Tinman

by Simon Fairhead

  It warbled again, and the wires thrummed in answer. Then it undulated, unhurried, back towards the opaque torus and Art saw it subsumed by the vehicle, like honey sinking in porridge. The torus moved slowly away, along the track and around a bend out of sight.

  CHAPTER 24

  Twelve more years passed. Art turned on Six once a year, for one day. Now that they were free to roam their entire enclosure, they spent time outside in the summer, in the den in autumn, and deep in the conical chamber when the storms came.

  Art was now very old. He had been old when, in terms of genetic health, he was young. He had benefitted from medicine unheard of in the twenty-first century. By his count, negating the years he had spent in stasis aboard Kyko Halliday's craft, he was something like two hundred and forty years of age. The alien diet he had been fed had kept him well, aside from its valium-like qualities, but an organic system, no matter how well cared for, has its natural span of years.

  And so does a cyborg.

  "Six," said Art, one day, "You have twelve minutes of power left."

  "I know."

  They were in the plaza, looking out at the incessantly moving, living forest. It was the end of summer, but still very warm in the evenings. Art had made a bed of straw next to the robot. He had collected his evening meal, and his jug, which he had filled with water. His hair and beard were like long silver strands of cold candy-floss, flittering in the breeze.

  Six lowered his head. "It has been a privilege to experience my life with you, Art Parrish," he said.

  Six knew what was coming. "I will try to get a power source to you, Six," he said.

  Six shifted his shoulders. Perhaps a shrug? "We have seen no life-forms for twelve years, six months and seventeen days. Area clear..."

  "Just shut down, Six. Don't talk. I'll shake the wires again, I'll try and break them!"

  "Don't get stuck. If you get stuck, I'll have to help you, and then my batteries will be drained."

  "Shut down, Six. I have a fistful of straw to hit the wires." He struggled to his feet and stood on limbs emaciated and bent with age, his flesh now yellowing like some old laboratory specimen preserved in formaldehyde. He ambled slowly to the wires. A first alien contact, he thought. Utterly alien. Utterly unknowable. On Earth, even a microbe has a common frame of reference, be it gravity or the intensity of sunlight, or the length of a day. Here...

  And the physiology. He was not even convinced of the symmetry of the creature they had encountered a dozen years ago. No eyes, no apparent mouth or genitalia; no limbs. And if it could sense its surroundings optically, what wavelength could it see? Could it even be classified as an animal? He had noted the structure of its conical body, like shelf fungus on an old tree trunk. How could they communicate? Were they even aware of them in a way he could understand?

  Every light on Six's frame was blinking in the red, even in deep sleep mode. He had moments to live. And there was a living human brain in there, screaming for survival. He had to act.

  He thrashed his handful of straw against the wires of their cage. They bobbed and sent their whispery call out along their length. He watched as the movement subsided. He watched until the wires were still. He watched as entropy does what entropy always does. They were all caught in its embrace; him, Six, the wires themselves. It would extinguish the mighty pulsars and supernovae one day; the ravenous black holes, the quasars and red dwarfs. One day, trillions of years in the future, the energy of the entire universe, the energy of the big bang, would be exhausted and utterly spent. One day, the last chemical reaction between the last remaining atoms would occur, the last milliamp of light or heat would flare for a second, and then the universe would go dark, forever. A stagnant swamp of becalmed rocks would remain, black, cold, immobile. Even gravity would no longer exert its force. Every physical thing would have found its final resting place; every chemical process would have run its course. But what final resting place? Would, instead, enough matter congeal around the remaining large physical objects to begin to compress the universe? As the stars died, would physical matter be drawn in, ever faster, to the ones that remained, to one huge sewer as opposed to a thousand plug holes? And as these sources of gravity became scarcer, would all matter, eventually, be attracted to the last, single source of gravitational pull in the universe? A gravitational singularity with no forces to oppose it? Would it be enough to contract the matter of the universe to a single point in space - to cause another big bang? To give birth to the next universe?

