Beautiful Intelligence Read Free Page B

Sitting at a streetside bar, Hound pondered, a glass of white wine in one hand, a retro moby in the other. Watching crap on nexus TV. Who would have thought it...
    He soon realised that the best way to conceal the link would be to utilise the geologists, perhaps have it appear that they had lost a nexus radio somewhere near the cavemouth. He would be able to conceal such a device without difficulty up a tree. And if virtual observers should see him talking to the geologists, it did not matter. The decision to fake his own death prior to joining the AIteam had not recommended itself to Leonora, but Hound had pointed out that a man of his renown could not simply disappear. Via the nexus, he would be hunted. Better to die and reappear as somebody ordinary; for Hound was not his real name. And so he could talk to who he liked with little chance of danger.
    He walked down the street to the bar he knew the geologists frequented. Then halted. Ducked behind a dumpster. There, sitting at a round aluminium table with two of the geologists, was Tsuneko June.
    Tsuneko June! Something had gone wrong.
     

CHAPTER 2
    Manfred Klee studied the cables linking the nine globular bis into a circle. One by one he took the cables and cut them with a scissors.
    Joanna Rohlen ran into the room, hands covering her open mouth, eyes wide. “What have you done?”
    Manfred walked over to her, took her in his arms, stroked her long white hair, then let her go. “Our mistake was to give them direct access to one another. Joanna, this is the crucial idea. Of course... we could never succeed if they stayed linked.”
    “But you’ve ruined them! Months of work–”
    “No. I’ve freed them.”
    She stepped back and stared past him. Each bi was circling the room, apparently at random, like a possessed basketball. “You’ve killed them.”
    Manfred shook his head. “I’m their midwife. It’s why they weren’t progressing. They were linked, right? Direct access to one another.”
    Joanna stood still, trembling.
    “It’s where everybody has gone wrong so far,” Manfred said. “We were seduced by the nexus... by the internet before it. We imagined better connected was better–”
    “You’re crazy!”
    “ Listen to me!” Manfred let the inchoate mixture of joy and frustration he felt rise up through his throat. “I’m right. This is the idea I was searching for on the soltrain from Beijing! It’s what we were doing wrong at Ichikawa. I bet Leonora does it wrong too–”
    “Oh, Manfred, stop talking about her–”
    “Sssh!”
    Manfred pointed at the group of nine bis. They had stopped circling one another. Each bi had sense organs constructed as near to the human norm as possible, albeit in a squat sponge of a body – ultra-pure bioplas made from smart petroleum that Manfred managed to spring from Tehran University. Each bi had two eyes, two ears, a mouth without a tongue, and Japanese micro touch sensors all over, like the fronds of the Mimosa plant.
    Manfred breathed in... out. “They’re looking at us,” he said.
    Joanna’s fury dissipated. “No... no,” she whispered. “They’re listening to us.”
    “They recognise something’s going on,” Manfred said.
    He got on his hands and knees and approached the nearest bi; the orange one. It moved its body so that its eyes stared into Manfred’s. He didn’t freak. It wasn’t like he was looking at a Nippandroid, which was freaky. Then the other bis – distinguished by pastel rainbow colour, plus one grey, one white – clustered in a group around them.
    “Look!” Manfred whispered, his voice hoarse with emotion. “They’re all watching the orange one. They’re trying to work out what it’s doing. Cutting their cables freed them. They’ve got no choice now but to try to understand each other.”
    “But... but...”
    Manfred glanced over his shoulder. Understanding illuminated Joanna’s eyes. “Oh, yes,” he said, “now we’ve got to stimulate them. Give them