by Ben Bova
Her eyes flicking away from his, she said softly, “I fell in love.”
“Oh.”
“But he didn’t love me. It’s that simple. I signed up for this star mission to get away from him, from the memory of him.”
“Two thousand light-years,” Ignatiev murmured. “Has it been far enough?”
“Almost,” Gita said, smiling sadly. “Almost.”
* * *
They finished the meal in silence, each wrapped in private thoughts. Then they left the kitchen as flexible mechanical arms slid out of the walls and whisked the dishes into the washer.
Ignatiev suggested an after-dinner drink but Gita declined. Yet she sat down on the worn old couch. Ignatiev thought it over for a few seconds, then decided to take the upholstered armchair next to the couch instead of sitting beside her.
“The meal was wonderful, Alex,” she said.
“It was good, wasn’t it?”
“The machines must get the recipes from Aida’s files.”
“But where do they get the ingredients? Poached fish. Wienerschnitzel. They must construct them from the molecular level.”
“They’re very intelligent,” said Gita.
“And fast!”
She laughed. “If they can really read our thoughts, as you suspect, then perhaps they know what we want before we consciously know it ourselves.”
Frowning, Ignatiev said, “That bothers me. I don’t like having someone poking into my mind.”
“Something,” Gita corrected.
“Yes,” he grumbled.
Abruptly, she changed the subject. “Do you want to be included on the team that will explore the biosphere facility?”
With a shrug, Ignatiev replied, “I’m not a biologist, but yes, I’d certainly like to go with you.”
Gita nodded her approval. “Rank hath its privileges.”
They discussed the foray into the machines’ underground facility for nearly another hour.
“Will you be able to keep pace with the team?” she asked. “I mean, with your ALS…?”
He made a crooked smile. “I’m not dead yet.”
Suddenly alarmed, Gita said, “Oh, I didn’t mean to imply—”
Grinning at her, he said, “It’s all right. I’m sure I can keep up with you youngsters.”
She smiled back at him. “Good.”
They chatted amiably for nearly another hour. At last Gita yawned politely and said, “I’d better get home.”
Ignatiev rose to his feet. “I’ll walk you to your door.”
“It’s only a few meters up the corridor.”
Extending his arm to her, he said, “The proprieties should be maintained.”
Laughing, Gita let him take her arm. “By all means.”
They walked together to her door. As it slid open, Gita said, “Thank you, Alex, for a charming evening.”
And she pecked at his cheek.
Ignatiev stood there for several long minutes after Gita had entered her apartment and slid the door shut behind her.
At last he huffed, bunched his shoulders, and strode back to his own door. Silly old fool, he groused to himself.
But he was beaming.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ignatiev’s smile disappeared as soon as he entered his own quarters. The display above the fireplace was blinking, MESSAGE FROM DR. MANDABE. URGENT.
Trouble, Ignatiev thought as he sank onto his couch and stared at the bloodred letters. It’s late, he told himself. But it says urgent. With some reluctance, he told Aida to connect him to the head of the exobiology department.
Mandabe was wide awake, his dark, heavy-featured face scowling impatiently.
“It’s about time you returned my call,” he practically growled.
Ignatiev answered amiably, “I just received your message.” And he thought, When in doubt, blame the messenger.
The exobiology chief was not placated. “Professor Ignatiev,” he said, in a low, almost menacing rumble. “I want to talk with you.”
“Now? At this hour?”
“Now,” Mandabe said firmly.
“Very well.”
Mandabe appeared to be sitting in his own quarters aboard Intrepid. He jabbed a finger at Ignatiev and accused, “You humiliated me. You deliberately humiliated me. In front of the whole committee.”
Ignatiev’s jaw dropped open in surprise. “Humiliated you?”
“At today’s meeting. You named that slip of a girl to head the investigative team. That should have been my decision, not yours.”
Ignatiev mumbled, “I suppose so. I apologize. I had no intention of humiliating you.”
