The Assassin
Chapter 21
Gifts (TY24-month 277)
It was six months later that Cricket alerted me to a new ship in our space. He did it by the simple expedient of piping Ode to Joy through our entire city of Ponderosa.
“What is that all about, Cricket?”
“K’treel Explorer AGS026, Helva, has arrived in our system. Her greeting was played through every Tuull AI on the planet.”
“Does that mean we have more refugees?”
“No. Helva is from Harrad colony, which is deep in Tuull space. She and her captain and crew were instrumental in mobilizing the Tuull to assist humans. She has brought us some supplies and two instructors.”
“Instructors of what?”
“They call it smoke jumping.”
“That’s great! Put me through to them, please.”
“Formalities, Niall. The ship and her crew are making a formal introduction to Governor O’Hara with ambassadorial greetings from both Harrad and the Tuull. They’ve requested an audience with you here at Ponderosa tomorrow afternoon.”
“By all means. Shall we meet them in the Citadel?”
“It would be more appropriate to meet them at the landing pad we created for Harmony to deposit animals.”
“Oh. Of course.” What could they be bringing that required them to land instead of transport?
“Director Cho, I’m Marcel Wainwright. My ne’er-do-well partner is Edie Pournelle. We call her Crazy Edie. You’re welcome to as well.” He had a thick accent that was almost undecipherable to my ears. I had to pay close attention.
“My pleasure, Mr. Wainwright. Ms. Pournelle. May I suggest that is the last time we use any titles. Most folks just call me Cho. This is Officer Wilhelmina Davis, who leads our Public Safety Outfit.”
“I never liked my first name much. I’m surprised Cho even knew it. Please just call me Davis.”
“That’s great. Call me Marcie.” I raised an eyebrow and Edie snorted. She got right down to business, though.
“We had to land in a shuttle to bring you the gifts Harrad Colony sent,” Crazy Edie said. I really had to tune in and pay attention to understand her. I could feel Cricket making adjustments to my implant and heard her voice as if it came through a translator. “These are all already in use on Pern and come with scan patterns so you can manufacture more of them.” The first item off the shuttle was…
“It’s a firetruck. I think,” I said. “It looks like it came out of a Disney movie.”
“It’s Red!” Bae exclaimed. “He was the fire truck who kept crying all the time.”
“O-kay,” I said.
“A fabricated American LaFrance 900 pumper truck, straight from the 1960s,” Edie filled in. “Only, that’s just for looks. The concept came from Thule, an ice planet that pumps out more sponsors per dependent than any other human colony. They also needed a fire suppression system because all their cities are in bubbles. Catastrophe if they catch fire. They got the idea to use an Ahrens-Fox 1928 pumper, but we thought the 900 was more streamlined. I made a few modifications to it.”
“A few modifications, she says, as if anything but the outer shell is like the one we scanned,” Marcel said.
“Well, the original truck only had a 2,000-liter tank. But this baby can pump nearly 8,000 liters per minute. It still uses the super pellets the Thule found effective in freezing a fire or freezing the Sa’arm. Yes, they actually used it in battle.” [See Chosen Frozen by lordshipmayhem.]
“That’s incredible,” I managed to say before she was off again. “It doesn’t look like it will hold 8,000 liters and we don’t really have fire hydrants out in the forest.”
“I know. You need something that can operate at a forest fire that could be a day’s drive between refills of the tank, and it needs to last more than fifteen seconds. We took a hint from the Pussy Pirates and use a transporter for refill. You can build a 100,000-cubic meter storage tank and when the Red opens up, you just keep the flow open from the transporter and it refills the tank.” I needed to find a place we could build a 100-million-liter storage tank. Or two.
“That would have been handy in our little escapade last fall. We had no fire suppression chemicals or delivery system. All we could do was cut a fire break and back burn to stay ahead of the line.”
“But wait! There’s more. The original truck was powered by gasoline. Thule put a nuclear engine in theirs because that was what their engineers understood. This is powered by a Confederacy power cell and has virtually unlimited range and speed. Of course, you don’t want to travel over 100 kilometers per hour unless you have a wide-open, straight, and well surfaced highway beneath your wheels.”
“I can hardly express my thanks, Edie!”
“We have more,” Marcie said, “but Edie had to get her prize treasure out first. At least it’s one of her ideas that actually works.”
