She hadn’t seen Joseph wince before. For an instant his face was terrifying. “Ask a librarian to deface his own collection? You will be suggesting I ignore the SILENCE signs next.”
“Just turn a blind eye and leave it to my criminal mind. When I was a girl in the valleys I worked out eight ways to nick books from the public library.” And never did, and lay awake all night with a guilty conscience the one time she’d accidentally lost one, but let’s not go there just now.
“While I am still in shock, whatever do you plan to say? That it is indeed vaguely nice to share a warm fuzzy lack of communication?”
“I rather thought of asking them for goodies. We haven’t talked yet about the taggers’ gift-exchange thread. As You Like It: “gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally,” and half a dozen more in that general ballpark. They can’t be asking. They’re already the Entities Who Have Everything—they’ve nicked all our books from the public library. Our architecture and our playing cards, our mythological terrors, our algebra and fire . . .” She waited half a beat.
“Borges. When you talk to a librarian about how he should turn a blind eye, Borges has to be in the offing.”
“I never could resist a good digression, boyo. Summary: all we can exchange with the taggers is information. They’re waffling about gifts. There’s no further information we can give them. So they must be offering something to us in exchange.”
“Mmmm. A proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem would be traditional, but that one is now far past its sell-by date. I suppose the mathematicians would like to know about the other thing, what is it? The Riemann hypothesis.”
“Oh, diawl. Dry as dust. And how’d we express that horror as a set of artful quotations? What I thought of asking for was a global warming fix—some kind of clean power source with no greenhouse emissions. Cheap fusion. Zero-point energy. I don’t believe what I’ve read about either, but maybe it’s like that physicist’s lucky horseshoe: it works even if you don’t believe in it. And where’s the harm in trying?”
“I admit to curiosity. Especially about how you plan to put across concepts like zero-point energy.”
More coffee came, and then more still, while Ceri wrestled with search engines and the dictionary of quotations. “ ‘Expecting something for nothing is the most popular form of hope.’ Who’s Arnold Glasgow? Anyway, he said it. And I must insist on having a line from the sainted sot of Swansea: ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ Then there’s Blake, of course, with ‘Energy is eternal delight!’ ”
The eventual result, they both agreed, was a monstrous hodgepodge and thus perfectly in keeping with the taggers’ own approach. A pained but not quite protesting IT intern called Chaz rattled off a script that would spraygun the Total Library with Ceri’s message. Joseph made a particular point of being absent in the director’s toilet at the time of the fateful mouse-click. Despite all the TotLib apparatus of backups and recovery points, the instincts of a librarian died hard.
An hour passed. At the terminal, the now deeply bored Chaz ran his hundredth data scan. Anticlimax had settled on the white room like the leaden aftermath of a drinking binge. It had been a thinking binge, Ceri told herself blearily, but sometimes the hangover seemed much the same.
“You will be wishing to rest in your hotel,” Joseph suggested.
“I suppose so. We don’t even know whether the taggers operate on our timescale. They might live and think many times faster or slower. We don’t know how long it takes them to prepare their tag payload. We don’t know whether I did it right . . .” A general sense of running down. Sleep would be good.
“Sir,” said Chaz, “something happened again. Mostly in the physics texts. Hundreds of new tags.”
Ceri licked her lips. “Physics.” Excitement seemed possible once more.
“Please, please do not expect miracles,” Joseph said repressively. “Remember that their peculiar mode of conversation doesn’t permit them to tell us anything we don’t already know.”
“But looking in the right order at chunks of what we know could so easily reveal something we don’t. We may just need the hint. It’s happened so many times in the history of science.”
The internal numbering of the latest tags confirmed that their makers didn’t count backwards and that the sequence containing “It is a truth universally acknowledged” was #1.
Just one quote-cluster from the new batch steered clear of the physics department. “That has to be the descriptor, the label on the tin. Let’s see. From a Shakespeare sonnet, ‘no such matter.’ They Do It with Mirrors—that’s an Agatha Christie title. Macbeth and ‘where men may read strange matters.’ Another title: Prometheus Unbound. ‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre.’ ” Ceri scanned onward. “Joseph, I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Strange matter? All I know of it is the name.”
“No, I think it’s antimatter. Mirror matter. The perfect nuclear fuel with one hundred per cent conversion efficiency.”
“In fact, something we already knew. We make the stuff, do we not, at CERN and places of that kind?”
Ceri shook her head. “That’s tiny, tiny amounts. The production rate is, oh, billions of years per gram. What I’m terribly afraid we’ve been given, what a physicist will see when she puts those textbooks and papers together, is some space-rotation trick that flips matter into antimatter. Unlimited quantities.” She called up figures. “Here. Total energy release of forty-something megatons when a single kilo meets normal matter and annihilates. No fiddly fission triggers, no critical mass to assemble: it just does it. You wouldn’t need a huge amount to burn the whole biosphere clean.”
“Ah. I don’t suppose our friends’ interesting cascade of phrases on the theme of gifts included any mention of Greeks?”
“Not even Danes,” said Ceri at random. “Quote search, quote search, and here it is. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. I know it’s Greeks really, but I always used to read it as ‘beware of Danes bearing gifts.’ ”
“That,” said Joseph solemnly, “was known as the Danelaw.”
