Survival--A Novel

by Ben Bova

  “Aren’t you?”

  With a shake of his head, Ignatiev replied, “Gita, dearest, even if I did that and even if the committee voted unanimously to replace him, Mandabe would still be with us. And he would hate me implacably. Such a rivalry could ruin our work here permanently.”

  She slipped into bed, then admitted, “Perhaps the machines are right. Organic intelligences inevitably destroy themselves.”

  “No!” Ignatiev snapped. “I cannot believe that. I will not believe that!”

  She had no reply. Ignatiev crawled into bed beside her, commanded the lights to shut down, and squeezed his eyes shut as if he could force himself to sleep.

  * * *

  He awoke, bleary-eyed, aching, and no closer to a solution than he had been when he’d gone to bed.

  Gita was unusually quiet, practically tiptoeing around him as they prepared their breakfasts and ate in almost total silence.

  She pecked at his cheek and then left for her laboratory, saying only, “I have to write my daily report for Dr. Mandabe.”

  Ignatiev sat alone at the kitchen table, wondering what he should do, what he could do. Maybe I should challenge Mandabe to a virtual reality duel again: that cut him down to size the last time.

  But he shook his head. No, this mustn’t be framed in terms of a quarrel between him and me. It must not become a personal vendetta.

  Most of the morning he wandered around the apartment, fruitlessly trying to find a solution. As he sat at his desk in the windowless den next to the bedroom he realized that the machines’ avatar had not appeared. They’re watching, waiting for us to fall apart, to split into two warring factions. I’ve got to avoid that. I’ve got to …

  Suddenly he raised his bearded chin a notch.

  This is a labor–management quarrel, he realized. Not that different from the struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when workers began to form labor unions to gain some power for themselves vis-à-vis the owners of their factories.

  “Aida,” he called out, “get Dr. Jackson for me, please.”

  He grinned at his politeness toward the AI, which of course did not recognize such niceties. But he reminded himself of Winston Churchill’s remark: When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

  I’m not going to kill Mandabe, but I might be able to shrink his ego down to a reasonable size.

  “Professor?”

  Ignatiev looked up and saw Raj Jackson’s sweat-beaded face framed in the heavy foliage out beyond the limits of the machines’ city.

  Immediately apologetic, Ignatiev said, “I didn’t realize you were out in the field.”

  With a slightly crooked grin, Jackson replied, “Best way to get out of Mandabe’s clutches. We’re collecting rock samples for analysis.”

  “Are all the other teams as upset about Mandabe as you are?” Ignatiev asked.

  Jackson nodded vigorously. “Most of ’em. The anthropologists are pissed as hell at his throwing Dr. Fogel off their team.”

  “I thought as much.”

  “What’re you thinking?”

  Instead of answering his question, Ignatiev asked, “Will you be free to have dinner at my quarters this evening?”

  A flicker of surprise widened Jackson’s eyes, but he said, “Yes, sure.”

  “Good. Call me when you return from your field trip.”

  “Sure. Ought to be between five and six o’clock.”

  “That’s fine. We have a lot to talk about.”

  Jackson nodded knowingly. “I’ll call you soon’s I get cleaned up and decent.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Ignatiev’s door chimed precisely at six o’clock.

  “Come in,” he called from the kitchen, where he was pouring himself a glass of potato vodka.

  Gita was removing a tray of hors d’oeuvres from the warming oven. “Right on time,” she said.

  “Punctuality is the pride of princes,” Ignatiev murmured.

  Looking across the divider that separated the kitchen from the sitting room, he saw the door slide open and Raj Jackson step in, tall and loose-limbed. But Ignatiev thought he looked tense, the expression on his face expectant, searching. He was dressed in a handsome maroon tunic and midnight blue slacks.

  “Welcome,” Ignatiev called as he stepped around the divider, glass in hand. “What would you like to drink?”

  “Fruit juice,” Jackson requested.

  “Nothing stronger?”

  Almost apologetically, Jackson admitted, “I’m not much of a drinker.”

