The Last Dancer

by The Last Dancer (new ed) (mobi)

  Trent sat with his face in his hands. Finally he straightened in his chair and interrupted her. "Shut up."

  Shell blinked. "What?"

  "Shut up," said Trent quietly. "You are an arrogant child with no understanding of the damage you are prepared to cause my home."

  She looked at him as though he'd slapped her. "Where am I wrong?"

  "About eight places, but I'll start with the worst. Have you ever seen a systems analysis on an Net trunk that's failed?"

  "Well--no," she said, suddenly uncertain. "That doesn't happen any more."

  "Not for a good thirty years," Trent agreed. "But it's the closest analog we have, though on a much smaller scale, to what you're talking about doing to the entire Earth. You haven't ever studied a trunk failure?"

  She started to say something, stopped, shook her head, said, "No."

  Trent nodded. "Great. So watch and learn." His eyes went blank a second, and then an orange slice view of Earth appeared, three-dimensional, with the orbital InfoNet Relays hovering in the air a meter above the surface of the planet. Trent came to his feet, walked over to the map. "This is the chain. The InfoNet Relay Station at Halfway goes down. The little talk-to-me's take up as much of the slack as they can, but Halfway is the primary trunk; suddenly eighty percent of the traffic going through the Orbital Relay Stations dumps down to Earth. Never mind the rest of the world; since you're a, what's the word, patriot, that's it, let's look at what happens in North America. The switching stations in Portland, Cincinnati, Capitol City, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Washington, San Francisco, Quebec, San Diego, Miami, Ensenada, Dallas, Chicago--one by one they attempt to take up the slack, but they can't. They were, as you note, designed for the volume of traffic you're going to dump on them; but Shell, they weren't designed to have it dumped on them all at once. Take note; to bring the Halfway Relay Station down safely you'd need to break up traffic intelligently among all of the ground stations, and you can't. You don't have access to the necessary resources, nobody but DataWatch does. Back when trunks used to fail, that was the commonest reason; not that they were given too much data to handle, but that they were given it too abruptly. Processors prioritize desperately; bits drop, data gets garbled, processors start trying to figure out just what the hell is being thrown at them. In the process, incidentally, every other half-assed, badly written expert system in the country has a nervous breakdown. While they're so engaged, the next batch of data arrives, and your downside systems still aren't done running error correction on the first batch. The second batch gets stored, if fault tolerance is properly implemented, or dropped, if it's not. In our real-world example, most of the data coming down to the ground stations gets dumped. Never mind the cost of the lost data--though you've already caused a mild recession--because far worse follows." In the holo, huge sections of the country went red, the red spreading south into Mexico, and down through Central and into South America. "The Net goes down across most of the Western Hemisphere. It stays down for days. This rebellion that's supposed to hurt the Unification--it breaks the back of Occupied America. One of the ten thousand things that goes down with the Net are the ATCs--" At her look of incomprehension he said quietly, "Automated Traffic Control cells. That's what TransCon calls them, ATCs. Food distribution is always tight; losing TransCon means people start going hungry. Trucks sit in the warehouses and because the trucks don't fly, the maglevs don't get shipments, and when the maglevs don't get their shipments the supermarkets don't get theirs. By the second day people in big cities--most of the northeast seaboard, and Greater Los Angeles--are out of food. Riots follow like the Unification hasn't seen in fifty years; an optimistic solution suggests that five million die in the first week, possibly as many as twenty million."

  Shell interrupted him. "But there have to be some sacrifices! You don't win a war without--"

  "Shut up." Trent turned away from the display, turned on her with such anger that she actually flinched. "You're not going to win no matter what you do." He spoke the words slowly, for emphasis. "You...can...not...win."

  Michelle stared at him speechlessly.

