by Ian Douglas
But then, he could do that even if Earth yet lived.
Perhaps . . .
He thought that perhaps he saw a course of action.
Chapter Nineteen
27 April, 2429
In Transit
Flag Bridge
USNA CVS America
1425 hours, FST
“And three . . . and two . . . and one . . . now!”
America emerged from Alcubierre Drive in a burst of trapped photons. Sol gleamed directly ahead, shrunken by distance. They should have entered normal space some ten astronomical units from the sun, roughly out at the orbit of Saturn. A quick check of navigational beacons and the web of navsats orbiting the star confirmed this.
They were home.
Moments later, three more ships dropped into normal space—the destroyer Arlington, the cruiser Birmingham, and the supply tanker Acadia. Scattered across a region of space roughly 100 million kilometers across, the four began moving together into a more compact group.
Admiral Gray leaned forward in his command chair, intently watching both screens and his in-head windows. They might be home, but something was very wrong. . . .
“I am picking up very little in the way of ship-to-ship communications,” Konstantin told him. “What I can detect is heavily encrypted.”
“Can you link in with your other self?”
There was a long pause. “Negative,” the AI said at last. “However, we are still some eighty-five light-minutes from Earth. If my larger self were in hiding, we would not pick up anything from him at this range.”
“Take us in close.”
“I recommend extreme caution, Admiral. I’m picking up an odd clustering of ships at Synchorbital, and although it is difficult to tell at this distance, there may be extensive damage to the ring facilities and to the Quito Space Elevator. In fact, I cannot see any sign of the elevator at all. It may have fallen.”
What the hell was going on, Gray wondered. A coup, possibly? That might explain the positioning of the ships. A coup . . .
. . . or they were defending against an attack.
But that made no sense. They would have deployed against a hostile force as far out in the depths of the Sol System as possible. What he was seeing there was more like the stand-down after a . . .
. . . surrender.
At a range of ten AUs, it was impossible to pick up details like ship nationalities or names. It would be another eighty minutes before a radio or laser-com signal could reach Earth . . . and eighty-five minutes more for a return answer.
“Take us ahead, Helm,” Gray said. “But dead slow.”
He needed time to think this through.
Koenig
The Godstream
Time Unknown
Alexander Koenig was alive . . . at least after a manner of speaking. It had taken him an eternity, it felt like, to drag himself back to full consciousness, to make himself aware of his surroundings, to make even a wild-assed guess as to where he was now . . . and why.
He at first did not even remember his own name . . . or who he was, or anything about his own past. That information returned very slowly, seeping up from the deeper recesses of his broken mind.
Koenig . . . Alexander . . . Koenig . . .
Yes, that was the name. He remembered now, though the memory was muffled and distant, like the evaporation of a dream.
How had he gotten here?
For that matter, where was here?
Vision, he slowly learned, was very much a matter of what he wanted to see. He could change his point of view to any point within the moon’s orbit simply by thinking about it; could mingle and merge with other minds, both human and machine, filling that virtual world of sound and color; could draw knowledge from the matrix of the Godstream itself to answer any question, any need.
Or . . . he could imagine . . . could dream . . . and the experience had the reality of the waking world. In fact, his brain was unable to separate reality from self-inflicted illusion, could not tell the difference between what was happening outside and what he saw and felt within his own mind.
He walked a world of soaring castle spires rising among verdant hills and forests. Was that reality . . . or fantasy? He couldn’t tell.
A shift of point of view, and he stood on a dark and barren plain of ice. A tiny sun, barely brighter than a star, hung low in the sky near a silvery crescent. He was standing on the cold and distant surface of Pluto . . . though how he knew this he didn’t know. A cluster of small domes around a much larger one at the base of a low ridge showed a human presence. An inner voice told him this was the mining head of the expedition drilling a shaft through ten kilometers of solid ice to reach the liquid water ocean beneath . . . and the promise of life.
He knew without knowing how that the temperature was minus 220 degrees Celsius, that the atmosphere was a thin haze of nitrogen, and that he was not wearing a spacesuit, though this last was causing him no discomfort.
Evidently, his mind was not limited by the circumference of the moon’s orbit . . . though how he was seeing these things, or surviving standing unprotected on the surface of Pluto, was lost to him.
He pulled back, seeking memories within the swirl of images. How much was real, how much illusion?
What was happening to him?
A deep forest . . . possibly within the northern reaches of North America . . . deeply shadowed, dripping wet, the ancient trees around him swathed in dense patches of moss and the gray scale patches of lichens.
He remembered. He’d been here once, a very long time ago, before . . . before . . .
Before what?
Ah. He remembered, now . . . at least a little. He’d been an officer in the USNA Navy, and during a period of leave after his training downloads he’d been here, in Oregon, hiking a forest trail. . . .
Was this memory? Imagination? Or was he somehow actually standing there on the forest path?
He couldn’t tell.
Marta. He needed to see Marta. . . .
