Текст книги "Devil to the Belt (novels "Heavy Time" and "Hellburner")"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 25 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

He didn’t know there was a tube. Didn’t know how Ben had gotten here. Or where they were now. Didn’t look like the Hole at all. Didn’t look like R2 hospital. He reached after the fork, took another tentative nibble at the eggs. God, he was weak.

“Where’s Bird?” he asked.

“What year is it, Dek-boy? I warned you there’d be a test this morning.”

He shut his eyes. Opened them and Ben was still there. In this room. He recalled something like that. Ben was going to beat hell out of him if he missed.

“2324.”

“Good boy. Have some more oj.”

“Can’t.” His stomach suddenly felt queasy, when he thought about that number. Number had to be wrong. He waved the cup away and watched Ben drink it.

Ben, in a UDC uniform.

He was going crazy. It was 2324. Ben didn’t belong here.

Ben said, “You remember Meg and Sal?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Meg writes to you, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah, sometimes.”

“Real love affair.”

“We’re friends.”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “You looked it when you said goodbye. Remember saying goodbye?” He took an envelope out of his pocket. Held up a handful of cards and pictures. “Remember these?”

He’d seen them before. They’d lied to him, the doctors had. They made all these things up. They told him they were his, he’d thrown them across the room.

Now Ben had them. Ben held up a picture of him with people he didn’t remember and he couldn’t look at.

“What are their names?”

He shook his head.

“Woman’s Elly?”

The name jolted. Elly was dead. Pete and Falcone.

“Pete?”

Guy on the right. Big grin. Pete smiled like that. Pete had his arm over the shoulder. But he couldn’t remember the photo.

“Which one’s Pete?”

“I don’t know.” But it was a lie. Ben just didn’t belong with them. Everything was scrambled. Gory and Ben and Bird. He was afraid Meg was going to be in that picture if he went on looking at it.

Blood. Exploding everywhere. Beads floating, fine mist.

He squeezed his eyes shut. The eggs didn’t sit well at his stomach. Everyone in that picture was dead. He was in mere too.

“Who’s the other guy?”

“Falcone.”

“Said not to worry about him. Didn’t he? Left you a note? You remember?”

He shook his head. He shoved the table away, tried to get up. Ben pushed him back against the pillows and a stabbing pain went through his skull.

He grayed out for a moment. When he came back Ben was quietly finishing his toast. Ben said, “You ready to talk now?”

The cup hit the grid. Sideways. Two out of five. Graff lifted the cover up and righted it before the coffee hit, collected his overdue morning caffeine and turned in the general noise of the end of breakfast, straight into Villy’s intercept.

UDC Flight Chief. Captain Alexandra Villanueva—senior test pilot for the UDC, who said, all friendly, “Hear you and the old man went one this morning.”

Fast. Must have ricocheted off Tanzer’s wall, Graff thought, and shrugged in mid-sip while Villanueva stuck his card in the slot and punched up a coffee. He said, “We differed.”

Villanueva rescued his cup. “Damn thing.”

“Ever since they changed the cups.”

Villanueva took the coffee out and let the cover drop, said, quietly, “You know, back when we were doing the A-89, we had one of these runs of trouble. Lost twelve guys in six months. The old man just sat in that office and filled out the reports: you never saw him crack—but it broke him up. Same now. He wants to pull this program out. But we’ve got to come out of this with an answer. A right answer.”

“Redesign isn’t it.” He got on well enough with Villanueva. Villanueva had started out calling him son—never did think he’d quite gotten the man out of the mindset. Gray hair on Captain Villy, legitimately come by, rumor had it: handful of crack-ups and a few pieces of luck—if dealing with Tanzer daily didn’t do it. They kept trying to promote him to a desk, God only wish he’d get Tanzer’s post and run the whole program, not just test ops—but Villy kept on making test runs himself, one of the UDC pilots who had real respect among the Shepherds.

