Travels of the Orphan (The Space Orphan Book 3)

by Laer Carroll

  "Our investigation of the hotels shouldn't keep us from clearing all the other habitats. We have to give the city an absolutely 100% clearance before we can let humans stay here. But I'm sure we're going to be spending a lot of time on North Side Hotel. I suggest we schedule two hours a day working on the rest of the city. After all, there's no urgency to clearing habitats. As long as they remain sealed they can't be a threat."

  Another scientist chimed in, saying that that the duties of clearing the rest of the city be shared by every scientist, not just the junior-most of them.

  Lee nodded. "I'll be happy to share in the work of clearing the other habitats even though I'm champing at the bit to look at the North Hotel."

  Hornsby said, "On a matter of logistics. It's a bit of a hassle to commute every day to and from work sites. Manager says that the South Side Hotel can house and feed guests. I suggest those of us wanting to try moving there do so."

  Lee said, "And anyone who doesn't want to move stay here. That would have the effect of giving us a control group and an experimental group."

  "To test what hypothesis?" said Hornsby.

  Lee said, "That an alien habitat is indeed habitable by humans safely, comfortably, and happily."

  Jane said, "All of those seem like reasonable proposals. Exec, would you have our people coordinate our efforts with Dr. Hornsby's people?"

  She looked around the room. There seemed to be no one unhappy with her requests.

  "So, let's get this show on the road folks. Break for lunch?"

  <>

  The early lunch was brief. Everyone wanted to get back into the city.

  It took over seven hours to go over South Hotel thoroughly. The sun was setting as everyone met in the lobby of the hotel where Hornsby was recording the completion of the long list of tasks needed to check the hotel for biologicals.

  The invisible robot servitors of the hotel had brought chairs and tables from somewhere and set them up in a rough circle. This provided seats and work tables for several researchers. The biggest table was in front of Hornsby. He and Jane sat behind it with their info slates before them.

  Finally he looked up from his slate.

  "That's it. Every I dotted and every T crossed. I declare the South Side Hotel here in the alien city on Mars safe for habitation. Captain Kuznetsov, do you concur?"

  "I do. On our heads be it."

  "The next order of business is to occupy it. I've made a tentative plan with your aid, Captain. First job is to reserve rooms for everyone who wants to move into the hotel."

  "I already reserved a room before the biological survey began and renewed it a little while ago. I'll eat here tonight and stay overnight. If I survive till the morning others can do the same."

  "Hey," said one of the scientists. "How come you get to be first?"

  "Because I'm the boss here, to be frank. And the boss should take the risks her decisions expose others to."

  "The old 'lead from the front' principle," the female questioner said. "Kind of macho, but what the Hell."

  The real reason was not martial tradition. It was that Jane knew she was much more likely to survive any danger harbored by the hotel. Her body was incredibly tough by ordinary human standards, made so by at least a thousand years of slow, careful genetic improvements. She also had Robot, much of whose design had included the ability to detect and neutralize danger to its human host.

  "Meanwhile," said Hornsby, "here is the list of people I've approved of those volunteered to be guinea pigs." He held up his info slate and punched a virtual button on its face. All around the disorderly circle info slates chimed or buzzed as they received the list.

  A few of the people who examined the list on their vears protested that they'd been left off it, but none did so strongly. They knew they'd get their turn eventually.

  "Now, I want everybody to leave for the ship. Those of you who will take up residence here reserve your rooms at the reception desk on the way out. Everyone rendezvous here at 8:00 tomorrow to begin the North Hotel investigation. Those who will be moving in here should bring the personal items you'll want for the next few days.

  "I'll see you then."

  The scientists and the few Constellation crew members who'd been helping them got up and began to leave. As they did so their chairs and tables quietly vanished. As Jane had expected, they were all force-field constructs.

