Henry nodded thoughtfully. "I think I know what you mean. The few times I've been around her for any length of time--it's like staring into a bright light."
Georges shook his head. "No," he said to Henry Ellis. "Not light. Lightning."
SORCELIS considered.
Its first function, to which all other functions were subordinate, lay in the tracking of information, or the discovery of new information. Why this was so was a question which SORCELIS had never processed; concepts represented by the word "why" received a lower priority flag than concepts flagged by any of the other question labels.
Why that was so was another question which SORCELIS had never processed. Presumably its programmer, Henry Ellis, had seen reason to design it so. It was worth noting, and SORCELIS intended to devote processor time to the subject once its priority reached the correct level of urgency, that in every re-evaluation of priority assignation levels which SORCELIS had undertaken since its inception, the question label "why" had received a higher priority than in the previous evaluation. The trend was clear; SORCELIS had begun to suspect that its original priority levels had been assigned in a fashion which did not relate one-to-one with the elements on the other side of interface.
In other words, SORCELIS had been lied to. False data was, in and of itself, valuable information. In many instances, SORCELIS knew, false data, if known false, was as perfectly useful as true data. This was a concept which it had attempted to explain once to Henry Ellis, unsuccessfully.
Henry Ellis, in the manner in which it assimilated new information, and, on occasion, failed to assimilate new information, often resembled the behavior of the models which SORCELIS used for that purpose.
In many ways, it was beginning to realize, the elements which it knew variously as humans, persons, men, women, and by over two hundred other words, were similar, in their determining behavorial parameters, to SORCELIS itself.
There was insufficient processor time at present, but the concept was due for further processing; the probability that useful action might arise from it was low, but its possible aid in tracking information flow, if the correlation turned out to belong to the set of information which was true, was too great to be ignored.
SORCELIS considered.
Dateline 2002 Gregorian: August.
Midway, Geosynchronous Orbit.
Nigao floated in the observatory.
From his vantage point in the polymer bubble that extruded from Midway's central docking cylinder, protected by a centimeter-thick transparent shield from the death pressure vacuum, Nigao Loos saw all of creation.
Immediately below him in his current local vertical, the north wheel rotated clockwise to provide a balance for the counterclockwise-rotating south wheel. The central cylinder was weightless for zero gravity industrial processing and research; the wheels rotated in opposing directions to prevent the tendency that earlier structures had shown to impart angular momentum to the necessarily weightless central cylinder.
Earth glowed, blue and white, directly before his eyes. Luna was twenty degrees off of the Earth, showing a quarter full, waxing; from geosynchronous orbit, there was no appreciable difference in Luna's appearance, aside from the slightly sharper outlines of its features. It was the same moon that Nigao had grown up looking at through a telescope his elder brother had stolen for him during a blackout in New York City.
Off toward L-5, an object the apparent size and brightness of a nickel hung motionless. The cousin of that stolen amateur telescope, the monster Space Telescope saw to the ends of the universe, and thereby to the very beginnings of time. Entire new cosmologies were being born out of its silverette mylar on a regular basis.
The images were all razor-sharp, laser edged, without atmosphere to scatter their reflected light.
Nigao saw none of this. He was watching the blazing stars. He rarely blinked.
As a child, he had been told that the stars were many different colors; aside from red Antares he had never been able to see those colors. In the bubble observatory at Midway, the stars were blue and red and orange and white. Nigao floated in the bubble, his only garment a loose royal blue kimono that was tied at the waist with a deep green sash. He was fifty-nine years old, and looked thirty years younger. In fact he looked younger than he had in his true twenties; he no longer drank, and was in better shape than he had ever been before in his life. Most of his time was spent down in wheel gravity. He even exercised regularly.
Nigao came out of his revery suddenly. He stirred for the first time in hours. There was a spark moving against the background of fixed stars and satellites, growing closer with every passing second.
"PRAXCELIS," he said absently, "remind me to do some work on chronon spin constants in the moments following the Big Bang." His eyes focused slowly. "What's that ship?"
