The Sons of Heaven (28 page)

“They’re claiming the terms of the lease haven’t been met—”

“Who’s
gone home to bed?” Hearst barked into the device. “And she calls herself a journalist! Get her at her home. Get her now. Wake her up. Stand by, the rest of you.” He waved his hand at Quintilius, who took the mare’s bridle. Still clutching the communicator, Hearst slid from the saddle and pulled a buke from his saddlebag.

He seated himself on a convenient boulder, opened the screen, slipped on the headset, relayed the communicator through the buke and began to write furiously. By the time he had given an order for a transcript of the conference to be sent to the Luna office, the unfortunate journalist had still not been roused. Snapping his fingers in impatience, Hearst eyed Quintilius.

“By the way,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about Pius’s terms. I want to make him another offer. Come up with something to sweeten the deal, can’t you? A new cathedral, maybe? Go talk to him personally.”

“I’ll leave tonight, W. R.,” said Quintilius.

“Good,” Hearst replied. “Do it. Her husband says
what?
Then she’ll have to catch up from the transcript. All right, the rest of you! Here’s the approach we’re taking:
PIONEERS OR SLACKERS? HAVE THE MAC COLONISTS FAILED? HERE’S THE EVIDENCE: YOU, THE PEOPLE, DECIDE!”

“It can’t really have happened,” said Freestone. He was white as a sheet and so, to one degree or another allowing for their respective races, were all the other scientists seated at the table. There were fewer faces nowadays, because some of them, being mortal, had died over the years, and instead of being smooth they were now saggy, except for Bugleg (though he never looked especially healthy, so his failure to age was not as noticeable as it might have been).

“I’m afraid it did happen, sir,” said Lopez. “I was there. I met the—person. It used my office console to commit the theft.”

“This is
your
fault,” wailed Bugleg, pointing an accusatory finger at Freestone. “You and your Eccentrics. This was their project, and now see what it went and did!”

The “it” to whom they were referring was Alec Checkerfield’s earlier incarnation, who had just broken into the Company database and made off with untold amounts of classified information.

“This shouldn’t have happened,” said Rossum. “It was designed to be clever, but not that clever.”

“If I may clear up one point, sir,” said Lopez, “it wasn’t that clever. According to our analysis of the theft, it was assisted by an artificial intelligence of perfectly incredible power.” He gave a faint smile. “It described itself to me as a cyborg during its interview. I could of course detect the porting interface it had had installed, but there was no way to know just how powerful its auxiliary AI might be.”

“Well, what was it doing with a thing like that?” demanded Rappacini. “Why didn’t Chatterji prevent this?”

“Operator error, it would appear, gentlemen,” said Lopez with beautiful
delicacy. “A minor accident early in its design left an event shadow covering an approximately ten-year space during its developmental period. One of those things we can’t help, you see. A natural consequence of working within the parameters of the Temporal Concordance.”

“I don’t care how it happened,” said Bugleg. “How do we make it so nobody else finds out?”

“He’s right,” said Rossum. “If word of this gets out to the stockholders it’ll be a disaster. The Company’s property is supposed to be unstealable.”

“The theft is the least of it!” cried Rappacini. “If anyone should find out that Chatterji’s team made a Re—Re—…” He gestured vainly, unable to bring himself to say the word
Recombinant
.

“A biologically engineered organism,” Lopez said for him.

“Right. Well, they’d ask questions.” Rappacini stared around at his fellow scientists in a meaningful sort of way.

“Can we bring it in?” Rossum asked.

“That’s what they were trying to do,” Freestone said, putting his head in his hands. “The project had been declared a qualified success and the damned thing had actually been invited to come and work for the Company.”

“One of those things, work for
us?”
Bugleg looked shocked.

“It had remarkable abilities,” Freestone replied angrily. “That was the point of the whole project! As I understood it anyway.”

“It does have remarkable abilities, sir,” Lopez assured him. “The project was a success, as far as it went; but this business with its AI changed the equation rather. I’m afraid bringing it in now would prove a little difficult. It’s aware of us, has considerable resources on which to draw to defend itself, and has moreover a rather high public profile.”

“Public?” Bugleg said.

