Counting Heads (17 page)

“Sure,” Bogdan said, “you’re the ones against people.”

The sim frowned. “Not exactly,” it said. “Birthplace is a worthy institution that tackles the important work of humanely limiting world population growth. Reproduction bans are but a small part of what they foster. While I wholeheartedly believe in Birthplace’s mission, a few years ago, I left the organization to pursue an even grander plan called the Garden Earth Project. Would you like to hear about it?”

Actually, no. Bogdan could care less about anything this wanker had to say, but he didn’t want to accidentally end his sweetest assignment in a week, so he said, “I’m listening.”

“Splendid,” said the little man. “See that bit of shiny object off your starboard bow?” Bogdan looked where the man pointed and saw not one, but thousands of shiny objects. He consulted his map and realized it was Trailing Earth, the space colony at one of Earth’s Lagrange points. “By the way,” said the man, “this live spacescape is brought to you courtesy of the SNEEN, the Starke Near Earth Eye Network. Why don’t we steer that way?”

Bogdan turned the ship toward the space colony. Immediately there was an auditory alarm, and a line on the map turned a pulsating red. “What’s happening?” he said.

The ship replied, “Warning, proximity to high-energy beam. Change course to oh-three-six. Warning.”

Bogdan didn’t know how to set a course, let alone change one, and when he turned the ship again, the alarm grew shriller.

“Hurry,” said the little man, “engage the hi-end filter.”

Without knowing what it was, Bogdan ordered the ship to engage it. The stars in his viewports darkened, and a brilliant line, like a taut wire, seemed to stretch across space. The line was too bright to look at directly, but it was dead ahead and growing larger every moment. Being able to see it made avoiding it child’s play, and Bogdan veered away. The proximity alarm fell silent.

“Good piloting!” said Bogdan’s sim passenger. “That was one of our Heliostream microwave beams that supplies Trailing Earth with power. It originates from our solar harvesters in Merc orbit and transmits an average of one terawatt per beam. It would have vaporized us.”

Bogdan cranked back the filter opacity and followed the microbeam to Trailing Earth. The ship passed corrals on the outskirts of the colony where thousands of captured iron-nickel asteroids awaited processing. It passed a row of microbeam targets: large, utterly black disks limned with nav beacons. Bogdan cut his speed when they reached the shipyards.

In the yards were rows and ranks of giant hoop frames. Many of the frames were covered with barnacle-shaped construction arbeitors that were busily weaving the seamless skin of the hab drums. The shipyards were crisscrossed with tightly choreographed flight paths of support tenders, construction bots, material trains, and waste scuppers, which seemed to fly at Bogdan from all directions. He zigged and zagged a lurching path through them, but there were too many, and his ship clipped the tail of a scupper and slammed into the side of a tender. There was a satisfyingly fiery explosion, and the holo ceased.

“Feck!” Bogdan said and brought his seat to its upright position. But the booth lights did not come on. Happily, the testing objectives of this vid seemed to be more important than his lack of piloting skill, and he and the Aria Ranger and his unnerving passenger were reset as good as new at the far border of the congested space yard. They were entering a second yard where there was very little traffic to avoid. A dozen or so hoop-shaped ships docked in the yard appeared to be complete. Their rings of sixty-four rotating hab drums were marked with names in giant letters: GARDEN TBILISI, GARDEN ANKARA, GOODACRE, GARDEN HYBRID, and so on.

“These Oships are taking on provisions,” said Myr Meewee. “Everything they’ll need to travel to another solar system, find a habitable planet, and colonize it. Steer that way, young man.” He pointed to a passage through the donut hole of the
King Jesus
. “It’s all right. The torus isn’t energized yet.”

Bogdan steered a course through the center of the Oship. At last he gained a sense of the size of these things. The
King Jesus
just got bigger and bigger. What had seemed like a bump on its lattice frame was actually a megaton freighter docked at a transfer port. The “I” of “KING” was as long and broad as a runway.

