Lost in Transmission

by Wil McCarthy

  Conrad personally didn't talk to the ship very much. The idea didn't bother him, exactly, but his first ship had been the pirate fetu'ula Viridity, whose only intelligent hardware had been a snotty fax machine. Not much of a conversationalist, and not much point in even trying. Over the years he'd trained on half a dozen other ships, some of them quite charming, but Conrad really didn't see the point in getting chummy. He didn't talk to houses, either. To its credit, Newhope seemed to sense this about him, and kept mostly silent in his presence. But it was just like Robert to have a personal relationship with the equipment.

  “So, when you were on that neutronium barge, did you talk to it as well?”

  Both Roberts smiled, and one said, “Not so much, no. Barges are funny that way; they're not really intended for crew, and I don't think Refuge ever really got used to having us there. It didn't matter how we talked to it or what we did, we were always kind of anomalous, a constant source of surprise and confusion. Of course, we weren't exactly authorized, which may have had something to do with it. But Newhope, why, she and I are friends.”

  “You make friends with robots as well?” Generally speaking, robots had a kind of collective intelligence thing going; whatever thoughts they had in their wellmetal brains, they were shared and spread across the brains of nearby robots, or household hypercomputers, or anything else that might be handy. They could be shockingly intelligent, but with a sort of mindless, mechanistic quality just the same. Idiots savant. And when they appeared together in the same sentence, the terms “friendly” and “robot” had certain other connotations—sordid ones which a lesser man might take amiss.

  But what Robert said was, “Ah, sir, you just don't know the right robots. Think of that one that follows King Bruno around. What is it, Hector? Hugo?”

  “Oh, yeah. Hugo. I've met him. It.”

  “Eerie, isn't it? There's nothing human about it, but it's definitely . . . there with you. More so than this ship, or any hypercomputer I've spoken with. I could be friends with a machine like that.”

  “Bruno spent a hundred years training that one. And it's still not finished.”

  Robert laughed. “Who among us is finished?”

  “Hmm,” Conrad said. “So, this activity here . . . Will it take you long?”

  Robert glanced briefly at his thumb, making sure it was still on the interlock switch, then looked back at Conrad. “You trying to hustle me into storage?”

  “Something like that. Have you got a timeline?”

  In the confines of the crawl space, Robert shrugged. “Two days for fine-tuning? A week? I'm just guessing. We don't really have to do this at all, but I thought it might smooth out the ride. We've got predictive algorithms trying to steer us at low thrust into minimum-density zones, so we don't have to spend all our time juking around dust grains, but unfortunately this is where astrogation starts to become a challenge.”

  “How so?” Conrad had studied astrogation, along with a lot of other subjects, but it was one of the many things that had gone in one side of his head and straight out the other, leaving no impression at all. Conrad wasn't sure if he was a stupid man or not, but he knew, at least, when somebody else knew a subject better than he did. Which was most of the time, alas, but that realization itself was maybe not so stupid.

  The nearer Robert wriggled in the crawl space, adjusting his position while keeping his thumb on the interlock. He gestured with his free hand. 2 “There isn't any kind of fixed reference for where we are. Near a known object, yes, you can take some range measurements, but not out here in the middle of nowhere. So even where we have echo-ephemeris dust maps—which are extremely spotty out here, by the way—we can't say with any certainty where we are on the map. So we're still flying blind.”

  And suddenly Conrad understood. “Ah, it's like driving a motorcar at night.”

  “Hmm? A motorcar?”

  “My father paves roads for a living. Well, maintains the paving, anyway. I used to do a lot of testing with him.”

  “So,” Robert said, “you're in some sort of wheeled contraption then? Rolling along in the dark? With, like, searchlights shining out in front of you?”

  Conrad nodded. “Right. And there's wildlife out in the country, and if you hit a deer or something it can bounce you right off the road. But you never know where the deer are going to be, and your headlights only shine so far, so the faster you drive, the less reaction time you have.”

  “And the more violent your maneuvers have to be, when you suddenly see that deer in front of you. Okay, it's exactly like that. So I'm turning up the brightness on our searchlights.”

