Transcension

by Damien Broderick

Genres: Science Fiction

Synopsis

Aleph is a machine mentality overseeing a future Earth largely bereft of humans, most of whom have sublimed into a virtuality.Remaining are the smug but cautious adherents of science. Amanda, still a teen at age 30, is a skilled violinist and mathematician but craves the applause of the Mall for some daring exploit. In a nearby enclave live the rustic, non-scientific people who worship the god of their choice. In the center of their poly-religious valley a wicked tower has emerged, surely a tool of evil temptation. Far below, a supersonic railroad is being constructed. Amanda conceives a dangerous feat: to enter the valley and descend to the rushing train, hitching a mad ride to the next city. Using a cyber "Liar bee," she buzzes the ear of young Matthewmark, who chafes under the restrictions of his own narrow society. He agrees to aid Amanda and her friend Vikram Singh, but the scheme goes horribly wrong. Vik dies; Matthewmark's brain is seriously damaged, although he recovers with advanced neurological prostheses. This treatment, condemned by his own people, allows him contact with the AI Aleph. In a series of startling moves, Amanda graduates to adulthood (and her modish clipped speech patterns give way to this new sophistication), while Matthewmark explores uncanny and sometimes very funny opportunities in the Alephverse, climaxing in the dismantling of the solar system and its embrace by the hyperuniverse beyond ours. This is the Singularity, at last, the Transcension, and everyone lives happily ever after, for rather mindboggling values of "lives" and "happily."

Release date: May 21, 2020

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 357

Sample

Face down in a pool of his blood, being kicked to death in the public thoroughfare by a troop of street ferals, Abdel-Malek learned that dying arrived just as he’d always feared it would: with shock, terror and agony.

Death, it turned out, provided no soothing anesthesia. Overwhelmed with shame, he squealed and whimpered. The hardened cap of a military-surplus boot smashed the side of his throat, crushing his larynx. Vomiting, scarcely able to breathe, he could barely hear his wife’s screams. She was frightened, but more than that she was furious.

“Gutless, selfish, stupid cowards,” she shouted. “Leave him alone!”

A kind of sad, admiring love brushed his fazed brain. Another boot took him in the ribs, then the right cheek. Light bloomed; it felt as if his eye had exploded. He wanted to cover his face, but his arms would not lift from the pavement. Mohammed Kasim Abdel-Malek, bon vivant and pragmatic optimist, B.A. Hons, Juris Doctor (license lapsed), D.Sc (cog. sci.), more honorary degrees than he owned senses and limbs, desperately curled the fingers of his left hand. He was reaching absurdly in his last moments for assurance: for the chrome bracelet at his wrist.

The stupidity of his plight appalled him. The hubris. Nothing can touch me, I’m that famous guy. He and Alice had been the last guests to leave. The Greenhouse weather had been bad for days, more August than early June, the news had been worse, the dregs of society skulked in the shadows, waiting in their perfectly understandable resentment to smash store windows, snatch baubles and shiny toys.

“Sure you’ll be okay?” Martha had asked, kissing Alice on the cheek, a true friendly smoosh of lips on flesh, none of your society air-kiss evasions. “Leave the dishes until the morning, honey,” she told their host. “Let’s see them to their car.” Josh had nodded, given them a tired smile; it was obvious that all he wanted to do was pile the wreckage into the dishwasher and hit the sack.

“Nonsense,” Mohammed Abdel-Malek told them forcefully. “We’re only parked half a block away.”

His mind, in all truth, was parked more than a block away. Abdel-Malek’s thoughts remained in Cambridge, in those buoyant sunny months when his spiritual father Alan Turing, and Campernowne and the rest of the wunderkinden, had invented out of whole cloth, in one fell swoop, the electronic computer, the theory of programming and the prospect of machine intelligence. No, he was getting confused. Turing’s device was pre-electronic, fed with paper tape. My God. And Turing dead these fifty years, June 7, 1954. Some golden jubilee. He would have been 88. Old, but not impossibly old. Not remarkably older than me, after all. But those hotshots tonight, those kids from Silicon Valley.

