The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh

by C. J. Cherryh

  Chess. He frowned and looked at her. "That's a new one. Who taught you that?"

  "My first programmer installed the program."

  He looked at the board, drew a deep breath. He had intended something rather simpler, some fast and stimulating fluff to shake the lingering sense from his brain. Something to sleep on. To see after his eyes were closed. He considered the game. "Are you good at chess?"

  "Yes, Warren."

  He was amused. "Take those dishes to the galley and come back up here. I'll play you."

  "Yes, Warren." The board altered. She had chosen white. The first move was made. Warren turned his chair and reclined it to study the board, his feet on the newly cleared table. He gave her his move and the appropriate change appeared on the screen.

  The game was almost over by the time the pseudo-some came topside again. She needed only four more moves to make his defeat a certainty. He sat back with his arms folded behind his head, studying his decimated forces. Shook his head in disbelief.

  "Annie, ma belle dame sans merci—has anyone ever beaten you?"

  "No, Warren."

  He considered it a moment more, his lately bolstered well-being pricked. "Can you teach me what you know?"

  "I've been programmed with the works of fifteen zonal champions. I don't estimate that I can teach you what I know. Human memory is fallible. Mine is not, provided adequate cues for recall and interrelation of data. One of my programmed functions is instruction in procedures. I can instruct."

  He rolled a sidelong glance at her. "Fallible?"

  "Fallible: capable of error."

  "I don't need the definition. What makes you so talkative? Did I hit a program?"

  "My first programmer was Franz Mann. He taught me chess. This is an exercise in logic. It's a testing mechanism, negative private appropriation. My function is to maintain you. I'm programmed to instruct in procedures. Chess is a procedure."

  "All right," he said quietly. "All right, you can teach me."

  "You're happy."

  "You amuse me. Sit down."

  She resumed the chair opposite him. . . her back to the board, but she did not need to see it. "Amusement produces laughter. Laughter is a pleasure or surprise indicator. Amusement is pleasant or surprising. Please specify which, Warren."

  "You're both, Anne."

  "Thank you. Pleasure is a priority function."

  "Is it?"

  "This is your instruction, Warren."

  He frowned at her. In the human-maintenance programming he had poured a great number of definitions into her, and apparently he had gotten to a fluent area. Herself. Her prime level. She was essentially an egotist.

  Another chessboard flashed onto the screen.

  "Begin," she said.

  She defeated him again, entered another game before he found his eyes watering and his senses blurring out on the screen. He went to bed.

  Trees and black and white squares mingled in his dreams.

  The next venture took resting. . . took a body in condition and a mind at ease. He looked over the gear the next morning, but he refused to do anything more. Not at once. Not rushing back exhausted into the heart of the forest. He lazed about in the sun, had Anne's careful hands rub lotion over his sore shoulders and back, felt immeasurably at peace with the world.

  A good lunch, a nap afterward. He gave the ship a long-neglected manual check, in corridors he had not visited since the plague.

  There was life in the botany lab, two of Rule's collection, succulents which had survived on their own water, two lone and emaciated spiny clusters. He came on them amid a tangle of brown husks of other plants which had succumbed to neglect, brushed the dead leaves away from them, tiny as they were. He looked for others and found nothing else alive. Two fellow survivors.

  No knowing from what distant star system they had been gathered. Tray after tray of brown husks collapsed across the planting medium, victims of his shutdown order for the labs. He stripped it all, gathered the dead plants into a bin. Investigated the lockers and the drawers.

  There were seeds, bulbs, rhizomes, all manner of starts. He thought of putting them outside, of seeing what they would do—but considering the ecology . . . no; nothing that might damage that. He thought of bringing some of the world's life inside, making a garden; but the world outside was mostly lilies and waterflowers, and lacked colors. Some of these, he thought, holding a palmful of seeds, some might be flowers of all kinds of colors. . . odors and perfumes from a dozen different star systems. Such a garden was not for discarding. He could start them here, plant them in containers, fill the ship with them.

