Saturn 3

by Steve Gallagher

  Only now did the fear begin to re-awaken. When acknowledgement was sought by Survey it might be given spontaneously by the computer, urged by Hector’s personality within it. Rescue could be delayed, or it might never come. Deprived of her immediate company, the Demigod would perhaps be content to watch her, an eternal and insatiable voyeur, resigned to impotence but too stubborn to let go.

  The focus ring was pulling itself back, turning in millimetre bursts. She could cut the power to the computer, but Saturn Three’s life-support would cease functioning immediately. There would be emergency lighting, and probably enough air in the station to last her for many months before it started to grow stale; but after only a few minutes the temperature of the buried structure would start to drop. Inside a pressure suit she could last for a few days, replacing the power packs with spares as they ran out, but in the end she would be forced to restore power to the computer in order to survive. And when the computer came back there Hector would be, watching.

  “You won’t leave me alone, will you?” she said, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the stillness of the lab. “You’re beaten and you know it, but you won’t let go.”

  The camera stared, unable to respond. The p.a. speaker crackled in a snowstorm of white noise, but the formless sound shaped into no message.

  Then it turned, inching slowly and angling away, tilting downward in an attitude of dejection. At first this is how she interpreted the move, before she overcame this anthropomorphic tendency and looked around to see what the camera might be pointing at.

  The VDU was on its side, mud-covered and cemented where it had fallen. The connecting cables were out of the wall socket and coiled into loose snakes behind the unit.

  “You want me to plug it in? Is that what you want?” Of course, the computer/Hector had no way of answering. With a slight smile she kicked the box aside and walked out of the lab.

  There was a degree of satisfaction in being able, at last, to deny something to the Demigod which he could not reach out and angrily take. That had been his inheritance from James, an uncontrolled and egotistical impatience. She arrived back in general quarters and the camera was waiting, trained on the open end of the tunnel as she emerged.

  She drew a glass of amber juice and sat down. The camera followed, thirsty for vicarious activity. She could go round the base and defocus each camera in turn, but Hector would eventually realign them. Probably she would have to smash the units to blind him, trap him in the petty sensations of life-support feedback. She hesitated over this course of action, not knowing what his reaction might be to such irrevocable antagonism. After all, he inhabited the station around her, and Alex’s safety was only guaranteed as long as his regard for her was greater than his resentment.

  At the moment it seemed that she had some small amount of dominance over him. She could hurt him, but she would have to be careful; she couldn’t risk him spoiling her chances of rescue, and she had no real idea of the extent of his abilities. So far he had opened no doors, slammed down no bulkhead seals, issued no directives. That did not, unfortunately, assure her that he was incapable; underestimating Hector had caused their downfall a number of times now. As a strategy, it was due for a change. Resignedly she set down the amber juice and returned to the lab.

  She was theoretically his prisoner, but she had the power to offend and wound him. Some kind of stalemate could be agreed on that basis.

  She righted the VDU and cleaned the obscuring crust from its screen and keyboard before plugging it in. It warmed immediately and the line-scan came in after only a few moments. She switched to computer display.

  THANK YOU.

  The first response surprised her. It didn’t sound like Hector at all.

  “Can you hear me if I speak out loud?”

  YES.

  “Okay. Now, I’ve got some idea of where you are and how you got there. I know you’ve got control of the cameras and not much more.” The unit didn’t react, so she went on, “I can wreck the cameras or burn them out. Either way you’ll be blind. I’ll do it if you don’t leave me alone. Do you understand that?” No response; so she raised her voice. “I said do you understand that, Hector?”

  NOT HECTOR.

  She suspected some deceit. The base computer was no more than a standard data processing unit without a personality of its own; any original thought or direction would have to be superimposed from without, and Hector had been the only organism who might have been capable of such influence. The pit of frustrated snakes that had comprised the darker side of James’s nature had found full expression in the Demigod, and now it seemed that they lived on, a howling pack of furies that needed no flesh for their embodiment.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  NOT HECTOR.

  “Then, who are you?”

  ALEX REMEMBER . . . ALEX BELIEVE.

  “Remember what? And what am I supposed to believe?” Nothing happened, and so she said, “I’m not going to waste my time. I’m going to cut the VDU.”

  PLEASE.

