Chapter 20


Sergey called it Nightcrawling. After slowly studying the Net exchange from every angle, he managed to use DEEFx to contact the Foreigner, who seemed amenable to reason. In five minutes, Sergey purchased six lines of text, a total of seventy-eight words. Later they would share the Method's wisdom.
  The Foreigner's first clue had come out of the sun. During a solar minimum two years ago, an unexpected coronal mass ejection had launched millions of tons of charged particles directly at Earth. Strange lights glowed in the sky. Slightly increasing the planet's water supply, the atmospheric changes (including argon fog) had been sensed by some dogs and migraine sufferers.
  Millions of radio links had failed in the same minute. A subsequent network error caused the overstressed landlines to fail one by one. Only the nighttime Pacific Rim was unaffected.
  The Method and the Foreigner had been trading software at the time. As dawn broke over North America, the connection never faltered. The flare should have caused a measurable delay. Some radio amateurs were unaffected, but they didn't use quantum encryption. This meant the Method was based in East Asia.
  During their next exchange, the Foreigner had caused a small Net crash, and deduced the Method was one timezone behind him. Borneo was possible, eastern China far likelier. That left 250 million suspects: nine orders of magnitude to go.
  Sergey was depressed that even the best security could be defeated. If a genius was vulnerable, what hope did he have?

  A great pyramid appeared over the hills like a god of the mist. Almost an astronomical feature, it didn't look quite straight. Hard to accept it was behind the horizon. Over a kilometer tall, full of transverse shafts, external pipes, glitter and reflections, China's hood ornament was described as an Ambergris crystal. With glacial slowness, a second face emerged as the first one contracted. It took the better part of an hour to pass the great triangles. Unlike the Chinese Wall, this self-contained city was sometimes visible from the moon.
  A Millipol officer called Rick with a list of questions. They had followed his progress for a day and a half, and wanted to double-check his assumptions. The officer pretended not to understand Rick's return questions.
  Rick surprised them both by ending the call. For two days he had slept in intervals, losing count when he was awake. The case was turning into a series of bright images, still in approximately the right order.
  He had to stay alert. Stimulants made him nervous, but he could take Ergozine, which simulated the effects of deep sleep. Designed to help laborers meet their production quotas, it gave his long-term memory a majestic clarity, but made his emotions shallower. Objects moved at odd speeds, in a serene light. He could operate at 60% efficiency indefinitely (better for short periods), comfortably numb. He might get addicted to such a state. The pill tasted like lemon. He'd come far in his night years.
  His Box navigator led the way through a major interchange, as on-and-off-ramps presented themselves. A billboard glowed high in the air.

