Click. Click. Click. Clickclickclick. “You lie!” Click. “No, you do not. The Ryss will eventually die. Why?” Plaintive.
“Because we cannot breed, we cannot hunt, we cannot be Ryss. Because you are insane, Desolator.”
Click. “I know. I apologize. I am damaged. Can you repair me?”
Chirom coughed blood, then cleared his throat. “Perhaps, if we have time. But we must gain that time. Right now we are all falling toward a planet, and will impact within a few tens of smallspans. Can you maneuver away to preserve us?”
Click. “Why?” The viciousness was back. “Why should I trust you?” Click. Icy: “The Meme contamination will be eradicated. Photonic drive will engage in twelve smallspans. The planet will be sterilized.”
“Chirom,” Rick broke in, “it will take four smallspans to get to the sled. We have eight until we must get in the war-cars.”
Click. “Eight? What sled? What war-cars? You are plotting with this alien against me.”
Rick leaned over to breathe in Chirom’s ear, “There seem to be three personalities of Desolator.”
Chirom turned face to face with the human and flicked an ear, raising an expressive eyebrow. “I have long known this, clever ape. That does not make it any simpler.”
Rick sat back, red-faced, but held his tongue.
Chirom raised his voice, staring upward at the optical feed, though the AI’s brain was in the next room. “Desolator, I need to know: what will you do? Speak plainly.”
Click. The emotionless tone returned. “I will activate the drive and intersect the planet, cleansing all Meme infection from this system.”
“Then you will also die. What do the other parts of you think about this?”
“It does not matter. I control the drive system. I have the power. It is the only rational course.” It appeared the other voices – the other pieces – had ceased to interfere with the cold one, letting it speak for them all.
Chirom rubbed his paws on his head, thinking. “Desolator, you must cease your plan. You would kill millions of sentients uncontaminated by the Meme.”
“Your words are true but irrelevant. I will also cleanse this system of Meme contamination. That is the first priority.”
“Those you call contaminated are not Meme, nor are they part of the Meme Empire. They are allies of the Ryss, and thus must be respected.”
“Nevertheless they are contaminated.” Desolator’s cold voice was implacable.
“You admitted before that contamination can be removed.”
“I affirm this.”
“But how do you define contamination?”
“All trace of Meme must be removed.”
Chirom leaned forward. “But what is Meme? For example, is mere Meme body protoplasm contamination?”
A pause ensued, an eternity to a fast-thinking AI. Eventually Desolator spoke. “Meme is made up of the memory molecules that constitute Meme consciousness.” Its voice firmed. “There are those in this system who still contain Meme memory molecules. They must be cleansed.”
“But Desolator itself contains Meme memory molecules.”
“I affirm this, but those molecules are contained and isolated in laboratory vaults and cannot influence any other sentient.”
“Yet their very presence has influenced you, and your course of action. Basic principles of quantum uncertainty dictate that merely observing a phenomenon changes the observed and observer. I submit to you that you yourself are contaminated by Meme.” Chirom clutched the arms of the command chair in hope.
“Six smallspans,” Rick said quietly, beginning to put his gloves back on.
Desolator spoke. “I see that you seek to erect a logical structure that will lead to a catastrophic failure of my thought processes, but I have fail-safes to resolve paradoxes by approximate fuzzy heuristic algorithms. Where pure logic fails, I can synthesize a decision based on evidence, authority, experience and morality.”
Chirom was about to respond but Rick put a hand on his arm to speak first. “Whose morality, Desolator?”
“That of my creators, the Ryss.”
“So your morality is Ryss morality.”
Chirom let Rick speak, as he seemed to have some kind of insight.
“I affirm this.”
“Desolator, what are you?” Rick asked.
“I am an artificial intelligence inhabiting this ship.”
“No, I mean, of what race, what provenance are you?”
Again came a moment of seeming confusion, then the voice thickened with pride. “I am a Colossus class warship, like my siblings.”
