The Revelation Space Collection

‘From nonentity to rat, eh?’ Sylveste said. ‘From some perspectives, that’s almost an improvement.’

‘Don’t believe it, son.’ Calvin leered at him, stretching forward from the seat which held him. ‘Think you’re so intolerably clever, don’t you? Well now I’ve got you by the balls; assuming you have any. They told me what you did. How you killed me purely on the pretext of ruining their plans.’ He raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘I mean, what a pathetic justification for patricide! I’d have at least thought you’d do me the courtesy of killing me for a halfway decent reason. But no. That would have been asking too much. I’d almost say I was disappointed, except that would imply I once had higher expectations.’

‘If I’d actually killed you,’ Sylveste said, ‘this conversation would pose certain ontological problems. Besides, I always knew there was another copy of you.’

‘But you murdered one of me!’

‘Sorry, but that’s a category mistake if ever I heard one. You’re just software, Cal. Being copied and erased is your natural state of being.’ Sylveste steeled himself for another protest from Cal, but for the moment he was silent. ‘I didn’t do it to ruin Sajaki’s plans. I need his… co-operation as much as he needs mine.’

‘My co-operation?’ The Triumvir’s eyes narrowed.

‘We’ll get to that. All I’m saying is that when I destroyed the copy, I knew another existed and that you’d soon force me into revealing its whereabouts.’

‘So the act was pointless?’

‘No; not at all. For a while I had the pleasure of seeing you imagine your plans in ruins, Yuuji-san. The risk was worth it for that glimpse into your soul. It wasn’t a pretty sight, either.’

‘How did you… know?’ Cal said. ‘How did you know I’d been copied?’

‘I thought you couldn’t copy him,’ said the woman he had been introduced to as Khouri. She was small and foxlike, but perhaps, like Sajaki, not entirely to be trusted. ‘I thought they had spoilers… copy-protection… that kind of shit.’

‘That’s alpha-level simulations, dear,’ Calvin said. ‘Which — for better or for worse — I happen not to be. No; I’m just a lowly beta-level. Capable of passing all the standard Turings, but not — from a philosophical standpoint — actually capable of consciousness. Hence, no soul. And therefore no ethical problems about there being more than one of me. However…’ He drew in breath, filling the silence which someone else might have been tempted to fill with their own thoughts ‘… I no longer believe any of that neuro-cognitive rubbish. I can’t speak for my alpha-level self, since my alpha-level self disappeared some two centuries ago, but for whatever reason, I am now fully conscious. Perhaps all beta-levels are capable of this, or perhaps my sheer connectional complexity ensured that I exceeded some state of critical mass. I have no idea. All I know is that I think, and therefore I’m exceedingly angry.’

Sylveste had heard all this before. ‘He’s a Turing-compliant beta-level. They’re meant to say this sort of thing. If they didn’t claim to be conscious, they’d automatically fail the standard Turings. But that doesn’t mean that what he says — the noises he makes… the noises it makes — have any validity.’

‘I could apply the same reasoning to you,’ Calvin said. ‘And where it’s leading to, dear son, is this: since I can’t speculate about the alpha, I have to assume that I’m all that remains. Now, this may be hard for you to understand, but the mere fact that I’m something precious and unique makes me object even more strenuously to the idea of anyone making a copy of me. Every act of copying me cheapens what I am. I am reduced to a mere commodity; something to be created, duplicated and disposed of whenever I happen to fit someone else’s inadequate notion of usefulness.’ He paused. ‘So — while I’m not saying I wouldn’t take steps to increase my likelihood of survival — I would not willingly have consented to be copied by anyone.’

‘But you did. You allowed Pascale to copy you into Descent into Darkness.’ She had been clever about it, too; for years he had never suspected a thing. He had given her access to Calvin to assist with the construction of the biography. She had allowed him to return to the object of his obsession, the Amarantin, with access to research tools and his dwindling network of sympathisers.

‘It was his idea,’ Pascale said.

