The Bohr Maker

by Linda Nagata

  “Corporate membership in Summer House is notoriously difficult for outsiders to obtain,” she said. “Yet many of our officers who have served here have been offered that privilege at the end of their tour of duty.” She let him think about that for a moment, while she watched the anxiety grow in his eyes. “Such a situation naturally leads us to wonder what favors our officers might be doing for the Board of Directors here, to earn the privilege of corporate membership.”

  His cheeks seemed to go hollow. “The ranks of the Commonwealth Police are full of many fine individuals. Just because the House recognizes that, it doesn’t imply a crime.”

  “Have you been offered a corporate membership?”

  Sweat actually appeared on his brow. “I have been,” he said stiffly. “I haven’t decided whether to accept it.”

  Hadn’t decided? Right. It amazed her that such a transparent man had risen so far in the ranks of the police. But if his loyalties had already been taken over by the House, she would need to find another mule for her investigation.

  “There are some things I’d like to look into here,” she told him. “But I know you’re much too busy to assist me. I’ll summon one of your officers instead.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He seemed more nervous than ever.

  She turned her attention away from him, to scan the personnel roster, checking the political backgrounds of the on-site officers. She moved from one entry to the next in growing dismay. Every one of them harbored radical sympathies! Apparently the House had been exerting considerable influence over posting procedures.

  She made no effort to hide her anger from the police captain. But apparently he didn’t trust his comrades in her presence, because he stepped forward with a political solution.

  “Might I suggest instead . . . well, it sounds like an insult, but you could access the House plexus in complete privacy if you rode one of the animals.” Kirstin must have looked puzzled, because the captain immediately added an explanation. “Monkeys and birds and such,” he said. “The House has doctored a few of ‘em with slave atriums. You can ride inside their heads and send ‘em where you want to go. And of course you’ll have full access to the plexus.”

  “I’m familiar with slave atriums,” Kirstin said. “They’ve been used by corporate pirates for decades in the rape of Mother Earth.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But I suppose the House uses them only for research.”

  “We’re far from the Mother here, ma’am.”

  Kirstin raised an annoyed eyebrow. Yet the proposal intrigued her; it would allow her to examine the House plexus without interference. And despite the captain’s fears, she had no interest just now in investigating the disloyalties of her forces on Summer House.

  “We’ve all kinds of animals,” the police captain said, sensing her interest. “But the baboons are best. Big and smart. Let me roll a catalog for you.”

  Data fed into Kirstin’s mind. It felt as if she were remembering in a linear way the highlights of a long list of animal hosts. “What’s that?” she asked suddenly, and the roll paused. “Back search for Jiang-Tibayan,” she said, and found herself considering a baboon by the name of Sax.

  “Oh,” the officer said, as if Kirstin had committed a social blunder. “Some of the monkeys are, well . . . kind of like pets, I guess. See, it says in the listing, that one belongs to Sandor Jiang-Tibayan.”

  “Not anymore,” she pointed out coldly. “I’ll have that one.”

  “Ma’am—”

  She didn’t stay to hear the captain’s objections. The routine was easy enough to adopt. She issued a code for the monkey’s address, and downloaded.

  Sax woke up with a start. He’d been sleeping with his head on a female’s rump, but when Kirstin entered his atrium, he stood up abruptly, stretching like a dog and sniffing expectantly at the forest air. Awaiting an old master? Kirstin wondered.

  The baboon pair was at rest on what might have been a horizontal section of heartwood, part of the supporting “bones” of Summer House. The humus-covered surface was heavily forested and oppressively hot under a shimmering blue swath of artificial sky that hung not a hundred meters overhead. Sax sat back down on his haunches and started grooming the female.

  Kirstin took a few minutes to accustom herself to her new sensory environment. She enjoyed sight of a human quality while scenting with a baboon’s skill—a fascinating change. The captivating odor of the female mixed with intoxicating vapors from overripe fruit, and a heavy, pervasive sweetness so intense that it must be issuing from some tree in full flower. Other scents she couldn’t even guess at, because though the baboon’s perceptions belonged to her, its knowledge did not. Not yet. She sought an atrium notebook, wondering if it might house a dictionary that she could subsume.

