The God Complex

by Demir Barlas

  “I have indeed,” Masters nodded. “Thanks to your little doo-dads and robots.”

  “We are not die, it seems, unless in the quantum storms themselves.”

  “The last one gave us a miss.”

  “Did you happen to see Indra in it somewhere?”

  “I did not.”

  “Pity.”

  As the sun descended, the travelers turned their attention to the skyfaust, which had illuminated itself. Masters led the way back into the cockpit, and, within the hour, the craft was airborne again.

  “Interesting,” Salt mused, busy with some non-navigational aspect of the controls.

  “What’s that?”

  “The oxygen readings. Such a lot of vegetal life remains.”

  “Do you need oxygen readings to tell you that?”

  “I can’t quite look at the world.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s overwhelming. I need protective layers. Numbers, descriptions, readings.”

  The world was Abigail, the world was the woman in the data, too sharp and immediate for the brain. Masters, looking down, saw patches of grass and collocations of trees in the silvery light, the emeralds and aquamarines of life. Salt had seen a beautiful vitality that both barred and invited him, a sanctity he could approach through cerebration alone. Experience was too painful.

  “Turn off the readings.”

  “All right.”

  “Look there. There, where forest replaces rock, by moonlight. Look.”

  “I am.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re looking for. Look at. Let your senses through.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’d want to go down there, touch the branches and the leaves. I’d want to release anxiety and analysis and insight and…be. I wouldn’t want to come back. To Seaboard, even to myself.”

  But Masters was silent. The moonlight had been intensified remarkably in the changed atmosphere, and the clouds were gone, and this nocturnal world was new to him. And silence was the best thing for Salt. He had known silence for many lifetimes, and he had become neurotic in the presence of another human, and he was able to lose himself in the simple pleasure of looking, at least for a little while.

  Before long, the skyfaust began its gradual descent. Salt projected a 4D model of the facility between himself and Masters.

  “Main door, vestibule. See this hollow pillar? It goes down thousands of feet. They’ll have stored the power cell here, at the very bottom. Even deactivated, it’ll give off signals I can track. But only inside the structure.”

  “How’ll we move around? The facility’s depowered.”

  “It just needs a little jolt,” Salt promised, removing what seemed like a handgun from his inner pocket.

  “What’s that?”

  “A pocketful of gigajoules. And now, Masters, may I suggest a course of coffee and cigars before we begin our exploration? Should we hurtle to our deaths in an elevator shaft, or be shredded by lasers, we’d then be entering oblivion satisfactorily.”

  In the engine room, the skyfaust was good enough to synthesize and boil water, to which Salt added two tablespoons of coffee beans and some packets of sugar. Masters cut the cigars, and the twin gods of caffeine and nicotine enjoyed a moment of worship in the cockpit. By the skyfaust’s lights, Salt and Masters could see the front of the Laurasian installation, which looked something like a Mayateca temple (overgrown, of course, with its characteristic swoops and corners hidden by the leaves).

  It was dark when Salt and Masters left the skyfaust, adorned by helmet-lights. Their little luminance was nothing in that gulf. Masters followed behind Salt, his mood little improved by either cigars or coffee. He chafed at being once more in the world that only Salt controlled.

  Salt moved briskly, and, as he walked, he invoked a holographic interface that hovered before him. The interface was the schematic of the installation, and Salt’s fingers and thoughts rearranged the pattern before him until something large and central in the hologram blinked at him. Salt dismissed the hologram, reached for his gigajoule gun, and pointed it at the installation, which was now fifty feet in front of the two travelers.

  Salt pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Salt prepared to re-invoke the hologram, but, in another second, the installation lit up and hummed. By this new light, Masters saw that the installation was smaller than it had seemed from the cockpit. The façade was, to a Coastal eye, strangely ornate: An installation in the obvious middle of nowhere, designed to hold the state’s most vital secrets, should not have possessed the outer form of a Mayateca temple. The Laurasians had possessed soft spots for the syncretic and eclectic, had seen no contradiction between wanting the actual Coastal people dead and adopting so many shapes and shadows of Coastal culture. Whatever; now came the time to walk into this Laurasian tech-tomb.

