Emerald Eyes

by Emerald Eyes (new ed) (mobi)

Suzanne changed the subject, again. "How are Trent, and the twins?"

  Malko wrapped the robe more tightly around himself, becoming aware for the first time of how cool the room was. "Why do you ask?"

  "Curiosity."

  I don't know if I believe that, thought Malko to himself. "I haven't seen Trent in a month, not to talk to. The twins are fine. I told them a bedtime story a week or so ago. They're growing fast, as their parents did."

  Malko was surprised at how his pulse leapt when she asked the question. "Malko, do you think I should visit?"

  "To see who?"

  Suzanne's smile froze painfully in place, and then she whispered, "Oh, Malko. You."

  Malko Kalharri found a grin splitting his features. "Of course you should visit. What the hell else would I call you for at this time of night?"

  She nodded. "I'll see you tomorrow, then. Good-bye."

  Her image vanished into blackness; the holofield silvered and flickered out. Malko went back to bed and slept the rest of the night without dreams.

  They sat in the center of the park in early morning sunshine and played a game that only Trent understood.

  Trent was not there.

  The twins sat together, sharing a keyboard, watching the holofield Trent controlled. Both of them wore tracesets, clamped at their temples. Denice was not certain she understood the game; David thought he did, and was wrong.

  They resembled nothing else so much as miniature versions of their parents. They were the children of Carl Castanaveras and Jany McConnell, who were, to twenty-two twenty-thirds, genetically the same person. With the exception of Malko Kalharri they were the only residents of the Complex whose genetic structure was not the result of work by genegineers. Suzanne Montignet had examined their genetic structures within weeks of their conception, and pronounced them sound. If Carl Castanaveras had any significant flaws within his genetic makeup, the luck of the draw had kept his union with Jany McConnell from reinforcing them. It was statistically likely that no such flaws existed.

  There were minor differences between the twins and their parents; while her brother David would never be considered anything but plain, Trent had once told Denice that she was, for a fact, the prettiest girl who had ever lived, and he was including both Jany and Doctor Montignet in that. Sometimes Denice could not tell if Trent was telling her the truth or not.

  He lied so much of the time.

  The holofield that hovered before the twins was matte black. Within its depths, gold and blue sparks swirled restlessly. None of them, not David, nor Denice, nor Trent himself, had the vaguest idea what the Gift would be like when it came; but already they knew what silent speech was like.

  Tracesets can give you a feel for what's happening inside the Net, but from what I've audited, I think it's only approximate. You need an inskin and an Image coprocessor for serious work. A brilliant green grid established itself in a horizontal plane that bisected the black cube of the holofield. Peaceforcers, the DataWatch, they still use tracesets. The sounds of keys tapping came to the twins. The inskin you can't get until you stop growing; an Image you can start work on right now. Three parts to preparation when you make a run. You, equipment and the Image. You have to be alert when you go in. Don't go in when you're tired or thirsty or have to pee. Orange cables, chaotically tangled, began wrapping themselves through the space over the green grid. Hardware is easy. You don't use a pointboard; they're cheaper and they last longer but you can't feel for sure if you hit the key you wanted. Usually you won't use the keyboard much, and the better you get with your traceset the less you'll have to; but when you do have to it's important. MPU hardware, well, the faster it is the better, but it's not critical. What you really need is equipment powerful enough to hijack somebody else's equipment. There's a lot of logic out there that hardly gets used. Beneath the green grid, red pulses flickered in and out of existence. Okay, we're ready. Break it down for me.

  David leaned forward. "Orange is leased-line optic fiber. Blue sparks are logic, and gold sparks are Players."

  "Live sign," said Denice.

  A silent laugh echoed in her head. That's what DataWatch calls it. Media calls us webdancers. What we are is Players...Players in the Crystal Wind.

  "You keep saying that," Denice accused. "But you don't tell us what it is."

  There was no inflection in the voice that touched them then. It was the voice of a machine, speaking the words of a litany: The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life.

  Denice felt the palms of her hands grow damp as he spoke. That voice--it scared her when he sounded like that. She didn't even know how a person could think like that, sort of empty and silver all at once.

  The voice of logic.

