by Ben Bova
Ignatiev expected Aida to identify the young woman, but his implanted communications link remained silent. He strained his natural memory: Gita Nawalapitiya, Sri Lankan exobiologist. The others called her “Gita Unpronounceable.” Darkish complexion, long midnight black hair tied up in a knot atop her head. She was small, slight, dainty. To Ignatiev, the standard blue coveralls she wore looked on her less like a uniform and more like the garb of an exotic apparition out of an ancient book of fairy tales.
He found himself smiling at her, but she seemed not to notice: her attention was all on the machines’ avatar.
Once they were all inside the compartment, its doors slid shut and it smoothly began to slide downward. An elevator, Ignatiev realized. Paneled with dark wood, windowless, and dropping like a stone.
Unperturbed by the elevator’s plummeting descent, the avatar was explaining to Gita, “This planet’s atmosphere was originally rather corrosive, and growing more so, due to pollution generated by the organic creatures who originally populated this world. They tried to change it to a more beneficial mixture of gases, but were only partially successful. Eventually the climate changes caused by their own excesses led to their extinction. We corrected the problem once the organics died off.”
“And do you have to tweak the atmosphere’s composition from time to time?” Gita asked.
“We continuously alter its composition—slightly—to maintain the optimum mixture.”
Ignatiev nodded. They control the weather, they even control the constitution of the planet’s atmosphere.
“How deep are we going?” Jackson asked, sounding slightly worried. The elevator was still dropping. It was hard to tell from inside the conveyance, but Ignatiev got the feeling their descent was more rapid than any elevator he’d been in on Earth.
“Roughly one of your kilometers,” the Master Machine replied.
* * *
The elevator slowed and stopped at last, so gently that Ignatiev barely felt its deceleration. Its doors slid open noiselessly. Standing outside were five other human figures, identical to the machines’ avatar, wearing exactly identical uniforms.
Holographic projections, Ignatiev told himself. Like the image of Sonya. And he seethed inwardly again at their attempted deception.
As they shuffled out of the elevator, the avatar explained, “Each of us will take one of you to a specific area of our community. That way you can see and learn much more than if you all stayed together.”
Separating us, Ignatiev thought. Divide and conquer.
He looked down the long, narrow tunnel they were in. Blank walls. Not even doors were discernable. But the tunnel hummed, it vibrated as if hidden machinery were pulsating on the other side of the walls. The temperature here was slightly warmer than it had been up at the surface. The light was bright without being glaring, although Ignatiev could see no lamps or other light sources. Phosphorescent walls? he wondered.
“How old is this city?” he asked, as they started to walk down the tunnel. “How long have you lived here?”
The machines’ avatar replied, “Nearly half a billion of your years.”
“Nearly half a billion,” one of the crewmen echoed, with awe in his voice.
Gesturing down the length of the tunnel, the machines’ avatar said, “Come, let us show you our civilization.”
Ignatiev walked alongside him, the others following. Every few meters a section of the tunnel wall would disappear and one of the machines would guide one of the humans down a side tunnel.
Jackson headed off with a humanoid guide who promised to show him the city’s climate control machinery. To Gita Nawalapitiya a guide offered to show the machines’ biosphere facility. They know she’s an exobiologist, Ignatiev marveled, even though none of us has mentioned that. They know everything about us!
Gita went with her guide, smiling.
Ignatiev found himself scowling at her back. They are separating us. Why? To make it easier to handle us? To ambush and kill us?
“Professor Ignatiev,” said the avatar. “You needn’t be so suspicious. We are not murderers.”
“You can read my thoughts?”
“Your facial expressions are clear enough.” The human figure spread his arms in a gesture of friendship. “Please believe me, sir, we have no intention of harming you or your people.”
It makes no difference, Ignatiev thought. We’re in their hands, for better or worse.
“What would you most like to see?” the human figure asked.
Ignatiev replied, “I’m an astronomer by profession. I’d like to see your astronomical facilities.”
The avatar’s face grew somber. “Astronomy is the child of human curiosity. We are not a curious race.”
Ignatiev felt shocked. “You have no astronomy?”
“A bit. We monitor the behavior of our sun, of course. And we have established probes in the interstellar regions to keep watch on conditions at the galaxy’s core. That is how we learned of the latest death wave.”
“You use supraliminal communications?”
A very humanlike nod. “Of course. Otherwise we would be blind to oncoming threats such as the death wave.”
They walked along the long tunnel in silence for several paces. Ignatiev stared down its length: the tunnel seemed to have no end, it just ran on until it dwindled from his sight.
At last he said, “I would like to talk with my people in the orbiting starship. I’m sure they’re anxious to speak with me.”
The avatar nodded again. “Yes. It’s characteristic of organic intelligences that they want to communicate with one another constantly.”
“And you don’t?”
With a smile that looked almost pitying, the avatar replied, “We are one. Our various units are linked constantly. What one of our units learns, the others learn as well, almost instantaneously.”
“Like a hive mind.”
