by MadMaxAU
MOST ASSUREDLY.
Virginia could not remember inserting that smug lilt into this particular simulation. Was it mimicking Saul? JonVon had been in link contact with her lover a lot, lately. And she should never forget that JonVon, as a bio organic construct, was midway between humans and silicon computers in his information processing. That led to unexpected capabilities.
“Can you stop the tickling?”
JonVon’s input broke into two channels, which she felt as a sluggish red stream of rusty words, with blue darting commentary slipping in and around them.
WHILE WE “SPOKE” —NOT THE RIGHT WORD, I
I TESTED THE EFFECT KNOW, BUT THERE IS NO
AND FOUND IT IS DUE OTHER
TO CONCENTRATIONS OF
MAGNETIC DIPOLES AVERAGE NUMBER 10°
FLIPPING TOGETHER
WHERE YOU HAVE BUILT
UP EMOTION LADEN PROBABLY FROM ADOLESCENCE
TRIGGER COMPLEXES.
I AM AFRAID I CANNOT
ELIMINATE THEM BECAUSE THEIR PRIMARY EXTERNAL
THEY ARE CLOSELY TRIGGER SEEMS TO BE SEXUAL
TIED INTO YOUR LEARNED
MOTOR RESPONSES THE IMAGE YOU ARE CALLING
UP AT THIS MOMENT IS THE
CONTRACTION OF UPPER
THIGH MUSCLES AS YOU
SPREAD YOUR LEGS FOR—
“Stop! I don’t want my sex life played back by you.”
YOU ASKED.
“I did?”
SORRY.
Her head was clamped in close packed foam, which proved to be good foresight—she would’ve flinched with embarrassment, otherwise.
“How much do you. . . “ Well, of course. The times with Saul.
YOU ARE DISPLAYING RHYTHMS OF EMBARRASSMENT. SORRY.
“Oh, it’s not your fault.”
I CAN ABORT THE EXPERIMENT.
“No! I need this for the mechs.”
I AM RECEIVING VALUABLE SUBROUTINES NOW
She supposed this last sentence was supposed to be reassuring. The program had an uncanny way of responding to her apprehensions. Still . . . “Just out of curiosity, what has my motor skill at handling tools—that is what we’re trawling for in my middle lobes, isn’t it? —what has that got to do with spreading my thighs?”
YOU HAVE ASSOCIATED THESE ACTIONS IN YOUR SELFPROGRAMMING.
“Self programming?”
LIFE LEARNED.
“Oh. Experience, you mean.”
THE BEST TEACHER, AN OLD SAYING GOES.
“Maybe. Some things I’d rather get safely out of a book.”
YES.
He’s being diplomatic. After all, he doesn’t have the option of direct experience. “Can you scan the nearby memory tie in?”
YES.
Was there a hint of reluctance? “Can you assign a date when those complexes were laid down?”
A YEAR, NO. TIME ASSOCIATIONS ARE VAGUE, HOWEVER, YOU ARE LYING ON SOMETHING GRITTY AND COLD. THERE IS A SOUND. WATER WAVES, I ESTIMATE. OVER YOU THERE IS A FACE AND A POUNDING IN YOUR LOWER ABDOMEN.
Yes. That warm spring Hawaiian evening, fragrant with promise. A movie and a shake and off to the beach for some friendly necking. Only the warm kisses and gently probing, caressing hands hadn’t stopped there. Something powerful had seized her in a way she had never imagined—no matter how many thousands of times she had already thought of it, tried to visualize it—and then they were actually, unbelievably, doing it. And rather than a fiery yet lofting sensation, a cosmic rapture, a mystical union, as her dreams had envisioned, it was raw, crude, uncomfortable, painful, and finally depressing.
SHORT PANTS
ROMANCE
“A simple rhyme isn’t poetry,” she said primly.
TRUE.
“And anyway, what do you know about it?” Even as the words formed she thought, Well, actually, Jon Von knows exactly what you do. Or will, when he’s finished mapping your lobes, dipped into your hindbrain, plumbed the reptilian core of you. It was a sobering thought.
JonVon chose to not reply. Tact? Or was she indulging the usual programmer’s bias, reading human traits into machine responses?
The delicate cool tickling continued. She relaxed, letting her mind glide away from the red swirl of emotions the recollection had called up.
She knew that memories lodged close to sites where physical associations were stored, so that the body led the mind in storing data. A crisp dry smell could call up a distant dusty afternoon or childhood. But this made her wonder about the radical experiment she was attempting here.
The mechs needed supervision. Special processing programs controlled subtle waldo arms, but they weren’t smart. JonVon was fairly “smart” but he couldn’t help a mech turn a screwdriver or balance a suction sponge. As a stochastic machine, he was built to deal in uncertainties. He did not interface well with the mechs’ reductionist, solve the-equation worldview. And JonVon lacked the intricate motor skills that evolution and exercise had given humans.
So she had decided to try one of her outlandish, low-probability dreams: Let JonVon read her skills. Her reflexes were also stochastic and holographic. He might understand them better.
The technology was available, if you knew where to look. The brain stored memories in the orientation of electrons, deep down in the cells and synapses. In principle, one could read the directions that these electrons pointed. The entire swarm of spins stored information—the intricate turns and tugs necessary to swivel a wrist, poke a finger. Virginia already had good programs that translated the human moves into mech moves. If JonVon could store her motor skills, he could take over much of the mech managing. That would be a big help. Carl and other spacers had nagged her endlessly to spend more time with the mechs, and she was getting frazzled.
This was a way out. Maybe.
She would have to develop this technology eventually, anyway. Even with Saul’s microwave eraser, things were still dicey. Oakes and Lopez still gave mech directing top priority.
If they kept losing people, over the seventy year haul the mechs would have to be much more independent than the expedition had planned. And she had to be slotted eventually, so she had to at least start on a better programming system right away.
READING NEARING COMPLETION.
She sent an expression of relieved excitement: burnt gold lightning strokes zapping across a velvet sky.
I RECORDED THE TRIGGER SITE. I COULD SUMMON UP FOR VOLUNTARY RECALL THE INCIDENT FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD. FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT.
“I wasn’t a child, you bucket of bolts.”
THE ASSOCIATIONS—
“And I don’t think it was `entertaining’ either. That big hulk of a boy—“She had a sudden jolting memory of a rasping, panting male voice muttering Eli a hohonu keia lua. His hard, machinelike ramming had hammered the words into her memory: I dig this hole deep. She shuddered.
YOU MAY MOVE NOW. READING COMPLETED.
“Thanks.”
NOT THE BEST OF BEGINNINGS.
She knew JonVon didn’t mean the reading. “No, it wasn’t. Oh, he was kind enough, I guess. I liked him enough to go out with him several times before that, after all. But never after . . . that.”
AND SINCE?
“I’ve had my share. An engineer in college . . . no, who am I kidding? Not many. Not many at all.”
A CONGRUENCY IS DIFFICULT.
“It’s not a mathematical congruence, you know, JonVon. People don’t look for someone exactly like themselves. Almost the opposite, in fact.”
YOU ARE YOUNG. YOU SEEK AGE?
Saul’s s desert weathered face came to her, grinning in that lovely distracted way he had, and for a moment she was not sure whether she had recalled it or. . .yes . . . “JonVon, you put him in my head.”
IT SEEMED NEEDFUL.
“I’ll be the judge of that. At least let me stage manage my own fantasies!”
OF COURSE.
But the quick vision of that lopsided grin below the dark, seldom-joyful eyes h
ad indeed gotten to her. It seemed an age since she had seen him, taken shelter in those strong enveloping arms, smelled the heady musk of him, talked—
“JonVon! Call him for me.”
I BELIEVE HE HAS AN APPOINTMENT WITH CARL OSBORN. ONE OF THE MECHS I COMMAND WITNESSED HIM PASS BY 1.34 MINUTES AGO.
“Drat! I miss him.” She jerked the foam padding away from her head and grimaced at the imposing banks of equipment: spindly nuclear resonance pickups, looming pancake magnet poles, ranks of digitizers.
“I’m worn out with this everlasting crisis.”
YOU NEED RECREATION.
“You bet.”
A picture leaped into her mind—so graphic, so lurid—silky entwined limbs, and more. She would have turned away if she had ever seen it displayed in mixed company…and yet she found it sensually enticing, pulse quickening, as if calculated to pry up the hinges of her own special private places.
“JonVon!”
ONLY A SUGGESTION.
The quilted scenes faded, leaving a halo of blue afterimage.
“How did you . . . know?”
I READ A LOT.
It was, she supposed, a joke.
CARL
Over here!” Carl shouted.
Saul’s silhouette turned at the far end of Tunnel K and waved. The figure kicked off and glided the hundred meters, passing through pools of ivory phosphor radiance.
“Damned chilly,” Saul said as he windmilled to bring his feet around in front of himself. He landed, knees taking the shock.
He’s getting better, Carl reflected. Everybody’s going to have to learn to sweat from now on. “We’re keeping it cold even in the central tunnels now. Me, I’d like to vac all these.”
“It would cut down on our maneuverability enormously.”
“Cut down on the purples, too.”
“I use the inner tunnels every hour or so. If I had to suit up every time“
“I’m going to recommend it anyway.”
“Bethany Oakes has already decided— “
“Yeah, I know.” Every time you confront Lintz with a problem he starts citing decisions by the higher ups.
Saul seemed reflective. “On the way here Lani and I saw Ingersoll down one of the side passages near Level A. He’s eating native forms, I think. Amazing. He seems harmless, if crazy.”
Carl felt a jab of irritation at the mere mention of Ingersoll. Things are so bad we can’t even catch a madman. But he kept his voice matter of-fact; diplomacy came first. “Yeah, he’s crazy, but crazy like a fox.”
He shook his head and decided to get right to the point.
“I . . . Look, I’m going to propose to Oakes that we go retrieve the Newburn.”
“Really? You’ve really located it?”
“Right. It was Lani’s idea, actually. We were just talking, looking at that numerical simulation Virginia did a while back.”
“The one which showed how the Newburn’s solar sail could’ve been shredded by Halley’s plasma tail?”
“Yeah. I figure the other slot tugs were just plain lucky they didn’t get hit. The cross tail induced currents probably blew out Newburn’s tracer beacons, too. Without that sail deployed, finding Newburn was hopeless. So Lani, she says maybe we could try sending tightbeam microwaves and listen for an echo. I used a little sack time and did just that and—bingo! —got a signal back after a week long search.
“Wonderful. And so simple!”
Saul’s surprise was gratifying. At least he didn’t think of it first. “We’re going to need those forty sleepers, at the rate we’re losing people.”
Saul nodded, thinking. “Right . . . the manpower problem will get worse.”
“We’ve got to do it soon. The Newburn’s drifted pretty far away, more than two million klicks already.”
“I agree, but I still don’t understand. Why get me all the way out here to tell me?”
“I want to line up support first, before telling the Committee. I’m no good at arguing with Oakes.”
“And I am?”
“Right. Also, I want you to go with us as doctor.”
Saul brightened. “Good thinking. Those slots may have suffered damage.”
“Be a good morale booster, too.”
“Exactly what we all need. I’m sure I can make Betty see the advantages, now that the purples are under control. But can the Edmund fly right away?”
“Jeffers says his tritium finding mechs have already filtered out enough to quarter fill the short range tanks, just as a byproduct from tunnel digging. He can top off the fuel we’ll need inside a week.”
“Good! You’ve thought this through.”
Is that supposed to be a compliment? Gee, thanks, Dr. Lintz. We grunts try to do some thinkin’ now and then, we do.
“Let’s see.” Saul rubbed his chin. It’ll take the better part a month to get there. That means we’d have to take some hydroponics modules, and . . .”
Carl had already figured out the basics, but he had also learned that it was a good idea to let scientists talk for a while before you got on to the hard part, the decisions. Maybe that was what kept them out of the really top positions. If you sat there while they gave their little lectures, usually they’d feel they’d had their say and they wouldn’t make a lot of stupid objections to what was already obvious.
Saul crouched against the wall with the innate insecurity of a ground dweller, always a little uptight about simply hanging on to a handhold above what his senses—no matter how well he trained them into submission—told him was a long drop.
“Sure,” Carl said when Saul had wound down a little. “Point is, what about Oakes?”
“We’ll need a consensus on this plan, of course, which may well take time.”
“Consensus, hell. Every day we wait the Newburn gets further away!”
Saul scratched his head. “Well, some will see the Newburn as a side issue.”
Carl gritted his teeth. “It’s forty lives.”
“True, but even I might be forced to put them on the back burner. The major problem is understanding the Halley lifeforms. If I can finish my current experiments on time—“
“Experiments!” Carl couldn’t believe he was hearing this. “You think they’re more important than forty people?”
“I didn’t say that, Carl! But we’re not out of the woods yet. There are so many diseases! We have to understand how the cometary ecology works when we add a new source of heat. That’s what we hadn’t anticipated, of course. I was speaking on tightbeam with Earth day before yesterday, and Alexandrosov, the head of the Ukrainian Academy, has a theory. Even with the minutes of time delay in the conversation, we got a lot of thinking done. I told him my ideas—preliminary ones, of course—and he saw an analogy—“
“Aw crap,” Carl said harshly.
“What?” Saul blinked.
“You’re talking like this was a damn thesis problem or something.”
“Thesis?” Saul blinked. “Carl. I assure you, an event of this magnitude, with so many implications, is bigger than a mere—“
“Shit, I don’t mean how big a deal it is with your professor friends back Earthside! I mean that you’re using it to make points!”
Saul’s face compressed, reddened. “That’s incredible. I—“
“You keep running tests and making up theories, yakking to your buddies Earthside—and the rest of us are working our butts off to stop this stuff.”
“I don’t need you to—“
“Come off it!”
“I’m sure I don’t know—“
“Life on comets! Discovery of the century! Saul Lintz, the interplanetary Darwin!”
Saul stiffened. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Some of us, we’re starting to wonder.”
Saul glowered. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You weren’t Mr. Popular in the scientific world when you signed on for this cruise, were you?”
“I was the last living figure ident
ified with the origin of the Percells, if that’s what you’re driving at.”
“Right.” Carl felt a sudden hot embarrassment, remembering who and what this man represented. But he could not keep his resentment in check. “The Israel you knew wiped out, family dead, career finished—you were on the ropes.”
Saul spoke in separated syllables. “So nu?”
“So you ship out. Why not take this ride—it’ll return you when your past is old, forgotten, right?”
Saul said with surprising mildness, “I didn’t think I’d return and still don’t.”
Carl rode over this pause in the momentum. “But! Along comes alien life, and then the green gunk, the purples—bonanza! You’re famous—by accident, really. Anybody could’ve analyzed that ice and found microbes. But to understand it—that’s the big game. That’s where Saul Lintz will make his mark, show that he’s not just lucky. No, he’s a first-class scientist. And he can work on all the new stuff by himself. Study it hard. Squirt it Earthside when he likes. Every biologist back there is waiting for a speck of data about the first alien life, and the only person he can get it from is—ta daah! —Saul Lintz!”