Starship Waking

by C. Gockel

  He let out a breath of relief, even though the wind was whipping around them, making 6T9’s joints, especially in his exposed temple, freeze up. “I don’t think I truly appreciated how much pure dumb luck factored into survival. ”

  “Most people leave out how much of evolution Darwin attributed to dumb luck,” Carl replied. “Although, I don’t feel particularly lucky at the moment.” He squeaked piteously. Volka pulled the pack the werfle was in onto her lap. Purring, Carl poked his head out and she rubbed him behind the ears, kissing him distractedly, her teeth chattering. Some app within 6T9 went dark and then sparked wickedly. He found himself glaring at the werfle as the pod’s pace slowed.

  “Jealous, much?” Carl said.

  “Who’s jealous of what?” Volka asked.

  6T9’s eyes narrowed at the werfle, but he turned his attention to their predicament. He took in the snow and the steep walls of the chasm around them. The Iron Range was full of such formations. His Q-comm hummed, placing them in Felter’s Gap, 101.5 kilometers from the magni-freight line about to cut itself into the Red Gorge practically on top of Sundancer’s location. His Q-comm calculated when they’d reach the ship at the rate they were going—the pod abruptly stopped, and a big fat zero flashed in a red overlay.

  Unplugging himself and slipping his skin back on, he went to the front of the pod. Standing on its nose, he saw that they’d reached a section of terrain that was more or less level. However, the downward slope resumed a few meters ahead. He went to the back, prepared to jump out and push.

  “Can…I…help…?” Volka asked, shifting as though to stand.

  Carl’s thoughts spiked across the ether. “Don’t jump out! It’s several meters deep; you’ll sink.”

  6T9 paused, started to consider it, and then noticed the lack of color in Volka’s lips and had another priority. Opening the compartment with emergency supplies, he gave a thermal blanket and S-rations to Volka. Carl was curled in a ball at Volka’s breast and didn’t look particularly cold or uncomfortable. 6T9 absolutely did not scowl at the animal but was certain the werfle smirked at him anyway.

  Opening his temple again, gritting his teeth at the uncomfortable sensation of cold on his metal skeleton, he plugged himself into the not-at-all friendly primitive pod computer. It didn’t even bother saying hello, but he did get it to run a diagnostic on the pod’s thrusters.

  “Can…I…help…?” Volka asked again, her teeth chattering. “You…must…get…cold…”

  At her words, a warning light went off, telling him that he was losing power to his thermoregulatory processors and Libertas’s higher gravity. Another light flashed behind his eyes, advising him to seek shelter immediately. “I do,” he replied.

  “Then…I should…help,” she managed between chatters. 6T9 remembered Judah at the Kanakah Gate. “Are you all right, sir?” Both Volka and Judah were from the most AI adverse planet in the galaxy, yet they treated him with the concern they’d give a human. Judah maybe only because he didn’t realize what 6T9 was, but Volka knew. Maybe she just didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to show concern for a ‘bot?

  She attempted to get up, but 6T9 held up a hand. “It’s…I’m not exactly comfortable. The lights behind my eyes are very annoying.”

  Her brow furrowed in confusion, and he realized she couldn’t know what he was talking about.

  The ancient pod computer finished the diagnostic and revealed where the thruster damage was. His Q- comm sparked. He took off the spent hover pack. It was deadweight. His ether connection to it told him that he couldn’t recharge it; the internal circuitry had been fried. He remembered the stunners in his coat and took them out, and then he held the coat out to Volka. “But I’m fine. Put this behind you.”

  She stared at the coat dubiously.

  “If you die, Volka, it will—”

  Her eyes lifted to his.

  “I will have failed,” he said. Snow began falling faster.

  Carl Sagan added, “Volka, you are the only other pair of opposable thumbs I can use to help save Sundancer if something happens to 6T9. Listen to him.”

  6T9 blinked. Was that what they were to the alien? Just a pair of opposable thumbs?

