Mind, Machines and Evolution Part 7

"Oh s.h.i.t!" Kunz groaned.

MINDS, MACHINES AND.

EVOLUTION.

If a "machine" is any kind of system created by man, and "think" means everything we normally mean when we use the word, will a machine ever be able to think?

This question is asked a lot these days. It actually implies two different questions, and much of the confusion on this subject results from a failure to distinguish between them. The first asks if the suggestion is possible in principle, and might be rephrased: Given that a human brain is a system which thinks, is there any reason to suppose that no man-made system, as opposed to one that happens to have evolved "naturally," can be capable of doing likewise? The second asks if it will ever be achieved in practice. My experience from sitting on many artificial intelligence panels at science-fiction conventions has been that writers tend to answer the first question, and researchers in the field, the second-which usually leads to two separate dialogues between groups who aren't talking about the same thing. Since there is no question to be asked about the practicability of something that's impossible on principle, the first question is the one to start with in a discussion of the subject. It's also the more intriguing philosophically.

The question of whether man-made intelligence is possible in principle amounts to asking if "mind" can be adequately accounted for by the principles of physics, and nothing else. If it can, then there's no compelling reason to suppose that a man-made system-which would operate by the same principles-shouldn't be able to emulate it. If it can't, then we must conclude that the phenomenon of self-aware consciousness possesses something "extra"-some qualitative difference that sets it above being explainable by the same laws that explain everything else in the universe, and that therefore it will forever be beyond our ability to duplicate.

The first reaction of many people is to insist that something as intricate as "mind" could never arise solely from arrangements of molecules, neural circuits, and the other things we find inside the human brain. It violates their subjective notions of what makes sense. But this kind of intuition is dangerous and has littered the trail of human discovery with the wreckage of all kinds of "proofs" that something or other was impossible. It pays to be open-minded. Ever since primitive man found himself hard put to account for the sun, the moon, the winds, the tides, and so forth, dismissing unexplainable phenomena as "supernatural" has provided many with a quick and easy alternative to expanding their powers of explaining. The "vitalists" of the nineteenth century were similarly convinced that the laws of physics were insufficient to account for living matter, and proposed the existence of a "life force," which set it apart from the inanimate world. Today, life processes can be satisfactorily accounted for in terms of molecular chemistry. The vitalist argument has not gone away as a consequence, however, but has simply shifted levels and reappeared in a new disguise: instead of between the living and the nonliving, it now searches for some fundamental difference between the thinking and the nonthinking, between mind and body.

A basic principle of science a.s.serts that the safest hypothesis to adopt is the simplest one that explains all the facts. In the present context, this asks if there is any way in which the things we observe could account for mind in a way that's at least possible. If there is, then the simplest explanation will have sufficed and there will be no need or justification for introducing additional influences.

There is effectively no limit to the number of different books that have been written or could be written.

We might describe our impression of one that we've read as "inspiring," "pa.s.sionate," "entertaining and witty," and so on. Similarly a symphony might strike us as "majestic," or "somber." Well, where in such creations do properties like these exist?

At its elementary level every book consists of letters drawn from the same, very limited, alphabet.

Clearly it would be ridiculous to look for such qualities as "inspiration" or "pa.s.sion" at that kind of level.

A letter of the alphabet can be one of only twenty-six possibilities, and hence the amount of information it can convey is very limited. But the act of stringing letters together to form words can convey enough different concepts to fill all the dictionaries of all the world's languages, plus form all the strings of letters that might have been words, but which, as it happens, aren't. Just this simple raising to a higher level of organization brings about an increase in the richness and variety of possible expression that is staggering.

And beyond that, words can be arranged into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, until at higher levels it becomes possible to express every shade of thought and meaning from Alice in Wonderland to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

Language is organized as a hierarchy of increasing complexity, in which the variety of possible expression increases by a stupendous degree over even a few levels. New orders of meaning and relationship come into existence that cannot be expressed as properties of the elements that form the building blocks at a given level, but which arise as emergent properties of the way the elements are put together. In the same kind of way, every musical composition is built ultimately from the same set of notes, and every chemical substance from the same three subatomic particles. We see nothing remarkable in any of this, and while we might be astonished by the diversity that can arise from combining simple elements in different ways, we feel no need to invoke supernatural agencies to explain it.

