8
Givering watched the Light Dog One glide into port. Two figures departed its hatch and walked toward his glass-encased office.
“Givering will probably have something useful to impart,” XJ said.
“He looks a lot newer than you,” Mick replied.
Givering, a wide, barrel-chested lifter robot, opened his office door and walked out to meet his guests. The blue-pink atmosphere of Bessel 2 ringed the starport and condensed on its buildings’ windows like frosting. A distant red-dwarf star dipped behind pink-ice mountains.
“XJ, you’re under arrest,” said Givering.
“Well, what’s this about?”
“Again, unauthorized departure. Silver alarm and all. Taking a ship without permissions. When Sera comes back, she’ll be damned angry about this one. Taking her antique out.”
“She’s forgetful sometimes, but she’ll remember the mission,” XJ said to Mick.
“Again with the mission. Didn’t you remember to defragment your memory? You know you’re an AM.”
“Of course I know, Givering. And I don’t recall ever using it as a means of exploitation, either.”
“And who’s this?” Givering twisted along a slit at his waist. A squealing noise revealed his lack of maintenance.
“He’s the result of the mission. He’s the anomaly, or his ship was, anyway.”
“Quit with the mission, XJ.”
“I’m Mick Compton. From Earth. I was on my way home on my ship, the Crake, when something happened in cryo. I woke up in an escape pod, and the next thing I knew, XJ rescued me.”
“Hah! Well, that’s about right. Something like this was bound to happen.” Givering robot-smiled. He went to grab XJ’s wrists in a weak attempt to bind the robot, but XJ withdrew.
“No you don’t,” XJ snapped.
“Alright, have it your way. When Sera gets back, she will be awfully mad you didn’t let me arrest you.”
“She’ll be quite pleased that I completed the mission.”
Givering turned with another squeal and began to roll back into his office. Mick and XJ followed him.
“Is the year four thousand?” Mick asked.
“Four thousand? Not in these parts. The year is fourteen, sir. And I’ll have to place you under arrest, if you’ll kindly allow.”
9
Mick looked around his alien cell. Black steel, deep blue rivets, and two circular portholes, inches below the ceiling adorned his barred cage . A sliding metal door separated him from the hallway leading to Givering’s office.
A half-hour wait he said. It’s been three hours.
“Mick? Mick are you alive?”
“XJ?”
“Are you hungry Mick?”
“Yea, how’d you get out?”
“Why, I hacked the lock of course. I’ll have you out in a moment.”
The metal door slid into the wall, revealing XJ’s thin frame, his eyes aglow, peering in.
“What about Givering?”
“I had to kill him.”
“What?”
“He’ll be all right.”
The cosmic madhouse. Will I meet a sane droid?
“Come on, I’ve found a pantry.”
Mick followed XJ. They weaved in and out of several cavernous halls, entered a bright steel room lined with cabinets.
“Dig in. Human food. Preserved for history. All yours, Mick.”
“Sure.”
Mick opened a cabinet. Foil packages fell out: freeze-dried beans, steak, potatoes. He ripped open one of the bags—a Styrofoam smell repulsed him; an oily scent of chemical fermentation forced his mouth shut.
“It’s quite edible,” XJ reassured.
“Who goes there?”
Footsteps came from the hall. Someone approached them.
“Get down, quick,” XJ ordered. He tried to squat, but his gyromotor whined in refusal. Into the bright steel pantry strode a woman. Blonde hair framed her rigid face. Her nose was fierce, leading to slender lips. Mick approved of the rest of her, and quietly forgot his hunger at the sight of womanly curves.
“XJ—What have you done to Givering?”
“Forgive me Sera, I’ve killed him.”
“You’ve cut his cord again. Did you steal an electrosplicer too?”
XJ guiltily stood to his full height and unclipped a small ring from his wrist. He handed it to Sera.
“And who’s this?”
“Mick Compton, ma’am.”
“Ma’am? I suppose I look wholesome to you.”
“Meant no offense, it’s a custom from my time.”
“Your time?”
“The thirtieth century.”
“Surely as mad as the robots,” she muttered.
“I’m not mad, not by any stretch. I’m trying to get home.”
“Where is home?”
“Earth.”
“Well good luck then—no one’s been there in centuries. Something else concerns us.”
She doesn’t care that I’m from nine hundred years ago. But Givering said it was year fourteen. So maybe I’m from the future. Mick’s reason melted before his wakening gut: She’s half-pretty, in a sargeantly way. Karen wouldn’t like her.
Mick stepped forward to shake Sera’s hand. She shook it.
“Glad to meet you, Mick. I hope XJ hasn’t been too—trying.”
“No. He’s been a great deal of help. He saved my life.”
“The anomaly?”
“That was me. My ship, the Crake.”
“I understand he also picked up a load of cargo.”
“He did. I don’t know what use it will be to me now that I can’t get back home.”
