He began to relax after a second week in which nothing bad happened. None of the local bums got wise to their hideout, the bis behaved and the fake class worked like a dream.
And then, late one afternoon, walking the street leading down to the apartment block, he noticed a man leaning against a tree.
The man noticed him.
Manfred tried not to stop, change the pace of step, clock the man, but it was impossible. He approached, looking down at the grease-spattered pavement. The man stepped out and said, “Good evening, Mr Klee. Not to worry. You safe.”
Manfred halted, stunned. He could not breathe.
“Dere much to speak of,” the man added.
Manfred recognised the face, the accent. This man was not in disguise. “You know me?” he whispered.
“You recognise me, surely?” came the reply.
The man was black, middle aged, weatherbeaten, shaven head. He wore a jet black greatcoat and poly trousers. When he grinned, his teeth gleamed white.
A warning went off in Manfred’s mind. “Not…”
“Yes. Dirk.”
Manfred span around, ready for attack, for men approaching, for the sight of a rifle.
Dirk placed a hand on his arm. “I been looking for you. You safe.”
“Safe?”
“Sure. I tell you all about it. Dere a lot to speak, you know?”
“But… we’re… visible in the nexus?”
“The BIteam? Sorta. I explain how to make better. And you might want my services. Interfaces?”
Manfred nodded. He felt numb. Interfaces, yes – he had wanted Dirk rather than Tsuneko when he put the BIteam together. Had the appearance of this man averted a disaster?
“Dirk, come with me,” he said. “Quickly! I can see you’re on our side.”
“One hundred percent,” Dirk replied.
They hurried down to the concealed entrance, then paused at the lift shaft inside the building, where Pouncey’s rope ladder swung. “She’ll shoot you if she sees you,” he said.
“Tell her first.”
Manfred nodded. He still felt numb. Kneeling down, he called out, “Pouncey? You hear me?”
No reply.
“Call again,” Dirk advised.
“Pouncey! Get yourself here. Damn quick!”
There came the sound of rustling below, and Manfred saw Orange and Blue. Then Pouncey’s face appeared. “What’s up?” she asked.
Manfred said, “Don’t panic. Don’t shoot.”
Pouncey raised her rifle, aiming it at him. “Why not?”
“We got company – good company. It’s okay. I’m not hostage – no guns. It’s Dirk!”
“Dirk?”
From behind him, Dirk said, “Mr Ngma, interface specialist. I tell you how to improve nexus security – freebie. It no problem.”
Pouncey looked confused. “I know, I know,” Manfred said, “but for god’s sake Pouncey, don’t shoot.”
Joanna appeared. “Dirk Ngma?”
“That you, Joanna?” Dirk said, leaning over the lift shaft.
Pouncey aimed her rifle at him. “Don’t shoot!” Manfred screeched.
“Shhh!” Pouncey said. “I wasn’t gonna. Just get the hell down here.”
They descended. Pouncey retreated and aimed her rifle at Dirk. “You’ve got some explainin’ to do,” she said.
Dirk spread his hands wide, then raised his arms in mock surrender. “I know you scared. Me too, coming here. It some deal.”
“You spotted us in the nexus?” Joanna asked. She looked horrified.
“I spot da children.”
Manfred glanced at Pouncey, then at Joanna. “Okay,” he said, “panic over, we all sit down, fix tea or coffee, put down the guns. Shit, if Dirk knows about the bis, Aritomo might know.”
“Dere little t’ing to tweak,” Dirk said. “It no biggie.”
“And then?”
Dirk grinned, pulled out a cheroot and lit it. “I interface man. AIteam not for me. Dere much to tell you. It amazing tale, you know?”
Manfred put his hands to the top of his head, leaned back and exhaled. He walked over to the stack of equipment by the soltruck, where lay a gas stove and a kettle. “Drink,” he said. “C’mon, you lot, drinks! I’m desperate for caffeine.”
They sat on the floor, Manfred with the two women to either side of him, Dirk facing them. Pouncey sat with her rifle on her lap.
Manfred cradled his mug in his hands, as if winter-cold. “Over to you,” he told Dirk.
