The Night's Dawn Trilogy

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “The structural array is copied from a brain,” Mattox said defensively. “But the construct itself is made purely from bitek. There was no cloning involved.” He indicated the clean room.

  The delegation moved closer. The room was almost empty, containing a single table which held a burnished metal cylinder. Slim tubes of nutrient fluid snaked out of the base to link it with a squat protein cycler mechanism. A small box protruded from the side of the cylinder, half-way up. Made of translucent amber plastic, it contained a solitary dark sphere of some denser material, set near the surface. The First Admiral upped the magnification on his enhanced retinas. “That’s an eye,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” Mattox said. “We’re trying to make this as realistic as possible. Genuine application will require the anti-memory to be conducted down an optic nerve.”

  A black electronic module was suspended centimetres from the bitek eye, held in place by a crude metal clamp. Fibre optic cables trailed away from it, to plug into the clean room’s utility data sockets.

  “What sort of routines are you running inside the construct?” Mae Ortlieb asked.

  “Mine,” Euru said. “We connected the cortex to an affinity capable processor, and I transferred a copy of my personality and memories into it.”

  She flinched, looking from the Edenist to the metal cylinder. “Isn’t that somewhat unusual?”

  “Not relative to this situation,” he replied with a smile. “We are attempting to create the most realistic environment we can. For that we need a human mind. If you would care to give it a simple Turing test.” He touched a processor block on the wall beside the clean room. Its AV lens sparkled.

  “Who are you?” Mae Ortlieb asked, with some self-consciousness.

  “I suppose I ought to call myself Euru-two,” the AV lens replied. “But then Euru has transferred his personality into a neural simulacrum twelve times already to assist with the anti-memory evaluation.”

  “Then you should be Euru-thirteen.”

  “Just call me junior, it’s simpler.”

  “And do you believe you’ve retained your human faculties?”

  “I don’t have affinity, of course, which I regard as distressing. However, as I won’t be in existence for very long, it’s absence is tolerable. Apart from that, I am fully human.”

  “Volunteering for a suicide isn’t a very healthy human trait, and certainly not for an Edenist.”

  “None the less, it’s what I committed myself to.”

  “Your original self did. What about you, have you no independence?”

  “Possibly if you left me to develop by myself for several months, I would become reluctant. At the moment, I am Euru senior’s mind twin, and as such this experiment is quite acceptable to me.”

  The First Admiral frowned, troubled by what he was witnessing. He hadn’t known Gilmore’s team had reached quite this level. He gave Euru a sidelong glance. “I’m given to understand that a soul is formed by impressing coherent sentient thought on the beyond-type energy which is present in this universe. Therefore, as you are a sentient entity, you will now have your own soul.”

  “I would assume so, admiral,” Euru junior replied. “It is logical.”

  “Which means you have the potential to become an immortal entity in your own right. Yet this trial will eliminate you forever. This is an alarming prospect, for me if not for you. I’m not sure we have the moral right to continue.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, Admiral. However, my identity is more important to me than my soul, or souls. I know that when I am erased from this construct, I, Euru, will continue to exist. The sum of whatever I am goes on. This is the knowledge which rewards all Edenists throughout their lives. Whereas I now exist for one reason, to protect that continuity for my culture. Human beings have died to protect their homes and ideals for all of history, even though they never knew for certain they had souls. I am no different to any of them. I quite plainly choose to undergo the anti-memory so that our race can overcome this crisis.”

  “Quite a Turing test,” Mae Ortlieb said sardonically. “I bet the old man never envisaged this kind of conversation with a machine trying to prove its own intelligence.”

  “If there’s nothing else,” Gilmore said quickly.

  The First Admiral looked in at the cylinder again, contemplating a refusal. He knew such an instruction would never be allowed to stand by the President. And I don’t need that kind of interventionism in Navy affairs right now. “Very well,” he said reluctantly.

  Gilmore and Mattox exchanged a mildly guilty look. Mattox datavised an instruction to the clean room’s control processor, and the glass turned opaque. “Just to protect you from any possible spillback,” he said. “If you’d like to access the internal camera you can observe the process in full. Not that there will be anything much to see. I assure you the spectrum we’re using to transmit the anti-memory has been blocked from the sensor.”

  True to his word, the image the delegation received when they accessed the sensor was pallid, the colour almost nonexistent. All they saw was a small blank disc slide out of the electronic module, positioning itself over the encapsulated eye. Some iconic overlay digits twisted past, meaningless.

  “That’s it,” Mattox announced.

  The First Admiral cancelled his channel with the processor. The clean room’s window turned transparent again, in time to catch the disc retract back into the electronic module.

  Gilmore faced the AV lens. “Junior, can you hear me?” The lens’s diminutive sparkle remained constant.

  Mattox received a datavise from the construct’s monitoring probes. “Brainwave functions have collapsed,” he said. “And the synaptic discharges are completely randomized.”

  “What about memory retention?” Gilmore queried.

  “Probably around thirty to thirty-five per cent. I’ll run a complete neurological capacity scan once it’s stabilized.” The CNIS science team members smiled round at each other.

