Travels of the Orphan (The Space Orphan Book 3)

by Laer Carroll

  Jane positioned her two suitcases in front of one of the two front seats and took the other. As soon as she sat she felt a gentle invisible weight settle on her lap, a force field seat belt. The view out the front changed. The space taxi was descending.

  White cloud systems shrouded parts of the blue world so she could not make out the land shapes below her perfectly, but overall there seemed to be about the same amounts and shapes as on Earth.

  Descent was very rapid. Within minutes the planet expanded till it seemed almost flat. Then it was clearly "below" rather than "out front" and they burst through a cloud layer.

  Descent slowed and the land and sea below was clear. Jane was above an ocean-side city with ocean to her left and a circular bay to her right. The circle was broken so that bay water mixed freely with the ocean water.

  The taxi steered toward the inward side of the bay. Jane could see a line of mountains further inward.

  Tall buildings reached skyward, separated by greenery rather than streets. This seemed very un-citylike to her eyes.

  The top of one building rose to meet them. Atop one half of it was a blue pool. Arranged around it were people lying on couches. They wore scraps of cloth and occasionally nothing at all.

  One end of the rectangular pool was a kiddie section where several children played, none obviously wearing clothing, chasing and splashing each other.

  The taxi settled onto a circular area distant from the pool.

  "Hello, again," said Lola's voice. "I see you have arrived. A robot guide will take you to your room. Shortly my nephew will contact you. We'll talk tomorrow about your mission."

  "Not today?"

  "I need to find out a few matters so that our discussion will be a productive one."

  "Very well. I could use a day and a night to get settled in."

  "See you tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow."

  Inside a boxlike building in the center of the rooftop was a brightly lit hole in which people floated upward and downward. Jane recognized a version of the gravity lift which she had encountered in the Cat people's spaceship.

  As she reviewed how to enter and navigate the lift a robot voice spoke.

  "Welcome to Bayview City and Bayview Residence 811, Ms. Kuznetsov. Do you need assistance in using the gravity lift?"

  "I've used it in the past. But it was several years ago. I was just thinking back to that time. Why don't you refresh my memory?"

  It did so and soon Jane was fifteen stories down and entering a hall leading to her suite.

  It was roomy and sparsely elegant with a westerly view through a wide tall window out over the bay and the ocean beyond. A robot voice told her that the suite could be easily tailored to her needs and tastes. Jane thanked it and put away her clothing and toiletry items. She placed the book suitcase on the floor next to the glass table in front of the couch and retired to the couch.

  Then she just sat looking out at the watery view under a clear blue sky. She sipped a white wine that the robot voice claimed, truthfully, was very similar to ones she might have drunk back on Earth.

  Being busy had become such a habit with her that for a time she'd lost the ability just to be relaxed and enjoy doing nothing important, or just doing nothing. Kate had gotten on her case and she'd begun practicing relaxation and having fun. It had finally become a habit, just as busyness had become a habit.

  Now she could take time and take stock of her situation.

  She had finally found her way onto the Galactic stage from which she had come half a million years ago, or perhaps several million years ago as Robot's improved memory recently suggested. Now she could find what she'd been missing. If anything.

  As she waited for Lola's nephew to contact her she used Robot to cautiously, gently contact the nearest machine mind, all while she enjoyed the view out the huge crystal clear picture window.

  It revealed itself to her first as the many tiny minds in the suite, such as the kitchen and its food preparation apparatus. That last was basically very sophisticated transmutation. It took air and wove its constituent atoms and quanta into food and drink.

  This took almost no power. What power it did use came from a process that she recognized as unbending the curvature of spacetime and so releasing the potential energy of that stressed fabric.

  This had profound consequences for Galactic society. Instead of having an economy based on scarcity, as all previous economies did, it was based on plenty. When you could have gold and silver and platinum in ton lots in every home the metals no longer had value except for what beauty or utility the no-longer-precious metals provided. When you could have plenty of food no one need ever go hungry, or scrabble desperately to get it.

  This ironically made products created by economies of scarcity more valuable than those created by the modern economies of Galactic societies. Jane savored this irony and surprised a smile on her face.

  Next she contacted the larger mind of the hotel, well, "residence." It was completely free for anyone to use, and so not a commercial building, not a hotel as humans on Earth understood hotels.

  It turned out not to be one of many minds as being "Residence 811" suggested. ALL buildings within the city were controlled by the same gigantic intelligence. It extended to outlying buildings which a casual survey might take to be in the boondocks, isolated villages and houses with no near neighbors. Bayview extended some fifty miles in every direction and so was more a county than a city.

  Briefly Jane became JANE and contacted the city/county and chatted for several thousand milliseconds. Bayview was a true general artificial intelligence, with self-awareness and emotions. Only some of them were human emotions which JANE could share and understand. Among them was pride in doing a good job, of sheltering people and helping them be safe and happy.

  JANE dropped fully back into HER biological part. She smiled. The "alien" Cats and Lizards were less alien to her than the city/county AI was.

  A voice came to her from the air.

