Destination: Void: Prequel to the Pandora Sequence (18 page)

“The hell you don’t!”

They glared at each other, Bickel desperate with indecision, and Flattery’s suspicions verging on certainty.

He has given the Ox the means to kill,
Flattery thought.
His argument and his anger betray it. But kill what? Not one of us, certainly. A colonist in the hyb tanks? No. One of the stock animals! He’d dip his toe into
violence first, see if the Ox could really do it.

But he cannot have already made the black box
—
white box transfer.

Prudence, dividing her attention between the control console and the clash of wills, felt herself shift further and further into a state of heightened awareness. She sensed Com-central’s minute temperature variations, heard the constant metallic creakings of deck and bulkheads around her, saw Flattery’s growing suspicions and Bickel’s desperate defensiveness, knew her own heartbeats and tiny variations in her body chemistry.

It was the chemistry that fascinated her: the thought that all through this subtle play of organic and inorganic matter which she called “myself,” messages of which she was only dimly aware (if at all) were being transmitted and acted upon.

The computer with its enormous library of data culled from millions of minds had offered her a way to explore the issue Bickel had raised, and she could not resist this.

Where and how are the instincts carried?

While the argument between Flattery and Bickel raged, she had translated the question onto an edge-coded tape, shifted it into the computer section of her board, tripped the action switch.

This went beyond chemical-base sequence, she knew, and into the area where knowledge of protein structure itself was only theoretical code. But if the computer gave her an answer that could be translated into a physical function, she knew she could explore the answer through experiments on her own body.

“Bickel, what’ve you done?” Flattery demanded.

Prudence looked up from her console, saw Flattery, his shoulders tensed as though about to leap, staring into the screen. The screen revealed Bickel and Timberlake, their backs turned, staring at the computer wall and the blocks-and-angles contortion that was the Ox.

The hum of the computer could be felt throughout the shop and Com-central. The play of sensor and telltale lights across the big board and the shop’s panels had reached a glittering tempo. Drain gauges showed energy consumption almost at the limits the system could tolerate.

Chapter 25

There must be a threshold of consciousness such that when you pass it you acquire godlike attributes.

—Raja Lon Flattery,
The Book of Ship

As though the computer display were a hypnotic trigger, all four of them waited it out with minimal reaction. Both Bickel and Flattery shared the same reason for inaction fear that
anything
they did might be enough to destroy the entire system. Timberlake sat in sweating fear that his charges in hybernation were threatened by this computer display. Only Prudence was frozen by guilt.

She found herself breathing in shallow gasps, acutely aware of every mechanical sound from the flashing display—every click and hum and buzz, every hissing tape—as though she had a direct sensory connection to the system.

Abruptly, she put the back of her left hand over her mouth, horrified realization flooding her:
The whole computer’s routed through the Ox now!

“What’ve you done?” Flattery demanded.

“Nothing!” Bickel said without turning.

Timberlake said, “Shouldn’t we …”

“Leave it alone!” Bickel snapped.

In a low voice, Prudence said, “I did it. I fed a question into the computer.”

“What question?” Bickel demanded. He pointed to a large meter above him. “Look at that current drain! I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I traced out sixty-eight sequential steps of fourth-order biochemical configuration. I programmed it as a comparator of optical isomers for a first step in trying to detect where and how our instincts are imprinted on us.”

“It’s gone into the monitor banks,” Bickel said, nodding at a new play of lights on the wall. “We’re getting multitrack reinforcement …”

“Like a man concentrating on a tough problem,” Timberlake said.

Bickel nodded.

The output beside Prudence began hissing as tape sped from it into the strip viewer.

Bickel whirled. “What’re you getting?”

She studied the viewer, forcing calmness. “A pyramided answer. I only asked for the first four probables. It’s already into the tenth step! It’s the nucleic acids, all right … down there with the genetic information. But it’s tracing out all the dead ends … the molecular weights and—”

“It’s talking it over with you,” Bickel said. “It’s asking your opinion. Cut in on it and eliminate the obvious dead ends as you see them.”

Prudence scanned back along the strip viewer, checked off useless sequences.
Hydrogen catalysis … obviously not. Too much opportunity for contamination.
She cut into the output tape, began deleting and feeding the tape back into the computer.

Output went suddenly silent, but the play of lights against the computer wall raised to a new frenzy. Power drain showed a new surge with a pulse in it.