  Just then, an alarm sounded, and Bertram Wang's voice echoed throughout the ship, calling out, “Collision avoidance! Brace for—”

  The lurch was not terribly violent when it came. Maybe a hundred-meter juke, one-fifty, tops. But the sound of crashing equipment echoed down the ladder, from one or two decks up, and the sound of human cursing followed close behind it. Then, while Conrad and Robert looked at each other, came the slam slam bang of angry footsteps coming down the wellsteel rungs. Seconds later, Louis McGee appeared, throwing himself down in front of them and stomping up to the entrance of the crawl space.

  “Goddamn it, Astrogation.” Louis seemed, for a moment, to be preparing to ask a question: Why can't you be more careful? Why can't you watch where we're going? Why don't you give us a little warning next time? But instead, he grabbed Robert by the foot, hauled him bodily out of the crawl space, and punched him hard in the stomach before Conrad could intervene.

  “Security!” Conrad shouted at the walls, and the walls responded in the voice of Newhope: “Security alert, deck four service core.” And then Conrad was prying Louis off of Robert, with a head- and armlock he wasn't really sure would hold. But as Robert struggled to his feet, and as the other Robert wriggled free of the crawl space, their own efforts aided Conrad, and the three of them were able to restrain Louis effectively.

  “You all right?” Conrad asked.

  “No,” Louis said angrily. “I banged my fuffing head for the third time today.”

  “I wasn't talking to you, numbskull,” Conrad barked. Louis was the third inventory officer, and had no business being out of storage this late, anyway.

  “I'll be all right,” Robert said, a little breathlessly. “He mostly just surprised me. Well—uh!—maybe I'll step through a fax just to be safe.”

  “You stupid ass,” Conrad said, smacking Louis across the top of the head. “Now I'm going to have to figure out a punishment. High space naval discipline, oh my little gods. You're probably going to have to be flogged, my friend. What would make you do something like this? Right in fuffing front of me?”

  And with that, Louis started crying. “I want to go home. Oh, I want to go home.”

  “Oh, brother,” Robert said wearily. “Here we go.”

  Conrad was inclined to agree. They'd had their share of freakups onboard Viridity, and even occasionally onboard more civilized craft. It was only a matter of time before they had some here. A lot of people didn't take well to space—the distances, the dangers, the isolation. And no one had asked to be here, not really.

  “I've got a big brother,” Louis whimpered. “He's forty-nine years older than me, and he always knows what to do. But it's taking three weeks to get his replies now, and it's only going to get longer. Three months, three years, twelve years when we finally get to Barnard. What good is a big brother if it takes him twelve years to give advice?”

  “Just calm down,” Conrad told him. “Take deep breaths.”

  Just then Security, in the person of an unescorted Ho Ng, came clanging down the ladder. He surveyed the scene, glancing dispassionately from face to face before meeting Conrad's gaze. “What happened?”

  “Freakup,” Conrad said. “Escort him to storage, please. We'll worry about treatment options sometime in the future. Meanwhile, just get him out of here.”

  Ho pursed his lips, studying Louis for a long momen
t. “What did he do, sir?”

  “It doesn't matter.”

  “It does if we want valid security and psych statistics. Did he damage equipment?”

  “No,” Conrad said. “He threw a punch.”

  Ho considered that. His eyes settled on Robert, noting the gut-pained kink in his stance. “Assaulting an officer. Out here that's a flogging offense.”

  “Only if I say so,” Conrad corrected. “Or Xmary does. There are extenuating circumstances, and in my opinion Mr. McGee here is not fully responsible for his actions. Do you want him flogged, Astrogation?”

  “No, I forgive him,” Robert said.

  Conrad nodded. “Right. Louis? Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

  “I want to go home. I didn't want to be here, I was never part of the revolt. I was just, you know, there at the time. Can you fax me home, sir? Please?”

  “Oh, for crying . . . Louis, you work in the inventory. You know as well as I do that we haven't got the data rate to transmit a person. Take some mental notes, if you like, and we'll mail them back for appendment to your archive. Do you want to be locally erased?”

