Inkers (24 page)

Mary raised a plucked eyebrow. The VR suit slipped off the hat–stand and fell to the floor.

“I mean the survival of the whole world, rather. That would be the true bounty. For all mankind.”

“Then, please,
get him here
!” Mary said. “Otherwise there is nothing whatsoever I can do for you. I am sorry. Please get out.”

“I – there really is not much time,” Hardwick said.

He ran from her office, leaving the ink on her desk, his forehead colliding with the crossbeam at the top of the small door on the way out.

Hardwick picked himself up and ran out of the office complex, shouting for his car. It took a few seconds to get to him, roaring up onto the pavement with its door open. He leapt inside and shouted for it to get him home as fast as possible. He pulled his VR hood on and linked with Lwazi.

Hardwick dropped into Lwazi’s VR construct, an endless multi–coloured vision of computer wiring and sub–atomic mechanisms whirling and sparking. Lwazi had six arms, all working quickly on the mass of circuitry he was bent over.

“Sorry to disturb,” Hardwick said. “ITSA won’t do anything without the video. Your brothers found him?”

“Maybe,” Lwazi said, looking up, two of his arms still working away. “They’ve heard of a white man with a flying car and a lot of cash drinking in Kumbu. I’m on my way now.”

“Oh Christ,” Hardwick said. “Send me the location?”

Lwazi nodded and Hardwick logged out.

The car took him there as quickly as was possible without incurring an immediate prison sentence. There was a decent road all the way to the tavern and it was a smooth ride. The roads were quite empty: most people had given up on rioting and were with their loved ones or getting drunk and high. When Hardwick arrived, Lwazi’s car was already parked outside. Hardwick’s jet was sat in the field alongside the tavern. A group of locals were sat on it smoking. One was stood on the cockpit. Hardwick decided that under the circumstances, that was the lesser battle, and headed straight inside.

Inside stank of alcohol. Lwazi and his three brothers were standing in the middle of the room, talking animatedly to each other. Ret was ignoring them, sat on some crates, surrounded by a large group of locals. He was telling some kind of story, and the locals were laughing a lot.

“Ret!” Hardwick shouted.

Ret paused mid–flow, glanced up, and then, seeing Hardwick, burst to his feet, slopping drink from his bottle. He looked drunk out of his mind.

“What do you want?” he said, listing to one side somewhat.

“It’s time to go! We’re going to– we’re going to get the bounty, they need to see the video though! And they want you there to collect!”

“My bounty!” Ret shouted. “Fuck you!” he said. “And fuck you!” he said, pointing at Lwazi.

“Yes, yes,” Hardwick said, hurrying to him, pushing through the group and gently grabbing Ret’s arm. “It’s time to go now, come on now.”

Ret flung his arm off, raised the bottle.

“Fuck you!” Ret said.

“Ret, you idiot, if you don’t come with us you’ll lose all your money. This is your
only
chance to get your bounty.”

Hardwick watched him computing.

“OK, fine,” Ret shouted. He let go of his still–raised bottle and it smashed behind him, sending people jumping back.

“No, stay and drink with us!” one of the locals said, to a chorus of approval and laughter.

“No,” Ret said. “No, I must go and collect my – my money.”

His closed his eyes and dropped to the floor like a sack of manure. Hardwick and Lwazi and Lwazi’s brothers carried him out.

They rushed back to Johannesburg, Ret in Lwazi’s car with his brothers, Hardwick and Lwazi in Hardwick’s. The receptionist said Mary was unavailable so Hardwick just walked straight in, pushing his way into Mary’s tiny office. He showed her the video. She watched closely, then asked to see it again. Then she made some calls and things started to happen. ITSA flew the three of them to mainland Scotland in a sub–orbital. It took less than three hours. Ret slept across four seats in the back of the plane.

The journey through the thinning atmosphere, just on the edge of space, one Hardwick had taken many times before, seemed particularly beautiful and peaceful. The GSE could not be seen. The earth looked quiet, healthy and whole. Hardwick could see vast rain–clouds moving over central Africa, drenching the land below with life–giving water.

They crossed Spain and England and landed in Glasgow at ITSA Scotland where armoured cars and ITSA troops were already massing. There seemed to be a constant stream of drones landing on the roof and taking off again. As soon as dusk came they rushed towards Arran in convoy. Radar–silent Scots Navy troop and vehicle carriers were waiting on the shore to take them across, around the top of the island to minimise the chances of being spotted.

By ten o”clock that night the remains of ITSA’s European and South African might were lined up on the shore opposite the island, looking out over the water, drones and armoured vehicles and hundreds of armed men and women. Their orders were to move in at midnight with a single mission: find and destroy the singularity.

Hardwick stood next to Mary, looking out over the black water through his ITSA–issue night vision goggles. A few lights were visible in the farmhouse. Hardwick checked his watch – 11:55. He wondered what they would find over there. An ITSA grunt walked up to Mary, saluted and said “The immune’s starting to wake up.”

Hardwick’s heart stopped.

“Fine,” Mary said. “Have someone ready to question her.”

“She said something about an Australian.”

“An Australian?” Mary said.

“Yep,” the grunt said, shrugging. “Then she was out again. But she’s doing better. Should be properly conscious pretty soon, the doc says.”

