Roger Sherman knew something was terribly wrong when his ex-wife contacted him through the grist. They had not spoken in months.
“And to what do I owe this honor?” Sherman said. There was more acid in his voice than he had expected. The split had been his fault, after all. There was no way any woman with sense would have stayed with him during his black period ten e-years ago.
“I wouldn’t bother you while you’re on duty, Roger, but I think this may be important.”
“What is it, Dahlia?”
“Something is happening at the hospital, and I wanted your input,” Dahlia continued. With practiced ease, he let himself slip entirely into the virtuality so that he could talk to Dahlia face-to-face. Instantly he was a hovering presence in the New Miranda hospital emergency ward.
One of Dahlia’s aspects was working near a bed where a raving woman was being strapped down by orderlies. Dahlia quickly laid a hand on the woman’s head and—Sherman knew—sent tranquilizing algorithms swarming under the woman’s skin and into her grist pellicle. This kind of direct grist-to-grist intervention was something only doctors were licensed to do in the outer system.
“More than fifty thousand bland camels through the needle of destiny,” the woman screamed. “I saw it! I saw the brick fall!”
Then the tranquilizers began to take their effect.
“I saw it, I tell you.” The woman’s eyelids began to droop. “There isn’t anybody who says that man can’t cook . . .” And she was asleep.
“What is wrong with her, Dahlia?” Sherman said. Nobody in the hospital heard him, of course, since he wasn’t really here. He was speaking convert-to-convert in the virtuality with his ex-wife. The bodily aspect that was an emergency-room doctor in the hospital continued to minister to her patient. There was lots more to Dahlia, besides—both here on Triton and elsewhere, on the moons of Jupiter. Sherman’s ex-wife was a full-scale LAP, after all.
“I was hoping you could help me with that,” Dahlia answered, a voice in his ear. “This is the fifteenth patient who has been brought in today with exactly these symptoms. Incoherent babbling. Partial loss of motor control.”
“I still don’t understand why you called me.”
“These people’s Broca grist is going haywire,” Dahlia said. “It’s a very rare condition.”
“Have you ever seen it before?”
“Once—and that was a nano lab tech who got into some very bad grist. The etiology was quite clear.”
Sherman turned his attention back to the patient. She was asleep now, but various muscles in her neck and jaw continued to twitch.
“Fifteen,” Dahlia repeated. “Has something gotten loose from the military base?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m talking about military grist, Roger.”
For a moment, Sherman considered the possibility. But the safeguards at the base were rigid, and he made sure they were completely enforced. Suddenly, Sherman felt a great weariness descend upon him.
“Oh no.”
“What did you say?”
“It’s begun.”
“What are you talking about, Roger.”
“This is an attack.”
“An attack?”
“From the Met, Dahlia.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Sherman pulled himself partially from the virtuality. He gazed up into the dark blue Triton sky. “I’ll have Major Theory send you all the information we have on this sort of weapon.”
“A weapon? So it is military grist.” Dahlia was now only a voice in Sherman’s ear. She might as well have been on the other side of the solar system. I guess that was always the problem, Sherman thought. But then his mind turned to practical matters.
“I have to go.”
“Roger, why would anyone do such a thing?”
“Communications warfare.”
“Surely you’re . . . exaggerating.”
“Maybe so. Maybe it’s a coincidence that the Broca grist of fifteen people went simultaneously haywire.”
“Is there an antidote?”
“No.”
“What?”
“No known antidote. Dahlia, I have to go.”
“But Roger, it’s your damned Army that—”
“I have to go.”
He cut the connection. He supposed he’d angered and hurt her once again. There was too much to do to worry about that. He had given her the information she requested. That should be enough.
It had never been enough.