Odyssey iarc-1

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  But if I’m Derec, why does the safesuit fit so poorly?The waist ring and chest envelope would have accommodated someone with a much stockier build. And when he tried to straighten his cramped legs, he found that the suit’s legs were a centimeter or two short of allowing him to do so comfortably.

  I certainly was shorter once-maybe I was heavier, too. It could be my old suit-one I wouldn’t have used except in an emergency. Or it could be my ID, but someone else’s suit.

  “Can you scan the datastrip on the badge?” he asked hopefully. “There should be a photograph-a citizenship record-kinship list. Then I’d know for sure.”

  “I’m sorry. There’s no data reader in the pod, and my optical sensors can’t resolve a pattern that fine.”

  Frowning, he said, “Then I guess I’ll be Derec, for now.”

  He paused and collected his thoughts. To know his name-if it was his name-did nothing to relieve his feelings of emptiness. It was as though he had lost his internal compass, and with it, the ability to act on his own behalf. The most he could do now was react.

  “All of the pod’s environmental systems are working well,” Darla offered brightly. “Rescue vessels should be on their way here now.”

  Her words reminded him that there was a problem more important in the short run than puzzling out who he was. Survival had to come first. In time, perhaps the things he did know would tell him what he had forgotten.

  He was in a survival pod. His mind took that one fact and began to build on it. When he shifted position in his harness, he noted how the slightest movement set the pod to rocking, despite the fact that its mass could hardly be less than five hundred kilograms. He extended an arm and let the muscles go limp. It took a full second to fall to his side.

  A hundredth of a gee at best.I’m in a survival pod on the surface of a low-gravity world. I was in a starcraft, on my way somewhere, when something happened. Perhaps that’s why I can’t remember, or perhaps the shock of landing-

  There was no window or port anywhere in the pod, not even a hatch peephole. But if he couldn’t see, perhaps Darla could.

  “Where are we, Darla?” he asked. “What kind of place did you land us on?”

  “Would you like me to show you our surroundings? I have a limpet pack available.”

  Derec knew the term, though he wondered where he had learned it. A limpet pack was a disc-shaped sensor array capable of sliding across the outer surface of a smooth-hulled space craft-a cheaper but more trouble-prone substitute for a full array of sensor mounts. “Let’s see.”

  The interior lights dimmed, and the central third of the hatch became the background for a flatscreen projection directed down from the command board overhead. Derec looked out on an ice and rock landscape that screamed its wrongness to him. The horizon was too close, too severely curved. It had to be a distortion created by the camera, or a false horizon created by a foreground crater.

  “Scan right,” he said.

  But everywhere it was the same: a jumble of orange-tinged ice studded with gray rock, merging at the horizon into the velvet curtain of space. He could see no distinct stars in the sky, but that was likely to be due to the limited resolving power of the limpet, and not because of any atmosphere. The planetoid’s gravity was too slight to hold even the densest gases, and the jagged scarps showed no signs of atmospheric weathering.

  In truth, it looked like a leftover place, the waste of star-and planet-making, a forgotten world which had not changed since the day it was made. It was a cold world, and a sterile one, and, in all probability, a deserted one.

  Formerly deserted, he corrected himself. “Moon or asteroid?” he asked Darla.

  “No matter where we are, we are safe,” Darla said ingenuously. “We must trust in the authorities to locate and retrieve us.”

  Derec could foresee quickly growing weary of that sort of evasion. “How can I trust in that when I don’t know where we are and what the chances are that we’ll be found? I know that this pod doesn’t have a full-recycle environmental system. No pod ever does. Do you deny it?” He waited a moment for an answer, then plunged on. “How much of a margin did the Massey Corporation decide was enough? Ten days? Two weeks?”

  “Derec, maintaining the proper attitude is crucial to-”

  “Save the therapist bit, will you?” Darren sighed. “Look, I know you’re trying to protect me. Some people cope better that way-what they don’t know and all that. But I’m different. I need information, not reassurance. I need to know what you know. Understand? Or should I start digging into your guts and looking for it myself?”

  Derec was puzzled when Darla did not answer. It dawned on him slowly that he must have presented her with a dilemma which her positronic brain was having difficulty resolving-but there should have been no dilemma. Darla was obliged by the Second Law of Robotics to answer his questions.

  The Second Law said, “A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”

  A question was an order-and silence was disobedience. Which could only be if Darla was following her higher obligation under the First Law.

  The First Law said, “A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”

  Darla had to know how small the chance of rescue was, even within a star system, even along standard trajectories. And Darla knew as well as any robot could what sort of harm that fact could do to the emotional balance of a human being. The typical survivor, already terrorized by whatever events brought him into the lifepod, would respond with despair, a loss of the will to live.

  It made sense to him now. Of course Darla would try to protect him from the consequences of his own curiosity-unless he could make her see that he was different.

  “Darla, I’m not the kind of person you were told to expect,” he said gently. “I need something to do, something to think about. I can’t just sit here and wait. I can deal with bad news, if that’s what you’re hiding. What I can’t take is feeling helpless.”

