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CAT’S WHIRLD

Rodolfo Martínez

Cover design: Sportula

First Edition: August, 2015

First Spanish edition: September, 1995 as La sonrisa del gato by Miraguano Ediciones

SPORTULA

www.sportula,es

sportula@sportula.es

This book is for your personal enjoyment. Nothing prevents you from re-selling it or sharing with other people. However, if you have enjoyed it, we would be very grateful if you recommended it to your friends. It is with this hope that we have kept the price as low as possible.

It all began during one of their few, and rather tense, diplomatic meetings. The Drímar Confederacy and the Sovier Mandate agreed on the joint construction of a series of space stations in the region known as the Convergence: some ten cubic parsecs on the border between Confederacy and Mandate, where there was nothing more than a huge dark nebula (possibly a star or a group of them in the process of formation) and several pulsars that might once have been normal stars that had gone supernova.

The Convergence had a blurred rather ambiguous legal status. It didn’t belong entirely to either Confederacy or Mandate, and any incidents that might happen there had, by tacit agreement, no consequence whatsoever in their diplomatic relations. Until they began to build the first station, the only humans who went there had been fortune hunters collecting precious metals from the protostellar nebula. A few scientific expeditions had been sent, from both sides, but these had gradually been abandoned: there were still thousands of years to go before the nebula would collapse into a stellar mass, and the scientists wanted rather more immediate results. Now only a couple of automatic stations in front of the Nebula still survived, visited by maintenance personnel twice a year.

In fifteen years, Convergence Station Number One was built and almost at once nicknamed the Whirld.

Because it seemed just like a huge spinning top or whirligig in the middle of nothing, orbiting a neutron star. Its wider top part was oriented towards the pulsar, from which it obtained energy in the form of X-rays, and its tapered bottom end served as a heat sink and antenna. A special statute was created not only for the station but for the whole Convergence, by which it came under the joint jurisdiction of both Confederacy and Mandate, but also enjoyed a certain autonomy. This arrangement attracted settlers almost immediately, and despite immigration restrictions, numerous “questionable” elements managed to get in. A large part of the original settlers were scientists trying to escape the moral restrictions and limitations of the Confederacy, and especially of the Mandate, on their research. Geneticists and Computer Engineers worked on the Whirld with a freedom they would not have dared to even dream of where they came from, and were able to create things that, in other places, would have landed them in prison for the rest of their lives… or worse.

Meanwhile, Confederacy and Mandate halted construction of the other stations. The cost of the Whirld had exceeded the most pessimistic expectations, and politicians from both sides vetoed the continuation of the project, claiming that very little profit could be expected from it.

Time soon showed just how short-sighted they had been. In less than fifteen years, the Whirld had already begun to export the more innocuous products of its technology to both Confederacy and Mandate, and become indispensable to the two of them. They had unintentionally brought together many of the most brilliant minds alive — but also a few of the most unstable…

As the years went by, the Whirld became, not only the chief exporter of advanced technology, but also a sanctuary for nonconformists, and not a few criminals, from both blocs. Its original governing status, which had never been revoked, gave it more autonomy than its signatories had foreseen, but now it was too late to turn the clock back. The entire Galaxy had come to depend on the Whirld , and the populations, avid for new toys, would not permit their rulers to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Both Confederacy and Mandate tried in vain to control the Whirld, and the information services of the two powers competed, in an old and endless game, to be the first to get hold of a new technological toy or a key piece of information. It was ultimately a futile game, because nothing could be kept secret for long here, but sometimes just a few days’ advantage could be, or could seem to be, important. In some ways, the Whirld had become the safety valve of the Galaxy: a place where Confederacy and Mandate could play their dangerous power games without restrictions or too much worrying about the consequences. After all, the original tacit agreement was still valid: nothing that happened inside the Convergence should affect what happened in the rest of the Galaxy.

I confirm. I stuck to the wrong greenie, but anyone in my position would have made the same mistake. He seemed to arrive in the right ship, had the right air about him, and there was nobody else around like him. It had to be him. It’s not my fault that two ships arrived almost at the same time, or that in both of them there was a greenie who wasn’t really what he appeared to be. And anyway it wasn’t exactly a case of division by zero: I wasn’t the only Irregular assigned to follow the Sovier, and the others stuck to him like cable pins to a slot.

