Michael Kube-McDowell - Odyssey

He had never once thought of ordering them to leave their work. Katherine had thought of it immediately. Derec knew somehow that the difference said something important about the two of them-something about their background, the subculture which had shaped their attitudes about robots.

It was as though he respected the importance of the robots’ work and saw them more or less as equals, while she thought of them only as servants. But whether it meant he had more experience with robots than she or less, he could not say.

All the same, it was another tiny piece in his puzzle. He was not like Katherine. They came from different worlds-culturally if not geographically. It made him wonder how it was she knew him.

All these thoughts cascaded through Derec’s mind in a fraction of a second, allowing him to carry on the conversation with only the faintest hesitation. “Look, I’m willing to share the decision-making. Maybe we could get the robots to come here,” he said. “There’s still the ship. I should go have a look at it.”

“That’s something we should do together.”

“Why? What’s hidden there that you don’t want me to find?”

Katherine crossed her arms and sighed. “If you’re going to be suspicious of me all the time, this isn’t going to work.”

“I’m not suspicious of you!” Derec exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. “I just don’t understand why you don’t seem to want to let me out of your sight.”

“And I don’t understand your hurry,” Katherine said stiffly. “You say that we’re a team, but you want to go run off and do everything yourself.”

“The hurry is because we want to get there first,” Derec said impatiently. “We don’t want anyone else taking it.”

She looked at him quizzically. “We’ve been here six weeks. Do you really think that they pulled us out and then locked the ship up somewhere until we could claim it? Think! That’s an alien starship. How long do you think it took them to realize they’d never seen one like it before-not just the design, but the whole technology? This is a frontier base. Do you think they just take it in stride when an unregistered ship shows up with two injured humans aboard?”

Belatedly, Derec understood. “So they’ve been all over it. Photographed it, X-rayed it, the whole works. They might have even torn it down, sent pieces of it out on Fariis to the district offices. They’re probably wondering about us, too.”

“Of course they are. That’s why I sent Dr. Galen away.”

“Do you think he’s been spying on us?”

“All robots are spies for their masters,” she said bitterly.

“What?” Derec asked, surprised by her intensity.

“Nevermind,” she said. “I just think we ought to play innocents abroad for a while, do all the things they expect us to-until we understand what kind of game we’re in.”

“Be helpless and worried. Play dumb.”

“Just so,” Katherine said. “Sometimes it’s the smartest thing you can do.”

At their request, Dr. Galen had a multicom brought to the ICU and tied into the station net. Very quickly, they learned that the Rockliffe Station welcome mat was a bit threadbare.

The station manager was fully scheduled until the following morning and thought that they really wanted to talk to the dock supervisor anyway. The dock supervisor was conducting an overhaul of the dock pressurization system, a priority task which had to be completed in the shortest possible time, and had they tried the dispatcher?

The dispatcher couldn’t answer their questions without clearance from the security chief, who deferred to the associate manager for station operations. The AMSOP was one step down the ladder from the station manager and probably the robot to which they should have been recommended in the first place.

The AMSOP was busy at the moment but would be free in an hour if they wanted to make an appointment. It seemed to be the best they could do, so they took it.

“So what do we do while we’re waiting?” Derec said as he turned off the viewer.

“We could spend the time getting to know each other better-”

“Should I entertain you with stories about my family?”

She laughed-a nice laugh. “Maybe not.”

“ You could tell me stories about my family.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Katherine-the only person who knows anything about me is you,” Derec said pleadingly. “Why don’t you tell me some of it now?”

“Not yet.”

“Still following Dr. Galen’s advice?”

“This really is the best way,” she said, touching his hand.

“It doesn’t feel like it to me,” he said gruffly. “All right. Tell me about you, then.”

“It’s boring,” she warned.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Being hijacked by an alien spacecraft was boring?”

“My life is boring. That’s the first exciting thing that ever happened.” She added, “Except it wasn’t exactly a hijacking.”

“Tell me about it. What was the name of your courier ship?”

“ Golden Eagle , out of Viking. We were carrying a diplomatic pouch to Frier’s Planet-”

At least in a first reading, the story had the ring of truth.

According to Katherine, she and her robots had been outbound from Viking on the courier ship Golden Eagle , along with a pilot and two diplomats. Just before they were about to make their Jump at the fringe of the Viking system, the pilot spotted Aranimas’s ship, apparently adrift.

Taking it for an uncharted wreck-in part because of its appearance and in part because they could not raise it on any channel-they abandoned their exit trajectory and went to investigate. Suddenly they were fired upon, and their ship disabled. Katherine and the robots were taken off the courier by the Narwe, and then the courier was set adrift. A short time later the courier exploded, probably, Katherine said, because of a bomb that had been placed aboard.

There were no screaming contradictions in the story, but there were several little points that nagged at Derec. Katherine was vague about just why she was on the courier. At first she seemed to want him to think that she was part of the diplomatic mission. But even though she wanted him to think that she was old enough for such duty, she clearly was not.

When he questioned her on it, she hastily explained that she had been a passenger, using the courier instead of a commercial carrier because she wanted privacy. He wondered aloud at a courier taking on passengers. She responded by hinting that she was important enough to justify any exception that might have been required.

But the biggest sticking point, and the one on which he kept his own counsel, was the behavior of the courier pilot. Couriers carried important people, emergency supplies, engineering prototypes, irreplaceable documents. It didn’t make sense that a courier pilot would endanger his cargo by poking around a wreck. It seemed far more likely that the pilot would report the sighting to the Patrol post on Viking, then make his Jump on schedule.

Derec recalled that the first time her capture had come up, Katherine had quickly changed the subject. He wondered now if that was because she didn’t have her story ready. Perhaps he was being fed half-truths as some sort of test-Dr. Galen’s prescription for crippled minds. If so, he resented it.

But the arrival at last of the Assistant Manager for Station Operations pushed those thoughts to the back of Derec’s mind.

“I am called Hajime,” the AMSOP said, “Dr.Galen tells me that both of you are recovering from your injuries. That is good news.”

“Especially to us,” Derec said under his breath.

“I understand that you have questions about your presence here. I hope that I will be able to answer them.”