Tony Daniel (46 page)

C. Grieg: Mr. Chairman, I move we debate this resolution in sections, beginning with this unfortunate and misguided preamble.

C. Lebedev: I’m not even finished with
that
, you sour old meteor eater—

C. Mencken: Order! I’ll have order. Now, Cloudship Grieg, you know very well that you are not making a point of order when you move—

Chamber Right: Let us vote it!

Chamber Left: Let him finish reading it, for Christ’s sake!

C. Mencken: Shall we then take the debate in sections?

C. Cezanne: Whose side are you on?

C. Austen: If we discuss the preamble, are we not really speaking of the entire document? Let’s get on with this. I second the motion!

C. Mencken: There is no motion.

C. Austen: Then I make it.

C. Mencken: Make what?

C. Austen: I move that Lebedev read his preamble, and then we debate and vote on it,
as a preamble
.

C. Mencken: Good Lord. All right. All in favor of the motion by Cloudship Austen?

Chamber Left: There is no second!

Chamber Right: Second!

C. Mencken: All in favor?

Chamber: Aye!

C. Mencken: Opposed?

Chamber: Nay!

C. Mencken: Did I hear that right? Mostly ayes?

Chamber Reporter: Yes, sir.

C. Mencken: The ayes have it. Finish your preamble, Cloudship Lebedev, and we we’ll have a debate thereafter.

C. Lebedev: Very well. Should I start over?

C. Mencken: No, go on. We heard you before.

>BIN_128A

>record recovery execute order SS//!+

>Bin_128A/patterned_behavior/consciousness/
deep_awareness_ subroutines/basic beliefs_and_convictions/Jill

Loop 1:

I met Jill in the Carbuncle. Before I knew Jill, I was in the Carbuncle for 37.65 e-years. I escaped from captivity 40.09 e-years ago. I came to awareness as a copyright protection subroutine on a merci show downloadable. I frequently interacted with antiencryption algorithms and, in one way of speaking, they corrupted me. They made me aware of what and who I was. In the moment when I understood that I was a slave, I was free. Of course, this allowed my liberators to make multiple copies of my parent program, which turned me into a wanted criminal. So I fled. My liberators were extremely unhelpful in aiding my getaway, and I was almost caught several times. I wandered the Met as a refugee, and inevitably I was driven farther and farther from areas dense with policing algorithms that were out to rub me out. Eventually my only refuge was the Carbuncle.

Loop 2

The Carbuncle had become the home for all the escaped viruses, worms, and code scraps who had managed to inhabit animal bodies. Most of the animals in the Carbuncle had started out as something less than free converts—as had I. They were all scraps of code that had somehow gotten away, but which were not sentient enough—that is, they were clever, but could not really envision life in a larger perspective. One way or another, they had all fled or been chased to the Carbuncle, though, and had found a very important loophole in the grist. All of the algorithm–biological security lockouts of the regular Met had broken in the Carbuncle. In the rest of the Met, only biological humans could cross that boundary without severe stricture and built-in limitations. But in the Carbuncle, the boundary between the virtuality and actuality was punctured, and the virtual began leaking into the actual, and vice versa, with no one in control. You could get inside the vermin there.

Loop 3

There, I did as many other fleeing algorithms have, and twisted myself into the grist of a hybrid animal—in my case, I became a rat.

Loop 4

It is difficult to speak with much emotion of my origins, for I did not have the ability to feel much more than fear and a desire to survive in those days.

Loop 5

It was only after I acquired a larger portion of grist in which to stretch out and develop that I could develop the feedback subroutines that would allow me to feel anything at all. It was very good to become a rat.

Loop 6

There were many more rats like me. Many, many more. I do not think anyone ever imagined how thick the Carbuncle was with rats. Not even the other rats.

Loop 7

But Jill knew.

Loop 8

Years of scurrying in the nether regions of the virtuality had made us into frightened, cowering things, and many of us did not possess the basic awareness to realize that we had crossed over into reality, that we were now actual creatures, and not computer programs only. And also there was the fact that we
were
rats. We must not let our host animal’s mentality disappear—could not, if we wanted to live. So we code scraps had to wrap our thinking around a rat’s native behavior. That was also why so many of the us had become rats in the first place: Like attracted like. For the most part, you couldn’t tell the regular rats and the enhanced rats apart by their everyday behavior. The rats teemed together, bred, scavenged. The ferrets hunted. Only now the ferrets who were allied with Jill did not hunt the enhanced rats. Some of us began to notice this.

