Элизабет Бир - Machine

“I understand we’re being grounded, and you’re fibbing to my ship about why.”

“Good. You’re paying attention.” They settled back and folded their arms. “Llyn. One old military mammal to another. I’m worried about the sabotage. I’m worried about Sally. I’m worried about this weird ancient AI and its weird ancient peripherals and its ten thousand corpsicles. I’m worried about why there’s a thing that might be a warbot in the cargo hold of a methane fast packet without a filed flight plan. I’m worried about why Afar isn’t talking to anybody, and neither is his crew. I need you here.”

I chafed, and they knew it. I also owed them, and they knew that, too. And the pills were working, which made it hard to stay as grumpy as I wanted.

“All right,” I said. “But you owe me , this time.”

“Saving your life was all in the line of duty,” they said, mildly.

“What about taking a kid from a backwater world and giving them a chance at their dream job?”

“You’ve been a commanding officer,” they said.

“Under very limited circumstances.”

They smiled. “Well, as you will learn if you continue to advance, identifying and nurturing talent is all in the line of duty, too.”

I could have pointed out that nurturing anything was not my strong point. But it seemed like a good exit line, so instead, I left.

I reached out through the senso to my ship as I walked around the wheel, dodging systers of every conceivable size, ox-compatible physiology, and morphology. Hey, Sally I heard they have you investigating the craboid.

As long as I’m stuck here, she said. It keeps me out of trouble. You know what they say about idle hands turning to farming drama.

I don’t think they say that about AIs.

It’s true, she agreed. Because when we don’t have enough work to do we generally wind up creating a more logical and egalitarian system of governance and resource allotment, or something similarly boring. Anyway, I’ve been working on getting some access to the craboid’s systems, and I think we can probably use electromagnetism to manipulate its superstructure.

You’re going to try to move it?

We are, she confirmed. Want to come and help? You might have some insights. We might all learn something.

My other duties weren’t currently pressing. Sally was grounded; the archaic humans were frozen solid; Helen was getting care from the best cyberdoc in the hospital. Tackling the job the master chief had given me was going to require sitting down and focusing my concentration to read a lot of case reports, and I didn’t want to tackle that until I’d had some time to process our conversation.

Am I avoidant? Very well then, I am avoidant. Also, sometimes I contradict myself. I contain multitudes.

Sure, I said. I’ll bring some EM induction patches.

Afar was docked in the methane section, which meant I had to suit up to get there no matter which way I went. I returned to Sally to pick up my own hardsuit rather than choosing from whatever was in the lockers. She seemed eager, and bored, and not too distracted by monitoring her own repairs.

She was empty of our team except for Hhayazh, the current duty officer, who was backup-supervising the crew of repair bots. Sally usually would have done it alone, but since Sally’s memory and perceptions were going to be in question until the repairs were complete, Loese and Hhayazh had decided to take turns sitting with her.

Just to make sure nobody snuck any more unauthorized aftermarket modifications into our ship. Such as bombs. Or Trojan horses.

Hhayazh followed me to Sally’s rear airlock and helped me into my suit. I didn’t need anybody to spray me with additional insulation todia, because I wasn’t going into the methane environment, and the irradiated vacuum of Core space was significantly less hostile than a balmy beachfront property on Darbo. I seemed to recall, now that I was thinking about it, that there were some methane-breather colonies on a major moon in Terra’s system. I should look into that; maybe Afar did have a reason to be on that vector. If he could have reasonably run across Big Rock Candy Mountain by accident while dropping out of white space to check and adjust course, that was one less intractable mystery to worry about.

The archinformists had said that it was likely Afar’s flight plan had not been deleted, or they would know. I would have to talk to O’Mara and ask if it was possible that Afar’s flight plan had been filed and had gotten lost somewhere, or was hung up at a packet beacon somewhere out in the galactic halo, waiting for the piggyback that would bring it to us in the Core.

It made me feel better to contemplate that there might be an easy explanation. Whether that was denial and self-delusion or refusing to fall prey to conspiracy theories, only time would tell.

Hhayazh finished my precheck and patted me on the shoulder with a bristly appendage. “Be safe out there.”

“I’m just going for a little walk around the wheel. Nothing to it.” I stepped into the airlock, and in a matter of moments I was looking at the outside.

This time the jump down to the surface would have been only a couple of meters. Rotational force would tend to fling me off the side of the hospital the instant I let go, however, so rather than waste maneuvering fuel, I climbed down a ladder. Space is a much better place for being cautious and pragmatic than flamboyant, even if it isn’t nearly as much fun as what you see in the three-vees.

Having reached the surface of the docking ring, I clomped across it until I got to a lift branch. It angled sharply, but my magnetic boots made it easy to walk right up the inside, and spin helped to hold me there. The farther I got up the arch, the heavier I was, because the structures farthest from Core General’s hub were spinning the fastest. Every so often, a lift zoomed past beneath my feet, shivering the whole tube. Above my head, crystal panels showed green and greeny-violet leaves outlifted toward the light of the Core.

It’s not every dia that you get to go for an EVA stroll around the outside of a gigantic space station. In short order, the branch I had been climbing joined the lift trunk. I paused at the top—or, from my perspective, the bottom—to take in the view.

Core General swooped and bulged over my head, incomprehensibly huge, like a world looming over my shoulder. Beneath my feet, beyond the silvery band of the trunk, the Core danced with all its millions of stars. Even though I was partially in the shadow of the trunk, my hardsuit cooler whined with the strain of so much insulation.

My exo gave me a squeeze, reminding me that the extra acceleration wasn’t helping my joints any. I tore myself from the spectacle and kept on walking toward the station’s nadir. Sally could handle this on her own. But I admit: even with all the mysteries stacking up, I was curious about this one.

It was easy to spot Afar, even in the distance. His cargo doors were open and a swarm of drone tenders moved around him, pulling the packing gel loose in wide chunks and long foamy strands. I could have tapped into the output of one of them, but I wanted to get a look at the craboid with my own eyes—and not a lot of senso—before we brought it inside.

Another ladder got me down to the cargo bay in time to watch the last of the packing material peeled away. Now that I was looking at it in person, the craboid seemed even bigger and spikier than I remembered. As I climbed up to it, a cloud of drones arose like flies off a corpse, leaving the clean-picked-looking carapace of the walker behind.