Vernor Vinge - True Names

VIP免费

2024-12-20 0 0 164.52KB 65 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

True Names - the novel by Vernor Vinge

Comment by the transcriber:

This is as complete and accurate an etext of the 1984

edition of True Names as I can make. I agree with Project

Gutenberg, regarding the superiority of hard formatted

plain ASCII over other formats. Except that this work

_requires_ some italics, so I've used a bastard mix of

plain text and HTML. If you want to read it as plain

text, the HTML codes for italics are not too annoying;

yet in HTML it will still preserve the original work's

line formatting (minus right justification).

Also included is the Afterword by Marvin Minsky, and

.GIFs of all illustrations from the book. These are

linked in at the correct places in the etext.

One zip file contains the whole lot, for portability.

Enjoy!

The Rectifier, Feb 1998

TRUE NAMES

"The story is a marvelous mixture of hard-science

SF and sword-and-sorcery imagery. Vinge posits that

in a direct neurocybernetic interface, the information

would be analogized by the brain into symbols it is

comfortable with. The "place" in which the Coven

"meets," for example, is or seems to be a castle,

guarded by a program which manifests itself as a

firebreathing dragon, sitting in a magma moat, wear-

ing an asbestos T-shirt. Fail to satisfy it, and it will

"kill" you, dumping you back into the real world--a

fate most Wizards seem to regard as very little better

than death.

"Vinge set himself about fifteen challenges in this

story, any one of which might have wrecked a lesser

writer, and pulled them all off with appalling ease.

No point in listing them all--but the most important

one to my mind is this: he succeeded in making me

feel, for over an hour, what it is like to be more than

human. That is one of SF's major challenges, and it

is bloody hard to do.

"Do not miss this ingenious and truly original

story--it is one of those that, when you're done, you

wish the author were present so you could applaud."

--Analog Magazine

Other books by Vernor Vinge:

GRIMM'S WORLD

THE WITLING

THE PEACE WAR (available

from Bluejay Books)

TRUE

NAMES

VERNOR VINGE

Bluejay Books Inc.

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any

resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is

coincidental.

A Bluejay Book, published by arrangement with the

Author.

reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

means, electronic or mechanical, including photo-

copying, recording, or by any information storage or

retrieval system, without the express written permis-

sion of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

For information, contact Bluejay Books Inc., 130 West

Forty-second Street, New York, New York 10036.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Bluejay printing: November 1984

To my sister,

Patricia Vinge,

with Love.

In the once upon a time days of the First Age of

Magic, the prudent sorcerer regarded his own true

name as his most valued possession but also the

greatest threat to his continued good health, for--the

stories go--once an enemy, even a weak unskilled

enemy, learned the sorcerer's true name, then rou-

tine and widely known spells could destroy or enslave

even the most powerful. As times passed, and we

graduated to the Age of Reason and thence to the

first and second industrial revolutions, such notions

were discredited. Now it seems that the Wheel has

turned full circle (even if there never really was a

First Age) and we are back to worrying about true

names again:

The first hint Mr. Slippery had that his own True

Name might be known--and, for that matter, known to

the Great Enemy--came with the appearance of two

black Lincolns humming up the long dirt driveway

that stretched through the dripping pine forest down

to Road 29. Roger Pollack was in his garden weeding,

had been there nearly the whole morning, enjoying

the barely perceptible drizzle and the overcast, and

trying to find the initiative to go inside and do work

that actually makes money. He looked up the mo-

ment the intruders turned, wheels squealing, into his

driveway. Thirty seconds passed, and the cars came

out of the third-generation forest to pull up beside

and behind Pollack's Honda. Four heavy-set men and

a hard-looking female piled out, started purposefully

across his well-tended cabbage patch, crushing ten-

der young plants with a disregard which told Roger

that this was no social call.

Pollack looked wildly around, considered making a

break for the woods, but the others had spread out

and he was grabbed and frog-marched back to his

house. (Fortunately the door had been left unlocked.

Roger had the feeling that they might have knocked

it down rather than ask him for the key.) He was

shoved abruptly into a chair. Two of the heaviest and

least collegiate-looking of his visitors stood on either

side of him. Pollack's protests--now just being voiced--

brought no response. The woman and an older man

poked around among his sets. "Hey, I remember this,

Al: It's the script for 1965. See?" The woman spoke

as she flipped through the holo-scenes that decorated

the interior wall.

