by Mel Keegan
“Perhaps,” Lai’a said in its customary, imperturbable tone. “Would Doctor Teniko care to debate the assertion that humans are not actually conscious in any real sense of the word?”
The suggestion was so outrageous, Teniko lost focus on Mark and his face clenched. “What?”
“Are you familiar with existentialism, Doctor,” Lai’a asked mildly, “specifically as applied to Rilke’s Theory of Phenomenology?”
Perhaps Teniko would have picked up the challenge, but Alexis Rusch strode between him and Mark and held out her hands like a traffic marshal. Her voice was a bark of command. “Oh, for the love of God, enough! Doctor Teniko, the time to address such concerns was days or weeks ago, long before this expedition launched. Even if there’s any basis for concern in your objection, it’s too late now to contest it. This mission depends on the AI at the core of this ship. Lai’a – the AI and the ship – are one and the same, the body and the brain. We go nowhere without it, and if you don’t care for the dependency, you shouldn’t have signed aboard. Do you wish to resign, is this your problem? Because it’s too late to quit. Like it or not, you’re along for the ride. I advise you to find some way to make yourself useful and cease being an irritant to this company, before measures are taken.”
For just a moment the authority of a career Fleet colonel overwhelmed Teniko, but he recovered fast. “Measures?” The sneer was sour in his tone. “A magical, mystical Resalq AI, is it? They believe they’re alive, do they?”
“I have no idea,” Rusch said acidly. “Why don’t you ask it?”
“Because there’s better ways to waste your breath,” Teniko informed her, “than playing word games with a mechanism that’s been preloaded with every possible answer, calculates at 700 yottaflops, and if it’s been rigged to believe it’s alive –”
“Doctor Teniko, I am very definitely a machine,” Lai’a said loudly enough to cut across him. “I am a biosynthetic mechanism. You are a biological mechanism of no greater complexity than I. Doctor Sherratt is a biological mechanism of very slightly greater complexity than the human machine, the difference being in the dual chromosome set and the demonstrably more intricate brain structure.
“The critical difference between myself and Doctor Sherratt is that the Resalq as a race are known, in hard, incontrovertible fact, to possess an immortal soul. Corresponding evidence has never been found to confirm or deny the existence of a human soul. It is statistically probable that the human organism, like the other creatures of Earth, which share your DNA, possesses no such immortal soul – exactly as I do not.
“Your grievance with my concept of consciousness and awareness may concern such qualities as conscience, judgment, loyalty, friendship, love, faith, even humor. Many organisms native to many worlds are quite intelligent while possessing no understanding of faith, love or humor, while others demonstrate several emotional qualities while having no notable intelligence.
“The question, ‘What is life?’ is elemental. I am ready to debate with you at your convenience … unless,” it added in a caustic tone, “you decline to play word games with a mechanism calculating at 700 yottaflops. Incidentally, Doctor Teniko, my database was not preloaded with ‘every possible answer;’ only those the Doctors Sherratt could conceive of. Both Resalq and humans share this phase of preparation. For some millennia it has been termed education.”
Teniko was puce. Several times he had tried to interrupt but Lai’a did not have to pause for breath, and nor was it likely to be provoked. Its arguments dizzied Travers and made Marin chuckle. Vidal and Rusch were vastly amused, and Mark – smug? Travers tried to remember another time when Mark Sherratt had looked so self-satisfied. Conceit was not in his nature, but the child of his intellect, if not his genes, had just scored a major victory, and as Lai’a fell silent he might have applauded.
“Rhetoric,” Teniko growled, once again glaring at Mark. “You recorded that little speech yourself, didn’t you, so Lai’a could parrot it back.”
“No,” Mark said, sighing, “but it’s too easy to call me a liar.” He only shrugged now. “Believe what you want to believe, Tonio. I entirely agree with Alexis. Find a way to be useful, and –”
“And stay the hell out of Ops,” Vaurien finished. “You’re barred from Ops, Teniko, until or unless your presence is requested. Get out.”