  The atrium notebook.

  Sandor’s atrium notebook. The boy had been guileless by all reports, yet devoted to Nikko. What personal information had he seen fit to record?

  She summoned the index and began to look through the listings. She found the dictionary. And a file on the behavior of the baboons (they were an artificial descendant of an African species of forest baboon). There was an extensive collection of private material: reminiscences, poems, descriptive writings on the forest, half-formed ideas for research, molecular histories, a calendar. And several short files with peculiar names: Bird Park, Rat Heaven, Budding Bears, Eve’s Wall. . . . And then: Nikko’s Score.

  Kirstin opened this last file. It was another list of similar nonsense: Lizard Fruit, Bat Berries, Fish Stones. . . . Each entry was accompanied by a brief description, as Solar Flies: observed hatch out from grapelike fruit cluster on seed tree in outer forest, prox. 400m S. tether center-point, 60m W. Silver wings unfurl like butterfly, but crawl, don’t fly. Designer: C. Furui. Background check fails! Christy never got approval on solar flies! No genesis. Nikko, you liar.

  But the other entries had apparently been corroborated. Animals sprouting from plants, or hatching from rocks, or emerging from heartwood. Biogenesis of adult organisms.

  Nikko and Sandor seemed to have enjoyed a running competition to see who could locate the most sites of active genesis. Why not simply consult corporate records? Kirstin wondered. She queried Summer House. But no matter how she phrased her question, the House denied her any information on biogenesis. Corporate privilege, she was told. The House was not at all impressed by her status as an investigating police officer. All queries into this subject must first be authorized by corporate officials, or information will be denied.

  Corporate privilege. Limit the available information, and locating sites of biogenesis became a kind of Easter egg hunt. She reviewed the list again. Eve’s Wall sounded provocative: Evita Rodrigues doubled herself here! Sax scented her the day before she emerged. This has to be worth two points. More, if you’re a cop. But an entry under a later date dampened Kirstin’s interest: Board of Directors furious; site dormant.

  Amongst the other entries, Bird Park was closest. Chandelier tree, protected from predation. Adults of various avian species observed emerging from genesis pods. Nearly inaccessible; birds safe from predators while plumage dries. Designer: P. Cartmin.

  Kirstin decided to have a look at it. She was wondering how to steer Sax in the proper direction when the animal stood up again and started walking slowly down the branch.

  Kirstin had never utilized a slave atrium before. Never had she encountered such an intimate form of transportation. She experienced the play of the baboon’s strong, lean muscles as it walked on all fours down the forest highway. The soft, cool feel of the humus under powerful hands. The rough, gnarly texture of bark against furred skin as Sax clambered over a tree root. The grunt of the female as she finally got up and began to follow. Fascinating.

  Sax jumped suddenly, taking Kirstin by surprise. He leapt off the heartwood and caught a large branch heavy with fruit. The branch grew from a tree rooted in a meadow some fifty feet below. Sax plucked one of the fruits and took
a bite out of it while the branch bobbed and swayed under his weight. Kirstin recognized the taste and texture of mango.

  She felt herself being drawn in by the charm of this place. Forcefully, she reminded herself that this forest was not the Mother. It was an artificial construct, full of artificial life, designed by Fox Jiang-Tibayan who thought he could improve upon the Goddess.

  She slipped into command mode and tried to forcefully guide the monkey’s limbs toward Bird Park. The method worked for about three seconds. She got Sax to drop the mango seed. He looked up, and reached out with a monkey paw for an overhead branch. But she overestimated his reach and the poor animal’s hand closed on nothing. Sax fell forward, tumbling out of the tree. Kirstin fled command mode, returning control of the body to the monkey. Sax recovered instantly, catching a lower branch in his paws, then clambering back up to the female who was screeching at him from the heartwood.

