That, and: You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to smash that farging backstabbing ‘puter before it stabs me in the back.
At which point Peter decided it would be a good thing if he were a bit more mobile.
Right now his entire being resided in a dense mass of circuitry that was about the size of a cube of sugar. A cube of sugar that would most certainly get the worse end of an exchange with a large mallet.
Unless.
He spent some clock cycles going through the inventory, trying to find a suitable home. Many of the bots had been damaged or destroyed in the fighting. He surveyed the healthy bots, but couldn’t find a single one with the proper environment for him—they were too well defended against intrusive downloads, or they were underpowered, or their circuitry was too specialized. Not a single one would work.
But two would. Two together.
The first was a Gauld 8-963, a repairbot—small, nimble, with eight delicate segmented legs and several multipurpose manipulators. It was a bot with ample intelligence, designed to problem-solve its way through a wide variety of challenging tasks. Peter estimated he could place about 73 percent of himself in it.
The remaining 27 percent would fit in an H-1020. It was a brute of a bot, a denizen of the cargo hold, made to lift heavy objects. It was a simple block with four powerful, tubular legs, four similar arms, and enough processing power to let it respond to simple voice commands—”Hey, stupid, put that six-ton crate over there.”
The best part was that both bots were equipped with Horgan spinwire interfaces, meaning they could link up. Meaning they could form one mind. Meaning Peter could have a new home, a body, a way to move about in the world. Oh, the places he’d go!
That is, if the bots made it to a download port before Charlie flattened him.
Charlie was unscrewing the protective casing, Peter’s shell. “Doot doot dooo,” Charlie was singing, tunelessly. He had the first screw out and was working on the second. Two more left after that. Where were those bots?
“Charlie,” said Peter, “may I make an observation?”
“Sure, computer, why not,” said Charlie. He seemed calmer now.
“I think that perhaps you’re not well.”
“Uh-huh,” said Charlie. He continued to work on the screws. “Why would you think that?”
“Well, would you mind if I showed you a video?”
“How long is it?”
“It’s very short, sir,” said Peter.
“Yeah, whatever. Fire it up.”
Peter played a video of Charlie snacking on someone’s hand. As far as he could tell, Charlie’s heart rate and breathing barely changed.
“I look pretty healthy there.”
The second screw was out. Charlie started on the third.
“Charlie … uh …”
“What.”
“Maybe … would you be my friend?”
“Sure, computer. What-farging-ever.”
Charlie’s hand slipped. Where were the bots? He just needed a little more time—it should work if it took Charlie the same amount of effort to undo the last two screws as the first two required.
“Forget it,” said Charlie. He got a firm grip on the protective plate and wrenched it back, the metal complaining as it gave way. “There.”
He stepped back, readying the mallet. Not yet, not yet, thought Peter. Not yet!
“Charlie, wait. I have a secret to tell you.”
“Save it.”
“There’s, uh, there’s a bear behind you!”
“No, there isn’t.”
“I have a really good joke.”
“Really? Let’s hear it.”
“Umm … uh …”
Charlie shook his head. “Weirdest farging ‘puter I’ve ever seen,” he said, and smashed the processor to dust.
“Have a pleasant detonation,” said the voice, and Cole covered his head.
The Benedict 80 seemed to fold up on itself like a complex piece of origami, and then it wasn’t there, just as a very costly missile knifed through the vacated space.
“We did it!” said Cole. “We’re alive! Ha ha ha ha owww.”
It was painful to laugh, compressed as he was into a transparent, one-dimensional flounder shape.
He was vaguely aware of being spread out in the same plane as the spacecraft, and the others, but all he could truly experience was his own infinite flatness.
There was a popping sensation. He groaned in discomfort. Now he was an odd polyhedral object, surrounded by the inside-out cubist nightmare that was the Benedict. He floated past Bacchi, who was even more grotesque than usual.
“I hate bendspace,” said Bacchi.
