Darkship Renegades (27 page)

THE GALLERY OF FRACTURED MIRRORS

Jarl groaned again, that deep-body groan that speaks both of pain and nausea, and his hand went up to rub his forehead in a gesture that was too much like Kit’s for me not to recognize it. It was the gesture that meant “my head is killing me, give me a few hours alone in a quiet room.”

This time I couldn’t grant him either the quiet or the alone. So, I didn’t try to pretend. I just stood there, holding my improvised weapon. “Don’t stall,” I said. “We don’t have time. I think the computer doesn’t understand humans aren’t machines.”

He blinked at me, then cleared his throat. “I’m not stalling. I have no idea what you want to know.”

“I want to know why you said the computer was you.” I said. I didn’t add that Kit had lent credence to this idea. I wasn’t sure how aware he was of Kit, still within him, and I didn’t want him to become aware of Kit, if he wasn’t.

“Oh.” His fingers rubbed at his forehead again, and they must have dragged us over very dusty ground indeed, because even though he looked grimy, as did those parts of myself I could see, his fingers left yet darker marks on his forehead, like symbols of some forgotten religion. “That.”

“Yeah, that. How can the computer be you? I’ve heard of cyborgs but…” I was about to say that Jarl had clearly not canned himself in the computer’s machinery, when it occurred to me that I couldn’t put it past him to have created a replica of his brain and put it inside the computer, as a cyborg component. I mean, if he could see absolutely nothing wrong with reforming an embryo’s brain into his own, then why would he care if he created a replica of his own brain to can?

Cyborgs were one of those concepts the ancients had been fascinated with and which even worked, to an extent. To the extent that adding some biological components and brain cells to computers could make them faster and better. But those components didn’t need to be, and usually weren’t human in nature. I thought—or I’d been told—that our computers nowadays were almost complex enough to be on the level of mouse-brains. But here was the thing: taking the entire brain of any creature, including mice or birds, and canning it—encasing it in circuits and electronic components, which it controlled—didn’t create a supercomputer.

What it did was create insanity. A cyborg created from a whole brain was always insane, regardless of whether the brain had experience of being in a body at any time or not.

Of course, I had no reason to think we were dealing with something sane. And Jarl himself wasn’t sane. I suspected he’d started to fracture in his horrible childhood and had, since then, parted company with whatever remaining shreds of sanity he might have held onto.

The idea of his having an additional brain stashed within a machine, growing crazier and crazier through three hundred years out of contact with humans made the hair stand up at the back of my neck. My mouth tried to go dry again, but I wasn’t about to give it time, particularly since it was dry anyway—from lack of water and, at a guess, from dust.

“Not a cyborg,” he said. “Not…really. At least, it wasn’t when I made it.”

“Explain
not really
.”

Jarl blinked at me, in a myopic way which had to be related to headaches, since Kit’s eyes are excellent. Then I realized Jarl was squinting against growing light. Which meant he couldn’t have his lenses in. What kind of machine was so detailed as to remove his lenses? And why would they? Jarl hadn’t worn lenses. Kit did. But Kit was designed in a completely different way. What did the computer know about Kit?

“Well…” he said, “there is no real brain in the machine.” He smiled a little, at what must have been my reaction. “How could you think I’d do that? Even back then, we knew that those didn’t work well in machines.”

Work well in machines. That was his criterion. Clearly the idea’s monstrous qualities meant nothing to him. I’d grown up hearing that the Mules, raised apart from humans, and created in a way that humans weren’t made, had been amoral. I believed they were amoral, but I thought it was how they were raised more than how they were made that caused them to have no moral sense. Kit and I were not amoral, though I sometimes managed to be immoral. I knew where good and evil were. If I crossed the lines, it was only when it was needed.

“Right, so what is this computer? I take it it’s not just a supercomputer of the twenty-first century.”

Jarl took a deep breath, then hissed it out between his teeth. He looked a little worried, as though he might have to admit to something embarrassing. “It started out as a supercomputer of the twenty-first century,” he said. “Then I added…biological components and…and other things.”

“Other things?”

