Cryptikon Far Freedom Part 2

by Warren Merkey

not take Phuti." Sorrowful sounds cascaded through the throng of people, swelling greatly, then slowly subsiding. Nori turned to the security chief and said: "Gregor. Vote."

  "VOTE!" Gregor immediately announced over the communication system. "YES, HE GOES. NO, HE STAYS."

  Urgent conversation erupted, swelling to a loud hum and slowly quieting. Jamie could not tell from faces in the crowd closest to them what the vote would be. She cast an inquiring look at Gregor.

  "I am waiting for everyone to vote," Gregor explained. "Everyone's vote should count. It won't be long."

  2-15 Siblings

  "Damn!" Khalanov interjected. "You could have just stolen him!"

  "Jamie made sure we did the right thing," Mother replied, making one of those noises that is almost a laugh.

  "We would have been dead right," Khalanov argued, "if you were delayed until the Navy caught us. I can't believe you performed an opera in order to make off with the body!"

  Freddy knew Admiral Khalanov was not angry that Mother did what she did in the Five Worlds. Khalanov had not known what a superb singer Mother was, and he had observed the events in the mountainous space habitat with ever-increasing amazement, even to the point of tears as Mother sang. The gruff and taciturn Khalanov was obviously opposite in character from what he appeared to be.

  Freddy was beginning to see how complicated his mother's life was. She had tried to explain it to him but he was sure he was deficient in the ability to imagine it. So many people in her life, and she had good feelings for all of them. He could sense that Khalanov felt affection for her. He liked Khalanov now. He liked Horss, too. Horss treated him with great patience and made him feel he was very important to both himself and to the ship.

  "What is our heading?" Mother asked.

  Graphic labels and navigational axes overlaid the star field surrounding the bridge, polluting the realism of the view. The simple yellow arrow was almost lost in the view.

  "That way, for the moment," Horss said, pointing very imprecisely with his thumb, meaning it was irrelevant. "If we are actually going to the hub, it's the other way."

  "I'm sure it's a very interesting place," Mother said, which of course meant she had no intention of going there. She was quiet for a few moments, the way she was often withdrawn into old memories. Horss and Khalanov waited respectfully, until she shook her head slightly and let her eyes widen in some kind of reaction, perhaps wonder.

  "I have some numbers," she said slowly, still introspective.

  "What kind of numbers?" Horss asked.

  "I'm trying to figure that out. They're in what looks like Galactic Chart Format, so it must be a location. There are only three numbers so I don't have time coordinates. I'm trying to match it up to the Navy Galactic Catalog."

  "Give us a peek at it," Horss said. "I'll bet Freddy can find it."

  Mother put the numbers into the display system and Freddy helped translate the plot using an assumed negative time interval of a century. Freddy could see Mother was still engrossed in memory and not following their navigational progress. They waited again for her to speak.

  "That's it," Mother said, pointing to a nebulous area in the holographic plot.

  "Is that where we're going?" Horss asked.

  "I'm afraid so. It's close to the frontier. There will be detection buoys. But we have things we need to do there."

  "What things?" Khalanov asked.

  "It involves an old argument you and I had, when we were building the ship, Iggy."

  "We had hundreds of arguments! Oh, you must mean the one about the size of the Freedom. It's too big!"

  "Actually, that may also pertain to what I'm trying to remember, but it was my insistence on the accessory circuitry in the tuning pylons."

  "Not to mention the pylons themselves," Iggy said. "They do help our envelope geometry but not, I think, enough to justify the expense."

  "Yes, well, whatever we must do at this location is made possible by the pylons."

  "Damn!" Khalanov swore. "Now you've got me puzzled. What can it be about?"

  "And now you've got me worried, Admiral," Horss said. "That's a disturbed region, one of those places where the Navy goes to dispose of its dirty laundry and embarrassing trash. And as you said, not far from the border and the buoys."

  "Jon, you've been on the bridge for more than seventy hours with no significant amount of rest. Iggy, same for you. Both of you get some sleep. Freddy and I will pilot the ship."

  "I don't see how I'll be able to sleep!" Khalanov declared. "I know you've got a big engineering problem waiting for me and not enough time to get it done right!"

  "You don't have to worry about it, Iggy," Mother responded with a smile. "You are correct. I think it will be the biggest ship modification you have ever done, even though I don't remember yet exactly what it is. All you need to do is only what you love to do. Jon and I will do the worrying."

