Asimov's Science Fiction 10-11/2001

by Dell Magazines

  Not only that, but if he was so afraid of Rakshasa, maybe there was something to it. She knew she could be naïve at times. On the other hand, just because the captain was sincere didn't mean he had it right. Did he really think she was better at robotics than Rakshasa?

  It took a while for such thoughts to simmer down. Now that the crew was gone, she opened her door to ward off claustrophobia, and settled down to work.

  In the course of picking up lost threads, she came across the Willie 1-9 query once again, and remembered that something had puzzled her about it. Odd that such a unit would have generated such a high rescue priority. She began to dig. The last download of its memory wasn't the only one. There had been others, all garbled. And the rescue attempts went way back.

  She began to get excited. Willie 1-9 had been stuck for nearly a year! His memory, if she could reconstruct it, might contain something that pre-dated the blackout period.

  She fixed herself a sandwich and a cup of coffee and settled down to work. At last she had something that she could sink her teeth into. After two hours, and still not sure if she was on to something, an ungainly shadow fell across the doorway. The change didn't register in her mind directly, but when the delicately gathered butterflies of her thoughts suddenly blew away, she turned and saw Dr. Rakshasa standing there, looking a bit worried.

  Despite his extra pair of arms, it was sometimes his face that caught her off guard. He wasn't disfigured, but his expressions seemed exaggerated sometimes, like a mask. She supposed it was because his head, like his long, withered limbs, seemed out of proportion to his almost child-sized body. It was hard to tell his age. There was no gray in his hair, cut short, almost like fur, but he was old enough to have crinkles around his eyes and weary lines around his mouth.

  At the sight of her, he reflexively stuffed his arms into some of the many pockets of his jumpsuit and said, “Excuse me. I hope I didn't startle you.”

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded, trying to sound indignant, then remembered that she was the one who wasn't supposed to be here.

  “Just out for a walk, trying to think a few things through, when I heard a noise. I thought you had gone with the others.”

  “No, I got out of it. Too much work to do.”

  “And it's the wrong kind of work, don't you agree? This project has been your dream, but now instead of moving on to the next phase, you're stuck with digging out of the wreckage. Looks as if you may have signed up on the wrong ship this time.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “There's something I've been meaning to tell you, but I don't quite know how, and I was wishing I could just get you alone for a moment, and then, all of a sudden, here you are. Are you sure you're not a figment of my imagination?”

  “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  “It's not even that I want to talk to you. I feel I must, yet I wish I could spare you the burden.” The worried look came over his face again, and he still made no move to enter or leave.

  “It's no burden. Come in, sit down.” She tossed the spacesuit behind the couch. “Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Juice? Tea?”

  “Tea, please.”

  He sat somewhat stiffly at the edge of the couch, two hands resting on his knees, the other two holding the cup she handed to him. Trina turned her chair around and sat across from him.

  “It's hard to say this,” he began, “without sounding like the pompous ganglyoid the talk shows so often make us out to be. We can't help it, you know. It's hard not to be affected psychologically when you grow up with an extra set of arms. I'm sure you understand, hmm?”

  “I don't know about that. I mean, I can imagine having four arms, and how very handy that must be, but I don't think I can imagine being used to it.”

  “Yes, you'd almost have to be a child again, out of the womb just long enough to take for granted a certain form and attitude. Well, try to imagine a young gangly in a classroom full of other gangly children. We are told every day that we are fully human, and yet when we study human history, I think we sometimes have a special difficulty identifying with it.”

  He sipped his cup of tea through its built-in straw, then continued. “We don't exactly thrive in Earth's gravity. So all we know of Earth is from a great height, and when you are young and your experience of life is benign, it's hard not to wonder whether, born into the ancient circumstances, we would commit the same horrors. Have our minds really crossed a threshold, or do we delude ourselves to think so? And without knowing for sure, we may sometimes assume an attitude that blinds our coworkers to any redeeming qualities we might have.”

  “Snooty.”

  “Even worse. I think our captain, for example, finds me threatening to an extent that interferes with his good judgment. I get the feeling he isn't telling me the real reason he doesn't want us to investigate this mystery together.”

  As he started to explain the advantages of working together, Trina glanced back at her screens and realized they were covered with data on the Willie 1-9 anomalies. And now Rakshasa was looking at them, too! She shut them down and whirled angrily to face him.

  “Wait just a damn minute! You didn't come here looking for me. You came here to snoop through my data and see what I've found out! You had every reason to believe I'd be out there with the others!”

  Rakshasa drew back from her outburst. His exaggerated features became a mask of surprise. “Yes, that's what I was led to believe, isn't it? Yet here you are. It puts me in an awkward position when someone in authority, like the captain, leads me to believe something and yet somehow, something in his manner raises a doubt in my mind. And then I have to wonder, am I being paranoid?” He paused.

  “Besides, I really did hope I might discuss a certain matter with you, but perhaps I am doing more harm than good.” He put his tea down and stood to go.

  “Oh, Raki.”

  “I don't hold it against you, really. I'm sure it wasn't your idea.”

