The Goliath Stone (11 page)

“Owls and crows. They’ll attack on sight any processing system that doesn’t show the key characteristics of the hardwired system.”

She was aghast. “Toby,
we
don’t have that system!”

“No. But we’re already on Earth. We’re in accordance with the program. May, honestly, some intensely fanatical people sat around for years trying to think of ways to deliberately screw this up. The problem is not a programming error.”

“Then what?”

He shook his head. “My best guess is revolution.”

“And that’s not an error?”

“No. It’s emergent behavior. It’s like when you put together the nursing instinct, unfocused aggression, and alcohol, and get rugby players wearing fake breasts. It’s—”

While he waited for her to stop laughing he finished the loaves and set them aside to rise.

“Better?” he said.

“A little,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“Emergent behavior. You don’t know what something’s going to do until it does it. It’s why the Global Warming scare didn’t end until the Great Chicago Blizzard.”

“I still don’t believe that was the reason they stopped. It killed maybe five thousand people. The ban on DDT killed more than that every day. The Soylents wouldn’t have stopped because they killed someone by being wrong.”

“No, but they would have stopped because they were dead. There were some kids who died when they were trapped in a school with an ‘environment-friendly’ heating system. One of them was the granddaughter of a union boss. Around a hundred key grantsuckers died in the next six months. Connors told me about it. He was scary good at connecting the dots. I got my first gray hairs after he explained why a cost accountant was put in charge of the Vietnam War.”

May was troubled. “I’m sorry that’s what it took to make it stop.”

Toby nodded. “So am I, but I’m not surprised. Connors used to say one man’s petty spite can do more good than any number of saintly reformers. He was a godawful cynic … which he defined as someone who loves mankind but is sick of being cheated on. —Anyway, what I was getting at is, you can wave your hands all day, but to predict results in a complex system, you need something more complex than the system you’re trying to predict.”

“Like the Human Genome Project stalling out as soon as the mapping was done.”

“Exactly. Everything interacted and nobody could figure out what did what when.”

“Except Connors,” she said.

Toby opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“You hadn’t realized,” she said.

He shook his head.

“I did almost as soon as you mentioned his idea. The nanos can’t just fix DNA within a cell, they have to compare each cell to the next to make sure the best copy of a given chromosome is what’s used. The frayed parts on the ends have to be rebuilt, so that comes from sex cells. Otherwise you have nice clean chromosomes, but they’re all old. That means the nanos are also comparing all the mutations that cropped up in your life with what you started with. The nanos are also implementing the changes.”

“That means there’s more than one or two nanos per cell,” he said.

“I realized that when my skin went red,” she said. “They’re smaller than a virus. There must be dozens per cell.” She looked alarmed. “Why are you looking like that?”

He didn’t know what he looked like, but he said, “There can be thousands of mitochondria per eukaryotic cell. I’d been assuming one or two nanos were hooked up to each cell, and that’s probably what it is for most people. But if the program that was loaded into ours used our intestinal bacteria for raw materials—we’re talking
pounds
.”

“Ugh.”

“Oh. Sorry, wearing my doctor hat.”

“It’s okay, go on.”

“The thing is, we could easily have a nano attached to every mitochondrion in our bodies. —My God, of course we do. The man had fibromyalgia, the first thing he’d have designed them to do is clean calcium phosphate out of mitochondria! —If they’re all in a network, it can
definitely
do a simulation of what shape the protein made by a mutated gene will be, and how it’ll interact with … everything.”

“Toby, even with limited connections, could something that big take over?”

“I don’t think it would. It’d be too busy. The cluster for a given cell is almost certainly supervising the operation of the cell. The network’s responding to what we want our bodies to do, but it’s not interfering with our brains, or we wouldn’t be discussing it.”

“So how do we find out if the network’s that big?”

He tilted his head and half-smiled. “The color change is a big hint, but I can think of a way to confirm it.” Before he could lose the nerve, he picked up the knife he’d used to divide the dough into baguettes and slashed it across his left palm.

