Up Against It Part 17

"She's good. In a life-support station, safe and sound." He got a remote look on his face. "One of Tania's team needs me."

"Go." She waved him off and leaned against the rail. The sculpture enveloping them all was an abstraction overlaid on the air: a panorama of numbers, images, and symbols. Jane's eyes and ears tried to stabilize it, make it into a landscape, but it changed too rapidly, reshaping itself as teams of programmer-artists sent out or pulled in streams of liquid light. Occasionally the programmers and data wranglers shot packets to each other, and snagged them, incorporating them into their constructs. More rarely they extracted from their structures an array of numbers or equations to spray into the main construct rendered in the room's center, which was slowly taking shape directly over Jane and Tania's heads.

The central, main construct stood for the sapient. It could be nothing else. Eleven of its twelve modules were laid out in a seven-pointed-star pattern (if you looked at the construct from the right angle; otherwise the star morphed into a more complicated shape), with three modules sharing the center, and one of the seven "points" a tightly woven binary system. The twelfth module was loosely tied to the center and to the binary-module "point."

In several ways the sapient was quite different in formation than the cla.s.sic four-, five-, and six-pointers she had read about inwave today. But she saw the similarities as Tania pointed them out to her.

"We've mostly figured out the ident.i.ty functions of the modules," Tania said. "We're ninety percent sure we have all the critical modules mapped, and about sixty to seventy percent sure we have all the critical interior pathways mapped properly."

Jane eyed her. "Only sixty percent sure?"

"Sixty to seventy."

"How important is that?"

"To excise it? Not very. To capture it live? Critical."

"I find that rather alarming."

Tania gave her a surprised look.

"I know," Jane said, "I was talking about destroying it before, but it turns out we have a use for the thing. We need it functional."

"I want it alive, too. You know I do! But we're running out of time. Its experiments at self-replication have been increasing rapidly over the past hour, and it's discovered the link from our network up to the surface. We've lost the battle to keep its nucleus contained. It's busy copying its full functionality to Upside-Down's local systems."

Jane stared. "Are you sure?"

"Yep." She gestured and a flurry of activity near the core of the sapient appeared. "That's the reason behind the activity you see going on here. It keeps remapping itself around our blocks. Upside-Down is reporting that they have some unexplained activity-and they have plenty of extra processing and storage capacity. The activity mimics that of certain modules over here. Which we believe means it's got a child in construction over there. I sent a team over and we b.o.o.by-trapped the trunk up to the surface, as a precaution."

Jane felt sick. "If it gets out of Phocaea on bandwidth as broad as Upside-Down's, it'll be all over the solar system in no time. Billions of computer systems could be damaged."

"Yes. And there's more. Look." Tania bounded over to one of the "points," the binary module system, and her hands flew back and forth in a complex pattern: the rest of the construct vanished and the binary subsystem grew in size and complexity.

"This unit," Tania told Jane with a gesture at the structure hanging before them, which caused the bigger of the two tightly bound modules to light up, "is at the very core of life support, and it was the first unit to go active. Look at the behavior of these two." She lit up its sister module. "These flows"-she pointed at the green strands and streams, which brightened as she gestured, and the other strands faded-"are internal processes with the other nine modules. But we have no idea what that extra module hanging out there is doing"-she pointed at the distant extraneous module, the one also attached to the star's center-"or why there's so much activity between that one and these two. These three modules are behaving very differently from what you'd find in most star-structure sapients.

"And somehow, these unusual relationships and activities are critical to the sapient's ident.i.ty-formation. All its awareness, growth, and replication activities accelerated once that one became active and hooked up to these two."

"What does that mean?"

"It means we have a very unusual sapient on our hands. It could have all kinds of unique properties. Now, look at all this other activity." Hundreds of suddenly brilliant streams and packets darted to and from the three modules, in all directions. "We don't even know what all these additional calls are-we can't trace them; the sapient has masked the process. And it's a huge transfer of information. This represents a good five percent or more of the entire cl.u.s.ter network activity-at least six kilo-turings' worth of processing, maybe as much as ten."

Jane whistled. "That's got to be affecting our other systems."

"It is. The city's automated processes are all experiencing slowdowns of fifteen to twenty-five percent."

"What are you doing about it?"

"I have Thondu investigating."

