Roboteer

by Alex Lamb

  From the spittle on his chin and the manic look in his eyes, it was clear that Hugo was losing it.

  Ira stared at the scientist, his nostrils flaring. However, when he spoke, it was with a surprising calmness. In its own way, it held more menace than any roar could ever have achieved.

  ‘I warned you, Doctor Vartian,’ said Ira. ‘You violated a direct order. You’re finished.’

  ‘I regret nothing, Captain,’ Hugo spat. ‘I answer to a higher calling. Do your worst.’

  Ira reached out a huge hand and patted Hugo gently on the cheek. Hugo flinched away, and for a moment looked genuinely scared.

  Ira then turned to Will. ‘And you …’ he said wearily. ‘Got any more gems of information you’d like to share with us tonight?’ His expression was unreadable.

  Will shook his head.

  ‘Okay then,’ Ira said softly. ‘I want to see your memory logs for this little adventure in my visor. Now I’m going back to sleep, and then tomorrow, Will, you and I need to have a private chat.’ He gave Will a last, highly meaningful stare, and then climbed up the ladder.

  Rachel stood there for a few moments longer, looking worriedly at Will. Will wished he could think of something to say.

  ‘Rachel, administer a level-two sedative to Doctor Vartian. Then go to bed,’ Ira said from above. ‘That’s an order.’

  She gestured to Hugo to ascend the ladder, then started after him. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said to Will as she climbed.

  Will stood on his own for a long minute. Then he pulled himself up the ladder, swung back into his couch and swapped into his home node to fume. He paced back and forth, cursing at the top of his virtual lungs. He felt stupid. That little outburst of his hadn’t exactly helped his cause. Perhaps if he didn’t feel so damned edgy all the time, it wouldn’t have happened.

  He glared at the familiar stone walls of the metaphor space. They’d never looked so foreign to him. He knew that somewhere beyond them lurked the Transcended. Watching him, listening to him, twisting him.

  Will shouted at the walls. ‘Leave me alone! I thought you were supposed to be helping me, but you’re making it worse, not better! I can’t work on your damned archive feeling like this!’

  He spun around to deliver another tirade to the opposite wall, but instead found an SAP hovering just in front of his face.

  ‘Gah!’ he exclaimed and jumped back, his heart hammering.

  The SAP was a cumbersome, ugly thing, all twisted rings and straggling memory trees like damp weeds.

  Will narrowed his eyes at it. ‘Fine! This is your answer, is it? Another fucking puzzle. What am I, a lab rat? How’s this for a deal. I solve it, you fuck off out of my head. Sound good?’

  He didn’t expect a response, and one didn’t come.

  ‘Well, fine then!’ he said, with a grand sweep of his hand.

  If the aliens wanted another trick from him before they talked, that’s what they’d get. And then he was going to give them a piece of his mind.

  Unsurprisingly, the SAP required him to make a butchered mess of his mental processes in order to synchronise with it, even more so than last time. But Will was used to that by now. He ignored his usual restraint. He hurled together whatever processor modules the program required, regardless of the reason why senses might be grouped that way, or the effect they’d have on him. He was too angry to care.

  In less than an hour, he had a finished solution. It wasn’t pretty, but then neither was the puzzle it was built on. Will activated it with a click of his fingers.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he growled at the program and threw himself in.

  He found himself lying in a berth aboard a slow-moving starship carved from the body of an asteroid. Through the touch console, Will could feel the outlines of the wonderful new world hanging below them. There were a few cities there, their fins sticking up above the dunes in orderly rows. It was a big improvement over the old world. He could remember it, a place with countless kilometres of tunnels, honeycombed to death, the bottom layers filled with industrial waste.

  He snuggled up against his wife. He couldn’t see her, but through a combination of other senses, he knew what they both looked like. Ugly, said the human mind. Wonderful, said the puzzle.

  They had simple vestigial eyes like a spider’s on blunt faces with huge teeth for gnawing. Where ears should have been they had noses that doubled as whiskers, big feathery protrusions like the antennae of moths. There were retractable spade-like claws on their hands. They came from a world of hot, subterranean rivers and limestone forests.

