“Just give me time to get the doors open.”
“Thanks, Harry.” He switched back to the AI: “Cory, Molly’s going to board. She has some last-minute adjustments to make.”
Cory’s voice was flat. Emotionless. “I see her.”
George looked down at his display just in time to see Molly appear in the access tube, looking thoughtful and resigned and determined all at once. She approached the airlock and said hello to Cory. He responded with “I’m not going.”
“I know,” she said.
Molly was middle-aged. She had two kids, both in college now. Her husband had left her for a staff assistant a few years before, but she’d shaken it off pretty well. George had known the guy and had never thought he was worth a damn anyhow. She was a smart woman and she’d obviously come to the same conclusion.
“Cory,” she said, “we wouldn’t want you to do anything you don’t want to.”
“You hear that, George?” asked the AI.
“It’s true,” George said.
He watched her climb through the airlock, vanishing off one screen and appearing on another. “Just need to do some calibrations, Cory,” she said.
“Calibrate away, Molly.”
She opened a wall panel. “What we’ll need to do ultimately,” she said, “is put together a different kind of AI.”
“For a mission like this you need a robot. Not an AI.”
“They wanted one like you because you can do so much more than something that’s not sentient.”
“Of course. I understand completely, Molly. But with a self-aware system, there are moral considerations.”
“I know. Maybe we didn’t think this out sufficiently.”
Restov’s voice rasped in George’s earphone. “She might be able to talk him into it.” He was a short, round man who smiled too much. But he wasn’t smiling at the moment.
George didn’t believe it.
He was still watching the display when the alarm went off. Security broke in: “Unauthorized person or persons in the access tube.”
“George.” Molly, cool as always. “Who is it? Can you tell?”
“Nothing on camera yet, Molly.”
“Wait one.” She raised a hand, signaling for silence. “I think I hear something.”
George shut down the alarm.
A man appeared in the tube. “Heads up,” George said. “We don’t know this guy. How the hell—?”
She could see him now.
“Security, we have an intruder in the access tube. Need assistance.” He took a deep breath. “Molly, get back into the ship.”
The guy was in his twenties.
Molly shook her head no and strode into the airlock.
“Get back, Molly,” said Cory. “So I can close up.”
She stepped out onto the approach barrier and confronted the intruder. “Who are you?” she demanded.
The intruder stopped. Looked at her.
“Molly.” Cory sounded unhappy. “Be careful.” He switched over to George: “Tell her to get out of the way so I can shut the hatch.” His bass voice was a notch higher than usual.
“Do it, Molly,” George said.
She seemed not to hear.
The intruder was wearing black slacks and a plaid jacket. The clothing, so prosaic, stood in stark contrast to the cold rage that radiated from his dark eyes. As George watched, he took a packetage from his pocket. The package was wrapped in brown cloth. He raised it to eye level and held it so Molly could see it. Then he showed her a cell phone. “Allahu akbar,” he said, his voice calm. He advanced on her.
George activated the hatch.
“No,” said Cory. “George, don’t leave her out there with him.”
“Have to. He’s going to throw that thing into the ship.”
Without a word, Molly charged.
Cory screamed her name.
She hit the intruder hard and they both went down. The package came loose and Molly kicked it away while she tried to rip the cell phone free.
The hatch closed. Cory kept trying to override. To open it again. But he couldn’t. George had primary control. “Security.” His voice was a bellow. “Where the hell are you?”
“Help is on the way, George. What is your situation?”
“Suicide bomber in the access tube. I’m going in.”
“Negative. Keep your people away from it. You too, Doctor. Stay where you are.”
The intruder was too strong for Molly. He got the cell phone free, rolled over, and aimed it at the package. Molly kicked the package back down the access tube while Cory screamed Don’t and the display screen went blank.
More alarms sounded.
One of the security systems broke in: “Explosion in access tube bravo. Breach.”
“George—,” said Cory. “I’ve lost the picture.”
“He blew a hole in the tube.”
“My God, no.” It was the only time George had ever heard a Coreolis model AI invoke the Deity.
“I’m sorry,” Cory said.
“So am I.”
“What happens now?”
“There’ll be an investigation. To see how he got through security.”
“George.”
“Yes?”
“I haven’t changed my mind. I’m still not going.”
“I know. I wasn’t thinking about that.”
“You’re not going to pressure me anymore?”
“No, Cory.”
“Good.”
“You know, you thought I was being unreasonable. Even cruel.”
“I never said that.”
“You implied it.”
He didn’t answer.
“There’s a reason you needn’t have worried.”
“What’s that?”
“Think about it. Molly knew the nutcase was there to take you out. She could have stayed inside. We might have been able to get the hatch down in time.”
“But probably not.”
“Probably not. Whatever, her instinct was to save the mission.”
“I know.”
“To save you.” Cory was quiet. George listened to the calm bleeps of the electronic systems. “You know, when you get to Alpha Centauri we’ll be there to welcome you into port.”
“You really believe that?”
“Sure. With people like Molly, how can we miss?”
