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A Power that Would Be Called Magic if it Were Not so Completely Rational in Every Way

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Excerpt from the novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12 by Robert M. Parsig icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12

Robert M. Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" book cover. [Formatted]

     On this machine I’ve done the tuning so many times it’s become a ritual. I don’t have to think much about how to do it anymore. Just mainly look for anything unusual. The engine has picked up a noise that sounds like a loose tappet but could be something worse, so I’m going to tune it now and see if it goes away. Tappet adjustment has to be done with the engine cold, which means wherever you park it for the night is where you work on it the next morning, which is why I’m on a shady curbstone back of a hotel in Miles City, Montana. Right now the air is cool in the shade and will be for an hour or so until the sun gets around the tree branches, which is good for working on cycles. It’s important not to tune these machines in the direct sun or late in the when your brain gets muddy because even if you’ve been through it a hundred times you should be alert and looking for things.
     Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it’s some kind of a “knack” or some kind of “affinity for machines” in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process of reason, and most of the troubles are caused by what old time radio men called a “short between the earphones,” failures to use the head properly. A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. I said yesterday that the ghost of rationality was what Phaedrus pursued and what led to his insanity, but to get into that it’s vital to stay with down-to-earth examples of rationality, so as not to get lost in generalities no one else can understand. Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.
     We are at the classic-romantic barrier now, where on one side we see a cycle as it appears immediately—and this is an important way of seeing it—and where on the other side we can begin to see it as a mechanic does in terms of underlying form—and this is an important way of seeing things too. These tools for example—this wrench—has a certain romantic beauty to it, but its purpose is always purely classical. It’s designed to change the underlying form of the machine.
     The porcelain inside this first plug is very dark. That is classically as well as romantically ugly because it means the cylinder is getting too much gas and not enough air. The carbon molecules in the gasoline aren’t finding enough oxygen to combine with and they’re just sitting here loading up the plug. Coming into town yesterday the idle was loping a little, which is a symptom of the same thing.
     Just to see if it’s just the one cylinder that’s rich I check the other one. They’re both the same. I get out a pocket knife, grab a stick lying in the gutter and whittle down the end to clean out the plugs, wondering what could be the cause of the richness. That wouldn’t have anything to do with rods or valves. And carbs rarely go out of adjustment. The main jets are oversized, which causes richness at high speeds but the plugs were a lot cleaner than this before with the same jets. Mystery. You’re always surrounded by them. But if you tried to solve them all, you’d never get the machine fixed. There’s no immediate answer so I just leave it as a hanging question.
     The first tappet is right on, no adjustment required, so I move on to the next. Still plenty of time before the sun gets past those trees… I always feel like I’m in church when I do this… The gauge is some kind of religious icon and I’m performing a holy rite with it. It is a member of a set called “precision measuring instruments” which in a classic sense has a profound meaning.
     In a motorcycle this precision isn’t maintained for any romantic or perfectionist reasons. It’s simply that the enormous forces of heat and explosive pressure inside this engine can only be controlled through the kind of precision these instruments give. When each explosion takes place it drives a connecting rod onto the crankshaft with a surface pressure of many tons per square inch. If the fit of the rod to the crankshaft is precise the explosion force will be transferred smoothly and the metal will be able to stand it. But if the fit is loose by a distance of only a few thousandths of an inch the force will be delivered suddenly, like a hammer blow, and the rod, bearing and crankshaft surface will soon be pounded flat, creating a noise which at first sounds a lot like loose tappets. That’s the reason I’m checking it now. If it is a loose rod and I try to make it to the mountains without an overhaul, it will soon get louder and louder until the rod tears itself free, slams into the spinning crankshaft and destroys the engine. Sometimes broken rods will pile right down through the crankcase and dump all the oil onto the road. All you can do then is start walking.
     But all this can be prevented by a few thousandths of an inch fit which precision measuring instruments give, and this is their classical beauty—not what you see, but what they mean—what they are capable of in terms of control of underlying form.
     The second tappet’s fine. I swing over to the street side of the machine and start on the other cylinder.
     Precision instruments are designed to achieve an idea, dimensional precision, whose perfection is impossible. There is no perfectly shaped part of the motorcycle and never will be, but when you come as close as these instruments take you, remarkable things happen, and you go flying across the countryside under a power that would be called magic if it were not so completely rational in every way. It’s the understanding of this rational intellectual idea that’s fundamental. John looks at the motorcycle and he sees steel in various shapes and has negative feelings about these steel shapes and turns off the whole thing. I look at the shapes of the steel now and I see ideas. He thinks I’m working on parts. I’m working on concepts.
     I was talking about these concepts yesterday when I said that a motorcycle can be divided according to its components and according to its functions. When I said that suddenly I created a set of boxes with the following arrangement:

