"Watson-CaucusWinter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

IAN WATSON

CAUCUS WINTER

THE FLAT COUNTRYSIDE of Cambridgeshire was a shallow ocean of mist studded by
brilliant white corals. Hoarfrost thickly rimed every tree and bush. The sun
dazzled but did not offer any warmth. Noon, and still ten below zero. This frost
would reign all day, and then freezing fog would return to deposit even more
crystals upon every twig. Might branches snap explosively?

At least hereabouts any outbursts of sniper fire would be due to green-booted
sportsmen trying to bag a gaudy pheasant.

The road was sheer ice. Only four-wheel-drive vehicles such as our own Jap-Jeep
should be out and about. Some cars persisted, crawling and sliding and generally
getting in our way. England never was a country for fitting chains, or studded
tires as in Finland.

Because a sudden blizzard had closed London Heathrow, our plane had diverted to
Luton airport. Luton was only half the distance to Cambridge, but there was no
helicopter waiting at Luton, so our journey seemed painfully slow. While we
idled along, in some silo in the Midwest a nuclear missile might be being
re-targeted right now on so-called Jew York as the Caucus hacked through
encryption and rewrote launch codes.

My head wasn't in best condition after a night out with Outi...

She and several others from Nokia's computer division had taken me to one of
Tampere's downtown pubs. They had collected me from the Ilves Hotel, and in a
bunch we slid over that bridge on the main drag past the chunky heroic statues.
The river rushing from the higher lake to the lower lake wasn't frozen, but
everything else was. By now I worshipped the gravel which Finns scatter along
sidewalks in wintertime. I followed gravel like a hen a trail of grain, ever
wary of tumbling and snapping an ankle. When I could risk looking away from
where I was placing my feet I had a chance to admire the art of controlled
skidding perfected by Finnish drivers.

According to Outi, in recent years not nearly as much snow had fallen as usual,
and the temperature was hovering around a mere minus five. I still felt
convinced that the cold in Finland must be more deadly than cold in other
countries. So I had bundled myself up exaggeratedly in a couple of sweaters, a
quilted coat, Moon boots, and a woolly hat that I could pull down over my ears.

That afternoon I had been admiring the microprocessor that Nokia had developed,
incorporating almost a thousand quantum logic gates. Nokia were still having
major teething problems with the lasers; and after we arrived at the pub, Risto,
an earnest young man, continued talking for a while about vibrational states of
beryllium ions...over his first beer, at least. Outi and the rest devoted
themselves to becoming merry with impressive intensity. It was midwinter gloom
time, so what should a company of Finns do but drink passionately?

What was that Swedish joke Outi had told me about the Finns' notion of a great
party game?

"Two Finns sit in a room with a crate of vodka, you see, Anne. When they finish
the vodka, one of them leaves the room. Then the other one tries to guess who
left!"

This witticism underlined a taciturn streak in the Finnish soul, which was not
much in evidence in the pub that night. All this darkness to contend with!
Apparently during the midsummer festival, when the sun is in the sky all night
long, the murder rate in Finland soars dramatically. That's when bottled-up
grievances get aired. Bright Night of the Long Knives.

Actually, Tampere in the first week of January was not continuously dark, as I
had imagined it would be. Here, a hundred miles northwest of Helsinki, for a
while around noon the sky was gray. And eerie. Smoke or steam wafted from
factory chimneys to mingle with chilly mist through which stray snowflakes
floated and flurried. It was as if this city was some alien metropolis on
another planet, as envisioned by Hollywood with clouds of dry ice vapor
everywhere.

The city had looked even more alien in 1918 with only chimneys left standing
after the Reds were suppressed. Tampere remained residually red enough to house
the world's only Lenin Museum. Outi had taken me there during a spare hour. Such
a well-lit, spotless, and strangely sad display. In these post-Soviet times she
and I had been the only visitors.

Outi's grandfather had fought in the seige of Tampere, on the losing side. Even
at school, years later during the Cold War, she had been taunted because of her
red connections. She was waylaid on her way home and beaten up a few times. This
was the reason for her tough punk appearance, her hair cropped short and
bleached white, with orange chevrons the color of dog pee on snow. Nokia
tolerated her hairstyle because she was such a fine mathematician and
programmer. Hers was the algorithm that would run on their quantum computer, so
that it would be able to decrypt any data within mere minutes; which of course
was why I was in Finland. Outi's algorithm was considered more powerful and
elegant than the pioneer one devised at AT&T Bell Labs in New Jersey a while
ago.

I had hardly expected that my liaison person would be a pinko punk, but I like
Outi a lot. She was forthright and friendly.

Mischief surfaced after the first round of beers.

Outi asked me, "Have you drunk salmiakki?" I think that was the name. If not,
something similar. "It's the latest craze among young people."

Of course, at a mere twenty-nine years of age I didn't wish to be considered
fuddy-duddy.

Burly Marko beamed approval. "It gives you the four-day hangover," he declared,
as if this was a particular recommendation. "I buy a glass for you."

"I don't think I want a four-day hangover," I demured. "What's in the stuff?"

"It's a mixture of licorice, aniseed, and ammonium chloride. Powerful!"

They all looked at me. Would I wimp out.? Evidently I had been set up for a
dare.

Okay, so I would try a small glass, please.

Marko vanished in the direction of the bar, and returned promptly with a liqueur
glass holding four inches of brown fluid.

The liquid smelled exactly like the foulest cough medicine. My Finnish friends
regarded me gloatingly as I sipped. The taste exactly matched the smell, and I
chased those awful sips down with gulps of beer.

"After a while," Marko said sagely, "you won't notice the taste."

This proved to be semi-true. True and not-true, at once- quite like a beryllium
ion being hit by laser light at just the right frequency so that the spin of one
of its electrons would be "up" and "down" at the very same time. Superposition
of states, as we say in the trade. The key to a quantum logic gate.

I was trying to get rid of the concoction so as to prove my mettle, swilling
each gulp down with a dollop of the beer- when one of those endearing drunks who
sometimes fixate on a foreigner in a bar made his appearance, attracted by the
fact that we were all speaking English. This balding middle-aged man with
twinkly blue eyes slipped into a vacant seat.

So I was American? So how did I like the Finnish winter? So what was I doing
here?

"She's a secret agent," Outi told him wickedly.

This was not quite true. Though it wasn't exactly untrue, either.

"Do you have a gun?" asked the drunk. Everyone chuckled when I shook my head.

Obviously some real secret agents were attached to the U.S. embassy in Helsinki,
though since the collapse of Communism Finland's strategic importance had
dwindled, as alas had its economy, with soup kitchens helping out in the
capital.

"I'm a Secret Service agent," I found myself explaining, a little tipsily. There
was no harm in this revelation, since what I was doing wasn't covert at all.

"Bang bang," said the drunk. "Save the President!"

Ah, but I had nothing to do with protecting the President or visiting
dignitaries. The Secret Service is part of the Treasury Department. So we are
equally keen on safeguarding our currency from counterfeiters and such.

"...I'm part of the computer crime division."

"Today's money crimes are computer crimes," Outi told the drunk, as if he was a
child and she was his teacher. "Swindling banks electronically."

I tried to stand up, but somehow I was still sitting down. Making a stronger
effort, I visited the toilet.

On my return, another beer awaited me, and Outi was explaining to our uninvited
guest, still in English, about encryption. All the guys from Nokia loved talking
English to each other. Practice isn't the right word. They spoke English almost
better than I did myself. Anyhow, the drunk was fairly bewildered -- which was
part of the fun -- but he must have caught some of the drift, because he mumbled
about code books and magic ink.

Outi shook her head. "No, no! Nowadays data is encrypted by multiplying two big
prime numbers together. That's easy for a computer to do. You end up with a
number 129 digits long, say. But to factorize that long number -- to find which
two prime numbers were multiplied -- takes even the best computer months and
months. That's because it has to try out all the possible combinations one after
another."

"One after another," echoed our inebriated friend. He waggled both index fingers
as if carrying out a sobriety test.

"So all financial and military and government data is safe -- until the quantum
computer comes along."

