Existence (29 page)

Well I’m a blue-nose gopher,
Hacker mused.

A number of dead or dying mullet still floated around. Hacker was only gradually recovering from his sense of astonishment, when one of his rescuers approached with a fish clutched in its jaws. It made offering motions …

Hacker remembered his own hunger.
It ought to taste like sushi,
he thought, realizing just how far he was from the ancestral-human world of cooking flames …

… and that brought on, unbidden, a sudden thought of his mother. Especially one time that Lacey had tried to explain her passionate interest in seeking other life worlds out there in space, spending half a billion dollars of her own money on the search.
“One theory holds that most Gaia-type planets out there ought to have even more surface area covered by ocean than Earth’s seventy percent, which could mean that creatures like brainy whales or squid are far more common than us hands-and-fire types. Which could help explain a lot.”

Hacker hadn’t paid close attention, at the time. That was her obsession, after all, not his. Still, he regretted not spending the time to listen and understand. Anyway, poor Lacey was probably worried sick, by now.

Focusing on the moment—and his hunger—he swam closer to the dolphin, reaching for the offered meal.

Only it yanked the fish back at the last moment, repeating a staccato beat of sound. Hacker quashed a resurgence of frustration and anger, even though it was hard.

“Try to stop, when you’re in danger of overreacting,”
his one-time therapist used to urge, before he fired her.
“Always consider a possibility—that there may be a reason for what’s happening. Something other than villainy.”

His implant repeated the rhythm, as the dolphin brought its jaw forward again, offering the juicy prize once more.

It’s trying to teach me,
he realized.

“Is that the pulse code for fish?” he asked, knowing the helmet would project his voice, but never expecting the creature to grasp spoken English.

To his amazement, the dolphin shook its head.

No.

Pretty emphatically no.

“Uh.” He blinked a few times, then continued. “Does it mean ‘food’? ‘Eat’? ‘Wash up before dinner’? ‘Welcome stranger’?”

An approving beat greeted his final guess, and the dolphin flicked the tooth-pocked mullet toward Hacker, who felt suddenly ravenous. He tore the fish apart, stuffing bits of it through his helmet’s narrow chowlock, caring very little about salt water squirting in, along with chunks of red flesh.

Welcome stranger?
he pondered.
That’s mighty abstract for a dumb beast to say. Though I’ll admit, it’s friendly.

ENTROPY

In his prescient novel
The Cool War,
Frederik Pohl showed a chillingly plausible failure mode, in which our nations and factions do not dare wage open conflict, and so settle upon tit-for-tat patterns of reciprocal
sabotage,
each attempting to ruin the other’s infrastructure and economy. Naturally, this sends civilization on a slow death spiral of degrading hopes.

Sound depressing? It makes one wonder—what fraction of the “accidents” that we see have nothing to do with
L
uck?

Oh sure, there are always conspiracy theories. Superefficient engines that were kept off the market by greedy energy companies. Disease cures, suppressed by profit-hungry pharmaceutical giants. Knaves, monopolists and fat cats who use intellectual property to repress knowledge growth, instead of spurring it on.

But those dark rumors don’t hold a candle to this one—that we’re sliding toward despair because all the efforts of good, skilled men and women are for naught. Their labors are deliberately spiked, because some ruling elites see themselves engaged in a secret struggle on our behalf. And this tit-for-tat, negative-sum game is all about the most dismal human pastime.

War.

—
Pandora’s Cornucopia

27.

EMISSARY

“We’ve reconsidered the matter, Lacey. Given that poor Hacker is still missing at sea, we should not impose on your time of worry. It won’t be necessary for you to fly to our upcoming meeting of the clade, so far away from the search for your son. We’ll manage, even though we’ll miss your wisdom in Zurich.”

