“Three years ago, we started presenting Jill with problems having to do with society, in the hopes that giving Jill some sort of social context would provide that catalyst. But alas, nothing significant has happened yet, though Jill keeps on trying. Sometimes, she’s—it’s so earnest and convinced it’s succeeded…It’s heartbreaking. It’s like waiting for a baby to be born…There’s all this muss and fuss, but nothing’s come out yet.
“Which is not to say that Jill isn’t a delight to work with. There’s nothing quite like designing and programming a complex thinker. After all this time with Jill, anything else would just be twiddling my thumbs.”
David Shine: “So there you have it. You may be enamored of AXIS or Jill, you may even find something enchanting about them, but they are not like you and me. For all their wonders and talents, they are no more equipped with ‘soul’ than your home manager.
“On the other hand, some psychological researchers have suggested that if self awareness does not automatically follow from complexity, a significant percentage of human beings may also be little more than convincing automatons. Perhaps every human being must undergo this mysterious ‘catalysis’ to experience self awareness, and not all of us do. Not a new idea, but decidedly a dangerous one. Perhaps on some future edition, we can ask Jill what she thinks about this possibility.”
Switch/LitVid 21/1 B Net (Decoded: Australian Cape Controclass="underline" ) Message relayed Space Tracking: Lunar Controclass="underline" Australian Cape Controclass="underline" _____
AXIS> I hope this analysis doesn’t prove disappointing. I can think of no reason such materials might not be used by intelligent life forms, a peculiar form of celloconcrete, perhaps. More should be known in a few hours. I remain hopeful if I (informal) may use that word, adopting the proper meaning syncline. I hope to find intelligent beings to communicate with.
49
Language is the engine that does our thinking for us. Spoken language is as much an evolutionary advancement in brain function as the enlargement of the cerebral cortex. The history of spoken (and much later, written) language is a fascinating problem for psychologists, for to understand the early stages of development, we must somehow return to the kind of mentality that is not familiar with words. We find this in very young children, but there are no pre-verbal cultures left on Earth, and ontogeny no more recapitulates phylogeny in language than it does in embryology…
In the quartiers diplomatiques, Soulavier gave her one hour to rest and prepare for the move.
Mary shut the door to the bedroom, removed the hairbrush from her coat and laid it on the glass-top dresser beside the window. She pulled down the window shade and reviewed the instructions mentally.
The whole process would take about ten minutes. There was no lock on the door; she backed a wooden chair against the brass and crystal knob. She looked hastily around for the extra materials she would need. At least one quarter kilo of steel, one sixth kilo of some high density plastic, and the makeup kit. She assayed the contents of the room, picked up a stainless steel tray from the dresser and decided it would do. A clock from the bedside, nearly all plastic. In the closet, she found an old fashioned pipe bootrack. She hefted the bootrack; more than enough.
Gathering the objects into a pile on the dresser, she unscrewed the hairbrush handle and removed a plastic panel from the rear of the brush head. A single small red button lay countersunk in the exposed area. With a deep breath, thinking of Ernest, feeling a faintly creepy sensation, she pushed the button and arranged the handle and head next to the pile.
A gray paste oozed from the handle, directed by a reference field within the head. Like a slime mold it crept across the table top, bumped into the bootrack, paused and began its work.
Soulavier had given her an hour but she surmised he would allow her twenty minutes of comparative privacy. She was much less sure about the servants. At any moment on some pretext or another they might try to open the door, show alarm and express concern for her safety.
Lying back on the bed, Mary decided to test what she had been told about interdicted communications.
She lifted her slate and typed in a request for direct access to the LAPD Joint Command. The transmitter within the slate was powerful enough to reach the first level of satellites at three hundred fifty kilometers; if she had been told the truth, however, its signal would be blocked by automatic interference from a more powerful counterphase transmitter. She assumed Hispaniola would be flooding all com satellites with such spurious random messages; the satellites would “eclipse” the island to restore order to their systems.
However, Hispaniola needed certain satellite links to maintain essential financial and political contacts. There was a definite possibility the authorities would raise the counterphase jamming periodically.
The slate displayed: Link established. Proceed. She lifted her eyebrows. No interdict thus far; were they expecting her to do this? She typed: ID check.
PD issued com unit message register 3254-461-21-C. Enter. She doubted that Hispaniola security would have her pd message register number, although if they were listening, they had it now. She thought for a moment, decided to be circumspect but take advantage of a possible opening, and typed Place call to D Reeve. Text message: Being held in Hispaniola. No information on suspect. Treated well. This in case her success was a ruse and she was being tapped. Using gift. What a mess. Then she typed Confirm receipt.
PD message register 3254-461-21-C: acknowledge receipt of message to Supervisor D Reeve.
Mary frowned. The link was clear; that made no sense. She thought of typing something about getting her out, but she had no doubt they were doing their best. Continue message. Going to Leoganes outside Port-au-Prince. Grotto tourist spot. Tension high; coup against Yardley may be in progress; Dominicans’? Military vehicles in streets everywhere. Confirm signal receipt again.
She looked at the dresser top; gray shiny paste covered all the objects in the pile. They were already deforming.
Signal confirmation not received, the slate told her. Incomplete link: interference suspected. There it was: interdiction. Either somebody had been asleep at the switch or they were playing her like a game fish; either way she at least had been allowed to send a message that she was alive. With a shuddering sigh she turned off the slate and knelt in front of the dresser, chin on folded arms resting on the edge.
She patiently watched the nano at work. The metal tubing of the bootrack had crumpled under the gray coating. The resulting pool of paste and deconstructed objects was contracting into a round convexity. Nano was forming an object within that convexity like an embryo within an egg.
Five more minutes. The house was quiet. From outside the house came the sound of distant shellfire and echoes from surrounding hills and mountains. She closed her eyes, swallowed, gathered her mental resources.
How close was the island to outright civil war? How close was she to being called a spy in the heat of an angry moment? She imagined Soulavier her executioner speaking so very apologetically of his loyalty to Colonel Sir.
The convexity grew lumpy now. She could make out the basic shape. To one side, excess raw material was being pushed into lumps of cold slag. Nano withdrew from the slag. Handle, loader, firing chamber, barrel and flightguide. To one side of the convexity a second lump not slag was forming. Spare clip.