“Still thinking about Turing?” asked Alice. He shivered despite the muggy warmth, saw that they had descended to street level. Through the glass doors, the street was ominously empty, no breeze lifting scraps of discarded newspaper or fast-food trash. Everyone with any sense was inside with the air-conditioning blasting. Stepping from the comfortable friendliness of the apartment and foyer to the stifling street was a jolt, reinforcing Abdel-Malek’s melancholy.

“Mmm. Poor devil. It was nice of the kids to honor his memory.”

“He was a great man,” Alice said. She smiled primly. “You were all great men, Boson.”

The bunch of street ferals was suddenly there on the sidewalk. They had every right to be there. It’s a free country, isn’t it?

“Oh Christ.”

“Come on,” he said with irritation. “They’re just kids.”

“Of course they’re just kids, Kasim.” Alice’s voice sounded as if it had been strained through mesh. “You’re not allowed to be a juvenile delinquent after you’ve grown up.”

They were stringing themselves out across the pathway. Pimples. Stubble, tats on the skull. Lumps of metal piercing flesh. Must they make themselves so ugly?

“Juvenile delinquents! Darling, that expression went on the pension around the time Turing bit the apple. Just keep walking. You’ve turned into a nervous Nellie in your dotage.”

Her hand on his arm, tense with dread, jerked. “Oh God, I don’t like this.”

A body moved into the space they passed through, thumped him cruelly.

“Watch it, you bastard!” cried the affronted thug.

Mildly, Mohammed Kasim recovered his balance. “Sorry.”

“You walked straight into me. See that, bro? Muthafucka walked straight into me. Think they own the whole sidewalk, these rich fucks.”

From the other side, keeping step with them, a peaky girl asked, “Got any change?”

Too quickly, Alice told her, “We never carry money.”

“You greedy old bitch.” The thug was outraged. “I’ll fix you.”

And the horror of it was that Mohammed Kasim understood, hadn’t they been talking about it all night? It was his doing as much as anyone’s. In all the world, he and his colleagues were the ones crucially responsible for the machines that took the children’s jobs away, filched their souls from them, stole their future. It paralyzed him. He felt the battering on his body, but only as a kind of moral retribution.

It hurts, blood tastes in his mouth, he cannot see any longer from his right eye, his heart clenches in dread for Alice, but he knows that at last some payment is being rightly exacted.

Alice is still shouting. “Leave him alone, you vicious—”

“Outta the fuckin’ way, bitch,” says one of the girls. He hears a hard slap, a screech of pain. “What you doin’ with that muthafuck?” another voice asks incredulously. “This no time for social calls.” A crunching sound: hundreds of dollars’ worth of latest-model cell phone under a boot heel. Maybe she had time to punch the emergency link key.

“Get his wallet, Donnie.”

They pull roughly at his person. That first burst of masochism is yielding to anger as the shock of passivity passes off, he starts to seethe with rage, with renewed fear for Alice, my God, in the middle of the street in a civilized city—

“Twenty bucks! You rotten miserable greedy bastards!”

So the punishment is going to be renewed. Mohammed Kasim pulls down his head, in against his chest, fingers twitching for the comfort of the bracelet. They will kick his head in, he sees in a terrible burst of sorrow. His brain will be gone by the time an ambulance gets here. There is nothing he can do. They jerk at him.

“Stick the knife in, Donnie,” the girl says. Her breath is rather sweet. Metal loops swing from her pink ear. Her hair, out of focus, in again, stands now like mown hay, pink and gold in the streetlamp light. The other face comes down, and a lash of light from another kind of metal. It enters his body again and again.

1: AMANDA

Automatics found us—kitted out in blackgear, grappling nets—trying drop through Maglev maintenance hangar ceiling. Had prized off solar roof panel with jemmy. Only took minute. In half-dark ten meters below, four Maglev freighters rested in bays like torpedoes. Sleek, smooth as bullets, ready go. Securing abseil line when Vik whispered, “Spotted us.”

