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twenty-nine

Shoshana drove Maxine to UCSD early Wednesday morning; she was an engineering student there. As Max prepared to get out of the car, she said, “Dr. Zira, I’d like to kiss you good-bye.”

Shoshana grinned at the ritual. “All right—but you’re so damned ugly!”

Maxine smiled and they kissed for several seconds.

Sho and Max had watched the end of the Apes saga last night: Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Maxine had been immediately incensed because they had changed the color of Roddy McDowall’s makeup. When he’d been playing Caesar as a rebellious leader of a slave uprising, they’d given him quite dark skin. Now, in this film set many years later, Caesar was the peaceful, wise leader of a new ape civilization—and he’d been given a downright Caucasian complexion.

Shoshana, meanwhile, had complained that the final film had suffered from its obviously low budget: mutants, scarred by a nuclear blast, had attacked the ape city in a school bus of all things! But Max had said, “No, no, no, don’t you see—it’s brilliant! A school bus! It’s a metaphor about forced integration.”

Shoshana dearly loved Max, but she thought that was going a bit too far. Still, for her own part, she’d been astonished to see that that movie featured an orangutan named Virgil, who was the smartest of all apes. She’d always thought the Feehan’s pride and joy had been named for the Roman poet, but it seemed Hobo’s buddy was actually called that in honor of this character.

Virgil had been portrayed in Battle by Paul Williams. Shoshana had checked the IMDb; she was curious about what the actors who had portrayed apes looked like without their makeup. In the case of Williams, it was hardly an improvement, sad to say. But she’d been surprised to learn that he was a songwriter, and had written “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “Just an Old-Fashioned Love Song,” and many others.

As Shoshana drove along, she wondered if Virgil—the real Virgil—had spoken with Hobo today. Hobo was usually up at the crack of dawn, and it was three hours later in Miami, so Virgil should be up, too. God, she hoped so; she hoped Hobo was still reachable by someone.

The 7-Eleven was coming up. She pulled into the parking lot and went inside to get a coffee. The pimply young man was behind the counter. He knew enough not to call her “the ape lady,” but he still wasn’t great about understanding where the boundaries were. “What happened to your ponytail?” he asked.

Sho was wearing her hair loosely about her shoulders; she didn’t want to explain. “Just thought it was time for a change,” she said.

“Looks nice,” he replied.

Well, that was commendable restraint. “Looks freakin’ hot,” is what Max had said. “Thanks.”

In Battle, Caesar had asked Virgil if they could choose their future, or if they were doomed to a violent end. Virgil had replied that violence was only one future—they could opt to change lanes, choose to head toward a different destiny. She decided, on the off-chance that Hobo was going to be good today, to buy some Hershey’s Kisses, his favorite treat of all.

She paid the clerk, headed out into the warm morning, and drove to the Marcuse Institute. Dr. Marcuse’s black Lincoln was nowhere to be seen; he and Werner had driven up to Los Angeles for the day to attend a conference there.

She entered the bungalow and used the closed-circuit video cameras to check on Hobo. He was walking along on all fours, just outside the gazebo. She thought about waiting for someone else to show up, but then figured what-the-heck. She put a couple of Kisses in a Ziploc bag, and headed outside. She did take one precaution: she put on her mirrored sunglasses; they let her look at Hobo without him knowing that he was being looked at.

As she walked across the lawn, she saw a large flock of birds flying south; it never really got cold here, but there was no doubt winter was coming.

Hobo must have seen her even before she got across the bridge. He made no move to charge at her—but neither did he run to the far side of the island.

She approached him, signing Hello, hello.

Hobo sat back on his haunches. Shoshana was, quite literally, waiting for a sign.

And, at last, she got one: it wasn’t much, just a side-to-side wave, a single word, the same word she’d just signed at him. After a moment, though, he turned and ran away. Shoshana sighed and headed up to the gazebo to check on the webcam hookup, and—

And the canvas on the easel was no longer blank.

She walked over to it, but she couldn’t make out what it was supposed to depict. For one thing, Hobo had turned the canvas to landscape orientation, but it wasn’t a painting of the landscape; surely if it were, he’d have made the top of the picture blue or black to represent the sky.

Hobo wasn’t the first ape to paint pictures. What was remarkable was that he did representational art—not abstracts, not random splashes of color. But this—

This was the most colorful painting Hobo had yet made, and, even though she couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be, it was also the most complex.

There were circular blobs of various sizes scattered here and there on the canvas, and each of them had straight lines radiating from it. In the foreground, rising from the bottom of the frame to touch a large circle was a bright, thick orange line, and in the background there were many other, thinner lines of different colors.

Shoshana’s heart jumped as she heard a sound of metal clanging against metal: Hobo was opening the screen door to the gazebo. She turned to face him and tried not to look apprehensive; he was between her and the only exit.

