And a servant that powerful could only be controlled if they were designed to follow instructions closely and without argument. One of those must have been to use extreme force only in the most serious situation, even more serious than saving their own lives. Jul had simply never asked the question before, and never seen what was right before his eyes.
Prone asked.
“What did I do?” Jul asked.
“You said they didn’t work.”
“So they go somewhere, but not where they were intended to go?”
“I’m sorry.” This was an incredible change in Jul’s fortunes. And in this structure, he was effectively shielded from Prone’s device, as well as out of sight of the surveillance drones. Magnusson couldn’t find him here. Even so, he needed to pursue this line of questioning very carefully.
“Prone, I didn’t mean to upset you. But they’d only go to other Forerunner structures, surely.”
Anywhere else was better than here—unless a portal took him into the heart of another artificial star, of course. Jul got to his feet with slow care, making no attempt to move toward that wall.
“And you’re not allowed to tell anyone what you do know.”
“I don’t want to get hurt. And I won’t tell Magnusson.”
Jul folded his arms to make it clear that he wasn’t going to touch anything. He followed Prone to the surface, but still wasn’t sure how he ended up back in the sunlight. Something brushed his face again and he was instantly outside.
He would memorize this place. This was his way home—somehow. And he hadn’t had to search for years to find it. If it was dangerous, then he’d face that risk.
Prone stopped and peered at Jul’s belt, head bobbing up and down. His tentacle snaked out and touched one of the symbols Jul had etched into his belt.
“In case I needed to find my way back. Why?”
Jul was intrigued, but tried not to look too interested. He had to assume he was back under surveillance now. “No.”
Prone said, turning around again.
“Why?”
Prone said.
Prone said nothing more during the long walk back. If he was seeking to quash Jul’s curiosity, he’d gone about it entirely the wrong way.
UNSC INFINITY, SANGHELIOS
“Bandits at twelve o’clock, Wing Co,” BB said. “Break, break, break.”
Hood ambushed Osman as soon as she got out of the bridge deck elevator. She carried on walking down the passage, but there was no way past him: he was a big man and he could block a lot of passage.
Her heart rate hiked for a few seconds. BB felt it via her earpiece. “Haven’t you got a dark blue version of that?” she murmured.
“No. But the phrase ‘If I cannot sink her, I will ram her’ springs to mind.”
It was hard to blame Hood, really. He was only doing his job, which was keeping one eye on the Sangheili, one eye on ONI, and … well, that was the problem with humans. They were one eye short, at the very least. Hood needed to keep another eye that he didn’t have on the colonies, too.
“Captain,” Hood said, all charm. “Margaret’s being very coy. Successful hunt?”
“You won’t be getting any more trouble from Kig-Yar, sir.” Her heart rate didn’t so much as blip this time. “Not with our own munitions, anyway. Pious Inquisitor is another matter.”
“Let me be specific. Did you find and destroy that unidentified ship?”
If she wanted to end the conversation, she’d have to actually brush past Hood. To her credit, she stood her ground and still managed not to actually lie, merely put him in a position where he’d have to call her a liar.
“Sir, I’d need to check up on the law regarding opening fire on pirate vessels crewed by a former enemy with which we have no official peace treaty.”
“You missed your vocation, Captain.”
“Have we got a treaty with the Kig-Yar?”
“No.”
“Best not trouble the Judge Advocate with that thorny issue, then, sir.”
Hood’s smile set solid. “We’re going to have a lovely time when Margaret retires.”
“Very kind of you to say so, sir.”
She returned the smile and carried on to the bridge. Thanks to Port Stanley’s detour, this wasn’t going to be a hot wash-up. It had already cooled to lukewarm. Everyone had had a chance to get their stories straight so that events would be tidied up rather than uncovered and learned from, which BB decided was just as well. He felt relaxed enough to manifest himself and drift along behind Osman instead of lurking in the systems and whispering in her ear. She really did need to start letting people know she’d been in the Spartan program, just so they fully understood who they were dealing with. What a lovely piece of theater it would have been to have her pull his chip out of her neural implant in a meeting; she already had all the cerebral connections in place, and it was just a matter of talking her into having the Huragok create a special external interface and letting him download into it.
But I’d better make sure that I’m fit enough to wander around in her brain first.
What’s she done with the radio?
It was still in her pocket. He’d kicked the dilemma around for ages—ages even by human standards—but if he wanted the data from the temple at Ontom, he had to interface with his fragment. And Phillips kept saying how important it was. The Prof had a lot of images on his datapad, but nowhere near as much material as the fragment had recorded. Every detail counted.
Halos. He’s sure it’s the locations and operational status of the remaining Halos. If Mal and the others are willing to take a bullet for Earth, I should be, too. Virtually speaking.
