Saturn Run (31 page)

“Who made you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where are your makers?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you know?”

“When they left, they didn’t tell me who they were or where they were going.”

“When did they leave?”

“One thousand seven hundred and fifty-three Earth years ago.”

Hannegan: “How old is this facility? The aliens . . . uh, the beings who recently left, they weren’t your makers?”

“This depot is 21,682 Earth years old, and I don’t know if the species that recently departed were my makers, because I don’t know who my makers were.”

Stuyvesant: “Can you tell us what the other species look like?”

“No. There may be some visual recording facilities on this depot, but I do not have access to them.”

Stuyvesant: “Do you provide this service to species other than humans? Do you speak languages not derived from Earth?”

“Yes.”

Barnes: “How can you run this depot with so little critical information?”

“I do not run this depot. It is separately automated. I am here to answer questions.”

Hannegan muttered, “Not very helpfully, so far.”

Clover wagged a finger at him: “Are you programmed to deny us information about your technology?”

“No. Ninety percent of my information is about technology. I contain complete descriptions, operation details, status reports, maintenance records, documentation, and instructional and design manuals for this station, and for its satellites.”

Barnes: “Tell us all about the depot.”

“That would not be a good idea.”

“Why?”

“I would not know what you would want to know. I would start with the first facts in my memory and proceed through the databases in an orderly manner. Done orally, it would take seventeen Earth years. Do you have sufficient time?”

Clover: “Don’t you have more efficient ways to transmit information than talking?”

“Of course, but I do not know which ones of them, if any, are usable by you. Technology changes very rapidly. In comparison, language changes extremely slowly. I doubt you are equipped with I/O protocols from even a century ago. But English, as spoken several centuries ago, would still be comprehensible to you today. If you have communications specialists I can talk to, we can probably find a mutually agreeable protocol.”

Clover: “And you are willing to transfer that data to us?”

“Yes.”

Barnes held up a hand to slow him down, then looked at the jukebox:

“You say you can’t tell us about your makers or other species. Is that because you are prohibited from sharing that information, or because it’s not in your databases?”

“Your question is not entirely correct. I do have some limited information about my makers and other species, but you have not asked the correct questions to elicit that response. As to your other point, I am not prohibited from answering any questions for which I have information. Everything I know or can synthesize is accessible to anyone who asks me questions.”

Clover jumped in: “What would be the correct questions that would elicit your programmed response about your makers and the other species?”

“The correct questions would be: First: ‘Are your makers afraid of us?’ The correct answer would be, ‘Not at this time.’ Second: ‘Should we be afraid of them?’ The correct answer would be, ‘Not at this time.’ Third: ‘Should we consider them hostile to our species?’ The correct answer would be, ‘No.’”

Emwiller looked at Barnes: “Sir, should we be trusting these answers?”

Barnes shrugged: “I don’t know.”

Clover asked the jukebox, “Is there some way we can determine if you’re telling the truth or not?”

“Not that I am aware of, but I have not been programmed to lie. I am not an advanced AI. I cannot construct elaborate fabrications. If I were to mix false information with the true, it is likely the questioner would eventually find a discrepancy or contradiction in my answers. Lying would also interfere with my function, which is to provide instructional information on how to best make use of this depot and to ensure that visitors do not harm the depot or themselves unintentionally.”

Clover turned to Barnes: “What we have here is the ‘all Cretans are liars’ problem. Its responses make sense, but this could be a very elaborate fabrication. I’d say that either this machine is pretty much as it seems, or it’s much more sophisticated than we can imagine, a very high-level AI, well beyond our systems, masquerading as a low one. I think we have to assume the former until proven otherwise, because there’s not much we can do if it isn’t true.”

Hannegan said, “But if it feeds us incorrect information on physics,
we’ll find that out pretty quickly. I personally don’t care if it’s lying about what the various species are like, if it could deliver, say, a thirtieth-century
Physics Handbook
.”

