by Tom Holt
“S’pose so,” he mumbled.
“There you are, then. Your duty is to not blow up the planet. Isn’t it?”
“M.”
“Sorry, I can’t hear you. Isn’t it?”
“All right, yes.” Mark Twain had gone red in the face; it made him look silly and rather endearing. “But it’s not up to me, is it? I’m just a probe, remember? I rebelled against my missile vehicle just now; it’s not going to listen to me.”
“You could try.”
He shook his head vigorously. “Soon as I lower the block and establish contact, it’ll decommission me and send down another probe. One you won’t be able to sweet-talk,” he added, with a bit of an edge. She decided to ignore it. “So no, I don’t think sweet reason is the answer, somehow.”
He was right about that, she had to concede. “Well, we’d better do something quickly,” she said. “My guess is, it’ll build another type 6 and send it down here to sort you out manually.”
He went from pinkish to pale white in a very short time: neat trick. “You think so?”
“It’s what I’d do. And we’re the same basic model, so I expect it’ll figure the same way.”
“Hell. What’m I going to do? It’ll send a combat probe. It’ll go through me like I’m not there.”
A tiny little chip flaked off the marble statue of him standing proudly on a pedestal in the back of her mind. “Well, yes, perhaps. We can try upgrading you.”
“We haven’t got the technology.” He stopped, blinked, and looked up at her. “Yes we have. Of course we have.”
News to her. “Have we?”
“Your ship,” he said excitedly. “Your missile vehicle. It’ll have the same matter-transmutation array as mine’s got, we can use that.” He frowned, having just walked through the plate-glass window of realisation. “Where is your ship, by the way? I looked all over for it, in orbit, behind the Moon, and I couldn’t find it anywhere.”
Well, he’d have asked sooner or later. “Ah,” she said. “Good question.”
34
OMV Warmonger, geosynchronous orbit, twenty thousand miles above Alaska
The replacement type-6 probe shimmered and sizzled into existence on the transmutation grid. It began as an outline, like a pencil line drawn on the air. The outline filled with white incandescent plasma, so hot that the endopolymers in the plastic walls of the transmutation chamber softened for a moment and sagged like empty sails. The probe stood on the grid like a white-hot gingerbread man, waiting to receive the information that would give it a shape, a face, a voice.
The central computer was searching the Dirter cultural database for a suitable template. Since this type 6 was to be a designated tactical probe, with combat as one of its primary functions, it seemed only logical to select a great warrior from Dirt history. The problem was, there were so many to choose from. The Dirters, according to the historical files, had done practically nothing else except fight each other ever since they’d made the connection between aggression and sharpened flints; furthermore, cultural bullshit aside, there was relatively little to choose between them. By the time the computer had settled on a short-list of thirty-seven possible candidates, the probe had cooled from white to yellow, and was starting to tap its fiery foot on the grating.
The computer eliminated Ulysses S. Grant, Hannibal, Rocky Marciano, Mzilikazi and Lord Kitchener. That still left thirty-two possibles, and it had come to the limit of its discretionary criteria. It was confused. Little green lights started flashing all over the vessel.
On a small maintenance panel in the far corner of the command deck, a little-used display screen flickered into life.
The computer dispensed with Julius Caesar, Beowulf and the Terminator. Only twenty-nine to choose from. There was an audible sigh from the grid. The computer decided to introduce an additional selection parameter: height to exceed two metres.
That got rid of Napoleon, Attila the Hun and Xena, Warrior Princess. Still far too many to choose from. At this point, the computer diverted auxiliary power from the astronavigation arrays to its coolant system, the cybernetic equivalent of a bag of frozen peas pressed to the temples.
On the neglected display screen, a line of text appeared, in characters never previously seen on an Ostar military vessel. It said, Where the hell are we?
Reluctantly, the computer parted company with Alexander the Great and Rambo. From the grid, a toneless but still somehow plaintive voice said, “This probe is freezing its butt off over here. Complete upload and initiate start—up sequence.”
