The Octagonal Raven (6 page)

I don’t know who said it—it was one of those fragments that came out of the Noram collapse—but I’d always liked it, and now, when the juncos returned to their winter feeding spots almost before fall had arrived, it boded ill for all who flew.

Then…I certainly had never thought of myself as an eagle. Gerrat—with his adaptation of sensoria to vyrtor projections and his machinations to try to merge the subnets of Afrique, Mercosur, and Etunie—was certainly aiming to be the highest flying in the family—except for Father, of course. I paused. Elora wasn’t that far behind, for all of her modesty.

Like the juncos, or the ravens, I was definitely a ground-feeder. That’s why Elysa’s effort to murder me made little sense.

The commplate glowed, and the bell sounded. I just hoped I was getting Klevyl’s specs.

Fledgling: Willston, 418 N.E.

The College was one of those institutions that predated the Federal Unity Act, even the chaos years and the Mandate, and dated back almost into the days of the ancient Anglish hegemony over NorAm. It had survived the collapse of the North American Union, almost untouched. It even had a building that had been built as a chapel, although it had been turned into a recital hall and classrooms. Still, the few faithies who attended The College used Thompson on sevenday for their rituals. That was their business, but I preferred to sleep.

That twoday afternoon I was attending the three hundred level major class in methodizing. I was seated halfway down the table on the Professor Trebman’s right. He always tossed the hard questions at those on the left side and those at the very end of the table.

Professor Trebman glanced down the table. “Ms. D’Ahoud, would you explain Kessel’s objections to the validity of the Rochford SocioTech Norming requirements?”

Ibaran D’Ahoud smiled. She had the whitest teeth, and the smoothest latte complexion, and she talked like a professor. “For all his objections, Kessel never really refuted Rochford’s empirical observations and theoretical construct that a minimum number of intelligent entities is required to support a given technology and an elite or that a mature society with multigenerational survival must adopt in function a pyramidal power structure, assuming, of course, something along the lines of a P(3) definition of power.”

“You claim Kessel did not refute Rochford. Please be more specific.” Professor Trebman’s mild voice carried to the end of the seminar table.

I smiled. Ibaran would have an answer. Like my brother Gerrat, she always did.

“The essence of Kessel’s rebuttal centers on two factors,” she answered immediately. “First, he contended that intelligence is a subjective assessment on the part of the elite, and defined to maximize and legitimize their control of the instruments of power, much as the ancient Anglish forced the Gaels into illiteracy and then used literacy as a measure of intellectual ability or that—”

“You can skip the rest of the examples,” Trebman said wryly. “Your last essay showed you knew them all. So does most of the class.”

“Second,” continued the dark-haired student, “Kessel argued that the pyramidal distribution of power documented by Rochford, and thus the entire structure of social hierarchy, was related to purely physical dynamics, rather than socioeconomics. Because that distribution was based on physical limits, he contended that nanotechnology and advanced materials technology effectively removed such limits.” Ibaran paused and nodded to Trebman. “He explicitly assumed that technological capability had no environmental or economic limits—or rather that those which existed at that time would cease to be limits within a century.” She paused briefly again, moistened her lips, and continued. “On the first issue, Kessel totally ignored the work of Raon and TanUy in establishing accurate quantifications of the various discrete kategoria of intelligence. This earlier work has been further confirmed by additional studies by Ng and Gonsalves….”

Trebman nodded. “You can skip the details there, unless anyone in the seminar wants to contest you.”

“What about the work of contrarians like Shatnich?” queried Wil Jimson—one of the few norms in the seminar. Then, only 10 percent of any class was norm. As my father always said, genius can come from anywhere—it’s just rarer among norms.

“Shatnich’s basic contention was that human intelligence is integrative, and that while its components are measurable, no testing protocol can measure the sum of those components because the interaction approximates a log scale. Gonsalves’s study does confirm that total integrative intelligence does not amount to the sum of the parts, but that the distribution from the theoretical curve apex follows an inverse bell curve, that is, those with the greatest variation in component scores—either on the high end or the low end—show correspondingly greater variation.”

