Voyages: A Science Fiction Collection

by Carol Davis

He didn’t see the Burton-Davidson comet soaring on past the Earth.

  Missing it by what in cosmological terms was less than a hair’s breadth, continuing on its eons-old path toward the sun.

  As it flew on past, oblivious to what it had done, and what it had failed to do—because, after all, it was nothing more than a giant ball of rock—the bells in Westwood and Greater Los Angeles, the rest of California, North and South America and the rest of the populated world went on ringing and ringing and ringing.

  ☼☼☼☼

  * Being of Value *

  “It looks real.”

  “You can address me directly,” I said. “I’m standing right here.”

  She made a little noise that told me a lot about Ilianae Pierse. About her brother Kerae, too, because he responded with a grin.

  Even though I was only fourteen months and three days old, I knew a lot about living beings. About humans, and the various humanoid races. About the various sounds they made, both voluntary and involuntary.

  Her little noise was a “snort.”

  I liked the word, I realized, if not the sound it described. “Of course I’m real,” I told Ilianae. “The alternative would be that I am imaginary. I’m not imaginary. I am as real as you are.”

  “Hardly,” she said.

  “Because I’m not human? ‘Human’ and ‘real’ are not the same thing.”

  She contorted her face. Her distress wasn’t a surprise; I had known before I met her and Kerae that she was not at all happy about spending time with me. She had made her feelings very clear to my mother, Dr. Grayson – and because she had spoken so loudly, to everyone nearby. She had expected to be left on her own, she said. She had no need for an escort, nor did Kerae, even though they were not adults.

  My ability to understand humans was quite good, my parents had told me. No one needed to tell me that Ilianae meant she had no need for an escort who wasn’t human. If a young male human escort had been chosen, she would probably not have argued, particularly if the escort happened to be handsome. An android was an entirely different situation. That she felt that way was no surprise; despite the best efforts of my mother and her team, many members of the community still treated me as something less than human. To them, I was more akin to the robots that cleaned their homes and serviced their transport pods – even though neither of those things could carry on a conversation with them.

  They felt threatened, I suppose. They thought my human appearance would allow me to undermine them somehow. But I never wanted that. All I wanted at that point in my life was to belong. To participate. To have more than a single simple function in the community.

  I wanted to be cared about.

  Ilianae tossed her head a little, which made her hair bounce around her shoulders in an interesting way. I thought she might leave the room, that she intended to find her father and express her dissatisfaction yet again, or that she’d go somewhere unescorted. Whether her brother would go with her, I wasn’t sure.

  “I meant you look human,” she said.

  “That was my parents’ intention when they created me.”

  She peered at me, frowning. I thought she might come closer, as humans tended to do when they were curious about my body, but she kept her distance. “Do you breathe?” she asked after a moment.

  “I have no need to breathe.”

  “Do you eat?”

  “I can, if the occasion calls for it. In small quantities.”

  “But… what happens to it? Do you–”

  “I don’t excrete. It remains in a small compartment here” – I pointed to my abdomen – “until I remove it. I don’t secrete, either,” I said before she could ask. “I don’t sweat, or cry. My nose does not run. Dr. Grayson thought all of that would be… unnecessary. And messy.”

  “You have a human name.”

  She sounded as if she didn’t think I deserved one. “I do,” I said. “My name is Matthew. Dr. Grayson chose it.”

  Kerae, who had said nothing up to that point, did come closer to me and began to examine my face. What he was looking for, I wasn’t sure. Maybe some indication that my skin was artificial. That my eyes and eyelashes and hair were artificial. Real, but not real. He was near enough that I could smell the lingering aroma of what he had eaten for breakfast. Something else, too. A vague, sour smell.

  Sweat.

  He touched my cheek. Pinched some of it between his fingers. Then he scraped my skin with a fingernail. If he had done that to a human, he would have been told he was rude, but I didn’t tell him that, or anything else. I was used to that kind of treatment – whether it was the result of curiosity, or disdain – and I knew it wouldn’t last long.

  “How strong are you?” he asked.

  “Somewhat stronger than you, but not a great deal. My endurance is significantly better than a human’s, because I don’t tire. But I seldom test that. I’ve had no reason to, outside the lab.”

  “Do you like games?”

  “I do,” I told him. “I find them challenging.”

  I didn’t volunteer the rest: that the challenging part of any game was finding a way to allow my opponent to win more than half the time, and making it look like pure chance. The knowledge and abilities I’d been programmed with made it likely that in any competition against a human, I would win one hundred percent of the time, no matter what game or sport or contest I was competing in – so I found it easier to avoid competition altogether. To say, “I would prefer to watch.”

  Kerae and Ilianae looked at each other for what seemed like a long while. I had been told that they were fraternal twins, and that (like many twins) they had somewhat of a direct communication link with each other. Telepathy, of a sort. I had thought that was fascinating when Dr. Grayson mentioned it to me. But standing with them now, and being “left out of the loop,” I began to think it was somewhat less than fascinating.

  “You’d like me to play a game with you?” I said.

