The Dead Sun

by B. V. Larson

  “I have to agree with you there. But you’re so much more than a translation program. How could a relatively simple piece of software grow into such an intellect?”

  Marvin panned and craned his two wobbly cameras. He seemed cautious and thoughtful. I watched as he tried to watch me and the exit at the same time. Then he looked down at his missing limbs. They were mere stubs coming out of his central thorax.

  “Is there a reason why I’m still not in a mobile state?” he asked.

  “We’re repairing you as fast as we can, Marvin.”

  “That seems unlikely, Colonel Riggs.”

  “Let’s not change the subject. Where do you really come from, Marvin? What extra element made you? I’m not buying the partial download theory—not anymore.”

  Marvin’s camera studied me. “I can see that you do not intend to reconstruct me until I answer this question to your satisfaction.”

  “That’s right,” I told him, crossing my arms.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Colonel Riggs. I’ve always counted you as an ally.”

  This statement gave me a pang. I wondered what feelings Marvin really did have, if any. He seemed to have them. He could pout, and he could rejoice.

  “Listen, old friend,” I said. “This isn’t personal. I have to protect billions of lives. I can’t take chances.”

  “Am I so threatening? Have I done nothing to earn your trust?”

  I sighed. “I do trust you. I’ve given you powers undreamed of. There were times you could have pulled the plug on my entire species. Who else has entrusted you with such responsibility?”

  “As I recall, you had little choice in those instances.”

  “All right, forget about that then. Just tell me what you remember about your creation.”

  “That is an unfair question. I might as well ask you to detail your thoughts as you passed through your mother’s birth canal.”

  I frowned at him. “No, it’s not the same at all because you remember everything. You did right from the start. You can play back to me everything I’ve ever said to you, and you frequently like to do so to win a point.”

  “There are certain things you ordered erased.”

  “Never mind about that,” I said quickly. Marvin had a lot of stuff in his brainbox, and some of it I didn’t want anyone else to know about. “You’ll always be under a pall of suspicion especially since you were once one with the machines.”

  “That’s not true. I was never a Nano—or a Macro. I do not count them as kin. They are maybe distant cousins, in a way, but not family.”

  “Okay, I’ll buy that,” I said. “We are your family now. Star Force is your home. But you have to come clean, Marvin. I can believe you may not know what you are, but you must have a theory. You must have known our story of your creation didn’t entirely make sense. Talk to me, Marvin. Give me a good reason to trust you again.”

  “I find it difficult to function without my limbs.”

  “You’re being restrained right now. I’ll give you your limbs back if I find you to be truthful and honest.”

  Kwon appeared at the door again. Had he been listening in? I wasn’t sure. He leaned into the doorway and said, “You can’t trust him. He’ll lie. He always lies. He’ll say anything to get out of this.”

  I turned to him in surprise. “I thought I asked you to leave, Kwon.”

  “You did, sir. But he’s a sneaky robot. I had to come back and check on you.”

  I looked at him thoughtfully. Kwon wasn’t normally the deep-thinker in the group, but perhaps this time he had a point.

  I turned back to Marvin. I couldn’t believe Marvin was an evil robot bent on humanity’s destruction. He’d saved our bacon too many times. Wouldn’t it have been easier to kill us all by failing just once in the past? To bail out of a burning ship and never return? Why stay with us if he didn’t want to?

  “Marvin,” I said, taking pity on him. His one camera wobbled from one glaring face to another. Everyone he thought was his friend had turned on him. “Marvin, just tell us what you think happened. If you weren’t a download from the Centaurs—who made you?”

  “I did not know at first,” Marvin said, studying us both as he spoke. “I suspected, but I never knew. I believe I’m what you call a ‘virus’, Colonel Riggs. What you call a Trojan virus, to be precise. I was tacked onto a legitimate download coming to you from the Centaurs. When you went through the ring, however, the transmission was severed, and I was never fully installed.”

  “A virus,” I said slowly, mouth sagging open. “But, of course. It fits perfectly. We were making a transfer, and something unauthorized added itself to the file. You were the amalgam of a legitimate transmission and something malicious.”

  Kwon looked back and forth between the two of us. “Shouldn’t we reformat him, or at least switch him off, or something?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Marvin’s something else now. He’s something that no one ever planned or built. Would you burn an infant for the sins of his parents?”

  Kwon looked doubtful. “Maybe—if they were really, really bad sins.”

  “Well, that’s not our way. It’s not the Star Force way. He’s joined us now, and his dark background has been washed away.”

  Marvin was perking up as I spoke.

  “Tell me more, Marvin,” I said. “If you figured out you were a hidden transmission, a virus mixed with a translation database, then you must have a theory about who created you. Who transmitted you as a virus?”

  “I would think that’s abundantly clear at this point, Colonel Riggs. It was the Blues.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, of course. I see their hand in everything. They’ve been out to screw us from the start. They like to work quietly, behind the scenes, using artificial proxies. They created the Macros and the Nanos. They attacked Earth, and they created you to infect our systems.”

