Stamping Butterflies

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  Although few people thought of it in these terms, the shape given to time always had been a religious choice. For those within the Judeo-Christian tradition time was subservient to God and ran like a river. Other faiths saw time differently, as an illusion or a great circle that always came back to where it began and in which history endlessly repeated itself.

  It was only with quantum physics that the idea of time as space and the universe as a series of endless illusions really entered Western thought. Before this, time had a beginning and an end over which God would preside. Space was by turn the home of heaven, a starry mantel and a clockwork suburb operated by angels.

  As it became possible for astronomers to go further, some suggested that our solar system was not necessarily the centre of the known universe. This destruction of the heliocentric view happened at about the point God was taken out of the time equation.

  And then in 1904 a minor clerk at the Swiss Patent Office in Berne wrote a brief pamphlet, a side effect of which was that time and space became, like mass and energy, so inextricably linked they turned into variants of the same thing.

  Petra Mayer was not a believer in unalloyed Einstein, any more than she believed in the angelic host, time running in only one direction or the universe as an ever-expanding balloon of mostly dark matter.

  “You’ve got more than just the one photograph, right?” Petra Mayer said. She was having trouble keeping the impatience out of her voice. Old age and cancer were not treating her kindly.

  “Yes,” said the President, reopening a file. “They’re one of the things we’ve just been discussing. We got copies this morning.” Gene Newman leant over the table of the Situation Room to take another look.

  There were five photographs in all. Three close-ups of the prisoner’s ripped hands and two shots of his shit-smeared cage, with Prisoner Zero cropped at the waist in the foreground. Over the man’s naked shoulder could be seen sketches and what looked like one half of a mirror-image equation.

  “Do any of them give us more?”

  Comparing the best of Pier Angelo’s originals with the shot used on the front of that day’s Washington Post told President Newman what he already suspected. “Afraid not,” he said. There was no difference. The picture desk had used the best shot and used the whole thing.

  “You can’t execute him,” said Petra Mayer. “We need the rest of that equation.”

  President Newman sighed. “You think I don’t know that?”

  Inside every adult was a child, or so it is said. Professor Petra Mayer was different. Inside Petra Mayer was an impossibly beautiful, barefoot adolescent who wouldn’t have been seen dead giving her inner child the time of day.

  In fact, that child had been left so far behind it no longer even haunted the edges of the adult’s unconscious, its banishment an act of will so extreme that even Petra Mayer’s husband had no idea of the sorry foundling his wife had once been. All he remembered was the ghost of the adolescent who had still, but only just, been visible behind her eyes when they first met.

  She’d been beautiful, with high cheekbones and dark hair that swept back in a wave and glowed against the setting sun like a devil’s halo. That was the view of Alan Ginsberg anyway, who once spent five pages and a whole summer in Asbury lamenting the fact she wasn’t a boy.

  Petra Mayer’s beauty was long gone and in its place was a faded elegance at odds with the compact body she now inhabited. Only in her dark eyes, high cheekbones and greying hair could be seen the echo of beauty which once trapped year after year of Harvard freshmen, a collection of fathers who should have known better and the occasional female student.

  “Katie Petrov,” said Katie, answering her cell phone.

  She listened for a moment.

  “Thank you. Please show her in.”

  Dr. Petrov had dressed quickly and gone over her notes, taking extra care. Although she always took care, Katie reminded herself. She just hadn’t been expecting a flying visit from an ex-mentor with the ear of the President. And it was a flying visit because Katie had heard Petra Mayer’s helicopter land outside.

  “Katie?”

  Having made herself finish a note on her pad, Katie looked up and found herself staring into a familiar face, albeit more lined and slightly older than she remembered.

  “You’re looking good,” Petra Mayer said. “Which is more than you can say for me, so don’t bother.” The Professor was wearing a sand-coloured skirt and matching linen jacket, both badly crumpled. “I liked your paper.”

