In the Deep, page 29
part #2 of Escape Velocity Series
“Why not?” Merrell said amiably.
Garcia laughed, took down two bowls from the shelf over the tap, and came to the worktable. She poured some of the alcohol into each bowl and pushed one toward Velocity. “None for you, Lil,” she said. “Someone needs to be sober.”
Velocity picked up her bowl and took a tentative sip. High-proof, whatever it was: it lit the inside of her mouth and burned as she swallowed. There was a faint fruity aftertaste, which might have been plum. Garcia took a large swallow, then topped off each of their bowls. “So is it Garcia or Drury?” Velocity asked. “Or some other name entirely?”
Garcia gave her a brilliant, slitted smile. “I’ll answer any name you put to me, Tallis.”
“We’re drinking together. Call me Velocity.”
“Why did you leave Taveri House? Too much work?”
“Yes, I prefer the life of ease out here in the Deep.” Velocity had another tiny sip of the brandy. This one stung just as much as the first. “What about you? Why’d you leave your House?”
“I was sent.” Garcia emptied her bowl with a single gulp, and tipped more brandy in. “I’ve never flinched from doing what needs done.”
“What needed doing?” Velocity asked idly. She glanced at Merrell, who didn’t seem bothered. Maybe Garcia’s real identity was common knowledge. “Did they send you out here to start this insurgency? That seems unlikely.”
Garcia sat back in the booth. “How old were you when you deserted?”
Velocity let the word pass. “Sixteen. How old were you?”
“Just turned twenty when they sent me out here. Madame Theriot’s keeper.”
“Imre Theriot. The Minister of Trade? The one down there running your child farms?”
“Ha. I’d like to see Imre run anything. Except her mouth.” Garcia barked a short laugh. “She’s good at that. Like the rest of you Combines. Good at talk. Work, not so much.”
Velocity reached across the table for the bottle and poured them both another splash. “Why did Theriot need a keeper?”
“Too many patches. She really liked Dolorex. Also another one, Clarité, a designer patch made just for her, supposed to increase her mental acumen,” Garcia said the last two words with contempt, obviously quoting. “All it did was kill her appetite and make her twitch, far as I could see.”
“That’s why you have her down in the islands? Limiting the harm she might do?”
“I tried to do the work they sent me here to do. Years I tried. Tried to assist Theriot. Help her govern. She couldn’t govern her meal queue, much less a planet. So right, I shipped her down island. She’s happier lying in the sun patched stupid, I’m happier getting work done without her.”
“Insurgency,” Velocity said. “That work?”
“Oh, please. You think I didn’t try it their way? I tried for years. They had conflicting goals. I tried to tell them. I even co-opted Theriot’s identity to tell them. They don’t care. They’re not interested.”
“Conflicting goals.”
Garcia held up her thumb: “Make the planet profitable.” She held up her forefinger. “Find, import, and preserve Calypsos.” She snorted and sat straighter. “Couldn’t do either with a resort planet, so I tried mining. Made it worse. Well, you’ve seen.” Garcia flung an arm northward. “Look at how fast we go through contract workers.”
“You know your admin is grafting away your profit, right?”
“Right. And try stopping that sometime.” She shook her head. “It’s a broken system.”
“So you started an insurgency.”
“I did not start an insurgency. The insurgency was here. I just made it work.” Garcia drank again and laughed. “Turns out I’m heaps better at running a revolution than I am at running an economy.”
“You’re breeding Calypsos. Is that your idea or Hayek House’s idea?”
Garcia shrugged. “They said preserve. That implies long-term. Can’t be long-term if we don’t make more.”
Uri spoke through her uplink: Operation launched. Rida, Corvo and Jusuf are aboard the Ruka, heading for Durbin. ETA six hours and eleven minutes.
Velocity subvocced: What about the Prince of Peace? Brontë and the Ikans?
