The Quiet Pools

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  But he was only one man, one person pretending to be five, one mortal attempting to live up to a myth. He could not be everywhere, could not scatter his energies on a thousand points of light. His focus had to remain at the center: Sasaki, Dryke, Memphis, the strategy for a killing blow against the Diaspora. The window was starting to close, and he could not bear to fail.

  Mustering a decisiveness he did not feel, he began to sift through the priority items in the queue, dispatching them from the displays at a rate approaching one a minute. Even as he did, new messages and stories appeared on the list, underlining the Sisyphean futility of the task.

  But making its way to him that moment was a message which would make him forget that futility for a while. Originating with Katrina Becker in Munich, it was following a tortuous path to reach him—bounced twice to a DBS, its headers stripped and replaced by a relayer, back-coded into a transparent file on DIANNA, and then unlocked with a key that had been sent weeks earlier.

  When it appeared in the queue, his face brightened. And when he read it, he laughed and clapped his hands together in a moment of celebration.

  For sometime while Jeremiah had been napping, the Munich virus had gone to war.

  It had been months in the making, as almost all operations were. It had begun with a suggestion from without, as almost all operations did.

  “Tell me your ideas, and Jeremiah will tell you when the time is right,” was the message which went out to the network, to newly vetted friends. And they looked into their own lives for the special opportunities offered there, building for Jeremiah a catalog of choices.

  “I can do this to hurt them,” they said. “I can do this to help.”

  Katrina Becker had come into the fold more than a year ago. Her vetting had been unusually prolonged, for the special opportunity she represented was dangerously attractive. Becker was a systems security technician in the engineering section at AT-Munich, the primary technical center for the Diaspora. Through her, he could have access to the closed world of Memphis’s operational and management engines—to the delicately tuned mind of the ship itself.

  From the first, he had viewed Becker with dark suspicion. Nine years into a career with Allied, she claimed a change of heart prompted by a book she had read and a man she had met. The book was Danya Odon’s Earthsong, an obscure collection of nature-experience poems. The man was Peter Corning, an obscure rad-left Bundestag member from Schleswig-Holstein. One sensitized her to the “organic wholeness” of Gaea, the other to the “soft fascism” of Allied Transcon.

  Or so she claimed.

  It took three months and several significant leaks of technical material from AT-Munich before Jeremiah was satisfied that her conversation was sincere. It had taken many more months to pick apart the secrets of the engineering network and build a virus capable of surviving its defenses.

  Even then, he had hesitated. To use Becker to deliver the virus would be to sacrifice her. She was willing, even eager, but he had no one similarly placed, no way to replace the intelligence she delivered. Without a guarantee of success, and with a plenitude of other options, Jeremiah held both Becker and the virus in reserve, waiting to be convinced that the time was right or her usefulness was about to end.

  Then came Dryke’s transparent attempt to trap him with the open gateway into the test environment. Jeremiah had at first been amused, then insulted. Did Dryke think that he could not tell the difference between real and calculated carelessness? Did Dryke think he would expect anything in the test partition except antibodies and backtracers?

  Ego prodded him to answer the insult by making Dryke look foolish. But it was the fact that the delivery of the finished command package to Memphis would bring Becker’s usefulness to an end which finally swung the decision.

  The day after the gateway opened, the virus was hard-coded in a tamper-sealed chipdisk and ferried to Becker in a delivery of perfume from a Belgian company. Two days later, it was installed in the Munich network. It had been waiting in hiding there ever since, watching for its trigger key. When the gateway was finally closed, the countdown began.

  The virus was meant to alter the command package in a subtle way, modifying a calculation here, a data point there, changing a pointer, closing a loop. If it had succeeded, no one would have known of its handiwork until Memphis herself, basking in the spotlight of what was to be her sailing day, refused to leave the Earth.

  But an antibody program, monitoring cryptographic checksums and integrity keys, spotted the change and came hunting.