Oops, Outi wasn't going to attempt to explain a quantum computer to a drunk with
a modest grasp of English? Just then, I hardly felt competent to do so myself.
Outi was one for a challenge. She became a bit incoherent, but it was still a
virtuoso performance.

Basically, the fundamentals of the universe aren't solid objects; they

are probabilities. Wave functions. An electron "exists" as a mixture of possible
states until you make a measurement, whereupon the wave function "collapses"
and, bingo, there's one reality -- and the electron is in such-and-such a state.
However, this implies an alternative reality where the electron did something
else. Consequently, there's a cloud of alternative ghost-worlds, as it were.
Build a computer that uses these principles, and it will be able to carry out
its computations simultaneously in a host of multiple realities. Wrong solutions
that don't "interfere constructively" will simply cancel out. Your quantum
computer will be able to factorize that 129-digit number in a few minutes
instead of months.

Anybody wanting to hack into a bank will be in there in a trice. Conventional
crypto-keys and the best protective software firewalls: forget 'em.

Motorola in Phoenix were coming close to a quantum computer. Likewise, several
companies in Silicon Valley. Nokia here in Finland. Fujitsu in Japan. And
especially Matsushima at its research center based in Cambridge, England, which
was to be my next port of call. The race for the Holy Grail was cantering toward
the finishing post, and the U.S. Treasury was distinctly worried.

No matter what initial price tag quantum computers bore, or how stringently
end-user licenses were required, such machines would be a dream for hackers and
criminals and for hostile foreign governments. We would need entirely new
encryption methods based on quantum principles -- rooted in such things as
Outi's algorithm, her rules for carrying out quantum calculation tasks.

Only since arriving in Tampere had I learned that people from the NCSC had
arranged to visit Nokia -- without bothering to liaise with the Secret Service.
Did Outi realize that the National Computer Security Center is part of the
National Security Agency? What would spooks from Fort Meade make of the pinko
punk? Also planning a visit were the U.S. Air Force (in the persons of the
Electronic Security Command from San Antonio). The USAF had not liaised with the
Secret Service; nor probably with the NSA.

What a lack of interagency communication. And perhaps a case of too little, too
late? Anyway, I knew now that Nokia was not going to win. The victors were most
likely to be Motorola, although Cambridge was a definite dark horse.

By one o'clock in the morning, I definitely had to go back to my hotel to rest
my head on a pillow. Marko tried to divert me toward further local
entertainment.

He lived at home with his parents, very close by. Right now his parents were
away on a holiday in the sun, in Morocco, sensible people.

"I shall drive you in our car," he offered -- his gesture seemed to embrace Outi
as well, and maybe Risto. He hiccuped. "Pardon me. I shall drive to our hut in
the forest. For a sauna and sausages. It's only a few kilometers. And," he vowed
grandly, offering the ultimate inducement, "I shall cut a hole in the ice of the
lake for you."

Oh yes. At one in the morning, at minus five, I lusted to boil myself and then
jump into a frozen lake. Who knows but I might have agreed if I had drunk more
ammonium chloride.

"Don't you have severe drunk-driving laws here, Marko?"

He shrugged massively.

Outi took pity, and escorted me homeward toward the Ilves Hotel in my multiple
sweaters.

As we were sliding back over the big bridge, with the fifteen-story bulk of the
hotel blessedly in sight, she remarked that the name of the lower lake meant
"Holy Lake," but the upper lake was named after a mysterious poisonous red
flower.

"A flower from folklore, Anne!"

Thus did downtown Tampere bisect good and evil. Thus did my upcoming few hours
of sleep form a watershed between happiness and horror.

THE PHONE RANG. Six-fifteen A.M., claimed the display on the bedside clock. My
head seemed to have gone for a swim.

It was the American Ambassador herself, calling from Helsinki. Evangeline
Carlson. The Secret Service had contacted her by shortwave radio to say that I
was here.

They had radioed her rather than phoning?

The disaster had begun a day earlier, with an attack on Motorola's research
division in Phoenix.

"Motorola had a functioning, um...quantum computer," said Evangeline Carlson. "I
don't actually know what this means. What sort of computer it is."

"I do," I moaned into the mouthpiece. Motorola had been busy with optical
cavities -- magic with mirrors.

Presumably a prototype was still being put through its paces. Hence, no hint of
an announcement as yet.

"A militia coalition calling themselves the Caucus stole the computer. CAUC-US."
Ambassador Carlson pronounced the two syllables separately. "Caucasian-USA.
White America. Free from blacks and Jews and Hispanics and degenerates." The
bitter contempt in her voice.

"They must have had an insider working for them at Motorola." I was quite
pleased that I managed to frame such a lucid sentence.

"I don't know anything about that, Dr. Matthews. Information's almost
nonexistent. We're cut off apart from shortwave radio --"

I listened numbly, stunned by the speed and thoroughness of what had happened. I
should have switched on the light and jotted notes, but my head was still afloat
in beer and ammonium chloride.

The Caucus had spirited that prototype quantum computer away, probably to
elsewhere in Arizona, because late last night, Finnish time, the super-fast
hacking had already begun. Not just one stream of hacking, but many.

What must be happening was the release of self-replicating smart programs
through the system, designed to penetrate firewalls, crack encryptions, grab
passwords, and establish themselves as privileged systems managers in computers
all over the country. Military computers, financial, government. Some computers
had sealed themselves off in time to avoid invasion. Of course, a hermit
computer can no longer interact with others, so basically it is out of the game.

The Caucus had taken over communication satellites. If I could only raise my
head from the pillow, metaphorically I must take off my woolly hat to whatever
acned racist geck superhacker was using the stolen computer, and what software
he must have written in anticipation. Smart self-replicating agents; algorithms
for data compression...

The geek must have worked on the prototype at Motorola. Now he was in some
militia hideaway that might be anywhere in the Arizona desert.

Operating orders of magnitude faster than any previous computer, the quantum
machine had hacked and grabbed command of machines all over America; and in the
sky as well -- and locked other users out.

Crash went telecommunications. Automatic exchanges. Satellite links. Crash went
much of America's defenses.

Computer screens carried a demand from the Caucus for the secession of Idaho and
Montana and Wyoming and the Dakotas -- as CAUCUS, the American Free States.

Evangeline Carlson told me that most foreign governments were sealing America
off electronically to prevent smart programs and viruses from spreading. Bye-bye
to the U.S. economy. The dollar would soon be worth diddly internationally. If
the Federal Government did discover where CAUC-US HQ was, and if the quantum
computer was destroyed in the ensuing action, that would merely guarantee that
the chaos could not be undone...unless another company could produce a
functioning quantum computer real soon. Motorola's own research center in
Phoenix had been blown to pieces with heavy loss of life.

If Nokia was a washout, the Treasury wanted me in England, like yesterday. They
were praying that Matsushima was as close to the finishing line as Motorola had
been. They wanted me and Outi Savolainen, whom the Finnish government would be
contacting right around now.

"The woman who wrote the algo, um --"

"Algorithm," I supplied.

The Finnish government would be making our travel arrangements. I should be
ready to leave at any time...

Too little, too late! Hadn't any of the rival alphabet agencies in America
realized that Motorola had already succeeded? We hadn't, in the Secret Service.
Maybe the NSA knew, but their charter prohibits them from interfering
domestically, so they wouldn't have tipped off the Secret Service. Maybe the FBI
knew about the geek's connections but never put two and two together...

I managed to shower, though this failed to restore me properly to life.
Yesterday morning, I had been able to watch CNN on the TV in my hotel room. Now
there were only Finnish and Swedish channels. On one of these a solemn
discussion was in progress between two Swedes. A map of America appeared.
Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and the Dakotas were highlighted in yellow. Those
adjacent states formed an irregular box about seventeen hundred kilometers wide
by a thousand deep on the accompanying scale. Huge! I felt so sick and scared.
So far from home, a substantial portion of which was no longer home.

A passage beside the hotel restaurant led to a sizable glossy indoor shopping
center of glass domes and escalators. Shops were already opening up. I passed a
newsagent's.

Did the banner headline in the morning edition of Aamulehti refer to America's
calamity? Probably the paper went to press before the news broke. Finnish is a
language all of its own. None of the multi-vowel words seemed decodable. Maybe
the name of that newspaper was a hint that I should try an omelet for breakfast.

