The Water Bear

by Groucho Jones

  “But money... money only matters to me.”

  Box shook her head.

  “Dr Box, take my advice. You need to lighten up, stop seeing shibboleths. It’ll give you conniptions. Now, let’s see what you need.”

  “You’re going to help us?”

  “Yes.”

  “We can have our gold?” asked Kitou.

  “How about we leave that for the real Water Bear?”

  “What, then?” asked Box.

  “Central bank credit is no use where you’re headed, so how about some fungible assets to carry?”

  “Fungible?” asked Brin.

  “Precious metals, stones and memory cores. Things you can spend.”

  “You’ll give those to us?” asked Box.

  “As long as you promise not to spend it locally.”

  “We get to own them?”

  “Whoever has them, owns them. That’s what fungible means.”

  “Can we spend it on Avalon?” asked Brin.

  “Perfect. They’re always trying to rob me. Sell them some inflation.”

  “What about our ship?” asked Box.

  “That souped-up little spy boat, the Bat?”

  “No, the Water Bear. It’s on its way to Fluxor.”

  “Then follow it.”

  “The Bat doesn’t have the range,” said Brin. “It would take a century of bending space at maximum economy.”

  “What do you need?”

  “A lightship.”

  “I can’t help you with that. But I know someone who can.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Earth.”

  “Welcome to the Cult,” said Macro, leading the three Po women on a tour of the Station. In Macro, Kitou had met her match for boundless energy. She followed gamely behind, inspecting everything he showed them. “This is the crypto trading floor,” he said. A group of preoccupied teenagers looked up from wall-sized holographic displays, harrumphed, and returned to their work.

  “Are you really all clones?” asked Kitou.

  “Yes, and all men.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re not a normal society; we’re a religious order.”

  “Who do you worship?” asked Brin.

  “The Finance Engine.”

  “But you’re all physically different,” said Brin. “Some are dark, some fair. You have light brown skin and almond eyes, with epicanthic folds.”

  “Yes, we introduce ethnic diversity at the zygotal stage.”

  “Why?”

  “Fifty identical clones would be boring.”

  “What do you do for sex?”

  “Nothing.”

  Macro claimed a strongroom to store their fungibles in. The room was pure white, as pristine as a laboratory cleanroom. Box asked why it was empty.

  “We don’t keep any valuables here,” said Macro.

  “Not even a wee float?” asked Box.

  “No,” he said. “We only do numbers here. Otherwise some trigger-happy desperado might come and blow us to bits, just to harvest the atoms.”

  “Could that happen?”

  “No,” he admitted. “We have a lightship drive, and a powerful computer to steer it with. We’d win any fight by a hundred parsecs.”

  The first piece of bounty to arrive was a fire opal, the size of a hen’s egg. “That’s for the resurrection of your colleague on Avalon,” said Macro. The next was a milky green cube, veined with circuitry.

  “What’s that?” asked Kitou.

  “The most valuable object you’re ever likely to see,” said Macro. “An unprogrammed mainframe AI.”

  “What’s it for?”

  “To pay for your ship’s refit. It’s worth more than the shipyard that did it.”

  “Why are you giving them that?” asked Box.

  “Oh, we need a shipyard.”

  These riches were followed by boxes of thumbnail-sized silicon slivers, and trays of small diamonds. “Every gemstone is unique,” he explained. “But we try to source gems whose signature has never been recorded. Memory cores are the hardest. We make our own for this kind of covert application.”

  “You do this kind of thing often?” asked Brin.

  “More than you might think.”

  He took them to see the Finance Engine. It consisted of a room, about ten times the size of their strongroom, containing only a blue haze. Embroidered throughout the haze, hardly visible at first, Box could see wisps of circuitry: ghostly logic gates and eerie registers, stretching to a luminous infinity.

  “Where is he?” asked Kitou.

  “What you see here is a model, like the pictures of animals painted on cave walls. A synecdoche. It’s here to help us experience him. Would you like to say hello?”

  Kitou nodded.

  “Is it safe?” asked Brin.

  “Yes,” said Box. “I thought Samppo was needed to interpret.”

  “I’m learning,” said Macro. “But yes, it’s perfectly safe. All that Cult propaganda is only for show. The Engine’s delightful company.”

  “I’d like to meet him,” said Kitou.

  “He is quite mad,” said Macro.

  “Well, in that case let’s certainly do it,” said Box

  Then they were elsewhere.

  Box gasped. “Oh, it’s Paris.”

  They were standing in the rain, in the Rue de la Bastille, outside the Brasserie Bofinger, where Box had first met Alois, six weeks before. The headlights of cars were reflected in the glistening pavement. Box couldn’t shake the feeling that they were in Paris. It was more than correct: it was perfect. Under the cupola of the restaurant’s grand dining room, a pajama-clad man was hunched over a honky-tonk piano, playing boogie-woogie like his life depended on it. He struck the keys with such gusto that the piano inched slowly forward, until he was forced to hook his leg around the leg of his stool to pursue it.

  “He’s playing Jelly Roll Morton,” said Box.

  The man looked up, and beckoned them inside.

