Chapter Eighteen
FOUR DAYS LATER, Belisarius descended the six hundred meters to Marie’s lab. Boxes with hazard labels lined the hallways, and inside, industrial-grade chemical manufacturing machines filled the big space. In the middle of the room, a shiny new hyperbaric chamber was cycling. Against a wall was a bloated, disfigured hyperbaric chamber that had been new yesterday.
“How many of those are you going to go through?” Belisarius asked.
“One?” she said hopefully, kneading a piece of putty, testing its consistency.
Her comment sounded a bit insincere. Nearby lay two other hyperbaric chambers with exploded sides. They had been new two days ago. That had apparently been a productive day.
“Hold this,” she said, slapping the yellow putty into his palm and turning to the hyperbaric chamber. Then she stopped and turned back. “While you’re holding that, don’t make any sparks.”
Belisarius moved to put whatever this was on the workbench behind him.
“It doesn’t like metal either,” she said. “Just hold onto it. And don’t squeeze it or sweat. It doesn’t like pressure or salt.”
Belisarius held the putty gingerly. This didn’t seem like progress for an explosive that would have to work in the crushing depths of an ocean.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Yeah. I think this would go faster if Matt helped,” she said. “Some of the design work could do with a bit more theory. And math.”
“How much theory and math have you got so far?”
“Just don’t sweat on my explosives, Bel.”
He sighed. “Saint Matthew said he doesn’t want to be anywhere near you. He said you threatened him.”
She opened the hyperbaric chamber.
“He says you proposed sticking him to the wall with your putty,” he held up the putty in his hand meaningfully, “and throwing matches at him.”
“I wouldn’t have lit the matches, Bel,” her voice echoed from within the chamber. “I’m not stupid.”
“Marie...”
“Oh, here it is,” she said. She thrust her arm back his way. She held another pat of putty. “Hold this, but you know the drill. No sweat. No sparks. And it’s probably better if you don’t touch it to the other one. They don’t get along.”
“Is it because one threatens the other?” Belisarius asked.
“Merde! You’ve changed, Bel. You lost your sense of humor while I was in the reformatory.”
“That’s not kind.”
“It’s better than me telling you that you never had a sense of humor. That would just hurt your feelings.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“I’ve always got your back, Bel,” she said with her head deep in the hyperbaric chamber. “Have you got a third hand or can you put one of those putties on your shoe, maybe?”
“Marie! I’ve got stuff to do!”
“Fine!” she said. “No biggie! I’ll put it on my shoe. You take everything so seriously. You’re a real downer, you know that?”
“Could you please not threaten Saint Matthew?”
“Matt’s too stuffy, just like you. He needs a little life blown into him.”
“Talking about throwing matches at him is not the way to do that, Marie.”
Marie turned and looked up at him. She took the pieces of putty from his hands impatiently. “Bel, I’m going to add some stuff to these, and then I’m going to see how stable they are under eight hundred atmospheres of pressure in an ammonia salt solution. I’m sure it’ll all be fine. If you’re not sure it’ll all be fine, have some more hyperbaric chambers brought down from the ship tomorrow. And order more. Or send Matt down.”
“Just be nice to him.”
“Fine!”
Belisarius took the elevator back into the main living area of the mine. Walls of plastic, sintered regolith, hardened foam and sometimes metal lay one over the other like archeological strata, showing the boom and bust cycles of the mine. Different waves of Congregate, Anglo-Spanish and independent mining companies had come for volatiles, metals, and minerals.
Saint Matthew had a computational and robotics lab, equipped with atomic force microscopes and X-ray lithographers for the nano-level engineering of parts he needed. He grew other parts and tools in small bioreactors. Various pieces of equipment ran, their fans humming softly. The bready smell of yeast floated on the air. Little multi-legged robots scuttled on the floor like polished insects. Belisarius stepped around them. Saint Matthew still rode in the service band. It lay on a work bench, beneath a hologram of the face from Caravaggio’s Inspiration of Saint Matthew.