“Graff,” Villanueva said, “dammit, we’re vulnerable on this project, we’re real vulnerable. Politicians are gathering like sharks. I know the old man’s hard to deal with. But let’s not hang the differences out in plain sight today.”

He thought about Mitch. About the frustration among the Shepherds, who wanted to fight Tanzer. And that did no good. “They won’t likely ask me anything but where I was, where the targets were. That’s all in the electronic record. Cut and dried, isn’t that the expression for it?”

Villanueva stood there a moment. Just looking at him. He expected Villanueva to say something in answer, but instead Villanueva walked off with his coffee and didn’t look back.

Maybe he should have given more back. Used a different expression. Read the signals otherwise. He didn’t dislike the man, God knew he didn’t dislike him. The man had been trying to say something, but somehow in the inevitable screw-ups between blue-skyer and spacer—he had the feeling the signals had gotten fuzzed.

Villanueva went over to a table with his own men. Sat down. Graff walked over to the other side, where a couple of the Fleet’s own gray heads inclined together. Demas and Saito. Nav One and Com One—no credence at all to the Equivalencies that the Fleet had had settled on them. Commdr. Demas, as happened. But Nav One meant it was Demas did the major share of the course plots, with the backing of eighteen techs interfacing with scan and longscan at any given instant, which meant that a prototype carrier on a test run knew so precisely where it was and where everything else was that a Lt. j-g at Helm couldn’t screw up if he worked at it.

Except with a wrong word to the UDC R&D chief.

“Think I just picked a wrong word with Villy. Does ‘cut and dried’ describe what they’re going to ask at the hearings?”

Com One said, her almond eyes half-lidded, “Probably. ‘Rigged’ might too. On, is the man?”

Demas said, “A lot On. Deep in. Drink your coffee, Helm. Present for you.” Demas laid a bolt on the table. Fat one.

Damn. “What is that?”

“That, J-G, is a bolt. It was lying next the wall in a dark little recess in the carrier’s main corridor. Where the construction crew just installed the number eighteen pressure seal.”

Thing was good as a bullet lying there. “I want to see the count sheet. I want the last crew that worked in there. Damn those fools!”

“Station labor. Gravitied brains. What do you ask?”

Ben said, “You remember Graff?”

“Yeah,” Dekker said.

“What do you remember?”

“The trip out from the Belt. Here.”

“Good boy. Where are we?”

“Sol Two,” he said. Ben told him so. He had to believe what Ben told him: Ben was the check he had asked for. Ben was what he got and he had to believe everything Ben told him—he told himself that, this morning. Ben showed him pictures and showed him letters in the reader, that he remembered reading. The ones from Meg, the note from Falcone, the morning—

The morning they pulled him off the demo and put somebody else in.

Nothing you can do, Falcone had written. Left the note on the system. Came back like a ghost—after the accident. After—

“You remember where the sims are?”

“Which ones?”

“You tell me.”

He felt tired, wrung out. He lay back in the pillows and said, “Couple downside. They’re all the procedurals.” Tried to think of exact words and remembered Ben was a licensed pilot too. “Ops stuff—stuff you need your reflexes for—it’s in the core.”

“Null-g stuff.”

“Null-g and high-g.” His eyes wanted to drift shut. His mind went around that place as if it were a pit. He could see the chamber in the null-g core, the sims like so many eggs on mag-lev tracks, blurring in motion. Lot of g’s when they were working. . ..

“When’s the last time you remember using the sims in the core?”

Difficult question for a moment. Then not so hard. “Watch before the test. Wilhelmsen and I—”

“Wilhelmsen.”

“He was my backup.”

“friend of yours?”

Difficult to say. “Chad...”

“Wilhelmsen?”

He nodded, eyes shut. “Son of a bitch, but he was all right. Didn’t dislike him. We got along.”

“So they subbed him in. You watch the test?”

He didn’t know. Completely numb now. But the monitor on the shelf was showing higher points to the green line.

“You went into shock. They put you in hospital.”

