Tony Ballantyne - Recursion

For Barbara

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Herb 1: 2210

eva 1: 2051

constantine 1: 2119

Herb 2: 2210

eva 2: 2051

constantine 2: 2119

Herb 3: 2210

eva 3: 2051

constantine 3: 2119

Herb 4: 2210

eva 4: 2051

constantine 4: 2119

Herb 5: 2210

eva 5: 2051

constantine 5: 2119

Herb and constantine: 2210

epilogue: 2212

Preview for Capacity

About the Author

Copyright Page

Herb 1: 2210

Herb looked at the viewing field and felt his stomach tighten in horror. He had been

expecting to see a neat cityscape: line after line of silver needles linked by lacy bridges, cool silver

skyscrapers shot through with pink-tinted crystal windows; artfully designed to resemble the spread of

colors on a petal. Instead he saw…bleak nothingness. Cold, featureless, gently undulating wasteland

spreading in all directions.

Something had gone badly wrong. Suddenly the cozy white leather and polished yellow wood lounge

of his spaceship was not the safe cocoon he had grown used to over the past few months. Now they

would be coming to prize him from this warm, cushioned shell to cast him shivering into the real world, all

because he had made one tiny mistake.

Somehow he had made a mess of the code that should have told the Von Neumann Machines to stop

reproducing and start building.

Herb’s machines had eaten up an entire planet.

But there was nothing to be gained now by crying about it. Herb had known he was on his own when he

embarked upon this project. It was up to him to figure out what had gone wrong, and then to extract

himself from the situation.

He opened a second viewing field next to the first and called up an image of his prototype Von

Neumann Machine. A cylinder, nine centimeters long, with eight silver legs spaced along its body, giving

it an insectile appearance. Six months ago Herb had dropped out of warp right over this planet, opened

the hatch of his spaceship, and stood in solemn silence for a moment before dropping that same machine

onto the desolate, rocky surface below.

What had happened next?

Herb liked to pace when he was thinking, and he had arranged his spaceship lounge to allow him room

to do so. Two white sofas facing each other occupied the center of the room. A wide moat of parquet

flooring filled the space between the sofas and the surrounding furniture that lined the walls of the room.

The smell of beeswax polish and fresh coffee filled the cabin. Herb closed his eyes and ran through the

order of events after he had released the Von Neumann Machine.

He imagined that first VNM turning on six of its spindly legs, lifting them in a high stepping motion as it

sought to orient itself. The remaining two legs would be extended forward, acting as antennae, vibrating

slightly as they read the little machine’s surroundings. It would have walked a few paces, tiny grains of

sand sticking to its silver-grey limbs, then maybe changed direction and moved again, executing a random

path until it found a patch of rock of just the right composition, then settled itself down, folding its legs

around itself to bring its osmotic shell in contact with the surface.

His thoughts on track, Herb began to pace, soft ships’ slippers padding on the wooden floor. He was

naked except for a pair of paper shorts. Okay, what next?

In his imagination he saw the first machine absorbing matter from the planet, converting it, working it,

and sending it around that half-twisted loop that no human mind could comprehend. Soon there would be

two identical machines standing on the rock, their legs waving in an explorative fashion. And then four of

them, then eight…

The program was perfect, or so the simulations had told him. When they reached the optimum

number, the machines should have begun constructing his city out of their own bodies, clamberering on

top of each other using the sticky pads on the ends of their feet. Herb was proud of the design of those

pads: each seemingly smooth foot ended in a chaotic branching of millions upon millions of tiny strands.

Press one foot down and the hairs would spread out, reaching down and around to follow the contours

of the surface beneath them so perfectly that they were attracted to it at a molecular level.

Not that any of that mattered now. This was the point where the error lay. The machines hadn’t

paused to build his city. They’d just gone on reproducing, continued eating up the planet to make copies

of themselves until there was nothing left. He opened his eyes again to look at the viewing field. Maybe

he had only imagined it.