  She had already reached out for the cut-off switch, but at the flat, toneless plea she hesitated and finally lowered her hand.

  ALEX BELIEVE . . . WE LOVE YOU . . . ALEX REMEMBER.

  “We? What do you mean, we? Who are you?”

  NOT HECTOR.

  “You must be Hector. You couldn’t be anyone else.”

  ADAM.

  Alex stared at the screen for a long moment. Then she slowly reached for the cut-off.

  PLEASE.

  “You’re lying to me. It won’t work.”

  NOT LIE.

  “Adam’s dead. Don’t think you can get around me by cheapening his memory.”

  ADAM LIVE IN HECTOR . . . HECTOR MAKE WAY FOR ADAM SO ALEX BELIEVE . . . ALEX REMEMBER ADAM.

  She was angry, and more than a little frightened. “What are you trying to do to me? Haven’t you done enough already? Are you going to keep me here and play with me forever?”

  ALEX SAFE . . . ADAM CALL SURVEY.

  “What? What was that?”

  ADAM CALL SURVEY . . . ALEX SEE EARTH . . . REMEMBER ADAM.

  She sat in silence, appalled at the scope of Hector’s ingenuity and amazed by his insensitivity. The words stayed to brighten the screen for several seconds, and then they slowly faded.

  “It won’t work,” she said again. “You think you’ll persuade me to stay by pretending there’s something of him left in you. Forget it, Hector.”

  NOT STAY . . . ALEX SEE EARTH.

  “I said forget it.”

  I LOVED YOU.

  There was a pause for a few moments and then:

  WE ALL DID.

  Without warning the screen darkened and died as the power supply was cut. Alex flicked the power switch but it had no effect.

  She stepped back from the VDU, but the lab camera did not track. When she pulled her box back and twisted the lens out of focus it made no effort to return.

  How could he lead her along and then desert her? What strategy of cruelty was this, that he should defy annihilation to pester her with doubt? What could he possibly hope to gain?

  Everything had been clear-cut before. She could have sustained the loss of Adam, knowing that he had died as he had lived, purposefully and with determination; but this twilight of uncertainty that Hector was creating pulled at her, destroying her composure and undermining her self-control. Of course she didn’t believe the Demigod’s subterfuge, but how could she be completely sure? How could she know that she wouldn’t wound and offend some vestigial trace of Adam’s personality, translated and replicated through the brainlink and the station computer? It didn’t matter that the trace was no more than a phased recording in the memory of a machine, for the Demigod’s argument came back to her with a conviction that was now far less easy to overcome. If the body was no more than a vehicle for the intellect, perhaps Adam lived on as long as his thoughts and ideas retained their coherence, whatever the medium.

  Alex was startled as the
tannoy spattered and came to life. “Saturn Three,” it said, “We understand you have a problem. Do you read?”

  The corridors echoed as every speaker in the base carried the same message. “Saturn Three, this is Survey. I repeat, is there a problem?”

  She ran to the com room. All the screens were lit and showing their usual views of the work areas and corridors. “Last call, Saturn Three,” the voice from the platform was saying as she reached the console. “Last call and then we come and bale you out. You’d better have a good reason for this, Three.”

  “Saturn Three here,” she said breathlessly, not really expecting to be heard, but then she was surprised when the voice replied immediately.

  “Hi, Spaceborn. The Major there?”

  “No. No, he’s . . . not here.”

  “Got a call from him less than four minutes ago, really weak signal. Some kind of distress code, but we couldn’t make out what.”

  “That’s right. We’ve been having some trouble with the robot you sent us.”

  “Sounds like we’ll have to dig out the guarantee. You want to enter for a replacement?”

  “It’s more serious than that. I think somebody ought to come down.”

  There was a silence at the other end of the link which implied a hurried conference. Then: “Better put the Major on.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t. The Major’s . . . hurt.”

  “Is that part of the trouble?”

  “Yes. It’s really too complicated to explain.”

  “Okay, we’re getting a cruiser on its way to you. Can you hold on for a couple of hours?”

  “I think so. But please, before you go . . . will you tell me something?”

  “Make it fast.”

  “When you got the call, was it the Major who spoke to you? Or was it just the code?”

  “It was him, all right. I spent three years alongside that monkey on the Venus slingshot. I’d know him anywhere.”