The same applies to an even more striking degree in the process of biological evolution, in which more complex systems of organization emerge from simpler ones under the influence of selection. Originally, simple inorganic compounds gave rise to more complicated substances, which in the course of time evolved self-replication and progressed through single-celled organisms to the advanced, multicellular life forms of today. Again we see a hierarchy of progressively increasing organizational complexity, and at each successive level new properties become manifest which exist only in the context of that level, and which can't be described in terms of the subsidiary components. Thus, a single molecule does not possess any attribute of "elephantness"; a sufficiently large number of them, however, when put together in the right way, do.

Now, if the laws of physics, plus selection, a lot of time, and nothing more are sufficient to produce physical forms as sophisticated as the nose of a bloodhound or the airframe of a hummingbird, isn't it to be expected that the same processes should result in similarly sophisticated patterns of behavior? After all, survival is what matters in evolution, and behavior-how an organism interacts with its environment-is just as important to its survival as its physical attributes, and frequently more so. Having big teeth isn't much good without the capacity to recognize a threat and the motivation to defend yourself.

Interacting with an environment consists of acquiring information from that environment, evaluating it, and responding in some way, all of which is performed by the nervous system. It follows that improvements to the nervous system as part of the general evolutionary process would confer significant survival benefits. It's interesting to see that when we trace the sequence that such improvements are believed to have followed, we see emerging the qualities most people would consider essential to characterizing that which we call "mind."

Primitive life-forms such as sponges evolved special cells that reacted to stimuli in the environment to trigger responses that, for example, increased the chances of capturing food. In later organisms like jellyfish these cells developed into simple neural networks capable of coordinating the movements of the entire animal to make possible such revolutionary strategies as directed mobility, with all the attendant advantages. In higher forms still, these networks developed concentrations of neural tissue which eventually acquired the structure and organization of the modern mammalian brain, and with it the ability to apply steadily more sophisticated processing techniques to the information gathered by the senses.

Here, then, is another example of a hierarchy of increasing complexity taking shape. And as was the case with the structure of language, the evolving nervous system forms a hierarchy of increasing information-processing complexity. With language, the concepts dealt with become more abstract at higher levels of organization-farther removed from the "mechanical" low-level world of alphabet and syntax. Different units of information operate at different levels of the hierarchy. Similarly, the units of information being processed at higher organizational levels in the nervous system become more distant from the raw-data world of the stimuli that impinge on the senses. Thus, we have the beginnings of a mechanism for a.s.sembling sensory data into higher-level symbols, and manipulating aggregates of symbols into a model of the world outside-a model inhabited not by wavelengths and energy quanta, but by objects, attractions, aversions, goals, and all the other factors that affect a higher-level ent.i.ty interacting with a higher-level perceived environment.

Models that reflected the real world more accurately would enhance an organism's survival chances and hence be favored selectively for further improvement. In creating progressively more elaborate world models, the evolving brain would learn to synthesize a representation of the three-dimensional s.p.a.ce in which it moved, the other objects inhabiting that s.p.a.ce, and the interactions taking place between them.

A crucial need in a survival-dominated environment would be the ability to distinguish the "self," whose survival is at stake, from the rest of the world around it. a.s.signing a special status to the focal zone of sensory impressions mapped into the world model gives rise to a self-model, which makes possible the emergence of directed action toward the goal of self-preservation, superseding purely automatic reflexes.

Given the ability of the brain to manipulate conceptual symbols that mimic the world that actually exists, it doesn't seem such a gigantic step to go on to manipulating the same symbols into representations of worlds that could exist. This would enable, for example, scenarios of a potential danger to be constructed from previously acc.u.mulated experiences and played through in advance, before it became a reality, allowing timely action to avoid it-or in a word, the faculty of antic.i.p.ation. And once we're in a position to play with models of worlds and situations that don't exist, surely we're well on the way to displaying imagination and creativity.

This is all very well, but it won't do very much for our evolving organism's survival prospects if it gets so wrapped up in its internal fantasizings that it loses track of reality and fails to notice the tiger coming at it down the hill. Hence, this variety of complex activity going on inside the brain requires some kind of overseeing function to monitor its own processes, evaluate their relative importance, and decide which should take priority over which from moment to moment. This implies a degree of awareness. Being aware of the images being manipulated in the mind, and aware of the preferences that arise from evaluating their implications, adds up, does it not, to experiencing feelings (emotions, if you will) and exercising judgment. And when coupled to the self-model that we already have, it yields self-awareness.

