The Medusa Chronicles

by Stephen Baxter

  “And the scientists waited. Every once in a while, the interaction of a neutrino with some subatomic particle within the ice would produce a spark of light deep inside the cubical array. They caught their neutrino flashes, and learned to correlate them with objects in the sky.

  “The experiment was run for decades, before being made obsolete by finer instruments off-planet.

  “And then, quite recently, I decided to turn this abandoned experiment into something else.” Bhaskar turned slowly back to face the audience, her hooded face looming on screens. “I called in a fresh generation of scientists and technicians, and had them adjust the sensors, making them respond to a wider range of neutrino energies. And I had them install optical amplifiers to make the light pulses visible, even to our poor human senses.”

  Falcon, to whom “poor human senses” were an increasingly distant memory, allowed himself a wry smile.

  “I carved away the ice around the outer face of the cubical array. I ­reinforced the cube itself with plastic, and embedded optical amplifiers into the four vertical faces. Each is tuned to respond to a particular flux of neutrinos . . .”

  The cube flickered. A pattern of orange and red lights played across the looming face, rapid and speckling, but soon settling to a regular pulse.

  “These neutrinos,” Bhaskar went on, “are coming from the sun. But the sun is on the other side of the world—the neutrinos have to travel through twelve thousand kilometres of solid rock before they reach my Ice Orchestrion—and they barely notice it!”

  The pulsing flux of neutrinos was steady as a heartbeat. As well it should be, Falcon thought, for the existence of every living organism on Earth depended on the sun’s healthy functioning.

  “These events,” Bhaskar continued, “set the base tempo of my Neutrino Symphony. That won’t vary from performance to performance. But the Ice Orchestrion also responds to higher energy neutrinos, those arriving from beyond our solar system.” And as she spoke, an area of the cube lit up with a pulse of blue-green, followed quickly by a patch of dark blue in one of the corners. “These are the signatures of galaxies, quasars, distant black holes—messages from the edge of creation. I’ve tuned the Ice Orchestrion’s sensitivity to the point where it will detect one or two such events a minute. Depending on their energy, these will govern the detailed pathways that the Neutrino Symphony follows. Motifs, refrains, will rise and fall in response. My algorithm is simple, but it guarantees that no two performances will ever be entirely alike—not if you sat through every recital between now and the end of the universe. And now, with your permission I would like to begin . . .”

  Bhaskar took a bow. The Ice Orchestrion darkened to black on all faces. After a ripple of applause, silence fell across the amphitheatre.

  Then a stirring of orange and gold and brassy speckles began to play across the cube.

  A deep rumble began to sound from the loudspeakers—a synthesised percussion section responding to the nuclear heartbeat of the sun. The rumble gained in strength and rhythm, taking on a portentous, martial overtone. A burst of lilac flared across the cube’s upper edge. Woodwind phased in—a questing, querulous refrain . . .

  Falcon settled back on his undercarriage, allowing the music of the universe to wash over him. He looked at the faces of the other guests, judging the degrees of rapture, curiosity, indifference or hostility with which they met the performance.

  “Commander Falcon?”

  The voice was raised just loud enough for him to hear over the music.

  Too detached from proceedings to feel irritated by the interruption, Falcon turned around to face the speaker. She was a tall woman with a narrow, pinched face within her hood. She raised a hand and pushed the hood back, exposing a scalp of tight, silver-grey curls. “Madri Kedar,” she said. “World Government. Executive Council for Machine Affairs.”

  Falcon had heard of Machine Affairs, a new bureaucratic arm created to handle the increasingly complex impact of the rise of autonomous machines in human society. He didn’t believe he’d heard of Madri Kedar, however. “Have we met?”

  “I don’t think so. But I was told you’d be here, and frankly it seemed as good a place as any other to introduce myself. Are you enjoying the performance?”

  “It’s an impressive bit of theatre.”

  “But it leaves you—I’m sorry—cold?”

  “The technical side of it is fascinating. I could take or leave the music.”

