A Larger Universe (12 page)

Tommy lifted his hands from the keyboard and twisted to face
his audience.  "Who said that?  Never mind.  You're right.  Damn.  The
demonstration is over."

Tommy went into the computer room and slumped on the floor
with his back to a corner and his arms wrapped around knees.  He raised his head
at the sound of Valin's voice.

"What's wrong?  Why are you crying?"  Valin asked.

"I didn't even consider the lords' alphabet, or that I
would need a special font, which doesn't exist."  The tears filling his
eyes made Valin's face a featureless sphere.  "I can't think of
everything.  I can't do this.  This is too much for a sixteen-year-old
kid."

"How can you say that?  Look at what you've already
done."

Tommy wiped his eyes with his sleeve and lurched to his
feet.  "I haven't done anything.  You want computers to replace the old
computers on your ship.  We haven't even started on that.  I'm no better than
these useless Earth computers."  He kicked the AT cases stacked against
the wall.  "I talked you into using computers first for the translators,
and I have no way to print the translations.  This may have all been a complete
waste of time.  Your choosing me, kidnapping me from Earth to do this, was a
mistake."

Valin shrugged his narrow shoulders.  "We made a
choice, you or some random person.  How would choosing a person randomly be an
improvement over you, who's obviously very familiar with computers?"

"You just don't understand," Tommy yelled.  You
didn't know what you were getting into when you started this project."

"Yes, I did.  We were and are completely
ignorant."

"No!  What you don't understand is that I am almost as
ignorant as you are!"  He wrapped his arms around his chest and looked at
the floor.  "And any single person you might choose would also be almost
as ignorant as you, there's so much to know.  Most of those who work in systems
are specialists.  No one knows everything, or even much of what could be
known."

"Tommy, in spite of what you think, we're not fools. 
We knew one little boy would not know all we needed to know.  Why else would we
have taken the books?  Why else would it be so important to translate the
books?

"We couldn't kidnap a group of adults, so we took you. 
You're what we have, and you've done well so far.  You can find an answer, even
to this problem, among all of those books and boxes.  I've learned that already
from you."  He paused.  "And however hopeless it may seem, you have
no choice except to try."  In spite of Valin's choice of words, Tommy
couldn't mistake the pleading expression on his face.

"I suppose you're right."  Tommy again wiped his
eyes on his sleeve.  He looked at that sleeve as if he had never seen it
before.  "If you think I'm doing so well, do you think I could get rid of
these farmer clothes and wear something more colorful?  At least when I'm not crawling
on the floor?"

Valin was right.  The next day Tommy was deep in study of a
book on fonts and installing software that would guide him through creating the
symbols that would display on the screen and on the printer.  After some
discussion, the same artisans who labeled the storeroom doors created stickers
for the keyboards.  The next demonstration was flawless.

Tommy had learned touch typing from a computer program, but
he was sure no typing program existed for the lords' language in his store of software. 
For this he was on his own.  He had Sanos, one of the two helpers he had been
assigned, tally each letter in fifty pages of a handwritten book in the lords'
language, and assigned the top ten symbols to the "asdfghjkl;" row of
the keyboard.  The next ten he assigned to the "qwerty" row, with the
remainder spread across the remaining keys.  When each member of the
translation team was hunting and pecking on his own, Tommy asked Valin to come
into the computer room, away from the click of keyboards and chatter of Valin's
staff. 

"Valin, we should start on the real purpose of all
this, replacing the old ship's computers."

 "The lords insist they have instruction manuals for
equipment we install, and we have to throw out our first translations and begin
again.  How could we replace any computers now?"  He lowered his voice to
a whisper.  "Though to be honest, I'm certain they only read the pages on
how to operate a machine and never the part on how to service it.  I'm equally
certain that, without the artisans to repair their machines, eventually nothing
would operate properly."

"I could write a manual that describes just the tasks
required for whatever computer we replace.  If you're right about what they
read, that would be enough.  Maybe that's all you should translate, for now. 
Maybe that's all you should ever translate for each new computer we install. 
How would they know the difference?"

Valin tilted his head and looked at Tommy for a long while. 
"You put unfamiliar thoughts in my head."

"Anyway," Tommy continued, "if we get started
replacing one of your computers, you'll have a sample to work with when the
translations are done, if they ever are," Tommy said.  "At the rate
you're going, we'll all die of old age before you finish.  How about an out-of-the-way
computer we could work on without being noticed?"

Tommy watched as Valin's eyes became unfocused and he seemed
to be looking deep into the ship around them.  Finally, Valin took a deep
breath.  "Yes, as long as you continue to help us learn this strange
vocabulary.  Follow me."

For the first time, Valin led Tommy to a bank of elevators
in the central column.  "We're going too far to take the stairs,"
Valin said.

The deck, twenty levels below the translators' workroom, was
divided into eight pie-shaped sections, each containing a hydroponics farm
spread through several connected compartments.  The air in the room Tommy and
Valin entered as they left the elevator was heavy and moist, saturated with the
odor of plants and chemical fertilizers.  An artisan, whom Valin introduced as
Moder, met them there.  Moder led them around the central column, unsealing
doors and resealing them behind them.  Each of the first three sections was
alive with greenery growing in long, transparent vats on top of low tables, and
the sound of fans blowing air in and out of the compartment.  Behind the fourth
sealed entrance, the vats were empty except for a dry powder covering their
bottoms.  Wires and tubes that had been hidden in the other room by plant life
were exposed.  The air was lifeless, except for the faint stench of mold.

Tommy sneezed.  "What happened to this place?"

"This was a hydroponics farm, as are the other areas we
passed through.  In a ship this size, many such areas are required, in addition
to the Commons, to maintain the quality of our air and health.  This one has
been dead for many years.  Getting it working again would be of great
benefit."

