Beautiful Intelligence

by Stephen Palmer

  Pouncey picked up her bags, to discover that she was shaking. The two bags, filled with half rotten food, seemed much heavier than before.

  “Just shock,” she told herself. “Just a sugar low. You feel sweaty. Get home and get some food.”

  She walked back to Haemorrhage Apts as fast as she could.

  Everybody was home. She locked the door, dropped the bags to the floor and ran into the main common room, where Dirk and Joanna sat, along with the bis. “Listen up,” she said.

  Joanna glanced up at her, but Dirk continued his sentence.

  “Listen up!” Pouncey yelled.

  Dirk jumped, then looked over his shoulder.

  “Where’s Manfred?” Pouncey asked.

  A voice behind her: “Here.”

  Pouncey turned. “Cascadia earthquake! It’s gonna unzip – maybe the entire length of the fault. We gotta get out.”

  “Out? Earthquake?”

  “On the news – the grown up news, Manfred! This is the real thing.”

  “Wait,” Manfred said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “What’s this news in full?”

  Pouncey summarised what she’d read, then linked her wristband to the lo-fi computer they had stolen from a local geek artist. The monitor screen lit up. “Read it for yourself,” she said.

  They all read the official reports. Joanna went pale and began stroking her cheek with one hand. Dirk sat back, silent. Manfred read the info, then shook his head.

  “I smell a big rat,” he said. “This is Aritomo trying to scare us.”

  At once Pouncey felt anger course through her body. “This is confirmed by all the legit stations!” she said. “This isn’t a software hack, this is the real deal. They’ve been warnin’ about this for decades, and now it’s gonna happen.”

  Manfred hesitated. Pouncey saw that he was half convinced.

  “Okay,” she said, “I’ll do a full check on it. Of course I will. But we have to pack. To go. In hours, Manfred! What if a megatsunami makes it all the way here–”

  “It couldn’t possibly–”

  “You don’t know! Nobody’s ever seen a megatsunami in the modern world. What about the Columbia River? Get real. You think you know it all and you don’t! We have to evacuate within hours. Two hours – that’s what I’m tellin’ you. Any more and it’s your ass on the line.”

  “Mmm, thank you,” said Manfred.

  “What’s da security diagnosis?” asked Dirk.

  Pouncey gestured at the bis. “One per cage – now. Then all food and water to be packed. Then all hardware. Last of all other stuff – clothes, oddments. I’ll prep the van to go in one hour. After that I’ll allow another hour. We can probably get out of Portland… hey, you know, fuck it! We need to be out of this city in one hour. If we don’t the traffic queues will kill us. Get movin’!”

  She ran out of the room to fetch the bi crates.

  Manfred followed. “You’re serious?” he asked.

  “Yes!”

  “Do your nexus source check. Five minutes, okay? We’ll pack while you do it. But I wanna be sure who’s behind this.”

  Pouncey tried to stop herself from trembling. She took a few deep breaths.

  Manfred again put a hand on her shoulder. “Calm down,” he said. “We don’t disbelieve you, but I need to be certain. Aritomo is a devious bastard.”

  “I do know,” Pouncey replied, putting every ounce of sarcasm into her voice. “Get packin’. I’ll do the check. Five minutes and I want to see five bis in five crates. Five in the back, that is – not Indigo.”

  “We haven’t got five strong crates any more. We’ve got four.”

  Pouncey hesitated. That was true. They were still militating against the bi co-operation regime, though the inhuman wailing had ceased. “Use that wooden case I made for Blue when it was injured,” she said. “It’s ramshackle, but it should hold.”

  Manfred nodded. He looked scared now. The atmosphere of the apartment had changed. Even the bis were quiet, staring at them in that weird Nippandroid way. Pouncey shuddered. The bis knew something unusual was happening. They weren’t stupid.

  She initiated a secure analysis of the nexus info source. The problem she faced was that, although her analysis would seem invisible – effectively secure – she could never entirely wipe the nexus free of her computational activities. Invisible, in nexus terms, meant hidden; there was always a trace. And if somebody wanted to locate that trace, invisible could change to visible.

