Part 7 (1/2)
Sarvik smoothed his epaulets and nodded. It would have been foolish to disagree. ”Yes.”
”Colony s.h.i.+ps,” Lequasha came in. Sarvik's epaulets p.r.i.c.ked up in interest. He looked with one eye at her, at Indrigon with the other. ”Interstellar colonization,” she said. Sarvik s.h.i.+fted the eye watching her to join the one looking at Indrigon.
Indrigon nodded. ”It's time for Borijans to get out of the Kovar System at last and go to other stars. The benefits to the first organization to do it would be enormous. Accordingly, as a pilot project- and this is a highly confidential matter-we are formulating plans to redesign the Searcher s.h.i.+ps into generation craft capable of carrying people. Survival at other stars will involve a ma.s.sive deployment of machines. That will require computing methods more sophisticated than anything we've used so far.” He gestured as if the rest didn't really need saying. ”Hence our interest in the most advanced work currently going on at places like Replimaticon.”
Sarvik considered the suggestion skeptically. Borijans always acted under a compulsion to find a flaw somewhere. ”You'd never get anyone to go,” he declared flatly, ”apart from natural dupes and losers -and who'd want to entrust a stars.h.i.+p to the likes of them?”
”We think there's a solution to that,” Indrigon told him.
”What?” Sarvik asked.
”Do you seriously expect us to tell you?” Umbrik scoffed.
”Do you expect me to be interested if you don't?” Sarvik shot back.
”We'll make that a condition of the deal,” Lequasha offered.
”What kind of a deal are we talking about, anyway?” Sarvik asked.
Indrigon turned one palm upward this time. ”Your expertise for a share. You head up the software development groups.”
”How much are you asking for on a time basis?”
Indrigon made a face. ”All of it, Dr. Sarvik. We're talking about a total commitment.”
Sarvik would have to pull up his other stakes. There would be no time for Replimaticon as well. ”I'll have to think that over,” Sarvik said.
”We a.s.sumed that would be the case,” Indrigon replied. ”Further discussion would be contingent upon your agreeing. Could we have an answer, say, by tomorrow?”
”Tomorrow?” Sarvik stared at them incredulously. ”You're out of your minds. What do you want, a serious coding chief or a bubblehead? I need fifteen days.”
”Impossible. Do you think we're growing flowers? Two days, then,” Indrigon answered.
”Why rush? You're putting together a stars.h.i.+p program, not a weekend dance. Ten.”
”Four.”
”Eight.”
”Six.”
And, amazingly, they settled on seven.
After decoupling at the booth in Pygal, Sarvik took a long walk and stopped at a graff shop to sit for a while and think. He believed the story about modifying Searchers into generation s.h.i.+ps, he decided.The Farworlds people's body signals had rung true, and it would have invited too many awkward questions and needless complications if the story had been fabricated. He believed the story as far as it went. But his instinct told him that there was more to it yet.
The time had come for Borijans to get out of the Kovar System, Indrigon had said. Why now? It was the reason Indrigon had given that seemed weak. Why the haste? Why all of a sudden was Farworlds in a hurry to transport people to other stars? It would be interesting, Sarvik told himself, to try to find out.
15.
The screen showed a cartoonlike depiction of a Borijan snoozing while a computer sagged under an avalanche of numbers pouring into it through a giant funnel.
”So,” GENIUS 5's voice said from the grille in the top of the console panel, ”you had a walk around Pygal and stopped for some graff. Very nice. But then, I suppose biological minds have to deactivate periodically, don't they? Carbon-chemistry hardware just can't hack it. It's all those big molecules. They come apart under the strain.” A figure formed from a double helix went into a tizzy, unwound, and collapsed; then a cuboid computer appeared with arms folded, striking a Superman pose, while the words silicon, yeah! flashed mockingly above.
”I had some thinking to do,” Sarvik said. ”If it were something that you'd ever experienced, as opposed to just shuffling bits around mechanically all day, you'd know that answers that need real judgment don't just pop out on command.”
”Brains are just soggy learning networks,” GENIUS replied. ”A neuron is as predictable as a molecular gate. Indeterminacy arises from complexity in both. So where's the difference?”
”Look, I don't have time for any of that now,” Sarvik said. ”I had a very informative meeting with the Farworlds people. They're planning to convert Searchers into generation s.h.i.+ps and send Borijans out of the Kovar System.”
