Echoes of Earth (25 page)

As she passed the drinks cabinet, she leaned over and removed a bottle of the Scotch Shalhoub liked so much.

It was an excellent copy of aged Glenfiddich, its replication accurate down to the individual molecules. What he didn’t know was that some of those complex and very large flavor molecules had been altered to react with the otherwise harmless bacteria living in his remote’s gut. And by the time he realized that something was wrong, it would be too late.

* * *

Hatzis lunged to catch the remote as it fell, but her response
was too slow, and it hit the floor with a sickening thud, barely missing the edge of the desk.

“That was a bit close, Caryl.” The voice of Matilda Sulich came from out of nowhere, emanating from a point somewhere above Hatzis’s head. It was the voice of a woman who had once been physically very large, and she retained much of that subtle resonance in her new form. “Literally cracking open his skull wouldn’t have done us any good at all.”

Hatzis ignored the jibe; there wasn’t time for small talk. “Two minutes,” she said, rounding the desk and straightening Shalhoub’s remote lying on the floor. “That’s all we’ve got.”

“I’m aware of the time restriction,” Sulich returned soberly. “Do you have the lace?”

Hatzis didn’t reply. She was already reaching into her hemline for the silken web masquerading as cotton. It squirmed in her fingers as she tugged it free. Colored lines and glowing points danced across her vision as the lace’s instruction manual showed her how to position it over the remote’s head. It was harder than she’d imagined it would be. The living, semisentient machine woven into the threads wouldn’t distinguish between her or the remote until she had targeted the remote’s modified genome. It wrapped itself around her fingertips like overcooked vermicelli, then sprang free when she gave the command.

The living cobwebs spread across Shalhoub’s lined face and settled in. Within seconds, the web was invisible, sinking between the cells of the dermis and deeper into the flesh surrounding his skull.

She squatted on her haunches. “He’s going to notice it.”

“Not in time.”

She checked again. One minute fifty had already passed; half a minute to go. The seconds were flying by too fast, she thought. There wasn’t going to be time to—

“Got it!” Sulich’s triumphant whisper brought Hatzis forward on her knees. “Your most concerned expression, please, dear.”

Hatzis frowned and held her breath. If Sulich had done her job right, she had pinpointed the locations in the remote’s artificial brain where Sel Shalhoub’s resident memory was stored. It was frozen in limbo for the moment, and therefore unreadable, but it would become active again once the body recovered from its sudden breakdown and the greater Shalhoub regained contact with it. There would be a moment—fleetingly brief—in which those memories would be vulnerable. Ordinarily, they wouldn’t be. Ordinarily, the security provided by the Vincula for its Urges would be sufficient to keep any intrusion at bay. But not this time; not with the neural lace working for them.

She started when his eyes suddenly opened, then cursed herself for acting so suspiciously. She put as much sincerity in her voice as she could. “Sel? Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

He didn’t move, except to frown. “Caryl? What happened?”

Keep him talking, not thinking, while the rest of him catches up,
she told herself. “I don’t know. One moment you were drinking, the next...” She shrugged.

A smile broke out across his face. “I see,” he said, laughing. “Congratulations, Caryl. You got me.”

It died abruptly before her eyes, security catching up to the situation hot on Shalhoub’s heels. The remote’s brain was fried by a blast of internal electricity, making its nostrils smoke and its hair jump. A smell like crushed ants issued from it as a massive release of apoptosis-inducing chemicals spread through its tissues. Cells committed suicide instantly in their billions, including the all-important neurons in its brain.

“
Fuck!
” She backed away from the malodorous corpse. “Did you get it?”

“Some,” said Sulich. “But not all.”

“Was it enough though?”

“Give me a moment,” she said calmly.

Despite her impatience, Hatzis didn’t push the matter. Sulich sounded quietly pleased, and that was a good sign. Hatzis had no doubt that, had they failed, as they had twice before on other targets, Sulich would have been quick to point it out. Getting top-strata information out of the Vincula wasn’t easy, and security was tough if caught in midattack. While there was still a chance the breach could be sealed, the Vincula fought back with all the violence and temerity of antibodies attacking a virus. On their previous attempts, she and Sulich had been lucky to get away unscathed.

