L. Neil Smith - North American Confederacy 02 (26 page)

But you will see that for yourself.

Gregamer parked his machine outside the old weather-faded metal building, which at one time was a center for the maintenance and repair of transcontinental steam-coaches. There was a very large door, hinged at the top, with a smaller one set within it. This smaller door he entered, having first unchained the handle and locking it behind him from the inside. I was sorely pressed to follow him. In our continuum, there would have been several broken windows in such an abandoned construction, but here—well, I’m not certain whether it’s a greater respect for private property or the fact that Confederate window-glass seems to have a knack for regeneration which would be enviable in an
organic
substance...

In any event, I finally extruded a number of specialized limbs with great adhesive properties and “walked” carefully up the corrugated side of the building. Earth’s moon did little to dispel the artificial light from orbit which, in this neighborhood, gave a peculiar grainy grayish tone to everything it washed. In the west, the sky was still a spectacular shade of infrared; stars shone ultraviolet in the east.

At last I discovered a ventilation grillwork. This building was at least a century old, its facilities in a state of disrepair for which I found myself deeply grateful. A few snips with yet another specialized appendage, a bit of careful footwork, and I was inside.

It would have been quite dark to you, Lord.

It appeared I was at one end of the garagelike building, just above a sort of railed balcony, half of which had served as a glassed in office. Now it was dark and empty, bits of paper scattered about in the thick dust. I walked down the inside wall to this platform, negotiated a cast-iron stairway I found there, and came at last to a grease-stained concrete floor, cluttered and full of pock-holes of various sizes. Hugging one wall to avoid discovery, I had a momentary altercation with a vicious quadruped approximately my own size with sharp chisellike teeth and a strange, hairless, skinny tail. He smelled bad and was covered with tiny vermin. I forebore to kill him, but he will have difficulty walking comfortably for some days and will not pass on his genes.

Did I act aright, Lord?

No matter. The boarding-ramp, Georgie’s boarding-ramp, was extended. This presented me with a problem, as the light from the passenger-deck airlock spilled across the dirty, littered floor and up the corrugated wall and joisting, making further progress in that direction around the vessel’s circumference impossible.

I started to turn back, to go around the other way, when I observed one of Georgie’s landing-lights, a very small, relatively dim amber one, blinking at me. As soon as it had caught my eye, it stopped.

Her senses, Bemie, must be very nearly as good as ours.

Thus I made my way, skulking from one rusty oil-can to the next half-melted cardboard box, as quickly and inconspicuously as possible to Georgie’s side, where, as you know, a slight undertaper keeps her from being perfectly hemispherical. It also provided an excellent temporary hiding-place until I could think of what to do next.

Finally, I sneaked up to the base of the ramp where I could remain in deepest shadow, yet be near enough the doorway to hear what was going on. Georgie, of course, had no way of communicating with me, but I could let her see me in hopes of comforting her. I climbed through the circular framing to the other side of the ramp, where I knew there was a television monitor, and extruded a special appendage—one I’d only just thought of, with a small ear on the end—and let it lie just inside the seal-cushions of the air-lock.

“—tell you, there’s something
screwy
about this ship!”

Rand Heplar was speaking up on the control deck, the air-lock hatch of which was also open. It sounded as though he were in acute danger of becoming hysterical, this formerly laconic fellow. Is there no middle ground with human beings?

“Superstitious nonsense!” Professor Cromney retorted.

“You’re simply making excuses for your own incompetence. What have you been
doing
with those supplies that Dr. Gregamer sent you?”

“You
try sticking your fingers into any access port,
any
access port, where there’s a static field for no apparent reason and see what a fat, blue, inch-long spark does for
your
metabolism! The effect is cumulative, you know— one more jolt like that and I’ll probably—”

“You’ll do exactly as you’re told, young man, and cease immediately anthropomorphizing this, this.. .
machine!
You ’ re no better than Gruenblum, in your way—next you ’ 1I be telling me the ship is haunted!”

There was a chuckle I recognized as Gregamer’s as he joined them in the control room. “It better not be haunted, at least for little Edna’s sake. How about it, sweetheart? Are the shades of the late Professors Merwin and Hulbert bothering you lately?”

