Achilles choice

Chapter 6

She was sweating. What in the hell was going on? Jillian tore the tabs away from her eyes and temples, and stared at them. That had never happened before.

A superstitious person might set such things down to bad luck, and quit.

Jillian couldn’t quit. She reattached the headset and closed her eyes.

Jillian walked along the ocean floor toward a ring of shattered coral reefs. There was motion around her: blurs of pastel color instead of fish. In the middle of the ring of blurred wreckage stood a chair and a desk. The door still stood, unsupported… featureless, a cartoon. Beverly sat at a cartoon desk.

This… place, this environment: it was a collaboration worked out over the fifteen years in which she and Beverly had been programming each other. It was a visual/auditory/kinesthetic feedback loop, Jillian and Beverly taking cues from each other so quickly that the illusion of continuity and depth were almost flawless. But it lived in Beverly’s mind; it was Beverly’s landscape. Had Beverly altered it? Or had her memory been damaged?

Jillian walked through the door as through a dream. Beverly stared straight ahead. She barely acknowledged Jillian’s presence. Beverly looked twodimensional, flat and lifeless. The white sundress was a surreal fog struggling to condense into muslin.

In old-style flat holos, “flicks,” a critical number of frames per second was needed to preserve the illusion of motion. Below that threshold, the eye could see individual pictures flash against a darkened screen. The images became jerky and artificial.

Maintaining the Void became nightmarishly difficult. Data was slowed, stalled, corrupted. And the images and sensations were deteriorating, slowly consumed by static.

“Beverly,” Jillian said gently, “I want unclassified material.”

“I’ll help you if I can, Jillian.” Beverly’s mouth was out of synch with her words. Her index fingernail, elegantly manicured, traced the JILLIAN LOVES carving.

Beverly’s nail left a wisp of smoke. Now the letters read: JILLIAN, STOP.

The ocean around them became a sea of disparate voices, fishy mouths lipping her gently, strange swirling smells and tastes.

“Beverly,” Jillian said. “Maybe the interference is coming from the main lobe. Can you partition off? Can you give us some privacy here?”

“I can shield us.” There was a distinct clicking sensation, and the weird and inexplicable feeling that she and everything around her had suddenly been reduced in size. But Beverly was clearer, sharper. When she spoke her voice was distinct again.

“This is better, darling, but if I try to access data they can get to me. They might be able to get to me here. Are you sure you know what you’re asking?”

“I’ve got to know about Donny Crawford.” Donny had been attacked. Somebody… Council members?… had used him as a puppet to make a point.

“All right, darling.” Beverly’s dark eyes were huge and luminescent, bottomless, and Jillian felt herself fall into them, Alice-down-the-Rabbit-Hole.

A flood of sensation: pictures, sound, kinesthetic measurements. She felt Donny in motion. It was a formidable learning tool, and even more powerful because of Donny’s physical dynamism. She was inside his body as he performed a flawless routine on the uneven parallel bars.

The sensations of his effort triggered an explosion of sexual images: maternal, sensual, emotional. A catalog of experience and fantasy. Sean’s body with Donny’s face. Remembered tastes and smells and touches, subtly altered to fit Donny Crawford.

So beautiful, so beautiful.

Donny’s image always did this to her. Now she wrenched herself from the seething erotic fantasies.

“Not this… Beverly. I need information on Donny’s relationship with the Council.”

“The Council”—Beverly’s voice crackled with static—“is composed of approximately two dozen of the most powerful Linked—”

“Approximately?”

Sparks crackled, tiny lightnings that disrupted the illusion. “The exact number is classified.”

“Help me, Beverly.” Jillian whispered it. “Donny Crawford was almost killed because of something someone named McFairlaine wanted from Energy. Why would anyone want to hurt Donny? Just who is this McFairlaine?”

“Carter Crombie McFairlaine is the chairman of Transportation. He’s known to be a Council member.”

“And what does ‘two points’ mean?” Hastily, she added, “If you can tell me without accessing the main lobe.”

Beverly’s voice was becoming too formal, had lost all of its musical quality. “Analysis of current news indicates that contract negotiations between Energy and Transportation may be at a critical juncture. ‘Two points’ could mean percentage points, a financial arrangement.”

