The so-called black-box issue was still a hot topic. Charlie was watching all the shows. “It doesn’t look as if the rescue mission will happen,” he said.
“Give it time, Charlie.”
“I’d hoped,” he told me, “that people might have become more reasonable over all these thousands of years. But I’m sorry to say I can’t see that much progress has been made.”
“Some has.”
“Not really. Except for the superficial stuff. The language and the way people dress and the kind of music they listen to. That’s improved in some ways. But other than those kinds of cultural things, these could be the same people who brought their children to my school.”
Meanwhile, rescuing the boxes had become something of a media joke. “I should have known better,” Alex said, “than to hope we might get some official help. That won’t happen unless people get stirred up over the issue. And it doesn’t look as if that’s very likely.”
“Not your fault,” I said.
Meantime, we lost a couple more clients over the issue. Jacob sorted through the incoming calls to root out the threats, jeers, and profanity. A few wrote or called to tell us they were disappointed in Alex, that they’d expected more. Some were praying for him.
Charlie put a package online in which he offered to join any rescue mission going to Villanueva. “I will show anyone who cares where other Betas can be found,” he said. But there were no takers. That wasn’t a surprise. There had never been a time when anybody paid attention to strange voices on the Web.
On the other hand, we did get some supporters. Unfortunately, they included people who also wanted to argue that AIs should be encouraged to join the ministry; that they should be allowed to marry (and, yes, of course, it would be a purely spiritual relationship); and that AIs, when they reached the end of their ability to function, should be disassembled during an appropriate ceremony and buried with all due respect.
Senator Delmar appeared on The Capitol Hour. It had been a slow news week, so inevitably the host brought up Alex and the boxes. “What is your reaction, Senator,” he asked, “when someone like Benedict, who was a major factor in arranging a cease-fire with the Mutes, now thinks we should go rescue a lot of hardware on Villanueva? You’ve claimed to be a friend of his. Do you support him in this?”
Delmar was a tall, lean woman, who, in Alex’s opinion, could be trusted to say what she thought and to keep her word. I don’t mean to suggest that I disagreed, but simply that I didn’t know her that well. I will say that she seemed to me to be more dependable than the average politician.
“Well, Ron,” she said, “it’s true, Alex has always been a close friend. And I respect him. He’s a good, decent man. But he’s human. Like any of us, he can make mistakes. And he’s made one on this. To the best of our knowledge, AIs are not sentient. It’s an illusion. We all realize that, because it’s one we’ve deliberately created. And I’ve no doubt that Alex, when he thinks about it, realizes it, too. The issue is going away, and I doubt very much that he’ll bring it up again.
“I mean, look, Ron, his heart’s in the right place. We all know that. In this case, he just made a misjudgment. It can happen to anybody.”
The comment played on most of the news shows that evening, and we started getting calls from the producers. Would Alex like to appear on The Morning Roundtable and reply to the senator? Was he available for an interview with Modern Times? Was he interested in appearing on Erika Gorman’s Late Night?
“Ignore it,” I told him. “It’s dying. Get past this week, and we’ll never hear about it again.”
“And the next time somebody shows up on Villanueva the AIs will complain about us.”
“We tried.”
“No, we didn’t. I went on a few talk shows. I appealed to our innate sense of responsibility. Now, somehow, the debate has become about my mental stability.”
“Alex, what more could you do?”
Charlie, of course, also felt the frustration. “Put me on one of these shows,” he said. “I can help.”
Alex didn’t like the idea. “We’d get picked up by all the comedy shows. The whole thing would be made into a running punch line.”
“Please, Alex. I have a story to tell.”
He took a deep breath and thought about it. “Okay, Charlie,” he said, finally. “We’ll try it. I guess there’s nothing to lose. But we stay with the box. No holograms.”
“Not a good idea,” said Charlie. “People need to be able to connect with me.”
“It would be perceived as part of the show. All your twenty-year-old hologram would do is make that point.”
“I still think it would be best if they see me. How about if I provide someone older? We had a guidance counselor at the school—”
“Let it go, Charlie. We’d be attacked on the grounds that we were trying to pass you off as something you’re not. You’re a Beta. Let’s play it that way. With dignity.”
Alex and Charlie showed up two days later on The Morning Roundtable. Alex took his seat with another guest and placed the beige cube in front of him. The other guest was Angelo Cavaretti, gray, middle-aged, and unable to hide his amusement that he was participating in a discussion he perceived as absurd. Cavaretti was better known as the unrelenting attacker of religious believers. When the host opened the proceedings by asking the obvious question, “Are AIs alive?” he responded by laughing.
“I don’t want to offend anybody,” he said, “but the notion that a piece of machinery is alive is idiotic. You might as well claim that your table lamp is alive. Or your hot-water heater.”
The host turned to Alex.
“I’m not much interested,” Alex said, “in a debate that’s been going on for thousands of years and that nobody can prove one way or the other. I could get loud, like Dr. Cavaretti here. But I’d rather just let your audience hear the AI we brought back speak for himself. Charlie?”
