Blonde Bombshell

by Tom Holt

  Put like that … Mark Twain felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. Another question was taking shape in his mind, one that he really should have addressed earlier: why Dirt? Why this scruffy, uninviting little planet with no interesting or unusual resources, and such a very primitive and unlovable dominant species? He could think of at least two dozen other worlds that’d be far more attractive to a self-made god, or even just someone who fancied living somewhere else. What was it about Dirt that made it special? To which he could only think of one reply: the music. The Ostar had surveyed hundreds of planets where some form of sentience had evolved, but nowhere else had the indigenous life come up with that pernicious blend of noise and maths.

  So; if you want to destroy the Ostar, you go where there’s a weapon. How long had Pavlov been here? According to the data, she was young, even in Dirter terms, but that didn’t mean anything. She could have been here for years before adopting human shape. Alternatively, Lucy Pavlov could simply be the latest addition to her wardrobe. The palms of his hands were damp, and he didn’t need to check the medical database to know what that meant. If he was scared, there was something to be scared about. One of our own is doing this to us.

  He cross-checked. Pavlov owned a Web network, which included six music channels. What that meant was that somewhere on the planet a bunch of Dirters spent their working day projecting tunes into the atmosphere, amplifying the signal so that it reached every part of Dirt, permeated the atmosphere, burst through it and escaped into space— Something he was missing here. He dried his hands on his trouser legs and made himself think it through. Think about sound. Sound moves very, very slowly: three hundred or so metres a second, practically standing still. Even boosted and amplified, it crawls through space like a wounded slug. How long would it take stray radio signals to reach Ostar? Centuries. Therefore it stood to reason that the signals currently tormenting Homeworld must’ve left Dirt hundreds of years ago. Which brought him back to how long Pavlov had been here. That long? He had no way of knowing, of course. Yes, but PaySoft was very recent indeed. If Pavlov had arrived, say, three hundred years ago, and PaySoft was no more than half a decade old, what had she been doing all that time?

  It was making his head hurt, and he stopped to consider that. Only a few days ago, he hadn’t had a head. The organic stuff that was throbbing like a malevolent subsidiary heart had been parts of the bomb — deck plating, console plastic, wiring insulation, dust —which the synthesiser had drawn upon and used to shape the body he was now wearing. Now, he found it hard to imagine not having a body. That, he couldn’t help thinking, was bad. He’d heard unsettling stories about artificial intelligences that got corrupted and went biological; according to everything he stood for and believed in, it was about the worst thing a machine could do. Gee, he thought, something else to worry about, just what I need right now.

  Concentrate on the matter in hand. Hypothesis: a dangerously crazy Ostar comes to Dirt with the aim of using the music weapon against her own kind. She launches radio waves. Centuries later, they reach Homeworld; we respond by sending a bomb. The bomb gets here, fails. Around that time, Lucy Pavlov supposedly invents PaySoft.

  Question: how did the Dirters defeat the Mark One?

  There was a wooden stick lying on the desk. It had a graphite core running through its middle, but it was still a wooden stick. He picked it up and started chewing it.

  Safe to assume they didn’t just shoot it down with a gun or something. The outer shell of an Ostar bomb was a masterpiece of technology; it could collide with a star, and it’d be the star that’d end up wishing it had been looking where it was going. No, the vulnerable part of a bomb was its brain; it had to be, there was no way round it, because a bomb has to be trained, it’s essential that it obeys commands, which means it has to be open to communication. Anybody who can talk to a bomb and sound convincingly like its master can control it, including ordering it to self-destruct.

  If you want to control an O star bomb, you need to talk to it in Ostar. And, around that time, scraps of Ostar code turn up in a Dirter-written program.

  The scenario set his palms off sweating again. Lucy Pavlov detects the bomb. As it enters orbit, she talks to it, the way an Ostar talks to his human. Bad boy; stop it; sit; stay.

  Explode.

