This Alien Shore (7 page)

As always, the
nantana's
insistence on questioning the obvious irritated him. “What are the conditions?”

“You'll have full access to the details of our own investigation, and to the Guild members in charge. You can have an assistant if you want—”

Another
nantana?
God forbid. “I work alone.”

The Guildsman bowed his head. “As you wish. Needless to say, all your expenses will be covered, all equipment you require will be supplied, any support which you request will be provided. And of course, being part of the outernet, you'll have access to unlimited data—”

Masada stiffened. “Part of the outernet?”

For a moment the Guildsman was silent. No doubt he was digesting Masada's statement, perhaps even running it through his brainware to isolate the cause of his objection. At last he said, “It was assumed that you would come to the outworlds. An investigation like this can hardly be managed with a sizable time lag in communication.”

He said it quietly, firmly: “I have never left Guera.”

The Guildsman spread his hands as if in offering. “Then this is a very special opportunity, Dr. Masada. One long overdue, for a theorist of your stature.”

Leave Guera. He'd considered it before, when professional opportunities beckoned, but each time he had chosen to stay where he was. It was the easier course. More comfortable. Safer. Could the
nantana
understand that? Or would Masada have to find words to express his misgiving, to give it parameters?”

After a very long silence, he dared, “You're asking me to work among aliens.”

The Guildsman drew in a sharp breath. “If you mean the Hausman Variants, let me remind you that you are one, Dr. Masada. As am I. The fact that our ancestors didn't suffer from any somatic distortion doesn't mean they weren't altered. You of all people should know that.”

He shook his head, frustrated by the man's lack of understanding. “I didn't mean that. You should know I didn't mean that.” Now it was his turn to lean forward on the table, not because it felt natural to him—such posturing never did—but because he knew intellectually that it would give his words more weight. “Must I remind you how the Terrans feel about my kaja? The very cognitive style which makes me so valuable on Guera is considered ‘abnormal' among those people. They did everything they could to eradicate it from their gene pool, and if by some unlucky chance it surfaces now despite those efforts, they use drugs or DNA therapy to ‘correct' it. Even if the price of that correction is the crippling of a mind, the death of a unique human soul. These are the people you want me to work among? The Terrans are more alien to me than any Hausman Variants ever could be. And you know they dominate the outworlds.”

“Dr. Masada.” The Guildsman's tone had changed in some subtle way, but Masada lacked the skill to interpret it. “You're a Holist—some say the father of Holism. Don't you want to see the outworlds for yourself? You've been theorizing about the outernet for years; don't you want to experience it for yourself, just once? I'm offering you that opportunity. Can you look at me and honestly say that it has no appeal?”

When Masada said nothing, he reached into a fold of his sleeve and brought forth a small data chip. “We ask only that you look at this.” He slid the chip across the table until it was within Masada's reach. “No more.” Through its thin cover the spectral shimmer of a storage disk could be seen. “It contains a copy of the virus we isolated, as well as our offer. We ask only that you consider both before you make your final decision.”

For a moment Masada said nothing. Did nothing. Then, very slowly, he reached out and took the small chip in his hand. Tiny words shimmered on its surface, along with an icon meant to trigger defensive programs in any equipment reading it. WARNING, it said. GRADE A CONTAGIOUS
MATERIAL.
LEVEL 1 PRECAUTIONS REQUIRED. He considered for a moment, then said, “I'll need a copy of the code it was embedded in.”

The Guildsman scowled, and for a moment Masada thought he might refuse his request. He had, after all, asked for a copy of one of the Guild's most secret programs. Never mind that the request was a valid one; it was also a test of how much they trusted him, and how much they wanted him on this project.

For a long minute the Guildsman said nothing, merely gazed at him through narrowed eyes as if that expression could give him access to the man's brain. Finally, with a short, stiff nod, he pulled a second chip out of his sleeve and slid it across the table. It was the proper answer, and Masada nodded his approval.

“How much time do I have?” Masada asked.

“As much as you require.” The Guildsman's tone made it clear that he understood the first phase of their negotiations was now complete. Either the virus would prove interesting enough to lure Kio Masada from his Gueran refuge, or it would not; mere words could no longer change that. “Take your time. Evaluate the situation. Our offer is on the first chip, along with instructions for contacting me. I'll wait to hear from you.”

He stood then, and offered his hand. Masada hesitated only briefly, then clasped it. Such contact with strangers was uncomfortable for him, but the Guildsman was
nantana
and would require ritual closure. In matters like this, his kaja had precedence.

It's a small price to pay,
Masada mused,
for a social structure that enables aliens to communicate.

If only the outworlds were equally civilized!

H
e didn't return to his apartment until after all the day's obligations had been dealt with, because he knew himself all too well; once he got wrapped up in some new cognitive puzzle he was likely to forget mundane things like meetings, and deadlines, and even meals. Once, when he had been in the middle of a particularly difficult project, he had even shut down part of his brainware because its constant reminders of an upcoming faculty session were distracting him.

It had been hard not to think about the Guild's offer for so many hours. Hard not to put on a headset and upload the small chip he carried, to get a look at the virus responsible for it. Only the fact that such rashness might prove downright suicidal enabled him to make it through the day, to wait until he returned to the one place on Guera where he could work undisturbed, and in safety.

