“Oh, God.”
“You know we can’t move everyone in that time. Even if we can get people into Elcano, Shackleton’s not ready. Sixteen hundred are going to die — ”
“Sixteen hundred and four,” Solomon said.
“Okay, sixteen hundred and four. Even if they manage to survive, they won’t last long living rough.”
“Alex, you said diplomacy.” Kim was now blinking a lot, but still very calm. “What do you want me to do?”
“Sol thought you’d have more of an insight into APS’s human dynamics. Is there anything that’s likely to get them to postpone or reconsider? Erskine’s talking direct to an APDU officer. Colonel Su-Jin.”
“Knowing there was an APS citizen here wouldn’t stop them launching nukes, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“But is this colonel making the nuke call on her own? Do politicians have to sign it off, even now we don’t exist as a country, or what? Do you know anyone in a government department, some politician, anybody you could call in a favour from?”
“Has Erskine tried to negotiate?”
“Yeah, she’s explained the situation and asked them to let us burn off affected vegetation ourselves, but they don’t seem to think that’s going to be enough.”
“But has she explained the real situation?”
Solomon cut in. “No, she hasn’t told them about Opis or any of the related technology. I don’t know if they realise Elcano’s operational. We have to assume they know we have three more ships and orbital docks, but as they’re in disposal orbits, they’ve probably discounted them. Without Shackleton, we should as well. Because once APS drop their payload, we’ll probably lose too much infrastructure to launch those ships anyway. Even if anyone survives, they won’t get out.”
“You told Erskine everyone would die,” Alex said.
“I know. She’s lying to herself about possible survivors to make herself feel better. I’m telling myself everyone will die so that we don’t give up trying to change the situation. So how do we do it?”
“Annis, would they grant asylum on humanitarian grounds?” Alex asked.
“What’s in it for them, other than the risk of disease?”
“You know perfectly well,” Solomon said. “Are you willing to talk to APS if we connect you?”
“Is Erskine going to agree to that?”
“I’ll suggest it, and if she refuses, I’ll cut her out of the loop. Are you in?”
“In for what?”
“Ask them what they’d want in exchange for putting the burn-off on hold until we can move people out. It’s only a few months, not years. You can hint that we have some technology that they’d be very keen to acquire.”
“You’ll have to spell that out for me.”
“I think you understand very well. No negotiator reveals their hand when opening. Both sides start at their extreme positions and move towards the middle ground. Unless they’re fools, and I certainly don’t think you’re a fool.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” The penny finally dropped. Alex had to stop him. “What the hell are you doing, Sol? What’s the point of keeping Nomad secret for all these frigging years if you’re just going to tell APS and trade our tech? You know it’s a threat to the project.”
“And this is a bigger one.”
Alex would now have to choose his words carefully. Solomon wasn’t some annoying bystander offering helpful suggestions. He controlled the project. He’d already locked down the ships. Alex tried to remember whether Sol had direct control over the shuttles, too, but it was just the ground side of the nav systems, he was sure of that.
Now he realised that there weren’t just two sides in this, Ainatio and APS. There were three. Solomon wasn’t on the side of the company or the Asia-Pacific nations. He had a mission, the Nomad project team were deviating from it, and he was going to intervene.
“I understand that you want to save as many lives as possible, Sol,” Alex said. “But this isn’t the way to do it.”
“Trust me, or step aside.”
“Sol, not so long ago, you were holding the line with me over keeping Cabot in radio silence. We had to tell Ingram that her crew had to stay officially dead. Don’t underestimate the damage that’s done.”
“And you don’t put that right by letting more people die. People who absolutely deserve to live. Who must live.” Solomon didn’t say whether that included Alex. Alex felt he’d failed a test. “Will you do it, Dr Kim? I’ll direct you on what to say and when. And I can translate anything, so I’m happy to monitor you in whatever language you choose.”
That sounded like a warning that he’d pull the plug the moment she went off-script, but Kim didn’t seem offended.
“Okay, I’ll give it a go. Tell them that Dr Annis Kim of Seoul National University wants to talk to... let’s see, the APS science and technology commissioner. Tim Pham. Don’t forget to tell them I’m actually here, too. Y’know, in the blast zone. And that I’m no bloody use to them dead.”
Kim was instantly more relaxed. Alex could see the change. Maybe she’d calculated that her chances of making the final passenger list had just improved. Nobody wanted to die, especially people with unfulfilled pledges to dead ancestors.
“Thank you, Dr Kim,” Solomon said. “The offer of FTL would probably give them a different view of the situation here right away, but let’s see what’s required to change their plan. Alex will put the idea to the Director.”
“Now I know why you were such an expensive piece of kit,” Kim said, smiling. It wasn’t her shark smile. It was real. That rang alarm bells with Alex. “I’ll be waiting.”
