Katya knew very little about the legends of Earth, but she knew what a Medusa was, and the sphere’s name was well chosen. In the stories, the Medusa was a woman so hideous that to look upon her face turned the hapless observer to stone. Here, the four of them stood there terrified to move, to do anything that the Leviathan might consider aggressive. They might not have been literally turned to stone, but they were still petrified.
“What are you going to do, Kane?” said Tokarov, trying not to move his lips.
“I have no idea,” Kane replied in a tone of resignation.
“No idea,” echoed Lukyan, with hollow disgust.
“No idea at all. I wasn’t expecting garlands and flowers when I came back, but I was hoping for a little tolerance at least. Perhaps I should have come by myself.”
Nobody answered, but nobody argued. Suddenly more beams sparked out of the sphere, bright reds and blues, the dots travelling across the walls clearly visible against the slightly reflective whiteness. They swept and whirled and then quickly drew together on Kane. They travelled quickly across him like scurrying beetles. The only one that didn’t move was the dull violet dot in the middle of his forehead.
“You are identified.”
Katya had no idea where the voice came from, it seemed to be in the air all around. Deep and sonorous, like the dying tones of metal striking metal in a large cavern, the voice was full of incorrect inflexions and emphasis. It was clearly not the product of a human throat.
Kane looked upwards, uncertain how to respond. Finally, he tried. “Hullo.”
“You were rejected. You have no function here.”
“Yes, I know. I was…” he shrugged, rolled his eyes looking for inspiration, “…just passing. Thought I’d drop in.”
“Where is drone six? The object in the retrieval bay is not drone six.”
Lukyan winced to hear his beloved Baby called an “object.”
“I’m afraid it, drone six, that is, I’m afraid it met with a bit of an accident.” Kane waited for an immediate reply, but none was forthcoming. “Sorry for your loss.” Still no answer. “So, I took its IFF unit so I could visit you.”
“You were rejected,” repeated the voice of the Leviathan. Katya wondered what it meant by that. Kane had simply left, not been rejected. At least, that’s the way he said it had happened. “You have no function here.”
“I think I do have a function here. It’s your current activities; they are not within your operational parameters.”
“Operations are within acceptable parameters.”
“No,” replied Kane in a chiding voice, “they are not. I’m very familiar with them and you are operating outside them.” He crossed his arms – slowly so as not to antagonise the Medusa sphere – and started to lecture the Leviathan. “You are pursuing a seek and destroy strategy. You know full well you’re not supposed to do anything that is actively aggressive without a human in that seat over there. Self-defence is all very well, but you saw off the vessel that first reactivated you. That should be that. You should have stood down afterwards, because that’s what your standing orders tell you to do.” Kane stopped and waited with his chin thrust forward as if expecting an apology.
“You are incorrect,” said the Leviathan.
Kane couldn’t have looked more surprised if he’d been told he been spelling his name wrong for the last year.
“What do you mean, incorrect?”
“Parameters state that when discovered, strategies of covert offence are to be employed. These strategies are being employed.”
“That’s not right,” said Kane under his breath. Then, speaking up, “What are your targeting priorities?”
“Category one combatants comprise the following.” The Leviathan started to list possible targets in the most abstract ways. Katya could follow them at first, but after a while even Tokarov started to look confused. Then Kane interrupted the list.
“Hold on, hold on. I need some clarification here. Which target category are we in now? Three? Four?”
“One.”
The colour leeched out of Kane’s face. “But you were listing civilian categories. Non-combatants. You were listing babies and the sick.”
“Category one targets.”
Kane spoke as if he didn’t want to hear the answers. “What is in category two?”
“Category two contains no definitions.”
“Category three. What’s in category three?”
“Category three contains no definitions.”
“What is in category blue?”
Katya looked sharply at him. During school, they’d seen historical simulations of important battles of the War of Independence. Category blue was the generic name for allies.
The Leviathan replied immediately.
“Category blue contains no definitions.”
Something was terribly, terribly wrong. The Leviathan was prepared to attack and destroy even vessels from Earth. There was only one possible conclusion; the great warship was insane.
Lukyan, Tokarov, and Katya stood in silence as Kane tried to find what had gone wrong. The Leviathan answered each question fully and, as far as they knew, accurately, but none of it helped. Synthetic intelligences are complex, but they are predictable at least as far as their motivations and goals, for these are the very things programmed deep into their fibres. An SI simply couldn’t go mad and decide to kill everybody because it felt like it. Nor could a simple malfunction suddenly turn it from a precision weapon into a threat to all sides. The only other possibility was that the vessel had somehow been reprogrammed. Kane was trying to find out by whom in the hope that this might reveal the reasons behind such an irrational act.
“Those were not the operational parameters you left Earth with,” Kane said, his irritation starting to show. He barely seemed aware of the Medusa’s sighting and sensor dots on him anymore. “They were not the ones you had when I left, either. You have been reprogrammed. Identify any and all personnel who have accessed your command levels since arriving at Russalka.”
