Asimov's Science Fiction: October/November 2013 (18 page)

Then I allowed myself to sweat.

Word does get out. The Fury was my predinner engagement, and before I had finished dessert the captain's orderly came by my table. Would I be good enough to join the captain for an after dinner brandy?

Well, a predelivered invitation was a step up the social ladder from the Fury's unannounced call.

The captain's cabin was roomy and well appointed. One section was done up in high tech and bastardized NeoHellenic. The captain was no doubt accustomed and obliged to entertain more highly placed guests than myself, those who might prefer to dine and converse while reclining on variable-grav couches done up in exotic leathers. Captain Harrow rose to greet me, then led me to a pair of Jacobsen chairs, all clean line and function. The brandy was already poured.

"You've seen the Fury, " the captain said after the briefest of small talk. "I wanted to talk to you about the Talley affair, but not before the Fury had interviewed you."

I nodded. "But before the Fury gets around to you."

The captain straightened in his chair. His bearing was never far from erect. Like ceremonial heads of state, captains of liners were expected to look and act the part. This one did.

"And it will," I went on, "when it's through dealing with Talley's direct associates and contacts. If it's dissatisfied, it'll go after indirect suspects. You'll be at the top of the second tier in its hierarchy. Believe me, I know."

"You anticipate me," the captain said.

"The Fury will, too," I said. "But you have nothing to personally fear. I gather you didn't kill Talley nor grease the skids for someone else."

The captain reached for his glass and swirled the brandy. "It's more complex than that."

"You know who killed Talley," I prompted. "And you don't want to tell."

That earned me an appraising look.

"You have your suspicions, I'd imagine," he said

. "Sure, and this interview confirms them. Possibly the first officer, but more probably the ship's AI."

"Why more probably?"

"Because you could lose the first officer and not endanger the ship."

"You didn't tell this to the Fury?"

"No. It was just the leading suspicion then, one of several. I was able to draw the Fury off into focusing on persons rather than programs. I could truthfully answer that I had no overwhelming suspicion of any person."

The captain nodded. He had admitted nothing yet; had asked only. But he'd soon have to volunteer information to get my help. And that's what he wanted, little doubt of it. An ally, and a capable one. I had seemingly outwitted the Fury in a one-on-one contest. Could I do more?

"You understand that what I'm about to say cannot be said publicly. State policy would not allow it." The captain paused. If he was fishing for a nod of complicity, he wasn't going to get it.

"Nor would Commander de Prado," I said.

The captain set his brandy down. He put both hands stiffly on his knees. He had words to say that were clearly outside of his comfort zone.

"Certain cabins on this ship are death chambers, though I don't know which ones till after the fact. The AI assigns staterooms. This ship's AI has a list of persons that it is programmed to kill should they ever take passage. All Terran state owned vessels do, and that's 90 percent of all liners. I don't know who's on this list, or my job would be untenable. It's a short list. I've never had a passenger killed in all my years of command. I hope to never again. But though I command this ship, I have my masters, faceless though they may be."

"Some of them aren't so faceless," I said. "Again, Commander de Prado, though I see him more as your watchdog than your master. I hope I'm right."

The captain stood up.

"I command this ship,
kyr
Nystrom. And I do not take contravention of my authority—even allusions to it—with tolerance. Any more than you take probing into your status as a diver."

"In fairness, Captain, you stated that you had masters."

He sat down and faced me head on. No side by side, friendly brandy-laden conversation now.

"This is not a cruise ship,
kyr
Nystrom, though we do carry passengers and I do have a public relations function. Shiphandling in jumpspace is serious business. Things have changed since I started forty years ago. Officers ran ships then. And ships got lost. Now AI's do the navigating in jumpspace. We were exploring in those early days. Now we transport. Terra was once mankind's sole base and allegiance. Now the Coalsack worlds have split off and stir up other Terran colonies to independence and new alliance. So captains have to implement policy now where they formerly had only to command and handle ships. Policies we may not like. And, yes, we do have our Commander de Prados to watchdog our actions."

