Starship Doi

by Alex Deva

  "See anything?"

  "Nothing. I mean, there's light down here, but nothing much to see."

  "We should be able to see him, too," said Doina. "Let's get back to One."

  "I heard that," Aram said.

  Mark and Doina went back to the starship's designated command and control room. It had that lower grav that the girl preferred, but Mark was used to it by then. She produced a range of glyphs, gently floating in the air in front of her, and picked one. A half-size projection of Aram's upper torso immediately appeared.

  "Oh. Hi," he said, a little startled, looking slightly downwards.

  "You can see us too?"

  "Yeah, you're right above my knees. I can see your heads... wait... yeah, I can zoom in and out. I can see all of One now. This is really cool!" he said, excitedly.

  After a few seconds of having fun with his comm hologram, he asked:

  "Hey Doi, where are the commands on this thing? How do I tell it what to do? Come to think of it, are you sure it can fly? This isn't the ship's, I don't know, food store or something?"

  "You have to tell it what you want."

  "I have to tell it?! How the hell do I know what I want?! I'm from year..."

  "Yeah, yeah, you're old, I know," she said, smiling at him. "But remember that Doi wasn't made for humans in particular. It was made to adapt to anybody."

  Aram looked around him, drew a big breath, then said:

  "OK. Give me a moment."

  Then, the image went away.

  "Doi?" said Mark with alarm.

  "He's fine," she said. "I can hear his heart."

  "You what?!"

  "He's fine," she repeated.

  The Brit opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  She switched to an outside view of the starship's airlock cylinder, seen slightly from underneath. A few minutes had passed since Aram had been in contact. Mark was pacing around the projection, trying not to get worried.

  They were parked about a million kilometres above the star system plane, away from Earth's orbit around the Sun. They'd ended up there after Mark had asked for a "quiet place" to investigate their newly discovered piece of inventory. He felt confident that the Moon War would not reach them at that distance.

  "Look," said Doina, as if feeling what was about to happen -- which she probably was.

  Slowly, a very thin slice of the airlock cylinder lowered itself into space. It was a razor thin disc, but as it distanced itself from the starship, millimetre by millimetre, they could see that its width increased towards a central bump. Its bottom was completely flat, but the gentle curves on the top side reminded Mark of pictures he'd seen as a young boy.

  "It looks like a UFO," he said, between amazement and amusement.

  "A what?" asked Doina.

  "Unidentified Flying Object. People sometimes saw them in the sky and thought aliens were visiting."

  "And why does it look like one?"

  "People also called them 'flying saucers'".

  "Really?" The girl was genuinely surprised. "So you've seen ships like this before?"

  "Not me," he said.

  "Well. This one's not unidentified."

  "Yeah. This one's just FO."

  Then, Aram's voice came back.

  "Effo," he said. "I like that."

  "How's it going in there?" asked Mark, relieved to hear him again.

  "I'll tell you when I get back."

  "What? Why? From where?"

  Aram said nothing.

  "Aram, can you hear me?"

  "Yeah, I can. I'm clear of Doi, all's good."

  "We know, we can see."

  "Hold on then; I think I'm about to do something interesting."

  Two fissures appeared in the middle of the small, disc-shaped ship. They started close to the central bump which housed the pilot, and continued, symmetrically, all the way to its edge. They were curved and, for a moment, inexplicable, until they became explained.

  The sides of the ship began to roll upwards.

  Where the ship had appeared to be a perfectly rigid disc, its sides now curled slowly upwards, along the newly created fissures, the left one wrapping around the right one, creating a protective tunnel above the cockpit.

  The part of the disc that now appeared to be the back remained in place -- a wide, gently curved tail, that was still razor-sharp at the rear edge. But the central bump was now covered by the rolled sides, giving the vessel an amazing, sleek shape.

  "Whoa," said Mark. "That is really cool."

  "Yeah, I had no idea," said Doina too, also impressed.

  "What's it like in there, Aram?"

