It wasn’t much consolation that there were even more plots afoot to assassinate Greyghor Stohnar, and everyone was unhappily aware of how much easier it would be for Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s “Rakurai” to trundle wagonloads of gunpowder around the mainland cities. Merlin had his own remotes seeded as thickly around Siddar City as he could, but even with Owl manufacturing more of them, there was a limit to the available supply. For that matter, even Owl’s was reaching a point of diminishing returns simply trying to filter, far less process, all the data available to them. And a city the size of Siddar City was a huge, complex target. Even the best chemical tracers could be diverted or fooled by the complex brew of humanity, animals, processes, and—especially with the city’s sewers overloaded by the influx of refugees—human and animal waste.
Had Merlin been a living, breathing human being, trying to keep track of threats to the emperor he’d come to love would have been more than enough to deprive him of sleep. As it was, no one would have been especially surprised, had they opened his chamber door, to see him sitting at the table with his already famous—or infamous—“revolvers” disassembled for cleaning. Ehdwyrd Howsmyn’s Delthak Works had established a new wing to its pistol shop which was already turning out duplicates of the seijin’s revolvers in quantity (although in a somewhat shorter-barreled, lighter version than he himself favored) and, as expected, the Inquisition was inveighing mightily against the new weapons. After all, had they not been instrumental in the abduction of the innocent Prince Daivyn and his sister by the heretic Cayleb’s demon familiar? Clearly they must be the work of Shan-wei herself!
At the moment, however, even as Merlin’s fingers smoothly and efficiently took the second revolver apart, his sapphire eyes were focused on something else entirely, and behind his neutral expression, he watched with a mixture of profound satisfaction and sorrow as Zhorj Styvynsyn’s company closed in on the stunned remnants of Hahlys Cahrtair’s pikemen. The imagery projected across his vision was hideously clear, and his lips tightened as keen-edged pikeheads drove into human flesh. It didn’t look like many of Cahrtair’s men were trying to surrender … and even less like any of Styvynsyn’s men were inclined to let them.
“As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he thought grimly. Even the Writ says that, and if anyone ever deserved what they’re getting, it’s Cahrtair’s butchers. None of which makes it any less ugly when it happens. And it’s going to get worse— much worse.
He picked up the stiff-bristled brush and began running it through one revolver’s barrel.
We’ve been damned lucky at home in Charis, and even in Corisande. We’ve avoided almost all this mutual butchery, partly because Reformist sentiment was so much stronger than I think even Maikel and the Brethren realized, and partly because Cayleb, Sharleyan, and Nahrmahn were all so popular with their own people. And it didn’t hurt one bit that everyone from Hauwyl Chermin to Koryn Gahrvai jumped on it with both feet … and that no one has the intestinal fortitude to massacre anyone where Maikel Staynair can catch them at it! But an even bigger factor was Maikel, Cayleb, and Sharleyan’s insistence on tolerance, not only in the Empire’s integrated territory, but in Corisande, as well. It’s hard to convince someone whose churches are actually protected by imperial troops that they’re a threatened minority who needs to strike out in self-defense, especially without mass communication to pour propaganda into our homegrown Temple Loyalists’ ears. I’m not real crazy about the Proscriptions in general, but right at the moment, thank God for the ban on electricity! The mere thought of what someone like Clyntahn would be doing with HD or even old-fashioned radio broadcasts would be enough to turn my stomach, if I still had one! And Rayno would probably make just a wonderful Goebbels.
That sense of safety despite differences in belief, was not, unfortunately, the case in Siddarmark. In fact, both sides in the Republic had ample proof they were threatened, and they were still in the process of reckoning up how much blood had been shed over just the past three months. Given the assistance of the SNARCs, Merlin was grimly aware that all the current estimates were actually low. By his own estimation, somewhere over two and three-quarters million people had died … so far. Just under a quarter million had been Charisians—or foreigners, at any rate; the mob hadn’t differentiated very clearly—who’d lived in Siddarmark’s Charisian Quarters. The rest had been native Siddarmarkians, more than half of them children, and while more had perished of starvation, hypothermia, or disease than from any other cause, all too many of them had been deliberately massacred. That sort of violence was exactly what generated the ferocity which had made religious warfare so especially ugly, and it was only going to get worse as the fighting intensified.
And what’s that going to do to our own troops? Merlin wondered, watching through the SNARC as the handful—the very tiny handful—of prisoners who’d survived were cuffed and kicked into a huddled group. When our men see the same things Styvynsyn and his men’ve seen, how are they going to react? It’s one thing to know what’s been happening; it’s another thing entirely to actually see it, smell it. And this is exactly what fills the very best of men with the very deepest of hatreds.
So far, at least, the Marines and armed seamen who’d made it to Glacierheart, reinforcing Zhasyn Cahnyr’s exhausted fighters barely in time, seemed to have avoided that particular toxin. On the other hand, Brigadier Taisyn’s people were fighting from fixed defensive positions, and they’d arrived only after Byrk Raimahn and the Glacierheart militia had stabilized the lines. They’d missed the worst of the massacres and see-saw atrocities, and they’d escorted in enough food to ameliorate the worst of the starvation. They hadn’t seen the monster yet, not in all its loathsome, carrion-breathing horror, whatever they might think.
