The Naked God - Flight nd-5

by Peter F. Hamilton

  You did well,hudson proctor told pran soo, the hellhawk’s resident soul. Kiera says she’s pleased with you.

  Commence nutrient fluid pumping,pran soo said flatly.

  Sure thing. Here it comes. Enjoy.

  Hudson Proctor gave a short command, and the fluid surged along the pipes and into the hellhawk’s internal reserve bladders.

  Two of us were exterminated,pran soo announced to the other hellhawks. Linsky and Maranthis. They were irradiated when Kerry’s SD network took out the Dorbane. It was awful. I felt their structure withering.

  Price we pay for victory,etchells said swiftly. Two of us, against an entire Confederation planet taken out.

  Yeah,said felix, who possessed the Kerachel.Kerry had me real worried. When it comes to drinking contests and pub brawls, they’d got us beat every time.

  Keep your Goddamn pinko loser opinions to yourself,etchells sneered back. This was a concept-proving mission. What the fuck do you know about overall strategy? We’re the hard edge of operations, the cosmic shock troops.

  Give it a rest, you boring little prat. And don’t pretend you were ever in an army. Even armies have a minimum IQ requirement.

  Oh yeah? What you know. I killed fifteen men when I was in combat.

  Yeah, he was a nurse. Couldn’t read the label on the medicine bottle.

  Careful, shit-for-brains.

  Or what?

  I’m sure Kiera would be interested to know about this sedition you’re spreading. See what a little fasting does to your attitude.

  SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU BOLLOCKBRAINED NAZI REDNECK MORON.

  The general affinity band fell silent for quite some time.

  Were you listening to all that?pran soo asked rocio on singular engagement.

  I heard,the Mindori ’s possessor replied. I think things might be starting to slide our way.

  Could be. I’m sure each of us can do simple maths. Two of us per soft-target planet. When we start hitting hard targets, Kiera’s going to have a full scale strike on her hands.

  Which she’ll win unless we can provide everyone with an alternative food source.

  Yeah. How’s it going?

  I have been tracking the Lucky Logorn, they’re almost back at Almaden.

  You think this Deebank guy will go for our pitch?

  He was the first to offer us a deal. At least he’ll listen to what I suggest.

  The First Admiral had stayed away from the CNIS secure laboratory ever since the incident in court three. Maynard Khanna had been a damn fine officer, not to mention young and personable. The boy would have gone a long way in the Confederation Navy, so Samual Aleksandrovich had always told himself. With or without my patronage. Now he was dead.

  The funeral ceremony in Trafalgar’s multi-denominational church had been short and simple. Dignified, as was fitting. A flag draped coffin, the enduring image of military service for centuries, placed reverently on a pedestal before the altar by the Marine dress guard. It was intended as a focus for their honour. But Samual had thought it looked more like a sacrificial offering.

  Standing in the front pew, mouthing the words of a hymn, he suddenly wondered if Khanna was actually watching them. Information gleaned from captured possessed indicated those ensnared in the beyond were aware of events inside the real universe. It was a moment of profound spookiness; he even lowered his hymn book to stare at the coffin in suspicion. Was this why the whole funeral ritual had started back in pre-history times? It was one of the most common cross-cultural events, a ceremony to mark the passing of life. The deceased’s friends and relatives coming to pay homage, to wish them well on their way. It would be reassuring for a soul, otherwise so naked and alone, to gain the knowledge that so many considered their life to be worthwhile.

  The remnants of Maynard Khanna’s body mocked the notion of a fulfilled existence. Young, tortured to death, his ending had been neither swift nor noble.

  Samual Aleksandrovich had raised his hymn book again and sung with a vigour which surprised the other officers. Perhaps Khanna would witness the mark of devotion from his superior officer, and draw some comfort from the fact. If it made a difference, the effort should be made. Now Samual Aleksandrovich was having to confront the cause of his regret. Jacqueline Couteur was still possessing her stolen body, immune from the usual laws that would deliver justice upon such a treacherous multiple murderess.