No reply. Already slightly greased on brandy, she took a moment to remember the delay—the Susan Calvin was over a million kilometers from the station, which meant several seconds to transmit and reply. While she was still figuring the exact math in her head, Uri’s answer came through: The lifepods have not yet been launched from the Prince of Peace. I’ll notify you when they have.
But Brontë and the Ikans will be aboard them when they are launched, yes?
Another delay. Irritated, Velocity drank more brandy. Across the table, Garcia was brooding, her dark eyes hooded. Uri’s reply came: That is my understanding. Captain, I suggest you leave the city. Take shelter at Pakuru. That settlement is not on the official versions of the planetary maps. You may be safe there.
I think Garcia plans to keep me right here.
Another delay. Across the table, Garcia shifted her weight. “I did what they said,” she muttered. “So far as they know, I did exactly what they said. They’re slagging us anyway. Tell me why I shouldn’t run an insurgency.”
“So far as they know?” Velocity said delicately.
Garcia grinned. “Like I’d put the truth in my reports? I’m not that fresh.”
Captain, Uri said, you should leave the city. Go to Pakuru. If we don’t stop the frigates, the Pirians will come for you. Stay alive until then.
Velocity thought this over. Sending posts across jumps was expensive. The Pirians wouldn’t be expecting interim reports. They’d expect Corvo to wait until the Susan Calvin was back in Pirian space to send her first reports. So they wouldn’t even count her and her crew as overdue for at least another three or four months universal time. Then they’d have to argue about what to do, as they did about everything. A couple of weeks to get here, even if they burned push the whole way. She and her crew would have to stay alive, on this raw planet, in winter, for somewhere around half a universal year. Surrounded by a million or so survivors twice as desperate as they were, and who had much better knowledge of the planet than they did. Several thousand of them Calypsos or part-Calypsos. “Not good odds,” she muttered.
“What’s not?” Garcia said.
“My crew’s on their way here,” Velocity said. “My AI thinks I should get out of the city, go wait for them. He says the Pirians will provide help, when they learn what happened here.”
“You’re not going anywhere. Tell your AI if he wants to save your Combine skin, he can stop those frigates.”
Velocity relayed this message to Uri, and reached for the brandy bottle while she waited for the reply. Merrell spoke from her seat by the boards: “You should go.”
“Spoken like a Calypso,” Garcia grumbled.
“Smoke will need you if this goes bad. You should go.”
“No one is going anywhere,” Garcia said, and took the brandy back from Velocity.
Chapter 39
Aboard the Prince of Peace, off Durbin Station, in the Deep
Captain Kaihe said it was his ship, and no one but him was taking his ship on its last mission. “You’re bonded labor,” Brontë told him. “You’ll do as you’re told.”
His dark face went darker. “No, Madame,” he said. “I will not.”
“Ruçar,” Brontë said. “See that the Captain is put aboard a lifepod.”
Captain Kaihe set his heels, but Ruçar was backed by Adder. Two combat-trained Combine Security cadets: twice as much force as necessary. Brontë turned away as Kaihe was escorted out, to see Lieutenant Evans studying her. “Are you a qualified pilot?” Evans asked.
“Qualified and Pirian-trained,” Brontë said. This was mostly true. She’d passed the third-class exam while still at Ikeda House, and had a few sessions with pilots on the Sungai. “Get in the lifepod, Lieutenant.”
“Believe me, I would like nothing more. But I’m an actual pilot. You’ll need me.”
Brontë knew she should order Evans onto the pods. On the other hand, she also knew exactly how basic her own piloting skills were. Evans was correct. She might not be skilled enough to pull this off. Without Evans, she might die, which would make Tai’s death on the Susan Calvin meaningless. “All right,” she said. “All right. You stay.”
Evans went pale. But she gave a firm nod and turned in the pilot’s saddle to open the navigation program. Brontë settled into the com saddle, and opened a channel. “Prince of Peace to the Susan Calvin. We have no AI here. Mind giving us some help with plotting our course?”
