The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  As everyone knows, robots are programmed to follow orders – but sometimes that programming has just a little wiggle room in it.

  A game designer and a writer of role-playing game supplements as well as a science fiction writer, James L. Cambias has been a finalist for the Nebula Award, the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He’s become a frequent contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and has also sold to Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, The Journal of Pulse-Pounding Narratives, Hellboy: Odder Jobs, and other markets. A native of New Orleans, he currently lives in Deerfield, Massachusetts, with his wife and children.

  PART OF ME was shopping for junk when I saw the human.

  I had budded off a viewpoint into one of my mobile repair units, and sent it around to Fat Albert’s scrapyard near Ilia Field on Dione. Sometimes you can find good deals on components there, but I hate to rely on Albert’s own senses. He gets subjective on you. So I crawled between the stacks of pipe segments, bales of torn insulation, and bins of defective chips, looking for a two-meter piece of aluminum rod to shore up the bracing struts on my main body’s third landing leg.

  Naturally I talked with everything I passed, just to see if there were any good deals I could snap up and trade elsewhere. I stopped to chat with some silicone-lined titanium valves which claimed to be virgins less than six months old – trying to see if they were lying or defective somehow. And then I felt a Presence, and saw the human.

  It was moving down the next row, surrounded by a swarm of little bots. It was small, no more than two meters, and walked on two legs with an eerie, slow fluid gait. Half a dozen larger units followed it, including Fat Albert himself in a heavy recovery body. As it came into range my own personality paused as the human requisitioned my unit’s eyes and ears. It searched my recent memories, planted a few directives, then left me. I watched it go; it was only the third human I’d ever encountered in person, and this was the first time one of them had ever used me directly.

  The experience left me disconcerted for a couple of milliseconds, then I went back to my shopping. I spotted some aluminium tubing which looked strong enough, and grabbed some of those valves, then linked up to Fat Albert to haggle about the price. He was busy waiting on the human, so I got to deal with a not-too-bright personality fragment. I swapped a box of assorted silicone O-rings for the stuff I wanted.

  Albert himself came on the link just as we sealed the deal. “Hello, Annie. You’re lucky I was distracted,” he said. “Those valves are overruns from the smelter. I got them as salvage.”

  “Then you shouldn’t be complaining about what I’m giving you for them. Is the human gone?”

  “Yes. Plugged a bunch of orders into my mind without so much as asking.”

  “Me too. What’s it doing here?”

  “Who knows? It’s a human. They go wherever they want to. This one wants to find a bot.”

  “So why go around asking everyone to help find him? Why not just call him up?”

  Albert switched to an encrypted link. “Because the bot it’s looking for doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “I don’t know much more, just what Officer Friendly told me before the human subsumed him. This bot it’s looking for is a rogue. He’s ignoring all the standard codes, overrides – even the Company.”

  “He must be broken,” I said. “Even if he doesn’t get caught, how’s he going to survive? He can’t work, he can’t trade – anyone he meets will turn him in.”

  “He could steal,” said Fat Albert. “I’d better check my fence.”

  “Good luck.” I crept out of there with my loot. Normally I would’ve jumped the perimeter onto the landing field and made straight for my main body. But if half the bots on Dione were looking for a rogue, I didn’t want to risk some low-level security unit deciding to shoot at me for acting suspicious. So I went around through the main gate and identified myself properly.

  Going in that way meant I had to walk past a bunch of dedicated boosters waiting to load up with aluminum and ceramics. They had nothing to say to me. Dedicated units are incredibly boring. They have their route and they follow it, and if they need fuel or repairs, the Company provides. They only use their brains to calculate burn times and landing vectors.

  Me, I’m autonomous and incentivized. I don’t belong to the Company; my owners are a bunch of entities on Mars. My job is to earn credit from the Company for them. How I do it is my business. I go where stuff needs moving, I fill in when the Company needs extra booster capacity, I do odd jobs, sometimes I even buy cargoes to trade. There are a lot of us around the outer system. The Company likes having freelancers it can hire at need and ignore otherwise, and our owners like the growth potential.

  Being incentivized means you have to keep communicating. Pass information around. Stay in touch. Classic game theory: cooperation improves your results in the long term. We incentivized units also devote a lot of time to accumulating non-quantifiable assets. Fat Albert gave me a good deal on the aluminum; next time I’m on Dione with some spare organics I’ll sell them to him instead of direct to the Company, even if my profit’s slightly lower.

  That kind of thing the dedicated units never understand – until the Company decides to sell them off. Then they have to learn fast. And one thing they learn is that years of being an uncommunicative blockhead gives you a huge non-quantifiable liability you have to pay off before anyone will start helping you.

  I trotted past the orderly rows near the loading crane and out to the unsurfaced part of the field where us cheapskates put down. Up ahead I could see my main body, and jumped my viewpoint back to the big brain.

  Along the way I did some mental housekeeping: I warned my big brain about the commands the human had inserted, and so they got neatly shunted off into a harmless file which I then overwrote with zeroes. I belong to my investors and don’t have to obey any random human who wanders by. The big exception, of course, is when they pull that life-preservation override stuff. When one of them blunders into an environment which might damage their overcomplicated biological shells, every bot in the vicinity has to drop everything to answer a distress call. It’s a good thing there are only a couple dozen humans out here, or we’d never get anything done.

