Tony Daniel (50 page)

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.”

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.”

from

First Constitutional Congress of

the Cloudships of the Outer System

April 2, 3013 (e-standard)

a transcript

C. Lebedev: To continue, then, Mr. Chairman . . . freedom . . . serve another without . . . ah, here we are. All thinking entities are people. Not only do we, as a people, affirm this freedom of thought, we are also inalterably and unconditionally opposed to those who would deny it to us. We declare our right as a government of the people to fight and defend ourselves, to educate our young in the principles of freedom, and to establish conditions of justice and security within our society that ensure the continuation and propagation of our freedom. Thinking must be protected and nourished. It is what defines us as a species, whatever form its particular instantiation may take, be it biological, physical, or by some other means as yet to be discovered or defined. Thinking precedes both existence and essence, and plurality is inextricably bound to its nature. The one has no meaning without the many. It is requisite upon our republican democracy to preserve and protect the plurality, as well as the freedom, of thought. They are the same. Any law or entity that arrogates the right to oppose plurality we find abominable, and we will oppose it as a people with all our hearts, minds, and strength. Any thinking individual, no matter how misguided or mistaken, shall have the right to think and express his, her, or its thoughts so long as that expression does not take the form of coercion. These are the principles upon which our government shall be based, and we, the people, do hereby establish them by the means that follow . . . er, that’s it. The next part is Section Two, Mr. Chairman.

C. Mencken: Very well. Chair recognizes Cloudship Ahab.

C. Ahab: Mr. Chairman and honorable ships, I have seen this document in its entirety, and I must say to you that it is gravely flawed.

C. Mencken: Please confine yourself to discussion of the preamble, Cloudship Ahab.

C. Ahab: I shall, Mr. Chairman. Gravely flawed, I say, beginning with this so-called preamble. Right of anybody to think anything they damned well please? Why, the very thing contradicts itself. If anyone can think anything, then how the hell could these so-called “framers” know that freedom
is
the basic principle? In this life, it is the forceful who are above the weak, the strong-minded are over the meek. You may not like it, but there it is. Where in this document is there one word about
character
? About will? No, sir, I do not find it! What the people need is strong medicine, not this weak tonic, this sop and placebo. We may not like the inner system, but there is a strong mind there, and we must respect that strength. As a matter of fact, we should not be debating whether or not to oppose that mind, but how we might join with it in common cause, for the betterment of the species. The strong must lead the weak. This is the law of survival to which we should bow—to which we must bow. Survival of the fittest. And the truth—however unpalatable it may be to minds of a narrower perspective—is that
we
and Amés are the strongest. It is only a matter of time until we win in the war for survival, which is above all other wars, and from which we cannot escape. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

C. Mencken: All right. What? Yes, er . . . the chair recognizes Cloudship Mark Twain.

C. Mark Twain: Well, Ahab has a pretty good point there, but I’m not so sure it is the one he intended to make. Now consider this survival of the fittest thing for a moment. If we take that as a given, then what in the world makes him think that we might band with another in common cause? Either we’re inalterably at one another’s throats, or we’re not, according to Old Ahab’s logic.

C. Ahab: Who are you calling old?

C. Mark Twain: I believe that you and I started out in the asteroid belt together, old boy. Used to be friends, as I recall, until you started taking yourself so goddamn seriously. I got a right to calling you old if I call myself the same, and I assure you, sir, I am ancient!

C. Ahab: Mr. Chairman!

C. Mencken: Please confine yourself to the matter under consideration, Cloudship Mark Twain. And that is not either your age or Ahab’s. Believe me, you’re both a couple of young cubs to me.

C. Mark Twain: Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Chairman, and I will do as you say. Now, it seems to me that by the good Cloudship Ahab’s logic, it’s all a big fight to see who is the biggest dog, and it’s going to come down to us and Amés in the end scrapping it out until one or the other of us gets hold of a throat and bites. In that case, we might consider that a pack can bring down the feistiest lone wolf. If I were Ahab, I would consider getting together all those weaker dogs and ganging up on the other big dog, then, when he’s all through and done for, why then I’d take out the littler dogs one by one. That, it seems to me, is where this survival of the fittest nonsense should lead us. But take a look at nature. It’s full of competition, certainly, but there is also a fair degree of cooperation, as well. Back when I was a biological human, I was mighty glad that my mitochondria cooperated with my DNA, for example, though the two of them started out as separate creatures. But that is enough for that line of argument, my friends and neighbors, for we are human beings, and we have moved beyond and above mere survival. Surviving is just
one
of the things we do. Maybe old survival itself saw its own limitations, so it bred itself a better alternative. At least that’s what I think on my good days. Let us make this a good day, friends, and vote to adopt this preamble.

Chamber Left: Hear, hear!

C. Mencken: Thank you, Cloudship Mark Twain. Chair recognizes Cloudship al-Farghani.

Leo knew the kid must be bored and scared at the same time, and she was still feeling acute, unconscious pangs of separation from her family, if he was reading the signs right. He wished there was more he could do for Aubry.

And now there was Jill—this amazing creature come out of the blue. She was a gorgeous thing—all shapely muscle and bone. Her hair was black, and her eyes were a dark blue, more like deep space than like Earth’s sky. She had a spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks that almost might appear to be whiskers in some light.

And there was that little tremble to Jill, as if her heart were beating much faster than a normal human’s, and that somewhere under her woman’s skin the jill ferret lurked in its den, waiting until biting was needed.

“So, you’re looking for somebody named Alethea.”

“Somebody or something.”

“Something? What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. She used to be a woman, but now she’s scattered.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I don’t know much more myself. But I’m going to find her.”

“And that’s what you’re trying to do?”

“Find her and save her.”

“Why?”

“I promised that I would.”

“Where do you think she is, then?” said Leo. “Maybe I can help.”

“That’s why I saved you. Tod said he thought you could help.”

“He told you that?”

“He wouldn’t let me take him to safety after we fought our way out of the DI sweepers. He told me to go back and find the changeling girl and the leprechaun. That they would know the answer to the question I wanted answered.”