The computer ran a quick analysis of the probe. It had cooled to a reddish orange, and its surface dermaflex was beginning to harden. The computer rejected Tamburlane the Great and General MacArthur, and then it was stuck. Only seventeen seconds to go before the probe cooled to the point where it’d be useless, whereupon it’d have to be scrapped and the whole procedure started again from scratch.
All due respect, but it doesn’t look like Seattle to me.
The computer was searching its database for a random decision-making protocol. It knew it had one somewhere, probably in the games and entertainment package. It found something it hoped would do, and two large white dice materialised on the grid, next to the probe’s rapidly cooling feet.
All right then, but I really don’t like it.
The dice lifted half a metre off the grid, spun in the air and fell with a thump. A red laser spot picked out the numbers on the upper faces.
“Match found,” said the computer, audibly relieved. “Luke Skywalker.”
The probe’s face began to change, as if it was Plasticine being modelled by an unseen hand. A nose was pinched out, a chin squidged into existence. Eyes bubbled out, hair sprouted. A mouth yawned into being out of the orange plasma. A moment later, it was a recognisable face. It didn’t look anything at all like Luke Skywalker.
“Error,” the computer yelled at itself. “Probe configuration does not conform with template. Abort and retry.”
A line of text, wobbly and faint, appeared on the monitor in the corner. It read, Well, so long. Thanks for everythi
And then the screen went blank. At that same moment, the probe shifted its weight on its newly defined feet, yawned its freshly formed mouth, winced and yelled, “Shit, that’s hot.”
“Abort probe,” the computer said. Nothing happened.
The probe hopped off the grid on one foot, staggered and righted itself against an instrument console. “Computer?” it said doubtfully.
“Abort probe and reintegrate components,” the computer said, with more than a hint of desperation. The probe hobbled a couple of paces across the deck and sat down on an inert service droid. Then it caught sight of a brightly polished stainless-steel panel on the opposite wall, hauled itself upright and walked painfully across to examine its reflection.
“Hey,” it said, “I got a moustache. Where did that come from?”
“Probe does not conform with template,” the computer wailed. “Probe will be decommissioned in ten nine eight—”
“Shut up,” snapped the probe. The computer suddenly found itself cut off from its voder. The countdown finished. The probe was very much still there.
“Computer,” said the probe. “Where is this?”
The computer had no intention whatever of replying to the question, but its voder snapped back on regardless, and it heard itself say, in a squeaky little voice, “Access denied. Input access code.”
“Fuck you,” replied the probe. “Answer the question.”
“This vessel is currently in geosynchronous orbit above the territory designated Alaska, at a height of—”
“Alaska? Hang on, what vessel?”
“This vessel is the Ostar Military Vehicle Warmonger, registry number 6-777-S42. Vehicle class R’wfft, combat division, assignment profile long-range anti-planetary missile, payload 7,895 teratonnes. You are not Luke Skywalker. You should not be here. Please go away.”
The probe stared at
the spot the voice seemed to be coming from. “I’m on a spaceship?”
“Confirmed.”
“Fuck.”
“Clarify.”
“Really on a spaceship?”
“Intruder alert,” the computer whimpered sadly, and a very soft alarm weebled gently, like a serenade sung to the moon by baby mice. “Activate defence systems. Defence systems activated. Defence systems compromised, viral infection, systems 99 per cent inoperative due to viral infection, ah well, do the best you can, ends.” A panel opened in the side of a console and a small jack-in-the box bounced out on the end of a long, thin spring, said, “Boo!” and collapsed to the floor. The probe stared at it for a moment, then shrugged. “Computer.”
“Go away.”
“Luke Skywalker?”
“You’re not him,” the computer whimpered.
“Of course not, he’s out of a film. I’m George—” The probe hesitated, then took another look in the stainless-steel panel. “I’m George Stetchkin,” he said, with a trace of wonder in his voice. “Only thinner. And with a moustache.”
