Logically, he and I could and should have continued our discussion on an appropriate fate for the AI that now controlled the Cyber Ark. In fact, we said not a word to each other about the matter; not then, not when we took off our suits, not at any time during our long journey back to the Institute.
What did we discuss? We talked about everything that people do talk about — when they want to avoid talking about one particular thing.
When we finally spoke again about the AI, the Cassiopeia supernova was far past its peak. That stellar beacon had dwindled and faded, and in its place shone the wan, unspectacular remnant of a dwarf star. Paul Fogarty was back from his trip, and his findings at the solar focus were enough to provide him with a respectable amount of media coverage.
Of McAndrew’s doings regarding the supernova, the Cyber Ark, or anything else, the media said not a word. He did not call me, write me, or send me any other possible form of message.
I tell you, the man is as obstinate as a mule. So it astonished me when, as I was monitoring the loading of volatiles for a routine Ceres run, he showed up at the L-4 loading area.
He stood at the side of the deck and did absolutely nothing until finally, in exasperation, I swung over to his side.
“What, then?”
“You know what,” he said. “I’m going. Again. To the Ark. ”
“I thought you might. Who’s going with you?”
“Lots of people. Too damn many people. Computer types, military, AI specialists, psychiatrists, the works.”
I kept my mouth shut, but I think my eyebrows rose because McAndrew said, “Aye, you heard right. Psychiatrists. The leading theory is that the AI is mad.”
“I told you it was insane when we first encountered it.”
“Well, now we have others saying the same thing. Crazy, they say, because the AI has been so long in isolation, without inputs.”
“It had inputs from the humans on the Ark. And it killed the lot of them.”
“I said that. When I did, the United Space Federation just added more people. It’s going to be a whole three-ring circus out there.”
I waited. He had ended his sentence on a rising note, and I knew from experience that meant he hadn’t finished.
“So well then,” he said after a while. “What do you say, Jeanie?”
“What do I say to what?” I can be as awkward as McAndrew when I feel like it.
“Why, are you coming with us? With me. Out to the Cyber Ark.”
“If I said yes to that I’d be as crazy as the AI. I’m amazed you’d come here and ask me such a thing.”
“Ah, well, there’s more that you don’t know.” He took my hand and sat me down next to him on the edge of the lading bay. “Simonette will be leading the USF party.”
“Simple Simonette?”
“The same. You know his solution to every problem: blow it away. He has to take the psychiatrists along, the USF insists on it, but he’ll take no notice of them. He agrees with you. We should have destroyed the AI when we had the chance.”
“It’s a bit late for that. Anyway, I’ve been thinking, too.”
“Oh aye?”
“I was wrong and you were right. It’s criminal to destroy any self-aware intelligence.”
“Then you should come with us.”
“And do what?”
“Be another voice of reason — a voice of sanity. Argue against destroying the AI.”
“I’m not sure I can argue that way, either.” I ignored the squeeze of his hand on mine, and went on, “We were both right, Mac, and we were both wrong. There’s no good answer. It’s morally abhorrent to destroy the AI, assuming that it is an intelligent, self-aware, thinking being. But it’s also unthinkable to risk the future of the human species by allowing the continued existence of something with the potential to destroy us.”
“You’re coming, then?”
“Of course I’m coming. You know damn well I’m coming.” I was angry; with myself, with McAndrew, with a universe that offered such unacceptable alternatives. “But I know I’m going to be upset, no matter what happens.”
Upset was too weak a word for it. Destroy the AI or allow it to live? That decision, whichever way it went, would be with me for the rest of my life.
I damned the AI to hell, and every Ark with it; and I wished that I had never heard of the solar focus.
A voice of sanity. I should have had more sense, and so should McAndrew. My job as a cargo captain is respectable, and my reputation excellent. McAndrew is the system’s greatest living physicist, and according to people competent to judge such things he ranks with the best ever. But when it comes to real clout, we are no more than flies buzzing around the admiral’s table.
I realized that when Mac and I flew on a navy vessel to the staging point and we saw the forces assembled there. I counted fifty-five ships before I stopped, and they were not lightweight research vessels or the cargo assemblies that McAndrew and I were familiar with. These were hulking armored monsters, ranging from high-gee probes employing giant versions of the McAndrew balanced drive, to massive orbital forts hard-pressed to reach a twentieth of a gee.
I asked Mac how long it would take one of the gigantic forts to travel out to the location of the Cyber Ark. He thought for a moment and said it would be a year’s trip.
“Great,” I said. “What are the rest of us supposed to do until the forts arrive? The AI could kill the lot of us.”
“It might.” The speaker was not McAndrew, but a blond navy officer. Captain Knudsen had very pale skin and a straggly Viking beard, and he looked about eighteen years old. “But the forts aren’t there to prevent our being killed,” he went on. “They won’t be going all the way out to the Ark. ”
“So what will they be doing?”
“They’re our last line of defense. They’ll make sure nothing can hit Earth and the Solar System colonies.”
That quiet comment gave me a jolt in the right place. Say what you like about Simple Simonette, he was taking the threat of the Cyber Ark AI seriously. The last line of defense…
McAndrew and I were assigned to the Ptarmigan under Knudsen’s command. It was the lead ship, equipped with a four-hundred gee version of the balanced drive and able to make the outward journey in four days. It was also, though no one mentioned it, the tethered goat. If, when we arrived, the AI found us and gulped us down, the rest of the fleet would learn from our fate and structure the rest of its operations accordingly.
It was a change for me to travel as a passenger. McAndrew had retreated inside his head, so I spent the four-day journey scanning the sky ahead with the Ptarmigan’s sensors. We had observing instruments aboard more sensitive and more sophisticated than anything that I had ever seen. Apparently they weren’t quite sensitive enough at extreme distance, since I found no trace of the Cyber Ark.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, when my worries were mounting, Captain Knudsen cut the drive of the Ptarmigan and joined me. “Locked in yet?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“But we show as within a hundred thousand kilometers.” There was a touch of reproof in his voice. “McAndrew assured me it couldn’t travel far, it doesn’t have the drive engines. We ought to have definite target acquisition by now. Let me have a try.” He eased me away from the mass detector controls and bent over them. “There’s a bit of a knack to using this, you see, you have to get used to it.”
I could have pointed out that I had been trained in the use of mass detectors when he was still blowing milk bubbles and filling his diapers, but I didn’t. I let him take over the controls, certain that he wouldn’t find anything.
Certain, but wrong. Within five minutes he said, “Ah, there we are. Mass and range are just the way they should be. I’m locking us in now.”