Frank Herbert - Destination - Void

Prudence: "And you think our computer has enough... experiences for that kind of comparison?"

Bickel: "It will have when we're through with it."

And Flattery thought: Black box - white box.

Prudence: "Aren't you likely to overload the computer, bog it down?"

Bickel: "For Chrissakes, woman! You personally receive all kinds of information constantly. Doesn't your own system sort through all that information, queue it up, program it, and evaluate the data?"

Prudence: "But the Tin Egg's very existence depends on the computer. If we blunder with..."

Bickel: "There's no other way. You should've realized that the instant you saw this whole ship was a set piece."

Prudence (angrily): "What do you mean? Why?"

Bickel: "Because the computer's the only place where that amount of information can be stored. You see, woman, we don't have time to train a completely uneducated infant."

Before she could answer, the transmission horn blared its warning. The AAT stood on manual bypass to keep its circuits from interfering with the work in the shop. The horn's trigger fired both Bickel and Flattery into action. Bickel threw the action switch in the shop. Flattery slapped the AAT master control switch on his console, realizing with a sense of detachment that the UMB message would pour through the Ox circuits before being displayed for them.

IT TOOK SEVERAL minutes for the incoming message to search its way through the AAT and the Ox-accretions which Bickel had added to the system. They were tense minutes in Com-central. Flattery's gaze swept back and forth across the telltales of his board. There were big unknowns about the system now and any input might elicit strange behavior from dangerous quarters.

Behavior! Flattery thought, catching the word in his own mind.

There were anthropomorphic assumptions in that word.

Why should it play by our rules?

In the shop, Bickel felt his own waiting tensions. Was the incoming message going to be more garbage?

Prudence, standing near him, sensed the unwashed musks of his body, all the evidences of his concentration on their mutual problem.

Why not? He wants to live as much as I do.

Bickel swept his gaze across the repeater telltales in the shop, watched the needles kick over and come to rest in the normal range. There came the characteristic sharp AAT hum, felt now in the shop because the Ox was part of the circuitry. The sound raised a tingling sensation along Bickel's sides and arms.

The gauges registered the usual AAT pause. The multiple bursts of the message were being sorted, compared, translated, and fed into the output net.

Bickel glanced at the screen, saw that Flattery had the system on audio.

Morgan Hempstead's voice began rolling from the vocoders:

"This is Project calling UMB ship Earthling. This is Project calling. We are unable to give an exact determination of the force that damaged the ship. We suggest an error in transmission or insufficient data. The possibility of an encounter with a neutrino field of theoretical type A-G is suggested by one analysis. Why have you failed to acknowledge our directive on return procedure?"

Bickel watched his gauges. The message was coming in with remarkable clarity, no garbling at all apparent now that it was routed through the Ox circuits.

There came the distinct sound of Hempstead clearing his throat.

It gave Prudence a peculiar feeling to hear this ordinary sound...an clearing his throat. The inconsequential thing had been transmitted millions of miles to no effect other than to inform them Hempstead had been troubled by a bit of phlegm.

Again, Hempstead's voice rolled from the vocoders: "UMB is being subjected to heavy, repeat heavy political pressures as regards the abort order. You will acknowledge this transmission immediately. The ship is to be returned to orbit around UMB while disposition is made of yourselves and cargo."

"That's an awful word - disposition," Prudence said. She glanced at Bickel. He seemed to be taking it calmly.

Flattery could feel the heavy beating of his heart. He wondered if the next few words would bring that deadly "kill ship" code signal from Hempstead.

Bickel stared at the vocoder with a puzzled frown. How clear Hempstead's voice sounded - even to the throat-clearing which the AAT should have filtered from the message. He shifted his attention to the Ox's surrealistic growth on the computer wall.

Again, Hempstead's voice intruded: "We expect from this transmission a more complete analysis of your damage. The nature and extent of the damage of paramount importance. Acknowledge at once. Project over and out."

Bickel kept his voice low, casual. "Prue, how'd old Big Daddy sound to you?"

"Worried," Prudence said. And she wondered why Bickel, with his inhibitions against return, could take this so calmly.

"If you wanted to convey the emotions in someone's message how would you do it, Prue?" Bickel asked.

She looked at him, puzzled. "I'd label the emotion or imitate the tone of the original. Why?"

"The AAT isn't supposed to be able to do that," Bickel said. He looked up, meeting Flattery's eyes in the screen. "Don't acknowledge that transmission, Raj."

"The AAT's working better than ever?" Prudence asked.

"No," Bickel said. "It's working in a way it shouldn't be able to. The laser-burst message is stripped to bare essentials. The original voice modulations are there, theoretically, and often strong enough to recognize certain mannerisms, but subtleties are supposed to be beyond it. That last message was high fidelity."

"The Ox circuits make the system more sensitive," she said.

"Maybe," Bickel said.

"Was there nerve-net activity accompanying that?" Flattery asked.

"A fish has nerve-net activity," Bickel said. "Nerve-net activity doesn't mean the thing's conscious."

"But sensitized the way consciousness is," Flattery said.

Bickel nodded.

"Selective raising and lowering of thresholds," Flattery said. "Threshold control."

Again Bickel nodded.

"What's this?" Prudence asked.

"This thing" - Bickel pointed to the Ox - "has just demonstrated threshold control... the way we do when we recognize something." He looked at her. "When you lower your reception threshold you spread the spatio-temporal message and project it across an internal 'recognition aura' for mental comparison. The message is a spatio-temporal configuration which you superimpose on a recognition region. That recognition region can discriminate quite broadly between 'just right,' which is maximum similarity, and a kind of 'blurring off' you could call 'somewhat alike.' Threshold control does the tuning for this kind of comparison."

With precisely controlled motions, Bickel returned to the circuitry he had been working on when the UMB message interrupted him. He picked up a sheaf of fibers, noting the neuron tag on them and slid the sheaf into a micro-manipulator where he finished the connection to a multijack.

In Com-central, Flattery stretched out his left hand, gripped the stanchion beside his action couch until his knuckles went white.

They were disobeying Hempstead in an outright, flagrant way. The chaplain-psychiatrist had precise instructions about such a contingency. Obey! If others try to stop you, blow the ship. But he could feel how Bickel was closing in on the solution to the Project's overriding problem. They were near success. That certainly allowed a bit of latitude.