Human Sister (37 page)

“It is not such a terrible thing that love now and then asks us to commit a small affront against the sensible,” Grandpa said, interrupting my thoughts: He really was in Berkeley. He was out getting flowers for Grandma.

I burst into tears and hugged him.

“Well, well,” he said, patting my back. “I had no idea my bringing flowers home to Grandma meant so much to you.”

The plot of the tiltrotor’s movements showed that it had gone from home to Palo Alto and from there directly to Livermore, where it had remained all day until 1751, when it had departed for Palo Alto to pick me up.

I was stunned. Evidently, my call to Grandpa had been routed to him from his office, and the roses had been delivered to him at Livermore. Michael said we should confront Grandpa with our evidence and ask him to explain. I reminded Michael that I’d promised not to reveal to Grandpa the existence of the pigeonoid or the contents of any communication I received from it.

“We need only show Grandpa the plot of the tiltrotor’s movements,” Michael said. “If he asks what induced us to spy on him, we can say that his increased absences from home made us suspicious.”

We printed out our evidence and placed it on the study table, then waited for Grandpa to come in and say goodnight. When he did, I pointed toward the table. He looked puzzled, walked to the table, and began examining what we’d prepared. After about a minute, he picked up the papers, and dumped them into the recycler. “What I do, I do to protect both of you, and Grandma and Elio. I’m sorry if—”

“Are you involved in planning another attack against Sara’s brothers?” Michael interrupted.

Grandpa looked down. His shoulders drooped. He had lost weight during the past year, perhaps in part because his eating and sleeping, entrenched for years in a strict schedule, had become erratic under the pressure of increased work. His face was thin, its creases full of shadows.

“I need to lie on the sofa for a moment,” he said.

He lay with his left arm beside him, his right arm over his forehead and eyes. After about a minute of rest he said, “I would like to consult with you and Michael about something, but I don’t want you to discuss anything I say with Grandma or Elio.”

“I don’t like keeping secrets from Elio,” I said.

“I understand. It’s not been easy for me to keep secrets from Grandma, either, but I’ve had to. That’s part of what working for the government entails—keeping classified information secret. The information I would like to discuss with you is dangerous to know, or at least to let anyone discover that you know. I love and trust Elio, too, but everyone has a breaking point if they’re interrogated. All I’m asking is that you not put Elio in danger unless it becomes necessary to do so.”

I was in a bind. On the one hand, I’d promised never again to keep secrets from Elio. On the other, I wanted to know what was happening, and I wanted to help Grandpa; it was clear that he was in some kind of trouble. And, what would be worse, my keeping classified information secret from Elio, or my putting Elio in grave danger?

I noticed then that Grandpa was trembling all over, and asked whether he was okay.

“I’m feeling very weak. Faint. Please check my pulse.”

With my right hand I began to take his pulse. As I did, I placed my left hand on his chest. He was trembling quite violently now. He had kept himself in good shape. His normal resting pulse was 58. His pulse now was 115.

“I think I should get some medical attention,” he said. “But we can’t have anyone coming into these rooms.” He slowly rolled off the sofa onto the floor and began crawling on hands and knees toward Gatekeeper. “If I pass out,” he said, “drag me through Gatekeeper and into my bedroom. Then call Dr. Taranik.”

First Brother

S
he stands about 2 meters in front of the inscribed surfaces of the markers. Her shadow lies to the right of the rightmost marker and extends over 9 meters toward the southeast.

The dog nuzzles her left hand, but she fails to respond. The dog looks back at me as I stand in front of the garage. The dog lies down beside her left leg.

She stands quietly in front of the markers for 1 minute, 22 seconds. Then both of her hands rise. They disappear in front of her body and appear to stop near her waist. Movement in the muscles of her arms indicates that her hands manipulate something. A review of frontal images of her as she exits the arborway and comes into view reveals no sign of a weapon.

Sara

G
randma and I accompanied Grandpa in the air ambulance that took him to the Stanford Medical Center. After a battery of tests, Dr. Taranik told us that because Grandpa had never before had a panic attack, it wasn’t surprising that he had feared he might have been having heart trouble. The doctor recommended that Grandpa remain in the hospital overnight because his blood pressure was still high and he continued to have bouts of trembling. Elio drove Grandma and me home.

The next morning when Grandma, Elio, and I went to visit Grandpa, an FBI agent was stationed beside his bed and refused to leave when we asked him to give us some privacy.

“That’s all right,” Grandpa responded. “Some people are afraid I might be having a nervous breakdown, and they want to be sure I don’t say anything untoward. Magnasea is involved in a few classified projects, you know.”

We made small talk for about a half-hour, until a nurse came in and said Grandpa needed to rest. We could visit him again the next day.

Before we left the hospital, we spoke with Dr. Taranik, who told us that though the acute problem of the day before had been a panic attack, the underlying problem appeared to be that Grandpa was suffering from nervous exhaustion. For the time being, a few days of monitoring and rest at the hospital were called for.

