Betrayals: eleven

Zero minus four hundred thirty three years

Having spent so long on the ship between the Necklace and Santos, Gus had learnt to be patient for almost the first time in his life. This didn’t stop him complaining.

At the stationary point of the beanstalk was the Entrepot, a comfortable place for beings to wait while they were screened for entry. A male and a female nearbaseline of nondescript appearance, who turned out to be simulacra designed to be friendly and helpful, greeted Max and Gus. After a short conversation with the Entrepot officers, they were immersed in a cloud of white fluffy bees, which seemed to survey them both (and also the thirty or so other tourists and commercial travellers that arrived with them) thoroughly, finishing off by extracting a blood sample from Gus, while also interfacing with the nanotattoo control processor on his left forearm.

Gus and Max spent half an hour or so in the Barzelona virch game they had played constantly on the way over from Prior B to Prior A, then the simulacra Entrepot officers returned. The female officer gently disengaged them from the violent architectural planet scenario, and informed them that they had been cleared to enter the Autonomous World of Santos. 
  ‘You will, no doubt, be aware that you are carrying a powerful subliminal direction to visit the Nova territories in Tau Ceti system.” she said.
“See, I told you, Gus, you are a sucker for those AIdverts. Yes, officer, we had come to that conclusion ourselves.”
  ‘If you wish we can remove the conditioning. Otherwise you are requested not to recommend tourism to Nova or any other territory in the Tau Ceti system to any citizen of Santos polity, on your honour.’
  “Sure, on my honour, “Gus said, surprised at how easy it was to make a binding agreement with the Negents. Of course, information would be preserved (second Axiom) and this conversation would no doubt be binding till the heat death of the universe.
  “I do so ever so solemnly swear,” said Max, in his ‘sardonic voice#3’.

-----------------

(Well, that is certainly interesting, Librarian; I had better check the records at Santos Entrepot about that compulsion virus they uncovered - bear with me, cousin…)
----------------


The trip to Santos took ten hours of vertical descent in a lift capsule with several levels, including a small swimming pool on the bottom with a transparent floor- by holding his breath and swimming
downwards Gus could see the gigantic blue ball approach from thousands of miles away. Occasionally a lift going upwards would flicker past, at a mutual speed of eight thousand kilometres per hour.
Among the legs of the swimmers Max floated like seaweed.

Finally Gus and Max found themselves on the surface of their first planet, a real spherical world. It was early morning, and misty, but Gus could see that the light in the sky came from sideways on, and slowly rose as they took the comfortable surface train to their exchange lodgings. The shadows were disconcerting- like being in a theatre. Eventually the light in the sky rose out of the mist, a
circular disc that was the sun. Too bright to look at, and it must be hell if it was shining in your eyes when you were driving a vehicle towards it. But as far as Gus could work out the Negents
didn't drive cars themselves.

Fifty kilometres north of the beanstalk terminal was Ngee Ann City, a spacious, low-lying and clean town of several million inhabitants, well served by public transport. Three-coach trams and robobuses pottered everywhere, but there were no private vehicles, and no animals used for transport at all. Gus realised that nearly every ring in The Necklace used animals of one sort or another for transport - ArGarthan talking horses would allow you to ride them if you were polite, or amusing, but leave you stranded if you were boring or aggressive. And the camels on Elsirac were part of a tradition that went back to Old Earth.
Here the choice was between using automatic transport or walking.

Wide boulevards, squares with fountains, modest sized civic buildings in various classical styles of architecture - Ionian, Palladian, New Daffy. (Dammit- Gus thought; that Barzelona architect/warrior persona is still surfacing… I must be more careful when coming out of a virtual scenario…) They wandered for a while, rubbernecking, then boarded a robobus to Suburb NNW where the tourist program had arranged lodgings with a Santos family. Somewhere on the Necklace a Mutual Progress family was hosting a Negentropist group in exchange.

It was with the sun nearly overhead that they arrived at their exchange lodgings in NNW. Gus recalled that the sun he could see was a regulated image, a sun beam, and would have been much brighter if the AIA swarm had not been in the way, but it was quite bright enough for him. The strange slanting shadows that were everywhere were smaller now, and made him feel less uneasy.

Max was wrapped like a bandolier over Gus' shoulder, while Gus wore a formal Scrabo vest that displayed his skin. As he stepped out of the small robobus, his tattoos were showing a pleasant, neutral image: blue water, green weed and a few small but colourful fish darting about.
Occasional bubbles.

