him. Paul glanced around. In the center of the room was an elliptically-shaped wet bar. Literally wet, for the mirror-backed pedestal that supported the bar also encased what looked to be a salt-water aquarium: a living coral reef with anemones and sea fans, crabs and shrimp, eels and other fish less extreme in shape but more extreme in hue—blues and yellows and greens and reds so vivid and radiant Paul was tempted to look for their power packs.
“And this...?” he asked, gesturing to indicate the cabin and the larger structure within which it was embedded.
“My mobile ‘home sweet home’,” Vang said with a small smile, sipping at his coffee. “My ghost ship, if you like.”
“Ghost ship?” Paul asked, sipping his coffee too, initially out of politeness if nothing else. Good coffee, though. Very good.
“I like my privacy,” Vang said, with a seemingly disinterested shrug. His voice, however, could not hide a certain pride as he went on to describe the features of his flying home. “Several of my companies were involved in building it. Technically, it’s a stealth airship. An ‘invisiblimp,’ if you like, though it’s more accurate to call it an invisible dirigible, since it has an airframe. The wind-duction system that propels it also gives it superquiet hovering capability. Its engines leave virtually no infrared signature. Its structure both absorbs and bounces radar away tangentially. Engineers at ParaLogics and Crystal Memory jointly developed a chameleon-cloth smartskin for it—protective coloration, fast-reactive camouflage. In a cloudy sky it’s a cloud, in a blue sky it’s a piece of blue sky. On a moonless night like tonight, it’s obsidian, a soft-edged arrowhead flecked with stars.”
Vang smiled at his turn of phrase, but Paul was looking into the space above the other man’s head.
“Built for you?” Paul asked, taking it all in. “Or for something a bit more covert?”
“If I answered that, I’d have to kill you,” Vang said with a little laugh. “One could speculate, however, that—unlike satellites, which pass high and fast over any particular point of interest—a ship like this might be able to go in low and slow, to linger longer over whatever one might be interested in....”
“How did you get one?” Paul asked, as he continued to take in the features of Vang’s private airship.
“Alas, for all its stealthy virtues,” Vang continued, “it was detectable by certain oversight committees, even hidden deep in the black budget. The politics of project funding shot it down before it ever went into production. I bought back the prototype.”
Paul sipped more of his coffee, puzzled. He had heard of ParaLogics—high tera- and even peta-flops machines, if he recalled right. Vang’s name was also obscurely familiar.
“But if your work is in aerodynamics and computing,” Paul asked, “I don’t quite understand your interest in the fungus I brought back from Caracamuni.”
Vang nodded thoughtfully.
“Are computing and mycology really that far apart?” Vang asked rhetorically. “Think about it. In my lifetime alone I have seen the Age of Code dawning. The instructions for organic life were deciphered with the cracking of the DNA code and the mapping of genomes. The instructions for artificial life were enciphered with the encoding of languages for digital and biological computing. Mushroom mycelial networks are a good analog for parallel processing. Together the biotech and infotech revolutions are transforming Earth into Codeworld. Which it always already was, of course. My associates and I are multidisciplinary enough to see the overlap.”
Paul’s eyes strayed toward the colorful fish swimming about the reef in the wet bar, but his mind was focused on Vang’s words.
“Associates?” he asked. “You’re not just representing yourself and your companies, then?”
Ms. Griego smiled her floodlight smile.
“Dr. Vang represents a consortium with a variety of interests,” she replied, glancing at Vang for confirmation.
“To what purpose?” Paul asked.
Ms. Griego looked briefly flummoxed. Vang broke in, freeing Athena Griego to depart from them and go on about some undisclosed business out of sight.
“Allow me to tell you a little story that may or may not be true,” Vang said, looking up at him. Paul shrugged and Vang continued. “When I’ve finished, consider me an unofficial source who will deny ever having told you the story I’m about to tell you. Let’s say that, once upon a time, there was something called the Cold War—a period when each side mirrored the horror of the other, both invoking doctrines of Mutual Assured Destruction. Let’s say that, during that Cold War, there were various intelligence agencies, whose work too, on whichever side, tended to mirror the work of their opposite numbers. Let’s say that, in their looking-glass world, groups on opposite sides of the mirror began making secret contacts with each other. All right so far?”
“I follow you,” Paul said. “Go on.”
“Let’s say further,” Vang continued, “that the motive for these contacts was a shared fear. At the time, these opposite numbers—very intelligent and foresighted people, mind you—were afraid one or another of the various powers would sooner or later start a war that would result in the planet being nuked to uninhabitable status. Let’s say further that, as a result of their meetings, they started working on what they called ‘depth survival.’”
“Which was?” Paul asked, staring into his coffee cup.
“An attempt to see to it that some remnant of human population and civilization would be preserved,” Vang explained, “even through the very worst of their worst-case scenarios.”
Depth survival. Paul thought of the old rumors of vast secret underground bases and covert subterranean cities—apocryphal tales which had flourished in the loonier reaches of Cold and post-Cold War paranoia. He quickly brushed the visions away with a mental sweep of the hand, however.
“But the Cold War ended,” Paul said, puzzled. “Where were your deep survival programs then?”
“Let’s say the security apparats’ mirror-horror world really did end, as you suggest,” Vang continued, quietly. “The Cold War and older Soviet-style socialism both collapsed, despite occasional atavisms. Biblical Armageddon and Socialist Utopia both disappeared from the radar screen. Where were the deep survivors’ reasons to keep on keeping on?”
Paul nodded but said nothing.
“Let’s say that, at that time,” Vang said, “the security organizations these deep survival programs were embedded in were themselves struggling to survive. Let’s say those organizations were metamorphosing from national security apparatuses into corporate espionage and international intelligence brokers.”
“Which they have increasingly become,” Paul said, pondering it.
“Perhaps,” Vang said without inflection. “Let’s say the end of the Cold War period forced those participating in the depth survival programs to take a very long view of the human future. From the perspective of their looking-glass world, when the mirror shatters, the shatters also mirror.”
“How’s that?” Paul asked.
Vang glanced thoughtfully around the cabin.
“Let’s say their think-tank
