by Mel Keegan
He would want ID, Travers knew. No one underage would ride out with the Wastrel, but since anyone stranded here would have contacts on Borushek, these unlikely Diaspora should make their own way adeptly. Travers and Marin sat on the stone bench in the garden, where the air was heavy with the scent of the night blooming plants and the brilliant moonlight cast double shadows across an ornamental sundial. Vaurien went on into the Capricorn, and the aroma of coffee wafted down the ramp along with the strains of a Borushek girl band called Roripoppu.
Footsteps from the house announced Mark. He was cradling a last glass of wine as he joined them, and Marin set Vaurien’s business into a few choice phrases. Mark seemed far from surprised. “I can’t really blame the ancestrals, but … it’s an overreaction. One can only hope it’ll erode away as time and safety, sheer complacency, overtake them. Resalq culture can be reborn here in a much purer form than anything that’s been known in centuries. Is it a bad thing?”
“No,” Marin allowed. “Not unless it starts to create a caste system, with the ancestrals on top, people like you in the middle, tolerated, people like Tigh and Winona on the bottom, scorned and ostracized.” He paused reflectively. “You remember how we speculated about a caste system among the Zunshu? We were pretty scathing of it.”
“And it wouldn’t be any more attractive if it were to happen here,” Mark said wryly. “Oh, I hear you, Curtis. And I’m sure people like Mad’ue hear you too. Midani Kulich is breathing smoke! He won’t be staying. Him and Emil, in the same small town? There’d be blood before the day was out. Emil can’t forgive him for being the one who flew Zunshu space – wrote himself into Resalq history, I suppose. But there’s more than that between them, as you know. They’ll never agree about this burning desire Emil harbors to see the pure Resalq bloodline return at the cost of the rest of us. Alas, I’m, afraid Emil is far from alone.
“There’s more than enough who think like him for Carahne to suffer birth pangs.” He sipped a little wine, swirled the deep red liquid in the glass. “Your own ancestors used to say that time cures all, and they were right. A hundred years, five hundred, all this will be forgotten. Carahne will be a world to be reckoned with, and when those days come, if Tigh Stromberg and Winona Breck wanted to be here, they’d be as welcome as they’re not right now.”
“Resalq are coming in from as far away as Louverne,” Marin mused. “There’s a halfway decent population here already – if you’re thinking of the gene pool. Emil certainly is.”
“The population is a little over a thousand,” Mark told him “Fifteen have been born here in the last six months. I can understand how Emil Kulich feels. He’s still young, and by the time he’s as old as I am now, the Resalq will be back. The … ‘real’ Resalq,” he added quietly. “And as soon as their numbers are great enough for them to feel utterly complacent of their place in the universe, I believe people like us – the hybrids, if you don’t mind the word; and it’s accurate enough! – will be welcome.”
“You’re already welcome,” Travers said pointedly, “anywhere in the Deep Sky. You want irony? You’re highly respected anywhere but here.”
“Perhaps.” Mark finished the wine in one swallow. “Time will tell. And if there’s anything we Resalq have plenty of, it’s time!” He gestured back toward the house, the dinner table. “Mad’ue has accepted the stasis chamber project, of course. How could he turn it down? We had an update from Engineer Ingersol sometime during the second course – the installation is complete, they’re setting down the chambers even now. I’ve warned Mad’ue not to tamper with ancient, malfunctioning hardware till he’s run every scan, every permutation of every experiment – and even then, to evacuate the facility, do the work on remote! The lessons of El Khouri were learned the hard way.”
“At least they were learned,” Marin said aridly. “So you’re done with business here?”
“Short of taking aboard a number of passengers for Saraine!” Mark indulged himself in a chuckle. “Saraine hasn’t known the presence of so many Resalq in almost a century! We’ll have to prefabricate accommodations for them, until their charter can come over from Velcastra. Forty of them, you said?”
Travers stood as Vaurien appeared on the ramp under the Capricorn. “That was Tigh’s guesstimate … so, Richard?”
“Give Gill Perlman a call,” Vaurien said without preamble. “She and Fargo are flying shuttle duty – two flights should do it.” He strode out to the sundial, inhaled the heady aroma of roses and gardenia and studied the new stars with a speculative expression. “There’s got to be a jewel like this out there, waiting for us.”
