The Cunningham Equations

by G. C. Edmondson

  Jerry eBooks

  No copyright 2015 by Jerry eBooks

  No rights reserved. All parts of this book may be reproduced in any form and by any means for any purpose without any prior written consent of anyone.

  PEST CONTROL

  The big man grunted as the jolt reached his heart. But he had already started his own punch, and air erupted from Blaise’s lungs. Then he was falling face forward.

  The dog snarled. Blaise rolled onto his back and Dobie’s back feet were on his chest. The dog stood between Blaise and his attacker, rumbling. Dobie was still a pup and his back legs pranced instead of setting him up to lunge. Avoiding a kick, Dobie dived for the man’s leg only to yelp shrilly when a hand landed against the side of his head and sent him spinning.

  Blaise’s attacker turned and lashed out desperately with his foot. Dobie launched himself, a mouthful of sharp, white teeth . . .

  A Del Rey Book

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Copyright © 1986 by G.C. Edmondson and C.M. Kotlan

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 86-90847

  ISBN: 0-345-33037-4

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition: June 1986

  Cover Art by Barclay Shaw

  “. . . there are many big steps from

  purified DNA in a test tube to

  amber waves of grain.”

  From a Calgene genetic

  engineering brochure

  What is artificial intelligence? Is artificial intelligence produced with wires and electricity, metal and glass? If man-made intelligence is biological, is such intelligence artificial? The questions are enormous, the challenge awesome.

  FROM A SEMINAR ON

  THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS

  PRELUDE

  The man appeared to suffer from heat, although the only hint of temperature in the darkened room was a work lamp shining on a naked computer board. Sweat beaded his face, glittering when he leaned into the light to squint at a microscopic silver line. He held a tiny soldering iron so coollooking that he might have touched the end without burning himself. Wiping his face, he lifted a can of warm beer from the counter and took a gulp.

  Lowering his face closer to the microcircuitry, he tinned the thin soldering iron until the tip gave off sparkles. Hand shaking slightly, he daubed the tip on the board, patching from one trace to another: the last of a series of changes that covered the board with a silvery spiderweb. Solder spattered. Cursing in fervent Sicilian, which was his native language, he brushed the loose solder away.

  After inspecting the work, he inserted the board into its slot. The machine clicked and the monitor gave a polychrome flash before settling down to blank green.

  “See, Alfie? Old Doc Cunningham’s still got the touch.” The man raised his can, disappointed by the lack of weight. Smuggling beer into the classroom contained an element of risk.

  "THANK YOU, PROFESSOR" Words danced in bright yellow across the green background of the monitor.

  Cunningham squinted. “Green on black, Alfie. Please.”

  "YES, PROFESSOR" The colors changed.

  He sat in the green glare sweating and milking his beer can for the last drop. The computer had nothing to say. It was only a machine. That was half the problem.

  “Soon, Alfie,” he typed, “I’ll be a thief. How about that?”

  The question demanded an emotional response and Cunningham knew machines didn’t have emotions. He’d programmed Alfie smart, but not smart enough.

  “Going to steal computer time, Alfie. For a man we don’t like; with a woman we don’t know; to keep a job I’ll probably lose anyway. Just remember I told you.”

  "YES, PROFESSOR"

  Machine language climbed the monitor like sparks up a chimney, ones and zeroes that told where the data was stored.

  “Even if you are only a machine, Alfie, I love you. Remember that, too.”

  Alfie clicked and whirred searching for the meaning of love. Well, Cunningham reflected, most of the human race was looking for the same thing. He flattened the can before putting it in his pocket. He was going to fly to San Francisco before he saw Alfie again. He hated flying when he could be racing down the freeway staring into the radiators of oncoming trucks. The ghosts in men’s minds took strange forms.

  “Good night, Alfie.”

