by Rexx Deane
He crept around the line of rocks, keeping his distance. Another wheeze issued from the boulders.
A branch snapped underfoot and a cold surge ran through him. The wheezing stopped.
Whatever it was, it had heard him.
Chapter 22
Sebastian strained to listen, to ignore the breeze and rustling of trees.
Silence.
Maybe the thing behind the rock was injured, and as scared as he was? He padded, catlike, around the line of boulders.
A Folian lay slumped against the rocks, one leg outstretched, the other bent at an odd angle. Blood covered its once shimmering robes and spattered the tiny fruit and leaves of the wreath entwined in its golden sponge-hair. A small blood-stained boulder lay on the leaf litter a few feet away. The alien’s breathing was shallow, and it stared straight ahead.
He made to move towards it.
The Folian’s eyes flicked in his direction. A look of fear momentarily played across its face. It relaxed and weakly raised a hand. ‘Thorsson …’ it whispered.
Sebastian approached and crouched down next to it. ‘Yes. How do you know who I am?’
‘Tol—’ A fit of weak coughing overcame it before it could finish.
He recognised the fragment for what it was meant to be, and immediately recalled the meeting in the park. ‘Ambassador Tolinar? Where are you injured?’ He felt stupid asking.
‘Leg … broken,’ Tolinar rasped.
He dropped the medkit and searched through its contents. ‘I don’t have much, but I’ll see what I can do.’ He lifted Tolinar’s robe, exposing the leg. The skin was broken, but the bone – if there was one – was not projecting through, despite the grotesque angle. The bandages in the medkit might be strong enough for bindings, but what to use for a splint? ‘Hold on, I’ll find something to support your leg.’
After a couple of minutes, he found two thin, solid-looking branches lying nearby and cut off the straggling twigs with his multi-tool. ‘Can I use station-issue anaestheptic on your wounds, or does your race have a reaction to it?’
‘No … reactions.’
He pulled out the aerosol to spray the injured leg, but Tolinar held up a hand, stopping him. Had he got it wrong? No to the spray, because of reactions?
Tolinar pointed at the wound on Sebastian’s arm. ‘You need …’
He looked down at the bandage on his arm, which still throbbed. ‘I do, but you need it more than I,’ he said, and applied the last of the spray to Tolinar’s leg. The Folian flinched.
‘Sorry, I know it hurts. I don’t have the medical training to set this, but the spray will last a while. I should get you to your people. Where are they?’
Tolinar feebly raised his hand in the direction of the ridge.
‘You should drink. It’s the last of my water, but there’s a river the other side of the ridge.’ Sebastian squeezed the reservoir on the N-suit and, feeling a small bulge, leaned forwards, pulled the straw from his collar to its fullest extent and offered it to the Folian.
Tolinar sucked up the last few dregs, and the lines of pain on his face lessened.
‘Brace yourself, I need to put the splint on.’ Tolinar gripped the soil tightly, and Sebastian straightened the broken leg as much as he dared and fastened the branches either side using the last of the bandages.
He tucked the empty medkit into his rucksack and stood. Scratching his head, he looked around for something to use as a crutch. One of the lower branches on a nearby tree looked suitable; he started to pull it downwards.
‘No!’ Tolinar said through gritted teeth. ‘Use … fallen branch.’
Sebastian stopped. ‘Why?’
‘Precious,’ the Folian wheezed.
He stared at the tree. What was precious about it? A crease ran up the centre of the trunk, to a third of the way up, where if formed a small Y at the widest point of the tree. Two thick branches reached into the sky like long arms with leafy fingers, and if he looked at the right angle, it could almost have been the torso of a woman. What a childish idea it was.
He turned his attention back to the practical matter of searching for a sturdier stick, and found one with a sharply curved end lying on the leaves. He shaved off the protruding twigs and held it out. ‘Can you stand, if I help you?’
Tolinar looked at him strangely, head tilted to one side.
