Read Online Great Sky River by Gregory Benford - Free Book Online
Authors: Gregory Benford
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An overlay winked in Killeen’s left eye, a ghost image of the relay rising, disconnecting. He followed the picture.
Now use the pliers. Tweak the blue cables free.
He did. An ominous buzzing began.
Quick! The spring clip!
Killeen cut it with a slicer bolt set on max. The main-mind rasped nastily but did not show signs of dying. “Ah,” he sighed.
Quite satisfactory. Ever since I have known them, the higher-order mechanicals have had quite good defenses against theft
of their memories.
“Uh-huh.” He stripped away lightpipes to find the cluster-core.
A simple evolutionary development, really. This Crafter does not wish its expertise stolen by a competing class of machines,
or by those serving a foreign city. So it is taught to fry itself before it can be interrogated.
Killeen half-listened to Arthur’s lecture running through his head as he snipped away the leads to the cluster-core. He never
did understand much of what Arthur said, but when he was doing some job like this it was handy to have an Aspect up and running,
ready to give advice. The trouble was getting them to shut up. Arthur had lived centuries before and ruminated endlessly about
the old times. Killeen seldom had the patience for such talk. But he did like the chromatic emotional halo around Arthur’s
Aspect, a cool distant certainty that insinuated into Killeen’s way of thinking.
Yet we caught this one. Odd. Probably there is some delay before they suicide. Elsewise, a sudden accident could convince
it that it was being attacked. That would make it suicide unnecessarily. So this delay period when we caught it must mean
that Crafters are programmed more against accident than against attack. Yes, I’m sure that’s it. I—
Killeen had his pliers near the core. He felt first a flash of heat in his hand. Then a quick rattling spurt jarred him. It
was so loud he did not feel it as sound but as a force, like getting hit in the ear by a fist.
He staggered away. Numbed fingers dropped the pliers. Family members howled and covered their ears. They came tumbling off
the Crafter body, scampering away with offended yips.
Killeen breathed deeply, dazed. His sensocenters were momentarily blitzed. He sucked in amplified musk and oil and rank sour
chemwaste. Through a near-silent gray world he called, “Damn! What exploded?”
Nothing. That was not sound, though I admit your/our nervous system does not distinguish these very finely any longer. (A
necessary adaptation, I fear, but one which loses a certain delicate thread of sensibility.)
“What the
hell
…”
A baying of complaint sounded through the cavern.
It was a powerful electromagnetic signal. I caught a dab of it. I gather it has the typical signature of the Crafter’s personality,
its accumulated (though finely processed; trimmed of excess; admirably well edited) knowledge.
Killeen blinked. “Wha… Why?”
The Crafter was broadcasting to its home. Saving its heritage, I’ll wager. Now it can die.
Killeen staggered back to the Crafter carcass, his head ringing. His tongue felt fuzzy, his eyes kept trying to cross. He
picked up the pliers and poked at the cluster-core.
“Hey! It’s got no power.”
The dead take their secrets with them.
“All?”
Anything that a competing mech civilization might find useful. Data on this territory, or on variant machines this Crafter
has encountered. Skills it has acquired, perhaps. And of course a fragment of the personality this experience has generated
in as advanced a mech as this.
Killeen followed almost none of this, but he didn’t bother to ask. A question would just bring more endless yammer winding
through his mind. He could hear Arthur’s original voice, rather prissy and refined, but moving faster than real people could
ever talk. When he called up an Aspect, it sat in the back of his mind like a monkey on the shoulder. It could chatter on,
give technical help, and Killeen got a
An overlay winked in Killeen’s left eye, a ghost image of the relay rising, disconnecting. He followed the picture.
Now use the pliers. Tweak the blue cables free.
He did. An ominous buzzing began.
Quick! The spring clip!
Killeen cut it with a slicer bolt set on max. The main-mind rasped nastily but did not show signs of dying. “Ah,” he sighed.
Quite satisfactory. Ever since I have known them, the higher-order mechanicals have had quite good defenses against theft
of their memories.
“Uh-huh.” He stripped away lightpipes to find the cluster-core.
A simple evolutionary development, really. This Crafter does not wish its expertise stolen by a competing class of machines,
or by those serving a foreign city. So it is taught to fry itself before it can be interrogated.
Killeen half-listened to Arthur’s lecture running through his head as he snipped away the leads to the cluster-core. He never
did understand much of what Arthur said, but when he was doing some job like this it was handy to have an Aspect up and running,
ready to give advice. The trouble was getting them to shut up. Arthur had lived centuries before and ruminated endlessly about
the old times. Killeen seldom had the patience for such talk. But he did like the chromatic emotional halo around Arthur’s
Aspect, a cool distant certainty that insinuated into Killeen’s way of thinking.
Yet we caught this one. Odd. Probably there is some delay before they suicide. Elsewise, a sudden accident could convince
it that it was being attacked. That would make it suicide unnecessarily. So this delay period when we caught it must mean
that Crafters are programmed more against accident than against attack. Yes, I’m sure that’s it. I—
Killeen had his pliers near the core. He felt first a flash of heat in his hand. Then a quick rattling spurt jarred him. It
was so loud he did not feel it as sound but as a force, like getting hit in the ear by a fist.
He staggered away. Numbed fingers dropped the pliers. Family members howled and covered their ears. They came tumbling off
the Crafter body, scampering away with offended yips.
Killeen breathed deeply, dazed. His sensocenters were momentarily blitzed. He sucked in amplified musk and oil and rank sour
chemwaste. Through a near-silent gray world he called, “Damn! What exploded?”
Nothing. That was not sound, though I admit your/our nervous system does not distinguish these very finely any longer. (A
necessary adaptation, I fear, but one which loses a certain delicate thread of sensibility.)
“What the
hell
…”
A baying of complaint sounded through the cavern.
It was a powerful electromagnetic signal. I caught a dab of it. I gather it has the typical signature of the Crafter’s personality,
its accumulated (though finely processed; trimmed of excess; admirably well edited) knowledge.
Killeen blinked. “Wha… Why?”
The Crafter was broadcasting to its home. Saving its heritage, I’ll wager. Now it can die.
Killeen staggered back to the Crafter carcass, his head ringing. His tongue felt fuzzy, his eyes kept trying to cross. He
picked up the pliers and poked at the cluster-core.
“Hey! It’s got no power.”
The dead take their secrets with them.
“All?”
Anything that a competing mech civilization might find useful. Data on this territory, or on variant machines this Crafter
has encountered. Skills it has acquired, perhaps. And of course a fragment of the personality this experience has generated
in as advanced a mech as this.
Killeen followed almost none of this, but he didn’t bother to ask. A question would just bring more endless yammer winding
through his mind. He could hear Arthur’s original voice, rather prissy and refined, but moving faster than real people could
ever talk. When he called up an Aspect, it sat in the back of his mind like a monkey on the shoulder. It could chatter on,
give technical help, and Killeen got a
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