Science Fiction: The Year's Best (2006 Edition). Аластер Рейнольдс

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СКАЧАТЬ his personality structure. I should also note that we aren’t the only combatants who are testing their limits. Our pursuers are driving themselves, too. As you yourself have advised me.”

      Sabor turned his attention to the material he had downloaded from the databanks. Now that they were being pursued on the ground, he could assume their pursuers knew where they were. He could transmit and receive without worrying about security. He could turn away from all the stresses and tensions of their situation—including the tensions Purvali was creating—and lose himself in profit projections, trading opportunities, brilliant-but-unworkable ideas for new projects, gossip that might tell him something about the character of possible customers, and all the other details that made his working life so endlessly fascinating. He had never understood people who thought “getting and spending” was an empty way to fill your days. The numbers and facts in his databanks absorbed him in the same way the interactions of individuals fascinated dramatists and the intricacies of natural systems fascinated ecologists.

      He could probably claim, in fact, that he had a better understanding of human relationships than most of the creative minds who had tried to depict them. A dramatist’s errors might be overlooked by some segments of the audience. His cost him real purchasing power.

      He kept on working after they stopped for the next fueling period. He didn’t call up Choy’s displays until the halt had reached the five minute point. This time Choy deliberately left one flank wide open. Choy’s opposite number committed his forces to an all out attack on that side and Choy responded with a precisely timed counterattack. Three of Choy’s remaining cats threw themselves into a melee in which they were hopelessly outnumbered. Choy lost one cat but he achieved his immediate objective. The widemounts placidly completed a full fifteen minute feeding.

      “Quite good, Choy,” Sabor said. “You had that timed to the second.”

      He waited for a nag from Purvali but she apparently decided to fume in silence.

      Choy now had six cats left. He grouped four in a loose formation in the center the next time they stopped. The other two were positioned further out, one on each flank.

      The opposition came in fast, in an attack that seemed to be spread across Choy’s entire front. Then, just when Sabor thought they were committed to a straightforward linear assault, they behaved like the kind of highly trained, purpose-shaped soldiers they were. Four hardbodies and four cats coalesced into a compact mass and started a wide swing around Choy’s right flank.

      Choy responded by detaching two cats from his central formation. They joined forces with the cat he had placed on the right flank and the three animals raced toward an intersection with the assault party.

      “I need a decision,” Choy said. “I can put up a strong fight when they make contact, gain us three or four extra minutes of feeding time, and probably lose one cat. Or I can put up a weak fight, hold them off just long enough for us to get moving, and probably save all the cats.”

      Sabor scowled. The widemounts had accumulated about eight minutes of browsing time.

      “Recommendation?” Sabor said.

      “I can’t make any,” Choy said.

      “Light resistance.”

      It was a random decision. He said the first thing that popped into his head and hoped he could live with it. Choy started the widemounts moving, Choy’s cats engaged in a brief flurry of action—and a shot from a hardbody reduced one of the cats to a set of rigid, totally paralyzed muscles. They had sacrificed several minutes of feeding time and lost a cat, too.

      “Not my most brilliant decision,” Sabor said.

      “I’m sorry,” Choy said. “I thought I could save the cats.”

      “You’re working with percentages, Choy. You make your bet and accept the results.”

      He returned his primary focus to the databanks but it had become a pointless exercise. Information flowed across his brain like water washing across a stone floor. Nothing penetrated.

      They were down to five cats. The next feeding period could be the last. Choy might be able to stave off a breakthrough one more time but it was a fifty-fifty proposition—at best.

      A blinking prompt advised him Purvali’s carrier had come open. He ordered it closed and received an immediate not responding.

      “You seem to have a problem with your carrier, Purvali.”

      “You have two options, Sabor. You can give Choy permission to integrate me into his tactical schemes or you can make me fight on my own.”

      “Please remove the pillow or whatever it is you’re using to jam your carrier open. I’ve already given you my decision.”

      “And how are you going to stop me? I can drop off this animal and be lost in the trees before you or Choy can touch the ground.”

      He could give her an order, of course. But would she obey it? He asked her designers for a concubine, not a robot. He had her loyalty and her devotion. For machine-like obedience he would have to console himself with the companionship of machines.

      “Don’t do this to me, Purvali. Please.”

      “You’re rolling the dice, Sabor. That isn’t good enough. Not when your survival is at stake.”

      “I have been running simulations,” Choy said. “I have a suggestion you may find worthy of consideration, Sabor.”

      “I would be a fool if I didn’t consider your suggestions, Choy.”

      “The simulations indicate we could probably lethal two or three of their cats at the next rest stop if I employed Purvali as a surprise ambusher. The risk to her would be minimal. She would only have to expose herself for a few seconds—just long enough to fire at their cats when I told her to.”

      “Look at the simulations,” Purvali said. “Just look at the simulations.”

      “Show me the simulations, Choy.”

      A summary popped onto Sabor’s display. Choy’s program had run five hundred simulations. They had killed one cat in twenty-seven percent of the simulations, two in fifty-four percent, three in thirteen percent, and none in six percent. There had been no simulation in which Purvali had been captured or injured.

      The display zipped through a random selection of quick-play runs that included samples with all four outcomes. Choy had conscientiously included all the unknowns he and the program would have to work with during a real attack. There would be important blanks, for example, in Choy’s knowledge of the terrain. He wouldn’t know the location of every tree trunk and the sight lines it would interrupt.

      “An impartial observer might note that you’ve left out one important factor,” Sabor said. “You’re assuming Purvali will obey your orders with scrupulous precision. If you included the possibility she might dally for a few seconds before she retreated—in the hope that she might be able to kill two of their cats instead of just one, for example—the outcomes of some of those simulations might have been less acceptable.”

      “You are running out of time,” Purvali said. “You’d be running out of time even if Possessor Avaming called you right now and told you he’s kept his word. How long will it be before Possessor Makajida СКАЧАТЬ