Isaak said nothing, waiting.
“Tell her she chose well and that I will come to her when I am finished here.”
“Yes, lord.”
Rudolfo followed Isaak out of the tent. His raven awaited, its feathers glossy and dark as a wooded midnight. He took it from the scout’s steady hands.
“When you reach the seventh manor,” he told his scout, “tell my steward there that Isaak—the metal man—bears my grace.”
The scout nodded once and left. Isaak looked at Rudolfo. His mouth opened and closed; no words came out.
Rudolfo held the raven close, stroking its back with his finger. “I will see you soon, Isaak. Start your work. I’ll send the others when I’ve freed them. You’ve a library to rebuild.”
“Thank you,” the metal man finally said.
Rudolfo nodded. The scout and the metal man left. Gregoric returned, wiping the apprentice’s blood from his hands.
“Sethbert wants his man back,” Rudolfo said.
“I’ve already seen to it, lord.”
Somewhere on the edge of camp, Rudolfo thought, a stolen pony ambled its way home bearing a cloth-wrapped burden. “Very well. Magick the rest of your Gypsy Scouts.”
“I’ve seen to that as well, lord.”
He looked at Gregoric and felt a pride that burned brighter than his grief or his rage. “You’re a good man.”
Rudolfo pulled a thread from the sleeve of his rainbow robe. This time, no other message. This time, no question. He tied the scarlet thread of war to the foot of his darkest angel. When he finished, he whispered no words and he did not fling his messenger at the sky. It leaped from his hands on its own and sped away like a black arrow. He watched it fly until he realized Gregoric had spoken.
“Gregoric?” he asked.
“You should rest, lord,” the chief of his Gypsy Scouts said again. “We can handle this first battle without you.”
“Yes, I should,” Rudolfo said. But he knew there would be time enough for rest—perhaps even a lifetime of rest—after he won the war.
LOST CONNECTIONS
Jody Lynn Nye
“So,” Corrie said, “I posted that Noel was being a total jerk, but he didn’t believe I could say something like that, and I said that he ought to get just where I was coming from, you know?”
Corrie admired her oval face and flawless features in the mirror function of her communicator and plucked a fragment of cosmetic from her eyelash. She dropped it on the floor of the corridor as they walked from the shuttle bay aboard the HSS Prescott. Melanie Needham glanced down at her impatiently.
“Don’t do that,” she whispered. “I need you to look professional.”
Corrie rolled her eyes at the taller woman, then looked at her fingernails, which were as artificial as the rest of her. She looked and behaved like a petite, coral-haired human teenager with a little upturned nose and bright blue eyes, but she wasn’t.
The android wore a cream-colored shipsuit identical to Mel’s. She hadn’t put it on without protest, calling it dull and pedestrian. Mel just wished she could leave Corrie alone at home, but that had not been working out well lately. She accepted that she was risking her job bringing her along. She felt she owed Corrie too much to abandon her.
“Whatever,” the android said. She grinned at Mel with the air of a conspirator. “This ought to be fun.”
“Define ‘fun,’” Mel said wryly. That provoked the usual laugh from her companion. The air of anticipation made her feel good, too. It ought to be fun and exciting, two characteristics that rarely defined her job.
Commander Proczyk gave them a strange look as the two of them entered his ready room. So did the senior officers sitting around the table. Mel smiled at them.
“Welcome, Dr. Needham,” the commander said, gesturing to a chair at the end of the pale gray oval. “Thank you for coming.”
“Glad to be involved.” Mel sat down. That was the last seat. Corrie sighed loudly and removed herself to a corner. She settled against the wall with her communicator between her fingers. Mel saw the Sociocrat page open. Corrie’s thumbs flew over the virtual keyboard as she updated her status. Mel groaned. Their location was classified.
“Override,” she said. Corrie’s face went momentarily blank, and her thumb moved to close the application. “No GPS. Read a book or something.”
“Whatever.”