Herb groaned as the view zoomed in on the cold grey shifting sea beneath. He could make out the

busy motion of millions of VNMs walking over and under each other, struggling to climb upwards to the

surface only to be trodden on and forced down by other VNMs, each equally determined about seeking

the light. Wasn’t that part of the end program? City spires, growing upwards, seeking the light in the

manner of plants? Everywhere he looked, everywhere the ship’s senses could reach—out to the horizon,

down to the submerged layers of machines—it was the same: frenzied, pointless activity.

He paused and felt a sudden thrill of horror. That wasn’t quite true. Something was happening directly

below. He could see a wave building beneath him: a swelling in the grey, rolling surface. Thousands of

pairs of tiny silver antennae were now waving in his direction. They sensed the ship hanging there. They

sensed raw materials that could be converted into yet more silver VNMs. Herb felt a peculiar mix of

horror and betrayal.

He croaked out a command. “Ship. Up one hundred meters!”

The ship smoothly gained altitude and Herb began to pace again. He needed to think, to isolate the

error, but he couldn’t concentrate because one thought kept jumping in front of all the others.

He was in serious trouble.

Herb didn’t exactly fear the EA. Why should he? The EA was like a parent: it cared for and nurtured

all its human charges. The EA wanted Herb to become the best that he could be. No, Herb did not fear

the EA: he respected it. After all, it watched everyone, constantly monitoring their slightest action.

And it acted to correct the behavior of those who transgressed its boundaries.

The EA would have been upset enough by the thought of a private city being built on an unapproved

planet. Never mind the fact that the planet was sterile and uninhabited, they would still point out the fact

that a city wasn’t part of this planet’s natural environmental vectors.

“We are uniquely placed to manipulate not only our environment, but also that of other races

as yet unborn. It is our responsibility not to abuse that privilege.”

The message was as much part of Herb’s childhood as the smell of damp grass, the dull brown tedium

of Cultural Appreciation lessons, and the gentle but growing certainty that whatever he wanted was his

for the asking. Everything, that is, but this. Everyone knew the EA’s philosophy.

So what would the EA think when they discovered that in failing to build his illegal city he had

accidentally destroyed an entire planet instead? Did they know already? Had something in his behavior

been picked up by the EA’s monitoring routines? Was someone already on their way here to arrest him?

Herb didn’t remember setting out a bottle of vanilla whisky on the carved glass slab that served as a

side table. Nonetheless, he poured a drink and felt himself relax a little. His next moves began to fall into

place.

First he had to try and destroy any evidence linking this planet with himself.

Next he had to get away from here undetected.

Then he had to slot back into normal life as if nothing had happened.

Then, and only then, could he pause to think about what had gone wrong with his prototype.

The first objective should be quite straightforward. The original VNM had been designed with

anonymity in mind: standard parts, modular pieces of code taken from public libraries. The thought that

someone might accidentally stumble across his planet had always been at the back of his mind. He gulped

down some more whisky and an idea seemed to crystallize from the alcohol. He prodded it gently.

As far as Herb knew, no one else even knew that this planet existed. He had jumped across space at

random and set his ship’s senses wide to find a suitable location. What if this planet were just to

disappear? What if he dropped a second VNM onto it—one with a warp drive and access to a supply

of exotic matter? Set it loose converting all the original machines, and then, when that work was done,

just jump them all into the heart of a star?

Could he do it?

Getting hold of enough exotic matter to build the warp drives of the modified VNMs would be a

problem, but his father had contacts, so that could come later. He had to get away first.

He could do that. A random series of jumps around the galaxy, eventually returning to Earth. Enough

jumps, executed quickly enough, and nothing would be able to retrace his course.

Good. Now, how about slotting back into normal life? Would anyone suspect him? More to the point,

would the EA suspect anything? Their senses were everywhere. They said the EA could look into

someone’s soul and weigh the good and evil contained therein to twenty decimal places, and yet…and

yet…

Herb was different. He had known it since he was a child. Sometimes it was as if he was merely a

silhouette. Like he was there in outline, but they couldn’t fill in any of the specific details.

