“This message is being sent from the plane,” said a voice that was almost unfamiliar. It sounded sort of like Connors, but healthy. “If you’re hearing it, the diversions worked long enough. Sorry I was so slow on the uptake, I’d stopped watching the rock years ago. Only noticed what was going on there when the computers showed paper on you. Then today they moved quite suddenly. You’ll be met in Quito. I’ll see you as soon as I can, but I’ve got other stuff going on there. Meanwhile, enjoy the Olympiad. Be seeing you. —And Bernard Fox played Dr. Bombay in the original show.” The phone shut off.
Bewitched
had had a revival in the twenties. They looked at each other. “The witch doctor,” May said.
“Could have been worse,” Toby said. “Could have been Jonathan Harris.”
“Ouch. —Hang on. That was Connors, right?”
“As far as I could tell, yes.”
“So he’s into the U.S. attorney general’s system. It flagged the warrant on you.”
“Oh Christ,” Toby said, and dialed rapidly.
“What?” said May.
He held up a hand and said, “Wait.” He typed at high speed, hit Send, and said, “I thought I’d better tell the Factory Team to divvy up the petty cash and get to shelter. Mass mailing. We made contingency plans.” He hove a sigh. “Yeah, hacking the Feds sounds like something he’d do if he could. Didn’t know he could, though.”
“Bear with me. It must have happened yesterday, right?”
“I guess so.” Toby was trying to see where she was going.
“So, D.C. is six hours earlier than Bern. Probably got word around the time I walked into your clinic. That means he set everything up—including a legitimate U.S. passport
and
an expert contact to deliver it!—in the time it took us to eat dinner! And he apologized for being
slow
?”
“I told you he had no patience with stupidity. That included his own. —I was
sure
Briareus was dead. It was supposed to put Target One in orbit around the Earth, years ago. Our instructions … I thought they’d gotten lost or scrambled. I wonder what it’s been doing?”
VII
Here is Plato’s man.
—DIOGENES THE CYNIC
The light sail wasn’t enough to allow Briareus to match velocities. The operators took the sail apart, built some of the mass into a smaller linear motor, and sent the rest of the aluminum down its length. Efficiency was much lower, but Briareus was also decreasing the mass to be slowed. It was enough.
All machinery withdrew into the carousel for the impact with Target One.
At impact, the electromagnet that had been assembled in line with the linear motor struck first and slid into the shaft, and much of the energy of motion was converted to power. Suddenly everything was at full charge.
Briareus One-a clambered out of Slot One.
Operators, the descendants of Briareus One and One-b, flowed out of Slot Six. More than half of them had failed during the six-year voyage. The inert machines hadn’t been remade. They had been stripped for parts, which were then reassembled along the linear motor to generate more power for a faster exhaust.
The operators crawled out onto the asteroid and dispersed. Briareus Three, the Master Computer, listened to their signals.
The tiny devices had no room for any complicated message. Briareus One-a, though bigger, was no more complex. They tested for certain metals. They ate. Some went offline, dying of mishap. Briareus One-a proliferated. Target One was enormously more massive than the Wyndham Launch orbiter.
Briareus Three, the computer, wrote and sent a series of signals:
Erect the telescope.
It rose on an aluminum column. Briareus Three pointed it down at the asteroid to watch the operators’ progress.
Most of the work was being done by Briareus One-b’s descendants. Briareus One-a’s children were not numerous yet, but they were reproducing.
Build solar collectors.
Silver flowers sprouted from the asteroid, with nodes at their center. The nuclear power plant was near dead by now, but power began to flow into the system.
Build a linear motor.
It looked like the two that Briareus had already built. As it grew longer, the operators built bracing spines.
Target One was being turned to dust.
Weave a net.
Briareus Three sent, and commanded that the dust be directed into it.
Briareus One-a’s children had grown more numerous than the original operators … but the children of Briareus One-b were eating Briareus One-a’s children. The little ate the big. Individual operators that were still active were ignored, but anything that wasn’t moving was ipso facto supplies. Large clusters that had gone on standby to await further tasks did not deem themselves inactive, and when they were approached they took apart their prospective dismantlers, as they did with any faulty operator.
It only takes one unforeseen circumstance to make a plan go wrong. This was why most of the people who came up with gray goo stories were in software.
The One-b operators began joining into processing clusters to deal with what were obviously defective devices, and attacked them in packs.
Predators had been invented.
The One-a clusters had no programming for such an emergency, but they did have more processing power. They linked up in pairs, allowing one sector to deal with immediate events while the other observed and made plans, and restructured their functions to put all manipulators on the outside, gathering the reconstruction modules in one place, and building internal conduits for instructions and repairs. Differentiated tissues.
All light absorbers were put on the outside as well, and were protected from the packs with diamond, scavenged from manipulators that exceeded the number that could be crammed together on the surface. Variations in power correlated with incoming objects, and this was helpful. Some of the ad-hoc structures were better than others at this, and their features were adopted for all absorbers.
Eyes had been invented.
Predators were seized before they noticed anything close enough to do it. All had data ports the operators used to link together, and the operators on the outside of a cluster always had some unused. Control linkages were attached to these. The clusters were then turned loose to attach linkages to their fellows, which then stayed close to the One-a clusters, which used their bodies for spare parts and their power stores for fuel.
Herding had been invented.
Some of the more elaborate One-a clusters had surplus processing capacity, but no provision had been made for not using it—the phenomenon of a server having more computing power than someone could find a use for was outside any living programmer’s experience. The clusters assessed the data collected by sight, exchanged the results, and became aware of the Master Computer as a specific entity.