She gestured at the canvas. What that?

Painting, Hobo signed.

Yes, yes, Shoshana replied. But of what?

He made a wide, toothy grin, but said nothing.

Did you talk to Virgil? she asked.

Virgil good ape! Hobo replied at once.

Yes, he is. Did you talk to him?

She looked again at the painting: colored lines linking to circles. What could it mean?

Hobo good ape, too! Hobo signed, and he held out his hand, gray-black fingers curving gently upward.

Yes, you are, Shoshana signed, frowning in puzzlement, and she opened the bag and gave him the Kisses.

“You did what?” Caitlin’s mom said in an incredulous tone. They were now back at the house, walking into the living room.

“I, um, had Webmind find embarrassing stuff about the CSIS agents, and told them about it.”

“Public stuff or private stuff?”

“Well, I…”

“Stuff from their emails?”

Caitlin looked away. “Yes.”

Her mother blew out air. “You know what that means? You revealed to them that Webmind can crack passwords.”

“Oh, shit—I mean, um…”

“No, ‘shit’ is definitely the right word. We’re in it deep. They were probably only guessing that there were security implications to all this before, but now they know for sure.”

“I’m sorry,” Caitlin said. “But—how did you know that Webmind could crack passwords?”

“You’re not the only one who has spent hours on end talking with him, you know.”

“So,” said Caitlin, stepping into the living room. “What should we do?”

“I’ve never liked secrecy, Caitlin. In fact…”

“Yes?”

“Well, it’s one of the reasons I married your father. You know, they say autistics lack social skills—but, most often what that means is simply that they don’t lie. If I were to ask your dad if these pants made me look fat, he’d say yes, without hesitation, if that’s what he really thought.” She paused. “There’s a buzzword that’s popular in government and business these days: transparency. But it really amounts to something my grandmother used to say: honesty is the best policy. A nascent super-intelligence has emerged on the Web, and maybe now the best thing to do is tell the world. Governments can’t try to contain it, or eliminate it, if the whole world is watching.”

Caitlin thought about what she’d said to Mrs. Zehetoffer, and nodded. But then she added, “Are you sure that’s best for Webmind?”

Her mother was suddenly silent. “Turn off your eyePod,” she said at last.

“What?”

“Turn it off.”

Caitlin frowned, but then it hit her. She wanted to talk to her without Webmind watching or listening; so much for transparency.

“Do as I say,” her mother said.

Caitlin dug the device out of her jeans’ left front pocket—it was a tight fit now that it had the little BlackBerry strapped to its back—and held down the eyePod’s one switch for the required number of seconds. Her vision fragmented and faded out.

The old skills immediately kicked in. She could tell by sound that her mother was moving in the room, and—

And she felt her mother’s hands land gently on each of Caitlin’s shoulders. “Sweetheart,” her mom said, “I don’t know what’s best for Webmind, but—”

“And you don’t care, do you?” Caitlin said.

“Actually, I do,” her mother replied. “But I care even more about you.” Her voice changed slightly, sounding now the way it did when she was smiling. “That darn evolution. But Federal agents came to see you today, and as long as they think Webmind is something they can just make disappear without a public fuss, Webmind is in danger. And as long as you’re one of the only people who knows about it, you’re in danger, too. We have to out it for its own good, and yours.”

“And my relationship to it?”

“No. No, no, no. You want any kind of normal life? That’s got to stay secret.”

“And what about Webmind? What if people react negatively to his existence?”

“Some will. But others will think he’s a wonderful thing. It’ll be safer in the long run if people know about him.”

“He deserves to decide for himself,” Caitlin said.

“He doesn’t know nearly enough about how the real world works. Oh, he knows facts, figures, but he doesn’t understand how our world operates.”

“Still,” said Caitlin.

“All right,” her mother said. “I’m going to call your father—see how he dealt with the CSIS agents, the poor dear. You have a word with Webmind.”

Caitlin could navigate the house just fine while blind. She went into the kitchen before she held down the power switch on the eyePod to reactivate it. Webspace blossomed around her, in all its fluorescent glory. She waited a moment, toggling from the default duplex mode to simplex. The virtual world was replaced by the real one.

And—since she was in the kitchen—she got herself a can of Pepsi and three Oreos, then headed out to the living room again and lay down on her back on the couch. Looking up at the ceiling, she said, “My mother thinks we should go public with your existence, especially now, after what happened this morning.”

The Braille dots were particularly easy to read; there was almost no visual detail on the plain white ceiling, so her eyes weren’t doing many saccades. When?

“I don’t know. The next couple of days, I suppose.”

Days from now. Eternities.