  “Paris!” he shouted, tossing his head back with pleasure. “La Ville-Lumière. The city of lights! Fluctuat nec mergitur. Tossed by the waves but never sunk.”

  Box was instantly charmed. There was something in all this rigmarole that was a personal compliment to her.

  “Paris is my home,” she explained to the others. “This restaurant, I almost live in this place.”

  “It’s wonderful,” said Kitou. “I like Earth.”

  “This is Earth?” asked Brin.

  “Oh yes,” said Box.

  They found themselves at a table piled high with oysters, mussels and snails, beneath a glorious art nouveau chandelier. The world was filled with people and noise. White-aproned waiters balanced platters of food on their arms. The room filled with the heady aroma of Choucroute.

  Box sighed with pleasure. Kitou gazed with concern at the lobsters.

  “Hey, Mr. M,” said Macro.

  “Macro, tuck in my boy!” said the man, who was inexplicably not only playing the piano, but was also at their table. He attacked the shells with the same gusto as he’d attacked the piano. Slowly, the table inched back.

  “Is this food?” asked Kitou.

  “It certainly is,” said Brin, filling her plate.

  “These are the people I told you about,” said Macro.

  “I know they are I know I know I know they are. Look what they’ve sent me! Can I work with this? Can I work with these raw materials? What d’you say, Macro? What d’you think?”

  “I think they’re perfect,” said Macro.

  “Perfect? Perfect? A perfect expression! A perfect number of soldiers. Tuck in, young soldiers! You can’t build perfect muscles without perfect mussels. Put some skin on those bones. Ha-ha!”

  He leaned back and stared. “I haven’t seen you in a while,” he said to Kitou.

  “I’ve never been here before sir,” she replied.

  “Never been where? Never been here? Here? Where are we where are we where are we, here? Oh ye
s, your brother is coming. And you!”

  He turned to stare at Brin. “The soldier the soldier the rock in the storm; the defender at the gates. Tell me, young soldier, what is mathematics?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Brin.

  “Oh, I know you know you know you know the answer. Did we find it or did we invent it? It’s important to me. Is it invented or discovered? I must know. I have to know have to know I have to know now.”

  “I believe it’s discovered.”

  “You know what I think, d’you know what I think? I think mathematics is God.

  “And you, Dr Ophelia Box! Oh yes. The one we’ve all been waiting for. What have we got here? All three at once? Is this all three of you here? The soldier the scholar the child. Dr Box, I have something for you.”

  “For me?”

  He made to reach under the table, then sprung back and grinned.

  “Yes, oh yes, I owe you some information. Les fruits de la mer. A porpoise for your visit. Something you can take away and eat later.

  “Go to Earth, Dr Box. See Yokohama Slim.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Trust me, it’s enough.”

  “I know Yokohama Slim,” said Kitou.

  “You do, you do you do you do! Look at that!”

  Outside, a shaft of sunlight split the Rue de la Bastille.

  “I get tired,” he said. “Macro, what, yes, got to stop talking, got to stop, got to stop, it’s a problem isn’t it? Is it a problem? Do you think so? Perhaps I should, perhaps I should stretch my legs, should I stretch my legs?”

  “I think so,” smiled Macro.

  “I will,” he said.

  They found themselves back in the street. Inside the brasserie, the computer played boogie-woogie as if his life depended on it, a mischievous smile on his face.

  The clouds closed ranks again, and a soft rain started to fall. Box, for a moment, shaking her head, thought the golden light from inside the brasserie was like the light shining from heaven.

  “This is your religion?” asked Brin.

  “Yes,” said Macro.

  “I approve.”

  Box and Brin teased Kitou.

  “You do see she’s smitten?” asked Box.

  “Really?” asked Brin.

  “He’s lovely,” said Kitou. “Clever, kind and not too beautiful. Beautiful people live in a warp bubble.”

  “Kitou,” said Box. “You’re stunningly beautiful.”

  “No, I’m not,” she said. “I have a bird’s nest on my head.”

  “Ask Macro about that.”

  “Oh, he loves me.”

  “And why do you think that is?”

  “Because of my spirit.”

  “There is that.”

  Box interviewed Samppo.

  “Do you mind if I record this?” she asked.

  “No,” said. “If you win, we can suffer being famous for a few milliseconds.”

  “May I ask, who are you?”

  “I’m the bank. This human being you’re addressing now was promoted into the role. His wetware speaks to the mainframe computer called Samppo, and Samppo speaks to the Engine.”

  “So, you’re not really Samppo?”

  “I’m a complex, evolved person. Are you the cells in your body? Once, I was a physical human like you.”

  “What was your original name?”

  “Oh, that’d be telling.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a central banker. I’m the central banker. I’m also a hedge fund manager. And a religious leader. The Cult of the Bicameral Mind.”

  “What is the Finance Engine?”

  “A god.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Any sufficiently advanced being is indistinguishable from a deity.”

  “That isn’t an answer.”

  “That wasn’t a question.”

  “Why do you do what you do?”

  “You mean, why does a god condescend to help run a bank? Because it’s interesting.”

  “I mean why do you do what you do?”

