Stephen Baxter - Ring

Milpitas touched Uvarov’s arm. “Why are you so damn hostile, Doctor? No one’s doing you any harm.”

Uvarov snatched his arm away.

“She’s right.” Virtual-Poole waved a hand to the couches at the heart of the lifedome. “Why don’t you sit down? Do you want a drink, or — ”

“I don’t want to sit down,” Louise said icily. “And I don’t want a drink. What am I, a kid to be impressed by fireworks?” Even as she spoke, though, she was aware that the wormhole, sliding across space above them, had frozen in its track at the moment Virtual-Poole had climbed out of his couch; exotic-energy light flooded down over the little human tableau, as if suspending them in timelessness. She felt confused, disoriented. This isn’t Michael Poole. But all Virtuals were conscious, to some degree. This Virtual remembers being Poole. She wanted to lash out at it — to hurt it. “Damn it, it would have been cheaper to take us to Jupiter itself rather than to set up this charade, here on Earth.”

“Perhaps,” Virtual-Poole said drily. “But this diorama isn’t just for show. I have something to demonstrate to you. This setup seemed the best way to achieve that. As, if you’ve the patience, you’ll see.”

Louise felt her jaw muscles tighten. “Patience? I’m trying to launch a starship. I need to be at Port Sol, working on the Northern — not stuck here in this box in New York, talking to a damn puppet.”

Poole winced, looking genuinely hurt. Louise despised herself.

Uvarov said, “I, too, have projects which demand my time.”

The sky-blue light cast convincing shadows over Poole’s cheekbones and jaw. “This simulation is serving several purposes. And one of those purposes is discretion. Look — I’m only partially self-aware. But I am autonomous, within this environment. There is no channel in or out of here; no record will exist of this conversation, unless one of you chooses to make one.”

Milpitas snorted. “Why should we believe you? We still don’t know who you represent.”

A trace of anger showed in the hardening of Virtual-Poole’s mouth. “Now you’re being absurd. Why should I lie? Louise Ye Armonk, I have a proposal for you. A challenge — for you all, actually. You may refuse the challenge. You certainly can’t be forced to accept it. And so, we meet in secrecy; if you refuse, no one will ever know.”

“Bullshit,” Uvarov growled; pink Jovian light gleamed from his bald pate. “Let’s skip the riddles and get on with it. Who’s behind you, Poole?”

Briefly, Virtual-Poole looked pained — almost as if he was too tired for such confrontations. Louise remembered that although Michael Poole had accepted AS treatment, he’d persistently refused consciousness adjustment treatment. A deep dread of memory editing kept people like Poole away from the reloading tables, even when the efficiency of their awareness — clogged by decades of memory started to downgrade.

Virtual-Poole seemed to rouse himself. “Tell me what you know.”

Mark spoke up. “Very little. We got a call to come in here from the Port Sol authorities.” He smiled. “We got the impression we didn’t have a lot of choice but to comply. But it wasn’t clear who was behind the summons, or why we were wanted.”

Milpitas and Uvarov confirmed that they, too, had received similar calls.

“But,” Louise said drily, “it was obviously someone a bit more senior than the Port Sol harbor master.”

Virtual-Poole rubbed his nose; shadows moved convincingly across his hand. “Yes,” he said. “And no. You’ve no doubt heard of us. We don’t report to Port Sol — or to any single nation. We’re a private corporation, but we’re not working for profit. We get some backing from the UN, but also from most of the individual nation-states in the System as well. And a variety of corporations, who — ”

Louise studied Virtual-Poole suspiciously. “ Who are you?”

Poole’s face stiffened, and Louise wondered how much restriction had been placed on the Virtual’s free will. Lethe, I hate sentience technology, she thought. Poole doesn’t deserve this.

Poole said, “I’m a representative of a group called Superet. The Holy Superet Light Church…”

“Superet.” Mark smiled. He looked relieved. “Is that all? Superet is innocuous enough. Isn’t it?”

“Maybe.” Virtual-Poole smiled. “Not everyone agrees. Superet is well known for the Earth-terraforming initiatives of the past. But not all Superet’s projects are simple balls of dry ice, you see. Some are rather more — ambitious. And not everyone thinks that projects with such timescales should be permitted to progress.”

Louise shoved her face forward, seeking understanding in the Virtual’s bland, simulated expression. “What timescales? How long-term?”

“Infinite,” Virtual-Poole said quietly. “Superet’s backers are people who wish to invest in the survival of the species itself, Louise.”

There was a long silence.

“Good grief.” Milpitas shook her head. “I don’t know about you, but I need to sit down. And how about that drink, Poole?”

Lieserl was suspended inside the body of the Sun.

She spread her arms wide and lifted up her face. She was deep within the Sun’s convective zone, the broad mantle of turbulent material beneath the glowing photosphere. Convective cells larger than the Earth, tangled with ropes of magnetic flux, filled the world around her with a complex, dynamic, three dimensional tapestry. She could hear the roar of the great gas founts, smell the stale photons diffusing out toward space from the remote core.

She felt as if she were alone in some huge cavern. Looking up she could see how the photosphere formed a glowing roof over her world perhaps fifty thousand miles above her, and the inner radiative zone was a shining, impenetrable sea another fifty thousand miles beneath her. The radiative zone was a ball of plasma which occupied eighty percent of the Sun’s diameter — with the fusing core itself buried deep within — and the convective zone was a comparatively thin layer above the plasma, with the photosphere a crust at the boundary of space. She could see huge waves crossing the surface of the radiative-zone “sea”: the waves were g-modes — gravity waves, like ocean waves on Earth — with crests thousands of miles across, and periods of days.

Lieserl? Can you hear me? Are you all right?

She thrust her arms down by her sides and swooped up into the convective-zone “air”; she looped the loop backwards, letting the floor and roof of this cavern world wheel around her. She opened up her new senses, so that she could feel the turbulence of the gas, with its almost terrestrial density, as a breeze against her skin, and the warm glow of hard photons diffusing out from the core was no more than a gentle warmth against her face.

Lieserl?

She suppressed a sigh.

“Yes. Yes, Kevan. I’m perfectly all right.”

Damn it, Lieserl, you’re going to have to respond properly. Things are difficult enough without —

“I know. I’m sorry. How are you feeling, anyway?”

Me? I’m fine. But that’s hardly the point, is it? Now come on, Lieserl, the team here are getting on my back; let’s run through the tests.

“You mean I’m not down here to enjoy myself?”

The tests, Lieserl.

“Yeah. Okay, electromagnetic first.” She adjusted her sensorium. “I’m plunged into darkness,” she said drily. “There’s very little free radiation at any frequency — perhaps an X-ray glow from the photosphere; it looks a little like a late evening sky. And — ”