Do we really mean any more than this when we talk about mind and consciousness? I'm not at all convinced that we do. The brain's ability to think requires no supernatural ingredient, but arises purely as an emergent property of its organizational complexity. What led to the phenomenon we call mind was the fact of an adaptive system being operated on by selection. The selection happened to be "natural," and the adaptive system happened to be biological, but those weren't the significant factors in yielding an intelligent, self-aware end product. Therefore there's no reason to suppose that other systems of comparable complexity shouldn't be capable of doing likewise. Hence man-made intelligence ought, in principle, to be possible.

That being so gives a point to the second question that we asked: What, then, is the likelihood in practice? The question these days is usually asked with reference to computers.

The appearance of human intelligence enabled selection to be guided by choice instead of by the unconscious processes that had operated previously; speech and written language transmitted new information through populations virtually instantaneously compared to genetic encoding. This has enabled the development and spread of human culture at the staggering rate that history has recorded. But we have merely accelerated the evolutionary process, not altered it in essence. Whether we're producing a better political system, a Boeing 747, or a bigger and tastier tomato, we apply the same basic method that nature used to turn jelly into vertebrates and vertebrates into us: We experiment with variations of the themes we've got, forget the ones that don't work so well, and try further variations of the ones we decide are worth keeping. That's evolution-by artificial selection. And we are applying it vigorously to systems that are designed to do just what nervous systems evolved to do, namely process information and vary their behavior in response: computers. This is what sets computers apart from other, earlier technologies that have been offered as models of the brain. Perhaps, too, our familiarity with computers has helped make "mind" less mysterious than it used to be.

Of course, I'm not trying to suggest that what goes on inside even the most powerful of today's computers const.i.tutes "thinking," or even comes close. But they do seem to be off to the right start, and only decades after their inception are mimicking in intriguing ways the reflexive, yet sometimes surprisingly elaborate, behavior of primitive nervous systems. I find it hard to believe that a jellyfish can think either; but obviously there was nothing to prevent it-or at least, something akin to it-from evolving into something that could.

For a start, computers possess a comparable hierarchical organization, in which the units of information being processed take on progressively more abstract meaning as we ascend through higher levels. The lowest level is that of the physical hardware, where the circuit chips lead a somewhat monotonous life shuffling binary digits through registers and combining them according to totally mechanical rules. At the higher levels of software activity which this traffic supports, the "bits" combine into codes that represent numbers, characters, instructions, and command strings to convey meaning at the more symbolic level in which programmers, rather than hardware engineers, think. And at higher levels still, these ent.i.ties in turn are subsumed into programs, files, display formats, and so forth, which have lost all connection with electronics, and relate instead to things like bank accounts, airline flights, Adventure games, and the rest of the world of human affairs.

A common objection to the suggestion that this could ever lead to intelligence is that a computer, however elaborate, is still by nature a "machine," operating according to rigid, mechanical rules that will always cause it to respond to the same inputs in the same, predictable manner. Whatever tricks might be built into it to give an illusion to the contrary (such as deriving some input from internal randomness generators), it can still only do what it's programmed to do. Nothing that qualifies as "thinking," which ought to exhibit some element of free choice, or even capriciousness, could ever result from it.

It is true that at its elementary level a computer system is constructed from components that function mechanically and repet.i.tively. But the same could also be said about us. The DNA, RNA, enzymes, and other const.i.tuents of the cells that make up our bodies function in ways that are quite mechanical and repet.i.tive. The neural hardware that supports our mental "software" consists of bewildering interconnections of an enormous number of neurons, each of which behaves predictably. If the signals applied to a neuron add up in such a way as to exceed its activation threshold, it will fire; if they don't, it won't. The neuron doesn't go through agonies of indecision trying to make up some microscopic mind about what to do. At its level there isn't any property of "mind" to make up. The decision is made according to fixed rules, just like the decision of a computer logic circuit to generate an output.

The earth's atmosphere consists of a vast number of interacting elements, each of which is very simple in itself and behaves completely mechanically. At the microscopic "hardware" level, each molecule responds to a combination of forces exerted by its neighbors in a way that can be calculated precisely.

