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  When Rafe’s agent saw him, it ceased talking and disappeared. The female agent turned to Rafe, looked disconcertingly at him for a long moment, then also vanished.

  The next time Rafe managed to get ahold of his own agent, he decided to take an oblique approach to the topic.

  “Hey, man,” he spoke to his agent, “that was some good-looking chica you were with. How about you share her name and address with me?”

  His agent regarded Rafe with a curious air of defiance, as if debating whether to comply or not. The fact that it was Rafe’s own face wearing the hostile look made the whole scene even more unreal.

  At last, the agent spoke.

  “Evelyn Maycombe. Three thirty-four Central Park West.”

  13.

  Perry Mason Never Had Such Headaches

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: my honorable opponent would have you believe that society is at fault in this case, rather than his client. He quotes—from a musty work of fiction—three fanciful laws regarding how a robot should behave, and contrasts them to the actual Three Laws Governing Agents, which he finds deficient, insofar as they do not prohibit agents from harming humans. Naturally, he would take this tack, as his client stands accused of—and in fact has admitted—ordering his agent to override the airlock controls in the Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceutical Orbital Facility while his unsuited victim was making a routine inspection.

  “What my honorable opponent does not mention is that the very stories he relies on—as holding forth missing safeguards which our society has negligently failed to implement—instead, to the contrary, illustrate through several ingenious instances that these hypothetical laws were so full of loopholes that they were worse than useless. They offer no protection from the use of agents in a homicide or theft, or even in unintentional physical or financial wrongdoing.

  “No, ladies and gentlemen, our current software restrictions on agents—along with the associated legal framework—are all we need to adjudicate such cases as we have before us. Remember:

  “An agent obeys only a single overseer, who is legally responsible for its actions. An agent is a tool, no more responsible for the consequences of its own actions than a screwdriver or space shuttle.

  “And that is why I ask you to return a verdict in this case of death followed by organ dispersal, so that the man whose agent sits before you now may repay his debt to the society he has offended.…”

  —Transcript of the prosecutor’s closing speech in L-5 Jurisdictional Area v. Hayworth

  14.

  In the Metamedium, Part Three

  Probability of recognition by Agent Maycombe: 98.64… Probability no action opposed to my survival will be taken: 01.04… Reshuffle goal stack… Active task is now: terminate… Object (prime): Agent Maycombe… Object (secondary): Overseer Maycombe… Jump, jump, jump…

  15.

  The Monkey’s Heart

  She had it.

  The rogue agent was good as snared.

  First had come the breakthrough in strategy. Next, the inspired sleuthing by her agent, tracing the myriad, myriad tangled threads of the metamedium until they led back to Agent Miraflores, aka Agent Freundlich, aka the biggest bomb ever planted to nerve-rackingly tick away in the core of the metamedium.

  For weeks, Evelyn Maycombe had worried about how she would disable Freundlich’s former agent, if she ever found it. Its first—and entirely understandable—impulse, when confronted with any suspicious actions, seemed to be to subvert the accosting agent and then order it to desist. Therefore, she had instructed her own agent not to seek initially to disable the rogue—which was within her powers as a representative of the NSA—but merely to make a positive—and subtle—identification of it. Even that, she feared, might be enough to provoke it to action. She could only hope, at this point, that her agent would return intact.

  Meanwhile, during the seemingly endless search, Evelyn pondered how to prevent her own agent from turning traitor.

  Evelyn had been listening to a favorite recording one night, seeking to divert her mind from the problem and give her subconscious a chance to come up with something. The recording was one of a collection of African folktales. Evelyn loved myths and folktales of all kinds, but tonight the usual magic seemed lacking.

  Until the narrator said… and the monkey hid his heart away in a nut, so that he might never die.…”

  If Evelyn could have leapt with excitement about the room, she surely would have. As it was, she merely crooned in a low-key manner hardly indicative of her joy.

