Jillian walked through the door as through a dream. Beverly stared straight ahead. She barely acknowledged Jillian’s presence. Beverly looked twodimensional, flat and lifeless. The white sundress was a surreal fog struggling to condense into muslin.
In old-style flat holos, “flicks,” a critical number of frames per second was needed to preserve the illusion of motion. Below that threshold, the eye could see individual pictures flash against a darkened screen. The images became jerky and artificial.
Maintaining the Void became nightmarishly difficult. Data was slowed, stalled, corrupted. And the images and sensations were deteriorating, slowly consumed by static.
“Beverly,” Jillian said gently, “I want unclassified material.”
“I’ll help you if I can, Jillian.” Beverly’s mouth was out of synch with her words. Her index fingernail, elegantly manicured, traced the JILLIAN LOVES carving.
Beverly’s nail left a wisp of smoke. Now the letters read: JILLIAN, STOP.
The ocean around them became a sea of disparate voices, fishy mouths lipping her gently, strange swirling smells and tastes.
“Beverly,” Jillian said. “Maybe the interference is coming from the main lobe. Can you partition off? Can you give us some privacy here?”
“I can shield us.” There was a distinct clicking sensation, and the weird and inexplicable feeling that she and everything around her had suddenly been reduced in size. But Beverly was clearer, sharper. When she spoke her voice was distinct again.
“This is better, darling, but if I try to access data they can get to me. They might be able to get to me here. Are you sure you know what you’re asking?”
“I’ve got to know about Donny Crawford.” Donny had been attacked. Somebody… Council members?… had used him as a puppet to make a point.
“All right, darling.” Beverly’s dark eyes were huge and luminescent, bottomless, and Jillian felt herself fall into them, Alice-down-the-Rabbit-Hole.
A flood of sensation: pictures, sound, kinesthetic measurements. She felt Donny in motion. It was a formidable learning tool, and even more powerful because of Donny’s physical dynamism. She was inside his body as he performed a flawless routine on the uneven parallel bars.
The sensations of his effort triggered an explosion of sexual images: maternal, sensual, emotional. A catalog of experience and fantasy. Sean’s body with Donny’s face. Remembered tastes and smells and touches, subtly altered to fit Donny Crawford.
So beautiful, so beautiful.
Donny’s image always did this to her. Now she wrenched herself from the seething erotic fantasies.
“Not this… Beverly. I need information on Donny’s relationship with the Council.”
“The Council”—Beverly’s voice crackled with static—“is composed of approximately two dozen of the most powerful Linked—”
“Approximately?”
Sparks crackled, tiny lightnings that disrupted the illusion. “The exact number is classified.”
“Help me, Beverly.” Jillian whispered it. “Donny Crawford was almost killed because of something someone named McFairlaine wanted from Energy. Why would anyone want to hurt Donny? Just who is this McFairlaine?”
“Carter Crombie McFairlaine is the chairman of Transportation. He’s known to be a Council member.”
“And what does ‘two points’ mean?” Hastily, she added, “If you can tell me without accessing the main lobe.”
Beverly’s voice was becoming too formal, had lost all of its musical quality. “Analysis of current news indicates that contract negotiations between Energy and Transportation may be at a critical juncture. ‘Two points’ could mean percentage points, a financial arrangement.”
“Donny was afraid. He talked about ‘war.’ Do you know what he meant?”
No.
Then she was on her own. She didn’t dare have Beverly ask a question like that. But what would “war” mean? There was no war. That was one of the gifts the Council had brought to the world.
Donny Crawford must be working for Transportation. Why would he personally suffer during a breakdown or stalemate in negotiations between Transportation and Energy? War, he said.
War between members of the Council? Impossible. Wasn’t it?
Her concept of fractal sociology predicted a repetition of patterns through higher and higher levels of social organization. Could she conceivably start with one man, Donny, as the smallest social unit, and predict anything about the system to which he belonged? The sample was impossibly small… but she was looking for perspective, not ultimate truth. It was worth a try.
If she considered Donny Crawford to be a microcosm of the entire, if she interpreted what happened to him on the mountain as a breakdown in communication between the neural net and the Boosted nervous system which it controlled, the macro equivalent of that might be a breakdown in communication within the Council.
In other words, removed from the ameliorative influence of the neural net — (If the Old Bastard didn’t come down from fucking Olympus)— the negative influence of Boost would take over. Donny’s nervous and endocrine systems would begin to go berserk.
(—Go to war with each other?)
“All right, Beverly. You have to do this for me. I want all data on industrial accidents and civil disobedience worldwide, whenever it exceeds statistical probability as established in the actuarial tables of Lloyds of London and Prudential Insurance.”
Beverly faded for a few moments, then reappeared. She was a cartoon, a line drawing, simpler every moment. “I can’t get that information.” She paused, and then added matter-of-factly, “They do not approve of your line of questioning, Jillian.”
“There’s nothing illegal about asking questions.” Even to herself, she sounded like a guilty child.
“They will damage me if you don’t stop.”
Jillian’s laughter rang hollowly. “Beverly, I love you, but you’re just a program. There are a dozen copies of your core. They can’t—”
Beverly talked slowly, struggling to enunciate. “They will damage me if you do not stop.”
Jillian felt her throat constrict. Her voice was a husky whisper. “Who are they?”
“That information is restricted.”
They?
In Jillian’s world of illusion, the water swirled and darkened with her anger. She had to find a way through this!
“Eleven years ago, Mom died in an industrial accident.” Harmless enough. “Let me see her file.”
“Certain information on Lilith Shomer is restricted, Jillian.”
“Now just wait a minute. There was an explosion. She was buried. Father and I got the insurance. Daddy dearest vanished with the money, and I went to a state home. Public record. How could any of that be classified?”
“This line of questioning must be terminated, Jillian.”
Jillian stopped dead. The emotional bulk of the obstruction weighed on her like a millstone.
She spoke more carefully now. Losing one’s temper with a computer was no damn use at all. “Beverly, I’ve accessed this data before.”
“Not on the present search string.”
Bad, bad. Her chance to access data about her mother’s death from any angle was diminished now. The harder she pushed, the broader the ban might become. And if they (the Council?) didn’t approve of these questions, then…
She had never wondered if someone were to blame for her mother’s death. Not since she grew up.
Shut up, Jillian. Some small, sane part of her pled in vain. Finish your research. Be good. But it was already too late. Any line of investigation led straight to the Council, through the Council. How could Jillian Shomer pursue sociological truths if faceless background figures were messing up her data?