Recursion

by Tony Ballantyne

  “We could still jump out of the Enemy Domain, back to Earth. I’d have to start the attack again with someone else, but I could do it.”

  Herb shook his head. It was tempting, very tempting. If Robert had asked him an hour ago, he would have jumped at the chance. As it was, he again shook his head.

  “No, I want to go on.”

  Robert smiled at him.

  “Okay. Here we go…”

  Again, they reinserted themselves into normal space. Herb was bracing himself on the sofa, leaning forward slightly, his eyes tightly closed against the expected glare of atomic attack. Nothing happened. Slowly he straightened up and looked around. Nothing.

  Robert’s face was one of intense concentration as he gazed up at the ceiling. He reached awkwardly across his body, groping in his right-hand pocket for something, then thought better of it, bringing the hand out empty. He drummed his fingers on the white leather of the sofa.

  “Something’s up,” he said. “It could be a trick, I suppose.”

  A drift of pans and kitchen utensils slipped into a new equilibrium with a metallic clatter. Herb jumped at the noise, then relaxed as he realized it was nothing to worry about. His heart was beating so fast. A little voice inside him told him to calm down, to relax a little. It seemed good advice.

  “Got it,” said Robert. “I’ll put it on the roof screen.”

  It looked like a golf ball blown up to planet size. Light and dark stains seemed to wander over the otherwise nearly uniformly colored surface of the planet. The effect reminded Herb of an ancient carpet his father had preserved in a room in one of his houses. The colors of its weave had faded over the centuries, leaving nothing more than a faint impression of variation in an overall field of pale blue.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a nasty piece of work. It’s stripped this system of everything. Even its defenses.”

  “Why?”

  Robert ignored him; he was speaking to himself. Rather, Herb realized, he was diverting most of his processing power to the ongoing battle and leaving just a little of himself to communicate with Herb. He listened carefully to Robert’s muttering.

  “Is this intended, or is it a result of faulty VNM architecture? I wonder. Why build it so close to the center?”

  Robert glanced at a couple of screens before resuming his muttering.

  “Then again, they’d want it close if it was a test. Keep it a secret. In a bottle: yes it is…Imagine, the end…”

  He turned to Herb. “Tell me what you see.”

  “I don’t know. What is it?”

  Robert spoke softly. “I will show you fear in a handful of…There are strong VNMs down there, Herb. Look.”

  Herb felt a rush of vertigo as the viewing field in the ceiling zoomed right in toward the planet, picking out an area of its surface. They passed through strange, glittering clouds that seemed to roll and tumble as if they were too heavy to float. The effect was of sand swept up by an inrushing tide.

  The golf ball pattern of dimples grew larger, became huge, shallow depressions sliding from view as the camera centered in upon one of them. The bowl-like effect slowly faded as they zoomed in closer; the curvature of the ground was lost close up. Herb began to make out a faint gossamer net of silver spread across the dark stone of the planet’s exposed lithosphere.

  Closer and closer and the net revealed itself to be the inevitable VNMs. But they were different this time: they each moved in their own space, spread in a hexagonal pattern, each a good fifty centimeters from its neighbors.

  “That’s odd,” said Herb. “What are they doing?”

  The machines moved in a slow dance, walking a few steps forward and then dipping their noses to touch the ground. A couple of seconds after they did so, a faint plume of silver dust emerged from them.

  Herb gasped as he realized what was happening.

  “They’re eating the planet, aren’t they? Chewing it up small and spitting it away. But why?”

  Robert’s voice was grave, echoing the tones that he had used when he first entered Herb’s ship, what seemed like an eternity ago.

  “It’s the death of the universe.”

  Herb shivered. Robert sighed. “This is the ultimate weapon. Entropy for its own sake. Machines that split matter into particles so small that it makes rebuilding so difficult as to be almost impossible.”

  “But why?”