He must have known he had overplayed his hand this time. It was the drugs talking, arguing, fighting, Travers knew. For one moment Teniko opened his mouth to appeal, and then he had the sense to close it again. He snatched up the castoff hoodie and dragged his too-big feet out of the room. In his wake, most of the company breathed a collective sigh and Mark offered,
“Lai’a, I ought to apologize.”
“No need, Doctor Sherratt,” it said unconcernedly. “The argument is a valid one.”
“But stuffed with prejudice,” Jazinsky warned. “He’s a little swine. When he was clear headed, he knew when to keep the lip zipped. The drugs make him aggressive and loud-mouthed, and I’m not the only one who’s noticed how it’s getting worse lately.” She turned a frown on Vaurien. “Sooner or later something’ll have to be done about him. He shouldn’t be aboard … I should’ve known better.”
“I did know better, but I guess I hoped ...” Vaurien was toying with a combug. “Three times in the last five minutes I almost called the Infirmary for Bill to break out a cryogen tank.”
“Do it – tank the bastard,” Vidal said in disgusted terms, “sort him out later. We don’t need him.” He gave Jazinsky a look. “Do we?”
“Yes and no,” she admitted. “He’s useful, when he’s clear headed.”
“Barring him from Ops will make him less of a thorn in the ass,” Dario said slowly, “but if I had my way, I’d confine him to quarters with only Lai’a to talk to. Kill or cure.”
The idea was not without merits, and Vaurien indulged himself in a dark chuckle. “I’ll bear it in mind.” His eyes skimmed every screen, every display of ship data. “Repairs, Lai’a?”
“Proceeding,” it reported. “The transspace drive will be available in 95 minutes. The next scheduled destination point is the Orion Gate.”
“In your own time,” Vaurien told it, “and at whatever you determine to be your cruising speed.” He paused. “How long?”
“Time to Orion Gate is 96 hours,” Lai’a said almost musingly. “When the drive comes online I will enter the Naiobe Gyre.”
“The what, now?” Marin asked. “Did we miss something?”
Mark reached for the handy, called up a simple graphical representation and passed it across. “Lai’a has been rationalizing a lot of navigational data. The Naiobe Gyre is a temporo-gravitic current orbiting the gravity well of Naiobe. The orbit is quite tight, around a year, give or take. Get into it, find a freefall channel, avoid the fast-time streams and the slow-time streams, and it’ll take us to Orion 359 directly. Occasionally we can glimpse the Orion Gate from here, when the Gyre channel resolves at a level permitting visual data.”
“Four days to Orion 359,” Vidal whispered, “and the Naiobe Gyre takes about a year to swing right around one orbit? And there are driftways every few hours down the track, and then exit gates at the major drifts, like Hellgate itself, every few days or weeks.” He looked almost as dazed as he had when Lai’a broke out of the lagoon. “Christ, half the galaxy becomes accessible.”
“Close to it,” Dario agreed, “which makes you wonder all the more, doesn’t it, who the hell the Zunshu are, and what they want with us?”
“Let’s just get to Orion 359,” Mark said with grim resolve. “We can spare a day or two in normal space to at least search for a Resalq colony, survivors from the Ebrezjim or their descendants. We know the range of those missing escape pods, we know we’re looking for a world with a viable environment – it won’t take long to look. Lai’a?”
“I shall be fascinated to explore the region for its own sake,” Lai’a admitted. “If we can find survivors, so much the better.
”
Survivors? “It’s been a thousand years,” Marin murmured, “after they punched out in pods? What, Mark, one chance in a million of finding anyone?”
“Or ten million,” Mark said soberly. “But as I said, it won’t take long to look, and we owe it to our ancestors to try … but not for too long. Remember, we’ve been gone for a month already, as far as the Deep Sky is concerned. In that time, you know the Zunshu will have struck again, perhaps more than once. The frontier worlds don’t have months to wait while we perform a meticulous search for people who probably aren’t there to be found.” He was moving as he spoke, as if forcing himself to be busy. “And we have an ocean of data to analyze even before the Ebrezjim AI comes up to temperature. Dario, Tor…?”
