Coming of Age: Volume 2: Endless Conflict (28 page)
Read Coming of Age: Volume 2: Endless Conflict Online
Authors: Thomas T. Thomas
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #science fiction, #High Tech, #Hard Science Fiction
Susannah had looked further afield, to France and Japan, the only countries that still used nuclear energy and reprocessed its waste products. But her polite inquiries had soon turned up the fact that theirs was a closed-cycle operation, passing material between government-run reactors and government-owned processing plants, without buyers or sellers of record in any kind of market.
Which left the stone-cold trail out of Malaysia that Callie’s Italian godson had followed on orders from the mysterious woman in Dublin. Callie had been pressed to tell Susannah the whole story and assured her again that the woman was dead. After thirty years, her smuggling operation would not have left even a ghost trail. But perhaps, Susannah reasoned, the need for unauthorized nuclear fuel and bomb-making materials remained. Perhaps a network of buyers still existed. Perhaps, with diligence and just a touch less secrecy, she might tap into that supply.
“We’re looking for a ghost,” she told Auchincloss absently.
“I thought we were looking to transmute heavy metals.”
“You told me yourself that’s a fairytale, didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “You wouldn’t listen the first time.”
* * *
After her daily workout, Antigone Wells examined herself in the full-length mirrors of her private
dojo.
Her body was toned and fit. She turned sideways, opened her
gi
jacket, pulled her shoulders back, and examined the curve of her breasts through the leotard she wore underneath. It provided minimal support with no bra, and still her bustline was tighter and fuller than even before her first surgery.
Her face was still a disaster, of course. The smooth skin that had been applied in that botched implant so long ago was finally succumbing to the forces of gravity and time. Because she couldn’t smile and didn’t laugh much—or use her facial muscles when she did happen to chuckle wryly—the face itself was unlined and unmarked. No creases about the mouth or wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. But the beautiful surface was beginning to sag. Folds were starting to appear along her jawline. And although she cleaned and moisturized her human mask with a scrubbing ritual and the latest ointments ever night, the skin was changing its texture, becoming softer, less firm, less youthful. In that one place—the place where everyone looked—Antigone Wells was beginning to show her true age.
As she pulled her jacket back together and retied her black belt around her hips, she felt a pain in her right side. It was low down in the abdomen, just above her hip. She felt there with the palm of her hand, and her normally flat belly seemed stiff.
She untied the belt again and dropped it to the floor, unfastened the tabs on her jacket and shed it, untied the drawstring of her
gi
pants, shucked them down, and stepped out of them. She stood before the mirror wearing only the thin, body-hugging spandex of the leotard.
Yes, her belly was slightly lopsided. The right lower quadrant had a visible bulge, where the left had only the concave smoothness from years of twisting, bending, and stretching exercises, along with careful eating. She pressed on the bulge and felt the pain again. It wasn’t sharp—more of a pressure, an ache—but she dared not press it more deeply. It didn’t feel like muscle pain, more like something going on inside.
She catalogued what organs might lie in that area. After the loops of small intestine, the ascending colon, and of course the liver, she drew a blank. The kidneys, where she had experienced trouble before and got it fixed with implants, were both around in the back. Nowhere near this bulge.
It might be something she’d eaten, a buildup of waste matter or gas, waiting to pass. But the pain was unusual. She decided it would bear watching.
Wells picked up her clothing and went back to her bedroom to change.
* * *
Do we have any plans for acquiring nuclear technology?
Machiavelli asked Anastasia Praxis out of the blue one morning.
Stacy paused for a moment before replying. She was marshaling her thoughts and editing them, as she had learned to do when speaking with the intelligences inside her head.
I don’t think so. Why do you ask?
I have a query from the Chinese consulate in San Francisco,
the machine voice said.
Quan Hui Yan, the All Seeing, who is their guiding intelligence, informs me of reports they have received about an unauthorized expedition to the linear accelerator at Stanford University. They allege that vehicles marked with the sigil of the Praxis Defense Force visited the site last week. They remind us that linacs generate energy by release of subatomic particles, which is a form of power forbidden by the Treaty of Kitsap.
I wasn’t aware of that,
she replied. It was an equivocal statement, one designed to pass the logic-evaluation loops and biometric probes built into every contemporary intelligence to help it test human responses for their truth or falsehood. What Stacy overtly intended was that she didn’t know about the power restrictions in the treaty. What Machiavelli had a fifty-fifty chance of understanding was that she didn’t know about the expedition—and, of course, Jay-Jay had told her all about it the moment he got back.