“When the torus is energized,” the man said, “this area in the middle of the Oship will become a magnetic target. We’ll propel the ship by bombarding it with a river of particles and pellets from the same Heliostream harvesters that supply the microbeams. Would you like to hear more about this awesome technology?”

“By all means,” Bogdan said, steering for the next Oship, the
Octopus Garden
.

His simulated host launched into a long-winded explanation of self-steering particles, laser course correctors, shipboard maneuvering rockets, and a redundant system for deceleration once the Oship arrived at its new home star system. As he talked, they passed out of the second shipyard and entered a traffic inwell leading to the populated core of the mushrooming space boomtown. The docking grid that extended out this far was incomplete and hosted few fabplat tenants. Bogdan aimed his Ranger at the inner core and punched the throttle.

“Lecture complete!” the Meewee sim said. “Had enough? Or would you like to hear about the Garden Earth Project and our ‘Thousandfold Plan’?”

“Spare no detail.”

“Splendid,” the Meewee sim said. “Heliostream and its parent corporation, Starke Enterprises, are major partners in a consortium of leading industries working together to spread seeds of humanity throughout the galaxy.”

The sim paused solemnly before continuing. “Those Oships back there, and hundreds more under construction, will each ferry a quarter million plankholders on a millennial voyage to newly discovered Earth-like planets in neighboring star systems. Each plankholder on board will receive title to a thousand acres of land on a new world, as well as a dwelling; a generous, lifetime share of food and supplies; unlimited access to education, medicine (including rejuvenation), cultural centers, sports facilities, vocational training,
and
full citizenship in whatever form of governmental structure the plankholders incorporate.

“Think of it, young man, a thousand acres plus all the ingredients of a happy life. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Frankly, it
is
. And do you know what we want in exchange for all of that?” The sim waited for an answer.

“Not a clue,” Bogdan said. “A million yoodies?”

“That’s probably how much it’s worth, but we’re offering plankholder shares for much less. We’re exchanging shares for real estate here on Earth. How much real estate? One share per acre. Let me repeat that. For title and usage rights to one acre of Earth, you can get one thousand acres, lifetime material support, and citizenship on a new Earth. What do you think of that?”

“I think it’s crazy,” Bogdan said. “Where is someone like me supposed to get title to an acre of land?”

The simulated pitchman looked at Bogdan, seemingly for the first time. “I imagine what you spend on rejuvenation treatments alone over five or seven years could buy you an acre of Amazonian desert. We don’t care about the quality or location of the land, as long as it’s in a country or protectorate that guarantees private property rights. Even an acre of deeded continental shelf will do.”

“What are you going to do with all that land? Build more gigatowers? Store nuclear waste?”

“You possess a healthy skepticism, young man, but you’ve got it backward. Remember the name of our project? Garden Earth? That’s what we’re building—a planetwide nature conservancy. We put the land we acquire into a trust for a period of two hundred years. During that time, the land lies fallow. No one lives on it or uses it for any purpose whatsoever. Our experts will help restore it to its pre-industrial ecology. Can’t you hear Ol’ Gaia sighing with relief?” The sim sighed theatrically.

“So, you’re doing this thing as a sort of public service?”

“That’s it exactly,” the unfrocked former bishop’s sim said, “a public service in the name of Mother Earth.”

Bogdan rolled his eyes and raced for the heart of the space colony.

“Can’t you get closer?” said Inspector Costa. Easy for her to say. She had remained behind in Chicago, as per protocol. She directed this phase of the hunt from a safe, dry booth in the UDJD tower. It was Fred and another on-call HomCom officer, Reilly Dell, who were in the GOV, churning up the muck at the bottom of Lake Michigan. This was turning into a long, long Monday.

In a pinch, a HomCom General Ops Vehicle made a dandy assault car, but a poor submersible. Its cabin could pressurize to only three atmospheres, it had no air lock or ballast tanks, and none of its array of weapons performed well at the bottom of a lake. Worst of all, its six powerful Pratt and Whitney hover fans adapted poorly to water propulsion. For these reasons, Fred was less than enthusiastic about tracking down Cabinet’s new hideout.