  “Good,” said Ignatiev. “Keep your head clear. Not like me. I became addicted to vodka at an early age.”

  Jackson smiled weakly. “It hasn’t affected your intelligence, apparently.”

  Glancing over his shoulder, Ignatiev saw that Gita was pouring some vile-looking greenish liquid into a glass. He gestured Jackson to the couch, then went to her and took the glass.

  As he carried the drink to the young man, Ignatiev said, “You obviously do not understand the prey/predator theory of alcoholic beverages.”

  Accepting the glass, Jackson asked warily, “The prey/predator theory?”

  “Yes,” said Ignatiev as he sat beside Jackson. “Imagine a herd of deer being stalked by a pride of lions. Which deer do you think the lions would catch most easily?”

  Before Jackson could answer, Ignatiev said, “They catch the slowest and weakest, of course. The strongest and fastest survive.”

  Jackson nodded cautiously.

  “So by culling out the weaklings the predators actually help the prey to grow stronger and smarter, you see.”

  “Do they?

  “Inadvertently, of course,” said Ignatiev.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Ignatiev continued, “Now when one drinks alcohol, the liquor kills off brain cells. But which brain cells does it kill? The slowest and weakest, naturally. Therefore drinking alcohol culls out the weaklings and makes your brain smarter and faster.”

  Looking totally unconvinced, Jackson said, “You’re claiming that drinking booze makes you smarter?”

  “It’s the prey/predator relationship.”

  As she carried the tray of hors d’oeuvres to the coffee table, Gita said, “Don’t take him seriously, Raj. He’s merely justifying his craving for vodka.”

  Jackson chuckled minimally.

  Taking a big gulp of his vodka, Ignatiev said, “Enough foolishness. We have an important problem to think through.”

  “I hope you have enough brain cells left to solve the problem,” said Jackson.

  “We’ll see.”

  * * *

  They moved to the kitchen table. Through the appetizers and much of dinner, Ignatiev explained his ideas. At first Jackson was incredulous.

  “Go on strike?” he asked. “Stop working? Refuse to work?”

  Ignatiev nodded solemnly.

  “But we’re scientists, not factory workers. The research we’re doing is our lives, for god’s sake.”

  “I know. I understand,” Ignatiev replied. “I’m a scientist, too, you know.”

  “We can’t just stop working. Most of the people would refuse to do it.”

  “You’ve got to convince them to cooperate with you,” said Ignatiev. “They won’t have to stop for long. It will be like a little vacation for them.”

  Shaking his head, Jackson said, “They won’t like it.”

  Gita, sitting beside Ignatiev and across the little foldout table from Jackson, said, “It’s a sacrifice they’ll be making for curbing Mandabe’s lust for power.”

  “It will only be for a few days,” Ignatiev added. “A week or so, at most.”

  Looking very uncertain, Jackson reflected, “We stop working until Mandabe agrees to drop his demands for these goddamned reports every day.”

  Ignatiev said, “No, wait, I have a better idea. We stop working until Mandabe agrees to allow Aida to generate the daily reports.”

  “Aida?”

  “The AI
records what you’re doing. Why not have it produce the reports Mandabe wants?”

  Gita agreed, “Of course!”

  Jackson broke into a toothy grin. “Aida could bury him in reports.”

  Hunching across the table, Ignatiev said, “So we suggest having Aida take over the reporting.”

  “And we won’t have to threaten a strike,” Jackson said.

  “Unless Mandabe refuses the Aida option.”

  Gita got up from the table and went to the half-sized refrigerator tucked in among the kitchen’s cabinets. “This calls for some ice cream.”

  Jackson asked Ignatiev, “So you’ll propose the Aida idea?”

  “Me? Oh no. Not me. You. Or Jugannath. Anybody but me.”

  “But you’re the most respected person on the committee,” Jackson argued.

  “Perhaps,” said Ignatiev. “But that’s exactly why I should be as quiet as a mouse with laryngitis. We don’t want this meeting to devolve into a competition between Mandabe and me.”