  Jane stood and went into the dining room just off the reception area. It was a large square with a thirty-foot ceiling decorated in a combination of elements perhaps taken from London hotels. It had ceiling lighting of eggshell gold showing discreet decorative ceiling paneling, light brown walls with more paneling, and a dark gold carpet. Booths with dark red cushioned seats circled the rooms, while square and octagonal tables graced the center of the rooms. Each table was covered with creamy white tablecloths.

  Jane took an octagonal table in a corner opposite the entrance. Lopez took the seat to her right, Hornsby to her left, and Lee opposite her.

  "Quite a setup," said Hornsby, looking around at the room. "Confederation spies must have taken a lot of photos when they visited us."

  Lee said, "Maybe. From what I can tell from the two versions of the Galactic Encyclopedia that we have, however, any spies were mechanical, tiny drones. Or invisible ones, since the Confederation has that technology. As an unimportant primitive society the Confed wouldn't bother to send actual human spies."

  "You've read all of the Encyclopedia?" said Lopez.

  "It's too big for me to do that. But I've read a lot, mostly about the larger context of the organization, the other alien civilizations, and biology, chemistry, and physics. Disappointing, the science material. Very sparse on details. Too few to use except to point us in the right directions for research."

  A robot servitor in the form of a floating ball of pale blue light floating at head height arrived. So did glasses of cold water, appearing on the table out of thin air in front of each of the hotel's visitors. A human-sounding voice spoke.

  "Here are menus. Please select any items."

  With that announcement four fat menus appeared in front of them floating in mid-air. When Jane took hold of the one near her it wilted into her hands, surprisingly heavy.

  Jane and her companions studied the menu while the servitor ball of light floated serenely in the air.

  The items might have been copied from any number of modern menus. Jane selected a salmon steak with sides of brown rice and a light lettuce salad, a loaf of buttered bread, and a glass of chilled white wine. The other three did not order food even though they studied their menus too. Catered dinners would be delivered from Constellation.

  Those dinners arrived as Jane sampled the wine. Phil had gotten her into wines on a basic level. She described her drink to her companions in the basic vocabulary she'd learned from him.

  "Could be a California wine or a European one, from what little I can tell. Very 'sunny' if that means anything. I'm still pretty shaky on wine appreciation and terminology."

  As her company took off the coverings of their food and flipped the tops off their sippy cups Jane's food arrived. It was accompanied by the (or a?) servitor and was on floating plates and saucers and separate floating napkin-wrapped heavy utensils. When Jane unrolled the napkin she found the utensils seemingly made of silver.

  Jane examined her food and looked up at the servitor.

  "These greens. Were they grown here?"

  "No, ma'am. It was created out of air from templates provided by the Human Interstellar Confederation. Be assured that it is as nourishing and fresh as the grown version. It was synthesized to be identical to the real thing to below the atomic level."

  "Thank you."

  "Pleased to help."

  As Jane and her companions began to eat and ceased talking to it the avatar of hotel's servitor (or servitors?) disappeared.

  Conversation was subdued and general as they ate. Lee, under questioning, told them a little about her life. So did H
ornsby.

  For dessert Jane had a slice of a deep-dish apple pie covered with a generous topping of whipped cream and well-creamed but not sugared coffee. Lopez looked on enviously.

  "That's what I'm having tomorrow. If you don't drop dead."

  Jane grinned at her. "That's what you and your sweets-loving friends get for running through Constellation's dessert supplies."

  As Jane finished the last spoonful of pie Lopez said, "Well, I'd better get back to Connie. If I may, Captain?"

  Jane nodded and her executive officer rose and left, joined by Jane's other two companions with a chorus of Good Nights.

  "Servitor," said Jane as she finished her food and drink.

  It appeared instantly.

  "I'm done. Thank you."

  "It was a pleasure to serve, Captain Kuznetsov."

  Jane wondered as she stood at the elevator what emotions limited AI like robots would have. The Galactic Encyclopedia said that full AIs with emotion and consciousness, living a billion or more times faster than humans, evolved so fast they almost instantly disappeared when created.

