Serengeti (18 page)

The dream ended abruptly, exchanging the blackened, bloodstained corridor for darkness.
Serengeti
waited, counting the seconds, dreading the moment when it started all over again. She knew the dream’s patterns after a thousand, and ten thousand, and ten ten thousands of viewings. Knew every last nanosecond of its images—where it began, where it would ultimately end—and oh, how she hated it—every last moment of this looping, cruel hell her mind had created. Bright white light gave way to fire, fire to a blood-red stain. And then the darkness poured in and
Serengeti
started counting all over again.

But this time was different. A second passed, then two, and the corridor never appeared. Ten seconds—darkness all around her, deep and thick, comforting as a blanket—and
Serengeti
realized something had changed.

She shook away the cobwebs, clearing her thought-deadened mind, reached out—expecting to find nothing—and felt an icy cold touch trailing across her skin.

Cold. Cold all around me. Serengeti
laughed in delight, remembering joy and pleasure—emotions long buried in the depths of the dark.
I can feel it. I can feel it on my skin.

She stretched her consciousness, drawing that sense of cold to her, and as she did, the darkness slowly retreated—inky black veil giving way, bit by tiny bit, until a darkened space appeared. And two brilliant cobalt eyes staring outward from a rounded, chrome face.

“442,” she whispered, looking down upon the little TIG from the camera high above the bridge. “It’s good to see you.”

442 stared blankly, giving no sign that he’d heard.

No atmosphere in here
,
Serengeti
remembered.
Not since the last of it vented
.

Which meant sounds wouldn’t carry.

Serengeti
reached for the robot’s internal comms channel, tapping directly into 442’s brain. He chortled in surprise, face lights ticking up one side of his face and down the other, chattering out a string of questions, asking where she’d been and what she’d seen, what she’d been doing all this time.

“I was dreaming,” she told him. “I was dreaming about the fire in the main corridor…”
Serengeti
trailed off, not wanting to remember, feeling the weight of that dream still. She cast her eyes about the darkened bridge, taking in the ruined stations, the dark stains on the floor.

More death here. More signs of destruction.

Perhaps I’m still dreaming. Perhaps I traded one dream for another and never woke at all.

Serengeti
turned her electronic eye back to the little robot. “Am I dreaming, 442?”

442
burbled
and shifted, face lights flashing a firm and definitive
No
.

“Guess I’ll have to take your word for it.”

442
wonked
loudly, face lights flashing in a frowny-faced look of offense.

Definitely not dreaming—she’d never seen one of her robots wear such a sour, glowering puss.

“Alright. I believe you.”

442 rattled his legs happily, frowny-face turning upside down as he shifted from side-to-side.

Serengeti
laughed softly, forgot herself and reached for systems, thinking to run diagnostics and query for ship’s status, berated herself for being stupid when nothing but silence came back.

“Dead
,
”
she said, touching at a burnt-out circuit, eyeing the blank spaces in her network that used to lead to systems. “Everything inside me is dead.”

442
beeped
softly, reminding her that he was there.

“Except you,” she amended, touching at 442’s brain. “And the others,” she added, thinking of her tiny cadre of robots, and
Cryo
tucked away inside her bowels.

She queried internally, hoping against hope for an answer, but the line to the lifeboat was gone—burned out with rest of her comms. On a whim, she cast her net wider, reaching outside her hull, searching for others like her—sister ships travelling the stars, thinking somehow, by some miracle, one might have drifted near.

Nothing out there—no sound at all. Just cold and stars, darkness unending and the shredded debris drifting in a cloud around her wrecked body.

Too much to hope for I guess.
She returned her attention to the bridge, and the robot waiting patiently beneath her camera. “Are we there yet?”
Serengeti
asked, focusing on the robot below her. “Have we reached our destination?”

442 ducked his head and shuffled his legs, metal tips tapping nervously against the decking.

“Have we reached our destination?”
Serengeti
asked sternly.

442 glanced at the camera, looking shame-faced and contrite. A slight pause and his face lights flashed once.