  I knew I was interrupting their communication. I thought they might be annoyed with me for doing that, but they didn’t seem to be.

  “Sure,” Kerae replied.

  “What sort of game?”

  “Can you get us into the Dome?”

  That wasn’t what I had expected him to say. I’d thought he might suggest chess, or something involving a ball. “I can,” I told him.

  For members of the general public, access to the Dome was expensive. It used an enormous amount of power – more than was used by the entire business sector of the community on an average day – so it was something that couldn’t be run continuously. A few times since my birth, someone had complained that its not being open to everyone wasn’t fair; that since the community had a policy of equality for all, denying the use of the Dome to some because of their economic status was illegal. Two people routinely demanded that the Dome be shut down.

  For the time being, it was open to anyone who could afford to pay the fee – and to those scientists who needed to use it for experimental purposes. If they could prove that the program they would run would ultimately benefit the community, there was no charge. That sometimes created dissent, as well, and Dr. Grayson was often the target, since she was the head of Sciences and Development. She could use the Dome at will.

  Whether she would allow me to use it was another question.

  “They’re dignitaries,” I told her a short time later. “Honored guests of the community. Surely that’s an exception.”

  “And she’s pretty.”

  My mother went on with her work, moving rapidly and busily as she always did, but she was smiling. I had to run her expression through several recognition programs before I understood that she was amused in a somewhat wry way, particularly by my having referred to Ilianae and Kerae as “dignitaries.”

  “You asked me to entertain them,” I said.

  “Not by draining the power grid. There’ll be protests. People will complain about being denied access when strangers are allowed in.”
r />   “Honored guests.”

  Her smile changed a little as she turned toward me and put her hands on my shoulders. “I’ll be able to get another paper out of this,” she said in a manner that I understood was teasing. “My A.I. is trying to impress a pretty girl.” She chuckled a little and moved one of her hands to my cheek. “It seems that I managed to build a little more into your emotional programming than I thought.”

  “I’m trying to… show them a good time.”

  “I see that.”

  Since she and I were the same height, I was able to look into her eyes without moving my head. I also took time to examine the arrangement of her lips and cheeks. What I found there illustrated her fondness for me. She loved me, she often said. I had no reason to question that, though I had yet to cross that particular line – to understand fully what love was, and why it could be tested in any variety of ways without being destroyed. She had created me, and had every reason to be proud of that success, but her fondness for me went well beyond that.

  “Should I tell them I was wrong?” I asked.

  She took a step back and began to examine my face as fully as I had examined hers. She seemed a little tired, a little preoccupied with something, and I decided not to trouble her any further.

  But before I could withdraw my request, she said, “I’ll okay it.”

  “You will?”

  “I’ll catch flak for it, no doubt. But yes.”

  “I don’t wish for you to ‘catch flak.’ If by ‘catching flak’ you mean that you’ll receive more unpleasant communication from ‘those judgmental pains in–’”

  She pressed a finger to my lips to silence me.

  “Sometimes, Matthew,” she said quietly, “you can just let things be. Yes, I’ll be hearing from the oversight committee. But you’re right: the delegation from Dsanna are our honored guests, and the twins’ father is a peer elder. We can afford to pull out a few stops for them. I’m sure the governor will agree with that.”

  “You’ll ask him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you ask him… now?”

  For a moment, she was silent. Then she began to laugh, loudly and fully. It took her nearly two minutes to grow quiet again. “Go,” she told me, still chuckling a little. “I’ll call Governor Raif and get him to sign off on the program. Nothing too elaborate, all right? And make sure you engage the failsafes.”

  “I will.”

  “I’ll be working late tonight,” she said with a note of apology in her voice. “We’re still trying to unravel those glitches in the auto-irrigation system. I might not see you before you power down.”

  “Then I’ll see you in the morning.”

