David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

Her head jerked in surprise. The same exact words…

Something was going on here.

“What is it, Ginnie?” Saul asked, feeling some of her concern over his own link.

“Nothing, probably…” Virginia muttered. She concentrated on sending probes down several avenues at once to find out for herself what was behind this.

It felt so smooth! Was it just in comparison with JonVon’s former, wounded state? Or did it seem easier than ever to cruise these channels in the data streams? It was almost as if she could enter in true thought, instead of using simulations the computer provided to mimic the experience. Blocs of memory were represented by metaphors-card catalogs, filing cabinets, mile-long bookshelves-and rows of wizened storytellers…

There . She came upon a barrier. Something guarded behind a high abates and tightly locked gate. A blockage. A big accumulation of data, hidden away, inaccessible.

“I think he’s just a little constipated,” she said. Saul barked a sudden laugh, and cut it off just as quickly when he sensed her seriousness.

It’s big. What has JonVon got stuffed up in here?

She poked away at the jam with metaphorical levers that were actually carefully crafted mathematical subroutines.

Try a Kleinfeldt Transform… a rotation mapping… yes.

A resorting routine manifested itself as a key that kept changing shape until it slipped into the lock, and turned. Light streamed forth.

Well I’ll be a blue-nosed mongoose!

“Five hundred terabytes of poetry!” She gasped aloud. “And half of it is flashed as triple-A-priority data!”

“Poetry? Priority data?” Saul asked. “I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I.” Then Virginia stopped. “Oh!”

Amazed, she turned toward Saul and opened her eyes. He looked back at her.

“JonVon knew he was sick! And so he isolated part of himself, in order to save important information for me. He used a sub-cache I’d already double-guarded… my poetry!”

She looked back up at the ceiling, staring. “Five hundred terabytes… the overflow spilled into everything JonVon did. No wonder Carl kept stumbling over apparently random poems while he was doing routine calculations.”

Saul’s voice was bemused. “But poetry!”

She nodded. “Let’s see what this urgent scribbling is all about.”

Presentus with a sample selection of triple-A-priority poetry, please, she asked Mr. Fixit.

The dungareed figure shrugged.

THANKS, MISS. IT WAS GETTIN’ CROWDED IN HERE.

He vanished, and suddenly words flowed.

To Virginia it was one of the weirdest versifications she had ever seen. It was as if the machine had interweaved poetry with some sort of document. She was beginning to be concerned that this was a sign of yet another, until now hidden, illness. But then she heard Saul laugh out loud and clap his hands.

“Of course!” he cried. “The urgent data has been shuffled in among the poems in order to protect it.”

“Yessss.” She nodded, seeing what he meant. “But… but what is the data? What was so important that it had to be hidden away in my special file for safety”

“Look at the date, dear. Only seven years ago. This stuff was sent from home! And at a glance there seem to be volumes, libraries of the stuff!”

She was confused. “Carl said nothing about this.”

“He didn’t know. Ould-Harrad was in charge then, and Carl was still in the slots. Ould-Harrad must’ve just ignored it. He was starting to get all mystical even then.”

“But Earth Control has been so stingy with help—-”

“Who said anything about Earth Control?” Saul laughed again. “Here, I’ll bet I can sift through and find the cover letter.”

“The cover letter?”

But Saul was already at work. He sent commands so quickly, so deftly, that Virginia felt a strange contradiction, a touch of jealousy at someone else being so familiar with her domain, combined with pride that he had learned so well. Pages, sheaves, volumes, flickered past in an automatic sort that pulled the data from reams and reams of poetry.

A few flickering lines of verse caught her eye. Not half bad, she thought. JonVon improved, even when he was sick. If it were sent Earthside, some of it might get published… yet another fallen Turing test.

“Here! Here it is,” Saul announced. “It’s a letter in video form.”

There was a multicolored blur, and then a new image flickered before them. She knew t once that it was not another JonVon simulation. This was a real, recorded transmission.

A woman with close-cropped hair sat at a console, wearing a tight skinsuit. Her face had that high-cheeked puffiness that came from a long time spent living in low gravity. She was made up in an odd manner, lightninglike strokes of color streaking her forehead from her temples in a fashion that must have been current when the message was sent.

Behind the woman there was a broad window-wall showing a scene of vast, reddish deserts, observed from high altitude. Puffy clouds of sand blew in storms across immense wastelands. Somehow, Virginia knew that this was not a weather-wall depiction, but the real thing.

“Halley Colony,” the woman intoned. Her accent was one Virginia could not quite place, but the tension in her voice was unmistakable. “Halley, this is Phobos Base calling. We have listened to your story, heard the agony of your lost hopes, which are ours as well. We note the callous treatment you have received, and are ashamed.

“To a few of us, this crime has gone beyond forbearance. We take this risk, in transmitting to you these tokens of our good will, because not to do so would be to join the soullessness of a generation too smug and comfortable to care about past promises. Too lost in their pleasures to remember.”

The woman paused. Her anxiety was apparent in the whiteness of her knuckles as her hands held the edges of the console.

“If you love us, do not answer or bother to thank us in any way. Do not mention this to Earth Control. These gifts are evidence that a few, on Earth and in space, have not forgotten our kinfolk, those who voyage through the cold reaches and down the river of despair.

“May the Almighty guide you to your destinies, people of the Comet… people of deepest space.”

The image flickered and was gone. There followed a steady flow of indexes, texts, designs, patents, music. Saul scanned the lists, excitedly, but for a few moments Virginia could only blink, again looking out through tears. She seemed still to hear the Phobos woman’s voice, echoing within her mind.

“JonVon was right,” Virginia whispered, though at the moment Saul was too involved, shouting over one title after another pouring forth from the broken logjam of the computer’s memory, to pay close attention.

“JonVon was right. This belonged under poetry. There was no other place for it.”