"Maverick" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bethke Bruce)

Chapter 12. Derec

. Derec and his father sat side by side in the ship’s robotics lab, hunched over a matching pair of robotic data entry terminals, staring intently at the video displays. A casual observer might have mistaken the pair of them for a new breakthrough in humaniform robots, so still were they: unmoving, except for their fingers and the barely perceptible motions of their chests as they breathed; unblinking, their paired attention completely focused on their work.

And yet there was something subtle, barely tangible, yet almost unmistakably lifelike about the pair. It wasn’t the white stubble on Avery’s chin; that effect could have been achieved with common nylon bristle. Perhaps it was the delicate filigree of bloodshot veins that adorned the whites of Derec’s eyes. More likely it was his hair, which had that limp, greasy look that could only be achieved through the use of expensive petrochemical plastics.

Or three days of nonstop programming.

Occasionally, a finger moved. Lips parted; a word or two passed between them, although not in anything that the average observer would have recognized as being part of a human conversation.

“Adb ixform. ”

“Got it. ”

“0B09?”

“15. ”

“0B2C?”

“A0. ”

“Sounds good. ” There was a long pause while Avery studied something on his screen.

Whatever it was caused him to frown and then to speak again. “Can you give me a du?”

“Fifteen-point-four-four-three-seven gigs. ”

“Well, if that’s not enough, I don’t know what is. Set the pipe. ”

“Piped. ”

Avery leaned back in his chair, ran his fingers through his bristly white hair, and blew out a deep breath. “Okay, we’re as ready as we’re ever going to be. Cross your fingers and start the yacc. ”

“Yaccing. ” Derec punched one last command into the terminal and leaned back in his chair in unconscious mimicry of his father. Numbers flashed and danced across the screen; Derec watched it for a few minutes and then rubbed his gritty eyes and turned to Avery. “Now what?”

“We wait. ” Slowly, painfully, Avery got up out of his chair and limped over to the autogalley. “Coffee, black,” he told the machine.

. Derec noticed the limp, and a reaction finally worked its way to his vocal cords. “You okay, Dad?” There was genuine concern in his voice.

Avery chuckled a little and slapped his dragging leg. “Yeah, I’m okay. Foot fell asleep, that’s all. ”

“Oh. ” Derec yawned. The autogalley chimed gently, and the serving door slid open to reveal the cup of coffee that Avery had ordered. Derec’s nose perked up at the rich, earthy scent. “Smells good,” he observed.

“You want some?”

. Derec thought it over. “Sure. With casein and two lumps of sugar. ”

“Decaf? You look like you could use some sleep. ”

. Derec rubbed the back of his neck and then studied the grit that had adhered to his fingers. “Nah. I’ve been in here three days; Ari’ll make me sleep on the couch anyway. Mayas well stay awake. ”

“Okay. ” Avery repeated Derec’s order to the autogalley. When the second steaming cup appeared, he picked it up and carefully carried it over to the work table.

The two of them sat quietly for a few minutes, sipping their cups of coffee, while the numbers danced and capered across Derec’s terminal display.

“I hate robotic coffee,” Avery said at last. Derec spoke without looking up. “Why?”

“Fresh-brewed coffee’s supposed to burn your tongue. That way you take a little more time, drink it a little slower. Robot-made coffee is served lukewarm, gets cold too fast. You have to gulp it down and get back to work. ”

“Oh. ” Derec took another sip and resumed staring into space.

“I could use some food,” Avery said after another long pause. “Anything you’re partial to?” He got up again and toddled over to the autogalley.

. Derec gave the matter his deepest available thought. “Snack food,” he decided, with some effort. “Crackers. Cheese. Something along those lines. ”

Avery leaned against the bulkhead, rested a hand on the autogalley’s control panel, and scrolled through the menu of preprogrammed selections. “Cheese is a pretty complex organic compound,” he said. “I’d hate to taste what this thing might come up with if it’s not specifically programmed for-ah, here we go. Magellanic fromage.Close enough for you?”

“Sure. ” Derec waved a hand in a noncommittal gesture. Avery gave the autogalley the order, and in a minute he returned to the table bearing a plate full of blue marbled paste and some little round white things that were either crackers or poker chips.