"If it came down to it," I asked, "which priority rules: safety of the ship and its passengers, or preserving Terra from diplomatic embarrassment?"

"Saving the ship. So long as I'm captain."

Could he stay captain, though? Was that what he was saying: that Commander de Prado could relieve him under certain circumstances? Or thought he could? But this was a question, like a number that could be addressed to a diver, that one didn't ask. Others I could.

"How is it that Commander de Prado is not with us? This conversation seems to be in his realm."

"I didn't invite him. We're talking about the safety of the ship. That's my realm. Besides, the first officer dislikes you. Thinks you an arrogant charlatan. Or at least no use in these circumstances."

"Ah," I said. "Then I must have done something right." I considered a moment. "Let me sum up your problem. If you tell what you know to the Fury, it will take on what it considers to be the perpetrator of Talley's murder. This is a very literal machine. The programmers of the AI are beyond its reach. So it'll go after the AI."

"No doubt," the captain said. "And this ship can't run without the AI."

"Don't you have human backups in case of malfunction?"

"Yes, and I'm one of them." The captain gestured to a far corner of the cabin, to a wall-mounted holofield of the celestial sphere. Near it was a computer terminal. "We can navigate this ship from jumpspace to real space. Maybe. The chances of failure are quite high. Statistically—I go on past history and computer simulations—perhaps one in ten. That's not bad odds if you have to do it. An exploration team or a military expedition might think those good odds. I have, in my time. But it's unacceptably risky for a passenger liner. We need our AI."

"If the Fury takes a narrow view of the Talley affair," I said, "it will destroy it."

"If it does, it destroys itself," the captain said. "But I understand that Fury pro gramming puts its survival second to destroying killers. I doubt if it makes distinctions between man and machine. So it comes to this: you've been up against it. You've outplayed it at its own mind game. Quite possibly, and I know of no delicate way of putting this that won't offend diver sensitivities, you have some mental powers or control over the Fury that would give us a handle. What do you advise?"

"Telling the truth, of course. It will punish you—and injury and killing are its only punishments—if you don't. Perhaps you could shoulder the blame as highest in the shipboard chain of command. Or throw it off on the first officer as being the closest link to the implementers of the AI's death dealing program."

"A human sacrifice to the machine god," the captain smiled thinly. "But would it work?"

"I don't know. Captain Harrow, please listen carefully. I have limited powers. Commander de Prado is certainly right about that. I can read minds, or a subconscious portion of them, when in direct linkage. Luckily that includes AI's, as I've discovered from my meeting with the Fury."

I paused. I knew that I could disable the Fury if I could get to it. I wasn't anxious to, not yet. Derailing the Fury now would be a victory for Commander de Prado, for murder by machine proxy. And its cover up.

Time to trade.

"If you want my help in doing more than reading the Fury, in disabling it, then I'll set a price. Go public to the passengers on Talley's murder."

"I can't do that," the captain said. "Not till the ship's
in extremis.
I'll face the Fury first."

Some backbone there. The captain was proving, not just saying, that he was more than a figurehead.

I'd have to modify my terms. The captain clearly thought he had some effective countermoves to make before paying my price. I wanted to know them. I wanted to remain in the councils that would set the terms of the upcoming confrontation.

"I'll help to this extent," I said. "I'll help you prepare for the Fury. Patch me in to the ship's AI. I'll help set up its defenses."

In the short term nothing overt was done. Extending the short term to the long term was the captain's optimal solution. If the Fury could be stalled, the ship would reach its scheduled jump point in two days, and make the jump and reentry into real space near the Carina hub. The plan was to represent the captain and the first officer as being bound up in navigational and shiphandling functions until after the jump. Meanwhile, and on a low visibility scale, the ship's landing party—under the guise of routine preparedness training—was turned into an onboard strike force. The bridge now tracked the remotes but did nothing.

