“PROTEUS,” ACHILLES SUMMONED.
“Speaking,” an overhead speaker replied.
Only the merest fragment of the AI would be here in his office. The rest was spread among computing nodes on five worlds and in space all around the Fleet. Most of Proteus existed beyond the Fleet’s singularity, linked — and in command of its far-flung sensor and weapons arrays — by instantaneous hyperwave.
Perhaps, Achilles thought, his finest creation.
If only Proteus had destroyed Long Shot when Nessus had brought it here. Of course there had been no Proteus then. It had required Nessus’ madness — revealing the Fleet to his Ringworld expedition! — to convince Ol’t’ro of the need to create something like Proteus. As it had been Nessus who had —
Enough.
He could bask another time in his enduring, white-hot rage against Nessus. The Concordance’s lurkers reported increasing restiveness among the alien fleets near the Ringworld star. That news carried with it an auspicious moment, a fleeting opportunity that he would seize.
He had only to plant the seed …
“Proteus,” Achilles sang, “I have a question for you. Suppose that more alien ships approach the Fleet. If need be, can you defend against them?”
“How many ships?”
“At the least, a few hundred. Perhaps thousands.”
“To defend against so many, it would be wise to expand my capacity.”
Knowing the answer to this question, too, Achilles chose his next chords with special care. Ol’t’ro would hear them through Proteus, if from no other source. “Do your algorithms scale to handle such numbers of targets?”
“Not as responsively as I would like, even with additional hardware.”
“That is unfortunate,” Achilles sang back. His work was done; the seed planted. “We can hope that more ships never come.”
Proteus must seek out Horatius, and Horatius must contact Achilles. Who better to extend the AI’s capabilities than he who had raised Proteus from more primitive software?
When Horatius did call, Achilles would demur, citing the burden of his existing duties. Horatius must go to Ol’t’ro, lest alien hordes departing the Ringworld should charge at the Fleet, and then Ol’t’ro would “ask” for Achilles’ aid.
Again he would demur — a proper, fearful Citizen — loath to extend any AI, especially an armed one. Rich with trills and undertunes and grace notes, the melody he would offer ran softly in his mind’s ear. To further develop Proteus risked evoking a runaway intelligence cascade, creating a super-sapience, inducing a singularity event …
Ol’t’ro was expert at coercing acquiescence, but how does one coerce creativity? They would want Achilles’ hearts and mind committed, without reservation or distraction, to the task of enhancing Proteus. And when they realized that …
To depose Horatius and restore me will be a small price.
Ol’t’ro were beyond genius and could modify Proteus themselves. But they wouldn’t: the task was too mundane to hold their interest. They would rather obsess on the enduring mystery of the Type II hyperdrive. They would rather keep working on a gravity-pulse projector to precipitate ships from hyperspace — and to find a way, if they ever had such a projector — to peer into hyperspace to aim it. Ol’t’ro had an unending set of ambitious projects, and the entire Ministry of Science to do their bidding.
And within that Ministry, every scientist and engineer would be terrified to touch the internals of an AI.
Rather than set aside their toys, Ol’t’ro would want Achilles to upgrade Proteus. A commitment to replace Horatius should be no obstacle.
Success was not in question. Achilles had had programming extensions in mind for years, waiting for the opportunity to have access. Not from curiosity, for that was a foolish human trait. Not from the panicked reactivity that motivated most Citizen invention. From preparedness. He who would lead from behind must prepare to lead from behind.
“Do you have further questions, or are we finished?” Proteus asked.
We have only begun, Achilles thought. But he sang, simply, “Finished.”
15
Louis roamed the narrow, serpentine corridors of Long Shot looking for distraction because Hindmost refused to be rushed. Louis looked for weapons, too, not that, if it came to combat, one ship could prevail against whole fleets. Long Shot’s advantage was its speed.
“Hindmost’s Voice,” Louis called. “Review your orders.”
“If any ship emerges from hyperspace nearer to us than a light-hour, initiate an immediate ten-light-day maneuver outward from the star through hyperspace. Repeat as needed until I detect no ship within a light-hour.”
“Very good.” Louis turned another corner, plunging deeper into the ship. Kzinti had held this ship for … he did not know how long. If only for a day, there would be some weapons aboard. Tunesmith would have added weapons, too.
Louis doubted he would recognize a protector’s weapon design.
He squirmed through a narrow passageway into yet another equipment room. Except for some stepping discs and float plates Tunesmith must have stowed in the corner, photonics racks filled the space. To judge from the power converters and backup fuel cells, whatever this gear did drew a lot of power. Fat fiber-optic bundles ran between racks and out the hatch into the passageway he had just left. The ship was filled with rooms like this.
Much of it decoy equipment, he had come to realize. His first time aboard, long ago, not even the maze of access tunnels had existed. Louis imagined ARM engineers, and after them Kzinti, ferreting out sham apparatuses one laboriously traced photonic circuit at a time.
As mired in molasses as his thoughts seemed, a few insights remained from his brief time as a protector. Never the reasoning, but sometimes the conclusions.
He found an intercom control. “Hindmost?” No answer. “Hindmost!”
“What?” the answer finally came.
“The lifeboat Tunesmith had in his workspace. The lifeboat we stowed aboard this ship just before leaving the Ringworld. It was on Long Shot in the first place, wasn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
What did he mean? Tanj this dim-witted breeder brain!
Something glimpsed on the Ringworld, Louis thought. Something seen in the war room Tunesmith had improvised within the Ringworld Meteor Defense Room.
Or was it something not seen? Louis remembered the war-room display tagging a few ships with an icon to denote an indestructible General Products hull. This ship. Three ships that hung far back, remote from the Fringe War action. They, like Long Shot, had number four hulls. Puppeteer craft, he had thought then. Had he seen any smaller ships in a GP hull?
Louis said, “The lifeboat is built in a General Products #2 hull. The simplest explanation for such a lifeboat is that it was aboard the whole time.”
“Tunesmith may have captured it,” Hindmost said.
“While the Fringe War raged, while warships blasted holes in the Ringworld with antimatter, Tunesmith was clearing space aboard Long Shot to accommodate a ship a hundred meters long. I don’t think so.”
“Perhaps Patriarchy engineers installed the lifeboat.”
“Long Shot is all but defenseless. If Kzinti had had the option, instead of a lifeboat we’d have found a hangar jammed with fighter ships or something just as lethal.”