  “But—”

  “Raj, I have to stay as far out of this as I can. Mandabe’s very sensitive about threats to his power. We can’t start a power struggle between the two of us.”

  Looking dismayed, Jackson said, “But I don’t have the status to argue against Mandabe. He’s a distinguished scholar and I’m just an ordinary researcher. Juga, Vargas, none of us have your stature.”

  “It can’t be me,” Ignatiev said firmly. “That would start a war between us.”

  Gita brought two bowls of ice cream to the table, then sat down again beside Ignatiev. “Alex,” she said, “you’ve got to show them what the machines showed you.”

  Ignatiev stared at her. “Yes, of course. How stupid of me to overlook that.”

  Blinking with puzzlement, Jackson asked, “What did the machines show you?”

  “The end of worlds,” replied Ignatiev. “The end of many worlds. Including Earth, perhaps.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  The executive committee members sat arrayed around the conference table, Mandabe at its head, Ignatiev down almost at the very end.

  It was the committee’s regular weekly meeting, but a special electricity was crackling through the conference room. Mandabe seemed to sense it. His dark, brooding eyes focused on Ignatiev, sitting between Jackson and Patel.

  Gita sat on one of the chairs along the room’s wall, to Mandabe’s left. Vivian Fogel sat next to her instead of at the table itself. Only a handful of the other chairs were occupied.

  “I hereby call this meeting to order,” Mandabe said in his deep rumbling voice.

  Everyone seemed to sit up straighter.

  Staring at Ignatiev, Mandabe said, “Professor Ignatiev has asked for permission to show some of the results of his astronomical studies.”

  Ignatiev raised a finger. “Actually, what I’d like to show is not from my own investigations, but from work that the machines revealed to me.”

  “Not your own work?” Mandabe asked.

  “No. But I believe it is of enormous significance to what we are trying to accomplish here on Oh-Four.”

  Tightly, Mandabe said, “This meeting is held specifically to exhibit and review the work of our various research teams.”

  Don’t start a mano-a-mano competition with him, Ignatiev warned himself.

  “I understand. If the committee doesn’t want to see the presentation, I’ll be happy to show it privately to anyone who is interested.”

  Mutters whispered along the table. Mandabe looked annoyed but said grudgingly, “If the committee is willing to spend the time…”

  “Let’s vote on it,” suggested Jackson.

  Mandabe said, “A simple show of hands should suffice. How many want to see Professor Ignatiev’s presentation?”

  More than three-quarters of the people around the table raised their hands. Ignatiev realized that the dissenters formed the heart of Mandabe’s clique.

  Mandabe scowled briefly, then asked Ignatiev, “How long will this take?”

  Knowing he had hours of imagery to show, Ignatiev said, “We can run the presentation until someone asks to stop it. Will that be satisfactory to you?”

  Mandabe nodded. Reluctantly.

  * * *

  For nearly two hours the floor-to-ceiling displays along the conference room’s walls showed the destruction of civilizations. On planet after planet, homicidal wars broke out that demolished cities, wiped out continent-sized swaths of cultivated lands, annihilated billions of intelligent creatures. By the time the death wave swept over those planets their inhabitants were already slaughtered—by their own brethren.

  For nearly two hours the conference room was silent, except for an occasional gasp, a quiet sob, a moan of despair.

  Ignatiev felt the pain all over again. So many worlds ruined, so many species obliterated, so many civilizations crushed.

  At last he said, “Aida, that’s enough. Terminate the display.”

  The walls immediately went blank. The room brightened. The men and women around the conference table and along the far wall seemed to stir, shudder as if suddenly awakened from a nightmare.

  Ignatiev said nothing. There was nothing he could say that would alleviate the horror they had all just witnessed.

  Mandabe recovered first. “And Earth?” he asked, in a strangely hollowed voice. “What’s happened back home?”

  Ignatiev swallowed once, twice, before he could answer. “The machines claim that tensions are rising between Earth itself and the outlying societies among the Asteroid Belt and other planets.”