The older man nodded. "I told you. He's written

more popular games than any three men and even

more than some agencies. Roger Pollack is some-

thing of a genius."

They're novels, damn you, not games! Old irritation

flashed unbidden into Roger's mind. Aloud: "Yeah,

but most of my fans aren't as persistent as you all."

"Most of your fans don't know that you are a

criminal, Mr. Pollack."

"Criminal? I'm no criminal--but I do know my

rights. You FBI types must identify yourselves, give

me a phone call, and--"

The woman smiled for the first time. It was not a

nice smile. She was about thirty-five, hatchet-faced,

her hair drawn back in the single braid favored by

military types. Even so it could have been a nicer

smile. Pollack felt a chill start up his spine. "Perhaps

that would be true, if we were the FBI or if you were

not the scum you are. But this is a Welfare Depart-

ment bust, Pollack, and you are suspected--putting it

kindly--of interference with the instrumentalities of

National and individual survival."

She sounded like something out of one of those

asinine scripts he occasionally had to work on for

government contracts. Only now there was nothing

to laugh about, and the cold between his shoulder-

blades spread. Outside the drizzle had become a misty

rain sweeping across the Northern California forests.

Normally he found that rain a comfort, but now it

just added to the gloom. Still, if there was any chance

he could wriggle out of this, it would be worth the

effort. "Okay, so you have license to hassle innocents,

but sooner or later you're going to discover that I am

innocent and then you'll find out what hostile media

coverage can really be like." And thank God I backed

up my files last night. With luck, all they'll find is

some out-of-date stock-market schemes.

"You're no innocent, Pollack. An honest citizen is

content with an ordinary data set like yours there."

She pointed across the living room at the forty-by-

fifty-centimeter data set. It was the great-grandchild

of the old CRTs. With color and twenty-line-per-

millimeter resolution, it was the standard of govern-

ment offices and the more conservative industries.

There was a visible layer of dust on Pollack's model.

The femcop moved quickly across the living room

and poked into the drawers under the picture window.

Her maroon business suit revealed a thin and angu-

lar figure. "An honest citizen would settle for a stan-

dard processor and a few thousand megabytes of fast

storage." With some superior intuition she pulled open

the center drawer--right under the marijuana plants

to reveal at least five hundred cubic centimeters of

optical memory, neatly racked and threaded through

to the next drawer which held correspondingly power-

ful CPUs. Even so, it was nothing compared to the

gear he had buried under the house.

She drifted out into the kitchen and was back in a

moment. The house was a typical airdropped bunga-

low, small and easy to search. Pollack had spent most

of his money on the land and his ... hobbies. "And

finally," she said, a note of triumph in her voice, "an

honest citizen does not need one of these!" She had

finally spotted the Other World gate. She waved the

electrodes in Pollack's face.

"Look, in spite of what you may want, all this is

still legal. In fact, that gadget is scarcely more power-

ful than an ordinary games interface." That should

be a good explanation, considering that he was a

novelist.

The older man spoke almost apologetically, "I'm

afraid Virginia has a tendency to play cat and mouse,

Mr. Pollack. You see, we know that in the Other

World you are Mr. Slippery."

"Oh."

There was a long silence. Even "Virginia" kept her

mouth shut. This had been, of course, Roger Pollack's

great fear. They had discovered Mr. Slippery's True

Name and it was Roger Andrew Pollack TIN/SSAN

0959-34-2861, and no amount of evasion, tricky

programming, or robot sources could ever again pro-

tect him from them. "How did you find out?"

A third cop, a technician type, spoke up. "It wasn't

easy. We wanted to get our hands on someone who

was really good, not a trivial vandal--what your Cov-

en would call a lesser warlock." The younger man

seemed to know the jargon, but you could pick that

up just by watching the daily paper. "For the last

three months, DoW has been trying to find the iden-

tity of someone of the caliber of yourself or Robin

Hood, or Erythrina, or the Slimey Limey. We were

having no luck at all until we turned the problem

around and began watching artists and novelists. We

figured at least a fraction of them must be attracted

to vandal activities. And they would have the talent to

be good at it. Your participation novels are the best in

the world." There was genuine admiration in his

voice. One meets fans in the oddest places, "so you

were one of the first people we looked at. Once we

suspected you, it was just a matter of time before we

had the evidence."

It was what he had always worried about. A suc-

cessful warlock cannot afford to be successful in the

real world. He had been greedy; he loved both realms

too much.

