Providence - Max Barry Page 0,51
trying to second-guess the AI. He should have known better than to try.
“All right, then. Engagement closed,” Jackson said. “If my math is right, we are now on track to pass Fire of Montana’s record.”
“Oh my God, yes,” Beanfield said. “At this rate, we’ll overtake their total accumulated kills by end of tour. Is that right, Intel?”
“Sure,” he said. “Sounds right.”
* * *
—
In debrief, Jackson stepped through the engagement, but there wasn’t a whole lot to say. They had encountered enemies; the ship had destroyed them; they’d done this dance before. Gilly had checked and double-checked, but there had been no unusual system activity during the engagement.
“So we’re back to standard ops,” Jackson said. “But we’re also deeper in enemy space than anyone’s ever been, so let’s stay sharp.”
“I wonder why we’re not scouring,” Beanfield said. “It almost feels like the ship’s in a hurry. Like it’s trying to get somewhere.” She looked at him, but he didn’t know what she was suggesting. “Like maybe the salamander homeworld.”
“Salamanders don’t have a homeworld,” Gilly said shortly. “They’re fully adapted for vacuum.”
“Some people say there’s a home.”
“Those people are wrong. If they came from a planet, we’d be able to deduce what it looked like from their physiology.”
“Can you ratchet down the aggression a tad?” Beanfield said.
“I’m just saying.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry.” He was jumpy and irritable. In between the engagement and debrief, he had run a probe on core bank 996, because it would have made a lot of sense to him if the ship’s room-hiding behavior could be traced back to a fault there, sustained either during the original damage or the subsequent self-repair. But as best he could tell, the core was functioning exactly as it should be. So there was no good explanation.
“They have to come from somewhere,” Beanfield said.
“A mystery for the ages,” Jackson said. “I think we’re done. I recommend everyone grab sleep. I’ll pull a solo shift.” She glanced at Anders. “You still have forty-eight hours of confinement.”
Anders didn’t react, but Beanfield jumped as if someone had goosed her. “We can discuss that.”
“It’s already decided,” Jackson said, and left.
“Let me talk to her,” Beanfield said, after a moment. This sounded slightly mutinous to Gilly. He didn’t know why she was surprised that Anders’s sentence had only been delayed. That was common sense.
Anders shrugged.
“No one’s going to confine you.”
“Do the crime, pay the time,” Gilly said.
“Shut the fuck up, Gilly,” Beanfield said.
He stood. That was a pretty aggressive comment, he felt. But he let it go. Jackson was right. They had been on edge for days. Everyone would feel better after sleep.
* * *
—
He returned to his cabin and recorded a clip while he undressed. Normally, he tried to structure his thoughts for a particular audience, Service or his colleagues at Surplex or the general public, but he was tired and degenerated into a ramble that was mostly for his own benefit. He figured Service could figure out what to do with it. “As we’ve encountered new hazards and the ship has developed more sophisticated responses, it’s become harder for me to guess what it’s doing, or why,” he said. “It actually makes me wonder if I’ve ever been able to.”
He unstrapped his survival core and hung it by his bed. He balled his shirt and tossed it into a chute and pulled open a drawer and there was a new shirt, of course, white and pressed and never worn before, because the ship manufactured them.
“I’ve been concerned about the ship exhibiting aberrant behavior. But I’m starting to think it might not be aberrant at all. I’m fooling myself if I think there’s a line I can distinguish between logical and illogical AI behavior. The reality is, it’s all beyond my ability to assess. Maybe the ship hiding Eng-13 is the result of a fault I haven’t been able to detect, but maybe it’s just natural emergent behavior from an AI system that’s so intelligent, it is, in a lot of ways . . .”