Yngve, AR - The Argus Project

by The Argus Project (lit)

  "Moravia, you'll get your share of the reward," the captain assured him. "And wasn't it you who begged me to be in on this flight, before I dropped you off for your R-and-R?"

  "But it's the race , man. Keaton's big chance. We're a team, he can't do it without me..."

  His Earth-born colleague pushed away from the weightless cabin wall and drifted off to pick up the stray piece of food. The blond, large-breasted leisure droid began to work on the captain's back, while casting a long look at Venix - who sat in an opposite corner of the cabin, "upside-down" relative to it.

  "Venix," the blond simulacra asked in its husky, childish tone, "are you robot, simulacra, or human? I cannot quite figure out which. But of course... I'm not very clever," it said with an innocent flutter of fake eyelids.

  In a second, Venix' expression changed from anger to shock to bafflement. All three crewmen looked at her face, waiting. Keaton put one cautious hand on the large multi-purpose power tool in his vest-pocket. Venix shook her head at him, and her long red hair fanned out about her head. He quickly removed his hand.

  "I am," Venix said with deliberate slowness, "a cyborg and political refugee. I intend to seek asylum on Mars. I don't want to cause you any harm, but with or without your help I'm going to try and get past the MSF and reach the Martian Immigration Office."

  "Want to borrow my hairnet?" the leisure droid asked, its gaze following the drifting coppery strands of Venix' hair with a dreamy expression on its face.

  "And what if the Martians choose to play it safe and simply deliver you back to the MSF, ma'am?" Moravia suggested gloomily. "It's not like they've got a fleet. Heck, they barely have independence."

  "I'm going to try," she repeated, focusing on the crewmen with her remarkably steady, clear, unblinking eyes.

  At once reacting to her gaze with a nervous grin, Moravia made a quick suggestion: "Maybe we could drop her into the Martian stratosphere during re-entry, with the... other shipments? It doesn't get so hot inside the drop-capsule, she could survive it. Hey, I figured out she wasn't human days ago. No offense, ma'am."

  "Sure, Moravia, if you agree to tossing out several kilos' worth of merchandise to make room for her. Our Martian business associates can get pretty nasty if they think we're screwing them," said the captain. Keaton added: "And another thing. If she's located by the MSF on the way down - and I'll bet the Fleet has some means of tracking her - it means our shipment gets busted with her. No - she has to go in stealth, and separately."

  "Hate to say this, but we've lost our last spare stealth-cloak," Foss said. "I had to... get rid of a little legal problem when we picked up Moravia from the lunar bus. Dumped it in space, it'll never be found. Sorry. Should have bought more. P-A's broken, so it couldn't handle it for me."

  "Does your shuttle at least have an escape pod I could use?" Venix asked.

  The crewmen looked at each other with blank faces. Keaton moved toward the red hatch in the ceiling, opened a small panel and pressed the large "TEST" button.

  BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

  "Warning! Escape pod unstable due to malfunction. Propulsion system will explode if the pod is ejected. Do not open!" shouted a computer-voice. Keaton shut the panel and the alarm stopped.

  "This is just incredible," Venix said - her lips smiling, her wide blue and white eyes suggesting stunned outrage. "I jumped the only shuttle in the universe that I can't get off!"

  "Fark!" Keaton cursed out loud. "I don't want to end up a lobo like my dad! I'd rather quit, I mean it..."

  Lobos , criminals who had had their brains surgically corrected, could no longer commit crime - or walk and chew at the same time.

  "Let's be practical, boys," Foss said even as Keaton kept ranting and Venix regarded the captain's neck in a most unsettling way. "Where and when is the best time to drop secret cargo from Martian orbit?"

  "May I make a suggestion?" Venix said, and got their attention without having to raise her voice. While she talked, she let herself drift through the weightless cabin while rotating, slowly. She knew her floating hair was an eye-catcher, and made full use of the effect.

  "Keaton is right. The Fleet can track me. During my years on Earth they always seemed to know where I was. So I think they've figured out that I'm headed for Mars - the MSF don't have to know which shuttle I'm actually on. All they need to do is to check every cargo shipment as it arrives."