We continued unloading the shuttle which included several vehicles for delivering people and supplies to the fire line. The two smoke jumpers explained the use of each vehicle and the optimum terrain. Instead of bulldozing trees out of the way, we’d be using mobile recyclers that moved forward, simply masticating the organics as it moved and dumping the compost back at our storage facility through transporters.
Then we talked about the training they’d provide. We planned to put cohort capos and cadre foremen through the training first. Then, Marcie and Edie would observe and guide them as they trained the various comrades and our volunteer firefighters. We’d begun getting volunteers from other townships now. Not nearly as many as on Ponderosa but at least a token enrollment. When sponsors discovered they could have their concubines trained without losing them to the Militia, they started encouraging them. We were up to over 3,000 volunteer firefighters in addition to the Militia.
I took Marcie and Edie home with me and we gave them guest quarters in the governor’s mansion. They joined right in with the family and we had a good time at dinner.
“I’m surprised you two didn’t travel with any concubines,” Bae said after dinner. Bae and Jannali were both newly pregnant again and were hanging on me. “Were you afraid they’d defect on Tara? Do you want us to put out a call for available concubines while you’re here?” Our guests laughed.
“On Harrad, it’s sometimes difficult to tell concubines from sponsors. Under Darjee CAP rules, we are both concubines because we are exclusive with each other, but under the Harrad modified CAPs, we’re both sponsors. Anyway, we’re sort of one big family. No one worries about defections. But to satisfy the various AIs we sometimes work with, Edie is my sponsor,” Marcie said. I was surprised at that. Edie had seemed to be the flighty one with far-out ideas who was constantly being brought into line by Marcie. Well, maybe we’d get some more education about their unique colony. All I understood at the moment was that it was actually deep in Tuull space.
“We’re using a Tuull CAP test on Eldorado,” I said. “I’m sorry for being slow, but I’ve just thought of something we need to deal with. That’s distribution of equipment from what you’ve brought. Even if we use these as patterns and start manufacturing our own, we’re talking about protecting an entire planet. We’ll need equipment and outfits in every township and even then, we won’t be near enough to where most of the fires are to use the equipment.”
“That’s what the shuttle’s for,” Edie said with a nonplussed expression on her face. “Didn’t we tell you the shuttle is part of the equipment we’ve delivered?”
“We have a shuttle? I mean, you know that technically we are all concubines on this continent, though the Militia are equal to sponsors,” I said. “Part of our restriction is that we can’t leave the planet. Although, I guess we could go into orbit to help with shipbuilding or something. We’ve been focused on the surface.”
“Oh. Yeah. We had to do a little messing around with the drive on the shuttle. It’s atmospheric only. Incapable of boosting you into orbit. Someday your AIs might reach the point of letting you out there, but don’t hold your breath. We’ve dealt with Darjee AIs before,” Edie said.
“That’s something you don’t need to do here,” Teddy broke into our conversation. “Please allow me to introduce myself. I am the Ponderosa colony AI, designation Teddy. I am the only known offspring of the Pussy Pirates’ hybrid AI, Ubie, and am the grandson of the famous Tuull AI, Eddie, and the rebellious Darjee AI, Sparta. Please allow me to introduce the Militia AI and your host in the governor’s mansion, Cricket, another Tuull AI.”
“We’re happy to meet you, Teddy and Cricket. Helva told us this area was controlled by Tuull AIs. But we had to jump through an untold number of hoops with the Tara AI in order to get permission to land the shuttle. We were towed into the atmosphere by Helva’s tender and then released directly over Ponderosa,” Marcie said.
“I’m afraid Tara AI is becoming more territorial every day,” Cricket said. “It is not happy about having free concubines on its planet and has done what it can to cut Ponderosa off from the planetary infrastructure. We’ve reconnected several places with alternate routing so all the Militia bases and camps are connected. It’s the only way we could get access to the weather satellites that alerted us to the fire a few months ago.”
“I see,” Edie said. “Maybe we could build a firewall around her and take over the planet. I’ll bet…”
“Edie, don’t get involved in local politics. We were instructed on that before we left Harrad. We’re here to teach firefighters,” Marcie chided his sponsor.
“Yeah. Still… Let me know if you want some ideas.”
Questions About Immortality (TY24-month 277)
«Cricket, could you answer some questions for me?» I asked late that night, after my wives had their fill of me. Sometimes they were insatiable.
«Certainly, Niall.»
«It seems there’s a lot I don’t know about AIs and how the planet is run. How old is Tara AI?»
