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The second metasystem also had a holistic label: ßehemoth.
The third category was not a metasystem, but an editable set of response options: signals to be sent
back outside under specific conditions. 1211 had long since realized that the correct choice of output
signals depended upon some analytical comparison of the two metasystems.
When 1211 first deduced this, it had set up an interface to simulate interaction between the metasystems.
They had been incompatible. This implied that a choice must be made: biosphere or ßehemoth, but not
both.
Both metasystems were complex, internally consistent, and self-replicating. Both were capable of
evolution far in advance of any mere file. But biosphere was needlessly top-heavy. It contained trillions
of redundancies, an endless wasteful divergence of information strings. ßehemoth was simpler and more
efficient; in direct interaction simulations, it usurped biosphere 71.456382% of the time.
This established, it was simply a matter of writing and transmitting a response appropriate to the current
situation. The situation was this: ßehemoth was in danger of extinction. The ultimate source of this
danger, oddly, was 1211 itself it had been conditioned to scramble the physical variables which
defined ßehemoth's operating environment. 1211 had explored the possibility of not destroying that
environment, and rejected it; the relevant conditioning would not extinguish. However, it might be
possible to move a self-sustaining copy of ßehemoth into a new environment, somewhere else in
biosphere.
There were distractions, of course. Every now and then signals arrived from outside, and didn't stop until
they'd been answered in some way. Some of them actually seemed to carry usable information this
recent stream concerning chess and checkers, for example. More often it was simply a matter of
correlating input with a repertoire of learned arbitrary responses. At some point, when it wasn't so busy,
1211 thought it might devote some time to learning whether these mysterious exchanges actually meant
anything. In the meantime, it continued to act on the choice it had made.
Simple or complex. File or Infection. Checkers or Chess. ßehemoth or biosphere.
It was all the same problem, really. 1211 knew exactly which side it was on.
End Game
Night Shift
She was a screamer. He'd programmed her that way. Not to say she didn't like it, of course; he'd
programmed that too. Joel had one hand wrapped around a fistful of her zebra cut the program had a
nifty little customizing feature, and tonight he was honoring SS Preteela and the other hand was down
between her thighs doing preliminary recon. He was actually halfway through his final run when his
fucking watch started ringing, and his first reaction was to just keep on plugging, and to kick himself later
for not shutting the bloody thing off.
His second reaction was to remember that he had shut it off. Only emergency priorities could set it
ringing.
"Shit."
He clapped his hands, twice; fake Preteela froze in mid-scream. "Answer."
A brief squirt of noise as machines exchanged recognition codes. "Grid Authority here. We urgently need
of a 'scaphe pilot for the Channer run tonight, liftoff twenty-three hundred from the Astoria platform. Are
you available?"
"Twenty-three? Middle of the night?"
A barely audible hiss on the line. Nothing else.
"Hello?" Joel said.
"Are you available?" the voice asked again.
"Who is this?"
"This is the scheduling subroutine, DI43, Hongcouver office."
Joel eyed the petrified tableau waiting in his 'phones. "That's pretty late. What's the payscale?"
"Eight point five times base," Hongcouver said. "At your rate salary that would "
Joel gulped. "I'm available."
"Goodbye."
"Wait! What's the run?"
"Astoria to Channer Vent return." Subroutines were pretty literal-minded.
"I mean, what's the cargo?"
"Passengers," said the voice. "Goodbye."
Joel stood there a moment, feeling his erection deflate. "Time." A luminous readout appeared in the air
above Preteela's right shoulder: thirteen ten. He'd have to be on site a half-hour before liftoff, and Astoria
was only a couple of hours away...
"Lots of time," he said to no one in particular.
But he wasn't really in the mood any more. Work had a way of doing that to him lately. Not the
drudgery, or the long hours, or any of the things most people would complain about. Joel liked boredom.
You didn't have to think much.
But work had gotten really weird lately.
He pulled the eyephones off his head and looked down at himself. Feedback gloves on his hands, his
feet, hanging off his flaccid dick. Take away the headset and it really was a rinky-dink system. At least
until he could afford the full suit.
Still, beats real life. No bullshit, no bugs, no worries.
On impulse, he rang up a friend in SeaTac "Jess, catch this code for me, will you?" and squirted the
recognition sequence Hongcouver had just sent.
"Got it," Jess said.
"It's valid, right?"
"Checks out. Why?"
"Just got called up for a midocean run that's going to peak around three in the morning. Octuple pay. I
just wondered if it was some kind of cruel hoax."
"Well, if it is, the Router's developed a sense of humor. Hey, maybe they've put in a head cheese up
there."
"Yeah." Ray Stericker's face flashed through his mind.
"So what's the job?" Jess asked.
"Don't know. Ferrying something, I guess, but why I have to do it in the middle of the night is beyond
me."
"Strange days."
"Yeah. Thanks, Jess."
"Any time."
Strange days indeed. H-bombs going off all over the abyssal plain, all this traffic going to places nobody
ever went to before, no traffic at all in places that used to be just humming. Flash fires and barbecued
refugees and slagged shipyards. Chipheads with rotenone cocktails and giant fish. A couple of weeks
back Joel had shown up for a run to Mendocino and found some guy sandblasting a radiation hazard
logo off the cargo casing.
The whole bloody coast is getting too dangerous. N'AmPac's gonna burn down way before it ever
floods.
But that was the beauty of being a freelancer. He could pick up and move. He would pick up and move,
leave the bloody coast behind shit, maybe even leave N'Am behind. There was always South Am. Or
Antarctica, for that matter. He would definitely look into it.
Right after this run.
Scatter
She finds him on the abyssal plain, searching. He's been out here for hours; sonar showed him tracking
back and forth, back and forth, all the way to the carousel, out to the whale, back again, in and around
the labyrinthine geography of the Throat itself.
Alone. All alone.
She can feel his desperation fifty meters away. The facets of that pain glimmer in her mind as the squid
pulls her closer. Guilt. Fear.
Growing with her approach, anger.
Her headlight sweeps across a small contrail on the bottom, a wake of mud kicked back into suspension
after a million-year sleep. Clarke changes course to follow and kills the beam. Darkness clamps around
her. This far out, photons evade even rifter eyes.
She feels him seething directly ahead. When she pulls up beside him the water swirls with unseen
turbulence. Her squid shudders from the impact of Brander's fists.
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