“No?”
Serengeti
repeated in confusion.

442
burbled
in apology, nodded and repeated his answer.

“My instructions were clear. You were not to wake me until we reached Tsu’s star.” A hint of frustration and disappointment crept into
Serengeti’s
voice. Power was at a premium, which meant they had to preserve every last morsel. Each waking, each return to consciousness drained their reserves just that tiny bit more. “Why, 442? Why have you woken me if we haven’t reached our destination?”

442 ducked his head again, legs sagging as he bobbed down and back up again, offering one of his robotic shrugs.

“That’s not an answer,”
Serengeti
noted.

442 shrugged again. Not like him, all that shrugging.
Serengeti
started to worry.

“Has something happened?” she asked him, trying to keep her concern from coloring her voice. “Has something gone wrong?”

Third shrug.
Serengeti
sighed in frustration.

She shouldn’t have, but she expended a bit of power to activate a light above the robot, wanting to see 442—
all
of 442, not just those disembodied cobalt eyes of his.

“No more shrugging, 442. I want an answer. Has something gone wrong? Is that why you woke me?”

442 looked up at her, blue eyes glowing brightly, face lights swirling in a complex pattern that looked suspiciously like guilt. A slight pause and he shook his head quickly, front legs lifting, waving frantically in denial.

Nothing gone wrong—that made her feel a bit better.
Serengeti
kept digging, looking for answers.

“Have we drifted off course?”

Another shake of 442’s rounded head.

“Were my instructions unclear? Are you confused by what you’re supposed to do?”
Serengeti
peppered the TIG with questions but 442 kept shaking his head ‘no.’ This was getting her nowhere.
Serengeti
returned to her original question, using her softest, gentlest voice to avoid scaring the little TIG further. “Why then, 442? Why have I been woken?”

442 fidgeted uncomfortably, carefully avoiding looking at the camera. He skittered to one side, leg ends rattling against the deck plates, and then shuffled to the other. A heavy sigh, body bobbing up and down, and he launched into a long and rolling chatter of explanation, face lights flashing in swirling, ticking patterns, filling in the gaps of his verbal communications.

Organized patterns this time—words spoken in swirls of cobalt light. That’s the way the TIGs talked to one another. The vocalizations were an adaptation, like the numbers and letters painted on their sides, the sounds added for the benefit of her human crew.

The sounds only told part of the story. The face lights told her what the TIG was
really
trying to communicate.

“Lonely. You’re lonely,”
Serengeti
repeated. “But you have the others to keep you company.”

That look again. That guilty flash of face lights as 442 ducked his eyes away. He shrugged uncomfortably, scuffing of one leg end across the metal floor, refusing to answer, refusing to even look at the camera.

There’s more to this than he’s letting on. It wasn’t just loneliness that brought 442 here
.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

442’s eyes ticked to the camera and just as quickly looked away again. He flexed his legs, offering another shrug.

“You’re keeping something from me.”

442 offered another shrug.

Serengeti
sighed in annoyance and decided to let it go for now. She’d been awake too long already, she couldn’t afford use more arguing over seemingly inconsequential matters. “Alright,” she said softly, letting 442 off the hook. “You can wake me now and then.”

442’s head lifted. He
hooted
softly, face lights flashing shyly.

“But not too often,” she admonished. “It drains the system each time I wake. Keep an eye on the power reserves. Make sure they don’t drop too low.”

442 nodded eagerly, metal legs rattling in a happy little dance.

“I’m going back to sleep now,” she told him. “I’ve already been awake too long.”

442 sagged in disappointment, belly scraping the deck plates. But he nodded eventually, knowing she was right, and raised his leg to wave goodbye as
Serengeti
abandoned the camera and slipped back into darkness.

#

The dream returned, pouncing on
Serengeti
as she drifted to sleep, wrapping close about her—an uncaring, unthinking lover clasping her to its breast.

This time she was ready for it, and knew not to fight. Denying the dream, trying to escape its clutches only made things worse.