  In response, the virus abandoned its stealthy subversion and went wild.

  All solutions are contingent. Content in his lesser victory, Jeremiah traced the virus’s progress by monitoring skylink traffic between Munich and Prainha, Munich and Houston.

  “We tried to tag it and it stripped the tags. When we finally got system control back, we tried to freeze it and it self-destructed,” the Munich systems supervisor reported to Dryke. “But there must have been a fragment hiding where we couldn’t get it, because when we came up again, it went right after us again and broke our control just like that.”

  Jeremiah nodded to himself. In fact, there were five copies of the virus in the system, each waiting their turn to wreak havoc.

  “It’s running through the libraries now,” he heard Feist tell Sasaki. “We’re taking nodes out of the network the hard way, pulling blocks and cutting cables as fast as we can. But Mods Five and Six are completely gone.”

  More good news. Mod Five was the navigation archive, Mod Six ship management. The only plum left was Three, the command engine.

  But the biggest self-satisfied smile came later, when a weary Dryke told Sasaki, “Jeremiah did what we expected him to do. But he didn’t use the door we had open, and we didn’t get him. His virus was better than our antibodies.”

  “We are facing a major reconstruction because of that, Mr. Dryke.” Sasaki’s voice was brittle. “It was your job to prevent such a disaster. It was your job to protect our Malena Grahams. And you failed at both.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Dryke snapped back. “You want to give this assfuck job to someone else, go ahead and do it. He beat me. All right? Jeremiah beat me. You got someone else that wants to take a shot, bring ’em on.”

  It was not until the excitement in Munich began to fade that Jeremiah thought to ask who Malena Graham was.

  Lila’s answer was straightforward and chilling. “A Memphis staff counselor, killed last night near Houston. You are implicated. Stories are in the queue and marked.”

  There were dozens of stories, for the murder had taken place fully six hours earlier. Troubled, Jeremiah viewed the stories one after another from the top of the queue, trying to grasp what had happened. Not one of them left him untouched.

  When a State Police medtech described in graphic detail the condition of the corpse, Jeremiah’s mouth went dry, and his hands trembled. When Mother Alicia recalled that her daughter was “naive about people, because she wanted to love them,” Jeremiah wept with her. And when Evan Silverman proclaimed proudly that he was “Jeremiah’s hands,” Jeremiah rose out of his chair and raged at the screen.

  “Liar—liar! You’re no part of me. Not one fragment. Bastard animal—” Then a horrible fear overtook him. “Lila! Search the archives. Is there anything about this man? Have we had any contact with him?”

  “I’m checking,” it said. “Done. There are no entries except for those connected with Malena Graham. We have had no contact with Evan Silverman.”

  That calmed him somewhat. “We’re going to do something about this, Lila,” he said. “I won’t let what he said stand unchallenged. I won’t let them think I wanted this.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m going to go real-time. I’ll need you to map out an interrupt. Pick a local station—everyone else can get it from them. I’ll need at least three minutes.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”


  While he waited, there were more stories. The State Police had the only crime-scene documentaries, but were refusing to release them—a station in Dallas was suing. (“That one,” he told Lila. “They’ll hear me out. Put it through them.”) The Allied Transcon complex was locked down and in mourning, and Hiroko Sasaki was rumored to be there. (He checked other sources: She was still in Prainha.)

  But the stunner was one of the late arrivals: a synth-image recreation of the girl’s last hours by the current affairs show Headliner. Somehow they had obtained a recording of the concert which had drawn Malena out into the city, and found her in an audience shot.

  With that and Silverman’s interviews as templates, they were able to animate a mockumentary, showing “Malena” walking with her friends from the tram station to the club, leaving the bar with “Silverman,” sitting in his flyer, and, ultimately, lying dead on the ground.

