“Turing?”
“An old cybertech term. Means you can carry out a conversation with them and not know they’re machines. Anyway, I’ve worked with Bolos for eight years now, and I’ve had the opportunity to converse with a number of them. A sharp ear can pinpoint the mark of an unknown Bolo simply by listening to the way it parses its sentences. Lower marks tend to sound a bit bloodthirsty and narrow-minded, and they don’t think about anything outside very narrow software constraints. Higher marks sound like extremely intelligent humans and can talk about damned near anything.”
“Ah. And you think your two friends out there are more intelligent than they should be.”
“In a nutshell, yeah. Language, specifically the ability to carry on an extended conversation about a variety of topics, reflects general intelligence. That’s exactly what I’m thinking. And I’m also wondering . . . why?”
“Why what?”
“The colonel is right. Those two Bolos out there are only machines. They’re very, very smart machines, but they’re smart because someone wrote some extraordinarily complex AI programs for them, which are processed through psychotronic circuitry designed to display a certain level of flexibility, speed, and even, to a limited degree, self-awareness. They can’t step outside the parameters of their own programming, can’t think outside of the box.
“So how can they possibly be thinking like Mark XXXs?”
“Perhaps they have found a way to reprogram themselves.”
“They don’t have that capability. Self-programming . . . that would mean they could step outside the box, somehow, and decide for themselves what they were going to do, exactly what people have been trying to prevent in Bolos ever since the things were invented.”
“The one, `Hank,’ keeps refusing your order to fire his Hellbore.”
“Yeah. I know. And that’s part of what bothers me. He has a certain level of tactical discretion, sure. And when they slip over into full Combat Reflex Mode, they’ll be entirely on their own. But I’ve never heard a Mark XXIV tell me that it couldn’t obey an order to fire because it might cause civilian casualties.”
“He sounds . . . human.”
“Yeah . . .”
“You said earlier that a Bolo cannot step outside of its box, cannot reprogram itself. I am thinking, my friend, that most humans are no better. We are what Allah and our pasts decree we are, and few of us can rise beyond that.”
Martin thought of Lang. “I’m beginning to think you’re right.”
The two Bolos were exchanging a barrage of information now over their QDCs, and Martin wondered what they were talking about.
* * *
In the Ad Dukhan Valley, twenty kilometers to the south, Andrew is engaging an Enemy air and ground assault. Sharing a real-time link via our Quantum Determinacy Communications suites, I watch, I feel as he maneuvers himself into a kilometer-wide pool of boiling water, the source of the hot-water Dukhan River and the “smoke” of “Smoke Valley.”
Concealed both optically and thermally, he is in an ideal position to ambush the Enemy as his crawlers reach the top of the pass. Fortunately, the refugee traffic through the Dukhan Valley has tapered off to nothing, but he holds fire from his main turret weapon, depending instead on a high-velocity fusillade from all eighteen ion-bolt infinite repeaters and tactical barrages of anti-armor missiles. For forty flame-shot seconds, the rock-locked valley shudders and trembles to the thunder of his volleys. Four Enemy crawlers are destroyed as they attempt to slip over the ridge crest and rush him. The others mill in a confused huddle for a moment, then withdraw.
I can sense his excitement. “We can charge them and finish them now!”
“It would be suicide,” I tell him. “Besides, our orders are to hold these passes at all costs. If the Enemy manages to slip through behind us, the evacuation will be compromised.”
“Then we will have to make sure none get past us.”
“In combat, nothing is sure. Marlborough knew that.”
“Marlborough also knew it was possible to win all of the battles and lose the war.”
I take his point. The War of the Spanish Succession was little more than an extraordinary string of victories for Marlborough, until political disgrace ended his career seven years after his brilliant victory at Blenheim. In the end, France kept her prewar boundaries and got much of what she wanted, even though her military reputation had been blackened by her poor showing on the battlefield. History is filled with such reverses . . . Napoleon in Russia, America in Vietnam, Argentina in Brazil, the Berrengeri Legions on Trallenca IV . . . victories won on the battlefield with blood, then squandered or given away by the bureaucrats at the conference table.
I note that Concordiat transports are preparing for evacuation and wonder how many of the population will be able to escape. It seems a foregone conclusion that the Enemy will soon overwhelm our positions and surge through the passes to attack the Command Center, the colonial capital at Izra’ilbalad, and the spaceport.
I note transatmospheric strike craft lifting from the flame-ravaged cities to the east and report the sighting and target lock to the Command Center. Orders return seconds later, “Do not, repeat, do not target enemy spacecraft.”
I wonder why we are here, placed where we cannot fight, deprived of our best weapons, fit for nothing save destruction. . . .
* * *
“If we start killing their transports,” Colonel Lang bellowed, “they start killing ours! And then we’re dead!”
“We’re also hobbling our one ace in the hole,” Martin replied. “Damn it, Colonel! Unleash the Bolos!”
“You are relieved, Lieutenant. Get the hell out of my command center.”
“Colonel!” Governor Khalid said. “You are here under my jurisdiction. I think you should—”
“Your jurisdiction, Governor. My command. You are scarcely qualified to lead a battle, and my men would not obey your orders. Now . . . I must ask both of you to leave the center.”
“Sir, with respect,” Martin said, “you’ll still need me to interface with Hank and Andrew. They might not accept your orders if they don’t recognize your voice.” It was a bluff, and a thin one, but he needed to stay, needed to at least try to stay in the loop with his two fourteen-thousand-ton charges.
“Colonel Lang!” a panicked voice said over one of the active speaker circuits. “Banner, at the spaceport! We have a mob breaking through the north perimeter fence!”
“Damn it to hell.” Lang hesitated, visibly swaying, his face dark with anger. “Okay, Martin. Stay. Make them stay. But one more seditious remark out of you and you’ll spend the next ten years in the stockade!”
“Yes, sir.”
His hands were shaking as he turned back to the Bolo console once again.
“He intends to abandon the Bolos, doesn’t he?” Khalid said softly.
“Of course. Those Bolo transports will carry a thousand people apiece.”
“So he will simply use them to buy time, to organize an evacuation?
“I think that’s the idea. But I don’t think he’s going to have the time.”
“I am not leaving my homeworld,” Khalid said.
“I’m not leaving either,” Martin told him, voicing the decision he had only just that moment made. “Not if it means leaving them out there.”
* * *
Andrew has beaten back the initial attack down the Ad Dukhan Valley. His use of infinite repeaters only slowed the advance of the enemy crawlers, but laser-guided cluster-munitions packages loaded with anti-armor missiles have proven to be effective.
I note that preparations are well under way for evacuation from Izra’ilbalad. Our sacrifice here, evidently, is designed to give Headquarters time to complete the evacuation. Andrew and I agree that we must do everything in our power to blunt the Enemy’s thrusts across the mountains, to buy as much time for the Consortium facility as possible.
I continue to track the approach of five transatmospheric strike craft wheeling in low across the mountains. Headquarters’ orders to hold my fire baffles me. The strike craft are fast, highly maneuverable, and grav-resist powered, similar to the Valkyrie XY-3000 Interceptor class. Low-grade gamma leakage suggests that they either are powered by small fission power plants or are carrying nuclear munitions.
Suddenly, they break south. They are targeting Andrew.
“Andrew!” I call over the QDC channel.
“I see them!” he replies, before I can get my warning out. “Tracking! They’ve launched!”
They have also vanished off my sensor net, my line of sight blocked by the southern wall of the valley I occupy. But I can watch them through Andrew’s eyes and through several orbiting military satellites, as each of five incoming TAS aircraft loose four missiles at nearly point-blank range.
“Engaging targets!” Andrew cries. He is climbing from the hot springs lake, hull steaming, seeking greater maneuverability as the attackers swoop in low across the northern wall of the Smoke Valley. Under Battle Reflex Mode, he can assign his own priorities to targets . . . and disregard the earlier no-fire order from Headquarters.