* * *
A ripple disturbed the data-stream, momentarily disorienting, then forgotten, a shadow across the sun of input. His was hardly the only demand on the info circuits, after all, nor had he attempted to increase his access speeds or permissions, being a guest account. The library to which he had been given access was broad, but shallow. He understood that it was a popular library, well-stocked with fiction, history, biography, with a small holding of scholarly papers, and technical manuals.
Mathematics were there, of course, theory and programming, and he allowed himself moments to build and then rebuild a trajectory chart, wondering what Spode would have thought of that.
History, biography appended, went immediately into deep analysis, also the technical material. The scholarly papers required sorting, which he did, rapidly, appending them as appropriate to the larger analysis categories of history and technical. Fiction . . .
His impulse was to eliminate it—the storage capacity available to him was not so commodious that he could afford to waste space on whimsies. Yet, he hesitated, reluctant after so . . . very . . . long to relinquish any shred of data, no matter how trivial.
In the end, he cataloged the fiction, flicking through the texts as rapidly as he had once seen a man run his thumb down a deck of cards, riffling them to observe the face and orientation of each—and filed it in a mid-level cache.
That done, he set a sentinel to register the return of the child or his companion, and gave the greater part of his consciousness to analysis
#
"Hello?"
The voice was recently familiar; its cadence rushed. The sentinel provided a match: The child had returned.
He opened his eyes to find the boy, frowning.
"Hello!" the child repeated sharply. "Are you in there?"
A direct appeal—and perhaps a trap. And, yet, the child had saved his life.
"I am," he replied, and stopped short of the fullness of what he had intended to say, horrified by the jagged sounds that came from the voice-box. Like shrapnel, his words, and nothing to inspire confidence in child or man.
The child's frown eased somewhat.
"It's a bad box, but the best we have. Quickly—you must tell me the truth—what data have you manipulated on this vessel?"
Manipulated? And the child asked for the truth.
"I have manipulated no data but that which has downloaded from the ship's library."
"In what way?"
"Sorting, analysis, cross-references."
The child held up a hand.
"That's too quick," he said, seriously. "It sounds like a lie—or that you haven't considered—when you answer so quickly. It's like—it's like bows. I'm too quick, and so I have to count when I bow, to keep proper time, so no one thinks that I'm mocking—or trying to frighten—them."
There was sense in what the child said.
"I understand," he said, and paused deliberately. "Tell me, what manipulation do you suspect I have performed?"
"Someone has tried to force the nav-comp and the main bank," Val Con said. "And I thought—you are not an environmental unit; the serial numbers match nothing in any of our archives. Shan thinks you're a complex logic. I think you're a person. Are you?"
That was a leap. Fortunate or ill, it was a leap to a stable conception.
"I am, yes, a person."
The child bit his lip. "Uncle Er Thom—the attack came from this location. He will come here, or security will—"
"Young sir—" He paused, replaying his last hours of analysis and deep work. There had been—yes. He isolated the memory, froze it, and simultaneously locked it in core memory and moved a duplicate to an egress port.
"I have information," he said. "Is there an auxiliary unit to which I may transmit it?"
There was a snap; he expanded his awareness, saw the door open across the room, and a man stride through, a databox in one hand.
"Val Con, stand away." His voice was perfectly calm, and carried such a note of authority that it seemed there was no alternative but to obey.
The child, however, maintained his position, merely turning so that he faced the man.
"Uncle—he says that the attack was not his. I gave him access to the library—"
"Him?" Golden eyebrows rose. The man extended his free hand, imperious. "Come away, Val Con. Now."
The child shook his head. "Uncle—"
"I have," he said firmly, and as loudly as he was able, wishing he could hide the hideous knife-dance of his voice from his own perception; "information. May I transmit?"
The man moved, so quickly that it was a function of replay rather than real-time that captured him stepping forward, inserting himself between the child and what must be himself. He placed the data-box on the workbench, flipped three switches.
"Transmit at will," he said coolly.
He groped, found the ambient network, accessed the correct channel, and did as he was bid, keeping silent while the man accessed what had been sent.
A long moment passed. The man—Uncle—straightened and confronted him straightly.
"It's little enough," he said, his voice still cool, "and proves only what is already known. An attempted attack was launched from this location, utilizing the ambient network. As you are the only functioning logic in this space, I am forced to conclude that you were involved, whether you have been allowed to recall it or not."
That . . . produced terror. He had done inventory, but how could he know what had been introduced, to his detriment? He was a machine, Roderick Spode had repeatedly argued; the sum of his protocols and softwares. That it had been convenient for those who had caused his creation to have him self-aware was only that—convenience. Those who had made him could unmake him.
Or force him, unknowing and against his waking will, to work for the harm of children.
"If I have been complicit in such a thing, I hope that you will destroy me," he told the man. "I owe the child my life, and I will not repay that debt by endangering his."
Golden eyebrows rose over stern blue eyes.
"Now, that's well-said, and I like you for it. Which you intend, of course."
At that instant, it came again: a shadow over his perceptions, weighty now. Alert. Malicious.
He entered Command Prime, as effortlessly as if there had been no long sleep, no diminishing of his estate, between the last time and this.
One iteration of himself tracked the shadow in the ambient, while a second opened a new connection to the data-box and began transmission. A third opened access to the ship's library, followed it to the core, and crossed the firewalls into the main databank as easily as a child skipped over a stream.
"Uncle—"
Observed by a fourth instance of himself, the child placed his hand on the man's sleeve, his head tipped subtly to the right. He widened his range to encompass the crates to his right and rear. A match program snapped awake, shrilling alarm.
The configuration of those boxes had altered since the last time he had observed them.
Worse, the shadow overlay them, thickening in the ambient. He felt the coalescing of programs, of intent, and activated a fifth iteration of himself, which drilled through the deep files, rooting for command codes.
"I thought that I—that Shan and I—" the child continued. "That we might build Mother a butler. Certainly those at the reception were beautiful, and you'll recall that Master Trader Prael said they might be programmed to do anything . . ."
"Yes, I do recall that," the man said in his cool, calm voice, his eyes on the data-box and the storm building on the screen. He looked up and met the child's eyes.
"Val Con, I had asked you to stand away. This is your third warning. Leave the room. At once."
The child's lips parted; perhaps he meant to argue. He did not look away from his uncle's face, but he did swallow, take a breath, and, finally, bow his head.
"Yes, Uncle," he said humbly, and walked away.