“The background count is rising fast,” said the intelligence.
“Shut up,” said Christian. “I’m busy.”
And somehow he freed Gimmick before either of them took too large a dose. He cradled the spheroid and its trailing cables in his arms, he crept down the rubble slope and leaped across the regolith. Dust puffed from his boots. The airlock opened for him. He stumbled through and up to the cabin, where he collapsed into a seat. His heart thuttered. As yet, the turmoil in him drowned any feeling of triumph. Mostly he lusted for a cold beer. Or two or three or four.
The robot spent a while examining the discarded machine and selecting rock specimens before it joined him. It had no reason to hurry.
5
Like Christian, Gimmick need not be in rapport in order to process data and execute a program—to remember, think, be aware. Unlike him, it did not need a body for this. A power supply and a few input-output connections sufficed. Upon returning, it had been linked to the central intelligence for purposes of downloading and analyzing the knowledge it brought. Those circuits were now inoperative.
The voice from the intercom should therefore have been flat, the words an unemotional report. To mimic humanness as well as the central intelligence did required capabilities beyond any called for in an explorer—especially an explorer that would often be under the guidance of a human mind. Yet tone and language this day carried more than bare information. Something else, a hint as of life, flowed along.
“You’ve found the cause of the collapse?” Christian asked eagerly.
“Uh-huh,” replied Gimmick. “The nanotech studied crystal structures atom by atom, and then the big brain set up a model and ran it. It turns out this particular mineral combination is unusually vulnerable to thermal stress. Oh, not much, or the crag wouldn’t have stood so long. But gigayears of heat and cold, heat and cold chewed on it. Solar wind and cosmic rays didn’t help. Flaws developed and grew till any substantial shock would bring everything tumbling down. Sooner or later, a good-sized meteorite would have hit nearby.”
Christian frowned. “We gave it no such push.”
“Sure, our seismic probe was gentle. But the resonant frequencies were enough. Construction or a spacecraft landing in the neighborhood would have done the same.”
“How great a problem will this be?”
“We’ll have to find out. Probably not very. The rock doesn’t appear to be a common sort. In any case, the planners will be forewarned.”
“I daresay the business was worth what it cost, then. But we’re earning our pay!”
Did the voice quiver, ever so faintly? “When can we start surveying again?”
“Don’t know. I’ve looked into the matter, and it isn’t practical to modify any robot on the planet for you. If making a new body and shipping it from Earth will take too long, I’ll negotiate early termination of our contract and let another team succeed us. I don’t want to sit idled for months, above all on Mercury.” Christian glanced at Willem Schuyten. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Nothing wrong with the company here.”
The older man smiled wryly. “Aside from a lack of live women. I don’t especially care for virtuals.”
“And the rest of the universe waiting,” Christian said, more softly still.
The cyberneticist gave him a look that went deep. For a moment the room lay silent. It was Christian’s quarters. At present, one wall screen held a view of Saturn in space, jewel-exquisite. In another, dry snow drifted across a flank of Everest, white beneath lordly blue. A third, smaller, displayed a portrait of his Ellen, which he seldom animated anymore, and a fourth had the likeness of their son, which he often did. His guitar leaned against a desk cluttered with figurines and the equipment for creating them. A bottle and two tumblers stood companionably on the table between the men.
Christian stirred. “Well,” he said toward the intercom, “I’ll let you know as soon as I do myself. Meanwhile, if you’ve nothing to keep you amused, I expect you’ll turn yourself off. Adios.”
“Until then,” responded the voice, and ceased.
“Escape from boredom,” Christian muttered. “I envy you that.”
“Do you really?” asked Willem almost as low.
Christian paused before he replied. “I suppose not. Envy wouldn’t make sense, would it?”
“Not envy of a machine. But you spoke with Gimmick the way one speaks with a friend.”
Christian shrugged. “Habit. Haven’t you ever talked or sworn at a machine?”
“I said ‘spoke with,’ not ‘spoke at.’ It never struck me before—I never was exposed to it so directly—how you two converse. How eerily lifelike Gimmick sounded. How much like you.”
“I shouldn’t think you’d be surprised. You’re the expert on AI.”
“It’s an enormous field, and enlarging exponentially. I had no experience with your sort of team until I came to Mercury. And of course my work here has been with the main system,” helping it direct the manifold activities on a world full of unknowns.
“But I mean, it’s so obvious. Gimmick’s not a thing I steer like a boat or put on and take off like a glove. He can operate by himself. He makes judgments and acts on them. He learns. Naturally he’d learn—pick up traits—from me.”
“And you from him,” Willem said slowly.
Christian’s hand, reaching for his drink, dropped to the table and doubled into a fist. “I never thought I’d hear that out of your mouth,” he snapped. ” ‘Dehumanization,’ ‘emotional deprivation,’ all the Organicist quack-quackery infesting Earth.”
Willem raised his own palm. “Peace, I pray. I certainly do know better. No offense intended. My apologies.”
Christian relaxed somewhat. “I’m sorry. Overreaction, stupid of me.” He gave the other a rueful smile. “After that go-around at the scarp, I guess my nerves haven’t yet stopped jangling.”
