2312

They came to the spaceport and hurried through it and down a jetway into a small airplane. After they were on board and in the air, Genette looked out the window and observed, “It’s a lot like China here. In fact they may still be ruled from China, it’s hard to be sure. Anyway, decisions are in the hands of a fairly small group. And they’re split now over what to do about the sunshield. How you regard it has become a kind of loyalty test for both sides. I thought most Venusians had come to accept reliance on it as just one danger among many. But the ones who object to it tend to be more vehement in their feelings. For them it’s a kind of existential issue. And so they are willing to be more extreme to get their way.”

“So what do you think they did?”

“I think what may have happened is that one of their programmers decided to instruct some qubes to help the effort to get rid of the sunshield. Maybe an open command, something like ‘figure out a way to get this done.’ So that means some qube running a probable-outcomes algorithm. And the algorithm could have been poorly constrained. Willing to consider anything, so to speak. Kind of like a person in that regard! Very lifelike. So, what if that qube then proposed to put qubes in humanoid bodies, so they could make attacks that immobile box qubes couldn’t manage on their own-attacks that humans couldn’t or wouldn’t do? Sabotage, I mean. Or call them educational spectacles, meaning some arranged disasters. If they could make the majority of Venusians believe that the sunshield was in danger of an attack-that they could all be cooked like bugs-then public sentiment would surely back another era of bombardment to give Venus a spin.”

“Scaring a civilian populace into making a certain political choice,” Wahram said.

“Yes. Which we recognize is one definition of terrorism. But this might not be so apparent to a qube programmed to look for results.”

“And so the attack on Terminator was a kind of demonstration?”

“Exactly. And it certainly had that effect here on Venus.”

“But this new attack on the sunshield, it could have been much more than a scare,” Wahram said. “If it had succeeded, it would have killed a lot of people.”

“Even that might not register as a negative. Depends on the algorithm, and that means it depends on the programmer. There are lots of people on Earth available to replace anyone killed up here. China alone could easily restock the place. The whole Venusian population could be killed and replaced by Chinese and China not even notice. So who knows what people might be thinking? These programmers may have set their qubes off in new directions, even given them new algorithms, but whatever they did they won’t have made human thinkers of them, even if they did get them to the point of passing a Turing test or whatnot.”

“So these qubanoids definitely exist.”

“Oh yes. Your Swan has met some, as have I. The thing on Io was one. And I’ve been interested to learn that a great many of them are on Mars, passing for human and involved in government. Mars’s problems with the Mondragon and with Saturn-they look a little suspicious to me now.”

“Ah,” said Wahram, thinking it over. “And so you are doing what?”

“We are apprehending all of them at once,” Genette said, checking Passepartout quickly. “I sent out the code to do it, and now’s the time. Midnight Greenwich mean time, October 11, 2312. We have to pounce.”

T hey landed outside Vinmara and after that Wahram was thankful that he was in a wheelchair, because Genette terriered from one brief meeting to another at a terrific clip; even wheeling along Wahram could barely keep up.

Kiran came in a few minutes later on another flight and met with them to show them which building the eyeballs had been heading for. Soon after that an armed group arrived and wasted no time surrounding this building. After a short delay they blasted down the front door and rushed in with weapons drawn, in full spacesuits. A thick pall of gray gas poured out of the interior from the very moment they broke down the door.

In less than five minutes the building was secured. Immediately Genette was conferring with the assault team, and then with Shukra, who showed up with another contingent of armed supporters, there to make sure there would be no local resistance to a rapid extraction of the facility’s contents.

Genette conversed continuously with people, in person and over mobiles, unflustered but very intent-used to this kind of thing. Used even to the idea of plunging into a fight between Venusian factions, which Wahram thought must be extremely dangerous.

When Genette seemed to be done for the moment, and was sitting on the edge of a table, drinking coffee and looking at his wristqube, Wahram said curiously, “So these pebble attacks-they were a matter of one Venusian faction wanting to influence the population here? To get its way in a fight with another faction?”

“That’s right.”