The lifeboats and pinnaces exploded in eruptions of violet sparks. When the sky cleared I saw, beyond them and slightly away from the line of the drive, the floating bulk of the Cyber Ark.
I was turning the Merganser to bring its deadly drive into alignment with the Ark when I felt McAndrew’s suited hand over mine on the control stick.
“Jeanie,” he cried — louder than he ever spoke. “What are you doing?”
“It killed them,” I said. We were fighting each other for the controls, and my voice was as shaky as my hands. “Killed all of them, all two thousand people. We have to destroy it.”
“Why do you say the AI killed them?” We were face to face, and his eyes were wild.
“Look at the sequence, Mac. The first message was genuine. It had them trapped, except for the ones who tried to escape in the lifeboat. It grabbed them with the manipulator.”
“But the others — the messages.”
“I don’t think it realized that the others had a way to get a message out until our signal was received at the Ark. But then it knew, and it opened the whole interior. It killed them all. Those jerky messages were synthesized, the AI made them up just for us.”
“That’s why you can’t kill it. Don’t you see, Jeanie, it’s intelligent. Super-intelligent — it learned our language, interpreted our messages in no time at all.”
He was stronger than me, but he had poor leverage. I was winning, and the drive had almost reached the outer limb of the Ark.
“We have to kill it because it’s super-intelligent,” I said. “Super-intelligent, and insane. We have no idea what it might be able to do. There’s never been anything as dangerous to humans in the whole Universe.”
“You wouldn’t kill a baby, would you, because it was crazy?” McAndrew had changed position, and his hold on the controls was as good as mine. “Think for a minute, Jeanie. It’s morally wrong to kill any intelligent being. You’ve told me that a hundred times.”
I let go of the control stick. Not because I accepted his argument, or even because the drive on the Merganser was inadequate to sterilize the whole Ark, though it almost certainly was. I had a more practical reason. We were accelerating at a hundred and eighteen gees. In the ten seconds that we had been wrestling for the controls, the Merganser had flown almost sixty kilometers. Over such a distance our drive exhaust would inflict only minor damage on the Ark.
I took a long breath, moved away from the controls, and forced myself to begin the routine task of refilling the life capsule with air. Until that was done we could not remove our suits. We were quite safe in them, but we faced a long journey home. After a few moments McAndrew came over to help me.
Logically, he and I could and should have continued our discussion on an appropriate fate for the AI that now controlled the Cyber Ark. In fact, we said not a word to each other about the matter; not then, not when we took off our suits, not at any time during our long journey back to the Institute.
What did we discuss? We talked about everything that people do talk about — when they want to avoid talking about one particular thing.
When we finally spoke again about the AI, the Cassiopeia supernova was far past its peak. That stellar beacon had dwindled and faded, and in its place shone the wan, unspectacular remnant of a dwarf star. Paul Fogarty was back from his trip, and his findings at the solar focus were enough to provide him with a respectable amount of media coverage.
Of McAndrew’s doings regarding the supernova, the Cyber Ark, or anything else, the media said not a word. He did not call me, write me, or send me any other possible form of message.
I tell you, the man is as obstinate as a mule. So it astonished me when, as I was monitoring the loading of volatiles for a routine Ceres run, he showed up at the L-4 loading area.
He stood at the side of the deck and did absolutely nothing until finally, in exasperation, I swung over to his side.
“What, then?”
“You know what,” he said. “I’m going. Again. To the Ark. ”
“I thought you might. Who’s going with you?”
“Lots of people. Too damn many people. Computer types, military, AI specialists, psychiatrists, the works.”
I kept my mouth shut, but I think my eyebrows rose because McAndrew said, “Aye, you heard right. Psychiatrists. The leading theory is that the AI is mad.”
“I told you it was insane when we first encountered it.”
“Well, now we have others saying the same thing. Crazy, they say, because the AI has been so long in isolation, without inputs.”
“It had inputs from the humans on the Ark. And it killed the lot of them.”
“I said that. When I did, the United Space Federation just added more people. It’s going to be a whole three-ring circus out there.”
I waited. He had ended his sentence on a rising note, and I knew from experience that meant he hadn’t finished.
“So well then,” he said after a while. “What do you say, Jeanie?”
“What do I say to what?” I can be as awkward as McAndrew when I feel like it.
“Why, are you coming with us? With me. Out to the Cyber Ark.”
“If I said yes to that I’d be as crazy as the AI. I’m amazed you’d come here and ask me such a thing.”
“Ah, well, there’s more that you don’t know.” He took my hand and sat me down next to him on the edge of the lading bay. “Simonette will be leading the USF party.”
“Simple Simonette?”
“The same. You know his solution to every problem: blow it away. He has to take the psychiatrists along, the USF insists on it, but he’ll take no notice of them. He agrees with you. We should have destroyed the AI when we had the chance.”
“It’s a bit late for that. Anyway, I’ve been thinking, too.”
“Oh aye?”
“I was wrong and you were right. It’s criminal to destroy any self-aware intelligence.”
“Then you should come with us.”
“And do what?”
“Be another voice of reason — a voice of sanity. Argue against destroying the AI.”
“I’m not sure I can argue that way, either.” I ignored the squeeze of his hand on mine, and went on, “We were both right, Mac, and we were both wrong. There’s no good answer. It’s morally abhorrent to destroy the AI, assuming that it is an intelligent, self-aware, thinking being. But it’s also unthinkable to risk the future of the human species by allowing the continued existence of something with the potential to destroy us.”
“You’re coming, then?”
“Of course I’m coming. You know damn well I’m coming.” I was angry; with myself, with McAndrew, with a universe that offered such unacceptable alternatives. “But I know I’m going to be upset, no matter what happens.”
Upset was too weak a word for it. Destroy the AI or allow it to live? That decision, whichever way it went, would be with me for the rest of my life.
I damned the AI to hell, and every Ark with it; and I wished that I had never heard of the solar focus.
A voice of sanity. I should have had more sense, and so should McAndrew. My job as a cargo captain is respectable, and my reputation excellent. McAndrew is the system’s greatest living physicist, and according to people competent to judge such things he ranks with the best ever. But when it comes to real clout, we are no more than flies buzzing around the admiral’s table.
I realized that when Mac and I flew on a navy vessel to the staging point and we saw the forces assembled there. I counted fifty-five ships before I stopped, and they were not lightweight research vessels or the cargo assemblies that McAndrew and I were familiar with. These were hulking armored monsters, ranging from high-gee probes employing giant versions of the McAndrew balanced drive, to massive orbital forts hard-pressed to reach a twentieth of a gee.