Jane frowned. "Is he the best choice?"

"I wish I had a dozen of him! He's caught tricks our sapient has pulled that I've I've missed. And I'm no slouch." missed. And I'm no slouch."

Jane thought for a moment. "Are you sure all this activity isn't a second attempt to replicate itself?"

"Oh, absolutely! Even if it weren't a huge waste of resources to try to replicate itself twice at one time-remember, it's just now learning how to do it-making two separate attempts from different centers would overtax it. Not a logical act. And artificial sapients are nothing if not logical. Also, there's just not enough room on our systems for it to create a duplicate. It takes up a huge amount of s.p.a.ce and processing time. That's why we couldn't just take a snapshot of the entire system and then do a purge and reboot. None of our recording and viewing methods can deal with that much information flowing in all those directions at once."

"Hmmm."

"And I also know that sapients are p.r.o.ne to going off on odd tangents that are of no importance to humans. They take contemplating their navels to a whole new level.

"Besides," Tania said, "we have a fleet of people around the entire cl.u.s.ter watching for unexplained behavior across the network. Trust me-we'd know if it was making yet another replica."

A call came in from Upside-Down. An older woman reported breathlessly, "You were right!"

"Report."

"It's got access to everything up here. And it's definitely replicating itself. We've managed to slow it down by running as many extraneous communications and soaking up as much bandwidth as we can, but we'd better move our a.s.ses. Once it's done creating a copy, it could hijack Upside-Down's systems at any time and beam itself to heck and gone. We are so G.o.dd.a.m.n lucky Upside-Down had shut off their 'Stroiders' transmissions, or I doubt if we could have stopped it."

Tania shared a look with Jane. The New Little Austin riot, for all its horrors, had been a blessing.

"How far along is it?" Tania demanded.

"Six modules appear to be complete up here, and the other six are well under way. And it's putting some heavy processing into re-creating and tuning two tiny modules we originally thought were exterior interactions. We don't know what they do yet."

"Two new modules? Have you changed your a.s.sessment on its ident.i.ty-formation, then?"

The woman paused, biting her lip. Then she nodded. "Yes. I think we should add those two. And we're getting some useful information on the critical linkages between the modules. But the linkages are going up so fast right now that we're having a hard time keeping up. We figure we have about forty minutes till its child is complete."

"Forty minutes? Have you communicated all this to Damian and his team?"

"Yes. We're in constant contact."

"Damian, pick up!"

"Inwave." A young man's face appeared before them.

"Why aren't these two new modules showing up on our map yet?"

"Already on it. They'll be up in a minute."

"Michaela, how precise is your estimate on the timing for completion of the copy?" Tania asked the older woman.

"Its replication rate has some built-in hardware constraints, and transmittal to the surface is down to a crawl right now. There's no way it can finish the job sooner than thirty-eight minutes, on my mark." She set a timer. "And, mark."

Jane held on to her own desire to jump in with an opinion, while Tania pondered her programmer's question. "The longer we wait, the better our information on the linkages-"

"And thus the better able we'll be to capture the sapient live," Jane finished for her.

"Yeah, but then the greater the danger that it could escape." Tania drew a breath. "This is a terrific opportunity to make headway on the linkages, which is our weakest area. I'm inclined to say give them all but ten of those minutes to a.n.a.lyze the sapient's behavior before we shut down the gateway and trigger the trap."

Jane shook her head. "Too risky. Give yourself a bigger margin of error."

"Very well." Tania sighed, with a nod. "Fifteen more minutes. Michael, Damian, get your teams ready. Folks," she announced to the room at large, "give me your attention!" A field of heads popped up, prairie doglike, both in the physical s.p.a.ce and the virtual. "In fifteen minutes we're springing our trap. That'll alert the sapient, so we'll be going to Phase Three at the same time. Get what information you can, then wrap up, and get ready to do your part on the purge. Just like the drills. I'll give the signal."

Thondu broke into their interface. Peals of Tonal_Z swelled around him. He was sweating heavily despite the temperature, and his fingers were tripping across his harp.

"Reporting," he said.

"Any clues?"

"Still a.n.a.lyzing," he panted. "Not sure-yet. How-much-time left?"

"Fourteen-point-five minutes at my mark. And, mark."

