"My suit," Avernus said, "is coated with the protein by which the strain recognizes its own self. You could say I'm like a virus, fooling the immune system. I dug a trench, and that's what you stepped into. Where is the transport?"
"On its way, but you don't have to worry about it," the spy said, as he struggled to free himself. "This silly little trap won't hold me for long."
Avernus stepped back. She was four meters away, and the black stuff was thigh deep around the spy now, sluggishly flowing upward. The spy flipped the catches on the flask and tipped liquid nitrogen over the stuff. The nitrogen boiled up in a cloud of dense vapor and evaporated. It had made no difference at all to the stuff's integrity.
A point of light began to grow brighter above the close horizon of the moon, moving swiftly aslant the field of stars.
"It gets brittle at close to absolute zero," Avernus said, "but only after several dozen hours." She turned, and added, "There's the transport."
The spy snarled at her. He was up to his waist, and had to fold his arms across his chest, or else they would be caught fast.
Avernus said, "You never were Ben Lo, were you? Or at any rate no more than a poor copy. The original is back on Earth, alive or dead. If he's alive, no doubt he'll claim that this is all a trick of the outer alliance against the Elfhamers and their new allies, the Pacific Community."
He said, "There's still time, Barbara. We can do this together."
The woman in the transparent pressure suit turned back to look at him. Sun flared on her bubble helmet. "Ben, poor Ben. I'll call you that for the sake of convenience. Do you know what happened to you? Someone used you. That body isn't even yours. It isn't anyone's. Oh, it looks like you, and I suppose the altered skin color disguises the rougher edges of the plastic surgery. The skin matches your genotype, and so does the blood, but the skin was cloned from your original, and the blood must come from marrow implants. No wonder there's so much immunosuppressant in your system. If we had just trusted your skin and blood, we would not hive known. But your sperm-it was all female. Not a single Y chromosome. I think you're probably haploid, a construct from an unfertilized blastula. You're not even male, except somatically-you're swamped with testosterone, probably have been since gastrulation. You're a weapon, Ben. They used things like you as assassins in the Quiet War."
He was in a pressure suit, with dry air blowing around his head and headup displays blinking at the bottom of the clear helmet. A black landscape, and stars high above, with something bright pulsing, growing closer. A spaceship! That was important, but he couldn't remember why. He tried to move, and discovered that he was trapped in something like tar that came to his waist. He could feel it clamping around his legs, a terrible pressure that was compromising the heat exchange system of his suit. His legs were freezing cold, but his body was hot, and sweat prickled across his skin, collecting in the folds of the suit's undergarment.
"Don't move," a woman's voice said. "It's like quicksand. It flows under pressure. You'll last a little longer if you keep still. Struggling only makes it more liquid."
Barbara. No, she called herself Avernus now. He had the strangest feeling that someone else was there, too, just out of sight. He tried to look around, but it was terribly hard in the half-buried suit. He had been kidnapped. It was the only explanation. He remembered running from the burning hotel ... He was suddenly certain that the other members of the trade delegation were dead, and cried out, "Help me!"
Avernus squatted in front of him, moving carefully and slowly in her transparent pressure suit. He could just see the outline of her face through the gold film of her helmet's visor. "There are two personalities in there, I think. The dominant one let you back, Ben, so that you would plead with me. But don't plead, Ben. I don't want my last memory of you to be so undignified, and anyway, I won't listen. I won't deny you've been a great help. Elfhame always was a soft target, and you punched just the right buttons, and then you kindly provided the means of getting where I want to go. They'll think I was kidnapped." Avernus turned and pointed up at the sky. "Can you see? That's your transport. Ludmilla is going to reprogram it."
"Take me with you, Barbara."
