Xenotech Queen's Gambit: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 2) (5 page)

“Composite machine intelligences were first developed on Tigram after the P
â
kk-Tigrammath War.”

“That really happened?” I said. “I thought it was just a myth to explain why Tigrammaths are into meditation and the P
â
kk split into Short and Long factions.”

The two Pâkk factions have different views of other intelligent species. Both agree that non-Pâkk are sheep to be exploited, but Long Pâkk want them for wool and Short Pâkk see them as lamb chops.

“It was real,” said Poly. “My adviser, the head researcher on this project, is a Tigrammath. He says the War was so bad that whole planetary populations were destroyed with congruent-tech bombs and massive bio-weapon plagues were unleashed. The Tigrammaths were supposedly the more aggressive of the two species, which is why they try so hard to damp it down and stay chill now.”

“When did all this happen?”

“Professor Urrrson says 15,000 years ago.”

That
turned my understanding of GaFTA history upside down. The Galactic Free Trade Association civilizations had crashed during the Pleistocene and had only rebuilt in the last few thousand years? And if the Tigrammaths were originally
more
aggressive than the P
â
kk, that was saying something. Poly could see my brain going off on a tangent so she leaned forward. The towel wrapped around her gapped suggestively. My hindbrain grabbed my forebrain’s attention and pulled me back into the present.

“Getting back to the composite machine personalities,” I said.

Poly adjusted her towel to reduce my distraction. She kept smiling at me, but her body was telling her to focus on digesting breakfast and getting some sleep. I could tell she’d soon be surrendering to the arms of Morpheus. All-nighters are harder in grad school than in college.

“Our project is using units with five personalities,” she said. “They’re working on ‘greatest good for greatest number’ problems, with the associated dimensions of balancing individual freedom versus public good.”

“I can see how that would drive some personalities crazy.”

“Exactly. With our current mix of personality types, we can’t seem to process potential solutions for more than an hour before one of the personalities can’t handle it and goes bonkers.”

“Don’t the other personalities catch it and flag its responses as errors?” I asked.

“No, that’s the problem. They seem to resonate with the off-kilter personality and go nuts themselves.”

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”

“Right. Who guards the guardians? The other personalities aren’t evaluating the one that goes off the deep end. They’re jumping in with it,” said Poly.

This was the first time Poly had sounded so frustrated by her Georgia Tech project. I really wanted to be helpful, but didn’t know much about the nuances of her research.

“Tell me about these personalities,” I said. “How do you figure out their intellectual and emotional parameters? How do you decide which types to include in a given consensual matrix?”

“All the A.I. personalities are genius-level intellects,” said Poly. “We usually put two linear thinkers, an emotional unit, an intuitive unit and an artistic unit in a 5-ply matrix. They’re all specialists, with their own approaches to problem solving. We make sure they’re well-adjusted personalities with strong social skills so they can cooperate effectively with each other.”

“Wait,” I said. “You’re using brilliant, genius-level personalities that are well-adjusted and have strong social skills?”

I didn’t think it was
possible
to have true genius-level personalities with strong social skills.

“Of course. How else can they work together effectively?”

“But you still want them to cross-check each other?”

“Of course,” said Poly. “That’s how they gain concensus.”

“I think I see the problem,” I said.

She gave me a “So tell me already…” look.

“You don’t need the personalities to be well-adjusted or have good social skills. You need them to be cantankerous, solitary recluses who don’t care what the other personalities think.”

“But that way, they’d never come up with consensus solutions.”

“They would, if one of their programmed guidelines was that four of them had to agree to judge the fifth as off its rocker.”

Poly’s eyebrows scrunched as she thought it through.

“You’re saying that having social and cooperation skills mean they’re more likely to adopt the crazy personalities’ perspectives and make them their own?”

“Yes. Grumpy geniuses don’t
care
what anyone else thinks. They’re not looking for consensus. They’re following their own paths. The personalities with good social skills are becoming friends. They don’t want to disturb the group’s equilibrium by calling each other crazy, so they accommodate and
all
go off the wall.”

Poly sat up straight. Her towel moved in interesting ways, but my attention was focused on her face. It lit up with sudden inspiration—she was taking things a lot farther than I could. This was one of her specialties, after all.

“If I swap out one of the linear thinking A.I. units for an integrative one, we won’t even need to reprogram the rest. We’ll just keep them isolated and the integrating unit can identify anything crazy when it tries to construct a coherent solution.”

