Cyber Rogues (75 page)

Maguire himself was a short, rounding, Pickwickian figure with a crescent of ragged white hair fringing a balding head that had taken on the same, post-holidays, pinkish hue as his face. He had a pair of ferocious white eyebrows, and rimless spectacles that tended to sit halfway down a bulbous, purple-veined nose. He was wearing a crumpled tweed jacket of brown-and-tan check with a woven tie, plaid shirt, and baggy gray flannel trousers with turnups that hadn’t been in style in fifteen years. From appearances, Evelyn would have dismissed him as a bumbling rural schoolteacher. Corrigan told her not to be deceived: it was Maguire’s insistence on accurate thinking and old-fashioned rigor that Corrigan had to thank for his later successes in the States.

There was little here in the way of visually entertaining demonstrations. Maguire showed them screens of symbolic diagrams representing abstract software relationships, and charts that tracked growth and decay trends in mixed populations of numerically defined entities that he referred to as “species.” The term was no misnomer. The aim of the research that Maguire and his team were engaged in was, in effect, to induce the emergence of intelligent behavior from neural-system analogs.

“. . . assuming that anything that has appeared in the natural world so far can be called intelligent,” Maguire said. “The notion shouldn’t be so strange to you, Joe. We talked about it often enough.”

“We did, that.”

Dermot elaborated for Evelyn’s benefit. “The idea, essentially, is to let a computer-intelligence follow the same route as we did and evolve from simple beginnings—instead of trying to reproduce in one step all the complexity that resulted from a billion years of selection and improvement.”

“I’ve never believed that was practical, as I’m sure Joe will have told you,” Maguire said to Evelyn.

She smiled. “At least a thousand times, at the last count. Top-down won’t work, right?”

“That’s right. We simply don’t have the detailed knowledge to specify it,” Maguire said. “Nobody has.”

“So how far back did you go to begin?” Corrigan asked him, intrigued.

“The groupings that I showed you a few minutes ago approximate roughly to early molecular structures,” Maguire replied. “We put a seed population into a simple world in large numbers and let them interact and compete. They’ve been running for the equivalent of several million years now, I’d say.”

“And the species you have now are performing at about the level of insects?”

“Roughly, we think. The dynamics are completely different from biological competition. Making a direct comparison isn’t easy.”

“Pretty impressive, all the same,” Corrigan commented.

“We do have the benefit of being able to guide things by conscious direction,” Maguire pointed out. “We are able to introduce deliberately engineered genetic combinations when we see fit. That speeds up the process considerably. It’s amazing the difference it makes when God goes into the stock-breeding business.”

“It’s fascinating, all right,” Corrigan agreed. There was an odd light in his eyes. Listening to Maguire and Dermot had rekindled all kinds of enthusiasms from years that he had almost forgotten. He could feel the excitement of real science stirring again: knowledge pursued purely for the sake of knowledge.

“But we need a more realistic simulation of the physical environment if progress is to be sustained,” Maguire went on. “One that will react back on the actions of the population more strongly and drive the selection mechanisms harder. It needs to close the overall organism-environment feedback loop more tightly.”

“This is interesting. . . .” Corrigan’s face took on a faraway look for a moment. “Kind of ironic.”

Maguire looked at the others uncertainly. “What is he talking about?”

“The work that we’re doing back at CLC right now,” Evelyn answered. “On the face of it, it sounds as if it might be an answer to just the kind of problem you’re talking about.”

“Is that so?” Dermot said.

“In that case, you should stop messing around among those Americans, trying to act as if you were a millionaire or a celebrity or something, and get yourself back over here and help out,” Maguire told Corrigan—but he wasn’t being serious.

“No chance,” Dermot declared. “He’s been too seduced by now by thoughts of money and promotion in those big corporations over there.”

Maguire snorted. “Well, don’t let yourself be carried away by it all,” he said to Corrigan. “Remember that the higher a monkey climbs, the more of an arse it looks.”

Corrigan grinned. “Okay. But I will make sure you get all the information we can let you have that might help,” he offered.

“That would be something we’d appreciate,” Maguire said.

