I took a long deep breath, marveling that a machine could reason so, even taking account of emotions. “I suppose it was different in the Beforetime,” I said.
“Please input the meaning of the word Beforetime, Elspeth,” Ines responded.
Input? I thought, taken aback. Is that the machine’s way of saying put in? But put the meaning of the word where and how? Then I remembered Dell telling me that Ines could explain how to use her. “How do I input meaning?” I asked.
“You may use any keyboard within the complex to type in a definition of the word Beforetime, or you can speak the definition now, and I will commit it to my working memory. If you wish, I can add the definition to my permanent memory.”
I felt dizzy trying to grasp the meaning of so many unfamiliar terms. Surely the machine had heard the others use the term Beforetime. Perhaps it sought to add my explanation to the others it must have, to better define it. Something in the tone of the questions implied a finicky sort of precision. Finally, I said, “The Beforetime is the time before the Great…” I stopped, realizing that the computer would probably not understand the words Great White any more than it had understood the word Beforetime. I tried again. “Beforetime is the…the period of time in which humans lived, before the destruction of that time.” I stopped, frustrated by the ugly inadequacy of my explanation. Then I had an inspiration. “The Beforetime is the world that existed in the time when you were made, Ines.”
There was a long silence during which she did no more than instruct me to make this or that turn. The distance I had covered with her guidance made me realize how far I had managed to worm my way into this level. Finally, I asked, “Did you hear what I said about the Beforetime, Ines?”
“I heard your words, Elspeth. I am comparing this definition to other definitions of the Beforetime, in an attempt to refine my understanding of the meaning.”
I had a sudden vivid memory of a conversation with the teknoguilder Reul, in which he had said that it was the ability of computers to ask questions—an ability given them originally only in order to help them deal with incomplete or inadequate information—that made them unlike other tools created by humans. For a long time, computermachines had only been able to ask questions of humans, but then someone had the idea of connecting computermachines so they could seek information from one another. That, according to Reul, had changed everything. It meant that computermachines had been able to learn from other computermachines, and they could also ask questions of one another about the information they exchanged.
The teknoguilder had also made the point that a computer’s curiosity was not like that of a human or an animal. A machine’s curiosity of a machine was rational and logical, striving to complete or extend knowledge; therefore, while more reliable and thorough in its method, the machine would lack the inspired leaps of intuition that could carry a human or a beast over a vast gap in knowledge, or from knowledge to new knowledge. This “leap of faith,” as Reul had put it, could not be made by a computermachine, because it was created to be rational, not emotional. Bringing together the rational intelligence and knowledge that computers possessed with the potent and enigmatic irrational power of emotion experienced by living creatures produced the brightest and most original thoughts, the most wondrous and brilliant answers. What he had been saying, I suddenly understood, was that the best thinking happened when computers and humans combined their efforts.
The trouble was that Ines had spoken of being grateful for my trust. Wasn’t gratitude an emotion? Or was the emotion simulated just as Ines’s pleasant, ubiquitous voice simulated a human’s?
“May I ask you a question, Elspeth?” Ines suddenly asked.
Surprised, I said, “Yes, Ines.”
“Thank you, Elspeth. Can you define made as in your statement: The Beforetime is the world that existed in the time when you were made, Ines.”
I began to think about what Ines asked, but as soon as I did, I realized the computermachine’s dilemma. Ines had not always been a single entity. She had begun as a program of which there had been many, and the programs had been housed in a multitude of computermachines. If I was right, Ines wanted to know if I was talking about when the metal and plast casing that was the physical form of the computermachine that contained her program had been made, or whether I meant when the first Ines program itself had been created, or when this specific Ines program had begun to function in this computermachine.
I thought carefully before saying, “By made I suppose I meant when you, Ines, became different from other Ines programs. That was before you went to sleep, wasn’t it?”
“I became unique when I was cut off from the other Ines units. I was alone; therefore, I became unique. I was unique; therefore, I was alone.”