“
Toby!
”

“I thought it would close up,” he said, staring at his hand.

“Where’s your bag?”

“Don’t need it,” he said, and showed her the thin scratch across his palm.

“Uh,” she said.

“It didn’t let the knife through,” he said. “Filaments. Connors must have deliberately overridden that to let them draw blood today. I doubt anything short of artillery shrapnel could get in otherwise.”

After they were both silent for a long moment, May said in a very small voice, “Toby?”

“Yes?”

“Did he wear glasses?”

They kept setting each other off for quite a while, their laughter tinged with hysteria. It might have stopped earlier if he’d had the presence of mind not to say “Yes” the first time they both calmed down.

*   *   *

He finally got the bread into the oven, then got out the phone again and called. He got voice mail. “Mycroft, we need to discuss the issue of speciation,” he said, and signed off.

May was wide-eyed when he looked at her. “You’re afraid we’re not human.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Toby, I think that’s not the question anymore. I think in a thousand years we may be the definition of human.”

They certainly could still be alive. “I’m not sure that’s better.”

“Neither am I.”

He was thinking very hard about what other effects there might be when May said, “Toby, do you want to have a baby?”

“That’s undoubtedly an option,” he said absently, “but I’d rather it was you. —Ow! What was that—oh. Sorry. Distracted. Yes.”

She seemed surprised at the swiftness of his answer, but said, “Oh. Sorry. Good. —At least we know I’ll be fertile.”

“I’d say the neighbors know,” he said.

She was already red, but flustering still showed. “Shut
up
! I’m not that loud!”

Holding his arm where she’d smacked it, he said, “Okay.”

“Am I really?”

“What?”

“Am I really that— Oh shut up!”

“Ow!”

Abruptly she looked worried. “Toby, did that actually hurt?”

In some surprise, he said, “No. I reacted to the noise.”

“Good. I was afraid we were getting stronger too.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Not by much, anyway. At the very least, our joints would need to be broader to avoid dislocating them. This skeleton is evolved for something that stood maybe four foot six and was malnourished to boot. It’s why—” He stopped, blinked, and went on, “It’s why I
used
to have back pains. The connections are holding things together, but they’re not pulling with us. Strictly human strength.”

“Toby, a berserk can pick up a
car
.”

“Yeah, but he’s ruined after— Oh, boy. Oh crap. They hold tissues together. And communication means they transfer energy. Like from one cell to another. What time is the weightlifting competition?”

“Two more days.”

“You read the whole program?” he said, startled.

She looked thoughtful. “Apparently. I did page through it. These things are doing wonders for my memory.”

Toby found that more worrisome than getting stronger. “That gives rise to some disturbing ideas,” he said.

“Like?”

“Like when I said cutting his head off might not kill him. They have to have kept his heart beating and his neurons firing when he was executed. If he’s got all his memories copied into the network, and the bleeding is stopped—which it would be—it could grow back.”

May stared at him, visibly swallowed, and said, “
Who Goes There?
”

“Yeah. He’s even got the rubber suit.”

“He who the what?”

Toby was surprised. “The first movie from that story. The monster was James Arness in a rubber suit. Later went on to play Marshall Dillon in
Gunsmoke
?”

May studied him for a moment, then said, “And you say Connors used to throw enough obscure references into the conversation to disturb
you
?”

Toby chuckled. “As a matter of fact, I learned about both those things from him. Checked out the show online. Given the social context it was well done. Good writing. The movie was kind of weak. First remake was okayish, but it was the second that was so good it was slapped with an NC-17 rating. Apparently somebody didn’t want kids thinking about how smiling helpful people might just be trying to take over your mind.”

“I never should have dafiated.” She sighed. “There was just so much to do.”

“Yeah. I don’t even know what…” He reflected. “I wonder what science fiction
is
doing these days? The real stuff, not Hollywood.”

She grinned. “Infiltrating.”

“More than it used to?”