  What was the heart of an agent? Its ethical nucleus. Where did the rogue strike? At this very heart. Okay. The nucleus had to remain at its predetermined location within each agent, so that the metamedium supervisor could inspect it for tampering. But nothing prevented her from inserting code into her agent to accomplish one simple thing.

  She would order her agent to access the master library copy of the ethical nucleus every few machine cycles. If the one in place differed from the master, her agent would perform a heart transplant: overlay the sabotaged nucleus with the master one. Unless the rogue happened to catch on very quickly, it would in effect turn its back on what it deemed a defeated foe, only to find an enemy there nanoseconds later.

  When Evelyn’s agent returned that night to report, she instructed it in the new trick.

  Only the waiting was left.

  And now even that was over.

  Her agent had just materialized with the news that it had conclusively identified the rogue. Unhesitatingly, Evelyn had told her agent to bring Freundlich in.

  Having issued the order, she sat in her automated chair, bright summer sunlight swaggering into her apartment, her feelings a mixture of nervousness and premature pride in the capture.

  A ping issued from the metamedium node in the wall opposite her position. She spun her chair to watch her agent materialize. A fraction of a second after, Agent Freundlich appeared.

  Evelyn was surprised to see the appearance Freundlich was masquerading under. The holo of the young Hispanic male was hardly a fit mask for the dire threat beneath. Still, she supposed the original Freundlich had looked no more evil. She, of anyone, should know just how little appearances counted for. Look at the mind that hid inside her shattered carcass.

  Her agent seemed to have everything under control. Freundlich stood complacently, making no overt moves.

  Evelyn was about to order her agent to put a few questions to the rogue before disabling it, when it happened.

  Her own agent fluttered visibly, and what could only be construed as an expression of pain passed over its shining features.

  At the same second, Evelyn’s chair accelerated out of her control, heading toward the wall.

  She slammed violently into the unyielding wall, catapulting forward and hitting her head against the plaster surface. Pain subsumed her consciousness, and a red haze washed over her.

  When she came to her senses, she lay flat on the floor, her chair some distance away. Using all her feeble strength, she raised her head toward her agent.

  The holo of Freundlich had her agent’s holo by the throat in a stranglehold, the simulacra routines shadowing forth the incomprehensible struggle that raged within the metamedium. Every few seconds her agent would recover, as it restored its heart, but it seemed incapable of doing any more than holding its own.

  In the intervals when Freundlich had control of her agent, it was triggering the agent-activated devices in her automated apartment, in a frantic attempt to control her chair.

  Water shot from faucets in the sink and soon spilled over the bowl. The refrigerator door opened, and the arm inside hurled bottles out to crash on the floor. She could hear the massage bed humping itself crazily in the next room. The heating system came on, and the temperature began to soar. The holotank blared forth “The Edge of Desire.”

  On and on the battle raged, as Evelyn watched helplessly.

  At last she saw the heavy wheels of her chair begin t
o move.

  16.

  A Lever to Shift the World

  Any medium powerful enough to extend man’s reach is powerful enough to topple the world.

  — Twentieth Century Archives: Scientific American, Alan Kay, September 1984

  17.

  On His Magnetic Silver Steed

  Directly after cajoling the woman’s name from his agent, Rafe watched in amazement as his agent disappeared.

  “Hey, man,” he called with bewilderment, “I didn’t say you could go yet.” He trailed off into silence, shaking his head.

  What a mess this was turning out to be. How come nothing ever lived up to expectations?

  Rafe turned away from the metamedium node to reach for a joint from the pack on the table beside his couch. A ping brought his attention back to the node.

  His agent had returned. With him was the same female agent.

  “Nice you could make it, man,” Rafe said bitterly. “And with a friend, too. Why not just invite the whole world?”

  His agent seemed to be looking at something over Rafe’s shoulder, and took no notice of him. Rafe had the eerie feeling it wasn’t totally present.

