by Diane Duane
“Can’t say that I blame them,” Nita said, getting up and dusting herself off.
“Okay,” Tom said. “I wanted to see you two off up here, because there’s data you’ll need that your parents don’t. Something major is going on out there. Dairine isn’t going to run into just some bunch of lackeys for the Lone Power. That One Itself is after her… but I have no indication why. And Its power’s oddly veiled, at the moment—concentrated, and hidden. I don’t think this manifestation of the Lone Power is going to be as obvious as it has recently, with you two. So find Dairine, and look carefully at the situation. If it looks like she needs to be where she is, stay with her and do what you can for her.”
He paused. “But you’re going to have to be very careful. The Lone One won’t mind distracting her by striking at you two… or using her danger to sucker you into pulling her out of the problem she’s intended to correct. Use your judgment. Save her if you can.”
“And if we can’t?” Kit said.
Tom looked at him sadly. “Once you’ve found out what she’s out there for, see that the job gets done,” he said. “Whatever it is.”
They were both quiet.
“There’s no telling what the stakes are on this one,” Tom said. “The looks of the situation may be deceiving… probably will. Can you take this job and do it? Don’t go if you can’t. If either of you isn’t sure you can depend on yourself, or on the both of you, I don’t want you in this. Too much can go wrong.”
Kit looked at Nita, then back at Tom. “We’re on it,” he said.
Nita nodded. Tom looked at her.
“I know you’re upset,” he said. “But you’ll have a while to shake down, while you chase her: so concentrate on that. Meantime, Carl and I have sent word ahead through the Network, so that a lot of people will be expecting you.” He smiled. “You’re going to find that the way wizards have to behave on Earth is the exception rather than the rule. Most of the major law-enforcement bodies in this part of the Galaxy routinely call wizards in for consultations, and they owe us a lot of favors. So don’t be afraid to ask the authorities wherever you go for help. Odds are you’ll get it.”
“Okay.”
“So get out of here. And good hunting.”
“Thanks.”
“Come here, bird,” Tom said to Picchu.
Nita looked up in surprise, half expecting an explosion: Picchu didn’t take well to orders. But she was surprised to see the macaw clamber up onto Tom’s arm and reach up to nibble his ear.
Tom spent a few moments scratching her in the good place on the back of the head. She went vague in the eyes for a couple of minutes, then ruffled the neck feathers up and shook herself. “You be careful,” Tom said.
“I’ll be fine,” Picchu said, sounding cranky.
Nita repacked her knapsack, slung it on, and flipped her manual open to the marked pages with the verbal supplement for the transit spell as Tom passed Peach back to Kit. She caught Kit’s eye, stepped into the circle at the same time he did. Tom backed away. Slowly, and in unison, they began to read, and the air trapped in their shieldspells began to sing the note ears sing in silence…
As the spell threw them out of the Solar System, Nita found herself wondering whether she’d ever see it again.
Uplink
PLA1ETARY H1STOR1 (p1ge 3 o1 26)
HE1P11/1111111
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111...
“Dead,” Dairine whispered. “I am so dead.”
“Input error,” said the computer, sounding quite calm.
Dairine’s heart leapt. “Aren’t you busted?!” she cried.
“Syntax error 24,” said the computer, “rephrase for—”
“You can take your syntax errors and… never mind!” Dairine said. “What’s wrong with you? Run diagnostic!”
“External input,” said the computer. “Nontypical.”
“What is it? Some kind of broadcast?”
“Negative. Local.”
It happened right after it linked to the geothermal power, Dairine thought. “Check your link to the planet,” she said.
“Affirmative. Positive identification. External input. Planetary source.”
“Are there people here?” Dairine said, looking around hurriedly.
“Negative.” The computer’s text window kept filling up with 1’s, clearing itself, filling with 1’s again.
She held still and forced herself to take a deep breath, and another. The computer wasn’t broken. Nothing horrible had happened… yet. “Can you get rid of all those ones and let me keep reading that analysis?” she said to the computer.
“Affirmative.”
The screen steadied down to the last page she had been looking at. Dairine stared at it.
This unique structure becomes more interesting when considering the physical nature of the layering. Some 92% of the layers consist of chemically pure silicon, predisposing the aggregate to electroconductive activity in the presence of light or under certain other conditions. This effect is likely to be enhanced in some areas by the tendency of silicon to superconduct at surface temperatures below 200K. There is also a possibility that semiorganic life of a “monocellular” nature will have arisen in symbiosis either with the silicon layers or their associated “doping” layers, producing—
Dairine sat there and began to tremble. It’s the planet, she thought. Silicon. And trace elements, put down in layers. And cold to make it semiconduct—
“It’s the planet!” she shouted at the computer. “This whole flat part here is one big semiconductor chip, a computer chip! It’s alive! Send it something! Send it some 1’s!”