  • MOTORCYCLE
    • COMPONENTS
    • FUNCTIONS

And when I said the components may be subdivided into a power assembly and a running assembly, suddenly appear some more little boxes:

  • MOTOCYCLE
    • COMPONENTS
      • POWER ASSEMBLY
      • RUNNING ASSEMBLY
    • FUNCTIONS

     And you see that every time I made a further division, up came more boxes based on these divisions until I had a huge pyramid of boxes. Finally you see that while I was splitting the cycle up into finer and finer pieces, I was also building a structure.
     This structure of concepts is formally called a hierarchy and since ancient times has been a basic structure for all Western knowledge. Kingdoms, empires, churches, armies have all been structured into hierarchies. Modern businesses are so structured. Tables of contents of reference material are so structured, mechanical assemblies, computer software, all scientific and technical knowledge is so structured—so much so that in some fields such as biology, the hierarchy of kingdom-phylum-class-order-family-genus-species is almost an icon.
     This box “motorcycle” contains the boxes “components” and “functions.” The box “components” contains the boxes “power assembly” and “running assembly,” and so on. There are many other kinds of structures produced by other operators such as “causes” which produce long chain structures of the form, “A causes B which causes C which causes D,” and so on. A functional description of the motorcycle uses this structure. The operators “exists,” “equals,” and “implies” produce still other structures. These structures are normally interrelated in patterns and paths so complex and so enormous no one person can understand more than a small part of them in his lifetime. The overall name of these interrelated structures, the genus of which the hierarchy of containment and structure of causation are just species, is system. The motorcycle is a system. A real system.
     To speak of certain government and establishment institutions as “the system” is to speak correctly, since these organizations are founded upon the same structural conceptual relationships as a motorcycle. They are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all other meaning and purpose. People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question and because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, no “mean guy” who wants them to live meaningless lives, it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless.
     But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.
     That’s all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel. There’s no part in it, no shape in it, that is not out of someone’s mind… number three tappet is right on too. One more to go. This had better be it…. I’ve noticed that people who have never worked with steel have trouble seeing this—that the motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon. They associate metal with given shapes—pipes, rods, girders, tools, parts—all of them fixed and inviolable, and think of it as primarily physical. But a person who does machining or foundry work or forge work or welding sees “steel” as having no shape at all. Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not. Shapes, like this tappet, are what you arrive at, what you give to the steel. Steel has no more shape than this old pile of dirt on the engine here. These shapes are all out of someone’s mind. That’s important to see. The steel? Hell, even the steel is out of someone’s mind. There’s no steel in nature. Anyone from the Bronze Age could have told you that. All nature has is a potential for steel. There’s nothing else there. But what’s “potential”? That’s also in someone’s mind!… Ghosts.
     That’s really what Phaedrus was talking about when he said it’s all in the mind. It sounds insane when you just jump up and say it without reference to anything specific like an engine. But when you tie it down to something specific and concrete, the insane sound tends to disappear and you see he could have been saying something of importance.
     The fourth tappet is too loose, which is what I had hoped. I adjust it. I check the timing and see that it is still right on and the points are not pitted, so I leave them alone, screw on the valve covers, replace the plugs and start it up.
     The tappet noise is gone, but that doesn’t mean much yet while the oil is still cold. I let it idle while I pack the tools away, then climb on and head for a cycle shop a cyclist on the street told us about last night where they may have a chain adjuster link, and a new foot-peg rubber. Chris must have nervous feet. His foot pegs keep wearing out.
     I go a couple of blocks and still no tappet noise. It’s beginning to sound good, I think it’s gone. I won’t come to any conclusions until we’ve gone about thirty miles though. But until then, and right now, the sun is bright, the air is cool, my head is clear, there’s a whole day ahead of us, we’re almost to the mountains, it’s a good day to be alive. It’s this thinner air that does it. You always feel like this when you start getting into higher altitudes.
