Adam Robots: Short Stories

by Adam Roberts

  ‘Not entirely likely,’ Ange observed drily.

  It hardly mattered. The Leibniz was instructed to continue on its way, in the hope that the Cygnics would reappear. If they did not, then the craft was to undergo scientific investigation of the Oort cloud (as if there were any science left to do there that probes had not already done!). But the aliens showed no signs of returning. Their prior communications were pored over, in all their prolix eccentricity, for any clues explaining their behaviour. People agreed that they had either gone by design, or else had suffered some accident; humanity seemed unable to think of a third possibility. But if the former circumstance obtained then they were presumably unwilling, and if the latter arguably unable, to make the rendezvous previously arranged.

  It was all very unsatisfying.

  Ange did not find it so, however. On the contrary she found the off-kilter non-symmetry of the whole thing rather pleasing, in an aesthetic sense. And, even without the actual rendezvous there was no denying that humanity had experienced first contact. We now knew for certain we were not alone in the universe. And that had to count for something. Didn’t it?

  Surely it did.

  Then one morning Maurice did not report for his shift; Ange and Ostriker overrode his doorlock to find him dead in his harness. It took half an hour to determine what had happened. All those occasions when Maurice had returned to his room to ‘meditate’, he had in fact been indulging his chronic drug habit -addicted, a quick blood check confirmed, both to pinopiates and to the ‘linktin’ pharmakon. It was an overdose of the latter, presumably accidental, that had killed him.

  It was a shock, of course; although if Ange were honest she would concede that it was the fact of it that was a shock rather than any emotional experience of actual bereavement. After all, she’d hardly known him. Ostriker thought this mildly shocking.

  ‘We shared this ship with him for weeks and weeks,’ she noted. ‘Yet we never got to know him!’

  ‘He kept himself to himself,’ Ange said.

  ‘You can see why! How did he get the medical OKs?’

  ‘I’ll have to look into that,’ Ange agreed - although she knew what she would find. It wasn’t beyond the wit of humankind to falsify medical certification. It wasn’t even that expensive.

  They bagged the corpse, sealed the bag in medimesh, and stowed it up amongst the ice at the ship’s nose, to keep it cold. Ange took charge of the remainder of Maurice’s illegal stash. She wondered whether she should simply jettison this into space, but when she reported the incident to the corporate offices she was told to retain it for legal reasons.

  ‘The irony is,’ said Ostriker, temporarily distracted from her endless speculation about the nature and purpose of the Cygnics’ visit, ‘the irony is that he had already called the voyage’s one unluck!’

  ‘He had,’ Ange agreed. ‘The mislabelled ice.’

  ‘Turns out that wasn’t the voyage’s unluck. That was just a minor inconvenience, after all. He was the voyage’s unluck, poor soul.’

  In a less than rational way, Ange found herself darkly pleased by this turn of events. She had, she realised, never believed that the incident with the ice right at the start of the voyage had been enough to defang the possibility of later disaster. But this, a dead crewperson . . . the first in her entire career, in fact . . . was unmistakably unlucky: Particularly for him, of course.

  They continued earthward, the long slow fall back towards the sun. Tangling themselves further into gravity’s soft, dark knot. Ange and Ostriker had to rejig the shift patterns, but there wasn’t much to do, and it wasn’t too onerous. Despite the death on board, or perhaps because of it (who knows how morbid human happiness truly is?) the mood lightened. Ange found Ostriker less annoying. Her obsessive chatter about the alien visitation acquired the flavour of a harmless quirk. And every time she woke after another sleep, Ange knew herself closer to her home.

  She worked her shift, and roused Ostriker and went to sleep herself. She had an elaborate dream about two trees. In one, a pointillist blur of starlings pulsed and flushed around the bare branches, landing, or rather touching down, and immediately taking off again, their wings abuzz like insects, like insects, like insects. A brown cloud. By contrast, the other tree was bare -black branches like stretched-out leather belts, a trunk with the bulgy, structural solidity of black rock. In this second tree there was a single bird, a magpie, and it was clutching the branch upon which it perched with such force, with such improbable strength, that the wood was being wrung out like a damp cloth, and sap was dribbling to the ground.

