by John Brunner
Nerice Compton misdialed a phone call and swore convincingly; she and Rush had friends in for drinks tonight.
Judge Virgil Horovitz had had a heart attack. At his age, that was not wholly unexpected. Besides, it had happened twice before. On returning from the hospital, his housekeeper remembered to activate the computer terminal and press three digital keys.
At a party with friends, Helga and Nigel Townes demonstrated some amusing tricks one could play with a computer remote. One aborted after three digits. The rest worked perfectly.
In any case, a complete emergency backup program was available which would have done the job by itself. However, many times in the history of Hearing Aid it had been proven that certain key data were better stored externally to the net.
By about 2300 EST the worm needed only fertilization to start laying its unprecedented eggs.
PARTY LINE
“I’ll be damned! Paul! Well, it’s great to see you. Come on in.”
Blinking shyly, Freeman complied. Kate’s apartment was alive with guests, mostly young and in brilliant clothes, but with a mix of more soberly clad people from G2S and the UMKC faculty. A portable coley unit had been set up and a trio of dancers were cautiously sticking to the chords of a simple traditional blues prior to launching a collective sequence of variations; as yet, they were still feeling out the unit’s tone-color bias.
“How did you know we were here? And what are you doing in KC, anyway? I understood you went to Precipice.”
“In a metaphorical sense.” Freeman gave a grin that made him look oddly boyish, as though he had shed twenty years with his formal working garb. “But it’s an awfully big place when you learn to recognize it. … No, in fact I figured out weeks ago that you were sure to be back sooner or later. I asked myself what the least likely place would be for me to find you, and—uh—took away the number I first thought of.”
“It’s alarming to think someone found my carefully randomized path so predictable. Ah, here comes Kate.”
Freeman stiffened as though to prepare for a blow, but she greeted him cordially, asked what he wanted to drink, and departed again to bring him beer.
“Isn’t that her mother?” Freeman muttered, having scanned the visible area of the apartment. “Over there in red and green?”
“Yes. You met her, didn’t you? And the man she’s talking to.”
“Rico Posta, isn’t that his name?”
“Right.”
“Hmm … What precisely is going on?”
“We had kind of a big temblor for a while, because of course once the news broke that Kate was back and she actually was kidnaped by a government agent as the students have been claiming, they were set to go tribal the campus. We put that idea into freeze, after a lot of argument, by hinting at all sorts of dire recriminations. And that’s what we’re discussing at the moment. Come and join us.”
“Such as—”
“Well, we’ll start by deeveeing Tarnover.”
Freeman stopped dead in midstride, and a pretty girl banged into him and spilled half a drink and there was a period of apologies. Then: “What?”
“It’s an obvious first step. A full Congressional inquiry should follow publication in the media of the Tarnover and Crediton Hill budgets. The others are in the pipeline, with Weychopee last because it’s hardest to crack open. And as well as financial revelations, naturally, there will be pictures of Miranda and her successors, and the fatality rates among the experimental children, and so on.”
“That looks like Paul Freeman!” Ina exclaimed, rising. She sounded alarmed.
“Yes indeed. And a bit dazed. I just began to tell him what we’re up to.”
Kate arrived with the promised beer, delivered it, sat down on the arm of the chair Ina was using. Rico Posta stood at her side.
“Dazed,” Freeman repeated after a pause. “Yes, I am. What’s the purpose of attacking Tarnover first?”
“To trigger a landslide of emotionalism. I guess you, coming fresh from an environment dedicated to rationality, doubt it’s a good policy. But it’s exactly what we need, and records from Tarnover are a short means to make it happen. Lots of things make people angry, but political graft and the notion of deliberately maltreating children are among the most powerful. One taps the conscious, the other the subconscious.”
“Oh, both hit the subconscious,” Ina said. “Rico has the same nightmare I do, about finding someone got to my credit records and deeveed everything I worked for all my life. And I don’t stand a prayer of finding out who’s responsible.” She turned to face her daughter squarely. “What’s more … Kate, I never dared tell you this before, but when I was pregnant with you I was so terrified you might not—uh—come out right, I—”
“You overloaded a few years later, and after that you were obsessively worried about me, and when I grew up you still worried because I’m a nonconformist. And I’m plain too. So what? I’m bright and I bounce. I’m a credit to any mother. Ask Nick,” she added with a mischievous grin.
Freeman glanced around. “Nick? You recovered from your prejudice against the name, then—Old Nick, Saint Nicholas and the rest?”
“As well as being the patron saint of thieves, Saint Nicholas is credited with reviving three murdered children. It’s a fair human-type compromise.”
“You’ve changed,” Freeman said soberly. “In a lot of ways. And … and the result is kind of impressive.”
“I owe much of it to you. If I hadn’t been derailed from the course I’d followed all my life—You know, that’s what’s wrong with us on the public level. We fret about how to keep going the same old way when we should be casting around for another way that’s better. Our society is hurtling in free fall toward heaven knows where, and as a result we’ve developed collective osteochalcolysis of the personality.”
“The way to go faster is to slow down,” Kate said with conviction.