     The altitude! That’s why the engine’s running rich. Sure, that’s got to be the reason. We’re at twenty-five hundred feet now, I’d better switch to standard jets. They take only a few minutes to put in. And lean out the idle adjustment a little. We’ll be getting up a lot higher than this.
     Under some shady trees I find Bill’s Cycle Shop but no Bill.A passerby says he has “maybe gone fishing somewhere,” leaving his shop wide open. We really are in the West. No one would leave a shop like this open in Chicago or New York.
     Inside I see that Bill is a mechanic of the “photographic mind” school. Everything lying around everywhere. Wrenches, screwdrivers, old parts, old motorcycles, new parts, new motorcycles, sales literature, inner tubes, all scattered so thickly and clutteredly you can’t even see the workbenches under them. I couldn’t work in conditions like this but that’s just because I’m not a photographic-mind mechanic. Bill can probably turn around and put his hand on any tool in this mess without having to think about where it is. I’ve seen mechanics like that. Drive you crazy to watch them, but they get the job done just as well and sometimes faster. Move one tool three inches to the left though, and he’ll have to spend days looking for it.
     Bill arrives with a grin about something. Sure, he’s got some jets for my machine and knows right where they are. I’ll have to wait a second though. He’s got to close a deal out in the back on some Harley parts. I go with him out in a shed in back and see he is selling a whole Harley machine in used parts, except for the frame, which the customer already has. He is selling them all for $125. Not a bad price at all.
     Coming back I comment, “He’ll know something about motorcycles before he gets those together.”
     Bill laughs. “And that’s the best way to learn, too.”
     He has the jets and foot-peg rubber but no chain adjuster link. I get the rubber and jets installed, take the lump out of the idle and ride back to the hotel.
     Sylvia and John and Chris are just coming down the stairs with their stuff as I arrive. Their faces indicate they’re in the same good mood I’m in. We head down the main street, find a restaurant and order steaks for lunch.
     “This is a great town,” John says, “really great. Surprised there were any like this left. I was looking all over this morning. They’ve got stockmen’s bars, high-top boots, silver-dollar belt buckles, Levis, Stetsons, the whole thing… and it’s real. It isn’t just Chamber of Commerce stuff…. In the bar down the block this morning they just started talking to me like I’d lived here all my life.”
     We order a round of beers. I see by a horseshoe sign on the wall we’re into Olympia beer territory now, and order that.
     “They must have thought I was off a ranch or something,” John continues. “And this one old guy was talking away about how he wasn’t going to give a thing to the goddam boys, and I really enjoyed that. The ranch was going to go to the girls, ’cause the goddam boys spend every cent they got down at Suzie’s.” John breaks up with laughter. “Sorry he ever raised ’em, and so on. I thought all that stuff disappeared thirty years ago, but it’s still here.”
     The waitress comes with the steaks and we knife right into them. That work on the cycle has given me an appetite.
     “Something else that ought to interest you,” John says. “They were talking in the bar about Bozeman, where we’re going. They said the governor of Montana had a list of fifty radical college professors at the college in Bozeman he was going to fire. Then he got killed in a plane crash.”
     “That was a long time ago,” I answer. These steaks really are good.
     “I didn’t know they had a lot of radicals in this state.”
     “They’ve got all kinds of people in this state,” I say. “But that was just right-wing politics.”
     John helps himself to some more salt. He says, “A Washington newspaper columnist came through and put it in his column yesterday, and that’s why they were all talking about it. The president of the college confirmed it.”
     “Did they print the list?”
     “I don’t know. Did you know any of them?”
     “If they had fifty names,” I say, “mine must have been one.”
     They both look at me with some surprise. I don’t know much about it, actually. It was him, of course, and with some feeling of falseness because of this I explain that a “radical” in Gallatin County, Montana, is a little different from a radical somewhere else.
     “This was a college,” I tell them, “where the wife of the president of the United States was actually banned because she was ‘too controversial.'”
     “Who?”
     “Eleanor Roosevelt.”
     “Oh my God,” John laughs, “that must have been wild.”
     They want to hear more but it’s hard to say anything. Then I remember one thing: “In a situation like that a real radical’s actually got a perfect setup. He can do almost anything and get away with it because his opposition have already made asses out of themselves. They’ll make him look good no matter what he says.”
     On the way out we pass a city park which I noticed last night, and which produced a memory concurrence. Just a vision of looking up into some trees. He had slept on that park bench one night on his way through to Bozeman. That’s why I didn’t recognize that forest yesterday. He’d come through at night, on his way to the college at Bozeman.

