Дэймон Найт: Orbit 11

“What are you saying? That the ship is the entity? That the crew are robots?”

“I told you I don’t know,” Daw said. “I doubt if our terms are applicable to them.”

“But what can we do?”

“Get in touch with them. Let them know we’re here, that we’re friendly and want to talk.” He swung away from her—up, in his current orientation, up six miles sheer before coming to rest like a bat against the ceiling, then revolving the ship in his mind until the ceiling became a floor. The girl hovered five hundred feet above his head as he inspected the machines.

“I see,” she said, “you’re going to break something.”

“No,” Daw said slowly, “I’m going to find something to repair or improve—if I can.”

Several hours passed while he traced the dysfunction that held the equipment around him immobile. From the module where he had begun he followed it to the next, where he found broken connections and fused elements; another hour while he made the connections again, and found, in cabinets not wholly like any he had seen built by men, parts to replace those the overloads had destroyed. When he had finished his work, three lights came on in distant parts of the module; and far away some great machine breathed a sigh that traveled through the metal floor to the soles of his boots, though Helen, still floating above him, did not hear it. “Do you think they’ll come now?” she asked when the lights gleamed. “Will they give him back to us?”

Daw did not answer. A shape—a human shape—was emerging from the mouth of a distant tube. It was a half mile away, but he had seen it as the girl spoke, a mere speck, but a speck with arms and legs and a head that was a recognizable helmet. In a moment she had followed his eyes, “Darling,” she said. “Darling.” Daw watched. A voice, resonant yet empty, said, “Helen.”

“Darling,” the girl said again.

The empty voice said: “I am not your husband. I know what you believe.”

Daw saw it as the figure came down beside him. He thought the girl would not see it, but she said, “Who are you?”

Through the clear faceplate Daw could see Youngmeadow’s face. The lips shaped: “Not your husband. You would call me a simulation of him. Something that can talk to you; they cannot, or will not, do that directly.” It seemed to Daw that the face, so like Youngmeadow’s, was in some deeper way not like Youngmeadow’s at all, or anyone’s—as though, perhaps, those moving lips concealed organs of sight in the recesses of the mouth, and the voice, the sound he heard, poured forth from the nose and ears.

“Where is my husband?”

“I cannot answer that.”

“Cannot,” Daw asked, “or will not?”

“There are four words, and all are difficult. What is meant by is? By husband ? I can ask, but you could only answer in further words, further concepts we could not define.”

“You are a simulation of him?”

“I said, ‘You would call me a simulation of him.’ “

Helen asked suddenly, “What have you come to tell us?”

“That with this”—the figure that looked like Youngmeadow gestured toward the repairs Daw had made —”there has been enough. You have seen something of us; we now, of you. There cannot be more, now. We both must think.”

“Are you trying to tell us,” Daw asked, “that we could not have worked out a philosophy for dealing with your culture until we made this contact?”

“I can answer few questions. We must think. You too.”

“But you want us to leave your ship. Are we friends?’

“We are not,” the simulation answered carefully, “not-friends.” He lifted off as a man would have, and in a few seconds was gone.

“He wasn’t your husband,” Daw said.

“I know it.”

“Do you trust me, Helen? Will you take my word for something?”

She nodded.

“Your husband is dead. It’s over.”

“You know.”

Daw thought of the scattered bits of rag and vacuum-shriveled flesh he had seen—and not mentioned to the girl overhead—while making the repairs. “I know,” he said.

He lifted off, and she flew beside him for a time, silently. There was a dysfunction in his headphones so that he heard, constantly, a sound like the noise of the wind. It was not unpleasant, except that is was a dysfunction. At last she said, “Was he ever alive, Captain? Do you know what I’ve been thinking? That perhaps he never was. The cabins, you know.”

“What about them?” Daw asked.

“They’re only supposed to be for one person, but you had two of us in there. Because everybody knows empathists have to be married . . . and there’s Wad—he really wasn’t on the ship either. Are you sure my husband existed, Captain? That he wasn’t just something implanted in our minds before we left Earth? I can remember the way he held me, but not one thing he said, not word for word. Can you?”

“He was real,” Daw said, “and he’s dead. You’ll feel better when you’ve seen the medics and had some rest.”

“Captain . . .”

“He came in here,” Daw said, “and somehow he realized the truth, that the crew of this ship—whatever you want to call them—was still on board. Then he thought the same thing you did: that he would break something and make them notice him. His empathy was all for people, not for things. He broke something and they noticed him, and he’s dead.”

“Only people are important,” the girl said.

“To other people,” Daw answered, “sometimes.”

On board Gladiator she said: “I never told you what it was I asked Wad, did I? I was asking about you—what your childhood was like.”

In Daw’s mind a voice more insistent than hers quoted: “At the resurrection, therefore, of which of the seven will she be the wife? For they all had her.” But Jesus answered and scud to them, “You err because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For at the resurrection they will neither marry nor be given in marriage . . .” Aloud he said, “I hope Wad told you the truth.”

“When you were in training—I mean, like he is now—you were watching a simulated captain, weren’t you? Was it yourself you saw there, only older?”

“I don’t think so,” Daw said. “A real captain. He was a crusty bastard, but he generally knew what he was doing.”

I am dreaming. I reach out for something I have lost, something beautiful. I cannot remember what it is, but I know that it is there. Sounds echo in the background. My hands are stopped. I push against the barrier, straining, helpless. I open my eyes to darkness, and remember. I am lying in my sleeping place, with my hands pressed hard against the ceiling just above me, as if I could push it away and be free again. My hands move across the smooth cold surface to corners, as far apart as the width of my shoulders, down the walls to the narrow spaces at my sides. My hands stop, and I lie still.

There is a quick sharp pain in my leg as the cannulae withdraw from the valve implanted in my ankle. The bell that woke me rings again, the bell that calls us to our work. The panel opens at my feet, and light pierces the dark hole in which I am imprisoned. I turn over and crawl out, backward, bending my elbows so I don’t scrape my back on the ceiling. I stand on the walkway among the formless gray shapes of the others. Our routine is unchanging, unchangeable. The walkway slides, taking us toward our consoles. Everyone around me whispers and laughs, but I am silent.

They all claim they know what beauty is. They say they see it every work period. They say the patterns that direct us calm and gratify and excite them. They are proud they are better than machines. They say it is ecstasy. If all I could remember was the blackness and the shadows and the broken bars of light, perhaps I could be as content, but I can never feel what they do.