LVV E Crosby Chicago Crystal Brick: “Mr. Atkins, I’ve read your lit, and I’ve long admired your work, but I’ve always been curious. If you do awaken Jill or some other machine, what will you tell them about our world? I mean, they’ll be as innocent as children. How do you explain to them why society wants to punish itself, why we’re so set on lifting ourselves up by our bootstraps whatever it takes, and we don’t even know where we’re going?”
Atkins: “Jill is hardly innocent. Just a few minutes ago, she was examining the theory of social feedback loops, that is, checks and balances in a society. She could probably tell us more about what troubles our society than any single human scholar. But that’s just recreation for her, in a way; unless someone comes along and specifically asks us—or rather, rents Jill—she won’t provide her analysis, but it’ll be stored away. I doubt that even if she did solve our problems for us, we’d listen to her.”
David Shine: “Thank you, E Crosby. Donald Estes?” LW D Estes Los Angeles East Comb Two: “I love this vid I really do. I watch it every chance. Mr. Atkins, speaking of those who want to punish society, what do the Selectors or the other avenging angel groups think of Jill?”
Atkins: “I have no idea. Absolutely no idea.” David Shine: “Why should they be concerned, Mr. Estes?” LW D Estes: “Because they say they’re trying to raise humans to the level of angels—to perfect us by, you know, weeding the garden. Roger Atkins is trying to make something or someone that isn’t even human.”
Atkins: “That’s an interesting comparison. Parts of Jill are very human. It’s no secret that I and four fellow researchers have downloaded significant portions of our personality patterns into Jill’s systems. Jill is like all of us having one child, but that child simply hasn’t been born yet. And since you mention it, I really don’t give a gracious fap what the Selectors do or think.”
David Shine: “How wonderful if all our unborn children could be as useful as Jill has been. Thank you for your questions. Now, Mr. Atkins, we have a new LitVid analysis of material being sent in from AXIS…”
Atkins: “I’m all eyes and ears.”
LitVid 21/1 B Net (Summary): The million nickel children have grown their legs and moved across the surface of B-2, all in a period of hours, sending information to the orbiter and to the larger mobile landers, which have been gathering their own information. Mobile Explorer 5 has deployed its wheels and rolled down a hill covered with bulbous green and purple vegetable growth like a carpet of peas and grapes, taking samples and analyzing them. At the bottom of this hill and across a plain some fifteen kilometers broad lies a ring of towers, each a tapered, flattened cylinder like a candle squashed lengthwise, each iron-black and shiny like polished stone, each thirty-two meters in height. Mobile Explorer 5 rolls between two columns, many eyes rotating, bobbing up and down, taking it all in, passing it all on to AXIS: a full spectrum seeing. The towers appear to be inert, their external temperatures 293 Kelvin, radiating only the sun-absorbed heat that would be expected from their mass and density. The magnetic field of B-2 is not affected by their presence; compass readings do not deviate.
The explorer rolls right up to a tower, raps it gently with a grasping arm and records the sound made by the rap, waits for some response, receives none, pivots a resonance disruptor into place, and abrades a four gram sample of the material into a cup. It lases the contents of the cup to white heat and analyzes the material.
AXIS (Band 4)> These structures appear quite dull and so they interest me. Are they memorials or artworks? They seem to do nothing. Roger, I try to decide what you would think they are, and I believe you will be as puzzled as I am.
My explorers are taking soil and atmosphere samples everywhere they have landed. My balloons spread through the atmosphere, patiently surveying.
The planet is covered with basic photosynthesizing plant life; chlorophyll B is the pigment of choice for about seventy percent of the plants; a pigment similar to visual purple is used at least in part by the rest. There are no apparent animal forms and no mobile plant forms. Microorganisms are limited to non-nucleated cells and viral agglomerates.
The circles of towers could not have been constructed by any of these apparent land based life forms.
Roger, where have the builders gone? Your voice within me is inadequate; I do not know what you will think about this.
David Shine: “Well, Mr. Atkins, what do you think about this?” Atkins: “Good Lord, I haven’t a pico. I’ll pass that on to the real experts…and to Jill, who no doubt is considering the broad possibilities even as we speak.”
They ripped the white from the tricolure, and what a wonderful thing that was! Your flag now blue and red, all white removed. I have wished I could rip the white from my own soul, but I cannot. Perhaps it is because I am truly white inside. Perhaps all humans, whatever their color, are white inside, with all that means—the grasping for money, security, comfort, progress, comfort, safe sex, safe love, safe literature, safe politics. I would kill anyone who proved that to me, though. I would kill myself before believing it.
21
Mary Choy keyed in her security number at the old armored pd terminal in the deep shade jag neighborhood once called Inglewood, surrounding the easternmost foot of South Comb One. She inquired whether or not citizens or any pd informants had reported seeing Goldsmith; thin soup with her near rejection by Oversight. None had.
For the moment, Mary Choy was fairly assured that Goldsmith had either fled before the alerts—immediately after the murders—or gone to ground. And where would he go to ground? What private citizen in the shadows even among the untherapied would give him shelter knowing the sure interest of the Selectors, not to mention the pd? Who among the comb dwellers would do something so unsocial as harbor a mass murderer?
Too many questions and no clear trail. It was becoming obvious that a trip to Hispaniola and a federally encouraged interview with Yardley’s representatives if not Yardley himself was inevitable.
To that end, she called Ernest Hassida from her lapel phone.
“Mary, I’m busy sculpting…call you back?”
“No need. Just make arrangements for me to meet your contacts on Hispaniola.”
“You’re scanning blank?”
“No clues.”
“This is Christmas Eve, my dear. My contacts are very religious people…But I’ll give it a try. I’m doing this reluctantly, I repeat. It will not be safe. Even tonight, you’ll have to be your most discreet, Mary dear.”
She stood by the black cylindrical terminal half seeing its odd scrapes and dings and other city abrasions and wondered why the prospect of a trip to Hispaniola bothered her so much. If she were truly of the comb she might enjoy a trip to the relatively safe sins of Yardley’s nation. But she was not. She was pd and external to safety. She knew LA and the surrounding territory; she did not know Hispaniola.
Christmas Eve. She had forgotten. Brief picture: a three meter farm tree in suburban Irvine gaudy with tinsel and blown art glass, a bright hologram star twinkling and beaming at the top, casting light through the high ceilinged family room, brother Lee running his electric car at her while she tried to hit his plastic shoulder harness with a grainy spot of red light from her pistol. Even then pd masculine mentality.
Lee would appreciate Christmas. Last she heard, he was working a Christian commune refuge in Green Idaho. She blinked and cleared the images. Christmas had passed in more ways than one; she was no more a part of her family now than she was a Christian.