"Oh, Ben, Ben. But I'm not going to Earth. I considered it, but when they sent you, I knew that there was something wrong. I'm going out, Ben. Further out. Beyond Pluto, in the Kuiper Disk, where there are more than fifty thousand objects with a diameter of more than a hundred kilometers, and a billion comet nuclei ten kilometers or so across. And then there's the oort Cloud, and its billions of comets. The fringes of that mingle with the fringes of Alpha Centauri's cometary cloud. Life spreads. That's its one rule. In ten thousand years, my children will reach Alpha Centauri, not by starship, but simply through expansion of their territory."
"That's the way you used to talk when we were married. All that sci-fi you used to read!"
"You don't remember it, Ben. Not really. It was fed to you. All my old interviews, my books and articles, all your old movies. They did a quick construction job, and just when you started to find out about it, the other one took over."
"I don't think I'm quite myself. I don't understand what's happening, but perhaps it is something to do with the treatment I had. I told you about that."
"Hush, dear. There was no treatment. That was when they fixed you in the brain of this empty vessel."
She was too close, and she had half-turned to watch the moving point of light grow brighter. He wanted to warn her, but something clamped his lips and he almost swallowed his tongue. He watched as his left hand stealthily unfastened a utility pocket and pulled out a length of glittering wire fine as a spider-thread. Monomolecular diamond. Serrated along its length, except for five centimeters at each end, it could easily cut through pressure suit material and flesh and bone. He knew then. He knew what he was. The woman looked at him and said sharply, "What are you doing, Ben?"
And for that moment, he was called back, and he made a fist around the thread and plunged it into the black stuff. The spy screamed and reached behind his helmet and dumped all oxygen from his main pack. It hissed for a long time, but the stuff gripping his legs and waist held firm.
"It isn't an anaerobe," Avernus said. She hadn't moved. "It is a vacuum organism. A little oxygen won't hurt it."
Ben Lo found that he could speak. He said, "He wanted to cut off your head."
"I wondered why you were carrying that flask of liquid nitrogen. You were going to take my head back with you-and what? Use a bush robot to strip my brain neuron by neuron and read my memories into a computer? How convenient to have a genius captive in a bottle!"
"It's me, Barbara. I couldn't let him do that to you." His left arm was buried up to the elbow.
"Then thank you, Ben. I'm in your debt."
"I'd ask you to take me with you, but I think there's only one hibernation pod in the transport. You won't be able to take your friend, either."
"Well, Ludmilla has her family here. She doesn't want to leave. Or not yet."
"I can't remember that story about Picasso. Maybe you heard it after we-after the divorce."
"You told it to me, Ben. When things were good between us, you used to tell stories like that."
"Then I've forgotten."
"It's about an art dealer who buys a canvas in a private deal, that is signed "Picasso.' This is in France, when Picasso was working in Cannes, and the dealer travels there to find if it is genuine. Picasso is working in his studio. He spares the painting a brief glance and dismisses it as a fake."
"I had a Picasso, once. A bull's head. I remember that, Barbara."
"You thought it was a necessary sign of your wealth. You were photographed beside it several times. I always preferred Georges Braque myself. Do you want to hear the rest of the story?"
"I'm still here."
"Of course you are, as long as I stay out of reach. Well, a few months later, the dealer buys another canvas signed by Picasso. Again he travels to the studio; again Picasso spares it no mor
e than a glance, and announces that it is a fake. The dealer protests that this is the very painting he found Picasso working on the first time he visited, but Picasso just shrugs and says, "I often paint fakes.' "
His breathing was becoming labored. Was there something wrong with the air system? The black tuff was climbing his chest. He could almost see it move, a creeping wave of black devouring him centimeter by centimeter.
The star was very close to the horizon, now.
He said, "I know a story."
"There's no more time for stories, dear. I can release you, if you want. You only have your reserve air in any case."
"No. I want to see you go."
"I'll remember you. I'll tell your story far and wide."
Ben Lo heard the echo of another voice across their link, and the woman in the transparent pressure suit stood and lifted a hand in salute and bounded away.
The spy came back, then, but Ben Lo fought him down. There was nothing he could do, after all. The woman was gone. He said, as if to himself, "I know a story. About a man who lost himself, and found himself again, just in time. Listen. Once upon a time .. ."