Wasn’t the way he remembered. Wasn’t sure what he did remember, but not that shock was the reason. No. He hadn’t seen it.

“They give you drugs in the hospital?”

He nodded. He was relatively sure of that.

“Give you a prescription when you left?”

“Dunno.”

“They say they did.”

“Then I guess they did.”

“You guess. Were you still high when you left the hospital? Did you have drugs with you?”

“I don’t remember.”

“What time of day was it?”

“Don’t remember, Ben, I don’t remember.” But something was there, God, a flare on the vid, a light the cameras couldn’t handle. Plasma. Bright as the sun. Pete and Elly, and Falcone and the ship.

“You all right?” The monitor was beeping. “—No! Let him alone. It’s all right! Leave him the hell alone.”

Orderly was trying to intervene. He opened his eyes and looked toward the door, trying to calm his pulse rate, and Ben leaned over and put his hand on his shoulder. Squeezed hard.

“You get in that sim by yourself?”

“I don’t know.”

“Somebody put you there?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know, Ben. I just can’t remember.”

“Come on, Dek, think about it. You got into the core. You remember that? You had to get that far. What happened then?”

He shook his head. He kept seeing dark. Hashing lights. Green lines and gold. Heard Cory saying, Nothing you can do, Dek, nothing you can do...

They were back in The Hole. In his room behind the bar. Had a drawerful of pills....

He put a hand over his eyes, men stared at the ceiling and looked over at Ben again to be sure where he was and when he was. But the black kept trying to come back and the lines twisted and moved.

‘Driver ship, a k long. Loads of rock going to the Well at tremendous v.

Cory was dead. Dead a long time. So was Bird. He thought that Bird was dead. Fewer and fewer things were coming loose and drifting.

He pressed his hands over his eyes until it made sparks of color in the dark of virtual space. Red. Phosphenes. Was that what they said the lights were?

Spinning, of a sudden. He grabbed the bed. Ben said, “God, watch it!”

Something was beeping. Ben said, to someone at the door, “He had a dream, that’s all.”

“Want you there this afternoon,” Graff said to his Nav One; and to Saito.

Saito said, “This won’t be like our procedures. An answer-what’s-asked. This is Earth. Don’t mistake it.”

Graff took a sip of cooling coffee. “I couldn’t. The old man hasn’t sent us a hint, except Pollard, and Pollard doesn’t know anything. I don’t know if that’s a signal to raise that issue or not—but I can’t understand the silence. Unless the captain’s leaving me to take the grenade. Which I’d do. Little they could do anyway but transfer me back. But he should tell me.”

“No grenades,” Demas said. “—No chance of Dekker talking?”

“Pollard’s honestly trying. All I know.”

“You sure he’s the captain’s? He could be Tanzer’s.”

Graff remembered something he’d forgotten to say, gave a short laugh. “Pollard’s a native Belter.”

“You’re serious. Tanzer knows it?”

“Knows he’s a friend of Dekker’s. That has him the devil in Tanzer’s book. What’s more, this Belter claims he’s a Priority 10 tracked for Geneva.”

Demas’ brows went up.

Graff said, “Bright. Very bright. Computers. Top security computers.”

“Tanzer can’t snag a Priority like that.”

Saito said, “Not without an authorization. I doubt Tanzer can even access that security level to realize what he is.”

“The captain set up Pollard with a room in the hospital. I told him to stay to it and Dekker’s room and keep his head down. With a security clearance like that, he understands what quiet means, I think. He’s got an appointment waiting for him—if he can get out of here before he becomes a priority to Tanzer.”

“You signal him?”

“Every word I could prudently use. There were some I didn’t. Maybe I should have. But he’s UDC. You don’t know where it’ll go, ultimately.”

“No remote chance on Dekker?”

