Robots: The Recent A.I.

by Elizabeth Bear

  I trotted past the orderly rows near the loading crane and out to the unsurfaced part of the field where us cheapskates put down. Up ahead I could see my main body, and jumped my viewpoint back to the big brain.

  Along the way I did some mental housekeeping: I warned my big brain about the commands the human had inserted, and so they got neatly shunted off into a harmless file which I then overwrote with zeroes. I belong to my investors and don’t have to obey any random human who wanders by. The big exception, of course, is when they pull that life-preservation override stuff. When one of them blunders into an environment that might damage their overcomplicated biological shells, every bot in the vicinity has to drop everything to answer a distress call. It’s a good thing there are only a couple dozen humans out here, or we’d never get anything done.

  I put all three mobiles to work welding the aluminum rod onto my third leg mount, adding extra bracing for the top strut, which was starting to buckle after too many hard landings. I don’t slam down to save fuel, I do it to save operating time on my engines. It’s a lot easier to find scrap aluminum to fix my legs with than it is to find rocket motor parts.

  The Dione net pinged me. A personal message: someone looking for cargo space to Mimas. That was a nice surprise. Mimas is the support base for the helium mining operations in Saturn’s upper atmosphere. It has the big mass-drivers that can throw payloads right to Earth. More traffic goes to and from Mimas than any other place beyond the orbit of Mars. Which means a tramp like me doesn’t get there very often because there’s plenty of space on Company boosters. Except, now and then, when there isn’t.

  I replied with my terms and got my second surprise. The shipper wanted to inspect me before agreeing. I submitted a virtual tour and some live feeds from my remotes, but the shipper was apparently just as suspicious of other people’s eyes as I am. Whoever it was wanted to come out and look in person.

  So once my mobiles were done with the repair job I got myself tidied up and looking as well cared for as any dedicated booster with access to the Company’s shops. I sanded down the dents and scrapes, straightened my bent whip antenna, and stowed my collection of miscellaneous scrap in the empty electronics bay. Then I pinged the shipper and said I was ready for a walk-through.

  The machine that came out to the landing field an hour later to check me out looked a bit out of place amid the industrial heavy iron. He was a tourist remote—one of those annoying little bots you find crawling on just about every solid object in the Solar System nowadays, gawking at mountains and chasms. Their chief redeeming features are an amazingly high total-loss accident rate, and really nice onboard optics, which sometimes survive. One of my own mobiles has eyes from a tourist remote, courtesy of Fat Albert and some freelance scavenger.

  “Greetings,” he said as he scuttled into range. “I am Edward. I want to inspect your booster.”

  “Come aboard and look around,” I said. “Not much to see, really. Just motors, fuel tanks, and some girders to hold it all together.”

  “Where is the cargo hold?”

  “That flat deck on top. Just strap everything down and off we go. If you’re worried about dust impacts or radiation I can find a cover.”

  “No, my cargo is in a hardened container. How much can you lift?”

  “I can move ten tons between Dione and Mimas. If you’re going to Titan it’s only five.”

  “What is your maximum range?”

  “Pretty much anywhere in Saturn space. That hydrogen burner’s just to get me off the ground. In space I use ion motors. I can even rendezvous with the retrograde moons if you give me enough burn time.”

  “I see. I think you will do for the job. When is the next launch window?”

  “For Mimas? There’s one in thirty-four hours. I like to have everything loaded ten hours in advance so I can fuel up and get balanced. Can you get it here by then?”

  “Easily. My cargo consists of a container of liquid xenon propellant, a single space-rated cargo box of miscellaneous equipment, and this mobile unit. Total mass is less than 2,300 kilograms.”

  “Good. Are you doing your own loading? If I have to hire deck-scrapers you get the bill.”

  “I will hire my own loaders. There is one thing—I would like an exclusive hire.”

  “What?”

  “No other cargo on this voyage. Just my things.”

  “Well, okay—but it’s going to cost extra. Five grams of Three for the mission.”

  “Will you take something in trade?”

  “Depends. What have you got?”

  “I have a radiothermal power unit with ten thousand hours left in it. Easily worth more than five grams.”

  “Done.”

  “Very well,” said Edward. “I’ll start bringing my cargo over at once. Oh, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to anybody. I have business competitors and could lose a lot of money if they learn of this before I reach Mimas.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”

  While we were having this conversation I searched the Dione net for any information about this Edward person. Something about this whole deal seemed funny. It wasn’t that odd to pay in kind, and even his insistence on no other payload was only a little peculiar. It was the xenon that I found suspicious. What kind of idiot ships xenon to Mimas? That’s where the gas loads coming up from Saturn are processed—most of the xenon in the outer system comes from Mimas. Shipping it there would be like sending ethane to Titan.

  Edward’s infotrail on the Dione net was an hour old. He had come into existence shortly before contacting me. Now I really was suspicious.

  The smart thing would be to turn down the job and let this Edward person find some other sucker. But then I’d still be sitting on Dione with no revenue stream.

  Put that way, there was no question. I had to take the job. When money is involved I don’t have much free will. So I said good-bye to Edward and watched his unit disappear between the lines of boosters toward the gate.

