Robot Blues (36 page)

“Certainly,” Dr.
Quong said promptly. “The robot doesn’t have to know anything about the
Claymore. All it lias to know is how to communicate with the onboard computer.
They talk to each other using machine language, which essentially has not
changed since the dawn of object-oriented machine language.”

“Okay, Tess thinks
the robot may be on its way to continue its work—laying Lanes. After all, the
robot has no concept of the passing of time. It doesn’t know it was sidelined
for a good two thousand years.”

“And the
Collimated Command Receiver Unit belonging to this Mr. Grant has reinforced
this idea.”

“Did you get a
chance to study that thing, Doc, when you brought it on board? Is it really
talking to the ‘bot? And if so, what’re they saying to each other?”

‘Yes, I examined
the unit. I understand how it works, but not I am afraid—why. In other words, I
do not precisely understand what it was designed to do. And therefore I have no
way of knowing what they are saying to each other.”

“Do you agree with
Captain Strauss? Is it likely that the robot is simply carrying on with its
assignment? Getting ready to lay more Lanes?”

“Conceivably,”
Quong said, sounding dubious. “But I doubt it. I hate to break this to the
Admiralty, but I don’t believe that this robot will provide them the answers
for which they are searching. Yes, it is a Lane-laying robot, but, as I told
you before, these robots were in constant communication with Professor
Lasairion. He undoubtedly fitted them with a fail-safe device. They would have
had to receive a confirmation signal before laying a Lane.”

“Wait a minute.” Xris
raised his hand. “What’s this ‘undoubtedly’ business? Back on base you told me
that the professor
had
fitted the robots with such a device. Did he or
didn’t he?”

“I looked it all
up for my report. According to the
Encyclopedia Galactica .
..” Harry
began.

Xris and Quong
both glared at him. Hurt, Harry fell silent.

Quong answered. “Research
exists which indicates that the professor did indeed install such a device.”

Harry was shaking
his head.

“Suppose the unit
is sending out that very signal,” Xris suggested. “The one telling the ‘bot to
go ahead.”

Quong was
decisive. “The professor himself was the only one who could have done so. The
signals were undoubtedly coded. He was the one—the only one—who had the code.
The robot might try to lay the Lane, but if it did not receive the correct
confirmation signal, it would not go ahead.”

“Sure it would,
Doc!” Harry protested. “The professor stored all his knowledge in the robots
and sent them off. That’s according to the
Encyclopedia Galactica.
You
can look it up.”

“I realize that
this is the popular theory,” Quong said. “I happen to believe it is in error
and I am not the only one. There have been a great many papers written on the
subject—”

“Like mine,” Harry
interjected, with pride.

“Precisely,” Quong
said dryly.

“Then if we shut
down the Collimated Command Receiver Unit, maybe we stop the robot dead in its
tracks,” Xris suggested.

“Perhaps,” Quong
said, “perhaps not. Perhaps shutting the unit down might make matters worse.”

“How could they
possibly get worse?” Xris demanded, exasperated.

“They could.”
Quong was ominous. “Believe me.”

“Tell me.”

The doctor shook
his head. “No, I do not have enough data.”

“Then at least you
can tell me what you think it’s doing out there. Is it sightseeing? And why
steal the Claymore? And Jeffrey Grant? And why is Captain Strauss lying to us?
Tell us how dangerous this robot would be if it falls into Corasian hands.”

Dr. Quong started
to reply, checked himself. He pursed his lips, shook his head. “No. I do not
have enough data.”

“C’mon, Doc,” Xris
ordered. “Cut the ‘enough data’ crap. At least tell me what you’re guessing.”

“Crap!” Quong
repeated, incensed. “It is not crap! I do not have enough data to make an
informed determination of the robot’s activities and I will
not
guess.
When I acquire more information,” he added, bowing stiffly, “I will let you
know.”

Clearly angry, he
left the bridge.

“He said the
encyclopedia was wrong.” Harry was shocked. “The encyclopedia’s never wrong.
You want me to look it up for you, Xris? I’m pretty sure the encyclopedia’s on
file in the research section of the ship’s computer.”

