The Naked God

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “I see.”

  “Then we’ve got—” His hand moved on to the next box.

  “Andy. What’s the top of the range, please?”

  “Okay, good question.” He disappeared behind the counter for a moment, returning with a fresh box and a suitably awed tone. “Kulu Corporation ANI5000. The King himself uses this model. We’ve only got three left because of the starflight quarantine. These are most wanted items all over town right now. But I can still give you level retail.”

  “And that’s better than the first one?”

  “Yes indeedie. Runs NAS2600, of course, with parallel upgrade potential for when the 2615 comes out.”

  “Um. What’s this NAS number you keep saying?”

  “Neural Augmentation Software. It’s the operating system for the whole filament network, and the number is the version. 2600 was introduced turn of the century, and boy was it a bugfeist when it came out. But it’s a smooth proved system now. And the supplement packages are just about unlimited, every software house in the Confederation publishes compatible products. If you’re going serious professional you can add physiological monitors, encyclopaedia galactica, employment waldoing, SII suit control, weapons integration, linguistic translation, news informant, starship astrogation, net search—the full monty. Then there’s games applications as well, I can’t even list them you have so many.” He patted the box with reverence. “No fooling, Louise, this set gives you the full interface range: nerve overrides to control your body, sense amplification, sight-equivalent neuroiconic generation, complete reality sensenviron, implant command, total indexed memory recall.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “Got to warn you: not cheap. Seventeen thousand fuseodollars.” He held up his hands in placation. “Sorry.”

  Daddy will kill me, Louise thought, but it has to be done. I promised Fletcher, and that horrid Brent Roi never really believed me. “All right.”

  Andy smiled in admiration. “Talk about power choosing. That’s impressive, Louise. But, hey, I can lighten the burden. For a 5000 set, we’ll throw in twenty-five software supplements, and give you twenty per cent discount on the next twenty-five you buy from us.”

  “That sounds like a jolly good deal,” she said inanely, swept along by his enthusiasm. “How long does it take to get a set?”

  “For one this complex, ninety minutes. I can give you the operating didactic at the same time.”

  “What’s one of those?”

  Andy’s breezy ebullience faltered in the face of such an astonishing question. He started to access his encyclopaedia’s file on Norfolk, and put a news search in primary mode for good measure. “You don’t have them on your planet?”

  “No. Our constitution is pastoral, we don’t have much technology. Or weapons.” Defending Norfolk, yet again.

  “No weapons; hey, good policy. Didactic imprints are sort of like the instruction manual, but it gets written directly inside your brain, and you never forget it.”

  “Well if I’m going to spend this much money, I certainly need to know how to work it, don’t I?”

  Andy laughed heartily, then stopped quickly when he caught sight of Genevieve’s expression. How come nobody ever produced a suavity program he could load? Talking to and impressing girls would be so much easier.

  The floor supervisor was datavising questions about his oddball customer and the door sensor alert, which he answered briefly. Then the Norfolk information started to emerge.

  “We have a preparation room,” Andy gestured to the back of the shop.

  “Louise, I want to look round,” Genevieve said winningly. “There might be something for me.”

  “All right. But if you see something just ask, don’t touch anything. That’s all right, isn’t it?” she asked Andy.

  “Sure thing.” Andy winked at Genevieve and gave her a thumbs up. Her sneer could have withered an oak tree.

  Louise followed Andy into the small preparation room, a cube-space whose walls were fashioned from dark panelling, with various electronic units poking out. It was furnished with just a glass cubicle, like a shower but without any visible nozzle; and a low padded bench similar to a doctor’s examination table.

  The attention Andy showed her was somewhat amusing. She thought possibly it wasn’t entirely due to her high-spending customer status. Most of the young gentlemen (and others—slightly older) on Norfolk had shown a similar, if less blatant, interest over the last couple of years. Now, of course, she was wearing what amounted to little more than an exhibitionist’s costume. Though by Earth’s standards it was tame. But the top and skirt had made her look so damn good in the department store’s mirror. She could hold her own against London girls in this. For the first time in her life she was sassy. And free to enjoy it. And loving it.