I was surprised. Instead of attacking anyone who presumed to call her “little Edna”—in her presence, at least— she merely snorted, enjoying the joke. “Not half as much as the shade of yellow I can see running up dear Randy’s back. Don’t laugh, Cromney—you’re no better, screaming at the top of your lungs when maybe you ought to be listening! I’m not quite sure how to put this, but the ship
does
seem, well...”

“Aware?” Gregamer ventured.

“Oh, come now!” Cromney scoffed. “Or is someone going to produce a Ouija board to make the point? This vessel is nothing more than an assembly of plastic, aluminum, and titanium!”

“Charm, is it really you?”

Georgie
had
found a way to communicate, after all, not with a Ouija board, whatever that is, but by amplitude-modulating her ultrasonic proximity-detectors. I pitched my own voice upward, replying on the same frequencies.
“Yes, Georgie, it is
/.
Are you all right?"

“Just as you, my dear Professor Cromney, are nothing more than an assembly of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen!” There was a genuinely sarcastic tone to the Hamiltonian’s voice now; he seemed not at all concerned to hide it.

“I am so far, but... well, how long have you been following this conversation, Charm?"

“Norrit, my boy, take it from an old academic hand: philosophical reductionism is scarcely a proper—”

“Now
look,
Cromney, you don’t know what the chaos you’re talking about! I was trying to point out that intelligence is a matter of complexity of organization, not composition. I know—for the past four years, ever since the Civil Liberties Association investigated Heller-Browne Cy-bercorp, and successfully prosecuted them for enslaving sapient business machines—”

“They
what?”
A female voice.

“You heard me, Edna. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell this ivory-tower worm-casting here. Don’t look so blasted shocked, Heplar! Now adjudicative precedent makes it morally obligatory—-and a desperate economic necessity—to design
around
any possible inadvertent sapience in cybernetic ... say, what’s that display over there? The small monitor, I mean?”

“
I’ve been listening long enough to understand what’s going on, Georgie. I greatly fear they’re about to discover your
—”

“That?” Cromney attempted derision, but there was more of a tinge of embarrassment in his voice than he would have liked. “It’s simply a CRT playback of a recreational DreamCassette we found, er...lying around the control room. It works perfectly over the closed loop, but its neuronic transmission doesn’t seem to—”

“That blonde,” Gregamer insisted, “I’ve seen her somewhere recently. But if that recording was made in
your
continuum, then how could I... I have it! She was on the Telecom at the furniture farm, talking to Gruenblum and the rest!”

"Uh-oh,"
Georgie whispered, “/
think my Bernie would say—‘the jig is up’!”

“Impossible!” Cromney shouted.

“Ridiculous!” Edna echoed.

“Ummmmm..Heplar mused, beginning to believe.

“Something strange
is
going on here,” Gregamer concluded, and I could hear him cross the little room, hear the springs and cushions squeak as he lowered himself into the pilot’s chair. “And I’m going to get to the bottom of it. Heplar, show me how that DreamCap thing works!”
“Charm, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m scared!”

From the tone of
her
voice, she’d learned to engage in understatement.

Bongggg!

Koko gave the tiller a whirl, an’ we drifted sideways across the intersection at about Mach 0.5, smackin’ a lamppost. The Neova’s rubbery skirt absorbed mosta the shock, an’ we were straightened up an’ away before the crosstraffic, their horns shrillin’ an’ blarin’, even knew what nearly hit ’em.

“Can’t you make this velocipede pile on any more steam, girl?”

“It’s fusion power, not steam, Bemie, and I’ve got it to the floor, already-—in fact, I don’t think Win’s accelerator pedal’s ever going to be quite the—
Oh, dear Albert!” “Ghaaaaa!”

ZZZZzzzzmmmmm!

The big orange hovertruck missed us by no more’n an angstrom unit, an’ I decided t’shut up an’ let the gorilla do the drivin’.

“How much further, Charm?”

The Freenie in the ’com screen thought a moment. “You’re on Slade Avenue?”