“And,” Travers said pointedly as he watched the young Resalq troop out of the Capricorn and vanish swiftly into the moon shadows, “it’ll be a lot of fun finding it.” He slid his left arm around Marin’s waist and drew him close. “We’re leaving, Richard?”
“We’re always leaving.” Vaurien’s eyes dropped back from the stars. “That’s the problem. We shove off in six hours, give or take. Saraine in nine days; then Alshie’nya … the Esprit should have her new engines by the time we arrive; the Harlequin should be done laying comm drones around Hellgate. If Lai’a comes back online, it can lay drones across twenty Freespace worlds while the Resalq put a team together, to study the Zunshu gas giant.” He nodded toward the house. “They’ll be thrashing it out right now. Their eyes are dancing with glee.”
“And us?” Marin wondered.
Vaurien looked down at him with a familiar lopsided smile. “Depends where you want to be. You’ve got a while left, before we’re at liberty to ship out of Hellgate and … vanish.” The smile broadened as he gave Travers a wink. “We won’t leave without you.”
He headed back into the house with that and Mark followed, leaving Travers with the freedom to take Marin in an embrace between roses and oleanders, eat him with kisses in the light of Carahne’s two moons. His hands delved into Marin’s shirt, molded about his chest, and with a soft curse as his wayward body began to respond, Curtis steered him to the Capricorn and locked the hatch.
Eternal City, Saraine
The AI chassis stood three meters tall and almost two thick, a kevlex-titanium armor cocoon around a thirty-kilo holographic crystal grown in a lab on the Carellan Djerun. Such crystals grew for up to a year, and for every one certified perfect, nine were rejected for microscopic flaws. Lai’a lived in a crystal matrix of such perfection, Mark swore he had never seen its equal. The crystal alone was worth its weight in gelemeralds; the AI mind which had been born inside it was beyond value. The kevlex-titanium wore a dull, green-gray sheen in the lab lights. The chassis was suspended in an Arago cradle in the middle of the biggest lab under the house, in the stream of cool air whispering from the vents.
Bevan Daku lilted from the living room, above, where Vidal had sprawled on the couch an hour before with a handy and a veeree visor, trying the cracks for Abelard and Zenobia 4.2. Reuben Kravitz swore by these keys to a game for which Vidal could not seem to think sneakily enough, but the last Marin saw of Mick, he had gone to sleep with the game looping endlessly, waiting for some coherent input.
Sitting on the stairs outside the lab’s open door, Travers was talking to Fargo and Perlman. They were back on the Wastrel, loading up with an eclectic assortment of goods from Supply – enough to keep forty transit passengers entertained and comfortable for the week before a charter vessel arrived from Velcastra.
Saraine was murmuring quietly with comm traffic again. Joss had come online at a signal from the Wastrel and the house was warm and bright when the Capricorn touched down in the rear courtyard. The human archaeologists welcomed Mark back – the wealthy eccentric, so obsessed with all things Resalq, he lived here in a mansion designed after the ‘dead’ civilization. They sent greetings and an invitation to come down to the camp for champagne and oysters in the evening. Those scientists were due, Marin thought ruefully, for a rude epiphany on the day when the Resalq came out to the Deep Sky.
A new dormer building stoo
d on the long slope below Mark’s house, with a view of the ruins and, beyond, the hills. Drones constructed it in two hours, while the Capricorn shuttled Stromberg’s party down; they would take it to pieces, put it in storage, when the young Resalq had gone. Marin had expected furore in Raishenne when the unwelcome generation left, but few older Resalq were surprised. Equeros were emotional; some were angry, but the anger was directed at Emil Kulich and the group at the heart of Raishenne, since the equeros themselves were of a generation little older than Dario and Tor, and displayed very human characteristics.
Not all Resalq were what Midani called ‘nasty bastardish minding.’ Marin suspected that Emil’s group might be a minority, but they were an influential minority composed of scientists, politicians, and a few who had played key roles during the Car’am anha. ‘Time,’ Mark had said, ‘will cure all.’ Marin hoped so, but Tigh Stromberg, Winona Breck and their companions were furious enough to leave and not look back.