Like all contingency plans, this one had a flaw: a contingency unforeseen. The Fury learned the true circumstances of Talley's murder, and not from interrogating the captain. It patched itself into a comm link with the ship's AI and learned in a straightforward exchange of data regarding Talley's cabin. No one had thought of that. The ship's AI had no interdiction against releasing data to another AI, a common practice when navigational data was exchanged. It coughed up the information as a true matter of course.

And took the Fury out of its investigative mode into the punitive.

I didn't want to be at the point of confrontation. Some interesting experiences are best foregone, certainly if the potential price is too high. Death fitted that category.

This one would be fought from the bridge, an area of limited access and tight security. I was the only invitee. Commander de Prado had objected. The captain talked him down, finally ordering him to obedience when the first officer persisted. Commander de Prado took this, but not well.

The bridge was, in essence, a walled ramp traversing a sphere. In our current real space, transiting to the jump point, the bridge was darkened, the globe's interior becoming the celestial sphere of the locality. A starscape of considerable splendor. In jump space it would be a mere darkened backdrop around, above, and below us.

The captain was ensconced in a gimbaled chair with armrest controls. Quartermasters and electronics technicians monitored displays and instruments relating to drive mechanics and navigation, I would imagine. Nobody was giving sightseeing tours this day.

Several monitors displayed corridors and compartments of interest. The cold sleep compartment showed the boxy bulk of the Fury accompanied by two of its floating remotes. Another camera picked up the passageway outside the AI spaces. Lt. Stein and several crewmembers were setting up a makeshift laser cannon. It was actually a cobbled together array of cutting and welding tools from the engineering department, linked together in a sort of Gatling gun configuration. Power cables snaked down and out to a grid of power ports some ten meters to the rear.

Lt. Stein looked determined though somewhat white in the face. With reason. It was doubtful whether this makeshift piece of weaponry could outgun the Fury's laser. The Fury's weaponry was necessarily designed to be the most powerful system on a typical mining world. Jumpships were not warships. Their armories contained hand weapons only.

The plan was to seal off the passageway outside the AI spaces by closing the hatches on either side of an approaching Fury remote. That part was simple. Compartmentalization and quick closure was built into all ships, as prudent damage control design. No one had any illusions that the Fury couldn't burn its way out, given time. Or burn away anyone in the compartment with it. In essence we had a potential death chamber here.

"It would be more effective for Lt. Stein to man and aim the thing," the captain said. "But I'm not yet ready to order suicide missions. We'll fire the array from outside, in a fan pattern. With luck we'll get the Fury's sensors and pickups, then we'll keep firing till our array or the Fury fails to function. Lt. Stein will be behind the hatch with what little we have left. He'll have to deal with the Fury if it gets through."

So we had a suicide mission once removed.

There was no question that the confrontation was imminent. Another monitor was tracking the approach of a Fury remote, its pickups handing off the image of that floating death machine as it advanced on the AI spaces. The crew was hastily sweeping the passageways ahead of it, clearing ship's personnel and passengers from the Fury's path. There was an electric crackle on the bridge that had nothing to do with high tech. It was tinged with the smell of sweat.

"Get out, Mr. Stein," the captain ordered. "It's here."

Stein and his men backed off from the laser array and picked their way past the roped power lines. Their fallback positions were still on a line of sight along the passageway, but outside the hatch to the AI compartments. The Fury was visible to them now, a mirrored sphere ever enlarging in their field of vision as it floated toward them.

There was a perceptible holding of breath among the bridge crew around me. No one was looking at shiphandling instruments. Everyone was focusing on the bank of monitors.

The captain nodded. The hatches on either side of the Fury sealed shut, cutting off retreat and erecting the barrier between the remote and Lt. Stein and his men.

Lt. Stein depressed his firing control. The compartment enclosing the Fury flared to white. A flashing image and afterimage etched the Fury's laser port in a blaze of coherent light. Then that monitor went blank as its pickup melted in that caldron of fire.