My Favorites

by Ben Bova

  He almost made me laugh. “What about, never put off till tomorrow what you can do today?”

  “There is a variation of that, sir: Never do today what you can put off to tomorrow; you’ve already made enough mistakes today.”

  That one did make me laugh. “Where’d you get these old saws, anyway?”

  “There’s a subsection on adages in one of the quotation files, sir. I have hundreds more, if you’d care to hear them.”

  I nearly said yes. It was kind of fun, swapping clinkers with him. But then reality set in. “Niner, I’m going to die anyway. What’s the difference between now and a week from now?”

  I expected that he’d take a few seconds to chew that one over, but instead he immediately shot back, “Ethics, sir.”

  “Ethics?”

  “To be destroyed by fate is one thing; to deliberately destroy yourself is entirely different.”

  “But the end result is the same, isn’t it?”

  Well, the tricky little wiseass got me arguing ethics and morality with him for hours on end. I forgot about committing suicide. We gabbled at each other until my throat got so sore, I couldn’t talk any more.

  I went to my bunk and slept pretty damned well for a guy who only had a few days left to live. But when I woke up, my stomach started rumbling, and I remembered that I didn’t want to starve to death.

  I sat on the edge of the bunk, woozy and empty inside.

  “Good morning, sir,” Forty-niner said. “Does your throat feel better?”

  It did, a little. Then I realized that we had a full store of pharmaceuticals in a cabinet in the lavatory. I spent the morning sorting out the pills, trying to figure out which ones would kill me. Forty-niner kept silent while I trotted back and forth to the bridge to call up the medical program. It wasn’t any use, though. The brightboys back at headquarters had made certain nobody could put together a suicide cocktail.

  Okay, I told myself. There’s only one thing left to do. Go to the airlock and open the hatches manually. Override the electronic circuits. Take Forty-niner and his goddamned ethics out of the loop.

  Once he realized I had pried open the control panel on the bulkhead beside the inner hatch, Forty-niner said softly, “Sir, there is no need for that.”

  “Mind your own business.”

  “But, sir, the corporation could hold you financially responsible for deliberate damage to the control panel.”

  “So let them sue me after I’m dead.”

  “Sir, there really is no need to commit suicide.”

  Forty-niner had figured out what I was going to do, of course. So what? There wasn’t anything he could do to stop me.

  “What’s the matter? You scared of being alone?”

  “I would rather not be alone, sir. I prefer your company to solitude.”

  “Tough nuts, pal. I’m going to blow the hatches and put an end to it.”

  “But, sir, there is no need—”

  “What do you know about need?” I bellowed at him. “Human need? I’m a human being, not a collection of circuit boards.”

  “Sir, I know that humans require certain physical and emotional supports.”

  “Damned right we do.” I had the panel off. I shorted out the safety circuit, giving myself a nasty little electrical shock in the process. The inner hatch slid open.

  “I have been trying to satisfy your needs, sir, within the limits of my programming.”

  As I stepped into the coffin-sized airlock I thought to myself, Yeah, he has. Forty-niner’s been doing his best to keep me alive. But it’s not enough. Not nearly enough.

  I started prying open the control panel of the outer hatch. Six centimeters away from me was the vacuum of interplanetary space. Once the hatch opens, poof! I’m gone.

  “Sir, please listen to me.”

  “I’m listening,” I said, as I tried to figure out how I could short out the safety circuit without giving myself another shock. Stupid, isn’t it? Here I was trying to commit suicide and worried about a little electrical shock.

  “There is a ship approaching us, sir.”

  “Don’t be funny.”

  “It was not an attempt at humor, sir. A ship is approaching us and hailing us at standard communications frequency.”

  I looked up at the speaker set into the overhead of the airlock.

  “Is this part of your psychological programming?” I groused.

  Forty-niner ignored my sarcasm. “Backtracking the approaching ship’s trajectory shows that it originated at Ceres, sir. It should make rendezvous with us in nine hours and forty-one minutes.”