Midani was the first one back on the Capricorn, and refused to even call Emil before the Wastrel shipped out. Mark conferenced at length with Mad’ue and the team who would be working with the stasis chambers, but Midani marched aft to the hangar where Tor and Dario were playing folgen with Rabelais, Queneau and Vidal, and dealt himself in, even though he had little idea of how to play. ‘Yous being teaching,’ he growled, and slapped down a wad of colonial dollars, as if in that moment he relished anything not purely Resalq.
The lab was quiet, cool. Wrist-thick hanks of cable bled from the AI chassis to a control processor. Dario and Tor had checked every connection three times that Marin knew of, and Mark was only delaying out of some anxious desire to anticipate the unpredictable.
“You gotta do it some time,” Tor said coaxingly as Mark checked the main cabling a fourth time.
“I know.” He mocked himself with a chuckle.
“We’ve tested this.” Dario hopped up to sit on the workbench beside Tor. His hands were idle now. Nothing remained to be done, save to give Joss the word. “You could have done this four days ago,” he added, “on the Wastrel. You only shipped the chassis down here to delay.”
“I needed the equipment in the lab here,” Mark said vaguely. “Easier to bring the chassis down than to ship another lab.”
“Bull,” Tor said, but his tone was gentle. “You just can’t bear to take a surgical knife to your child. And Lai’a is your kid, Mark. Not mine or Dar’s. We all worked on it, and it’s picked up a lot of traits from Neil and Curtis and Mick, as well as us. But down deep, Lai’a is still you. It always will be.”
The observation was painfully astute. Marin was watching Mark’s face, and saw the pageant of emotion there as he admitted the truth. “All right,” he said at last. “You checked the backup?”
“Three times,” Dario swore, hand on his heart. “Anything goes wrong, we boot up the clean copy of Lai’a, load up everything we filched from the database of our Lai’a, and then swear on a stack of everybody’s holy books, it’s the same AI.”
“I won’t tell,” Tor promised. He balled up a handful of discarded beta-cloth, threw it at Marin. “Take the oath.”
“I won’t tell,” Curtis pledged dutifully. “Just do it, Mark.”
“Just do it,” Mark echoed. The gold eyes closed for a moment and were dark when they opened to slits. “Joss … run it.”
“Standby,” Joss’s sweet tenor said calmly.
The chassis was featureless, but the handies monitoring it flashed red as it powered up, green as the hardware verified, and then red again as the holographic virus raced through the matrix. Lai’a was merely idling, like a patient under sedation while a surgeon cut into brain tissue to excise a tumor. Twice, this procedure had been run in test with a prototype of Lai’a installed in the standby crystal. Both times it was successful, but the prototype was less complex than Lai’a. It did not have the wealth of memory Lai’a had accrued, nor the many veneers of rich behavioral characteristics Lai’a had learned through interaction with Resalq and humans. The prototype had so much less to lose.
One minute became two, and three. Marin watched Mark’s face as he paced between the Arago cradle and the open door, beyond which Travers was talking over old times with Fargo and Perlman, laughing over memories of events that would have been far from amusing at the time. In the house above, Shapiro and Rusch were in the kitchen, making and breaking plans. Their voices carried over a comm they had forgotten to close: would Harrison come to Velcastra with her? She was shipping out on the Aenestra from Saraine, with Vidal, Rabelais and Queneau, in just a few days. The downtime was long overdue. Shapiro was more than welcome. He was also immediately recognizable to the Elstrom paparazzi, and reluctant to break the cover he had only just engineered for himself on Borushek.
A fresh sweat broke across Mark’s face and he came to rest in the draft from the air vents. “Joss?”
“Standby,” Joss said unhelpfully.
“Is it taking too long?” Marin knew little about the process.
“It’s a lot longer than in the tests on the prototype,” Dario admitted.
“But then,” Tor said pointedly, “there’s a whole lot more to Lai’a than the prototype. I was trying to estimate the amount of storage and processor power it’s using for personality development. Looks like double to triple any of the values it uses for straight-up memory storage.”
“The sophisticated AIs come expensive,” Mark said quietly.
He was pacing like an expectant father, but Marin was not about to say it, not to a ‘man’ who had birthed three children from his own body. He was about to suggest bel grass smoke, or a shot of bourbon, perhaps both, but before he could speak Joss said,
“Procedure complete. Reboot in process.”