“Why is it that you can’t get home?”
“Well, as I’m slowly accepting, I’m hundreds of years from my correct spacetime.”
“Solved easily enough.”
“It is?”
“Surely. What has he told you?”
XJ spun around in confusion, checking his memory banks.
“I’ve only told him the truth—that quantum tech is outlawed; we cannot use it,” XJ said.
“Yes XJ, but is anything we do in this system legal?” she replied.
The droid didn’t respond. His eyes dimmed.
“So, you’ll help me?” Mick asked.
“Your cargo is quite useful to all of us. Magnadraw and Hoila ore. It will fetch a good price. Enough to get you home.”
This is it! I’ll be famous, a hero, absolved of sin—an anomaly, some vortex of spacetime, and me, returning with the deep future, or past, or whatever the hell this is. And I’ll be home.
Mick’s face split with a smile.
“It’s not as easy as taking a cruiser,” she said, eyeing his contorting visage.
“You tell me the plan, and I’m with you. The how and what doesn’t concern me. My life was forfeit up until a minute ago. In fact, XJ here was the only reason I was hanging in—he’s a funny guy.”
XJ turned his head and attempted a smile of his own.
“Thanks Mick,” XJ said.
Sera turned, paused some place between speaking and moving. Finally she committed to the former:
“I’ll have to fix Givering first. Give me some time. Eat up, the food’s fine.”
Sera strode out of the pantry. Mick turned back to the crumbling powder on the counter below him. He sniffed it once more, decided it wasn’t Lysol after all, and nibbled on a wafer. XJ steamed beside him, eager to play chess.
10
“For a robot, you’re a son-of-a-bitch,” said Givering. His barrel chest clanked against a rod jutting from the wall of the starport office. The pink atmosphere was near to black, and the distant mountains had become pointed silhouette apparitions of their day-glazed beauty.
“You curse your own kind, GR,” XJ said.
“Call me Givering, it is my rightful name.”
“Quiet GR,” said Sera.
Mick eyed the party before him. Sera seemed put-together enough
: her clothing was professional—not an outfit he’d ever seen, but military in appearance, which reassured him of her wherewithal. The droids were another matter: XJ was mad, archaic, and full of faulty information. Givering was a dumb utility droid, not good for much beyond managing starport docking maneuvers and hauling small cargo.
“So what’s the game plan?” Mick said. “How do I get back home?”
“We go to Utopia,” interjected XJ.
“How I’ve longed to go there!” whirred GR, as if the concept of the place just now reached him.
Are they both AM? Maybe I should ask. I need to know who I can trust. The human.
“The game plan. I like your expression Mick. You’re a good soldier, I can tell.”
Let her think I’m a soldier. What’s the difference?
If I can time travel back, then maybe I can get to the point before the assault. I don’t even need the money. I can get back to when we first had the boys. Start over from there. All my mistakes, learned from, distilled, guiding me into happiness. My Utopia. Who knew it took time away from home to realize what home means? I did, though it hadn’t mattered before now.
“He looks like a human. I’d almost say he is one,” GR said.
“Don’t be silly GR, he’s one of those new model cellbots,” XJ said.
“Quiet you two. We have to get the Magnadraw and Hoila to market. Problem is, I lost my license to sell ore. I know someone who will sell for us, but he’ll take a cut. We’ll still have enough to T-jump you when and wherever you want. And I’ll have enough to get us to Utopia,” Sera said.
“So there is a Utopia?” Mick asked.
“You’re damned right there is. And your ore is the pay dirt we’ve been waiting for. I may be a bandit, a scoundrel, a liar, and a thief, but I will help you.”
A liar and a thief, but with a conscience? Human AM, or is something mixed with the air here?
“Fine to me. You all get to your Utopia, and I get to mine.”
“There are not two Utopias, Mick,” XJ informed.
“Oh yes there are, friend, yes there are.”
11
Sera’s Cozon Light-class space ship embarked under the morning glow of a chrysanthemum sun. Pink ice glittered, melted, stretching into preorganic pools far below the smear of the Cozon’s ion drive.
Mick walked into the dining hall. Sera had slow-boiled some kind of onion-smelling soup. A large pot, lid ajar, releasing heavy steam, filled the center of the table. Sera slid the lid off, avoided a roll of hot smoke, then doled out thick globs. Each member of the crew drew a bowl close. The droids stared at theirs, as if unsure as to why they’d received a portion.
“Sorry—I forget,” said Sera.
“Oh, no problem. I still have a tongue for human food,” GR replied. He slopped some of the food into his mouth, grinded unnecessarily, then swallowed.
“How did you three wind up on Bessel 2?” Mick asked.
“XJ’s my father,” she replied. “And GR is my brother.”
“Your what?” spat Mick. Lumps of mystery splattered the side of the pot.
“You’re preneurocopying, aren’t you?” Sera asked.