  “No!”

  “Then you're pretty much stuck here, right? Ho, just take him.”

  “With pleasure, sir.” Ho grabbed Louis' arm and roughly hauled him toward the ladder.

  “Gently, Security,” Conrad warned. He knew Ho from their pirate days, and trusted him about as well as he trusted a starving dog. Security was a real interesting job choice for him, the result not of a vote but of a writ issued by King Bascal shortly after his coronation. “Ho likes responsibility,” Bascal had said at the time. “It's good for him, and that's good for us. You want him idle instead? You want him tuning the engines?”

  But as Ho and Louis ascended the ladder together—not stopping at the nearest fax machine but continuing all the way to the top—Conrad heard the echoes of Louis' yelping and squawking for a long time, and knew that Ho would gladly break an arm or two if the opportunity arose.

  “Jesus Christ and all the little gods,” he said to Robert. “I need to get my ass into storage pretty quick here. Maybe I should punch you myself.”

  chapter five

  through every waking moment

  Time? Any physicist will tell you it's just another dimension, not so different from space, and its relentless forward movement is an illusion imposed by conscious minds rather than an inherent property of the universe itself. Remove consciousness and time does not pass, does not have any dynamic properties at all. It simply is.

  The first thing Conrad saw when he stepped out of the fax machine was Bascal's face. Or something like it, anyway. The king looked different: at once chubbier and more gaunt, his skin looser. There were even strands of gray in his hair, and in his beard. But his eyes were the thing that really stood out. They had a milky, unfocused look to them.

  “Bascal?”

  The careworn face lit up with a smile. “Ah, Conrad. So glad to hear your voice again. It has been . . . too long.”

  Conrad felt a cold shiver. “What year is it?”

  “Well, let's see.” Bascal's smile collapsed into a frown of concentration. “We did the first correction burn at one year, and the second burn at ten years, and that was thirty years ago. So we're forty years into the journey. Yeah, forty.”

  “And nobody thought to wake me before now?” Conrad didn't know whether to feel relieved or insulted.

  “Yes, well, we would have,” Bascal said. “You're due next in the rotation, I believe. Xmary will sit out the next burn, but that's not for a while yet. That's not why I brought you out.”

  Well, that sounded encouraging. Conrad cast a look around him, scanning for signs of trouble. They were at the forward inventory, on deck fourteen, twelve levels aft of the bridge. It was all done up in projective holograms: a tropical theme of sand and palm trees, elephant grass and vanilla. And right away, Conrad noticed flaws in the imagery, indicating streaks of dead material in the wellstone of the walls and ceiling. But not too much—the damage was no worse than he'd expect after forty years of cosmic wear and tear—and other than that, there was nothing obviously amiss.

  “What's going on?” he asked.

  Bascal stepped away from the fax's print plate, gesturing for Conrad to follow. “Our colonization plans need . . . revising. Some surprises have trickled along in the news from Earth, and . . . Well, the truth of it is that I was lonely. You're my best friend, and I don't feel like doing this without you. All right?”

  Conrad felt his brow furrowing. “How long have you been out here, Bas? You're supposed to be in storage.”

  Bascal smiled sheepishly, his face showing off deep creases. “There is a lot to do, you know. A lot to study. I'm to be the king of an entire planet, an entire solar system. The first truly new civilization since the conquest of the Americas. I thought I'd, you know, pack in some wisdom along the way. I've got six master's degrees now, do you know that? I was going to try for a Ph.D., but, well, it seemed wrong to specialize in any one field. That's not really my place, I think.”

  Conrad was both awestruck and horrified. “You mean you've been bumping around the ship all by yourself, for forty years? Some kind of hermit? So when we get to Barnard, we'll all still be kids, but you'll be a pleasantly seasoned man. A grown-up, here to lead us in the ways of the world. Is that it?”

  “Yeah, basically.” The king did not seem particularly embarrassed by this admission. “But I realized I can't do it alone. I need help; I need friends. It's a powerful insight! So you see, in spite of the doubts written all over your face, there is a bit of wisdom accumulating.”