  “You guys are making me crazy. I wish the two of you would get together and have it out and just leave me out of it. I came here to do a job, and that's all I want to do. You make everybody crazy, you know that? It's like a pressure cooker in here. I've never seen a crew so crazy devious in all my life, and it's got something to do with you being here. Everybody's got more going on in their minds than they're telling me, and they all want me on their side, but I don't want to be on anybody's side. I just want to be left alone for a while and get some work done.” She shook her head in frustration.

  “God, look at the time. They'll be back pretty soon and I've got nothing to show for it. I was just getting started, and it's over. Larry will be wanting attention, Kira will want to confide in me, and the captain will want to see my progress, and I can't stand working with somebody looking over my shoulder, especially somebody who wants results and all I've got is a hunch. I just wish I could have one good day all to myself.” She sighed.

  “And yes, you're damn right it wasn't my idea!”

  Rakshasa looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then began to fumble through his pockets. “Perhaps I can at least grant you that one modest wish.” Trina couldn't help becoming fascinated by the multiple sleight-of-hand show he put on as he fished out the flotsam of his pockets and passed it around from hand to hand, all kinds of little things disappearing and reappearing unexpectedly. When she realized what he was doing, she looked at his face and saw him watching her. It was a trick he pulled sometimes when he noticed her becoming hypnotized by his arms, just something he did to make her smile, though now it just made her wistful.

  He found what he was looking for, a small datapad that he held in his lower arms, punching in some code, while he stuck the fingers of his upper hands into his ears. Trina thought he was clowning again, till she was jolted by the shriek of an alarm. The noise was everywhere, in her room, in the corridor, ringing hollow through the entire ship. Then silence, and a synthetic voice, unnaturally calm, said, “Warning, a magnitude s
even solar flare event is now in progress. All personnel report to hardened shelters immediately.”

  The message repeated between bouts of wailing. Before Trina could say anything, Rakshasa motioned her to be quiet and spoke excitedly into his pad. “Captain, we've got a flare alert! Captain, come in, do you read me? Hello? Mayday! Mayday!”

  Then the captain's voice, preoccupied, “Just a sec.”

  “Captain, get all your people back here immediately. You need to get to the shelters.”

  “Keep your pants on, spider-man. This cave is a class one shelter. Here's what we're going to do—okay, listen up, everybody. We may as well ride it out right here and get some work done, better than sitting on our butts in that tin can. Okay, check supplies.”

  The captain began conferring and assigning duties, then came back to Rakshasa, “Oh, by the way, Trina hasn't caught up with us yet. Make sure she gets to the shelter, will you?”

  “Aye, captain,” said Rakshasa, and signed off, looking very pleased with himself as he shut off the alarm.

  Trina's heart was still pounding. “You just set off a false alarm?”

  “Of course. That ought to get you at least a day of freedom.”

  “It's a little hard on the others, don't you think? I don't know if they can even pressurize that cave in a day. Jesus, when I said I wanted a little private time ... maybe you'd better call it off.”

  “If they get in trouble, we'll bring them in. I am authorized to conduct unscheduled drills, you know.”

  “Maybe, but the captain is still going to kill you.”

  “No, I'll be too useful as a hate object. It will unify the crew, and show everyone he was right about me all along. Don't worry about him. He loves a good emergency, now and then. And you have your private time.”

  “And you have your revenge. On everybody.” She shook her head. “Sheesh, I can't believe it. You must be a little bit crazy.”

  “You're quite welcome. It's the least I could do after barging in the way I did. I'll go now, and let you enjoy your solitude.”

  “You don't have to go. I always spout off. It doesn't mean anything. Sit down. You had something on your mind. What was it?”

  “It can wait.” He went to the door and then turned. “I was just wondering, as you examine the robots for signs of what took place, have you noticed a certain agitation among them?”

  “Agitation?”

  “It's hard to describe. Normally the human presence among them is part of the background of their awareness, like the weather. But since we arrived, they seem almost skittish. I've been trying to get them adjusted to their new circumstances, and they overshoot the mark trying to anticipate my intentions. Instead of pushing them along I've got to hold them back. Maybe their thought processes have simply evolved in the time they were left alone, or perhaps the pirates somehow disturbed their collective psyche.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. They do have a psyche, you know. Let me know if I can be of assistance.”

  Trina was in shock for a little while. Then it began to sink in that she had some time to work with, and no reason to feel guilty about it. It wasn't her fault. And once she'd gotten used to that fact, she found that she was indeed onto something with those pieces of Willie 1-9's mind. It was like finding fragments of something that had once been alive, except that these fragments did not belong to the world of material things. They were little nothings in themselves, pieces of wanting-to-assemble, but what they wanted to assemble depended on what pattern, in turn, assembled them.

  One of her first tasks was to put the code fragments into an intelligible form by setting up some virtual robots based on Willie 1-9's general pattern, and watching how the fragments affected him in simulations. At a low level, there wasn't much to set him apart—he had all the basic moves. At a higher level, there were skills, some mundane, like walking, others more specialized, and among them some potential oddballs.

