Authors: Ken MacLeod
Divisions (7 page)
Malley fiddled with the bowl of his pipe. His fingers were stubby, their tips ingrained with grey ash and yellow tar.
‘Day before yesterday,’ he said, ‘a couple of chaps turned up out of the blue, and told me they were from space defence. Said they were checking out rumours that I was dabbling in AI work. Total bollocks, of course. I just teach the local farm boys basic electronics. Any bright sparks that turn up, I throw a bit of Feynman and Hawking at them.’ His eyes flashed conspiratorially. ‘And a bit of Malley. The few who make any sense of it invariably fuck off and join the Union, no matter what I say.’ He unzipped a leather pouch and began filling the bowl, hands working automatically as he gazed sadly out of the window. ‘You could say I’ve been lowering the average intelligence in these parts—a crime in my book, but not, I guess, in yours.’
He snorted a laugh. I smiled encouragingly; not that I quite understood what he was saying word for word, but I got his drift.
‘So,’ he went on, lighting up his mixture with an antique Zippo, ‘it was a bit of a surprise to be leaned on by two of your heavies, leaving me with subtle warnings about dire consequences. The words “outbreak” and, I think, “red-hot smoking crater” happened to crop up in the conversation. Just like the good old days under the Yanks. No black suits with bulges at the shoulder, but otherwise,
plus ça change
.’
plus ça change
.’
This, I have to say, gave me pause. There was no
law
against dabbling with artificial intelligence (or against anything else, for that matter). There was not even a Union rule against it. For anything not covered by Union rules (just about everything) we’d settled on the iron rule: ‘Do What You Can Get Away With.’ But touching off an outbreak—of artificial intelligence, disease, nano-assemblers, or any other kind of replicator—was something you couldn’t get away with. Your neighbours would ostracize you, or boycott you, and if one
of the essential amenities they chose not to supply turned out to be, e.g., your next breath, why then that was something that—when the matter reached the agenda of a neighbourhood moot—
they
would get away with.
law
against dabbling with artificial intelligence (or against anything else, for that matter). There was not even a Union rule against it. For anything not covered by Union rules (just about everything) we’d settled on the iron rule: ‘Do What You Can Get Away With.’ But touching off an outbreak—of artificial intelligence, disease, nano-assemblers, or any other kind of replicator—was something you couldn’t get away with. Your neighbours would ostracize you, or boycott you, and if one
of the essential amenities they chose not to supply turned out to be, e.g., your next breath, why then that was something that—when the matter reached the agenda of a neighbourhood moot—
they
would get away with.
And at worst, if an outbreak actually began to spread, the Inner System’s own space defence forces would apply the orbital zap. I had never heard of them coming down and threatening people before the fact. It seemed rather illiberal.
‘Excess of zeal,’ I said, partly thinking aloud, partly bluffing. ‘I’ll have it looked into. But I assure you the Division has nothing to do with it. We have a rather different proposition to put to you.’
‘Yes,’ he sighed, ‘I’m sure you do. Hard-cop, soft-cop, and all that.’
Could it be? The thought that someone else in the Division, or in the wider Solar Defence apparatus, might be playing games with my mission was so enraging that for a moment, fortunately, I was speechless. After a second or two I gathered my thoughts, and calmed down: I might be out of practice at conspiracy, but not at self-control. I shrugged.
‘I know nothing of that,’ I said.
‘So what do you want me to do?’
‘Dr Malley,’ I said, smiling, ‘do you know what the people on the other side of the wormhole, the people Wilde told us about, call it? They call it the Malley Mile.’
‘I’ve seen the tapes,’ Malley said dryly. ‘Flattering, isn’t it?’
I had hoped so. Time to lay on some more.
‘We find ourselves,’ I said carefully, ‘in a position where we urgently need to understand the wormhole. And on our own, we can’t. There’s only one person who can help us, and that is you. Would you like to come with me to Jupiter, and do some real physics?’
Malley was taking a sip of whisky as I said this, and he snorted so hard it went up the back of his nose. He spluttered, coughed, then leaned back and laughed.
‘So it’s come to this! Thirty billion people in your utopia, and you have to come to me! You people really disappoint!’
I smiled. ‘I know what you mean, Dr Malley. And I think what we want to do may change all that, in the long run. The Division is not the Union. That’s all I want to say, for now.’
He rested his chin on a cat’s-cradle of fingers and looked at me.
‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Interesting. That used to be called the Wolff gambit.’