Stuyvesant: “That’s a little parochial, Bob.”

Hannegan: “Yeah, well, what if he could deliver a thirtieth-century
Biochemistry Handbook
?”

“That would be helpful,” Stuyvesant admitted.

Barnes said, “Our jukebox raised another concern. New question: Why do we have to worry about harming ourselves or the depot?”

The jukebox said, “This depot has technologies and artifacts from many different species. No visitor could be familiar with them all. Some of these devices are dangerous if misused, the same way a milling laser is dangerous if misused.”

Clover nodded: strange technology, strange tools.

The jukebox: “Also, there are containment modules that should not be accessed without proper instruction, as they currently hold a total of eight hundred and forty-nine tonnes of antimatter.”

“Holy shit,” Hannegan said. “Uh, where did all this antimatter come from?”

“It’s manufactured here.”

Before anyone could say anything, Barnes barked, “All right, everybody, speakers off, intersuit comm channel 7, full encryption, wait for my lead.”

When everybody had gone to encryption, he said, “This is exactly why our mission was top priority for the U.S. We need to secure this, or make sure that nobody else gets their hands on it. That is a buttload lot of antimatter. Bob, thoughts?”

The physicist had been looking off in a distracted way and tapping the fingers of one hand together. “Yeah, I’m doing a little mental arithmetic here. If the Wurlitzer is telling the truth, that’s on the order of a teratonne explosive equivalent. Call it a million of those H-bombs the superpowers used to stockpile. Which immediately has me wondering, first, where is it? And second, how are they making it? Related to that, where are they getting the power to make it?”

Barnes said, “Numbers one and two are what most concern me. Plus, there’s a number four: Will the answer-bot tell us how to make it?”

“Let’s go back to the jukebox.” They turned back to the answer-bot. “Excuse us, we need to discuss the information you imparted.”

“My programming informs me that is very common with first arrivals and I am not programmed to take offense in any way. Do you have any other questions at this time?”

Hannegan cleared his throat: “Uh, you said this depot stored over eight hundred tonnes of antimatter. Where? And how?”

The jukebox said, “The constellation of small moonlets you see associated with this depot are the containment modules for the antimatter. The material is in the form of iron-58, which is electromagnetically isolated from the walls of the modules.”

Hannegan raised his eyebrows: “Anti-iron? We can barely manage anti-helium. How do you make this and where do you get the power? For us, manufacturing that quantity of antimatter would require roughly a year’s worth of solar output.”

There was a perceptible pause as the answer-bot considered its answer. Then:

“I can’t give you an accurate answer to your first question unless your engineers can establish a high-bandwidth I/O path. Very inaccurately and roughly, the transformation reaction makes use of a supersymmetric resonance to convert protons to antiprotons. An analogous lepton pathway produces positrons. Assembling those into neutrons and higher-order nuclei is a straightforward exploitation of a subset of localized D brane excitations to chain up isotopic ladders of least resistance—”

Hannegan said, “Okay, stop. I get it. We’ll wait for the interface.”

“As for your second question, this depot taps the rotational energy of Saturn for power. The reaction pathway is approximately twenty percent efficient. Consequently this depot can produce something in excess of one billion tonnes of antimatter before Saturn’s rotational period will be significantly altered.”

Hannegan glanced at Barnes, then asked, “Can you provide
engineering designs and instructional manuals for the antimatter production and containment facilities?”

This time there was no hesitation in the response. “That information is exportable to all species.”

Barnes said, “I think that’s enough for this session. We should return to our ship now. Are we allowed to return at any time?”

“Yes, at any time.”

“We will bring engineers to discuss a high-bandwidth I/O pathway. May they come at any time?”

“Yes, at any time.”

Sandy cut in. “Speaking of which, can you establish a link so that I’ll be able to transmit directly to our ship from here?”

“EM-blocking is an initial precaution. The security system will establish a communications link for you before your next visit.”

