“Yes.”
“You said nobody ever checks the AIs. So why bother changing it?”
“That’s a point,” I said. “But before you get excited, Survey reconditions the things every few years. They come in, clear the system, maybe upgrade it, and reinstall it.”
“Every few years?”
“Yes. The AI the Wescotts had would have been cleared a long time ago.”
He sat quietly and made a few offhand comments about the weather and the cemetery, and on a few business-related matters. I thought the subject had been dropped until he said, abruptly, “Let’s give it a try anyhow.”
“Give what a try?”
“The AI. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Alex, there’s no point.”
“There’s nothing to lose. Let’s get on the circuit and ask. Maybe they download everything into a master file. Who knows?”
He went off for lunch with a client. I called Survey and got one of their avatars.
Elderly man, this time. A bearded eminence. “Yes, young lady,” he said, “how may I be of service?”
I told him what I wanted, that I was looking for details on the Wescott flights during the 1380s and early ’90s. That I hoped that data from the Falcon AI might be available.”
“We have the official logs on file, you know,” he said, as if that solved everything.
“Yes, of course. But we think there might have been an error. We’d like to recover the AI, if that’s possible.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask you to hold a moment, please?”
He was gone. Survey is like most other bureaucracies. When they ask you to hold, they pump images of waterfalls and sandy beaches and mountaintops at you, throw in some soft music, and keep you waiting an hour. This was different. I got the waterfall, but they were back within a minute. A human being this time.
“Hi, Chase,” he said. “I’m Aaron Winslow. You wouldn’t remember me but we met at the Polaris event last year.”
“The one that blew up.”
“Yes. What a terrible thing that was. But I was glad to see most of us came through it okay. How can I help you?”
“Aaron, I work for Rainbow.”
“Yes, I know. Alexander Benedict’s company.”
“Right. I was doing some research on the deaths of the Wescotts, back in ’98. I was hoping that the AI from their ship, the Falcon, might have survived.”
“After thirty years? I don’t think so, Chase. They’re absolutely religious about reprogramming them at six-mission intervals.” He was biting his lower lip. “You say they used the Falcon?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.” He looked off to one side, probably at a data screen. “Hold on a second.”
“Okay.”
“The Falcon’s before my time. In fact, it was sold off after its last mission with the Wescotts.”
“Was there a problem?”
“No. It had forty years’ service. That was as long as they kept them then.”
“They keep them longer now?”
“Fifty-five. We buy better stuff now.”
“What happens to a ship when its time is up?”
“We sell it if we can. Junk it if we have to.”
“Do they clear off the AI when that happens?”
He looked puzzled. “You know, I really have no idea. It’s not something I ever thought to ask.” He made a face and drummed his fingertips on a flat surface. A desktop, probably. “Hold on a second, Chase.”
The scenic images came back. Sand dunes this time. And music designed to make you feel affectionate toward Survey. Then he reappeared. “They tell me we do now. But at the turn of the century, we don’t know whether they bothered. There was a court case eighteen years ago. That’s what got us serious about it, so now everything gets cleared.”
“Can you tell me specifically what happened to the Falcon?”
“Let me check,” he said. “I’ll get back to you.”
You should understand I had no hope whatever that anything would come of the inquiry. But Alex expected me to be thorough.
When Aaron called back, he had a piece of paper in front of him. “Chase,” he said, “it was purchased in 1392 by the Hennessy Foundation.”
“Hennessy,” I said.
“Dedicated to peace with the Mutes.”
TWELVE
Takmandu is the loveliest of human worlds. Its forests are deep, its seas veiled in mist, its triple moons breathtaking. It is remote from the mundane skywalks and crowded parks of the Inner Confederacy, and its proximity to the demon-haunted Ashiyyur suggests it will remain that way.
- Hyman Kossel,
Travels, 1402
The ski slopes are great, too.
- Leslie Park, quoted in The Ultimate Tourist, 1403 The Hennessy Foundation was headquartered on Takmandu, in the Coroli Cluster.
Takmandu had been, for centuries, the political center of the outlying worlds. I’d been there once, with my class, when I was a teenager. It was the first time I’d been off Rimway, and it was one of those life-changing events. I wasn’t all that caught up visiting the historical sites, which was the purpose of the field trip, but I loved the ship.
The Starduster. And the flight itself. I came back with the determination to be a pilot.
In an era during which you could communicate more quickly over interstellar distances by traveling physically than by any other means, I knew I’d be hitting the road again. Alex pleaded the pressure of business. Appointments with clients. Have to keep them happy. You know how it is, Chase. “Anyhow,” he said, “I don’t know anything about shipboard AIs. Find the Falcon. And let’s see what the AI has to say for itself.”
“If anything,” I said.
He gave me his most optimistic gaze. “Nothing ventured,” he said.
So I packed a couple of good novels, picked up a blank chip that would be compatible with the Falcon AI data dump, and boarded the Belle-Marie. On the first day of the new year I set out for Takmandu and the Josef Hennessy Foundation, which was dedicated to creating a better understanding between us and the Ashiyyur.
I’d never seen a Mute in the flesh. Alex had talked with one once. If that’s the right word. They’re telepaths, and there’s something about their physiognomy that creeps people out. Not to mention the fact that they can see into your mind. Alex describes the experience in his memoirs. His comment to me was that what humans and Mutes need isn’t understanding, but distance. We’re just not designed to get along. “The Foundation’s been at it for half a century,” he’d said. “They should understand the realities by now.”
“I guess they keep trying,” I told him.
“Yep. Makes me wonder if they’re not really con men collecting money from idiots.”
I read what I could about the Hennessy Foundation on the way out. They supervised some exchange programs, and conducted seminars in how to communicate, the nature of Mute psychology, and how to control your own natural revulsion in their presence.
Mutes didn’t really look that bad. They were humanoid, but there was something insectile about them. Their pictures didn’t look all that unsettling; but Alex warned me that the common wisdom was correct. Get close to them and your hair stands on end.
The AI produced a Mute avatar for me to talk with. It did look pretty revolting, like one of those things that show up in horror sims. Red eyes, fangs, claws, and a smile that suggests you’re next on the menu. Still, I didn’t feel the kind of revulsion that I’d been warned about.
“That’s because,” Alex said, “it wasn’t really there, and you knew that.”
Whatever Alex might think, the Foundation seemed to be having a degree of success.
The sporadic sniping and occasional warfare between Mute and human had stopped.
Visitors from each side were spending time with receptive groups, and there was even an Ashiyyur-human friendship society. The Foundation’s stated goaclass="underline" Two intelligent species with a single objective.
The objective, Alex commented, was to keep well away from each other.
The historian Wilford Brockman has argued that we were fortunate to find the Mutes, because they had the effect of uniting the human race. Since they arrived on the scene centuries ago, there had been only one major war between human powers. The last few centuries have been the most sustained period of internal peace in millennia.