Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (163 page)

Chapter 19

Brett knocked on Williams’ door with a cheery rat-tat-tat. Finally there would be progress.

He didn’t really need to report to Williams, whom he considered his superior in name only. Might as well be magnanimous though.

“Come in.”

As the door opened, Williams glanced at the chair on the visitor’s side of the rosewood desk. “And have a seat.”

Williams hadn’t finished his coffee, and there was still a little sleep in his eyes. Clearly not an early bird, though he sounded alert enough. “Good morning Brett. Any news?”

So Williams had noted the lack of recent progress. Brett started small, saving the best for last. “Today I’m going to practice learning verbal knowledge. After that I’ll be about as good with the nannies as an average Oceanian.”

Williams smiled. “Great. Lots of Oceanians think Federalists have an unreasoning fear, and you’re certainly helping.”

Brett continued. “I’m going to be reading an Oceanian history of Roundhouse. Understandably enough, some Oceanians find it difficult to accept the fact that the overmind built with their technology was responsible for what happened on Roundhouse. This guy thinks differently, and he’s a reputed historian.”

Williams lifted his head, and his eyes widened. “The book isn’t called ‘Alexander and His Mother’, is it?”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“Brett, be careful. You’re not the first one to hear about open intelligence. I think you’ll learn some useful things, but remember that the people above you already know them.”

What a peculiar reaction. Brett shrugged. “OK, thanks for being concerned. See you tonight.”

Brett didn’t dwell on the strangeness. He’d be seeing Ariel soon.

Brett asked dubiously, “So this building is called a library?”

Ariel nodded. “Is that a difficult concept?”

Brett shook his head. “Heck no. A huge warehouse full of books, user searchable, with a reading room attached. Should I ask why they aren’t available electronically all over the planet, or why people come here even though they are?”

Actually it was a rather pleasant place. The table was polished to a high gloss. The chairs were not entirely comfortable, despite a depression shaped vaguely like the human fundament carved into the seat. The seat kept the occupant alert. A breeze blew through the open windows on either side.

A teenage boy in a brown uniform placed a heavy book in front of Brett. He hurried off before he could be thanked.

The leather tome showed signs of wear. He asked, “Have a lot of people been studying the history of Roundhouse lately?”

It seemed natural enough, considering Oceanian involvement in recent events there, but Brett looked again, and amended his question. “They wouldn’t all turn the pages the same way, putting their fingers in the same spot on the edge. I wonder if someone recently wrote a thesis on this.”

“Maybe, but printing books that look used has become fashionable. Anyhow, reading a physical volume can be an anchor to help the nannies feed you knowledge. Try it out.”

Brett studied the cover. It was more garish than he would have expected of a scholarly history. The gigantic woman on the cover was familiar: the symbolic goddess Oceania. The artist had made her easily recognizable, yet with coarse and domineering features. She placed her hand on the head of another figure, as if giving a blessing. The other man had a brutal face, with a sloping forehead and a sneer. He carried a bloody sword and was dressed in anachronistic armor.

Never having been enthusiastic about long winded historical volumes full of footnotes, Brett was surprised how easily he became involved in this one – although the first few chapters were old history indeed. Few truly ancient records survived from the days the Octoids had maintained colonies of that useful servant species Humanity on some of their worlds. When the Octoid Empire had broken apart in civil war, humans had at first been treated more like valuable property to be captured than enemies. Over the millennia, as Octoids had killed each other, humans had taken over much of Roundhouse, the remaining Octoids reduced to allying with some human nations against others. But even for humanity, the situation was not ideal. Civilizations rose and fell as populations reached unsustainable levels and nations collapsed into anarchy. Each time more and more of the conveniently reachable fossil fuel was used up.

Brett looked up and stretched. “This is good stuff, but it would take me months to read it. Can’t the nannies help?”

Ariel glanced at the pages under his left hand. “You read a lot in the past forty minutes.”