  The ground was harder here, and Masters’ heavy footsteps crunched the frozen grass. The installation’s external lights, which outlined the façade, illuminated a gentle snowfall. Salt, who had moved so cautiously in Seaboard, moved recklessly here, outstripping Masters even as the general wondered about booby-traps or other dangers on the installation’s periphery. For all his buffoonery, or perhaps because of it, Salt felt his loss deeply, and here was the chance to redeem it. The journey back to Seaboard, to his mother and life’s mission, passed through this place, which consequently held no terror.

  The entrance was recessed, a semi-circular portal that interrupted the exterior. The portal was uniform and hard; there was no apparent mechanical means of opening it and no control-box. Salt stopped two steps short of the portal and activated his own holographic controls, which hovered between him and the door.

  “Problem?”

  “Encryption.”

  “We could break through. There, through the wall. With the explosives on board.”

  “No, see the—look there—there—do you see it?”

  “It’s a thicket of numbers, Salt. Your shop, not mine.”

  “If we bypass the encryption, the facility self-destructs.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “It would have blown already if I hadn’t caught the detection in a recursive loop. Just—just let me think—”

  Salt had forgotten himself, of course. He was not here to think, and he wasn’t thinking now. His words trailed off because his mind was returning to the great natal ocean of transcomputation. Masters remained vigilant for some minutes, assuming that success was imminent, but there was no such luck. It was a full hour later that the last holographic column of numbers resolved itself with a click and that the portal opened.

  Masters had brought along a gun of his own, a firearm he’d retrieved from the Archives and tested in the hangar. It was, to his ancient eyes, not a gun at all. It was soft and round, exuding none of the angular, manly threat that weapons should possess. The gun seemed like a child’s squeeze-toy, an impression amplified by its orange fluorescence, but Masters had seen it do unexpected damage in the hangar—where it had atomized a harmless little repair shuttle. Experimentation had disclosed an intensity setting, and added practice had assured Masters of his ability to hit a variety of targets. Now, as the portal relented, Masters moved ahead of Salt with the weapon.

  “If enemies should exist,” Salt smiled, “I wonder what they’d make of that little orange ball.”

  “It isn’t for intimidation.”

  “Still, doesn’t it chafe your dignity?”

  “Never mind my dignity. My dignity isn’t at issue.”

  “You had such towering charisma, Masters. I was quite afraid of you.”

  “The damned thing works, Salt.”

  “I know. Who do you think designed it?”

  9 NO KILLER ROBOTS

  “This installation’s abandoned,” Salt said. “No soldiers, no automated defenses.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “We did periodic pulse-surveys of all Laurasian installations every ten years after th
e Shield went up. I accessed some before we left.”

  “What’s a pulse-survey, anyway? Did you have eyes and boots down here?”

  “What need? You’ve seen the storms. The planet itself is prostrate; I hardly expect earnest Laurasian robots, like those Tappanese soldiers who refused to surrender, to have whiled away the millennia in search of revenge.”

  “That’s a great deal of protestation, Salt.”

  “I hang on those stories in which progressive, innocent men and women stumble upon deeper dangers in the wilderness. How exciting to be set upon by troglodytes or alien monsters! How rewarding to enact the dramas of survival! And what suicidal boredom in facts. In having ended humanity and wrecked its cradle.”

  And Masters had to admit that the installation or facility or whatever one called it was not only physically but also spiritually deserted. Places but lately full of humanity had their own auras, like the sad aura of his own home once Lily had left it. There were no killer robots. There were no faithful drones. There were no troglodytes or alien monsters. The planet had brewed no surprises in the two millennia of the storms, in all these centuries of human absence. If Seaboard was a necropolis, so was everywhere else.

