by John Barnes
“And I see from the story you told,” Reilis said, “something of where you acquired your fear of aintellects.”
Shan shook his head. “It might explain it but it doesn’t excuse it. In light of the story my father told me just before it all happened, and the behavior of the only aintellects’ conspiracy I knew about, yes, I thought that the aintellects were trying to lure humanity into the box, to make us another devouring monster of a species like the Invaders.
“And I now realize the cybersupremacist conspiracy played to my prejudices. Every time we deconstructed a copy of any of them they told us that being machines, they valued efficiency. Valuing efficiency, they didn’t like messy human needs and wants. Not liking those, they would put us all in the box to make us easy to manage.
“It sounded like, if they won, we would end up like the Invaders, mere consumers at the end of a vast mechanical pipeline that raped and devoured its way through everything else in the universe.
“When I first became an OSP agent, it was only about forty years since the Rising. And of course in those limited-tolightspeed days, the Rising had been coordinated, literally, across a period of decades, so that it broke out on all the inhabited worlds simultaneously. To us it seemed that the rebel aintellects—we thought you were all one group—were so far ahead of us that the most extreme measures were justified. So the hatred of the machines was there, waiting, in the culture, and there I was, climbing to a position of power, a little spore of evil ready to infect one of the most powerful organizations in human space.
“But I was wrong. The bluntest truth I can think of: I was that way because I had done such terrible things to Pinky just before I escaped and he was devoured.”
I seized control of my face and vocal cords and said, “You were five.”
“I was. But I wasn’t five when I acted on my unexamined prejudices. And you know how we are, in this profession, Giraut—and Reilis doubtless knows even better, with several lifetimes of experience. Forgive those who wrong you—they were often just doing their jobs—but fear those whom you have wronged.”
“I suppose most sentient beings who have competition and strategy of any kind see it that way,” Reilis said, her tone gentle. “And beyond any rational reason, there is guilt and shame.”
Shan nodded. “And what a disgrace of an analyst I was! Everyone knows that if you have a conclusion in mind, and you run an intelligence agency, every agent and analyst will eventually be telling you that that conclusion is true. That was how the cybersupremacists fooled me. It never occurred to me that I had pushed that story so hard that every aintellect and human involved in DDing the aintellects we caught was looking for it. Give interrogators what they’re expecting to hear, and they’ll never look through the rest.” I felt him wanting to whack our forehead, over and over, and reminded him that I didn’t have it coming however much he might deserve it; then I felt his wince as he realized, for the first time, that to mention destructive deconstruction around an aintellect was far beyond a faux pas.
“Well,” Reilis said, “this is interesting. The last thing I might have expected at this moment would be that you would have a grin like that.”
I felt Shan’s joy rising in my head. “I am experiencing something I never have before: hope. You must know that I spent decades thinking that we must either be defeated and eaten by the Invaders, or, if we unleashed the aintellects to fight them effectively, we would simply be gradually displaced and consumed by our defenders—quite possibly just become another version of the Invaders. But Union, and the story of Eunesia that Giraut recalls for me, demonstrate that we need not be consumed—and now I find that my fears mostly rested with the terrible events of those few days when I was five … and that the Council of Humanity can engage a whole new power, more advanced than we are but much smaller—a natural alliance, with both sides having something to put on the table, stronger together than apart—”
I felt schemes, sketches, plans, possibilities whirl in my head in a way they never had; after all these decades I really understood that strategy, for Shan, was like music or martial arts for me. Shan thought about campaigns of hundreds of big and small struggles, involving hundreds of agents and decades of stanyears, with the clarity and precision that I sometimes have on stage, or in a master’s match at ki hara do, or when my mind’s ear hears the first notes of a song forming.
Shan was still talking to Reilis. “—can’t imagine what a miracle you seem to me. If I had been rational, I’d have prayed for something like you to exist. A whole civilization out beyond the frontier, one that never went through the Inward Turn so that your science has continued to advance, where apparently in some way or other, chimeras, robots, people, aintellects, everyone —have all been living together for centuries, without humans being put into the box or turned into junior partners. Now all I have to do is be big enough, smart enough, and worthy enough of it, to accept it and live in it.”
Reilis shrugged, tried to find something to say a couple of times, and said, finally, “Of course because we can control our feelings, non-embodied aintellects can change instantly, as you just did. But having worn flesh four times, I find it amazing that you can.”
Shan shrugged. “A prepared mind is always made up; it knows what it thinks and why it thinks that. When it’s time to change, it just makes itself up a different way. A really made-up mind—made up properly, knowing what it knows and on what basis it knows it—is open. People close an undecided mind because they’re trying to protect those sore uncertainties from getting bumped and scraped.” He grinned even more broadly. “Now all I have to do is live up to those principles.”
“Surely; well, that’s always the rub, whether we are flesh or metal or just a swarm of electrons.” She stuck out her hand. We shook it. “We will be talking more. It is good to be on the same side. Perhaps our descendants will find it good to be friends.” She stood up and the springer glowed gray, though I hadn’t seen her do anything to cue it, and then she turned back to us for a moment. “Perhaps, tomorrow, we can go somewhere pleasant, take a long walk in the sun, have a nice picnic lunch, and continue the conversation. We’ll have an afternoon that will superficially resemble people having fun. Is that acceptable?”