Something bright rose above the horizon and dwindled away into the outer darkness.
Steamship Soldier on the Information Front
Nancy Kress
Here's a critical look at the high-pressure, high-tech, high-bit-rate lifestyle of a busy future executive, and a warning that no matter how fast you run, there's always something just a little bit faster coming up behind you ... Nancy Kress began selling her elegant and incisive stories in the mid seventies, and has since become a frequent contributor to Asimov's Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Omni, and elsewhere. Her books include the novels The Prince of Morning Bells, The Golden Grove, The White Pipes, An Alien Light, Brain Rose, a novel version of her Hugo- and Nebula-winning story Beggars in Spain, and a sequel, Beggars and Choosers. Her short work has been collected in Trinity and Other Stories and more recently in The Aliens of Earth. Her most recent books are the thriller Oaths & Miracles and a new SF novel, Max imum Light. She has also won a Nebula Award for her story "Out of All Them Bright Stars." She has had stories in our Second, Third, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Annual Collections. Born in Buffalo, New York, Nancy Kress now lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband, SF writer Charles Sheffield.
Just before the plane touched down at Logan, Allan Haller gave one last check to the PID on the back of his tie-tack. Good. Intense vibration in the Cathy Aw icon, superintense in Suzette, and even Charlie showed acceptable oscillation. No need to contact any of them, that would save time. Patti and Jon, too their icons shivered and thrilled at nearly top speed. And three minutes till landing.
"My, look at what you have there," said his seatmate pleasantly. A well rounded grandmotherly sort, she'd been trying to engage him in conversation since La Guardia. "What sort of gadget is that, might I ask?"
No, Allan almost said, because what ground could possibly be gained? But then he looked at her again. Expensive jacket, good haircut, Gucci bag. Certainly money, but probably not entrepreneurial-rich old women tended to safe and stodgy investments. Still, what could he lose? Two and a half minutes until landing, and speculative capital, as he well knew, was sometimes found in very odd places.
"It's a PID-A personal-icon display," he said to Grandma Money. "It shows the level of electronic interaction going on with my family-my wife Cathy here, my son and daughter on these two icons-and two of my chief business associates. Each of them is wired with a WIPE, a 'weak interactive personal electronic field,' in various items of clothing that communicate with each other through a faint current sent through their bodies. Then all interactions with other electronic fields in their vicinity are registered in their WIPES and sent wireless to each other's PIDS. I can tell, for instance, by how much the Cathy icon is vibrating that she's probably working at her terminal-lots of data going through her icon. Suzette is probably playing tennis-see, her icon is superoscillating the way WIPE fields do when they're experiencing fast-motion physical interference, and Charlie here-"
"You send electric current through your children's bodies?" Grandma Money sounded horrified.
"It isn't dange-"
"All the time? And then you Big-Brother them? All the time?"
Allan flipped down the tie-tack. Well, it had been worth a skirmish, as long as the time talking to her would have been downtime anyway. With a slight bump, the plane made contact with the runway.
"Don't they ... well, I don't mean to be rude, but doesn't your family object to-" But Allan was already moving down the aisle toward the jetway, from the forward seat he'd had booked precisely because it was the first to disembark. By the time the other passengers were reaching for their overhead luggage, he was already in the airport, moving fast, talking into his phone.
"Jon, what have you got?"
"A third prospect. Out in Newton; the car company will do the max-efficient route. The company is Figgy Pudding, the product is Newssort. It goes through the whole Net looking for matches to key words, then compares the news items with ones the user has liked in the past and preselects for him-the usual statistical-algorithm gig. But they're claiming 93 percent success rate."
"Pretty good, if it's true."
"Worth a skirmish," Jon said, in New York. "That's all in Boston." He hung up.
Allan didn't break stride. "Figgy Pudding"-the cutesy name meant the talent was old, left over from the generation that could name a computer after a fruit and a communications language after a hot beverage. Still, some of those geezer geeks still had it. Worth a skirmish.