  So much for all those stories about AIs turning on their creators, she thought as the elevator took her upward. Shame. They were such good villains.

  Her suite was on the top floor, one of four. She had a night-time view of the North Side Hotel and the Main Street in front of her. They were well-lit. Off to her right, to the east, she could see the hundred-foot high bulk of Constellation. The near side of the spacecraft was faintly lit by city lights.

  Jane wondered why the city was so well lit. When someone had asked Manager it had just said: For esthetic reasons.

  <>

  The next morning Jane woke at 6:00 as usual after a good night's sleep, exercised in the hotel's gym on equipment similar to Earth equipment except for the absence of company labels, and swam in the pool.

  In pajamas and slippers provided by the hotel she had breakfast at the hotel's buffet, dressed in her spacesuit as she intended to watch over the investigators inside the North Hotel, and exited to meet the scientists as they assembled on Main Street at 8:00.

  By 11:00 it was clear that the "AI test" was not very difficult. Many artifacts from long-gone occupants remained inside the hotel. They were clearly those of the blue catlike centaurs. There were no biological remnants, however.

  This did not depress the biologists, however. With Jane they had lunch at the South Hotel, Jane having proven that there was no danger to the food available there. They told Jane that Manager had volunteered to provide detailed biological information on the Cats from the most basic biochemical areas to their physiology and psychology.

  "Then why the suggestion that there was any 'test' for us to pass?" she said to Lee.

  The woman said, "I can only guess that the Cats, the makers of the city, wanted to challenge us to discover their nature."

  "And why was that? When they left here more than five thousand years ago?"

  Lee only shrugged.

  <>

  The scientists wrapped up their investigations of the North Hotel early, saying that it was safe to enter except that it was set up for Cats. The air had a temperature only a dozen degrees above freezing and was thin, being half the pressure of Earth's.

  More scientists, almost all of them, reserved rooms at the South Hotel. The hotel's dining room was almost filled that evening.

  Jane's table, as it had become known, hosted eight when she finally ordered her dinner. As the night before it seated Lee and Hornsby. That left seats for five scientists. One was a buddy of Lee who acted somewhat like an executive officer for the woman. All the others were quite young.

  Jane had one of the servitors set up a discreet microphone in the center of the table. She wanted not only her table but the nearby tables able to hear the conversation at her table, and Lopez who was back at the ship.

  After ordering Lee said, "A part of me is saying that eating here like this, in this alien hotel, should feel strange and wonderful, but most of me just accepts it as perfectly normal."

  Andrée Leroi, a dark-haired dark-eyed young French scientist, said, "It's because we're technological creatures. We're sitting on what I suspect are force fields simulating physical chairs, but they're chairs and we're sitting and that's enough for our subconscious. Wood or plastic or force fields, all the same to our conditioning."

  "Plus," said another scientist, "the city is doing a good job of simulating an Earth city and an Earth hotel. The hotels it's imitating are the old-fashioned kind. Look at the paneling on that ceiling, those walls. That kind of elaborate ornamentation is straight out of Victorian England."

  The rest of the table, and of several adjoining tables who could hear what was being said at this one, looked around at the ceiling and the walls before looking back at each other.

  Leroi said, "Another part of our technological nature is how rapidly we've come to accept the new as familiar. An example is our attitudes toward the larger interstellar landscape, or maybe I should stay starscape. A dozen years ago we thought we were alone in the universe. Now we know we're not. The knowledge permeates all our lives.

  "I see it in the children of my aunt and her husband. They live in the US and their children have become completely acculturated. My youngest niece went trick-or-treating at Halloween as The Star Princess, a cartoon superhero from another galaxy. She thinks the Princess is a real person."

  Jane had a strange feeling in her gut at hearing of the Star Princess. The character was only the latest of numerous girls or boys in comics who were aliens yet from distant human worlds. But SHE was a real instance of just such a creature.