  Instead of looking perturbed, Volka’s eyes went wide, and her head fell into her hands. “Oh…she is so alone…” Her breathing came in sharp gasps, too strong to be accounted for by the relative lack of oxygen in the atmosphere.

  “She’s waiting for us to rescue her,” Carl said. “Can you feel it?”

  “Yes,” Volka exclaimed. “I can feel that…now…oh…”

  Her voice was rapturous. 6T9 did scowl. He wasn’t seeing any visions, but apparently Carl and Volka were. Listening to them describe the experience he wasn’t part of, and couldn’t have, he had the same sort of dimness in his neural networks that he used to have when he watched humans eat.

  “You’re not transmitting Sundancer’s visions to me,” 6T9 said to the werfle and couldn’t help hearing the accusatory tone in his voice.

  “Aren’t you busy with something?” Carl asked .

  6T9 rolled his eyes, but he heard phaser fire and the roar of starfighters in the distance and engaged the thrusters. They didn’t have enough power for lift, but the pod shot forward.

  Sitting in front of him, Volka turned back. “You told me you get cold.”

  6T9 shrugged, busy surveying the sensors.

  She lowered the blanket and set Carl beside her.

  “Hey, it’s cold!” the werfle protested.

  “You’re the only one here with a proper fur coat,” Volka scolded.

  Scooting on her knees toward 6T9, eyes averted the whole time, she said, “I have an idea to keep us all warm.”

  6T9 was too busy adjusting the boost as the grade increased to respond.

  Volka draped his coat over his back, and then, turning around, she scooted so her back was to his chest and her body was between his legs. She called Carl Sagan to her lap and then adjusted the blanket over the three of them. In a business-like tone, she said, “We can all share the blanket this way.”

  Her body was too stiff, and she was obviously uncomfortable with the gesture. Oddly, it affected him more, and he had a very unfortunate urge to kiss her behind the ears. In the background, starfighters roared, and he heard explosions. He closed his eyes, saw through the pod’s primitive sensors, and guided them down the chasm.

  Skidding down through the chasm, Volka wasn’t sure if she felt Libertas’s .19 extra G, or if she was just weighed down by sustained terror. It did seem that the pod slid faster than it should, but she didn’t know if that was just her imagination. She wasn’t warm except for where she held Carl Sagan on her lap, and where her back pressed to 6T9. Her arms were cold, her legs were cold, and her face was cold, even though she kept it tucked beneath the thermal blanket. The chill crept in everywhere at the edges.

  She’d read in her paperbacks that the first sign of hypothermia was feeling warm, so she supposed that she was glad she was uncomfortable.

  Being uncomfortable made her feel like she wasn’t just in a dream. She was riding down a mountain in an escape pod with a robot—or android, or sex ‘bot, or cybernetic consort that she’d mistook for an angel. There was a werfle on her lap that could speak into her mind. All the strangeness of it made it much easier to believe that there was a starship that might be an alien or a robot, and the ship was speaking directly to her heart.

  In the real world, if she opened her eyes, she’d see only the shadow of her knees, but she was in the grip of a powerful, yet slightly ghostly daydream. In the daydream, a slightly amorphous Carl Sagan was still in her arms, but she was standing. They were in a room with a floor and ceiling of glowing mother-of-pearl, and a wall of windows overlooking icy blue moons orbiting what was, from her paperback science fiction education, a gas giant. The planet was brilliant orange and red surrounded by sparkling rings. On her left, there were two suns. It was very different from the nightmares of darkness—more tentative, and
not as consuming. The images were slightly translucent, and if Volka turned her head too quickly, the scene got muddy and faded. In her arms, Carl explained, “Like human dreams, Sundancer’s are hazy around the edges, but this is a real place. This is Sundancer’s interior and this is a place she wants to take us.”

  Volka scratched him behind the ears and felt tears prickle her eyes. “I know.”

