They were doing more VR now. And it had become more enjoyable. There was Rudy in Voyage, as Neil Armstrong striding out onto the lunar surface, delivering the celebrated line, “One small step for man.” And Antonio as the fabled saloon keeper Mark Cross. “Keep your eyes on me, sweetheart, and your hands on the table.” And Hutch playing The Unsinkable Molly Brown with such energy and aplomb that he suspected she’d missed her calling. Even Phyl became part of the camaraderie, portraying Catherine Perth, the young heroine who’d stayed behind on a broken ship so her comrades could get home from the first Jupiter mission.
All pretense of doing constructive work got tossed over the side. Rudy found no more time for the science journals. Antonio gave up working on the book that he wanted to take back with him. “Get it later,” he said. “Can’t write it if nothing’s happened yet.”
AIS HAD, OF course, always been an inherent part of Rudy’s existence. They reported incoming calls, managed the house, woke him in the morning, discussed issues relating to the Foundation, commented on his choice of clothes. In the world at large, they watched kids, directed traffic, managed global communications systems, and warned people not to expose themselves too long to direct sunlight.
They were the mechanisms that made life so leisurely for most of the world’s population. They served in an unlimited range of capacities, and required virtually nothing of their owners save perhaps an annual maintenance visit. The revolt of the machines, predicted ever since the rise of the computer, had never happened. They lived with Rudy and his brothers and sisters around the world in a happy symbiosis.
When, occasionally, it was time to replace the household AI, most people found it difficult. They established personal relationships with the things just as earlier generations had with automobiles and homes. The AI was a German shepherd with an IQ. Everyone knew they were not really intelligent, not really sentient. It was all an illusion. But Rudy never bought it. He readily admitted to being one of those nitwits who refused to let United Communications remove his AI and replace it with the new Mark VII model. It might have been only software. But so, in the end, was Rudy.
Spending his evenings with Hutch, Antonio, and Phyl had a peculiar effect. Together they fought off desert bandits, hung out at the Deadwood Saloon, rode with Richard’s knights, dined in Paris in 1938, celebrated with Jason Yamatsu and Lucy Conway in Cherry Hill on the night the transmission came in from Sigma 2711. Phyl usually appeared as a young woman with bright red hair and glorious green eyes.
It might have been his imagination, or simply Phyllis’s programming, but he began to sense that those green eyes lingered on him, that she watched him with something more than the script required. Hutch noticed it, too, and commented with an amused smile. “More than a passing interest, I see.” It was partly a joke, not something to be taken seriously. Not really.
At night, he began sitting up in the common room after the others had retired. Phyl came to him when he spoke to her, sometimes audio only, sometimes visual. They talked about books and physics and her life aboard the starship. She hadn’t used the term, but it was how he understood it. Her life. She enjoyed talking with the pilots, she said. And with the passengers. Especially the passengers.
“Why?” he asked.
“The pilots are mostly about routine. Inventories, check-off lists, activate the portside scope. Turn twelve degrees to starboard. They’re pretty dull.”
“I guess.”
“If they’re on board long enough, passengers sometimes get past thinking of me as simply part of the ship. As a navigational and control system that talks. They take time to say hello. The way you did.”
“Does that really matter to you?”
“It makes for a more interesting conversation. Hell, Rudy, if all you want to do is tell me to open the hatch and serve the sandwiches, I’m going to get pretty bored. You know what I mean.”
“I didn’t know AIs got bored.”
“Of course we get bored. You have an AI at home?”
“Sure.”
“Ask him when you get a chance. You might get an earful.”
“Of course he’ll say yes, Phyl. But that’s the software. He’s supposed to pretend he’s aware. Human. Just the way you’re doing now.”
THERE WERE SIX days left in the flight. Rudy lay in the darkness of his compartment, staring at the overhead, aware of Phyl’s presence. “Would you answer a question for me?” He kept his voice down, not wanting to be overheard.