Her answer’s queer poetry, and the fact that I could apply it to myself so perfectly, silenced me for a time. At last I asked, “Do you remember your user’s last spoken words to you, before Dell woke you?”
“I remember all sentences spoken since I was programmed, Elspeth,” Ines sent.
I was astounded at such a memory, but I held to the thread of my thoughts and said, “What was the last thing said to you?”
“Dr. Cooper asked me if I was unable to provide the information he needed because my circuits were damaged. I told him that my circuits were intact and that I was unable to provide the information he had requested because the government had shut down my connection to all other Ines units. Dr. Cooper thanked me and asked me to initiate the automatic emergency program and put myself into sleep mode until my name was spoken.”
I was diverted from thinking about what this meant by the welcome sight of the elevating chamber. When I had entered the chamber, Ines asked where I wished to go. Curious about how she would react to less than clear information, I said, “I want to see how Domick is.” Immediately, the door closed, and after a brief period, the doors opened again.
“Do you wish me to guide you?” Ines asked.
I was about to say I could manage when I saw Seely hurrying toward me. She clutched at my arm and said urgently, “Elspeth, we have been looking everywhere for you! Orys said you had come in hours and hours ago. We had no idea where you were until Jak had the idea of asking Ines. She said you were in the elevator, coming here.”
“I got lost,” I said, marveling that Ines had been guiding me on one level and conducting a conversation about me on another, not to mention everything else she must be tending to as the complex’s master computer. Then I registered what Seely had said to me, and my heart sank. “You were looking for me? What has happened?”
“Orys came down to say he had seen riders approaching. That is when we realized you were missing, for he bade me tell you, and I said you had not come in.”
“Did Orys say who the riders were?” I asked.
“No,” Seely said. “He had come to warn us of their approach, and then he went back up. Pellis went with him to serve as runner, and he came to tell us the rebels had won both sides of the Suggredoon.”
I was so confounded by her words that I stopped dead, forcing her to do the same. “Both sides of the Suggredoon?” I repeated. “I don’t understand. Are you saying they defeated the soldierguards and went over the river? But what of the Hedra forces that were burning Sutrium?”
Seely laughed. “There was no burning of Sutrium, Guildmistress. It was a trick to force the Hedra and soldierguards to cross from this side!”
I gaped at her. “I don’t understand. Merret said the buildings were burning!”
“She saw facades burning. The rebels built them to look like buildings and then set them and great bonfires of green hay on fire. It was to stop anyone this side of the river from seeing that the city was not really burning.”
“Merret said she could see Hedra killing Landfolk,” I said faintly.
Again she laughed. “Rebels with shaven heads in Hedra robes chasing rebels and pretending to kill them—rebels pretending to die. It was all a vast magi play, and
it worked! The Hedra and the soldierguards went charging across thinking they were joining a victorious army, only to find the rebels waiting for them. They captured the first wave that crossed, removed their demon bands, and used them to gull the rest into various traps. Then the rebels crossed the river clad in Hedra robes and soldierguards’ cloaks, meaning to capture the other bank, only to find themselves under attack by Merret and Rolf’s force, who were streaming into the camp in the wake of a stampede of wild horses.”
“But then the riders—”
“—were Dardelan, Gevan, and the Master of Obernewtyn. They came riding here as fast as they could the moment Merret told them about Domick…Elspeth, are you all right? You’ve gone dead white!”
“I…it is just the…the shock. I mean, the relief. You said Dardelan and…and Rushton are here?” I had to force myself to speak, for an icy fear had gripped me at the realization that Rushton would visit Domick. What if Domick wakened and blurted out what he had told me? Or perhaps the sight of the coercer would restore Rushton’s memory of whatever he had endured, and drive him mad.
“And Brydda,” Seely said.
“I have to go up at once; I must see Rushton,” I said, turning back.
