Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

Allen-Shipman Research Facility

St. George Street

Toronto, Canada

Evening, Monday 11 September, 2062

Elspeth slid a holographic crystal out of the outdated reader and tapped her interface off. She really ought to make a stab at transferring the data to more modern storage devices. I could probably stretch that out over at least three days if I worked at it. Valens is going to get cranky if I keep reviewing the old data. I wonder if he’s figured out that I’m stalling.

I wonder if I can justify starting over from scratch. New personalities. I could pick ones that seem to fit the criteria but are somehow subtly wrong to develop into true AIs.

I could. If I had any real solid clue what it was that made Feynman different from the rest. As it is, I’ve got just as much chance of building Valens his AI by accident as on purpose. And I am not handing the man a slave intelligence. Not if I can help it. She sighed and set the crystal on her desk, scrubbing her hands across her face before she reached for her mug. Cold tea, smelling of ashes. She drank it anyway, and wiped the mug out with her handkerchief.

She set it down once clean and rattled her fingers on the edge of her desk, away from the interface. The memory of Gabe Castaign bending over her outside the coffee shop that morning and dropping half a kiss on the corner of her mouth rose up to trouble her. She wondered if she could call him, and decided there was time enough to worry about it when an old friend hadn’t just blown in from out of town.

“All right,” she said at last, pushing her chair back to stand. “Tomorrow I’ll think about this.”

“Think about what, Doctor Dunsany?”

Elspeth was in the habit of leaving her office door open, because she could. She looked up to see Alberta Holmes, resplendent in gold and navy blue with matching shoes, primly framed in the doorway. “Doctor Holmes. Come in. I was just about to head out for the night.”

“We can talk tomorrow if you prefer. And please, I’m a Ph.D. — I don’t need to be called ‘Doctor’ outside of a classroom.” The Unitek VP came a step farther in.

“I’d rather get it out of the way,” Elspeth said, wincing as she heard the tone of her own voice. She wondered if the visit had something to do with her own brief conversation with Gabe’s friend at lunchtime. “I’m on my way to the hospital.”

“How is your father?” Alberta strolled across the forest-green carpeting.

Elspeth picked up the crystal and went around her desk the opposite way, bending to replace it in its rack. “As well as can be expected,” she answered. “I don’t expect he’ll see Christmas. I appreciate what you’ve done for him, however. And for me.” She was surprised at how level her voice sounded, even to her own ears.

“We — appreciate — the compromises you’re making on our behalf. I’m very glad I caught you here, actually. I’m going over Colonel Valens’s head a bit to tell you this, but I’m in favor of full disclosure. Expecting scientists to work with partial information is, well, silly. And Fred should know that.” Alberta tilted her head inquiringly as Elspeth straightened from replacing Woolf’s crystal in the rack.

Something uncoiled in Elspeth’s belly. As if drawn by an invisible thread, she took a step toward Alberta. “Full disclosure?”

Alberta nodded, pulled a data slice out of her pocket, and pressed it to the reader on Elspeth’s desk. “Here.”

Frowning, Elspeth came forward and placed her thumb on the interface plate, keying her monitor back on. “What is it?”

“Data on the project we need the AIs for. Assuming you can make some for us. By the way, I’d like for you to avoid Casey for a while. She’s not well, as you saw, and she’s under a tremendous amount of emotional stress. We have no objection to you socializing with coworkers outside the program. But — assuming Colonel Valens can do it — we want to see to her medical needs before we start confusing the issue.”

Message received. Stay out of the way until we know where the potential loose cannon is pointing. Elspeth nodded. “As you wish,” and turned to the image projector.

Light flickered for a moment, and an image — a machine? a space station? — resolved itself in the air over Elspeth’s desk. “Lights out,” she said absently, leaning forward. “What’s that supposed to be?” She poked at the hologram with a finger, expecting it to expand to show detail of the section she indicated, where a fat revolving disk connected to an axle or a shaft.

It enlarged, indeed, and also peeled back, showing cross sections. “A spaceship?”

“A starship,” Alberta corrected, smiling. “That’s the Indefatigable. It doesn’t exist.”

“Design schematic? And what’s the difference? Spaceship, starship…”

“What you see before you is a VR mockup. It’s designed so that it simulates the real thing almost exactly, in handling capabilities, schematics, and so forth. You do know about the Chinese colony ships launched over the last seven or ten years?”

“The so-called generation ships? Yes, I do.” Elspeth picked up her teacup again, forgetting it was empty. It would have been hard to miss the portentous announcements, the media frenzy, the images of red flags in serried ranks snapping in a crisp spring breeze. Even in jail. She didn’t raise her eyes from the display. “Between their space program and the military actions… Well. I suppose we should expect an invasion of Russia any day now.”

“Irrelevant, but yes. This ship, the Indefatigable . As I said, it doesn’t really exist.” She reached out and tapped up another display. “Since governments got out of the space game, everything has to pay for itself. Corporations won’t gamble money where there’s no return. But smart companies, forward-looking ones, have always known that sometimes you can’t see where the money is going to come from. And if the Chinese are going to the stars, then we bloody well are, too.”

This image was lower resolution, but Elspeth somehow found her breath caught in her throat. Something about how the hard sunlight of space played along the curve of what must have been an enormous wheel… She set the teacup down on her interface panel, uncaring. It clicked on the cool crystal.

“And the difference between a spaceship and a starship… lies in how far away they’re intended to go,” Alberta continued after a momentary pause. “This one does exist. Did. You’re looking at Le Québec . She was destroyed on her first test flight.”

“Destroyed?” That brought Elspeth’s chin up. She blinked for focus, meeting Alberta’s peculiarly intense eyes.

Alberta smiled. “Pilot error. Pilot inadequacy, more exactly.” Rapidly, she flicked through more images. “This one is the Li Bo, taken by telescope. Also destroyed, as was her predecessor, the Lao Zi. ”

“Ah. So. I sense a naming trend — those are Chinese ships?”

“Yes. This is Huang Di . She’ll be ready for launch by the end of the year.”

“How do you know that?”

“We have assets. So do they. We need to be able to test our second ship by New Year’s.”

Elspeth thought about it for a moment only. “You need a better pilot? How fast does that thing go?”

Alberta ignored the question. “We visualize a tailored-human/AI team. We’ll use drugs and nano-and biotherapies to improve the human pilot’s response times, although there are some medical barriers to that. The AI, of course, can respond at processor speeds, but we’d like to keep a human involved because of judgment calls. And also, well, there’s a trust issue.”