LitVid 21/1 A Net (David Shine): “We’re cutting from the AXIS report now—it’s mostly numbers and stuff for enthusiasts, I’ve been told—and replaying two poems. One of them is the poem AXIS wrote to his or her or its programmers as part of a long range diagnostic test four months ago. The second is a poem written and transmitted by AXIS six months after departing our solar system. At that time, AXIS was still functioning on a biological basis.
“The AXIS ‘mind’ consists of a machine system and a biological system. During the years when AXIS accelerated on a furious torch of matter-antimatter plasma, the unmanned interstellar probe was controlled by a primitive, rugged and radiation proof inorganic computer. When the antimatter drive ceased some four years ago after launch, AXIS entered a cold, quiet mode, its functions reduced to the simplest routine of maintenance, sensing and launch of transponders. During this time, AXIS’s ‘mind’—as I said, little more than a simple computer—ticked away the days and weeks and years, its most demanding job keeping track of numerous deep space experiments that could not be conducted while the torch was burning. Some six months before the beginning of AXIS’s deceleration phase, AXIS allowed itself the luxury of powering up a small fusion generator, very little larger than a human thumb. This produced sufficient heat to allow nano-machine activity, and the creation of AXIS’s huge, yet very thin and light superconducting wings, or vanes.
“AXIS’s huge wings actually acted like the rotor on an incredible electric generator, cutting across the lines of the galaxy’s own magnetic field. The resulting flow of electricity through the superconducting material of the wings—some billions of watts of power—was used by AXIS to dismantle the antimatter drive, reduce it to a fine powder with the aid of nanomachine destructors, and to electrically propel this refined scrap opposite its direction of motion to further decrease speed.
“By cutting through the galaxy’s magnetic field and generating this electricity, AXIS relied on the law of conservation of energy to decelerate even more quickly without the use of onboard fuel. The power drawn from its vast wings was more than sufficient to dispel the cold of deep space; but AXIS waited for proximity to Alpha Centauri B to begin to grow its biologic thinker system.
“That complex neural network is finishing its growth and integration right now, Earth reference frame, AXIS’s new biologic thinker will replace the thinker that died and was recycled when AXIS passed out of our sun’s temperate regions and fired off its antimatter drive.
“AXIS chief mind designer and programmer Roger Atkins has told LitVid 21 that he personally knows whether a poem has been written by the machine thinker or by the biological thinker. Can you tell the difference? Here are the two poems.”
Please pass, oh pass when night is on your middle ground This flower from hand to hand Tell each night it’s had its chance
We need day to spread our arms.
“That one might seem rather obvious, no? But we are warned by Doctor Atkins that these are not deeply symbolic poems and do not express AXIS’s desires for any particular circumstance, such as a warm, close star, Now for the second poem.”
This is not what we had To say in different words That wise day. Wisdom played Its shatter game Cut its track and called For what had fled.
“Perhaps not great poetry, but not bad for something not even human, and tucked into a vehicle the size of an oceangoing yacht. Viewers may hazard a guess as to which poem is machine, which is biological, by calling the number below my finger. We’ll tally the total rights and wrongs over the next hour and report them…direct to you.”
Examiner: “We are still far from the end of this list. Our cases are backed up for centuries…I am not familiar with the crimes of these three.”
Clerk: “One is Hyram Sapirstein, one is Klaus Schiller, one is Martin Bormann.”
Examiner: “I remember Mr. Bormann. You’ve been before this court before, have you not?”
Bormann: “Yes.”
Examiner: “For outrages against your own kind.”
Bormann: “Yes.”
Examiner: “What crime is he accused of this time?”
Clerk: “Outraging Hell, sire.”
Examiner: “But these other two…are they contemporary?”
Clerk: “Human, sire, twenty-first century.”
Examiner: “Humans were made to learn quickly, not to take ages, like angels and demons. Haven’t they learned their lessons yet?” (No reply.)
