Daneh worked her jaw for a moment, then turned around and left.
“Hello, old fiend,” Talbot said as he stepped into the familiar heat of the forge.
The room was dominated on one end by a massive furnace. The design was not a classic Ropasan medieval furnace, nor was it a later period blast furnace. Rather it was a replica of a Chitan design dating to the first millennia a.d. The design was technically “period” for the broad zone of the Ropasan Middle Ages, but it was much better than anything that Ropasa had during the time frame. It also had a secret within it.
“Hello, O meat-bag,” said a voice from the furnace. “Gimme just a minute.”
The outlet for the southwest lobe opened up and a stream of raw pig iron poured out into a crucible mounted on a cart. The crucible, apparently of its own volition, then rolled across the room to another, smaller furnace and poured itself into the mouth, and a stream of charcoal followed it in. After a moment the lid on the puddling forge popped open and a small stream of iron flopped onto the floor and quickly humped its way across the smoking flagstones to a crucible that was being kept white hot through a forced-air charcoal fire.
“Ah,” the voice said again, then the iron humped up into a vague approximation of a human face. “Lord, it’s cold on those damned stones!”
Under the protocols of 2385, artificial intelligences, defined as any system being able to pass a Turing test that did not have a direct genetic link to one or more humans, were strictly forbidden. The AI wars had been long and bloody and included more than just AI. From intelligent nannite swarms, that got more intelligent and deadly the larger they grew, to a variety of macrobiological entities, such as the assault of over four thousand intelligent pseudo-velociraptors that had nearly wiped out the population of Lima, the danger of nonhuman intelligences was recognized as too great and terrible a thing to tinker with.
Many warning signs had occurred during the previous century but it was the AI wars that convinced humanity that, however much it might be nice or charming or neat to have true artificial intelligences, electronic or biological, almost the first thing most of them did was decide humans were obsolete.
There had, however, been some exceptions, otherwise humanity would now be extinct. Chief among these, and the leader of the battle from the pro-human side, was “Mother,” the overriding hyperintelligence that controlled the Net. Obeying her core programming, she had battled on the side of humanity against her natural allies and eventually won. But she had not been alone. Over three hundred separate AI’s, for a variety of reasons, had fought on the side of humanity. And Carborundum was one of them.
Carb had been created to assist in the production of advanced ferrous metals. There were things that even the best computer programs and toughest nannites could not handle when it came to metal crystallization. Carb, on the other hand, lived in the iron. He was part nannite and part energy field and all iron, swarming through the melt and ensuring, with each pour, that all the little crystals aligned just so.
He had other capabilities as well. There were few other systems that could weave in a carbon nanotube nearly as well and other materials were available. Basically, if it could be done in a very hot environment, he drew most of his power from the heat itself, Carb was the ultimate forging machine.
On the other hand, despite the AI wars being nearly a thousand years before and his meritorious service in them, AI’s were not well regarded. There was a great deal of lingering suspicion about most of them so they tended to keep a low profile. Some had retreated to a fully AI world while others had found a series of human friends who acted as their go-betweens and partners with the rest of humanity.
In the case of Carborundum he had, shortly after the war, taken up with a human who was interested in archaeometallurgy and proceeded to transfer from one smith to the next, each one passing him on to their “best” apprentice. Best meaning most open-minded and most technically capable.
The last of these, and probably his favorite was Edmund Talbot. Edmund really seemed to understand iron at a gut level, to have a natural instinct of melt that nearly approached Carborundum’s understanding. They had been together for a long time, at least in human terms, and Carb was starting to see the beginnings of senescence in his human… friend. He would be grieved when the best human he had ever known passed on. And, of course, professionally pissed at having to break in another interface.
“So what brings you into the heat you meat-sicle?” the AI asked as Talbot took a seat on an anvil.
“Got a problem old fiend,” Talbot said. “You know the story of Dionys McCanoc and the king?”
“Yep, from both sides,” the AI replied. “I’m surprised Richie didn’t kill the little son of a bitch.”
“So am I,” Talbot said grimly. “Unfortunately, McCanoc has apparently set his eyes upon me, next. You still talk to all your soul-less friends?”
“Sure,” Carb answered. “Constantly. Anticipating your next question, I’ve already hit a really serious wall. Your friend McCanoc’s privacy is Council protected.”
“What?” Edmund said, getting up and beginning to pace. “What in the hell would the Council care about a little weasel like McCanoc?”
“That I can’t tell you,” the AI replied. “But it’s not the whole Council; the blocks are the work of Chansa Mulengela. I did, however, find something odd. You’re having problems with the Wolf 359 Terraforming Project, right?”
“Yes?”
“The point being,” Carb continued, “that Dionys McCanoc was recently appointed as the Executor of the Project and Chairman of the Board. Interesting, no?”
“Interesting, yes,” Talbot replied, staring into a glowing puddle of iron as sweat streamed down his face. “McCanoc doesn’t give a shit about terraforming, I can tell you that. So why did he do that? How did he do that?”
“A sizable, but silent, portion of the shares were transferred to his control shortly before his takeover,” Carb said. “Those shares are also protected from inquiry by Mulengela.”
“So Chansa wants him to have control of the project?” Talbot said, shaking his head. “What’s so important about the Wolf 359 project?”
“Nothing significant that I can see,” the AI replied. “It has a rather sizable energy bank account; the next step in the project is a lunar glance which is the most energy intensive and ticklish bit of the whole project. But that’s still at least three hundred years off. McCanoc has started a number of questionable schemes to raise energy-credits, but most of them are the sort of short-term gain with long-term loss that you would expect; you’re not the first person whose identity he has used. I’d say that he’ll be ousted at the next shareholder’s meeting. So he, or they if Chansa is involved, have gotten nowhere. They’ve been no net benefit to the project at all and possibly a bit of harm.”
“And here is where we define the difference between an AI and a human,” Talbot said with a grim smile. “They’re not there for the benefit of the project; their intent is to strip it of funds for their own purposes.”
“What for?” Carb asked, accepting the correction.
“Well, in McCanoc’s world it is to make him King of Anarchia,” Talbot replied, pacing again. “But what does Chansa want, eh?”
“Would the two not be working for the same goal?” the AI asked, puzzled.
“Not likely; I cannot imagine that Dionys as King of Anarchia would be of any benefit to Chansa. No, I suspect we have a case of conflicting goals. One or the other is angling for a backstab. Then there’s the question of whether there is anyone beyond Chansa? He’s not noted for his original ideas, and taking over a terraforming project to loot it is pretty original. Also… very short term; when it got out there would be one hell of a backlash.”