I raised my eyebrows; he shrugged. ‘Look it up.’ (I never did.) ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘you’re too late.’ He refilled his tumbler, and raised it to me in an ironic toast:
‘Here’s to the scientific genius of Isambard Kingdom Malley.’ He knocked
it back and slammed the tumbler down. ‘And here’s what has long since pissed it away. This, advancing age, and corrupting youth.’
it back and slammed the tumbler down. ‘And here’s what has long since pissed it away. This, advancing age, and corrupting youth.’
‘No!’ I stood up. ‘You’re wrong! Those are symptoms. Your real problem is this: you worked out the most beautiful and successful physical theory a human being ever developed, and then superhuman beings went right ahead, used it, applied it, took it to the limits and
disproved it
! And you have never gotten over the suspicion that, to go beyond your theory, you’d have to go beyond your human limitations. And now, you can’t even do that!’
disproved it
! And you have never gotten over the suspicion that, to go beyond your theory, you’d have to go beyond your human limitations. And now, you can’t even do that!’
‘Precisely,’ he said. He refilled the tumbler, again. ‘Thanks to you people!’
‘Us?’ I said, stung by the injustice of this accusation.
‘Yes, you—with your armlock on space development and on computer work, your endless cold war with the Jovians. The Cassini Division has a very cushy number out there, while the rest of the human population gets fobbed off with a sort of static comfort. Restricted without their noticing, rationed without knowing what they’re missing. The rations are generous, I’ll give you that, but basically what you so grandly call the Solar Union is the civilian hinterland of a war economy.’
This was beyond arguing about.
‘Think what you like,’ I said. ‘But why not come and see for yourself?’
Malley took out a penknife, unfolded a yellowed steel spike and began poking about in the bowl of his pipe. I looked away. There was a scrape of flint and the now-familiar smell of burning dried weed refreshed itself in the room.
‘It’s tempting,’ Malley acknowledged. ‘To be honest, I’d love to see the gate—the Malley Mile, ha-ha!—up close. I’d be delighted to find a way through it to the world Wilde described, which sounds so much more interesting than this one.’ (I almost jumped—I hadn’t even raised the matter of navigating the wormhole, which was what we really wanted him to do.) ‘But like I said, it’s a waste of time. I can’t handle the math any more. It’s a young man’s game, and the young man who was Malley is no more.’
He really was sounding dangerously close to maudlin. I sat down again, and leaned across the desk and looked earnestly into his somewhat bloodshot eyes.
‘Age and alcoholism,’ I said, ‘are curable. As you well know. A couple of treatments and you’ll feel better than you can remember, better than you can now even
imagine
. You’ll have access to the biggest computers the Division has, the best instruments, decades of observations. All we want you to do is show us the way to New Mars. If you do that, you can do whatever else you can get away with, just like the rest of us.’
imagine
. You’ll have access to the biggest computers the Division has, the best instruments, decades of observations. All we want you to do is show us the way to New Mars. If you do that, you can do whatever else you can get away with, just like the rest of us.’
Malley leaned back, sucking on his pipe. I’d never noticed before the horrible bubbling sound the tar and spittle make in the things.
‘It’s a deal,’ he said.
It took me a moment to work out that this meant he agreed.
‘You mean, we have a plan?’
‘Yes!’ Malley chuckled. ‘Indeed we do. We have a plan.’
My plan, at this point, was to retrace my route to Alexandra Port, and get the next airship connection to a flying-wing flight to Guiné, and the next laser-launcher to rendezvous with the
Terrible Beauty
, the fusion clipper on which I’d arrived, which was currently parked in low Earth orbit. On the way—a recent update—I intended to show or describe to Malley some of the features of Union society, from which he’d so carefully exiled himself these past one hundred years: the gigantic Babbage engines churning through their Leontiev material-balance matrices, the sea-farms, the miles-high skyscrapers, the miles-deep caves, the (almost deserted) great hall of the Central Planning Board with its golden statue of Mises …
Terrible Beauty
, the fusion clipper on which I’d arrived, which was currently parked in low Earth orbit. On the way—a recent update—I intended to show or describe to Malley some of the features of Union society, from which he’d so carefully exiled himself these past one hundred years: the gigantic Babbage engines churning through their Leontiev material-balance matrices, the sea-farms, the miles-high skyscrapers, the miles-deep caves, the (almost deserted) great hall of the Central Planning Board with its golden statue of Mises …
Alas for plans.
‘Isn’t there anyone you want to say goodbye to?’
