Forbidden Knowledge (20 page)

“If I knew how to plant a virus,” he objected, “I might be able to cure this one.”

Morn stared her desperate and conflicted weariness up at him and refused to let him off the hook.

“But if I knew how—” He faltered; his mustache looked like a streak of dirt bleeding into his mouth at the corners. After a moment he began again more strongly. “If I knew how, I could just sit down at the data board and write it in. But that would be the hard way.”

“Why?”

“It’s an incredibly complicated job. I would have to study the entire system to find the right place for the virus. That takes time. A lot of time. And the coding for the virus has to be enormously complex—as well as enormously subtle. Otherwise it shows. Or it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. Which takes more time. Somebody would almost certainly catch me.”

Rather helplessly, he added, “You know that.”

She dismissed the issue of what she did or didn’t know with a twitch of her hand. “What would be the easy way?”

“Write it all ahead of time,” he said more promptly. “Bring it aboard on tape—or in a chip. Then I could just copy it into the system whenever I had a minute to spare.”

“Fine,” Morn murmured as if she were dozing. “You can write it all ahead of time. You can copy it in seconds. But you still need to study the system. You can’t design your virus until you know the system.”

The data first nodded. “Sure.”

“Vector, did Orn ever have a chance to study
Captain’s Fancy’s
systems before you joined ship?”

The engineer’s gaze was quizzical. “Not that I know of. I can’t be sure, but I don’t think so.” Then he added, “Nick would know.”

She also dismissed the issue of what Nick did or didn’t know. “Assume it. Assume he couldn’t write the virus until he knew the system—and he couldn’t get to know the system until he joined ship.”

A small frown creased Vector’s round face. “You’re saying he must have written the virus after he and I came aboard.”

“No. Sib’s right.” Fatigue made everything hard to explain. “He was new. Nobody trusts new people. Nobody would let him spend five or ten uninterrupted hours at the computers without challenging him.” Not Mikka Vasaczk. And certainly not Nick, whose instinct for trouble was as searching as a particle sifter. “He would have to do the work in little bits and pieces, while nobody was looking. It might take him weeks.

“But he said”—it was astonishing how clearly she remembered this—“he said, ‘I put a virus in the computers—the same day I came aboard.’ The same day, not weeks later.”

“He may not have been telling the truth,” Vector observed.

“Assume he was. Now we have a virus that couldn’t have been written earlier and wasn’t written later.”

Vector studied his coffee as if it could cure his perplexity. “So what are the alternatives?”

“Hardware,” Mackern breathed. He sounded like he was about to be sick.

Morn turned her tired gaze on him and waited.

“But that’s impossible,” he protested to himself. “I mean, it’s not technically impossible. He could hardwire a virus into a chip or a card. Or a mother-board-that would be the most versatile. It would do the same thing as a program virus. He could order it dormant or activate it whenever he wanted.

“He could do the work before he came aboard. Then he would only need five minutes alone in the core to substitute his chip, or whatever.

“But it’s still impossible.”

Vacillating between sleep and concentration, Morn asked, “Why?”

“For the same reason he couldn’t write the virus ahead of time,” Sib replied. “There are too many different kinds of computers, as well as too many different kinds of programs to run them. He couldn’t hardwire a
compatible
chip unless he already knew exactly what equipment we have. And we’re assuming he couldn’t know that before he joined ship.”

“Not to mention the expense,” Vector put in. “Ordinary sods like us can just about afford a hard-memory chip or two for systems like these—if we’ve got steady jobs and we like to save. Mother-boards might as well be on the other side of the gap.”

“But not,” Morn murmured as if she’d decided on sleep, “interface cards.”

The data first opened his mouth; closed it again. A wince in his eyes made him look like he was afraid of her.

“What do you mean,” Vector inquired tentatively, “‘not interface cards’?” He gave the impression that he doubted she could answer the question.

“Not everything.” Without quite realizing it, she’d slipped her hands into her pockets; her fingers rested on the keys of the zone implant control. She was so familiar with it that she could use it without looking at it. “Not expensive.” Probably she should have felt brilliant, victorious: she should have felt that she’d achieved a breakthrough that would redeem her. But she lacked the energy for so much emotion. As soon as she finished what she was saying, she would turn off the control and let herself rest. “And not impossible.”