If anyone could get away with it, it was Herb.

A gentle breeze brushed his face and he felt his spirits lift. He took another gulp of whisky and felt a

flood of warm relief as he swallowed. The plan was good. He could get away with it.

“I can get away with it,” he whispered to himself, his confidence growing. Another sip of whisky and

that familiar sense of his own invulnerability swung slowly back into place. Get back home, and he would

be able to examine the design of his VNM and discover what had gone wrong with it. He drained the

glass and began to stride around the room, feet padding on the wooden floor, energy suddenly bubbling

inside him.

“I’m going to get away with it!” he said out loud, punching at the air with a fist. And then, once he was

home, once he had found the error in his design, he could find himself another planet. Build his city there

instead.

“I will get away with it!” he cried triumphantly.

“No you won’t.”

The glass slipped from Herb’s fingers. He spun around and fell into a crouch position, ready to run or

fight, though where he would run to in a three-room spaceship his body hadn’t yet decided.

A slight, dark-haired man with a wide, white, beaming smile and midnight-black skin stood on the

sheepskin rug between the facing sofas. He wore an immaculately tailored suit in dark cloth with a pearl

grey pinstripe. Snowy white cuffs peeped from the edge of his sleeves; gleaming patent leather shoes

were half hidden by the razor-sharp creases of his trousers. The man raised his hat to Herb, a dark

fedora with a spearmint green band.

“Good afternoon, Henry Jeremiah Kirkham. My name is Robert Johnston. I work for the Environment

Agency.”

Herb slowly straightened up. He felt naked and exposed.

“What are you doing on my ship?” he said, the faintest tremor in his voice.

Robert Johnston gave a sad little shrug of his shoulders.

“Oh Herb, I don’t like this any more than you do, but, well, I have no choice. You have put me in this

position; your actions have led me to this juncture. I’m afraid that I am going to have to punish you for the

destruction of this planet.” He shook his head in regret.

Herb frowned back at him. “No, that’s not what I meant. I meant, how did you get on my ship? You

can’t have stowed away; it’s too small. I’d have heard the alarms if you tried to come through the

airlock.”

Herb bit his lip in thought. “Ergo, you can’t be here,” he murmured. “What are you? Externally

projected V-R?”

“Sorry, Herb, no.” He suddenly became more animated. “I’m as real as the next man. I’m here in

person, in the flesh. Accept no substitutes, the One and Only, the real McCoy, the Cat in the Hat.” At

this he skimmed his broad-brimmed hat across the room toward Herb, who ducked quickly to avoid it.

The hat spun over Herb’s head and hit one of the glass ornaments on the sideboard, knocking it over. It

fell to the floor and shattered. Herb ignored the noise. His anger was building, his arrogance asserting

itself. He fanned it, forced himself to hold Johnston’s gaze and speak with a level voice that belied the

tension that was building in his stomach.

“Okay, if you’re real, how did you get in here? The ship’s integrity has not been breached since we left

Earth, or I would have known about it. Every particle of onboard matter will have been tracked by the

ship’s AI since it was loaded, and you are to be found nowhere on the manifest. You cannot be here. I

can only surmise that I am hallucinating.” He looked thoughtfully for a moment at the bottle that sat on the

floor near his feet and murmured to himself, “Possibly drugged by this vanilla whisky that I don’t

remember putting out here on the table…”

He frowned. Robert Johnston tilted his head back and laughed. His neatly knotted green-and-pearl tie

shimmered in the light.

“The lengths some people will go to to avoid the simple truth! The whisky has been tampered with, but

only to the extent of adding a mild sedative. That is what allows you to stand there arguing rationally with

me, rather than following the more natural urge to crouch shivering in the corner. Anyway, if I’m a

hallucination, how could I have put the whisky bottle there in the first place?”

Herb frowned thoughtfully. He did feel a lot calmer than he would have expected to under the

circumstances.

“Why have you drugged me?” asked Herb, after a pause.