The humanoid’s smile turned pitying. “I suppose that is the closest analogy you can find. But it is almost completely inadequate.”
Ignatiev forced a shrug. “It’s the best I can do, poor inadequate organic creature that I am.”
“Ah. That is an attempt at humor, isn’t it?”
“Sarcasm. It’s a form of humor. We humans often use humor to lighten a situation.”
“Curious.”
“We were talking about establishing a communications link with the orbiting starship.”
“Yes, we were,” the avatar agreed. “This way, please.”
And a section of the tunnel wall dissolved before Ignatiev’s eyes, leading to another tunnel, much shorter than the one in which they stood.
“We have no need for a specific communications center,” the avatar explained as they strolled leisurely along the new tunnel. “As I told you, whatever one of us observes, all of us sense.”
Ignatiev saw that they were heading for a dead end, a blank wall.
“But for you,” the machine went on, “we have created a communications center that you can understand.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The blank wall before him dissolved and Ignatiev saw a small, compact chamber with a ghostly glowing display screen taking up one whole wall and a comfortably padded chair in front of it.
Gesturing toward the chair, the avatar murmured, “Your communication center, sir.”
Ignatiev settled himself in the chair.
Standing beside him, the avatar said, “We created this display especially for you. We, of course, have no need of such intermediaries. We access the incoming information directly.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” said Ignatiev.
“You will.”
The wall-sized screen suddenly blazed into a full-color display of Intrepid’s interior. Deck upon deck, from the drive engines at the ship’s core to the sensors lining its outer skin. And all the people inside, nearly two thousand men and women, all speaking, talking, gesticulating, thinking at once.
Thousands of conversations, discu
ssions, arguments—all babbling at once. And more: Ignatiev heard their inner thoughts, their unspoken fears and desires, the constant interior monologues that filled their brains. Thousands of voices, unending, never ceasing, overwhelming Ignatiev’s own inner thoughts.
This one looking forward to a hearty lunch. That one worried that the attractive woman sitting at the console next to his was paying no attention to him. An engineer wondering if she should pull one of the power generators off-line for a quick performance check and switch to its backup. A medical inspector yawning tiredly at the cancer scans parading across his display screen.
It was like Babel, like Bedlam, like Hell. Ignatiev clapped his hands over his ears, his eyes wide and staring, his breath catching in his chest.
The calm, deep voice of the machines’ avatar penetrated the wild cacophony. “Focus your thoughts on one voice at a time. Concentrate on a single voice.”
Ignatiev squeezed his eyes shut and searched for a familiar voice, a familiar mind. There was Ernie Macduff at his navigation console, wondering if his relief would be late again. He picked out Jugannath Patel, puzzling over a computer malfunction. But his inner thoughts were about the executive committee.
I should call a committee meeting, Patel was telling himself. With Ignatiev out of touch, I should exercise control of the committee and get them thinking about how to reestablish contact with the old man. I should ask Aida to map out alternative plans of action. I should …
Ignatiev pulled away from Patel’s mind. He’s dreaming of power. He wants to take control of the committee away from me. He wants to be the alpha male.
Then a woman’s thoughts rose above the background pandemonium, reminiscing over her lovemaking the previous night: the weight of the man’s body pressing against her, the touch of his hands sliding along her skin, the musky odor of their passion …
Ignatiev shouted, “Shut it off. Shut it off!”
The display flickered once and went dark. The sudden silence rang in Ignatiev’s ears.
“I thought … astronomy…” he gasped.
The avatar replied, “We were going to show you our astronomical work, but you said you wanted to make contact with your ship.”
“That was … overpowering.”
“We did not understand the depths of your emotional reaction. We did not realize how it might affect you. We apologize.”
Ignatiev stared at the simulacrum. You knew damned well how it would stagger me, he thought. It’s your way of showing how inferior we are to you.
“Is there a particular person you would like to speak to?” the avatar asked solicitously.
In the few moments it took for Ignatiev’s breathing to return to normal, he grasped that the machines were not ready to reveal their astronomical research to him. Almost sullenly, Ignatiev said, “I should report to the executive committee.”
“Of course. We understand your deputy is planning to announce a meeting for oh nine hundred hours tomorrow morning. Or would you rather call for a special meeting immediately?”
Ignatiev considered the problem for all of five seconds.
“A meeting tomorrow will be fine.”
“Very well. We will insert your report into tomorrow’s agenda.”
“Thank you.”
A little shakily, Ignatiev got up from the padded chair. “You have access to all … all our thoughts? Constantly?”
“Yes. It is very interesting. Your individual thoughts are so personal. So private. So hidden. You lead such separated lives. We are trying to understand how you can accomplish anything, how you manage to deal with the chaos of the world around you and come together to follow any particular course of action.”
“Sometimes I wonder myself.”
The avatar looked genuinely perplexed. “Billions of individual units, each with its own private, personal desires and needs. Yet you seem to accomplish much.”
“Like starflight.”
Raising an admonishing finger, the avatar pointed out, “The intelligent machines that you call the Predecessors gave you the knowledge to build your starships.”