  "Help me! Please!" screamed Art, his voice cracking. He hit the wires again. And again. "I need power! The cyborg will die! There is a living brain inside! Let me get to my space ship! Please!"

  The metallic, ringing noises of the wires died. They became still once more. A wind blew over the tops of the living forest, disturbing their tiny, oval leaves.

  "Power critical. System shut down in 5 minutes. Organic systems preparing for emergency freeze. You have thirty minutes from system shut down to restore power to organic systems."

  Art hugged Six tight. "Please help us! If you can hear us, please let me take the robot to our spacecraft. I can save him!"

  Six twitched in his arms. The automatic voice continued. "System shut down in 4 minutes, 59 seconds. Please restore power immediately. Halliday duosphere brain approaching critical system failure."

  "Six."

  "Yes, Art?"

  "When were you born?"

  "My system clock tells me I attained consciousness in the Halliday laboratories 38th of Mioumu, Imo year 112. I am two hundred and twenty one years old, excluding periods of stasis and time dilation caused by our travels. Would you like me to calculate my exact age?"

  Art took Six's ugly head in his hands and gripped it tight. He could see the lenses in his mis-matched optical system shift as they studied him, irises opening and closing to compensate for light changes. He smiled at the cyborg. They had been together longer than many people had been married, longer than some people had been friends, longer than some people had been alive, and that is what Six was; his oldest, most trusted, dearest friend. He had stayed by his side, in this empty zoo, for 56 years, uncomplaining and attentive. He had only one question for him, a question left unanswered since the military manoeuvres on Ium, when he had been assigned to look after him.

  "Six?" he asked.

  "Yes, Art?"

  "What happened on Ium, on the training drop?"

  Six craned his head around to look at him directly. "Was that me?"

  Art frowned. "Yes, Six. Who did you think it was?"

  "I was a woman then. It can't have been me."

  Art stared into the optical sensors. He couldn't read the robot's face, of course. "Six, who were you when we landed on Ium?"

  Six's servo motors and hydraulic system began to shut down. He slouched on his rig. "I was on my way to the market, when suddenly I saw all these men in the way. It had been a long day at the office and I just wanted to buy some fish for my dinner and get home. All of a sudden, I was hearing all these instructions in my head, and the place where I was was hot and dirty. I just wanted a shower, to put on my pyjamas and my fleece slippers and have a nice, quiet dinner."

  Art's mouth was agape. "And so you...?"

  "Well, I dealt with it. I got to the fishmonger just in time, too."

  "Six, nineteen men died!"

  "In the market?"

  "On Ium! On the training drop in the fucking jungle! You killed Bailey..." He leant back from the robot, appalled.

  "You silly boy, that wasn't real."

  Art finally understood. "Six, was your brain seeded from the stem cells of Halliday's secretary, Ms Kjanvik?"

  The robot tilted his head. It looked like he was rolling his eyes. "I am from the Special K batch, Art. Imo years 111 to 113. We were all seeded from Ms Kjanvik."

  "Grade C military defence unit, Special K batch. I remember Halliday's description of you. He said I should inject you with prodraxil, end it before your trial could take pla
ce."

  Six's infrared array shut down. Art could see the robot shift his head as its perception of the world altered. A tiny, hinged housing at the underside of his head popped open to display a black button.

  "Art, this is my prodraxil syringe. Press the button to kill my brain."

  Art knew about this. Halliday duospheres mounted in military housings all had this built in, in case a robot was captured by hostile forces. The syringe killed the brain, and attached electronic circuits wiped all associated data from the unit, rendering it useless. It could be performed externally, as Six was presenting it to him now, or internally, via the enclosed brain, as a self-destruct mechanism. Suicides had occurred, but the military had kept the device. Handing over a robot soldier to an enemy was simply too dangerous.

  "No, Six. Never."

  "You look tired. Come home with me this evening, and I will cook you the finest hargest fish you have ever tasted."

  "Astrid, this is a dream."

