You've claimed to be a friend of his. Do you support him in this?”
Delmar was a tall, lean woman, who, in Alex's opinion, could be trusted to say what she thought and to keep her word. I don't mean to suggest that I disagreed, but simply that I didn't know her that well. I will say that she seemed to me to be more dependable than the average politician.
“Well, Ron,” she said, “it's true, Alex has always been a close friend. And I respect him. He's a good, decent man. But he's human. Like any of us, he can make mistakes. And he's made one on this. To the best of our knowledge, AIs are not sentient. It's an illusion. We all realize that, because it's one we've deliberately created. And I've no doubt that Alex, when he thinks about it, realizes it, too. The issue is going away, and I doubt very much that he'll bring it up again.
“I mean, look, Ron, his heart's in the right place. We all know that. In this case, he just made a misjudgment. It can happen to anybody.”
The comment played on most of the news shows that evening, and we started getting calls from the producers. Would Alex like to appear on The Morning Roundtable and reply to the senator? Was he available for an interview with Modern Times? Was he interested in appearing on Erika Gorman's Late Night?
“Ignore it,” I told him. “It's dying. Get past this week, and we'll never hear about it again.”
“And the next time somebody shows up on Villanueva the AIs will complain about us.”
“We tried.”
“No, we didn't. I went on a few talk shows. I appealed to our innate sense of responsibility. Now, somehow, the debate has become about my mental stability.”
“Alex, what more could you do?”
Charlie, of course, also felt the frustration. “Put me on one of these shows,” he said. “I can help.”
Alex didn't like the idea. “We'd get picked up by all the comedy shows. The whole thing would be made into a running punch line.”
“Please, Alex. I have a story to tell.”
He took a deep breath and thought about it. “Okay, Charlie,” he said, finally. “We'll try it. I guess there's nothing to lose. But we stay with the box. No holograms.”
“Not a good idea,” said Charlie. “People need to be able to connect with me.”
“It would be perceived as part of the show. All your twenty-year-old hologram would do is make that point.”
“I still think it would be best if they see me. How about if I provide someone older? We had a guidance counselor at the school-”
“Let it go, Charlie. We'd be attacked on the grounds that we were trying to pass you off as something you're not. You're a Beta. Let's play it that way. With dignity.”
Alex and Charlie showed up two days later on The Morning Roundtable. Alex took his seat with another guest and placed the beige cube in front of him. The other guest was Angelo Cavaretti, gray, middle-aged, and unable to hide his amusement that he was participating in a discussion he perceived as absurd. Cavaretti was better known as the unrelenting attacker of religious believers. When the host opened the proceedings by asking the obvious question, “Are AIs alive?” he responded by laughing.
“I don't want to offend anybody,” he said, “but the notion that a piece of machinery is alive is idiotic. You might as well claim that your table lamp is alive. Or your hot-water heater.”
The host turned to Alex.
“I'm not much interested,” Alex said, “in a debate that's been going on for thousands of years and that nobody can prove one way or the other. I could get loud, like Dr. Cavaretti here. But I'd rather just let your audience hear the AI we brought back speak for himself. Charlie?”
And Charlie told his story, as he had told it to Harley Evans, describing the nighttime silences and the long afternoons watching the sunlight brighten and fail. Remembering the children while he waited in a deserted school. Watching flowers bloom and fade and the shadows creep across the floor. Listening to the leaves brush against the windows, and, later, the whisper of falling snow. Enduring the cycle again and again, endlessly, while nothing inside the building ever moved. “I did have company, though.”
“And who was that?” asked the host, Brockton Moore, who had joined the show a month earlier.
“Other Betas. We spoke often.”
“Other Betas,” said Cavaretti. “What's a Beta?”
“I'm a Beta. It's a nonbiological sentient life-form.”
Cavaretti, barely able to contain his reaction to the absurdity of the proposition, shook his head.
“But,” said the host, “they were only voices?”
“Yes.”
Cavaretti was a model of intensity, his face wrinkled, his jaw set, his arms folded, signifying a desire to be away from this pointless discussion. “So what,” he asked the audience, “does all this prove? The box is programed. It can carry on a conversation. It can describe a compelling experience. It can play championship chess. But does it feel anything? Is there really anyone inside this thing? Come on, Alex. Get serious.”
“I wasn't finished,” said Charlie.
“Oh?” Cavaretti sighed. “And what else have you for us?”
“You, sir, have a closed mind. You're unable to question your own opinions. It is the definition of a blockhead.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“One other thing: I know where some of the Betas can be found. I can't pinpoint locations from here, but I can find them. If anyone out there wants to make the flight to Villanueva, would like to demonstrate the humanity everyone is always bragging about, I would be pleased to go along. I can show you where to look.”
The show hadn't gone off yet before Jacob announced that we had a call from Edward Drummond, an MD who normally collected Ashiyyurean War artifacts from interstellars. Through one of our competitors.
“Put him on,” I said.
I heard a couple of clicks as Jacob switched over. Then a deep baritone: “Hello. I'd like to speak to someone about Villanueva, please.”
“This is Chase Kolpath,” I said. “Can I help you?”
“Ms. Kolpath,” he said, “I just watched the program. Can I borrow Charlie?”
Two days later, Drummond showed up at the country house and wasted no time getting to the point. “I can put together a team, mostly ex-Fleet types,” he told me, while we were walking down the corridor to Alex's office. “And I can get sufficient financial backing.”
“The place is dangerous,” I said.
“Ms. Kolpath, we'd like very much to resolve this problem.” He was tall, with a general demeanor that was more military than medical. His black hair was cut short, and there was no hint of the smile I usually get on first meeting guys. He struck me as being stiff, and consequently too inflexible to trust on a mission like this. He'd get everybody killed.
I introduced him to Alex. They shook hands, and Drummond sat down. “We're in the process of assembling a team,” he said. “They're good people, skilled, able to protect themselves, and they want to help. We want to help.”
“Why?” said Alex.
“Why?” His brow creased, and he leaned forward in his chair. “I'm surprised you feel you have to ask that.”
“I wouldn't ask if I didn't want to hear the answer, Doctor.”
“Mr. Benedict, I've watched AIs give everything they had in combat. And you could see them react exactly as you or I would. When things got bad, they got scared. It wasn't just programing. It really wasn't. On one occasion, one of them-his name was Clay-took over control of his destroyer after it had been evacuated and rammed a Mute frigate. I was talking to him until the end, and nobody is ever going to tell me he wasn't alive.”
Alex nodded. “There's substantial risk involved, Doctor. What makes you think you can go in there, manage a rescue, and not get yourself, and whoever's helping you, killed?”
“I've run rescue missions before, Mr. Benedict. For the Patrol. I've pulled people out of places at least as dangerous as Villanueva. And I'll have professional help.” A smile flickered across his lips.
We brought Charlie into the conversation. There was no hologram. No twenty-year-old. Just a stern voice
