“I’m not sick now,” Stephen Thomas said. “I feel terrific. Satoshi, what do you think?”
“Are you seriously asking whether I think you ought to turn into a diver?”
“Yeah.”
“Stephen Thomas!” Victoria sounded bewildered.
“I like you the way you are,” Satoshi said.
Stephen Thomas pushed himself back against his pillows, slumping down and folding his arms across his chest.
“You guys have got no spirit of adventure.”
“We have a job to do!” Victoria exclaimed. “If you keep on with this, you’re going to be involved in your own changes, you won’t be part of the team —”
“Of course I’m part of the team!” Stephen Thomas exclaimed. “I don’t see what difference this would make. We don’t even know that we’ll find anything on the other side of transition. In the meantime, I’ve got no specimens from Sea, no samples, no nothing! I don’t have a fucking thing to do! So why the hell should anybody care what I do, even if I decide to turn into a fish?”
“You aren’t turning into a fish, Stephen Thomas,” Zev said, his tone solemn. “Divers are still mammals.”
“I know that, Zev!”
“Then why did you say —”
J.D. put her hand on Zev’s arm. He started, glanced over at her, and fell silent, frowning and confused.
Satoshi leaned forward and took Stephen Thomas’s hand. Stephen Thomas flinched and jerked away.
“My hands still itch,” he said.
“Look, Stephen Thomas, if we find the alien ship —”
“The alien ship — if there is an alien ship — is running away from us! We could end up in interstellar space a hundred million light-years from anyplace. Shit, I shouldn’t change into a diver, I should design a change that’ll let me breathe hard vacuum!”
He pulled the quilt up over his head and flung himself over onto his face, twisting the bedding around him.
“Stephen Thomas,” Victoria said.
“Go away, will you all? I’m going back to sleep.”
“You’re doing no such thing, Stephen Thomas.” Professor Thanthavong stood just outside his open windows, gazing in at him with her hands on her hips. “Sit up, I want to talk to you.”
Stephen Thomas obeyed, abashed. He shot a glance at Victoria, but it was clear she had not called Thanthavong as reinforcements, nor had she expected the head of the genetics department to turn up for breakfast.
“Thanks for coming,” Satoshi said.
“Traitor,” Stephen Thomas muttered.
Professor Thanthavong ignored his comment. “What’s this nonsense about your turning into a diver?”
“If I am, it’s my business.”
“Not if it’s happening because of an accident in my lab. And not if it’s happening because of a mistake.”
“I’m not blaming Zev. I don’t see why anybody else ought to.”
“That’s very considerate of you. Nevertheless, it’s an illegal act in our country to become a Changeling.”
Stephen Thomas shrugged. “So I’ll get one life sentence for helping steal Starfarer, and another for being able to breathe underwater.”
“It’s also an illegal act to help someone become a Changeling. Zev is innocent of helping take the starship, but he may be imprisoned for helping you.”
Stephen Thomas had no reply.
“It is a factor to contemplate,” Professor Thanthavong said.
“But I’m already in trouble with your country, Stephen Thomas,” Zev said. “I ran away from the soldiers. I sneaked on board Starfarer. Sort of. But they can’t do anything to me. I’m a Canadian now.”
Victoria groaned softly, but Satoshi and Feral both laughed, and even J.D. smiled.
“Come along,” Thanthavong said to Stephen Thomas. “Get dressed. We can get to work within the hour. Bring your medical record so we can restore Arachne’s files.”
With the original record of his DNA, his genetic structure, Stephen Thomas could select out and dispose of the new DNA that the changing virus had inserted into his chromosomes.
“Yes, well,” Stephen Thomas said, without meeting Thanthavong’s eye. “That’s kind of a problem.”
“You can’t mean to tell me,” Thanthavong said, horrified, “you can’t mean to tell me that you didn’t make a backup.”
“I did!” he said.
“It’s true,” Victoria said. “We all went together for new scans a couple of months ago. We all have backups. Stephen Thomas, I saw yours.”
“I had it,” he said. “But it was in my office.”
His office was in the heap of rubble that used to be the genetics building.
“I thought it would be safer there,” he said.
Chapter 9
So far today, the sun tubes were functioning properly and Arachne remained up and alert, its web strong and responsive.
J.D. crossed campus to her office in the physics building. Her mood was a curious mixture of elation and apprehension: elation that the expedition would continue; apprehension that whoever had tried to stop Starfarer before would try, this time, to prevent it from going anywhere but to Earth.
On either side of the path, spring flowers lay wilted by last night’s unseasonable and untimely light and heat. J.D. doubted the ecosystem of the starship could survive many insults like that one. The environment possessed some resilience, but its size made it vulnerable.
Victoria had put Arachne to work on a self-examination, searching for anomalous programming, for anything that might turn out to be the virus or worm or mole or Trojan horse. J.D. was on her way to help look at whatever bits of code Arachne turned up with. Victoria hoped that someone, somehow, would find the flaw. It was a long shot.
J.D. entered Physics Hill. Victoria and Stephen Thomas and Satoshi stood in the hallway, a message display hanging between them.
