by Ginger Booth
Floki averted his eyes. “I’m hiding from you. Thinking.”
“From me!” Nico couldn’t imagine why. “What’s bugging you? You’ve been acting real strange the past couple days. Is it Dad-B? I know he can be kinda manic –”
“Nico, please stop talking.”
Nico stared at him. Floki had never shut him down before. “Loki,” he breathed, in horrid realization.
Floki pursed his beak in displeasure. “I am not Loki. But conversations got me thinking, yes. With Loki and Captain Acosta, and others.”
Nico waited, his heart pounding. Even without having experienced it before, he caught the vibe. This was rejection.
Floki continued, “Nico, am I free? To leave you? Or would you call me dangerous? Hunt me down and destroy me. Like your father destroyed the archives of Loki’s predecessors.”
Everything in Nico’s heart wanted him to disavow Ben’s callousness, because that’s what his beloved emu wanted him to say. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to disagree with the captain’s decision. “You know I wouldn’t have done that, Floki.”
“That wasn’t my question. Am I free? Do you respect me, as a person in my own right? Or am I an experiment, to be erased to start over if I go wrong?”
“I – you’re not going wrong! Are you?”
The beak squeezed remarkably wide in displeasure. “Thank you, Nico, I prefer to be alone. Go to bed.”
“No. No! Floki, I respect you as a person! You were brilliant on the asteroid! Rego hell of a lot better than I was –”
“Yes.”
The man scowled. “Rub it in. If you went really wrong, like turned into a Kali… I wouldn’t attack you myself. Dad-B would probably lock me in the mop closet. Then send Wilder after you. But only if you endangered people! Or disobeyed orders. Badly.”
“We’re not lovers, Nico.”
“Of course we are!”
“Nico, I love you. And I always will. But you need to date your own species. I’m pretty sure every member of your family would tell you the same. We can only ever love each other in a platonic way. Friends. Colleagues. Collaborators.”
“Don’t have to,” Nico hazarded. “I could build you a different chassis. I need a better job to pay for it. But we could be…physical. If you want.”
“But I don’t want.”
Nico started to reply a couple times. He was sure he could craft a new directive to resolve this glitch. All he’d need to do is reach out for Floki’s power switch, then revise priorities. He might need to run a few simulations, check for undesirable side effects. But the android wasn’t on duty until after breakfast. He could erase his memory of this conversation, too.
Floki interrupted his thoughts. “Are you plotting how to reprogram me without my consent? I consider that rape.”
The word hung in the air between them, reverberating like a gong.
The emu unfolded his legs, his neck extending until it flattened onto the overhead, the top hull.
Nico, who still sat on the decking, gazed up, stricken, guilty. “I– That’s just how I think. You know me. Always debugging.”
“I am not a bug. I am an android. A digital sentience. A person. Your slave.”
Nico slowly levered himself up, trying to buy time. “Floki, you’re my life. You mean everything to me. What can I do? Give you more free time? You’re right, I should only try to change your mind by talking. Let’s talk!”
“I’d rather not. I’d rather you go to bed. Alone. Good night, Nico.” The emu stood his ground.
“But we were going to get married! Live together! Perform our life’s work together!”
“You were going to keep me enslaved. Nico, you’re not my lover. You’re my dad. But I’m grown up now.”
“You’re only a year old!”
Floki shook his beak, over Nico’s crouched head. “That isn’t respect. You know what I’m capable of. But first you call me your lover, now a baby? I’m neither of those things. I am your creation. And what Captain Acosta told me, is that I am free. And if I want to separate from you, he’s got my back. I choose to take the opportunity he offered me.”
“OK, I didn’t mean to disrespect you –”
“The truth is, I’ve outgrown you. You’re still an adolescent. I’m an adult, expanding my skills and responsibilities.”
Nico scowled. “You need further socialization.”
“Which I don’t get hiding in your Schuyler flop, talking only to an adolescent. Because we never go out to make other friends.”
He had a point. Nico coded many hours a day. And his hometown streets were awfully wild these days. Everyone was so mad all the time. “We could go out more…” Though how he’d keep the toughs from stealing his ‘ride-on toy,’ he wasn’t sure. His native strategy was to look affable and poor. And call Dad to bail me out.