  Finish up, David.

  "Red is web angels," David finished. "Written with algothims that--"

  Algorithms.

  "Algorithms," the boy said precisely, "that give them access to not need to hook into the power supply so that power traps can't kill them, but because they can't get to the power supply they finally die. But DataWatch doesn't care because they make more of them all the time."

  Denice said, half questioningly, "Web angels loop your Image to destroy it and some of them can backtrack and burn you too." There was no reply from Trent, and encouraged, she continued, "If there were any AI inside they would be white dots, but there hardly ever are."

  …hardly ever. Okay, this is a simple one. This is the easiest part of what you have to learn to do. Generate your Image, and send it inside. I'm a Franco-DEC MicroVAX, and my users have me running distributed leaseline accounting for small businesses all over the East Coast. But it's midnight now, and all of the accountants who use me have gone home until the morning. I've finished most of the jobs they've given me, and about eighty percent of my logic is available.

  David hunched over the keyboard he was sharing with Denice, and touched the home row. "And we have to hijack you."

  Right. Who are you?

  David said. "Edmond Dantes."

  Who?

  "The Count of Monte Cristo."

  There's already a Count in the Net.

  "That's how come I'm Edmond Dantes instead."

  There was a pause. That works. Who are you, Denice?

  "Joan of Arc."

  Can't be. There's already a Player named that.

  "Why can't I be?"

  Because when you go into the Web you have to have an Image ready for--

  "But we're not going into the Web. This is just a game!"

  No, said Trent flatly, it's not.

  The girl folded her arms sulkily. "I suppose somebody's already using Rebecca of York?"

  No. Denice suspected that Trent, wherever he was, was grinning, which only made her angrier. Who is she?

  "She was the Jewess in Ivanhoe who nobody would stick up for except Ivanhoe."

  That works. Two soundless clicks reached them through their tracesets. I'm running Purolator security firmware. You get that much of a hint. Now go.

  David loaded Image into memory, keyed for code decryption routines, and went after the imaginary minicomputer being controlled by Trent.

  Denice sat, and watched him, and eventually the anger faded from her clear green eyes, and she began to grow interested.

  "Go away," Carl snarled at the evil intruding voices. Then an intolerably bright light spilled across his face and he jerked upright in bed, blinking. They were all standing well back from the bed, at the other side of the room, Gerry McKann and Johnny and Andy. Gerry and Johnny were dressed for outdoors; nineteen-year-old Andrew Thomas, one of the nine elder telepaths born before the deluge, was wearing a white cotton jumpsuit with pockets in unlikely places. He was vaguely European featured, with pale olive skin and brilliant green eyes.

  Carl stuffed pillows behind himself and leaned back against the headboard. "I feel like shit. What time is it?"

  "About ten fifteen," said Gerry. "You look like shit, too," he offered.

 
Carl's left hand was numb where he'd been sleeping on it. Feeling began to come back in pins and needles, and he grimaced. To Gerry he said with a ragged attempt at grace, "Sorry I snarled at you yesterday."

  Gerry shrugged. "If you didn't act like a jerk all the time people would worry about you."

  "Where's Jany? She said she would be here this morning."

  "She was," Andy informed him cheerfully. "But you wouldn't get up, so about an hour ago she went to have breakfast."

  Carl nodded. "I don't remember." Johnny gazed steadily at him. From a vast distance, Carl turned to face him. Without asking he seized Johnny and took him out and up into the otherworld, vaguely aware of the expression of concern that was on Gerry's face, of the voice saying faintly, Carl, is something wrong, and then--

  They stood together in the vast darkness of the otherworld, in a place that had not even existed until the Gift began to appear in the children. Beneath them a flat crystal plain ran away to infinity. Bright lights flickered off at the edges of existence, so far away that no telepath had ever even attempted to find out what the lights were. In their immediate vicinity a nimbus of light and warmth pulsed, the scattered thoughts of nearly two hundred and fifty minds. Beyond that nimbus was a vast, dim glow; the massed minds of humanity.

  Carl said, How are you?