“No, I don’t want
you to look it up!” Xris snarled. “Just catch the damn Claymore, will you?”

He turned to leave
the bridge, swore savagely when he clipped his elbow—his good elbow—against the
bulkhead. Banging the blast door shut, he stomped off, rubbing his elbow and
muttering to himself.

“Geez, everyone
sure is in a bad mood,” Harry commented.

Tycho, not
understanding a single word, nodded and smiled and agreed.

Xris headed for
the galley. He had two things to do, one of which was to try to contact Darlene
on board the cruise liner, find out if she was all right. First, however, he
needed to talk to Raoul. And the Little One.

Walking past the
crew quarters, Xris glanced in. Tess was seated in a chair, her gaze fixed on
the unit, which was blinking its blue light and humming in its monotone voice.
She had taken off her shoes, sat with her legs outstretched, her head resting
on her hand, her arm leaning on the arm of the chair. Her expression was
unreadable. She looked tired, but then they were all tired. She also looked
thoughtful, abstracted, worried.

She’s got good
reason to be worried, Xris thought. The Lord Admiral would not smile favorably
on a captain who had not only lost a prize robot, but had let it hijack a
plane, kidnap a civilian, and go wandering about the universe, perhaps getting
ready to carry on with an assignment it had been given two thousand years
previous.

Dixter might be
holding a court-martial on board the
King James,
after all. A real one.

Xris shook his
head, continued on his way without speaking to Tess. He felt sorry for her, but
not as sorry as he might have felt, given the circumstances. If what Dr. Quong
theorized was true—and Xris had been with the Doc long enough to trust his
opinion—then Tess had lied to them. The robot was not A Danger to All Humanity.
It was more like a juvenile delinquent, taking Dad’s vehic out for a joyride.
So what was Tess up to? Xris needed to find out.

Raoul and the Little
One were in the galley. Raoul had ten slices of bread laid out on the counter,
was adorning each slice with a vivid yellow substance that Xris recognized
(every space traveler recognized) as the durable and nutritious, if not
particularly tasty, delicacy known to its detractors as plasticheese.

Raoul was making
sandwiches—nibbling as he concocted them. The Little One, standing on a chair
at his friend’s side, assisted by closing up the portions of bread as Raoul
completed placing the slices.

Xris grimaced. “Is
that all there is to eat aboard this thing?”

Raoul nodded
gravely. “Apparently no one thought to advise the cook that we were taking off.
I discovered several bags filled with a supposedly edible commodity made of
wheat paste laced with artificial meat flavoring. It goes by the name of W-ham.
If you would like, I could add a slice of W-ham to your sandwich. However, if
such is your inclination, I feel it only fair to advise you that I have poisons
which act much faster and probably taste better.”

“Give it to Harry.
Tell him you found the recipe in the encyclopedia. Now”—Xris leaned against the
counter—”if you and the Little One could halt your culinary endeavors for a
moment, I need to talk to you.”

The two exchanged
glances. Raoul laid the alleged cheese on the counter, turned, regarded Xris
with a hazy, dreamy-eyed attention that did not bode well for the lucidity of
the conversation. The Little One rotated slowly and carefully upon his chair,
his feet shuffling beneath the raincoat, his hand on Raoul’s shoulder for
balance. The eyes beneath the fedora were hooded, shadowed.

Xris hit the
controls. The door slid shut. He locked it.

This is the first
time we’ve had a chance to talk privately. I want you to tell me about Tess.
Captain Strauss. What’s she thinking? What’s going on inside her?”

Another exchange
of glances. The Little One put his hands over his mouth. His small shoulders
heaved with what for him were apparently giggles. Raoul smiled a knowing
smiled.

“She is very much
attracted to you, my friend.”

Taking out a
twist, Xris thrust it into his mouth. “Yeah, I know. Poor kid. She never had a
chance. Let’s move past that. What’s her angle? I know she’s lying about the
robot and maybe a few other things.”

Raoul was
apparently in deep concentration. He actually permitted his smooth brow to
furrow slightly— something he never would have done under any less serious
circumstances. The plucked eyebrows drew closer together. He stared fixedly at
a point somewhere around Xris’s uniform breast pocket and observed, “You have
not had sex in a long time, my friend.”