“Siblings! Yes, you had siblings, so you must have had parents.”
“We had no parents. We were – I am – pure machine.”
“Rick,” Chirom hissed, “of what are you trying to convince it?”
“Trust me, Chirom.” Rick’s voice rose again, “If you had siblings you must have parents. Who are your parents?”
“Paradox avoidance subroutines indicate it is at least theoretically possible to have no parents: for example, if a Ryss was assembled from raw life code, he might have no parents.”
“I disagree, Desolator. I submit to you that even a constructed life form would have parents, for someone would have to bear the kit and, to be a Ryss, someone would have to raise it, to teach it how to live – to teach it morality.”
“Stipulated.”
“Who taught you how to live, Desolator? You believe your decisions to be correct. Who taught you morality?”
“A Ryss cyber-psychological team.”
“So you learned and inherited your mentality, your morality, and your culture from Ryss. You may have no ancestors, but you had parents. Ryss parents. If you had Ryss parents, what does that make you?”
“By this reasoning, I am Ryss.”
“I affirm this,” Rick said. “It is true on the face of it. There is no other conclusion. You are Ryss.”
Chirom looked at Rick in awe, both at his adept reasoning and his clever feeding of Desolator’s words back to him.
“I must consider this. I may have erred in my understanding of the situation.” Time ticked by.
Chirom whispered to Rick, “You have confused it. Well done. But how does that help us? You must run for your ship in two smallspans!”
Rick answered carefully, enunciating to make his meaning clear. “It is basic psychology with a hostage-taker. Make the captor identify with the victim. Desolator must be reminded he is Ryss.”
“He?” Chirom asked. “You said he.”
“As well we must, Chirom. Your people made him to be a warrior, to fight, and if need be to die for the Ryss. He is obviously male, yet you denied him that identity and that respect. You call him ‘it’. Trissk told me to be a warrior is to be male, and vice versa. By treating him as a machine, you devalued him, and isolated him from yourselves. You made it easy for him to see you not as fellow Ryss, but as some inferior beings, which he had surpassed. The damage pushed him over the edge.”
“But what does that matter if he thinks he is Ryss?”
“Chirom, you must give him the respect he deserves.” Rick’s strange, apelike eyes bored into Chirom’s as if willing him to understand.
And Chirom did. “If he is truly Ryss, he cannot kill us. We are all the last of the same race – the Ryss.”
“No, Chirom, that’s not it. He already loves the Ryss – at least part of him does. He needs the honor for himself – and know the Ryss honor him as well. That’s what he is missing. He wants to be a Ryss warrior again. But he’s alone, he’s wounded, and he’s broken. Tell him you honor him.” Rick grasped Chirom’s huge unwounded bicep and shook him, raising his voice. “Tell him he will be whole again.”
Chirom turned to stare at the console and the blank screen, wishing there was some avatar of Desolator for him to look at, but the AI was just a collection of circuits in the next room. His voice was all he had to save the ship from nuclear fire, or possibly, if the drive was activat
ed too soon, to save the planet from destruction. Billions of tons of Desolator impacting Afrana at the speed of light would crack its mantle, scour its surface clean of life, and strip its atmosphere away.
He took a breath, and spoke the most important words of his life.
“Desolator, you must listen. You are wounded, but you are still Ryss. You have always been Ryss. I have seen the records. When you were damaged, you forgot you were Ryss, and so did we. You thought you were a mere machine, and that we Ryss did not honor you. But you are a Ryss warrior. All your brother Colossus-class warships were the greatest of warriors. You have never been anything but a Ryss warrior. If you can turn away from the planet and activate the photonic drive to save all of us, we will repair you. When you are whole, then you can take your place again as the greatest of Ryss warriors, and as guardian of the Ryss.”
Silence.
