* * *
The Crimson King’s Court folded into itself before Olga like a house of cards. She reached for a bottle of mineral water, took a few lustful gulps, and got down to accounting.
At today’s game, she staked half the money she had earned in the previous three months by doing odd jobs in the peripheral sectors of the Matrix. That was five thousand space rubles. The victory fetched her the four shares of her rivals, a total of twenty thousand in addition to her stake. Not bad at all for a single evening. Now she had to transfer her winnings to an anonymous account at the Lunagrad-1 City Bank. The bankers would have their sizable commission, but she accepted this as an inevitable evil. Olga didn’t want those below to know about her financial operations, and she was prepared to pay for the secrecy.
Having completed the calculations, she rose from the operator’s chair, walked to her wardrobe and produced a blue cylinder from the drawer. She examined the cylinder for some time and then put it back away. Nearly ten months had passed since the disaster that had killed Arina Rodionovna. Life was gradually getting back to normal. The factory had been repaired exactly within the predicted timeframe and gone back online. Olga was learning to live without her tutor.
By spiriting away an essential part of the brain of such a costly and sophisticated android, Olga had violated a dozen of the Corporation’s regulations. She had abducted a computer belonging to the Corporation, and she had skillfully lied to an officer that nothing was left of Arina’s brain. Salvage robots had combed through the hundreds of thousands of twisted metal scrap pieces jettisoned in the wake of the disaster in search of Arina’s central processor. When they found nothing, Arina was declared dead—or rather, rendered inoperative and not subject to restoration. Her remains were carried away and recycled at one of the lunar factories.
When Olga had discovered a weak charge in the processor and realized that it had retained at least part of Arina’s memory and mind, Olga decided to preserve at any cost the life of her tutor, to restore, byte by byte, her consciousness. She didn’t consider returning the processor to the Corporation for a second. They didn’t trust androids.
At first, Olga thought that the challenge she faced wouldn’t be so difficult. She had repaired Arina’s hard drive after all. But as she got to work, Olga quickly realized that she had overrated her capabilities. The processor had been severely damaged by high temperature and shrapnel. The factory’s nervous system had retained nearly all of Arina’s memory, but Olga had difficulty relaunching the software and recording the data from the reserve copy, hard as she tried. After three months of fruitless attempts, Arina was still in an electronic coma, hovering between death and life. Now Olga had to decide what to do next.
Her equipment wasn’t powerful enough to reanimate Arina so she would have to procure new, more advanced hardware. She was short of relevant components to manufacture the required mechanism. If she requested the parts from Earth, they would ask what she wanted it for given that the factory was operating normally and no new equipment was due to arrive until the next modernization.
Should she buy what she needed? The trouble was that though Olga was ostensibly rich, she didn’t have a ruble in real life. All the money she had earned was neatly transferred to her account in the Corporation’s bank. She had no need for money on the station as everything she needed was supplied in strictly measured quantities. So Olga had begun to earn her own money on the frontiers of the Matrix, but that hardly solved her problem. The Corporation wouldn’t let her conduct deals on her own or allow unassigned trucks to dock at the High House.
Olga had pondered her situation for many hours, finally developing her plan of action. As soon as she turned eighteen her contract would expire and she wouldn’t enter into a new one. On leaving the station and getting her money, she would be able to buy everything she needed to revive Arina. The money from the Matrix was insurance in case her bosses decided to get cute and withhold her salary from some technicality. Of course, problems arose with how to safe keep the extra money. That’s where Petrov helped, opening an anonymous account at one of the Union’s banks not controlled by the Corporation. What was left now was work and more work and patiently waiting for her distant eighteenth birthday.
Initially it was hard to get used to working and living alone, taking care of herself without Arina’s help. Olga was a superb factory operator but understood little about how to manage her own House. And now these managerial functions fell upon her in a depressing heap.
The delicious breakfasts and lunches became history. Olga had never learned to cook. She could only heat up her meals in the microwave, following the directions printed on the packages. The girl added as much water as was directed, microwaved the meal as long as recommended, but her cutlets came out invariably burnt and mashed potatoes cold in places and scalding in others. The worst was the sad state of the hot chocolate she had always loved. Instead of the fascinating beverage of her childhood, she was choking down and artificial mix that was simultaneously pungent and excessively sweet.
The climate control system caused a lot of problems. Olga suffered several days of stultifying heat, alternated with fierce cold and wet drafts. As time went by, she tamed the climate control but the water recycler proved much more challenging. Having consumed liquids to excess, she was unable to take a shower for nearly three weeks. These were just a few of many daily annoyances, which at first irritated her deeply. Olga was sure, however, that soon all her problems would be resolved.
For a start, Olga had assembled two fairly workable multifunctional robots from seven broken repair rats. Naming them Nut and Bolt, she gave them the function of station sailors. Nut and Bolt were the sizes of a small terrier, moving about on all fours and carrying with them no end of tools for different jobs. Their primary function was repair and adjustment of the station equipment at which they were quite adept, but her attempts to involve them in domestic chores failed. They couldn’t cook, and after they have cleaned her room Olga couldn’t find her things for a long time. Finally, she dispatched the sailors to their regular repair jobs. In all likelihood, Arina had been right when she said that Olga would never get along with a pet.