  “Why not?” said Robert. “A threat? A display of ego? A punishment? Or maybe just because it can be done. When this planet is almost gone, the program will change, and those machines down there will build an explosive device and gather around: the detonation will send them tumbling through space. If just one of them reaches another planet intact, the whole process will begin again.”

  “Oh.”

  “It won’t happen yet. This is just a test. They won’t be set to spread beyond this system. There will be no bomb, just a command to stop reproducing after so many generations. At least I hope so. These machines are strong VNMs.”

  “What do you mean, strong?”

  “I mean they will probably convert our machines faster than we can convert theirs.”

  Herb swallowed hard. “Oh.”

  “Oh is right. They’ve got limited intra-system travel. I’m guessing these are replicants of the machines that destroyed the defense systems here; that’s why we didn’t get shot at when we arrived. Not that the defense systems are needed. There are nearly a hundred of the little buggers attached to our hull right now. They’re at work trying to convert us.”

  Herb trembled, but he didn’t panic. He had too much faith in Robert by now.

  “Okay. So why don’t we pick them off the hull? Shoot them off or something?”

  Robert smiled.

  “You’re learning, Herb. You’re learning to trust me. Now is the time to learn the second rule of VNM fighting. What do you do if you don’t have superior numbers, and you can’t convert the Enemy faster than it can convert you?”

  “I don’t know. You’re going to tell me.”

  Robert grinned delightedly.

  “Of course I am. What you do is get yourself into a position of having superior numbers. We shall use stealth technology. Three of those machines clinging to our hull have been reprogrammed. Those machines will now reproduce along with all the others in this system, destroying the planet as they go. But sometime, in the future, when there are enough of the good guys, a signal will be sent and the revolution will begin.”

  “Very clever,” Herb said. “I’m beginning to learn.”

  “Good.”

  “But…”

  “But what?”

  Herb hesitated. “Well, this is all very well, but…All we’ve done so far is fight a bunch of dumb machines.”

  “So?”

  “Well, what are you going to do when you meet something with real intelligence? When you meet another AI?”

  “Oh, you’ll see…”

  “And what if the other AI is more intelligent than you are?”

  “It will still not be more intelligent than the EA.”

  “But supposing it is?”

  “It won’t be, Herb. That’s the secret of life in the universe.”

  Herb was thrown off balance for the moment.

  “What? Are you saying that the EA AI is God, or something?”

  Robert didn’t laugh this time; instead he looked even more somber than before.

  “What I am saying is, that if you were to understand what the EA really is, you’d understand a lot more about why you’re here. You’d understand why the whole universe hadn’t been eaten long ago by machines like those on that planet below.”

  Herb felt a momentary light-headedness. It quickly passed, and he thought nothing more of it.

  “Okay. Then explain it to me….”

  And then the ship shook violently again and Herb felt himself lifted from his seat and sucked toward the ceiling. He could see stars up there. Not stars on a viewing screen: real star
s. He could see the edge of the inner hull, semicircular bites taken from the painted metal. He could see the outer hull, twisting and warping as it struggled to repair itself, and he could hear the rush of cabin air as it exploded from the ship. His left leg jarred with pain and Robert was suddenly there, clinging to him with his remaining arm, legs gripping the sofa with robot strength, so great they had torn right through the leather to tangle in the framework beneath. Robert’s other arm, his detached arm, bashed and banged and tumbled end over end through the gap above, and Herb saw it sailing out into the bright, hot space beyond. His eyes were hurting, his lungs bursting, and yet the howl and the tug of the outrushing air was diminishing. The outer hull seemed to flap and flow over itself, the inner hull did the same. The ship changed its direction and Herb was flung against the wall near the kitchen area. He gasped with pain.

  Robert sat on the floor by the sofa, his legs bent at a strange angle. Herb’s ears were singing with pain. Robert’s mouth was moving as if he was speaking. Herb heard the calm, measured tones fading up as if Robert was approaching from a great distance.