  In keeping with Headliner reputation for heavy-handed journalism, the commentary was moralistic and overblown (“But Malena Graham could not resist the temptations of her youthful freedom…”). The ham-fisted essayism extended to using a song from the concert as ironic counterpoint to the images: “Look at me, I’m flying free—”

  “Good God,” said Jeremiah. “Lila—who is that?”

  “The performer is Christopher McCutcheon, an archaeolibrarian with the Memphis hyper project in Houston.”

  “I want to hear the whole song.”

  There was a pause. “I’m sorry, it doesn’t appear to be available.”

  “Someone has it. Call Headliner.”

  “I could contact Christopher directly.”

  “No,” said Jeremiah. “Call Headliner. Buy it if you have to.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Lila. “By the way, the interrupt you requested is ready now.”

  “Keep it current,” said Jeremiah. “I’m not.”

  Jeremiah sat back in his chair, hands folded in his lap, eyes unblinking, and watched the recording through to the end. When it was over, he watched it a second time.

  “Kill it, Lila,” he said. “No archive.”

  Then he rose and left the warren and its screens and queues, left the house, his heart full of pain. His triumph had been stolen from him, trumped by the mocking images which had flickered across the displays. It did not matter if the damage in Munich would delay Memphis ten days or ten months. No amount of time would be enough to dissuade them. They would never turn from their course.

  All the proof he needed was contained in the final four minutes of the concert. The last song Christopher sang was the embodiment of unreason, a précis of cultural insanity. Its words revealed every folly of the Diaspora, every bitter truth that poisoned the sweet romance of adventure.

  There were no other Edens, no golden paths. There was no glory in a shabby death a long way from home. The final, brutal indictment was the son’s tragically misguided choice—no, not a choice, a received obligation—to carry on his father’s quest. Delicta maiorum immeritus lues.

  Yet the audience applauded the waste of lives, acclaimed the embrace of pointless suffering, absolved the father through his son’s blind emulation of a suicidal self-sacrifice.

  And the singer accepted the accolades as though that were what he had meant all along.

  The agony of Malena’s parents came through to him with new force. “We tried to talk her out of it,” Mother Caroline had said to the reporters. “We pleaded with her to stay. But she wouldn’t listen. What can you do? What can you do when they’ve made up their mind?”

  Her helpless feeling echoed his own. He could not touch them. He could not reach their minds or turn their hearts. You will leave me, and I will lose you. That was what Mother Caroline faced, what every family faced. That was the fear which had eaten away at the dreamy idealism of the Diaspora in the years since Ur.

  “As far as I’m concerned, she was a runaway, as much as if she’d gone to the streets,” Father Jack had said. “Someone caught her eye with a shiny trinket and a bit of candy and she was gone. She took everything that we’d given her and threw it away. I’m sorry if it sounds hard, but she was dead to me from that day on.”

  How many wounds had been left by eight thousand final partings, how many families shattered? How many mates and lovers and children and parents still nursed anger and hurt that they were abandoned? How many that they touched had learned to view the new ship taking shape in orbit as a threat?

  “She was a terrific girl,” Father Brett had said. “She brought so much brightness to my life, and now she’s gone. I know we were going to have to say good-bye soon, but I feel cheated. We were expecting her home for Yule, did I say that? And I still half expect to hear her at the door. I loved her and she’s gone. I really haven’t been able to think about anything but that.”

  Malena was gone. But the rest of the ten thousand were still here, could still be saved, their families and friends and lovers still spared. Mother Caroline and Father Jack had surrendered, accepted a reality they hated, and their daughter had paid the price. If he, Jeremiah, surrendered as they had, the price paid would be far greater.

  When he returned to the house after an hour’s walk, he stopped to watch the hummingbirds darting through the air around the bright red feeder. There were three nesting pairs this season, the most in several years. The frantic energy in their tiny bodies was a marvel, their speed on the wing a delight.