“Morn”—Vector leaned forward, touched her arm—“you’re drifting. Try to stay with us a little longer.”

With an act of will which the zone implant itself made possible, she took her fingers off the control.

“They aren’t expensive,” she said dimly. “If they were, ‘ordinary sods’ couldn’t afford to expand or upgrade their systems. And they can be hardwired like a chip, or a mother-board.” Especially in this case, when all that was needed was a relatively simple embedded wipe command with an on-off code. “And there’s no compatibility problem. Interface cards are standardized. That’s why they can be cheap. They plug into standard slots—they run on standard operating systems. If you want to interface two computers, all you have to do is look at them, see what they are. Then you set a few dip-switches on your cards, plug them in, and connect the leads.”

As she spoke, Sib began to nod, ticking off points in his mind when she made them.

She forced herself to continue. “All our computers seem to function fine independently. And they all wipe when we link them up. He could probably change out every interface card in the core in fifteen minutes.

“Has anybody searched his cabin?”

Vector’s eyes were wide and round, as blue as surprise. “Not that I know of. Why bother? He wasn’t likely to leave a virus-owner’s manual lying around.”

Waves of sleep rolled through her and receded again as the zone implant fought them. She waited until one of them passed; then she said, “You might find something interesting if you did.”

Mackern went on nodding as if he couldn’t stop. “It’s worth a try.” Vector was back at the intercom before Morn noticed that he’d moved. She eased her fingers onto her black box again as he keyed the intercom and said, “Mikka?”

The command second took a minute or two to answer. When she replied, she sounded grim and unreachable. “I’m sleeping, goddamn it. Leave me alone.”

Unflappable as ever, Vector said, “We’re in the galley. I don’t think you want to miss this, Mikka.”

By the time Mikka arrived, Morn was deep in dreams, cradling her head with her arms on the galley table.

When Vector nudged her awake, her brain was gone, lost in unnavigable weariness. She could focus her eyes on him—she was able to recognize Mikka and Sib standing behind him—but she had no idea what they wanted.

“Come on,” the engineer said gently. “You don’t want to miss this.”

Where had she heard that before? She couldn’t remember.

There were other things she couldn’t do as well. She couldn’t protest. Or resist: all her resistance, every bit of her independent self, had fallen away into a black abysm of sleep. Numb and disconnected, she let Vector urge her up from her chair; she let him and Mikka take her out of the galley between them.

Out of the galley to the bridge.

Nick was there with his watch—Carmel and Lind, Malda Verone, the helm first. Sib Mackern’s place at the data station was empty, but he didn’t move to take it; he stayed beside Mikka with Vector and Morn as if the four of them were joined in an obscure pact.

Nick faced them tightly. Morn couldn’t read his expression, and didn’t try. If Mikka and Vector had let go of her, she would have slumped to the deck.

“That took you long enough,” he said. She couldn’t read his tone, either. “What the hell’s going on?”

“I’ll spare you the details,” Mikka answered brusquely. “Morn thinks she’s figured out this virus. She convinced Vector and Mackern. They persuaded me to search Vorbuld’s cabin.

“For some reason, he kept a box of interface cards in his locker. They look normal to me, but Mackern says he thinks they’ve been doctored. He thought we should replace all the interface cards in the core.” Morn felt the command second shrug. “He’s data first. I let him do it.

“He got a new set of cards from stores and changed out the old ones. Just to be on the safe side, I watched him do it. The old cards are all out. The new ones were sealed before he opened them, so they haven’t been tampered with.

“If he’s right—if Morn is right—the virus is gone.”

“If you don’t mind”—now Morn could hear Nick’s sarcasm—“we’ll test that a few times before I believe it.

“Mackern,” he ordered, “the rest of you, get to work. I want to re-create the tests we ran the first time—I want to do exactly the same things that triggered those first wipes.”

Maybe he went on talking. Or maybe not. Morn couldn’t tell: she was asleep again.

Vector and Mikka kept her on her feet; they held her approximately at attention while all the original tests were set up and repeated. But she didn’t return to a state which resembled consciousness until Vector shook her and said into her ear, “Everything works, Morn. You were right. You did it.”

Did it. Oh, good. She wasn’t sure she knew what he was talking about.