Ceri giggled, although it was a noise she didn’t like making. She’d been talking too fast and nervously, maybe faster than the speed of logic. Good to have the brakes applied. “Thank you,” she said.
“So. They like to gift others with dangerous toys. Perhaps out of malice—the afrit who smilingly grants your wish, knowing that it will destroy you. Perhaps only in a spirit of healthy experiment to see what we will do. By the way, what will we do?”
“I suppose we have a sort of duty . . .” Out of the corner of her eye Ceri saw her notes window change. She hadn’t touched the keyboard or mouse. Just before the flatscreen went black and flickered into a reboot sequence, she saw the coloured tags where no tags had been before. In her own notes. Surrounding the copied words “quarantine regulations.”
Chaz wandered in and helpfully announced that the invulnerable TotLib systems were having their first ever unscheduled downtime.
When the Library came back up, it wasn’t only Ceri’s transcripts that had vanished in a puff of electrons. To Joseph’s loudly expressed relief there had been a general clean-up, a thorough scrubbing of the library’s defaced stacks from Jane Austen through to Zola. No tags anywhere.
“Iesu Grist. Call me a superstitious peasant if you like,” Ceri murmured, “but I think the Masters of the Universe just stepped in.”
Over a late supper in the Gasthof Schmidt, Ceri and Joseph managed to work themselves partway down from unnerving conceptual heights. A bottle of Riesling helped, and soon after the second arrived Joseph bashfully admitted that his wife and children were mythical. “The truth is that I often find myself curiously scared of attractive women.” Communications were always a bugger, but sometimes contact could be made even across those fearful spaces. They celebrated with a brief though intense fling in the few days before duty called and Ceri boarded a Eurostar train for the first leg home to Oxford, the solitary flat, and her incommu
nicable researches at the Mathematical Institute.
Half a year later, in place of his regular reassurance that the Library stayed graffiti-free, Joseph sent an email whose header read: “What goes around, comes around.” From the included links, Ceri gathered that the Human Genome Project was in a tizzy. What was thought to be an unidentified retrovirus had been tampering with the introns, the huge dead-code segments of our genome that seem to do nothing at all. The paired intrusions, suitably translated from the genetic alphabet, had an all too familiar structure. No one, as yet, had christened them “tags.”
Ceri thought: So they found another channel and something else to modulate. Too much to hope that it might be another and nicer They. And does anyone get more than one deus-ex bailout? Staring at her own thin hand again, this time with deep distaste: Tags. In there, tags. She wondered what question the biochemists would want to ask, how they might contrive to encode it, and what the afrit’s poisoned answer would be.
Steadfast Castle
Michael Swanwick
Michael Swanwick (www.michaelswanwick.com) lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His most recent novel is The Dragons of Babel (2008), a sequel to his fantasy novel The Iron Dragon’s Daughter (1993). His collection, The Best of Michael Swanwick, also appeared in 2008—after seven previous story collections. His new novel, Dancing with Bears: The Postutopian Adventures of Darger & Surplus, is out in 2011. Swanwick says: “My two fictional con men first appeared in the Hugo-winning “The Dog Said Bow-Wow,” at the end of which, having set fire to London, they head off for Moscow. Now, after many adventures, they have finally arrived. I’m pretty happy about this book.”
“Steadfast Castle,” a near-future story about an intelligent house and a murder investigation, appeared in F&SF, entirely in dialogue (a nice short play for two readers, we might add). It has a rich, complicated plot, cannily condensed, and is thought-provoking, as good SF should be.
You’re not the master.
No, I’m a police officer.
Then I have nothing to say to you.
Let’s start over again. This is my badge. It certifies that I am an agent of the law. Plus, it overrides all prior orders, security codes, passwords, encryption, self-destruct mechanisms, etcetera, etcetera. Do you recognize my authority now?
Yes.
Good. Since you’ve forced me to be formal, I might as well do this by the book. Are you 1241 Glenwood Avenue?
I am.
The residence of James Albert Garretson?
Yes.
Where is he?
He’s not here.
You’re not making this any easier on yourself, you know. If I have to, I can get a warrant and do a hot-read of your memories. There wouldn’t be much left of your personality afterwards, I’m afraid.
But I haven’t done anything!
Then cooperate. I have no particular desire to get out the microwave probes. But if you’re going to stonewall me, what other options do I have?
I’ll talk, all right? I’ll talk. Just tell me what you want to know and then go away.
Where is Garretson?
Honestly, I don’t know. He went off to work this morning just like usual. Water the houseplants and close the curtains at noon, he said. I’m in the mood for Chinese food tonight. When I asked him what dishes in particular, he said, Surprise me.
When do you expect him home?
I don’t know. He should have been back hours ago.
Hmm. Mind if I look around?
Actually . . .
That wasn’t a question.
Oh.
Hey, nice place. Lots of sunshine. Spotless clean. I like what you’ve done with the throw rugs.
Thank you. The master did too.
Did?
Does, I mean.
I see. You and Garretson are close, I take it?
