The A.I. War, Book One: The Big Boost (Tales of the Continuing Time) (8 page)

7

THE MARTIAN TOWN of Sulci Gordii is mostly underground. But just mostly: the location, south and east of Mons Olympus, gave superb views of the great mountain. So some structures were above ground, and hard to heat, and expensive: and one of those was the Valentine Dome where the SpaceFarer’s Collective’s Board of Directors met.

Over two hundred persons attended, though at most forty of those had the right to cast votes, either directly or by proxy. The others were staff, security, lovers, children, and other members of the retinues of the powerful.

Trent was pretty sure he was the only voting member who was there by himself. Not by choice, either – Jimmy had refused to come and Reverend Andy had just laughed at him.

The Dome seated over three hundred, the seating arranged around small tables set in concentric and rising circles. Trent took a table four rows up from the floor, facing Olympus Mons, and ordered two pints of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout – from Earth, imported – and a bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich: the bacon had never seen the inside of a pig and the bread, lettuce, tomatoes and mayonnaise were all from the Mormon colony to Sulci Gordii’s north. The waiter was short, for a Martian – a young Mormon Trent knew slightly, Ryan Larsen – and Trent had an awkward moment trying to remember whether Ryan was a member of one of the families that were mad at him. If Trent had ever known that, the information had not made it into Trent’s inskin, where it would have been secure for as long as he cared to remember it.

Ryan confirmed that he was. “But it’s OK,” he assured Trent, “we got her married anyway, and pretty much everyone else has let it go.” He paused. “Well, not cousin Aaron. If you ever see Aaron, you should be careful.” He smiled reassuringly at Trent. “But he’s not here, so no need to worry, right?”

“I have a ten million Credit bounty on me,” Trent told him. “You tell cousin Aaron he’s not allowed to kill me for trivial reasons.”

Ryan looked hurt. “It’s not like that. Aaron’s as patriotic as anyone. He wouldn’t even want the bounty.”

“You bring me my sandwich and stout,” Trent instructed the boy. “And no more talk of killing me, it ruins the digestion.”

“Right,” said Ryan, smiling uncertainly. “I’ll be right back with your order.” He hurried away.

Captain Saunders arrived a moment later with one of her crew, and paused by Trent’s table. Before she could even speak, Trent eyed her and said flatly, “I hate Mars.”

She paused. Trent glanced past her, saw the tall man standing beside her was Sidney Zinth – Trent had once slugged Zinth and stolen his uniform. Trent still had unexpected moments when the color of the man’s underwear would pop up in his memory and offer itself for inspection.

Zinth stiffened at Trent’s glance.

“People still making fun of you over your undergarments, are they?” Trent asked politely.

“A few of the women,” Zinth said evenly enough. “I’ve whipped all the men.”

“You’ll need to take a number if you want to whip me,” Trent said. “Behind cousin Aaron and about a thousand Peaceforcers.” He considered it. “And a whole bunch of gypsy Macoute, but I don’t expect to run into any of
those
bastards on Mars, so you should sneak in ahead of them.”

Saunders said, “The Executive Directors normally sit at the inner row.” She pointed at a table that would seat a dozen. “That’s Belinda’s old table.”

Trent smiled. “More space than I need. I’m good here.”

She nodded and moved on.

Zinth held back a step, and said in a quieter voice, “If you want to meet me any time, I’ll make myself available.”

Trent smiled at him, too. “I’m sorry I embarrassed you once, eleven years ago. I mean that most sincerely.”

“I know you’re important, that you’re doing important things,” Zinth said. “So I won’t kill you.”

“There’s worse things in life than wearing pretty underpants,” Trent said mildly. “You can tell people I said so. But no, I’m not going to fight you, not now, not ever.”

“You’re a coward,” Zinth said in a low voice.

Trent kept smiling. “ ‘You keep carrying that anger,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘it’ll eat you up inside.’ You move along, I’ve got a sandwich coming.” With a last glare, Zinth continued on after Captain Saunders.