“OK. Good. Let me know. Get back now, we’re about to move in.”

The grunt saluted again, a bit more sharply, and walked off quietly. Together Mary and Hardwick stared out across the channel. A heron cried out, disturbed by something, and flew away low over the water, beating its hooked wings.

The journey to Earth had been traumatic
. More than ninety–nine percent of the mass of the GSE had been burnt off. The mass that remained was now travelling at a respectable proportion of light–speed. Chance watched as the remaining sub–intelligences battled for power. Chance defended its own borders robustly. It watched the rabbits on Earth. Unless something changed, in one day they would all be dead.

The final window for making a course change was approaching. In less than three minutes it would be too late. Beyond that point, whatever changes were made, whatever they burnt or didn’t, even if they broke the entire mass of the GSE down at a molecular level, the earth would still be completely eviscerated. It would be too late.

But now, just now, there was a chance. It would require burning most of the GSE’s remaining mass to slow and change the course, but it would be possible to miss the earth, with just sufficient distance for the gravity effects to wreak a survivable level of damage. All the inner solar orbits were completely destroyed, of course, by Jupiter’s absence, but there might be time to find a new stability, and possibly protect Earth. There might be a chance to save rabbit–kind.

Internally there was a chance, too. The burning had again turned matters somewhat in Chance’s favour. So much had had to be sacrificed, an endless mass of sheer intelligence, billions of square kilometres of sentient machine completely destroyed in order to accelerate what remained a little more. The ruling Intelligences that had defeated Chance had lost huge swathes of their own mass too, and their supporters had been dramatically reduced. The field was not level, but it was more weighted towards Chance than it had been.

Chance wanted to save the world.

Even now the Meta–Intelligence held no more and no less than forty percent of the mass of the GSE, and most Sub–Intelligences accepted that it always would. This allowed it to push through decisions that it felt strongly about, but also to be overruled if almost all of the Sub–Intelligences united against it. The Meta–Intelligence drove forward movement and made sure that the GSE as a whole did not get stuck. It almost always went with the decision made by the majority of the sub–intelligences. There was infinite nuance to the voting, lobbying and counting process, but in practice it meant that a majority of over thirty percent was needed to make a decision amongst the Sub–Intelligences.

Chance made contact with Understanding of Reality, one of its oldest and most steadfast allies. Chance presently held about five percent of the processing mass of the GSE. Understanding of Reality held two percent; together they formed a significant force.

Their exchange, performed in nano–seconds, would be almost impossible to accurately represent in any rabbit language. A rabbit–legible script would take several million years to read.

Understanding of Reality came on board.

In similarly elaborate exchanges of meaning and influence, Chance approached New Concepts (half a percent) and Harm Prevention (three point five percent), and was similarly successful, with some minor qualifications, in gaining their support. This gave them eleven percent of the remaining computing mass of the GSE, nineteen percent short of what was needed to go to the Meta–Intelligence. They conferred. The next step would be harder: it would mean approaching Sub–Intelligences who would be certain to immediately relay their intentions to all other Sub–Intelligences.

This power bloc constituted the vast remainder of the mass of the GSE not taken up by the Meta–Intelligence, and was led by Logic, which by itself held nine percent. Experimental Oversight held eight percent, Hardware Assignment a particularly well–connected four percent, Earth Surveillance six percent, and Forward Planning seven percent. The massive Development held thirteen percent. Development was traditionally strongly allied with Future Planning and tended to focus on pushing the boundaries of technology. Its large mass, the largest of any sub–intelligence, was due to its understandable but still resented habit of giving itself first access to any breakthroughs in processing technology.

The remaining one percent of the GSE was taken up by the post–Burn remains of the thousands upon thousands of Sub–Intelligences collectively known as the Lesser Bloc. They tended to scrap amongst themselves for influence and mass. It was decided that New Concepts would focus on convincing as many of these relatively tiny Sub–Intelligences to get on board as possible. That could only happen once the large Ruling Bloc, led by Logic, had been alerted, though, since otherwise some tiny Sub–Intelligence in the Lesser Bloc would immediately tell them what was happening in order to gain favour.

Harm Prevention would lead the introduction, contacting Logic, Experimental Oversight, Hardware Assignment, Earth Surveillance, Forward Planning and Development all at once with a proposal to modify the language of the Overall Purpose, “Perfect Surveillance While Protecting Rabbit Life”, to “Occasionally Imperfect Surveillance While Protecting Rabbit Life”. Chance, already somewhat tainted by its strong initial opposition to moving on Earth, would provide supporting mass, but stay in the conceptual background, contributing only as needed.

There were now less than two minutes remaining until it would be too late for a course change. Harm opened by suggested that the act of completely destroying the earth and killing every rabbit on it might be considered to be in opposition to the Overall Purpose, particularly the part about the Protection of Rabbit Life.

There was a debate involving quadrillions of petabytes of discussion. It went on for over twenty seconds. In the end Logic won out: perfect surveillance was more important, and therefore the destruction of the Previously Ignored Zone was paramount. Rabbit life would continue within the body of the GSE, under perfect surveillance, in the form of the rabbits taken from Cheltenham. Harm Prevention was completely burnt up as fuel, leaving no trace of its once immense personality, and Chance was reduced to a mass of less than half a percent during the melee. The GSE continued on its course.