  “That’s good,” Gilmore said. “That’s damn good. Best percentage yet.”

  “Meaning?” the First Admiral asked.

  “There are no operative thought patterns left in there. Junior has stopped thinking. The bitek is just a store for memory fragments.”

  “Impressive,” Mae Ortlieb said reflectively. “So what’s your next stage?”

  “We’re not sure,” Gilmore said. “I have to admit, the potential for this thing is frightening. Our idea is to use it as a threat to force the souls away from their interface with this universe.”

  “If it works on souls themselves,” Jeeta Anwar pointed out.

  “That prospect is bringing about a whole range of new problems,” Gilmore conceded cheerlessly.

  “Let me guess,” Samual said. “If anti-memory is used on a possessed, you will also erase the host’s memories, and destroy their soul.”

  “It seems likely,” Euru said. “We know a host’s mind is still contained within their brain while the possessing soul retains control of the body. The host’s reappearance after zero-tau immersion forces the possessor out proves that.”

  “So, anti-memory cannot be used on an individual basis?”

  “Not without killing the host’s soul as well, no sir.”

  “Will this version work in the beyond?” Samual asked sharply.

  “I doubt it would ever get through to the beyond,” Mattox said. “At present, it’s too slow and inefficient. It managed to dissipate Junior’s thought processes; but as you saw, it didn’t get all the memories. The areas of the mind which are not employed when the anti-memory strikes are likely to be insulated from it as the thought channels which would ordinarily connect them are nullified. If you analogise the mind with a city, you’re destroying the roads and leaving the buildings intact. Given that the connection a possessing soul has with the beyond is tenuous at best, there is no guarantee the anti-memory would manage to pass through in its current form. We must develop a much faster version.”
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  “But you don’t know for sure?”

  “No sir. These are estimations and theories. We won’t know if a version works until after it’s proved successful.”

  “The trouble with that is, a successful anti-memory would exterminate every soul in the beyond,” Euru said quietly.

  “Is that true?”

  “Yes, sir,” Gilmore said. “That’s our dilemma. There can be no small scale test or demonstration. Anti-memory is effectively a doomsday weapon.”

  “You’ll never get the souls to believe that,” Lalwani said. “In fact, given what we know of conditions in the beyond, you wouldn’t even get many of them to pay attention to the warning.”

  “I cannot conceivably permit the use of a weapon which will exterminate billions of human entities,” the First Admiral said. “You have to provide me with alternative options.”

  “But Admiral—”

  “No. I’m sorry, Doctor. I know you’ve worked hard on this, and I appreciate the effort you and your team have made. Nobody is more aware than myself of just how extreme the threat which the possessed present. But even that cannot justify such a response.”

  “Admiral! We’ve explored every option we can think of. Every theorist I’ve got in every scientific discipline there is has been working on ideas and wild theories. We even tried an exorcism after that priest on Lalonde claimed his worked. Nothing. Nothing else has come close to being viable. This is the only progress we have made.”

  “Doctor, I’m not denigrating your work or your commitment. But surely you can see this is completely unacceptable. Morally, ethically, it is wrong. It cannot be anything other than wrong. What you are suggesting is racial genocide. I will tell you this, the authorization to use such a monstrosity will never come from my lips. Nor I suspect, and hope, would any other Navy officer issue it. Now find me another solution. This project is terminated.”

  * * *

  The First Admiral’s staff ran a quiet sweepstake to see how long it would be before President Haaker datavised for a conference, the winner called it in at ninety-seven minutes. They sat facing each other across the oval table in a security-level-one sensenviron bubble room. Both kept their generated faces neutral and intonations level.

  “Samual, you can’t cancel the anti-memory project,” the President opened with. “It’s all we’ve got.”

  In his office, Samual Aleksandrovich smiled at the way Haaker used his first name, the man always did that when he was going to adopt a totally intransigent line. “Apart from the Mortonridge Liberation, you mean?” He could imagine the tight lips drawn at that jibe.

  “As you so kindly pointed out earlier, the Liberation is not a solution to the overall problem. Anti-memory is.”

  “Undoubtedly. Too final. Look, I don’t know if Mae and Jeeta explained this fully to you, but the research team believe it would exterminate every soul in the beyond. You can’t seriously consider that.”

  “Samual, those souls you’re so concerned about are attempting to enslave every one of us. I have to say I’m surprised by your attitude. You’re a military man, you know that war is the result of total irrationality combined with conflict of interest. This crisis is the supreme example of both. The souls desperately want to return, and we cannot allow them to. They will extinguish the human race if they succeed.”

  “They will ruin almost everything we have accomplished. But total life extinction, no. I don’t even believe they can possess all of us. The Edenists have proved remarkably resistant; and the spread has all but stopped.”

  “Yes, thanks to your quarantine. It’s been a successful policy, I won’t deny that. But so far we’ve been unable to offer anything that can reverse what’s happened. And that’s what the vast majority of the Confederation population want. Actually, that’s what they insist upon. The spread might have slowed, but it hasn’t stopped. You know that as well as I do. And the quarantine is difficult to enforce.”

