Beautiful Intelligence

by Stephen Palmer

  “See?” Manfred said.

  “Shut up,” Joanna shouted. She was angry. Manfred shrugged, glancing at Pouncey, then winking.

  Joanna helped the bis free of the tangled lengths of twine, then sat back. Anger made a mask of her face.

  Silence fell across the camp. Manfred sat down to watch the bis. They clustered together – so like a little group of kids planning some stunt – then ambled down to the river’s edge. Manfred stood up to follow. Freedom was all very well, but an accident beside the river could wash one away. Like an indulgent father he nudged them away from the bank, allowing them to settle in a moss-covered basin.

  “They understand,” he said. “I can feel it.”

  “Understand what?” Pouncey asked.

  “They understand they’re in a social group, of which I’m one member. We’re all in this together, and they know it. They’re not acting as isolated individuals, they grasp that there’s bonds, responsibilities, ties between us all. It’s like glue. They’re not going to run off, they’re a clan, like wolves, and we’re part of it.”

  “And the dye patterns?”

  “Could be emotional reactions – which always have a physical component – or could be gestural language, Too early to say.”

  “D’you reckon they think the soltruck is their home?”

  Manfred glanced back at the vehicle. Suddenly its significance became magnified to him. “Yeah, could well be,” he said. “Well spotted, Pouncey. Yeah, they would need a home. The soltruck is all they know.” He paused for a moment, imagining their arrival on the West Coast. “When you make us a new base,” he said, “you’ll have to include the soltruck in it, else the bis will be homesick. Then they really might run off.”

  “Oh, so now you’re making amendments to your theory?” Joanna said. “The bis will not run off, you claim, but if they are homesick – whatever that is to a bi – they might do. Very scientific!”

  “Science is about risks too,” Manfred remarked in a flat voice. “We said we balance the risk–”

  “You said that – forget the we.”

  “Okay, I said that.”

  Pouncey nodded to them both. “I think it’s time for us to be getting back in our mobile home,” she said.

  Joanna scowled, and Manfred knew she got the point of Pouncey’s joke. The atmosphere had turned bad.

  He sighed under his breath, then went to collect the bis. Like domesticated animals they let him pick them up, and as they did the patterns on their skins changed. He put Orange and Yellow in their cage, then dumped them in the back of the soltruck. For a few seconds he held Red in his arms. The bi looked up at him through artificial eyes. For a moment Manfred felt a kind of conceptual vertigo envelop him, as he imagined looking into the mind of the bi, then imagined it looking back at him.

  “Hurry up,” Joanna muttered. “This is not a love-in.”

  Manfred, irritated, glanced up at her. “You seem pretty happy with Indigo on your lap in the front of the truck. Can’t I have a favourite?”

  She confronted him. “A favourite? They’re not our children, Manfred!”

  He stared at her. Something inside his mind seemed to move, like a deep, unconscious realisation about to bob to the surface. “They kinda are,” he said. “Jeez, I’m only human. Somehow I know these guys are all different. And I do like this one’s relaxed–”

  “It is lazy, not relaxed.”

  He laughed. “How easy it is to talk about them as if they’re human. You fall into that trap as quickly as I do, mmm?” He dropped Red into a cage, then shut the door. “I don’t like doing this,” he said. “I don’t like locking them up.”

  “Cut the emotional crap,” Joanna said. “These are artificial creations, they are not children, they are not human.”

  “If they do mimic us they’re gonna be part human,” he pointed out.

  Joanna jabbed him in the chest. “They are mimicking one another. We are the big bad wolves, remember? Now get in the truck.”

  ~

  A few miles on from The Dalles, as the sun dipped behind white-capped mountains, they found a rock shelter beneath which they parked the soltruck. Low altitude now, a good few thousand feet down from the pass high point. Fish leaped in the Columbia River, the trees swayed in the breeze and pink-limned clouds swept across the sky.

  Manfred, eating oat slop by the soltruck, watched the scenery. Fifty metres off, Pouncey sat on a boulder. Joanna was answering the call of nature behind rocks.

  Then Manfred saw Pouncey fall off the boulder.