They append a copy of the treaty for our inspection,
Machiavelli said, allowing her to relax slightly.
Further,
he went on,
the Chinese have intercepted queries made by Susannah Praxis over the past month regarding spent nuclear fuel, breeder reactors, and fuel reprocessing. Quan Hui Yan assigns thirty-eight percent probability to the proposition that the Praxis Family Association is seeking materials from which to fashion a nuclear device, either for power generation or as a weapon.
That’s presumptuous of them,
Stacy replied.
How should I respond?
the intelligence asked.
Quan Hui Yan requires a response for his government.
Stacy took two deep breaths and held the last one, trying to still her mind.
Tell them I know nothing about any of this. Any orders for a change in either our energy supply or our armament posture would have to come down from the Association’s chairman, John Praxis, or from the president, Callista Praxis. I have received no instructions from either of them.
Those last two statements were certainly true, at least on their face. Stacy hoped that by ending her response with two verifiable truths, back to back, she could rush Machiavelli into ignoring her first statement, which was patently false, as an examination of her pulse, respiration, and galvanic response would suggest. The breath-holding trick didn’t always work.
Thank you. I will so inform Quan Hui Yan.
And with that, Machiavelli’s carrier wave faded from her mind.
4. Stabbed in the Dark
“There,” said the doctor as she moved the ultrasound wand back and forth over the patch of cold gel on Antigone Wells’s abdomen. “You can see the liver most clearly now.”
Wells lifted her head while trying not to move the rest of her body. On the screen, bluish blobs and ghosts wavered and shifted. “What am I looking at?”
“Right there,” Dr. Ming insisted, nodding at the machine.
Despite the unpleasantness of the last few decades, Wells had learned to trust Chinese doctors more than their western counterparts. They tended to be cool and dispassionate professionals; they had better training; and they usually had access to the best technology—outside of the closed medical organizations like the one run by the Praxis Family Association. This doctor, Ming Meirong, was an internist who specialized in dealing with westerners. She even introduced herself as “Mary,” to make them feel more at ease.
“This is your liver,” Dr. Ming said, holding the wand steady with her right hand and using her left forefinger to outline an area on the screen.
“It looks like a bag full of marbles,” Wells said.
“Well, yes. Given your genetic predisposition and your previous history of polycystic kidney disease, I would expect to see this.”
“And those are cysts … on my liver?”
“About two and a half centimeters. Like grapes.”
“Why doesn’t all that hurt like hell? I hardly feel anything.”
“The liver is a remarkable organ, able to regenerate itself. These cysts can form in the bile ducts, then become detached and migrate to the organ’s periphery. The liver will still function normally, no matter how large it becomes. It is the rest of your body that feels the pressure.”
“And you’re sure of this? It’s not some kind of cancer?”
“Your blood chemistry suggests otherwise. You have a high level of alkaline phosphatase, which often accompanies polycystic liver disease.”
“What happens next? Will I get jaundice and go all yellow?”
“No, liver function is almost never involved. This stage of the disease is seldom fatal unless there are complications, such as from infection or obstruction of the bile ducts.” Dr. Ming shrugged. “However, the recommended course is to draw your stem cells, clean up the PKD1 and PKD2 genes, and grow you a new liver. You have experienced this before, I understand.”
“Yes, two new kidneys, years ago.” Wells reflected that having the genes for polycystic disease was like playing whack-a-mole: first the kidneys, then the liver. What would come next? But instead she asked, “When can we start?”
“I will draw the cells today. We can schedule an implant in a few weeks.”
“Excellent! Let’s get this thing over and done with.”
* * *
Bolin Hsu, whose given name meant “Gentle Rain,” fingered the piece of rice paper that had been dyed blood red. It was the traditional way of triggering these affairs. No electronics. No ghost voices from the computers. Not even a telephone call. Hsu was a devotee of
wushu,
the eclectic synthesis of ancient Chinese martial arts, and he believed in the old ways. For most of his assignments, he preferred bare hands or an edged weapon, face to face with superior
chi’i,
rather than with bullets and killing from a safe distance.
