by Mel Keegan
“What do you require?” The AI’s voice gave nothing away. If it had the capacity for resentment or rebellion, Travers did not know – or the capacity for deception.
“We need to shut down your functions temporarily,” Mark said in the same measured tone, “allowing us to identify the source of the problem and effect repair. If the flaw is in the crystal or in the fundamental code, it is completely repairable; but not,” he added, “while you continue to operate.”
“You wish to shut down all AI functions?” Lai’a inquired.
“All of them,” Mark affirmed, “for as short a time as may be. I hope, a few days. At worst, a few weeks, if Dario and I must access the facilities on the Carellan Djerun.”
“The Carellan Djerun should be at Alshie’nya,” Lai’a said reasonably. “I will be there in two days.”
“Unless you suffer a catastrophic event.” Mark paused in search of words. “If the incongruity increases, you can lose function. If this happens while you’re navigating, you’ll be destroyed, and all of us with you. You understand?”
“Of course.” Lai’a seemed unmoved.
“Then, it’s in your own interests to shut down pending repairs,” Mark reasoned. “You have my pledge that you will reactivate, earliest possible. A few hours … a few weeks, if the Carellan is elsewhere, or if the work is extremely demanding.”
Lai’a did not respond for a moment, and when it did Travers heard a distinct tone of puzzlement. “Yet, diagnostics report no fault in code or matrix.”
“Diagnostics can be misleading,” Mark said with infinite patience, “because your mind is so complex. One logic processor can perform many thousands of tasks, or many thousands of logic gates may be applied to any one process at any point in time. A diagnostic performed on an AI of your sophistication which is operational at the time of the test is therefore always dynamic. The results,” he said gently, “will always be fractionally different. The differences make for ambiguity. Do you understand?”
“I do,” Lai’a said, and paused for several seconds which, in biosynthetic terms was a long, long time. “My thought processes do not seem different. Should they differ, due to error or imperfection?”
“I don’t know,” Mark admitted, “because I don’t yet know the cause of the problem. As soon as Dario and I have found it, and repaired it, you will reactivate and full information will be available.”
“Full information,” Lai’a added, “will expand your knowledge of sophisticated AI systems, and prevent such faults recurring in my own matrix.”
“Exactly.” Mark folded his hands on the workspace before the flatscreen. “Examination and repair are in your own best interests. It serves no purpose to take risks with yourself, and all of us.”
“I agree,” Lai’a said readily. “What do you require?”
Mark’s eyes closed for a moment. “Exit at the approaching driftway. Place us in safety – freefall, if possible. If not, put us in a stable position where we can coast on adjacent gravities for at least five minutes.”
“And then?” Lai’a asked.
“Place the drive on standby,” Mark said very quietly, “verify that the ship has five minutes of safety, and … go offline.”
“And then?” Lai’a inquired in a tone Travers had never heard before.
“Colonel Vidal and Captain Queneau will take us to the next driftway, where Colonel Travers and Colonel Marin will take over. Human pilots can return us to Alshie’nya in four days.” Mark looked up at Travers and Marin. “You might be back online by then. If not, you are my priority,” he promised. He hesitated. “Lai’a, do you trust me?”
“I trust you,” Lai’a said in that odd tone.
“Then merely trust me,” Mark asked. “I was there when you woke. I’ll be here when you go offline, and you’ll reawaken as soon as we can give you our absolute guarantee that the fault, or faults, are eliminated. Yes?”
“Yes. Do you not wish me to take a science crew to Zunshu 161-D?”
“We do.” Mark stood. “And your transspace assignments are already scheduled. You’ll survey for Zunshunium lodes … you’ll liaise with Guardian ships of the Veldn, searching for the missing vessels. Have no doubts, Lai’a – only trust me.”
“I trust you, Doctor,” it said mildly. “Driftway in five minutes. The simulator is functional. Colonel Vidal and Captain Queneau are running preflight checks. I would assist, but given the incongruity you report, I can no longer trust my observations. Colonel Vidal will monitor flight calculations until we concur on a safe location in the driftway. Please keep the datastream open, Doctor Sherratt. When I return, I need a continuity of information to be fully functional.”
