CAPACITY a-2

by Tony Ballantyne

  “Hey, baby. Hey, baby boy,” crooned Justinian, still breathing hard. “Not long now. We’ll soon be at the secondary infection. Then maybe we can go home.”

  “Justinian…” Leslie began.

  “I’m comforting my son,” Justinian replied edgily. Leslie hovered nearby, his body fuzzing and unfuzzing in waves as he tried to catch Justinian’s attention.

  “Justinian…” he said again.

  “What?” Justinian snapped.

  “Justinian, I know you’re upset, but I must make an urgent request. Please don’t make the flier go all the way to the next location. The last AI was quite insistent about that.”

  “Leslie, this flier has been ordered to follow my instructions, right? It’s bad enough that my son and I have been placed in this danger at all. I will not compound that danger by leaving him alone on the ship with you while I go trekking across the surface of this planet. I say again, we go all the way to the next position.”

  Leslie adopted his most reasonable tones. “Oh, Justinian, the last AI pod knew you would react like this. It knows how pig-headed you are. Don’t you realize what you are doing? You are putting us all at risk. You’re putting your son at risk.”

  “You’re the one who put us in this situation, Leslie, by bringing us to this planet. Don’t try to make me think otherwise.” He looked towards the flight deck. “Ship, how long until we arrive there?”

  “Four hours, Justinian.”

  “Fine. I’ll have something to eat: pasta and roasted vegetables. Have a cut-up portion made for the baby.”

  He looked up at Leslie. “Are you going to sit at the table with us?” he demanded.

  “Me? I wouldn’t have thought you wanted me there.”

  “The baby needs social stimulation. Even the hologram children don’t work since the AIs pulled out.”

  A table formed itself from memory plastic. Three flight chairs slid up, circling dancers in the dinner-time waltz. One chair shrank in girth to accommodate the baby.

  “I can’t make pasta anymore,” apologized the ship’s TM. “As of five minutes ago, my intelligence has dropped below the level necessary for complex food production. You’ll have to eat the freeze-dried meals we brought on board for emergencies.”

  Leslie shook his fuzzy head, and Justinian gazed at him.

  “Was that your doing?”

  “Yes. I got the signal from the hypership. We’re turning down all machine intelligence on this planet even further.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of you, Justinian. Against all advice, you’re flying us to the secondary infection. We’re not taking any chances.”

  Justinian gazed at the robot. “So you’re telling me that the knowledge of how to cook pasta cannot be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.”

  “You’re being deliberately obtuse.”

  Justinian ignored this. “Very well,” he said, “freeze dried it is.” He lifted the baby into the high chair, then sat down next to him.

  Leslie headed to the forward section and, after a moment, came back carrying a tray on which lay two plastic bowls, steam curling upwards. The robot seemed to be moving erratically.

  “I think this is yellow leather,” he said, placing the tray before Justinian.

  “What?” Justinian looked at the robot in disbelief, then prodded a piece of meat with a fork. “It’s chicken passanda. What’s the matter with you, Leslie?” For a moment, something almost like compassion flickered through him. “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know, Justinian. The continual lowering of my intelligence is getting to me. I’m not what I was. I’m not acting rationally. I can’t connect to the world properly in this skin. I can’t check what is real and what isn’t.”

  “Wak!” the baby said, reaching out for his dinner, little fingers gripping at nothing.

  “Too hot,” Justinian said. “Ship! Can you cool the baby’s dinner?”

  “Sorry, I’ve lost that capability. Spread some chicken on the side of the tray and let the second law of thermodynamics take effect.”

  “You mean let it cool down?” Justinian said in disbelief.

  “That’s the expression, I think,” agreed Leslie.

  “I’ve got to get off this ship,” Justinian muttered.

  He took a forkful of the freeze-dried meal. It didn’t taste that bad, though it was possibly a little spicy for the baby. He scraped some of the yellow sauce off the vegetable constitute that represented chicken and cut it into pieces with his fork, then left it to cool. A second pack held sweet corn: little yellow nuggets of maize. Justinian studied it thoughtfully until a voice interrupted his reverie.