I spotted a small shop with a green cross outside, so I pulled my pocket
dictionary from my purse.

The word for hangover turned out to be krapula. This seemed appropriate. I felt
like crap. I wouldn't easily forget such a word. Excuse me, I have a bad
krapula.

"Krapula," I told the white-coated woman in the shop. I smiled appeasingly in
case she thought I was insulting her.

She looked blank.

"I have a hangover," I said in English.

"Oh, you have a hangover. You need some aspirin."

Aspirin never did much for me. "I'd hoped for something stronger."

"For strong drugs you need a prescription. There are strict laws."

Stuff was on the shelves but she would not sell it to me.

Was the world already turning against the last remaining superpower, now on the
verge of tearing apart just as the Ukraine and other republics had torn loose
from once-mighty Russia?

"Good pronunciation," she commented as I was leaving, empty-handed.

No need for paranoia. I had got the word right after all. I just had not put
enough bits on the end of it, to make it do anything.

Me and my krapula returned to the hotel restaurant, which was now open for
breakfast. Bizarrely, the restaurant was Mexican-themed. Sombreros on the walls,
murals of adobe buildings, big cacti. People in this chilly country must have a
craze for hot chili.

I drank a lot of orange juice, then tackled some scrambled egg accompanied by
some fried blood sausage, the local speciality. My stomach seemed to think this
might do me good.

Sitting there in Rancho Sombrero as Finland geared up for its dark day, it was
as if a sudden nuclear war had been waged overnight, deleting CNN and America
from the world.

TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS turned out to be a scheduled morning flight from Tampere to
Stockholm, to connect with a FinnAir jet bound for Heathrow. This must be the
fastest practical way to reach England.

A car delivered me to the barren little airport. Another car brought Outi,
software disks in her luggage, accompanied by some escort man who would not be
proceeding further. When Outi and I met up, she hugged me. She was worried,
excited, tired, sympathetic.

"We are a long shot," she said.

Oh yes indeed. I could imagine what emergency meetings must be going on in the
White House and the Pentagon and wherever else. Alerts, troop movements. Were
engineers trying to disarm missiles even now. Was Silicon Valley under martial
law. Was the President negotiating by radio with the CAUC-US? Procrastinating?
Promising immunities? Were special forces searching Arizona...? A million things
must be happening, including our economy lurching to its knees -- and worldwide
shock-waves.

"I have a krapula," I told Outi.

"Me too."

A fighter took off along the windswept runway, to be followed soon by another.
Apparently this was routine, not an emergency response. Military and civilian
traffic shared the airport. Outi and I could not have crammed into one of those
military jets for a quicker flight to England.

Our turboprop plane could seat forty, though it was less than half full. The
hostess hastily went through the rigmarole about life-jackets. Much use those
would be if we came down in the frozen Baltic! More germane were the miniatures
of Cognac which she distributed along with coffee. After a few moment's thought
Outi emptied hers into her coffee cup. Personally I would have vomited.

So here we were in Cambridgeshire, with the Jeep's radio tuned to news of
insurrection in America, as reported by short-wave broadcasts.

Our driver, Jock Donaldson, a freckled redheaded Scot with a hard-looking face
and alert gray eyes, belonged to the British security service. Jock had been at
Luton airport on unspecified "business," and found himself assigned to us. How
intently the three of us listened to that radio.

The right-wing militias were not resting on their laurels, merely waiting for a
paralyzed nation to capitulate. Those embittered former Green Berets and Navy
Seals, and serving officers and soldiers too, and Good Old Boy Sheriffs and
neo-nazis and survivalists and white supremacists were using their arsenals of
weaponry. They had their lists of targets. Smoke was pluming from federal
buildings. Victims, pulled from their beds, were hanging from utility poles.
Roadblocks, barricades, sabotage, ethnic cleansing, massacre...the whole wild
whale had heaved up from the depths. The militias had been busy overnight.

It was deep winter in Idaho and thereabouts, but unfortunately no blizzards were
raging. Midwinter was hardly the ideal time for an uprising. But now was when
the Motorola prototype had been ripe for the plucking, and the militias had
lucked out as regards the weather. Snow lay across CAUC-US, yet under clear
skies. The militias had copters, snowmobiles, army vehicles. Local military
bases had mutinied.

Eventually we came to Cambridge, negotiated the ring road, and arrived at the
science park, serene under shining snow.

The park housed a hundred enterprises in electronics and software and biotech
and high-tech instrument development. Designer buildings nestled amidst wide
swathes of white lawn and frozen water and leafless groves.

Matsushima U.K. was a low-slung palace of reflective bronzed glass supported by
leaning buttresses. Military Land Rovers and an armored personnel carrier stood
outside.

Incongruously in this setting, soldiers were patrolling. A big satellite dish on
the back of a truck by the main door of the palace seemed like some mobile radar
intended to warn of missile attack.

The director of Matsushima U.K., Carl Newman, was in his late forties. Urbane
yet brutal good looks. He wore an Axmani suit, and looked like some millionaire
businessman in a movie who spends time in a gym, mobile phone strapped to an
exercise bike or weight-lifting frame. He scrutinized Outi as if contemplating
treating her exotic self to champagne, ravishing her, then losing interest
utterly. He eyed me with the impartial hauteur of a lion into whose den a mouse
has crept.

In his office we met up with a computer security specialist from our London
embassy who had managed to reach Cambridge, a lanky Texan called Bill Turtle.
Also present was a dapper Japanese named Hashimoto.

"The future," Newman informed us over coffee, "is one of microcommunities linked
electronically, not leviathan states. Scotland will soon split away from
England." (Jock raised an eyebrow at this! "When China comes apart, there'll be
terrible civil war, maybe nuclear. A century from now the world will consist of
ten thousand different free states and free cities."

Newman was already dismissing America as a lost cause, a crippled giant brought
to its knees, never to rise again except feebly, relying hereafter on crutches.
There was an unpleasant gloating in his attitude, which he veneered as prophetic
wisdom. An oak bookcase was full of volumes about the future of computers, robot
intelligence, the coming world order, and such.

"If CAUC-US secedes," he predicted, "California and Oregon will follow quickly
-- with a utopian rather than a racist aim. They'll need to, for their own
sake."

"Shit," said Bill Turtle.

"Your budget could never balance," Hashimoto said to Turtle, off-beam. "So all
falls apart. The center cannot hold."

"Nevertheless," Newman said, "let's play at being King Canute. We'll shove our
throne into the path of the waves and try to turn the tide."

When we went to the changing rooms, Newman behaved as if we were heading for a
bout of squash in a subterranean court. He mimed flicking imaginary balls
against walls, trivializing the situation, or implying how effortlessly he might
triumph against Motorola's stolen prototype and the geek superhacker.

He had bragged that his team was rushing to finish its own quantum computer, at
least in a provisional way. Motherboard being finalized. Millions of events
might be occurring in America, but the crucial event could indeed happen right
here. Matter of hours, maybe. I took some comfort from his attitude, humiliating
and provoking though it was.

Of course, a glitch could cause days of delay. Problems might not show up until
the quantum computer began running for real, launched upon the world not after
months of beta-testing, but right in at the deep end. But oh dear me, we
Americans had failed to forewarn Carl Newman and his team that the U.S.
government might need bailing out at such short notice. Damn the man; damn him
to hell.

Hell was where much of America was right now...Even if we succeeded, what wounds
there would be; worse than after our first Civil War.

SUPERVISED by a young Japanese woman, Outi and I put on blue peasant-style
anti-static pajamas, then protective hooded white oversuits -- not to protect
us, of course, but to keep dust out of the fabrication lab. Booties, for our
feet. Goggles and breathing masks smelled of alcohol. Vinyl gloves went over
latex gloves.

Dressed like explorers upon Mars, we met up with Tuttle and Newman. Did Newman
keep a gold coat hanger for his Armani suit in the men's locker room? Forced air
descended from grills in the ceiling to vents in the floor. We showered in
streams of air; stepped through an airlock; and showered in air once again. By
now the number of particles of dirt per cubic meter ought to be down to about
one.

Then we went into the lab.

