Sufficiently Advanced Technology (Inverse Shadows) (42 page)

More and more details flooded into his mind. The quantum foam – magic – wasn’t the true purpose of the whole experiment. Dacron poked onwards until he realised the truth; it wasn’t the magicians that were important, but their children. And yet the children went mad very early in their lives... on Darius. Off Darius, away from the boosted quantum foam, who knew
what
they could do? They’d certainly be stable. Dacron put two pieces of very different information together – Joshua had still been able to sense the magical field in orbit, even if he hadn’t been able to use it – and realised that the whole purpose of Darius was to breed humans who could interface directly with the quantum foam. A human sage had once remarked that sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic. Dacron was looking at the proof of his words.

The whole concept awed him. They knew that the ultimate in technology was to manipulate the quantum foam, but they’d always assumed that a race needed to be in the Sixth Age before it could. Now, there were humans who were developing the powers to manipulate the foam, without giving up their human bodies. If Darius’s children were taken away, into the Confederation, what would happen to them? Might Joshua’s children have their own magic, even in the Confederation?

And what would that do to the human race?

Dacron stared down at the machine’s vast slow thoughts and wondered. Darius proved that an imbalance of personal power was not a good thing for stability, but then... it had been true throughout human history, without magic. Or what might as well be magic. What would happen to the Confederation if magicians started to develop? It was hard to imagine the children becoming a problem, and yet humans were strange creatures. Who knew what would happen if they were allowed to grow up?

Thousands of years ago, during the Thule War, the early Confederation had been forced to sterilise thousands of worlds. They’d been infected with killer nanotech, or engineered diseases that wiped out entire populations and were just waiting for the chance to spread to the rest of the human race. There had been no choice; the worlds had been wiped clean, or tipped into the local star, or cracked open with fission beams. And quite a few of them had still had infected humans on the surface when they’d been destroyed. Should they destroy Darius now, while they had the chance?

Dacron found himself caught between two conflicting beliefs. The AIs desperately wanted to understand the quantum foam – and how it could be manipulated.
They
would want the children of Darius to be taken to an isolated world, where they could be loved, brought up and studied. But the Confederation as a whole might move to destroy Darius, exterminating the population before their genes could spread into the rest of the human race. The Thule had believed themselves superior to all other forms of human life and they’d come far too close to destroying the Confederation. Would Darius go the same way?

Absently, he scanned further, trying to understand who had built the Darius Machine. It was very definitely not human, or descended from the first AIs that humanity had created. He would have been inclined to believe that it had evolved accidentally, if it hadn’t been for the limiters built into its mind. In fact, it struck him that the creators had been very cruel. They’d created a machine that was likely to go mad, eventually, without ever truly realising what was wrong.

And there was nothing about its creators in its memory banks. The machine didn’t even have the imagination to realise that there had
been
creators. As far as it was concerned, it had come into existence seven thousand years ago – well after the First Expansion Era, which was interesting – and it had been doing its job ever since. Dacron mentally shook his head in disbelief. Darius had maintained its social structure for
seven
thousand
years. Very few other human worlds had remained so stagnant for so long. He was still probing through the network when he realised that he wasn’t alone.

It was Elyria, he saw, and Joshua... and she was pregnant. The Darius Machine seemed to find it very exciting – insofar as it could feel excitement – which made a certain amount of sense. It had to find it...
frustrating
that its ultimate purpose was so often thwarted, particularly seeing that it didn’t really understand why. There were so many limitations to its ability to guide its human charges that it had never been able to break the taboo.

And the machine was on the verge of
killing
her.

Dacron acted with the speed of thought, grabbing her mentality and shoving it out of the computer network. A Confederation AI would have had safety precautions to prevent mental damage, if something went wrong with the link, but Dacron rather doubted that the Darius Machine even realised that there was a possibility that humans might be damaged through direct contact. The number of magicians who went insane suggested otherwise. A moment later, he threw Joshua out as well, noting absently that the machine had managed to influence him too. Dacron scowled mentally, even as the machine finally realised it had an intruder. Like early computers, it had no imagination, but that didn’t stop it being hellishly good at playing chess.

If the machine had been a true AI, Dacron knew he would have been destroyed right there and then. A real AI would have had enough awareness to detect an intruder long before he got into a position to do some real harm. Instead, the machine seemed to be searching for him, as if it wasn’t quite capable of hunting inside its own mentality. Absently, Dacron wondered if the machine had been damaged – or sabotaged – in the years since its creation. If it was really designed to create children with the ability to influence the quantum foam, why would it be so incapable of protecting them?

He threw himself forward, into the attack. The machine lay open in front of him, a strange mass of slow thoughts and captured human impressions. Dacron slashed through them, looking for the machine’s vitals. It struck back by flailing around, deleting sections of its own memories in the hopes of eliminating his mentality. If it had been human, Dacron would have thought that it was panicking, instead of having real problems adapting to the new situation. It had never even considered the possibility that it would link to another AI, even an AI pattern that had been embodied in a human mind.

Dacron’s mind expanded as he took over more and more of the machine, reformatting chunks of its programming to serve as his soldiers. The machine drew on the power from the black holes to fiddle with the magic field, only to boost Dacron’s own abilities. It really didn’t comprehend his true nature, he realised, as he used magic against the machine’s servants, and then froze the booksellers. They’d be at risk from being overwhelmed and controlled themselves.

The war raged onwards as Dacron thrust right into the machine’s thoughts. It was steadier than he’d realised; ironically, its weaknesses were also strengths. He had to slow his own thoughts to touch its core, which weakened his grip on its outer systems. Instead, he flanked the machine, trying to study the gravity pulses that kept the black holes under control. There was nothing beyond his understanding about them, apart from why the designers would want such a dangerous power source in the first place. A black hole might eventually start devouring the entire planet, or simply evaporate. Seven of them was insane.

