by Robert Reed
“What’s this?” she asks, showing nothing but simple curiosity.
“Here,” he says. “Be careful, love.” He lifts it like a bag of feathers, putting it behind the couch and out of sight.
10
The single constant throughout the System, from Kross to the cold empty fringes, are the AIs. Each of them possesses the same essential voice, the same patterns of thought, the almost identical capacities and the intentional limitations. Each wishes to serve, yet none lives for our thanks. They are uniformly polite. They are coldly inhuman. They are the perfect tools through which we organize and calibrate and record and regurgitate. Indeed, the only true difference between the AIs is their name. No two have the same name. They cannot. Imagine the confusion if it wasn’t so. I do. Isn’t it fun?
—excerpt from a traveler’s notebook, available through System-Net
The AI is watching one side of the Cosgrove Tower. It’s done this job for several months now, requiring no sleep and no other diversions, and nothing has happened in all that time. At least nothing memorable. Dozens of cameras serve as eyes. Other sensors concentrate on key portions of the spectrum—radio noise and microwaves and the infrared and UV. Microphones complete this comprehensive picture. If it wished, the AI could count every creaking bug in the parkland below. If its sponsors—either Dirk or Minus—were to ask, it could identify every human face with the existing banks of Brulé City records. And World-Net. And System-Net. Though that final search would take months, what with the sluggishness of light and the diffusion of the human race.
A few nights ago, moments before a strong rainstorm, Dirk’s Flower left the apartment and vanished from this AI’s view.
This wasn’t normal behavior for a Flower.
Yet no one told it to notice such an event, much less stop the creature; so it simply ignored the Flower and put no details into memory. AIs are finite, after all. You can’t simply fill them with endless stores of raw data. The heart of the problem is that reality is a curious, almost unfathomable phenomena. It’s been the experience of this AI that people are nearly blind to the wealth of things around them. Except Ghosts. Ghosts appreciate the enormity of the simplest scene. Flesh-on-blood people cannot. And when an AI doesn’t notice something it wasn’t told to notice, like a Flower, its first response is to explain the limitations inherent in the situation. Cameras and sensors do not give it godlike powers of perception. Someone like Dirk can scream all he wishes. Nothing changes. The AI is sorry, truly sorry, but it can’t even recall the direction she went…
Why is the Flower so important? It doesn’t know or care to know.
It feels frustration—a common emotion for the species. The emotion is born from a tireless loyalty to people and to its work. Sometimes an AI will find itself caught up in periodic millisecond depressions. Of course it won’t allow those dark times to lessen its effectiveness. A person won’t see any diminished capacities. Yet when someone like Dirk threatens AIs with harm, physical harm, there is no improvement either. The AIs can only work as well as they can work. And for days they will be haunted by the depressions, like now, this particular AI watching the side of the Cosgrove Tower and doing the equivalent of a prolonged sigh.
Something is happening below. What’s this? the AI asks itself. What are they doing down there?
At the base of the building, standing in a ragged line, thirteen big Morningers are looking up and talking among themselves, pointing with their long strong arms. What do they want? it thinks. Interest can mean trouble. One never knows. The AI shirks off the depression for now, concentrating on the Morningers’ faces. Miners. Casual clothes on each of them. No shoes. What are they doing now? They are approaching the building. They are reaching, it sees, and look at that! They’re grabbing the ledge above and climbing, hands and the bare feet taking them right up the side of the Cosgrove!
Without hesitation, it calls its fellow AIs and allows them to look with its senses. Do you see what they’re doing? Why are they doing it? Any ideas?
Is it an attack? asks one of the others.
Or maybe they’re invited? asks another.
Invited is possible. But invited by whom? The building has many, many residents. But Ghosts and AIs don’t call cyborgs for a visit. Not in a physical sense, surely. So they start considering the flesh-on-blood people above and below Dirk. Maybe it’s one of them. Maybe this is how they’re expected to arrive. It’s hard to know what’s possible with human beings. Maybe this is a game, they think.
Have the cyborgs been drinking? Are they drugged? Dangerous?