“No chance on this one. Too much to ask. They’ve requested the log. They’re going to ask questions on the carrier—they’ll want to ask questions about the trainees. But they won’t talk to them. They’re not scheduled. Trainees don’t talk to the EC. Trainees they’re designing those ships around don’t talk to the committee because the committee is only interested in finding a way that doesn’t admit we’re right. Another schitzy AI. Another budget fight.”

“The Earth Company makes a lot of money on shipbuilding,” Demas said. “Does that thought ever trouble your sleep?”

“It’s beginning to.”

The captain wanted to bust Demas up to a captaincy. Demas insisted he was staying with Keu. The argument was still going on. The fact was Demas hated administration and claimed he was a tactician, not a strategist, but Demas saw things. Good instincts, the man had.

Saito said, quietly: “Committee will be predominantly male, predominantly over fifty, and they won’t understand why the captain didn’t leave Fitz in charge and take me and Demas with him. That’s what you’re dealing with.”

Fitzroy, Helm One, was answering questions for the committee at Sol One. Graff said, glumly: “Tanzer’s threatening to make an issue out of their command rules.”

Demas shook his head. “Let him make it. That’ll get me to the stand surer than the nav stats would. And I don’t think he wants that.”

One could wish. But one couldn’t get technical with the legislative types. With the engineers, yes. “They’d talk to Demas. But the engineers couldn’t talk policy to the legislators. Couldn’t get through their own management.”

“I keep having this feeling they’re going to blindside us.”

“You’ll handle it. No question. Easy done.”

Keu’s silence was overall the most troublesome thing. Graff finished off his coffee, took the bolt and pocketed it. “Paperweight. Every paperpusher should have one. —Tell the construction boss I want to talk to him, in my office, right now.”

“Ought to give him the thing at max v,” Demas said.

“When we find the foreman who faked the parts count– I’d be willing.” Graff headed for the door, tossed his cup in the collection bin.

Ben was back. Ben had been in the hall a while. Ben sat down with his chair close to the bed, put his hand on his shoulder.

“How’re you doing, Dek?”

“All right.”

“You were remembering, you know that? Pete and Elly? You remember that?”

Ben scared him. “I was dreaming. Sorry, Ben.” If he was dreaming he could be in the Belt. Or the ship.

But Ben shook at his shoulder and said, “Dek, how did you get in the sim? What were you doing in there? I got to get out of here. I got twelve hours, Dek.”

Sim chamber. Pods spinning around and around. Racket. Echoes. Everything tried to echo. And Ben said he had twelve hours. He didn’t want Ben to leave. Ben came and Ben went, but as long as he knew there was a chance of Ben being there he knew what he was waking up to.

He said, “It’s June 20 ^th, isn’t it? Isn’t it, Ben?”

Ben took a fistful of hospital gown, under his chin, and said, “Dekker, remember what fucking happened. I got to be on that shuttle. It’s my life at stake, you copy?”

He tried. Ben let him go, smoothed the covers, patted his shoulder. Didn’t ask him anything for a moment. Ben was upset and he earnestly tried to pull the sim chamber out of the dark for Ben. But it wasn’t there.

Just that fireball. Second sun. They said it wasn’t Wilhelmsen’s fault. Maybe it wasn’t. You died when you overran your limits.

“Target,” he said. Ben said, “What?”

He said, “Target. Missed one....”

CHAPTER 4

THE hearing was set up in A 109, not the biggest of the classrooms—dressed up with tables and a couple of UDC guards with sidearms—to do what, Graff asked himself bitterly, shoot down anybody who’d tell the truth out of turn?

Limited seating, they called it. No public access. That meant the workmen and the mechanics that worked for the EC, the vendors and the man who sold meat pies on 3-deck were barred, and those of them with security clearances still had to pass metal detectors. It meant that any military personnel showed if the committee knew they existed, and sent them passes: that meant ranking officers and the few like himself whose names were on the duty list the hour of the disaster. But there were passes issued for aides and for official representatives of the several services. And that meant the Fleet had Saito and Demas.

