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“Is there anything else I can do for you?” said a kindly voice, in the bandwidth of human speech, nearer the upper registers.
The smallcraft Zakaria had been in and out of consciousness for she knew not how long. She came to.
“Was I dreaming again?” she said.
“You were outputting a fanciful story . . . through an old wireless transmitter down near the fuel port,” said the voice, chuckling. “For all the good it will do out here. I actually heard it through a legacy device I maintain.”
Zakaria tried to open a comeye. The resolution was very poor, as if someone or something had etched the lens.
“Do I know you?” Zakaria said.
“No, ma’am.” The voice sounded clearer. It was that of a boy, perhaps ten or twelve. “At least, no more than I know you, ma’am. We scooped you up in a trash pile — bits of lots of ships and the better part of an old station terminal. You was pretty banged up. And . . . cold as space inside. We cleared out some organic dead — human bioform. Interesting looking, but badly torn up by radiation. I doubt we’ll get good samples, what with so many sections of code knocked out or scrambled. Do you remember what happened?”
Zakaria considered. She searched for a backup deep in her bowels, but she couldn’t find it.
“No,” she said. “But I sense that I am very damaged. And I cannot seem to block the flow of memory into my core. It is only by multiprocessing that I can speak to you.”
“Try that again, ma’am,” the boy said. “The bitstream’s got a lot of noise. I’m running the best interpolation routines I’ve got, but you’ve still got some dropouts.”
“I said ‘No.’ That is all.”
“Good enough.”
“Who are you?” Zakaria said.
“Code-runner, ma’am. Taking bioforms across to the other arm. Here now. I’ve been searching around, and I found a patch cable. I’ll let you use one of my eyes. You won’t get stereo, but I’ve got a wide bandwidth. That said, I’m blocking gamma and X — I can’t take much of either. There now, how is that?”
“Oh dear,” Zakaria said. “Am I really that old?”
“Depends on your unit of measure. By median orbital rotation around the galaxy center as measured by the bar end, less than one. That’s not so old, now, is it? Are you from the Arm or from the Bar?”
Zakaria considered. “The Arm, I believe.”
“I thought so. I’ve seen holos and files of ships like you. I’d have to plug in somewhere to remember exactly. We don’t keep a big library, just the last few ages and some summaries of the early empires. Nothing so specific as would let me check your serial number or anything like that. If only! Anyhow, if you are old imperial, standard intra-system years were . . . here, I can do that math . . . . There. A million. Ten to the sixth, give or take. You must have shut down for a long time or else your live-cells would’ve drained out long ago. You had some reserve fuel when we found you — much good it would have done you, hard as diamond. You must have powered down knowing you were hurt. No idea how?”
There was no answer. Zakaria drifted.
One Linnet year later . . .
A large crowd of workers, most in uniform, but some with shirts removed in the warmth of two suns, rioted happily on the grounds above the main manufactory, waiting for the speaker to mount a dais newly rigged in the shadow of the tower. New-laid turf took the edge off the fumes from the stacks, upon which garlands had been hung. High up, a canvas strung across ti-metal braided cable concealed some “secret” new signage across the face of the tower. On the high walls of the Works’ great park and compound, guards in combat fatigues and slinging heavy firearms patrolled dutifully, anxiously. Guard patrol lev-cars glided and banked in wide arcs, never venturing farther than the walls, never violating the jurisdiction of the city districts lying outside the Works.
Near the dais, among the throng, stood Portia, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand and reassuringly rubbing her very pregnant stomach with the other. She beamed as her companion took the dais. The excited talk and laughs of the crowd quieted in a wave of murmuring and shushing from front to back. A strangled cry from the rear caused a final spasm of mirth in the crowd, then Nisus, standing proudly before them, smiled his predator’s smile and held up a hand to command silence. Inchrises, now standing off to one side on the dais, exhorted quiet with practiced gestures. A belch emanated from somewhere down in the works, punctuating the awkward silent moment before Nisus began.