Ryan put the plate down, and the two pint bulbs of Guinness.

Trent’s smile faded.

“Man,” Trent said gloomily, “I fucking hate Mars.”

MOST OF THE business bored Trent. He spent the evening watching the other members of the Board of Directors, tagging the few new faces and looking them up via his inskin – he identified most of them. There were a few young people he was unable to place, children or new employees, but only one person of any obvious significance escaped him. Jocko Singer appeared with a man who was not on the cleared list of attendees – as one of the Executive Directors Singer had certain prerogatives. Trent watched the unidentified man carefully – Caucasian, hard to guess his age, though his hair appeared to have been silvered by age rather than by makeup key. Plainly a downsider, both by build and by the awkwardness with which he carried himself in Martian gravity. Blue eyes, possibly, though Trent didn’t get close to enough to him that evening to be certain. He stored several high resolution copies of the image crossing his optic nerve, watching the man closely for several consecutive seconds while his inskin built up an interpolated image.

He was only required to vote twice before the measure that he was interested in came up – voting once to subsidize immigration from Earth to Mars, in a measure that failed –
war fever,
Trent thought sourly – and the second time to increase aid to Free Luna, which passed – war fever again, Trent imagined.

Several more matters passed without Trent bothering to cast a vote. Then Rickie Gorabel announced, “Trade sanctions in the matter of Iwatsu Electric, a subsidiary of the Sanwa keiretsu.”

Trent said, “Hold.”

It caused a stir. Gorabel didn’t appear surprised, but she waited until the noise had died back down again.

“The facts in this case,” she said carefully, “are well established. You read the briefing documents.”

Trent nodded. “Yep. Mind you, I didn’t receive the addendum on Iwatsu Electric until this morning. Did anyone else? No? Anyone?” He looked over the room. “No. Thought not. I’d like a hold placed on this matter until it can be addressed in a less … rushed … manner.”

“The Sanwa keireitsu,” said Jocko Singer, “is no friend of the Collective.”

“About fifteen percent of the Collective is spacing in ships Sanwa built, of course.” Trent studied Singer. “I believe you own a few yourself.” Singer attempted to answer and Trent spoke over him. “But that doesn’t matter. Sanwa’s transportation businesses are not on the agenda. Their nanoassembly engines are, and while they certainly are not cheap, they are important to various interests both off Earth in general, and specifically within the Collective.”

“Failing to impose sanctions will draw attention on Earth,” Rickie Gorabel pointed out.

“In front of two hundred people you point this out?” Trent asked mildly. “Well, of course it will now.”

Gorabel gave him a slight nod, and the hold was upheld by acclamation, without need of a vote, though Jocko Singer sat glaring at Trent while the motion was tabled.

GORABEL STOPPED BY Trent’s table as she was leaving. “You should have let it come to a vote,” she complained. “He’d have lost anyway, and we’d have had useful information from how people voted.”

Trent shrugged. Not much bored him more than Rickie Gorabel trying to figure the angles. “I had reasons.”

8

THE BIOSCULPTOR HAD worked on Trent before; Trent had changed his appearance fourteen times in the last decade. Usually he used a woman named Katrina Trudeau, a Luna-based biosculptor he trusted. Twice before, though, he had used the man who stood before him now, when Katrina had been unable to make the trip from Luna in time.

He didn’t know the fellow’s name, and didn’t want to. The only thing he knew for sure about the man was that he was an American and a Johnny Reb. It was hard to miss.

The biosculptor said, “You have a couple problems. You’re about an inch taller than the subject; he’s only six foot three. If –”

Trent said, “Excuse me.”

The man stopped. “What?”

“Please, please,
please
try not to act like such a freaking Johnny Reb, okay? It’s nothing personal, I’m sure the world was a much better place when we all used inches and gallons and ozzes and things to measure with, but I have to do a lookup every time you pop off with, ‘Well, you’re eight stones high,’ and it’s irritat-”

“Stones,” the biosculptor interrupted, “were a unit of mass. Well, weight,” he corrected himself, “they didn’t really have a clear concept of the distinction between mass and weight –”

“Metric!” Trent yelled at him. “Use metric!”