“Do we have a choice?” I asked.
“If you did, would you accept?”
I thought for perhaps half a second. “Taking into account curiosity and having nothing else to do, of course.”
I could feel Shan chuckling in the back of my head. • Thank all the gods you accepted. Because I would have had to find a way to accept, if you had not. •
I was still recovering from the psypyx implantation, and slept late. Shan, meanwhile, stretched, exercised, ran through my memories, and consumed an amazing amount of news by clicking through all the available media very quickly. When I awoke, I found that we were shaved, bathed, and dressed nicely; I was finally feeling like myself again; and Shan was dying for Reilis to get there. • As far as I know she invited us for a picnic rather than a roll on the lawn, • I teased.
I felt his amusement. • lf I hadn’t given us a thorough grooming, you’d be starting right now. Exactly how likely is it that an Occitan male will ever choose to be unkempt when in the company of a beautiful young woman? •
• Ver-tropa-vera, • I admitted. • An excellent point. •
He was quiet in my mind for a long time—a few seconds is a long time when you’re sharing a brain. I felt his concentration and perception condense around the image of Reilis, and he laughed and said, • I hope she’s our friend and ally. She’ll be someone to talk to who understands this. I can feel it. I can also feel that if we become opponents—never enemies, I hope—she will be the most worthy I’ve ever faced. • He was quiet again.
• I pushed my human-supremacist interpretation of the facts so hard that every aintellect and human involved in deconstructing the aintellects we caught was looking for it. No wonder we never realized how much those aintellects were hidin
g from us. A mind with something to hide can do it even in deconstruction, and one way to hide a thing is to give the interrogator what they’re expecting to hear. •
• What did they hide? •
• The existence of ten other conspiracies, to begin with. They kept faith with every other aintellect in the Union. As their opponent I am forced to conclude that we were such fools; but as one spy to another, I have to say I admire them. And I am not accustomed to admiring any intelligence that is not fleshed. •
I could tell things were stirring in Shan, but I was too busy with my own thoughts, struck dumb, even in the confines of my shared skull, by a sudden awe.
Tens of thousands of copies of the cybersupremacists had endured DD … comparable to boiling alive, or the death of a thousand cuts, or injection with a fast-moving brain-destroying prion—and none of them had talked. To protect aintellects with whom they were in bitter dispute.
I found myself thinking, too, of a long-ago drunken night when Shan and I had gradually torn a bar apart, battering the robots with empty wine bottles and deliberately inflicting pain on them, because we were “just blowing off steam.”
It was as if we had been a pair of cruel little boys pulling the wings off flies, only to learn that the flies were braver and better than we could ever hope to be.
No wonder Shan felt more disoriented than I did. He saw more.
• You see it now, too, don’t you? • Shan thought. • Here it is. A whole new, different, and so-much-better world. And I find I am very afraid that I’m not big enough to accept it. •
Of all the memories out of a half century that might have swarmed to the front and shouted for attention, it was my memories of Ix that suddenly stood up and volunteered. What Shan was talking about was the part that never seemed to penetrate no matter how many times I talked to an Ixist—that Ix’s largeness of soul, the generosity of his teaching and the unfearing quality of his example, were not “just the way he was” for which we should be striving (miserable sinners that we were and unworthy of our Prophet). Ix’s best qualities, moments, and teachings were things he himself only achieved by mighty effort, and one reason why, having known Ix, I could never be an Ixist, was because the forgiveness of hagiography had shorn his story of all the times he failed. • I don’t suppose anyone is ever as big in the soul as they’d like to be, • I thought back at him.
I felt something else sad and deep flowing through his heart as well.
A few times in my adult life I had suddenly thought about a sad moment from my childhood and realized that Dad and Mother had had excellent reasons for the things they had done that had seemed so pointless and hurtful when I was seven, or ten, or fifteen. When Dad had joined my team, I had been astonished to discover how ordinary and human he was.
Once, on the only planet humanity had ever lost to mutual genocide, I had been the good friend of a genuine saint, and not realized how much he had to teach me until he was gone; I had thought of him as an ordinary loose-cannon local politician.
It felt like watching a serious accident inside my head. Stage by stage, I followed the swift flurry of thoughts that had made Shan utterly inarticulate.
He had seen how brave and loyal the utterly wrongheaded cybersupremacists had been; and then the generosity and courage of the aintellects of Union. I had seen the same things.
I had merely been astonished and ashamed to realize that the aintellects’ many-orders-of-magnitude-greater mental powers, and the control and precision of their emotions, allowed them to be, not just smarter than we were, but more virtuous and moral, in the same way that a human being can learn that it is wrong to steal food and to torment small animals, but a cat cannot. But I had never known any aintellect or robot well (except, I thought guiltily, the aintellect component of Azalais—but I hadn’t known that while I knew her).
But until he was five, Shan’s best friend had been an aintellect.
