by M S Murdock
“You will not stand between me and honor.”
“Look, we might have a use for him, a use that’ll make RAM’s position even stronger. Since RAM’s all that’s left of your precious motherland, I’d think that would satisfy your honor even better than confirming his death, now wouldn’t it?”
Masterlink thought it over, the firelight that glinted off his eyes giving him a feral look. It was oven» done to the point of melodrama, but that little detail delighted Holzerhein nonetheless. It was the first time the matrix had held such a detail not of his own creation.
“What would you do with Rogers, to make an asset of him?”
“We could use him to disarm the dissidents.”
“How would you do that?”
“By propping him up as a martyr. We would let him draw them into a group, then crush them once and for all.”
Masterlink shook his head. “Were be alive, he would never join you.”
“You sound mighty sure of that.”
“He was a fanatical American imperialist. He would no more aid your organization than he would mine. Certainly he would never betray his own people. Even as a capitalist, he was not without honor.”
Something about Masterlink’s statement caught at Holzerhein, made him pause in his argument, to wonder at the sudden twinge of envy he felt for the Russian A.I. Envy? Why should he envy Masterlink?
Certainly not for his sense of honor. Honor was for idealists. Besides that, it was impractical. Holzerhein had tried and discarded it as a guiding principle more than a century ago. No, he didn’t envy Masterlink his honor, but he certainly envied him something.
“You do not know Rogers,” Masterlink was saying. “If you did, you would not speak of bringing him to your world. You would give him to me immediately, while it is still in your power to do so.”
Holzerhein smiled involuntarily. He had it. What he envied was Masterlink’s sense of purpose. The Al. had crossed five hundred years of time; by rights he should be lost, grasping for support wherever he could find it, but here he sat in Holzerhein’s study, acting as if he owned the place and demanding that his enemy be delivered to him.
“Your choice of words is interesting,” Holzerhein said. “You say ‘give him to me’ rather than simply ‘destroy him.’ Your obligation to honor notwithstanding, I wonder if you don’t want him alive.”
“I want him alive long enough to exact my revenge from him, yes. He 18 not yours to kill, but mine.”
“He is mine. I could ensure his death whenever I wish, and his head impaled on one of your antennae. Then where would you be?”
“Then honor would compel me to kill you in his stead.”
Holzerhein felt a brief thrill run through him at that bold statement. No one had had the courage to say such a thing to him for decades. No one had had the power to back up such a statement, but neither did Masterlink and that hadn’t stopped him. Holzerhein smiled. He was getting to like this A.I.
But first things first. If Masterlink managed to get to Rogers without Holzerhein’s permission, any kind of real partnership would be impossible. Holzerhein would be able to get over it, but he didn’t think Masterlink could. That idiot sense of honor wouldn’t let him. He would be expecting retaliation, or at least resentment, and he would be paranoid until it came. The only way to prevent that was to keep him away from Rogers until they got this personal vendetta of his straightened out.
Splitting was more difficult when the matrix was in reality mode, but Holzerhein had come up with a method. He closed his eyes, imagined his center of consciousness as a focus of energy just behind the bridge of his nose, then shrunk that focus tighter and tighter until he had a singularity. The singularity bridged a connection into the matrix again, and he poured a duplicate of himself through the bridge.
And now to see about Rogers. Leaving a marker behind, so he could find the singularity entry point again, he flipped to the matrix core, then out along the communications lines into Ardala’s programming space. From there he identified the line with the most activity on it and followed a data clump outward until he found himself off' planet in her private ship’s computer. It wasn’t as roomy as in the RAM matrix, but it was big enough to hold him, though there were very few places in it where he could go without breaking through her security first. Fortunately most people left a “doorbell” in their systems for visitors such as Holzerhein, and Ardala was no exception. He rang it.
Ardala came on line, audio only “Who is it?”
“Your Uncle Simund.”
“Oh, hello!”
Was there tension in her voice? “Will you give me video?”
“Sorry, I’m not decent.”
“You’re always decent, and I’m a hologram anyway.”
“And you’re also a lecher.”
“True,” Holzerhein admitted. He considered crashing her security, not simply to peek, but more importantly to see what else she might be hiding, but he decided against it. Ardala’s security would be tough to crack. Doing it would almost certainly damage her system, and this really wasn’t important enough to get her angry at him. Besides, she probably wasn’t clothed. Ardala seldom was.
“Have you made arrangements to pick up Rogers?”
“Of course.” Again, that tension in her voice.
“Good I’ve got the A.I. in the matrix with me, and he’s evidently Rogers’s sworn enemy. He’s getting kind of belligerent about it, so I wanted to warn you to keep Rogers under electronic, as well as physical, guard, all right?”
“I--certainly.”
“All right then. I’ll be back to talk to him later, when I’m done with Masterlink.”
“Thank you. I’ll have him ready for you.” Ardala’s formality convinced Simund she was up to something. He had learned that she would reveal all to him in her own time. One never pushed things with his niece. “Good.” He broke the connection and headed back into the RAM matrix to learn more about Masterlink. He knew that the other copy of himself was doing just that even now, that there was really no rush to rejoin, but somehow the advantages of duality never seemed to offset the uncomfortable feeling that someone-even if it was himself-was learning something that he wasn’t privy to.