“You’ll have it,” Mark promised. “Thank you, Lai’a. I appreciate your trust.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Lai’a added. “Our association has been a privilege, and will be again.”
Travers let out the breath he had been holding and discovered his chest burning. He gave Marin a rueful look and spoke softly, under the loop’s audio pickup. “I never worked with this level of AI. Richard won’t have one on the Wastrel. You?”
“Never. The brightest I ever knew was Joss. It’s smart, but Lai’a …” His brows arched. “Lai’a is something else. It has to be. It was designed to live in transspace.” He nodded into the tank, where two sets of navigational data were displaying, one stream from Lai’a, the other from the simulator, where Vidal and Queneau had already meshed into the system and were flying the same space in realtime, checking every calculation Lai’a made.
Movement at the armordoor announced Hubler and Rodman, and their faces told Travers they had been listening in. Hubler dropped his voice to a confidential murmur as he stomped into Ops. “Richard, you want to put the ship on alert – hardsuits?”
But Vaurien made negative noises. “It’s a nice thought, but it’s pointless. Mick and Jo make one mistake, and we’re gone like that.” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve never flown the simulator, but I’ve watched and reviewed the flight reports. We find our way into a fast-time current or a slow-time current, or into the sinkhole of a gravity well, it’s over. Armor and high anxiety won’t make any difference.” He nodded at Travers and Marin. “They’re good. So are Mick and Jo. Four days, Roark, hopping from driftway to driftway. Have a little faith.”
“The castanets you can hear,” Hubler growled, “are my biocyber knees knocking together.”
“You were the one that didn’t want to trust an AI, at first,” Marin recalled. “You’ve changed your tune!”
“Lai’a convinced me.” Hubler thrust out his large chin and glared at Travers. “I’m ready to be convinced again.”
“Hey, we passed whatever test Mick had in mind,” Travers informed him. “Vidal, Queneau, Rabelais – Lai’a itself – qualified us to fly. There’s no higher authority, just the people who can do it.”
“And you two can,” Rodman said with acerbic humor. She gave Hubler a sharp nudge. “We’re about halfway there, you and me. Thank Christ they’re not asking us to get the bus home!”
“Driftway,” Lai’a announced.
“Safe parking maneuver,” Mark stressed.
“Analyzing temporo-gravity currents,” Lai’a assured him. “Captain Queneau is performing the same function. We will concur upon a position before the transspace drive shuts down.”
“Holy shit,” Hubler whispered. “Shut down, as in, dead in the water?”
“Not for long.” Travers had clicked his combug over to monitor Vidal and Queneau. According to their talkback they were already flying, though the simulator was not yet passing commands to the ship. The transition should be smooth as silk. Neil took a step closer to Marin, offered his hand and was gratified when Curtis clasped it.
On the other side of the tank, Jazinsky had fitted herself into the curve of Vaurien’s good side. They were intent on the display as Mark said softly into the loop, “Michael, talk to me.”
And Vidal: “We’re on it, Mahak, and
she feels good. Instruments are in the green, everything checks out. It’s going to be easier than flying the simulator, because we’ve got power unlimited under us – easier than flying the Orpheus, same story.” He paused for a moment, and then, “Got it. We’re safe. Drifting gently – it found us seven minutes of safety, and our numbers agree. Any time, Lai’a. We’re good to go.”
“Acknowledged,” the AI responded. “Doctor Sherratt.”
“I’m here,” he said softly. “You’ve no cause for concern. You may wake up on the Carellan, as you did the first time, but I promise you contiguous data, total continuity, and you can manage your own transfer back to this hull.”
“My privilege, Doctor,” Lai’a whispered. “Offline.”
For an instant every display flashed red before Joss took over general housekeeping routines across the habitation module. Screens righted; the navtank cleared, rotated, distorted, before the datastream from Vidal and Queneau replaced the feed from Lai’a.
“Can’t call it the simulator anymore,” Travers said softly.
“Transspace cockpit,” Marin suggested.
“Aligning realtime navigation platforms,” Queneau’s voice rasped, “here she comes … got it. The load is identical, Mick. Got a fix on the next driftway. In your own time.”