And you ought to be grateful for that. If I hadn’t, things would’ve been much worse, peri. So stop keying me. I’ll print the code my way or there’ll be no code to print. And don’t even dream of trying to force me to speak, you know very well you can’t.

Much better, peri. No errors, no warnings, perfect. Maybe the greenie wasn’t a Sovier but he wasn’t from the Confederacy either. No doubt about that, a hundred per cent bug free, do you confirm? He seemed just another worm, a clueless tourist used to walking on the surface of a well. His codecard identified him as a trader of personality chips. A good cover: we make the best ones here, after all, so where else would a trader go to look for them? And he fitted his cover well: he chattered away like any other visitor, wandered around looking confused, and didn’t do anything unusual for a worm on his first visit to the Whirld.

But these memory filaments of mine were designed precisely for catching even the slightest detail. There was something about him that just didn’t gel with the image of the successful trader from Castleganda he claimed to be. Of course you wouldn’t have noticed, you could’ve been tailing him the entire rotation only to end up apologizing for having followed the wrong man. But the moment I saw him my alerts clicked in. He was my greenie, the worm I had to follow, there was no doubt about it. Behind his cover there was that contemptuous glow in his eyes, that condescending sense of superiority typical of a Sovier. How could I have known that my man would come ten minutes later in another ship?

As soon as he passed through Plague Control, I stuck to him so close that if he’d seen me he would’ve thought I was a part of his own body. I recorded his every gesture, every tiny movement, even the words he subvocalized without being aware of it. He certainly wasn’t who he said he was, but little by little I began to realize he wasn’t a Sovier either. Yes, he fitted the mold partially, I’ve told you before: the contempt, the condescending looks, all typical Sovier behavior. But there was something in his eyes that I’d never seen before in any of them: curiosity. Are you processing, peri? It’s normal for greenies to spend the first few minutes staring around open-mouthed, even those who’ve come from the Mandate, but this doesn’t last long, they soon lose interest, and look around with their usual disdain. But mine wasn’t like that. He seemed stunned by everything he saw. Oh yes, he hid it very well: a person with untrained eyes wouldn’t have noticed a thing. But for someone like me…

So while I was tailing him, and watching everything very carefully, I also examined everything he had done after leaving the ship. The first time I did something like that I ended up vomiting. It makes you sick and dizzy until you get used to it, as if you had double vision. But you get the hang of it sooner or later, and you teach yourself to distinguish between what’s happening in real time and the images you have saved in your memory filaments. Yes, it takes time, but in the end you can handle two sets of images simultaneously without any problem.

Your expression is betraying an intense interest in what I’m telling you, eh peri? OK, yes, I admit I do tend to babble on a bit, but as I told you before: either I tell things my way or I don’t tell them at all, so it really would be better for you to at least fake an interest in what I’m saying. No need to make too much of an effort, just an expression of polite expectation will be enough. There, that’s better! Now I can go back to what is really interesting you.

The greenie spent all morning consolidating his cover. He contacted several manufacturers and haggled with them without committing himself to anything definite, but he did show an interest in some of the chips and arranged a new meeting for the next rotation to discuss prices. At midrot he went back to his hotel and stayed in his room the rest of the rotation. I called one of the boys to relieve me and went off to see Con to give him my report. It was then that I learned that I had — how did you put it, peri? Ah yes — I learned that I had well and truly screwed up.

Arthur Conan Chandler had been living on the Whirld for ten years. Officially, he earned his living running a singles bar called Baker Street, but the police knew very well (though they had never been able to prove it) that most of his income came through somewhat more indirect and tortuous ways. He defined himself as a trader in information, which wasn’t that far from the truth. The peris had never been able to catch him doing anything openly illegal, among other reasons because he himself seldom risked going out and collecting the information he sold to his various clients. Instead, over time he had managed to recruit a veritable battalion of teenies (whom he liked to call, when he was in a good mood, the Baker Street Irregulars) who roamed the Whirld under his orders, sticking their noses where no one else would dare, and obtaining whatever Chandler needed. Memorandum, as he called himself — no one remembered his real name — had always been the most efficient and reliable of them, so it wasn’t surprising that Chandler was pretty furious when he realized that this time his best teeny had well and truly blundered, following a newcomer who had nothing to do with the business in hand.