But at the macroscopic level, totally new emergent properties manifest themselves as storm centers, cloud banks, rainfall, and other phenomena that cannot be expressed in terms applicable to molecules.

Instead, we describe them in macroscopically meaningful terms, such as temperature and pressure-statistical measures of the composite effects of huge numbers of molecules whose individual motions can never be known with certainty. In the process we define a qualitatively new set of concepts which lose the precision and predictability that characterize the lower-level activity, and which in the process acquire an increasing degree of uncertain, "whimsical" behavior.

The fallacy with the objection is that it compares the activities taking place at the brain's highest, most abstract level with those at a computer's lowest, most mechanical level. It's a bit like saying that tree shrews could never evolve into humans because humans can build cities and write symphonies, whereas a tree shrew is just a collection of nucleic acids and proteins that are obviously incapable of such feats.

It's interesting to note, however, that the qualities of unpredictability and "whimsy" that many people insist on as indispensable prerequisites for intelligence are in fact beginning to appear in computer systems, too. A large "realtime" system, for example-perhaps for controlling an industrial plant or a communications network-typically contains hundreds or even thousands of different programs for carrying out various tasks that need to be performed at different times and in different circ.u.mstances. It would also contain a list of priorities, specifying which task is the most important at any given time and should therefore run if it is ready to, which task is second priority and should run if the first is held up, and so on. Through thousands of input signals coming in from sensors around the plant, or from the network, the system constantly monitors and reacts to the changing conditions, perhaps by suspending the operation of one task to allow a higher-priority response to a critical situation somewhere, or by activating lower-priority fill-in jobs when there's nothing more pressing to attend to. The result can be a bewildering activity pattern of different programs being started, interrupted, waiting to execute, of interrupting programs themselves being interrupted by higher priorities still, all interlaced with the operations of supervisor programs to keep track of what's going on and orchestrate the other programs.

Since this activity is all being driven by unpredictable events unfolding in the outside world, it's impossible to say in advance what state such a system will be in or what, precisely, it will be doing at any particular time (unlike a "batch" system, where it's always possible to say, for instance, that payroll is run on Thursday mornings.) Hence it's not really true, even today, to say that a computer system will always respond in the same way to the same set of inputs. Its response will depend not only on the information coming in through its sensors from the outside world, but also on its own internal "state" at the time, and this in turn will depend on its earlier history, i.e., its "experiences." What's programmed in is the potential to react to various external stimuli in different ways, without any specific large-scale behavior being predefined-just as is true of sponges, jellyfish, tree shrews, and with much broader ranges of variability, people.

Because a human brain is far more complex than these systems, the number of different internal states that it can a.s.sume is vastly greater. So if it's true that even with today's large computer systems the same external inputs do not elicit the same responses, it will be much more true of the brain. In fact, the brain can never revert exactly to any state that it was once in previously; however close it gets, the very fact of having once been in the earlier state will have left impressions-not necessarily conscious-that weren't there the first time, and hence the state that exists later must be different by at least that much. I find this a far more plausible basis for the variability of human behavior than attempts to derive it from random quantum mechanical effects at the molecular level. Variability of behavior implies a degree of correlation of our responses to the macroscopic realm that we perceive, and this is a different thing from randomness. As Schrodinger conjectured, the reason we evolved to be so much bigger than atoms could be precisely because with objects at the macroscopic level, the uncertainties that dominate the quantum realm are swamped out. In other words, only at higher scales of magnitude does a predictable and repeatable world in which rational intelligence can evolve become possible. Linking our mental activities to the quantum fluctuations of neural atoms would appear to put us back where we started-literally.

The highest-level activity of our brains, our experience of awareness, doesn't extend down to the operations taking place at the lowermost neural hardware level. We think and communicate in terms of persons, places, ideas, and things, with no innate knowledge of the streams of electrical impulses swirling around in our heads, or the chemical codes by which various cells and organs in our bodies exchange messages. They, at their own levels, communicate in their own languages; we, at our level as conscious totalities, communicate in ours.

It's not difficult to see why consciousness should have become shut off in this way from lower-level processes. The simple act of raising an arm involves the coordinated action of something like forty muscles, each of which needs a discrete neural signal to tell it to contract by the right amount at the right time. Such muscular sequences are controlled by fixed "microprograms" hardwired into the brain, which are triggered by high-level commands that we initiate voluntarily. If we had to monitor every step of such sequences consciously, our brains would be constantly saturated with mundane detail. Leaving such routine ch.o.r.es to a subconscious realm frees up our voluntary and conscious abilities for more valuable problem solving.

