The Bohr Maker

by Linda Nagata

  The black-trunked, silver-leaved trees were one of only two plant species developed for the airless forest. They grew in graceful arcs from the vertical axis of the tether, turning away from the spin’s outward pull. Between them grew brittle shrubs—a shadowy habitat for a population of small, furtive creatures resembling lizards. Nikko had no idea what the lizards were afraid of, as no predators had ever been introduced to the forest. Most likely their behavior was just a bit of historical trash preserved by chance long past its age of usefulness.

  He’d climbed three kilometers up the tether—a fraction of its length, but high enough that he could look back down from his perch on the tree branch to the inhabited portion of the House below.

  The House was an organic, living habitat, controlled by a network of nearly ten thousand neural centers. Oceans formed the outer walls of the inhabited section: great cells of water that mimicked aquatic environments of Earth. Sunlight was piped through the insulating oceans to hallways and corridors and beyond, to the great rainforest that filled the city’s core.

  The tether was an extension of the living habitat, binding it to the counterbalancing asteroid affectionately known as the “mother rock,” as it had contributed over half its original mass to the construction of Summer House. Now the asteroid functioned as a reservoir of organic materials. Glazed with cometary ice and then coated with a stabilizing paint to minimize sublimation, it glistened like a small white star at the far end of the tether.

  Time passed and Nikko’s mind began to calm. Gradually, his whirling memories settled out in orderly sequence, and he found himself reliving the Earth-side experiences of his abducted ghost:

  He recalled first the contempt he’d felt as he stared at Jensen Van Ness. Only a few hours ago the man had been a senior researcher in the Commonwealth police, a molecular designer second only to Fox in renown.

  Now Van Ness was a fugitive. He huddled cross-legged on the filthy carpet of a ramshackle hotel room in the Spill, his hollow gaze focused inward, his lips trembling, his shoulders hunched in acute dejection. He seemed oblivious to the fleas that crawled from the carpet into his clothing. But Nikko could feel them.

  Nikko was only a ghost, existing within Van Ness’s atrium. But the synthesized environment that contained him provided a high level of verisimilitude, down to the simulated bites of simulated fleas on the soft, human-ordinary skin of his ankles—for as always, Nikko had come to Van Ness disguised within his brother Sandor’s physical appearance.

  He knew his role. “It’ll be all right,” he lied, trying to ignore the horrible itching around his ankles, and the steaming heat that drove perspiration from every pore. “We’ll get out of this.”

  But the voracious fleas worked in concert with the heat to wear at his ever-limited patience. “So pull yourself together before you kill us both!”

  Van Ness didn’t respond. The treacherous bastard. He’d tried to steal the Bohr Maker on his own, for himself, without Nikko’s knowledge. He’d taken the Maker and fled his home. But doubt and fear had caught him in the Spill.

  Suddenly Van Ness gasped, as if trying to recapture a breath that had vanished from his lungs. His chin trembled, his head came up. His anxious gaze fixed on Nikko.

  His appearance was that of a twenty-year-old, though Nikko knew he was well over a hundred. He had luxurious black hair—too well behaved to be natural—and a red kanji tattooed on his cheek, proclaiming him a life member of some snooty executive club. Hair and tattoo: they were the only two features Nikko really noticed. For the rest of him, Van Ness fell into the overflowing mental file of nondescript attractive.

  “Why?” he pleaded. “Why did you do this to me?”

  Nikko could frame no quick, diplomatic reply. To Van Ness, he was an obscure but talented young historian out of RedCam, a corporate group both geographically and politically far from Summer House. He’d come to Van Ness with a flattering proposal for a documentary on the unsung heroes of the police research division. But in truth he’d come only because Van Ness had access to the Bohr Maker—and a reputation that whispered of his vulnerabilities.

  For some fifty years it had been Van Ness’s task to constantly upgrade police defensive Makers so that they remained superior to any new corporate introductions. He’d been secure in his position—perhaps a little bored—so that when this fresh young historian from RedCam approached him, he’d been happy to talk. It hadn’t been long before the conversation rolled around to Leander Bohr.