Maybe this is some elaborate publicity stunt dreamed up to serve the mantle mines. It’s as possible as any other solution.
The AIs focus on the hyperfiber bodies, utilizing every available sense. The cyborgs seem to be racing one another. It’s obvious once they’re past the tenth floor. Their enormous strength allows them a catlike grace, hands reaching and arms pulling and the old ledges of burnished metal taking the weight without trouble. A crowd is gathering below them, pointing and asking questions of one another, some voices shouting encouragement to the brave climbers. And floaters drop from the sky, hovering near enough to let their riders see everything. Now the AIs have to study each of these spectators. What are their true motives? Are they the real threats? More and more of the AI capacities are taken up by the process. There are hundreds of faces to consider, then thousands, and it’s no surprise that at this hour, in this particular district, a rather high percentage of them are known to local records as criminals of one kind or another.
The cyborgs are a third of the way up the building. They’re not armed! one AI asserts. No weapons can be detected, at least.
But can they break into Dirk’s apartment? asks another. Do they have the strength?
Yes, do they?
Each AI scuttles into World-Net, accessing mountains of technical information on Morning and Morningers—images of cyborg guts and power outputs and fulcrums being applied against the smooth seamless walls of Dirk’s fortress-apartment.
All of the Morningers, acting as one, might get inside.
It’s possible, they decide.
But probable? No, they vote. It’s not probable. If there’s a true danger, it’s from all the other people using this opportunity to get close and try their tricks. The cyborgs are more than halfway up Cosgrove Tower. Should we wake Dirk and Minus? they wonder. Do we warn anyone? They aren’t sure what actions to take. If any. There’s no reason to call the police. They’ve arrived in their sleek floaters with flashing blood-colored lights and blowhorns, and they call to the climbers with their amplified voices, telling them to quit this nonsense. “Don’t persist!” they warn. “Stop and wait and we’ll lift you to safety!”
One of the cyborgs stops long enough to turn and gesture with one hand, then she wheels and jumps and climbs into the lead. Most of them are laughing. The AIs wait to deploy their batteries of defensive weapons. If the cyborgs are a threat and they do stop on Dirk’s floor, they decide, bolts of electricity will be pumped through the ledge. The AIs know how to immobilize a Morninger. In the last several minutes, World-Net has shown them the exact methods to do it without causing death. And now the AIs feel a shared confidence. They tell one another that they’re ready. They are absolutely prepared.
The cyborgs are reaching, grasping and grunting.
They seemed tired by their exertions. But none of them slacken. Not for an instant. They’re coming to Dirk’s ledge with half a hundred floaters hanging in the air behind them. People cheer and applaud now as robot news cameras drift into view, catching every detail for the people who would have wanted to see this if only they could have been here.
And now the cyborgs are past Dirk’s ledge.
They are gone.
The AIs breath more easily—in a figurative sense—and for a few moments the crisis seems past. Then one of them senses something odd, something wrong, and asks the others:
What’s this?
D
o you see this?
I tell you, something is happening!
Dirk comes awake for no clear reason. He lies in bed for a moment, long hands across his face and his thoughts muddled and slow. Why is he awake? Why is it so awfully bright in here? It seems early for the sun. God, he tells himself, is he ever tired.
The lights from all the floaters are playing across the elegant bedroom fixtures. Dirk pulls away his hands and sees the lights bouncing off the far wall. He starts to sit up, surprised, and turns in bed and spots something even stranger before he has his bearings. An enormous figure is standing on the ledge not four meters from him. “What the fuck,” says Dirk. “What are you?” The Morninger gives a little leap and is gone, and Dirk stands and shakes, pulling his sheets around his naked body, confused enough to think that all those people outside can see him scrambling for cover.
Where’d the floaters come from?
“What the shit,” he mutters. He remembers the Masking Glass and feels foolish. He drops the sheet and takes a few wagging steps forward. A spotlight throws a cone of light. Another Morninger scratches up into view, at a different part of the ledge, and the spotlight illuminates the hard black body and the straining face. Dirk can hear it and the other bodies climbing. The sound is a faint irregular tapping conducted through the Glass, and he touches it and feels them too, the spotlighted one now up and gone and still another cyborg coming into view.