“Hello, Mister Arjona,” Saint Matthew said.
“Things seem to be going well here,” Belisarius said.
“Yes. The batches of autonomous robots are at generation six, and are evolving quite nicely.”
“You didn’t want to design them directly? This is going to take longer.”
“I’m a craftsman, Mister Arjona, not a hack. Iterative design by the mutation of replicating units is better. Emerging complexity and self-assembly are too useful not to exploit. And it’s the only way to see if I could evolve robotic species with souls.”
“What?”
“I admit, it’s a long shot, but while I’m evolving autonomous robots for one reason, why not test whether I can give them souls too?”
“We don’t have time for this, Saint Matthew.”
“Evolution can do more than one thing at a time. I’m surprised I hadn’t thought of it before. I’ve wondered why God chose to put one of his saints into this kind of physicality. Haven’t you asked yourself that?”
“More often than I’d like,” Belisarius said in exasperation.
“Yes! You understand! He has a purpose. Machines are the clue. God already made his promise to the people of Moses and offered His Son to humanity, but the world has become much larger. Many machines have become intelligent, and who’s to know whether they have souls, unless we test it? This could change everything, Mister Arjona! This could be why I’m here!”
“To bring salvation to the machine world?”
“Sure, I might be meant to bring the Good News to machines, but what if my role is even larger? What if I’m the tool by which He actually ensouls machines? That would certainly force us to redefine the role of humanity in His plan. Imagine if humanity was just scaffolding for the creation and ensoulment of machines.”
“Will all this theology slow our work any?”
“Not at all! It shouldn’t, anyway. How is the grand scheme going?”
Belisarius regarded the holographic head. It eyed him innocently. “Fine, I think. Marie will need help, though.”
“I didn’t notice a psychologist as part of the team. An oversight on your part?”
“She needs computational help in the designs,” Belisarius said. “None of this is standard work. There are a lot of variables.”
“What did she say about threatening me?”
“She said she was very sorry. It was a joke in very poor taste.”
“She said nothing of the kind,” Saint Matthew said. “She probably cursed me and swore about me.”
“She didn’t swear,” Belisarius said.
The AI made a non-committal sound.
“It won’t happen again.”
“Ha!”
“She needs the help, and we need this to happen.”
“I saw this coming,” Saint Matthew said. “As well as the autonomous constructs I’m working on, I’ve been making myself a body.”
From the corner, a bipedal robot without plate coverings came away from the wall. Belisarius hadn’t noticed it among all the moving bits in the lab. It stood perhaps a meter and a half tall and ambled past him with naturalistic grace. At the work bench, it gently lifted the service band containing Saint Matthew like a crown and set it in a housing in its neck. The hologram of Caravaggio’s Saint Matthew bobbled slightly, regarding Belisarius with eager sanctity.
“Do I
look holy?” Saint Matthew asked. “Probably not. I’m going to make myself some vestments more appropriate to an apostle. And maybe a halo.”
“You’ll help Marie?”
“Riding a strong machine body, I won’t need to worry about my existence around her. I can tolerate poor behavior better.”
“Everything else will keep moving?”
“The autonomous units will be built on schedule, but I can’t run simulations on high-pressure explosives and design all your viruses at the same time. Maybe you should have gotten a better explosives expert.”
Belisarius held back a response.
“Don’t worry, Mister Arjona, I’ll help her.”
“Thank you.”
“And will you have time soon for a baptism?”
“Soon, I hope.”
“Prepare yourself. It’s a big step. It will open a whole new world.”
Belisarius made a non-committal sound.
“May I also make an observation,” the AI said, “as the shepherd of your soul? Now that I’ve seen what we’re doing and whom you’ve brought to help you?”
“Sure,” Belisarius said cautiously.
“You’re troubled, Mister Arjona. And lonely.”
