Singularity Sky

A Semiotic War

The Admiral was having a bad day.

“Damn your eyes, man, g-g-get your hands off me!” he croaked at his batman. Robard ignored him and carried on lifting; Kurtz’s frail body wasn’t capable of resisting as he sat the old man up and plumped up the pillows behind him. “I’ll have you taken out and shot!”

“Certainly, sir. Would that be before or after breakfast?”

The Admiral growled, deep in the back of his throat, then subsided into a rasping pant. “‘M’not well.

Not like I used to be. Dammit, I hate this!”

“You’re getting old, sir. Happens to us all.”

“Not that blas-asted Terran attache, dammit. He doesn’t get old. I remember him back on Lamprey.

Took lots of daguerreotypes of me standing by a hill of skulls we built in the public square of New Bokhara. Had to do something with the rebel prisoners, after all, no Jesus to make the quartermaster’s loaves go further, ha-ha. Said he’d hang me, but never got around to it, the bastard. Wry cove, that wet fish. Could have sworn he was a female impersonator. What d’ye think, Kurt? Is he a shirt-lifter?” Robard coughed and slid a bed table bearing cup of weak tea and a poached egg on toast in front of the Admiral. “The UN inspector is a lady, sir.”

Kurtz blinked his watery eyes in astonishment. “Why, bless my soul — what a surprise!” He reached for the teacup, but his hand was shaking so much he could barely lift it without slopping the contents. “I thought I knew that,” he accused.

“You probably did, sir. You’ll feel better after you’ve taken your medicine.”

“But if he’s a girl, and he was at First Lamprey, that means—” Kurtz looked puzzled. “Do you believe in angels, Robard?” he asked faintly.

“No, sir.”

“Well, that’s alright then, she must be a devil. Can deal with those, y’know. Where’s my briefing?”

“I’ll fetch it right after your breakfast, sir. Commodore Bauer said to tell you he’s looking after everything.”

“Jolly good.”

Kurtz concentrated on assaulting his egg. Presently, when he had accepted its surrender, Robard removed the table. “We’d better get you dressed and up, sir. Staff meeting in thirty minutes.” Thirty-five minutes later, the Admiral was ready to meet his staff in the huge conference room adjoining his suite. Donning a uniform and taking his medication seemed to have removed a decade from his shoulders; he shuffled into the room under his own power, leaning heavily on his canes, although Robard discreetly helped when the Admiral tried to return the assembled officers’ salute (and nearly caught a walking stick in one eye).

“Good evening, gentlemen,” began the Admiral. “I gather the rail packet has been me — I’m sorry. I gather the r-r — mail packet has been received. Lieutenant Kossov. What word of our dispatches?”

“Er—” Kossov looked green. “We have a problem, sir.”

“What do you mean, a problem?” demanded the Admiral. “We’re not supposed to have problems — that’s the enemy’s job!”

“There was a stack of twenty disks in the time capsule—”

“Don’t give me disks, give me answers! What word of the enemy?” Commodore Bauer leaned forward. “I think what the Lieutenant is trying to say,” he interrupted, “is that the dispatches were damaged.” Kossov eyed the Commodore with embarrassingly transparent gratitude.

“That’s exactly right, sir. The private mail was intact, for the most part, but there was damage to the time capsule at one side — a micrometeoroid impact — and three of the disks were fragmented. We’ve retrieved a partial copy of a tenth of our orders from the remaining disks, but most of what came through consists of supply manifests for the quartermaster and a suggested menu for the Emperor’s Birthday Commemoration Dinner. No details of the enemy, order of battle, force dispositions, diplomatic analysis, intelligence, or anything remotely useful. It’s all shattered.”

“I see.” The Admiral looked deceptively calm; Kossov quailed. “So our intelligence about the enemy disposition is absent. Ah, that-t makes life easier.” He turned to Bauer. “Then we shall have to proceed in accordance with Plan B in order to accomplish a successful attack! Every man shall do his duty, for right is on our side. I ex-expect you have incontingency plans for dealing with in-insurgents on the ground?