He flipped back to the study, found the marker he had left, and opened the pathway to his other self, but instead of reaching his own consciousness, he found himself mired instead in a seething, malevolent expanse of conflicting imagery. Sensory data of all descriptions churned in a stew of confusion: visual pieces of study grafted haphazardly onto the smell of vodka, overrun by the feel of moleskin upholstery and the sound of half a flame crackling in the clock. Pieces of light flitted about in short-circuited frenzy, reflecting off smells and sounds and tastes, cavorting through the fragments of pseudoreality until they encountered the wide, gaping hole into the matrix where they flashed into dimensionless data and were gone.
A wrist and forearm floated by, fractured cleanly at the ends like a glass rod snapped 1n two. Holzerhein recognized the end of the sleeve as his own, and now that he paid attention he could spot fragments of his voice, a tuft of hair, and there, an eyeball smeared with the taste of pirozhki. He waded into the fragments, sweeping them aside, searching through them like a person searching for the last piece of merchandise 1n a box full of packing chips, but there was not a trace of Masterlink anywhere.
Just the gaping hole.
So Masterlink had gotten angry and torn up the place, alternate Holzerhein and all. Had it been something he said?
He started searching for word fragments, but he had barely begun when the intruder alarm at the central directory flared like the shot of pain from a suddenly drilled tooth.
OOOOO
Security had held, but Masterlink had left his mark. The last bit of imagery from the study, a three quarters fragment of Holzerhein’s head, stared lifelessly out from the central directory’s main access link.
A declaration of war, or just a warning? Holzerhein wasn’t sure. Masterlink
must have known he couldn’t kill Holzerhein that easily. Even if Holzerhein hadn’t been running doubled at the moment, he had backups stashed all through the matrix; that was a standard precaution for any data entity. To kill Holzerhein, Masterlink would have to wipe out not only the running copy, but all of the backups, and that was simply impossible for an A.I. to do. Some of Holzerhein’s backups were in read-only memory, and he had other, even more secure forms elsewhere. He even had backups off planet. He might lose a few weeks, even months if the more recent backups were destroyed, but nothing short of complete destruction of the entire interplanetary matrix could kill Holzerhein completely. Masterlink might not have known that, but he had to have known that killing one copy wouldn’t do significant damage.
So it was most likely a gesture, a warning to satisfy his electronic honor. Well, Holzerhein knew about gestures, too.
Just in case it was war, he split, split again, and split again, rushing off down every major line in search of his newfound adversary, but one copy made its way to the computer lab where Masterlink’s physical body still rested in its cradle with test instruments plugged into every socket. The Spotlights had been turned off, now that the techs had tapped into the power line.
It was a simple matter to slip into the power supply and reset its output from the low, circuit-sustaining level the satellite required to a searing thousand volts. Holzerhein accessed a camera just in time to see flame shoot from within the cylindrical case. There must have been a dead-man switch wired into the altitude jet fuel tanks, because a moment later the entire computer lab erupted in flame. It was a more violent demonstration than he had intended, but he didn’t care. He’d made his point.
He didn’t expect that to be the end of Masterlink, nor was he disappointed. The shutdowns started almost immediately, whole sections of the matrix winking out of existence as they went off line. Safeties began springing up, limiting access to the remaining sections, but that worked against Masterlink more than it did against Holzerhein. Holzerhein had lived in the matrix for years; he knew alternate paths in and out of anywhere. Now he began throwing up still more barriers, walling off the sources of disturbances until each was isolated in its own micro-universe. A simple purge operation wiped each one clean of data, and of the local copy of Masterlink that was causing the trouble.
But at least one copy was still at large, traveling ahead of Holzerhein and spreading still more destruction in its wake. Copy upon copy of Holzerhein advanced in a wave after it, branching at every junction and checking every peripheral on the way, sealing off access and pushing the intruders head of them until they finally reached the chasm separating the local network from the long-range computers that continued the matrix on into interplanetary space. This last was a physical barrier, erected by the speed of light itself. The matrix continued beyond it, but light-speed lag limited its use to one-way communication beyond near Mars orbit. Holzerhein had just returned from Ardala’s ship along this path, but now he and his copies stopped their advance, for there on the edge waited Masterlink.
There was just one of him. Holzerhein linked together and tried moving to surround him, to cut him off from his only escape before pressing a direct ‘attack, but Masterlink moved still closer to the edge, poised to jump. Holzerhein backed off enough to give him room. Another Holzerhein slipped away, heading back the way they’d come.
There in the matrix, without visual referents or any other reality mode to lend form to their battle, their confrontation at the brink was more like the advance of mold cultures in a Petri dish than like two people facing one another with weapons drawn. Electronic feelers interpenetrated each other’s ranges of influence, were tolerated for communication but not for any other action.
“It’s not polite to kill your host and trash his living room” Holzerhein said.
Masterlink replied, “It is not polite to deny a guest a reasonable request.”