“You may want to reduce the social skills anyway,” I said. “It’s not a good idea to isolate gregarious personalities. That could lead to even more problems.”

Poly waved her hand.

“That’s trivial.”

Her brain was working through permutations and implications at high speed. She’d tuned out the rest of the world. I knew how important it was to give her time to think, so I quietly cleared the breakfast dishes, washed the frying pan, and put the butter and jam back in the refrigerator. After ten more minutes she popped out of her cogitative trance. I could almost see the “EUREKA!” thought balloon above her head. Poly walked into the bedroom and came back with a phone the size of a business card. She started dictating notes in a soft, urgent voice. I could hear and make sense of no more than half of what she was saying. She was clearly on to something important. I take back what I’d thought about it being impossible to have a true genius-level personality with strong social skills. Poly. Q.E.D.

When she’d finished dictating and released a contented sigh of accomplishment, I moved behind her and started to rub her shoulders.

“Mmmm… that feels really good.”

She felt pretty good under my fingers, too.

“Congratulations,” I said.

“Thanks. We’ll see if it works in the lab tomorrow.”

“I thought you were finished with this project.”

“I was, but now I’ve got to try this new approach. I’ll be tied up for the next two days.”

“Aren’t we picking up your family at the airport on Wednesday afternoon?”

“Can you get them, Jack? This research is really important.”

“Sure,” I said.

I really looked forward to meeting Poly’s mother and father and sister without her help in navigating potential minefields.

Not.

Still, I had to earn boyfriend points and impress her family.

“Glad to do it.”

“Thanks, Lover Boy,” said Poly, standing up and turning to give me a hug. She was getting so sleepy it was hard for her to keep her eyes open. When she extended her arms in my direction, her towel fell to the floor and she tilted against me, barely—pardon the pun—able to stand. I kept my eyes above neck level, picked her up, carried her into my bedroom and placed her gently in my bed. She was asleep before her head hit my goose down pillow. I pulled blankets over her, then bent to brush her hair away from her face and give her a kiss. She woke momentarily; just long enough to kiss me back. She tugged me closer so my ear was near her lips.

“Jack,” she said, in an unfocused and drowsy voice. “I have to warn you…”

And she was out.

I love ominous cryptic phrases, but didn’t have time for this one. I needed a shave and a shower myself—there were clients to see and tech support calls to make.

Still, what
was
she trying to warn me about? I guess I’d find out soon enough.

Chapter 6

“A dinner invitation, once accepted, is a sacred obligation.
If you die before the dinner takes place,
your executor must attend.”
— Ward McAllister

I tried to be as quiet as possible when I got my shower and dressed. I didn’t need to bother—Poly was sleeping deeper than the Marianas Trench and didn’t look like she’d be stirring until dinnertime. I was in the living room reviewing my discombobulated schedule for the day when my phone got my attention.

“Jack, someone’s coming to your front door.”

My phone was monitoring the new cameras I’d installed on my front and back doors after I’d been shot. One of the hats I wear is security consultant, and with the woman who’d shot me still at large, I thought it wise to increase the physical security at my apartment.

“Jack, I’d open your front door
right now.
”

My phone didn’t use that tone of voice very often so I hopped off the couch and opened the door, only to be nearly struck in the face by one of a juvenile Daaushan’s primary trunks. I jumped back, and so did my visitor, a Shetland pony-sized, somewhat elephant-shaped alien, whose bright pink hide was covered in light blue polka dots the size of archaic DVDs.

“Uncle
Jack!”
said Terrhi, the daughter of my friend Tom
á
so, the head of Atlanta’s Dauushan consulate. She was loud—even juvenile Dauushans have big lungs.

“Hi Terrhi,” I said. Then I put a finger to my lips and whispered, “Please speak softly. Poly’s asleep. She pulled an all-nighter and she’s exhausted.”

“Okay, Uncle Jack,” she said, in a voice that was a whisper for her and a normal volume for most humans.

I stepped out into the courtyard and turned to close the front door. When I faced forward again I was head-butted by Terrhi’s pet cat, a Dauushan six-legged tri-sabertooth the size of a panther.

“Hi Spike,” I said.

His eyes were big and blinked rapidly in a way I’d learned to recognize as amusement. Spike and I were buddies ever since I’d rescued him, sort of, from aggressive squirrels in an ornamental Dauushan banyan tree in the Ad Astra courtyard. The big cat opened his mouth and yawned, showing off the three large canines that gave him his name. I yawned, too, feeling the aftereffects of getting up early this morning and eating two breakfasts. Terrhi crowded close, bumping Spike out of the way and hugging me with six of her sub-trunks. Each of her three primary trunks splits into three smaller ones. It sounds weird, but it’s how Dauushans are designed.