They were already working. Dario stepped aside to show him a flatscreen displaying two visual angles on the salvage and a steady stream of readings. “It’s getting there. Looks like another 45 hours before we dare handle it, then I’d like to get it into the lab. But first –” He yawned animatedly. “Tor had the right idea. I gotta catch some shuteye, Mark. Been in the lab around the clock lately, till I’m seeing double.”
The proposition of rest was seductive, and yawns were infectious. Vidal in particular looked gaunt with fatigue, and excused himself with a mutter of needing to be in the Infirmary for scheduled shots. The company broke up, drifting in their own directions, and as Marin headed back to the crew lounge, Travers followed.
Curtis recovered the handy, picked up his reading where he had left it an hour before. Tired but not ready to sleep, Travers ambled back to their cabin. From the bag he had stashed in the bottom of the closet he pulled the book – the actual, physical book Marin had bought in the gift store at the Jagreth Colonial History Museum.
The heavy plastex sheets were sumptuous, a sheer extravagance, and the art was glorious. An illustrator credited as Ian McGuire had depicted the hero, Iven Jagreth, as a tall, big-shouldered, deep-chested male with a penchant for blue and gold bandanas and big gold rings in lobes and nipples. Travers was charmed – reminded of the character of Sinbad, who featured in no few of his childhood fantasies.
But Jagreth was the commander of an exploration ship on an expedition to find new worlds suited to the Resalq. On one likely planet his crew went head to head with smugglers and the love of his life – Ande Cailenne, the expedition’s master navigator – was taken hostage to ensure the escape of the smuggler craft. Cailenne was described as a ‘timeless beauty,’ whom McGuire depicted as olive skinned, doe eyed, slender against Jagreth’s solid bulk of muscle, though there was nothing feminine about him.
The smuggler crew had been outlawed many years before; they were infamous for using and abusing prisoners, and Jagreth was sure Cailenne would suffer at their hands. What the smugglers did not know was that Cailenne was already carrying Jagreth’s child; and Iven Jagreth convinced his crew to forget their mission of exploration and go hunting. It took four months for them to track the smuggler crew through improbable realms rich with fantasy and dark magic, and recover Cailenne, who by that time was obviously with child. Jagreth fought for him, a physical match between himself and Rahn Hawd, the smuggler prince who was sure the child was his. Jagreth and Cailenne knew better. Jagreth was badly injured – still limping when Samaral was born on the new colony world which would one day be named, by humans, for the captain of the expedition.
The story was charming, the artwork beautiful, and Travers’s eyes were drawn to the native Resalq script, which was given right beside the Slingo translation. The Resalq wrote top to bottom, on and through a vertical line, from right to left of the paragraph. The characters of the written language were curving, flamboyant, gorgeous, and utterly baffling.
“The story is sixteen centuries old,” Marin said as Travers set down the book and went for coffee. “The Resalq were on Jagreth for six hundred years before the Zunshu came – and the planet is so lucky. The colony was still small enough to pack up and run, shut down everything that smacked of industry, before the world-wrecking assault could come.”
“There’s a stasis chamber,” Travers remembered.
“Jagreth,” Marin said bitterly, “was fortunate, like Saraine. And if I knew how to pray, right now I’d be saying one for Borushek and Omaru – they’re far closer to Hellgate than Velcastra and Jagreth, so if the Zunshu strike at a major, populated world –”
“They did.” Travers breathed the steam off a Pakrenne roasted blend. “We caught the Borushek weapon just as it launched out of the Drift.”
“Yes.” Marin set aside his handy and stood. “All the more reason not to spend long at Orion 359. We don’t have a lot of time left.”
As if on cue, Lai’a said into the loop, “Standby for transspace drive ignition. Navigation bench markers are set … acquiring Naiobe Gyre in three. Two. One … Naiobe Gyre insertion successful. Potential transit of Orion 359 in 95 hours, 37 minutes.”
