Phase Space

by Stephen Baxter

  He sensed acceptance. Forgiveness. He wondered how far they’d come, how long they’d travelled. What they were fleeing.

  Anyhow, it was over now.

  ‘You weren’t alone,’ he said. ‘And neither were we.’ He pushed his hand back into the pit he’d dug, ignoring the fresh dust clouds he raised.

  The light of Earth billowed around him.

  GLASS EARTH, INC.

  ‘You lied to me.’

  I don’t understand.

  ‘You lied about the murder. Have you lied to me all my life? Is it just me, or do other Angels do this too?’

  Rob, I don’t mean you any harm. My sole purpose is to serve you.

  ‘Because of you I don’t know what’s real any more …’

  It is the year 2045. Don’t be afraid.

  For Rob Morhaim, it started as just another assignment.

  Morhaim checked his reflection in the Cinderella mirror on the softwall. Not that he expected to meet anybody in person today – that hardly ever happened – but it made him feel better. The mirror showed him Cary Grant circa 1935 – incongruously dressed in Metropolitan Police light armour, circa 2045 – but it was honest enough to show him any smuts on his nose, and that he needed a shave.

  But the mirror was infested; Cary Grant started to sprout a ridiculous Groucho Marx moustache and cigar.

  ‘Goddamn viruses. Off.’

  The mirror metamorphosed to a neutral view of a Thames riverscape, under a parched June sky. The view was overlaid by a tampon ad: irrelevant to Morhaim since his divorce, of course, but still counting to his ad quota.

  Nothing much we can do about the viruses, murmured the Angel. Since the passing of the sentience laws –

  Morhaim fixed himself a coffee and a Coca-Dopa marijuana cigarette. ‘I know, I know. But where the hell are the Goodfellows when you need them? …’

  He settled in his chair.

  The Room, his home, was just a softwall box, with a single office chair, and a caffeine/Dopa vending machine. Its bio equipment – a bed, a kitchen, a bathroom – folded away when he didn’t need it. He was a cop in a box, one of thousands in New New Scotland Yard: a Virtual warren of Rooms, of cops in boxes, physically separated, their softwalls linking one to another.

  Nobody travelled any more …

  You want to take your ads?

  ‘Do it.’

  Morhaim stared straight ahead as a melange of graphics, letters and smiling faces blizzarded over the wall in front of him.

  Most of the ads that, for statutory reasons, survived the Angel’s filtering were dominated by the big companies – Microsoft-Disney, Coke-Boeing, IG Farben. Morhaim could never see why they couldn’t do a little pooling, thus reducing the quota for everyone. Some of the images were crudely three-dimensional, popping out of the softwall in front of him, though they still hadn’t got that stuff right and the images tended to break up into pixels, light-filled boxes, around the edges. More insidious were the you-ads, ads that were tailored to him – shouting his name, for instance, or Bobby, the name of his kid.

  He let his eye follow the action – the in-wall retinal scanners could tell if you closed your eyes, or even if you let yourself glaze over – and, unless your attention was caught, you wouldn’t be allowed to tally to your quota.

  At last the battering of light and noise died.

  When he checked the time he found he’d got through the best part of his legal duty as a consumer in a half-hour, a good performance by any standard, even if it did leave his eyes feeling like poached eggs.

  And all the time, somewhere in his head, he was thinking about The Case.

  With relish, he said: ‘Time to go to work, Angel.’

  The softwalls dissolved, even the Cinderella mirror, and Morhaim was suspended over Tower Bridge.

  When they were proven to be alive, by legal definition anyhow, you granted viruses amnesty.

  Manufacturers of virus killers were shut down; even virus check software is illegal. In fact it is part of the remit of Rob Morhaim’s unit of the CID to track down breaches of those laws.

  But there are supposed to be two sides to the bargain: the Robin Goodfellows, the most human-like products of virus evolution, have committed to keep their more mischievous junior companions under control. Mostly they do just that …

  Possibly.