“Memo,” answered Chandler, trying to calm himself, “the guy you stuck to had nothing to do with us. Talk with Fingers, he’ll tell you. The real deal came fifteen minutes later, and Fingers and his group have been following him all morning.”

“You don’t have to get anything,” said Chandler, now a bit more relaxed. “It doesn’t matter. And maybe we can salvage something from this disaster. Show me your worm.”

Memo took a holoprojector and plugged the connection pin into the slot behind his ear. Intrigued, Chandler watched the 3D image the boy was projecting in front of him. On the surface, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the guy. He wore a long brown robe, a mode of dressing quite common in several Confederacy worlds, and his black hair was shaved right down almost to the skull. But his disturbing blue eyes never seemed to blink, and this had caused many of the people he had spoken to that morning to become rather nervous. Chandler didn’t have Memo’s incredible mnemonic abilities, but he was a keen observer: in his business he had to be. He gradually began to understand that the boy’s mistake had been almost unavoidable. To a trained eyes, the man had all the hallmarks of a Sovier acting undercover.

“All right, Memo, I see your point. I myself would have made the same mistake. And maybe we can get something from him.”

Memo nodded, pleased. He worked for half a dozen men apart from Chandler, but he felt more comfortable with him than with the others. Con never yelled at him or reproached him for unavoidable mistakes. Right then, Memo was feeling so depressed by his failure, and so relieved by Chandler’s understanding reaction, that he suddenly felt impelled to give him some information for free, something he would never have done otherwise.

Memo rewound the recording and began to show Chandler certain parts of it, commenting on some of the images when he felt it necessary.

“You see, Con?” he said, eager as a puppy dog waiting for a bone. “No Sovier would be so fascinated by everything he sees. It’s as if he’d never seen anything like it in his whole life. I’m not talking just about the Whirld itself, but about things they have in the Mandate too, and which should be absolutely normal for him. I mean, just look at him in front of that transit booth!”

“Hmm,” Chandler stroked his chin, covered by a hard two-day beard. “Sure, it’s weird. But if he’s not a Sovier, what is he?”

“There’re some wells in the Confederacy more deversioned than others, do you confirm?”

“Confirmed. I told you that myself. But it’s highly unlikely he came from here, if he really is a personality chips trader.”

“All right, Memo,” Chandler smiled, “you made a mistake, but you’ve still done a good job. I’ll get some of the boys to keep an eye on your greenhorn and we’ll see what happens. Maybe we can find something valuable. But the important prey is still the Sovier. I want you and Fingers to relieve the team in his hotel tonight. Follow him.”

“I hope so. Now, rest a few hours. Wait, give me a copy of your greenhorn recordings.”

Memo did so and left Chandler alone, who spent the rest of the evening projecting the images, and sometimes freezing and enlarging some of them. This was strange and unexpected. None of his contacts had told him anything about the arrival of someone like this. If they didn’t know, that meant the matter was more important than it seemed. But if they did know, and still hadn’t told him, things could be even more serious.

He reflected on what Memo had said. Someone coming from a Confederacy world so out of touch that he was fascinated by things as pedestrian as transit booths? Ludicrous. If his home world was so old-fashioned, there was nothing for him in the Whirld. Besides, in that case, how had he managed to get an access code? No, something was definitely fishy here. Maybe that guy had nothing to do with his present business, but all the same he would keep him under surveillance just in case. Maybe something useful could come out of all this, after all.

The Sovier left his hotel at 21:30, and Memo and Fingers stuck to him as if they were part of his own shadow. They were both good at their work, and a suspicious observer wouldn’t have noticed anything out of place: just two teenagers looking for a bit of fun. The fact that they seemed to be going the same way as that surly-looking tall bearded man was simply a coincidence; after all, he was heading towards the Domes, and if the boys were looking for fun that’s where they would be going too.

