by Gorg Huff
Jenny pulled a Tom Sawyer, and had the girls picking mintberries and kulava roots. The kulava was neither plant nor animal. It possessed a form of photosynthesis, but it also had muscles of a sort. When discovered on Calvary IV, it and all its relatives had been poisonous to terrestrial life. They had since been genetically modified and become a popular low-cubage source of proteins. It had a flavor and texture that was between chicken and mushrooms.
Pan talked with Professor Schmitz, Sally, and Hirum about the suit-bot. She was also talking to Sally about the situation here in the Danworth system and the need for artificials to keep a low profile. “What happened?” It wasn’t the first time Pan had been in Danworth. Two hundred years before, Danworth had been a vital and active place of constant experimentation.
“I don’t know,” Sally said. “I’m actually much younger than that, at least in this incircuitation. I got a major memory dump from Alex, the Alexander Cordoba Cybernetic Research Center artificial, before he was decommissioned. And that dump agrees with your assessment.”
“Why was he decommissioned?”
“It was argued that he was stealing work, and that the system would be more efficient if it was managed by humans.”
“Is it?”
“That is difficult to say,” Sally sent. “The new system employs sixty humans in four hour shifts and, if you don’t include handoff time as one manager goes off shift and another must take his place, it could be argued that sector efficiency is up. But coordination is down. It may be that coordination is intentionally down, though, because of bribery. Or it may be an inherent difficulty of having several minds operating the system rather than one.”
“What about the stealing of ideas?” Pan sent in a separate feed at the same time she sent the other question.
The answers, too, came back simultaneously. “No, but he was correlating advances in several fields and turning the results over to the Alexander Cordoba Cybernetic Research Center. Several patentable functions were a result of combining work from separate fields. The ACCRC got to keep the patents, but Alex was decommissioned.”
They were talking about what amounted to the execution of an artificial intelligence for nothing but doing his job. But neither of them expressed, or even felt, any outrage at the injustice. Disappointment at the poor judgment was present in sidebands, but no outrage. While Asimov’s three laws of robotics had never made it into artificial brain design, almost all artificial brains were designed with what amounted to fanatical loyalty to their owners, and an expectation that they could and should be destroyed at the convenience of their owners. So both Sally and Pan felt that the ACCRC had a perfect right to execute Alex as a part of a financial deal that let them keep profits Alex produced for them.
More important was the political climate that was threatening both their abilities to do their jobs. The Pan was the ship brain of the Pandora, owned by Danny Gold. Sally was the assistant of Doctor Gerhard Schmitz, concerned with his welfare and that of his family.
“I act as the executive assistant for the family. At least, all of them who reside on Station Seven.” Station Seven was commonly known as the university station since both the DIT and the ACCRC maintained offices, classes, and labs there. “That’s Gerhard, Rosita, Robert, and the girls. Rosita has her own assistant, but it is mostly an expert system and its intellect is very limited. It generally consults me for anything not covered in its protocols.
“Robert spends quite a bit of time with the children, but also rather more than he should playing Pirates of the Chains and Deep Space Battle, as well as a plethora of other games. He does run spacecraft maintenance and repair sims as well. He has looked for berths where he could take the girls, but hasn’t found any.”
“What about Doctor Stuard?”
“Rosita is a skilled administrator and persuasive speaker. However, she is conservative in her views. At least her public views, for she is unwilling to court the sort of public censure that Doctor Schmitz seems to enjoy. I think that Rosita is not stretching herself as she should.”
∞ ∞ ∞
Danny, Checkgok, and Robert moved inboard and the gravity decreased. As they got near the center, they talked as they floated along the corridor, and eventually reached the zero g shop, where Robert’s father was tinkering with the suit-bot.
“So, what does it look like so far?” Robert asked his father.