  “Me personally? The human? Dr Box, I’m not a private citizen. I’m a branch of government. I do what’s required of me.”

  “Which is?”

  “I manage the value of money, for the benefit of our society. Our economy runs hot. People want to live productive lives. We overproduce. I manage that by taking it out of the system.”

  “You steal it?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “How?”

  “Typically, in the form of complex derivatives.”

  “What do you do with it then?”

  “A lot of it is just bank credit. We make it disappear. We try to spend the real money outside our economy. Some of it goes on the Thousand worlds military. Some of it is to honor political commitments. The Xap rely on us to defend one of their frontiers. We finance that. We provide aid, philanthropically, and in return for astropolitical favors. If there’s a disaster, on a sufficiently large scale, our society is often a first responder.”

  “So, you’re the good guys?”

  “We like to think so.”

  “Everyone keeps claiming that for themselves.”

  “Maybe because it’s true. We’re a benevolent society.”

  “Why did you stop us stealing our gold?”

  “Partly because I wanted to meet you in person. To see your faces. Talk it over. Maybe find a better solution. But holding up the bank was good. I like your cojones.”

  “Why was the bank vault empty?”

  “Oh, there’s people I’d like to think you got away with it.”

  “You’re framing us?”

  “For a crime you intended to commit.”

  “Do you know what’s happening, Samppo?”

  He thought about that. “No. Maybe the Finance Engine does, but me? No. I can only make inferences.”

  “Why are you helping us now?”

  “The great randomizer is war. I fear it exponentially.”

  “How far would you go to prevent one?”

  “I’d give up a great deal, but not to the point of abandoning our values. What’s the point in sacrificing what you set out to preserve?”

  “What’ll you do now?”

  “About the drums of war? Nothing. The Po are the operational wing of the executive. You’re the covert wing of the Po. I depend on you people for doing things.”

  “Us people?”

  “You’re a Po soldier, Dr Box.”

  “Why me, Samppo?”

  “You mean, why you, personally, of all people? Why are you here?”

  “Yes, does anyone know why?”

  “Maybe the Xap know.”

  “When will I get to meet them?”

  “Soon.”

  Piece by piece, their fungibles arrived. Sapphires and emeralds. Hypercrystals used in warp drives. Memory cores. Objects Box didn’t recognize. Fabulous riches. Some of it arrived in small, cylindrical lightships, about the size of a person. These flitted in and out of existence around the Cult, with their lambent Aurorae Galactini playing over the layers of refuse.

  One shipment arrived in a ship made of shadows: Magellanics. This one, Macro wouldn’t show them.

  “It’s a surprise,” he said.

  “There’s enough wealth there to fund a new world,” said Samppo.

  “Or a small war?” asked Box.

  “If need be,” said Brin.

  Pax monitored proceedings from a thousand kilometers away, declining any social invitation to visit. “We have our systems,” he said. “I can best protect you from here.”

  Instead, Kitou took Macro to the Bat, a long fall through space in their respective spacesuits, Kitou’s unreflective black nano, Macro’s like a deep-sea diving suit. Box watched them drift away, hand-in-hand, into the big empty.

  Again, she shivered.

  It was lonely out there.

  Kitou returned with Alois, still steering the Water Bear’s androform b
ody, who promptly disappeared to talk business.

  “I’m staying,” he said, after he and Samppo finished.

  “What will you do?” asked Box.

  “Samppo has kindly offered me the use of a virtuality.”

  “What for?”

  “Oh, some enquiries.”

  “Permanently?”

  “Oh no. Please come and get me, when you get my original back.”

  “You’ll merge?” asked Brin.

  “If he’ll have me,” said Alois.

  Everyone seemed to agree that this was for the best. Kitou and Brin reluctantly agreed. Box felt bereft. The Water Bear’s remote wanted her systems free for the mission.

  “What kind of virtuality?” asked Box.

  “A simulation of Threnody,” said Buss. “I’ll continue my research. I have work I want to do on the Fa:ing number, with the help of the computers here.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “I have ideas, based on what I saw Backstage. I want to try to talk with it, instead of trying to understand it. A more heuristic approach.”

  “Talk, using mathematics?” asked Brin.

  Buss nodded.

  “I want to ask it what it thinks it’s doing.”

  “The Finance Engine told me mathematics is God,” said Brin.

  “Then perhaps I’ll be speaking with god,” said Alois.

  After seven days, with their treasure secure in the Bat, they prepared to leave. The war chest was smaller than Box had expected, hardly larger than a suitcase.

  “It’s been good having you,” said Samppo. “We don’t get many women here, much less three archetypes.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Box.

  “It should be obvious by now. You, the scholar. Brin, the soldier. Kitou, the child. Beings of mythos. Who can oppose you?”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “As do we all.”

  Box looked out across the space they were about to cross. It was lonely, out here in the big empty. The stars were so few. If there was a demon who lived in the sky, it lived here, in the nothing.

  Kitou was heartbroken. As they were leaving, on the airside of the filmy membrane, on the edge of the scow, Macro gave her his package.

  “It’s for your ship,” he said.

  “And for you.

  “Remember us here.”