Servitude for security, then. No day passed when he didn't hate the choice he'd made. Some day, perhaps, he'd even hate it more than he feared the alternative.
"Seventeen items on high priority," said the workstation as his feet hit the floor. "Four broadcast, twelve net, one phone. Broadcast and phone items are clean. Net items were disinfected on entry, with a forty percent chance that encrypted bugs slipped through."
"Up the disinfectant," Scanlon said.
"That will destroy any encrypted bugs, but might also destroy up to five percent of the legitimate data. I could just dump the risky files."
"Disinfect them. What's on midlist?"
"Eight hundred and sixty three items. Three hundred twenty seven broad—"
"Dump it all." Scanlon headed for the bathroom, stopped. "Wait a minute. Play the phone call."
"This is Patricia Rowan," the station said in a cold, clipped voice. "We may be encountering some personnel problems with the deep-sea geothermal program. I'd like to discuss them with you. I'll have your return call routed direct."
Shit. Rowan was one of the top corpses on the west coast. She'd barely even acknowledged him since he'd been hired on at the GA. "Is there a priority on that call?" Scanlon asked.
"Important but not urgent," the workstation replied
He could have breakfast first, maybe go through his mail. He could ignore all those reflexes urging him to drop everything and jump like a trained seal to immediate attention. They needed him for something. About time. About goddamned time.
"I'm taking a shower," he told the workstation, hesitantly defiant. "Don't bother me until I come out."
His reflexes, though, didn't like it at all.
"— that 'curing' victims of multiple personality disorder is actually tantamount to serial murder. The issue has remained controversial in the wake of recent findings that the human brain can potentially contain up to one hundred forty fully-sentient personalities without significant sensory/motor impairment. The tribunal will also consider whether encouraging a multiple personality to reintegrate voluntarily — again, a traditionally therapeutic act — should be redefined as assisted suicide. Crosslinked to next item under cognition and legal."
The workstation fell silent.
Rowan wants to see me. The VP in charge of the GA's whole Northwest franchise wants to see me. Me.
He was thinking into sudden silence. Scanlon realised the workstation had stopped talking. "Next," he said.
"Fundamentalist acquitted of murder in the destruction of a smart gel," the station recited. "Tagged to—"
Didn't she say I'd be working with her, though? Wasn't that the deal when I first came on?
"— AI, cognition, and legal."
Yeah. That's what they said. Ten years ago.
"Ahh— summary, nontechnical," Scanlon told the machine.
"Victim was a smart gel on temporary loan to the Ontario Science Center as part of a public exhibit on artificial intelligence. Accused admitted to the act, stating that neuron cultures" — the workstation changed voices, neatly inserting a sound bite— "desecrate the human soul.
"Expert defense witnesses, including a smart gel online from Rutgers, testified that neuron cultures lack the primitive midbrain structures necessary to experience pain, fear, or a desire for self-preservation. Defense argued that the concept of a 'right' is intended to protect individuals from unwarranted suffering. Since smart gels are incapable of physical or mental distress of any sort, they have no rights to protect regardless of their level of self-awareness. This reasoning was eloquently summarized during the Defense's closing statement: 'Gels themselves don't care whether they live or die. Why should we? The verdict is under appeal. Crosslinked to next item under AI and World News."
Scanlon swallowed a mouthful of powdered albumin. "List expert defense witnesses, names only."
"Phillip Quan. Lily Kozlowski. David Childs—"
"Stop." Lily Kozlowski. He knew her, from back at UCLA. An expert witness. Shit. Maybe I should have kissed a few more asses in grad school…
Scanlon snorted. "Next."
"Net infections down fifteen percent."
Problems with the Rifters, she said. I wonder… "Summary, nontechnical."
"Viral infections on the Internet have declined fifteen percent in the past six months, due to the ongoing installation of smart gels at critical nodes along the net's backbone. Digital infections find it nearly impossible to infect smart gels, each of which has a unique and flexible system architecture. In light of these most recent results, some experts are predicting a safe return to casual e-mail by the end of—"
"Ah, fuck. Cancel."
Come on, Yves. You've been waiting for years for those idiots to recognise your abilities. Maybe this is it. Don't blow it by looking too eager.
"Waiting," said the station.
Only what if she doesn't wait? What if she gets impatient and goes for someone else? What if—
"Tag the last phone call and reply." Scanlon stared at the dregs of his breakfast while the connection went up.
"Admin," said a voice that sounded real.
"Yves Scanlon for Patricia Rowan."
"Dr. Rowan is occupied. Her simulator is expecting your call. This conversation is being monitored for quality control purposes." A click, and another voice that sounded reaclass="underline" "Hello, Dr. Scanlon."
His Master's voice.
Muckraker
It rumbles up the slope from the abyssal plain, bouncing an echo that registers five hundred meters outside Beebe's official sonar range. It's moving at almost ten meters a second, not remarkable for a submarine but this thing's so close to the bottom it has to be running on treads. Six hundred meters out it crosses a small spreading zone and slews to a stop.
"What is it?" wonders Lenie Clarke.
Alice Nakata fiddles with the focus. The unknown has started up again at a crawl, edging along the length of the spread at less than one meter a second.
"It's feeding," Nakata says. "Polymetallic sulfides, perhaps."
Clarke considers. "I want to check it out."
"Yes. Shall I notify the GA?"
"Why?"
"It is probably foreign. It might not be legal."
Clarke looks at the other woman.
"There are fines for unauthorised incursions into territorial waters," Nakata says.
"Alice, really." Clarke shakes her head. "Who cares?"
Lubin is off the scope, probably sleeping on the bottom somewhere. They leave him a note. Brander and Caraco are out replacing the bearings on number six; a tremor cracked the casing last shift, jammed two thousand kilograms of mud and grit into the works. Still, the other generators are more than able to take up the slack. Brander and Caraco grab their squids and join the parade.
"We should keep our lights down," Nakata buzzes as they leave the Throat. "And stay very close to the bottom. It may frighten easily."
They follow the bearing, their lights dimmed to embers, through darkness almost impenetrable even to rifter eyes. Caraco pulls up beside Clarke: "I'm heading into the wild blue yonder after this. Wanna come?"
A shiver of second-hand revulsion tickles Clarke's insides; from Nakata, of course. Nakata used to join Caraco on her daily swim up Beebe's transponder line, until about two weeks ago. Something happened up at the deep scattering layer — nothing dangerous, apparently, but it left Alice absolutely cold at the prospect of going anywhere near the surface. Caraco's been pestering the others to pace her ever since.