Beautiful Intelligence (3 page)

Manfred walked over to her, took her in his arms, stroked her long white hair, then let her go. “Our mistake was to give them direct access to one another. Joanna, this is the crucial idea. Of course... we could
never
succeed if they stayed linked.”

“But you’ve ruined them! Months of work–”

“No. I’ve freed them.”

She stepped back and stared past him. Each bi was circling the room, apparently at random, like a possessed basketball. “You’ve killed them.”

Manfred shook his head. “I’m their midwife. It’s why they weren’t progressing. They were linked, right?
Direct
access to one another.”

Joanna stood still, trembling.

“It’s where everybody has gone wrong so far,” Manfred said. “We were seduced by the nexus... by the internet before it. We imagined better connected was better–”

“You’re crazy!”

“
Listen
to me!” Manfred let the inchoate mixture of joy and frustration he felt rise up through his throat. “I’m
right.
This is the idea I was searching for on the soltrain from Beijing! It’s what we were doing
wrong
at Ichikawa. I bet Leonora does it wrong too–”

“Oh, Manfred, stop talking about her–”

“Sssh!”

Manfred pointed at the group of nine bis. They had stopped circling one another. Each bi had sense organs constructed as near to the human norm as possible, albeit in a squat sponge of a body – ultra-pure bioplas made from smart petroleum that Manfred managed to spring from Tehran University. Each bi had two eyes, two ears, a mouth without a tongue, and Japanese micro touch sensors all over, like the fronds of the Mimosa plant.

Manfred breathed in... out. “They’re looking at us,” he said.

Joanna’s fury dissipated. “No... no,” she whispered. “They’re
listening
to us.”

“They recognise something’s going on,” Manfred said.

He got on his hands and knees and approached the nearest bi; the orange one. It moved its body so that its eyes stared into Manfred’s. He didn’t freak. It wasn’t like he was looking at a Nippandroid, which
was
freaky. Then the other bis – distinguished by pastel rainbow colour, plus one grey, one white – clustered in a group around them.

“Look!” Manfred whispered, his voice hoarse with emotion. “They’re all watching the orange one. They’re trying to work out what
it’s
doing. Cutting their cables freed them. They’ve got no choice now but to try to understand each other.”

“But... but...”

Manfred glanced over his shoulder. Understanding illuminated Joanna’s eyes. “Oh, yes,” he said, “now we’ve got to stimulate them. Give them problems, dilemmas. Make ’em sweat. They’ve got to start being stressed.
Then
they’ll understand one another. They’ll have no damn choice!” He stood up and grabbed Joanna’s arms, dragged her to him. “Yeah, you see now?”

“It could be a society,” Joanna breathed. “I do see.” She exhaled, put one hand on her sweating forehead. “Can you fix me a coffee?”

Manfred walked backward, hardly able to take his eyes off the bis. He poured two cappuccinos. Pressed the attention switch. The other two needed to see this.

Pouncey arrived. Tall, Afro, strong, thirty, she was responsible for the Hyperlinked, the system of apartment mapping that allowed Manfred to remain invisible in the great urban mess of Philadelphia. “You got two hours left,” she said. “Hey. What happened to the bis?”

“I cracked ’em,” Manfred said. “What d’you mean, two hours?”

Pouncey split open a juice, whacked the paper straw in. “I got itchy fingertips. You know I don’t like havin’ itchy fingertips.”

“Is somebody on to us?” asked Joanna.

“Dunno. But we’ve had our time here.”

Manfred cursed. “Get the bis in their crates. Double quick. Damn, Pouncey, you pick your moments. Where’s Tsuneko?”

“Out–”

“Out? Where?”

“The bioplas?” Pouncey said.

“Oh... yeah. Forgot. Com her through her earset. Don’t tell her where the next apartment is though, come and get her when we’re safe.”

“Okay.”

“And com Six-Fingers to clean up here.”

“Okay.”

A flurry of packing and movement, curses, sweat and coffee: the bis were stored in their automobe crates, people packed bags, changed clothes, put on wigs. They had only been in the apartment for three days – a short one. Manfred hoped the next stop might be for a week or more. But he had to move. The whole world was trying to locate him.

Pouncey took her wristband and modded its screen. “Sansom Street seventeen, floor seven, apartment twenty,” she said. “Hey – where Jewellers’ Row used to be. Been empty for a while. Nothin’ bad nearby, unless you count the jazz club. Could be nice. Got some furniture, even.”

