Burnt Ice (31 page)

Topaz tested everything through a
minute connection directly into the spider’s brain and, once they were
satisfied, the brain levels were lifted to just below sentience. They
programmed in all the information about Harry that would be of use to the
creature and a great deal of engineering knowledge as well. Neither could see
the point of Harry having to do all that instructing himself.

The spider was lifted from the
gel tank. Topaz had it perform an entire series of tasks under its own control.
Finally they ran the 17J5ACE protocol tests for an Artificially Created Entity.

‘Harry. Want to wake up your new
friend and name it?’

‘Great! On my way.’

Everyone awake turned up. Sirius
was excited about recording the event. Marko passed over the code card to
Harry.

‘What does the code do, Marko?’
Sirius asked.

‘The code triggers the full
sentience for the first time. The creatures are, of course, switched on and
technically alive at this stage, but when the code is read, a whole body
attitude change occurs as the creature attains self-awareness. It still
fascinates me.’

Harry read the code out to the
spider.

It twitched several times. The
eyes opened slightly wider. Then the spider turned to look at each of them with
its front eyes. Then it looked up at Harry, smiled a tiny smile and walked
across to him, reared up, presenting its small true hands. Harry leant down and
gently picked it up. The spider looked into Harry’s eyes, then back at the rest
of them. It reached out, placing a tiny hand on Harry’s cheek. Its two main
eyes then looked back at him.

‘Hello, Harry.’

‘Hello to you, Flint. Welcome to
existence.’

‘Thank you. Thanks to you, Marko
and Topaz. Show me your life please, Harry.’

They walked off, in conversation.

Jan smiled and kissed Marko. The
captain nodded and smiled, leaving with Sirius in tow, who bombarded him with questions
as he headed to the flight deck. Veg reached across and shook Marko by the
hand, and Stephine, her eyes shining, leant down to kiss him on the cheek. She
smiled at him.

‘That is a very good creature
that you have made. My deepest compliments to you both.’

She then patted the main outer
casing of Topaz, resting her hand on its top for a few seconds.

After the tall couple had left,
Marko turned to Jan.

‘I could have sworn that a tiny
part of her fingertip detached and seemed to melt down into Topaz’s case, but I
think I’m mistaken. I obviously need a meal and a large pot of tea. I’ll brew
it with one of Stephine’s new ones. Green tea with mandarin. Delicious. Come
on, I’ll pour you a cup —
if
you’re nice to me!’

~ * ~

‘So,
Stephine. What do you know about a cat called a Siamese, from Earth?’

‘Flash me the file please, Marko.
By the way, I have a batch of cocoa beans almost ripe. Tell the beautiful Jan
that she is about to learn what real chocolate is. And I know that you don’t
like it, so I’ll prepare something special, just for you. It is known as Dutch
bitter chocolate.’

‘Don’t touch it, friend Marko,’
Veg interrupted. ‘It is quite addictive. Hey, there’s a thought, Steph. I haven’t
tasted licorice in a long while. There’s a challenge for you.’

‘You and licorice are a bad mix,
my beautiful man. Last time I made it for you, Veg, you spent a great deal of
time creating paper bags just so you could carry your selection around with you
all day. You were offering it to everyone! We’ll see what happens, eh?
Beautiful cat, Marko. File says it has a very annoying voice pitch, though. Not
sure if I would like that.’

‘Easily fixed, Stephine.’

Marko recalled how he had once
called her Steph — and got a raised eyebrow and a slightly reproachful look for
his familiarity. He did not call her that again.

‘Yes. Now, I would like this cat
to have standard fusion micro plant — but have it heavily shielded. I would
also like it to be able to digest and use any standard food sources. I’m
assuming that the eyes will be able to see in any spectrum and that it will
have a full-band communication suite also on board?’

‘Yeah, OK. That entails a large
domestic cat. Siamese are slinky things. Perhaps a Birman would be a better
base for the build? Here’s the file.’

‘Yes, I like that. Good history
as well. It is fitting — a guardian. Yes, Marko, This is good.’

For Marko, something like a cat
was a straightforward build. Building a specific type of cat was even simpler.
Topaz could have done the entire project on her own but Marko wanted to do
something special for Stephine.

‘Right, Topaz, mate. Let’s start
with the skeletal structure. OK. Pull across the files for the heavy birds of
prey. Right, osprey should do nicely. Take the bone structure, then type and
match it across the feline skeleton. OK, power systems. She wants it shielded.
If we placed it in the head, we could then plate the inside of the skull with
false image returners. Scanned, it would appear to have a brain. We place all
brain and cognitive capability into the bone structure, hence the use of the
bird bone type. We will have to ramp up the connective nerve and neural
material. Might as well use the bird’s respiratory system as well. Gas goes in
one nostril and out the other. We can leave out the lungs, but build the
diaphragm as if it were a normal creature. That way, it will appear to be
breathing, but won’t at all. We use the air exchange, instead, to cool the
micropile.

That’s a nice design, Marko.
Suggest we use a fish digestive system. Faster and more efficient than a
mammalian one. So, what should we do with the additional space?’

‘We could just fill it with
additional synthetic brain. In fact, the smart way would be to grow all the
organs as if they were standard, but have them all synthetic brain. Scanned, it
would look normal, but the thing would have huge memory capacity and cognitive
power. Would verge on a sub-AI size-wise, but be fully AI anyway. Suggestions
on the hair?’