  His wife spoke. Once again, the Transcended used Rachel’s voice.

  ‘You are experiencing frustration.’

  The theft of her smooth, alto tones filled Will with further rage.

  ‘Damn right!’ he said. ‘And the first thing you can do about it is lay off that voice! If you think it’s going to win me over, you’re way wrong.’

  ‘We use the voice of your intended mate to increase your comfort and attentiveness, not to attempt persuasion,’ said the Transcended.

  Will was caught off guard. ‘Intended mate?’ He’d never let himself think of Rachel in those terms.

  ‘Do you deny that this is your desire?’

  Will wanted to deny it, but what was the point of denying the truth to an entity that had access to the inside of your head? That was reaching new levels of denial.

  ‘You did not call upon us to discuss the voice of your intended mate,’ said the Transcended.

  Will recovered his momentum. ‘No. You know exactly why I called on you – because I’m fed up with you messing around inside my head!’ He jerked back and forth in the lightless berth, wobbling his long, hairless body.

  ‘You refer to the sensation of discomfort you have experienced since leaving the Fecund star system,’ said the female beside him.

  ‘Of course I’m talking about the fucking sensation. I want you to stop it!’

  ‘We cannot. We are not the origin of the sensation. You are.’

  That took Will by surprise.

  ‘It is a natural anxiety springing from an accurate comprehension of your situation,’ the alien explained. ‘By leaving the Fecund system, you are risking the destruction of your species.’

  ‘I didn’t have a choice,’ said Will.

  ‘You do not fully believe this remark. This is one reason why your anxiety is so acute.’

  Will gnashed his enormous teeth. ‘You could have helped me,’ he insisted. ‘We need not have left.’

  ‘You believe we should have aided you in convincing Captain Baron to remain in the Fecund star system.’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘You are mistaken,’ the Transcended said. ‘This was your responsibility. You may consider it a part of the test.’

  ‘The test,’ Will said with scorn, ‘feels like a pretty arbitrary way to decide the fate of a species.’

  ‘Yes,’ the alien agreed. ‘However, it is still the best option available to us at this point. When you activated this program, we began taking steps to equip you with the tools you will need to compensate for your changed circumstances.’

  Will wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that. ‘Tools? What kind of tools?’

  ‘Their nature will become clear to you if you solve the required puzzle necessary to activate them.’

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you don’t understand. Can’t this whole test thing just wait? Just give us a while to stop the Earthers first!’

  ‘You cannot stop them,’ said the female. ‘Captain Baron is mistaken in his belief that the knowledge he has is adequate to prevent his world from being overrun.’

  Will froze. ‘How … You can’t know that.’

  ‘We examined the memory hierarchies of the group you call the Earthers in great detail. Without assistance, you will eventually be overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers.’

  ‘Then blow up Zuni-Dehel!’ Will raged. ‘You can do that, can’t you?’

  ‘That option was a
vailable to us when you made contact with the lure, but this test was considered a better solution. You no longer have access to the lure. Furthermore, you no longer have access to the Fecund star system.’

  Will was aghast. ‘Why not?’

  ‘At thirteen forty-three ship time today, your fuel supplies became too low to enable you to return.’

  Will was speechless for a moment. Ira had kept that mighty quiet. Will’s sense of betrayal deepened a little.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he said.

  ‘We were waiting to see if your natural anxiety was sufficient to override your group instincts while return was still possible.’

  Will craned his bulky, seal-like body against the soft upper layer of the berth. ‘You did what?’

  ‘That motivation was not sufficient,’ the female said, ignoring his outburst. ‘It is our judgement that you sacrificed your desire to the perceived need of your social group. This trait is visible in many constructive species, so we have not condemned you for it.’

  ‘This is insane!’ said Will. ‘You want us to go back, but you leave it till now to tell me we don’t have that option?’