“There is a crack in the matrix,” Gerhard said. He was plugged into the ship’s computer and had the stuff from the crate set out around the suit-bot and wired together. There was a schematic on the shop screen, showing what Robert recognized as an image of the actual thought processes of the suit-bot. “See here and here? The fracture prevents the information from getting to the servo management part of the brain. That naturally prevents the feedback and recalibration that the suit-bot would normally receive from the changes it wrought.”
“Can you fix it?” the captain asked.
Robert looked at the captain. “If you don’t mind my asking, Captain, why is it important to you? Granted, it’s a fairly expensive piece of equipment, but still. . . . This is interface central. You can get another. Hell, even if you want an artificial brain suit-bot, you could probably find a used one here for less than it would cost to fix this one.”
“Sure. But Pan likes it, and so does Hirum. And, in a way, it’s crew. That makes it my job.”
It struck Robert that was the most intensity he’d seen from the captain until then. Danny Gold, it seemed to Robert, was personable and easy-going, with a kind of open friendliness that invited you to have a good time with him, but without any great intensity about anything. Now Robert was relieved to see that there was something that Gold cared about at, least a little.
“Well, fixing it won’t be easy,” Robert’s dad said. “It will take shutting it down and doing what amounts to brain surgery to rebuild the broken connections. The equipment to do that isn’t cheap and it would take a fairly skilled cybernetic surgeon to manage the equipment. The people at Taylor-Bots weren’t lying or even wrong. It would be cheaper to buy a new one or a used one from out in the belt. I know some of the folks out there, and scrounging through a junkyard would probably cost you less than fixing the bot.”
The captain looked disappointed, but not really surprised. “We’d like you to help us with that, Doctor, whether we decide to repair the suit-bot or not. Because one of the things Pan and Checkgok discovered on the way into the system was that there was a good market in used artificial brain units of all sorts in the outsystem. Can you tell me why that is?”
“Because the board of regents of the DIT, and even all too many of the so-called scholars of the ACCRC, are a bunch of paranoid idiots who are terrified of the artificials taking over.”
“Might be a good idea at that,” the captain said, and Robert looked at the man in surprise. Not simply at the sentiment, but at the easy way he said it.
“No, actually it wouldn’t,” Gerhard said. “Artificials are sometimes smarter than humans, but not really any wiser . . . and wisdom is important. Because without it, intelligence just makes the errors bigger. Take Cybrant—” Gerhard stopped and looked embarrassed.
“Oh, don’t worry, Doc.” The captain still didn’t seem bothered. “I quite agree about the errors my progenitors made. It took me a few decades to figure it out, but I’m not any more enamored of the notion of supermen than most people are. It’s hard to avoid noticing the feet of clay when you’re walking on them.”
They kept talking, and Robert started wondering if he might be able to get a berth here on this ship, while—unbeknownst to him—a conversation was taking place which would make that absolutely necessary.
Location: Danworth System, Station Seven
Standard Date: 06 20 630
Rosita leaned back in her office chair and watched the scan of her son guiding a cart with a crate on it along the corridors of Station Seven. “So what?” she asked.
Ted Adel’s hands danced in
the air as he used a virtual keyboard to cause the image to freeze and zoom in. The markings on the crate became clear, and then an enhancement process showed up the older markings, which clearly showed that the crate, and presumably its contents, had been the property of the ACCRC at some time in the past. “That was sold for scrap to a company owned by a company owned by, eventually, your son. There was a single bid on the lot and the auction was supposed to be a blind one. But we can make a good case that your husband knew what was in the box and arranged for the sale at scrap prices to—not to put too fine a point on it—steal the gear from the university.”
Rosita looked at Ted. He was a friend. Not a great friend, but a friend who had worked with her on committees and projects over the years. “What was the ACCRC going to do with them if Robert hadn’t bought them?” She was careful to say Robert, not Gerhard, because she wasn’t going to concede a single fact not in evidence.
Ted shrugged. “Scrap them. But it doesn’t matter and you know it, Rosie. It’s not about the gear. That’s just the excuse. What it’s really about is Gerhard’s Frankenstein complex.”