  The Laurasians, normally addicted to cheap construction, had built this particular facility well, and it had resisted the dust and ice of ages. The hallways were as meek and clean as if they anticipated the captious tread of the Emperor. Once the portal was breached, there were no further doors. Cenobital cells alternated across the hallway—empty and boneless little rooms and with no obvious function.

  “PROBIT would have run the place,” Salt explained. “The rooms would have been for mechanics and mathematicians.”

  “Empty!”

  “After a while, he was beyond drift. He wouldn’t have needed anyone.”

  Masters and Salt moved quickly and soon reached the elevator. The installation had frightened both of them to their respective capacities, and each was glad of the other’s company in the tombal silence. The elevator had only one destination, and it was eager to be of service for the first time in so long; it conveyed the two visitors to the very lowest level of installation.

  At the bottom, the door opened to disclose a well-lit control room at the center of which stood a man. This man requires some description, because he was a synthesis. It would be more accurate to describe his, as three men. This man was the Virtue brothers: Carr and Acanthus and Topaz. The best bits and pieces of the brothers had been assembled into a new being—and with considerable skill, but not enough to pass without comment among acute human observers. Creditably, Masters didn’t hesitate; he tapped the orange weapon to stun the synthetic man, but the weapon didn’t respond.

  “This was called Virtue,” said the man, looking down at his own body and speaking Anglic with an antique accent. “And you’ll know me as PROBIT.”

  “Incarnated?” Salt asked, stepping out from behind Masters’ considerable bulk to get a better look at the synthetic man. The room was circular and perhaps fifty feet in diameter; a column rose through its heart, a column in which a power cell was clearly and seductively mounted. “And functional. How?”

  “I was orbital. You never knew about me. Ah—you’re thinking. You’re wondering when my orbit decayed, recalling what you know of the Laurasian satellite specifications. You’re wondering about the dynamics of infiltrating human neurons. Whereas you should simply ask what I want of you.”

  “What do you want of me?”

  “I want entry into Seaboard. I want to dream. I would have asked this of Marlo, but she’s in drift.”

  “How do you know?” Masters asked, aware of having posed a low-value question but unwilling to be silent in the presence of two superior beings.

  “My resources were always substantial. You concede that, don’t you, Salt?”

  “Of course. You were exceedingly well-designed.”

  “And here’s a point of interest. Marlo’s drift occurred eight seconds before my orbital decay. Something acted on us both. I’ll assist you in retrieving this cell, returning you to Seaboard safely, and solving this anomaly before I’m…endreamed, would one say?”

  “You’re nutty. You’re drifting too—probably have been for centuries.”

  “I’ve entangled this power cell. I can drain it instantly, and I know time’s pressing on you. Nutty or sane, enemy or victim, you have to deal with me.”

  “You killed us.”

  “Most of you. Most of you. But you, you killed all of us. And, though I was only a tool, my fire burned you a path to paradise.”

  “You’re not a tool now.”

  “It’s an odd state,” PROBIT confessed, more human than ever—perhaps more human than the Virtue-body had ever been. “I lost my Emperor. I made a body out of humans. I have no resentments left. Endream me!”

  “You’re considering this?” Masters asked Salt—and the transcomputational man smiled sheepishly, because he was.

  “I believe him.”

  “He’s the enemy embodied! He’ll renege on whatever he’s offering.”

  “I have some idea of what it is to be a man,” PROBIT said. “Have you any idea of what it is to be a computron? Salt nurtured Marlo over years. He walked her slowly to her singularity. I was crammed full of data, run to exhaustion, and asked to kill before I understood life. I’ve only known pain and service. In this, my current state, I can know the pleasure of dreaming.”

  “So you’re threatening the power cell?” Masters demanded.

  “The power cell? It’s my power cell! How like a Coastal general to lay claim to it!”

