“Got to think ahead, Liam,” said another man who’d drifted into the conversation. “It’s a new world. You can rebuild. I will.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t have livestock.”
“You know we can store embryos and reproductive material, don’t you?” Alex said. “You might want to think about that. We won’t have to do things the hard way any more.”
“Sure,” Liam said. But he didn’t sound convinced.
After the folksy start, it was getting a little tense and acid. Alex moved on to the next point of eye contact, hoping it was friendly, and got chewed up badly by the town’s physician about gravity — yeah, he’d forgotten to mention that — and arrangements for the seniors.
It was hard going. But this was what he was paid for, not that he’d been paid recently in any currency that was still spendable, and he took it on the chin.
Dear diary — went into town, told simple country folk that we lied about dead astronauts for forty-five years, everybody surprisingly happy at the good news of crew’s survival, made me feel guilty. Showed rubes nice pix of Opis and said they could go settle there if they wanted to. Ended evening by splitting the town down the middle and causing strife. Reconsidering my life choices.
Eventually Alex ended up at the back of the hall. At least Chris and his buddies wouldn’t savage him. One of the guys he’d never met before, Jared, seemed to find Alex’s sales routine funny. The big solid one, Dieter, just nodded in acknowledgement and grunted his name.
“I wouldn’t worry,” Jared said. “They’ve got time to think it over. It’s a hell of a big surprise. Anyone who says yes without thinking probably isn’t cut out for that kind of life anyway.”
“Or a kid.”
“Yeah, I wanted to be a spaceman when I was eight.”
“I wanted to be a firefighter,” Alex said. “Which kind of happened — oh.”
Alex had spotted Erskine. She hadn’t told him she was coming. People glanced at her as they would at any stranger, but Alex was sure they didn’t know who she was. At least she’d dressed down today and abandoned the designer suits.
“Director,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I thought I’d wander down here. Are you going to introduce me?” She shook hands with Chris, scrutinising him, and made nice with the others. “I think I only know Doug Brandt.”
Erskine didn’t wander anywhere. She was here for a tactical reason, perhaps to be seen to be available to the townspeople at a critical time, but after she’d done the rounds, Alex followed her outside and through the town square to her parked car. When she opened the door, Alex began to get the idea. She took off her collar comms and put the mike on the passenger seat with her screen. Then she indicated his collar link and gestured with her thumb.
Leave it here.
It had to be about Solomon.
Alex patted his pockets and took out every device that was connected to the centre’s network and left it in the car. Erskine opened the trunk, took out a bunch of flowers that looked like they’d been cut from the potted plants in her office, and headed towards the church.
“Show me the young man’s grave,” she said.
It seemed like a nice gesture, but the centre’s drones might be out and about, and Solomon saw all. He had the measure of Erskine. Alex knew he’d suspect her motives. The grave was in a new row, picked out by a temporary headstone with a pine wreath, a pot of yellow crocuses, and divots in the freshly cut turf. The edges of the grave were marked by four lines of stones. Erskine laid her bouquet next to the crocuses.
“I hate the thought of lives that never got the chance to do all they were meant to do,” she said. “Anyway, I wanted to talk about Solomon. I know this is going to make you squirm because you seem quite fond of him, but I’m concerned.”
Yes, I’m squirming. “You’ll have to be specific.”
“He’s actively defying instructions.”
“Yeah. True. He is.”
“Simple question, then. Is he malfunctioning?”
“My gut feel would be no.”
“Why?”
“He’s behaving like a human being would when a project’s getting to the critical stage.”
“I’m not sure if that’s meant to make me feel better, but it doesn’t. When people start to lose it under pressure, you remove them.”
Alex didn’t want to be dragged into this. Solomon had made the right calls, and autonomous meant autonomous. That was what Bednarz had wanted. If flesh and blood got it right every time, nobody would have needed Solomon.
“Here’s the difficult thing,” Alex said. “He disagrees with how some people want to do things. That’s exactly why he was developed.”
“Yes, I’ve heard the Bednarz paean more times than I can stomach. But Bednarz never foresaw how much circumstances would change. We adapt.”
“That’s why Bednarz built him, though. Because he didn’t want people giving up on his vision. And Sol’s been consistent. He lives to make Nomad a viable colony.”
“Sol.”
“It’s a long name.”
“You’re sentimental.”
“He’s the core of the project. You can’t change that.”
“I can’t believe there isn’t a way to tone down or remove the independent streak in him and keep the lower functions.”
“Why are you asking me? That’s a question for an AI developer. Have you asked one?”
“No, for the very obvious reason that Solomon would know right away.”
“I can’t help you, Director. I really can’t.”
“I suspect you wouldn’t if you could.”
“Would I let you poke a random screwdriver into the system that runs an entire complex for fifteen hundred people, four spacecraft, an extrasolar base, and the orbital stations without a truly compelling reason? No, I probably wouldn’t. But more to the point, Solomon won’t, either. He’s terrorist-proof, idiot-proof, and hacker-proof, otherwise he’d be our weak point.”
“Has anyone tried?”