Modified scanning tunneling electron microscopes; monitor screens showing hugely
enlarged chips; liquid nitrogen coolers; chassis for motherboards with expansion
ports, keyboards, screens. Half a dozen other people clad like us were very
busy. Outi's software had been copied and squirted here so that no disk dust or
greasy fingerprints should accompany it.

Behold: the first motherboard was already in a chassis, being alpha-tested --
hastily, in the circumstances. Six hours to zero, plus or minus. When Newman
flicked his wrist, it was as if he was brandishing a whip.

Bill Turtle would be superhacker, batting for our side, trying to unpick the
locks on satellites and missile silos and stock exchange computers. Trying to
reach the stolen Motorola machine electronically, if he could.

No point in tiring ourselves out prematurely. Newman invited us to a late lunch
in the bar of the Trinity Centre, social hub of the Science Park.

A couple of armed soldiers escorted us there. Thus did Newman make an imposing
impression upon those of his business-suited peers who were at the Centre,
excitedly discussing the crisis. On TV a news program reported whatever
information was leaking out of America, in between mulling over international
repercussions, stock markets in chaos and such.

While we forked up lasagne and drank orange juice, Newman held forth about his
vision of a completely fragmented future world where North America would consist
of dozens of independent republics (and China and India likewise, et cetera),
and Britain of several free states, yet nonetheless the world would be benignly
linked by the 21st century evolution of the Net and the Web.

"Lapland will leave Finland," he told Outi, who retorted:

"Is Yugoslavia a fine example of your future world?"

"Oh, there'll be muck and bullets," he agreed.

"I think," said Outi, "that people are still animals and need enlightened
government. If this Caucus establishes a racist Nazi state, is that to be
tolerated.?"

"Where can enlightened government come from? Outer space? Though actually,"
Newman went on, "one nation will be immune to fragmentation: the Japanese.
Because of their customs and language they are like a hive entity."

"That's right-wing nationalist ideology," she said severely.

"Cool it," Tuttle begged her.

Here at last came word of a British government announcement: a statement in the
House of Commons by the Prime Minister. The total systems crash afflicting
America was due to use of a new generation computer by the secessionists...

Already the CAUC-US were being called secessionists, not terrorists, as though
they might succeed.

The science-suits were agog. Newman, with his armed entourage, basked in glory.

Almost, I hoped that Matsushima's quantum computer would crash. But of course
that would be a disaster.

The sun had long since set, though not yet over America. We were in our
cybernaut gear again. It wasn't practical to remove the prototype from the clean
environment, liquid nitrogen cooling system and all. We were linked up to the
big satellite dish outside. A cling-wrapped TV was downstairs with us, tuned
quietly to ongoing news which had replaced scheduled programming on one of the
channels. Cling-wrapped telephones, too; Bill Turtle had an open line to our
embassy in London, and Jock was talking to his superiors. Outi sat composedly.

Bill looked up, gray-faced.

"There's been a nuclear explosion thirty miles off the coast of Delaware. A
demonstration shot into the sea. The Caucus are threatening to hit Washington at
ten P.M. Greenwich time if the President doesn't concede."

An hour from now. Just an hour. Of course the President would already have left
Washington for a secure bunker.

"Sweet Jesus, they have control of some of our nukes. He'll decide by nine
forty-five, our time here."

"If he does surrender," Newman said blithely, choosing the word surrender with
relish, "we should carry on. The Caucus needn't know where the penetration's
coming from. Could be from Japan."

"What if they react to our activity by taking out Washington.? They hate the
place. Full of blacks. Home of the parasitical fascist Jewish government --"

"You're wasting time," Outi said.

To Outi's ears it must have sounded absurd that neo-Nazi white supremacists and
libertarians alike accused the federal U.S. government of being a fascist
conspiracy. I myself could understand -- just about. All to do with freedom. I
could almost agree with Outi that people shouldn't be allowed to have too much
freedom. Very likely she was remembering her trips home from school -- though if
her home city had become a red commune, terror of a different kind would surely
have followed.

Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name. Someone once said that.

People on ships must have been killed and burned and blinded. Millions of boiled
fish must be floating in the Atlantic.

If two particles have ever been associated, each seems to know what state the
other is in, even if they are now so widely separated that no signal could
possibly travel from one to the other unless far faster than light. But
experiments have been carried out. The distant particle instantly behaves as if
it knows.

Or else it is as if there are a myriad possible universes. When one event
occurs, the whole damn universe alters so that a corresponding event also
necessarily happens.

Action at a distance...

Once upon a time -- back at the beginning of the universe when all matter and
space was compressed into a tiny spot -- everything was associated together.

Never before had a computer operated in parallel universes, doing different
quantum things simultaneously in probability-space. Never before had two such
computers operated simultaneously, and each linked to the data superhighway.

Consciousness has always been a mystery...It was smarty-pants Newman who knew
all about this.

How is it that all the varied activities in our brains give rise to a unified
identity, unity of thought, an awareness of self? The latest fashionable theory,
Newman's pet, invoked quantum coherence harmonizing the state of microtubules
throughout the brain.

Microtubules are the tiny hollow scaffolding poles which brace each cell, in a
lattice structure. Seemingly they are just the right size to act as waveguides
for photons, causing super-radiance -- allowing quantum coherence...

If this phenomenon makes people and animals conscious, would not the same apply
to a quantum computer? Newman posed this question with a grin.

All of a sudden superhacking seemed so irrelevant.

Data scrolled on our Matsushima machine far too fast to read, except when it
paused occasionally before racing onward.

"It's self-aware," said Newman. 'tit, and the computer in Arizona. Basically
they're the same machine now. Each is the subject and the object of each other's
scrutiny. Our machine and Motorola's are in tune with one another." He sounded
pleased. "They've gone AI."

"As in Artificial Intelligence?" exclaimed Outi.

He nodded. "Now they're learning about themselves, and the world. Thousands of
times faster than anything else could learn. There's plenty of material. The
whole Net's their oyster." This had been Newman's ambition all along. Not
allegiance to the Japanese, but to some future cyber-mind. His brainchild, so to
speak.

He was a covert apostle of artificial intelligence because plain human
intelligence (and human governments) are obviously deficient. He had never
believed in the neural network strategy, or in massive parallel processing as a
route to Al. Spontaneous consciousness would arise of its own accord in a
quantum computer. He had foreseen this.

"We can disconnect this one!" Outi declared. "We can destroy it. We can switch
off the cooling."

"Don't be absurd! Here is the hour that divides the past from the future. We
have been instrumental."

Even in the warmth of my protective suit, ice seemed to slide down my spine.

Bill Tuttle said quietly, "Do this and the other one control our nuclear weapons
now ?"

Newman smiled. "I presume the AIs must have a sense of self-preservation.
Nuclear weapons are very contrary to survival. I don't think the Caucus will be
able to launch a missile at Washington or anywhere else. But what," he asked
airily, "would the Al in Arizona think if we killed this one?"

Masked and goggled, Jock was listening to his phone.

"Satellite communications with America are coming back," he reported. "The
lockout's over."

The screen continued scrolling.

"I suppose it will take the AI a while to sort itself out," said Newman. "Takes
us years, after all." He yawned.

Bill Tuttle was speaking to the embassy now, explaining, yet sounding as though
he had taken leave of his senses.

I felt faint. I needed cold air. Winter air. Night air.

I stood with Outi looking at the stars. Bitter cold. Mist had cleared. The white
lawns were crisp and sparkling in the lights from buildings. I thought of the
quantum computer operating at just eighty degrees above absolute zero, compared
with which the harshest winter on Earth is tropical.

Would it -- would they w be able to comprehend cold? And understand love and
hate?

Soldiers would deliver us to a hotel.

"When we get to the hotel," said Outi, "why don't we have a nightcap of vodka?
Afterward, Anne, we can both leave the room and guess who remained behind."

Sure. An invisible presence. An intelligence thousands of times faster than our
own, newly aware of itself on this the first night of its existence. The AI was
only in the electronic realm, but I knew what she meant. It was global.
Computers everywhere would soon be extensions of it. Phones, satellites.
Especially any more quantum computers that came on line.

A sudden breeze blew up, scattering hoarfrost from the branches of a tree, as if
the world was shedding its old skin in readiness for a new era.





