“Goddamn circus,” Frederick Lefarge said. “We’re running this like the bloody Los Alamos bomb project, back in the ’40s. Everything and the kitchen sink.”
“Not really,” the man beside him on the polished-slag bench said. “In the long run, the actual construction will go faster if we spend the time to get the infrastructure in place.” A sigh. “And even the . . . fourth Project will require a good deal of preliminary groundwork. We are going to miss Dr. Takashi very badly, as the years go by. I am more for the crystals and wafers and wires, me; he was the instruction set genius.”
“Yes.” He looked aside at Professor Pedro de Ribeiro: a vigorous-looking forty-five, with the usual Imperial Brazilian goatee in pepper-and-salt and an impeccable white linen suit; the cane and gloves were, the American thought, a little much. Very competent man, but . . . “I’d have thought that was less so for the final Project than for the rest of the New America enterprises. It’s basically a set of compinstructions, isn’t it?”
“Não.” De Ribeiro’s English was impeccable, but it slipped now and then. “I have been thinking much on this matter, since I was contacted . . . and have concluded that we must almost reinvent the art of information systems here, if we are to accomplish what we wish.” He rested his hands on the silver head of his cane and leaned forward. “Abandon our assumption that because we have always done things one way, that is the inevitable path. Another legacy of the struggle with the Domination . . . Tell me, Señor Lieutenant Colonel, what would you say to the idea of writing compinstruction procedures on a perscomp?”
Lefarge blinked, taken aback. “That’s . . . well, it would be like using a shovel as a machine tool, wouldn’t it?”
“Bim, but only because we have made it so.” He tapped the ferrule of the cane on the ground. “Perhaps computers could only have started as they did, large machines used for cryptography, for the handling of statistics. Precious assets, jealously guarded. They have grown immensely faster, immensely more capable, even rather smaller—that first all-transistor model in 1942 was the size of a house!—but not different in nature.”
“Well, how could they be?”
“For example . . . it is certainly technically possible to build central processing units small enough to power a perscomp. Yes, yes, quite difficult, but the micromachining processes we have developed for other purposes would do . . . if there were a strong development incentive. But our computers were always, hmm, how shall I say, limited in access. Perscomps were developed from the other end up, from the machinery intended to run machine tools, simulations, deal with the real world; only their instruction storage and the interfacers are digital, and the rest is analog. We build them for a range of specific uses, and then develop the instruction sets on larger machines; they are loaded into the smaller in cartridges. Complicated machines such as space warcraft have a maze of subsystems like that, linked to a central brain.”
Wild speculation combined with restatement of the obvious, Lefarge thought. Then: No, wait a minute. We’ve been too narrowly focused on immediate problems. The Project’s going to need real ingenuity, not just engineering. “But if we’d gone the other way . . . Jesus, Doctor, it’d be a security nightmare! Even as it is, we have to throw dozens of people in the slammer every year for illegal comping. There might be . . . oh, thousands of amateurs out there screwing around with vital instruction sets. The Draka could scoop it up off the market! Then think of the problems if you could copy embedded corepaths and instruction sets over the wires between perscomps. Lord . . . ”
The Brazilian nodded. “Exactly! And who would find it more difficult to adjust to such a world, us or them? We must be radical, on our Project. That is an example.”
He laughed as the younger man rocked under the question’s impact. “Also, one of the reasons I have come here. Here we will be relatively free of the security restrictions—if only because we are already imprisoned, in a sense! For the first time, a completely free exchange of ideas and data.”
Another tap at the metallic pebbles of the walkway. “The thing we wish to devise, it must be more than a set of hidden compinstructions. It must be a self-replicating, self-adjusting pattern of information, a . . . a virus, if you will. One able to overcome all the safeguards the Draka place on their machines; the redundant systems, the physical blocks, the many interfaces. We will have to reinvent many aspects of our art. Takashi agreed with me; it is better to start with a majority of younger men . . . and women, to be sure—ones free of the rather bureaucratized, specialized approach of other research institutes. And less dominated by us old men, who are so sure what is possible and what impossible! The New America, the starship, that is engineering. Wonderful engineering, many tests, unfamiliar challenges, but development work. In our Project, we must learn new ways to think. Ah, the señora, your wife.”
She was walking now, with care and in this half-gravity. The forgetfulness was diminishing, and the crying fits; there would be no need for more transplants. The doctors were quite pleased . . . Something squeezed inside his gut, as he looked at her. She looked . . . a well-preserved forty, and moved with slow, painful care. Her face had filled out, a little, and she had gained back some of the weight, if not the muscle tone. The hair was cropped close, and only half gray; her teeth were the too-even white of implanted synthetic. Professor de Ribeiro rose and bowed over her hand.
“A salute to one so lovely and so brave,” he said formally, bowing farewell to them both.
Cindy sank down with a sigh, and leaned her head against Fred’s shoulder. He put his arm around hers, feeling the slight tremor of exhaustion.
“Should you be up, honey?” he asked gently.
“I’ll never get any better if I don’t push it a little. I was with the girls,” she said. “God, they’re doing great, darling. Just . . . I get so tired all the time.” He looked down, and saw that slow tears were leaking from under closed lids, made wordless sounds of comfort. “And I feel so old, and useless and ugly.”
“You’re the most beautiful thing in the solar system, Cindy,” he said with utter sincerity. “I’ve never doubted it for a single instant.”
She sighed again. “I like the professor. He’s on whatever-it-is that’s being hidden behind the New America, isn’t he?”
Cindy laughed quietly, without stirring, as he tried to conceal his start of alarm. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I haven’t been steaming open your letters . . . Honestly, I’m sick, not stupid. And I’ve had plenty of time to think, and anyway we’re all here for the duration. I do like the professor; he reminds me of Dr. Takashi—”
Suddenly she began to shake, and he turned to hold her in the circle of his arms. “Oh God, oh God, the end of his hand was gone and, and, uhhh—”
“Shhh, shhh,” he said. “I’m here, honey, I’ll always be here, I’ll never let them hurt you again. Never again.” The taste of helplessness was in his mouth, like burning ash.
At last she was still again. “Sorry. Sorry to be such a . . . baby,” she said, gripping the breast of his uniform.
“God, honey, you’re stronger than I could ever be.”
She shook her head. “I get angry, and then I start feeling so sorry for everyone.” A long pause. “Even her.”
“Now, that’s going a bit too far,” he said, trying for humor. Funny, hatred is actually a cold feeling. Like an old-fashioned injection at the dentist’s.