  The starship didn’t talk, but Volka felt its emotions deep in her gut. The ship longed for them. Sundancer was afraid they wouldn’t make it, and the ship wondered if Carl Sagan and Volka were only dreams conjured up to soothe its own loneliness.

  We’re real, Volka willed the ship to feel. She was consumed by the sensation Mr. Darmadi said was known as “flow” among the ancients. It was the experience of being so in the moment, so doing something rightly, that time broke down and you felt out of your body. She felt flow when she was painting or drawing sometimes, and sometimes even at church when she was deep in prayer. She had it when Sundancer touched her heart. It made her feel as though Sundancer was as real as the pod, the snow, the air that didn’t smell or taste right, that didn’t seem to fill her lungs quite the way Luddeccean air did, and as real as 6T9’s chest against her back.

  She heard the thruster sputtering, and a scent wafted beneath the blanket that made her ears perk in real life. In the room among the stars, she whispered into Carl Sagan’s ears, “There is something new out there. It smells…dried.” Like hay in the fall, something that had been green and alive, but wasn’t anymore.

  Carl Sagan lifted his nose. “Yes,” he said.

  “We must go, Sundancer,” Volka said. Nothing happened.

  In her arms, Carl said, “You must feel your meaning, Volka, if you want Sundancer to understand. Words are too small. ”

  Taking a deep breath, Volka let herself feel the importance of going, the necessity of it, her worry that if she didn’t pay attention, she might not be able to come back.

  “Very good!” Carl exclaimed.

  The room among the stars disappeared, and she saw the werfle in her lap and the light creeping beneath the edges of the thermal blanket. Carl bobbed in her lap. “Very good! Very good, Volka. 6T9, I might turn her into a true empath!”

  Behind her, all 6T9 said was, “We’re almost at the tree line. Such as it is.”

  Volka lifted her head from the blanket, sending snow that had accumulated on top sliding to her feet. She blinked in Libertas’s strange light. The snow was so thick, she couldn’t even see the sides of the chasm, or judge the position of the sun. Squinting, she was able to make out a blue-gray shadow ahead. A few moments later, they coasted by what looked like a stick stuck in the snow, but might have been a scraggly looking tree, barely taller than Volka. If it had leaves, she couldn’t see them, just peeling blueish bark. They coasted by another, and then another. The trees got gradually taller, and she began to see patches of red earth here and there. The ground was getting more level. They weren’t going to be able to coast much longer, even if the snow kept up.

  She’d barely thought that when the thruster at the back of the pod sputtered and died. The pod began to slow. Her ears swiveled, and she lifted her head, catching a new scent in the breeze, and wondered if she was imagining it.

  “It won’t restart,” 6T9 said. “It’s out of power.”

  At his words, the pod scratched to a halt on rocky, just barely snow-covered ground .

  Volka sniffed again. The air was so cold it made her feel like the interior of her nose was freezing. But the scent was there—no, not scent, scents …She began to picture a world beyond the curtain of snow.

  “I smell it, too,” Carl Sagan said.

  Behind her, 6T9 shifted. “Volka, the temperature has dropped eleven degrees since we began and it isn’t even nightfall. Even if we turn the pod over to take shelter from the snow…” She could tell his head had dropped at those last words, because his breath tickled her behind her ears and warmed the crown of her head. She flicked her ears, not comfortable with how good the sensation felt, or just how good sitting with him and trusting him felt.

  He exhaled heavily and said, “I’m worried that you won’t survive the night. Maybe if I gathered wood, I could start a fire.” He sounded miserable, and she blinked in confusion.

  “He can’t smell it,” Carl said.

  “I have excellent chemical receptors,” 6T9 said. “I can smell.”

  Volka blinked again. She almost said, “You have the sense of smell of a human ,” but caught herself.

  “We smell fire, roasting meat, and humans,” said the werfle.

  “And weere,” said Volka, her ears perking. She couldn’t hear them yet though, and she didn’t recognize the meat. It didn’t smell like any Luddeccean animal or imported Earth animal she’d ever eaten, but it made her lick her lips. The dull S-ration 6T9 had given her earlier had mostly just made her stomach ache and made her feel hungrier.