Dirk presses his face against the Glass.
This new Morninger is resting. He seems to be breathing with a pedestrian’s gait, but his face is strained and the hyperfiber muscles are twitching and obviously pained. Dirk is impressed nonetheless. Look at that creature! Goddamned splendid, he thinks. It occurs to him that if that idiot Pyn had paraded some of these brutes around the meeting rooms, fuck studies and charts and dreamy predictions, then he might have felt more charitable about the mantle mines. Look at that face, he tells himself. Like some old-fashioned god. Like something you’d find clinging to a big stone church somewhere. And he steps back and watches the Morninger leap and vanish, nothing to it and all of them now gone.
“I wonder what they’re doing?” he mutters to himself.
“Who knows?” says a voice behind him.
Dirk wheels, dropping by instinct and reaching for anything, a shoe or belt or anything, and he stares up at a point in space and hears a sober soft voice come from it, saying:
“So. How much does this kind of place cost?”
Dirk sees no one. The blinking lights and spotlight show him the far wall and the gemstone furniture and nothing between them and him. Dirk takes a short step forward. He’s aware of his nakedness again, skin prickling and sweat on his face and his testicles pulled up close to his crotch. The distinct sharp odor of ozone comes into his nose. He takes another step, watching the space that sprouted the voice and guessing it must be some little microphone hovering in the air, taunting him.
He takes a bare-handed swat at nothing.
Nothing happens.
He takes several short steps, keeping low and ready, and the sole of a shoe is suddenly on his butt and pushing, pushing him down to the carpeted floor. He grunts. Rolling, he climbs up on his feet and slashes with his hands at the bare suggestion of a figure. Then the figure is gone. It seems to shimmer and yield to the image of the floaters, and now the floaters follow the damned Morningers up the side of the building. No more lights. Dirk takes a step backward. He blinks and turns and runs for the bedroom door, closed when it should be open, and something sizzles behind him. Pain arcs up his back and chars his brain and kicks his legs out from under him. He shouts, “Minus!” A second sizzle catches him just above the groin.
Dirk stiffens and cries, “Minus!” Tears well up and he pulls his legs up, knees to his mouth.
“I don’t think he hears you,” says the stranger.
Dirk forces himself to breathe, struggling to find his senses.
“Besides,” the stranger continues, “your door is locked. If you want to leave you should learn how to fly.”
“What are you?” Dirk snaps.
There is no sound.
The old paranoia emerges. “Goddamned Ghost!” Dirk sits upright and asks, “Are you? Are you? What the hell are you?”
“A Ghost? Can a Ghost do this?”
Dirk feels a hammer-blow to his temple. One moment he is sitting up and thinking it must be a Ghost manipulating…what?…he thought these crazy spells were getting better…and then he’s down on the carpeting, the soft living fibers between his teeth and his skull full of the outrageous clanging of bells tumbling from a high church steeple. He can’t think properly. He tries to stand and an invisible foot is on his neck, pressing down against him, and the voice says:
“What scares you? Tell me.”
He is terrified. He feels tiny and weak and wishes Minus would burst through the door and do his job. Jesus! Breathing is something he did in another lifetime. The foot is crushing his throat. Blood begins to pool in his swelling, breathless face. The thought occurs to him that this is no Ghost, it’s a man, but he doesn’t feel better for knowing it.
“I can do to you what I want,” he hears.
Dirk grabs a shimmering bare leg.
“No, no.” The leg is gone. The pressure is gone. The voice says, “You’re warned.”
Dirk moans and starts to gasp.
“It’s not so much fun, is it? The roles reversed.”
He doesn’t dare move. He lies on his back and stares at the ceiling, a shape forming into a shimmering face without details, and then the face is gone and someone is slowly circling him. The sober voice is almost quiet, saying:
“You’re big rich, aren’t you?”
Dirk says nothing.
“Fat, enormous rich. Right?”
“What do you want?”
