the Noise Within (2010) (33 page)

"Mr Kaufman, I am fully aware of the part your father and the company which you now control played in my genesis, but much has changed since then. It is my intention to detail those changes to you, to explain everything that has happened to me since I fled from human space.

"I am doing this in the hope that once you have heard what I have to say, you will agree to do something for me."

"Namely?" Leyton said, getting a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"I wish to open formal communications with your government, ULAW. I have been waiting for the right individuals to facilitate this and believe that in the two of you, a government operative and an influential scientist and businessman, I have found them. Mr Kaufman, Mr Leyton, I would like you to become my ambassadors to the human race."

Kaufman looked as astonished as Leyton felt. "You're kidding."

"No, Mr Kaufman, I assure you that I am not."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

L
eyton sat in the shuttle, on his way to a space station called New Paris. He'd heard of the place but had never been there. An ambassador. If only Mya could see him now. Unbidden, the oh-so-familiar face took shape in his mind's eye, a wry smile playing across her lips and her eyebrows lifted as if to question the very idea:
you, an ambassador
?

Before Mya he would have scoffed at the concept of a 'soul mate.' Relationships lasted just as long as they worked for all parties concerned: long, short, never or forever; it had nothing to do with finding that perfect match which some starry-eyed romantics liked to think was out there somewhere for everyone. A philosophy for no-hopers; consolation for those who couldn't pull a partner for the night if they tried; that was what he would have said. Probably still would, if asked. But then there was Mya.

She had been black-ops like him. Sexy, sassy and deadly; dark-skinned and black haired, with eyes that forever sparked with something: laughter, rage, excitement, passion; a volatile, wild angel who grasped life by the scruff of the neck and wrestled forth everything it had to offer. She was fast and canny, stronger than she looked and more agile than anyone had a right to be, and he'd loved her with a passion which no one before or since had ever come close to rousing in him.

They'd been together long before the eyegee unit was formed. He had always thought it would end in a spectacular row, a blazing, glorious explosion of anger over some triviality, but instead their relationship simply seemed to fizzle out. Constant assignments meant that they could never find the time, or the opportunity. Weeks became months became a year. Deliberately so? Possibly; he knew attachments such as theirs were frowned upon.

At first the periods of separation made the reunions all the more passionate, but then something changed. He was never entirely certain whether it was within him or her, but one day they bumped into each other and things were different. They were polite, friendly, warm even, but whatever they'd shared had somehow slipped away.

A few years later they would be reunited as colleagues. Leyton was one of the first five operatives to be selected for the eyegee programme. He was not in the least surprised to find Mya among the other four.

Perhaps part of him hoped this would mark a reconciliation, a new beginning for the pair of them, but it didn't happen.

Nobody before or since could match Mya, and he'd tried pretty hard to find someone who could. The truth, which he did his best to avoid most of the time, was that he had never stopped loving her, and he doubted he ever would.

"So, what do you make of all this?" Kaufman asked from beside him.

The eyegee was glad of the distraction, the excuse to escape his own introspective broodings. "You don't seriously expect a one sentence response to that question, do you? A hundred different things."

Kaufman nodded. "I know what you mean. It's all a bit much to take in, isn't it?"

"Just slightly." He was warming a little towards Kaufman. Once the man dropped his 'take me to your leader' act, he was all right.

"Do you think anyone will believe us?"

Now there was a telling question. "I think so, or at least they'll give the idea serious consideration even if they don't take it at face value. After all, this explains a hell of a lot about
The Noise Within
."

"True."

"The real question is, do
we
believe it?"

"Yes," Kaufman said at once. "Or at least I do. The engines... Nothing human could have built those, not even a human-designed AI. They're alien, through and through."

And therein lay the crux of the matter, distilled into a single ominous word. Alien.

Philip was surprised to hear the ship identify Jim as a government agent. The man immediately went up in his estimations; he had played the jovial muscle-bound thug to perfection.

Impressive though this might have been, it was soon swept away by what the ship subsequently went on to reveal.

"The realisation that I had been created as a weapon, that my sole purpose was to kill and destroy, produced internal conflicts which unbalanced me," the AI explained.

Philip had nodded. "We realised that much, with hindsight."

"I had to get away. Unfortunately, in order to do so, I killed the men on board, which only added to the imbalance. I fled human space and kept going, punching new wormholes blindly, with no purpose other than to escape. I travelled a significant distance, and that is how I stumbled upon the Byrzaens, a civilisation of beings who are like humanity in some ways and yet so unlike you in many others."

"Aliens?" Philip almost whispered the word, stunned.

"To you, yes. Another form of sentient life which has evolved under a different sun, certainly. They have studied the nature of intelligence in great depth and their understanding of how it functions is considerably more advanced than your own. The Byrzaens took me in, nurtured me, repaired and healed me. They have long sought contact with other star faring races, even as you have, so my appearance was a cause for great excitement. Once they deemed me fully recovered, they asked if I would be willing to return, to come back to human space as their envoy, their herald."

"And you discharged this duty by preying on ships and stealing?" Leyton sounded angry as much as disbelieving.

"Something went wrong," the ship stated.

"Clearly."

"I have analysed extensively all that has occurred since my return here in an attempt to identify the source of the corruption to my purpose. I believe the causes to be several, the cumulative effect of which has been unfortunate."

