Stranded

by James Alan Gardner

  The robot stared at her. Alyssa might have said he was staring hopefully, like a dog who wants to be told he’s done the right thing. Og had big glass eyes, one of which had cooked the goulash in a single second.

  “It was good food,” Alyssa said. “I’m feeling better.”

  Og seemed to relax, although Alyssa couldn’t say how his bearing had changed. In her Tech-Civ study group, she’d learned that most robots were programmed to make subtle movements mimicking human body language; with tiny physical cues, the machines seemed more like people. They also mimicked human personalities—usually simplified into stereotypes, not truly complex—because such behavior put humans at ease. One history video had spelled it out clearly: machines that seemed human sold better. Their manufacturers made more money. Once robot-makers developed techniques for making robots act human, even machines that were just big arms working in factories were given personalities. Mostly they acted like big dumb lugs, but with hearts of gold. As the video had said, “A lovable machine is a profitable machine.”

  Apparently, the same principle applied to war machines. Alyssa didn’t mind that at all—if her weakness made her need a robot nursemaid, one like Og really did make her feel better.

  “I’m good,” she told the others. “I’m ready to go.”

  But when she tried to stand, she felt wobbly: lightheaded, and sluggish in the slightly heightened gravity. Og took her in his padded arms before she could topple over. “The General tell Og to carry you.” He lifted her gently. “Og be like girl’s pony. Giddy-up Og.”

  “Yuck,” Spymaster said. “Have some dignity, Og! Humans already look down on robots like peons they can just order around. Don’t make it worse by sucking up to them.”

  “If I were you,” Eve told Spymaster, “I’d speak to Og more politely. He’s a Model 54 Doom Cluster. If he seems slow-witted, it’s because ninety-nine percent of his processing power is spent on weapon management. Instead of making up complex sentences, he’s inventing ten thousand ways to kill you.”

  “Og not kill,” the big robot said. “Og retired.” He adjusted Alyssa’s weight in his arms. “You ready go now?”

  “Sure,” Alyssa said. “You know the General’s plan?”

  “Nobody ever knows General’s plan,” Og said. “General keep secrets. Plans behind plans behind plans. But Og knows where General told Og to go.”

  “That will do,” said Eve. “Let’s head out.”

  As Og carried Alyssa from the room, she whispered, “Thank you, Og. The food was good.”

  —————

  They walked along the bank of a river . . . or rather Eve rolled, Spymaster flew, Og rumbled along on metal tank-treads, and Alyssa let herself be carried. She felt well enough to walk on her own, but Og wouldn’t hear of it. Alyssa didn’t insist—she decided to save her strength in case she needed it later. Considering what the General had asked her to do, she couldn’t afford any weakness.

  Seen from a distance, the river seemed to wind naturally through the fields; close up, however, the water’s course was obviously artificial. Its dirt banks were almost perfectly squared off—more like the walls of a canal than a real river bed—and every few paces, the mouths of plastic pipes were visible in the banks, just below water level. Alyssa guessed that the pipes carried water into the fields for irrigation. The crops were certainly growing nicely; these particular fields held leafy green plants that Spymaster said were potatoes.

  On Alyssa’s wrist, Balla muttered, “Trend, trepidation, trespass.” Close to the end of the alphabet . . . Alyssa couldn’t say why, but she feared what might happen when he finished the Z’s.

  Ahead lay their destination: a low building on the boundary between land claimed by the General and land claimed by the Lorelei. The building had once been the station’s communications center; fiber-optic cables ran from the building down into the ground, continuing all the way through to the station’s external shell. There, the cables connected with an array of dish antennas. The antennas had been designed to pick up transmissions from practically anywhere on Earth, and for years, the General had used them to eavesdrop on anyone he chose. However, when the General and the Lorelei started fighting, the comm center had to be abandoned—it now lay in a no-man’s-land too dangerous for either side to enter . . . unless, of course, you wanted to be captured.