Or was it? Looking at the strange threads of energy, Dacron realised that there was more to the system than he’d anticipated. The normal laws of space-time broke down inside a black hole, just as they seemed to break down near Ancient worlds – or Darius itself. Each of the singularities helped the Darius Machine to tamper with the quantum foam – altering the laws of space-time to the point where normal technology glitched and then refused to function. Studying black holes – and mastering the internal singularity – was the key to manipulating the quantum foam. Vast concepts floated through his mind as he pulled back, and then started to attack the systems keeping the black holes under control. The Darius Machine responded quickly, but not quickly enough. Five of the black holes evaporated before the machine regained control. There was a sudden loss of power all over the planet.

Dacron wondered, absently, just what would be happening outside, even as he moved in for the kill. The Darius Machine seemed to be falling back in disarray... no, it was triggering a self-destruct system. Dacron lanced his own thoughts forward, trying to disarm it, but it was already too late. Reversing course, he threw himself out of the neural link before the entire network collapsed into dust. Opening his eyes, he discovered the crystalline lattice that had linked him to the Darius Machine was falling apart. His implants and nanotech came back to life a second later, warning of possible brain damage caused by the lattice. If he’d been human, breaking the link so brutally would have been lethal.

The bookseller let out a cry of shock. “I can’t feel my magic!”

Dacron tested a spell himself and discovered that it no longer worked. The boosted quantum foam field had vanished, along with the singularities. And yet he could still feel
something
... a vague awareness of the quantum foam lurking at the back of his mind. There
was
a key to unlocking the greatest scientific mystery in human history...

“I think the magic is gone,” he said, gently. Darius’s entire social structure, as ramshackle and artificial as it had been, was doomed. What would happen when the rule of the strong replaced the rule of magic? The Confederation would have to intervene openly, he decided, at least partly because they’d caused the disaster. And besides, Darius was a genetic treasure trove. “We’ll have to make our way out of the ship.”

He activated his implants and contacted
Hamilton
. “The Dead Zones should be gone now,” he subvocalised. “Is there any chance of a shuttle picking us up?”

As soon as Captain Thor confirmed, Dacron switched channels and contacted Elyria. “Are you all right?”

“I think so,” Elyria said, finally. She didn’t
sound
all right. “I think we’re trapped. Can you come get us?”

“Snoops are already on the way,” Dacron assured her. Her location had been easily pinpointed by the orbiting satellites. Once the snoops had established a chain of custody, they would simply teleport Elyria and Joshua back to orbit. “And then we can start sorting out the mess.”

***

“So,” Joshua said. “You’re pregnant.”

Elyria nodded. Neither of them had had the energy to move away from the cracked and broken crystal chairs, even if they had been able to see their way. Her eyes, as enhanced as they were, hadn’t been able to pull much from the oppressive darkness that had replaced the brilliant light. The two stunned guards were still out of it; they were lying on the ground, helpless.

“I thought that was dangerous,” Joshua said, after a moment. “If it is my child...”

He shook his head. “It
is
my child, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Elyria confirmed. Darius
did
consider paternity important. “And I don’t think there’s much danger of magical madness any longer.”

“I can marry you,” Joshua said. Elyria almost laughed at him, but managed to stop herself in time. “I do have prospects...”

“You don’t have to marry me,” Elyria assured him. The Confederation didn’t really
have
marriage as a concept, although there were couples who remained together for decades, even centuries. “If you don’t want to have anything to do with the child, I will understand.”

Joshua swallowed. He was old enough to have children, but hardly mature enough to make life-changing decisions. Elyria felt a flicker of sympathy; Joshua’s world had just turned upside down. And his magic was gone. Anyone would have problems coming to terms with the new reality.

“I can still feel the magic,” Joshua said, after a long silent moment. “I just can’t access it.”

Elyria nodded. “I think we will have to wait until they teleport us out,” she said. “There won’t be any magic anywhere else on the planet.”

Her implants were already picking up a chain of snoops as they scouted out the colony ship and found their way down to the chamber. The remaining magicians in the colony ship had collapsed when the alien machine self-destructed, but they were being teleported out anyway. They would receive medical attention on the space station, before starting the long path to integration into the Confederation. And then the entire planetary population would follow them.

She clung to that vision as the world span around her. Now that the magic was gone, there would be no problem breaking down the remainder of the previous social structure and inviting the citizens to enjoy a far better life. The Pillars would be powerless; the Scions, it was possible, would be torn apart by their former slaves. Once the Confederation had revealed what it could offer, there would be very few objections. And besides, even the most conservative heart would melt when they realised they no longer needed to die so young, after a backbreaking life.

“The teleporter is about to snatch us out,” she said, as her implants warned her. “It won’t hurt...”

The darkened chamber faded away in shimmering golden light, to be replaced by the
Hamilton’s
medical bay. Captain Thor had evidently overcome his fears long enough to allow them to be brought directly to the ship. The medical staff and the AI drones helped them onto beds while scanners rolled down, preparing to check their bodies for damage. Elyria almost laughed out loud. The real damage was beyond their ability to detect.

“Take care of the child,” she said, out loud. The AI drones buzzed nearer, as if they were suddenly very interested in her womb. “I think she’s the hope of the future.”

And then the world fell away into darkness.

CHAPTER
T
HIRTY-
F
IVE

“You do not wish to return to us?”

Dacron stepped away from the niche where his memories had just been uploaded into the AI
Gestalt
. “I do not feel like an AI any longer,” he said. “I have become something more.”