"Renegade" - читать интересную книгу автора (Scotten Cordell)

Chapter 9. Insight

While she was eating breakfast, Ariel queried Jacob on the results of his nightlong cogitations.

“I have made a list,” Jacob said, “of the technical features that jump technology and discrete modulation of hyperwave have in common. Would you like me to project it on the screen?”

“Heavens, no,” Ariel said. “I don't understand that stuff. Transmit your list to Keymo over the comlink; see if he can deduce a parallel list that allows him to predict the characteristics of continuous modulation from the characteristics of Key technology, features they would likely share.

“And tell him I'd like an answer well before we go to the meeting with the aliens.”

She finished breakfast and stepped out onto the small open balcony to sample the fresh smells of morning. And she was assailed instead by the sterile, leftover smells from night in a brand new city; not even the yeasty smell of baking bread that characterized the city of Webster Grove at any time of day and was certainly to be preferred to the ozone and machine oil of Pearl City.

Until that moment she had not really come to grips with how much she disliked cities. She had put up with Robot City, and with Earth's caves of steel, and now with this city, just to please Derec, disliking it all the time but kidding herself into thinking she was having a great time.

She disliked cities, any city, and she disliked them most in the morning. Without thinking, she had expected to sample the new-mown hay of Aurora. Instead she was oppressed by the smells of a city she disliked intensely and yet was compelled to try to save. The thought of that negotiation, less than two hours away, lay-in its anticipation-not like an idea in her mind, but like a brick in her stomach.

With her nose wrinkled and breakfast roiling her gut, she turned and went back inside to dress for the meeting.

An hour later, she was dressed and sitting in the living room, still groping for some solution to the dome problem. Jacob was standing in his niche. She even preferred that in her present mood. She wanted no distractions this morning.

Quite edgy, she decided she could wait no longer for Keymo to communicate with her. She needed a solution to take to the meeting, any solution, even one for a minor problem.

“Jacob, raise Keymo on the comlink,” she said. “See if he's come up with anything on the hyperwave bit.”

“Keymo reports some limited success,” Jacob said. “He can now see certain features of Key teleportation that he had not seen before, features that might potentially serve as a method of instantaneous communication quite unlike current hyperwave communication.”

“Good. Could it be called continuous modulation?”

“Yes. But it modulates a sort of hybrid wave, not hyperwaves as we know them.”

“Good. That seems like a small distinction.” Particularly since she didn't know what any of it meant. “That must be what the aliens are talking about.

“Let's go,” she said.

“We're well ahead of time,” Jacob said.

“Drive slow,” she said as she walked out of the apartment with Jacob trailing closely behind.

He had requisitioned a small nonautomated runabout the night before, but not without some difficulty. With the evacuation at its peak, transport vehicles were in short supply.

Main Street was bumper-to-bumper with traffic, but it was all moving briskly so that Jacob, following her instructions to drive slowly, parted the traffic like a rock in a turbulent river. All eight lanes were flowing northbound to expedite the transfer of materiel.

Still, they arrived at the dome opening at 9:40 AM, more than twenty minutes ahead of time. At the dome opening, the street narrowed to four lanes and then turned into a dirt road a few meters north of the dome.

Wohler-9 was already standing vigil on the west side of the opening where the meeting with the aliens would again take place. This time she did not plan to make Wohler-9 a participant.

“Drive on north, Jacob,” Ariel said. “I don't want to appear anxious.”

She knew she must sound inconsistent, edgy to leave one moment, reluctant to arrive the next. She had to remind herself that he was just a robot and couldn't care, and so didn't judge her one way or the other. It was a good thing. She already felt inadequate enough.

Ten minutes later, Jacob said, “We are at the halfway turnaround point, Miss Ariel.”

She had been deep in her dome problem, still unable to think of anything that could serve to stall the aliens further. The closure of the dome seemed inevitable.

“Fine,” she said and glanced at him. “Let's turn around.”

For just a second, a quick thrill of affection for Jacob coursed through her mind. He was such a handsome hulk and so thoughtful and caring.

He was clad in an attractive, short-sleeve top of loose weave that she had picked out. She had selected it for this occasion because of its casualness. She was clad informally as well. She didn't want the aliens thinking she was toadying up to them, no matter that they might not be able to classify her attire one way or the other. It was more a matter of establishing the proper frame of mind-in her mind.

She reached over impulsively and patted him on the forearm. She put out of her mind the thought that he was incapable of not being thoughtful and caring, incapable of acting otherwise, and programmed so. And he was a handsome hulk.

He gave her a quick glance in turn.

“Is there something else, Miss Ariel?”

“Oh, yes, Jacob. There is. I just hadn't anticipated it back on Aurora when I first asked for your companionship.”

After all, he was only a robot. She kept telling herself that, over and over.

“Then I can be of further service?” Jacob said, questioning.

