‘You say it absorbs technical knowledge,’ said Cormac, ‘so what happens when it absorbs U-space tech.’
‘Unless controlled, it won’t, and without a host it would not be capable of retaining that knowledge,’ said Mika.
Cormac gazed at her queryingly, but it was D’nissan who continued: ‘Jain tech uses its acquisitions in, for example, the same way an amoeba uses the physical mechanisms of its body. It is sub-sentient—not conscious. It doesn’t understand what it is doing. It is the very nature of U-space tech that a high level of conscious understanding is required to operate it, hence the fact of runcible and ship AIs controlling it now.’
‘Those creatures… biomechanisms, if you like’—Cormac eyed the spider drone—‘U-jumped down into that base Chaline occupied,’ he observed.
Mika replied, ‘Yes, but they were controlled by a Maker version of our friend Skellor—that being the conscious element.’
‘Some of our original U-spaceships were not controlled by AI,’ Cormac noted.
‘Apocryphal,’ said D’nissan. ‘Those ships left before the AIs won the Quiet War and took over. It suited the companies owning those vessels to define the systems controlling them as CQPs — carbon quanta processors—simple computers. In reality those systems were conscious and a damned sight more intelligent than any of the ships’ passengers, none of whom could understand U-space technology.’
Cormac shrugged, accepting that. ‘Okay, even without U-tech this shit could bring us down. We got lucky with Skellor. A little less arrogance on his part and he could have caused damage on a systems-wide scale, before seeding Jain nodes across the Polity to finish the job. So how do we stop this? How do we kill Jain technology?’
Mika leant forwards. ‘There is no simple answer to that. The inactive nodes are easy to destroy—just drop them straight into a sun—but active Jain technology, especially when it has sequestered an intelligent mind…’ She stared at Cormac, looking grim. ‘You heard Chaline. It seemed as if the only successes the Makers had in destroying it were by planetary sterilization. And if it gets out of control within the Polity… well, there’s an old saying, something about killing the patient to cure the disease.’
There seemed little more to say after that. Cormac listened in half-attentively as the other two discussed recent research. His attention kept drifting to the spider-drone which periodically reared up against the panoramic window and rattled the tips of its legs there in an annoyingly grating manner. Finally D’nissan, then, shortly afterwards, Mika, departed. Cormac finished his brandy, stood, and began heading for the door. Subliminally he observed the drone drop away from the window and head towards him. As he turned towards it and gazed at an array of red eyes and gleaming chrome pincers, the fact that such drones were not noted for their stability occurred to him, and he abruptly wished he had a weapon to hand.
Halting before him the drone said, ‘Hi, I’m Arach—I’ve been assigned to you.’
Cormac eyed it suspiciously, then made a query through his link: ‘Jerusalem, apparently a drone called Arach has been assigned to me!
‘He’s lying,’ Jerusalem replied. ‘He is very bored and feels you are his best bet for some action. I will send him elsewhere if you require.’
‘An ex-war drone that served in the Prador War? Perhaps I would be foolish to refuse?’ Cormac commented.
‘Perhaps you would,’ Jerusalem agreed.
To the drone, Cormac said, ‘I’ll summon you when I need you, Arach. Just make sure you are ready for… any eventualities.’
The drone did a little tappity dance on the carpet.
Cormac departed frowning.
4
Cassius Project: this is a Dyson sphere in the process of construction, an object first described in 1959 by the physicist Freeman Dyson in his paper ‘Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of lnfra-Red Radiation’, though the idea germinated in him after reading a science fiction story by one Olaf Stapleton some thirteen years earlier. It is a hollow sphere being built around the sun, Cassius, to capture nearly all the star’s radiation so as to power (at nearly 1026 W) the civilization that will occupy the inner surface of the sphere when the project reaches completion. Construction began in that hugely optimistic time during the initial runcible-based expansion of the Polity, when it was felt that anything could be achieved. The project stalled during the Prador-Human War, but then continued after because, some claim, it was felt by the AIs that a sense of optimism needed to be reclaimed for the human race. It has caused much contention in the Polity because, with its completion date lying in the remote future, it is felt irrelevant to present requirements. However, few can deny the massive technological advances stemming from this project, and the rejuvenating economic effect throughout that sector of the Polity. Perhaps few can also deny that this is forward planning on a truly ambitious scale.
- From ‘Quince Guide’ compiled by humans
Horace Blegg considered the universe as a web of lines interconnecting nodal points which, studied with sufficient intellect, would reveal its holistic nature. How fated is this particular node? He did not personally believe in determinism, but some coincidences seemed almost too coincidental to ignore. He walked out along a gravplated platform to a viewing blister in one half-completed section of the giant ship’s outer skin. To his left he observed the muted glare of ion engines which maintained the vessel’s position in the planet’s shadow. The engines were necessary for correction because the ship’s mass was perpetually changed by materials being brought in through four internal cargo runcibles. Also many smaller vessels docked and undocked all the time, changing its vector. In two days the ship would be completed, and by then, hopefully, it would no longer be necessary to keep it this close to the world in order to relay the thousands of tonnes of equipment coming through the runcibles, and then it could move out into a more comfortable orbit around the sun. Just down to his right he observed the shuttle he had requested, now docking, but there was no hurry.
‘A space tug will arrive in thirty hours,’ said the Golem beside him, which was telefactored from the ship’s newly initiated AI: Hourne—named after one of those who had discovered the nature of the object below, just as the world itself was now called Shayden’s Find, and the sun was called Ulriss.
Down below, the single rocky slab was the planet’s only enduring feature, drifting around on the mostly molten surface like a miniature tectonic plate. Huge autodozers were clearing the millions of tonnes of ash built up on its surface over millennia of constant eruptions. A slab like this would not have survived for so long on such a world but for one circumstance: the magma had accumulated and solidified around a large flat object unaffected by the heat. Others had discovered this object and listed it as a purely natural phenomenon. The woman Shayden, and her two male companions, had come here to study it and found that some fragments of its incredibly tough and durable substance had broken away—enough for them to retrieve and study thoroughly. This substance, something like diamond, also bore certain similarities to memcrystal. Shayden—out of curiosity—attached an optic interface to one piece, and the reams of code feeding back through it astounded her. She realized instantly she had discovered something very important. She also realized that her private business did not have the resources to study this discovery as it should be studied. She returned to the nearest Polity world and reported her find. Before the AI on that world was prepared to commit resources, it needed confirmation so Shayden, Ulriss and Hourne returned here with a Polity Golem called Cento, whose presence cost them their lives.