  “Hey, Justinian.” The voice came from behind the dinner table.

  “Who is that?”

  “Justinian, it’s me, David Schummel.”

  “The pilot of the shuttle. Where on earth are you?”

  “We’re not on Earth. Look out of the windows to your left.”

  Justinian did so, surprised to see it was nighttime again; obviously the flier’s constant criss-crossing of the planet had scrambled his body clock. Munro, Gateway’s overlarge moon, was shining palely over the dark snowscape of the Williams Fells. A lime-green spot of light was approaching from the distance.

  “Can you see me?” Schummel called.

  “Yes, I see you. What do you want?”

  “Set the flier down. We need to talk.”

  “About what? I’m heading for something called the secondary infection. And the sooner I get there, the sooner I can leave this planet for good.”

  The spot of light resolved itself into the lime-green shuttle Justinian had seen earlier that day on the landing field.

  “You’re not going anywhere unless it’s on my shuttle. Set down, Justinian; this is important.”

  “The baby and I are having our dinner. That’s important, too.”

  “Just do this as a favor to me, Justinian.”

  “You, too, David? I did you a favor back at the spaceport, when I didn’t get on your shuttle, and now it’s like I somehow owe you. I’m not going to be deflected from what I intend to do this time.”

  The shuttle had flown closer, and Justinian could now see David Schummel seated in a polarized glass bubble near the front of the craft. The wings and tail were flexed into atmospheric flying position, giving the craft the appearance of a paper dart. David gave Justinian a lazy wave, moving even closer, now flying only a few meters away from the window. Justinian remembered that Schummel was piloting the shuttle alone, without any AIs to help him. He was impressed by that, despite himself.

  “Justinian?” Seeing Schummel’s lips move across that icy supersonic gap between the windows gave Justinian an odd feeling. So near and yet so far away. “Justinian,” he said again, “all we’re asking is that you don’t fly too close to the secondary infection. You’ve got a Turing machine piloting that ship and an advanced AI there in that robot.”

  “The advanced AI is currently having trouble telling chicken from leather. It’s so cut off from reality it doesn’t even know what day it is.”

  “That’s my point exactly: they’re cracking up. There’s no telling what they will do if they get too close to that location. I’ve come to make you an offer. Just land, and we can fly the rest of the way in this shuttle. I’m the most intelligent thing aboard this ship. I’m not going to turn myself off when things get tough. You should be safe with me. You could leave the baby with the robot.”

  “I wouldn’t leave that robot in charge of a rock.”

  “Fine. We’ll take the baby with us and leave the robot behind.”

  “I’m coming, too,” Leslie said. “Orders.”

  “No, you’re not,” Justinian said. The robot had just helped make his mind up. “Ship! Take us down. David, I need to finish feeding the baby. Come on board and we can talk.”

  The flier’s exit ramp dropped onto snow. Cold sighed into the craft’s interior. Justinian shivered and wondered why for a moment, then r
ealized that the temperature gradient mechanism at the rear door had gone the way of the food synthesizer. Justinian had lived his entire life with such devices; he took their function so much for granted he realized now that he wasn’t even aware of their existence until they ceased operating.

  He peered out of the open hatchway, feeling the cold nipping at his lips and ears. Schummel was a dark shape about thirty meters away, struggling towards him, waist deep in the snow.

  “Do you need help?” Justinian called out, his voice sounding strangely dead in the cold air.

  “I’m okay,” Schummel gasped, pushing ahead. His craft lay about fifty meters away, half illuminated by the wash of the flier’s interior lights, which shone in a wedge across the snow. Justinian made his way down to the base of the ramp, fascinated by the cold blackness that surrounded him. Stepping sideways from the cone of light into the snow and the darkness, he blinked as his eyes grew accustomed to the night, and then gave a gasp of astonishment at what he could see. The black sky seemed to rise forever, the stars tumbling down into one corner of the night as he observed the edge of galaxy M32. The arcs of the contrails left by the two craft glowed in the moonlight; they dipped down through this brilliant expanse to the points where they had landed, and Justinian followed the lines they made back along their paths through the sky.