He Told the Interviewer that if He Must Die Young, He had at Least Created the Most Unique Sculpture in the World Before He Left

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Excerpt from the novel Rising Storm icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12 by S.M. Stirling icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12

S.M. Stirling's "Rising Storm" book cover. [Formatted]

VON ROSSBACH ESTANCIA, PARAGUAY

     Dieter entered the living room, where John half lay on the couch, reading a manual on source codes, a beam of bright sunlight spearing through one of the high clerestory windows to bring out the slight reddish hints in his dark hair. The Austrian dropped a package into the young man’s lap.
     John started as though he’d been asleep and looked from the package to von Rossbach. “What’s this?” he asked.
     “A package,” Dieter said, with the slight edge of sarcasm.
     John snorted. “Thanks!” he said, and rose. “I’ll be in my room if you want me.”
     Sarah came in just as he was leaving and he leaned over on his way out to kiss her cheek. Her eyes widened and she turned to watch him go, then turned back to von Rossbach, her eyebrows raised in inquiry.
     “Something came in the mail from that girl in Boston,” he explained, sitting down in one of the leather chairs, the rest of the mail in his lap.
     “Ahhhh,” Sarah said thoughtfully. She moved slowly into the room. “What girl?”
     This time Dieter’s brows rose. “He didn’t tell you about her?”
     Trying to keep the hurt out of her expression, Sarah sat next to the big Austrian. “Uh, no.” Her mouth twisted ruefully. “He is seventeen, and this is a girl and I am his mother…” She sighed. “I guess it’s only natural he’d want to keep her to himself.”
     Dieter looked at her sympathetically. “But you’re hurt anyway.” As far as he could tell, they were unusually close. It was probable that until now they’d shared everything.
     Sarah was quiet for a moment, then she wrinkled her nose at him. “A little. Maybe.” Then she sighed. “It annoys me that I am, though, because, really, I’m pleased that he has someone. It would be nice if she were nearby…” She leaned toward him. “Tell me about her.”
     He shrugged his massive shoulders. “There’s not much I can tell you,” he said. “She’s somebody he recruited on-line to keep an eye out for mysterious doings. Then, when we went to the U.S., he took her and her team the Terminator’s CPU. She’s a student at MIT,” he added. “And clearly, something clicked between them.”
     “Hmmph,” she said. “I guess I’ll have to go to the source.”

John closed the door to his room, tore open the box that Wendy had sent him, and pulled out her letter.
     Hi, Sweetie, she’d written.
     Well, that’s flattering, he thought. One kiss… On the other hand, we felt close right off. Evidently three months’ separation hadn’t altered her feelings—and that was extremely reassuring. He read on:

     Some of us went to New York this week to attend the New Day show. That’s the show that Ron Labane of the New Luddites hosts. It was wonderful! I can’t begin to tell you how inspiring I find him. I wish you could have been with us. About a hundred of us from MIT went down in buses.

     A hundred? John reread that, shocked. A hundred MIT students went to the New Luddite show? Those people must be more powerful than he’d thought.
     The idea shook him. He’d assumed the group would be just another flash in the pan, a this-year’s-cause sort of thing. Certainly not the kind of thing that would appeal to really intelligent people. Like Wendy, he thought, troubled. He straightened the folds of her letter and continued reading.

     I’m more convinced than ever that his brand of intelligent Luddism is the answer to so many of our problems: pollution, poverty, overpopulation. I have to confess to you right now that I took the pledge.

     John looked up from her letter, frowning. She took “the pledge”? What the hell did that mean? He didn’t think she drank.

     In case you’re wondering just what I’ve pledged, I feel a little awkward about telling you. I know I should have discussed it with you, though that might be presumptuous of me. And maybe you’ll say I was swept away by the enthusiasm of the crowd. But I did take it, and I mean to keep my word
     In case you haven’t heard of the pledge, it’s a promise to have no more than two children. If I divorce and remarry and my second husband hasn’t any children, then I’m allowed to have one with him. Though ideally I would have had my tubes tied after I had my second child.
     The hard truth is, the only way we’re going to reduce our population is by making sacrifices like that. And reducing population is step one; everything follows from that.

Wincing, John lowered the letter and rubbed his brow with his free hand. Oh, Wendy, if you only knew, he thought sadly. Overpopulation was not likely to be a problem in a few years.

     Anyway, I hope you won’t be angry with me for going ahead on my own. But I know you’re a sensible person and so I’m trusting you’ll understand.
     On a completely different subject, we also saw some of the sights while we were there and I got this for you at Lincoln Center. This is the most amazing sculpture; I’d love for you to see it for yourself. But the video is very good and has a “making of” section at the end that you’ll probably find interesting.
     Hope to hear from you soon. Love and kisses…

     John pulled the video out of the mailing box and looked at it. On the cover was a photo of a weird-looking modern sculpture. He wasn’t impressed, but then he wasn’t a big fan of modern art. The back of the box was filled with not very informative blurbs from other artists and bits culled from critical reviews.
     But, hey, if Wendy was impressed it must be really something.
     He was trying, and he knew that he was trying, to suppress thoughts of Judgment Day. If there was a Judgment Day. Well, if there was, it would make Wendy’s idealistic pledge seem rather foolish.
     And yet, that she had made it moved him; still more, that she’d written to him about it. He felt toward her a tenderness more profound and respectful than he had yet experienced. He wanted to protect her, to shelter her from all harm. At the same time he admired her faith in the future. He smiled and shook his head.
     Then he took the tape and inserted it into the VCR and sat back to watch.
     There was a little explanation at first on how Lincoln Center had decided to erect a statue, and had commissioned the late Vladimir Hill to create it. Then there was a segment of film, greatly speeded up, that showed the thing actually moving. Its name was Venus Dancing and John’s jaw dropped as we watched it doing just that.
     The glittering column seemed to swoop and bend, stretching high and then stooping, the holes in its surface growing and shrinking as it moved. The whole thing seemed alive and its motion was graceful and very beautiful. Although, despite the pleasure of watching the lovely thing, something niggled.
     Then the dancing segment ended and the “making of” section began. The sculptor, emaciated from his bout with cancer, described the process of creation. He told the interviewer that if he must die young, he had at least created the most unique sculpture in the world before he left.
     Then there were scenes from the unveiling, where an almost unrecognizably healthy Vladimir was shown with a beautiful young woman who was the creator of Hill’s new sculpting material, a substance she called Intellimetal.
     It took a moment as he watched the smiling, blushing brunette, nervously adjusting her glasses. But it was that movement that attracted his attention to her eyes. The shock of recognition took his breath away.
     “MO-OM!” he shouted, not moving from where he sat on the bed but only bellowing louder, “MOM! DIETER! COME HERE! NOW!”

