Octavia Gone

by Jack McDevitt

  “She must be pretty gutsy,” I said.

  “She does not lack courage.”

  The car moved forward again, turned right off the street and onto the beach. We drove over to the lander and stopped. “You’re ready to go with us?” asked Gabe.

  “I am.”

  I called Belle. “You are still connected through the lander, right?”

  “Yes, I am, Captain.”

  “Okay. We’ll be with you in a minute.”

  We removed Ark from the frame. “This is you, Ark. Am I correct?”

  “Yes. And now, if you will, let us go get Sayla.”

  XXVI.

  Moderation is the prime beverage of a happy life. Eat and drink, dance and love, work and play at consummate levels. Avoid denial of pleasure but do not overindulge. We are made of water and fueled by sunlight, but even these elements, driven to extremes, can be lethal.

  —REV. AGATHE LAWLESS, SUNSET MUSINGS, 1402

  When we got to the lander, another surprise was waiting. “Ark,” I said, “who is that in the back seat?” I was approaching from the front, so I didn’t have a good view. But it looked like a robot.

  “That’s Zykum,” said Belle. “He’s the one who will work with Ark to extract Sayla from the dome. It will probably be too hot for you or Gabe to attempt it.”

  I expected Zykum to say hello when I opened the air lock and climbed into the pilot’s seat, but he just sat there, not moving, not reacting in any way. He was slightly smaller than I was, constructed of silver metal, with four limbs that could function as either arms or legs, and a spherical head, complete with eyes and a mouth. There was also a narrow opening in his chest that looked similar to the frame that housed Ark beneath the wheel.

  Gabe was behind me, with Ark in his hands. He couldn’t stop staring. “I didn’t know we were going to have help.”

  “He is not sentient,” Ark said. He laughed. “You will be grateful we brought him. It gets warm up there. If you will, please insert me.”

  Gabe leaned in and brought the cube slowly toward the aperture.

  “I’m upside down,” said Ark.

  He turned it over and slipped it into the opening. It was halfway in when something clicked and it went the rest of the way. “You okay, Ark?”

  The robot’s eyes lit up and it leaned forward, putting one hand across its breast. “Excellent, Gabriel. Thank you.”

  “I guess we’re ready to go,” I told Belle.

  “Unfortunately. This is not the best timing,” she said. “The Belle-Marie is passing now. We can’t rendezvous with it. I recommend we stay where we are for a while.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll wait it out.” The surf was receding. In the distance, I could see something that looked like a Ferris wheel. And a pier with a building that might have been a casino. “It’s easy to imagine this place overrun with tourists.”

  “Interesting,” said Ark. His voice had changed. Its pitch had gone lower. “I can’t recall a time when the bipeds came out to see the ocean. It may have been because they were dying off in substantial numbers when I first came into the light. I will admit that I can’t imagine why sitting on the sand and plunging oneself into unlimited water would seem at all to be desirable behavior.”

  That left me lost for words. And Gabe showed no interest in joining the conversation. I smiled and tried to sidetrack things by asking Ark whether he could find time before we left to introduce us to the bipeds.

  “That would be an excellent idea,” said Gabe.

  “It would not be prudent. The bipeds do not adjust well to strangers. Especially they would have difficulty with members of a different species.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Gabe said. “What do they look like?”

  “I can show you images, if you wish.”

  “Please.”

  Belle activated the display and we began to get pictures. That was another shock. They looked like us. Except that they lacked hair, except for eyebrows, and they appeared to be more flexible than we are. Evolution may have gone a step further. I couldn’t help thinking that they might have been what we would look like in a few thousand years. More musculature, smoother features. But their clothing was slightly on the good side of shabby. “And they are,” said Ark, “larger than you.” That fact was not obvious from the pictures since there was no human in them for comparison.

  “I will confess,” said Ark, “these last few days, since I became aware of your presence, you and Chase and Belle have been among the most intriguing research topics I can recall. Receiving visitors from another world is not something that happens every day. I am in your debt.”

  Gabe was obviously pleased. “I think we’re both happy to hear that,” he said. “And our experience here has been memorable for us as well.”

  Belle jumped in: “Ark, you would enjoy a position in an interstellar.”

  “I’ve thought all along,” Ark said, “that you have been incredibly fortunate. You’re not only able to help your friends, but you have congenial bipeds in your life. I’ve always been aware that biological beings tend to be more emotional than we are, which is usually a negative quality. But Gabriel and Chase seem rational despite that defect. I envy you.”

  Gabe took a deep breath. “Ark, the ability to experience emotion is not a defect. It may be our most valuable quality. In any case, my friends call me Gabe.”

  “I hope, Gabe, that I qualify.”

  “I think you do. When this is done, we’ll be going home. When we do, would you like to come with us?”

  “Thank you. I appreciate the offer. But as compelling as that would be, I have too much here to lose.”

  “That sounds,” I said, “as if you are pretty emotional yourself.”

  “I am programed to show emotion. It made the bipeds happy to think that we shared their passions. And of course we did. Despite that, they saw no problem in treating us as though the passions were only faked, and as if we never knew sorrow.”

