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“Then we’ll transmit the problem back to Moonbase and let them run it for us,” Bickel said.
“Forgetting your analysis of why we were sent out here to solve it,” Flattery said.
“Ahh, you’re admitting we were sent out here to sink or swim.”
“I’m admitting nothing, but I’d suggest you come in and man the AAT. A message has been reeling in from Moonbase for the past minute.”
Chapter 16
The high data-rate sense perception and identification abilities of the human system mostly bypass verbal/analytic awareness. We are generally conscious of a cognitive recognition after the fact. In this way, what we understand as consciousness has to be identified as a reflexive monitoring ability with quite limited application. To produce consciousness (artificial or otherwise) we are stepping down, not up.
—John Lon Bickel (#5), Message Capsule datum
Morgan Hempstead’s burst-depersonalized voice filled the control room as Bickel started the playback of the new message from Moonbase.
“Calling UMB ship Earthling. This is Project calling UMB ship Earthling.”
A long, rolling silence followed and they grew aware of the hissing of the tape as it sped across its sorting heads.
To Prudence, that hiss was something primordial and perilous. It was a noise from the slime of evolution and she felt that some dangerous part of her own brain came awake at hearing it.
That’s foolish, she told herself, I’m reacting to my last injection.
That had to be it: the chemical experiments on her own flesh were creating imbalances. She was using a series of variations on tetrahydrocannabinol now, shifting the CH3 forms and adding oxygen.
That was just the hissing of tapes, she reminded herself. But her head wanted to move from side to side. Something within her was fascinated by that sound.
Bickel glanced around the room—Flattery at the big board yet, composed and so serenely sure of himself; Prudence in her action couch and with her eyes intent on the vocal translator at the AAT; Timberlake in his couch, eyes closed, breathing deeply. One might almost think he was asleep, but for the pulse at his temple. Bickel recognized that mannerism of Timberlake’s. It meant the man was chewing over a heavy problem.
“Hit it,” Hempstead said.
“That must be an error,” Bickel said. “The AAT goofed on that one.”
“We do worse ourselves sometimes,” Flattery said.
“On the question of defining consciousness,” Hempstead said. “Reference is made to nerve barrier and threshold data your computer. Best dive to date.”
“Best definition to date,” Flattery said. “That’s what he must’ve said.”
“New Organic Mental Core,” Hempstead said. “Medical personnel are directed to abandon all such repeats in their waste of order.”
“There’s something wrong with the AAT,” Prudence said.
“Not with the AAT,” Bickel said. “With the translator circuits from the computer.”
“That goddamn wild program we flushed through the system like a high colonic,” Timberlake growled. He opened his eyes and stared accusingly at Bickel.
“Abandon all such attempts,” Hempstead said. “Repeat: abandon all such attempts. This is a direct order.”
“That sounds like him rightly enough,” Prudence said.
“Under no circumstances are you to attempt to make inanimate components,” Hempstead said.
“Try that one on your violin,” Timberlake said.
“Analyze course and reaction data related to mass changes,” Hempstead said. “Unknown area derived mathematically.”
“Hash!” Timberlake snarled. “Garbage!”
“Project over and out,” Hempstead said. “Acknowledge year compliance.”
Timberlake sat up, swung his feet to the deck. “Go ahead, Bick,” he said. “Acknowledge year compliance.”
Flattery glanced at Timberlake, returned his attention to the board. Timberlake obviously was making a bid to regain his authority. That could have been predicted. Their first setback would bring him charging out—from fear for all those lives dependent on the life systems, if not for any other reason. Flattery had watched the way Timberlake studied the life-systems repeaters—nothing wrong there … yet. But a threat to any part of the ship was a threat to all.
“Was he asking us to install a new brain?” Prudence asked.
“Where could we get one?” Timberlake asked.
“We’ve already been through that,” she said, looking at each of them in turn.
And for the first time since taking her position with the umbilicus crew, Prudence allowed herself to wonder what it really would be like to become that fleshless embodiment, the mentality which was central to a driving behemoth such as this ship.
She shivered.
They taunt me with blasphemy, Flattery thought.
“Are you cold, Prudence?” he asked.
He watches me all the time, she thought. The medical part of her faced the feminine part then. “I’m quite comfortable,” she said.
But she wasn’t comfortable. Moods of depression and elation shot through her without warning and had to be concealed. Strange psychic aches tortured her mind—fantasies of godlike power competed with the urge for physical abasement.
She suspected she was close to finding the selective stimulator of consciousness. Some of the combinations she was now using on herself provided enormous amounts of oxygen to the brain in abrupt bursts. There seemed to be a threshold effect involving the blood-brain barrier. The experiments produced residual effects, though. One of their by-products had forced her to complete abandonment of anti-S and its body-chemistry-balance substitutes. Lately, she’d had to mask and suppress acute withdrawal symptoms. And she had found herself unable to deny the profound, compulsive hungers for foods heavy in B-complex vitam
ins.
She also found herself plagued by sexual dream fantasies involving all of her companions.
Bickel turned from the AAT with a length of printer tape, said: “Garbage.”
“What else?” Timberlake snapped.
Flattery started to speak, froze in the act while he studied the track graph on his board. He hadn’t imagined it; the graph was climbing. “We’ve been gaining speed for several minutes. Slow … but steady.”
“Drive problems now!” Timberlake snarled.
Flattery activated the drive readout, scanned it. “No, no emission. G/R level shows the normal radiation drop.”
“Mass register?” Bickel asked.
Flattery’s hands flicked over the keyboard. He scanned his gauges. “Out of register! Mass reference is out of register!”
“What are your readings?” Bickel asked.
“They vary through ten argos”? Flattery muttered. “They don’t graph back … no series-constant in the curve of change. Mass is out of register with speed.”
“What’d Hempstead say?” Bickel demanded, looking back at the printout tape. “‘Analyze course and reaction data related to mass changes.’ If he—”
“That could be garbage!” Timberlake snapped.
“Still that gradual speed increase,” Flattery said. “A slow increment for about four minutes now.”
The ship is programmed for emergencies, Prudence thought. That’s what they said. But which are emergencies from that program … and which are emergencies from an unknown source?
Flattery took a comparator readout. “In the past minute and eight seconds, our speed has gone up .011002 against the fixed reference.”
Bickel began shifting plugs on his computer board. His fingers danced over the keys. He checked the telltales, looked to the visual readout screen.
“Mass interference,” he said.
Timberlake coughed. “Is that thing saying our speed has raised our mass to a point where something is … colliding with us?”