Fred said, “I can’t seem to get clear of this turbulence.” He had submerged too deep and had disturbed the lake bed. He was trying to approach a Chicago Waterworks aquifer crib. The crib quickly sucked the cloudy water down its voracious inflow manifold, and when their visibility improved, Fred saw that they, too, were being sucked in. He fed power to the hover fans. At first the GOV responded sluggishly, but it broke free all at once and bobbed to the surface of the lake before he could compensate.

“Crap,” he muttered as the car settled on the choppy water.

“Now, now,” Costa said from her booth.

“Can’t you have them shut down the aquifer?”

“Waterworks has respectfully declined my request,” said Costa. “Two of their other cribs are off-line for maintenance. However, they’ve agreed to reduce its throughput by twenty percent, down to half a million liters per minute, but it’ll be hours before the change is noticeable.” Chicago was a thirsty city that drank eight billion liters of lake water each day.

“Let me give it a go,” Reilly Dell said from the shotgun seat. “Believe it or not, I’ve actually had some experience with this kind of driving. There’s a particular kite maneuver that should work.”

Fred passed him control of the GOV. Reilly was not only another russ, but he lived in the same APRT as Fred, and they and their wives were part of a Wednesday night crowd. Reilly took the GOV down, but not deep enough to stir up the bottom. He dropped the nose of the GOV until it was pointing straight down. He reversed the fans and gave them only enough power to offset the crib drag. Though it was uncomfortable to be hanging upside down from the seat straps and craning their necks, now they could safely observe the entire crib facility.

It looked like what it was—a giant sucking drain. The inflow manifold was a ribwork of diaron beams that strained inrushing water and filtered out anything larger than a rowboat from being pulled in and transported ninety kilometers to the lakeshore treatment plant. The manifold itself was surrounded by a slightly convex concrete apron that covered about an acre of lake bottom.

Costa said, “Good work, Reilly. Hold it right there.”

Reilly turned to Fred and made an apologetic face, but Fred shook his head. After working with Costa that morning, it was sheer pleasure for Fred to be sharing the GOV with another russ.

“By the way,” Reilly said to him, “we confirmed the table at Rolfe’s for tonight. You and Mary will be there, right?”

Fred was confused a moment. He was about to say that today wasn’t Wednesday, when he remembered the canopy retirement ceremony advertised for that evening. There was supposed to be a party and a Skytel show, and the gang was going. Fred said they’d be there, and then added, “That reminds me, you sign up for that refresher course in bloomjumping?”

“I wasn’t going to,” Reilly said, “but after coming out here today, I think I will. Does the city even know how much wild shit there is still floating around out here? Whoever came up with the idea of dropping the canopy is nuts.”

What the city maintained, what the media trumpeted, was nothing less than the end of the Outrage. In recent decades, terrorist attacks had become ineffectual and rare, or so the experts claimed. The rabid zealots of terror of the twenty-first century had been exterminated, or gone underground, or lost interest. Earth’s biosphere was now 99.99 percent nanobiohazmat free. Any residual nanobot or nanocyst still dispersed in the atmosphere or hydrosphere had gone wild, lost its virulence, and was no more lethal than hay fever. In fact, most nanocysts contained ordinary pollen, not the smallpox, marburg, or VEE they were designed to ferry. The big, region-wide filtering systems known as canopies that had once been the lifesavers of cities throughout the United Democracies were now, according to the authorities, little more than giant, very expensive air fresheners.

The two men grew silent, lost in their own thoughts, which must have followed similar lines, for when they spoke again they’d come to the same conclusion.

“They won’t be able to hire enough bloomjumpers,” Reilly said.

“We’ll be able to name our own price.”

“You still certified, Fred?”

“You bet, and I’m going to increase my rating.”

