Part 8 (1/2)

That was sharp. I didn't think I'd have thought of the pellets. They were hardly standard issue on Loophole. ”So where are they?” I asked.

He shook his head. ”I don't know. But they keep accessing the station board and bidding. I've got a program running, trying to track them to whatever public terminal they're using, but they keep switching. Near as I can tell, they're all over the station, at least three of them, maybe more. But boss, that's not the problem.”

Tommy's weird. I'm used to that, but it croggled my mind to think that a bunch of alien homunculi robots scrambling around the station acting like me wasn't a problem, and that something else loomed larger.

”Okay, Tommy, what is the problem?”

”I've gone over some of the bids they put in, boss. They're good bids, vacuum tight. You couldn't do better yourself. And they're compet.i.tive too, we'll probably score thirty to forty percent of them.”

I laughed at that. ”How is that a problem, Tommy? Most weeks we're hungry for business; we're lucky to win one in ten. We can use the work.”

”Yeah, boss, but most weeks you only put in five or ten bids. They've logged over a thousand.”

”A thousand? How can three bots have already put in a thousand bids?”

”They're quick,” said Tommy, and offered nothing more.

”I'm ruined. There's no way we can handle winning that many jobs. My G.o.d, if I tried to withdraw that many bids the penalties alone would bankrupt me!”

I whirled into the front room and slammed into the nearest terminal, relying on long habit to guide my fingers through the sequence of logons and protocols that eventually connected me to my account on Loophole's bidboard. According to station records I had one thousand eighty-five outstanding bids. I skimmed the first few and came to the same conclusion Tommy had. The bids were good, too good. In five days' time when the pool closed, contracts would be issued to the winners, and Gideon Cybernetics would be inundated with several hundred times the business it could handle. As the horror of it sank in the data display refreshed. One thousand eighty-six.

”I've been munged by a Clarkeson,” I swore. I called up my preference file for the station's board and began the sequence of code phrases that would allow me to alter my pa.s.sword and cut the homunculi's access. They could still follow the action on the bid board, but they wouldn't be able to place any new bids. Then I slumped back and tried to figure what to do next. The control ring still glittered on my finger. I tore it off, wrenching a knuckle in the process, and strode back into the middle room.

”Tommy, what can you tell me about this?” I said, tossing the ring onto his bench. ”What kind of a control ring doesn't give the wearer control? I'm not getting anything from this thing, not the tiniest bit of feedback.”

Tommy caught the ring on the second bounce, tearing his eyes from it with obvious effort. ”I think you're outside of their range, boss.” He gestured to the gutted puppet on the bench. ”It's not very much. The receiver I found in this one probably couldn't recognize a signal beyond half a dozen meters.”

”Then why didn't they shut down when they ran out onto the concourse? The Clarkeson said the homunculus wasn't an autonomous A.I.”

”Well, technically it isn't. It's an autonomous A.Y.”

”A.Y.?” I said.

”Artificial You. Each of them is operating with a reduced version of your personality, knowledge set, and skills. That's what the ring does. It lays down the initial template and index.”

I took the ring from him and slid it onto my finger. ”They have to be stopped, before they do any more damage. How can we get them back here?”

Tommy shrugged. ”I don't know, boss, what would bring you back to the office?”

That stopped me. One of the perks of Tommy's hyper-attention is the way it cuts through to the heart of things. What would bring me back to the office? There wasn't a good answer. We had no other contracts to work on. The Clarkeson's had been the first job GC had seen all month. I didn't have a lot on my calendar.

The breed-bots had been inspected three days ago. I'd finished all pending off-station correspondence two clays earlier, and spent yesterday making the rounds of my creditors. Other than the thousand and some new entries from the Clarkeson puppets, I had only a single outstanding bid that could come through today, a multimedia chip design for a hybrid cryogenic organ delivery vendor. I was fairly certain Scully Pica.s.so over at Cubist Cyberdreams had underbid me by at least five percent, which was two percent below what I saw as my cost. Not surprising; Scully had done the last upgrade for the cryonics firm and could do the job in half the time it would have taken GC, in much the same way I'd been able to grab the Clarkeson contract. I actually had nothing pressing today, prior to the homunculi. Unless...

”Tommy! What's the status of that cryo chip bid? Has the deadline pa.s.sed?”

”No, boss. Bidding ends at thirteen hundred, but the Cubists probably snagged that one. Why?”

I glanced at the wall clock, rushed back to the front room and sat down at a terminal. It was still a quarter hour before thirteen hundred. I signed back onto the bidboard via my new pa.s.sword, calling back over my shoulder to Tommy.

”Write up a mailer to Scully,” I said. ”Standard sub-contract. Offer him another five percent on top of what he bid on the cryo job. I'm about to underbid him by a wide margin.”

”Boss, you're going to underbid him and pay him more to do the work? You'll lose a ton. Why win the bid at all then?”

”Because,” I said as I finished entering an updated bid on the board, undercutting my best estimate of Scully's bid by a margin of ten percent. ”What happens whenever we win a job?”

Tommy laughed. ”You come back to the office and start work on it.”

”Exactly.” I called up the station time on my screen. Bidding for the cryo job would close in about ten minutes, and my station account would be notified of the win. The homunculi, miniature versions of me, would be monitoring my account and get the news. And they'd come home.

We spent those ten minutes getting ready. I locked Tommy in the middle room after instructing him to stay focused on the door. We'd a.s.sembled several pop guns and loaded them with fresh clips of EMP pellets one of the breed-bots had churned out. Tommy's focus made him a natural marksman. He'd only need a single shot per puppet. Next, I recoded the door to the middle room, giving it a one way setting. It would let you in but not out. The last thing I wanted was for any of those puppets to leave again. Both Tommy and I could easily access the system and send an override, and presumably the homunculi could too, but that would take a while. If one of them had enough time to sit at Tommy's terminal and hack an override then we'd already have failed.