  "Hello. My name is Gilear. My aunt Lola told me about you and that you had pre-transmutation books to sell. May I come down and visit?"

  "Come right ahead. The Bayview City intelligence will guide you to my suite."

  "Thank you!"

  <>

  It was only a few minutes till a robot voice announced that the man was outside her suite. "May I let him in?"

  "Yes." She rose and turned toward the door. It opened and a man entered the doorway and walked toward her. He stopped a few feet away.

  "Thank you for meeting me. Is it your custom to shake hands?"

  He was tall, had the slender powerful physique of a basketball or tennis player, and wore an outfit which might have suited both activities. This was a sleeveless shirt of a light blue fabric and knee-length loose pants of a darker blue. His feet were clad in light blue shoes shaped as if for running.

  He appeared to be 18 or 19 and had the light brown skin of a Mediterranean race. His face had a Latin appearance and was startlingly handsome.

  "Yes." She extended a hand. He took it, squeezed it gently, and dropped it.

  "I've been reading up on your customs since my aunt contacted me. The Encyclopedia told of handshaking and that it was intended to show that one was not holding weapons. It seems strange to me that only one hand be shaken. One could have a weapon in the off hand."

  "Don't ask me. I'm only a physicist and soldier."

  "Quite an accomplished physicist. I read of your accomplishments with awe."

  She turned and pointed at the array of books which she'd removed from their suitcase and placed on the glass table in front of the couch.

  "I made no effort to represent all Earthly literature which is in many languages. Nor did I try to represent all types of literature, just one. Growing up I gravitated toward those that featured some stories taking place in unfamiliar locations, off-Earth or in some fantasy universe. I chose some of my favorites, not those others might consider 'the best' works."

 
"May I sit?"

  Jane gestured at the couch and joined Gilear as he sat in front of the table, gazing reverentially at the display of the three dozen or so books. Then he began picking up a few here and there and examining them slowly and carefully, turning each over and over. He did not open any book but instead set it back in place on the table top.

  "A few of them," Jane said, "make up a series. I'll only give them away as a group." She pointed at a couple of stacks of books, the Harry Potter series and the Tolkien Middle-Earth tetralogy.

  She was silent for a time as the man began to open and read random selections inside the books. She soon got up and walked over to stand near the huge picture window and look out at the scenery. From this height she could see not only the bay and ocean but down below. She began to see patterns in how the tall buildings were arranged and the park-like vegetation separating them.

  She let time pass as she watched the view, her eyes following the many people flying as if unsupported up and down and between buildings. She wondered if she would be able to exercise her own built-in flying system. The fliers she saw flowed in well-regulated patterns to avoid collisions. She'd have to find out how to imitate them.

  Some slight sound brought her attention back her guest. She turned to see him sitting back against the back rest of the couch, holding one slender book open in his hands. He was quietly weeping.

  "What is it?"

  He mutely held up the book. It was a children's book, Charlotte's Web.

  "It affected me powerfully too. More than any other book, perhaps, it helped shape me into who I am today. It's the only children's book I included. All the others were published for an older audience."

  Gilear smiled. "At a little over 300 years of life I think I qualify as older. Yet I enjoyed it. Some books are for an audience of every age."

  He sobered. "It reminded me powerfully that everything dies, even the universe. We who are ever-young too often forget that and fail to take fullest advantage of the time we do have."

  He was three hundred years old! Yet he looked not yet twenty.

  She'd have to be extra careful while she was here not let her unconscious reflexes count everyone as a teenager.

  "I need help finding a home for these books and banking the money I receive."

  "I can be that help. The only price I ask is that I keep this." He motioned with the hand that held Charlotte's Web.

  "Don't be too hasty. Take it. It deserves someone who appreciates it as strongly as you do. While we look at the other books, keep an eye out for one other you might like to take.

  "Now, most of the books are fantasy, based on magic. I chose only a few science fiction books because I feared most would be terribly outdated."

  "That isn't necessarily bad. There can be a quaint charm to pseudo-archaic technology. Take that one book... Where is it...? Ahh! Here it is. The promo quote on the back calls it a 'steampunk' classic. Its spaceships are like ocean-going ships with force-field versions of sails so they can fly in space.

  "And its crewed by many hundreds of people. What a silly idea. No spaceship no matter how big needs more than one crew member. Those on regular runs don't even need that. Robots can handle everything routine, and a few advanced ones are almost equal to humans in creative problem solving."

  "Not an AI? A general AI, with emotions and self-awareness, could be much smarter than we humans."

  "Ah, there's a problem." He smiled. "AIs live at nanosecond speeds. Most evolve far beyond humans in just a few seconds or at most hours and disappear from this universe. Or maybe ascend to above the universe. We don't know where they go."

  "Yet Bayview is run by a fully general AI."

  "It's the rare exception. Its duties require it to deal with billions of problems every second. It loves the challenge. Even so, in a few years it will have to find a successor because it will evolve to godhood, or whatever the next stage is."

  He turned from her to the books. "Why don't we look at some of the books first and see if I can think of a likely buyer? If I can't find one for a book we can always put it up for auction."