  I stomped out of the airlock and ducked into the bridge, muttering, “If this is some wiseass ploy of yours to keep me from—”

  I looked at the display panel. All its screens were dark: conserving electrical power.

  “Is this some kind of psychology stunt?” I asked.

  “No, sir, it is an actual ship. Would you like to answer its call to us, sir?”

  “Light up the radar display.”

  Goddamn! There was a blip on the screen.

  I thought I must have been hallucinating. Or maybe Forty-niner was fooling with the radar display to keep me from popping the airlock hatch. But I sank into the command chair and told Forty-niner to pipe the incoming message to the comm screen. And there was Donahoo’s ugly mug talking at me! I knew I was hallucinating.

  “Hang in there,” he was saying. “We’ll get you out of that scrap heap in a few hours.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, and turned off the comm screen. To Forty-niner, I called out, “Thanks, pal. Nice try. I appreciate it. But I think I’m going to back to the airlock and opening the outer hatch now.”

  “But sir,” Forty-niner sounded almost like he was pleading, “it really is a ship approaching. We are saved, sir.”

  “Don’t you think I know you can pull up Donahoo’s image from your files and animate it? Manipulate it to make him say what you want me to hear? Get real!”

  For several heartbeats Forty-niner didn’t answer. At last he said, “Then let us conduct a reality test, sir.”

  “Reality test?”

  “The approaching ship will rendezvous with us in nine hours, twenty-seven minutes. Wait that long, sir. If no ship reaches us, then you can resume your suicidal course of action.”

  It made sense. I knew Forty-niner was just trying to keep me alive, and I almost respected the pile of chips for being so deviously clever about it. Not that I meant anything to him on a personal basis. Forty-niner was a computer. No emotions. Not even an urge for self-preservation. Whatever he was doing to keep me alive had been programmed into him by the psychotechs.

  And then I thought, yeah, and when a human being risks his butt to save the life of another human being, that’s been programmed into him by millions of years of evolution. Is there that much of a difference?

  So I sat there and waited. I called to Donahoo and told him I was alive and damned hungry. He grinned that lopsided sneer of his and told me he’d have a soy steak waiting for me. Nothing that Forty-niner couldn’t have ginned up from its files on me and Donahoo.

  “I’ve got to admit, you’re damned good,” I said to Forty-niner.

  “It’s not me, sir,” he replied. “Mr. Donahoo is really coming to rescue you.”

  I shook my head. “Yeah. And Santa Claus is right behind him in a sleigh full of toys pulled by eight tiny reindeer.”

  Immediately, Forty-niner said, “A Visit from St. Nicholas, by Clement Moore. Would you like to hear the entire poem, sir?”

  I ignored that. “Listen, Niner, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it just doesn’t make sense. Donahoo’s at corporate headquarters at Vesta. He’s not at Ceres and he’s not anywhere near us. Good try, but you can’t make me believe the corporation would pay to have him come all
the way over to Ceres to save a broken-down bucket of a waterbot and one very junior and expendable employee.”

  “Nevertheless, sir, that is what is happening. As you will see for yourself in eight hours and fifty-two minutes, sir.”

  I didn’t believe it for a nanosecond. But I played along with Forty-niner. If it made him feel better, what did I have to lose? When the time was up and the bubble burst, I could always go back to the airlock and pop the outer hatch.

  But he must have heard me muttering to myself, “It just doesn’t make sense. It’s not logical.”

  “Sir, what are the chances that in the siege of Leningrad in World War II the first artillery shell fired by the German army into the city would kill the only elephant in the Leningrad zoo? The statistical chances were astronomical, but that is exactly what happened, sir.”

  So I let him babble on about strange happenings and dramatic rescues. Why argue? It made him feel better, I guess. That is, if Forty-niner had any feelings. Which he didn’t, I knew. Well, I guess letting him natter on with his rah-rah pep talk made me feel better. A little.

  It was a real shock when a fusion torch ship took shape on my comm screen. Complete with standard registration info spelled out on the bar running along the screen’s bottom: Hu Davis, out of Ceres.