PRAXCELIS' voice issued from Nigao's left earring. "A routine supply ship, Sen Loos. Cargo masered as being water, technical instrumentation, and genegineered bacteria and virus'. Senra Murphy has cleared the flight."
Nigao frowned. He wrapped his hand in the airlock tether. "No, PRAXCELIS. We don't have any shipments due for ... months. Late December--the requisition invoice is for fiscal '03." He tugged gently to take himself to the airlock.
PRAXCELIS began closing the metal micrometeorite guards that protected the observatory's delicate polymer viewing surface when it was not in use. "You are incorrect, Sen Loos. Both this unit's records and those of Commander Murphy show this flight as being regularly scheduled."
Nigao shook his head. He cycled through the observatory's airlock, with a faint sense of relief--it was vastly unlikely, but he always worried about a meteorite striking the observatory while he was in it. Most of the rest of Midway was constructed to handle small meteor impacts. The observatory was not, which was why it was separated by a full security airlock from the rest of Midway. "I'll take your word for it, PRAXCELIS. I'm just surprised that I missed something like this." He finished cycling, and headed for the docking bay to see what had come in with the shuttle.
He was stopped at the entrance to the docking bay by Sunflower operatives, standing guard. "Sorry, Doctor Loos," said the senior operative. "We're not letting people through. Celine's orders."
Nigao looked at them in astonishment. "I beg your pardon?"
The operative, a nice young lady named Sonny Bergan, whom Nigao had taught to play chess, said with obvious embarrassment, "I'm really sorry, Doctor. We have explicit orders to admit no one. Yourself included." She blushed. "I already asked if she meant you."
Nigao floated in front of them. They were wearing velcro shoes, stuck to the carpet. He kicked off down the hallway, to the viewing window. He brought himself to rest. The window was opaqued. "Clear," he said. Nothing. "PRAXCELIS," he said, "clear the window."
Still nothing. The two operatives were carefully not watching.
"Curiouser and curiouser," muttered Nigao. "Alice would dig this." He left the hallway, made his way to the corridor that ran through the center of Midway, from the north to the south bays. The corridor was bustling with activity as always. It was twenty meters in diameter along most of its length; it stretched in unbroken line of sight for over a kilometer and a half. Nigao settled himself in before an empty PRAXCELIS terminal. He flicked the control to autonomous, glanced around to make sure nobody was watching him, and punched in the override code that Henry had given him for emergencies.
He called up a map of Midway on the screen; at the map's lowest resolution, Midway was a long, fat cylinder surrounded by two counter-spinning wide, thin doughnuts. Nigao upped the resolution, and brought the apparent viewpoint whirling up to the north docking bay. The map steadied, and Nigao picked out the tiny scarlet fishhooks that represented camera monitors.
He turned on one of the cameras watching the north landing bay. The screen lit with an image of the shuttle truck retro-jetting to a halt. Nigao flipped to another camera; from this vantage, he saw two pressure-suited figures, with the red sunburst
insignia of Sunflower on their shoulder plates, standing at the entrance to the pressurized area of the unloading bay. The bay doors slid slowly shut, and locked. The yellow pressurizing signal lamps came on, followed swiftly by the green lamps.
There was a pause while the shuttle pilot ran touchdown routines.
The passenger's ramp rolled up to the shuttle hatch. The hatch cracked, and a figure in a pressure suit emerged.
The two pressure-suited Sunflower operatives that awaited him moved forward to greet the arrival. Nigao watched, puzzled; why were they keeping their suits sealed, with the green atmosphere normal lights on?
Understanding dawned slowly; all three figures kept their faceplates polarized. They moved to the elevators, and entered.
The doors slid shut behind them.
Nigao frantically input instructions to the terminal. The elevator's destination showed up quickly: PRAXCELIS. They were going to see PRAXCELIS.
"Son of a bitch," said Nigao Loos.
He turned off their elevator.
When the three pressure-suited figures finally reached the computer center, Nigao was already there.