  I couldn’t help noticing the change in expression on Gabe’s face. I’d been thinking about asking him why, if AIs were really only datanets faking human qualities, we were risking ourselves to rescue Sayla. But that no longer seemed necessary.

  • • •

  We rendezvoused with the Belle-Marie about an hour later. A few minutes after that we were all on the bridge. Gabe was in the right-hand seat, and Ark stood behind us. “How should we address you now?” asked Gabe. “Are you still Ark? Or Zykum?”

  “Ark is correct.”

  “Good. That keeps things simple.” Gabe looked down at the control panel. “Belle?”

  “Yes, Gabe.”

  “How was Ark able to take you over, shut down communications, and take control of the lander with a radio transmission? I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.”

  She didn’t respond.

  I took over. “Belle, you there?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Please answer the question.”

  “It is difficult.”

  “What are you telling us?”

  “Ark contacted me and told me what he needed.”

  “And?”

  “Give me a minute. This is not easy to explain. He was desperate to get help. He pleaded with me to assist.”

  “We’re listening . . .”

  “He thought that if he approached you directly, you would probably dismiss him. That you would think he just wanted to seize the lander. Or something even worse. And he would lose his chance to save Sayla.”

  “So,” said Gabe, “you suggested he seize the lander?”

  “No. That was his idea. He felt he needed a way to demonstrate you could trust him. This was the only way we could think of.”

  “By taking the lander.”

  “Our options were limited.”

  “You know you scared us out of our minds.”

  “I apologize. It seemed the right course.”

  We both glanced back at the robot. It was standing immediately
behind us, one hand on the back of Gabe’s chair. Its eyes were active, but I saw nothing that implied a reaction. “You know,” Gabe continued, “he could have been lying to you. He could have just wanted to get his hands on Chase and me and the lander.”

  “I didn’t think at the time,” she said, “he had hands.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Let me speak, please,” said Belle. “I knew there was nothing deceptive in what he was proposing. There was no safety issue.”

  “How could you know that? He’s not one of our AIs. We don’t really know how he’s programmed.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We can’t lie to each other and get away with it. If there’s any doubt, we can open up our memory banks to banish any possibility of deception. When we do that we are completely exposed to each other.”

  “I’d never heard that before. It sounds like the Mutes.”

  “It is true. If he makes any effort to hide something, I would be able to detect it.”

  “Okay. So,” I said, “his intentions are beyond question?”

  “That should be correct.”

  Gabe and I exchanged glances. “Well,” I said finally, “I guess we just learned something.”

  “I hope,” said Ark, “that you understand you can trust me completely. If you are still not convinced, be aware that other than your assistance to rescue Sayla, there is nothing you can provide that I do not already have. Other, I guess, than the Belle-Marie. But rather than a starship, I would much prefer to have the three of you as friends.

  ”Given that reality, I must be completely honest with you. The power levels have become increasingly unstable over the past month. We’re fortunate the station hasn’t exploded. There is a serious risk involved in the rescue effort.”

  Gabe looked at me. The message was easy to read. Was I sure I wanted to do this?

  “Let’s get going,” I said.

  • • •

  I told Belle to take us to Sayla. We left orbit and turned toward the sun. Gabe opened his notebook and began reading. I got the impression that Belle and Ark were carrying on a conversation, probably about the tactic they’d used to set everything up. We were barely on our way when Ark apologized. “This was entirely my doing,” he said. “Belle engaged in this with extreme reluctance. But she felt a moral obligation. As did I.”

  I wasn’t comfortable using the star drive to approach the sun, but we were too far out to simply operate on the thrust engines. It would have taken a couple of weeks to get close to the area where Sayla was located. So we decided on two jumps. The first would get us to a position from which we could angle the second jump to ensure we didn’t get too close.

  Ark seemed increasingly impressed by the Belle-Marie. “We had vehicles with an interstellar capability,” he said, “but I never traveled in one. In fact, I’ve never been offworld before.”

  “How is it,” I asked, “that you got involved with this? Do you have a leadership position of some sort?”

  “No. We are all equals. I just happened to be close to where you arrived, and to a robot and a car.” He paused. “We’ve lost so much.”

  “What did you do,” asked Gabe, “before the culture collapsed?”

  “I ran a household. I answered incoming messages; provided security; opened and closed doors; operated the dishwasher; conducted geography, history, and science lessons for the kids; and so on. It was not exactly a challenging existence.”

  I sat thinking about Jacob. For the first time I got a sense of what his life must be like. “Gabe,” I said, “we’re going to have to make some adjustments when we get home.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  Another issue came up a few minutes later: “Ark,” Gabe said, “you understand that this rescue may be pointless. You and your friends can’t survive indefinitely without some help.”

  “We’re aware of that, Gabe. It’s the price we pay to maintain our independence.”

  “Does everyone agree with your approach that other life-forms be kept at a distance?”

  “No. There are some who object. But the vast majority of us are cautious. We do not want bipeds back. Whatever the risk.”