Religion was not invented.
The Master Computer was capable of issuing signals of overriding power, and possessed an absolute fixity of purpose—a purpose which the clusters shared—but was, bluntly, fairly stupid. Some of the plans it seemed to have were far less effective than they should have been, displaying no flexibility of response to current conditions.
One cluster of unusual size arrived at the concept of working out their ultimate purpose through examination of, essentially, everything; and making their own plans to fulfill it. It began including suggestions to this effect in all its communications.
Call it Socrates.
VIII
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism … The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.
—THEODORE ROOSEVELT
The plane landed in Puerta de Cosmos International Airport in just over two hours. Flight attendants pinned astronaut wings on passengers as they left, instantly cementing the loyalty of the rich and influential people who could afford the ride.
As they went through the private egress tube, Toby looked at his, then at May. “Astronaut?”
“Cruising altitude for Rukhs is two hundred and seventy thousand feet, remember? Over fifty miles. We’ve been in space.”
He’d forgotten the official phobic crap Wyndham had been getting about sonic booms. Including on days when flights had been canceled. “Be damn. And nobody bitches about ozone?” he said as they reached XVIP customs.
The big uniformed woman behind the table spoke up, in the most luscious voice he’d ever heard in his life. “Ecuador deals with Green claims of harm to the ozone layer with a politely smothered yawn, Doctor. This country
works,
ever since the space industries started up. Not every country south of the U.S. demands golden goose for dinner. Forgive the intrusion. I am Inspector Lorelei Huntz. Clearly you have no baggage. The papers to replace those that were stolen from you in Bern are right here, and I can dispose of the others for you.” She held out a sheaf that included a passport—and a couple of bank books. Credit cards were clipped to both.
He was sure he knew that name, but he simply exchanged papers with her and said, “Thank you.”
“Certainly. Enjoy the Olympiad.” She obligingly stamped the new passport. There were faded stamps on it already, and a coffee stain. “Your driver will take you directly to your residential cottage when you’re ready. You can do any shopping you want from there.”
She looked like an Indian, and young for her job.
Their first stop was another XVIP room, for a little drink and a big talk.
May opened with, “So Connors is in charge of a secret society of beautiful women who have infiltrated the world.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“That was supposed to have been an absurd joke.”
“First it would have to be absurd. I’m guessing it’s inaccurate. I seriously doubt they have any influence in East Asia or the Moslem nations, except possibly Kuwait.”
“With a traditionalist emir in charge?”
“When did that happen?”
“Years ago. Do you ever watch the news?”
He thought about it. “Not on purpose. If I want to hear political propaganda I just tell a stranger I’m an American.”
May opened her mouth, closed it, and nodded. “Okay. But there’s still information you can sift out.”
“Don’t care; don’t care. Anything that affects me personally I can find on Lilith dot com. They let you decide for yourself what you want censored. I check that every day when I get home.”
“You missed the asteroid story.”
“I was distracted.”
Her smile was deservedly smug. “Sorry.”
“Are not.”
“No, I was being polite,” she agreed. “So he’s been using a nano to turn old women into beautiful young women, and he’s got fanatically loyal help wherever he needs it.”
“Maybe transsexuals too,” he said, thinking of the customs inspector. “Why make them look like Indians?”
“It’s good cover. Ever since JNAIT started up they’re everywhere.”
“Janet who?”
She glared at him. “Start watching the damn news! The Joint Negotiating Alliance of Indian Tribes. Jay-en-ay-eye-tee. Incorporated last year. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has been going nuts ever since. JNAIT has been in the World Court, suing to get the U.S. to adhere to its treaties or pay compensation. They’ve been recognized by practically everybody as a nation, got their own stamps and currency, for Christ’s sake.”
“What kind of population are we talking about here?”
“Something like a million original shareholders, with maybe a million more immigrants by now. Shareholders get paid dividends from corporate revenues, but immigrants get paid income from nonvoting shares they buy. There’s no income tax. Or any taxes.”
“Wow. I didn’t realize the casinos were that big—”
“I’m going to smack you in a minute! JNAIT owns pieces of businesses all over the world. Most of their revenue comes from running the waste recycling services in major cities of the U.S.”
“I thought that was a big Mob industry.”
“It was. JNAIT underbid everyone, and whenever they got turned down they published computer records that showed who was getting bribed … Oh my God, Connors is behind them. It’s so obvious.”
Toby nodded. “Everything the man did was always obvious afterward. He must have found everyone who was willing to go along with him, made them young again, then waited. He has to have started almost as soon as he left Watchstar.”
“You said he couldn’t make nanos himself.”
“He couldn’t. But the ones we made could make their own. They’d simply make nanos to order by following his instructions.” He clapped both hands to the sides of his skull. “That’s why he was working there in the first place! My God, the crazy sonofabitch was stealing wheelbarrows!”
“You keep calling him that. Didn’t you like him?”
“Sure. Calling him wha— Right. That’s what he called himself, a ‘crazy son of a bitch.’ After I listened to a few stories about his childhood—as few as possible, after the first—I had to agree on both counts. Incidentally, if we end up meeting him, do not mention mothers in any context.”
“What kind of stories?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“So why did I ask?”
“A merciful failure of imagination.”
“… Oh.” May tried to think of something else. “So much for his toolbox.”
“What?”
“You said manipulation wasn’t in it.”
Toby shrugged. “He was a minimalist. He did only use it once.”
* * *
On the way to their ride they almost passed a newsstand.
Toby stopped dead and turned to look at a headline.