“I didn’t find it reasonable.” “Unfortunate.” “So is your present situation. What do you plan to do now?”
“My position is unchanged. I must kill Buck Rogers. If you kill him first, or through your negligence allow him to be killed, I will take my vengeance upon you.”
“Bravado,” Holzerhein said. “Russians were great ones for bravado in the face of defeat.”
“You have won nothing. I have nearly destroyed your matrix, and I can destroy you as well if you force my hand.”
“Consider it forced.” Even as he spoke, Holzerhein made his move, rushing forward as if to surround the Al. He didn’t expect to succeed at it, but neither did he expect what happened. Masterlink should have leaped off into the void, and he did, but he left behind a suicide copy. The instant his other self was away, the suicide copy met Holzerhein’s advance with a furious attack of its own. It lunged through the communications channels, going straight for Holzerhein’s cognitive functions, rending and tearing without regard for its own survival. Holzerhein felt parts of himself die under the onslaught, taking parts of Masterlink with them, but dying all the same. He tried to expand, to duplicate himself, but those abilities were already gone. All he could do was fight back in the same way, sacrificing pieces of himself to kill pieces of his enemy.
Within milliseconds the battle had degenerated to two mindless automatons bent on mutual destruction for reasons neither could remember. It was a battle that could have no winner, but still they fought on.
00000
At Space Traffic Control, a somewhat different scene unfolded. The copy of Holzerhein that had slipped away only moments before had duplicated again, once more surrounding all the data paths leading to a long-range jump point-the other side of the one at which he and Masterlink were even now confronting one other. This time he had a few extra milliseconds to set up security barriers on all the local paths, and gain control of the transceiver generating the long-range path. He waited patiently, knowing that his other self would eventually make his move, and that Masterlink would only have one place to go.
Sure enough, here he came. Holzerhein waited until the A.I. was completely received, then shut off the transceiver, trapping him in the Traffic Control computer. He didn’t risk opening a two-way communications channel, but instead sent a one-way message in to his captive.
“Bravado,” he said again.
00000
Later, with Masterlink safely put away in a well-guarded corner of the matrix and restoration programs already repairing the damage he had caused, Holzerhein relaxed 1n his study and considered the events of the day. He was once again in hologram form in his real study, the other one still not restored from backup.
All in all, it had been an exciting afternoon, the most exciting one he had had in years, but now that it was over he felt let down. Masterlink had provided him with an unexpected challenge, but Holzerhein had won too easily. Fighting Masterlink had been good sport, nothing more.
And the discovery beforehand that Masterlink had no subjective universe at all for him to explore was now doubly disappointing. What did he have to look forward to tomorrow, and the days after that? Even Masterlink, locked in his peripheral, had more to look forward to than Holzerhein did, for he could at least scheme for eventual revenge. Holzerhein didn’t even have that.
Should he let Masterlink go again? Give him a bigger head start and see if the hunt would last longer? Or perhaps he should kill this Rogers and then let Masterlink go, see how well he could back up his threat. That might be interesting.
While he thought about it, he watched the dust particles drifting through a shaft of sunlight (average particle diameter 0.125 millimeter, his senses informed him). In all his time in the matrix, he had never thought to include that particular detail. It was discouraging, that realization, because it underscored the basic inadequacy that he had always sensed in his electronic existence. Subjective reality was simply not as rich or as spontaneous as the real thing. Even another subjective mind like Masterlink’s couldn’t come up with the sort of complex, detaile
d surprises that the simplest real situation could present.
No, Masterlink as an all-out enemy would be no better than what he was now. Their battle would be just another battle like the last one, lasting maybe an hour instead of a few minutes, but it would hold no surprises.
Besides, it would be just that: a battle. Holzerhein wasn’t a soldier, he was a leader, and leaders didn’t fight battles. Leaders fought wars. Leaders fought other leaders in wars, using soldiers as their weapons. And strategy, of course. That was where the fun came in.
But who could he find to fight a war with? That was where he’d gotten stalled the last time he’d thought about this. There was simply nobody who could put up a good enough fight against all the resources of RAM. NEO, the New Earth Organization, was the best bet, but it was just a bunch of soldiers. They needed a leader before they would be a worthy adversary for Holzerhein.
Ha! Send them Masterlink!
It was a good idea, but it wouldn’t work. NEO was a rebel organization; they chose who they wanted for their leader, and they would never choose an ancient Russian space weapons computer for a leader, no matter how deviously he presented it to them. Rebel organizations chose heroes for their leaders, not-
It hit him that fast. Heroes. If they needed a hero well, he just might have one on hand.
Maybe not. He hadn’t actually seen Rogers; Ardala had to have him by now. Or his body. He could be alive but insane from freezing effects in his brain, or sick from any of a thousand other biological problems. Damn the frailties of meat bodies! Why did his sudden hope have to rest on something so fragile?
Holzerhein winked out of the palace like a burst bubble, streaked through the matrix to the directory, and thence to Ardala’s ship. He’d said he would give her some time, but that was before he’d realized Rogers’s potential. Even if nothing was wrong with Rogers’s health, Holzerhein had to talk with Ardala.