“Dig in, son. ” Avery smashed a chip into the mound of paste and stuffed the resulting accretion into his mouth. Derec picked up a dry cracker and began nibbling at it in an absentminded manner.

A half -dozen goo-covered crackers later, Avery took a slurp of coffee and turned to Derec. “Well, any lint yet?”

. Derec checked his terminal screen. “Nope. ”

Avery frowned. “I hate sitting through yaccs. I mean, I just feel like I should be doing something constructive with this time. ”

. Derec looked up and gave his father a bleary-eyed stare. “Such as?’’

“Oh, talking, maybe. Finding out the answers to some questions that have been bothering me for a long time. ”

. Derec yawned. “Okay. ” There was a long pause. “Anything in particular you wanted to talk about?”

Avery closed his eyes, stroked his whiskery chin, and thought it over. “Yes,” he decided. “This Aranimas fellow: Who is he, and why is he trying to kill you?”

. Derec shrugged. “You want the full story or the condensed version?”

“Depends. Where’s the yacc at?”

. Derec rubbed his eyes and checked the terminal one more time. “About twenty percent, I’d guess. ”

“That far already? Better condense it. ”

“Okay. ” Derec took a deep slug of his coffee and closed his eyes in thought. Just when Avery was starting to wonder if he should give the boy a little nudge to wake him up, Derec opened his eyes and began speaking in a low, raspy voice.

“Aranimas is an alien, from somewhere outside Settler space. You could call him a humanoid, depending on how loosely you define human, but when I finally got a close look at him, the first thing I thought of was a plucked condor with fisheyes. ”

. Derec took a nip of his cracker, chewed it thoughtfully, and swallowed. “His species call themselves the Erani. They’re a wonderfully simple people: vicious, brutal, and utterly without empathy. In a couple years you’ll be able to look up ‘cruel’ in the dictionary and see a picture of an Erani. You‘d get along great with them. ” Derec paused to sip his now-cold coffee.

Avery bristled at the boy’s cheap shot, but held his tongue.

“The Erani claim to control about two hundred worlds, but I think they must be counting every rock, asteroid, and moonlet in their solar system. That ship of his-did you happen to get a look at his ship before we jumped?” Avery shook his head. “Oh. Well, that ship of his appears to be one-of-a-kind, the first hyperdrive the Erani ever developed. I don’t know whether Aranimas built it or stole it, but the first thing he did when he got to human space was hijack a good Auroran hullto put it in. Wolruf tells me the Erani hyperdrive is fantastically unstable, and that being in the engine room of their ship is almost as dangerous as being on the wrong end of their guns. ”

Avery interrupted. “What is Wolruf, anyway? A genetically engineered dog or something? And how’d you hook up with it?”

“Her,”. Derec corrected. “No, Wolruf-that’s not her real name, by the way, that’s just as close as the human voice can pronounce it. I guess our mouths aren’t the right shape, or we don’t have the right ultrasonic frequency components in our speech and hearing to really get her name right

“Anyway, Wolruf was Aranimas’s navigator. She was basically a sort of indentured servant on board that ship; I counted at least four different species of intelligent aliens on board Aranimas’s ship, and they were all conquered subjects of the Erani. I suspect that if we humans ever have a real confrontation with the Erani, we’re going to find a lot of allies on their subject worlds. I met Wolruf when

“But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me put this story in linear order, okay?” Derec gave Avery a questioning stare; Avery didn’t respond, so Derec finished off the last of his coffee and caught his breath.

“Now, this whole thing starts with that asteroid you dumped me on after you wiped my memory. You remember that asteroid?”

Avery looked down. “I-I was insane then, Derec,” he said softly. “I’m not sure what I remember and what I hallucinated. ”

“Well, I was still trying to figure out your asteroid when Aranimas showed up and started shooting the thing to pieces. You see, there’s three things the Erani don’t have: a fleet of hyperdrive ships, a key to Perihelion, and a glimmer of understanding about robotics. They have a slave culture, you see, and since organic slaves are free for the taking, they’ve had no incentive to develop mechanical ones.

