Linnear 03 - White Ninja (39 page)

They entered the long, echoey marble foyer where a formidable state-of-the-art security network had been installed. Shisei gave the attendant her vital statistics,

full name, date and place of birth, place of employment, watched in fascination as the young woman typed the information on to a computer screen. There was only a fractional hesitation, then the printer began spewing out hard copy, including a facsimile photo of Shisei. The computer operator handed the hard copy to a uniformed officer, who scanned it, then scrutinized them. He nodded, indicated that they should step through a metal detector. They were asked to empty their pockets. Shisei's handbag and the contents of their pockets were X-rayed. In addition, Shisei was made to hand over her jewellery to be analysed by a spectrometer.

They were fingerprinted, then directed to look into the eyepiece of a great, arching machine so their retina patterns could be photographed and, in Branding's case, compared with those on file. Then they spoke in turn into a grille so that a sophisticated computer could record and store their voiceprints.

At length, they were given laser-etched tags to wear, each imprinted with an invisible one-time-only code.

'Is that all?' she asked ironically as they passed through into the Institute proper.

Branding smiled thinly. 'If you come back next month, they'll take blood as well,' he said. 'I understand they're about to perfect instant DNA identification.'

Dr Rudolph, a tall, whip-thin man with a pencil moustache and high, arched eyebrows, was waiting for them just past the next computer-operated check-point. His bald,skull gleamed in the overhead illumination. A brim of salt-and-pepper hair hung down over his ears and the nape of his neck. Shisei thought that he had the air of a man who bred dogs or roses in his spare time: meticulous, patient, gentle. He peered at them as if they were laboratory subjects, quickly shook their hands with a dry, firm grip. He nodded absently as Branding introduced Shisei.

'Do you smoke?' Dr Rudolph asked. 'No? Good. No smoking of any kind is allowed here.'

He turned and led them down a quiet corridor. Shisei thought the subdued light and acoustically muffling carpet were more appropriate to an executive suite.

Dr Rudolph opened a door, ushered them into what looked like a boardroom. The space was dominated by an oval mahogany table, around which high-backed chain were arranged. On the table, in front of each chair, were a glass ashtray, a copper-coloured water carafe, two glasses, pad and pencil. In the centre of the table, where a floral arrangement would otherwise be, sat a sleek black oblong box made of ABS plastic. On its face were three rows of colour-coded buttons and toggle-switches.

'Sit,' Dr Rudolph said laconically.

Shisei looked around. She saw that one wall of the room was entirely composed of a clear plastic sheet on which had been etched a detailed Mercator projection map of the earth. In all other respects, the room was nondescript. She had expected a laboratory, and was slightly disappointed.

'As you know,' Dr Rudolph began, 'the Hive Project is involved in constructing an altogether new form of artificial intelligence. There have been attempts before this. Indeed, other projects are going on even as we speak. But, sadly, all are doomed to failure. All except the Hive. This is because true artificial intelligence is impossible utilizing conventional computers. While these clumsy machines may be programmed to aid in disease diagnosis or the like, outside the laboratory they cannot reliably perform even routine tasks involving movement and recognition. Simply put, computer processors, even a series of linked processors, executing one pre-programmed task at a time, cannot achieve a useful kind of artificial intelligence.

'For that, one needs a brain, and what is a brain but billions of neurons, the human equivalent of processors,

running a multiplicity of tasks simultaneously. This has been our goal here, to accumulate and store information7 much as humans do, as a pattern of interconnections that can be accessed all at once. Hence the name Hive Project, because our "brain" has the approximate complexity of a bee.'

Dr Rudolph rubbed his hands together. 'Enough talk. I brought you here, Cook, for a demonstration.' He nodded at the plastic object in the centre of the table. 'Would you take the remote?'

Branding did so, then passed it to Shisei. 'I think I'd prefer my friend to participate in the demonstration,' he said.