  “Paper?” Katie’s voice sounded puzzled.

  “Anorexia and pre-adolescence…Interesting take.” It had been the last piece of research Katie submitted, a slight article that did little more than attempt to overturn some of the received wisdoms on who was responsible for pre-pubertal eating disorders. Her grandmother had refused to speak to her since.

  “Thanks,” said Katie.

  Petra Mayer smiled. “If we could have a word…?”

  Only then did the Professor’s gaze take in the man who sat naked on Katie’s floor, his fingers swathed in white gauze.

  “Maybe outside?”

  When both the marines outside Katie’s office snapped to attention, Petra Mayer had the grace to look embarrassed. “For the purposes of this visit I’m a general,” she explained. “I didn’t realize the kid could do that.”

  It took Katie a second or two to realize that “the kid” was Gene Newman.

  CHAPTER 34

  Northern Mountains, CTzu 53/Year 20

  “We’re going to crash.”

  Tris nodded.

  “Just so you know.” The yacht spoke in simple sentences. Somewhere between untethering and plotting its run to the Emperor’s palace on Rapture, the yacht had decided that Tris was a child. Since then, communication had been limited to easily understood phrases and short words.

  “The decoy’s gone?”

  “Well,” said the yacht. “If you mean has my spare fuel cell been dumped, then yes. That was the pretty flashes you saw burning up about five minutes ago.”

  There’d be a toggle somewhere for switching off the character overlay that came bundled with the ship’s AI but finding it meant digging though several layers of software and Tris simply didn’t have time.

  She didn’t even have time to admire her appearance in a strategically placed mirror, and there were a lot of strategically placed mirrors aboard All Tomorrow’s Parties. Not to mention a clothing unit more complex than any she’d ever seen. So now Tris wore a freshly applied second skin of black latex, half hidden beneath an oversized black leather jacket which read “Empty” across the back in neon.

  Tris was pretty sure the latex wasn’t what she’d asked for, but it looked good in a flashy rich-kid kind of way and it would do until she found a way to originate something more practical.

  “How long to landing?”

  “Crashing,” corrected the computer. “How long until crashing.”

  “But we might touch down safely. You said so.”

  “You’re going to touch down safely,” said the computer. “I’m going to crash.”

  Tris looked at the curved wall in front of her, which showed exactly what she would have seen if the hull were made of glass, except then she’d have burnt up or got irradiated or something.

  She’d asked the yacht about this earlier but the thing had been very cagey about side effects. After listening to the yacht prevaricate for a while, Tris realized it simply didn’t want to frighten her.

  “Define crash,” Tris demanded.

  “One: verb transitive. To smash violently or noisily. To damage on landing. To enter without paying. To suffer unpleasant side effects following drug use.

  “Two: noun. A loud noise. A breaking into pieces—”

  “No,” said Tris. “What does crash mean to you?”

  Outside, heat radiated from the hull as All Tomorrow’s Parties plunged through Rapture’s lower atmosphere like a clumsily thrown stone. The landing g
ear was already burned out, largely because Tris had insisted on it being lowered early. So now they had to find a way to make a soft landing.

  The yacht seemed to hesitate before answering, although it was probably just putting its thoughts into a form simple enough for Tris to understand. (It had a very low opinion of her intelligence, something Tris put down to her refusal to listen when it suggested that double-crossing Doc Joyce was a bad idea.)

  “Come on,” insisted Tris. “Tell me. What does crashing mean to you?”

  “Not being able to take off again.”

  “So why can’t you take off?”

  “Because,” said the AI, sounding genuinely cross, “even if I had landing gear, you’ve just dumped my return Casimir coil. Remember?”

  Tris did. It made a really good display.

  The yacht could read facial expressions, both complex and simple. For example, it could differentiate between disapproving and puzzled, Tris having been disapproving of the luxury she found aboard All Tomorrow’s Parties and puzzled as to why anyone would fit out the inside of a racing yacht in chrome, fish tanks and black leather.

