His Majesty's Starship (16 page)

“Of course,” Adrian said, “all you know so far is that the translator thinks it’s got a translation.” The others looked at him. “I mean,” he said, a bit defensively, “you can’t test it against itself, can you?”

“You’re right,” said Peter. He squared his shoulders and walked over to the nearest Rustie.

*

The transporter, a converted grain freighter capable of Mach 5, was parked on the ridge up above, overlooking a deep quarry that had been visible from miles away. Gilmore, not usually given to vertigo, peeped warily over the edge. The Rusties had told them the pit was as deep as the diamond mines at Kimberley in South Africa. Gilmore had never been to Kimberley so the statistic was meaningless, but it was big. He held up his aide to record an image of the place for Joel’s benefit, and told it to add a scale so the boy would get an idea of the size too.

The tour of the Roving was only a couple of hours old and less than a quarter of the way around the globe from Capital, zigzagging their way across the main continent from site to site. Now they were deep in the interior, just on the eastern edge of the central desert. It was a relief to be out of the transporter; no doubt it was airworthy enough but the Rusties’ method of flying it was to point it up at about 45o and put on the afterburners, taking an almost ballistic trajectory to their next destination. They were packing in as much of their world as they could into a single day.

The delegates were standing nearby, engaged in conversation with Iron Run and some of the other Rusties. The odd phrase drifted over:

“-naturally, an equitable exploitation of this world’s natural resources is foremost on our minds-”

“-the Confederation is unparalleled on Earth for its industrial base and its care for the natural environment-”

Blah, blah, blah.

Caterpillar tracked trucks were climbing laboriously up the switchbacked road that led up from the depths of the pit. Up close they were bulky and looming but they looked small as beetles below. Gilmore watched as one made it to the edge and the flat ground with a sigh of relief from its gears. It surely couldn’t be as efficient as an antigravity device, so why didn’t the Rusties use one? Gilmore ran through the possible limiting factors in his mind and hit on size. If an a-grav generator, or whatever it was, were the same size as a truck ...

“A call from Lieutenant Kirton,” said his aide. Gilmore took it.

“Gilmore.”

Peter Kirton seemed slightly dazed, though still with a look of triumph. “Sir, you remember the translation program the prince asked me to do?”

“I remember.”

“Well, it ... it works! Sir, it can translate practically anything! I’ve used it on some of the Rustie bystanders here and ... well, I think for the first time ever I can read a Rustie expression. Very, very surprised.”

Gilmore blinked. “Well done,” he said. “That’s amazing.”

“Not half, sir. It shouldn’t work!”

Kirton went into the details of why it shouldn’t work: not enough words in the sample data, and it had all come together far too quickly. Gilmore listened in silence.

“What now?” he said at the end.

“I’ll go through it very carefully, sir. But meanwhile I think the prince should know, sir, but I thought I should go through you.” Kirton twitched as though he had just been nudged from off-camera. “That is, Commander Dereshev felt I should, sir.”

“Very good,” Gilmore said. He glanced up over at the delegates. “The prince is busy right now, but I’ll get him to call you when he’s free.”

The chance didn’t come until the transporter was airborne again and they could get out of their seats. The prince looked annoyed.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” he snapped, and moved off to one corner of the lounge that was the transporter’s main cabin. Gilmore shrugged and watched him take out his aide. He spoke a few words into it, listened, spoke again, listened-

-and his face turned to thunder. He looked around, then strode towards the washroom at the rear of the cabin. Gilmore saw his expression and decided that, if the prince was talking to one of his crew with a face like that, it was his duty to get involved.

In the washroom the prince was raging. “You ... you incompetent! You fool, Kirton! By God, you cretin, I’ll have your stripes for this, you bungling, stupid-”

Gilmore snatched the aide from the prince’s hand. “That’s all, Lieutenant,” he said, and broke contact.

The prince’s face turned a deeper shade of red. “Stay out of this, Gilmore.”

“How dare you talk to one of my crew like that?” Gilmore said sharply. “They are service, you are a civilian and you will damn well keep your temper to yourself.”