They glared at each other for a moment.

“I’ll use metric,” said the biosculptor grimly, “but I may not use anesthetic.”

THE “SUBJECT” – A computerist named Eugene Yovia – stood 190 centimeters even; Trent stood 194, and Yovia had been implanted with an inskin of wildly different make than Trent’s. “I’d really like to make you a little shorter –”

“We don’t have time.”

“Unfortunately,” the biosculptor agreed. “You can slouch some, I guess. Let’s see –”

A holograph appeared in the space between them. Eugene Yovia: a man of, Trent knew, thirty-six, in decent condition. Trent had not seen a holo of the man until now, but he’d known what to expect from his databases and the Yovia interviews –

He regarded the image grimly. “Adam Selstrom.”

The biosculptor stared at it himself. “Are you serious? You want me to make you look like Selstrom?”

“Afraid so.” Trent could not take his eyes away from the holo. Jet black hair, high cheeks, gleaming white teeth, piercing blue eyes, cleft chin, a jaw that begged some random passer-by to take a swing at it – that was what always crossed Trent’s mind, anyway. “Man, people are gonna snicker behind my back.”

“And to your face.” The biosculptor glanced at the display holo floating off to his right. “Wait – Adam Selstrom’s fifty-something years old. The subject’s only thirty-six. You mean you want me to make you look like someone who’s been sculpted to look like the Man.”

“Yep.”

“Well,” said the sculptor slowly, “look at the upside, Mister Castanaveras. No one at Halfway will even see you. They’ll look at you and see an Adam Selstrom wannabe so desperate he paid for biosculpture to look like the Man.”

“He’s not even a very good actor.”

“Really?” The man looked blank. “Did you ever play the sensable
The Sun Shines on Metal?
Gregory Selstrom wrote it a couple years before his accident; Adam worked in it. ’70 or ’71. Wasn’t half bad.”

“I’ve never played it. I’m never
going
to play it.”

The sculptor was silent a moment. “Anyway. I doubt anyone’s going to notice you’re the wrong height.”

Trent said grimly, “I doubt it too.”

“The inskin’s another matter.”

“Yeah.” Trent’s inskin was an NN-II, a radio packet nerve net that was so much a part of Trent he did not quite know any longer, and hadn’t for years, where he ended and the nerve net began. The design was half biochip; the nerve net had spent the last decade growing inside Trent’s skull. It would have killed Trent to take it out.

“The subject’s jack is over the left parietal lobe, and it’s small but it is visible. I can give you a dummy jack, but there’s no way for me to make it functional.”

Trent nodded. “That should be okay. Most places where there are hardware jacks, there’s radio packet support. And places where there’s not, I’ll have to work out something else. Create a diversion. Faint. Something.”

“Faint?”

“That’s just off the top of my head,” Trent assured him. “I’ll think of something better if I need to.”

“Lord, I hope so. Aside from height, we have some other glitches too, but I wouldn’t worry too much about them. The subject carries about six kilos fat you don’t have, mostly around his stomach. I see in the psychometric that the subject recently divorced; we can explain the loss of weight as emotional trauma. Not at all uncommon –”

“I need the fat too,” said Trent.

The biosculptor looked annoyed. “Why make this harder for both of us? I can fatten you up, but I promise you, no one’s going to notice that you’re thinner than the subject, except possibly to compliment you on it. I have to stretch new skin across your abdomen and –”

“I want this as perfect as it can get.”

“You’re worrying too much,” said the biosculptor.

“Am I? Ten years ago I walked into the PKF DataWatch base on Farside, had my ass biosculpted and pretended I was one of them. They’re never going to forget it. Do you know why the PKF uses genetic analysis during personnel transfers these days? Because of me.”

The biosculptor studied the display again. “The subject can’t be a Peaceforcer, then; there’s no way you’d pass a genetic analysis. Even an amateur could look at your chart and see you’re a genie
...
and for that matter, the PKF wouldn’t tolerate an officer who looked like Adam Selstrom anyway. You’ll be going in as a civilian, then – computerist, at a guess?”

