Odyssey iarc-1

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  And then it came to him that there was someone else on board who was just as alone, just as helpless, who might take not only comfort but courage from a companion. Someone, in fact, who had already proclaimed herself Derec’s friend.

  If she’ll help, Derec thought, we just might do it, at that-

  An hour of waiting had slipped by. Reinvigorated by hope, Derec’s attention had wandered from watching the doorway to playing with the pieces of the puzzle.

  “ ’Ur back,” a gruff voice intruded.

  Derec raised his head and looked toward Wolruf. “I went walking. You’ve been looking for me, haven’t you?”

  “Aranimas was looking for ‘u,” Wolruf corrected. “‘U stay ‘ere now, okay?”

  “Is he coming back?”

  “Boss iss resting now. ‘E’ll come to see ‘u in the morning. Best ‘u be ‘ere,” Wolruf said, turning away.

  “You got in trouble with Aranimas because I was gone, didn’t you?” Derec called after her.

  The caninoid stopped, looked back, and shrugged.

  “I’m sorry,” Derec said. “I put you in a bad position.”

  “Iss nothing new. I put myself therr enough.”

  Derec smiled. “Tell me something, Wolruf. What are you doing here? Why are you working for someone like Aranimas?”

  “Too long a story to explain.”

  “You’re not on board by choice, are you.”

  “Too complicated to explain.”

  “I’ve got the time-and I really want to know.”

  Wolruf hesitated, then advanced a few steps into the room. “Should go sleep,” she said gruffly.

  “Why not do what you want to instead of what you ought to?”

  Crouching an arm’s length away, Wolruf grinned. “That the secret of ‘ur success?”

  It took longer than it should have to sort out the story. Wolruf had never had to talk about her home and life to someone who did not know the thousand and one things that a person living within a culture knows without thinking. Again and again, Derec had to ask her to go back and fill in some clarifying detail.

  Beyond that, there were language problems, as some of what Wolruf was trying to convey ran up against the limits of her Standard vocabulary. At other times she seemed to be talking around some fact or idea that she did not feel comfortable disclosing.

  Piecing together what he heard and filling in a few of the blanks on his own, Derec gained a reasonably coherent answer to his question. Despite Wolruf’s boast of two hundred inhabited worlds, the crew of the ship was from a single solar system. Aranimas’s kind-the Erani-and the Narwe lived on the second planet, Mrassdf, which by Wolruf’s description was a hot, windswept, unpleasant world. Wolruf’s kind-the name was just as unpronounceable as Wolruf’s own-and the elusive star-creatures were from the temperate fourth planet.

  The relationship between the Narwe and the Erani was like that between sheep and their shepherds, except that the Narwe were more intelligent and physically adept than sheep. But the comparison was still apt. The Narwe vastly outnumbered the Erani, but the Erani-aggressive, inventive, acquisitive-were completely dominant.

  The relationship between the two worlds was rather more complex, and Derec did not completely understand it. Neither planet seemed to have a unified government. That might have been the only thing that kept them from going to war, for there clearly was a basic antipathy between them. Despite that, there was active commerce between the worlds. At the center of it were trading companies operatedoperated by several factions of Erani and goods produced by several families of Wolruf’s people.

  Wolruf would not talk much about Aranimas in particular, but he seemed to be a younger member of one of the more powerful Erani factions. Derec gleaned that somehow Wolruf’s family had run afoul of Aranimas’s trading company.

  “My service on this mission lifts thedhierggra from my family,” she explained.

  Thedhierggra, Derec determined after much questioning, was equivalent to a blacklist-while it was in effect, no Erani would deal with the family. That made Wolruf, in essence, an indentured servant-a slave, working off her family’s debt.

  “Why were you chosen?”

  “I am youngest, least valuable to my family.”

  Derec did not want to rush to judge an entire culture on one story from one member, but he found himself getting angry over the injustice. “Is that why Aranimas treats you the way he does? Is that part of the deal, that he gets to push you around?”

