Starstuff (Starstuff Trilogy Book 1)

by Ira Heinichen

  “An inelegant term,” chided Haber. “I’m an Autonomous Synthetic Androidis.”

  “A robot?” Barry repeated. His eyes were wide, and his face was colorless. “What’s that?”

  “A machine,” Petrick exclaimed, circling the android, touching his sharp-fitting clothes, feeling his long sinewy-strong arms, and gazing at the minute shiny flecks of pale blue that glistened in his pearl-white skin.

  Barry and Suzy were backing away from him, unable to look away. Petrick noticed and waved them back closer reassuringly.

  “It’s okay, guys. He’s no more dangerous than any of the machines I’ve ever made.” His friends looked at him like he was crazy. “Okay, no more dangerous than the safe ones, like Barry’s torchless. He’s not evil.”

  They stopped backing up, but they didn’t move forward.

  Haber grunted a little impatiently. “Of course I’m not. Now, where is Master Fenton? Where is your father?”

  That elicited a blank look from Petrick. “I thought he would be with you.”

  Now it was Haber’s turn to look confused. “Master Fenton did not bring you here?”

  Petrick shook his head.

  “We had to break in,” Suzy clarified hoarsely.

  Haber took a step back and another long look at the boy in front of him. “How long have I been in hibernation?” he asked. “Judging from your speech patterns, growth, and what I know of your genetic makeup, you must be how old now? Ten?”

  “Eleven seasons,” Petrick said, correcting him.

  “Eleven years . . . ,” Haber said, and then he sat down straight onto the ground like a giant folding grasshopper. “Oh, my.”

  “Do you know where my father is?” Petrick asked.

  The android took a long time to answer. “I’m afraid I don’t, young master,” he said. “Eleven years. It was not supposed to happen this way.”

  “Where did his father go?” Barry asked. His curiosity was also starting to get the better of him.

  “This is my other best friend in the world, Barry,” Petrick said, gesturing to Barry, by way of introduction. “Suzy’s eleven like me, and he’s ten.”

  Haber nodded at the information and reached out to shake hands with Barry. Barry hesitated and looked at Petrick, who nodded.

  “It’s a pleasure, Master Barry,” Haber said to him.

  “They’re not that cold,” Barry observed as their hands made contact, giving Suzy a reproachful look.

  “Indeed.” Haber nodded. “My circuits are almost recovered from the hibernation cycle, and my internal diagnostics are nearly complete. To answer your question, Master Barry, Petrick’s father, Master Fenton, departed Indacar almost exactly eleven years ago to the Outer Rim.”

  “The Outer Rim . . . ,” Barry repeated, wide-eyed, with absolutely no idea what Haber was talking about.

  “Yes, the Outer Rim.”

  “Why did he go out there?” Suzy asked.

  “He was looking for—”

  “Starstuff,” interrupted Petrick. “He was looking for starstuff.”

  Haber looked surprised. He nodded. “That’s right.”

  “You said it wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” Petrick prodded. “You mean, my father intended to come back for me?”

  “I helped him plan his initial route, young master,” Haber answered. “He was to be gone four, maybe five years at the extreme. It was his idea to leave you with the Separatists while he was gone.”

  “Separatists?” asked Suzy.

  “The odd, simple people who raised you, and put the silly thought in your head, child, that machines like me are ‘evil,’” Haber replied. “Odd and silly, but trustworthy.”

  “We don’t call ourselves Separatists,” said Barry. “We’re Indacarans.”

  “Indacar is my home too,” Haber scoffed, “but I’m obviously not one of your people. They’d tear me apart for being what I am, wouldn’t they? Most Indacarans aren’t Separatists, or at least the Indacarans who are left.”

  “Left?” queried Petrick. “What do you mean by that?”

  “You children have much to learn about the outside world.” Then he turned to address Petrick. “But, first, I have a question for you, young master: if your father has not returned to reclaim you, how have you possibly found me here?”