“Peripherals. The machines that you saw are also peripherals, but the ones I gave it initially were…well, in one room, and more…more restricted. But they did have the capacity to both repair the computer and…”

“And improve it. That was where I came up against it, see.” His eyes suddenly acquired animation. It was an expression I knew all too well. Father’s work often required him to come in contract with scientists of various stripes. And, as his social hostess, I often came in contact with them too. Over the years, I’d arrived at the conclusion a scientist is someone who will speak happily and with great enthusiasm of a cunning method for his own execution.

There was this weird light that came to scientists’ eyes when they described something particularly creative they’d invented or some tricky way they’d found around an eternal problem. The light was in Jarl’s eyes now.

“The thing is,” he said, “I created a far more efficient, larger and better computer than anything the world had known before, but I had one problem. No one had ever created a computer to be truly creative. Oh, sure, to shuffle and rearrange creative solutions. But truly create? No.” He grinned. “So I thought how could I create creativity. I couldn’t. No one has managed it. It’s not something that can be figured out. So…”

His voice trailed off and he was quiet so long I thought he had become lost in the internal dimensions of the problem, again. “So?” I said.

“So…” He sighed. “I knew I was creative, right? I’d created things in the past. So I figured I could do it…So…I increased the complexity of the computer enough to support it, and then I…” His eyes shifted side to side, like a thieving servant caught in error. I continued to stare at him, not giving him a respite, or a chance to evade answering. “And then I gave it a brain, but it was a
new
brain and I uploaded my personality and knowledge into it.”

I must have made a reflexive movement with the robot arm, because he put his hands over his head and yelled, “Don’t.”

But I had no intention of hitting his head. The part I hit might be the part that lodged what remained of Kit. It was one thing to be cavalier with my own life, another with Kit’s. Instead, and so I wouldn’t be tempted, I forced myself to retreat and sit against the opposite wall, with the robot arm by my side.

“I won’t ask if you’re insane,” I said, and he gave me a puzzled look as if I made no sense. “I’ll just ask what you thought you were doing.”

The smile again, which looked like a rictus in his begrimed face. A bruise ran from the corner of his mouth to his ear, as if one of the machines who’d dragged us here had grabbed his cheek between its pincers. And the other side of his face was abraded, as though they’d rubbed fine sand paper over it. I suspected it was just the way they’d held him. One of his eyelids was swollen. They might have been fine enough instruments to remove his lenses without blinding him, but clearly they hadn’t cared if they caused him pain and discomfort.

“No,” he said. And I wasn’t sure if he was denying insanity or the need to question it. “You see, I was created to serve humanity, but it was becoming obvious…” He cleared his throat. “Humanity is not as easy to serve as you might think.” He looked puzzled at the choked laugh that I felt escape me. “They created us first as functionaries. Super bureaucrats? Yeah. You see, the land territories, even though they had much higher resources than the seacities, were bankrupt. They couldn’t keep their compact with their own populations, and their brightest and youngest were escaping to the better-off seacities. There was, of course, mismanagement and fraud, and of course they wanted to stop that, so they created us. We weren’t human and, in the same way that the church enforced the celibacy rule for priests, back when…Never mind.” He must have seen by my expression that history or religious history was not my forte. Gaian priests were not celibate, though ultra-observant ones often had themselves castrated, so that they could more closely approach the feminine nature of their goddess. And they were the only priests I’d ever heard of, in sufficient numbers and in an organized enough church, to have enforced celibacy. “The thing is, because we couldn’t have descendants, it was thought we would be free from any interest in…in furthering ourselves or our lines. Because even though we were crammed with every longevity genetic marker possible, it was obvious one day we would die. Everyone does. So it was thought knowing that, we’d just serve people the best we could.”

