Destination: Void

Prudence: "So we line up the Ox's physical time and set it going like some mechanical toy - in one direction."

Bickel: "The more remote parts of its 'specious present' have to fade the way they do with us. The past has to be less intense than what's just appearing on its horizon. It needs a constant 'serial fadeout'; otherwise, it won't be able to distinguish points near in time from points remote in time."

Flattery looked up into the screen, saw Bickel hook an oscilloscope to the Ox, run a pulse check.

Entropy, Flattery thought. One direction in time.

He projected a picture in his mind: jets of water - one labeled entropy and the other that thrusting probabilism they called Life. Balanced between the two like a ball on a fountain danced consciousness.

It's so simple, Flattery thought. But how do you reproduce it... unless you're God?

Bickel: "Hold on there! Don't hook in that layer without ru

Prudence: "You and your damn caution!"

Bickel: "Life is a very cautious proposition. An error in those stepdown circuits could screw us up royally. Remember this, Ox has to take complicated inputs and filter them down through simpler and simpler integrating systems until it finally displays the results as symbols on which to act. Think of your own sense of vision. How many receptor neurons in your retina?"

Prudence: "About a hundred and twenty million?"

Bickel: "But when the system gets back to the ganglion layer, how many cells there?"

Prudence: "Only about one and a quarter million."

Bickel: "Stepped down, see? The system takes hordes of sense impressions and combines them into fewer and fewer discrete signals. In the end, we get a sense datum called an image. But we interpret that image out of an enormous file of topological comparisons, all of them out of previously translated experience."

Prudence: "And you think our computer has enough... experiences for that kind of comparison?"

Bickel: "It will have when we're through with it."

And Flattery thought: Black box - white box.

Prudence: "Aren't you likely to overload the computer, bog it down?"

Bickel: "For Chrissakes, woman! You personally receive all kinds of information constantly. Doesn't your own system sort through all that information, queue it up, program it, and evaluate the data?"

Prudence: "But the Tin Egg's very existence depends on the computer. If we blunder with..."

Bickel: "There's no other way. You should've realized that the instant you saw this whole ship was a set piece."

Prudence (angrily): "What do you mean? Why?"

Bickel: "Because the computer's the only place where that amount of information can be stored. You see, woman, we don't have time to train a completely uneducated infant."

Before she could answer, the transmission horn blared its warning. The AAT stood on manual bypass to keep its circuits from interfering with the work in the shop. The horn's trigger fired both Bickel and Flattery into action. Bickel threw the action switch in the shop. Flattery slapped the AAT master control switch on his console, realizing with a sense of detachment that the UMB message would pour through the Ox circuits before being displayed for them.

CHAPTER 23

I feel the duties of a creator toward this Artificial Consciousness. It seems to me that my primary goal must be to render this creature happy, to provide it whatever joy I can. Else this entire project seems pointless. There already are enough unhappy creatures in this universe.

IT TOOK SEVERAL minutes for the incoming message to search its way through the AAT and the Ox-accretions which Bickel had added to the system. They were tense minutes in Com-central. Flattery's gaze swept back and forth across the telltales of his board. There were big unknowns about the system now and any input might elicit strange behavior from dangerous quarters.

Behavior! Flattery thought, catching the word in his own mind.

There were anthropomorphic assumptions in that word.

Why should it play by our rules?

In the shop, Bickel felt his own waiting tensions. Was the incoming message going to be more garbage?

Prudence, standing near him, sensed the unwashed musks of his body, all the evidences of his concentration on their mutual problem.

Why not? He wants to live as much as I do.

Bickel swept his gaze across the repeater telltales in the shop, watched the needles kick over and come to rest in the normal range. There came the characteristic sharp AAT hum, felt now in the shop because the Ox was part of the circuitry. The sound raised a tingling sensation along Bickel's sides and arms.

The gauges registered the usual AAT pause. The multiple bursts of the message were being sorted, compared, translated, and fed into the output net.

Bickel glanced at the screen, saw that Flattery had the system on audio.

Morgan Hempstead's voice began rolling from the vocoders:

"This is Project calling UMB ship Earthling. This is Project calling. We are unable to give an exact determination of the force that damaged the ship. We suggest an error in transmission or insufficient data. The possibility of an encounter with a neutrino field of theoretical type A-G is suggested by one analysis. Why have you failed to acknowledge our directive on return procedure?"

Bickel watched his gauges. The message was coming in with remarkable clarity, no garbling at all apparent now that it was routed through the Ox circuits.

There came the distinct sound of Hempstead clearing his throat.

It gave Prudence a peculiar feeling to hear this ordinary sound...an clearing his throat. The inconsequential thing had been transmitted millions of miles to no effect other than to inform them Hempstead had been troubled by a bit of phlegm.

Again, Hempstead's voice rolled from the vocoders: "UMB is being subjected to heavy, repeat heavy political pressures as regards the abort order. You will acknowledge this transmission immediately. The ship is to be returned to orbit around UMB while disposition is made of yourselves and cargo."

"That's an awful word - disposition," Prudence said. She glanced at Bickel. He seemed to be taking it calmly.

Flattery could feel the heavy beating of his heart. He wondered if the next few words would bring that deadly "kill ship" code signal from Hempstead.

Bickel stared at the vocoder with a puzzled frown. How clear Hempstead's voice sounded - even to the throat-clearing which the AAT should have filtered from the message. He shifted his attention to the Ox's surrealistic growth on the computer wall.

Again, Hempstead's voice intruded: "We expect from this transmission a more complete analysis of your damage. The nature and extent of the damage of paramount importance. Acknowledge at once. Project over and out."

Bickel kept his voice low, casual. "Prue, how'd old Big Daddy sound to you?"

"Worried," Prudence said. And she wondered why Bickel, with his inhibitions against return, could take this so calmly.

"If you wanted to convey the emotions in someone's message how would you do it, Prue?" Bickel asked.

She looked at him, puzzled. "I'd label the emotion or imitate the tone of the original. Why?"

"The AAT isn't supposed to be able to do that," Bickel said. He looked up, meeting Flattery's eyes in the screen. "Don't acknowledge that transmission, Raj."

"The AAT's working better than ever?" Prudence asked.

"No," Bickel said. "It's working in a way it shouldn't be able to. The laser-burst message is stripped to bare essentials. The original voice modulations are there, theoretically, and often strong enough to recognize certain ma