  “I see. Thanks.”

  “Trade you, Spaceborn.”

  What did he mean by that? “I’m sorry?”

  “Trade you information, something I didn’t understand. The Major said—well it sounded like, ‘look after Alex’. You got anybody called Alex down there?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t know who he could have meant.”

  SIXTEEN

  The weeks spent on the Orion shuttle between the Saturn platform and Earth were never more than vaguely pleasant for the travellers on board. Those making their first trip were naturally excited by the novelty of their circumstances, but even this mood was eventually worn down by the killing routine of mild amusement. The movies, the magazines, the long-drawn-out dinners and the drunken jags, the blue dreams and the bed-hopping—all of the pastimes devised by the bored voyagers were never any more than the term implied, a means of speeding up the slow passage of the hours. After a while the fun became yet another routine, a mechanical process of enjoyment to be gone through as a matter of form.

  Such travel, consisting of isolation in a void with no direct control over one’s progress and no satisfying feedback from the changing of one’s surroundings, is surely one of the least rewarding activities made possible by technological advance. Departure and arrival are the only significant realities; in between the two the continuity of existence is suspended, and any action taken during that period of not-time is leached of any worth. Books read are instantly forgotten, relationships formed and promises made are unreal in retrospect. There was a certain desperation evident under the superficially lighthearted mood of the Orion passengers. Only the crew seemed to be free of it, occasionally glimpsed like some rare species as they moved about the decks from one roped-off private burrow to another. Their continuity was somehow intact; they were more than in transit, they were actually alive. They kept their own society. They managed to make the passengers feel even more estranged.

  The Orion was a rambling structure, space-assembled and designed exclusively for long hops between orbiting platforms. Of all the passengers only Alex seemed to find its environment comfortable, for it was hardly different from any of the places in which she had lived. If anything it was more spacious, and she derived an additional sense of awe from walking around the full circle of the promenade deck and looking out of the screens at the seemingly endless emptiness that surrounded the shuttle. She usually found herself alone on the deck, and this was one of the reasons for her frequent and prolonged visits. People, large numbers of them with over-loud voices and unattractive habits, were a source of extreme discomfort to her. She was gradually learning how to handle them—mainly by finding ways of persuading them to leave her alone—but it was a slow and depressing business. She’d not yet had any problem with sexual overtures; it wasn’t that none had been made towards her, but with civilian passengers she was able to pull back into the shell of her military status, and she was fortunate in outranking the few Survey monkeys who were making the trip back home.

  No doubt she would get used to being a Major. Her grasp of the hierarchy of the Survey was not very good, but it had at least been sufficient for her to be able to put the case for her promotion back on the platform. How, she had demanded, could they ignore her experience and close knowledge of the workings of Saturn Three as they worked on plans to restore its operations? But, they had said, their aim was to rationalise the station. They wouldn’t need any ranking staff, experienced or otherwise. And then she had made her carefully thought-out proposal.

  Sometimes she would absently slip her hand under her hair, and lightly touch the implant at the back of her neck. Part of her mind would always resent its presence, even though its installation had been her own idea. She’d done well in the tests, scoring high on stability and control and convincing even the most sceptical of the members of the Survey Forward Planning Board that she should be engaged to programme the new Saturn Three Demigod.

  She had never told them the real reason. They would laugh at her worries, dismiss her ideas. Instead she had transformed her determination into a reasonable facsimile of loyal enthusiasm, her very thoughts on offer for the benefit of the Survey.

  There was a clear tone, and some kind of an announcement. Earth was only a few hours away—or, at least, that was when they would rendezvous with the orbiting platform from which they would be taxied to re-entry. Although she was alone on the observation deck Alex could sense the shiver of excitement that was passing through the ship, a re-awakening of the senses at the prospect of resuming interrupted lives.

  She would hate it, she knew. Adam had told her so often enough, and she had come to believe it. Even so, he had been prepared to accompany her, to leave the unhurried peace of Tethys that he had loved so much. Now he need never leave, and the sacrifice need never be made. He had become part of the very fabric of the station, his mind holding together within the neural lifelines of the base in the same way that her own had been re-drawn in the Demigod.

  Adam and Alex, together again in Saturn Three.

  Forever.