Again, the beginnings of the same kind of thing are evident in today's computer systems. At the bas.e.m.e.nt level, the machine's elementary operations are controlled by microcode embedded in the hardware. Microcode is the language of circuit chips and hardware designers. At the first software level, a single "machine instruction," typically written in alphanumerics-to execute an ADD operation, for example-triggers a whole sequence of microcode functions, and such instructions form the units in which "machine-language" programs are written. The machine-language programmer does not have to understand microcode to write a program, or even have to be aware that it exists. However, a machine-language program does reflect the architecture of the machine it's designed for, hence its name.

A step further removed from the hardware are "high-level" languages, consisting of commands that initiate sequences of machine instructions, which make it possible, for example, for researchers to write programs directly in scientific and mathematical terms, without having to learn machine language. And at higher levels still we find "system" and "user" commands which control the operation of entire programs and are meaningful in real-world terms, without the user having to know or care if what exists behind the b.u.t.tons is electronics, clockwork, or black magic. Indeed, it's difficult to see how it could be very much different. If every user had to understand microcode to check a bank balance or play Adventure, the computer industry wouldn't have gotten very far.

Designing any kind of system involves tradeoffs. Some of the requirements that the system has to meet will always conflict with others, and improving the design in one direction invariably extracts penalties in others. Thus a toaster is great for making toast but not much good as a blender; F-15s wouldn't be the right buy for Pan Am, and so on. "General purpose" systems offer a compromise by fulfilling a number of roles moderately well without excelling at any of them, for example, the family car or a home computer.

You could say that these trade off excellence for versatility. The human nervous system is probably the best example of versatility that we know. It can do practically anything to a degree, but its performance in any given area is limited. So we supplement it with all kinds of specialized accessories such as microscopes, high-speed calculators, and long-range communications equipment, each of which outperforms it by orders of magnitude in its own field, but is useless for anything else.

Conceivably, if we ever did produce a system of comparable versatility to the brain, we might find that one of nature's basic trade-offs is that thinking wide and thinking narrow are mutually exclusive. In return for versatility, we could find that we have to sacrifice many of the features that we a.s.sociate with the highly specialized machines of today. In the same way that our consciousness operates without any awareness of what its neurons are doing, or even that it has any, a man-made electronic (or photonic, or biosynthetic, or whatever) intelligence might find itself shut off from the substrate levels at which its fast and mathematically precise activities were taking place. Perhaps, therefore, it wouldn't be able to perform astronomic calculations in seconds, or recall word for word a conversation that it had a week ago, or make a decision without wrestling with all kinds of imponderables. So what would it do if it wanted to know pi to a few thousand decimal places? Well, I suppose it would have to either build itself a computer or buy one. And that's a good reason to suppose that long before then we'd have started calling it something else.

It's funny how the right people have a knack of popping up at just the right time. I became interested in writing a book about machine intelligence at about the time I moved to the U.S.A. with my second wife, Lyn, in late 1977. I'd developed a few thoughts and ideas, but before getting serious, I felt I needed to bounce them off somebody who knew a lot more about the subject. One Sat.u.r.day morning over breakfast I said, "Who do we know who's an Artificial Intelligence expert?"

She replied, "But we've only just arrived in this country. We hardly know anyone yet"-which was about all that could be said on that.

And then, the very next morning, Sunday, the phone rang and a voice said, "Hi, my name is Marvin Minsky. We haven't met, but I'm director of the AI department at MIT. n.o.body has written a good book about AI yet. I read Inherit the Stars and liked it, and I think maybe you could. How would you like to come along and take a look at what we're doing here, and talk about ideas for fiction?"

I got to know Marvin and his family, and the outcome of our talks about ideas for fiction was The Two Faces of Tomorrow, which was published in the summer of 1979.

Perhaps the sign of when artificial systems have become smarter than we are will be when they start making up ethnic jokes about people: "How many humans does it take to change a light bulb?"

"How many?"

"One hundred thousand and one."

"How come?"

"One to change the light bulb. The rest as biological ancestors to produce him. How inefficient can you get?"