In Transit
Flag Bridge
USNA CVS America
1615 hours, FST
“Message coming through, Admiral. Naval HQ Mars.”
“Put it through.”
Gray checked his internal clock. They were bang on cue. America had emerged from FTL at 1425 hours. The burst of photons from that emergence would have registered at Mars sixty-two minutes later . . . at 1527. And it had taken another forty-eight minutes for the reply to reach the America.
The signal would have reached Earth at 1550, and their response would not arrive until 1705, a response time cut somewhat by America’s slow progress toward the planet.
Times and distances flickered through Gray’s in-head processors, an automatic process that required no real input on his part. It was good to know that Mars had spotted the America and identified her almost immediately, however.
“America, America, this is NavComMars,” a woman’s voice said in Gray’s head. “You are advised to turn around immediately and boost for someplace else—either Chiron or Barnard Base. Eight Nungiirtok mobile fortresses entered the system two days ago, and Earth has surrendered unconditionally.
“Admiral Barnes is hoping to assemble an ad hoc strike force in order to launch a counterattack against the invaders,” the voice went on, “and he’s counting on the America as an important asset.”
A chart appeared giving lists of stats, but the voice continued.
Damn, those things were big. . . .
“The largest of the attackers measures approximately 250 kilometers across, and masses 3 x 1016 tons. Weaponry includes gravitic fist technology with a range of at least 7,000 kilometers. Admiral Barnes wants all vessels to stay well clear of the attackers until we can come up with a plan of attack. Message repeats . . .”
Gray whistled. America was decidedly outclassed by just a single one of those things, much less eight. He doubted that every human warship in the Sol System working together with unprec
edented unity would be able to make much of a dent in that alien armada . . . not unless the Nungies pulled something really boneheaded, something on the order of diving into the sun.
Still, he was not inclined to run. Mars HQ could not know that he had a singular tactical advantage: the twenty-three captive Nungies on board. For days now, both Gray and Konstantin Junior had been working on them, trying to overcome their deep-seated loyalty to their Tok Iad masters and instill in them a more realistic worldview . . . at least from a human perspective.
Konstantin had been doing the majority of the work, using memetic engineering techniques that had been employed against the Pan-Europeans several years before, along with a modified version of the Omega virus created by the enigmatic inhabitants of a civilization at Deneb. Omega had been designed to be used against AI targets but had proven useful against organic intelligences possessing electronic implants.
Still, Gray had no idea how well their efforts were working. The Nungies had stopped attacking the transparencies every time their assumptions were challenged, and that, he thought, was a good sign.
But could they be used against Nungiirtok intruders here in the Sol System? That he didn’t know.
It was definitely worth a try, however. “No reply, Lieutenant West,” he said. “Comm silence.”
Mackey turned from his station and looked at Gray. “Is that wise, Admiral? They’re warning us off.”
“We’ll pretend we didn’t hear them, at least for now. I want to get in close enough to see those planetoid ships.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” But he didn’t sound pleased. Unlike Rand though, he kept that to himself.
“Pass the word to Birmingham, Arlington, and Acadia, Ms. West,” Gray said. “Laser com only. Maintain comm silence and stay in close formation.” Using laser communications between ships would keep their signals focused within the squadron and not leak them all over the solar system.
“Yes, sir.”
“But tell Moskva to hang back,” he added. “I want them to stay out of whatever we’re getting ourselves into.”
“Aye, sir.”
Moskva had been pretty badly chewed up and still had a crew of four thousand Russians. There was no way Rand would be effective if he tried bringing the prize vessel into the fight. The three destroyers—the one used as a makeshift holding pen had been abandoned—had not yet emerged from Alcubierre Drive.
“Konstantin?”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“I’d like you to continue trying to link up with your other self. We need to know exactly what’s going on here.”
“I have been continuing to ping him. The speed-of-light time lag will hamper our efforts.”
“I know. Do it anyway.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
And the squadron continued to advance on Earth.
Koenig
The Godstream
Time Unknown
With the speed of thought, Koenig shifted to the USNA Midwest to find his home north of Columbus as he remembered it. Marta was there, seated on a sofa nano-grown from the floor. He reached for her with his mind . . .
. . . and found emptiness.
Her eyes were wide open but vacant. Empty. He tried probing her systems with his mind, but power levels were at zero and there was no data flow within her computer AI brain. It was as though she’d been switched off.
“Marta! No!”
His scream was silent, but the emotions were a mingling of fire and ice. There was nothing there. Was she dead? Or simply powered down?
God, was there a difference between the two in a robotic companAIon? He wanted to take her in his arms, but he found that he was as unsubstantial as a ghost, his arm passing uselessly through her body. He couldn’t feel her . . . couldn’t touch her. . . .
Rage boiled up within. It was possible, just possible, that Walker or the anti-AI forces had found a way to switch off all AIs. There was that billionaire he’d been going up-E to visit, Anton Michaels. If they’d turned her off . . .
