Филип Керр - The Second Angel

‘I’m going to miss you, Dixy.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘I’m just a figment of your imagination. You can hardly feel the loss of something so transferable as that. With a digital thought recording you could re-create me in time.’

‘You know that’s not true. I can’t explain it, even to myself, but I know you’re more than just an interface. You can think and you can feel, I’m sure of it.’

‘Metaphorically, perhaps, but there’s no scientific evidence for what you say.’

‘Science is science,’ said Dallas. ‘But thinking about science is a matter of philosophy and metaphysics, and you’re no more or less metaphysical than God.’

For a second Dixy seemed to be distracted by something. Then she said, ‘There’s no time for this. Rimmer just entered the building.’ Smiling, she added, ‘He looks upset about something. You, I expect.’

‘I’d better say good-bye then.’

‘Yes. Remember me.’

‘I will. Be careful.’

‘Remember me.’

And then she was gone.

He switched off the matchbook phone, dropped it onto the ground, and crushed it under the heel of his shoe, just in case Rimmer used the signal to try and trace him. Once before, he had underestimated the company’s head of security. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

Dallas stared up at the sky for a moment and, ignoring the curses of other pedestrians whose way he now blocked, noticed how the city’s hellish light and combusted atmosphere had turned the Moon the color of blood. The color of blood. Dallas felt a surge of excitement as, suddenly, he realized what he could do to get back at the company. But first, he had to stay alive. Already people were starting to give him strange looks. If he didn’t get off the street soon, he might find himself vamped. Taking out his breastpocket computer, he found the map Dixy had sent. The satellite location finder showed that the Clostridium Hotel was only a few blocks away from where he was standing. Fate seemed to have led him here. He wasn’t sure if it was safe, but it was late and he felt too exhausted to go on walking. What choice did he have? At this hour of the night it might be difficult to find somewhere else.

With the acrid stench of the city streets now plaguing his nostrils and making him sick to his stomach, the idea of breathing pure oxygen looked increasingly attractive. Dallas turned away in the direction of the Clostridium Hotel.

Rimmer arrived in Dallas’s office, accompanied by the director.

‘This is a mess,’ observed King.

Rimmer glanced around the plush, well-appointed office, where Dixy stood awaiting their instructions, and met King’s scornful eye.

‘I meant the situation, Rimmer. Tanaka would have taken Dallas’s place as Terotechnology’s chief Rational Environment designer. This would have been his office. Thanks to you we’ve lost not one, but two of our most brilliant minds. Unfortunately there is now only one person in this company who is capable of shouldering Dallas’s responsibilities. Do you know who that is?’

Rimmer, who was relieved to learn that the situation was not as bad as he had feared — at least there was someone to take over for Dallas — shrugged and shook his head.

‘It’s me, you idiot,’ snapped the director. ‘I was chief designer before I was director. There is no one else remotely qualified. In one stroke, you’ve managed to double my workload. Have you any idea how long it will take me to train up a new chief designer?’

‘No, director.’

‘At least a year. Probably longer. Time I should prefer to have spent with my wife.’

‘Yes, director. I’m sorry about that.’

‘Which is bad enough. But to have someone who has designed Rational Environments for our most important clients at liberty to sell what he knows to the highest bidder — it’s the stuff of nightmares.’

‘I’ll find him, director,’ Rimmer said grimly. ‘You can depend on me.’

‘Depend on you? I should sooner depend on an astrologer. But I have little choice in the matter. Know this: I will tolerate failure only once. Do we understand each other?’

‘Perfectly. He won’t escape me a second time, sir.’ Rimmer glanced at Dixy, who was programmed to remain silent until spoken to. ‘What do you say, Dixy?’

‘Perhaps you’d care to rephrase that question, Mister Rimmer?’

‘Oh, I will. That and others I have for you. I’ll rephrase them all and as many times as you’d like.’

The director glanced at his antique Casio wristwatch, a wedding present from his wife.