For lunch they drove down to the Cobh Hotel in the center of the town, which was where Corrigan and Evelyn were staying. Ballygarven was a small boating resort grown from a fishing village that stood at the head of an inlet where the sea twisted its way among rocky headlands and shingle beaches. Behind the town, heather-covered slopes and marshlands rose toward a ridge of granite-topped summits a mile or two away. Evelyn was doubly glad that she and Corrigan had decided to make this trip to the west of Ireland before they left. It was just as she had pictured, ever since Dermot began describing it soon after their arrival.

Food was served in the bar, which though modernized had not lost its old-world feel. Maguire steered Evelyn and Dermot to one side where there stood a table for hot food and another for salads, recommending the mussels and the lamb. Meanwhile, Corrigan went to the bar to take care of the drinks. He and Evelyn had checked in the evening before, and he already knew Rooney, the bartender. Several of the locals were in, taking a midday refreshment.

“Oh, the American’s back, I see,” Rooney said, taunting Corrigan good-humoredly. “Coca-Cola, is it? Or do I have to start mixin’ some o’ them fancy cocktails for ye?”

“Three pints, and enough of your lip, Rooney. And a glass of lager-and-lime for the lady, if you please.”

“Are ye’s back to see some decent scenery? Sure, don’t the mountains way up above look green and fresh in the sunshine this mornin’, after the rain?”

Corrigan looked pained. “What mountains are you talking about, Rooney? You don’t call those humps out there mountains, do you? I’ll tell you, we were in the Sierra Nevada in California just before the holidays, and there’s real mountains for you. They’ve got one cliff called El Capitan, in the Yosemite Valley, that goes practically a mile straight up.”

“Is that a fact?” Rooney said, putting a glass under one of the pumps. “And what would be the use of things as big as that to anyone at all? Our Irish mountains have got a top and a bottom to them, and that’s all that matters. Why waste so much on all that useless middle? If you stand a little bit nearer they look the same anyway. But you don’t have to spend half your life getting up, and then back down again.” Rooney looked at the regulars in appeal. “Isn’t that right, now?”

“It’s fine by me,” one of them agreed. “I’d never be seen dead on the top of either one of them anyway.”

“You see, I was right. It’s after turning into a Yank, you are. Everything has to be biggest, and that’s all that matters. Never a thought for the quality of things.”

“And when were you last there, Rooney?” Corrigan challenged.

“Oh, you’d be surprised if I told you, wouldn’t you?”

“Go on, then. Surprise me.”

Rooney set a foaming pint down on the countertop for the head to settle, and began pouring another. “Oh, I know all about the high life and such, as you might call it,” he said airily. “I’m what you might call something of a self-unmade man.”

“Oh? A self-unmade man, is it?” one of the locals said.

“And what might that be?” another asked.

“I started out, long ago in me dim and distant youth, as the president of a big corporation, making half a million dollars a year,” Rooney said. “But would you believe, I
needed
every blessed penny of it. There was the yacht to take care of, the private jet plane, and the mortgage on the mansion. All them social clubs and country clubs and golfing clubs, with their dues. . . . And you wouldn’t want to hear about the kind of wife I had to put up with, and her tastes.”

“Would ye listen to the man?”

“Okay. And? . . .” Corrigan said, smiling.

Rooney went on, “But I worked hard and assiduously, and by the time I was twenty-five I’d come down to regional manager. Got rid of the house for something smaller, the car for something slower, the wife for someone saner, and I found I could manage on two hundred thousand a year. So I paid off the debts, kept at it, and I was down to a branch manager by thirty, ordinary salesman by thirty-four, and I quit the salaried professions altogether before I was forty.”

“Now there’s a success story for you,” one of the regulars murmured approvingly.

“It’s different. I’ll give you that,” his companion agreed.

Rooney nodded. “By then I didn’t need a salary anymore. Today, I don’t owe anybody anything, and this job pays me all I need. It’s only four shifts a week, and I get plenty of time to read the books I always wanted to, sit in the sun when it suits me, and go fishing with the kids.” He thought for a moment, then shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I probably don’t need the money that much at all, for we’ve a small farm that could get us by. But I keep it for the people that you meet.”