Professor Trebman sighed. “In short, Ms. D’Ahoud, while the ancient Anglish may have used the skill of literacy to oppress the Gaels, as did the priests of Egypt and the mandarins of China, intelligence can be measured and assessed relatively objectively, as shown by centuries of studies, and the talented do show greater integrative intelligence and the untalented show less.” He paused and added, “In general.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Does that answer your question, Mr. Jimson?”

Wil nodded.

“You did not address the question of whether intelligence, even if it can be measured and assessed accurately, is merely a rationale for control by the elite. Mr. Hamelfar?”

“It is, sir, but the rationale is based on experience, practicality, and history. In the last years of the North American Union, the legislators who controlled the government failed to use their intelligence. They enacted laws and rules that the less informed majority desired. That was so that they could maintain power, even when such rules were wrong economically, socially, and environmentally.”

“So?” asked Trebman. “What’s your point?”

Hamelfar swallowed. “They couldn’t maintain control because they subordinated their brains in order to keep the power that they got through media-generated identity politics.”

“And if you wished to retain power in that culture, what would you have done, Mr. Hamelfar?”

Hamelfar flushed, belatedly understanding the professor’s point.

Trebman waved his hand across the end of the table in a vague gesture. “Power is—in its simplest form—the ability to get other people to do what you want. In a neolithic culture, no one cared directly if you had greater intelligence—not unless it was coupled with a modicum of physical force. The use of intelligence to mobilize force is a construct of a post-industrial society. All of you at this table could probably dominate a neolithic culture, but that’s because technology has been employed to enhance your health and physical ability. Because you’re what the late industrial and pre-collapse cultures would have called ‘beautiful people,’ most of you probably could have easily mastered the personality cults of business and politics necessary to gain power. Today, where even the lowest norm has better health and education than ninety-five percent of the teeming millions of that time, power comes from the successful integration of intelligence, knowledge, and education….”

I forced myself to listen as Trebman went on and on, and I had to work to keep my eyes off Ibaran. Then, she wasn’t likely to look my direction because she was sitting beside Alou Darcia. But I could look.

Raven: Kewood, 458 N.E.

I eased the glider off the automated guide-road and onto the dark way winding between the massive redwoods that towered nearly a hundred meters above the mulched dark bark of the path, a twisting access lane barely wide enough for two gliders if they had to pass side-by-side, and irregular enough in width that it would have been hard for a casual passerby to realize a private guideway lay beneath.

While I could have accessed the private control guides, I preferred to take the glider through the trees on manual. Once I was well under the trees I flicked off the ground limiters, with one of the manual switches I’d installed, bypassing about a half-dozen manufacturer’s safety systems, and eased the glider upward until we were running a good twenty meters above the hidden guideway.

After about two klicks, I eased back down and restored the limiters, wondering about the inductors’ response and whether I’d have to rebuild them. But then, I’d practically rebuilt the entire glider at one time or another, and that included the installation of full orbital maglifter gyros. All that wasn’t bad for a methodizer and edartist, or even for a former pilot who hadn’t been trained as an engineer.

The UniComm headquarters complex lay another three klicks through the forest and over one ridge. I hadn’t wanted to seek help there, but all my net searches had come up blank, and, besides, intrigue had never been my sport. So, much as I disliked the idea, I had called my brother Gerrat, and made an appointment.

He’d been most gracious, as always. “Any time for you…any time.” His smile was as warm and friendly as ever, tinged with concern, as it should have been.

My mind dropped back to the effort of navigating the bark throughway, and I slipped the glider around a Gate-like grove, maintaining speed and concentrating on the physical challenge involved. Neither Gerrat nor Father, nor my grandfather, had wanted the direct physical surface access to UniComm easy. I could have taken the induction tube, with its private station for the UniComm area, but there were guards and scanners everywhere that way, and I always tried to avoid the tubes on the few times I visited Father and Gerrat at UniComm. There were scanners hidden among the darkness and the cool of the redwoods, as well, but far less obtrusive, and I could enjoy the illusion—and the scents of the redwoods and the forest—except when my internal system informed me of yet another scan. Still, the glider had an access chip, which meant I’d only have to pass one personal scan—when I entered the building on the upper garden level.

