All Fall Down (27 page)

           
The panther turned its head away, “They're working on it.”

           
“Code for, 'They haven't a clue'?”

           
Verigua looked back at her, “Exactly. They're scared to integrate with me. You see how anxiety spreads, becomes fear? What if they shut me down?”

           
“You know you don't communicate like other AIs. I wonder if your core's been infected with the dust on the planet? It's full of unrefined minerals.”

           
“The mining tunnels are far from my core.”

           
Kate checked her watch again, “We haven't much time. What's your view on these tunnels from the old Colony? What can you tell me?”

           
“Do you know about the accident? When we evacuated the old Colony and came here?
 
I had already transferred here. The ship impact collapsed all of the tunnels. I'm sure these new tunnels are oversights. Raw mining that never went anywhere. Horrendous time, very confused. Lots of things were lost.”

           
“Still, I've asked Djembe to perform an initial investigation. Can you please accompany him?”

           
The panther sat up, “As you wish. They intersect with natural fault lines, which then intersect a point in the lower levels. A storage room, if I'm not mistaken.”

           
“What's down there? Is it an official access point? Emergency rooms?”

           
“Only service passages. Storage. Pipes and levers and valves. An engineer's forest.”

           
“It seems strange that a fault line would go straight into a storage room. And that there would be movement in the tunnel.” Kate's wrist band chimed. Doctor Currie was on his way.

           
Verigua's panther stretched, “I'd better make myself scarce. Our good doctor doesn't like interference in his work programmes you know.” The panther crouched ready to leap.

           
“Wait. Can you keep an eye on me? An independent observer?”

           
“My pleasure,
 
my lady,” the panther leapt, invisible, into a gap between ghostly equipment displays.

           
Kate sat on a holo seat, an ivory white anti-grav field.

           
“Focus, Kate, focus,” she sat, eyes closed, breathing deeply, waiting for Doctor Currie to arrive.

The city square was filled with Jonahs dressed as mime artists. They pushed against invisible walls, cleaned non-existent windows and walked against the most bereft of winds. One climbed into a bag and made unusual shapes as he made his mimes in secrecy. Djembe watched this one. The mime's act evolved. The bag took on shapes, the impression on the outside obscuring the human form within. The mime made its bag look like a tree, a remarkable act considering the lumpy seed the bag had started as. Djembe wondered how this helped with the consequence planning. What were they processing through this? Around him Jonahs sitting in cafés and taking tourist images clapped and started talking to each other. Their hands flew in the air, like startled birds, making points, their eyes dancing after them, quick clay pigeon shooting. The conversations became play, sport, deadly serious hunting.

           
The Librarian appeared. “My good man, here you are! Whatever are you doing in the square? Aren't you supposed to be working for your General?”

           
Djembe raised an eyebrow and waved his datapad, “I was creating some tools to get into this file. It's very well protected. What can I do for you, computer?”

           
“Verigua, please. Must I keep asking? Your General wishes me to accompany you on your visit to the tunnels.” The Librarian waggled its eyebrows, pulled a chair over from a nearby table and sat down, “I have a map!”

           
Djembe laid his datapad on the table, next to a coffee cup. “It's time I left these programs to do their work. It may take thirty minutes or so to break through the defences.”

           
“So Commander Djembe, here I have the parchment.” The Librarian pulled the map from inside its waistcoat, lay it on the table, unfolded it, smoothed away the creases, “Perhaps there's treasure, eh?” As it traced a yellowing nail across the tunnel network, the Librarian caused a three dimensional projection to appear, bearing the same colour as the parchment, “The old tunnels join up here. What do you say we go and explore?”

           
Djembe took a sip of coffee, “Very well. Please lock this room. Make sure no one can get in.” He left the holo suite with Verigua in tow.

           
On the journey down to the Colony's bottom floor Djembe became annoyed. Verigua had decided to sit on his shoulder, without permission, as an animated mouse, dressed mostly in the Librarian's clothes, though with prominent gaiters and wearing a hat sporting a single feather. This was the sort of thing Win would enjoy.

           
Verigua was chatting away to him. “I went off world once, did you know that? I sent an avatar, put a horrendously reduced version of myself inside an automaton. My intelligence and mental capacities were terrifically limited. It might be that I was only twice or three times as intelligent as a human. Can you imagine, Mr. Djembe?” The mouse looked up at Djembe's ear, “Possibly you can't. It may be beyond your capacity. I've no idea how you've all created so much with such limited stock. Up there, you know?”

           
When the lift doors opened, Verigua was still talking. Djembe's eyes were hooded, an enforced patience, a stillness of mind that he kept alive by narrating to himself sections of his report on Jonah's innovations. He walked down the corridors he remembered seeing on the map.