  She narrowed her gaze. “Then why did you accept the invitation? The great Howard Falcon, at a loose end? Are there no worlds left to conquer?”

  “These aren’t good times for exploration, Ms. Kedar. Expeditions like the Kon-Tiki cost a lot of money . . .” He still travelled, but in recent years—and despite all his efforts to raise funds and other support—he’d been reduced to a kind of tourist, rather than a pioneer. He had reached Saturn’s clouds, for example, but only in a follow-up expedition in the footsteps of the actual pioneer, Mary Hilton.

  “Well, from my point of view the timing couldn’t be better. I’ve a proposal, Commander—an offer of gainful employment. A challenge. And one that’ll take you into space again. If you’re interested.”

  Falcon turned back to the cube for a few moments, watching the play of colours; trying, without success, to relate them to the swerves and surges of the music. “Interested in what?”

  “Machines, Commander. Robots with autonomy. The core focus of my agency. You were involved in that whole business on the Sam Shore, back in ’99. And you’ll be aware that the first flush of idealistic enthusiasm soon wore off. People always fear what they don’t know, what they can’t understand. There’s even a movement called the Three Laws Campaign that has got the whole thing tied up in bureaucracy, court hearings at vari­ous levels . . .

  “However, we at the Executive Council have other, more progressive ideas. We think the Machines have much to offer. They could, for ­example, play a decisive role in expanding human presence far beyond the inner solar system. It’s just a question of how long a leash we let them have.”

  Although Madri Kedar was keeping her voice low, one of the other guests scowled at them, raising a finger to his lips.

  “A leash?” Falcon whispered back. “You call that progressive?”

  “We have a . . . call it a vision. We’re opening up the Kuiper Belt. There’s wealth out there beyond the dreams of avarice, Commander—organics, minerals, and water, the stuff of life, the greatest treasure of all—and it’ll take Machines to bring it home. But to do that, to work effectively, the Machines need to be able to work without direct human supervision. Operating light-hours from any possibility of direct human control, the Machines would necessarily need to be instilled with near total autonomy, an unusual degree of flexibility, independence, and capacity for self-­learning. And given the importance of such a project to the growing solar economy, the World Government is willing to relax many of the usual safeguards and constraints on artificial intelligence. The challenge is, of course, to ensure such Machines obey their programming.”

  “A tough call.”

  “But we think we’re close. What we’ve learned from Conseil’s descendants, robots of growing sophistication, has enabled us to make great strides in true artificial intelligence. We’re making up for a century of neglect of this kind of technological possibility. Now we have a new class of Machines coming into development. They’re clever—much smarter than anything we’ve seen before, and more flexible, capable of learning, of decision-making. But they need to be mentored, shaped, as they lay down their behavioural pathways. Almost like children. And we’d like you to be involved in the process, Commander.”

  “Why? Because I’m halfway to Machine myself?”

  She ignored that. “Because the education and training would be most efficiently conducted in deep space, under conditions similar to those where the Machines will eve
ntually work. And given your physical, ah, peculiarities, you are particularly well adapted to such environments. You could be a real boon to us—an asset. There’s one Machine in particular we want you to work with—the prototype of a whole new series. You could mentor that Machine, guide it towards full autonomy.”

  “Full autonomy. You mean, true consciousness?”

  “That might be a stretch. We wouldn’t necessarily want the Machines to reach consciousness, even if it lay within our grasp. We’re more interested in commercial potential than philosophical conundrums, Commander. I’ll be honest: this is a demanding challenge. But you’ll be helping to kick-start the next stage of human space exploitation. And the Machines will benefit, as well. Through you, they’ll come to a better understanding of humanity.”

  He grunted. “Of which you think I’m a representative example?”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself, Commander. You’ve done great things. Even greater achievements lie ahead of you, I’m sure of that. Oh, and one other thing—”

  “Yes?”