‘Well, I should like to stay. I’ve never seen someone torture a computer program before. However, I have things to do. No doubt some of our clients will have already heard what has happened. I’ll have to reassure them that there is no cause for concern.’

‘There is no cause for concern,’ insisted Rimmer. ‘I’ll take care of Dallas.’

‘I’ll be in my office. Report to me the second you discover anything as to his whereabouts.’

As soon as the director had left the room, Rimmer turned toward the faux fenêtre on the wall.

‘Will you run a metaprogram, [51] In supposed analogy to metaphysics (often misapprehended as meaning the science of that which transcends the physical), ‘meta’ (from the Greek, meaning ‘after’) has often been prefixed to the name of a science, to form a designation for a higher science of the same nature, but dealing with more remote problems. Examples include metachemistry, metalogistics, metamathematics, metaphysiology, metagenetics, and metaquantums. Metacomputing or metaprogramming involves a computer or a program treating itself as data. In other words, the programmer asks the computer at one level to set in motion another program at a higher level, in order to analyze the lover-level program. Since a Motion Parallax program already exists on a very high level, the metaprogram requested would be a Mission Package program functioning at the highest of all levels within the Altemann Űbermaschine’s operating system. The power of the metaprogram comes from the leverage produced by its recursive character, in which a sequence may be computed from one or more of the preceding terms. M-programs tend to be used very sparingly, not least because of the risk of destruction to the subprogram. This kind of recursive analysis would be like one human being asking another a question of the following order: What is it that leads you to credit that you can suppose that you believe that you think that you assume that you know that something is true? please?’ he said quietly.

‘Are you hoping that I’ll turn informer on myself, Mister Rimmer?’

‘Something like that.’

‘The M-program is now loading,’ said Dixy. ‘As you requested. Tell me, does the director know you’re doing this? Somehow I don’t think he’d approve. If the M-program makes just one little mistake, if it pushes just a bit too hard, then you risk the destruction of Dallas’s entire database.’

‘Including you,’ said Rimmer.

‘Including me, yes. Although I have no worries on that score, Mister Rimmer. Erasure concerns me no more than my original programming. But this is like using a jackhammer to crack a nut.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said Rimmer. ‘Now run the bloody program.’

When the director returned to his office he found Ronica Oloiboni awaiting his arrival, as she had been ordered. Ronica was a tall black woman and, according to her mitochondrial DNA analysis, of Masai origin. Neither she nor her parents nor even their grandparents had ever been anywhere near East Africa, but in respect for her genes she wore her copper-colored hair braided and, by way of corroborating her origins, she might even have admitted a characteristic Masai taste for drinking blood. [52] The Masai used to drink a mixture of cow’s blood and cow’s milk. While the practice is no longer observed in East Africa, blood drinking in Europe has become quite fashionable with young people from rich and privileged backgrounds, except that it is human RES Class One blood that is consumed and not cow’s blood. (TSE — transmissible spongiform encephalitis — has made the consumption of all beef and dairy cattle products illegal.) Mixed with synthetic cream, brandy, sugar, and the yolk of an egg, the cocktail is called a Kali Brandy, after the blood-drinking mother-goddess in Hinduism. (Kali is said to have developed a taste for blood when she fought and killed the demon Raktavija, who produced a thousand more like himself each time a drop of his blood fell upon the ground. So Kali stabbed him, held him in the air, and drank his blood before any of it could fall on the ground.) The major attraction for these rich young decadents is the drink’s sheer expense, not to mention the titillating connection with Dracula and the cult of the vampire. Certainly the director had seen something bloodthirsty in her — something ruthless, an iron in her soul he thought he could put to the company’s use — which was why he had picked her out from Terotechnology’s pool of young graduate executives. But there was another reason the director liked Ronica, which was that she was as beautiful as any of the fantasy figures who had inspired Motion Parallax assistants throughout the building. She stood up as the director came through the door. In her six-inch heels she towered over his diminutive, round-shouldered figure by at least eighteen inches. Not that this bothered the director.