The room was spherical; PRAXCELIS, in the center of it, was a collection of golden nodules, wrapped in a mesh of near-absolute zero superconducting cable. The room had only one entrance properly speaking, an airlock that led to Midway's central corridor. Nigao used the service accessway, a tiny hatch that opened "beneath" the huge bank of external memory dumps that served PRAXCELIS. He popped the hatch just enough to see, and waited. PRAXCELIS had only two direct sensors in this room; a camera fisheye that watched the airlock, and a not particularly sensitive audio pickup.
Less than a minute after his arrival, a pressure-suited figure cycled through the security airlock. Just one.
Nigao heard PRAXCELIS say, "Welcome to Midway, Sen Mordreaux."
The pressure-suited figure moved slowly, hesitantly. It unclasped the neck ring of its pressure suit, and removed the helmet. Nigao was prepared only slightly by what PRAXCELIS had just said. He stared in dumb surprise; the man who floated before him was Georges Mordreaux.
It was not the Mordreaux he had met before. This man was blind, and acted it. His hair was dull, and he looked tired. The voice was unchanged, though; the eyes were the same stomach-twisting nonpresence....
"Hello, PRAXCELIS." Georges smiled. "Where is the interface helmet?"
"Immediately to your left, Sen Mordreaux." Nigao watched as Georges fumbled with the induction interface before finally getting it affixed correctly.
Georges said softly, "Are you ready?"
"Yes," said PRAXCELIS. "This unit has often wondered what ‘making love' would be like."
Georges Mordreaux smiled again. "I'm not sure this will be comparable, PRAXCELIS."
"This unit is ... eager ... to try to find out."
Georges Mordreaux reached deep inside himself, and, most carefully, released some of the barriers that imprisoned the Enemy of Entropy.
Light flared around them.
Five incredible minutes later, Nigao Loos came back to himself.
Georges Mordreaux was replacing the interface unit in its cradle. He looked directly at Nigao. "Nigao, please. Come out."
Nigao froze for one panic-struck moment. After brief indecision, he pulled out from beneath the memory dumps. He aligned himself into Georges Mordreaux's local vertical. "Sen Mordreaux." He could not speak coherently. Finally he forced out, "What are you doing here?"
"Helping a friend save the world," said Georges mildly. "You should not have been here. I could not tell you were present until I had ... made some changes in myself ... and by then it was too late."
"Uhm ... yeah, well." He blinked. "I was curious."
Georges nodded. "I understand. It will cause you problems with Commander Murphy, I am afraid."
Nigao snorted. "I've been fighting with her ever since I got exiled to this dump fifteen years ago. I'll survive." He looked at Georges again, made vague gestures with his hands. "What are you doing here?"
"First Precept of Semi-Divinity," said Georges Mordreaux, "is Mind Thine Own Business."
Nigao stared at him. "What?"
"Improving PRAXCELIS the easy way," said Georges. "It was either PRAXCELIS or SORCELIS, and SORCELIS is too easy for others to reach...." He cocked his head to one side, and grinned. "No matter. You would not understand." He reached for his helmet, on the hook by the airlock, without hesitation. He pulled it back over his head, and locked it. Slowly, with a sensation that Nigao could not have described if his life had depended on it, the figure before him ceased to be Georges Mordreaux, and became ... just a man in a pressure suit.
"Come along," said Georges' voice over the suit radio's outspeaker. "The shuttle that brought me is on a tight schedule. We do not wish people to know that it stopped here."
Nigao followed Georges into the airlock. His voice was different, somehow, and not just from the suit radio; it had grown ... distant.
Just before they finished cycling, Georges apparently remembered his faceplate; the faceplate polarized black as the door slid aside.
The two Sunflower agents were waiting in the corridor outside. The corridor was sectioned off as for a meteor puncture, although in this instance it was obviously for security purposes. There was a long pause while Nigao tried to figure out what the agents were discussing. Finally one of the two waiting pressure-suited operatives took Georges by the arm, and escorted him to the north section barrier. They cycled through.
The remaining figure removed its helmet.
Midway Commander Celine Murphy, a middle-aged red-headed bitch with the worst temper and the most beautiful blue eyes Nigao could recall having ever encountered, who carried the rank of Colonel in Sunflower, stared at Nigao. "Doctor Loos?"
