Jack McDevitt - POLARIS

We must hold fast, for ourselves, for our children, and for everyone who follows after.

Generations unborn will remember that we took a stand.’ Remember?”

“Well, I don’t exactly remember, but I know about it, sure.” At the critical moment, Delacort rallied the nation. Today, every schoolkid is familiar with the appeal. “I’m still not following.”

“It’s lost, Chase. The appeal. We don’t have it anymore. We know what he said, but we don’t have the actual broadcast. But it’s out there somewhere. We know approximately when it happened, so we know where it can be found. What stops us from going out, tracking it down, recording it, and bringing it back? Intact. All we have to do is get in front of it, and we can recapture one of our great moments. What do you think such a recording would be worth?”

A couple of quegs flapped past, landed in a tree, and turned their attention to the fountain. Someone had thrown bread into it. Quegs are not shy. They sat for a minute or so, then launched themselves, flew over our heads, splashed down, and began feeding.

“It’s a nice idea, Alex, but a broadcast doesn’t last that long. Not nearly. There’s nothing out there to recover except a few stray electrons.”

“I’ve done some research,” he said.

“And?”

“The Delacort Address was forwarded to several off-world sites. That means directed transmissions. Not broadcasts. Add the kind of power they used during that era, and the transmissions might still be recoverable.”

“Is there a way to pin down the transmission vectors?” Worlds and bases move around a good bit.

“We have the logs,” he said. “We know exactly when the transmissions were made. So yes, it should be possible to work out the direction.”

I was impressed. It sounded plausible.

“There’s a lot of history out there,” he said. “Brachmann’s Charge to the Dellacondans. Morimba holding the fort against the religious crazies on Wellborn.

Arytha Mill’s address at the signing of the Instrument. Damn, we don’t even have that one written down. But it all went out in directed transmissions, and in every instance we can nail the time.”

“We might be able to do it,” I said. “I don’t think anyone’s ever considered the possibility before.”

He looked pleased with himself. “Something else.”

“Okay.”

“There’s a lot of entertainment out there, too.”

“You’re talking about holodrama.”

“I’m talking about a substantial portion of broadcast arts over the last few thousand years. Most of it, or at least much of it, was packaged and forwarded to orbitals and ships and everything else. It’s all out there. You want to hear Paqua Tori, we can get her for you.”

“Who’s Paqua Tori?”

“The hottest comedienne on Toxicon during the Bolerian Age. I’ve heard her.

She’s actually pretty funny.”

“Does she speak Standard?”

“Not hardly. But we can do translations, and keep her voice and mannerisms.”

“Tastes change,” I said. “I doubt there’ll ever be a wide audience for antique comedy. Or drama, or whatever.”

“Sophocles still plays.” He was all smiles. “As soon as we get this Polaris business taken care of, we’ll look into some antenna enhancement for Belle. ”

-

The Advancement of Learning We received our invitations to the banquet and auction the day after I spoke with Windy. Later in the week, she called again. “Chase, I wanted to let you know we’ve put together a reception tomorrow evening. There’ll be some VIPs on the premises.”

“Okay.”

“At eight. We’d like you and Alex to come and be our guests. You could look over the stock at the same time.”

“That’s very kind of you.” Alex liked events. Especially something like this. It meant free food and drinks. And he’d inevitably come away with a new client or two.

“Thanks, Windy,” I said. “I’ll have to check with the boss, but I suspect we’ll be there.”

Then she surprised me. “Good. Something like this wouldn’t be complete without Rainbow. Come fifteen, twenty minutes early, okay? I’ll meet you in my office. And by the way, I’ll need your birth date. And Alex’s.”

“Why?”

“Security.”

“Security?”

“Yes.”

“You think we might try to steal the artifacts?”

“Of course not.” She arched an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t, would you?” And then a grin. “No. It has nothing to do with that. But I can’t talk about it.”

“Why not?”

The eyebrow went up again. “I can’t tell you that, either.”

The Polaris, of course, was old news. It had happened long before I’d been born, and the story had an unreal aura about it. It almost suggested the existence of a supernatural power out there somewhere, something capable of invading a sealed ship before an alarm could be sent. Something able to shut down the AI. A force that stole humans for purposes of its own. It sounded too much like a fable, like something that had happened outside history. I had no more idea what might have occurred on board than anyone else did. But because the events as reported seemed to defy explanation, I was convinced that the report was in some way simply wrong. That something had been left out. Or added in. Don’t ask me what.

I’d done some boning up on the incident after Windy told me about the auction.

Aside from the disappearance of the people inside, there was something else that was very odd. When Miguel Alvarez went on board, the AI was not operating. The Polaris had sustained no damage, hyperlight communications worked fine, and all systems were functional, except that the AI was down. It appeared, Alvarez testified during the hearings, that it had simply been turned off. Tests indicated it had stopped functioning within minutes after that last transmission had been sent. Departure imminent.

Alex had also become interested. Usually, his juices only got flowing when there was money to be made. But the Polaris was something different. He commented that shutting down the AI eliminated the sole witness the investigators might have had. He wanted to know how one did that. How did you turn off an AI? “The easiest way,” I said, “is simply to tell it to shut itself off.”

“You can do that?”

“Sure. It’s done all the time. The AI records everything that happens on the bridge, in storage, and in the engine compartment. And maybe one or two other areas.

If you want to have a conversation on the bridge, but you don’t want a record kept, you tell it to shut down.”

“How do you turn it back on?”

“Sometimes there’s a key word. Sometimes a switch.” We were standing on the porch outside the Rainbow office, which was located on the ground floor of Alex’s country house. It was raining, a cold, driving rain that beat against the trees. “But that’s not what happened on the Polaris. ”

“How do you know?”

“If you tell an AI to deactivate, it retains a record of having received the direction. When the Polaris AI was turned back on, a few minutes after Alvarez had boarded, it recalled no such instruction. That means somebody disconnected it manually.”

“Is there any other possibility you can think of? Anything that might account for the shutdown?”

“A power failure would do it. Ships are required to have backup power sources, but those regs aren’t enforced now, and probably weren’t enforced in 1365. But we know nothing like that happened, because the Polaris was still powered up when the Peronovski reached her.”