Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time

‘New transmission coming through,’ from Lain, even whilst others were demanding to know what Holsten meant.

‘What should I do with the drone?’ Karst put in.

‘Just sit on it for now. Tell it to keep itself blocked from communications with the habitat,’ Guyen told him. ‘Mason—’

But Holsten was already working through the new transmission. It was a far shorter, punchier message than the first, but the word stuck in his mind. ‘ Habitat ’ : that was my translation. Did the ancients mean that? They couldn’t really have meant something for someone to live in. Twenty metres across, for however many millennia? No, that can’t possibly…

‘It says, do we want to speak to Eliza,’ he choked out.

Inevitably, someone had to ask, ‘Who’s Eliza?’ as though anybody there could have answered the question.

‘We do,’ Guyen decided, which was just as well as Holsten had already sent the response.

Minutes later – the delay shorter each time, as they neared the planet – something new spoke to them.

Holsten recognized the same voice as before, though considerably clearer, and still with that horrible stream-of-consciousness backing constantly trying to break through. His translation for the others came swiftly. By now he reckoned he must be as fluent in Imperial C as anyone had ever been in post-glacial history.

He passed it around the others’ screens: Good evening, travellers. I am Eliza Kerns, composite expert system of the Second Brin Sentry Habitat. I’m sorry, but I may have missed the import of some communications that you have already sent to me. Would you please summarize what was said?

There was an interesting split in the listeners then. Command and Security remained mostly unmoved whilst Science and Engineering were thrown into sudden debate: what did the voice mean by ‘expert system’? Was Holsten sure that was the proper translation? Was it actually an intelligent machine, or just something pretending to be one?

Holsten himself was busy piecing together that background message, although he felt less and less happy about it. The words, the very tone of horror and desperation in his ears, were making him feel ill.

Holsten re-sent the Gilgamesh ’s last substantive transmission: We are the ark ship Gilgamesh , carrying five hundred thousand humans in suspension. It is of utmost priority that we are able to establish a presence on your planet. This is a matter of the survival of the human species. We require your assistance in preserving our cargo.

And the reply:

‘Same words from a different computer,’ Guyen spat angrily.

Lain was looking over Holsten’s shoulder, staring at his translation of the second, hidden voice. He saw her mouth the words, The fuck…?

‘Mason, I don’t care how you phrase it – dress it up as fancy as you like. It needs to understand that we are human and that we need its help,’ Guyen said. ‘If there’s some old-world way of overriding its programming, of getting through to whatever that is, we need you to find it.’

No pressure, then ; but Holsten was already planning out his response. It was not a linguistics problem, no matter what Guyen might think. It was a technological problem, but one that even Lain was surely little better equipped to deal with than he was. They were speaking to a functioning, autonomous Imperial system. The EMP-blasted hulks in orbit around Earth had contained nothing like it.

Eliza , he sent back, we are in desperate need. We have travelled far from Earth to find a new home for that part of the human race we are responsible for. If we cannot locate such a home, then hundreds of thousands of human beings will die. Does your system of priorities allow you take responsibility for such a result? The Gilgamesh archives did not contain them, but Holsten had an idea that he had read somewhere of some philanthropic rules imposed on the fabled old artificial intelligences.

So much for that. ‘It really is just the same line as before. We’ve got nowhere, except…’

‘What?’ Guyen demanded.

‘I want to try something a bit lateral,’ Holsten explained.

‘Is it likely to get us blown up ahead of schedule?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then you try whatever you’ve got, Mason.’

Holsten steeled himself and transmitted a simple, surreal question: Is there anybody else there we could talk to?

‘You’re taking the piss,’ Lain said in his ear.

‘Better ideas?’

‘I’m Engineering. We don’t do ideas.’

He managed a weak smile at that one. Everyone else was on tenterhooks, awaiting the response, save for Guyen who was glowering at Holsten as though his fierce regard could somehow inspire the classicist to greater efforts of antiquarianism.

Lain swore again, and Guyen stared down at his own screen. Another murmur of baffled speculation was rising around them.

‘Right, look, I have a theory,’ Holsten explained. ‘We’re talking to some sort of automated system still, obviously, even if it’s programmed to respond in a human-like manner. But there’s something else there. It’s… different. It seems less rational. So we could see if it will let us do things that the main expert system won’t. Worst comes to worst, we could even turn it against the main system, somehow, I don’t know.’

‘But what is “it”?’ Vitas asked him. ‘Why would they have two systems?’

‘Failsafe?’ Holsten suggested, because he was keeping his worst suspicions very much to himself.

‘Try it,’ Guyen said. ‘Karst, I want some solutions if this turns ugly. Our current course will bring us into the planet’s attraction at the right speed to make orbit. The only alternative is to stop decelerating now and just fly past, and then… and then what?’ The question was plainly rhetorical, the hard-pressed commander showing the working of his sums. ‘Then we set course for the next point on the star maps, and somehow hope there’s something different there? We’ve seen this planet now. This is going to be our home. Mason, tell it.’