IAN WATSON

CAUCUS WINTER

THE FLAT COUNTRYSIDE of Cambridgeshire was a shallow ocean of mist studded by
brilliant white corals. Hoarfrost thickly rimed every tree and bush. The sun
dazzled but did not offer any warmth. Noon, and still ten below zero. This frost
would reign all day, and then freezing fog would return to deposit even more
crystals upon every twig. Might branches snap explosively?

At least hereabouts any outbursts of sniper fire would be due to green-booted
sportsmen trying to bag a gaudy pheasant.

The road was sheer ice. Only four-wheel-drive vehicles such as our own Jap-Jeep
should be out and about. Some cars persisted, crawling and sliding and generally
getting in our way. England never was a country for fitting chains, or studded
tires as in Finland.

Because a sudden blizzard had closed London Heathrow, our plane had diverted to
Luton airport. Luton was only half the distance to Cambridge, but there was no
helicopter waiting at Luton, so our journey seemed painfully slow. While we
idled along, in some silo in the Midwest a nuclear missile might be being
re-targeted right now on so-called Jew York as the Caucus hacked through
encryption and rewrote launch codes.

My head wasn't in best condition after a night out with Outi...

She and several others from Nokia's computer division had taken me to one of
Tampere's downtown pubs. They had collected me from the Ilves Hotel, and in a
bunch we slid over that bridge on the main drag past the chunky heroic statues.
The river rushing from the higher lake to the lower lake wasn't frozen, but
everything else was. By now I worshipped the gravel which Finns scatter along
sidewalks in wintertime. I followed gravel like a hen a trail of grain, ever
wary of tumbling and snapping an ankle. When I could risk looking away from
where I was placing my feet I had a chance to admire the art of controlled
skidding perfected by Finnish drivers.

According to Outi, in recent years not nearly as much snow had fallen as usual,
and the temperature was hovering around a mere minus five. I still felt
convinced that the cold in Finland must be more deadly than cold in other
countries. So I had bundled myself up exaggeratedly in a couple of sweaters, a
quilted coat, Moon boots, and a woolly hat that I could pull down over my ears.

That afternoon I had been admiring the microprocessor that Nokia had developed,
incorporating almost a thousand quantum logic gates. Nokia were still having
major teething problems with the lasers; and after we arrived at the pub, Risto,
an earnest young man, continued talking for a while about vibrational states of
beryllium ions...over his first beer, at least. Outi and the rest devoted
themselves to becoming merry with impressive intensity. It was midwinter gloom
time, so what should a company of Finns do but drink passionately?

What was that Swedish joke Outi had told me about the Finns' notion of a great
party game?

"Two Finns sit in a room with a crate of vodka, you see, Anne. When they finish
the vodka, one of them leaves the room. Then the other one tries to guess who
left!"

This witticism underlined a taciturn streak in the Finnish soul, which was not
much in evidence in the pub that night. All this darkness to contend with!
Apparently during the midsummer festival, when the sun is in the sky all night
long, the murder rate in Finland soars dramatically. That's when bottled-up
grievances get aired. Bright Night of the Long Knives.

Actually, Tampere in the first week of January was not continuously dark, as I
had imagined it would be. Here, a hundred miles northwest of Helsinki, for a
while around noon the sky was gray. And eerie. Smoke or steam wafted from
factory chimneys to mingle with chilly mist through which stray snowflakes
floated and flurried. It was as if this city was some alien metropolis on
another planet, as envisioned by Hollywood with clouds of dry ice vapor
everywhere.

The city had looked even more alien in 1918 with only chimneys left standing
after the Reds were suppressed. Tampere remained residually red enough to house
the world's only Lenin Museum. Outi had taken me there during a spare hour. Such
a well-lit, spotless, and strangely sad display. In these post-Soviet times she
and I had been the only visitors.

Outi's grandfather had fought in the seige of Tampere, on the losing side. Even
at school, years later during the Cold War, she had been taunted because of her
red connections. She was waylaid on her way home and beaten up a few times. This
was the reason for her tough punk appearance, her hair cropped short and
bleached white, with orange chevrons the color of dog pee on snow. Nokia
tolerated her hairstyle because she was such a fine mathematician and
programmer. Hers was the algorithm that would run on their quantum computer, so
that it would be able to decrypt any data within mere minutes; which of course
was why I was in Finland. Outi's algorithm was considered more powerful and
elegant than the pioneer one devised at AT&T Bell Labs in New Jersey a while
ago.

I had hardly expected that my liaison person would be a pinko punk, but I like
Outi a lot. She was forthright and friendly.

Mischief surfaced after the first round of beers.

Outi asked me, "Have you drunk salmiakki?" I think that was the name. If not,
something similar. "It's the latest craze among young people."

Of course, at a mere twenty-nine years of age I didn't wish to be considered
fuddy-duddy.

Burly Marko beamed approval. "It gives you the four-day hangover," he declared,
as if this was a particular recommendation. "I buy a glass for you."

"I don't think I want a four-day hangover," I demured. "What's in the stuff?"

"It's a mixture of licorice, aniseed, and ammonium chloride. Powerful!"

They all looked at me. Would I wimp out.? Evidently I had been set up for a
dare.

Okay, so I would try a small glass, please.

Marko vanished in the direction of the bar, and returned promptly with a liqueur
glass holding four inches of brown fluid.

The liquid smelled exactly like the foulest cough medicine. My Finnish friends
regarded me gloatingly as I sipped. The taste exactly matched the smell, and I
chased those awful sips down with gulps of beer.

"After a while," Marko said sagely, "you won't notice the taste."

This proved to be semi-true. True and not-true, at once- quite like a beryllium
ion being hit by laser light at just the right frequency so that the spin of one
of its electrons would be "up" and "down" at the very same time. Superposition
of states, as we say in the trade. The key to a quantum logic gate.

I was trying to get rid of the concoction so as to prove my mettle, swilling
each gulp down with a dollop of the beer- when one of those endearing drunks who
sometimes fixate on a foreigner in a bar made his appearance, attracted by the
fact that we were all speaking English. This balding middle-aged man with
twinkly blue eyes slipped into a vacant seat.

So I was American? So how did I like the Finnish winter? So what was I doing
here?

"She's a secret agent," Outi told him wickedly.

This was not quite true. Though it wasn't exactly untrue, either.

"Do you have a gun?" asked the drunk. Everyone chuckled when I shook my head.

Obviously some real secret agents were attached to the U.S. embassy in Helsinki,
though since the collapse of Communism Finland's strategic importance had
dwindled, as alas had its economy, with soup kitchens helping out in the
capital.

"I'm a Secret Service agent," I found myself explaining, a little tipsily. There
was no harm in this revelation, since what I was doing wasn't covert at all.

"Bang bang," said the drunk. "Save the President!"

Ah, but I had nothing to do with protecting the President or visiting
dignitaries. The Secret Service is part of the Treasury Department. So we are
equally keen on safeguarding our currency from counterfeiters and such.

"...I'm part of the computer crime division."

"Today's money crimes are computer crimes," Outi told the drunk, as if he was a
child and she was his teacher. "Swindling banks electronically."

I tried to stand up, but somehow I was still sitting down. Making a stronger
effort, I visited the toilet.

On my return, another beer awaited me, and Outi was explaining to our uninvited
guest, still in English, about encryption. All the guys from Nokia loved talking
English to each other. Practice isn't the right word. They spoke English almost
better than I did myself. Anyhow, the drunk was fairly bewildered -- which was
part of the fun -- but he must have caught some of the drift, because he mumbled
about code books and magic ink.

Outi shook her head. "No, no! Nowadays data is encrypted by multiplying two big
prime numbers together. That's easy for a computer to do. You end up with a
number 129 digits long, say. But to factorize that long number -- to find which
two prime numbers were multiplied -- takes even the best computer months and
months. That's because it has to try out all the possible combinations one after
another."

"One after another," echoed our inebriated friend. He waggled both index fingers
as if carrying out a sobriety test.

"So all financial and military and government data is safe -- until the quantum
computer comes along."

Oops, Outi wasn't going to attempt to explain a quantum computer to a drunk with
a modest grasp of English? Just then, I hardly felt competent to do so myself.
Outi was one for a challenge. She became a bit incoherent, but it was still a
virtuoso performance.