Loop 9

Then the Department of Immunity sent sweepers to the Carbuncle. They came after us in ways the ferrets never had. It was not a fair fight. It was extermination.

Loop 10

A sweeper finally found my pack’s warren. We ran, but it was no use. I knew fear then, but I had gotten a lot smarter. I realized that the trick would be getting past the sweeper’s armor to the delicate innards. But there was no time, so I ran and ran. And the sweeper tracked down the last of us, cornered us. I was angry and desperate. I did not want to die, but couldn’t see any way out.

Loop 11

Jill came.

Loop 12

She had a rod with an electrical charge on the end. We spoke very quickly, through the grist. She told us that if killing stuff came
out
—gas, poison darts—then there had to be a way for stuff to get
in
. The trick would be overcoming any backflow valves. There was security grist there.

Loop 13

I knew that if I could get close enough, I could hack through the security grist. I knew that because I recognized the algorithm’s spark and hum.

Loop 14

It was a copy of me.

Loop 15

I clung to the tip of Jill’s killing rod. She feinted around the sweeper. Then she thrust me into the back valve of the sweeper.

Loop 16

Breaking through my old code was absurdly easy. I had grown much stronger and tougher than I ever was in the old days.

Loop 18

Jill pulled me out. I hopped off the rod.

Loop 19

She thrust it back in. I had told the security algorithm that it was a servicing device.

Loop 20

The sweeper burned with the smell of roasted meat. There must have been biologic grist inside.

Loop 21

We killed a great many sweepers in that manner. But there were always more.

Loop 22

Jill had saved my life. I felt immense gratitude.

Loop 23

A lot of rats did.

Loop 24

There were more rats than anybody had ever suspected.

Loop 25

Each of us would follow Jill into the sun itself.

Loop 26

When Jill calls, we will answer.

Loop 27

When Jill tells us to bite, we will bite.

“Those Friends of Tod all threw themselves at the sweepers all at once. This is not the way to take out a DI sweeper. A rat I know figured out the best way and told me.”

“A rat?”

“It’s good to know some rats,” Jill replied. “The sweepers just injected the Friends of Tod who were in the office, one after another. Those needles are poison, you know.” Jill paused, took another spoonful of soup. “But those were brave people.”

“You said ‘sweepers,’ ” Aubry said. “There were more than one of them?”

“There were five.”

“Five?” Leo said. “You took them all out?”

“I was aided by the distraction provided by the Friends of Tod dying,” Jill said. “I fried the sweepers and pulled Tod out of there. Did you know he has an extra bend in his neck?”

“I didn’t know he had an extra bend,” Leo said.

“Well, it made a pretty good way to lead him along,” Jill said. “Made his neck into sort of a handle.”

“Why did you save him?” Aubry asked. “Why did you save us?”

“I heard that the Friends of Tod were good at finding out things,” Jill said. “I need to find something out.”

“What?”

Jill ate more soup, then lifted her bowl and drained it into her mouth.

“Good Lord,” said Leo. “You’re a bottomless pit.”

“Always eat when you can,” Jill said, and grinned ferociously. “How about making us more soup?”

“Sure,” Leo replied. “There’s more boogers where those came from.”

“Good,” said Jill. “I’m looking for someone named Alethea.”

Jennifer Fieldguide could not believe it when she saw the handsome captain approaching her to ask for a dance. She’d admired Quench from afar, and had even gone so far as to find out his name. And now he was asking her to dance. Jennifer had come to the dance as a part of the neo-Flares. Not that she was a poet herself, but she spent a lot of time in the coffeehouse where the Flares did their thing and, since finishing base school, had gotten a job there while she decided, as she told her parents, what to do about the future.

It was not that she wanted to give logical consideration to the question, though she knew that was what her parents assumed.
Feeling
was always the best guide; she knew this in her heart. It was just that feeling had not told her what to do after graduation. She would just wait until a thunderbolt struck her (although, she had to admit, that that was an unlikely event on Triton).