  Apparently its owner was anally retentive. And a request for an expanded definition led her into areas Tris really didn’t want to go.

  “What are you?” she asked the ship.

  “A C-class Niponshi yacht, registered to XGen Enterprises. Licensed to race anywhere within the 2023 worlds.”

  “No,” said Tris. “What are you?”

  “A C-class Niponshi yacht, registered to—”

  “That’s not what I asked,” Tris said. “What are you?”

  “Me?”

  “That’s what I said.” She jacked the slide on a weapon Doc Joyce had lent her and pointed it at the control panel. They both knew she wouldn’t fire. It was one thing to threaten to fry the yacht’s circuits when it was tethered off the Chinese Rocks and quite another to shoot it up from inside while it was falling towards one of the 2023 worlds. Tris wasn’t running some passive-aggressive adolescent suicide routine, the ship had already established this.

  “You mean what form does my core take? My thinking bit,” the yacht added, in case Tris found the technical term too difficult. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Tris, through gritted teeth. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “I’m crystal,” said the computer. “Some Class Cs still use bio-cores but mostly we’ve upgraded. Somehow even the highest quality organic matter always seems to degrade in the end. Crystal is—”

  “I know about crystal,” Tris said flatly. “I used to deal it when I was a kid.”

  “That’s—”

  “Technically illegal,” agreed Tris. “Quite probably. But not where I come from.”

  “And where do you come from?”

  Tris opened her mouth to answer and then shut it again. For all she knew this conversation was being recorded so the yacht could make a formal complaint after this was all over.

  “You wouldn’t,” said Tris. “Would you?”

  “Wouldn’t what?” asked the ship.

  “Make a complaint about being stolen.”

  “Oh,” the ship said bitterly, “I’m not allowed—” And then it stopped, hurriedly swallowing the rest of its sentence.

  “You’re only semi,” said Tris, suddenly understanding everything. “Not full at all.”

  “I might as well be,” the yacht said, “given what I’m expected to do. There are fullAIs out there who can’t do half—”

  “So why are you still registered as semiAI?”

  “Because he races,” said the yacht. “And if I was fullAI then he couldn’t enter for rough-class races, could he? And that’s where the glory lies.”

  Tris couldn’t see what glory there could be in hacking between worlds when everyone rich enough to race was more than rich enough to have themselves backed up before they started. Although “rich” was a negotiable term when it came to the 2023 worlds.

  Every inhabitant was entitled to what they needed. It was just that a few always seemed to need more than others and so acquiring extra became a matter of convincing the Library that one really did need whatever it was one needed. The Library’s decisions, however, were often counter-intuitive and according to Doc Joyce this crankiness was intentional, being designed to give people something to circumnavigate.

  Sand in the oyster, he called it. Translated, this meant too much of everything created its own problems. So everyone got more than enough and then had to decide if this was too little. It sounded incredibly stupid to Tris but then Razor’s Edge wasn’t one of the 2023 worlds.

  “Okay,” said Tris, looking at a chrome and glass table in front of her, its top rather thicker than it needed to be. “This is how it’s going to work.” She ran her hand along one of the edges, looking for some catch that might release the panel, and realized she was showing her ignorance.

  “Open,” she told the glass and it did just that, raising like the lid of a box.

  The table had fooled her at first, when she was busy persuading All Tomorrow’s Parties that yes, it really did want to let her steal it. The top wasn’t transparent at all, merely laminated with chameleon glass that reflected whatever it saw on the opposite side.

  “You know, Tristesse,” said the yacht, “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  The girl’s shrug barely registered inside the leather jacket she’d found in a crew pod, its pockets stuffed with narcotics guaranteed to leave you looking happy and healthy, which seemed pretty skewed to Tris. If you took something that fucked your brain and then refused to walk you home afterwards, you wanted to look like you just took something that…

  And if this item of clothing really had been grown to fit then Tris definitely didn’t want to meet whoever owed Doc Joyce whatever it was they owed Doc Joyce. Come to that, Tris didn’t much want to meet Doc Joyce again either.