  But things seem to be sliding a little right now, as most of you realize. A lot of commentators blame the approach of the Digital Millennium – 2048, the year 100000000000 in binary, requiring a whole extra digit from 2047, which was 11111111111 – when, street scuttlebutt has it, the storage problems required by that extra digit will deliver the catastrophe we managed to avoid at the 2000 date change.

  Perhaps you are right. Perhaps rogue viruses, or the approach of the Digital Millennium, are indeed at the root of everything that is going wrong for you.

  Perhaps not.

  … And now here was Morhaim at a pov that looked down over the crime scene: two days ago, Wednesday 13 June 2045, at 10.53 a.m., five minutes before the event. The sun was bright and high, the light dripping down from a sky that was whited-out and without a shred of ozone, and the twin towers of the Bridge sparkled like a fairy castle. Further down the river he could see the city’s newest bridge, a gaudy, over-familiar M-shape curve in bright corporate yellow: an eyesore for traditionalists, but welcomed by Londoners as a painless hit against the ad quota … The view was neutrally interpreted. Evidently he was seeing through a dumb camera, a simple imager with little more sentience than a cockroach.

  Tower Bridge’s road span was lowered right now, and Morhaim was looking down at a ribbon of colourfully clad pedestrians and smart-trams, weaving their complex paths across the Thames. And among those crowds – gazing up, perhaps, at the big aerostats floating across London pumping out ozone, or down at what was left of the Thames, a sluggish, carefully managed trickle a quarter of its former size, or just staring at the people – was Cecilia Desargues, forty-three years old, entrepreneur, founder and chief executive of Glass Earth, Inc. – Cecilia Desargues, about to meet her death.

  Subject is stepping onto the Bridge roadway. From the south side.

  ‘Let’s go see her.’

  The pedestrians froze. His pov descended smoothly, like a swooping bird. The pov reached an adult’s eye level, and Morhaim was in the crowd.

  People, their lives freezeframed in the sunshine like photographed billows of smoke: a family of fat Nigerians, a huddle of Asiatic businesswomen – Korean or Thai probably – against a background of evidently British faces, many of them bearing that odd blend of Asian and Anglo-Saxon that characterized so many Londoners now. No Europeans, of course, since the French had shut down the Chunnel following the prion plagues, and no Americans, scared away by the activities of the Wessex Liberation Front. All of them wore their sunhats and Angel headsets – smart glasses – mostly draped with corporate logos: everyone working to hit their one-hundred-thousand-a-day ad quota as painlessly as possible.

  But this was sparse, compared to the crowds Morhaim remembered from his youth. And most of the tourists were old, with very few middle-aged – that generation would be watching from a Room somewhere, like himself – and, of course, hardly any kids. Nowadays, the dwindling numbers of young humans were too precious to be risked outdoors.

  But there was, he noticed, a clutch of teenagers, leaning against the rail, peering out at what was left of the river – oddly hard to make out, just skinny outlines around blurred patches, coated by softscreen tattoos.

  ‘Play.’

  The images came to life, and a bustle of voices washed over Morhaim.

  The kids came out a little clearer; the softscreen tattoos that coated their flesh, turning them all but transparent, had some trouble processing their images when the kids moved, and every so often a softscreen would turn black, an ugly patch against young skin, an arm or leg or shoulder.

  These were the Homeless.

  The kids, without speaking, lef
t the rail and walked away from the pov. They moved like ghosts, Morhaim thought.

  ‘Damnedest thing.’

  Yes.

  ‘There but for the grace of God –’

  – goes Bobby in a couple of years, the Angel completed for him. I understand.

  Morhaim’s pov moved forward, through dissolving crowds. And there, in the middle of the tableau, was Cecilia Desargues herself: a compact, stocky Frenchwoman, her face broad, cheerful and competent, her hair uncompromisingly grey. On the breast of her jumpsuit she wore a Day-Glo flashing 1/24 symbol, the logo of her company, Glass Earth, Inc. One twenty-fourth of a second: the maximum signal time lag between any two points on the globe in the future, beating the pants off the satellite operators. So promised Glass Earth, Inc., anyhow.

