Destination: Void: Prequel to the Pandora Sequence (10 page)

“You don’t have to ask that. You know it would.”

“Okay, now tell me why you didn’t answer my question by saying
pi
is a sweet concoction of starchy crust enclosing a filling often of fruit?”

She saw his seriousness in the way he stared at her, waiting. This bore on the problem in some way. She looked at Timberlake and he interpreted her motion as an appeal for help.

“It’s obvious,” Timberlake said. “You set up a category first by saying, ‘You’re our mathematician.’ Then you asked: ‘What’s
pi?
You didn’t say: ‘What’s
a
pie?’”

“Yeah,” Bickel said. “You had two screening references through which to filter the question and come up with the right answer. Then, because you sensed this was a rhetorical question in some way, you didn’t try to explain first that there’s no rational number for
pi;
you just gave me the rational approximations.”

“Well, I knew I didn’t have to explain
that
to you,” Prudence said.

“That was category ‘common information,’” Bickel said. “All you had to do was produce the
significant
answer.”

“Holy cow!” Timberlake exploded, seeing where Bickel was leading them.

“Holy Ox, you mean,” Bickel said.

Prudence whirled, pointed wildly toward the computer panel. “But it wasn’t conscious! It couldn’t have been!”

“It wasn’t conscious,” Bickel agreed. “But first crack out of the box, we’ve produced a significant result. And it was no accident. What can we say about the results of this test? First, we can say that the computer had sufficient information to produce an accurate answer despite errors in the system. Second, we can say that we’ve introduced a new kind of sense data into the system previously called a computer. We can go on calling this a computer, but it’s a step up from ‘computer’ now. It has
learned
how to use a new kind of sense data.”

Prudence started to speak, stopped.

“Screen everything I’ve said here through field theory,” Bickel said. He grinned at them. “Then remember that we matched
three
energy sources in the Ox. The integrator there set them up to go out identically. The buffer potential of this storage unit here scattered those pulses through the system. They were divided and re-divided … but wherever they matched they reinforced each other.”

“In itself, the original program pulse was a kind of comparator,” Timberlake said. “The computer could compare for accuracy on the basis of signal strength.”

“And the computer already
knew
how to compare the AAT signals for accuracy by screening them through a code-matching grid,” Bickel said. “Signal strength was merely another kind of grid.”

“If you’re not too busy congratulating yourself,” Prudence said, “consider how some of those rematched signals must’ve grown in strength. The probability is that some elements of the computer have been shocked out of—”

“We’re still running,” Bickel said, but he spoke defensively, realizing that Prudence was right. There were overload fuses throughout the filter to protect components, but stray signals overriding barrier potentials could have played hob with some of the master programs. He looked at the overhead screen which showed Flattery manning the Com-central board.

Flattery appeared relaxed, but watchful, his gaze traversing the big board.

Damn her!
he thought.

One instant everything had been rosy, full of elation that the Ox had come a short step up the ladder—not into consciousness … but toward it. And all she could think to do was throw cold water on them.

Bickel met Flattery’s gaze in the screen. “Have you been listening, Raj?”

“I’ve been listening,” Flattery said.

“Have we gone sour, yet?” Bickel asked.

“You really think I’m this hypothetical human fail-safe device?” Flattery asked, holding his tone to a nice balance between mockery and injured innocence.

He almost goes too far,
Prudence thought.
If he isn’t underestimating Bickel, he’s pressing the limits. One course is as dangerous as the other.

“You’re the logical candidate,” Bickel said, “but I was asking for your comments on progress.”

Flattery suppressed an abrupt feeling of jealousy. Bickel, in spite of the obvious flaw—and that was a gaping thing—balanced so beautifully. Or … he appeared to balance, which was much the same thing as far as this operation was concerned.

“Ahhh, progress,” Flattery said. “If I understand your original test correctly, the pulse-time distances didn’t check out with the space distances. They weren’t proportional.”

“That’s essentially it.” Bickel wondered why Flattery’s tone made him feel so defensive. “They averaged out to almost a zero product.”

“The artificial nerve nets produce something vaguely equivalent to psychological space.” Flattery paused, scanned the Com-central board, returned his attention to the screen and Bickel. “You can say that the test pulses are more or less like sense data feeding into psychological space—a region somewhat equivalent to what Prudence calls imbedding space. I like her cobweb-and-ink analogy. But there’s a big difference between physical space and psychological space.”