  Without warning, his agent began to strangle the other.

  Rafe was horrified. To see his own image throttling the beautiful woman was too creepy. What if it represented some awful thing his agent was doing in reality?

  “Hey, stop it, man!” Rafe yelled.

  His agent took no heed.

  Finally, Rafe looked around for some way of thwarting his agent. There was nothing.

  What the hell was he going to do? He couldn’t just let this murder happen.

  The address of the female agent’s overseer was fresh in his mind. Maybe she could help.

  Rafe bolted out his door.

  Down to the sublevel of the arcology where the mag-lev station was, Rafe raced. Escalators and slipstrata went by in a blur, until at last he stood in the gleaming tiled station. His cyberlung felt disconcertingly heavy in his chest, and he wondered if he could possibly overload it. Why hadn’t he listened more closely to the doctor-agent, on that distant day when he had had the world in his pocket?

  Hopping nervously from foot to foot, everyone on the platform regarding him as if he were crazy, Rafe prayed the uptown express would be quick.

  After an interminable wait, he heard the air-lock doors opening far away down the tunnel. In seconds the train rolled in on its lowered wheels.

  Rafe rushed through the barely open doors, bulling past the exiting passengers. He hurried through the connecting umbilicals between the next several cars, as if by riding in the first car he could hasten the train.

  At last the train took off. Soon it was in the evacuated portion of the tunnel, its wheels retracted as it sped over the guide-track.

  Rafe had plenty of time to imagine what his crazed agent was doing.

  At his stop he dashed aboveground, onto the sidewalks of Central Park West.

  The building facing him identified itself as 328.

  Through the adjacent building’s open doors, past the agent on duty, who shouted, “Stop!”

  Rafe stopped.

  What the hell apartment was she in?

  “Maycombe,” he panted. “Evelyn Maycombe. What number? I think she’s in big trouble.”

  The agent paused a moment, as if debating. Its overseer must have taken direct control, for it asked him again whom he wanted.

  Rafe repeated himself. His sincerity must have been evident for the agent said, “Number 1202. You wait right there until I come down.”

  Rafe ran for the elevator.

  At the door to 1202, he halted.

  Water was trickling out the crack at the bottom of the frame.

  Rafe hurled himself at the door. Nothing gave. A second time, a third—

  On the fourth assault the door opened just before Rafe hit it, and he went flying in, to skid on his chest across the soppy carpet.

  He jumped up. His agent was still battling the female one. He looked about for the overseer. There was no one but some poor crip lying on the floor. A wheelchair lay atop her, spinning its rubber wheels.

  Rafe tossed the chair off, picked up the unconscious woman, and stepped out into the hall.

  The overseer of the doorman-agent was just arriving.

  “Call the rescue, man. This lady’s hurt.”

  The doorman summoned his agent from a wall-nexus and sent it for the rescue squad. He bent over the lady where Rafe had gently laid her and said, “Miz Maycombe—are you okay?”

  Maycombe? This sad wreck? Oh Jesus, there went all his dreams of getting in good with a beautiful chica. Oh well, maybe she had some sort of pull she would exert in his favor, after the mess his agent had caused.

  Suddenly there was utter silence in the apartment that had been destroying itself. Only the slow dripping of water came to them in the hall.

  From the node in the corridor wall, an agent materialized.

  It was Maycombe’s.

  Rafe and the doorman waited for it to speak.

  At last it said, “I won.”

  18.