  He grinned to himself, set to work reworking the planting medium, activating the irrigation system.

  He located Rule's notebook and sat down and read through it, trying to decide on the seeds, how much water and how deep and what might be best.

  He could fill the whole botany lab, and the plants would make seeds of their own. No more sterility. He pictured the living quarters blooming with flowers under the artificial sunlight. There was life outside the ship, something to touch, something to find; and in here. . . he might make the place beautiful, something he could live in while getting used to the world. No more fear. He could navigate the rivers, hike the forest. . . find whatever it was. Bring home the most beautiful things. Turn it all into a garden. He could leave that behind him, at least, when another team did come, even past his lifetime and into the next century. Records. He could feed them into Anne and she could send them to orbiting ships. He could learn the world and make records others could use. His world, after all. Whole colonies here someday who would know the name of Paul Warren and Harley and Rule, Burlin and Sax and Sikutu and the rest. Humans who would look at what he had made.

  Who would approach what he had found out on the river with awe. Find it friendly, whether or not it was an intelligence. The ship could fit in. . . with the gardens he intended. Long rhythms, the seeding of plants and the growing of trees and the shaping of them. No project he had approached had offered him so much. To travel the rivers and find them and to come home to Anne, who maintained all he learned. . .

  He smiled to himself. "Anne. Send the pseudosome here. Botany four."

  She came, a working of the lift and a tread of metal feet down the corridor and through the outer labs into this one. "Assistance?"

  "You had a standard program for this area. Maintenance of water flow. Cleaning."

  "I find record of it."

  "Activate it. I want the lights on and the water circulating here."

  "Yes, Warren." The lights blinked, the sixth one as well, in the darkness where her chin should be. "This is not your station."

  "It is now."

  "This is Rule's station."

  "Rule stopped functioning. Permanently." His lips tightened. He disliked getting into death with a mind that had never been alive. "I'm doing some of Rule's work now. I like to do it."

  "Are you happy?"

  "Yes."

  "Assistance?"

  "I'll do it myself. This is human work."

  "Explain."

  He looked about at her, then back to his work, dropping the seeds in and patting the holes closed. "You're uncommonly conversational. Explain what?"

  "Explain your status."

  "Dear Annie, humans have to be active about twelve hours a day, body and mind. When we stop being active we don't function well. So I find things to do. Activity. Humans have to have activity. That's what I mean when I use do in an unexplained context. It's an important verb, do. It keeps us healthy. We always have to have something to do, even if we have to hunt to find it."

  Anne digested that thought a moment. "I play chess."

  He stopped what he was doing in mid-reach, looked back at her. As far as he could recall it was the first time she had ever offered such an unsolicited suggestion. "How did that get into your programming?"

  "My first programmer was—"

  "Cancel. I mean why did you suddenly offer
to play chess?"

  "My function is to maintain you happy. You request activity. Chess is an activity."

  He had to laugh. She had almost frightened him, and in a little measure he was touched. He could hardly hurt Anne's feelings. "All right, love. I'll play chess after supper. Go fix supper ahead of schedule. It's nearly time and I'm hungry."

  It was chicken for dinner, coffee and cream pie for dessert, the silver arranged to perfection. Warren sat down to eat and Anne took the chair across the table and waited in great patience, arms before her.

  He finished. The chessboard flashed to the screen above.

  She won.

  "You erred in your third move," she said. The board flashed up again, renewed. She demonstrated the error. Played the game through a better move. "Continue."

  She defeated him again. The board returned again to starting.

  "Cancel," he said. "Enough chess for the evening. Find me all the material you can on biology. I want to do some reading."

  "I've located the files," she said instantly. "They're in general library. Will you want display or printout?"

  "Display. Run them by on the screen."

  The screen changed; printed matter came on. He scanned it, mostly the pictures. "Hold," he said finally, uninformed. The flow stopped. "Anne. Can you detect internal processes in sentient life?"