“Sure,” Dirk said, lighting another cheroot. “But listen, I not harm you guys. Must emphasise dat. I leave AIteam, maybe join BIteam. If dere space for me.”
“There may well be,” Manfred said, with exaggerated feeling. He pointed at the bis, clustered nearby, all watching, apart from Grey who sat by the ramp. “We can’t get these things to understand English. And we need to speak to them soon.”
Dirk grinned. “Dis how I spot you.”
“How?” Manfred asked.
“See, I know da score with da BIteam. I know how differ from your ex. Da AIteam, dey create one intelligence, make best computer dey can. At first, I go with dat. It make sense. But den, t’ings, hmmm, dey change. We in Africa, chased by da Ichikawa guy, apparently. I see Zeug – he Leonora’s artificial intelligence – I watch him go rogue. He like autistic superman. He got no society.”
“You mean, society like the bis?”
“Yes! Da beautiful intelligence. I see dat. I like dat notion. Zeug go mental ’cos he got no brothers, sisters. Dat Leonora’s big mistake.”
“Then,” Manfred said, “you spotted the bi society in the nexus?”
“First, I consider options. I know da score of BIteam – make society of intelligences, not just da one. Make dem conscious, like we got conscious. So dis what I look for in da nexus. Society of new entities.”
“But how? There are billions of new small societies all over the world, thousands of kids born every minute. We could’ve been anywhere-“
“Yes, it very difficult. Take some time. I smoke many smokes! Much Diabaté kora music, ha ha!”
Manfred waved his right hand in a circle. “Then…?”
“I begin to realise, look for weird kid behaviour. Maybe language-free. Maybe special language. Like kid secret language dat nobody else understand. I guess you in America from da underground news. Sixty two percent of rumours place you on da East Coast. Starting point, see?”
“Go on…”
“I do over da entire East Coast, but nothing make me sit up. I get depress. I alone, and sometime bored. I got nobody to talk to about mind stuff.”
Manfred laughed. “You’re in damn good company here.”
“I know! Very attractive to interface guy. So… da t’ing is, I begin scouring da West Coast. Not with much hope, though, eh?”
Manfred nodded. “And…?”
“Ha! You so impatient, Mr Klee! Okay, I tell you. One day I notice school with many kids. It random spot – not obvious. Getting desperate, truth to tell. Many smokes in da ashtray. I analyse dis school, but nothing stand out. Den I notice one class, dey special need. No speaks, I notice, no writes. Like a class of feral kids – raised by wolves, maybe? You get?”
“I get,” Manfred confirmed.
“Den I analyse further. Kids quite recent to school. No writes, yes – but no speech therapist, no writing guru, in dat class. Why not?”
Manfred felt his skin turn cold. Such an obvious mistake; yet so easy to make. He turned to Pouncey and said, “No blame. Not your fault.”
Pouncey shrugged.
At once Dirk sat up and waved his cheroot in Pouncey’s direction. “I gotta say, it brilliant deception. Genius level. I only notice ’cos I specifically go for kids with total language issues.”
Pouncey sagged. “Yep. My bad.”
Manfred patted her on the shoulder. “Hey! No problem, I mean that.”
“Thanks.”
Dirk continued, “Once I spot dis, I get e
xcited. Chance in a million for me. For da Ichikawa computer, chance in a trillion. Dey not know complex mind stuff, like me. Dey search America at random, see?”
Manfred nodded. “But given enough time, Dirk…”
“Sure! But we fix da kid language issue. Pouncey make fake handwrites. You add fake speech therapist. It cover da problem real nice.”
Manfred clicked his fingers at Pouncey. “Start now.”
Pouncey leaped to her feet, the rifle clattering to the floor. “Will do.”
Joanna moved forward, so that she sat between Manfred and Dirk. She said, “We have got one bi that is blind, Dirk. We have hypothesised that it is much more active in the nexus than the others, probably as a kind of compensatory mechanism. Did you spot one child who appeared more nexus savvy than the rest?”
“Oh, sure – nickname Tuareg.”
Manfred nodded. “Tuareg tribe in the Sahara, indigo robes.”
Dirk nodded back, grinning. “But none speak English. I help you with dat!”
