Entoverse

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The next day, while Hunt was away in the city, Gina and Sandy had lunch together in a drab cafeteria on the level below PAC’s residential sector. The food was plain and monotonous. When anyone complained to the Jevlenese catering staff about it, they were told that the supply system was messed up. It had become usual to attribute every failure and discomfort to JEVEX’s being shut down.

“Squid shit and processed shoebox again,” Sandy said, looking down at what was supposed to be a sandwich. “It’s not really what you’d expect when you come all this way, is it? Our guys did better down the ice hole on Ganymede.”

“How did you ever end up at a place like Ganymede?” Gina asked curiously.

“When you work with people like Chris and Vic, anything’s possible.”

“Yes… I think I can believe it.”

“Well, look at you. You’ve known Vic for a week. Here you are.”

Gina looked around. “You’re right. It’s sure a lot different from the Vishnu, I have to admit.”

“Although I think ZORAC is, somehow… ‘cuter’ than VISAR. It cracks jokes. Did you ever hear of a computer that cracks jokes before?”

“Maybe being stranded in space for twenty-five years affected it,” Gina said. “The Ganymeans would be okay. They could handle it. I’m beginning to get the feeling that a lot of things that would completely screw us up in the head don’t bother them at all.” She inspected a peculiar-looking yellow fruit with orange lobes. “Although we still have the direct link to VISAR here.”

They munched in silence for a while, exchanging grimaces over their respective dishes.

“I haven’t been near VISAR since we arrived,” Sandy said.

She spoke in an odd, pointed tone, as if she were trying to convey something deeper to test Gina’s reaction. It took Gina a few seconds to register the fact. Her expression changed, but before she could say anything, Sandy went on. “How well did you get to know VISAR when we were on the ship? It’s not just ZORAC with a different I/O system, you know. Did you take any time to… experiment with it at all?”

Gina stopped eating and stared across the table, interrogating Sandy’s face silently. “Experiment with it?” she repeated.

“Yes.”

“It depends what you mean.”

Sandy answered in a way that sounded as if she had been wanting to bring the subject up with somebody for a long time. “Do you have any idea of just how weird that thing is, once you get into it? You’re so right: the Thuriens must be a lot different from us up here.” She tapped the side of her head. “People don’t realize how different.”

Gina sat back in her seat and took in the tenseness that had come over Sandy suddenly. She knew now what Sandy was getting at, but she replied in a way that evaded the point. “Do you mean how they can live with that universal bugging system everywhere, and not be bothered by it? Yes, I agree that’s strange. It would bother me. And all that pointless detail they have to go into. Maybe they have a different notion of reality.”

Sandy shook her head. “No. That wasn’t what I meant. I was talking about the way it puts information into your head. It’s not just that it can make you think you’re somewhere else and not know the difference. It can manufacture places-whole worlds, whatever-that don’t exist at all. And they’re just as real-I mean, there’s no way you can tell the difference. It can be anything you like.”

“Go on,” Gina said, not willing to commit herself just yet.

Sandy put down her fork and gestured briefly, then brushed her hair aside. Whatever recollections she was bringing to mind seemed to be troubling her. “But it goes a lot farther than just creating things that you tell it to. It can go right into your head and pull out things you didn’t even know were there-things about yourself that you didn’t know existed. Or maybe if you did, you buried them down deep somewhere because life has enough problems that you can do something about, without wasting time hassling yourself over things you’re not gonna change anyhow. But can you imagine what it’s like to find them staring you in the face?”

Gina held her eye and nodded slowly. “Yes, I know,” she confessed finally. “I fooled around with it, too. I know what you’re talking about.”

“You did?”

“Yes.”

“And how did it…” Sandy left the question hanging and showed an empty hand.

“Terrifying,” Gina said. “I haven’t gone near it again, either.”

Sandy nodded. It was woman-to-woman now. They understood each other without need of secrets. She looked at Gina and pulled her zip-up sweater tighter around herself. “Want to know something? I can kill people.” Despite herself, Gina couldn’t prevent a startled look from crossing her face. Sandy nodded as if seeing Gina’s reaction provided a source of relief. “That’s something I found out. Want to know something else? I get a kick out of it. How’s that for finding that what you thought you were all your life isn’t you?”