He appeared rested when he returned home four days later, but he didn’t come to Michael’s area until after Elio left for school the next morning. By then, my mind was swirling with questions and speculation: Why would Grandpa help attack the androids? After all, he had spent decades helping to create some of them, and he had wanted me to love First Brother. Perhaps someone was forcing him. But who?

When Grandpa finally came in to see Michael and me, he told us another attack against the androids was being jointly planned by the United States and China. “I’ve been privy to some, but far from all, of the details,” he said. “My position has always been a hundred percent against the attack, and I have been doing everything I can to discourage it. By participating in their war games, my desire to dissuade the military from attacking the androids interacts with their desire to anticipate and defeat all responses from the androids. In participating in these games, I’ve tried to demonstrate how a human force far from home, gripped by fear, handicapped by multiple comparative frailties, and paralyzed by comparatively slow response times would meet fearless opponents with far swifter intelligences—opponents who are safe and functional in nearly all environments, and so on, and so forth.

“Whenever the android team wins, I’m asked for solutions. I tell the generals I don’t have any solutions for them, except to abandon this dangerous nonsense. But they employ a swarm of highly intelligent people who are soon able to simulate victory. I’ve worn myself out many times trying to explain my reasons for believing that the androids mean us no harm. I’ve explained that we are frail biologic creatures and that something as drastic as a second attack may alter the intentional structures of some of the androids, may induce them to hate us. I have long felt that it may take some traumatic event to raise First Brother, for example, to a higher level of emotional consciousness. But war is not the trauma and a desire for revenge is not the emotion I was seeking. If the androids come to feel hate without feeling love, they truly will be creatures to be feared.”

The letter from First Brother already seemed full of hate, I thought.

“If I understand correctly,” I said, “your efforts to convince the generals that it’s unwise to attack the androids have so far failed, but your efforts to demonstrate our military’s weaknesses have resulted in modifications to their plans that increase the likelihood of success for the plans.”

“Sara’s right,” Michael said. “They listen to you only so they can figure out how to overcome the difficulties you present. And the better and more sophisticated they perceive their plans to be, the more likely they’ll be to proceed with the attack.”

Mom was right, I thought. Knowledge isn’t power; it’s the fuel of power.

Grandpa’s face flushed. “You are quick to assume the only goal worth pursuing is that of preventing the attack. But suppose for a moment that despite my best efforts, the attack proceeds. After the rockets blast off with their arsenals of destruction, what should our goals be then?”

Michael shrugged.

“We don’t know,” I answered.

“I don’t know, either. But I fear that if the androids are attacked again, they might attempt to retaliate. With biological weapons. Unfortunately, in a self-congratulatory display of our grand moral intelligence, we have prohibited the development of such weapons. As a consequence, we have failed to acquire in-depth knowledge of such weapons and are virtually defenseless against any the androids might have developed. And that is what I want you to help me with. Sara, you’ve had more intimate interactions with First Brother than I have. Michael, you are capable of thinking like First Brother and the other Sentirens. What kinds of things might they come up with? What might they do?”

Michael again merely shrugged.

“Give us half an hour to think about it,” I said.

When Grandpa returned, I told him we hadn’t yet thought of anything helpful. As for me, though I might have had more intimate interactions with First Brother than Grandpa had, that wasn’t saying much. I truly didn’t have any idea what made him or my other brothers tick. As for Michael, though he may possess the potential to think like First Brother, he obviously did not think like First Brother. He had never thought of harming any human in any way. In fact, merely finding my memory of Second Brother’s breaking my finger had sent him into hiding. His mind seemed to rebel against even considering the hypothesis that androids would use biological weapons against humans. During the past half-hour, he had cried and had nearly slipped into hiding again when I’d asked him to try to consider such a thing. Sobbing, he’d said he loves us; loves the touch, the warmth of our skin, our laughter; loves the human genius for having invented so many wonderful things, for having created him.

Michael and I did, however, have some questions.

“What strikes us as peculiar,” I said, “is that you are not an expert on rockets or bombs or military strategies, yet you apparently have been spending a great amount of time working at Lawrence Livermore on the launching of another military expedition to Mars. We find it hard to believe that merely playing war games would take so much time. Your expertise is in emergent intelligences—in androids. Michael and I are worried that you’re helping the military create android soldiers for use against our brothers.”

Grandpa put his head in his hands but didn’t say anything.

Michael broke the silence. “How many are there?”

Grandpa’s answer was barely audible. “Nine hundred thirty-seven.”

“Grandpa, it would be suicidal to train androids to kill,” I said. “You’ve told me so. You said that Magnasea was involved in the Sentiren project to create Navy SEALs, but that they were only going to be trained for reconnaissance and rescue missions.”

“Yes, I told you those things. Part of what I said, however, was merely hope: I hoped that the android SEALs would be used only for such missions, as I was assured they would be. But think about it: How could we have controlled how they were used once they left our labs? In the end, your parents secretly trained the Sentirens to fail the Navy’s tests because they didn’t want to take such a risk with the creations they loved. Though I can’t claim any credit for having helped your parents subvert the Sentiren project, I believed then, and I believe even more strongly now, that it is terribly wrong to create android killers.”