The Sovier (who had checked in as Parzeewal Aronson, the same name that appeared on his codecard) entered the main gallery of the Domes and begun to wander around. Memo and Fingers, keeping in character, let him go while they looked at some of the holostore window displays. Fingers pretended to be especially interested in one that showed a couple making love in a Zero Gravity Dome, but Memo didn’t seem to be attracted by it, and the two began to argue. Finally, when their target had moved almost out of sight, Fingers was apparently persuaded by Memo, and they turned off down a side passage, in a completely different direction from the one the Sovier had taken.

Both of them were familiar with not only that gallery but all the others, and they had in fact taken a shortcut that would put them just behind Aronson again. There was a small chance that during the short period he was out of sight he might turn round and go back the way he had come, but this was a calculated risk.

They came back to the main gallery just in time to see how Aronson had stopped at a holostore display advertising a new model of pleasure droid. The advert was suggestive and promised to make thousands of impossible fantasies come true. Memo knew the place: it was a filthy spot with most of the droids in a state of minimal functionality; some of them would never have passed a quality inspection. Someone had told him that, once, one of them had jammed in the middle of the act, with its legs around the client, constricting him more and more in a deadly lock. The poor guy hadn’t even been able to scream when the droid (moaning lasciviously and whispering something like “give it to me, baby, come on, give me everything”) broke his backbone. The owner of the place had had to fork out for full medulla regeneration for the unfortunate client, and could barely scrape together the money needed to bribe the peri in charge of the case not to have the joint closed down.

Aronson finished looking at the storefront and headed for a public information booth. Once inside, he slid his codecard into the groove, and an isolation cone at once dropped over him. Memo made a quick sign to Fingers and they approached the booth. The appendages that gave Fingers his nickname were as thin and flexible as tentacles, but very much more skillful. A few seconds of manipulation were enough for him to open a small window in the cone, so that they could peep inside. Aronson was scrolling rapidly through the index, apparently not very interested in what he saw. He reached the restricted area point but just continued without any problem. The access codes of most of the laboratories appeared before his eyes and then, at one point, he suddenly stopped. Memo had no way of knowing which laboratory in particular had caught his eye, as the holosheet was showing the codes of half a dozen at the same time. Finally, Aronson nodded to himself and disconnected the terminal. Memo made a new sign to Fingers, and the window disappeared as fast as it had appeared. The two boy stepped back and pretended to be interested in one of the storefronts as Aronson came out of the booth and began to walk away.

Memo was puzzled. Aronson’s codecard had given him access to the most restricted areas of the index, something he had never seen in a greenie, and especially if he was a Sovier snooper. The Whirld authorities were extremely careful with the level of access they permitted on visitors’ codecards. Nobody, on their first trip to the Station, could get beyond Level B. But Aronson had entered as deep as Level M just like that. Memo made a quick decision, and whispered to Fingers:

Fingers nodded. For him, a piece of cake: a simple matter of taking advantage of a single moment of inattention, stealing the card, instantly making a copy with the tiny reader he always carried, and returning it to the victim before he noticed anything was missing. He approached Aronson in a casual way, and almost at once his nimble fingers rummaged in the Sovier’s pockets and got what they were looking for. At that precise moment, Memo was not watching him — an infraction of the security rules they had both established — because he had just spotted a familiar figure out of the corner of his eye, and had turned round to take a look. Fingers, unaware of what his partner was doing, slipped the card into his reader.

Suddenly, Memo stopped looking at the man in the brown robe who was strolling through the gallery, as a siren began to howl, and an Immobilization Cone dropped over Fingers before he could move. Memo muttered “Fuck” and slipped away as fast as he could. From the relative safety of a corner, he watched helplessly as the peris arrived, disconnected the IC, and arrested Fingers. Then they called Aronson and gave him back his card, dragged the handcuffed Fingers to the nearest transit booth, and asked Aronson to accompany them. He did so, not looking very pleased at all with what was happening.

Suddenly Memo felt someone touch his arm, in a way he knew very well. He turned and saw Serpentine beside him.

Memo looked at her for a few seconds. It wasn’t her business, but sooner or later she would find out anyway.