  He was accompanied by Mae Ortlieb and Jeeta Anwar from the Assembly President’s staff, as well as admiral Lalwani and Maynard Khanna’s replacement, Captain Amr al-Sahhaf. The presence of the two presidential aides he found mildly annoying; an indication of how his decisions and prerogatives were increasingly coming under political scrutiny. Olton Haaker had that right, Samual acknowledged, but it was being wielded with less subtlety as the crisis drew out.

  For the first time he was actually thankful for the Mortonridge Liberation. Positive physical action on such a massive scale had diverted the attention of both the Assembly and the media companies from Navy activities. The politicians, he conceded grimly, might have been right about the psychological impact such a campaign would create. He’d even accessed a few rover reporter sensevises himself to see how the serjeants were doing. My God, the mud!

  Dr Gilmore and Euru greeted the small elite delegation with little sign of nerves. A good omen, Samual thought. His spirits lifted further when Gilmore started to lead them along to the physics and electronics laboratory section, away from the demon trap.

  Bitek Laboratory Thirteen was almost the same as any standard electronic research facility. A long room lined with benches, several morgue-like slabs arranged down the centre, and glass-walled clean rooms at one end. Tall stacks of experimental equipment were standing like modern megaliths on every surface, alongside ultra-high-resolution scanners and powerful desktop blocks. The only distinguishing items the First Admiral could see were the clone vats. Those you normally wouldn’t find outside an Edenist establishment.

  “Exactly what are you demonstrating for us?” Jeeta Anwar asked.

  “The prototype anti-memory,” Euru said. “It was surprisingly easy to assemble. Of course, we do have a great many thoughtware weapons on file, which we’ve studied. And the neural mechanisms behind memory retention are well understood.”

  “If that’s the case, I’m surprised no one has ever designed one before.”

  “It’s a question of application,” Gilmore said. “As the First Admiral pointed out once, the more complex a weapon is, the more impractical it becomes, especially in the field. In order for the anti-memory to work, the brain must be subjected to quite a long sequence of imprint pulses. You couldn’t just fire it at your opponent the same way you do a bullet. They have to be looking straight into the beam, and a sharp movement, or even an inappropriately timed blink will nullify the whole process. And if it was known to be in use, retinal implants could be programmed to recognize it, and block it out. However, once you hold a captive, application becomes extremely simple.”

  Mattox was waiting for them by the last clean room, looking through the glass with the air of a proud parent. “Testing has been our greatest stalling point,” he explained. “Ordinary bitek processors are completely useless in this respect. We had to design a system which duplicates a typical human neurone structure in its entirety.”

  “You mean you cloned a brain?” Mae Ortlieb asked, a blatant note of disapproval in her voice.

  “The structural array is copied from a brain,” Mattox said defensively. “But the construct itself is made purely from bitek. There was no cloning involved.” He indicated the clean room.

  The delegation moved closer. The room was almost empty, containing a single table which held a burnished metal cylinder. Slim tubes of nutrient fluid snaked out of the base to link it with a squat protein cycler mechanism. A small box protruded from the side of the cylinder, half-way up. Made of translucent amber plastic, it contained a solitary dark sphere of some denser material, set near the surface. The
First Admiral upped the magnification on his enhanced retinas. “That’s an eye,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” Mattox said. “We’re trying to make this as realistic as possible. Genuine application will require the anti-memory to be conducted down an optic nerve.”

  A black electronic module was suspended centimetres from the bitek eye, held in place by a crude metal clamp. Fibre optic cables trailed away from it, to plug into the clean room’s utility data sockets.

  “What sort of routines are you running inside the construct?” Mae Ortlieb asked.

  “Mine,” Euru said. “We connected the cortex to an affinity capable processor, and I transferred a copy of my personality and memories into it.”

  She flinched, looking from the Edenist to the metal cylinder. “Isn’t that somewhat unusual?”

