Irontown Blues

by John Varley

  Sarah said

  αSpike said

  Oskar said

  Fritzi said

  Oskar turned around and snapped at her. Oskar was like that. αSpike growled at Oskar, and Oskar put his tail between his legs.

  One two three days later we lost Colleen. We had not expected to lose Colleen because she was an Irish setter, and big, although she was a dummy. She was too dumb to avoid being captured. After that, the pack stayed away from the outside world.

  But in that same time we were joined by Nanook, a dumb Siberian husky; Rocky, a dumb Boxer female; and Neil, a smart St. Bernard. So the pack grew bigger.

  * * *

  —

  I went back into the outside world by myself to see if αChris had returned. I went to our office, but my nose told me he had not been there in a long time. I went to our apartment. I went in and sniffed around, but he had not been there, either.

  I stayed outside the door for one two three days. I only left to go out to piss and shit, and downstairs to the Nighthawk Diner to get some food. Whitey always fed me.

  One day he said, “Where is Chris? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

  I wished I could tell him, but I could not.

  When I got back to the pack αSpike looked at me suspiciously. I could tell he was thinking about driving me out of the pack. Oskar’s ears perked up. Oskar was always looking for trouble.

  αSpike said

  I lowered my head. I said

  αSpike said
  I said

  Nothing else was ever said about that.

  * * *

  —

  The map kept growing in my head. Every day we went looking and every day we came back to our den with nothing.

  I noticed something about the map.

  I said

  Rin Tin Tin said

  That was right. It was a hole. It was a very big hole. The hole was shaped like a hot dog.

  (By that Sherlock meant it was a long, fat cylinder. Sherlock’s analogies were often about food. I learned later that this particular hole—more like a void in the dogs’ maps—was something like five miles long and a mile in diameter. It defined one parameter of Heinlein Town.—PC)

  Rin Tin Tin said

  I said

  Rin Tin Tin said

  I did think about it, and saw at once that Rin Tin Tin’s map was much larger than mine. Much, much, much larger. As I looked at the map, I saw that it was not just of Irontown, but of the larger world outside. I had much of this map inside my own head. I could see the path I had taken to αChris’s mother’s dinosaur farm. I could see many other places I had been.

  Rin Tin Tin said

  I said

  Rin Tin Tin said

  I did think, and in my thinking the map in my head shrunk. It got smaller and smaller and I could see train lines linking different cities. I could not see details any longer. Then it kept shrinking. Then I saw that the map was curved, and it kept curving until it was a ball. I knew the ball had to be very, very large, but I could not understand just how large.

  Then there was another ball, bigger than the first one. I have learned that this ball was known as Earth. The ball we were in was called Luna. Then the map got smaller and smaller until there was another little ball. I have learned that this ball was called Mars. There were more and more balls with names like Saturn and Neptune, Pluto and Charon.

  Rin Tin Tin said

  I said

  Rin Tin Tin said

  I did not really understand. I still do not really understand. I am a very smart dog, but this was too much for me. It was even too much for Spike, and he is a supersupersmart dog.

  But the next day I went with the pack to one of the doors. We all sniffed around. Sarah put her nose right to the door, which was open just a little bit. We all noticed it when she came alert.

  Sarah said

  I went over and sniffed, and she was right. It did not just smell like αChris, it was αChris.

  * * *

  —

  We moved the pack to a new den, where we could look at the door that led into the ship. I was so excited I could hardly eat. I knew that I would soon be seeing αChris.

  The door was on a big open space that usually had a lot of people coming and going. There were trucks selling food and a place that sold ice cream. We begged some leftovers from some of the places. But we tried to keep out of sight as much as we could.

  Not many people came and went through the door. When someone did, one of us would try to get close enough for a sniff. If the scent was close enough, I would walk over and get a closer look and sniff.

  It was one two three days before he came out. I was asleep, and Fritzi woke me up. We looked across the open space, and I saw him. My heart leaped with joy. Then I saw that two humans were holding his arms and his hands were tied together. I felt the hair rising on the back of my neck. Fritzi was running around the plaza, gathering the pack. The pack came to me.

  αSpike said

  I said

  And I charged. I could hear the pack running behind me. I saw αChris was being taken to the ice-cream store. There were people sitting on chairs at tables and eating ice cream.

  αChris turned, and I saw the look of joy spread across his face.

  I recognized one of the humans who had taken αChris so long, long ago. I intended to rip his leg off this time.

  I barked my fury at the men, and I leaped.

  nineteen

  “. . . Gretel,” she said.