Completely unappeased, Mandabe said, “No, of course you didn’t. You’re so fascinated with the woman that you can’t think of anything else.”
Ignatiev could see that the exobiologist was furious. His dark face radiated anger. What kind of a chess piece is he? Ignatiev asked himself. A queen, perhaps, powerful and imperious, disdainful of the other players on the board.
He started to say, “This is all a misunderstanding—”
“No it’s not,” Mandabe insisted. “You’re hot for the little bitch and she’s using you to climb the ladder.”
“That’s not true,” Ignatiev snapped. “And I want you to apologize for using that vulgar term.”
“Apologize? Hah! What were the two of you doing all evening?”
His own temper rising, Ignatiev growled, “We had dinner together.”
“And what else?”
The man’s insane, Ignatiev thought. Then he realized, He feels threatened. He thinks I’m belittling him because I want Gita. He wants to be the alpha male of this pack. Maybe he wants Gita for himself.
“You’re being foolish,” Ignatiev said, as calmly as he could manage.
“Am I? She’s twisting you around her little finger, and you’re enjoying the experience.”
Ignatiev shot to his feet. “That’s a lie!”
Mandabe rose, too, ponderously, and Ignatiev realized that the man was a head taller and at least a dozen kilos bigger than he.
For a long, silent moment they stood glaring at each other. Ignatiev couldn’t help feeling glad that Mandabe was aboard the starship while he was on the surface of the planet.
“So how do you propose to settle this?” Ignatiev asked. “Swords or pistols?”
Mandabe blinked, confused.
“The honorable thing to do,” Ignatiev explained, “is to fight a duel.”
“A duel?”
“Yes. In my country, when two men have an irreconcilable conflict, they settle it with a duel.”
“That’s primitive.”
The trace of a smile on his lips, Ignatiev explained, “No, it’s very modern. Even therapeutic, so the psychotechnicians say.”
Mandabe’s face contorted with utter incomprehension.
“We fight a duel in virtual reality. We agree on the weapons to be used and the setting. Then, in a virtual reality simulation, we can bang away at each other to our hearts’ content, until one of us either surrenders or dies—in the VR simulation. In actuality, no one is injured in the slightest.”
“Virtual reality,” Mandabe muttered.
“Yes,” said Ignatiev. “Would you care to try it?”
“No!” Mandabe snapped. “It’s ridiculous. Childish.”
Forcing himself to remain calm, Ignatiev said, “Then how do you propose to settle this? I’ve already apologized. I had no intention of humiliating you.”
Mandabe filled the display screen, a tall, powerful thundercloud of a man, uncertain, undecided.
At last he hissed, “I accept your apology.”
“Very well. Now I would like to hear you apologize for what you called Dr. Nawalapitiya.”
Grudgingly, Mandabe said, “I let my anger get the better of me. I regret using that term.”
Ignatiev put up both his hands. “Then everything is settled.”
His red-rimmed eyes narrowing, Mandabe muttered, �
�I suppose it is.”
“I’ll be more careful in suggesting personnel assignments in the future,” Ignatiev assured him.
“Good,” said Mandabe. “See that you are.”
The holographic display went dark, and Ignatiev let out a heartfelt sigh. A soft answer turneth away wrath, he reminded himself. Good thing, too. The man was angry enough to break me in half.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The next morning, Ignatiev used Aida to call Gita and asked her to meet him in the common room that the machines had included in their quarters.
“I’m halfway through breakfast,” said Gita’s image in the holographic viewer. “Can you give me fifteen minutes?”
“Take half an hour, if you like.”
With a smile she said, “Fifteen minutes should be fine.”
Ignatiev had not slept well. His encounter with Mandabe troubled him. The man wants to be the alpha male in our community, Ignatiev told himself. He resents anything that he sees as a threat to his ambition.
With a shake of his head, Ignatiev recalled that a similar situation led to Julius Caesar’s assassination.