I hid behind my desk, just beneath the wall safe. In the past, if a winning bid came through while I was out of the office I might head straight for the middle room, to spin the project with Tommy. Or I could just as easily pull up and work at my own desk. And on at least one occasion I'd gone to the safe to see how much hard currency was on hand for paying off an emergency subcontract. I cradled a pair of pop guns, one in each hand. Unlike Tommy, I'm a lousy shot and expected to need every pellet in both clips The first homunculus strode into the office at thirteen-twenty, looking like it owned the place. It had reconfigured its appearance somehow, its chrome physique had transformed to the proportions of a portly human, and a prominent silvery mustache occupied a full fifth of its face. It swaggered despite its small size, radiating confidence with every step as it went straight to the inner door, triggered the optic, and pa.s.sed inside. I heard the frazzling sound of static followed by a thump. Tommy had scored.

Two more came in a few minutes later, arguing the pros and cons of licensing another breed-bot in a pair of voices identical to my own. Neither seemed the least bit put off to be accompanied by proof that it wasn't the one true Walrus. Some day I wanted to talk to the Arconi designer who had found a way to create a limited A.I. that could believe it was someone else but also knew it wasn't. My doppelgangers headed straight for the inner room, but the door wouldn't budge. With a curse I realized that the EMP had fried not only the first homunculus but the door's controls as well.

I rolled to my feet at about the same time that the two puppets turned around. I fired with both guns and managed to miss them entirely. They sprang to either side, two tiny s.h.i.+ny versions of me. I kept shooting. EMP pellets exploded against the walls, scattering my office with bursts of electro-magnetism. And then the puppets started fighting back.

It made sense; I'd have done the same thing. A stapler barely missed my head, followed by a box of invoices and several optical mice. A paperweight clipped my left arm and a pop gun fell from my hand, skittering toward the front door. The homunculi scrambled and leapt like lemurs, zigzagging across the office. I gripped my remaining gun with both hands and fired again and again.

Behind me I heard someone else enter the office but I couldn't spare the time to turn and see who it was. Something hit me behind my right knee and I fell forward Just as two shots whooshed over my head. EMP pellets struck the two homunculi, catching each dead center. They keeled over in a wash of electro-magnetic energies. I rolled over and gasped when I saw the face of my rescuer. Another hornunculus stared back, cobalt lenses glowing haughtily above a thick mustache of bristling chrome. It aimed my missing pop gun straight for my solar plexus.

”Put it down,” I said, wondering how much damage an EMP pellet could do to my nervous system.

The puppet stared at me, unblinking. It didn't lower the gun. ”I don't think so,” it said. ”You put yours down.” The voice was unmistakable. Did I really sound that smug?

I lowered my pop gun. The puppets had already demonstrated better reflexes. There was no way I could win a shootout with this tiny version of myself. There had to be another way. I glanced at the useless control ring on my finger. just last night I'd imagined the success it could bring, and in less than a day I was on the brink of financial ruin. And then I had an idea.

Walrus,” I said to the homunculus, ”you got here just in time.”

”Yeah?” it said. ”How's that? C'mon, don't waste my time; I've got work to do.”

”Yeah,” I said, nodding. ”The cryogenic contract. I, uh, I came back to work on that myself. And when I got here those two were, uh, trying to open the wallsafe. I think they were planning to steal all the solars from the Clarkeson contract.”

”My solars!” it said, and scuttled over to the office safe, and climbed onto my desk to reach it. It kept the gun trained on me and pressed its tiny hand against the safe's key plate. I think it really expected the safe to open.

”Maybe they jammed it,” I said, ”Here, let me give it a try.” I stepped closer, and pressed my own hand to the plate. The security system recognized my palm and the locks disengaged.

The puppet sighed in obvious relief and reached inside with both hands. I brought up my own pop gun and shot it in the back.

Scully Pica.s.so was only too happy to take on the subcontract at a better return than he'd bid for. Tommy and I spent the next four days preparing for the onslaught from hundreds of new jobs when the bidboard's five day period cycled to a close. He repaired all the homunculi we'd zapped and then set both our breed-bots to manufacturing several dozen more. I spent most of the solars we'd earned from the Clarkeson job renting larger office s.p.a.ce and more equipment for GC, six rooms this time, and paying off-duty dock workers to move us and get everything set up.

When the contracts started pouring in on the fifth day I sat in the front room of the old office taking vouchers and rea.s.suring skeptical clients that Gideon Cybernetics would have no problem completing the work on time. I flashed each job to Weird Tommy at the new office by station mail I and at the end of the day joined him there.

Tommy sat alone in the new front office at a refurbished workbench. He worked with that furious concentration of his, pounding out code for one of the jobs we'd won earlier in the day. I set a bowl of turkey synth-soy to one side of his keyboard and went past him to check on the next room.

Inside sat thirty homunculi, three to a workbench, row upon row. None of them looked up or gave the slightest indication of noticing me. They were all busy with projects of their own. The drone of humming was like the buzz of a hive bees. I knew I'd find the same thing in the next two rooms and didn't bother to look. Instead I went back to the front area to check on Tommy again. He still didn't acknowledge my presence, still didn't break his frenetic pace, but his right hand had strayed to the soy and he was absently licking bits of the stuff from his fingertips. On his index finger the control ring burned blindingly bright.