  “War?” asked a woman’s voice. “Like what we’ve just seen?”

  Suddenly the machines’ avatar appeared, standing at Mandabe’s elbow. “Human civilization was moving toward war when our latest probes observed your solar system. That was nine hundred of your years ago. We have no later information.”

  “We’ve got to go back!”

  Not unkindly, the avatar reminded, “Even if you started immediately, it would take two thousand years for you to get back to Earth.”

  Mandabe rumbled, “By the time we got there, it would be too late.”

  “Too late for what?” Jugannath Patel demanded, his voice choked with tears. “What can we do? What could we do to make a difference?”

  “Earth will have to solve the problem without us,” Ignatiev said resignedly.

  “I’m afraid that is the truth of the situation,” said the avatar. With that, it winked out.

  Mandabe stared for a wide-eyed moment at the spot where the avatar had been, then turned his attention back to the committee members.

  “As long as we have to remain on this planet, we should make the best of it and carry on with our researches.”

  Jackson straightened up in his chair and said, “I agree. But we have a problem about that.”

  Up and down the table several heads nodded. Others looked surprised, uncertain.

  Mandabe scowled. “A problem?”

  “Yes,” Jackson said, staring up the length of the conference table at their chairman. “We’re spending more time writing reports every day than doing our research.”

  Mandabe snapped, “Reports are important. Necessary.”

  Undeterred, Jackson countered, “There are only so many hours in a day, sir. The time we spend writing reports is time we are not conducting our research.”

  Laurita Vargas broke in with, “Dr. Mandabe is right, however. It is his responsibility to coordinate our work, to see that we are all moving ahead toward agreed-upon goals. The daily reports are needed. Without them we will drift into chaos.”

  Forcing a smile, Mandabe said, “I know that most of you don’t enjoy writing. You’d much rather be doing the work that interests you.”

  “The writing is interfering with our work,” Patel said, looking surprised at his own audacity.

  Mandabe’s smile vanished. “The reports are necessary,” he insisted.

  “We all agree to that,” Jackson said, glancing up
and down the conference table. “But why do we have to write them?”

  “Who else could write them?” Mandabe challenged.

  “Aida.”

  “Aida?”

  Ignatiev glanced at the other committee members’ faces. Most seemed surprised. A few nodded, accepting the suggestion.

  “Aida,” Jackson said. Keeping his expression serious, he pointed out, “Aida stores all our observations and research results in her memory. She could produce daily reports from that information, while we could carry on with our work.”

  Mandabe blinked uncertainly. “You want to have the AI take over the task of writing your daily reports?”

  “It makes sense. Aida is probably a better writer than most of us.”

  Plenty of nods agreed with that statement.

  But Mandabe was shaking his head negatively. “You can’t have a machine doing creative work. It’s your responsibility to write your own reports.”

  “I disagree,” said Jackson.

  “That doesn’t matter in the slightest,” Mandabe retorted. “I want you to write your own reports.”

  “But we don’t want to write the damned reports,” Jackson insisted. “We don’t have to write the damned reports!”

  “Yes you do,” Mandabe bellowed.

  Before Jackson could reply, Ignatiev grabbed his arm and squeezed. Hard.

  Astounded, Jackson turned toward him, mouth agape.

  As reasonably as he could manage, Ignatiev said, “If Dr. Mandabe insists on your writing daily reports, you’ll have to write daily reports, Raj.”

  Jackson stared at Ignatiev wordlessly.

  Mandabe’s expression went from anger to astonishment and finally to composure. With an almost grateful smile he said, “Why, thank you Professor Ignatiev. Thank you for understanding the realities of the situation.” His eyes swept up and down the silent conference table, then he announced, “Meeting adjourned.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Jackson was obviously fuming as he walked alongside Ignatiev and Gita back to their quarters. He waited until they were safely in the sitting room with the front door firmly closed behind them before bursting out:

  “Why did you agree with him? Why did you betray me?”

  Ignatiev grinned at the angry young man. “I believe there’s an old adage that states that there’s more than one way to peel a banana.”