Superluminal

by Tony Daniel

  [Yes,] Andre thought. [Multiplicity in unity are fine concepts—but do any of us reflect the mind of God inside ourselves? Is there a mind of God to reflect? You know the tune,] he thought to his convert. [You’re the rhythm section, after all.]

  Andre’s convert portion could but agree. It was literally unthinkable for him not to—or for Andre’s personas ever to fundamentally disagree with one another. That would be like the awl turning against the scissors on a multitool knife.

  And therein was the crux of the problem. Andre had had spiritual crises before. He’d dropped out of teaching at the Seminary when he felt his work was consuming his spiritual life. He’d traveled far away, out to Triton, to recover. At the time, he’d been sure his doubts were the product of the academic hothouse environment of Seminary Barrel. He could solve his problems by doing the day-to-day, existential work of a local shaman-priest ministering to his local congregation.

  For a time, it had worked. He’d come to love Triton and his place on it. He’d even found his particular “teaching”—the individual expositional talent that each shaman-priest was supposed to develop in order to lead his congregation toward enlightenment. Andre’s teaching was the balancing of rocks into delicate sculptural towers. He’d even developed a following on the merci art channels for his creations—although, for Andre, his artworks had less than nothing to do with why he was engaging in the activity in the first place. But there was no denying that carefully placing one rock upon another to build a tower up to a seemingly impossible height (a task made easier by the fact that he could jump over twenty feet into the air from a standing stop here on Triton) was just plain fun to do, whatever spiritual message it might embody.

  But the war had challenged Andre’s beliefs anew. First, there was the dead certainty of its coming. Almost every shaman-priest in the Way knew it would happen—one didn’t need signs and portents (although there had been plenty of those for anyone who was sensitive)—you only had to follow the news. He’d taken a sabbatical from his parish. While he was in the Met, the war had come, and he’d made a harrowing escape back to Triton, bringing along his friends Ben Kaye and Molly Index.

  The suffering he’d seen since the onset of the fighting was enormous. Tens of thousands dead on Triton alone. The local hospitals overflowing with the wounded, who lay with twisted minds and grist-eaten bodies—suffering, with no cure in sight.

  His congregation had begged him to come back to them. They’d been making do without a shaman for the past three and a half e-years, saving Andre’s place for him. Since the onset of the war, they had steadily grown to double, then triple, their old size. What had been a small meeting had become a congregation of over seven hundred people. They needed a full-time shaman-priest. And, despite his doubts, Andre had decided that, whatever his personal turmoil, he could not turn them down in their time of need.

  Sixteen

  From

  Grist-based Weapons

  Federal Army Field Manual

  Compiled by Forward Development Lab, Triton

  Gerardo Funk, Commandant

  Section VI: Weapons-Grade Grist

  The intelligent soldier will consider the physics of the object or enemy he or she wishes to destroy. Is the target held together by ordinary means or does it use a macro version of the strong nuclear force, as does the Met cable structure and most DIED ships? Grist-mil weapons that come from Forward Development have a simple S,M,L coding on them standing for the words “small,” “medium,” and “large,” in Basis. S class is used against individual enemy soldiers and small fortifications. It is usually a single-method weapon. M class means a weapon that is more complex—one that employs multiple attack methods in a more “intelligent” fashion than the S class. L class is usually under the control of a secondary copy of a free-convert soldier who is incorporated within the weapon and expects to be destroyed with its use.

  Section VII: Conclusion

  Military grist is deadly material and should be handled with extreme care. Its effectiveness in modern warfare is proved. Individual soldiers should become familiar with each new grist-mil weapon as it becomes available. Forward Development is intensely involved in creating more powerful military grist. All Federal Army grist-mil is fully tested, but not all has been used under battlefield conditions. Field commanders should remain alert to areas of use not covered in the supplied tutorials and teaching modules. Remember, a half-sentient teaching program is no substitute for the common sense and good judgment of the fighting soldier.