The older cop continued the technician's almost

diffident approach. "In any case, Mr. Pollack, I think

you realize that if the Federal government wants to

concentrate all its resources on the apprehension of a

single vandal, we can do it. The vandals' power comes

from their numbers rather than their power as

individuals."

Pollack repressed a smile. That was a common

belief--or faith--within government. He had snooped

on enough secret memos to realize that the Feds

really believed it, but it was very far from true. He

was not nearly as clever as someone like Erythrina.

He could only devote fifteen or twenty hours a week

to SIG activities. Some of the others must be on

welfare, so complete was their presence on the Other

Plane. The cops had nailed him simply because he

was a relatively easy catch.

"So you have something besides jail planned for me?"

"Mr. Pollack, have you ever heard of the Mailman?"

"You mean on the Other Plane?"

"Certainly. He has had no notoriety in the, uh, real

world as yet."

For the moment there was no use lying. They must

know that no member of a SIG or coven would ever

give his True Name to another member. There was

no way he could betray any of the others--he hoped.

"Yeah, he's the weirdest of the werebots."

"Werebots?"

"Were-robots, like werewolves--get it? They don't

really mesh with coven imagery. They want some

new mythos, and this notion that they are humans

who can turn into machines seems to suit them. It's

too dry for me. This Mailman, for instance, never

uses real time communication. If you want anything

from him, you usually have to wait a day or two for

each response--just like the old-time hardcopy mail

service."

"That's the fellow. How impressed are you by him?"

"Oh, we've been aware of him for a couple years,

but he's so slow that for a long time we thought he

was some clown on a simple data set. Lately, though,

he's pulled some really--" Pollack stopped short, re-

membering just who he was gossiping with.

"--some really tuppin stunts, eh, Pollack?" The

ferncop "Virginia" was back in the conversation. She

pulled up one of the roller chairs, till her knees were

almost touching his, and stabbed a finger at his chest.

"You may not know just how tuppin. You vandals

have caused Social Security Records enormous prob-

lems, and Robin Hood cut IRS revenues by three

percent last year. You and your friends are a greater

threat than any foreign enemy. Yet you're nothing

compared to this Mailman."

Pollack was rocked back. It must be that he had

seen only a small fraction of the Mailman's japes.

"You're actually scared of him," he said mildly.

Virginia's face began to take on the color of her

suit. Before she could reply, the older cop spoke.

"Yes, we are scared. We can scarcely cope with the

Robin Hoods and the Mr. Slipperys of the world.

Fortunately, most vandals are interested in personal

gain or in proving their cleverness. They realize that

if they cause too much trouble, they could no doubt

be identified. I suspect that tens of thousands of

cases of Welfare and Tax fraud are undetected, com-

mitted by little people with simple equipment who

succeed because they don't steal much--perhaps just

their own income tax liability--and don't wish the

notoriety which you, uh, warlocks go after. If it weren't

for their petty individualism, they would be a greater

threat than the nuclear terrorists.

"But the Mailman is different: he appears to be

ideologically motivated. He is very knowledgeable,

very powerful. Vandalism is not enough for him; he

wants control..." The Feds had no idea how long it

had been going on, at least a year. It never would

have been discovered but for a few departments in

the Federal Screw Standards Commission which kept

their principal copy records on paper. Discrepancies

showed up between those records and the decisions

rendered in the name of the FSSC. Inquiries were

made; computer records were found at variance with

the hardcopy. More inquiries. By luck more than

anything else, the investigators discovered that deci-

sion modules as well as data were different from the

hardcopy backups. For thirty years government had

depended on automated central planning, shifting

more and more from legal descriptions of decision

algorithms to program representations that could work

directly with data bases to allocate resources, suggest

legislation, outline military strategy.

The take-over had been subtle, and its extent was

unknown. That was the horror of it. It was not even

clear just what groups within the Nation (or without)

were benefitting from the changed interpretations of

Federal law and resource allocation. Only the deci-

sion modules in the older departments could be di-

rectly checked, and some thirty percent of them

showed tampering. "...and that percentage scares us

as much as anything, Mr. Pollack. It would take a

large team of technicians and lawyers months to suc-

cessfully make just the changes that we have de-

tected."

"What about the military?" Pollack thought of the

Finger of God installations and the thousands of mis-

siles pointed at virtually every country on Earth. If

Mr. Slippery had ever desired to take over the world,

that is what he would have gone for. To hell with

pussy-footing around with Social Security checks.