  She had five minutes. She would have to ignore the usual complex, careful, fractal-freighted camouflage of a fully secure analysis and go for the default option: hide and hope. It worked 99.999% of the time.

  Having initiated the analysis, she set it off. The default computer chose an earthquake infomercial to conceal its activities, an option Pouncey supported, though it was rather obvious. She checked local stats – already there had been over twenty million hits on official earthquake advice stations. She glanced at a few traffic cams. Nothing out of the ordinary. But soon, she knew, the roads would be filled with solcars and solbikes, not to mention every half-operational, salvaged, pimped or patchworked solar vehicle in Portland. It would be a mechanical jungle.

  She heard noises in the other rooms. She felt reassured. They were taking the warning seriously. Some of the bis were whining – she could hear their vocoder-lite voices making beats as the frequencies dipped and dived – but it was only two or three of them. Anyway, they were still too weak to resist a co-ordinated move from Manfred and the other two, in such a constrained environment.

  Then the results: info source 99.6% official West Coast Geological Survey.

  Pouncey compressed her lips. That was less than she’d expected, and less than she wanted. A 99.9% official would have been nice. Her result meant a 0.4% chance that somebody had set up the Cascadia warning as a hoax.

  Manfred walked out of the far room. “Well?” he grunted.

  “It’s real,” she said. “Everyone out. Fifty minutes. I’ll prep the van. Move it!”

  Without waiting for an answer she grabbed the food bags and headed to the lift shaft. Minutes later she stood beside the van.

  She paused. She was trembling again. Shock receded, and she felt frightened. A megathrust earthquake was every West Coast person’s nightmare. Was it real? Surely it was. 99.6%…

  “Oh, fuck it! Why now?” She kicked the side of the van, then pulled open all the doors. Moments later she’d forgotten her fears and immersed herself in the mechanics of the soltruck. Engine first. Check. Fluids. Check. Tyres… one down slightly, but not serious. Spare tyre: check.

  Noises from the lift shaft: Manfred, Jo and bis in crates. “I found the sixth crate and lashed it up,” he said. “Better than that old wooden case you made.” He grinned. “No offence.”

  Pouncey indicated the back of the soltruck. “None taken,” she said.

  She revved the engine a few times, disabled the auto-GPS feature, then ran down the on-board computer by disconnecting its power lead. This being an emergency exit, they didn’t want to leave a traffic trace in the nexus for some nosy street management system to record.

  “Forty minutes!” she shouted. “Or less!”

  Those forty minutes passed like four. But then – quite suddenly it seemed to Pouncey, as if she woke from a dream – she found herself sitting behind the soltruck wheel, Manfred, Jo and Dirk at her side. A bit of a squeeze. Indigo sat on Dirk’s lap.

  “It was only three of us before,” Manfred observed. “Dirk, you gotta give up smoking, you know?”

  The smell was strong. Pouncey stared out of the front window. That odour was a potential security risk. Dirk was famous. Computers everywhere would be looking for him. There was such a thing as an artificial nose.

  All three of them were staring at her. Joanna looked concerned. “We’re ready to go,” she said.

  Pouncey nodded. She had fazed out for a few moments, her last hour a blur of motion lasting subjective minutes. “Yeah,”
she said. “Right. Yeah. Let’s go.”

  She drove the soltruck up the ramp and turned left into morning sunlight, leaving a trail of leaves from the green camouflage. Then an orange warning light winked on her spex. There was a synchronous beep in the front comp.

  “What’s that?” Manfred asked.

  Pouncey checked, then slammed on the brakes. “Shit,” she said. “The fake class!”

  “What about them?”

  “An error’s been spotted. All the real school kids have made earthquake plans, but not our fake class. Manfred, I gotta sort that now.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It’ll stand out like a sore thumb – Portland kids with no escape plan? You gotta be jokin’! There’ll be dozens of media computers sending that newsflash to the nearest stations, the voyeuristic fuckers. And if Aritomo spots–”

  “Yeah, yeah. So give ’em a plan. Then drive on.”