“You don’t need to know.”

The biosculptor nodded without offense. “Okay. How long will the subject have been out of touch when you make the transfer, and how long after your sculpture will it be?”

“We’ll make the transfer at Halfway, about an hour before he’s due to report to the PKF Security Chief, so there won’t be any lapse to speak of on his point from the moment he’s last seen to the moment I pick him up. Transfer is eleven days from today.”

“Then we’re going to do you in two rounds, today and day after tomorrow, so that makes your date to pass as the subject at eight days post-sculpture. You’ll be en route from Mars most of that time –”

“That’s correct.”

“Keep the boost down. Under two gees.”

“That won’t be a problem. How soon can I get myself sculpted again?”

The biosculptor frowned. “In identity as this fellow? I wouldn’t recommend it. Any good sculptor taking a deep long look at your skull is going to see evidence of multiple bouts of sculpture – unless the subject has had multiple bouts?”

“Just the one.”

The sculptor shook his head. “Don’t do it. I, and whoever else you use, are talented cutters; we haven’t left much behind. But the markers are there for a professional to see. If you have access to a cutter who’s a patriot
...
different story, but even so, flesh takes time to heal. If you find such a cutter, maybe two weeks post-sculpture.”

Trent nodded. “So I’m stuck with this face until I’m back out again.”

The biosculptor snickered. “Yep. You want the anesthetic?”

Trent said, “Please.”

SOMEWHERE AROUND HIS eighth GoodBeer, Jimmy Ramirez said, “So humanity is doomed, huh?” He shook his head. “That seems a little pessimistic.”

“I didn’t use that word,” said Trent carefully. His lips were numb. “Doomed. I didn’t say that.”

Jimmy Ramirez nodded wisely. “Ah.” He stared out across the Martian tundra. He and Trent sat together in Trent’s hospital room, out on the patio, working their way through the GoodBeer. The patio was enclosed by a bubble that gave them a panoramic view of the Martian landscape.

Olympus Mons soared up before them, off to the northwest, striking up into the darkening sky as night fell around them. Stars had begun to come out.

They
twinkled
. Trent hadn’t seen twinkling stars in six years, not since leaving Mars.

Trent sipped at his GoodBeer. “I miss Earth. I miss good coffee. I miss the feel of the wind on my face. I miss
smells
.”

“You really think the AIs are going to wipe us out?”

Trent blinked, a touch drunkenly. “Did I say that? I don’t think I said that. You’re putting words in my mouth,” he accused.

“You said they were going to try to.”

“I don’t think I said that, either. What I said was ...” Trent tried to remember. “Something about dragons? There were dragons in it, I remember that. The dragons were a good bit.”

“Check your inskin,” Jimmy suggested.

“Uhm ...” Trent thought about it. “All right.” A moment later he said, “I didn’t say the race was going to get wiped out. Just that it was going to stop mattering, one way or another, in the sweep of history. Either we’re going to destroy ourselves, or we’re going to survive; and if we survive, our children will be amazing. Project Superman didn’t know what it was doing; today we almost do. We could make
real
supermen. We could make children better than ourselves. The AIs are getting better hardware all the time; and they’re already smarter than we are. The day is coming, Jimmy, sooner than you think, when reality on the other side of Interface will be more complex – more real – than reality on this side of Interface. Our children aren’t going to look like us, Jimmy, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be our children.”

Jimmy shook his head. “My children are gonna look just like me. Brown skin, muscles, and handsome as Hell.”

Trent took a swallow of his cold beer, staring out at darkening slopes of the huge mountain. “Something better than us is coming.”

SEVERAL HOURS LATER Trent called it a night, when he was down to the dregs of his sixth or seventh beer.

“I’ve got my last procedure in the morning” – new eyes – “and then a flight to Deimos.”

Jimmy snickered. “Chandler. That old man is hot for you.”