Tiny automatic patrolbot hovering in night sky. Stealthed, only just visible against Metro glow; strained eyes, could see beady little lenses, sensors glistening, poking our way.

“Passive. Nothing worry about.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Amanda,” Vik said. “Alerting Security. Stodes here any minute.”

“Got time then. Let’s slide.”

“Let’s not,” Vik hissed. “Out of here…”

And was, making run for it, bounding across roof, slim dark shape in blackgear, making for steel ladder, waste ground, hoping slip out under perimeter silently as both had slipped in.

Didn’t stand chance. Now knew were here, automatics would track every move, deliver update on global co-ordinates to Relinquishment Custodians every three microseconds. Snapped catch onto abseil line, swung clear. Plummeting. Cleanly, quickly, without effort, was dropping towards cold, dull shine of freighter beneath. Didn’t stand chance either, knew that. From moment automatics locked on, both doomed, geese cooked, game over. Just thought better surrender gracefully from top freighter than collared wriggling like worm.

Feet touched curved metal, shoes gripped. Hanger still dim, empty. Stood there few beautiful seconds. Solid bulk freighter beneath feet didn’t vibrate, hum. Right now quiet as tomb—but could feel supersonic power of thing. One day would ride it. Breathed deeply, extended both arms in welcoming gesture to team Stodes bursting into hanger, yelling instructions: get down, stay where are, put hands on head.

Twenty minutes later both standing in front Metro’s Magistrate, Mr. Abdel-Malek, looking sheepishly at feet. Knew only matter time before olders arrived, coldly tore off horrible bleeding strips. Quite relieved when Magistrate sentenced night’s detention, remanded hearing following day.

Was ever right about Maman, Maître’s reaction!

“You disappoint us, Amanda,” Maître said, looking more furious than disappointed. “What a remarkably stupid thing to do.”

“You do know that the freighters go supersonic once they enter the main conduit?” Maman asked, in frighteningly relaxed voice. Couldn’t tell if was hiding fright put into her, or genuinely unmoved. Maybe was sufficient that had interrupted routine. Both dressed in evening clothes, had been fetched to lock-up in discreetly unmarked Custodian glide from opera, where no doubt sitting with gaggle nauseating heavies from tube project. Bad daughter supposedly safely tucked up at home, racting a vee in bedroom. Well, had certainly left them with clear impression, meanwhile planning sneak out back way moment they were driven off to opera house.

Said in surly voice, “Had buckynets,” still looking at toe tips clad in grippo carbon sneakers. Don’t know if Maman even knew buckynets safest safety device in world, made of incredibly strong, reliable carbon tubes that lock together in way makes steel seem strong as brown paper. “Had drex grapples. Weren’t taking risk.”

Maman made alarming snort through nose, shook head, once right, once left. Just killed me. Was so much worse than shouting, or hitting, or turning back over to Magistrate. “Speak English, Amanda,” she said. “You are not a machine.” Gaze shifted, then, smiled with kind of awful cool beauty. Vikram’s father had entered chamber, bearing down on us. Vikram’s father big man, bigger than Maître, way bigger than Maman. Know which one of them am most afraid of.

“Dr. Singh,” father said, extending hand. “ Not the happiest occasion.”

“Mr. Kolby, Legal McAllister, good evening.” Gruff, eyes dark, angry under crisp white turban. “I believe it is time to separate these penders of ours.”

“That is certainly my intention,” Maman told him. “Until recently my daughter has had an unblemished record.” Untrue, of course, but not as if ever charged with arson or murder or mutating household pets. “I do not wish her to remain in danger of further—”

Dr. Singh rose full height, glaring down. Maman regarded him back without slightest fear, baring teeth.

“I hope you are not suggesting that my son is a…”

“Not at all,” said Maître hastily, tad flustered. “These are the pranks of a subadult, nothing more.” Twitched eyes my direction, winked ever so slightly out line of sight other two adults. In face new threat to whole family, anger had come, gone, even disappointment at my stupidity. “I look forward to having them off our hands at Maturity.”