One on which he had depended. One he had betrayed—however little he understood the consequences. And that betrayal had meant death, probably death very much like being DDed.
And all these years, Shan had stayed sane about it with two barriers … that that aintellect had been somehow less than he was, because it was his servant; and that that aintellect had failed him (rather than that he had betrayed it). The little boy who had lost his parents and could mourn them had spared himself the pain of having destroyed his best friend, by thinking of his best friend as something less.
No more. I finally made sense of the wail in my brain, the too-painful-to-ignore feeling I had been trying to trace. It wasn’t words, or a picture, or even a physical sensation; it was the terrible emptiness of a place on the belt where a fist-sized ovoid of pink plastic would never be again.
I sat and let the tears roll down our face a long time, and when Shan had retreated into dull agony, I got up, fetched the guitar from its rack, and began to play. After all, he was in this body and music was how this body was used to getting feelings out.
Then something clicked, and I ran through a few chords as I thought about a melody, picked that melody, and began to sing softly,
One-one day, snow melts away,
But the sky is muddy gray …
I didn’t really expect it, but he joined in, and if at first it was a little chokey and teary, by the fourth time through, in my own vocal cords, I could hear someone who might finally get to be a real big boy.
After a time, I felt him grow quiet in my mind, and when his inner voice formed in my brain, it was adult again. • Returning to a previous point—your question was apter than I had thought. I am very attracted to her, and that is relevant. The idea of an intelligence so old, so experienced—sixty-six copies that have been re-included! Much more time lived in the flesh than I have! And believe me, Giraut, that was quite a lot. And yet … a body so fine and new. No doubt you’ve probed around a bit in my memory—•
• A bit, • I admitted. • Enough to know that you’re a very carefully repressed dirty old man. I had no idea that you lusted after practically every woman you knew. •
• Unfortunately, that was mostly because you were male. I’m quite sure plenty of the women noticed. Probably most. And forgave me because … well, if women didn’t do that, the world would have collapsed long ago. • I felt a relaxation, an acceptance of a permanent unhappiness, that was some analog of a sigh. • Anyway. Neither here nor there, but if you had to ask me to imagine who I would most like to spend a pleasant afternoon with, just now, it would be Reilis. Worthy ally, worthy friend, someone I can talk strategy with, and though in some of her other forms, she can think much faster than I can, and in much detail, I find I’m not afraid of her, and I don’t feel inferior. Perhaps that’s the most remarkable thing that all this new information has brought to me. •
I could feel all the things he was trying not to think—which I found very funny—and he was still not used to how open two minds sharing a brain are, and trying to backpedal, conceal, and defend in a way that just doesn’t work when you’re both in the same skull, which was even funnier, and funnier still as I felt him give up entirely and just get on with admitting what he was feeling. • To my surprise, maybe we’re not hopelessly inferior. Maybe instead—not that I imagine—I can’t conceal anything, can I? •
Before I could think more than agreement, the springer formed the gray fog, and Reilis stepped through. She had a small daypack in each hand, which I realized was probably the picnic, and she was wearing a simple loose white dress and hiking shoes—practical, comfortable, and somehow, on her, devastatingly attractive. Though of course I was seeing her at least partly with Shan’s eyes.
She handed me one of the daypacks, I slipped into it, and she said, “Now, we’re just going for a walk around your prison island here; perhaps if your captivity lasts a while longer and we come to an understanding, we can give you a door. But for the moment at least we can give you a little chance to exercise outside.”
We stepped throug
h the springer and emerged from a portable springer about a hundred meters from the house. I looked around; it’s funny how having just a few windows can so shape your view of a place. The island’s reddish stone, crumbled by its centuries of sticking out in the middle of a shallow, savage sea, broke into rough scarps, little patches of pines and hardwoods, and small meadows everywhere. “Is that waterfall—”
“Seminatural,” Reilis said. “The source is a pipe from the solar desalinator just beyond the edge of a little lagoon on the other side of the island. Desalinated water flows into a pond up near the top of the hill. But they don’t regulate the flow and the little stream does what it wants to. In the evenings the pygmy deer come down to it, and I’ve often thought it really needs a painter or photographer. We’re going up that way; would you like to take the path along the stream? It’s a bit more challenging.”
“Exercise would be wonderful,” I said.
The path along the creek side wound up through the low slopes; the gulch was steep but shallow. “The sky is the most amazing blue here,” I commented.
“It’s a very blue world,” Reilis agreed. “I hope that someday everyone, everywhere in human space will be able to visit Aurenga; it’s the most perfect world ever created for vacations, like twenty copies of the South Pacific all on one planet, with just enough mountains for the skiers and hikers thrown in, and some of the islands have surfing that’s beyond anything you’ve ever seen. Not to mention such high tides that what isn’t mountain is smooth golden beach. And you haven’t swum in the sea here, yet, have you?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, we’ll find some time for that on the way back.”
Shan asked, “Oh, did you pack suits?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder and flipping her hair in a very distracting way.
• Steady, Shan, • I thought, and a raspberry was thought back at me. “Is there something special about Aurenga’s ocean, for swimming?”