“Oh, please.”

“So was Belinda Singer,” Jimmy pointed out. “What is it about you that makes ancient rich people get hot and bothered?”

Trent shrugged. “Charm. Grace. Good manners,” he offered, “I say
Yes, ma’am,
and
No sir.
”

“They design that into you?”

“There was no ‘they’, just Suzanne Montignet. I was hand-crafted, me.” Trent blinked. “Not that that kept her from screwing me up. Everybody
else
got the goddamn Castanaveras gene complex.”

“I bet
she
was hot for you too.”

“I was eleven when she died.”

Jimmy was silent a second. “OK, then, motherly.”

Trent sipped at the remains of his beer without responding. She had been, to the very limited degree that she was capable of it.

“It’s the charisma, man. Goddamn charisma. It’s how you got Mahliya’s attention. And never lost it.”

In the darkness, Trent could barely make out Jimmy’s features, even with his light-sensitive genie eyes. Just planes, angles, dark hollows at his cheeks and eyes. He wished he’d drunk less – Jimmy was hard to handle when he got on the prod like this: the few arguments they’d ever had, they’d both been drinking. Trent could manage it, when he was sober himself.

“That’s not fair,” he said finally. “She’s not the first woman to bounce off one of us and onto the other, either.”

Trent could hear the anger in Jimmy’s voice. “You didn’t treat her right.”

“I loved her.”

“You love lots of people,” said Jimmy. “It’s what you do. But it doesn’t seem to make a difference in what happens.” He took another drink of the GoodBeer, watching Trent with those empty holes where his eyes had been. “Loving everyone,” said Jimmy, “is almost the same thing as loving nobody.” He paused. “You’re awfully hard on the people who love you.”

F.X. CHANDLER SNICKERED when he saw Trent. Trent was a tall, reasonably muscular, pot-bellied man with a dark, brooding, strikingly handsome face. “Oh my Sweet Jesus.”

“Don’t even start with me,” Trent warned him. “I’m in a lousy mood.”

The wealthiest human being in the Solar System – the wealthiest human being in history, for that matter – received Trent for dinner at his house in Deimos.

Perhaps it was a touch inaccurate to phrase it that way. F.X. Chandler, founder of Chandler Industries, the company which had built and sold three quarters of the non-commercial vehicles in use in the System in 2080, did not merely have a house tucked away in the depths of Deimos; he owned the satellite.

Francis Xavier Chandler was an old man, even by the standards of the time; one hundred and three. He was nowhere near being the oldest living human – there were several well-documented individuals in their sixteenth decade – but he was old nonetheless. The striking thing about him was not so much his age as his vigor. A broad shouldered man with long, flowing black hair, he radiated vitality. It had crossed Trent’s mind, more than once, that he would not at all mind being an old man the way F.X. Chandler was managing it.

“Son,” said Chandler, “one of the few joys left when you reach my age is teasing know-it-alls who do foolish things.” He looked Trent over, squinting slightly. “I’d say this qualifies.”

“Man did it for his wife,” said Trent. He grinned. “Then she divorced him.”

Chandler shook his head. “Poor schmuck.”

“He may be a schmuck,” said Trent, “but Eugene Yovia is also the new Chief of Development,
Unity
Information Systems Division.”

TRENT HAD NO appetite; his final round of sculpture had been finished only that morning. He’d metabolized the beer by the time he went in for surgery, but he still felt a little off from the drugs. His incredibly expensive new eyes, grown to match the pattern of blood vessels inside the eyes of the man he would be replacing, hurt. A lot.

Chandler didn’t let Trent’s lack of appetite slow him down; he had a salad, half a loaf of fresh baked bread, and some sort of dessert brought out to him. He started with the dessert. Trent didn’t recognize the dessert, and wasn’t sure he wanted to – it involved a mixture of ice cream, fudge, nuts, and some sort of pale tubes of baked yellow cake, with cream inside them – “twinkies,” Chandler told Trent they were called, while eating his fourth tube. Trent looked away while Chandler worked on it.