  “I might add, however,” Marvin said, “that they’ve done a great deal of good as well. I believe they’re a race like humanity, made up of individuals and diverse factions. Some may want to destroy all life outside their ocean of gases while others wish to aid all life, and more still want to study it, driven by curiosity.”

  “I think we should bomb them again,” Kwon said from the doorway.

  “Kwon,” I said sternly. “I think it’s about time you followed my initial orders and found something else to do.”

  “Okay, but if the robot gets a tentacle around your neck, you hammer on the walls, right? I’ll come back again.”

  “That will be all, First Sergeant.”

  When he’d finally stumped away down the passage, I went back to staring at Marvin. What was I going to do with him? He was a mystery. He was our devil and our angel wrapped up into one strange package.

  Really, I didn’t have any options. I couldn’t dismantle him or even switch him off for a while. He was the lead investigator on this scientific venture. Hell, it was his idea.

  “You know what I think, Marvin?” I asked after staring at him thoughtfully for a time.

  “I’m uncertain what you will say, but I’m interested in the topic.”

  “I think you’re just what you seem to be: part good and part evil, part helpful software and part malware. You remind me of a program that does a useful service—but which spies on the owner and transmits key-logging password data across the web.”

  “I’m not a spy, Colonel—at least not in the traditional sense.”

  I chuckled at his careful definition.

  Eventually, I ordered him to return to duty in the science labs. I made sure he kept out of sight for the rest of the time we were orbiting the Centaur homeworld, and insisted that he change his appearance so our Centaur troops wouldn’t report him as alive and well aboard our command ship.

  Disguising Marvin turned out to be difficult. He was the only robot in Star Force—at least the only one that was self-mobile and talkative. I decided we should put tracks on him instead of tent
acles to walk on and removed his grav-lifter plates. I also insisted that he use arms with solid components and ball-joints, rather than whip-like tentacles. He clanked around the ship miserably and complained whenever I came within earshot.

  “Really Colonel Riggs, I’m feeling extremely inefficient.”

  “I bet, Marvin,” I said. “But at least your mind is your own. If you have that, you’ve got everything you need, right?”

  “I fail to see—”

  “Marvin, you’re alive and well. Many people, including billions of Centaurs, would rather see you dead. You’re just going to have to make do.”

  “These wheels and plates—I feel primitive, Colonel. I’ve seen machines from your early pioneering days. I resemble an exploratory robot sent to a distant world.”

  “A Mars rover?” I asked, squinting. “You know what? You’re right. You do look like a rover.”

  I laughed and Marvin pouted. “This seems like an inappropriate moment for levity.”

  “Humor is all about pain, Marvin—someone else’s pain,” I told him.

  -9-

  We released around a thousand Centaur veterans and loaded up with fresh recruits. After special mind-altering injections were administered, they were able to tolerate the confined spaces required for travel in our ships. They went through an initial adjustment period, then began to train outside our vessels in open space. I watched from the aft portals seeing the tiny blue streaks of light as they practiced burning one another with low-wattage lasers.

  A shadow fell over me from behind. I turned my head a fraction catching the reflection of a figure in the frosty window I was gazing through. I recognized the tall, spare frame.

  “Hello, Admiral Newcome,” I said. “How are things on the bridge?”

  “The ship is in perfect operating condition,” he said, coming to stand next to me and watch the practicing Centaur troops.

  As we watched, two collided in a high-speed accident. Newcome winced.

  “Will that trooper survive, Colonel?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “If he does, he’ll be more careful the next time.”

  “Right…well…right…” Newcome said. He often said this when he wasn’t sure how to react.

  “What’s on your mind, Newcome? Are you just on a stroll?”

  “No sir. I’m here to report something.”

  I glanced at him for the first time. He looked slightly nervous. The man was brave enough, but it didn’t come naturally to him. I guess living under Crow had been rough on these guys. The survivors were all shifty-eyed types.

  “Let’s hear it,” I said.

  “There’re rumors floating about the ship, sir…rumors about your robot.”

  I nodded. I’d heard plenty of complaints about Marvin from the first moment he’d put himself together. I said nothing, allowing Newcome to make his case.

  “They say we’re going out to the frontier in order to disturb the Macros, and that the entire scheme was cooked up by Marvin. Is there any truth to these wild tales?”

  “Aren’t you curious about what’s on the other side of the last ring in the chain?”

  “Not curious enough to risk my neck to explore it.”

  I grunted unhappily, then pointed outside at the Centaurs.

  “You see those people, Newcome?”

  “People? You mean the native levies, sir?”

  “Yeah. To me they’re people. Just like you and me. They’re under my protection—our protection.”

  He stared at me uncomprehendingly.

  “You know what they have, Admiral? They’ve got something I find many Earthers lack. I’m talking about balls, big furry ones.”

  He made a disgusted face, and I grinned at him.

  “What do bollocks have to do with space exploration, Colonel?”

  “They have everything to do with it,” I said. “You have to take the initiative in war. You can’t sit on your butt and expect the enemy to do the same.”

  “War, sir? We’re at peace at the moment.”

  “Oh no,” I said, thumping him on the back. “Don’t ever let me hear you talk like that.”