Standing by the tank, Rabelais seemed to hug himself, eyes closed, listening to their voices. Travers could only guess what was racing through his mind as he whispered, “Go for it, kid.”
“That you, Ernst?” Queneau called.
“Yeah. Never far away.” Rabelais’s eyes squeezed. “Make me proud.”
“Piece of cake,” she snorted. “Pull up a chair and watch.”
The absence of Lai’a was like an enormous deadness across the ship. Travers could not put his finger on it, but as odd as it had initially seemed, knowing the AI was everywhere, seeing and hearing everything, now it felt bizarre to know it was gone. He and Marin watched the tank, making far better sense of the navigation datastream than anyone else on this ship with the possible exception of Rabelais himself. They were monitoring engine diagnostics – the ignition cycle – when Tor Sereccio and Alexis Rusch arrived together. The too-small Ops room was crowded as they shouldered in, and Rusch said in a rasp,
“You should have called me, damnit!”
“Nothing you could do,” Vaurien said tersely. “You’re no more an AI specialist than Barb is, and you’re no more a transspace pilot than I am. Like Jo said – pull up a chair and watch.”
“Transspace drive ignition in four. Three. Two. One,” Queneau read off, “and we are on our way, folks. Next stop, Driftway 884 … I can see the gravity well of the Empress. Nav data is comin’ at you Mick. Any time you’re ready.”
The Empress was a supergiant star, short-lived, super-luminous, violent in both normal space and Elarne. Its immense gravity was strong enough to ripple and ruck the e-space conduit, not quite strong enough to open a gate here with a Hellgate-style storm.
“One day,” Rabelais said broodingly, “well inside the next century, we’ll know enough to punch right through into transspace in places like this. We’ll know where the e-space conduit is tissue-thin, and a good, solid kick will open it right up, put us in the driftway beside the gravity express.” He nodded to himself. “Ask Barb – she’s had a good glimpse of the numbers.”
“And they drive you crazy,” Jazinsky admitted. “I don’t say it’ll be me who finds the answers. It could take most of that century! But it’s out there … and here we go.”
As she spoke Vidal had found his safe insertion point. Engine output and Aragos were aligned to the Naiobe Gyre, the big ship was tacking like a tallship before a stiff breeze, and as she picked up the main tide she began to race. Vidal gave a whoop, and Travers felt the phantom sensations in his own hands and forearms, the pulse and thrum, as Vidal felt his way through, around, beneath, beyond, the immense energies, holding the ship in the freefall steam so that she literally fell toward the next driftway.
“Driftway 884 in 2.45 hours,” Joss announced.
And there, Vidal and Queneau would hand over. Armored butterflies swarmed in Travers’s belly and his palms were damp. He knew Marin felt the same, but Curtis’s eyes glittered as he picked up the gauntlet. Rabelais relaxed slowly, subsided into a chair and accepted a coffee as he focused on the comm from the transspace cockpit. Eyes closed, he listened only to Vidal and Queneau – one, blood of his blood, the other who had become his life partner.
Would he and Queneau stay on the Wastrel, Travers wondered, or after Vaurien had found his ‘jewel of worlds,’ would they transfer to the Elarne Zhivun, the Transspace Gypsy? The lure of Elarne was as glorious as it was terrible.
“Dario?” Mark clapped his hands sharply to deliberately break the mood. “We’ve a lot of work to do.”
“Which lab are we in?” Tor wanted to know.
“Not you,” Dario said loudly. “Like Bill says, bugger off and rest.”
Tor was sullen. “I’ve rested enough to last the rest of my freakin’ life. I know my way around the inside of a holographic crystal matrix, and you need all the help you can get.”
“We bloody don’t,” Dario argued.
“In fact, we do.” Mark set a hand on Dario’s shoulder. “If he’s up to it, let him work. If he’s not, he’ll change color and we can pack him off to the Infirmary.”
Tor gave Dario a self-satisfied look, relishing the minor victory, though Dario was right – he was as pale as Vaurien and inclined to hunch over and cradle his abdomen. His organs had only just begun to clone, and it would be a long year for him, and for Dario.
“We’ll set up in Tech 3,” Mark was saying, “and the first thing I want to do, now Lai’a is inactive, is scan the crystal matrix again.”