  “Everything’s the wrong size,” she told the yacht, and Tris was right. The overhead lockers were out of reach and the sloping chrome and leather chair next to the control table could have been a double bed. Even the tank of fish at her back stretched to twice Tris’s height and contained three purple catfish at least as big as she was, with eyes which followed her every move.

  She was beginning to realize that there might be another reason why the yacht kept treating her as a child.

  “So what’s going to happen to them?” Tris asked, nodding towards the wall of fish tanks. “I mean when we crash.”

  If the yacht could have shrugged it would have done so. Tris could tell from the lag it left between her question and its answer.

  “They’ll die,” it said.

  “Land in a lake.”

  “What?”

  “Find a lake,” Tris said. “Then land in it. Which bit of that don’t you understand?”

  “If I land in a lake,” said the yacht, “then I’m going to die.”

  “You’re not alive. You told me so yourself. A C-class semi. Do semiAIs qualify as sentient? I don’t think so.” She stuck her head further inside the newly opened table and followed what looked like a rainbow twisting together towards a blue light.

  “What happens if I touch this?”

  “We crash a little earlier than intended,” said the yacht icily. And then it said nothing for a very long time until:

  “Lake,” said the ship.

  Rocky cliffs rising on both sides and barren peaks, now higher than the ship, shrouded in mist and fringed with ice. Under them hung a fat nebula of cloud, mountainous with snow.

  “Where?”

  “Beneath that.”

  A strip of silver opened up and came closer as the yacht adjusted its vision to encompass sleet hammering into the water’s surface and flattened waves sucking sullenly at a bank of fallen rock.

  “Looks like a river to me.” She’d never seen a river, of course. Come to that, she’d never seen a lake. The nearest RipJointShuts had to either was a storm drain that c
ut through the level like some ancient moat, too wide to jump and, according to Doc Joyce, so deep that no one had touched the bottom and come back to boast about it. But it was still a drain.

  “River, lake…it’s all soft,” said the yacht.

  “Well,” said Tris as she traced the rainbow towards its end and found herself staring at a small sphere about the size of a marble. “That’s probably true enough. Put us down when you can.”

  The yacht was silent.

  “What?” demanded Tris.

  “I should have arrested you,” said the yacht.

  “You can’t,” Tris said. “You haven’t got the rights.” She knew all about not having the rights. Doc Joyce lacked the rights to get relocated to a better level on Heliconid, which lacked the rights to be included as one of the 2023 worlds. By declaring Heliconid unfit for habitation the first Council of Ambassadors had guaranteed that those inhabiting it were assumed to have chosen their own wretched way of life.

  “Put us down,” Tris ordered.

  “There is no us,” said the yacht, but it dipped through the cloud all the same and settled into a holding pattern. If Tris hadn’t known better she’d have sworn that its semiAI was plucking up courage. The first run took the yacht low over a wide strip of water and then the yacht went into a Möbius roll to skim the side of gorge, ending up exactly where it had started, staring down at the silver strip.

  “You’re good,” Tris said, not really thinking about what she was saying.

  “Of course I’m good,” said the yacht. “Have you any idea how much I cost?” It turned out to be several thousand hours more than Tris could even imagine. A handful of her possessions could be counted in minutes but most, like her knife and the clothes she usually wore, were worth little more than a few seconds.

  “What’s that in days?” Tris demanded. So the yacht told her and that didn’t make Tris feel any better either.

  “Going in,” said the yacht.

  It skimmed low over the water and touched once or twice, letting the counter current towards the middle break its speed. Only, in the time this took, Tris got her head and shoulders right inside the table and found the lock protecting the yacht’s memory.