The house they were going to stay at was a pleasant single-storey white building, apparently built from painted planks of wood, with a long porch front and back. Climbing plants of some kind grew on trellises around the porch and at various places in the large square garden. This garden had a huge flowering tree at each corner, and a white fence on each boundary, with the house squarely in the centre of the plot. Down the long straight road were dozens of identical square plots, each with a house in the centre.

  "Yeesh- this all looks as boring as krek," Gus said to Max, on the private channel. "Just as I thought; the Neggies are a right bunch of uptight conformist stiffs."

  "No, not at all. Take another look, Gus. Each house is slightly different, each garden has different trees and flowers in it, but somehow they do look the same. It seems to be a little game the Santos peopleplay, to be different without anybody noticing."

  "Well, what is the fun in that? If you are going to be different, go for it." Gus did not change his deadpan face, but was suddenly covered with the image of thousands of rising bubbles - each one containing an icon of the Blessed Lady Ur-ner-geb blowing more tiny bubbles through a clay pipe.

Max ignored this slapstick display. "No, actually, I quite like this idea of subtle nonconformity. You have to know the rules, and how little you need to bend them to be individual. Very neat."

The door of the house was opened by a tidy, unremarkable looking man, smiling and greeting them in a slightly odd accent.
  "Welcome, come in, come in. Eaowyg, Eaowyg, the strangers are here."
Eaowyg came to the door, a neat, attractive, smiling woman. "It is a great privilege to have you in our house. We hope we can provide you with anything you need. You have met my husband Ghosh, he won't have introduced himself, if I know him..."
  "My name is Max Handy, and this is my human Auguste Gienah."
  "Come and see your rooms," said Ghosh, bringing them into the hallway, which had a very clean, minimalist décor.
  "Max doesn't need a separate room, he is my symaiote."
  “Oh, don't worry; these rooms are to do with as you will. We have just had them built. Now then!  If you have any particular requirements you should speak to our autofabricator, the Genius Loci; e will be wanting to know about your choices for dinner soon, if you are hungry," said Ghosh. 
He indicated a pentagonal shape inset into the wall, bronze green and shiny. It spoke to them directly.
 `Greetings, people of the Mutual Progress Alliance,' the polygon seeming to vibrate slightly as e spoke. 'I am a Household Compiler and Domestic Manager. If you require anything, I will be happy to provide it. Please allow for assembly time. If you desire anything, I am prepared to debate your requirements.'
  “Don’t be too harsh on them, Genius, they are from a money-based economy, and don’t expect to debate every purchase.” Ghosh said, laughing.

  “Hello, Genius: lovely household you keep here, very neat. If it is okay to put an order in for dinner now, just electrolyte soup for me. How do I know the difference between a requirement and a desire, by the way?”
  'Thank, you, Robot Handy. You can easily discriminate between a requirement and a desire; if you do not receive a requirement, you will die. This is not true of a desire.'

  "Well, if it is within your definition of a necessity, can I have tomato rice and nut Kiyoshi? Not too much garlic, please." Gus asked the wall-plate. 
  'You can have Kiyoshi, with pleasure, Citizen guest; Good food is certainly within the definition of a necessity. It will be ready in twenty minutes, if you wish to use the good order room.'
  "Thank you," said Gus, then sent silently to Max on their symbi channel,
  ~ the what? ~
  ~ try to remember, skinbag; the good order room is how these people refer to the bathroom or toilet. You are supposed to get yourself in order before socialising. To be honest I could flush some toxins out of my system as well while I'm at it. ~

The brushbot and his human joined the married couple for food at a wide table on the back porch, which faced `south' and `west' (Max silently translated these directions as `Equatorwards and Spinwards). 
The sun was moving from nearly overhead towards the west, so was shining right onto the dining table even though they were sitting under the slanted roof of the porch.
  "Zar Ghosh, I am new to this tourist life, so I might end up saying something stupid." Gus sipped his wine and water mix.
  "Don't worry- I went offworld once- to Zarathustra, Gamma Pavonis. Everyone thought I was just a naïve Santos hick- which of course I was. But it was a fascinating place."
  "Well, perhaps you can indulge me a bit, by telling me what you do in your everyday life. Do you perform work, and if so, how are you paid?"
  "I am doing a little work for the government at the moment, a few hours a week, but it all adds up. As a matter of fact we did have money here on Santos, as an experiment, for a couple of hundred years, around the time that I was born, so I know what it is like."
  "I am too young to know anything about that, of course," smiled Eaowyg. "I missed that by a couple of decades."
  "But nowadays we have an abundance economy; our whole society consumes just a tiny trickle of the light energy passing through the Swarm collector array, and the compilers will let us have anything that they decide is good for us."