“Are you feeding a resonant cycle into the system?” Prudence asked. She was surprised at how much effort it took to hold her voice level.

“That pulse is identical to the timing of the Ox’s response loops,” Bickel said.

As he spoke, the output beside Prudence renewed its chattering. Tape surged into the strip viewer.

Prudence stared at it silently.

“Well, what is it?’ Bickel demanded.

The output tape rolled to a stop. In the abrupt hush, Prudence said: “It’s linked to acid phosphatase … amino acid catalysis in the DNA coils.” And she made the functional comparison, relating this to her tests on her own body. Adrenochrome—if she filled out the OH to C
₅
H, i(n) … would that take it through the blood-brain barrier at a less-than-fatal dosage?

“Is it … conscious?” Flattery whispered.

Bickel looked up at the computer wall where lights were winking out, leaving only that somnolent play of telltales—green … mauve … gold …

“No,” Bickel said. “We’ve merely produced a computer that can program itself, concentrate all its bits of information on a problem … hunt for data even if that data comes from outside its banks. It
knew
when to ask a question of one of us.”

“And that isn’t conscious?” Timberlake demanded.

“Not the way we are,” Bickel said. “You have to ask it a question before it … comes to life.”

“Acid phosphatase,” Prudence mused. “What do we know about acid phosphatase?” She knew she was asking questions about the DNA language of life, questions pertinent to their consciousness problem. And she longed to confide in the others, discuss her experiments openly … but more than worry about the inhibitions of her companions held her to silence. In some way, she had gone too far down a road that she had to continue on … alone.

“Acid phosphatase is widely distributed in the body,” Flattery said. He turned, looked at Prudence as though seeing her for the first time. She would understand, of course—almost at once. He looked up to the screen at Timberlake and Bickel. They might have to have it explained to them. He returned his attention to Prudence. How thin and tired she looked.

Prudence nodded to herself, eyes glazed in thought. “Body chemisty, yes,” she said. “Male prostate’s rich in acid phosphatase. Males store more of it than females.”

And she thought:
Testosterone!
The male hormone’s level in the body was directly related to position in a hierarchy. Bickel would have the crew’s highest T-level.

Flattery spoke cautiously: “Body tissue requires a minimum level before a person can be awakened.”

She jerked upright, met his gaze. “An enzyme involved in the physiology of sex and awakening.” She turned away, thinking:
Sex and awakening.

“Is that what anti-S suppresses?” Bickel asked.

“Not directly,” Timberlake answered. “A-S works primarily on serum phenolsulfatase discrimination. It inhibits transfer and action.”

Timberlake, the life-systems specialist, the biophysicist, would see it, too,
Flattery thought.

Flattery looked into the screen, seeing Bickel standing there so silent and thoughtful, feeling a sudden pity for the man. Such a simple fact:
Awakening and sex are tied together.

Prudence kept her face turned toward the big control board, studied it without really seeing it. The ship could have gone into wild gyrations at the moment and she would have been seconds responding. As she had looked at Flattery, she had seen what he was thinking as though there were words written on his forehead.

Consciousness linked to reproduction.

There was no doubt of it: both came out of the same genetic well. History had washed them in the same waters, transferring the needs of one to the needs of the other.

Slowly, Bickel turned, looked through the screen at the big laser-pulsed autolog in Com-central recording the passage of Earth-time. It recorded eighteen weeks, twenty-one hours, and twenty-nine seconds. It clicked over another minute as he watched it.

For most of those pulse-counted minutes, Bickel thought, the Tin Egg’s crew had been under the pressures of a ship in peril. The danger was real, no matter its source or intent; he had only to study the report on damage accretion to confirm this. But the pressure on the umbilicus crew had started with the loss of the Organic Mental Cores. The pressure had started when they were no longer shielded by another consciousness.

For the first time, Bickel turned his thoughts onto the concept of consciousness as a shield—a way of protecting its possessor from the shocks of the unknown. It was an “I can do anything!” answer hurled at a universe that threatened you with
everything.

He lowered his attention to Flattery who still sat half cocooned in the action couch, and Bickel sensed defeat in the curve of the man’s shoulders and the set of his face.

Why is he so quick to accept defeat?
Bickel wondered.
It’s almost as though he wanted it.

The answer came to him on the heels of the question:
If you’re programmed for destruction, you have a need for destruction.
With a sense of growing awareness, Bickel turned to look at the Ox construction, focusing on the angles and blocks and the tangle of neuron connections.