“Very understandable. But I do want to make a point, and then… lead up to something that’s been more and more on my mind.”
Christian lifted the tumbler, sipped, and leaned back in his chair. “Go ahead, do.”
“You’ve given Gimmick a name, jocular, but doesn’t that in itself show a feeling? And you persistently refer to Gimmick not as ‘it’ but ‘he.’ ”
“Sure. Why not? I’ve owned a couple of boats on Earth, named them, and called them ‘she.’ ”
“But you said it yourself, Gimmick is not a passive piece of machinery. Within… his… limits, to all intents and purposes, he thinks. In linkage with you, he becomes… an aspect, a facet of a human being.”
“No,” Christian said quietly. “In linkage, together, we’re more than human.”
“In sensory range, in capabilities, yes. Which is bound to affect you. But you are the man. Yours are the instincts, drives, fears and hopes, joys and sorrows, everything that four billion years of evolution on Earth has made. Do you imagine contact with that would not affect him?”
Again Christian gathered his thoughts before he answered. “Of course it has. During the time we’ve worked as a team, and that’s been a spell now, I’ve noticed. And not been surprised.” He tossed off a dram. “That’s part of why I get so angry at those snotheads. Robotization of humans? How about humanization of robots?”
“Within their limits, as you put it,” Willem said carefully.
Christian nodded. “Agreed. I don’t pretend Gimmick is the equal of—of you. How can we compare… apples and bluebirds?”
“When you insisted on going out and risking your life, you claimed it was to save the data. They did prove to be important. However, what you really intended was to rescue your friend. Was it not?”
Christian sat silent.
Willem sighed. “Still, compared to the central intelligence here on Mercury, not to speak of the greater systems on Earth, Gimmick is very limited. And as I said, things are changing exponentially. Now I will soon be obsolete and retire to rusticate. Everybody like me will.
“Where wil
l it end? Where does computational power leave off and actual consciousness begin? I don’t know, and this field has been my lifelong specialty. Nobody knows, and they’ve been wondering about it for two or three centuries.”
He leaned forward. His eyes sought Christian’s and held fast. “But I do know a few things that are not yet public. You have heard of uploading entire personalities into a computer?”
“Who hasn’t?” Christian retorted. “Isn’t that another notion they’ve kicked around ever since when? Last analysis I saw, the idea was unworkable. Entropy…” Confronting the sudden intensity across the table, he let his words trail off.
“That was then,” Willem said. “We’ve reached the truly steep part of the progress curve. Uploading should be possible within another ten or fifteen years. Scan the entire organism, transfer the informational matrix to a database in an advanced neural network, add sensors and effectors. Yes, a machine existence. But not like any ordinary or even extraordinary robot’s. And maybe later—Who knows what will become possible later?
“If, by then, you want it.”
Christian shivered. “Yes.” Willem nodded. “I have been watching you and your partner. You strike me as an excellent candidate for uploading.
“The first starships should be ready not long after the end of sour mortal life expectancy. The expeditions will need an element of human judgment, human will and desire. Think about it. Barring mishaps such as you have lately courted, you have time to decide. How would you like a continuation of you to go to the stars?”
IV
No living man or woman ever went. Flesh is too frail.
Consider. Light in vacuo moves at the ultimate velocity, some three hundred thousand kilometers per second. Nothing can outrace it. For matter, that would require more than infinite energy; for information it would imply systems able to reach backward through time and alter the past that brought them into being.
In the era when the pioneer voyagers left Sol, light took four and a third years to traverse the distance to the next nearest sun. The average separation of stars in their outlying part of the galaxy was about twice that.
If an interplanetary mission was urgent, a spacecraft sometimes boosted to as high as a hundred kilometers per second. Thus it got from Earth to Mars in a minimum of ten days, to far Pluto in a year and a half. Such haste was extravagant of power, seldom used, and only by flyers of small mass. Otherwise robots fared at their leisure.
Given a speed like this, one could make the least of interstellar crossings in thirteen thousand years.
The central intelligence on Earth, linked to its subordinates and to its equals elsewhere in the Solar System, designed vessels more capable. It was scarcely necessary to test them once they were built—or, we might better say, grown. So profound was the intelligence’s understanding of natural law and physical reality, so potent its logic and mathematics. The Alpha Centauri expedition was only ten years under way. In due course it would be feasible to approach the speed of light.
Now, space is in fact not a vacuum. Hydrogen and helium gas pervade it, together with dust that here and there forms great clouds. Nowhere is this medium dense, except when a part falls in on itself and makes new stars. In Sol’s region at that time it ran to approximately one atom per cubic centimeter. Yet anything moving at any substantial fraction of the ultimate velocity encounters many of them every second. Each collision releases energy. The hard radiation would kill an organic creature well-nigh instantly.