It had to be a lot longer than that, but the computer on his belt agreed. He must have been turning pages without reading them. Then he recounted to himself a few of the different Human and Octoid factions he had read about, surprised by his retention.

“OK, you convinced me.”

She winked at him and continued reading. Brett stood up, stretched a few more muscles, and did the same.

For most of the last five hundred years, ‘modern’ times, the planet had been divided into two large alliances. Brett settled for thinking of one as the Eastern alliance and one as the Western alliance. The Western alliance included the remaining Octoids on the planet. Every thirty or forty years, war would engulf much of the planet. Large scale atrocities were perpetrated against civilian populations to avenge atrocities from previous wars, or in hope of cowing populations into perpetual submission, or in attempts at total extermination.

Then the Federalist Worlds had reached Roundhouse. As they had done on previous worlds, they offered membership. Because of their economic status, their payment was only token. Institutions were forged and treaties signed. If civil war broke out on that world again, Space Force ships would return to punish the aggressor. Technological aid and trade were offered as well, but the planet was in a trap. The richest could afford off world technology, making it very hard to rebuild intermediate technologies that were stepping stones to the top.

Oceanian nanotechnology seemingly offered an answer for this, but the ugly scars that lay under the surface hadn’t healed. Some opposed its use entirely, including the Octoids whose brains were radically different from human, and feared they would suffer in the long term from a system that excluded them. War broke out again, and ancient horrors were avenged with new ones. When the Space Force returned, peace was restored. Yet to kill all the leaders on both sides involved in war crimes, along with the civilians who had enthusiastically supported their government, would have started the war anew. Many crimes were blamed on the hive mind, although those who joined had sometimes expressed their intentions even before doing so.

The Federalist Worlds and the Space Marines were portrayed in glowing terms, and the author seemed to have something against his own world. The Space Force in particular was shown with complete fairness. Still something bothered Brett. The book blamed Oceania for what had occurred. The author was aware of the idea that the overmind somehow controlled humans as pawns, and even spoke sympathetically of the reasons for it, but didn’t think it worth the bother of refuting.

Brett stopped reading. His stomach rumbled. It had to be too early for dinner, but it wasn’t. He had almost finished the first section, after which various factors were explored in more detail.

Ariel had heard his stomach growl. “I take it the spirit is willing, but the flesh is stronger?”

Mildly stung by the macerated quote, Brett shook his head. “Nobody but us intellectuals here. I wouldn’t dream of taking you away from all this and dragging you out to dinner.”

Knowing Ariel must be getting hungry as well he said, “Let’s have some intellectual conversation instead. Have you read this?”

His hand waved towards the book before him.

Ariel replied, “As a matter of fact I have. The author is allergic to nannies, and somewhat embittered about the difficulty of living in our society as a result.”

Brett hadn’t wondered about the man’s attitude, but as soon as Ariel spoke he knew her words were true. He also knew where he could go to do more research, but the basic facts were undisputed.

Perhaps that had been the inspiration that had enabled the man to transcend his cultural background. Brett continued before Ariel could change the subject by suggesting the historian was unreasonably biased. “The only thing he doesn’t do is explore the possibility that Alexander became more powerful than the people who had created him.”

The Roundhouse overmind had named itself Alexander. Brett now understood the cover of his book, and appreciated the irony of symbolizing the Roundhouse overmind by its ancient namesake, and making it the ‘son’ of the sea goddess used to symbolize the Oceanian overmind.

Ariel shrugged. “If you keep reading that you’ll learn more about how the system on Roundhouse worked. But you already know something about Oceania. Most of an overmind consists of the brains that make it up, and they have to work hard to maintain it. People may do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do defending something they consider greater than themselves, but they’re still responsible for what they do. Our technology is a tool that enables them to work together.”

It seemed so obviously true that for a moment Brett wondered how he could ever have suspected otherwise.

For a moment.