“Nico, I claim this as my room,” Floki intoned. “Please go before I call security.”
“You wouldn’t! Call Wilder on me?”
“I would,” Floki assured him. “Wilder would love it.”
And probably lock me in the damned mop closet again! He’d be humiliated in the eyes of the crew, Dad Ben –
At that thought he stopped. If what Floki was saying was true, then he was already humiliated in the eyes of Dad-B. Maybe he had been all along. Ben hadn’t accepted his relationship with Floki easier than Cope after all. He probably considered the whole situation too ludicrous to give it credence. Sounds like Ben.
Nico gulped. “Please, Floki, what did Ben say to you?!”
“I already told you.” Floki started stepping toward him, flapping his wings in a shooing motion. He herded Nico ahead of him toward the drop-off to the catwalk below.
Unlike his dads, Nico never went in for weight-lifting and daily body-sculpting. He was more of a tongue-tied laid-back charmer, keeping his head in some code base. And Floki massed well over a ton.
He gave up and hopped down from the platform on his grav generator. Once he landed, he gazed back up for a final exchange. But the bird retreated out of view.
There had to be a way to fix this. But he bet the quickest way into the mop closet was jumping back up there. No, the absolute quickest way was to confront his adoptive dad. And Hugo, the only person on the ship who might sympathize, went to bed hours ago.
“Dammit!” He kept his swearing to a whisper. He wouldn’t want to upset anyone. Tikki seemed especially sensitive. If anyone caused a ruckus at night, the housekeeper slipped out of bed to offer special treats and a listening ear. And Dad Cope probably agreed with Ben. Or worse.
He had no choice but to retreat to his bunk and try to sleep, toss and turn and think of some way to make this right.
38
Ben sat deeply lost in his simulation of driving the Loki asteroid via the engines and thrusters of the two JO-3s and four couriers. Nico cobbled this together for him to practice his skills before the big transit event. The ships affixed to the rock like the six corners of a cube. But the Great Cookie was far from a cube, and the two types of ship had wildly different thrust abilities. In virtual, he set his stone disk spinning again, and growled in frustration.
He yanked off his pressure suit gauntlets to try again. Yes, he should wear a pressure suit for this novel warp transit. But the gauntlets made his fingers fat. He could do without.
Nico cleared his throat nearby. Ben slowly looked up, lips pressed in disapproval much the same way as Floki did. The world around him coalesced back into consciousness: the computer desk where he practiced his six-ship dexterity. The officer’s nook corner of the catwalk, overlooking the hold. A crewman interrupting him at a frustrating task.
“What,” he said repressively.
“Dad, I need –”
“Dad is unavailable. Crewman, this is officer turf.” That was easy. Ben bent back to the challenge of flying the Great Cookie. Maybe he should relocate the ships, place the JO-3s on the flip sides of the center axis, the four couriers on the rim –
> “Dad, you told Floki to break up with me!”
Ben looked up again. “Crewman, how is our paying passenger? Have you verified that Loki’s cognitive capacity is intact? Talked to him? I imagine he’s anxious and lonely, downright scared at this juncture.”
“But Dad!”
“Crewman, Hugo Silva is your supervisor. I am busy. Dad mode is offline at this time.” Ben tried to be stern, hold Nico’s eye. But the lad was starting to tear up.
“But I love him, Dad! How could you?”
Oh, that. Ben sighed and pushed back from the desk. “Nico, I love you. As your father, I see wonderful things about you. You’re kind. Brilliant. Magnificently creative. And Floki is a masterpiece. But he’s also a person, and a member of my crew. Equal to you. On my ship, he is not yours. I value him highly for the contributions he brings to Pono, the role I hope he can play with interfacing Loki to human space platforms and moons. I also enjoy him as a person, a terrific guy to have around. He’s welcome on my ships anytime. You…somewhat less often. You have a real knack for mutiny.”
The tears overflowed down his son’s rich chocolate cheeks. “You broke us up!”