  “That iss the Erani way. They treat everyone so.”

  “Not each other,” Derec said. “That’s what makes it wrong.”

  It was then that Derec realized that somewhere in the course of the conversation, something unexpected had happened. He had drawn Wolruf out selfishly, calculating. It was just another angle to exploit. But as he had listened to her, his false sympathy for her plight became real empathy for her pain. She was a victim, just as he was.

  But she seemed uncomfortable with his concern. “Not ‘ur trouble.”

  “Wolruf-you said you were my friend. Let me be yours.”

  “What do ‘u mean?”

  “Aranimas is working you like a slave and abusing you like an animal. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can put a stop to it, together.”

  “How?”

  “I have a tool,” he said, nodding toward the robot. “And I have some ideas. But I need you to tell me some things-about Aranimas, and about how this ship is controlled.”

  Wolruf looked uncomfortable, and Derec was afraid that he had gone too fast and frightened her. “You want the jewel back,” she said.

  Honesty was an imperative. “I do.”

  “ ’U will take it and leave me to face Aranimas.”

  Derec shook his head emphatically. “I do have to get away. I can’t let Aranimas take me back to Mrassdf. But if I can’t leave you in a better situation than you’re in now, I’ll take you with me. Wolruf-we’re the only ones who can help each other. If we don’t try, then we deserve what happens to us.”

  The caninoid met Derec’s questioning gaze unblinkingly. “That iss true. Okay-friend. Less try.”

  There seemed to be something in the biology of Wolruf’s kind which sharpened the imperative for sleep and rejuvenation. It was almost as though there was within them a metabolic switch which, once tripped, told them in no uncertain terms that the primary energy fund had been exhausted and it was time to withdraw.

  A half-hour after they began talking, with only some of Derec’s questions answered and their plan barely sketched out, Wolruf’s alarm went off. Her eyes narrowed to slits, her breath took on a sour tang, and her fur lay flat and seemed to lose luster.

  Though he still had many urgent questions, Derec did not even get a chance to try to coax her to stay. With no more explanation than a muttered “must sleep,” she rose and was gone.

  Wolruf’s departure made Derec suddenly aware of his own weary limbs. But there was one further task he had to see to before he could think about curling up on the thin mattress.

  The robot was waiting where it had settled after completing Derec’s last order several hours ago, but that was no surprise. There had been an unnatural passiveness to the robot’s behavior ever since Derec had activated it, a passiveness above and beyond the wait-states he had prescribed. A normal robot had a variety of duties it attended to without external direction, following the default orders built into it for its primary function: domestic, laborer, engineer, and the like.

  The robot’s initiative had apparently fallen victim to the burned-out memory cubes and the cold powerdown. But it still had the Second Law, and so it sat and waited patiently for the words from Derec that would give it something to do.

  Derec’s first act was to pull the Mathematics cube and replace it with the Personal Defense cube. The additional pathways in the PD cube would enhance the robot’s sense of impending harm and its anxiety to act to prevent it. But they would also suppress the robot’s normal inclinat
ion to protect him from immediate, concrete risks without regard to the consequences of doing so. The First Law did not have any exceptions built into it for taking well-intentioned gambles; the PD cube provided them.

  “Alpha,” Derec said when he was done. “My previous instructions for you to go into a wait-state when one of the aliens approaches are now cancelled. But where possible, you are still to avoid revealing the unique capabilities of your right arm.”

  “I understand, Derec.”

  “I am now going to give you a block of instructions which will not become operative until you hear the initiate code. The initiate code, which must come from me, is the question, ‘Who is your master?’ The disable code is the word ‘Aurora.’ ”

  “I understand, Derec.”