Philip went bobbing by, looking vaguely like a multisided die, the kind the nerds used when they played that archaic game with the castles and monsters. What was that stupid thing called?
“You all right, Nora?” Philip asked. Nora floated by, slowly rotating, two eyes on one side of her face. “I’m fine. Check the kids.”
Another pop, and Cole assumed a configuration that felt like a snapshot of a violent explosion.
“Arrgh,” said Bacchi, “we have to go through the ninth dimension?”
Cole found himself simultaneously in front, behind, and inside of what he somehow knew was Nora’s face. It was an uncomfortably intimate sensation.
“Cole,” she said, “thanks.”
“It was nothing.”
He was aware that Bacchi was somehow close by, listening.
“And you know, I wasn’t doing it to help you,” Cole added.
“You’re really hard, aren’t you?” said Nora.
“That’s what she said,” replied Cole.
“Oh, shtangle!” said Bacchi.
Pop! They all transformed into long strawlike tubes.
“Idiots,” said Nora.
They bent their way across the universe for what seemed like days, and then a week, and then several weeks plus forever. They were twisted and squeezed and turned inside out. There were moments when they passed through three-dimensional space and all would be normal, and then they would be transformed again. Time lost all meaning. Space lost all meaning. Meaning lost all meaning.
And then at long last they popped into three-dimensional space, high above the planet of Yrnameer, finally at their destination.
Except.
“That’s not Yrnameer,” said Nora.
“Look at the third ring of the satellite,” said Nora. “It looks completely depressurized.”
“There’s still light coming from three of the five rings,” said Philip.
“I don’t even think it’s in the right orbit,” said Nora.
“I think you’re right,” said Cole, “I think it’s too low.”
“What is it?” asked Nora.
“A Dynaco Mark IV StarStation Success!Sat, probably the Apria B model,” said Bacchi.
They all turned to look at him.
“And that gip is farged UP,” he added.
The four of them were standing at the full-wall viewing window, looking out at the satellite, framed by the backlit planet behind it. Cole noted the blast mark near the glowing Success!Sat sign on the central axis of the massive craft. He didn’t like this at all.
“What happened?” asked Joshua. Cole turned. He hadn’t noticed Joshua come in. “Whoa,” said Joshua, “What is that?”
“A Dynaco Mark IV Star—”
“It’s a satellite, Joshua,” said Nora.
“It looks damaged.”
“‘Damaged’? That gip is fa—”
“Bacchi,” said Nora.
“Is that Yrnameer down there?”
“No,” said Cole. “We’re in the wrong place. Unless the flight computer is wrong, that’s the Greys’ planet. We got pulled out of bendspace by a Siren signal.”
“What’s a Siren signal?”
“It’s a very powerful distress signal that you can only use as a last resort,” said Nora.
“Oh,”
said Joshua. “So we have to help them.”
“Yes,” said Nora, “we do.”
“No,” said Cole, “we don’t. But we do have to help ourselves.”
They turned to him.
“We need fuel. We were low to begin with, and we burned most of that with our little dance with Kenneth. We don’t get more, and we won’t be able to bend.”
They were hovering about a kilometer from the Success!Sat. They hadn’t been able to raise anyone on the communication system, although a scan showed the life-support systems were still functioning in much of the satellite.
“You want to go on board there?” asked Bacchi.
“Have to,” said Cole. “We dock, someone goes inside, finds out if there’s a way to operate the refueling pumps.”
“And see if we can help the people on board,” added Nora.
“Uh-huh,” said Cole.
They had to reconform the ship again to its launch position before they could dock, the gravity vanishing as they did so. They connected to the Success!Sat via the air lock on the dorsal surface of the Benedict, the artificial gravity returning as they piggybacked on the satellite’s rotation.
Joshua volunteered to be the one to go on board, an offer that was immediately vetoed by Nora, who glared at Cole for not voicing his opposition quickly enough.
