43 - Kernel of an Idea

Terry held his once favourite book up as if to squint at the text, let it down again.  He was letting his eyes run over the familiar sentences, that he’d committed to heart years ago, without re-reading them. Slower... slower for the recording.  For all he knew if the station recorded his skin responses it probably recorded his comparative eye motion.  He stopped and yawned, picked up the book and slowly... slowly let it sag.  For all purposes a man reading himself into a nap.

It was just after his normal shift, that he was paid for.  To sit at the controls and keep an eye on all the equipment that was mothballed.  He’d nearly fallen asleep then.  But in his head, he had a kernel of new programs that he layered a dozen different levels of security on.  Then waited to see if Mr. Thurmontaler or his Thought Police would notice.  He let the book settle onto his face and closed his eyes.

His kernel lay in the middle of what looked to him like a sea of open dragon-traps. Silly but the easiest way his brain could envision them.  A moat full of acid.  A locked door that changed itself every twenty of his heartbeats.  He could stop it and unlock it, but only on the fourth beat.

Behind that was an empty hall with paintings on the walls.  Paintings of his family men.  The women... would never sit for something so forward as being gazed at by a painter, so they were represented by still-lifes of their things and pets. Gowns and jewellery, shoes.

Terry went over to touch the left shoe in his mother’s painting.  No one would think that he’d hide the door in one of the women’s paintings.  Except someone from away.  Siva probably would have, if he’d tried to break in.

It was undisturbed.  He stepped through, quietly and stopped.  In the real world he let himself snore a bit.  He could hold both images in his head.  Code and world, world and code.

Inside his kernel, everything opened up.  The first thing he’d built... or envisioned... was a vast library, where any book could spring to his hand.  He’d ‘read’ here... and sometimes choose to load information into his sleeping memory, which gave him the weirdest dreams, but he knew an enormous amount more than he had, even just a few days ago.

No sign of any tampering.  Squeeze the outside appearance smaller and more reflective... yes... make it a mirror.  That way if anyone looked, they’d see their code reflected back, and just over a tiny scrap of it.  They’d be looking at the edge of a knife blade, that hid its effectiveness behind its own invisible and razor sharp edge.

**

Kyrus sat, with Tizrav on his lap, listening in awe to the lin letter from Ilax’s co-ruler.  The konsiliarch could make the mildest statement mean I’m about ready to rip your fool head off, young man. In perfectly polite information about the breakdown of talks with the Nadumon.

“I do realize that all of a sudden everyone is seeing Milar and Lainz combined since your wedding and since your husband’s sudden elevation.  This hasn’t stopped the Nad from being prickly as owners.  Their ambassador implied as much to me before he left.”

“He has left.  And I have if from good authority that they consider themselves legitimate owners of this land, with an actual charter from the owner himself.  I suppose they consider the rest of us all squatters, renegades, rogues and thieves of their land and water.”

“Ilax.  I need you back here.  I’m afraid your pay is going to get cut no matter what you do--" She meant a war.  The Milari cut their warmaster's salary if a war broke out.  "-- I would sincerely ask your husband to prepare to move several thousand of his closest friends up to our border... perhaps beyond.”

Da blinked at that.  “She wants me to mobilize the Empire’s troops as a Milari ally?  That’s crazy.”

Ilax who had been reading aloud shook his head... “No.  It makes perfect sense.  Here.  Listen.”

“—I would never consider this unless I saw it as absolutely necessary.  Since the water stopped falling from the moon, they have come up with this very bad idea of a dam across the river.  The one we both fought over ten years ago?  The one that feeds the lake and the canyon beyond that?”

“Fakkin’ Enlightened—“ Da breathed.  “They’re looking to cut off or, at the very least, control everyone’s water.”

Ilax looked grim.  “At least the Radumon, the Milar, the Lainz and the Trovii.”

That’s everyone but the Hippefrey and they have other water sources out there.”

“Inamour... we have to leave this ‘get off the planet hunt’ and all the coding we’ve been doing... it has to wait.”

Kyrus senior looked very much older for a second.  “We have to go convince them otherwise.  Or make them stop.”