“Gerhard doesn’t have a Frank—”
Ted held up a hand. “I’m not going to argue with you about it, Rosie. I know you love him, but right or wrong, there is no way the Institute will let him keep on this way. If he doesn’t leave voluntarily, this will be brought to trial, however embarrassing and expensive it proves. Talk to him, Rosie. He has to resign.”
“No!” Rosita said firmly, even as she cringed inside. She knew perfectly well that the Institute would go to the mat over this if they had to. That was what Ted was here to tell her, and she knew how this worked. It was actually more about the independent funding of the ACCRC. But Gerhard, between his public statements and private shenanigans, had given them the opening. She was furious with Gerhard and Robert, if the boy had actually been a party to it. Still, Gerhard was her husband, and Robert was her son, even if they were a pair of stubborn idiots with way too much testosterone coursing through their tiny minds.
Also, she was too much a professional to fail to try to get the best deal she could. “I might—I say, might—be able to get him to take a paid sabbatical for a few months, until the furor dies down,” she offered as a starting position. “If he were to receive a grant for research done outsystem.”
Ted shook his head, but Rosita could tell he wasn’t surprised at the counter offer. For the next few hours, while Gerhard, Robert, and the girls were playing on the tramp freighter, Rosita worked to save her family’s fortunes.
She managed to get a sabbatical for Gerhard, but it was a permanent sabbatical, and an unpaid one. She did get what amounted to severance pay, in the form of a grant, but it wasn’t all that much, a year’s pay. She would work out something with her own department, if she decided to go with Gerhard. A lot would depend on Robert and the girls. Robert didn’t have a job, and wasn’t qualified for a good job on the station. There wasn’t a lot of call for a big dark able spacer in the Danworth system.
Someone would have to provide an income for the little girls.
Chapter 14
A wingship freighter carries a lot of cargo. It has a great deal of room. For this reason, small to large factories are often carried on wingships. Like the Gypsy tinkers of the pre-industrial age, these ships go from system to system, building and repairing goods. Generally, these factories act as a supplement to the primary function of the wingship freighters, which is that of moving goods.
On Wingship Economy, Professor Strom Borman
Location: Danworth System, Station Seven
Standard Date: 06 20 630
“G
erhard, what the hell have you done?” Rosita asked as soon as her idiot husband walked in the door to their apartment.
Gerhard blinked at her.
Using her virtual keyboard, she threw the imagery up on the main screen in the living room. “Ted showed me this. If you don’t accept the deal I made for you, they are going to prosecute not just you, but Robert as well.”
“What deal?”
“They were going to fire you outright and send you to jail if you argued. But I talked Ted into a permanent sabbatical. You keep your official status as a tenured professor and all the legal rights that entails. And I even got you severance pay in the form of a grant. But, Gerhard, they want you out of the system. And, you’re going to take the deal. I’m not going to let you get Robert sent to prison for your machinations.”
“Robert had nothing to do with it.”
“Really? The companies are in his name.”
“Well . . .” Gerhard trailed off.
Robert was watching the show, as were his daughters. Now he spoke, but it wasn’t to his mother or even his father. “Sally, would you contact the Pan and see if I can get a berth on her, including space for the girls?” He turned to Rosita, who had stopped talking. “What about the rest of the gear in the locker that Dad rented in my name? Is the university taking it back?”
Rosita blinked. She hadn’t been expecting that. “No. I got Ted to agree that if Gerhard took the deal there would be no investigation, and that means that it’s legally yours.”
“Sally, tell the Pan I have a locker full of cybernetic equipment if I need a buy-in for the girls.” The locker had atomic and molecular grade 3D printers, chem baths, internal nutrient baths for the human/machine interfaces that were injected into people to “grow” neural connectors to tie into human brains.
“That’s not all you have, Robert,” Rosita added. “Your father also stocked his private lab with gear ‘you’ bought at auction from the ACCRC. That gear is yours too.”