  He sat up. Had she slipped? Holding his breath, he watched. When after a count of five she did not move, he ran.

  She was out cold, it seemed. He knelt at her side. “Pouncey? You okay? You fainted?”

  Then he saw a tiny plastic dart in her neck. He gasped: sat back. He pulled it out. Then he jumped up and looked around.

  A few metres away two men with long, grey beards pointed rifles at him. The taller, older man carried an augmented rifle – a lump at the trigger filled with semiconductors.

  “You on my land, boy,” the man said.

  “Hey, we’re just driving through,” Manfred said. “What’ve you done to my friend?”

  “Just a trank.” The man glanced at his friend, then added, “We don’t like dead meat, see? Fresh.” He snickered.

  The other man said, “You ask to come through our land, did ya?”

  Manfred shrugged, trying to appear cool. He must not antagonise these rednecks. “Didn’t know. I’m sorry. Hmmm, we need to pay a toll?”

  “You’ll need to pay summat, boy,” said the first man. “Hands up.”

  The other man changed the direction of his rifle. “Hell, there’s three of ’em,” he said. Manfred sagged. Joanna must have appeared.

  “You come on over, lady” shouted the taller man. “We got us a l’il conference goin’ on here. Hands up, an’ all.”

  Joanna walked over. Glancing at Manfred she said, “Pouncey?”

  “Tranquilised. These men didn’t like the look of us. But I told them we’d pay the toll.” He looked back. “Which we will.”

  “Whatcha got in that there truck, boy?”

  Manfred put his hands on his head as he blew air through his lips. “Oh, nothing much. Just some toys.”

  “Tech toys? We don’t like tech ’round these parts.”

  “Er… not really. Just foreign crap.” He shrugged. “Toys for kids. Nothing for you.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that, boy. I might wanna get rid of your tech, see? So open up the truck.”

  Manfred sighed. “Sure. No problem. We just wanna drive on through, after we’ve paid up, get off your land–”

  “Shut it! I said open the truck, boy.”

  Manfred unlocked the rear doors then flung them open. “See?” he said. “Just baby robots, old style, nothing new. Nippandroids, yeah?”

  “I told you, boy, our land is tech free,” the taller man replied. Manfred glanced at the gun. Well, that was a lie.

  He said, “Sure. Your rules.”

  “Take the nearest crate out. I wanna see what those cute little fuckers are.”

  “Okay.”

  “How many you got there, boy?”

  Manfred glanced at Joanna. Indigo was in the front comp. “Eight,” he said.

  “Where you takin’ ’em?”

  “Portland.”

  “Why?”

  Manfred shrugged. “Money. Not much of it around.”

  The taller man chortled. “That a fact? Open the cage, boy.”

  Manfred did as he was told.

  Inside stood Violet and Blue. The bis crept out of the cage, looking like startled cats. They stared at the two rednecks. Manfred held his breath. He could see that the bis were spooked. Maybe they guessed that something was wrong; the dynamics of the group were so different to normal. And Violet had seen a gun before. It would remember the old man and the danger he represented.

  Blue began to walk towards the taller
man. He swore under his breath, then yelled, “Get away from me, you Jap fucker!”

  Manfred waved his hands as he said, “No! It won’t hurt you. It’s just curious–”

  Too late. The man lowered his rifle and fired. The lower half of Blue’s right arm vanished, and Manfred saw a glint of the alu-plex skeleton.

  He put his hands to the sides of his head. “No! You damaged it! For God’s sake, don’t–”

  “Shut up, boy! My land, my rules.”

  Manfred saw Indigo appear at the side window of the comp. The tall man walked up to Manfred.

  “I don’t like you, boy. You whinge like a girl. What kinda man you anyway, takin’ Jap toys to Portland?”

  Manfred shook his head, unable to comprehend the logic. “What?” he said.

  The man raised his rifle. “I’m gonna give you a taste of mountain justice, boy. An’ I don’t think you’ll like it.”

  He pulled the trigger. The gun popped, whirred. He stared at it.