  The glass door slid shut with a definitive click behind her. She shot Andy a suspicious glance.

  “Bugger,” Western Europe muttered as his linkages with Louise were cut.

  He switched to Genevieve, which was about as useless; the little girl was investigating a Gothic fantasy, standing in a castle courtyard as a column of priestess warriors rode off to battle on their unicorns.

  Western Europe had wanted Louise to discover the bugs at some stage. He just hadn’t planned on it being quite so early in the operation. But then, buying neural nanonics wasn’t what he expected of a girl from Norfolk, either. She was quite a remarkable little thing, really.

  Andy Behoo scratched at his arm awkwardly. “You do know you’ve been stung, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Stung?” Louise took a guess. “You’re not talking about insects, are you?”

  “No. The door sensors spotted it as soon as you and your sister came in. There are nanonic bugs in your skin; like miniature radios I guess you’d call them. They transmit all sorts of information about where you are, and what’s going on around you. There are four on you, Genevieve has three. That we can detect, anyway.”

  She drew in a shocked breath. How stupid! Of course Brent Roi wouldn’t let her walk round freely. Not someone who’d tried to sneak a possessed down to Earth. He was bound to want to see what she did next. “Oh sweet Jesus.”

  “I reckon Govcentral must be nervous about foreigners right now, especially as you come from Norfolk,” Andy said. “What with the possessed, and all. Don’t worry, this room is screened, they can’t hear us now.”

  His sellrat swagger had diminished as he tried to reassure her. In fact, he’d become almost sheepish, which made him actually quite pleasant, she thought. “Thank you for telling me, Andy. Do you scan all your customers?”

  “Oh yes. Mainly for dodgy implants. There’s quite a few gangs try to siphon our software fleks. Then we do sell bugs ourselves, see, so sometimes we get cops coming in and trying to find who those customers are. Jude’s Eworld has a strong neutrality policy, which we enforce. We have to, or we’d never sell anything.”

  “Can you get them off me?”

  “All part of our customer service. I can give you a more detailed scan, too, see if there are any others.”

  She followed his instructions, standing in the cubicle, which gave her a comprehensive bodyscan down to a subcellular level. So now someone else knows I’m pregnant, she acknowledged in resignation. No wonder Earth’s population value their privacy so, they don’t get very much of it. The bodyscan located another two bugs. Andy applied a small rectangular patch similar to a medical package (same technology, he said) to her arms and leg; then she pulled up her T-shirt up so he could press it against her back.

  “Is there any way of knowing if the police sting me again?” she asked.

  “An electronic warfare block should tell you. We had a shipment of front-line equipment in from Valisk a couple of months back. I think there’s still some left. Good stuff.”

  “I think you’d better put one of those removal patches on the list as well.” Louise called Genevieve into the room, and explained what’d happened. Thankfully her sister w
as more curious than outraged. She peered at her skin after Andy took the nanonic package away, fascinated by the removal process. “It doesn’t look any different,” she complained.

  “They’re too small to see,” Andy said. “Which makes them too small to feel. They shouldn’t call it getting stung, really. More like being feathered.”

  When Genevieve scooted back into the shop to continue her appraisal of consumer goodies, Andy handed over the box of Kulu Corporation neural nanonics to Louise. “You need to check the seal,” he said. “Make sure it hasn’t been broken, and see that the wrapping hasn’t been tampered with as well. You can tell that by the colour. If someone tries to cut or tear it, the stress turns it red.”

  She turned it over obediently. “Why do I have to do this?”

  “Neural nanonics connect directly into your brain, Louise. If someone changes the filaments or subverts the NAS codes they could get into your memories or manipulate your body like a puppet. This guarantees the set hasn’t been tampered with since it left the factory; and you have the Kulu Corporation’s assurance that their design wouldn’t sequestrate you.”