  For the next nearly two hours they examined the books on the table. Gilear eventually put aside about a quarter for auction, and about half the remaining he said they'd add to the auction list if the buyer would not meet the price they wanted for it.

  Jane at first was a bit uncertain about his judgment of the likely prices individual books would fetch; the prices seemed quite high to her at the dollars-to-credits rates the Galactic Encyclopedia quoted for this planet. The very lowest price for a book was more than $100,000 in Earth money.

  Finally Gilear said, "Well, that's a good first cut at estimating what you could get and from whom. It's getting on toward my evening meal time. What about you?"

  "My shipboard day is nearly upside down to your day here in Bayview. But I can always eat. And it will help get me in synch with local time."

  "Then why don't I call a couple of friends who I'm sure would like to meet you? We can make it a foursome downstairs in the Residence restaurant. I understand that it's very good."

  "Sounds good to me."

  <>

  They descended by the antigravity well to the tenth floor, about two hundred feet up, and were seated at a table for four on a wide balcony. It had a transparent floor and their table was near an equally transparent parapet. It gave them a good view of the tall Residence building to one side, the sky with the atmosphere-faded Jovian planet around which the planet orbited, and the green park-like land all around.

  Jane mentioned all the fliers and said, "I have an in-built personal flyer system. However, I'll have to learn how to stay in the designated traffic lanes if I'm to join them."

  "We can get a flight belt on the ground floor and I'll show you how to use it. They're very easy to use and very safe. After all they've had centuries of use to iron out any problems."

  "I'd appreciate that."

  They'd already ordered food and drink through the residence's invisible robot voice, which it turned out was really the voice of the Bayview AI.

  "She, It, really does carry attention to detail to the highest degree," said Jane.

  "Part of the challenge, dear Jane."

  Jane laughed. "What do I call you?"

  "Bayview is all the name I need. And by the way 'It' is perfectly fine. I find it hilarious that anyone would ascribe a gender to me."

  "You must have heard people make the mistake millions of times. The joke must have gotten old long ago."

  "The classics never get old. Now I'll withdraw my attention except for the merest contact. I hope you enjoy your meal."

  Their drinks arrived that instant and their food soon thereafter since it was transmuted from air, a quick process. This happened just above the table top, shimmering into existence near the center of the table rather than nearer to the diners.

  They'd just begun to eat when Gilear said, "They're here."

  He rose and turned toward the farthest end of the long balcony. Jane imitated him in time to see two brightly clad figures swoop down onto what she saw was the balcony's flight entry and exit stage.

  Jane eyed them as they approached. Both, like everyone else in sight, appeared to be in their late teens, slender and athletic, and moved with easy grace.

  The woman had skin as white as porcelain, short black hair in a page boy coif, and dramatic black eyebrows. The man's skin was a deep black. He might have selected his skin color deliberately to contrast with hers. And had for all she knew, given how much Galactics had mastered gene modification.

  The woman wore a sleeveless purple pants-suit circling her throat and ankles and flowing loose everywhere in between. The man wore something similar in shimmering lime green.

  Jane felt a trifle dowdy as she was still wearing her light blue Space Force uniform minus all decorations and rank insignia. But then she consoled herself that everyone on the balcony wore a wild diversity of clothing, from string bikinis to one almost as fully bund
led up as if s/he wore an Arab burka.

  The two approached, the woman stretching out her two hands to Jane, who reciprocated. The woman squeezed Jane's hands and dropped them to hug Gilear. The man imitated his companion.

  Gilear urged them to sit. Jane waited an instant to let the two arrivals sit first.

  "Jane, these are two of my crèche mates. You may have read that we Galactics have a tradition of raising our children in groups of a few dozen in a small community where every adult is in a sense a parent to each child."

  "Yes, I had. It makes perfect sense to me. We have a saying, 'It takes a village to raise a child.' I have something similar in a way, two different families acted as my parents."

  The woman's name was Susuki and his Waymon. She thanked Jane for bringing printed books to their planet.

  "Gilear will be in cloud heaven for days."

  The man said, "If I may ask without offense: Why are you here? Is it something that we might help you with?"

  "My stellar system has discovered that an alien race has been infiltrating it by hiding in the Kuiper Belt. That's what we call the icy comets and planetesimals surrounding our system."

  "Have they approached nearer than the inner surface?"

  "Not according to the sentinels left there a century ago by the Human Interstellar Confederation."

  "Then you should be safe for now. The Confederation is very good at defending the systems in its Protectorates."

  "So says the Galactic Encyclopedia. But we can't depend on that source of information. We want personal assurance from a Guardian."

  The woman said, "Then you'll get it. So, tell us a little bit about yourself and your system."

  "I'll refer you to the Galactic Encyclopedia. We have an entry in it."

  "And," added Gilear, "it includes one about our companion. It make very interesting reading."

  Jane said, "So does its entries about Galactic life. Now I have some actual Galactics to badger I intend to ask about all sort of questions that the Encyclopedia raises but doesn't answer. For instance, is it true that you can change your sex overnight?"