Malley was stuffing books, instruments and stashes of tobacco into an overnight bag with every indication of being ready to leave there and then. He gave me a wintry smile.
‘What do you think?’
‘You’re not in a close relationship?’
‘No doubt the village whore will miss me.’
I blushed and looked out the window; changed the subject.
‘Why’s this place built like a fortress, anyway?’
Malley coughed at dust stirred up by his rummaging.
‘Police station. The windows do open, by the way. I understand this was so that prisoners could dive out of them.’
Not entirely sure what he meant (or, perhaps, not wanting to believe I understood) I fiddled with a lock and latch. The window swung open, and I leaned out to inhale a breath of uncontaminated air. After my first long sigh of relief I looked across at the nodding treetops, the lowering sun, and down—
In front of the college was a crowd of about fifty people, mostly adult, and all clutching some kind of weapon: rifles, shotguns, even—like peasants out of an old horror movie—pitchforks. Some were crowded around the gate, others formed a wide semicircle around the buggy, above which the rucksack part of my suit had transformed itself into a hornet-cloud of buzzing defence-motes.
I must have said something to draw Malley’s attention. He stuck his head out the window beside me.
‘Oh, shit!’ he said.
‘Is this the doing of that nice young man in reception?’
‘Probably,’ said Malley.
‘Why?’
He turned to me and frowned. ‘You really don’t get it, do you? People live here because they
don’t like
you guys! And they don’t want you taking me away.’
don’t like
you guys! And they don’t want you taking me away.’
‘You can tell them you’re going because you want to!’
He retracted his head. ‘I can try.’
The people around the vehicle were backing off from the futile and painful task of attempting anything against the defence swarm. They moved through the crowd at the gate and, being apparently more adventurous spirits, began to lead them to the main door. Someone looked up and saw me. Yells rose and the move towards the door became a surge.
They’d be up the stairs in about a minute.
‘Suit!’ I screamed, tapping instructions on to my cuff. The swarm above the buggy circled once then made a beeline for me, and as I ducked back inside they crowded over me and reformed. The whole of my outfit flowed and reshaped into its basic spacesuit form. The suit went rigid, everything went black (two releases on, and that one-second bug was
still
not fixed) and then became clear and mobile again.
still
not fixed) and then became clear and mobile again.
Malley stared open-mouthed as my clothes changed into seamless matt black close-fitting armour, with a faceless black ball for a helmet and massively over-muscled shoulders.
‘Nanotech spacesuit,’ I explained impatiently. ‘Out on the window-sill, now!’
He hesitated, then heard the sound of running feet in the corridor. He grabbed his bag and clambered out, half-sitting under the swung-up window. I followed him on to the ledge and wrapped my arms around him. ‘Hang on,’ I told him unnecessarily.
‘Rope,’ I requested, and jumped. From the shoulders of the suit a couple of cables extended, one end grabbing the window-ledge by pure adhesion, the other lowering us rapidly to the ground. We landed gently. I looked around. The crowd’s vanguard were looking down at us from the window as the cables snaked back into the suit, the crowd’s stragglers were standing around between the gate and the doorway, looking at us with expressions that I still remember with somewhat malicious satisfaction.
Malley was tottering on his feet beside me, wheyfaced. He’d vomited over the suit; already it was thirstily absorbing the organics. I picked Malley up, like an actor in a Killer Robot outfit carrying off an actress in a Torn
And Revealing outfit, and bounded to the buggy. The crowd scattered around me. I set Malley down in the passenger seat and hopped into the driver’s seat.
And Revealing outfit, and bounded to the buggy. The crowd scattered around me. I set Malley down in the passenger seat and hopped into the driver’s seat.
I had underestimated the crowd. They were not some panicked mob, but a peasant village, watching what they saw as the suborning or abduction of a well-liked and much-needed teacher. Those who’d gone up the stairs were streaming back down, and those who hadn’t were closing around the buggy. Students, young men mostly, added to the numbers pouring out of the college doorway. They made no threatening approaches, giving it a good few yards’ clearance, but they formed an increasingly solid mass around us. I looked out at a wall of people dressed in their colourful wools and cottons, their broad leather belts; at their competently held, though crude, weapons, their smooth and hostile faces.
Well, at least they should see my face. ‘Scroll helmet,’ I murmured, and the globe around my head opened at the top, the aperture widening, then narrowing, as the smart-matter flowed back into the temporary ring-seal resting on my collarbones. I turned to Malley before anyone could react and said:
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