Slant

by Greg Bear

  “Yes, sir,” Mary says.

  “It seems to me,” Lodge says, “that there are a number of compelling reasons to release these records to the SPD, specifically to Fourth Rank Mary Choy, to clear up these ambiguities.”

  “We do not agree, sir,” Parmenter says, now very uneasy. “But if that is your pending judgment—”

  “I believe it very well might be.”

  “Then I have been authorized by the estate to reveal a recently discovered… ah… a modification to the circumstances of the records in question.”

  “Yes?” Lodge asks, raising his eyebrows

  “All vid and audio for that day have been retroactively erased by the machine keeping the apartment records.”

  “Erased?” Lodge asks. Mary sits up straighter in her chair, prepared to be very interested, or perhaps officially angry.

  “Without our knowledge until just before this meeting. The transcribed record is intact but as I said, vague.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “We are assuming a malfunction in the machine—”

  “A very convenient malfunction,” Mary says.

  Parmenter shakes her head vigorously. “Very inconvenient, actually, for the estate. It could create all kinds of mischief.”

  “No vid records?” Lodge looks stem. “You presume upon the dignity of this court, Miz Parmenter. Wouldn’t you call it deceptive not to tell us this earlier?”

  Parmenter looks as if her stomach is bothering her. She decides, once again, to say nothing.

  “You’ve brought proof of these changed circumstances?”

  “Tech confirmation. The vid, audio, and all but medical and transcribed records for the day of Mr. Crest’s death are blank.”

  Lodge leans back in his chair and shakes his head, again with a pixie smile. “My,” he says. “Very awkward indeed.”

  “Sir, I amend my request to all of the available records,” Mary says quickly, “and ask that they be transferred immediately, before something else awkward happens.”

  “I agree. Granted.”

  Parmenter accepts this without protest. There is really nothing more she can say; the judgment has been issued, and there is no appeal.

  But Mary does not have any idea what sort of shambling, crippled victory she has won.

  “We need to talk,” she says to Parmenter in the hall outside.

  “I don’t need to talk with you,” Parmenter responds.

  “Vid recorders are supposed to be foolproof.”

  “Not so, apparently. And don’t go fishing in our offices for conspiracies. This is damned embarrassing.”

  “I need the tech’s file.”

  “It’s simple. The vid recorder has a link to Mr. Crest’s pad, to allow him to deactivate it should he wish to. He did not deactivate it, but something worked its way through the pad after his death—time unknown—and broke through the vid system firewalls.”

  “It was hacked?”

  “That’s our best guess. I think you can imagine how tough it is to hack a billionaire’s system. Listen, Miz Choy, we’re lobe-sods here, just doing what the heirs need to have done to protect their interests. You have all that’s left. My office had nothing to do with this, except to find it out too late to come up with a good defense. Don’t drop a ton of bricks.”

  Mary is inclined to believe her, but professionally can make no blanket pronouncements. “Please send—”

  “I know Nussbaum’s sig,” Parmenter says. “I was in lock and key before I moved to keyhole and private law. I have to go now. Anything else?”

  “Professionally, I should say thanks.”

  “It’s nothing,” Parmenter says, and then gives a small, pained laugh. “Really, nothing at all.”

  11

  Denny Tower is a long crystal prism standing on one point, supported by four cylindrical pillars that rise to intercept the facets of the base. The Workers Inc Northwest central office for the Corridor fills ten floors in the pillar that rises to meet the western slant of the tower, near the junction. Above the junction, the tower rises an additional twelve hundred feet, its top brushed this late morning by a broken deck of smooth gray clouds. The tower’s usual blue-gray sheen has been modified to sunny gold to offset the gloomy and featureless sky.

  At noon, Dana Carrilund escorts Martin Burke through the orientation and security office, where his CV and biostats are confirmed, into the client tracking center. Workers Inc is very careful about providing access to this center. Temp agency records on clients are immune from Federal and Citizen Oversight; and the records in client tracking are the most comprehensive and critical of all.

  In a real sense, for Workers Inc, this is the inner sanctum of a temple, where the physical and mental vital signs of millions are fed into living, continuously updated displays of immense power and subtlety. Martin has never been at the heart of one before.

  “We get the inputs from house monitors, agency medical, therapists, city and state proceedings,” Carrilund explains as they enter the darkened display circle. “All household diagnostics, all procedures, work records and employer evaluations, and diary reports from our volunteer study clients, come here and are processed. Nobody can connect individuals with the data; that’s forbidden. The whole system is protected by four INDAs instructed to code-lock the data if a hack should be attempted. Only the personal presence of the top worldwide executives of Workers Inc—about thirty in all—can unlock the data if that happens. We’ve never had a successful real hack. We’ve never even managed to irritate the system with test hacks.”

  Carrilund catches his faint, smile and lifts one eyebrow. “Famous last words, you think?”

  Martin folds his arms, looking around the dark circular room. “No, I was thinking about something else… As to the security, I really can’t judge.”

