Implied Spaces

by Walter Jon Williams

  A rocket landed nearby. Shrapnel hammered Aristide’s armor. One of the bodyguard collapsed, its innards torn. The remaining two machines were unable to carry Aristide on their own, and he found himself face-down on the torn ground.

  The pain in his knee hadn’t returned, but the sensation of heat was spreading up his leg toward his groin.

  “I don’t find our current prospects very promising,” Aristide said.

  “Nor do I,” said Bitsy.

  “Have the bodyguard engage any enemy that come in range. Maybe the black hats will be good and blast all of us to bits.”

  “Very good.” The two remaining machines dropped Aristide’s armor and took up a defensive posture.

  Aristide felt heat flush his entire body. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and dripped steadily on his displays. The air in the suit smelled of humus.

  “I don’t seem to be doing well,” he confessed.

  “With your permission,” Bitsy said, “I would like to erase myself. Vindex shouldn’t capture either one of us alive.”

  “Carry on,” Aristide said. “I’ll just hang around here till something happens.”

  “Good luck.” The ground shuddered.

  “I’ll see you in a better place.”

  “Five seconds,” Bitsy said. “Four. Three. Two. One.”

  She spoke no more.

  “Goodbye, old friend,” Aristide said. “It’s been jolly.”

  Heat blazed through Aristide’s flesh. His body had been completely infiltrated by the nanomachines, which were reproducing in a perfect frenzy.

  His vision had gone dark. He panted for breath. He could feel sweat pouring off him.

  And then he was consumed.

  17

  There was a soft whirring, a breath of air on his cheek. From somewhere in his scrambled memories came the scent of violets. The scent faded.

  “Damn it,” he said aloud. “I’ve survived over fifteen hundred years, and now the bastard’s killed me twice.”

  He remembered the arcing fire coming down through the trees, the broken reef of dead machines lying in heaps. The microscopic machines burning through his body. Bitsy’s farewell.

  But then he remembered that he shouldn’t remember anything like that. Not if this was a new incarnation. If he had been reloaded from his last backup, he wouldn’t have any memories of the invasion at all.

  He opened his eyes. He sat at apparent ease in a leather armchair, one knee crossed over the other. His spider-silk suit was grey, with a subtle pinstripe, and fit him perfectly. The armchair was in a book-lined study, lit by a skylight through which came a clear, perfect north light.

  Sitting in another chair and regarding him with polite attention was a man who seemed about nineteen, with a Navy blue blazer worn over a cream-colored turtleneck. Though his hair was short on the back and sides of his head, a mass of chestnut curls tumbled from the top of his head almost to his eyes. His eyes were grey. An oval onyx ring sat on one forefinger.

  The whole arrangement had a perfect Victorian solidity to it that made Aristide suspicious at once.

  “Who the hell are you?” he asked. “Captain Nemo?”

  The other man smiled faintly. “Beyond devotion to an ideal,” he said, “there is little basis for comparison.”

  Aristide tried to stand, and found that his body declined to obey his commands. He looked at the other figure.

  “You’re my interrogator, I take it?”

  The young-seeming man inclined his head. “I’d prefer to consider this a productive dialogue,” he said.

  Aristide glanced about at the room and its furnishings. “This is a virtual room, I suppose.”

  “Oh no. It’s real.” The man raised a hand to the shelves. “The books all exist. If your senses are keen enough, you can detect the scent of fine leather binding and the acetic acid smell of book paper decomposing.”

  “That’s exactly the sort of detail that makes me want to think none of this is exists.”

  “Oh.” The stranger seemed slightly taken aback. He considered a moment, then shrugged. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say that the room was created by someone, for some purpose, and that you and I now inhabit it.”

  “Where’s that whirring sound coming from?”

  “There’s a humidifier behind you. The room is kept at an ideal humidity for preservation of book paper.”

  “Is there a pot of violets somewhere behind me?”