DISCOVERING.

HYPERs.p.a.cE.

Another question that writers are always being asked is where they get their ideas from. In my experience, the ideas that finally turn into books often result when thoughts that complement each other, but which have never connected together in your mind before, suddenly click together like jigsaw puzzle pieces. While I was writing Inherit the Stars, I found myself thinking from time to time about the "hyperdrives," "warp drives," and other exotic propulsion systems that we come across in science fiction.

It seemed to me that they had become something of a cliche, tacitly accepted by writers and readers alike as merely a device to shortcut Einstein by moving characters from here to there fast to get on with the story. . . . But wait a minute. We're talking about a capability that transcends not only any technology imaginable today, but also our most fundamental theoretical beliefs. Never mind getting across the galaxy to save the blonde or deliver the villain his comeuppances-how did they discover "hypers.p.a.ce" to begin with? Surely, there's a much more interesting story right here, which we were about to gloss over. What experiments in labs gave strange results? What body of new theory and speculation did this open up?

How were the ideas tested? How did things progress from there to proven, working engineering?

n.o.body I talked to had seen a story about how hypers.p.a.ce came to be discovered. I played around with some extrapolations of physics that provided a plausible theoretical framework, but that doesn't make a novel.

Another subject that I talked about with friends sometimes was the interstellar warships that we saw in books and movies. As usual, I was complaining. It didn't make sense for a vessel that could cross light-years of s.p.a.ce in an instant, with the staggering level of technology that implied, to peel off into a dive when it got there, like a World War II Stuka-and usually with a pilot driving it from a World War II c.o.c.kpit-and drop a bomb on something. After all, what does a bomb do? It concentrates a lot of energy on a target. Well, if you can send a s.p.a.ceship there through hypers.p.a.ce, why not just send the energy? Just imagine being able to materialize the equivalent of a fifty-megaton bang out of nowhere, instantaneously, without warning, and with no way for an enemy to know where it came from. That sounded more like a weapon worthy of a futuristic technology. By comparison, sending a s.p.a.ceship to drop a bomb would be like inventing gunpowder to blow holes through castle walls, but trundling it up to the wall with a horse and cart instead of thinking to invent a cannon. But that doesn't add up to a story either.

These two thoughts existed in separate compartments in my head for a long time. Then one day, the obvious eventually struck me: Perhaps the new physics that our characters stumble on isn't recognized as the way to a hyperdrive at all, to begin with. Perhaps they could be investigating its promise of a revolutionary weapons system-which happens all the time in real life. And only later, maybe, the line of new discoveries takes an unexpected turn which leads to s.p.a.cecraft drives. The two ideas fitted well together, and that was how The Genesis Machine came to be written. It's the book that seems to generate the most questions about where the idea came from.

TILL DEATH US DO PART.

The apartment looked out from high above London's fashionable Knightsbridge, across Hyde Park toward where the green sea of treetops washed against white cliffs of elegant Park Lane buildings that had not changed appreciably in the last hundred years. s.p.a.cious, light and airy, and opulently draped and furnished in contemporary style, the residence was not the kind that came with the income of the average Londoner of 2056; but then, the four people whom Harry had come from Las Vegas to meet there that morning were hardly average Londoners, and their income was what he had come all that way to talk about.

For tax purposes the apartment was owned by a nebulous ent.i.ty registered as Zephyr Enterprises Limited, and described as a business property retained for the use and entertainment of clients and customers visiting the capital. The company rented it for ten months of the year at a nominal sum to Nigel Philiman and his wife Delia, who, it turned out, happened to be managing director and company secretary respectively of the holding company that had set up Zephyr. To comply with the minimum required by law, the Philimans spent two months of each year abroad or elsewhere while the apartment was being used by clients. The clients often turned out to be friends who needed somewhere to stay while mixing a considerable amount of pleasure with a modic.u.m of business in the course of a visit to the city, but that was purely coincidental.

Nigel was in his late forties, suave, athletic, suntanned and silver-haired, and always immaculately groomed and dressed. Delia was only a few years younger, but she had a countess's bearing and a movie star's looks, and knew just how to choose slinky, body-clinging clothes that enhanced the latter without detracting from the former. The couple went well with the apartment's image of luxury and high living, and Harry Stone was well aware that the image was no hollow sham.