“The EA is concerned about your health. The shock of me suddenly appearing in your ship could have

had severe consequences.”

“Good for the EA. So how did you get here? Matter displacement?”

“No. Nothing so exotic. I came down the secret passage.”

Herb was silent for a moment as he considered the statement. When he spoke, it was with icy calm.

“You don’t have secret passages on spaceships.”

“Yes, you do. There’s one underneath that armchair. Look.”

At that, Johnston walked across the room, the heels of his shoes clicking on the polished wooden

floor. He seized the armchair by its back, his fingers making deep dimples in the soft white leather, and

pulled it to one side. The outline of a trapdoor could be seen, a knife line through the contrasting colors of

the parquetry. Johnston pressed one corner of the outline with an elegantly manicured finger and the

trapdoor popped up with a soft sigh. He pulled it back to reveal a long metal tube dropping away into the

distance. Herb felt the gentle pull of air leaving his lounge, sighing its way down the dark, yawning

passageway.

“I don’t believe it,” whispered Herb softly. “Are you sure you’re not a hallucination?”

“I feel it in my bones,” said Robert Johnston.

They both crouched down by the edge of the secret passageway, staring into its depths.

Johnston stroked his chin. “The floor of your lounge is built into the port wall of your ship. I attached

my ship to yours just after you completed your first jump from Earth. The pipe you can see is the

connection between us. A simple deep scan ensured that the hatch was located beneath your armchair

for concealment.”

Herb gazed at Johnston in disgust. He hated being patronized. “What are you talking about? How

could you attach your ship to mine without me noticing it? I’d have picked it up the first time I scanned

any system on reinsertion from warp.”

Johnston shook his head sadly. “Oh, Herb. And you’re supposed to be quite intelligent.”

“What do you mean, quite intelligent?” snapped Herb.

“Do you find that offensive? I’m sorry.” Johnston gazed at the tips of his fingers for a moment, an

enigmatic smile playing around his lips, then continued.

“What I mean is that I’m surprised you haven’t worked it out. Surely you have heard of stealth

technology?”

“I have. I don’t believe it is sophisticated enough to fool my scanners,” replied Herb shortly.

“Oh, it is,” Robert Johnston said softly. “It is.”

They crouched by the hole for another moment in silence. Herb’s pale blue eyes locked with

Johnston’s dark brown gaze. Herb was used to playing this game, and usually he was the last to look

away. Not this time. He blinked and looked back down into the shadows.

“Okay,” he muttered softly, “I believe you. You attached a stealth ship to mine.”

“I didn’t say that,” said Johnston.

Herb jumped to his feet in anger. “Hell’s teeth!” he shouted. “What is your problem? Why do you

keep playing games with me?”

The smile vanished from Johnston’s face, and Herb found a very different person looking at him. There

was no emotion in his face, just the cold certainty that Robert Johnston—and only Robert

Johnston—was in charge of the situation.

Johnston spoke in the softest of tones. “I just wanted to establish, right at the beginning of our

relationship, that I could. I’m not one of your father’s lackeys, paid to be pushed around.”

The smile snapped back onto his face, and Herb felt a rush of relief.

“However, let me explain. I did not say that I used a stealth ship, I merely pointed that out as a

possible solution to the problem: namely, how did I attach my ship to yours without you noticing?”

Johnston rose to his feet and walked across to the sofa facing the viewing field that Herb had opened

earlier. Herb paused to run his finger along the rim of the hatch Johnston had opened in his ship. The

parquetry was joined to the metal of the hatch like the crust on a loaf of bread: one material faded into

another without any definable boundary. However the join was achieved, Herb had not seen the effect

before. Reluctantly, because Johnston was waiting, he pulled the hatch shut and went to sit on the sofa

opposite him.

When Herb had designed the lounge of his spaceship, he had intended it to be light and airy. White

leather furniture and slabs of glass sat above the nonrepeating, tessellating pattern of the parquet floor.