  Desargues was standing in the middle of the pavement, looking at the crowds. Evidently waiting.

  ‘She has an appointment.’

  Yes.

  ‘With her killer?’

  Not as it turned out. Do you want me to freezeframe?

  ‘Not this first time. Let’s just watch …’

  Rob Morhaim thinks about children a lot.

  His own child, Bobby, is very precious to him. Much more precious than his failed marriage, in fact.

  He has that in common with most people of his generation. Adult relationships can involve pairings of any of the eight main sexes, are only rarely formalized by marriage, and come and go like the seasons. But child-bearing – in an age where male fertility is only a few per cent of what it was a century ago – is the emotional cornerstone of many lives.

  Perhaps of your own.

  Even so, population numbers are collapsing, all over the planet … Your children are the last protected species.

  End of the world, say your doom-mongers. But they have been wrong before.

  You perceive threats which don’t exist. Perhaps you don’t perceive the threats that do exist.

  A man emerged from the crowd. He was maybe thirty, medium height. His head was hidden by his sun-hat, of course, but his high forehead indicated he might be balding. He wore a standard-issue business suit that wouldn’t have looked out of place, Morhaim thought, a century ago. But his sunhat was a little less sombre: something like a beanie cap, with six or seven little satellites orbiting his Earth-coloured cranium.

  Morhaim recognized the logo. ‘He’s from Holmium,’ he said.

  Yes. He’s called Asaph Seebeck. He’s more senior than he looks in the corporation, for his age. Smart cookie. Details are –

  ‘Later.’

  The young man started moving towards Desargues, across Morhaim’s field of view.

  Holmium was a comsat operator, Swiss-based, worth billions of Euros. It was named after the element, holmium, which had an atomic number of sixty-seven, the same as the number of microsatellites the corporation operated in geosynchronous orbit.

  If Desargues’ extravagant claims about her company’s revolutionary technology were true, Holmium was among those most likely to lose out. In a big way.

  Morhaim tried to take in the scene as a gestalt. The two principles were coming together across a stage crowded with extras playing tourist. Among the extras, over there walked a pretty girl of the kind Morhaim liked – slim, dark, pert breasts, long legs free of tattoos, walking away from his pov, looking up at one of the Bridge towers – and now, when Morhaim looked away from the girl, he saw that Seebeck and Desargues had made eye contact.

  They moved together more purposefully. Morhaim could see Desargues’ face; it was assembling into a smile.

  They’re going to speak. Enhancement is available to –

  ‘Not yet. Just run it.’

  They met face to face, smiled, exchanged three lines of dialogue. Morhaim strained to hear, through the background noise wash.

  ‘ … Machine Stops …’ said Seebeck.

  ‘Pardon? Well. I’m … see me, Mr Seebeck.’

  ‘ … sorry?’

  And then the shot came.

  Crime among you is, frankly, uncommon in this year 2045. The ubiquity of cameras, callosum dumps and other monitors has seen to that. And the rules of evidence have gradually evolved to admit more and more data gathered by non-human means. The court system – even police work – has been reduced almost to a rubber-stamping of the deductions of faceless expert systems.

  Rob Morhaim knows that his precious CID is a fraction of the manpower it was a few decades before. Most coppers now serve as muscle to implement the decisions of the courts, or the social services, or – most commonly – the recommendations of the smart systems. Yes: even now, on the brink of the Digital Millennium, there is still need for a poor bloody infantry to ‘meet the meat’, as the plods call it.

  In the meantime, we do the real work.

  Thus, you let us guard you, and watch you.

  You even trust us to judge you.

  Desargues stumbled forward, as if she had been punched in the back.

  She actually fell into Seebeck’s arms, Morhaim saw; but before she got there the Virtual imagery turned her into a stick figure, with a neat hole drilled in her torso.

  The Angel knew Morhaim didn’t need to be shown the details of Desargues’ injury. And so it filtered, replacing Desargues with a bloodless Pinocchio. He was silently grateful.