  "It's worse than that," said Trent slowly, his voice almost gentle in contrast. "When the Net comes up again, DataWatch--if they're smart, and they are, at least, smarter than you--will bring it up with something like the old Lunar Information Network Key hard-wired into it, an encryption key which would take the Net away from the Players, from us. You're old enough to remember the LINK; I damn near died taking out the LINK back in '69. You don't get to mess up my work." Trent was silent a beat, just looking at her. "Projections I've run put their odds of success, at taking the Net away from us, at around seventy percent; they may not use Image, but they've got some of the best webdancers in the world working for them, sweetheart, and if you think otherwise you haven't studied DataWatch the way someone calling herself a Player should have. The Players would fight back, and the war that followed would make your silly rebellion look like the punk idiocy it is."

  The withering contempt in his voice wore her down; by the time he was done the tips of her ears were bright red. I don't think he intended this last to carry, but I have good hearing; his voice was very low when he said, "And neither you nor I even want to think about what happens if the AIs ever get together and mount a really serious campaign against DataWatch."

  Shell fell silent for a long while. "Trent," she said finally, "I'd like to see your simulations. I'd like to work through them."

  Trent nodded, rising. "I'm going to have you detained with your cousin; I'll have an infochip sent to your cell." He gestured to me, turned away.

  Shell stood up also. "I can make it work. I can prove it to you."

  "I doubt it."

  Shell said softly, "I've spent eight thousand hours on this project."

  It stopped Trent cold. He looked straight at me, paused, and looked back at Michelle Altaloma. "But you're only sixteen."

  She stared back at him, clearly proud of herself.

  "Jesus and Harry," said Trent quietly. "Get a life, girl."

  He turned around and left her there, standing motionless and open-mouthed in the middle of the Halfway Relay Station.

  * * *

  57.

  Denice prepared for bed.

  The tub in her bathroom was a marvel; Denice suspected that it was the largest tub off the surface of Earth itself. She set the water as hot as she could stand it, called the lights down and floated in the warm darkness until all the tension had drained from her. After a time, she was not certain how long, she released the drain catch, rose from the tub and dried herself. She pulled on a silk robe that had been left out for her and went back to her bedroom. As the door to the bathroom uncurled to close, a voice said softly, "Will you accept a call?"

  Denice sat down on her bed. "From who?"

  The voice paused. "The caller identifies itself as a childhood friend."

  Suddenly Denice's heart was beating very fast. "Are you a person?"

  "No, 'Selle Daimara."

  Denice bit her lower lip. "Can I turn you off?"

  "You can instruct me to not listen to this call, if this is what you mean by turning me off. I will comply."

  "Send the call through. Don't listen."

  "Yes, 'Selle Daimara."

  There was the briefest of pauses.

  A holograph, about thirty centimeters in height, appeared at the foot of her bed, glowing slightly against the darkness. It wavered, then solidified.

  A young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, with short blond hair and pale blue eyes, stood at the foot of Denice's bed. "Hello, Denice."

  The voice, the face--Denice stared at the image, felt her heart skip a beat.

  Her mouth was very dry. "Trent? Is that you?"

  We had dinner together, Trent and I, in Marc's office.

  Trent cleared Marc's desk, and we ate atop the desk. Mexican food, huevos rancheros with warm corn tortillas. Not bad.

  I sat in one of the guest chairs, Trent in Marc'
s. Through Marc's window, behind Trent, I could see, off in the far distance, a glowing, expanding cloud of debris that had once been a Space Force ship.

  "Tomorrow I'm going to have to go be seen."

  Trent nodded. "Yes. The fighting will keep them occupied tonight; tomorrow we'll have a good simulation of Packard for anyone who might call him; you and a couple of squads of our fake Space Force will head out into Halfway and let yourselves be seen. Word is that Security has been confined to barracks for the duration; you don't have to explain it when people ask, just say it's so and look unhappy. They'll draw their own conclusions."

  "What happens if someone actually calls Space Force to complain?"