Serengeti
steeled herself as the dream engulfed her, and let the visions come, hating the dream every bit as much as she had before, but accepting it now. She couldn’t change the dream, or the past it showed her, but acceptance gave her power—a feeling of controlling the uncontrollable, if that made any sense at all.

Light and dark, light and dark—the dream looped its way from the shining corridor to the hallway stained with smoke and blood before starting all over again. And
Serengeti
looped with it, pulled along by its unstoppable current. But it was different now.
She
was different.
Stronger
knowing 442 was out there—her constant companion waiting in the darkness until the time came for
Serengeti
to wake up.

Sleep and wake, sleep and wake—that became the pattern of
Serengeti’s
for a while, her wakings brief but oh-so-sweet—a welcome relief from the dark visions in her dreams. Time slipped away from her, bent and twisted in the dark, leaving her confused at each waking, not knowing how long she’d been gone. But she’d taught herself a trick along the way to help keep the confusion at bay—a simple thing that involved counting, marking the time the dream ran from end to end, the pause between repetitions to give her something to hold onto. Something besides the dream to occupy her mind.

Predictable pattern to the dream, the entire run time just under twenty minutes, the lag before it started again a matter of fifteen agonizing seconds.
Serengeti
set the counter as the dream started, let it run its course, only half-watching now—unable to close her mind completely to it but removed a bit after so many repetitions. Light faded to dark, the counter showing nineteen minutes, twenty-eight seconds, just as it always did. Reset and restart, counting the seconds until the dream started back up again.
Serengeti
watched it closely—anxious, excited—as the counter hit fifteen, rolled over and kept right on going.

No sign of the silver and black corridor. No blood and fire, crew burning like candles before her eyes.

Safe,
she breathed, relief washing over her.

She focused in and cast her consciousness wide. Shapes emerged from the darkness—rounded outlines and sharp edges, the flowing curves of the bridge with its jagged lines of damage.
Serengeti
settled into a camera and looked downward from its electronic eye, searching until she found the cobalt eyes she expected, the bright and shining face staring back at her.

“442.”

Fondness in
Serengeti’s
voice as she greeted him. One hundred and seven wakings, and 442 always there—her constant companion, the one thing she could count on besides the dreams in the dark.

She reached for him, stroking at his mind as she tapped into 442’s comms channel and spoke directly into his brain. “Hello, 442. Long time no see.”

442
burbled
a greeting, face lights moving in whorls across his chrome cheeks.

“How have you been?”

The barest hesitation before 442 offered one of his patented shrugs.

This again. Serengeti
stifled a sigh of frustration. “I’m getting tired of your shrugs, 442.”

442 flashed his face lights in apology as
Serengeti
activated the light above him and took a good long, look.

Dirt and char showed on his carapace, scuffs and scores showing just about everywhere, turning his once bright and shining silver body a dull, dingy shade of gunmetal grey. “Looking a bit worse for wear these days,”
Serengeti
noted, panning the camera a bit. “Picked up a few more dents and scratches while I was away.”

442
beeped
and
blipped,
face flushing self-consciously as he rubbed at a scratch in his side. His efforts only made the mark worse—metal on metal tended to have that effect.

So strange
, she thought,
seeing 442 in such a slovenly state
. Her robots were always so particular about their appearance, polishing and buffing their metal bodies, carefully maintaining their shimmering glow.
Spit and polish doesn’t really matter anymore, though, does it? I mean, look at me. I’m just a wrecked hulk drifting in empty space.
The bitterness she felt surprised her, the anger and embarrassment even more.
It doesn’t matter what he looks like
,
Serengeti
decided.
442’s still here. That’s all that matters.

“Everything still working alright?”

442 nodded quickly, demonstrating his soundness by giving himself a good, solid thump on the chest.

“My hero.”
Serengeti
smiled. She spotted something and zoomed in, examining the chipped and faded remains of the letter and number designation on the TIG’s side. “Looks like you lost your numbers somewhere along the way.”