Dr Rudolph nodded. 'As you wish.' He, pressed a stud, and the lights went down. Simultaneously, as if it were a Broadway stage, the map of the world began to glow. Then several spots began to pulse. 'We are in the war room below the White House,' he intoned. 'Our DEW line defence has automatically come up in response to the firing of several ICBMs' - red circles blinked, moving towards the United States - 'from three different locations.' Yellow lights flashed to indicate the launch sites. They were in Siberia, the USSR's south-west coast, Shisei saw.

'You want me to figure out a defence or offence with the help of the Hive computer?' Shisei asked, looking over the array of buttons and switches on the black box.

'No,' Dr Rudolph said, 'you have in your hands the Russian initiative. Of course, you will be aided by conventional computers. You will even get their advice on the box's print-out screen. But you will decide how and when to launch the second and, if you survive, the third launch waves.'

'If I survive?'

"The defence of the United States is now in the

hands of the Hive computer,' Dr Rudolph said. 'World War Three has begun.'

The red dots indicating the Russian missiles were more than half-way to their targets. Now she could see, arcing to meet them, green blips. Soon there was a series of yellow explosions as the first wave of missile strikes was detonated in the atmosphere.

Shisei asked for computer advice, even as she launched a second wave of missiles, double the number of the first launch. She glanced at the wall map in time to see clusters of green dots moving towards the Soviet Union: American missiles; the Hive computer had successfully defended America, and was now retaliating.

She punched the button for missile identification, got it, asked her computer to match a defence. She waited impatiently as the green dots streaked ever closer to impact. She sent bombers aloft, dividing them into four sectors, separating them. But already she could see the orange lights of American fighters launched off aircraft carriers, rushing to intercept her bombers. The Hive computer was doing all this, thwarting her at every turn? Impossible!

Again, she asked her computer for advice, then, desperately, deployed her fleet of atomic submarines, punched up the Soviet automatic defence-net against the American missiles. Identifications were flooding in, too many for the computer to handle, too many for her to defend all at once. Her computer managed to detonate some in the atmosphere but, one by one, she saw her launch sites impacted, destroyed or crippled beyond use. Before she knew it, American stealth bombers had decimated her subs. Then Moscow was wiped out and she had only a minimum number of bombers left. She was sweating. What was there to do?

'Had enough?' Dr Rudolph's voice echoed hollowly in the room.

'Yes.' Shisei's voice was hoarse. She thrust the black box from her. 'But how convincing can this be? I know next to nothing about missiles and defence systems. The Hive knows everything there is to know.'

'The Hive computer knows as much as the computer at your disposal,' Dr Rudolph said. 'Which, I might add, is an accurate simulacrum of the Kremlin's supercomputer.'

'But the difference is - astounding,' Shisei said.

'Like pitting modern-day man against a dinosaur in a game of intelligence.' Dr Rudolph nodded. 'I couldn't agree more.' He rubbed his hands together again. 'Was the demonstration a success, Cook?'

Branding was beside himself with delight. He had it all in the palm of his hand now. The Hive computer on which he had staked his career was a reality. Rudolph and his staff of geniuses had taken it out of the realm of theory, taken it further even than the first primordial jury-rigged experiments. Branding had been in on the Hive's first bleating squalls; encouraging, to be sure, but this was a fully-fledged success. It had spoken in sentences, paragraphs, volumes. The Hive brain was here, now, and it was his. 'You tell us, Shisei,' Branding said, too overcome to say more.

'I'd - ' Shisei seemed a little stunned. 'Would it be possible to actually see the Hive?'

Dr Rudolph looked at Branding. 'Cook, it's up to you. She's your guest.'

'All right.'

The Hive computer itself was housed three floors down, beneath even the old mansion's sub-basement. Rock had been blasted away to make room for the shielded laboratories. But when Shisei saw it, she could not believe her eyes.

'Why, it's no larger than my pocketbook,' she said. 'This can't be it.'