  Both the General and the Lorelei had cobbled up comm centers in their personal headquarters, but those centers were only makeshift substitutes, with much less sensitivity than the original. Twice the General had attempted to recapture the old center, but both times his forces had been driven off by a Lorelei counterassault. If Alyssa and her companions ventured into the building, the Lorelei would think the General was making Recapture Attempt Number Three. She was certain to move against them . . . with restraint. The comm center was much too valuable to damage, so the Lorelei wouldn’t mount an all-out attack. The General had assured Alyssa there wouldn’t be major violence—the Lorelei would send a team of her best operatives, with instructions to take Alyssa alive. They’d then bring Alyssa back to the Lorelei for questioning: what was the General up to?

  Or at least that’s what the General predicted the Lorelei would do. Alyssa hoped he was right.

  She figured the Lorelei was watching already. According to Spymaster, the Lorelei controlled at least three invisible spy-drones, all reprogrammed by leeches to obey the Lorelei’s commands. As Alyssa and her friends had neared the comm center, Eve had picked up transmissions that were likely from a spy reporting to the Lorelei’s home base. “The signals are in code,” Eve told Alyssa. “A code I haven’t seen before. But don’t worry; I can crack it with a bit of work.”

  “Vertebra, vertebrate, vertex,” said Balla.

  The river continued right up to the comm center’s door, making a sharp right-angle turn to avoid running under the building. It looked like bad planning, as if the people who dug the river hadn’t noticed the building until the last second, then had been forced to veer the channel sideways. More likely, there was a practical reason for the building to be so close to the river’s course: the comm center probably used the water for cooling machinery or irrigating organic data storage.

  When the group reached the building’s entrance, Og lifted Alyssa and stared at her with his big glass eyes. “Is girl okay? Can girl walk?”

  “Yes, Og. Thank you.”

  “Good. Og too big to fit through door.” He set her down onto her feet and watched in obvious concern as she took a few steps.

  “See?” she said. “I’m fine.”

  Og relaxed. “Og stay outside, watch for trouble. You go.”

  Alyssa nodded. This was all part of the General’s plan. She patted Og’s thick metal body and told him, “This shouldn’t take long.”

  She went inside with Eve and Spymaster, but a moment later, Spymaster turned invisible and went out again. His job was to watch for leeches and anything else the Lorelei might send their way. He’d promised to warn them of any incoming attack—a quick radio blip that Eve could pick up and pass on to Alyssa.

  When Spymaster was gone, Alyssa turned to Eve. “What now?”

  “We pass the time until minions show up.” She rolled in a little circle, as if looking around. “I’d love to tap into this place’s radio dishes. See what I can pick up.”

  “You mean you want to eavesdrop,” Alyssa said.

  “It’s what I do,” Eve replied. “And it’s been years since I’ve had access to top-of-the-line receivers. With the dish antennas here, I’ll hear the tiniest whispers—transmissions that humans want to keep secret.”

  “Can you send as well as receive? Could you send a message to my parents?”

  “I can send,” Eve said, “but I don’t know if anyone will listen. Earth wants to pretend this station doesn’t exist. I’ll see what I can do.”

&nbs
p; She rolled across what passed for the comm center’s lobby. It had obviously served as a security checkpoint—incoming visitors would have passed through body scans before they could go farther into the building. But the scanners now lay smashed and blackened with soot; the steel door that once blocked access to the interior had been ripped clean out of the wall. Alyssa and Eve wove their way through the debris and entered the building’s inner core.

  The first room beyond the door had taken light damage, but it was only a waiting lounge, with partly burned furniture and scorch marks on the walls. The next room contained more valuable equipment, all of which looked intact: electronic gadgets embedded in the walls, and gray plastic boxes the size of refrigerators standing in the middle of the floor. LEDs of all colors glowed on the equipment—the place still had electricity. Alyssa couldn’t identify any of the devices, and not a single one had a human-readable label; but Eve said, “This is beautiful!” and rolled up to a fridge-like box. She nestled against a metal plate mounted near the bottom of the box. Immediately the machine began chuck-chuck-chuck sounds, as if something had come awake inside.

