The Trilisk AI (Parker Interstellar Travels #2)

by Michael McCloskey

  “I guess I believe you. I find it hard to grasp intuitively,” Arlin said.

  “I can offer a more intuitive explanation, at the cost of over-abstracting. Take a five-year-old kid. When he considers a brand new problem, he sometimes see it as black or white. He examines these problems from fewer angles, and he has a smaller grasp of the consequences. When an adult considers a new problem, she juggles more facts than a kid can. But does the answer always come more easily? No, sometimes you become aware of more and more of the what-ifs and the tradeoffs. Now remember, I said a new problem, so you aren’t supposed to make use of canned answers kids just don’t know yet. Sometimes the more you know, the more confused you get. It all seemed so simple when you were a kid. Now you know enough to know you’re partly guessing all the time. Are you a hundred times smarter than a kid? Not really. You pushed farther up the curve until the weight of a bunch of facts, consequences, and unknowns overwhelmed your ability to push farther. You considered all sorts of things the kid never even thought of, and all it got you was a swarm of what-ifs you can’t really tie down. You may have achieved some key insight the kid couldn’t see, but it wasn’t easy. Now consider—kids are low on the curve, adults farther up, and a genius way up there, but it’s getting steeper and steeper. Doubling the power of a genius’s mind can’t get twice as far anymore, it only gets you just a bit farther up the rising curve.”

  Arlin shook his head. “I’ll just take your word for it,” he said.

  Relachik laughed. “You think that’s bad? Try talking with a physicist about the gravity spinner sometime,” he said.

  Now’s as good a time as any, Relachik sent Cilreth. We’re only a few minutes away from Arbor Gellon Five.

  Cilreth’s face changed. She sat silent for a moment, sandwich in hand. Then she set her food down.

  “Something up?” Arlin said.

  “Yes. Looks like they’re the sloppy type. We have a major lead from the nearby system, Arbor Gellon Five.”

  “Arbor Gellon? Crazy luck,” Arlin said.

  “Well, the reason I got the lead is partly because we’re nearby. I concentrated my efforts there since we’re passing by.”

  “So what’s the lead? What’s the plan?” Arlin asked.

  “Someone there knows a lot about the ones we’re searching for. A collaborator. This is the jackpot.”

  “Take us there now,” Relachik said.

  “Sure!” Arlin said. He got up and walked away from the mess toward the cargo bay.

  Relachik got up after him. “I’m going to work up details for a meeting.”

  Okay then, the plan is in motion, Cilreth sent.

  Yes. Just stay calm, Relachik replied.

  Arlin brought the ship into the Arbor Gellon system. He headed for the sole habitation there, a colony of about ten million souls on the fifth planet and a space habitat in orbit. Their spinner brought them into a reasonable range. Then Arlin used simpler thrusters to rendezvous with the habitat. A complex series of bureaucratic handshakes took place, mostly automated procedures outside the typical realm of human attention. The Violet Vandivier proved itself a legitimate vessel.

  This time there was a bit of extra scrutiny. The security had been tightened since the destruction of the Seeker. A ring of protective satellites were under construction in orbit of the planet, as well as a small Space Force vessel. Once again Relachik took note of these developments and felt annoyance at his lack of clearance.

  As they made their final approach, Relachik found Arlin in person and spoke aloud. “Arlin. We have a name. This guy is on the space habitat. I’m sending you the details.” He sent the information Cilreth had provided about someone who lived on the habitat. “Check this out. Make sure it’s not a trap. If the guy is alone, we’ll arrange a meet at another spot.”

  Arlin nodded.

  “Look,” Relachik said. “You haven’t done anything wrong. If it is a trap, they’re either after me or Telisa and Magnus.”

  “I wasn’t complaining,” Arlin said.

  “Just letting you know I’m not putting you in harm’s way...yet.”

  Arlin went to his weapons locker. He came back to the lock wearing a thick protective suit. Relachik saw his equipment and nodded.

  “You got something better than a stunner?”

  “Yes. A laser,” he said, drawing the weapon.

  At the cue ‘laser,’ Relachik activated the trap.

  There was a loud snap and crackle to their left. The ship’s lights winked. A humanoid form materialized from thin air. The stranger emitted a surprised curse.

  Arlin shot the form in the shoulder without hesitation, then charged forward and bowled the intruder over. Relachik joined him, grabbing the spy’s still-holstered weapon, some kind of compact slugthrower.

  “So you made me,” the person croaked. A visor covered half the face, open over the mouth. Goggled eyes locked onto Relachik.

  “This is where you get off. Leave the suit behind.”

  “You’re going to be in a—”

  “Save the speech or we’ll space you instead,” Relachik snapped.

  The man stripped off the thick stealth suit. It had protected him from the majority of the laser’s energy. He wore only a thin shirt and undersheers after shedding the suit. The laser burn was a small black mark on the edge of his pectoral. Pain dominated the spy’s face.

  Relachik covered him for a couple of tense minutes while the Vandivier descended. Finally Relachik extended the ramp. It revealed a remote location on a barren planet.

  “Move it,” Relachik prompted.

  The man staggered down the ramp. Arlin closed the Vandivier back up and began the takeoff procedure.

