Robot Blues (24 page)

You would be
wrong. Jeffrey Grant was a man with an obsession.

He was obsessed
with space flight.

Grant had been a
pilot of sorts, his job having consisted of flying an orbital shuttle from one
side of XIO to the other. Lesser minds might refer to Grant as more bus driver
than pilot. Grant never argued the matter, but merely responded with a secret
smile which implied a wealth of adventures equivalent to those of any Royal
Navy hotshot and known only to Grant himself. Such secret adventures did exist,
if only in the head of Jeffrey Grant.

A quiet, somewhat
shy, and retiring man, Grant had entertained himself on the long shuttle
flights by imagining his Ladybird orbital transport was a sleek fighter and
that he was the flying ace of every major space combat battle from the time of
the Black Earth forward. His shuttle bus never deviated from its set course,
its fixed speed. It was run by computer. Grant had little to do but watch the
stars flit past him.

Jeffrey Grant saw
more than stars. Jeffrey Grant saw squadrons of Scimitars swooping in to attack
the planet in the name of some rogue dictator. He saw Claymore bombers fly off
to do battle for the new king. He saw deadly dogfights between Flamberge
bombers and Corasian fighters. He saw Jeffrey Grant, in his Scimitar or his
Claymore or his Flamberge. He saw Jeffrey Grant, the wing commander.

Since the hated
Corasians—who were on the other side of the galaxy—never attacked XIO, Grant
never had a chance to put his dream into action. Considering that his shuttle
bus was not armed, this was probably just as well. He didn’t really want the
Corasians to attack, nor did he particularly want XIO to fall to a bloodthirsty
dictator. But he did admit to a feeling of disappointment that the most
exciting thing to have happened to him in thirty years of space piloting was
the malfunction of the toilets on the shuttle bus, which had resulted in a
flood of a most unpleasant nature.

He spent
thirty-five years piloting the shuttle bus by day, piloting Scimitars on his
flight simulator by night. When retirement was forced upon him at age
fifty-five by a benevolent union, which needed to make room for younger
employees, he was provided with an adequate pension. In addition, Grant had
quite a tidy sum of money saved, all of which enabled him to make at least one
of his dreams come true. He opened a space museum.

His museum was as
different from the Megapolis Space and Aeronautics Museum as Grant’s shuttle
bus was different from a sleek Katana fighter prototype. The museum was located
in a dusty storefront on a side street in a part of the city that no tourist in
his right mind would have any inclination to visit. This was perhaps just as well,
since Grant neither liked nor trusted tourists, and if any happened to wander
into his museum—perhaps to use the bathroom—he did his best to get rid of them.

He had on display
in his museum various antiques from bygone eras of space travel which he had
collected over the years. These included boost engines from an original
Arc-Class Terraforming Transport, two small Type F-66 fighter spaceplanes with
no guns. (Originally in service with the Galactic Express, the spaceplanes had
been painted bright orange. Grant had repainted them their original gray.) He
was the proud possessor of a jump-juice distillery (not in working order) and
owned innumerable flight and computer instruments from very early space flight
in various stages of disrepair.

Grant spent his
days dusting his treasures, poring over his books and old papers, playing games
on his flight simulators (he owned forty-seven), and browsing through vid
antique catalogs, searching for material to add to his collection.

A new arrival was
expected today, in fact. A gun site simulator for a Scimitar Type A, still in
working condition. Grant smiled in pleasant anticipation.

The morning was
fine—a rare commodity on XIO. The sun struggled to shine through a haze of
smoke and fumes, but at least the sun was shining. Grant enjoyed his short
stroll between his small brownstone and the museum. He nodded the usual
greetings to his neighbors (he’d never spoken to any of them in the twenty-five
years he’d lived in the neighborhood, except once, when the house next door
caught fire, and then he felt compelled the next day to politely inquire if
anyone needed a blanket).