  Ange was woken abruptly by a cacophony of ship’s alarms. As she unhooked herself from her harness, scrabbling to regain full consciousness, she knew what had happened. A micrometeorite - dust, rock, ice, at these velocities it hardly mattered what - had struck.

  Ange hauled herself through and up the main corridor. The whole ship was shuddering, like a house during an earthquake, or a fat man shaking with fear. If Ange hung in space she was still, but as soon as she reached out and touched the fabric of the craft the vibration communicated itself to her, and her very teeth zizzed in her jaw. The corridor was a chimney, a borehole. It was the inside of a riflebarrel. The corridor flexed and groaned.

  She silenced the alarm’s barbaric yawp. Then she checked the ship’s schematics.

  The bulkheads had all sealed automatically, and she worked as quickly as she could checking compartment after compartment, opening each bulkhead one by one. Each time she passed through a door she shut it behind her. Where there was one micrometeorite there were likely to be more. But she had to get to Ostriker.

  She located the forward position where the pinhead meteor had hit. The ship schematics showed that it had come on a freak trajectory, from the side, avoiding the mass of bulkhead shielding the nose of the craft. Its speed had been its own, then; and not a function of the ship’s own velocity, although it had been going plenty fast enough to enter through the forward 2 hull plate and exit through the forward 7 hull plate. Ange checked the room beyond, found it stable at two thirds pressure, and overrode the bulkhead lock.

  Inside was a mess. The air sucked gently in through the open hatch, blowing past Ange and swirling into the cabin, stirring a particulate soup of red blood droplets and blobs. Ostriker was by the left wall, her arm through a strap, but unconscious. From the doorway, Ange dialled up a filter scrub of the room’s air, and some of the fog of blood began to draw away. Ostriker’s right foot was missing, and blood was pulsing and glooping dark red strings of blood.

  There was a bright yellow patch on the wall away to the right, and another similarly coloured blob on the wall near to where Ostriker dangled. Presumably she had had enough presence of mind to fix the leak before passing out. Presumably, too, the micrometeorite had passed not only through the wall of this room but also through her foot, turning it into blood and atoms.

  Ange spent a moment checking the trajectory of the item. Ostriker had plugged both the holes in this room. The adjacent space (on the far side of the wall, and sealed away by the corridor bulkhead) must be vacuum now.

  The cabin was full of blood droplets. Circulating the air to clean these was taking a long time, or perhaps the filter was getting clogged. Ange took off her shirt and wrapped it around the lower part of her face as a makeshift mask. Then she launched into the space, unhooked the unconscious Ostriker’s arm from the strap, and pulled her out into the corridor. She sealed the room behind her. She transferred her shirt to Ostriker’s stump, wrapping it into a clumsy bandage. Then it was slow progress back down the corridor, opening and closing bulkheads one by one, until they were at the medical room.

  She strapped Ostriker onto the medibench and uploaded some data on tackling amputation wounds. The first thing she did was to sprayject analgesics into the patient’s leg. This action seemed superfluous given Ostriker’s lack of consciousness, but (Ange reasoned) she might suddenly come to at any time. Then Ange rubbed her h
ands thoroughly with antiseptic wash. Then she slapped two plasma bags onto Ostriker’s belly, under her shirt, and unpeeled the sodden makeshift shirt-bandage from her right leg. The raw stump was not pretty to look at. She was no wimp, but Ange’s stomach still shimmered with revulsion as she picked pieces of stray bone and gelid, stringy flesh from the sound site. Ange slathered the whole stump with the mud-like nano gunk, hooked a bag of medimesh about the whole thing to keep it sterile, and went away to check on the health of the ship as a whole.