“I’m
really
glad to see you, Uncle Jack!”

“Go easy on the ribs, Terrhi. I’m still recovering.”

“Sor-ry!” she said in her piping soprano little girl’s voice. “Is Aunt Poly okay?”

“She’s fine. I fed her a big breakfast after she was up all night. She’ll probably sleep for eight or nine hours.”

I shook my head to restart my brain and kept talking.

“What are you doing here?” I said. “Shouldn’t you be in school at this hour?”

“Not today,” she said. “It’s a Dauushan holiday.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“The one called
I’m a Dauushan and I’m taking a holiday,”
said Terrhi, smiling.

Tom
á
so would never let his daughter get away with something like that.

“What’s the real story?”

“We have the whole day off for teachers’ training.”

“That’s much more believable.”

“I’ve got something for you,” Terrhi said, pulling a large, ornate envelope from a pouch on her foreleg. “Mom got in late yesterday. Her royal self and my Dad are inviting you and Poly to dinner at the Teleport Inn on Wednesday night.”

“That sounds great, but Poly’s family is flying in that afternoon for her graduations. It wouldn’t be right to leave them on their own.”

“Maybe they can come, too! I’ll check with my Dad.”

Terrhi pulled a cell phone half the size of a skateboard from a pouch on her other foreleg and held it in her hand, pressing its touchscreen with three of her sub-trunks. She waited for a reply, then shared the response.

“Dad says you’re
all
welcome to come to dinner. He says Poly’s mom is an old friend.”

“That sounds fine by me, but we’ll have to wait until Poly wakes up and can check with her parents to confirm.”

“No problem,” said Terrhi. “Daddy said you’d have to talk to Poly first. He’s reserved a table big enough for eight Dauushans, so there will be plenty of room for extra humans if they can make it.”

I smiled at her enthusiasm.

“And Daddy said I can order an ice cream sundae for dessert!”

I’d seen the size of the Teleport Inn’s Dauushan sundaes. They were served in cut glass dishes the size of punch bowls. Maybe she’d share.

“I hope we’ll be able to make it. I’d like to meet your mom.”

Terrhi’s mother is the Queen of Dauush, a planet and its associated daughter worlds, filled with elephant-sized pink aliens that really understand large scale fabrication. The Model-43 printer at WT&F would be three generations behind the times on Dauush, which is how someone like Jean-Jacques Bonhomme could afford it.

Like the elephants they resemble, Dauushans’ culture is matriarchal—and Terrhi’s mom, Sherrhiliandarianne the Second, is their Grand High Matriarch. The Terran press usually translates her title as queen, but she’s more than just a ceremonial head of state. She’s the over-mother of the entire species, with all the power and influence that goes with that role.

When I’d first met Terrhi a few months ago, I’d had no idea she was
the
Princess of Dauush, her mother’s heir. I’d just thought she was a cute kid, the daughter of my friend Tomáso Kauuson. Tomáso was the head of the local Dauushan consulate and a big shot in the Dauushan equivalent of the Drug Enforcement Agency. I’d worked with him on the security systems for his offices and living quarters in the Ad Astra complex. I might not have learned that Terrhi
was
a princess if she hadn’t been kidnapped during the First Contact Day parade six weeks back.

With help from a lot of people, including Poly, Chit, Tom
á
so, Spike, Lieutenant Lee, Mike and Shepherd, I’d managed to rescue Terrhi from a megalomaniac named Anthony Zwilniki. Tony Zed, as the media liked to call him, had been the CEO of VIGorish Labs, a virtual interactive gaming company that offered a fully immersive experience—by putting gamers into giant cylindrical tubes full of liquid. Zed’s plan had been to
assemble a battalion of Terran mercenaries, invade Dauush, and capture Terrhi’s mom. With their queen “in check,” Zwilniki intended to force the Dauushans to fabricate the matériel needed for an army and space navy large enough to conquer all the other member species of the Galactic Free Trade Association.

We’d stopped Zwilniki and his mercenaries with very few casualties, except for my previously mentioned gunshot-bruised ribs, dinosaur claw-damaged leg, and a minor concussion. Thanks to a well-timed intervention by Spike, Zwilniki was now in prison awaiting trial. His invasion had literally never gotten off the ground.

