Alan Foster - Cyber Way

Below, a section of canyon two hundred yards in diameter had been wiped smooth. No pebble marred its perfect surface, no creosote or mesquite poked its desiccated crown skyward. Flowing down from the north, the lonely little stream spread out in all directions, searching in vain for a course to follow as it sought to reclaim a momentarily forgotten corner of the planet.

Samantha Grayhills gazed at the exposed strata; white Coconino and dark red Kaibab sandstone.

“It looks like the setting in a necklace. It looks like—” she struggled for the right analogy, the right word.

“It looks like hozho,” said Vernon Moody in his easy southern drawl. “Balance and stability, thank God.”

Feeling suddenly very tired, Grayhills sat down on the edge of the slope and wiped at her wild, rain-slicked hair.

“It saved us. Maybe saved everything.” She squinted at Ooljee. “Whatever it was you called up saved us.”

The sergeant shrugged. He was thinking of his wife, of the warmth of her against him in bed at night. Of his boys, making trouble and smiles.

“Haal hootiid. Who knows what happened? Maybe we had nothing to do with it. Maybe something decided it was time to pick up garbage that had started to stink.” He put down what he had so diligently shielded against Gaggii’s fire.

Moody found himself staring intently at the still active, still glowing monitor of the mated spinners. After a mo-merit’s hesitation he rose and raised his foot over them.

“That won’t make it go away.” Ooljee spoke softly. “I have been thinking. It will only delay things. Maybe the next person to learn the secret will be another Gaggii. One who might proceed more cautiously, without leaving behind dead people to draw attention to himself, but one with similar dangerous ambitions. Or it might be some brilliant kid who would do irreversible damage before anyone had any idea what was happening.”

Moody put his foot down—alongside the spinners. That was the trouble with knowledge, he mused. Once acquired, it was so damn difficult to destroy. The Middle Ages hadn’t been able to wipe out science. What made him think he could stomp the web into nonexistence? As physicists delved deeper and deeper into the construction of the cosmos they were bound to stumble into the web eventually, with or without the clues provided by the sandpainting.

Grayhills was gazing thoughtfully at the screen. “I wonder: if you knew how, what else could you access through there? Holy People? Yei-tsos, aliens, creatures that live in the web itself? Those drifting patterns and lights: what do they represent? Worlds, living beings, or abstracts?” Moody snorted, flung a rock into the canyon. It did not travel far enough to mar the unnaturally smooth plain at the bottom.

“Maybe you could access a ‘delete’ button. Ever think of that? ‘Have fun, amuse your friends.’ Delete ’em. Or maybe there’s a command for deleting something else. Like the Earth.” He threw another stone, harder. The pain that shot up his arm was real, reassuring.

She refused to let him discourage her. “If you could make a wormhole do what you wanted it to, if you could control its position, it would make travel between worlds as simple and easy as crossing the street.”

“Yeah,” grumbled Moody. “Think about that for a minute.”

They were distracted by the whirr of rotors overhead. Someone had located the downed skycutter’s emergency beacon. Soon they would be found. Then they would have to explain themselves, not to mention the perfectly round polished basin below.

“The only problem with having a wormhole to step through,” Ooljee observed quietly, “is that something else can step through from the other side.”

“Not if we learn how to control it, how to manipulate it.” Grayhills came up behind Moody and began kneading his shoulders with her strong fingers. At first he tensed, then allowed himself to relax, letting her work on the stiff muscles. “Something did, once.”

“You’re not arguing fair,” Moody objected mildly, feeling the tension ease out of his shoulders. “Where’d you learn how to do this? Not off a molly.”

“You’d be surprised what you have to learn while working Security.”

“Who, me? A dumb cop?”

“Why does it please you to describe yourself that way?” He offered no comment.

“I wonder what we might find if we subjected some other sandpaintings to the kind of analysis we put the Kettrick through?” Ooljee said. Moody looked up sharply. “Some of the paintings that are used in the Shooting Way or Blessing Way. I wonder if Grandfather Laughter worked with them too?”

His partner indicated the still flickering fold-out screen. “Don’t you think the offspring of one Way is enough to deal with for a while?”

The sergeant looked over at him. “Other paintings, other clues. Perhaps other universes.”

“Something else I don’t understand,” said Moody. “Why you? I mean, not you personally, but why the Navaho? Why did these aliens or whatever decide to pick on you, whether accidentally or on purpose?”

Ooljee rose, scanned the sky for signs of approaching rescue craft. “Maybe they liked the country. If you were coming in via a ship or wormhole or whatever, wouldn’t you choose an interesting part of the planet to study? There are not many planetary features visible from a distance. The Grand Canyon is one of them, and it is right over there.” He gestured to the northwest.

“Besides, people have been dumping their garbage on the Reservation for a long time. Why should these visitors have been any different?” He walked over to the lip of the canyon, stared down at the newly planed, perfectly flat bottom. The creek was spreading out to form a shallow pond.

“The ants have found the spray can. Devoutly as I would like to, I am afraid that we cannot just ignore it.”

Returning to the mated spinners he moved to separate them, paused. Thoughtfully he inserted his fingers into the monitor to disturb drifting rainbows.

Moody watched him, admiring the play of patterns and colors within the screen. They were beautiful. Not just threatening and inspiring and dangerous, but truly beautiful. Maybe Ooljee was right. Maybe there was much in there worth seeking. Given time and hard work and care, might not the ants aspire to understanding?

A curious Grayhills leaned over his shoulder. “What are you grinning at, mister detective? You look like the coyote who has just made off with the chicken.”

“I was thinking about one possibility we’ve been considering. What if we really are components of this database? If that’s the case, won’t it be interesting for whoever built it, when we start learning how to manipulate it ourselves?” She considered. “The revolt of the bytes? Is such a thing possible? Bytes do what they’re programmed to do. They can’t act of their volition.”

“Maybe we’ve developed beyond what the makers of the web imagined. Maybe we’re the virus in their programming.”

“I hope not,” said Ooljee. “They may have programs designed to combat viruses.”

Moody was warming to his subject. “What if we’re an unexpected factor, something new?”

“I always thought there was a purpose to mankind’s existence,” Ooljee replied, “but not as a virus.”

“We’ll find out.” Moody eyed the glowing monitor, excited by the prospect it presented, no longer afraid of what they might find when they went aweaving in its unfathomable depths.

They would learn how to use the alien web, how to bend it to their own needs. And if it turned out that man was merely one component of some immense database, why, he was going to have an impact all out of proportion to his designated size.