Beauty is a Weapon

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Excerpt from the novel Rising Storm icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12 by S.M. Stirling icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12

S.M. Stirling's "Rising Storm" book cover. [Formatted]

CRAIG KIPFER’S OFFICE, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

     ALTERNATE USES FOR INTELLIMETAL

Bullets: Intellimetal, once fired, will expand with the heat of the explosion, mushrooming into the most effective shape possible. On striking the target, it will break apart into smaller pieces, each piece seeking the primary electrical source in the body: the brain. Once there, each individual piece of Intellimetal will respond to the brain's electrical patterns by oscillating at a very fast rate as it seeks to rebond with other pieces of Intellimetal. This will effectively liquefy the brain.

Mineworms: These antipersonnel devices will be planted like seeds in rows, while the "farmer" is protected by special gloves and boots, possible special coveralls as well. When stepped on, the rods of Intellimetal will activate and burrow upward through boot, flesh, and bone, again in search of the body's primary electrical source. As an additional advantage, when anyone subsequently touches the body the activated mineworms will try to burrow into this subject as well.

     Craig Kipfer sat back, his lips pursed as though to whistle but emitting no sound. There was some additional stuff in the girl’s notes about possible security uses for her invention, but it was her ideas for weapons that both fascinated and chilled him.
     He’d been around long enough to know that women could outdo men in viciousness; even so, he found it hard to associate these ideas with that young woman’s lovely face. It proved once again the truth of an adage he’d been taught when he first started in this service. Beauty is a weapon. Feel free to use it, never let it use you.
     From the moment he heard about that statue in New York, he’d been interested in Clea Bennet. And when she began throwing out ideas that paralleled the Skynet project during her meeting with Colvin and Warren, he knew that he wanted her to work for him, else he’d never have ordered her picked up. But this! Talk about a bonus, he thought.
     Kipfer sat forward in his chair and pulled out his keyboard. He’d been of two minds about the woman; keep or kill. Pool was waiting for his orders.
     *Send her to Antarctica,* he typed, then sent the message. After this, he’d hear about her in progress reports or not at all. Until, that is, such time as he had to review his decision to let her live.

It Was Very Hard, She Reflected, to Know When to Stop Refining a Plan

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Excerpt from the novel Rising Storm icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12 by S.M. Stirling icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12

S.M. Stirling's "Rising Storm" book cover. [Formatted]