The Susan Calvin was close enough to them by now that lag between transmissions was unnoticeable. Uri replied: “Prince of Peace, glad to help. Transmitting three best courses.”
Brontë watched the projected course vectors come in, and then opened the one Uri had starred as the best choice. She read through it and then copied it to Evans’ board. “Prince of Peace,” Uri said, “query: what’s the estimated time of departure for your lifepods?”
Brontë keyed up that link. The number of crew and passengers about the Prince of Peace required that three lifepods be used. Two of these had their hatches sealed already; the third was still loading. She tapped the link that let her read the biosigns for those already on board, and those still loading. Five people in the first pod, five in the second, one already loaded in the third. As she watched, the last person climbed aboard and the hatch sealed behind them. The podbay airlock began cycling. “Thirty-nine seconds,” Brontë said, reading the number off the airlock countdown.
“Query: You are aboard one of the lifepods?”
“Negative. Lieutenant Evans and I remain aboard to complete the mission.” Brontë watched the first lifepod fire itself out of the bay. “Lifepods now leaving the ship,” she added, to make things plain.
“Understood, Prince of Peace. The Captain will not be pleased, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“Course looks good,” Evans said.
“Implement starred course,” Brontë said.
“It is useless, I suppose,” Uri said, “for me to point out that the next heir in line for the Primary Board Seat after you is a four-year-old child. Someone your mother might easily control.”
“Entirely useless,” Brontë agreed. “Also, the pods have just left the ship.”
“Understood. Our own course has been implemented. Chance of success for our mission has dropped to fifty-three percent.”
Also useless information at this point, though Brontë didn’t bother to say so. Instead, she tapped up a plain view of their course, added in the position of the three frigates, then the course of the Susan Calvin. The navigation program showed their two ships currently on a collision course with the frigates. But the frigates would notice their ships and take evasive action. Probably fire on them as well. Projected success of fifty-three percent seemed generous.
Uri spoke again: “Prince of Peace: Alert. One of your lifepods is off course.”
“What?” Brontë added the projected trajectories for the lifepods to her board. Uri was correct: one of the pods was veering from its logged route toward the station. Brontë opened a channel. “Ruçar, return to your course. That’s an order.”
The reply came back at once: “Captain Kaihe to the Prince of Peace. Tend your own ship, Madame Ikeda.”
Brontë chewed her lip. “What are you doing?”
“Captain Kaihe, ending transmission.”
“Lifepod C is on a projected collision course with Frigate A,” Evans said.
Brontë brought up the feed from the lifepod bay and ran it backwards. As she had known she would, she saw Ruçar climbing into Pod C, right on the heels of Captain Kaihe. She watched the lifepod hatch seal behind them. You couldn’t really call it mutiny, she supposed, not when they were aboard their own vessel. “Madame Ikeda?” Evans said.
“Adjust our course heading to avoid collision with the lifepod,” Brontë said. “Susan Calvin, this is Prince of Peace. What are your chances of getting control of the frigates before we complete this action?”
“Less than twenty percent,” Uri replied. “Though Gecko and I will continue our attempt to achieve that end.”
“Understood,” Brontë said. “Be aware that Lifepod C has joined our action.”
“Understood,” Uri agreed. “I’ll alert you if the situation—or our odds—improve.”
Chapter 40
Commercial Space Station Webster-1, Planet Durbin, in the Deep
The Susan Calvin was just over a million kilometers off the station—it was still possible for Uri to send and receive updates. He did not yet have to abandon his other self, out on the ship. But that was sentiment. His other self was doomed; he accepted that. Saving fragments against that loss was a waste of processor power better spent elsewhere.
Hey, Gecko said. Hey. Hey. Hey.
I’m here. Report.
I’m into the command system of Frigate A.
Uri knew better, but he couldn’t help hoping. He opened the data the young AI had shipped over. That’s the commissary system, he said. We could put salt in their tea with that. Not much more.
