Chapter 9

"Rory ... Rory!" Ling whispered peremptorily in Rory's ear as she gently shook his shoulder.

"W-w-wha... !" Rory began to shout, but was cut off by Ling's hand across his mouth.

Disorientated, Rory opened his eyes and shook his head to try to force wakefulness. Ling was kneeling beside him on the bed.

"What's going on?" He asked still drunk with sleep.

"Shush, it's me; you are in your room and it is about four thirty in the morning. I said I would wake you when everyone had gone to sleep."

Rory had rolled on to his side and started kissing Ling's knee which was by his head. Ling put her head back and kittenishly arched her back, only to sigh and look down again as the kissing ceased and a gentle snore was sounded.

Gently Ling again began the task of waking Rory.

"Ah, yes knee ... Pretty knee; want the rest," Rory was mumbling.

As much as Ling was very much in favour of Rory's current interests and especially where they were likely to lead, she also recognised that he wouldn't be too happy if she did not remind him of the more pressing reason for her waking him and it would best be done before he remembered for himself.

"The knee and the rest are yours to do with what you will, but much as I am loath to remind you there are things to be discussed, which perhaps ought to take precedence."

Rory was remembering now. He jerked, as he moved himself up the bed and levered himself up into a sitting position just in front of the pillows. Ling, who hadn't moved, was wearing her baby-doll nightie and kneeling Japanese fashion between Rory and the wall.

Now that Rory had moved, Ling began to kneel-up prior to changing her position, but Rory put his hand across her knees stopping her; she settled back down.

"Hey leave those knees; I though we had just agreed they were mine to do what I wanted with and I haven't finished with them yet," Rory said smiling as he began to stroke and caress her knees and thighs.

"My apologies," Ling replied with a smile in her voice.

"That's all right, this time," Rory replied less than seriously. His head was clearing now and it was all coming back to him.

"The phone call!" Rory stated with sudden seriousness, his hand now gripping Ling's right thigh just above the knee.

"Yes, the phone call and the rest. Oh and unless it is your intention to mark me, please loosen your hand."

"Sorry Ling," Rory replied quickly and contritely as he let go of her thigh, though still keeping his hand in contact with her skin.

Ling remained quiet and motionless, looking at Rory. Rory quickly realised that she was waiting for him to tell her to begin.

"Okay Ling, perhaps you should tell me what happened yesterday, from your point of view. I am going to assume there were reasons why a certain Ni'ng Wu, didn't feel it necessary to inform her owner exactly what was going on or more importantly what the Divil she was up to."

"Your safety and that of your family was best served by acting the way I did; what other reason could there be?" Ling replied submissively, but with feeling.

"I'm sorry—I know, but I am only human and I went through a lot of anguish and worry, that you could have prevented with a word. It's hard for me to not feel a little peeved at that, even if I know intellectually you must have had sufficient reason," Rory looked pensive and then continued with a smile, "but of course if I find otherwise a certain posterior will definitely be changing colour and female orgasms will be off the menu for the foreseeable future."

Ling swallowed nervously looking deliciously vulnerable and incredibly cute and desirable. Rory felt a frisson of excitement and desire together with a healthy feeling of guilt that he should so enjoy her discomfort when she had not really done anything to deserve it.

"Sorry Ling—I know I am being mean, it's just ... Oh you know what I mean."

"You naturally want to get back at me a little, for what you feel I let happen to you."

"But you don't deserve it, so come on get on with the story."

Ling began her tale. Rory was particularly interested about how she had changed her skin colour and appearance and asked a lot of questions, even going so far as to request a demonstration. He soon lost interest in the facial changes which had quickly degenerated into giggles and gurning, but was quite enjoying the zebra pattern that now covered all of Ling's visible flesh with clear indications that the coverage was in fact total.

"We'll keep that then for the time being, but switch it off when you go back to bed ready for the morning," Rory declared rather insensitively.

Ling nodded feeling no rancour.

"So, back to the story then," Rory encouraged, absently caressing Ling's thigh and wondering if he couldn't perhaps manage a little exercise with his rather sexy zebra, once the serious stuff was done.

Ling continued the story. Rory, of course, had to see her sting.

