by Larry Niven
“Where did you hear that?” Charley exclaimed.
“I didn’t. My father couldn’t figure out how so many could go wrong the same way, so he bought a bunch of old Soyuz capsules from museums and took them apart. They’d forgotten to take it out of one.”
There was a silence.
“I think I’m sick,” said Jack.
“Could be,” said Stephen.
Jack stared at him. This was a very different man. Hearing a joke that was actually funny from him was just weird, like being mauled by a pack of hamsters.
“We’ll be right over,” Charley said, and started the thrusters. Now they worked.
“Firebird’s rolling,” Marty said. “Damn, the shot went clean through! —The nanomachines must run on sunlight.” He used his magnifier. “Yeah, the hole has black edges. I wonder why JNAIT isn’t selling electric power? They’re not like silicon cells, they wouldn’t have a problem with the doping getting sloppy before they generate enough power to build another.”
“We’re trying not to ruin anybody that doesn’t insist on it,” said a man’s voice.
“How the— I’m not on an open channel.”
“It may have come to your attention at some point that our pilot knows everything about how these vehicles work. You’d be Martin Tillery, right? I liked your paper on heat reclamation. I’m Mycroft Yellowhorse.”
“The skydiver,” Stephen said.
“And that’d be Stephen Edmundson, who broke an elbow qualifying for the U.S. team in ’48. It’s my guess that it was Samson Quinn who took the shot at us; fighter pilots have judgment issues. That leaves John Bernstein and Charles Loomis. Dr. Bernstein, if you’d joined the military your promotions would have been held up by the Pentagon and you’d never have made astronaut, which would be a damn shame since you’re the smartest man in the corps. Commodore Loomis, the thing I find most interesting about you is that you were an extremely large baby.”
“Ten pounds four ounces. You have that on file?”
“Not as such. Your middle name is Stuart, and you’re the youngest in your family. Charles Stuart was the only king to be beheaded by the English. It’s my guess you were overdue and a difficult birth.”
“Three weeks. Nine hours followed by a Caesarean. I can see why they named you Mycroft.”
“I chose that name. The name on my birth certificate was Guillaume Olivier Connors. Ten pounds seven, six weeks, more than thirty hours, no Caesarean. Sounds like your mother was nicer than mine. Of course, so was Medea. But I’m sorry I didn’t have the bots ready for yours in time. You’ve suffered all your life from an illness inherited only through the maternal lineage. It’s what I set out to cure when I started fooling with Toby’s work. Say hi, Toby.”
“Hi, Toby,” said another man’s voice.
“Gracie Allen lives,” said Yellowhorse.
“Ohh kaythen,” Charley said, “braking now.”
When they’d come to relative rest, Yellowhorse said, “Hang on a bit. I have to round up the help.”
“Sure,” said Charley.
Jack noticed Charley was slowly opening and closing his hands, looking at them.
“I didn’t know you tried out for the Olympics,” said Marty.
“Didn’t just try out. Qualified. Only thing I ever had that wasn’t handed to me, and it was taken away because I tripped over my own feet after I was down.”
“This personality change of yours is making me want to check your pack for pods,” Jack said.
Stephen looked at him. “I think I’m getting a rash where you sprayed me. It’s all your fault. Does that help?”
“In a terribly wrong way, yes.”
XXXV
They come to see; they come that they themselves may be seen.
—OVID
1
The entities aboard the interceptor watched with interested suspicion as Envoy disarmed itself and maneuvered close to Firebird. Sortie parties gathered the discarded materiel, which was examined with great care. Energetic and otherwise useful chemicals were separated and packaged, and the metals were stored for later processing.
Firebird stopped rolling. The two ships now had their bellies toward one another. Humans slowly got out of both ships, sending radio signals back and forth, and one from Firebird moved to attach a flexible connector between the ships’ bellies. The connector presently altered shape in a way that indicated internal pressure.
The relative motion of the ships showed that Envoy was losing mass while Firebird gained it.
The interceptor had been designed to reach the ships, destroy Envoy if it attacked, repair Firebird if it was damaged, and get Firebird to Foundry safely. Envoy had attacked, but the sole attacker had immediately died, and none of the other humans had attempted further aggression. Firebird had been damaged, but manifestly had its own operators aboard, and was now intact. Envoy’s behavior indicated that the crew had surrendered to Firebird’s crew. Firebird was now refilled with oxidizer, though it would not have proportionate solid fuel to go with that.
The entities of the interceptor had been occupied with observation and preparedness for war. The value of having assigned some of them to construction of a communication system was now apparent. Lasers intended for making holes through Envoy were unsuited to the purpose, and in any case each could produce only one overwhelming shot before being remade, since it would destroy its own core as it fired.
A plan was formed as the humans from Envoy were making their way into Firebird. A chunk of metal from the discarded armaments was flung ahead of Firebird’s nose, then destroyed by a laser pulse, emitting light visible to humans. While the entities waited for the humans to respond—human movements were so slow as to be tiresome to watch—all entities not currently engaged in operations formed up in a layer on the side of the interceptor facing the ships.
