He wanted to state that she knew very well he could not. Mary Carfax had the means built in to wipe clean everything but the functional elements of its database. It had done so the moment the strangers made entry with obvious purpose. That included whatever compulsion to this had been in the program.
As for its existence, it could have been built slowly, piecemeal, perhaps in the course of a human lifetime, in a laboratory now altered beyond retrieval. The Selenarchs thought far ahead. They schemed for advantages remote in time, unforeseeable except as possibilities dependent on contingency.
Proserpina.
He would not admit to his knowledge. Let her wonder how widely it ranged. “Investigation is proceeding. I repeat my suspicion that you no more wish to bring this business into the open than … the government does.”
Her mockery continued through the lag. He saw it fade as she listened to him. Gone fluid, the countenance took on something akin to seriousness. “You imply accusation, seigneur,” she attacked softly. “You misdoubt I have sought knowledge denied to any but a few. What became of the lofty principle that information shall be open to all who query of the net?”
He recognized it for an abstract argument, a way of disengaging. She would scarcely have hoped for more than to sound out the measure of his determination and estimate his progress. For her part, she had revealed or confessed to nothing. He admired the performance. The loss of the Carfax machine must be a sharp blow. It might well mean the unraveling of the entire web she had spun on Earth. It certainly indicated that her attempt at espionage had failed: forAlice Tarn was Venator’s most probable connection to Carfax. He was not about to tell her that Tarn remained loose, unimportant though that had become.
Instead, he would press her. Maybe he could shock a bit of revelation out. “You’re being disingenuous, my lady. It’s always been accepted that certain facts must not be available to just anyone. For instance, how to synthesize a new disease. The cybercosm could readily model that, but it will not release the details, except to qualified persons with a genuine need to know. A criminal, intending to do it, would have to have computational capability isolated from the global system.” Harshly: “Why was that independent sophotect made, and why was it programmed never to mesh with the cybercosm?”
He did not really, expect an answer.
Nor did he get one. “You own, then, seigneur, that the cybercosm makes every significant decision, that it rules over every world. Nay?”
“I do not!” He shouldn’t let her anger him. “Are you subject to a hammer because it drives a nail better than you can with your fist?”
After the lag, scorn. “Such shoddiness I had not looked for in you, Venator. Robots may be tools, however powerful and cunning, but sophotects are not. Nor are they partners, despite many a mawkish avowal. The cybercosm reigns, under the Teramind and for it. Humankind is in its pay, albeit to no purpose I can perceive—“ laughter rang like crystal “—unless it be olden habit, or amusement.”
He could not help himself, he must repeat arguments that had lain centuries stale. Otherwise he would somehow be yielding to her, and he felt obscurely that he did not know where that might end. “Do you mean citizens’ credit? Why, that’s simply the way we allocate, individually, the goods and services the machines produce for us, and keep track of demand. If we want to produce more and exchange with each other, we have our cash-and-bank currency.” Transmitting, she rebuffed him more frostily still. “Nay, how you disappoint me. Though you be a hound for the regnancy, I had not thought your spirit was bribed into lameness.” The snake hissed.
“Tameness, or common sense?” he flung back. “You Lunarians don’t tolerate chaos either. You’d soon be dead if you did.”
Waiting, he composed himself. Why should he feel vulnerable to her? A single nightwatch—Nevertheless it was a balm when she said quietly, “We seek the survival of our race, and of variousness everywhere. If that be chaos, then remember that life is chaotic.”