“He’s using the tipping nucleus as a switch to control the pool.”
“Yes. As I suggested. The spin of the nucleus directs the nanobots in their extension of the pool further through the structure of the moon. And—”
Uncharacteristically, she hesitated.
“Yes?”
“And the spin is used to reinitialize the logic trees.”
“These poor trees are like Schrödinger’s cat,” Hassan said, sounding amused. “Schrödinger’s trees!”
Reinitialize?
“Lethe,” Chen said. “The trees are being culled. Arbitrarily, almost at random, by a quantum system — that’s against the sentience laws, damn it.” She stared at the fist-sized quantum device with loathing.
“We are far from Earth,” Hassan said sharply. “Has Marsden found his quantum nonlinearity?”
“I can’t tell.” Bayliss gazed at the data desks, longing shining through her artificial eyes. “I must complete my data mining.”
“What’s the point?” Hassan asked. “If the nonlinearity is such a tiny effect, even if it exists—”
“We could construct chaotic quantum systems,” Bayliss said dryly. “And if you’re familiar with the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox—”
“Get to the point,” Hassan said wearily.
“Nonlinear quantum systems could violate special relativity. Instantaneous communication, Hassan.”
Chen stared at the floor uneasily. The thrashing of the trees in the logic pool was becoming more intense.
The Sky was close, a tangible presence above him. He devoured statements, barely registering their logical content, budding ferociously. Diminished brothers fell away from him, failed copies of himself, urging him on.
He remembered how — last time, before the Cull — he had struck at that vast, forbidding Interface — lashed through it in the instant before he had fallen back. How he had pushed into something soft, receptive, yielding. How good it had felt.
The Sky neared. He reached up—
“I think the trees killed Marsden.”
Hassan laughed. “That’s absurd.”
She thought it through again. “No,” she said, her voice measured. “Remember they are sentient. Motivated, by whatever they see as their goals. Growth, I suppose, and survival. The culling, if they are aware of it, must create murderous fury—”
“But they can’t have been aware of Marsden, as if he were some huge god outside their logic pool.”
“Perhaps not. But they might be aware of something beyond the boundary of their world. Something they could strike at…”
Bayliss was no longer with them.
Chen stepped away from Hassan and scanned the dome rapidly. The glowing logic pool was becoming more irregular in outline, spreading under the floor like some liquid. And Bayliss was working at the data desks, setting up transmit functions, plugging in data cubes.
Chen took two strides across to her and grabbed her arm. For a moment Bayliss tried to keep working, feverishly; only slowly did she become aware of Chen’s hand, restraining her.
She looked up at Chen, her face working, abstracted. “What do you want?”
“I don’t believe it. You’re continuing with your data mining, aren’t you?”
Bayliss looked as if she couldn’t understand Chen’s language. “Of course I am.”
“But this data has been gained illegally. Immorally. Can’t you see that? It’s—”
Bayliss tipped back her head; her augmented cornea shone. “Tainted? Is that what you’re trying to say? Stained with the blood of these artificial creatures, Chen?”
“Artificial or not, they are sentient. We have to recognize the rights of all—”
“Data is data, Susan Chen. Whatever its source. I am a scientist; I do not accept your—” for a moment the small, precise mouth worked “ — your medieval morality.”
“I’m not going to let you take this data out of here,” Chen said calmly.
“Susan.” Hassan was standing close to her; with a surprisingly strong grasp he lifted her hands from Bayliss’s arm.
“Keep out of this.”
“You must let her finish her work.”
“Why? For science?”
“No. For commerce. And perhaps,” he said dryly, “for the future of the race. If she is right about non-local communication—”
“I’m going to stop her.”
“No.” His hand moved minutely; it was resting against the butt of a laser pistol.
With automatic reflex, she let her muscles relax, began the ancient calculation of relative times and distances, of skills and physical conditions.
She could take him. And—
Bayliss cried out; it was a high-pitched, oddly girlish yelp. There was a clatter as she dropped some piece of equipment.
Chen’s confrontation with Hassan broke up instantly. They turned, ran to Bayliss; Chen’s steps were springy, unnatural in the tiny gravity.
“What is it?”
“Look at the floor.”
The Sky resisted for an instant. Then it crumbled, melting away like ancient doubts.
He surged through the break, strong, exultant, still growing.
He was outside the Sky. He saw arrays of new postulate fruits, virgin, waiting for him. And there was no further Sky; the Pool went on forever, infinite, endlessly rich.
He roared outwards, devouring, budding; behind him a tree of brothers sprouted explosively.
The pool surged, in an instant, across the floor and out beyond the dome. The light, squirming with logic trees, rippled beneath Chen’s dark, booted feet; she wanted, absurdly, to get away, to jump onto a data desk.
“The quantum switch.” Bayliss’s voice was tight, angry; she was squatting beside the switch, in the middle of the swamped light pool.
“Get away from there.”
“It’s not functioning. The nanobots are unrestrained.”
“No more culling, then.” Hassan stared into Chen’s face. “Well, Susan? Is this some sentimental spasm, on your part? Have you liberated the poor logic trees from their Schrödinger hell?”
“Of course not. Lethe, Hassan, isn’t it obvious? The logic trees themselves did this. They got through the Interface to Marsden’s corpus callosum. Now they’ve got through into the switch box, wrecked Marsden’s clever little toy.”
Hassan looked down at his feet, as if aware of the light pool for the first time. “There’s nothing to restrain them.”
“Hassan, we’ve got to get out of here.”
“Yes.” He turned to Bayliss, who was still working frantically at her data mines.
“Leave her.”
Hassan gave Chen one long, hard look, then stalked across to Bayliss. Ignoring the little mathematician’s protests he grabbed her arm and dragged her from the data desks; Bayliss’s booted feet slithered across the glowing floor comically.
“Visors up.” Hassan lifted his pistol and lazed through the plastic wall of the dome. Air puffed out, striving to fill the vacuum beyond.
Chen ran out, almost stumbling, feeling huge in the feeble gravity. Neptune’s ghost-blue visage floated over them, serene, untroubled.
Waves of light already surged through the substance of the moon, sparkling from its small mountaintops. It was eerie, beautiful. The flitter was a solid, shadowed mass in the middle of the light show under the surface.
Hassan breathed hard as he dragged a still reluctant Bayliss across the flickering surface. “You think the trees, the nanobots could get into the substance of the flitter?”