Freeman’s brow furrowed. “Yes, perhaps. But how do we choose this better direction?”
“We don’t have to. It’s programed.”
“How can that possibly be true?”
Rico Posta spoke up in a strained tone. “I didn’t believe it either, not at first. Now I have to. I’ve seen the evidence.” He took an angry swig of his drink. “Hell, here I am allegedly vice-president in charge of long-term corporate planning, and I didn’t know that G2S’s social-extrapolation programs automatically mouse into a bunch of federal studies from Crediton Hill! Isn’t that crazy? It was set up by my last-but-two predecessor, that system, and he left under a cloud and omitted to advise the poker who took over. Nick got to it with no trouble, and he’s taken me on a guided tour of a section of the net I didn’t know existed.”
Pointing with a shaking hand, he concluded furiously: “On that goddamn veephone right over there! I feel sick, just sick. If a veep for G2S can’t find out what’s happening under his nose, what chance do ordinary people have?”
“I wish I’d been here,” Freeman said after a pause. “What do these Crediton Hill studies indicate?”
“Oh …” Posta took a deep breath. “More or less this: the cost of staying out front—economically, in terms of prestige, and so forth—has been to invoke the counterpart of the athlete’s ‘second wind,’ which burns up muscle tissue. You can’t keep that up forever. And what we’ve been burning is people who could have been useful, talented members of society if the pressure had been less intense. As it was, they turned to crime or suicide or went insane.”
Freeman said slowly, “I remember thinking that I could easily have taken to peddling dope. But I can’t see the world the way you do, can I? I owe to the people who recruited me for Weychopee the fact that I didn’t wind up in jail or an early grave.”
“Is our society on the right lines when one of its most gifted people can find no better career than crime unless literally millions per year of public money are lavished on him?”
Nick waited for an answer to that question. None came.
Watching the dance, Freeman said helplessly, “Oh, what difference does it make whether I agree or not? I gave you your U-group codes. I knew damn well that was like handing you an H-bomb, and I went right ahead. I only wish I could believe in what you’re doing. You sound like an economist—worse, like a nihilist, planning to bring the temple pillars down around our ears.”
“The name for what we’re doing wasn’t coined by any kind of radical.”
“It has a name?”
“Sure it does,” Kate said firmly. “Agonizing reappraisal.”
Nick nodded. “During all my time at Tarnover it was drummed into me that I must search for wisdom. It’s the beginning of wisdom when you admit you’ve gone astray.”
The coley dancers dissolved into discords and laughter. As they scattered in search of fresh drinks they complimented one another on the length of time they had managed to keep dancing. An impatient exhibitionistic youth promptly jumped up and conjured a specialty number from the invisible beams. After the complexities of the nine-part dance it seemed thin and shallow in spite of being technically brilliant.
“Sweedack,” Freeman said eventually, his face glistening with sweat. “I guess now we hold tight and wait for the tsunami.”
THE RACE BETWEEN GUNS AND ARMOR
On the tree of evolution, last season’s flowers die, and often the most beautiful are sterile.
While Triceratops sported his triple horns, while Diplodocus waved his graceful tail, something without a name was stealing their tomorrow.
AN ALARMING ITEM TO FIND ON YOUR OVERNIGHT MAIL-STORE REEL
Origin: Tarnover Bioexperimental Laboratory
Reference: K3/E2/100715 P
Subject: In-vitro genetic modification (project #38)
Nature: Controlled crossover in gamete union
Surgeons: Dr. Jason B. Saville, Dr. Maud Crowther
Biologist i/c: Dr. Phoebe R. Whymper
Mother: Anon. volunt. GOL ($800 p.w., 1 yr.)
Father: Staff volunt. WVG ($1,000, flat pmt.)
Embryo: Female
Gestation:—11 days
Survival time: appx. 67 hr.
Description: Typical class G0 and G9 faults, viz. cyclopean eye, cleft palate, open fontanelle, digestive system incomplete, anal-vaginal fusion, pelvic deformities and all toes absent. Cf. project #6.
Conclusion: Programed inducement of crossover only partially successful employing template solution #17K.
Recommendation: Repeat but attempt layering of template on crystalline substrate (in hand) or use of gel version (in hand).
Disposition of remains: Authorized (initialed JBS).
AN ALARMING ITEM TO FIND ON YOUR CREDIT-RATING STATEMENT
Inspection of computerized records has revealed that over half the credit standing to your name derives from nonlegal undertakings, details of which have been forwarded to the Attorney General of the United States. In anticipation of criminal proceedings your permissible credit is limited to the Federal Supportive Norm, viz. $28.50 per day.
The Commission on Poverty has held this insufficient to provide an adequate diet; however, upgrading to the proposed norm of $67.50 per day still awaits presidential approval.
This is a cybernetic datum for the public service.
AN ALARMING ITEM TO FIND ON YOUR DESK COME MONDAY MORNING
To all employees of Marmaduke Smith Metal Products Inc.
The decision taken to commission the building and launching of an orbital factory for your company by Ground-to-Space Industries Inc. (contract noncancelable) was reached as the result of a warning from the chief accountant Mr. J. J. Himmelweiss that the corporation faces certain bankruptcy.