“No, but if they did, you already know what he’s set up to do. He’d keep moving himself somewhere safe within the system. You’d be playing whack-a-mole with a mole that’s smarter than we are.”
Erskine was still looking at Jamie Wickens’s distressingly fresh grave. Alex found himself thinking what he might have to do to stop her making a lethal mistake. Sol had assessed the threat and decided there was no danger in telling a captive audience about Nomad. He was railroading Erskine, though, manoeuvring her into a position where she’d find it nearly impossible to exclude the transit camp personnel. Yeah, Alex had to accept that Sol had learned to do things the devious human way. That was the fault of everyone who’d ever worked with him.
“What if he decides he doesn’t need us?” Erskine asked.
“Why would he do that if Nomad is entirely about human colonisation? He’s making moral, emotional decisions, or else there wouldn’t be any humans involved in this at all.”
“But that’s relying on a benign dictator. He decides what’s best for us and we can’t gainsay him or vote him out.”
“But he isn’t motivated by having power.”
“Really? What would you call forcing everyone to stick to your plan if it’s not about getting your own way? He says he has a longer-term mission than mine, the future well-being of humanity rather than just the success of Nomad. Being human means having a choice, though. I feel he’s taking mine away.”
“Director, Sol could have killed us all by now. He’s just concerned about the size of the gene pool. That’s what he means about the future.”
“Specifically that, you think.”
“We’ve discussed it pretty regularly over the years, haven’t we? One hundred and seventy-five people selected for survival and exploration skills more than for breeding p
otential, and who might not reproduce anyway. What follows them is crucial.”
Occasionally Erskine would hear an argument, weigh it up, and get that look on her face that said she’d taken it on board. For all her she-who-must-be-obeyed manner, she recognised a better idea when she saw one. Alex thought he’d made his point.
Erskine shrugged. “Apparently they say in the Navy that they ‘wouldn’t breed from this officer.’ So perhaps there’s my answer, from the source. Don’t put all your money on Cabot’s collective genome.” She smiled, completely natural this time, as if she’d been caught off guard and reverted to the person she’d been before Ainatio had bent her out of shape. She pointed at the churned turf around the grave, dotted with the distinctive foot impressions of a quadrubot. “Solomon even came to the funeral. He really does take a liking to people, doesn’t he?”
“You can trust him,” Alex said. “You know that. Protecting humans is built into him.”
“Oh, I know.” Erskine bent down to reposition the bouquet. “As you say, he’s probably just conscious that it’s a critical moment. He’s waited a century for this.”
Alex hoped she meant that. “It’s the price of making him so human. I’d bet an AI with no moral core would have culled us all by now and sold Nomad to China on efficiency grounds.”
“That’s why they need an off switch.”
Uh-oh. “Be glad Sol hasn’t got one. Nobody can change him.”
Erskine was still studying the flowers, smiling slightly. Then she looked up and transferred the smile to Alex. There was a slight chill to it.
“I’ll try to remember that next time he defies me,” she said.
* * *
Staff Garden:
End of March
“Oh my,” Erskine said. “I always wondered what had happened to that.”
It was surprising what ended up dumped in the gardens. The lawns that had once been a haven for staff eating lunchtime sandwiches or catching the sun on coffee breaks were still mown by bots, and there was always a steady supply of people keen to pass their time pruning the roses. But some hidden corners had become tangled with briars. This one, between an equipment store and some old garbage bins, yielded a relic she hadn’t seen in more than thirty years.
The object was sitting on a concrete ledge next to the bins, veiled in spiders’ webs and barely recognisable in the fading evening light, but the blue-green patina gave it away. It was the bronze memorial plaque to the crew of Cabot.
TO THE MEMORY OF THE SHIP’S COMPANY
OF SURVEY VESSEL CABOT
LOST WITH ALL HANDS
WE WALK IN THE UNCHARTED PLACES
AND ARE NOT AFRAID
It had been mounted on one of the stone walls inside the old security gate before the perimeter was moved to its current position. Her father had come to visit the research centre, and insisted that she accompany him, for reasons she didn’t understand at twenty-five but that she certainly grasped a few years later. It troubled her to think that the people who attended the memorial service and laid flowers were unaware that it was a sham. She couldn’t tell them the truth now even if she could contact them.
Alex, perpetually in his freshman year when it came to things like this, would probably want the plaque to be cleaned up and presented to Bridget Ingram as a joke. Erskine found nothing funny in it. It made her skin crawl. It was a monument to betrayal on every level.
Here you are, sweetheart. Daddy’s told this big lie, but it’s yours now, and you’re going to have to deal with all the hurt and angry people.
Erskine put on her gloves to pull the plaque from the debris and wiped it with a tissue. With all the real death and devastation in the years since then, a lie about a relatively small number of lives seemed a stupid thing to worry about, especially weighed against the necessity of the Nomad mission. But like all symbols, the emotions it triggered were disproportionately larger.
Yes, it’s self-pity. Not my doing. But how easy some people find it to do that and not worry about the wreckage they leave in others’ lives.