  “…jumped again and again. They’re getting better at predicting where we’re going. Finding us much faster than I thought they could. Not much material left on the outer hull, barely enough to…”

  His voice faded out again and Herb shook his head. The view from the screens changed again and again. For just a moment, Herb saw a glimpse of a silver dart, its sharp end flickering: it was firing at them.

  Robert’s voice faded back in. “…where’s the VNM, Herb, the one I gave you?”

  “I don’t know. I must have dropped it. Maybe it blew out of the gap in the hull.”

  “…No. It’s programmed not to leave your presence. Look for it.”

  Herb didn’t want to move. Even after the pink pill, the agony from his left side was almost too much to bear. He didn’t want to have to move across the room in search of the silver machine. Then he saw it. It was nearby, lying on the floor by his left hand, still wrapped in the linen napkin.

  “I can see it,” said Herb dully.

  “Get it.”

  He reached out and took it, gasping with the pain. “…Got it.”

  “Nearly there,” said Robert. “One more stop and then we’re there. Do you think you can make it?”

  Herb winced. “Yes.”

  “Good. Okay, we’re about to jump…”

  The ship wobbled a little, sending further thick, sick waves of throbbing pain through Herb. He looked around the interior of his once beautiful ship, at the broken ornaments, the thick weal of the badly healed scar in the ceiling, the cracked and warped parquetry of the floor, at the torn and leaking remains of the two white sofas, and finally, at Robert. The once immaculately dressed robot now sat in a torn suit, his shirt and jacket covered with a spreading bluish grey stain, one arm missing and his legs in a twisted heap beneath him.

  For the last time, they reinserted into normal space, close to a planet’s surface. Above them, in the night sky, the biggest fleet of spaceships Herb had ever seen filled the viewing fields, stretching from horizon to horizon, stacked up into seeming infinity. The ship was falling fast, down toward the strangely warped city that reached, grasping, at them through the lower screens. Herb shivered at the grotesque, tangled forest of skyscrapers that sought to engulf them. It looked strangely familiar, then he remembered: the files that Robert had shown him, back when they had hovered over Herb’s badly converted planet. Looking now around the wreck of his ship, feeling the pain in his left side, that time now seemed like paradise.

  “No…” said Robert. “Too soon…”

  “What is? What’s too soon?”

  “The Enemy ships. They’re here already. They must have a tracking device on this ship…Of course, that’s it: those VNMs must have done more than dissolve our engine…But where is it? I can’t see it…”

  “Never mind that,” said Herb. “Jump, jump again.”

  “No point, they’ll just follow us again. We need to find it first. But where is it?”

  The ship shuddered, and a strange note filled the air, half warning signal, half death song. There was an edge of finality to it, and Herb suddenly knew that the ship would not be leaving this planet.

  “What’s that…?” he asked, his voice faltering.

  Robert didn’t answer. His face had gone completely blank. Herb knew that was a bad sign. Robert was having to concentrate entirely on something else.

  Slowly at first, the twisted towers of the Necropolis began to move toward them. Herb felt a strange feeling in his stomach. He was now in free-fall; the gravity generators had finally given up. If the ship were to be hit now, there would be no dampening effect. He would be rattled around like a pea in a bottle.

  Robert snapped out of his trance.

  “That’s it, Herb. I can just about land this ship, but nothing else.”

  Herb picked up the silver machine. “Shall I press the button?” he asked, his voice shaking. Nonetheless, he suddenly felt very brave.

  “No point. We’re in the wrong place.”

  Herb felt despair settle upon him. So that was it.

  “So we’ve failed. I don’t understand. I really thought you knew what you were doing.”

  Robert smiled. The care lifted from his face, and he was his old self again: the original, irritating, cocksure, supremely arrogant man who had stepped through the secret trapdoor all that time ago.

  “We haven’t failed,” he said. “I’m sorry, Herb, but you’ve been tricked.”

  Herb said nothing. He was beyond surprise.

