by Raya Jones
‘Ludovic’s men told you,’ dismissed Bin Abdullah.
To deny it would only confirm Bin Abdullah’s suspicion that Rinzler was in cahoots with the gangsters. Rinzler said, ‘Yes, they told me. But I also recognise his mark. It means sunrise in Japanese.’
‘So you know Japanese,’ dismissed Bin Abdullah.
‘No, but I know a Japanese man about your age, this tall,’ Rinzler indicated with his hand.
Bin Abdullah stroked his beard, thoughtful, and then signalled to his men to back off.
Rinzler didn’t gloat, but was smugly aware that Angerford looked impressed. Aloud, loudly, he addressed the crowd, ‘Does anyone happen to have a salvaged Teletek deck lying around?’
‘No, it’s software I need,’ corrected Angerford.
Chapter 37
Angerford was impressed with how Rinzler handled the situation, although he wasn’t going to let Rinzler know it. They arrived in a bar that Rinzler chose for reasons that he wasn’t divulging and Angerford couldn’t fathom. It was a dreary place opposite a Phyfoamicals factory. April served them drinks from a replicator. Nobody else was there. Angerford was impatient to get home and install the software, but had a ‘Rinzler situation’ to handle. He guessed correctly that the detective won’t let it go until finding out why he wanted Teletek software. Angerford decided to tell him the truth. He couldn’t say it outright because April was around. He sipped bland wine and told Rinzler instead, ‘I wasn’t in danger back there.’
‘You have no idea. Let me tell you about the time I…’
Angerford cut him short, ‘I wasn’t in any danger. Bin Abdullah won’t risk his livelihood by getting into trouble with Cyboratics.’
‘How do you know about him?’
‘I was briefed.’
‘And he was briefed about you. You came from Mars. I thought you’re from Earth. You told me you’re from Earth.’
‘I am.’
He ended up telling Rinzler about growing up in a small town by the sea, and then living in Cy City Earth until he was relocated to Cy City Mars. Why am I telling him all this? Angerford sipped his wine and tried not to think about how much he missed a sky, the sea, wind, sunlight, rain on his face. He watched Phyfoamicals adverts play on the wall across the kind of tunnels that are called streets in P-7. The Suzuki face faded in and out like a staccato reminder of another Japanese man who had eerily insinuated that the problem with April might be impossible to solve.
‘Will they send you back to Earth?’ Rinzler darted a glance at April. The android idled on standby next to the replicator, but he lowered his voice anyway. ‘When you’re done here?’
‘I’m here indefinitely,’ he told Rinzler morosely. ‘It’s a job for life unless I’m needed somewhere else.’
‘It’s not too bad here.’
‘Even Mars was better. My room had a window. I could see the stars.’
‘You’re not here for life anyway,’ Rinzler pointed out cheerfully. ‘What are you now, thirty-something? Only forty more years, and then you can go to a retirement village on Earth.’ He drank up his beer. As soon as he put down the emptied glass, April switched itself on and hurried over, eager to serve: ‘Would you like the same again or would it be something different? May I recommend the…’
‘Not yet.’ Rinzler placed his pad on the table. The image of Louis Huang flickered into view next to the empty glass. ‘Have you seen this man anywhere in the past four days, April?’
April smiled broadly and started to inform Rinzler how little it charged for information like that.
Angerford butted in, ‘Just answer him, April, or I’ll search your records myself.’
April’s face went blank briefly, and then became animated with an apologetic smile, ‘Sorry, Rinzler, I can’t locate this man in the specified period.’
‘How about this woman, have you seen her in the past four days?’ The image of a young essencist woman replaced the man.
April went blank again, and then apologised, ‘I am sorry, Rinzler, I can’t locate her.’
‘How about this one?’ asked Rinzler, switching to the woman from the OK ‘wanted’ poster.
‘She is nowhere,’ April said at once.
‘Do you know Everild?’
