Read Online The New Space Opera 2 by Gardner Dozois - Free Book Online

not—”
    â€œIt is unlikely. It’s astronomically unlikely that we just happen to be aiming at the one intelligent spot on a sphere one and a half AU’s across. Which means…”
    He says nothing. The perplexity in his face mocks me. I want to punch it.
    But finally, the lights flicker on: “There’s, uh, more than one island? Oh! A lot of islands!”
    This creature is part of the crew. My life will almost certainly depend on him some day.
    That is a very scary thought.
    I try to set it aside for the moment. “There’s probably a whole population of the things, sprinkled through the membrane like, like cysts I guess. The chimp doesn’t know how many, but we’re only picking up this one so far, so they might be pretty sparse.”
    There’s a different kind of frown on his face now. “Why Chimp?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œWhy call him Chimp?”
    â€œWe call it the chimp.” Because the first step to humanizing something is to give it a name.
    â€œLooked it up. Short for chimpanzee . Stupid animal.”
    â€œActually, I think chimps were supposed to be pretty smart,” I remember.
    â€œNot like us. Couldn’t even talk. Chimp can talk. Way smarter than those things. That name—it’s an insult.”
    â€œWhat do you care?”
    He just looks at me.
    I spread my hands. “Okay, it’s not a chimp. We just call it that because it’s got roughly the same synapse count.”
    â€œSo gave him a small brain, then complain that he’s stupid all the time.”
    My patience is just about drained. “Do you have a point or are you just blowing CO 2 in—”
    â€œWhy not make him smarter?”
    â€œBecause you can never predict the behavior of a system more complex than you. And if you want a project to stay on track after you’re gone, you don’t hand the reins to anything that’s guaranteed to develop its own agenda.” Sweet smoking Jesus, you’d think someone would have told him about Ashby’s Law.
    â€œSo they lobotomized him,” Dix says after a moment.
    â€œNo. They didn’t turn it stupid, they built it stupid.”
    â€œMaybe smarter than you think. You’re so much smarter, got your agenda, how come he’s still in control?”
    â€œDon’t flatter yourself,” I say.
    â€œWhat?”
    I let a grim smile peek through. “You’re only following orders from a bunch of other systems way more complex than you are.” You’ve got to hand it to them, too; dead for stellar lifetimes and those damn project admins are still pulling the strings.
    â€œI don’t— I’m following?—”
    â€œI’m sorry, dear.” I smile sweetly at my idiot offspring. “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to the thing that’s making all those sounds come out of your mouth.”
    Dix turns whiter than my panties.
    I drop all pretense. “What were you thinking, chimp? That you could send this sock-puppet to invade my home and I wouldn’t notice?”
    â€œNot—I’m not—it’s me ,” Dix stammers. “ Me talking.”
    â€œIt’s coaching you. Do you even know what ‘lobotomized’ means ?” I shake my head, disgusted. “You think I’ve forgotten how the interface works just because we all burned ours out?” A caricature of surprise begins to form on his face. “Oh, don’t even fucking try . You’ve been up for other builds, there’s no way you couldn’t have known. And you know we shut down our domestic links too, or you wouldn’t even be sneaking in here. And there’s nothing your lord and master can do about that because it needs us, and so we have reached what you might call an accommodation .”
    I am not shouting. My tone is icy, but my voice is dead level. And yet Dix almost cringes before me.
    There is an