Good, very good. The Festival we shall meet in orbit and, having destroyed their ships, we shall work on the assumption that there is an aspiration to depose His Majesty among the rebels on the ground and their allies from the enemy camp! Commodore. You will supervise our approach to the target system.

Colonel von Ungern — Sternberg? Plans for the disposition of your marines and the re-re-reimposition of order once we arrive, if you please. Captain Mirsky, you will coordinate the, ah, la-la— maneuvers of the flotilla. Report to Midshipman Bauer if you please.”

The Admiral rose, shakily, and made no protest when Robard held him by one arm. “Diss-diss-missed!” he snapped and, turning, hobbled out of the room.

Procurator Muller was bored. Bored and, furthermore, somewhat annoyed. Apart from the evidence of misconduct over a weissbier back in New Prague, there wasn’t anything he could hang on the engineer.

Just the fact that he was a foreigner who espoused radical opinions liable to encourage moral turpitude among the lumpenproletariat — which put him in the company of roughly ninety percent of the population of the known universe. Admittedly, there had been the nonstandard plug-in from the man’s PA, but that wasn’t conclusive. Was it?

He’d spent nearly two months of his life getting this much information. Much of the time, he was bored to tears; the crew and officers wouldn’t speak to him — he was one of the Curator’s men, charged with the preservation of society, and, like all police posts, this attracted some degree of suspicion — and he had long since exhausted the small wardroom library. With no duties but covert surveillance of a suspect who knew he was under suspicion, there was little for him to occupy his time with except idle fantasies about his forthcoming meeting, when they arrived on Rochard’s World. But there were only a finite number of words he could think of to address his father with — and small consolation in imagining himself saying them.

However, one evening, it occurred to Vassily that there was another avenue he could follow in his exploration of the subject’s movements. Wasn’t Springfield spending an unhealthy amount of time in company with the foreign diplomat?

Now there was a shady case! Vassily’s nostrils flared whenever he thought about her. If she hadn’t had diplomatic papers, he’d have had her in an interrogation room in a trice. Springfield might be a radical, but Colonel Mansour wore trousers—enough to get her arrested for indecency on the streets of the capital, special credentials or no. The woman was a dangerous degenerate; obviously of depraved tastes, a male impersonator, probably an invert, and liable to corrupt anyone she came into contact with.

Indeed, her very presence on this warship was a threat to the moral hygiene of the crew! That the engineer spent much of his time with her was obvious (Vassily had seen the surveillance recordings of him slipping in and out of her cabin), and the question of where the incriminating evidence was kept seemed fairly clear-cut. Springfield was a dangerous anarchist spy, and she must be his evil scheming control; a secretive mistress of the art of diplomatic seduction, mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

Which was why he was about to burgle her cabin and search her luggage.

It had taken Vassily nearly two weeks to reach this decision, from the moment he determined that Martin’s nonstandard PA module was, not to put too fine a point on it, toast. It was a week and a half since the fleet had begun its momentous homeward voyage, first jumping across to the unpopulated binary system code-named Terminal Beta, then successively hopping from one star to the other, winding back more than a hundred years every day. Another four weeks and they would arrive at their destination; nevertheless, Vassily had taken his time. He’d have to be delicate, he realized. Without proof of treason he couldn’t act against either of them, and the proof was obviously under diplomatic lock and key. Whatever he did would be ultimately deniable — get caught and, well, burgling a diplomat’s luggage was about as infra dig as you could get. If anyone found him, he’d be thrown to the wolves — probably not literally, but he could look forward to a long career auditing penguins at the south polar station.

He picked an early evening for his raid. Martin was in the wardroom, drinking schnapps and playing dominoes with Engineering Commander Krupkin. Sitting on in Lieutenant Sauer’s security wardroom, Vassily waited until Colonel Mansour left her room for some purpose; his monitors tracked her down the corridor to the officer’s facilities. Good, she’d be at least ten minutes in the shower, if she stuck to her usual timetable. Vassily tiptoed out of his cubbyhole and scampered toward the lift shaft, and thence, the passage into officer country.