  Pouncey worked info as fast as she could. The ghost link on the school roster had alerted her class management soft to the fact that the fake class had no earthquake evacuation data, unlike the rest of the school. Somebody… no, some thing, some computer somewhere had noticed that anomaly. If it got out into local media, that would be just the sort of thing Aritomo might notice. He would be searching for anomalies.

  Then Indigo said, “There are vultures circling overhead.”

  Pouncey stared. Manfred stared at her.

  Dirk said, “What you say, Mr Indigo?”

  “There are vultures circling overhead.”

  “What dat mean?” Dirk asked.

  But Indigo said nothing more, lowering its head in a way that made Pouncey think at once of an aircraft crash posture.

  “Get outa here!” Manfred shouted.

  Pouncey used three more seconds to finish the school class update. Then she took a deep breath and revved the engine. “To the hills,” she said.

  She turned the corner at the end of the street, then headed down a passage leading to the main route out of town – a dual triple lane road of potholed tarmac and shattered barriers. Algae-covered roadsigns littered the sides of the road, alongside less recognisable piles of rubbish.

  Pouncey drove fast, but around the next corner she saw a roadblock. She skidded to a halt. Two solcars had stopped at the roadblock; a man gesticulated with tall black dudes in faded emergency overalls, yellow and orange.

  “Highway department?” Pouncey muttered to herself. “Can’t be.”

  “What is it, mmm?” Manfred asked.

  Pouncey parked the soltruck, threw him a hi-vel pistol, then armed her own. “Gonna find out,” she said. “Manfred, open the window your side and cover me. If you hear a shot, Dirk – you drive. I might be injured. Got it?”

  “Got it,” said Dirk, handing Indigo over to Joanna.

  Pouncey stepped out, then ran over to the gesticulating man. “What’s going on?” she asked. She gestured at the roadblock. “Local, is it?”

  Three heavyweights manned the roadblock: more muscles than wrestlers. Steam shot up from some manhole a few metres behind piles of rubble. The solcar driver spoke in broken Ameri-English. “Yeah, local. These men say splits in the road. We go back. He tell me to get the fuck out before the earthquake come.”

  Pouncey glanced at the three dudes. They glowered at her, but said nothing. They made no move. Seemed legitimate. She turned to run back to the soltruck.

  There came a shot. The front windscreen of the soltruck shattered, but it did not break free: triple laminated. Pouncey dived, rolled, ran along a barrier, then positioned herself at its end.

  The soltruck stood three metres away. A second shot rang out and two men ran out from a building twenty metres off. Nearby there came the screech of wheels.

  Nothing for it. This was a set-up – time for a risk.

  She fired at the running men, then jumped up and flattened herself against the side of the soltruck. A bullet ricocheted off her boot heel.

  She opened the door and jumped in. “Close your window you fool!” she shouted at Manfred.

  He shut the window. Dirk gasped, “It da Aritomo men! Dey block da road.”

  Pouncey stamped on the accelerator then swung the soltruck around. Through luck and nothing else the two attackers were right in her way: she ran them over as the three black dudes raked the back of the soltruck with semi-automatic fire.

  “They want us alive!” Pouncey gasped. “This is kid gloves, yeah? Hold tight!”

  “But–”

  More gunfire – and then a sight of the vehicle that she’d heard. A big fat car with racing wheels and what sounded like a petrol engine. Pouncey quailed. That was not good. That was concentrated energy.

  Again through luck she was well positioned to dodge the vehicle as it screeched into the street. Somebody leaned out of a window and fired a semi-automatic at the back of the soltruck. Bullets thundered into the metal and she heard one of the doors rattling. Then she heard the whumph of a car impact.

  “If that door opens, our five bis are done for,” she said.

  Joanna glanced over her shoulder. “I think the door is open!” she cried.

  Pouncey span the wheel and drove the soltruck into a side road. She screeched to a halt. “Manfred! Cover me!”

  She ran to the back of the soltruck to see that two crates had fallen out, but they were invisible – in the other street. Too far away now.

  She slammed the right door shut, grabbed a jump lead from the tool bay on the inside of the other door, then closed it and wired both doors. A vehicle engine revved around the corner. Voices yelled. She ran back to the comp, jumped in and slammed her door shut.