  At a higher level still were some vague intimations of how Willie fit into the grand plan. That was where the discrepancies between Willie 1-9 and the others were most apparent, though at first it wasn't clear what it meant. Gradually, by trying out one context after another, varying the raw materials, cloning multiple virtual Willies to be his coworkers, a pattern began to emerge. It was not at all what she had expected. There was nothing so clear-cut as a memory of having been visited.

  But there was evidence of design elements in the skill bank that had no place in their normal repertoire. The robots had apparently been busy for a long time on a task she was beginning to vaguely sketch out. There were indications that the Willies had been making large superconducting electromagnets of a type used in mass drivers. With a little more digging, she might even come up with the operational parameters. Ingenious! The pirates had no need to risk a landing—they had just instructed the robots to construct a mass driver and shoot material off to some rendezvous point. Except for one robot who fell down a crack, there would have been no trace left behind.

  She was up on her feet from the excitement, and dying to tell someone. She wondered how they might reconstruct the exact timing and trajectory of the material. Maybe from the record of adjustments to the uplink antenna they could see how the asteroid's orbit had changed. Pacing the room soon became striding down the hallway full of a sudden sympathy for her stranded comrades. This charade had gone on long enough, time to call it off.

  The echoes of her footsteps seemed to have echoes of their own. She stopped, and the footsteps continued. She called out, but there was no answer. Then she heard the airlock cycle—the noise was coming from the floor below. She slid down the nearest ladder. But there was no one there. A few empty vacuum suits hung limp and faceless. The external view showed nothing, just the black-against-black of night on an asteroid. But if Rakshasa had gone out, why hadn't he turned on the floods?

  She took out her datapad and called up the locator. Rakshasa was out there all right, and being sneaky about it. She felt like an idiot for thinking he'd set off that alarm for her sake. He was up to something.

  Or he could be perfectly innocent. Just out for a walk. It was his element, after all. She hurried back to her room and suited up, her mind full of imaginary arguments, with Anders, with Rakshasa, with herself, trying so hard to figure out what version of whose story made the most sense that she almost didn't notice where she was until she was in the airlock, trying to focus on going through the drill.

  She didn't use the floods either. And she was glad, now, that the captain had removed her transponder. It had all seemed like some stupid game at the time.

  She stood at the edge of the open hatch and hesitated. There was a ladder, of course, but ten meters, in this gravity, was nothing. Her mind knew that, but her eyes couldn't see it. They couldn't see much of anything without the floodlights. Even if the ground was really there, it hardly seemed substantial enough to keep her from falling through forever. Like a child playing with magic, she downloaded a virtual landscape in a mesh of faint red grid lines, computer generated on her heads-up display. The robots showed up as moving dots, tagged with their designations. Every outcrop and hunk of machinery was mapped in place.

  As long as everything was where it was supposed to be, she shouldn't need her headlamp. She could walk unmarked among the invisible things. She shivered, then stepped off the edge and fell so slowly she had an odd illusion of shrinking.

  With of flip of her wrists, a pair of joystick controls popped into her hands, and the tubing of the rocket nozzles deployed from her backpack like a few scraggly ribs of an umbrella. She floated low over the ground like a bubble in a breeze.

  At first, she followed Rakshasa's location marker on her display, but then, on a hunch, she took a detour along the rift where Willie 1-9 had fallen. She had a vague idea that she ought to retrieve the robot before Rakshasa could get to it, but that idea proved to be hopeless. The crack, when she knelt down to it, was sealed with murky ice that scattered the light right back in her f
ace.

  While she was looking, Rakshasa's voice spoke softly into her ears. “Careful there, don't fall in.”

  She was so startled that she stood too fast and took an unexpected leap, only to be caught in mid-air and brought gently to the ground as she was spun around to face him. His eyes were scrunched up from the brightness of her headlamp, so she turned it off and his face disappeared, and they stood like shadows behind the neon gridwork of their respective displays.

  “You scared the hell out of me,” she began. Rakshasa brought his hand to his face in a gesture of silence.

  “Privacy,” he said, and switched her over to short-range infrared communication.

  “What are you doing out here?” she asked, though what she really wondered was how he had covered so much ground so quickly.

  “Same as you, I think. Trying to understand what's going on. Come this way. I want to show you something.” He guided her to a nearby bit of asteroid, just like any other bit, and said, “Here it is, the missing piece. Impressive, isn't it? When you see it up close.”

  “See what?”

  “Oh, I forgot. We're looking at different realities. Here, download this.” Once again he allowed himself a few liberties with her keypad and established a link between their display processors.

  Then she could see it, in virtual reality, like the bare spine of some ancient mastodon poking through the ground, but unnaturally straight.

  “The mass driver,” she said, peering down its length. “Was it really this big?” It was twice her height, and so long she could see the world curve away beneath it while the structure drove straight on like a bridge into nothingness.

  “This is just a rough idea, but I think the scale is about right.”

  It was a simply rendered model, with a stony, moonlit texture that wasn't at all realistic, yet compared to the wire-frame rendering of the rest of the virtual landscape it looked substantial, even ancient. She had to resist an impulse to lean on it. Something fired from the tip as she watched, and fell away like a tear down a well.