  But this morning, he could not feel delight. He descended into the warren, still grasping for an answer. The queues had ballooned again. The new additions included the Houston site director’s first statement, still under way, on the murder. As Jeremiah joined the cast, the director was condemning Silverman and “all those who share his curse of hate and arrogance of virtue.”

  “We know his kind,” said Carlos Vincenza. “We’ve seen them outside our gates, waving fists and hurling rocks. We’ve heard their voices, bleating about Mother Gaea and the selfishness of the pioneers. But is there any act more selfish than the one Evan Silverman committed in that field? Is there any explanation besides jealousy for denying someone else a gift you could never appreciate, or stealing a reward that you could never earn?

  “They call themselves Homeworlders. Better we should call them homebodies. They protest their own history. They stand against the future. Their life strategy consists of pulling back to the smallest defensible locus. They want to give up nothing, risk nothing, and preserve everything. They’ve made their lives petty and meaningless, and they want ours to be as empty.

  “But we have goals and dreams, and we have the right to pursue them. The cost is being borne by those who choose to bear it. The sacrifices will be made by those who choose to make them. We ask only one thing from you: Let us be. Turn your back if you must, but let us go. It means nothing to you, but everything to us—as it did to Malena Graham.”

  As Jeremiah watched Vincenza, his expression turned harder and grimmer. “Lila,” he said when it was over, “what has Allied said about Munich?”

  “Nothing received, sir.”

  “What has Sasaki said about it? Or about Malena Graham?”

  “Nothing received, sir.”

  “Is the interrupt still ready?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bring up the translator and animator and give me a countdown,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. Translator up. Converter up. Counting down: five-four—”

  “This is Jeremiah, speaking for the Homeworld.”

  The anger was still bubbling within him, and he welcomed it.

  “My heart aches this day for those who knew and loved Malena Graham. Her death was brutal and tragic. But the greatest pain must be the knowledge that her death was unnecessary.

  “Who is to blame for what befell Malena Graham? I have been accused. But my goal from the first has been to dissuade—not destroy. I love this world and all its creatures, mankind most of all.

  “Who, then? Her parents, for failing to control her? Evan Silverman, for succumbing t
o the hate that filled him? Hiroko Sasaki, for dangling the universe before a naive girl? Or Malena herself, for the choices she freely made?

  “As every parent can witness to, life is a journey from dependence to rebellion to responsibility. Every parent knows that their child will have to face temptations and make difficult choices. You want them to choose well.

  “But how do they learn to choose well? They learn from the rules imposed on them from the beginning. If the rules are too strict, what they learn is to escape. And they learn from the examples that surround them. We are sometimes surprised to discover that they have learned more from our example than our words.

  “Did Malena Graham choose well? She forsook her family for strangers, the richness of a vast bountiful world for the closed spaces of a tiny metal shell.

  “Her father has called her a runaway. But what was she fleeing? Was she abused and belittled? No. We can see that she was loved and nurtured. Was she bitter and unhappy? We are told that she was vibrant and joyful. Why, then, would she make such choices?

  “The answer is that Malena Graham was a victim not of a murderer’s hand, but of a poisonous idea. An idea born in the harsh years of the great Repression, when the family of man turned cold in spirit as well as flesh. An idea as false and foolish as a ten-year-old’s notion that his problems will end if he only leaves home.

  “Come with me to the stars, whispered the demon. Come with me to find a better place.

  “Malena Graham listened. Many good people listened. They saw so much more clearly than we, or so they believed. They saw a burning Earth, an old and weary Earth, a sickly Earth. They saw disease-riddled bodies and fear-divided communities.

  “And they dreamed a child’s fantasy of a magic land inhabited by the pure and the loving. A fantasy that became a crippling obsession, a roadblock on the way to responsibility.

  “Who is responsible for Malena Graham’s death? We are all responsible—Evan Silverman perhaps least of all. Every one of us who thought the demon harmless. Every one of us who thought the fantasy amusing. Every one of us who failed to notice our children slipping away.