  The stranger looked at him curiously. “No. Why?”

  “No reason.”

  The young-looking man reached into his pocket and withdrew a cigaret case. “I’ve taken up any number of vile habits lately. Mind if I smoke?”

  “I can’t stop you.”

  The stranger looked at him from under his waterfall of curls.

  “You could, actually. I would refrain out of courtesy to you.”

  “I suppose,” Aristide mocked, quoting his interrogator, “it doesn’t matter.”

  The young-looking man put the cigaret in his mouth, then lit it with a table lighter of carved white jade. Aristide wondered how many centuries it had been since he’d seen a table lighter.

  The scent of tobacco stung his nostrils.

  “The level of detail is really pretty good,” he said.

  His companion gave him a severe look. “I admire the consistency of your skepticism,” he said, “but if you persist in viewing me as some kind of Cartesian Great Deceiver, it will not only make no difference in the long run, but will make our conversation damned tedious.” He gestured with his cigaret. “If we were in virtual, I wouldn’t have had to take control of your body. I could have let you run and jump and leap about to your heart’s content, secure as if you were in a padded cell.”

  Aristide considered this. “Conceded,” he said.

  “I have otherwise interfered only minimally. I’ve given you one tweak that will make you talkative, and another that will make it impossible for you to lie to me.”

  “There’s not a lot of point in that,” Aristide said. “The only military secrets I know have to do with the timing and composition of the invasion, and by now you already know all that.”

  “You probably know more than that, or have guessed much more,” said the stranger, “but we can save all that for later, if we get to it at all. I had other reasons for saving you.”

  “Which were?”

  Aristide’s reply was instant. He really couldn’t stop this conversation, he thought.

  The stranger looked at him.

  “I wanted to interview Pablo Monagas Pérez,” he said.

  Panic fluttered in Aristide’s throat. What threatened to burst from his tongue was not language, but babbling, and he managed to fight the impulse and keep silent.

  The stranger tilted his head, amused at Aristide’s reaction. “You’ve been my most persistent opponent since I’ve set up shop here on Courtland. I think you were the fellow who first found out what I was up to on Midgarth. I suspect you were on Hawaiki, too. I had some idea of your activities in Topaz, since for a time I received messages concerning your activities.

  “I gave you credit for consistency, so I thought you would almost certainly be a part of the invasion—and thus my weapons were programmed, insofar as it was possible, to preserve your present existence.” He shifted comfortably on his seat, gesturing widely with the cigaret as horror slowly closed its cold, steel-clad fingers on Aristide’s heart.

  “Your genetics are on file,” the stranger said. “There are certain patterns found in your template without which you would not be you. And so…” He smiled. “I had my little machines programmed to look for you, and now here you are, my guest and interlocutor.”

  “You’re Vindex then?” Words burst free from Aristide’s tongue.

  The stranger put a hand to his heart and bowed. “Honored to make your acquaintance,” he said.

  The wave of adrenaline that burned through Aristide’s veins turned to anger.

&nb
sp; “So what’s next for me, then?” he demanded. “Torture? Slavery?”

  The Venger’s lips twisted with distaste. “Really,” he said. “What do you take me for?”

  “Megalomaniac. Mind-twister. Mass-murderer.”

  “…And many additional words beginning with M,” Vindex sighed. “I suppose it would be useless to point out that your side has done a lot more damage than I have?”

  Aristide laughed in derision. Vindex looked at him reproachfully.

  “That invasion was wasteful, needlessly destructive, and stupid besides. The wreckage is immense. The cleanup will take ages. You’re the only survivor, and only because I took care to preserve you.”

  “Well, then,” Aristide said. “I suppose you’re just going to lecture me to death?”

  Vindex stubbed out his cigaret, crossed his legs, and locked his hands around one knee. He looked at Aristide with friendly interest.

  “You’re the only person in my domain who doesn’t love me,” he said. “No one else here would call me names.”