Manfred felt his heart race. He took a few shallow breaths. “Really?”
“Sure. But dere major problem. We not tamper with da bis now. Dey evolving heuristically, becoming individuals. Tamper, dat like cut up kid’s brain – not cool. So I make interface.”
“How, Dirk?” Manfred asked. “This is urgent. If we don’t speak to them on higher, abstract levels soon, they’ll give us away. At the moment they’re like dogs, kids – we train them in simple stuff. But we need to tell Indigo about the dangers of giving us away to Aritomo.”
“Exactly. I do dat. You trust me good.”
“Yeah! Please. Please help.”
“Okay.” Dirk grinned. “Dis real good! I hope find you guys. Da AIteam, it not for me. I need stimulation. I need da challenge. I got dat here real fine. Many thanks.”
Manfred sat back and sighed. “My pleasure. And welcome to Portland.”
CHAPTER 17
The fake Zeug was taken down by the police. The real Zeug remained invisible.
At least, invisible to Hound, searching the North African nexus. “Man,” he said, as the AI trio sat at the back of a faux-Berber caf, “this is not going to be easy.”
“We didn’t get into this for an easy life,” said Leonora.
“No… sure we didn’t. I was just saying.”
“Why did the police bother with my fake Zeug?” Tsuneko asked.
“Well, there were no street cams,” Hound replied, “so a satellite must’ve pinged Zeug after he ripped Yuri’s head off, then passed on the description.” He shrugged. “Didn’t spot us. Man, we’d know by now.”
“Why did Zeug rip Yuri’s head off?” Tsuneko asked.
Hound laughed. “Heh! You’re watching me, I told Zeug. He replied that he didn’t like me, so I asked him straight out – why are you watching me? My master told me to, he said. That master was Yuri.”
“Are you certain?” Leonora said.
Hound shook his head. “Nothing’s ever certain in security. But, yeah, I am certain. Yuri was trying to direct the AIteam, ain’t no doubt. Then he hit the big high wall that’s Zeug. Ol’ Dirk was right. Zeug is autistic–”
“Hound!” Leonora interrupted. “I said no–”
“Hey! Listen. I got my free speech. Man, you know the worst thing about Zeug? He knew he was good. He knew he was special. But he can’t cope with us random, stupid fleshies, so he ran away.” Hound paused, staring into the cloud-brushed sky. “We’ll be looking for someone mad, someone paranoid, someone cruel. That’s what you made, Leonora.”
“I did not!” Leonora said.
Hound glanced at her. He knew when she was upset. She was not now. Yes, she knew what she’d done, so he had a duty to point out that she’d made a few mistakes…
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I don’t want you to feel bad. Honest. But we gotta face facts. To find Zeug, we head for madness.”
“I think your assessment is flawed,” Leonora said, looking away and resettling her dress on her legs.
“Well, ma’am, with Yuri and Dirk gone it’s only you and me that ever saw him. So I guess we’ll agree to differ.”
“Analysis is not your function here.”
Hound glanced at Tsuneko, then shrugged.
Leonora scowled. “If you are trying to impress the new lady, you failed.”
“I ain’t. Man, like I said – we all got free speech.”
Tsuneko leaned forward and said, “Either way, I’m not here to be impressed or unimpressed. I’ve got the biograins.” She slapped a bio-drive on her belt. “On a standalone. Listen, I like your plan, Leonora. Can’t we all get along? Can’t we make something magical and new?”
“Oh, we get along well enough,” Leonora said. “Hound’s just staking his place out. He’s telling you he’s not stupid while I get the collateral damage.”
“I knew that already,” Tsuneko replied. She shrugged, pouring mint tea into all three of their cups. “Let’s concentrate on Zeug. We’ve got to find him. We can’t let the Africans get their hands on him.”
Hound raised his eyebrows. “Why not?”
“I meant the local people. I’m assuming Zeug could be killed? Blown up? Hacked to pieces?”
“Stolen by Aritomo Ichikawa,” Hound said. “That’s the worst case scenario.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
Hound hesitated, then sighed. “Yeah. Good point. And we needed some new blood around here. Let’s find a doss for the night, then I’ll begin a new search.”