At least she didn’t have to worry about security reprisals. Remotes like Shalhoub’s were cheap, throwaway components; the Urges probably went through dozens every year. And information was leaky stuff; despite every effort to contain it, with or without help, it invariably got out. The Vincula was resigned to a certain amount of loss each year. The trick was to make sure the right data slipped out at the right time.

She forced herself to try to relax and not concentrate on the possible consequences of what she had just done. Even if they had been caught in the attempt and had their bodies or patterns scrambled, it would have meant as little to them as the stunt did to the Vincula. But Hatzis was superstitious about losing her original body; it had sentimental significance, if nothing else. The irony that it was the part of her most likely to take part in something like this wasn’t lost on her.

“Okay,” said Sulich. “We have resource estimates, completion dates, media releases, policy guidelines... no damage rates or shortfalls... no error calculations... no contingency plans... We have final design tolerances, but I don’t know what good they’re going to do us. Anyone could work them out.”

Hatzis stood up and dusted herself down. She was still patched into the simulation she and Sulich had prepared for Shalhoub: a bright green projection of what the Frame would look like in thirty years, with the Shell Proper stretched over it like a sail. This image would have been enough to trigger the download of more information from his wider self into the remote. That’s when they had Scotched him, when the information was in his head and ripe for the plucking. Or so they’d hoped.

“That’s it? Nothing any more sensational than that?”

“Nothing, I’m afraid. He was smarter than we gave him credit for; either that or he was simply thinking about something else. There is a lot of other stuff in here... Sulich’s voice faded as she sifted through more of the dead remote’s memory. To her, Hatzis knew, this sort of work was a game, albeit one to be taken very seriously. She had no body or reputation to lose. She wouldn’t be dogged by well-wishing types on both sides of the divide wanting to know what she was up to. Matilda Sulich was one of the last truly independent activists in the system, and notorious for it, which is why she and Hatzis worked so well together.

Chaos and control.
Hatzis had programmed her dress with that theme in mind before coming to the party. Whether the venue, which had allowed her the use of the study for the evening, had suspected or would even care after the fact, she didn’t know.

“I’m going out to mingle,” she said. “People will be starting to wonder what’s going on.”

“You plan to tell them?”

“Of course. We’d be hypocrites, otherwise.”

Sulich chuckled. “If I find anything more sensational, I’ll let you know.”

* * *

The party was beginning to peak when she slipped out of
the study and poured herself a drink. Someone had resurrected an old 3-D Dean Martin simulation. It was warbling something about memories as she went out onto the balcony.

JORIS, still female and holding court under a swaying palm tree silhouetted against a simulated orange sunset, raised an eyebrow when she stepped out into the night air.

“I hear you’ve been busy, Caryl.”

Hatzis shrugged and halfheartedly toasted the
merge’
s observance. “I’m not going to deny you the pleasure of confirming what you’ll know soon enough, so... yes. We cracked Sel Shalhoub.”

“And here I was thinking you were after me.” The
merge
smiled. “Matilda is aiming high, this time.”

That stung. She opened her mouth to protest that it wasn’t entirely Sulich’s plan; that she, Hatzis, had been part of the conspiracy, too. But she reined in her emotions. Sulich provided the notoriety and expertise that made their work together successful, even if only to a small degree so far; without her, Hatzis would have gotten nowhere, so it seemed churlish to argue about it in public. And that was, probably, what JORIS was trying to provoke.

“No secrets,” she said with a brief smile.

“Ah, yes, the slogan. And what did you learn this time?”

“We’ll let you know.”

“No doubt.”