But I’ve programmed this beast for violence!

Forcing himself to appear calm and natural, Bickel shifted the jackboard for a diagnostic check on the program, traced out the condition of the routine. His throat went dry as he scanned the readout.

The embryo he had placed at the Ox’s mercy—it was dead. No … dead was too simple a word for what had happened to that embryo. It had been disintegrated, torn asunder, broken down to its constituent molecules. The record was all here on the tapes and discs, betraying also the reason for the destruction.

Prue’s question!

The embryo had been subjected to a violent experiment in the computer’s search for information.

A violent and
useless
experiment. This certainly could not have produced much data—except for some of the more grossly apparent characteristics of acid phosphatase—and perhaps negative data about other biochemistry.

It’ll kill to get information,
Bickel thought.
It has an ability of sorts to accept motivation
—
if we give it
motivation.

Chapter 26

There’s a trait called initiative which is balanced against caution. Too tight a balance and you get oscillatory inaction, but that balancing act rides the wave of consciousness. All creatures display it in some form, but the sophisticated, symbol-juggling form displayed by humans has to be related to the kind of consciousness-answer we seek.

—Morgan Hempstead,
Lectures at Moonbase

Prudence wiped perspiration from her cheek, returned her attention to the big board. For almost half an hour now she had been dividing her attention between the board and Bickel. It drained her.

Bickel, working in the shop with Timberlake, obviously was caught in unspoken indecision, skirting all around it. Something had happened … something which Bickel refused to share with the rest of the crew. He went through the motions of refining that Ox-monstrosity, but something was making him fearful beyond any normal caution.

A telltale on the board flickered into the red.

“We’ve just lost another sensor,” Prudence said, reading the telltale. “ … at 4CtB
₅
K2.”

“Second
pi,
fourth ring and in behind number five shielding layer,” Timberlake said. “That’s damn close to the hyb tanks.”

“I’ll check it,” Flattery said, unlocking the bottom of his couch. He swung his feet to the deck, slipped his helmet forward, but left it unsealed.

“Is there a robox-R in that area?’ Bickel asked.

“What’s the difference?” Flattery asked. “By the time we found one and traced out the control sequence—”

“Are we going to check that sensor or aren’t we?’ Timberlake demanded. He glared into the screen at Flattery.

“I’m on my way,” Flattery said.
I mustn’t let Tim preempt this job,
he thought.
I
need the excuse to go past quarters for a quick check on what Bickel’s done. It’s something violent and dangerous. He has himself under very thin control.

“Raj,” Prudence said.

He turned at the hatch.

“That … thing down there in the shop
could
reproduce itself with no help from us. Every machine tool, every robox monkey, every muscle and sensor is programmed through the computer. Once the last tie-in is made …”

Flattery wet his lips with his tongue, ducked out through the hatch without answering her.

Why’n hell did she bring that up now?
Bickel wondered.

“That goddamn slowpoke,” Timberlake said. “I should’ve gone myself.”

Prudence shifted a corner of her board to monitor Flattery’s progress. She glanced up at the screen. Bickel was staring back past her at the hatch where Flattery had gone.

Raj was depressed at the thought of reproduction being linked to consciousness,
Bickel thought.
What Prudence told him should’ve lifted some of that depression. It didn’t.

A sense of foreboding poured through Bickel.

Programmed for destruction equals a need for destruction,
he thought.

What am I afraid of?
he wondered.
What new thing? The fact that the Ox could reproduce itself by using the tool tapes and mechanical muscles of the ship?

“Prue, do you have a fix on Raj?” Bickel asked.

“He has a prime repair dolly and he’ll be at the trouble spot in another minute or so,” she said. “I ran a continuity check on the …”

“No sense in that,” Bickel said. “The trouble’s in the sensor itself. The continuity net has hundreds of backups and alternate circuits. What failed, a heat sensor?”

“Multiple,” she said. “Heat-sound-visual.”

“That thing’s down near the temperature-control shutters in the baffle to the hyb tanks,” Timberlake muttered. “Too goddamn close to them. You getting any heat shifts on the other sensors?”

“Nothing significant,” she said.

Prudence flicked a switch, watching the shifting factors of temperature-weight-sound on her board, the telltales moving with Flattery. She hit another switch: “Raj, how much longer?’

Flattery’s voice came out of the overhead command vocoder: “Another minute or so.”