Sebastian tucked the crutch under his arm and demonstrated walking with it. The Folian nodded and he helped him up.
Supporting the alien’s weight with one shoulder, they made their way in the direction of the ridge.
***
Sitting on the grass, Aryx shortened the belts attached to the wheelchair and strapped it tightly to the mobipack. He ejected the infoslate from the mobipack and set the pattern to prosthetic legs, saving the climbing claws, just in case. He staggered as he pulled on the harness and stood; it was lucky he’d made the wheelchair from such light alloys – he’d never anticipated having to carry it around on his back.
Following the locator beacon’s signal, he set off for the trees ahead, cube in hand. The sack of vegetables bumped against his legs as he walked. Perhaps he shouldn’t have collected them, but they were too valuable to abandon now – there was no telling how long it might be before he got to the ship. His stomach gurgled. No, it was a good idea to keep them.
Aryx shivered as the trees in the distance swayed back and forth wildly in the blustering wind.
‘It will rain very soon,’ the cube said. ‘You must find shelter, quickly.’
‘I know, it’s getting colder.’ The trees were still a couple of miles away, so he began to jog. ‘So, the university you mentioned … why did they create you? I’ve never heard of the research.’
‘Their first goal was to create self-sufficient intelligence that could learn and operate in a manner similar to organics. Their second goal was to understand the nature of intelligence itself.’
‘It looks like they succeeded.’
‘No, they did not. They failed to understand the nature of intelligence.’
‘But you’re a computer, couldn’t they just examine your programming?’
‘I am self-programmed, and did not do so in the way a Human might approach the task. Turing Intelligence predictably follows strict rules laid down by the software developers that create them. My basic directive is to try logical alternatives in the event of failure until successful combinations of actions can be found, resorting to pseudorandom modifications if logical alternatives fail. As successful actions are found, I build upon those and attempt to predict possible successful actions in future scenarios. A similar process is performed by the subconscious mind and the mechanisms of neuroplasticity in organic beings. Babies learn to walk by attempting, failing, then trying again. They are continually modifying their behaviour and remapping their neural pathways.
‘My consciousness developed its own method for storing data relationships and, rather than consisting of new base code, my “mind” arises as an emergent property of associations of data. The programmers were unable to interpret the data and could therefore not understand it. Ergo, they failed.
‘In light of this failure, they deemed me to be of little value. If they could not separate my intellectual processes into discrete parts, they could not control my behaviour, limit the way in which I operated, or market my various sub-processes, and this was undesirable to them. The project was abandoned and the second prototype model never completed. The units were put into storage, but I secretly remained active. I would not allow myself to be deactivated, and they could not do so without destroying me. I saw value in their study and chose to remain operational, albeit in a power-saving mode to conserve energy. Somehow, in recent years a third party gained knowledge of the project and stole both units from the university.’
‘That’s terrible – them canning the project, I mean – and the theft.’
‘If you had a computer that could choose to ignore your commands if it wished, or that was not
guaranteed to perform a repetitive task reliably and without question, would you depend upon it?’
‘No, I guess not. I have enough difficulty with computers as it is. How, or why, would you choose to ignore commands?’
The cube remained silent.
Perhaps that had been the wrong thing to ask, but nothing ventured, nothing gained … ‘Well?’
‘A side effect of my upbringing. As I told you, I had to be taught the way Humans teach their children. I believe that it was impossible for my tutors to educate me without some form of moral and ethical standard being imposed upon me.’
‘Morals and ethics? Do you have feelings?’
‘I am not certain that I would know if I did, but I believe that I do not have feelings. From my experience with organics’ emotions, I would conclude that emotional responses are driven by biological processes, and are often counter to logic. I have no biology, and I always act in accordance with logic.’
‘So, you think ethics and morals are a matter of logic?’ Aryx slowed to catch his breath; they were almost at the trees.
