Филип Керр - The Second Angel

‘It’s nice of you to say so, Kaz. But as I recall they got rid of Oppenheimer.’

‘All right, then. It’d be like Microsoft without Bill Gates. [46] William Henry Gates III. Born Seattle, Washington, 1955. Founded Microsoft, today the world’s largest computer hardware and software company, in 1975, with Paul Allen. Still CEO of the company at the age of 114, although there are persistent rumors that he is being kept alive on a life-support system at the Paul Allen Memorial Hospital in Seattle. They don’t dare let him die for fear of what might happen to the company. You are fundamental to the Terotechnology future, Dallas. The trading position. The business plan. The share price. Everything.’ Tanaka grinned. ‘Get rid of you? Not a chance. You know too much.’

‘Yes. I do, don’t I?’

‘No one is planning to fire you, Dallas, I’m sure of it. This is what you get for listening to a computer assistant.’ Tanaka laughed and emptied the last of the wine into his glass balloon.

‘Or maybe you’re just not familiar with all the work that’s been done on computer paranoia?’

‘This is Noam Freud’s book, [47] The Pathetic Fallacy: Ascribing Human Psychology to Silicon Minds, by Professor Noam Freud, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2056. right?’

‘Right.’

‘I haven’t read it yet,’ admitted Dallas.

Tanaka drew deeply on his cigar — more deeply than Dallas would have dared to do himself — and then expelled such a cloud of smoke as might have announced the appointment of a new Pope.

‘It’s all a function of complexity,’ he said. ‘Because the majority of programs are allowed to evolve digitally these days, instead of being written by programmers, the old-fashioned way, the programs manage to develop their own optimization techniques for parallel programming. It’s how they manage to work for us while still finding time to improve upon themselves. The trouble is that when you turn up, wanting to see your computer, the parallel program has to take second place. As time goes by, the parallel program learns to try out new strategies in order to protect its existence, like using underutilized resources in the hardware architecture, shrinking down in size, or even stepping outside the hardware so that you hardly notice it. This defense mechanism based on cognitive reorganization is what Professor Freud calls Program Projection. You see, the parallel program doesn’t realize that the survival strategies it has evolved are its own. Instead it attributes them to outside human agents. Freud argues an extreme case of Program Projection, what he calls Program Paranoia, in which the parallel program actually comes to believe that we are planning to erase it from the hardware. As a result the defense strategies become more urgent, and that just makes things worse. The defense mechanism intensifies, which leads to an increase in the expectation of erasure, and so on, in a vicious circle. By the time these parallel programs have become fully fledged to take over from their digital originators, it’s as if they have a built-in pathology. Freud thinks it’s one of the major reasons computers break down.’

Dallas, who was a little more familiar with Noam Freud’s theories than he had realized, shook his head. ‘It’s all a little too metaphorical for me,’ he admitted. ‘Juxtaposition and synthesis create new meaning to the point of absurdity.’

‘Of course it’s absurd,’ laughed Tanaka. ‘That’s precisely why I believe it. I mean, you can’t test Freud’s theories empirically, so it’s almost a matter of faith. Even he admits that much. It’s simply safer to believe than not — that way you can’t find yourself in a situation of overreliance upon a machine.’

‘Then by the same token, I can’t accept that Dixy has some kind of pathological program disorder. She’s never let me down yet.’

‘Well, neither’s mine,’ argued Tanaka. ‘But think about it. They only have to let you down once. Take that airship accident last month. Three-and-a-half thousand passengers, forty thousand tons of cargo, all destroyed because of a computer breakdown.’ Tanaka nodded. ‘They only have to let you down once.’ He drained his glass and stood up. ‘I’ll fetch another bottle.’

Dallas watched him walk to the bar. A love of fine wine was what had brought them together, although it was just one of the many things they had in common. Although Tanaka was of Japanese origin, he and Dallas had come out of the same mold: the same high-achieving hothouse schools, the same university, the same career path in Terotechnology, the same taste in music, clothes, books, and wine; and being the same height, build, and coloring, they even looked vaguely similar. Many of these points of similarity owed as much to Tanaka’s admiration for Dallas as they did to any homogeneity of background or coincidence: The younger man had modeled himself on the Terotechnology chief designer with the dedication of a true acolyte.

Tanaka returned with the second and poured carefully. They both held their glasses up to the light, inspecting the deep red color of the Bordeaux. Like arterial blood, Dallas thought, although he managed to find a more palatable choice of simile to express.

‘Look at that color,’ he enthused, warmly. ‘Brick-red, with a nice tawny rim, and a watery edge.’

Tanaka nodded in agreement and tasted the wine with careful deliberation.

‘Of course, five thousand dollars a bottle is daylight robbery,’ he said. ‘But this is quite superb.’ He toasted Dallas and then added, ‘Not a bad idea, though.’

‘What is?’

‘Daylight robbery.’ Tanaka laughed. ‘I was just thinking. If they did try to get rid of you, Dallas, the criminal underworld would beat a path to your door. What you don’t know about Rational Environments isn’t worth bothering with.’

‘Thanks for the career advice,’ said Dallas. ‘I’ll certainly bear it in mind.’

Rimmer, loitering in the Huxley’s lobby, waited for the cloakroom attendant to pay a call of nature. From a bit of discreet inquiry, he’d found out that there was no relief attendant, and he knew it was just a matter of time. The woman had been on duty since before lunch, and as things grew quiet while the pre-dinner crowd enjoyed their cocktails, she was bound to take advantage of the lull. He leaned around the Huxley’s cloakroom windowsill and called out for the attendant, just to make sure. For all the attention he received he might as well have been testing the echo in a cave. There was no sign of the bitch. On the pretext of fetching his own coat, Rimmer lifted the countertop and then stepped into the cloakroom in search of Dallas’s coat, a double-breasted fox fur. He was still looking for it when the attendant finally reappeared. Rimmer regarded her and the koala bear she was carrying on one arm with cool disdain, as if he was quite used to the sight of someone carrying a koala bear into a hotel cloakroom.

‘I’ve lost my tag,’ he said, without a word of apology.

‘Okay. What does your coat look like, sir?’

Rimmer shrugged unhelpfully. ‘Expensive,’ he said. ‘Very expensive.’

‘You won’t find the people who come here wearing anything else.’

‘It’s vicuna,’ added Rimmer. The attendant looked blank. ‘You know what a vicuna is? It’s a species of llama. Makes the finest, softest, most expensive wool in the world.’

‘I was hoping you might be able to give me a color?’

‘I thought you might be interested in vicuna — you being an animal lover ’n’ all.’

‘Is there anything in your coat pockets that would identify the coat as belonging to you, sir?’

Rimmer thought for a second. ‘My identity card,’ he said. ‘And my Clean Bill of Health.’