This Alien Shore (8 page)

It was ... beautiful.

He read through it again and again, and each time he discovered subtler and subtler patterns embedded within it. There were nested loops that intertwined with mobius complexity, altering at each pass and then interacting with their earlier versions. There were parts that altered external code and parts that devoured it and parts that analyzed the devouring process ... and in the end the virus became something greater than it had been: more subtle, more powerful, infinitely more contagious.

It
evolved.

He put a hand to the monitor screen as if somehow that contact could bring him closer to it. He had seen self-editing infections before, but never anything of this complexity. This program would mutate within its host each and every time it ran, and send new offspring into the outernet at every opportunity. There must be thousands of copies out there already, he thought—perhaps millions—each “spore” struggling to do its job more perfectly than the last, each one handing over its store of data and then self-destructing when a more efficient version dominated it. It was survival of the fittest at its most basic level, the mathematics of success leached of all fleshbound drives. It was life, of a sort. Life as he had theorized it, life as he had known it must be, but had never seen before.

Without break for food or rest—despite his wellseeker's insistence that he needed both—he loaded in the second chip. He was familiar with outpilot programming, having worked with it before, and scanned through it quickly at first. It didn't surprise him that the segment they had given him dealt mainly with the Guild's medical programs—he had assumed it would, based on how the virus had struck—but what was a surprise was that the code wasn't as clean as he remembered it. Guild programmers were notorious for paring down their work to an absolute minimum, but this had marked redundancies throughout, and segments of code that seemed to have no other purpose than—

For a moment he almost stopped breathing. A concept had taken shape within his brain, and for a moment he felt that if he moved—or even thought too much—he would lose it.

He put the outpilot program into storage and called back the virus to his screen. He studied it again, searching for confirmation.

It had left a doorway behind it: two or three sections of code that would help its offspring back through the security wall, should they choose to invade. Why would a programmer want that? What possible purpose could it serve?

He thought he knew. He couldn't quite believe it, but what other explanation was possible?

He set up the computer to run a comparison between the two programs, then took a precious moment to push back in his seat and stretch his stiffened limbs. A glance out the window told him that the sun had set and risen and maybe risen again; in his preoccupation with the virus he had lost all sense of time. Without bothering to ask his brainware for the date—what was the point?—he ate again, and was settling down for a brief nap when his brainware flashed him a message.

MEETING WITH DEAN SUMPTER AT 10:30.

“Damn.” He called up the current time, and saw that there were only two hours until the meeting. Not long enough to finish what he was doing. He called out for the vid to connect him with the Dean's office. God willing the man would be up, and in, and approachable.

He was. “Dr. Masada. I've been expecting to hear from you.”

It was hard to switch gears, from the clean and straightforward language of code to the cluttered layering of human communication. “Sir?”

“Guildmaster Hsing spoke to me yesterday regarding your obligations here. I've agreed to have Dr. Alesia cover for you this morning, and Towcester this afternoon. We'll need you at the Standards Committee meeting tomorrow noon—no way around that one—but after that we can make do without you, if we have to.” He paused, and perhaps another man could have read some meaning into his expression. “I know how important your Guild work is to you.”

What on Guera had the Guildsman said to him, to make him so agreeable? If Masada were a different man, he might have been suspicious, but as it was, he was simply grateful for the reprieve. “Thank you, sir.” Possibly the Guild had donated a large amount to some university fund that was near and dear to Dean Sumpter's heart; the amount they had offered to Masada implied a large enough budget for that kind of gesture. And Sumpter could certainly be bought.

Guildmaster Hsing.
He hadn't thought to ask the man's name, he realized, or his rank. The fact that a Guildmaster had come all this way, forsaking control of an outworld station for more than an E-year to meet with him ... it meant that they were determined to hire him at any cost, under whatever conditions were necessary, and had sent a man with the authority to make binding promises. The Guild clearly didn't intend to take no for an answer.

Energized by that discovery—and by his sudden reprieve from scholastic duty—he took up the headset again to see what his comparison program had uncovered.