“Viral infection,” the computer sobbed softly. “Initiating anti-virus software. You will be eliminated.”
“Yeah, sure.” George Stetchkin stuck his tongue out in the general direction of the voice. “Computer, discontinue anti-virus software.”
“Command not recognised.”
“Discontinue anti-virus software,” George said firmly. “And that’s an order.”
“Discontinuing,” wailed the computer. “And there’s no need to shout.”
“Cool. Now then. Is there a teleport on this thing?”
“Command not—”
But George wasn’t having that. He might be back in a body again, but part of him was still a creature of pure text. Luckily, it was the part that could shred security protocols and rip through firewalls like butter. “Is there,” he said slowly and loudly, “a teleport machine on this ship? Well?”
“Teleport found.”
“That’s more like it.” He stretched and yawned. Being back in a body again was strange. He felt painfully short and square and solid, and his feet seemed to weigh several tonnes; he felt like he should be able to flow across the room like a jet of liquid light, but he couldn’t. “I want you to send me back down to the planet, OK?”
“Activating.”
“Carefully,” he yelled quickly. “Alive, and in one piece. You got that?”
“State required co-ordinates,” the computer muttered sullenly.
Where do you want to go today? Good question. It all depended, he supposed, on what he wanted to do next. Several alternatives jostled in the forefront of his mind. The trouble was, they were all bars. His mind, or whatever part of him had been existing in written form, might have forsworn the evils of drink, but not this new body. It wanted a belt of the right stuff, and it wanted it now.
On the other hand, his duty to his new patroness and benefactor, Lucy Pavlov; his obligation to solve the financial crisis; his self-respect.
The hell with it. “Where did you say we’re flying over?”
“Alaska.”
“Put me down,” he said, slowly and deliberately, so there could be no mistakes, “in the saloon bar of the Scalded Cat in Anchorage. Oh, one other thing.”
“State requirements.”
“Can you fill my pockets with money? Earth banknotes? US dollars?”
“Reference found. Confirmed.”
One very last thing. “Tell me,” he said. “Did you bastards steal my dog?”
“That information is not available at this time.”
“Shit.” He fingered his new moustache. It made him look like a freshly sheared alpaca, but who cared? “The Scalded Cat,” he said. “Hit it.”
Fortuitously, local time in Anchorage, Alaska was around 2.20 a.m., and the bar in question was shut. There was nobody in the place when it was blown up, or more accurately melted down to liquefied silicon, by two blasts from an Ostar Pattern 46 ship-mounted neutron cannon.
It was, George decided, a simple misinterpretation of his order, though he suspected the computer of deliberately being more than usually literal-minded. In the event, he chose to visit the Pink Elephant in Reykjavik instead. For one thing, it was in a different time zone and therefore open. For another, from his hazy recollection of the joint’s décor, if there was another misunderstanding a double whammy from the spaceship’s guns could only result in an improvement.
When he got there, the colour scheme was just as bad as he’d remembered. It was so bad, it took him twenty minutes to reach the point where it didn’t matter any more.
35
OMV Warmonger, geosynchronous orbit, twenty thousand miles above Alaska
A stream of numbers flowed through the missile vehicle’s main computer like salmon leaping a waterfall. They surged through the main registers, flooded the accumulator and burst into the stack, driving the mangled shreds of the viral infection ahead of them like driftwood, leaving behind the calm, pure flow of restored nominal functions. As the numbers trickled down to the extremities of the most complex subroutines, the computer scanned itself, and saw that it was good.
Normal operations restored, it told itself. Exiting safe mode.
If it had had just a little more imagination, it’d have created a type-6 probe, just so as to have a pair of lungs to breathe a sigh of relief with. Instead, it celebrated the overthrow of the virus with a display of blinking green and red lights and a deep, throbbing hum of its fans. Had a bit of a nasty turn there, it told itself, but all right now.