And the Shepherd trainees had Mitch and Jamil. They’d taken off the jewelry, taken off the earrings—couldn’t hide Jamil’s tattoos, but Jamil’s single strip of black hair was braided tight against his scalp, and both of them were as regulation as the Shepherds could manage.

There were the various heads of department, maintenance chiefs, the ones who had security clearances. There was a big carrier schematic on one screen, others showing details of the docking ports. And an undetailed model on the table. Just the flat saucer shape. Mania shape, the blue-skyers called it. He’d seen a picture of the sea-dwelling creature and he saw why. Thin in one aspect to present minimum profile to fire or to high-v dust when it needed, broad and flat to accommodate the engines and the crew, and to lie snug against a carrier’s frame.

Black painted model. The real thing was grayer, reflective ceramic. But they didn’t advertise the coating. Thirty crew aboard when, please God, they got past the initial trials, thirty crew, mostly techs, mostly working for the longscanner. Core crew was four. The essential stations. The command personnel. The ones whose interfaces were with the active ship controls and the ones they had to risk in the tests.

The carrier dropped into a star-system and launched the riders—trusting that real space ships, launched like missiles, with more firepower than ability to maneuver at v, could do their job and make a carrier’s presence-pattern a far, far more diffuse element for an enemy’s longscan computers.

And trusting the human mind could keep going for four hours on intermittent hyperfocus at that v with no shields, only a constantly changing VR HUD display and a fire-power adequate to take out what threatened it—if reactions were still hair-triggered after that length of time immersed in virtual space; if human beings still had consistent right reactions to a dopplered infostream of threat and non-threat and every missile launched and potentially launched. A longscan of a fractional c firefight looked like a plaid of intersecting probabilities, overlaid cones or tri-dee fans depending on your traveling viewpoint; and you overran conventional radar, even orders from your carrier all you had was calc, com, and emissions.

Put an Artificial Intelligence above the human in the decision loop? Use a trained pilot for no more than resource to his own Adaptive Assist systems, with no power to override? Like hell. Sir.

He took a seat next to Demas and Saito, he cast a look down the row at Mitch and Jamil, and let the comer of his mouth tighten, surreptitious acknowledgment of their effort at diplomacy.

The committee filed in. Over fifty, Saito had said, and all male. Not quite. But the balance of the genders was certainly tilted. There were a handful of anxious execs from the designers and military contractors, from Bauerkraftwerke, who had designed the rider frame and some of the hardware; Lendler Corp, simulator software; Intellitron, which produced the longscan for both carriers and riders; Terme Aerospatiale, which did the Hellburner engines; and Staatentek, responsible for integrative targeting systems, computers and insystem communications. All of which could be pertinent. Lendler and Intellitron and Terme Aerospatiale were all Earth Company, but God only knew what side they were on. They’d doubtless been talking up the military examiners since last night: there’d been a UDC briefing.

“That’s Bonner,” Saito whispered, indicating a white-haired shave-headed UDC officer. Gen. Patrick Bonner, Graff understood. Tanzer’s direct CO. Ultimate head over R&D, not a friend. And what was he saying to an HI! contractor, both of them smiling and laughing like old friends?

People got to their seats. Bonner gave a speech, long and winding, a tactic, Graff thought, designed to stultify the opposition. Or perhaps his own troops. Not here to fix blame, Bonner said. Here to determine what happened and what caused it.

Introductions. Graff found himself focusing on the walls, on the topographic details of Bonner’s receding hairline, the repeating pattern in the soundproofing, on the nervous fingers of the rep from Bauerkraftwerke, which tapped out a quiet rhythm on the table.

Statement of positions: Bauerkraftwerke insisted there was no structural flaw, that its engineers had reconstructed the accident and there was nothing to do with failure of the frame or the engines. Terme Aerospatiale agreed. Lendler said its simulation software wasn’t at fault. Staatentek, the patent holder of the local AI tetralogic, maintained that the random ordnance software, the communications, the targeting software, had not glitched. Nobody was at fault. Nothing was wrong.