“All over it—no offense, Koko. I ain’t complainin’— just keep those big brown eyes on the...
Ohmygod!” SSSsssweeeeen!

“Relax, Bemie,” she said cheerily over her fuzzy shoulder. “That one didn’t even come close!”

Ulp. “Where do we go next, Charm, providin’ that we live that long?”

“Just keep going until ydu see a big red neon sign that says ‘Rosie’s’.”

“Some kinda truckstop?”

“Er, I don’t think so, Bernie. Although there were plenty of trucks parked there when I—”

“Okay, okay. Remember there’s a minor drivin’. What happened next—after Gregamer remembered seein’ Georgie on the Telecom, I mean?”

Given the sort of people that they were, it wasn’t very easy for them to agree upon a course of action, and they continued to argue about it, even after Norrit Gregamer had acted for them.

“But that would be silly,” Heplar insisted. “Besides, how...
where
would I even begin trying to communicate with a timeship?”

“How do you
ordinarily
communicate with it, stupid?” Gregamer was close to losing his temper; even Edna seemed a little afraid of him.

“Answer him, Rand!”

“Well, I...”

"Charm, we've got to contact Bernie. If Gregamer’s going to do what I think he is—it’s one of my truly weak points, and I’m not sure I can hold out if he
—
well, I’m just not sure
what
will happen!"
She began to sob quietly, still in the ultrasonic range.

“But Georgie, what can they do to you?"

“Give me that cap, you moron! You and Cromney—get out of my sight! Now, Edna, turn it on, or whatever you do!”

There was a pause.

"Charm!"

“All right,” Gregamer said, sounding a bit abstracted. “I appear to be in a grove of trees. The sun’s shining in my eyes, so I can hardly—wait,
there
she is! That same pale blue-eyed blonde, standing beneath a big oak. Here goes: you there! That’s right, I mean
you,
blondie!”

"Oh, Charm!"

“You might as well speak up, honey. We know
all
about you. I watched that CRT display straight through, and it was pretty amazing. In fact, before we start the interrogation, I think I’ll just avail myself of your—okay, Edna,
okay!
Say, blondie, don’t try to run away. You’re not supposed to be programed for it!”

"Charm, help me!"

“What can I do, Georgie?"

“Gotcha! Now calm down, honey, or I’ll have to break your little arm. Let me see now... here, my belt ought to do nicely. Hold still!”

“Oh, Charm,
please
help me!”

My thought’s spun hopelessly. How could I save a ninety-foot starship/time-machine from an imaginary fate-worse-than-death?

“
Georgie, can you still communicate? Can you find Ber-nie? Try the farm—they might still be there!"

Her ultrasonic voice quavered.
“I’ll t-try!”

“There!”
Gregamer leered. “Nice and tight—is that bark too rough on your nonexistent little back? Now tell me all about yourself, honey. You weren’t
designed
for sapience. Where’d you get the extra processing capacity? Oh, you won’t talk, eh? Well, that makes it inconvenient, but a
lot
more fun! I’ll just imagine real hard, and—
there
—I
thought
I had a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in my pocket, even though I don’t smoke, ordinarily. Very satisfactory, this DreamCap system—and it’s
you
who’re going to do the smoking! I’ll just light up, here, and that chiffon dress you’re wearing ought to melt at an
extremely
uncomfortable temperature. I believe I’ll just start at the top of your shoulders and work my way down to your—”

"Charm!”

“Get Bemie, Georgie, get Bemie! Try the Sanders' car— try Win’s!"

I couldn’t see, of course, when she’d connected any more than I can see you now, but I could recognize the breathing on the other end of the line.

“Lord?” I pleaded. “I have done as much as I could myself. Now it is time for you to help!”

21 Cromney Gets the Point

“
P
ARDON MY UNDERWEAR,
K
OKO.”

“Why? What did it do?” Half a block from the steam-coach bam, she’d slowed down to a crawl. The Neova settled to the big balloon tires under its skirt as we crept silently forward.

I started squirmin’ outa my coverall. “Charm, tell Georgie we’re almost there. An’ remind her I can erase the memories of whatever Gregamer’s doin’ to her, if that’s any comfort.”