“I don’t believe this,” Victoria said.
J.D. joined them. “What is it?”
“Official communication from the chancellor.” Victoria sounded furious.
“I didn’t know he could communicate,” Satoshi said.
“Shit, I wouldn’t talk to people, either, if I knew that all anybody was going to do was yell at me about the administration. Besides, he’s got a lot to do.”
“Yeah?” Satoshi said. “Important stuff like this?”
J.D. read the communication. To her surprise, it supported the meeting’s decision to follow the alien ship. She had assumed, since Gerald Hemminge was so opposed to continuing, that he must be following the administration line.
J.D. did not understand why Victoria and Satoshi were so annoyed. The other two paragraphs were equally reasonable. One set out a work schedule for planting crops. The other described a plan for the fair allocation of scarce resources, ordering all the members of the expedition to pool what they had brought to Starfarer in their personal allowances.
“Oh, dear,” J.D. said, embarrassed by the second plan.
“What?” Victoria asked.
“I’ll do my share of planting, of course. And turn in my allowance, since it’s for the good of the expedition...”
“Nonsense!” Victoria said.
J.D. glanced at her, confused. “But, it’s true we came away without the reserves we planned.”
“Yes. But there are two problems with this communication. First, the whole idea of having personal allowances was so everybody could bring something they particularly liked. Luxuries. It’s ridiculous to pool them. Suppose Stephen Thomas gave up his champagne.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Stephen Thomas said.
“I thought you were supporting the chancellor,” Satoshi said. He may have meant his comment to sound like a joke, but it had a definite edge to it.
“I didn’t say that,” Stephen Thomas said. “I said he wasn’t a bad guy. I’m sure this sounded better when he was writing it than it does when we’re reading it. And I’m not going to pool my champagne. The next ti
me I open a bottle of it, I want more than half a sip.”
“See what I mean?” Victoria said to J.D. “And if Stephen Thomas did pool it, it wouldn’t do you any good, because you don’t drink. What would anybody do with my gold shirt, or your — whatever you brought?”
J.D. felt herself blushing.
“You don’t have to tell me what it is,” Victoria said quickly.
“I don’t mind, really,” J.D. said. “I’m not embarrassed to tell you, and I shouldn’t even mind sharing it. It just sounds so frivolous to admit I brought a couple of pounds of chocolate into space with me.”
“Chocolate, you might have to put a guard around,” Satoshi said. “Victoria’s right, though. Your allowance is supposed to be frivolous.”
“It’s selfish, though, to refuse to pool it. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to do nothing,” Victoria said.
“What about the order?”
“He doesn’t have the authority to give orders!” Victoria exclaimed. “I can’t imagine what he’s thinking of, to put out a communication like this.”
“But we do have to grow food,” J.D. said.
“Of course we do. And we will. But this isn’t how we work. We’ll have a committee, like the housing committee, and everybody will do their share.”
“Growing food is part of what the ASes are for, anyway,” Stephen Thomas said.
“Can you get Blades to withdraw the order?” Victoria asked Stephen Thomas. “If he is reasonable, then he’ll want to know it if he’s put his foot wrong. This message isn’t doing his reputation any good, and it’s lousy for morale.”
“I get to tell the chancellor he screwed up, huh?” Stephen Thomas said.
“That’s about it.”
“Okay, I’ll call him.” His eyelids flickered and Stephen Thomas went away for a moment. When he opened his eyes again, he was frowning.
“No luck?” Victoria said.
“Got my message bounced, with a copy of the order. Weird. He said to call whenever.”
A second message display formed before them: the image of Infinity Mendez.
“Hi,” Stephen Thomas said. “What’s up?”
“Kolya and Esther and I are out here checking the sun tubes,” Infinity said. “We can’t find any malfunction.”
“At this point, I wish I knew if that was good or bad,” Victoria said.
“Something is bad. The silver slugs have shut down. I can’t even get a response from them. As far as I can tell they haven’t worked on the crater since last night. Does anybody have any idea what’s going on?”
“Damned if I know,” Stephen Thomas said.
“Something’s wrong with the artificials,” Victoria said. “Damn! Maybe Arachne hasn’t healed the controllers yet.”
“The slugs started working after the web crash,” Infinity said. “It’s just since last night that they stopped. This hole needs fixing. The course changes put the cylinder under a lot of stress.”
“We’ll do our best to find out what happened,” Stephen Thomas said.
“Thanks.”
Infinity’s image faded.
“I didn’t believe Gerald would do anything with the artificials,” Victoria said. “But if he did... Doesn’t he realize how dangerous — Dammit! Where is he?” Her eyelids flickered.
“Victoria,” Satoshi said.
She opened her eyes again.
“What?”
“Suppose I go talk to Gerald. In person.”
“That’s... probably a good idea,” she said, abashed. “You get along with him a lot better than I do.”
“Okay.” He headed out of the physics building.
“Satoshi,” Victoria called after him.
“Yeah?”
“See what he says about this order, too.”
Satoshi waved without turning and broke into a jog down the path.
“No more procrastination,” Victoria said.