~
Tsuneko faced Leonora across a table strewn with supper debris: breadcrumbs, green leaves, feta cheese and clear plastic cups of mint tea. A nexus radio blared out rai music mutated according to the 2077 Cairo Agreement, and this was a useful cover to their in-caf conversation.
Tsuneko said, “Am I welcome in the AIteam?”
Leonora smiled. “Don’t take any notice of what Hound says, pay attention to what he does. If he did not like you, you would not be here. It is his job to be suspicious of you.”
“I came here with sincere motives.”
“I believe you,” Leonora said. “You are a VIP in my book.”
“The biograins?”
Leonora nodded. “Though how I integrate them into my scheme is a mystery.”
“Biograins are still in the development stage. As yet, human brain biochemistry isn’t quite sophisticated enough to cope with them. But that’s the direction I want to go in – a seamless fusion of perception and virtuality inside our heads.”
“One stage on from the nexus.”
Tsuneko nodded. Leonora seemed to understand her. She said, “Spex and wristbands are all very well, but spex were introduced almost eighty years ago by Google. Their time has gone.”
“But there does not seem to be any crossover between what you have invented and what I have invented.”
“No…” Tsuneko mused. “D’you think you’ll locate Zeug?”
“Hound will.” Leonora sighed. “If he doesn’t, Aritomo will. That man is like a cat hunting a bird. The bird rarely escapes.”
Tsuneko nodded. With a grin she said, “A lot of cats wear bells on their collars so birds get a warning.”
“The concept of a collar is alien to Aritomo. He is utterly focussed on himself – the ultimate narcissist. He believes the world exists in his image, or should do. He is ultra-patriotic and devoted to the nexus.”
“Which was a Japanese invention.”
Leonora nodded. “If I had known then what I know now…”
Tsuneko waited. When Leonora remained silent she said, “You wouldn’t have worked for him?”
Leonora shook her head. “Nor Manfred. We didn’t realise what he was like. He wooed us. He pretended interest in Western cultural mores. He promised to place the world at our feet.” She laughed. “Yes, his world, in his image!”
“Then he will find Zeug?”
Leonora shrugged. “We have to get there first.”
Tsuneko l
eaned forward, lowered her voice a little. “What if we attract Zeug to us? That’s the other option, after all.”
“How? We know nothing about what Zeug intends.”
“Make a simulation of him, but make it different, so that Zeug’s intrigued.”
“Impossible,” Leonora said. “We only made one quantum computer, into which we placed everything we knew. And Yuri is dead. He knew so much about the technicalities.”
“Do you still retain the records of what you did in Malta?”
“Oh, yes, of course. Three back-ups exist, disguised as vault possessions of various museums around the world.” Leonora smiled. “Hound calls that abstract art.”
“Why?” Tsuneko asked.
“Making something incomprehensible out of figurative art. He prefers the latter. The point is, under all that cultural camouflage nobody will notice what the data really is.”
Tsuneko nodded. “Then even though you destroyed everything in the Maltese cave we could make a simulation.”
“It would be a pale imitation – no pun intended.”
“That’s all we need. We could use my biograins to make a nexus-ready super-intelligence, but instead of using a human template we use your Zeug template. I mean, it only has to look approximately like Zeug. Then we set it free and wait for Zeug to come running.”
“All sorts of people could spot the fake Zeug. Aritomo.”
“We’d spot Zeug from his nexus traces long before any actual meeting. Anyway, the fake would look inhuman, like some weird computer. There’s millions of weird new computers in the world. Billions, probably. But Zeug will notice the particular characteristics of ours long before anybody else does. It’ll be primed to attract him.”
Leonora nodded, her gaze in some far-off mental corner. “It could work,” she said. She picked up her standalone com, tapping in a code. “Tell Hound. I just called him on this com. He’ll be skeptical, but you can ignore that.”
Tsuneko took a deep breath. “Okay.”
Leonora looked at her. “You’ll need to convince me too. I will be at least as skeptical as he is.”
~
Hound lay prone on a Z-bed, spex over his eyes, two microcables linking spex arms to the bone receivers drilled into his skull next to his ears – he couldn’t afford to miss even a whisper from the nexus on this mission.
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