In which Inki sleeps.
Inki’s attitude reminds me of another SF series I’ve been reading lately, which features a planet where slavery has been practiced for many generations, and the slaves have their own secret culture and language, unknown to their masters. In the language of the slaves, the word for “death” and the word for “freedom” are the same.
There’s a parallel between this section and the one earlier where Tolly went off to a sleep that he didn’t expect to wake from, although the reasons are somewhat different, as are Tocohl’s reasons for letting her captive live. It doesn’t appear to be the Ethics module that’s the hold-up this time.
One wonders just how human-like an intelligence Tocohl is; if she were a biological organism, there would be a fairly obvious interpretation available for the recent behavioural lapses that are bothering her.
Speaking of parallels with the Admiral/Tolly situation, there was a recent discussion between Tolly and the Admiral where Tolly talks about the effects of working as a team, and how this creates emotional bonds between the team members which last beyond the teamwork. He is explicit that this also applies to machine intelligences, citing it as an explanation for the Admiral’s determination to save Haz.
Yes, good point.