He blinked at me again, and closed his eyes fractionally more. It was possible that the light in this room would never grow bright enough to make him close his eyes, but it was obvious he was starting to feel uncomfortable. “I tried. I know not all of us did, though those of us…well…they found a way to circumvent death, right? But I never did, or…” His eyes wandered again, as he probably became uncomfortably aware that his attempt to take over Kit couldn’t be construed as anything else. “Not for a long time. So I took serving humanity seriously, and I did try to be the impartial servant they’d created me to be. Only it became obvious that no matter how much waste and fraud we eliminated, there would always be more.” He looked very sad, suddenly, and very young despite the scruffy growth of calico-colored beard on Kit’s chin, despite the beauty of a shiner on his cheek, despite his obviously full-grown body. “It’s so difficult to govern humans, because humans are so fallible. This is why they created us, of course, to get around their own weaknesses.” He nodded, as if to himself. “So you see, we saw that it was our duty to take over, and we did. We stopped their pitiful systems of governance and we took over. We…we…we called ourselves biolords, but I know everyone called us Mule Lords.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Eventually we took over the whole world, including the seacities. And we governed well. There were some of us made by the seacities, even, and they too took over and…” He sighed. “But humans don’t like to be efficiently governed and their…their perverse nature always ended up causing problems and fraud and waste and scarcity. It was impossible to convince humans to live on a rationed diet so other humans at the other end of the world didn’t die of famine. It was impossible to convince them to work as hard as they needed to at jobs that provided for everyone, even though it was obvious if they slacked off there would be failures and…and lack of things.” He rubbed at his nose, and managed to look genuinely perplexed. “And they didn’t like us. In fact, they hated us. They…there were more and more rebellions, and I realized sooner or later we’d need to leave the Earth.” He shook his head, as though at the waste of it all. “But you see, to create the ship and all, and still govern as wisely as I could, I had to create something else, a…an additional brain that could take over some of my duties, and so…”

“And so, you misguided idiot, you created a cyborg that could think like you did.”

He just nodded, and shrugged. “It was really good at helping me with the design and…and everything. And when I left, because I left in a hurry…”

“Yes?”

“I didn’t know if I could survive this or not, if I could even get to the
Je Reviens
in time. I thought I might need to backtrack and hole up here and defend my position. And I didn’t want any of the rioters to penetrate and to come here and…” He shrugged. “So…so I you know…programmed the computer to defend this perimeter with its peripherals, and not to let anyone tamper with programming.” He sighed. “How was I to know we’d come back centuries later? How would I know it would decide I was an enemy. I tried to talk to it…I tried…It was supposed to recognize my gen signature, and Kit’s is good enough for the genlocks, but…”

“But?”

“But the computer seems to be more discriminating when it comes to genes.” He sighed again. “When we first came back before, I had some indications that the components had gone rogue, but they didn’t seem to be very mobile. I caught glimpses of them here and there, but they didn’t mass and attack us—I don’t know why, but perhaps because none of us tried approaching the computer—so it thought we were not a threat. Then when we came back…I left you out, in a clearing, and I thought…I thought I’d go to the computer and…uh…see what files there were and…uh…”

“And delete them,” I said. I couldn’t even manage any anger. What had Kit said once? Or was it Doc? Something about self-defense being enshrined in the law of even the most primitive societies.

Clearly, in healing Kit and thereby getting rid of Jarl’s personality and memories, what we’d be doing was killing Jarl. That Jarl was akin to an illness in Kit’s brain made no difference. He was alive and sentient and, no matter how he himself might not believe it, clearly human. So if we destroyed him, we would be killing him, and he was within the laws of every civilization to stop us doing it. To defend himself. So, of course, knowing I wanted the knowledge of the nanocytes, if he had anything relating to them on the computer, he’d want to erase them.

His eyes widened a little, in alarm, and he nodded minimally, then added, “Not the ones on the powertrees. I had solved that problem, by the way, just before I…just when we had to leave. With the help of the computer, so most of the files were in the computer. So, I figured I would get those on gems, and give them to Zen and Bartolomeu, and get them out of the Earth…”

“Oh, yeah, so you could make me your queen of the damned or whatever. Right,” I said.

He flinched, but didn’t say anything for a while, then spoke in an even voice, as emotionless as though he were discussing the weather, “But I couldn’t get near it. I got close enough to realize that it had done something to you…that it was playing some game…”