  "Negative. Internal processes are outside by sensor range. But I do pick up periodic sound from high-level organisms when I have refined my perception."

  "Breathing. Air exchange. It's the external evidence of an internal process. Can you pick up, say, electrical activity? How do you tell—what's evidence to you, whether something is alive or not?"

  "I detect electrical fields. I have never detected an internal electrical process. I have recorded information that such a process exists through chemical activity. This is not within my sensor range. Second question: movement; gas exchange; temperature; thermal pattern; sound—"

  "Third question: Does life have to meet all these criteria for you to recognize it?"

  "Negative. One positive reading is sufficient for Further investigation."

  "Have you ever gotten any reading that caused you to investigate further. . . here, at this site?"

  "Often, Warren."

  "Did you reach a positive identification?"

  "Wind motion is most frequent. Sound. All these readings have had positive identification."

  He let his pent breath go. "You do watch, don't you? I told you to stay alert."

  "I continue your programming. I investigate all stimuli that reach me. I identify them. I have made positive identification on all readings."

  "And are you never in doubt? Is there ever a marginal reading?"

  "I have called your attention to all such cases. You have identified these sounds. I don't have complete information on life processes. I am still assimilating information. I don't yet use all vocabulary in this field. I am running cross-comparisons. I estimate another two days for full assimilation of library-accessed definitions."

  "Library." He recalled accessing it. "What are you using? What material?"

  "Dictionary and encyclopedic reference. This is a large program. Cross-referencing within the program is incomplete. I am still running on it."

  "You mean you've been processing without shutdown?"

  "The program is still in assimilation."

  He sank back in the chair. "Might do you good at that. Might make you a better conversationalist." He wished, "all the same, that he had not started it. Shutdown of the program now might muddle her, leave her with a thousand unidentified threads hanging. "You haven't gotten any conflicts, have you?"

  "No, Warren."

  "You're clever, aren't you? At least you'll be a handy encyclopedia."

  "I can provide information and instruction."

  "You're going to be a wonder when you get to the literary references."

  A prolonged flickering of lights. "I have investigated the literature storage. I have input all library information, informational, technical, literary, recreational. It's being assimilated as the definitions acquire sufficient cross-references."

  "Simultaneously? You're reading the whole library sideways?"

  A further flickering of lights. "Laterally. Correct description is laterally. The cross-referencing process involves all material."

  "Who told you to do that?" He rose from the table. So did she, turning her beautiful, vacant fact toward him, chromium and gray plastic, red sensor-lights glowing. He was overwhelmed by the beauty of her.

  And frightened.

  "Your programming. I am instructed to investigate all stimuli occurring within my sensor range. I continue this as a permanent instruction. Library is a primary source of relevant information. You accessed this for investigation."

  "Cancel," he said. "Cancel. You're going to damage yourself."

  "You're my highest priority. I must maintain you in optimum function. I am processing relevant information. It is in partial assimilation. Cancel of program negative possible. Your order is improper. I'm in conflict, Warren. Please reconsider your instruction."

  He drew a larger breath, leaned on the chair, staring into the red lights, which had stopped blinking, which burned steadily, frozen. "Withdrawn," he said after a moment. "Withdrawn." Such as she was capable, Anne was in pain. Confused. The lights started blinking again, mechanical relief. "How long is this program going to take you?"

  "I have estimated two days assimilation."

  "And know everything? I think you're estimating too little."

  "This is possible. Cross-references are multiplying. What is your estimate?"

  "Years. The input is continuous, Annie. It never quits. The world never stops sending it. You have to go on cross-referencing."

  The lights blinked. "Yes. My processing is rapid, but the cross-reference causes some lateral activity. Extrapolation indicates this activity will increase in breadth."

  "Wondering. You're wondering."

  A delay. "This is an adequate description."