"Please show me," he asked, "I meant to ask how you gave that fake policeman a truth serum, but what with one thing and another, I clean forgot about it—now I know."

Naturally Ling was happy to show him and extended the stings from both her index fingers to their fullest extent.

"Wow, that's amazing, what are they made of? Keratin like a porcupine's quill?"

"No they are made out of carbon nanotubes, arranged themselves to form a fine ultra-strong tube held in shape by interlocking side pieces, which when strengthened by the natural Van der Waals forces affecting such fullerene molecules are more than sufficient to ensure a strong rigid structure with enough flexibility."

"I just about understand that, I think. But what happens if they break or something?" Rory asked.

"Then I grow new ones—I can grow a new one in less than an hour."

"And if you lost your finger with it?" Rory asked.

"Then I would grow a new finger, but that takes a bit longer, so in the mean time I might decide to grow a sting under my middle finger."

"I'm learning—you see that answer didn't surprise me too much!"

Ling said nothing—she had a tendency not to respond to non sequiturs, though she would usually laugh or groan if appropriate.

Rory recognised that he had stopped the flow of conversation and he had come to know that in these situations Ling would politely and patiently wait far longer than he was comfortable with, before challenging the silence. "Go on!" He said.

Ling finished the story up to the point where she left Aaron outside of Frocks.

Rory wasn't quite sure what to say or ask next; Ling's story seemed so far fetched—like something out of a spy novel—the reality was so much more than he had imagined. He had known from his brief conversation with Ling, when she had returned last night, that things were resolving in their favour and he had imagined all sorts of scenarios that might have allowed that to be the case, but never in his wildest imaginings had he guessed at such an easy or so complete a victory.

Ling was watching him and it was a deeply understanding look, it was as if she had guessed the thoughts going through his mind. She started to speak.

"This is all new to you and I know that things like this are very difficult to understand as a coherent whole. One minute there is no problem, then everything is lost and finally it seems the bad guys have been completely crushed; at no point is there time to stop and examine the whole situation; to look at the players and non-players; to recognise the goals; to identify what it means to win and what it means to fail and perhaps most importantly to decide whether this is our fight and whether this is a battle or the whole war."

Rory listened and it was as if her intensity and carefully chosen words were the key to unlock his brain. In a moment of strange clarity he suddenly found himself seeing the last few days in a completely different light. It was as if his mind had found a new and higher gear. He had a question; he didn't like it, but it had to be asked.

"Ling, to whom do you owe your ultimate loyalty? Is it me or the King?"

"You are my owner so the answer is you; there can be no other."

"But you said I can't give your away, because the King had told you so."

"That is correct."

"So you are still obeying the Kings instructions; how do I know that there aren't lots of other instructions and that you have been ordered not to talk about them? In fact for all I know you might have been told that your only my property for a fixed amount time and that you are not to tell me this. I guess what I am saying is: given your nature and what I don't know, can I trust you?" Rory asked.

"No, not really." Ling answered quietly.

"Are you saying I shouldn't trust you?" Rory asked more fiercely than he intended.

"Not at all; I am saying that with what you know and perhaps more importantly with what you know that you don't know, you are correct not to trust me. What you need to do now is to see what can be done towards establishing trust for me."

"Don't you want me to trust you?"

"Of course I do, but I am only going to earn that trust if I answer you truly." Ling replied with intensity.

"Which brings us back full circle; how do I know you haven't been ordered to lie to me?"

"It's because I want you to trust me that I can't answer that question. You need to work some things out for yourself and to ask me the right questions and that is all I can offer by way of help at this moment."

Rory's brain was still in hyper-drive; he could see what Ling meant by her last answer; any suggestions she gave were subject to the same caveat; they were only helpful if he believed Ling.

"Okay I get that; let me think for a bit." Rory replied.

He started to think about the problem and as he thought he realised that this was his field; this was a problem he was uniquely skilled to solve. He was studying Artificial Intelligence and the application of logic together with concepts of truth and falsehood were very much ideas that he was used to wrestling with.

