetary AIs.
The answer stunned and confused him. He had heard of Planetary AIs, but he hadn’t expected to hear of them in this setting. Suddenly there was a cosmic context, and a depth of time to this encounter; he felt obscurely thrilled. Maybe he was asking the right questions.
‘Give me more background. Please.’
Have you heard of the Homeward movement?
‘Yes. Twenty-second century?’
Twenty-third. The Homeward movement was in fact a cooperative venture, by humans and the advanced AIs they had established on the planetary bodies—
‘Advanced AIs. General intelligences. Which bodies?’
The Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Europa.
‘Continue.’
The parties became dismayed at the ruin of these bodies’ environments. Nano disasters on Venus. Biological contamination and the extermination of native life on Mars, and in some parts of Venus too. On Europa, the penetration of an ocean ice roof, in the mistaken belief that life might subsist beneath, in the water, whereas a complex intelligence actually inhabited the ice shell itself.
World Engine Page 11
