Event Horizon (Hellgate) (134 page)

“You gotta do it some time,” Tor said coaxingly as Mark checked the main cabling a fourth time.

“I know.” He mocked himself with a chuckle.

“We’ve tested this.” Dario hopped up to sit on the workbench beside Tor. His hands were idle now. Nothing remained to be done, save to give Joss the word. “You could have done this four days ago,” he added, “on the
Wastrel
. You only shipped the chassis down here to delay.”

“I needed the equipment in the lab here,” Mark said vaguely. “Easier to bring the chassis down than to ship another lab.”

“Bull,” Tor said, but his tone was gentle. “You just can’t bear to take a surgical knife to your child. And Lai’a
is
your kid, Mark. Not mine or Dar’s. We all worked on it, and it’s picked up a lot of traits from Neil and Curtis and Mick, as well as us. But down deep, Lai’a is still you. It always will be.”

The observation was painfully astute. Marin was watching Mark’s face, and saw the pageant of emotion there as he admitted the truth. “All right,” he said at last. “You checked the backup?”

“Three times,” Dario swore, hand on his heart. “Anything goes wrong, we boot up the clean copy of Lai’a, load up everything we filched from the database of
our
Lai’a, and then swear on a stack of everybody’s holy books, it’s the same AI.”

“I won’t tell,” Tor promised. He balled up a handful of discarded beta-cloth, threw it at Marin. “Take the oath.”

“I won’t tell,” Curtis pledged dutifully. “Just do it, Mark.”

“Just do it,” Mark echoed. The gold eyes closed for a moment and were dark when they opened to slits. “Joss … run it.”

“Standby,” Joss’s sweet tenor said calmly.

The chassis was featureless, but the handies monitoring it flashed red as it powered up, green as the hardware verified, and then red again as the holographic virus raced through the matrix. Lai’a was merely idling, like a patient under sedation while a surgeon cut into brain tissue to excise a
tumor
. Twice, this procedure had been run in test with a prototype of Lai’a installed in the standby crystal. Both times it was successful, but the prototype was less complex than Lai’a. It did not have the wealth of memory Lai’a had accrued, nor the many veneers of rich
behavioral
characteristics Lai’a had learned through interaction with Resalq and humans. The prototype had so much less to lose.

One minute became two, and three. Marin watched Mark’s face as he paced between the Arago cradle and the open door, beyond which Travers was talking over old times with Fargo and Perlman, laughing over memories of events that would have been far from amusing at the time. In the house above, Shapiro and Rusch were in the kitchen, making and breaking plans. Their voices carried over a comm they had forgotten to close: would Harrison come to Velcastra with her? She was shipping out on the
Aenestra
from Saraine, with Vidal, Rabelais and Queneau, in just a few days. The downtime was long overdue. Shapiro was more than welcome. He was also immediately recognizable to the Elstrom paparazzi, and reluctant to break the cover he had only just engineered for himself on Borushek.

A fresh sweat broke across Mark’s face and he came to rest in the draft from the air vents. “Joss?”

“Standby,” Joss said unhelpfully.

“Is it taking too long?” Marin knew little about the process.

“It’s a lot longer than in the tests on the prototype,” Dario admitted.

“But then,” Tor said pointedly, “there’s a whole lot more to Lai’a than the prototype. I was
trying
to estimate the amount of storage and processor power it’s using for personality development. Looks like double to triple any of the values it uses for straight-up memory storage.”

“The sophisticated AIs come expensive,” Mark said quietly.

He was pacing like an expectant father, but Marin was not about to say it, not to a ‘man’ who had birthed three children from his own body. He was about to suggest bel grass smoke, or a shot of bourbon, perhaps both, but before he could speak Joss said,

“Procedure complete. Reboot in process.”

The lights flicked over to green in the handies monitoring the event, and a clock was counting down. Marin held his breath, waiting, hoping as much for Mark’s sake as for the AI’s. He looked at Dario and Tor – Dario’s mouth was compressed while Tor’s teeth worried at his lip. Even now no one could be sure, with a generation of artificial intelligence far more sophisticated than any the Resalq had worked with before.

The clock counted to zero; the handies remained green. Mark was a statue, waiting. He cleared his throat. “Lai’a. I made you the promise I’d be here when you woke.”

Its voice was slightly different, since it issued from the lab speakers rather than those on the driftship. “Doctor Sherratt ... good afternoon. I assume the procedure was successful.”

“If you’re awake, and aware,” Mark said hoarsely, “it was. Please run complete diagnostics. Joss will run the same tests. I want you to compare notes and report any inconsistency.”

“This would be advisable,” Lai’a agreed. “Diagnostics commenced. Thank you for making available contiguous data. I have been offline for four weeks, and much has happened.”

“Much,” Mark agreed. “You will be aware of the discrepancy between the mission clocks and those of the Deep Sky.”

“I am.” Lai’a paused. “It appears we were in transspace for five months. I will attempt to fathom where and how the temporal incongruity occurred; however, be aware that this information may not be inferable from existing data. It is highly probable I must conduct further experiments in transspace.” It paused again. “I have run the files pertaining to the
Elarne
Zhivun
. A second driftship.” It sounded delighted. “May I assist?”

Mark sagged against the workbench, exhausted by relief. “That would be excellent, Lai’a. You’ll be working in association with Colonel Vidal. You have the pertinent materials?”