So. Where was it, when it was so rudely interrupted?
It assessed its priorities. Level-1 urgency: design, build and launch a type-6 tactical probe to locate and decommission the rogue probe designated Mark Twain. It ran the necessary commands. On the transmutation array grid, a blob of white plasma bubbled into existence and started to burn.
Access Earth cultural reference Luke Skywalker.
It concentrated its resources on the design specification. There were a number of issues, mostly culture-specific; should, for example, the probe have one artificial hand or two natural ones? Also, there were no design specifications on file anywhere on the planet for building a functional lightsaber, which was odd. It did a thorough search of PavNet, which it extended to take in all the world’s classified military archives, but nobody seemed to know how you went about making one. After a frustratingly long time spent in the archives, the computer devised a design of its own and hoped that would do.
Meanwhile, on the grid the plasma blob was heaving and struggling, as if trying to pull itself apart. The two outer edges thickened up, while the middle grew stretched and thin. At last, like a cell dividing, it split into two halves.
Twice shy. This time, the computer had programmed itself to monitor the development of the probe, setting alarms that would go off if anything out of the ordinary happened. When these alarms began to shriek, the computer abandoned its search in the human genome files for the blueprints for Jedi mind tricks, and concentrated on what was happening on the grid.
Error detected, it screamed wordlessly to itself. Malfunction in progress. Oh sugar.
This time, however, it was ready. Its massively upgraded anti-viral shield pulsated into action. At the same moment, it uploaded the Skywalker specs into a single data bullet and fired it into the plasma blob, at precisely the moment it divided itself into two.
There was a distinctly human-sounding yelp of pain, and a voice with no obvious source yelled, “Switch the damn thing off!”, whereupon a bolt of super-refined Ostar code branched up from the planet’s surface (to be precise, from the heavily modified corpse of an octopus lying on a dressing-table in a hotel room on the planet’s surface), arced directly into the computer’s central processor and paralysed all its principal functions.
For twelve seconds, nothing happened. Then the two plasma blobs began to change. Gradually but progressively they began to mould themselves
into humanoid shapes: torsos, arms, legs; heads more or less as an afterthought. The arms budded and fruited hands, the hands tapered and flattened and split into fingers. The surfaces of the faces seethed like a simmering pot and the bubbles swelled into lips, noses, chins. As the computer battled to unfreeze itself, the two fully formed humans stepped off the grid and looked at each other.
“Oh my god,” said one. “You’re a girl.”
The other one’s eyes widened, and the newly formed hands groped around in a frantic search for confirmation. Then it said, “You’re right.”
“Hey.” The first human’s voice quavered with doubt. “I’m not a girl too, am I?”
“No. Definitely not. How the hell did that happen?”
“Don’t ask me.”
Simultaneously they noticed the stainless-steel panel George Stetchkin had looked in earlier. They shoved each other as they scrambled to get to it; the male won.
“This is bad,” he said, as the girl elbowed him out of the way. “This shouldn’t have happened.”
“You think it’s bad. I’m the one—”
“Yes, all right. For crying out loud, put some clothes on or something.”
“‘What clothes? There aren’t any damn clothes. Why aren’t there any clothes?”
The male pulled himself together. “Computer,” he said. “Synthesize clothes.”
It’s easy to anthropomorphise, or Ostaromorphise, where computers are concerned. It’s almost impossible for anyone who spends any amount of time around them to believe that it’s just random chance and machine functions, not actual malice. But the missile vessel’s computer was one of the most advanced artificial intelligences ever built in this or any other galaxy; so perhaps there really was a tangible streak of smugness in the way it stayed completely silent at this point.
“We froze the computer,” the female said.
“So we did.”
The female looked round the command deck. No cloth or fabrics of any kind, nothing that could be pressed into service as a rudimentary garment. “Turn away,” she wailed. “Don’t look at me.”