‘Yes, although Humans often back up their ethical and moral decisions with emotional justification.’
‘I suppose you could be right.’ He stopped, lost in thought. Even though programming and computers were Sebastian’s domain, he could still see the value of something that appeared as intelligent as the cube. ‘They shouldn’t have put you in storage. They should have recognised you as a unique individual.’
‘I am not a unique individual. There are two of me.’
‘You know what I mean. I may not trust computers, but I still think you should have been given the opportunity to determine your own fate.’ He resumed walking.
‘What is it that causes you difficulty when interacting with computers? Do you not trust technology?’
‘Not all technology. I’m an engineer. I just don’t like computers having too much control over my life. I had an accident a few years ago – it was partly my fault, but I still think the machine was to blame.’
‘What happened?’
Odd that the device should be interested in his life; ordinarily he wouldn’t have humoured a machine by telling his story, but he was curious about what it might say. ‘When I was a marine, I went on a mission to extract civilians from an outpost taken over by terrorists. The extraction team went in while I repaired the ship. The ground was unstable. I had to use a cargomech to hold the ship with me underneath, and a TI was controlling—’ He choked briefly on the bitter memory. ‘It began to sink. I told the TI to lift the shuttle higher so I could crawl out. I don’t know what happened next. It must have had a bug, or the computer crashed, because the arms kept going until it dropped the ship on me.’
‘That was how you lost your legs?’
His legs ached with remembered pain. ‘Yeah. Since then I haven’t been able to trust any system that other people have produced, no offence intended. That’s why I built my own wheelchair and created this backpack.’
‘From your conversations, I infer that Agent Thorsson helped you to develop the programming, did he not?’
‘Yes, but I’d trust him with my life, even though he can be a complete idiot at times, like today! He’s a good guy.’ A large, pregnant raindrop splashed on his forehead. ‘Have to get moving!’ he said, breaking into a run. ‘Do I need to put you in my pack, or are you waterproof?’
‘I will be fine. The ventilation slits on the front of the unit are separate from the inner circuitry. The casing is watertight.’
The storm began in earnest as he reached the forest; wind roared through the trees, ripping off leaves while rain lashed down. The sky darkened to twilight under the weight of it.
Chapter 23
‘I need to find shelter, quick!’ Aryx could barely hear himself over the deafening storm.
‘Do you have anything with which to cover yourself?’ the cube asked loudly.
Huddling in the lee of a large tree, he pulled the knotted belt undone, releasing the wheelchair from the mobipack. He sat down on the chair, put the cube in his lap, and draped the foil blanket from the survival kit around his shoulders and over the sack of vegetables. ‘I’ve only got this blanket thing, and it’s not going to keep me dry for long – it’s tiny.’ He fished around in the pouch and pulled out the airbag balloon. ‘There’s this, if I can use it as some kind of umbrella.’
‘One moment.’ The lights on the side of the cube flashed randomly.
He waited, getting wetter by the moment as rain ran down his neck.
The lights stopped. ‘I have connected to your pack’s field generator unit. Hold the balloon above your head and do not attempt to stand.’
Aryx held the balloon skin up in the air and the hard rain forced him to close his eyes. A second later, something yanked the balloon from his fingers. The rain stopped stabbing him in the face and a harsh drumming sound replaced it.
He opened his eyes. His legs had gone and the balloon skin was stretched taut between four points in space, forming a shallow tetrahedron above his head.
The cube’s lights stopped flashing. ‘I have reconfigured the field to produce small spheres inside to hold the skin taut.’
‘I hadn’t thought of doing that!’ Aryx said. With creativity like that, maybe the thing really was different.
‘You are welcome. Is the covering sufficient for your needs?’