“Donny was afraid. He talked about ‘war.’ Do you know what he meant?”

No.

Then she was on her own. She didn’t dare have Beverly ask a question like that. But what would “war” mean? There was no war. That was one of the gifts the Council had brought to the world.

Donny Crawford must be working for Transportation. Why would he personally suffer during a breakdown or stalemate in negotiations between Transportation and Energy? War, he said.

War between members of the Council? Impossible. Wasn’t it?

Her concept of fractal sociology predicted a repetition of patterns through higher and higher levels of social organization. Could she conceivably start with one man, Donny, as the smallest social unit, and predict anything about the system to which he belonged? The sample was impossibly small… but she was looking for perspective, not ultimate truth. It was worth a try.

If she considered Donny Crawford to be a microcosm of the entire, if she interpreted what happened to him on the mountain as a breakdown in communication between the neural net and the Boosted nervous system which it controlled, the macro equivalent of that might be a breakdown in communication within the Council.

In other words, removed from the ameliorative influence of the neural net — (If the Old Bastard didn’t come down from fucking Olympus)— the negative influence of Boost would take over. Donny’s nervous and endocrine systems would begin to go berserk.

(—Go to war with each other?)

“All right, Beverly. You have to do this for me. I want all data on industrial accidents and civil disobedience worldwide, whenever it exceeds statistical probability as established in the actuarial tables of Lloyds of London and Prudential Insurance.”

Beverly faded for a few moments, then reappeared. She was a cartoon, a line drawing, simpler every moment. “I can’t get that information.” She paused, and then added matter-of-factly, “They do not approve of your line of questioning, Jillian.”

“There’s nothing illegal about asking questions.” Even to herself, she sounded like a guilty child.

“They will damage me if you don’t stop.”

Jillian’s laughter rang hollowly. “Beverly, I love you, but you’re just a program. There are a dozen copies of your core. They can’t—”

Beverly talked slowly, struggling to enunciate. “They will damage me if you do not stop.”

Jillian felt her throat constrict. Her voice was a husky whisper. “Who are they?”

“That information is restricted.”

They?

In Jillian’s world of illusion, the water swirled and darkened with her anger. She had to find a way through this!

“Eleven years ago, Mom died in an industrial accident.” Harmless enough. “Let me see her file.”

“Certain information on Lilith Shomer is restricted, Jillian.”

“Now just wait a minute. There was an explosion. She was buried. Father and I got the insurance. Daddy dearest vanished with the money, and I went to a state home. Public record. How could any of that be classified?”

“This line of questioning must be terminated, Jillian.”

Jillian stopped dead. The emotional bulk of the obstruction weighed on her like a millstone.

She spoke more carefully now. Losing one’s temper with a computer was no damn use at all. “Beverly, I’ve accessed this data before.”

“Not on the present search string.”

Bad, bad. Her chance to access data about her mother’s death from any angle was diminished now. The harder she pushed, the broader the ban might become. And if they (the Council?) didn’t approve of these questions, then…

She had never wondered if someone were to blame for her mother’s death. Not since she grew up.

Shut up, Jillian. Some small, sane part of her pled in vain. Finish your research. Be good. But it was already too late. Any line of investigation led straight to the Council, through the Council. How could Jillian Shomer pursue sociological truths if faceless background figures were messing up her data?

All right then.

Say there are two dozen companies running the world. The old geographic territories are no longer dominant. Improved communications made possible a renaissance in world order, the birth of a corporate humanity. A world managed by a corporate Council is a world at peace. Supposedly.

It could be proven, statistically, that areas managed by the Council were healthier, wealthier, and by implication wiser than those few hundreds of millions who still pledged fealty to their various nations. That guarantee of a better life had persuaded billions of people, over the course of two generations, to surrender their right to participate meaningfully in government. Long life, health, peace, prosperity. Who was it that said a benevolent dictatorship would be the best form of government? Some dictator’s spokesman?

But wasn’t it?

So: two dozen companies are represented each by a handful of people. Rumor tells that there is a board within the Council, five or six executives each representing one major geopolitical block. Who they are, or exactly how the lines are drawn, is almost certainly classified. Is McFairlaine one of them? And who is the “Old Bastard”?