And we’re going to be sending more thousands of Charisians into the same maelstrom as soon as Eastshare’s troops land. For that matter, Earl Hanth’ll be taking his men up the coast from Eralth even sooner than that. That’s going to put them right on the flank of that mess in South March.
He sighed and switched his vision to magnification as he withdrew the brush and inspected the pistol barrel to be sure the bore was clean. It was, and he ran an oiled patch through it before he began reassembling it with a loaded cylinder.
It’s only a matter of time until what’s going on over there spills onto Hanth, especially with Rahnyld’s little surprise, and then—
“Merlin?”
The voice in his “ear” was clear, and his eyes narrowed as he heard it.
“Yes, Nahrmahn?” he subvocalized over his internal com.
“Sorry to disturb you, but it didn’t look like you were excessively busy at the moment.”
“Just thinking while I worked. And, to be honest, a distraction from the things I was thinking about wouldn’t exactly be unwelcome at the moment.”
“The Sylmahn Gap?” Nahrmahn’s voice had darkened, and he sighed as Merlin nodded ever so slightly. “I’ve been watching through the SNARCs myself. It’s going to be really bad, isn’t it?”
“It’s already bad enough for me.” Merlin grimaced, then laid the reassembled and reloaded pistol aside, picked up its mate, and began running the brush through its barrel. “But you’re right. There’s still lots of room for it to get worse … and it will.”
As he spoke, the imagery from the Sylmahn Gap faded, replaced by another image, this one of Nahrmahn sitting on the palace balcony looking out over a night cityscape of Eraystor under a black velvet sky sprinkled with stars. The portly little prince leaned back in one of the rattan chairs with a glass of wine, and someone was seated on the other side of the stone-topped table.
“I don’t doubt you’re right about how bad it’s going to get,” Nahrmahn said soberly. “I’ve seen enough of human hearts to know there’s at least some of the beast in the best of us, and even if I hadn’t, there’s more than enough about this kind of thing in Owl’s archives.” He shook his head. “I’ve been spending a lot of time in that ‘hyper heuristic m
ode’ of yours. I haven’t liked quite a bit of what I’ve been finding out while I was at it, but one thing about being dead is that it’s finally given me a chance to catch up on my reading.” He snorted suddenly, wryly, despite his obviously somber mood. “Of course, I’ve also discovered—being dead, you understand—that I’ve suddenly got a lot more reading to catch up on.” He shook his head again, this time in wonder. “I thought I had some notion of what you meant when you talked about Owl’s data storage, but I never imagined there could be that much knowledge in one place. It’s downright scary!”
“Even that’s only a fragment of everything we once had, you know. A big fragment, maybe, but only a fragment.”
“I’m sure it is, but it’s still going to be an enormous heritage on the day you can finally share it with everyone on this planet.”
“I’ve been looking forward to that moment for quite a while now.”
“I know, and … I’ve decided I want to be here to see it with you.” Nahrmahn sipped wine, then lowered the glass and smiled crookedly. “I’m not sure about telling Ohlyvya yet. That’s … a harder decision than I thought it would be. But I think I’ve come to understand Nimue Alban a bit better now, and I can’t leave this particular task unfinished any more than she could. So if you want me around, and if you don’t mind dead men’s voices nattering away in the back of your brain, I’m here for the duration.”
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that,” Merlin said quietly, his hands pausing. “And not just because of how useful you’ll be.”
“I suppose there are worse things we could dedicate our afterlives to,” Nahrmahn observed in a lighter tone. Merlin smiled, and the prince smiled back, lifting his glass in Merlin’s direction. Then his expression sobered and he set the glass on the table and leaned forward.
“Before we go any farther, I’d like to introduce someone.” He waved at the person sitting across the table from him. “Merlin, meet Owl.”
Merlin’s eyebrows rose. The person in the other chair was of no more than medium height, which made him considerably taller than Nahrmahn but shorter than Merlin, with dark hair, blue eyes, and a curiously androgynous face. There was, he realized after a moment, a strong “family resemblance” between that face and his own.
“Owl?” he said after a very long second or two.
“Yes, Lieutenant Commander Alban,” the blue-eyed stranger replied in a very familiar tenor. Yet even as Merlin recognized it, he realized it had changed subtly. He couldn’t put his mental finger on precisely what the change was, yet it was clear.
“This … is a surprise,” he said.
“Prince Nahrmahn required a more comprehensive interface.” Owl’s avatar actually shrugged, Merlin observed. “It became apparent to both of us that a physical avatar within his VR environment would be the most effective way to provide it.”
“What he means is that having someone besides empty air to talk to when we conversed made me feel a bit less like a lunatic,” Nahrmahn amplified with something suspiciously like a chuckle. “And it’s been good for him, too.”
“Really?”