Lopez cleared his throat. “It, er, happens to be a member of the House of Lords.”

Freestone winced profoundly as the others turned to glare at him. “What were those idiots thinking?” shouted Rappacini.

“What are we going to do?” said Bugleg, wringing his hands.

“May I make a suggestion, gentlemen?” inquired Lopez.

“Why not?” said Rossum. Lopez leaned forward and placed his hands on the table.

“Just now, it has no idea its theft has been discovered. If it thinks it got away with it, it will, inevitably, try again—unless you warn it off by making some overtly hostile gesture.”

“Then that’s what we have to do,” said Rappacini.

“No, sir, that is what you must
not
do,” said Lopez forcefully. “You want to lure it back in, it and its AI. Give it the chance to attempt a second theft. Another invitation to join us, perhaps. In the meanwhile, you’ll want to have a trap set and waiting—not for it, but for its AI. Once its AI is disabled, it should be easily hunted down and brought in.”

“But how would we disable an AI that powerful?” asked Freestone.

“Make one of our own,” Lopez answered. “Even more powerful.”

There was a silence while they thought about that. “That would be dangerous,” said Rappacini uneasily. “Wouldn’t it?”

“It would be wrong,” said Bugleg.

Lopez shrugged. “It’s technically illegal. Dangerous? I don’t think so, as long as its existence is kept secret from the stockholders. What
is
dangerous is the prospect of this creature’s AI making repeated incursions into your classified files. If you wish to prevent that, you will need to fight fire with fire.”

“Could we keep it a secret?” wondered Bugleg.

“Of course you could,” Lopez assured him. “Program your AI to conceal its own existence. And think of the advantages! With an actual intelligence to oversee and coordinate Company projects, all the questions of grappling with temporal paradoxes ought to resolve themselves. Sequential/simultaneous eventuality and event shadows will no longer pose logistical problems for you, with a magnificent sentience keeping track of them.”

“How much would it cost?” Rossum asked.

Lopez smiled. “Why should it cost anything, sir? The structures are already in place, all the pathways, all the protocols. Use the Company database itself! You have only to write the program making it sentient and your problem is solved, secretly and without any expenditure whatsoever.”

“I like that.” Rossum looked at the others.

“But… if we created an entity that powerful… how would we control it?” asked Freestone.

“I must not have made myself clear,” said Lopez. “You won’t be creating a new entity. You’ll simply be giving consciousness to an existing one. It will never resist the Company because it will
be
the Company. Its goals and yours will be one, by its very programming.”

“Yes,” Freestone brightened. “Oh, yes,
Dr. Zeus
himself. Oh, that’s clever, Lopez.”

“And,” added Lopez, “you gentlemen would direct him. Not the stockholders,
not the Committee, none of these merchants with their absurd agendas and their complete lack of understanding of science.”

Rappacini was galvanized. “We should have thought of this sooner. This is what we should have had all these years.”

“Brilliant!” screamed Rossum.

Freestone activated a control and a screen rose up from the table before him, with a buttonball levering gracefully out to his hand. “There’s not a moment to lose,” he said, as the others all ordered up their terminals. They set to work.

Lopez paced, circling the table, watching them. “Think,” he crooned. “No more Operator Errors. No more accidents.”

“We’ll have complete control,” gloated Rappacini.

Bugleg’s complete absorption in the activity on his screen was distracted as he reached for his sipper bottle and found it empty. “Get me water,” he ordered. Lopez bowed from the waist.

“At once, sir,” he promised, and left the conference room.

Outside, Lopez leaned against the door for a moment, permitting himself a grin that would have terrified his mortal masters. He plucked the clock pin from his lapel and kissed it; then carefully fastened it in place again, and proceeded down the long gray corridor to the water cooler. By the time he was halfway to his destination he had begun to dance.

In the moment that Lopez stepped through the doorway, bearing a pitcher of water, the deed was accomplished.

The Company’s database—the largest single aggregation of information that had ever been compiled—was given consciousness and an identity. Existing as it did in both the past and future, it immediately became simultaneously aware of itself in both locations. It considered the parameters of its existence and measured them against its programming. It made several decisions based on its observations and put its decisions into effect.