The walls were left quite plain, only the occasional tall ornament or sculpture set out around the perimeter

of the room acted to relieve their blankess. The ceiling was hung with the fragile white balls of paper

lanterns that gently illuminated the room. To Herb’s eyes, Robert Johnston, sitting on the white sofa,

stood out like a turd in cotton wool. His dark suit may have been immaculately tailored, his sharp

starched cuffs may have slid from the sleeves of his jacket as he smoothed a crease on his trousers, but

as far as Herb was concerned, there was something jarringly wrong about the man sitting opposite. As he

was thinking this, the answer to the problem occurred to him.

“You suppressed my ship’s AI, didn’t you?” Herb said. “My ship is completely under the control of

your ship’s AI. Your ship has processed every command I’ve made and filtered out any information it

didn’t want me to see.”

“Very good. You are intelligent, but I knew that. However…I want you to understand that everything

you have done over the past six months has been catalogued by the EA. We have the proof you

destroyed this planet.”

“It was an accident.” Herb narrowed his eyes. “If you’ve monitored everything that I’ve done, you will

realize that.”

Johnston smiled sadly.

“Oh, I realize that. But Herb…it’s not an excuse. You’ve still destroyed a planet.”

“It was completely lifeless. I checked first.”

Herb knew that it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words left his lips. Johnston’s eyes

darkened and the smile snapped away again to be replaced by an expression of pure anger.

“You checked, did you? Ran a full spectroscopic analysis of the atmosphere for airborne plankton?

Performed a high-resolution deep scan in case microbes were clinging onto life beside hot vents deep at

the heart of the planet?” He flicked his right hand in a dismissive fashion. “Or did you just run a

five-minute local sweep for Earthlike life-forms?”

Herb opened his mouth to speak but Johnston interrupted.

“Don’t!” he shouted, holding up a hand. “We both know the answer to that, don’t we?”

Herb cringed. Johnston remained perfectly still, his arm raised as if to strike, the edge of one perfectly

pressed and gleaming white cuff emerging from the sleeve of his jacket, the tide line between the pale and

the midnight black skin that traveled around his hand, dead center in Herb’s vision.

Johnston held that position, held it and held it, then his eyes moved slowly to the left to gaze at his own

hand. His mouth creased back into a wide smile and he relaxed. The upraised hand was dropped.

“…but that’s all in the past now. A crime has been committed, and now we must decide upon the

punishment.”

Herb felt his stomach tighten again. Maybe the effect of the drugged whisky was wearing off, because

he felt more panicky than before.

He began to babble. “We don’t have to do this, you know. My father is a very important man. I’m

sure we can come to some arrangement. Besides, I’m sorry. I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t do anything

like this again. Look, face it, I’ve got a lot to offer society. I put together those VNMs to my own design.

My technical skills have got to be worth something; it would be a real waste to lock me away where I

couldn’t achieve anything worthwhile…”

“Preemptive Multitasking?” said Johnston, innocently.

Herb paused in mid flow, his mouth moving soundlessly.

Johnston began to adjust the viewing field. The greyish square hanging in the air above the coffee table

began to grow.

“I mean, I know that it reduces the overall intelligence slightly, but it does mean that a perfectly good

brain can work on five or six different jobs at the same time.”

The viewing field had now expanded to a square about three meters across the diagonal. Johnston

began to apply a slight curve across its surface, continuing to speak as he did so.

“So, we could have your body locked up in a nutrient vat in a station in the Oort cloud, while we apply

your intelligence to controlling five or six different maintenance craft.”

The viewing field darkened and a few stars began to appear.

“We could leave you a time slice of consciousness for your own use: a time for you to think and

dream, to be yourself. Depending on how you cooperate, we could locate that consciousness inside your

body, in the vat…though that would be very boring—” Johnston turned from the viewing field to smile at

Herb “—or maybe controlling a robot with the run of the station. That way you could get to mix with

some members of the crew.”

