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

Chapter 4. Derec

Ariel was in one of her cold and silent moods again. Derec tried to strike up a conversation over breakfast, but all he managed to do was irritate her more.

“Look, Ari,” he said, “I know how you feel about losing the baby. I lost my whole life. When I woke up in that survival pod on the surface of that asteroid-”

A look of fury flashed into Ariel’s eyes, and she fired a buttered scone straight at Derec’s face. “Will you shut up about that stupid asteroid! “

He ducked the pastry and tried his most soothing voice. “But honey, my amnesia is”

“Old news! You’ve been telling me about your frosted amnesia and that crummy little asteroid for the last three years. Don’t you have any other stories?”

“Well, no, honey. The amnesia-”

“Aagh!” She threw another scone at Derec and this time caught him right between the eyes.

By the time Derec finished wiping the butter off his face, Ariel had locked herself in the bedroom. He briefly considered trying to reason with her through the closed door, and then realized that discretion was the better part of valor. Leaving her sulking in their stateroom, he decided to take a stroll around the upper deck of the good ship Wild Goose Chase.

The stroll went almost as badly as the breakfast. Within minutes Derec was thoroughly lost. As he wandered blindly through the great salons and companionways that simply hadn’t been there the night before, the temptation to use his internal commlink to call for help grew very strong.

. Derec resisted. Frost, he thought angrily, for once r m going to figure out this mouse-maze myself! Pausing to visualize the latest floor plan of the deck, he thought once more about what a remarkable-and disturbing-ship it was.

Try as he might, Derec could not get used to the idea that he wasn’t aboard a ship so much as he was inside an enormous robot. To make matters worse, the Wild Goose Chase was no ordinary robot, but rather one of his father’s incredible cellular creations, constructed of the same amorphous robotic “cells” as Robot City itself. Back in Robot City, Derec had slowly come to accept that the city constantly rearranged its architecture to suit the perceived needs of its human inhabitants. But out here, in space-far out in space-there was something terribly unnerving about the idea of having nothing between himself and the vacuum except a ship’s hull that changed shape like a Procyan jellyslug on a hot day.

For example, three days before, when they’d left the planet of the Ceremyons, the Wild Goose Chase had been reasonably ship-shaped: long, narrow, and linear, with the control cabin in the nose and the planetary drives in the stern. As soon as they’d cleared the atmosphere, though, the ship had decided to shorten the walking distance between the bridge and the engine room by reconfiguring itself into a thick, flattened disk not unlike an enormous flying three-layer cake. Derec had found being locked inside a Personal during that first transformation to be a terrifying experience. Of course, thought Derec, it was for my own good. There was probably nothing but space on the other side of that door.

Since then, the ship had continued to reconfigure itself in accordance with the expressed or implied needs of its passengers. Already a gymnasium, a synthe-sun deck, and a zero-G volleyball court had come and gone. These enormous, gaudily decorated new rooms puzzled Derec, though, until he remembered that he and Ariel had talked the night before about an old video she’d once seen. The show was some kind of ancient history swords-’n’-togas epic that took place on a steam-driven riverboat on Old Earth, and Ariel had been trying to make a point about the timeless nature of conflict in man/woman relationships.,

But the ship, apparently, had picked up Ariel’s appreciation for the sets and attempted to respond by recreating the promenade deck of an ancient Egyptian riverboat. No doubt by evening it would have dug enough Dixieland jazz out of its memory banks to provide music in the ballroom.

With a slight pang, Derec suddenly thought of three robots he’d once known. “The Three Cracked Cheeks would have loved this,” he said sadly. “What a pity they’re-” he caught himself-“ happily employed elsewhere and couldn ’ t possibly be here,”he finished loudly. Already, he’d learned to be very careful about what he said out loud aboard the Wild Goose Chase. There was no telling what the ship might try to cook up to satisfy a perceived human need, and Derec had no desire to see it resurrecting cybernetic ghosts.

Just beyond the other side of the ballroom, Derec found a wide staircase that led down. It wasn’t quite what he’d been looking for-he’d wanted to find a way to get up to the bridge-but curiosity led him to try the stairs.

The next level down was pure gray utilitarian metal. Even the environmental responses were down to a bare minimum: A puddle of light tracked him down the companionway, switching on two steps ahead of him and switching off two steps behind. The only door he found opened into a tiny, darkened cell.

His mother’s three robots were in there. Adam, Eve, and Lucius II stood rigidly frozen in position, their eyes dim, as if someone had made an aluminum sculpture of a three-way conversation. For a moment, Derec’s breath quickened. Ever since they’d left Robot City, his father had been itching for a chance to melt the learning machines down into slag, or at the very least shut them down permanently. Had he finally done it?

A quick check of his internal commlink, and Derec relaxed. The three robots weren’t deactivated. They were simply locked up in one of their interminable high-bandwidth philosophical discussions. He moved on.

At the end of the hallway, he found a small lift-shaft much like the one on the original asteroid where the robots had found him. It was a simple platform, one meter square, with one three-position switch on the control stalk: up, down, or stop. Obviously intended for robotic use-the sight of 11 human riding such a contraption would send most robots into First Law conniptions-the platform was also obviously at the top of its guide rail. “Well, that simplifies my choices,” Derec said. He stepped onto the platform and pressed down.

With a sickening lurch, the platform dropped out from underneath him.

Derec didn’t have time to panic. He fell through ten meters of darkness, then brightness flooded the shaft as the platform dropped through into a lighted cabin. Just before he passed through the opening, some kind of localized gravity field caught him and deposited him as gently as a feather, albeit sputtering like a goose, on the deck of the cabin.