She joined another group, where a narrative designer by the name of Lancia Newark was holding court. The ND was unique in the sense that she had two remotes at the party; having stated publicly that conversation was getting progressively more boring the older she became, she had to back it up by keeping herself company wherever she went. But then, Hatzis reminded herself, everyone was unique in some way or another, these days. They might lump themselves in with the Vincula or the Gezim or go it alone as Hatzis and Sulich preferred, but in the end, all those who had survived the Spike were following their own muse. All were free to do what they wished, virtually or in reality. This didn’t necessarily mean that people would not act in concert when they desired to; the Shell Proper was the greatest evidence thus far that emergent properties such as cooperation and common vision could exist in this new scheme, and not even Hatzis could argue with that. Still, the great irony—that the Vincula was humanity’s greatest achievement as much as it threatened to become its ultimate downfall—haunted Hatzis in all her povs. Freedom always carried a price, and sometimes she felt that of the 3,472,803 individual humans still legally living in Sol System, she alone was concerned about when and how that price would have to be repaid.

The Newark stunt held her attention for a while, and she was relieved not to have to endure examination from JORIS or any other inquisitive mind, for that matter. The sad thing was that most people wouldn’t genuinely care if she had cracked Shalhoub’s remote, or even if the Vincula had a thousand secrets they were keeping from the rest of humanity. That was her particular uniqueness and her lasting regret.

“I’ve found something interesting,” said Sulich into her head. “There’s been another Discord.”

“What’s that, Mati?”

“In McKirdy’s Machine. Another signal. This time they’re sure it’s a transmission. They’ve got it under wraps for the moment while they translate it.”

She frowned. “I thought they couldn’t—”

“The first time the Machine wasn’t tuned the right way. So they adjusted it in case another one came through. And it did, barely two hours ago.”

Hatzis wandered away from the gathering so she could think more clearly. She felt the rest of herself gathering around her angels’ wings. “Maybe this was what Sel was thinking about,” she said, remembering the conversation she had shared with him earlier. Perhaps it hadn’t been idle chitchat after all.

“It seems likely,” said Sulich. “There are links to other sources. Some of them are still open. Very sloppy.” She sounded almost displeased that the Vincula security wasn’t tighter, and Hatzis found herself silently concurring with the sentiment. There was nothing worse than a careless opponent—except, perhaps, no opponent at all. “They don’t know where this transmission came from, either, but it doesn’t appear to be directional. Whoever it came from, they’re spraying the sky with it.”

That sounded like a beacon more than anything else. “Is it closer? Farther away?”

“It’s stronger, which suggests that it might be closer. No one knows at this point.”

Hatzis imagined an alien ship broadcasting for help, drifting out of control toward Sol. Part of her was excited by the thought; another part was terrified. What could the Vincula do if anything massive, traveling at relativistic speeds, were to strike the Frame? The shock wave would be enough to tear the structure apart, along with the Shell Proper. Decades of hard work could be unraveled in an instant. Whether she agreed with its existence or not, it would still be a shame.

But the implications of the discovery weren’t her immediate concerns. The information itself was the priority.

“What can we do with it?” she asked.

“I’m circulating it as we speak.” Sulich sounded distracted, a rare thing, since she hardly ever approached her processing capacity, even with all her povs. No doubt she was opening thousands of communication channels, talking simultaneously to as many people as possible. “This is a live one, Caryl. They won’t be able to plug it up in time, so I expect them to take the wraps off at any moment now.”

“They probably would have anyway,” said Hatzis.

“Don’t be so sure. These days, two hours is a long time to keep anything new a secret, so they must’ve been trying hard. I think they would’ve kept it that way until someone noticed what they were doing—which we did. And that’s good enough for me.”

Success?
Hatzis glanced back at JORIS and the Newarks and toasted the illusory moon with a glass of champagne. Success at this stage of her life would be welcome indeed. She had been looking for direction since the novelty of passing her one hundredth birthday had turned into irrational dread of her looming one hundred fiftieth; not even the promise of immortality could take the sting out of getting older.

But the champagne tasted bitter as it went down, and she knew she was probably kidding herself. Wherever this led, she doubted it would be to her advantage. There were too many higher forces at play. The original Caryl Hatzis was under no illusion that to the Vincula as a whole, their work constituted little more than a nuisance. Hardly the sort of thing one would be pleased to put on a CV... or a headstone, for that matter.