  The readouts were not good. The chamber in which Ostriker had lost her foot had contained nothing essential to the functioning of the ship as a whole; but the other chamber - that on the other side of the ship, through which the micrometeorite had exited - fed through several key tubucules, and all of these were snapped and venting into space. The whole of the forward 7 hull plate had been ripped away by the exiting debris, and that in turn had deformed or pulled free the edges of four other plates. It was bad. Ange did what she could to reroute, and she shut down as much as possible; but not everything could be rerouted without actually going into the room, which was going to be a dangerous and onerous task. More, the impact had thwacked the ship hard. They were (Ange couldn’t sense the actual motion, although a big shudder was still palpable in the craft) now rotating horizontally stem-to-stern, and tumbling on a different cycle on a seventy-per cent-of-vertical roll. The micrometeorite strike meant that she didn’t have the complete set of attitudinal jets to steady the ship. She spent ten minutes doing what she could with what she had, and steadying without entirely eliminating the shudder.

  Then she went back to the medical room and checked on the patient. Ostriker had regained consciousness, or some part of it. Ange kissed her forehead, glad that she had already sprayjected the painkiller. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ she said

  Ange fetched her a globe of water, and she sucked noisily upon it. ‘What happened?’ Ostriker asked. So Ange explained about the micrometeorite strike, and about Ostriker’s foot. She seemed to take this calmly enough. For a moment she looked down at her leg.

  ‘That explains the ache,’ Ostriker said, in a whispery voice. ‘I remember the decompression, and I remember I felt calm. Isn’t that odd, feeling calm?’

  ‘You did very well,’ Ange reassured her. ‘You did very well not to panic.’

  ‘Everything was dark and swirly, but I had a good handhold, and it was easy enough to see where the holes were. I plugged them both, but then I must have passed out.’

  ‘Bloodloss.’

  At this Ostriker began to weep. ‘I feel faint,’ she said. ‘Oh my foot! My poor foot! How will I do without a foot? My toes! My foot.’

  ‘You’ll be alright,’ Ange said, awkwardly. ‘When we get home, you can have a prosthesis.’

  ‘I feel faint. Oh, it hurts. Can I have some painkiller?’

  Ange fetched a bulb of analgesic. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Take a little of this. It’s best if you self-medicate; when you feel sore, sip a little. But don’t take too much.’

  And, suckling like a baby, Ostriker did seem to become calmer. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You’re a good person.’

  ‘You need to rest.’

  ‘I do feel real sleepy. Don’t think me rude, but . . .’ And Ostriker fell asleep, holding the bulb of analgesic in one hand and the bulb of water in the other.

  Ange was filthy, sticky with Ostriker’s blood; so she went off to shower. There, in amongst the omnidirectional jets and the cleansing florettes of steam, she considered the situation. A rogue micrometeorite strike through the flank of the craft was extraordinarily unlucky, but it had a plus side: namely that it was almost certainly not to be repeated. Had the ship flown into a cloud of micrometeorites, and had the combined velocity of ship and projectiles been enough to pierce the shield of ice, then the ship could have been shredded. On the downside, she was going to have to suit-up and go into the broken 7-side chamber, to see how much of the physical damage could be made good. Only then would she know if the ship could make it back to Earth unassisted. Methodically, she worked through the worst case. They were weeks away from any assistance. Weeks were no problem; they had air, water and food for months, and energy for years. But Ange would much prefer not to have to go begging amongst other pilots for rescue.

  Clean, she went again to the medical room to explain to Ostriker what she was going to do; but the patient was still asleep. So she went to the store space and began suiting up; elasticated leggings; elasticated arms; the padded torso unit. She was about to roll the helmet onto her head when the whole ship gave a massive bucking-bronco kick, and lurched wildly, sending her colliding painfully with the wall.