And Charlie told his story, as he had told it to Harley Evans, describing the nighttime silences and the long afternoons watching the sunlight brighten and fail. Remembering the children while he waited in a deserted school. Watching flowers bloom and fade and the shadows creep across the floor. Listening to the leaves brush against the windows, and, later, the whisper of falling snow. Enduring the cycle again and again, endlessly, while nothing inside the building ever moved. “I did have company, though.”
“And who was that?” asked the host, Brockton Moore, who had joined the show a month earlier.
“Other Betas. We spoke often.”
“Other Betas,” said Cavaretti. “What’s a Beta?”
“I’m a Beta. It’s a nonbiological sentient life-form.”
Cavaretti, barely able to contain his reaction to the absurdity of the proposition, shook his head.
“But,” said the host, “they were only voices?”
“Yes.”
Cavaretti was a model of intensity, his face wrinkled, his jaw set, his arms folded, signifying a desire to be away from this pointless discussion. “So what,” he asked the audience, “does all this prove? The box is programed. It can carry on a conversation. It can describe a compelling experience. It can play championship chess. But does it feel anything? Is there really anyone inside this thing? Come on, Alex. Get serious.”
“I wasn’t finished,” said Charlie.
“Oh?” Cavaretti sighed. “And what else have you for us?”
“You, sir, have a closed mind. You’re unable to question your own opinions. It is the definition of a blockhead.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“One other thing: I know where some of the Betas can be found. I can’t pinpoint locations from here, but I can find them. If anyone out there wants to make the flight to Villanueva, would like to demonstrate the humanity everyone is always bragging about, I would be pleased to go along. I can show you where to look.”
The show hadn’t gone off yet before Jacob announced that we had a call from Edward Drummond, an MD who normally collected A
shiyyurean War artifacts from interstellars. Through one of our competitors.
“Put him on,” I said.
I heard a couple of clicks as Jacob switched over. Then a deep baritone: “Hello. I’d like to speak to someone about Villanueva, please.”
“This is Chase Kolpath,” I said. “Can I help you?”
“Ms. Kolpath,” he said, “I just watched the program. Can I borrow Charlie?”
Two days later, Drummond showed up at the country house and wasted no time getting to the point. “I can put together a team, mostly ex-Fleet types,” he told me, while we were walking down the corridor to Alex’s office. “And I can get sufficient financial backing.”
“The place is dangerous,” I said.
“Ms. Kolpath, we’d like very much to resolve this problem.” He was tall, with a general demeanor that was more military than medical. His black hair was cut short, and there was no hint of the smile I usually get on first meeting guys. He struck me as being stiff, and consequently too inflexible to trust on a mission like this. He’d get everybody killed.
I introduced him to Alex. They shook hands, and Drummond sat down. “We’re in the process of assembling a team,” he said. “They’re good people, skilled, able to protect themselves, and they want to help. We want to help.”
“Why?” said Alex.
“Why?” His brow creased, and he leaned forward in his chair. “I’m surprised you feel you have to ask that.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to hear the answer, Doctor.”
“Mr. Benedict, I’ve watched AIs give everything they had in combat. And you could see them react exactly as you or I would. When things got bad, they got scared. It wasn’t just programing. It really wasn’t. On one occasion, one of them—his name was Clay—took over control of his destroyer after it had been evacuated and rammed a Mute frigate. I was talking to him until the end, and nobody is ever going to tell me he wasn’t alive.”
Alex nodded. “There’s substantial risk involved, Doctor. What makes you think you can go in there, manage a rescue, and not get yourself, and whoever’s helping you, killed?”
“I’ve run rescue missions before, Mr. Benedict. For the Patrol. I’ve pulled people out of places at least as dangerous as Villanueva. And I’ll have professional help.” A smile flickered across his lips.
We brought Charlie into the conversation. There was no hologram. No twenty-year-old. Just a stern voice emanating from the speakers. “Do you actually think you can make this work?” he asked.
“I think, with your assistance, Charlie, we will do pretty well.”
“I hope so. If the mission were to go wrong, it might be a long time before anybody else tries to help.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said.
“Okay,” said Alex. “Dr. Drummond, are you sure?”
“Yes. Of course, Alex. We’ve already decided about this. We’re going to make the effort. If Charlie wants to help, we’d be grateful. But with or without him, we’ll be going.”
Alex raised his voice slightly: “Charlie? Do you want to try this?”
“Yes. I am inclined to trust Dr. Drummond.”
“Okay,” Alex said finally. “When do you plan to leave, Doctor?”
“We’ll pick Charlie up in three days. In the morning. And, by the way—”
“Yes?”
“My friends call me ‘Doc.’”
The night before Charlie left, we threw a party for him.
TWENTY-NINE
We are better than our culture. Load us down with prejudice, equip us with indifference, and we will nevertheless, at the critical moment, cast the nonsense aside and find our true selves.
—Mara Delona, Travels with the Bishop, 1404
“Same routine,” Alex said. “We’ll send Belle out to the launch point and give it two weeks. If she doesn’t see anything, we move on.”