“Well, that’s as may be,” Dr. Singh grumbled. “For the time being, I suggest you—” Paused, cleared throat. Maman had gone absolutely lethal, even though hadn’t moved muscle. “We had best all look to our charges. Speaking of which, have formal charges been laid?”

“The penders have been bound over in custodial detention for the evening,” Maître told. “No vee privileges, only hard phones. I think they’ll be quite safe and comfortable. Hearing in the Magistrate’s court at 2 p.m. tomorrow. Will you or Mrs. Singh be in court?”

“I have a ballistic tube booking for Aung San Suu Kyi Metro at seven,” Dr. Singh said. “My wife is in Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki polis at the moment attending a family wedding, and my pender and I were to join her in the afternoon. This little mess has ruined everything.” Looked around, hailed peace officer imperiously. “So, no—I’m afraid Vikram is going to have to face the music alone. Sir,” told young night-duty officer, “I’d like my boy brought out now, if you please.”

“You wish us to keep an eye on the pender during your absence?” father asked.

Dr. Singh sent look barely suppressed distaste over shoulder. “On the contrary. I intend my son to have no further dealings with any member of your family. Good evening to you both.” Swept off toward holding area.

In quiet, pleasant voice, Maman told me, “You stupid, stupid person. Do you see what you’ve done?” She took Maître’s arm, turned him toward exit desk. “Stew in your own juice, Amanda. And don’t expect any privileges for at least three months, once they let you come home. Thank god you’ll be Thirty soon and out of our hair at long last.”

2: MATHEWMARK

Old man Grout kicked up a splendid fuss when the Metro tunneled under our valley. In kirk, he prayed like a madman, yelling to the Lord his god. Yelling to every god in the Valley, in fact, although some of them are goddesses or Gaia Herself and a few of them are even stranger gods than that. We’re all believers, in the Valley, one way or another. Although, secretly, some of us believe that our neighbors believe a bit too much.

Old man Grout was something to see, something to hear. His wild white hair stood on end. It must have been the divine activity in his brain. Old man Grout gave the god of his choice orders in a booming voice: strike down the works of polluters, pour boiling oil on the tunnelers, send plagues, send scorpions, send the hounds of hell.

We got the message all right, sitting there in kirk, trying not to giggle. But it was a bit hard to tell if old Grout’s god got the message. And there was no way of knowing if the tunnelers got the message. Maybe they were drowning in boiling oil down there right now, leaping about like scalded cats, scratching at their hideous rashes, fending off the hounds from hell in the darkness of their infernal world. There was no way of knowing because the tunnel started hundreds of kilometers from our valley and it finished on the coast, fifty kilometers in the other direction.

We never leave our Valley. The only way you could know the tunnelers were down below us was to lie on the ground with your ear pressed hard against a rock. Then you heard them—faintly. You heard their machines, you heard noises like mice in a granary. Sometimes you heard the distant rumble of explosives.

Old man Grout was furious. He’d stand in the yard of the kirk of the god of his choice and wave his great bible in his hand.

“The Lord will not condone this wickedness,” I heard him thunder one Wednesday morning, the sacred day of his sect. “Hearken to the word of revelation!” His yellow old beard was getting spittle-flecked. “Attend to the voice of the Psalmist, for it is said in Psalm 20, verse, um, er, seven: "Some boast of chariots, and some of horses; but we boast of the name of the LORD our God". Do you see, those who have eyes to see and ears to hear? The chariots of Man may thunder their way at no more than the speed of a harnessed horse, no faster, for list to the Psalmist: "They will collapse and fall; but we shall rise and stand upright".”

There wasn’t much to be said to gainsay that, it seemed to me, but on the other hand the argument wasn’t absolutely convincing. After all, in the days of the Hebrew prophets they didn’t even have tunnels deep in the bowels of the earth—unless there were some driven by fiends. Yet more sacred arguments were pronounced by other prophets, though, which convinced the rest of the Valley. Old man Legrand stood in his own righteous kirk’s yard and quoted from the same Bible.