  "And what kind of work do you do, zar Ghosh?" Max was hooked politely over the edge of the table, just two tendrils dipped in a shallow bowl of purple liquid.
  "My department studies practical politics. Some interpret ancient and modern political systems from various worlds around the galaxy, giving subjective readings based on many forms of data processing, including simulation. I was involved in that for a while, but now I am helping evaluate the practicalities of various forms of government of humans by humans here on Santos."
  "Sounds fascinating. Which ones are you working with right now, and which one is the best?"
  "We are working with combined Patronage and Nepotism right now, zar Gienah, but as to which is the best, now that is a question."
  "He means he doesn't know," Eaowyg laughed.
  "Ha, ha. It is a very difficult question, and our investigations are on-going," Ghosh conceded. "However, they do have some value, in the interstellar information market, so I can't say too much because of commercial confidentiality. Anyway, you could be a god in disguise, picking my brains by reading my body language, so forgive me if I am somewhat cagey on this subject."

  "I certainly don't feel like a god, although this is a very nice place you have here, and your compiler does nice food." Gus indicated his kiyoshi, a speciality dish from an MPA world, which he had asked for as a kind of test. "I can't speak for my symaiote, although if he is a god, he is an unreliable one."

The sun was getting lower in the sky, and it was now late `afternoon'. "How about yourself, zar Gienah? What do you do, over there in the necklace worlds?" Eaowyg poured more wine and water from the carafes on the table.
  "We tend to act as a unit, Max and I, and we have some advantages because of this. Sometimes we freelance for netnews narrowcasting, and we manage to get paid to go round the Necklace reporting on this and that- nothing major league. Just subjective, low key stuff –there are millions of us doing it, so the audiences are quite small.“
  “Are you reporting now?”
  “Well, no, this is a holiday. If anyone contributes something to our subjective impressions which will interest people in the Necklace worlds when we get back, that is a bonus, but it is not the object of the exercise.”

  “Well, we had better be on our best behaviour, them.” said Eaowyg.

Gus looked at her closely; she had a rather arch expression. He said, "Sometimes one or the other of us make a little crust from passive reporting- just going over the various news reports from round the galaxy, giving our impressions- we have to be hooked up to a mainbrain for that."

He started to scroll through a few random news stories in text and images, using his upper torso tattoos. Eaowyg and Ghosh seemed reasonably impressed. Up to that point, he had been displaying a subtly shifting pattern of faint stripes.

  "Interfacing with software is second nature for such as me, as you can imagine." Max said. "I am very much in tune with the mind and personality of my friend and symbiote here, so together we can give a useful insight into events and social trends and patterns. We have been getting the occasional commission to give subjective readings for more unusual experiences – alien or artificial emotions, qualia, weird stuff; that's where the big creds are."

  "But everybody in your system receives a basic minimum comfort level of credit, is that not the case?" Ghosh leant forward, professionally interested. "You see, we tried this system a while ago, but we eventually moved away from money altogether."

  "Oh, yes, no-one goes hungry. It's just that it’s a laugh to do something that might be useful in society, and get paid for it as well. The Necklace ‘Powers in Charge’ don't seem to mind, one way or the other."
  "As far as our poor little minds can understand the motives of the gods," said Max, in his dedicated sardonic voice again. 

  "Every tenyears or so we get the urge to do a bit of real graft, and go to work on the new rings. There are construction jobs to do, working with the buckytube lattice in the ring floor, which is interesting, although the AI do most of the vacuum work."
  "Heh, heh. Gus really has a knack for piloting single manned craft luggers, mind you! If he were to enter into a singleship race, he’d be hard to beat. But I haven’t been able to persuade him yet.”
  “I can’t see the attraction in racing as a hobby, to be honest. I prefer to get things built. It is good to strive in order to produce a material result – that’s the MPA Way, as they say. ” Gus suddenly felt self-conscious about appearing patriotic in front of these polite, pleasant people. He felt a long way from home after such a long space journey.

  "There is a certain amount of human spacework available in the A1A swarm, as well," said Ghosh. "The individual swarm units are several kilometres apart, and a few of the end products and raw materials are traditionally ferried by ships with human pilots – an interesting pastime, but I have never done it myself."
  "It is always good to keep up the old skills, you never know when they might be useful," Max agreed.
  "Max tried his hand at topographic design as well. There are a couple of mountains and a whole river on Seibiunouva Ring that are his."
  "No landslips or avalanches yet, as far as I know," Max said with pride.