  Robert grinned. “You’re not the real Herb. You’re just another personality construct, living in the processors of the ship. The real Herb got on that other copy of your ship just after it was replicated, back above your misconverted planet.”

  “You’re lying. This is just another one of your tricks. I’m in so much pain.”

  “That’s just part of the simulation.”

  “Then it’s cruel.”

  “I know. But necessary. I had to distract the Enemy AI. It had to believe you were really on this ship. It had to detect human thinking and reactions.”

  “Why?”

  “So that it wouldn’t see the real you approaching until it was too late.”

  “So what will the real me do?”

  Robert grinned. The pain in Herb’s side suddenly vanished, and he was standing upright in the middle of the ship, a perfectly healthy young man again. Then he was standing in a room halfway up one of the towers of the Necropolis. Robert was standing next to him. A whole Robert Johnston, both arms intact, dressed in an immaculate navy blue suit, a matching hat tilted on his head.

  They both gazed through the wide picture windows at the tattered wreck of Herb’s spaceship as it plunged to the ground before them. It landed with a jarring thud that both flattened and split it at the same time. It bounced once and skidded to a halt. No explosion. There was nothing on board that would burn. It simply lay, squashed and lifeless, against the side of the building.

  “What was that?” asked Herb. “Something tumbled from the ship just before it hit the ground.”

  “The Ouroboros VNMs we took from that planet a few jumps back. This place is a mess. It could do with starting again.”

  Herb looked up at the twisted towers, the trailing strands of deformed buildings.

  “You’re not kidding,” he muttered. “And what about us? What do we do now?”

  Robert smiled, but it was a pleasant smile. A friendly smile. Herb found himself warming to it.

  “Well,” said Robert. “You like VNMs, Herb. I thought maybe you’d appreciate the opportunity to do something positive. I thought that maybe we could help the transformation along. Would you like that?”

  “Do I have any choice?” Herb said, almost out of habit, then he paused. Whether he was the real Herb or not, he’d realized something back on the ship. Something he needed to think about.

  His life so fa
r had been a complete waste. Maybe it was time to try acting in a different fashion.

  Maybe here would be the perfect place to begin thinking about it. And why not think about it while doing something for someone else for a change?

  “Actually, maybe I will help.” Herb began to smile, too. “I think I would like that.”

  eva 5: 2051

  Eva walked into the Watcher’s lair. Her emotions were all there: fear, curiosity, even excitement, but they were muffled. It was as if her mind was at the end of a very long tunnel looking down at her body in the here and now, watching the strange figure that stumbled along in the cupped hands of the green-forested hills.

  Alison strode ahead of her across the dusty yellow gravel of the enclosure, heading for an abandoned yellow digger that stood at the center of the flat, cleared area.

  Ramshackle buildings cobbled together from concrete and corrugated metal lay silent around them.

  Alison began shouting to someone, her head jerking this way and that.

  “Well, I’m here! I’ve brought them with me!”

  Katie shuffled along behind her, her head down, hands clasped tightly together. Eva paused just inside the gate and looked around in wonder. It was an old quarry site. Nestling among many taller ones, the top of a hill had been sliced away as neatly as the lid of a boiled egg to leave an area where trucks could park to be loaded up with yellow stone. The dusty grey windows of the surrounding buildings gazed blindly on. Long conveyor belts ran back and forth, still bearing fragments of yellow stone. The place looked deserted. Dead. The rusty old digger that Alison headed toward made Eva think of the picked-over skeleton of a dinosaur. Its tail scoop was stretched out on the ground behind it, lifeless as everything else in that dry place.

  And yet there were the pylons. Heavy cables, humming with current, trailed to a building at the far side of the square. Something here needed power.

  Alison was turning around and around now, spinning in the middle of the enclosure like a dancer as she searched for something.

  “Well?” she shouted again. “I’m here! I want my reward!”

  There was a faint metallic creak. All three women spun in its direction. They could see nothing unusual. Only another old building, bright orange rust forming lichen patterns on its roof.