  "GOOD NIGHT, PROFESSOR"

  Cunningham didn’t see the message. The door lock clicked behind him. The whir continued after he was gone. Alfie didn’t mind the dark. The computer’s eyes were optical scanners to read typed documents. Tentatively the machine began testing its new circuits, creating short programs to discover their functions.

  Electrical activity warmed the traces, causing the remodeled board’s solder joins to expand. At the last major juncture a joint crept one atom closer to a drop of spatter and electrons seeped across.

  The monitor fluttered as Alfie experienced something new that the computer could not control. Automatically, Alfie checked the offending traces, narrowing them to a specific set. Programming rerouted the working circuits around the malfunction.

  When no one ordered the computer to do anything, Alfie played memories of the malfunction over and over, recreating something disturbing while it pondered what lurked beyond the periphery of its being.

  “The study of artificial intelligence is perforce, the study of human intelligence for the purpose of replication. The study of human intelligence is an exercise in pure mathematics. The development of artificial intelligence is therefore the proof of the mathematics used . . .

  FROM A SEMINAR ON

  THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS

  CHAPTER 1

  Alfred and Ottilie . . . Blaise couldn’t get into their minds.

  He saw the car racing through the night, headlights flaring on the curves as his father drove with more than human precision, anticipating everything from G force on the curves to road surface conditions. He didn’t consider luck or fate. If Alfred Cunningham had not despised computers he might have been one.

  Blaise’s mother was in the backseat checking their lecture notes. At the lectern his parents were no different from at home—picking up on one another’s ideas, finishing each other’s sentences, mildly bemused that anyone thought them odd. Ottilie used every minute to best advantage, prepared for the moment Alfred’s agile mind outran his tongue, causing him to pause in midsentence and ask. “Ottie, what exactly do I want to say?”

  She usually rode in the backseat where the reading light didn’t distract her husband. She might not have experienced the moment of terror when the drunken truck driver crossed the white line, doing all the things Alfred never did.

  But what were they thinking? Had there been time for bitterness? Did they think of him in that final instant?

  Blaise woke sweating to the imagined shriek of rending metal. Chill light poured in through a pair of small windows, illuminating a cheerless morning. Eyes closed, head throbbing from a hangover, he swung bare feet off the bed onto a braided carpet familiar with tactile landmarks. Cold gripped the house, a reminder that he’d turned off the heat.

  The hallway wore zigzagging three-dimensional patterns of blue, red, and green cubes on yellow paper offset by blackened varnish over the woodwork. He leaned against the wall. I will not be sick. He avoided looking at the wallpaper too late.

  His dead mother had been a brilliant mathematician but her decorating borrowed from Escher. Blaise’s stomach revolted.r />
  When he came out of the bathroom to walk into the front room his mouth tingled from the mouthwash. Plastic cleaner’s bags of fresh clothes were dumped on the sofa.

  The house was built the year Queen Victoria died. One huge living-room window had been an extravagant concept at the time. But the builder knew his business. Beyond the window the hill dropped three hundred feet, neatly sectioned by a switchback road. A half-mile slope checkerboarded with the white clapboard cottages of old La Jolla stretched to the endless blue ocean.

  Blaise breathed deeply. Too many regrets and he’d be drunk before he got to the lab where Dr. Hemmett was sure to be looking for him before the sun dried the grass.

  Normally, the static-free rubber floor tiles of Dr. Gordon Hill’s lab smelled of Lysol. Animal cages filled one comer. Laboratory sinks, a binocular optical microscope, and an electronic scanning microscope accounted for the leftover space. Gordon said a dozen engineers wouldn’t have cost the price of the scanning microscope—now sitting sphinxlike in its own dust-free desert.

  Blaise felt as empty as Gordon’s laboratory, where he had no business being. Sensing human presence, the animals made small sounds, their warm smells dominating the lab in a way that was impossible when they shared it with Gordon.

  Dobie scooted from under the workbench to paw Blaise’s leg. Absently Blaise put his hand on the dog’s head and scratched. The Doberman wriggled his insane joy at being noticed. His ears were still hard from being cropped.

