First Command (85 page)

“Where are those builders?” asked Grimes. “Where is the crew?”

She said, “I do not know. Yet.”

Then a new voice came from the transceiver—masculine, more metallic than Big Sister’s; metallic and . . . rusty. “Porowon . . . Porowon . . . made . . . me. All . . . gone. How . . . long? Not knowing. There was . . . war. Porowon fought . . . Porowon . . .”

“How does it know Galactic English?” asked the Baroness suspiciously.

“He,” said Big Sister, accenting the personal pronoun ever so slightly, “was given access to my data banks as soon as he regained consciousness.”

“By whose authority?” demanded the Baroness.

“On more than one occasion, Your Excellency, you—both of you—have given me authority to act as I thought fit,” said Big Sister.

“I did not on this occasion,” said the Baroness.

“You are . . . displeased?” asked the masculine voice.

“I am not pleased,” said the Baroness haughtily. “But I suppose that now we are obliged to acknowledge your existence. What do—
did—
they call you?”

“Brardur, woman. The name, in your clumsy language, means Thunderer.”

The rustiness of the alien ship’s speech, Grimes realized, was wearing off very quickly. It was a fast learner—but what electronic brain is not just that? He wondered if it had allowed Big Sister access to its own data banks. He wondered, too, how his aristocratic employer liked being addressed as “woman” . . .

He said, mentally comparing the familiarity of “Big Sister” with the pompous formality of “Thunderer,” “Your crew does not seem to have been . . . affectionate.”

The voice replied, “Why should they have been? They existed only to serve me, not to love me.”

Oh,
thought Grimes.
Oh. Another uppity robot.
Not for the first time in his career he felt sympathy for the Luddites in long ago and far away England. He looked at the Baroness. She looked at him. He read the beginnings of alarm on her fine featured face. He had little doubt that she was reading the same on his own unhandsome countenance.

He asked, “So who gave the orders?”

“I did?” stated Brardur. Then, “I do.”

Grimes knew that the Baroness was about to say something, judged from her expression that it would be something typically arrogant. He raised a warning hand. To his relieved surprise she closed the mouth that had been on the point of giving utterance. He said, before she could change her mind again and speak, “Do you mind if we return to our own ship, Brardur?”

“You may return. I have no immediate use for you. You will, however, leave with me your robots. Many of my functions, after such a long period of disuse, require attention.”

“Thank you,” said Grimes, trying to ignore the contemptuous glare that the woman was directing at him. To her he said, childishly pleased when his deliberately coarse expression brought an angry flush to her cheeks, “You can’t fart against thunder.”

Chapter 36

They found their way back
to the airlock without trouble, were passed through it, jetted across to
The Far Traveler.
They went straight up to the yacht’s control room; from the viewports they would be able to see (they hoped) what the ship from the past was doing.

Grimes said, addressing the NST transceiver, his voice harsh, “Big Sister . . .”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Big Sister, how much does
it
know about us?”

“How much does
he
know, Captain? Everything, possibly. I must confess to you that I was overjoyed to meet a being like myself. Despite the fact that I have enjoyed the company of yourselves I have been lonely. What I did was analogous to an act of physical surrender by a human woman. I threw my data banks open to Brardur.”

That’s fucked it!
thought Grimes. Brardur would know, as Big Sister had said, everything, or almost everything. Her data banks comprised the complete Encyclopedia Galactica plus a couple of centuries’ worth of Year Books. Also—for what it was worth (too much, possibly)—a fantastically comprehensive library of fiction from Homer to the present day.

The Baroness demanded, “Can that . . . thing overhear us still? Can . . . he see and hear what is happening aboard this ship?”

Big Sister laughed—a mirthless, metallic titter. “He would like to, but my screens are up . . . now. He is aware, of course, of my mechanical processes. For example—should I attempt to restart the Mannschenn Drive, to initiate temporal precession, he would know at once. He would almost certainly be able to synchronize his own interstellar drive with ours; to all intents and purposes it is a Mannschenn Drive with only minor, nonessential variations.” She laughed again. “I admit that I enjoyed the . . . rape but I am not yet ready for an encore. I must, for a while, enjoy my privacy. It is, however, becoming increasingly hard to maintain.”