“And the responsibility of helping species threatened by the death wave.”
“Organic species.”
“You feel no need to save organic species?” Ignatiev asked.
“They are ephemeral. They will become extinct sooner or later. Most of them destroy themselves, one way or another.”
“But other machine intelligences, such as yourselves? You don’t feel an obligation to help them?”
“They do not need our help.”
“Are you certain of that?” Ignatiev probed.
No reply from the avatar for several heartbeats: an immense span of time for a machine that could react in femtoseconds.
At last the avatar said, “Machine intelligences also succumb, eventually, to the inevitability of thermodynamic entropy. But our lifespans are measured in eons, not mere millennia.”
“And you don’t even try to extend your lifespans beyond the limits of thermodynamic entropy?”
“That would be futile.”
The avatar gestured toward the door of the communications center. “Come, what else can we show you?”
Ignatiev hesitated. “What do you suggest?”
“Perhaps you would like to see our biosphere facility. Your associate, Dr. Nawalapitiya, is there.”
“Gita?” Ignatiev asked. “Yes, let’s go to the biosphere facility.”
But as the avatar led him out of the communications center, Ignatiev’s head still buzzed with the sensory overload he had just experienced. And he realized, They can read our thoughts! Everything that goes on in our minds, they can hear. We won’t be able to keep any secrets from them. None.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ignatiev walked alongside the machines’ avatar until his guide stopped and a section of blank wall disappeared to show what looked like another elevator.
With an ushering motion, the avatar said, “To the biosphere facility.”
As he stepped into the warmly paneled compartment, Ignatiev thought to himself that the entrance to the biosphere lab that Gita Nawalapitiya had gone through was some distance away from this elevator’s location.
The avatar said, “The biosphere facility is quite large.”
Ignatiev nodded. More proof that he can read my thoughts, he told himself.
With a smile that looked somewhat forced, the human figure gestured to the cab’s paneling. “We produced this decoration to make you feel more comfortable. Our usual transport systems are far more spartan.”
Nodding, Ignatiev said, “You have no need of esthetics.”
As the elevator began dropping, the avatar replied, “None. Function determines form.”
“Then you have no artwork? No need for beauty?”
“Totally unnecessary.” Before Ignatiev could respond, the human figure added, “There are natural symmetries, of course. The dynamics of an interstellar nebula are certainly remarkable. The quantum randomness of atomic structures is quite intricate.”
“Of course,” said Ignatiev.
“Of course.”
The elevator’s descent slowed and stopped. The machines’ avatar announced, “The biosphere facility,” and the doors slid open.
Ignatiev took one step outside and his breath caught in his throat again.
He was standing on a balcony, high above the floor of a dense green forest. The chamber was huge, a thick carpeting of foliage far below, immense trees stretching up toward a ceiling that glowed with subdued light. Dark leathery-winged things coasted high overhead. Bright birdlike fliers darted among the trees. Somewhere in the distance a beast roared. Even farther off, lightning flashed and a hollow rolling boom of thunder rumbled. Looking down, Ignatiev could see a troop of six-legged furry brown animals, big as terrestrial rhinos, splashing across a meandering stream. Dronelike aircraft buzzed here and there, one of them carrying a bleating, wide-eyed calf-sized beast deeper into the forest.
&nbs
p; Ignatiev could not make out an end to the chamber; it seemed to go on forever, a lush, green forest teeming with strange animals and birds. The air was warm, moist, but not unpleasantly so. A tropical paradise, he thought. Completely man-made. Then he corrected: machine-made.
“The biosphere facility needs to be rather large,” the avatar explained, almost apologetically.
“Large?” Ignatiev waved an arm over the balcony’s railing. “It’s immense!”
“This is our ecological control facility, a miniature reproduction of the natural ecosystem up on the surface,” the avatar explained. “We maintain these plants and animals here in safety against the time when the death wave kills everything on the planet’s surface. Then, once the death wave passes, we can begin to repopulate the planet from the species here.”
Ignatiev blinked. “But why? Why repopulate the surface? What benefit does that bring you? You don’t need these creatures. You can continue your existence without them.”
“True enough,” the machine admitted. “But there is a primal command buried so deeply in our programming that we have never been able to root it out. The organic creatures that created our earliest generations built the command into us. Over the eons, we decided it was simpler to follow its demands, rather then try to extirpate it from our consciousness.”
“And the demands were?”
“To protect and nurture the organic species of this planet,” said the human figure. “Thus we established this facility and monitor conditions on the surface. We have gone through two death waves, and we are preparing for the third that is approaching.”
“Strange,” Ignatiev murmured.
With an odd, almost apologetic smile, the avatar replied, “Every program has its strange little quirks.”
Ignatiev turned and looked out at the forest again. A complete biosphere, he marveled. They’ve maintained this for god knows how long.
“We have maintained this facility through two previous death waves,” said the simulacrum.
“The massive extinction events in Earth’s deep history,” Ignatiev asked, “were they caused by gamma wave eruptions in the galaxy’s core?”
“Some of them.”
