Майкл Бишоп - The Final Frontier - Stories of Exploring Space, Colonizing the Universe, and First Contact

There was a trial, but Ashcroft argued that he was not the same personality as his virtual, who now controlled the Firewall. After all, Ashcroft-virtual had only half of his memories. He went on to declare that he would have transmitted all the data and pictures possible if he had been on the Firewall. Veritometer tests confirmed that he was telling the truth. His rating steadied at a billion likes and two hundred million dislikes.

I predicted that the trial would become mired in legal technicalities, and this was what happened. Ashcroft had too much public support to be found guilty, and it was public money that had built the Argo in the first place. A verdict of guilty would ruin careers and bring down governments, so a verdict would never be delivered.

Six months after the Firewall landed, Jackson and I met to sort out some media rights for the holocasts in which we both appeared. Documentaries about the Argo and Firewall were bringing in substantial amounts of money, because of the sudden revival of interest in deep space exploration.

We met at Coffee Plaza on the old Berkeley campus. Our table was shaded by redwoods planted before the Argo had even been designed. It was not the first time that we had met since the establishment hearing, but it was our very first private meeting. I had prepared for it with more care than the control-captain realized.

“Why did Ashcroft-virtual do it?” I asked as we were finishing up. “Why did it really do it?”

“Why ask me?” said Jackson wearily. “I was as surprised as anyone when he and his virtual went rogue.”

“The veritometer confirmed that Ashcroft was concealing something during my hearing, and in all of his testimonies since.”

“All of us are concealing something,” said Jackson. “We all have harmless, personal secrets of a sensitive nature.”

“Some of us more than others.”

“The law allows for it,” she pointed out, quite correctly.

There was silence between us for a time. Jackson sipped nervously at her coffee, suspecting something. I went through my notes, then I handed her a smartprint.

“I’ve done some of my own research,” I said as she looked down at it. “Like that Twentieth Century movie director Alfred Hitchcock once said about murder: ‘If you want to do a good job, do it yourself.’ This is a car park at a conference center in Geneva. A security camera took the image. Now look here.”

I traced my finger around one corner and invoked area enlargement. A couple could now be seen embracing against a sleek sharecar. The registration code was visible. The faces of the lovers were not.

“Would you like me to read out who the sharecar was registered to?” I asked.

Jackson studied the image and data specs more closely.

“The date is August 17, 2198,” she commented, although there was a tremor in her voice. “Ridiculous. Nobody keeps commuter car records for half a century.”

“The Swiss do.”

Jackson froze completely while she conducted some sort of internal debate with herself, then she let the printout fall to the table and put a hand over her eyes.

“Okay, okay, no more games,” she sighed. “Ashcroft and I were married, but to other people. Moral Imperative was sweeping the world, and Equiliberation was trying to shut down the Argo project and turn the starship into a theme park to celebrate waste control.”

“So politically speaking it was a bad time for a scandal involving the control-captain and one of her officers?”

“Correct.”

“How long did it last?”

“Believe it or not, this monitor caught part of our very first night. After that, well it’s still going, occasionally.”

“An affair concealed with meticulous care, decades of pillow talk,” I said. “Years to plan what to do about Wells.”

“Wrong, Mr Harper, totally wrong. Wells was an opportunity, a tool, something to get humanity back on the path to the stars. If the Harpy 1 probe showed that Wells was truly Earth-like and supported life, it deserved a closer look more than any other planet in the galaxy. We spent so many nights in each other’s arms, cursing the spinelessness that had cut us off from the stars. Then we came up with a plan. We invented stellar aerobraking.”

“In bed?”

“Why not? Thoughts wander, tongues are loose. We would not live to see the Gliese encounter, so with Wells as the alternative, no contest. If Harpy 1 showed that Wells was just another version of Mars, the Firewall could still be left on a course for Gliese.”

“But Wells was everything that you hoped it would be.”

“Yes.”

“So you also planned to dangle it in front of us, then snatch it away?”

“Oh no, we thought that the virtual would send back all the data and pictures that it possibly could, and that the wonders of Wells would lure humanity back into deep space.”

“Instead, Ashcroft-virtual punished humanity, and shamed us into doing the same thing.”

“Yes, yes. Because of the damage, Ashcroft-virtual is all motivation, but limited memories. It’s no longer human, so perhaps it thinks more clearly than humans—like me or Charles. Do you have children, Mr Harper?”

“A son, thirteen.”

“Do you know what a thrill it is when your child turns out to be better than you at something?”

“Yes. Jason has a shelf full of swimming trophies, but I swim like a brick.”

“This is going to sound strange, but I think of Ashcroft-virtual as the child that Charles and I never had. It’s turned out wiser than either of us, and I’m very proud of it. Argo 2 is being planned already, and it will be bigger, faster and tougher. Thirty years, Mr Harper. In thirty years we will have a fleet of orbiters, floaters and crawlers delivered to Wells, while another probe loops Centauri A and goes on to Gliese 581. The Harmonizers are backing us. Do you know about them?”

“A new technological movement,” I said. “They say that the universe is burning resources all the time, so humanity is fighting nature by striving for total, static balance. That makes exploration and expansion morally okay.”

Jackson nodded.

“Argo 2 will happen, so thirty years after the launch there will be telepresence tours of Wells. I’m not yet eighty, so with modern health care I might even be alive to book for one.”

I took the printout of the car park from her, tapped the black bar at the top, then said “Clear.” The image vanished. Jackson blinked, then stared at me.

“What’s this about?” she asked.

“I generated the images of you and Ashcroft, then superimposed them on a genuine security camera record that showed your sharecar.”

“You—you mean that wasn’t us?” she gasped.

“No. I gambled that the details of your early courtship with Ashcroft would become blurred in your memory over fifty years.”

Jackson bristled and her eyes bulged. She flung the remains of her coffee at me. I did not move. She raised her cup to fling it as well.

“Don’t you want to know how I knew?” I asked. “If you throw that cup you’ll never find out.”

“Don’t you play that Ashcroft-on-Wells game with me!” she said between clenched teeth.

“It worked for him.”

The cup fell from her fingers and shattered on the pavement. A student waiter hurried over and cleaned up the pieces. Jackson sat with her arms folded tightly while he worked. Sitting like that, she reminded me of my son.

I feared that our meeting was over, but hoped otherwise. Jackson sat glaring at me for three or four minutes, quite literally. Try sitting with a really angry person for as long as that, watching each other intently but saying nothing. It’s quite a harrowing experience. Finally she softened just a little.