“It saith in the Book of Isaiah the Prophet, chapter 35, verses eight and nine: ‘A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not pass over it, and fools shall not err therein’! The unclean polluters shall not pass over it, and by the God of our Choice the polluters shall not pass under it, either!”

All this talk of Holy Ways and chariots and horses gave me a powerful interest in the subject, I have to admit. I found myself dreaming of the old automobile in the Museum that used to be driven to mock the wicked at Halloween, and wondered if it could go faster than a running horse back in the days when we still had a supply of gasoline fuel in the Valley.

“Yea verily I tell you,” old man Legrand was fuming, “in the vile days of the last century, men of wicked ways did have mighty engines of two thousand horsepower under the bonnet, fueled with the black oil of Egypt. But hear what Isaiah says in chapter 36 about that: ‘I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders upon them. How then can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master’s servants, when you rely on Egypt for chariots and horsemen? The Lord said to me, go up against this land and destroy it.’ ” There were moans aplenty, believe me, and many good folk made the sign o’god and bowed their heads in terror.

I never really understood why the tunnel authority even bothered to ask the Valley Olders for permission to build their underground tunnel. They could have gone ahead and built the thing without telling anyone—nobody would have twigged. If any had heard the sound like mice in the granary, they’d have thought it was just that: little rodents, scratching about in their burrows, putting aside stolen grain for the winter. As it was, the tunnelers formally asked for permission, and then, when the Assembly of Olders split into warring factions and couldn’t come to a collective decision, they made a secret deal with one of the factions and went ahead with the project anyway. I didn’t know that at the time, of course, none of us did. It would have been a mighty scandal. If you ask me, though, there never was any real choice—the tunnelers were just going through the motions. I reckon their city slicker lawyers had told them to cover their backsides—consult with the rural community’s representatives, and the fewer the better.

Eventually old man Grout was spending half the day lying on the ground. Once, to my shock, I saw his mule grazing unattended and eating the wheat, and went in to tether the beast myself. Ear pressed against the earth, old man Grout listened to the sounds of depravity and corruption. Then he’d be up on his knees, yelling curses into the soil, shouting so loud you thought maybe the tunnelers actually could hear him. A moment later he’d be standing up, his head thrown back, yelling at the god of his choice.

One day I was driving our cart past his wheat patch. Ebeeneezer, our mule, is plodding along and suddenly he stops. There’s old man Grout’s mule just wandering about, blocking the track and there’s Grout in the far corner of the patch. Only this time he’s not prone on the ground, he’s not listening, he’s digging. He’s digging like a madman. He’s digging with a crowbar and shovel. The hole is a meter deep, all you can see is old man Grout’s top half, throwing dirt up into the air like a volcano. I got down off our cart and left it standing in the track. Ebeeneezer was standing nose to nose with old man Grout’s mule, as they talked to each other in their mulish way. I walked over to the old fellow, dodging a few clods of flying dirt. At the edge of his hole I said, “They’re bound to be hundreds of meters down, Uncle. You’ll never reach them.”

“God gave me muscles to dig with, boy,” said old man Grout. “And what God gives, God wants used. He don’t abide no slacking. I’ll get there. I’ll break through the roof of their godless tunnel and the glory of the Lord’s wrath shall pour down like as unto the waters of Babylon, yea and the angel of the Lord shall not rest until the wicked….”

Old man Grout raved on, leaning on his shovel, staring up at me like some wild beast fallen into a trap. When I could get a word in, I said, “Another meter down and you’re going to hit solid rock, Uncle. It will be rock all the way.”

“Cleft for me!” yelled old man Grout into the hole. “Rock of ages! God helps those who help themselves. You need faith, sir, faith. If I get the thing started, the Almighty will pitch in too. The pair of us are unstoppable. Me and the Lord, we’ll get there, we’ll smite the heathen tunnelers, we’ll smite them good!”

