Deep Storm (22 page)

Welldo you know what a Turing machine is?

Youd better refresh my memory.

In the 1930s, Alan Turing posited a theoretical computer known as a Turing machine. It was composed of a tape, a paper ribbon of arbitrarily extendable length. This tape was covered with symbols from some finite alphabet. A head would run over the tape, reading the symbols and interpreting them, based on a lookup table. The state of the head would change, depending on the symbols it read. The tape itself could store either data or transitions, by which he meant small programs. In todays computers, the tape would be the memory and the head the microprocessor. Turing declared this theoretical computer could solve any calculation.

Go on, Asher said.

I started thinking about this code were trying to decrypt. And Marris waved his hand at the computer screen, where the signal emitted by the sentinels pulses of light sat, almost taunting in its brevity and opacity:

-

I wondered: what if this was a Turing tape? Marris continued. What would these zeros and ones do if we ran them through a Turing machine?

Slowly, Asher sat forward. Youre suggesting those eighty bitsare a computer program?

I know it sounds crazy, sir

No crazier than the very fact of our being down here, Asher thought. Please continue.

Very well. First, I had to break the string of zeros and ones down into individual commands. I made the assumption that the initial values, five zeros and five ones, were placeholders to signify the length of each instruction each digital word thus being five bits in length. That left me with fourteen five-bit instructions. Marris tapped a key, and the long string of numbers vanished, to be replaced by a series of ordered rows:

-

-

Asher stared at the screen. Awfully short for a computer program.

Yes. Clearly, it would have to be a very simple computer program. And in machine language the most basic, and universal, of digital languages.

Asher nodded. And then?

When I got to my office this morning, I wrote a short routine that would compare these values against a master list of standard machine-language instructions. The routine assigned all possible instructions to the values, one after another, and then checked to see if any workable computer program emerged.

What makes you think these whoever is sending us the message uses the same kind of machine language instructions that we do?

At a binary level, sir, there are certain irreducible digital instructions that would be common to any conceivable computing device: increment, decrement, jump, skip if zero, Boolean logic. So I let the routine run and went on with my other work.

Asher nodded.

About twenty minutes ago, the routine completed its run.

Did those fourteen lines of binary translate to any viable computer programs?

Yes. One.

Asher felt his interest suddenly spike. Really?

A program for a simple mathematical expression. Here it is. Marris punched another key, and a series of instructions appeared on his monitor.

Asher bent eagerly toward it.

-

-

What does the program do? Asher asked.

Youll notice that its written as a series of repeated subtractions, coded in a loop. Thats the way you do division in machine language: by repeated subtraction. Well, its one way you could also do an arithmetic shift right but that would require a more specialized computing system.

So its a division statement?

Marris nodded.

Asher felt surprise and mystification mingle with the sudden, intense excitement. Dont hesitate, man. Whats the number theyre dividing?

One.

One. And its being divided by what?

Marris licked his lips. Well, you see, thats the problem, sir

Chapter 26

The door was one of a half dozen along the corridor in the northeast quadrant of deck 3. It bore the simple legend RADIOLOGY PING.

Commander Korolis nodded for one of the accompanying marines to open the door, then stepped inside. Glancing over the commanders shoulder, Crane made out a small but well-equipped lab. If anything, it was too well equipped: most of the available space was crammed with bulky instrumentation. Just inside the door, an Asian woman in a white coat was sitting before a computer, typing rapidly. She looked up at Koroliss entrance, then stood, smiled, and bowed.

Korolis did not respond to her. Instead, he swiveled around, one eye staring disapprovingly at Crane, the other looking at some point over his left shoulder.

This should serve your purposes, he said. He glanced around the lab once more as if mentally checking off items Crane might steal then stepped back into the hallway. Post guard outside, he said to the two marines, then turned his back and walked away.

Crane watched the commanders retreating form for a moment. Then he nodded to the marines and entered the lab, shutting the door behind him. There was a low squeal of rubber as the grommeted seal around the door snugged tightly into place. He then approached the female scientist, who was still standing at her lab table, smiling.

Peter Crane, he said, shaking hands. Sorry to barge in like this, but I dont have a work space down here and they said this lab had a light table.

Hui Ping, the woman replied, her smile displaying brilliant white teeth. Ive heard of you, Dr. Crane. You are looking into all the sickness, right?

Right. I just need to examine a few X-rays.

Its no problem; feel free to use anything. Hui was small and thin, with sparkling black eyes. She spoke flawless English with a strong Chinese accent. Crane guessed she was about thirty years old. Light tables over there.

Crane glanced in the indicated direction. Thanks.

Let me know if you need anything.

Crane walked over to the light table, snapped it on, and then drew out the X-rays hed just ordered on several of the workers in the Drilling Complex. It was as he suspected: no problems. The radiographs were depressingly unremarkable. Everything looked clear.