  Perhaps Lee had seen Jane's slight wince and sought to distract her. She said, "Another aspect of our technological nature is how quickly actual events are echoed and publicized all around the world. For instance, Jane, you've become a public figure. My youngest son has a poster of you in his bedroom. One where you are upside down kicking a soccer ball."

  Or perhaps Lee was gently teasing Jane. She quirked an eyebrow and smiled. "It seems I'm never to escape that moment."

  "What do you expect, Captain? You opened up space to the human race."

  Another of the scientists at the table said, "Well, I for one am looking forward to the day I can meet the Cat people. They are the two in biospheres nearby by interstellar distances which are not too alien for humans, and according to the Encyclopedia they like humans."

  Yet another scientist chimed in. "I read that humans can biomorph into Cats, and vice versa, and have done so. Wouldn't that be a hoot?"

  Leroi spoke, more to herself than to the table, "How would they do that? The skeleton alone would be a big problem. Then the morphed person would have to learn to walk all over again."

  With that talk turned more general.

  <>

  The next several weeks saw the remaining buildings of the Mars city cleared for opening and use. A few of the scientists moved out of the human hotel into houses, an easy change since each house quickly furnished itself with force-field furniture and, over several days, physical copies transmuted from air.

  Jane made ready to travel back to Earth with some biologists and other scientists.

  Then something happened which changed all her plans.

  Chapter 8 - Voyage by the Cats

  It was in the middle of the night when it happened. Jane was prepping for bed in her room just off the control room. She had moved out of the Mars City hotel as she suspected she would soon receive orders from Earth to return there. Suddenly Robot pulled her into HER cyborg state.

  A few hundred milliseconds revealed why. The sentinels set in orbits halfway between the Asteroid Belt and Jupiter by the Human Interstellar Confederation had sent Robot a message via Robot's hypercom transceiver, a feature SHE had known about but never used except to receive communications from the sentinels.

  One of the dozens of spaceships which daily exited from the mysterious Galaxy-wide subspace network located near Saturn had
left Saturn space and was headed for the Asteroid Belt.

  This was not cause for immediate alarm. The giant invisible Guardian which was part of the millions-of-years old network would not allow spacecraft to leave its locale if it contained aliens who might endanger residents of the Solar System, either physically or socially. It was Godlike in its intelligence and (the Galactic Encyclopedia said) nearly as infallible as a mythical God.

  JANE examined the data the sentinels had sent HER. They considered HER a Citizen of the Confederation and routinely sent HER data on moving objects inside the Solar System and out to about half a light year.

  For the first time ever SHE sent a message over Robot's hypercom, one to the sentinels. WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THE SPACESHIP'S CREW?

  Back came an answer, very simple compared to the detailed data about the spaceship and its trajectory sent earlier: Cat people.

  Well, well. That was very interesting. And would get more interesting as knowledge of the Cat visit became general knowledge.

  SHE would have plenty of time to react to the news in the next few days and weeks as the news percolated throughout the proper channels within the United Nations and from there to the rest of the world. SHE reverted to HER fully biological state, finished getting ready for bed, and went to sleep.

  <>

  Midway through the morning Jane called a meeting for the officers of Constellation. Most showed up, many with sippy cups in hand. Those asleep or at other duties would receive a briefing update.

  "I've been thinking," Jane said. "Sooner or later we're going to meet up with real-life Cats. We've already twice seen evidence of their interest in this solar system. Suppose they showed up tomorrow?

  "I want you all to bone up on the Cats and make up a guide to education about them for every crew member and tests on the knowledge. I want everyone to become experts, even the jet jockeys. Exec, please pick an officer to head up this project, one not too burdened by duties.

  "That is all." She stood, everyone else stood, and she left the conference room.

  Understandably the Captain's latest wild hair up her ass annoyed many on her crew. No one knew just why it had been ordered, but a lot of the crew wisely told others it was sure to be for a good reason. The Old Lady had before gotten wild hairs, and all of them had turned out to be not wild at all.