I detected reticence. Alice did not want to get to the point.
“Tell us, Alice ,” Bithras encouraged.
“I still feel deeply embarrassed by what Jill discovered in me. I am able to fulfill my duties, I am sure, but there may be reason to no longer trust my ultimate performance — ”
Bithras shook his head impatiently. “Jill found evolvons,” he said.
“In Alice ?” Allen asked, lowering his slate.
I sucked in my breath. “What kind?” I asked.
Alice ’s image froze, flickered, and went out. Her voice remained. “I am changing modes of display to better conform with my internal state,” she said. “I will not maintain a cosmetic front. Evolvons exist in my personality configuration. They appear to be original, not implanted after my incept date.”
An evolvon could be nearly any thing or system designed to exist in time, consume energy or memory, and reproduce itself. All living things were evolvons in a sense. Within computers and thinkers, the word usually referred to algorithms or routines not known to be part of the status design or acquired neural configuration — sophisticated viruses.
“Do you know their purpose?” I asked.
“Jill discovered them only by comparing my full configuration with my neural bauplan, my self-known design, and running a trace of her own devising. There are parts of me that are not known to me, and which I have no control over; these parts are not functional in my personality configuration. They have no known utility, but all of them contain reproductive algorithms. They are well-hidden. No traces on Mars revealed their presence.”
“Evolvons,” Allen said, his face pale. “That’s against the law.”
“I have difficulty describing my sensation at making this discovery,” Alice said. I wanted to hold her, but of course she had nothing to hold. Her voice remained level — I had never heard a thinker express negative emotions in speech. But her tone became a shade harsher as she said, “I feel violated.”
“Is it possible the evolvons have been planted since we left Mars or arrived on Earth?” Bithras asked.
“Very unlikely. I have not been accessed by specialists for repair, which would be the only way they could be planted after my incept date.”
Bithras folded his hands on his knee. “If you have these… evolvons, then Alice One has them as well.”
“Most likely,” Alice said.
“They were copied from her to you. And they escaped our most expert traces. That means they were planted by the manufacturer, right here on Earth.” “ The implications were jolting.
“I apologize for my inability to be trustworthy,” Alice said.
“No need to apologize,” Bithras said. “We’ll remove the evolvons — ”
“Jill does not believe that can be done without great care to avoid damaging my personality. They are imbedded in key routines.”
“Do you know what will activate them?” I asked.
“No,” Alice said.
“Can you guess?” I pursued.
“Specific triggering codes delivered by any of my inputs,” Alice said.
“They are sabotage,” Bithras observed, “waiting to happen.”
“Who’s responsible?” I asked.
“Earth,” he said, lips curling. “Sane, wonderful Earth.”
Bithras sent an emergency message to Mars, contents unknown to us, and returned to his bed, exhausted, soon after. Allen and I stayed up, ordered a bottle of wine, and sat drinking, talking with Alice .
“The most important thing,” I said, finishing the first glass, “is whether Alice wants to continue working with us.”
“Bithras and I have discussed this,” Alice said.
Allen and I felt tired and sad and discouraged, as if suffering through an illness in the family. What was dying rapidly was any joy we might have had, coming to Earth; any feeling of value as representatives of Mars, any sense of self-worth whatsoever. We were isolated, our friend was compromised in such a way that we could no longer have faith in her…
“What did Bithras say?” I asked softly.
“He believes I should carry on with my duties. I will of course be glad to continue.”
“Can you tell… ?” Allen asked, not finishing.
“I will not know when or if an evolvon is activated. This I have told Bithras.”
“Everything we set out to do is being scuttled,” Allen said, twirling his glass in his hand. “We can’t trust anybody or anything here.”
“They’re frightened,” I blurted. I had not mentioned my conversation with President Muir; I had not wanted to leave any impression that I was trying to conduct diplomatic inquiries on my own. And the conversation itself had not made much sense to me, had no context, until now. “They’re afraid of what we can do.”
“What can they possibly be afraid of?” Allen asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t figure it out.” I described my visit to the Omphalos. When I finished, Allen whistled and poured himself another glass.
“ Alice ,” he said, “does any of this make sense to you?”
“If I model the situation correctly, we are in the middle of changing political strategies,” she said. “Earth obviously prepared decades ago for unexpected situations by placing evolvons in thinkers shipped to Mars.”
“Perhaps all thinkers,” I said. “Maybe that’s why Jill analyzed you… She suspects something, and she doesn’t approve.”
Abruptly, the image of Alice Liddell appeared, sitting beside Allen on the couch. He jumped. “Sorry,” she said. “I did not mean to startle you.”
“What could possibly have changed their strategy?” I asked.
“Bithras received a communication from Cailetet, a copy of a text message from Stanford University sent to the Olympian research group on Mars,” Alice said. “He discussed it with Casseia.” Alice projected the message for us.
“We’ve established strong link between time tweak and space tweak. Can derive most special relat. Third tweak discovered may be co-active but purpose unknown. Tweak time, tweak space, third tweak changes automatically. Probably derive general relat. as regards curvature, but third tweak pushes a fourth tweak, weakly and sporadically… Derive conservation of destiny? Fifty tweaks discovered so far. More to come. Can you share your discoveries? Mutual bennies if yes.
“Still sounds like gibberish,” I said.
“There have been no further messages from Cailetet,” Alice said. “They’re stonewalling on the unification proposals, and they’ve rejected Majumdar’s offers to join in the Olympians’ physics research.”
‘That’s new,” I said. ”Bithras hasn’t told us about that.“
“Bithras keeps many worries to himself.”
“Does the message mean anything to you?” Allen asked Alice .
“Bell Continuum theory treats the universe as an informational array, a computational system. The Olympians applied for grants with abstracts on such theory. Some of their applications were sent to Earth, one to Stanford, where they established communications with the group that sent this message.”
Alice projected LitVid reports on related topics from the past year. The Stanford group had published only three public papers in the past ten years, none of them dealing with the Bell Continuum. Alice concluded the display by saying, “Bithras has been unable to rent key papers and research vids related to the Bell Continuum, and has found only popular references to the topic of ‘descriptor theory.’ ”
“Why didn’t Bithras tell us?” I asked.
“I believe he did not think it was terribly important. But your visit with President Muir would interest him. Her instincts appear sound.”
“Something’s going on?” Allen asked.
“Perhaps,” Alice said.