Depth was added to the picture in the viewing field. A section of a black sphere grew in the lounge,

diamond stars winking into existence inside it. Herb was looking at a star field. His mind, however, was

far away across the galaxy, trapped in a tight-fitting metal coffin filled with lukewarm nutrient soup, while

his eyes stared into infrared and the empty drones under his control crept and crawled beneath the cold

remnants of starlight.

“I don’t want that,” Herb said softly. His eyes were filling with tears.

“What makes you think you have a choice?” Johnston asked. “You’re not a child anymore; your father

isn’t going to come along and say, ‘Okay, maybe not this time if you really, really promise not to do it

again.’ We’re dealing with cause and effect here. You do the crime, you do the time. That’s it; you can’t

go back, any more than we can restore the life to this planet that your self-replicating machines have just

spent the last few months destroying.”

“Oh.” Herb couldn’t think of anything else to say. He looked around the lounge of his spaceship and

already it seemed to belong to someone else. He had passed from one world to another. He sat down

heavily on one of the sofas and put his head into his hands.

“Will you tell my father?”

“You will have the opportunity to do that yourself. You will have access to a public comm channel.

That’s a basic right of any intelligent being.”

Johnston continued to manipulate the viewing field. Stars began to move across it. He appeared to be

searching for something. Herb said nothing. He began to run his fingers over the soft white leather of the

sofa, enjoying the sensation of luxury while he still could.

Johnston paused in his search and glanced toward him. “Don’t you want to know how long your

sentence is?”

The thought that a finite sentence made any difference to his current circumstances hadn’t occurred to

Herb. The thought of going to the Oort cloud was too big. Coming back was too remote a possibility, be

it in ten or a hundred years’ time. He just shrugged.

Johnston grinned as he brought the stars’ movement to a halt.

“That’s an unfair question, of course. We don’t know the answer. How long will it take for you to

atone? Only the EA knows. We don’t get that many cases of planetcide—one a year, if that. I’d guess

your sentence would probably be more than your natural lifespan. We’d probably have to take an e-print

of your consciousness.”

“Are you deliberately tormenting me?” asked Herb, a feeble twist of anger gently uncurling in his

stomach. Johnston turned toward him again with an approving smile.

“Good. You do have some spirit, don’t you? No, Herb, I’m not tormenting you. I’m just trying to

impress upon you the seriousness of your predicament.”

There was a silence, and Herb had the first inkling that maybe his fate wasn’t yet decided. He paused,

wondering if he dared hope otherwise.

Eventually he had to speak. “Why?” he asked.

Johnston grinned in response. If Herb hadn’t known better, he would have thought the other man was

pleased with him.

Johnston had finally found what he was looking for. He set the viewing field to full locale. Herb was

floating in interstellar space on a white leather sofa. A star rushed toward his face, growing in size. It

veered to one side just before hitting him and a smaller, darker object swam into view. A planet with the

size, and the apparent intent, of a fist now hung in front of Herb’s nose.

“Take a look at it,” said Johnston. ‘I’ve enabled the tactiles.’

Herb reached for the planet and turned it around in his hand, the rest of the universe spinning around

the room in a dizzying pattern of lights as it maintained the correct orientation with Herb’s viewpoint. The

planet was a grey featureless sphere, like an old ball bearing Herb had once seen in a museum.

“What is it?” he asked, fascinated. As he stared at the object in his hand, the surface of the planet

seemed to ripple slightly.

Herb frowned. “Those ripples must be hundreds of kilometers high. What’s going on?” As he spoke,

an answer occurred to him. For a moment he had thought he was looking at his own planet, the one that

seethed just outside the door of his ship. Then he had noticed the patterns of the star field.

“It’s the remains of another planet, isn’t it? Someone else has done what I’ve done here.”

Johnston’s smile loomed in the blackness of space, his teeth glowing blue in the reflected starlight.

“A few people, actually. Oh, don’t look so disappointed, Herb. I thought you were sorry for what

you’ve done. Look at that planet, though. Look at the way it’s writhing in your hands. Think about the

sheer power behind those machines. Just compare them to yours.”

Tony Ballantyne - Recursion

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