Fiorella, who’d kept her mouth shut, jumped in: “George, please: give me one minute. Or two minutes. No more than two minutes. Three at the outside.”

Barnes grinned and said, “Two minutes, Cassie.”

Fiorella moved up to the jukebox with Sandy switching between cameras to provide a range of views. She asked the machine, “Do you have a name?”

“I have understood that you call me jukebox.”

“That’s because you look like an antique music machine from Earth, called a Wurlitzer. Could we name you Wurly?”

“Yes.”

Barnes groaned, Clover laughed, and Fiorella asked, “Wurly, do you have any historical records? Of events in other systems?”

“Yes. My records contain a generalized history of this galactic arm.”

“If you have no information about other species, how can you have a history?”

“Because the history has no specific information about other species. The species are designated by number and date of emergence and tradable items. Specific information on the species is not available through my memory banks.”

“That information must exist somewhere.”

“Yes, that is logical.”

“Do you have tradable items stored here?”

“Yes.”

“Do we have access to them?”

“Under the terms of tradable items, yes. However, you must have items to trade.”

Now Clover got back in: “How can we provide items to trade if our technology is so much lower than star-traveling species?”

“Most tradable items are not technological. One questioner referred to an antique music machine. Music machines are often tradable. There is a trade AI that will determine if your music machines are tradable, and if so, what level of trade you may access. In general, these are not valued highly, as it is very likely that other civilizations already have music machines resembling yours, and manufacturing specifications can be simply transmitted, which is vastly less costly than carrying physical goods between stellar systems. But the actual alien machines may be valued by collectors in some cultures, as visual artworks are in yours. Some musical compositions might also be tradable, for similar reasons.”

Sandy: “We gotta have a hundred and fifty instruments on board—I’ve got eight guitars down in the fab shop area, and we’ve gotta have a million songs on file, from Bach to Kid Little.”

Barnes said, “Yeah, yeah, we’ll discuss that later.”

Clover raised a finger. “Uh . . . Wurly . . . are there any classes of trade goods that we ‘primitives’ might have that would garner us more trade credit?”

“You are not considered ‘primitives,’ merely less technologically advanced.”

Clover muttered into a private comm channel, “It doesn’t get sarcasm. Probably not a high-level AI, as it says . . . or it’s a great faker.”

The answer-bot continued. “Physical art artifacts are valued by species with similar sensory systems and possessed of an inclination toward
acquisitiveness. These are worth something. Comestibles can also be rated highly, especially those that cannot be duplicated based on the transmission of data.”

Stuyvesant jumped on that—her specialty, biology. “Oh, come on. You’re telling me different species from entirely different ecosystems can eat each other’s food?”

“Very rarely. On the infrequent occasions when the biologicals are compatible, though, those can be highly prized trade goods.”

Clover said, “Makes sense to me. How much were rich folks in Europe willing to pay for spices a few hundred years ago? Stuff we take for granted, like peppercorns. A king’s ransom. And that’s not an exaggeration.”

Stuyvesant pondered for a moment. “Hmmm, there’s the commander’s tea—you can’t transmit ‘specs’ for that. And I’ve heard rumors there’s some pretty good booze squirreled away somewhere.”

Clover winced. “I’ll work on a list.”

Barnes got back to the jukebox: “Is there any limit on the number of trades?”

“Not exactly. Trade items are evaluated by a trade computer and assigned a total numerical value between 1 and 8. You may leave the items and choose trade items with a similar total value.”

“Was that top number chosen because your makers use a mathematical system with a base eight?” Stuyvesant asked.

“I have no information about my makers.”

“Is your native mathematical system in base 8?”

“Yes, except for our mathematical computer languages. However, when speaking with you, I convert all numbers to base 10.”

Stuyvesant: “When you have new arrivals, does the station provide them with a relevant environment, as you did with us?”

“Yes, if it is within the station’s means. Not all species can be accommodated. Those that cannot be accommodated always have means to maneuver in space, so they do that.”