All Fall Down

by Astrotomato

  Djembe and Jonah looked at each other, then back at Jonah from the tree. They both shook their heads, made their excuses and left. “You get that, too. Usually refers to people having affairs.” Jonah was becoming reflective, “Always nice to know that normal things are happening. SysNet stuff comes in here, sometimes. You get interpretation of events out there. Might not be what you'd immediately think of to put in a map, but like I said, in a facility like this, you never know what's important, do ya?”

  “Do you miss out there? I presume you are not a child of Fall.”

  Jonah took a moment to reply, “Dunno, mate. Dunno. Your mind's wiped. Most of it, anyway. I'm not exactly sure what I'm missing.” He shrugged.

  For a while the land went uphill, and they talked about the mechanics of the consequence mapping. Djembe thought over the rumours he'd heard from the different Jonahs, real and simulated. Exotic technology. Hidden children and secret recordings. It was too close to their mission to ignore.

  They climbed in silence over a cascade of tree roots covered in fungal rot, pulling themselves up by hanging vines and plants. At the top Djembe put his hand against a tree trunk and looked over the brow of the hill. The possibilities of this place enervated him.

  Ahead, a school room merged into the forest, where one Jonah was sweeping the floors and muttering about children, another was sitting on a desk gazing out of a window at a passing ocean-going ship, and a third looked to be asleep, his head hidden in his arms, leaning on a desk.

  Jonah changed the subject, “We should go and talk to Verigua. You wanted to investigate this anomaly, didn't you?”

  “Yes. Which way is it?”

  “You're never more than five metres from the door in here. You just have to ask for it. Door!” In front of them, a dark gap opened in the school room. Jonah walked through first. Djembe straightened and followed.

  In their discussion of consequence mechanics, he'd forgotten what Jonah had said about the room's ecology. It never occurred to him to mention the butterfly resting on the tree trunk where his hand had rested.

  Kate sat opposite Daoud, whose mouth had pinched. His eyes were cold, as if they'd been replaced by black diamonds. “Murder?” Daoud blinked, once. Although her eyes were dry, she forced herself to match his demeanour.

  Kate had taken a risk, to see if she could push this man into giving something away.

  “I think so. Doctor's Maki biotag signal is very unusual.” Kate took a silent breath, while she concentrated her gaze between Daoud's eyes on the bridge of his nose, “I'd like to interrogate Doctor Currie. The culprits are usually those who know the victim best.”

  “He won't take kindly to a murder charge. This sort of thing doesn't occur on Fall.”

  “You've had a vendetta killing before, I checked. I'll also need to talk to any spouse she had.”

  “Why not take a ship, scour the planet? Her body is out there somewhere.”

  “Too slow. Pressure on the people closest to her is the quickest method.”

  “But you said this was a vendetta. That implies an external force.”

  “Your colonists gossip about vendetta. But your planetary surveillance shows we're the only ship to have entered recently. And nothing has left.”

  “Very well. I can't very well stop you. I'm a civilian, you're a General in the military. I'm sure even as a Colony Administrator you trump my clearance levels.”

  Kate scratched her leg, rubbed her thigh, flicked her eyes to Daoud's, “Well, about that.” Kate decided to take another risk. Adrenaline was flooding through her, “You have a rather unusual clearance status, Administrator.” She looked at his desk, back up to his face. She wasn't sure how to address what she'd discovered; or what she hadn't. It showed lack of control, influence.

  “Ah. Yes I do.”

  The two were silent for a few seconds. Kate wondered if she was supposed to speak, if there was a natural follow-up to that sort of comment. Eventually, “It's classified.”

  Daoud sucked his cheeks in slightly.

  “I don't know what that means, having a clearance status that's classified. Admiral Kim's status is Onyx. It's on her record. It's the highest you can go, as far as I know. But yours just says 'classified'.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I'm afraid that, too, is classified General.”

  He was annoying her again. “Does it mean I'm just not allowed to know your clearance status?” Kate was lost in the double meanings. What could she discuss with him if she didn't know his clearance status? What could she accuse him of? Clearly his status must be high. He ran a classified facility, supplying the minerals for all the artificial intelligences throughout the settled galaxy.

  “I take it you mean, is my status in the list that you know about, but you're not allowed to know where it lies?”

  Kate bit her tongue. Diplomacy had to be the over-riding strategy here. There was too much at stake.

  “The answer is classified, General. I suggest we change the subject. We've established that you may interrogate Doctor Currie and Doctor Maki's spouse.” Daoud stood, “I've read your file, General. I think I mentioned it?” He walked around the room to a long window that looked over the Colony's heart, the dark central air shaft, “You came here well prepared. Verigua tells me your consequence map is very impressive. Your Planner, Commander Cygnate, is very thorough. I think Verigua likes him. You seem to run your team well. You think ahead. Your education and career history are impressive.” He folded his hands behind his back, kept his face turned to the window, facing his Colony and the darkness, his subterranean world. “I understand you're a xenophile?”

  Kate was taken aback by the question. It had come out of nowhere. “Was.”

  “Oh?”

  “I now consider it a youthful fantasy. Hoping for there to be alien life out there. Nine hundred years in space and no evidence? Sometimes we have to give up our dreams.”