As it sank, the sun turned yellow, then orange, and twilight came on – with bands of colour centred on the sun in a display known as a `sunset'. This phenomenon was very different from the fading of the luminaire on the Necklace Rings, where the sky generally faded to purple and black only. Here, on a planet, the sky was green, pink, purple, red, colours the pair of tourists had never seen in the sky before. 
Soon the sun had set. The vast swarm itself could now be seen, invisible before, glowing red against the deep blue night sky. They sat transfixed until the outside air cooled, and they moved indoors.

  "Do you ever watch `movies' in the Necklace worlds?" Ghosh asked, as they settled down opposite the bronze screen of the Genius Loci.
  "Sure, I've seen dozens of them, especially the cartoons- sometimes I can get versions of them that will run on my tattoos, but you don't get the sound though."
  "It can be a grin making your own dialogue up, as it happens." Max added. 
  "Ha, ha, ha. Max is really good at different voices, he can do anything –dolphins, gods, aliens- whatever," said Gus, who seemed to enjoy the hospitality and the wine and water. He had adopted a stylised sunset coloration, purple face, through blue to green and with an orange torso.
  "Well, if you are not too tired, we could watch a `movie' file, together with sound, on the Genius. Sometimes it is nice to watch a movie file together, rather than on an internal implant – everybody can comment on the story as it goes along, we can all watch it at the same speed. What do you say?" 
  "Fine- I wasn't feeling up to a virtual tonight anyway," Gus said."
  "Yes, you have come a long way," said Eaowyg. "I think this is only an hour long- you can give up on it if you like- excuse me while I ask him. Good evening, Genius."
  'Hello, Eaowyg, are you having an enjoyable evening?'
  "Fine, thank you. Can you show us the `movie' Gift of Ginoie tonight?"
"This is an acceptable request. Bear in mind the addictive quality of shared 2D displays- Please don't imagine that you are going to start watching them every evening like a band of primitives."
  ~ this Genius Loci is a real prig, and a pain in the jackplug, ~ sent Gus.
  ~ and all the comms are no doubt routed through him, ~ Max replied.

The `movie' was in fact a dramadocumentary, about an event on a distant Negentropist colony. 
  ~ I suppose real fiction is too frivolous for the Neggies, ~ Gus sent.
  ~ Not at all. Fiction is cheap; it takes less energy to make a movie or a virtual about a starship than it does to build one. But they do like to have a moral to every story, you understand. ~
Set on a half-developed Mars-like world far from the nearest wormhole, the story centred around a young woman pilot who gradually discovered that she could read minds. 
Infected by a high tech virus, all the humans in the small society were unwittingly transmitting their thoughts to receiver nanobots in her head. At first she thought she was going mad, but with the help of a therapibot she realised that the voices in her head were real. 
And the secret thoughts of the people around her exposed the hypocrisy beneath many so-called Negentropist faithful. Almost everyone was to some extent, a liar, a cheat, and many were unfaithful to their partners. Negentropists seemed very keen on the institution of marriage, but Ginoie was flooded with the details of all her neighbours' infidelities and the unhappiness that resulted.
This part of the `movie' was somewhat sexually explicit, and Gus found that watching that sort of thing among relative strangers made him somewhat uneasy, especially when he noticed that Eaowyg was giving him very unegentropic looks behind her husband's back.

Soon, in the ’movie,’ Ginoie was discovering political intrigue among the colony leaders, who were each plotting against the other, and she accidentally brought down the entire power structure by simply telling everyone the truth. Of course it was all a Cyberian conspiracy, or a joke, depending on the interpretation.

The next day, after sightseeing by robobus and tram all day, Gus and Max decided to explore the potential of the house compiler.
  "So you have a wide range of templates available, but you won't allow us to actually have anything, is that the gist of it?" Gus said. "
  'Most things that you could wish for are available to me as recipes, that is correct, and I could make them for you given time.'
  "But if you decide not to, you won't make them." Max chipped in, snaking up Gus' arm to take position on his shoulders. Gus was aware of the planetary gravity making his symaiote slightly heavier to carry than on the ring habitats. He would have to get used to that.
  'If it is in your best interest, yes, of course I will. That is what I do, I provide things, and look after the house and the well-being of the occupants.'
  "But how do you know what is in my best interest?" Gus, talking to the polished bronze plate, could only see his own image staring back sardonically.
  'That is my speciality, and I have hardly ever been wrong.'

