‘Like, for example,’ said Hannah, ‘instinctively calling just about every robot on this station to your present location.’
In an instant he was gazing through cams located outside the arcoplex, then into the minds of the massed robots and isolating what had brought them here. It was something that had spread virally from the two spiderguns now stationed outside the door to this laboratory. He could define it as computer code, but an easier description would be that it was their protective instincts kicking in. He shut it down, he reassured them, and sent them back to work, watched them hesitantly moving away as if unsure that he knew what he was doing.
‘They are returning to work now,’ he said.
‘Well,’ Hannah shrugged, ‘that certainly shows that you are in charge but, anyway, we soon found out that you never really weren’t.’
‘Quite so,’ Saul agreed, ‘though my awareness of that fact wasn’t wholly conscious.’ He reached up to pull the teragate plug from the socket in his skull, and switched the data stream going through it over to his internal radio modem, then continued, ‘I lapsed into unconsciousness without preparing any way to wake myself. Partitioning my mind was almost a survival effort, but it has had some beneficial results.’
‘What did wake you?’ Hannah asked.
‘Let me get to that in its turn,’ Saul said.
‘Okay, you’re the boss.’ Hannah’s expression was wry, almost sad.
‘The parts of my mind were not completely separate, however,’ he said. ‘There were those for my senses, the other functions of my body and the functions of my mind, but access was required to them for one other partition. I needed to analyse our situation perpetually and make the best decisions about what to do to improve our chances of surviving. Hence the orders for Rhine’s vortex generator to be built, and the subsequent course changes – these decisions were made inside that partition.’
‘It’s an interesting theory,’ said Hannah sniffily, ‘and I would guess that from your point of view the different parts of your mind would seem like partitions. In reality the human brain, and thus mind, is already a divided thing.’
He understood her reaction at once and knew that she was uttering such half-truths because he had infringed on her territory, her expertise. Even in her computer as she tried to map what was happening to him, she had labelled the partitions. Therefore it was so childish of her to react in this way. He paused in that train of thought, and realized that he had sounded bombastic, pompous and patronizing. He understood that if he clearly stated his thoughts to anyone now, he would always sound that way, while much of what they said to him would seem like the wittering of children.
‘Yeah, I guess so, but it’s much easier to use computer analogies’ – he smiled ruefully at her – ‘especially after someone started sticking computer processors in my head.’
‘Never by choice,’ she said crossly.
‘Ah, choice,’ he said, humanity re-established. ‘Anyway, those bits of my mind that were damaged eventually healed.’ He studied her carefully, deciding it would be best for her to see it for herself rather than have him lecture her. ‘You said the bio-interface in my skull would grow according to demand, and that those bits of my mind governing my senses, the processing of certain kinds of information like mathematics, spatial ability, even aesthetics if there is such a part, were internalized, they had no reference frame . . .’
He saw her expression, blank at first, then frown lines appearing on her forehead as she realized she had something to think about here, rather than just absorb.
‘Without any reference frame, without connections to the other parts of your mind, the bio-interface wouldn’t have known whether or not there was demand,’ she said. ‘It would have had two options. It could simply stop growing its neural net or have it keep on growing.’
‘It kept growing.’ He stabbed a finger towards the clean-room door. ‘And there was room for it.’
‘But that’s . . . separate . . .’
He nodded once, waiting for her to catch up – and she did.
‘Of course, it continued to grow physically in your skull but informationally in your . . . spares.’
‘My vision is a prime example of what’s happened inside this body,’ he said. ‘The net has grown into my optic nerve and done a lot in my visual cortex. I can see into infra-red now, and a little into ultraviolet – though I think that’s the full physical extent available to me. I’m also no longer using the usual mental shorthand for anything I see.’
‘You’re processing everything, every detail?’
‘Different shorthand – using up a few more pages.’
‘Omniscience?’ Hannah asked, opening a container down beside his bed and taking out a standard undersuit for space apparel.
‘Hardly.’
Swinging his legs off the surgical table was not quite so difficult as sitting upright had been, but still he felt exhausted after the effort. He felt disconnected too, but it was the familiar inertia experienced after a long deep sleep. An urgency in him was growing and his focus kept drifting away from this laboratory, out towards the smelting plant and the cinnabar asteroid, to the vortex generator and to the eight proctors now ranged all the way round it like priests guarding some temple relic.