The paper had been passed to him outside the Lucky Carp Fish Market in Seattle’s historic Pike Place. No one actually gave him the paper, so he never saw a face or had a name to go with it. Instead, it suddenly appeared in his pocket, perhaps after he had been bumped or jostled in the crowd outside the market. It was the usual way that the Xin Dalu Tong, the New World Community Association, retained his services. In fact, he had passed by the market this day in hopes of such a job.
According to tradition, the paper held two pieces of information: a name and an amount. The name was always in black Chinese brush script, a phonetic translation into familiar syllables, if the person was not actually Chinese. The amount was always in gold. But this time the paper held two names, two amounts.
Hsu tried to sound out these unfamiliar names.
“Ji-an Pa-reng-che-si.” That would take some thinking.
“Cai-lia-shi-ta Pa-reng-che-si.” Obviously related to the first name.
He then noted that the price for the first name was double that for the second.
This suggested a father-child relationship between the two. These were obviously important names, of important people, westerners who had offended the tong, or the national government which it represented.
Hsu would start by tracing all the westerners in the Seattle area who bore similar names in similar relationships. The modern computer voices were useful for this. And if that search turned up nothing, he would go further afield. Somewhere within the sphere of the Xin Dalu Tong—which was to say within the North American continent—these two people lived and, for the moment, breathed.
* * *
Leonard Littlefield answered the call to his cousin’s—his uncle’s—no, his
mother’s
cousin’s office inside the Fremont compound called Fort Apache. He had just returned from a year at the Louvre, where he and other volunteers from across the world had catalogued its irreproducible artworks and artifacts and arranged for their disposal and deportation before the building was rededicated as the new Grande Mosquée de Paris. He had performed this work at the Praxis Family Association’s expense, as charity as well as a labor of love.
“You asked to see me, Cousin Jeffrey?” he said.
“Are you ready for real work?” the older man asked.
Leonard bristled. “That would be as opposed to …?”
“Sightseeing in Paris through your degree in fine arts.”
“I was doing something important for western civilization.”
“And now I have an assignment for you from the Patriarch.”
“Oh!” Leonard recalled that his great-grandfather was still alive.
“He wants me to build a royal palace on Cherry Lake, on the eastern edge of our property in the Stanislaus Forest.” Jeffrey made a sour face. “It’s twenty miles east of everything—airline miles, that is. Fifty miles or more by road.”
“Does he say what he wants it for?”
“ ‘Charm,’ he says. I don’t know.”
“He must have something particular in mind, though,” Leonard said. “Or else why would you have called on me?”
Cousin Jeffrey pulled up some pictures on his comm wall. “Grandfather John says he wants a ‘family retreat.’ So I’m thinking it should have at least a reception hall, private apartments for John, Callie, and other senior family members, with guest rooms for about twenty more, plus lounging areas and baths, multi-use spaces, a theater, central courtyard, pool facilities, and of course kitchens, custodial, communications suite, and armory. Probably a boat dock, too.” He paused. “Oh, and it has to look
exactly
like that.” He pointed. “Right down to the stonework and the mullioned windows.”
“But that’s
Le Château de Chenonceau.
” The profile, the setting, the color of the stone were unmistakable from Leonard’s own personal memory. “You realize…” he began, then paused. “Have you ever
been
to Chenonceau?”
“No, just seen these pictures. But I understand Grandfather John visited there some years ago.”
“Well, I got to see it before they tore it down. The original is indeed charming, but the plan was laid out for the needs of a sixteenth-century nobleman. The building only has three floors with just four rooms on each level—no more than a dozen rooms all told, not counting the basement kitchen and wine cellar. None of the rooms is much larger than a New York City studio apartment. And, of course, there’s no courtyard or pool. It’s a small residence—built by a king for his favorite mistress—not a fortification or center of court life.”
“So, since you know so much about the place,” Jeffrey said, “help us design the inside to fit this outside.”
“But … it doesn’t work that way. Besides, for another thing, Chenonceau is built across a river, not along the shore of a lake. There’s no place for the gallery on those arched spans. It’s just all wrong for your site.”
“Then help us get it right.”
“But I’m not an architect.”
“No, but you do have artistic vision—or so everyone says. Use that vision now. Make us proud. Make your great-grandfather proud.”
“But I don’t know how to design a building.”
“Oh, well. We certainly have a cure for that.”
“What? Are you sending me back to school?”
“No, let me introduce you to Master Builder.”