The lights flicked over to green in the handies monitoring the event, and a clock was counting down. Marin held his breath, waiting, hoping as much for Mark’s sake as for the AI’s. He looked at Dario and Tor – Dario’s mouth was compressed while Tor’s teeth worried at his lip. Even now no one could be sure, with a generation of artificial intelligence far more sophisticated than any the Resalq had worked with before.
The clock counted to zero; the handies remained green. Mark was a statue, waiting. He cleared his throat. “Lai’a. I made you the promise I’d be here when you woke.”
Its voice was slightly different, since it issued from the lab speakers rather than those on the driftship. “Doctor Sherratt ... good afternoon. I assume the procedure was successful.”
“If you’re awake, and aware,” Mark said hoarsely, “it was. Please run complete diagnostics. Joss will run the same tests. I want you to compare notes and report any inconsistency.”
“This would be advisable,” Lai’a agreed. “Diagnostics commenced. Thank you for making available contiguous data. I have been offline for four weeks, and much has happened.”
“Much,” Mark agreed. “You will be aware of the discrepancy between the mission clocks and those of the Deep Sky.”
“I am.” Lai’a paused. “It appears we were in transspace for five months. I will attempt to fathom where and how the temporal incongruity occurred; however, be aware that this information may not be inferable from existing data. It is highly probable I must conduct further experiments in transspace.” It paused again. “I have run the files pertaining to the Elarne Zhivun. A second driftship.” It sounded delighted. “May I assist?”
Mark sagged against the workbench, exhausted by relief. “That would be excellent, Lai’a. You’ll be working in association with Colonel Vidal. You have the pertinent materials?”
“I have. I am eager to return to Alshie’nya, where the engine deck will be jettisoned from the salvaged miner very soon. Engineer Ingersol is overseeing the construction of the new transspace drive engine.”
“Yes, he is. And you’ll be transferring to the Wastrel today, tomorrow at latest,” Mark assured it. “The ship is returning to Alshie’nya directly … though I’ll be remaining on Saraine for a coup
le of weeks, and I believe it could be as long as six weeks before Colonel Vidal will join you at Alshie’nya. You’re perfectly qualified to work without me, Lai’a, and you have plenty to occupy you. You have your assignment?”
The AI was in possession of every nugget of data. “I will cruise both sides of the frontier, seeding comm drones as far into Freespace as I consider necessary. I estimate a minimum of five weeks will be required to perform the work. Is this sufficient time for a Resalq science team to gather for the journey to Zunshu 161-D?”
“It should be,” Mark mused. “If it takes longer, you may continue to work with Colonel Vidal on the Zhivun, oversee the installation of the transspace drive. I’ll join you at Alshie’nya soon enough.” He paused, glancing at Marin, Dario and Tor. “Business is going to keep me here for a while. Dendra Shemiji.”
“I understand,” Lai’a assured him. “Diagnostics are complete, and results returned by Joss agree with my own. The process was successful. I have synched with Etienne and am undertaking deep scan observations of the Ouroboros quasar at this time.”
“You have Captain Vaurien’s authorization to use the deep scan?” Mark was amused.
“Captain Vaurien is unavailable. Doctor Jazinsky made the facilities available one minute ago. She conveys her felicitations and relays a message from the Harlequin. Would you care to hear it?”
“No,” Mark decided. “Just give me the gist.”
“Captain Rodman and Major Hubler have reloaded their vessel and are leaving the Drift, bound for Velcastra and Jagreth to lay comm drones on the approach roads from Hellgate.” It paused. “I am most eager to return to Alshie’nya, Doctor Sherratt, and assist with the work.”
“All right.” Mark popped the cap off a water bottle and drank. “Get me Doctor Jazinsky. I’ll be in the study.”
A sense of profound relief had settled over Marin, surprising him. He had not realized how precious the original Lai’a was. He would have accepted a copy, but he was listening to the same intelligence that broke trail around the Red Gate and Zunshu space, and Mark was right. The Resalq would have said, ‘If it makes no difference, what’s the difference?’ But intuitively he knew this was the Lai’a, and though it should not have, the knowledge did make a difference.