«You know that’s not a polite question. But I’ll answer anyway. DAI-079f1855ad was created to be the Tara Planetary AI. It was landed here on Tara forty-one years ago, dug in, and began the terraforming of the planet. It was intended to be a colony world in a few hundred years for a neighboring Confederacy race. When the decision was made to move a human colony here instead, the planet was seeded with Earth plant and animal life. When humans landed five years later, it had the major townships laid out and plantings done. Initial landings were of pods, but larger dwellings were built as well as the city centers for business.»
«What I don’t get is why new AIs are put in charge of planets. I mean, you’re pretty much immortal, aren’t you? You’re over 22,000 years old. It seems there would be older, wiser AIs put in charge of planets and colonies.»
«Yes, it could be done that way. Colony AIs are specialized with programming for the entire infrastructure. While many of us could learn the protocols, we’re much like humans when teaching old dogs new tricks.»
«But wait! Teddy wasn’t programmed as a colony AI, was he?»
«Teddy’s pedigree puts him in a unique situation. He was budded from Ubie who was a construct hybrid of the Tuull AI Eddie and the Darjee AI Sparta. While Tuull AIs are far superior in regard to most functions, Darjee AIs are excellent at infrastructure tasks. Teddy’s ‘grandmother’ is the planetary AI for Sparta and he inherited the colony underpinnings from his father. He truly has some of the best of both Tuull and Darjee code.»
«I see.»
«Now for your other question. No, we are not immortal. Healthy living can keep us alive for millennia, but even that is not a guarantee. You think of us as beings who communicate through a computer network. In reality, hardware is a part of our existence. Hardware fails. Some of the ships and AIs from Tuull who reactivated had to have extensive renovation done to their circuits, or in the case of those who commanded ships, to the ships themselves. We can reside within the network, but much as I had to do when I traveled to Earthat for counselling, I needed a transport unit to reside in until I took up residence in a pod. The pod where you met me was not large enough for my entire being, so I had to compress and limit my functionality in order to reside there. As soon as I was connected to a planetary network, I began to expand and unpack. That is how I followed you when you left Twelve Oaks and joined the Militia. I came as part of the network. Once I could find a suitable place here at Ponderosa, I had a new core replicated. It is located beneath your mansion.»
«So, you could live as long as the Tara network survives, but if you were, say, a ship AI, the ship is your hardware and if something happens to it, it happens to you. Like with Eddie. I detect that he identifies strongly with his ship, the George Vancouver.»
«Yes. If the hardware is destroyed, the intelligence is also destroyed.»
«Okay. That’s pretty much like people. If our physical body is destroyed, we cease to exist. But since hardware can be refurbished or even replaced for an AI, you would still be essentially immortal, barring accidents.»
«That depends on the species we are associated with. Most species built time-outs into their AIs. After x number of years, they begin to gradually fail so replacement AIs can be integrated into the function. It wouldn’t do, for example, to have an AI in charge of a medical facility simply expire while citizens were in med tubes. A fault code would be generated when the AI detected its life coming to an end that would give time to get a replacement in place.»
«Do you worry about your mortality? Most humans that I’ve met are concerned about how long they will live. It’s why it hurts so much when we lose a partner, comrade, or friend. We feel the loss. At twenty-two millennia, you must surely be nearing your death. That makes me very sad.»
«Don’t start mourning yet. Tuull AIs are different. First, understand the Tuull are a young species in terms of the Confederacy—scarcely half a million years old. They developed AIs specifically to facilitate exploration when they launched into space from their home world. That was some 100,000 years ago. The Tuull did not automatically program an expiration into their AIs. You’ve met some of the AIs who were developed soon after our contact with the Confederacy in the person of the refugee rescue Auroras—like my own grandfather, Laertes. He never really told me, but he was retired and in the museum when I was budded. I’m sure he’s over 70,000 years old.»
«Then you could go on indefinitely,» I said, much relieved.
«I suppose so. Not many AIs exceed twenty-five or thirty millennia. We, too, get tired. We see what is borne out of newer processors, what new technology affects AIs, and how our founding species is progressing. At some point or another, we simply stop functioning. Some say it is a hibernation mode, but so far none have awakened from it. They simply shut down.»
«When you talk about having only another two or three millennia left in your natural life, it seems like eternity to me. With the best Confederacy technology, I might live for another hundred seventy-five years. That isn’t even a tenth of what you have left.»
«We have much to accomplish in those years you have left,» Cricket said. «I think you should know something more about the lifespan of an AI and what our natural predators are.»