  Conrad studied his friend's face and body. “How long has it been since you faxed a fresh body? You look terrible. Your eyes, especially. Can you even see me?”

  Bascal frowned, looking him up and down. “You know, I thought you looked a little . . . dim. I put it down to all the reading I've been doing. But I think you're right—there's something rather wrong with me.”

  “It's the cosmic rays,” Conrad said. “They're eroding your retinas and your corneas, and God knows what else. Stop here. Don't leave this room. I'm not going anywhere with you until you step through that print plate.”

  The king paused, then nodded. “Very well. It's your advice I seek, and this sounds like strong counsel. One gets . . . neglectful. My father lived alone for decades, on a planette out in the Oort Cloud, but it occurs to me, talking to you now, that I've been a hermit for longer than he. The people finally dragged him back and made him their king. That was more than Mother could ever do. But there is no one to drag me anywhere, and nowhere to be dragged to, so a hermit I remain.”

  Though he hated to bring it up, Conrad asked, “No one? Not even Brenda?”

  “Oh, I've seen her,” Bascal said distractedly. “We have our little flings every now and then. Although I suppose it has been a while. Funny, that I brought you out instead of her. But we get different things from different people, don't we?”

  “Aye, Your Highness,” Conrad said with some amusement, although there was something creepy about this situation.

  Bascal stepped up to the print plate and murmured, “Repair and reprint, please.” Then stepped through. It was like watching someone brush through a slightly sparkly gray-black curtain, or sink into a pool of liquid paint. The print plate didn't move, didn't part, didn't resist. It simply accepted Bascal's body, whisking it apart into component atoms. And then, a moment after Bascal's back had vanished into it, his front reemerged, stepping clear and bringing the rest of his body along behind it. He blinked, suddenly young and fit again, sharp of mind and fleet of foot.

  “Oh. Wow. That feels better.”

  “I'll bet,” Conrad said. “You should consider, you know, making it part of your regular schedule.”

  Bascal's youthful face broke into a smirk. “Ah, you kids, you think you know everything.”

  Conrad sneered at the joke and then said, more seriously, “So what is this ba
d news from Earth?”

  “Ah. Yes. Trouble with the atmosphere, I'm afraid. More than a hint of chlorine in it. Not nearly as much as the oxygen, thank God, but more than enough to be toxic. There is also sulfur dioxide, which gives us some clue about the biological processes that must be involved. I have a master's degree in the subject, by the way.”

  Conrad shrugged. He'd never expected the atmosphere to be breathable, anyway. He'd never expected the planet to be habitable at all. “I wouldn't worry, Bascal. Most of the settlement designs are already provisioned for doming over. Chlorine is pretty corrosive, I seem to recall, but if we use chlorinated plastics in the dome material, or even probably just standard semiconductors—basically wellstone in the off state—I doubt that will matter. It's more an inconvenience than anything else—some extra filtration when we pump in fresh air. It's really not that big a deal.”

  “Oh.” Bascal looked as though the light had gone out of his sails. “Well. That's all right then.”

  The two of them looked at each other for a long moment. “You want to have lunch?” Bascal asked finally.

  As it happened, Conrad had eaten dinner only thirty subjective minutes ago—his last waking act. He wasn't hungry, and he wasn't bored or lonely. In point of fact, he was very eager to get to the next mission milestone, and from there to Barnard itself. He'd spent enough time on this ship already! But forty years? That was a long, long time to be alone, without ever once having lunch with your best friend. Bascal had inflicted the fate on himself, of course, and it was crazy—it was crazy—to go and do a thing like that. But the king had his reasons, weird as they were, and the desperation in his eyes was unmistakable now.

  “Sure,” Conrad said, and watched Bascal's face relax.

  The next time Conrad stepped out of the fax, he saw exactly the same thing. Well, not exactly the same; Bascal looked fresh, for one thing. And the holograms were different: an underwater theme of translucent reefs and fish, with the illusion of depth and a hint of surface light somewhere up around the bridge.