"No. No penetration there. In fact, it was his at-

tempt to infiltrate--" the older cop glanced hesitantly

at Virginia, and Pollack realized who was the boss of

this operation, "--NSA that revealed the culprit to be

the Mailman. Before that it was anonymous, totally

without the ego-flaunting we see in big-time vandals.

But the military and NSA have their own systems.

Impractical though that is, it paid off this time."

Pollack nodded. The SIG steered clear of the military,

and especially of NSA.

"But if he was able to slide through DoW and

Department of Justice defenses so easy, you really

don't know how much a matter of luck it was that he

didn't also succeed with his first try on NSA .... I

think I understand now. You need help. You hope to

get some member of the Coven to work on this from

the inside."

"It's not a hope, Pollack," said Virginia. "It's a

certainty. Forget about going to jail. Oh, we could

put you away forever on the basis of some of Mr.

Slippery's pranks. But even if we don't do that, we

can take away your license to operate. You know

what that means."

It was not a question, but Pollack knew the answer

nevertheless: ninety-eight percent of the jobs in mod-

em society involved some use of a data set. Without a

license, he was virtually unemployable--and that left

Welfare, the prospect of sitting in some urbapt count-

ing flowers on the wall. Virginia must have seen the

defeat in his eyes. "Frankly, I am not as confident as

Ray that you are all that sharp. But you are the best

we could catch. NSA thinks we have a chance of

finding the Mailman's true identity if we can get an

agent into your coven. We want you to continue to

attend coven meetings, but now your chief goal is not

mischief but the gathering of information about the

Mailman. You are to recruit any help you can without

revealing that you are working for the government--

you might even make up the story that you suspect

the Mailman of being a government plot. (I'm sure

you see he has some of the characteristics of a Fed-

eral agent working off a conventional data set.) Above

all, you are to remain alert to contact from us, and

give us your instant cooperation in anything we re-

quire of you. Is all this perfectly clear, Mr. Pollack?"

He found it difficult to meet her gaze. He had

never really been exposed to extortion before. There

was something ... dehumanizing about being used

so. "Yeah," he finally said.

"Good." She stood up, and so did the others. "If you

behave, this is the last time you'll see us in person."

Pollack stood too. "And afterward, if you're... satis-

fied with my performance?"

Virginia grinned, and he knew he wasn't going to

like her answer. "Afterward, we can come back to

considering your crimes. If you do a good job, I

would have no objection to your retaining a standard

data set, maybe some of your interactive graphics.

But I'll tell you, if it weren't for the Mailman, nabbing

Mr. Slippery would make my month. There is no way

I'd risk your continuing to abuse the System."

Three minutes later, their sinister black Lincolns

were halfway down the drive, disappearing into the

pines. Pollack stood in the drizzle watching till long

after their sound had faded to nothing. He was barely

aware of the cold wet across his shoulders and down

his back. He looked up suddenly, feeling the rain in

his face, wondering if the Feds were so clever that

they had taken the day into account: the military's

recon satellites could no doubt monitor their cars, but

the civilian satellites the SIG had access to could not

penetrate these clouds. Even if some other member

of the SIG did know Mr. Slippery's True Name, they

would not know that the Feds had paid him a visit.

Pollack looked across the yard at his garden. What

a difference an hour can make.

By late afternoon, the overcast was gone. Sunlight

glinted off millions of waterdrop jewels in the trees.

Pollack waited till the sun was behind the tree line,

till all that was left of its passage was a gold band

across the taller trees to the east of his bungalow.

Then he sat down before his equipment and prepared

to ascend to the Other Plane. What he was undertak-

ing was trickier than anything he had tried before,

and he wanted to take as much time as the Feds

would tolerate. A week of thought and research would

have suited him more, but Virginia and her pals were

clearly too impatient for that.

He powered up his processors, settled back in his

favorite chair, and carefully attached the Portal's five

sucker electrodes to his scalp. For long minutes noth-

ing happened: a certain amount of self-denial--or at

least self-hypnosis--was necessary to make the ascent.

Some experts recommended drugs or sensory isola-

tion to heighten the user's sensitivity to the faint,

ambiguous signals that could be read from the Portal.

Pollack, who was certainly more experienced than

any of the pop experts, had found that he could make

it simply by staring out into the trees and listening to

the wind-surf that swept through their upper branches.