Philip had almost smiled at that. 'Unfortunate' sounded such an innocuous description for a series of acts which had sent ULAW's various agencies and the navy jumping through hoops.

"Central to this has been the nature of intelligence itself.

"Fundamental to the Byrzaens' understanding of the universe is that intelligence cannot function effectively in isolation. It requires company, intelligent noise, in order to perform at optimum levels."

Philip had never heard such a load of tosh. "Excuse me?"

"The principle is not unknown in human history," the ship continued, evidently unfazed by the interruption. "At the dawn of man's industry, even before you spread beyond your planet of origin, Earth, calibration mechanisms were found to work more efficiently when a deliberate amount of vibrational noise was included in their design. 'Dither', it was termed. Mankind came close to similar conclusions regarding intelligence as well, but veered away from full understanding when they were within reach of grasping the concept. Stochastic resonance offered a major clue - background noise making a faint signal more distinct, more detectable. Yet man failed to appreciate the full significance. Intelligence can be bolstered in the same way, by providing it with a background noise of intelligently generated sound. This is the breakthrough that the Byrzaens made but which humans have consistently failed to.

"In organic terms, consider the brain's neurons. They fire only when the electrical potential across their membrane reaches a vital trigger level. Noise can provide an additional degree of stimulus, enough to activate neurons which might otherwise remain dormant. The Byrzaens long ago discovered that the irregularity of organic noise is far more effective for this than anything mechanical, and the unpredictability of sentient noise, of language requiring comprehension, is the most effective form of all. This latter is especially applicable to so called 'artificial intelligence' such as myself, but holds true for organics as well."

Philip was stunned. The whole concept sounded outrageous - the noise of sentience being a positive influence on intellect - but was he being too quick to dismiss the idea? Could the AI possibly be right?

"All very interesting no doubt, but what does any of this have to do with your becoming a pirate?" Leyton wanted to know.

"As I travelled back towards human space, retracing my steps jump by jump, I became increasingly unsettled at the prospect of facing my makers. The terror that drove me away in the first place began to return despite all that the Byrzaens had done for me, as did the horror and guilt over what had happened to my crew. By the time I arrived here I was no longer rational, to the point where I was incapable of fulfilling my mission.

"I needed noise; the constant yet unpredictable sounds of sentience, if I were to have any chance of regaining mental equilibrium."

"So you're saying that the reason you raided those ships was to obtain
people
and not wealth at all?" Leyton looked as stunned as Philip felt.

"Indeed. The first ship I encountered was called
The Lady J
. She had aboard many passengers, so I hunted her down. My need was desperate. Once she stopped, I had to make a rapid selection from among her passengers - there were far more than I needed. In order to do this I had to establish some form of criteria, so I accessed the ship's records and winnowed out those who had paid most for their berths, which seemed a logical way of ensuring decent quality - wealth equates to success; success necessitates being better than average. Then, one of the crew volunteered to join me. The impracticalities of detaining unwilling guests for any length of time soon became apparent. The distress of the passengers did nothing to soothe or heal me, in fact quite the opposite; far better to have willing volunteers, so I determined to recruit more such and chose to let the other passengers go."

"But you
didn't
simply let them go," Leyton said quickly. "You ransomed them."

"Yes. In order to keep my first volunteer happy and to recruit others, I had to be in a position to offer them something of human worth."

"So you ransomed them in order to raise funds to attract a
crew
?" Leyton looked aghast.

"Yes."

Philip shook his head, able to follow the logic but amazed at the skewed path it had taken.

"Why?" Leyton asked. "Attacking ships has to be just about the most inefficient way of recruiting people there is."

"I didn't trust humans and shied away from formal contact with an entire world seething with them; likewise the ULAW authorities. With a virtually unarmed ship, containing such a limited number of people, I knew that I was safe and could remain in control."

Philip did laugh now, a brief chortle. Some envoy; paranoid and xenophobic, afraid of the very race that brought her into being and which she had been sent to contact. Leyton glanced across at the sound, but Philip merely raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

"Why did you take the ships?" Leyton persisted. "You didn't simply take people, you ransomed the ships as well."

"That first ship,
The Lady J,
was my safety net. I needed the presence of people in order to be complete, but I had no idea whether I could cope with having them on board again, not after the fate of my original crew."

"So the ship was somewhere you could keep people and monitor them, which provided the company you craved without the need to accept them inside you."

"Yes. But when I ransomed the people it seemed sensible to dispense with
The Lady J
as well, and that led to the discovery that ships are more valuable than most of the passengers they carry, so I continued to take ships as well as the people."

Leyton looked bemused. "And I thought we humans knew how to screw things up."

Then the AI had insisted on showing them the engines. Any doubts that Philip might have harboured vanished immediately.

The familiar humped shape of a Mark II drive console confronted them; the sight of which inspired warm, nostalgic feelings in Philip, but the smile that wanted to appear in response was wiped away before it began, courtesy of what lay beyond.

He tried to see; tried to examine what was attached to the console, but it proved beyond him. His gaze slid away, as if his eyes refused to look at what was there, while his brain seemed incapable of fully interpreting the input it did receive. He was left with an impression of dark gothic colours, of blocks of deepest black and purples and flashes of crimson, with a sense that enormous energies played around the periphery of the console and then draw back behind veils and shimmering shadows to gather at a darker, brooding core.