Off Armageddon Reef

by David Weber

  Eventually, advances in cybernetics had finally reached the level of approximating the human brain's capabilities. They didn't do it exactly the same way, of course. Despite all the advances, no computer yet designed could fully match the brain's interconnections. Providing the memory storage of a human brain had been no great challenge for molecular circuitry; providing the necessary "thinking" ability had required the development of energy-state CPUs so that sheer computational and processing speed had finally been able to compensate. A PICA's "brain" might be designed around completely different constraints, but the end results were effectively indistinguishable from the original human model . . . even from the inside.

  That capability had made the remote operation of a PICA possible at last. A last-generation PICA's owner could actually load a complete electronic analogue of his personality and memories (simple data storage had never been a problem, after all) into the PICA in order to take it into potentially dangerous environments outside the direct neural linkage's limited transmission range. The analogue could operate the PICA, without worrying about risk to the owner's physical body, and when the PICA returned, its memories and experiences could be uploaded to the owner as his own memories.

  There'd been some concern, when that capability came along, about possible "rogue PICAs" running amok under personality analogues which declined to be erased. Personally, Nimue had always felt those concerns had been no more than the lingering paranoia of what an ancient writer had labeled the "Frankenstein complex," but public opinion had been adamant. Which was why the law required that any downloaded personality would be automatically erased within an absolute maximum of two hundred forty hours from the moment of the host PICA's activation under an analogue's control.

  "The last personality recording you'd downloaded was made when you were still planning that hang-gliding expedition in the Andes," Commodore Pei's holograph reminded her. "But you never had time for the trip because, as part of my staff, you were tapped for something called 'Operation Ark.' For you to understand why we're having this conversation, I need to explain to you just what Operation Ark was . . . and why you, Kau-zhi, Shan-wei, and I set out to sabotage it."

  Her eyes—and, despite everything, she couldn't help thinking of them as her eyes—widened, and he chuckled without any humor at all.

  "Basically," he began, "the concept was—"

  * * *

  "—so," Pei Kau-yung told her a good hour later, "from the moment we found out Langhorne had been chosen over Franz Halversen to command the expedition, we knew there was going to be a lot of pressure to dig the deepest possible hole, crawl into it, and fill it in behind us. Langhorne was one of the 'we brought this down on ourselves through our own technological arrogance' types, and, at the very least, he was going to apply the most stringent possible standard to the elimination of technology. In fact, it seemed likely to us that he'd try to build a primitive society that would be a total break with anything which had come before—that he might decide to wipe out all record that there'd ever been a technologically advanced human society. In which case, of course, all memory—or, at least, all accurate memory—of the Gbaba would have to be eliminated as well. He couldn't very well explain we'd encountered them once we attained interstellar fight without explaining how we'd done that, after all.

  "None of us could question the necessity of 'going bush' to evade detection, at least in the short term, yet where Langhorne was determined to prevent any new confrontation with the Gbaba, we felt that one was effectively inevitable. Someday, despite any effort to preclude the development of a high-tech civilization, the descendants of our new colony's inhabitants would start over again on the same road which had taken us to the stars and our meeting with them."

  He shook his head sadly.

  "In light of that, we began considering, very quietly, ways to prevent those distant descendants of ours from walking straight back into the same situation we were in. The only solution we could see was to ensure that the memory of the Gbaba wasn't lost after all. That our descendants would know they had to stay home without attracting attention, in their single star system, until they'd reached a level of technology which would let them defeat the Gbaba. The fact that the Gbaba have been around for so long was what suggested they'd still be a threat when mankind ventured back into space, but the fact that they've been around so long without any significant advances also suggested that the level of threat probably wouldn't be much higher than it was today. So if there was some way for our descendants to know what level of technological capability they required to survive against the Gbaba, they would also know when it ought to be safe—or relatively safe—for them to move back into interstellar flight.

  "One way to do that would be to maintain a preelectric level of technology on our new home for at least the next three or four centuries, avoiding any betraying emissions while preserving the records of our earlier history and the history of our war with the Gbaba. Assuming we could convince Langhorne, or at least a majority of the Administrative Council, to go along with us, we would also place two or three of the expedition's ships in completely powered-down orbits somewhere in our destination star system, where they'd be only a handful of additional asteroids without any active emissions, impossible to detect or differentiate from any other hunk of rock without direct physical examination, but available for recovery once indigenous spaceflight was redeveloped. They would serve as an enormous bootstrap for technological advancement, and they'd also provide a yardstick by which to evaluate the relative capabilities of later, further developments."

  His holographic face grimaced, his eyes bitter.

  "That was essentially what the original mission plan for Operation Ark called for, and if Halversen had been in command, it's what would have been done. But, frankly, with Langhorne in command, we never gave it more than a forty percent chance of happening, although it would obviously have been the best scenario. But because the odds of achieving it were so poor, we looked for a second option. We looked hard, but we couldn't find one. Not until we were all sitting around after dinner on the very evening before our departure, when you and Elias Proctor came up with the idea which led to this conversation.

