At last, somehow, she and Pedro lay next to each other, gasping in exhaustion.
“I… saw Lustig succeed… diverting their beam,” Manella explained. “He couldn’t push it all the way to sea… so I came outside to watch.
“Then I saw you falling…”
Teresa touched the big reporter’s arm. He didn’t have to explain further. “So—” She inhaled deeply a few more times, blinking away blurriness. “So Alex did it.”
Then, with more enthusiasm, she rolled over onto her stomach and laughed, hitting the ground. “He did it!” Pedro commented. “Yeah. I’m sure sorry—” Teresa sat up. “Sorry! What are you sorry about?” Manella stared at the pit he’d just pulled her from. “That wind tore off my True-Vu. I wonder how far down this thing…” He shook his head and turned to face her. “But no. What I meant was that I’m sorry for the other guys. They’re in for a rough time, I bet, now that it’s Lustig’s turn to fight back.”
Teresa glanced toward the resonator building where Alex labored on all alone. Just uphill though, she saw a cascade of Tangoparu engineers, running to rejoin their tohunga, looking mortified at having left his side during a battle. Teresa doubted it would ever happen again.
In the rear, security guards escorted June Morgan, who stared about in mute surprise, much to Teresa’s satisfaction. “Come on, Pedro,” she told the big reporter, offering her hand. “You can search for your recorder later. First let’s see if we can be of any use.”
In Yellowstone Park, tourists pose near steaming geysers. All around them stretch cinder cones and other testaments to the land’s violent past. And yet, they don’t see any of it really relating to them. After all, those things happened a long, long time ago.
Today, however, the Old Faithful geyser surprises them. Instead of steam, wet and clear, what comes out at the appointed time glows white hot and molten.
It is quite a show, indeed. More, perhaps, than the visitors ever bargained for.
• HOLOSPHERE
As time passed, it was only the outline — the warp and weft — that remained hers alone. As for the rest, it be-came a collage, a synthesis of many contributions. Though Jen’s daring model of the essential processes of thought grew more complicated with each added ele-ment, most of its newest pieces now came bobbing out of the capacious well of the Net itself. Some bits were brought home by her ferrets. But lately, the little software emissaries kept getting lost in the worried maelstrom surging through the world’s data hubs. The help she got now came mostly in real time, from real men and women — co-workers and colleagues who knew her access codes and had begun by merely eavesdropping on her work, but soon, intrigued, started offering suggestions as well.
Li Xieng of Shanghai had been first to speak up — after watching her model build for hours before making his presence known. Apologetically, he pointed out a flaw that would have stymied her if left uncorrected. Fortunately, he had a convenient solution ready at hand.
Old Russum of the University of Prague logged in next with a recommendation, and then Pauline Cockerel in London. After that, rumors spread with the eager pace of electrons, drawing attention from specialists across the globe. Helpful suggestions began arriving faster than Jen could scan them, so she deputized to surrogates — both living and simulated — the job of culling wheat from chaff.
Of course this was no more than a ripple in the tide of anxious comment right now sweeping the Net. Jen knew she and the others were being self-indulgent. Perhaps they oughtn’t to be concentrating so single-mindedly on an abstract model while all channels crackled with angst over matters of planetary survival. They should pay attention to the pronouncements of presidents and general secretaries and all the multichanneled pundits.
And yet, moments like this came so seldom in science. Mostly, a researcher’s work was a daily grind no less than the toil of a baker or grocer. Now and then though, something glorious happened — a paradigm shift, or theoretical revolution. Jen and the others were caught in the momentum of creative breakthrough. No one knew how long the burst of synthesis would last, but for now the whole was far greater than the sum of its parts.
… PRECONSCIOUS CULLING OF SEMI-RANDOM MEMORY ASSOCIATIONS cannot be too strict, Li Xieng commented in a line of bright letters to her upper left, after all, what would CONSCIOUSNESS BE WITHOUT THOSE SUDDEN LITTLE MEMORIES AND IMPULSES, APPARENTLY SO RANDOM, BUT…
Li’s comment wasn’t particularly important in itself. But the software bundle accompanying them was. A quick simulation test showed it wouldn’t hurt the big model, and just might add to its overall flexibility. So she spliced it to the growing whole and moved on.
A contribution from one of the Bell Labs arrived, bearing Pauline Cockerel’s chop of approval. Jen was about to evaluate it for herself when a sudden swirl of garish color drew her attention to the screen on the far left.
It was that bloody tiger again! Jen couldn’t figure out what the thing represented or why it persisted so. Or why it looked more battle worn each time she saw it. A while ago she had assigned the symbol to serve as an icon for her protection-sieve program, guarding this computer nexus from any outsiders trying to interfere without permission. But by now her data domain was so much larger, it seemed in retrospect a trivial precaution.
The tiger really was looking rather the worse for wear. It’s fur even smoked along one flank, as if seared by some terrible flame. Bleeding wounds seemed to trace the recent work of raking talons. And yet it rumbled defiantly, turning now and then to glare at something lurking just off screen.
The metaphorical meaning struck Jen even in her distracted state. Somewhere, out in the pseudoreality of the Net, something or someone was trying to get in, and it wasn’t one of her colleagues.
Who, then? Or what?
As if answering her query, the tiger raised a paw. Impaled on one claw shimmered what looked like a glistening lizard’s scale…
Jen shook her head. She hadn’t time for trivialities. Her model kept growing, building impetus. It took all her attention now just to ride along, guiding here, adjusting there…
“ — have to ask you to return the memory and processors you’ve borrowed, Dr. Wolling. Do you read me? This is a crisis! We’ve heard from Alex that—”
The new voice was Kenda, yammering by intercom. Irritably, she wiped the circuit. Of all times for that bloody man to interrupt! Jen had far too little computer memory as it was! She’d even taken advantage of the Ndebele and appropriated space in Kuwenezi Canton’s city computers. Thank heavens it was nighttime outside. By morning it might all be finished, before she had to deal with swarms of irate administrators.
Somewhere in the real world, she vaguely heard Kenda and his crew shouting at each other, struggling to bring their big resonator on line with abrupt speed. But Jen was barely of the real world anymore. Through her subvocal and with delicate finger controls, she created hungry little programs — surrogates designed on the spur of the moment to go forth and get more memory, wherever it could be found, commandeering it on any pretext and hang the ultimate expense! Any storage and computing charges would be recouped a million times over if this worked!
This was no job for mere ferrets or hounds. She needed something tenacious that wouldn’t take no for an answer. So the new surrogates she pictured as tiny versions of herself, and laughed at the image her computer drew from memory — an old book-jacket photo depicting her in an earth-colored sari at some Gaian ritual, wearing a smile of maternally patient, absolute determination.