Counting Heads

2.20

Arrow, Meewee said, where is Ellen?

I do not know, replied the mentar.

Meewee had gotten out of bed and put on house togs. He’d gone out to the living room again and sat in his favorite armchair. He felt light-headed, and his whole left arm tingled fiercely. Wee Hunk explained it as merely a side effect of his new brainlette temporarily hijacking the efferent pathways of his brachial nerves. It would pass.

Arrow, do you know how to find her?

Negative.

This isn’t working, Meewee complained.

Wee Hunk said, Let’s try something different. Talk to Arrow about anything except Ellen while at the same time you are thinking about finding her.

“Huh?”

An indirect approach, Merrill. Talk to it about an unrelated topic while thinking about Ellen.

About what topic?

For pity’s sake, use your imagination.

So Meewee nestled into the armchair and thought about Ellen’s head and where it might be at that moment and said, “What’s the time and temp?”

“Eighteen forty-six,” Arrow replied. “Twenty-eight degrees Centigrade outdoors and twenty-two degrees indoors.”

Meewee said, Well?

I didn’t hear anything.

I need a break.

Later! Wee Hunk snapped.

But Meewee ignored him and told Arrow to fetch a snack.

I HAVE AN idea, Meewee said, brushing crumbs from his togs. You and Arrow have challenged each other. I’ll have it challenge me.

Wee Hunk, who had reduced his display to a flat frame in order to conserve attention units, said, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.

Why not?

If it challenges you, and your ability to use Starkese is not up to the task, I frankly don’t know how it would react.

Let’s find out, Meewee said and told Arrow to challenge his identity.

Complying. “Myr Meewee, do you have a shipping address for your household goods, or shall I place them in storage?”

“In storage, I would suppose,” Meewee answered.

Immediately, the three Orange mechs raced into the living room and took up attack positions around Meewee’s head, so close he could feel the backwash of their wings and hear their tiny laser cannon powering up.

Don’t move a muscle, Wee Hunk said. I told you it was a dicey idea.

Meewee held his head perfectly still. A microcannon was aimed at each temple. Seconds dragged by, and then Arrow said, as though for the first time, “Myr Meewee, do you have a shipping address for your household goods, or shall I place them in storage?”

I suggest you get it right this time, Wee Hunk said.

A bead of sweat trickled down Meewee’s forehead. “I—uh—that is,” he began.

“My household goods—I mean—place my household goods—no wait—check that.” He shut his eyes and clenched his teeth.

Don’t try to think it, Wee Hunk prompted him. Just feel your undying loyalty to Eleanor and say whatever comes out of your mouth.

Meewee thought about Eleanor that morning at the board meeting, about the image of the tumbling yacht, about the Garden Earth Project and frozen colonists crossing the heliopause. “Storage,” he said. “Except for several changes of spring seasonal clothes and my ecumenical files.”

The cannon powered down, and the mechs flew away. Meewee gulped air. His heart rattled against his rib cage.

You are Merrill Meewee, Arrow said.

Excellent, said Wee Hunk. Maybe now we can get somewhere with this.

But they tried for another half hour with no success. Finally, Wee Hunk came up with a suggestion: Simply tell Arrow to tell you how to tell it in Starkese to locate Ellen’s head.

Meewee gave it a try. Arrow, tell me how to tell you in Starkese to locate Ellen’s head.

Arrow replied without hesitation, I feel like watching a vid or something, Arrow. Maybe the evening news. Find something interesting for me.

Meewee parroted the mentar, “I feel like watching a vid or something, Arrow. Maybe the evening news. Find something interesting for me.”

“Complying,” Arrow said, and the Orange mechs raced out of the apartment through the slugway.

Well, that got a response, Wee Hunk said, and what’s this?

A large spinning globe, as viewed from space, appeared in the middle of the living room. Around the globe’s equator hung sixteen satellites, attached to it with a web of strings. Meewee recognized them immediately as the Heliostream relay stations and the microbeams they directed at ground targets. As he watched, the microbeams, starting at the orbital stations, became coated with a silvery sheath that traveled down their length to the ground stations. At the ground, powdery clouds billowed up and spread out like ripples on a pond.

What is that stuff? Meewee said.

I don’t know yet. I’m sampling it via meteorological drones. It’s a kind of dust particle, streaming down the static flux of the beams. I can’t tell much more than that yet.

Over the next half hour, silver puddles spread outward across continents until they intersected with each other and merged. Meanwhile, clouds of the dust rose into the atmosphere and shrouded Earth in a silvery fog. The prevailing winds mixed and churned it up. It was denser in the temperate zones and almost absent at the poles.

Well?

I think it’s nust.

Which is?

Microscopic network repeater nodes. Nodal dust. Microscopic particles that link with all the particles around them.

I don’t understand, said Meewee. What do they do?

That’s all they do. Imagine if ten particles of nust landed on your hand and networked themselves. Anything that could read them would see a rough approximation of your hand in real time as it moved through space. Wait a few minutes until ten more particles landed and linked up. With every addition, the image of your hand gets sharper. Eleanor is coating every blessed thing on the face of Earth with interactive dust!

By now the entire globe, suspended in Meewee’s living room, was completely obscured by a bright cloud of churning nust. Meewee went to the skylight where the evening sky seemed a little more orange than usual, but nothing out of the ordinary. I can’t see it.

That’s because its density is only about twenty to forty micrograms per cubic meter, depending on latitude and altitude, less than common air pollution. I’m not sure what kind of picture resolution that would give you. But it seems to me it would take an incredible number of attention units to read it. A whole battalion of superluminaries.

Suddenly a pocket of nust at the equator flashed and seemed to liquify. The transformation raced around the globe until the planet seemed covered by a flood of swirling quicksilver.

They’ve just linked up, Wee Hunk said. Eleanor has just achieved the first global handshake. Shall we dive in and see if Arrow knows what it’s doing?

The caveman reached out his arms and pulled, like pulling an invisible rope. Meewee, in his armchair, did the same, and seemed to pull himself down toward the planetary surface. The Baja Peninsula appeared below him like a silver icicle. He pulled until he could distinguish the San Bernadino Mountains and Southern California. Aircraft disturbed enough nust in the atmosphere to be visible, but the resolution at ground level wasn’t high enough to make out anything smaller than a building.

Come down here, Wee Hunk said.

Down where?

Bolivia—the crash site.