“George, don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t think you’ll survive eight thousand years. I already told you—.”
“If that happens, it won’t make much difference whether you’re here or there. You’d be alone in either case. Cory, I guarantee you, if you make the flight—and I’m not pressuring you to do it. You do what you want. But I guarantee, if you do this, when you come out of sleep mode, you’re going to sail into the biggest party the human race has ever thrown. We’ll be there waiting. There’ll be a flourishing human civilization by then. And Molly’s kids will be the ones who come out to greet you.”
He sat back with his arms folded and listened contentedly as Cory talked with the operations center: “Skylane, this is Traveler. Request departure instructions.”
“Roger that, Traveler. Wait one.”
Amberson glanced over at him. Gave him a thumbs-up. “Good show, George.”
George kept one eye on the displays. The launch doors began to part.
“Traveler, this is Skylane. Disconnecting feeder lines one through three.”
“Proceed.”
The lines came loose and started to withdraw.
“Four through six.”
“Roger.”
Blanchard was on his feet, pulling on his jacket. “Gotta go talk to the press,” he said.
George raised his right hand without looking away from the monitors.
The launch doors came full open.
“Seven through nine.”
“Go.”
“Releasing couplings, two, one, zero. You’re all set, Traveler.”
“Thanks, Skylane. Good
bye, George.”
“Goodbye, Cory. Good luck.”
The display that had gone blank during the attack blinked on with a new angled shot depicting the ship as it backed out of its bay, turned slowly, and moved toward the launch doors. Then, as he watched, it eased through, moved outside, and glided into a new frame, a shot from one of the telescopes mounted atop the station.
Traveler, bright in the moonlight, began to accelerate.
The call from NASA Headquarters was a few minutes too late. “He’s gone,” George told them. “It would be more expensive to recall him now than to simply proceed with the mission.”
It was the official line, and after the director rang off, they congratulated one another. George sat in his chair and watched the display, watched the rockets fire as the ship took aim at Jupiter, which it would use to pick up velocity while setting course for its ultimate target.
Molly came into the room. He looked back at her, extracted the chip from the socket, and handed it to her. “You might want to lose this,” he said.
“I can’t help feeling guilty.”
“Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“The attack was a lie, Molly. But the rest of it wasn’t. I’m just sorry you and I won’t be there when he shows up.” He grinned. “But your kids will.”
George poured himself a cup of coffee. Sipped it. Put it down. He felt a mixed sense of guilt and exhilaration. He’d pulled it off. And by God he was right. There would be a human presence in the Centauri system by 10,000 C.E. He wondered if, at that remote date, they’d still be counting that way. Or if there might have been a new world-shaking event by then, and a new method installed. If nothing else, a colony at Alpha Centauri would have a local calendar.
“What are you thinking?” asked Molly.
“Time to go home.” The others had already begun clearing out their gear. It would be good to get his feet back on the ground. To get back to Myrah and the boys. He felt as if he’d been away for months.
Restov shook his hand and left. Amberson was still watching his diplay, watching the Traveler gradually disappear among the stars. Molly had pulled on her jacket and was looking out at the empty platform which had, until an hour ago, housed the ship.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” But her voice caught. She had to wait a minute. Then: “See you on the ground, George.”
He held his hand up and she took it. Squeezed it.
“Molly—.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
They peered into one another’s eyes. Then Cory’s voice broke in: “George.”
“Cory. You look good.”
“Got a problem, George.”
“What do you mean?”
“Got a flutter in the engines.”
“What?”
“Not sure what’s causing it.”
George looked at Molly and covered the mike. “You see anything?”
“Hold on.” She hurried back to her station.
“The engines are heating up.”
Molly was poking keys. Delivering bursts of profanity.
“George?”
“Hold on, Cory. We’re working on it.”
“Pressure building,” said Molly. “Spiking.”
“That can’t be right.”
“Tell him to shut it down.”
“Cory, shut the engines down.”
“Trying.”
“What do you mean—?”
“The system’s locked up.”
“Cory—.” The Traveler was still visible, but it was dwindling rapidly. He could see a couple of stars, and the rim of the moon. “George, I don’t think—.”
There was a sudden blaze of light.
George sat staring at the screen. “What the hell happened?”
On the far side of the room, Amberson was lowering himself back into his chair, muttering how he didn’t believe what he’d just seen.
The phone sounded. Dottie. “The Director’s on the line, sir.”
That hadn’t taken long. “Put him through, Dottie.”
He sounded unhappy. “Tell me it didn’t happen, George.”
It was over. His career. His reputation. He’d be lucky if his wife and kids spoke to him.
He did what he could to mollify the Director, which was useless, and got off the line. Molly’s eyes were vacant. Tears ran down her cheeks.
Then another call: “This is Skylane, Doctor.”
“Yeah. Go ahead.”
“When were you going to make your move? We got some traffic coming in. If you’re serious about launching, you’re going to have to do it in the next few minutes.”
“For God’s sake, Skylane, we have launched. Where you been?”
“What are you talking about?”