“Thanks for that,” said Manfred. “Listen, do everything you can to keep us invisible there for a week. Ten days if poss. The bis are changing.”

“And they got
you
for a dad. Poor things.”

“You did say you wanted them stressed,” Joanna observed.

“Yeah,” Manfred replied, “but not stolen. They’re ours.”

An hour passed, then they were ready. Taking three crates each, they left the apartment then took the lift down to the ground floor.

Manfred walked into the rain outside the block. Splashed puddles soaked his trousers. For a moment he recalled the warm, comfortable suites he had enjoyed at Ichikawa labs; the flowers, the food, the unhurried conversations. This was madness in comparison: and it was straining the BIteam. He worried about Tsuneko, who wasn’t used to the travelling life. Well, she better get those sixty grams of bioplas.

“Lead on,” he told Pouncey.

Midnight dark, rain worsening. They struggled through grease-laden puddles, past noisy vegeburger joints, sweet mullers, nexus music clubs where everyone wore spex’n’headphones like fly eyes. But nobody was interested in them. Pouncey had long since developed the perfect nexus illusion, each member of the BIteam with a full identity, back story, credit thread. In the spex of the good citizens of Philadelphia they were three worthless woons. Street litter.

Which was fine. Nobody noticed street litter.

Manfred called this operation
doing a Damascus.
He didn’t say why. But it worked. The Hyperlinked meant they could never be traced. Worst case scenario – somebody bumped into Manfred and recognised him. Almost impossible, that.

A shebang of electric cars tore by, sending water everywhere. Plastics hawkers carrying black stash bags patrolled the streets. All normal. When Pouncey ducked into a doorway and shook the rain from her hair they followed her, sighing with relief. The next apartment was near. It would be warm and dry.

~

Tsuneko June was not impressed with what Manfred had done.

“You cut the cables
off?
” she said.

The quartet sat around the kitchen table. Manfred shook his head. “I freed them,” he said. “You’ve got to understand. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for. They no longer have direct access to one another’s brain, which means–”

“Yes, yes, I heard you the last time. But my biograins...”

Manfred appraised her. The girl was mid twenties, slim, long brown hair. Bright...
very
bright – the one who developed biograins. The first member of the quartet he had bought: the most important one. He could not afford to hack her off.

“It’s all this moving,” he said, “um, unsettling you. I get it. I feel the same. But until we reach our breakthrough we’re food for the big guys in China, Japan, Singapore, Korea. Hell, Thailand even. Not forgetting Leonora.”

Tsuneko uttered a sigh of frustration. “What does Joanna think?”

Manfred relaxed. This was a question that got him off the hook. “Ask her,” he said.

Rain spattered against the kitchen window. Joanna shrugged and said, “He could well be right. I see it–”

“You mean
you
see it, Joanna Rohlen one-time shrink, or
you
see it, Joanna his bedtime fun?”

Joanna’s face flushed. “Both,” she said.

Manfred hadn’t heard them talk like this before. His heart beat fast. He hadn’t realised what lay beneath the surface. He raised a hand. “Please–”

Tsuneko waved a hand back at him. “
Stop
it. I don’t care. I wouldn’t touch you.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. We’re the BIteam, aren’t we? Me and Joanna... what does a relationship matter?”

“It doesn’t matter a
bit,
” Tsuneko said, slapping the table. She stood up to pour coffee, then walked to the window, back turned. Manfred glanced at Joanna. She looked scared. He shrugged at her.

“Your biograins are safe, Tsuneko” he said, in his softest voice.

Tsuneko turned around. “My biograins had better be safe. My biograins could have made me a billion. Instead, I was seduced by your... vision.”

“Hmm. You regret it? You want out?”

“No.
No.
I’m just...”

“Okay,” Manfred said, standing up. “Bad evening. Stressy. We all said what we needed to say. Pouncey, buy food. Expensive. We need a treat.”

Pouncey grinned. “Sure boss,” she murmured as she left, nodding to him.

Tsuneko sat at the kitchen table. She stared at Manfred and said, “My biograins had
better
be safe. My biograins take everything we learned from the internet, what the Rim learned to make the nexus, and fire all that inside the human brain. If the bis lose their way...”

“They won’t,” Manfred said. “I’m right. I damn
know
I am. They’re in the room next door now, all nine of them, listening. Working out what the others know. I bet you.”