LOS ANGELES

     Clea did her best to project untutored country girl at the CEO and president of Cyberdyne. In an effort to aid that effect she’d worn a denim skirt and jacket with a red plaid Western shirt, her tooled leather belt had a big silver buckle, and on her feet were a pair of well-broken-in cowboy boots. The rustic costume, with the glasses and attitude, she hoped, would eliminate any resemblance to Serena’s slick corporate look and, therefore, to Serena.
     As long as he doesn’t focus on my tits, some sardonic corner of her mind thought. They’re just like Serena’s. Clea scowled at the inner voice; it was far too much like the recorded memories of her clone sister/mother.
     Eventually they would notice; it was inevitable. But by that time they would be used to her and might comment on the resemblance, but they wouldn’t be suspicious. Merely curious.
     That’s one of the things I actually like about humans—their willingness to explain away anything strange. From what she’d observed, on her own and through Serena’s memories, they’d perform some unbelievably convoluted feats of logic to return to their everyday frame of reference. At times she found it incredible that these people had conceived and build Skynet.
     The I-950 set her battered briefcase on the conference-room table and extracted a portable computer, smiling nervously at the two men as she set it up. The new corporate HQ was nothing like Serena’s memories of the underground center the Connors had destroyed; it was pure minimalist functionality, the sort of “nothing” that cost a great deal of money, and left you wondering if anything as vulgar as paper ever crossed anyone’s desk. Some of the people in the cubicles outside weren’t even using thin-screen monitors; they were peering into the telltale blackness of vision goggles, miniature lasers painting text and diagrams directly on their retinas.
     “Would you like some coffee?” the president of Cyberdyne offered. Paul Warren hefted a carafe with his own hands, considerable condescension from an executive at his level.
     She shook her head and gave him a shy smile. He smiled back warmly and she knew she’d taken the right tack with him. Serena had considered initiating a romantic affair with him, but she’d miscalculated his affection for his wife. This was one instance in which Serena’s mistake really didn’t matter, though. The woman had had to die, even if it did turn out to be a setback in other areas.
     By now, though, he must be lonely and his distress over his wife’s death should be fading. Perhaps she should co-opt Serena’s plan for herself. Although the very thought of intimate relations with a human revolted her.
     “Welcome to Cyberdyne,” Roger Colvin said. “I think, based on what I saw at the unveiling the other night, that we’ve got a lot to offer each other.”
     Clea squirmed as though pleased and allowed her face to flush as though she was embarrassed. Don’t overdo it, she warned herself. “Thank you,” she said aloud, allowing just a touch of Montana into her voice.
     “I was just wondering,” Warren said, “what have you named your product and have you got a copyright on it.”
     “I, uh, sent in the paperwork, but I hadn’t heard back before I left home.” She shrugged. “It may be that it hasn’t caught up with me yet.”
     “We’ll check on that for you,” Colvin said. “What name have you registered it under?”
     “Intellimetal,” Clea said. She smiled ruefully. “That’s more for what it will be one day than for what it can do now. What Mr. Hill was working with was my earliest successful prototype.”
     “Really,” Colvin said, his voice dripping with interest.
     “Uh-huh,” she said, smiling. “But”—she twisted her fingers together—“I’d rather not go into detail until we’ve come to some sort of agreement.” Clea shrugged prettily. “My uncle was a stickler for getting things in writing. Never agree to anything until you see it written down, he’d say. It always looks different then.”
     Warren and Colvin exchanged a glance that said, “This little lady might be inexperienced, but she’s nobody’s fool.”
     They set to work, and work it was. Clea knew exactly what she wanted, how much she wanted, and what terms she’d accept. As far as she was concerned, almost nothing was negotiable, however hard the two humans tried. Two hours later Clea typed in the last word of her “rough notes,” as she called them, on her portable and handed the CEO a disk.
     “There ya go,” she said cheerfully. “Now I’ll need to see this all written up formally before I can even begin to decide for sure what I want to do.”
     “Thank you,” Colvin said palely.
     “You’re welcome.” She met his eyes and leaned forward confidentially. “I would like to leave you contemplating this one little idea I had. Now, I haven’t done any real special work on it, but I’ve been thinking about it real hard.” Watch the Montana effect, she warned herself. She was in serious danger of enjoying her role too much.
     “We’d love to hear about it,” Warren said, leaning forward himself.
     “Well. You know the F-101, that flying-wing stealth plane?”
     The two men nodded.
     “The only reason something like that can keep from crashing is because it has an onboard computer that makes thousands of adjustments a minute.” Her listeners nodded again. “So I was thinking, what we need is a machine that can do that and know it’s doing it. You know what I mean?”
     Colvin and Warren exchanged nervous glances.
     “A machine like that could control thousands of planes, thousands of miles apart. And not just planes, either, but tanks and gun emplacements and even battle robots.” Clea sat back, having noticed long since the subtly appalled expressions on their faces. “Not detailed control—it would be a distributed system—but a strategic artificial intelligence… Is something wrong?”
     “No, no. It sounds fascinating,” Warren reassured her. “But… well, perhaps at some future date we could look into something like that. But right now you’ve put so much into developing Intellimetal that we’d like to help you with that project.”
     She was silent for a moment, her glance roving from one to the other. “Really?” Clea tapped her fingertips on the arms of her chair. “Because I’ve always thought of Cyberdyne as one of the foremost robotics specialist in the field. I had the impression that artificial intelligence was sort of your bailiwick.”
     “You have to understand, Ms. Bennet”—Colvin spread his hands helplessly—“that in some instances our hands are tied.”
     Her eyes widened. “Oh!” she said, looking from one to the other. “I see.” then she shrugged, and allowed another blush. “And here I thought I was being original.”
     “I’m sure that anything that comes out of that brain of yours is original, Ms. Bennet,” Colvin said.
     “Absolutely,” Warren agreed eagerly.
     Clea smiled at them. “Well then,” she said, rising. “I’m sure you gentlemen have a great deal to do and I’ve already taken up an amazing amount of your time.”
     “Not at all.” Colvin rose with her and extended his hand.
     “She shook it, smiling, and turned to Warren, who had offered his hand as well. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you, then.”
     With a nod the I-950 preceded them out of the room and without another word or backward glance marched down the corridor toward the elevator.
     Warren looked askance at the CEO and gestured toward the young woman. “Is she annoyed, or something?” he asked.
     Colvin shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. She may be a little socially backward. Apparently she was raised by an eccentric uncle in the wilds of Montana and they didn’t get out much. Home schooling, the whole nine yards. She’s never even been to a university.”
     “You’re kidding!” Warren said, appalled.
     Colvin held up his hand. “I know what you’re going to say.”
     “Yeah, and I’m going to say it, too. Why would we want to hire some kid who’s never even graduated from college, especially at the price and on the terms she’s demanding? That’s crazy.”
     “We’re trying to hire her so that we can exploit this metal she’s invented. You have to see this statue to believe it, Paul. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
     “Why don’t I just hop on a plane to New York, then, and go take a peek?” Warren asked.
     “Why don’t you just trust me, buddy?” Colvin said, putting an arm around the presidents shoulders. “I know what I’m doing here. Believe me, if we don’t snap her up now somebody else will. Look, we’re going to put in an escape clause, right? So we can both walk away if it doesn’t work out and nobody’s a loser. Right?”
     “If she walks she’ll take that Intellimetal with her,” the president warned.
     “You’ve gotta trust our lawyers to write a better contract than that,” Colvin said with a smile.