Although the glider’s surface shimmered when observed closely, even in the deep shade beneath the redwoods, it looked dull from any distance, a green-tinted silver dullness, created by the thousands of flexible solar panels coated with the polarized polymer. If I had eased it into the underbrush between some of the redwoods, it would have almost vanished in the shadows.

In time, the glider slipped out from the trees, then over the last ridge, where the lane ended in a tree-shaded glider park. The park held all of eight gliders under the shade of the redwoods and the lower firs that filled the lower part of the hill into which the UniComm spaces were built. There were three magscooters locked to loop-poles—transportation for young norms who lived west where the tube line did not extend, in all probability.

The glider resealed itself after I exited and headed toward the northeast side of the hill, the net repeater at my belt routing the signal to my internal systems, confirming the glider’s security. I walked through a light breeze a good five degrees warmer than the air had been among the trees. At the end of the stone way from the glider park, polished gray granite steps led up to the three meter high stone archway, an arch of glistening black marble. Beyond the archway was a formal garden, sunken into the hillside, but open to the sky, and the polished gray stone led to a second smaller archway, without doors. Through the second arch was an entry foyer and black stone podium desk, behind which sat a guard who wore the green-trimmed gray singlesuit of UniComm security.

I smiled and announced, “Daryn Alwyn…to see Gerrat.”

“Yes, ser. Is your profile on the system?” Her voice bore the slight dullness often heard from the brain-damped. Some of the lower-level security types were—but they were totally honest.

“I do hope so.” I grinned.

“Yes, ser.” She nodded to the scanner before the inner door. “If you would step through, ser? The door will open if you are cleared. Would you like me to call Director Alwyn’s office?”

“Only if the door doesn’t open.”

She nodded seriously, and I stepped through the scanner. The door did open, and I took the right-hand corridor, and then the inclined ramp past the orchid gardens, up to Gerrat’s office, second in size only to Father’s.

I’d read some of the old literature which had insisted that larger organizations would do without people gathered together, that virtual offices would be the rage, and, for a time, many had tried them, and gone back to putting people together, if in smaller numbers than before the collapse. Part of the reason had been social. People are still herd or clan animals. Part had been economic. Energy transmission costs rose with the volume of data, as did the costs of external infrastructure. And part had been security. Even in UniComm there were systems totally isolated physically from the worldnets.

There was a complete scanning unit set before the door to Gerrat’s office. It hadn’t been there the last time I’d visited my dear sibling, but, then, that had been several years before. There was also a muscular young man standing by the scanner unit. He was probably a pre-select himself, except he’d been pre-selected for physical attributes and reactions. While Gerrat and I might have bested him on a good day, the day and week before had been far less than optimal for me.

“Daryn Alwyn. I’m here to see Gerrat.”

“Yes, ser. He is expecting you, ser. If you would, ser…” He gestured to the scanner.

I stepped through, sensing from my own nanite feedback a far more than casual scanning, one that seemed to last several minutes before the guard opened the door to Gerrat’s sanctum sanctorum.

Unlike Father, whose desk was handmade of real cherry, Gerrat affected a desk fabricated as an expanse of transparent armaglass, polarized just enough that it neither reflected nor totally absorbed light. It looked like an ephemeral object made out of mist, even though it would have taken all my strength to move it.

“Still sitting amid the mist,” I offered. I didn’t mention that mist didn’t smell as sterile and lifeless as Gerrat’s office. The only scent was the cologne that he liked. I couldn’t remember the name, probably because it reminded me vaguely of the interior of an interstellar ship.

“Of course.” Gerrat stood and beamed, then glanced down almost apologetically. “The effect is relaxing, and that’s useful.” He gestured to the loveseat to the left of the mist-desk.

I eased into, or onto, the green leather, turning slightly on the firm cushion to face him directly.

“Father said you might want to talk.” Gerrat had reseated himself and leaned back in the swivel that molded to his large but muscular figure. His blond hair picked up the light from somewhere. He might have had nanite-guided low-intensity lensors directed on him. The effect would be heightened if he were in a VR conference, and would give him an appearance that the ancient sun gods—Re, Aton, Apollo, Helios, all of them—would have been pressed to create.