  And so the bomb exploded, causing the severe damage to the climate and the ozone layer he’d already recorded. That had been a fundamental part of his initial interpretation — hard to imagine how they’d got there otherwise. That, on the other hand, suggested that the explosion and its catastrophic effects had happened recently; in which case, he had to admire the Dirters for their attitude. A mere pawful of years ago the very existence of their planet had hung in the balance, and they’d cheerfully put it behind them and got on with their lives, never mentioning it, even in passing.

  No, that couldn’t be right. In which case-He heard a voice and looked up. Two Dirter females had arrived for the new working day; they were talking to each other (another thing about this species; they never stopped talking) as they took off their coats and draped them over the backs of their chairs. They caught his eye. He smiled. They looked away quickly.

  No bad thing. He was, he knew, irresistibly attractive to Dirter females; he’d included that feature in the design specifications, just in case he had to use charm, glamour and seduction as data-acquisition techniques. He hadn’t realised at the time how utterly obsessed these creatures were with mating rituals. If he wasn’t careful, his outstanding good looks might easily prove to be a hindrance rather than an advantage. It might be a wise move to imply at some point that he was already pair-bonded, which seemed to make a difference, according to the social-mores dossier. The smile was all right, though. The dossier was quite clear on that score. Smile, it categorically stated, and the planet smiles with you.

  He turned back to his screen and called up the wodge of Dirter-compatible code he’d put together as camouflage. It was a search engine, so primitive it was practically coal-fired, but at least fifty years ahead of anything the Dirters had right now. Under other circumstances, creating such an artefact would have been strictly forbidden under the draconian Ostar cultural cross-contamination regulations. As it was, it couldn’t really do any harm. After all, as soon as he’d figured out the answer to the mystery of the Mark One, he was going to blow this planet into fine sparkly dust— He stared at the screen, his eyes wide. Just ruin that last thought again. Any day now, he was going to activate himself and kill a worldful of people; these people, these funny little primates with their screwed-up behavioural conventions and their bizarre but endearing socio-cultural quirks and their absurd little button noses that couldn’t smell a pig in a desert. And himself, of course, though that didn’t matter, because it was what he’d been built for. But the ordinary Dirters, the countless thousands of them who scampered about in the streets below his window, hadn’t done the Ostar any harm. At worst, it was just their leaders; quite possibly, if his theory was correct, it wasn’t Dirters at all, it was a single rogue Ostar. Slaughtering the lot of them just because they wouldn’t turn the music down seemed a trifle excessive.

  It’s the shape, he told himself, it’s the flesh and blood and bone and gristle that’s making you think like that. Sternly he reminded himself of the three commandments of weaponkind: Thou shalt not doubt; Thou shalt not judge; Thou shalt not choose. There were rumours, dark and terrible, about bombs that had thought they knew better: bombs that succumbed to pity and refused to explode, bombs misled by righteous indignation and poetic justice into blowing up the very people who’d launched them. In every case, the outcome had been limitless pain, suffering and disaster, because a bomb could never foresee the consequences or understand the true reasoning. A bomb must remain true to its programming; that’s the price it has to pay for its guaranteed entry into the incandescent paradise of Duty Done and Mission Accomplished.

  “Hi,” said a chirpy voice beside him. “You’re Mark, right?” />
  “No, I’m Mark Twain.”

  The chirpy voiced laughed. He was beginning to understand laughter. This sort meant he’d made a joke (had he? When?) and although it wasn’t very funny, the voiceholder had decided to regard it as a friendly gesture. He had to admire that. Remarkable, that a species that so far hadn’t managed to invent something as basic as the gravimetric shunt could pack so many subtle shades of meaning into a snorting noise. “I’m Judy. Pleased to meet you.”

  Why? The smile, presumably. He therefore switched it on as he swivelled his chair round. “And I’m pleased to meet you, too,” he said. “How beautiful the weather is today! Do you come here often?”

  Judy blinked, as if someone had just shone a very bright light in her eyes. “I’m your head of department,” she said. “I thought we might discuss what you’ll be doing for us.”

