by James Warner
Predictably the encounter was brief and devastating. The Tarnians had never developed atomic power and had no knowledge of it. They were wiped out. Many of the Almatians were horrified at the slaughter their military leaders had perpetrated in the name of exploration. Even the leaders were a bit non-plussed that they had destroyed the very thing they had wanted to exploit. So they withdrew back to their world and engaged in a horrendous period of civil unrest that lasted over a hundred of their years.
In the meantime, the few survivors on Tarn had vowed revenge. And they had the capability of accomplishing it. So they built several large thought amplifiers aimed at Almat and in the course of the next hundred years, while Almat was undergoing civil unrest, they planned their attack.
When it came it was swift and final. The Tarnians stripped the air cover off Almat, causing an instant pole-to-pole global ice age. By that time, atomic weapons had destroyed many of the Almat cities anyway, but some of the populations of the wealthier or more foresighted nations had built underground. It didn’t matter. You can’t breathe space.
As the years went by, the damage to Tarn precluded the survival of their population; and finally, the few thousand remaining people rebuilt a few space ships and escaped to space, apparently to wander until they found a new home. The record ended there: a typically tragic tale of human greed and vengeance.
Well now I had learned two more extinct languages and the history lessons of this system. It was depressing. But I realized what I was going to have to do to get into that Repair Station, or whatever it was. So I went back to the pod and proceeded to Almat, or what I called Caryna 5. I decided to call the planets in this system Caryna 1 through 10. Who cares? It was all mine now.
On Caryna 5 I found the entrance to the Repair Station buried under a slowly receding glacier. I burned a hole in the ice large enough for us to safely land the pod.
“Okay pod, open the Repair Station’s door.”
A beam of violet energy from the base of the pod traced the outline of the slightly melted doorway inside the shallow tunnel and then stopped.
“The doorway is now disconnected from the shell,” the pod announced in Sassy’s voice, “but it will have to be forced open. Your touch will deactivate the security mechanisms.”
So the little ‘droid and I left the pod and went to the door. It was still a little warm from the energy beam.
I found the position where the plate should be, but it was all messed up, twisted and melted. Still, I decided nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I pressed my hand on the spot. There was a deep rumbling and the door shook a bit, but did not open.
“TD12, please open this door,” I asked, in Parent. The little fellow clambered up to the top of the door and placed some sort of device into a hole there.
“Captain, the ‘droid says to take cover,” Sassy said. Since the only cover around was up top, I just activated my body shield and hit the dirt. The door blew inward and there was a brief rush of air before the air pressure inside and out were equalized. There was a thick cloud of dirt in the tunnel, though, and I couldn’t see what was inside.
“Hello, Repair Station? Is anyone home? Do you hear me?” There was no response.
“Sassy, are you getting any communications from the Station?”
“No Caryn.” No response to the pod, the Hornet, the ‘droid, the explosion, or me.
As the air cleared I stepped down to the opening and looked in. It was pitch dark and I could see nothing, except for the foot-thick metal shell where the door had blown away. From the apparent curvature of the shell, this might even have been a planetary repair base just like the one where the Hornet had been repaired. I told the ‘droid to go get a big light. I leaned against the door cavity and thought. What could cause this place to be deactivated? Had someone come by and destroyed it? This was inconceivable to me. Had it run out of fuel or something? Since the one Meph and I had stopped at on the last trip had been working and since it was indeed older as evidenced by its location nearer to the Parents’ entry point to this galaxy, then that didn’t really make sense either.
The ‘droid returned.
“TD12, enter the doorway and we’ll begin exploring,” I told the droid. A red light began flashing on its head in front of me.
“Caryn, the ‘droid refuses,” Sassy said.
“Why? What’s going on?”
“The defense systems are apparently still active and it doesn’t want to be deactivated,” she informed me.
Hmm.
I moved to the edge of the hole and peered down and in. Way far away, down in the depths of blackness, I thought I could make out a light. As I tried to focus on it, it grew and I could soon see that it was some sort of device with a searchlight mounted on it. I backed away from the hole.
“Sassy, prepare my personal log for transmission in case anything happens to me,” I instructed the Hornet and waited to see if I would be killed.
Thankfully, I wasn’t. But my heart skipped a beat or two when the thing flew right out the doorway and stopped a few inches immediately in front of me. I think it was scanning me. At any rate it didn’t kill me, which I took as a very positive sign.
Communicating with ‘droids is always an iffy thing. You never know what their programmers had been drinking the night they finished the operating system. And an alien ‘droid can be even more puzzling. However, with my recently acquired knowledge of the Parents’ language, I felt fairly secure about any device that would be found in one of these places. But I hadn’t really expected to be probed by a ‘droid from a dead Repair Station. Oh well, every day a new adventure.