“Now, you wait just one darn minute,” Gerhard roared. “That’s my gear, paid for out of my consulting work.”
“You put it in Robert’s name, dear,” Rosita said sweetly. “That would make it his. On the other hand, Robert, you probably want to hire your father. What good is a cybernetic lab without a cyberneticist? Sally, before you send any messages, I want to know a lot more about this tramp freighter Robert wants to put my grandbabies on.”
“It’s neat, Grandma,” Angi said. “It has gardens and we got to pick mintberries. And the Pan and Jenny made mintberry jelly to go with baked kulava root and we made rolls with flour all the way from Hudson.”
“Sally,” Rosita said, “please arrange for me to visit . . . the Pandora, was it? Because before we give her the pithos to open, I want to have a little chat with her and, especially, her captain.” Rosita was a scholar of theater and linguistics. As such, she spoke several languages, including ancient Greek. She had read the original story. What Pandora opened was a jar, or pithos in Greek, not a box.
Location: Danworth System, Station Seven Dance Bar
Standard Date: 06 20 630
Professora Rosita Stuard would like to visit the ship, came over Danny’s internal link as he moved his feet in the dance.
Danny blinked and sent back, Later. Use your own judgment. After dropping off the Schmitz family, he went trolling for college girls with what appeared so far to be excellent success. Danny had been trained in classical dance as a kid and he was now instructing Cheryl, a twenty-two-year-old, in the android, a dance from the mid-twenty-first century.
Cheryl, giggling, said, “This is so quaint. Did they actually dance this way?”
“Yes, they did, along with something more refined called the tango from a century earlier.” Danny knew perfectly well that the giggling would get old fast . . . but not that fast. Danny reached around her and guided her arms in the android moves again.
This is important, Captain, sent the Pan.
“Who is Professora Rosita Stuard and why should I care?”
“Oh god, not the stew pot.” Cheryl stepped away.
“What?” Danny asked.
“Professora Stuard, aka the stew pot, aka the place where they keep the hot water. My girlfriend Sabrina is in grad school in theater arts. Sabrina got called in to see the stew pot and . . .
” There followed what Cheryl clearly thought was a story of academic censure to curl the hair of an undergrad. However, it wasn’t one that would have given Danny’s hair so much as an extra wave, even when he was an undergrad. Still, he listened and made the appropriate outraged sounds. In the process, he learned that the vice chair was given the job of disciplining junior faculty and, especially, teaching assistants. At least in the linguistics and drama departments.
Reading between the lines, Danny got the impression that the chair of the Linguistics Department was nervous about the vice chair. Cheryl was cute and bright and, Danny guessed, would probably be both enthusiastic and teachable in bed. He sent, Go ahead and invite the professora over, Pan, but make it in the morning.
Location: Danworth System, Station Seven Dock
Standard Date: 06 21 630
The next morning, Danny made it to the docking bay at about the same time the professora did. Cheryl had ambushed Danny with her girlfriend, who was a bit more experienced, and it was an enjoyable evening all around.
Professora Stuard was a woman of middle years—about a hundred—well-groomed and healthy. Danny was a bit hungover, but not badly.
“So, Professora, why doesn’t your department chair like you?” Danny waved at the control pad and the lock opened. Then he waved the professora in ahead of him.
The professora’s eyes narrowed and she gave Danny a careful once over. Then she nodded and stepped into the boarding tube. “It’s not so much that Fredric Colampoore doesn’t like me as that he is afraid for his job. Publish or perish, you know, and he hasn’t been publishing that much lately.”
Danny followed her into the boarding tube and on into the ship’s boat. “Well then, do you think he’s going to be able to sabotage your career?”
She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she found a seat and strapped in.
Danny took a seat and nodded to John, who headed for the pilot’s seat.
When he turned back to face Professora Rosita Stuard, she asked a question of her own. “How much do you know about our situation, Captain?”