  “Begin instruction block. You will answer the initiate code with the reply ‘Aranimas.’ You’ll go with Aranimas wherever he wishes you to go. You are to follow his orders except where they conflict with the First, Second, or Third Laws or this instruction block. You will not follow orders given by Wolruf or any other nonhuman member of the crew. You will not accept any additional orders from me unless preceded by the disable code. You will respond to informational inquiries from Wolruf or myself. However, you will not relate, replay, or in any way communicate to Aranimas this conversation or any other conversation with me which he did not witness.”

  “Clarification. You wish for Aranimas to believe that I am completely in his service?”

  “Suspend. I do,” Derec said. “If he’s going to get any use out of you, he’s going to have to teach you about the ship. Anything you learn will help us escape.”

  “I understand the necessity for intelligence, sir,” the robot said. “But if I am to protect you I must remain at your side.”

  Derec had expected the objection-PD circuits made robots more argumentative. “Since Aranimas is in command of this ship, he is the real threat to me. Only his actions or his orders can harm me. By remaining close to him, you will be best able to protect me.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “All right. Resume. There are two things that we particularly need to know. A valuable object came aboard with me, a metallic rectangle, silver color, about five by ten centimeters. I think it’s the same object Aranimas called the key, and Wolruf the jewel. It’s apparently valuable and powerful. We need to know where it is.”

  “Yes, Derec. I will be particularly alert for clues to this object’s whereabouts.”

  “The other thing we need to know is what Spacer facility we’re heading for and when we’re going to get there. If we wait too long to move, Aranimas will have us locked up somewhere to keep us out of his hair while he’s stealing robots.”

  “That would be a prudent precaution.”

  “Which means that Aranimas will probably think of it,” Derec said. “If you learn where the key is located, you are to wait one decad and then simulate a Code 804 malfunction. If you learn where we are headed or when we are to arrive, you are to wait fifteen centads and then simulate a Code 3033 malfunction. End instruction block.”

  Though he knew what he hoped would happen from that point onward, Derec stopped there. Verbal instruction-in-advance was a tricky enough matter, requiring the skills of a semanticist with the foresight of a seer. He did not wish to saddle the robot with excessively specific and possibly useless orders.

  Much work and intelligence had gone into designing the PD library cube. Derec would have to trust that, when the time came, Alpha would grasp the situation and do what was required.

  Chapter 12. Mutiny

  Despite how little of the night was left when Derec was done, he slept well and awoke rested, with his head clear and his spirits up. He began clearing one end of the room as though to make a stage, determined to put on a good show. Presently, Aranimas arrived with Wolruf in tow.

  Derec did not have a Handbook of Robotics with its extensive diagnostic interrogatory, but he knew the main lines of questioning used to test the various positronic functions.

  “If the daughter of a woman with red hair owns two dogs and the father of a boy with a broken leg is unemployed, what day does the barber give shaves?”

  Wolruf hooted at that one, and Aranimas looked puzzled. But the robot calmly answered, “It is not possible to determine the answer from the information given.”

  “What is the value of hex 144C times 16F2?”

  “Hex 1D1B7D8.”

  “Touch your right index finger to the middle of your forehead.”

  The robot complied.

  “State the Rayleigh law of magnetic permeability-”

  For fifteen minutes, Derec peppered the robot with commands and questions, less to impress Aranimas with the robot’s abilities than to underscore his own competence. He did not want Aranimas thinking that with the robot operational, he, Derec, was now expendable.

  Then, before Aranimas could grow impatient, Derec asked the final question. “Alpha, who is your master?”

  “Aranimas,” the robot replied.

  Derec turned to Aranimas. “The robot’s yours now,” he said. “You will have to teach it what you want it to do, but you won’t have to show it more than once.”

  Aranimas rose. “Order it to attack Wolruf,” the alien said.

  “What?”

  “I will not share control of this servant. Order it to attack Wolruf.”

  Derec’s hesitation was calculated. He turned to the robot and said, “Pick up that brace and strike Wolruf in the head.”

  Wolruf whimpered, but the robot did not move. “I may not comply, sir.”