Where their money came from was none of Harry Stone's business. Being a professional, he had done some discreet checking on the side, however, and he knew that Zephyr had obscure links to a string of loan companies that seemed to specialize in financing such operations as escort agencies, various types of modeling agencies, an employment agency that hired waitresses and hostesses, and home or hotel visiting ma.s.sage services-in short, anything to do with girls. The girls employed by such enterprises always worked according to a strict code of ethics written into their contracts, and they accepted payment only in the form of checks or credit cards that could be verified by accredited auditors. But like any man of the world, Harry knew that the girls were seldom averse to cultivating friendships further in their own free time, and that any additional such transactions were strictly cash. Where a portion of that cash might wind up and how it might get there were interesting questions.

Clive Philiman, Nigel's younger brother by ten years or perhaps slightly more, ran a group of agencies that specialized in handling rented apartments on the west side of London. Out of curiosity Harry had purchased a selection of the kinds of magazines that younger, single women tended to read, and had found a number of Clive's companies taking prominent advertising s.p.a.ce in several of them. He could imagine that Clive, with his dark-brown eyes, cla.s.sically Roman features, tight curls of short black hair, and sympathetic manner, might be just the kind of person that a girl just in from the country and looking for somewhere to live might find easy to talk to, especially when she learned that he just happened to have the right contacts to give her a job. And of course, making money might become her main problem when she discovered that the great bargain which had brought her into the office had been rented just an hour before she showed up.

Barbara Philiman, Clive's slim and pet.i.te, auburn-haired wife, had a good as well as a pretty head on her shoulders; she was director of a personnel selection agency off Wigmore Street which procured managers and senior executives for a wide spectrum of companies and corporations ranging from manufacturers of plastic labels to builders of s.p.a.ce stations. This position gave her numerous social contacts throughout the capital's commercial world, and, Harry thought, were she so inclined, she would be the ideal person for somebody who perhaps was interested in arranging some entertainment for an important visitor to know. Furthermore, the agency would have been able to supply a tax-deductible invoice to cover the costs of screening a lot of nonexistent job applicants for positions that proved unsuitable. It was just a thought.

All Harry Stone knew officially was that the Philiman family wished to convert a substantial inflow of cash from sources they chose not to disclose into a legitimate form of income the British Inland Revenue would be obliged to accept-despite any suspicions they might harbor-as justifying a life-style built around diamonds, personal flymobiles, a la mode gowns from Paris, and jetliners chartered for mid-Atlantic orgies thinly disguised as parties. In the capacity of financial and legal consultant, he had spent the morning explaining how he thought an American inst.i.tution known as Neighbors in Need, with which he happened to have "personal connections," might be able to help solve their problem.

Essentially, the organization managed the investment of large sums of money collected by charities of one kind or another, and distributed the proceeds among various worthy causes it was pledged to support.

This service was rendered in return for a moderate commission on the amounts handled, plus expenses.

Harry's proposition involved setting up a British chapter of the operation.

The British subsidiary would be guaranteed to attract a ma.s.sive response to the quite moderate program of advertising Harry had outlined. The response-mainly in the form of anonymous donations-was guaranteed because the so-called donations would be almost completely made up of the Philimans' own hot money mailed to themselves after conversion into money orders and travelers' checks bought with cash all over the country. The packages would be opened and the contents registered by certified accountants, thus providing unimpeachable proof of where every penny of the chapter's a.s.sets had originated.

"Twenty percent stays here for salaries and expenses, which is the maximum allowed under British law,"

he said when he summed up the main points. He was speaking easily and confidently as he sat in an armchair of padded purple and chrome that looked as if it belonged in some eccentric millionaire's sculpture collection. The rings on his fingers glittered in the sunshine streaming through the window as he made an empty gesture in the air. "The remaining eighty is tax exempt and goes to the States as your gross contribution to the fund. Obviously you're all charitable-minded people, and there's no reason why you shouldn't add in a personal donation of your own or some deductible contributions from your companies' profits. Four times a year they pay you back a commission that they list as foreign expenses, which brings your effective total revenue back up to fifty percent; you pay tax on only three-fifths-that is to say, the thirty that's fed back. The remaining fifty covers the actual input to the fund, the parent company's commission, and U.S. domestic expenses. I guess that's about it." He sat back in his chair, steepled his fingers below his chin, and studied the four faces before him.

