New Frontiers (8 page)

Immediately the avatar replied, “This will necessitate reducing power consumption.”

“Power consumption may be reduced below the levels needed to keep the crew alive,” Ignatiev said.

For half a heartbeat the AI avatar said nothing. Then, “That is a possibility.”

“If we change course to remain with the region where hydrogen density is adequate to maintain all the ship's systems,” Ignatiev said slowly, carefully, “none of the crew's lives would be endangered.”

“Not so, Alexander Alexandrovich,” the avatar replied.

“Not so?”

“The immediate threat of reduced power availability might be averted by changing course, but once the ship has left its preplanned trajectory toward Gliese 581, how will you navigate toward our destination? Course correction data will take more than twelve years to reach us from Earth. The ship would be wandering through a wilderness, far from its destination. The crew would eventually die of starvation.”

“We could navigate ourselves,” said Ignatiev. “We wouldn't need course correction data from mission control.”

The avatar's image actually shook her head. “No member of the crew is an accredited astrogator.”

“I can do it!” Nikki cried. “I monitor the navigation program.”

With a hint of a smile, the avatar said gently, “Monitoring the astrogation program does not equip you to plot course changes.”

Before Nikki or anyone else could object, Ignatiev asked coolly, “So what do you recommend?”

Again the AI system hesitated before answering, almost a full second. It must be searching every byte of data in its memory, Ignatiev thought.

At last the avatar responded. “While this ship passes through the region of low fuel density the animate crew should enter cryonic suspension.”

“Cryosleep?” Gregorian demanded. “For how long?”

“As long as necessary. The cryonics units can be powered by the ship's backup fuel cells—”

The redhaired engineer said, “Why don't we use the fuel cells to run the ship?”

Ignatiev shook his head. The kid knows better, he's just grasping at straws.

Sure enough, the AI avatar replied patiently, “The fuel cells could power the ship for only a week or less, depending on internal power consumption.”

Crestfallen, the engineer said, “Yeah. Right.”

“Cryosleep is the indicated technique for passing through this emergency,” said the AI system.

Ignatiev asked, “If the fuel cells are used solely for maintaining the cryosleep units' refrigeration, how long could they last?”

“Two months,” replied the avatar. “That includes maintaining the cryosleep units already being used by the cargo.”

“Understood,” said Ignatiev. “And if this region of low fuel density extends for more than two months?”

Without hesitation, the AI avatar answered, “Power to the cryosleep units will be lost.”

“And the people in those units?”

“They will die,” said the avatar, without a flicker of human emotion.

Gregorian said, “Then we'd better hope that the bubble doesn't last for more than two months.”

Ignatiev saw the others nodding, up and down the conference table. They looked genuinely frightened, but they didn't know what else could be done.

He thought he did.

7

THE MEETING BROKE
up with most of the crew members muttering to one another about sleeping through the emergency.

“Too bad they don't have capsules big enough for the two of us,” Gregorian said brashly to Nikki. Ignatiev thought he was trying to show a valor he didn't truly feel.

They don't like the idea of crawling into those capsules and closing the lids over their faces, Ignatiev thought. It scares them. Too much like coffins.

With Gregorian at her side, Nikki came up to him as he headed for the conference room's door. Looking troubled, fearful, she asked, “How long … do you have any idea?”

“Probably not more than two months,” he said, with a certainty he did not actually feel. “Maybe even a little less.”

Gregorian grasped Nikki's slim arm. “We'll take capsules next to each other. I'll dream of you all the time we're asleep.”

Nikki smiled up at him.

But Ignatiev knew better. In cryosleep you don't dream. The cold seeps into the brain's neurons and denatures the chemicals that hold memories. Cryonic sleepers awakened without memories, many of them forgot how to speak, how to walk, even how to control their bladders and bowels. It was necessary to download a person's brain patterns into a computer before he or she entered cryosleep and then to restore the memories digitally once the sleeper was awakened.