"Your car is waiting at these coordinates," his wristwatch said, displaying them along with a route map of Logan. "Thank you for using the Micro Global Positioning System."
Allan tacked through the crowd, past the fast-food kiosks, the public terminal booths, the VR parlors crammed with kids parked there while parents waited for flights. The driver, who had of course been tracking Allan through MGPS, already had the car door opened, the schedule revisions from Jon, the illax-effish route. No words were necessary. Allan sank into the back seat and unfolded his meshnet.
This was Haller Ventures' latest investment to come to market. Allan loved it. A light, flexible cloth meshed with optic-fiber wires, it could be folded almost as small as a handkerchief. Yet it could receive as much data as any other dumb terminal in existence, and display it in more varied, complex configurations. Fast, powerful, keyed both to Allan's voice and to his chosen tactile commands for max effish, fully flexible in interacting with his PID and just about every other info-device, the meshnet was everything high-tech should be. It was going to make everyone connected with Haller Ventures rich.
Richer.
"Jon message," Allan said to the meshnet. "Display." And there was the in formation about Figgy Pudding: stock offerings, annual reports, inside run-downs put together and run through the Haller investment algorithms with Jon's usual efficiency. Nobody on the information front could recon better than Jon, unless it was Allan himself. Carefully he studied the Figgy Pudding data. Looking good, looking very good. "Five minutes until your first scheduled stop," his wristwatch said. A second later, the phone buzzed, then automatically transferred the call to the meshnet once it verified that the meshnet was unfolded. Cathy's icon appeared on the soft metallic surface.
"Cathy message," Allan said. The driver, curious, craned his gaze into the rearview mirror, but Allan ignored him. Definitely no ground to be gained there.
"Hey, love," Cathy's voice said. "Schedule change."
"Give it to me," Allan said, one eye still on the Figgy Pudding projections.
"Suzette made it. She's in for the Denver Preteen Semi-Final Skating Championship!"
"That's great!" Allan said. Damn, but he had great kids. Although Charlie ... "I'll send her congratulations."
"Good. But she needs to leave Tuesday, on a nin
e-twenty A.M. plane. I have to be in court in Albuquerque on the Darlington case. Can you see her off at the airport?"
"Just a sec, hon." Allan called up the latest version of his schedule. "No can do. Patti's got me in Brussels from Monday night to Tuesday afternoon, with a stop at a London biotech on the hop home."
"Okay," Cathy said cheerfully. She was always cheerful; it was one of the reasons Allan was glad she was his wife. "I'll get a driver for her, and Mrs. Canning can see her off. Consider it covered. Are we still on for dinner and hanky-panky Wednesday?"
"Let me check ... yes, it looks good. Five o'clock at the Chicago Plaza."
"I'll be there," Cathy said. "Oh, and give Charlie a call, will you? Today?"
"What's with Charlie?"
"Same thing," Cathy said, and for just a moment her cheerfulness faltered.
"Okay," Allan said. "Don't worry."
"You on your way to Novation?" Cathy of course received constant updates of his schedule, as he did of hers. Although she had fewer updates; even consulting attorevs as good as she was sometimes stayed in the same city for as long as three days. "Novation is the biorobot company, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Allan said. "Patti's pushing it pretty strong. But frankly, I don't have much faith in radical tech that makes this many extravagant claims. Promise the moon, deliver a rusty asteroid. I don't expect to be impressed."
"That's my man. Make 'em work for it. Love you."
"Love you, too," Allan said. The Cathy icon vanished from his meshnet.
"Two minutes until your first scheduled stop," his watch said.
Perfect.
Allan was wrong. He might not have expected to be impressed with Novation, but, almost against his will, he was.
As soon as he entered the unprepossessing concrete-block building, he could feel the data rush. Vibrating, racing, dancing. Whatever made a place blaze on the very edge of the information front, this place had it.
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection Page 17