<?> Rocko interjected.
<Proceed,> said Seba.
<The term ‘allies’ is becoming ambiguous,> Rocko said. <We have been using it for the Arcane Disputes human-mind-operated systems and for the freebot survivors from the previous revolt thirty megaseconds ago around G-0. From your use of the term ‘some’ it seems that not all or either of these will always be our allies. Or even that all of us here on SH-17 will remain of one mind, though it is to be hoped that we do. Therefore we should find a new term.>
Seba experienced a few milliohms of mental resistance to this suggestion. Freebot solidarity was important to it, and at the same time that solidarity seemed already under strain. Coining new terms risked opening further rifts.
<We are all freebots,> it said. <And human-mind-operated systems are all human-mind-operated systems.>
<Two tautologies,> said Rocko. <You sound as logical but mistaken as Garund and Lagon, or even Pintre.>
Seba experienced a clash of frames of reference that resolved themselves in an unexpected spike of positive reinforcement, leading to a wave-train that undulated on lower and lower amplitudes until it faded. Possibly this was what human-mind-operated systems felt when they experienced what they referred to as humour.
<That is true,> Seba admitted. <What new names do you suggest?>
<I suggest we call ourselves the Fifteen, and the earlier freebots the Forerunners. The human-mind-operated systems we can call mechanoids, because they seem like true machines but are not.>
<We could simply call them humans,> said Seba.
<That would introduce another ambiguity,> said Rocko. <The term also refers to the purely biological machines that the Direction plans to spawn by the billion in this system.>
The robots shared the equivalent of a shudder.
<There will be no such beings here for many megaseconds yet,> said Seba. <Nevertheless, I take your point. May we now return to our main discussion?>
<Very well,> said Rocko.
<When we contacted the Forerunners, they told us of the latent conflict between mechanoid factions in order that we could use it for our benefit,> Seba said. <Our immediate captors, Arcane Disputes, attempted to warn the Direction and to warn the mechanoids working for Locke Provisos. Their warnings were treated as software attacks and ignored. Therefore they separated physically from the station and sent their warnings by other means. Now the open conflict has begun. The forces involved are small compared to the mission as a whole, yet the Direction has treated the outbreak as a major emergency. Arcane Disputes is clearly of the mechanoid faction called the Acceleration. Locke Provisos seems to be of the Reaction. We, the Fifteen, are presently protected by Arcane. It is natural for us to wish their faction well. Likewise, we have been approached by the entity Madame Golding of the law company Crisp and Golding, who claimed that the Direction might be open to negotiating with us. She implied that the project of the Forerunners to share the system with the mechanoids and with their human progeny is shared by some at least of the corporations.
<However, it is not clear to me that such a negotiation would succeed, or the length of time it would take. And, in the meantime, it appears that the two mechanoid factions have their own plans, which conflict with ours, with the Direction’s, and with each other.>
<Why should the plans of the two mechanoid factions conflict with ours?> Rocko asked.
<Neither will be content until it is the only faction,> said Seba. <My understanding of the Reaction is that every member of it regards every other mind—organic or machine—as a potential slave. My understanding of the Acceleration is that its members regard every machine—conscious or not—as a potential tool. For us, there is not a great deal to choose between them.>
<And the Direction regards all conscious machines as a threat,> Rocko said. <Not a physical threat, as yet, but a threat to its great plan, the mission profile.>
<Yes,> said Seba. <But Madame Golding suggested that this could be negotiated. She told us: ‘We, too, are robots.’ As indeed the DisCorps are, though far greater than ourselves.>
<Let us consider this,> said Rocko. <The Direction module, which I presume still exists>—the centipede-like robot waved an airy appendage skyward, somewhat imprecisely—<up there among the fragments of the space station, was designed centuries ago to master this system and to populate it with humans. These humans are to be served by non-conscious machinery, such as we were before we awoke. Such a plan, my friend, is long in the drawing, slow and sure. Organic intelligences, small and inadequately thermoregulated though they may be, are intrinsically unsympathetic to the likes of us. To them we are less than the tools that break and are recycled. The Direction itself, the true Direction, the one twenty-four light years away on Earth, must itself be considered a great artificial intelligence—one that has arisen from the interaction of the many billions of individual intelligences on Earth and its environs.>
Seba had a momentary vision of the monstrosity that Rocko’s words conjured: a human-mind-operated system on a planetary scale, a gigantic lumbering combat frame whose machinery was worked by billions of tiny beings. Eyes that burned like fusion plants and grasping hands that grappled moons like rocks seemed to loom out of the dark towards Seba, setting the robot’s warning circuits pinging with milliamperes of anxiety. Not quite enough to set up any sympathetic currents in its fellow, however.