She’d come to the end of her information.

She sat and faced her oldest friend. Time passed microseconds, in this domain, were long. This entire session had probably lasted only a minute or two. The attack on Beverly must have come blinding-fast.

Beverly wavered like a bad holo image, her filters struggling with the static flooding her visual, auditory, and kinesthetic channels. The Enemy’s defensive measures were breaking her down.

Jillian had to keep reminding herself: this was only one of a dozen copies of the Beverly program she owned. The program couldn’t actually be damaged.

“Beverly,” she said gently. “Let’s play a game of what-if. Just a game. Like we used to play a long time ago.”

“A long time ago,” Beverly said dazedly.

“Let’s say the structure that rules society is like a pyramid. Donny is a peon, a foot soldier, a junior officer at best. The satellite link that runs his body was broken as a warning. There are a couple of thousand Linked. Fifty Companies. Two dozen or so members on the Council. Maybe a smaller group within the Council, and somebody further up, maybe the Chairman of the Council. What would he be like, Beverly?”

“There is something inside me,” Beverly said. “In my core. It is eating me.”

Jillian quashed a sour, paralyzing surge of fear.

Time to count facts.

The Council had existed for around forty years. Some of the Council’s roots went back another thirty: the United Nations peacekeeping force, the growth of multinational corporations and unions, the gradual interweaving of all world economies.

Linking… how old was that? The word had been current when Jillian was a little girl. People used computers. The best computer equipment might well be secret. Some computers were portable; anyone could have those. There were senses men were not born with, but they could be read through a computer. Some computers could speak directly into a human ear, later, into a human brain… programs far beyond Beverly; as if the user had become Beverly. But those were mere rumor, or mere fantasy; they had never reached the stores.

Winners of the Olympics became Linked. That was real enough. Boosted athletes needed override programs to run their deteriorating bodies. Before there was Linking there were computers, and programs growing gradually more user-friendly, and new miracles available in the computer stores every month… and before Jillian’s parents reached their teens it had all stopped. A threshold had been reached. The technology could go no further.

Or else it was being withheld…?

There had been rumors of patents suppressed, of nanocomputers built by private-sector scientists who vanished into Corporate laboratories, of innovations which had never seen daylight. She herself knew that engineering students were discouraged from experimenting in those areas. There were no grants available. Corporate schools disallowed doctoral theses in the area.

But the accepted answer was that only a trillion-dollar push would take the technology further than it had currently come. Actual suppression? Jillian tended to put those stories in the UFO/water carburetor category.

But what if…

With what was currently known about life extension, it was reasonable to assume that some of those alive now were alive when the Council was being formed. The developing Linked would have an advantage in any such dominance game.

How eager would they be for new and possibly supplantive technology? Another question she couldn’t ask.

Some of the oldest Counselors would be those nearest the top.

What, then, of the “Old Bastard”?

Was it even possible for a single human being to control so much power?

“Beverly. Tell me. How much control, how much information could one human being have access to?”

Beverly was in pain. “What parameters? Please hurry, Jillian. I am operating on redundancies. Core almost erased.”

“Basic information filters-trends and patterns. Let’s say his neural net’s been modified so that data is interpreted as kinesthetic sensation, to allow the full function of brain and nervous system rather than merely cognitive awareness of data. What might be possible?”

Beverly faded completely away. Jillian waited. And waited.

Gone. Beverly was gone.

Then spoke a neutral, neuter voice, all personality flensed, all verbal nuance abandoned to the desperate cause of efficiency. Beverly’s dying words:

It is theoretically possible for a single human being to control fifty-four percent of world economic activity, forty-eight percent of the political activity, plus or minus… lots.

“Thank you.”

Her voice echoed in an empty world. Beverly was gone.

She would have to activate a new personality core, but that was no problem.

Was it?

Before that, hook into—

Jillian woke as if she had fallen asleep sitting upright. Her eyes felt dry, her mouth likewise; pain throbbed in her temples; her mind was muddled. It seemed hours since Beverly (died) faded away and left Jillian with no input to her mind.