  "Stop looking at her like that, Captain!" the pouting leisure droid said hurtfully. "You've got me ."

  The captain's face turned a shade paler. "Venix is probably right. Why would the Fleet divert any of its precious forces just to track us, when they've got a war on their hands? I mean, where could she go, but Mars? What I still don't know is why you escaped, and what they want from you. So you're a cyborg, big deal. I've got plastic kidneys, a pacemaker, a hearing aid, titanium reinforcements in my bones and a digestion-bot in my stomach. What's so special about you? "

  "Never mind that," Venix said, landing softly on a wall section. "There is one way you can drop me off the shuttle without connecting you to my escape."

  Foss raised a hand: "We'll claim you hijacked us... no, they'll set an example and punish us anyway." He put away his chewed-up cigarette.

  "I shall take Keaton's place in the Skysurfing Grand Prix ," Venix said in her most unaffected voice.

  Keaton stood upright and began to bounce around in the cabin like a human rubber ball.

  "Never!" he protested. "She won't take my board! Never! I'm going for the tryouts this year, no matter what!"

  "Keaton and Venix are about the same height," Foss said, ruffling the leisure droid's blond head, like showing affection for a pet. The droid smiled with closed eyes, purring gratefully. "She can fit into your surfer suit easily."

  "But Caaap ..." wailed the fat man, spinning around his center. "You know the race is my life! All the money and effort I've spent training for this... I could've made the tryouts this year! Ask Moravia!"

  "I wash my hands," Foss replied. "I didn't choose to have her on board, but at least we can get her down without a fuss and 'they' pay us two billion hits for the effort. You can build a brand-new board with your share. My decision's final."

  Venix could not shake her suspicions that "they" were the Fleet.

  "For this plan to work, you must get killed in the Grand Prix," Venix said to Keaton, who glowered at her with open hatred. She could see with her infrared vision that the man was being quite emotional. Her years of experience reading heat-patterns from the heads of humans told her, intuitively, that some kind of revenge act was to be expected.

  Without a sound, she pivoted off the wall, bounced off another, caught hold of Keaton and they slammed into the ceiling. Venix put her face an inch from his; his breath smelled of cheap soy protein and alcohol.

  "Keaton, whatever you're thinking of doing... don't. I'm much too fast for you. Now, get into a suit and show me how to ride that board. We've got plenty of time until the tryouts."

  " My , Captain, would you like me to start behaving like that too?" asked the leisure droid in an outraged tone - perhaps testing the ground for adapting its behavior.

  "No, Sugar, you just stay the lovely way you are. Venix is... very, very focused. Last time a saw a woman that focused, she was chasing after some man. And the more hopeless her chase became, the more she... well, you know how it is."

  Venix avoided the captain's eyes. Sometimes she wanted to lash out and scream at people that she wasn't an emotionless robot, her inner life wasn't as visible as on a body of flesh and blood, words could hurt her... but she had learned to give up trying.

  Her hopes focused on the one man who had seen her feelings on the first attempt. Venix promised herself for the millionth time, that she and Gus would be together again... even if she had to deal with smugglers and worse scum to get there.

  19: Bullet Time

  His private room was wide, for the flagship - twice the space of an admiral's quarters, four times larger than a crewman's
hold. The crew's private quarters were lined up in a separate centrifuge.

  During the four-week journey from the Moon to Jupiter, this was the only space of privacy that Argus got.

  Argus entered the room, shut the airtight door, lay down on his body-fitted, naked metal bunk - sheets only irritated his skin - and shut his eyes. He thought about Venix, the night they met, and that seemingly everlasting time of bliss when their minds connected. The memories were quite detailed, and easy to get lost in...

  Maybe he could get in touch with her relatives on Venus. He pictured the awful event: "Hi, folks. I'm your daughter's new boyfriend. Don't look so frightened... I know I'm shorter than I look on the screens..." He laughed inwardly. Five ship-days to his next mission.