Pulling her cabin door shut behind him, he looked around cautiously. In almost every respect, her room was just like that of any other officer. Built like a railway couchette, there were two bunks; the upper one configured for sleeping, and the lower currently rolled upside down on its mountings to serve as a desk.

Two lockers, a tiny washstand sink, mirror, and telephone completed the fittings. One corner of a large trunk protruded from under the desk. The inspector didn’t travel as light as a naval officer, that was for sure.

First, Vassily spent a minute inspecting the chest. There were no signs of fine hairs or wires glued across the lid, and nothing complicated in the way of locks. It was just a slightly battered leather-and-wood trunk. He tried to lever it out from under the bunk, but rapidly realized that whatever was in it was implausibly heavy. Instead, he unlatched the desk/bunk and folded it upward against the bulkhead.

Exposed to the light, the chest seemed to smile at him, horrible and faceless.

Vassily sniffed and reached for his pick gun. Another highly illegal tool of the Curator’s Office, the pick gun was an engineering miracle: packed with solenoid-controlled probes, electronic sensors, and transmitters, even a compact laser transponder, it could force just about any lock in a matter of seconds.

Vassily bent over the chest. Presently he confirmed that UN diplomatic luggage was no more immune to a pick gun than any other eight-barrel mortise lock with a keyed-frequency resonance handshake and a misplaced faith in long prime numbers. The lid clicked and swung upward.

The lid held toiletries and a mirror; after a brief inspection, Vassily turned to the interior and found himself confronted with a layer of clothing. He swallowed. Unmentionables mocked him: folded underskirts, bloomers, a pair of opera gloves. He carefully moved them aside. Beneath them lay a yellow silk gown.

Vassily flushed, deeply embarrassed. He picked up the gown, unfolding it in the process; confused, he stood up and shook it out. It was, he thought, wholly beautiful and feminine, not what he’d expected of the corrupt and decadent Terrestrial agent. This whole fishing expedition wasn’t turning out they way he’d imagined. He shook his head and laid the gown on the upper bunk, then bent back to the chest.

There was a black jumpsuit beneath it, and an octagonal hatbox. He tried to pick up the hatbox, and found that it wouldn’t move. It was solid, as heavy as lead! Encouraged, he picked up the suit and draped it over a chair. Beneath it he found a slick plastic surface with lights glowing within it. The chest was only six inches deep! The entire bottom half of it lay below the surface on which the false hatbox rested, and was doubtless full of contraband and spying apparatus.

Vassily poked at the plastic panel. It reminded him of a keyboard, but lacking ivory and ebony keys, and with nowhere to feed the paper tapes in. It was all disturbingly alien. He poked at the panel, hitting an obvious raised area: runes blinked, access forbidden: geneprint unrecognized.

Damn.

Sweat poured off his neck as he considered his options. Then his eyes turned to the contents of the trunk he’d heaped beside it. It wanted a familiar skin sample? Hmm. Gloves. He held them up. Long women’s gloves. They smelt faintly of something — yes. Vassily rolled one inside-out over his right hand, up his arm. He touched the raised plinth: processing … authorized. A human body sheds five million skin particles per hour; Rachel had worn these very gloves, therefore—

A menu appeared. Vassily prodded at it blindly. Option one said sears foundation design catalog, whatever that meant. Below it, free hardware foundation gnu couturier 15.6; then dior historical catalog.

He scratched his head. No secret code books, no hidden weapons, no spy cameras. Just incomprehensible analytical engine instructions! He thumped the plinth in frustration.

A deep humming filled the room. He jumped backward, knocking over the chair. A slot opened in the top of the hatbox. A demented clicking rattled from it and something spat out. Something red that landed on his head — a wisp of lace with two leg holes. Scandalous. With a grinding clank, the hatbox extruded in short order a shimmering tulle ball gown, a pair of spike-heeled ankle boots, and a pair of coarse-woven blue shorts. All the clothing was hot to the touch and smelled faintly of chemicals.