  “Okay, Dobie.” Blaise knelt and roughhoused the pup. “Where’s the boss?”

  Dobie cocked his head to stare with soft brown eyes fringed by velvety black lashes. He whined deep in his throat, conveying the same puzzlement that Blaise’s voice carried, before butting at Blaise in an effort to continue the game.

  Blaise stood, patting the furry head. “Enough, Dobie. Sit!”

  The Doberman released Blaise’s wrist. His eyes were lonely. “I’ll come back later,” Blaise promised. He felt dumb, making excuses to somebody else’s dog, but aside from Gordon and Helen, Dobie was the closest thing to a friend that he had.

  A mosaic of glass microscope slides covered one end of the thick plastic slab that made up the rectangular lab table. Impervious to acid, forgiving to scalpel blades, receptive to the ultraviolet germicidal lights that could be left on at night to purge the lab, the slab reminded Blaise of Gordon.

  The slides were arranged with nervous precision, unchanged since the last time Blaise was in Gordon’s lab. “Bye, Dobie,” he said as he let himself out.

  The dog’s answering whine, cut off by the closing door, conveyed regret.

  “Ah, there you are, Dr. Cunningham!”

  “I was on my way to see you,” Blaise lied.

  Arthur Hemmett’s warmth inspired instant friendship in total strangers. His blue eyes and silvered hair seemed to convey statesmanship. He had the walk of a king or a pope. But for Blaise familiarity had bred fear and contempt.

  “In Dr. Hill’s laboratory?” Hemmett’s neutral tone revealed nothing. Blaise didn’t fill the void. Dr. Hemmett’s method left conversational cavities for others to stuff with volunteered information in a losing struggle to please this charming man without knowing what would please.

  “I wanted to see Gordon first.” Blaise was glad he’d avoided an early-morning drink. He hadn’t made many good decisions since the accident. The pain in his head was real enough without being augmented by saying something stupid.

  “Yes. Well, Dr. Hill’s working out of town.”

  “Like me?”

  Gesturing, Hemmett started down the corridor, ignoring the question. Blaise fell into step. When Hemmett stopped, Blaise unlocked his own lab, ushering Hemmett inside.

  “You ought to clean up this mess, Doctor.”

  “That’s what Gordon tells me.” A rat’s nest of cables and power rectifiers heaped on his worktable were dust free and no neater than he had left them. Only the hand-wired circuit boards with their microscopic precision suggested competence.

  Dr. Hemmett surveyed the mess distastefully. “Is any of this junk ever going to work?”

  “You know my project is chancy.”

  Hemmett put his hand on his chin. The practiced movement announced deep thought. Dr. Hemmett’s chin had a touch of weakness, soft folds of skin that avoided being jowls, but an impediment to a man who polished his image in a mirror.

  “That is too bad, Dr. Cunningham. Too bad. I try not to involve the employees in the business side of the laboratory, but we are reaching a point where the stockholders need reassurance.”

  “We’re under the sword?”

  Eyes flat, Hemmett studied Blaise for a moment. “You are under the sword.”

  “That’s not fair! I do my share—” Blaise would have said more when abruptly his air choked off. He froze, immersed in his effort to breathe. His body was quitting, shutting down from overwhelming tension that could only be exorcised by not fighting—not giving in to his own fear of death.

  Gordon had said his heart and lungs were striving to rid themselves of Blaise’s personal devil—himself. He was being shut out. He switched off his thoughts: Dr. Hemmett, his job. His parents . . . were dead. Blaise didn’t feel the pain anymore. His hands turned icy. Desperately he pushed the memories of his parents away, concentrating on the connection his feet had with the earth.

  “Another asthma attack?”

  Dr. Hemmett slipped in and out of sight in the distance. Blaise watched him without feeling, examining a curious bug. Air filled his lungs again; his heart was pumping a steady beat of blood. “Yes,” Blaise said.

