Lowenthal didnt respond to that immediately, and I could understand why. Curiosity must be burning him up, but he was wary of asking what Ngomi intended to do. Even if hed been talking to the real Julius Ngomi, the other man wouldnt have given him a straight answer. The real Ngomi wouldnt have wanted to let Lowenthal in on any secrets while he had every reason to believe that the AMIs were listening in on their conversation.
Can we keep track of Horne and the eternal child? Lowenthal asked, eventually. Will we know how Titan reacts to the news?
Ngomi shook his head. We dont have a single reliable conduit of information left, he said. Effectively, were on our own.
What about the other people on Charity ? Are we sure that theyre dead?
Ngomi shook his head again. Your guess as to what really happened is as good as mine probably better, given that you were there when Alice Fleury spilled the story. What do you think?
Lowenthal paused for a moments thought, then said: If anyone did die, it must have been an accident. The machines may have wanted to let some of us go for strategic reasons, but the same strategy would have demanded that they keep the others safe. I can understand why they wanted Zimmerman and Fleury, and they do seem to hold Gray in unwarranted esteem, but I cant figure out why they bothered to take Tamlin and Caine aboard Charity , or why they had them thawed in the first place if they werent just practice runs.
We dont know, Ngomi said. We cant trust what records we have, so all we know for sure is that Damon Hart had Tamlin frozen down and was careful never to draw attention to him thereafter. Hart was one of the old generation: the last of the doomed. He wasnt considered reliable even by his own kind. If he had his own reasons for keeping Tamlin hidden away and we must assume that he had hes unlikely to have confided them to any of us.
What about Caine?
We cant find anything. Nothing related to her crimes, or to her trial. We cant find any reference to the VE tape that Tamlin remembered, let alone an actual copy. If it was as popular as Tamlin remembered, someone must have done a very thorough cleaning job.
Or some thing . But why?
Good question. Its probably safe to assume that Caine and Tamlin are of some interest or utility to our adversaries, but I doubt that well find out why theyre of interest until its too late for the information to be useful.
According to Alice Fleury, they like playing games, Lowenthal said. She seems to be right about that and its very plausible, given that the programs most likely to become self-aware were always the kinds of AI that were designed to have the ability to learn from experience. The first AIs developed as mimics of neuronal networks were game players, and even those that werent were set up to treat real situations as if they were games. Conscious or not, theyre still what we made them. Unfortunately, theyre much better at mind games than we are. Humans havent been able to compete in that kind of arena since the twenty-first century. Is there any reason to suppose that skill in war games wouldnt be transferable to actual warfare?
Not unless theyre cowards, or faced with overwhelming odds, Ngomi answered, wryly. I think we can already discount the possibility that theyre unwilling to take human lives the casualties caused by the basalt flow may have been light, but they were by no means negligible. It wouldnt require many rogues of that sort to devastate any community with an artificial ecosphere, and we cant be certain that Earth itself would be safe, even if the vast majority of AMIs really are our friends.
But theres a sense in which the fact that they dont seem to be united among themselves is bound to work to our advantage, Lowenthal observed. If they employ their strategic skills in trying to defeat one another, that leaves a window of opportunity open for us.
To do what? Ngomi asked.
Thats what we have to decide, Lowenthal told him. At the very least, wed want to support the winning sidebut that wont be easy, will it? If the AMIs go to war with one another,
the winners arent likely to be based on Earth.
Our best hope might be Mortimer Gray, Ngomi said, pensively. If what Alice Fleury told you is true, even the AMIs are prepared to take him seriously and whatever faults he has, hes certainly a man of peace, a true Utopian.
I doubt that they really will take him seriously, Lowenthal told him. I know youve always had a soft spot for him, but hes always been a clown. He may or may not be a good historian but hes definitely clumsy when it comes to verbal argument. I remember seeing him debate against that Wheatstone character. He was a Thanaticist fellow traveler in his young days not the kind of champion Id want to bet on as a potential savior of the human race. If he really is our chief negotiator, we might be closer to the brink of extinction than we think.
You dont understand him, was Ngomis response to that slightly unexpected hatchet job. I do. So does Emily Marchant, which is even more important. Ive always thought that he stood a better chance of building bridges between Earth and the Outer System than anyone in the Inner Circle, simply because hes so obviously not one of us. Hes as neutral as anyone on Earth. The lunatics like him, and so do the fabers. Siorane Wolf was one of his foster mothers, and that still counts for something on Titan, even among Marchants rivals. Most important of all, he really does understand the phenomenon of death better than any man alive including Adam Zimmerman and any other stray mortals whove crept into the equation. If the machines are prepared to listen to him, hes one of the few men Id trust to tell them what they need to know.