“Stop it,” he hissed. “Stop it!” In reply, the trunk ejected a stream of stockings, a pair of trousers, and a corset that threatened any wearer with abdominal injury. He thumped at the control panel in frustration and, thankfully, the trunk stopped manufacturing clothing. He looked at it dizzily. Why bring a trunk of clothing if you can bring a trunk that can manufacture any item of clothing you want to wear? he realized. Then the trunk made an ominous graunching sound and he stared at it in ontological horror. It’s a cornucopia! One of the forbidden, mythological chimeras of history, the machine that had brought degradation and unemployment and economic downsizing to his ancestors before they fled the singularity to settle and help create the New Republic.

The cornucopia grunted and hummed. Thoroughly spooked, Vassily looked to the door. If Rachel was on her way back—

The hatbox opened. Something black and shiny peeped forth. Antennae hummed and scanned the room; articulated claws latched onto the side of the box and levered.

Vassily took one look at the monster and cracked. He left the door swinging ajar behind him in his helpless flight down the corridor, disheveled and wild-eyed, wearing an inside-out opera glove on one hand.

Behind him, the freshly manufactured spybot finished surveying the insertion zone. Primitive programs meshed in its microprocessor brain: no operational overrides were present, so it established a default exploration strategy and prepared to reconnoiter. It grabbed the nearest non-fixed item of camouflage and, stretching it protectively over its crablike carapace, headed for the ventilation shaft. Even as it finished removing the grille, the hatbox clanked again: the second small robospy was born just in time to see the yellow gown disappearing into the air-conditioning duct. And then the luggage clanked again, preparing to hatch yet another …

By the time Rachel returned, her trunk was half-empty— and almost all her ready-made clothing had escaped.

“You come with me,” Sister Seventh told Burya. ”See situation. Explain why is bad, and understand.“ Wind whispered through the open window, carrying grey clouds across the city, as Novy Petrograd burned in an inferno of forbidden technology. Houses crumbled and grew anew, extrusions pushing up like mushrooms from the strange soil of men’s dreams. Trees of silver rose from the goldsmith’s district, their harsh, planar surfaces tracking the cumulus-shrouded sun. The hairless alien wobbled forward onto the balcony and pointed her tusks at the fairground on the other side of town: “This is not the Festival’s doing!”

Helplessly, Burya followed her out onto the rooftop above the Duke’s ballroom. A cloacal smell plugged his nostrils, the distant olfactory echo of the corpses swinging from the lampposts in the courtyard.

Politovsky had disappeared, but his men had not gone quietly, and the mutinous troops, frenzied and outraged, had committed atrocities against the officers and their families. The ensuing reprisals had been harsh but necessary—

Javelins of light streaked across the cloudscape overhead. Seconds later, the rumble of their passage split the cold evening air. Thunder rattled and echoed from the remaining windows of the town.

“Festival does not understand humans,” Sister Seventh commented calmly. “Motivation of fleshbody intelligences bereft of real-time awareness not simulatable. Festival therefore assumes altruist aesthetic. I ask: Is this a work of art?”

Burya Rubenstein stared at the city bleakly. “No.” The admission came hard. “We hoped for better. But the people need leadership and a strong hand; without it they run riot—” Sister Seventh made a strange snuffling noise. Presently he realized that she was laughing at him.

“Riot! Freedom! End of constraint! Silly humans. Silly not-organized humans, not smell own place among people, need to sniff piss in corner of burrow, kill instead. Make military music. Much marching and killing by numbers. Is comedy, no?”

“We will control it ourselves,” Burya insisted trenchantly. “This chaos, this is not our destiny. We stand on the threshold of Utopia! The people, once educated, will behave rationally. Ignorance, filth, and a dozen generations of repression are what you see here — this is the outcome of a failed experiment, not human destiny!”

