Prophets

Unfortunately, since none of the signals they picked up were intended to broadcast over interstellar distances, it was not an easy process. Picking up tach-transmissions would be easier for analysis, but actively scanning for them required nearly as much energy as transmitting them, and that kind of power was only really available for a planet- based system.

So they grabbed fragmentary forty-year-old data from a cluster of half a dozen systems—it was close to miraculous that they were able to filter anything intelligible at all—and over two thirds of it consisted of raw digital packets that were meaningless without context. Somehow, though, Tsoravitch was able to occasionally pull snippets of text, audio, and video. She had a knack for correctly guessing what kind of data was encoded in something just by looking at the raw stream.

Kugara was stuck with the much more boring job of looking for artificial signals in the broad spectrum of EM radiation the Eclipse could pick up.

One of her displays flashed at her, and Tsoravitch shook her head. “I just sent him the last dozen signals I was able to filter—”

“Mosasa’s not very patient.”

“I suppose not,” Tsoravitch shook her head, “But if he’s not even waiting for my analysis, then . . .” She stabbed a few controls, and the various displays in front of her winked out.

Kugara leaned back in her chair and turned to look at her. “Then what?”

“I was expecting something different.” Tsoravitch looked down at the control panel.

“From Mosasa?” Kugara asked, trying to keep the incredulous tone out of her voice.

“I think I need a break,” Tsoravitch said, standing up. “We’ll be making the next jump in an hour anyway.”

Kugara watched her go and wondered why she seemed so disappointed. What did she want out of Mosasa? She fingered the bio-interface at the base of her skull and wondered. Even though her own ancestors had been the result of someone exploiting heretical technologies, she felt uneasy around Mosasa. Maybe it gave her a level of perspective that Tsoravitch didn’t have, but Kugara couldn’t help thinking that the woman had wanted to work with an AI.

Mosasa sat in his cabin, staring at nothing. Only a fraction of his attention was spared for the data around his immediate physical surroundings. The signals from the maintenance robots scuttling across the skin of the Eclipse were higher priority. The small six-legged hemispheres crawled across the skin of the ship, checking seams and the integrity of the hull. Other robots crawled inside the tach-drives, insuring every mechanical system was performing optimally.

The robots, even with the bans on true AI, were largely autonomous within their limited sphere; Mosasa only had to override them occasionally. The task was simple, repetitive, and took only a small fraction of his processing capacity.

At the moment, most of his attention was focused in bathing in the stream of data Tsoravitch had sent him. It was spotty and incomplete, a trickling stream rather than an ocean he could submerge his consciousness in. But he needed it. From the Eclipse’s reference frame, it had only been out of the immersive data stream he lived in on Bakunin for a hundred and forty hours.

Already his entire being ached with the need. It took a great measure of restraint for him not to forgo all the maintenance checks and order the crew to the bridge so they could make the next jump toward Xi Virginis now.

The door to his cabin signaled him unexpectedly.

He shifted his awareness back to the physical world around him; at the same time he grabbed onto the Eclipse’s security network to look through the camera in the hall outside his cabin.

Outside his cabin door stood the data analyst from Jokul, Rebecca Tsoravitch. Oh, yes, I did expect this . . .

He only wondered briefly at his initial surprise. The same deeply ingrained software that allowed him to perceive the movements of societies allowed him to understand much smaller units. Given enough information, he could see the dynamics of a group of a dozen as easily as a million.

He stood and faced the door as it opened.

“Ms. Tsoravitch?” he asked.

She frowned at him. “Why am I here?”

“I required the services of a data analyst—”