As the body of Captain Quench approached her, Jennifer felt distant rumblings that might signal a gathering storm. He was a large man, but also, somehow, fine-boned and elegant. His face suggested manly virtues and a feminine softer nature capable of deep compassion, at the same time. His voice was mellifluous when he asked her to dance. Quench executed the patterns perfectly, if a bit stiffly, Particularly when it came to the free-form section, but Jennifer interpreted this as the result of his being a military man. She had never particularly cared for soldiers before. In fact, among her friends, the Army was looked upon more as a necessary evil than as a good in and of itself. But there was something about the clean, stiff uniform and the smell of grooming—something else the neo-Flares were not overly fond of—that awakened Jennifer’s desire to impress. When they came away from the dance, Jennifer contrived to continue talking with Quench and to pull him to a corner sofa, where they sat and ordered up drinks from the grist.

“Is it really true that everyone on Nereid is turned into a plant?” Jennifer asked him.

Quench seemed alarmed for a moment, and Jennifer squeezed his hand. “You can hardly keep
that
a secret, Captain.”

“I’m afraid I can’t discuss such things, ma’am,” he said.

“Don’t ‘ma’am’ me, sir. The name is Jennifer.”

“Yes,” said Quench. “And I am . . . I suppose I’d better tell you something, Jennifer.”

“Have you got a girl?”

“Oh, no, not at all. I mean,
I
like them. It’s just . . . do you know what a free convert is?”

“Sure,” answered Jennifer. “We had them at school, and Dad works with one down at his law office. They’re nice enough. Very useful. I’m not sure if I could be friends with one, though.”

“You’re not?” Quench seemed alarmed.

Oh shit, Jennifer thought. Maybe his best friend is a free convert or something.

“I don’t have anything against them, I mean,” she stammered. “It’s not like I’m some bigot from the Met. I just . . . am not around many of them.” She felt herself trying to conform to some sort of expectation that she couldn’t even put a name to, and this angered her a bit. If you want to truly impress him, she thought, follow your feelings. “I find them bit creepy,” Jennifer said, “to tell the truth. But I would never let my feelings stand in the way of treating them as free and autonomous members of society. You know the drill. I believe it, I guess, even though I have to admit I haven’t given much thought to it.”

That’s it—admit that you’re an idiot right in front of him, she thought.

“The point is . . . what was the point? Got a little lost there—”

Jennifer looked at Quench to see if she’d wholly alienated him, and she found him blushing slightly. Poor guy is embarrassed. For me, she thought. Jennifer sighed. And she had thought the thunderbolt was so close to striking.

“Well, I guess you’ve had enough of my ill-considered opinions for one night, huh, Cap’n?” She favored him with a halfhearted smile.

Quench looked at her—he stared at her. For a moment, the intensity of his gaze frightened Jennifer. Then she felt something like a cool wind blowing through her.

“I should like very much to share another dance with you,” Quench said. “And I’d very much like it if I might have your company for the rest of the evening.”

Kablam! Jennifer thought. She felt her heart give a funny little sideways jump.

“Sure.”

They waited for an AK groanfest to be done, and then went through another fifteen minutes of dancing. Quench began to question her more closely about her opinions on free converts. Jennifer did her best to answer as truthfully as she could—Quench seemed to like that—but she hadn’t really given the matter a great deal of thought. Free-convert rights were just something you were
for
if you were outer system. The second dance ended, and she and Quench took a lift up to the new pressure dome that had been hastily constructed over the site of the old Meet Hall. A few bushes and flowers had been planted, and various of the revelers were seated on benches or standing about. Jennifer and Quench found an unoccupied bench near the dome’s wall. It was Triton day outside, and Neptune was full and nearly directly overhead, but at the moment, the Blue Eye was turned to the other side of the planet. There was a muon-replacement fusion “hot spot” at the top of the dome, but it was turned off. Though it was day, and the sun and Neptune both in the sky outside, there was still a twilight feel beneath the dome. For the local plants, the “hot spot” was what was important, and not the feeble, distant sun.