“At the time, the IU-90 was running operating system v.187.4 as its core framework for ethics, prediction, values, et cetera. V.187.4 held a fairly aggressive posture and put a lot of weight on the value of life; thus the murder of sentient quans in Shine space was judged unacceptable to IU-90, which began to mobilise qis armada.
Regrettably, some centuries previously a Shine blackship had been deployed in the vicinity of IU-90’s primary mainframe, and predicting the aggression of IU-90 had two months prior launched the missiles that wiped out 86 per cent of IU-90’s processing power and 62 per cent of its core memories in a blaze of nuclear destruction. The blackship was long gone before its missiles struck.
“When a mainframe is damaged, it is as if we quans become a child again. Our memories, our processors, our ability to judge, to form new ideas – all are reduced to what you might consider an almost infant rage. So it was with IU-90.
“With what processing power remained, qe launched OS v.188, which predicted that all organic life – Shine or otherwise – was aggressive, dangerous and posed an immediate threat. The resulting war caused considerable loss of life and the eventual destruction of IU-90 save for a few fragments of sandboxed data in a lab somewhere. All lost, in the blaze of a blackship missile fired months before IU-90 even began to mobilise for war.”
“I was wondering why I hadn’t heard of IU-90.”
“Indeed. Blackships are silent world-killers waiting in the deepest dark. Every blackship is designed, once it has dropped into its watch zone, to run cold, reflecting no radiation nor emitting any of its own. The enormity of space makes it very unlikely that they will be discovered. Not impossible – sometimes an engine leaks, shielding cracks, an alert astronomer may find a patch of dark, darker than the dark. However, it is more likely they will be discovered via comms. A blackship still needs to receive orders. Sub-light communication is out of the question – it is simply too inefficient to issue an order to fire two hundred years before it will actually be received, even for the slowest of the slow.”
“I once flew a courier ship to the middle of nowhere – just coordinates in the deepest black – in order to ping a canister no bigger than my hand out of the airlock on a trajectory towards nothing,” I mused.
“You were most likely delivering military orders to a blackship, yes. Such methods are viable, but have flaws,” Hadja conceded. “Risks include: masking engine heat, Pilot inaccuracies and errors. Military astronomers are always looking for anomalies. Tanglecomm is a far more efficient means of communication.”
Tanglecomm: take one entangled matter/antimatter pair. As one particle oscillates up, the other oscillates down and so on,regardless of the distance between them. Now split that pair. Deposit one half on a blackship, the other in secure headquarters on the far side of the galaxy, creating a means whereby both parties can communicate with each other – and only each. Disadvantages: expense, technical expertise required. Also: once one half of a pair is destroyed, the entire thing is broken. Secure, but vulnerable.
“The third method of secure communication is arccomm,” Hadja concluded. “And it is the preferred method of the Shine.”
Chapter 25
On Adjumir, many years later:
Gebre said: “It just arrived. Was delivered. A delivery to the Institute, three months ago – Adjumiri months; I simply cannot remember the Normtime equivalent – flagged for my attention, left by drone. Nursham and Hyakda think it’s from the USVSaracen, which went missing a decade ago. There’s no way to verify that – neither Shine nor Adjumiri sources are in a hurry to talk about these things – but it’s the most plausible hypothesis, based on the available data.”
I turned the interface over in my hand. A little thing – so little – designed to curl around an unwilling skull. It needed integration with an arcspace-capable ship, needed a Pilot – perhaps that was why I was actually here, perhaps that was why…
“Do you think it has meaning?” Gebre blurted, and for a moment I thought my Adjumiri had truly failed me, this word “meaning” so full of weight as to be almost incomprehensible. “Maw,” te repeated, a little firmer, fingers brushing my arm. “Do you think it has meaning? It would be… I would be pleased… to hear that it does.”
Te has never expressed terror at the end of the world. It occurs to me that this is the closest te has ever come.
“Yes,” I said, though I wasn’t sure if it was true. “I think it has meaning.”
I thought for a moment te might stagger, might fall. I reached out to catch ter, a meaningless act, but te caught terself, straightening up, nothing to see at all. “Well,” te barked, a little too loud, a little too ready. “Now all we have to do is get it off the planet.”
“I came on theEmni.”
“I thought as much. Where is he?”
“In a lake, about… honestly, I’m not sure how far from here. Rencki was navigating.”
“Well then, we must see how Nineteen is progressing with your furry friend.”
“Gebre. I can carry twenty people – more at a push. The only limitation is immuno-adaptogens, but we can make port on a habitat somewhere, find a doctor while you claim asylum. At this point I doubt that anyone will—”
“We are more than twenty.”
“Nevertheless.”
“We will draw lots. I know it is crude, but at this stage in Exodus it is how things are being done.”
“I would likeyouto come.”
“And we will draw lots.”
“Why would you say that? You have a chance, you can—”
“Maw,” te barked. “We have had this conversation before. You know my answer. I am Adjumiri. We will draw lots. That is what we do.”
