Accelerando - Charles Stross (classic books for 10 year olds .txt) 📗
- Author: Charles Stross
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a pyramid scheme crossed with a 419 scam. As it happens, most of the
runaway corporate ghosts out beyond the router are wise to that sort
of thing, so it hacked the router’s power system to give us a beam to
ride home in return for sanctuary. That’s as far as it goes.”
“Hang on.” Sirhan’s eyes bulge. “You found something out there? You
brought back a reallive alien?”
“Guess so.” Amber looks smug.
“But, but, that’s marvelous! That changes everything! It’s incredible!
Even under Economics 2.0 that’s got to be worth a gigantic amount.
Just think what you could learn from it!”
“Oui. A whole new way of bilking corporations into investing in
cognitive bubbles,” Pierre interrupts cynically. “It seems to me that
you are making two assumptions - that our passenger is willing to be
exploited by us, and that we survive whatever happens when the
bailiffs arrive.”
“But, but -” Sirhan winds down spluttering, only refraining from
waving his arms through an effort of will.
“Let’s go ask it what it wants to do,” says Amber. “Cooperate,” she
warns Sirhan. “We’ll discuss your other plans later, dammit. First
things first - we need to get out from under these pirates.”
*
As they make their way back toward the party, Sirhan’s inbox is
humming with messages from elsewhere in Saturn system - from other
curators on board lily-pad habs scattered far and wide across the huge
planetary atmosphere, from the few ring miners who still remember what
it was like to be human (even though they’re mostly brain-in-a-bottle
types, or uploads wearing nuclear-powered bodies made of ceramic and
metal): even from the small orbital townships around Titan, where
screaming hordes of bloggers are bidding frantically for the viewpoint
feeds of the Field Circus’s crew. It seems that news of the starship’s
arrival has turned hot only since it became apparent that someone or
something thought they would make a decent shakedown target. Now
someone’s blabbed about the alien passenger, the nets have gone crazy.
“City,” he mutters, “where’s this hitchhiker creature? Should be
wearing the body of my mother’s cat.”
“Cat? What cat?” replies City. “I see no cats here.”
“No, it looks like a cat, it -” A horrible thought dawns on him. “Have
you been hacked again?”
“Looks like it,” City agrees enthusiastically. “Isn’t it tiresome?”
“Shi - oh dear. Hey,” he calls to Amber, forking several ghosts as he
does so in order to go hunt down the missing creature by traversing
the thousands of optical sensors that thread the habitat in loco
personae - a tedious process rendered less objectionable by making the
ghosts autistic - “have you been messing with my security
infrastructure?”
“Us?” Amber looks annoyed. “No.”
“Someone has been. I thought at first it was that mad Frenchwoman, but
now I’m not sure. Anyway, it’s a big problem. If the bailiffs figure
out how to use the root kit to gain a toe hold here, they don’t need
to burn us - just take the whole place over.”
“That’s the least of your worries,” Amber points out. “What kind of
charter do these bailiffs run on?”
“Charter? Oh, you mean legal system? I think it’s probably a cheap
one, maybe even the one inherited from the Ring Imperium. Nobody
bothers breaking the law out here these days, it’s too easy to just
buy a legal system off the shelf, tailor it to fit, and conform to
it.”
“Right.” She stops, stands still, and looks up at the almost invisible
dome of the gas cell above them. “Pigeons,” she says, almost tiredly.
“Damn, how did I miss it? How long have you had an infestation of
group minds?”
“Group?” Sirhan turns round. “What did you just say?”
There’s a chatter of avian laughter from above, and a light rain of
birdshit splatters the path around him. Amber dodges nimbly, but
Sirhan isn’t so light on his feet and ends up cursing, summoning up a
cloth of congealed air to wipe his scalp clean.
“It’s the flocking behavior,” Amber explains, looking up. “If you
track the elements - birds - you’ll see that they’re not following
individual trajectories. Instead, each pigeon sticks within ten meters
or so of sixteen neighbors. It’s a Hamiltonian network, kid. Real
birds don’t do that. How long?”
Sirhan stop cursing and glares up at the circling birds, cooing and
mocking him from the safety of the sky. He waves his fist: “I’ll get
you, see if I don’t -”
“I don’t think so.” Amber takes his elbow again and steers him back
round the hill. Sirhan, preoccupied with maintaining an umbrella of
utility fog above his gleaming pate, puts up with being manhandled.
“You don’t think it’s just a coincidence, do you?” she asks him over a
private head-to-head channel. “They’re one of the players here.”
“I don’t care. They’ve hacked my city and gate crashed my party! I
don’t care who they are, they’re not welcome.”
“Famous last words,” Amber murmurs, as the party comes around the
hillside and nearly runs over them. Someone has infiltrated the
Argentinosaurus skeleton with motors and nanofibers, animating the
huge sauropod with a simulation of undead life. Whoever did it has
also hacked it right out of the surveillance feed. Their first warning
is a footstep that makes the ground jump beneath their feet - then the
skeleton of the hundred-tonne plant-eater, taller than a six-storey
building and longer than a commuter train, raises its head over the
treetops and looks down at them. There’s a pigeon standing proudly on
its skull, chest puffed out, and a dining room full of startled
taikonauts sitting on a suspended wooden floor inside its rib cage.