“Then why you not a sculptor, cut new flesh from old?” Sister Seventh approached him. Her snuffling cabbage breath reminded him of a pet guinea pig his parents had bought him when he was six. (When he was seven there had been a famine, and into the cook pot she went.) “Why not you build new minds for your people?”

“We’ll fix it,” Burya emphasized. Three more emerald-colored diamonds shot overhead: they zipped in helices around one another, then turned and swerved out across the river like sentient shooting stars.

When in doubt, change the subject: “How did your people get here?”

“We Critics. Festival has many mindspaces spare. Brought us along, like the Fringe and other lurkers in dark. Festival must travel and learn. We travel and change. Find what is broken and Criticize, help broken things fix selves. Achieve harmonious dark and warm-fed hiveness.” Something tall and shadowy slid across the courtyard behind Burya. He turned, hurriedly, to see two many-jointed legs, chicken-footed, capped by a thatch of wild darkness. The legs knelt, lowering the body until an opening hung opposite the balcony, as dark and uninviting as a skull’s hollow nasal cavity.

“Come, ride with me.” Sister of Stratagems the Seventh stood behind Burya, between him and his office.

It was not an offer but an instruction. “Will learn you much!”

“I–I—” Burya stopped protesting. He raised a hand to his throat, found the leather thong he wore around it, and yanked on the end of it. “Guards!”

Sister Seventh rolled forward, as ponderous and irresistible as an earthquake; she swept him backward into the walking hut, making that odd snuffling noise again. A furious hissing and quacking broke out behind her, followed by erratic gunfire as the first of the guard geese shot their way through the study door. Rubenstein landed on the floor with two hundred kilos of mole rat on top of him, holding him down; the floor lurched then rose like an elevator, dropped, and accelerated in a passable imitation of the fairground ride at a winter festival. He choked, trying to breathe, but before he could suffocate Sister Seventh picked herself up and sat back on what appeared to be a nest of dried twigs. She grinned at him horribly, baring her tusks, then pulled out a large root vegetable and began to gnaw on it.

“Where are you taking me? I demand to be put down—”

“Plotsk,” said the Critic. “To learn how to understand. Want a carrot?” They came for Martin as he lay sleeping. The door of his cabin burst open and two burly ratings entered; the light came on. ”What’s up?“ Martin asked fuzzily.

“On your feet.” A petty officer stood in the entrance.

“What—”

“On your feet.” The quilt was pulled back briskly; Martin found himself dragged halfway out of bed before he had quite finished blinking at the brightness. “At the double!”

“What’s going on?”

“Shut up,” said one of the ratings, and backhanded him casually across the face. Martin fell back on the bed, and the other rating grabbed his left arm and slipped a manacle over his wrist. While he was trying to reach his mouth — sore and hot, painful but not badly damaged — they snagged his other wrist.

‘To the brig. At the double!“ They frog-marched Martin out the door, naked and in handcuffs, and hurried him down to the level below the engineering spaces and drive kernel. Everything passed in a painful blur of light; Martin spat and saw a streak of blood dribble across the floor.

A door opened. They pushed him through and he fell over, then the door clanged shut.

Shock finally cut in. He slumped, rolled to his side, and dry-heaved on the floor. From start to finish, the assault had taken less than two minutes.

He was still lying on the floor when the door opened again. A pair of boots entered his field of vision.

Muffled: “Get this mess cleared up.” Louder: “You — on your feet.” Martin rolled over, to see Security Lieutenant Sauer staring down at him. The junior officer from the Curator’s Office stood behind him, along with a couple of enlisted men. Martin began to sit up.

“Out,” Sauer told the guards. They left. “On your feet,” he repeated.

Martin sat up and pushed himself upright against one wall.