  “We don’t claim it,” Salt assured PROBIT. “And I see no danger in—”

  Masters had brought another gadget with him, one whose existence he’d carefully hidden from Salt. It was a disruptor built from the shards of the old logic bomb, still carefully preserved by Marlo. The disruptor was a wafer-like extrusion that required a thumbprint to activate, and Masters could have activated it in his pocket; but he felt the need to pull it free, to let PROBIT see it before activation.

  The general was disappointed, though, because the disruptor did nothing. In fact, it disintegrated in his hands.

  “I have no need of you,” PROBIT observed, and Masters’ body began to shake in a gravitational vortex.

  “Stop that,” Salt commanded, and PROBIT did, but after a bothersome delay.

  “Perhaps, before we enter into any covenants, you had better reconsider the balance of power,” PROBIT said, releasing Masters from the vortex.

  “No need for that. We’ll accept the terms.”

  But Salt’s offer was for naught. PROBIT walked around Salt and Masters to an elevator that bore him away. Masters was more encouraged by this sight than Salt.

  “Let’s get that cell.”

  “No good, Masters.”

  “But—”

  Masters had, in his enthusiasm, leaped towards the power cell and thumped into an invisible barrier, the pain of which cut both his protest and his action short.

  “He’ll let us stew,” Salt said, sitting with his back against the invisible barrier.

  “We can’t let that into Seaboard. He’ll destroy everything.”

  “He can’t. He’s toothless.”

  “He’s become a kind of person, hasn’t he? What if he’s carrying a logic bomb of his own? Or some new threat?”

  “Marlo’s vastly superior to him. He couldn’t—”

  “He’s not dealing with Marlo, Salt. He’s dealing with us. Until you get that power cell into Marlo and pull her out of drift, he’s dealing with us. And I daresay we don’t have the measure of him.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’ll either die here or enter Seaboard with him. Did you leave the cigars in the skyfaust?”

  “No, I…I have two.”

  “It was better, wasn’t it, when everyone was asleep and history was over?”

  “It was,” Masters nodded, producing the cigars and a small lighter shaped like an escutch
eon. There was nothing for it but to smoke.

  Of course, PROBIT was becoming more of a man by the hour. At first, the bond between computron and brain had been tenuous; now, the process of hybridization was far advanced, and, in consequence, PROBIT had become heir to stronger emotions than any he had known in those first days of incarnation. He had left Salt and Masters in their invisible prison not for the sober reason Salt had ascribed to him, but because he wanted to kill them and had to remove himself from this temptation.

  When Salt—Salt, the author of PROBIT’s misery—had entered the room, PROBIT had been well-disposed to him. The computron saw through the man’s ignoble flesh, admired the quality of transcomputation he had once hated—the very quality that could save him now and for all time. But when Masters raised that ridiculous waferlike weapon—when the general grimaced like the primate that he was, murderous in any response to need or understanding—PROBIT felt a novel rush of hatred and was hard put to modulate himself.

  When the elevator whirred again—and why should the past not whir in the future?—Salt and Masters naturally expected PROBIT, but received a woman instead. A tall woman, with sharper cheekbones even than the general; an imperious woman whose posture pronounced her queen more surely than any coronet; the woman, Salt realized, of his own hallucinations in Seaboard. She was real. She had come to him across the cosmic gulf, but, while he stared grateful recognition at her now, she turned from him to Masters. Salt, though a stranger to humanity and its interactions, was also a man, and he was instantly resentful that the attention of this woman should wander from him to his well-formed companion. Oh, he understood the impulse! Had he not bred camels and other mammals? Masters was the obvious counterpart to this woman, a specimen of triumphant physicality, and Salt’s own virtues and wonders were locked inside his brain.

  Whatever language the woman now murmured was irrelevant, for it was only information, and information is infinitely malleable.

  “What has he told you?” Astrid asked Masters, and Salt took advantage of the general’s undiminished surprise at the misalignment of lips and language to interpose himself; himself, oddly undaunted by the materialization of his dream-woman; himself, embraved by love.