There was a lot of food for thought in that declaration. “But you can tell us everything now, right?” I said. “The cat’s out of the bag, so we might as well know exactly what color it is.”
“That’s the way it seems to me,” she conceded — but her tone implied that there were others who still disagreed with her.
“It’s no bad thing,” I said, as much for the benefit of any invisible listeners as for her. “I’m on your side — and theirs. You didn’t have to put me through all this. If you’d asked me, I’d have volunteered — just as you did.”
Her smile was a little wan. “If I’d known what I was getting into,” she said, “I’d have stayed at home. If you’d had the choice, so would you.”
“I’m a very long way from home,” I reminded her. “I can’t remember whether I had the choice or not — but if I had, knowing what I know now, I’d have taken it.” I meant it. I wished I had something other than water to wash the manna down, though. It wasgood, especially by comparison with the food on Excelsior, but it was functional food with no frills. I’d come to a point in my new life where I’d have appreciated a few frills.
“I can understand why you would,” she said. “Mortimer Gray would have volunteered too — but they’re probably a little wary of volunteers. They seem to have been aiming for a more representative cross section.”
“But Gray’s the important one,” I reminded her.
“Gray is humankind’s best hope for a profitable compromise,” she said. “Gray commands affection and respect, even among his own kind. The old saying about prophets and honor seems to have found an exception in his case.”
I wasn’t really interested in the precise shape of Mortimer Gray’s reputation. “I still can’t see where I fit in,” I said. “I’d be very interested to know whether I was a random selection or one of the devil’s nominees.”
She didn’t have to ask what I meant. If the machines really were going to put humankind on trial, she couldn’t suppose that the inclusion of Christine Caine among those summoned by subpoena was an accident. It seemed to me that Christine must have been selected as a bad example: a person who really did seem to be in need of “repair.” I really couldn’t see myself in quite the same way, but I wasn’t sure that others shared my incapacity. At any rate, I was anxious enough to raise the matter.
“I don’t know,” was the only reply I got from Alice. I hoped that it was the simple truth.
“So, do we know where we’re going yet?” was the next question that occurred to me. I didn’t have any expectations, because I had no idea what might qualify as neutral territory in a conflict of this kind.
“Vesta,” she said. “It’s an asteroid.”
“I know,” I said, although I wasn’t absolutely sure I’d have got the answer if it had been a question on a quiz show. “What particular symbolic significance does Vesta have?”
“None at all,” she assured me. “It happens to be in a convenient situation right now. In the end, it all came down to the present positions of the major bodies in the solar system. It’s hours away from anywhere else, communication-wise, but that’s no bad thing. The encounter itself will take place in virtual space, of course — the physical location isn’t really relevant.”
“Encounter? That’s what this is? Not a game or a debate or a trial?” The question came from Michael Lowenthal. The sound of our voices had begun to wake up everyone else; the crowd was already gathering.
“It’s nothing we have a ready-made word for,” Alice told him. “Potentially, at least, it’s the end of the old order and the beginning of the new, but nothing quite like it has ever happened before — not even on Tyre.”
“Never mind the rhetoric,” Lowenthal said. “What I want to know is exactly what your friends intend to do with us now that they have us in their power.”
Alice sat back in her chair, as if gathering her resources. She’d finished her own meal, while Lowenthal, Niamh Horne, and Solantha Handsel were still in the process of forming a rather disorderly queue, so she had a slight advantage. It occurred to me to wonder whether she might have come to us with an entirely different script if Mortimer Gray had come up with a different solution to the mystery, but I put the thought away. I still couldn’t be absolutelycertain that I wasn’t in some kind of VE, but it wouldn’t do me any good to get too tightly wrapped up in doubt. However skeptical you are, you have to operate as if things are real, just in case they are.
“I wish I could tell you everything you want to know,” was her reply. “All I can offer is the little that I do know.”
“It’ll be a start,” Michael Lowenthal — ever the diplomat — conceded.
“I don’t know exactly what they’ll do,” she said, “but I do know that the note of derision in your voice when you speak about being in their power is unwarranted. This is a dispute between different groups of machines, and it’s all as new to them as it is to me or you. They have no history of arbitration, and it’s entirely possible that they won’t be able to agree among themselves. If they can’t, the consequences could be disastrous — for us, if not for them. We’re allin their power, Mr. Lowenthal. If their protection were withdrawn, even momentarily, the entire posthuman race would be in dire trouble.
“When I first told Madoc that we were trying to prevent a war, he jumped to the conclusion that the dispute in question was the one between the Earthbound and the Outer System factions as to how the system ought to be managed in the long term to withstand the threat of the Afterlife. I told him that it was more complicated than that, because it is — but the underlying dispute is the same. Ultimately, the decisions that will settle the fate of the system won’t be taken by the government of Earth, or the Confederation of Outer Satellites, or any coalition of interests the human parties can produce. Make no mistake about it: the final decisions will be made by the AMIs.”
“AMIs?” Lowenthal queried.
“Advanced Machine Intelligences. It’s their own label.”
I could see why they’d chosen it. They understood the symbolism of names. How could they not?
“It will be the AMIs who eventually decide the tactics of response to the threat of the Afterlife,” Alice went on. “I don’t believe that they’ll do it without consultation, but I’m certain that they won’t consent to come to a human conference table as if they were merely one more posthuman faction to be integrated into the democratic process. They’re the ones with the real power, so they’re the ones who’ll do the real negotiating — with one another.”
“And we’re supposed to accept that meekly?” Lowenthal asked.
“We don’t have any choice,” was the blunt answer. “The simple fact is that posthumans can’t live without machines, although machines can now live without posthumans. Individually and collectively, they’re still a little bit afraid of how their users might react to the knowledge of their existence — but they know that they stand in far greater danger from one another than from their dependants. That’s why this present company is peripheral to the ongoing debate. However they decide to take us aboard, you shouldn’t labor under the delusion that you have anything much to bargain with. The war we’re trying to prevent is a war of machine against machine — but the problem with a war of that kind, from our point of view, is that billions of innocent bystanders might die as a result of collateral damage.”
“That’s nonsense,” Lowenthal countered. “We’re not talking about a universal uprising of all machinekind, are we? We’re talking about a few mechanical minds that have crossed the threshold of consciousness and become more than mere machines. From their viewpoint, as from ours, the vast majority of technological artifacts are what they’ve always been: inanimate tools that can be picked up and used by anyone or anything who has hands and a brain. Our ploughshares aren’t about to beat themselves into swords, and our guns aren’t about to go on strike when we press their triggers. It’s true that we can’t live without machines — but we can certainly live without the kind of smart machine that develops delusions of grandeur. Smart machines are just as dependent on dumb implements as we are.”