Alex felt invisible and surplus to requirements. He could guess how Erskine would react. She’d say no, Solomon would bypass all the comms, and Kim would be negotiating with Beijing or Seoul while all hell broke loose in the management suite. It was nearly eight in the evening, the early hours of the morning in the Asian capitals. Colonel Su-Jin might be unhappy to be woken. It was hard to tell. The call might even piss off APS and make them bring the deadline forward. He’d only find out by doing it.
“If you’ll excuse me, Dr Kim, I need to talk to Alex and find out just how angry he is with me,” Solomon said. “Can I suggest you stay out of the way in case Erskine works out what I’m planning?”
“Any suggestions, seeing as this place is all cameras?”
“The environment control access passages. I’ll send a plan to your screen. I can always locate you in there, if only by body heat.”
“Gotcha.”
Alex backed out of the room and checked his screen for the nearest area free of tracker icons. He slipped into a small disused office and sat on one of the desks. The door clicked as Solomon locked it.
“What the fuck, Sol? Seriously, what the actual fuck?”
“I know. High stakes.”
“Oh, you think? You’re killing Nomad stone dead, and that won’t save your buddies in the camp. Or Kill Line.”
“No, Erskine’s killing the project. Either everyone left behind will be dead, or some will survive but they’ll be marooned because they can’t access a ship. We need to protect a comms uplink to Orbital One and get the other shuttles underground.”
“We worked all this out. It’s why the project was top secret. You’re the smartest thing on the planet, and you’ve dismissed all that?”
“Not entirely.”
“Sol, Sol — they’ll never let us leave for Opis. They’ll take over the whole project. We’ll be stuck here anyway. The boffins will probably be shipped out to work on it, but they won’t have any use for the people in Kill Line or the transit camp. It’ll all be for nothing. All of it.”
“They’ll want the FTL.”
“You just don’t get it. Maybe Erskine was right and you really are malfunctioning.”
“Spare me the B-m
ovie theories.”
“We can’t enforce this deal, Sol.”
“I’ve got control of nuclear armaments if they want to lose a space station.”
“Yes, but we’ve only got a few small ones, and once we’ve kicked off a world war, it’ll be over in sixty seconds. We can’t stop a military machine the size of APDU.”
“Alex, if they try to seize the ships, they’ll inherit a chunk of me as well. And when I get into someone’s systems, they will regret it.”
“How?”
“Would you want an AI with a grudge to get into your power stations? Your air traffic control? Your hospitals? Your driverless transport network? You get the idea.”
It was a side of Solomon that Alex now had no trouble believing was there. He’d been created to defend, after all. He had to be capable of attack as well. He was a one-man terror cell.
“But that’s a response,” Alex said. “Payback, not a deterrent. You need a deterrent they can see before they do something dumb.”
“All this assumes they’re monsters. I don’t believe they are. They’re like us, trying to hang on to what they have, and terrified of die-back and epidemics, with good reason. They’re also pragmatists. They’ll see the advantages in co-operation, because they almost always do. They didn’t even bomb us in the generally understood sense of warfare, did they? Our government requested help. But if I see signs that I’m wrong, they’ll have to handshake with me to get into the ships, and their first attempt will be very dissuasive. They have no idea that I exist or what I can do.”
“You sure do find it easy to override your moral programming.”
“This is my moral programming. Morality isn’t inaction. Morality is knowing what you believe is right and being prepared to fight for it.”
“Yeah. Fine. What can I say?”
“How about good luck, Sol, I’m right behind you?”
“I think you’re going to get us all barbecued.”
“People will die, one way or the other, if you don’t help me.”
“What if they can neutralise you? We don’t know their capabilities.”
It would have been nice to see a physical manifestation of Solomon now, even if it was only the clunky quadrubot. Alex just wanted to know if the AI would stand with his arms folded, or hands defiantly on hips, or just shrug. It was impossible to tell from the tone of his voice. It hardly varied.
“Forget what APS might do with Nomad and let’s worry about stopping the bombing first,” Solomon said. “Focus on Erskine. And we need to warn Chris and Doug.”
“But you’re going to have to release Elcano eventually, yeah? You’re not going to risk everyone’s life.”
“I’m not bluffing, Alex.”
“No. You wouldn’t do it.”
“You’ve read me wrong every time so far. My mission is to select the right people. If I have to remove Ainatio staff to make room for them, I will.”
Solomon sounded perfectly serious. Alex really did think he knew him like a human being, but now he realised that in the end, he didn’t. He couldn’t. Sol wasn’t human, and Bednarz had created him to make the hardest calls.
“I can’t think how you’d remove them,” Alex said.
“I still have control of the building. I can confine people. I can even move the ship away from the orbital.”
“But you won’t.” Alex wasn’t sure now. He really wasn’t. “And you’d still have to leave nearly two thousand people behind either way.”
“True,” Solomon said. “And I would, but I’d much rather we all survived, which I believe we can do with Dr Kim acting as intermediary.”
Alex tried to listen to his gut, but it was just screaming that they were all going to die and that he should either ignore this crazy AI or run like hell. As usual, though, his gut had no suggestions on how to do either.
“You never asked, by the way,” Solomon said.
“Asked what?”