  Louise gave the box a closer examination. The foil seemed intact and clear.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” he said quickly. “It’s a standard speech; we implant fifty of these a day. I mean, think what would happen to the shop or the manufacturer if anything like that did ever happen. We’d be lynched. It’s in our interest to make sure everything’s kosher for you. Another reason we have sensors at the door.”

  “Okay, I suppose.” She handed the box back. Andy broke the seal in front of her, and took out a small black capsule a couple of centimetres long.

  He slotted that into the back of a specialist medical implant package.

  The only other item in the box was a flek.

  “This is the operating didactic, which is standard, but it also contains the first time access code specific to this set,” he told her.

  “Basically, it allows you to activate the neural nanonics. After that, you change the code by just thinking of a new one. So even if someone got hold of your flek afterwards it wouldn’t do them any good. Don’t worry, it’s all explained in the didactic.”

  She lay face down on the cushioned bench, with a pair of collar wings holding her neck steady. Andy pushed her hair to one side, ready to apply the medical package to the nape of her neck. There was already a tiny nearly-healed scar on her skin. He knew exactly what it was, he’d seen it a thousand times before, every time the implant package was taken off.

  “Is everything all right?” Louise asked.

  “Yes. No problem. It just takes a minute to line this up right.” He datavised the bodyscan cubicle’s processor. Its memory file of her scan confirmed there was absolutely no foreign matter in her brain.

  Andy took the coward’s way out and said nothing. Mainly because he didn’t want to alarm her. But something here was desperately wrong. Either she was lying to him, which he couldn’t believe. Or … he couldn’t quite decide what the other options were. He was trespassing deep in Govcentral territory. All that did was enhance her mystery up to the level of pure enchantment. A babe in distress right out of the sensevise dramas. In his shop!

  “Here we go,” he said lightly, and put the package over her existing scar. Now there would never be any proof.

  Louise tensed slightly. “It’s gone numb.”

  “That’s okay. It’s supposed to.”

  All the medical package did was open a passage through to the base of the skull, and ease the capsule containing the densely pleated neural nanonics into place. Then the filaments began to unwind from each other and porrect forward, their probing tips slowly winding their way round cells as they sought out synapses. There were millions of them, active molecular strings obeying their AI formatted protocol; instructions determined by their own structure of spiralling atoms. They formed a wondrously intricate filigree around the medulla oblongata, branching to connect with the nerve strands inside while the main filaments seeped further into the brain to complete their interface.

  With the implant package in place, Andy fetched the didactic imprinter.

  Louise thought it looked like a pair of burnished stainless steel ski glasses. He put the flek in a small slot at the side, and placed it carefully on her face. “This works in pulses,” he said. “You’ll get a warning flash of green, then you’ll see a violet light for about fifteen seconds. Try not to blink. It should happen eight times.”

  “That’s it?” The edges of the imprinter had stuck to her skin, leaving her in total blackness.

  “Yep, not so bad, is it?”

  “And this is the way everyone on Earth learns things?”

  “Yes. The information is encoded within the light, and your optic nerve passes it straight into your brain. Simple explanation, but that’s the principle.”

  Louise saw a flicker of green, and held her breath. The violet light came on, an otherwise uniform sheen broken by that unique monotone sparkle which a laser leaves on the retina. She managed not to blink until it went off. “Your children don’t go to school?” she asked.

  “No. Kids go to day clubs, keeps them busy and you make friends there. That’s all.”

  She was silent for some time, considering the implications. The hours—years!—of my life I have sat in classrooms listening to teachers and reading books. And all the time, this way of learning, of discovery, existed. One of the demonic technologies that will ruin our way of life.

  Banned without question. That’s nothing to do with keeping Norfolk pastoral, that’s denying people opportunity, stunting their lives. It’s worse than cousin Gideon’s arm. She clenched her teeth together, suddenly very, very angry.

  “Hey, are you all right?” Andy asked timidly.

  The violet light came on again. “Yes,” she snapped primly. “I’m fine, thank you.”