Over the last twenty-four hours, he had performed informal examinations on several people from the Drilling Complex. And hed found their complaints were like those in the non-classified section of the Facility: amorphous and maddeningly diverse. One complained of severe nausea. Another, blurred sight and visual field defects. Some complaints appeared psychological ataxia, memory lapses. None of the cases seemed in any way severe, and as usual there was no interrelation. Only one was genuinely interesting: a female worker who had exhibited remarkable disinhibition of character. Normally a timid, quiet teetotaler, she had over the last few days become profane, aggressive, and sexually promiscuous. The day before, shed been confined to quarters after being found drunk while on shift. Crane had interviewed the woman and spoken to her coworkers, and would send a comprehensive report to Roger Corbett for evaluation suitably filtered, of course.

Crane pulled the radiographs from the light table with a sigh. He had ordered MRIs and taken blood, and he would send them to the lab for analysis. But he feared the results would be the same as before: inconclusive. A part of him had hoped for a breakthrough here. Although the last thing he wanted to see was more illness, if there had been a disease cluster in the Drilling Complex where the real work was being done that would have provided a clue. But they seemed no worse off than their fellows upstairs.

No: it was clear to him that Spartans sudden concern was not due to severity but selection. Before, only non-essential people had been affected, and the admiral had shown little interest. But now that people directly responsible for the digging were falling ill, Spartan was sitting up and taking notice.

He snapped off the light table. Even if these new complaints proved inconclusive, they had given him a major break: he now had access to the classified levels of the Facility. This effectively doubled the number of people he could monitor, not to mention more opportunities for seeking out possible environmental factors.

Hui Ping looked over. She was a study in black and white: black hair, eyes, and glasses; white lab coat and pale, almost translucent skin. You dont look happy, she said.

Crane shrugged. Things arent fitting into place as quickly as Id hoped.

Ping nodded as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves. That goes for me, too. Her glossy hair, cut short, shook as she moved her head.

What are you working on?

That. And Ping pointed toward the far side of a hulking piece of equipment.

Crane walked over, peered around its edge. To his surprise he saw another of the thin sentinels twin to the one Asher had shown him hovering in midair, shimmering with myriad shifting colors. The same whisper-thin beam of pure white light led from the objects upper edge up to the ceiling of the room.

Jesus, Crane said, awed. Youve got one.

Ping laughed lightly. Theyre not exactly rare. More than twenty have been retrieved so far.

Crane looked at her in surprise. Twenty?

Yes, and the deeper we go, the more we find.

If youve found so many just in the path of the drill shaft, the crust around here must be saturated with them.

Oh, theyre not in the path of the drill shaft.

Crane frowned. What do you mean?

Well, the first one was. But since then, the rest have come to meet us.

Meet you?

Ping laughed again. I dont know how else to put it. They come to the Marble. Almost as if theyre drawn to it.

You mean these things drill through solid rock?

Ping shrugged. We dont know how they come, exactly. But they do.

Crane looked at the object more closely. It looked impossibly strange, floating there in the middle of the lab, coruscating with a deep inner glow: a glimmering rainbow of infinite hues. Staring at it, Crane felt a sudden, deep conviction that Ashers fears were unfounded. Perhaps the unsettling eyewitness report hed read the night before was false or referred to something else entirely. Surely, whatever was making people sick here had its roots elsewhere. This object had to be benevolent. Only a morally advanced culture, beyond war or aggression or evil, could have fashioned something of such ineffable beauty.

What are you studying? he murmured.

That tiny beam of light it emits. Ive been running it through refractometers, spectral radiometers. Analyzing its components. But its difficult.

You mean, because you have to move your equipment around to suit it not the other way around?

Ping laughed again. That, too. But no, I mean whats happening to you is happening to me as well. The pieces just arent fitting together.

Crane folded one arm over the other and leaned against the bulky equipment. Tell me about it, he said.

Id be happy to. Only the scientists are taking much interest in these sentinels. The rest are just eager to get to the mother lode. Sometimes I think Ive been given this non-essential assignment just because Korolis wants me out of the way. I was brought down here to program the scientific computers, not run them.

For a moment, she was unable to hide the bitterness in her voice. So Korolis has taken her off the important work and stuck her in this backwater of a lab, Crane thought. Wasting her talent on theories and secondary measurements. Why would he do that? he asked. Doesnt he trust you?

Korolis doesnt trust anybody, especially someone with a degree from the Beijing University of Technology. She stood up, came over, and pointed at the hovering object. Anyway. That beam of light its emitting? It appears to be steady, right? But when you process it, you can see its actually pulsing on and off, incredibly quickly: over a million times a second.