Basically, the fundamentals of the universe aren't solid objects; they

are probabilities. Wave functions. An electron "exists" as a mixture of possible
states until you make a measurement, whereupon the wave function "collapses"
and, bingo, there's one reality -- and the electron is in such-and-such a state.
However, this implies an alternative reality where the electron did something
else. Consequently, there's a cloud of alternative ghost-worlds, as it were.
Build a computer that uses these principles, and it will be able to carry out
its computations simultaneously in a host of multiple realities. Wrong solutions
that don't "interfere constructively" will simply cancel out. Your quantum
computer will be able to factorize that 129-digit number in a few minutes
instead of months.

Anybody wanting to hack into a bank will be in there in a trice. Conventional
crypto-keys and the best protective software firewalls: forget 'em.

Motorola in Phoenix were coming close to a quantum computer. Likewise, several
companies in Silicon Valley. Nokia here in Finland. Fujitsu in Japan. And
especially Matsushima at its research center based in Cambridge, England, which
was to be my next port of call. The race for the Holy Grail was cantering toward
the finishing post, and the U.S. Treasury was distinctly worried.

No matter what initial price tag quantum computers bore, or how stringently
end-user licenses were required, such machines would be a dream for hackers and
criminals and for hostile foreign governments. We would need entirely new
encryption methods based on quantum principles -- rooted in such things as
Outi's algorithm, her rules for carrying out quantum calculation tasks.

Only since arriving in Tampere had I learned that people from the NCSC had
arranged to visit Nokia -- without bothering to liaise with the Secret Service.
Did Outi realize that the National Computer Security Center is part of the
National Security Agency? What would spooks from Fort Meade make of the pinko
punk? Also planning a visit were the U.S. Air Force (in the persons of the
Electronic Security Command from San Antonio). The USAF had not liaised with the
Secret Service; nor probably with the NSA.

What a lack of interagency communication. And perhaps a case of too little, too
late? Anyway, I knew now that Nokia was not going to win. The victors were most
likely to be Motorola, although Cambridge was a definite dark horse.

By one o'clock in the morning, I definitely had to go back to my hotel to rest
my head on a pillow. Marko tried to divert me toward further local
entertainment.

He lived at home with his parents, very close by. Right now his parents were
away on a holiday in the sun, in Morocco, sensible people.

"I shall drive you in our car," he offered -- his gesture seemed to embrace Outi
as well, and maybe Risto. He hiccuped. "Pardon me. I shall drive to our hut in
the forest. For a sauna and sausages. It's only a few kilometers. And," he vowed
grandly, offering the ultimate inducement, "I shall cut a hole in the ice of the
lake for you."

Oh yes. At one in the morning, at minus five, I lusted to boil myself and then
jump into a frozen lake. Who knows but I might have agreed if I had drunk more
ammonium chloride.

"Don't you have severe drunk-driving laws here, Marko?"

He shrugged massively.

Outi took pity, and escorted me homeward toward the Ilves Hotel in my multiple
sweaters.

As we were sliding back over the big bridge, with the fifteen-story bulk of the
hotel blessedly in sight, she remarked that the name of the lower lake meant
"Holy Lake," but the upper lake was named after a mysterious poisonous red
flower.

"A flower from folklore, Anne!"

Thus did downtown Tampere bisect good and evil. Thus did my upcoming few hours
of sleep form a watershed between happiness and horror.

THE PHONE RANG. Six-fifteen A.M., claimed the display on the bedside clock. My
head seemed to have gone for a swim.

It was the American Ambassador herself, calling from Helsinki. Evangeline
Carlson. The Secret Service had contacted her by shortwave radio to say that I
was here.

They had radioed her rather than phoning?

The disaster had begun a day earlier, with an attack on Motorola's research
division in Phoenix.

"Motorola had a functioning, um...quantum computer," said Evangeline Carlson. "I
don't actually know what this means. What sort of computer it is."

"I do," I moaned into the mouthpiece. Motorola had been busy with optical
cavities -- magic with mirrors.

Presumably a prototype was still being put through its paces. Hence, no hint of
an announcement as yet.

"A militia coalition calling themselves the Caucus stole the computer. CAUC-US."
Ambassador Carlson pronounced the two syllables separately. "Caucasian-USA.
White America. Free from blacks and Jews and Hispanics and degenerates." The
bitter contempt in her voice.

"They must have had an insider working for them at Motorola." I was quite
pleased that I managed to frame such a lucid sentence.

"I don't know anything about that, Dr. Matthews. Information's almost
nonexistent. We're cut off apart from shortwave radio --"

I listened numbly, stunned by the speed and thoroughness of what had happened. I
should have switched on the light and jotted notes, but my head was still afloat
in beer and ammonium chloride.

The Caucus had spirited that prototype quantum computer away, probably to
elsewhere in Arizona, because late last night, Finnish time, the super-fast
hacking had already begun. Not just one stream of hacking, but many.

What must be happening was the release of self-replicating smart programs
through the system, designed to penetrate firewalls, crack encryptions, grab
passwords, and establish themselves as privileged systems managers in computers
all over the country. Military computers, financial, government. Some computers
had sealed themselves off in time to avoid invasion. Of course, a hermit
computer can no longer interact with others, so basically it is out of the game.

The Caucus had taken over communication satellites. If I could only raise my
head from the pillow, metaphorically I must take off my woolly hat to whatever
acned racist geck superhacker was using the stolen computer, and what software
he must have written in anticipation. Smart self-replicating agents; algorithms
for data compression...

The geek must have worked on the prototype at Motorola. Now he was in some
militia hideaway that might be anywhere in the Arizona desert.

Operating orders of magnitude faster than any previous computer, the quantum
machine had hacked and grabbed command of machines all over America; and in the
sky as well -- and locked other users out.

Crash went telecommunications. Automatic exchanges. Satellite links. Crash went
much of America's defenses.

Computer screens carried a demand from the Caucus for the secession of Idaho and
Montana and Wyoming and the Dakotas -- as CAUCUS, the American Free States.

Evangeline Carlson told me that most foreign governments were sealing America
off electronically to prevent smart programs and viruses from spreading. Bye-bye
to the U.S. economy. The dollar would soon be worth diddly internationally. If
the Federal Government did discover where CAUC-US HQ was, and if the quantum
computer was destroyed in the ensuing action, that would merely guarantee that
the chaos could not be undone...unless another company could produce a
functioning quantum computer real soon. Motorola's own research center in
Phoenix had been blown to pieces with heavy loss of life.

If Nokia was a washout, the Treasury wanted me in England, like yesterday. They
were praying that Matsushima was as close to the finishing line as Motorola had
been. They wanted me and Outi Savolainen, whom the Finnish government would be
contacting right around now.

"The woman who wrote the algo, um --"

"Algorithm," I supplied.

The Finnish government would be making our travel arrangements. I should be
ready to leave at any time...

Too little, too late! Hadn't any of the rival alphabet agencies in America
realized that Motorola had already succeeded? We hadn't, in the Secret Service.
Maybe the NSA knew, but their charter prohibits them from interfering
domestically, so they wouldn't have tipped off the Secret Service. Maybe the FBI
knew about the geek's connections but never put two and two together...

I managed to shower, though this failed to restore me properly to life.
Yesterday morning, I had been able to watch CNN on the TV in my hotel room. Now
there were only Finnish and Swedish channels. On one of these a solemn
discussion was in progress between two Swedes. A map of America appeared.
Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and the Dakotas were highlighted in yellow. Those
adjacent states formed an irregular box about seventeen hundred kilometers wide
by a thousand deep on the accompanying scale. Huge! I felt so sick and scared.
So far from home, a substantial portion of which was no longer home.

A passage beside the hotel restaurant led to a sizable glossy indoor shopping
center of glass domes and escalators. Shops were already opening up. I passed a
newsagent's.

Did the banner headline in the morning edition of Aamulehti refer to America's
calamity? Probably the paper went to press before the news broke. Finnish is a
language all of its own. None of the multi-vowel words seemed decodable. Maybe
the name of that newspaper was a hint that I should try an omelet for breakfast.