Clea was pleased. They’d accepted her without question. For the first time in ages she felt that she’d performed well. The only downside was that they hadn’t risen to the bait she’d dangled in the way she’d expected. Could it be that they really weren’t involved in the Skynet project any longer?
     Cyberdyne had provided a limo and driver for her and the car was waiting out front when she exited the building. She didn’t even acknowledge the driver when he opened the door for her, but stepped in and settled herself for the ride back to the hotel, lost in her own thoughts.

Clea woke up lying on a sofa, its firm cushions upholstered in a blue-green tweed. The room she was in appeared to be a cheaply paneled conference room, with, unusually, a large mirror in the wall opposite the couch. No. That is one-way glass. The room is institutional; government, not corporate.
     Her eyes searched the mirror for hints of movement from a possible hidden room as she sharpened her hearing and listened.
     “…took enough hypno to knock out an elephant! I thought she’d never go down,” a male voice was saying.
     “Maybe there’s a flaw in the delivery system,” another man answered, “because she just woke up. If she’d absorbed as much of the drug as you say you gave her, she’d sleep until tomorrow night.”
     Clea detected movement in the mirror, as though one of the speakers had leaned forward for a better look.
     Well, well. I’ve been kidnapped! One of Cyberdyne’s more aggressive competitors, perhaps? Or Cyberdyne itself? She considered the idea. It would be strange if it was them. For one thing, nothing in their dossier indicated that they played such games. For another, it seemed a criminal waste of their president and CEO’s time if they had intended to negotiate by force all along.
     Now who else might have an interest in my little inventions? And who else could or would employ such an extreme technique as drugging and kidnapping her? Organize crime came briefly to mind, but she dismissed the idea. They were hardly into research and development.
     It’s much more likely to be Tricker or one of his friends, she thought. Excellent.
     She’d been wondering where the agent had got himself to; it looked like she might be about to find out.
     Clea sat up, faking a wobbliness that she in no way felt, one hand to her brow as though her head ached. Which it should, but for the computer and nanites that had worked so hard to cleanse her blood. She blinked, and narrowed her eyes as though the fluorescent light bothered her.
     “Hello?” she said, sounding shaky.
     “That’s my cue, said one of the men.
     She heard a door open and close and there was a flash of light in the mirror. Then the door to the room she was in opened and she got up from the couch quickly. The I-950 immediately sat down again, resting her head against the back of the couch, her hand over her eyes as though dizzy.
     “Take it easy, miss,” the man said soothingly. “Are you okay?”
     “Dizzy,” she murmured.
     She dropped her hand as though exhausted, keeping her eyes closed for effect. But her nose and ears told her where he was, even what he’d last eaten—hamburger with some sort of hot sauce. The glimpse she’d had of him when he walked in confirmed her suspicion. He worked for the government. His clothing and appearance were so artfully average that in a crowed he would be effectively invisible. It wasn’t Tricker, but he might have been a close relative.
     “That will pass,” the man said gently.
     She heard water pouring and then felt the touch of his hand. Opening her eyes, she saw that he was offering her a glass of water; when she took it he held out two aspirin.
     “For the headache I’m sure you have, he said with a sympathetic smile.
     Clea accepted the pills and took them with a sip of water, studying him over the rim of the glass. He was tall and slender, with muddy hazel eyes and a narrow face; his silvering blond hair was beginning to recede and there was an element of grayness about him somehow. But his voice was pleasant, as was his manner, both conveying trustworthiness.
     Which was actually quite different than Tricker, who seemed to go out of his way to be abrasive. And yet this man reminded her of no one so much as of Serena’s old nemesis.
     He could be dangerous if he needed to be, she thought. Or if he wanted to be. There was the essential resemblance; like Tricker, this man was competently ruthless. Not unlike myself, she thought. They probably work for the same agency.
     Clea swallowed. “Where am I?” she asked.
     He didn’t answer, but sat looking at her.
     “And who are you?” She pulled herself up until she was sitting straight.
     “Aren’t you going to ask why you’re here?” he prompted.
     “Well, I assume you’re going to tell me,” she snapped. “Or are we just going to sit and stare at each other until we starve to death? But I’ve got to tell you, mister, if you’re looking for a ransom you’ve got the wrong girl! My only relative is dead and all I’ve got in the world is a few thousand dollars in the bank. So what’s going on here?”