The AI system is going to do that for us? Ignatiev scoffed at the idea. That was one of the reasons why the mission required keeping a number of the crew awake during the long flight: to handle the uploading of the memories of the two hundred men and women cryosleeping through the journey once they were awakened at Gliese 581.

Ignatiev left the conference room and headed toward his quarters. There was much to do: he didn't entirely trust the AI system's judgment. Despite its sophistication, it was still a computer program, limited to the data and instructions fed into it.

So? he asked himself. Aren't you limited to the data and instructions fed into your brain? Aren't we all?

“Dr. Ignatiev.”

Turning, he saw Nikki hurrying up the passageway toward him. For once she was alone, without Gregorian clutching her.

He made a smile for her. It took an effort.

Nikki said softly, “I want to thank you.”

“Thank me?”

“Vartan told me that he confided in you. That you made him understand…”

Ignatiev shook his head. “He was blind.”

“And you helped him to see.”

Feeling helpless, stupid, he replied, “It was nothing.”

“No,” Nikki said. “It was everything. He's asked me to marry him.”

“People of your generation still marry?”

“Some of us still believe in a lifetime commitment,” she said.

A lifetime of two centuries? Ignatiev wondered. That's some commitment.

Almost shyly, her eyes lowered, Nikki said, “We'd like you to be at our wedding. Would you be Vartan's best man?”

Thunderstruck. “Me? But you … I mean, he…”

Smiling, she explained, “He's too frightened of you to ask. It took all his courage for him to ask you about me.”

And Ignatiev suddenly understood. I must look like an old ogre to him. A tyrant. An intolerant ancient dragon.

“Tell him to ask me himself,” he said gently.

“You won't refuse him?”

Almost smiling, Ignatiev answered, “No, of course not.”

Nikki beamed at him. “Thank you!”

And she turned and raced off down the passageway, leaving Ignatiev standing alone, wondering at how the human mind works.

8

ONCE HE GOT
back to his own quarters, still slightly stunned at his own softheartedness, Ignatiev called for the AI system.

“How may I help you, Alexander Alexandrovich?” The image looked like Sonya once again. More than ever, Ignatiev thought.

“How will the sleepers' brain scans be uploaded into them once they are awakened?” he asked.

“The ship's automated systems will perform that task,” said the imperturbable avatar.

“No,” said Ignatiev. “Those systems were never meant to operate completely autonomously.”

“The uploading program is capable of autonomous operation.”

“It requires human oversight,” he insisted. “Check the mission protocols.”

“Human oversight is required,” the avatar replied, “except in emergencies where such oversight would not be feasible. In such cases, the system is capable of autonomous operation.”

“In theory.”

“In the mission protocols.”

Ignatiev grinned harshly at the image on the screen above his fireplace. Arguing with the AI system was almost enjoyable; if the problem weren't so desperate, it might even be fun. Like a chess game. But then he remembered how rarely he managed to beat the AI system's chess program.

“I don't propose to trust my mind, and the minds of the rest of the crew, to an untested collection of bits and bytes.”

The image seemed almost to smile back at him. “The system has been tested, Alexander Alexandrovich. It was tested quite thoroughly back on Earth. You should read the reports.”

A hit, he told himself. A very palpable hit. He dipped his chin in acknowledgement. “I will do that.”

The avatar's image winked out, replaced by the title page of a scientific paper published several years before
Sagan
had started out for Gliese 581.

Ignatiev read the report. Twice. Then he looked up the supporting literature. Yes, he concluded, a total of eleven human beings had been successfully returned to active life by an automated uploading system after being cryonically frozen for several weeks.

The work had been done in a laboratory on Earth, with whole phalanxes of experts on hand to fix anything that might have gone wrong. The report referenced earlier trials, where things did go wrong and the standby scientific staff was hurriedly pressed into action. But at last those eleven volunteers were frozen after downloading their brain scans, then revived and their electrical patterns uploaded from computers into their brains once again. Automatically. Without human assistance.