  Moving about inside the ship in the vacuum suit was not easy, but there was no time to disrobe. Ange went first to the medical room to see if Ostriker was OK - she was still asleep - and then to the nearest control nexus. A supply tubule had ruptured along its entire length, and was feathering great sprays of sealant and fuel into the void. It must have been weakened by the earlier damage to that flank of the ship. Ange fiddled again with the attitudinals to try to calm the lurching, trembling aspect of the ship. It took a long time, and when she was finished one thing was clear: that the craft was in no shape to pilot itself back to Earth.

  Angry at fate, Ange sent out the SOS. It would be half an hour before anybody even heard it, and an hour at the soonest before she heard any reply, so she went back to the medical room. Ostriker was awake now.

  ‘You’re suited,’ she observed.

  ‘A tubule has ruptured,’ Ange said. ‘I’m going to have to go into one of the voided rooms and see what’s what.’

  ‘Will we need rescue?’ Ostriker asked. She seemed very matter-of-fact.

  ‘I’m afraid so. But I’ll see how bad things are. You OK?’

  Ostriker took another sip of water, and smiled. ‘I’m fine. If I’m thirsty, I’ll drink; if the pain comes back I’ll take some more painkiller.’

  ‘Is the pain bad?’

  ‘I can’t feel anything.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  Ange took herself forward, fitted the helmet and negotiated the bulkheads. Inside, the breached chamber was cold and messy, the twinkly detritus of floating dust in vacuum. To the gasping soundtrack of her own breathing, Ange checked the pipes one after the other, tried rerouting the fluid network, and discovered she could not. She swore to herself, quietly. The gaping hole in the side of the ship was panel-sized, and there was no patching it; Ange even stuck her head through it to take a look at the outer skin. It was sobering to consider that a projectile so small could have so large a set of consequences. The whole area was pitted and striated, not by the micrometeorite itself, of course, but by the debris it threw off as it shot out of the ship. Her helmet headlamp drew witchy shadows from the gouges and shone brightly off the petals of twisted metal. And beyond that was the starless black.

  She had done what she could, at any rate. So she brought herself back in, moved laboriously up the corridor, lowered the bulkhead, pressurised the space, and came back through.

  Stripping out of her suit she realised she was hungry; so she heated some tagliatelle and drank some sugar water. There was a reply to her SOS: the nearest craft cried off rescue because the detour would impact too grievously on the commercial viability of their trip. Another ship replied but claimed to be too small to be able to help - it took Ange a minute to pull the specs of the craft and see that this was only an excuse. There was nothing she could do, however; so she fired back acknowledgements and spent a frustrating half-hour working the crippled controls to at least orient the ship in the direction of Earth. They were still falling sunward, although the sideswipe and rattle-roll had added months to their unaided ETA.

  Finally, a third ship confirmed the SOS; another Mars freighter, similarly returning empty to Earth. If Ange’s parent company would reimburse the fuel, they would divert and accelerate, and lock t
rajectories within a fortnight. Ange agreed, hoping that the parent company would agree (if not, the money would come from her own salary, she supposed), and went to tell Ostriker the news.

  Ostriker was sleeping. Except that when Ange looked more closely, she saw that Ostriker wasn’t breathing. With a nauseous sensation in her solar plexus Ange examined her. There was no question about it. Ostriker was dead.

  Ange gave herself over to a childish, universe-directed fury. She swore and swore, and kicked the walls of the medical room. It was so stupid! It was idiotic. But she had to get a grip; getting a grip was what she was good at. So she reined in her temper and examined the situation. Almost at once she saw what must have happened: holding a globe of water in one hand and a globe of painkiller in the other, woozy, confused with blood loss and very thirsty, Ostriker had drunk deeply of the latter thinking it the former. It was such a trivial mistake, and so arbitrary! That the woman could survive having her foot amputated, yet die of mixing up what she was holding in her left and right hands - it was simply outrageous. It was insulting.