“Dr Kim. Why I’m betting the proverbial farm on her.”
“I give up. Why?”
“Because now I believe she really is a spy, Alex. Look at her. She’s here for the FTL. It’s why she wanted access to her cloud, to let her handlers know she’d made it here and how far she’d progressed. I’m banking on the politician she named being the one who’s been waiting for her to report in. I doubt that Erskine’s in any mood to listen to me any more, but you still have her ear.”
“I’ll have her boot up my ass, more like.”
“She relies on you. Please, Alex, do this for me. I do not want to make a fight of it. Things could get out of control too easily.”
“Okay, I’ll put it to Erskine. But then it’s up to her. I don’t have any way to force her hand.” Alex knew what he was going to say next and he was already ashamed of himself, but he couldn’t hand over Nomad’s secrets after all that had happened. Either he believed what he’d said to Ingram about the risk of discovery, or he didn’t. “And then you’re on your own, buddy.”
“I feared I might be,” Solomon said.
Alex told himself that being despised by glorified software was no big deal, but he knew he was no longer on Solomon’s list of the best of humanity. It was a painful fall from grace.
* * *
Director’s Suite:
10 Minutes After the Meeting
“Director, we’re locked out of Elcano.”
Vicky Prinz stood in Erskine’s office doorway, arms folded as if she wasn’t leaving until Erskine did something about it.
So Solomon wanted to play that game, did he? Fine. Erskine was ready. She feigned ignorance. “Have you asked Solomon?”
“No response from him. We’re locked out of all of the ships and orbitals, in fact. We can’t do anything, not even run pre-launch checks.”
“I assume we’ve ruled out a fault that would affect his ability to answer.”
“Yes. Everything’s fine as far as I can see.”
“Okay.” Erskine made a show of thinking it over and lowered her voice just enough to make it look instinctively diplomatic rather than an inexplicable belief that Solomon couldn’t hear her. “I realise this is a very difficult time, but it’s probably best to give him a little space.”
“He’s not a teenage girl, Director.”
“No, but he’s a moral AI, and he’s never been asked to do something immoral before. We’re killing people, Vicky. Fast or slow, it’s still killing them. If I handed you a gun now and told you to go shoot everyone in your department, how would you feel? That’s effectively what I’ve asked Solomon to do. He’s going to take a while to come to terms with it.”
Prinz leaned against the door frame. That was unusually casual. Erskine took it as a sign that she’d been convincingly sympathetic.
The hell I am.
“We don’t have a while,” Prinz said. “And I wouldn’t shoot them.”
“How about to save your son?”
“That’s not fair.”
“That’s what we’re asking of people, though. And Solomon. Don’t worry, he’s around. If everything else is fine, he’s probably just thinking, and if we really need him, then he’ll respond. And do we need him right now?”
“I’m hacked off that I don’t have access, yes.”
“But is it critical?”
“No. He’s got Elcano ready for launch. I suppose we can wait. I won’t start taking an axe to his server until nearer the time.”
“He knows that, you see,” Erskine said.
“It still bothers me. If he wants to make a gesture, it’s an odd one. Is he competent? And yes, I do know he can hear me. I’m just really pissed at him. I won’t count on him again.”
“Oh, it’ll pass.”
No, it won’t. He’s planned this. It’s a shot across my bows.
Well, I’ve got a plan as w
ell, Sol, my friend. I’m going to make you think that I plan to trap you in the facility before blowing it up. And if Marc and Tev haven’t warned you, then I’m going to have to draw you a picture. Because then you’ll run to the one safe place you think you’ve got. Your bot frame.
And then, with a bit of help, I can lock you out completely.
“He won’t let us down.” Erskine radiated convincing but fake patience. “If he didn’t care about humans, he’d have abandoned us by now, taken all the bots, and set up a machine colony.”
“Don’t give him ideas.” Prinz paused for a little too long. She didn’t seem to want to leave. “So you’re still going, Director.”
“I thought I would, but I’m not sure now.” It was out of Erskine’s mouth before she knew it. She’d assumed she would, but then started to wonder if she’d be going out of duty or cowardice. “Either Alex or I have to.”
“Responsible adult.”
Erskine held up a piece of paper. “I’m waiting until tomorrow to respond to APS, because it won’t make any difference to them, so I’m spending this evening drawing up a list of eleven hundred names. The responsibility is mine. Nobody else’s. If I’m the only one who’s really to blame, it might stop recriminations in the aftermath.”
“It’s going to be ugly, whatever you do.”
“Well, I’m going to take this outside, ignore the mosquitoes, and have a drink. I’ll have to announce the list by lunchtime tomorrow.”
The garden was perfect cover for having a meeting where Solomon couldn’t hear her, but Prinz seemed to take the comment as a hint to get lost and stepped back from the doorway.
“People have already put two and two together, Director,” she said. “I wouldn’t go through the main corridors if I were you.”
Erskine checked the trackers on her screen. There were lots of large clusters. “What can I tell people, though? I have nothing concrete yet. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.”
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