Schemes Of The Unknown Unknown Ch 16

Chapter Sixteen

Earth - 3753 C.E.

"What I don't really understand," said Jorgen, "is why you ever got married to Paul."

"It's because I love him," Beatrice replied. "Is that so difficult to understand?"

"Well, if you love him," Jorgen persisted, "why do you make love to me so often and so passionately?"

"Because I'm a passionate woman," said Beatrice as she leaned over Jorgen's bed where they lay and grasped his penis which was one part of his body thankfully undamaged by shrapnel but still enhanced by surgery.

"I can see that," said Jorgen. "I've never met a woman before as passionate as you."

His last word was prolonged by the spasm that shuddered through his body as Beatrice's tongue slobbered upwards from the shaft of his penis to the glans. Her lips squeezed gently on the tip as it glistened with a sticky gauze of semen.

"You're cheating on Paul," said Jorgen. "Isn't that a contradiction of your assertion that you love him? Or is he one of those who doesn't mind?"

"He'd mind all right," said Beatrice as she rubbed the tip of her forefinger on the glans. "That's why I don't tell him."

"It's deceitful," said Jorgen. "He's your husband. You should be faithful to him."

Beatrice was bored with this conversation. She'd heard this and so many variants of it from the stream of lovers she'd had ever since she and Paul got married. She couldn't understand what the problem was. Her husband was happy to have regular sex with her. She was happy to have sex with him and with other people. Paul wouldn't be happy if he knew the extent of Beatrice's sexual escapades, especially since the time they'd arrived on the Moon and then travelled to Earth where there were significantly more opportunities for sexual encounters. If the purpose of morality was to maximise the scope of human happiness, wasn't she working at it as hard as anyone? And hadn't she more than fulfilled her moral mission given that she'd made so many other people happy?

As she was doing now in the company of a man who as nearly resembled her as a human could. The fact that his body was as much machine as biological was bound to fascinate someone like Beatrice who wasn't even partly biological. He was stronger, faster and had more stamina than most humans, even allowing for the advances in medicine and surgery that had prolonged lives and enhanced bodies far beyond genetically prescribed limits. His senses, particularly those of sight and sound, were acute though not quite as much so as Beatrice's. And his ability to make love also exceeded that of most humans as Jorgen was now demonstrating. He was deep inside her and his pelvic thrusts were hard, fast and thoroughly agreeable. Beatrice gripped his scarred metal and plastic back and reciprocated his thrusts with her own. She gave vent to cries of passion, not because she needed to (as she had total control over herself) but because she knew these would further inflame her lover's passion.

Beatrice was a frequent visitor to Jorgen's bedroom and was aware that Grace knew about their relationship. Jorgen may even have told her. It was in Beatrice's interests, of course, to also seduce Grace and thereby compromise any suspicions she might have concerning Paul's beautiful wife, but the guard was clearly not interested. Beatrice was sufficiently versed in human sexual behaviour to identify those tempted by her charms and those who weren't. It wasn't surprising that more men than women were attracted to her, but Grace wasn't even interested in sexual relationships with men. Beatrice understood that there was a spectrum of sexual desire which extended from perpetual lust to total indifference, but she still thought it was a shame. She'd love to push her fingers deep between Grace's muscled thighs. Beatrice was equally attracted to men and women however much or little it was reciprocated. It was a design feature that could bring her as much distress as it did delight.

"And why Paul?" Jorgen wondered when he and Beatrice slumped face up back on the bed with his torso streaked with perspiration. "I can't see how you could possibly love a man like him. Don't get me wrong. I understand that people are attracted to the most peculiar things..."

"What kind of things

are

people attracted to?" Beatrice asked teasingly.

"Don't change the subject. You know just as well as I do. Some of these activities mightn't even be legal. But what I wonder is what you see in Paul. He's not especially good looking. He's only averagely intelligent and his range of interests is so narrow that his conversation ranks amongst the most boring I've ever had to eavesdrop. Is it only because he's on a secret mission that you've taken to him?"

"Secret mission?" asked Beatrice, who didn't like the turn in Jorgen's speculation. "What do you know about a secret mission?"