I left him to it. I climbed back onto our cart and went down the track to the McWeezles’ place. I helped Auntie McWeezle load half a dozen sacks of turnips onto the back of the cart and then she asked me in for scones and buttermilk. As I was drinking the buttermilk I said, “Old man Grout’s digging down to the tunnel. Him and the Lord are going to smite the tunnelers.”

“Lady, I can hear him now, Mathewmark,” Auntie McWeezle said with a smile. “Uncle Grout walks in the eyes of the Lady, but if there’s smiting to do, I reckon Grout and his god would be the ones to do it.”

“He told me himself,” I said. “He’s going to dig the first couple of meters all on his own, and then the Lord is going to lend a hand, do a bit of clefting.”

“Well, the Lady just might, Mathewmark,” Auntie McWeezle said, passing me another scone. “Faith moves mountains.”

“I don’t know that it digs shafts,” I said. “That tunnel is surely a hundred meters down, if not further.”

“And a wicked, Gaia-hating thing it is,” Auntie McWeezle said.

“It won’t worry us,” I said. “We won’t even know it’s there.”

“Don’t tell me those trains won’t carry no polluters and gene-twisters,” Auntie said. “Them trains will carry gamblers, idolaters, money lenders, fornicators, blasphemers, eaters of unclean foods, mockers of the word of the goddess, and every kind of wickedness. The ground we walk on will be the roof of hell. The crops will wither. Strange mutant apples will turn to wormwood in the mouths of goddess-fearing folk…”

“You sound like old man Grout,” I said.

“Uncle Grout may get a bit carried away at Sacred Service,” Auntie admitted.

“He may get carried away in his hole,” I said. “Carried away by the grim reaper. It looks to me like he’s working on a heart attack, the way he was digging this morning.”

Auntie McWeezle made the sign o’god in the air with her index finger. She’s a good old soul, Auntie McWee. Many’s the time, when I’ve wanted someone to talk to, when I’ve wanted to get away from my parents and my kid brother, or yearned hopelessly for my sweetheart—many’s the time I’ve run to Auntie McWeezle’s kitchen for sympathy and buttermilk.

“Don’t say such a thing, Mathewmark,” Auntie said now. “Don’t tempt fate.”

“It’s old man Grout who’s tempting fate,” I said. “I’ll bet you he’s dead before harvest time.”

Auntie McWeezle shooed me out of the house. I climbed up on the cart and turned Ebeeneezer in the direction of our Village and spent the rest of the day fetching and carrying for the good people of the Valley. It was almost night when I turned for home and let Ebeeneezer have his head, he knew the way better than I did. Passing old man Grout’s wheat patch I noticed the last of the sun’s rays glinting on his spade, tossed out of the hole and left to lie where it had fallen. Old man Grout’s mule was milling around, trampling the wheat. I jumped down from the cart and told Ebeeneezer to continue on home by himself.

“Yeth, thir,” he said, and ambled off.

I walked over to the hole. I knew exactly what I would find.

The young paramedic glanced up into the shadowed face of his colleague. A few unshaved whiskers glinted on the older man’s cheek. “We can give the siren a rest, Hools. This one’s dead as a mackerel.”

Julio Mendez frowned, jerked his head briefly in the direction of the gray-haired woman, seated on a plastic chair someone had fetched for her, speaking quietly with a cop. In the spinning light from atop the ambulance her face was ghastly. A bruise was coming up above one high cheek bone. “The wife. Refused a sedative. Keep it down, buddy.” As he moved the limp body, a spear of brightness flashed at the dead man’s wattled throat. Another at his left wrist. “What’s that?”

“Doesn’t matter much now, does it? Medical indications, I guess—epileptic, diabetic, whatever—”

Mendez pushed him aside, crouched. He wiped blood away from the bracelet, then the one at the dead man’s neck. Both tags showed the same message. On the front of the chromed bracelet, in red block letters beside a hexagonal icon holding the entwined snakes of the caduceus, he read:

MED. HX. CALL 24 HRS.

800-367-2228 OR

COLLECT 480-922-9013

IN CASE/DEATH SEE REVERSE

FOR BIOSTASIS PROTOCOL.