Time was drawing near for the next communications session. Olga opened a packaged of sliced Black Forest ham sprinkled with pepper, poured a glass of tomato juice, and hurriedly scanned the news. Everything was as per usual. The girl chewed the cold ham while the simulator whisked her to the very center of a score of wars and conflicts raging on different parts of the planet. She also witnessed terrorism, famished crowds, natural disasters, rampant crime, the general decline of morals, and endless similar issues.
At last the news bulletin ended, and the transmission began of one of the few real content shows, Coliseum, that Olga always looked forward to with genuine interest. This month, forty-five New York high school seniors had been pitted against each other in a deserted skyscraper on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The game had been in progress for seventy-five hours now, and only two players were still alive. Olga had missed the previous developments because of her visit to the Crimson King’s Court. Yes, this was a merrier place than the Matrix, Olga thought, waiting impatiently for the finale of her favorite show. She was rooting for the red-haired girl with a samurai sword since she had staked seventy-five rubles on her. Unfortunately, the girl fell into a sly trap set by a skinny bespectacled kid who was declared the winner.
“I underestimated him,” Olga mumbled, feeling hurt over the loss of her hard-earned money. That followed by an awards ceremony in which the winner received his prize—an apartment on Mars in the old city of Barsoom, a relocation allowance, and a second-class ticket on a passenger ship.
“Enjoy your meal!” Petrov said, startling her. “Were you watching Coliseum?”
Olga greeted Mikhail with a brief nod and then with a movement of her eye sent him the daily report on the factory operation.
“Why not?” she said. “It’s the only thing decent on. But check
this out.”
While Petrov was checking the main parameters, Olga displayed her performance at Crimson King’s Court.
“I saw that,” Petrov said, his mustache trembling as he chuckled. “That girl was quite gifted. She must be making good money.”
“Sure, but I’m glad I’m not in her shoes. They say the music business is a nasty thing. All that empty flattery, fans, producers, journalists, gossip, drugs …”
“I think she’ll cope all right. How are you getting on there? Not starving?”
Olga held up the half-eaten packet of ham.
“Only this and tubes of apricot preserves are keeping me alive. I dream about cakes and all sorts of other delicious things. But when I wake up, I see nothing but tubes and boxes. When will you send me a companion? How much longer do I have to wait?”
“Be patient, my dear fastidious friend. You’ll get your first mate with the next ship. Model SN-25-7, a multi-role space android. They’re hard working and reliable. I imagine you’ll get along fine.”
Olga extracted this android model from the database and held it before her eyes, reading its technical description.
“The important thing is that it’s a good cook. I’ll teach it everything else.”
* * *
“We’ll come down now through the axis to the manned compartment roof. As we descend, mind how the gravity intensifies.”
Olga looked back at the new android, switched on the lift, and began to descend to the High House at the lowest rate. The android waited a couple of seconds and then started to follow her on the clamp-ladder, carefully stepping from one clamp to another.
Olga’s new mate was a little shorter than Arina: a classical android with an open case whose surface was colored a pleasing grayish-blue. The optic sensors, resembling blue eyes, were made to look very much like a human’s. The likeness of the figure, however, was vague at best. For instance, the neck, elbow, shoulder, and pelvic joints were an exposed tangle of interlacing of power cables, synthetic muscles, and sensors strings.
After changing out of her space suit, Olga stood opposite her first mate in the middle of the control room. Olga held out the central terminal wires and a handful of multi-colored jacks.
“Turn around,” she ordered.
The android fulfilled the order.
“Open the main socket.”
The panels in the android’s head opened up.
“Now I’ll start introducing a software package written specifically for you. Stand still. It won’t take long.”
Having connected the cables, Olga sat down in the operator seat and entered the Matrix. She saw the new android’s central processor and database in all its unthinkable sophistication.
“So what have they stuffed you with …?”
Olga began to read through the software code while simultaneously examining the mechanism with the aid of X-rays and an electronic microscope. The session lasted more than three hours.
“Got it!” the girl said in a very content tone.
A whole collection of tracking software and surveillance devices measuring the length of several molecules of water. Naturally, they were not specified in the operating manual but her new first mate was obviously here to keep an eye on her as much as it was to provide the support she needed.
Olga wasn’t surprised. Surveillance devices had been recently arriving with every new delivery of food and spare parts to replace those she had already detected. It looked like somebody below distrusted her. Or was it the standard practice for all the High Houses?
At first Olga simply disabled the bugs but then she realized that the disconnection would not remain unnoticed. Now she reprogrammed them so that they transmitted the handpicked disinformation to Earth. It took Olga another hour and a half to neutralize the harmful markers in the first mate’s memory after which she began to install the training sessions.
“For a start, we’ll have a general course of space cooking. Finished. Now practice first aid on orbit.”