  “We’ve offered a two million dollar reward to anyone who manages to get past the first firewall,” says with that brittle sort of pride Martin has often seen in players in an immense team effort. “There are nine walls beyond that, each equally difficult. Nobody’s collected the reward.

  “We’ve been told by experts that we’re better than National Defense.

  If he had one tenth this power, Martin believes he could advance the science of human social systems by decades… But he is merely a peon in the corporate scale of things, a rogue scientist not part of the team.

  “What about the data displays here? Who gets access to them?”

  “Top execs and key employees only, on a need-to-know basis confirmed by our own oversight board. The data is used for a number of purposes, but we couldn’t connect the data to any individual even if it were a matter of life and death.”

  “I see. You’ve never used the data to do research?”

  Carrilund gives him a sidewise look and narrows her eyes in amusement. “We have an INDA and a staff of fourteen advocates who decide what we use this data for. They’ve never okayed research for its own sake.”

  “Pity,” Martin says.

  “Um,” Carrilund says, with a small smile. “This is also the only room where we can access the data. It’s large enough to accommodate about thirty people.”

  “All of the execs at once, if need be.”

  “Exactly.” Carrilund requests two seats. They rise from the polished black floor, simple cushioned curves. Martin sits and then lies back, and Carrilund takes the seat beside him. He watches her movements with more than professional interest; the combination of power and healthy grace, with the dignity of her middle years, is a distraction from his focus. A wistful voice at the back of his awareness asks if Carol, his former wife, wears this such grace and power now, as well.

  “Before our meeting with the board and other experts, I want you to see what we’ve been seeing for the past two months. Can you read sociometrics? We use standard icons and indicators.”

  “I presume I can, then.”

  Carrilund leans her head back. Projectors around the room have focused on them a
nd now provide triangulated feeds of light and sound to their eyes and ears. The room takes on the empty graded blue of a cloudless desert sky; a null hum surrounds them. The feeds override any other images or sound at first, and for a disorienting moment, surveying the floating console of controls above his hands and the disorienting void, Martin feels as if he is about to enter the country of someone’s mind, a journey he has not made in four years…

  Then Carrilund’s voice comes through clearly, rooting him. “Remember, our clients have volunteered to be part of this,” she says.

  His vague sensation of weightless nausea goes away. “I would have agreed, if I were them.”

  “Mr. Burke, we need your mind free and clear. We do not need freewheeling moral judgment.”

  “Of course,” Martin says with some irritation.

  “You’ve gone upcountry in the mind of an individual. We’re riding the flow of the river upcountry into the simulated heart of a community. I’m sure you appreciate this opportunity.”

  Martin wonders if she is being patronizing, but it doesn’t matter. This is indeed like standing on the beach of a new sea, and his qualms and flashbacks quickly fade. “I’m ready,” he says.

  “The community has a puzzling and possibly dangerous fever,” Carrilund says. “Let me show you what we’ve learned.”

  The blue changes to grass green. A plain extends to infinity. Bushes and trees grow up from the plain. They become a thin forest, with canopy and undergrowth. He touches the virtual controls here, there, and with some non-tactile fumbling, he acquaints himself with its basics.

  “This is the threshold,” Carrilund says. Her voice sounds directly in his right ear; she seems to be speaking softly, breathlessly. The effect is seductive. “We’ll start with charts and graphs and stay until we get a sense of scale and some detail. Then we’ll venture a little deeper. All the trees and bushes here—”

  “Personal event graphs—Smithfield Tri-chromas, with each growth representing a thousand clients,” Martin says.

  “Right. The coordinates for different fields can be mapped now if you wish.”

  Martin chooses icons showing broad categories: the forest divides into male and female, and other—sexual transforms, he presumes—and then sexual orientation. This display recognizes fifteen orientations, some of them maladaptive and usually therapied in Western culture—disapproved of even in this liberal age—which of course calls up questions of survey accuracy and the honesty of reporting individuals.

  With some shock, he sees that the numbers of individuals matching these “outlaw” orientations is much higher than the figures he is familiar with.

  “The sexual orientation stats are based on survey results cross-correlated with entertainment-seeking patterns and have a maximum reliability in the more extreme sub-fields of about eighty percent,” Carrilund says. She has slaved her display to his explorations, he realizes; she sees what he sees, and is good at guessing how he might react, what he is thinking. Then why bring me here at all. I’m supposed to offer some surprises.

  “The numbers showing possible deviant behavior are way up,” he says. “Pedophiles, supermales, omniphilia with destructive context… Much higher numbers than I’d expect.”

  “And they’re on the rise. Some of the numbers are nearing what we would expect in society without effective therapies. Figures haven’t been this high since 2012. An obvious danger sign, don’t you think?”

  “Hm,” Martin says.

  The display changes to softly shifting patches of rainbow color, like a tart sorbet between courses of a rich meal.

  “I’d like you to see a constellation of dendritic charts for diagnostic toilet evaluations.”

  “All right,” Martin says, grinning despite himself.

  “About a third of our clients have diagnostic toilets. Generally upper four percent in earnings. A greater percentage of naturals and high naturals; generally, they’re therapied for thymic rather than pathic imbalances.”