“It’s my party and my business scheme!” Sirhan insists plaintively.
“Nothing you or anyone else in the family do can take it away from
me!”
“That’s true,” Amber points out, “but in case you hadn’t noticed,
you’ve offered temporary sanctuary to a bunch of people - not to put
too fine a point on it, myself included - who some assholes think are
rich enough to be worth mugging, and you did it without putting any
contingency plans in place other than to invite my manipulative bitch
of a mother. What did you think you were doing? Hanging out a sign
saying ‘scam artists welcome here’? Dammit, I need Aineko.”
“Your cat.” Sirhan fastens on to this: “It’s your cat’s fault! Isn’t
it?”
“Only indirectly.” Amber looks round and waves at the dinosaur
skeleton. “Hey, you! Have you seen Aineko?”
The huge dinosaur bends its neck and the pigeon opens its beak to coo.
Eerie harmonics cut in as a bunch of other birds, scattered to either
side, sing counterpoint to produce a demented warbling voice. “The
cat’s with your mother.”
“Oh shit!” Amber turns on Sirhan fiercely. “Where’s Pamela? Find her!”
Sirhan is stubborn. “Why should I?”
“Because she’s got the cat! What do you think she’s going to do but
cut a deal with the bailiffs out there to put one over on me? Can’t
you fucking see where this family tendency to play head games comes
from?”
“You’re too late,” echoes the eerie voice of the pigeons from above
and around them. “She’s kidnapped the cat and taken the capsule from
the museum. It’s not flightworthy, but you’d be amazed what you can do
with a few hundred ghosts and a few tonnes of utility fog.”
“Okay.” Amber stares up at the pigeons, fists on hips, then glances at
Sirhan. She chews her lower lip for a moment, then nods to the bird
riding the dinosaur’s skull. “Stop fucking with the boy’s head and
show yourself, Dad.”
Sirhan boggles in an upward direction as a whole flock of passenger
pigeons comes together in mid air and settles toward the grass, cooing
and warbling like an explosion in a synthesizer factory.
“What’s she planning on doing with the Slug?” Amber asks the pile of
birds. “And isn’t it a bit cramped in there?”
“You get used to it,” says the primary - and thoroughly distributed -
copy of her father. “I’m not sure what she’s planning, but I can show
you what she’s doing. Sorry about your city, kid, but you really
should have paid more attention to those security patches. There’s
lots of crufty twentieth-century bugware kicking around under your
shiny new singularity, design errors and all, spitting out turd
packets all over your sleek new machine.”
Sirhan shakes his head in denial. “I don’t believe this,” he moans
quietly.
“Show me what Mom’s up to,” orders Amber. “I need to see if I can stop
her before it’s too late -”
*
The ancient woman in the space suit leans back in her cramped seat,
looks at the camera, and winks. “Hello, darling. I know you’re spying
on me.”
There’s an orange-and-white cat curled up in her nomex-and-aluminum
lap. It seems to be happy: It’s certainly purring loudly enough,
although that reflex is wired in at a very low level. Amber watches
helplessly as her mother reaches up arthritically and flips a couple
of switches. Something loud is humming in the background - probably an
air recirculator. There’s no window in the Mercury capsule, just a
periscope offset to one side of Pamela’s right knee. “Won’t be long
now,” she mutters, and lets her hand drop back to her side. “You’re
too late to stop me,” she adds, conversationally. “The ‘chute rigging
is fine and the balloon blower is happy to treat me as a new city
seed. I’ll be free in a minute or so.”
“Why are you doing this?” Amber asks tiredly.
“Because you don’t need me around.” Pamela focuses on the camera
that’s glued to the instrument panel in front of her head. “I’m old.
Face it, I’m disposable. The old must give way to the new, and all
that. Your Dad never really did get it - he’s going to grow old
gracelessly, succumbing to bit rot in the big forever. Me, I’m not
going there. I’m going out with a bang. Aren’t I, cat? Whoever you
really are.” She prods the animal. It purrs and stretches out across
her lap.
“You never looked hard enough at Aineko, back in the day,” she tells
Amber, stroking its flanks. “Did you think I didn’t know you’d audit
its source code, looking for trapdoors? I used the Thompson hack -
she’s been mine, body and soul, for a very long time indeed. I got the
whole story about your passenger from the horse’s mouth. And now we’re
going to go fix those bailiffs. Whee!”
The camera angle jerks, and Amber feels a ghost re-merge with her,
panicky with loss. The Mercury capsule’s gone, drifting away from the
apex of the habitat beneath a nearly transparent sack of hot hydrogen.
“That was a bit rough,” remarks Pamela. “Don’t worry, we should still
be in communications range for another hour or so.”
“But you’re going to die!” Amber yells at her. “What do you think
you’re doing?”
“I think I’m going to die well. What do you think?” Pamela lays one
hand on the cat’s flank. “Here, you need to encrypt this a bit better.
I left a one time pad behind with Annette. Why don’t you go fetch it?
Then I’ll tell you what else I’m planning?”
“But my aunt is -” Amber’s eyes cross as she concentrates. Annette is
already waiting, as it happens, and a shared secret appears in Amber’s
awareness almost before she asks. “Oh. All right. What are you doing
with the cat, though?”
Pamela sighs. “I’m
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