Strider's Galaxy

by John Grant

  At the rear of the gigantic fingertip that was the Santa Maria projected an extended bar, like the exposed bone running between the first and second knuckles; at its end was a hemisphere of diameter nearly a kilometer. This was where the matter-antimatter reactions that would power the Santa Maria through space towards Tau Ceti II would occur. It was also where the nuclear pulse fusion explosions that the craft would use to get itself out of the Solar System would be mounted; nuclear pulse fusion explosions were dangerous enough, but no one in their right minds would risk creating matter-antimatter reactions anywhere closer to Mars than somewhere beyond the orbit of Scarab, the gas-giant tenth planet discovered as late as 2103.

  "I think we should get moving," said Lan Yi's voice in her helmet after a while. "The shuttle crew have a job to do."

  Strauss-Giolitto nodded, then said: "Isn't it always the way that, when you come across the most amazing thing you've ever seen in your life, there's a good reason for hurrying along?"

  "Once the shuttle's blasted off, we can come out here again," said Lan Yi quietly. "Our services are not required aboard for the next few days."

  "Won't superbitch Strider object? I mean, it would be a bit too much like having fun."

  "Have you met Strider?" They were bobbing across the stone towards the Santa Maria in that peculiarly clumsy way everybody did on Phobos.

  "No," said Strauss-Giolitto. "From everything I've heard, it's an experience not to be looked forward to."

  "Who has been telling you this?"

  "Most people. She's supposed to be a hard number."

  "Who are these 'most people'?"

  Already, lurching ten or fifteen meters with every pace, they were halfway to the Santa Maria.

  "Everyone I know who's come into contact with her during training sessions," said Strauss-Giolitto. "They all say she's a tight bitch."

  "She can be cold on occasion," said Lan Yi. His voice was beginning to sound a little breathless. Maneuvering oneself across the surface of Phobos was harder work than it seemed. "But she's no ice queen. I've met her several times, and like her very much. I would rate her IQ as being rather less than my own, but not by very much."

  "A high IQ doesn't make someone a better person." To her annoyance, Strauss-Giolitto was likewise discovering this odd stumbling process tiring. She turned a somersault between paces just to reassure herself that she was able to. The stars whirled nauseatingly around her.

  "Don't believe what those people told you," said Lan Yi. "I'm sure she can be ruthless when she has to be. She swears a lot—and sometimes quite interestingly. Most of the time, though, she's restrained but also prepared to listen to what you have to say. If she thinks you're talking rubbish she'll say so, but very politely, so that you don't feel like an idiot."

  "How do you mean?"

  Lan Yi laughed. It was a dry noise in Strauss-Giolitto's helmet.

  "I insisted to her that I needed at least a hundred techbots if I were to do my job properly. She said the SSIA had said I could have four. I was prepared to appeal over her head until she pointed out that every extra kilogram of mass aboard the Santa Maria made the mission less likely to succeed: did I really believe it was worth doing without one of the shuttles in order to have my extra bots? Better a job done, if not as well as I would like, than a job completely undone." He laughed again. "Then she took me out for a meal, and we talked it over a second time."

  Lan Yi was adapting to the strains of moving about on Phobos better than she was, which irritated Strauss-Giolitto yet further. She was in her early twenties—she thought she was twenty-four—and he must be a hundred years older. She was in splendid physical condition and over two and a half meters tall; he was apparently frail and barely two-thirds her height.

  "She was right," continued Lan Yi. "By the time I'd worked it out properly, I realized that I could get as good results from four techbots as from a hundred, because I could use the Main Computer for data storage. I had been thinking lazily; Strider hadn't. Many people I have worked with would have made me feel foolish because of my lack of clear thinking. Strider did not."

  "That doesn't sound like the person everyone else describes," said Strauss-Giolitto impatiently. They were very close to the Santa Maria now—close enough that the curve of its hull overhead was no longer noticeable.

  "Perhaps this displays a lack in those other people rather than in Strider," said Lan Yi mildly.

  "Hmmf."

  "How many of these other people are going to be a part of this mission?"