  Andy didn’t say anything else until the didactic imprinter finished. Too scared he’d say the wrong thing again and annoy her further. He hadn’t got a clue why her mood had swung so fast. When the imprinter did come off, it revealed a very pensive expression.

  “Could you do me a favour?” Louise said. A knowing smile licked along her lips. “Keep an eye on Genevieve for me. I promised I’d buy her something from here, so if you could steer her to some kind of gadget that’s relatively harmless I’d be grateful.”

  “Sure, my pleasure. Consider her guarded from any possible digital grief.” Andy had to use a nerve override impulse to prevent her from seeing how crushing that request was. He’d been counting on using the time it took to implant the neural nanonics to talk to her. Yet again, Andy blows out, he raged silently. Just once, I’d like to score with a major babe. Once!

  The games section wasn’t nearly as exciting as Genevieve had expected.

  Jude’s Eworld was actively promoting a thousand games through its display screen catalogues, with direct access to ten times that many over encrypted links to publishers; covering the whole genre from interactive roles to strategy general’s command. But as she flipped through them she could see they were all variants of each other. Everybody promised newer, hotter graphics, unrivalled worldbuilding, tac-stim activants, ingenious puzzles, more terrifying adversaries, slicker music. Always greater than before, never different. She sampled four or five, standing inside a projection cone beamed out from a high-wattage AV lens on the ceiling.

  Bore-ing. In truth, she’d begun to tire of them back on the Jamrana; like spending a whole day eating chocolate cake, really.

  There didn’t seem to be much else in Jude’s Eworld that was interesting.

  Their main market was neural nanonics and associated software, or else no-fun processor blocks with strange peripherals.

  “Hi. How’s it going, there? Are you hyping cool yet?”

  Genevieve turned to see the gruesomely oiky little shopboy Andy smiling ingratiatingly at her. One of his front teeth was crooked. She’d never seen that on someo
ne his age before. “I’m having a lovely time, thank you so much for caring.” It was the tone that would earn her a sharp slap from her mother or Mrs. Charlsworth.

  “Uh huh.” Andy grunted, fully flustered. “Er, I thought perhaps I could show you what we’ve got to offer for kids your … I mean, the kind of blocks and software you might enjoy.”

  “Oh whoopee do.”

  His arms re-arranged themselves chaotically, indicating the section of the shop he wanted her to move towards. “Please?” he asked desperately.

  With an overlong sigh and slouched shoulders, Genevieve shuffled along despondently. Why does Louise always attract the wrong type? she wondered. Which sparked an idea. “She’s got a fiancé, you know.”

  “Huh?”

  A modest smile at his horror. “Louise. She’s engaged to be married. They announced the banns at our estate’s chapel.”

  “Married?” Andy yelped. He flinched, looking round the shop to see if any of his colleagues were paying attention.

  This was fun. “Yes. To a starship captain. That’s why we’re on Earth, we’re waiting for him to arrive.”

  “When’s he due, do you know?”

  “A couple of weeks, I think. He’s very rich, he owns his starship.” She glanced round in suspicion, then leaned in towards the boy. “Don’t tell anyone I said this, but I think the only reason Daddy gave his permission was because of the money. Our estate is very big, and it takes a lot to keep it running.”

  “She’s marrying for money?”

  “Has to be. I mean he’s so old. Louise said he’s thirty years older than she is. I think she was fibbing so it didn’t sound so bad. If you ask me, it’s more like forty-five.”

  “Oh my God. That’s disgusting.”

  “It looks so awful when he kisses her, I mean he’s virtually bald, and hideously fat. She says she hates him to touch her, but what can she do about it? He’s her future husband.”

  Andy stared down at her, his face stricken. “Why does your father allow this?”

  “All marriages are arranged on Norfolk, it’s just our way. If it makes you feel any better, I think he really likes Louise.” She’d have to stop now. Crying shame, but it was getting really difficult to keep a straight face. “He keeps on saying he wants to have a big family with her. He says he expects her to bear him at least seven children.” Jackpot! Andy had started trembling with indignation—or worse.