Chapter Thirteen
Lai’a, transspace
It could have been a mountain range before and beneath the driftship, but Marin recognized the illusion. Pure energy was sculpted by immense gravities, pulled and twisted into the form of mountains. What one took to be tendrils of cloud whipping and foaming over their shoulders, driven by a fierce wind, was the visual representation of the slow-time currents. Overhead and deep below were the brilliant jetstreams of the fast-time currents. The trick was to find a viable course between them.
It was a little like contour-riding over a terrestrial landscape, and the pilot in him rose to the challenge. He had done similar flying, and memories of the Santorini skyline flittered through his mind – weaving and darting between comm relay towers and the crowns of sky-high buildings, with an armed Rand Stratos on his tail. Death had been a hair’s breadth away then, too.
They were in the Kronos Tide, the gravity stream racing between the Orion Gate and the Tasman 288 comm beacon; and both Marin and Travers had forgotten this was a simulation. The experience was too overwhelming, and the level of commitment essential to survival was so profound, reality dropped away from them like an old, outworn glove.
“You’re a little fast,” Travers was warning.
The AI had remained silent since they acquired the Kronos Tide. Its handholding dialog was less frequent each time they flew the simulator, and now the tone of Neil’s voice was level, composed. Marin heard no edge of panic there, and though he drew a deep breath to slow his own pulse, he was calm. This was the twentieth time he and Travers had flown the driftship, and they were on the homeward leg now. The Kronos Tide returned to the Orpheus Gate via a different route from the Odyssey Tide, but it would get them there – through a chicane, a bottleneck between the gravity wells of two supergiant stars. The cleft between the walls of two towering mountains of unspeakable energy was just wide enough to pass the ship through, so long as Marin could keep it out of the slow-time currents.
“You’re still too fast,” Travers judged, though Marin had shed speed twice. “Brake … and again.”
The energy penalty for overenthusiastic braking was dire, and Marin was watching the instruments every moment now, waiting for the AI to whisper its customary warning, that the generators were overheating and would underrun to compensate. In five flights through the chicane they had made it through three times, and on each flight Marin was keenly aware of the goddess of sheer lucky flying copilot for him.
“I’m going to try something,” he said softly. “Let’s see if dropping us just a whisker closer to the slow-time stream bleeds off some of this speed without overstressing the generators.”
“Risky.” Travers was busy with his own work, and Marin’s eyes scanned his data constantly. “It’ll be close.”
“But doable,” Marin argued, “and it’d get us through this chokepoint without killing those generators – and us.”
Twice, they had crashed the simulation right here. The first time, the slow-time channel sucked them in and they were suspended in an eddy leading eve
ntually to a driftway that would dump them into the Ebrezjim Lagoon in a year, or a decade. The second time a fast-time current seized the driftship, raced it away into regions impossible for any human pilot to fly, perhaps even beyond a machine like Lai’a.
The display surrounding Marin synched with Travers’s, and Neil had zoomed to concentrate on the immediate ‘sky’ where Marin would either make this work – or not. Neil’s instruments focused on the mass, gravity and temporal potentials, drawing and redrawing the ‘safe lane’ that should take the ship through.
Marin’s hands were feather-light in the sensor nets around his fingers, wrists, forearms, and he took up the navigational data through the pores. He was unaware of any process of seeing, analyzing, comprehending then acting on the knowledge. What he perceived from instruments seemed to translate directly to the sweeping, diving movements of his hands on the flight controls. The driftship responded more like a living bird than like any aircraft he had ever flown.
She skimmed the surface of the slow-time channel as if she were a pelican trailing a wingtip in order to manage a stable, energy-free turn – and sure enough, the apparent velocity dropped fast. Almost too fast. Marin throttled up the drive and skipped at right angles across the gravity tide swirling around the subspace roots of the super-luminous star cataloged as NHC-5574. To human navigators who had used it as a navigation fix for three centuries, the star was commonly known as Gloria, a young blue giant which would live another million years and die like 2631C. Its fate was to become a Hellgate nebula and patiently feed the master magician, Naiobe itself. But for now Gloria was one of the brightest bodies in the skies around Hellgate, visible even from Pakrenne and Lushiar, and as brilliant as Shikoku in the pre-dawn north over Hydralis –