I’ll bet,
Lacey thought, pondering the stately blonde who was portrayed seated in front of her, full-sized, through a top quality threevee holistube. Unlike their earlier exchange, back at the Chilean observatory, images now went both ways, between plush, high-security communications lounges in two far-apart branches of the Salamander Club—one of them perched high upon the Alps and the other here in Charleston, where magnolia scents wafted indoors on waves of sultry, junglelike heat, despite a double-seal entrance. Both rooms were decorated so similarly that the seam, separating real from depiction, was easy to ignore. It felt as if the women were chatting across a gap of two meters, not thousands of kilometers.

Security from eavesdropping came the same way as before—using twinned parrot brains as uncrackable encoding devices. Only now, the birds at each end were neuroplugged directly to elaborate transmission systems, allowing more sophisticated use of cephalo-paired encryption. This high-fidelity image helped Lacey read cues in the other woman’s expression. She didn’t need any sophisticated facial analysis program.

Sympathy is only an excuse, Helena. Deliberation is over. The peers have already reached a decision about the Prophet’s proposal, haven’t they? And you know it’s one I’d fuss about.

Testing that hypothesis, she ventured: “Maybe I should come anyway. I’ve hired skilled people to handle the rescue effort. If I hang around, I’ll just get in the way. Or else wilt in this damned humidity. A distraction might help pull my mind away from fretting—”

Transit delay was negligible as Helena duPont-Vonessen interrupted.

“Our thought exactly, dear. A diversion from worry may be just the thing. Hence, we do have a task for you. One that should engage your intellect far better than visiting a bunch of stodgy trillionaire gnomes.”
Helena smiled at her own disarming jest.
“Also, it will keep you much closer to the scene, in case the searchers find … in case they have need of you.”

Lacey felt her mind veer away from the icy place where she kept anguish over her missing son. That helped propel her the other way, into cool, analytical examination of Helena’s true meaning.

She doesn’t even suggest that I send a surrogate or representative to the meeting in Switzerland. She wants to deflect me to another topic altogether.

“Oh? And what task would you have in mind?” Lacey asked.

“To represent the First Estate—or, at least, our part of it—at the Artifact Conference in Washington. To be our eyes and ears, at this historic and disruptive event.

“After all, Lacey, isn’t this right up your alley? An abrupt culmination of everything you’ve dreamed about—contact with extraterrestrial life? Who, among all the members of our class, is better qualified to grasp the issues and implications?”

Lacey almost responded with irritation. Helena was offering her
boffin work …
almost like some big-domed hireling from the Fifth Estate.

Of course, it was also enticing.

Helena knows me. I’d love a chance to see this famous emissary probe from outer space.

But that wasn’t the point. Her aristocratic peers already had plenty of boffins hard at work on this very topic—either at the Artifact Conference in Washington or closely watching the data feeds—producing digested summaries and advice papers about the implications of an alien
Message in a Bottle
. Implications to the planet. To a teetering social compact. And to those sitting at the top of an unstable social pyramid.

They have decided already,
Lacey realized, interpreting plenty from the other woman’s terse wording and guarded visage.
This news of contact with an interstellar civilization must have tipped them over, uniting the leading families in consensus. They are just as upset and panic-ridden as those dopey demonstrators in a hundred cities, calling for the Livingstone Object to be destroyed.

Only, trillionaires didn’t join demonstrations. Lacey’s fellow patricians had other ways of taking action.

They’ve decided to join Tenskwatawa, the Prophet,
she realized.
And his Renunciation Movement.

Of course, she knew what that meant. Another surge in anti-intellectualism, fostered by populist politicians and mass media—at least, the portions that were controlled by two thousand powerful families. An ancient trick in the human playbook; get the masses lathered up in fear of “outsiders”—and what better outsiders than outright aliens? Whip up enough dread and the mob will gladly follow some elite, pledging fealty to men and women on horseback. Or yacht-back. Vesting them with power.

Lacey didn’t object to that part. Even before she met Jason, her parents and tutors had explained the obvious—that people aren’t naturally democratic.
Feudalism
was the prevalent human condition erupting in all eras and cultures, since history began to be recorded on clay tablets. Even in modern films and popular culture, the theme resonated. Millions who were descended from enlightenment revolutionaries, now devoured tales about kings, wizards, and secret hierarchies. Superheroes and demigods. Celebrities, august families, and inherited privilege.

