Roboteer

by Alex Lamb

  They steered him out of the room towards a separate cell. Ira chose his moment and tried to shrug them off, but resistance in his current condition was hopeless. The police barely heeded his efforts and threw him through the doorway. He sprawled across the floor as the door thudded shut behind him.

  Now he didn’t even have his crew with him. Ira gripped the floor and refused to despair. He needed to think about something else. Revenge sprang easily to mind – revenge on whoever had got him into this shitty situation. It wasn’t rational and it didn’t help, but right now it was the strongest, most productive emotion Ira could muster.

  Who was it? He weighed the evidence. The suspects were Hugo, Rachel, Will and the resistance. Rachel he discounted immediately. Hugo had been shot for his troubles and appeared to have gained nothing. Unless his entire fragile persona was an act, it was unlikely to be him.

  The resistance were strong candidates, but their motive wasn’t clear. And from what Rachel had said, it sounded as if they’d exposed themselves quite badly through their actions.

  However, believing in their guilt was preferable to the idea that he’d been sold out by Will. At the end of the day, Will was still one of his crew. Ira was responsible for him, and as determined as ever not to lose another roboteer.

  Unfortunately, the evidence pointed straight at him – or to the alien in his head, at least. Perhaps it had done this in revenge for Ira’s decision to remove Will’s micromachines. Maybe it had decided that humanity wasn’t worth saving after all, or was just pursuing its own unguessable agenda. Either way, Ira couldn’t take Will’s loyalty for granted any more. Though he hated the idea, if he ever escaped this place, he’d have to accept the fact that Will might need to die.

  14: FACE TO FACE

  14.1: GUSTAV

  Gustav read the report from the New Angeles authorities while his starship was still decelerating into the system. It filled him with a kind of anxious excitement. The enemy was within his grasp at last. Not that he was out of the woods yet, of course – he still had a protectorate government to deal with, a project to save and a war to win.

  As soon as he arrived, he made a bee-line for the habitat ring where the prisoners were being held. As always, Rodriguez came with him.

  During the uncomfortable two weeks he’d spent with Tang, Gustav had experienced a reversal of attitude with respect to the intolerable disciple. He actually preferred to have him around. While Rodriguez remained in sight, he couldn’t be off plotting. Gustav had found his new assistant huddled in furtive conversation with Tang once too often for comfort. It would also help if the revolting little man saw Gustav succeeding for a change.

  At the habitat ring, Civil Coordinator Enrique Chopra was waiting for him. He met Gustav with a broad, gleaming grin and an outstretched hand the moment he stepped out of the elevator.

  ‘Welcome, General!’ said Chopra enthusiastically.

  Gustav regarded the hand steadily until Chopra tucked it back out of sight. From the report Gustav had received, he knew Chopra was suspicious of the reasons for the Ariel’s capture, and the coordinator had done his level best to build himself into Gustav’s operation. If he thought he could deal with Gustav as an equal in the negotiations that were bound to follow, it was better that he be disabused of that notion now.

  Chopra’s smile ground on with unyielding confidence. ‘We have all heard the news of your commendation, General. My congratulations to you!’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Gustav curtly. ‘May I introduce my assistant, Disciple Jesus Rodriguez.’

  Rodriguez was only too willing to shake Chopra’s hand. ‘May I congratulate you on your capture, Civil Coordinator,’ said the disciple. ‘A brilliant piece of police work, if I may say so.’

  Chopra beamed at him. ‘You’re too kind, Father.’

  Gustav decided to wrest back control of the conversation before Rodriguez could enlist another ally in his machinations.

  ‘I want to interview the prisoners,’ he said.

  Chopra arched an eyebrow. ‘In person, General?’

  ‘Why else do you suppose I’m here?’ said Gustav. ‘To watch recordings? Please take me to the man you identified as Will Kuno-Monet.’

  ‘The mad one?’ Chopra’s professionally unreadable face betrayed a moment of intense curiosity. ‘I would have thought you’d want to see the captain first, sir.’