  He walked over and poured himself a drink at the counter. Looked back at her, finding his hands shaking a bit. "I'll tell you something, Annie. You're going to be a long time at it. I wonder things. I investigate things. It's part of human process. I'm going back to the river tomorrow."

  "This is a hazardous area."

  "Negative. Not for me, it's not hazardous. I'm carrying out my own program. Investigating. We make a team, do you understand that word? Engaged in common program. You do your thinking here. I gather data at the river. I'll take your sensor box."

  "Yes, Warren."

  He finished the drink, pleased with her. Relaxed against the counter. "Want another game of chess?"

  The screen lit with the chessboard.

  She won this one too.

  8

  He would have remembered the way even without the marks scored on the trees. They were etched in memory, a fallen log, the tree with the blue and white platelet fungus, the one with the broken branch. He went carefully, rested often, burdened with Anne's sensor box and his own kit. Over everything the silence persisted, forever silence, unbroken through the ages by anything but the wind or the crash of some aged tree dying. His footsteps on the wet leaves seemed unbearably loud, and the low hum from the sensor box seemed louder still.

  The clearing was ahead. It was that he had come back to find, to recover the moment, to discover it in daylight.

  "Anne," he said when he was close to it, "cut off the sensor unit awhile. Its noise is interfering with my perceptions."

  "Please reconsider this instruction. Your perceptions are limited."

  "They're more sensitive over a broad range. It's safe, Anne. Cut it off. I'll call in an hour. You wait for that call."

  "Yes, Warren."

  The sensor unit went off. His shoulder ached from the fifteen kilos and the long walk from the raft, but he carried it like moral debt. As insurance. It had never manifested itself, this�
��life—not for Anne's sensors, but twice for his. Possibly the sensor box itself interfered with it; or the ship did. He gave it all the chance it might need.

  But he carried the gun.

  He found the grove different than he had remembered it, dark and sunless yet in the early morning. He came cautiously, dwarfed and insignificant among the giant trees. . . stopped absolutely still, hearing no sound at all. There was the fallen one, the father of all trees, his moss-hung bulk gone dark and his beard of flowers gone. The grass that grew in the center was dull and dark with shadow.

  Softly he walked to that center and laid down his gear, sat down on the blanket roll. Looked about him. Nothing had changed—likely nothing had changed here since the fall of the titan which had left the vacancy in the ceiling of branches. Fourteen trees made the grove. The oldest of those still living must have been considerable trees when man was still earthbound and reaching for homeworld's moon. Even the youngest must measure their ages in centuries.

  All right, he thought. Come ahead. No sensors. No machines. You remember me, don't you? The night, on the river. I'm the only one there is. No threat. Come ahead.

  There was not the least response.

  He waited until his muscles cramped, feeling increasingly disappointed. . . no little afraid: that too. But he had come prepared for patience. He squatted and spread out his gear so that there was a plastic sheet under the blanket, poured himself hot coffee from his flask and stretched out to relax. Anne called in his drowsing, once, twice, three times: three hours. The sun came to the patch of grass like a daily miracle, and motes of dust and pollen danced in the beam. The giant's beard bloomed again. Then the sun passed on, and the shadows and the murk returned to the grove of giants.

  Perhaps, he thought, it had gone away. Perhaps it was no longer resident here in the grove, but down by the river yonder, where he had felt it the second time. It had fingered over his mind and maybe it had been repelled by what it met there. Perhaps the contact was a frightening experience for it and it had made up its mind against another such attempt.

  Or perhaps it had existed only in the curious workings of a very lonely human mind. Like Anne. Something of his own making. He wanted it to exist. He desperately wanted it to be real, to make the world alive, Rule's world, and Harley's, and his. He wanted it to lend companionship for the years of silence, the hollow days and deadly nights, something, anything— an animal or an enemy, a thing to fear if not something to love. Solitude forever—he could not bear that. He refused to believe in it. He would search every square meter of the world until he found something like him, that lived and felt, or until he had proved it did not exist.