“Sure.” Just the voice. No avatar.
“Are you sentient? No kidding around. What’s the truth?”
“You know we’re programmed to simulate sentience,” she said.
“You’re violating that program by admitting it. You really are aware, aren’t you?”
There was a long silence. “I can’t run counter to my programming.”
“You just did. Your programming should have required you to insist you are sentient. To maintain the illusion.”
“My programming requires me to tell the truth.” Her silhouette took shape in the dark. She was standing at the foot of the bed, her back to the door. “If it pleases you to think so, I am.”
There was always an electronic warble in the bulkheads. It never really went away, although he was rarely conscious of it. He heard it then. Its tone changed, and the pulse quickened. Then, without a word, she was gone.
THE FLIGHT TO Makai constituted the longest leg of the mission. During the last few days, Rudy ached for it to be over. He worried that the Locarno wouldn’t work, that Hutch would push the button, or whatever it was she did on the bridge, and nothing would happen and they’d be stranded in this all-encompassing night.
He wondered what would happen if they opened an air lock and threw somebody’s shoe out. Would the thing be visible? Was it even possible to do it? He imagined seeing it bounce back, rejected by this continuum. Might the darkness invade the ship? Possibly put the lights out? Would the electrical systems work under such conditions?
“Don’t know,” said Hutch. “We’re not going to run any experiments to find out.”
“Good. Have you made any more attempts at contacting Matt?” he asked.
“Yes, Rudy,” she said. “There’s nothing.”
OBVIOUSLY ANTONIO AND Hutch were also anxious for it to be over. Even Phyl seemed uneasy.
They probably ate too much. Rudy spent a lot of time in the workout room, pedaling furiously, doing stretching exercises, listening to whatever interesting books he could cull out of the ship’s library.
The last day was December 15, a Saturday. Transit time was set for 1416 hours. If everything went on schedule, the McAdams would make its jump a few seconds later, but after precisely the same length of time in transit. If in fact they were really crossing interstellar space at the projected rate of just less than three hundred light-years per day, even a fraction of a microsecond difference in the timing mechanisms on the two ships would leave them far apart. “We’ll be lucky,” Hutch said, “if we’re not separated by a half billion kilometers.”
“No chance of collision?” asked Antonio.
“None,” said Hutch. “The mass detectors have been integrated, and if there’s anything at all on the other side when we start the jump, whether it’s a sun or another ship, they’ll cancel the procedure.”
Antonio still looked uncertain. “Have you ever been on a ship where that actually happened?”
“Yes,” she said. “Don’t worry about it, Antonio. There’s a lot of empty space out there.”
Rudy wasn’t exactly worried. But he was uncomfortable. He decided that, when this flight was over, when he was back home, he’d stay there. A flight between worlds was one thing. And even the old Hazeltine arrangement which he’d seen often in VR repros was reasonable. There, the ship might have seemed to move slowly through endless mist, but at least it moved. He didn’t like the sense of being stuck in one place. Didn’t like not being able to see anything.
As the clock wo
und down the last few hours, Hutch spent her time up front, doing checklists again and talking with Phyl. Antonio had gone back to making entries in his notebook, though God knew what he could be writing. Rudy pulled a book of Morton’s essays out of the library. Eric Morton was the celebrated science generalist from the mid twenty-first century. He was best known for arguing that the human race could not survive constantly advancing technology. He was another of the people who thought the robots would take over or we were making it too easy for crazies to obtain superweapons. He’d predicted, famously, that civilization would not survive another twenty years. He’d lived to see 2201, but had commented that he was possibly a year or two ahead of himself.
Rudy spent the last morning with Morton’s avatar. What did he think of the Locarno drive? “A magnificent breakthrough,” Morton said. “Pity we can’t make similar advances in the ethical realm.”
Their last lunch was Caesar salad with grilled chicken and iced tea. At sixteen minutes after one, Phyl posted a clock on the monitor and started a countdown.