“Let’s go and see–”

Beep beep: their moby. Tsuneko clicked it. “Dijon... Maria... you got how much? Where from? Right... right... sure I want it... But it’ll cost? Right... right.”

Tsuneko glanced at Manfred, eyes wide.

“Dawn... Sure... I’ll be there. Non-traceable, you need to tell me
that?
After all the deals we’ve cut?”

She shook her head and grimaced at Manfred.

“Sure... sorry... yes, it is a lot of bioplas. Okay. Five am. ’Bye.”

Moby off-click.

“I think we’ve hit the motherlode,” she said.

Manfred said, “Bioplas?”

Tsuneko nodded. “One fifty one kilogrammes, finest Iranian. We could build the bis proper bodies!”

Suddenly the threat and angst of the night was gone, and Manfred saw his young hothead researcher again. “Let’s go see the bis,” he said. “You and Pouncey can score the bioplas later. Then we’ll hunker here for as long as we can.”

~

Pouncey skimmed the grease-sheened streets, rain popping her hair. At a Washington Square tang joint she bought keefers, chips, chocolate sponge and bottles of water. Real British water, from Yorkshire, where they still had some. Electric scooters whizzed by, mounted the pavement, then rode on. In her spex she saw clouds of neo-info swirl around the riders – kids, their ages, their names. They were safe though: her links to the PD computers told her that. She smiled. The nexus provided.

She walked into Sansom Street, putting the food in her rucksack, then the ruck on her back. Then stopped.

Six-Fingers?

It
was
him, the man she employed to clean evacuated apartments of all human traces. He was being hassled by a white-haired Hispanic in a raincoat.

Six-Fingers shouldn’t be here. He should be steam-cleaning furniture.

She watched the pair. Three brief moves through the nexus brought their conversation to her ears via the parking meter they stood by – one of the old speak/listen models. And Six-Fingers was doing a deal.

Suddenly cold, Pouncey retrieved the Hispanic’s kernel through the nexus. Theft. Arson. A Penn Centre gang drone.

Danger!

Pouncey took her hi-vel and ducked behind a liquor store hoarding. She had a good sight. The pair hadn’t seen her. She glanced over her shoulder. One cam looking the other way. And an exit – an alley. Too good an opportunity. No point thinking about it.

She aimed. Shot Six-Fingers. Turned, ran.

No time to see what the Hispanic did. But Six-Fingers was dead. She never missed.

At the end of the alley she turned left into a yard, flipped over the wire mesh at the end, then dodged dogs to skitter down a covered passage. Then out into the street, calm, ordinary. No red lights blinking in her spex: no PD.

A few minutes later the new place, and up in the lift. Through the apartment door, then shut it. Pause for breath, her back to the door; and a gasp of relief.

Manfred saw her. His face blanched. “What?” he said.

Pouncey took off her rucksack and extracted the food bags. “Six-Fingers screwed us. It was lucky though. If I’d not been out...”

Manfred turned, glancing at Tsuneko. “You see? We’ve got to keep moving.”

Tsuneko scowled and took one of the bags, sniffing it. She glanced up at Pouncey and in a quiet voice said, “Yes, but sometimes I feel I’d like a
life.
”

Pouncey shrugged. “I’m just the hired muscle,” she said. “Sorry about the bad news.”

~

Midnight, and Manfred peered through the sim-slot of the bis’ room, Joanna at his side. “What are they doing?” she whispered.

He squeezed her arm. “Resting, I think. Maybe they’re getting used to their new heavy bodies. Two of them staring at each other though. Hmm... better go in. You too?”

“Of course.”

The door clicked as Manfred opened it, the lamps auto-brightening. Like cats, every bi turned to stare at them; motionless now, alert, aware. Manfred had seen this a few times however, and was not concerned. These intelligences
had
to be alert to survive.

“Look at those two,” Joanna said.

Manfred looked. Two of the bis had returned to staring at each other, and he noticed that their bioplas tints had changed. “The yellow one is more orange and the orange one more yellow,” he murmured.

“It’s like you said. They’re trying to model one another. You were right!”

At once new ideas flooded into Manfred’s mind. The whole point of using bioplas – rare, yes, and novel, but which he could still afford – was to give the bis malleable bodies. Ultimately, he wanted humanoid physiques. But then another thought. “We’ve made a mistake,” he said. “If they’re going to have a reason to mentally model one another, they need to be different. They need different experiences. They need...”