  "I think this is the long-distance configuration," came the answer. "How does it look from the outside?"

  "Like you wouldn't believe, mate."

  "Yeah. I'm sure it does. Race you?"

  "You what?!"

  "Come on. We gotta see what this thing can do."

  Mark looked at Doina, who smiled and shrugged.

  "A few minutes ago you didn't even know how to turn it on, now you want a race?"

  "Oh, I've turned it on, alright."

  "How are you controlling it?"

  There was a small pause.

  "Like the crate, mostly," came the answer. "It's the only way I knew, really. I got a kind of command model in here. And I really can't wait to see how it works."

  "Careful, now. We don't know if you'll feel the acceleration or not. Don't push it too hard. Don't wanna find you five light-years away turned into atom-sized pulp."

  "Thanks for that thought," replied Aram. "Yeah, I'll start small."

  "OK. You really want to call it Effo?"

  "Why not?"

  "FO can come from other words too, you know."

  "So, what are you thinking? 'Fuckin' Otter'?"

  Mark laughed.

  "Fine, Effo. You are cleared for a cautious test drive, and I emphasise cautious."

  There was silence.

  "What am I supposed to say to confirm? Yes?"

  Mark laughed again.

  "Well, you could say 'Roger'."

  "Roger? Isn't that a name? Who came up with that?"

  "I... erm, that's actually a good question. I think it's how they used to call the letter R, which stood for 'received'. I think."

  "Why not just say 'received' then?"

  "You wanna fly that thing or what?"

  "Roger."

  And then, after a second:

  "This is Effo, departing."

  The test ride went very well indeed. Aram and his Effo accelerated slowly, away from the Sun, and Aram confirmed he was feeling no g-forces at all, only happiness and elation. Mark wanted to call it a day and suggest that he come back in, but in the end he didn't have the heart. They did race, eventually; they picked the asteroid belt as a target, and Effo achieved the considerable speed of over two hundred and eighty kilometres per second. Doi kept up effortlessly, but the girl took care to always remain at a safe distance behind Aram, who was rolling and weaving and bobbing like a crazed space sparrow, yelling like a hyperactive kid in a toy store.

  When he arrived at the asteroid field, he proceeded to carelessly use them as moving obstacles, barely clearing them on ever more daring flight trajectories, that had Mark constantly cringing.

  And then, he simply landed on one.

  "Yeah, but look how happy he is," said the girl.

  "I've been meaning to ask you this, Doi. Do you have any idea how it is that Effo can talk to us? Do we have radio, after all?"

  She concentrated and looked around her, as she did whenever he was asking her a complicated question about the starship, with an answer she either didn't have, or wasn't quite sure how to put into words.

  "I don't think it's radio, not the way you described it. To talk to Effo, Doi is making very very tiny changes in the stuff around us, that gives us all weight."

  "Gravity field modulation," whispered Mark. "Or that Higgs thing. That's completely unheard of."

  "Maybe
to the people of our days."

  "No, Doi. The people living now certainly don't have it, either. Such a technology would literally change the world. It really makes me wonder what the ship builders look like."

  "I've asked," she said.

  "You did?"

  "Yeah, I've asked the ADM to tell me something about the place where Doi was born. I sort of felt it was something I should know."

  "And?"

  "And nothing. It said all such knowledge had been locked in its mind until we're nearly there."

  "Some sort of security provision. In case the starship ends up in the wrong hands, or something like that," he said. Then, he asked:

  "What if we pretended we wanted to go there, and once the ADM gave us useful information, we changed our mind, or brought an army or something?"

  "Would you?"

  "I'm just asking, Doi."

  "No, I know. But would you? I mean, would you try to play games with something so powerful that it borrowed the English language directly from your head and put it in ours?"

  Again, that got Mark thinking. First, he thought about the true rapport between Doi-the-ship and its human crew. He realised, for the first time, that they were merely allowed to do with the ship what they wanted; at least, thus far. And, most likely, they did not have complete freedom. He now suspected that the ADM would prevent them from doing anything that would seriously harm the starship.