“Kane, Havilland.”
“Yes, but when and for what purpose?”
The Leviathan gave a date ten years before and added, “Maintenance and examination protocols were enacted.”
“What changes were made?”
“None.”
“Fine. That’s good. I didn’t break anything by accident. Now, list all subsequent accesses.”
“None.”
“None?” Kane shook his head angrily as if somebody was telling him black was white and expecting him to believe it. “What do you mean, none?”
“No subsequent access demands were made to command levels subsequent to arrival at Russalka.”
“Kane,” whispered Lukyan, very conscious of the laser dot on him, “perhaps the Terrans programmed this in before you left.”
“What?” said Kane. He snorted with derision. “They told it to regard them as deadly enemies? Does that seem likely to you? Besides, even if they were crazy enough to enter such a program it would still have been registered as a command access.”
“Not if it was programmed not to…”
“No,” interrupted Kane firmly, “it does not make sense. They had no way of knowing I wouldn’t end up in that chair, no way of predicting this little scene. Therefore, why spend a lot of time and effort covering up a trail they never expected anybody to even have the chance of finding? It can’t be so.”
“Kane,” said Tokarov, “something’s bothering me about all this.”
“Only one thing? You’re ahead of the rest of us then.”
“Seriously, if it considers us all enemies, why are we still alive?”
Kane started to open his mouth to reply, but stopped. He frowned. His gaze wandered back and forth across the floor as he worked through possible reasons and discarded them one by one. “You know, lieutenant,” he said finally, worry evident in his face, “I have no idea.” He looked back at the exit. “I’m not even sure how we’re go
ing to get out of here.”
“Go?” said Katya. “We can’t go. We came here to…”
A warning glance from Kane made her reconsider her words. She’d been about to say “…destroy this thing.” Saying out loud that they were a threat to the Leviathan while it was pointing high energy lasers at each of them might have been a fatal mistake. Instead, she said, “…deal with the situation.”
“I think,” said Kane, choosing his words just as carefully, “that the situation is very much in control of the situation. If we were to attempt to deal with the situation, I fear the situation would deal with us first.”
“We’ve proved that we can get in,” said Lukyan, “and that’s enough to be getting on with. It will have to be enough. I suggest we leave and reconsider what to do next.”
Kane nodded. “I agree. Lieutenant?” Tokarov also nodded. “Well, we’re all agreed, then.”
“I agree too,” said Katya.
The three men had the grace to at least look embarrassed. “All agreed,” said Kane quickly. They turned to leave. “Would you open the hatch, please?”
“Which is the replacement?” said the Leviathan.
Kane stopped and looked back, his mouth working soundlessly. “What?” he managed.
“Which is the replacement?”
“Clarify your statement,” said Kane, but Katya could see he already knew full well what the Leviathan meant, just as she knew.
“Which of these three humans is to replace you as the biological component in my intelligence?”
“What makes you believe any of them are?”
For its answer, shimmering multi-coloured beams spat from the surface of the Medusa sphere. Suddenly, there were two Kanes. The new one was faintly translucent and Katya realised it was a projected, animated hologram, a technology unavailable on Russalka since the war destroyed the few facilities that contained it. The new Kane was nothing like the one she’d first met back in the launch locks. He seemed younger and was wearing a Terran uniform. With a small shock, she realised that this was Kane as he’d been ten years ago. He was pacing up and down in front of the door, his eyes and hair wild. He looked like a man at the edge of a breakdown.
“Why do you wish to leave?” boomed the Leviathan.
“I… I just,” the holographic Kane ran his fingers through his hair and clamped his palms to the sides of his head in frustration and fury. “I just need to go, that’s all.”
“You have your function.”
“I cannot fulfil it, you know that.”
“Then you are without function.”
“In that case, I might as well go.” The younger Kane looked optimistically at the door, but it remained sealed.
“You may still have utility for the mission. You will be retained.”
“No!” barked Kane. “No! I will not… You… This mission is over!”
“You do not have the authority to declare the mission aborted. You will be retained.”
“And what if I never have ‘utility’ again?” Katya could see the fear in the recorded Kane’s face. The real Kane looked away. Katya couldn’t read the expression on his face. It may have been sickened, or it may have been humiliated.
“You will be retained.”
“I could die here! I could get old and die in this… this cybernetic mausoleum. With just you! You for company.” There was a sob in his voice. “I’m in Hell.”
“You are aboard the Terran attack cruiser Leviathan.”
The recorded Kane laughed a horrible bitter laugh that quickly subsided into sobs again. He hammered at the closed hatch with his fists. “Let me go,” he begged, “please let me go.”
“You will be retained,” said the Leviathan, its intonation exactly the same every time it repeated the damning phrase.
Then Kane stopped his sobbing and looked back into the chamber with an air of cunning on his face. “I have utility,” he said.
“Specify your utility.”
“You require a person to interface with, to attain full operational status, yes?”