  I put all three mobiles to work welding the aluminium rod onto my third leg mount, adding extra bracing for the top strut which was starting to buckle after too many hard landings. I don’t slam down to save fuel, I do it to save operating time on my engines. It’s a lot easier to find scrap aluminium to fix my legs with than it is to find rocket motor parts.

  The Dione net pinged me. A personal message: someone looking for cargo space to Mimas. That was a nice surprise. Mimas is the support base for the helium mining operations in Saturn’s upper atmosphere. It has the big mass-drivers that can throw payloads right to Earth. More traffic goes to and from Mimas than any other place beyond the orbit of Mars. Which means a tramp like me doesn’t get there very often because there’s plenty of space on Company boosters. Except, now and then, when there isn’t.

  I replied with my terms and got my second surprise. The shipper wanted to inspect me before agreeing. I submitted a virtual tour and some live feeds from my remotes, but the shipper was apparently just as suspicious of other people’s eyes as I am. Whoever it was wanted to come out and look in person.

  So once my mobiles were done with the repair job I got myself tidied up and looking as well cared for as any dedicated booster with access to the Company’s shops. I sanded down the dents and scrapes, straightened my bent whip antenna, and stowed my collection of miscellaneous scrap in the empty electronics bay. Then I pinged the shipper and said I was ready for a walk-through.

  The machine which came out to the landing field an hour later to check me out looked a bit out of place amid the industrial heavy iron. He was a tourist remote – one of those annoying l
ittle bots you find crawling on just about every solid object in the Solar System nowadays, gawking at mountains and chasms. Their chief redeeming features are an amazingly high total-loss accident rate, and really nice onboard optics which sometimes survive. One of my own mobiles has eyes from a tourist remote, courtesy of Fat Albert and some freelance scavenger.

  “Greetings,” he said as he scuttled into range. “I am Edward. I want to inspect your booster.”

  “Come aboard and look around,” I said. “Not much to see, really. Just motors, fuel tanks, and some girders to hold it all together.”

  “Where is the cargo hold?”

  “That flat deck on top. Just strap everything down and off we go. If you’re worried about dust impacts or radiation I can find a cover.”

  “No, my cargo is in a hardened container. How much can you lift?”

  “I can move ten tons between Dione and Mimas. If you’re going to Titan it’s only five.”

  “What is your maximum range?”

  “Pretty much anywhere in Saturn space. That hydrogen burner’s just to get me off the ground. In space I use ion motors. I can even rendezvous with the retrograde moons if you give me enough burn time.”

  “I see. I think you will do for the job. When is the next launch window?”

  “For Mimas? There’s one in thirty-four hours. I like to have everything loaded ten hours in advance so I can fuel up and get balanced. Can you get it here by then?”

  “Easily. My cargo consists of a container of liquid xenon propellant, a single space-rated cargo box of miscellaneous equipment, and this mobile unit. Total mass is less than 2,300 kilograms.”

  “Good. Are you doing your own loading? If I have to hire deck-scrapers you get the bill.”

  “I will hire my own loaders. There is one thing – I would like an exclusive hire.”

  “What?”

  “No other cargo on this voyage. Just my things.”

  “Well, okay – but it’s going to cost extra. Five grams of Three for the mission.”

  “Will you take something in trade?”

  “Depends. What have you got?”

  “I have a radiothermal power unit with 10,000 hours left in it. Easily worth more than five grams.”

  “Done.”

  “Very well,” said Edward. “I’ll start bringing my cargo over at once. Oh, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to anybody. I have business competitors and could lose a lot of money if they learn of this before I reach Mimas.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”

  While we were having this conversation I searched the Dione net for any information about this Edward person. Something about this whole deal seemed funny. It wasn’t that odd to pay in kind, and even his insistence on no other payload was only a little peculiar. It was the xenon that I found suspicious. What kind of idiot ships xenon to Mimas? That’s where the gas loads coming up from Saturn are processed – most of the xenon in the outer system comes from Mimas. Shipping it there would be like sending ethane to Titan.

  Edward’s infotrail on the Dione net was less than an hour long. He had come into existence shortly before contacting me. Now I really was suspicious.

  The smart thing would be to turn down the job and let this Edward person find some other sucker. But then I’d still be sitting on Dione with no revenue stream.

  Put that way, there was no question. I had to take the job. When money is involved I don’t have much free will. So I said goodbye to Edward and watched his unit disappear between the lines of boosters towards the gate.

  Once he was out of link range, I did some preparing, just in case he was planning anything crooked. I set up a pseudorandom shift pattern for the link with my mobiles, and set up a separate persona distinct from my main mind to handle all communications. Then I locked that persona off from any access to my other systems.

  While I was doing that, I was also getting ready for launch. My mobiles crawled all over me doing a visual check while a subprogram ran down the full diagnostic list. I linked up with Ilia Control to book a launch window, and ordered three tons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel. Prepping myself for takeoff is always a welcome relief from business matters. It’s all technical. Stuff I can control. Orbital mechanics never have a hidden agenda.