THIS MORNING WAS the first time in years that Fred had actually flown through the Chicagoland canopy. After dropping Inspector Costa off at JD headquarters, Fred had detoured to HomCom headquarters to retrieve his own GOV and to pick up another partner for the remainder of the mission. He was pleased to see Reilly’s name on the on-call roster. As the GOV sped them across town to the lake, Fred quickly briefed his brother on the morning hunt for Cabinet. They passed over the breakwaters and their floating burbs and parks and were soon over open water. On the horizon ahead, the cordon of canopy generators rose from the lake like kilometer-high reeds. Due to the diluting effect of the lake winds, the generators were spaced close together. They pumped out such a dense concentration of anti-nano that the air around them seemed to ripple.

In no time, Fred’s GOV had passed into the first canopy layer. Below them were the buoys of shipping lanes where the big lake freighters crossed the canopy.

As they flew through the outer canopy layer, they saw bright, pinpoint flashes outside the GOV windows, too numerous to count. Each flash marked a brief, intense battle between an invading nanobot or cyst and the canopy’s anti-nano defenses. The anti-nano won every time.

“Doesn’t look too bad,” Fred said.

“About what you’d expect,” replied Reilly.

They passed over the floating Decon Port Authority where they would be obliged to stop on their return flight. Soon they were leaving canopied space to the great, unfiltered world beyond.

Reilly told the car to give them an auditory count of anything glomming to the outside of the GOV, and they traveled some minutes before the counter chimed. In a moment, it chimed again, but then fell silent for most of the rest of the outbound trip.

Reilly said, “ID those.”

The car replied, “Preliminary analysis identifies two gloms, both simple, one-phase carboplex disassembler nanobots.” The GOV’s frame and body were composed of carboplex—food for these particular bots—but it was covered with a tough and much less digestible diamondoid coating.

Reilly said, “Did you grease ’em?”

The car replied, “Affirmative.”

When they reached the coordinates Costa had given them and no more chimes had sounded, Fred said, “Not so bad.”

He spoke too soon, for a volley of chimes rang out. Then, after a pause, another volley, and a third. Numerous dimpled nozzles all over the car’s exterior exuded layers of heavy anti-nano grease. Here and there, the grease flashed in little, white-hot puffs as it encountered and incinerated the nanobot gloms.

Fred brought up the windshield HUD and enlarged the over and under GOV diagrams. The gloms showed up as red flags when first detected, amber when engaged by anti-nano grease, and blue when destroyed. Besides carboplex disassemblers, the gloms they were picking up included concrete, diaron, and silicate disassemblers as well. In other words, typical city-eaters.

Fred said, “Not so good.”

THE GLOM CHIMES had slowed down when they submerged. However, the anti-nano grease didn’t cover the car evenly underwater, and the little amber flags persisted for minutes before finally turning blue.

“We’ve confirmed our preliminary assessment,” Costa said. “Cabinet has an underground station here. It’s very well concealed and heat baffled, and it has tapped into the crib’s comm. You can just make it out in IR.” The windshield HUD displayed an IR overlay. There, at about eighty degrees east, at the very edge of the concrete apron, Fred saw a few wisps of fluttering ghostly ribbons. These marked exhaust heat being swallowed up in the rush of cold lake water. Starke’s hidden installation was putting out more heat than it could covertly dissipate.

“Must be working at capacity,” Fred said.

“I agree,” said Costa. “Ordinarily, it would be invisible, but now it’s trying to run Starke Enterprises from down there.”

“How did you find it?” Reilly said.

“Through snitches, of course,” said Costa. “From about a thousand of Cabinet’s closest friends. We were tipped off as soon as it went active. Mentars are their own worst enemies.”

Reilly gave Fred a look like—doesn’t she know there’s about a million mentars listening in?

Fred cleared his throat and said, “So, what do we do now, Inspector? Go after it?” He wasn’t too eager to tackle the waterworks crib in a GOV.

“No, we wait for the dredge to arrive. In the meantime, we’ve equipped one of the crib maintenance arbeitors with a probe. We’re releasing it now.”