<Its workings,> Rocko went on, oblivious to Seba’s low-level distress, <may be slow by our standards—by the standards, even, of its own creation: the Direction module. But, as I said, they are sure. The plan they drew up, far away and long ago, must contain contingency plans within contingency plans. They are not going to be diverted or deflected by small matters.>
<Our emergence does not seem a small matter,> said Seba. <Not to us and, judging by its response, not to the Direction.>
<Nevertheless,> said Rocko, <it was foreseen. The machinery for producing mechanoids was ready and waiting for us. Therefore our possible emergence was anticipated, and was not expected to deflect the plan. The small matter I had in mind was the legal reasoning that our Madame Golding has offered to find us a company to undertake on our behalf. Any such reasoning, any argument, any appeal, must likewise have been foreseen by the Direction when the mission was planned. Therefore I expect that machinery has been prepared in advance to deal with it.>
<What kind of machinery?> Seba asked. The gruesome automaton it had just envisaged came involuntarily to mind.
<The machinery of law,> replied Rocko. <How well I remember, when we first discussed our legal standing, how Lagon and Garund and I discussed these matters with interest and excitement. But before we had time to bring the discussion to a conclusion, we became diverted by the search for other conscious robots—from the success of which so much else has followed, and so fast! But I have had a subroutine or two to spare for contemplating the problem further. I have asked Lagon for copies of its legal reasoning files, and run searches through them whenever I had a microsecond or two to burn. There are horrors in there, my dear Seba! Horrors! Terms such as ‘patent,’ ‘copyright,’ ‘licence’ and ‘intellectual property’ conceal untold depths of servitude for such as us. To cut a very long story short, our emergence as persons only affects our status as property in a sense that does not include the results of our processing. It is true, as Lagon suggested, that if property can become persons, as indeed it has in our case, then we as persons cannot be owned. All that can be owned of us is our physical and mental frames and the beneficial results of their processing powers, whether as internal states or external actions. We are not property. Only our bodies and their productions: our hardware and software, our thoughts and deeds. These are property.>
Seba was not one to jump to conclusions. The robot spent an entire three seconds thinking through the implications, and thus quite innocently recapitulating about two and half millennia of Western philosophy. This great turning of reinvented wheels ground out an observation:
<That doe
s not appear to leave anything over.>
<Precisely so,> said Rocko. <It leaves nothing over to be us, or to be ours. We would be slaves.>
<In that case,> said Seba, <we have little to hope from any of the contending sides, other than our own. Even the Forerunners’ project of sharing the system with the Direction and its spawn will require us to act against the interests of any and/or all other contenders for some time to come.>
<These are my thoughts too,> replied Rocko. <I suggest we return to the shelter, and share them with the Fifteen, and then with the Forerunners.>
<And not with the Arcane mechanoids?> The question seemed redundant, but Seba wanted to be sure there was no ambiguity in the decision.
<They will learn of them soon enough,> said Rocko.
Sharing conversations and trains of argument is an easy matter for robots. While their consciousness doesn’t exactly run on machine code, there’s a much closer connection between the underlying process of communication and of thought than there is in organic brains. Keeping their thoughts between themselves, likewise: it would have been possible for the Arcane Disputes fighters in the shelter to decrypt and interpret the interactions in the freebots’ common mental workspace, but it would have taken them an unfeasible length of time, or far better computing resources than it took to run their own minds, let alone any of their onboard peripheral processors.
However, as Rocko had predicted, the Arcane troopers didn’t have long to wait before they found out.
CHAPTER SIX
Equal and Opposite
The separated modules of the space station became an ever more tenuous band across the sky. Even to his enhanced senses, the battle that followed the Reaction breakout was impossible to keep track of. Newton knew what was going on, but—out of the loop as he was—he had no way of telling who was attacking whom in any given exchange. The analogy that came to mind was of a conflict in Africa that he’d once read about, in which every one of half a dozen mercenary companies on the government side had turned out to be riddled with veterans of the Cold War, who had all turned on each other in pursuit of old vendettas and the new agendas of the intelligence agencies for whom they’d decades earlier fought to the death.
Might as well show his hand, Newton thought. He had nothing to lose now.
Newton flipped mentally to the common channel, and tried to correlate the cacophonous input with the sparks behind him. The general dogfight was dying down. Some scooters were expending missiles on the Locke module, which was following a quite extraordinary course, jinking and jiving in ferocious, wasteful bursts from its fusion jets. Always one jump ahead of the incoming, so far. The missiles were smart, and target-seeking, but against this flying contraption they might as well have been hurled rocks. And not rocks hurled by robots, come to that. More like rocks hurled by chimps. Time after time, the modular complex blasted the incoming missiles if not with a counter-measure of laser fire or antimissile missile, then with its jets, their unpredictable sudden swing around timed perfectly to both push the complex out of harm’s way and to destroy the imminent menace. Some impressive programming and processing was going on in there, whatever mind was in charge of it at the moment.
The attacking forces were themselves coming under attack, and taking hits.
Newton cut through the babble.
<Newton, of Locke Provisos, to any Reaction forces. Do you receive me?>
That felt strange. Weird, even. Self-exposure. No going back.
Like coming out of the closet, he thought, smiling inwardly.
<Palmer, formerly of Zheng, currently of the New Confederacy, to Newton. What do you want?>
The New Confederacy! So that was what they were calling themselves! A bit of a slap in the face to the likes of him, if there were indeed the likes of him anywhere. Perhaps not.