  Chopra was fishing. The report suggested he’d followed Gustav’s orders to the letter. Supposedly, Chopra’s men had neither interrogated the Galateans nor made any attempt to investigate the hard or soft contents of the impounded ship. Gustav was sure that was a lie, but they’d at least taken pains to conceal their efforts. He’d half-expected the policeman to announce his knowledge of the Relic and start bargaining for the price of his silence. Then again, the Sons of Mao could be relied upon for subtlety, if nothing else.

  ‘You have stated that the captain’s behaviour is stable,’ said Gustav. ‘Therefore, he can wait. I will see the mad one, as you call him.’

  Chopra bowed. ‘As you wish, General.’ Chopra muttered some commands into the mike on his lapel and gave Gustav another winning smile. ‘Please follow me.’

  According to Chopra’s report, Monet talked to himself. He made demands for help from an entity he called the Transcended. The moment he read that, Gustav’s skin had prickled all over. That word, or something like it, had occurred eleven times in the garbled responses they’d received from the Relic.

  Chopra had identified Monet as performing the role on the Galatean ship known as roboteer. This meant he was bred to think with the autistic clarity of a machine so that they could plug him into their robots like some kind of human strategy SAP. Gustav was revolted by the idea, but realised its potential all the same. If Monet was in effect part machine, was there some possibility that the Relic had influenced him, just as it had influenced their computers? Either way, it was clear that this Monet was involved in some way with the attack on their data feed from the Relic.

  When Gustav learned of Monet’s apparent betrayal of his crew, his suspicions were aroused still further. It suggested that something at odds with the Galatean agenda might be at work in his mind. If the man was as unstable as Chopra suggested, there was hope that they might be able to manipulate him to their advantage.

  Chopra arrived at a door next to a panel of wall monitors. They showed a young man slumped in a chair from a variety of angles.

  ‘I will talk to the man alone and in private,’ said Gustav.

  Rodriguez regarded him levelly. ‘For what reason, General?’ he asked coldly. Apparently he no longer felt the need to play at being an assistant, not even in front of the Leading members of other subsects. ‘You don’t want to give the impression that you’re cutting deals with the prisoners that the Prophet would disapprove of, do you?’ Rodriguez added.

  ‘The Prophet will have to trust me,’ Gustav replied with equal venom. ‘I will go in alone.’ He looked at Chopra. ‘The man is appropriately secured?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Chopra cheerily. ‘Motor-suppressants have just been applied. He can talk, and move a little, but not much else.’

  ‘Good,’ said Gustav. He tapped on the closest monitor, bringing up a command interface and used his security override to lock down surveillance in the cell. The images of Monet vanished.

  ‘No recordings will be made of this discussion,’ he said. ‘If I find that there has been any attempt to subvert my authority, I will hold you in contempt of Kingdom security.’

  Chopra nodded smoothly, not quite hiding his disappointment. ‘Of course, General.’

  ‘Open the door,’ Gustav ordered.

  Chopra keyed in the code and the door swung open. With some satisfaction, Gustav stepped through and shut it against Rodriguez’s frowning face. Let the bastard wring whatever political advantage he could from this moment. Gustav wasn’t going to miss his opportunity.

  He turned to the prisoner. Monet was a tall man with a mop of floppy
brown hair and some uneven beard growth. He sat slumped in his chair, dressed in regulation-green prisoner’s overalls, looking for all the world like one of the drunks who used to pass through Civic Control back in Sophia.

  Except for his eyes. The man’s eyes stared fearlessly into Gustav’s own. His expression might even have been called menacing. Gustav knew that the prisoner’s slack posture was due to the motor-suppressants, but that wasn’t how he looked. He looked like a supremely casual man considering murder.

  Good, Gustav thought to himself. If he was lucid at the moment, he’d be that much easier to talk to.

  ‘Good afternoon, Will,’ he said. ‘My name is General Ulanu.’

  ‘I know who you are,’ said Monet.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Gustav. ‘Then you know why I have come to see you.’

  Monet chuckled to himself. Gustav fought down a surge of impatience. If this little Gallie thought he could get away with playing mind games, he was a fool. Gustav had played with the best of them.

  ‘I have come seeking knowledge,’ he said simply. ‘And I am prepared to ask nicely.’ He sat down opposite the prisoner.