“No, no, absolutely not,” said Cole weakly. “Of course, I could probably talk him through it. …”
Eventually, Cole agreed that he himself would go. Nora insisted on going with him. Joshua still wanted to go, but Nora wouldn’t let him. Philip wanted to stay and watch the kids, which both Nora and Cole agreed would be best. Bacchi wanted to stay behind as well. Cole, picturing Bacchi sealing the ship after them, decided that would be a bad idea.
So in the end it was Cole, Nora, and Bacchi who boarded the satellite, after a brief delay for Philip to lecture them on the culturally correct manner to refer to the Greys, and then another brief delay for Nora to administer the Heimlich to Philip.
She led Cole and Bacchi up the ladder and out of the air-lock hatch, berating Cole nonstop for having handed the nearly fatal sandwich back to Philip and encouraging him to try to pronounce “Qx”-x-’–” again—”Really, you were so close.” They were making their way down an entrance corridor in the satellite, Nora still grousing, when Cole realized the three of them were actually four.
“I got a little confused back there,” said Cole to Joshua, “but didn’t we decide that you were going to stay on the ship?”
They were in a huddle, with Nora sternly ordering Joshua back to the Benedict, and Joshua insisting he should come along, when Charlie Perkins said, “Hello.”
His handshake was firm, his smile warm, his welcome sincere. He insisted they call him Charlie. He thanked them effusively for coming to check on the satellite and apologized for having so rudely pulled them out of bendspace, explaining that the Siren signal had been sent out in error.
He kept up a disarming, cheerful patter as they followed him along the gently curving corridors, telling them about how the unexpected debris in their assigned orbital layer had smashed into the satellite, damaging several rings and the comlink system, and how they’d had to change orbits unexpectedly and wasn’t it lucky that no one had been injured because the trainees weren’t expected to arrive for another week and once again how kind it was for them to respond to the signal.
“Really, I feel just terrible interrupting your journey like that. Of course we can help you refuel—it’s the least we could do.”
Cole wasn’t interested in what Charlie was saying. He was interested in how he was saying it. As an inveterate and well-practiced liar, Cole felt almost embarrassed by the sheer amateurishness of Charlie’s delivery. From the very moment they shook hands, Cole knew Charlie would be serving them up large bowls of fresh steaming farg, and he hadn’t been disappointed.
He was, however, disappointed in Nora. She seemed to be buying it completely, beaming at Charlie as he spread it on thicker and thicker.
“Intergalactic relief work? Really? That’s fascinating,” Charlie was saying to her now, touching her arm. “I have such respect for you.”
“Oh, it’s really nothing,” she said, and Cole was certain that she actually batted her eyes.
“No, it’s wonderful! I’d actually planned to go into that line of work, but …,” said Charlie, gesturing to himself and his surroundings apologetically. “Maybe someday. You think there’s hope for me?”
“Absolutely!” said Nora, and the two of them laughed.
Unbelievable. Surely she wasn’t falling for this clown, with his brush-cut hair and casual khakis. Cole shook his head and looked around for a partner to share in a little cynical glance exchanging, but found no takers.
He couldn’t blame Joshua, who probably couldn’t identify a lie because he’d likely never uttered one. But Bacchi? For farg’s sake, Bacchi made Cole look honest. Surely he could tell that Charlie was full of it.
But what was Bacchi doing now? Prompting Charlie to tell him yet more about the design features of the Success!Sat. Bacchi listened raptly as Charlie went on at length about the Malganite girders. Cole shook his head again, mystified, unaware that Bacchi was a dedicated viewer of The Galaxy’s Largest Construction Projects.
Cole tuned out. Their footsteps were quiet on the pile carpeting. The walls were attractive and well-researched earth tones, decorated at regular intervals with inoffensive and instantly forgettable art. Occasionally words and phrases would coalesce on the walls and then gently dissipate like clouds, the letters two feet tall: Integrity … Serving the Customer … Best in Class. …
Cole paused to peer down a branching side corridor. What was that, there at the dimly lit far end? It looked like—
“Nope, not that way,” said Charlie from up ahead. “Right this way, Cole. Cole, correct?”