“That is correct.”
The recording of Kane stepped closer to the throne and pointed to it. “I’ll find you somebody who can sit there for you. I’ll find you somebody to merge with.”
“There are parameters to be observed.”
“I know, I know. I know all about all that. I can find you somebody.”
“Your mission is to locate and retrieve a suitable candidate.” Katya could tell that the Leviathan was not thinking it over with those words; it was telling Kane what to do. In the gap between two sentences, Kane had gone from the Leviathan’s prisoner to its agent. The door, the holographic door, slid open leaving the real one still in place. “Proceed to the launch area. The escape pod is being readied.”
“Yes!” cried the holographic Kane exultantly. “Yes!” He ran through the shadowed door.
The coruscating, brightly coloured beams faded and the laser-fed echoes from ten years before vanished.
“You have fulfilled your function,” said the Leviathan. Lukyan, Tokarov and Katya all looked at Kane with horror.
“Which is the replacement?” demanded the Leviathan.
Chapter 11
Mythical Creatures
“You did this deliberately!” roared Lukyan.
“No!” Kane looked in as much shock as the others. His eyes wavered around even as he tried to explain himself, as if he were trying to deal with the present and the future simultaneously.
“Dirty Grubber…” Lukyan wanted to say something so vicious that it exceeded even his vocabulary. Instead he reached for the sidearm he’d strapped on before they’d left the mining station.
“Hold on,” snapped Tokarov, grabbing his wrist. Lukyan glared at him as if to say he could be next if he liked, but Tokarov’s steady eye-contact gave him pause. “If you draw that gun, the Leviathan will kill you before you’ve even got the safety off. Calm down. It’s the only way we’re going to get through this.”
Lukyan slowly subsided, but the looks he gave Kane were still venomous.
“I’m sorry,” said Kane hopelessly to nobody in particular, “I’m so sorry. I forgot that I ever said such a thing. I was desperate, I had to get out. I’d have said anything. I did say anything.”
“Leviathan,” rumbled Lukyan, his fury suppressed but evident, “why was this man here, Kane, you said he was rejected. Why?”
The reply was curt, factual and unhelpful. “Interface misphasing.”
“What does that mean?”
Kane shook his head. “You’re wasting your time. It doesn’t understand language in the same way you do. It was never programmed to act like a thesaurus.”
Lukyan turned on him. “Fine. You tell me then. What the blazes is ‘interface misphasing’?”
“I don’t think this is the time or the…”
“It’s exactly the time and the place,” said Lukyan, darks threats in his voice.
“It’s not like we can walk out of here,” said Katya. “Please, Kane. If you were rejected, we need to know why. Maybe we can make it reject all of us.”
Kane heaved an exasperated sigh. “Simply put,” he said with a sideways glance at Lukyan, “it means the Leviathan couldn’t interface with my nervous system. It’s supposed to attach itself to nerve endings and the grey and white matter of the spine and brain for full interface. For some reason my nervous system rejected it, or it rejected my nervous system. I don’t know which. All I know was that the attempt was very painful.” He shuddered at the memory.
Tokarov looked cynical. “You don’t know why it happened?”
“No. I don’t know why it happened.”
“It just strikes me as strange that the Terrans should choose you to go with this extraordinary vessel…”
“I volunteered.”
“Were you the only volunteer?”
Kane’s lips narrowed. “No.”
“Well then, chose you from a pool of volunteers to be part of a vital
mission and entrusted this astonishing craft, the Leviathan, to you. They did all this, gave you such a responsibility and never tested you for compatibility with it?”
“They tested me.” Kane seemed to be growing, in his own way, as angry as Lukyan under this inquisition. “I was fully compatible.”
“So what went wrong when it came time to do it for real?”
Kane’s voice was tight and Katya half expected him to refuse to answer or even to strike Tokarov. “If I could tell you,” he hissed through clenched teeth, “I would tell you.”
She was getting a little angry herself. All this bunch of so-called “adults” was doing was making enemies of one another when what they really needed to be concentrating on was how to get out alive.
“Leviathan!” Her voice sounded less impressive echoing around the chamber than she’d hoped, but it still stopped the men bickering. They looked at her in bewilderment. “When one of us is selected, what will become of the rest?”
“They will be without function. They will be stored until a function arises.”
“Clarify stored in this context.” Katya had spoken to enough artificial intelligences to know the terms it was easiest to communicate in. At the moment, the Leviathan was clever in military AI terms, but nowhere near as intelligent as it would be when it got its human… component? Victim? At the moment, it could be fooled easily enough if you were careful and clever.
“Confined to living quarters.”
“Those were designed for one person,” groaned Kane behind her. She ignored him.
“What if we had a function to fulfil for you? Would we be allowed to leave then?”
“That would be dependent on the priority of the utilisation.”
“We will attempt to recover drone six for you,” said Katya. “You cannot build new drones, each one you lose must be a serious drain on your resources. We can try and get it back.”
Katya's World Page 14