  "Yes, Art. I have been published to the quartz. I am in a solid state. I have been in stone since Imo year 113. And so have you. Mr Halliday was very busy during your periods of stasis."

  Art limped away from Six, across the pavement that looked like fish scales and shone under the red dwarf sun like sea shells. He looked up at the red, rotund clouds, easing themselves into fresh conjunctions as they rolled slowly across the sky. He shouted back at the robot slouched in front of the taut wires of their cage.

  "Is this real, Six?"

  "This is real, Art, but we can live somewhere else, too."

  "Is that what you've been doing?"

  "Halliday has built my mind three or four hundred times - in duosphere brains and in solid states. The solid states don't always work, but I've found one I like. Join me."

  Art tore at his hair. Had he wasted 56 years of his life in this stupid, deserted zoo? "How can I join you, you biological freak?"

  "Sorry, Art, you'll have to die."

  Six's read outs, all in the red, abruptly went dark. Art ran to the robot's side, but what had once been a support system for a living brain, with a link to Halliday's hidden ship, was now an empty metal carcass. He lifted up Six's head, but it fell loose when he removed his hand. Brain function had ceased.

  Art sat nest to Six, his back propped up against him. No tears came. Perhaps they were all used up.

  Twenty three more years passed. Nothing of any interest happened. One morning, as Art crawled out of the tunnel entrance to speak to his long-dead friend, his heart stopped beating. There was, thankfully, only a moment of pain, and then he was free, and the zoo, and his interminable confinement, were forgiven and forgotten, in a white, comforting mist of formless oblivion.

  CHAPTER 25

  They had not expected to find anything so far from the Wascrow Tunnel. They had seen nothing, but there was a gravity well in the sector that indicated there were objects ahead.

  Three tiny probes were shot ahead of the survey ship, the size and shape of tin cans. They went off at different trajectories so they could make a triangulated signal.

  Navigation crewman Qwish monitored their progress. His chev lounged on the deck under the console, chewing on his favourite toy.

  Commander Uriff entered the bridge, riding his own chev, his tiny legs dangling from the saddle on its back. The chev, with its broad, good-natured face, hooted quietly to Qwish's mount. Qwish's chev hooted back, a smile forming on its lips. But they were well trained. They had their duties. There would be time to play at six chimes. Uriff's chev sat and went down onto the elbows of its strong, ape-like arms so the commander could dismount. He slid off the saddle and walked with tiny steps to the navigation console, his big, hairless head bobbing on his narrow shoulders.

  "Is there a good signal, crewman?"

  "Aye, sir. I'll bring up the graph interface."

  Qwish's long, delicate fingers tapped at the circular screen. A holographic representation of the signal bloomed from the black disc that was the console's hologenerator. They saw a large, dark object, surrounded by four planets and a fifth, broken moon, shattered into fragments.

  "Solar radiation only six points above background levels. The sun has been dead for some time. Perhaps ten million years."

  The commander reached into the hologram and toyed with each of the planets in turn, drawing them closer so he could examine their surfaces in detail. The holographs showed topographical formations down to a ten metre scale. He paused as he examined the fourth planet. "Qwish, what do you make of this?"

  Qwish moved his chair closer. He saw tiny lines, and aggregations of raised blobs. "Hard to say, sir. The raised objects could be seabed formations."

  The commander grunted to himself and turned away. "Carry on, crewman."

  "Aye, sir."

  The commander called a meeting with the science officer in his quarters. They sat either side of his desk, their chevs lying by their sides.

  "Linsk, high command is talking about pulling our funding at the end of this year and government is dragging its heals over building any more photonic stations. We need to show them something of interest or we'll all be called in and re-assigned."

  Linsk smoothed his hand over his bald head, thinking. "Do we have something of interest?"

  "Navigation has picked up a dead solar system. The sun seems to have cooled very gradually over millions of years. One of the planets has some very unusual topography."

  "I'm not sure they'll go for it. It can't be colonised, there won't be any life. We can land and check for mineral deposits, precious metals and the like, but unless it's spectacularly rich, this far out, it won't be worth digging out of the ground."

