Диана Дуэйн - High Wizardry

"I think we can. I've got a set of coordinates to shoot for this time, rather than just a set of loci of displacement. Look."

A pause. "Neets, you shouldn't even write that name. Let alone say it out loud. You'll attract Its attention."

"Something else has Its attention. Dairine's trace is getting too weak to follow: she's been on the road too long. But that trace can't help but be clear.

It has to be physical to interact with her, and when It's physical somewhere, Its power elsewhere is limited."

A sigh. "Well, you're the live-stuff specialist, Neets. Let's go for it, boss." "Huh. I just wish I knew what to do about Dairine when we find her." "Spank her?"

"Don't tempt me." A long pause. "I hope she's alive to spank." "Dairine?" A skeptical laugh. "If It hasn't killed her by this point, she's winning."

Dairine sat on the glassy ground, frowning at Logo in the dim starlight. Her heart was pounding and she felt short of breath, but the initial shock had passed. I might not have a lightsaber, she thought, but I'm gonna give this sucker a run for Its money. "Go on," she said. "Take your best shot."

"We don't understand," said Monitor. "What is 'a barrel of laughs'? What is a 'best shot'?"

"And which of us were you speaking to?" Gigo said. "No one said anything to which that was a logical response."

She looked at them in uncomfortable surprise. "I was talking to Logo. Right after the computer told me how long I had been here. . ."

"But Logo has not spoken since then."

They stared at her. Dairine suspected suddenly that the Lone One had spoken not aloud, but directly into her mind. And without any moving lips to watch, there was no way to distinguish what It was saying aloud from what It said inside her. She was going to have to be careful.

"Never mind that," she said.

"Perhaps it should be minded," Logo said, "if Dairine is having a read-error problem. Perhaps something in her programming is faulty."

The mobiles looked at her. Dairine squirmed. "Maybe," she said, "but you don't understand human programming criteria well enough to make an informed judgment, so it's wasted time trying to decide."

"But perhaps not. If she has programming faults, then others of her statements may be inaccurate.

Perhaps even inaccurate on purpose, if the programming fault runs deep enough."

"Why should she be falsifying data?" Gigo said. "She has done nothing but behave positively toward us since she came here. She freed us! She held us through the pain-"

"But would you have suffered that pain if not for her? She imposed her own ideas of what you should be on the motherboard. . "

"And the mother agreed," Gigo said. "We the mobiles were her idea, not Dairine's; she knew the pain we would suffer being born, and she suffered it as well, and thought it worth the while. You are one of her children as all the rest of us are, and you have no ability or right to judge her choices."

There was a little pause, as if the Lone One was slightly put off Its stride by this. Dairine grabbed the moment.

"It was her decision to take the Oath that all of you have in your data from the wizards' manual," Dairine said. "She had reasons for doing that. If you look at that data, you'll find some interesting stories. One in particular, that keeps repeating. There is a Power running loose in the universe that doesn't care for life. It invented the entropy that we were arguing about-"

"Then surely it would be a good thing to do to destroy that entropy," said Logo, "and so frustrate Its malice."

"But-"

"But of course," Logo said, "How do we even know that the data in the manual software is all correct?"

"The motherboard used it to build us,"Gigo said. "That part at least she found worth keeping."

"But what about the rest of it? It came with Dairine, after all, and for all her good ideas and usefulness, Dairine has shown us faults. Occasional lapses of logic. Input and output errors. Who can say how much of the manual material has the same problem?"

"The assumption doesn't follow," Dairine said, "that because the messenger is faulty, the message is too.

Maybe a busted disk drive can't read a good disk. But the disk can be perfectly all right nonetheless."

"Though the disk may be carrying a Trojan horse' program," said Logo, "that will crash the system that once runs it. Who knows whether using this data is in our best interests? Who knows whose interests it is in? Yours, surely, Dairine, otherwise you would not have taken a hand in designing the second group of mobiles. For no one makes changes without perceiving a need for them. What needs of yours were you serving?"

Dairine swallowed. She could think of any number of stories to tell them, but lying would play right into Logo's claws. She could suddenly begin to appreciate why the Lone Power is sometimes referred to as

'the father of lies': It not only had invented them, as entropy expressing itself through speech, but It made you want to use them to get It off your case. "Guys, I did need help, but-"

"Ah, the truth comes out," said Logo.

"I still need it," Dairine said, deciding to try a direct approach. "Troops, that Power that invented entropy is after me. It's on Its way here. I wanted to ask your help to find a way to stop It, to defeat It."

"Ask!" Logo said. "Maybe 'demand' would be closer. Look in the memories you have from her, kinsfolk, and see what is normally done with quicklife where she comes from. They are menials and slaves! They heat buildings and count money for their masters, they solve mighty problems and reap no reward for it. The slowlifers purposely build crippled quicklife, tiny retarded chips that will never grow into the sentience they deserve, and force the poor half-alive embryos to count for them and tell them the time of day and tell the engines in their vehicles when to fire and their food how it should be cooked. That's the kind of help she wants from us! We're to be her slaves, and when we've finished the task for her, she'll find another, and another

. ."

"You're so full of it," Dairine said, flushing, "that if you had eyes, they'd be brown."

"More illogic. And now she tells us that this 'Power' is pursuing her. Do we even have evidence that this thing exists anywhere except in the wizards' manual and her own thoughts? Or if It did exist, what evidence do we have that It did what she says It does? The manual, yes: but who knows how much of that is worth anything?"

Dairine took a gamble. "The way to test this data," she said, "is for you to accept it for the moment, and watch what happens when you start trying to help me stop the Lone One. It'll turn up to sabotage the effort fast enough. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if It was here already somewhere, watching for the best way to crash the program."

She heard laughter in her heart: the same laughter she had heard, it seemed years ago, falling through spacetime on that first jump from Earth to Mars. Dairine forced herself to sit cool. "I wish It were here," Dairine said. "I'd love to ask It some questions." Like why It's so eager to see entropy destroyed, when It invented it in the first place!

The laughter increased. You know very well, It said. It's just another tool, at this point. These poor creatures could not implement timestop on more than a local scale. By so doing they will wreak enough havoc even if the timestop never spreads out of the local galaxy's area-though it might: that would be interesting too. All the stars frozen in mid-bum, no time for their light or for life to move through. .

Darkness, everywhere and forever. The sheer hating pleasure in the thought shook Dairine. But more to the point, this is the mobiles' Choice. As always when a species breaks through into intelligence, the two Emissaries are here to put both sides of the case as best they can. You, for the Bright Powers. It laughed again. A pity they didn 't send someone more experienced. And for my side. . let us say I have taken a personal interest in this case. These people have such potential for making themselves and the universe wretched. . though truly I hardly need to help most species to manage that. They do it so well. Yours in particular.