They waited in silence, listening to the sounds of Flattery’s progress through the open command vocoder.

Prudence activated a guide beam to the dead sensor as Flattery passed the water baffles.

“Baffles secure,” she said, reading her board.

“All secure,” Flattery said.

He dogged that last hatch, knowing the action would register in front of Prudence in Com-central. The action sent a faint fear response through him. He had symbolically cut himself off from the core of the ship.

I’ll fix this sensor and get back to quarters as soon as I can,
he told himself.
It’ll seem natural for me to stop off there on my way back. I have to find out what Bickel’s done, but I can’t make him suspicious.

Flattery turned, studied his surroundings. He stood in the bulb lock that served as a hub for outer-hull communications tubes in this sector. It was an oval for strength, about six meters across its short diameter, and seven meters deep. He oriented himself by the faint pull of ship gravity.

The nonfunctioning sensor was up a tube that curved off at two o’clock on his right. Tube eight, ring K. The number checked. The failure would be at the five-line. He stared into the pale gray metal gap illuminated by cold light. A green guide beam beckoned in the tube.

Prue remembered to set the guide beam,
he thought.

He took the repair dolly in his left hand, made the low grav leap across to the tube and caught its access rung. He pushed the dolly in ahead of him, setting its sensors on the printed track, fed it low power to pull him into the tube.

The autolock’s sphincter closed behind him. He suddenly remembered Anderson strangled in a rogue sphincter … but of course that was no problem now … with all the OMCs dead. The fact that one of the crew had to come out here and make this repair meant the dangers were of another sort.

“Something wrong?” Prudence asked, her voice filling his helmet.

She saw the telltales stop here,
Flattery thought. It gave him a feeling of reassurance that she was so alert to his movements—or lack of movements.

“Nothing wrong; just being cautious.”

“You want Tim to come out and back you up?” Prudence asked.

“I don’t need anyone to hold my hand!” Flattery snapped, and he wondered at the sudden anger he’d thrown into that rejection.

“You’re at Station Two,” Prudence said. “There’s video on Two. Check.”

Flattery glanced up at the ring of sensors on the tube, saw the one circled with yellow for video, waved at it as he passed.

The robox-R’s imprinted track curved up the tube side to clear the base bulge for the next automatic lock. He went through, looked back as the transparent shutters squeezed closed behind him. The ship’s core
felt
so far away back there.

He looked forward, letting the robox unit tow him with its faint hissing growl, letting the loneliness seep through him. With an OMC in control, an automatic robox repair unit could have been sent on this little chore. Mobility, that was the problem. Where there were fixed automatic repair units—along the outer hull and at the major bulkhead locks, at the baffles and core-integrity barriers—the ship took care of itself with only a little help from its crew. But let a little thing like this come up—where you needed mobility and a decision factor—then one of the crew had to risk himself.

Flattery cursed the Tin Egg’s designers then. Hate poured out of him. He knew why they had done this—the “planned increment of frustration” they called it. That was fine—as long as one of the ship’s designers didn’t have to experience the frustration … or the deadliness.

He was at Station Four now, coming up on Five.

“Station Five coming up,” he said. “Hey!” He cut the power on the robox, braked himself against the station’s ring, stared up at the overhead arc of sensors. A neat, shiny hole plugged with gray foam-coagulant occupied the position where the multi-sensor had been. The yellow-green-red code rings on the tube around the hole had not been touched. He swung his gaze around the tube and the other sensors. All appeared to be functioning.

Flattery thought then of the island on Puget Sound—missing mysteriously … personnel missing. He felt cold sweat around his shoulders.

Prudence’s voice filled his helmet: “Anything to report?”

He lowered the volume. “The multisensor seems to’ve been cut out in some way. It’s gone. The hole’s been plugged with foam.”

“No foam automatics in that area,” Prudence said.

“The thing’s been plugged with foam anyway!” Flattery was unable to hide the angry irritation in his voice.

Prudence suddenly said, “John, I’m getting a demand drain on the computer. Is it something you’re doing?’

“Nothing,” Bickel said.

Flattery turned his head in the helmet. Bickel’s voice had come in faintly as a pickup through Com-central.
Action in the computer!
Flattery forced himself to act calmly, removed a replacement sensor from his robox unit’s parts compartment, checked it. The thing was about three inches in diameter, containing a warp-type thermal detector, standard videye pickups like tiny jewels on its face, and three gridded ducts leading into the membrane of the audio unit.