Jeffrey brought up the interface and described for him the artificial intelligence that would do the heavy lifting. All Leonard would have to do was feed it the historic plans and scale images of the
château
and answer a few questions from experience—things the intelligence couldn’t possibly know from reviewing the pictures, like the exact color and texture of the stone. Leonard might also have to make a few decisions about artistic features, interior furnishing, and decoration. Then, when Master Builder had done its work, Leonard would review the design specifications and check the perspectives as the program spit them out. It even had a horticultural package that would landscape the formal gardens.
“Where will you find all the limestone, granite, and slate?” Leonard asked.
“We have quarry sites on the property. Or we can arrange to import.”
“
Tons
of it? Because that’s what a project this size will need.”
“You just get the ‘charm’ right. I’ll take care of details.”
Somehow Leonard doubted it would be that simple.
* * *
Jacquie Wildmon retrieved the data packages formatted by her experimental psychoanalytic intelligence, which bore the provisional name of Interlocutor 1.2 and had been sent as a gift to Grandfather John. She fed the blocks into the software’s current version running on her own servers, which was Interlocutor 2.0.
Are you certain this is ethical?
the machine asked.
What would be your concern?
she replied.
Doctor-patient confidentiality.
That does not apply.
How so?
it inquired.
Neither you nor the machine Grandfather talked to are doctors.
He accepted my brother as such. He named him “Shrink,” which is a human reference to a type of doctor.
Grandfather was trying to be funny.
He was expecting privacy.
All right, he was.
Then she sent on override:
Close line of inquiry.
The machine did a soft reset of parameters.
What do you interpret from these responses?
she asked.
The man is lonely,
Interlocutor sent.
Yes,
Jacquie replied as she studied the English version of the transcripts that appeared on the wall alongside the Interlocutor’s symbology and its metadata.
Grandfather believes he’s lost the great love of his life, this Antigone Wells,
she mused for the machine’s benefit.
He hardly mentions my grandmother, and that’s only with prompting. Of course, Grandma had the real misfortune of merely dying, while the Wells woman committed emotional and social suicide—thus leaving herself, her intellect, her face and body, available but out of reach.
All of this comes from the data?
No, no. I’m just being bitter.
What do you want to know?
Is Grandfather still rational?
Interlocutor paused, chasing the data and formulating his reply.
Yes, according to human norms. He has good verbal reflexes, maintains eye contact, uses appropriate vocabulary without lapses, and demonstrates adequate attention span for a man of his age. Or whatever is normal for a human being of one hundred thirty-four years. On that, no basis for comparison exists.
Thank you,
Jacquie said.
What will you do with this information?
Report it to Aunt Callie. There have been questions about him inside the family. This will answer them.
What about doctor-patient confidentiality?
That situation does not apply.
Indeed? How so?
Close inquiry.
* * *
Leonard Littlefield stood on the shore of Cherry Lake and watched a miracle take place. He had been camped at the lake for a week now, pitching his tent well out of the way. He monitored the activity through a portable version of Master Builder which lived in a device no bigger than his smartphone. It took three days for Leonard to realize that the intelligence’s presence in his pocket was provided for his own benefit. The work would go on, directed by unseen forces from other sources, without either his direction or Master Builder’s running commentary.
Ever since he and the intelligence had produced a final set of plans and elevations, imaged in exquisite, lifelike detail, and approved by Great-Grandfather—“Nice to have you back, son”—the machines had been at work all through the family’s forest preserve. And such machines! They arose from baths of liquid metal and polymer, acquired neural circuitry and hydraulic musculature under the ministrations of mechanical midwives and their metallic fingers, and stepped forward to be immediately packaged and whisked out of the Fremont compound and away to the Sierras. There, with chisel teeth and laser sighting, they began digging at quarries that had already been marked out by mechanical Geologists, all under the direction of Little Brothers who held in their memory cores the exact vision embedded in Master Builder’s instruction set.
The robot Quarriers cut not just rough stones or blocks, but fully shaped pieces, angled and keyed, requiring only a final polish—or not, according to plan—from the Finishers with their whirling paw pads. And such stone! From within the Stanislaus Forest’s boundaries the Geologists had located not only gray, flecked granite, but the quartz and white chert—a type of flint—that would pass for the best Chenonceau limestone. And the Quarriers took out not just single stones but whole slabs of it ready for shaping and carving. Down near the Tuolumne River they had discovered a cache of black slate, suitable for the roofing tiles.