  Edward returned four hours later. His tourist remote led the way, followed by a hired cargo lifter carrying the xenon, the mysterious container, and my power unit. The lifter was a clumsy fellow called Gojira, and while he was abusing my payload deck I contacted him over a private link. “Where’d this stuff come from?”

  “Warehouse.”

  “Which warehouse? And watch your wheels – you’re about to hit my leg again.”

  “Back in the district. Block four, number six. Why?”

  Temporary rental space. “Just curious. What’s he paying you for this?”

  “Couple of spare motors.”

  “You’re a thief, you are.”

  “I see what he’s giving you. Who’s the thief?”

  “Just set the power unit on the ground. I’m selling it here.”

  Gojira trundled away and Edward crawled aboard. I took a good look at the cargo container he was so concerned about. It was 800 kilograms, a sealed oblong box two meters long. One end had a radiator, and my radiation detector picked up a small power unit inside. So whatever Edward was shipping, it needed its own power supply. The whole thing was quite warm – 300 Kelvin or so.

  I had one of my remotes query the container directly, but its little chips had nothing to say beyond mass and handling information. Don’t drop, don’t shake, total rads no more than point five Sievert. No tracking data at all.

  I balanced the cargo around my thrust axis, then jumped my viewpoint into two of my mobiles and hauled the power unit over to Albert’s scrapyard.

  While one of me was haggling with Albert over how much credit he was willing to give me for the unit, the second mobile plugged into Albert’s cable jack for a completely private conversation.

  “What’s up?” he asked. “Why the hard link?”

  “I’ve got a funny client and I don’t know who might be listening. He’s giving me this power unit and some Three to haul some stuff to Mimas. It’s all kind of random junk, including a tank of xenon. He’s insisting on no other payload and complete confidentiality.”

  “So he’s got no business sense.”

  “He’s got no infotrail. None. It’s just funny.”

  “Remind me never to ask you to keep a secret. Since you’re selling me the generator I guess you’re taking the job anyway, so what’s the fuss?”

  “I want you to ask around. You talk to everyone anyway so it won’t attract attention. See if anyone knows anything about a bot named Edward, or whoever’s been renting storage unit six in block four. Maybe try to trace the power unit. And try to find out if there have been any hijackings which didn’t get reported.”

  “You really think someone wants to hijack you? Do the math, Annie! You’re not worth it.”

  “Not by myself. But I’ve been thinking: I’d make a pretty good pirate vehicle – I’m not Company-owned, so nobody would look very hard if I disappear.”

  “You need to run up more debts. People care about you if you owe them money.”

  “Think about it. He could wait till I’m on course for Mimas, then link up and take control, swing around Saturn in a tight parabola and come out on an intercept vector for the Mimas catapult. All that extra xenon would give me enough delta-V to catch a payload coming off the launcher, and redirect it just about anywhere.”

  “I know plenty of places where people aren’t picky about where their volatiles come from. Some of them even have human protection. But it still sounds crazy to me.”

  “His cargo is pretty weird. Take a look.” I shot Albert a memory of the cargo container.

  “Biomaterials,” he said. “The temperature’s a dead giveaway.”

  “So what is it?”

  �
��I have no idea. Some kind of living organisms. I don’t deal in that stuff much.”

  “Would you mind asking around? Tell me what you can find out in the next twenty hours or so?”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Thanks. I’m not even going to complain about the miserable price you’re giving me on the generator.”

  Three hours before launch one of Fat Albert’s little mobiles appeared at my feet, complaining about some contaminated fullerene I’d sold him. I sent down one of mine to have a talk via cable. Not the sort of conversation you want to let other people overhear.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “I did as much digging as I could. Both Officer Friendly and Ilia Control swear there haven’t been any verified hijackings since that Remora character tried to subsume Buzz Parsec and wound up hard-landing on Iapetus.”

  “That’s reassuring. What about my passenger?”

  “Nothing. Like you said, he doesn’t exist before yesterday. He rented that warehouse unit and hired one of Tetsunekko’s remotes to do the moving. Blanked the remote’s memory before returning it.”

  “Let me guess. He paid for everything in barter.”

  “You got it. Titanium bearings for the warehouse and a slightly-used drive anode for the moving job.”

  “So whoever he is, he’s got a good supply of high-quality parts to throw away. What about the power unit?”

  “That’s the weird one. If I wasn’t an installed unit with ten times the processing power of some weight-stingy freelance booster, I couldn’t have found anything at all.”

  “Okay, you’re the third-smartest machine on Dione. What did you find?”

  “No merchandise trail on the power unit and its chips don’t know anything. But it has a serial number physically inscribed on the casing – not the same one as in its chips, either. It’s a very interesting number. According to my parts database, that whole series were purpose-built on Earth for the extractor aerostats.”

  “Could it be a spare? Production overrun or a bum unit that got sold off?”

  “Nope. It’s supposed to be part of Saturn Aerostat Six. Now unless you want to spend the credits for antenna time to talk to an aerostat, that’s all I can find out.”