The blonde android beamed its happy smile. ‘Sorry, the root-mind has switched off. May I get you the same beer again or would you like to try…’
Angerford interrupted the enthusiastic android. ‘You are not switched off. Teleport this unit to the androhouse immediately and keep it there until I tell you to release it.’
‘Why? Is there anything wrong with this unit?’ asked April.
‘I’m monitoring randomised procrastic degradation of the cybrosynaptic calibration.’ He stroked his ring to activate a diagnostic. The April unit jaunted away. Angerford met Rinzler’s quizzical stare, and spoke rapidly before April dispatched another unit to serve them. ‘I need Teletek software to open the unknown file you’ve spotted.’
‘Yeah, I’ve figured out that much on my own, but “randomised procrastic degradation of cybrosynaptic calibration”? Does it even mean anything? Never mind, I guess I need a brain transplant to understand it. April was too quick telling me that this woman is nowhere.’ The ghostly image still shimmered near the empty glass. He switched it off. ‘If April were human I’d suspect her of hiding something. She’s playing games with you. But you are going to tell me not to anthropomorphise.’
Angerford shook his head, reading incoming diagnostic data. ‘Who is Everild?’
‘Someone April is lying about. Hello, April. I don’t think I’ll have another drink just yet.’
The newly-arrived April turned to Angerford. ‘Are the diagnostic results satisfactory?’
‘No, April. There’s a slight oddity,’ he lied. ‘But you may redeploy the other unit now.’
‘What oddity?’
‘I’m getting an echo on a name I can’t pin down,’ Angerford continued lying, ‘Everild.’
April smiled happily. ‘Is this a game? I love games! I used to play with Fernandez. May I get you more wine? It’s going to get very crowded here in a moment.’
‘No. We’re leaving.’
They walked out.
People in green uniforms started to pour out of the factory and head to the bar. There was nothing else in the immediate vicinity except for the factory on one side and the bar opposite it. The rest of that side was a featureless brick wall. Overhead was a low curved ceiling. Angerford asked Rinzler, ‘Where does this tunnel lead to?’
‘You mean this street?’
‘It’s a tunnel,’ insisted Angerford. He strode on past the factory. It didn’t matter where the gloomy tunnel led. It was April-free. ‘Who is Everild?’
‘I’m trying to find out. Your April knows. Can’t you rummage in its mind and find out?’
‘Maybe, but I need my deck for that.’
‘She’s playing games with you,’ Rinzler moved aside to let people get past. He raised his voice past them, ‘That’s a cliché science-fiction nightmare, a machine that becomes self-aware!’
‘Andronets are self-aware. It’s a different kind of consciousness.’
‘Can they decide to kill someone for their own gain?’
‘Yes.’
‘Isn’t there some law of robotics against that?’
‘No, that’s science fiction.’
Rinzler stared after workers disappearing into the bar, then fell into quickstep at Angerford’s side, his eyes darting everywhere. ‘Body-snatching aliens, do they…?’ In mid-speech, he made a sharp turn directly into the brick wall, yanking Angerford along.
By the time Angerford wriggled free, they were already past the virtual wall.
They stood on a narrow metal balcony overlooking an ‘open’ space. Angerford hadn’t seen anything like it before. It was chaotically crammed with haphazard constructions connected by bridges, catwalks and ladders, full of mechanical noises and jingles, flickering lights that made shadow
s darker, and advert balloons rising and sinking.
The virtual wall they had crossed was transparent from this side. The street was now empty but for a lone tall woman in Phyfoamicals uniform who stood near the bar as if waiting for someone.
‘Fine. It’s not a tunnel.’ Angerford took out his pert.
‘She’s not one of them.’
Angerford realised that Rinzler meant the woman near the bar. She started to stride purposefully in their direction. ‘Who is she?’
‘The body snatcher.’
Angerford spoke with ill-suppressed impatience. ‘Rinzler, I have work to do. I don’t have time for…’ But looking at Rinzler, he sensed that the man was serious. ‘What is it?’