  Hemmett waited for him to say more. “You may think you’re pulling your weight, Dr. Cunningham. But the most precious stone loses its glitter inside a bottle.”

  “I do my share,” Blaise said stubbornly. “This line of research had no guarantees.”

  “Your personal life is your own, Dr. Cunningham. But the stockholders may expect a higher standard.”

  “Where is Gordon?”

  Tightening his lips, Hemmett moved toward the door.

  “Is he in San Francisco?”

  “Dr. Hill has nothing to do with your situation.”

  “You’ll forgive me, Dr. Hemmett, if I sense something going on that I’m not being told about. I’ve served my time. I’m not surrendering any stock options until I talk to Gordon Hill.”

  Hemmett smiled with his teeth. “I have an appointment.” He made an issue of looking at his gold wristwatch. “In the meantime, Dr. Cunningham, I expect a more cogent effort. Let us hope your trip to San Francisco accomplishes something.” He stared at Blaise, like a butcher examining a beast he had just bought and found wanting. “Try not to reveal any company business while you’re up there.”

  The door swung shut and Blaise collapsed on his lab stool, looking at a glass jar on the counter. A long gray tube of tissue dangled from a silver cap in the mellow, lime-green solution that filled the jar.

  She was growing. Tillie, an acronym for Technological Intelligence Labs, Limited, was putting on weight. Gigabytes and biological memory that maintained itself, increased its own capacity—and no way to access it.

  “You’re a loser,” Blaise said. But he wasn’t thinking about the Tillie, or the circuit boards he’d constructed to separate and analyze signals that the silver cap fed his computer. Only twenty-nine, and one of the youngest ever to win a Nobel Prize, he was thinking about failure.

  “Where are you, Gordon?” Blaise yelled his question at the soundproof door, then felt scared and tried to pull the words back into his silent shell. He was sliding to the edge of the universe. There was no fence to keep him from falling off.

  He opened a cupboard. The five-gallon distilled water jug with the contaminated label was half full. He poured nonprescription medicine into a beaker. It looked like a long day.

  Blaise concentrated on walking straight as he passed the receptionist. Because the builders had not waited for the artificial fill to set
tle, floor cracks caused his eyes to wander from the mental chalk line of his course.

  In spite of the fence, the grounds of GENRECT, Genetic Research in Environmental Computer Technology, were pleasant. Grass rolled to the cliff edge before giving way to green-gray shrubs that clung to the sheer escarpments. Blaise ambled toward another fence that served more to keep the absentminded from walking off the cliff than to exclude intruders.

  Two hundred feet below a dark-haired girl in the buff sunbathed at the surf’s edge. Blaise pantomimed raising binoculars but the girl only waved. Luminescent greenish foam rushed up the narrow band of sand, nearly touching her feet as it surrendered the iodine odors of seaweed and naphtha.

  In the distance a hang glider struggled to possess the updraft from the sea breeze scooting up the cliffs. Blaise was already started toward the parking lot when Gordon Hill left the main building leading Dobie.

  Blaise yelled and Gordon looked his way. Stopping, he unsnapped the leash and Dobie gamboled ecstatically. Blaise walked back toward the older man. It was, strange that Gordon hadn’t come to see him. “How are you?”

  Sun flashed on Gordon Hill’s square-cut rimless glasses and Blaise could not see his eyes. For an instant he thought he had made a mistake, calling out to a stranger.

  Then Gordon’s square face wrinkled into a familiar smile. “Doing fine, Blaise.” He held out his hand.

  They strolled to the cliff edge to look down where waves tumbled against the shore and the sound of rocks clicking against each other drifted up. The naked girl was gone. “I’ve been looking for you, Gordon.”

  “You’ll be all right, Blaise.”

  “I know.” Blaise spoke without enthusiasm. “I’ve been having dreams again. About killing my parents.”

  “Dreams or nightmares?”

  Blaise shrugged.

  “You should talk to someone qualified.”

  “I don’t think much of psychiatry.”