Mappa Mundi (53 page)

She sat on the toilet seat, watching her hand swell and redden. When it finally began to hurt more than she could bear, she was calm enough to come out and get down to business.

Jude watched the hired driver taking his car away from the end of the street. The key to the U-Stor-It was still taped under the seat. He'd sent Jenny Black Eagle a message that would tell her what to do if the time came for that. He thought there was no way it would ever get public or go to court, but White Horse's case had at last got a hearing. The car, her new vehicle for the next world, was the last thing he had to take care of, and as it turned the corner and made its way into the northbound traffic he genuinely did feel a sense of lightness for the first time in weeks.

He didn't go back in straight away, but walked along the familiar streets, trying to figure out what to expect. The legal papers would be lodged by now, and if he was right about Mary, then he could anticipate some kind of visit very shortly. Not a friendly one. He'd feel bad about that if it happened. He hoped it wouldn't.

His hopes were dashed as a black and grey BMW pulled up to the curb a half hour later as he was on the return journey. Mary lowered the darkened electric window on the passenger side. She was wearing her sunglasses but her face didn't show any sign of feeling either angry or surprised.

“Get in,” she said.

Jude looked the length of the street towards his apartment. No, there wasn't anything worth going back for. He opened the door and sat down in the soft leather. On the steering wheel he saw that she had two fingers taped up.

They both stared through the windshield. He sensed that she was searching for the right words and wasn't finding them. He had nothing to say either.

In the end she stepped on the gas and pulled away. He wasn't surprised when she crossed Arlington Memorial Bridge and then started to take roads out of town, moving south.

“I guess you've resigned, then,” he said after a time.

She didn't turn her head. “I guess you have, too.”

They didn't speak again. The roads led into Virginia towards the spine of the Appalachians. Finally, as evening drew on, they entered a National Park area, took a diversion off the Skyline Drive, passed two No Thru-road signs, and then the car stopped. Mary, who had driven without a pause, rested her forehead on the wheel as the engine muttered into silence. They were in a small settlement that Jude thought he'd seen signposted as Stone Spring. It meant nothing to him. The car was sitting on blacktop outside the Spring Laundromat. To his left the Bake'n'Bagel had already closed for the day. A stray dog, wiry and with an eye on the car, ran sniffing along the store fronts and then vanished through a clot of weeds on the corner. The place seemed uninhabited.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“End of the road.” She took her gun out of its holster, checked the load, put it back, and nodded at him. “Get out.”

He still had his gun, but not with him. It was back at the apartment, locked in the wall safe. He got out.

The sound of the car doors closing was a shock in the quiet. Apart from this single road he could see a few tracks branching away, perhaps to more secluded lots in the woods. Birdsong and the hum of insects gave the early evening a drowsy feel. The sun was just dropping through the trees on his left.

Mary led the way across the street and up the steps of a big grey clapboard house with white window frames and a turret at its road-facing corner. At her knock the door was opened by a man in a military
uniform, although the entrance hall was so dark that Jude didn't see his insignia clearly.

She turned as soon as the door was closed.

“You'll stay here for now.”

Jude glanced around. Apart from the guard on the door there was no sign of life.

“The guard will always be here. There are automated locks and security. If you try to leave you will be shot on sight.” She gestured at his jailer and the man opened the front door again for her.

She held out her hand. “Give me your Pad.”

He gave it to her and she put it in her jacket's inner front pocket.

Seeing that she meant to leave Jude asked, “What am I waiting for?”

Mary didn't pause in her exit, only glanced obliquely over her shoulder, not making eye contact as she replied, “Don't ask and you won't be disappointed.”

She was halfway through the door when he added, bitterly, “You've got a fucking nerve, playing it like you're the one with a grievance.”

She didn't stop.

The guard closed the door.

The house was very quiet.

Mary sat in the car with her head in her hands. She breathed through her fingers, trying for a long, slow breath, but she didn't get anything except gasping and drowning sensations until long after it was dark.

Natalie sat at her desk, staring into space. It was now three weeks since she had arrived. Ian's data had bridged the critical gaps in the program. She was left with the task Guskov had set her, but since that night when in some misguided moment of emotional breakdown she'd actually felt sorry for the wily old goat/idealistic old fool (delete depending on mood) she'd been doing a lot of thinking. She'd tried to figure out what kind of program she could write for the Mappaware that did everyone some good, nobody any harm, and prevented hostile interventions in the future. It was the equivalent of asking what it was that made people do bad things and trying to factor it out. Obviously, bad things had many definitions depending on which end of them you were at, and many causes—perhaps infinitely many.

She was staring into space because there was nothing to look at and she wasn't sure how long she'd been sitting there. Every so often she progressed and made notes. When she was stuck she sat and did nothing. Eventually solutions rose to the surface and became thoughts; she didn't care where they were coming from.

She thought that once Mappa Mundi was delivered the US and Europeans would go for a preemptive strike. It wasn't like nuclear war: nobody was going to die. In fact, from the joint security and governmental perspective things should improve no end. Human rights and
the sanctity of individual personality didn't enter into it because governments had probably already convinced themselves that this was a kind of superdevice that would end all wars and turn the world into a kind of utopia.

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.”