”So they say. And you believe them?”
”Yes.”
”Why?”
”I've told you before-biological intuition. It's not something you can comprehend, so don't worry about it. The project will need heavy computing. They want us to go in with them to take care of advanced software.” It was part of the present deal that the rights on GENIUS were Sarvik's, not Replimaticon's, although there was a complicated formula that would give Replimaticon a share of future attributable earnings. Sarvik had gleaned that a large part of Farworlds' interest in him lay in gaining access itself to the means that had enabled Sarvik to break its security.
An image of starfields and a nebula appeared on the screen, with the words distance . . . void . . .
migration . . . seeds in wind . . . colonize galaxy coming and going to give glimpses into GENIUS's a.s.sociative musings on the subject. Finally, astronomy/astronomers flashed portentously. Then GENIUS explained. ”It may surprise you to learn that I haven't been exactly idle myself. While you were out doing your slow-motion thinking, another copy of the boomerang came back. With all the tracers.”
Both sides of Sarvik's face looked up sharply. ”Allof them?”
”Why do I keep having to repeat things? Yes, that's what I said:all. Interesting?”
It was very interesting. Because that much couldn't be said for the copy that had returned from Farworlds, where only some of the tracer data had found their way. So, while Leradil Driss had, as far as could be ascertained, given Farworlds only some of the information purloined from Replimaticon, she had been pa.s.sing all of it to somebody else. This suggested that she had been as much a plant in Farworlds as in Replimaticon and had supplied Farworlds with just enough information to preserve her cover. All the time she really had been spying for someone else yet again.”So?” Sarvik said, not bothering to voice the obvious.
”It retrieved portions from various sections of the most confidential files of ASH,” GENIUS answered.
Sarvik frowned on one side. ”ASH? You mean the astronomers?”
The Astronomical Society of Hoditia-actually worldwide in members.h.i.+p, with some of Turle's most prestigious scientists on its list-was a purely professional inst.i.tution, normally considered to be above the kind of deception and double dealing connivances reveled in. For obscure reasons the a.s.sociation insisted on retaining a national t.i.tle and hence had to change its name whenever the political grouping that contained its headquarters on Vayso-one of the islands in what was currently called Hoditia-broke up and realigned.
”Yes,” GENIUS confirmed. ”ASH. There's been a lot of communication between the directorate of Farworlds and some of the a.s.sociation's senior members. I can't tell you what about, because the references don't point to anything that's accessible through the net. But whatever it is, it's big enough to get some of the planet's top scientists into the espionage business.”
And big enough, maybe, to change his whole lifestyle for keeps, Sarvik thought to himself. Which way to go next? The best was usually the most audacious, he had long ago decided. He contacted Leradil Driss-the person he'd just gotten expelled from two positions in as many days-and told her he had a proposition that she might find interesting.
The zhill was a large marine avian that laid eggs, breathed air, and looked like a tooth-beaked submarine. It belonged to a line whose distant ancestors had returned to an aquatic environment; its feathers were now transformed to leathery scales, and its limbs had adapted into rudimentary flippers in front, lateral fins in the center, and twin rudderlike tails at the rear.
Sarvik met Leradil Driss in a gla.s.s-walled gallery projecting into an underwater seascape, where visitors could sit and view, or talk, or think while zhills turned and dived over and around. Other kinds of Turlean ocean life wheeled and cavorted about them; nosed, crawled, sifted, and slithered in the sand and mud at the bottom; or glared balefully from fissures in the rocks and the holes underneath. Sarvik had suggested meeting at the Pygal zoo. Too many connivances cooperated with information agencies that peddled snippets gleaned from bugging, and he never felt completely safe in cab compartments, restaurant booths, plaza snack bars, or any of the other places people normally went to talk.
Although somewhat taken aback by his gall in approaching her, Leradil was not irreversibly antagonized. After all, the game they played was hardly something that he had invented. He had merely gone by the same accepted rules as she and shown himself to be a proficient player. Few Borijans would condemn him for that, any more than they would concede open admiration. And while she would naturally be smarting from the double put-down of having been exposed twice, especially since in both cases she had been acting on behalf of the same princ.i.p.al, he was reasonably sure that the material penalties would not involve losses to her personally.