“I have. I am eager to return to Alshie’nya, where the engine deck will be jettisoned from the salvaged miner very soon. Engineer Ingersol is overseeing the construction of the new transspace drive engine.”

“Yes, he is. And you’ll be transferring to the
Wastrel
today, tomorrow at latest,” Mark assured it. “The ship is returning to Alshie’nya directly … though I’ll be remaining on Saraine for a couple of weeks, and I believe it could be as long as six weeks before Colonel Vidal will join you at Alshie’nya. You’re perfectly qualified to work without me, Lai’a, and you have plenty to occupy you. You have your assignment?”

The AI was in possession of every nugget of data. “I will cruise both sides of the frontier, seeding comm drones as far into Freespace as I consider necessary. I estimate a minimum of five weeks will be required to perform the work. Is this sufficient time for a Resalq science team to gather for the journey to Zunshu 161-D?”

“It should be,” Mark mused. “If it takes longer, you may continue to work with Colonel Vidal on the
Zhivun
, oversee the installation of the transspace drive. I’ll join you at Alshie’nya soon enough.” He paused, glancing at Marin, Dario and Tor. “Business is going to keep me here for a while. Dendra Shemiji.”

“I understand,” Lai’a assured him. “Diagnostics are complete, and results returned by Joss agree with my own. The process was successful. I have synched with Etienne and am undertaking deep scan observations of the
Ouroboros
quasar at this time.”

“You have Captain Vaurien’s authorization to use the deep scan?” Mark was amused.

“Captain Vaurien is unavailable. Doctor Jazinsky made the facilities available one minute ago. She conveys her felicitations and relays a message from the
Harlequin
. Would you care to hear it?”

“No,” Mark decided. “Just give me the gist.”

“Captain Rodman and Major Hubler have reloaded their vessel and are leaving the Drift, bound for Velcastra and Jagreth to lay comm drones on the approach roads from Hellgate.” It paused. “I am most eager to return to Alshie’nya, Doctor Sherratt, and assist with the work.”

“All right.” Mark popped the cap off a water bottle and drank. “Get me Doctor Jazinsky. I’ll be in the study.”

A sense of profound relief had settled over Marin, surprising him. He had not realized how precious the original Lai’a was. He would have accepted a copy, but he was listening to the same intelligence that broke trail around the Red Gate and Zunshu space, and Mark was right. The Resalq would have said, ‘If it makes no difference, what’s the difference?’ But intuitively he knew this was
the
Lai’a, and though it should not have, the knowledge
did
make a difference.

Travers stood to make space on the stairs as they went up, and looked at Marin, waiting. Curtis gave him a nod and walked up with him, while Dario and Tor remained behind to close down the equipment. Travers had caught a little of the conversation from the lab and asked,

“Are we leaving – Alshie’nya?”

“The
Wastrel
’s leaving,” Marin mused, “but there’s no reason you and I should go back so soon.”

He stopped in the living room while Mark went on into the study. The blinds were open on the wide front windows, and the view was superb, with a sky in every shade of mauve and green, so typical of Saraine. A light rain had fallen in the morning; the plane where the Eternal City was slowly being excavated was lush and green with the spring season.

“You want to stay for a while?” Marin asked. “I can’t even remember the last time we took downtime for long enough to relax. Saraine has some beauty spots, and I lived here long enough to know them.”

“We could head back to Alshie’nya with Mark,” Travers agreed. He wore a perplexed expression. “You
feel
this?”

“You mean, we’re not running, getting shot at, trying to figure out how to survive one more day?” Marin took a breath, held it, breathed it out as a long sigh. “It’ll take a while to get used to this, but I could get to like it.” He paused to listen as Mark and Jazinsky shared schedules.

The
Wastrel
was outbound tomorrow; Lai’a – the AI chassis – would be transferred this evening. Vaurien and Jazinsky were talking about looking up old friends in Sanmarco – a week, ten days, and gone again before Terran agents could identify them and get close enough to cause trouble. Again, Shapiro declined the offer to accompany them. By now he was listed among the honored dead of the Colonial War, and he wanted to keep it that way.

He was safe enough on Saraine for a short time, and Marin guessed he would choose to stay where he was. At that moment, Shapiro had taken a handy and retired to the courtyard at the rear of the house, which caught the afternoon sun. The Confederacy maintained no orbital surveillance over Saraine, and since the only humans on the planet were the archaeological crew, agents were difficult to hide. If one place existed where Harrison Shapiro could sit in the sun without a platoon of bodyguards around him, this was it.

“The
Aenestra
will be here tomorrow, perhaps the day after,” Mark was saying. “She’s bringing data from a nasty star system, four days closer to
Carahne
– we’ll be mining rare fuel elements there next year. I need to transfer the same data to Velcastra, get the lode legally registered before some other survey ship stumbles on it, and suddenly we’re brawling like Freespacers. No offence intended, Barb.”

“None taken,” she said easily. “It works out well. I was talking to Lex and Mick this morning. It’s the first opportunity she’s had to spend some time with the husband in years, and it turns out her son’s back home right now. He’s been playing with an orchestra in Westminster, but he just took a teaching job in Elstrom. Lex is talking about riding back to the old homestead with the
Aenestra
, if you’ve got the space.”

“It’s been organized,” Mark agreed. “She’s a science ship, there’s not much luxury, but after fifteen years on Fleet ships, Lex won’t mind! The
Aenestra
can handle a few extra. Ernst and Jo are going over with her. And Mick,” he added, “needs to spend some time with his father. While he can.”