Examiner: “I’m afraid we’ve run out of tortures appropriate for crimes of these sort. Not to mention space. Send them back.”
Clerk: “Sire?”
Examiner: “Send them back to their own kind. Let the living find the best ways to punish their miscreants. Open the gates of Hell, and push the damned through them, one by one!”
5
Madame de Roche was tired by noon and the faithful removed themselves from the house, all but Fettle whom she requested to stay behind. By twelve thirty the old stonecool house was quiet. Madame de Roche ordered her arbeiter to bring glasses of iced tea for them both. The sleek black machine walked on four spider legs through the dining hall into the kitchen.
“Have you published yet, Richard?” she asked him as they sat on the veranda looking across a dusty green and gray canyon at the rear of the house.
“No, Madame. I do not write for publication.”
“Of course not.”
+ Teasing me. She’s in a smooth.
“Your story made quite an impression. We were all fond of Emanuel Goldsmith. I knew him quite well when we were younger, when he was writing plays. Did you know him then?”
“No, Madame. I was a lobe sod. I met him thirteen years ago.”
Madame de Roche nodded then shook her head, frowning. “Please. We both remember a time when language was civilized.”
“Your pardon.”
“Was the pd certain Goldsmith was the murderer?”
“They seemed to be,” Richard said.
She put on a contemplative air, arms limp on the wicker rests of her peacock chair. “That would be a most interesting thing, Emanuel a killer. He always had it in him, I thought, but it was a crazy thought. I never voiced it…until now. You were an acolyte, were you not? You admired some of his women?”
“I was a sycophant, Madame. I admired his work.”
“Then you’re sad about this.”
“Surprised.”
“But not sad?” she asked, curious.
“If he did it, then I’m furious with him. It’s a betrayal of all the untherapied. He was one of our greats. We’ll be hounded till our deaths, our styles will be degraded, our works shunned.”
“That bad.”
Richard nodded almost hopefully as if anticipating the ordeal.
“This transform pd you met…She was not negroid, you say, but she was black.”
“Oriental in some features, Madame.”
“Black nemesis. I’d like to meet this woman sometime…Elegant, composed, I presume?”
“Very.”
“One of the therapied?”
“I would think so. She had the air of the combs.”
“There was once a time when police, public defenders, were underpaid, lower class.”
“I remember, Madame.”
“They probably enjoy coming into the shade.”
“Emanuel lived on the third foot of East Comb One, Madame.”
She nodded, remembering. “I wouldn’t worry if he is caught and convicted,” she said, voice light as down. “He was never really one of us. Untherapied, yes, but a natural needs no such thing. We are none of us naturals, my dear. We are merely untherapied. Our badge of mock protest. Oh, no. Emanuel will dishonor a much higher category than ours.”
Madame de Roche dismissed him and his spirits fell immediately he was outside the door. + More and more I am nothing without someone. To be alone is to be in bad company.
Richard paced one yard this way one yard that on the root heaved concrete. Five minutes
after a signal from his beeper another little rounded white autobus hummed into the eucalyptus screen and opened its wide doors.
“Destination,” the bus asked him, voice pleasantly androgynous.
+ People. A place that brings an end to a rough.
Richard gave an address in Glendale on Pacific, an avenue leading to and in shade of East Comb Three. A literary lounge where home brew could be had and most important of all where he would not be alone. Perhaps there he could tell the tale again maximum effect maximum purgation. + Black nemesis. Work on that.
“One hour,” the bus told him.
“So long?”
“Many calls. Please come aboard.”
Richard boarded and took a strap.
Moses came down from Horeb, hair on fire with God, God’s soot around his lips where he had eaten the greasy leaves of the burning bush, his humanity blasted from him, leaving him like carbon steel touch him he might ring, and contemplated his future. A leader of men. And women. He sat near his dear wife Zipporah in the dark and cursed his misfortune.
Men didn’t know what they wanted, or how to go about getting it. They did whatever came into their minds first. They hated at the drop of a hat and spurned love because they feared being taken advantage of. They leaped into violence before an angel could blink, and then called their murder and destruction valorous, and boasted of it and wept while drunk. And women! Did not carbon steel deserve something more?