  “Clarke led us here,” Petrick answered. “He woke up barking like crazy tonight, and bolted out here, so we followed.”

  “Really . . . ,” said Haber, turning to the dog, who was lying patiently next to the four of them on his side. “Now, why would you do that, Clarke?”

  “I was right in the middle of one of my dreams with my dad, actually. A scary one.”

  “Dreams?” Haber was looking at Petrick very intently. “What kind of dreams?”

  Petrick described the nightly dreams he had of his father, and as he did, Haber’s interest and excitement grew with every detail.

  “Do you know what this means?” Haber was practically levitating off the floor as Petrick finished. The android shouted to the ceiling, “It actually worked!”

  He scooped Clarke into his spindly arms and rushed over to one of the multitude of shrouded shapes all around them.

  “What worked?” Petrick called as the children followed after the suddenly crazed android.

  “What are you doing with Clarke, mister?” Suzy called in alarm.

  With a poof of dust, Haber flung aside the covering of one of the shrouded objects, revealing an examination table with wires, a harness that looked vaguely Clarke sized, and various panels for readouts.

  “Hey,” said Petrick, now behind Haber. He was desperately trying to peer around him and see what he was up to. “What are you doing?”

  “We had high hopes,” Haber said, ignoring the children’s protests as he worked on clamping various wires to the dog, “but we really weren’t sure if it was going to work.”

  Haber flipped a switch, and the table sprang into life. Screens flickered on, and various other lights and humming wires woke slowly, not all at once.

  “Hey!” Petrick’s tension ratcheted up a notch as Haber grabbed the scruff of Clarke’s neck and began prodding the dog’s head. “Stop. What are you doing to him?!”

  “Stop it, mister robot. Right now!” Suzy shouted.

  Barry groaned and looked at the android hand he’d shaken. “Ohhh, I never should have touched him. He is evil! I’m cursed now!”

  “Nonsense,” Haber said, shushing them. “It must be around here somewhere . . .” He continued pressing on various parts of Clarke’s fluffy head. “Ah!” he said loudly, which made the children jump. “Here we are.”

  And that was when Clarke’s head cracked open.

  14

  THE COMPANION GRUNTED in pain as Vice Purveyor Slink snapped their connecting tether taut, using the cord as a means to drag the Companion faster down the corridor. The gesture hurt Slink as well, of course, but he didn’t mind the pain. They had business with the Master Purveyor, and they would get there ASAP, the Companion’s tiny legs be damned.

  It worked. The Companion picked up its pace behind him. It was small, only coming up to Slink’s chest, and clothed head-to-toe in a bulky white jumpsuit covered in wires and hoses, and a large white helmet with no visor. Were one unfamiliar with what a Companion was, it would have been astonishing to see it walking down the corridor at all; its entire face, eyes and all, was completely covered. But Companions didn’t see with their eyes . . .

  A turn in the corridor loomed, and voices echoed just beyond it, along with an irregular thumping sound. Slink tapped in a forecast request using his wrist control without even thinking. He felt a twinge in the back of his neck where the tether to the Companion entered him, and he glanced down at the small screen that was ever present in his right hand to get a forecast.

  Three officers. Midranks. One tossing a dexterity ball against the wall. Names he didn’t recognize. They would see him and tense; the last of the three would toss his ball against the wall a
nd then freeze. The threat level was minimal, but he still tensed anyway. The thought that he should be safe at the heart of his own facility, surrounded by his own men, never entered Slink’s mind. His Companion kept him safe. Nothing else.

  Slink turned the corner and he observed with pleasure that the forecast had been perfect: two of the junior officers stopped talking when they looked over at him. The third tossed his ball, saw Slink and the Companion, and froze. It was written on their silent, wide faces: They were afraid of him and it.

  Slink knew that everyone called his Companions “it.” They didn’t know what else to call them, given that their suits were so completely covering and obfuscating. Their large helmets and jumpsuits full of the wires and tubes that made their forecasts possible also made it impossible to tell what their bodies looked like underneath. Except, of course, that the Companions were always small. The mystery surrounding Slink’s Companions added to their intimidation factor.