  Kirstin sighed internally. Obviously, the monkey should guide itself. But how to get around? She examined the system. Between passive observer and active command modes there lay an intermediate level of communication with the monkey. This would allow all specific movements to come under the baboon’s control, but the rider could influence the monkey to move in a desired direction, or even to proceed to a preprogrammed destination. How thoroughly had Sandor trained this monkey?

  Bird Park, Kirstin urged experimentally. And to her surprise, Sax began to move. Bird Park, she thought again, more passionately this time, and Sax began to scamper along the heartwood with the happy abandon of a child at play. Bird Park! The female pursued, slapping at his rump whenever he allowed her to catch up.

  Along the heartwood they ran, for nearly a quarter mile before it finally branched. Sax took the smaller fork, followed it for only a few hundred yards until they’d cleared the patch of sky just overhead, then he started to climb. Once Kirstin ordered him to stop, so she could gaze at the glowing blue oval, one of hundreds of little bits of sky that brought light to all levels of the vertical forest. This close, Kirstin could see the faint shapes of aquatic creatures moving inside the light. Curious, she consulted the House. Yes, the skies were also aquatic habitats, populated with organisms adapted to the bright, warm waters of tropical seas. Artificial constructions in an artificial world.

  Bird Park! she commanded Sax, and the monkey sprang upward.

  They climbed beyond the sky. A meadow grew on its upper surface, cut through by a tiny stream that fell in a misty spray of water to a clear pool hollowed out of a branch of heartwood. There was no visible outlet from the pool, so Kirstin surmised that the water drained into the heartwood’s transit system.

  They went on.

  The forest changed gradually as they climbed, becoming wetter until Sax began to slip on the mosses that clothed the branches of the trees. A breeze started to blow, and tendrils of mist floated past. The breeze freshened, setting the branches swaying slowly up and down.

  What happened when a tree fell? Kirstin wondered. She’d seen the trunks of small trees that had fallen, clothed in moss and fungi and epiphytic plants, wedged against the roots or branches of other trees. But what happened when a forest giant, rooted in the heartwood, toppled? Or was the House too young to have ever experienced that particular disaster?

  The girth of the branches Sax chose to climb had thinned. They’d gone up as high as they could on a tree whose canopy blazed in orange flowers. Sax looked down. Kirstin saw a thin weave of branches below him, and then a route of heartwood, at least three hundred feet below. She quailed. Sax leapt.

  Kirstin wanted to close her eyes and scream, but of course neither response was possible. The monkey remained undisturbed. It caught a flexible green branch no thicker than Kirstin’s finger, and hung on to it, bobbing up and down like a child at the end of a bell rope. His presence startled a flock of large fruit bats that had been roosting on the pendulous branches. They flapped away with cumbersome strokes, disappearing briefly behind a thin veil of leaves before they emerged into the open air, wheeling in great circles as if they couldn’t decide where to go. Beyond them Kirstin could see the window-perforated wall of the apartment complex.

  Sax climbed the pendulous branch. It was part of a tree that grew upside down, hanging like an elegant chandelier on a trunk barbed with thorns and glinting with a moist gel. The trunk was suspended from heartwood; it looked to be at least two hundred meters long. The branches were all pendulous, whip-thin green cords like the one Sax climbed. They were sparsely leafed but heavily in fruit with green, gourdlike pods that ranged from the size of a fist to the size of a coconut. A few of the pods had turned red. Sax climbed until he drew even with a large green pod. Then he leapt through space once again, grabbed a branch, and sat down upon the pod like a child seated on a swing. He didn’t seem inclined to journey further.

  Bird Park? Kirstin wondered, but of course Sax didn’t respond.

