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They didn’t warn me! she thought. They cheated, Calculated emergencies, they said, just enough to keep a fine edge on your reaction abilities. Reaction abilities! “You overcompensated, Prue,” Timberlake said. “Make minimal adjustments to avoid oscillation while you hunt for the source of your trouble. You had sensor telltales flaring right out through the ship to pinpoint where you needed shielding reinforcement.”
I panicked, she thought. “I guess I let myself get too tired.” Even as she spoke she sensed how lame the excuse sounded.
I was too intent doing the job on Flattery, she thought. I had him headed for a nice corner where he’d have to fight his way out … and I missed the ship trouble until it was almost ready to wreck us.
It occurred to her then to wonder if one of the crew had her as a “special project” to keep her abilities toned up … on edge.
“Prue, you’ve got to remember that when the overload switches go, the computer automatics are out of the circuit,” Bickel said. “This thing was designed to be brought back into line by a conscious intelligence—one of us or an OMC.”
“Oh, shut up!” she flared. “I made a mistake. I know it. I won’t do it again.”
“No damage was done,” Timberlake said.
“I don’t need you to defend me!” she snapped. And she thought: No damage! Nothing was harmed except one of the crew—me! She pressed her hands together to still their trembling. We’re sitting ducks for any real emergency. We can’t turn back without the risk of a runaway dive into Sol or becoming another of her wandering comets. We can’t go on unless we solve the unsolvable.
“Take it easy, Prue,” Flattery soothed. “We probably put you on the big board too soon after getting you out of hyb.”
Thanks for the excuse! she thought.
Flattery glanced around the room, seeing the poised silence of Bickel and Timberlake—both of them scorched by Prue’s anger. Bickel slid out of his couch, secured a set of test leads in the clip at his left shoulder. A multimeter could be seen protruding from his breast pocket. Timberlake was refining the hull temperature adjustments, putting the system back into the computer circuits.
Flattery returned his attention to Prudence. She shouldn’t have panicked, he thought. Not the type. She has a woman’s wide perspective and confidence in her intuition. She should be better at the big board than any of us. Is she under greater strain? Does she know something I don’t?
Chapter 13
We understand synergy to mean the fortuitous working together of a set of components which we have assembled in our attempt to achieve artificial consciousness. Working together, the components produce more than …
—Prudence Lon Weygand (#3), incomplete segment from message capsule
It required almost twenty minutes for Prudence to regain her composure. By that time, Timberlake had run a checklist survey on every hyb-tank complex. He did it with a compulsive determination that none of them misunderstood. His function as life-systems engineer had been ignited.
Flattery let the thing run its course and a bit longer. Bickel was fretting to get back to his work, but Timberlake needed this role reinforcement. And Prudence needed recovery time.
Bickel finally had enough waiting.
“Can we get back to work?” he demanded.
“I can take the board now, Tim,” Flattery said.
Timberlake studied his instruments. “Okay. On the count.”
They shifted the board, and Timberlake got up, a sharp ache across his back telling him how tense he had been.
“Let’s get back to the shop,” Bickel said.
“How far along are you?” Prudence asked.
“Barely beginning,” Bickel said. “Let’s get cracking.”
“Is a man just a machine’s way of making another machine?” she asked.
“Just like Sam Butler’s hen,” Timberlake said. “Philosophy I.”
“Philosophy some other time, huh?” Bickel suggested.
“Just a minute,” she said. “By attempting to reproduce an artificial consciousness, we’re monkeying with variation of variability. Now, there’s a field that all good little divines”—she nodded toward Flattery—”and most scientists have agreed by a compact of silence is the exclusive territory of God in Heaven and God’s handiwork on earth—the genes.”
“Yeah,” Bickel said. “That’s great. Let’s solve it some other time.”
“You still don’t get it, none of you,” she said.
Bickel glared at her. “Don’t I? Okay, Prue. Let’s strip off the fancy verbiage. We’re damned if we solve this problem and dead if we don’t. Is that what you were trying to say?”
“Bravo!” she said, and turned to look at Flattery.
Flattery scowled at his board, pointedly ignoring her.
“You see, Raj?” she asked.