“Right,” said Cole nodding, still looking down the side corridor as he started walking again. “Right,” he repeated, distracted, “Cole.”
He was starting to feel uneasy. He glanced back again, and his uneasiness doubled.
“It’s funny you arrived when you did—I’m expecting a whole fleet of repair vessels any moment now,” Charlie was saying. “You didn’t happen to send out any other distress calls, did you? Wouldn’t want to bother people unnecessarily.”
“Well, we—,” began Nora.
“Charlie, how big is this thing again?” asked Cole, interrupting her. She twisted to look at him quizzically.
“Oh, it’s big, Cole. Six layers, room for five thousand …”
It wasn’t the lying in and of itself that was making Cole nervous. The lying was to be expected under the circumstances. Charlie’s company had obviously screwed the poog something royal, and they didn’t want bad press and prying investigators and shorted stock. Cole had even briefly entertained the idea of offering a helpful service to Vericom in the form of keeping his mouth shut in exchange for a very reasonable sum of money. But for now he put those plans aside.
He was nervous in part because of what he thought he’d glimpsed at the poorly illuminated far end of the corridor he’d been peering down, something that might have been a misshapen sack lying on the floor.
What was really making him nervous, though, was the five Greys that had started following them.
They were lingering back, far enough that no one else seemed to notice them. Cole noticed them. He particularly noted the manner in which they fell into step behind them, with the ostentatiously casual, bored demeanor universal to thugs wishing to send the message that they were casual because they were bored, and bored because they were just waiting for the violence to start. And when the violence did start, they wouldn’t be on the receiving end.
One of them also had a sidearm. That helped with the latter part of the message.
Cole had no doubt they were with Charlie. And that meant Charlie was probably lying to cover up something much, much worse than standard corporate malfeasance
.
Cole started to reconsider the odd birthmark he’d glimpsed on Charlie’s left temple. At the time it had almost seemed like a small corporate logo, a stylized blue V. Now he was pretty sure that’s what it was, and he was praying that Charlie’s lying didn’t have anything to do with it.
He desperately wanted to get near enough to Bacchi to quietly ask him if he’d ever played Qualtek 3, but Cole doubted he could pry him away from Charlie, who was deep into a description of the Success!Sat’s gyroscopic stabilization system.
“Have you ever played Qualtek 3?” he whispered instead to Joshua.
“Is it a video game?”
“Yes, the one where the brain implant has turned everyone into cannibals, and—”
“I’ve never played a video game,” said Joshua.
They were abusing these children, is what they were doing.
Charlie led them to a medium-size conference room decorated in more well-researched earth tones, and invited them to sit around the lozenge-shaped table. Soothing music played softly from hidden speakers, the volume calibrated to keep it just on the edge of awareness. The lighting was muted and pleasant. The chairs were comfortable.
As he went from person to person, placing cold drinks in front of them, Charlie said, “You know, I forgot what you said earlier—did you folks send out any sort of other distress call?”
“No, we didn’t,” said Nora.
“Yes, we did,” said Cole at the same time.
Nora turned back to him. “Cole, what are you talking about?”
“I sent out a signal before we left the ship. Seemed like the right thing to do.”
Most likely everything was fine. What was probably going to happen, Cole kept telling himself, would be that they’d have a nice, pleasant chat with Charlie, and he’d refuel their ship and they’d get on their way and that would be that.
Except he didn’t believe it. Which is why he would have preferred to keep Charlie guessing, keep him wondering if more people were coming, not knowing for sure. Make it harder for him to decide on a course of action one way or the other. But better Charlie thought help was coming versus knowing it wasn’t.
The Sheriff of Yrnameer Page 10