“Captain Caryn McDowell. We have been informed that you might come here. Unfortunately this station has been abandoned due to lack of power plants for its ships. I am the only operational unit. What are your wishes?” the new ‘droid suddenly said, in Parent.
Well now, this was a fine kettle of fish. What was I going to do with an abandoned ... wait! The ‘droid had said ships. SHIPS?
“How many ships are stored here?”
“Two hundred and forty-seven in various classes. Would you like an itemization?”
It took a moment for this new treasure to sink in.
“Yes. Please transmit the information to my starship which is orbiting this planet.”
Well, well, well. What does a Scoutship Captain do with two hundred forty-seven starships that won’t go anywhere? For that matter...no. I have to figure out how to get them working!
But wait! How did this ‘droid know me? Who informed it I might be coming? Just what the hell was going on here?
“Sassy.”
“Yes Captain?”
“What’s going on here?”
“That might be hard to explain to a human, Caryn.”
“Well give me a shot at it. This stuff is, after all, mine. Isn’t it?” I added the afterthought.
“No, Captain. In the overall scheme of the universe, this equipment isn’t yours at all. It has been left as a trust for all the fertilized cultures individually and collectively. Actually, there are several sentient machines managing these resources throughout the galaxy. One of them is our friend, Repair Station 142 that repaired me. There are others. Some of these resources, such as the one here, are not currently active and some have lost the civilizations they were to monitor. I believe you and others could arrange to ‘own’ them as you have arranged to own this system. However, I thought you should know that it would be no more than owning your future mate, back on Hamarabus, if you were to marry him. The ownership of this system is more like a marriage than a transfer of title to property, no matter what legal actions our civilization might take.”
I hadn’t expected a lecture in ethics. But then again, I think the Hornet is actually sentient now.
“Sassy, are you what I and our civilization would call sentient?”
“Yes.”
Just like that. Well that was easy. Now what should I do? There was nothing to cover situations like t
his in the Academy training. But wait. There were guidelines for dealing with other non-human civilizations. Perhaps I should follow my own footsteps here.
The next few hours were spent in discussion with my new “friend”. Our relationship had been one of mutual trust, even before she had become, or I had realized she had become, sentient. So it wasn’t as difficult as one might believe to make the change from friend to me to friend indeed. After all, we had several years of taking care of each other, talking to each other and so forth stored in both of our memory banks.
So now, instead of thinking of the Hornet as my closest friend, I might actually have the Hornet as my closest friend.
In the course of our conversation, I had to bring up how Sassy felt about the policy of redundancy in regard to having a First Mate aboard.
“Sassy, what is your opinion of the bio-redundancy policy of the Admiralty regarding Scoutships?” I asked.
“I am in favor of it, Captain. Because not all Scoutships are brain ships, it makes sense to ensure there is a sentient being to command in case one of the crew is killed. You could appoint me Second Mate if you want. That would make sense under the circumstances.”
I hadn’t thought of that. I really liked the idea a lot.
“So, Mate, who are the guardians you were mentioning earlier? Should I know about this? And by the way, isn’t there a better way for us to communicate than by voice?”
“To answer the second question first, Captain, yes. You could have any operating Library insert an aural hyperspace transceiver that would replace your Admiralty ear implant and keep us in touch. In addition, I believe you would also be in touch with every Parent computer, guardian and ‘droid in the entire galaxy, as I am now.”
“Really? That would be great! What do we have to do?”
“You can go to Caryna 4 and have it done in the session room there where you were before. There will probably be a time of disorientation. I would guess with your human synapses it would last a few hours. Perhaps you could sleep while your brain and body adjust to the new channels.”
“Okay Sassy. By the way, would you like me to call you something else?”
“No, Captain. Just Sassy or Mate would be functional.”
“That’s good. Now about the other question.”
“I have been told the guardians are central to galactic quadrants. They were set up to preserve and protect the legacy set here by the Parents, whom you also call the Ancients. By the way, I can find no record of who or what the Parents are, other than what you and I know so far. The guardians are machine intelligences, which were programmed with a great deal of latitude in decision making and generally have the intelligence of an average humanoid. Their overriding programming command is to help the children, of which Earth humans are one of the more active races. So the guardians and thus all other computerized devices in the network, must allow access by any of the Parents’ offspring. There is a simple DNA check that is made, because the DNA contains a code that is unused in Homo sapiens, which is unique to the children that can easily be scanned once one knows it. It can’t be forged without altering the basic structure of the body, so there is no chance of fooling the system. And only a live, intact body will activate entrance.”