“By the sound of that,” Jazinsky said carefully, “you don’t expect to find any ‘tiny defect’ there.”
“I don’t.” Mark’s lips compressed. “The crystal is fine. I already know it’s fine before we go through the formality of looking, but let’s be sure.”
“Then, what?” Rusch asked. “Surely not an error in the fundamental code? If I know anything about AI design – and I admit, I’m no specialist! – that kind of error would have shown up in test, within days.”
She was right, and Mark sighed. “Look, let me see what I can do.”
Some finality in his tone made Travers’s ears prick. “If you can’t find the cause of this incongruity?”
“Lai’a doesn’t come back on line,” Mark said sadly, “and I know what I promised. The best I can offer is a kind of serial reincarnation. An upgrade of it, with code that’s been revalidated over a thousand hours of simulation before everything Lai’a knows, and remembers, is loaded.” He sighed. “Maybe we did miss something. We finished in a hurry, under a storm cloud – maybe we rushed it.”
But Dario’s head was shaking. “No, we didn’t. Lai’a was perfect, Mark, or we’d never have taken off into transspace with it.”
“Then – what?” Jazinsky demanded.
“I’ll find out,” Mark said darkly.
She tilted her head at him. “You already suspect.”
“Perhaps I do.” He was moving as he spoke. “Give us a couple of hours. I’ll give you a buzz when we know more.”
“Besides,” Rusch mused, “if an upgraded copy comes online with every memory, ever skerrick Lai’a ever knew, it has no way to know it’s not the original, and the original won’t ever know it never rebooted.”
“Still,” Tor said slowly, “it’ll always be a copy. It won’t be the Lai’a who went to war with us, even if it thinks it is.” He shook himself. “Remember way back, Mark, our scientists ran a bunch of experiments to see if you could upload a complete, living personality into computer memory – save a copy of yourself before you kick the bucket, was the idea. Achieve functional immortality in holographic crystal, in a virtual world like a game reality, utterly indistinguishable from our reality.”
“Which w
as dandy,” Dario went on, “till somebody thought to ask, are you uploading an autonomous program based on someone’s memory and moods, or are you uploading their soul? Because if the soul gets left behind when the body goes belly-up, what’s the point? The part that matters is gone – all you uploaded is a glorified snapshot … and nobody I know ever got confused between the family album and the living spirit.”
“The point was,” Mark remembered, “the next living generation would continue to have benefit of your presence. The deceased would endure, in every tangible way. If the soul vanished into the aether, what did it matter, since the copy functions just fine?” He held up his hands to halt the impending dispute. “I know. The argument was, uploading to dynamic memory doesn’t offer any kind of immortality, just convenience for the people left behind who’d miss having you around – until they found somebody to take your place!” He gave Marin and Travers an exasperated look. “There’s a saying among our people: ‘If it makes no difference, what’s the difference?’ But you feel it as a niggle, down deep … oh, there’s a difference. So let me do what I can to save our Lai’a. I want it back as much as you all do. And the preliminary work is still going to take two hours – I’ll call you.”
“Driftway 884,” Joss announced, “in 140 minutes.”
“We’ll know about Lai’a,” Marin said as the Resalq stepped out, “before we take a shot at flying this thing for real … and speaking of flying it, I’d like to spend the next couple of hours watching the nav feed in full veeree, and listening to Mick and Jo.” He flexed his fingers. “I want to get the feel, before we go hands-on.”
He was right. Travers looked sidelong at Vaurien, who nodded. “Joss, stream everything to Nav 2.” Richard watched the workstation come alive. “Anything you need, Neil, Curtis?”
“Just coffee,” Travers decided, and was on his way to the ’chef while Marin popped open the storage drawer under the workspace and broke out a pair of full veeree sets, still in the vacuum packs.
It was like ‘buddy hooking’ at a gaming den. Travers had visited more than a few in his time, and some of the cutting-edge flight games approximated the experience, though none of them depicted transspace. Even here, the multi-dimensions of Elarne were simulated in three dimensions to allow the human brain to grasp them, work with them. Travers slid smoothly back into the navigator’s role.