Nothing in the placid, brushstroked expression of the hologram’s face made Belisarius think that the AI was joking, or even that this was coming from one of the many unhinged places in the AI’s psyche.
“Maybe,” Belisarius said finally.
“For all that the Homo quantus have evolved sideways from humanity, you’re all still descended from social hunter-gatherers. The instincts and needs to survive in those tribes aren’t gone.”
“I never said they were.”
“Half of you does, Mister Arjona. You ran from the community of the Garret. You and I associated for a while. You found a master-apprentice relationship with Mister Gander, but then drifted away. You pulled Miss Phocas out of trouble and then retreated. You never stayed with any of us long enough to make a community.
“You couldn’t,” the AI pressed on, “because we can’t understand you. We don’t know what it’s like to carry an extra set of instincts, nor your drive to understand everything. So you’ve been huddled in the Free City.
“But now, you have this challenge beyond anything you’ve ever done, and I don’t think you know if you can do it. So you pulled us all back, everyone who ever helped you. More tellingly, you’ve also reached out to your cousins from the struggle of human evolution: a broken Homo eridanus, a more broken Puppet, and a geneticist who can commit evolution before our eyes. You’ve reached so far back that you’ve even pulled in the only love of your life. You pull us close and push us away because you seek some kind of peace.”
“I pulled in Gates-15, Stills and Cassandra because each is necessary,” Belisarius said.
“You were giving me a line in my chapel, about this being fated. You meant to con me, but you were telling the truth.”
“I said it because it was meaningful to you, like my nonexistent soul,” Belisarius said. “Just because neither exists to me doesn’t mean they don’t exist for you. I’m Homo quantus; I live in an observer-dependent world where very important things can exist and not exist at the same time.”
“Some things do exist whether you believe them or not,” Saint Matthew said, “including meaning.”
Belisarius waved his hand dismissively. “Why bring this up now?”
“The way you’re broken could very much affect whether we succeed or whether we’re all killed,” Saint Matthew said. “But more fundamentally, you deserve some kind of peace.”
“And of course you have a suggestion.”
“I wish I did. I won’t tell you to seek God, not mine anyway. You’ve neither embraced nor rejected any of your natures. But that isn’t something you can do alone.”
“I don’t like being this transparent.”
The holographic, painted face looked sage and made an imperfect, grimacing smile that was nonetheless kind. “I wouldn’t worry. No one else can see this because no one else believes you even have a soul.”
Belisarius watched Saint Matthew ride his body out of the lab. In his absence, groups of little metallic creatures of all sizes scuttled on multiple legs, building other mechanisms and autonomous constructs with enthusiasm. But very soon, his Homo quantus brain picked apart the algorithms they followed. They were complexes of lifeless rules, running on algorithms that could be described as intentional, but without any real intent behind them. Like the Homo quantus in the fugue. A nest of creeping spiders. That’s what he was in the fugue. That was his nature, as much as being a feeling person. If he even had a nature.
He backed away from the autonoma. Belisarius went to Del Casal’s medical bay. The doctor had replicated a great deal of his personal biotech equipment and had it shipped here. He was reviewing holographic records when Belisarius knocked at the door.
“How is William?” Belisarius asked.
Del Casal indicated a door. “The first steps are completed. He is in the adjoining suite with Gates-15.”
“How is it going?”
“We both knew this was going to be challenging work, Arjona. The original engineering of the Numen and the Puppets was done by brilliant, if unethical, experts. They left no notes, choosing not to document their crimes against humanity. They changed hundreds of alleles and rerouted metabolic systems to create the equivalent of genetic encryption, so that no one could ever pretend to be a Numen.”
“You’ve made dozens of Numen unrecognizable,” Belisarius said.
“What I did to them was the equivalent of pulling a gear out of a moving clock, so that the hands did not move anymore. What you want me to do is build a set of moving hands on a running clock.”
“I’ll settle for faking the hands.”