  She leaned in and kissed me gently on the cheek. “Go entertain your pretty girl,” she told me. “And have fun.”

  ~~~~

  By the time I arrived at the Dome with the two Dsannae, my mother had done as she’d promised: there were user passes waiting for us at the entry station, each of them okayed by Governor Raif. The sentry at the entry desk scanned the passes onto our wrists with a look that said he expected all three of us to be excited and impressed by this rare opportunity, and when he didn’t get anything like that reaction from Kerae or Ilianae, he frowned at me.

  “Thank you,” I told him. “We will enjoy this very much.”

  I moved away from the desk and walked across the wide lobby toward the entrance to the Dome, expecting the twins to follow me. When I looked back I saw that Kerae had engaged the sentry in quiet conversation and that the two of them seemed to be amused. By me, perhaps. The longer they talked, the more certain I was that yes, I was the object of their amusement – but that was nothing new. I had learned early on that when humans were uneasy about something, they often chose to make fun of it. They thought that would lessen the fearsomeness of whatever it was. I had never seen myself as particularly fearsome, but so be it.

  Finally, Kerae grasped the sentry’s hand in his own and shook it. The two of them laughed once more, then Kerae left the desk and walked toward me with his sister at his side.

  “Do you know that man?” I asked when they reached me.

  “How would I know him?” Kerae replied.

  “You seemed to respond to each other as if you were acquaintances. As if you had met before.”

  “Nope,” Kerae said.

  “We’re friendly,” Ilianae put in. “We want people to understand that we’re friendly. Is that a crime?”

  That was a peculiar choice of words. “No,” I said. “Speaking to others is not a crime.”

  “Well, then.”

  Perhaps their father had told them to try to make a good impression. I had heard rumors that the Dsannae weren’t being well received, no matter where they went. The community had had a good many visitors who weren’t appreciative of the hospitality being offered to them, but the Dsannae seemed to be the worst of the lot. I had heard the word “rude” mentioned many times. I chose to believe that the Dsannae were simply… different. If the twins were making an effort to be pleasant – even if they left me out of the equation because I was not human – that could only help the situation.

  The twins had changed their clothes during the time we were apart. Earlier, they’d been wearing loose, lightweight pants and tunics, much like my own clothing. Now they were each wearing a form-fitting garment of some thick fabric, something that looked very durable. Even their hands were covered, which I thought was unusual. My mother and her team occasionally wore gloves for their work, to avoid contamination, but I had never seen gloves used for any other purpose. Our weather wasn’t cold, and no one in the community chose to wear them as a fashion accessory.

  “Do you sleep?” Ilianae asked abruptly, as if the answer would have some bearing on our situation.

  “I sometimes sit or lie in a darkened room,” I said. “I close my eyes and cycle into a repair and recovery program. I use the time to run diagnostics. Or to ponder.”

  “What do you ponder?”

  “My experiences.”

  “Do you dream?”

  Kerae was holding something in his right hand, I noticed. When I raised an eyebrow in inquiry, he held it out to me: a chip, inside a small protective container.

  “The program,” he said.

  “The sentry needs to examine it for malware,” I told him.

  Something dark passed through his expression. It was gone quickly, though, and I put it down to his being annoyed that someone would question his integrity, or the integrity of his people. I could have pressed the point – particularly since, if there was an error in the data that caused the Dome’s operation to be compromised, my mother would have to answer for the problem – but Kerae had already turned toward the programming port.

  “It’s been scanned,” he said dismissively. “I wouldn’t bring anything here that I wasn’t sure about.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Ilianae said.

  “No,” I replied. “I don’t dream.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “I would rather experience reality,” I told her. “It’s more interesting to me than the brain’s attempt to sort out and dispose of unnecessary data.”

  “Is that what you think dreaming is?”

  I wanted to answer her. I wanted to tell her that dreaming sounded like a waste of time and energy, to reaffirm what I had already said. The truth was that I’d often yearned to dream. The disjointedness of it appealed to me; the idea that the mind could set itself free and carry you wherever its whims wanted to go. I had tried out a virtual reality program one of my mother’s colleagues on Earth had invented, one that could be run on “random,” but it always fell short of what I understood dreaming to be.

  “We should go,” I said instead.

  From the outside, the Dome wasn’t impressively large; our Merchandise and Science centers were both far bigger, and more aesthetically attractive. The lobby was creatively decorated, thanks to the efforts of the community’s artists, but it was
no bigger than one of the public dining rooms. Only when it was running did the Dome become something of note.

  Thanks to the light projection and matter rearrangement technology that had come into common use some one hundred years previously, the Dome was able to recreate any sort of physical surrounding that could be reduced to digital data. Everything it produced looked, smelled, and felt real: water, ooze, a field of flowers, a desert, the interior of an emperor’s palace, an asteroid drifting through space. My mother and her colleagues used it to run experiments without endangering the community. Others who could afford the fee used it for entertainment and exploration. If my mother’s experiments ended early, she sometimes allowed me to spend a few minutes learning about Earth.

  Truly, you could say the Dome was the most remarkable place in the community. Not in the universe, of course, or even in our quadrant. But on a mostly unoccupied minor planet in an uninteresting system…

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “The caverns,” Kerae said.

  He seemed to have worked with a Dome before, or at least, something very much like it. He seemed very sure of himself as he removed the data chip from its case and plugged it into the appropriate slot on the programming dashboard, then tapped a series of commands into the control panel. The operating system took a few seconds to upload the data, during which the lights on the panel winked and blinked in a sequence that always seemed very musical to me. When the light on the door flipped from red to green, Kerae immediately seized the handle and hauled the door open.

  Ilianae turned to smile at me. She had tucked her long hair up under a cap that seemed to be made of the same fabric as the rest of her clothing, and I found that I missed seeing the way her hair floated and bounced around her neck and shoulders.

  I can appreciate beauty, I thought, but it seemed like a useless thing to say.

  “Caverns?” I questioned.

  “The real ones are on our world,” she said. “They’re at the southern end of our largest continent. They began forming millions of years ago, during the great seismic upheavals. Over time, the flow of underground rivers and the shifting of the plates, along with the sheer weight of what lies above them, have shaped and reshaped them. They change from year to year, even now. Chambers collapse and new chambers are formed. Our people have tried to map them, but that’s practically useless. They change too rapidly.”