  New charts appear on a deep midnight ground like wildly radiating stars. Carrilund highlights three of the stars clustered near the center. “Working outward to current date, these are reports beginning two weeks ago of diseases or infections within client households.”

  Martin points with one finger to bring up numerical statistics. Of the four million households surveyed, infections have been detected in more than forty percent. And the supposed infections change with time, beginning with warts in skin sloughs from shower and bath gray water (diagnostic toilets almost always interpret the entire household sewer system) and leading to a virtual epidemic of bronchial and nasal infections.

  “What about medical reports?” Martin asks.

  Carrilund brings up these stats as simple bar charts laid over the dendritic stars. They show no increases in hospital visits or medical arbeiter attendance to treat such illnesses, which is what Martin would expect, knowing that nearly all viral outbreaks are easily controlled by medical monitors found in most of the population.

  “The toilets are giving us false reports day after day,” Carrilund concludes. “Even when checked and re-set.”

  Martin thinks this over, mind racing. “But you’ve told me… You’re concerned about mental therapy fallbacks.”

  “Use your controls and bring up charts of our therapied clients in this population. Now match them with the households whose diagnostic toilets are acting up.”

  With some fumbling and false starts, Martin makes the correlations. “Sorry,” he says after a couple of minutes. “There. Households with therapied members are the source of all false disease reports.”

  “I wanted you to see for yourself. That took us two hours to find last week, when we decided to run neural data searches. The trend is consistent.”

  Martin rubs his cheek with one finger. “I’ll need stats for thymic disturbances in the overall client list…” He finds the display. “Up twelve percent, but only previously therapied people show the increase. What about pathic imbalances and criminal behavior?”

  Carrilund keys in an entirely new display. “Remember, this is professional… You’ve signed strict non-disclosure.”

  “I remember,” Martin says softly.

  “We’ve had a twenty-five percent increase in arrests for social disturbances and other misdemeanors, and a five percent increase in felonies, mostly assaults and rapes, but a few murders, as well. It’s been Worker Inc policy not to employ individuals with a record of violent crimes, even when they’ve been therapied… We leave those folks to the rehab temp agencies. So if our hypothesis is correct, that we’re seeing an epidemic of fallbacks, we would expect our greatest increase to be in thymic disorders. And it is.”

  “What about the misdemeanors—do you have pull-outs for category?”

  “Here’s the breakdown.”

  The display rises before them like a sun cut into pie wedges. Martin examines the icons and captions for more details, punching his finger at the virtual display, poking empty air.

  “You have ten thousand twelve hundred and three cases of disturbing the peace, social misbehavior requiring PD action, in the past week,” Martin says, stroking his cheek more rapidly. He frowns. Details on selected cases come up. “Public displays of nudity. Blatant racial insults. Let’s get away from criminal behavior for a moment and look into complaints of unprofessional actions. How many referrals for client misbehavior have come back to this office?”

  Carrilund finds him the right folio within the display and the charts and figures for these incidents appear. They take him some time to sort through. He is most interested in the sudden increase of incidents of expressed racism in the work place—evidence perhaps of bigotry, the old devil of genetically and culturally mixed populations. Most forms of racism are now regarded as varieties of the thymic category once known as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Workers Inc seems to be experiencing levels of racist behavior riot seen since the teens and twenties.

  Irrational and pernicious. And outbursts o
f public obscenity—

  “Any ideas?” she asks.

  “Can we get national figures here?”

  “No,” Carrilund says. “But I’ve been authorized to let you know that these figures are remarkably uniform for North America, including Mexico.”

  “Workers Inc has a problem with politeness, it seems.”

  Carrilund chuckles ruefully. “That puts it mildly.”

  “There seems to be focused antisocial activity in your clients… But what in hell do diagnostic toilets have to do with this?” He shakes his head. He asks for the display to cease for a moment and he turns to look at Carrilund. “Is it possible we’re seeing the results of some unknown disease agent? Something not in the medical database? Microbial infections have been known to produce thymic imbalances. Production of natural antivirals to fight infection has been shown to produce depression in some people.”

  “It’s possible,” Carrilund says, “but if so, it will have to be non-viral, non-bacterial, non-protist and non-mycotic, and even fall outside the range of prions.”

  She’s certainly up on this. Maybe she came out of the medical disciplines. “Something going wrong in the equipment itself?”

  “The equipment is fine.”

  Martin finds the problem oddly exhilarating. “I noticed some charts on sexual harassment and domestic and sex-related abuse—” He pauses. “Let’s skip that for the moment. I wouldn’t expect fallback to produce immediate increases in these areas.”

  “But they have,” Carrilund says. “Couples who have gone in for mutual therapy in domestic abuse cases—mostly supermale territorial aggression—and have been free of incidents for years, are coming back to their therapists in alarming numbers. We don’t have statistics available through this center yet—members of some of the families and partner units work for different temp agencies. We’re trying to draw information from other agencies, but so far that doesn’t seem workable. We guess that such incidents have more than doubled.”