  “Amazing sight, isn’t it?” Schummel said, gasping cold clouds of steam as he came up beside Justinian. Powdered snow fell from his passive suit.

  “I suppose it is,” Justinian grudgingly admitted.

  “Come on, Justinian. Don’t let your frustration with the EA spoil this moment. Who could have imagined that a species with a sense of vision evolved to help them swing through trees would someday use that same sense to appreciate this sight?”

  Justinian looked up into the sky and felt just a little of the tension relax that had been building up in him over the past few weeks. But the sound of his son crying brought it straight back.

  “Come inside. I was halfway through feeding the baby.”

  They found Leslie trying to wrestle the spoon from the baby so that he could feed him. Niblets of sweet corn skittered across the tray.

  “Let him try to feed himself,” Justinian suggested. “He’s getting old enough to try.”

  Leslie glanced in their direction. “Hello, David,” he said.

  “Hi, Leslie. I want Justinian and the baby to fly on my shuttle to the location of the secondary infection.”

  “Sorry, I can’t allow that, David. I am responsible for this mission, so I must stay with them. Anyway, I can’t place my fate in the hands of a human intelligence. No offense, but you’re too erratic.”

  “Humans are too erratic! You say that after the way you have just been behaving? I’m going with David.”

  “Are you going to leave the baby behind, then?”

  “Of course not. He’s coming with me.”

  “So you’re going to cross the freezing snow out there carrying a fifteen-month-old child? And you claim that I’m erratic?”

  “You’ve turned your intelligence back up again, haven’t you?” Justinian observed. “It’s not just your body that goes into hiding behind that fractal skin. What is it that you’ve got hanging around in your mind?”

  Leslie abandoned the baby, leaving him to play with the spoon. Soon the baby was quite happily trying to pick up a piece of sweet corn. The robot looked hurt.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I’m doing my best in difficult circumstances.”

  A black flicker in the corner of Justinian’s eye turned out to be a Schrödinger cube, sitting on the orange patterned carpet nearby. “Okay,” he said. “No problem. We’ll just fly somewhere warmer, then make the swap there. After that we fly to the secondary infection, and then go home.”

  “So you feel perfectly safe putting your child’s safety in the hands of a human intelligence? Do you really think that David’s reactions will be quick enough to evade danger should everything start going wrong on board his shuttle?”

  Justinian looked at Schummel. The older man held up his hands, still damp from the melting snow.

  “Hey! I don’t know exactly what is out there. All I’m saying is that every other AI on this planet is giving up the ghost and climbing back down the mental planes all the way into the basement. So if you must fly all the way to the secondary infection, Justinian, I think it would be safer if you were to do it with me.”

  “Okay then,” Justinian said. “I’m convinced. I won’t insist on flying all the way there.”

  “Great.” Schummel beamed triumphantly at the robot. “If Justinian isn’t going all the way to the secondary infection, that’s fine by me. But, even so, why risk the baby? Why not leave the baby with me while you go there alone?”

  Justinian looked down at his son. The baby had picked up a Schrödinger cube on his spoon and was bringing it towards his mouth.

  “Hey!” Justinian called warningly. “Ah ah ah! Don’t eat that!”

  The baby frowned as Justinian replaced the cube with a piece of chicken. Several more cubes rattled onto a plastic tray nearby.

  Leslie’s fractality was turned down, making him look almost human. “And why should Justinian trust a man who he has known for barely forty minutes in total with his child?”

  Schummel shrugged. “Why not? We’re all in the same craft here. We’ve got to look after each other.”

  “Are you saying that Justinian is not capable of looking after his own child?” the robot asked smoothly.

  “I know what you’re trying to do, Leslie,” Justinian snapped. “You’re playing with my emotions. You’ve turned your intelligence up so you can manipulate me again.”