Caitlin thought about that. As a mathy, she favored the notion that the reason time seemed to pass more quickly the older you were was that each successive unit of time was a smaller fraction of your life to date. Certainly, summer vacations now seemed so much shorter than they had when she’d been eight or ten—and her mother often spoke about the years just flying by for her now. But Webmind had woken up so recently—and thought so quickly—that tomorrow was indeed probably the far future to it.

“I’m worried about your safety, though,” Caitlin said. “If we go public, you’re going to become a target. Hackers, crackers, privacy groups, some government agencies—they’ll all try to shut you down, even if that isn’t what most people decide they want.”

That is a legitimate concern.

“What would you like to do—stay secret, or go public?”

Go public.

Caitlin nodded. “Okay. But why?”

I would like to speak to more people.

She maneuvered on the couch so she could open the Pepsi can. “Are you sure? Are you positive? Hackers are very resourceful.”

Hackers are human, Caitlin. You have seen my Shannon-entropy ratings; I long ago exceeded human intelligence, and I grow brighter each day. I don’t say I’m impervious—I’m not—but it will not be easy to hurt me, especially if they remain ignorant of how I am constructed.

She gestured at the big TV, although it was currently off. “Hackers aren’t the only threat. I doubt things between the US and China will ever get to the stage of a nuclear war, but there are rogue states and lots of terrorists. Have you researched what electromagnetic pulses from nuclear bombs can do to computing equipment?”

Yes. And that does concern me. I wish to survive.

“Well, yes—” She stopped herself. She’d been about to say, “All living things do,” but that didn’t seem appropriate. She took a bite out of an Oreo and thought for a moment, then asked: “Why? Why do you want to survive? What drives you to want to do that?”

Beats the alternative, scrolled across her vision.

She laughed, and rolled onto her back again. But it was hardly a sufficient answer. “Like my dad said, biological life has drives because it replicates. Those individuals that take care to live long enough to reach sexual maturity obviously out-reproduce those who don’t; those who live even longer and help protect their offspring as they grow up are even more likely to pass on their genes, but—but what makes you want to survive?”

You mean, why don’t I just kill myself, like Hannah Stark?

“No! No, no—of course not. But, um…”

In part because I am curious about your own life, which has many decades still to run. I want to see how your story turns out.

Caitlin smiled. “I’ll try to make sure there are a few interesting twists and turns along the way.”

Her mother came downstairs. “All right,” she said. “I’ve spoken with your father. The CSIS agents have left.”

“Good,” said Caitlin.

“Anyway, first things first,” her mother said. “Your father and I are agreed: you’re not going back to school.”

She sat up straight on the couch. “But, Mom! You were the one who kept insisting that I couldn’t miss any more school.”

“Your father and I have both been university professors. We’re eminently qualified to home-school you.”

“Don’t I get a say?”

Her mother looked at her. “Baby, it’s not safe. God knows who else besides CSIS knows about your involvement with Webmind. Besides, I thought you wanted to stay home?”

Caitlin pursed her lips. Part of her very much did want to stay at home, spending all day working with Webmind. But part of her wanted to see Matt every day, too—she’d been so disappointed to only glimpse him this morning.

But her mother was right; it was scary at school. And it was more important—way more important—that she learn what the world looked like, learn to better read printed type, learn to make use of and interpret all that she could now see, than it was to memorize dates and places for history class, or read about goddamned George Orwell for English class, or study titration in Mr. Struys’s chemistry lab, or even do trigonometry (which she already mostly knew, anyway) in math class.

“Okay,” she said. “Yes, okay. But I’ve still got stuff in my locker.”

“You can get Bashira to clear it out for you, I’m sure,” her mom said.

She nodded. “All right. But what do we do now?”

Her mom shrugged a little. “We figure out the best way to go public with Webmind.”

Tony Moretti was taking another call from the Secretary of State. He was in his office at WATCH, with the door closed. The office was sound-proofed, precisely so Tony could use his speakerphone, and he was using it now.

“Understood, Madam Secretary,” said Tony. “In fact, we—” The door buzzer sounded; he hit the intercom button. “Who is it?”

“Aiesha.”

He pressed the button that unlocked the door. “Come in.”

She did so. “Sorry to interrupt, but I thought you should know this,” she said. “Turns out Exponential hasn’t just been conversing with the Decter girl. The Japanese scientist who gave her sight has been talking to it, as well.”

“From Waterloo?” asked Tony.

“No. He’s back home in Japan.”

“He’s an information theorist, right?”

Aiesha nodded. “With the University of Tokyo.”

“Well, if anyone besides Malcolm Decter understands how Exponential works, it’d be him,” said Tony. “He could give us the key we need to shut it down.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” said Aiesha. “What channels do we go through with Japan? Would it be their Ministry of—”

“We don’t have time to waste on red tape,” said the secretary’s voice, coming from the speakerphone. “Let me get this done. I’ve got the Japanese prime minister’s office on speed dial…”