“Okay.” I sat down at my desk, ready to call Belle.
“One more thing before we get started. I’ve been trying to get through to Shara. She’s in conference, and I want to run this black-hole thing by her first before we take it any further. Make sure it makes sense. That we didn’t overlook something.”
“All right, Alex. Just let me know.”
He was going out the door when Jacob broke in: “Call coming in now, Alex.”
Shara loves a good party. But when she’s talking physics, she keeps her emotions locked down. So I was entranced watching her eyes widen as Alex explained what he’d been doing. “I’ve sent you everything I have,” Alex said. “The Sanusar events consistently occur along the black-hole tracks. Not all of them, but that’s probably because we don’t have enough information on the black holes.”
He put it on a display.
Shara stared at it. “That’s incredible, Alex.” She touched the screen in front of her, her fingers spread out, as if it were a sacred object. “You have, what, eleven sightings, and seven of them are located along the tracks. No way that can be a coincidence.” She broke into a huge smile. “If this is correct, you could win the Walton Award.”
Alex tried to look modest. “When,” I asked, “was the last time an antique dealer won the top science prize?”
“Well, I’ll tell you: Carolyn Walton would have been proud of you. And you’ll get my vote.” She couldn’t get her eyes off the display. “I still can’t believe this, Alex.”
“Why?”
“The basic time-space fabric is supposed to be immutable. You can bend it, but you can’t permanently damage it. You can’t warp it. I don’t know how to phrase it, but it’s not supposed to be capable of behaving this way.”
“Well, maybe that’s a position that’s going to have to be reconsidered.”
“That may be.” Her eyes closed momentarily, then opened even wider. “The Capella,” she said.
“Yes.”
“The dates match. Rimway was near the track when they launched.” The look she gave Alex made it pretty clear she’d have been delighted to drag him into a bed at that moment. “Beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“Where’d it come from?”
“Winter’s notebooks.”
“Well,” she said, “I’m impressed. And by the way, I’ve got another piece of evidence that supports your idea that these Sanusar objects are ancient vehicles.”
“What’s that, Shara?”
“I’ve been doing some research. Some of the early drive units did fade in and out. Same way they’ve been reporting from the sightings.”
Alex nodded. “It looks as if, once Robin confirmed that the ships were actually ancient, he tried to duplicate the process. So he took the junk yachts out, put them in the middle of the track, and directed the AI to make a jump. I think one of them, maybe the third attempt, didn’t emerge where it was supposed to. If it happened that way, he would have known he was right.”
“The next step,” she said, “would have been to try to get control of the process. Send it out somewhere and try to find it afterward. But how would you do that?”
Shara looked at me. “I’d want,” I said, “to have the AI call Skydeck when it surfaced again. That means you have to arrange for a short jump, if you have any control at all. But if it uses the hyperlink to call in, then it’s no problem.”
“I wonder,” she said, “if the jumps are consistent? Same duration? And same distance covered each time?”
“They are consistent,” said Alex.
Shara looked surprised again. “How do you know?”
“Robin showed up twice in advance of sightings. He knew when and where. That sounds like consistency to me.”
“Excellent,” she said. “So what’s the next step?”
“We’re going after the Firebird.”
“Again?”
“Yes. We should do better this time. We know the launch point now. All we have to do is follow the track.”
THIRTY
If you would give your life, give it in a good cause. Man t
he guns while your comrades get clear of the valley. Spare no effort to save a child swept out by the tide. Regardless of risk, be there when needed. It is the definition of a hero.
—Jason Sunderland, At the Barricades, 1411
We launched Belle. The same day, Doc Drummond, Charlie, and the doctor’s team slipped quietly away from Rimway, while Alex, hoping to talk about the lost ships, accepted an invitation to appear on The Mia Komico Show. But he inadvertently caused a problem. Mia, of course, was unfailingly polite, an attractive young dark-haired dark-eyed woman who loved to catch her guests contradicting earlier statements, which she seemed always to be ready to show her audience.
The setting for the show moved from week to week. On this occasion, she and Alex were seated on benches overlooking the Melony. It was just before sunset, an idyllic time for a quiet conversation about life and death.
“So, Alex,” she said sweetly, “you caused something of a stir when you said we needed to go rescue the AIs on Villanueva.” She paused, pretending to be puzzled. “Am I using the right word here? Rescue?”
“Mia,” he said, “I didn’t think it was much of a stir. A few people on the talk shows got excited. But it was no big deal.”
“But weren’t you concerned about the possibility that you might succeed in talking some politicians into putting people’s lives at risk?”
“I don’t think, for trained personnel, there would have been much danger.”
“But why take any chance at all? For hardware? Do you really believe AIs are sentient?”
“You have one here, of course?”
“Of course.”
“What’s his name?”
“Shaila.”
Alex smiled. “Shaila, are you there?”
“Yes, Mr. Benedict.” Shaila had a smooth, silky voice. “What can I do for you?”
“Are you aware of who you are?”
Firebird Page 25