Halo Read online

  Halo

  Tom Maddox

  The resources of Aleph, the artificial intelligence that operates the high-orbital space station Halo, are being diverted to its experimental sections. And when the corporation that owns Halo hires freelance data auditor Mikhail Gonzales to observe the problem, Aleph starts spinning out of control.

  "A clear and well-conceived plot . . . Maddox is a name to watch".--SF Chronicle.

  Halo

  Tom Maddox

  From the author:

  You may read these files, copy them, and distribute them in any

  way you wish so long as you do not change them in any way or

  receive money for them.

  I have entered HALO into the distribution networks of the Net, but

  I retain the copyright to the novel.

  If you paid for these files, you were cheated; if you sold them,

  you have cheated.

  Otherwise, have fun and spread the book around.

  If you have any comments on the book or this distribution, you can

  send me e-mail at:

  [email protected]

  November, 1994

  HALO

  Tom Maddox

  To the memory of George Maddox, my father; Paul Cohen,

  my friend; and all our lamented dead, lost in time.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Here are some of the people I owe in the writing of this

  book.

  My wife Janis and son Tom. They have had to put up with the

  problems of a novelist in the houseincluding arbitrary mood

  swings and chronic unavailability for many of the usual pleasures

  of life. To both, my love and gratitude for their love, patience,

  and understanding.

  My best friends: Leo Daugherty, Jeffrey Frohner, Bill Gibson

  and Lee Graham.

  My mother Jewell, my brother Bill and sister Janet.

  Ellen Datlow: she published my first stories in Omni and

  showed me how a really good editor works. Also, two friends who

  patiently read through drafts of those stories before Ellen got

  them: Geoff Hicks and Larry Reed.

  The readers of various incarnations of this book: Beth

  Meacham, my editor at Tor Books; Merilee Heifetz, my agent; Bruce

  and Nancy Sterling, great readers; Melinda Howard and Gary

  Worthington; Lynne Farr; Carol Poole. Also, the members of the

  Evergreen Writers' Workshop, especially Pat Murphy.

  The Usenet community, friend and foe, for ideas about a quite

  astonishing number of things, and for the continuing fascination

  of life online; with special thanks to Patricia O'Tuana and the

  members of "eniac."

  The usual suspects at the Conference on the Fantastic, with a

  special nod to Brian Aldiss, because we'd all be happier if there

  were more like him running around.

  At The Evergreen State College, many people who gave

  technical advice. (Perhaps needless to say, any consequent

  blunders are entirely mine.) Mike Beug and Paul Stamets, world-

  class mycologists and explainers, talked to me about mushrooms and

  provided invaluable references. Mark Papworth applied a coroner's

  eye to a carcass I made. The faculty and students of the Habitats

  Coordinated Studies Program, 1988-89 helped me to think about a

  space habitat's ecosystem.

  A list, much too long to include here, of friends, both

  colleagues and students, at Evergreenthough I have to mention

  Barbara Smith and David Paulsen, whose cabin and cat make cameo

  appearances.

  And all I've known who can find a piece of themselves in this

  book.

  PART I. of V

  Everything is destined to reappear as simulation.

  Jean Baudrillard, America

  1. Burning, Burning

  On a rainy morning in Seattle, Gonzales was ready for the

  egg. A week ago he had returned from Myanmar, the country once

  known as Burma, and now, after two days of drugs and fasting, he

  was prepared: he had become an alien, at home in a distant

  landscape.

  His brain was filled with blossoms of fire, their spread

  white flesh torched to yellow, the center of a burning world. On

  the dark stained oak door, angel wings danced in blue flame, their

  faces beatific in the cold fire. Staring at the animated carved

  figures, Gonzales thought, the fire is in my eyes, in my brain.

  He pushed down the s-curved brass handle and stepped through

  to the hallway, his split-toed shoes of soft cotton and rope

  scuffing without noise across floors of bleached oak. Through the

  open door at the hallway's end, morning's light through stained

  glass made abstract patterns of crimson and buttery yellow.

  Inside the room, a blue monitor console stood against the far

  wall, SenTrax corporate sunburst glowing on its face; in the

  center of the room was the egg, split hemispheres of chromed

  steel, cracked and waiting. One half-egg was filled with beige

  tubes and snakes of optic cable, the other half with hard dark

  plastic lying slack against the shell.

  Gonzales rubbed his hands across his eyes, then pulled his

  hair back into a long hank and slipped a circle of elastic over

  it. He reached to his waist and grabbed the bottom hem of his

  navy blue t-shirt and pulled the shirt over his head. Dropping it

  to the floor, he kicked off his shoes, stepped out of baggy tan

  pants and loose white cotton underpants and stood naked, his pale

  skin gleaming with a light coat of sweat. His skin felt hot, eyes

  grainy, stomach sore.