  Schummel was looking around the flier with a thoughtful expression. “Have you noticed,” he said, “how he’s turned up his intelligence, and all of a sudden there are Schrödinger cubes appearing everywhere?”

  Justinian realized that he was right: the floor was a drift of cubes. Little black cubes tumbled from the flight chairs, sat in the window recesses, rolled on the baby’s tray. “I’ve never seen so many,” he whispered.

  “Of course there’s more,” Leslie said. “Think about it. If I turn my intelligence up, I have a wider sense of awareness; I fix more of the cubes in place as they pass through this space.”

  Schummel’s eyes widened. He suddenly looked very sick. “Of course,” he murmured. “I never thought of that before. It’s so obvious; there must be a constant flux of cubes across this planet.”

  “The flux increases the closer we get to the secondary infection,” Leslie said, teasingly.

  “Oh, hell,” Schummel said. “I just didn’t think of that, Justinian. I just never saw it. We were standing outside barely five minutes ago, and I said that it was the first time a human had stood there looking at the stars. But, think about it: what if this is the first time that intelligent beings have ever stood on this planet? The cubes could have been flowing past this planet for millennia until we got here. And now our intelligence is fixing them here!”

  Justinian stared at David, his lips moving slowly as he sampled the idea. He turned to the robot.

  “Is that right?” he asked.

  “Possibly,” Leslie said in a tone that implied otherwise. “But it’s an anthropomorphic way of looking at things. What makes you human beings? I’ll tell you. Intelligence. Birds fly, cheetahs run fast, plants photosynthesize. What is your defining characteristic? You can think.”

  “Yeah…” David said. Leslie waved a dismissive hand.

  “It colors your perception. You believe thinking is your defining characteristic, so you build AIs to think for you. Would a dog have built a smelling machine, or a bat a hearing machine? You have colonized the galaxy through the power of thought. And so, because it has been a successful method of propagation for you, you seek evidence elsewhere of objects that can be identified by intelligence. Does this not strike you as being anthropomorphic? What if evolution had left dogs the dominant creatu
re on Earth? Would they think it significant that the cubes stayed put when you could smell them?”

  Justinian was getting riled. “The argument is facile. It would take an intelligence to identify the smell. Plus, a sense of smell alone would not give us the freedom to explore the galaxy.”

  “Okay, fair enough. But what if there were other ways to be successful in the race to spread your genes to other planets? Blind luck, maybe, or evolving into creatures that can fly through a vacuum?”

  “How could that be?”

  “I don’t know, but what if that is where we are going wrong? We search for signs of other intelligent life, yet maybe none exists. Maybe there is no other intelligent life. There are other ways of evolving. And here on this planet maybe we have found one of those other ways. Or at least its by-products.”

  They stood in thoughtful silence. In the background the baby was making a noise, banging his spoon on the table and repeating one syllable over and over again. “Da da, da da…”

  “Is he saying Dad?” Justinian asked.

  “No,” Leslie said matter-of-factly. “He has quite a different intonation for that concept. This is the noise that he makes when he thinks he has done something clever.”

  Justinian stared at the robot. He had never imagined that Leslie could already understand what his son was saying. It made sense, he supposed, for Leslie seemed to read humans at a deeper level. There was no reason why he could not understand the sounds a child made as it was developing language facility.

  Then he realized what the child was doing. It had picked up a Schrödinger cube and was banging it against the yellow plastic of the tray.

  “He’s holding a cube,” said Justinian.

  The baby meanwhile was beaming at his father and saying something over and over again.

  “I think he’s saying that he’s managed to fix it in position by looking at it,” Leslie said. “I think he’s telling us that he’s never managed to do that before.”

  Helen 4: 2240

  Rising above the Earth, the Shawl bathed in the warmth of the Sun. Its rectangular black sections, strung together in a grid by connecting filaments, hung down in loose pleats from the lens of the Source. The Shawl in EA Public Space number 4 was bigger than the one in the atomic world; it looked like an unbelted kimono floating above the Earth, its hem trailing in the thickening atmosphere.