“Your daughter?” inquired a female officer with short-clipped green hair.
“My companion,” Mel said. “She’s an AI.”
“My goodness, she really looks human.”
Mel cringed. She was all too aware that the current fashion was for blocky mechanical faces.
Proczyk gestured to the three-dimensional chart hovering over the table. Limned in brilliant blue was a black, elongated globe shape about a quarter the size of Brandex’s second moon. Mel knew the visitor was massive, but to see it represented three-dimensionally just brought it home.
“We started the briefing without you, doctor.”
“I’ve been following it on my tablet,” Mel assured him, placing the device before her. “Go ahead. I don’t think I’ve missed more than the last few minutes since we docked.”
Proczyk nodded. “The alien craft has been signaling since it entered the system. It was moving at .5C until we hailed it, when it started dumping velocity. You have the recordings of the messages we’ve been sending up and back. Whoever is in that big ship is intelligent. We’ve even picked up some words in Standard in the latest messages. It sounds friendly enough that Brandex Gov is ready to make a first contact. You sure you’re up for it?”
“I volunteered, sir,” Mel said promptly. “Xeno Relations doesn’t get too many first contacts these days. For better or worse, we know every race between here and the Crab Nebula. Most of the time we just try to maintain friendly interaction among systems.”
“Mmm.” Proczyk switched to a different view on the holo. “Well, we don’t know what you’re going to run into up there. We have not been able to get decent visuals. Telemetry thinks there’s only one occupant in that echo chamber. Temperature is below Brandex standard. Atmosphere’s limited. So is gravity. You’ll need a full lifesuit, with power backups.”
“Two, sir,” Mel said. She gestured toward Corrie.
The commander’s graying eyebrows met over his bulbous nose. “You’re taking that with you? Why?”
Mel flinched.
“I need her, sir. She’s my reference source.”
“What’s the matter with your tablet? Isn’t that full function?”
“It’s not the same, sir. She, uh, she’s been a big help in the past.”
Mel had no doubt that the commander had read her entire dossier. He knew why she had Corrie.
Her father had been in the diplomatic service before her. To accommodate his assignments, the family had moved countless times throughout her childhood. Every time they had settled in a new colony or on a space station or a compound on a non-human world, she had had to try to make friends all over again. It was easier when she was small; her parents had just plopped her down in a playgroup and left her to introduce herself.
As she reached geeky preadolescence, the playgroups turned into cliques, not so ready to accept an outsider. In fact, the neighbor kids on Lavender VI had been downright mean. When she found a sympathetic ear, Mel had the habit of opening her heart and telling her whole life story, including her dreams and hopes. On Lavender VI, that just meant that the other kids had ammunition they could use against her. They teased her unmercifully, then they left her alone.
She couldn’t find even one child who dared to break ranks with the local queen bee, a beautiful, tall and imperious girl named Iosta Bengal. Iosta didn’t like the fact that Mel was better in sports than she was, and made life as miserable for her as she could. Mel had existed in desperate isolation, until the glorious day her father brought Corrie home.
The two of them were the same height in those days. Corrie let
her comb and style that gorgeous crimson hair, and advised her on how to wear her mousy brown locks so they didn’t look so lank. They made one another up with cosmetics, and shared secrets. Corrie responded warmly to Mel’s shyness, drawing her out, giving her a safe companion to vent to, to laugh with, to tell all her stories, and to trust. Mel knew Corrie would never reveal a confidence, or tease her about her dreams. The relationship was by no means one-sided. Her programming was fully responsive. She needed Mel as much as Mel needed her.
Corrie was programmed to obtain all the latest celebrity gossip and to download the newest music and videos to share. She had a complete understanding of what was really up to the minute and what had passed its sell-by date, so Mel was ahead of the pack on what was trendy and what wasn’t. Best of all, Corrie always stuck up for her. Her program made her a genius at intervention. She could be arch and critical, and picked on the people that Mel never had the nerve to, but that only meant the other mean kids fought harder to be worthy of her attention.