  Van Ness claimed he’d known Bohr. He bragged about how he’d collected the charred tissue of Leander’s brain and, from it, decoded the basic structure of Bohr’s Maker.

  Adaptive artificial intelligence was illegal in the Commonwealth. Dull Intelligences were common, but machine intelligence that could match the diversity of human thought was banned. The Bohr Maker was the most infamous example.

  According to Van Ness, being infected by the molecular-scale machine was like being host to an intelligent force without a personality. Bohr had written into it his own talents as a molecular engineer, backed up by an immense computing capacity. When first introduced to a host, it would proceed through an infantile learning period during which it would automatically work to improve and enhance its environment. Eventually, it would subsume itself to the will and persona of its host—a host now equipped with the skills of the greatest of molecular engineers, and the physical apparatus to practice those skills within the host’s own body.

  Nikko wanted the Bohr Maker. Its talents had helped Bohr evade a police manhunt for five years. It could help Nikko do the same. It could heal him, and change him just enough that police Makers would no longer recognize him. Then he could lose himself in the vast, organic body of Summer House, while he worked secretly toward the collapse of the Commonwealth.

  So he’d disguised himself behind his brother’s face and won the affections of Van Ness. This human-ordinary ghost had visited Van Ness many times at his residence in Southwest Australia, and eventually Van Ness had made the suggestion: I could open the Bohr file. And then someone clever, someone like you, could easily smuggle the Maker’s pattern off-world.

  But Van Ness was an old man carrying a century’s accumulation of ego. He’d decided he could handle the theft alone.

  Nikko found himself shouting in a sudden seizure of frustration: “Why’d you synthesize it?” He didn’t worry about being overheard. He was only a ghost, and no one else could see or hear him. “You were supposed to bring out the Maker’s pattern, not the Maker itself!” It would have been so easy for Nikko to smuggle electronic code past police Gates. And of course he would have brought a ghost of Van Ness out at the same time. He’d already grown a second body for him, under an alias in the mausoleum at RedCam. Van Ness had even visited it briefly, less than a week ago when he’d still been only toying with the idea of betraying the police.

  But Van Ness hadn’t stolen the pattern. He’d synthesized a hard copy of the Maker’s components and stolen that, because he didn’t trust Nikko through the resurrection.

  The spineless bastard. He’d been very careful. He’d developed a tiny packet to contain the Maker. The packet had separate chambers, one for the Maker’s computational core, two to store its initial manipulator arms. The chambers were divided by soluble membranes. When exposed to an aqueous medium they would dissolve, allowing the components to unite and the Maker to become active. The packet was ensconced in the hollowed-out core of a defensive needle. As Van Ness had explained the system to Nikko, he’d seemed especially pleased with that aspect of the design. The needle gun he carried hidden in his chest was registered with the police, so its presence wouldn’t arouse suspicion. Like the chambered storage packet it contained, the needle would dissolve upon contact with flesh, or another aqueous medium, releasing its toxins. But so long as the needle remained in its launch cradle, invisible under his skin, it would be dry and safe. Van Ness had even arranged the thread of a neural connection between the Maker’s computational cor
e and the Dull Intelligence that supervised the use of the needle gun. He could communicate with the Dull Intelligence, and so, indirectly, he could also communicate with the Maker’s core.

  It was a good system. But Van Ness had lost his nerve.

  “You tricked me into this!” he shouted at Nikko. “It’s your fault. You don’t love me. You’re nothing but a whore. And you poisoned me with a behavioral virus, didn’t you? I would never have put myself in this position, never, never, never. Not for you. Not for anyone. If you’d just left me alone. You’ve ruined me! My life, my career. The police will execute me! And you’re not even here, just a ghost. But I’ll see to it the police find you too. . . .”

  Play it calm, Nikko thought. It had been a mistake to let his temper show. It was the heat, he told himself. The heat and the horrible fleas. Damn, but he hadn’t expected Van Ness to guess about the virus! He’d used the virus to give Van Ness a little courage, that’s all. To instill him with some much-needed backbone.