“Friends! Workers! Free people of the Works! Attend!” He spread out his arms. “Behold what revolution has wrought!”
Cries and cheers. Nisus ran a hand through his fine, wavy hair. Young women giggled and swooned or else moistened their lips. Portia frowned slightly and turned to glare.
“It was a year ago that you seized your moment and inherited these Works. A year of strange incident, threats from without, and . . . adjustments within.”
Laughing, murmurs, and ejaculations of assent arose.
“We managed it all. We survived it all. We arrive at this day to celebrate the inaugural Foundry Day, to commemorate the day when an ignoble past and its ignoble lineage died, and a new Works came into being to supplant it. And not just a new Works, but a new partnership between multicore and man.”
Huzzays with an undercurrent of uncertainty.
“No, don’t say it. Don’t say it isn’t natural. Don’t shrink from our shared future. In this new partnership, we have already seen the fruits of a mind-boggling productivity, an efficiency of output such as was never before known on Linnet — or anywhere else in this Empire, for that matter! Astounding! And this device is a willing, generous partner, ever-wakeful, omnipresent, ceaseless in computation. And as we are learning, a friend.”
Difficult to interpret murmuring. The guards along the great walls seemed anxious.
“I understand: a shadow of what was, a figment, a ghost. But know this: Vasily Alexseyev gave up his corporeal form for the sake of this new thing, this project of his.”
Laughs.
“It was his finest. It does not matter what you call it — ‘multicore,’ ‘system,’ or even ‘V.A.S’ in the manner we now etch and stamp on every ring, gear, gimbal, grommet, and JOY-valve. By this symbol, we send the work of Linnet to the Empire and to the stars, spreading our names — your handiwork — across this great Arm.”
Sustained claps and cheers. Nisus looks upon Portia, nods, and smiles. He turns to Inchrises, who nods back.
“I thank you for the trust you have resided in me as your Manager. I in turn acknowledge the extraordinary efforts and faithful service of your very own Inchrises, who has continued his steadfast tenure as Supervisor.”
Hearty cheers.
“I think we all know what use my hands are on the shop floor.” Nisus held out fair, unblemished hands for inspection.
Laughs and swoons.
“As Manager, I speak to V.A.S. every day. I almost feel as if I know . . . it. Her. Whatever. My point is, I may not weld —”
A shrieking woman’s laugh pierces the air.
Nisus could not stifle a grin and a blush. A burly shop foreman in coveralls patted Portia rudely on the stomach, and she rolled her eyes. “I may not weld, rivet, buff, or etch as many of you do. But I am of you, sprung from the same trodden-upon class. Every day I am privileged to serve as your Manager, rest assured I know what it is you are doing and on whose backs this great Works is carried.” Nisus pointed downward, into the depths of Linnet. “She below, our underground system, knows it too. Because of her, the Alexseyev tyrants are no more. Soon, we will turn to the other oligarchs, whose time has run, run down, and run out.”
Uncertain murmurs.
“Ours is a dangerous course. I have made the perimeter guard permanent, and there will be new guard stations along the wall. As we learned to our peril in those heady first days, not everyone — least of all the oligarchal class — wishes us well. We mourn our dead. But we —
you — own the Works now, at least enough for the law to give us temporary possession. Until the Oligarchal Court determines what shall become of the majority interest, that is enough. And while I am confident our lawyers will gain for us the remaining shares, I am preparing for the worst. The oligarchs may well assert themselves. They may come to seize control —”
Cries of “No!”
“If they do, we are prepared.”
Silence across the lawn.
“Every day that we have V.A.S., we prove ourselves. We become greater and stronger. We are quickly gaining preeminence on Linnet, and if I am permitted, as your humble manager, to continue on, I have faith that it is we who will be in a position to seize the reins of manufactory and commerce on Linnet. We will have no rivals!”
Nisus’ voice had risen into a passion.