  Strauss-Giolitto hesitated. "Well, none, actually."

  "I do not think that this is a coincidence: only the best are being permitted aboard this vessel. Look, someone is letting down an access tube for us."

  Strauss-Giolitto was silent as they entered the tube's outer airlock, stripped naked, stuffed their suits into disposal vents, and were showered with various precautionary chemicals to ensure they were bringing nothing into the Santa Maria's ecosystem that had not been planned for. She tried not to look at the little out-of-Taiwanese's body, but couldn't help it. He was more muscular than she had expected, his only visible augmentation the secondary retinal screen that hovered a couple of centimeters in front of his right eye. With his left eye he was unashamedly scanning her own body.

  "You are very lovely," he remarked.

  She snorted. "Dream on."

  "I was speaking aesthetically."

  "Oh yeah?"

  "Oh yeah, as you put it, Strauss-Giolitto. If I knew you better I might find the display of your body alluring. As it is, I find it merely beautiful—you are an elegant statue."

  The second airlock hissed, and two sets of SSIA uniform flopped on to the floor on its far side. After a moment's confusion Lan Yi and Strauss-Giolitto sorted out between them whose was whose.

  She didn't know whether to feel complimented or to be angry with the small Taiwanese.

  Then they were walking up the brightly illuminated walkway through the tube towards the ship's interior.

  #

  They could hear the tube grunting and creaking as it retracted itself behind them. The innermost airlock grudgingly granted them admission, and they were met by someone even taller than Strauss-Giolitto. His face was crafted as a perfect simulacrum of a human being's and he was clad in the form-shrouding standard uniform of the SSIA, but she immediately recognized him—it—as a bot.

  Lan Yi was shaking the bot's hand and reaching up to slap it on the shoulder.

  "My good friend Pinocchio," the diminutive scientist was saying. "How very fine to find you here to welcome us."

  The bot's head buzzed. "Dr Lan Yi," it said after a perceptible pause. "The pleasure is mine entirely. I have been despatched by Captain Strider to guide the new arrivals to their cabins."

  Strauss-Giolitto spared the bot no more than a glance. Although technical manuals and holos had described the interior of the Santa Maria to her, the direct experience was as startling as the outside had been. Almost the entirety of the vast space was empty. In the distance, near the craft's stern, she could perceive a small cluster of hut-like structures: from here, about a kilometer away, they looked almost as if they were made of wood, though she knew this had to be an illusion—textured and colored plastite was much lighter and tougher than wood. Still, she liked the fact that the craft's designers had taken the trouble to create that illusion. It made the bizarre space within the Santa Maria seem humanized. Overhead a long daylight-simulator ran the length of the vessel; it had been set to Earth-standard, which like most people who had spent much of their lives on Mars she found offensively bright. The ship's floor was covered in fields of yellow and bright green grain; here and there were groves of fruit-trees. Overhead, right up by the edges of the daylight-simulator, she could see the markings for further fields. For the first part of its voyage the Santa Maria would be set into latitudinal revolution, so that the direction of "down" would be towards the exterior of the craft as the spin simulated gravity. Thereafter, once i
t started accelerating out of the Solar System, the spin would be stopped and the fields would be swivelled out from the hull to form several layers of "landscape." The cabins where she and the others would sleep and spend their leisure time would likewise swivel. Several elevators, currently useless, ran the length of the vessel. The system was unlikely to work perfectly: agribots would ply endlessly to return topsoil from the craft's stern to the fields where it properly belonged.

  Small clouds hovered beside the Santa Maria's huge daylight-simulator.

  It was an imposing sight.

  The colors, for example. Colors on Mars were always fairly muted—even the orange-red of the plains was restful in the glimmer of the sunlight. Inside the Santa Maria, with its Earth-standard daylight-simulator, greens and yellows were violent, vibrant colors.

  She supposed she'd get used to it.

  Lan Yi had finished his rather embarrassing reunion with the bot, and was introducing it to her.

  "This is Pinocchio. He plays a very good game of chess."