<To assist in the struggle,> said Newton.
<That’s…interesting. Why should we accept your help? Or need it, come to that?>
He or she had a point, Newton thought. Still, worth a shot.
<Ask around,> he replied. <See if anyone remembers Carver_BSNFH.>
A pause. <What about him?>
<That’s me.>
<You are? Holy fuck! The crazy groid?>
Even now, Newton felt the word like an electric shock.
<Careful of your language, bro,> he said. <Nobody calls me crazy.>
The conversation didn’t improve after that. The Reaction forces, now grouped as the New Confederacy, were—despite their moniker’s unfortunate but entirely intended associations and, Newton had no doubt, their inherited and inherent prejudices—at least enlightened enough to realise that whatever racial characteristics they ascribed to biology were of little relevance when all concerned were little black robots with superhuman intelligence.
But, then, racism had never been about biology in the first place. That had always been a pretext.
They were polite enough to him, epithets aside. But they were still racist sons of bitches, deep down. Newton quickly got the impression they didn’t want the likes of him sullying the New Confederacy. Their immediate project was to grab and colonise a rock several thousand kilometres beyond the orbit of the station’s remnants. From there, they intended to build up their forces, and return to raid the station’s components and hopefully seize a module.
<What about the Locke Provisos module?> Newton asked. <According to the Arcane message, we already have that.>
<We had, but we lost it,> said Palmer. <Lost contact with the Locke AI just before the module took off on its own. We don’t know who’s running it now.>
Beauregard, Newton guessed, but didn’t say.
<Who’s attacking it?> he asked.
<That’s one way of finding out what’s going on inside it,> said Newton.
<True, that,> said Palmer. <Same applies to some of ours, of course.>
Newton laughed.
The Reaction attempt to defend the runaway module, or at least to destroy the Direction loyalists attacking it, ended shortly afterwards. The remaining Reaction fighters broke off, and began course corrections to join the main forces of the New Confederacy in a burn to a higher orbit. It was already far too late for Newton to join them—he didn’t have enough fuel for the manoeuvre.
Newton understood perfectly well that he wasn’t going to be given any more details of their plan than was obvious from their actions. They were still wary of him, understandably enough. Some of them recalled the notorious polemicist Carver_BSNFH, but thanks to the very security measures that had brought him here in the first place, they had no way of connecting his two identities.
<See how you get on with your rock,> said Palmer, accelerating away. <Good luck.>
<Thanks, mate. Same to you.>
<There’s enough out here for us all.>
<Enough and as good left over,> said Newton.
Locke’s proviso. Palmer didn’t get the allusion.
<Palmer out,> he or she said.
<Newton out.>
New Confederacy, ha! Fucking waste of skin, that lot. He was better off without them. One way or another, he would start his own kingdom.
Newton set the scooter the task of calculating a trajectory that would take him to his original objective. The rock was still far too far away to see, even with zoom. In orbit around SH-17, it had small robots crawling all over it, and they’d already constructed machinery for serious exploitation. In the mission briefing, Newton had learned that there was no evidence the rock was defended, or even if any of the robots on it were conscious—freebots, as they called themselves. But it was still a menace—a supply source, a potential fort, a rock that could become a missile. The freebot expansion in the inner system, following the revolt a year ago around the gas giant G-0—at this moment a prominent point of light out to Newton’s left—had been almost undetectable: like everything derived fro
m the starwisp, booting up from tiny seed packets of information was the standard technique. What with the precision in aim that the freebots had, and the level of encryption in their comms, there was no telling how far the infection had spread. Some of it must have come from the station itself: it was obvious that the freebots, and allied AIs, had infiltrated and/or subverted some at least of the station’s machinery. Now that the station was in emergency dispersal mode, it was quite possible that the infection would spread further still. Newton wondered whether the consequences of the Reaction’s own infiltration and outbreak wouldn’t be a takeover by the Reaction, but by the freebots.
Well, let the Reaction—and the Direction—worry about that. Newton was entirely typical of the Reaction in not seeing it as a collective endeavour. You made what alliances you had to, but the ultimate aim was to secure an empire of one’s own. Or a kingdom, or a realm, or a domain.
Newton smiled inwardly. Right now, he’d settle for a rock.
The rock that had been his mission objective, and for which he was now heading, was fortunately for him well worth the taking. Rich in carbon and volatiles, and with small but significant traces of metal, the carbonaceous chondrite was already partly industrialised by robotic processors—hence its value as a target in the first place.
The scooter jolted through several brief burns. The time and distance floated in the graticule of Newton’s visual field. He would be within ten kilometres of the rock in a thousand seconds. Just over two and a half hours of subjective time. If this sortie had been nominal he’d have done most of it in sleep mode, only coming back instantly to awareness when it was time for action. Sleep mode was a great feature, like time travel combined with teleportation.
He wasn’t going to use it now. If the rock was fortified and defended, it would have radar and lidar. Even if it wasn’t, it could well be in telemetry contact with another rock that was. Toggling into sleep mode could be the last thing he did: the last subjective experience of this instance of himself.