  Then Aranimas repeated the command. “Servant. Pick up the brace and strike Wolruf.”

  Derec held his breath. If there was going to be a First Law conflict over treatment of the aliens, now was when it would surface.

  “Yes, master,” the robot said, turning and reaching for the metal rod.

  Wolruf crabbed nervously toward the door. Derec released a small sigh of relief.

  “Stop, servant,” Aranimas ordered. To Derec he said, “You have done as you promised. It seems that you are worth keeping alive after all. Wolruf will find other duties for you.”

  That was a wild card Derec had not expected, and he could not let it be played unchallenged. “No,” Derec said boldly. “I’m a roboticist, not a laborer. Not a Narwe. If you want to keep your new servant in good order, you’re going to keep me working here.”

  “Doing what?”

  “First, disassembling the other body for spare parts. Some of the patches I did on this robot are temporary. I can work on better fixes. Some of the damaged components may be repairable if I can get certain supplies.”

  Derec plunged on, gathering a head of steam. “Out in the real world, there are repair technician robots which do nothing but maintain other robots. You only have one robot at the moment, so I’m your technician. You’ve seen what I can do. How long did you have those parts? How much time did you spend looking at them and figuring out nothing? Why do you want to start treating me like a particularly ugly Narwe?”

  Aranimas stared, then made a hissing sound which might have been laughter. “Come, servant. We will leave the master roboticist to his work.”

  It was difficult for Derec to watch Alpha walk away with Aranimas. It was even more difficult to wait patiently for some sign whether the fragile plan he and Wolruf had concocted would even pass the first threshold.

  He was still isolated in his little corner of the ship. There was no way for him to know what Aranimas was doing with the robot. He did not know from one minute to the next whether his instructions to the robot were still intact. Perhaps Aranimas had only pretended to be ignorant about robots. Perhaps he had already undone all of Derec’s careful conditioning.

  Even if the instructions were still intact, they could well be irrelevant. Derec had assumed that Aranimas would be so fond of his new toy that he would keep it close at hand. Everything depended on that being true. But if he was wrong, if Aranima
s had simply dispatched Alpha to some far corner of the ship to perform some menial function, then his plan was foredoomed to failure. Derec would have given up the robot and gotten nothing in return for it.

  Derec had work to do, some to maintain the fiction he was Aranimas’s faithful employee, some for his own purposes. He tried to make the hours pass more quickly by immersing himself in it. But work could not dull the edge of his impatience or his anxiety. Even with no clock to watch, time crawled by.

  Wolruf was in and out several times the rest of that day, and even when she was gone she was never far away. He welcomed the interruptions, but he worried that Aranimas might detect the change in her working patterns and wonder why. And without Alpha to alert him to Aranimas’s approach, Derec was reluctant to talk about their evolving plot against the alien commander.

  But it was not entirely avoidable. The call could come at any time, and a key problem remained unsolved. Derec knew, or thought he did, how they could disarm Aranimas. The unanswered question was how to disable him.

  With surprising vehemence, Wolruf ruled out killing the Erani. Derec did not much regret it. He could not picture himself walking up to Aranimas with a club and battering him to death. But at the same time, as long as Aranimas was alive he was dangerous.

  Derec first proposed a stunner, made from a recharged microcell and a few bits of wire. But there was no way to be sure that Aranimas was vulnerable to electric shocks, or to assure that the high-voltage current wouldn’t kill him.

  “The chamber with the star-creatures,” Derec said abruptly. “When we passed through it, Aranimas’s eyes started to water. Do you know why? Those things are from your world. Is there something in the air there that’s not in the rest of the ship?”

  “Yes,” Wolruf said. “The yellow-gas. That iss the only part of the ship wherr it iss used. The star-creatures release yellow-gas when they move.”

  That would account for it, Derec thought. A digestive by-product, or some sort of chemical communication-”So the air in there is like the atmosphere of your world?”