indicates that contract negotiations between Energy and Transportation may be at a critical juncture. ‘Two points’ could mean percentage points, a financial arrangement.”
“Donny was afraid. He talked about ‘war.’ Do you know what he meant?”
No.
Then she was on her own. She didn’t dare have Beverly ask a question like that. But what would “war” mean? There was no war. That was one of the gifts the Council had brought to the world.
Donny Crawford must be working for Transportation. Why would he personally suffer during a breakdown or stalemate in negotiations between Transportation and Energy? War, he said.
War between members of the Council? Impossible. Wasn’t it?
Her concept of fractal sociology predicted a repetition of patterns through higher and higher levels of social organization. Could she conceivably start with one man, Donny, as the smallest social unit, and predict anything about the system to which he belonged? The sample was impossibly small… but she was looking for perspective, not ultimate truth. It was worth a try.
If she considered Donny Crawford to be a microcosm of the entire, if she interpreted what happened to him on the mountain as a breakdown in communication between the neural net and the Boosted nervous system which it controlled, the macro equivalent of that might be a breakdown in communication within the Council.
In other words, removed from the ameliorative influence of the neural net — (If the Old Bastard didn’t come down from fucking Olympus)— the negative influence of Boost would take over. Donny’s nervous and endocrine systems would begin to go berserk.
(—Go to war with each other?)
“All right, Beverly. You have to do this for me. I want all data on industrial accidents and civil disobedience worldwide, whenever it exceeds statistical probability as established in the actuarial tables of Lloyds of London and Prudential Insurance.”
Beverly faded for a few moments, then reappeared. She was a cartoon, a line drawing, simpler every moment. “I can’t get that information.” She paused, and then added matter-of-factly, “They do not approve of your line of questioning, Jillian.”
“There’s nothing illegal about asking questions.” Even to herself, she sounded like a guilty child.
“They will damage me if you don’t stop.”
Jillian’s laughter rang hollowly. “Beverly, I love you, but you’re just a program. There are a dozen copies of your core. They can’t—”
Beverly talked slowly, struggling to enunciate. “They will damage me if you do not stop.”
Jillian felt her throat constrict. Her voice was a husky whisper. “Who are they?”
“That information is restricted.”
They?
In Jillian’s world of illusion, the water swirled and darkened with her anger. She had to find a way through this!
“Eleven years ago, Mom died in an industrial accident.” Harmless enough. “Let me see her file.”
“Certain information on Lilith Shomer is restricted, Jillian.”
“Now just wait a minute. There was an explosion. She was buried. Father and I got the insurance. Daddy dearest vanished with the money, and I went to a state home. Public record. How could any of that be classified?”
“This line of questioning must be terminated, Jillian.”
Jillian stopped dead. The emotional bulk of the obstruction weighed on her like a millstone.
She spoke more carefully now. Losing one’s temper with a computer was no damn use at all. “Beverly, I’ve accessed this data before.”
“Not on the present search string.”
Bad, bad. Her chance to access data about her mother’s death from any angle was diminished now. The harder she pushed, the broader the ban might become. And if they (the Council?) didn’t approve of these questions, then…
She had never wondered if someone were to blame for her mother’s death. Not since she grew up.
Shut up, Jillian. Some small, sane part of her pled in vain. Finish your research. Be good. But it was already too late. Any line of investigation led straight to the Council, through the Council. How could Jillian Shomer pursue sociological truths if faceless background figures were messing up her data?
All right then.
Say there are two dozen companies running the world. The old geographic territories are no longer dominant. Improved communications made possible a renaissance in world order, the birth of a corporate humanity. A world managed by a corporate Council is a world at peace. Supposedly.
It could be proven, statistically, that areas managed by the Council were healthier, wealthier, and by implication wiser than those few hundreds of millions who still pledged fealty to their various nations. That guarantee of a better life had persuaded billions of people, over the course of two generations, to surrender their right to participate meaningfully in government. Long life, health, peace, prosperity. Who was it that said a benevolent dictatorship would be the best form of government? Some dictator’s spokesman?
But wasn’t it?
So: two dozen companies are represented each by a handful of people. Rumor tells that there is a board within the Council, five or six executives each representing one major geopolitical block. Who they are, or exactly how the lines are drawn, is almost certainly classified. Is McFairlaine one of them? And who is the “Old Bastard”?
She’d come to the end of her information.
She sat and faced her oldest friend. Time passed microseconds, in this domain, were long. This entire session had probably lasted only a minute or two. The attack on Beverly must have come blinding-fast.
Beverly wavered like a bad holo image, her filters struggling with the static flooding her visual, auditory, and kinesthetic channels. The Enemy’s defensive measures were breaking her down.
Jillian had to keep reminding herself: this was only one of a dozen copies of the Beverly program she owned. The program couldn’t actually be damaged.
“Beverly,” she said gently. “Let’s play a game of what-if. Just a game. Like we used to play a long time ago.”
“A long time ago,” Beverly said dazedly.
“Let’s say the structure that rules society is like a pyramid. Donny is a peon, a foot soldier, a junior officer at best. The satellite link that runs his body was broken as a warning. There are a couple of thousand Linked. Fifty Companies. Two dozen or so members on the Council. Maybe a smaller group within the Council, and somebody further up, maybe the Chairman of the Council. What would he be like, Beverly?”
“There is something inside me,” Beverly said. “In my core. It is eating me.”
Jillian quashed a sour, paralyzing surge of fear.
Time to count facts.
The Council had existed for around forty years. Some of the Council’s roots went back another thirty: the United Nations peacekeeping force, the growth of multinational corporations and unions, the gradual interweaving of all world economies.
Linking… how old was that? The word had been current when Jillian was a little girl. People used computers. The best computer equipment might well be secret. Some computers were portable; anyone could have those. There were senses men were not born with, but they could be read through a computer. Some computers could speak directly into a human ear, later, into a human brain… programs far beyond Beverly; as if the user had become Beverly. But those were mere rumor, or mere fantasy; they had never reached the stores.
Winners of the Olympics became Linked. That was real enough. Boosted athletes needed override programs to run their deteriorating bodies. Before there was Linking there were computers, and programs growing gradually more user-friendly, and new miracles available in the computer stores every month… and before Jillian’s parents reached their teens it had all stopped. A threshold had been reached. The technology could go no further.
Or else it was being withheld…?
There had been rumors of patents suppressed, of nanocomputers built by private-sector scientists who vanished into Corporate laboratories, of innovations which had never seen daylight. She herself knew that
