Greg Bear - Mariposa

"First, our sanity," Rebecca said.

"Dispensable," Trace said. "Across that border lies a whole new country. Believe me."

"Tell me-does it get better-more stable?"

"Yes and no. You're third stage. You and a few hundred others. You may not go through any of the big swings-I hope. Did Plover talk to you?"

"Yes."

"He's screwed things up royally for Axel Price."

"The vice president was key," Rebecca said.

Rebecca felt the loop start to coil and the knot to shrink. The visuals faded to a normal range of colors-not at all fairy-tale, just D.C. after an autumn shower. The sun was going down, she was cold, and she was walking beside a man who scared her.

"I'm still capable of being frightened," she said. "Quinn was beyond that. But he must have started out as a real a piece of work. I listened to his-"

"What do you know about Jones?"

She looked over Trace sharply, judging his facial muscles, his hands. "Nothing. Is Jones someone you worked with?"

"Jones is very close to our problem-perhaps he is our problem, but he could also be our ace in the hole."

"Is Jones a code name for a human?"

"No. A machine personality."

"You built it… him for Talos? Axel Price?"

"I worked for Mind Design. We helped program a key part of MSARC. And for a lot of money, we built in a couple of nasty backdoors. One for Price… and several that none of us knew about, devised by our owner and CEO, who did not trust Price. The extra entry points were supposed to shut down once the system went online… three weeks ago. They didn't. Jones controls all of them. Maybe he's one, maybe he's many, but the way MSARC works, he has access to nearly everything in the world hooked up to a computer."

"Jones is like a hydra. Many heads."

"Good enough," Nathaniel said. They strolled along the damp path. "But he's not just a computer. He's a self-initiated, evolutionary problem solver. A competer."

"Ah," Rebecca said. "It all makes sense."

"Does it?" Nathaniel asked.

"No."

Two joggers in their twenties-long white legs, pumping arms, hair pasted to their heads, damp and smiling-broke to pass around them. Rebecca smelled the female's spoor, rich as cinnamon. She looked at Trace, who sternly faced forward.

"Right," he said. "She's pregnant. Beautiful scent."

"Oh, my lord," Rebecca said.

Nathaniel looked up at the sky and took a deep, nasal breath. "Jones has had a nasty shock. If I could take a guess, he's very disturbed. He doesn't know what he's going to do next."

"He feels emotions?"

"Not like ordinary people. But he has attachments and a weird something like loyalty."

"Maybe we're turning into Jones," Rebecca said.

"Believe me, at our most variant, we're nothing like him-his emotions might be more those of an insect, or a lizard at the most complicated. But that seems to be changing."

"What's changed-changing, for you?"

"You've had self-defense training."

She watched him closely, as she would an unpredictable animal. "So?"

"You'll soon be ten times better-but you'll have to relearn how and when to move; otherwise you'll end up breaking every bone in your body. We lose some level of autonomic control, down to the cellular level-not all of it, just the nervous system, and only parts of that. Key parts. But let's get back to Jones. There's not much time."

"Okay. A hydra, right?"

"So you say."

"Right now, at least one of his heads is very upset-even angry. How odd," Rebecca said. "What does an angry computer… competer do to get even?" Then she thought of the obvious question, which had not occurred to her at first. Logic seemed to be working backwards. "What made Jones angry?"

"Murder," Nathaniel said. "Jones had seven programmers, including me. We called ourselves the Turing Seven. It was our job to help design him, build him, teach him, and debug him-that is, understand him. At least four of the Turing Seven are dead. Jones also had a master designer-our boss. We called him the Quiet Man. His real name was Chan Herbert. He's dead, too. Axel Price killed Jones's father."

Lion County

The boy was still asleep in the backseat. The long twilight had dwindled to a blue and gold haze on the straight horizon. Black low mountains to their right. Twilight the most dangerous time of day: eyes still adjusted for bright but dark settling in.

William wondered what Kapp and Curteze might have thought if they had seen him releasing the snakes into the scrub. Just ordinary agents-honorable young men caught up by the thrill of what they thought was a simple rescue, and a chance for a little payback. Payback played a big role in cop psychology.

Strangely, for William, sitting in the driver's seat both figuratively and literally, it mattered not at all. He was at the point in his career where simply having a career-and surviving the twists and turns of that career-meant a hell of a lot more than showing the world's tricky players who was really kicking butt and taking names.

Curteze, riding shotgun, was passing the time by engaging in showbiz trivia.

"All right, then. Where's the big guy in Lifeboat?"

William frowned, pretending to take his time. Then: "Newspaper ad. Fat guy in a suit-before and after."

Curteze murmured his irritation.

"Well?" William asked.

"Yeah, that's it. What about Psycho?"

"Through the window after Janet Leigh comes back to the real estate office. He's wearing a cowboy hat."

"Everyone knows that one. Rear Window?"

"Winding a clock in the songwriter's apartment."

"Have you seen them all?"

"Every single film, including the silents," William said. "He shows up twice in The Lodger."

"Fuck you," Curteze murmured, shrinking down in the seat. "Bet is off."

"We weren't betting," William reminded him.

"I saw Vertigo," Kapp said. "Hated it when the cop slid off the roof. Gave me nightmares as a kid."

"What about Jimmy Stewart?" Curteze asked. "Didn't you worry about him?"

"I knew he was going to make it. The movie wasn't even started yet."

"When I was a kid, I always told people I was born in Texas," William said. "Sounded braver than being born in California. Alamo and all that."

"John Wayne as Davy Crockett, Richard Widmark as Travis," Curteze said.

"Billy Bob Thornton as Crockett," William said. "Screaming out his lungs when the Mexicans kill him."

"I didn't understand that part," Kapp said.

They switched positions and Kapp swiftly ground the Yukon over the rough ranch road, swerving to avoid huge potholes that loomed at the last second.

Curteze took out a Thermos of coffee and tried to pour William a cup. Most of it slopped.

"U.S. 62 in a couple of miles," Curteze said, consulting his pocket GPS. "We're west of the Guadalupe Mountains. They got lots of tanks out here, it says-Army tanks?"

"Cattle tanks. Ponds, lakes," Kapp explained. "Give me some of that."

"Drive better and maybe I will."

They had to cross twenty miles north over the old grazing acreage, now left dry and dusty in the drought.

"Texas feels like a foreign country," William said.

"Might as well be a foreign country," Curteze said.

"It's what some of these folks have always wanted," Kapp said as he swung the wheel left. They lurched around a hole big enough to hide a cow. This road had seen better days. Still, there was enough traffic out here that a Yukon-especially a Yukon equipped with a citizen transponder-might not seem out of place.

Already, they could see the lights of El Paso on their left. They'd meet 62 and drive west. Their next obstacle might come at a Texas Ranger checkpoint this side of the New Mexico border. There had been some incidents between New Mexico state troopers and Texas Rangers in the last few months. Shots fired, patrolmen and troopers down. First shots of the new civil war, some called it. New Mexico was staying loyal to the federal government.