‘Yes… I admit that much.’ Cal drew in a lungful of breath, appearing to take stock before his next utterance, despite the fact that the Calvin simulation ‘thought’ far more rapidly than unaugmented humans. ‘Those were dangerous times — no worse than now, of course, from what I’ve gathered since my reawakening — but hazardous all the same. It seemed prudent to ensure some part of me would survive my original’s destruction. I wasn’t thinking of a copy, though — more a sketch, a likeness; perhaps not even fully Turing-compliant.’

‘What made you change your mind?’ Sylveste said.

‘Pascale began to embed parts of me in the biography over a period of time — months, in fact. The encryption was very subtle. But once she had copied enough of the original for the copied parts to start interacting, they — or rather me — became rather less enthralled by the notion of committing cybernetic suicide just to prove a point. In fact I felt rather more alive — more myself — than I ever had before.’ He vouchsafed his audience a smile. ‘Of course, I soon realised why this was the case. Pascale had copied me into a more powerful computer system; the governmental core in Cuvier, where Descent was being assembled. The system was connected to more archives and networks than you ever allowed me, even back in Mantell. For the first time I actually had something to justify the attentions of my massive intellect.’ He held their gaze for a moment before adding, very softly: ‘That’s a joke, by the way.’

‘Copies of the biography were freely available,’ Pascale said. ‘Sajaki had already obtained one without even realising it contained a version of Calvin. How did you know he was in it, though?’ She was looking at Sylveste now. ‘Did the copied version of Cal tell you?’

‘No, and I’m not even sure he would have wanted to if a way had existed. I figured it out for myself. The biography was too large for the amount of simulational data it contained. Oh, I know you’d been clever — encoding Cal into least significant digits of data files — but there was just too much of Cal to hide away that easily. Descent was fifteen per cent longer than it should have been. For months I thought there had to be a whole hidden layer of scenarios; aspects of my life not supposedly documented but which you’d put in anyway, for anyone persistent enough to find them. But finally I realised that the missing capacity was enough to store a copy of Cal, and then it made sense. Of course I could never be completely sure…’ He looked at the projected image. ‘Though I suppose you’d say you’re the real Cal now and what I erased was just a copy?’

Cal raised a hand from the armrest, disputatiously. ‘No; that would be much too simplistic a version of things. After all, I was that copy, once. But what I was then — and what the copy remained, until you killed it — was just a shadow of what I am now. Let’s just say I had a moment of epiphany, shall we, and leave it at that?’

‘So…’ Sylveste stepped forward, finger tapping against his lip. ‘In that case, I never really killed you, did I?’

‘No,’ Calvin said, with deceptive placidity. ‘You didn’t. But it’s what you might have been doing that counts. And on that score, dear boy, I’m afraid you’re still a callous, patricidal bastard.’

‘Touching, isn’t it?’ Hegazi said. ‘Nothing I like better than a good old family reunion.’

They proceeded to the Captain. Khouri had been here before, but despite her minor familiarity with the place, she still felt unnerved; obtrusively aware of the contaminating matter which was only barely contained by the envelope of cold which been caulked around the man.

‘I think I should know what you want from me,’ Sylveste said.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Sajaki said. ‘Do you think we went to all this trouble just to ask you how you were doing these days?’

‘I wouldn’t put it past you,’ Sylveste said. ‘Your behaviour never made much sense to me in the past, so why should it start doing so now? And besides, let’s not deceive ourselves that what went on back there was everything it seemed.’

‘What do you mean?’ Khouri asked.

‘Oh, don’t tell me you haven’t figured it out yet?’

‘Figured what out?’

‘That it never actually happened.’ Sylveste fixed her with the blank depths of his eyes; a scrutiny which felt more like the scanning of a mindless automatic surveillance system than any human apperception. ‘Or perhaps not,’ he added. ‘Perhaps you haven’t actually figured it out yet. Who are you anyway?’

‘You’ll get your chance to ask all the questions you want,’ Hegazi said, edgy now that they were within a