His part of the
city was a very old part, containing crumbling brick buildings that had once
housed important firms, but were now reduced to selling adult vids and renting
out clown costumes. It was the last place one would have expected to find a
museum. Grant considered himself lucky to have discovered it.

He inserted the
key into the lock of the wooden door, pausing as he paused every morning to
admire the gold lettering on the glass pane which read:
grant’s air and space museum: an out-of-the-world experience.
Pleased
with the sign and himself and the sunshine, looking forward to a day filled
with dusting and puttering, unpacking and perusing, Grant opened the door and
switched on the overhead light.

Something was
wrong.

Jeffrey Grant didn’t
know quite what yet, but he was so attuned and accustomed to the atmosphere of
his quiet little museum that the slightest change registered instantly. He
stood in the door, nervous and wary, trying to figure out what was disturbing
him. A first cursory glance around the room seemed to indicate that all was
exactly as he had left it the night before.

Of course, he
couldn’t see every part of the museum from where he stood; the one-room museum
was filled from floor to ceiling with his collection, and what portion the
helmets and gloves and hull plates from rocket boosters and instruments did not
take up, his books and papers did. The book he’d been reading was still on the
vidscreen; his prized artifact—a graduation ring from the Mars Terran-Command
Flight School—was still in its glass case. He hadn’t been robbed.

Yet something was
most definitely wrong.

Standing, alarmed
and troubled, in the open doorway, Grant deliberated his next move.

He decided, on
consideration, to shut the door.

This done, he was
immediately cognizant of a strange sound, a high-pitched and annoying hum that
had not been there yesterday, nor any days prior to yesterday.

He relaxed,
relieved, no longer alarmed, merely annoyed. The furnace was old enough to have
almost qualified as an exhibit. It required constant attention and was a
considerable source of trouble to him. True, the furnace had never made a sound
like this before, but Grant was confident that it could if it truly put its
mind to it. Muttering mild imprecations, he made his way through the clutter to
the back of the room, opened a door, and began to descend to the cellar, where
the furnace was located.

He stopped halfway
down the stairs, puzzled. The sound, instead of growing louder, as it should
have if the furnace was the source, was growing softer. Grant paused on the
staircase, head cocked to one side, listening intently. Yes, the hum was not
nearly as pronounced down here as it had been up above.

Grant
experimented, walked down to the bottom of the stairs. He could not hear the
hum at all. He checked the furnace, just to be certain. The furnace was not at
fault.

“I see,” said
Grant to himself. “Sorry,” he apologized to the furnace, then turned and went
back up the stairs. “It must be one of the computers. Or maybe I forgot to shut
off the flight sim.”

He knew that wasn’t
the case. Grant was a creature of habit. (It had taken him a week, following
his retirement, to break himself of the habit of going work. He’d finally
accomplished this only by writing the words
not NEEDED
on a large placard and posting it on his refrigerator.) Grant
habitually turned off the flight simulators every time he was through with
them. If not, his electric bill—already substantial—would have been
astronomical.

He stepped out
into the museum. The hum was distinctly audible.

Methodically,
Grant checked all the computers, then began walking down the line of flight
simulators that took up one entire wall. He turned each one on, listened to it,
turned it off, and moved to the next. He was fairly certain that they were not
to blame; he had excellent hearing and the hum seemed to be coming from another
part of the room. It was best to rule out the obvious, however, before
investigating further. He was switching off the twenty-third simulator when it
occurred to him— rather uncomfortably—that the hum might be the prelude to
something nastier. An explosion, perhaps.

Grant wavered in
his determination to check out all the rest of the flight simulators. He looked
about fearfully, thinking he should carry all his valuables out of the
building, but that would take days. Then he thought he would only carry out his
most valuable artifacts, but that meant choosing between them, and that was
impossible. Then he thought that perhaps he should call in an expert. But ...
an expert in what? Annoying hums? Perhaps he should call the police, firemen.
He had a vision of the firemen, with their laser cutters and foam canisters and
water hoses, entering his beloved museum, and he shuddered. He’d rather be
blown up.

