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outabout their Singularity, right? The Sh’daar Singularity?”

“Actually it was the ur-Sh’daar, Mr. President, but, essentially, yes.”

“Sh’daar, ur-Sh’daar, all the same. The carrier’ll come back with all kinds of information about what the Sh’daar went through,and the science wonks and news media feeds and memegineering hacks’ll pick it up and start chewing on it: ‘Oh, what can wedo? What are we gonna do?’ And everybody’ll be focused on that instead of what they’re supposed to be doing! I won’t have it!”

“Honestly, Mr. President, I don’t think there’s anything we should do about that. I don’t think there’s anything we can doabout it. People are still free to think for themselves.”

“Yeah. People think too much, that’s the problem. Keep it short, sweet, and simple—that’s what I say!”

“Yes, sir. So . . . what is it you want Intelligence to do? We’ve bought a little time with that nanoreplicator trick. Butthat’s not going to keep them in port for long.”

“How long?”

“I can’t say. Twenty-four hours? Forty-eight?”

“They can’t be planning on going out in just the one carrier.”

“As I understand it, Mr. President, the America task force will consist of two destroyers, a cruiser, and a resupply tanker. And the America herself, of course.”

“Okay. So see if you can keep that resupply ship from undocking, too. They can’t go anywhere without their rawmat, right?”

“No, sir.”

“And in the meantime, there might be some markers I can call in. Keep me informed.”

“Of course, Mr. President.”

“Just remember, Ron. I’m the one sitting at the big desk, so what I say goes! I will not have this government wasting time and money on chasing moonbeams when there’s work to be done right here!”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Lehner stood and left the room. Walker sat behind his desk for a long moment, before opening a secure channel in his cranial hardware. It took several minutes for various AIs to establish the hypersecure back channel.

Then a familiar voice sounded in Walker’s mind. “Vasilyev. Mr. President Walker? This is a surprise. What can I do for you?”

“Dimitri? I have a very special job for you. But you’ve got to keep it hushed up. . . .”

 

Within the Godstream

Earth Virtual Space

1630 hours, EST

Alexander Koenig flew. . . .

Golden light streamed past him as he plunged into a maelstrom of illumination and color and movement, a kind of lucid dreamof astonishing depth and clarity, and more sensation than a human could experience in real life. He could hear the whisperof minds around him, like a kind of angelic chorus.

In fact, he—his physical body, at any rate—was still back in the room set aside as his office in his home outside Columbus.His mind, however, had joined with Konstantin’s in the vast, deep river of the Godstream, a kind of shared universe withinthe Global Net created and maintained by some of the most powerful SAIs in existence.

This, he thought, was why alien civilizations like the Baondyeddi had crawled into their artificial universes and pulled the ladderup after themselves. Within the Godstream, anything—any manifestation of any thought—was possible, a realm of both intellect and sensation unfolding as a kind of artificial heaven more real and morepowerful and more exciting and infinitely more interesting than the pale husk of what passed for reality.

It also provided a superb means of gathering electronic intelligence.

The joy and thrill coursing through his being were addictive, quite literally. Millions had taken up residence within the virtual reality of the Godstream permanently. Konstantin would monitor his brain chemistry closely and let him know when it was time to emerge back in the real world.

When he’d been President, he’d not . . . indulged, preferring to take verbal and visual reports from Konstantin to keep him aware and up to date. Besides, back then the Godstreamhad been relatively small and simple, an outgrowth of the Global Net at large. But it had grown, both in scope and in function,and for several years now—as a part of his work with SIRCOM—he’d been going straight to the source and experiencing Earth’selectronic noosphere personally.

The sensation of movement ceased, and Konstantin indicated a virtual file, a repository of visual files and information. “Here. . . .”

Images rippled, then flowed over and through Koenig’s consciousness, a flood of awareness and being. Koenig, a bright point of consciousness, swam among turbulent clouds of similar points as Konstantin revealed to him therecent past.

Everything taking place within virtual reality was recorded and stored, and those with the appropriate passwords could seethe past in unprecedented detail. Events within the Godstream were largely shown in icons and symbols, but greater detailwas always possible. Privacy was increasingly a quaint and outmoded perversion.

Two points of light, each attended by identifying tags of data and layered imagery, appeared to be releasing a black mass,like tangled eels, into the virtual sea. The mass rippled, shifted into something more like a snake, then flashed into thedistance with the speed of thought. Without moving from their virtual vantage point, Koenig and Konstantin watched it reacha distant, structured complex and vanish inside.

“That was the virus attacking the nanoreplicator software on board the America,” Konstantin told him. “Watch the two who released it.”

The two were not, Koenig realized, within the Godstream itself, but working on the fringes, within the main body of the GlobalNet.

“The time stamp shows this happening two days ago,” Koenig said.

“The malware is not particularly sophisticated,” Konstantin observed. “But it is well camouflaged as environmental control software. Antiviral programs within America’s OS missed seeing it completely.”

“So . . . it wasn’t Marta,” Koenig said. He felt a surge of relief. He’d not believed his companAIon was responsible . . .but it was very good to have that fact confirmed.

“No,” Konstantin agreed. “I never seriously believed that to be true. It would be rather obvious for an AI robot to be thesource of the security breach.”

Gray watched silvery cords flashing out in different directions as their cerebral implants made connections within the electronicweb. Koenig traced the connections from node to node to node, and finally . . .

“Walker!”

“We did suspect as much.”

The former President bit off an angry curse. “Doesn’t make it better. Or right!”

Chapter Four

06 April, 2429

USNA CVS America

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