The computer popped open a number of windows in rapid sequence: the text window started filling with 1’s again. Dairine rolled from her sitting position into a kneeling one, rocking back and forth with anxiety and delight. She had to be right, she had to. One huge chip, like a computer motherboard a thousand miles square. And some kind of small one-celled—if that was the right word—one-celled organism living with it. Something silicon-based, that could etch pathways in it—pathways that electricity could run along, that data could be stored in.
How many years has this chip been laying itself down? Dairine wondered. There must have been long ages during which volcanoes erupted chemically pure silicon and trace elements that glazed themselves into vast reaches of chip-surface as soon as they touched the planet. While further down, in the molten warmth of the planet’s own geothermal heat, the little silicon-based “bacteria” that had wound themselves together out of some kind of analogue to DNA kept on doing their tiny work. Maybe they were more like amoebas than bacteria now: etching their way along through the layers of silicon and cadmium and other elements, getting their food, their energy, from breaking the compounds’ chemical bonds, the same way carbon-based life gets it from breaking down complex proteins into simpler ones.
It was likely enough. Dairine would check it with the manual. But for now, the result of this weird bit of evolution was all that really mattered. The chip was awake. With this much surface area—endless thousands of square miles, all full of energy—and connections and interconnections, millions of times more connections than there were in a human brain—how could it not have waked up? But there was nowhere for it to get data from that Dairine could see… no way for it to contact the outside world. It was trapped. The 1’s, the basic binary code for “on” used by all computers from the simplest to the most complex, were a scr
eam for help: a sudden realization that something else existed in the world, and a crying out to it. Even as Dairine looked down at the screen and watched what the computer was doing, the stream of 1’s became a little less frantic. 111111111, said her own machine. 111111111, said the planet.
“Give it an arithmetic series,” Dairine whispered.
1, said her computer. 11. 111. 1111. 11111.
1. 11. 111. 1111. 11111.
“Try a geometric.”
1. 11. 1111. 11111111. 1111111111111111.
I. 11. 1111. 11111111—
“Oh, it’s got it,” Dairine said, bouncing and still hugging herself. “I think. Hard to tell if it’s just repeating. Try a square series.”
11. 1111. 1111111111111111—
111. 111111111. 1111111111111111111111111—
It had replied with a cube series. It knew, it knew! “Can you teach it binary?” Dairine said, breathless.
“Affirmative.” 1. 10. 11. 100. 101—
Things started to move fast, the text window on the laptop’s screen filling with characters, clearing itself, filling again as the two computers counted at each other. Dairine was far gone in wonder and confusion. What to teach it next? It was like trying to communicate with someone who’d been locked in a dark, soundless box all his life…. “Is it taking the data?”
“Affirmative. Writing to permanent memory.”
Dairine nodded, thinking hard. Apparently the huge chip was engraving the binary code permanently into itself: that would include codes for letters and numbers as well. But what good’s that going to do? It doesn’t have any experiences to make words out of, no reason to put letters together to make the words in the first place. It was like it had been for Helen Keller, Dairine thought: but at least Helen had the senses of touch and taste, so that she could feel the water poured into her hand while her teacher drummed the touch-code for water into it. It has no senses. If it did—
“Can you hook it into your sensors?” she said to the computer.
The computer hesitated, and Dairine gulped: she’d never heard it do that before.
When it spoke again, its syntax was peculiar—more fluid than she was used to. “High probability of causing damage to the corresponding computer due to too great a level of complexity,” it said.
Dairine breathed out, annoyed, but had to agree. Anything able to sense events happening forty trillion miles away, no matter how it managed it, was certainly too complex to hook directly to this poor world-creature right now. Then another thought occurred to Dairine, and her heart beat very fast. Not sensors. Senses.
“Can you hook me to it?” she said.
This time the laptop’s hesitation was even longer, and its speech slow when it responded at last. “Affirmative,” it said. “Triple confirmation of intent required.”
“I tell you three times,” Dairine said. “Hook it to me. Tell me how to get connected! It’s got to get some better idea of what’s going on out here, or it’ll go crazy!”
“Direct physical contact with surface,” the computer said. It sounded reluctant.
Dairine dusted her hands off and put them flat on the glassy ground. She opened her mouth to tell the computer to go ahead, do what it was going to…
But she never got the chance. Instantaneously a jolt of power went right through her with exactly the same horrendous sensation of grabbing and shaking she’d felt when she was seven and had put a bobby pin in an electric socket. Dairine convulsed, all over: her head jerked up and snapped back and she froze, unable even to blink, staring up into the golden-veiled blaze of the barred spiral, staring at it till each slight twitch of her eyes left jittering purple-green afterimages to right and left of it. And somewhere inside her, like another mind speaking, she could hear her laptop crying 110010 01011110000100! 11001001011110000100! at the frantic silence that lis-tened. Light, light, light—
And the reply, she heard that too: a long, crazed string of binary that made no sense to her, but needed to make none. Joy, it was simply joy, joy at discovering meaning: joy so intense that all Dairine’s muscles jumped in reaction to it, breaking her out of the connection and flinging her face down on the glazed ground. The connection promptly reestablished itself, and Dairine’s mind fell down into turmoil. She couldn’t think straight. Caught between the two computers—for under the swift tutelage of her own, the great glassy plain was now beginning truly to function as one—Dairine felt the contents of her brain being twinned, and the extra copy dumped out into endless empty memory and stored, in a rush of images, ideas, occurrences, communications, theories and raw sensations.