  “The police haven’t even found you yet,” Nikko said gently. He crouched beside Van Ness and hugged him, trying not to shudder at the hot, wet touch of the man’s sweat-soaked clothes. Van Ness smelled horrible. That and the stink of piss from the carpet made Nikko want to gag. Too bad Van Ness’s atrium delivered so well on reality.

  “Love and Nature,” Nikko sighed. “What an awful hot stinking place this is.” He stroked Van Ness’s sweat-slick cheek. “You know, we can still get the Maker out. You just have to trust me.”

  Van Ness went preternaturally still. His gaze fixed on the door. “What’s that noise?”

  Nikko listened, but all he heard was drunken laughter from an adjacent room. “What?”

  “Shh!”

  Then he caught it: voices whispering outside in the local language. “Hotel guests,” he said with a shrug. “Beggars. Criminals. Who else would stay here?”

  “No, it’s a police dog! Can’t you hear it sniffing?”

  Nikko listened again. He could hear odd sounds. But Van Ness’s senses were clouded with fear and Nikko didn’t trust them. “It’s probably nothing,” he said. And if it were a dog, well, the game was up, that’s all.

  No dog materialized. “We can still get the Maker out,” Nikko repeated.

  This time Van Ness looked at him. His eyes were wild and bloodshot, his face bleached and furrowed with worry. He pushed Nikko away and stumbled to his feet. “I don’t care about the Maker. I just want to get out of this alive. I want to get back to my home, back to my job, back to the life I had before I met you. And the police will take me back too, when I show them the virus you planted in me. The police are supposed to protect me from outside attack! It’s their fault I’m here. It’s not my fault. They have to pardon me.”

  Nikko stood up to face him, his gaze deliberately hard. Van Ness had to be brought back into line. “They won’t pardon you. They’ll execute you, and you know it. The law is very strict on these matters. You should have resisted the virus, or gone for help. Besides, you head the division responsible for developing defensive molecular security. It was your lapse that exposed you.”

  Van Ness’s hands began to shake. He cursed and spun on his foot, beginning to pace frenetically from one end of the room to the other, three steps each way, back and forth, back and forth. “If you’re that good at molecular design,” he shouted. “Then you don’t need the Maker!”

  But Nikko wasn’t that good at molecular design. The behavioral virus had come from Fox’s collection . . . and Fox would never consider designing anything as potent as Bohr’s Maker.

  “I need it,” Nikko said calmly. “Besides, we always knew you’d probably have to sacrifice this physical copy.” He reached out to touch Van Ness’s hand, but Van Ness pulled away. Nikko let his own hand fall back to his side. “You’ve already been to visit your other self on RedCam. You know everything’s ready. So trust me. Let me take your ghost out.”

  “Oh no!” Van Ness squawked, his finger jabbing the air like a knife. “Don’t try to lead me on. I’m not stupid. I know I’m trapped here. The police will have my pattern in the data Gates by now. My ghost will never get through.”

  “Your ghost doesn’t have to go through the data Gates,” Nikko said. “You’ve established a communications link with the Maker’s computational core. So download your ghost into the Maker. Store it there. Let me carry your ghost out, along with the Maker.”

  Van Ness stopped pacing. He shook his head in wide arcs like a wounded beast seeking a route of escape. His knees were actually shaking now. “Trust Bohr’s Maker?” he croaked. “Put my existence in its—”

  “Why’d you synthesize it if you don’t want to use it?” Nikko hissed.

  Van Ness had intended to inoculate himself with the Maker—that’s what he’d told Nikko—just as Leander Bohr had done long ago with the Maker’s original incarnation. But Van Ness was not Leander Bohr. He was afraid of the Maker—afraid it would get away from him, or worse, change him so much that he would no longer recognize himself.

  “It doesn’t know anything,” Van Ness mumbled, his voice so soft and obscure Nikko suspected he spoke to himself. “It’s a virgin copy. It was designed to function in a human brain; use its host’s memories as a database. But I haven’t taught it anything; it wouldn’t know what to do with me.”

  “Then teach it,” Nikko said. “Let it feed on the open data net. Use it. It’s your only chance.”

  “I will use it,” Van Ness said. “But under controlled conditions. I can’t trust it with my life.”