“On the other hand, while they don’t know a thing about robotics, they apparently know a lot more about hyperwave than we do. Aranimas was able to identify and track the hyperwave interference caused by a key to Perihelion. ”

. Derec abruptly realized that he’d been getting excited and lowered his voice. “That’s what brought him to the asteroid. Once there, I guess he saw all those robots and decided to do a little old-fashioned Erani slave-raiding. It’d never occurred to him that the robots would self-destruct instead of surrendering. Capturing me was just an accidental bonus.

“Not that he was happy about it. Apparently he’s been skulking around human space for a few years, hijacking the occasional ship and trying to pick up robots. When he captured me he was convinced that I’d cheated him out of a good load of slaves, and he-” Derec faltered a moment and winced at the memory of the torture he’d suffered at Aranimas’s hands. “Let’s just leave it at that, okay?” Derec found another cracker, loaded it up with Magellanic fromage, and resumed talking around the mouthful of cheese.

“Wolruf, as I said, was part of the crew. Ariel was a prisoner, although I didn’t find that out for a while. Mandelbrot was a collection of junk parts in a locker. ”

Avery interrupted again. “Mandelbrot? Isn’t he at least three-quarters Capek, Ariel’s old valet robot from back on Aurora?”

. Derec scowled at Avery. “Beats me. You gave me amnesia, remember?”

“Sorry. I forgot. ” Derec took another bite of the cracker and continued. “Dad, I don’t know what kind of crazy experiment you really had in mind when you dumped me on that asteroid-”

“I’m not sure I remember either,” Avery muttered, “although I think I remember trying to explain it. But that may have been an hallucination. I was crazy. ”

“-but Aranimas had been doing his share to foul it up. By the time we got away from him, I had no memory, of course, and Ariel was losing hers to the amnemonic plague. I’d cobbled together Mandelbrot and programmed him with a pretty restrictive definition of human, which may have influenced some of the Robot City developments along that line. And Wolruf had finally gotten fed up with the Erani and decided to jump ship. With her help we got away while Aranimas was on a raid on a Spacer station, and then we had to steal the key to Perihelion back from the robots before we could use it to escape-and that’s how we got. to Robot City. “

Avery was silent. Derec ran his fingers through his greasy hair, leaned forward, and shook his head.

“Y’know, Dad, as experiments go, yours didn’t go too well. ”

Avery sighed and nodded. “No. No, it didn’t, son, and maybe someday I’ll be able to apologize for putting you through it. But right now it’s just too big, and I have too much trouble coming to grips with the idea that I actually did that to you. I’m sorry. ” Then an idea hit Avery, and he frowned.

“But before I get too sorry, I’d like to remind you that you still haven’t answered my main question: Why is Aranimas still trying to kill you?”

. Derec shrugged. “ An Erani never forgets. ” He helped himself to the last cracker and then looked at his terminal screen. “Oops. We’re just about done yaccing. Better finish that coffee and get back to work. ”

“Okay. ” Avery hurriedly drained the cup, tossed it into the disposal chute, and then slipped into his chair.

. Derec checked his screen again and turned to Avery. “Seriously, Aranimas is desperate for robots. That’s why he follows me, I think; he knows that wherever I go, there are bound to be lots of robots.

“I don’t think he can comprehend the Three Laws, though. I mean, he understands the words well enough, but I think the idea that robots simply can ’ t hurt humans is just too alien a concept for him. Maybe it’s too alien for any Erani. ” Derec stole a sidelong glance at his terminal, and quickly spun back to Avery to squeeze one last thought in.

“So here’s an idea: If we ever find out where the Erani home world is, what do you say we drop a half-dozen Robot Cities on it? That ought to drive those ugly clowns just absolutely crazy…

Avery didn’t have time to respond. The two data terminals chimed simultaneously, then blanked and displayed the final results of the yacc.

Both Avery and Derec immediately switched into zombie programmer mode.

“Any lint?”

“No, it’s clean. ”

“Okay, let’s grep gen_shape. ”

“Grepping. ”

“A053?”

“15. ”

“A0C0?”