“Give me a glorious task, Lord, away from this rabble.”
And that was when God descended and was sore vexed with him, making the land outside their tent quiver. Zipporah daughter of Jethro said, “Moses, Moses, what have you done now?”
“I have thought unworthy thoughts,” Moses said, hoping that was enough to mollify God, but the landscape turned bloodred and the sky filled with bloody clouds. Moses, even carbon steel, was afraid.
Zipporah came upon the clever expedient of lopping off their poor son’s foreskin, touching Moses with the blood, and then the door frame.
“Stay away from my husband!” she cried. “He’s a good man. Take my son, but not my husband!”
Moses hid behind the daughter of Jethro and understood clearly the weakness of his people.
6
Mary Choy came back to the frozen apartment at thirteen, having been off six hours, barely time for catnap vinegar bath and paperwork. She had requested full time for this case and was certain she would get it.
Some of the victims still entombed had been identified and they were gold and platinum names, students, sons and daughters of the well known and influential. She put on a thermal suit in the cubicle erected outside the hall door, ordered the seal breached and stepped into the blue cold.
A radio assayer hung from the track mounted in the apartment ceiling, having replaced the sniffer. Dustmice pushed through the cold stiff tendrils of once live carpet searching for skin flakes and other debris trapped in the carpet’s custom digestion. They had already found traces of all victims and Emanuel Goldsmith; there were traces barely thirty six hours old of four other visitors.
Mary surveyed the solid spattered sadness of young bodies one by one saying her professional farewells.
The names, in order of death:
Augustin Rettig
Neona White
Betty-Ann Albigoni
Ernly Jeeger
Thomas Finch
and three unidentified. Rettig’s mother was general manager of North Comb One. White’s father owned Workers Inc the Pacific Rim’s biggest temp employment agency representing some twenty three million therapied and natural lobe sods—the cream of the crop. Workers Inc had approached Mary in her pretransform youth. She had turned them down. West Rim pds worked through Human Expedition Ltd and even in her raw youth she had known where she was going.
Betty-Ann Albigoni was the daughter of a publisher—books the file said, more lit than vids; Goldsmith’s major English language publisher. Thomas Finch’s uncle was counsel to High Reach, general chandlers for suborbitals. Ernly Jeeger was Emanuel Goldsmith’s godson a promising poet on his own also known for an eloi sympathizer and borderlaw activity in whole-life vids.
A dim red light mounted on her shoulder pointed wherever she turned her eyes. Livid cold. The assayer tracked quietly overhead like a legless insect and passed into another room.
Finch the last killed lay on his back like a broken cross, face slashed throat cut jagged sideways from jaw to opposite clavicle open eyes rimed white.
It was spatch that pd didn’t sympathy a crime. Mary knew in brain and crawl of skin each frozen peeled back wound frightened dead glare of white eyes and cropped corpse grimace. This was her motivation for excellence.
She would know the murderer and organize for a full-therapy conviction, restructuring if called for—and the pd would call for it. If Goldsmith was the murderer as seemed most likely now so be it; the LitVids would have her and the pd all over the world. But she would smooth those waters when they rippled.
What she had officially come back for was a context search, a look at Goldsmith’s files. The room where Goldsmith kept his office had no bodies in it and had already been assayed. She could enter and make her search. Pd, metro and federal warrants allowed her to investigate most aspects of Goldsmith’s life as per the Raphkind amendments not yet removed by President Yale’s year old block appointed court. She did not personally agree with the Raphkind amendments but she was not in the least reluctant to take advantage of them. What could not be found here might be found in Citizen Oversight—a journey she hoped she would not have to make.