  Then, he noted again how much Doina had grown, and the adult that replaced her whenever she was talking for the starship. In that small, frail body that still had those ugly, dark bruises on her neck (they made his hairs prickle every time he saw them) there seemed to live a little, twelve-year-old girl, and a strong, young woman -- backed up by the most alien, powerful and beautiful machine that the mankind had ever encountered.

  And that reminded him of something.

  "Effo, this is Doi. Aram, do you read?"

  "Read what? I'm flying here!"

  Once more, Mark smiled.

  "How's the ship?"

  "Like a second skin, that's how. Like I was born to fly it."

  "I strongly suspect that you were. Listen, I have a question."

  "Go on."

  "Did you notice if Effo has any sort of... offensive capabilities?"

  Startled, Doina looked up at him.

  "I'm only asking, Doi."

  She said nothing, and looked elsewhere.

  "Erm, not as yet. But give me a minute."

  Mark nodded, even though the link was, at the moment, audio only.

  "Doi, do you mind getting back the holographic comms? Or is that a problem?"

  "It's not a problem," she said, a little dryly. A few seconds later, Aram’s preoccupied head appeared in a secondary three-dimensional projection, next to the one that showed the asteroid field and Effo negotiating its way through the huge rocks.

  The Dacian was looking straight ahead, brow knitted, biting his lower lip.

  "If I were you, I wouldn't be fiddling with the ship's computer, or whatever it is, while flying through a world of rocks," Mark said, quietly.

  Aram opened his mouth, then looked down towards his own holocomms, thought better and replied:

  "Yeah, I guess you're right. Let me pick a place and land."

  With a graceful arch, still flying at an amazing speed, he chose a flat surface on one of the greater asteroids and landed smoothly at the end of a roll meant to get him in sync with the rock's trajectory, just as if he'd been doing it all his life. Mark began to feel jealous. He thought to ask whether he might have a go, but decided that it wasn't a good time; besides, he had once tried to fly straight and level in a helicopter and thought it was very difficult.

  "I'm down!"

  "What?!" Mark jumped, trying to look at both holograms at once. "What happened?! Why?!"

  "Whoa, what's wrong with you? I'm down on the rock. I've landed."

  "Jesus Christ, Aram. When a pilot says he's down, it usually means he's been shot out of the sky."

  "Yeah, number one, we gotta sit down and agree on what we say and when, soon as I'm back, because right now I'm afraid to say that my butt itches, 'cuz maybe you'll think I'm abandoning ship or something."

  "Sorry, mate. You're right, we'll do that. What's number two?"

  "Number two, stop calling me Jesus Christ."

  Doina let out a small guffaw.

  "I'll remember that. Is there a number three?"

  "We'll see. Give me that minute now."

  Mark shut up. Aram looked ahead and started talking, in a small voice, uttering words that made no sense to the Brit.

  He looked at Doina and mouthed voicelessly: What?

  She gestured quickly, muting the call from their end, then trying to listen to Aram's words, and watching his lips intently at the same time.

  After a few moments, she said:

  "He... He's talking to the ship. I can't understand all the words, but he's asking it about things."

  "Effo knows Dacian?!" Mark was, again, truly amazed.

  "Well, I don't think that anything in our heads is a big secret to it."

  He swallowed hard.

  In the projection, Aram suddenly nodded a few times, then spoke English again.

  "Mark, you there?"

  "Right here."

  "I couldn't hear you for a few moments."

  "Found anything?"

  "I think so. Tell you what. You got any particular rock you hate more than the others?"

  Mark laughed. "No, not really. Why?"

  "Well, I'll just pick one, then."

  Effo lifted off and launched into a chase after a smaller asteroid. It was still at least twice as big as the pointed ship.

  "You wanna have a go at it?" Mark asked.

  "That's the plan," came the answer. "You asked about offensive capabilities, well, I'm ready to offend."

  "With what?"