  Nikko groaned. “You have to trust it. You have to download your ghost into it. You know it’ll work. You know the Maker will preserve you. You’ll be as safe as the Maker itself, and I can’t make you safer than that.”

  Someone shouted on the street outside. Van Ness jumped as if he’d been touched with an electric prod. “I won’t do it!” he screamed. “I see what you’re trying to do and you won’t get rid of me that easily.”

  Nikko drew three deep breaths to bleed his temper. He had one offer left to play. Let Van Ness see the advantage of it! “I’m coming through this city tomorrow,” he said. “In first person.”

  Van Ness’s eyes widened. “You’ll actually be here?”

  Nikko nodded somberly. This was a lie, of course. He wouldn’t be here. He could never come Earth-side. His body would fail in such a deep gravity well. But Van Ness knew him under Sandor’s human-ordinary face and Sandor was Earth-side.

  Nature save me! He hated to involve his brother, but he could see no other way. So he carried on with the lie. “I’ve been working in the islands for almost three months now. But I’ve just had myself summoned to Castle. I’ll be coming through the city this morning. You can walk right up to me and lay the Maker—and your ghost—in my hands.”

  “What alias are you using?”

  “Sandor Jiang-Tibayan.” He winced. He’d just condemned his brother, if the police came in on this too soon. But he needed the Maker. He needed it. Sandy would understand.

  Van Ness looked glassy-eyed for nearly a minute as he used the atrium to access the net and confirm Sandor’s identity. “You’re from the House,” he muttered at one point. “Not RedCam, at all. But the House.” He blinked nervously, as he began to understand the breadth of Nikko’s deception. Then, “Liar!” he screamed. “You’re not coming through today. It’s tomorrow. Tomorrow! I can’t last that long. The dogs will find me. You requested a day’s delay! You did. You want the dogs to find me!”

  Nikko shook his head in confusion. He’d had Sandor transferred to Castle. The orders had been easy enough to fake. He ran a check out of his own data field, only to confirm Van Ness’s findings. Sandor had requested a delay in transfer. Damn! Everything had gone wrong on this venture! Just everything! Maybe it was time to pull out and start covering his trail.

  “You thought you could get me,” Van Ness croaked. “You thought you could hang this crime on me. No. There, I’ve done it. I’ve fed your identity to t
he Maker. Name and face. Ha ha. You’re the one it’ll finger, not me. And I’ve entered your name and your face in my atrium notebook. The police will find that too.”

  But it wasn’t Nikko’s name and face that Van Ness could identify. It was Sandor’s.

  Nikko felt the skin at the back of his neck pull tight. Van Ness was crazy, completely over the wall. Nikko knew it; knew it by the instinctive loathing he felt for the man, though he’d never encountered madness before. Even so, Van Ness could make good on his threats, would, if he had the chance.

  Nikko had to fight back. He began searching the Spill’s illicit directories, accessing information via the data field he occupied. He was only a ghost, enthralled to Van Ness’s atrium. The atrium would simulate a physical attack on Van Ness. But he didn’t think it would allow him to kill his host. And even if the simulation did go that far, by destroying Van Ness he would destroy himself, and have no way to recover the body, or the atrium notebook, or the Maker. No way to recover the secret of Sandor’s identity, now that the Maker knew him, and the atrium notebook too.

  But in the Spill help could be hired. He began making phone calls, only to be interrupted by a knock on the door. Van Ness heard it and closed his eyes; then doubled over and held his stomach. “Answer it,” Nikko said. Van Ness whimpered, shaking his head no. The knock sounded again, louder this time. A man’s voice called out in the local tongue. “Stop acting like a fugitive and answer it,” Nikko commanded.

  Like a sleepwalker, Van Ness moved to the door. He opened it a crack. As if that could keep the dogs out, Nikko thought. Peering over Van Ness’s shoulder, he saw a dark-skinned, scrawny man in the street outside. “I get cure, I get cure,” the man repeated over and over again, kneeling down on the floor and opening a briefcase to prove to Van Ness it was so. Nikko strained to see the case, but Van Ness wouldn’t look at it, so he could get only a peripheral view. And the light was bad.