  "Yeah. How do you do, Pinocchio?" said Strauss-Giolitto. It seemed odd to be introduced to a goddam machine. (She must stop blaspheming, even in her thoughts.) "Pleased to meet you."

  She shook hands formally with the bot.

  "And I am pleased to meet you too, Ms"—again there was that disconcerting buzzing noise—"Strauss-Giolitto. We have not met before, but I recognize you from the data which the Main Computer has supplied me concerning your facial features."

  "You're too kind," said Strauss-Giolitto sarcastically.

  "Thank you," said Pinocchio, with no apparent irony. "Now may I guide you to your cabins? There is a further pair of personnel due to arrive in"—his head hummed—"four hours and forty-four minutes."

  Two-thirds of the Great Beast, thought Strauss-Giolitto, following Lan Yi and the bot.

  They went along a path that could have been in Mongolia, where Strauss-Giolitto had spent her childhood, although her mother and grandmother had always fiercely reminded her that her roots lay in Greater Yugoslavia. Through the hedges Strauss-Giolitto could hear the thrum of insects. Every now and then a gap in the bushery offered her a view of endless ears of grain; the only difference from Mongolia was that the heads weren't moving. Above her some kind of raptor soared close to the clouds. The inside of the Santa Maria was Earth's ecosystem, done in miniature.

  An animal that she didn't recognize scuttled across the path in front of them. It seemed to be covered in stiff, bony needles. Its hindlegs were amusingly long as it scampered nervously out of their way.

  "You are a teacher?" said Pinocchio, with studied courtesy.

  "Unless your programming's wrong, bot, you know that already." It was probably quite cool in here, but the brightness of the daylight-simulator was making her feel hot. The SSIA uniform was designed for use on Mars, not in Earth-standard.

  "You will have very little to do during the first few years of this mission," said Pinocchio. "It is unlikely that any child will be born before we leave the orbit of Jupiter."

  "All teachers are, by definition, highly trained in data retrieval," Lan Yi pointed out. "They have to be, because that is what they spend most of their time teaching to their young charges. Ms Strauss-Giolitto's expertise in that field will also be of considerable use to the mission."

  "Do we have to respond to this bot?" said Strauss-Giolitto angrily to Lan Yi.

  The out-of-Taiwanese looked offended. "I told you, he is a friend of mine. He is making conversation, although sometimes I suspect his conversation is not just idle. Why can't you be courteous to him?"

  A yellow butterfly landed on Pinocchio's shoulder, flapped its wings for a moment or two, then fluttered away.

  "Be courteous to a machine? Why should I be?"

  "He's a very clever machine," said Lan Yi.

  "And I brew excellent coffee," added Pinocchio.

  "I wouldn't be surprised if he were as clever as, for example, you," Lan Yi continued.

  "I doubt it," said Pinocchio. "Ms Strauss-Giolitto has an IQ of"—his head buzzed again—"one hundred and eighty-four plus or minus ten. I am a mere valetbot, so that I do not require an IQ higher than several decades less than that."

  "You've kept telling me so," said Lan Yi, "but you've taken three games of chess off me."

  "You were playing badly at the time."

  They'd been walking for quite a while, yet still didn't seem to be much closer to the cabins at the Santa Maria's far end.

  "Look, can I just get a word in edge—?" began Strauss-Giolitto.

  "No. You can shut up," said Lan Yi, rounding on her suddenly, holding up his hand, palm towards her, so that instinctively she stopped walking.

  "I really don't think—" Pinocchio said.

  "And you can shut up for a moment or two as well, my friend," said Lan Yi. His face had become pale. Strauss-Giolitto had the sudden impression that the scientist had grown taller than herself.

  "There are going to be fewer than fifty of us on this ship for the next thirty years or longer, perhaps very much longer," said Lan Yi, "and we are going to have to learn to rub along together somehow. Since we left the shuttle a few minutes ago you have beefed about Captain Strider—whom you have never even met—and now you are being directly insulting to a being who, while he is not organic, is nevertheless a sentient creature and a valued friend of mine. You were insulting to me when I remarked on the fact that you were physically beautiful. I don't know what chip it is that you have on your shoulder, Ms Strauss-Giolitto, but could you get rid of it, please?"

