Achilles choice

Then she was on her own. She didn’t dare have Beverly ask a question like that. But what would “war” mean? There was no war. That was one of the gifts the Council had brought to the world.

Donny Crawford must be working for Transportaion. Why would he personally suffer during a breakdown or stalemate in negotiations between Transportation and Energy? War, he said.

War between members of the Council? Impossible. Wasn’t it?

Her concept of fractal sociology predicted a repetition of patterns through higher and higher levels of social organization. Could she conceivably start with one man, Donny, as the smallest social unit, and predict anything about the system to which he belonged? The sample was impossibly small… but she was looking for perspective, not ultimate truth. It was worth a try.

If she considered Donny Crawford to be a microcosm of the entire, if she interpreted what happened to him on the mountain as a breakdown in communication between the neural net and the Boosted nervous system which it controlled, the macro equivalent of that might be a breakdown in communication within the Council.

In other words, removed from the ameliorative influence of the neural net- (If the Old Bastard didn’t come down from fucking Olympus-)

— the negative influence of Boost would take over. Donny’s nervous and endocrine systems would begin to go berserk.

(-Go to war with each other?)

“All right, Beverly. You have to do this for me. I want all data on industrial accidents and civil disobe dience worldwide, whenever it exceeds statistical probability as established in the actuarial tables of.

Lloyds of London and Prudential Insurance.”

Beverly faded for a few moments, then reappeared. She was a cartoon, a line drawing, simpler every moment. “I can’t get that information.” She paused, and then added matter-of-factly, “They do not approve of your line of questioning, Jillian.”

“There’s nothing illegal about asking questions.” Even to herself, she sounded like a guilty child.

“They will damage me if you don’t stop.”

Jillian’ s laughter rang hollowly. “Beverly-I love you, but you’re just a program. There are a dozen copies of your core. They can’t-“

Beverly talked slowly, struggling to enunciate. “They will damage me if you do not stop.”

Jillian felt her throat constrict. Her voice was a husky whisper. “Who are they?”

“That information is restricted.”

They?

In Jillian’s world of illusion, the water swirled and darkened with her anger. She had to find a way through this!

“Eleven years ago, Mom died in an industrial accident.” Harmless enough. “Let me see her file.”

“Certain information on Lilith Shomer is restricted, Jillian.”

“Now just wait a minute. There was an explosion. She was buried. Father and I got the insurance. Daddy dearest vanished with the money, and I went to a state home. Public record. How could any of that be classified?”

“This line of questioning must be terminated, Jilhan.”

Jillian stopped dead. The emotional bulk of the obstruction weighed on her like a millstone.

She spoke more carefully now. Losing one’s temper with a computer was no damn use at all. “Beverly, I’ve accessed this data before.”

“Not on the present search string.”

Bad, bad. Her chance to access data about her mother’s death from any angle was diminished now. The harder she pushed, the broader the ban might become. And if they (the Council?) didn’t approve of these questions, then.

She had never wondered if someone were to blame for her mother’s death. Not since she grew up.

Shut up, Jillian. Some small, sane part of her pled in vain. Finish your research. Be good. But it was already too late. Any line of investigation led straight to the Council, through the Council. How could Jillian Shomer pursue sociological truths if faceless background figures were messing up her data?

All right then.

Say there are two dozen companies running the world. The old geographic territories are no longer dominant. Improved communications made possible a renaissance in world order, the birth of a corporate humanity. A world managed by a corporate Council is a world at peace. Supposedly.

It could be proven, statistically, that areas managed by the Council were healthier, wealthier, and by implication wiser than those few hundreds of millions who still pledged fealty to their various nations. That guarantee of a better life had persuaded billions of people, over the course of two generations, to surrender their right to participate meaningfully in government. Long life, health, peace, prosperity. Who was it that said a benevolent dictatorship would be the best form of government? Some dictator’s spokesman?

But wasn’t it?

So: two dozen companies are represented each by a handful of people. Rumor tells that there is a board within the Council, five or six executives each representing one major geopolitical block. Who they are, or exactly how the lines are drawn, is almost certainly classified. Is McFairlaine one of them? And who is the “Old Bastard”?

She’d come to the end of her information.