He let it hang there a long time, forcing Bickel to admit a dependency upon someone else’s expertise.

“If you’re going to explain it, then get at it,” Bickel said. There was anger in his voice. He didn’t enjoy depending on Flattery.

“Okay.” Flattery kept his tone even and friendly.

“You can time a signal across physical space, repeat it and get matched results. Any difference will have a positive relationship to a change in distance. But psychological space … now, that’s something else again. The time there could depend on mood. What’s mood, John? Is it a comparison between this and previous experiences of a similar kind? Your pulse-time in psychological space will meet many more variables than it does in physical space.”

“Are you saying we haven’t analyzed our results correctly?” Timberlake asked. He glared up at the screen, feeling that he and Prudence and Bickel were arrayed somehow against Flattery.

“You’re trying to arrive at some proportional comparison between the sense world and the physical world,” Flattery said. “But you can’t use the same rules of measurement. Each neuron in your net will introduce an element of random conduction time and you get more randomness from the similar variation in synaptic delay time. The difference between the sense world and the physical world is the difference between time distance and space distance. And the most casual examination of your setup indicates you’ll have random time distances.”

“Zero by probability,” Bickel said. “That won’t wash.”

“That shot-effect test,” Flattery said, his voice bored, “fired off impulses which weren’t time-regulated. You got a variety of delay times there and in your system. That could average out statistically—by probability mechanics.”

“Over the entire net?” Bickel demanded.

“Why not? The bigger the net, the more likely this is to be true. And your net here took in the entire computer.”

“But we got the right answer from the translator,” Bickel said, his voice pouncing. “Try probability on that!”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” Flattery said. “No more than I’d think of coming to definite conclusions on the basis of one test run.”

Bickel glared at him. “Okay, we’ll run it again!”

“No, you won’t,” Flattery said. “Not without figuring how to isolate your Ox from the computer … and before you think of taking any storage units out of the system, ask yourself which one it’ll be. Will it be a unit protecting the life of someone in the hyb tanks? How about a unit controlling the drive?”

“We can’t tell one from the other without a complete block-sort of the entire system,” Bickel protested.

“Exactly. That shouldn’t take more than eight or nine years—with the manpower available to us.”

Flattery’s argument was unassailable, Bickel knew. This didn’t ease the anger that surged through him at the sight of the man’s coldly superior attitude. Still, Bickel felt they had approached some unspoken, elusive, and vital fact that all of them should recognize. They had approached it and wandered away.

“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 CH
₃
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 vitamins.

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?”

“We don’t know,” Bickel said.

“And with that computer, the answer could be garbage,” Timberlake said.

“But the problem isn’t garbage,” Flattery said. “I’m getting direct reports.”

“Speed and mass are our major variables,” Bickel said. “Mass reference is cockeyed. Something outside their
rated
spectrum is colliding with our sensors. That’d throw the—”

“Prepare for retro-firing,” Flattery said.

“Wouldn’t it be wiser to turn ship?” Timberlake asked. He kicked the manual cocoon switch and the action couch snapped securely around him.

“Raj’s right,” Bickel said. “Use minimum change. Something’s happening for which we have no experience.”

“I am starting retro with micro-emission,” Flattery said. “Prue, monitor the track graph. Tim, watch our mass reference. I am recording for later analysis.”

“If there is a later,” Timberlake muttered.

Flattery ignored him. “John, monitor hull temperature and Doppler comparison.”

“Right.” Bickel cleared his throat, thinking how crude was this quartered division of functions when compared with a properly working ship-control robobrain. The umbilicus crew was a pack of limping cripples by comparison … and in a situation where they needed to run and dodge and balance with the ability of an athlete.

“Starting retro,” Flattery said.

He moved the micro-controls one notch.

Action couches made a slight adjustment to the change. It registered as a creeping movement of their repeater consoles against the conduits, pipes, and instruments of the fixed walls.

“Track graph report,” Flattery said.

“Speed is dropping unevenly,” Prudence answered. “Fits and jerks.”

