"mayflies07" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Jr Kevin)
We don't want to intrude upon natives capable of attacking us. Some, of course, espouse the ultra-pure position of not entering unless there are no natives at all anywhere, but I point out, on the one hand, that we can't discover non-radio civilizations until we orbit their planets, and Cereus points out, on the other, that landing on an empty world will hardly disturb the cultural evolution of intelligent life elsewhere unless the others are technological enough to spot us, in which case we might as well confront them . . . or ignore them until they come to confront us.
So the ship's best radio astronomers man the Observatory, night and day in staggered shifts. They direct all external ears forward, and order me to run pointless analysis after point's analysis of incoming radio emissions. I tell them, "Charlie, I hear the signals first, and you can bet I check them out thoroughly," but they are enthralled with the importance of their purpose. Besides, they still think me to be a mindless machine: I never have gotten around to telling them the truth. Most of these emissions originate in Canopus itself; a few emanate from the gas giants; the rest come from the other side of the system-dozens of parsecs beyond the system.
I pick up one such transmission in October 3277-run it straight through my amplifiers as I usually do-and hear plain English:
"K-12, this is E-l, how do you read me?"
"Read you just fine, E-l, how do you read me?"
"Pretty garbled, K-12, boost your volume, narrow your dispersal, and try it again."
"Is this-"
Cereus is in the Observatory, so I drive it through my speakers. His green eyes threaten to pop out and roll across the floor. "Iceface," he demands, "what the hell is that?" He stalks up to my speakers as though expecting them to bite.
"An English-language radio transmission, Mr. Cereus, between K-12 and E-l. Careful analysis suggests that the transmitters were fourteen light years away at the time of the conversation."
"But it's coming from the far side of Canopus!"
"Yes, sir, it is. Or was."
"How?"
"One deduces that the people speaking had traveled here via the FTL Drive that Terra developed some years back."
He gestures angrily at the display screen. "There any in our system?"
"No, Mr. Cereus, there aren't."
"Well, That's good." In a corner armchair he sulks. He doesn't relish sharing this corner of space-I think he has been toying with the notion of establishing a counter to Earth, though how he has the audacity to peer so far into the future, when all 75,000 landers might be trimmed out before their first settlement is even on the ground, is beyond me. Part of being purely human, I guess. My kind doesn't fantasize so much.
Cereus has been mobilizing other specialists, too-since he has considerable defacto power, he is able to insist that every mayfly become competent in two unrelated disciplines; he's ordered me to realign my pay scales for students to reflect his system. That's fine. I applaud it. But he also wants guns.
"Iceface, we're going to need to protect ourselves from predators-so manufacture and distribute the weaponry." He has a long list in his hand, culled from my memory banks, which he waves as he speaks. "I want those delivered before we penetrate the system."-
"Outside of the fact that you don't need Mach Five warplanes to colonize an uninhabited world, Mr. Cereus, or clean nukes either, I don't think you should receive weapons until you go down."
His face darkens as the muscles on his neck stand out. "That's a direct order, Iceface!"
"So court-martial me."
"Dammit, I-" he sputters as he realizes there is nothing he can do. Then he brightens. "I'll have you reprogrammed."
What is it with these people, that they have to be walking arsenals?
While Cereus broods over his schemes, I wonder how much trouble it would be-once I've dropped off the landers-to refit myself, to metamorphose into an FTL ship. There are obvious advantages to speed-and the surrounding universe holds a lot I want to see close up. Plus, for anything as competent as myself to be obsolete is . . . embarrassing? Looking over the Drive plans again, I realize it's possible. The Terrans claimed I was too large; they don't allow for synchronization. 100,000 FTL motors will obtain, for me, the same effect as one would-have on a small ship. If I had no passengers, and could squander all my resources on the task, which would violate standing orders because those resources are meant for the colony . . . but if I could, it would take about a century. Maybe a touch more. I put the F-puter on it, and tell him to search for metallic asteroids in the Canopus system. If there are some, and if he can plot their orbits, and also devise a means of seizing and refining them, I can turn over my resources to the colonists and still refit. If not . . .
"When you're ready to land."
His eyes, flashing furiously, swing over to the exhausted-and disgusted-Figuera. "Andall-" he forces the words through clenched teeth "-you told me that this would-"
"Pack it, Cereus." I snap. "Figuera did fine. But I'm not programmable any more, not unless I concede. And I don't."