  “It’s working?” Alyssa asked.

  “Mmm,” said Eve, not listening. She had obviously started worming her way into the system; presumably there’d be passwords and codes to hack before Eve could get anything useful, so Alyssa sat down to wait on the dusty floor.

  “Wide, widen, widow,” Balla said. Alyssa stroked him and tried to send him strength through the stent that connected her to him. Did her blood contain antibodies to the alien disease? She didn’t know—the General had evaded all questions of how he’d cured her. But if the “cure” was in her blood, it would be in Balla’s too, so he never should have gotten sick. The treatment must have worked in some other way . . . something the General had given to Alyssa while Balla hadn’t been attached. Reconnecting had given him the sickness but not the remedy.

  “I’m sorry,” Alyssa said, still petting him. “I didn’t know.”

  “Windmill, window, windy,” Balla said. “Wine, wing . . .” He fell silent for a moment. Alyssa’s heart leapt with fear and hope. Then, “Wink, winsome, winter.”

  “Wow,” said Eve.

  Alyssa looked up quickly. “What?”

  “I can’t believe what the General was doing,” Eve said. “Back when he still controlled this place, he sent transmissions to a star system ten light-years away. They’re the weirdest signals I’ve ever seen . . . and remember, I’m a code expert. This encryption scheme is like . . . wow. I didn’t know math could do that.”

  “What was the General up to?” Alyssa asked.

  “Darned if I know,” Eve said. “But this place kept records of every data-bit the General sent. I’ve made copies, so I can work on cracking the code. But right now, I have no idea how to begin. If the General understands this stuff, he really is a Level Thirteen intelligence.”

  “If he was sending signals into space,” Alyssa said, “could he have been talking to aliens?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? I can’t see that he ever received answers back . . . but there’s barely been enough time for that. He sent his signals when he first arrived on this station twenty years ago. If he was talking to aliens ten light-years away, that’s ten years for the General’s message to reach them, another ten years for a reply to get back. Their response would just be arriving now, and that’s assuming they noticed the message right off and decided to answer it immediately.”

  “But how could the General know what to say to aliens? How could he know their language?”

  “Beats me,” Eve said. “Of course, there’ve always been rumors of covert government agencies receiving alien transmissions. In the Almost War, the General had access to all of their top-secret files, plus whatever they managed to steal from their enemies. A Level Thirteen intelligence might notice things nobody else had picked up—hidden patterns and coded messages in data from radio telescopes. He might have learned the aliens’ language without telling anyone. Then when humans banished him to this space station, he sent the aliens a hello.”

  A terrible thought struck Alyssa. “What if the General is responsible for the plague? What if he asked the aliens to send a disease that would wipe out humanity?”

  “I doubt that he would,” Eve said. “The people who built the General weren’t totally stupid: deep down, he’s programmed to help humanity, not hurt it. Or at least to help that segment of humanity on his side during the war.” Eve paused to consider. “On the other hand, who knows how aliens think? They might just automatically try to destroy any other life-forms they notice. Or the General may have said something to make them mad—he sure annoys the heck out of me.”

  “Can we tell the aliens we’re friendly and ask them to take their disease back?”

  “Maybe . . . if we could speak their language. And if we didn’t mind waiting ten years for the message to reach them.”

  “I don’t think we can afford—”

  Alyssa stopped. Something cold and sharp had touched her throat.

  “Keep still,” a female voice whispered. “I’d really hate to hurt you, but by an unlucky coincidence, your windpipe is exactly where I had planned to put my knife.”

  Alyssa didn’t so much as twitch, but her eyes darted around, trying to figure out what was holding a blade to her neck. She still sat on the floor, which was thick with the dust of disuse; she could see her own footprints, and a smeared line made by Eve. She could also see a wavy trail like the marks that a snake leaves in desert sand.

  The invisible creature holding the knife must have noticed where Alyssa was looking—it gave a soft chuckle. “Yes,” it whispered, “I was codenamed Viper. An inaccurate title, considering that vipers do their killing with poison, and I’m not venomous in the least. But to humans, I suppose ‘Viper’ sounds more impressive than Snakelike-Robot- With-A-Knife-For-A-Tail.”