  Once he was out of link range, I did some preparing, just in case he was planning anything crooked. I set up a pseudorandom shift pattern for the link with my mobiles, and set up a separate persona distinct from my main mind to handle all communications. Then I locked that persona off from any access to my other systems.

  While I was doing that, I was also getting ready for launch. My mobiles crawled all over me doing a visual check while a subprogram ran down the full diagnostic list. I linked up with Ilia Control to book a launch window, and ordered three tons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel. Prepping myself for takeoff is always a welcome relief from business matters. It’s all technical. Stuff I can control. Orbital mechanics never have a hidden agenda.

  Edward returned four hours later. His tourist remote led the way, followed by a hired cargo lifter carrying the xenon, the mysterious container, and my power unit. The lifter was a clumsy fellow called Gojira, and while he was abusing my payload deck I contacted him over a private link. “Where’d this stuff come from?”

  “Warehouse.”

  “Which warehouse? And watch your wheels—you’re about to hit my leg again.”

  “Back in the district. Block four, number six. Why?”

  Temporary rental space. “Just curious. What’s he paying you for this?”

  “Couple of spare motors.”

  “You’re a thief, you are.”

  “I see what he’s giving you. Who’s the thief?”

  “Just set the power unit on the ground. I’m selling it here.”

  Gojira trundled away and Edward crawled aboard. I took a good look at the cargo container he was so concerned about. It was 800 kilograms, a sealed oblong box two meters long. One end had a radiator, and my radiation detector picked up a small power unit inside. So whatever Edward was shipping, it needed its own power supply. The whole thing was quite warm—300 Kelvin or so.

  I had one of my remotes query the container directly, but its little chips had nothing to say bey
ond mass and handling information. Don’t drop, don’t shake, total rads no more than point five Sievert. No tracking data at all.

  I balanced the cargo around my thrust axis, then jumped my viewpoint into two of my mobiles and hauled the power unit over to Albert’s scrapyard.

  While one of me was haggling with Albert over how much credit he was willing to give me for the unit, the second mobile plugged into Albert’s cable jack for a completely private conversation.

  “What’s up?” he asked. “Why the hard link?”

  “I’ve got a funny client and I don’t know who might be listening. He’s giving me this power unit and some Three to haul some stuff to Mimas. It’s all kind of random junk, including a tank of xenon. He’s insisting on no other payload and complete confidentiality.”

  “So he’s got no business sense.”

  “He’s got no infotrail. None. It’s just funny.”

  “Remind me never to ask you to keep a secret. Since you’re selling me the generator I guess you’re taking the job anyway, so what’s the fuss?”

  “I want you to ask around. You talk to everyone anyway so it won’t attract attention. See if anyone knows anything about a bot named Edward, or whoever’s been renting storage unit six in block four. Maybe try to trace the power unit. And try to find out if there have been any hijackings that didn’t get reported.”

  “You really think someone wants to hijack you? Do the math, Annie! You’re not worth it.”

  “Not by myself. But I’ve been thinking: I’d make a pretty good pirate vehicle—I’m not Company-owned, so nobody would look very hard if I disappear.”

  “You need to run up more debts. People care about you if you owe them money.”

  “Think about it. He could wait till I’m on course for Mimas, then link up and take control, swing around Saturn in a tight parabola and come out on an intercept vector for the Mimas catapult. All that extra xenon would give me enough delta-V to catch a payload coming off the launcher, and redirect it just about anywhere.”

  “I know plenty of places where people aren’t picky about where their volatiles come from. Some of them even have human protection. But it still sounds crazy to me.”

  “His cargo is pretty weird. Take a look.” I shot Albert a memory of the cargo container.

  “Biomaterials,” he said. “The temperature’s a dead giveaway.”

  “So what is it?”

  “I have no idea. Some kind of living organisms. I don’t deal in that stuff much.”

  “Would you mind asking around? Tell me what you can find out in the next twenty hours or so?”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Thanks. I’m not even going to complain about the miserable price you’re giving me on the generator.”

  Three hours before launch one of Fat Albert’s little mobiles appeared at my feet, complaining about some contaminated fullerene I’d sold him. I sent down one of mine to have a talk via cable. Not the sort of conversation you want to let other people overhear.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “I did as much digging as I could. Both Officer Friendly and Ilia Control swear there haven’t been any verified hijackings since that Remora character tried to subsume Buzz Parsec and wound up hard-landing on Iapetus.”

  “That’s reassuring. What about my passenger?”

  “Nothing. Like you said, he doesn’t exist before yesterday. He rented that warehouse unit and hired one of Tetsunekko’s remotes to do the moving. Blanked the remote’s memory before returning it.”

  “Let me guess. He paid for everything in barter.”

  “You got it. Titanium bearings for the warehouse and a slightly used drive anode for the moving job.”

  “So whoever he is, he’s got a good supply of high-quality parts to throw away. What about the power unit?”

  “That’s the weird one. If I wasn’t an installed unit with ten times the processing power of some weight-stingy freelance booster, I couldn’t have found anything at all.”