  He stepped up and into a chrome half-egg, then shivered and

  lay back as body-warmth liquid bled into the slack plastic, which

  began to balloon underneath him. He took hold of finger-thick

  cables and pushed their junction ends home into the sockets set in

  the back of his neck. As the egg continued to fill, he fit a mask

  over his face, felt its edges seal, and inhaled. Catheters moved

  toward his crotch, iv needles toward the crooks of both arms. The

  egg shut closed on him and liquid spilled into its interior.

  He floated in silence, waiting, breathing slowly and deeply

  as elation punched through the chaotic mix of emotions generated

  by drugs, meditation, and the egg. No matter that he was going to

  relive his own terror, this was what moved him: access to the

  many-worlds of human experiencetravel through space, time, and

  probability all in one.

  Virtual realities were everywherevirtual vacations, sex,

  superstardom, you name itbut compared to the egg, they were just

  high-res videogames or stage magic. VRs used a variety of tricks

  to simulate physical presence, but the sensorium could be fooled

  only to a certain degree, and when you inhabited a VR, you were

  conscious of it, so sustaining its illusion depended on willing

  suspension of disbelief. With the egg, however, you got total

  involvement through all sensory modalitiesthe worlds were so

  compelling that people waking from them often seemed lost in the

  waking world, as if it were a dream.

  A needle punched into a membrane set in o
ne of the neural

  cables and injected a neuropeptide mix. Gonzales was transported.

  #

  It was the final day of Gonzales's three week stay in Pagan,

  the town in central Myanmar where the government had moved its

  records decades earlier, in the wake of ethnic rioting in Yangon.

  He sat with Grossback, the Division Head of SenTrax Myanmar, at a

  central rosewood table in the main conference room. The table's

  work stations, embedded oblongs of glass, lay dark and silent in

  front of them.

  Gonzales had come to Myanmar to do an information audit. The

  local SenTrax group supplied the Federated State of Myanmar with

  its primary information utilities: all its records of personnel

  and materiel, and all transactions among them. A month earlier,

  SenTrax Myanmar's reports had triggered "look-see" alarms in the

  home company's passive auditing programs, and Gonzales and his

  memex had been sent to look more closely at the raw data.

  So for twenty straight days Gonzales and the memex had

  explored data structures and their contents, testing nominal

  functional relationships against reality. Wherever there were

  movements of information, money, equipment or personnel, there

  were records, and the two followed. They searched cash trails,

  matched purchase orders to services and materiel, verified voucher

  signatures with personnel records, cross-checked the personnel

  records themselves against government databases, and traced the

  backgrounds and movements of the people they represented; they

  read contracts and back-chased to their bid and acquisition; they

  verified daily transaction logs.

  Hard, slogging work, all patience and detail, and so far it

  had shown nothing but the usual inefficienciesGrossback didn't

  run a particularly taut operation, but, as of the moment, he

  didn't seem to have a corrupt one. However, neither he nor

  SenTrax Myanmar was cleared yet; Gonzales's final report would

  come later, after he and the memex had analyzed the records at

  their leisure.

  Gonzales stretched and rubbed his eyes. As usual at the end

  of short-term, intensive gigs like this, he felt tired, washed-

  out, eager to go. He said to Grossback, "I've got a company plane

  out of here late this afternoon to Bangkok. I'll connect with

  whatever commercial flight's available there."

  Grossback smiled, obviously glad Gonzales was leaving.

  Grossback was a slight man, of mixed German and Thai descent; he

  had a light brown complexion, black hair, and delicate features.

  He wore politically correct clothing in the old-fashioned Burmese

  style: a dark skirt called a longyi, a white cotton shirt.

  During Gonzales's time there, Grossback had dealt with him

  coldly and correctly from behind a mask of corporate protocol and

  clenched teeth. Fair enough, Gonzales had thought: the man's

  operation was suspect, and him along with it. Anyway, people

  resented these outside intrusions almost every time; representing

  Internal Affairs, Gonzales answered only to his division head,

  F.L. Traynor, and SenTrax Board, and that made almost everyone

  nervous.

  "You leaving out of Myaung U Airport?" Grossback asked.

  "No, I've asked for a pick-up south of town." Like anyone

  else who could arrange it, he was not going to fly out of Pagan's

  official airport, where partisan groups had several times brought

  down aircraft. Surely Grossback knew that.

  Grossback asked, "What will your report say?"

  Surprised, Gonzales said, "You know I can't tell you anything

  about that." Even mentioning the matter constituted an

  embarrassment, not to mention a reportable violation of corporate

  protocol. The man was either stupid or desperate.

  "You haven't found anything," Grossback said.

  What was his problem? Gonzales said, "I have a year's data

  to examine before I can make an assessment."

  "You won't tell me what the preliminary report will look

  like," Grossback said. His face had gone cold.