  It seemed as though she were prepared for his kind too, after all, but had only needed convincing that he was one. “I understand, Derec. Of course I’ll be happy to tell you what I know.”

  “Good. What ship are we from?” he asked. “There’s no shipper’s crest or ship logo anywhere in the cabin.”

  “This is a Massey Corporation G-85 Lifepod-”

  “You told me that already. What ship are we from?”

  Darla was silent for a moment. “Massey Lifepods are the primary safety system on six of the eight largest general commercial space carriers-”

  “You don’t know?”

  “My customization option has not been initialized. Would you care for a game of chess?”

  “No.” Derec mused for a moment. “So all you know how to do is shill for the manufacturer. Which means that we probably came from a privately owned ship-all the commercial carriers customize their gear.”

  “I have no information in that area.”

  Derec clucked. “In fact, I think you do. Somewhere among your systems there has to be a data recorder, activated the moment the pod was ejected. It should tell you not only what ship we came from and where it was headed, but what’s happened since. It’s time to find out how smart you really are, Darla,” he said. “We need to find that recorder and get into it.”

  “I have no information about such a recorder.”

  “Trust me, it’s there. If it wasn’t, there’d be no way to do postmortems after a ship disaster. Are you in control of the pod’s power bus?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look for an uninterruptible line. That’ll be it.”

  “Just a moment. Yes, there are two.”

  “What are they called?”

  “My system map labels them 1402 and 1632. I have no further information.”

  Derec reached for the water tube again. “That’s all right. One will be the recorder, and the other is probably the loca
tor beacon. We’re making progress. Now find the data paths that correspond with those power taps. They should tell us which one is which.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  “They have to be there. The recorder will be taking data from your navigation module, from the environmental system, probably even an abstract of this conversation. There ought to be a whole forest of data paths.”

  “I’m sorry, Derec. I am unable to do what you ask.”

  “Why?”

  “When I run a diagnostic trace in that portion of the system, I am unable to find any unlabeled paths.”

  “Can you show me your service schematic? Maybe I can find something.”

  The icescape vanished and was replaced by a finely detailed projection of the lifepod’s logic circuits. Scanning it, Derec quickly found the answer. A smart data gate-a Maxwell junction-was guarding the data line to the recorder. The two systems were effectively isolated. Similar junctions stood between Darla and the inertial navigator, the locator beacon, and the environmental system.

  This is all very odd, Derec thought. It wasn’t surprising that there was a lower-level autonomous system regulating routine functions. What was strange was how Darla was locked out of getting any information from it.

  Coddling frightened survivors required tact and discretion. But robots were strongly disposed toward an almost painful honesty. Perhaps it had proven too difficult to program a Companion to put on a happy face while keeping grim secrets. Lying did unpredictable things to the potentials inside a positronic brain.

  And there were Third Law considerations as well. The Third Law went, “A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.”

  How would a robot balance its responsibility to preserve itself with the increasing probability of its demise? It was as though the designers had concluded that there were things Darla was better off not knowing, and thrown up barriers to prevent her from finding out. They had kept her ignorant of herself, and even of her ignorance.

  There was a disturbing parallel in that to Derec’s own situation.Is that what happened to me? he wondered. He had hoped almost from the first that his loss of memory was the consequence of whatever disaster had put him in the lifepod, perhaps along with the shock of a hard landing on this world.

  Now he had to ask whether such selective amnesia could be an accident. He had read the schematic easily, but he could not remember where or why he had acquired that skill. Obviously he had some technical training, a fact which-if he survived-might prove a useful clue to his identity. But why would he remember the lessons, but not the teacher? Could his brain have been that badly scrambled?

  Yet reading the schematic was a complex task which clearly required that his mind and memory be unimpaired. As well as he could judge, his reasoning was measured and clear. If he were in shock or suffering from a concussion, wouldn’t all his faculties be affected?

  Perhaps this wasn’t something that had happened to him. Perhaps, as with Darla, it was something that had been done to him.

  Derec grimaced. It was unsettling enough looking at the blank wall of his past, but more unsettling to think that hiding behind that wall might be the reason why it had been built.

  By this time Darla had grown impatient. “Have you found anything?” Darla asked with a note of anxiety.

  Blinking, Derec looked up at the status board. “The recorder’s tied in through a Maxwell junction. The junction won’t pass through to the recorder anything it doesn’t recognize, which is why you can’t find it with a trace. And why we’re not going to be able to read it through you. But there has to be a data port somewhere, probably on the outer hull-”

  At that moment, the whole pod lurched and seemed to become buoyant. Derec had the sensation that it was no longer in contact with the frozen surface of the asteroid. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

  “Please stay calm,” Darla said.

  “What is it? Have we been found?”

  “Yes. I believe we have. But I am unable to say by whom.”

  Derec gaped openmouthed for a moment. “Put the exterior video up again! Quickly!”

  “I am becoming concerned about your level of agitation, Derec. Please close your eyes and take several deep breaths.”