  In his absence, the flagship was sending out more remote-controlled fighter-pods to attack defense positions on the rebel moons. Would more people he had never known get killed, for reasons he had not learned?

  He regarded his hand, remembered how he had nearly bitten through the skin, and focused his vision on the spot.

  He found that he could discern details in the skin texture smaller than a twentieth of a millimeter. There was no scar, no blood. The micro-bots inside him had repaired the dent - it was gone.

  He closed the hand to a fist. There was one way of preventing that hand from pressing the bomb button again... if he had the nerve to do it. The cyborg body was powerful, but far from invulnerable. The arm could get caught in something, torn off, lost in space. He might even survive it. No more "hero" bullshit. Just a war cripple, asking strangers: "Got spare PP for an ex-soldier?"

  But he wasn't sure what price Venix might pay if they lost the war, or what would happen to Earth itself. Giving up was easy; it wasn't right. For the first time in weeks, he asked himself: What would Ali have done?

  He recalled the story he knew so well from the old book, how the 20th-century fighting champion had sacrificed his rightful title to stand up for his beliefs. Ali would have refused to take part in a war he did not believe in... not out of fear, but personal conviction. Argus still thought he believed in this war, at least enough not to quit.

  It was important to preserve some sort of safety for the Inner Planets. But at what cost, he asked himself... and the Kansler, in his public speeches, had only suggested that the war must continue until decisively won. That word "decisively" held so many frightening meanings...

  The ship's bulletin-board screen informed him that another squadron of fighter-pods had just returned to the docking-bay. The flagship moved to a wider orbit outside Jupiter's system of moons, and the crew was given an extended leave. Leave? Where to?

  He had an idea, and switched on the room's voice-mail.

  "A request to Admiral York and the Kansler: I wish to make a visit to one of the gas-mining stations in Jupiter's atmosphere." He hesitated, for one-thirtieth of a second, then added: "We need this opportunity to raise the morale of those Jovians who are friendly with Terrans, and show that I bear no ill will toward them as a people. We should give them a chance to talk instead of fight. Send mail. "

  Argus left his room and went to the recreational centrifuge to mingle with the crew. He felt awkward around the higher officers, and avoided them when he could. This was a mixed crew, and large enough to demand adequate diversions.

  According to rumors, the Fleet put drugs in the spaceship crew's food to deaden their frustrations and hormone levels during long flights.

  Drugs had no effect on Argus-A's electric nervous system... so he had to deal with his drives alone. In a way, not having genitals was a kind of relief: no hormones to cause involuntary outbursts of anger or desire. It had gotten easier not to think about it, though the feelings had not vanished from his mind.

  If only in his mind, Argus felt a desire for Venix that wouldn't go away... for only with her could he be a whole man again.

  The directional light strips on the corridor walls pointed out the way to the Recreational Section with glowing green arrows. He walked past scores of men and a few women, all in signal-color coverall uniforms.

  Orange for pilots, yellow for officers, blue for maintenance personnel - the great majority - red for weapons and reactor engineering; white for medics and physicians; ink-black only for Argus... and plain gray only for the Kansler.

  Argus caught a glimpse of himself, on a small eye-screen worn on a passing officer's forehead. In that brief glimpse, the cyborg got the impression of a man-shaped hole in reality - a cutout silhouette where a person should have been. The impression stayed in his memory.

  A door opened up into the Recreation section, and he paused in the doorway to watch the forty or so people in their jogging suits and coveralls, working out and playing games.

  The drug rumors appeared to be true, for the men didn't ogle the women and the women didn't flirt with the men. Only Argus looked at the women with something like a male interest.

  He walked in, trying not to make himself big. It didn't help: everyone stared, or tried badly to pretend they didn't stare. As they stared, he noticed, they struggled to get a clear focus of his body, but failed - it was so dark, they couldn't get a fix on his volume. The stares turned into confused drifting glances, and then went past him.

  He'd become almost a shadow.