  "No," said Gonzales. He stood and said, "I have to finish

  packing." For the moment, he just wanted to get out before

  Grossback did something irretrievable, like threatening him or

  offering a bribe. "Goodbye," Gonzales said. The other man said

  nothing as Gonzales left the room.

  #

  Gonzales returned to the Thiripyitsaya Hotel, a collection of

  low bungalows fabricated from bamboo and ferro-concrete that stood

  above the Irrawady River. The rooms were afflicted by Myanmar's

  tattered version of Asian tourist decor: lacquered bamboo on the

  walls, along with leaping dragon holos, black teak dresser,

  tables, chairs, and bed frame, ceiling fans that had wandered in

  from the twentieth century just to give your average citizen that

  rush of the Exotic East, Gonzales figured. However, the hotel had

  been rebuilt less than a decade before, so, by local standards,

  Gonzales had luxury: working climatizer, microwave, and

  refrigerator.

  Of course, many nights the air conditioner didn't work, and

  Gonzales lay sweaty and semi-conscious through hot, humid nights

  then was greeted just after dawn by lizards fanning their ruby

  neck flaps and doing push ups.

  He had gotten up several of those mornings and walked the

  cart paths that threaded the plains around Pagan, passing among

  the temples and pagodas as the sun rose and turned the morning

  mist into a huge veil of luminous pink, with the towers sticking

  up like fairy castles. Everywhere around Pagan were the temples,

  thousands of them, young and flourishing when William the

  Conqueror was king. Now, quick-fab structures housing government

  agencies nested among thousand year old pagodas, some in near

  perfect condition, like Thatbyinnu Temple, myriad others no more

  than ruins and forgotten names. You gained merit by building

  pagodas, not by keeping up those built by someone long dead.

  Like some other Southeast Asian countries, Myanmar still was

  trying to recover from late-twentieth century politics; in

  Myanmar's case, its decades-long bout with round-robin military

  dictatorships and the chaos that came in their wake. And as was

  so often the case in politically wobbly countries, it still

  restricted access to the worldnet; through various kinds of

  governments, its leaders had found the prospect of free

  information flow unacceptable. Ka-band antennas were expensive,

  their use licensed by permits almost impossible to get. As a

  result, Gonzales and the memex had been like meat eaters stranded

  among vegetarians, unable to get their nourishment.

  He'd taken down the memex that morning. Its functions

  dormant, it lay nestled inside one of his two fiber and aluminum

  shock-cases, ready for transport. The other case held memory boxes

  containing SenTrax Myanmar group's records.

  When they got home, Gonzales would tell the memex the latest

  news about Grossback, how the man had cracked at the last moment.

  Gonzales was sure the m-i would think what he didGrossback was
r />   dog dirty and scared they would find it.

  #

  At the edge of a sandy field south of Pagan, Gonzales waited

  for his plane. Gonzales wore his usual international traveller's

  mufti, a tan gabardine two-piece suit over an open-collared white

  linen shirt, dark brown slipover shoes. His hair was gathered

  back into a ponytail held together by a silver ring made from

  lizard figures joined head-to-tail. Next to him sat a soft brown

  leather bag and the two shock-cases.

  In front of him a pagoda climbed in a series of steeples to a

  gilded and jeweled umbrella top, pointing to heaven. On its

  steps, beside the huge paw of a stone lion, a monk sat in full

  lotus, his face shadowed by the animal rising massive and lumpy

  and mock fierce above him. The lion's flanks were dyed orange by

  sunset, its lips stained the color of dried blood. The minutes

  passed, and the monk's voice droned, his face in shadow.

  "Come tour the temples of ancient Pagan," a voice said.

  "Shwezigon, Ananda, Thatbyinnu"

  "Go away," Gonzales said to the tour cart that had rolled up

  behind him. It would hold two dozen or so passengers in eight

  rows of narrow wooden benches but was now emptyalmost all the

  tourists would have joined the crush on the terraces of

  Thatbyinnu, where they could watch the sun set over the temple

  plain.

  "Last tour of the day," the cart said. "Very cheap, also

  very good exchange rate offered as courtesy to visitors."

  It wanted to exchange kyats for dollars or yen: in Myanmar,

  even the machines worked the black market. "No thanks."

  "Extremely good rate, sir."

  "Fuck off," Gonzales said. "Or I'll report you as

  defective." The cart whirred as it moved away.

  ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤

  Gonzales watched a young monk eyeing him from the other side

  of the road, ready to come across and beg for pencils or money.

  Gonzales caught the monk's eye and shook his head. The monk

  shrugged and walked on, his orange robe billowing.

  Where the hell was his plane? Soon hunter flares would cut

  into the new moon's dark, and government drones would scurry

  around the edges of the shadows like huge mutant bats. Upcountry