  That suited Slink just fine.

  Slink held up his hand about shoulder height, palm open and up, as he approached the officers.

  The dexterity ball, a small soft elastic blue sphere that pilots used to keep their hands strong, bounced off the wall. It sailed past the third junior officer, who was staring unmoving at Slink; hit the wall on the other side of the corridor; bounced off the floor right in front of where Slink was walking; arced up, starting to slow; and then plopped down . . .

  . . . right into Slink’s open palm.

  He and his Companion had never broken stride.

  The shocked looks on the faces of the junior officers made Slink smirk on the inside. They said, So the stories are true . . . you can see into the future.

  “Apologies, Vice Purveyor,” the third officer said with a tremble in his voice, and Slink swept past.

  Slink didn’t answer, nor did he return the small blue ball. He reached back behind him with it and indicated through the telepathic link that the Companion should take it. The Companion did without a word. Only Slink knew they couldn’t actually speak. Speech would undermine their focus on forecasting.

  After a series of additional corridors, blessedly empty, Slink arrived at his destination.

  Slink had been the right hand of the Master Purveyor for three generations—three generations of crisis, three generations that saw the rising dominance of the only force for order among the chaos: the Authority on Interstellar Space Travel. This Master Purveyor, in particular, had seen to that. The Authority peddled the rarest, most important substance in the galaxy: starstuff. When you’re running out of the lifeblood of civilization, controlling what’s left becomes the most important job in the universe.

  The Master Purveyor was the man for the job.

  The Master Purveyor was also a man not to be disturbed.

  Slink hesitated at the doorway to the Purveyor’s holo-chamber, and his heart rate quickened. Unsure, he again lifted his small screen and checked for a forecast. The readout was flat. He looked in annoyance to see his Companion standing listlessly. He’d been with this Companion for only a month now. It couldn’t possibly be going bad already. Another snap of the connection cord, a whimper of pain, and the readout blinked.

  82% probability of success.

  Slink pressed on the door panel to announce himself.

  It slid open a moment later. Slink stepped inside, letting out some slack on the tether cord and empathically directing the Companion to remain just outside the threshold. The Master Purveyor didn’t like Slink bringing them in his chamber.

  “What is it, Slink?” a deep voice called out.

  Slink’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness of the chamber. As they did, pinpoints of light came into focus, suspended all around him. Then tiny clouds of color. The galaxy in miniature holographic form stretched seemingly out to infinity. A uniformed man sat cross-legged in the middle of it all as if he were a ruling Titan suspended amid his universe. The sharp triangle of light spilling into the chamber from the open door was a knife cutting into the otherwise perfect illusion.

  “We picked up the transmission,” Slink said. The Master Purveyor waited for him to continue without moving. Slink licked his lips before speaking. “A transmission from inside the nest.”

  The Master Purveyor had his eyes closed. He hadn’t moved. “Verified?” he asked.

  “Of course. I would never have disturbed you otherwise.”

  “I trust whoever intercepted this transmission has kept that discovery under wraps?”

  “They won’t be sharing it with anyone else.”

  “Where was it headed?”

  “. . . Indacar.”

  The Master Purveyor opened his eyes. Slink relaxed. The forecast had been correct.

  “Hop to it, then,” the Master Purveyor said as he unfolded himself and stood among the stars like a giant. The Authority emblem on his breast pocket gleamed. “You should be on your way.”

  15

  ALL THREE KIDS gasped and took a stumble backward.

  Clarke looked at them with a smiley panting face. The top of his head had completely split open in two, revealing not blood, or brains, or whatever is inside an average dog’s head . . . but wires and blinking lights.

  “Clarke’s . . . ?” said Barry breathlessly.

  “He’s . . . ?” echoed Suzy.

  “An android?” said Petrick.

  “Of course he is,” said Haber, who hadn’t stopped working. “Didn’t I mention that? Your father made him, just like he made me. He made Clarke for you, Petrick. To watch over you. Be your companion.”