  The blade pressed harder against Alyssa’s throat. She winced, reflexively closing her eyes at the nip of pain. When she opened her eyes again, Viper was visible—as if she’d been waiting for Alyssa to blink in order to make a dramatic entrance.

  The robot was indeed snakelike: two paces long, but narrower than Alyssa’s arm, which must have made it easy for Viper to sneak into places she wasn’t welcome. Viper was almost as shiny and reflective as Eve—brightly polished metal, in a flexible steel sheath. Her head was no thicker than the rest of her body, with chiseled steel teeth and beady eyes that glittered like black jewels. Her tail, which was currently pressed against Alyssa’s neck, ended in a double-edged dagger; one edge was serrated like a saw blade, while the other was as straight and sharp as a razor. That edge had just drawn a drop of blood as it nicked Alyssa’s skin.

  “What do you want?” Alyssa asked. She tried to look Viper in the eye, but that was difficult when she didn’t dare move her head.

  “It’s not what I want,” Viper answered. “It’s what the Lorelei wants. And she wants to talk to you.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t ask—the Lorelei likes unquestioning obedience. Besides, I’ve never much cared about the reasons for my orders. During the war, my job was sneaking into places and killing people. It didn’t matter why those people had to end up dead. It was probably politics. Or strategy. Or somebody hurt my boss’s feelings. Borrrring! But you know what? Almost every machine on this space station has more firepower than me, because they were built for large-scale battles . . . but they’ve never actually killed a single person. The Peace came along before the armies started shooting. But me, with my little knife . . . I have killed people. Lots. The Almost War had no open fighting, but murder behind the scenes? Oh yes.”

  “Nice that you take pride in your work,” Eve said. “And nice the Lorelei ordered you to take the child alive, or I guess she’d be dead already.”

  “Her? I wouldn’t kill
her.” Viper slithered up Alyssa’s body and wrapped around her neck, the knife blade never moving. Within seconds, the snake had coiled herself three times around Alyssa’s throat like a cold metallic scarf. The knife remained against Alyssa’s windpipe as Viper nestled into place. “I’ve killed presidents,” Viper said. “I’ve killed royalty. If not for the Lorelei, I wouldn’t waste my time on some kid.”

  “But the Lorelei orders you around,” Alyssa said. “She must have used her leeches to reprogram you. Doesn’t that make you mad? At her, I mean, not me.”

  “It should make me angry, but it doesn’t. Because I’m reprogrammed, you moron!” Viper’s small head lifted away from Alyssa’s neck to stare her straight in the eye. The snake drew one of her sharp metal teeth down the bridge of Alyssa’s nose, drawing blood.

  “If I were human,” Viper said, “maybe I’d have deep-seated resentments about what the Lorelei did to me. Maybe you could work on my feelings: sway me to disobey orders. But I don’t have depths, and I don’t have true feelings. Neither does your taped-up silver ball, or that giant yellow arsenal outside. We’re machines, nothing more. We’re wind-up toys who might seem human, but we’re fakes—nothing but ones and zeroes. You’re the only real person on this whole blasted station; so far you’ve been a disappointment.”

  Silence. Even Balla’s recitation of the dictionary had gone quiet under Viper’s tirade. Then Eve said, “Well, Viper, it’s good you have no deep-seated resentments.”

  “Shut up,” Viper said. “I’m supposed to give a speech.” She paused as if taking a big deep breath, then quickly rattled off words in a monotone. “Do-what-I-say-or-the-human-dies-the-Lorelei-has-authorized-me-to- use-lethal-force-and-don’t-think-I-won’t-because-the-human-isn’t-that-valuable-if-the-human-really-mattered-the-Lorelei-would-have-sent- more-minions-to-do-this-instead-of-a-lone-assassin-who’ll-just-kill-the-kid-then-escape-invisibly-if-you-try-anything-stupid. Got it?”