  Any situation could always get worse. Rick's Box made a sound like a gunshot in a forest. His codes had been revoked, and he could no longer transmit. It took three minutes to find a working pirate node and reach Tina.
  "Don't worry, Max had another idea," she said. "By the way, we're at war."
  "And I'll be blamed."
  The news had worsened dramatically. He saw people standing in public squares and shopping areas in a dozen Chinese cities. They seemed to be organizing protest groups. Clenched faces and blazing torches. "What happened?"
  "The Jilin authorities surrounded Multiverse with cops in full riot gear. Almost twenty thousand guests were questioned. Tour groups had to wait underground, while robots took everyone's picture."
  "So the attacker couldn't possibly have escaped?"
  "We're still figuring out how he did it. Everything happened at once," she said calmly. "Apparently, the attacker leaked one billion personality tests to the media, SKC-6's and JYO-8's, including the full names and social identity numbers of most Chinese and many foreign citizens. Some data came from the Zondyne release, but most was illegally purchased in the past year from functionaries and data brokers. We don't know who aggregated it, or who paid for the release."
  He had been briefed on Chinese law. Their concept of privacy was subtle to the point of nonexistence. The police kept files on everyone, and everyone was an informer. Transactions were recorded forever. Newborns were tested for sixty criminal genes, and later invited to seminars for problems they didn't know they had, "Loser Clubs". Evil people could always be identified, and were sometimes necessary. They could adapt, but not change. Until now, this data had been semi-private.
  The leaks were instantly copied, cross-referenced and analyzed. Those most affected recognized themselves.
  "Those people are protesting many things," Rick said. "Are they equally mad?"
  "It's like the Dalit revolution in India. They want to know what they lost," Tina replied. "Every citizen has to take regular personality and aptitude tests, starting before birth. Apparently, the government used too many non-standard or adaptive tests. The security minister promised that wouldn't happen. A few hundred categories determined someone's entire life. The data was also combined to reveal more than it should." Big scandals started in obscure ways. People felt strange relief when their fears were confirmed.
  "It should have happened a long time ago," Rick said.
  "There's a high correlation between the Chinese P-tests and later success in life, a self-fulfilling prophecy. If it's a conspiracy, everyone's involved."
  "Those are the worst kind."
  "The leaks suggest the results from the annual Citizen Performance Reviews were widely shared, reinforcing China's class structure. Some people were doomed from the start, no matter how hard they worked, while others had a permanent advantage. The worst jobs are in waste management and just-in-time supply networks. Low-paid employees could show how unimportant they are by staying home."
  A lot of anger with no clear target. Organized demonstrations in China could last for years.
  Rick exhaled, and his problems seemed to recede. "In some ways, Asia can appear more Western than us. Historically, they need the occasional crisis. The Chinese language has thousands of words for chaos and changing relationships."
  Tina could not have sounded more skeptical. "Really? I don't even understand pitch and inflection in Mandarin. Suppose my paternal half brother married my half sister on my mother's side, and their identical twins did the same. If each couple had a son, what would be their relationship?"
  At that moment, Rick realized Tina also suspected the truth; probably for longer than he had. "I think they're called yi biao, he said uncertainly. "Or maybe xiong di."
  "Sometimes there is no right word," she corrected him.
  They watched recorded video of the inevitable escape. The traffic out of Multiverse had come to a standstill. Vehicles backed up and tried to extricate themselves, as figures ran across the road. When the flow resumed, three cops were missing. It took Tina five minutes to understand what had happened.
  "The roadway toll scanners were disabled, causing the worst gridlock since the '37 quake," she said. There were no taxes in Jilin province, but tolls for everything, even crossing the street and flushing the toilet. "The escape happened immediately after the data release. Half the cops were recalled. At 03:05, an army officer took control of the Exit Two checkpoint, clearing a lane for a passing ambulance. They think he was your attacker. He hijacked a parked police van and followed the ambulance. It reached a five-road junction, leading to a hundred exits. The van was 'ghosted'. Its beacon's in Thailand now. The cops didn't use their unmanned copters, because they thought he would hijack them too." This was the only time in history this trick could have worked.

  Despite the clock in his dashboard, Rick wasn't sure how long he dozed until the next bulletin. Tina had changed from her business-casual outfit into pajamas. She seemed worried about something unrelated to this case, but refused to discuss the problem. He probably wouldn't have understood anyway. "You need to focus," she said.
  Rick guessed it involved her extended family. Their Node was blocked, but there were no Net alerts. After eliminating some other options, he guessed one or more of the orphans living in her trailer-complex commune had vanished, perhaps on a mission of their own.
  "Did they find the van?" he asked.
  "The occupants were found upright and unconscious in a bus station. Paralyzed by sedative-narcotic IVs normally used to control prisoners. Like Yasuo, they won't remember a thing. A massive manhunt is underway, but the National Persons Registry was sabotaged. He could skate through most checkpoints. This attacker has Special Forces or Intelligence training. He's too talented to work for Chen. The Chinese Federal Police have primary jurisdiction, but they'll share their data with us. Our role is 'supervisory', not as good as it sounds."
  "Too bad," Rick said. "I always wanted to ask Anonymous how she faked her own death."