Xris attempted to
be patient. “Outside of the fact that this is none of your goddamed business—”

“Lack of sex over
a prolonged period of time is not healthy,” Raoul continued, grave and solemn as
a biology professor. “I believe I heard that you can go blind. It also makes
you irritable.”

Xris chomped down
hard on the twist, reminded himself that Raoul was a valued member of the team
and that it would be counterproductive to wring his neck. “Tess is lying,” he
said, clearly and deliberately. “Either that or she’s not telling us all the
truth. Why? And what is she holding back?”

“We have witnessed
your deprivation with a keen amount of sympathy,” Raoul carried on. “What you
can possibly see in a woman who wouldn’t recognize the need of a lipstick tube
from a guided missile is beyond me. Still, she is genuinely fond of you, Xris
Cyborg and”—Raoul and the Little One exchanged sly glances—”we know that you
are fond of her. There should be no barrier to your happiness. Go forth, my
children,” Raoul said solemnly, with a graceful gesture, “and procreate.”

Xris went forth,
but not to procreate. Thoughts of pulverizing Raoul and stuffing him into a bag
with the W-ham were far too tempting. Xris headed for the comm room on his next
mission: to establish contact with Darlene, assure himself that she was safe
and likely to continue that way.

Yet deep down,
down somewhere around Xris’s gut, in parts of him that were still human, was a
warm glow of pleasure. It was nice to be wanted. Granted the woman who wanted
him was lying to him, had been prepared to shoot him, and was quite possibly
leading him into a very ugly situation.

But, hell, no one’s
perfect.

In the galley,
Raoul put the finishing touches on the sandwiches, all the while holding a
seemingly one-sided conversation with his mute friend.

“Should we tell
Xris Cyborg the truth, do you think? It seems to me”—Raoul tilted his head to
one side, to view the sandwiches from a different angle—”that this could be rather
important.”

The Little One
agreed that this might be so, then presented his argument.

Raoul had a clear
vision of a flower, wilting.

“True. It would
take the bloom off their budding relationship. You are right. In point of fact,
such a thing could blight the rose of love forever.”

The Little One
snorted, wiggled his small fingers in the air.

Raoul sighed
deeply, relieved. “Right again, my friend. As long as
we
know the truth,
we can be prepared to do whatever must be done. And perhaps
she
will
tell him herself. I have always heard that good relationships are founded on
honesty. I, personally, have other criteria, but most people lack my
imagination. So we will hope, for the sake of this relationship, that she tolls
him the truth. As for the rest, what we do, we do for Xris Cyborg’s own good.
Someday he will thank us. It would be terrible if he went blind.”

The Little One
gave an emphatic nod, such that his hat almost fell off into the sandwiches.

For solitude
sometimes is best society, And short retirement urges sweet return.

John Milton,
Paradise Lost

Darlene was
lonely. The feeling startled her, for she was used to being alone.

She’d always been
considered odd, even as a child, when she had startled her teachers by being
able to provide the correct answer to any math problem almost the second she
saw it. What made this more unique was that she was a very mediocre math
student. She was rarely able to show her work or explain how she arrived at the
correct answer.

Tests indicated
that she was a genius, possessed extraordinary capabilities in linear thinking.
The teachers, never quite trusting her after that, let her alone.

She made few
friends in school. Dalin Rowan never went out for sports or enjoyed hanging out
with the guys. Darlene Rowan was still asleep inside Dalin’s psyche. It wasn’t
until Rowan went to work for FISA and met her partners, Xris and Mashahiro Ito,
that she found two people who were not intimidated by her. Two people who
admired and respected and, better still, just plain liked her.

And then Ito had
died, horribly, in a Hung trap. Xris had been supposed to die, but he
survived—more machine than man. A part of Darlene died in that explosion, too,
though she hadn’t been anywhere near it at the time. She spent the next year of
her life working under cover, working to destroy the Hung, who had destroyed
her life. She was successful. Most of the top people in the Hung were now
busting rocks in penal colonies.