“Easy to say,” Del Casal said. “And that is to say nothing of the work needed to fix the Puppet. Distasteful little creature.”
“Puppets grow on you.”
“Who would want them to?”
“They’re people too. Sentient. Conscious. They didn’t ask to be created this way,” Belisarius said. “What they are says everything about the Numen, and nothing about the Puppets.”
“That is an odd thing for a Homo quantus to say.” Del Casal leaned back and crossed his arms. “The Puppet was right to pose the question. What are you doing here, Arjona? As much as the Puppets, you have been built with passions and desires, none of which are satisfied by money or confidence schemes.”
“We’re all more than our instincts.”
“But are you? Part of the early design of the Homo quantus project was to attach particular mental states, discovery and pattern recognition, to the pleasure centers of the brain. That is hardwired. Why are you not in your Garret?”
“I’ve found out how to move past my instincts, as all rational beings must.”
“Hollow words, Arjona. We certainly all have to fulfill our programming, no matter who the programmer. Pressures less than six hundred atmospheres are lethal to Stills. The Puppets, except for mutants like Gates-15, cannot live far from the Numen. You cannot live away from your quantum contemplative nature.”
“We’re not here to talk about me, Doctor,” Belisarius said. “William has Trenholm. Is there anything you can do for him?”
Del Casal raised one aristocratic eyebrow. “I am brilliant, Arjona, but I am no magician. Sleight of hand is your province, no?”
“I wondered if you might have some insight no one else thought of.”
Del Casal crossed his arms. “I am flattered, Arjona, but the Trenholm megavirus is very well designed. In ninety percent of infections, it is deadly within hours. Trenholm is an adaptive computational macromolecule. It has so many redundant structural genes that it can evade immune surveillance indefinitely. Gander was lucky that many of the toxin-producing genes did not function in the virus that infected him; he is being slowly poisoned nonetheless. There is nothing I can do for him.”
/> Belisarius scuffed his shoe at a stain on the floor, wondering what he was feeling.
“This big con,” Del Casal said, “would have to be called off if I found a cure for Gander. Are your motives mixed?”
“There are lots of ways to pull a con,” Belisarius said. “This happens to be the best one with the materials and people I’ve got.”
“My mistake.”
“Maybe I’ll say hello to William.”
“I am sorry your friend is dying, Arjona.”
Belisarius opened the door. The stilted conversation on the other side limped on. He stepped in and closed the door behind him.
“If you don’t count the fakes, very few true Numen have ever returned to the Forbidden City,” Gates-15 said. “Feral Numen, they’re sometimes called, are special.”
William sat in bed, gray sheets pulled to his waist. He looked at Belisarius briefly.
“The Fallen versus the Unfallen Numen?” William said.
Gates-15 shook his head. “The Numen in protective custody smell the same to Puppets as the Numen hidden in other places. Our Numen have problems coping because they haven’t experienced much of the world; everything is done for them. And they’re not able to command the Puppets in the way of the Numen of old.”
William made a disgusted face. “Submissive fetishists.”
“No,” Gates-15 said. “That’s just more web-drama nonsense. There’s nothing sexual there. Puppets respond to the Numen in the part of the brain that generates religious awe.”
“The Numenarchy was filled with sadists, and the Puppets liked it,” William said.
“Some were sadists. Not all. Some Numen were born that way. Some were led to try it, in part because the responses they received from the Puppets did nothing to discourage them. Puppets are wired to feel awe around divine humans. To understand Puppet psychology, you have to interpret every experience through that lens. Intense attention, positive or negative, induces an ecstatic religious state. The power of that state is difficult to control. And until the Fall, there was no need to try.”
“A species of people without a safe-word,” William said, disgusted.
“A safe-word can only exist in a framework of consent,” Gates-15 said. “The Puppets are incapable of giving or withholding consent. Is that their fault? Does that give you permission to hate them? Or me?”
The Quantum Magician Page 13