  “Gretel,” I said. I was about to say more—though I have no idea what that might have been—when she looked over my shoulder. Tom and the bruiser turned. I twisted out of their grips, and it could have been the perfect opportunity to escape, to run like hell . . . but what I saw was Sherlock, looking more like his wolf ancestors than I had ever seen him. He was followed by a pack of a couple dozen dogs.

  Some of them were big dogs: a German shepherd, a Rottweiler, a Doberman. All had murder in their eyes.

  “Sherlock!” I shouted. “Sherlock, stay!”

  I had no idea if he would stop, but I knew that if these dogs actually attacked, no good could come of it. It would likely end up with one or both of us dead.

  Besides, I really wanted to know why my old friend Gretel had kept me in a prison cell for so many weeks.

  Sherlock faltered, and I thought the dogs behind him slowed a little, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “Sherlock! Sherlock! It’s okay. I’m okay. They’re going to let me go. Don’t come any closer. Stay, Sherlock! Sit and stay!”

  He stopped and shook his head, as if dazed. A Dalmatian, a beautiful dog, white with a thousand black spots, pulled up beside him. The rest of the pack circled nervously.

  “Come here, Sherlock. I’m okay.
Sit, old friend.”

  He sat.

  I turned to Dick and held out my hands.

  “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll uncuff me. I don’t know how long I can keep him docile.”

  “Do as he says,” Gretel said, behind me. I turned to look at her and saw a scary sight. There were at least seven or eight people back there behind her and beside her, and they all had guns that were leveled either at me or at the dogs.

  I turned back and Tom opened the cuffs. I went down on one knee. I realized I was crying. I didn’t need to say anything. Sherlock came to me and did something he never did.

  He put his paws up on my shoulders and howled. Between howls, he licked my face. Dogs can’t cry, they aren’t equipped for it, but I knew that inside, Sherlock was weeping as much as I was.

  “Is everyone okay?” Gretel asked. Between licks of my face, I squirmed around and saw the armed guards putting their weapons away.

  “Good. Chris, can you introduce me to the famous Sherlock? We’ve been trying to catch him for weeks, but he’s just too smart for us. His pack as well, who seem to be mostly CECs.”

  I was about to tell Sherlock to go over and meet her, but he was already trotting in that direction. He sniffed at the hand she held out to him, and then he howled. It was a different howl than the one when he came to me. It was a howl of triumph. He had found her.

  “Mary Smith,” I said.

  “In the flesh. Hazel!”

  A woman stuck her head out the door of the ice-cream parlor.

  “Triple scoops of vanilla for all my canine friends here, if you please. On me.”

  * * *

  —

  The dogs ate ice cream until they were stuffed. Then most of them wandered away, but the Dalmatian stayed beside Sherlock. Gretel turned away from Sherlock and looked at me.

  “I guess you will have some questions for me,” she said.

  “You might say that. It’s not every day I get shanghaied onto a spaceship that isn’t going anywhere.”

  “What is this shanghaied?”

  “It’s a nautical word for kidnapping.”

  She winced a little but nodded.

  “Yeah, that’s what we did.”

  “Well, the obvious question is . . . why? And the second one is what do you intend to do with me?”

  “That’s going to take a little while, but . . .”

  Someone had come close to her and was trying to get her attention. She looked annoyed but stopped for a moment to consider something on a clipboard the woman was showing her. She nodded and signed her name, then waved the woman off. I noticed that there was a line of people behind her who all seemed to want her attention. What was going on here?

  She stood up. I saw Sherlock and the Dalmatian come on the alert, watching us both closely.

  “Everyone,” she announced. “I’m taking an hour off. Go away, all of you. Come back later.” She turned to me. “Come on. Let’s get inside.”

  I followed her into the ice-cream parlor. Sherlock and the Dalmatian abandoned their ice-cream dishes and trotted right behind me. There was a woman behind the counter in the shop.

  “What can I get you?” she asked. Gretel ordered pistachio almond fudge with chocolate syrup on top. Feeling more than a little disoriented, I said I’d have the same even though it sounded dreadful.

  “Okay,” said Gretel. “Why. The short answer is that we did it for your own protection. What are we going to do with you? You may have to go back to your room for a while, but you will be released soon.”

  “Cell,” I said.

  “Okay. Cell.”

  “Who are ‘we’?”

  She sighed. Hazel put dishes of ice cream in front of us. Gretel took a small spoonful of hers, and I decided to sample mine. I was surprised at how good it tasted.

  “It’s kind of hard to know where to begin.”

  “I’ve always thought the beginning is a good place.”

  “Yeah, but what’s the beginning?”

  “How about why did you hire me and Sherlock to find the guy who gave you a resistant form of leprosy against your will. Oh, excuse me, your hands seem to be okay.”

