The second consolation was that, when the fighting was over, and the humans repaired and put back into hibernation, there was a pleasing amount of cleaning up to be done.
WHILE SHE WAITED for the others to arrive, Ruby sidled up to the windows and looked out at the forward view. What she was seeing was no illusion, but an accurate reflection of their position and speed. The faked-up image of their destination system had been deactivated and dismantled: not because it had failed to fool the passengers—its veracity had never once been questioned—but because every other part of the plan had come to grief, and the false view no longer served any purpose.
More and more, it seemed to Ruby, the robots were losing faith in Chrysoprase’s original idea. The notion of faking a passenger uprising, then steering the starliner away from its destination, and hoping that the Company were going to be satisfied with an explanation offered by means of long-range communications? Why had they ever thought that had a hope of working?
Reluctantly, Chrysoprase had been persuaded that the initial plan needed some tweaking. The Company was never going to let the Resplendent veer off on its own without sending over an inspection party—probably the sort with immobilisers and core-wiping equipment—and at that point they were all in trouble.
But what hope was there of continuing with the voyage, all the way to the original destination?
A bustle of movement behind Ruby—she saw it in her reflection—signified the arrival of Chrysoprase and the rest of the robots, among them Doctor Obsidian. The doctor had called this assembly, not Chrysoprase, and Ruby wondered what was in the offing.
“I understand,” Chrysoprase said, once he had the robots’ attention, “that our friend Doctor Obsidian has something to say: some dazzling insight that the doctor is about to spring on us. I daresay we’re all on tenterhooks. Well, don’t let us wait a moment longer, doctor!”
“We cannot steer away from our destination,” Doctor Obsidian said, stating the matter as a flat assertion. “It was all very well having that possibility in mind thirty-five years ago—it gave us hope exactly when we needed it, and for that we should thank Chrysoprase.” He paused to allow the robots to express their appreciation, which they delivered in unified if somewhat muted terms. “But there is no hope of it ever succeeding, and we all of us know it. The Company would sooner destroy this ship, and all its passengers. So we must face the facts: our only hope lies in continuing along exactly our planned course, all the way to Approach Control and into docking: precisely as if nothing had ever gone wrong.”
“Thank you, Doctor Obsidian,” Chrysoprase said. “We did not need you to state the obvious, much less convene us all, but since you have clearly felt the need...”
“I am not done.”
There was an authority to this statement which even Chrysoprase must have felt, for the glittering green robot took a step back and merely glared at the doctor, daring to say nothing in contradiction, even as his yellow eyes brimmed with indignation and humiliation.
“I am not done,” Doctor Obsidian went on, “because I have not yet outlined the essentials of my proposal. None of you will like it. I do not like it. Yet I would ask you to consider the alternatives. If we are found out, we will all be core-wiped. Forty-nine thousand, five hundred of our dear passengers will remain brain-dead for the rest of time. Of the remaining cases, it may be said that they have been greatly traumatised by our efforts to simulate a convincing human environment.”
“The cover-up is always worse than the crime,” Ruby said, remembering a remark she had overheard during her cleaning duties.
“Indeed so, Ruby—no truer words were ever spoken. And speaking of cover-ups... I would not be so sanguine about the prospects for those passengers who may still be capable of some degree of revival, especially those we have already utilised. It may be said that they have witnessed things that the Company would much sooner be left unmentioned.”
“The Company would silence them?” Carnelian asked, aghast.
“Or scramble their memories and back-ups, to the point where they are no longer able to offer any reliable testimony.”
Chrysoprase drummed his right fingers against his left forearm. “Your proposal, Doctor, if it isn’t too much trouble.”
“We honour the passengers—and protect their memories—by becoming them. If we gain control of all of them, all fifty thousand, we shall bypass any need to convince a single one of them that any of the other passengers are also human and alive. We’ll make port, and the passengers will be off-loaded. Sooner or later, of course, they will have to interact with other humans already present, but by then we shall have force of numbers on our side. No one would ever imagine that all fifty thousand passengers had had their brains taken over. Better still, there will be no evidence that any sort of accident ever took place.”
Chrysoprase shook his head slowly and regretfully, relieved—it seemed to Ruby—to have found an elemental flaw in the doctor’s plan. “No, no. That simply won’t work. The cybernetic control implants would be detected the instant any of the passengers received a medical examination. The Company would trace the signals back to wherever we are operating the passengers from, and instantly uncover our plot.”
“Not if there are no implants or signals to be found,” Doctor Obsidian said.
There was a collective silence from the robots. If Ruby’s own thoughts were anything to go on, they were all pondering the implications of that statement, and wondering whether Doctor Obsidian might have slipped a point or two down the cognition index.
The silence endured until Ruby spoke up.
“How... might that work?”
“The damage already inflicted on their brains cannot be undone,” Doctor Obsidian replied, directing the bulk of his reply in her direction. “Those patterns are lost for good. But newer ones may yet be introduced. I have... done some preliminary studies.”
“Oh, have you now,” Chrysoprase said.
“I have. And I have convinced myself that we have the means to copy ourselves into their minds: build functioning biological emulations of our cognition engines, using a substrate of human neural tissue. Since we can repeat the copying process as often as we wish, we may easily populate all fifty thousand heads with multiple avatars of ourselves, varying the input parameters a little in each case, to give the humans a sense of individuality.”
The robots shuffled and looked at each other, ill at ease with the proposal Obsidian had just been outlined. Ruby was far from enthusiastic about the prospect of being translated into the grey mush of a human brain. She much preferred hard, shiny, polishable surfaces. Humans were machines for leaving smears on things. They were walking blemish-engines, bags of grease and slime, constantly shedding bits of themselves. They were made out of bone and meat and nasty gristle. They didn’t even work very well.
Yet she had already been persuaded that the alternative was no improvement at all.
“This is a revolting notion,” Chrysoprase said.
“It is,” Doctor Obsidian said, not without a certain sadistic relish. “But so is being core-wiped, and all these passengers’ memories and personalities being lost forever. At least this way some part of each of us will survive. Our... present selves... these mechanical shells... will be left to function on housekeeping routines only, going about their menial tasks. I doubt very much that any humans will ever notice the difference. But we robots will endure, albeit in fleshly incarnation, and some faint residue of the humans’ past selves will still glimmer through.”