  “We’re an influential arm of the World Government. Your cooperation with us wouldn’t go unnoticed, or for that matter unrewarded. I’m confident you won’t decline,” Kedar said firmly. “Because any man patient enough to sit through this infernal racket certainly isn’t one to turn down a challenge.” She dipped a mitten into an outside pocket. “This is my card. Call me within five days. We’re very keen to get moving on this.” She held the card in her mittened hand and let it go.

  Falcon plucked it out of the air before it had a chance to fall more than five centimetres.

  Kedar grinned. “You are just as I’ve heard. Be seeing you, Commander Falcon.”

  * * * *

  So he’d got involved in a complex, difficult, yet hugely satisfying project. He’d since had many contacts with Machine Affairs, but he’d heard nothing more of Madri Kedar.

  Until now, twenty-six years later, when she came to Makemake aboard that clumsily landed shuttle.

  11

  The meeting was held in a conference room in the lower levels of Trujillo.

  He had been assigned a chairless space at the conference table. Falcon collapsed his undercarriage, moved forward slightly, settled his elbows onto the table and laced his hands. Opposite him sat Kedar and her two colleagues in the WG delegation. He scanned their nametags. Hope Dhoni was here, looking somewhat subdued, he thought.

  From their points of view, he knew, in his present posture, he might almost have passed for an unaugmented person. Over his upper limbs and life-support system he wore a black zip-up tunic embroidered with the logos of Trujillo Base and Makemake. Above the tunic’s neck, the leathery mask of his face had eyes, nose and mouth in approximately the right positions and proportions. Plastic gloves, sewn with a fine mesh of microsensors, a marvel of responsive feedback, made even his hands look almost real.

  * * * *

  “So,” he said evenly. “What’s this all about?”

  “Thank you for agreeing to see us, Howard,” said Kedar. She had not aged much in twenty-six years—or perhaps Falcon was getting worse at judging such things. “We all appreciate your cooperation in this matter. These are my associates on the Executive Council for Machine Affairs: Marzina Cegielski, Maurizio Gallo. I’m pleased to see you looking so well.” She looked at Hope. “Doctor Dhoni tells us you’ve made an excellent recovery from your latest set of enhancements.”

  Falcon folded his mask of a face into a smile. “Hope’s done her usual excellent work.”

  “We would not have it any other way, Howard. You are very precious to us—quite literally irreplaceable.”

  “Like an old Corvette, and about as up to date.”

  He won a wan smile from Hope.

  But Kedar’s face tightened. “Levity, Commander Falcon? But make no mistake: none of this comes cheap, especially on a facility as isolated as Makemake.”

  Falcon wondered why she felt it necessary to make that point. “It would have been less expensive if I’d been allowed to stay on Ceres.”

  As he spoke he reached for the iced tea that had been served for the meeting. He allowed the back of his hand to rest near the chilled jug, absent-mindedly testing his ability to register cold across centimetres of air. He became aware of Hope watching him: not the time to run a system check. He poured himself a cup of the tea, sipped it, and raised it to Hope. He was rewarded with a wider smile.

  “It was unfortunate that you had to be moved,” said the man, Maurizio Gallo. He was small but muscular, built like a wrestler. “But in the end, Makemake was an excellent choice.”

  Marzina Cegielski said, “Public opinion being what it is . . .” She was about the same age as Gallo, but taller and more slender. “These are delicate times. There’s a lot of anti-Machine sentiment in the air.” She glanced nervously at her colleagues. “You’re not a Machine, of course.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But in the eyes of the public, or a section of them—”

  “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? This is about your Kuiper Belt ice-­mining project.”

  “No one else has your insight into the Machines,” Madri Kedar said. “You were there at the start of it all—your mentoring of the early prototype. And now we have a difficulty, one that you may be uniquely poised to resolve.”

  “A difficulty?”

  “There’s been an incident—an industrial accident. Many Machines were caught up in it.” Kedar glanced down at her notes. “Some operational losses are to be expected—it’s a harsh and unforgiving environment, mining the iceteroids. Ordinarily, we’d treat the destruction of Machine assets as a capital expenditure, no more than a budgetary problem. Such losses aren’t unusual, or even that damaging. We might expect a temporary reduction in volatile throughput to the inner system, with a concomi­tant impact on the frost markets.”

