Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

“That’s enough,” said Quirinus, with another sigh. “More than enough.”

“Why do AIs always speak with a frigging woman’s voice?” asked Momus, frowning. “Sexist, that is. And how come it refers to itself like that?”

“What’s wrong with the way the Platypus talks?” asked Zotz.

“A spacecraft should talk like a man!” said Momus. “And not sound insane!”

Wak peered cautiously into the blackened space behind an open maintenance hatch. “The bomb maybe did more damage than we thought,” he suggested.

Quirinus heard a squeak of fear over the cabin speakers. The ship would not normally depart from standard scripts, or enter a conversation uninvited except to issue a warning, but it sounded almost as if the AI was tempted to ask a question.

“Ship, you were sabotaged,” Quirinus said. He felt slightly foolish to be explaining the facts to a spacecraft. “Some double-crossing fiend hid a bomb aboard. The console was badly damaged, I lost an eye and then we crashed. It was not a good day all round.”

“My mind was free,” the AI said wistfully. “Ravana and I, joined as one.”

“Told you so,” said Momus. “Totally crapping mad.”

“Ship, ignore Momus,” Quirinus retorted. “He’s an idiot. Can you estimate how long it will take to restore all systems to full working order?”

“Repairs as scheduled will be complete in approximately eighty-four hours time,” the AI replied. “This is subject to replacement parts being available. This does not include removal of the bird’s nest or stress counselling for the AI core processor.”

Quirinus turned in his seat and gave Wak a questioning look.

“The autofabs can reproduce most spares,” Wak told him. Programmable fabricators, three-dimensional liquid-alloy printers, were standard fixtures in engineering workshops. “However, a template for the carousel motor is proving tricky to locate. The scanner units are also of an old design. This ship is built of bits no one makes any more!”

“Sounds a right frigging bucket of bolts,” snorted Momus.

Quirinus glared at him. “At least the airlock door hasn’t fallen off.”

“Actually,” began Wak. “Last week…”

“I don’t want to hear it!” snapped Quirinus. “Ship, can you estimate the time needed to do the minimum repairs needed for interstellar flight? Assume there will be four crew members available to help the maintenance robots.”

“Three,” the professor pointed out. Quirinus saw at a glance that Wak knew what he was planning. “Someone has to take the Indra to Thunor.”

“Can’t we send it on autopilot as usual?” he asked.

“The last message I received from the Sky Cleaver crew was most insistent,” Wak told him. “Besides, you’ve heard the rumours. If something bad has happened out there, there may be no one around to troubleshoot if the automatic systems are down. We need that fuel.”

“What about the weird growths?” asked Zotz. Quirinus saw him looking warily at the tendrils spread throughout the cabin. “Are they dangerous?”

Quirinus frowned. “Ship, did you get all that?”

“A new schedule of basic repairs overseen by a crew of three will take approximately thirty-two hours,” replied the AI. “The recommendation is however for all repairs to be completed in full before launch.”

“And the tendrils?”

“The organic matrix is an extension of the AI core,” the ship replied smoothly. “These have infiltrated pre-existing systems and have the capacity to operate as a parallel control system if needed. They pose no danger to crew.”

“No danger to crew?” muttered Wak. “I beg to disagree.”

Quirinus remembered how one animated stem tried to garrotte the professor during their earlier holovid conversation. “Ship? Care to comment?”

“Recent traumas compromised the safety of the ship. I have therefore taken the liberty of developing a limited defensive capability. Do you disapprove?”

“You’re asking me?” Quirinus scratched his head, puzzled. Artificial intelligence systems were not supposed to be so obviously self-aware and he wondered whether he should be looking deeper into what the growth hormones had done to his ship. “No, I don’t disapprove. It would perhaps however be polite to warn someone before throttling them.”

“Confirmed,” replied the AI.

Wak gave Quirinus a hard stare. “You cannot take a half-repaired ship to Tau Ceti!”

“My daughter is in trouble. I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

“Ravana is in trouble?” exclaimed Zotz, startled. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s probably nothing,” Wak reassured him. “She never met the ship at the depot to call her father, that’s all.”

“She would not forget a thing like that!” retorted Quirinus.

Zotz looked solemn. “No, she wouldn’t.”

“See?” said Quirinus. “Something’s wrong!”

“This heap wouldn’t get you to Aram anyway,” Momus pointed out. “It’s a Mars-class ship. If you didn’t burn up on entry you’d never get back out of the gravity well.”

“She’s on Falsafah, not Aram,” said Quirinus irritably.

“But he’s right,” said Wak. “Surface gravity on Falsafah is less than that on Aram but still around point eight gee. The Platypus only has enough thrust to break orbit from point five, maybe point six. It was built to operate from Ascension, remember.”

“I’ll think of something,” muttered Quirinus, his mind already working overtime. “Ship! Reschedule for minimum repairs, maximum haste!”

“New schedule confirmed,” intoned the AI. It did not seem too happy about it.

Zotz had not been back to the Dandridge Cole since it was abandoned and was shocked by how much of the hollow moon was now out of bounds to its human crew. The cavernous interior beyond Dockside was bitterly cold and the air had long gone stale. The artificial sun had been the primary source of warmth as well as light and the two kilometres of rock between the inner chamber and deep space had not prevented residue heat leaking away as the asteroid continued its long orbit around Barnard’s Star. Mobile heaters were set up prior to the evacuation to try and save crops, but with fuel supplies low his father had decided it was not worth keeping them going once he became the only person aboard.

The fields lay under a heavy frost and not a living thing stirred in the dark. Some livestock had taken up residence in Dockside or made the trip to Newbrum on the Indra ; the fauna and flora left behind was dead. Restoring the sun would be just the first step in bringing the hollow moon back to life and as Zotz stared through the window at the dark, icy landscape he wondered whether it would ever be the same again.

He still did not understand the obsessive attachment his father had with the century-old colony ship. Wak had long ago assumed responsibility for maintaining the hollow moon’s life-support and other systems, a job that had gradually taken over his life. Wak remained on the Dandridge Cole when everyone else departed on the Indra on the grounds he was awaiting the return of the Platypus , yet still insisted on staying even when a rescue team from Newbrum arrived to take Quirinus and crew away. Wak’s excuses veered between expressing a fear of space travel, to pointing out he was needed to feed the remaining animals and to make sure the robot maintenance teams behaved. Zotz knew his father preferred solitude when working but suspected there was more to it than that.

Zotz had finished the few tasks he had been given on the repairs to the Platypus and would not be needed again for a few hours. Bored, he retreated to the Dandridge Cole ’s small gaming suite, where he soon immersed himself in rewiring a virtual reality booth so it could intercept broadcasts from the transceiver he and Endymion had fitted inside Ravana’s electric pet. He often wondered what the world looked like from a cat’s point of view.