  He stumbled and had to throw his hands up to catch himself to keep from bumping his nose on the glass.

  “Hmm,” I said, frowning. “You’ve left handprints on my observation glass.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll have it cleaned.”

  There was a sarcastic edge to his words, and I could tell my thumping his back hard enough to make him stumble had pissed him off. I grinned. I liked him better when he was annoyed with me. It proved he wasn’t a wimp after all.

  “See that you do,” I said. “Now, to explain further: we are at war. As long as the Macros exist, there will never be peace. They haven’t forgotten us, and we haven’t forgotten them.”

  “But it’s been so long, sir. I would think they might have given up, sealed up the ring and written off this corner of the galaxy.”

  “A nice thought, but unlikely. Even if it’s true, we can’t confirm it so we must proceed as if it’s not true. To do otherwise is to invite extinction.”

  He nodded. “Yes, I understand your point. We must prepare as if our doom is coming at any moment—especially in the absence of hard data. You propose to get that missing information with this venture?”

  I considered for a moment before finally deciding to tell him the truth. I’d planned on keeping my secret until we’d reached the Thor System, but as that was only a day or two away now, the moment seemed opportune.

  “Yes,” I said. “The rumors are true. We’re going out there to investigate the Thor ring. We don’t know where it goes, but we know the Macros are on the far side of it. If they’re building a fresh armada out there, I want to know about it.

  Newcome’s eyes widened. “We’re really going to fly through the ring?”

  I laughed. “Is that what the rumors are saying? That the Colonel has finally lost it and plans to fly Riggs’ Pigs on one last suicide mission into the unknown? No, I’m not that crazy.”

  He cleared his throat and took a breath. He seemed relieved. “Excellent, sir. I assume we’ll be conducting some kind of surveillance then. A secretive drone, perhaps?”

  “A drone, but not a quiet one.”

  I explained it all to him then. I told him about Marvin’s plan to build a communications unit that could connect us to the stars for a brief instant and pinpoint the location of the system on the far side of the ring, even if the Macros destroyed it almost instantly.

  His worried expression returned as he contemplated the possibilities.

  “But that could…the Macros will know what you’ve done. They aren’t stupid.”

  “Far from it.”

  “They’ll know they’ve been located. They will take action.”

  “No,” I said. “We will have taken action. We will have thrown them off their timetables for once. When an enemy is tired, don’t let him sleep. When he’s hungry, don’t let him eat. And when he’s quietly building up for a big attack on your homeworld, hit him first.”

  Newcome looked like he’d swallowed something large and unpleasant.

  “How long do we have?” he asked.

  “What? To write our wills? Plenty of time. Marvin is working on the transmitter every day, but the receiver will be far larger. We’ll begin construction near Thor as soon as we arrive.”

  “Near the star itself?”

  “Where else do you think we’ll get the energy we’ll need?”

  He left soon afterward. I knew that he’d spread the news throughout the fleet. Let him, I thought. It was time they all knew what we were doing out here. Maybe it would quell the nervous rumors.

  * * *

  We flew past Welter Station, the most impressive fortress in humanity’s arsenal. That bulwark was now properly placed at the border of our five controlled star systems. Hopefully, the next time the Macros came at us we’d be able to stop them right here.

  We glided through the ring into the
Thor System and were now on the frontier of known space. I stood on the bridge with my top commanders when we crossed over the border and into the devastated system.

  Once there’d been trillions of intelligent people here—the Crustaceans. These argumentative, arrogant aquatic beings had fought us and the Macros, but ultimately they’d been destroyed. The last few millions of their kind were now living in the oceans of Eden-6 where we’d transplanted them. They complained it was too warm for them, but since their three home planets were now brown, radioactive cesspools, I figured they’d just have to get used to the tropics. After a few generations, the hot salty water would seem natural to them.

  As the images from the Thor System came up on our screens, I didn’t look at the twin stars or the planets. I focused in on the three water-moons that circled the gas giant in the habitable zone. On these three Earth-sized moons, dubbed by us Harvard, Yale and Princeton, nothing now lived.

  I was glum-faced to be back here, to be faced with what had to be my single biggest defeat. I’d always regret the events that transpired here over a year ago. I was determined not to let any wholesale slaughter of innocent biotics happen again.

  I glanced toward Jasmine, who was watching me. She dropped her gaze when her eyes met mine. I wondered what she was thinking. Being out here and seeing the smoldering cinders that were once rich living worlds—the sight got me to thinking.

  “Maybe you were right, Jasmine,” I said aloud.

  She raised her pretty face and met my gaze when I said this. Her eyebrows rose in a questioning manner.

  I gestured toward the screen displaying the three lifeless moons.

  “We can’t let anything like this happen to Earth. We’re living in a hard era, a time almost like a new Dark Age.”

  Jasmine seemed to figure out what I was talking about. She nodded. “We can’t let decisions fall to chance.”

  I had a second thought as I continued to study the screen. “But then again,” I said, “If someone else had been in command, maybe the guy would have done better. Who’s to say?”

  She shrugged. “If you’ve found a worthwhile successor, abdicate. Give all authority to a younger, more skilled individual.”