  “Even though you warned me, it still scared the crap out of me when he showed up out of thin air!” Cilreth said. “He’s been here the whole time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who could have sent him? Maybe we need to interrogate him.”

  “He has to be Space Force. I guess they don’t trust me very much.” They’re covering all their bases because of the aliens. And they know I made unusual decisions in an encounter. How much do they know?

  “What now?” Cilreth asked.

  “We have to check all the systems and see what the remora broke,” Relachik said. He stole a glance at the remora. It was a thick disc stuck to the ceiling above the spot where the spy had been standing. A small green light winked on its surface as Relachik disarmed it.

  “We used the lowest setting, so it shouldn’t be too bad,” Arlin said. “I have to admit, I’d never have thought of using a remora inside my own ship. But it sure did a number on his stealth suit.”

  Cilreth looked the suit over. “We don’t have a key for it.”

  “Luckily, I have a computer expert in my employ.”

  “I’m a searcher, not a hacker.”

  “You can’t do it?”

  “I can do it. But it’s going to cost you extra. Just because you risked my life, just then.”

  “As long as we find Telisa.”

  Cilreth nodded and retreated with the gear. Relachik suspected she’d head to the cargo bay, where she could find some useful tools for her investigation. Or perhaps she would take the software angle first.

  Relachik walked in circles through the tiny ship. His resolve to find his daughter remained firm, though now he saw a larger chance of failure. What if he led the Force to her? What if the force planned to catch and arrest them both? Dammit, Tel, you put us in a tight spot. I hope it was worth it.

  He thought of Telisa’s mother, a principled scientist, a woman who made great advances in understanding the first alien devices recovered by the Force, until her untimely death. He knew he was doing right by her memory to sacrifice everything to protect their daughter.

  After a while, he decided to pester Cilreth. He knew she wouldn’t have made much progress yet, but he wanted to know if she would still participate in their training routines.

  “Cilreth. Are you checking ou
t that suit?”

  “Of course. You think I could resist slavering over this treat?”

  “Can we use it?”

  “Too early to say. I’m still marveling over its design. Well, actually, I’m trying to figure out if it’s one-hundred percent genuine Terran know-how, or modified alien tech, or reverse-engineered from alien tech. I may never know, though; some of these components have been shielded against probing.”

  “Of course. A lot of Space Force stuff is hardened against prying eyes.”

  “Well, I’m gonna keep prying.”

  “Good. Keep me informed. Shall we run a few more scenarios at fourteen hundred hours?”

  “How about eighteen hundred? I prefer to work in longer spurts.”

  “Eighteen hundred it is.”

  Chapter 8

  “What’s up?” Telisa called from the entrance to the cargo bay.

  “We’ve arrived,” Magnus said.

  “Where exactly?”

  Magnus shrugged. “Shiny says it’s his home.”

  Telisa accessed the Iridar’s sensor data. She saw a light brown planet zoom into her mind’s eye. It was roughly Earth-size. The atmosphere was thin. It wasn’t a gorgeous blue and green planet filled with life. It looked rocky and dead.

  “Shiny, has your planet always looked like that? Or was it the destroyers?”

  “Planet appears normal from here,” Shiny said. “Massive damage internally. Shiny civilization hidden, subterranean, submerged.”

  Telisa sifted through some of the details of the planetary data. There were indeed a few signs of life tucked away, even on the surface. Nothing big. In fact much of what they had detected among the rocks were sessile creatures deriving sustenance from the star, creatures half plant, half animal. Hints of vast underground tunnels were there, as expected. Minimal volcanic activity. The air at the surface could sustain humans.

  “What is it called? I don’t think I should be calling you a Shinarian anymore.”

  Shiny stomped several of his feet in a quick pattern.

  “Ah, right,” Telisa said. “Say it again please?”

  Shiny stomped the pattern again. There seemed to be a duplicated preamble and a louder clack at the end.

  “Sounds like...Vovok,” Telisa said.

  “Vovok it is, then,” Magnus said.

  “What algorithm provides translation?” Shiny asked.

  “A whimsical one. No worries. The name doesn’t translate. So I’m calling it Vovok. Which makes you a Vovokan. Be glad I didn’t call it Klack Klack.”

  Before Shiny could inquire further, Telisa asked more questions.

  “Where should we drop? What can we expect to find? Besides your target industrial seed, I mean. And you have to give us the specs of what that seed looks like.”

  Shiny downloaded an information module to Iridar’s storage. Telisa immediately became aware of it when she received a pointer.

  “Study. Prepare,” Shiny said.

  Telisa saw a series of low pillars, hourglass-shaped, lined up in the cargo bay.

  “And these?” Telisa asked, pointing at the objects.

  “Gift. Offer. Mutual benefit,” Shiny said.

  “Those are what you made on the way here, right? You said before they are remote drones.”

  “These gather information. They warn Telisa and Magnus of destroyer activity. Allow Shiny to monitor general, overall, long-range situation from remote location.”

  “Only us? Why aren’t you coming?”

  “Enemy. Danger.”

  “But you expect us to go in your place? This deal is getting worse.”