At the same meeting of the Board which confirmed the placing of the G2S contract all officers were voted an additional 100 percent of their respective holdings of stock to dispose of at temporarily inflated prices prior to the company’s voluntary liquidation which is scheduled for the end of next month.
Thsi is an unauthorized cybernetic announcement.
AN ALARMING ITEM TO FIND ON A COSMETICS PACKAGE
This product contains a known allergen and a known carcinogen. The manufacturers have expended over $650,000 in out-of-court settlements to avoid legal suits by former users. This is a cybernetic datum imprinted on the wrapper without the manufacturers’ knowledge or consent.
AN ALARMING ITEM TO FIND ON A PACK OF “HONEST-TO-GOODNESS” ® BEEF STEW
Despite being advertised as domestic, this stew contains 15 to 35 percent imported meat originating in areas where typhus, brucellosis and trichinosomiasis are endemic. Authority to label the contents as domestic produce was obtained following the expenditure of appx. $215,000 in bribes to customs and public-health inspectors. This is a cybernetic datum derived from records not intended for publication.
AN ALARMING ITEM TO FIND ON A MONTHLY AUTO-DEBIT NOTICE
Advice to clients of Anti-Trauma Inc.
A status check of the first one hundred juveniles treated according to this corporation’s methods, all of whom are now at least three years past termination of their courses of therapy, reveals that:
66 are receiving prescribed psychotropic drugs;
62 are classed educationally subaverage;
59 have recently reported nightmares and hallucinations;
43 have been arrested at least once;
37 have run away from home at least once;
19 are in jail or subject to full-time supervision orders;
15 have been convicted of crimes of violence;
15 have been convicted of theft;
13 have been convicted of arson;
8 have been committed to mental hospitals at least once;
6 are dead;
5 have wounded parents, close relatives or guardians;
2 have murdered siblings;
1 awaits trial for molesting a girl aged three.
Totals do not sum to 100 because most are entered under more than one head. This is a cybernetic announcement in the public interest.
AN ALARMING ITEM TO FIND ON YOUR OVERDUE-TAX DEMAND
For the information of the person required to pay this tax Analysis of last year’s federal budget shows that: * * * 1 7 % of your tax dollar went on boondoggles
***13% ………………. propaganda, bribes and kickbacks
***11% ………………. federal contracts with companies
which are (a) fronting for criminal activities and/or (b) partly or wholly owned by persons subject to indictment for federal offenses and/or (c) hazardous to health and the environment. Fuller details may be obtained by punching the code number at top left of this form into any veephone. They take about 57 minutes to present.
This is a cybernetic datum appended without Treasury Department authorization.
AN ALARMING ITEM TO HEAR OVER THE VEEPHONE
“No, Mr. Sullivan, we can’t stop it! There’s never been a worm with that tough a head or that long a tail! It’s building itself, don’t you understand? Already it’s passed a billion bits and it’s still growing. It’s the exact inverse of a phage—whatever it takes in, it adds to itself instead of wiping … Yes, sir! I’m quite aware that a worm of that type is theoretically impossible! But the fact stands, he’s done it, and now it’s so goddamn comprehensive that it can’t be killed. Not short of demolishing the net!”
THE OUTCOME OF THE BRAIN RACE (COMPUTED)
The first shall be last and the last shall be first.
THE WHOLE CONTINENT ON THE BRINK OF ONE PRECIPICE
The press conference automatically cal
led by Nick’s program was to be held in the largest auditorium on the UMKC campus. The students had been delighted to commandeer it. Discreetly, the university authorities declined a request from the state governor to intervene. Among the persons credited with work on Miranda and those like her were two incumbent faculty members, and they were—sensibly—spending today behind locked doors and steel shutters. The students were very unhappy about those deformed babies.
Moreover, for the first time in well over a generation, the mass of public opinion was in agreement with the students. Gratifying. If it didn’t heal the split, at least it moved the split to a healthier location.
The hall was packed—it was crammed. If modern technology hadn’t shrunk three-vee cameras and sound-recording equipment to a size that the engineers of fifty years ago would have called impossible, the puzzled but dutiful reporters who had arrived to cover a story they were certain must be sensational … whatever the hell it was, would have been unable to put anything on their tapes. As it was, they were obliged to use poles, electric floaters and their longest-range mikes and lenses because they couldn’t get anywhere near, the rostrum, and there was a squabble over priority in respect of lines of sight which delayed the start of the conference until well past the scheduled time of noon.
At long last, however, Kate was able to appear on stage, to be greeted by a standing ovation that threatened never to end. It took her a long time to pat down the noise. When she finally did so, the putter-of-cats-among-pigeons made his appearance, and the audience settled to an expectant hush.
“My name is Nicholas Haflinger.” In a loud clear voice, capable of filling the auditorium without the aid of microphones. “You’re wondering why I’ve called you here. The reason is simple. To answer all your questions. I mean—all. This is the greatest news of our time. As of today, whatever you want to know, provided it’s in the data-net, you can now know. In other words, there are no more secrets.”