  Seventeen

  Nirvana was burning with a green, silent flame, fueled by its own oxygen and organics. It seemed so close. You could actually reach out and touch it, at least in the virtuality. With the proper adjustments to your sensory feed, the fire wouldn’t even burn you.

  Leo Sherman withdrew from the merci news channel he had been tuned to and continued on his way to the troop barracks.

  At least I wasn’t called on to be part of the Nirvana attack force, Leo thought. That would have been an extremely nasty irony.

  Instead, he was headed out-system—just like his papers said. Those papers—like his pellicle, like his DNA—were all forged, of course. Leo had become the most complicated hack, both physically and virtually, that the Friends of Tod’s chief hacker, Alvin, had ever put together.

  A total stealth person—Leo Sherman—was hiding underneath the protective shell of Leo’s adopted persona. The persona’s name was Private Hershel G. Aschenbach. Leo’s DNA, even his behavioral patterns—the whole schlemiel—were stored in a capsule implanted slightly behind Leo’s left elbow. These characteristics were encoded on a grist-laden chip of quantum uncertainty—a chip whose every subatomic particle was precisely entangled on a quantum level with all the particles in “Private Aschenbach.”

  Anyone opening the capsule containing “Leo” and observing its contents—that is, letting those contents interact with the rest of the universe—would immediately reset Leo’s body and brain to its original state, wiping out “Private Aschenbach” like so much temporary random noise.

  Leo—the Leo who knew all of this information and was in ultimate control of Private Aschenbach’s behavior—would also be wiped out. He was a free convert, an algorithm—literally the ghost of his former self—wound into the newly blanked brain along with the “Private Aschenbach” persona. If and when he made it safely across the front line and into the outer system, the convert portion of himself could be downloaded and added to the memories of the newly reconstituted, real Leo.

  It was all rather mind-blowing, and Leo tried not to think too hard about it on a metaphysical level. What bothered him, though, was the way his body had all new behaviors, down to the smallest detail. He walked differently. His voice now had a mid-Vas drawl, as befitted someone with his alleged upbringing.

  Even my goddamn eyes blink at a different rate, Leo thought. And he had an ache in his knee that flared up whenever he was on his feet for too long. That was a result of an old sports injury which, of course, he had never actually suffered. Oh, the memory was there, and he could go into detail about it, if questioned (pelota, church league, kicked in the patella by a Methodist). The memory was there, but Aschenbach wasn’t. Aschenbach didn’t exist. The private wasn’t anything more than a behavioral shell. Leo’s convert was the only consciousness present in those parts.

  He knew that the Friends would most likely have figured out that an attack on Nirvana was coming. If the Friends knew, then Jill would know, and the partisans would make it out of Nirvana alive. Aubry—the young woman who had been his charge—would be as safe as possible with Jill.

  Safer running around with hunted rebel forces than she would be with me , Leo reflected. That truly put his own precarious position into perspective. He was an experiment that might unravel at any moment—and any moment was the wrong moment when you were couriering vital information to the enemy.

  When you were a goddamn dirty spy.

  No quarter would be given, a
nd none was expected. That’s why he had insisted on a backup plan: another capsule behind his right elbow—this one filled with the very nastiest military grist. It wouldn’t just dissolve his body to base elements—that was to be expected—it also would pack enough of a nuclear wallop to destroy everything within a kilometer radius—including, and especially, the contraband Leo was transporting in the cavity within his chest.

  Alvin told him that the cargo he carried within himself could not be detected by common means. It was disguised as his heart. His real heart had been replaced, and Leo’s blood system now ran on free-floating grist pumps that were disseminated throughout his bloodstream.

  I’m practically a high-tech vampire, Leo thought. I can’t even see myself in the mirror. Just some guy.

  To get to the platoon barracks, he had to pass through the scanning arch that guarded the entrance to the Department of Immunity Enforcement Division Armature of the Egolo Barrel. Alvin had proved correct; Leo had made it through numerous scans to get this far out the Mars-Earth Diaphany, but each time he underwent one, he held his breath—mentally held his breath, that is. Private Aschenbach registered no change in his body except for mild irritation at having to wait to get to his destination. Once again, Leo set off no alarms as he walked through, and he was not detained. He ducked into a side corridor and caught a public streamer that would take him the rest of his way into the DIED base.