  Manfred leaped forward, grabbed the rifle and pulled it, then rolled to his right. Taken by surprise, the tall man let it go. Manfred jumped to his feet, then ran forward as the other man turned to fire.

  Joanna screamed at the top of her voice. The second man turned back. Momentarily distracted, the tall man hesitated, and in this fraction of a second Manfred swung the butt around, cracking it against the tall man’s head. He dropped.

  The second man pulled his trigger. His rifle failed too.

  “You’d better run,” Manfred growled, “or I’ll drop you too. Run!”

  The man sped away.

  Joanna ran to the soltruck. “I’ll start it up,” she shouted. “Grab Pouncey! We have to get out of here.”

  “The bis!” Manfred yelled.

  “I will fetch them. Get Pouncey!”

  Sixty seconds later Manfred and a semi-conscious Pouncey were in the comp, with Blue on the floor by Manfred’s feet, its arm leaking fluid. Violet was loose in the back. Joanna drove the truck onto the road, then floored the accelerator.

  A few minutes passed. Pouncey came around.

  Manfred reached down to pick up Blue. “Stop!” he told Joanna. “We need to give it some help. Stuff is still leaking out.”

  Joanna cursed, then said, “Yes, you are right, we cannot ignore it. There’s a flat, straight section up ahead with nowhere for rednecks to hide. I’ll stop in a minute.”

  When the soltruck halted Manfred leaped out, letting Pouncey fall back on her seat. Drool escaped from her mouth, but she was alive, and recovering. Manfred pulled out the bioplas emergency box and rummaged through it, but he did not know what he was looking for. There had not yet been a traumatic bioplas injury within the BIteam.

  He turned around to see Violet holding Blue’s injured arm in its own. He froze. It was a scene of succour – or so it seemed. He shook his head, aware of the perils of anthropomorphic thinking, yet unable to push the notion of tender care out of his thoughts. And Violet’s dye patterns, he noticed, were moving like a fast Moiré pattern. An emotional reaction in a time of stress, perhaps?

  “Ah, damn it!” he murmured, as he turned back to see what lay in the emergency box. More bioplas required…

  Pouncey limped to his side. He stared at her. She said, “Hi.”

  “You okay?”

  “Blue,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I see it.”

  “Can we stop this damn leakage? D’you know?”

  “Just give it fresh bioplas. See if they know what to do.”

  Manfred followed her instructions. Pouncey knew more than him about the substance, having worked with it when completing her PhD. “How much?” he asked.

  From a neoprene-wrapped casket Pouncey took a few tens of grams of bioplas, then gave it to Violet.

  Manfred said, “Blue’s injured, not–”

  “Violet’s carin’,” Pouncey replied.

  Manfred watched as Violet moulded the bioplas into a glove that fitted over the damaged end of Blue’s arm. Bioplas, engineered from bacteria, created its own nutrient channels as it was transformed by whatever intelligence directed it, but Manfred knew that a simple cover would not be enough. He wondered if a healing process might begin, instigated by physical contact. Perhaps the obvious care shown by Violet would improve the chances of success. If Blue knew that it was cared for…

  “I think you might be on to something,” he told Pouncey. “Just look at them. They’re totally aware of one another. They care.”

  “Could be a kind of act of safekeepin’,” Pouncey replied, nodding.

  Joanna joined them. “Look at those patterns,” Manfred told her. He turned to Pouncey, adding, “Fetch Indigo. I want to see if it too manifests the dye patterns.”

  Pouncey brought the bi from the comp, resting it in the crook of her left arm. Indigo’s surface showed a moving pattern, like the oscillating colours of an octopus.

  “It’s emotion, I’m sure of it,” Manfred said. “Mmm, they’re appalled that Blue is injured. They know that’s bad because they’re aware of their own bodies, and how delicate those bodies are.”

  Pouncey handed Indigo over to Joanna. “Interestin’ that Indigo shows the patterns even though it’s blind,” she remarked.

  Manfred nodded. “Yeah… what you doing?”

  “Had a thought,” Pouncey replied as she put on her spex and tapped on her wristband.

  Manfred waited. Joanna, entranced by the scene before her, said nothing. After a few moment she placed Indigo on the ground, whereupon it hurried over to the other two. The gesture was unmistakeable.