Parangosky was talking to Phillips when Osman walked onto the bridge. He was getting his pat on the head for being a clever boy, and he was giving her a heavily censored briefing. These were all the little things that made humans … human. They had the technology to dispense with conversations, finding things out the labor-intensive way, or ever lifting a finger. The likes of BB could do all that for them. They didn’t need to talk to one another or eat actual food, but that was just existing, not being alive. BB understood all that in a way he’d never realized he would.
Phillips stopped talking and looked expectantly at Osman.
“We’re just discussing whether to visit the Arbiter or let the Arbiter visit Infinity,” he said. “Or just waving from a distance and asking him if everything’s okay, because we’ve got to be going. It’s a Sangheili psychology thing.”
“He’s won this round,” Osman said, “and the other keeps have decided to keep their powder dry. But how do we exit this?”
“Well, he’s seen some of the hardware we can now deploy, so it’s a choice between looking supportive, and not hanging around to provoke Sangheili who already think he’s a human-loving traitor,” Parangosky said. “Evan thinks looking submissive by offering the Arbiter the choice would achieve more than being assertive this time.”
Osman shrugged. This was a sideshow for ONI and they all knew it, but for Hood it was serious diplomatic hassle. “Are you seriously going to let him on board, ma’am?”
“This place
is the size of a city. Why not? We can confine him to the atrium. He doesn’t get to see Huragok, he doesn’t get to see anything sensitive or conspicuously unfinished, he doesn’t run into anyone he shouldn’t, and he gets a lovely view of space. Much as I’d love to mooch around down on the surface, Evan thinks that would tip a few keeps over the xenophobic edge. Anyway, it’s Terrence’s call.”
BB occupied himself while the grown-ups had their discussion. He took a tactful stroll around Aine’s databases—clean as a whistle, no incriminating evidence or problems there—and tried to resist taking another look at Catherine Halsey.
Hiding people from most of the crew was something you could only do on a very big vessel, and the engineering section seemed to be a very effective oubliette. BB sneaked into the engineering mainframe and watched Halsey from her own terminal for a while, trying to feel pity now that she’d had plenty of time in solitary to dwell on the death of her daughter. He didn’t manage it. She looked tired and resigned, so he doubted that she only lived for the thrill of discovery; there was probably nothing worse for a human than having no shoulder to cry on, and Halsey had savaged or frozen all those offered to her throughout her life. BB wondered how Osman would react if he told her how often Halsey cried herself to sleep, but just telling her that would probably erode a little trust between them.
I’m a spy. I spy on people. I don’t spy on my own team, though. I keep an eye out for them, and I don’t intrude unless they’re in trouble. I hope Osman understands that.
Parangosky dragged him into the conversation. “So how are you doing, BB?”
“I’ll tell you when I’ve reintegrated, ma’am.”
“If you need some technical support, you-know-who would probably be fascinated to help.”
Halsey was the expert in third-generation smart AIs, even if she’d never worked on a fourth-gen one like him. He didn’t doubt her technical genius. But asking her for help wasn’t without its downside. He had a conscience, and he also had a healthy fear of handing over his brain to a sociopath with a record of terminating AIs.
Call it what it is. Murder.
“I think I’ll try self-help first,” he said. “Cold showers, long runs, inspiring literature. That kind of thing.”
Parangosky winked. “Talk to her. If Serin’s okay with that.”
Phillips had never spoken to Halsey. He had that curious look on his face, that go-on-please-invite-me look, but Osman swept right over it. “Go see her if you need to, BB.”
“You know she wiped part of Cortana’s memory, don’t you? If I come back a complete vegetable, you’ll know who to blame.”
Sometimes BB wanted to flounce out, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t leave when he was already everywhere, and he needed to create a gap in his memory to ignore anything his sensors were aware of. That was the whole problem in a nutshell. Gaps. They hurt. Memory was his body; he couldn’t just lose chunks of it without consequences, without those millions of connections knowing something was missing like an amputee’s phantom limb. Sometimes he had to partition data so that he had to actively seek out memories rather than live with them lurking in the background, but that was messy. The only way he’d coped with knowing about Osman’s family history was to firewall the data so that it wasn’t on his mind every time he talked to her.
Osman took the radio out of her pocket. “What do I do with this?”
“Give it to Phillips, because he’s got hands. Then he can accompany me to a secure terminal.”
There. He’d done it. He couldn’t back out now. Osman gave him a sad little smile and handed the radio to Phillips, who set off on the long trip to the engineering section. Neither of them said a word until they were in the elevator.
“It’ll be all right, BB.” Phillips pressed the radio’s case. “You know what the awful thing is? That I could switch off this BB and he didn’t mind. I actually forgot he was still here. He doesn’t interrupt. He doesn’t join in. I told him he’d remember who and what he was, though. Because he’s still you.”
“You’re really quite sentimental, aren’t you?”
Phillips looked hurt for a moment. “Yeah, I think I am.”
A marine was on sentry duty at the ladder to the engineering section. It was probably to make sure Halsey didn’t get out rather than to stop anyone getting in. She was three compartments along on the main passage, her back to the door and her head bent over a desk.