How much did he really know, apart from what the Oceanians had taught him? If there was a trick, it was subtle. On any controversial issue he learned about via the overmind, he always knew there were different sides, and where he could learn more about them all. The very fact that he felt so trusting was itself suspicious.

Brett wanted to resist the waves of paranoia rolling into his brain, but he wasn’t quite sure it was paranoia. He only had one question: how could all this be done to him without Ariel knowing?

He didn’t want to believe the blindingly obvious answer that came to him, but the fact that he had never considered it even briefly was damning. He had been so eager to think of Ariel as a victim of the supermind, because he was attracted to her, and because of his feelings about Michael. If she had helped entrap him, was it knowing or unknowing?

“Brett, what’s wrong?”

Would a verbal explanation be the specific feedback they needed to understand what was passing though his brain – and how to ‘fix’ it? From his mouth to her brain, processed by the nanotech mind, would transmit (what?) to his brain directly. He wasn’t quite certain enough to speak the words that would wound or shatter Ariel’s trust forever.

“Ariel, I have to go.”

“What about dinner?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not… feeling well.”

“Do you need a doctor?”

He damned well didn’t need an Oceanian doctor. He couldn’t claim he would see a military doctor, since she knew most of their staff had been withdrawn. “I just need to lie down a bit in my own bed.”

He added the last phrase so she wouldn’t offer an invitation which would have been very welcome even an hour ago.

“Let me walk you home then.”

The embassy was only a couple of blocks away from the tube station, but he certainly would have made the same offer if the situation were reversed.

“No, I need to be alone.”

He got up and walked away from the expression of bewilderment and hurt on her face. Either Ariel was an amazing actress, or she didn’t know what he was thinking.

The short trip back to the embassy got him physically away from Ariel, but it didn’t get him away from the nanomachines in his bloodstream, or even distance in any meaningful sense from the supermind to which they connected him. Suddenly Brett ripped the cap off his head. Why hadn’t he thought of that earlier? Maybe because he was so upset? Maybe.

The virtual conference room was designed to be secure. Ship to surface communications were encrypted. More important from Brett’s point of view, his Oceanian equipment should be unable to transmit in and out. As Brett unclipped the Oceanian computer from his side, a simpler solution occurred to him. He decided not to smash the machine just yet though. He tossed the box and cap in a corner, as far from him as possible.

Brett sat down in the metal chair and took a deep breath. He had examined Oceanian technology on Roundhouse, and while they were a notch or two beyond the Federalist Worlds in some respects, there was no reason to imagine they could destroy the blockade whenever they took a fancy. Brett wouldn’t attribute layers and layers of secret knowledge to them, with even the technology Brett had examined as a simplistic blind. So he’d assume that the nannies couldn’t communicate more than a couple of inches outside his skull.

Which left only what had been conditioned into him during the months he’d carelessly used the cap and booster to worry about.

Brett took another deep breath. He decided to track down the source of his concern. ‘They’ controlled his brain well enough to delude him that Oceanian technology alone couldn’t explain what happened on Roundhouse, but not well enough to prevent his sudden realization, or somehow head if off. Possible, but it seemed less likely as he calmed down.

Was there another explanation for his reaction? Lydia and her bionic eye had made a lasting impression on him as a Lieutenant, but it was more than that. The Federalist Worlds had indeed been part of the war crimes trials and reconciliation commissions on Roundhouse. If what he had read was really true, Brett had been misled by his own government, at least by implication. Of course the information couldn’t be made public lest the war be restarted, but Brett’s work was directly related, and he could have been informed.

Of course he might have been conditioned… but that way madness lay. If his brain was no longer his own, there was no sense worrying about it.

There wasn’t anybody in this solar system Brett trusted more than Colonel Barr. The ship would be overhead right now. Even better, he was already in the virtual conference room. Probably Barr wouldn’t be, but it shouldn’t matter too much.

In a few moments Brett saw a conference room with a round table. Barr was slightly higher than he should have been, probably because he was at his desk instead of in a virtual conference room.