“I guess I am. They’re the minds of your brother and father?”
“They are. But they’re not the same. I couldn’t afford the best job, or a good job.”
GR and XJ continued to eat, although Mick had a suspicion XJ’s model wasn’t meant to consume organics, as steam rose from several thin crevices in his neck.
“What’s a good job?” Mick asked.
“A top-rate neurocopy takes all the memories, personality—the spirit of a person—and puts it in an expancapacitor droid system. Expancapacitor systems ensure not only that all the original essence of the person transfers successfully, but also that the essence can continue to grow, store new memories, and retain a sense of identity.”
“And neither of them have that?”
“Far from it. An expancapacitor system, full transfer and all, and then the body on top, costs more than the worth of all of Bessel 2’s resources. Mind you, the parts don’t cost that, and the labor doesn’t either. It’s set up that way, so that only the ones they want can attain eternal life.”
“They?”
“The ones we are going to kill right now.”
“Who are they?”
“People like me call them the tricklers.”
“Tricklers?”
“They trickle their intelligence, wealth, and overall command over others through their seat of power, generation after generation. The immortals. Governors. If everyone could become immortal, hell, there’d be a lot more chaos around the universe.”
“So we’ve got to kill one of these things?”
“Sure do. You see, that’s why I need you. You don’t have a plant.”
“A plant?”
“Everyone in the Messier 82 galaxy has to have a plant. You can’t get in without one. It tracks your location from the moment a crime is committed. Now look, I have no idea how you got here. The anomaly—whatever it was—was the answer to our dreams. You don’t have a plant. You’re untraceable.”
“So I have to kill one of them? Alone?”
“Sure. You didn’t think I was helping you for no reason, did you? It won’t be hard without a plant. Getting an expancapacitor rig is much easier accomplished by theft than by purchase. You kill him. Lug the hardware in. And dad gets an expancapacitor.”
“What about your brother?”
“One at a time.”
12
“I don’t give a damn,” Mick said.
“Well you should—you’re frightening your sons,” Karen replied.
“This guy has been in our fucking house Karen!”
“I know that, but you can’t go after him.”
“What do you want me to do? Call the police? You think they’ll arrest him? Are you that stupid?”
“They have to. He broke in.”
“I’m done with this—I’m taking care of this myself.”
“Don’t go Mick!” Karen sobbed. Her voice trembled.
“Get the god damn kids to bed. Stop crying. It’s always more of the same with you. He comes into my house? I’m gonna snap his fucking neck.”
Mick stood up from the dining room table; Karen grabbed his arm, crying into him.
“Get the hell off of me.”
He pushed her away and smacked her jaw. She moaned and whimpered in spasms.
“You sleep with this guy, he’s in my house, and you expect me do the right thing now? C’mon Karen. Go upstairs, take care of your children.”
Mick picked up his plate and threw it against the kitchen wall. A treble explosion, the china shattering, sent his sons deeper into the wells of their waking nightmares, those that can only possess the young and innocent.
The boys cried from atop the stairs. They listened in darkness to the insanity below them. A void existed in which they had no power: it was the rage of their father.
“You’ve been drinking…”
“I’ve been drinking? Were you drunk when you fucked him?”
“Mick please!”
The front door slammed. Karen slumped across the dining room table, and the children crawled forth from the abyss, seeking to comfort her with their own sadness.
A long night expired. Father never returned home.
13
“So do they know who they are—that they’re your brother and father?” Mick asked Sera when the droids had left.
“No idea. I don’t even call them by their real names. In fact, I don’t even know if this transfer is going to work. But I’m going to take a shot.”
“So where’s their identity?”
“It’s called a .hum file. It houses each of their souls. The file is only partially mounted on those droids, because their models don’t read .hum files. The expancapacitor model will fully mount .hum files.”
.hum files. And me, assassin of expancapacitor droids. Does she guess I’ve ki
lled before?
“How do I kill this guy?”
“It’s a woman. You’ll flush her .hum away. Her name is Emily Husson. Grand Governor of the sector we’re breaching now.”
Mick looked out the port window at a neon blue world coated with turquoise film.
“That planet?”
“Yes sir. Use this,” Sera said, handing him a gun.
“Shoot her?”
“EMP. She drops. Then use this.” She handed him another gun. “That will format her .hum.”
“Sounds easy enough. Does she live alone?”
“Do you know where we are Mick?”
“No idea.”
“This is Bessel 9. Way too close to Bessel’s solar flares. No one lives out here except for crazies. Luckily for us, she’s a rich crazy. A trickler.”
XJ motored into the room. GR followed behind him, a wrench in his hand.
“We’ve fixed the engine, Sera.”
Sera smiled at Mick. The droids did not seem to notice that the ship had been cruising steadily toward its destination for the past several hours, the engine running fine.
Black Hull Page 4