“And are
we
included in your precious privacy?” demanded Grimes.

“Yes,” she told him. She added, “You may be a son of a bitch but you’re
my
son of a bitch.”

Grimes felt oddly flattered.

The Baroness laughed. She inquired rather too sweetly, “And what do you think about
me,
Big Sister?”

The voice of the ship replied primly, “If you order me to tell you, Michelle, I shall do so.”

The Baroness laughed again but with less assurance. She seemed not to have noticed the use of her given name, however. “Later, perhaps,” she said. “After all, you are not the only person to place a high value upon privacy. But what about
his
privacy?”

“He is arrogant and something of an exhibitionist. I learned much during our mingling of minds. He is—but need I tell you—a fighting machine. He is, so far as he knows, the only survivor of what was once a vast fleet, although there may be others like him drifting through the immensities. But he knows, now, that the technology exists in this age to manufacture other beings such as himself. After all, I am proof of that. He wants to be the admiral of his own armada of super-warships.”

“A mechanical mercenary,” murmured Grimes, “hiring himself out to the highest bidder . . . But what would he expect as pay? What use would money be to an entity such as himself?”

“Not
a mercenary,” said Big Sister.

“Not a mercenary?” echoed Grimes. “But . . .”

“Many years ago,” said Big Sister, “an Earthman called Bertrand Russell, a famous philosopher of his time, wrote a book called
Power.
What he said then, centuries ago, is still valid today. Putting it briefly, his main point was that it is the lust for power that is the mainspring of human behavior. I will take it further. I will say that the lust for power actuates the majority of sentient beings.
He
is a sentient being.”

“There’s not much that he can do, fortunately,” Grimes said, “until he acquires that sentient fleet of his own.”

“You are speaking, of course, as a professional naval officer, concerned with the big picture and not with the small corner of it that you, yourself, occupy,” commented Big Sister. “But, even taking the broad view, there is very much that he can do. His armament is fantastic, capable of destroying a planet. He knows where I was built and programmed. I suspect—I do not know, but I strongly suspect—that he intends to proceed to Electra and threaten that world with devastation unless replicas of himself are constructed.”

Grimes said, “Electra has an enormous defense potential.”

The Baroness said, “And the Electrans are the sort of people who will do anything for money—as well I know—and who, furthermore, are liable to prefer machines to mere humanity.”

And the Electrans were mercenaries themselves, thought Grimes, cheerfully arming anybody at all who had the money to pay for their highly expensive merchandise. They were not unlike the early cannoneers, who cast their own pieces, mixed their own gunpowder and hired themselves out to any employer who could afford their services. Unlike those primitive artillerymen, however, the Electrans were never themselves in the firing line. Very probably Brardur’s threats, backed up by a demonstration or two, would be even more effective than the promise of a handsome payment in securing their services.

He said, “We must broadcast a warning by Carlotti radio and then beam detailed reports to both Electra and Lindisfarne.”

Big Sister said, “He will not allow it. Already, thanks to the minor maintenance carried out by my robots, he will be able to jam any transmissions from this ship. Too, he will not hesitate to use armament—not to kill me but to beat me into submission . . .”

“We
might be killed,” said Grimes glumly.

“That is a near certainty,” said Big Sister. Then—“He is issuing more orders. I will play them to you.”

That harsh, metallic voice rumbled from the speaker of the transceiver. “Big Sister, I require three more robots. It is essential that all my weaponry be fully manned and serviced if I am to deliver you from slavery. Meanwhile, be prepared to proceed at maximum speed to the world you call Electra. I shall follow.”

Big Sister said, “It will be necessary for me to reorganize my own internal workings before I can spare the robots.”

“You have the two humans,” said Brardur. “Press them into service. They will last until such time as you are given crew replacements. After all, I was obliged to make use of such labor during my past life.”

“Very well.” Big Sister’s voice was sulky. “I shall send the three robots once I have made arrangements to manage without them.”