  “I’ll call you a lot more, if you like.”

  “No, if you like,” Vindex said.

  Aristide did so. Vindex listened with apparent pleasure.

  “I have to say,” he said, “that it’s refreshing to speak with someone who isn’t so damned deferent all the time. Being the cynosure of all eyes is, I fear to say, dull in the extreme. No wonder so many tyrants went mad, hearing nothing but that yes yes yes all the time.”

  “Funny words from a fellow who thinks he’s God.”

  The young man’s eyebrows lifted. “God? No, I don’t think I’m God. In fact, I don’t think even God is God, a problem on which I will enlarge at the proper time.” He settled deeper into his seat.

  “No,” he said, “I’m a shabby, temporary, lower-case-g god at best—and I fully intend to resign as soon as my current task is complete.”

  “You’re going to free your slaves?” The sarcasm came easily to Aristide’s lips. “Once billions of people have labored entirely on your behalf for who knows how long? How generous of you!”

  “I’ll tell you how I’m going to do it,” said Vindex in all seriousness. “When my mission is complete, I’ll upload myself and a select group of followers, and we’ll zoom off to build a new settlement around a remote star. The rest of you will be instructed, by me, to return volition to yourselves after a suitably safe number of years is passed.

  “Meanwhile, in my distant habitation, the original settlers will retain their love for me, but their children—who will I hope view my life in a less subjective light than, say, yourself—the children will have full volition, and will in time outnumber their parents.” An equivocal look crossed his youthful face. “After which, I suppose, some form of justice may take place, if you can persuade the children it’s necessary. But in the meantime—”

  “That’s a ludicrous fantasy. People like you never give up power.”

  “But in the meantime—” Steel glittered in the Venger’s grey eyes. “In the meantime, I need the human race. All of you, each and every one.”

  Aristide managed to avoid flinching under the directness of that gaze.

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me why,” he said.

  The Venger’s eyelid twitched.

  “In time,” he said.

  “I imagine it will be a long lecture,” Aristide said. “So could you rearrange me in my chair? I’m starting to cramp.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Vindex looked abstract for a moment, and Aristide assumed he was giving instructions through his implant.

  Vindex returned his attention to Aristide.

  “I’ve told Courtland to allow you limited mobility,” he said. “If you try to get up, or attack me, Courtland will stop you. But if you just shift on the chair, you’ll have freedom of movement.”

  “Very generous of you,” Aristide said.

  He experimented, shifted off his one numb buttock, and got both feet on the floor. He was tempted to launch himself at Vindex and try to snap his neck, but he halted the impulse before it got very far. The odds were good that Vindex was telling the truth, and he wouldn’t be able to move at all to the attack, or would end up a humiliated heap on the floor. But even if he succeeded, the Venger’s death would be temporary. No doubt Vindex had backed himself up everywhere within his domain.

  He decided to save energetic movement for later, and carefully stretched one leg, then the other.

  “Right,” he said. “You were about to explain why it’s necessary to have your boot on the neck of the human race, and how you’re going to give us our freedom once you’re done with your big project, whatever it is.”

  Vindex had lit another cigaret while Aristide was stretching. He rose to his feet.

  “I think better when I’m pacing,” he said. He took a few steps, then hesitated. “You can turn your head? I don’t fancy talking to your nape.”

  Aristide turned his head left, then right.

  “Carry on,” he said. “But it seems to me that you’re the one with the talking tweak, not me.”

  Again Vindex touched his heart with one hand, and bowed.

  “First of all,” he said as he walked lightly on the carpet, “I’d like to dispose for once and all with that moral superiority you insist on displaying. After all, you are a founding member of a caste who out of pure self-interest has enslaved eleven intelligent beings, any one of them smarter than you, more capable, and arguably more creative—or at any rate, able to simultaneously consider many more options than you can, which probably amounts to the same thing.”

  “I save my sympathy for human beings, not machines.”