2
May said, “Looking good, we’ve got another orbit before we need to what in Hell was that?” A searingly bright violet flare had appeared before the windshield, expanded at terrific speed as it cooled, still fluorescing, through the spectrum to red, and then vanished.
“Iron,” said Mycroft, from outside. “Heated enough to strip all the electrons away, then take them back. About fifty milligrams, maybe. I noticed the colors seemed very pure, and I’d bet teeth there were exactly twenty-eight frequencies emitted as the electron shells filled back up. Four natural isotopes, seven shell states. I think the bots want our attention. —Yep. Look.”
May switched a screen to the camera facing the bot ship. Bright yellow letters said WAIT.
“‘Wait,’” said Mycroft. “Shall I wave to let them know we’ve seen it?”
“Go ahead.”
The word promptly changed to YOU WILL; then, a moment later, BE MET. Then nothing.
WAIT YOU WILL BE MET.
May switched over to radar, which, aside from the automated alarm, was normally about as necessary and useful as a sniper scope on an automatic weapon. Something BIG was closing from higher orbit, with a thin stream of very fast stuff moving ahead of it.
The Rock was matching course.
“May, the bot ship is altering position to aft of Envoy. Now they’re connecting that pipe to the tail and putting a shaft of something in. Ouch. Way in. Either they’re going to salvage the solid fuel for us or they’re checking its prostate.”
“Any sign that they refrigerated the shaft first?”
“No, why would they do that?”
“Might have been a Pap test.”
Mycroft made a strange noise in the back of his throat, but said nothing.
Finally got him.
* * *
Pretty much the first thing that Jack noticed was that two of the JNAIT astronauts appeared to be naked women.
The other NASA guys had noticed too. At least, they were all as quiet as Jack while they found seats and plugged their packs into the ship system.
After a while, Marty said to him, “I grew up in the wrong culture.�
��
“Yah.”
The man who must be Toby Glyer spoke: “I think JNAIT is probably going to be interested in hiring more astronauts. You might want to talk to Mycroft when he gets back in. —Sorry; Toby Glyer, Alice Johnson, May Wyndham piloting.”
Charley pointed around and gave their names, then said, “So what’s the word?”
“Currently it’s ‘nanos.’ Although Mycroft calls them ‘bots.’ I think he begrudges the energy to use an extra syllable. He used to be just this side of an invalid.”
“How come they turned him black and you red?” said Marty.
“He has his doing extra stuff, so they absorb more light. Red is what you get when he’s authorized reconstruction.”
“Reconstruction of what?”
“Whatever’s been wearing out, starting with DNA. They also make vitamins, scavenge minerals, destroy bacteria, break down dead cells, and get rid of any tattoos you may have. And grow back missing body parts—most of them, anyway.”
“You can modify what you look like, too,” said Alice.
Jack suddenly placed her. “Hey, I remember reading about you.”
“Don’t point that finger at me, it might go off.”
Jack held up his hand and wiggled his thumb, which had been parallel to his index finger. “No, see, the safety’s on.”
She grinned at that. “Okay.”
“You got that from your grandfather,” said Mycroft Yellowhorse over the radio.
Part of Jack’s brain was interested to discover that gravity is not necessary for your jaw to drop. “How did you know that? How did you even know what I was doing?”
Mycroft laughed. “Your grandfather got it from me. He was my best friend in sixth grade. Funny, funny guy. We had mind-roasting contests before the term was coined. One time we were on a field trip to the local college to ‘appreciate French culture,’ and at lunch he coined the term ‘Cheval Bourguignon.’ We built model rockets together. Never got the damn things back. Jeff used to spray them with Scotchgard to cut friction. He could get more altitude out of an Alpha than Vernon Estes would have believed. Tell him ‘Goc’ said hello.”
“I’m afraid he’s dead. He wandered out of his nursing home last year, nobody ever found him.”
“If it was in November, I suggest you look in Haiti. It’s just barely possible for someone of sterling character to trigger the bot upgrade spontaneously through malnutrition, and from what I know of nursing homes and remember about Jeff, he might have done it, realized what was happening, and hit the road before he got put under a microscope. Haiti’s turning out nice these days.”
“You gave them to him too?”
“I gave them to everybody. Remember Goat Flu? Well—”
Jack spent the next little while listening to an astounding story.
Nobody interrupted.
XXXVI
Almost all people descend to meet.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
1
Foundry threw away more silicon to make final course alterations. The report from the interceptor made it clear that Firebird was repaired and refueled, and that Envoy qualified as salvage. Entities had been going through Envoy and found the design to be better than anything in the decoded records, so it would probably be worthwhile to make copies for human use.
The dead man had been found to be too thoroughly charred for the orientation of his brain connections to be reconstructed. That would have been useful.
Rendezvous was at hand. It was time to open contact.