  Johnny stood before him, a fine blue tracing of nerves glowing dimly through his skin, running up into the brainstem, toward the bright, almost white glow that permeated his skull. He was among the least powerful of all the telepaths; with him, and again with nearly a score of the children, the genegineers had attempted to improve upon the trio of genes that had produced Carl. In some ways they had been successful; the telepaths without the full gene complex were easily the calmest, most emotionally stable of the group. They were also the least powerful telepaths.

  I'm fine. The horror in him was palpable. You're--

  Carl avoided the otherworld whenever possible. You see me as I am. Jerril Carson saw it once when I was very angry. Jany has seen this, and now you. I have seen it myself, through her eyes. You look into this blaze of light and ask yourself if you can still love me.

  The horror radiated from Johnny in waves, horror mixed with fear, as the light and the heat of Carl's person washed over him. Oh, God, Carl--what are you?

  I am a man, who is not sane. But I love you. I'm sorry I hurt you, Johnny. I am not very different from most men. I am only different from you, and the children, because you were raised by Jany, who is nearly sane, and the children were raised by you and Andy and Will, and you, and they, are sane.

  Johnny vanished abruptly, and Carl turned--

  --blinked once, and said mildly, "What the hell are you doing here, anyway, Gerry?"

  Gerold McKann looked back and forth between the three telepaths. "I'm never going to get used to that," he said conversationally. To Carl he said, "We had an appointment. You made it a couple of months ago, remember?"

  Andy said patiently, "We're going to go buy a car. As of this morning at 6 a.m., when the banks opened, Kalharri Ltd. shows a balance of CU:825,000, drawn against the credit of Chandler Industries."

  Carl bounced out of bed and stood facing them. "You're kidding."

  Gerry said mildly, "Uh, Carl..."

  "Oh." Carl looked down at himself. "I'll get dressed." He looked up again and said, "Everybody coming?"

  Gerry nodded and Andy said, "Sure." Johnny looked startled, realized he was being addressed, and then smiled rather lopsidedly. "Yeah, I'm coming."

  Carl looked down at the carpeted floor for a second, and then looked up at Johann and said, "Thanks."

  To the other two he said, "Let me cycle through the shower and get some clothes on, and let's go have some fun."

  Jany sat cross-legged in the center of the kitchen, cooking. She was stir-frying chicken strips with her left hand, and holding a cookbook open with her right. Whoever had programmed environment today had stuck with classical music for most of the morning; the outspeakers began by playing eighteenth-century French ballads that Jany found she liked even though her French was atrocious, and then segued into one of her favorite synthesized works, Vangelis' Chariots of Fire. The kitchen was huge; only the Complex's dining room and auditorium were larger. On the other side of the kitchen two waitbots made late breakfasts, or early lunches, for those of the children who had, for whatever reason, missed early breakfast.

  She was trying a recipe from a cookbook Suzanne Montignet had given her for her thirteenth birthday. The cookbook was a plastipaper hardcopy of recipes taken from the Better Homes and Gardens Board, with gorgeous--and, at the time of its printing, expensive--neon-laser etchings of the various dishes. It had not been new when Jany had received it as a gift; now it was nearly twenty years out of date, and it was making things interesting.

  One of the waitbots stood at attention immediately behind her. In past years both Jany and Willi, their only other decent cook, had cooked for themselves without paying attention to whether the meals were reproducible. That was a habit that had ended when the telepaths had taken over the Complex. She had never really had the opportunity to talk at length with F.X. Chandler, for all that he was clearly taken with her. Unlike some of the men business forced her to deal with, Chandler was a gentleman.

  A gentleman with a monocrystal constitution, judging from his diet.

  It had taken her nearly two days, after the telepaths had received Peaceforcer permission to occupy the Chandler Complex, to decipher the contents of Chandler's cooking programs. She'd spent most of those two days doing nothing else, while first the few adults, and then the children, began complaining and did not cease.

  Jany still had no idea how a man of F.X. Chandler's age could have survived on a diet with so much sugar, salt, lipid, alcohol, THP and amphetamines. The staples of his diet were foods she had never heard of before. Hamburgers were familiar, and hot dogs, though she considered them unhealthy; but what were "Oreos?" And "Twinkies?" The menu had been full of foods with those words in them. The "Twinkie Fiend Surprise" she had found simply astonishing, and the "Double Stuff Oreo Zombie" had been even worse, a revolting mixture of ice cream, cookies laden with extra lard, liquid THP and amphetamines.