It was difficult enough to protect the electronics and photonics of the machines, or even their metal. Material shielding did not suffice. Besides producing secondary radiation, as bad as the primary or worse, it would soon be ablated away. Magnetohydrodynamic force fields were required, closely controlled, ever changeable according to need, as subtle as they were powerful. They too were incompatible with carbon-based life—which, in any case, demanded absurdly elaborate and massive apparatus for its maintenance. Consciousness went to the stars: machine consciousness. Watched from outside, that inaugural departure was a sight beautiful but hardly spectacular. An arrowlike shape, ashine in the light of the distant sun, glided from orbit and dwindled into heaven. Later an aureole surrounded it and trailed it, like an incandescent comet, though this was mainly at wavelengths beyond the visible. When it reached its goal it transmitted its discoveries and experiences back to the central intelligence and to any humans who cared.
Many did, often because the starfarer was not altogether alien. A robot aboard carried the spirit of Christian Brannock.
V
The countryside rolled in gentle hills, intensely green, starred with wildflowers. Trees stood alone or in small, widely strewn groves, oak, beech, elm. A breeze tossed light and shadow through their crowns. Looking out, Laurinda Ashcroft could almost feel warmth and wind, hear birdsong, breathe odors of growth.
But the view was electronic, for her house and its few neighbors lay underground. Nor was the nature above them ancient. A century ago this had been a plantation, broken here and there by the ruins of an ugly industrial town. Not until the useful genetically engineered monstrosities became obsolete was everything razed and a preserve created.
Yet above a ridge to the east rose a steeple, as it had for more than a thousand years.
All this beauty can die again, she thought, crushed beneath ice, sickened and seared by radiation, or—who knows? Someday, somehow, by some or other cosmic chance, it must. The knowledge saddened. Unless, before then, Terra Central decides it’s outlived its value.
She recoiled from that idea, the sense of helplessness. Never mind! Right now we only have to cope with the universe. Which means first coping with man.
Will and strength rallied. She turned back to her visitor. He stood waiting for her to find words after his cautious greeting. The trace of a smile on his lips was like a flag of truce.
Not that Omar Hamid would recognize a symbol so archaic. Laurinda drew breath, formed a full smile herself, and bowed her head briefly over bridged fingers. He responded likewise. The modern gesture calmed her. The foreboding that his entry had roused died away as quickly as it had risen. It had been unreasonable. After all, he had called ahead, days in advance, and he was here simply to talk. She was surprised that meeting him could affect her so much.
“Yes, you’re welcome, Omar,” she said. “Always.”
His shyness, if that was what it had been, hardened into a certain wariness. “In spite of my errand?” His Inglay was more accented than formerly. Perhaps he hadn’t had many occasions to use it.
Laurinda shook her head. “In spite of its having been so long,” she answered low.
“I’m sorry.” It sounded genuine. “I thought you would rather not… see me again.”
“True. For a while.”
“And then?” The tone was half anxious.
“It stopped hurting. I remembered what was good. Otherwise—we made a mistake, you and I. An honest mistake, and we were very young.”
The look he gave her was briefly, uncannily familiar. It was as if the wrinkles and the short white beard were a mask, gone transparent for a glimpse of the face she once knew.
“Sometimes I even wished you would call,” she added.
“I hardly dared,” he said.
“Me too. Although I think what we both feared most was pride, wounded youthful pride, each other’s and our own.”
“It would probably have been another mistake to try again.”
“The same one, with the same result. Or still more bitter. But I did begin thinking, now and then, how nice it would be to hear from you.”
“Likewise for me. Of course, I kept hearing of you, oftener and oftener. I hoped—I hope you’ve been happy.”
“Why should I not have been?”
“Your life became so different.”
Their gazes met and held steady, but somehow hers went through him, beyond this room and this moment. ” ‘A sea change,’ ” she murmured, ” ‘into something r
ich and strange.’ ”
The living planet and the souls upon it. The knowledge, vision, wisdom, and presence of Terra Central. The minds at other stars, the stars themselves, the marvel and mystery that is the cosmos. And I amidst all these.
Omar’s question drew her back out of reverie. “What do you mean;
“Oh, that,” she said, carefully careless. “Only a quotation.”
“Your style of talking has certainly changed. Scholarly, is that the word? I suppose working with Terra Central did it.”
“Not really. I read a great deal.” Laurinda formed a new smile. “Anachronistic habit, agreed.”
But necessary, she had found—for her, at any rate, if not for everyone who served as an interface between human and machine. Those wonders were too great, those thoughts too high. She had been in danger of losing her own humanness to them. The works and songs of the past redeemed it. Sometimes that past, even its fictions—Hamlet, Anne Elliott, Wilkins Micawber, Vidal Benzaguen—felt closer to her than the world she lived in.
She broke off. “Enough,” she said. “At least, enough about me. Do sit down, please. What refreshment can I offer? You used to like coffee, black, strong, and sweet.”
“Thank you,” Omar replied. “I still do.” He paused. “Thank you for remembering.”
Chairs shaped themselves to bodies with fluid, unnoticed sensuality. Laurinda gave the house an instruction. “Tell me about yourself,” she urged her guest.
“You know.” He spoke defensively.
“Just your recent activities. What did you do, how did you do, in the years between?”
He shrugged. “On the whole, contented. I pursued my interests—mainly sports, you know.”
“I suppose you became a champion.”
“Not quite, but I didn’t do badly.”
“I’m sorry. I should have followed the athletics news.”
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