“I love debugging computer code,” Stephen Thomas said, joking. “I look on it as exploring an earlier stage of evolution.”
“It’s awful, I know, but I can’t think of anything else to do,” Victoria said. “If anybody comes up with any other idea, I’ll be the first to try it.”
They went to their offices and set to work, looking at interpretations of Arachne’s neural patterns.
o0o
Satoshi climbed the steps to the administration building. It was one of the few places on campus built above ground. If he had planned the cylinder, if he had been told that one building must be visible, he would have chosen a library, a museum. And he would have chosen something beautiful, a building with some architectural design to recommend it, not this ugly, blocky building of gray rock-foam brick.
The bureaucratic mentality at work, he thought. If something has to be impressive, it has to be concerned with the hierarchy.
But the hierarchy on Starfarer was far more complicated; it rested more on esteem than on position. Professor Thanthavong or Kolya Cherenkov would receive more cooperation with a request than the new chancellor could demand. Satoshi hoped he could get Gerald to persuade the chancellor to withdraw his orders before they did real damage.
Satoshi ran up the stairs to the top floor — the second floor; at least the planners had not insisted on making the administration building an edifice. A hallway led past closed offices, and finally ended at the entrance of a reception room. Satoshi went inside.
It was deserted, though there was an AI pattern hovering over the desk.
The room was better furnished than anyplace else on board Starfarer. The rug was of woven wool, the desk of rock foam polished and heat-stained to look like wood. The wooden chairs had been imported from one of the O’Neill colonies, which had been in existence long enough to harvest a first crop of trees. On the starship, most people still made do with bamboo and rattan.
Two other doors, both closed, opened off the reception area. One led to the chancellor’s office, the other to Gerald’s. Satoshi knocked on Gerald’s door. He had no wish at all to talk to the chancellor. Satoshi had met him once, and found him aloof, overbearing, and uninformed on the aims of the deep space expedition. He was a political appointee. Satoshi believed he had come here to engineer the starship’s dismantling. Events had offered considerable evidence for his beliefs.
Satoshi could not figure out why Stephen Thomas liked him. They had spent most of the chancellor’s welcoming party talking together. Gerald had taken umbrage. at being ignored by the guest of honor of the party he had arranged.
No one answered Satoshi’s knock.
Blades had surprised Satoshi by remaining with the starship, rather than boarding the last transport and trying to go home. But as far as Satoshi was concerned, all it meant was that Blades had more nerve than sense.
He knocked again.
He had expected to find Gerald in. Unlike almost everyone else on the starship, whose schedules were highly variable, the assistant chancellor kept regular working hours. He could almost always be found here between ten and four, unless he had some other official task.
Satoshi addressed the AI.
“Where’s Gerald?”
The intelligence had been waiting in silence; that was its job, unless someone requested its help.
“Assistant Chancellor Hemminge is unavailable.”
“Where is he?”
“The assistant chancellor has not left his schedule accessible.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“The assistant chancellor is unavailable.”
An AI that had been damped down as far as this one would never make any sense; it would simply go around in circles. He had encountered forbiddingly intelligent AIs, but he had never met one that revealed any hint of frustration. They could not be worn down, circumvented, or tricked.
Satoshi paced the reception room a few times, knocked again, loudly, sat on the upholstered couch, got up again. He tried sending a message to Gerald through Arachne, but
received no reply.
On impulse, Satoshi spoke to the AI again. “What’s happened to the mobile ASes and AIs?”
“The artificials are under impound.”
That answers that, Satoshi thought. At least it’s useful information — !
“Release them, please,” he said.
“Impound is under the control of Chancellor Blades.”
Damn, Satoshi thought. It was worth a try. I guess I’ll have to talk to the chancellor after all.
This time he knocked on the chancellor’s door. He had not expected a reply. He received none.
“Where’s the chancellor?”
“The chancellor has not left his schedule accessible.”
After going through the same routine about the chancellor that he had gone through about Gerald, Satoshi sat on the couch, and he waited.
o0o
Paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs of esoteric instructions washed past J.D.’s eyes. Translated from molecular code, they vaguely resembled English, but they fought interpretation. J.D. watched them fly by, hoping a phrase would leap out at her, obviously corrupted, and give her some clue how the web had crashed, or even how the sun tubes had realigned and frozen. Occasionally she stopped the inundation of information and changed the parameters of the search. Arachne had been asked to search for unusual states within its own mental processes. Any complex system contained unusual states, and Arachne was monumentally complex. J.D. experimented with limits on what was unusual. The trouble was, any limit she specified might exclude exactly what she was looking for.
Part of the problem was that Arachne was self-programming. It was difficult enough to understand a program written by another human being, much less one developed by an artificial intelligence that learned and changed and grew. The programming evolved all the time, so even if J.D. found something worrisome, she had no guarantee that it would be in the same place, or even exist, when someone went in to try to fix it.
And if Arachne is making mistakes in its reprogramming, J.D. thought, we are in more trouble than we ever dreamed.
She stretched. She felt as if she had been staring at the same fixed point for an hour. When she looked at the time, she found that several hours had passed.
The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus Page 52