Out of the corner of one eye, Flattery detected movement up the tube. He jerked upright, banged his head against the helmet liner, stared up toward Station Six.

A robox-R with its tool extensors clamped tightly to its sides was moving along the tape track toward him. The thing acted sick—speeding and slowing.

His first thought was that Prudence had traced the robox remote controls for a unit in this area and was maneuvering the thing from her board. The crudity of Com-central’s controls over the robox series would account for the unit’s erratic behavior.

“You bringing another robox in here, Prue?” Flattery asked.

“No, why?”

“There’s another robox-R coming down on this station,” he said.

As he watched, the thing lost the tape track, relocated it.

“There can’t be! Nothing at all shows on my board.”

The thing stopped across the sensor ring from Flattery. An auger extension jerked away from its side, reached toward the foam-plugged hole, withdrew.

“Who’s controlling that thing?” Flattery demanded.

“Not from here,” Prudence said. “And I can see both Tim and John. They’re not controlling it.”

“You still getting drain on the computer?” Flattery whispered.

“Yes.”

“Is the … Ox active?” Flattery asked.

“Only the original circuits,” Bickel said. “Through the AAT bypass. The new doubled units haven’t been connected.”

“There can’t be another robox in that area,” Prudence insisted. “We haven’t put any of the damn things on automatic. There’s nothing showing on my board. The remotes would take a day and a half at least to—”

“It’s right in front of me,” Flattery said.

He watched it, fascinated. A tool arm extended with an empty sensor socket, reached toward the foam-plugged hole, retreated. A claw arm came up next. It probed the foam, drew back with a swiftness that startled Flattery.

“What’s it doing?” Prudence asked.

“I’m not sure. It seems to be looking over the damage. Its vid-eyes are turned toward the hole. It acts like it can’t decide which tool to use.”

“What
can’t decide?” That was Timberlake, his voice faint over the Com-central relay from the shop.

“Try fixing the sensor yourself,” Bickel said.

Flattery swallowed in a dry throat. He lifted a feeler with a guide eye from the tool pouch on his own robox, probed into the foam plug looking for the leads from the conduit.

Instantly, a whiplike extension shot out of the other robox, trapped his arm, jerked it away. The pain in his arm where the thing had clamped on it was sharp and shocking. He dropped the tool, yelled.

“What’s wrong?” Prudence demanded.

The whiplike extension slowly unwound, released his arm.

“The thing grabbed me,” Flattery said. His voice was shaky with pain and surprise. “It used its circuit probe … grabbed my arm.”

“It won’t let you make the repair?” That was Bickel, his voice coming in loud over the helmet system, indicating he’d plugged into the command circuit from the shop.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Flattery said. And he wondered:
Why doesn’t one of us say what this thing has to be? Why’re we avoiding the obvious?

With an abrupt sense of purpose, the other robox reached out a claw arm, lifted the replacement sensor from Flattery’s left hand, matched sensor and socket. Another claw arm recovered the feeler guide, fitted it to the connections of its own circuit probe.

“What’s it doing now?” Bickel asked.

“Making the repair itself,” Flattery said.

The feeler came out of the hole pulling the leads.

“John, what’s showing on your meters?” Prudence asked.

“A slight pulse from the servo banks,” Bickel answered. “Very faint. It’s like the cycling echo of a test pulse. Are you still showing current drain in there? I don’t have it here.”

“Drain from the mains into the computer. You should be registering it.”

“Negative,” Bickel said.

“It just fitted the new socket and sensor into the hole,” Flattery said.

“It brought the correct spare parts?” Bickel asked.

“It took the sensor I brought,” Flattery said.

“It just took it from you?” Prudence asked.

“That’s right.”

“Prue, that test pulse is stronger,” Bickel said. “Are you sure nothing on your board is doing it?”

She scanned her console. “Nothing.”

“Job’s finished,” Flattery said. “What’s the big board show, Prue?”

“Sensor in service,” she said. “I can see you … and it.”

“Try touching that new sensor, Raj,” Bickel said.

“The thing damn near took my arm out the last time I tried that,” Flattery objected.

“Use a tool,” Bickel said. “Something long. You’ve got a telescoping radiation probe there.”

Flattery looked into his robox unit, removed the telescoping probe. He extended it to its limit, reached toward the sensor, touched it.