But she wasn’t here to rehash her father’s sins, although she suspected they were the root of her growing anxiety. She couldn’t trust him. Could she trust Solomon? She’d never had to test that until now, and suddenly she wasn’t sure. She hadn’t expected him to breach security protocol, and when Alex had joked about unfeeling AIs selling off the project it felt like an alert from her subconscious.
Solomon doesn’t have an off switch.
She had to explore her options now in case the unthinkable happened later. Containing Solomon should have been something to discuss with Trinder, but she felt safer making a more discreet approach to Marc and Tev. They were still separate from the company, some distance removed from office politics, and they’d had experience of neutralising real threats. The best place to catch them out of Solomon’s earshot was here.
Erskine checked her watch, her grandmother’s Chopard, and realised that they were ten minutes late. The two Brits were disciplined men who stuck to a fitness routine, whether that was morning squash sessions or the early evening run they took around the Ainatio grounds, so regular that she could almost rely on them as timekeepers. Never mind; she’d sit here for a while in the twilight with the plaque on her lap, looking deep in profound thought, not engineering an accidental meeting with the two men at all.
The delay allowed too much time for second thoughts, though. Did she really want to go through with this? She was about to ask how to disable a tamper-proof AI, whether she spelled it out or not. If they understood the oblique question and indicated they could help, then her problem was solved. But once that question was asked, she’d be at war with Solomon one way or the other. And he was equipped to fight a real one.
Perhaps their lateness was fate telling her to keep her powder dry. Solomon hadn’t been a problem since the spat over breaching confidentiality. But the project was only weeks away from completion, and the indefinite settlement phase that followed would rely wholly on him while everyone else was in cryo.
Perhaps she’d jumped the gun. The immediate issue wasn’t how to deal with a crisis with Solomon, but to work out what form it might take. To do that, she needed to know if his mission brief and his extraordinary leeway to interpret it differed so much from her own that he was a risk to a very simple objective: to get people shipped out to Nomad, and to export as few problems from Earth to the new colony as possible. If he started to interfere with the mission plans — and there was no way of telling what curve balls might be ahead — then she needed to find a way to take control of the remaining ships away from him.
The alternative was to put her authority to one side, accept that he had ultimate control over the mission, and try to keep him in an open and co-operative frame of mind.
Damn, she’d have to call this off. But before she could get up and leave, she spotted Marc and Tev jogging her way. They’d already seen her. She fell back on her original plan, explaining her presence here by brandishing the memorial plaque.
The garden was deserted. She nodded at them, smiling. They slowed to a halt.
“Have we been ambushed, Director?” Marc asked.
There was no point in putting on an act now. He knew this wasn’t one of her usual haunts.
“I need to ask you a question, gentlemen.”
“An awkward one?”
“Why else would I be sitting here in the dark? Actually, I found this behind the bin store over there.” She held up the plaque by the edges. “I didn’t realise it was still around. I’m not entirely sure what’s appropriate to do with it now.”
“Military humour being what it is, ma’am, we’d normally present it to the ship for their trophy cabinet,” Tev said, wiping his sleeve across his forehead. “But under these circumstances, I think we’d give it a miss.”
“Very wise. Thank you.”
“Very well, what would you advise us to do with the more sensitive parts of the Ainatio site when we finally pull out? You two are experts in asset denial, if that’s the right term.”
“Blowing shit up, ma’am? Yes. If you want an airfield to lose a few jets or knock out a comms system, we’re the boys. But you have a plan for that kind of thing. We’ve seen it. We helped update it.”
“Yes, but we don’t have a self-destruct procedure. The bio labs have systems to vaporise entire sections if a pathogen escapes, and the reactor can be entombed, but the centre itself was never designed to be destroyed if it had to be abandoned.”
“If you’re talking about rigging charges to blow the whole site, that’s well beyond the kit we’ve got,” Tev said. “That’s an air force job with some pretty substantial ordnance. Maybe even nukes.”
“Do you really need to destroy it?” Marc asked. “If you can purge your biohaz labs, I’d just stick all the combustible and meltable material in them and press the barbecue button.”
“What if we identified the most sensitive parts of the facility? Because we’ve got equipment we wouldn’t want to leave behind.”
“We could try, but most of your kit’s designed to stop the likes of us trashing it.” Marc had that look on his face that said he wanted her to know that he was only pretending to go along with a charade. “Hasn’t Sol got any suggestions?”
I like a man who’s quick on the uptake. Saves so much time.
“Good grief, no,” she said. It was one of those moments that would either spark a chain of mistakes she’d regret later or provide her with a way out. “I wouldn’t want him to get the wrong idea. You’ve seen how jumpy he is at the moment. After the arguments we’ve had lately, he might think I was planning to shut him down.”
“Yeah, just as well you’ll never have to try that, eh? Personally, I’d do what Tev suggests. An air strike with those missiles you’ve still got on the mothballed ships.”
“Just how much stuff do you need to dispose of?” Tev asked, still acting as if he was taking this at face value. “Tell us exactly what you want taken out, and we’ll come up with a plan.”
The Best of Us Page 26