“You are in big trouble,” said the Lieutenant. “No, don’t say anything. You’re in trouble. You can dig yourself in deeper or you can cooperate. I want you to think about it for a while.” He held up a slim black wafer. “We know what this is. Now you can tell us all about it, who gave it to you, or you can let us draw our own conclusions. This isn’t a civil court or an investigation by the audit bureau; this is, in case you hadn’t worked it out, a military-intelligence matter. How you decide to deal with us affects how we will deal with you. Understood?”

Martin blinked. “I’ve never seen it before,” he insisted, pulse racing.

Sauer looked disgusted. “Don’t be obtuse. It was in your gadget. Naval regulations specify that it’s an offense to bring unauthorized communications devices aboard a warship. So what was it doing there?

You forgot to take it out? Whom does it belong to, anyway?” Martin wavered. “The shipyard told me to carry it,” he said. “When I came aboard I didn’t realize I’d be on board for more than a shift at a time. Or that it was a problem.”

“The shipyard told you to carry it.” Sauer looked skeptical. “It’s a dead causal channel, man! Have you any idea how much one of those things is worth?”

Martin nodded shakily. “Have you any idea how much this ship is worth?” he asked. “MiG put it together. MiG stands to make a lot of money selling copies: more if it earns a distinguished combat record. Has it occurred to you that my primary employers — the people you rented me from — have a legitimate interest in seeing how you’ve changed around the ship they delivered to you?” Sauer tossed the cartridge on Martin’s bunk. “Plausible. You’re doing well, so far: don’t let it go to your head.” He turned and rapped on the door. “If that’s your final story, I’ll pass it on to the Captain. If you have anything else to tell me, let the supervisor know when he brings your lunch.”

“Is that all?” Martin asked as the door opened.

“Is that all?” Sauer shook his head. “You confess to a capital offense, and ask if that’s all?” He paused in the doorway and stared at Martin, expressionless. “Yes, that’s all. Recording off.” Then he was gone.

Vassily had gone to Lieutenant Sauer immediately after the abortive search through Rachel’s luggage: badly frightened, needing advice. He’d poured everything out before Sauer, who had nodded reassuringly and calmed him down before explaining what they were going to do.

‘They’re in it together, son, that much is clear. But you should have talked to me first. Let’s see this gadget you took from him, hmm?“ Vassily had passed him the cartridge he’d stolen from Martin’s PA.

Sauer took one look at it and nodded to himself. ”Never seen one of these before, have you? Well, don’t worry; it’s just the lever we need.” He tapped the exhausted causal channel significantly. ”Don’t know why he had this on board, but it was bloody stupid of him, clear breach of His Majesty’s regulations.

You could have come to me with it immediately, no questions asked, instead of digging around the woman’s luggage. Which, of course, you didn’t do. Did you?“

“Uh — no, sir.”

“Jolly good.” Sauer nodded to himself again. “Because, if you had, I’d have to arrest you, of course. But I suppose, if she left her door unlocked and some enlisted man tried to help himself to her wardrobe, well, we can investigate it …” He trailed off thoughtfully.

“Why can’t we arrest the woman, sir? For, um, possession of illicit machinery?”

“Because”—Sauer looked down his nose at Vassily— “she’s got a diplomatic passport. She’s allowed to have illegal machinery in her luggage. And, frankly, far as I can tell, she’s got an excuse. Would you be complaining if she had a sewing machine? That’s what she’ll say it is; a garment fabricator.”

“But I saw these things coming out of there, with too many legs! They were after me—”

“Nobody else has seen them,” Sauer said in a soothing tone of voice. “I believe you; you probably did see something. Spy robots, perhaps. But good ones, good enough to hide — and without evidence—” He shrugged.

“What are you going to do, then, sir?”

Sauer glanced away. “I think we’re going to pay Mr. Springfield a visit,” he murmured. “We’ll take him away. Stick him in the cells for a bit. And then”—he grinned, unpleasantly—“we’ll see which way our diplomat jumps. Which should tell us what all this means, shouldn’t it?” Neither of them noticed the pair of polka-dotted knickers hiding behind the ventilation duct overhead, listening patiently and recording everything.