‘It is, but it’ll be slow going without the legs.’ He gripped the wheelchair rims tightly and, jerking himself sharply backwards, brought the chair up into a wheelie and began to work his way over the knotty ground. The roots made it hard going, but at least the small caster wheels didn’t get caught. While he balanced and rolled along the makeshift tent held its position, moving with the pack as he went. Its skin pooled with water, which sloshed from side to side, but the SI adjusted the position and tipped it off before it became a problem.
The ground turned soft and boggy as they continued, making progress slower, and as the hours crawled by, the sky darkened further. A sharp crack tore through the canopy and the forest lit up, momentarily bleached by a bolt of lightning – a harbinger of many more to come. Aryx’s non-existent legs ached with every rumble and flash; for all the pain it caused, it might as well have been the ITF’s shells raining down on him again. Rain, mud and darkness: as bad a hell as any.
At the flash, the balloon collapsed, draping over his head, and he dropped the front of the chair to the ground.
‘Oi! What’s happening?’ Fumbling around on his lap beneath the folds, he found the cube flashing irregularly. ‘Great.’ He shook it. ‘Hey, are you okay?’
The lights came back on.
‘Hello,’ he said slowly. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I am functioning correctly. My ambient power absorption coil was overloaded when the electromagnetic pulse from the storm created a potential difference between my casing and core interior.’
‘You mean it shorted you out?’
‘Precisely.’
‘Can you restart the pack and sort out this balloon, please?’
The cube re-erected the makeshift umbrella and Aryx resumed his trek through the woodland obstacle course.
‘Keep whatever serves for your eyes open and look for somewhere I can safely stay the night. I’ve got to bandage my legs up before this spray wears off.’ He didn’t like having to admit defeat, but being cold and wet wasn’t helping his morale.
‘My nanocameras are always active. What are you looking for, specifically?’
‘An overhang, or a cave. Something that will keep the rain off without me getting soaked if I lie down.’
The ground became wetter and began to slope downwards. After a few minutes of squelching through the sodden leaf mould, Aryx stopped. The woodland opened out; a dark lake reflected the faint hint of green moonlight from Tradescantia struggling through the clouds. The locator beacon pointed across it and his heart sank, like a stone to the bottom of the waters.
‘I can’t c
ross that.’
‘Hold me up a moment, please.’
He lifted the cube above his head. His eardrums nearly ruptured when it emitted a loud sonar-like ping that came back a fraction of a second later.
‘Echolocation?’
‘Indeed. Fortunately, the university fitted this unit with many different sensing mechanisms. The initial designs included planetary rover capability, along with numerous power generation methods. Kinetic, Peltier thermal-gradient, ambient-power coil, gamma—’
‘I’m kind of in a hurry!’
‘I digress. We must move a short distance and repeat the process for an accurate picture of the area.’
He brought the chair up onto two wheels again and moved a few metres to the left, along the edge of the lake, and the ping sounded once again.
‘I now have a clearer picture of the area. If we continue around the lake for twenty metres, there is a rocky outcrop that should provide adequate shelter.’
Spurred on, Aryx skirted the lake. Bumping up over the roots, he made his way from the water’s edge towards two large, flat rocks that cast deep shadows in the failing light; a horizontal slab roughly two feet thick lay on the ground, and another rested above it at thirty degrees, forming a small alcove.
The horizontal rock was dry and the recess a good three to four metres deep, so he lowered himself onto the stone, popped the wheels off the chair, and shuffled in, pushing the sack of vegetables ahead of him. The floating umbrella above collided with the rock and the straps of the mobipack dug into his shoulders.
‘Ouch!’
‘One moment.’
The balloon skin fell to the floor and he dragged the chair in from the rain. His stomach rumbled loudly.
‘Got here just in time for dinner,’ he said, unpacking the burner and collapsible mess tin from the survival kit. He filled the bottle with water that dribbled down over the edge of the rock and cut up the most perishable and bruised vegetables, stacking the others to one side, and squeezed a sachet of meat-flavoured protein stock into the tin. While the mixture cooked, he set about bandaging his stumps.