  The streamer was packed with other soldiers, some new recruits who had not even been outfitted for Glory yet. Aschenbach was fully Glory receptive, of course. Franklin had seen to that when “reprogramming” Leo’s body. Leo, on the other hand, was immune to its effects. He could, however, see the pleasure it brought to the body. Once a day, Aschenbach got the minimal infusion from headquarters. It came as a specially coded pulse over the vinculum, the DIED army’s version of the merci. The specialized Glory grist that permeated Leo/ Aschenbach’s body heard the call and went to work. His skin became flushed and sensitive. He got an immediate erection. And the edges of the world grew sharper, as his visual acuteness was momentarily augmented. If the private had had anything on his mind, he would have been able to think many things at once.

  The Glory wasn’t just some cheap pleasure pulse. It was more—it was a two-way transmission. For the time that you were participating in it, when it was participating in you , you were…a LAP. You got to feel what it was like to be a fully functioning Large Array of Personalities. Alvin had tried to explain to Leo how this was accomplished—multiple time-sharing on the merci, overlay copies, multiple recursion of sensory signals. It was as if every signal coming into your body was momentarily boosted.

  It didn’t last. The idea was not to make each soldier into a LAP—that would have meant an army of officers and no followers. Unity, pleasure in service, the knowledge that you were part of something larger—that was the aim behind the Glory infusions. It meant that Director Amés liked you and approved of what you were doing. It meant that your place in society, in the New Hierarchy, was secure.

  It made Leo metaphorically sick at his stomach. But he had to endure all the slack-jawed wonder that it induced in the other soldiers in his platoon—including his new friend, Sergeant Dory Folsom.

  Leo entered the barracks and headed for his sea locker. He was on guard duty in an hour. The dread partisan force could be anywhere, after all. At the moment, the dread partisan force was getting its base of operations destroyed, Leo knew. But the legend of the partisans was growing almost in spite of anything the partisans actually did. Jill and her people had only staged a couple of raids, more for practice than for effect. But Leo also knew that Jill was indomitable and utterly focused. Very soon she would double in truth whatever made-up hype she, the mysterious rebel commander, was getting on the merci.

  Leo changed from his civvies into his uniform—black pants with red trim, red shirt with black epaulets and sleeve piping. He stepped into inner boots that were proof against all sorts of nasty stuff you could step in (and Dory had told him about how nasty and deadly it could be out there on the front). Then he put on overboots that glinted with the mica sparkle of cleaning and buffing grist. He ordered his tucked shirt to mesh with the inside of his pants and to pull down straight. All was perfectly creased and clean from a night of maintenance lying in his locker. Leo felt his chin. His regular clean-shaven face wouldn’t do for DIED. You needed to be stropped on a submicroscopic level to pass inspection. He and the rest of the platoon put themselves through a rugged pellicle-directed facial every couple of days. Dory said that would all change once they got into action. In port, you tried to maintain appearance, however.

  But Leo’s fingers, dialed up in sensitivity to probe his features with the finest of an electron microscope, discovered only smoothness. He was fine until his next facial. He went to the platoon’s common weapons locker and identified himself to Corporal Merrymaker, the platoon’s quartermaster.

  “Aschenbach reporting for outfitting,” he said. “How’s the team doing, Merrymaker? Saeed gotten over that pulled triceps yet?”

  Merrymaker was a devotee of the sport of pelota. He followed the Nebs, a Dedo team from a Sino-Arabian district called Kardmenihar. Leo had always liked sports, and was a bit of a pelota buff himself, though he’d never seriously played the game. Leo was five-foot-five. The average professional pelota player was nearly seven feet tall, and most of it torso. The court consisted of two rotating, hexagonal goal “gaps,” a field cage suspended in a weightless environment, a hexagonal ball, and powerful aircannons for everyone.