But then the odd, constricted glare Nick fixed on her pulled up her head, made her take notice of him.

“You win.” He looked at her as if winning were the most dangerous thing she could have done. “We had a bargain. You kept your end of it. I’ll keep mine.

“You can have your damn baby.” The concession came out as a snarl. “And you won’t have to do it on Thanatos Minor. Vector says the gap drive will get us into tach and out again one more time. He doesn’t want to stake his life on it, but he’s willing to risk his
reputation.
” Nick rasped the word like a curse. “I’m going to do both for you.”

His eyes blazed with murder or wild joy, she couldn’t tell which.

“I’m going to take you to Enablement Station.”

As soon as Morn heard the name, she stopped breathing.

The entire bridge seemed to stop breathing.

“They’ll help you have your baby, all right. And we won’t have to put up with some squalling brat for the next decade or so. They’ll give you a full-grown kid in about an hour.

“Maybe that way I won’t have to leave you behind.”

His last words reached her, but she didn’t absorb them. She was thinking, Enablement Station.

Forbidden space. The Amnion.

She may have heard Nick’s vindictive laughter. He’d intended this from the moment he first made his bargain with her.

In spite of Vector’s support, and Mikka’s, she fainted as if she were dying.

ANCILLARY
DOCUMEMTATION

THE AMNION

First Contact

O
pinion is divided as to what should be formally considered “first contact” with the Amnion. Some believe that humankind’s relations with the only other (known) sentient—not to mention spacefaring—life-form in the galaxy cannot be considered to have begun until the first human met the first Amnioni. By some standards, this occurred aboard the Amnion ship
Solidarity
, when Sixten Vertigus, captain of the Space Mines, Inc., probe ship
Deep Star
, on his own authority, and against strict SMI instructions, took the risk of an EVA transfer to
Solidarity’s
airlock and was assisted through the locks by a being which he later described as “a humanoid sea anemone with too many arms.”

His instructions had been to establish proximity with any alien vessel or base, broadcast incessantly the tape which Intertech, a subsidiary of SMI, had prepared for the occasion, tape any returning broadcast his equipment could receive as long as possible without jeopardizing his mission, and then escape into the gap in a way that would confuse pursuit. SMI Chairman and CEO Holt Fasner professed himself unwilling to risk Earth for the sake of profit: he did not wish to reveal too much to beings whose intentions were unguessable.

Sixten Vertigus’ disinclination to follow instructions assured him of his place in the history of human-Amnioni relations.

He was an idealist.

He had also been on this mission for a very long time—and Earth was so many light-years away that his decisions were in no danger of being countermanded.

However, the being which assisted him aboard
Solidarity
was a relatively minor functionary. Therefore analysts with a keener sense of protocol argue that “first contact” took place when Vertigus met the “captain” of
Solidarity
(in this context, “captain” is an imprecise translation of an Amnion term which means, literally, “decisive”).

In a concrete sense, nothing much was accomplished during this meeting. Captain Vertigus’ instruments established that the atmosphere aboard
Solidarity
was one he could breathe—if his life depended on it. This merely confirmed information which he had received much earlier from Intertech: specifically that the Amnion were oxygen-carbon-based, with metabolic processes at least analogous to humankind’s. His attempts at speech with
Solidarity’s
“captain” gained only the preliminary tapes from which translations were eventually made.

However, Sixten Vertigus had no unrealistic expectations. His only goal—aside from his prohibited desire to lay eyes on at least one Amnioni—was to hand over to someone the tape which he had been instructed to broadcast, along with a player which would enable the Amnion to scrutinize the message at their leisure.

This tape contained a basis on which the Amnion could begin to translate human speech, mathematics, and data coding. Not incidentally, the tape included a message offering alliance and trade with SMI itself. Preferably exclusive.

The Amnion reacted with gestures and noises which meant nothing to Captain Vertigus. They were, however, not unprepared for his gift. And perhaps they understood the significance of the fact that he had come to them alone and unarmed. In exchange for the tape and player, they offered him a sealed canister which contained—research discovered this shortly after his safe return to
Deep Star
—mutagenic material nearly identical to the stuff that had brought him into this quadrant of space in the first place.

In their own way, the Amnion were attempting to communicate.