Since Corrie herself was the coolest new thing on the block, all the other kids wanted to get to know her, and the price for that was to become friends with Mel, too. It worked. Even Iosta grudgingly deigned to speak with the pathetic newcomer. Mel had a reasonably good social life through the rest of her childhood, with Corrie always at her side, as an ever-encouraging cheerleader and confidant.
The trouble was that over the last six years, Mel had grown up. She kept Corrie, because she was loyal and Corrie was still good company. But Corrie never changed. Her programming was too complicated to update to an adult level. The company had tried a reboot with new, updated software, but Corrie’s internal processor wasn’t powerful enough to accept it, and could not be expanded. Mel had railed at the corporation. “How could you sell something so expensive that can’t be updated?”
“Blame Microsoft,” the online help guide had said. “We can’t see into the future. We extrapolate as far as we can using Moore’s Law, but we’re not going to set the systems up for programs that haven’t been written yet.”
Having an android wasn’t as easy as owning a doll. Corrie couldn’t be shoved into a closet when she was inconvenient. She needed Mel to spend time with her. As Mel’s responsibilities in her career grew, she had less time to give.
Corrie’s expressive face crumpled into despair when Mel left her in the morning to go to the office. The longer Mel left Corrie alone, the worse the reaction when she returned. The neighbors complained that they could hear her stomping around Mel’s apartment, wailing and throwing things in her isolation.
“You don’t love me anymore!” Corrie would cry, clinging to her, the moment she walked in the door. Her optics were programmed to produce tears from the ambient atmospheric moisture. They rolled down her lovely plastic face.
“I do love you,” Mel would insist, her heart torn. I’ve just outgrown you.
Commander Proczyk relented. Personnel’s private life was just that—private—unless it impinged on personnel’s function. Corrie was given the go-ahead and her own lifesuit. It didn’t hurt that she also was trained in martial arts and weaponry, and could defend Mel if Mel was hurt or disabled.
That defensive capability loomed very importantly in Mel’s mind as the shuttle entered the huge irising port on one side of the massive black ship. The small craft’s lights illuminated a cavern large enough to park a moon. The autopilot brought them close to the only internal doors. Then the stars were cut off behind them, leaving them in total darkness except for the colored console lights.
Mel moved cautiously out into the landing bay, wearing her translucent lifesuit and the bubble helmet that projected a heads-up display just above her eyebrows. Except for the sound of their boots and their breathing, it was completely silent. She glanced at Corrie, who was looking around in wide-eyed wonder. The bulkheads seemed to have been braided of filaments of metal into complex structures, more like an overgrown garden than a starship. Her detectors chuckled to themselves, and her heads-up display showed that a low level of electricity flowed through the filaments, creating constant ‘noise’. No wonder the Prescott and the Brandex sensors hadn’t been able to read much.
As they approached the single door, it slid open. Beyond, a faint golden glow beckoned them. Corrie automatically took the lead, as always shielding Mel from potential harm.
The door slid shut behind them, leaving them in a small, featureless room. The floor promptly dropped out from under them – or rather, the elevator they were in began to descend. Mel and Corrie clung together as they floated up to the ceiling.
“It’s okay,” Corrie said, with a grin. “Remember the Fear Fall ride at Galaxy Park?”
Mel nodded. Her heart was in her throat.
When the sensation stopped, they settled to the floor again. The door whisked open on a chamber glowing with blue light. Corrie started to lead again, when a huge, blob-like object rushed toward them. Mel braced herself. From inside her suit sleeve, Corrie produced a lethal burst pistol. Before she could fire, the blob rammed into them and pressed them back against the rear wall of the elevator.
It screeched, honked and blatted at them in deafening tones. It took Mel several frantic heartbeats to realize it was talking.
“You’re here! Come in! I am so glad you came! How wonderful to meet you! Your species calls itself ‘human’? But you are not both human. And your planets have many subspecies. I must know more! Come in!”