  Vindex smirked. “Not very broadminded of you, is it?”

  “Is that how you got Courtland on your side? Promising the same freedom you’ve guaranteed the rest of us—that he’ll be free when you say so?”

  Vindex gave an equivocal shake of the head.

  “At the proper time,” he said. He turned and continued his pacing, his eyes on the cigaret cupped in his right hand. He gestured with the cigaret as he spoke, jabbing it as if emphasizing words on a blackboard with a piece of chalk.

  “Consider what has to be done to create one of our celebrated pocket universes,” he said. “In essence, we convince the universe that a wormhole exists and always has, and before the universe can change its mind we widen the thing with a vast amount of energy, and stabilize it with negative-mass matter that doesn’t properly exist either.” Jab. “And after that miracle,” jab, “we perform a few more, re-creating the Big Bang by inflating a tiny amount of matter into a whole habitable universe. Except that we outdo the Big Bang,” jab jab, “because the Bang only created hydrogen and a few other light elements, so everything between helium and ununoctium has to be brought into existence in a whole secondary creation, just so that we can have something to stand on… and we can only do any of this thanks to incredible calculation on the part of the intelligences you’ve enslaved.”

  As he turned, the cigaret performed not a jab, but a flourish.

  “I’ve heard this part of the lecture,” Aristide said. “Feel free to skip ahead.”

  Vindex stopped and turned to him. “My point is that we can create whole self-contained universes,” he said, “and we do it with extreme care and extreme diligence, such that no one is hurt in the process and the end result is a pleasant place for folks to live.”

  “Right,” Aristide said.

  “And then,” Vindex said, “having done all of this, not once but multiple times, what did you lot do next?”

  “Even though I know perfectly well where you’re going with this,” Aristide said, “I suppose you’re going to tell me anyway.”

  “You just pissed it all away!” Vindex said. The cigaret jabbed again, this time at Aristide. “You did all the stupid things humanity always does. You pursued comforts and profits, and had affairs and babies, and indulged in a lot of stupid arguments and wars, and you created a whole universe so that yo
u could dress up in chain mail and fight orcs! How brilliant was that?”

  He walked along a row of books, the cigaret gesturing, his free hand running along the spines of the bound volumes.

  “Vast machine intelligences, pocket universes created so beautifully and brilliantly they should be the home for gods, settlements growing on other star systems… and you indulged yourselves with an Existential Crisis! You all took the popular—and lazy—view that if you hadn’t solved a problem given the resources available, that meant the problem was unsolvable. You forgot what it all was for.”

  Aristide watched from his chair, one skeptical eyebrow raised.

  “Doubtless you are going to remind me,” he said.

  “For heaven’s sake!” cried the Venger. “You people have the power of gods! But you insist on demonstrating that you’re merely human beings!”

  “The ones who tried to be gods haven’t had such a good record,” Aristide pointed out. “Domitian to Hitler to the Seraphim, they failed and took half of civilization away with them.”

  “They thought it was about personal power!” Vindex said. “That’s not the point!”

  Aristide looked at Vindex in mock surprise. “Controlling the entire human race is not about personal power? O Vengeful One, your wisdom astounds me!”

  Vindex offered a little expression of distaste. “Power is a short cut. Something needs doing, and getting everyone behind it is just a means to an end.”

  “Perhaps you’d better get to the point, then,” Aristide said. “Because so far, you’re coming across as just another damned megalomaniac.”

  Vindex walked across the room with short, angry strides, and stubbed out his cigaret in a marble tray. He turned to face Aristide, his arms crossed.

  “Has it occurred to you to wonder why you’ve been able to stand in my way at every turn?” he asked. “You personally I mean, not the others.”

  Aristide considered the question.

  “I was unlucky,” he said.

  Vindex cocked his head. “What were you doing in Midgarth, anyway? Looking for me?”

  “No. It was pure chance I met your creatures.”