Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

retinue of guard bots and helper machines. She'd seen one plow down the center of a street, humans and virtual life-forms hopping out of its way, but none protesting or trying to stop it. She'd asked what they were at the time, but had not understood the answer. 'You're saying we gave away our technology to ... nature itself?'

Holon nodded. 'Exactly. One way to put it would be to say that we accidentally created a universal interface for our entire industrial and intellectual legacy--an interface that anything that can want, can use.'

'But why not simply go back to the way it was? Make machines that only obey orders from something that looks like a human?'

'Oh, we do. Now. But the machines that chained their own purposes to those of nonhuman life-forms proliferated; they took their own will to survive and reproduce from the species they allied with. Some became fierce beyond all human control.'

Antaea was shaking her head. Holon said, 'Look at it this way, then: an artificial intelligence doesn't come with its own will to live. That's something separate from the ability to think, it has to be added on. You don't notice this until you start to build tools that can act on their own--when you stop using them directly. The greater the distance between your guiding hand and the actions of the machine, the more it has to develop its own sense of who 'you' and 'it' are. The best way to get such an autonomous machine to work for you is to design it in such a way that it thinks it is you. It studies your desires and needs the way your brain studies the needs of your body; it identifies with you entirely, and has no desires of its own. It isn't even aware of itself. But a machine that can do that can just as easily identify itself as a flower, or a crow, or any other creature. It could identify itself as a rock, I suppose, but rocks have no needs. A machine that did that would just stop. But imagine one that, for one reason or another, has no human to imprint on. It searches for things like humans--and let's say it finds a crow. Once it understands some particular crow, it comes to think of itself as the crow--and has access to the entire history of human ingenuity and industry, to aid in obtaining what that crow wants ...

'So nature rebelled, first on Earth, then all her colonies. Except in one place, where our technology couldn't reach.'

'Virga.' She thought about it. 'So who are you, in this new world?'

He looked ruefully at his plate. 'We're mice in the walls. You know, all things being equal, human beings aren't that competitive--I mean, as a species. But things haven't been equal for the past hundred thousand years. We've had technology, society, and the ability to plan. Other life-forms haven't. Artificial Nature gives all those things to anything that wants them. All things are equal now.'

'Look, Argyre, there's no 'us versus them' thing happening here. They don't really exist. The morphonts are just mindless forces that have been given an industrial base. Something we made got away from us, and we're starting to get it back. The only question that's of any relevance is whether you're on your own side here, or on the side of blind forces that are against you. Your choice.'

Antaea looked down, her arms crossed, then said, 'Thanks. Enjoy your meal.'

She made to leave, and he said, 'Talk to me any time. I'm not just here for the food.'

* * *

'I WISH I could tell you who to trust,' she told Airsigh, 'but I'm as confused as everybody.'

The Last Line captain seemed to accept this. As she flew Antaea back to her hotel, however, she said, 'What about Slipstream?'

Antaea pretended to think about the possibility. 'I have ties there. I know they're deeply concerned about the same issues ... If you'd like, I can set up a meeting between some of your people and the admiralty.'

'That would be good. I'll give the address of our drop box.'

As she climbed out of Airsigh's little jet and watched it soar off into the flocking traffic of the city, Antaea knew she should be feeling a sense of triumph at how things had turned out. She'd made exactly the contact Chaison had hoped. Why, then, was she so troubled?

And, of course, she knew why: Holon. He'd not been what she'd expected. She remembered the blank thing her sister had become after being possessed by something from outside of Virga. Holon wasn't like that.

If anything was like the monster her sister had become, it was this emissary Leal claimed as her friend.

Deeply disturbed, she flew to her hotel to tell Richard that she'd been successful.

* * *

ANOTHER COUNTRY, ANOTHER palace, and another dinner party. They had long since blurred together in Keir's mind, yet he found himself smiling tonight as he, Leal, and Venera made their way back to this city's dockyards. Their military escort saluted and left them on the inner curve of the cylindrical dock. Leal waved to the soldiers, but Venera dismissed them with a sniff and, in the microgravity, bounded in long slow steps in the direction of their ship.

A cowled figure waited in the shadow of the yacht. Leal saw it only when Venera suddenly stopped and put her arm across Leal's chest. As Keir bumped into Leal, Venera reached for an absent sidearm; they'd been required to leave their weapons on the yacht.

'Please, I'm a friend,' said a woman's voice. The gray-cloaked shape bobbed through the dock's minuscule gravity to perch before them, and as Venera said 'Who--' it threw back its hood.

Leal recognized the face; this young woman had been at the banquet. She'd been seated at the first table to the right of the main table, which meant she was a person of high standing. Leal carefully bowed, and didn't quite have to kick Keir in the shins before he did, too. Venera held her head high--but of course, Venera bowed to no one.

They all stood in half-shadow, but the young woman clearly thought that this wasn't discreet enough; she windmilled her arms and sailed a few feet back, into the darkness. 'Please, I can't be seen here,' she called softly.

Venera glanced up at the well-lit main hatch of the yacht. 'There's another way in,' she said curtly. 'This way.' She led them under the belly of the yacht. To the left were the lights, gantries, and piled crates of the docking ring that rode at the central axle of the town wheel; to the right was a sheer drop-off, and night skies.