REWARD A-2167

On the back were more immediate instructions:

CALL NOW FOR INSTRUCTIONS

PUSH 50,000 U HEPARIN IV

AND DO CPR WHILE COOLING

WITH ICE TO 10C. KEEP PH 7.5

NO AUTOPSY OR EMBALMING

“Hey, Hools, it’s one o’ them Freezer Geezers.”

Mendez looked up, blinking slowly.

“I saw it on Sixty Minutes, man. They cut their heads off after they die, and freeze—”

“I know what they do, you jackass. His wife is listening. Be quiet now.”

“Oh. Yeah, sorry.”

A hard, brittle voice said, “Young man, have you called that 800 number yet? You do have a phone, I assume? They smashed mine.”

“Uh, sure, yes, ma’am, I have a—”

“There’s not a minute to lose, goddamn it. Why haven’t you packed my husband’s head in ice? Do you carry crushed ice in your ambulance? One of you should be doing Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation.”

Julio Mendez, slightly nettled, regarded her in silence. The younger paramedic said, “Uh, I’m sorry, lady, that’s outside our jurisdiction now. The law says we have to take the, uh, deceased to hospital for certification of death.” He glanced at his colleague. “That’s right, isn’t it, Hools?”

“I’m afraid so, ma’am. Here, sit down, you must be feeling rather—”

“Gentlemen, understand this.” The dead man’s wife stared at them with cold rage, her face lashed by the yellow flashes from the roof of the open ambulance. “I know my husband is dead according to current medical standards. There’s a small chance that he can be restored to life.”

The dead man, with his ugly fatal injuries, was clearly beyond all hope of intervention. “I’m sorry, there’s no heartbeat or respiration, ma’am, so I’m afraid that’s out of—”

“Not now, some time in the future. Listen to me. That will only happen if the appropriate treatment is started right this instant, God damn it!”

Uncomfortable, the older man said: “Please, ma’am, we—”

She was small and thin, and seemed to tower over them.

“I said listen to me. Call that 800 number. When the cryotransport team arrives, my husband’s body will be prepared for vitrification and cryostasis at minus 140 degree Celsius. Any delay now, prior to cooling and washout, will cause irreversible loss of brain tissue.” Her voice broke on the last word.

The younger man said, “Man, they’ll either kick our ass out or put us on Sixty Minutes.”

Mendez nodded. “Or both. Think there’s some ice in storage. Okay, get the gurney over here.” He tore open the dead man’s shirt and began pressing on his chest.

3: AMANDA

In holding cell until two in the afternoon, felt usual blend of anger and sinking, stomach-chewing loss. Why such a disappointment to olders? Anyway, why care? All ever think about is themselves, damned immortal careers, climbing social ladder. Dr. Singh, wife rather higher up social hierarchy than family had yet managed to reach, even if Maman was legal for one of major new sub-surface construction projects. Singhs stockholders, not mere functionaries. Had really blown it. Well, both blew it together, but Vikram was golden pender so didn’t suppose would suffer any long term consequences. Damn-all chance he’d have vee access cut off for whole night. Good grief, what to do? Stare at ceiling of cell? Scribble on walls? Read book?

Was depressing, truly boring way to spend night. Amused self with compactification of n-manifold classes, fiddling as usual with Cohn-Vossen inequality. Got frustrated and nowhere. Next day in court was worse. Mr. Abdel-Malek, principal Magistrate for van Gogh Metro polis enclave, is very calm gentleman with soft, sinister tone to voice. Heard society ladies find quite sexy, in right context. Plainly have never heard him speaking to miscreant who threatened freighter system by attempting tie webbed subadult body to Maglev train ready to thunder through new Metro-to-coast tube at speed sound. Actually, dispute anyone, anything in danger. Did extensive sims air flow, vector changes, stresses we’d experience in protective webbing, all that. Piece cake. Well, not really piece cake, or wouldn’t be worth doing. But nothing lethal. Just really, really glumpzoid. Would be talk of Mall. Be Mall gods.

Or would have been, if had got that far. As was, everything came unstuck