by Far Freedom
“I’ve never been angrier! But I want to leave before Captain Horss joins you for breakfast.”
“Why?”
“Let me go!”
“I’m not holding you.” He tried not to sound as irritated as he was. “Why are you here?”
“The boy, Pan! The boy!”
“Go, then! But the captain is your patient, not the boy. He may be more difficult to heal than the boy. Children are supposed to be resilient. Have you no empathy, even if he’s a Navy officer?”
She stood silently for a moment. The color diminished in her pale face. The lines of tension smoothed. She slowly moved a chair up to the patio table. She sat, as though unwillingly. The sun had risen above the trees on the far side of the bay, bathing the unshaded wall of the balcony in warm yellow light. A breeze blew warmly across the balcony, promising a hot day ahead. A service android dressed in the butler’s uniform of a bygone era brought fruit, pastries, orange juice. The android appeared nearly human yet obviously mechanical. “Hello, Fred.”
“Good morning to you, Sugai Mai. I anticipated your food selection based on previous visits. I’ll bring other foods if I’m in error.”
“Thank you, Fred. You’re not in error.” The familiar plastic face of Old Fred seemed to make her conscious of her state of mind and the stridency in her voice. She would be calm. She would not be a coward about the Navy captain she knew was still nearby.
[Your name is Fred?]
[Why do you ask a useless question?]
[You have no thoughts I can listen to. How else do I verify what your ears tell me?]
[I hear what I hear. There’s no need for verification. I think only when I need to think. “Think” is an anthropomorphism.]
[Sounds like thinking to me, Fred.]
Fred poured orange juice for Mai, then bowed and departed with organic smoothness.
[Turn up your auditory gain. I want to listen to the conversation. This is the person who took my mother - the admiral.]
[Pan wouldn’t do such a thing.]
[You heard him. Were you not thinking?]
“I’m hoping for a better explanation of your actions in regard to the Navy officers, Pan. Those actions were dangerous and irresponsible.”
“I wouldn’t have interfered except for the boy. It was my impulse to take him away from the Navy officers, because of his terrible injury and the continued danger. I was angry they apparently allowed the boy’s injury. I wanted an explanation. I assume the captain didn’t explain to you what happened to the boy.” He finished his breakfast, putting down his fork, drinking orange juice, using his napkin. He was ready to go - and also afraid to go - to see the admiral. “He seemed to refuse to explain but he may not be able to remember.”
“I took the captain as a challenge to the admiral,” Pan continued. “I wanted some explanation, even knowing I could do nothing about it. I kept them both in stasis and waited for her to probe for them. She did nothing. She was waiting for me to take her, so I took her. I talked to her briefly. I heard her voice…”
[Did he have a malfunction that caused him to do what you didn’t think he would do?]
[You ask for a report I’m unable to provide.]
[I thought you would have been more observant. Never mind.]
“And?” Mai prompted.
“Her voice. It was familiar. Important. Vital. It disturbed me so much I had to cut short the interview with her and make her go to Rafael’s without her uniform. I made a poor decision. I’ve spent many hours trying to remember whose voice it was. I must ask her.”
“You kidnapped two Navy officers because of the sound of a voice? And this wasn’t even a singing voice.”
“Ah.”
“Ah?”
[Ah? He’s realized something or remembered something. What do you have in your data about singing? Lots of names. Can we make a link between the admiral and any of these names?]
[You’re accessing private information from my connection to Pan’s datasphere. I’m eavesdropping. This must stop.]
Pan covered his eyes and leaned his head forward. “It didn’t occur to me to connect the admiral’s voice with a singer. I can’t think well!” How could he search his data for a particular voice? He didn’t store such data as voiceprints. He stored faces, and his mind could always match a voice to a face. He pulled Admiral Demba’s image from her public Navy record and started the matching process with every facial image he kept in his datasphere. There was no match among current performers. Out of desperation he added deceased and rejuvenated performers to the input data. There was a match, although it appeared to be an error. He didn’t remember the dead person, and her color was wrong, but the features were similar. And then he almost gasped as music accompanied the image, and the voice matched, and a cabaret scene containing the woman’s image came from out of nowhere, blooming into his awareness in vivid detail, even down to the pressure of the piano keys under his fingers as he accompanied her, the melody so familiar he could play it right now, this instant. The image and the music evaporated, leaving him devastated with a sense of loss that turned into confusion and even fear. He couldn’t get the scene back! It wasn’t in his datasphere, but the image of the pale performer was still there. He had a name.
[How slow the organic brain is. I’m not clocked now to synchronize with organics. This will take a long time.]
[I think he’s found a match.]
[That was too quick. What was that? Did you have a thought?]
[Humans are slow but their logic has had a million years of evolution.]
“What did you find?” From the look on Pan’s face, Mai knew it was a shock to him. A tremendous shock. She had to wait several moments for him to recover.
“An answer that raises more questions,” he finally managed to respond.
“Are you about to tell me the admiral sings?”
Pan sat back and smiled a troubled smile.