Jointed metal tentacles extruded from the blob-like body and wound themselves around Mel’s and Corrie’s waists. Still talking, it dragged them off their feet and out of the elevator.
The glare in the room was almost blinding. Mel caught only glimpses of more braided metal in the walls and floors.
“I’m Dr. Melanie Needham,” she began, but the blob cut her off.
“This is such a pleasure. I have read your planet’s atmosphere, but you have a surprisingly varied climate. I do not know from which meteorological zone you originate. Let me know if the temperature and humidity are too low or too high for you.”
“Who are…?” Mel tried again.
“I have been studying this system since I entered it,” the blob continued. “The habitat formation on the outer planets is not consistent with their position so far from your binary. That speaks of considerable technological expertise on the part of your species. Or is the technology borrowed from another species? It bears resemblance to fourteen other intelligent, space-going races that I have in my memory banks.”
“You’re rude, aren’t you?” Corrie said suddenly.
The blob stopped and the center part of it twisted. Two metal stalks with crystal spheres extruded and snaked up to look at each of them.
“Rude… lacking in appropriate social behavior,” it said. “Not my intention. Please, tell me what is appropriate?”
“Well, you introduce yourself first. You never grab another being without permission unless you’re saving her life!” Corrie banged on the metal arm with the butt of her pistol.
The blob promptly dropped them on the floor. Mel picked herself up.
“Deep regret is offered. Keh’keh’keh’gnicht is my original designation. What are yours?” It sounded far more like a sneeze than a name. Mel didn’t try to reproduce it.
She got her first good look at the being, and recorded the image for transmission to the Prescott and Brandex. It was almost three meters in height. The seemingly amorphous shape was because it consisted of layered horizontal rings that could swivel independently. Each of the rings was a different hue of smooth metal or ceramic, but pliable so it could bend in any direction.
“I’m Dr. Melanie Needham,” Mel said at once. “This is my companion, Corrie. I represent the government of the Brandex system, on the fourth planet from the primary. I want to welcome you and ask the meaning of your visit to our solar system.”
“Knowledge! I gather knowledge on behalf of my creators. Do you know about the system I passed on the way toward yours,
the one with the trinary stars, four gas giants and two rocky outer worlds? I was there…” It did a rapid calculation. “…Eight of your planet’s revolutions ago. The denizens of the first solid planet were showing signs of primitive space travel at that time.”
A disk shot out from between the top two rings and hovered between the three of them. From it an image arose of the three-sun system. Unlike the holos that the human race had developed, this looked solid. Keh’keh’keh’gnicht’s upper body conformed and deformed, which Mel took to be commands. The image zipped toward the planet in question, a green world surrounded by a dense layer of clouds. A tiny, bulbous craft topped the clouds and moved upward, perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. Columns of strange characters wrote themselves on the sky, probably observational data.
“Yes,” Mel said. “We call them the Nodarians. That is as close as we can come to pronouncing their own name for themselves. We’ve been watching them for centuries, waiting for them to develop their own technology before bringing them into the Collective Systems. It’s to ensure that they don’t feel trapped and fearful at the appearance of space-going races before they’re ready for the concept. My own department, Xeno Relations, will be the first to reach out to them when we judge that they have made adequate advances.”
The crystal eye bobbed before her enthusiastically. “That is intelligent! So many other species have pressed the issue before its time, including my own creators.” The voice turned plaintive. “Will you share your knowledge about the Nodarians with me? I have databanks and libraries full of information of many systems and cultures to share in return. Please polite word? I do not mean to be rude again.”
“You’re not being rude,” Corrie said, with a toss of her head. “That’s really polite. You’re doing fine.”
“Excellent! Gratitude expressed.”
Mel checked her communicator. Within the massive ship, its signal strength was poor. She could offer some data, but possibly not enough to satisfy Keh’keh’keh’gnicht’s request. She needed to consult Brandex Gov.
Bless Your Mechanical Heart Page 24