  “Not relative to this situation,” he replied with a smile. “We are attempting to create the most realistic environment we can. For that we need a human mind. If you would care to give it a simple Turing test.” He touched a processor block on the wall beside the clean room. Its AV lens sparkled.

  “Who are you?” Mae Ortlieb asked, with some self-consciousness.

  “I suppose I ought to call myself Euru-two,” the AV lens replied. “But then Euru has transferred his personality into a neural simulacrum twelve times already to assist with the anti-memory evaluation.”

  “Then you should be Euru-thirteen.”

  “Just call me junior, it’s simpler.”

  “And do you believe you’ve retained your human faculties?”

  “I don’t have affinity, of course, which I regard as distressing. However, as I won’t be in existence for very long, it’s absence is tolerable. Apart from that, I am fully human.”

  “Volunteering for a suicide isn’t a very healthy human trait, and certainly not for an Edenist.”

  “None the less, it’s what I committed myself to.”

  “Your original self did. What about you, have you no independence?”

  “Possibly if you left me to develop by myself for several months, I would become reluctant. At the moment, I am Euru senior’s mind twin, and as such this experiment is quite acceptable to me.”

  The First Admiral frowned, troubled by what he was witnessing. He hadn’t known Gilmore’s team had reached quite this level. He gave Euru a sidelong glance. “I’m given to understand that a soul is formed by impressing coherent sentient thought on the beyond-type energy which is present in this universe. Therefore, as you are a sentient entity, you will now have your own soul.”

  “I would assume so, admiral,” Euru junior replied. “It is logical.”

  “Which means you have the potential to become an immortal entity in your own right. Yet this trial will eliminate you forever. This is an alarming prospect, for me if not for you. I’m not sure we have the moral right to continue.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, Admiral. However, my identity is more important to me than my soul, or souls. I know that when I am erased from this construct, I, Euru, will continue to exist. The sum of whatever I am goes on. This is the knowledge which rewards all Edenists throughout their lives. Whereas I now exist for one reason, to protect that continuity for my culture. Human beings have died to protect their homes and ideals for all of history, even though they never knew for certain they had souls. I am no different to any of them. I quite plainly choose to undergo the anti-memory so that our race can overcome this crisis.”

  “Quite a Turing test,” Mae Ortlieb said sardonically. “I bet the old man never envisaged this kind of conversation with a machine trying to prove its own intelligence.”

  “If there’s nothing else,” Gilmore said quickly.

  The First Admiral looked in at the cylinder again, contemplating a refusal. He knew such an instruction would never be allowed to stand by the President. And I don’t need that kind of interventionism in Navy affairs right now. “Very well,” he said reluctantly.

  Gilmore and Mattox exchanged a mildly guilty look. Mattox datavised an instruction to the clean room’s control processor, and the glass turned opaque. “Just to protect you from any possible spillback,” he said. “If you’d like to access the internal camera you can observe the process in full. Not that there will be anything much to see. I assure you the spectrum we’re using to transmit the anti-memory has been blocked from the sensor.”

  True to his word, the image the delegation received when they accessed the sensor was pallid, the colour almost nonexistent. All they saw was a small blank disc slide out of the electronic module, positioning itself over the encapsulated eye. Some iconic overlay digits twisted past, meaningless.

  “That’s it,” Mattox announced.

  The First Admiral cancelled his channel with the processor. The clean room’s window turned transparent again, in time to catch the disc retract back into the electronic module.

  Gilmore faced the AV lens. “Junior, can you hear me?” The lens’s diminutive sparkle remained constant.

  Mattox received a datavise from the construct’s monitoring probes. “Brainwave functions have collapsed,” he said. “And the synaptic discharges are completely randomized.”

  “What about memory retention?” Gilmore queried.

  “Probably around thirty to thirty-five per cent. I’ll run a complete neurological capacity scan once it’s stabilized.” The CNIS science team members smiled round at each other.

  “That’s good,” Gilmore said. “That’s damn good. Best percentage yet.”