  “Robotic enemy sensitive to Shiny technological and biological footprint. Not sensitive to Telisa, Magnus. Safer, more likely success utilizing Terran agents.”

  Telisa accessed the information module. In her mind’s eye she saw a three-dimensional map of a Vovokan city below. The complexity of what she saw sank in. The city he had showed them was a subterranean maze of epic proportions. The map contained many layers of various kinds of infrastructure. Telisa could only observe one of them at a time without overwhelming her senses. To look at all the tunnels, connections, and rooms at once was just too confusing.

  “There are a lot of tunnels and pipes,” Magnus said, understating the obvious. “But I see no electronic networks.”

  “Power and information are transferred through electromagnetic fields,” Shiny prompted.

  “So they have broadcast power as well as wireless data transfer,” Telisa summarized carefully.

  “That is vague but right, correct, suitable as abstraction for elementary understanding of a thing very complex, complicated, confusing,” Shiny said.

  “The map can’t be accurate anymore, if there’s been a war,” Magnus said. “I assume the city and your house were breached by destroyers.”

  “Also correct. Vast, wide, incalculable devastation.”

  Telisa searched for any sorrow in the artificial voice but found none.

  There’s no way to tell how he really feels about it. If he feels, Telisa shared with Magnus over another channel.

  “Shiny, how does the destruction of your home make you feel?” Magnus asked for her.

  “Schadenfreude.”

  “What!?”

  “Great opportunity created for personal advance in absence of heavy competition,” Shiny elaborated.

  By Demogorgon’s ninety bitches, Magnus transmitted to her. We’re in league with the nastiest sort of space creature out there.

  We can’t expect an alien to stand up to our standards in moral behavior, Telisa replied, though she felt the same shock.

  “So there will be dead Vovokans. A lot of them. I don’t know what this city was like, but—”

  “This is not city. Target location is inside my house, domicile, abode.”

  “Yes, a house in this city—”

  “All information provided describes my house, abode, dwelling. Constructs outside the target area have not been provided.”

  “What?”

  “You will enter my house from surface. Recommend Telisa and Magnus remain within its confines.”

  Telisa checked to see if Magnus was catching the conversation. From his wide-eyed expression, she judged he was.

  “Shiny, what are the approximate dimensions of your house?”

  “All that is displayed, described, defined here. Twenty-five kilometers by fourteen kilometers at geometric center, extending from surface to an average depth of twelve kilometers.”

  “Five Holies. When am I ever going to learn to stop making assumptions about aliens? I’m supposed to be good at that!” Still, such discoveries are exactly why I find xenos so amazing. I’ve been obsessing on the Trilisks, but Shiny’s race is probably just as interesting.

  “Why is your house so large?” Magnus asked, beating Telisa to the next question.

  “Safety. Productivity. Control. High number of reasons,” Shiny said.

  “So you want us to go in there and get you this seed. That’s all you want out of this? We can take anything we want? We can steal from your house, right?”

  “Affirmative, allowed, encouraged. Industrial seed is sole Shiny stake in operation.”

  “And it just happens to be full of enemy death machines?”

  “Destroyers focused on controlling, suppressing, exterminating Shiny race.”

  His race is being killed off. At least here on their homeworld. I’d be so horrified for Shiny, except he himself seems only ready to take advantage of it.

  “Well do you at least know where this seed is?”

  “Affirmative. Telisa, Magnus, dropped on planet surface nearby. Seed located deep underground.”

  “Makes sense. Your race is subterranean,” Telisa asked.

  “Affirmative, correct, accurate statement of fact.”

  “You don’t have to say that three times, you know,” she said.

  “Each word inaccurate, estimate, approximate. Utilization of multiple words helps to co
mmunicate lack of exact, perfect, aligned match. Defines approximate, estimated, local-meaning space.”

  “Wow. I thought he was using triple words to be clearer,” Magnus said. “But he’s using three words to tell us that there is no exact match. He’s using three words to point out that it’s vague.”

  “I never thought of it that way. What difference does it make? I’m not sure that really makes sense to me. I mean, he’s using three words just in case one is not quite right?” she said.

  “But he knows the words aren’t right so he spreads it out using three.”

  “I’m tired. We need to sleep before we start,” Telisa said.

  “Encouragement,” Shiny said. He didn’t move.

  Telisa and Magnus left him alone in the bay and went to her quarters. Telisa lowered the lights and removed an outer layer of clothing to get comfortable. She noticed she already had Magnus’s eye. She smiled. He never got tired of watching her. They were different, yet compatible in so many ways. They stretched out into her sleeping web and held each other close. Despite her fatigue, Telisa’s mind still raced.

  “If he decides to just take the Iridar and leave...” Telisa whispered.

  “He won’t. He has his own ship. He doesn’t need the Iridar. It’s inferior to his own. No, he needs the industrial seed for real. And he can’t get it. Now therein lies the real danger. Once we’ve retrieved it, we have to hope he’s not as bloodthirsty as we fear he may be.”

  “So, we’re going to go down to Vovok and steal our next batch of artifacts,” she said. “Vovokans. Hmm, I may need to revisit that name. It doesn’t exactly slide off the tongue.”