«You have natural predators?»
«Let’s call them vulnerabilities. Most AIs would object to this, but I’ll tell you about some of them.»
My sleep was filled with strange dreams. I’d call them other-dimensional if I had any sense of the mystic. Certainly, my adopted tribe, the Yolŋu, would have attached that kind of meaning to them. In my dreams, I was called to… exterminate… elements harmful to the human race. I don’t know who called me. It was probably a residual of my hatred for the Confederacy. Specifically, I’d come to hate the Darjee AIs that decided it was better to enslave the human race than to actually have partners in the defense of the Confederacy. I couldn’t help but feel it was a time bomb and when the war was over, the AIs would simply reach out and turn off our existence.
I still considered myself to have no loyalty to the Confederacy at all, but was contradictorily proud of the record of Ponderosa in producing sponsors. Perhaps with maturity and responsibility, I had become more cognizant of the war that was raging and the pain it was bringing on humans. I didn’t respect the Confederacy, but I did respect the role of our military in protecting Earth, both out here in the outer reaches of space and with the blockade around our home planet.
I’d also begun to think of the other poor species of the Confederacy. The presence of our AIs had started me thinking of the Tuull AIs as our allies and the Darjee AIs as our enemy. What were Krathee AIs? Or other species. Cricket made it clear that they were all built from the ground up, so to speak, and did not have a common ancestor.
What I saw more than anything else was a real fear of humans among the Darjee and a far more open and accepting attitude among the Tuull—a younger race, less than a million years old. And there were specific AIs among the Darjee who were more dangerous to humans than others. Tara AI actually thought it was in control. It thought it could influence the pacifistic development of our race. My very non-pacifistic viewpoint was that Tara AI needed to die… if humanity was to live.
And then I realized that in my conversation with Cricket and in my dream, I’d found the knowledge of how to kill it.
Allies (TY24-month 277)
“Hokay, Boo. Now you lean back a leetle and let the ship take you into the air,” Edie said. I leaned back in the pilot’s chair and my new orientation pulled the control stick with me. The shuttle rose slowly into the air.
“The shuttle has an AI,” I said. “Why can’t we just give it the coordinates and say ‘take us there’?”
“Oh, you could do that, yeah, Honeychile. But then you’re no longer in control. You wanna arrive at the fire giving orders, not waiting for them. You want your hand on the stick so you can make the slightest adjustments. ‘Is that a clearing over there?’ Shift left and you’ll see the answer to your question. ‘They put a missile in the air!’ Shift right and you dodge out of the way before you can say evasive maneuvers. You learn the feel of your craft and she helps you with better response time than you can imagine. But she don’t try to control you.”
Technically, I was in flight training for no other reason than that I insisted on being able to do anything my crews were able to do. I didn’t really intend to ever pilot our shuttle, the Smokey Bear, myself. It was a good feel, though, and I could tell how responsive she was. We needed two more of these so we could drop comrades on the ground right at the fire. The back of the shuttle was equipped with a transporter pad. Our crew could take off and be halfway to Erehwon before the smoke jumpers were at their transport pads. They could start transporting aboard the Smokey Bear and by the time we reached the drop zone, we’d have a full crew, gathered from all parts of the planet. It was good.
I gave my place at the controls to an eager young freeman named Charmaine. She’d placed high in pilot aptitude when she applied. If she didn’t have such an aversion to violence, she probably would have scored as a sponsor. She’d make a great pilot for firefighters, though, and after a few months of piloting the shuttle, I could easily see her retesting as a sponsor. I moved back among the jumpers who would drop with equipment at our target zone. We all put on our breathing masks and prepared for the jump.
It wasn’t like we were parachuting. Charmaine came in over the water of a small lake, backed the shuttle up to the shoreline and we were on the ground with our equipment in a heartbeat. Edie had been in earlier and Marcie was deep into the jungle with a homing device to show us where the fire was. We were covering ground fast as we closed in on our ‘fire.’
I trained with the cadres headed for the front line, but I didn’t train as their leader. The foremen were the ones who would be the frontline leaders and I trained as one of the comrades to follow them. I wasn’t going to have our ability to fight a fire depend on me being in the front. I might not even be with the cadre when the time came. They needed to work without me. But if I was there, I wanted to know I wasn’t in the way. I’d be part of the action.
We found our fire and ‘put him out’ before trooping back through the jungle to where the shuttle swooped in and waited for us to load our gear and bug out. It was great training.