“AF. ”

“Very good. Nice it. ”

“Niced with a tee. ”

“Thanks, I forgot about that. Iostat?”

. Derec paused a moment to page through several screens of data. “Clean, green, and five by five. I think it worked. ”

“Okay, let’s finish it. Nohup. ”

“Nohupped. ”

“Chown gen-shape. ”

“Chowned. ”

Avery leaned back in his chair and crossed his fingers. “Here goes. I am putting ixform to sleep. Any floating children?”

. Derec scrutinized his screen. “No-no, we’re clear. No children floating in the pipe. ”

Avery suddenly realized that he’d been holding his breath. “Well! I think we’ve got it. Do you want to put it to the test?”

. Derec smiled and waved an open hand at his father. “You, sir, may have the honor. ”

“Okay. ” Avery pushed his chair back from the terminal, tented his fingers, and frowned. Then he cleared his throat, raised his eyes to the ceiling, and said in a loud, clear voice: “Gosh, Derec, I think I need to use the Personal. ” Both of them locked their stares on Avery’s chair.

Nothing happened. No softening around the edges; no reconfiguration of the seatpad. For over a minute they both held their breaths, waiting to see if the chair was going to reconfigure itself.

It remained a chair.

“Yahoo!”. Derec raised his fists in a victorious gesture, and Avery cracked into a broad, beaming smile. “Dad, we did it! We’ve cut out the autonomic shape-changing!”

Avery allowed himself another smile and then sobered. “We’re halfway there, Derec. We made the changes we wanted. Now let’s make sure that we haven’t done any other

damage in the process. ” He turned away from Derec, looked up at the ceiling, and loudly said, “Ship, make this chair two inches higher. ”

Smoothly and silently, as if it were a robobarber’s chair, the seat rose two inches. Avery looked at Derec with a tight smile on his face and a merry twinkle in his eye. “Son, we’ve cut out the autonomic routines, but we’ve kept the voluntary control intact. Now that is what I call a success. ” He hesitated a moment and then impulsively stuck out a hand to Derec.

For a moment, Avery felt terribly uncertain and insecure. Derec was looking at the hand as if he expected to find a joybuzzer. Then he switched to looking Avery straight in the eye, with an unreadable expression on his face.

And then he smiled, reached over, and shook his father’s hand. “Congratulations, Dad. ”

“Thanks, son. ”

The moment passed. They broke off the handshake, both looking a little sheepish about their undisciplined display of raw emotion, and went back to their respective terminal displays.

“You know,” Derec said at last, “I’m beginning to feel that I really understand this polymorphism business. ”

“That’s just what I was thinking,” Avery agreed.

“I mean, look at that pipe. It’s totally tubular. ”

“Totally. ”

The two of them studied their displays a while longer, and then Derec spoke up. “You know, as long as we’re on such a good roll, we really should find something else to work on. ”

“I quite agree. ”

“Got any ideas?”

A wicked smile appeared on Avery’s face. He tried to suppress it, but it could not be denied, so he turned it on Derec. “Where did you say Lucius II was?”

. Derec was aghast. “Dad! You promised you’d leave those robots-” Then he realized that Avery was teasing him and broke into a laugh. Avery joined him.

“I think maybe we’ve done enough for now,” Avery said when they’d stopped laughing.

“I think maybe you’re right. ” Derec yawned, rubbed his eyes, and gave the robotics lab one more once-over. “What do you say we catch some shut-eye?”

“An excellent idea. ” Avery looked up at the ceiling and raised his voice again. “Ship, convert these chairs into bunks, and then dim the lights. ” Smoothly and silently, the chairs flowed into their new shapes.

. Derec didn’t even get out of his chair. He simply kicked off his shoes, loosened his tunic buttons, and stretched out full-length on the bunk. “G’night, Dad,” he mumbled. The lights in the cabin dimmed down, and within a few minutes Derec’s breathing had shifted into the steady rhythm of sleep.

Dr. Avery watched his son until even the phosphorescent glow of the terminal displays had faded to pitch blackness. Then he kicked off his own shoes, removed his lab coat, and stretched out on his bunk.

“Nighty-night, Davey,” he whispered.