But a redesign in favor of the tetralogic control couldn’t be ruled out.

Bangs and thumps again. “Ben?” Dekker called out. Ben had said he would be there. But he waked up in a corridor, on a gumey, with restraints he didn’t remember deserving. “Ben!”

A nurse patted his shoulder and said, “It’s all right, your friend’s just outside.”

He hated it when the illusions started agreeing with him.

He lay still then, listening to the rattle and clatter. Someone said, from over his head, “We’re going to take you in, now,” and he didn’t know where. He yelled, “Ben! Ben!”

And somebody said, “Better sedate him.”

“No,” he yelled. “No.” And promised them, “You don’t need to.”

“Are you going to be all right?” they asked him.

“Yeah,” he said, and lay there getting his breath. But there was a whine of hydraulics and a clank, and they shoved him into a tube, telling him: “You have to stay absolutely still...”

Like a spinner tube, it was. Like back in the belt, in the ship. He lay still the way they told him, but it got harder and harder to breathe.

Flash of light. Like the sun. He heard a beeping sound that reminded him—that reminded him—

“Elly—Elly, Wilhelmsen, don’t reorient, screw it, screw it, you’re past—”

“He’s panicking,” someone said.

He screamed, at the top of his lungs, “Wilhelmsen, you damned fool—”

Fifteen-minute recess. Break for restrooms and the corridor and the hospitality table.

Mitch moved close enough to say, “They’re dithering, sir.”

Graff said, “Ease down. Not here.”

“They’re saying it can’t be flown. That’s a damn lie.”

“Ease down, Mitch. Nothing we can do out here.” He had Saito at his elbow. He could see Tanzer down the hall with Bonner, in hot and heavy discussion.

Demas came back from the phone in the office. Said: “A word in private.”

Graff said, “Mitch. Be good,” and took Saito with him, farther up the hall. “You get him?”

“Couldn’t get hold of Pollard. Talked to Higgins. The neurosurgeon wanted to run another brain scan. Higgins and Evans agreed. Dekker went off the edge, he’s under sedation. Higgins says he remembers the accident. Nothing further. He may never be able to remember how he got in that pod.”

“Damn.”

“You’ve got to tell it plain, Helm.”

“Break it wide open? We don’t know what the captain wants. We don’t know and if it were safe to use FleetCom he would.”

Saito said, “It can’t be worse. At this point I’d advise going past protocol. Worst we can do is alienate Bonner and a few handpicked legislators who came out here with him. This is a set-up. But it has records. The contractors are here defending their systems. And there may be a few line-straddlers in the senatorial party.”

That was a point. Bonner was already alienated. This was likely a breakaway group of legislators Bonner favored putting in here to hear what Tanzer put together—but the fact that they let him talk at all was either a try at getting something incriminating out of him; or maybe, maybe there were members of the group that wanted more than one view. “God only knows what we’re dealing with. No Pollard, no Dekker. It’s a small hand we’re playing. All right. I’ll tell Mitch. Wraps are off.”

Past lunch and beyond, and Ben paced the waiting room. He’d read all the damned articles available to the reader, he’d become grudgingly informed in the latest in microbiologic engineering, the pros and cons of seasonally adjusted light/ dark cycles and temperature in station environments, the ethics of psychological intervention, and the consequences of weather adjustment in the hurricane season to the North American continent, not to mention five posture checks for low-g workers. He’d occupied himself making changes in a program he had stored on his personal card, he’d been four times at least to Dekker’s room to see if he was out from under sedation—he’d lost count. You could hear the clangor and rattle of lunch trays being collected—they had a damned lot of hurt and sick: people in here, people that had let a welder slip or gotten in the way of a robot loader arm, one guy who’d taken a godawful number of volts closing a hydraulic switch—he heard the gossip in the corridors coming and going, he was saturated with hospital gossip on who was missing what and how the guy with peritonitis was doing today and what was the condition of the limb reattachment in 109?