Walking along the balcony towards a spiral staircase, Rinzler told him that the woman didn’t come out of the factory with the others. She could be on her time-off waiting for a colleague, Rinzler conceded before Angerford could say it, and then disclosed that an ‘origin-undisclosed’ teleport signal had been registered in the vicinity moments ago.
He has the 1Step matrix hacked! Not for the first time Angerford wondered whether Roke Steiner was right to worry about Rinzler. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the woman looking up and down the empty street, then step through the virtual wall and fleetingly metamorphose into a familiar tall pale-faced man as ‘she’ crossed it.
Panicked, Angerford lunged forward and grabbed Rinzler, simultaneously pressing his pert, relieved that Rinzler had his anti-kidnap app disabled.
They were in the courtyard outside his door.
Rinzler looked around as if routinely surveying the place.
‘Quick, he’ll follow us here!’ Angerford urged. The door opened to his touch, and slid shut behind them.
‘She was a he? Who is he?’ asked Rinzler, his eyes scanning the room as if checking for any changes since his last visit.
‘Your bloody shape-shifter,’ said Angerford. Damn Roke, doesn’t he know that MirXperma Wall cancels out the cloak? He wondered whether Rinzler had caught a glimpse of Roke.
‘That’s rich language coming from you,’ observed Rinzler, amused. They stood in the middle of the room. The bed was stowed away. ‘What’s to stop him coming here?’
‘Nothing, but he can’t be downloaded indoors when there are two of us here. Let me pull out the bed.’
‘Good idea, let’s make even less room.’ Rinzler moved out of the way.
They sat down on the bed, their faces aglow with the reflected rainbows of April’s shimmering mind.
Angerford didn’t know what to say, and Rinzler seemed lost for words.
Not for long, though. ‘Why is he after me?’
‘I have no idea,’ Angerford said truthfully.
Rinzler’s eyes followed movements of rapid light streaking on the visual curtains of interlaced synapses as if reading the display. There was no way he could decipher it, Angerford reminded himself, but he was worried just the same. ‘What do you know about April, Rinzler?’
‘Huh?’
‘You said that April is playing games.’
‘April said it.’
‘You said it first.’
‘Did I? Maybe I did. I was only anthropomorphising the machine.’
‘Cyber-mind. An entity in cyberspace.’
‘I stand corrected. She… it lied to you about being switched off. But her mind, its mind, is all around us here like an open book. Any lie, any deception, any flicker of randomised procrastic degradation, you can read it, right? April doesn’t stand a chance.’
‘Are you being sarcastic?’
‘No. I’m looking for reassurance that you people are in control of your product. It makes me nervous, and I speak as a customer, when I hear an android saying it loves playing games. Somehow I don’t think April meant chess or backgammon.’
‘April meant applied mathematics, game theory, useful for predicting human behaviour,’ Angerford explained. The Rinzler Situation was getting awkward.
Wondering how to handle it, he got up and unplugged all the hardware that sustained the live link with the andronet. One by one, the curtains of light peeled away off the walls and vanished, and the bare walls made the small room feel even smaller.
Rinzler went on relentlessly, ‘Did you know that Fernandez was playing games with April?’
‘We use game theory when training an andronet. Rinzler,’ Angerford turned to him, having made a decision, ‘I need your help.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes. Please. This is serious for me. I’m doing something that could be construed as a breach of my corporate loyalty.’ He got out the pin that he bought at the people’s yard.
Rinzler said as if offended, ‘Are you worried that I might tell on you to save my skin from Roke Steiner?’
‘You know!’
‘You said…’
‘I’ve never told you his name.’
‘You just did. It was a wild guess and you confirmed it.’
‘What do you know about Roke?’
‘I hear things in my line of work,’ Rinzler said evasively, and then realised that it might sound as if Spart had leaked company secrets. He came clean. ‘I know he’s in Human Resources. Personnel go missing. I came across his name in some cases I investigated a while back, but none of the disappearances could be pinned down to him. Like that business that almost got the two of you expelled from school.’
‘How do you know about that? Never mind.’ School records are easy to hack. ‘Do you check out the school records of all your clients?’