This campaign in the media went way back. Subsidized court sages, from Confucius to Plato to Machiavelli, from Leni Riefenstahl to Hannah Niti, all warned against mob rule, preaching for noble authoritarianism. In his one and only book—circulated only within the clade—Jason compiled convincing arguments for
newblesse oblige …

… though Lacey still wondered, now and then. Would either of them have found the case so compelling, if they weren’t already members of the topmost caste? The platonic crust?

Oh, no question, the species and planet would be better off guided by a single aristocracy, than by a fractious horde of ten billion short-tempered, easily-frightened “citizens” armed with nuclear and biological weapons.
Government-by-the-people
wasn’t her reason for being in love with the Enlightenment. Democracy was an unfortunate and potentially toxic side effect of the thing she really valued.

The peers think they’ll use Tenskwatawa as a tool to regain control. But this new wave of populist conservatism … this Renunciation Movement … is no brainless reflex, like in the century’s early years. No spasm of rural religiosity, easily steered by plutocrat puppeteers. Not this time. Nor will the Prophet’s followers be satisfied with just lip service to their cause. Not anymore.

Though it had only been a few seconds, Helena grew visibly uncomfortable with Lacey’s thoughtful pause.

“So, will you do this for us? We’ll supply whatever staff and ai resources you’ll need, of course.”

“Of course. And that would include—?”

“Well. All the linguistic feeds and any experts you desire.”

“And simulation tools? For projection-analysis of social repercussions, all that?”

“Absolutely, the very best available.”

Really?
It was all Lacey could do, not to arch an eyebrow skeptically.
The latest versions that you and the inner circle use?

Anyone outside of the clade—which meant 99.9996 percent of humanity (almost exactly)—would have called Lacey part of any “inner circle.” It went beyond mere wealth and its ability to buy influence. Family also mattered. Especially as the generation of self-made moguls in China, Russia, and the Americas departed, leaving their fortunes to privilege-born heirs, letting the old logic of
bloodlines
reassert itself. And yet, Lacey knew—despite her marriage to Jason, and the way her own parents helped stave off the Bigger Deal—even those ties never guaranteed real power. Or being truly in the know.

You still wondered, always—
who are the real Illuminati? Those who know the really big secrets? The fellows who have the dirt and can blackmail even the most idealistic politicians. Those discreetly pulling strings and playing the world’s people—yes, including me—like pieces on a chessboard?

Does even Helena wonder about that?

When it came to most of the scions, princes, sheiks, and neolords whom Lacey knew—many of them convinced they were high intellects, because sycophants had flattered them and given them high marks at Oxbridge—well, one had to hope and pray that none of
them
was a secret string puller! Surely, any cabal of aristocratic titans ought to be smarter, by far.

Could it be that they don’t exist? Perhaps every part of the aristocracy thinks that someone else is really guiding affairs?

Lacey wasn’t sure which possibility felt more frightening. A cryptic superelite of mighty meddlers, working their will beyond her sight … or else that things actually were as they seemed, a mélange of cartels and “Estates,” of impudent guilds and impotent legacy nations, plus a bewildering fog of “smart” citizen-mobs and ephemerally frightening ais … all desperately tugging at the tiller, with the result that no one was really steering the ship. Nobody at all.

She answered, carefully.

“Hm. I … suppose some top ai tools would help. Can I access the Quantum Eye in Riyadh?”

Helena blinked, shifting back in her chair. This request went a bit further than diverting one crackpot old lady from bigger matters.

“I … I can approach the Riyadhians. Though, as you know, they tend to be a bit—”

“Suspicious? But aren’t they fully committed members of our clade? So, if there’s consensus that my mission is important—”

She left the sentence hanging. And it worked. Helena nodded.

“I don’t expect that will be a problem, Lacey. My factotum will contact yours about details. Only now, I am so sorry, but I must run. The Bogolomovs are arriving, and you know how much they love ceremony. They actually think they’re czars or boyars or something, complete with a family tree made of fairy dust and forged DNA!”