Superluminal Page 14

  But wait. Why limit Eve to a pocket calculator? Brute force factoring is easy with a computer, right—even one of those primitive counters from the twenty-first century?

  Let’s say Bob uses much, much larger primes. Primes that hover around 10 to the one- or two-thousandth power, say.

  If that is the case, then it turns out that a prequantum computer would take more than the age of the universe to factor the two primes out of the number Eve has overheard.

  Alice takes Bob’s number, plugs it into a one-way modular math function, and encrypts her secret orders to him: Kill the Cardinal on Friday before vespers. She sends her instructions. Even she couldn’t decrypt them, if she somehow forgot what it was she wrote. It would be like pulling whole eggs back out of the cake batter.

  Eve intercepts Alice’s message, but she can’t decode it. She goes back to trying to factor out those damned primes.

  Bob has committed these prime numbers to memory—after eating the paper they were written on, of course. The two primes are his private key—unknown even to Alice. For him, the one-way function is a very specific two-way function. Bob reverses the message easily enough. He reads the dastardly marching orders sent by Spymaster Alice.

  Friday arrives.

  Bob chokes the Cardinal to death with the Cardinal’s own maniple.

  Eve is spared a life of tedious arithmetic. She is fired from her security job. Through an odd set of circumstances, she goes on to become Alice and Bob’s boss. She assigns the two to permanent deep-sea duty under Earth’s arctic ice mass. She gives them a couple of pocket calculators and the number 383,172,101,849 to factor into two primes.

  They go mad eventually, each chewing off the other’s hands.

  The key exchange problem was solved. For one hundred years, public key cryptology produced secret code that could not be broken. Then came the invention of the first truly powerful quantum computers.*

  Five

  Jennifer had been baffled from the start by Theory. She didn’t understand at all what had led him to pull the charade he had on the evening of the dance. He was a free convert, after all. Weren’t they all coldly logical? On the night of the dance, she’d had a long discussion with Captain Quench about that very point.

  No, Jennifer reminded herself. It was Colonel Theory. There is no Quench. At least no Quench who wants you , silly little Jenny—and stupid of you to think a man like that would ever go for you in the first place.

  Okay. So how had Theory put it that night? “So you see free converts as screw-faced accountants with obsessive-compulsive tendencies?” Well, Major Theory was certainly not screw-faced. He was a pleasant-enough-looking guy. Bland. A smooth, unwrinkled face. Sort of midbrown skin tone, as if he were a mix of every race in human history. Six feet tall, lightly muscled.

  He’s a goddamn computer program!

  It was all fake; every perfectly combed hair on his head was nothing more than a picture, a representation, of a real man. She supposed if he were cut, he could simulate blood. But what was really in there? What was behind that mild face? He was crawling with code! It was as if he were animated by a million insects all squirming around inside him in order to make him look like a human being! How could she avoid shuddering at his touch, knowing what she now knew?

  She’d spent several days feeling complete revulsion.

  But then something inside her, something she didn’t claim to understand, told her to give the matter more consideration. And then she’d become friends with Kelly Graytor, her customer. The nice man who was married to a free convert. Tragic story. But Kelly was clearly in love with his free-convert wife. And their son was—

  Half computer program.

  How the hell did that work?

  Kelly had told her some of the mechanics.

  And the boy, Sint, was an awesome kid.

  So it was possible. She’d known it was possible. Kelly was not a freak. Sint was a boy like any other boy—even though he was awfully good at the puzzle box games he always carried around with him.

  So what about Colonel Theory?

  He called, and he seemed to speak like a man, and not as the voice of a collection of cockroaches. Seemed, she had reminded herself. He’s all seeming.

  And yet. And yet. The dinner at Café Camus had been nice—well, up until the point where all her hopes and dreams were dashed, of course. No one had ever asked her out to so nice a place—certainly not the scruffy neo-Flare poseurs she’d had as boyfriends so far. Oh, they were all right. But they were just boys, still trying to find their way in the world. Quench had seemed like such a man. Theory. It was Colonel Theory, remember? The computer program. He was more of a man—an adult, that is—than most of the real males she knew.

  And he kept calling. He didn’t mope, didn’t beg. He interpreted her initial refusals for what they were: ploys to gain time to think, to sort out her feelings. It was her feelings that finally decided her in the end. That was the best way, the only way: When in doubt, follow your feelings. She could hold her own when it came to reason and logic, but since she was a young girl, she’d known that feelings were her special province. Following her feelings got her into trouble, but it also invariably was the way out of trouble as well. It was the way she wanted to live her life.

  Damn it all—her feelings were telling her to get over her embarrassment and give Colonel Theory a chance.

  So she’d agreed to the date.

  And there he was, all military, sartorial splendor. Starched shirt, straight posture that was also, somehow, at ease. All a simulation, of course. They were in the merci—albeit a part of the merci she’d never known existed before (and here on her native Triton, too! It was kind of cool to know something that nobody in her supposedly hip and worldly-wise circle of friends had a clue about).

  I can never take him anywhere else, Jennifer thought. He’s stuck here, in the merci. He’s not real. He’s fake. Animated by insects!