"We haven't been fully briefed, but there have been hints," Jorgen admitted. "And of course there are rumours."

"Hints? Rumours? Tell me more."

"You don't have to do too much thinking, sweetie," said Jorgen. "Paul Morris of Godwin has been associated with the Anomaly for years. And there are precious few anarchists from the barren wastes of the Kuiper Belt who've been authorised to visit Earth. He doesn't have much wealth, his specialities in database archaeology would never qualify him, and his progress across the Solar System has been accompanied by an extraordinary trail of assassination attempts..."

"Speculation like that is unavoidable," said Beatrice. "But what

is

the secret mission?"

"I don't know," said Jorgen. "There are rumours about the Interplanetary Union chartering a gigantic space ship to fly beyond the Oort Cloud. There's a rumour that the source of the Anomaly was originally on Earth given that this Paul Morris established that it was first identified one and a half thousand years ago. There is a rumour, which I find truly incredible, that Paul Morris is in some way the mastermind behind the Anomaly. No one really knows. Why should I know any more than that?"

Beatrice relaxed. Jorgen didn't really know anything. "Do you think I married Paul because of this secret mission?" she asked.

"It doesn't seem too unlikely."

"What's my role in the mission then? Is it to seduce Paul's bodyguards and fuck them here to paradise? Is it to weasel dark secrets out of Paul? To become one with the mastermind behind the Anomaly? It all seems ludicrous to me."

"You must admit though," said Jorgen who reclined on the mattress with his cock drooping temptingly over his thigh, "the rumours don't sound much more bizarre than the notion that you somehow fell in love with a man like Paul and married him after a whirlwind romance on Ecstasy."

"That as may be," said Beatrice who grasped Jorgen's penis in readiness for a further bout of lovemaking. "But it's all the truth there is."

Beatrice was grateful for the protection provided by Jorgen and Grace, but from her point of view these and all the other bodyguards who'd shadowed Paul and her on the journey from the Ecstasy colony onwards were at best a distraction from her central task of keeping Paul safe and to keep secure her passage aboard the Space Ship Intrepid. If the man should fall victim to an assassination attempt, it would be regrettable for Paul and Beatrice might even feel quite sad, but the more serious result would be the derailment of Proxima Centauri's mission to the Anomaly. There were other options, of course, but she'd been informed that her role in the campaign was currently the most promising. What would Paul think if he knew that he was travelling beyond the Solar System on the whim of a civilisation from more than four light years distant that he didn't know even existed?

Beatrice was able to lower her level of alert since she and Paul arrived in Earth orbit. There were many Proxima Centauri operatives scattered about Earth and its satellite: far more than in the more recently colonised settlements in the outer Solar System. Very few such operatives were androids, of course. Beatrice belonged to a very elite set. Most operatives didn't resemble humans in any shape or form at all. Their appearance was more likely to be that of street furniture, household robots or industrial machinery. It was much easier to maintain invisibility in such a form than in the intricate structure of a human being, especially when you were subjected to so many intrusive body scans in the name of security. Beatrice knew where these operatives were stationed, but even a bodyguard like Jorgen with his heightened senses wasn't capable of identifying an operative disguised as a waste dispenser, a light fitting or a home computer. With such additional support, Beatrice was able to relax but she was also aware that unknown threats still existed.

Beatrice and her husband had blundered into yet another place on Earth that Paul now regretted having decided to visit. On the map, Antarctica seemed an attractive proposition. It was empty, white and beautiful. It was also so cold that Paul might as well be in the orbit of the outer planets. Even though the air outside the Polar Station was breathable, it was so bitterly cold and windy that even a moment's exposure was enough to kill a man who wasn't properly protected. So Paul and Beatrice were now lounging inside a hotel which afforded them a glorious view of the midnight sun over an Antarctic ice-scape that was often obscured by snowstorms.

"Don't you ever open the blinds?" wondered Beatrice when she wandered back to the hotel room where Paul was studying an online book about a twenty-second century television science fiction program.