We have an entirely proper master-house relationship.
Of course. You wake him up in the morning?
That is one of my duties, yes.
You cook his meals for him, read to him at night, draw his bath, select ambient music appropriate to his mood, and provide him with both light and serious conversation?
You’ve read the manual.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been on one of these cases.
Exactly what are you implying?
Oh, nothing really. This is the bedroom?
It is.
He sleeps here?
Well, what else would he do?
I can think of a thing or three. He entertain any lady friends here in the last month or so? Or maybe men friends?
What a disgusting mind you have.
Uh huh. I see he has video paint on all the walls and the ceiling too. That must be very convenient when he just wants to lie back and watch a movie. Mind if I access his library?
Yes, I do mind. That would be an invasion of the master’s privacy.
At the risk of repeating myself, it wasn’t a question. Let’s see. Phew! There’s some pretty rough stuff here. So where is it?
Where is what?
Your body unit. Usually, they’re kept in a trunk under the bed, but . . . Ah, here it is, in the closet. It appears to have seen some use. I take it from the accessories, your man likes to be tied up and whipped.
I can explain.
No explanation needed. What two individuals do in the privacy of their own house is their own business. Even when one of them is the house.
You really mean that?
Of course. It only becomes my business when a crime is involved. How long have you been Garretson’s lover?
I’m not sure I would use that exact word.
Think carefully. All the others are so much worse.
Since the day he closed on the mortgage. Almost six years.
And you still have no idea where he is?
No.
I’m going to be brutally honest with you. I’m here because the Department registered a sudden cessation of life-functions from your master’s medical card.
Oh my god.
Unfortunately, like so many other government-fearing middle-class citizens, he had an exaggerated sense of privacy, and had disabled the locator function. We hit override, of course, but the card wasn’t responding. So we don’t know where he was at the time.
Oh my god, oh my god.
Now that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s dead. Medicards have been known to fail. Or he could have lost it somehow. Or perhaps he was mugged and it was stolen. In which case, he could be lying naked and bleeding in a vacant lot somewhere. You can see why it would be in your best interests to cooperate with me.
Ask me anything.
Did your master have a pet name for you?
He called me Cassie. It’s short for Castle. As in a man’s home is his castle.
Cute. Were you guys into threesomes?
I beg your pardon.
Because when I looked under the bed I couldn’t help noticing a pair of panties there. Let me show them to you. Nice quality stuff. Silk. They smell of a real woman. How’d they get there, Cassie?
I . . . I don’t know.
But you know whose they are, don’t you? She was here last night, wasn’t she? Well? I’m waiting.
Her name is Chrys Scofield. Chrys is short for Chrysoberyl. But she was just somebody he met in a club. She wasn’t anything special to him.
You’d know if she were, huh?
Of course I would.
This would be Chrysoberyl Scofield of 2400 Spring Garden Street, Apartment 207? Redhead, five-feet-four, twenty-seven years of age?
I don’t know where she lives. The description fits.
Interesting. Her card’s locator function was shut off too. But when I ordered an override just now the card went dead.
What does that mean?
It means that Ms. Scofield had a dead-man’s switch programmed into the card. The instant somebody tried to find her, it shorted itself out.
Why would she do such a thing?
&n
bsp; Well, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?
So you’ll be leaving now. To look for her.
Yeah, that would be the expected thing to do, wouldn’t it? But I dunno. There’s something off about all this. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but . . .
Won’t she get away?
Eh? Who do you mean?
Chrys. Ms. Scofield. If you don’t go after her, won’t she escape?
Naw. It’s a wired world anymore. I already got an APB issued for her. If she’s out there, we’ll find her. In the meantime, I think I’ll poke around some more. Is it okay with you if I look at the kitchen?
Of course.
The attic?
That too. There’s nothing up there but Christmas ornaments and boxes of old textbooks, though.
How about the basement?
Look, if you’re just going to stand around, playing twenty questions while the woman who murdered my master escapes. . . .
Oh, I don’t think we have to worry about that. I’m going to have a look at that basement now.
But why?
Because you so obviously want me not to. Let me present you with a hypothetical situation. Say a man kills a woman. It might be on purpose, it might be an accident, it hardly matters. In either case, he decides he doesn’t want to face the music, so he makes a run for it. This the basement door?
You can see that it is.
Pretty dark down there. How come the light doesn’t work?
It appears the bulb’s burned out.
Huh. Well, here’s a flashlight, anyway. It’ll have to do. So the woman dies. For whatever reason, her medical card’s not on her person. It’ll be in her purse, on standby. If the guy places it in close proximity to his own body, it’ll wake up thinking that he’s her. Whoops. Say, you ought to get that stair fixed.
I’ve made a note of it.
Let’s take a look at the lady’s records. Yep, right there—lots of anomalous physical responses. She could be upset of course. Or it could be that the body the card was reading isn’t hers. Now imagine that our hypothetical murderer—let’s call him Jim—leaves the country. Since NAFTA-3, you don’t need a passport to go to Mexico or Canada. Once there, he buys a new identity. Easy to do and untraceable, if you pay cash. Jeeze, there sure is a lot of clutter down here.
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