  Setting Carl down, she stood, pulled on her backpack with the S-rations, water, sketchbooks, wrapped the thermal blanket around herself, and hopped out of the pod.

  “Wait,” said 6T9, “shouldn’t we think this through?”

  “We’ll think about it as we go,” said Carl, hopping after her.

  Inhaling the frigid air, Volka licked her lips again. It was red meat, definitely.

  6T9 grumbled but climbed out of the pod, leaving the stunners and the strange pack he always wore behind. He immediately crouched beside the pod, put his hands beneath it, and tipped it over an instant later. Wiping his hands, he explained, “Snow will accumulate on it and hopefully disguise it from above.”

  It was a good idea, and Volka should have said so, but all she could do was nod. He’d pulled the cord out of his temple, but his skin hadn’t fastened together quite right. He looked like he was melting, like a picture in one of the Surrealistic paintings in the forbidden Earth art history books that Mr. Darmadi wasn’t supposed to have. She lifted her hand. “Your face…”

  “It’s not on right?” he asked, and managed to smooth it in all the wrong places.

  “Let me,” she ventured.

  6T9 bowed toward her, his eyes on the ground. Clutching the thermal blanket with one hand, Volka gently smoothed out the wrinkles in his skin, or whatever it was, with the other. Whatever-it-was was warm, like true flesh.

  6T9’s eyes had slipped closed, and maybe that was why, just for an instant, she found herself staring at him. He really was handsome, and despite the lingering scent of metal and plastic, he still smelled good and was warm. It gave her the urge to lean closer. She quickly backed away.

  “You look human now,” she said, gripping the edges of the thermal blanket tighter.

  Straightening, 6T9 met her gaze. Robot eyes were supposed to glow. They didn’t. They were a lovely brown that bordered on hazel, with flecks of gold and green. His lips weren’t too full or too narrow, his nose was straight, but not too long or too sharp. And his cheekbones might have been chiseled from stone. She decided that he didn’t look human; he was too perfect.

  A sound behind her made her ears swivel and her breath leave her in a cloud.

  Thunk-a-thunk-a-thunk-a-thunk.

  “Hoofbeats!” Carl whispered in her mind.

  Volka spun and smelled something alive, vital, and delicious. She knew somehow it would taste better than rats or lizzar. Her mouth watered and she smacked her lips. “What is—?”

  A man’s voice spoke from behind a tree not twenty paces away. “Hands above yer heads!”

  18

  Liberty

  6T9 glanced at Volka, looking for a sign of how she wanted this to play out. He was running low on power again and the stunners were exhausted. He really shouldn’t have tipped the pod over by himself; it had required superhuman strength. Her amber eyes met his. She loosened her fingers, and the thermal blanket fell, making a pool of silver at her feet. Nodding at 6T9, she raised her hands and slowly turned around. He followed her lead.

  A human man
edged from the trees, a rifle upraised. 6T9’s Q-comm hummed, trying to analyze the unfamiliar make. Data glowed in his mind. The highest probability was that it was a projectile weapon of local manufacture, not a phaser rifle. The man aimed it briefly at Volka, but then aimed it at 6T9’s head. His calculations put the man’s aim at perfect. A direct hit to the head…well, he could be repaired, but not here .

  He began downloading data on the culture of the people of Libertas. Libertas was Luddeccea’s less-habitable cousin: colder, with higher gravity, lower oxygen, and poisonous plant life. It was settled originally by Luddecceans who weren’t happy with Luddeccean rule, but according to Galactic records, after Revelation the Libertians gave up their autonomy for food aid and protection from a potential AI incursion. So, not friends of his—but thanks to Volka’s ministrations, he’d pass for human. She wouldn’t, though. Remembering how Judah, who’d been so nice to him, had called weere monsters, 6T9’s jaw ticked, and his fingers flexed above his head.