Pathfinder (32 page)

Contractor Director bowed its head. “The seed contains very dangerous knowledge. We didn’t know how dangerous it could be and we didn’t predict its devastation.”

“Your gift caused the destruction of the Builders.” She wasn’t surprised that the precious “knowledge” the Minoans sought was related to weapons. “What’d they do? Blow themselves up?”

“That might have been a far easier death than seeing each generation devolve, trying desperate experiments to reverse the changes in their reproductive code, until their basic cognition and sentience evaporated. When we determined the cause of their devolution, we decided an evolved intelligence could never be
given
this again. Perhaps, if the Builders had developed the knowledge on their own, they wouldn’t have misused it.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” She threw out the caustic comment while her mind went into overdrive. She’d assumed Gaian-based life-forms
always
evolved toward higher organization, specialization, and intelligence. The Builders had obviously messed with their natural reproductive process and encoding. That sounded a lot like the function DNA played for humans, although human genetic technology was obviously way behind the Minoan understanding of—Her breath caught.

“You’re talking about technology to make weapons like those
you
used at Enclave El Tozeur, on New Sousse. The ones that affected Abram’s people.” Her lips and face felt numb.

There were people who would
kill
to get their hands on that “seed” from the Minoans. Several examples came to mind: angry isolationists who had suffered from the Minoan genetic weapons and other Terrans under Overlord Six, such as SP Duval. Then, there were the Terrans under Overlord Three, including SP Parmet and Dr. Istaga, aka Andre Covanni, who might want weapons technology that would be superior to the Autonomists. Of course, there were plenty of power-hungry Autonomists—the Terrans didn’t control the market on people with Alexander complexes. No wonder the Minoans wanted to keep a lid on this.

“Yes, the Builders developed that kind of weapon and used it against one another.” The Minoan emissary ignored her mention of New Sousse. “If it had been possible for their culture to overlap with yours, they would have used their weapons on humans.”

“I understand your guilt, believe me, but if you just wanted to make sure
we
never get our hands on it—why help us explore the Builders’ system?”

Contractor Director was silent.

Rubbing her temples with her fingers, she knew she was missing something. The Minoan standing in front of her was either testing her, or waiting for her to have an epiphany. She pressed further. “All you had to do was leave well enough alone, and it’d be decades before we got their buoy to work.”

Or would it? Suddenly, she saw Frank’s face as he said,
I’m sure the ones from New Sousse had encountered the Builders’ technology before
. At the time, she’d passed over his comment in favor of the tangible connection of following the money. Then she’d been hit with a clue club and ignored it: David Ray asked Contractor Director,
You encountered the Builders elsewhere?
And Contractor Director said,
Certainly
.

Instead of calling herself stupid and running headlong into a bulkhead, she took a deep breath and said, “We need to get to the Builders’ system before someone in the Soussen System gets there?
That’s
why you say we can’t afford to wait.”

She watched the slow nod of Contractor Director’s horns with horror. “But you’ve helped them, don’t you understand? Everything we’ve translated or uncovered here in G-145 has been sent back to Overlord Six’s territory. I need to tell—”

“You swore not to pass on this information, using the name of your deity and your oath as an AFCAW officer.”

“Yes, but . . .” She hadn’t expected to stumble over vital intelligence about a Terran Overlord. This raised serious questions regarding Six’s support of Abram; was he hoping that Abram would get rid of a pesky competing Builders’ buoy with the stolen TD weapon? If a couple of thousand people died in the process, it apparently didn’t matter. But, since Abram’s plan was thwarted, what was Overlord Six’s backup plan? Was Six, and his SP Duval, behind the “competitor” the Minoans feared?

“We decided we could wait no longer. We observed you, and selected you because of your many titles, Ariane-as-Kedros.” Now the emissary was putting the pressure on, as much as it could with its soulless voice, even using her name—which didn’t happen very often. “You know the duties required of a
Destroyer
, who must ensure restitution, reparation, and, when necessary, take action to restore order.”