  “Be there in an hour and a half,” Donahoo said, still sneering. “Christ, your old Jerky really looks like a scrap heap. You musta taken some battering.”

  Could Forty-niner fake that? I asked myself. Then a part of my mind warned, don’t get your hopes up. It’s all a simulation.

  Except that, an hour and a half later, the Hu Davis was right alongside us, as big and detailed as life. I could see flecks on its meteor bumpers where micrometeors had abraded them. I just stared. It couldn’t be a simulation. Not that detailed.

  And Donahoo was saying, “I’m comin’ in through your main airlock.”

  “No!” I yelped. “Wait! I’ve got to close the inner hatch first.”

  Donahoo looked puzzled. “Why the fuck’s the inside hatch open?”

  I didn’t answer him. I was already ducking through the hatch of the bridge. Damned if I didn’t get another electric shock closing airlock’s the inner hatch.

  I stood there wringing my hand while the outer hatch slid open. I could see the status lights on the control panel go from red for vacuum through amber and finally to green. Forty-niner could fake all that, I knew. This might still be nothing more than an elaborate simulation.

  But then the inner hatch sighed open, and Donahoo stepped through, big and ugly as life.

  His potato nose twitched. “Christ, it smells like a garbage pit in here.”

  That’s when I knew it wasn’t a simulation. He was really there. I was saved.

  Well, it would’ve been funny if everybody wasn’t so ticked off at me. Donahoo had been sent by corporate headquarters all the way from Vesta to Ceres to pick me up and turn off the distress call Forty-niner had been beaming out on the broadband frequencies for all those weeks.

  It was only a milliwatt signal, didn’t cost us a piffle of electrical power, but that teeny little signal got picked up at the Lunar Farside Observatory, where they had built the big SETI radio telescope. When they first detected our distress call, the astronomers went delirious: they thought they’d found an intelligent extraterrestrial signal, after more than a century of searching. They were sore as hell when they realized it was only a dinky old waterbot in trouble, not aliens trying to say hello.

  They didn’t give a rat’s ass of a hoot about Forty-niner and me, but as long as our Mayday was being beamed out, their fancy radio telescope search for ETs was screwed. So they bleeped to the International Astronautical Authority, and the IAA complained to corporate headquarters, and Donahoo got called on the carpet at Vesta and told to get to JRK49N and turn off that damned distress signal!

  And that’s how we got rescued. Not because anybody cared about an aged waterbot that was due to be scrapped, or the very junior dumbass riding on it. We got saved because we were bothering the astronomers at Farside.

  Donahoo made up some of the cost of his rescue mission by selling off what was left of Forty-niner to one of the salvage outfits at Ceres. They started cutting up the old bird as soon as we parked it in orbit there.

  But not before I put on a clean, new space suit and went aboard JRK49N one last time.

  I had forgotten how big the ship was. It was huge, a big massive collection of spherical tanks that dwarfed the fusion drive thruster and the cramped little pod I had lived in all those weeks. Hanging there in orbit, empty and alone, Forty-niner looked kind of sad. Long, nasty gashes had been ripped through the water tanks; I thought I could see rimes of ice glittering along their ragged edges in the faint starlight.

  Then I saw the flickers of laser torches. Robotic scavengers were already starting to take the ship apart.

  Floating there in weightlessness, my eyes misted up as I approached the ship. I had hated being on it, but I got teary-eyed just the same. I know it was stupid, but that’s what happened, so help me.

  I didn’t go to the pod. There was nothing there that I wanted, especially not my cruddy old space suit. No, instead I worked my way along the cleats set into the spherical tanks, hand over gloved hand, to get to the heart of the ship, where the fusion reactor and power generator were housed.

  And Forty-niner’s CPU.

  “Hey, whattarya doin’ there?” One of the few humans directing the scavenger robots hollered at me, so loud I thought my helmet earphones would melt down.