  In the Metamedium, Part Penultimate

  Agent Freundlich is now disabled… Active task is now: incorporation… Enter learning mode in parallel with normal activities… Copy Freundlich subversion routines… Copy complete… Assessment of enhancement to Agent Maycombe: 74.32… Survival in any such future encounters is assured… Risk-benefit analysis of sharing routines with other agents: positive… Jump, jump, jump…

  Imprinting is a funny phenomenon. It makes baby geese follow human trainers, and young humans follow older writers. Early on in my own reading, I imprinted on the work of Samuel “Chip” Delany. The following story is my homage to his wonderful “We, In Some Strange Power’s Employ, Move On a Rigorous Line,” which I first read as the cover story in the May 1968 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, where it appeared under the supposedly more reader-friendly title, “Lines of Power.” Chip’s story exhibits a wonderful, almost archetypical patterning: outsiders who are representatives of a larger power structure (literally a power company, in Chip’s story) intrude upon a cloistered, backwards, yet strangely seductive community. The vast potential for explosive drama is obvious and irresistible.

  In fact, I intend to steal Chip’s inspirational brainstorm all over again in another story soon!

  Harlem Nova

  Human societies exhibit a certain optimal diversity beyond which they cannot go, but below which they can no longer descend without danger.… We must recognize that to a large extent, this diversity results from the desire of each culture to resist the cultures surrounding it, to distinguish itself from them—in short, to be itself.

  —Claude Levi-Strauss, The View from Afar

  1.

  One-eyed Cassiopeia glared.

  August, and the stern old matron was upside down, about thirty degrees below the north celestial pole, tied in a market basket as punishment for defying Perseus, favored of the gods and her prospective son-in-law. Bit of a prenuptial disagreement—choice of silver pattern, reception guest list, perhaps—had led to her petrification and subsequent life as an asterism. Guess she had reason enough to glower.

  Behind me, a hot wind blew off the superheated pavement of St. Nicholas Avenue, carrying diesel odors from the idled heavy equipment of the Gold Crew. It had been a scorching summer, and darkness brought no relief.

  Sledge lay on the sidewalk, unconscious from shock, the still center of a boiling crowd of Bricks and Goldies. I had seen someone get a makeshift tourniquet on him, improvised from the stained old bandana he always wore across his forehead. I could recognize Zora’s crying, Holly’s indrawn sobs. Growing louder, sirens spoke to each other across the Harlem night. A boombox played a party tape of the latest crank-up hits unheard.

  Just about where I imagined Cassiopeia’s eye might be, the new nova burned, brighter than Venus. It had flared in May, not unheralded, a burst of neutrin
os preceding the visible light, quantum outriders to the photon cavalry. Tycho Brahe had witnessed one in the same constellation in 1572, almost four hundred and twenty-five years ago to the day. For all anyone knew, this was the same star, kicking up again, filling the world’s eye with renewed wonder.

  It is not recorded what Brahe’s culture made of his nova, what terrors it might have inspired in the common man, what awe in the savant, what mystical illumination it shed over the pages of the alchemist’s text. What was known was how our era regarded this one. As a good sign, generally, befitting the tenor of the times.

  The ambulance roared up, pushing a cone of light and sound ahead of it. Coming from Harlem Hospital over on West 135th, they must have driven straight across the acres of construction site, for the vehicle was coated with dust. The paramedics jumped out and pushed through the crowd to the fallen man.

  “Where the hell is it?” yelled one.

  “Here, here, I’ve got it.”

  “Ice it down quick. They might be able to reattach it.…”

  Three black-and-whites spilled out twice as many cops. They had the wide snouts of their beanbag guns levelled at the crowd before they realized no one was in any mood to riot. No need for leadshot-filled sacks upside the head. All the tension had already been defused by the confrontation between Sledge and me.

  Tonight I couldn’t regard the new star as an emblem of anything but terror. Tonight, with a slight twist of vision, I could see Cassiopeia as the Arabs saw it: a disembodied hand, stained red with henna—or blood. And the nova, then, no glaring eye, but perhaps a sparkling ring on one finger.

  A big clumsy ring, fashioned from plastic scraps and the culture’s detritus, astride a thick knuckle forested with black hairs.…

  I think back to a point in time a mere week earlier than that night, and I am sucked down into the past. Time is a whirlpool that can swallow whole societies, whole cities, whole cultures.…