Филип Керр - The Second Angel

‘That’s strange,’ he commented.

‘What is?’ asked Cavor, joining him inside the glass wall.

‘This computer seems to be generating an unusually high quantum wave function, such as I’ve not seen before. According to what’s happening inside this tube, the computer looks as if it’s operating at a level a thousand times higher than normal. But I’m not sure where the extra superconducting circuit power is coming from. There’s some very fast switching going on inside this machine. It’s almost as if the computer has managed to create its own Josephson junctions — that’s a way in which pairs of electrons use ordinary superconductors to create a quantum effect.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means current could flow even if there was no exterior source of energy applied to the junction.’

‘But that’s impossible, isn’t it? Surely, that would mean the computer was capable of sustaining itself independently.’

‘Theoretically, it can be done. I mean it’s been done on paper. But no one’s ever achieved it in a practical way. And certainly not on the scale of something like the Altemann Übermaschine.’ Dallas placed his boot on the operating footplate, causing the pattern on the round screen to clear. A number of touch-sensitive choices presented themselves to his scrutiny. ‘If I wasn’t feeling like shit, I’d find it more fascinating, I guess.’

‘You too, huh?’

Dallas grunted and reached for the screen, but as he touched it, he quickly pulled his hand away.

‘Wow,’ he said, unnerved by what he had felt there. ‘It’s vibrating.’

‘All machinery vibrates,’ objected Cavor.

‘Not the Altemann Übermaschine. And not like this.’

Cavor touched the screen with his prosthetic. Even through his glove he could feel the vibration.

‘It can’t be seismic,’ Dallas observed. ‘Feels too rhythmic to be a moonquake.’ Gingerly, Dallas touched the screen to close down the siren and open the main facility outer door. This would effectively signal the Mariner that their object had been achieved.

‘It feels sort of pulselike,’ he admitted to himself.

As he next initiated the selection and loading process, refrigerated tanks began to open like so many tombs, delivering up their frozen contents for collection by a loading droid. It happened so quickly it was almost as if the quantity and type had been ordered in advance. Had the system of selection and loading always been so efficient? It was hard to recall, so nauseous did he now feel. Dallas let out a nervous sigh, and then added: ‘I suppose silicon is just as versatile an atom as carbon. It can bind with other atoms to make a whole array of minerals and rocks. I mean, that’s the way computers operate. From the point of view of a siliceous soul, as opposed to one that’s carbonaceous, like our own.’ He completed the transfer process and then walked as quickly as he was now able toward the door of the computer’s glass envelope.

‘What are you saying, Dallas?’

‘Come on. There’s no time to waste. We need to hitch a ride out of here.’

‘That the computer’s alive? Is that what you’re saying?’

Cavor climbed alongside Dallas aboard one of the electric cars that was already loaded with a whole pallet of cryoprecipitate. A large label on the container indicated that the contents were AS-1 RED BLOOD CELLS. FROZEN. AB Rh POSITIVE. TO BE STORED AT -65 °C OR COLDER. EXPIRING TWENTY YEARS FROM DRAW. COLLECTION DATE JULY 20, 2069. Briefly, Dallas wondered how it was that the collection date could already be marked.

‘Perhaps. I don’t know. Look, what does it matter? We’ve got what we came for, haven’t we? If we don’t get some fresh blood in our veins soon we’ll be dead, and it’ll make no difference whether this machine has a pulse or not.’

‘But the possibility makes you uncomfortable, right, Dallas?’

‘What does one more bad feeling matter? Look, let’s just get out of here, shall we? My own quantum state is of rather more concern to me right now than that of the Descartes computer. Another time, another place, I might be fascinated by the idea of an information process taking the opportunity to give itself a kind of genetic expression. If that’s what’s happened. I’m not at all sure.’

The electric car carrying them jerked into forward motion. They didn’t bother to close the lid. Within a few seconds they were out of the vault and speeding through the labyrinth in the first of the many cars now loaded with blood.

‘Anyway, it’s hardly our affair,’ said Dallas, as much for his own benefit as Cavor’s. ‘Something bootstraps its own evolution, let Terotechnology and the First National people sort it out. They’ll be here soon enough. They’ll know what’s happened here. The Descartes computer is linked to others back on Earth. Right now, there’s a bank employee who’s looking at a computer, unable to believe what it’s telling him — that someone just broke into the most important bank in the solar system and stole the stuff of life. Four tons of it.’

‘We’ve done it then.’ Cavor closed his eyes and let out a weary sigh of satisfaction.

‘Yes,’ Dallas said, almost grudgingly. ‘We’ve done it.’

‘Thank God.’

‘God had nothing to do with it. But I’m beginning to wonder if we weren’t expected.’

‘I didn’t see any welcoming committee.’

‘It’s not just blood that can be tested.’

‘Now you’re talking in riddles.’

‘Yes, I suppose I am. But that’s where meaning often lies.’

Nineteen hours later, Dallas went up to the flight deck, to find Gates staring out of the window of the orbiting Mariner. It was the first chance they’d had to talk since leaving Descartes. For a moment he said nothing, enjoying the strange silence of Moon orbit. Finally he asked, ‘How do you feel?’

‘I’m okay,’ shrugged Gates, as if there was no reason to be concerned about him. ‘Matter of fact, I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time. Like I’ll live forever. It’s probably psychosomatic, the effect of a complete infusion, I guess, and not just the couple of units I lent Ronica.’ He paused, searching Dallas’s reddened face — one of the effects of his exposure to the radiation of the containment room — for some clue as to the other man’s well-being. But there was no indication of anything other than the sense of anticlimax that prevailed throughout the ship. ‘How about you?’

‘Cav and I have each had a complete infusion,’ said Dallas. ‘Neither of us is vomiting anymore. White-cell count seems to have stabilized, although Ronica says it’s still a little early to tell if we’ll need another infusion.’

‘We’re not short of blood.’

Dallas smiled his assent. ‘All in all, I’m feeling better than I could have expected.’ He nodded as if he was only just realizing this himself. ‘At one stage, it looked like a military hospital down on mid-deck. About three or four infusions happening all at once.’

‘Ronica’s been busy, all right.’

‘She did herself last of all,’ observed Dallas. ‘But she reckons Lenina’s going to make it.’

Gates nodded, already well aware of this. He reached for Dallas’s hand and took a firm hold if it.

‘We’re all going to make it,’ he said. ‘Mariner’s in good shape.’

Dallas held Gates’s watery gaze for a minute before glancing out of the window again. ‘Where exactly are we?’

‘We’re coming up on the dark side of the Moon,’ said Gates. ‘Fifty thousand feet, four thousand miles an hour. We’ll be invisible for the next twelve hours, just in case anyone decided to try and look for us. The dark side’s about the last place they’ll think of looking now. More likely they’ll believe we’re well on our way back to Earth. We’re set to autopilot. Soon as we come around the near side we’ll increase altitude and then head home.’