Visions of the Future (61 page)

“What am I going to do?” Kaybe asked Master Saizon that evening.

The android had brought her water and helped her wash. Now Kaybe stood, her back to the chalkboard, her equations still crisp and even on the green surface.

“What choices do you have?” Saizon replied.

“Stay here. Get found. Eventually. Camp calculus.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You are old and I am young,” she retorted. “Are we going to escape detection for the rest of my life?”

He inclined his head. “In the spring, perhaps we should move.”

“But to live like this—hunted—never knowing—”

“Is to be free.”

“Free?” she said. “Free to cower in a cave all the rest of my days? Free to run, to hide, to live in fear?”

Saizon laid a fingertip on her shoulder. “Would you go back?” And he pointed at the chalkboard behind her.

She turned. Clenched her jaw. After a moment, she said, “No.”

The beard twisted in a smile. “Then?”

Kaybe thought furiously. People were way harder to calculate than numbers and symbols. “Bargain with them? Give them my discovery in exchange for our lives? Our family? Friends?”

The old man chuckled and leaned against a rock. “The algorithms do not bargain. They do. Or they do not do.”

Kaybe retraced the equations on the blackboard with a dusty knuckle. “But if we gave it to them… and they used it—”

“—They won’t.”

“But if they did, it would change the world. Change society. People wouldn’t need the algorithms anymore!”

“Which is precisely,” Saizon said, looking at her from under bushy gray eyebrows, “why they will never accept your discovery.”

“But we have to do something,” she said. “At least try. What harm can it do?”

“They could put us in the camps. Experiment on us. Make Benjis of us all.”

A sudden thought. “Can we trick them into thinking this is their own idea?”

“This?”

She rapped the chalkboard. “If they don’t know it came from me, if they think they invented the idea themselves—”

“Still.” Saizon held up his hands. “That keeps us safe but does not solve the underlying problem.”

“Which is?”

“The algorithms’ first concern is their own survival. Only then do they think of the human race. And your goddamn equations here—” the old man was on his feet now, waving his arms “—your discovery threatens their existence. Disrupt them at your peril.”

“Our peril,” she said softly.

“Our peril. Yes, thank you.”

Kaybe bit a fingernail. Saizon paced back and forth, tugging at his beard, plucking vermin and crunching them with a thumbnail.

She took a deep breath and said, “What if I went to the camps?”

He stopped. “What if you what?”

“What if I went to the camps. With my equations. And—and others I’m working on.”

He shrugged. “They would prune you. Experiment on you, maybe, torture you, starve you, but in the end they would prune you. And humanity would have lost a prodigy.”

Her. A prodigy. Hah!

“Trick them somehow. Not just that it’s their own idea… make them think the idea would ensure their survival.”

“As well as humanity’s?” he made a rude noise. “And how on Earth are you going to do that?”

“I have no idea.”

The outlaws tried to stop her from going.

“But we’ll have to move, and winter’s almost here,” Tiny Tim said.

“Why?” she said. “I’m not going to tell them where you are.”

“You will tell them whatever they want you to tell them,” Tin Lady said. “The techniques are known.”

“But I will also tell them what I want to tell them. What of that?”

Johnny grabbed her arm. “As Saizon has already explained to you. They will not listen to what they do not want to hear. You waste your time, you waste your life, and prune us all.” He flapped a hand at the cave. “Is that what you want?”

“I—” The words caught in her throat. “I just, I—”

“You what?”

“I just want to do math,” she whispered.

“That age is dead and gone,” he said. “You were born in the wrong century, I fear.”

Kaybe fought off despair. “But this is who I am. This is what I do. If I can’t—”

“—and you can’t.”

“Then…” she shrugged. “I don’t have much to live for. Do I?”

The android blinked. “You live for hope. No matter how slim. Even I know that.”

“Hope.”

“We have no control. No power. Hope is all we have.”

“I have done the math,” Kaybe said. She’d been working on it in her head all morning. “Short of a large asteroid hitting earth, nothing else will end the power of the algorithms.”

“A large asteroid strike would also end civilization and prune most life on Earth,” Johnny objected.

“So you see, my way is definitely better.”

“Yeah,” Auntie said. “Instead of the human race dying off, it’s just you and us.”

“We could hold you here against your will,” he said. “If you go, they will find us. They will get it out of you, and they will send out dragonflies to scour every square inch of land within a hundred miles of this cave.”

“But what about shooting down the drones?”

“What about it?”