"Blinds?" Paul asked. He pressed the button to open them and accidentally opened the triple-glazed windows that let in a sudden gust of icy air that even in midsummer was dramatically below zero. He hurriedly found the button to close the window while he shivered from the intense cold and watched as the blinds slowly slid open. It was watery sunlight of almost the same intensity at whatever hour of the day or night. There was a peculiarity about time here, of course, which had also attracted Paul to the South Pole and that was that the hotel was so positioned that it was simultaneously the same hour on every degree of longitude. By convention the day was measured using an archaic measurement called GMT which time zone wasn't even adhered to in Greenwich.

"What do you find to do here?" wondered Paul as he and Beatrice reclined on the unmade bed. Paul was still tired as he'd only woken up a couple of hours earlier even though it was now nominally evening.

"I was visiting the bodyguards," said Beatrice.

"They can't be very busy at the moment," Paul surmised. "Not many assassins here. In fact, there are hardly anyone in this hotel at all. I'm not sure whether we're the only guests."

"There are some who've come to visit the fresh water lakes under the ice," said Beatrice. "And there's a couple who are now spending a few days in the dry valleys."

"You always know more about what goes on than I do," said Paul.

"I socialise for the both of us," said Beatrice who was slightly concerned that Paul might get jealous of his wife's more extensive social life. But after eighty years or more of living the life of a social outcast more from a sense of carelessness than purpose, socialising wasn't one of Paul's main concerns. Perhaps he just wanted more of Beatrice's company. After all, the Antarctic was truly both bleak and boring. "We'll be setting off tomorrow anyway."

"What's next on the itinerary? I hope it's not going to be somewhere as dull as Seattle. The historic home of a Twentieth Century Operating System was even more dreary and desolate than the Antarctic. And it must be some kind of an improvement over Timbuktu. That was far too hot and sandy."

Beatrice had no need to refer to anything to find the answer, but for form's sake she picked up the e-paper that displayed the couple's itinerary and acted as a kind of ticket for their passage. "Tomorrow we travel by helicopter to Tierra del Fuego and from there by ship to the Falkland Isles. I believe they have many penguins and a pub just like the ones in London. And then after a week there we travel to Lagos by ship and from there overland to Moscow."

"Moscow? Is it cold there?"

"At this time of the year, yes. But it will be very hot in Lagos."

"Is that in Africa or South America? I was hoping to go to that city in Brazil with the huge statue on the hill. Is that Lagos?"

"No, that's Rio de Janeiro. We aren't scheduled to go to Brazil at all."

"Tourism is a more fraught pursuit than I ever imagined," said Paul ruefully. "I'll be pleased when we can stop zigzagging about planet Earth and head off to the Heliopause."

In truth, it was Beatrice rather than Paul who was the most desperate to finally begin her real mission. She hadn't really been designed to act as Paul's wife, chaperone, lover and bodyguard. She'd much rather take a more active role in directing the Interplanetary Union's mission towards Proxima Centauri objectives.

Nonetheless, being a tourist was undeniably relaxing though there were many destination she'd rather have visited than Paul's haphazard and nearly random choices. This unstructured itinerary had its advantages from a security point of view. No one, for instance, would have expected Paul and Beatrice to elect to spend a week at Port Stanley in the Falklands. There would be no Christian or Islamic fundamentalist fanatics amongst the penguins and the very small number of wretched people who had chosen to live and work on this remote South Atlantic island.

Beatrice still had to guard against attempts on Paul's life. There was the incident of the poisoned dart that was shot in their direction when they travelled by steam boat along the Congo. Beatrice glimpsed it just in time and plucked it out of the air before it struck Paul. There was the incident of the venomous snake that got into the hotel room when the couple were in Perth, Australia. Beatrice was hardly bothered by the snake's venomous bite when she picked it up and threw it out the window, but Paul wouldn't have been nearly so fortunate. There was the incident of the collapsing bridge over the gorge in North America, but Beatrice was forewarned of this by Proxima Centauri operatives and was able to delay Paul's departure by an impromptu lovemaking session whose result was that the bridge had already collapsed by the time Paul and Beatrice would have to cross it.

These were trivial incidents that were probably organised by amateurs who had none of the operational skills that would be expected from a trained assassin with full logistical support. It was gratifying for Beatrice to be able to take appropriate action without needing to attract the attention of Jorgen and Grace, who were, if anything, magnets rather than deterrents to any assassin.

