Read Online The zenith angle by Bruce Sterling - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Bruce Sterling
Tags: Fiction, General, thriller, Suspense, Popular American Fiction, Science-Fiction, Thrillers, Mystery & Detective, Espionage, Computers, Political, Colorado, High Tech, Science Fiction - High Tech, Technological, Washington (D.C.), Married People, Government investigators, Fiction - Espionage, security, Intrigue, Political Fiction, Computer Security, Space surveillance, Women astronomers
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your life. She’s a sweet girl who loves you, that’s a wonderful baby. Do you know what you’re risking there? You’ll never get that back.”
“I don’t get off that easy, Dad. They need me. Because they know I can help. Everybody else has screwed it up.”
“Derek, if you work inside the Beltway, the people who screw things up are gonna become your best friends. They’re going to be your best war buddies. You’re gonna encounter people worse than you can imagine, with problems that don’t bear thinking about. There’s no reason for someone like you to become one of them.”
“No, there’s a very good reason, Dad. I know I can make a difference, so I have to try. If nobody ever tries to fix the world of the Internet, the future will just turn into . . .”
Van broke off. This was a very long speech for him, and his father wasn’t getting it at all. He realized that his father thought of him as a soft, dreamy person, from a lucky generation, leading a charmed life. Van didn’t know whether to feel rage or pity, so he felt what he always felt with his father: gloomy confusion.
He began to shout. “The Internet turns into hell! Some awful, total mess! Where every single decent company goes broke. Viruses and worms breaking everything. Lawsuits everywhere you look. Where crazy people from the very worst places on earth try to rip you off with bank frauds and drugs and filthy pictures . . .”
His father looked at him with alarm. His grandfather was totally bewildered by Van’s outburst. Van sounded wild and crazy, even to himself. Why let on about the nightmare cyber-scenario? He should never have opened his mouth, he thought. He was crushing their cherished, old-fashioned ideals. There were horrors in the world beyond their understanding.
CHAPTER
FOUR
CHECHNYA, NOVEMBER 2001
T he American agents inside Chechnya were rapidly improving their disguises. The Americans would never seem at home in the Caucasus, though. They didn’t have lice, nor did they stink. The Colonel was sharing a rocky, blasted ledge with the American agent called Kickoff. The two of them were very close, so close as to be quite intimate. Kickoff wore a black fur hat and crumpled Soviet combat fatigues. To that extent, Kickoff looked normal for Chechnya. Yet his teeth were white and perfect beneath his salt-and-pepper beard, and his skin was uncannily clean. Silky mountain-climbing underwear kept his precious American body toasty from wrist to ankles. Kickoff wore strong, beautifully knitted socks. He even wore sock liners. Thin, magical membranes that kept the painful rot of trench foot away. They were like condoms for his feet.
The Colonel himself stank badly of sweat, fear, boredom, vodka, and strong cigarettes. But his personal reek was lost in the awesome stench from a dead donkey’s rotting haunch and fetlock. Endless skirmishes had been fought over this vulnerable run of the Chechnyan pipeline. The shallow little cave the Colonel shared with Kickoff was a well-known bandit lair. It was routinely scourged by passing federal helicopters. Every once in a while the lightning-sticks would blow a smuggler’s donkey apart. Tonight he and Kickoff would be killing bandits. Not all of them, of course. Just enough to prove a concept to Kickoff’s employers. There were not enough soldiers in all the world to guard all the world’s pipelines from all the world’s thieves, saboteurs, and vandals. That task would have to be automated somehow, for those pipelines were the arteries of all the world’s machines. Like clouding mosquitoes, human bandits had learned to pierce those pipes and drink deep. So, in return, the threatened machines would have to learn to seek, hunt, and kill.
Kickoff handed the Colonel his heavy, brick-shaped satellite phone.
“Hello again, Alexei,” said the phone in Russian.
“Hi sexy,” said the Colonel, his morale improving at once. It no longer seemed odd to the Colonel that he talked on a satellite
“I don’t get off that easy, Dad. They need me. Because they know I can help. Everybody else has screwed it up.”
“Derek, if you work inside the Beltway, the people who screw things up are gonna become your best friends. They’re going to be your best war buddies. You’re gonna encounter people worse than you can imagine, with problems that don’t bear thinking about. There’s no reason for someone like you to become one of them.”
“No, there’s a very good reason, Dad. I know I can make a difference, so I have to try. If nobody ever tries to fix the world of the Internet, the future will just turn into . . .”
Van broke off. This was a very long speech for him, and his father wasn’t getting it at all. He realized that his father thought of him as a soft, dreamy person, from a lucky generation, leading a charmed life. Van didn’t know whether to feel rage or pity, so he felt what he always felt with his father: gloomy confusion.
He began to shout. “The Internet turns into hell! Some awful, total mess! Where every single decent company goes broke. Viruses and worms breaking everything. Lawsuits everywhere you look. Where crazy people from the very worst places on earth try to rip you off with bank frauds and drugs and filthy pictures . . .”
His father looked at him with alarm. His grandfather was totally bewildered by Van’s outburst. Van sounded wild and crazy, even to himself. Why let on about the nightmare cyber-scenario? He should never have opened his mouth, he thought. He was crushing their cherished, old-fashioned ideals. There were horrors in the world beyond their understanding.
CHAPTER
FOUR
CHECHNYA, NOVEMBER 2001
T he American agents inside Chechnya were rapidly improving their disguises. The Americans would never seem at home in the Caucasus, though. They didn’t have lice, nor did they stink. The Colonel was sharing a rocky, blasted ledge with the American agent called Kickoff. The two of them were very close, so close as to be quite intimate. Kickoff wore a black fur hat and crumpled Soviet combat fatigues. To that extent, Kickoff looked normal for Chechnya. Yet his teeth were white and perfect beneath his salt-and-pepper beard, and his skin was uncannily clean. Silky mountain-climbing underwear kept his precious American body toasty from wrist to ankles. Kickoff wore strong, beautifully knitted socks. He even wore sock liners. Thin, magical membranes that kept the painful rot of trench foot away. They were like condoms for his feet.
The Colonel himself stank badly of sweat, fear, boredom, vodka, and strong cigarettes. But his personal reek was lost in the awesome stench from a dead donkey’s rotting haunch and fetlock. Endless skirmishes had been fought over this vulnerable run of the Chechnyan pipeline. The shallow little cave the Colonel shared with Kickoff was a well-known bandit lair. It was routinely scourged by passing federal helicopters. Every once in a while the lightning-sticks would blow a smuggler’s donkey apart. Tonight he and Kickoff would be killing bandits. Not all of them, of course. Just enough to prove a concept to Kickoff’s employers. There were not enough soldiers in all the world to guard all the world’s pipelines from all the world’s thieves, saboteurs, and vandals. That task would have to be automated somehow, for those pipelines were the arteries of all the world’s machines. Like clouding mosquitoes, human bandits had learned to pierce those pipes and drink deep. So, in return, the threatened machines would have to learn to seek, hunt, and kill.
Kickoff handed the Colonel his heavy, brick-shaped satellite phone.
“Hello again, Alexei,” said the phone in Russian.
“Hi sexy,” said the Colonel, his morale improving at once. It no longer seemed odd to the Colonel that he talked on a satellite
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