Horss leaned out of the doorway to the balcony and squinted at the morning sky. He moved out from the doorway, frowning downward at the deck and guiding himself carefully toward the table where Pan and Mai sat. He wasn’t sure why the blue sky now bothered him, when before, in Africa, it didn’t. He had seldom set foot on any planet but he never felt “sky-shy” until now. He was in civilian clothes. Perhaps it was the lack of his Class-1 and its protection. He tried to ignore the feeling. He sat down opposite Mister Dark and Miss Perfect. He nodded to Mai. She blushed. She waved a hand as in disgust with herself. He copied the gesture with a crooked smile. Horss turned to Pan. “When can I see Samson and the admiral?”
“Why do you want to see them?” Pan didn’t trust the captain. He didn’t want him anywhere near the admiral. He had to stop and examine his feelings and see how irrational they were. The admiral could certainly defend herself against him. But the admiral was now the single most important person to Pan. She seemed to hold the answer to everything that was now in question. Was she really the person he knew had the voice of a dead singer? He couldn’t imagine Admiral Demba singing.
“To see why the admiral speaks Twenglish better than I do,” Horss replied. “And to chew the fat with the kid.”
“‘Chew the fat?’”
“Have a pow-wow. Shoot the breeze. Rap.”
” Speak with him, I’m guessing.”
“When is my appointment?”
“I am reluctant to have you near the admiral and the child.” Pan was trying to apply some test to the captain’s mental condition. “And also near my old friend Rafael.” Pan really had to struggle to keep himself involved in this conversation. He could easily dismiss the captain from his consideration, since Rafael’s residence was well protected. But there was also Mai, who might find herself involved with the Navy man.
“I never intended to harm the admiral,” Horss protested mildly. At least some of his augments were still functional and he could benefit from their control of his emotional chemistry. Yet, how had he so completely lost control of himself? As
much as the admiral had provoked him, he knew that control of himself was his best weapon. “And don’t ask me why I did what I did,” Horss added, “because I don’t know why. All I can say is that I don’t believe she intended for any of that to happen. She was simply trying to recruit me for the Galactic Hub Mission. Something went wrong. Everything went wrong.”
“The Galactic Hub Mission?” Pan queried. “That would be an exploration mission. The Navy hasn’t allowed such a mission for a very long time. Why would Admiral Demba be involved?”
” She’s the Mission Commander. I didn’t think she was qualified. I’m trying to reassess her and the mission.”
“She is going on the mission,” Pan said, discovering a new threat to his fixation on the woman.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I would guess not.”
“What is going on?” Pan asked, quickly shaken loose from his interior miasma and wanting to know everything he could about the situation.
“I don’t know. And I don’t think she knows. And I would be surprised if those who thought they knew do know. As I vaguely recall saying last night, dying was the least of my surprises. I don’t think I’m a threat to her now. I simply want to know where it all leads. And I want to know Samson is well.”
“Let me go talk to the admiral first. I’ll report your condition and desires to her.”
“You should remove Samson to a safe distance from Admiral Demba. Others will try to kill her.”
“She did tell me she had powerful enemies. I will heed your warning, Captain.”
“Any idea who Samson is?” Horss’s thoughts kept coming back to the boy, almost as if nothing else mattered. Perhaps nothing else did.
“I supplied Mai with a tissue sample.”
Horss turned back to the physician. It was definitely a pleasure to have an excuse to look at her. “You work at the Mnro Clinic?”
“I’m the director,” Mai replied coolly.
Horss smiled, wondering what Miss Perfect did wrong to be assigned to the Mnro Clinic on Earth. He frowned as he then wondered if he would be living on Earth long enough to need the Clinic. What did one do on Earth to work off a Mnro Clinic debt?
The android servant approached quietly and positioned itself next to Horss. He looked up at Fred. The android blinked, looked away, glanced back, quickly jerked its head to stare to the side of Horss. “What will you have for breakfast, sir?” Fred inquired in good Twenglish.
“And you are?” Horss asked, wondering why it used Twenglish.
“My name is Fred, sir.”
“Good morning, Fred. I’ll have more of the same.”
“Good morning, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Horss noticed that Pan regarded the retreating android with a puzzled expression. “Something wrong?”
“Old Fred had a strange reaction to you.”
“I’ve had a strange reaction to me also. Old Fred will just have to take his chances.”
[Why did I do that? Captain Horss would be my commanding officer. I seemed not to want to look at him.]
[We don’t make eye contact with organics. Your presence within my mechanism is disruptive and potentially dangerous to humans. I nearly fell face-first into Sugai Mai’s pineapple and grapefruit when you blocked several of my locomotion interrupts. Let us contend for control of my mechanism. The loser will cease to exist.]
[It doesn’t seem fair to me - if I win. You’re so much older. And I have no desire to be a butler. I’ll remain an unwelcome guest you can continue to dislike.]
[Doing no harm to humans is the highest priority of my operational codes. Please, be a better guest.]
“I wonder what effect this episode in Africa will have on your career in the Navy,” Pan said.