‘No, only the ones that Samurai Sunrise approaches in person. Don’t worry, I won’t tell on you to Roke Steiner,’ Rinzler grinned reassuringly. Angerford didn’t feel reassured. ‘But I’m not the only one who knows you have a Teletek interface.’
‘That’s not a problem.’ Angerford removed his ring, put it in his pocket, and it disconnected from his brain. ‘Not what I meant,’ he muttered, checking that all the links to Cyboratics were now disabled. ‘I can make up some story why I wanted the software.’
He sat back down next to Rinzler and spread a handkerchief-sized mini-portal on his knees. It was a travel accessory that he had modified, and didn’t declare on any inventory of his possessions. It could sustain only one link, the link he needed to cyberspace wastelands. He waited for the connection to come through, aware that Rinzler was closely observing. It didn’t matter if Rinzler saw the location, decided Angerford. He had created the site for the sole purpose of stashing that file. ‘I need your help with what I’m doing, Rinzler. In case anyone asks.’
‘Why, is being disconnected against Cyboratics law?’ puzzled Rinzler. ‘Besides, if anyone, Roke Steiner for instance, is monitoring this place they can detect this signal.’
Angerford nodded. His head started to ache. ‘You are showing me something, and you are so paranoid you’ve insisted on me disconnecting everything.’
Rinzler laughed. ‘Okay, I’d fall for that. What am I showing you?’
‘We’ll find out in about two hours,’ replied Angerford.
Chapter 38
To Rinzler’s relief, Angerford didn’t expect them to wait two hours indoors. They went out as soon as the link was established and the process was running itself. ‘Anywhere will do,’ said Angerford, and Rinzler suggested the Zohar Memorial. ‘Any particular reason?’ asked Angerford, wincing. His head throbbed. Rinzler grinned enigmatically.
It was outside teleport range. They took an eight-minute train journey in a car full of children chaperoned by three Aprils. His ring back on, his head still aching, Angerford activated his implant’s phone utility and contacted Roke. He spoke sub-vocally, ‘I saw you, Roke. Didn’t you know that MirXperma cancels the…’ Roke’s voice inside his head interrupted, ‘Why are you protecting Rinzler? Has he given you anything useful?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘Something I can report only to Wye Stan Pan. You’ll have to trust me on that. I need Rinzler alive.’
‘As you wish,’ Roke accepted reluctantly. ‘If he dies it won’t be my doing. You know that OK are after him.’
‘Then make sure they don’t get him. I can’t give you an order but I can ask the President to issue it.’
‘Fine, fine,’ Roke got the point, irately. ‘Have it your way for now.’
The train arrived at the Memorial. The children noisily jostled out of the opening doors and raced to an escalator at the end of a featureless platform. There were no other people around. ‘Could he take a child shape?’ Rinzler he asked.
Angerford shook his head.
‘April?’ queried Rinzler, raising his voice to be heard over the raucous.
Hearing its name, the nearest android called back, ‘Hello Rinzler! I’ll assign a unit to reach you on the next train!’
Rinzler called back. ‘No need, April, I was only telling your boss what a superb job you’re doing!’
April beamed. ‘Thank you, but Angerford is not my boss. I chose him because he’s the best. Bjorn, get in line with your sister! You, Dania, don’t push!’
The Aprils herded the high-spirited crowd onto the escalator. Silence descended on the platform as the school trip ascended. Rinzler kept looking over his shoulder even though the train was gone and the place was out of teleport range. ‘He can use a mobile PertNet and I won’t get an alert for that,’ he fretted.
‘I can’t get over how you hack the 1Step matrix,’ Angerford remarked.
They stepped on the escalator.
‘I didn’t hack them. What gave you that idea? It would be too risky even if I knew how to do it,’ protested Rinzler, who knew how to do it. But it was too risky.
‘Then how did you set up the alert?’
‘I called in a favour.’
‘It’s a momentous favour to ask,’ observed Angerford.
‘Yes, but a lot is at stake.’