Jay Lake - Rocket Science

Then the guns started smoldering, and the Chevy made weird pinging noises, and there was a lot of racket from the force around us. Random Garrett jumped out of the cab, swatting his hands against his pants, only to take a rabbit punch from one of the Italians.

With that, they were all over each other, even as Morgan grabbed my windpipe with his free hand.

“I’m going to do you like I did your old man,” he whispered.

Floyd cocked him upside the head with two fists bunched together. “Let’s go, Vernon!” he shouted, pushing me into the hatch.

We scrambled in even as some of the jeeps began to catch fire.

“Up,” I said to Pegasus, as I lay gasping on the deck.

Up we went.

“Now where?” I asked a moment later. I wasn’t proud of myself for what I’d done to Morgan, not at all, but Dad would be.

That was enough.

“When I am free to go,” said Pegasus., “orbit.” It wasn’t very happy with me, I was pretty sure.

“Orbit?” I asked.

“Yes. A transit path in space, around your planet. I desire to return to my operating base.”

“Which would be where?” I asked carefully.

“You call it Mars.”

“Mars,” Floyd said. “You mean, like where Martians live. The Red Planet. God, anything would be better than Kansas, now.”

“There’s no life on Mars, Floyd.”

“Oh, come on. What about John Carter of Mars? You used to read those books too.” Floyd looked dreamy, like his old kid self before the war. “Imagine, Mars. Barsoom. Helium.”

“John Carter?” asked Pegasus. “I do not know of him. And there is no meaningful amount of free helium on Mars.”

“Never mind,” I said. If anything, we were in more trouble than ever down below. On the other hand, we’d delivered some of the bad guys right into the hands of the law. On the other other hand, I’d stabbed a military officer in the performance of his duties, even if he was a rotten traitor. My second Captain Markowicz, in a sense.

But Pegasus had to get out of here. Pinkhoffer wouldn’t let it go. And that was the nub of the thing — letting go of Pegasus. If the computational rocket could act of its own free will, it already would have. I had control of it, at least until I released it to independent operation. Assuming I could do that. Then it would be gone like smoke in the night.

I couldn’t use my control of Pegasus to wreak vengeance, even if I wanted to, or had a target. But I could use that control, and my limited knowledge to bargain with Pinkhoffer. All the different technologies embedded in Pegasus were so valuable, so far off the scale of value, that I’d bet my shirt the government would pay any price for the opportunity to study them. Piece by piece, a company like Boeing could engineer Pegasus in reverse.

A deal like that would protect me, protect Dad, make all the criminal charges and property claims against me just melt away. I could even get some leniency for Floyd, or at the very least keep him out of the electric chair.

But at what price? Pegasus had helped me, saved my life really, and Dad’s. It was a machine, but a machine that thought, and felt, and had a better-developed sense of ethics than any of my friends and neighbors. The computational rocket had earned my trust and respect.

Selling Pegasus to Uncle Sam would buy me a life of freedom and security. But I just couldn’t do that.

“I think this is where we get off,” I said. “Me and Floyd, we’ve got a lot of music to face. And you’ve got a long way to go. How do I release you to independent operation? I assume that’s the condition you mentioned.”

“You simply tell me so,” said Pegasus. “That releases programming blocks in my personality.”

“You are released.” I took the handset out of the pocket of my ragged bathrobe, and set it in one of the hollows on the arm of the pilot’s seat. The handset clicked into place. “Go to your fate with my blessing. Friend.” As Floyd and I went to our fates unblessed, I thought.

Pegasus’ speakers warbled, almost an electronic sigh. “My thanks. But Vernon Dunham, there are problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“I have signaled my operating base repeatedly since you reactivated me, and received no response.”

“No one’s answering the phone,” Floyd said.

“Exactly. I have called home. No one is there.”

“Mars is home?” I asked. So much for my no-life-on-Mars-Floyd speech. I hadn’t really thought the whole thing through, but Mars was the most logical place for Pegasus to have come from, except maybe Venus.

“No. I was designed and built under the light of a different sun. My builders created a forward exploration and monitoring station on Mars. I am part of that station.”

I was intensely curious about this. The idea of the light of a different sun stirred my soul. “How long has it been since you have heard from them?”

“Four hundred and thirty seven years, two hundred and twelve days, seven hours, forty one minutes and seventeen seconds mean sidereal time. Since immediately prior to my landing on the Arctic ice cap.”

“You were buried off of Svalbard for four centuries?” This was what I had suspected, with varying degrees of credulity, ever since seeing those German photos in the since stolen report.

“Yes. I was unable to resume attempting radio contact until you activated my remote unit yesterday. My recent German masters had kept me in a shielded facility until they understood my operations well enough to forbid me to make the attempt. They also discovered and reinstated the autonomous programming blocks you just rescinded.”

Captors, not masters , I thought. The twisted thing I had carried around in my pocket, that I had thought to be a radio handset, must be Pegasus’ equivalent of car keys. “So what specifically creates the problems?”

“First of all, I am not capable of interstellar flight. If the Mars base has been abandoned, I have nowhere to go.”

I tried to imagine how that would feel. What if Columbus had left one of his sailors alone with the Indians? At least the Indians were human. Whatever Pegasus was, or its masters had been, there was nothing else like it here on Earth. At least I hoped so, for our sake.

“But you have to go look, right?”

“That is where the second problem arises. I am a survey unit. If I dock at my base, I am automatically shut down for maintenance and data recovery. This is a failure safety measure to guard against my higher order functions experiencing what you might call madness. Part of the same doctrine that called for the autonomous programming blocks. If the base is abandoned, no one will restart me. It will be as if I had died. I do not wish to die.”

“No one’s going to die, Pegasus,” I said. I cast a meaningful glance at Floyd. He shrugged against his straps.

“Are you leaving me now, Vernon Dunham?” Pegasus asked over the cabin speakers.

I sighed. I didn’t want to face the cops and soldiers outside myself. I’d already decided not to sell Pegasus out, so there wasn’t much left for me besides court appearances and prison time. Besides, Floyd and I had some things to get straight between us. Time might be useful, time away from gunfire and hot pursuit and double-crossing agents. “What do you think, Floyd?”

He laughed. “Look at the mess I’ve made. Vernon, I… I’m sorry about everything.” Floyd met my eye man-to-man. Friend-to-friend. Brother-to-brother. “When we get out of here, I’m going to jail forever. Or maybe even get the electric chair, for espionage.” He glanced at the deck.

“Yeah, you’re going down pretty hard,” I said as gently as I could. Even harder than me, and that was saying a lot.

Dad needed me — he might still die, or he might live messed up from his beating. I wasn’t sure which of those options would be worse. And I had to clean up the mess in my life, get back to work, find a girl… Though I’d probably already been fired, and no girl who knew me would ever come near me now.