Gita was waiting for him when Ignatiev stepped into the common room, sitting on one of the comfortable couches scattered about the spacious area. Only two others were there, Raj Jackson and one of the geophysicists, their attention focused on a map display on one of the wall screens.
“What do you want to see me about?” Gita asked as Ignatiev sat down gingerly next to her.
“Mandabe,” Ignatiev answered.
“Dr. Mandabe doesn’t like me,” Gita said. Her tone was level, controlled. No tears, not a complaint, really. Merely a statement of fact.
Ignatiev frowned. “What makes you think that?”
“I can feel it,” Gita said. “He’s very exacting with me. He called me this morning and demanded written details on every person I’m considering for the exploration team. It’s going to take me longer to get his approval for my choices than it’ll take to make the decisions in the first place.”
Ignatiev said, “He feels threatened. You’re a challenge to his sense of authority, his position on the totem pole.”
Frowning with puzzlement, Gita asked, “Totem pole?”
“An old North American symbol: chain of command, pecking order, line of authority.”
Clearly surprised, Gita said, “But I’m not challenging his position! He’s the chief of the exobiology department! A distinguished researcher! A leader in the field!”
With a wry smile, Ignatiev asked, “Then what’s he doing here, among the exiles?”
“I don’t understand.”
Thinking of his own situation, Ignatiev explained, “He was persuaded to join this mission because he’s near the end of his useful career. Like me, he’s no longer doing leading-edge research. He’s shuffling papers and chairing meetings. You’ll be leading a research team. You’re going off into new territory. He’s jealous of you—and afraid you might threaten his position of power.”
“But I don’t want—”
“It’s not what you want, my dear,” Ignatiev said softly. “It’s what he believes that you want.”
Gita blinked with perplexity.
Ignatiev added, “The fact that I suggested that you lead the field team hasn’t helped. He thinks I’m backing you, in preference to him.”
“But that’s not true!”
Yes it is, Ignatiev realized. Yes it is. But he decided not to tell her about Mandabe’s visit the previous night. It would only pour fuel on her suspicions, upset her more.
Spreading his hands in a gesture that was part tutorial, part frustration, Ignatiev explained, “It’s the old primate urge for power. Mandabe sees you as a challenge. You’re threatening his position at the top of the exobiology heap. So he reacts by showing you he’s more powerful than you are.”
“That’s so primitive!”
“It’s an instinct lodged deep in the human psyche,” Ignatiev said.
“The male psyche,” Gita countered.
With a sigh that was almost a grunt, Ignatiev replied, “I’ve seen it among females, too. But men are more obvious about it, true enough.” Breaking into a low chuckle, he added, “You’re lucky. A few millennia ago he would have come after you with bared fangs, looking for blood.”
Gita almost smiled. Instead, she asked, “So what am I to do?”
Ignatiev thought it over for a few moments. “If I tried to speak to him about it, I’m afraid that would only make matters worse.”
“He’d think you have a special interest in me.”
But I do, Ignatiev realized, with something of a shock.
Aloud, he replied, “Be compliant, outwardly. Show him that you know he’s the boss, the head of the tribe. But go ahead in your own way, get your job done as you think it should be done.”
“Let him think I’m submissive, but do what I want to do?”
“Women have been behaving that way since the Stone Age and even earlier.”
“That’s devious.”
“Yes, it is. But it works.”
“I don’t know if I can behave that way.”
Ignatiev shrugged. “You’ll learn. I can help you.”
“I’ll need all the help I can get, Alex.”
“I’ll help you,” he repeated, hoping she felt reassured.
* * *
That evening, as Ignatiev prepared for sleep, the machines’ avatar appeared in his bedroom, dressed in its usual stiff-collared military-style uniform.
“Dr. Mandabe is causing problems for you,” it said, without preamble.
Frowning, Ignatiev snapped, “Must you listen to everything we say?”