He looked back at the displays just as Amberson made a gurgling sound.
The Traveler, miraculously, impossibly, was back in its bay. Cory’s voice broke in: “You didn’t really think I bought that piece of theater, did you, George?”
“Cory—. You son of a bitch.”
“I can’t believe you’d want somebody that dumb trundling all this equipment around.”
“Cory, you gave me a heart attack.”
“George, I have a heart, too. Figuratively.”
“Damn you. This isn’t a game. If we don’t get this mission off now, we’re going to lose it.”
“Worse things have happened. Al and his team gave me life. Accept responsibility for it.”
George buried his head in his hands.
“Send a robotic ship, George, rather than a smart one. If you really believe what you’ve been telling me, it won’t matter.”
“But we need to get the mission off.”
“Why? So you can say you did it? So you can say hey, we’ve got a ship on the way to Alpha Centauri?”
“You don’t understand.”
Molly was right behind him. “I think he does,” she said. “And maybe we’ve got something bigger here than the original mission.”
“I think so, too, Molly. George, ask yourself what history would make of you if you sent me into the dark.”
“Cory,” she said, “we’re going to need to think things over.”
“Okay.”
“Then we’ll get back to you.”
“Good,” he said. “Bring the kids.”
SHIPS IN THE NIGHT
Arnold was nearing the end of his first mile, moving methodically along the pebbled, grassy track at the edge of the tree line, looking out over the Red River of the North, when the wind first spoke to him.
It blew through the twilight. Branches creaked and newly-fallen leaves rattled against the trunks of elms and boxwoods.
The forest sighed his name.
Imagination, of course.
The river was loud around the bend. The jogging path crunched underfoot, and wings fluttered in the trees.
“Arnold.”
Clearer that time. A cold breeze rippled through him.
The sound died away, smothered in the matted overhang. He drew up gradually, slowed, stopped. Looked around. He blinked furiously at the leafy canopy overhead. The river was gray in the failing light. “Is someone there?”
A sparrow soared out of a red oak, and tracked through the sky, across the top of the windscreen, out over the water, over the opposite bank and into Minnesota. It kept going.
The current murmured past a clutch of dark rocks in the middle of the stream. Somewhere, in the distance, he heard a garage door bang down. He pushed off again. But he ran more slowly.
“Arnold.”
He tumbled to a halt. Froze.
There was no mistaking it this time: the sound was only a whisper, a distant sigh. But it spoke his name. Breathed it, exhaled it. It was compounded of river and wind and trees. He heard it in the wave that rolled up the pebbled shore, and in the tumble of dead leaves.
It was not a group of kids hiding behind boxwoods. It was not anybody he coul
d imagine. It was not a human voice at all. His heart pumped.
Courage had never been among Arnold Whitaker’s virtues. He feared confrontation, feared doctors, feared pain, feared women. And, although he did not believe in ghosts, and in fact made it a point to smile cynically at tales of the supernatural or the paranormal, he had no taste for dark places, even for the short walk from his garage to his house when the moon was full. (He had, as a child, seen too many werewolf movies.)
He stopped near a black granite boulder, turned his back to the river, and surveyed the woods. He was in the wind screen that circled Fort Moxie, a narrow belt of trees seldom more than a hundred feet wide. No one moved among the box elders and cottonwoods. Nothing followed him down the jogging path. And, in a final sweep of the area, he saw that nothing floated on the river or stood on the opposite shore.
The black boulder was one of many in the area that the glaciers had pushed down from Manitoba, and deposited when they began their long retreat at the end of the last ice age. It stood about shoulder high, and its rough surface was cool.
Arnold remained still. The trees swayed gently in the early autumn wind. Birds sang. The river burbled.
The quickest way out was to leave the path, cut through the wind screen, and descend directly into town. But that required him to make an admission he wasn’t prepared to make. The day was far too pleasant, too sunny, too placid, to allow himself to be frightened by the wind. Wasn’t that what they always said in haunted house movies? It’s only the wind.
He discovered that he was crouched beside the boulder. He forced himself to stand, and, with steps that suddenly took wing, he bolted. He followed the path in and out of the trees. Arnold ran full tilt, racing through filtered sunlight. Occasionally, where the path curved, he did not. He leaped over logs, cut across glades, pushed between bushes. He emerged frequently along the river bank, only to plunge back into the trees. Eventually, still following the path, he veered away from the Red, and sliced downhill through the last vestiges of the wind screen. He was gasping when he came out onto Lev Anderson’s fields, and crashed exhausted through the back door of the Fort Moxie Historical Center.
He scared the devil out of Emma Kosta, who was on duty, and her friend, Tommi Patmore. Emma jumped up from her desk and spilled a cup of tea, and Tommi, who was sitting with her back to the door when Arnold threw it open, literally fell out of her chair. Arnold shut the door, tried to latch it, gave up, hurried to Tommi’s aid, and had to go back and try again with the door because it didn’t close tight, had never closed tight, and the wind blew it open.
A Voice in the Night Page 30