It was at this
point, during his dithering and his fitful darts to grab something beloved,
only to put it down distractedly to pick up something else, only to put that
down and finally head for the phone in back, only to reconsider and pause in
confusion, that Jeffrey Grant saw the light.

It was a blue
light and it was flashing on an antique machine, an ancient antique machine, a
machine that was one of Jeffrey Grant’s most valuable artifacts, a machine
that—as far as he had been able to ascertain had not worked in centuries. This
was the machine that was flashing. This was also the machine that was humming.

Grant stared,
began to tremble, as if an icon of a dutifully worshiped saint had suddenly
begun shedding tears of blood. He approached the machine—which had a corner
location of honor all to itself—with timorous footsteps, regarded it with
reverential awe.

He had acquired
the machine several years previous. It was very old and had run off electrical
power supplied by lines run through the walls. No building on XIO operated with
such antiquated equipment; Grant was forced to hook the machine up to a
nuclear-powered battery. The cost of the battery had been considerable, but
Grant deemed it worth the price. The machine had a large text screen on the
front, and though it had never displayed any information, Grant kept it turned
on. The screen cast a soft glow which bathed the back portion of the room in
white luminescence. In other words, Grant used the machine for a lamp.

The machine was
truly antique. It had a keyboard interface on the front with a track-ball built
into the keyboard. The central memory and functioning hardware were housed in a
small box attached behind the keyboard. The front of the box was a vid unit
that provided the wonderful white glow. Along the side were six small lights,
about two centimeters in diameter. One of these lights was flashing a bright
blue this morning.

Grant was careful
not to touch the machine; he was afraid he might do something wrong, might
cause it to shut off. He examined the machine closely, intently, studied every
part of it, rotating it by turning its stand in order to see the back.

Finished with his
inspection, he regarded the machine in doubt. He had read up on the machine,
knew all about it, what it did, why it did it, was completely familiar with its
workings, and there was only one logical explanation as to why it had suddenly
begun, after all these years of silence, to speak.

But that
explanation was so bizarre, so strange, so impossible, that Grant had to
consider some other cause.

More practical,
less wonderful: a malfunction, a short in the wiring, a lightning strike.

He wanted so much
to believe. He wanted to fall down on his knees and give praise. And therefore
he knew he had to consult some higher authority. He had to prove the saint’s
tears were blood, as it were, not streaks of rust.

Leaving the
machine to hum to itself—a hum that was, for Grant, no longer annoying, but a
chorusing of angels—he headed for the reference library part of his museum. He
was forced to stop, however, to calm himself. His heart was racing in a most
unhealthy fashion, his hands shook, the palms were clammy with sweat. He began
to see spots in his vision and was horribly afraid he was going to pass out.

“Get hold of
yourself, sir,” he counseled himself sternly. “I expect you to set the example
for the younger pilots. Enemy sighted. Lock onto target.”

Since the only
people with whom Grant communicated were the fellow pilots and commanders
inside his space games, he was used to talking to them and interacting with
them. He took all the parts and, in this instance, considered himself as being
chewed out by his commander.

The momentary
dizziness passed. Grant felt better. He locked onto his target—the bookcase—and
proceeded toward it. Once there, he studied the shining metallic disks in their
plastic cases, selected three, pulled them out and carried them to his
computer. He inserted the first, brought up the file.

He spent the
remainder of the day in study so intense and rewarding and exalting that he
lost all notion of time, forgot even to eat his baloney and mustard sandwich
for lunch, something that had not happened in thirty-five years. He ascended to
a higher state, reveled in the ecstasy of his discovery, forgot everything on
the more mundane levels of existence.

How long he would
have remained at his work is open to question. Mankind being heir to the
weaknesses of the flesh, Jeffrey Grant was brought back to this realm rather
abruptly by the rude insistence of his bladder that he go to the bathroom and
that he go now.