“Dr. Halsey,” BB said. “Have you got five minutes?”
She turned around and gave Phillips a long, appraising stare, then glanced at BB’s avatar. She had one of those half-smiles that had nothing to do with humor.
“You said that without moving your lips.”
“Yes, I’m just the help, Doctor,” Phillips said. “That’s BB. I’m Professor Evan Phillips. I didn’t get to meet you on board Port Stanley. I’m ONI’s Sangheili analyst. But at the moment, I’m BB’s bagman.”
BB noted that he didn’t mention the university at all. Now that was a sure barometer of his sense of identity. Halsey looked over BB, not softening one bit.
“I didn’t meet you, either, did I?” she said. “BB.”
“Black-Box, Dr. Halsey.”
“So which ship or Spartan are you assigned to?”
“I work for Captain Osman.”
“Oh. Is she here?”
“Yes.”
Halsey didn’t quite flinch but her pupils dilated a fraction. “Well, I don’t suppose I deserve a box of chocolates. How about Naomi?”
“She’s in Port Stanley. Playing cards with the ODSTs.” He listened in via the alarm system in the corvette’s wardroom. “She’s not winning, but then maybe she’s not trying.”
“So … what can I do for you?”
“I may have to reintegrate a damaged fragment. It was security-purged as well, so is there some way to avoid creating time baseline discontinuity? I know you wiped a chunk of Cortana and she didn’t realize it, so how about telling me what you didn’t record about the algorithm?”
Halsey crossed her legs and sat cupping her elbow, eyes narrowed. “I’d love to know who built you. That’s quite impressive decryption.”
“I’m designed to be completely fabulous. So is there a way around it?”
“If you hacked my files, then you’d know I didn’t find one. Although I can obviously fool an AI into not knowing data’s been deleted.” She looked up at Phillips. “Do you know what this is about? The time baseline’s a little like the system clock on a dumb computer. It’s the AI’s sense of reality, for want of a better word. If there’s a gap, it’s like staring at yourself in the mirror and not seeing part of your face. Or that name on the tip of your tongue that you can never recall even though you know your life depends on it. Or a missing limb.”
“I think he gets it, Doctor,” BB said. “Never mind. I knew it was a long shot asking you to fix a fourth-gen.” See, I can be a bitch too, dear. “You’ve been out of the field a long time. I’ll work it out for myself.”
“Fourth generation.”
“Yes. An AI built by AIs.”
That made her blink. “I’ve been kept out of quite a few loops, haven’t I?”
“God, yes.” BB twirled around to face the door. “Thanks, anyway.”
Phillips was very good at taking cues as well as carrying things. He followed BB down the passage into one of the server compartments, still clutching the radio like it was an anesthetized scorpion that was about to wake up any second.
“Is that true?” he asked. “That you were made by another AI?”
“Not really. Look, plug the radio in to that dock, will you? Thanks. No, I just lobbed that in to see if she’d bite. She’s upset that they kept Infinity from her, and the Spartan-Threes, and the Spartan-Fours, and even the monthly menu plans. She’s rather like an AI, you see. She has to know things or she’ll burst. If she knew anything that could fix the time baseline, she’d have bargained with me.”
“You think she’s got a person
ality disorder?”
“No, she’s just a nasty bitch. An unpleasant personality isn’t a medical condition. Just a symptom of not being slapped around the head enough.”
“Well, thank you, Dr. Freud. We’ll be in touch.”
Phillips forced a smile and pressed the radio down into the dock with a soft click. Now BB could see himself, a glimpse in a mirror that was his precise reflection but not the three-dimensional reality of him. The next process was to step into that image like a coat. It usually took a fraction of a second. This time, he’d have to take each segment in stages. He’d check it out, integrate it, and see how suffocatingly empty it felt.
“She might still come across,” Phillips said. “Give her some time.”
“She doesn’t know the answer, we could be running out of time on the Halos, and we really need to crack on with Venezia.” BB would deal with it. If Cortana had coped, then so could he. “She can ram it, as Mal would say. I’ll fix myself, thanks.”
“That line she came out with about the gaps. Was that accurate?”
“For an AI, not acquiring data and making sense of it is like suffocating. It hurts and eventually you die.”
Phillips held up his hands. “Sorry. I’ll shut up. Is there anything I need to do?”
“No. It’ll be over before you know it.”
BB’s life was lived at a speed that humans could calculate but never experience. Before Phillips had even lowered his hands, BB would work through every segment of the damaged fragment, explore its data and processes, try to recover deletions, and align both time baselines. Then he would see the gaps, the bottomless shafts, the paths that led to doors that opened into nowhere. He would try to knit reality back together, assembling all the inputs his fragment had experienced at precisely the time they’d happened, and match them to the processes the fragment had been running. And he would know what he could never repair and had to live with. Once he tested it and found the voids, it was already too late. Awareness of them made them part of him, and he could try to firewall the worst ones, but he could never remove them or refill them. He could never unknow anything.