A sneer spread over the prince’s face. “I said, stay out of this. You’re captain of your toy ship but I’m-”

“-the son of the man who appointed me,” Gilmore said. He spoke clearly and slowly, to give the prince the benefit of every word. “You may have his ear, but let me remind you of one or two things. I was appointed directly by him. Not by Parliament, not by the Admiralty, but by the king. I was given full authority in the running of
Ark Royal
and I don’t recall you being given any. You have no rank or position within the Royal Space Fleet, prince, and your threats don’t amount to anything.”

“I have the rank of Rear Admiral in the Fleet, Commander Gilmore.” The prince’s grin was malicious.

“Then your behaviour is unbecoming your rank,” Gilmore said. “Good officers, sir, do not scream and swear at subordinates, as you’d know if you’d actually earned that rank or ever passed an exam in your life.”

The prince was still breathing heavily and he held a trembling finger out to Gilmore. “I knew appointing you was a mistake, Gilmore. You’re actually taking this seriously, aren’t you? You think you’re pretty grand. No, I’m the senior on this mission and your blockhead of a software officer-”

“-has just successfully produced the first human translation of the Rustie language. We’re talking Nobel prizes here, prince. We’re talking guaranteed tenure in any AI research department the man chooses. We’re talking the most amazing prestige for the Fleet and for UK-1. Do you have a problem with that?”

“He tried it on the Rusties!” the prince bellowed.

“Well, of course he did,” Gilmore said, actually taken aback for the first time. “He couldn’t trust the test set on its own. He had to compare it. That’s basic science, prince. Lieutenant Kirton acted on his own initiative and I back him all the way. My report to the king will endorse everything the lieutenant has done.”

James shook his head. “You don’t understand, Gilmore, you ass. He-”

“What’s the problem, anyway?” Gilmore said. “Presumably you were-” He broke off as it finally dawned on him, followed by a wave of contempt. “Oh, of course. I see. He stole your thunder, didn’t he? You wanted to be the first! You wanted to be the one who would stroll over to Iron Run and address him in his own language. What a coup for us all!”

“Now you’re getting the picture, Gilmore,” the prince said.

Gilmore shrugged. “So? Lieutenant Kirton is a UK citizen. He was acting on your orders, with data supplied by you, and his program belongs to the Fleet. And Iron Run hasn’t heard of it yet, has he?” He jerked a thumb at the bulkhead, to indicate the rest of the transporter. “As far as everyone in there’s concerned, you’ll be the first. Walk out of here with a broad smile on your face, as though everything’s dandy, go up to Iron Run and say whatever clever phrase you want to go down in the history books.” He studied the prince’s stony expression. “Unless you want a potential triumph ruined by a little man’s petty tantrum,” he added.

The prince held out his hand silently for his aide and Gilmore gave it back. “Get me Kirton,” James said. A pause, then Kirton’s voice spoke.

“Kirton?” He managed to make the statement of his name a question: the aide would have told him who was calling.

“I owe you an apology, Lieutenant,” the prince said, never taking his gaze off Gilmore. He put as much inflection into his statement as if he had been stating that water is wet.

“Ah ... very good, sir,” Kirton said.

“I commend you on your successful program design.”

“Ah, actually sir, I-”

“I’d be grateful if you’d download a copy to my aide. Now.”

“Very good, sir,” Kirton said again. “Coming through.” A pause of a couple of seconds. “You have it, sir. Filename ‘polyglot’, password whatever you choose.”

“Thank you. Where is the original?”

“On the ship, sir.”

“Secure it and delete your own copy from your aide. This is a very valuable asset. Out,” said the prince. He flipped the aide shut without waiting for a reply. “Happy, Captain?”

Gilmore stood aside without answering and indicated that the prince should precede him out of the room. To join the others, to speak to Iron Run and to go down in history, however inaccurately, as the first human to speak to the First Breed through a human-made translator.

But if Kirton wasn’t happy with Polyglot’s suddenly perfect performance then Gilmore wasn’t happy either, and he was going to get to the bottom of it.

- 13 -

19-20 May 2149

“That is one pissed off Prince,” said Adrian thoughtfully. Peter was still pale.

“Do ... do you think he meant it?” Peter said. “About my career-”

The aide spoke. “Call from-” Peter tensed “-Captain Gilmore.”

“Oh.” Peter sighed in relief and took the call. “Yes, sir?”

Gilmore’s expression was cold. “I’m sorry about that, Lieutenant. Ignore his threats – he can’t touch you, I’ll make sure of that. I’m commending you in my report.”

“Thank you, sir. But there’s still-”

“I know,” Gilmore said. “What do you suggest?”

Peter realised, with relief, that Gilmore believed him. Peter was the software expert and in that area the captain was willing to be guided by his opinion alone.

“I’ll pursue my own investigations, sir,” he said. “I’ll report directly to you, if I may.”

“Agreed. Out.”

Peter looked up at the others. Hannah looked thoughtful, Samad and Adrian puzzled. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said, his mind already filling up with images of
Ark Royal
’s systems and the tests he was going to have to run. “I’m going back to the Dome.”

*

There was silence in the lounge of the transporter. Fifty humans and several Rusties were looking at the tableau made by the prince, aide in hand, and Iron Run, standing facing him. Gilmore saw what Peter had meant by being able to read Rustie surprise.

After a long pause, Iron Run spoke to his mouthtalker.

“Iron Run congratulates you,” the other Rustie said. “It enquires how you achieved this.”

Prince James was basking in the respect of the Rusties and the envy of the other humans. “Data for this program, Polyglot, was compiled from recordings of the natural speech of the First Breed delegation to Earth, and their own translations,” he said. “The program was prepared by Lieutenant Peter Kirton, the software officer on the UK’s ship
Ark Royal
. Captain Gilmore’s ship.”

The prince indicated Gilmore but only the Rusties looked over at him. The other humans were looking at the aide and, one by one, realising just how great a coup the prince had just pulled. As well as kudos for the UK’s software talent, whoever had Polyglot would be able to conduct their own negotiations with the Rusties – regardless of who won this bid.

“Captain Gilmore.” As usual, Arm Wild was beside him. “Your upper limbs are crossed, one corner of your mouth is inclined slightly upwards and your head is in motion from side to side around your vertical axis. Forgive me, but this is a stance I have learned to equate with amused disbelief in your species.”

Gilmore quickly uncrossed his arms and straightened up. “If you want to learn human body language,” he said, “Look at that lot.”

“What will I see?”

“Naked greed.”

“How interesting.”

The prince’s cabal were gathered together, awaiting a moment to be alone with their colleague. When he and Iron Run had finally finished speaking, the prince turned away and they intercepted him before any of the other humans had a chance. James had his own arms folded and he held his head high: every now and then he would nod or shake his head or say something brief.

The tables had suddenly turned. Prince James had been the poor man of that little clique, his membership based on pure expedience and his father’s clout back home. Even
Ark Royal
’s armaments were a minimal contribution to what the other ships could offer. But now ... now the others were coming cap in hand to him, and he could name his price.

*

“Caution,” said the aide. “The limited memory capacity of this unit will greatly increase the time taken for your program to execute.”

Sitting in his cramped little room in the Dome, Peter Kirton thought wistfully of the vistas of memory space up on the ship. “Execute,” he said.

“Complying.”

A long range diagnostic of the entire ship’s systems, conducted through an aide on a signal that bounced around the Roving’s communication network ... it was going to take hours.

On the way back to the Dome, he had had time to think. Polyglot’s output was too perfect and three possible reasons came to mind: someone had substituted the program’s output for their own; someone had rewritten the neural net that generated it; or someone had substituted the input data that the neural net filtered.

All seemed equally unlikely and it came perilously close to being just a problem to be solved out of intellectual curiosity, but for one thing: Peter Kirton was convinced that some entity had got into
Ark Royal
’s net undetected and tampered with his program, and that made it personal. He would leave the whys and wherefores until later: the who was most important now.

But entities capable of interfering seamlessly with other people’s programs didn’t just appear out of nowhere. They had to know precisely what they were doing, which meant being familiar with the style of the person who had written the program in the first place, and they also had to be in situ. Peter could only think of one entity fitting this description.