Bickel, watching the edge of his repeater where it aligned with the edge of a wall plate, could see the bucking movement of the ship as a series of tiny jerks. His hands on the console keys sensed a tremor in the ship.

“Tell me when the graph levels off,” Flattery said. “Mass reference report.”

“Uneven,” Timberlake said. “Graph average is dropping, but the direct register is going up and down … it’s .008, .0095 … .0069 …”

“Let me know if it levels,” Flattery said.

Without being asked, Bickel said, “There’s a microincrease in temperature along the first quadrant, stern. Compensation system is taking care of it adequately. Doppler reference shows an actual speed decrease of .00904 plus.”

“Mark,” Flattery said.

“S over C confirms,” Prudence said.

Flattery advanced the micro-control another notch, feeling perspiration along his back and neck collecting too fast for his suit to compensate.

“Track,” he said.

“Graph is now dipping below the fixed reference,” -said. “Still dropping unevenly.”

“Ion reading,” Flattery said.

“One over four point two eight double ought one,” Timberlake answered. “Agreement with emission rate is positive. Retro normal.”

“Rate of down-graph is now even on the track,” Prudence said.

“Mass reference is level and .000001001 out of agreement,” Timberlake said.

“Hull temperature?” Flattery asked.

“Holding” Bickel allowed himself a deep breath. Changes in hull temperature where they should not occur, changes in their speed without a positive explanation—these were more alarming than a physical breakdown that they could touch with their hands and repair.

Flattery heard the sigh and thought:
The Tin Egg had a close call. But close to what? Does Bickel know? Did he tell us everything he got from the computer? Even so, how can we trust computer information now?

But Flattery recalled another part of Hempstead’s possibly garbled message:
“Unknown area derived mathematically.”

What if that were pretty close to Hempstead’s actual words? Flattery asked himself. An unknown of some kind derived mathematically. The ship
had
encountered a mass/ speed problem.

Bickel said, “Raj, drop the speed another two points and hold. We’ll want regular checks on mass/speed variations from here on out.”

“Complying,” Flattery said. “Report in order.” He turned to the micro-controls, dropped them two more notches.

“Track graph declines on an even slope,” Prudence said.

“Mass reference agrees,” Timberlake said. “Ion emission normal.”

“Temperature holding normal,” Bickel reported. “Doppler comparison is positive-zero.”

Bickel looked at those two thin black needles of the Doppler comparator. They were what put the bite in this emergency. They provided positive checks on speed through Doppler reference to fixed astronomical bodies. The Doppler comparison and change in speed had agreed one-for-one.

Bickel felt he knew only one area of probability to explain what had happened, but the area involved a theory that had always been treated as a kind of mathematical game. You first had to assume the universe contained two groups of matter, each moving faster than the speed of light in relation to the other. Then the Cavendish extrapolation on gravitational theory produced negative transformations. Wide holes were opened in the Newtonian theory that two bodies
always
attract each other with a force proportional to the square of the distance between them.

It was that word
always
and the implication that
all
matter exerted gravitational attraction, Bickel thought.

“I do not understand what happened,” Flattery said, “but I have the distinct feeling we were close to the brink.”

“The brink of what?” Prudence demanded. Fear was plain in her voice.

“We were close to running wild out of the solar system,” Bickel said. “Out of control, unable to maneuver. Quite likely, we were close to being hurtled into another dimension.”

“Without a prayer of escape,” Timberlake said.

“The negative transformations in grav theory,” Prudence whispered.

“What?” Timberlake barked.

“The implicit energy exchange for enormous mass shifts near the speed of light,” Prudence answered him. “The negative forms in the equations don’t all cancel out until you build hypothetical transformations beyond the speed of light. There is a region of mass/speed change wherein two bodies theoretically repel each other rather than attract.”

“Now,” Bickel said, “how do we tell Hempstead and his boys about this without blowing the whole show?”

“We’ve already blown the whole show,” Timberlake growled. “The computer—”

“Isn’t necessarily wrecked,” Bickel said. “Our life systems still work. Ship servos and sensors appear to be in order. I get consistent replies to demands for information.”

“Consistent doesn’t mean correct,” Timberlake said.

“Was Hempstead telling us to cease and desist?” Flattery asked. “If he was …”

“We don’t know,” Bickel said. “As long as we don’t know, we don’t have to obey.”