“I never doubted you. You had nothing to prove to me. The self-sufficiency thing is your pathology, love, not mine. I love you as you are, not because I think I can make you perfect. I just wish you could see your strengths as well as you see your flaws – one second, bit of a squall up ahead – I’m back.”
“Are you on an airship?” Was she coming here?
“Just an airjeep.”
Relief and a stab of disappointment. You wouldn’t get from Aphrodite to Ishtar in an AJ.
Well, Dharthi thought. Looks like I might be walking home.
And when she got there? Well, she wasn’t quite ready to ask Kraken for help yet.
She would stay, she decided, two more sleeps. That would still give her time to get back to basecamp before nightfall, and it wasn’t as if her arm could get any more messed up between now and then. She was turning in a slow circle, contemplating where to sling her cocoon – the branches were really too high to be convenient – when the unmistakable low hum of an aircar broke the rustling silence of the enormous trees.
It dropped through the canopy, polished copper belly reflecting a lensed fisheye of forest, and settled down ten meters from Dharthi. Smiling, frowning, biting her lip, she went to meet it. The upper half was black hydrophobic polymer: she’d gotten a lift in one just like it at Ishtar basecamp before she set out.
The hatch opened. In the cramped space within, Kraken sat behind the control board. She half-rose, crouched under the low roof, came to the hatch, held out one her right hand, reaching down to Dharthi. Dharthi looked at Kraken’s hand, and Kraken sheepishly switched it for the other one. The left one, which Dharthi could take without strain.
“So I was going to take you to get your arm looked at,” Kraken said.
“You spent your allocations –”
Kraken shrugged. “Gonna send me away?”
“This time,” she said, “... no.”
Kraken wiggled her fingers.
Dharthi took it, stepped up into the GEV, realized how exhausted she was as she settled back in a chair and suddenly could not lift her head without the assistance of her shell. She wondered if she should have hugged Kraken. She realized that she was sad that Kraken hadn’t tried to hug her. But, well. The shell was sort of in the way.
Resuming her chair, Kraken fixed her eyes on the forward screen. “Hey. You did it.”
“Hey. I did.” She wished she felt it. Maybe she was too tired.
Maybe Kraken was right, and Dharthi should see about working on that.
Her eyes dragged shut. So heavy. The soft motion of the aircar lulled her. Its soundproofing had degraded, but even the noise wouldn’t be enough to keep her awake. Was this what safe felt like? “Something else.”
“I’m listening.”
“If you don’t mind, I was thinking of naming a tree after you.”
“That’s good,” Kraken said. “I was thinking of naming a kid after you.”
Dharthi grinned without opening her eyes. “We should use my Y chromosome. Color blindness on the X.”
“Ehn. Ys are half atrophied already. We’ll just use two Xs,” Kraken said decisively. “Maybe we’ll get a tetrachromat.”
THE MACHINE STARTS
Greg Bear
GREG BEAR (www.gregbear.com) is one of the most important science fiction writers of the past forty years. He is the multiple Hugo and Nebula awardwinning author of more than 35 novels, including Blood Music; Eon and sequels Eternity and Legacy; The Forge of God and sequel Anvil of Stars; Queen of Angels and sequel /Slant; Moving Mars; Darwin’s Radio and sequel Darwin’s Children; City at the End of Time, War Dogs and most recent novel, Killing Titan. Bear’s short fiction has won or been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards on multiple occasions, and has been collected in The Wind From a Burning Woman, Tangents, The Collected Stories of Greg Bear, and other volumes. His major stories include “Petra”, “Hardfought”, “Blood Music” and “Tangents”. His complete short fiction will be published in three volumes in 2016. Bear is the father of two young writers, Erik and Alexandra, and is married to Astrid Anderson Bear. The Bears make their home in Seattle.
THOUGH I AM otherwise relentlessly normal, I have one peculiarity: I get along well only with people who are smarter than me. My wife, for example, is smarter than me. I am happy in my marriage.
In my present employment I should be very happy, because everyone around me is smarter and often at pains to prove that fact. It is my duty to reinforce their positive opinions, but at the same time to exert, now and then, small course corrections. Nothing shores up a fine self-opinion better than success.
So far, five years into our project, we had known nothing but failure.
The first thing you saw as you approached the perimeter site was the warehouse, large, square, and painted a brilliant titanium white. Surrounded by two high hurricane fences topped with glittering rolls of razor wire, it looked like the kind of place where you might store an A-bomb. Access to the site was on a strictly controlled, need-to-go basis. Parking was several hundred yards away, on a small lot covered with pulverized rubber. You were told not to drive a loud car, not to cut out your exhaust or rev your engine, not to sing or even shout, upon penalty of being fired.
On the morning of the test, I drove into the lot and parked my white VW, old and shabby. I had owned it since college. My colleagues favored Teslas or Mercedes-Benzes. I liked my Rabbit.
In the lane between the fences, small robots rolled night and day – nonlethal, but capable of shooting barb-tipped wires that carried a discouraging shock. The robots inspected me with their tiny black eyes and, bored by my familiarity, rolled away.
The warehouse was made entirely of wood, no nails or brackets. It covered half an acre and sat on a thick pad of cement reinforced with plastic rebar and mesh. Beneath the pad lay a series of empty vaults that discouraged ground water, rodents, or anything else that might disturb the peace. No pipes or wires were allowed, except for those that fed directly into the warehouse.
After I passed through the fences, a single thick oak door gave access to the warehouse interior. I was scheduled to meet Hugh Tiflin, project manager and chief researcher. He was always prompt, but I was deliberately early. I wanted to reacquaint myself with the architecture, the atmosphere, the implications – to feel the place again.
I summoned up my image of Alan Turing. It is my habit to sometimes talk to the founder of modern computing, hoping for a reflection of his peculiar, sharp wisdom. What we were in the final stages of creating (we all hoped they were the final stages!) could transform the human race. A machine that would end all our secrets. What would Mr. Turing think of such a New Machine?
He never answered, of course. But then, so far, neither did our machine. I entered the security cage and listened to questions spoken by a soft, automated voice – personal questions that were sometimes embarrassing, sometimes sad, sometimes funny. I answered each of them truthfully enough and the cage opened.
Next to the cage, a small illuminated counter revealed the number of my recent visits: 4. In the last month, I had only been here twice. The counter reset every day. I take it as a personal affront when automated systems make mistakes.