And just as a daydreamer forgets his actual sur-

roundings and sees other realities, so Pollack drifted,

detached, his subconscious interpreting the status of

the West Coast communication and data services as a

vague thicket for his conscious mind to inspect, inter-

rogate for the safest path to an intermediate haven.

Like most exurb data-commuters, Pollack rented the

standard optical links: Bell, Boeing, Nippon Electric.

Those, together with the local West Coast data

companies, gave him more than enough paths to

proceed with little chance of detection to any accept-

ing processor on Earth. In minutes, he had traced

through three changes of carrier and found a place to

do his intermediate computing. The comsats rented

processor time almost as cheaply as ground stations,

and an automatic payment transaction (through sev-

eral dummy accounts set up over the last several

years) gave him sole control of a large data space

within milliseconds of his request. The whole process

was almost at a subconscious level--the proper func-

tioning of numerous routines he and others had de-

vised over the last four years. Mr. Slippery (the other

name was avoided now, even in his thoughts) had

achieved the fringes of the Other Plane. He took a

quick peek through the eyes of a low-resolution

weather satellite, saw the North American continent

spread out below, the terminator sweeping through

the West, most of the plains clouded over. One never

knew when some apparently irrelevant information

might help--and though it could all be done automati-

cally through subconscious access, Mr. Slippery had

always been a romantic about spaceflight.

He rested for a few moments, checking that his

indirect communication links were working and that

the encryption routines appeared healthy, untampered

with. (Like most folks, honest citizens or warlocks,

he had no trust for the government standard encryp-

tion routines, but preferred the schemes that had

leaked out of academia--over NSA's petulant objec-

tions-during the last fifteen years.) Protected now

against traceback, Mr. Slippery set out for the Coven

itself. He quickly picked up the trail, but this was

never an easy trip, for the SIG members had no

interest in being bothered by the unskilled.

In particular, the traveler must be able to take

advantage of subtle sensory indications, and see in

them the environment originally imagined by the SIG.

The correct path had the aspect of a narrow row of

stones cutting through a gray-greenish swamp. The

air was cold but very moist. Weird, towering plants

dripped audibly onto the faintly iridescent water and

the broad lilies. The subconscious knew what the

stones represented, handled the chaining of routines

from one information net to another, but it was the

conscious mind of the skilled traveler that must make

the decisions that could lead to the gates of the Coven,

or to the symbolic "death" of a dump back to the real

world. The basic game was a distant relative of the

ancient Adventure that had been played on computer

systems for more than forty years, and a nearer rela-

tive of the participation novels that are still widely

sold. There were two great differences, though. This

game was more serious, and was played at a level of

complexity impossible without the use of the EEG

input/output that the warlocks and the popular data

bases called Portals.

There was much misinformation and misunder-

standing about the Portals. Oh, responsible data bases

like the LA Times and the CBS News made it clear

that there was nothing supernatural about them or

about the Other Plane, that the magical jargon was at

best a romantic convenience and at worst obscuran-

tism. But even so, their articles often missed the

point and were both too conservative and too extrava-

gant. You might think that to convey the full sense

imagery of the swamp, some immense bandwidth

would be necessary. In fact, that was not so (and if it

were, the Feds would have quickly been able to spot

warlock and werebot operations). A typical Portal link

was around fifty thousand baud, far narrower than

even a flat video channel. Mr. Slippery could feel the

damp seeping through his leather boots, could feel

the sweat starting on his skin even in the cold air,

but this was the response of Mr. Slippery's imagina-

tion and subconscious to the cues that were actually

being presented through the Portal's electrodes. The

interpretation could not be arbitrary or he would be

dumped back to reality and would never find the

Coven; to the traveler on the Other Plane, the detail

was there as long as the cues were there. And there

is nothing new about this situation. Even a poor

writer if he has a sympathetic reader and an engag-

ing plot--can evoke complete internal imagery with a

few dozen words of description. The difference now

is that the imagery has interactive significance, just

as sensations in the real world do. Ultimately, the

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

TrueNames-thenovelbyVernorVingeCommentbythetranscriber:Thisisascompleteandaccurateanetextofthe1984editionofTrueNamesasIcanmake.IagreewithProjectGutenberg,regardingthesuperiorityofhardformattedplainASCIIoverotherformats.Exceptthatthiswork_requires_someitalics,soI'veusedabastardmixofplaintextandHTML.I...

展开>> 收起<<

Vernor Vinge - True Names.pdf

共65页,预览13页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Vernor Vinge - True Names

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: