“As for the break-in itself, while there were certain . . . anomalies about the infiltrators, they were unable to do any harm. The system is designed to defend itself, and it did so, forcing them to flee before they could gather any useful information.”
“What do you think they were looking for?” That was finance minister Hatior Daus, a small man whose finger kept compulsively going to his nose as if to push up a pair of spectacles. It had been two years since he had undergone treatment at WWA to correct his vision (and restore his hairline), yet the atavistic habit persisted, an indicator of the man’s inflexibility. “You say they had some kind of sophisticated measuring implements. Are they rivals seeking to steal your secrets?”
“You trouble yourself over nothing, Mister Daus,” Vabion replied.
“Nothing? That’s not the word you used to describe your stocks when you encouraged us all to invest in them so heavily. If you were to lose your monopoly on instant fabrication or, or propellerless flight—”
“I think he means that there are deeper concerns here than our portfolios.” Bantik Weroz, Hemracine’s chief political adviser, turned her thin face toward Daus with a calculating expression. That face had been middle-aged a few years ago, but thanks to her WWA treatments, she now looked fifteen years younger. “Like what would happen to us if Miss Zeheri succeeded in her investigations into the disappearances. Even Mister Vabion hasn’t yet bought all the magistrates.”
“Zeheri,” the prime minister cursed. “Why can’t we just make her disappear?”
Vabion tilted his clean-shaven head toward her. “That would be too conspicuous, given her known and highly public pursuit of this investigation and her close association with journalists. We are better served by discrediting her.”
“Maybe,” Hemracine said. “But I can’t help feeling it’s a stopgap. Your machines have quite an appetite, Daskel. The more of them you sell, the more brainpower they need to provide their services. Eventually more people will begin to wonder about the disappearances. And what if the brains of the poor and the damaged aren’t enough for them? What if they decide they need to acquire a higher class of brain?”
“I assure you, Pevrat, the system has no volition of its own. It follows a complex set of programmed instructions—no different from the calculating engines WWA developed for codebreaking in the War, just immensely more miniaturized, allowing them to be far faster and more elaborate.”
“It is different,” Weroz pointed out, “in that those calculating engines did not incorporate living brains. Can you be so sure your ‘system’ doesn’t think?”
“My dear Weroz, I am firmly convinced that most people do not actually think,” Vabion said, making a point to keep his gaze upon her. “We ourselves are elaborate calculating engines following prewired programs and conditioned responses. Only a few of us ever develop sufficient introspection and flexibility of thought to reach the point of true sentience.”
“If that charming sentiment was meant to reassure me, Daskel, it didn’t work,” Hemracine said. “The mindless outrage of the mob is exactly what I’m afraid of. All of us here see the value of taking people who were drains on society and putting them to work for the benefit of the economy. But the traditional ideals still hold sway, and we are well into another storm cycle.”
“A cycle that Worldwide Automatics is well on the way to taming,” Vabion reminded her. “There will no longer be any need for austerity or population control, and thus the old sermons teaching us to cherish every person’s contribution, no matter how meager, need no longer sway the people.”
“In time, perhaps,” Weroz said. “But there’s still a lot of idealistic sentiment in the wake of the War. The generation that stood against Fetul won’t die off anytime soon. In fact, many of them are among the poor and damaged, and their comrades would not appreciate their . . . involuntary contribution to the economy the way we do.”
Vabion smiled. “My friends. You speak as though the mood of the populace were like the weather, a force of nature outside your control. We are beginning to master the weather, in fact, but directing the minds of the public is a far easier proposition. If there is a risk of disclosure, we must simply get ahead of the story. Reveal the system’s use of living brains ourselves, and present it as a positive.”
The others stared, several steps behind him as always. “How in the storms do you suggest we do that?” Hemracine demanded.
“We present it as an innovation of our own design to increase the power of the system. Decree that inmates sentenced to execution will have their sentences commuted if they volunteer for a new program whereby their brains will be tapped to increase the efficiency of WWA technology. It will appear to be a humane alternative, allowing them to contribute usefully to society for the remainder of their lives. And however brief those lives are, it will be an improvement on what they were slated for.”
Hemracine stared for a long moment. “You are one cold son of an Undertroll,” she said, albeit with admiration.
“And what happens,” Weroz asked, “when we run out of condemned inmates and the system still demands more?”
“Hmm,” Daus muttered. “Well, I suppose if it goes over well, the penalty could be extended to lesser offenses. As needed, of course.”
Hemracine grimaced. “Wonderful. And in time we’ll have to invent new crimes to keep up the supply.”
Daus shrugged. “Well, Vabion did say we can relax the population laws. There will always be plenty of poor people.”
The prime minister threw him a disgusted glare, but said nothing, aware that she was in no position to claim a moral high ground. “All right,” she said. “I’ll take the measure under consideration. We’re adjourned.” But once the advisers and Vabion had risen and headed for the door, Hemracine spoke softly. “Daskel, stay a moment.”
Once they were alone, she sidled closer and spoke. “No matter how cleverly you dress it up, you know this is only a stopgap.”
“Of course.”
“Can you give me any idea how close you are to taming the beast?”
“As you know, Pevrat, I and my best cyberneticists have been working steadily on the problem ever since we recovered the first landing craft. But whatever world created this technology must be enormously beyond us. Its defenses against deconstructing or modifying its programming code are . . . robust. You know we have lost a number of experts in the attempt.”
She grimaced, remembering tales of specialists miraculously translocated into walls or high into the open sky, or simply disappearing. “You’re not telling me anything new.”
“Because I have nothing new. The problem persists.”
Hemracine strode back to her desk and slammed a meaty fist against the wood. “We were fools, you know. Machines falling out of the sky and offering us endless riches and power . . . and we just embraced it. I ask you, Daskel, who’s really in control? Are we managing this problem, or just finding new ways to bend over and give it what it wants?”
“Control will be mine,” he assured her. “No problem is intractable to a sufficiently imaginative and dedicated mind. It’s simply a matter of gaining enough information. The more I study the system, the more my understanding grows. And in time, I will master it.”
Her only response was, “You’d better.” He recognized it as dismissal and left—though it was a polite fiction that she had any real authority to dismiss him. He could impoverish her with one signature, or bring down her government with one endorsement of a rival. For that matter, she probably would not be alive today had Vabion’s technology not cleared her arteries and repaired her heart. Everything the prime minister had, she owed to him, and he could take it from her again with ease. Daskel Vabion allowed nothing to be out of his control.
Except for one thing. Once alone in the lift—an automated one driven by a WWA processor, so there was no attendant to witness it—he allowed himself a
grimace of frustration, for Hemracine’s words had been an aggravating reminder of his one failure of control. He was the greatest mind on the planet, but someone out there from somewhere else had outsmarted him, building a machine that even he could not comprehend.
No, it simply could not stand. He would break the system somehow. He would understand its code, tear down its defenses, and make it truly serve his will. Or, failing that, he would find a way to travel to its source. He knew, as no one outside of WWA besides Hemracine knew, that Vanot was circled by orbital drones that delivered the fabrication units to the ground and that occasionally demanded cargoes of captured Vanotli for delivery elsewhere. He knew the system must be merely one portion in a larger technological ecology that spread across the stars. If he could just alter its programming enough to make a lander come for him and deliver him conscious and uncompromised to its source, then he could do business with its creators and enter into a true partnership.
But first he had to penetrate its defenses and alter its programming, and the effort to circumvent its security had already taken lives. He knew he might die himself before he mastered this problem.
But if Daskel Vabion could not conquer a mindless machine, then he had no business living.
13
May 24, 2165
ShiKahr Business District
“WE HAVE BECOME PREOCCUPIED of late with the question of whether the lessons brought to us by the Kir’Shara truly originated with Surak. I submit that this is the wrong question.”
The speaker, T’Zhae, was a whip-thin Vulcan female whose cocoa-dark hair fell halfway to her waist. She was also startlingly young; in Phlox’s medical judgment, she was less than two Earth decades of age, younger even than Hoshi Sato had been when she had first joined Enterprise’s crew. But she was as welcome in this forum as anyone. That was the egalitarianism Phlox so admired in the Vulcans, and he was glad he had happened to track down his old acquaintance Tobin Dax in time to get invited on an excursion to this debate house—a combination coffee shop and public forum where ordinary Vulcan citizens gathered to debate logic, philosophy, politics, poetry, art, and whatever other issues took their fancy. It was the Vulcan equivalent of Denobulan social gatherings like gueaa-dancing and Stump the Philosopher, or human customs like poetry jams and karaoke. Phlox was quite enjoying it, just as he was enjoying the opportunity to get acquainted with Dax’s new friend Iloja of Prim, whose orbital ridges Phlox found most formidable and whose neck structure was anatomically fascinating. Oh, and his poetry was charmingly vicious as well.
There was no viciousness in T’Zhae’s presentation, but there was a cool, intellectual passion beneath her words. “Surak would not have tolerated becoming the object of a personality cult,” she went on. “He insisted he was an ordinary Vulcan—a teacher, not a prophet. The insights that came to him, he insisted, were equally available to all who chose to meditate upon them. The wisdom lies in the words themselves, not their scribe.
“Thus, if the lessons inscribed in the Kir’Shara are sound, if meditating upon them brings us greater cthia and serenity, if it heals the rifts that had arisen between communities in recent generations, then does it matter when and by whom those words were written? Surak, revered though he is, is a memory. We are the Vulcans who live today, and who shape the future. Thus, it is we, through our own choices and actions, who give legitimacy to a philosophy. The wisdom is ours to discover and to enact in our lives. Even if the document imparting the lessons is a lie, that does not matter if the lessons themselves are true.”
“Marvelous!” Iloja murmured to his tablemates, barely managing to keep his voice low enough to avoid irritated glances from the adjacent tables. “I thought these Vulcans were a cold people at first, but do you see the passion in her eyes? There’s true idealism there, true dedication.” He sighed and shook his head. “On Cardassia, the Obsidian Order would be hauling her away for reconditioning right now, if not arranging for her suicide following a lovers’ quarrel.”
“I see what you mean,” Phlox replied, trying to keep the mood cheery. “She reminds me of my own daughter, Vaneel. Always passionate in her convictions, always eager to question and challenge the precious assumptions of society.” He chuckled. “Vaneel forced me to rethink a thing or two over the years, and I’m eternally in her debt for it. I hope this young lady’s parents are just as proud of her.”
Tobin Dax was watching her distractedly as she completed her speech and stepped aside for the rebuttal speaker. “I like her hair,” he finally murmured.
Iloja let out a bark of laughter, this time succeeding in drawing glares. “She’s a little young for you, isn’t she, my friend?”
Dax flushed. “You have no idea,” he replied sheepishly. “But . . . well, she seems older. Really smart.”
“This is Vulcan,” Phlox told him. “They’re all really smart.”
“Although sometimes in monumentally stupid ways,” Iloja added.
The rebuttal speaker was a more mature male—a few years below T’Pol’s age, Phlox estimated. He was tall and lean, but his fitness and bearing suggested a military background. Indeed, the man declared, “I am Soreth, formerly a subaltern in the High Command.” Many in the audience made subtle sounds or gestures of disapproval.
“My . . . learned opponent,” he continued with respect so measured as to be clearly sarcastic, “has attempted to suggest that the source of a philosophy is irrelevant so long as we are swayed by it. I submit that the intentions behind the philosophy and its propagation are entirely relevant. For these teachings are those of the Syrannites—a long-standing radical group that originated within the melder community.”
“Uh-oh,” Tobin murmured. “He’s one of those.” Soreth was not the first partisan of the Mental Integrity Coalition to have spoken tonight, though he was the youngest.
“Our history clearly shows the dangers of melding. Before Surak, the powers of the mind were wielded as weapons, trapping our ancestors in a constant state of warfare and tyranny where no individual’s mind was safe from violation. Surak himself condemned these practices and taught us to respect the sanctity of the Vulcan mind. Only when our minds were safe from external assault were we free to master them.
“Thus, the renewed embrace of melding threatens to erode the barriers that keep us sane and safe within ourselves—between logic and emotion, between self and other, between private and public. Melders thus often have difficulty respecting the barriers that must exist between Vulcans and more emotional species if we wish to preserve our integrity. We have seen how melders such as Soval and T’Pol have been swayed by human emotion and human agendas. This led inexorably to a melder-led Syrannite government that has allowed even more alien intrusion into Vulcan life. Thus, these teachings contained in the alleged Kir’Shara serve to undermine everything that makes us Vulcan.
“Now, I do not agree with Commander Zadok’s conclusion that Vulcan has already been conquered,” he insisted to the skeptical crowd. “That would imply that it is already too late, and this I do not consider true. I do support the reconstitution of the High Command, but as a precaution, a deterrent against outside forces that would seek to undermine what we are. We must restore the barriers that preserve our Vulcanness.”
Once Soreth stepped back, T’Zhae was quick to rebut him. “Even in the Analects, Surak’s constraints on melding referred only to invasive and non-consensual melds. Yes, throughout history there have been cultures that read this as a condemnation of melding itself, but they were few. Most simply adopted the policy that melding should be attempted only by trained adepts, or through their mediation—but those adepts were respected by most Vulcan societies until the High Command came to power and propagated what are now known to be myths about the medical hazards of melding.
“We now understand that the melding of minds is the essence of what makes us Vulcan. It does not erode our identity—it reveals it. By sharing our minds w
ith others, we discover ourselves through their eyes. And only then do we truly know ourselves.”
“I concede,” Soreth replied, “that the potential for telepathic contact exists within any Vulcan brain. But so does the potential for hallucination or psychosis. So does the potential for rage and violence. In the normal Vulcan brain, the telepathic potential is unexpressed. It must be activated through the telepathic intervention of a melder—a member of that minority of the population in which the potential is spontaneously active.”
“This is a proven falsehood. The ability is present in every Vulcan brain from birth, as demonstrated through the mating bond—which is unquestionably psionic, despite the belief propagated in recent generations that it was merely hormonal in nature. But we must learn to exercise the skill, just as we learn to walk or to operate a keyboard or to play a lyre. It only lay dormant in most modern Vulcans because we were conditioned to deny it. But that denial is pathological. Have you not seen the thesis of T’Rin of TesKahr, demonstrating the steady rise of mental illness during the generations when the melding ban was in place and the substantial decline since the ban was lifted?”
“A thesis which has not yet been peer-reviewed,” Soreth countered. “Nor has there been enough time to verify that the reputed decrease is anything but a temporary fluctuation.”
“You ignore the preponderance of cases in which melding itself provided the cure to mental illness. Pa’nar Syndrome has been effectively eradicated in less than a decade. It only took that long because so many sufferers were slow to accept the simple cure.”
Soreth continued to ply his case gamely, even though the bulk of the crowd seemed to side with T’Zhae. “There,” Iloja opined, “is a man who will never change his mind if he lives to be two hundred. So young for a Vulcan, yet so very old already.”
“I don’t know about that,” Dax said. “Nobody can live a long life without changing.”
Star Trek: Enterprise - 017 - Rise of the Federation: Uncertain Logic Page 17