  "You were the one who pointed out that the same technology which had gone into building the PICAs could have been used to build an effectively immortal 'adviser' for the colony. An adviser who actually remembered everything which ought to have been in the records we were all afraid Langhorne wouldn't want preserved and who could have guided—or at least influenced—the new colony's development through its most dangerous stages. Unfortunately, there was no time to implement that idea, even if there'd been any way Operation Ark's planners would have signed off on any such notion. And even if the mission planners had agreed to it, someone like Langhorne would almost certainly order the 'adviser's' destruction once he was out on his own.

  "But Elias was very struck by your observation, and he pointed out, in turn, that the only thing preventing an existing, off-the-shelf PICA from being used to fulfill the same role were the protocols limiting PICAs to no more than ten days of independent operation. But those protocols were all in the software. He was relatively certain he could hack around them and deactivate them. And a single PICA, especially one with its power completely down, would be relatively easy to conceal—not just from the Gbaba, but from Langhorne."

  The PICA on the table, which had decided she might as well continue to think of herself as the young woman named Nimue Alban, whose memories she possessed, would have nodded if she could have moved her head. Doctor Elias Proctor had been the most brilliant cyberneticist Nimue had ever known. If anyone could hack a PICA's software, he could. Of course, trying to would have been a felony under Federation law, punishable by a minimum of fifteen years in prison.

  "Unfortunately"—Pei Kau-yung's expression turned sad once again—"the only last-generation PICA belonging to anyone we knew we could trust was yours, and there wasn't time to acquire another. Certainly no
t without making Mission Control wonder what in the world we wanted it for. In fact, you were the one who pointed that out to us. So I signed off on a last-minute cargo adjustment that included your PICA in your personal baggage allotment, on the basis that it might prove useful for hostile environment work somewhere along the line. And then, after all our personnel and cargo had been embarked, you volunteered to transfer to Kau-zhi's staff aboard Excalibur."

  Nimue's eyes went very still, and he nodded slowly, as if he could see them.

  "That's right. You volunteered for service on the flagship, knowing it would be destroyed if Operation Breakaway worked. And when you were transferred to Excalibur, the official manifest on your gear included everything you'd brought aboard Gulliver, including your PICA. But you didn't actually take it with you, and I personally transferred it to a cargo hold where it could be permanently 'lost.' It was the only way to drop it completely off all of the detailed equipment lists in Langhorne's computers."

  His image seemed to look straight into her eyes for several seconds. Then he drew a deep breath.

  "It wasn't easy to let you go," he said softly. "You were so young, with so much still to contribute. But no one could come up with a counterscenario that offered us as good a chance of success. If you hadn't been . . . gone before we reached Safehold, the master manifests would have shown you still holding the PICA. You would have been forced to turn it over to Langhorne for destruction, and if you'd announced you'd 'lost' it somehow, instead, all sorts of alarms would have gone off, especially given how late in the process it was added to your allotment. So, in the end, we really had no choice. Yet to be perfectly honest, despite the fact that you'd chosen to deliberately sacrifice your life to give us this option, we all hoped we'd never actually need it.

  "Unfortunately, I'm afraid we do."

  He settled back in his chair, his face hard, set with an expression she'd seen before, as Gbaba warships appeared on his tactical display.

  "Langhorne and Bédard have turned out to be not just fanatics, but megalomaniacs. I've left a complete file for you, with all the details. I don't have the heart to recite them all for you now. But the short version is that it turns out Langhorne and his inner clique never trusted me quite as completely as I thought they had. They deployed a complete orbital kinetic strike system without ever telling me, as their senior military officer, a thing about it. I never knew it was there, couldn't take any steps to neutralize it. And when Shan-wei and her supporters resisted their efforts to turn themselves into gods, they used it. They killed her, Nimue—her and all of the people trying to openly maintain any memory of our true history."

  A PICA had no heart, not in any physical sense, but the heart Nimue Alban no longer possessed twisted in anguish, and he cleared his throat, then shook his head hard.

  "To be honest, I thought about waking you up, having this conversation with you in person, but I was afraid to. I've lived a long time now, Nimue, but you're still young. I didn't want to tell you about Shan-wei. For a lot of reasons, really, including the fact that I know how much you loved her and I was . . . too cowardly to face your pain. But also because I know you. You wouldn't have been willing to 'go back to sleep' until you'd personally done something about her murder, and I can't afford to lose you. Not now. Not for a lot of reasons. Besides, you'd probably try to argue with me about my own plans. And when you come right down to it, no time will pass for you between now and when you actually see this message, will it?"

  His bittersweet smile was crooked, but when he spoke again, his voice was brisker, almost normal-sounding.