His apartment was small and neat, furnished simply and without aesthetic fanfare. In the comer of the living room a three-tiered keyboard loomed, sleek and polished, and as he entered, he went over to it and put a hand to it: gently, reverently, as the ancient Jews had done when they touched their fingers to a piece of holy scripture upon entering a home. It had been his wife's, her pride and joy. Now, with her gone, it served as a repository of memories, pictures frozen in time that were brought to life each evening by this ritual touch.

He saw her sitting there, slender and graceful, her fingers dancing over the keys in the old style of performance (she disdained to use the headset for composition, saying she liked the feel of the music in her hands), flicking upward for one note out of a hundred to adjust the tone of the instrument, always striving for perfection. Once she had begun a piece, nothing could distract her, and if for some reason she needed to play one part again, she began the whole thing from the beginning, as if incapable of judging a handful of notes out of context.

She had been iru, as he was, and their marriage had been based on that one compatibility. It was enough. He understood the periodic distortions in sensory perception that affected her interactive skills; she understood that for the sake of his work he had programmed his brainware to compensate for such distortions, and thus had sacrificed a portion of his natural essence. He understood that when she performed—weaving together strands of music from Bach to Omesi, creating a tapestry of musical history that critics called
breathtaking
and
insightful
—she was making contact with something far greater than a human soul could understand, a mathematical perfection whose mere shadow inspired symphonies. She understood that only in his work could he attain the control he longed for, sculpting patterns of computer code with the same meticulous care that a Classical Greek artist might have used to refine his marble masterpieces. He hadn't loved her, not in the way a
nantana
would understand the word; he lacked the neural circuitry necessary to experience that kind of emotion. But their ten years of marriage had been good years, an oasis of companionship in the life of a kaja that all too often tended toward isolation ...

And then there was the pod accident.

And the oasis was gone.

With a sigh he let his hand fall from the keyboard, allowing the memories to fade. Despite his eagerness to begin work he forced himself to go into the kitchen and eat a hurried meal, not tasting it, not even caring what it was, merely acknowledging the need for caloric energy in the hours that lay ahead. Then and only then did he move into his office, which had been set up in the apartment's second bedroom. In addition to stacks of state-of-the-art equipment—some purchased, some lent to him by the university, some supplied by companies for his analysis—there were several old dinosaurs of technology, bulky processors and flatscreen monitors that had no place in modem life, but which were necessary for the safe handling of contagious material. He set the first chip down before them, printed side up. GRADE
A CONTAGIOUS MATERIAL. LEVEL 1 PRECAUTIONS REQUIRED.

It was time.

In an insulated safe at the end of the room he kept half a dozen sterile headsets, prepared for just such a moment; he retrieved one of them and ran it through a decontamination procedure again, just in case. The process took a while, and he watched it through each step as his program matched every byte of the headset's machine code to a copy of the original. Such extreme precautions were rarely required, but a Level One contaminant demanded it. At last it was confirmed to be both free of infection, and safe from any marginal damage that a past infection might have caused. He'd had enough “healthy” systems fouled up by the latter to know just how important that was.

Carefully then, with meticulous clarity, he visualized the series of icons that would shut down his brainware response systems. Because sight was the most easily manipulated of all the human senses, it had been the centerpiece of brainware control since the first biotech system was inserted in a human subject centuries ago. The result was a nearly perfect interface; the waking brain couldn't tell the difference between images processed by the optic nerve, those produced by conscious visualization, and those supplied by a mechanical source. It was a useful system, and one which human society now totally depended upon, but it had its drawbacks.

Look at a virus too closely and your brainware might accept it as input; focus your vision on its invasive code and you might become infected yourself. Handling such material required a sealed brain, one which would accept no new input. The sensation of that was acutely claustrophobic, but it was something Masada had done before, and he took a few deep breaths and waited, letting his wellseeker deal with the rising tide of panic. There were those who couldn't handle the sensation, he knew, but to him it was just one more facet of his work. And any pain which allowed him to get closer to this virus was a pain worth enduring.

He laid out the sterile headset before him, slid the chip into it, uploaded its contents. (Was this what biohazard experts felt like when they handled a bacterium that could decimate planets? When they knew that one prick of their safesuit would give the enemy access to their own flesh?) He used a thin cord to connect the headset to an old-fashioned monitor, and saw the latter flicker to life as contact was made. Then: the U-shaped device was settled onto his head, its receivers made contact with the transmitters implanted just behind his ears, and he visualized the commands that would set the whole system to working.

There was introductory material on the chip, which basically reviewed what the Guildsman had told him. He fast-scanned that part, glanced briefly at the Guild's offer for his services (and it was indeed generous, but money wasn't the main issue here), and then had to give the program his Guild security codes in order to proceed. Few surprises there. The program digested his response, mused silently for a second or two ... and then the virus itself began to scroll onto the screen.

It was a vast creature, seemingly endless. It took hours just to scan the code, hours more to go over parts of it in detail. At some point his brainware alerted him to the need for nourishment. He ignored it. Hours later, it alerted him to the need for sleep. He ignored that, too.

The virus was complex. It was effective. It was fertile.