  "So long as they don't call the Peaceforcers," Trent said mildly. "First, you try to prevent that happening. There's a pretty good chance it won't; Halfway is used to looking to you, Neil, and then to Packard, as the final arbiters on most subjects. Be unhappy, but don't make too big deal of this; temporary inconvenience, due to the fighting, soon over. Second, if somebody does try to get through to Space Force brass, odds are good they won't. I haven't let you call out, so you don't know; the Net's a mess right now. Traffic is running three hundred percent above normal, due to the fighting, and DataWatch is all over the Net, web angels clogging every channel, slowing down even legitimate business by thirty or forty percent before you tack on the three hundred percent extra traffic penalty. It's at least fifty-fifty the call gets ignored even if it gets through. It doesn't seem all that unreasonable that a couple of squads of Space Force might have taken over the Halfway Relay Station, and only slightly unreasonable that they've taken over Administration Central; it almost happened for real. So even if they get through, it's possible that the brass will figure it's a case of left hand/right hand. Third, suppose someone calls, gets through, and brass gets alarmed. Brass calls here, we identify ourselves as Space Force Detached, Squads SG02 and SG03."

  "Um--"

  "Yes?"

  "That's the Secretary General's escort group, no?"

  Trent nodded. "Yes. So our hypothetical brass calls the SG's office, asks if SG02 and SG03 are properly detached to duty at Halfway--"

  "And you're screwed."

  Trent shook his head, spoke around a bite of warm corn tortilla. "Nope. The SecGen's office says, yes, they're ours."

  The small image said hesitantly, "Trent--as you mean that question, no. I am that part of Trent which used to be Johnny Johnny. Trent's Image. Today we are very much of a part. You may call me Johnny Johnny if you wish, or Trent; I will answer to either."

  So many different things tumbled through the back of Denice's head that for a long moment nothing came out. She licked her lips, finally, said, "What would you like to be called?"

  The Image said simply, "Call me Trent."

  "You're kidding."

  "Nope. I'm not proud of it," Trent conceded, "but I am serious. The Secretary General and I have certain interests in common. At the moment."

  I couldn't imagine. "Such as?"

  Trent actually laughed. "Well, for starters, we're both terrified of Mohammed Vance."

  They talked long into the night.

  "I've missed you so much," Denice whispered. "I can't tell you how many times I've woken up at night and wondered what I was doing on Earth, why I didn't go to join you."

  The Image nodded. "I have wondered," he said quietly. "If--" The Image paused, and spoke deliberately. "I must speak to you of emotions, and I have none. The person I speak of is not-I. He is the passion, and the desire."

  "Is Trent."

  "If you wish. My biological component--" The Image hesitated again. The words he spoke would have sounded melodramatic from any human; from Image that lacked emotion they had the simple ring of truth. "His heart aches and his soul is empty. When he lost you he ceased to be a whole person. He has loved many people; you are the only one he has ever let himself need. He wrote this of you, some years ago:"

  Still the days seem the same

  You say you want

  Silence and solitude

  Promises made

  Unbroken

  Dreams

  Unspoken

  True

  I don't need dreams

  Have what I want

  And all I need is you

  Denice sat in the darkness while silent tears tracked down her cheeks. "I've done things that would horrify him. He doesn't even love the girl he knew seven years ago, he didn't know her long enough. He loves a child who died when I was nine. He doesn't love me."

  "He did once," said Trent's Image softly. "Does any part of that person still live in you?"

  "Yes, no," she cried, "I don't know."

  Trent seemed restless. He got up and paced, sat down again, talked compulsively, listened with half an ear when I talked. I didn't know the man, obviously; perhaps this was normal for him. Around two or three in the morning, in response to a comment I made regarding the preparations the Rebs had made, he snapped, "They have no chance."

  "Is it really that bad?"

  Trent sighed. "I'm not exaggerating, if that's what you mean. Neil, if everything the rebels are planning goes right--absolutely everything--they still lose. No projection I make has them coming away winners. To win they need the Collective and the CityStates, and they don't have either; what's worse, this pimp Obodi, he didn't even try to get either to back him. With the Collective on their side it's possible; but even with the Collective it's closer than I'd like." Trent hesitated visibly, said finally, "There is one thing that gives them a bare chance. But the cost of trying it is too high, and there are still no guarantees. They probably haven't even considered it as an option."