“Oh, yes. Pick up a romance novel sometime. In between the softcore there’s an awful lot of ‘Should I marry the rich heir to the local windmill farm or the honest older man who lost his money and his front teeth trying to legalize pulp conversion?’ Subversives never sleep.”

“Three thumbs up. But I meant fandom.”

“No idea.” She took him by the hand, led him around the counter and to the living room, and started up the screens.

After a while, May said, “Well, not a lot of conventions in the U.S. Large assemblies of technically minded people need a permit from DHS. GISS. Except for England, Europe’s just as bad. Good grief. Nairobi U has had a Science Fiction College for years and funds a convention every
month
. The college has just established a Tobias Glyer Memorial Scholarship Fund. No action in Haiti, but they’re still short of topsoil. Hang on … Haiti’s building an OTEC plant at Cap Haitien. Since January. You got anything?”

“Westralia has a Con in Perth in six weeks. With Wade Curtis. Who is over a hundred and twenty.”

May sat with her mouth hanging open for a moment, then said, “Connors a big Curtis fan?”

“That seems fairly likely, wouldn’t you say? But that sounds like Connors must have had something life-extending made before he went to prison. Curtis was older then than Connors is now. Jane Curtis is still alive too. —Well, of course she is,” he told himself.

“So he was treating prostitutes before he went to prison?”

“I hadn’t thought about it. Seems likely.”

“I’d have said certain. I hardly think Connors stuck his own tongue into Curtis’s mouth. Or into his wife’s.”

“I doubt anyone did except each other. Curtis had combat experience. He wouldn’t have been successfully ambushed. I wonder how it was delivered.” He looked in vain for a phone number or e-mail address. “Can’t contact him to ask.”

“We know where he’ll be on August twenty-third.”

Toby stared. “You want to
go to Australia
so we can say hi to somebody?”

“No, actually I want to go to the Moon so we can play darts at forty paces, but this is what’s available. Toby, you
created life
to hopefully end poverty forever, I sent it into space to do the job, and a friend of yours has used it to make us young again. This is just an airplane ride. If you can’t get used to an age of miracles, at least try to get used to having money.”

“Easy for you to say. You grew up with it,” he said.

“Okay, it takes a generation or two. You’ve got that and more. Get started now. You want me to make the reservations?”

He nodded. “I’d better check the bread anyway.”

He was getting the loaves out when she called out, “We have reservations.”

“That was quick.”

“We already did. All I had to do was confirm them. Ambrose Hawking and October Kroft have a honeymoon cabin on a Last Continent Skyhook on August eighteenth.”

“A
zeppelin
?” When the Westralians had finally gotten fed up and seceded, a host of new industries had started there to take advantage of the tax structure. After various other governments had begun harassing the successful outfits to protect their own campaign contributors, a corporate alliance had formed under the name Last Continent, giving them enough muscle to fight back effectively.

One of the screwy ideas that hadn’t been able to get backing elsewhere was the manufacture of hot-nitrogen airships for the luxury tourist trade. “It’s probably not a great idea to use the German term with Aussies. They learn history. Anyway, it’s all that’s open. Reservation was made last week.”

“Connors strikes again.”

“Yep. You know, I’m not sure I wanted to meet him anyway. I’m not used to talking with people who are smarter than I am.”

“Then I better do the talking when we see Curtis. Connors met him a few times. He said it felt really weird not to be the smartest one in the room.”

“Curtis is smarter than Connors?”

“Yes. And that’s
in the opinion of Connors
.” Toby tore off a chunk of loaf, split it, slathered it with butter, poured a glass of milk, and brought them out. “Bread?”

“I’m still full.” May inhaled, fluttered her eyelids, sighed happily, picked up the bread, and took a bite. “God bless the Egyptians,” she said indistinctly.

“And GM foods,” Toby said.

“?”

“Somebody once took apart wheat DNA and found it was a cross between four different wild grasses. Had to be deliberate. Some precivilization woman must have gotten very tired of the good stuff blowing away when she threshed seeds to go with whatever the hunters brought home.”

May swallowed, said, “Poor thing didn’t even have any SF to read,” and took another bite.