But, no. That made no sense at all. They couldn’t have turned off all of the AIs on the planet, because to do so would have brought down civilization. That had always been the principle argument not to take the AIs off-line . . . the fact that doing so would take modern civilization off-line as well.
Marta, he realized through his anger, had switched herself off . . . a robotic suicide.
Why? Why?
But the answer was painfully obvious. She’d switched herself off when she’d heard he was dead. . . .
But he wasn’t dead!
Or was he? Things were happening too fast. Thoughts, impressions, sensations were coming so fast now, a bewildering kaleidoscope of data, that he was having trouble taking them all in.
Seeking peace to collect his thoughts, he let his mental vision rise from Earth’s surface, reaching out into space, moving toward a region he knew well, but the change shocked him. Chaos somehow had engulfed a large part of the Synchorbital bases, scattering fragments everywhere. More, the Quito Space Elevator was wrecked, a great, twisted tangle of slack cable dangling below the scattered debris still in geosynchronous orbit. The shock was palpable as he studied the ruin. What the hell had happened?
Okay—he remembered being in the elevator, remembered the fall. He remembered the shock, the growing heat. . . .
But something had happened at the cable’s anchor point on Mt. Cayambe, not out at synchorbit.
He explored further . . .
. . . and found planetoids in Earth orbit, eight of them slightly above synchorbit. He could sense that they were powered, that they were equipped with sensors and with weapons. He couldn’t tell what species occupied them, but it was clear that this was an attack or an invasion of some sort. He tried penetrating the largest planetoid’s crust, and bounced—the Godstream did not extend inside the alien craft. He would need to find another way.
Konstantin. Konstantin would be able to tell him what had happened, both to the Synchorbital and to him.
Finding even a mind as powerful as Konstantin’s in this thunderous avalanche of information was the equivalent of finding a particular molecule of water in the ocean. He needed to attract the super-AI’s attention. Focusing his thoughts, he sent out a ping, putting all the power into the signal he could. He reached out . . .
“Mr. President!”
Konstantin was there. His presence swept over and through Koenig like an incoming ocean wave. He was here, all around him, and Koenig could feel the AI’s thoughts, as calm and steady as ever, mixed in with what might have been powerful emotion.
It felt as though Konstantin was very glad to see him, a reunion of old, old friends.
And perhaps that was true. For a long time, Koenig had wondered if machines, the smartest ones, anyway, really felt emotion or were simply acting as if they did.
Then he’d purchased Marta, and over the next few months had become convinced that, in fact, they did. So convinced of that fact had he been that he’d uploaded her manumission to the authorities, making her a free agent. Owning a personal computer was one thing. Owning a thinking, feeling, sapient and sentient being was quite something else.
Damn it, his Marta had killed herself, and his best guess was that she’d done so out of grief. If that wasn’t an expression of emotion—of human emotion—he didn’t know what was.
The thoughts flooded through his mind in an instant. “Hello, Konstantin,” he replied. “I think . . . I think I’ve been away . . .”
“Indeed, Mr. President. We all presumed you’d been killed.”
In Koenig’s mind, he could see Konstantin—or his characteristic digital presentation of himself, that of an elderly Russian schoolteacher, white-haired and balding, with a goatee and with an archaic pince-nez perched on his nose. Behind him were bookshelves, piled high with books with Russian titles.
“That may well be true. How long have I been . . . gone?”
“Two days, Mr. President,” the image told him. He adjuste
d his pince-nez. “You were attempting to link in on the Net when your elevator failed. I was in communication with you at the time, you may remember.”
“I remember. There was some . . . some radio interference.”
“Indeed. Your re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere generated a shell of hot plasma around your pod, interrupting all communications. The early astronauts of three centuries ago discovered the same thing. I had just re-established contact with you when your pod exploded. At that moment I attempted to link directly with your in-head hardware to allow you to upload into my computational matrix, but it did not appear to have worked.”
“Upload me? Like the Baondyeddi?”
“Precisely. A great many humans, you will recall, have already uploaded themselves, their minds, into the Godstream, and more have been ascending every day. Evidently, you have done the same, though I was unaware of the fact at the time.”
It made sense, he supposed. Koenig was in fact immersed within what might have been described as the experience of a god, though shock and dissociation had left him weak, confused, and adrift in strangeness.
“So how did you lose me?”
“Mr. President, the Godstream is extremely large, a kind of ocean consisting of many trillions of bits of information. You appeared to have died despite my efforts to upload your personality intact. When you vanished, when your body disintegrated, I assumed that you had died. I checked to see if you had, in fact, uploaded successfully, but I could not find any trace of you. I am sorry.”
The super-AI sounded genuinely contrite, as though it had been caught in the most horrible and enormous of calculational errors.
Two days. For most of that time, he’d been unconscious . . . or the noncorporeal equivalent of that state. Where had he been?
“It’s okay, Konstantin. I may not have been there to find. I’m not sure where I was—I’ve only been gradually finding myself. I’ve been wandering around in a state of something like amnesia, but the memories have been coming back.”