  He turned his head slightly, “Humour me for a moment, then.”

  “OK.” Her voice was guarded. What was he up to?

  “What would you give to meet an alien? To make first contact.” He turned round, faced Kate again, his back to the Colony.

  Kate wondered where this was leading. She sat up in her chair. “The question's redundant. We're alone.”

  “As I said, humour me.”

  Kate paused, thinking. “I don't know. It would be the single biggest event in history. Knowing there's other life out there. Apart from the algae we find everywhere, I mean.”

  “Do you think you're ready for it? What if it's a disappointment, something primitive?”

  She still couldn't fathom where this was leading. Surely not about the biological research she was trying to discover? “I've been asked this before. It's not an intelligent life I want to meet. I just want to know that life is possible anywhere.” Kate shook her head, “It doesn't make sense that Old Earth be the only place where more complex life developed. It's not intelligent life I was interested in finding. It was any life. Grasses, flowers, insects, jellyfish, sponges.”

  Daoud walked back to the desk, put his hands on the back of his chair, “And if you did meet something, whatever it was, would you tell people? Or keep it secret?”

  Kate began, “Well...”

  Daoud tipped his head quickly, “Imagine the panic. The consequences.”

  Kate thought it over. “Yes, people would panic. If it wasn't handled properly, panic would turn into fear and mistrust. If it was something even vaguely intelligent, we would risk war. We see it often enough in Old Earth's history. And even after the Diaspora, when we discovered the algaforms. People attacked them.”

  “You said 'war'. Is that what you think would happen?” Daoud moved back to his chair and held its back. She watched him carefully.

  “Conflict is always the product of colliding cultures.”

  Daoud straightened and folded his hands behind his back again.

  “What if
we could lance that boil?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Daoud took his seat again. “What if we could contain the,” he searched for a word, “anxiety that would precipitate large scale war.”

  “How?”

  He smiled, waved his conversation away, “I hadn't thought it through.” Daoud leaned back in his chair, “I was thinking out loud. An academic exercise. I don't get to meet many new people out here on Fall.”

  There was a silence between them. What was he playing it? Kate was lost in trying to second guess his intent.

  Daoud appeared to be considering something. “You talk with passion and foresight. History does indeed teach us an awful lot about bringing different cultures together. But, you have a mission to run and I am detaining you. Please, proceed as we discussed.”

  “Very well. Thank you for your time.”

  Daoud sat again at his desk, straight backed against the chair, “Thank you, Kate. I look forward to our next meeting.”

  She left feeling both confused and confident. She had permission to interrogate the closest people to Doctor Maki. Hopefully that part of the mission would be textbook. And if Djembe was right, the illicit biological research may be this AI infection. They just needed to isolate it and pass it to the cyberologists back in MI.

  As she left Daoud's office, she started thinking about her R'n'R again, thinking she would be home within the week.

  The cargo ship hung in the air several kilometres over the Colony. The cockpit was empty, the autopilot engaged. Win had just finished laying a sensor grid around the Colony, ten kilometres to a side. And he'd patched into the Colony's satellite web, uploading an image search algorithm. If the thing came near the Colony, or within a hundred kilometres of this part of the planet, they would find it immediately. Further out, the planet had a limited number of defensive and weather satellites. They didn't give good resolution of the surface, and Fall's huge storm made it difficult to monitor large parts of the planet. But Win hoped they might pick up something.

  In the bulging centre of the saucer-shaped craft, he lay out holo projectors in the space normally used for transporting cargo across the surface and to low orbit craft. When all the projectors were in place a ghostly cube of cubes glowed to life. Win stood at the ship's internal control deck. “Hello ship.” In the giant cube behind him, a green lizard-man with an inflated head floated into view on a miniature representation of the cargo ship. “Can you form a link to the Colony AI, please?”

  It bowed its head, moving its spindly arms across a small console on its floating platform. Though nothing on the avatar's face moved, the word “Verigua” echoed through the cargo bay, as if from the space where its mouth was. The lizard-man floated out of the holographic cube, replaced seconds later by a black cat.

  Win smiled, “The AIs on this planet are very playful. Hello again.”

  The cat stood on its hind legs, performing a deep bow, “Delighted.” Verigua licked a paw, cleaned one of its cat ears. “So, Commander, what can I do for you that the ship's AI can't?”

  “Colony Defence Code article seven.”

  “Really? Very well, give me a moment.” The cat walked to the edge of the holo cube. For his benefit, Win assumed, the ship's holo avatar came into view and engaged in quiet conversation with Verigua. Eventually it bowed its head and held out its clawed hands. Verigua took three monkeys from its cat fur and handed them to the ship's AI, before it faded from view. “Well, Commander, I am all yours. We are in a confidential space. What great mystery have we to investigate today? Shall I become a sleuth, a detective from your SysNet entertainments? I have some practice! At this moment I am talking with your colleague about those damnable anomalies. He's getting rather irritated with me, you know. Says I shouldn't be representing myself as a human. I can see why. If you were going to design a body, you'd be rather stupid to make it your shape forever. Eyes that don't work properly, only two hands. You need a more intelligent design. No offence.”