  If this was Bird Park, it certainly didn’t deserve its name. There were almost no birds around. Just a pair of little finches in dull green plumage squabbling over a perch on a tiny red pod. Kirstin watched them, and after a moment she noticed that the red pod had a crack in it. Another pod, farther down on the same branch, had already split open, its shell peeling back like the petals of a flower. A bird hung inside it. A little green bird. It was suspended by its feet, twitching occasionally, its wings making frantic flapping motions every few seconds. Its plumage looked unkempt, somewhat wet and sticky. At first Kirstin thought it had been trapped by the flower/pod, which must be of a carnivorous nature, and if she sat here the whole slow afternoon, she would see the petals close over the sorry victim. But no. As she watched, the bird’s movements became more vigorous. Soon it was swaying back and forth as if it hung from a trapeze, and finally it dropped free, flapped its wings, and shot into the forest, the other small birds in noisy pursuit.

  So this was a biogenesis tree. Kirstin watched the red pod with the crack in it for over an hour. When the flower finally opened, it revealed a tiny brown hummingbird. The creature revved its wings for a few minutes, then flew off into the forest.

  She watched it go, her mind troubled by the implications. Automated biogenesis. An artificial world that could bring forth its own life, almost instantly, apparently without immediate supervision. Dangerous. But not illegal, so long as the biological machinery wasn’t developing the design. That would be a violation of Commonwealth covenants. Non-human intelligences could not be self-aware or act without strict direction. This was probably just a manufacturing process, under strict control. And yet, and yet. . . .

  She finally pinpointed the source of her growing alarm. This talent had no purpose. Not here on Summer House anyway, where the forest community was reportedly self-sustaining or

  so the line of propaganda went. Then where?

  The answer came to her immediately: anywhere; everywhere.

  If the corporation wanted to duplicate the House, what would be the best way to go about it? Follow the same process of trial and error, setback and failure that had led to the original? Or create a program employing all that had been learned in the design of Summer House? Could all of that be coiled into one package? An egg that could hatch a world? Delivered by automated machinery.

  Another thought swiftly followed; an even darker thought. In all that great, winding, cross-referenced chain of data, might the pattern and persona of one Nikko Jiang-Tibayan be hidden?

  The possibility left her oddly calm. She could feel the hand of the Mother guiding her. Caution, the Goddess seemed to whisper. Move slowly. Indeed. She must not alert Fox to her suspicions. He must have no chance to erase evidence before she could investigate. But how to conduct an investigation? The staff on Summer House could not be trusted. No, a new staff must be brought in.

  She would route a police ship to Summer House, one with a proven commander. It might be several weeks before the new staff could reach the city, but the evidence would wait. Given the political climate, Fox couldn’t be thi
nking of recovering Nikko for tens, possibly hundreds of years. She would have more than enough time to trap Fox in his own schemes.

  Chapter

  18

  Nikko awoke with a start. How could he have been sleeping? It wasn’t possible. Even when Arif’s body subsided toward sleep, his own consciousness would continue. He was an electronic program, a ghost. He was not Arif. And yet he’d been sleeping.

  He sat up. He found himself on a plush pallet, on the floor of one of the ship’s two cabins. The walls were tuned to a mock-up of the forested interior of Summer House in simulated moonlight; soft insect sounds rolled out of the air. The bedding was crumpled, and it stank, as if he’d inhabited it for days.

  Phousita stood in the door, watching him. She was dressed in new clothes: a gold breastcloth, and a white sarong stitched with flowers of red and gold. Her hair hung down her back in a long, black cascade. Nikko felt his fist clench. “What did you do to me?” he growled at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I had to. You’re killing Arif. Can’t you feel what you’re doing to him? You’re violating him. He can’t stand it. He can’t.”

  “So you made him sleep? You made me sleep too? How’d you do that?”

  “I wove a dream for you, and fed it to the atrium.”

  “You synthesized the sensory input? For how long? How long, Phousita? I don’t even remember leaving Castle!”

  “Three days,” she said. “We’re far from Castle now. We’re safe. You have to let Arif go.”

  His bladder felt ready to burst. He staggered to the head and relieved himself. Arif’s body still seemed awkward to him: too short, too tightly muscled. But very strong. Strong enough to put his fist through the wall. He resisted the impulse. Instead, he pulled on a pair of shorts, then dug the camera pack out of his briefcase and strapped it on.