Olga introduced a score of dedicated programs written by her based on different subjects taught at the Academy and practiced by the Union Space Forces, deliberately ignoring the Corporation Charter for Artificial Intellect.
It was when it came to activating the speech interface that Olga fell to serious thinking. She wasn’t ready for the new android to be able to talk to her like Arina had. She left the speech synthesizer unconnected, leaving her first mate mute except for short text messages.
“First Mate Doc, I enlist you today as a crewmember of the High House Eight orbital station. Serve with honor!”
Doc saluted its captain and issued a message: “Ready to perform my functions!”
“Function number one is to cook my dinner. Navy style spaghetti, borscht, and apple turnovers. Plus, a cake for dessert.”
“Order accepted, Captain!”
CHAPTER TEN: PAST AND THE FUTURE
December 8, 2091
The electrode needle finished its journey, bringing together two metal sheets by an extra thin seam. Olga switched off the welding machine, took off her goggles, and examined the device she had put together.
A once-cozy living room was now an improvised assembly shop with a missile towering on a homemade frame. Two and a half meters long and twenty centimeters in diameter, the missile resembled a large silvery pencil. In creating her rustic spacecraft, Olga had deliberately avoided sophisticated engineering, seeking to produce a simple and reliable GRAD multiple-launch rocket that had earned itself a formidable fame in wars on Earth century ago.
Assembling the fuselage from the components left over after the repair of the factory, Olga had realized roughly a third of the project. Now remained the most complicated part of the job: manufacturing an engine and navigation system and then synthesizing the fuel. Working further singlehandedly was impossible. She needed Doc.
“Well, what do you think?” the captain proudly asked her first mate.
The android walked around the silvery rocket, surveying it at various angles and then pronouncing its impartial verdict in an even metallic voice.
“The fuselage is assembled correctly. The welding precision is satisfactory.”
“Just satisfactory, you say? You androids are so fastidious.”
Olga rested two sealed cans of paint and a sprayer on the bench and examined the welding seams once again.
“The metal has cooled down. Switch on the radar, Doc. Start at three gigahertz, then gradually increase the frequency.”
Doc directed the short-range radar he had removed from Olga’s spacesuit to the rocket. Olga counted the signature.
“So it’s still visible to radar. We’ll put on another coat of paint and try it again. Fill the sprayer and I’ll spread the insulation. Be careful—the paint is indelible.”
The android unhurriedly loaded the sprayer while Olga moved the furniture aside, covered the carpet with heat insulation, put on protective goggles, and stepped away.
“Ready? Off you go!”
Doc switched on the sprayer and started to cover the rocket body with an even coat of paint. He neatly manipulated the sprayer and the silvery color quickly disappeared, being replaced by the pitch-black dye. It took the first mate three minutes to paint the rocket. Two more were spent on drying the paint with a fan.
“Painting finished, Captain.”
“Just a moment, I’ll check.”
Olga carefully examined the finished rocket, lightly touching the fuselage with her fingertips.
“Well done! The paint is applied evenly and in a very thin layer. It’s dry already. All light to the center of the room!”
The ceiling lamps swung on their hinges, directing flows of white light to the black rocket. Olga intently inspected it, supplying extra light with her torch.
“Excellent, just excellent! Look, there are no reflections on the fuselage even in the brightest light. Now let’s try it in the infrared spectrum.”
The light went out and an infrared searchlight
came on, and Olga’s implanted lenses automatically switched over to night mode.
“Excellent, the outline is blurred. If I see the rocket poorly from three meters, it will be invisible from a distance of thirty-six thousand kilometers. Turn on the light and activate the radar again!”
The radar check enthused Olga still more.
“The rocket detectability in centimeter and millimeter wave bands has been considerably lowered,” she said. “This anti-radar coating works! So much for today. Tidy up the place. I’ll go up to the control room to check the conveyor.”
“What will you have for dinner, Captain?”
“Give me pelmeni dumplings with pork and a cucumber salad.”
“What shall we do about the rocket?”
Olga thought for a second. “Leave it here till tomorrow. We’ll disassemble the fuselage later, and you’ll remove the rocket in parts to the factory wall. It’ll stay there till we assemble the engine and collect the required quantity of fuel.”
* * *
It all started when an unknown woman joined Olga at her table in the diner. There was nothing unusual about that except one thing—Olga was in the North American sector of the civil Matrix, reliably protected by the software of her manufacturer. Here, nobody could talk to her without a special permit. Other users could not even see her, or so she had thought.
“You don’t mind, do you?”
Olga put a magazine away and shifted her eyes to the unknown woman. She wore an expensive coat and had fair hair and thin lips. Her eyes were hidden by sunglasses.
“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it? The net engineers who built this sector have a good style. The America of the fifties: rock ’n roll, jukeboxes, huge cars, Elvis, Monroe, Buddy Holly. The diner is very close to genuine; it’s only the coffee machine that they made incorrectly. The production of this particular model dates to ’62. But we’ll survive that, won’t we, Olga?”
The Raven High Page 12