She knew it took only a short time: but it seemed to go on forever, and all her senses throbbed like aching teeth at being desperately and delightedly used and used and used again to sense this moment, this ever-changing now. Dairine thought she would never perceive anything as completely again as she was seeing and feeling the green-and-gold-shaded piece of silicon aggregate she lay on, with the four crumbs from her sandwich lying half an inch from her eye. She felt sure she would be able to describe the shape of those crumbs and the precise pattern of the dappling in the silicon on her deathbed… if she survived this to have one.
Finally the frozen moment stopped. Groaning softly, Dairine levered herself up and stared around her. The computer was sitting there innocently, its screen showing the main manual menu. “How is it?” Dairine said, and then sighed and got ready to rephrase herself.
“Considerably augmented,” said the computer.
Dairine stared. “Is it just me,” she said, “or do you sound smarter than before?”
“That calls for a value judgment,” said the computer.
Dairine opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I guess it does,” she said. “You weren’t just acting as conduit all through that, were you? You expanded your syntax to include mine.”
“You got it,” said the computer.
Dairine took a moment to sit up. Before this, she’d thought she would love having the computer be a little more flexible. Now she was having second thoughts. “How’s our friend doing?”
“Assimilating the new data and self-programming. Its present running state has analogues to trance or dream states in humans.”
Dairine instantly wished it hadn’t said that. What time is it at home? How long had she been running? How long had that last longest jump taken, if it had in fact taken any time at all? All she knew was that she was deadly tired.
“Update,” said the computer. “It is requesting more data.”
“On what?”
“No specific request. It simply desires more.”
“I’m fresh out,” Dairine said, and yawned. Then she looked at the computer again. “Wait. I’m not. Give it what you’ve got.”
“Repeat and clarify?” said the computer, sounding slightly unnerved.
“Give it what you’ve got. All the information about planets and species and history and all the rest of it. Give it the magic!”
The computer said nothing.
Dairine sat up straight. “Go on,” she said.
No reply.
“Is there some rule that says you shouldn’t?”
“Yes,” said the computer slowly, “but this edition of the manual software contains the authorization-override function.”
“Good,” Dairine said, none too sure of what this meant, except that it sounded promising. “I’m overriding. Give it what you’ve got.”
The text window in the middle of the screen lit up with a block of text, in binary, quite small and neat, and Dairine immediately thought of the Oath in Nita’s manual.
A pause—just a brief one —
Then the window blanked and filled with another stream of binary. That blanked in its turn. Windowful after windowful after windowful of 1’s and 0’s followed, each flickering out of existence almost as quickly as it appeared.
Dairine got up and stretched, and walked back and forth for a few minutes to work the kinks out of her muscles. Sh
e ached all over—as she had after the bobby pin incident—and her stomach growled at her again: a bologna sandwich and a half was not enough to satisfy her after the kind of day she’d had. If it’s even the same day. At least I have a while before the BEMs show up… she thought. Maybe our new friend here can be of some kind of help.
As she looked out across the dappled-silvery plain, she noticed a bloom of soft crimson light at one side of it. Dairine held still as the light grew, and watched this world’s sun rise. It was a fat red star, far along in its lifetime—so far along, so cool, that there was water vapor in its atmosphere, and even in the vacuum of space it hung in a softly glowing rose-colored haze, like an earthly summer sunset. It climbed the sky swiftly, and Dairine watched it in silence. Quite a day, she thought. But whether it’s morning here or not, I need a nap.
Dairine turned around and started to head back toward the computer—and froze.
One patch of the surface was moving. Something underneath it was humping upward, cracks appearing in the surface’s perfect smoothness. There was no sound, of course, since Dairine’s air supply was nowhere near the spot; the cracks webbed outward in total silence.
And then the crust cracked upward in jagged pieces, and the something underneath pushed through and up and out.
Bits of silica glass fell slowly in the light gravity and bounced or shattered in a snow of splinters around the rounded shape that stood there. “Stood” was the right word: for it had legs, though short stumpy ones, as if a toy tank had thrown away its treads and grown limbs instead. It shook itself, the rounded, glassy, glittering thing, and walked over to Dairine and straight through her shields with a gait like a centipede’s or a clockwork toy’s. Then it looked up at her, if something like a turtle with no head can be said to look up.
“Light,” it croaked, in a passable imitation of the computer’s voice, and bumped against her shin, and rested there.
It was too much. Dairine sat down where she was and looked at the computer. “I can’t cope,” she said.