All eleven reported that they felt no different after the experiment than they had before being frozen. Ignatiev wondered at that. It's too good to be true, he told himself. Too self-serving. How would they know what they felt before being frozen? But that's what the record showed.

The scientific literature destroyed his final argument against the AI system. The crew began downloading their brain scans the next day.

All but Ignatiev.

He stood by in the scanning center when Nikki downloaded her brain patterns. Gregorian was with her, of course. Ignatiev watched as the Armenian helped her to stretch out on the couch. The automated equipment gently lowered a metal helmet studded with electrodes over her short-cropped hair.

It was a small compartment, hardly big enough to hold the couch and the banks of instruments lining three of its walls. It felt crowded, stuffy, with the two men standing on either side of the couch and a psychotechnician and the crew's physician at their elbows.

Without taking his eyes from the panel of gauges he was monitoring, the psychotech said softly, “The scan will begin in thirty seconds.”

The physician at his side, looking even chunkier than usual in a white smock, needlessly added, “It's completely painless.”

Nikki smiled wanly at Ignatiev. She's brave, he thought. Then she turned to Gregorian and her smile brightened.

The two men stood on either side of the scanning couch as the computer's images of Nikki's brain patterns flickered on the central display screen. A human mind, on display, Ignatiev thought. Which of those little sparks of light are the love she feels for Gregorian? he wondered. Which one shows what she feels for me?

The bank of instruments lining the wall made a soft beep.

“That's it,” said the psychotech. “The scan is finished.”

The helmet rose automatically off Nikki's head and she slowly got up to a sitting position.

“How do you feel?” Ignatiev asked, reaching out toward her.

She blinked and shook her head slightly. “Fine. No different.” Then she turned to Gregorian and allowed him to help her to her feet.

“Your turn, Vartan,” said Ignatiev, feeling a slightly malicious pleasure at the flash of alarm that passed over the Armenian's face.

Once his scan was finished, though, Gregorian sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the couch. He stood up and spread out his arms. “Nothing to it!” he exclaimed, grinning at Nikki.

“Now there's a copy of all your thoughts in the computer,” Nikki said to him.

“And yours,” he replied.

Ignatiev muttered, “Backup storage.” But he was thinking, Just what we need:
two
copies of his brain.

Gesturing to the couch, Nikki said, “It's your turn now, Dr. Ignatiev.”

He shook his head. “Not yet. There are still several of the crew waiting. I'll go last, when everyone else is finished.”

Smiling, she said, “Like a father to us all. So protective.”

Ignatiev didn't feel fatherly. As Gregorian slid his arm around her waist and the two of them walked out of the computer lab, Ignatiev felt like a weary gladiator who was facing an invincible opponent. We who are about to die, he thought.

9

“ALEXANDER ALEXANDROVICH.”

Ignatiev looked up from the bowl of borscht he had heated in the microwave oven of his kitchen. It was good borscht: beets rich and red, broth steaming. Enjoy it while you can, he told himself. It had taken twice the usual time to heat the borscht adequately.

“Alexander Alexandrovich,” the AI avatar repeated.

Its image stared out at him from the small display screen alongside the microwave. Ignatiev picked up the warm bowl in both his hands and stepped past the counter that served as a room divider and into his sitting room.

The avatar's image was on the big screen above the fireplace.

“Alexander Alexandrovich,” it said again, “you have not yet downloaded your brain scan.”

“I know that.”

“You are required to do so before you enter cryosleep.”

“If I enter cryosleep,” he said.

The avatar was silent for a full heartbeat. Then, “All the other crew members have entered cryosleep. You are the only crew member still awake. It is necessary for you to download your—”

“I might not go into cryosleep,” he said to the screen.

“But you must,” said the avatar. There was no emotion in its voice, no panic or even tribulation.