Wolruf and Mandelbrot were already there, lounging comfortably in two acceleration couches that faced a large control console. The small, dog-like alien was spooning something that looked like Brussels sprouts in milk out of a bowl and between bites chatting with the patchwork robot. Her furry brown ears went up when Derec hit the floor; together, she and Mandelbrot turned to look at him.

“’ullo,” Wolruf said around a mouthful of greenery. “Nice of ‘u to drop in. ”

Mandelbrot stared at Derec a moment, but did not rise…, Are you hurt?’, he asked at last.

“Only my dignity,” Derec said, as he got up off the floor and brushed some dust off his posterior.

“That is good,” Mandelbrot noted. The robot turned back to Wolruf… You were saying?”

“ ‘at can wait,” Wolruf said. She favored Derec with a wicked grin, then barked out, “Ship! Master Derec wants t’ sit next t’ me!”

“That’s all right, Wolruf, I can-what!” A glob of floor material suddenly mushroomed up under Derec, sweeping him off his feet and catching him like a giant hand. By the time it’d moved up next to Wolruf, it’d formed into another acceleration couch.

Wolruf leaned over, smiling wolfishly, and offered Derec a dripping spoonful of whatever it was she was eating. “ ‘u want t’ try some gaach? Is real good. Put ‘air on ‘ur face. ”

. Derec looked at the thing on the spoon-which, on closer. inspection, looked nothing like a Brussels sprout-and shook his head. “Thanks, I, uh, already ate. ”

Wolruf shrugged as if disappointed. “ ‘ur loss. ” With a practiced flip, she tossed the green globule up, then caught it with a frightening snap of her long teeth. “Mmm,” she said in a deep, throaty growl that was apparently a sign of delight.

. Derec finally recovered something of his composure, and started to look around the cabin he’d dropped into. “What…? Why, this is the bridge!”

“T’row ‘at boy a milkbone,” Wolruf said between bites.

“But last night the bridge was at the top of the ship!”

Wolruf favored Derec with a toothy smile. “ ‘at’s right. But ‘at was ‘en. ‘is iss now. ” Derec kept darting nervous glances around the cabin, as if keeping an eye on everything would stop it from metamorphosing. Wolruf leaned over and put a furry hand on Derec’s shoulder. “Face it, Derec. ‘ur on a crazy ship. ” She shrugged

“But iss not dangerous crazy. ” The little alien finished the last of her gaach. then licked the bowl clean with her long pink tongue. “Mmm,” she growled again as she tossed the bowl and spoon over her shoulder, to clatter onto the deck.

“Wolruf!” Derec was shocked. “Do you always throw your dirty dishes on the floor?”

She rolled over, smiled innocently, and brought a hand up to start scratching her right ear. “What dishes?”

“Why-,” Derec turned to point at it but stopped short. The spoon had already melted into the cabin deck, and only a tiny bit of the bowl’s rim remained.

“Robot City materral,” Wolruf said with a shrug. “So ‘ow’s Arr’el?”

. Derec watched the last trace of the bowl disappear, then sighed. “Still having a rough time. ”

“Th’ baby?” Wolruf asked gently.

“Yeah. ” Derec fell back onto the couch and stared at his hands. “Ariel is still trying to pretend that she’s too tough to mourn, I guess. So instead, she treats me like it’s my fault she lost the baby. ” Derec fell silent a minute, thinking about the two-month-old fetus that Ariel had just lost. Maybe it was his fault. After all, the embryo’s brain had been destroyed by an infestation of chemfets, the same microscopic robotic “cells” that swam in his bloodstream and gave him his incredible biological interface with Robot City. He should have realized that the chemfets were a communicable disease.

“Never ‘ad pups myself,” Wolruf broke in with a hint of sadness in her voice. “But unnerstand that th’ mother gets quite attached t’ ‘em long b’fore she actually whelps. ”

“Yeah, well-look, this is depressing. Let’s change the subject, okay? How’s the flight going?”

“ ‘u got ‘ur depressors, I got mine. ” Wolruf sat up, and made a wide sweeping gesture that took in the control panel. “Look a’ it. Perfect automation. Don’t need a pilot ‘r navigator. I ‘aven’t touched a button in t’ree days, and probably won’t until we jump tonight. No way I could everr fly ‘er ‘alf so good. ” Wolruf’s upper lip curled in a silent snarl. “ ‘ur father ever puts this design on the market, ‘ur lookin’ at one bitch ‘oo’s seriously out 0’ work. ”.

“That’s okay,” Derec said. “We still love you anyway. ” To prove the point, he started giving her a reassuring scratch behind the ears.

“Oo! Oo! Don’ stop!” When her left foot began twitching reflexively, though, Wolruf got embarrassed and pulled away from Derec’s hand.

Presently, a new thought came to Derec. “Say, speaking of my father, have either of you seen him this morning?” Wolruf shook her head, but Mandelbrot’s eyes dimmed for a moment as he checked his internal links.

“Dr. Avery is in the ship’s robotics lab,” the patchwork robot announced.

“Robotics lab?” Derec repeated.

“Yes. Dr. Avery had it constructed at 0137 hours last night. It is currently on the port side, two levels up. ”

“Thanks, Mandelbrot. ” Derec bounced off his acceleration couch, said goodbye to Wolruf, then stepped over to the lift plate-and paused, to glare at the lift plate with obvious misgivings. “Oh, ship?” he said at last. “I don’t suppose you could cook up a stairway, could you?” Inresponse, a blank wall resolved into an arched passage that led to the bottom end of a spiral staircase. “Thanks, ship. ” Derec stepped through the passage and started up.