Free The Duke Of Uranium by John Barnes Page B

gaggle of cowardly mousefarts—don’t even let the kids know why they’re supposed to be afraid of social engineering. The idea that even the very worst zybots would ever try for crude raw power like that, let alone—”
    “Oh, hush,” Gweshira said. “You don’t have to worry about the state of his education, anymore, Sib, he’s done with that, and think about who we’re talking about. If it’s up to Jak, he’ll never learn anything more for the rest of his life. Anyway, as long as Jak knows the truth, we don’t have to concern ourselves with how wrong everyone else is, now do we? So turn it down, old pizo, and let me explain things to Jak—it will take half as much time as it will if you help.”
    She pulled her chair closer to Jak’s bed, as if to make sure he had no view of Sib. “All right, beginning once again, the shape and number are a sort of shorthand for how a given zybot wants to see society structured. Sib and I have been members and operatives, for more than a century, of a zybot called Circle Four. Our major opponent is Triangle One. Triangle One organized Princess Shyf’s kidnapping, not because they dislike her or wanted her for any purpose of their own, but to assist the House of Cofinalez in a power struggle, because the Cofinalezes have a close relationship, often a de facto alliance, with Triangle One. Are you with me so far?”
    “Circle Four, toves. Triangle One, working for Cofinalez. Cofinalez, malphs. Got it.”
    “It’s more complicated than—”
    “Not for him, it isn’t, Sib. Now hush up and let me handle this!”
    Sibroillo got up and left, closing the door with a heavy thud against its padding. “He’d have slammed it if he could,” Jak observed.
    “He’ll recover. He’s a big boy. Sometimes more big and sometimes more boy. Seriously, Jak, you at least understand that there are two teams, and that the Cofinalez people hired the other one?”
    “So far. So you—Circle Four, I mean—are willing to help Sesh—Princess Shyf, I mean, this is confusing— because you just oppose anything Triangle One does?”
    She sighed. “Well, no, not exactly. We do oppose many things that they do. Every now and then we’re allies, and each zybot also does things that don’t interest the other at all. But in this case, we have strong
     
    reasons to oppose them. That’s what I was getting at with the business of the shape and number description. You see, the shape describes how many power centers a zybot is seeking to have in its ideal society, and in what relationship to each other. And the number designates what order of effect each power center should be taking into account in its decision-making.”
    “Clear as Martian moss soup,” Jak said, shaking his head in confusion.
    “Well, let’s take a simple one. Rhombus Two. They think society should be a balance between law, art, charity, and business, with art and charity working as close allies and law and business kept far apart So if you diagrammed that, you’d have the four points that define a rhombus, with two in the middle close together—art and charity—and two more distant ones, law and business, far from each other. Is that clear so far?”
    Jak shrugged. “Clearer.”
    “So that’s where they get the rhombus. All right, now, what the two means, is that they think that when, say, an artist does something that affects the law, he should also worry about the second-order effect—how his effect on the law will affect charity, for example.”
    “What about the two groups I actually have to deal with?”
    She smiled grimly. “Patience, patience. Circle Four. A circle has an infinite number of points around a center. Which we think should be a wise, intelligent, democratically controlled government, you see? An infinite number of other powers, all equal in their relation to the state. And a fourth-order effect means, basically, that before the government takes any action about or to Mr. A, it has to think about how Mr.