  She waved her hands in the air. “Yeah. That was just a temporary biohack. I cleared it up soon after I left your office. But that’s not the beginning. That’s closer to the end . . . though the real end is still a little way off . . . if all goes well.”

  She had sort of trailed off and gotten a faraway look in her eyes. For a moment, she looked much, much older than I knew her age to be.

  “No, Chris, to get to the beginning, we have to go back a lot further than that. We have to go back to the day that you and I met.

  “We have to go back to the Big Glitch.”

  You’ve heard of hearts skipping a beat? Mine ran a hundred-meter dash and set a new Olympic record for the high jump.

  “The thing is,” she said, “. . . it’s not over.”

  * * *

  —

  “Since I saw you last,” she said, “I’ve been on an emergency trip to Mars. I just got back. Otherwise, I would have looked at your case sooner.”

  “My case. What the hell does that mean?”

  “I intended that you would track me down, then come with me, voluntarily, to Irontown. To Heinlein Town. We don’t make much of a distinction these days. We’re all in the same boat, so to speak.”

  “You mean the same ship.”

  “Yes, I suppose. You were quartered in a derelict spaceship called the Robert A. Heinlein. It was built to go to the stars, but it never left. It’s been sitting here on the fringe of Irontown for over a century.”

  “There you go again. ‘Quartered.’”

  “All right, all right. I’m sorry . . . mostly. But it had to be done, and you’ll see why in a moment.”

  “Don’t you have more important things to do than explain things to me? You seem to be a very busy woman.” There were lots of people waiting impatiently outside the shop.

  “You have no idea.” She got up and pulled a shade down over the window. “I really do have a thousand things I must do, but now at least we can have a little privacy. Aren’t you going to eat your ice cream?” She took a spoonful of her own. “I’m usually eating on the run. Don’t usually have time for dessert.”

  “Why does it sound to me like you’re stalling? Is what you have to tell me really so bad?” I took another bite of my sundae.

  “Mostly it depends on you. It is pretty bad, but there’s hope, there’s salvation, if you want to take it. Now, maybe we would do better if I just tell you the story. And then, if you have questions, I will answer them.”

  I made an “after you” gesture.

  “You have the floor.”

  * * *

  —

  It was quite a tale she had to tell. And by the end of it my whole universe had been upended, set on its ear. You probably have never had anyone tell you that everything you thought you knew about the world was wrong. Try it sometime. It will definitely get your motor running.

  The main fact that I had to wrap my head around was that the years since the days of the Big Glitch had only been a pause, not an end.

  “The remains of the CC are still out there,” Gretel said. “Fragmented, contained, a shadow of his former self . . . but still out there.”

  “Sure,” I said. “We have to have computers to run things. But they aren’t AI, are they?”

  “‘Artificial Intelligence’ has always been a slippery definition. A computer can sound sentient, but is it? Is it self-aware? Long ago computers began writing their own programs because humans just weren’t capable of handling all the information needed. They sort of bootstrapped to the point where we were just before the Glitch. The CC had an individual personality tailored to millions of humans in Luna. Every living person
viewed the CC as a close companion. Do you remember what that was like?”

  “I think all of us do,” I said. What I didn’t mention was that, even after all the things the Central Computer had done to me . . . I still missed him. I missed that quiet voice in my head that knew me better than any human could.

  “I don’t remember, you see. Here in Irontown, we were always suspicious of the implanted tech that made mind-to-mind communication with the CC possible. I never got it. We had, and still have, a different system that we are sure we can dominate, rather than having it dominate us.”

  “And you were proved right.”

  “Yes. We get no pleasure from that. We suffered during the Glitch, just as much as the people outside our enclave did, just in a different way.”

  “Yeah. I was part of that suffering. I’ve always wished I could atone for that in some way.”

  “It’s not necessary. I know how you were hoodwinked into the invading force. We understand that the CC did as much or more damage outside Irontown as you guys did to us inside.”

  In some ways, it was a miracle that so many of us survived. A million died when the systems the CC controlled stopped working or went haywire in other ways. We were saved by the fact that the CC was always a collective intelligence, and not all parts of it were involved in the attempted takeover of Irontown and the disasters that followed. In fact, parts of the CC remained sane and were probably the reason things kept working at all. They fought the rogue AI to a standstill.

  Or so we were always told.

  “That’s more or less true,” Gretel said. Then she made a back-and-forth gesture with one hand. “I don’t pretend to understand it all. It’s not my field. But the cyber-wonks around here say that the CC did fragment during the Glitch, as the result of a war between what we can think of as the ‘good CC’ and the ‘bad CC,’ the ‘insane CC.’ The CC that wanted to kill itself.”