  "What is it?"

  Trent shook his head. "I won't tell you. It scares me that I thought of it myself." He sighed, rubbed the sides of his temples with his fingers. "I was raised by the PKF until I was ten years old, Corona; the Unification Council freed us from them the day before my eleventh birthday. I learned a lot from the PKF. If they were running this rebellion, it would succeed. They're professionals, and I have great respect for them. The thing I thought of doing--they've thought of it. They've planned for it if it happens. And those stupid sons of bitches running the rebellion down on Earth, the Rebs and the Claw, they're so far out of their depth they don't even know which end is up any more."

  Toward morning, when Denice was tired and empty of tears, the Image said finally, "He asked that this message be given you before I leave: I hurt when I think of you. I am pained so that I cannot love or dream or plan with conviction. But it has not stopped me from thinking of you, every day of the last seven years. A day does not go by that I do not think of you. A day does not go by that I do not wish you to join me."

  Denice sat quietly, fought not to let it show how the words touched her. She said after a moment, "He can't still love me. He--lies to himself-- exquisitely well."

  Trent's Image said slowly, "Perhaps. But it does not make what he feels less real."

  "It's been seven years. And seven years before that since we were together for more than a brief while."

  "He has not stopped hurting."

  Denice bit her lip. "Trent, that's insane."

  The Image of Trent the Uncatchable nodded. "I do not believe that sanity is his strong point." A brief pause: "Web angels are flooding the Net as we speak, in anticipation of an upcoming battle; I must go soon. Do you have a message for Trent, when I return to him?"

  "Tell him--I miss him."

  "Ah."

  Denice said quietly, "Trent, I love you."

  Trent's Image said, "There are days--when he--still believes that; and days when he can't, because you haven't come to join him. But it's good to hear, nonetheless."

  "I do love you."

  The Image stood silently, shimmering in the darkened room. "I'll tell him you said so. It will mean a great deal to him. He loves you more--" Trent hesitated. When his speech resumed it was very slow. "Forgive me. Web angels--I'm devoting significant processor
time to hiding from them. They're sweeping through this section of the Net. I may have waited too long."

  Denice spoke in a desperate rush: "Trent loves me more than what?"

  The Image seemed to be looking straight at her. "More than you love him. He's a very foolish person, really. I must go now if I'm to have any hope of survival. I'll tell him what you said."

  The bright image ceased, left behind a black afterimage in Denice's eyes.

  Denice sat as Trent's Image had left her, sitting still and motionless, when Robert came for her. He spoke as the door curled open. "Denice!"

  She did not look up at him, did not let him see the tears that had left her cheeks wet. "What?"

  "My dear--perhaps this is bad timing, but--"

  "What?"

  "We're being attacked."

  Denice looked up, saw him standing in the doorway looking at her.

  "I'm sorry to interrupt," he said quietly, "but I thought you might want to know."

  Trent's Image fled through the orbital Net.

  It was a dangerous place at the best of times, and doubly so now, with DataWatch prepared for war. Trent knew he had no chance of getting back undetected; he hoped only that he could get back to his body.

  He fled through a chained series of low-altitude comsats. The comsats spoke both to one another and to Net communications relays on Earth. At no point did Trent consider going down to Earth; with no secured processors as a home base, he would be no better off than in the orbital Net.

  Jump, and jump, and jump again--Trent found himself in a transfer node, a small observation area with excellent input attachments, poor output. Paths led away from the transfer node in eight directions.

  The living Image of Trent the Uncatchable paused briefly, considered his options. Web angels closed in on him as he considered, as the borrowed processor cycles which the Image stole from its surroundings moved slowly by. Trent fired viruses and phages back in the direction he had come, paused long enough to clone himself into a dozen apparently functional ghosts, and sent the ghosts back after the viruses and phages.