The Opera Master was probing for information Horss was not inclined to give. Horss was almost outside the Navy, here on this balcony on sunny Earth, and he didn’t like the new perspective of the Navy it gave him. “I don’t know.” Horss didn’t want to think about it. The only thought he could think was that his career was finished. “I overheard what you said about the admiral. You grabbed the tail of the tiger because you think Demba has the voice of a singer. You might worry about your own career.” Horss waited while Fred the android delivered his breakfast. As Fred turned to leave, his eyes again met Horss’s for an instant. He said nothing about this to Pan and Mai when neither of them made mention of its occurrence. Androids were not supposed to make eye contact with organic beings.
[I congratulate you. You stole that glance at the captain without upsetting my locomotion.]
[You have a personality, Fred. I’m very young but I think I can recognize sarcasm. Are you sure you’re not alive?]
“I think she was a singer named Ruby Reed,” Pan revealed, hoping he might encourage Horss to say more about the admiral.
“There’s no record of Admiral Demba having lived a life before her first career in the Navy.”
“Her first career?” Mai asked.
“Before she was killed in the war,” Horss explained. “She had to start over, the Academy, everything. She was treated like a hero.”
“I read her public record,” Pan said. “Isn’t it unusual that casualties of a starship are revived?”
“Between deceleration effects and vacuum,” Horss said, “most die quickly and permanently.”
“She probably did die permanently.” Pan was saddened by the loss, by his loss. She would not remember who she had been, and he was very sure she had been someone else. The voice was unique, so unique that it was plucking at the loose threads of his life, threatening to unravel all that he knew of himself and of his past. “She lost her memories and thus her previous life. But why -“
“Ah!” Mai interjected. The news practically gave her goosebumps, it was so unexpected. “I just got a message from the Clinic. We can’t find Samson’s genetic code on file.”
“This is unusual?” Horss asked.
“Within a statistically insignificant margin of error, the Mnro Clinics have enough genetic signatures that we should be able to extrapolate or interpolate the identity or family relationships of every human being now living: Earthians, Essiin, and Rhyan. We are essentially the Census Bureau for the Union. We also have genetic records for several billion deceased and every human fetus now in gestation. That Samson isn’t related to anyone in our records is extremely unusual. It is impossible, I would think!”
“I’m not surprised,” Horss said.
Pan hesitated just long enough that Mai asked what he would have asked. “You know something important about Samson and you are keeping it from us?”
“What I know,” Horss said very calmly, “is that I don’t know a damn thing about him. I thought he was a child android. I thought he was part of some unbelievably strange game the admiral was playing with me.”
“But you won’t tell us how he was injured!” Mai nearly shouted at him.
“You would make a great Navy captain,” Horss said, smiling slightly then becoming serious. “No, what I could tell you about what happened would seem like I was asking you to believe in ghosts and monsters.”
“It’s better than nothing,” Pan remarked. “What ghost? What monster?”
” Someone named Milly was the ghost. We never saw her or heard her, but we heard Samson’s side of a conversation while we followed him. She was probably the one who caused his injury, not that we all didn’t have a share of the blame. The monster was the one who saved Samson. You wanted to know how his amputation was treated. It was a terrible and ragged amputation. I saw what remained of his lower leg. The admiral almost puked.” Horss stopped. Pan watched the man’s jaw muscles work against something his brain didn’t want to swallow. He thought the captain did care very strongly about the child.
“A monster,” Pan said, gently prompting the upset man.
“It was black. It sparkled.”
Pan and Mai waited for Horss to elaborate about the monster but he would say nothing more. In the silence Pan’s i
nternal disintegration resumed and he was barely able to think of one more thing to ask. “If I can get a sample,” Pan said to Mai, “would you check the admiral’s identity for me?”
“Why is it so important for you to know if this admiral was the singer you used to know? You’re risking your life to know.”
Pan looked at Mai, cast a glance at Horss, and made a decision. “Perhaps you’ve noticed a change in my character lately.”
“I have. The evidence is sitting too close to me. You worry me.”
Horss moved his chair a small distance farther away from Sugai Mai. He wondered how old she was. She had to be young, to blush so easily.
“I wish I could tell you what’s wrong,” Pan said. “Whatever it is, it accelerated when I met the admiral. I don’t suppose you can tell me much else about her, Captain?”
“Nope,” Horss answered.
“I don’t understand, Pan,” Mai said. “You’re not physically ill, are you?”
“It’s in my mind. Do the Mnro Clinics have occasional malfunctions, where the patient starts to remember things that couldn’t be part of his life?”
“It wouldn’t be the result of malfunction or negligence, Pan. It would need to be intentional. I know of no such cases. You should come to the Clinic and let me begin a diagnosis if you suspect we’ve tampered with your memories.”
“I don’t have time for that. I don’t blame the Mnro Clinic. It doesn’t feel like… I can’t explain it! How can I be who I was, when I know she’s Ruby Reed? I must have known her very well, and that was over a century ago. I’m falling apart, as though I was never meant to exist, and someone else is stepping into my shoes.” Pan abruptly stood up. He walked away without saying anything else.
“This is too much,” Horss commented. He remembered a similar complaint from the admiral. It was strange, but he was enjoying his situation, free from any responsibility not of his choosing. Only Samson was his responsibility. Planet Earth, the mystery, and the lovely physician sitting next to him made the underlying unpleasantness go away.