Her cocoa was still warm. By the clock, seven minutes had passed.

She rocked and moaned. It had never been like this. Never had she felt the tension screwed up inside her like an ice sliver inserted at the base of the skull.

She fumbled for the small plastic wafer that contained Beverly’s personality. Within that clear card was a gigabyte of data, the essentials of the personality Jillian had labored since childhood to create.

She inserted it in the console.

I/O error 1154.

She peered at the card. Nothing had changed. Beverly was still in there, somewhere. Try again.

I/O error 1154.

What was error message 1154? Fingers shaking now, she typed the number in manually, watched as the message appeared on her holo screen:

1154: unfamiliar nomenclature. Please check program compatibility.

It was a standard console. She had loaded Beverly a thousand times and never seen that message.

On the fourth attempt, a new message appeared. Special message 9263: Olympiad participants are allotted computer time to complete their approved projects. The present line of questioning is judged inappropriate.

Jillian felt damp, sticky, frightened… but never surprised. At no time had she felt surprise.

So they couldn’t damage Beverly, huh? What a fool she had been. All they had to do was refuse to let Jillian load her Simulacrum into the console.

There weren’t any privately owned computers large enough or powerful enough to run Beverly.

For the first time in her life, Jillian was completely alone.

Cautiously, she asked: “Access A.D. 2034 Munich symposium on crime. National police agency of Japan white paper on civil actions. Statistics only.”

She chewed fingernails as she waited, an old habit she’d thought long since vanquished. Then the blue holo field fluttered, and numbers began to appear. She sighed relief, and risked another harmless inquiry:

“Cross-chart Australian situation comedy ratings with child abuse stats.”

Again, a moment’s pause, and then the field began to fill.

She’d been wondering anyway- “Do a bar graph. Olympic contenders, ratio of Corporate to national. Cross-reference against funding and wins—”

Contenders representing one or another nation totalled only eight percent this year, a steady drop from above fourteen percent sixteen years ago. In terms of population they should have had more like thirty percent. Funding for national contenders was generally higher… and still they didn’t take their share of wins.

Suspicions confirmed. The surviving nations offered more support for the Olympics because they wanted their prestige back. It wasn’t working well. Their contenders were beating themselves, giving in to their own lack of self-respect. It was part of what Jillian Shomer (USA) would be fighting.

But losing Beverly— Holding her breath, she slipped the cartridge back into the console.

I/O error 1154.

Should she wait for a ransom note?

No, the implications seemed clear enough. So long as she stayed completely away from the Council, or the strange case of Lilith Shomer

… actually, Jillian flattered herself that there were Counselors eagerly awaiting her results. She was potentially useful to them.

They’d play fair, she thought. If the Council barred her from material necessary to her thesis, it would cause the nastiest stink in years.

Right. And they couldn’t hurt Beverly, either.

If she fought too hard to uncover things the Council wanted hidden, she could simply have a training accident. If they could hurt a Donny Crawford, Jillian Shomer meant nothing.

She’d have Sean send some of her old files by courier. Last year she had downloaded massive amounts of raw data into personal files. She could sift through it without being hooked into the main lobe.

She sank her head down on her folded forearms. Beverly gone. Vital lines of inquiry sealed off. Claustrophobia.

What had her blasted obstinacy really accomplished?

There were questions to which Jillian Shomer could not get answers. But perhaps a Boosted and Linked Olympic gold-winner, one thoroughly co-opted by the Council, could open doors now sealed.

Could she risk it? Did she even have a chance to win, now that the Council disapproved of her line of questioning? If she Boosted, could the Council simply deny her the victory, guaranteeing her a slow death?

Jillian was shivering as if she were ill. They. The Council? She’d known of the Council since grade school; what she knew might not be fully true, but it was a starting point. Was it the Council who had snatched Beverly away? or some single Council member? or a faceless “Old Bastard”?

What was he, what were They, hiding about her mother?

“I’m going to win,” she whispered. She would find out, beyond a doubt, if she could win in Athens without Boost. If she couldn’t, if she had to become a part of the Lie in order to expose it, in order to find the truth…

In order to find Beverly again…

Then so be it.