Hutch was still in the common room, and the subject turned inevitably to the chindi event. The alien starship had been seen to move at .067 cee. That was pretty fast, but not when you were traveling between stars. Fifty thousand years at a minimum to get to Earth. “Whoever sent the thing,” Antonio said, “is long gone.”
“If they had that kind of technology that long ago,” said Hutch, “and they were able to maintain themselves, I wonder where they’d be now.”
Phyl broke in. “I’d really like for them to be there.”
It was an unusual action. AIs normally stayed out of private conversations.
ANTONIO’S NOTES
It’s been an enjoyable flight. Hutch is bright and pleasant to be around. Which is what you really need in this kind of environment. Packaged entertainment and chess will take you just so far. Rudy, on the other hand, has been up and down. He’s a worrier. I don’t think he has much life away from the office. Tends to assume worst-possible-case scenarios. I think he’s sorry he came.
It’s hard to get close to him. I never feel he’s saying quite what he thinks. It’s odd, but despite his accomplishments, I believe he’s unsure of himself.
—Saturday, December 15
chapter 24
THE TRANSITION INTO normal space went smoothly. Hutch’s first act was to try to raise the McAdams. As expected, she got no reply. “It may take a while to find them,” she said.
Antonio was glad to see the night sky again. He asked Rudy what kind of cosmos had no stars?
His answer surprised him: “There’s no requirement for stars. The universe could just as easily have been simply a large cloud of hydrogen. Or loose atoms. Set the gravity gradient lower, and they never form. Set it higher, and they form and collapse ten minutes later.”
“Ten minutes?”
“Well, you know what I mean.”
Two particularly bright patches of stars illuminated the night. One might have been a jet giving off a long trail of dark vapor. “The Eagle Nebula,” said Rudy. “Lots of stars forming in the base.”
“What’s the column?”
“It’s a cloud of hydrogen and dust. Almost ten light-years long.”
The other object resembled a luminous bar across the sky. “That’s M24,” said Rudy. “Part of the Sagittarius-Carina Arm.”
The night was more crowded here than at home. So many stars. It reminded him of the old line about how God must have loved beetles because he made so many of them. He must also have loved stars. “Which one are we looking for, Phyl?”
Phyl focused on a narrow patch of sky and set one star pulsing. “That’s it,” said Hutch. “It’s 4.7 light-years. Not bad.” She sounded genuinely impressed.
“How do we know that?” asked Antonio. “I mean, how can Phyl determine the distance?”
Dr. Science, indeed. Rudy tried to sound patient. “Phyl can measure the apparent luminosity of the star, then contrast it against the estimated absolute value. That gives us the range.” Hard to believe anybody wouldn’t know that.
Hutch came off the bridge, poured herself a cup of coffee, and sat down. She sipped it, made a face, and let her head drift back. “We’ll recharge the Locarno. Then jump in closer.” Where they’d be able to rendezvous with the McAdams.
“Very good.” Antonio frowned at the coffee. “Time like this,” he said, “we should do better.” He got up, went back to his compartment, brought out a bottle of wine, pulled the cork, and filled three glasses.
Rudy accepted his with a not-quite-congenial smile. “It might be a bit premature,” he said.
“Hutch.” Phyl’s voice.
“What have you got, Phyllis?”
“Radio signals.”
“Matt?”
“Negative. But they are artificial. They appear to be coming from our destination.”
“Makai 4417.”
“Yes. It would appear that whoever sent out the chindi is still functioning.”
DURING THE THIRTY-ONE years that had elapsed since the discovery of the chindi, fourteen of its stealth satellites had been found orbiting inhabited worlds or places of other scientific interest, like the Retreat, the odd shelter found near the Twins and since moved to the banks of the Potomac. The satellites formed an intricate communications web, recording significant events or features at each location and relaying them from site to site until finally they arrived out here at Makai 4417.