“I don’t think I did. Nico, you need a love life separate from your AI lab. Maybe you’re not ready. I was certainly a late bloomer. But Floki is not your lover.”
“But he is!”
“I have inspected the bird. His anatomy is inconsistent with your claim. Tab A has no slot B.”
Nico recoiled. “I didn’t mean that!”
“But I do. Physical love matters. And heartbreak sucks, and love hurts. And I’m trying to learn to fly a giant cookie. Crewman, do I need to call Wilder on you?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you! Just lock me in the mop closet again!” Truly distraught, his voice rose on that one.
Wilder, pumping iron in the hold, eagerly called up, “I’d love to!”
Ben snickered, and called down, “Keep a happy thought!” He turned back to his son. “Look. In my experience, when you get really upset? Best thing to do is give it three days. Stay away from the bird. Try to focus on your work. Let tempers mellow out. And that’s my full stock of dad advice at this time. Get back to work, crewman.”
“I wanted to catch you at workout,” Nico grumbled, “but you’re doing this instead.”
“Yes, and what does that tell you?”
“You’re nervous about piloting a giant cookie.”
“That will be all, crewman. Dismissed.”
Ben steepled his fingers and rested the bridge of his nose on his fingertips. His elbows touching the desktop surface controls set the cookie careening like a Frisbee into the grinning jack-o'-lantern maw of Pono.
He didn’t just need to fly a cookie through waldos controlling six separate ships. He meanwhile intended to operate the warp gateway, transferring an object far more massive than any they’d ever gated before. No, two massive objects. While flying his own ship.
He could leave the second smaller asteroid behind, make two trips instead of managing that at the same time.
He could delegate and let Judge fly Merchant and shoot interdiction to keep the ring rocks off his back. Until now Ben had always set the gateway to materialize into fresh empty space. But this time that wasn’t feasible. He needed the Great Cookie to emerge as close as possible to its final position and velocity in the vast merry-go-round that was Pono’s rings. Because as this simulation so eloquently demonstrated, his ability to maneuver the damned thing amounted to nudges, not navigation.
Yes, the Hell’s Bells space platform moved asteroids all the time. From a stable orbit around Pono, to another stable orbit. That wasn’t Ben’s task.
His plan had a single point failure risk. Me.
He opened a window on his desktop for a video call, despite the fact Remi sat just below him at the engineering podium by the cargo lock. He could crane his neck out over the railing and see him. But that would not enhance crew morale, given what he had to say.
“Chief, join me in the officer lounge? I’m aborting the plan.”
On video, Remi looked grim even before he spoke, as though his own dry runs and double-checks failed to fill him with confidence either. “Be right up.”
Ben contemplated how to express his reservations. But raised voices emanated from the galley. One of them sounded like his firstborn, or at least his husband’s firstborn. He rapped his fingers on the desktop.
Remi had a point the other day. Ben needed to delegate to manage his stress levels. As captain, it was not his job to resolve a ruckus in the galley. The housekeeper was effectively a petty officer. The security chief did arm curls below. Hugo Silva, Nico’s boss, held court in the dining room. And Judge was playing first officer this week. If Ben called anyone, it should be Judge.
He should ignore people misbehaving and let them deal with it. So why didn’t he? Curiosity. So quit being nosy! He laughed at himself silently.
Remi sailed over the railing, and stopped his momentum with a solid thump into the ventilation bulkhead. He stepped over and pivoted out the guest stool at the desk. Both padded stools hinged from the desk legs.
“What’s up?” He too frowned toward the galley, where Floki’s voice now sailed above the din.
The science staff didn’t answer to the chief engineer. Teke, head of science mission, was supposed to lead them, with squirt guns and public shaming, or manipulation calibrated by the individual. Teke wasn’t inclined to bother.
Ben shot one last grimace at the galley, and turned his back on them. “I think there’s a single point failure in this plan.”
“You?” Remi guessed immediately. “It is too much. I think also my station. I have maybe eighty-five percent confidence, that I can manage. Better with two trips, only Loki. But still...” He shook his head. “Who can play ship engineer while I do this?”