'But it is!' Dr Rudolph was beaming. He pointed to

a copper-beryllium object that was a three-dimensional octagon. 'This is the Hive computer. Your adversary during our simulation of World War Three. You see, the Hive is well named. It's really a multi-brain, a new form of intelligence. It's not compartmentalized as we humans like to think of everything being, but rather is made up of many inputs working at once, in conceit. We've mastered a revolutionary technology to make it so. These resonant tunnelling computer chips are constructed not of silicone, not even of the newest hyperfast conductive alloys, indium phosphide and aluminium gallium arsenide. We're beyond even that technology. The Hive runs on multi-laser computer chips. You see, what we've accomplished is to find a way to send coded light signals through chips at a rate of ten billion times a second. There they are converted to electronic signals via a monocrystalline diamond layer. The result is a chip that not only processes data at mind-boggling speed, but also insulates the data from the massive heat build-up such high-speed work would otherwise generate. In short, the speed of this Hive brain makes that of even the fastest of the conventional supercomputers seem annoyingly slow.'

'So I had no chance against it,' Shisei said.

'Not even George Patton at the helm would have a chance,' Dr Rudolph said.

'But if it's so good, so fast, and can reason, plan strategies and such, why isn't it being used now?' Shisei asked.

"This demonstration was just that,' Dr Rudolph said. 'It was in a controlled environment over a short space of time. There are still problems, applications we have to work on. And, of course, in some areas the Hive is still incomplete.'

'Aren't you afraid that someone will tap into the Hive brain?' Shisei asked.

Dr Rudolph beamed at her. 'Ah, no. Besides the

security network you yourself have experienced - which, I might add, is only a traction of the external shell security, as we refer to it - the Hive brain has been programmed with its own internal policing system designed to eradicate any form of intrusive or destructive virus program, as well as to deny any attempt at unauthorized usage. I assure you that Cook Branding's baby is quite safe.'

'The Hive computer is your baby,' Branding said to Dr Rudolph. 'I'm only godfather to its birth and development.'

'Thank you, Cook,' Dr Rudolph said. 'Come. I have some coffee brewing in my office. I'd appreciate a moment of your time to go over the revised estimates for next year's budget requirements.'

'Shisei?'

'Coming, Cook.' She was still staring at the amazing computer that thought like a brain. She took a step to follow the two men and her right heel gave way. She stumbled, went down on one knee. 'No, no.' She waved away their help. 'I'm OK. I'll just have to go barefoot.'

She slipped off both shoes, turned away from them a moment and, as she did, palmed a tiny cylindrical object she slipped from the centre of the broken heel. For just an instant her hand slid beneath the table upon which the Hive computer rested. Her heart.beating fast, she felt the coated plastic cylinder adhere to the underside of the table just beneath the octagon of the Hive. Then she was turning back to them, saying, 'Oh, coffee. How wonderful. I'm dying for a cup.'

Late in the afternoon, Tomi Yazawa returned to police headquarters. She had spent the entire day interviewing Dr Hanami's and Dr Muku's assistants, lab and X-ray personnel, anyone with frequent contact with either the offices or the doctors themselves. She also went over the appointment books for the previous six weeks. She was

searching for some clue to the identity of the man who had murdered Hanami and Muku.

It was clear to her by the manner of the doctors' deaths that their murderer had been known to them. This was, perhaps, more apparent in the case of Dr Muku, because he had been killed at close range without a struggle. Tomi could not imagine anyone, even the frightening figure that had attacked her and Nicholas Linnear in Dr Hanami's office, breaking into Dr Muku's office and shoving a phosphorus cigarette into his face. Phosphorus was what the Medical Examiner's lab report had found traces of in Dr Muku's eye socket. The intense flash of heat had, hi the ME's words, 'burned through the orb, the external and internal recti, the optic nerve, the lesser wing, the sphenoid'. In other words, it had penetrated all the way into the brain, causing death by flash-searing the organ.

In the assistant ME's estimation - and in Tomi's as well - one not only had to be very close to the victim in order to inflict death in this bizarre manner, but also to take the victim completely by surprise. Dr Muku's clothes were not torn or even wrinkled, his office was in immaculate condition. There was, in sum, no evidence of a struggle. Ergo: Muku knew his murderer. Assumption: Hanami knew him as well.