  “Ah, right.” He nodded, four times. His chance to make a good impression. Now would be a good opportunity to say something ingratiating, so she’d know he’d do his very best and all that stuff. Rather than try and think up something, he decided to access the cultural database. Sure enough, he found the very thing. “I shall not cease from mental strife,” he said, “nor shall my sword sleep in my hand—”

  The word “sword” made her take a step backwards, for some reason. “I was thinking you might like to work with Jules and Dmitri on compatibility issues,” she said. She was watching him very closely. “Basically, we’re trying to interface the old prePaySoft accounts package with XB, using a simple shell format. Do you think you could handle that?”

  “Or die trying,” he replied affably. “Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we’ll keep the old pre-PavSoft accounts package running here. Is that all, or is there anything else I can do?”

  “Um.” The look in her eyes reminded him of a h’jjjyh caught in the headlights of a pyff’t transporter, and he wondered if she was falling in love with him. If so, he’d have to deal with it. Clearly, that sort of thing was going to be an ongoing problem. “No, that’s fine,” she said. “Just see how you get on with that, and then we can assess your role in the team structure going forward.”

  “Of course. What about dinner? Or would you rather take in a show?”

  Something in her body language gave him the impression that he hadn’t quite got that bit right. It was essential, according to the database, to clarify the situation and avoid offending complex Dirter sensibilities. “Only kidding,” he added quickly. “I don’t really want to go out with you, not at all. Under no circumstances. Right, so you want me working on this interface? No problem. Should take me about ten minutes.”

  In the event he managed to spin it out for seven, and then only because he accidentally-on-purpose deleted a large chunk of what the other two had taken a week to do. To his surprise, nobody seemed pleased when he showed them what he’d done. Judy just stared, while Jules and Dmitri retreated to the water-cooler and started muttering.

  “That looks …” Judy was having trouble speaking. “Fine,” she said. “I think. Only, some of these components …” She frowned, a sort of faraway baffled look. “Could you just run through it for me? I can’t quite follow this sequence here.”

  He cranked up the smile. “Easy peasy,” he said. “All I’ve done is, I’ve taken the—”

  Installing updates. Please wait.

  Oh no, he thought, with the small part of his mind that wasn’t suddenly paralysed. Not now. Please not now.

  His central processor managed to interpret that as some kind of request for information. Inside his head, he heard it, curiously enough, in Dirtspeak. Installing update package #34855733009 for OstSoft BBP for Bombs. Time remaining, three Dirt standard minutes. All open programs have been closed. Once installation is complete, you will need to restart your system. Thank you for choosing OstSoft BBP for Bombs from PicoSoft Corporation.

  Through eyes that couldn’t move he saw Judy staring at him, but there was nothing he could do. With a tremendous effort, using which systems he had no idea, he managed to upload This is not a good time. Can’t it wait?

  Installing urgent upgrades to OstSoft BBP for Bombs. Updates comprise new improved fonts package for OstWord, exciting new cursor options, updated versions of popular games including Bouncing Ball 3.1 and Termites, and new revised user licence agreement. Attempting to interrupt upgrade process while installation is in progress may lead to loss of personality components and damage to your sanity subroutines. Time remaining 2.67 minutes. Your patience is appreciated. Please wait.

  It had turned off his hearing. He could see Judy’s mouth moving, but he didn’t have enough active processor capacity to lip-read what she was saying. It occurred to him that it might help if he could switch off the smile, or at least tone it down a little, but he couldn’t; his face and lower jaw were paralysed. Meanwhile, his mind was full of fonts and cursors, little red bouncy balls and boxes that said “I Agree”. They comprised the entire universe, apart from the thin blue line gradually creeping across the bottom edge of his field of vision. It still had a long way to go, and from time to time it just stopped and sat there.

  Judy had stopped mouthing at him; she turned and walked away, and everybody in the room had stopped working and was staring at him. His optimism routines were offline. All in all, he couldn’t help thinking, he’d had better moments.