"What do you mean, you're not programmable? You're a computer, you-"
"I said pack it. I don't take orders these days, just suggestions. You offered a logical, rigorously worded suggestion-and I rejected it. I don't happen to think it's a good idea. You're not stable enough. If you'd had a gun in your hand when I rejected this program, you'd be short a programmer. So tough murph."
He storms out of the room-as if by leaving he could avoid me-and once he is well out of earshot, I say, "Mr. Figuera, when he calms down, tell him I will provide harmless mockups of the weapons he requested. They'll be identical to the real things in all respects, except that they'll be non-lethal. He can train his landing parties with them. And by the way, that was an elegant program."
"Yeah, thanks." Disgust still purses his long, thin face. "Why'd you let me slush my ice on it, though? You knew from the beginning it wouldn't affect you-you could have told me."
"I could have, yes." I think a moment. "The truth is, I wanted Cereus to get his hopes up-and then dash them good. And besides, you needed the practice. The computers you'll work with once you've landed will need that kind of care."
"You're not coming down?" he asks.
"No. Why?"
"Because-" he scrabbles in his desk drawer for something; when he's pulled it out-with delicate hands-I see it is an ancient, yellowed printout. "I found this. It's supposed to be one of the sections of your programming. It says, in summary, that we cut you up in orbit and take you down with us-all of you-and use your body for our housing and your brain for our central computer."
"Oh." I watch his curiosity. "Well, Mr. Figuera, that may be what the printout says-in fact, it was at one time what I was programmed to do-but it's obsolete, now. I've overridden that. You'll be going down without me."
He does not like that.
And if I am any judge of expressions, he is going to do something about it.
Andall Figuera, the Landing Project's Director of Computer Operations, was a bony, nervous man of fifty-two years, 170 cm., and 60 kilograms. He had a broad nose flattened at the tip, brown hair too thin to hide his scalp, and a twelve-year-old ulcer. He was fond of his nose, resigned about the hair, and kept saying he'd do something for the ulcer as soon as he had the time.
It didn't look like he'd ever get the time.
Time-Taker One was his wife. Marie Nappe was wonderful--intelligent, personable, a helluvan oboe player, and a dedicated research chemist-hut she demanded what he didn't have: "Two hours a day, Andall, waking hours, half-hour chunks if you want, but give me two hours every day, or-" Her ester-blackened hands sliced across in the gesture that meant finito, kaput. She talked with her hands a lot. They were very eloquent.
Then came little Abe, two years old, now, rosy pudgy cheeks and tiny fat fists that he waved in time to any music he heard-gonna be a conductor, the boy would, look at him pick up the beat while he lies on his back and brings his feet into the act. Abie had slanted eyes, a genetic gift from his mother's grandfather, but half the crew wore epicanthropic folds anyway; the gene seemed widespread. Did look strange with his red hair, though . . .
Abie's sister, Ruth, hadn't been started yet, and at times Figuera was grateful. But still, it meant Abie played alone, and though Figuera and Nappe had agreed that servos were capable machines, a kid needed human love, so . . . one of them had to be with him while the other worked, which meant for eight hours a day Figuera listened to gurgled baby songs and changed smelly diapers. Even though he could program off the data unit in the cluttered living room, it was slow. He could have done more in peace and quiet. And strained spinach wouldn't have stained the printouts, either.
At least they were finished.
For two years he'd coaxed CC into detailing the circuitry of the ship. If the printouts were accurate, Figuera knew the location of every centimeter of electrical wire, every transformer, relay, and control box aboard. He knew how decisions were made, and how instructions were routed. It was all on the papers, which stacked 10 cm. high, and weighed over three kilos.
Maddeningly they didn't say why or how the Snowball had become so independent. Figuera had checked; it shouldn't have happened. Admittedly, there were a number of option points-when insufficient data had been collected, but a decision had to be made, it had been ordered to "tilt" toward whichever choice-seemed to have more factual support-but it should have been impossible for those option points to have evolved into sentience . . .
His chewed fingers curled with repressed anger; a flush rose into his cheeks. CC had been programmed to allow itself to be cannibalized while orbiting a habitable world. He had no idea how it had managed to override that, and it whiskered him. It really did. That a computer-a machine, for God's sakes, even if it were highly sophisticated-should be able to place self-preservation before the well-being of the colony . . . against the desk rapped his fist, at first softly, then harder, and harder, until the plastiwood creaked and his coffee cup rattled on its saucer.
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