‘Well, if processing capacity is
not an issue, with the bone-encased system running the creature, and the
additional brain material available for analysis, how about we make this a true
intelligence-gathering entity? The hair could be fabricated as normal, but I
could build sensors for energy emissions into each fibre. It would be seeing
and hearing with its entire surface area,’ said the unit.

‘Oh, now that’s nice, really
nice! Shame you don’t drink beer. I’d go and get you one, right now.’

‘Kind thought. Parrot’s internal
mouth structure and voice box? We will have to route some additional piping for
that from the nasal cavity.’

‘Yeah, good call, Topaz. That way
it could mimic just about anything it hears. We will use chain-linked ivory for
its teeth. They will look natural, but be very tough. We will also build a
comms laser behind one of the eyes. I’ll have Harry make one of Fritz’s spectral
comms units for this ACE as well. Now, if we are going to go down this road, we
might as well go all the way. How about we also give it fluid analysis
capabilities in its mouth? That would require no saliva glands to dilute
whatever it is examining. Also, the same capability at the base of each claw.
Yeah, I like that. OK, give me the list of goodies and I’ll start loading the
tank. Build time?’

‘Long one, Marko. Forty-seven
days. If we give it all those additional analytical tools it is going to
require some fluid cleanser, or at least a neutraliser. Am researching the
possibilities for such. As I suspected, it would require a neutralising dust in
a carrier fluid. We could take an amount of the ingested food and alter it. It
would require an additional unit which we could place in what would normally be
the bladder. Piping up as if it were normal saliva. Suitably altered as
required, it could also create a useful marker to be placed on things of
interest.’

‘Good, I like that. Let’s crack
on then. Stephine?’

‘Yes, Marko.’

‘Just a thought. Shall we also
build you a set of hands for this cat? Would be very useful and it wouldn’t be
too difficult to set them up so they could socket directly into the foot pad.’

‘No. Nice idea. But no. Keep it
as close to standard visually as possible please.’

‘OK.’

~ * ~

Stephine
did not want any fuss made over the awakening of her cat. She was direct with
Sirius and told her in no uncertain terms that the cat would never appear in
any images gathered by her. Sirius took it badly stomping off to complain to
the captain. Nobody was quite sure what he said, but it must have brought
something to a head, as she moved out of his cabin the same afternoon.

Jan, Veg, Stephine and Marko were
with Topaz when Marko gave Stephine the code card. The cat, up until that
stage, had been like any other cat, but when she spoke the activation code, its
eyes opened a fraction wider then narrowed, and it gazed around at them,
carefully looking each up and down.

‘Hello, Stephine. Hello, humans.
Now, this is going to be very interesting. I am curious, Stephine. I can see
the energy patterns for the humans. They are human Type A military. Your
companion, Veg, is a little different. But you, mistress, you are
quite
different. In fact, you are barely — only just — human.’

Stephine looked across at Marko
in a way that he had never seen before. He felt a chill run the full length of
his existence. Then she smiled and laughed, although he noted that the laugh
did not quite reach her eyes.

‘So, Cat. Master Spitz has made
you rather special. I am in his debt. I have been tanked sixteen times, Cat. Of
course I am only barely human. What would you expect?’

The cat cocked its head to one
side, looked her up and down slowly, for a second time almost disdainfully, as
only a cat can do. ‘I believe that I am going to enjoy living out my tenure to
you, Mistress Stephine.’

‘Yes, I had wanted a cute, cuddly
ordinary
cat, Cat. I see that I have something much more powerful and
therefore more useful, in fact. Thank you, Marko. Thank you, Topaz. Part of me
is displeased that you didn’t tell me what you were building. The rest of me,
however, is quite delighted. I shall cook a special dinner for us all. So, Cat,
I was going to call you Petal. Instead I shall call you Nail. More fitting.
Come on, let’s go find you something to eat.’

‘Nail? That, I like. Petal! That’s
a name for which I should bite you, Stephine.’

‘And I shall bite you back, Cat!’

~ * ~

Seven

Jan
and Marko stood beside Topaz watching Stephine and Veg walk away — Nail, with
his tail vertical, padding between them.

‘That was not quite what I
expected. Stephine frightens me. Shit,
that
I didn’t expect.’

Jan said, ‘You are not on your
own with that sentiment, Marko.’

After a few seconds Topaz said
quietly, ‘We should have expected it to do something interesting, Marko. It is
a very powerful ACE. Don’t worry: Stephine cares for all of us deeply. I think,
in fact, we surprised her with something new — and she doesn’t surprise easily.
They’ll be fine. We will also be fine. I’m already getting an interesting data
link from Nail. Stephine really is an enigma. A whole lot of augmentation; she
could survive in almost any environment that wasn’t too powerfully acidic or
alkaline. Extraordinary levels of nanote technology on her skin — and a very
tough skin at that. Sensible move giving the cat diamond claws! It’s well she
doesn’t know we now have an informant on her.’

Marko had installed a very sleek,
extremely high-level intel program in the ACE. Topaz had noted it had similar
traits to some of Fritz’s more interesting programs. ‘I shall place that
program in my destruction protocol if I am ever compromised.’ said the AI. ‘Well,
I rather enjoyed that. How about we now get serious and build something really beautiful?
It’s time for your ACE, Marko.’