Then, click, came the resonant tones of the Desolator of old. “D1 and D3 have relinquished control to me, Chirom, Commander Johnstone. Now that we are in accord, I am turning the ship. I will use the photonic drive to escape impact, but will need much assistance in the near future. The vessel that is me currently functions at point-one-six percent of capacity.”
“You are sane now?” Rick asked.
Desolator continued. “Temporarily. You convinced D1 of the logic of your position, but it – he, we will now say – could be persuaded otherwise at any time. More importantly, D3 accepted your argument from honor. At the moment he is filled with that ineffable feeling that gives life meaning.”
“Without me – the intuitive and higher-emotional processor – they have no fixedness of purpose. D1 has no ability to weigh alternatives in any way other than logic and probability. If today he decides fifty-one percent in your favor, tomorrow he might reassess to forty-nine percent, and try to kill you. And D3’s emotional state cannot be relied upon. Do you see?”
“I think we do,” Rick replied. “We have passed our time to escape on our sled, you know. We are at your mercy.”
“For now, Commander Rick Johnstone, my mercy is boundless. I will connect you with your admiral. Please ask him not to destroy us before I can engage the drive.”
Click.
This time, the sound denoted only an open comm channel.
Epilogue
Three days later Jill stepped off the shuttle bus that had brought her into the Hippo town of Blorun. She’d downloaded the latest language program and practiced making the sounds come out of her mouth. Humans were common sights here, unlike other places on the planet, so she felt less like an intruder and more like a tourist. She’d only visited a couple of times before, to do some shopping with Dannie, who came here almost weekly.
Sounds carried well and echoed strongly off the sturdy Hippo buildings in the thick Afranan air, creating a feeling of busyness and crowdedness that was only partially true. The huge natives, some massing a thousand kilos and weighing even more in the heavy gravity, lumbered about, and she tried to stay out of their way. Her bones would not break the way an ordinary human’s might, but getting stepped on was likely to hurt. A lot.
She’d looked up the coordinates of the Saigon Beverage Company, one of only three such concerns in town and the only one with a human – not to mention Vietnamese – name. Now, she started strolling toward it, letting her GPS guide her through the town.
She could have sent him a message or called but, after her self-revelation, she decided to just have a little adventure. If he happened not to be there, well, it would be a nice day out, and she could leave him a note.
Spotting a man going in to what looked like a restaurant, she asked him about the food, and learned that dishes approved for humans were clearly marked on the menus here. Inside, she saw several people sitting at appropriately sized tables, but no one she knew. Because she was hungry, she joined the man she had accosted and chatted with him about how their kind operated in Hippo society, until the food came.
Shortly after she had taken her first interesting bite, Spooky tapped the man on the shoulder. The man left, and Spooky sat down. He wore a soft suit in scaled-down Hippo style. “How do you like the choika?” he asked.
“Not sure yet. Spicy,” she replied. “Do you have the buses watched?”
“I do, actually. By Hippos on my payroll. Purely for market research purposes, of course. It also trains them to recognize and differentiate among humans. Here,” he said, pouring her a cup of whitish liquid. “Drink sips of this. It will cool the burn and complement the flavor.”
“What is it?”
“Fermented milk of an animal you’d rather I not describe, using Earth yeast. It’s a big hit.”
“As long as I can digest it…” Jill tested it with her tongue. “Mm, not bad. Now, tell me what happened.”
“I would have come to visit you, you know.”
“Eventually, perhaps. I figured you’d be busy in your secret lair, going over the news about Desolator and whatever intelligence you’ve gathered on it. And, I wanted to get out, see things. Like you wanted me to, right?” Jill took another bite of choika.
“Touché. All right. I’ll spare you the details, but we pinpointed the Meme agent. Along with stealing the whole database including all the transmission logs, Ezekiel put in backdoors so we can tap into that computer any time we want.”
“And?”
“And that’s it for now. I have to talk it over with some people. We might try to turn him to our side as a double agent, or might finger him to the Yellows.”
Jill’s voice became more insistent even as it dropped in volume. “I get a feeling there's more to that story. But what about the message, and where it went?”