You cold, inhuman, manipulative bastard
. . . and she meant that in the worst way possible. Her hands clenched and she bit back her first response. After a deep breath through her nose, she said, “Are you Minoans admitting to being ‘Destroyers of Worlds’ also? If you understand restitution and reparation, what about
redemption
?”

She didn’t expect an answer, and she didn’t get one. After several long moments of silence, her timer went off. Glancing at her sleeve, she saw she had ten minutes before she had to give testimony.

“Will you assist us, as Explorer of Solar Systems?”

Her mind flailed about and stumbled upon a bargain. “Basically, it’s your
property
that must be kept secret. Once it’s returned, do you care how many missions we launch to the Builders’ solar system? Do you care who knows the locations of the other Builders’ buoys?”

Contractor Director replied, “If you successfully return the seed, the answer is no.”

“Once I return it,” she didn’t dare say
if
, “I want the location of the other buoy and the permission to release that information to whomever I wish.”

She watched two minutes tick away on her sleeve while Contractor Director considered. Finally, it lowered its horns. “Agreed. However, we cannot have a record of this agreement.”

Looking about at the unfinished, unwired, and un-noded station, she shrugged. “Verbal agreement’s fine.
No
handshake necessary,” she added, leaving a possibly bemused Minoan standing alone in the corridor.

 

“Is Ariane coming today?” David Ray’s face peered at him from a view port.

“No, she’s testifying to the ICT—and I don’t envy her that.” Matt was having his Hellas Kaffi on the control deck of
Aether’s Touch
. “I hear Duval’s getting pissy because there’s no
direct
proof there was a stolen Terran TD weapon, now that Dr. Rouxe is dead. He’s avoiding the inconvenient fact that a temporal- distortion wave can’t spontaneously appear, not as a natural physical phenomenon.”

“He’s playing up the uncertain
source
of the weapon and who controlled it. I’m even beginning to wonder if the prosecution will get their convictions. Lee sends her regards, by the way.”

“She’s back to her old self, I hope,” Matt said.

“Maybe.” David Ray shrugged and Matt knew enough to drop the subject. “When do we leave?”

“I’ve got permission to disconnect in two hours—we’ll be gone about four hours. The station hasn’t moved that far away from the buoy.”

“Good.” David Ray rubbed his head. With such a short haircut, it was easy to see his scalp wrinkle up on his head. “You’ve talked to your AI so it’ll stay quiet while Lowry’s around?”

“Don’t worry.” Matt signed off.

Just to be sure, he had another talk with Muse 3. Even though Matt had started the licensing paperwork, he was worried about exposing the AI to a Terran scientist, and this wasn’t just military paranoia rubbing off from Ari. Everyone was beginning to get their first glimpses of Terran standards of living—and they didn’t live up to their political hype.

The Terrans had no equivalent to ComNet and the Autonomist Worlds’ huge crystal vaults of data. They certainly never developed AIs to sift through data and do objective indexing. The Terrans were enamored with the Heraclitus and Democritus models that indexed the minutiae collected every minute of every day—although Matt wouldn’t give it such a pretty name. The darker side of Terran interest was their requests for “copies” and their failure to grasp that each AI model number actually had
rights
and couldn’t be copied or dissected, by Consortium law. Matt didn’t want to deal with requests or demands to access his AI, from Lowry or the Terran State Prince who currently administered this station.

“I understand I cannot let the Terran scientist suspect my existence, but can I remain operational while she is aboard?” Muse 3 asked.

“Certainly, since your interpretation routines might help us speak to the bot on the buoy.”

“I do not think the bot will understand your speech,” Muse 3 said cautiously.

“I mean I’d like to try to interpret its signal—remember I asked you to analyze its command set?”

“Yes, Matt. I have developed some routines for you, accessible on the console. Please look at the far left comm panel.”

He looked over the smooth console of displayable material, configured with touch squares. To the upper left of the console was the comm panel, using orange squares, which was how he and Ari configured the commands on the
Aether’s Touch
. There were three new squares, titled BOT COMMANDS, BOT RESPONSE VARIANT, and BOT RESPONSE ACTUAL.