Under the ribwork, a crablike mech was working its way around the manifold. It had a low-slung body and six wiry legs. It moved across the concrete apron with surprising agility by pulling itself against the suction along a grid of recessed D-ring grips. It traveled to the very edge of the apron, near a boulder where the waste heat seemed to originate, and reeled out a thin rod to probe the boulder. But when the probe made contact with the rock, there was an explosive flash, several of the arbeitor’s legs lost their grip, and the arbeitor’s body was whipped toward the intake. For a moment it hung from two legs, but these were torn away, and it bounced off the ribwork and disappeared down the gullet of the crib.

Reilly said, “Drink
that
, Chicago.”

Costa said, “Looks like this backup’s got teeth. I guess we might as well wait for the dredge. How you boys doing?”

Fred consulted Reilly with a glance and said, “We’re fine.”

“I see no need for you to be hanging upside down like that. We can watch through the cameras now; I doubt Cabinet is going anywhere. Why don’t you level the car out.”

Fred said, “What’s the ETA on the dredge?”

“Twenty minutes, and an hour for deployment.”

Fred consulted life support and power stores. Their trip out had consumed only a fraction of the GOV’s supply. Again he polled Reilly with a glance. Reilly yawned.

The life of a russ seemed to involve untold hours of keeping watch in uncomfortable positions. But russes had a high threshold for discomfort and an uncanny tolerance for boredom.

“We’re fine the way we are for now.”

And so they waited. The GOV’s glom monitor chimed every few minutes, unsettling Fred each time it did. He watched for each new red flag to turn amber and then blue. Before long, there was a louder chime. A red flag was blinking—there was a glom that the anti-nano grease could not reach. It was lodged in the door frame, one of the few seams in the GOV’s otherwise unibody construction. Fred and Reilly watched the blinking red flag for several long minutes. Eventually, the car said, “Protocol suggests surfacing and preparing for evacuation.”

Fred thought about it and said, “That might be wise.”

“Not to mention smart,” said Reilly.

Costa said, “What kind of bot is it?”

“Unknown,” Fred said, “until the grease can reach it.”

“Then why don’t you do as your car advises and come up.”

Fred nodded to Reilly, who righted the car and powered it to the surface. He released control of the GOV back to its subem pilot, which hovered the car a meter over the lake surface.

Almost at once, the glom flag stopped blinking and turned amber—the anti-nano grease had engaged the bot. The glom was a three-phase nanobot, a Nanotech Assault Engine, or NASTIE. Fred and Reilly stared at each other openmouthed.

Reilly said, “You don’t see many of those anymore,” and unbuckled himself from his seat. He went back to the passenger compartment.

Costa said, “You should evacuate immediately. Deploy the raft.”

Fred said, “Aye, aye, preparing to ditch.”

Reilly said, “Heads up,” and tossed Fred a pouch of VIS-37 from the refrigerator. The two russes made identical sour faces as they popped open their pouches, raised a silent toast, and forced down the vilest, most intrusive of all the emergency visolas. It turned Fred’s stomach. Reilly belched and went back to the passenger compartment.

Suddenly the NASTIE’s amber flag turned blue—bot killed, crisis averted. When Reilly returned with the rescue raft cassette and their kit bags, he looked at the glom display and said, “Well, hell.”

The two men watched the display for a while. Finally, Reilly said, “You still want to ditch or what?”

Fred said, “We could just eyeball that door frame real close.”

Reilly said, “I’ll do that,” and went aft again.

“Take your grease gun,” Fred called after him.

Reilly returned and got it from his kit bag.

Costa said, “What’s going on?”

Fred said, “Our NASTIE is dead. We’re going to stay aboard. Where’s your dredge?”

“Are you sure that’s such a good idea?”

“Anybody object?”

None of the monitoring mentars spoke up. Such decisions were usually left to the humans in the field.

Fred rotated the GOV to face the city, but they didn’t have enough altitude to make out either the shoreline or the picket of canopy generators from this distance. Suddenly something startled him. Someone was standing right in front of his windshield.

It was Cabinet, the old lady chief of staff who had earlier addressed the UD General Assembly. She looked directly at Fred and said,
May I have a few private words with you?