  “They’re all there?” Manfred asked, trying to peer into the gloom at the back of the soltruck. “All five?”

  Pouncey did not answer. Pedal to the metal, she was already doing twenty kilometres per hour.

  “They were all there?” Manfred shouted.

  Pouncey said nothing.

  “Stop!” Manfred screamed. “Stop now! We can’t lose any of the bis, that’s what Aritomo wants.”

  Before Pouncey could reply he opened his door and leaped out. She saw a bouncing, rolling body on the pavement in her mirror. She slammed on the brakes.

  “Manfred!” Joanna cried out, moving to the open door.

  “No!” Pouncey said. “Gunmen! Following us!”

  As if to underline her point a weapon fired, and she saw orange flashes in the rear view mirror.

  “Do as I tell you!” she yelled. “Don’t think, just obey! If we don’t escape together we’re dead!”

  “But… Manfred!”

  Pouncey jumped out of the comp and surveyed the scene. Twenty metres away Manfred struggled to his feet. He was injured. In the street to her right a vehicle approached – the crashed petrol guzzler. It still moved: not disabled. Twenty seconds away maybe. It was not in a hurry. But the soltruck was secure and they retained four bis.

  Then she saw two children jump out of a side passage.

  Not children: Green and Yellow. Green had been in the improvised case, which like as not had shattered when it fell out of the soltruck.

  Manfred limped over to her. Then the petrol guzzler accelerated, appeared, screech to a halt.

  Pouncey raised her hi-vel and shot the two bis, who disintegrated into bioplas splats that covered the wall behind them like cartoon freeze-frames. “Into the soltruck or you’re dead!” she shouted.

  She fired at random, hoping the chase would duck for cover. Manfred gasped at the bioplas waste, then uttered a wail of despair.

  “Into the soltruck!” she yelled. “Or I’ll shoot you too!”

  He hobbled to the soltruck. Pouncey followed. A gun fired. Bullets ricocheted off the soltruck base – they were aiming for the tyres. Pouncey jumped into the comp, stamped on the accelerator and, tyres screeching, drove off.

  “Now I gotta lose ’em,” she said. “Get down! Hold tight. Hold Indigo!”

  They did as she told them. At the end of the
street she swung the soltruck left, then returned to the route out of town. The damaged petrol racer followed. It would always be able to out-perform the soltruck, she knew – oil was concentrated energy, more so than solar. So she had to use wits; and hope for luck.

  A few kilometres on, the traffic became thicker. No queues yet, but people were escaping the city as fast as they could. Pouncey, pedal to the floor, weaved in and out of car lanes, waiting for an opportunity. She had done over a thousand hours of 3-D role playing in vehicles as part of her training. She knew a few tricks.

  Ahead she saw two small flat-back vans loaded with furniture – families leaving Portland. They looked useful. She slowed, timed her move, watched the racer behind, then dodged a phalanx of solbikes to position herself between the two vans. Then she turned the wheel hard left, then hard right.

  The soltruck smashed into the right vehicle, but it did not deviate, nor did any furniture fall off. But the other van lost its load and then skidded into the central barrier. As it jack-knifed, Pouncey dived into the space before it, then accelerated. Looking into her rear view mirror she saw the traffic collapse into a chaotic mess. Vehicles, furniture everywhere. The road was blocked.

  She drove on as fast as she could, getting off the road at the next exit – wrong side, so she had to squeeze through a barrier maintenance gap. But there was almost no oncoming traffic heading for Portland, so it was safe. Then up the ramp at top speed the wrong way, and then the security of no street lamps and no traffic.

  The chase was over. She heard distant vehicle horns, saw a hint of flames on distant tarmac.

  “Now where to?” asked Dirk.

  “Well, Portland is quite low lyin’,” she replied. “The Columbia River ain’t too far away. We need to get high–”

  “There’s no earthquake!” Manfred yelled. “No damn earthquake at all, Pouncey! Aritomo found us. It was all a hoax.”

  “Nothin’s certain,” Pouncey replied. Her anger was all played out, now – she felt calm. “You don’t know anythin’, Manfred. It’s guess, guess, guess with you.”