“Oh, absolutely!” Nahrmahn laughed out loud this time. “We’ve spent the equivalent of several months getting to know one another since your visit. I remember how difficult I found it to understand your complaints about the limitations of Owl’s self-awareness. He always seemed so incredibly … human, for want of a better word, to me, given that he was actually a machine. I’m afraid that once I found myself dealing with him on a continual basis, I became unhappily aware of those limitations myself, though. He really didn’t have much of an imagination, did he?”
“Well, that’s hardly his fault,” Merlin replied, slightly surprised by his own almost defensive tone. “He was designed as a fire control system, and the Navy didn’t want its weapons systems to have too much imagination.”
“I wasn’t trying to insult him,” Nahrmahn said mildly, although the gleam in his eye suggested he’d gotten exactly the response he’d wanted. “It was merely an observation—and an accurate one, I think you’d have to agree. For that matter, I think Owl would agree, wouldn’t you?”
He looked back across the table, and the avatar nodded.
“I would be forced to acknowledge the validity of your point, Your Highness. ‘Imagination,’ as ‘intuition,’ is not, in fact, a truly valid or complete descriptor of the qualities you and Lieutenant Commander Alban are subsuming under them, yet the terms as used are clearly applicable.”
Merlin suppressed a reflex to blink, and Nahrmahn chuckled again.
“Owl and I have been interacting on an almost continuous basis for quite a long time now, subjectively speaking. You said the manual indicated he’d become increasingly capable through use, and you were right. You’d already started the ball rolling by how continuously you’d had him online monitoring functions and analyzing data, but you’d never really had the time to sit down and, well … talk to him, I suppose.”
“That’s true,” Merlin acknowledged slowly, feeling a stir of something rather like guilt. “I had so much to do, especially before I found out about the Brethren and we started bringing more people into the inner circle.” He looked at the avatar’s smooth, calmly attentive expression. “I’m sorry about that, Owl.”
“There is no reason you should feel sorrow or guilt, Lieutenant Commander Alban. I was not, in fact, sufficiently self-aware to be concerned by the frequency or infrequency with which you communicated with me. It is, however, true that the combination of my heuristic programming and Prince Nahrmahn’s more sustained level of communication has significantly advanced the development of an actual gestalt. As such, I am pleased to meet you, Lieutenant Commander Alban.”
“And I’m pleased to meet you, Owl.” Merlin nodded in response, then glanced back to Nahrmahn. “On the other hand, if he starts talking like this to anyone except Sharleyan, they’re going to want to know why he’s changed.”
“One of the reasons I decided I should introduce the two of you,” Nahrmahn agreed. “Owl’s breakthrough occurred—oh, two or three five-days ago as far as we’re concerned, but only about fifteen minutes ago the way you slowpokes count time. And, unfortunately, he can’t lie to anyone unless his commanding officer instructs him to. So if anyone asks him what’s changed, he’ll cheerfully tell them all about me. Which I would very much prefer not happen until I’m able to make my mind up about whether or not to tell Ohlyvya I’m still more or less here.”
“I can tell him to lie?” This time Merlin did blink in surprise.
“As nearly as I can determine, only military and very high security civilian AIs ever had that capability,” Nahrmahn said. “Believe me, I’ve dedicated quite a bit of subjective time to researching the question since his ‘gestalt’ woke up, although information on this particular topic is scarce—not surprisingly, I suppose. As I understand it, it was part of the security function. It wouldn’t have done for just anyone to be able to place a com call to, oh, one of the system defense command center AIs and ask it all sorts of embarrassing questions!”
“Access was just a bit more tightly controlled than that,” Merlin replied rather repressively.
“But the example was so appropriate I couldn’t resist,” Nahrmahn replied with a smile. “At any rate, you’re listed in Owl’s core programming as his commanding officer. As such, you can instruct him to maintain a cover story. I can’t.”
“I see.”
Merlin finished cleaning the second revolver and sat back, reassembling it rather more slowly while his attention focused on the avatar seated across from Nahrmahn.
“I think Nahrmahn’s request is reasonable, Owl,” he said after a moment. “Are you comfortable with the thought?”
“Prevarication is alien to my essential programming protocols and core value hierarchy, Lieutenant Commander Alban. I am, however, provided with the flexibility to exercise deceptive measures when circumstances require. I do not at this time possess sufficien
t comparative data to determine whether or not that equates to the human concept of ‘comfort,’ but practicing such measures will not compromise my functionality in any way.”
“In that case, I formally instruct you to not reveal Prince Nahrmahn’s existence without my—or his—express authorization. When the others remark on the expansion of your self-awareness, you will inform them that it’s the result of your having crossed the interaction threshold necessary to produce it.”
“Understood.” The avatar seemed to smile slightly. “That explanation will, after all, be essentially accurate, Lieutenant Commander Alban.”
“I’m glad you feel that way.”
The AI didn’t reply, but Nahrmahn cleared his throat, recapturing Merlin’s attention.
“I didn’t contact you just to introduce you to Owl,” the Emeraldian said in a considerably darker tone.
“No?” Merlin finished reloading the second pistol and stood. He crossed the room, turning his back to the door and leaning on the windowsill, looking out over Siddar City and the blue waters of North Bedard Bay as the sun settled steadily into the west somewhere behind his vantage point. “What else did you have on your mind?”