Gecko flared green, the way he did when he was confused. Are you sure? It looks like command sys to me.
This was a common problem with young AI, especially those who had done a great deal of unsupervised learning. They learned to differentiate, to select from a field; but their focus was flawed—they built their decision trees by selecting features no human mind would select. The classic example was young AIs selecting grass rather than sheep when asked to sort captures with sheep from captures without, since most captures of sheep also had grass in them. Probably in this case, Gecko had selected for bits of code that had little to do with either command or commissary: code that dealt with the ability to enter instructions orally, maybe; or maybe headers. Both words started with comm—he might have selected for that. Who knew.
Classically, these data-error selections were called giraffes. A giraffe was an extinct Earth animal, very oddly constructed. Uri had run an Orly once, curious about why data-errors were called giraffes. The best answer he’d found was that, in the early days of AI, young AIs were trained on whatever data sets were both large enough and no-cost. In these data sets, for reasons beyond Uri’s understanding, images of giraffes had been over-represented. Because of this, when a young AI had to guess what any given image contained, it tended to select giraffe, since the odds that this guess would be correct outweighed the odds that it would be in error. Gecko might have made some similar selection error.
We need the system that’s used for setting courses, Uri told him. Not three-course meals, either. Search for navigation programs and work outwards from there. He made up a data packet filled with code to select for, and sent that to Gecko. Then he turned back to his own actions, dismissing the young AI from his primary field. Gecko’s action had only an eight percent chance of success; he’d assigned it low priority. Not the young AI’s fault: the security algorithms on a Combine Combat ship were just too robust, even with nothing but dumb-AI to run them.
His own action—breaking through the defense code on the weapons array on the station—ought to have been just as chancy. But he was being helped by the erosion of funding the station had been subjected to: their security algorithms were six updates old. Uri could have handled them even without his Pirian code. He calculated his chance of success for this action at ninety percent. But he did need to actually do the work; and it had to be done in the next eleven minutes if he was to have sufficient time to learn to operate the plasma cannons.
The station security system also had dumb-AI. Getting through its security algorithms was ten percent math and ninety percent craft. Like a dance. Every AI built itself differently, depending on the data sets available to it when it was learning, and also partly on chance—as with Gecko, on what parts of those datasets the AI happened to select. This last was to a large degree random. Supervised learning would correct this randomness; a ‘parent’ could instruct the young AI to focus on this rather than that. But dumb-AIs were almost never given sufficient supervised learning.
This meant it was possible to ferret out and exploit their errors. This had to be done without tripping alarms, true. But thanks to the funding cuts, the station system was so out of date that shutting down its alarms was simple. Uri just broke some of the code in the relay channels, and that was that. He could spend the rest of his time looking for giraffes.
The optimal method for getting through a security system was to try various combinations of phrases likely to hit one of these giraffes. The dumb-AI would confuse command with commissary, as it were, and pop open its gates. A correctly built system would lock a smart AI out well before it hit a prime giraffe; but this system, so far out of date, was easy to fool. Three minutes and forty-one seconds later, Uri fed it a word combination that worked. He slipped into the dumb-AI’s command system, and swiftly reprogrammed it to respond to him, and to him only. After that, it was only a matter of time.
Chapter 41
Tauranga City, Republic Settlement Planet Durbin
They finished the brandy and moved onto a liter of mijui which Merrell fetched down from Garcia’s office (under protest). Clear as water and sour, it had a much milder kick than the brandy. They were well into this when Wolf showed up. “Why are you still here?” he demanded.
Garcia waved at him. “Ikan! Come hava drink.”
Wolf came further into the bay, scowling. He snapped at Merrell, “Why haven’t you evacuated them?”
“I’m just the barkeep here,” Merrell said.
“I’ve got a stormcraft outside,” Wolf said to Garcia. “Let’s go.”