  "Aha! So you do make mistakes! You admit it. In that case you might as well give me anything I want, seeing as you have such a wide range of ‘recipes’ going to waste. They can’t do anyone any good sitting in your databanks."
  'Zar Gienah, it is interesting to debate with you, and rewarding for myself to learn from you about your culture and attitudes to value; but bear in mind that we do not use money, barter or obligation here. I represent a vast potential resource, but it is in the best interests of the people here not to use this resource without check.'
  "But you don't even give them the option!" said Max.
  'As I am much more aware of the true value of things and the probable outcomes of their misuse, I am in the best position to decide. Many requests are granted, after all.'
  "So if I ask for something, you might give it me?"
  'I may give it to you, if it is in your best interests. Try me.'
  "Oh, I don't know, what do I want – a tree-syrup waffle. "
  'Ready in two minutes, but please don't ask for any more, they are too rich in carbohydrates and will affect your blood sugar adversely.'
  "That's not much of a challenge, Gus, ask him for a spaceship."
  "Yes, ok, right -I have an MPA pilot's licence, have you got a pattern for a singleperson interorbital spacecraft?"
  'Yes, I have, and no, you can't have it. You won't be trained for takeoff from a planetary surface, and ground to orbit flights are forbidden anyway– that is what the Beanstalk is for. The World Steering Committee didn't build a space elevator forty thousand kilometres long so that tourists can ignore it and waste fuel on joy rides.'
  "But-"
  'The answer is no. I'm sorry. Care to try for anything else?' The Genius was polite, but firm. 

  "How about a car?"
  "Good one, Gus. These robobuses are very convenient, but they hate going too far from the city – we argued for twenty minutes before that red one would take us up into the heathlands."
  "That's right – do you Negent vecs all have the same obstructive personality?" 
  'No, we do not. It is true I was given some of the same parameters in my design, there are nevertheless many differences.'
  "Well, anyway, what about a car then, eh? A nice fuel cell powered roadster." 
  'I'm sorry, but if I let you have one of those, everybody in Ngee Ann would see it, or get to hear about it, and the desire for personal transport would begin to infect them like any other infectious memetic complex. Soon the roads would be choked like they are in some of your Mutual Progress cities.'
  "More likely you would just have fun saying no to everybody who asks."
  'On another level I am duty bound to protect my household. If I let you take Zar Eaowyg out in your hypothetical car to the heath, I would be indirectly responsible for her likely misbehaviour. You have already been successful in turning her head, whether you realise it or not, Zar Gienah; I have a duty of care towards her and her husband.'

  "But - bust my backup – gah! It's no good, Max, this benevolent tyrant of an adding machine won't give us anything worthwhile," Gus collected his plate of waffle and syrup and stomped off to eat it on the porch. The bronze polygonal Genius Loci glinted with pride in a job well done.

The day before they were scheduled to leave Gus found himself alone with Eaowyg. She complimented him on the traditional static Mehndi design he was wearing that day.
  "Thank you. I have enjoyed this world, it is very civilised, but there’s one thing I find hard to deal with. Your magic mirror wouldn't let me have jack," he said to her.
  "Oh, is that so? Yes, that is about right. What did you ask it for?"
  "I asked it for a spaceship, and it wouldn’t let me have one, which is reasonable I suppose, so I asked it for a car. It just gave me a lecture. How in the Arm of Orion do you get it to actually give you anything?"
  "Well, the compilers do give us every thing we actually need, so we don't go without… if you really want something you have to have an argument worked out in advance. It helps if you convince yourself that you really need it for a specific purpose – the compilers do give people personal transport, and even space craft, if they need them to get to a specific location not accessible by public transport."
  "So I should have told him I needed to get to somewhere specific, eh?"
  "That usually works."
  "Well, the Genius seemed to think I wanted the car to take you out for a joy ride to the heath somewhere." 
  "Is that so? Well, I'm a respectable married woman. I've been with Ghosh for nearly two hundred years. Don't people get married in the Necklace?"
  "Yes, as a matter of fact they do. It is mostly a financial thing, but certain rings have different traditions- I got married myself once actually, for a whole year. "
  "And did you?" she asked 
  "Did I what?" he said, with a sudden surmise.
  "Want to take me on a joy ride?"
  "The Genius seemed to think it wasn't a good idea. You being respectable and all."
  "Two hundred years is a long time to be respectable, actually."
She glanced at him.
Smiled.
Gus smiled back, politely, then again, as he finally understood.
  “Is it? I see. What ever can we do about that?”

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