"Why is it like this?" Tommy asked.

"Moder, if you will show him?" Valin said.

Moder led them to a room next to the central column.  Inside
was a closet-sized cube.  "This was the device that controlled the
environment in this section.  When a critical part failed, we were unable to
repair it.  The result is as you saw."

Tommy opened a panel in the cube's side.  Except for some
wires trailing through the interior, the cube was empty.  "Where's the
rest of it?"

"We had no more of one critical part, and other parts
in this device have been used to keep similar devices working." Moder
said.

"You cannibalized it!" Tommy said.

"I told you these computers are old," Valin said. 
"and we have no replacement parts.  When one breaks down, we must decide
if it's critical and must be repaired, or if it will become replacement parts
for other, more valuable computers.  Either way, we lose one of the ship's
computers.  Many areas of the ship are no longer inhabited because of computer
failure, and not just in the lower decks.  Perhaps you understand now why this
is important."

"And would also get you out of trouble with the invisible
lords?"

"They're not invisible."

"Whatever.  I need access to a live hydroponics farm
and its computer for me to have any chance at this.  And to the artisans who
maintain it."

"Moder is the master of all of the artisans on this
deck.  He will answer your questions and give you anything you need."  He
paused.  "A word of caution."

"Yes?"

"Be careful of the remaining computers on this deck. 
For you to shut one down, briefly, wouldn't cause repercussions, but to
permanently lose another, with you being seen as the cause, wouldn't be
beneficial to any of us."

"You know, if I worry about screwing this up, I'll be
too afraid to make it happen," Tommy said.

He didn't have time to worry.  He spent at least a part of
each day with the translation team, answering their questions.  As soon as he
could break away, he went down the elevator, usually with Potter, whining in
his carrying case, to talk with the artisans about what they insisted on
calling "devices."  Potter would search for mice below the foliage of
a live farm while Tommy tried to learn enough to even understand the problem. 

The first issue was that the devices were process control
computers, not the general-purpose computers he was accustomed to.  Tommy's
knowledge of process control computers consisted of a programmable robot he had
been given for Christmas.  The robot could be programmed to pick up objects and
place them in a container and move from place to place.  This was much more
complicated.

The computers received input from sensors scattered
throughout the farm and used that data to control water flow, air movement,
temperature, chemicals in the water, light, and even, indirectly, human
activity.  According to Moder, no one knew how old the devices were.  As to who
programmed them, Moder was unfamiliar with the concept.  The devices were kept
in a certain configuration.  They were connected to various sensors in a
certain way.  Power was supplied.  Lights on various control panels indicated
areas in the farm needing attention by the human caretakers:  fertilizer tanks
to be filled, foliage to be cut, filters to be cleaned.  Other lights indicated
problems with the device or one of the sensors.  Do every procedure as it had
always been done and the plants would thrive. 

On the other hand, the artisans were familiar with the
interface between the device and the sensors and the controllers in the farm. 
The signals sent in either direction were constantly monitored as part of
ongoing maintenance.  A degradation of those signals was reason for the
artisans to replace a sensor or attempt to substitute parts in the central
device until the signals returned to normal.  Tommy had to reproduce those
signals to control the hydroponics farms.  The artisans were also able to
provide him with an instruction manual for the device, as required by the
lords, handwritten in the lords' language.  A reference in the appendix of this
book to another book on "control codes" resulted in a deck-wide
search, and the discovery of a rudimentary programming book.

When Tommy found several books on using PCs for process
control in Valin's library of computer books, he began to hope he had a chance of
success.  A pallet of programmable computer boards, specialized for process
control turned his hope into conviction, and he buried himself in the problem.

The electricians put power into the room containing the old
cannibalized computer; then he had his assistants put together a PC on the
floor inside the old box, more because he thought it was funny than for any
need to route sensor wires.  The new computer looked like a toy inside the old
one.

His first test burned one of the probes the artisans used,
which didn't make them happy.  Probes weren't as rare as computer spare parts,
but they were passed from father to son and twenty years had passed since the
last had been taken from storage.  Rather than take this risk again, Tommy
stopped work, and searched through the computer warehouse for electrical
testing equipment from Earth.  For his next test, he was able to assure the artisans
that the voltages from his computer weren't great enough to damage their
probe. 

During the fourth week, Sanos and Vent, his two assistants,
revealed they had been attempting to read every book he had selected for this
project, including the programming instruction manuals for the computer
boards.  Vent looked down and shuffled his feet.  "Um, we were
wondering," He said without looking up, "Would you listen to a
suggestion we have?"  Tommy listened and grinned.  After that, they became
more than just extensions of his hands; they became part of a team.

Fifteen weeks after the project began, the team turned on
the first vat and watched as a hydroponics artisan planted seeds and cuttings
in the fiber sheet suspended in the water.  For the next few days, as Tommy and
his team stood by, ready to fix anything that went wrong, the artisans
monitored plant growth and the signals being transmitted to and from the new
computer, just as they would have with one of the original devices. 

Nothing went wrong.  The plants grew, Potter had fun--he
always did--searching for small animals among the wires and tubes crisscrossing
the floor, and Tommy's two assistants had a large number of women to discuss,
but Tommy was bored. 

Three weeks before, he had realized he was losing the
physical fitness that working in the stable had given him.  Now, he used his
time to put together and begin an exercise program, again by finding and
reading several books taken from Earth.  This helped him sleep at night but did
nothing to keep his mind busy.  In frustration, he studied the hand-written
programming manual for the original device.  He knew he was probably wasting
his time, and, if he had had anything else urgent to do, he wouldn't have
bothered.  He was, after all, here to introduce Earth computers, not amuse
himself with some antiquated programming language.  Even so, he was soon deep
in the small book and didn't notice those around him.