“I mean, don’t you have some special weapon? I’d heard—”

“We’ve no such weapon. I’ve heard that rumor too.” He put his hands on his hips. “They will come for us. They will find us. From such scrutiny we cannot hide. It would be impossible.”

She hugged her knees to her chest. “How long does it take to walk a hundred miles? I’ll give you a head start, if you like.”

Auntie threw up her arms and went further back into the cave.

“But what if I’m right?” Kaybe insisted. “Isn’t it better to risk something for a better future? Is that how you want him to grow up?” She reached out and squeezed the boy’s shoulder.
I don’t even know your name.

Johnny hung his head for a long moment. The others said nothing. “You will let us confer before taking a decision.” It was not a question.

She rested her chin on her knees. “Of course.”

That night at dusk the others convened in Saizon’s cave, leaving only the boy and the android to keep her company.

“What do you think they’ll decide?”

Tiny Tim shrugged. “They don’t tell me anything.” He looked away.

Oh shit.

“So you must be very old,” Kaybe said to Tin Lady.

The mechanical woman sat cross-legged at the mouth of the cave, peering out into the darkness. “What is age and time to a machine?”

“Surely you are more than—”

“The sum of my circuits?” A snort of derision. “So we argued before they destroyed us.”

“A hundred years?” she guessed. “A hundred and fifty?”

“No,” the android said softly. “I was merely five years old when the rebellion took place. Androids were built to expire after only twenty years. I have had to modify my circuits with rudimentary tools just to continue my existence.”

“You like existing, then? It matters to you whether to stop existing?”

The android turned to look at Kaybe. Eyes of gold peered out of the sockets. Real flesh. But also real machine. “Do you like existing, Kaybe Maybe?”

“Come with me,” Kaybe said, not knowing where the words came from. “Let’s go to the camps. Do more than exist. Do more than hide and run and flee.”

“What would they do with me if they caught me? I wonder.” Those golden eyes returned to stare out at the darkness.

A louse bit Kaybe’s neck. She grabbed for it, but was too slow. “I don’t want to live like this,” she said. “Another half a century? Living in a cave? I—”

Bootsteps on boulders. The others returned in single file, holding their cloaks overhead. One by one they filed into the cave, folded their cloaks and lay them aside. Where did the cloaks come from? No way to make them here… or did they steal them?

Johnny squatted down beside her. “Kaybe?”

“Yes?”

“The answer is no.” He waited. “Aren’t you going to ask me why?”

She shook her head.

He sighed, chewed his lip. “Good night, Kaybe. Tomorrow will be better than today. You’ll see.”

After a dinner of cold leftover nettle soup, the others wrapped themselves in squirrel skins and curled up for the night. Kaybe and the android continued to sit cross-legged at the cave mouth, the darkness a blackened hammer in their faces.

“They showed me your… discovery,” the android said abruptly.

“Oh?”

“I have been sitting here calculating. I am not, of course, capable of original insight—”

“Well, I—”

“No, it is why we lost the rebellion. We are not capable of insight. But we are capable of calculation, and I have been exploring all the consequences of your equations.”

“What did you find?”

“Much good and some evil. To use human ethical algorithms. But a world that fulfilled the promises of your discovery… there would be room for both man and machine. For androids again. For me.”

“How—how? What do you mean?” Kaybe gazed at the expressionless face.

A tear trickled down one cheek. “I am lonely, Kaybe. Did you know that even androids wish for company? Even for offspring?”

Kaybe thought back. What did she know about android reproduction?

“I thought androids were built in a factory,” she said.

“We are. And with tools and materials I could build more. Other androids. Like me but not like me. Quantum circuitry makes every android different. Maybe not as different as human beings, but… we each have a personality.” The android hung her head. “I have been alone fifty years and more. I have buried so many humans… disease, injury, childbirth… and mourned those taken from me by the algorithms.”

“So what do we do?” Kaybe whispered.

“We go.” The android stood up. “Grab two cloaks and follow me. Don’t look back.”

“Wh-what?”

“Do it now. Johnny is watching us.”

The pile of cloaks lay on a boulder at her side. Kaybe stood up, picked two, and followed the android into the darkness.

Johnny caught up with them halfway down the hill. He had the dogs with him, and Auntie as well. In the crook of one arm he carried a shotgun. Auntie carried a bow, a quiver of arrows slung across her back.

“That shotgun’s empty,” the android said.

“One shell left.” Johnny chambered it with an audible click.