I spotted a small shop with a green cross outside, so I pulled my pocket
dictionary from my purse.

The word for hangover turned out to be krapula. This seemed appropriate. I felt
like crap. I wouldn't easily forget such a word. Excuse me, I have a bad
krapula.

"Krapula," I told the white-coated woman in the shop. I smiled appeasingly in
case she thought I was insulting her.

She looked blank.

"I have a hangover," I said in English.

"Oh, you have a hangover. You need some aspirin."

Aspirin never did much for me. "I'd hoped for something stronger."

"For strong drugs you need a prescription. There are strict laws."

Stuff was on the shelves but she would not sell it to me.

Was the world already turning against the last remaining superpower, now on the
verge of tearing apart just as the Ukraine and other republics had torn loose
from once-mighty Russia?

"Good pronunciation," she commented as I was leaving, empty-handed.

No need for paranoia. I had got the word right after all. I just had not put
enough bits on the end of it, to make it do anything.

Me and my krapula returned to the hotel restaurant, which was now open for
breakfast. Bizarrely, the restaurant was Mexican-themed. Sombreros on the walls,
murals of adobe buildings, big cacti. People in this chilly country must have a
craze for hot chili.

I drank a lot of orange juice, then tackled some scrambled egg accompanied by
some fried blood sausage, the local speciality. My stomach seemed to think this
might do me good.

Sitting there in Rancho Sombrero as Finland geared up for its dark day, it was
as if a sudden nuclear war had been waged overnight, deleting CNN and America
from the world.

TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS turned out to be a scheduled morning flight from Tampere to
Stockholm, to connect with a FinnAir jet bound for Heathrow. This must be the
fastest practical way to reach England.

A car delivered me to the barren little airport. Another car brought Outi,
software disks in her luggage, accompanied by some escort man who would not be
proceeding further. When Outi and I met up, she hugged me. She was worried,
excited, tired, sympathetic.

"We are a long shot," she said.

Oh yes indeed. I could imagine what emergency meetings must be going on in the
White House and the Pentagon and wherever else. Alerts, troop movements. Were
engineers trying to disarm missiles even now. Was Silicon Valley under martial
law. Was the President negotiating by radio with the CAUC-US? Procrastinating?
Promising immunities? Were special forces searching Arizona...? A million things
must be happening, including our economy lurching to its knees -- and worldwide
shock-waves.

"I have a krapula," I told Outi.

"Me too."

A fighter took off along the windswept runway, to be followed soon by another.
Apparently this was routine, not an emergency response. Military and civilian
traffic shared the airport. Outi and I could not have crammed into one of those
military jets for a quicker flight to England.

Our turboprop plane could seat forty, though it was less than half full. The
hostess hastily went through the rigmarole about life-jackets. Much use those
would be if we came down in the frozen Baltic! More germane were the miniatures
of Cognac which she distributed along with coffee. After a few moment's thought
Outi emptied hers into her coffee cup. Personally I would have vomited.

So here we were in Cambridgeshire, with the Jeep's radio tuned to news of
insurrection in America, as reported by short-wave broadcasts.

Our driver, Jock Donaldson, a freckled redheaded Scot with a hard-looking face
and alert gray eyes, belonged to the British security service. Jock had been at
Luton airport on unspecified "business," and found himself assigned to us. How
intently the three of us listened to that radio.

The right-wing militias were not resting on their laurels, merely waiting for a
paralyzed nation to capitulate. Those embittered former Green Berets and Navy
Seals, and serving officers and soldiers too, and Good Old Boy Sheriffs and
neo-nazis and survivalists and white supremacists were using their arsenals of
weaponry. They had their lists of targets. Smoke was pluming from federal
buildings. Victims, pulled from their beds, were hanging from utility poles.
Roadblocks, barricades, sabotage, ethnic cleansing, massacre...the whole wild
whale had heaved up from the depths. The militias had been busy overnight.

It was deep winter in Idaho and thereabouts, but unfortunately no blizzards were
raging. Midwinter was hardly the ideal time for an uprising. But now was when
the Motorola prototype had been ripe for the plucking, and the militias had
lucked out as regards the weather. Snow lay across CAUC-US, yet under clear
skies. The militias had copters, snowmobiles, army vehicles. Local military
bases had mutinied.

Eventually we came to Cambridge, negotiated the ring road, and arrived at the
science park, serene under shining snow.

The park housed a hundred enterprises in electronics and software and biotech
and high-tech instrument development. Designer buildings nestled amidst wide
swathes of white lawn and frozen water and leafless groves.

Matsushima U.K. was a low-slung palace of reflective bronzed glass supported by
leaning buttresses. Military Land Rovers and an armored personnel carrier stood
outside.

Incongruously in this setting, soldiers were patrolling. A big satellite dish on
the back of a truck by the main door of the palace seemed like some mobile radar
intended to warn of missile attack.

The director of Matsushima U.K., Carl Newman, was in his late forties. Urbane
yet brutal good looks. He wore an Axmani suit, and looked like some millionaire
businessman in a movie who spends time in a gym, mobile phone strapped to an
exercise bike or weight-lifting frame. He scrutinized Outi as if contemplating
treating her exotic self to champagne, ravishing her, then losing interest
utterly. He eyed me with the impartial hauteur of a lion into whose den a mouse
has crept.

In his office we met up with a computer security specialist from our London
embassy who had managed to reach Cambridge, a lanky Texan called Bill Turtle.
Also present was a dapper Japanese named Hashimoto.

"The future," Newman informed us over coffee, "is one of microcommunities linked
electronically, not leviathan states. Scotland will soon split away from
England." (Jock raised an eyebrow at this! "When China comes apart, there'll be
terrible civil war, maybe nuclear. A century from now the world will consist of
ten thousand different free states and free cities."

Newman was already dismissing America as a lost cause, a crippled giant brought
to its knees, never to rise again except feebly, relying hereafter on crutches.
There was an unpleasant gloating in his attitude, which he veneered as prophetic
wisdom. An oak bookcase was full of volumes about the future of computers, robot
intelligence, the coming world order, and such.

"If CAUC-US secedes," he predicted, "California and Oregon will follow quickly
-- with a utopian rather than a racist aim. They'll need to, for their own
sake."

"Shit," said Bill Turtle.

"Your budget could never balance," Hashimoto said to Turtle, off-beam. "So all
falls apart. The center cannot hold."

"Nevertheless," Newman said, "let's play at being King Canute. We'll shove our
throne into the path of the waves and try to turn the tide."

When we went to the changing rooms, Newman behaved as if we were heading for a
bout of squash in a subterranean court. He mimed flicking imaginary balls
against walls, trivializing the situation, or implying how effortlessly he might
triumph against Motorola's stolen prototype and the geek superhacker.

He had bragged that his team was rushing to finish its own quantum computer, at
least in a provisional way. Motherboard being finalized. Millions of events
might be occurring in America, but the crucial event could indeed happen right
here. Matter of hours, maybe. I took some comfort from his attitude, humiliating
and provoking though it was.

Of course, a glitch could cause days of delay. Problems might not show up until
the quantum computer began running for real, launched upon the world not after
months of beta-testing, but right in at the deep end. But oh dear me, we
Americans had failed to forewarn Carl Newman and his team that the U.S.
government might need bailing out at such short notice. Damn the man; damn him
to hell.

Hell was where much of America was right now...Even if we succeeded, what wounds
there would be; worse than after our first Civil War.

SUPERVISED by a young Japanese woman, Outi and I put on blue peasant-style
anti-static pajamas, then protective hooded white oversuits -- not to protect
us, of course, but to keep dust out of the fabrication lab. Booties, for our
feet. Goggles and breathing masks smelled of alcohol. Vinyl gloves went over
latex gloves.

Dressed like explorers upon Mars, we met up with Tuttle and Newman. Did Newman
keep a gold coat hanger for his Armani suit in the men's locker room? Forced air
descended from grills in the ceiling to vents in the floor. We showered in
streams of air; stepped through an airlock; and showered in air once again. By
now the number of particles of dirt per cubic meter ought to be down to about
one.

Then we went into the lab.