  “Meaning?” the First Admiral asked.

  “There are no operative thought patterns left in there. Junior has stopped thinking. The bitek is just a store for memory fragments.”

  “Impressive,” Mae Ortlieb said reflectively. “So what’s your next stage?”

  “We’re not sure,” Gilmore said. “I have to admit, the potential for this thing is frightening. Our idea is to use it as a threat to force the souls away from their interface with this universe.”

  “If it works on souls themselves,” Jeeta Anwar pointed out.

  “That prospect is bringing about a whole range of new problems,” Gilmore conceded cheerlessly.

  “Let me guess,” Samual said. “If anti-memory is used on a possessed, you will also erase the host’s memories, and destroy their soul.”

  “It seems likely,” Euru said. “We know a host’s mind is still contained within their brain while the possessing soul retains control of the body. The host’s reappearance after zero-tau immersion forces the possessor out proves that.”

  “So, anti-memory cannot be used on an individual basis?”

  “Not without killing the host’s soul as well, no sir.”

  “Will this version work in the beyond?” Samual asked sharply.

  “I doubt it would ever get through to the beyond,” Mattox said. “At present, it’s too slow and inefficient. It managed to dissipate Junior’s thought processes; but as you saw, it didn’t get all the memories. The areas of the mind which are not employed when the anti-memory strikes are likely to be insulated from it as the thought channels which would ordinarily connect them are nullified. If you analogise the mind with a city, you’re destroying the roads and leaving the buildings intact. Given that the connection a possessing soul has with the beyond is tenuous at best, there is no guarantee the anti-memory would manage to pass through in its current form. We must develop a much faster version.”

  “But you don’t know for sure?”

  “No sir. These are estimations and theories. We won’t know if a version works until after it’s proved successful.”

  “The trouble with that is, a successful anti-memory would exterminate every soul in the beyond,” Euru said quietly.

  “Is that true?”

  “Yes, sir,” Gilmore said. “That’s our dilemma. There can be no small scale test or demonstration. Anti-memory is effectively a doomsday weapon.”

  “You’ll never get the souls to believe that,” Lalwani said. “In fact, g
iven what we know of conditions in the beyond, you wouldn’t even get many of them to pay attention to the warning.”

  “I cannot conceivably permit the use of a weapon which will exterminate billions of human entities,” the First Admiral said. “You have to provide me with alternative options.”

  “But Admiral—”

  “No. I’m sorry, Doctor. I know you’ve worked hard on this, and I appreciate the effort you and your team have made. Nobody is more aware than myself of just how extreme the threat which the possessed present. But even that cannot justify such a response.”

  “Admiral! We’ve explored every option we can think of. Every theorist I’ve got in every scientific discipline there is has been working on ideas and wild theories. We even tried an exorcism after that priest on Lalonde claimed his worked. Nothing. Nothing else has come close to being viable. This is the only progress we have made.”

  “Doctor, I’m not denigrating your work or your commitment. But surely you can see this is completely unacceptable. Morally, ethically, it is wrong. It cannot be anything other than wrong. What you are suggesting is racial genocide. I will tell you this, the authorization to use such a monstrosity will never come from my lips. Nor I suspect, and hope, would any other Navy officer issue it. Now find me another solution. This project is terminated.”

  The First Admiral’s staff ran a quiet sweepstake to see how long it would be before President Haaker datavised for a conference, the winner called it in at ninety-seven minutes. They sat facing each other across the oval table in a security-level-one sensenviron bubble room. Both kept their generated faces neutral and intonations level.

  “Samual, you can’t cancel the anti-memory project,” the President opened with. “It’s all we’ve got.”

  In his office, Samual Aleksandrovich smiled at the way Haaker used his first name, the man always did that when he was going to adopt a totally intransigent line. “Apart from the Mortonridge Liberation, you mean?” He could imagine the tight lips drawn at that jibe.

  “As you so kindly pointed out earlier, the Liberation is not a solution to the overall problem. Anti-memory is.”