Goldsmith was not a tidy man. She inclined her head in the inflated tube helmet and surveyed his desk. Reasonable models of slate and keyboard—no gold plating or wood box. Cold crackers and half glass of frozen wine. Crumbs. Pens fiber-tip and what did they call them fountain. She wondered where he got them. A sweep of some hand or arm had fanned a short stack of printouts—not erasable cyclers old fashioned in themselves but actual papers written on by hand—across the black marble top. Cubes marched to the edge of the desk in tandem and lay below on the floor. Mind’s eye she saw a hand palm them two by two from a box—an empty cubefile lay nearby—and click them in pairs on the desk then pass aimless over the edge, dropping four. The gesture of a dramatically distracted man.
She bent to pick them up. Each cube projected a tiny label in cold green into her eyes. The Progress of Moses, The Way of the New, Debit/Asset, the cubes informed her artlessly not concerned with who she might be. Doubtless Goldsmith’s works in solid state. Not a man to crypto his data his work. One work per cube was surprising for pure word; perhaps they were LitVid adaptations for the half literate. LitVid sales would explain Goldsmith’s place high on the third foot.
She had heard of Emanuel Goldsmith before this case. An occasional guest on the allnight cable talkers celebrated more for his youthful output. Not currently productive. Mary Choy planned to remain productive well past a century but she allowed as her plans might be young and naive. A pd could not rest on laurels. Salary not royalties.
There were real books on his shelves. She did not pull them down but with an uninformed eye guessed their age at eighty to a hundred years. Expensive, a luxury both in money and space for this information dense age. The World Reserve Library could be stacked in space held by Goldsmith’s fifty or sixty paper volumes.
What she specked was unorganized uncontemporary inefficient, what one might presume of a poet; but the scatter of cubes on desktop and floor pointed to a greater disorganization, a careless personal moonstrike.
A closure.
She held up her slate to read the inprog. Sloughed cell and fiber analysis and assay of the office area showed no entry but for Goldsmith. Whatever socials he had conducted, none had entered this sanctum.
Goldsmith’s frame of mind had been disturbed before the murders, she posited. He had not entered his office after the murders. Another possibility as yet not eliminated by the total rad
io assay: that Goldsmith did not occupy the apartment during the murders. Unlikely.
Reaching out she shifted a skewed half inch pile of paper and saw an airline confirmation billet and a document of different color beneath. She picked out the billet. A roundtrip to Hispaniola dated two days before—the day after the murder. Had the ticket been used? She marked a memo on her slate to check the airline: NordAmericAir.
The other document was a letter real paper again beige stock gold stamping; stationery of the rich and eccentric as atavistic as real books. Mary’s eyes widened reading the engraved head and the signature. Colonel Sir John Yardley.
Authentic? The inprog reported nothing. The papers had been disturbed only for chemical and bio clues; it was her task to make a context beyond that. She lifted the letter, three gloved fingers on each hand vising perpendicular the opposite edges of the stiff thick sheet. She read it up close. Typed on an oldfashioned electric impact printer perhaps even a typewriter. Dated and stamped Hispaniola, Yardley’s name for his conquest, formerly Dominican Republic and Haiti.
28 November 2047
Dear Goldsmith,
Whatever the circumstances, we will be most pleased to receive you. Ermione charmed. It’s rare to meet unhypocritical agreement now. I’ve particularly enjoyed our letters in book form and Moses and appreciate your signature dedicatory. I can only hope what we do here helps this old world lift itself by its bootstraps into sanity.
Yours, as ever,
Colonel Sir John Yardley Hispaniola
Mary replaced the letter carefully as if it were a snake.
I do not aspire. I be.
7
Martin hadn’t eaten so well in six weeks, when he had seen the end of his savings. He refused to go on shade dole; his application for Municipal Assistance had not been processed perhaps because of official disfavor or ineptitude; civil service was the last well-paid refuge for the untherapied. Now in a cool dark booth with crushed velvet upholstery, holding a reservation card in one hand and a whiskey sour in the other, he felt less disdainful of civilization, closer to the human race. A note on the back of the card said, “Go ahead and eat. We’ll be half an hour late. Regrets. Lascal.”