  "You'll see."

  "Well, tell me, can't you? What did you find? Lasers, bullets, photon torpedoes?"

  "That last one is a really stupid name for a gun," observed Aram. "Reckon you just made it up."

  "Seriously now, Aram. What is it?"

  "Fuck should I know?! It's a gun. It fires many tiny somethings that are incredibly heavy."

  "Mate, you're beginning to sound like Doina."

  "Actually, yeah, you do," chimed in the girl, with a half smile.

  "Well, let me do it and you can tell me what it was afterwards."

  "Aren't you a bit too trigger happy? What if the rock blows up in your face?"

  There was silence, as the distance between the asteroid and Effo increased visibly.

  "What's the range of that gun?"

  "Fuck's sake, Mark. I don't know. We're gonna find out soon, if you stop with the questions."

  "Climb up a little, will you. Don't want to get hit by debris."

  Aram rolled his eyes, forgetting the others could see him, and said nothing, but climbed out of the asteroid belt plane, increasing the distance even more.

  "OK, happy?"

  It was Mark's turn to roll his eyes.

  "This is Effo, requesting permission to shoot at that damn thing already."

  "Yeah, cheeky. Permission granted, you are clear to go weapons hot and fire at will," Mark played along.

  "Oooh, get you. Right, firing in three, two, one."

  The rock disintegrated in a puff of tiny particles. There was no fire, obviously, and no massive explosion; it simply turned into a slowly expanding cloud of dust. Nothing remained of it that was visible; Mark was ready to assume that it had been broken down at least into individual molecules. Doina zoomed into the place where the asteroid had been, and even at maximum magnification, there was nothing left. Nothing at all.

  "Wow. I've offended the shit out of it, haven't I," came Aram's pleasantly surprised voice.

  Later, after Aram had returned and docked Effo back underneath the airlock cylinder, they were eating and talking.

  The atmosphere wasn
't quite the same as before, when they had no idea what lay ahead of them. After the incidents with the Kennedy, they were tired and changed.

  But now they were all wearing the black uniforms of their starship, and they had discovered Effo, and they were a team. A team that was much stronger than the sum of its parts.

  "Out of interest, how were you targeting?"

  "I was just looking at whatever I wanted to hit, and Effo got it."

  "Isn't that a bit risky? What if you looked at Doi?"

  "I have to press down with my heel for the gun to actually fire."

  "Some gun, that."

  "Yeah. I'm thinking of calling it The Offender."

  Mark laughed. Doina smiled, but said nothing, looking at her feet. The Brit noticed, and asked, very calmly, quietly and matter-of factly:

  "So, I guess if Effo has a cannon, so does Doi, right?"

  "I guess," said Doina, in a very small voice.

  Aram stopped with his meal bar half-way to his mouth.

  "The ADM lied to us," he said.

  "Yes, it did," said Mark, equally quietly, trying not to stare at the girl.

  She chewed on, still looking down. The two men waited in silence.

  "I didn't know what it was," she said, eventually. "I've never seen a cannon, and whatever this thing on Effo is, it doesn't look like... what I've heard cannons look like."

  "But you knew we had guns."

  "It's not really a gun," she said.

  Aram was about to speak, but Mark threw him a hard look. Without a word, he leant back towards the wall behind him, touched it and chose the ADM symbol.

  "It is the ship's propulsion system, reconfigured as a weapon," said the ADM.

  "But I've asked you a direct question," said Mark. "I've asked you whether this ship had offensive capabilities, and you've said that it didn't."

  "I lied," said the machine.

  Mark was stumped for a second.

  "Well... I thought computers couldn't lie," he said, for lack of anything better.

  "Why would computers be unable to do something that humans can do just fine? Lying is not that difficult."

  "Doina...?" asked Aram.

  "I know, it's been sounding more and more human lately. I guess it's learning from us," she said, neutrally.

  "This lying sack of shit let me throw rocks at spaceships, while it had a huge fuck-off gun tucked away?"