Evelyn and the others had come over and were listening. “Another philosopher,” she said to Corrigan. “You know, Joe, this is the kind of place that Eric should be in.”

“Who’s Eric?” Maguire asked.

“A scientist that we know back at CLC,” Corrigan said.

“He’d fit in here,” Evelyn said. “You’re his kind of people. You talk his values. Corporate politics isn’t his scene.”

Maguire nodded and pulled a face. “Well, if he ever decides he’s had enough, tell him to get in touch. We’ll talk to him, sure enough. We’ve got some good people here, including some from Europe, but we could always use more. . . . And that applies to you, too, Joe, don’t forget. If you get tired of being among those neurotics over there, we’ll find room for you.”

Corrigan laughed and raised his pint. “I think I can handle whatever comes up, Brendan. But thanks anyway.”

The next day, Dermot drove Corrigan and Evelyn south to Shannon, where they boarded an Aer Lingus jet for New York. It had been fun, and it had been interesting—the kind of break they had intended. And in another way, a lot that they had not intended. But now it was time to get back to the real world. They had a big surprise to tell everybody.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Jonathan Wilbur was in the Galahad Lounge again, sitting at the bar. It was early yet, with a few people at the other barstools and a group from a company marketing conference that was being held at the Camelot that week occupying some tables on the far side.

“How are things working out with Oliver?” Corrigan inquired casually.

“Oh, okay,” Wilbur replied neutrally, and returned to playing with his portable electronic office. Corrigan sauntered back to the other end of the bar and checked the pressure in the dispenser. Wilbur looked up at him oddly from time to time but said nothing. Corrigan got the feeling that his behavior of late had been puzzling the system.

In the commercial showing on the TV, the couple who had arrived for dinner were healthily image-conscious, he in a satin-edged cloak and wearing a wig of constantly color-changing optical fibers, she in a
Psi-Woman
meditation jumpsuit, complete with requisite combination shoulder-purse and music/mantra player.

“Wasn’t she the clairvoyant in that movie about the surgeon who put his wife’s lover’s brain inside the gorilla after they had the car crash?” a fat woman in a pink sombrero, sitting on another stool, asked the man with her while she stared absently at the screen and pushed pretzels into her mouth.

“Yeah. She showed the detective where the body was.” The man was wearing a short, embroidered cloak and matador’s black hat. It was South of the Border week. Anyone in Mexican garb got a ten-percent discount in most places.

On the screen, the two guests were sipping before-dinner cocktails. Suddenly the woman nudged her husband and pointed to a faint finger-smudge on her glass. “
Body grease!”
she whispered behind her hand. The husband hurriedly put down his own glass, at the same time glancing apprehensively from side to side at the cutlery and the china. Moments later, the scene ended with a shot of the couple departing on a pretext, and then the embarrassed host consoling his distraught wife.

“She can really do it,” the woman in the sombrero said.

“Huh?” her companion said.

“In real life—she’s really psychic.”

“Oh.”

“The police use her. A documentary last week had her in it, so it must be true.” The woman looked at Corrigan for support. “She can find missing stuff by looking at pictures that they take from choppers over the city.”

“That’s nice,” Corrigan said.

While on the TV, the hostess’s wise and worldly mother was educating her daughter in the use of “Bodysafe.” After spraying fingertips and palms, they embarked on a tour of the house together, rapturously drenching drawer handles, doorknobs, light switches, phone buttons, toilet seats, and anything else carrying the risk of indirect contact with another human being. The ad ended with the husband and wife again, this time waving goodbye to their guests after a brilliantly successful dinner party, and then flinging their arms around each other ecstatically—presumably after taking appropriate precautions with Bodysafe.

“You know, Joe, I think you’ve been holding out on me,” Wilbur said at last.

Corrigan ambled back to that end of the bar. “Oh? Why would that be, now?”

“I think you saw some things coming that I didn’t see, and you didn’t tell me.”

“Is that a fact?”

“About Oliver,” Wilbur said. So, apparently, things weren’t going so well. “What makes people so greedy? I mean, not only in business, but all these people that we read about. How do they get like it?”

“People will continue trying to get better at whatever others continue to admire,” Corrigan answered.