  Seebeck clumsily tried to catch her, but she slid down his body and landed at his feet with a wooden clatter. People started to react, turning to the noise of the shot – it came from the Bridge’s nearest tower – or to the fallen woman.

  ‘Freeze.’

  The Virtual turned into a tableau, the sound ceasing, devoid of human emotion – blessedly, thought Morhaim. He studied faces: bewilderment, curiosity, shock, distorted faces orbiting the dead woman like Seebeck’s circling satellites.

  The ballistic analysis was clear. There was a single shot. There is no doubt it killed her, and no doubt where it came from.

  ‘The Bridge tower.’

  From a disused winch room. The bullet was soft-nosed. It passed through her body and took out the front of her chest cavity before –

  ‘Enough. Leave it to the coroner.’

  He was studying Seebeck. He saw shock and fear written on the Holmium man’s face. And his suit was – marred somehow, the image blurred.

  Covered with pieces of Cecilia Desargues.

  In the winch room was found a high-velocity rifle, which had fired a single shot –

  ‘Which matched the bullet that killed Desargues.’

  Yes. And a card, bearing the phrase –

  An image, hovering in the Virtual, a grubby card:

  THE MACHINE STOPS

  ‘What was it Seebeck said at the start? Something about a Machine?’

  Yes. The winch room also contained a directional mike. The phrase was evidently a verbal trigger, a recognition signal …

  And so, Morhaim thought, it comes together. Nestling like the cogs of a machine.

  The Homeless are a new cult group among your young, a strange mixture of scientific and Zen influences. Popular, despite the protestations of the Reunified Christian Church.

  It is a cult of non-existence of the self, thought to be a consequence of the way you explain ourselves and your world to your young. Science and economics: science, which teaches that you come from nothing and return to nothing; economics, which teaches you that you are all mere units, interchangeable and discardable. Science is already a cult of non-existence, in a sense. Homelessness is simply a logical evolution of that position.

  They aren’t literally homeless, of course. The most extreme adherents coat their bodies in image tattoos, hiding themselves utterly …

  They are a puzzle. But they are your young, not ours.

  ‘So,’ Morhaim said to his Angel, ‘you think Holmium were responsible.’

  Cecilia Desargues’ company is small and entrepreneurial, still heavily dependent on her personality. Her elimination immediately wiped much value from the company’s stock. The involvem
ent of a Holmium employee in such an unambiguous role at this critical moment –

  ‘Yeah. It all points that way.’

  … But in slomo, the shock and horror spreading across Seebeck’s moonlike face seemed unmistakeable. The rest of the brief conversation, when he’d heard it all unscrambled, had been odd, too.

  The Machine Stops … Pardon? Well. I’m intrigued you asked to see me, Mr Seebeck … I’m sorry?

  After the code phrase, it looked for all the world like the interchange of two people who didn’t know why they were meeting. As if Seebeck thought Desargues had asked to meet him – for some odd reason in RL, in this public place – but Desargues thought the opposite, that Seebeck had asked to meet her …

  As if some third party had set them up, to come together. Was it possible Seebeck was some kind of patsy? – set up to repeat a phrase whose significance he didn’t understand?

  It was Morhaim’s job to approve what he’d seen, and the conclusions the Angels had drawn, and pass it up the line. And he ought to sign this off and move on.

  The evidence against Holmium was circumstantial. But what the smart systems had turned up here was surely enough for a court order to start digging into Holmium, and it was a good bet that before long more substantial evidence of a conspiracy to murder would come to light.

  And yet …

  And yet, he liked to think he had retained something of the instincts of the coppers of London past.

  Something didn’t smell right.

  ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that somebody’s lying here.’

  He told the Angel to put him through to Asaph Seebeck, who was being held at Westminster Police Station.

  When Morhaim came to haunt Seebeck, the cell’s softwalls carried only images from a movie – the centenary remake of Casablanca, with a coloured, hologram Bogart growling through his modernized lines to a sulky Pamela Anderson. Morhaim knew that the cell’s electronic confinement, hemmed around by software firewalls, would be far more enclosing, to a man like Seebeck, than the physical cage.