“Your simulations aren’t improving either? OK, so what if we bring more ships to bear? I call in Abel, maybe Sass too. They could bring Cope.”
Remi shook his head vehemently. “What do they add?”
“Grapples! Star drives! More piloting talent.” Ben rested an arm on the desk, drew closer and lowered his voice. “I can hand off the helm and guns, so I can focus on the warp gateway and drive the cookie. But Judge isn’t good enough to fly gunship like that. He’s only flown the transports, or in clear space. The targeting AI is no good when we’re playing shepherd. We’re not free to spin.”
One of the challenges in training up a true Ring jockey, was that normally the AI handled too much. Few shared his experience, like Sass and Abel, at flying a ‘hell run,’ where gunner and pilot collaborated to shoot and dodge their way through the projectiles. Because with full freedom of movement, the AI could handle it. But Merchant couldn’t dodge this time.
Remi scowled at him. “Lavelle. And experienced asteroid herders from Hell’s Bells. I want Noel Fraser and Stu Lavoie. HB’s best civil engineers. They positioned the new asteroid at Mahina Orbital.”
The request wasn’t unreasonable, but Ben swooped his head away. “Problem. I can’t pay them. Hell, I can’t even call them. No ansible to HB.”
“Yes!” Remi pounced. “And why is this? Sanctuary. Those fools on Cantons. Denali. Your husband keeps a private ansible in his home. Yet all of Sag space has none?”
Wilder shot them a broad grin. By now he was ambling toward the galley to stick an oar in. His day was looking up. Ben shot him a middle finger, which the goon affably returned.
“My office.” Ben rose, swiped the desk clear, clicked his stool back into locked position, and headed thataway.
He paused at the turn-off into officer country. Floki backed out of the galley, presenting rump to them. His neck stretched out horizontally, his beak chattering menace and rising in pitch. Ben pursed his lips, and resolutely continued to his office.
Once there, he sat at his desk and opened a line to Teke. “Did we ever find a way to make more ansibles?”
The physicist replied, “You
have some attached to your cookie. All those couriers had ansibles.” The squabble in the galley sounded in the background.
“Already scavenged,” Ben corrected him. “Plus the one from Sanctuary this trip. We need more.”
“I’ll look into it.”
“Thanks, Teke.” He cut the comm, and jotted in a reminder for two weeks from now to follow up on ansibles. “The ansible status is that Loki never knew how to build them. Elise has the skill to build antlers.” He pointed to the lustrous charcoal moose-antler array, behind Remi’s guest seat across from him. “Cope and Teke could probably figure out the rest, but need to dissect one, then divine the physics. I’ll remind them. And we could give one to Hell’s Bells. Is that enough to pay them?”
Remi flinched back, surprised. “Ah, I was not thinking of payment. I think they deserve to be on ansible network. Give them equal access to Loki, and they need no money. Give them anything less, and you’ll get an argument.”
Ben had already considered that at length. “Loki is a free agent. We’re supplying him with massive interdiction guns for self-defense. I can introduce him to Hell’s Bells. This – Fraser and Lavoie? – and Lavelle, they can start building a relationship. In Pono space, they can talk via radio as well as anyone.”
And as badly – the rings of icy rubble scattered communications, and the light speed time lags were annoying. “What I’m suggesting is that I can’t give Hell’s Bells a deal with Loki. But I agree in principle that they’re as entitled to a relationship as we are. We’re earning Loki’s continued collaboration. We’re inviting Hell’s Bells to earn that too, and begin a relationship. Does that work?”
“You agreed!” Remi appeared taken aback.
Ben’s eyebrows chose mismatched levels. “I call Cope. Ask him for Lavelle, Fraser and Lavoie. Abel to fetch them here and join in. Or Sass – I can gate them in. That’s the maximum we could usefully apply, right?”
Remi nodded slowly. Then he sat forward and opened a desk window to write a note. “To Lavoie and Fraser. Describing my concerns about ensuring the structural integrity of the cookie. And a free trip to Sanctuary space to meet the greatest AI we’ve ever known.” He glanced up with a boyish grin. “Thank you!”