  “Looks like Saeed’s out of it for the season,” Merrymaker replied ruefully. Saeed was the Nebs’ first-string goalkeeper.

  “Then maybe my Jets will finally take the division.”

  Merrymaker shook his head. “Nebs’ve still got a strong midfield. The Jets don’t have the front line for air command, either. Not a chance.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Leo said. “Twenty greenleaves says the Jets beat the Nebs by five points for division.”

  “Well, they don’t play for an e-month,” Merrymaker replied. “We’ll be in action before then. Might not find out until next R & R.”

  Might not find out forever, Leo thought. “I’ve got faith in my team,” he said. “Twenty greenleaves.”

  “Twenty greenleaves it is,” Merrymaker replied, and shook Leo’s hand. “You pulled guard this shift?”

  “Yep.”

  Merrymaker disappeared back into the weapons locker and returned with a guard kit. He watched as Leo suited up.

  A brace of arm rockets on each forearm. Rotating projectile weaponry, miniature railguns, interlaced with capsule-sized grist grenades about the wrist. For the outside of both hands, antimatter rifles that stiffened the entire arm into a stock for better aiming when activated. E-M micro-macro goggles with a grist patch directly to the sight centers in the rear brain. Isotropic-coated military grist supplemental body armor for the pellicle. Attitude and impulse rocketry on the legs, and a resupply and gyroscope pack on the back.

  I feel like a miniature attack ship, Leo thought when he’d gotten all the gear into place.

  Leo formally stated that he was ready for action. “Aschenbach, full guard service issue, check.”

  “Aschenbach, issued and rechecked,” Merrymaker replied.

  “Go Jets.”

  “Fuck that shit. Go Nebs.”

  Leo made his way to the guard post. This involved traversing several acceleration locks to get to the bearings of the armature where they rolled around the Met cable proper. The last egress was also a vacuum lock, and then Leo was in space. He’d never been fully space-adapted before (that was another Alvin addition to his bodily structure), and he enjoyed the freedom of it. He reached his station via an exposed gangplank that stretched out a hundred feet from the armature. The guard station was a little cupola on the end of the gangplank whose window faced the armature where it joined with the Met cable. It was very much like a large version of an old dentist
’s mirror. Leo’s duty was to keep watch over this crucial connection for anything abnormal or suspicious. Even if he hadn’t known the partisans were nowhere nearby, he would have been aware that the chances for anything bad happening were minuscule. It was make-work for the troops to keep them busy in port while the transport ships resupplied. Everybody knew it.

  Still, Sergeant Folsom didn’t let you get away with murder out here. She’d check up on you now and again to make sure you weren’t tuned in to some merci channel or catching extra shut-eye. She showed up about two hours into Leo’s shift, and he was glad for the distraction. Watching the huge bearings of the armature turn around and around the Met cable could be mind-numbing after a while.

  “Password,” Leo asked as she clambered to the end of the gangplank. They were communicating over the vinculum, of course.

  “El camino, el camino,” Folsom replied. Leo’s goggles told him that this was the correct phrase for the night.

  “Good to see you, Sarge.”

  “Yeah, you too. Report.”

  “All’s well, Sergeant.”

  “Very good.” Despite the time he’d spent with her off duty, Leo still couldn’t think of her as “Dory.” She was “Sarge” or “Sergeant Folsom.” Of course, she’d have kicked his ass if he tried to call her by her first name anyway. Or tried. It might be an interesting fight, Leo thought. He knew a thing or two himself from his years in the seedy zones and backwaters of the Met. He might be disguised as Hershel Aschenbach, but he was also Leo Y. Sherman, author of The Vas After Sunset.

  “Tuned in to the news lately?” he asked.

  Folsom grimaced. “Yeah. We took out that nest of weirdos,” she said. “Poor weirdos didn’t put up much of a fight. It was like shooting run toys.”

  “I guess they don’t believe in violence,” Leo replied. He didn’t want to give away his close acquaintance with the Friends of Tod, but this was pretty much common knowledge.