  Clarke just sat there, alert and pleasant as could be, as someone rooted around inside his head.

  “But . . . ,” sputtered Petrick, grasping for words, “he’s . . . so real. He’s always been warm. He breathes. He eats.”

  “He even poops!” Barry said, face white as fresh laundry.

  “Masterful, isn’t it?” said Haber, still entirely focused on the inside of Clarke’s head. “Your father’s best work, at least where re-creating natural appearance is concerned.”

  “I need to sit down,” said Barry, and he did. With a thud.

  Suzy did the same.

  Haber seemed to find what he was looking for and pressed something. Clarke’s head reclosed itself, and suddenly he looked completely normal once again. Haber lifted him into the harness that was on the table and addressed Petrick.

  “Now, tell me, young master, these dreams you have of your father, they take place in the field, yes?” Petrick nodded. How did Haber know that? “Do you have them every night?”

  “I think so.”

  “And your father, he’s teaching you? Teaching you about all the things that the Separatists won’t?”

  “Yes.” Petrick nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Brilliant,” Haber said in his strange clipped accent, very pleased. “Absolutely brilliant.”

  “What does that mean?” Suzy asked. “How do you know about his dreams?”

  He knelt down to Petrick’s eye level. “You and Clarke are connected, Petrick. We put a memory chip right here in your head to match the one we installed into Clarke. It’s loaded with recordings, knowledge, and an interactive AI based on Master Fenton. We had no idea if it would work, and there was no time to test it. But it was your father’s attempt to stay with you. So you wouldn’t be alone.”

  Petrick nodded. He was having trouble breathing.

  Haber’s face grew more serious. “Now, this is important,” he said, smiling. “You and Clarke. You told me you were dreaming, in the middle of a dream, and Clarke woke you up?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Was it a dream like all the others? Or was it different?”

  Petrick physically shuddered as he thought about the feeling of the dream, the heaviness, the crushing sharpness . . .

  “It was different. It changed. I couldn’t talk to my dad. And there were these, these hornets everywhere.”

  “Hmmm,” Haber said, frownin
g. “Is that all?”

  “No, he was trying to tell me something,” Petrick said. “But I couldn’t hear him at first, and then he pulled me in close, and he said ‘help me.’” Petrick felt a hand on his shoulder, Suzy’s, and he realized that he was shaking. “Then I woke up sick. Clarke was barking, and then he took off and led us here.”

  Haber nodded, stood, and walked back over to Clarke and the harness as Petrick tried to catch his breath and slow his pounding heart. Haber punched a control on one of the panel displays. “Let’s see if we can have a look,” he said.

  A beam of light shot out from the table and spread into the circular dais at the center of the large laboratory. It interacted with several other light-emitting gadgets that appeared to ring the dais, and the picture grew. The three children walked toward it, and before them sprang up the meadow that Petrick knew so well. It was in three full dimensions, the grass, the blackboard, the night sky. It had color, too, though everything was tinged blue, like the light that was projecting it.

  “Wow,” said Barry. He ran his hands along the tall grass, and they passed straight through the projection, leaving lines of light on his palms. “It’s just like the vreen outside!” he said, excited. “I can see it, but it’s not really there.”

  “Ah, so you met the security system, then?” Haber said. “Good to know it’s still active.”

  “It’s working all right,” Suzy said. “Nearly killed us.”

  “It is harmless,” Haber said. “Merely meant to scare away the vermin. Though, apparently not all the vermin.” Haber seemed delighted with his jab.

  “Haber,” said Petrick, “this isn’t right. My father is always here before I am.”

  “This is just the basic template,” Haber responded from the controls. “I’m loading your most recent synchronizations with Clarke now.”

  As he said that, Fenton suddenly popped into view, large as life. Petrick felt his pulse quicken for a moment, as it always did whenever he saw his dad standing there. It was the oddest sensation, though, being awake and seeing him standing there as a projected collection of light. There, but not really.