Gina saw that Sandy had paled and was trembling. She leaned forward to lay a reassuring hand on her arm. “Don’t worry. Everyone has something. Look, if it’s any-”

Sandy pulled her arm away defensively. “It’s a psychic fucking Freud with a one-million IQ, for chrissakes. Maybe Thuriens don’t have things they’d rather not know, or maybe they can deal with them-I don’t know. But…” Her voice trailed off. She looked up at Gina and sighed. “I’m sorry. I guess I was looking for someone to dump on.”

“That’s okay.”

Sandy took a long swig of real Coke from a batch that had been ordered from Earth by PAC’s Terran contingent and arrived with the Vishnu. “Yet we were only out there a couple of days.” She set the can down and made a sweeping motion with her arm. “But outside there’s a whole planet that’s been junked on something like that for as long as anyone can remember. And everyone’s asking what drove them crazy? Are they kidding? It’s pretty clear to me what drove them crazy.”

Gina regarded her long and hard. Why she hadn’t said anything herself, when she had reached the same conclusion even before they left the ship, she didn’t know. Now that she had heard it from Sandy, it all seemed so obvious.

“Finish your squid shit,” she said.

Sandy pushed the plate away. “I’ll puke. Why?”

“Because I think you’re right. It’s time we told the others. Probably we should have said something a long time ago.”

They found Danchekker perched on a stool in the main lab, pondering some curves expressing the variation in programming complexity exhibited by sample populations of anquilocs-the peculiar Jevlenese flying animal that could inherit learned behavioral modifications. Apparently the anquiloc was just one of a family of related creatures with such abilities.

“Have you heard people argue that machine intelligence is superior to our kind because it builds up its knowledge base cumulatively?” he asked as they entered. Evidently he had been preoccupied in a line of thought and was bouncing it off the first targets to appear. “They see it as a crippling disadvantage that we have to spend a quarter of our lives learning the same basics over and over with each generation, after which we use little, add less, and take most of it with us when we go.” The professor waved at the solid image of an anquiloc hanging in a flying posture above a bench top to one side. “But can you imagine what the consequences of an advanced development from that animal would be? One of the things about ourselves that we should be thankful for is that conditioning isn’t inheritable. After all the effort that was expended on turning virtually an entire generation into Nazi fanatics, their children were born as untainted by it as Eskimos. But think how much more insufferable fanatics would be if the process of indoctrination created its own gene. What would our friend Baumer give for a tool like that?” He turned fully on the stool and saw that Gina and Sandy were waiting to say something. “Anyway, ladies, what can I do for you?”

“I think we may have an answer to the question of what messed up the Jevlenese,” Gina said, coming straight to the point.

“We already have an answer,” Danchekker replied airily. “They’ve been stifled by millennia of well-intentioned overindulgence by the Thuriens, who made the mistake of thinking that humans are put together in the same way as themselves.”

“So you still don’t think it was JEVEX?”

Danchekker was in an expansive mood and not minded to give anyone a hard time. “Well, in a way I suppose you could say it was,” he conceded. “Although JEVEX was merely the instrument of the cause, not the cause itself, you understand. It provided all their needs, did all their thinking, took away their problems. But the Jevlenese, like any human, is a problem-solving animal. Take away his problems and he’ll promptly invent more; otherwise he’ll languish or resent you for denying him his nature. And that is precisely what we’re seeing the symptoms of. Time and patience are the only answers now, I’m afraid.”

“We don’t think so,” Sandy told him. “We think it could be something specifically to do with the way JEVEX operated.”

Danchekker extended his lanky frame over the back of the stool and looked mildly amused. “Oh, really? That’s most interesting. Do tell me why.”

“JEVEX is pretty much the same as VISAR, yes?” Gina began.

“Well, the Jevlenese system was programmed with different procedural rules and operating parameters.”