"OK." Then he stilled his strings, studying some readout they couldn't see. "What's that? Sweet Jesus!" A look of horror bloomed on his face. "No! Stop!" He repeated it in Tonal_Z. His fingers danced across the strings again.

"It knows," he said. "Robotics. New tactic. Block it!"

"What?"

"It's-launching-attack." Drops of sweat flew from his face as music streamed from his fingertips. "Interior-robotic systems. Can't stop it. Shut down automation. Shut it down!" His image vanished.

"Jesus Christ!" Jane gasped. She turned to Tania, whose gaze had drawn inward. Jane recognized the look. She was marshaling her thoughts, weighing data, mapping out a course of action. "Damian."

"Here."

Tania gave Jane a look so intense and remote it made the hairs rise on her neck and arms. "Our only shot to contain this thing is to take down the data line up to the surface. Now. Everything else is secondary."

Quarantine. Jane had read the case studies. The others infected by a feral had tried it, too. "Do it."

"Damian, blow the trunk line."

"Now?" He sounded hesitant, incredulous.

"Now!"

They waited. Jane asked, "Should we hear something? How did you rig it?"

"A small explosive. We should have heard it. Damian?"

His voice was grim. "The feral must have found the device and hacked it. The data line is still up."

Tania gave Jane a wild look. "We have got to shut down that data transmission line!"

"I'll deal with it," Jane said. "Trigger the extraction. Move up the time table."

"Right." Tania shouted, "Phase Three now! Move your a.s.ses!"

Jane grabbed Tania as the other woman started to bound away. "What are its weaknesses? How can I contain it? How much time do I have?"

"It can't get off 25 Phocaea without breaking through Upside-Down's barriers," Tania said. "But those are software barriers. It can hack them." She grabbed Jane. "It hasn't finished replicating. I can slow it down some. But you have to disrupt transmissions at the main demarcation point up to the surface before it finishes. The demarc is in the Hub, near the lifts. Say, fifteen minutes. After that, there's no point."

"I'm on it," Jane said. Tania leapt to another platform to where her team leaders were a.s.sembled.

Xuan, Jane thought. Jane thought. The rest of the clan. The rest of the clan. Her heart slammed against her ribs like an angry fist. She couldn't warn them-there wasn't time. She had to trust that they were doing what they needed. Her heart slammed against her ribs like an angry fist. She couldn't warn them-there wasn't time. She had to trust that they were doing what they needed.

Sean came to mind. He was ex-military with combat experience: shrewd, resourceful, decisive. If anyone could mount a counterattack, it would be him. She should also warn him to protect his people up on the surface. She put in a call, and briefed him quickly on what was happening.

"Get that demarc point, or if you have to, disable the gaser-xaser itself. It's at the base of the buckyball conduit that carries the city signals up to the surface. Hurry!"

"Confirmed," he said, and signed off.

Jane turned back to Aaron. Marty had alighted next to him.

"Sean will take down the data line," Jane told them. "Now let's talk about internal defenses. Does the emergency plan include a feral sapient attack?"

"No," Aaron replied, "but we have one for hackers, and we can use those protocols. I'll talk to Hiro, and I'll also alert Cervantes and Gregoire." The other towns' resource allocation chiefs. Like Hiro, they were responsible for their towns' disaster recovery. "So they're forewarned, in case..."

"Very good."

He departed.

"Marty," Jane said, "activate the emergency call tree, then alert Benavidez and give him a full briefing. And the mayors. Hurry!"

He said, "I'm on it," and winked out.

16.

As they were clearing their table, Sean got a call. It was Commissioner Navio. "Sean, heads-up," she told him. "We've got another d.a.m.n crisis. A feral sapient is loose in our systems."

Sean's breath froze in his throat. "Good G.o.d."

"Communications are in jeopardy. All radio-operated equipment is at risk of being hijacked. Tania is taking it down, but it's found a way off Zekeston, and I need your help to stop it."

"Where?"

"There's a transmission line that runs next to the main lift cables. Xaser transmission through a buckyball conduit. Meanwhile, the feral is mounting a full-scale attack-all our resources are on defending the city."

"What do you need me to do?"

"Take out the main point of entry located in the Hub. Shut it down. We have to keep the feral contained in the city systems. You have twelve minutes, no more than fifteen."