  “I’ll do no such thing,” he said angrily. “I want to see what’s going on.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation, and then Darla acquiesced. “Very well.”

  The sight that greeted Derec’s eyes made his breath catch in his throat. The limpet’s cameras were no longer trained on the horizon, but down at the ground. A half-dozen machines, each different from the next, were arrayed around the pod. The largest was taller than a man, the smallest barely the size of a safesuit helmet. The tiny ones hovered on tiny jets of white gas, while the larger ones were on wheels or articulated tracks.

  He could also see a portion of some sort of cradle or deck which seemed to be centered below the pod. And all of them-the machines, the cradle, and the pod-were moving, proceeding along together toward some unknowable destination like some sort of ice-desert caravan.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded of Darla. “Can you identify them? Did they make any contact with us?”

  “The device below us appears to be a cargo sled. I have no information on the other mechanisms.”

  Derec reached for his helmet and unsnapped the catch holding it in place. “I’m going out. I’m not going to let us be hijacked like this with no explanation.”

  “Leaving the pod would be too dangerous,” Darla said. “In addition, you will lose a minimum of four hours’ oxygen opening the hatch.”

  “It’s worth it to find out what’s going on.”

  “I can’t allow that, Derec.”

  “It’s not your decision,” he said, reaching for the harness release with his free hand.

  “I am sorry, Derec. It is,” Darla said.

  Too late, Derec realized that a Massey Companion was equipped to calm a distraught survivor not only verbally, but chemically. The dual jets of mist from either side of the headrest caught him full in the face, and he inhaled the sickly sweet droplets in the gasp of surprise.

  Derec had barely enough time to be astonished at how quickly the drug acted. Both his arms went limp, the right falling well short of the harness release, the left losing its grasp on the helmet. His vision rapidly grayed. As though from a distance, he heard dimly the sound of the helmet hitting the floor. But between the first bounce and the second, he drifted away into the silent darkness of unconsciousness, and saw and heard nothing more.

  Chapter 2. Under The Ice

  For the second time in one day, Derec awoke in strange surroundings.

  This time, he was lying flat on his back staring up at the ceiling. There was a sour taste in his mouth and an empty, growly sensation in his stomach. He lay there for a moment, remembering, then sat up suddenly, his muscles tensed defensively as he looked about him.

  As before, Derec was alone. But this time he found himself in more domestic surroundings-a four-man efficiency cabin, three meters wide by five meters long. The bed he had been lying in was a fold-down bunk, one of four mounted on the side walls. To his right as he sat on the edge of the bunk was a bank of storage lockers of assorted sizes. To his left was a closed door.

  That damned Darla, he thought fiercely.

  Though what he saw around him struck a vaguely familiar chord, Derec dismissed it as meaningless-there was a tedious sameness to all modular living designs. A more important question was whether the cabin was part of a work camp on the surface of the asteroid, tucked away somewhere inside a speeding spacecraft, or somewhere else he couldn’t imagine. The cabin itself offered no clue. Nor could it tell him whether he had been rescued or captured.

  Glancing down at himself, he saw that he was no longer wearing the safesuit. His torso and legs were covered by a formfitting white jumpsweat, the sort of garment a space worker would wear insid
e his work jitney or augment.

  It was clean and relatively new, but there was some wear on the abrasion pads at heel and knee and waist. It might have been what he was wearing under the safesuit, or-

  “The suit,” he said with sudden dismay.

  He jumped to his feet and looked around wildly. There was only one locker large enough to hold a safesuit. It was unlocked, but it was also empty. He went through the other lockers mechanically. All were empty.

  No, they were more than empty, he decided. They looked as though they’d never been used.

  Derec felt a twinge of panic. If he didn’t find the suit, he would never learn whatever information the datastrip on its name badge had to offer. And he had to find Darla as well, or lose the irreplaceable data stored in her event recorder.

  Half afraid that he would find it locked, Derec crossed to the door and touched the keyplate. The door slid aside with a hiss. Outside was a short corridor flanked by four doors. The corridor was deserted, the other doors all closed.

  To Derec’s left, the corridor terminated in a blank wall. The other end was sealed by an airlock, suggesting that the four rooms formed a self-contained environmental cell. Through the small window in the inner pressure door he caught a glimpse of another corridor lying beyond.

  “Hello?” Derec called. There was no answer.

  The door facing him was labeled WARDROOM. Inside, he found a table large enough to seat eight for a meeting or a meal, a compact autogalley, and a sophisticated computer terminal and communications center.

  Derec ran his fingertips across the surface of the table, and they came away clean, without even a coating of dust. The status lights on the galley told him that the unit was in Extended Standby, which meant that its food stores had been irradiated and deep-frozen. No one had eaten here for some time.

  Was it all for him? Was that why it was unused? Or was he a surprise visitor in an empty house?

  He switched the galley to Demand status, and a timer began counting down the two hours it would take to bring it on line. But when he tried to activate the com center, it demanded a password.