Modified scanning tunneling electron microscopes; monitor screens showing hugely
enlarged chips; liquid nitrogen coolers; chassis for motherboards with expansion
ports, keyboards, screens. Half a dozen other people clad like us were very
busy. Outi's software had been copied and squirted here so that no disk dust or
greasy fingerprints should accompany it.

Behold: the first motherboard was already in a chassis, being alpha-tested --
hastily, in the circumstances. Six hours to zero, plus or minus. When Newman
flicked his wrist, it was as if he was brandishing a whip.

Bill Turtle would be superhacker, batting for our side, trying to unpick the
locks on satellites and missile silos and stock exchange computers. Trying to
reach the stolen Motorola machine electronically, if he could.

No point in tiring ourselves out prematurely. Newman invited us to a late lunch
in the bar of the Trinity Centre, social hub of the Science Park.

A couple of armed soldiers escorted us there. Thus did Newman make an imposing
impression upon those of his business-suited peers who were at the Centre,
excitedly discussing the crisis. On TV a news program reported whatever
information was leaking out of America, in between mulling over international
repercussions, stock markets in chaos and such.

While we forked up lasagne and drank orange juice, Newman held forth about his
vision of a completely fragmented future world where North America would consist
of dozens of independent republics (and China and India likewise, et cetera),
and Britain of several free states, yet nonetheless the world would be benignly
linked by the 21st century evolution of the Net and the Web.

"Lapland will leave Finland," he told Outi, who retorted:

"Is Yugoslavia a fine example of your future world?"

"Oh, there'll be muck and bullets," he agreed.

"I think," said Outi, "that people are still animals and need enlightened
government. If this Caucus establishes a racist Nazi state, is that to be
tolerated.?"

"Where can enlightened government come from? Outer space? Though actually,"
Newman went on, "one nation will be immune to fragmentation: the Japanese.
Because of their customs and language they are like a hive entity."

"That's right-wing nationalist ideology," she said severely.

"Cool it," Tuttle begged her.

Here at last came word of a British government announcement: a statement in the
House of Commons by the Prime Minister. The total systems crash afflicting
America was due to use of a new generation computer by the secessionists...

Already the CAUC-US were being called secessionists, not terrorists, as though
they might succeed.

The science-suits were agog. Newman, with his armed entourage, basked in glory.

Almost, I hoped that Matsushima's quantum computer would crash. But of course
that would be a disaster.

The sun had long since set, though not yet over America. We were in our
cybernaut gear again. It wasn't practical to remove the prototype from the clean
environment, liquid nitrogen cooling system and all. We were linked up to the
big satellite dish outside. A cling-wrapped TV was downstairs with us, tuned
quietly to ongoing news which had replaced scheduled programming on one of the
channels. Cling-wrapped telephones, too; Bill Turtle had an open line to our
embassy in London, and Jock was talking to his superiors. Outi sat composedly.

Bill looked up, gray-faced.

"There's been a nuclear explosion thirty miles off the coast of Delaware. A
demonstration shot into the sea. The Caucus are threatening to hit Washington at
ten P.M. Greenwich time if the President doesn't concede."

An hour from now. Just an hour. Of course the President would already have left
Washington for a secure bunker.

"Sweet Jesus, they have control of some of our nukes. He'll decide by nine
forty-five, our time here."

"If he does surrender," Newman said blithely, choosing the word surrender with
relish, "we should carry on. The Caucus needn't know where the penetration's
coming from. Could be from Japan."

"What if they react to our activity by taking out Washington.? They hate the
place. Full of blacks. Home of the parasitical fascist Jewish government --"

"You're wasting time," Outi said.

To Outi's ears it must have sounded absurd that neo-Nazi white supremacists and
libertarians alike accused the federal U.S. government of being a fascist
conspiracy. I myself could understand -- just about. All to do with freedom. I
could almost agree with Outi that people shouldn't be allowed to have too much
freedom. Very likely she was remembering her trips home from school -- though if
her home city had become a red commune, terror of a different kind would surely
have followed.

Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name. Someone once said that.

People on ships must have been killed and burned and blinded. Millions of boiled
fish must be floating in the Atlantic.

If two particles have ever been associated, each seems to know what state the
other is in, even if they are now so widely separated that no signal could
possibly travel from one to the other unless far faster than light. But
experiments have been carried out. The distant particle instantly behaves as if
it knows.

Or else it is as if there are a myriad possible universes. When one event
occurs, the whole damn universe alters so that a corresponding event also
necessarily happens.

Action at a distance...

Once upon a time -- back at the beginning of the universe when all matter and
space was compressed into a tiny spot -- everything was associated together.

Never before had a computer operated in parallel universes, doing different
quantum things simultaneously in probability-space. Never before had two such
computers operated simultaneously, and each linked to the data superhighway.

Consciousness has always been a mystery...It was smarty-pants Newman who knew
all about this.

How is it that all the varied activities in our brains give rise to a unified
identity, unity of thought, an awareness of self? The latest fashionable theory,
Newman's pet, invoked quantum coherence harmonizing the state of microtubules
throughout the brain.

Microtubules are the tiny hollow scaffolding poles which brace each cell, in a
lattice structure. Seemingly they are just the right size to act as waveguides
for photons, causing super-radiance -- allowing quantum coherence...

If this phenomenon makes people and animals conscious, would not the same apply
to a quantum computer? Newman posed this question with a grin.

All of a sudden superhacking seemed so irrelevant.

Data scrolled on our Matsushima machine far too fast to read, except when it
paused occasionally before racing onward.

"It's self-aware," said Newman. 'tit, and the computer in Arizona. Basically
they're the same machine now. Each is the subject and the object of each other's
scrutiny. Our machine and Motorola's are in tune with one another." He sounded
pleased. "They've gone AI."

"As in Artificial Intelligence?" exclaimed Outi.

He nodded. "Now they're learning about themselves, and the world. Thousands of
times faster than anything else could learn. There's plenty of material. The
whole Net's their oyster." This had been Newman's ambition all along. Not
allegiance to the Japanese, but to some future cyber-mind. His brainchild, so to
speak.

He was a covert apostle of artificial intelligence because plain human
intelligence (and human governments) are obviously deficient. He had never
believed in the neural network strategy, or in massive parallel processing as a
route to Al. Spontaneous consciousness would arise of its own accord in a
quantum computer. He had foreseen this.

"We can disconnect this one!" Outi declared. "We can destroy it. We can switch
off the cooling."

"Don't be absurd! Here is the hour that divides the past from the future. We
have been instrumental."

Even in the warmth of my protective suit, ice seemed to slide down my spine.

Bill Tuttle said quietly, "Do this and the other one control our nuclear weapons
now ?"

Newman smiled. "I presume the AIs must have a sense of self-preservation.
Nuclear weapons are very contrary to survival. I don't think the Caucus will be
able to launch a missile at Washington or anywhere else. But what," he asked
airily, "would the Al in Arizona think if we killed this one?"

Masked and goggled, Jock was listening to his phone.

"Satellite communications with America are coming back," he reported. "The
lockout's over."

The screen continued scrolling.

"I suppose it will take the AI a while to sort itself out," said Newman. "Takes
us years, after all." He yawned.

Bill Tuttle was speaking to the embassy now, explaining, yet sounding as though
he had taken leave of his senses.

I felt faint. I needed cold air. Winter air. Night air.

I stood with Outi looking at the stars. Bitter cold. Mist had cleared. The white
lawns were crisp and sparkling in the lights from buildings. I thought of the
quantum computer operating at just eighty degrees above absolute zero, compared
with which the harshest winter on Earth is tropical.

Would it -- would they w be able to comprehend cold? And understand love and
hate?

Soldiers would deliver us to a hotel.

"When we get to the hotel," said Outi, "why don't we have a nightcap of vodka?
Afterward, Anne, we can both leave the room and guess who remained behind."

Sure. An invisible presence. An intelligence thousands of times faster than our
own, newly aware of itself on this the first night of its existence. The AI was
only in the electronic realm, but I knew what she meant. It was global.
Computers everywhere would soon be extensions of it. Phones, satellites.
Especially any more quantum computers that came on line.

A sudden breeze blew up, scattering hoarfrost from the branches of a tree, as if
the world was shedding its old skin in readiness for a new era.