Godlike Machines Read Online Free PDF Page B

pajama pocket, now in the trousers. I take it out, the prize folded in a white handkerchief.
    I pass the bundle across the coffee table. “This is for you.”
    Nesha takes it warily. She unwraps the handkerchief and blinks at the little metal box it had contained. She picks it up gently, holds it before her eyes and pinches her fingers around the little handle that sticks out from one side.
    “Turn it.”
    “What?”
    “Turn the handle.”
    She does as I say, gently and hesitantly at first, as if fearful that the handle will snap off in her fingers. The box emits a series of tinkling notes. Because Nesha is turning the handle so slowly, it’s hard to make out the melody.
    “I don’t understand. You came all this way to give me this?”
    “I did.”
    “Then the rumours were right,” Nesha says. “You did go mad after all.”

    Falling inward, the Progress began to pass through another swarm of free-flying obstacles. Like those of Shell 1, the components of Shell 2 were all but invisible to the naked eye-dark as space itself, and only a fraction of a kelvin warmer than the cosmic microwave background. The wireframe display started showing signs of fuzziness, as if the computer was having trouble decoding the radar returns. The objects were larger and had a different shape to the ones in the outer shell—these were more like rounded pebbles or all-enveloping turtle-shells, wide as cities. They were covered in scales or plaques which moved around in a weird, oozing fashion, like jostling continents on a planet with vigorous plate tectonics. Similarly lethal field lines bound them, but this far in the predictive model became a lot less trustworthy.
    No runaway Chinese probe had ever collided with Shell 2, so we had no good idea how brittle the objects were. A second apparition probe operated by the European Space Agency had tried to land and sample one of the Shell 2 obstacles, but without success. That wouldn’t stop Galenka from making her own attempt.
    She picked a target, wove around the field lines and came in close enough to fire the sticky anchors onto one of the oozing platelets. The Progress wound itself in on electric winches until it was close enough to extend its tools and manipulators.
    “Damn camera’s sticking again. And I keep losing antenna lock.”
    “It’s what they pay you for,” I said.
    “Trying to be helpful, Dimitri?”
    “Doing my best.”
    She had her hands in the waldos again. Her eyes were darting from screen to screen. I couldn’t make much sense of the displays myself, having never trained for Progress operations. It looked as if she was playing six or seven weirdly abstract computer games at the same time, manipulating symbols according to arcane and ever-shifting rules. I could only hope that she was just about winning.
    “Cutting head can’t get traction. Whatever that stuff is, it’s harder than diamond. Nothing for the claws to grip, either. I’m going to try the laser.”
    I found myself tensing, as she swung the laser into play.
    How would the Matryoshka respond to our burning a hole in it? With the same cosmic indifference that it had shown when the Chinese robot had rammed it, or when the American probe got in the way of its field lines? Nothing in our experience offered any guidance. Perhaps it had tolerated us until now, and would interpret the laser as the first genuinely hostile action. In which case losing the Progress might be the least of our worries.
    I tensed.
    “Picking up ablation products,” Galenka said, eyeing the trembling registers of a gas chromatograph readout. “Laser’s cutting into something , whatever it is. Lots of carbon. Some noble gases and metals: iron, vanadium, some other stuff I’m not too sure about right now. Let’s see if I can cut away a sample.”
    The laser etched a circle into the surface of the platelet. With the beam kept at an angle to the surface, it was eventually possible to isolate a cone-shaped piece of the material.