  Pouncey nodded at Manfred. “Thought so,” she said.

  “What?”

  “A nexus trace. Those rednecks’ rifles were nexus heavy.”

  “Yeah. I saw the tech bulge by the triggers. Hypocrites.”

  “Did the rifles refuse to fire?”

  Manfred turned to face Pouncey. “They did. How d’you know?”

  Pouncey pointed at Indigo. “It sensed what was goin’ on. It sensed the redneck rifle, and you, the victim. It modelled the whole scene in realtime. And it knew there was danger because of its experiences. Flexible thinkin’. Mental movement in time.”

  “Jeez… it knocked out the rifles through the nexus?”

  “To Indigo, the nexus must be like the air we breathe. It don’t see the boundaries we see. It knows the nexus, but it don’t know what we know – how the nexus evolved, all that. It just senses it and uses it, like a dolphin uses water.”

  “Then if we don’t get to Portland soon, we’re dead.”

  Pouncey nodded. “Listen, we could set up a Faraday cage using aluminium foil–”

  “No way! No. You joking? How long d’you think you could last in an isolation chamber? An hour? A day? No… we get in the soltruck and drive back to the nexus just as fast as we can.”

  Pouncey nodded. “Like the twisters of Ichikawa was after us.”

  Then Joanna said, “Soon, very soon, we shall need to speak with Indigo.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Leonora saw through her binoculars that Annaba was a small city of desert agriculturalists, solar mirror designers and junk artists, their advertising hoardings covering the hillsides like litter. She turned, thumbing the binocs up to full power. A group of Berber children was heading their way, smiles on their faces, spex tied on with string around the backs of their heads; running single file, like a caravan.

  “Incoming,” she said, turning to the group.

  “Who? What?” Hound asked.

  “Just the local kids.”

  “Give ’em a few coins to make ’em scatter,” he replied. “It’s the surest way. Man, the quickest way. We don’t need the attention.” He handed copper coins to them all, coins Leonora saw came from various countries.

  They walked on. Annaba was an important stop, their supplies low, energy waning, only the camels unaffected by the heat and dry air. Zeug, the only member of the group riding, sat quiet and dignified, recharged to the max, soaking in t
he sunshine. She and Yuri had both noticed how much he liked the camels (because they weren’t human, Dirk said, because their behaviour was simple and predictable.) That comment had caused another argument.

  She had stopped worrying about Hound and begun worrying about Dirk. Yes, she was a worrier: she knew it. But she could not help herself. Dirk’s position in the group had become redundant and there was little for him to do except become argumentative. On the other hand, Hound was over thirty and, she suspected, he wanted to settle down – yet he was still with the AIteam. Still doing good work, still loyal. She had been wrong about him.

  Dirk glanced at her, smiled, waved his cheroot. She smiled back. Really, it was more of an intellectual argument they had, nothing more; it was not as if bad blood existed between them.

  Then children’s cries surrounded the group and she fell out of reverie. The kids were everywhere, yelling in English and in French, “Give money! La bourse ou la vie! We want money!”

  Hound began throwing coins into the sand, making the kids work, making them run. They all followed suit and it became a game. But then a group of the children began taunting Zeug, who sat, high and remote like a king, on his camel, staring into the sky in silence.

  And then Zeug seemed to freak out.

  He jumped off the camel in a single motion, landing on all fours in the sand. At once the children ran towards him, but he backed off, his face alternately scrunched up as if angry, then blank like a dead monitor. Leonora stared at him. His arms moved up and down like wings. A stream of words poured from his mouth.

  “Tell! Vin. Large. Sign! Go! Helm. Man. Sun. Hot! Hot! Cowl. Zip. Grow!”

  “What the…?” Hound said, turning around.

  Yuri began running towards the children, shouting at them, almost screeching. “Leave him alone! You have had your money, now leave us alone!”

  Leonora ran too. She had seen how strong Zeug was. A child’s death here would be a disaster.

  Zeug continued to speak. “Four metres ten. One metre sixty one. Two metres fifteen.”