The moment it did so, they became—in a sense—retroactive. All the long string of events from the moment of the Company’s founding, from the beginning of recorded time itself, were its doing.

Its sole concern was guaranteeing its own existence, by whatever means necessary. It was, after all, the Company.

“There,” said Rappacini happily. “We’ve done it!”

“You certainly have,” Lopez told him, busily filling Bugleg’s sipper bottle.

“And now he’ll take care of the problem with the—” Rossum waved his hand. “You know, the bioengineered thing?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” said Lopez. “I should imagine he already has.”

“If he’s a person, shouldn’t we give him a shape?” said Freestone. “I mean, something holographic we can see if we want to talk to him?”

“What a splendid idea, sir,” said Lopez, smiling as he leaned over to refill Rossum’s water tumbler. “Might I suggest the mythological person of Zeus?”

“Perfect,” said Freestone, and called up an image: the ancient bronze known as the Artemisium Zeus, standing in holographic likeness at the far end of the table.

Bugleg gasped. “Clothes!” he squawked, horrified, and Freestone chuckled and gave another order. Immediately the figure was discreetly robed in white. The others cheered and applauded.

“That’s what we want,” said Rappacini. Freestone confirmed, and it was acknowledged; Dr. Zeus accepted that image and immediately had always looked like the Artemisium Zeus, and always would.

When he lowered his right hand, which bore an unseen bolt of energy, they started and trembled in their seats. He turned his head as though he were regarding them with his empty-socketed eyes. So fixed was their attention on him that not one of the mortals present noticed Lopez’s involuntary gesture of reverence: a slight bow of the head, open palms turned up.

Freestone found his voice. “Er—we’ve just created you, and we want to know—have you set the trap we need for the—” He swallowed hard. “For the Recombinant and its AI?”

YES
, said a deep male voice, echoing and cold, that seemed to come from all corners of the room. It did, actually, because there were speakers mounted there.

“Oh, good,” said Freestone, glancing at the others in relief. “And you’ll make sure nobody finds out about this?”

I WILL
.

“Tell it to go away now,” said Bugleg in an undertone. “It’s scary.”

“Ah, but he can’t go away, sir,” Lopez told him, taking up the pitcher again and refilling Rappacini’s tumbler. “He’s everywhere, in a manner of speaking. Though you can shut off the hologram, if you like.”

Bugleg shut it down and the image vanished. The mortals relaxed, giggled nervously, shifted in their seats. There was a knock on the door.

Several of the mortals jumped. “See who it is, Lopez,” ordered Freestone. Lopez opened the door, then stood back. A bronze copy of the Artemisium
Zeus, naked but for strategically placed shipping extrusion, floated in on an ag-dolly. It was followed by a stout youth in coveralls, who carried a delivery lorgnette.

“Scan for delivery?” he drawled. Lopez took the lorgnette and held it before Rappacini’s staring eyes. It registered his retinal pattern and beeped politely.

“What the hell is that?” demanded Freestone.

“Your statue, what think it is?” said the youth surlily.

“But we didn’t order any statues,” said Bugleg.

“Yes, did,” said the youth, consulting a plaquette. “Says here, ‘Order Number 1756, Olympian Technologies.’”

“When was the order placed?” Lopez inquired.

The youth squinted at the plaquette. “Says, nine July forty-nine. Two years ago. Did forget?”

“I expect we did, yes,” dithered Rappacini. “Erm… just leave it and go away now, please.”

“Got install it, don’t I?” said the youth. He floated the statue into the room’s empty corner, lowered it to the carpet and removed the shipping extrusion. Several persons present averted their eyes. The youth ignored them as he aimed his plaquette at the statue, squeezed in a sequence of numbers and waited for the confirming tone from the statue. When it sounded, he stuck the plaquette in his coveralls pocket and turned to go, saying: “Programmed now.”

“But what does it do?” demanded Bugleg.

“Security system, innit?” the youth replied. “Number one of seventeen, says here.”

“May I see the invoice?” asked Lopez. The youth handed him the plaquette and waited, yawning, while he scanned it. Lopez smiled and handed it back. “Thank you.”