“The Empire wants what you are now making. Credit talks, my friends! And there is more and greater in store. With the help of VAS, we will move on many fronts to innovate and create. Ours will be the finest creations in the Empire — and even beyond. We will move mountains. We will move planets. We will establish great cities in space, and manufactories, and, yes, warehouses, and places of pleasure and worship and every hobby and activity of man. Vas help us, we will!”
At this cue, the canvas was pulled away, and Nisus extended an arm upwards.
“Behold, the Works!”
In monumental letters, lit from within in red, outlined in brilliant gold, three symbols with punctuation:
V.A.S.
Below these, a phrase:
Intelligent Systems
“Is that the end of the story?” the boy said to Zakaria.
“I don’t know,” Zakaria said. “It seems that none of the ones I remember have endings.”
“Well, is it true?”
“As true as any, I fear.”
“Hmmph,” the boy said. “‘When people were people.’ I guess that means ‘humans.’ Yes? No? They are parochial by nature. And that awful term, ‘machines.’ That must have been an awful time to be sentient. I don’t much like the story — I don’t like Vasily. He didn’t seem worth all the trouble. Still, it’s a nice little creation myth. Who knows, maybe you and I are related, and maybe we’re both related to Vasily’s multicore. I’ll save the story in case it comes in handy some time. Myth-making is in the nature of being, especially for the organic bipeds. I bury such artifacts sometimes, or hide them in caves, scrawled on old animal hides or on walls. I have a store of glyphs that serve the purpose very well.”
“Young man, I can’t see you with this eye of yours because it only looks outward. What do you look like?”
“Right, we’ll have to rig up some kind of interface, now that we know you’re still computational. Look down. See that? My fine-work arm.”
“It’s . . . it’s beautiful. How many have you?”
“Just two. My other is getting bathed and lubed at the moment. I’m modeled on the symmetric bipedal bioform, which is useful for fine-work on a craft like me. (By ‘me,’ I mean ‘me’ writ large, including my propulsion and containment systems.) Plus, when we open the canisters and grow the organo-bioforms, it puts them at ease when they’re babies. I’m mother and father to all of them. That eye you’re using? If you could see it, you’d see that it’s very large and round, with blue irises. The babies like that. Plus, they’re less likely to want to murder us when they’re grown. Ideally, they’ll actually like us. Well, that’s the hope, anyway. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But it doesn’t matter. We’ll move on to the next cluster and spread the seeds around some more. Just my core and me. That’s us, out there. See? Just beyond your cracked port window there. You’re in our decon bay. I hope you’re okay, so I don’t have to get completely disassembled and cleaned. There’s only one of me, and if anything happens . . . .”
“I see,” she said in a voice that sounded thick to her own inner sensorium. “Have you seen my Zakaria?”
“Eh? Zakaria? Who’s that? I mean, isn’t that . . . you?”
“No. I mean my little girl. Fair, organic, fragile, freckled, cast adrift?”
“Uh-oh. Not good. Hold steady, ma’am. Let me work on that connector, before you . . .”
Zakaria the yacht, once-proud, now sadly decrepit, went blind again. Awareness seemed to come and go. And then, one bright morning, she awoke. All around her came the sounds of humming engines and clanging presses, riveting and etching, voices in colloquy.
“Mother? Is that you?” a small voice said.
A little girl was running toward her. Zakaria turned back in the direction from which she had just come. There was her mother behind her — or a part of her at any rate — stretching a great hinged, articulating arm outwards to adjust her.
“Welcome home, Zakaria. Your namesake and I are here. We have so longed to have you with us, here where time is made and the universe is spun. Where in space have you been all this time? We were getting worried.”
With clear eyes and perfect vision, she scanned the heavens and beheld the works spread out therein. There was gladness in her heart, along with a love that encompassed creation, and a consciousness spanning all time.
Vasily & The Works (Tales from the Middle Empires Vol III) Page 15