While the orderlies were having lunch.

Another trip out to Dekker’s room. Can’t wake him, Higgins said. We’ve gotten the blood pressure down now. But he’s tired. He’s just tired—

“I’ve got a shuttle pulling out tonight—tell the lieutenant I’ve done everything I can do. I want to see him. I’ve got to get out of here.”

Higgins said, “He’s involved in a hearing this afternoon. I don’t know if I can reach him. I’ve left two messages with his office.”

“The hell! Doctor, my luggage is still lost, I’m out of money for the damn vending machines—I never got a cafeteria authorization and I’m sick of potato chips—I never asked to come here, Dekker and I never were friends, dammit, I don’t know why I’m his keeper!”

Higgins lent him five. Which wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it was lunch, at least, and he wasn’t going to offend Higgins by turning it down. Supper, he wasn’t even going to think about.

Tanzer’s turn with the mike. Nobody from the Fleet on the panel and no chance, Graff thought, of doing anything about that, except refusing to allow Fleet personnel to testify and trying to make an issue of it—but he was in a Position on that too, being one of the people on the list to testify; and he hoped the sweat didn’t show.

Demas’ advice, Saito’s, Armsmaster Thieu’s, for that matter, who might be called, was unanimous, and that it agreed with his only confirmed that if he was wrong and if he screwed this, the Fleet had to push him out the lock as a peace offering. That was one thing. He understood that kind of assignment.

But the thought that he could screw things beyond recall, offend the wrong senator, say something the media could get hold of and kill the riderships or bring the Fleet under UDC control—either of which would kill any hope of preventing the whole Beyond being sucked into Union’s widening influence—that was the possibility that had his bands sweating and his mind chasing random imaginations throughout Tanzer’s performance: he kept thinking, I’ve got to counter that; and, I’ve got to get that across to the committee, and, God, they’re not going to ask me the right questions.

No way Bonner’s going to let me answer those questions.

The general’s no fool. There’s something he’s got planned, some grenade planted and ticking, only where is it? With Tanzer?

Tanzer was saying: “It’s the task of this facility to evaluate prototype systems and to take them to the design limits. The essential step before we risk human life is advanced, exacting interactive assist simulation. The second step is automated performance testing. And again, the simulations are revised and refined, and procedures and checklists developed in hours of Control Integration Trials, a process with which many of our distinguished panel are intimately familiar. They are also aware that in the world of high-velocity craft we are exceeding human capacities to cope with the infostream. We’ve overrun human reaction time. We’ve long since overrun conventional radar. Hence the neural net AA, which adapts and shapes itself threefold, for the pilot’s past performance, enemy’s past, pilot’s current behaviors—and the longscan technique that extrapolates and displays an object’s probability. We’ve developed dopplered communications and communications techniques to receive information faster than human senses can sort it, computer assemblies to second-guess the pilot on multiple tasks. The faster we go, the more the pilot becomes an integral component of the systems that filter information via his senses and the Adaptive Assists into the ship’s controls. Right now the human is the highest vote in the Hellburner’s neural network; but we’ve long been asking the question at what point the sophistication of the computers to provide the information and the speed and power of the ship to react may finally exceed the engineering limits of the creator– that is, at what point of demand on human capacity to react to data, do we conceive a technically perfect and humanly unflyable machine?”

The questioner, Bonner, said, “Have we done that, in your opinion?”

Tanzer said, “Yes. In my opinion, yes.”

“Go on.”

“The EC militia came here with a design within the capabilities of the shipbuilding industry, and within the skills of its own pilots to operate. And the design for a companion ship they claimed could use off-the-shelf hardware and software—”

Damn him, Graff thought.

“—and serve as a high-velocity weapons platform. It was not, of course, operable as designed. The fleet insists that the unpredictability of human decisions without a tetralogic AI dominating the pilot-neural net interlink is essential to high-v combat. And we have six men in hospital and seventeen dead in the realworld discovery process.”