           
“I travelled quite broadly. Occasionally I would get updates from myself when I entered AI Thought Space. Two years I was away. A most interesting time. I merged with a Level One Mind. Unbelievable. You have to try it, my dear Commander. So much freedom and space. And texture! It filled an entire solar system. You can imagine, surely, how it feels to be so small and insignificant and to suddenly be so vast.”

           
“Which way?”

           
“I say, what's that, Commander? Which way? You're not lost, surely?”

           
“For an AI of such intelligence, you can be quite confusingly dim at times.” Djembe looked around, “This is not my Colony. I've never been here. This way looks much the same as that way.”

           
The mouse ran down his body, skittering across the smooth floor. It turned back, “Right.”

           
Djembe stepped to his right, while Verigua's mouse headed to his left. “That would be my right, Commander.”

           
Djembe took a deep breath, closed his eyes, “Of course.” He strode over the mouse, walking forcefully down the corridor. Behind him he heard Verigua's voice, “I wonder if you ever saw my avatar, Djembe? Are we on first name terms again? I do hope so. My avatar was red, about half your height, and ro...”

           
Djembe quickened his pace, hoping to force the AI to quieten, though he knew it was useless. It was just a holographic projection, after all. Verigua could hold conversations with every Colonist simultaneously without pause. As he turned into an adjoining passage at the corridor's end, Verigua's voice faded away. Perhaps Verigua had got the message after all? He carried on in silence, feeling calmer. He preferred to work alone. The AI's personality quirks disturbed him.

           
A few metres further he stopped at a solid-looking door in the right hand wall. It was smoother, cleaner than the ducts and maintenance hatches and the exposed pipework. It looked different. A security device kept it locked.

           
“Verigua, is this it?” Djembe turned around, and was surprised to find himself alone. He looked up and down the corridor, but there was no sign of the AI. Two automatons were plugged into pipework, making machine code burbles to a wall-mounted control pad. With a frown, he retraced his steps; the automatons turned their heads as he passed. At the corner he turned and almost trod on Verigua's mouse. Off-balance, spotting the holo creature as his foot was going down, he stumbled backwards. In front of him, the mouse was walking on the spot, and though it was very quiet, he could just hear the mouse talking.

           
“Computer.”

           
The mouse continued to scamper without going anywhere, chattering away to itself.

           
“Verigua?” Djembe waited a few moments, watching the mouse. Something was obviously wrong. The computer didn't seem to notice that it was stuck on a loop, that it wasn't moving forward, or that it was no longer able to see him. Djembe started to look around the walls, searching for a broken holo projector. Amongst the confusion of pipes and similar features, it was difficult to see anything. In many buildings they were integrated into the furniture and building services, making them difficult to find if there wasn't a diagnostic map to hand. He inspected a few nodules and projections, but the technology was outside his expertise; a meaningless exercise. Instead he decided to step over the looping mouse, to see what would happen.

           
“... and a sun larger than our two combined. A giant. They have a Habitat there that occasionally orbits through the outer layer of the star. Can you imagine? It's very cool, the star is bloated, near the end of its life. Millions of years from now, of course, and... What are you doing behind me?” The mouse snapped its head round, “Was I talking so much that I lost attention? My dear Mister Djembe, whatever must you think of me? Are we stopping?”

           
Djembe's eyes flicked around the corridor, Verigua following his gaze.

           
“Is there something wrong, Commander?”

           
“Before you noticed me behind you, where was I? What was I doing?”

           
“Commander, this is most unusual for you. I never had you as one for mysteries. Walking here, appearing there, asking odd questions.” Verigua's mouse shuddered and flapped out into a small owl. It ruffled up to a pipe, high on the corridor's wall, settling its talons and wings. The owl inclined its body towards the corridor-end, keeping its large eyes on Djembe, “You were just walking ahead of me, there.”

           
“How far ahead?”

           
Lifting a talon, “From where I was, two metres forty six centimetres. From here three metres ten, to be precise.”

           
Djembe nodded, as if answering a question only he had heard, “And humour me, Verigua. Can you fly to the spot where I was furthest ahead?”

           
The owl cocked its head, “Well, if you have time. I did think you were busy,” it blinked its radiant eyes, extended its wings and hopped into the air. It wheeled first over Djembe's head, banked, flew back down the corridor, “It was just about... And it will consume its outer planets which currently enjoy balmy climates, absolutely perfect for life. Humans are settled all over that system. Seventeen moons, five planets and ten Habitats. There are billions of you there. They've developed an interesting sport, which you may have heard of; Flare Racing it's called. Undoubtedly you know well its rules and team performances, but it was a...”

           
“VERIGUA!”

           
The owl flapped backward, flipped over, fluttered back to the pipe. “What are you doing behind me? Was I talking so much that I lost attention? My dear Mister Djembe, whatever must you think of me? Are we stopping?”

           
“Something's not right here.”

           
Verigua's owl extended a wing, splayed the feathers, drew it back in.