  "Do you want to go back to one of the colony worlds and oversee some terraforming or work in the hydroponics research laboratory?"

  "Not particularly, commander."

  "Then I suggest we take our time here, Linsk. Examine everything."

  "Isn't that a misuse of government funding?"

  "Let's just be selective with our findings. I'll send back some enthusiastic reports to counsellor Bresk."

  "You're the commander, It's your call. I'm just following orders."

  "Linsk, no one is listening in on us."

  "You're right. Let's screw some more money out of the bastards and keep on flying."

  "That's more like it. We'll deploy the large terradome and get some shore-leave."

  CHAPTER 26

  The terradome was a majestic sight. It had taken six weeks to erect on the surface, and a further four months to plant out their algae farm. Ultraviolet lights built into the roof of the dome provided sunlight. The algae grew and pumped out oxygen. Within six months, five square kilometres of the planet, beneath its artificial sky, was habitable once more.

  Qwish piloted the commander and Linsk, the science officer, onto the surface of the planet in a squat, toroid shuttlecraft. It landed on a black, frozen surface of shattered rocks. Six chevs, their lumbering forms encased in spacesuits, dragged one end of a pressurised corridor tent to the shuttlecraft airlock and secured it in place. Qwish and the others disembarked and passed through the inner airlock, into the terradome.

  Rain clouds had formed at the far end of the dome, and as they removed their helmets, they heard it falling on alien soil. There was a vegetable stink in the air, and on the ground crates full of equipment surrounded a hundred or so crew domes arranged in neat rows, to either side of a galley tent. Around a kilometre distant was a jumble of rocky fragments. It was not a mountain, but the remains of something that had collapsed.

  Refton, head of security, approached the commander on the back of his chev.

  "Commander, the dome is secure and ready for inspection."

  "Thank you, captain. Let's have some kroi, and then we'll set out."

  The surface, frozen nearly to the mantle for millions of years, was rapidly melting under the terradome and its artificial light and heat and air. A soft red mud clotted on the boots and gloves of the chevs as they ambl
ed across the landscape on their short legs and long arms, like great apes. They took an easy route, a flattened path of land that snaked in gentle curves between hundreds of collapsed hills of debris.

  Linsk gazed in wonder at their surroundings. "It's a city..."

  Commander Uriff glanced over at him. "That's what's going in my first report to Counsellor Bresk."

  Linsk returned his stare. "Pure conjecture on my part, commander."

  Uriff shrugged "'Appears to be a city' should cover all eventualities, Mr Linsk."

  Qwish, who was a little way ahead, next to the security chief, turned in his saddle, pointing. "And that appears to be a fence!"

  Bent and rusted though they were, the four of them saw ahead a distinct curving line of metal protrusions sticking out of a tumbled and shattered ridge of stones.

  Linsk muttered under his breath to Uriff. "And that's our funding secured for another five sols." The commander nodded.

  Over the next week, they assembled equipment and living quarters close to the fence, and began their dig. At the start of the second week, Qwish fell in a hole. A porus stone slab slipped beneath the feet of his chev, and the beast slid ten feet or so down a newly opened incline into the mouth of a debris-laden tunnel. Qwish tumbled from his mount and slithered after his chev, his puny arms and legs buckling uselessly until they both came to a stop in the tunnel's half-light. His chev, trained since birth to assist its rider, immediately cupped him in its strong arms and looked around for further danger. All was still, once the torrent of tiny stones that followed them fell silent. The chev stood Qwish upright and made sure he was not about to fall over again, then waited for further commands.

  Qwish turned slowly on the spot to look down the tunnel. He took a step forward and dislodged a metal object. It banged and rang as it rolled away down the incline, but it was too dark to see that it was. He tapped a control on the chest-plate of his uniform, and lights mounted to his shoulder-straps came on, illuminating the tunnel. The chev hooted and pointed, looking to Qwish for approval.