  ‘How good of you,’ Monet replied.

  Gustav sighed and examined his fingers. ‘Let me summarise your position. You and your crew are facing public execution. Your ship will shortly be broken up into pieces. Your robots will be dissected for analysis or forcibly reprogrammed. And your home world is due to be occupied in a matter of days.’

  Monet looked remarkably unaffected by this list of misfortunes. An infuriating secret smile kept playing about his lips.

  ‘If you know who I am,’ said Gustav, ‘then you also know that I am a powerful man. I can help you with one or all of these matters if you answer my questions. If you tell me what I want to know, you will find me surprisingly flexible.’

  ‘Will you let me and my crewmates go?’ asked Monet.

  Gustav took a deep breath. Monet obviously considered himself a comedian. ‘No,’ he replied.

  ‘Then you can’t help me,’ said Monet. ‘You can’t even help yourself.’

  Gustav regarded him wearily and considered for a moment. A roboteer was supposedly a creature of logic and reason, so Gustav decided to take a calculated risk. He would give Monet as clear a picture of his priorities as he could afford.

  ‘Perhaps I should explain a little about myself,’ he said. ‘I am, first and foremost, a scientist. I carry the rank of general because in the current political climate of the Kingdom, the military is the only source of research funding. For the last two years, I have worked full time studying the alien object we call the Relic – the object you attacked.’

  At this, Monet’s smile grew a notch wider. He snorted and shook his head.

  ‘It is my desire,’ said Gustav, raising his voice a little, ‘to share what I have learned with all mankind. I believe that the human galaxy should be made aware of the existence of the Relic, and what we have learned from it. If you know the first thing about the Truist movement, you will also know that this is at odds with dogma. So you see, I am making myself vulnerable to you. I am making a confession to you that my enemies would be only too glad to hear. You may also consider it an assurance of the fact that this meeting is private. Nothing you say in this room will go any further.’

  Monet laughed. ‘That’s what Chopra said.’

  Gustav pursed his lips. ‘Chopra is interested only in personal gain. I am interested in truth, nothing more, nothing less.’

  ‘Really?’ Monet leaned forwards and rested his arms on the table. He moved surprisingly easily for a man supposedly doped to the eyeballs on disabling drugs. ‘You might not like it.’

  ‘Then you are prepared to talk?’ said Gustav, excitement churning his insides.

  ‘Ask your questions,’ said Monet. ‘I might answer.’

  Gustav nearly betrayed his glee. Locked in this man’s head might be secrets he hadn’t even dreamed of.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘How did you deactivate the feed from the Relic?’ That had to be a good place to start. Since the arrival of the Galateans, the Relic had told them exactly nothing.

  ‘We didn’t,’ said Monet. ‘It stopped talking to you.’

  Gustav peered at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you were deemed no longer a useful part of the dialog with humanity,’ the prisoner replied. ‘I superseded you.’

  Gustav bristled. The roboteer was almost as good at annoying him as Rodriguez.

  ‘Superseded? In what way?’

  ‘You spent your two years searching the Relic for weapons technology.’

  He said it as an accusation. But what else could Gustav have done with so much pressure on him from the Kingdom to produce results? Did Monet imagine that would have been his choice if he’d been given free rein?

  ‘In doing so, you convinced it that humanity is an unworthy species,’ said Monet.

  ‘Unworthy how?’

  ‘Not useful for the galactic biosphere. Scheduled for extinction. The technology it gave you contains a deliberate flaw.’

  Gustav recalled the long, anxious hours he’d spent poring over the incomprehensible blueprints and hid his alarm.

  ‘Use it long enough and it marks the stars it draws energy from,’ said Monet. ‘The people who made your Relic can then detonate them at their leisure.’

  A problem in the suntap, just as his instincts had warned him there might be. It was grave news for the Kingdom – if it was true.

  ‘How do you know this?’ said Gustav uneasily.

  ‘I just listened,’ Monet replied. ‘Something you apparently failed to do.’

  Gustav’s shoulders cranked upwards. For two whole years, he’d done nothing but listen.