  “You really don’t understand what you’re proposing, do you. There are billions of souls there. Billions.”

  “And they are living in torment. For whatever reason, they cannot move on as this Laton character claimed is possible. Don’t you think they’d welcome true death?”

  “Some of them might. I probably would. But neither you nor I have the right to decide that for them.”

  “They forced us into this position. They’re the ones invading us.”

  “That does not give us the right to exterminate them. We have to find a way to help them; by doing that we help ourselves. Can you not see that?”

  The President abandoned his image’s impartiality and leant forwards, his voice becoming earnest. “Of course I can see that. Don’t try to portray me as some kind of intransigent villain here. I’ve supported you, Samual, because I know nobody can command the Navy better than you. And I’ve been rewarded by that support. So far we’ve kept on top of the political situation, kept the hotheads in line. But it can’t last forever. Sometime, somehow, a solution is going to have to be presented to the Confederation as a whole. And all we’ve got so far is one solitary possible answer: the anti-memory. I cannot permit you to abandon that, Samual. These are very desperate times; we have to consider everything, however horrific it appears.”

  “I will never permit such a thing to be used. For all they are different, the souls are human. I am sworn to protect life throughout the Confederation.”

  “The order to use it would not be yours to give. A weapon like that never falls within the prerogative of the military. It belongs to us, the politicians you despise.”

  “Disapprove of. Occasionally.” The First Admiral permitted a slight smile to show.

  “Keep on searching, Samual. Bully Gilmore and his people into finding a decent solution, a humanitarian one. I want that as much as you do. But they are to continue to develop the anti-memory in parallel.”

  There was a pause. Samual knew that to refuse now would mean Haaker issuing an official request through his office. Which in turn would make his position as First Admiral untenable. That was the stark choice on offer.

  “Of course, Mr President.”

  President Haaker gave a tight smile, and datavised his processor to cancel the meeting, safe in the knowledge that their oh-so diplomatic clash would be known to no one.

  The encryption techniques which provided a security-level-one conference were, after all, known to be unbreakable. The most common statistic quoted by security experts was that every AI in the Confederation running in parallel would be unable to crack the code in less than five times the life of the universe. It would, therefore, have proved quite distressing to the CNIS secure communications division (as well as their ESA and B7 equivalents, among others) to know that a perfect replica of a 27-inch 1980’s Sony Trinitron colour television was currently showing the image of the First Admiral and the Assembly President to an audience of fifteen attentive duomillenarians and one highly inattentive ten-year-old girl.

  Tracy Dean sighed in frustration as the picture vanished to a tiny phosphor dot in the middle of the screen. “Well, that’s gone and put the cat amongst the pigeons, and no mistake.”

  Jay was swinging her feet about while she sat on a too-high stool. As well as being their main social centre, the clubhouse catered for the retired Kiint observers who weren’t quite up to living by themselves in a chalet anymore. A huge airy building, with wide corridors and broad archways opening into sunlit rooms that all seemed to resemble hotel lounges. The walls were white plaster, with dark-red tile floors laid everywhere. Big clay pots growing tall palms were a favourite. Tiny birds with bright gold and scarlet bodies and turquoise membrane wings flittered in and out through the open windows, dodging the purple provider globes. The whole theme of the clubhouse was based around comfort. There were no stairs or steps, only ramps; chairs were deeply cushioned; even the food extruded by the universal providers, no matter what type, was soft, requiring little effort to chew.

  The first five minutes walk
ing through the building had been interesting. Tracy showed her round, introducing her to the other residents, all of whom were quite spry despite their frail appearance. Of course they were all very happy to see her, making a fuss, patting her head, winking fondly, telling her how nice her new dress was, suggesting strangely named biscuits, sweets and ice creams they thought she’d enjoy. They didn’t move much from their lounge chairs; contenting themselves with watching events around the Confederation and nostalgic programmes from centuries past.

  Jay and Tracy wound up in the lounge with the big TV for half the afternoon, while the residents argued over what channel to watch. They flipped through real-time secret governmental and military conferences, alternating those with a show called “Happy Days,” which they all cackled along to in synchronisation with the brash laughter track. Even the original commercial breaks were showing. Jay smiled in confusion at the archaic unfunny characters, and kept sneaking glances out of the window. For the last three days she’d played on the beach with the games the universal providers had extruded; swam, gone for long walks along the sand and through the peaceful jungle behind the beach. The meals had easily been as good as the ones in Tranquillity. Tracy had even got her a processor block with an AV lens that was able to pick up Confederation entertainment shows, which she watched for a few hours every evening. And Richard Keaton had popped in a couple of times to see how she was getting on. But, basically, she was fed-up. Those planets hanging so invitingly in the sky above were a permanent temptation, a reminder that things in the Kiint home system were a bit more active than the human beach.

  Tracy caught her wistful gaze once and patted her hand. “Cultural differences,” she said confidentially as the mortified Fonz received his army draft papers. “You have to understand the decade before you understand the humour.”

  Jay nodded wisely, and wondered just when she’d be allowed to see Haile again. Haile was a lot more fun than the Fonz. Then they’d flicked stations to the First Admiral and the President.