  “Okay, you’re the third-smartest machine on Dione. What did you find?”

  “No merchandise trail on the power unit and its chips don’t know anything. But it has a serial number physically inscribed on the casing—not the same one as in its chips, either. It’s a very interesting number. According to my parts database, that whole series were purpose-built on Earth for the extractor aerostats.”

  “Could it be a spare? Production overrun or a bum unit that got sold off?”

  “Nope. It’s supposed to be part of Saturn Aerostat Six. Now unless you want to spend the credits for antenna time to talk to an aerostat, that’s all I can find out.”

  “Is Aerostat Six okay? Did she maybe have an accident or something and need to replace a generator?”

  “There’s certainly nothing about it in the feed. An extractor going offline would be news all over the system. The price of Three would start fluctuating. There would be ripple effects in every market. I’d notice.”

  He might as well have been transmitting static. I don’t understand things like markets and futures. A gram of helium is a gram of helium. How can its value change from hour to hour? Understanding stuff like that is why Fat Albert can pay his owners seven point four percent of their investment every year while I can only manage six.

  I launched right on schedule and the ascent to orbit was perfectly nominal. I ran my motors at a nice, lifetime-stretching ninety percent. The surface of Dione dropped away and I watched Ilia Field change from a bustling neighborhood to a tiny gray trapezoid against the fainter gray of the surface.

  The orbit burn took about five and a half minutes. I powered down the hydrogen motor, ran a quick check to make sure nothing had burned out or popped loose, then switched over to my ion thrusters. That was a lot less exciting to look at—just two faint streams of glowing xenon, barely visible with my cameras cranked to maximum contrast.

  Hybrid boosters like me are a stopgap technology; I know that. Eventually every moon of Saturn will have its own catapult and orbital terminal, and cargo will move between moons aboard ion tugs that don’t have to drag ascent motors around with them wherever they go. I’d already made up my mind that when that day arrived I wasn’t going to stick around. There’s already some installations on Miranda and Oberon out at Uranus; an experienced booster like me can find work there for years.

  Nineteen seconds into the ion motor burn Edward linked up. He was talking to my little quasi-autonomous persona while I listened in and watched the program activity for anything weird.

  “Annie? I would like to request a change in our flight plan.”

  “Too late for that. I figured all the fuel loads before we launched. You’re riding Newton’s railroad now.”

  “Forgive me, but I believe it would be possible to choose a different destination at this point—as long as you have adequate propellant for your ion motors, and the target’s surface gravity is no greater than that of Mimas. Am I correct?”

  “Well, in theory, yes.”

  “I offer you the use of my cargo, then. A ton of additional xenon fuel should permit you to rendezvous with nearly any object in the Saturn system. Given how much I have overpaid you for the voyage to Mimas you can scarcely complain about the extra space time.”

  “It’s not that simple. Things move around. Having enough propellant doesn’t mean I have a window.”

  “I need to pass close to Saturn itself.”

  “Saturn?! You’re broken. Even if I use all the extra xenon you brought I still can’t get below the B ring and have enough juice left to climb back up. Anyway, why do you need to swing so low?”

  “If you can make a rendezvous with something in the B ring, I can pay you fifty grams of helium-3.”

  “You’re lying. You don’t have any credits, or shares, or anything. I checked up on you before lifting.”

  “I don’t mean credits. I mean actual helium, to be delivered when we make rendezvous.”

  My subpersona pretended to think w
hile I considered the offer. Fifty grams! I’d have to sell it at a markdown just to keep people from asking where it came from. Still, that would just about cover my next overhaul, with no interruption in the profit flow. I’d make seven percent or more this year!

  I updated my subpersona.

  “How do I know this is true?” it asked Edward.

  “You must trust me,” he said.

  “Too bad, then. Because I don’t trust you.”

  He thought for nearly a second before answering. “Very well. I will trust you. If you let me send out a message I can arrange for an equivalent helium credit to be handed over to anyone you designate on Dione.”

  I still didn’t believe him, but I ran down my list of contacts on Dione, trying to figure out who I could trust. Officer Friendly was honest—but that meant he’d also want to know where those grams came from and I doubted he’d like the answer. Polyphemus wasn’t so picky, but he’d want a cut of the helium. A big cut; likely more than half.

  That left Fat Albert. He’d probably settle for a five-gram commission and wouldn’t broadcast the deal. The only real question was whether he’d just take the fifty grams and tell me to go hard-land someplace. He’s rich, but not so much that he wouldn’t be tempted. And he’s got the connections to fence it without any data trail.

  I’d have to risk it. Albert’s whole operation relied on non-quantifiable asset exchange. If he tried to jerk me around I could tell everyone, and it would cost him more than fifty grams’ worth of business in the future.

  I called down to the antenna farm at Ilia Field. “Albert? I’ve got a deal for you.”

  “Whatever it is, forget it.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You. You’re hot. The Dione datasphere is crawling with agents looking for you. This conversation is drawing way too much attention to me.”

  “Five grams if you handle some helium for me!”

  He paused and the signal suddenly got a lot stronger and clearer. “Let me send up a persona to talk it over.”