     “That’s not entirely true, Ms. Bennet, now is it?” the gray man said. “You have the house and land in Montana, don’t you?”
     The I-950’s eyes widened quite involuntarily as her mind flashed to that empty grave in the modest country cemetery. Should she have replaced the Terminator with a human corpse? Surely they wouldn’t check her background that thoroughly?
     “Oh yes,” the man continued complacently, “we know everything there is to know about you. Certainly everything that is a matter of public record.” He gave her a tight little smile. “And we’ve come to the conclusion that only we can offer you the resources to allow your inventiveness full scope.”
     “Who are you?” she almost shouted. All the time thinking, Ah, so I was right. Tricker’s gang.
     “My name is Pool,” he said.
     “Just Pool?” Clea demanded sarcastically, remembering Tricker’s insistence on being called a simple, unadorned “Tricker.”
     “Yes,” he agreed with a slightly deprecatory smile. “Just Pool.”
     Clea drew in a deep breath. “And who is we, Pool?”
     The smile broadened. “We are your tax dollars at work, Ms. Bennet.”
     Setting her jaw, Clea tilted her head at a defiant angle. Actually she was delighted; the government had to have taken over the Skynet project when Cyberdyne’s second facility was destroyed… by the Connors, again. But a human would object to this sort of treatment…
     “And if I don’t want to work for the government?” she asked.
     Pool shrugged. “Then we would have to tell Vladimir Hill that the wonderful new material you’ve been letting him play with as though it was clay is one of the most carcinogenic materials ever devised.” He paused as if to gauge her reaction.
     Clea gave him one. “Nonsense!” she snapped, sitting forward. Then she looked queasy and leaned back again. “What are you talking about?”
     “He’ll probably be dead by next year,” Pool said. “But that would allow him plenty of time to sue you. And, of course, there would probably be charges of criminal negligence. You’d probably do jail time.” His eyes cooled. “In fact, you can count on that. And afterward, well, Cyberdyne wouldn’t touch you or Intellimetal with a ten-foot pole, and neither would anyone else.” He spread his hands. “Which would leave you with us. But not before we both lost a lot of time and effort and money. So why not just cooperate and we’ll all be happy?”
     Clea allowed herself to look shaken; her computer dropped her circulation slightly so that her face would go pale.
     “Does Vladimir have… cancer?” Her eyes widened. “Do I?” she asked, her voice quavering.
     “We don’t know, actually, your tests aren’t back. But the odds are good. As for Hill, in good conscience, of course, we can’t let him remain at risk. We’ll warn him quite soon, and if it’s caught early enough there’s always a chance that he might survive. You, too, of course. But we think you’d be better off if you suddenly became unavailable. Don’t you?”
     She nodded, looking shell-shocked, or so the mirror told her.
     He smiled, an avuncular smile this time; Pool seemed to have quite a repertoire. “Very wise,” he murmured. “You won’t regret it, I’m sure. Our terms won’t be quite as generous as Cyberdyne’s, but our facilities are the best and our research budget is virtually unlimited.” He stood, smiling down at her. “Why don’t you lie back down and get some rest,” he advised. “That drug can pack quite a punch. Later on someone will come and take you to your room, where you can have something to eat and relax. Then tomorrow we’ll outfit you for your new job and by evening you’ll be on you way.”
     “On my way where?” she asked, trying to sound crushed. Instead, her computer component was suppressing glee; this was turning out exactly as planned. And if it hadn’t [there was a] sixty-seven percent probability of terminating all units here and escaping without irreparable damage, she calculated automatically.
     His lips jerked into a mirthless smile, and he turned to the door. “I’d rather not say,” he told her. Then he walked out the door.
     She heard the click of a lock and then his receding footsteps. Clea covered her mouth as though feeling sick and leaned over, hanging her head. Then she lay down and, turning her back to the mirror, began to sob quietly for the benefit of whoever still lurked in the room behind the mirror.
     It was too late now to do anything about her missing “uncle,” she decided. Agents might still be loitering around asking questions, making it very risky to fill the empty hole.
     I’ll just have to take a chance on it, she thought. But even if they do open the grave to find it empty, that proves nothing. At least, nothing against her. Even so, it bothered her.
     It was very hard, she reflected, to know when to stop refining a plan. I should inform Alissa of the latest developments…