She can’t possibly know my instructions, Flattery thought. She might guess, but she can’t know. And certainly she couldn’t stop me if I had to blow us all to Kingdom Come.
“Yes, I see,” Flattery said. “Don’t underestimate John Lon Bickel.”
At the sound of his name, Bickel’s head came up. He stared at Flattery’s profile, seeing the way the man’s sensitive fingers moved like spider legs across the big board.
“You’re so very clever, Raj,” she said. “And so damn stupid!”
“That’s enough of that!” Bickel snapped, turning to glare at Prudence. “We’d better clear a little air, here. We’re on our own, Prue. You’ve no idea how much on our own we are. We have to depend on each other because we sure as hell can’t depend on the Tin Egg! We can’t afford to snap and bite at each other.”
Oh, can’t we now, she thought.
“We’re trapped on a ship that contains only one top drawer mechanism,” Bickel said. “We’ve only one thing that functions smoothly and beautifully the way it should—our computer. Everything else works as though it’d been designed and built by six left-handed apes.”
“Bickel thinks this was all deliberate,” Timberlake said.
Prudence caught herself in an involuntary glance at Flattery, forced her attention away from Bickel and onto Timberlake. This is far too early for Bickel to suspect, she thought.
Timberlake avoided her eyes. He looked like a small boy who’d been caught stealing jam.
Flattery broke the silence. “Deliberate?’ he asked.
“Yeah,” Timberlake said. “He thinks the other six ships had the same kind of failure—something rotten with the OMCs.”
Bickel’s far more alert and suspicious than anyone suspected, Prudence thought. Raj or I will have to side with him; there’s no other way to keep control of the situation.
“Why … the OMCs?” Flattery asked.
“Let’s not tiptoe around it,” Bickel said. “The thing’s obvious. What feature of these ships is never mentioned in the stress analyses? What feature do we assume is proof against failure?”
“Surely not the OMCs,” Flattery said. He tried to hold his voice to a bantering level, failed, and thought: God help us. Bickel’s seen through the sham
far too soon.
“Certainly the OMCs,” Bickel said. “And they gave us three of the damn things! One in service and two for backup. Never a hint that an OMC could fail, yet we had three on the Tin Egg!”
“Why?” Prudence asked.
“To make damn sure we got beyond the point of no return before we got the cold-turkey treatment,” Bickel said.
I guess I’m elected, Prudence thought. She said: “More of Project’s goddamn maneuvering! Sure, it’d be right in character.”
Flattery shot a startled look at her, returned his attention to the big board before Bickel noticed.
“Cold turkey,” Bickel said. “This ship’s one elaborate simulation device with a single purpose—and my guess is the others were the same.”
“Why?” Flattery demanded. “Why would they do such a thing?”
“Can’t you see it?” Bickel asked. “Don’t you recognize the purpose? It casts its shadow over everything around us. It’s the only thing that makes any sense out of this charade. The secrecy, the mystery, the maneuvering—everything’s calculated to put us on a greased slide into a very special ocean. It’s not just cold turkey, it’s sink or swim. And the only way we can swim is to develop an artificial consciousness.”
“Then why such an elaborate sham?” Flattery asked. “Why all the colonists, for example?”
“Why not the colonists?” Bickel countered. “Ready replacements for any members of the crew slaughtered on the way. Another arrow in the quiver—just in case we do get over the hump to a habitable planet where we can plant the seed of humankind. And … maybe there’s another reason.”
“What?” Prudence demanded.
“I can’t say just yet,” Bickel said. “It’s just a hunch … and there’s something a hell of a lot more important we have to consider—the destructive potential of this project.”
“You’d better explain that,” Flattery said, but he could feel in the dryness of his throat and mouth that Bickel already had seen through to the horror element of Project Consciousness.
“Let’s not kid ourselves,” Bickel said. “If we really solve this, the whatever-you-call-it we develop could be a kind of ultimate threat to humankind—a rogue, Frankenstein’s monster, cold intelligence without warm emotions, an angry horror.” He shrugged. “Once there was an island in Puget Sound; you all know about it. What happened? Did they solve it?”