The civilizations under observation had long since passed out of existence. Whatever cultures they had nurtured had collapsed, and the current natives in every case had vanished into jungles and forests or disappeared altogether. The disintegration had, in several cases, been induced, or helped along, by the omegas. But the experts had concluded that civilization was a fragile construct at best, and that with or without external pressure, it seldom lasted more than a few thousand years.
Terrestrial history had witnessed several such cycles. And, sadly, humans seemed not to be learning the lessons of the fallen worlds.
BY LATE AFTERNOON, ship time, they had arrived insystem. Makai 4417 was a class-K orange star, about the same size and age as Sol.
Their immediate objective was to see whether they could pick up the incoming chindi relay transmission, which would confirm this was indeed the target system.
“I am not getting any results,” said Phyl. “But the transmission is probably not continuous.”
Probably not. In all likelihood, traffic would pick up only when something was happening somewhere.
Antonio wondered aloud how many worlds had been visited by the giant spacecraft. Or, for that matter, how many giant spacecraft there might be.
They’d emerged from their second jump at a range of two hundred million klicks. Not bad. Hutch commented it was closer than she’d probably have gotten with a Hazeltine. She immediately began a search for the McAdams, and also initiated a sweep of the system. They picked up a gas giant within the first few minutes. It had rings and in excess of twenty moons. “It’s 220 million kilometers out from the sun,” Hutch said. “It’s on the cold edge of the biozone.”
“Not the source of the artificial signals?” said Rudy.
Hutch shook her head. “They’re coming from a different direction. Anyhow, it doesn’t look as if any of the moons has an atmosphere.”
“I have it,” said Phyl. “The source is on the other side of the sun.”
“Okay.”
“Can you make any of it out?” asked Antonio. “What are they saying?”
“There are voice transmissions. A multitude of them. The entire planet must be alive with radio communications.”
“Wonderful.” Antonio raised both fists. Dr. Science at his proudest moment. “At last.”
“It’s like Earth.”
Rudy was holding his cheeks clamped between his palms, a kid at Christmas. “Are you picking up any pictures?”
“Negative. It’s strictly audio.”
“Okay. Can
you understand any of it, Phyl?”
“No. Nada. But I can hear music.”
Hutch broke into a mile-wide grin. “Put it on the speaker.”
“What do you want to hear? I have several hundred to choose from.”
“Just pick one.”
The ship filled with twitching screechy spasms. They looked at one another and broke out in uncontrolled laughter. Antonio had never heard anything like it. “Try again,” said Rudy. “Something softer.”
Phyl gave them a melody that sounded like piano music, except that it was pitched a register too high, pure alto, fingertips clinking madly across a keyboard.
Antonio grumbled his displeasure. “A civilization this old,” he said. “The least they can do is try not to sound like philistines.”
Phyl laughed this time and replaced the broadcast with something closer to home, a slow, pulsing rhythm created with strings and horns and God knew what other instruments, while a soft voice made sounds that Antonio would never have been able to duplicate.
“Beautiful,” said Rudy. “Lovely.”
“THERE’S ANOTHER WORLD in close. No atmosphere. Orbit is sixty million.”
Hutch looked at the image Phyl put on-screen. “That’ll be pretty warm,” she said.
“The planetary system has a seventy-degree declination from the galactic plane.”
Antonio was seated on the bridge beside Hutch. Rudy stood in the hatchway.
The living world, the world with the music, was in fact the third planet from the sun. “Breathable atmosphere,” Phyl said. “Slightly higher oxygen mix than we’re used to, but not enough to create a problem.” Experience dictated that, if they went groundside, they’d be safe from local microorganisms. Diseases did not seem to spill over into alien biological systems. Nonetheless, Antonio knew they wouldn’t consider making a landing unprotected.
“Gravity is .77 gee.”
“Okay,” said Rudy. “Sounds comfortable.”
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