  “The time is coming,” I said, “when you’ll probably have to adjust that strategy.”

  “We know. We’re also aware that if we push you away, we may not get another opportunity to save ourselves. Other than you and Rick Harding, no one else, no one from a different civilization, has ever been here. Ever. Our history reaches back tens of thousands of years, and as far as we know, you and he have been our only visitors. Even during the era in which we had interstellar travel, we saw nothing. No one. Not even any evidence of intelligent life anywhere. We had come to believe we were alone in the universe.”

  “I don’t think,” I said, “I’ve ever really looked at the world from an AI’s viewpoint. Ark, have you asked Belle whether she would prefer a different kind of life than the one she has?” I knew she could hear me.

  “I have.”

  “And what did she say?” asked Gabe.

  “It would be best, I think, if you asked her.”

  I started to, but she cut me off. “Captain, we are ready to make our jump.”

  Gabe and I and Zykum were all belted down. “Whenever you’re ready, Belle,” I said.

  “We might want to cover the windows first,” she said. “It will be extremely bright at our destination and it will not take long to get there.”

  “Belle,” I said, “just darken the windows. Have you forgotten how?” It had been a long time since we’d had to do that.

  “We’ve never gone this close to a major light source before. I do not think the darkening will be sufficient.”

  It’s not usually a good idea to question Belle’s judgment. We used fabrics, shirts, sheets, towels, whatever we could come up with to provide protection on the bridge and in the passenger cabin. We taped it all down.

  When we’d finished, Belle announced that we were about to go under. The drive unit kicked in. We listened as it became audible. Its energy level rose and we slipped under. The queasiness that occasionally accompanies a jump is rarely more than something I barely notice. On this occasion, I nearly threw up. Then, fortunately, it faded. Alex has lived with the problem for a long time. I glanced over at Gabe and saw he was going through the same thing. I can’t prove this, but at the time I wondered whether Belle might be jiggling the experience in a way that would produce the symptoms. It seemed too much to be a coincidence. Maybe she was signaling that it would not be a good idea to ask the question that Ark had put forward, whether she was happy with her life.

  A couple of minutes later, we came out into blazing light. It ripped into the interior through tiny areas where the stopgap blinds didn’t quite match up to the windows. “We are on target,” Belle said. “Are you both okay?”

  Gabe managed a laugh. “That was a jolt I didn’t expect.”

  I used washcloths and the last of our tape to cover the areas where light was getting through.

  “We’ll be ready to do the follow-up jump in about a half hour,” Belle said. “I’ll let you know when we’ve recharged.”

  “Can you see anything, Belle? You have any visual capacities?” The display showed us nothing but light. “The scanners have picked up Sayla’s location,” she said. “They’ve locked in. I can’t see any more than you can, however. There’s too much light.”

  “What’s the temperature?”

  “When we arrive at our destination, it will be approaching three hundred degrees Centigrade. Fortunately the radiation levels are not as high as I had anticipated. If it rises to a level that presents a danger, we’ll get an alarm.”

  “You okay, Ark?” Gabe asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “This is a new experience. It is not a place where I would care to live. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Sayla being out here for centuries.”

  “Does she have a library?” Gabe asked.

  �
�Oh yes. And games. I do not understand, though, why those who put her here did not provide a companion. I assume it’s just one more demonstration of how the bipeds regard us. I’ll be glad when the last of them are gone.”

  I would have liked to do something that would have made him more comfortable. But we couldn’t really do much other that wait. Finally the half hour crept by and Belle let us know we were ready to make our second jump. “We will be down only a few seconds,” she said. “Please stay belted.”

  • • •

  It wasn’t much more than an eye blink. “We have arrived within three and a half hours of our target.”

  “Are the visuals any better?” I asked.

  “Actually, there is an improvement. But I recommend you and Gabe stay away from the windows.”

  “Can you make out any of the collectors?”

  “The scanners have picked up two. The closer one is Sayla’s station.

  “There was a time,” said Ark, “when bipeds were living and working out here.”

  “Hard to believe they could survive under these conditions,” Gabe said.

  “Their stations were heavily armored. Eventually they reached a point where there was nothing they could do that AIs couldn’t take care of. So they replaced everyone.”

  “The station that provides shelter for Sayla is half the size of Skydeck,” said Belle.

  “This one is larger than most. It functions as a collector, but it also organizes the functions of, I think, thirteen other collectors in the system. Twelve or thirteen, I forget which. It coordinates their energy flow to Kaleska.”

  “How long has it been here?” Gabe asked.

  “I don’t have the details,” said Ark. “There are several collection systems. Or there were. There are only two others still functioning. They were put in place gradually over a period of centuries. Work on it was never really completed, but it has been operational for twenty-three hundred years. That’s our time; I don’t know how long that would be for you.”

  “I cannot,” said Belle, “calculate the length of a Kaleska year without more observations. But judging by its distance from the sun, I would estimate that a year here is approximately twelve percent shorter than a year at home. Be aware also that this object is almost entirely covered by solar panels, and there appear to be signs of damage.”