“He told you?”

“What affects one of us affects all of UniComm.”

“I doubt that I affect UniComm much.” I paused. “Assuming that the attack wasn’t specifically personal, who would have gained by it…in your opinion?”

“No one.” He smiled. “Who
thinks
they would have gained is something else entirely. I can see the Dynae deluding themselves along that line, and certainly the NeoLudds. Even possibly some mid-level types at OneCys or AsyaNet, although they’re not that big. NEN wouldn’t stoop to that. Elora would destroy anyone who did.”

I grinned at his reference to our older sister, who’d rejected Father in her own special way. “The mid-level types probably wouldn’t have access to the specialization required, not without leaving a track.”

“You’re right, and there wasn’t any track,” Gerrat confirmed.

“And somehow…can’t see the NeoLudds embracing all that they decry to use specialized nanites.”

“Fanatics have been known to do stranger things,” he pointed out. “They might find the irony delightful.”

“I’m sure they would. But they probably wouldn’t know a bacterium from a nanite.”

“Not that there’s much difference.”

I ignored Gerrat’s quip. “What do you know about the Dynae?”

Gerrat smiled and gestured idly toward the fist-sized black case on the corner of the mistingly transparent armaglass table that served as his desk. “I’d already thought about that. Everything that can be put in data form is there.”

“What about the information that can’t?”

“There isn’t much. Not even from our sources. They’re either more successfully secretive than we are, or they have no secrets.” He shrugged. “I doubt that you’re their preferred target. If anyone is.”

“It seems unlikely someone would go to the trouble of tailoring nanites for a prank or a blind target.”

“No…they wouldn’t. But…what if you weren’t the target? You know, I had Kharl check you most carefully.”

“Meaning you are? Or the more important members of the family?”

“Kharl says that they were self-replicating. That’s why you were scanned before you came in today and why I had Kharl check you over thoroughly.”

“You think they wanted me to convey all those odd nanites to you?”

He frowned. “I wouldn’t have done it that way, but I can’t see any other rationale. You’re not important enough to spend that much effort on killing.”

“I do so appreciate your judgments, Gerrat.”

He smiled. “Surely, you’re not going to object to my objective analysis. You’re a good methodizer. According to some people, you’re one of the best, if not one of the top five. You’re also a watched edartist, and one with a growing following. But you don’t control or influence anything directly. You haven’t upset any women—or men—and everyone likes you personally. Because of that, you can and do go everywhere. Kharl’s of the opinion, and I tend to agree, that someone miscalculated. This mysterious woman overdosed you.”

“Why didn’t they just go for you? Or Father?”

“How?”

Gerrat had a point—in a way. Getting through UniComm’s security and his and Father’s personal systems would have been difficult—but not impossible. I could have, and I wasn’t an expert in it.

“Plus,” he added, “if we were attacked directly, the CAs would have to show an interest. If you had died from an anaphylactic reaction…there would have been sorrow…a little mystery perhaps…and it would all have been forgotten by now. You have neither spouse nor partner, nor position in UniComm.” He grinned ironically. “You can imagine the CA reaction. ‘So sorry your brother died, Director Alwyn. He showed real promise as an edartist.’”

With that, he had a better point. Much better, unfortunately. “And you can’t think of anyone else who might want me dead?”

“Neither Father nor I can, and that worries us both.”

I nodded slowly as I stood. There wasn’t much point in staying. I reached forward and took the small black case. “You’ll let me know?”

“Just as you will.”

I was afraid of that, but I smiled. “As soon as I find something…if I do.”

“Daryn…do be careful.”

“I will. I don’t want to be a rate-hit on your instant AllNews show.” I could certainly assure Gerrat of that.

He actually looked worried as I left, and some of it was real. What worried me most was that he hadn’t even questioned that what had happened to me had been an attack of some sort, and that meant more was happening than met anyone’s eyes, and that neither Gerrat nor Father knew much more than they had already said.