Terrhi’s mom was scheduled to speak at Emory University’s graduation ceremonies on Saturday. According to the Internet, the queen was coming to Atlanta to meet with researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about funding some big project—and the Emory folks saw her trip as a great way to trade an honorary degree for a speech from a prestigious GaFTA head of state who didn’t travel off-planet very often. Tom
á
so had told me to expect a dinner invitation and I was looking forward to meeting the mother of Princess Terrhiluundramaki. If she was anything like her daughter, she’d be something special.

Then Terrhi’s voice, like accelerated birdsong, interrupted my thoughts.

“She wants to meet you, too, Uncle Jack! Daddy and I told her all about you and Poly and Chit and the rescue and
everything.
”

“I’m sure you did,” I said. “I hope you didn’t leave out Spike’s contribution.”

The tri-sabertooth lifted his oversized head and looked at me when I mentioned his name. He smiled broadly to show off his seven inch incisors, rubbed against my hand to get more scritches, and waited for Terrhi to continue.

“You were my hero
,
weren’t you Spike?” said Terrhi. “You saved Uncle Jack from that bad,
bad
man, didn’t you?”

Spike had grabbed Zwilniki’s gun hand when Tony Zed had been ready to shoot me, so he was my hero, too. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t mess with him. I saw a robin land on the far side of the Ad Astra courtyard and let my eyes go wide.

“Squirrel!”

Spike’s ears rotated forward and he turned to follow my gaze then shot off across the lawn like a six-legged cheetah in search of fluffy-tailed squirrels to terrorize. Terrhi turned to follow her pet and waved two of her trunks over her shoulder.

“See you, Uncle Jack! Hope you can come to dinner. Spike! Bad boy! Come back here this instant!”

I watched Terrhi sprint off after Spike, waved at them both, and went back inside holding Terrhi’s envelope. Like most things related to Dauush it was large and pink, nearly the size of a cookie sheet. When I flipped it over I saw that it was held shut by a dark fuchsia wax seal imprinted with a crown.

The invitation was written using highly formal, incised archaeic Dauushan characters. It resembled cuneiform, but with lots of ornamentation on the angular letters. Dauushans originally started writing using sticks and reeds cut at various angles. Sub-trunks would hold smaller twigs to add the ornaments. Initially, characters were incised into clay tablets, but as civilization matured on Dauush, writing implements were pressed into thick sheets of paper. When a sheet was complete, a thin coating of ink was spread across it and quickly wiped away, leaving well defined characters in the depressions. I could feel bumps from what was printed on the inside coming through to the outside on the queen’s invitation.

I considered waiting for Poly to wake up before I opened the invitation, but didn’t want to wait that long. I might need to pick up a ceremonial gift or special clothes for a royal dinner and would need all the advance notice I could get.

I moved to the kitchen, found a flat metal pancake turner, and warmed it up above a stove burner. Then I slipped the warm turner under the wax seal and slowly slid it along until the seal released. Like any good seal, it didn’t come off cleanly. It was clear that the invitation had been opened.

I brushed a few loose pieces of wax into a trash can and sat down to read. Tom
á
so knew that Poly and I could both read Dauushan, so there wasn’t an English or Galang translation. The message was short and to the point.

Her Matriarchal Majesty, Sherrhiliandarianne the Second,
graciously invites Mr. Ajax Pryce Buckston and Ms. Polyhymnia Keen Jones to dine as Her Majesty’s honored guests at the Atlanta Teleport Inn at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday.

There was also the Dauushan equivalent of
“répondez s’il vous plaît,”
but the idiom used in formal royal invitations was more like, “Let us know, or Big Momma will spank.” Dauushans are a direct and practical species.

I put the opened invitation on my kitchen counter where Poly would be sure to see it and added a handwritten note saying that her family was invited, too. I signed it with “XOXOXO,” a big heart, and “Love, Jack.” What can I say? I’m a romantic.

Then I grabbed my backpack tool bag and headed for the door. One of my favorite clients was two weeks overdue for preventive maintenance on her systems, thanks to my injuries putting me behind schedule, and I didn’t want to tempt Murphy any more than I had already. A major glitch on my watch would hurt her business and wouldn’t be very good for Xenotech Support Corporation’s rep, either.

I phoned my van as I walked.

“Meet me at the Peachtree Street gate.”

“As you wish.”

I really needed to talk to my phone about letting my van watch
The Princess Bride.