  In one section of the large centrifuge stood a boxing-ring, where crewmembers worked off their grudges in boxing and kickboxing bouts. Argus hurt inside when he saw it, and his fists grew tense. The ring wasn't for him anymore.

  His visual perception worked so fast he saw lip movements before he heard the words, and it got worse with increasing distance. During the long, boring flight to Jupiter he had taken to a new hobby: lip-reading.

  A look across the room, and he could easily see what the crewmembers were saying as they lowered their voices in his presence... as if they pretended he couldn't hear.

  "Look what just walked in."

  "Fark... he's bigger than on the screen."

  "Gina, would you let your daughter marry one?"

  "Quiet, he's got super-hearing... now you're gonna get it, big mouth."

  "It's the future you're looking at, folks... we're obsolete."

  "What's wrong with you people? He's one of us, he's 'Our 'Gus'."

  "Yeah, he's great."

  "But does he ever breathe...?"

  One crewman in orange shirt and baggy pants greeted Argus - not with a salute, because even in the centrifuge section of a spaceship, it was bad form to waste a good arm and risk losing your balance.

  "Hello, Colonel, sir... good to see you here. We don't get the officers much. They keep to their own section mostly. You really impressed us all out there yesterday, sir. I've never seen a ship maneuver so fast."

  This was the first time a private had addressed him off-duty. Again he began to feel noticed by the others - but this time it was fear of his superior rank that made them watch, not him.

  "Sir," the smiling crewman said, his eyes flinching ever so little, "would you mind giving us a small demonstration of your speed and strength? We've all seen your tour, but never with our own eyes. If you're fed up with people asking, sir, then I apologize..."

  The man backed away a step. And Argus became aware of something new: his acquired habit of standing absolutely still when other people were near, for their own safety, also intimidated them. His inherited flesh-and-blood reflexes were rapidly fading away; he barely blinked at all, and had ceased to "breathe".

  He gave the man a disarming smile, hoping it didn't appear too fast to seem natural - his facial muscles were somewhat too rapid, and his expression could sometimes change like the frames of a primitive cartoon.

  "Yeah, sure. Tell your friends to come closer. Let's find something to demonstrate on."

  Instinct, or habit, made him walk along the centrifuge floor until he came to the boxing-ring. The crewmembers urged him to step inside the ring. He shook his head in friendly denial.

  "It's no use, guys. I could punch someone's head off wi
th a blow. That'd be a mess for the guys in blue to clean up! You got a dummy, or a pugilist bot?"

  He had only half an idea of what to do if the crew actually offered him a droid to spar with. Sure, he could hold back his strength and speed, but then what was the point of belittling himself and lowering the morale of the onlookers?

  After half a minute, the crewmembers in blue carried a device toward the boxing-ring that Argus had not seen before. It mostly resembled the rusty outdoors tripod grill he had used in Australia, back when he was a teenager. But the device was twice as large, black and without rust.

  One man in a red engineer's coveralls explained.

  "This is a remote-controlled mini-turret, sir. From the ship's armory. We've got hundreds, most of them never used. The mini-turrets were meant for holding positions on hostile surfaces, during a large-scale landing of troops on the rebel satellites. But... they turned out to be too vulnerable to counter-measures. We only use missiles and electromagnetic weapons now."

  In the second that the engineer spent to pause for breath, Argus figured out what the man had in mind.

  "Okay... for a test, make it shoot one projectile against that sand-bag over there. Careful, or you'll puncture the centrifuge." The engineer hesitated; no other officers but "Colonel Clarke" were present. The sole security officer on duty watched it all, but made no objections.

  Argus suspected the whole show was staged by Marketing to just seem spontaneous. The engineer put on the remote-control headset and took control of the mini-turret.

  The device's legs locked its clamps into the floor niches, and the upper lid of the turret lifted itself open. A small gunbarrel inside rotated and took aim at a large sandbag five meters away. The crewmembers cleared away from the area, as the engineer counted to three and fired.

  With a rather loud BANG, that made the entire audience flinch - the device used an outdated chemical propellant - a metal projectile was fired and lodged itself inside the sandbag.