“Yes,” said the human figure. “We are trying to learn everything we can about you.”
“Why?” Ignatiev challenged. “Why must you dig into our inner thoughts? Can’t we have some privacy?”
Coolly, the avatar responded, “Why do you want privacy?”
“We’re accustomed to it. We consider it a fundamental right of every individual.”
Crossing its arms across its chest, the avatar echoed, “Every individual. We find that aspect of your intelligence quite different from our own. You are a mob of individual intelligences, often working at odds against each other. We are one: an intelligence of many parts, but all an integral part of the whole.”
“So you are learning from us?”
“We are learning about you.”
“For what purpose?”
The humanlike figure fell silent for several heartbeats. At last it replied, “For the purpose of deciding whether we should allow you to leave our world or not.”
“Not leave?” Ignatiev gasped. “You would force us to remain here? Against our will?”
“If we decide it is for the best.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“But you can’t do that!” Ignatiev insisted. “Holding nearly two thousand men and women here against their will. It’s like kidnapping! It’s a crime!”
“Professor Ignatiev,” said the human figure, “you are allowing your emotions to distort your thinking.”
“You can’t hold us here against our will. You mustn’t.”
“We can and we will, if we decide that we must.”
Ignatiev stared at the avatar, wondering what arguments he could find to dissuade it.
The humanlike figure asked, not unkindly, “Professor, what is the ultimate motivation of every species?”
“To survive,” Ignatiev answered automatically.
“We are subject to the same imperative. Survival is the primary goal of our species, just as it is yours.”
“But we’re no threat to your survival.”
“You think not? Perhaps the two thousand members of your ship’s crew do not threaten our survival, but there are more than thirty billion human creatures back in your solar system. Thirty billion individuals, each with its own goals, its own ambitions, its own desires.”
Ignatiev asked, “What of it?�
�
The avatar made a small smile. “Ahh. That is the question, is it not? What impact on our species would result from full contact with your species?”
“We’ve already made contact—”
“Your small group has made contact with us. But if the entire human race learned of our existence, what would happen?”
Ignatiev started to answer, hesitated, then admitted, “I don’t know.”
“Neither do we,” the avatar said. “And until we have determined the answer to that question, you will not be allowed to leave our world, nor to communicate with your homeworld.”
Ignatiev’s knees felt rubbery. He sank down on the perfectly made bed and argued, “That’s not necessary. Let us tell our people about you. It will take more than two thousand years for a follow-up mission to reach you.”
“And when they do reach us, what will happen? The history of your species is drenched with the blood of civilizations you have destroyed. And they were fellow humans, the same species as you! How will your people react to us, a race of intelligent machines? A superior intelligence. They will react with fear, undoubtedly. And what you people fear, you try to destroy.”
“But you’re so far ahead of us. Your technology could protect you. You could…” Ignatiev’s voice trailed off as he realized where he was heading.
“We could destroy you. Yes. Easily. Just as you destroyed the people you called the hobbits. And the Neanderthals. And the Incas and Aztecs. The Polynesians. The Pan-Asian Confederation. The Asteroidal Alliance. War. Nuclear weapons. Biological weapons. Neuronal disruptors. Slaughter.”
“But we’ve progressed beyond that.”
“Have you?” the avatar demanded. “Have you given up all your thoughts of vengeance, of moral crusades, of automatic xenophobic reactions to anything that seems to threaten you?”
“I … I don’t know.”
“Neither do we. And until we come to a firm determination, you and your descendants will remain here, with no contact back to Earth and your solar system.”
With that, the avatar vanished.
Still sitting on the bed, Ignatiev stared around the bedroom, wondering what to do, what he could do, to persuade the machine intelligence to allow him and his fellow crew members to leave, to return home.
Promise to be silent? Promise not to tell anyone on Earth about the machines? He shook his head. Swear two thousand people to perpetual silence? Laughable. They can read our thoughts. They’d see how pitiful such a promise would be.