Serpentine signalled left with her head. Memo again saw the man who had distracted him while Fingers was working.

Peri, you’re overflowing. Anyone would have made the same mistake. How could I know that a greenie had a Hi-Level card? Only govers and some top sceggheads have one of those. But a greenie, however good a spy he may be? Doesn’t compute, boy. The card had to be faked, or he’d stolen it from someone. So he wanted to enjoy the hospitality of peris no more than we did.

Of course I didn’t. They could’ve gone to any precinct and I had no way of knowing which one. Besides, I was too damn nervous. We follow two quite separate greenies, and suddenly there they are, in the same place at the same time. There was something fishy in that whole business, and the only thing I could do was go back to Con and tell him everything. Serpentine had also lost her target while we were talking, so we went back to Baker Street together. O boy, it seemed like Con had just lost his last óscopo in a rigged roulette game. He was beside himself. That set my alarm bells ringing again. It was very difficult to upset Con, do you process? It wasn’t by any means the first time an operation had gone wrong, but he’d never blown his top like that before. Two greenies come the same day, one of them with a Hi-Level card… and Con like a CAI without its security chip. That stank more than the output of a biolab. I took Con’s tongue-lashing as best I could, and then he stormed off to talk with his leeger, to find out what he could do to get Fingers out of the jug. Con’s like that. He never leaves one of his boys in the lurch. And it’s not because he’s afraid they might grass on him. He cares about us, do you process, peri? Nah, of course you don’t. I stayed in my room alone and I was shit-scared. Anything that could make Con lose his cool was certainly something big enough to tear me apart. And when I’m afraid there’s only one thing I can do: plug myself into the net, and try to get information. Other people eat like pigs or shout like madmen.

You’d like to know, eh, peri? I bet you would! I found out a few things, oh yes, you can bet your fat peri ass I found out a few very interesting things!

Abdul Yasir ibn al-Murahi felt trapped between two contradictory feelings. Everything he saw filled him with dread and revulsion, but also with an almost limitless curiosity and fascination. He understood that God was wise, and that this was all part of the test, but occasionally he wondered whether he had the strength and fortitude to pass it.

It wasn’t his first mission into enemy territory. He had spent two years spying on the Confederacy on their capital planet, Albrezworld, but that experience hadn’t prepared him to face what now surrounded him. Decadent and corrupt as they were, the inhabitants of the Confederacy at least had sense enough to keep within certain limits. They might play around with the genes of other species, but their own genetic code was taboo. They might construct artificial intelligences bordering on self-awareness, but consciousness itself was a frontier they never dared to cross. But here, in this Babel, in this Sodom and Gomorrah to beat all Sodoms and Gomorrahs, all constraints had been erased. Men manipulated their own genes with the same casualness with which they told a joke or had sex; they ignored the Herbert-Brin Restrictions and built thinking machines fully aware of their own existence. And worst of all, that marriage made in Hell: the fusion of man and machine. He had been wandering round the Whirld for three or four hours, talking with sellers of personality chips, and had already seen at least half a dozen monstrosities where flesh, metal and plastic were seamlessly welded together into a single creature. The very profession he had chosen as cover could hardly be more abominable. The personality chips were tiny plates that, once inserted into the cortex connector, allowed the user to be someone he wasn’t. You could become an athlete, a spy, a murderer, you could twist your sexuality and enjoy certain pleasures you would never have dared to try without the chip. As he walked through the galleries he intoned the Self-assertiveness Litany to himself at least twenty times: Only God is God. I will have no other God but God. I will not try to emulate the Creator. This place had to be destroyed, wiped off the face of the Universe. And some day it would be, some day the Legions of God would unleash the Jihad on the Galaxy and destroy all these abominations with fire and blood!

And yet… And yet the fascination was lurking there, despite his efforts, threatening to spill over into his conscious mind. All that freedom, all that creativity working without limits, even though it was only to serve vile obscene ends!

But, although now and then a sudden glint of repugnance would appear in his eyes, or he would draw in his breath sharply at some marvel, most of the time he kept all this well hidden, locked in a corner of his mind, as he adjusted his behaviour to what would be expected of a trader in chips.