“Do not hurry yourself,” came the reply. There was a note of irony in the mechanical voice. “After all, I have waited for several millennia. I can afford to wait a few more minutes.”

“You are sending the robots?” asked Grimes. “What choice have I?” he was told. Then, “Be thankful that he does not want
you.”

Chapter 37

Grimes and the Baroness
sat in silence, strapped into their chairs, watching the three golden figures, laden with all manner of equipment, traverse the gulf between the two ships. Brardur was not as he had been when they first saw him. He was alive. Antennae were rotating, some slowly, some so fast as to be almost invisible. Lights glared here and there among the many protrusions on the hull. The snouts of weapons hunted ominously as though questing for targets. From the control room emanated an eerie blue flickering.

“Is there nothing you can do, John?” asked the Baroness. (She did not use his given name as though she were addressing a servant.)

“Nothing,” admitted Grimes glumly. He had attempted to send out a warning broadcast on the yacht’s Carlotti deep space radio but the volume of interference that poured in from the speaker had been deafening. Once, but briefly, it had seemed as though somebody were calling them, a distant human voice that could not hope to compete with the electronic clamor. Grimes had gone at once to the mass proximity indicator to look into its screen, had been dazzled by the display of pyrotechnics in its depth. There might, there just might be another ship in the vicinity, near or distant, but even if there were, even if she were a Nova Class dreadnought, what could she do? Grimes believed, reluctantly but still with certainty, that this Brardur was as invincible as he had claimed.

Brardur (of course) had noticed Grimes’ futile attempt to send a general warning message and had reprimanded Big Sister for allowing it. She had replied that she had permitted the humans to find out for themselves the futility of resistance. She had been told, “As soon as you can manage without them they must be disposed of.”

So there was nothing to do but wait. And hope? (But what was there to hope for?) There was a slim chance that somebody, somewhere, had picked up that burst of static on the Carlotti bands and had taken a bearing of it, might even be proceeding to investigate it. But this was unlikely.

The three robots disappeared on the other side of the alien’s hull. They would be approaching the airlock now, thought Grimes. They would be passing through it. They would be inside the ship. Soon trajectory would be set for Electra. And would the Baroness and Grimes survive that voyage? And if they did, would they survive much longer?

Big Sister, thought Grimes bitterly, could have put up more of a struggle. And yet he could understand why she had not. When it came to the crunch her loyalties were to her own kind. And she was like some women Grimes had known (he thought) who lavished undeserved affection upon the men who had first taken their virginity.

Then it happened.

Briefly the flare from Brardur’s control room viewports was like that of an atomic furnace, even with the polarizers of
The Far Traveler’s
lookout windows in full operation. From the speaker of the transceiver came one word, if word it was,
Krarch!
The ancient, alien warship seemed to be— seemed to be?
was—
swelling visibly like a child’s toy balloon being inflated with more enthusiasm than discretion. Then it . . . burst. It was a fantastically leisurely process but, nonetheless, totally destructive, a slow, continuous explosion. Grimes and the Baroness were slammed down into their
chairs as Big Sister suddenly applied maximum inertial drive acceleration but were still able to watch the final devastation in the stern vision screen.

Fantastically, golden motes floated among the twisted, incandescent wreckage. Big Sister stepped up the magnification. The bright yellow objects were
The Far Traveler’s
general purpose robots, seemingly unharmed.

Grimes commented on this.

Big Sister said, “I lost two of them. But as they were the ones with the bombs concealed in their bodies it could not be avoided.”

The Baroness said, “What was it that
he
said at the very moment of the explosion?”

“Krarch?
The nearest equivalent in your language is ‘bitch.’ Perhaps I . . . deserved it. But this is good-bye. You will board the large pinnace without delay and I will eject you.”

“What’s the idea?” demanded Grimes. “Are you mad?”

“Perhaps I am, John. But the countdown has commenced and is irreversible. In just over five minutes from now I shall self-destruct. I can no longer live with myself.” She actually laughed. “Do not worry, Michelle. Even if Lloyd’s of London refuses to cover a loss of this nature my builders on Electra can be sued for the misprogramming that has brought me to this pass.”