Although Paul was quite content to enjoy the Antarctic from only the view he had from his seventh floor hotel suite, Beatrice was more adventurous. Paul looked on anxiously as she piled on the layers of clothing that would keep her alive in the snowy wilderness. They were rather less heavy and cumbersome compared to what she once had to wear on Venus, but they most certainly restricted her movement.

"Are you sure you want to venture outside?" Paul asked.

"Why else are we here?" Beatrice responded.

"It's not like you're going out for air," Paul continued. "It might be sunny but it most definitely isn't warm."

"I'll be alright," said Beatrice. "I just want a close look at Amundsen's flag."

"You mean the Norwegian one at the pole? There are loads of other flags there and I don't believe it's actually the original. Anyway the ice has moved tens of kilometres away from where it was all those hundreds of years ago."

"I'll be back soon."

Beatrice's main reason for venturing out wasn't really to see the flag. When she'd trudged a sufficient distance across the thick packed snow, she disappeared out of sight behind a twentieth century truck that was left as some kind of memorial to the original South Pole base and quickly disabled all the surveillance cameras. She then pulled off the heavy coats that served her no useful function as her operating specifications enabled her to function even in deep space. She stood in the snow and ice in nothing more than the flimsy undergarments that came as standard issue. She directed her body in the right orientation with regards to the Proxima Centauri mission control ship that was about a light minute's distance away. She downloaded the data that was transmitted to her in reply to the data she uploaded. This was scrambled to the extent that no human receiver could identify it as a data stream of any kind and wouldn't anyway have the computational power to decipher.

It wasn't human interception that troubled Beatrice or even Proxima Centauri mission control. What sense could humans have made of the contents of her communication? The main source of anxiety was Sirius' robot civilisation whose interest in the Intrepid's mission to the Anomaly had been identified by Proxima Centauri intelligence. There was a real likelihood that their activities could conflict with Beatrice's. It wasn't clear what the Sirius operatives intended to do but the overwhelming impression was that it was hostile to the objectives of both the Interplanetary Union and Proxima Centauri.

Sirius had sent its own investigative mission to the Anomaly, as had Proxima Centauri and the other robot civilisations in the neighbouring stellar systems, and it was unlikely that their mission would have learnt anything much different than the others. There was still no convincing theory to explain the Anomaly and it remained as irrational an entity as it was possible to be. Just as the scientists from Proxima Centauri, those from Sirius would have concluded from the biological—sometimes even human—Apparitions that the phenomenon was associated with human civilisation in a way as yet unknown. This was especially evident as it was centred on the Solar System rather than other parts of the neighbouring Star Cluster. However, although Proxima Centauri had determined that the success of the Intrepid's mission would help them to better understand what the Anomaly might be and how much of a threat it might pose, Sirius appeared to have taken the view that the mission was fundamentally dangerous and should be stopped at all costs. Or so Proxima Centauri intelligence strongly suggested.

Beatrice had never once encountered a Sirius operative. There was only a tentative diplomatic relation between Sirius and Proxima Centauri. It was inconceivable that any robotic civilisation should interfere with another and, given the vastness of space, there was no need for machine societies to engage in territorial disputes.

Nevertheless, this passive strategy of non-interference was poorly observed in the Solar System. Although it was more or less decided that humans should remain ignorant of the more advanced machine civilisations they had accidentally spawned until such time (if ever) they were able to deal with this revelation in a rational way, all the robot civilisations maintained espionage and intelligence gathering operations throughout the Solar System. These were generally benign and non-intrusive, but the presence of the Anomaly had rather changed the comfortable status quo. On this issue, Proxima Centauri and Sirius had taken radically different attitudes, while the other robot civilisations maintained a principled policy of non-interference.

For all Beatrice knew, it was possible that humans like Jorgen or Professor Wasilewski were also androids, but they showed very little evidence that they were. There was no doubt that Sirius androids had been assigned to monitor and possibly sabotage the Intrepid's mission, but this was kept secret from even Proxima Centauri's formidable intelligence resources.