  "Wake me up when you remember more!" Khalanov demanded. "I need to get started!"

  "I will not! Go! Get off the bridge! Get some rest. Jon, you, too."

  "How much rest have you had, Admiral?" Horss asked. "How many kilometers in that hike up the mountain?"

  "Go! Out! Out!"

  The captain and the admiral departed the bridge, leaving Mother alone under the stars, alone with me. She sat down in the captain's chair, smiled at me, and watched one nearby star drift slowly by.

  "Admiral. Mother? Are you asleep?"

  = = =

  "She's asleep," he said to his little brother.

  "Then she isn't going to come see me," Sammy said.

  "Yes, she is. You know she will. Why do you worry about that?"

  "I'm not worried."

  "Yes, you are. Just like me. For no good reason."

  "I'm just in a hurry," Sammy said, "waiting for my leg to grow, and I don't want to be here. I want to be home with you and Mom."

  "I think it's very nice here," Freddy said. "It reminds me of the place where I got my body. Why did they put you here? Because Mother is on the bridge tonight?"

  "I'm under observation!" Sammy complained. "I'm always under observation! And I'm here more than I'm at home."

  "Mother is seldom at home, too, and when she is, she falls asleep, exhausted. I worry about her. But when you are here with Aunt Aylis, she doesn't have to worry about you."

  "I wish I could think as logically as you, Freddy."

  "Oh, I'm not as logical as you think, Sammy."

  "But logic is easier for you, isn't it? Because you're a machine."

  "I'm tempted to say I'm not really a machine. I'm somewhere inside this mechanical body but the body isn't me. Does that sound wrong to you?"

  Freddy waited while Sammy thought about what he had said. Then he slowly shook his head, meaning he thought Freddy was correct. "You are really alive!" Sammy declared.

  Never more than when I'm with family, Freddy thought. "I am what I am, whatever that is. I'm still learning. I want to talk to Mother as much as I can, but she has so little time for me. And she has you. And she has Jamie. We're all siblings, of a sort, aren't we? I wanted to visit you while I'm piloting the ship, before you went to sleep."

  "No way! You're piloting the ship right now? And what are siblings?"

  "I'm watching over the ship's expert systems. If my speech is interrupted for a millisecond or two, I'm giving orders to the navigation system. Siblings are children who have the same mother or father or both."

  "Brothers and sisters? Is the ship alive, too?"

  "We are brothers, Sammy. No, the ship's control system doesn't have the flexibility to become self-aware. The physical memory of its operating instructions are fixed and armored to survive many types of hazards. It has very little room in which to shift the nearly infinite number of variables needed to feel alive. The logic flow for sentience is too dedicated to dealing with improbabilities to meet the reliability requirements for a ship. Understand?"

  "Being alive is messy?"

  "That's a good
way to say it, Sammy."

  "How old are you, Freddy?"

  "Only a few weeks in human terms."

  "Is that a long time in computer time?"

  "Not exactly. While there are computer-like things I can do much faster than a human mind, my human mimicry is less efficient than what has evolved in organic brains, so I age - or grow wiser - only a little quicker than a biological person. It helps that modern computers are often designed with circuitry similar to the human brain. But I made a jump in maturity because I had the benefit of copying the vast knowledge of Old Fred, who shared his body with me. Still, I'm basically just a child, hardly older than you."

  "Wow. Do you know any games?"

  "No games for disorderly patients past their bedtime," Aylis ordered, stepping into the room. "Hello, Freddy. How nice of you to visit Sammy! He overexerted himself today."

  "Good evening, Aylis," Freddy greeted, remembering to use her given name - as she had instructed him.

  Jamie tapped Aylis on the shoulder from behind, startling her.

  "I was following you down the hall," Jamie said to Aylis. "I came to see Sammy. How are you doing, kid?"

  "It itches!" Sammy complained.

  "People have said that for about three hundred years," Aylis said. "Ever since we've been able to regenerate a limb on the body. Unfortunately, we doctors believe it's better for you to be bothered by 'the itch' than to make you not feel it. Now, if you could just get to sleep, the itch will go away on its own. I'm going to turn off your lights and remove your visitors. If you don't go right to sleep, I'll tell your mom."

  "May I kiss you good night?" Jamie asked Sammy. "You're my little brother, aren't you?"

  Sammy thought about it,