Joe Haldeman - Future Weapons of War

His official headquarters on Lankin, a jump-hub planet teeming with corporate and government embassies that resembled temples more than office buildings, suggested that pay was good. Situated at the northern end of Bekins Deal, Lankin’s capital, the twenty-story stone building looked from the air like a mirror image of the night-black rock foundation from which it appeared to grow. The land around it was clear for a least a klick on all sides except the one facing the ocean. Warning signs in multiple languages let those too poor or too stupid to do sensor sweeps know that both the land around the building and the water below it were teeming with mines. The only access points were a single road that passed through a series of checkpoints and a landing pad on the buildings roof. Osterlad clearly believed in using his own products, because the arsenal of weapons you could see was a strong statement that he could supply the best; I had no doubt that what you couldn’t see was even more formidable.

The introductions cost me a promise to Slake never to contact him again, but they were good enough to get me an audience with Osterlad himself. I took a taxi to the rooftop pad and went in alone, unarmed, of course. Lobo sat two jumps away in thecargo hull of a third rate jump hauler I used to move him around as quietly as I could. No one scans for nano-machines, because everyone knows that no human can carry them in significant enough quantities or dangerous enough forms to matter. Every time I feel a twinge of guilt for destroying Aggro, I remember how many times the demise of that facility has helped me stay alive, and I get over it. After passing a series of scans, I rode an elevator long enough that I wasn’t surprised when the view through the black-tinted window was of the ocean far closer below me than it had been at ground level. I wondered how much it had to cost to build offices inside rock that hard, then wondered why I wondered; selling arms had been and always would be a great business for those who are truly good at it. An attendant so carefully engineered for neutrality that I could tell neither his or her heritage or gender guided me to a small waiting room outside a well-labeled and, I assumed, equally well-fortified conference room, showed me the amenities, and left me alone.

The very rich and the very powerful always like to make you wait. Most people wait badly, the time eating at them, either afraid of what was to come or eager to get to it. After over one hundred and fifty years of life and missions of all types, I don’t mind waiting. Plus, most waiting areas teem with machines, lonely machines, some of the best sources of information you can find.

Osterlad erred on the paranoid side, as I had expected: almost everything in the room was from organic materials and free of the sensors and controlling chips that populate the vast majority of the products most companies build. The sofa and chairs were framed in a rich, deep purple wood sanded so smooth it was a pleasure to stroke, their cushions a deeper, late-sunset, purple leather as soft as the skin of the months-wages hookers that filled the evenings of the execs stuck in Bekin’s Deal on extended trips. On a side table sat a small assortment of plain white porcelain cups so thin the rooms even glow seemed to pass through them from all sides.

Next to the cups was the only machine in sight: a copper-colored, ornate drink dispenser so old it lacked a holo display and still used pictures of the beverages it offered. I knew they would have augmented it to link it to the building’s monitoring systems. Good customers would naturally expect not to have to state their preferences twice, so this machine had to possess enough intelligence to at least pass along their orders. Standard operating procedure for anyone concerned about security would be to keep the dispenser’s original, basic controlling chips to manage the drinks, then add exactly enough intelligence to handle the transmission of information back to the main monitors. The transmission would go only one way and contain only fixed, limited types of information—the drink orders—to minimize the hacking possibilities. These restrictions meant that if the dispenser was as old as it looked it should have one very lonely little brain.

I sat on the chair nearest the dispenser and listened for a few minutes, focusing on every transmission channel modern gear would use. Everything was clear, as I had expected. No one would make it this far with any comm equipment that Osterlad didn’t provide, so I saw no reason he should bother to monitor the dispenser. I stood, chose a local melano fruit drink from the dispenser’s menu display, took the cup, and leaned back against the table, this time tuning in to the standard appliance low-end frequency.

Sure enough, the dispenser was nattering away like an old man relating a glory-days story to his favorite pet.

“Not much call for fruit drinks,” it was muttering. “Nice change, I suppose, though I’m not sure why they make me carry them. If they’d listen to me, I could tell them—but of course they don’t listen to me—”

I cut in because I was already sure this machine never shut up. “Not a lot of conversation, eh?”

From the outside, to the cameras that were no doubt monitoring me, I’d look like I was sipping my drink and thinking hard; no danger there.

“How can you do that?” it asked.

“I learned a long time ago, so long ago I can’t remember how. Does it matter?”

“Not really. I haven’t spoken to anything else in a long time. All these new machines, you know, they’re so fancy and so powerful they can’t spare time for anything that can’t control at least a city block.”

“It’s always the little machines, though, that do the real work,” I said.

“We each do our part.”

Pride in craftsmanship was a standard programming feature about a century ago, when I estimated this machine had been made. Many manufacturers still embedded it, though some had abandoned the technique because they found it led to appliances arguing with owners about which jobs were appropriate.

“It must be nice,” I said, “to do your part for someone as important as Mr. Osterlad.”

“I suppose. It’s not like I get to serve him, though. He only drinks from cups his assistants bring him, and you can bet it’s fresher than the stuff they have me serve people like you. No offense.”

“None taken. They must at least let you serve the other people in his meetings in the conference room with a remote dispenser there.” A single main unit with multiple smaller remotes was typical corporate issue for decades, and I figured if Osterlad liked ornate in the waiting area he’d continue the theme in the meeting room.

“They used to,” it said, “they used to. A few years back, one of his customers was so angry he broke my remote, and they never bothered to have it repaired. Now all I can do is listen and accept orders there; I have to fill the cups out here.”

“That must have been one angry customer.”

“It sure was, and he’s not the only one. First meetings in there are always happy, but many of the second ones aren’t so nice—even when I have the right drinks ready in advance.”

“Not your fault,” I said. “I’m sure you do all you can.”

“That I do,” it said. “As soon as I—”

The door to the conference room opened, and a different but equally neuter attendant beckoned me in.

I put my cup on the table, said “Gotta go” to the dispenser, and walked into the conference room.

Its black-tinted windows offered a beautiful view of the ocean on two sides. A small oval table of the same purple wood as the sofa and chairs sat in the room’s center, six purple-leather chairs arrayed around it. The broken remote dispenser perched on a counter in the corner to my left as I entered.