  Win walked into the holo cube, “Whatever keeps you happy, Verigua. We do have some investigative work. My team downloaded a large amount of information an hour ago, which is confidential to us, MI security clearance Ebony. Can you bring it up here, please? I've entered the file codes in this terminal.”

  As the data downloaded, the black cat rose in the air supported by a tree which grew beneath it.

  Win narrowed his eyes while he searched for the literary reference, “Interesting. If you start to grin, what should I do? Eat or drink?”

  The cat grinned. “Very good, Commander. Not many people here on Fall notice. The old classics of literature are, well. Old. I think we can work well together. In fact Doctor Currie has a substance, let us call it Compound X, that allows humans to synchronise their biology with artificial intelligences with some great accuracy. It makes data investigation very much easier. No body suits necessary. If you like I can arrange for some to be brought up here. It will only take a few minutes.”

  “A substance? Is it safe?”

  “My dear Commander, it was you who initiated Article Seven. I judge it appropriate to the requirements of the Code that we understand each other better, remove any barriers to communication. As for the safety, indeed yes, it has been tested to destruction. Some decades ago, actually. If you knew the extent of Doctor Currie's research, you'd wonder how he came to develop so much biology so quickly. The compound was the breakthrough. It allowed him and his researchers to expand their knowledge, their ingenuity within my program cloud.”

  Win walked into the cube, stood under the tree, pulled himself up onto the branch the black cat sat on. “Do no harm?”

  “That's right.”

  He sat for a moment. His hand reached out automatically to stroke the cat while he thought through the risk. “Well, I can't sit here for days and days, and that's a fact. What's it like, taking this compound?”

  “The humans tell me it's like going raving mad.”

  Win sighed, smiled, shook his head, “I thought they would. Very well,” he nodded, slipped from the branch. “Has Djembe taken it?”

  “Oh good grief, no. I like him and his orderliness, but I fear suggesting he take Compound X would be chaos too far.”

  Win chuckled, nodded, “Yes, perhaps at the moment. While we wait,” he looked up to Verigua, “can you please order the cube into sections. The floor I want as a layout of Fall's surface, Colony entrance in the centre, fifty kilometres to a side scale. Overlay environmental data, ion trails through the atmosphere, Lagrange One probe two metres above, forced perspective scale of the system, keep the suns and the well properly oriented.”

  “Interesting. 'Well' isn't a term offworlders use. You say 'wormhole' usually.”

  “One of your pilots used it earlier, Kiran ha'Doek. He's a good kid. Ready with the data overlay?”

  Win and Verigua went about organising the data into the ship's hold. When they had finished, the ship reported the arrival of the capsule carrying Compound X.

  “How do I take it?”

  “There's a nasal inhaler and two other items in there. Place the inhaler's prongs in your nostrils, press the red button and sniff. The effects will take around ten seconds. You will also need to put on the two body links. One goes on your inner wrist, the other across your forehead like a diadem. Then you communicate with your thoughts alone. You think, therefore you are.”

  Win placed the inhaler back in the capsule when he had used it, and put on the link devices. “I don't feel any different.” He looked around, waited, “What should happen?”

  Verigua's cat padded over to him, jumped and changed into a dolphin, which swam around Win, giving off deep green ripples of light and making clicking sounds as it went.

  “But it doesn't feel different.” Win followed Verigua, which created gold sparkles in the air, sunlight reflecting off a churned sea. In the middle of the cargo area images of Win's family appeared. “You've brought up my personal files. Why? You're not supposed to access informatio
n about my family. Can you please close these images?”

  Verigua danced on its dolphin tail.

  Win followed the movement. “From me? Just because I was thinking of them?” The dolphin performed a backflip; virtual water splashed around Win, who stared through it at the viewing cubes around him, the holographic layout of his data. He put out a hand, pointed at a picture of his son. A look of concentration appeared on his face, he curled his hand as he pulled his arm in. The image poured through space, flowed into his chest; ripples spread out on his clothes as it disappeared.

  The dolphin swam around his back. When Verigua came into his eyesight again, it had changed its form to an ethereal face and finally addressed him vocally, “Very good, you catch on quickly. We were communicating mind to mind.”

  “I like these new toys,” Win looked at the holo in the cargo hold, at Fall's surface at his feet, the stars above his head. “Do I still need the holos? Can all this be done mentally?”

  “Eventually, yes. It takes some practice. Even you will need some practice, Commander. For now, we'll keep the holo. In fact, many scientists keep them, they like to maintain a separation. But from now, you don't need to describe anything to me. Think like a god, and it shall be.”

  Verigua tutored Win in how to control his mental environment. The thoughts running close to the surface of his mind had to be controlled so that they didn't leak out. He visualised wrapping them in white feathers and placed them in a small box on the edge of his vision: his son, his wife; his family. He moved on, moved back to the task at hand.

  Win walked back into the holo. Verigua had changed form again, this time representing itself as a sandman.

  The surface features of the Colony could be seen immediately below. East and south were smaller features, the surface buildings of the mining centres. Blue lines appeared, darkened into a network showing the mining tunnels.