  "We did our best to give you at least some of the tools you'll need if you decide—if you decide, as the person you are now, not the Nimue Alban who originally volunteered for this—to continue with this mission. We didn't really think we'd be able to do that, since we hadn't known Langhorne would decide to keep Hasdrubal with the main fleet instead of personally overseeing Safehold's terraforming. We were delighted that he did, at the time, because it gave us a lot more freedom. Of course"—he smiled bitterly—"we didn't realize then why he was staying there. Even without him looking over our shoulder, though, we couldn't begin to give you everything I would have liked to. There were still limits to what we dared to 'disappear' from the equipment lists, but Shan-wei and I showed a little creativity during the terraforming operations. So you'll have some computer support, the most complete records we could provide, and at least some hardware.

  "I've set the timer to activate this . . . depot, I suppose, seven hundred and fifty standard years after I complete this recording. I arrived at that particular timing because our best projections indicate that if the Gbaba didn't decide Kau-zhi's fleet was all of Operation Ark's units, and if their scout ships continued to sweep outward, it ought to take them a maximum of about five hundred years to pass within easy detection range of radio emissions or neutrinos from this system. So I've allowed a fifty percent cushion to carry you through the threat zone of immediate detection. That's how long you will have been 'asleep.'-"

  He shook his head again.

  "I can't begin to imagine what it's going to be like for you, Nimue. I wish there'd been some way, any way, I could have avoided dropping this burden on you. I couldn't find one. I tried, but I couldn't."

  He sat silent once more for several seconds, his holographic eyes gazing at something no one else had ever been able to see, then blinked back into focus and straightened in his chair.

  "This is the final message, the last file, which will be loaded to your depot computer. Besides myself, only one other person knows of your existence, and he and I have an appointment with Administrator Langhorne and the Administrative Council tomorrow evening. I don't know if it will do any good, but Langhorne, Bédard, and their toadies are about to discover that they aren't the only people with a little undisclosed military hardware in reserve. There won't be any survivors. It won't bring back Shan-wei, or any of the rest of my—our—friends, but at least I'll take a little personal satisfaction out of it."

  He seemed to look at her one last time, and he smiled once more. This time, it was an oddly gentle smile.

  "I suppose it could be argued that you don't really exist. You're only electronic patterns inside a machine, after all, not a real person. But you're the electronic pattern of a truly remarkable young woman I was deeply honored to have known, and I believe that in every way that counts, you are that young woman. Yet you're also someone else, and that someone else has the right to choose what you do with the time and the tools we've been able to give you. Whatever you choose, the decision must be yours. And whatever you decide, know this; Shan-wei and I loved Nimue Alban very much. We honored her memory for sixty years, and we're perfectly satisfied to leave the decision in your hands. Whatever you decide, whatever you choose, we still love you. And now, as you once said to me, God bless, Nimue. Goodbye."

  MAY, YEAR OF GOD 890

  I

  The Temple of God,

  City of Zion, The Temple Lands

  The Temple of God's colonnade soared effortlessly against the springtime blue of the northern sky. The columns were just over sixty feet high, and the central dome which dominated the entire majestic structure rose higher yet, to a height of a hundred and fifty feet. It shone like a huge, polished mirror in the sunlight, plated in silver and crowned with the gem-encrusted, solid-gold icon of the Archangel Langhorne, tablets of law clasped in one arm, the scepter of his holy authority raised high in the other. That icon was eighteen feet tall, glittering more brilliantly even than the dome under the morning sun. For over eight centuries, since the very dawn of Creation, that breathtakingly beautiful archangel had stood guard over God's home on Safehold, and it and the dome under it were both as brilliant and untouched by weather or time as the day they were first set in place.

  The Temple sat atop an emerald green hill which lifted it even further towards God's heavens. Its gleaming dome was visible from many miles away, across the waters of Lake Pei, and
it glittered like a gold and alabaster crown above the great lakeside city of Zion. It was the city's crown in more than one way, for the city itself—one of the half-dozen largest on all of Safehold, and by far its oldest—existed for only one purpose: to serve the needs of the Church of God Awaiting.

  Erayk Dynnys, Archbishop of Charis, strolled slowly towards the Temple across the vast Plaza of Martyrs, dominated by the countless fountains whose dancing jets, splashing about the feet of heroic sculptures of Langhorne, Bédard, and the other archangels, cast damp, refreshing breaths of spray to the breeze. He wore the white cassock of the episcopate, and the three-cornered priest's cap upon his head bore the white cockade and dove-tailed orange ribbon of an archbishop. The fragrant scents of the northern spring wafted from the beds of flowers and flowering shrubs the Temple's gardening staff kept perfectly maintained, but the archbishop scarcely noticed. The wonders of the Temple were a part of his everyday world, and more mundane aspects of that same world often pushed them into the background of his awareness.

  "So," he said to the younger man walking beside him, "I take it we still haven't received the documents from Breygart?"

  "No, Your Eminence," Father Mahtaio Broun replied obediently. Unlike his patron's, his priest's cap bore only the brown cockade of an upper-priest, but the white crown embroidered on his cassock's right sleeve marked him as a senior archbishop's personal secretary and aide.