“You could, indeed, Jacob. It's just that I can't accept that service, no matter how delightful I might find it.”

And then there popped into her mind the image of Derec, waving, standing far away at the end of a long row of waving green corn. And she wondered where that memory came from. She had never been in a cornfield with Derec. Not that she could remember.

And that brought her back to her present responsibility, which was more an obligation to Derec, to carry out his wishes, for she had only negative feelings for the robot city otherwise.

Still, the obligation remained.

“Do you see any sign of the aliens, Jacob?” she asked.

“Possibly,” Jacob said. “I see three blackbodies that have just descended into a circular flight pattern around the dome.”

“Can you time our return so that we arrive just after they have landed?”

“I will endeavor to do so.”

He succeeded.

She got out of the runabout, walked over to face the aliens, and decided not to bow. Jacob stood to one side and slightly behind her.

Affecting a faint note of haughtiness, she said, “Good morning, ambassadors.”

They had called themselves leaders the day before, but she refused to use that term for fear they might misconstrue themselves to be her leaders.

“Gud mahnin', Miz Ahyahl Wilsh,” the middle alien said.

Ariel could not help smiling broadly. The Webster Grove accent took her by surprise again, but she immediately set her mind to eliminate it from consideration so as to avoid the less-than-serious attitude she had briefly lapsed into the day before.

“This is my assistant, Neuronius,” the middle alien continued, bunching on the right side what looked like a shoulder in silhouette, “and this is my third in command, Axonius,” and he bunched his silhouette on the left.

Ariel responded by inclining her head in the appropriate direction as each was introduced, a casual, restrained acknowledgment short of a pronounced nod.

The alien did not use the grand gesture that Sarco had used the day before when he had introduced Synapo, but it still left Ariel wondering whether she was dealing with Synapo or Sarco.

Here she was, on thin ice already, and the meeting had just begun. She guessed that it must be Synapo. It was he who had dominated the meeting the day before. On the other hand, these others were subordinates. They did not rate the grand gesture, even if this were Sarco.

She had nothing with which to parley except the analysis of hyperwave modulation that Jacob and Keymo had concocted at her prodding. And if this were Synapo, and if she had construed properly-that his green flaming the day before was an impatient assessment of Sarco's complaint-then it must have been a trivial complaint in Synapo's mind and not much of a bargaining chip for her side.

Not knowing for sure whom she was dealing with, she decided to stall.

She said, “I trust that you have now concluded that closing the dome does not have any immediate importance since it is already ninety-nine-point-two percent effective.”

“On the contrary, we feel it would be better to close the compensator and to completely enclose any such creations in the future,” the alien replied. “Although the emissions from the creation that Wohler-9 calls a city have been brought under control, we are still concerned, for the city may merely be a harbinger of worse things yet, things that lie off-world and are yet to be inflicted upon us.”

“I can assure you that no such dire things exist. We merely want to share this planet with you and are quite willing to go to great lengths to insure our mutual compatibility.”

“That would be more reassuring if it were to come from a leader. That would be a member of your he clan, if I downloaded Wohler-9 correctly.”

Another male chauvinist like Wohler-9, Ariel thought. This big bat had to be a male. Clearly.

The entire universe was filled with insufferable males.

“Not necessarily. Women-our she clan as you describe them -have often been leaders, and able leaders, functioning quite as well as men-our he clan.”

“But most leaders are still members of the he clan. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” Ariel was forced to reply.

The discussion was certainly not going well. Ariel decided to risk her only bargaining chip in an effort to turn things around.

Without giving the other a chance to respond, she said, “But let's get back to the main points of our discussion, the things we have been doing that are disturbing to you. We do not wish to disturb you in any way and are willing to go far to insure that that does not occur.

“For instance, we can change our modulation of hyperwave from discrete to continuous so as not to disrupt your listening comfort.”

A small flame of irritation shot from beneath his eyes, smaller than the day before, but still a respectable, quite noticeable, luminous green jet.

“Sarco!” he said like he was uttering a curse. “That hyperwave disturbance is not important enough to discuss here. My esteemed colleague is a music lover and prone to give those minor disturbances more attention than they deserve.”

She had shot her wad, and at the wrong alien.

“Still,” she said, “that does show how far we are willing to go to avoid disturbing your people. That should reassure you as to our intentions.”

“Proper reassurance can only be supplied by your leader.”

With strangely mixed emotions-longing and irritation inexplicably intertwined-she thought, I am the leader here, mister bat, and you're stuck with me. But I wish my darn partner were here instead of way off cruising down some alien cornfield.

She didn't stop to question where that strange image came from-the vision of Derec at the other end of a green, green cornfield; the yearning for Derec was too intense; and then the answer to the dome problem struck her with that marvelous insight that can come only from one brain hemisphere communicating with the other, passing on the subconscious machinations of the one that are hidden from the other.

For the first time, she felt in command of the situation.