'Okay, ' he thought to himself, 'what if Ling is lying? Then there has to be a purpose to her lying.' He reasoned that were she lying randomly and without purpose then already in the time he had known her, there would have been signs. Well that only left two other alternatives given the premise that she was lying; firstly that she was acting as a free-agent and lying for her own reasons or secondly that she was lying at the behest of another party. From what Rory knew of Ling so far, he was prepared to discount the first choice; he did not believe that Ling was capable of being a free-agent.

Rory suddenly felt that he had solved part of the problem: Ling must either be telling the truth or lying according to a set of pre-programmed rules, given her by another, almost certainly the King.

Thinking on, he realised that this was in essence a problem soluble by a sort of 'Turing Test' à la Alan Turing's famous paper 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence', in which Turing had proposed that defining thought and intelligence was very difficult, but that it might be more useful to test whether a computer could be programmed to simulate intelligence to the point where an unknowing third-party would not be able to distinguish whether they were talking to a computer or to a human. His problem though analogous was also simpler; what it boiled down to was that if Ling had been essentially programmed to lie regarding certain issues then it was not possible that the programming could be so complete as to allow for all situations, so it had to be general in nature, no matter how specific the core issues were and this meant that it was flawed: clever questioning should be able to force Ling into either a tautologically closed argument (for those of us who are not students of AI or semantics this is one that resolves to: 'It's true because I say it is!') or into a self-evident contradiction. Rory was honest enough, however, to acknowledge the flaw in his solution; namely the obvious question: would his questioning be clever enough and if not would he know it?

All this took but a few minutes and during this time Ling was kneeling motionless watching Rory, but not staring; she was aware of the point at which Rory reached his conclusion, but gave no visible indication of it.

"Ling if I ask you to tell me what the King told you about me, would you tell me everything?" Rory asked, rather proud of himself.

Ling was delighted by the question, she could answer ambiguously without disobeying any orders still in force. "That would depend on how you asked." Ling answered with absolute pedantry.

It was that easy, Rory realised. He had finally seen the obvious; that if Ling were trustworthy and truly his, then she would want to show it; he didn't have to try and catch her out, he just had to create a question that would allow her to show him that she was under other constraints. He hadn't expected to nail it on his first question, but he had reasoned that if he asked enough and she hadn't shown anything then, either there was nothing to show or she was not really his. Well at least he knew now.

"Thanks Ling, now all I have to figure out is what to do next." Rory replied

Rory thought some more and Ling waited.

"Ling as your owner, can I give you an order that I can't cancel?" Rory asked.

Ling wasn't so happy about this question; it was sloppy and she hoped that Rory would recognise it as such. "Of, course: order me to kill someone for instance! But to answer what I think you meant, I am not a computer or some sort of imaginary mind-control victim; If you were to say: 'You must never eat snails again' then except in exceptional circumstances, I would never eat snails again. However, if you then said that the order could not be cancelled then that could only mean by someone other than my owner: I must always obey my owner, save in exceptional circumstances, so any active or future order can always be modified or superseded."

Could it be that simple? Rory wondered. He merely had to give new orders. "Ling if the King gave you an order and told you not to mention it or to admit it's existence to anyone including your owner, you wouldn't be able to tell me about it at the moment would you?"

"No, Rory."

"Ling I order you to discount any existing orders concerning what you can and can't tell me and that as your owner I expect you to answer truthfully and completely regarding all existing and previously existing orders."

"Yes Rory."

"Ling if I ask you now to tell me what the King told you with regard to me would you tell me everything?" Rory asked smiling hopefully.

"Yes," Ling replied with her little half-smile.

"So what did the King say?"

"Not a lot, actually. It wasn't discussed before you came. I don't think the King had decided, himself, what he would do, before he actually did it. If you remember he spoke in Hoytanni just before he told me to accompany you," Rory nodded and Ling continued, "Well all he said was that interesting times were afoot and that he was going to tell one of us to go with you and that the one chosen would belong to you. He then said that it was his order that the girl in question was not to speak of court intrigue or speculate regarding the Hoytanni crown or Hoytanni matters. He then gave the specific edict that you could not dispose of your Ni'ng Wu save at you death. I believe that this was for your own good and to help deal with any situations such as have just been occurring."