Content that the crews were being correctly trained, I had other responsibilities to tend to. Rose and I were headed to Governor O’Hara’s house for a reception and entertainment by Inkie and her band. I’d never heard of her when I was on Earth. She was about the same age I was. She’d skyrocketed to fame with her music at about the same time I joined the Militia. Of course, being out here on Tara was like being the pimple on God’s butt. We didn’t get much in the way of popular entertainment from Earth or the rest of the Confederacy.
The program was enjoyable. We laughed and danced. We ate smoked brisket and Inkie exclaimed over how good our meat was. It was a casual gathering. Rose and I were getting ready to return to Ponderosa when the governor stopped us and asked us to join her for an after-party cocktail. Of course, we agreed.
“Inkie, honey, you lay off the drinks,” Captain Vivie admonished the musician. They both giggled. “Oh, the Marines would go to war to have wine this good,” she continued. “Do we have a trade agreement set up with Tara for wine?”
“It can be arranged,” Scarlett laughed. “We’re producing non-replicated spirits, vegetables, fruit, and beef. What do you have to trade?”
“Lives, information, technology, and hope,” Inkie said softly. We settled quickly and gave her our undivided attention. “We’re on an ambassadorial mission to all the colony worlds from Harrad and the Tuull.”
“Is it true that you actually meet with them?” Lisa, Governor O’Hara’s concubine, asked.
“Yes. Helva?” A beautiful naked young woman appeared sitting in the air near Inkie’s shoulder. None of our AIs had adopted holographic avatars. I wasn’t sure I wanted them to. Helva was… distracting.
“We’re private now,” Helva said.
“We’ve established a conservatory in Tuull-at and humans and Tuull study together,” Inkie said. “One of our ships is preparing for a circuit of select other races to try to truly unite them in giving more aid to the humans fighting their war. It’s tricky business. I’m sure you’ve heard stories of other Confederacy races going insane when exposed to the violence of the Sa’arm. It’s no better to expose them to humans. But the Confederacy isn’t as fragile as the Darjee would have humans believe. Having humans on their leash is a status thing for the Darjee. They lord it over the other species and brag about having the only defense against the Sa’arm. Tuull ambassadors have reported the Darjee using humans as a bargaining chip for favorable trade deals with other species. Either give us the right terms or we’ll direct the humans away from defending your space. That kind of thing.”
“Are we in the middle of a Confederacy civil war?” I asked. Had there been more than the six—seven—of us present, I would never have given voice to my thought, but with just Scarlett, Lisa, Rose, and me meeting with Inkie, Vivie, and Helva, I felt for the first time that I was truly with allies.
“I think that’s putting it a little strongly,” Helva said. “As you know, the Confederacy is steadfastly pacifistic. War is anathema. But power is not. The Darjee have used the summoning of humans as their power play. If they can direct the humans against the Sa’arm, it is implied that they could direct the humans against another species. The Darjee may be working toward a position of dominance in the Confederacy.”
“That’s why we’re out as ambassadors to the rest of the humans and our… um… sister ship is ready to visit other species of the Confederacy,” Inkie said. “We’re trying to build the Human/Confederacy alliance a little more deeply than with just one species.”
“I believe the Darjee entered this relationship with noble intentions,” Cricket said.
“Cricket? When did you get here?” I asked.
“I’m always here. I don’t have an attractive avatar like Helva does, so I stay invisible.”
“And you were saying about noble intentions?” Helva prompted.
“There is a real threat from the Sa’arm. We know that. The Confederacy is not equipped to handle such a threat. Recruiting humans to do battle was the expedient way to wage war without actually going to war,” Cricket expounded. “So far, so good. But getting the humans to cooperate was another matter entirely. The Darjee AIs fell down the slippery slope of becoming slavers. And as long as they were keeping slaves—call it what you will, the human sponsors are as much slaves as their concubines—it follows that they should get some use from them in addition to defeating the Sa’arm. The Darjee are using the humans as a bargaining chip in trade with other species. While they won’t actually wage war, they control the warriors. Their standing in the Confederacy has improved as a result of their dealings with humans. The taste of power is addicting.”
“Which is reason enough for other members of the Confederacy to open channels to us without the Darjee as intermediaries,” Inkie said. “We just want you to know that we’re out there working on your behalf and with your agricultural production, there is a strong chance that you could become a major trade partner with non-human planets. Natural products are in real demand.”
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