He tapped BOT COMMANDS and a view port opened, displaying a menu. As he read it, he nearly choked on his Kaffi. “There’s more commands here than in the bot’s operational manual. How were you able to put these together?”

“The standard commands are marked, but they’re too limited. The bot’s situation has changed and it may now interpret an aggregate command. I sliced up the standard commands and ran a random aggregation routine to see if anything useful appeared.” The AI sounded smug and, just like a pet, it hoped for feedback.

“This is great, Muse. We can query ‘friend or foe,’ and ask for general cooperation, assuming the bot considers itself the interface for the buoy.” Matt got excited, scrolling through the lexicon. He opened view ports for the other two functions Muse 3 had provided, discovering a routine for attempting response interpretation directly, and one for breaking a response apart into original primitives.

“I suspect the bot has become responsible for providing an interface. Your original video makes its intent fairly clear.” Muse 3 used a satisfied tone.

Matt remembered Muse’s interest, or
obsession
, with the video he took with his EVA suit on that day. He’d nearly lost his life, because the bot was slicing his suit apart while he pigheadedly told Ari he didn’t need rescue. But he did, and he didn’t realize his dire circumstances until the bot had cut his communications with Ari and the ship. Lucky for him, Ari didn’t always obey orders and she was on top of the situation.

“How did you get this done so fast?” Matt asked, then wished he could take it back.

“I have had no other duties for six days,” Muse 3 said reproachfully.

“Sorry, Muse. Life can be boring sometimes, when you have synapses that run near the speed of light.” According to Ari, however, human synapses were necessary for piloting N-space and human heads contained quantum devices, blah, blah, blah. Matt didn’t want to discuss any of these subjects with Muse 3. “Now stay quiet while I go through this undocking checklist.”

Everything was prepared and requisitioned by the time David Ray and Dr. Lowry stepped through the passenger airlock.
Aether’s Touch
could support a two-person crew for a real-space voyage of sixty days. Matt didn’t consider it risky to take three people on a little jaunt within an hour of rescue from Beta Priamos Station and the Laomedon mining operations.

Lowry had effusive praise for the bot command testing routines; her face became animated and cheerful, making her seem positively friendly.

“How did you have the time to do something like this?” She scrolled through the interactive tests, almost chirping when she saw an interesting command.

“Oh, I ran a random aggregation routine to see if anything useful appeared,” Matt said modestly.

David Ray, standing on the other side of Lowry and a little behind her, rolled his eyes. Matt hoped Nestor hadn’t programmed Muse 3 with pride of ownership. Was it possible to offend an AI by taking credit for its work?

Matt didn’t wait to find out. “Everybody get webbed into their seat.” He shooed David Ray toward the jump seat, and pointed Lowry at the other control deck chair. David Ray gave him an annoyed look, but started webbing into the seat.

After doing his system checks and ensuring his S-DATS display was working, Matt got clamp disconnection verification and departure approval from Command Post. He boosted away from the station efficiently. Even though Ari had more real-space hours and gave him gas about his piloting experience, he was a safe real-space pilot.

They spent at least an hour on transit, including boost and braking time. During that time, David Ray and Lowry chatted about the Minoans and their substance, background, and technology. The Minoans were one of David Ray’s favorite subjects and one he’d studied extensively. Matt had heard plenty of David Ray’s opinions and theories, so he stayed quiet. He also noticed David Ray was trying to draw Lowry out of her prickly shell and elicit her opinions.

“The Minoans build and sell us N-space buoys—but did they do the same with the Builders?” David Ray gestured at the pictures Lowry displayed above the console. “That buoy looks like it might have been manufactured by the Builders.”

“The shape is similar to ours—the ones we pay the Minoans to build, that is. The physical differences may be superficial. It’s the functional difference, the fact it only goes to one place, that intrigues me.” Lowry zoomed in and displayed the baffling text that translated to “Biological Temple.”

“You think the Builders designed their own time buoys?”