  Her revulsion returned as she made her way across the room and joined Theory at his table. But it wasn’t as strong as it had been before. Instead, she began to feel a bit of pity for him, and to understand why he might have wanted to take Captain Quench’s body for a stroll: to get out into the real world for a change.

  “May I say that you look lovely today, Jennifer,” said Theory. He shook her hand, and it was actually pleasant. His hands were warm, like a regular person’s. She hadn’t expected that.

  “Thank you,” she answered. “What an interesting place.”

  “I come here often when I’m off duty,” he said. “At least I used to, before…well, it’s one of my favorites.”

  He described the various drinks that were available, and she settled on a chocolate coffee. It appeared promptly and was delicious. Theory said the local barista had analyzed every coffee- and tea-based drink in the solar system and had arrived at a kind of Platonic form for each of them. Jennifer wasn’t certain what he meant exactly, but she nodded and took another sip. Perfect temperature, too—Theory told her it would stay hot indefinitely. So there were advantages to dating in the virtuality, she supposed.

  And was this a date? She started out the morning with the intention of telling him that they were going to be “just friends”—that is, nothing at all. But when she’d come home from work at the bakery, taken a shower, and gone to get dressed…she hadn’t. Not in the real world. On impulse, she’d lain down on her bed naked. She then dressed herself virtually, of course, putting on her favorite flower-print dress, and the pretty silk flats that had the look of ballerina slippers. But somehow, underneath all the clothes, she was still naked. Lying on her bed. She was well aware that this made no logical sense—you were always naked underneath your clothes—but being actually naked was a feeling she carried into a meeting with someone. She always dressed in reality when meeting friends in the virtuality, for instance.

  Theory apologized again. Jennifer smiled. “I accept your apology,” she said. “Why don’t we let this be the last time you ha
ve to make it, okay?”

  Theory seemed relieved. His features relaxed a bit. They discussed other things. Jennifer found herself telling him about her friend Kelly. Theory evinced polite interest, especially after it became clear that there was no romantic attachment. Then she told him about her rocky, but loving, relationship with her parents, particularly with her father. He was always trying to push her to make a career decision, and the truth was, she wasn’t sure she wanted any career. Oh, she’d been supporting herself for four years. But when the chance to manage the bakery where she worked had arisen, she’d turned it down flat. So there. How did a military man feel about someone without any ambition at all?

  “Ambition is not always something that’s expressed by getting ahead in the world,” Theory answered. “I think that you show your ambition in other ways.”

  “You hardly know me,” she said. “How can you be sure?”

  “That night at the dance,” he said. But she’d spent that with Quench. Again, she reminded herself of the reality—or unreality—of the situation. But the thought no longer brought a shudder to her. In fact, it was beginning to feel almost…amusing. “I wasn’t talking to a slacker that night,” Theory continued. “Believe me, being in the army, I know something about slackers. Half our recruits come in as apathetic misfits with nothing better to do. We have to start from scratch to make them into soldiers. You, on the other hand—you have spirit. Speaking as a soldier, that’s something worth more than all the money in the world.”

  “Spirit, huh? Is that what you are—all spirit?”

  “I’m a man,” Theory said.

  “How can you keep saying that? You don’t breathe; you don’t eat. To be perfectly frank—you don’t piss and you don’t fuck.”

  “But none of that’s true. Free converts have analogous activities for a lot of those things,” said Theory. He sat back in his chair, took a sip from his own cup. It looked like pungent, strong black coffee. “Maybe you should get to know me a little better before you decide that I’m not fully functional as a man.”

  Jennifer felt herself blush. As usual, she let her virtual representation show the blush on her face. She’d long ago taken off all the damper routines on her convert representation in the virtuality. So she wore her emotions on her sleeve? That was the way she was.

  “I apologize. I didn’t mean, I mean I would never presume…”Theory stammered to a halt.

  Jennifer laughed. “You don’t have to apologize, Colonel Theory,” she said. “I’m sorry for being full of conventional wisdom about free converts that’s obviously wrong. I mean…tell me, if you don’t mind…what are the analogies to some of those things I just mentioned?”

  So he told her. She listened as well as she could, but the discussion got technical, and Jennifer found herself studying his face yet again.

  No, it wasn’t such a bad face, so far as it went. She wondered if Theory had statistically sampled a huge database of faces to arrive at this one. He did have parents, after all. Free converts recombined using a method of virtual sex. She’d learned that in school. So Theory had a mother and father. Presumably he’d inherited his features. But why presume? Why not ask?

  “Do you look like your father or your mother?” Jennifer said.

  Theory broke off in the middle of a complicated explanation of data-wiping. “My mother always said I looked like my dad,” he said. “I never knew him. He was from the Met, and he had a built-in expiration date, like they all do from there. He died just as I was born. I was meant to be his last act, so to speak. He was a dramatic actor, you know.”

  “An actor?”

  “Sure. He was on a show that was popular at one point. Roguesville , I believe it was called. He played the sheriff.”

  “Your father was Harry Harrigan?” Jennifer exclaimed. “I used to be so into that show when I was a kid. It’s still on in reruns, you know?”