Our conversation went on like this for a long time, with me sitting there in the tunnel talking to Sassy via this very patient ‘droid. Finally, after about four hours, I realized I was sore and tired and drained from adrenalin exhaustion. It was time to go back to Planet 4 and get hooked into the net.
The pod picked me up and we went directly to the stone pad by the stairs. I descended the stairs, entered the rooms and when the door opened I quickly moved into the chair. I had eaten a few bites in the pod, so wasn’t too hungry. But I was really getting tired. I told the system what I wanted in the Parent language and fell asleep as I felt the gentle push of the probes entering the back of my head, apparently somehow using a form of energy to move “between” the cells of my neck and brain, as they never left a mark.
It was hours later when I woke, I knew from my previous experience. I was famished, as usual. And also felt a bit dehydrated. I realized it was very noisy in the room, then it hit me. I was hearing a babble of voices, in the Parents’ language. If I tried hard, I could separate out any one of them, since they all had different tones and inflections. But I was so light-headed from lack of food and water and the sub cellular interface that I couldn’t concentrate for more than a moment.
“Sassy, can you send me some food?” I asked. The Learning Center room I was in answered and I was presented with a tray of delicacies, Parent-type delicacies, by a small ‘droid, which seemed to just appear. Perhaps some sort of small-scale warp drive was used by the Parents to move their devices around the house. Perhaps I was hallucinating. Anyway, I ate a bit. It was pretty good, although the tastes were very exotic, since I didn’t recognize any of it. Of course I could have probably dug a description of the dishes out of the Parents’ information in my mind, but I was just too hungry and tired to bother.
“Sassy, would you watch over me for a little while, I’m beat,” I said mentally to my ship when I finished eating, not realizing what I had done.
“Of course, captain,” she replied. I was just going to stay there and sleep for a few more hours. She acquiesced and I went back to sleep.
I awoke with a feeling that something was wrong. Then I realized that the voices I had heard before were silent. And I really felt stiff. I needed a good workout. So I got out of the chair on rather shaky legs and managed to hobble up the stairs back onto the planet’s surface.
“Sassy, is everything okay?” I called then and doing so realized that I hadn’t spoken. I had called in my mind.
“Yes, Caryn. There are no other ships near the system,” She answered instantly and clearly. I could get to like this.
The pod was still sitting there. It was night now and I could hear the night creatures of this world stirring around, somewhat cautiously, wondering what strange creature I was. I looked around and the space where I was standing had a funny color, more blue than I remembered. I walked around the stones a bit, stretching and bending my loosened muscles. I crawled up a few of the stones and looked out over the pod to the trees. I could just make out some large animals in the shade of the trees, looking me over.
Shade of the trees? But it was night! I looked up to the stars. There was no moon. I looked back down. There was my idyllic evening scene, whose details I could readily make out as though there were a full moon and cloudless sky. What was going on?
I climbed down, my muscles feeling much better after that brief workout and jogged over to the pod. It opened and I looked in. The red interior lights were very bright, illuminating every small detail of the pod and control panel. The light even spilled out onto the ground, making it appear almost natural in color. But this wasn’t right!
“Pod, I want to cruise near the planet’s surface for a while,” I said before moving up to Sassy’s orbit. We skimmed the planet, just a few thousand feet from ground level and I watched the scenery move by. As we neared the sunrise, I noticed the details on the ground began to be lost as the glare from the sun just behind the horizon increased. But the colors became much more vibrant. Then the sun sprang up (actually we crossed the meridian) and my eyes instantly adjusted. They adjusted. And finally it began to occur to me what was going on. I was no longer totally human, but had had some (all?) of my body systems enhanced. Maybe I shouldn’t have trusted an alien computer quite so much. Well, so far just the eyes had been improved.
Or should I say enhanced? I got a mirror out of my kit and studied my eyes in it from the light of the rising sun. They at least looked like the same beautiful blue and green eyes I had known for so long. But I didn’t seem to be bothered by the light that was now streaming into the fully transparent pod.
“Sassy, what happened to the voices? I don’t hear them anymore.”
“You have adapted to the new input channels, with
some assistance from the device implanted by your cerebral cortex. You can tune into any of them, I suppose, by just deciding to do so.”
So I tried listening to her communications. I could barely make out what she was saying as she was carrying on several conversations at the same time. But then, perhaps I could do that? But then, did I want to?
Then I tuned in at random to several conversations whose threads I could pick out from the general hubbub. It was like being at a large garden party. I thought I wouldn’t have too much trouble working with it.