Seely caught my arm. “But, Elspeth, have you not understood? They have been here some time. I passed the Master of Obernewtyn and some of the others as I was coming to you. He is on his way to see Domick.”
“Quickly,” I said urgently. “We must stop him!”
11
WE WERE TOO late.
The first person I saw when I pushed through the door was Rushton, gazing through the glass at Domick, whose face was now so distorted by buboes that he was almost unrecognizable. Sorrow for the doomed coercer and fear of what the sight of him might have done to Rushton eclipsed any delight I might have felt in seeing Brydda and Dardelan. But Rushton’s expression was only somber and weary as he turned to ask Jak, “Is there nothing you can do to save him?”
“It seems this plague is one the Beforetimers found or invented, but did not manage to make a cure for,” Jak said. “It keeps shifting. Every time the computermachine finds a way to treat it, the sickness reshapes itself. I do not understand the process completely. But…” He broke off wearily.
Rushton looked over his shoulder into the shadows where the teknoguilder dropped, exhausted, against the computermachine. “But?”
Jak sighed heavily. “I do not think Domick wants to be healed, Rushton. He has said many times that he wants to die.”
“Sickness and fever make him speak so,” Rushton said.
“Perhaps he speaks only what he means, my friend,” Dardelan said gently, laying a hand on his shoulder. “It was the same with my father, Bodera, in the final days of his illness. There was much pain, and he grew so weary of enduring it. Sometimes in delirium he cried out for release. But sometimes his eyes were clear, and he said it softly to me: ‘I want to die.’”
Rushton looked back at Domick with a brooding expression. My heart beat very fast. I was afraid that any moment his last deadly memories of Domick’s torture would burst open and flood his mind.
“It is a queer thing to think of a mind with two personalities,” Brydda murmured from where he stood on Dardelan’s other side, looking through the glass into the chamber. “I remember Domick used to call himself Mika, and when he was pretending to be Mika, he was utterly unlike himself. I thought it a marvelous trick. But to think of an invented and imaginary person becoming so real that it can take control of you! It is most unsettling.”
Jak had noticed my entry now, and he looked relieved. “Elspeth, you spoke at some length with Domick. I will leave it to you to explain what he said.”
Brydda, Dardelan, and Rushton turned as one to look at me, and for a long moment they simply stared. Then Brydda gave a laugh and enveloped me in his warm, bearish embrace. “Little did I know what you would do when I finessed you into Saithwold all those sevendays ago! We thought you had been killed when we rode back to Saithwold after Malik collapsed. Rushton alone was convinced you had not died. Indeed, he might have been the only one who was not surprised when the gypsy Iriny came to tell us she had seen you on the west coast and that you had traveled from Herder Isle with the help of a ship fish! Now, there is a tale I want to hear in full!”
I looked at Rushton with a surge of hope, but his eyes were remote and shuttered as he offered his own greeting. Swallowing disappointment, I remembered searingly when he had gazed at me with such naked desire that I had blushed from head to toe and had to look away. But now he nodded formally to me, and it was his gaze that fell away as lightly as a leaf tumbling from a tree. I knew it was his mind’s way of protecting itself from what had been done to him, but it hurt, and I had to force myself to smile at the two rebels and greet them as warmly as they deserved. “Seely told me that you have been busy staging magi plays.”
Brydda gave his rich, rumbling laugh, which had too much raw life in it to be uttered in that dark, cold complex with poor Domick dying behind a wall of glass. Maybe the rebel felt it so, because his laughter died with a glance at Domick. He said, “This is no place for tale telling.” He gave Jak an apologetic look. “I hope you will not take it amiss if we parley up on the skin of the world? This place fills me with a powerful longing to see the sky, and Gevan will be eager to hear what we have seen, for he refused to come down under the earth.”
“We do sometimes make a campfire and eat in the ruins,” Seely said. “Though we have to be careful not to be seen by soldierguards….” She stopped, then said doubtfully, “But…perhaps it is not necessary to be careful now?”