  “This time it’s different,” Cegielski said.

  Like it or not, they had his interest. Falcon toyed with the handle of his glass, pincering it delicately between fingers that could exert enough force to crush coal to diamond dust. “How so?”

  “The unit you mentored,” Gallo said, “one of the high-autonomy supervisory robots. You called it Adam, didn’t you?”

  “Autonomous Deutsch-Turing Algorithmic-Heuristic Machine,” Falcon said. “I just took your description of the machine’s design and architecture and came up with an acronym. You were free to choose differently if you didn’t like it.”

  “Oh, it suited us very well,” Kedar said. “Adam. The first of a new lineage.”

  “And an appropriate choice for you, Commander,” Cegielski said, apparently interested. “I read your authorised biography on the flight over.”

  “Not authorised by me—”

  “It mentioned a toy robot with the same name. Hardly a coincidence?”

  That personal intrusion jolted Falcon. He was aware of Hope avoiding his gaze. He snapped: “Tell me why Adam is any concern of mine now . . .” A disturbing thought struck him. “Was Adam hurt?”

  Cegielski frowned slightly at his turn of phrase. “Not damaged, no. Telemetry says the unit was near the scene of the accident, but didn’t suffer any physical harm during the incident itself. But Adam isn’t responding to our instructions or requests for more information.”

  “A comms fault?”

  “Not according to the telemetry,” Gallo said. “It all checks out. The only explanation is that the unit is deliberately ignoring us. That’s absurd, of course . . .”

  “Whatever’s happened,” Kedar said, “it needs to be nipped in the bud. We rely on Adam and similar units to oversee the continued operation of the flingers and mass-concentrators. If this . . . glitch, whatever it is—if it spreads from this Adam to another unit, or to another set of Machines on another Kuiper Belt Object—we could be looking at the collapse of the entire v
olatile production flow.”

  “If you think it’s that serious,” Falcon said, “shouldn’t you send out a team of analysts?”

  “Expensive and time-consuming, not to mention liable to spook the markets,” Gallo answered.

  Falcon set down his iced tea. “And we wouldn’t want that. Besides, I’m cheaper.”

  “What matters to us is that you have prior experience with the Adam unit,” Kedar answered in placating tones. “The iceteroid operation is of incalculable value. Something’s gone badly wrong out there. Possibly it is a problem of Machine psychology, if you will. We’re hoping you can fix it for us.”

  “Psychology? I’m an explorer, damn it,” he snapped. “In as much as I’m anything at all. Not some nursemaid.”

  Kedar wasn’t perturbed by this outburst. “Our debt to you would be . . . well, let’s just say that there’d be no question of continued support for Doctor Dhoni’s team.”

  Falcon felt oddly disappointed. “As efforts to apply leverage go, isn’t that rather crude, Madri?”

  “Might I have a say?” Hope said now. “Howard remains my patient—”

  “Indeed he does. And you have successfully applied a suite of improvements,” Kedar said, tapping one of the dossiers open before her. “Haven’t they given the Commander even greater independence than before? Greater ability to spend time away from external support, greater ability to tolerate extremes of gravity, pressure, heat and radiation?”

  “Within limits,” Dhoni said. “But that doesn’t mean that he’s out of my care, or that I’m ready to sign him off for a solo jaunt across the Kuiper Belt. Everything about Commander Falcon is experimental—it always was—”

  Falcon raised a hand. “It’s all right, Hope—they’ve got us both over a barrel. But there’s one detail they’ve neglected. They needn’t have bothered with incentives and threats. Adam’s a friend. Just a Machine, maybe, but a friend. I spent a lot of time with Adam, watching it—grow up. And if a friend of mine’s in trouble, I don’t need any persuasion to go help. Just give me a ship and tell me where to point it.”