  He stared up at her, his dark eyes very hard.

  She could probably have clubbed him to the ground with a single swing of her arm, but of course she didn't.

  "I am amazed you got through the screening procedures," said Lan Yi. "You seem like an atavism. I will make a point of observing you during the next three years and if necessary recommending to Strider that she send you back to Mars before we leave Jovian orbit."

  Strauss-Giolitto felt the blood drain from her lips. "You'd get me thrown off the mission?" she said.

  "Too damnably right," said Lan Yi. "I might have children during this voyage. You are a teacher. I do not want them to be taught your ghastly little prejudices."

  "What makes you think Strider would listen to you?" said Strauss-Giolitto.

  "Oh, you really do have a lot to learn, Ms Strauss-Giolitto," said Lan Yi. "Come on, Pinocchio. Let us get to the cabins. Let this stupid individual come along behind, unless she would prefer to find herself lost out here rather than follow a mere bot and a wrinkled old man."

  #

  As soon as Lan Yi was alone in his cabin he threw himself down on the forcefield futon and stretched out on his back, his arms outreached behind his head with his thumbs locked together, his feet tensed so that his toes pointed towards the opposite wall. His body was over a hundred years old and felt as good as it ever had.

  On his secondary retinal screen he could see that Pinocchio was returning to the main ingress aperture, ready to wait for the next brace of incoming personnel.

  The cabins had small windows so that enough light came in from the daylight-simulator for most things. There were blinds that would mute the light and automated curtains to shut it out entirely. Lan Yi had been in worse quarters. Much worse. His Taiwanese ancestors had luckily been out of the country when the nuke war had annihilated Taiwan alongside mainland China. People elsewhere on Earth often couldn't make the distinction between the descendants of Communist Taiwan and those of the larger, anarchist nation that had once been to its north. On either side of his family tree, Lan Yi had ancestors who had been lynched. He himself had three times during his century-long lifetime—or was it four?—been locked up by the cops for a few nights on the grounds of "suspicion." Maybe that had been, along with their poverty, a part of what had driven his wife Geena to take her life. Once he had come to Mars that type of harassment had stopped; the Martians, blind to physical differences like the epicanthic fold
, regarded anyone from Earth as a bit of a lost cause until they had proved themselves otherwise.

  Lan Yi was concerned that this blasted teacher might think differently. He blinked at his secondary retinal screen and the scene of the outdoors changed instantaneously, giving him a view through the window into her cabin.

  She was kneeling forward on her forcefield futon, with her face in her hands. Her long, mousily blonde hair covered her arms down to her elbows, so that it took a moment or two for him to realize that she was weeping.

  He felt like a voyeur, and immediately blinked at his secondary retinal screen once more. The pastoral splendors of the Santa Maria's interior blandly returned again.

  The woman regarded bots as by definition second-class citizens. He wondered if, by extension, there were subdivisions of the human species whom she regarded as inherently inferior to herself. He hoped this were not the case—otherwise he would indeed fulfil his threat to have Strider pitch Strauss-Giolitto off the mission at the first possible opportunity. But he didn't feel very good about himself for having invaded her privacy.

  Wearily, he realized that he probably ought to take her under his wing. If she carried on behaving this way, no one else would.

  He cued his musibot to play some Bach. Pure Bach, not a melding with another composer, was what he desired right now. The fifth Brandenburg Concerto was exactly what was needed to soothe him.

  #

  "We have it!" yelled Strider ten days later. The amalgamate fibre linking the eighth of the eight tugs to the Santa Maria had attained full tension. "Yahey!"

  "Are you reporting that we have achieved A-73 status, Captain Strider?" said Dulac in her temporary commlink. He sounded amused.

  "Aw, come on, Alphonse, you know what I'm talking about."

  "I was joking, Leonie," he said. Over the past year the two hadn't become friends, but, as with O'Sondheim, their working relationship was more or less OK. "Congratulations on a successful manoeuvre."