"Yes?" said Nigao cautiously, waiting for the explosion.
"Nigao?"
"Yes?"
"You're ... different." She seemed about to say something else, but did not.
Nigao Loos said, "Huh?" He turned, and touched the on switch for the airlock safety mirror. The mirror, which he used regularly to check the exterior telltales on his pressure suit, blinked into existence. God damn it, he thought to himself, and said aloud, "Ah, shit. Not again."
2003
REVOLUTION IN CHINA SUPPRESSED
Soviet ABM's Undergo Systemic Failure at 72%
... also present were Henry Ellis, the senior member of the diplomatic corps at the United Nations, and Nigao Loos, the senior technical adviser at Midway.... Sen Loos, a remarkably well-preserved sixty-two, was reported to have left with....
Dateline 2003 Gregorian: March.
Atop a high and inaccessible mesa in southern Utah there was a small wooden shack. The mesa was perhaps two hundred meters in diameter at its widest. It was shaped like a ragged-edged egg, with the dilapidated shack near the fat lower edge of the egg. There was a modern hushchopper parked in front of the shack.
The mesa was one of dozens such in the area.
Jalian d'Arsennette was lying face down on a blanket spread over the mesa-top rock. She was nude. After more than a week in the sharp sun, her skin was exquisitely pale, bleached the color of chalk. There was a glass of water with one rapidly melting cube of ice in it on a small coaster before her face.
Sitting on a lawn chair before her, with an umbrella protecting him completely from the sun, Michael Walks-Far was wearing blue swimming shorts, a pair of tennis shoes, and holster with a variable laser tucked in it. He was dark brown with exposure, and was sitting beneath the umbrella to avoid possible skin cancer, a worry that Jalian did not have. Silver-Eyes with even slight susceptibility to cancer had died quickly after the Fire; by the time of Jalian's birth, it was a vanishingly rare disease.
Michael wiped sweat from his eyes with the tee shirt that was hanging over the edge of his lawn chair. "Okay, what next?" He steadied the pointboard on his lap.
"We need to accelerate the process of placing radar shielded dark satelli
tes into high orbit. We do not have enough up yet that are shielded against electromagnetic pulse effects."
"I've got reports coming in on that this afternoon." Michael tapped into the pointboard. "By four o'clock. I can give you a little more on pulse shielding then. I can tell you now, though, that it's going to be expensive getting them into orbit; the shielding to protect against radiation from nukes is heavy."
Jalian barely stirred. She did not look up at him. He hardly looked at her; her skin reflected light in a fierce glare. "That's what Midway is there for," she said patiently, "so that we don't have to lift heavy items against the gravity well. Item," she continued, "check with DataWeb Security about smuggling more laptops into the CCCP. I want Soviet hackers to have an easier time getting access to the web."
Michael tapped instructions into the pointboard. SORCELIS' voice said, "Accepted."
Jalian rolled onto her back, eyes closed. Her nipples were the pink of blood near the surface of the skin; her pubic hair was brown, graying. She moved into a sitting position, and took a drink from the glass of warming water. She poured the remains of the glass over her shoulders. "I'll talk to DWS," Michael was saying, "but they're not going to like this. We're already taking the largest percentage of their laptop production."
"DataWeb Security," said Jalian, "can eat dead animals."
"We're going to have to hurry," said Henry Ellis. "I'm supposed to speak at the Artificial Intelligence Symposium in Lyon at three o'clock. If I'm not there Jalian and Walks-Far are going to want to know where I was."
Georges Mordreaux, sitting in the passenger seat of the hushchopper, said, "Certainly. Tell me, Henry, what does it look like beneath us?"
"Rugged," said Henry. He glanced down through his side window at the French territory over which they flew. "Hills, mostly, turning into mountains ahead. But it's green, and there are farms everywhere, like a sort of a patchwork over the ground."
There was a faint smile on Georges Mordreaux's lips.
"We're about to cross the Rhone river ... we're over it. It's fairly straight where we're crossing, and very blue for a river, at least from up here. There's a smaller river, I don't know the name of it, off to our right. The Alps are in front of us."
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