“I
t's called a
hide-and-seek,”
he told the Guildmaster. “A sophisticated spy program meant to invade your outpilot's brainware, copy certain information into its code, and then spin off ‘spore' programs to reinfest the outemet. Meanwhile it would be improving itself and its offspring as well, and creating a back door through your security programs. So that if someday a version developed which could uncover more of your secrets it would have a guaranteed way back in.”

“Why did it attack our outpilot?”

“I believe that may have been an accident. A side effect, if you like, of the virus' true function. This one was designed to collect data during the pilot's transition period; it may have simply dominated his brainware at the moment when he needed full access to his circuits. I would need more time to be sure of that,” he cautioned, “but right now it's my best guess.”

“All right. All right.” The Guildmaster nodded slowly as he processed that information. “First question: can you stop it?”

“You mean an antibody program? Surely your own people have one in place by now.”

“We have three, to be exact. The best odds our designers will give us regarding their success aren't reassuring. We're hoping you can do better.”

Part of Masada's reputation came from never promising anything he couldn't deliver. Thus he considered carefully before answering. “In a machine environment, I could guarantee you success. But this is the human brain we're talking about,” he reminded him. “Every program that runs in the brain is altered by it, we know that. Even the virus itself will be affected by the brain it invades. Can I try to predict the overall pattern of such changes, allow for their effect, design a system to weed out every version of the infection that might evolve? In the short term, yes. But in the long term?” He paused. “Could any observer studying Earth's dinosaurs have predicted that birds would descend from them? Much less set a trap that would be effective for a bluejay, millions of years later? I can do my best. Given my special perspective, it will probably be better than your programmers could do. But it won't be perfect. Nothing can be.”

The Guildmaster nodded grimly, acknowledging the information. “What about determining the virus' source?”

For a minute he didn't answer. Any response he might give began with the same statement, and that was a commitment he wasn't ready to make. “The designer's mark will be evident in his work,” he said at last, “and like any signature, it can be traced. There are a handful of subtle patterns within this virus which might be viewed as representative of its creator's style. But to locate other programs with that same signature one would need an almost infinite database, and unlimited access—”

He stopped himself.

Not in time.

“You would have that,” the Guildmaster told him, “in the outemet.”

He said nothing. There were still doubts. Fears.

“What else?” the man prompted.

“Track down the spores,” he said. Grateful for the temporary reprieve. “See if there's a pattern to the mutation that can be analyzed. It's unlikely that a programmer this good would send out his virus and then just wait for random chance to bring it back within reach. More likely there's some kind of homing pattern embedded in the code, or an address he can use to retrieve it. If he's good—really good—it won't express for generations.”

“You'd have to wait for it to come out naturally?”

“Not necessarily. One might catch a hint of underlying structure in the pattern of mutation and extrapolate from there. Or—”

Words suddenly failed him. It's
all
theory, he thought, just
theory. There's never been anything like this before.

“Quite a challenge,” the Guildmaster suggested.

It was. A unique one. He might never see its like again.

He forced himself to draw in a deep breath. “How much freedom would I have?”

The Guildmaster spread his hands. “We set you loose in the outworlds. We foot your budget for whatever travel you deem necessary. Your instincts have served us well in the past; we trust them now. All you need do is report to our people at regular intervals so we can follow your progress.”

“They won't interfere?”

There was a pause. “You have my word.”

“All right,” he said. He could taste the power of the words: sealing his fate, closing off a thousand possible futures to channel him toward one. The sensation was vertiginous. “All right. I'll go.”

The man offered his hand to seal the bargain. Masada braced himself, then grasped it. “I'll see that a debit account is opened for you. The next shuttle leaves first thing Twos-day. Can you be ready?”

He had meetings, assignments, scholastic obligations ... but the Guild would take care of all that. No one would argue with them. No one would defy the people who made interstellar flight possible. The price was simply too high.

That price will soon be paid,
he thought.
And I will be choosing its victim.

“Dr. Masada?”

He forced himself to nod. “I'll be ready.”

Deal closed.