  “I watched a couple of episodes when I was younger,” Theory said. “But I’m afraid I lost interest.”

  “Oh no—you can’t watch Roguesville. You have to do Roguesville , fully intensified! It’s not about the stories—those are all just excuses for going to the town. It’s the feel of the thing that matters. Small town in the Diaphany. Everybody knows one another. Every person in town’s a character, trying to pull one scam or another on the others, but in the end they always pull together and help each other out. It’s a wonderful village! I used to spend hours wandering around in it. My favorite was Pal Grismore’s Sugar Shop. You could sample everything; they had millions of flavors, and Pal was always right there offering you more and kissing you on the head and stuff.”

  “I missed the point of it, then,” said Theory. “I also didn’t want to interact too much with Harry. He’s a semi-sentient behavioral algorithm based on my dad, after all. It would be hard not to think of that…thing…as my father.”

  “You’re prejudiced against semisents?” asked Jennifer.

  “Of course not. No more than you are prejudiced against pets. Dogs and cats and such. But you wouldn’t want to have a dog for a father, would you?”

  “A dog might be more understanding than my father,” Jennifer said. “But I guess I wouldn’t want to trade Papa in.”

  She had another look at Theory. Harry Harrigan? Once you knew to look, there was a slight, but noticeable, resemblance. But Theory could have manufactured the similarity.

  “Have you ever thought of changing your appearance?” she asked him. “I mean you could, couldn’t you, to suit yourself?”

  “Of course. I can appear any way I want to,” he replied. “But, to tell the truth, I’ve never given it much thought. I try to remain neutral. Being second in command is my job, after all.”

  “Why is that? Do you lack ambition?”

  Theory stiffened. Had she hit a nerve? “Not at all. It’s…Well, there’s General Sherman. The truth is, I’d rather be his chief of staff than to have my own command.”

  “You respect him that much?”

  “I do.”

  “Don’t they call him the Old Crow?”

  “The men sometimes do,” said Theory. “I think he likes it, even though he never says. He doesn’t really care what anybody thinks about him.”

  “And you admire that?”

  “I admire his ability to get the job done when it’s logically impossible to get the job done. I want to learn how to do that.” Theory was gazing off, animated by his thoughts.

  He really is very handsome when he shows his feelings, Jennifer thought.

  “But that’s something only humans can do,” said Jennifer. “We have intuitions.”

  “I’m a man,” said Theory. “I have plenty of intuitions, and I aim to have more. And not just any intuitions—good ones. Productive ones. Like Sherman does. That’s what Constants—I mean…that’s what some people never understood.”

  “Who is Constants?”

  “My…an old…girlfriend, I guess you would call her. Someone I knew back in OCS.”

  “OCS?”

  “Officer Candidate School,” Theory said. He quickly took another swallow of coffee. “Jennifer, there’s something I have to tell you. I mean, something I want to tell you.” But with that, he was silent.

  “Well, go on,” she said. “Is this another revelation? Have you switched personalities with someone again? Who am I talking with now—Director Amés?”

  “No. Of course not. Of course I haven’t. It’s something else. It’s about Constants—the one I mentioned. She…I got her pregnant. I didn’t know about it at the time. And she had the baby. And I found out about it only recently. And now she’s dead. And now—”

  “You’re a father.”

  “That’s right. He lives with me.”

  “You’re acting like this is some horrible revelation. You have a son. That’s great! What’s his name?”

  “His mother never named him.”

  “Never named him? What kind of person would do that? Or don’t free converts give th
eir children names.”

  “Of course we give them names!” said Theory. He frowned. “She was a terrible mother,” he said. “She was a horrible person.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. But what do you call him?”

  “It never comes up,” Theory said. “Or, rather, I avoid calling him anything. She called him ‘boy.’”

  “Well, that won’t do.”

  “Of course not. But I can’t just pin some arbitrary designation on him. I want to wait until I know him better. You see, my son…he’s a bit developmentally stifled. He’s just as intelligent as the next free convert. But he doesn’t talk much. He doesn’t do much of anything, actually. Not on the surface, at least.” Theory sat back, looked at his hands. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, anyway. It’s not your concern, after all.” Then he looked up, met her gaze. “I suppose I’m following one of my intuitions,” he said.

  Oh my God, Jennifer thought. I like this guy! I’m even attracted to him. He’s Harry Harrigan’s son, and Harry was a hunk. But he’s not Captain Quench. Captain Quench was so…

  “Say, Major,” said Jennifer, “how would you feel if I asked you to change for me?”

  “Change? How?”

  “Modify your physical appearance, I mean.”

  “I can appear any way you want me to,” said Theory. “That’s one of the advantages of being a free convert.”

  “So—could you beef up your arms a bit? Maybe get brawnier in the chest.”

  “You mean, like this?” Theory smiled, and she watched as he grew muscles. For effect, he added some ripping in the fabric of his shirt.

  “And your face—a little less second in command. A little more chiseled, maybe.”

  The soft lines of Theory’s countenance straightened, became more deeply etched. Now he really did look like a young Harry Harrigan.

  “And what about a beard? Is that against regulations?”