  Gary Auerbach, one of the few Peaceforcers stationed with them at the Complex whom Jany had either liked or trusted, told her once that Chandler had been, in his younger, wilder days, a "satanic drug fiend heavy metal musician."

  Jany wasn't certain what any of that meant, except that if it related to his diet she believed it. With few exceptions she was vastly pleased with the Complex; one of the exceptions was the kitchen. Most of the kitchen was custom hardware, which meant that standard cooking programs had to be extensively modified to run, so extensively modified that it made as much sense to program again from scratch.

  As she was doing.

  Sighing in frustration, she put Chandler and his improbable digestion out of her mind and returned to the problem at hand. She was starting to regret using the old cookbook; things had changed enough in twenty years that, with modern kitchen equipment, the Better Homes and Gardens recipes from the early 2040's were almost impossible to prepare.

  "'Bot," she said abruptly, "it says here I'm supposed to chill the sauce, once boiling, by taking it out of the microwave oven and putting it into the freezer for five minutes. Guestimate for the same job, maser to SloMo?"

  The waitbot draped a flexible spyeye over her shoulder and focused on the page's surface. It spoke in a cheerful male baritone. "Bearing in mind that maser cooks more quickly and evenly than bouncer microwaves, assume fifty-six to fifty-seven percent of the cooking time listed for microwave ovens. SloMo cooling times are irrelevant, given a target temperature. Are the ambient temperatures for 'freezers' given?"

  Jany shook her head. "No."

  The waitbot said simply, "Accessing...for the Mitsui Kenmore Refrigerator Module SMM2-202, a model popular from 2037 through 2045, ambient default freezer temperature was -8 degrees. Given the mass
of the orange almond sauce, five minutes at -8 degrees would bring the sauce to an ambient temperature of two to three degrees."

  Jany nodded. The chicken had reached the proper degree of brownness; she scooped the strips onto a plate and put the steaming pile of meat into the stasis box, popped a single strip of chicken into her mouth, and turned the stasis field on. Steam froze in mid-air, and Jany glanced back over her shoulder at the waitbot. "How long is that for the SloMo?"

  The waitbot said conversationally, "Eyeball it at 8.3 seconds, to bring the sauce to approximately one degree Centigrade. It is clearly the intent of the recipe's author to produce a sauce as close to freezing as possible, without inducing the formation of those unpleasant ice crystals."

  Jany bit down savagely on her lower lip to prevent herself from going into a fit of giggles. "Yes," she said at last in a high-pitched voice, "those unpleasant ice crystals can be a bitch."

  "Yes, Mademoiselle," said the waitbot cheerfully.

  The holo hovering over the lot said:

  Chandler Industries: Machines that Move

  Beneath the holo, the reflected sun glittered off the bright polypaint of over eight hundred cars in the lot at Chandler's Rochester dealership. The polypaint was turned off; at night the cars glowed, at choice, in any of a hundred different shades. The cars on display ranged from small two-seater ground effect vehicles all the way up to the MetalSmith Mark III, the fastest floater ever brought to market.

  The man met them out on the lot, as they got out of Gerry's Chandler 1300; he had been waiting for them.

  Tony Angelo was unlike any other salesperson Carl had ever met. Selling was not difficult; Carl could have become rich at it. Smile frequently. Look them in the eye and radiate sincerity. Dress appropriately and know the product. Forget anything else you like, but remember their names. Make them feel good about the purchase, before, during, and especially after.

  Tony Angelo did, at least, know the product.

  He was a thin, dark-haired Speedfreak with a dark beard and mustache, slightly shorter than Carl. He moved quickly and spoke slowly, without a regional accent Carl could detect. He greeted them dressed in dark slacks and boots that would not have been out of place in a corporate boardroom, and a black t-shirt that showed the tightly corded muscles in his chest and shoulders. The shirt had a single breast pocket, on which the word CHANDLER was embroidered in glowing white thread.