“I mean in terms of basic technology and capabilities.”

“Very well, yes.”

Gina pulled up another stool and slid onto it. Sandy remained standing by the bench. “Then let me ask you something, Professor,” Gina said. “How much have you used VISAR yourself?”

“Probably as much as anybody,” Danchekker replied. “I was one of the party that met the first Thurien craft to come to Earth, and nowadays I use it routinely in the course of my work.”

“Yes, but what do you use it for?” Gina persisted. “Describe the operations that it performs.”

Danchekker shrugged in a way that said he couldn’t see the point but would go along with it. “To access Thurien records and data; to confer with Thuriens, and also other Terrans who happen to be at locations connected into the system; and to ‘visit’ locations throughout the Thunen domain, for business reasons, social reasons, or out of pure curiosity. Does that answer you?”

“And never for anything beyond that?” Gina asked.

Danchekker started showing the first hint of irritation at being cross-examined. “Beyond that? What do you mean? What else is it supposed to do?”

Gina sat forward, raising a hand momentarily as if mentally rehearsing herself to get this right. “Professor… with all due respect, could I suggest that your impression has been restricted by a professional attitude that sees VISAR purely as a technological tool?” She added hastily, “And the same’s true of Vic. You’re both scientists, and you’ve never thought of it as being anything other than a piece of technical equipment. But it’s far more than that. It’s a self-adapting environment in its own right, which interacts directly with the mind. And like any interactive environment, it can shape, as well as be shaped.”

“Tailored realities, guided by what it dredges up from your subconscious,” Sandy said.

“VISAR doesn’t read minds,” Danchekker retorted. “That’s something which is excluded quite specifically by the Thurien operating protocols.”

“It can if you permit it,” Gina said.

Danchekker blinked, then stared at her. “I’d never thought to ask about that,” he admitted. Which made her point. There was no need for anyone to say so.

“And JEVEX worked by different rules,” Sandy reminded him. “Rules that didn’t embody Thurien notions of privacy and rights.”

“You’ve experienced this phenomenon, both of you?” Danchekker asked. They confirmed it. “Tell me about what you found,” he said.

They related what they had discovered and its effects, leaving out unnecessary personal details. Hunt had warned Gina that Danchekker could be cantankerous at times, and she had come prepared for a fight. But instead of scoffing, Danchekker listened closely to what they had to say. When they had finished, he got up from his stool and walked slowly over to the far side of the lab, where he stood looking thoughtfully at a chart of Jevlenese phylogeny.

After a while Sandy, reassured by his manner, said to his back, “It might not be just us who are finding an alienness in the Thurien mind that we’re having trouble relating to. Maybe having a common biological ancestry isn’t what matters.”

It was clear that she meant the Shapieron Ganymeans, who were from a culture estimated to have been only a hundred years or so ahead of twenty-first-century Earth’s. They, like Terrans, were from a culture in which people were where they thought they were, objects and places were what they seemed to be, time and space meant what common sense said they did, and i-space had never been heard of. The civilization of Thurien-even allowing for a long period of stagnation that had almost brought about its demise-had evolved far beyond either.

“Perhaps now we know why Garuth turned for help in the direction he did,” Gina said.

Danchekker turned to face them. “Most interesting,” he pronounced. “Have you talked to Vic about it?”

“Not yet. He’s gone out into the city. We came straight here,” Gina said.

“What’s he doing?”

“I’m not sure. Trying to get a lead on Baumer, I think.”

“ZORAC,” Danchekker called.

But just then, ZORAC announced an incoming call for Gina. The pale, bespectacled features of Hans Baumer appeared on one of the screens. The face broadened into a smile as Gina moved closer.

“Oh, you’re with company, I see. Is this an inconvenient time?”

Gina shook her head. “No, go ahead. It’s okay.”

“About our talk the other day. Look, I’m sorry if I was a bit terse. You caught me at a bad time. Those Jevlenese were being awkward, and things have been piling on top of each other lately. Of course, I’d be happy to show you a little more of Shiban. So, if you’re still interested, when would be a good time for us to get together?”