2
“—If you pass this on, I will never tell you anything interesting again,” Mycroft said. “Clear?” Everyone agreed, and he went on, “The bots guarantee that a woman who’s aroused and capable of climax will have at least as good a time as her partner. The reason the Amish have an undiminished birthrate is that, as of November of ’51, every woman who gets pregnant is one who actually wants a child to raise. Not ‘proof of womanhood’; not a serf; not a household pet; not a live dress-up doll; not a talisman to save a bad marriage; not a puppet to impose ambitions on because your own were thwarted by someone doing the same thing to you when you grew up; not a punching bag. The Amish record on that score is unexcelled. —Which is not to say perfect, but you may rest assured that everyone’s record will be perfect in future. That is, everyone whose culture isn’t extinct. Speaking of which, you don’t have to worry about repercussions when you get back to America. I once met Tommie van Fossen, and I think he’ll be decent about it.”
“It’s not the vice president we have to worry about,” Charley said.
“He’ll be president soon enough. I’m amazed he’s not already. Haven’t you heard what I’ve been saying about the bots? Robert Foster cannot possibly manifest the attitude that made him so acceptable to his Party—and he surely does—without mainlining some heavy painkillers and anticonvulsives, and he is not a man who comprehends proportion or self-control. He’ll certainly OD or be a vegetable before the election. —As I was saying, van Fossen is an honest man, possibly included as an attempt to balance the ticket. You’re good.”
After a pause for shocked absorption of this, Charley said, “Do you mind if we at least send a message to warn him? An officer takes an oath.”
“I quite understand, and have not the slightest objection. Bear in mind that you want to send a message, to a powerful man, whose way of coping with the phenomenon of immediate and protracted agony, whenever he does something he knows to be wrong, and only on those occasions, is to take increasingly large doses of narcotics; the aforesaid message being that all he has to do to stop the pain is to cease to do evil, such as, say, having people murdered when he hears something that upsets him, a category which extends down to the word ‘no.’ Let me know when you’ve worked out the phrasing that you think will do him some good. I’ll contact my own people and have your families and friends and pets and keepsakes and so forth moved somewhere safe before you send it, shall I?” Mycroft stood attentively—well, floated attentively—before Charley, with his hands laced before his stomach, wide-eyed, smiling, his head at a slight angle, the very embodiment of guileless solicitude.
The really appalling thing was that Charley was certain that if he, Charley Loomis, was silly enough to insist on sending that message, Mycroft Yellowhorse would do exactly as he had offered. “Do you always work stuff out that fast?” he said.
“He does,” said Toby. “He used to do it sometimes even when he was sick. I thought for a while that he was using the nano network to augment his thinking, but from what he’s described it’d only be good for calculations.”
“Only?” said Jack. “If I’m following this, this guy put an experimental machine into his own cells, then got himself sentenced to death because he knew he’d survive being killed horribly, so he’d be put away for life without parole, just so he’d have time and a place to design a better machine to experiment on himself with? Which he could do without funding, lab facilities, or a pencil for making notes, because of the nanomachine network in him, and you’re brushing it off as ‘only’ calculations?”
“Also simulations and memory search,” Mycroft pointed out, clearly willing to take up the mind-roasting tradition with a new generation of the family.
“What about coordination?” said Stephen. He sounded suspicious.
“Not so much. They have to work by monitoring the feedback in the system they’re working with, and that operates at the same speed it always did. Are you thinking of the parachute landing? The net let me know what I had to do, but I had to do it. The fact that the bots cured everything that kept me from getting into perfect physical condition does enter into it.”
After a moment, Stephen said, “Oh. —Sorry.”
“It’s okay. —It sounds like you might be starting late in life to find a balance between accusation and accountability. It does take a while; believe me, I know. —On the bright side, you have more time to perfect it than you used to. I think you’ll do okay. I’ve
been watching your character improve just since you got here. You might find it helpful to read the works of Robert Heinlein and Poul Anderson. The hallmark of a truly great philosopher is that he never writes books on philosophy, and those two—”
“We’re there,” said May.
“Yay. —Are the best. Anderson for how to get along with people who are conspicuously wrong, and Heinlein for when not to. —Okay, let’s see if they’ll talk now.”
* * *
“They think,” Toby heard Edmundson say. “Do they have souls?”
“I don’t see why not,” Mycroft said. “Cats certainly do; watch one for a day. Souls seem to be contagious.”
“Everybody shut up, will you?” Toby said. His nerves were ragged. The nanos had clustered together for better processing, as he had designed them to, and he had contemplated the possibility that they would become conscious; but he hadn’t considered for an instant that they would toss out their basic programming and do things as wildly different as they already had.
He had no idea of their intentions. Neither did Mycroft, but it didn’t seem to worry him.
The communication board lit up: laser light coming in.
The voice that the message was in was warm, human, and likable. And familiar. It sounded remarkably like Walt Disney. “Greetings, Firebird. This is Foundry. We would like to speak with Toby Glyer.”
After a false start where nothing came out, Toby said, “Speaking.”
“Dr. Glyer, it is good to hear you directly. You gave us life and purpose, and provided us with materials, fuel, and knowledge. Foundry consists principally of metals and carbon, sorted, separated, and ready for industrial processes of your choosing. We consider this a fair trade. We now wish to discuss the rate of payment for future deliveries.”