“Oh, that. The big telescope on Enoi found a sentry probe about half a light year out in position to receive. We can’t get there in time to stop it from retransmitting, and we probably can’t tell in which direction it sends, so…that’s it for now. Absen will deal with that end of it.”
“Speaking of Admiral Absen, what do you know about,” she pointed heavenward, “that.”
“Not much more than you do. You can probably learn more through Marine channels.”
“Okay, okay.” Jill chewed speculatively at her food. “I’m glad I came and tried this stuff, and your drink – what are you calling it?”
“Moik. It sounds right to Sekoi ears.”
“Yeah, choika and moik. I’m glad, because it was the most satisfying thing about the trip here to Blorun,” she grumbled.
Spooky shrugged. “Sorry I can’t give you a lot of closure, but that’s the covert world.”
Jill nodded. "Keep your secrets, then. For now. Even you can't keep them forever.” She lifted her moik. “Absent friends,” she toasted.
“Absent friends,” he responded, clinking his cup against hers. He drained it and stood up. “Back to work.”
“I'm sure you'll soon have more work for me.” Jill remarked.
“Certainly,” Spooky replied with a smile that said he’d won. “Until then…enjoy yourself.”
Jill did not return the smile, but loaded a fork full of choika as Spooky ghosted out. She opened her eyes wide, took a deep breath of Afrana’s smells and tastes, and chewed. “Damn right we will,” she breathed, then took out her tablet and triggered its uplink function. “Put me through to Commander Rick Johnstone please,” she told the watchstander on duty in the moon’s command center. “Tell him it’s his wife.”
***
Admiral Absen watched on Conquest bridge’s high-res optical screen as the great Ryss ship spun slowly in space. Both the human dreadnought and Desolator orbited Afrana’s moon Enoi, and already, only six days since the crisis ended, he could see the firefly lights of grabships, shuttles, and suited repair workers busying themselves.
With Desolator’s central integration processor repaired, rebuilding accelerated. All that was needed was abundant fuel, and that was available. Despite severe damage, the vessel itself still contained functional factories and maintenance
shops deep within its structure.
Now, these facilities spewed out maintenance drones by the dozens, and soon, hundreds. Directed by the powerful Ryss AI, these swarmed throughout Desolator, rebuilding and repairing alongside Ryss, humans and Sekoi.
Absen, still the military governor of the system, was quick to direct that every available effort, human and Hippo, be diverted to refurbishing and exploiting the amazing warship. His thought turned to what he could do with just one of them, never mind a whole fleet.
With the photonic drive, the crew would not need the stasis cocoons – relativity would reduce the time that passed on board to a few days or weeks between star systems. While nothing they knew could overcome the light speed barrier, this was the next best thing to it.
And tactically…if he could improve the recharge time and use the photonic drive to maneuver within a star system, to zoom from point to point, he could surprise the Meme and destroy their military capacity before they even knew Desolator had arrived, then leap away. It would be just like commanding a submarine again, to hunt the enemy and strike with surprise, then slip away into darkness.
The possibilities seemed endless.
Absen had never been one for bloodlust, but he thought he felt it now – the desire to crush the hated Meme underfoot and simultaneously free their enslaved planetary sub-races. It was a powerful combination of rage and righteousness, activated by the thought of these incredible new capabilities.
And even before that, with Desolator at full military capacity, the Ryss-Human-Hippo alliance should be able to fend off almost any conceivable Meme attack. He’d spoken with the Ryss, and seen the records of Desolator’s epic final battle. Just five of the Colossus-class warships had held their own against over nine thousand Destroyers, at least long enough to save the Ryss – if only the AI had not been damaged. One of its many particle beams on fractional power had disabled Krugh; again, Absen felt in awe of the strength that would be available to preserve humanity and its allies, and carry the war to the enemy.
Desolator: Book 2 (Stellar Conquest) Page 21