  ‘No, Will,’ said the alien wryly. ‘We do not want you to go back. We encourage you to. Were we to have attempted coercion, we would have succeeded. We are only interested in what you choose to do. We intervene only to give you access to facilities we have already decided to put at your disposal. Here are two questions for you to consider. First, would you return to the Fecund system now if you were the only one at risk – if it was a choice for you to make alone?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘Secondly, what are you prepared to sacrifice to create such an opportunity?’

  Will paused. He didn’t have an easy answer for that one.

  ‘We recommend you contemplate that,’ the alien said finally.

  Will felt his senses lurch. The SAP was starting to disengage. ‘Wait!’ he cried, but it was already too late.

  The puzzle dumped him back into the Ariel’s main cabin. He felt as if he’d been dropped there from a great height. He gasped for breath and stared at the ceiling of his bunk.

  He was glad Amy wasn’t monitoring his vital signs right now. They wouldn’t have shown him in the best of health. The puzzle had left him with an overpowering sensation of nausea. As he lay motionless on his bunk recovering, Will found himself filled with dread.

  It was too late to go back. That meant they had no choice but to try John’s plan on New Angeles. Sweat rolled off his brow. He tried to reach up to wipe his face and discovered to his horror that he was too weak to move. Now that he paid attention to it, it was clear his body had changed since he’d launched the puzzle. It was burning up. The alien virus was back.

  He tried to speak but couldn’t even muster a croak. He was forced to cry out through his interface instead.

  ‘Help!’

  Even that frail effort was too much for him. He struggled to stay awake, without success, and tumbled headlong into the abyss of unconsciousness.

  11.3: IRA

  After the fiasco in the privacy chamber, sleep for Ira became impossible. He climbed up into the meeting chamber, unlocked the gym-system from the wall and started bench-pressing weights. He had to channel the physical tension in his body into something other than crushing Hugo’s skull like an egg.

  Infuriating though the scientist was, Ira knew he only had himself to blame. Things should never have got this bad. The Ira of five years ago would have woken spontaneously the moment Hugo started talking to Will. Hell, even the Ira of six months ago. His instincts had never failed him so badly. He was definitely losing his touch.

  Worse still, Ira had known he’d been taking a risk when he threatened Hugo. Applying traditional stick-and-carrot discipline to men as genetically overclocked as Hugo Vartian never panned out straight. There was always the chance they’d snap, and Hugo had definitely snapped. Ira notched the weight setting up again to five hundred kilos and started a fresh set of reps.

  The comm sounded.

  ‘What is it?’ said Ira.

  ‘It’s me,’ said John. ‘Can you spare a moment?’

  Ira folded the weights back into the wall and thumbed the door open.

  John’s head appeared at the hatch. ‘Hi,’ he said and climbed in, shutting the door behind him.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ said Ira, wiping the sweat from his face. He didn’t feel much like talking.

  ‘It’s about you, Captain,’ said John. ‘With respect, your cracks are showing.’

  Ira scowled at him.

  John grinned and raised both hands in submission. ‘A joke! Really. I heard everything that happened and I didn’t come up here to piss you off more. I want to help. It’s clear we have a problem.’

  ‘That’s a fucking understatement,’ Ira growled. ‘We’re going to have to put our goddamn passenger into coma. Which will make a mess of what’s left of our meds and leave us a hand down right as we go into the lion’s den.’

  ‘We don’t have to,’ said John. ‘That’s what I wanted to say. I have an idea: we could just put him off the ship instead.’

  Ira frowned. ‘I don’t get it. Are you proposing we shove him out of an airlock?’

  John shook his head. ‘Of course not. I’m talking about giving him to the resistance on New Angeles to babysit. Look, he’s done his job – we already know how to beat the suntap. Now he’s dead weight and causing problems. Setting him down would give everyone a break.’

  Ira winced. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said bluntly. ‘For starters, he’s got a head full of military secrets.’