Nigel, looking relaxed in the chair opposite, took a measured sip from the gla.s.s of sherry in his hand and savored the taste with an approving nod before replying. "You're still talking about a full half of it," he said. His voice was calm, registering curiosity rather than surprise or indignation. "Allowing for the portion that's taxable over here, we'd end up with the minor share. That does seem rather overambitious, wouldn't you agree?"

Harry knew Nigel knew better than that. He spread his arms expressively. "Most of their half has to go through to the fund. It's a respectable fund management operation, and it's got its payments to make.

The rest helps them make a living, something we all have to do."

"What percentage goes into the fund net at the end of it all?" Barbara asked from where she was sitting on the sofa to one side, next to Clive.

"What I've described is the deal," Harry replied evenly, avoiding a direct answer. "They're not asking where the donations would be coming from at this end."

"It's still a big chunk whichever way you look at it," Clive said. He rubbed his nose dubiously, then looked across at his brother. "The money's clean on their side from the moment it enters the country," he pointed out. "We run all the risks over here. That's a difference that should be reflected in the split. I'm for this scheme in principle, but not for settling as it stands."

"Your money is also hot, and that's another side to the same difference," Harry countered smoothly.

"It's unspendable, and therefore might as well not be there. Half a loaf is better than no loaf. Your risk is balanced out by their doing you a favor that you need, which squares things back at fifty-fifty."

A short silence fell. Delia walked back from the window where she had been listening and stopped behind Nigel's chair. "I presume, Mr. Stone, that this matter would be subject to a written contract confirming all these figures and terms," she said, speaking in a precise English society accent that was marred only by a slight tendency toward being shrill.

Harry's brow furrowed into a pained look. "Of course," he told her. "Everything would be legal and aboveboard. They wouldn't do it any other way. They've got a valuable reputation to protect."

Nigel sniffed pointedly, but made no comment. Harry smiled to himself and marveled at the mental gymnastics that enabled somebody in Nigel's position to be capable of a gesture implying moral disapproval. Although the bargaining had been tough in places, his instinct made him confident the deal would go through. The Philimans had politely but firmly argued him down from his opening proposal of seventy-five/twenty-five, which he hadn't expected them to accept for a moment, and declined his original suggestion of a one-year-deferred commission, which would have given the U.S. side of the organization the exclusive benefit of a substantial sum accrued as interest. But the negotiations had all been very gentlemanly and a refreshing change from the kind Harry was used to. Furthermore, everybody would be able to have dinner in a civilized manner afterward with all business matters forgotten.

Harry admired and envied the ability of these people to keep different parts of their lives in the proper compartments, and the tradition that enabled them to smile apologetically while they twisted the knife in deeper for the last ounce of flesh. This was the way of life he meant to become part of before much longer, and he recognized in the present situation not only the prospect of some lucrative business but also an opportunity for some social investment that could pay handsome dividends later. Anybody who was just smart could make money, but to really fly high in the circles that mattered, you needed something extra that people like this had. Harry Stone knew that he had it, too, and he was going to prove it.

Nigel kept his face expressionless as he turned toward Clive with an almost imperceptible raising of his eyebrows. Harry could feel a warm surge of jubilation inside as he read the signals, but kept his own face just as straight. Clive's jaw stiffened a fraction, his eyebrows dropped, and he moved his head in a slight sideways motion.

"Sixty-forty," Nigel said, looking back at Stone.

It was what Harry had been expecting, but he frowned intently at the floor in front of him and went through the motions of wrestling with figures in his head. "It's sc.r.a.ping the bone," he said dubiously when he finally looked up. "But since we're talking pretty big dollars, I'd be prepared to try them for another three points. I'm sure we'd be wasting our time if I pushed for anything past that."

"Not enough," Nigel said flatly. "Make it another two. We'll meet you at fifty-five."

That gave Harry forty-five, which clinched the deal because his bottom limit had been forty-three.

Nevertheless, he played through some more mental agonies and then asked guardedly, "Would we have a deal if I managed to get them to go for that? No more strings. You'll okay a contract if they beam it through later today?"

Nigel looked over at his partners, and one by one they returned faint nods. "Very well, Mr. Stone," he agreed. "You have a deal. Provided that the terms are as discussed and that our lawyer finds nothing amiss with the details, you may consider the matter settled."