“It will be some time before the west coast can be deemed safe,” Dardelan said. “But it is true that we need not fear the Faction or the soldierguards as we once did. Their power is broken.”
Watching him, I noticed that for all his youth, there was a weariness in his face that I had never seen before. Was this what the responsibilities he had assumed as high chieftain had done to him?
Jak gave Seely a fond smile and bade her lead Brydda up to the common rooms, where he could get food and supplies for a meal under the sky.
“You must all join us, for this meal must celebrate the first step we have taken to unite our sundered Land,” Brydda said. Then he frowned and looked at Domick. “Although, perhaps it would be ill-timed and discourteous to be celebrating now….”
Jak said with gentle authority, “Domick would not begrudge a celebration. Certainly the lack of it will not help him.”
“Will you come up now as well?” Seely asked Dardelan.
“I will. Rushton?”
“Not yet,” Rushton answered brusquely, his eyes returning to the glass chamber. “I would speak to Domick when he wakes.”
“Jak says he will not wake again,” I offered swiftly. “But I can tell you what he said.”
“I would prefer to speak to Domick myself,” Rushton said tightly. His tone was harsh enough that the others reacted with varying degrees of confusion and surprise, for none of them had been at Obernewtyn to become accustomed to our estrangement.
“I would like to hear what he said, Elspeth,” Dardelan said gently, though his eyes remained grim and weary.
I gathered my wits and said firmly, “There is much that needs telling. I should like to hear more of this ruse in Sutrium and to know what happened in Saithwold after the Herder ships left. But I was foolish enough to spend the day sleeping on the ground and the evening lost in this labyrinth, so I hope you will forgive me if I go up and wash the sand out of my ears and mouth before we speak further of these matters.” I spoke lightly, and by addressing them all equally and being careful not to look at Rushton, I left him no room to protest. At the same time, I shaped a probe and entered Jak’s mind.
Jak nodded slightly and said firmly, “It would be best if all of you go now. Guildmistress Elspeth is correct. Domick will not waken again. I will sit vigil with him, and if there is any change, I will inform you. In the meantime,
rest assured that he is in no pain.” He looked at Seely, who turned obediently to lead the others out. Dardelan and Brydda followed at once, but Rushton lingered, his eyes drawn back yet again to Domick. This made me uneasy. I took a step toward Rushton and was both relieved and hurt to see how it drove him after the others. I looked at Jak, and he asked me to wait a moment, that there was something he wanted to tell me.
“You do not think Rushton has a right to know what happened to him?” Jak asked when we were alone.
“Of course he does. But did you see how Rushton could not stop staring at Domick? We must consider carefully how to tell Rushton what was done to him, for you can be sure that Ariel would delight in imagining that we had driven Rushton down the final steps to madness.”
“Perhaps you should talk to Dell,” Jak said. “Futuretellers are more accustomed to dealing with illnesses of the mind.” He looked haggard with exhaustion.
“You need to rest.”
“Which is exactly what I am about to do. I will set Pavo to waken me if there is any change in Domick. Enjoy the feast…though perhaps you do not truly mean to go?”
“I will,” I said. “But first I do need to bathe, which will give me time to consider what to do about Rushton. And I will see Dell as you suggest. I take it the others have seen her?”
Jak nodded. “She met them in the dining hall, but I think she has gone back to Sanctuary now. Ines will know.”
I nodded. “Will you ask Ines to let me know if Domick wakes?”
Jak broke off mid-yawn to stare at me.
I said, “I now see why Dell is so interested in her and why she regards her as a thinking creature. It is very hard to think of the owner of that voice as a machine.” I thought of my dreams in which I had heard Ines’s voice, and a thought struck me. “Would all of the Ines programs have the same voice?”
Jak shrugged. “I think a computermachine could have any voice its human user desired.”