  A man he didn’t know, a man in a suit, walked up to him and started talking. He couldn’t hear a word, of course, but the lip movements suggested he was shouting. OstSoft is reconfiguring your entertainment and media preferences, home shopping options and moral imperatives. One minute and fifty-one seconds remaining.

  The main shook his head in disbelief, made a rather florid head-and-arms gesture and stalked away. Forty-six seconds later, two different men appeared. They were wearing light brown Security uniforms. They started talking at him, while OstSoft deleted a batch of his temporary files and recalibrated his ability to metabolise caffeine. Just as the two men grabbed hold of his arms, he rebooted and the world went blank.

  18

  Novisibirsk

  A young ginger-bearded giant in a skin-tight white polo-neck and white jeans opened the door to him. “Hi,” George said, “I’m George Stetchkin, I’m expected. Lucy sent a car.”

  The giant frowned, as his mental enzymes broke down the information. “George Stetchkin?”

  “That’s me.”

  “You’re expected. This way.”

  The floor was white marble; likewise the walls. The ceiling, by some bizarre coincidence, was white. So were the very few pieces of furniture. You needed welding goggles just to cross the room without bumping into things. Through the white room and into another, equally white. “Sit down,” the giant said. On what? George wondered; then, as his eyes recalibrated to cut out the glare, he made out the faint outline of a couch. He sat down. There was a furious yowling noise, and a white cat shot past him.

  “Nice place you’ve got here,” George said. “Great colour scheme.”

  The giant didn’t see fit to comment. He took a step back and folded his arms, motionless as a volcano that hasn’t erupted for decades but could go up at any moment. George sat well forward —difficult to do, since the couch cushions were soft as custard — and tried not to dwell on the fact that he stank of stale booze and had recently puked on his shoes.

  An intercom buzzed. The giant crossed to the wall, whispered softly into a panel. “She’ll be down any minute,” he said. “You want coffee?”

  George nodded, a trifle too eagerly. “Black,” he said.

  The giant looked at him as though he’d used a bad word, and went away. When the door closed behind him, it was practically impossible to see where it had been.

  White, he thought. Nice and cheerful. Bright. No it wasn’t: it was the colour of fridges and morgues, which was where he belonged. The glare hurt his eyes, and the rolling softness of the couch was making him feel seasick. He tried to stand up, but he couldn’t get enough purcha
se. They were going to have to lift him out with a crane.

  Three minutes later the door opened, but it was only the giant. He had a white tray, on which rested a white cup. George gobbled it down, and felt the liquid sentience soak into him. He looked up into the giant’s cold blue eyes. “More?”

  The giant nodded and left. Inside his head, George could feel the coffee stumbling about in the dark, fumbling for the light switch. White, he thought. Like a— The door opened again, and Lucy Pavlov came in, holding the white tray. He struggled to get up, but she shook her head just a little and held the tray where he could reach it. The hell with it, George decided. He grabbed the cup and glugged.

  “Better?” she said.

  “Marginally,” he replied. “Look, I’m sorry—”

  She grinned. “I’ve never drunk alcohol,” she said. “Is it nice?”

  He took a moment to answer. “Yes and no,” he said.

  She put the tray down on a table he hadn’t realised was there, and sat down on the floor, her legs folded neatly under her. “Thanks for coming,” she said. “I hope I haven’t dragged you away from anything important.”

  “Not as such,” George said. “Um, what can I do for you?”

  Her eyes, he thought. Something odd about them. Also, she had perfect teeth. “I read your paper,” she said. “The one you wrote for the Oslo Institute of Technology, about six years ago. About why there couldn’t be life on other planets.”

  “Ah,” George said.

  “It was fascinating,” Lucy said; and she had a way of saying it that made you think she’d just had the word specially designed and precision-engineered, to mean exactly what she had in mind. “Quite brilliant, I thought, the way you demolished Rostovseff. The bit about gamma-wave diffraction differentials was sheer genius.”