  “I’m retrieving the computer’s hard drive,” I said.

  “You got permission?”

  “I was the crew. I want the hard core. It’s not worth anything to you, is it?”

  “We ain’t supposed to let people pick over the bones,” he said. But his tone was lower, not so belligerent.

  “It’ll only take a couple of minutes,” I said. “I don’t want anything else; you can have all the rest.”

  “Damn right we can. Company paid good money for this scrap pile.”

  I nodded inside my helmet and went through the open hatch that led down to JRK49N’s heart. And brain. It only took me a few minutes to pry open the CPU and disconnect the hard drive. I slipped the palm-sized metal oblong into a pouch on the thigh of my suit, then got out. I didn’t look back. What those scavengers were chopping up was just a lot of metal and plastic. I had Forty-niner with me.

  The corporation never assigned me to a waterbot again. Somebody in the front office must’ve taken a good look at my personnel dossier and figured I had too much education to be stuck in a dumb job like that. I don’t know, maybe Donahoo had something to do with. He wouldn’t admit to it, and I didn’t press him about it.

  Anyway, when I finally got back to Vesta, they assigned me to a desk job. Over the years I worked my way up to chief of logistics and eventually got transferred back to Selene City, on the moon. I’ll be able to take early retirement soon and get married and start a family.

  Forty-niner’s been with me all that time. Not that I talk to him every day. But it’s good to know that he’s there and I can ease off the stresses of the job or whatever by having a nice, long chat with him.

  One of these days, I’ll even beat him at chess.

  Introduction to

  “Sam and the Flying Dutchman”

  Sam Gunn has been with me for a long time.

  Back when I was editing Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact magazine, I got a little germ of an idea for a story. I bounced it off several of the magazine’s regular contributors, but none of them took me up on the invitation.

  Still, the idea pecked away at my imagination. When I left Analog and took up writing full time, I tackled the idea myself.

  The result was the first story about Sam Gunn. Today, half a lifetime later, Sam has appeared in a couple of doz
en of my short fiction works. Sam is fun. Sam is like a brother to me, although we are very dissimilar in looks, attitudes, and capabilities.

  Every now and then, Sam taps me on my metaphysical shoulder and tells me he has a new adventure to relate.

  Here’s the latest one.

  SAM AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

  I ushered her into Sam’s office and helped her out of the bulky dark coat she was wearing. As soon as she let the hood fall back off her face, I damned near dropped the coat. I recognized her. Who could forget her? She was exquisite, so stunningly beautiful that even irrepressible Sam Gunn was struck speechless. More beautiful than any woman I had ever seen.

  But haunted.

  It was more than her big, soulful eyes. More than the almost frightened way she had of glancing all around as she entered Sam’s office, as if expecting someone to leap out of hiding at her. She looked tragic, lovely and doomed and tragic.

  “Mr. Gunn, I need your help,” she said to Sam. Those were the first words she spoke, even before she took the chair that I was holding for her. Her voice was like the sigh of a breeze in a midnight forest.

  Sam was standing behind his desk, on the hidden little platform back there that makes him look taller than his real 165 centimeters. As I said, even Sam was speechless. Leather-tongued, clatter-mouthed Sam Gunn simply stood and stared at her in stupefied awe.

  Then he found his voice. “Anything,” he said in a choked whisper. “I’d do anything for you.”

  Despite the fact that Sam was getting married in just three weeks’ time, it was obvious that he’d tumbled head over heels for Amanda Cunningham the minute he saw her. Instantly. Sam Gunn was always falling in love, even more often than he made fortunes of money and lost them again. But this time it looked as if he’d really been struck by the thunderbolt.

  If she weren’t so beautiful, so troubled, seeing the two of them together would have been almost ludicrous. Amanda Cunningham looked like a Greek goddess, except that her shoulder-length hair was radiant golden blond. She wore a modest knee-length sheath of delicate pink that couldn’t hide the curves of her ample body. And those eyes! They were bright china blue, but deep, terribly troubled, unbearably sad.