  ‘Is that really an issue?’ asked John. ‘How long can the war possibly last now? The suntap has totally changed the game. There are a few months left in it, tops, we both know that. Either we get home in time, build our own suntaps and force a truce on Earth, or Galatea will be crushed. Nothing in Hugo’s head makes a whit of difference any more. Plus there’s the fact that using coma is a problem, as you mentioned. If anything else weird happens to Will, we’ll be out of meds. Do you want that?’

  Ira squirmed inside. John’s idea made sense. He dearly wanted Hugo off the ship but dumping him with a bunch of rebels still felt like a cruel choice.

  ‘I’m not sure he could hack it,’ he said. ‘He hasn’t exactly proved himself robust.’

  ‘True,’ said John. ‘But you need Will, you need a functional ship and you need to be able to make it home even if some other crazy shit busts off on this mission. You have to ask yourself if you’re prepared to risk Galatea’s survival to protect a single, unbalanced physicist.’

  Put that way the answer seemed clear, even if Ira didn’t like it that much. He exhaled. The moment he let himself indulge the idea, he could feel a weight lifting from his shoulders.

  ‘How do you expect to do it?’ he asked. ‘Hugo’s not an easy man to handle. We can’t afford to jeopardize your mission.’

  John laughed. ‘Not a problem,’ he said. ‘I promise. If you could have met some of the people I’ve babysat behind enemy lines, you wouldn’t worry. For starters, there’s only one of him and he’s not trying to kill me.’

  ‘And what do we tell Hugo? How do we get him to buy in?’

  ‘Simple.’ John waved an airy hand. ‘We tell him that you can’t stand the sight of his face, which is true. We say that I’ve requested help for the trip down to New Angeles, and that this is his chance to redeem himself. He doesn’t need to know he’s staying put.’

  Ira pulled a face. ‘You think he’d buy that?’

  ‘I think he’d buy that we’re desperate, which is enough. Furthermore, I think he’d see a chance to advance his own agenda by getting off your ship, which makes everything else moot.’

  Ira stared at the wall and thought. He still didn’t like the plan but he couldn’t argue with the efficiency of it. It had the kind of cold, tidy logic John excelled at. Plus there was the churning, irrational sense inside him that at some level, Hu
go deserved it. Maybe seeing what the rest of the war looked like outside his ivory tower would be the slap of perspective he needed.

  ‘You’re confident he’ll be safe?’

  John cocked an amused eyebrow. ‘You’re saying he’d be safe on the Ariel? He’ll definitely be safer down there, but let’s face it, that’s not hard. You have to fly home unnoticed across all of Earther space while being hunted by the entire fleet. He won’t.’

  Ira hesitated, knowing he’d already been convinced. Another ping on the comm broke his thoughts.

  ‘What is it?’ said Ira.

  John’s brow creased in anger at the interruption.

  Amy’s voice sounded over the speaker. ‘It’s Will,’ she said with a heavy sigh. ‘His micromachines are at it again. I’ve no idea how or why they started up again, but it’s far worse than before. The virus has invaded most of his major organs.’

  Back in the main cabin, Ira viewed Will’s medical profile with a mixture of fury and concern. It didn’t surprise him that the mystery illness should appear the moment they turned their backs on the Fecund system. Ira wasn’t doing what the so-called Transcended wanted, so they were using the best bargaining chip they had: Will’s life. If these aliens expected him to trust them, they weren’t doing a great job of convincing him.

  A part of Ira did regret leaving the ruins behind. Perhaps Will had been right that an answer lay back there. But Ira was the captain of a Galatean starship, and he didn’t have the luxury of following a series of cryptic clues when there was a deadline for the survival of his people. And anyway, what kind of ally opened negotiations with a threat to destroy the human race? When he thought about it too much, Hugo’s ideas started to make sense.

  ‘Is there any way we can deactivate them?’ he asked Amy. ‘His micromachines, I mean.’

  ‘Not without taking them out. Which we don’t have the tech for.’

  He scowled down at Will’s empty bunk. ‘So where does that leave us?’

  Amy sighed. ‘Our best option is to contain the virus by leaving him in the tank. With a constant supply of antivirals, we might be able to keep him stable till we get home.’