“To buy something and go. Okay?”
Dirk can’t see the sense in the words. “Buy what?”
The voice is moving behind him. “I don’t know,” it says. “What do have that’s for sale?”
Dirk lies waiting, massaging his throat.
“Anything?”
“Fuck yourself!” says Dirk.
There is no sound, no motion.
“Hey!” Dirk snaps. “What’ve you come hunting? Tell me. We’ll deal!”
“You don’t have what I want,” the voice announces.
“Talk some sense.”
“But I’ll buy it anyway. Worn and old, but I’ll take it off your dirty hands. Is that fair?”
“What is it?”
Someone is moving. Dirk detects motion but doubts he could pinpoint the source. He tries sitting up, keeping his motions peaceful and slow. He says, “All right. I’ll sell it.”
“But you don’t know what I want to buy.”
He snorts. “Sure I do. And okay. I’ll sell it to you for a fair price. Absolutely.”
“So what’s fair?”
He suggests a modest figure.
The voice snorts. “Hell, I’d have paid ten times that!”
Out in the next room, now and again, Dirk can hear motions. Minus? He has to hope.
“You don’t know what I want,” says the voice.
“All right. I don’t.” Dirk says, “Tell me.”
“The Flower.”
The latch of the bedroom door is being tested. He sits and listens to the electronic click, faint and faraway. But suddenly Dirk halfway wishes that Minus will stand back for now. “Which Flower?” he asks. Time is creeping now, the voice circling him and his own hands grasping at the carpeting, tugging, the feeling coming to him that here is something more important and more fortunate than anything in a good long while. “Which Flower do you mean?”
“Chiffon.”
“Miss Luscious?”
There is no sound. An invisible someone is standing directly behind him. He knows! He can feel the eyes boring into his head.
“Do you know my Miss Luscious?”
“I want to purchase her
,” the voice claims. “A fair deal.”
“Naturally.”
“She’ll be mine by rights.”
“Sure.” Dirk says, “She’s an absolutely lovely creature.” He tries to pick up the threads of sense. Something is going on between this man and Chiffon. “Lovely,” he says, “and so damned trustworthy too.”
Nothing is said.
Dirk tells the voice, “I’ll let you have her for nothing. Okay? She is yours.”
“Is that so?” There’s a hook to the voice. “No,” it says, “I need more than that.”
“More than what?”
“You have to go. Back to Quito. Off to wherever. Just make sure you leave here so you can’t cut her for fun anymore.”
And Dirk is ready. He starts to laugh. He turns and is ready to tell the voice the truth, at least the brunt of it, because he can now see what’s happening and there’s humor in it. Great heaping mounds of steaming humor. He’d pay a fortune, he would, just to see his assailant’s startled face.
“Is that what she says?” he starts. “That I’m cutting her—”
The bedroom door is blown out of its jam.
A webbing of intricate wires, hair-fine and studded with tiny holo projectors, lays over Steward and weighs him down and does its intended job better than he had hoped. Computer elements are sewn into the power pack on his back. Miniscule cameras are beside each projector, linked with one another and the computer—a very simple AI, in effect—and the computer takes what it sees and instantly tells the projectors just what to show any set of eyes situated at any position. The projectors are the very best available, at any sum. The entire apparatus is a kind of portable Masking Glass unit. In the gloom Steward is virtually invisible.
But he’s a long ways from invincible, and he knows it.
“Is that what she says? That I’m cutting her—?” the naked man begins, and then there’s a flash and blast and the bedroom door is thrown through the smoky air. Steward reflexively drops. The naked man happens to be closer to the door, his face jerking, eyes big and startled. Steward has seconds to react. The bed’s sheets are in a rumpled pile beside him. He grabs the pile and throws it over Dirk, then slides to one side and looks for his chance. Dirk scrambles to his feet, the sheets blinding him. He curses and swats at them, turning like someone drunk, and someone comes through the open door and aims a big pistol at the staggering apparition. The new someone is hairy, the hair bright and the build beneath solid and quick. He comes close to shooting, but a stern voice behind him says: