Destination: Void: Prequel to the Pandora Sequence by Frank Herbert Page A

“We’ve only one thing that functions smoothly and beautifully the way it should—our computer. Everything else works as though it’d been designed and built by six left-handed apes.”
    “Bickel thinks this was all deliberate,” Timberlake said.
    Prudence caught herself in an involuntary glance at Flattery, forced her attention away from Bickel and onto Timberlake. This is far too early for Bickel to suspect, she thought.
    Timberlake avoided her eyes. He looked like a small boy who’d been caught stealing jam.
    Flattery broke the silence. “Deliberate?’ he asked.
    “Yeah,” Timberlake said. “He thinks the other six ships had the same kind of failure—something rotten with the OMCs.”
    Bickel’s far more alert and suspicious than anyone suspected, Prudence thought. Raj or I will have to side with him; there’s no other way to keep control of the situation.
    “Why … the OMCs?” Flattery asked.
    “Let’s not tiptoe around it,” Bickel said. “The thing’s obvious. What feature of these ships is never mentioned in the stress analyses? What feature do we assume is proof against failure?”
    “Surely not the OMCs,” Flattery said. He tried to hold his voice to a bantering level, failed, and thought: God help us. Bickel’s seen through the sham far too soon.
    “Certainly the OMCs,” Bickel said. “And they gave us three of the damn things! One in service and two for backup. Never a hint that an OMC could fail, yet we had three on the Tin Egg!”
    “Why?” Prudence asked.
    “To make damn sure we got beyond the point of no return before we got the cold-turkey treatment,” Bickel said.
    I guess I’m elected, Prudence thought. She said: “More of Project’s goddamn maneuvering! Sure, it’d be right in character.”
    Flattery shot a startled look at her, returned his attention to the big board before Bickel noticed.
    “Cold turkey,” Bickel said. “This ship’s one elaborate simulation device with a single purpose—and my guess is the others were the same.”
    “Why?” Flattery demanded. “Why would they do such a thing?”
    “Can’t you see it?” Bickel asked. “Don’t you recognize the purpose? It casts its shadow over everything around us. It’s the only thing that makes any sense out of this charade. The secrecy, the mystery, the maneuvering—everything’s calculated to put us on a greased slide into a very special ocean. It’s not just cold turkey, it’s sink or swim. And the only way we can swim is to develop an artificial consciousness.”
    “Then why such an elaborate sham?” Flattery asked. “Why all the colonists, for example?”
    “Why not the colonists?” Bickel countered. “Ready replacements for any members of the crew slaughtered on the way. Another arrow in the quiver—just in case we do get over the hump to a habitable planet where we can plant the seed of humankind. And … maybe there’s another reason.”
    “What?” Prudence demanded.
    “I can’t say just yet,” Bickel said. “It’s just a hunch … and there’s something a hell of a lot more important we have to consider—the destructive potential of this project.”
    “You’d better explain that,” Flattery said, but he could feel in the dryness of his throat and mouth that Bickel already had seen through to the horror element of Project Consciousness.
    “Let’s not kid ourselves,” Bickel said. “If we really solve this, the whatever-you-call-it we develop could be a kind of ultimate threat to humankind—a rogue, Frankenstein’s monster, cold intelligence without warm emotions, an angry horror.” He shrugged. “Once there was an island in Puget Sound; you all know about it. What happened? Did they solve it?”
    “So we install inhibitions, fail-safe features,” Prudence said.
    “How?” Bickel asked. “Can we develop this consciousness without giving it free will? Maybe that was the original problem with our Creator—giving us consciousness without permitting us to turn