  ‘Oh, and one other thing,’ the prisoner said. ‘It appears we Galateans have achieved one thing you Earthers have not. They call it constructive self-editing. It’s the means by which a species is judged. If you can’t do it, they wipe you out.’

  Gustav’s face hardened. Suddenly he could see where this was going. ‘You mean genetic modification?’

  Monet shrugged. ‘That’s part of it.’

  The Galatean had blown it. He’d had Gustav worried there for a moment, but his story had just passed the point of believability. This wasn’t the truth. It was a gene-racist’s fantasy. Gustav was furious with himself for taking it so seriously.

  ‘You mean to tell me that the survival of the human race is dependent on us all turning Galatean?’ he said darkly.

  Monet grinned. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

  Gustav stood. ‘You disgust me,’ he sneered. ‘I gave you an opportunity to speak the truth.’

  ‘And I told you that you might not like it,’ Monet replied sunnily.

  Gustav looked down his nose at the prisoner. ‘You expect me to believe that an advanced alien race will kill us all if we don’t adopt your people’s revolting practices? That’s a little convenient, don’t you think?’

  Monet examined his fingernails. ‘Not really. We weren’t thrilled about it.’

  Gustav glared at him. ‘To self-edit, as you put it, is to lose track of what it means to be human. No advanced race would condone it.’

  ‘Are you so sure?’ said Monet. ‘Why not?’

  Gustav contemplated ramming his fist into the Gallie’s face. ‘Because you people are building injustice into your very bodies! Look at yourself.’ He gestured wildly at the prisoner’s chest. ‘Born to talk to machines,’ he said with contempt. ‘Selected for autism by your own parents, for God’s sake. Are you going to sit there and tell me you’re happy with that? Or are you so programmed by your own people that you can’t see the freedoms they’ve stolen from you?’

  Gustav saw Monet’s smug mask slip for the first time. He’d struck a nerve. Good.

  ‘You may be happy with your lot because it’s all you’ve ever known,’ he added, ‘but I intend to fight for humanity. And if that means there’ll be war and ignorance in the world, I think
it’s still worth it. It’s better than changing ourselves into sterile machines.’

  Monet shook his head. His expression had turned bitter. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ he said. ‘I’ve no reason to lie to you. Listen, nothing lasts for ever. Put cavemen in charge of starships and sooner or later we’re going to kill ourselves, with or without help. Either way, mankind’s days are numbered.’

  ‘Then let us be the ones who number them!’ Gustav spat.

  ‘Fine,’ said Monet quietly. ‘I don’t care if you believe me or not. Unless you release us, it’s irrelevant. You’ll know I’m telling you the truth when whatever sun you’re sitting near bloats up and fries you. It’s just a shame you won’t have long to regret your mistake.’

  Gustav narrowed his eyes. This Earther might be mad but he wasn’t stupid. He knew how to goad his adversaries. Gustav regretted his earlier honesty. Still, if the roboteer became a threat, they could always kill him. He turned to the door and pressed the stud.

  ‘I’m finished,’ he told Chopra bitterly.

  The door swung back and Gustav stepped out into the corridor where Rodriguez and the coordinator stood with expressions of unconvincing innocence on their faces.

  ‘Well, General?’ said Chopra.

  ‘Your assessment of the prisoner is accurate,’ Gustav said coldly. ‘His insanity is unfortunate. I will see the captain now.’

  Gustav followed Chopra on down the corridor, leaving Monet’s cell behind. The sick, uncertain feeling in his gut came with him.

  14.2: JOHN

  The captain’s voice came over the bunkroom speakers.

  ‘Fifteen minutes to Galatean defence perimeter. Weapons officers, report for duty in five.’

  John put down the dull pornographic pamphlet he’d been staring at and exhaled slowly. At last! This had been the longest fortnight of his life. It was ironic that he’d spent none of it as himself.

  When the Reconsiderist Subsect Starship Fist of Vengeance had finished planet leave at New Angeles, the Akbar Inglez who’d shuttled aboard was not the same one who’d left two days before. The real Akbar Inglez was dead. He’d died wearing John’s face as he stumbled out of a resistance house clutching a gun. Now John had Akbar’s face, his pass-codes and his scout mission to Galatea.