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“Using our communications AAT system as a basis,” Bickel said.
“The AAT is linked directly to the computer core,” Flattery said. “It’s part of the translation master program. If you make a mistake, you destroy the heart of the computer. I’m not sure we should—”
“It’ll be securely fused,” Bickel said. “No chance of a backlash getting through to—”
“Without the computer, our automatics cease functioning,” Timberlake said. “Maybe we’d better reconsider. If—”
“Come off of that, Tim!” Bickel protested. “You could set up this safety system as well as I could. There’s not a chance of anything getting through to the—”
“I keep thinking of the UMB’s so-called thinking machines,” Timberlake said. “We can’t see all their behavior. If we miss one linkage we could upset a vital master program.”
“We’re just not going to miss any linkages. The schematics are all available. This isn’t flying blind. The AAT is the only thing we could really foul up, and at this distance from Moonbase it’s of dubious value.”
Does he want to cut us off from the UMB? Flattery wondered. They suggested he might try it. We can’t let him do that.
“If you demolished the AAT system,” Flattery said, “how long would it take to restore communications?”
“Fifteen to twenty hours,” Bickel said. “We could have a jury rig doing the job by then.”
Flattery looked questioningly at Timberlake.
“That’s about right,” Timberlake agreed.
“We use the AAT as a basis for our simulator,” Bickel said. “We’ll raid colony stores for reels of neuron fiber, Eng multipliers, and the other basic components. What we have to get is a system that simulates human nerve-net function.”
“But will it be conscious?” Flattery asked.
“All we can do is cut and try,” Bickel said. “Our computer and even the AAT work on analogue additive principles. We’re going to build a system that’s strictly infinite multiplying. Our system will produce message units that are products of many multipliers.”
“You make it sound so simple,” Prudence said. “Connect net A to net B at points D and D prime and you get the Consciousness Factor—CF for short.”
Bickel’s lips thinned. “You have a better plan?”
Did I push too hard? she wondered. And she spoke quickly, “Oh, I’m with you, Bickel. You obviously know all the answers.”
“I don’t know all the answers,” Bickel growled, “but I’m not going to sit out here moaning about fate … and I’m not turning back.”
What if we have to turn back? Flattery wondered. What do we do about Bickel’s inhibition then?
“Are you going to wait for Moonbase to answer?” Flattery asked.
Bickel glanced at Prudence. “I’d prefer starting at once, but that means I’d miss my shift on the board … and since I’ll need Tim—”
“We can handle it,” Flattery said. “Everything seems to be running smoothly.”
Prudence looked up at the big board and the inactive repeaters over her couch, wondering at her sudden feeling of chill. I’m afraid to take that board, she thought.
Those thousands of lives down in the hyb tanks … all depending on right-the-first-time reactions. Did the UMB big-domes really know what they were doing when they sent us out here? Was this the only way? Should we dehyb more people to help us? But that would overload several systems … including the Bickel system.
Chapter 10
The Chase has fascinated humankind from the beginning, and with good reason. What many failed to understand, however, was that there could be the excitement of the chase even where the only thing you were chasing was an idea, a concept, a theory. As awareness developed, it became apparent that this was the most important chase of all, the one upon whose outcome all of humankind survives or fails.
—Raja Lon Flattery, The Book of Ship
The creaking of their action couches, the click-click of relays—all of the subtle and familiar sounds of Com-central worried at the edges of Prudence’s awareness.
For the past half-hour, Bickel had been fussing through the schematics, plotting his way into the computer, sharing parts of his plan with the others. She had come to dislike the sound of the schematics being shuffled.
There were tensions here that she did not fully understand, but her own role remained clear—mediate and goad … mediate and goad.
The common stench of Com-central carried an acridity which she identified as fear.
We have a chance at glory, she told herself. Very few people ever have that opportunity.
It was an empty pep talk, forever confronted by that inescapable fact:
I am not people.
For the first time since coming out of the hyb tank, she felt the old familiar pain-of-wonder, asking herself what it might have been like to have been born into a normal family in the normal way, to have grown up in the noisy, intimate belonging of the unchosen.
“You are the cream, the select few,” Morgan Hempstead and his cohorts had kept reminding them. But they all knew where the cream had originated. Normal biopsy tissue from a living human volunteer had been suspended in an axolotl tank, the genetic imprint triggered and the flesh allowed to grow. It produced an identical twin—an expendable twin.
Select few! she thought. Something precious was taken from us and the compensations were inadequate.
She tuned the small screen at the corner of her board to one of the tail eyes, looked back toward the center of the solar system, toward the planet that had spawned them.
A stabbing pang of homesickness tightened her breast, made breathing difficult for a moment.
They had been molded and motivated, twisted, trained and inhibited—wound up like mechanical toys and sent scooting off into the darkness with their laser “whistle” tooting to let UMB know where they were.
And where are we? she asked herself as she blanked the screen.
“Prue, you’d better take the big board,” Flattery said. “You’d normally follow John.”
Si
ght of the big board’s dials and gauges filled her with an abrupt anger and fear. She felt the immediacy of the emotions in a dry throat, heat in her cheeks.
“I … haven’t had enough time off the boards, to recuperate,” Flattery said, speaking hesitantly. “Or I’d—”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’ll take it.”
She took a deep breath, leaned back, signed to Timberlake to begin the count.
The appeal to her nursing instinct did it, Flattery thought. She was ready to funk out. She had to take the board now or she might never be able to face it.
Flattery glanced at Timberlake, saw the relief so apparent on the man’s face as he switched the green arrow to Prudence.
Timberlake, dominated by intuition, was terrified by the responsibility of Com-central. Prudence, deep in sensation, shared that fear.
And I, because I feel their fear, overcome my own repugnance, Flattery thought.
Only Bickel, logical and with penetrating intelligence, seemed immune to these pressures. It was a flaw in Bickel’s character, Flattery thought, but he knew their lives could depend on that flaw.
“Get the manifest and ship-loading plans, Tim,” Bickel said. “I’ll give you a list of what we need from colony stores. We can set up in the computer maintenance shop next door for easy—”
“Don’t stay outside the shield area too long,” Prudence said. “You’d better key your dosimeters to repeaters in here; we’ll keep an eye on you that way.”
“Right,” Bickel said.
He slipped off his couch, looked back at Prudence, studying her profile, the intent way she watched the big board. He shifted his attention to Flattery, who lay back with eyes closed, resting for his shift at the controls; then to Timberlake, who was taking copies of the ship-loading plans from the computer memory-bank printers.
None of them has really focused on what has to be done here, Bickel thought. They haven’t faced the fact that the simulator eventually has to be tied directly to the computer. We’ll just be building a set of frontal lobes—if we’re successful. And our “Ox” can have but one source of experience upon which to come alive and conscious—the computer and its memory banks.