The robot
beeped
in confusion, front legs lifting, metal ends rattling nervously against each other as
Serengeti
turned 442’s head and showed him the blank space on his side.

442 swiped at the blurred remains of his name, obviously thinking that would somehow make things better and magically bring his missing numbers and letters back. But all he did was move a bit of dirt around and scraped away yet more paint.

A flash of worried face lights accompanied by anxious, apologetic vocalizations.
Have to fix that, Serengeti
thought, listening to 442 chatter away.
This
beep
and
borp
business is cute enough, but it’s really getting annoying.

She
made herself a mental note, moving repairs to the robot translation routines higher up on 442’s ‘to-do’ list.

442 took another swipe at his side, completely obliterating the remnants of his numbers.

“Now you’ve done it. Looks like those numbers are gone for good.”

442
hooted
mournfully, leg end touching tentatively at the blank metal of his side.

“I guess it’s just Tig now.”

442 turned wide, worried eyes on the camera, face lights swirling in dismay. Those numbers gave him identity, distinguishing him from all the other TIGs in her robot crew. Losing them made him anonymous—just one more robot scuttling about the ship.

But he’s more than that now. It’s not right, calling him a number. Reducing him to something as simplistic as a number when she’d made him so much more than that.

“It’s alright,”
Serengeti
said, soothing the little robot with a touch at his brain. “It’s just your numbers that got lost, not you, little one. What’s here doesn’t matter.” She lifted his leg, tapping the end against the place where his numbers used to be. “It’s what’s in
here
that counts,” she said, moving that same leg around to touch the metal plating of his chest. “And here,” she added, tapping at the robot’s temple. “That’s what makes you special—different from the other TIGs. That’s what makes you
you.
”

442 shrugged uncomfortably and kept staring at the blank space on his side.

No, Serengeti
thought.
No more numbers.
“Tig,” she said, giving the little robot a name—a
proper
name this time. “
My
Tig,” she added, with a gentle caress at his AI mind.

Tig blushed happily, bright spots of cobalt color blooming on his cheeks as a shy, pleased grin stretched across his face.

“How long?”
Serengeti
asked then—the first question, the
same
question she asked every time she woke from the dream. “How long have I been asleep?”

A simple enough question, and Tig normally answered quickly, but this time, inexplicably, he offered nothing—nothing at all, except to kill his face lights entirely, leaving his rounded chrome head dark. The look came back then—that guilty, furtive look that colored their previous conversations.

“You’re keeping something from me, Tig. You have been for a while now.”

Nervous swirl of face lights, metal leg ends rattling against the deck plating.

“What is it?”
Serengeti
asked him.

A
blip
and a sharp shake of his head. Tig cut his eyes, kicking at dust bunnies to avoid answering her.

“Alright. I’ll find out myself. Chron,”
Serengeti
barked, diverting the tiniest flicker of power to activate the chronometer that kept ship’s time. Chron was the simplest of her systems and one of the few still working after her disastrous attempt at jump.
Serengeti
kept Chron running while she herself drifted in sleep, because Chron was her history. The one thing—in the absence of star charts and navigational arrays—that gave her any sense of where she was in the galaxy. “Time and date,”
Serengeti
ordered.

A brief pause as Chron processed the request and squirted out a bit of information.

1049
.
3343 Solsten
.

“Can’t be. That can’t be right,”
Serengeti
whispered. She stared at Chron’s display, wondering if she could trust it
.
Have to. If Chron’s failed, I’m lost—utterly, completely, hopelessly lost
. “Five years, Tig,” she said, focusing back on the little robot. “Five
years
I’ve been sleeping.” And if she added all the wakings before that, winding time backward to that fateful day when everything went wrong, the count of years came closer to eight. “Why?” she demanded. “Why did you let me sleep so long?”

Tig
burbled
softly, legs bending, ovoid body sagging to the floor. His eyes ticked up and down, casting anxious glances at the camera above him before quickly looking away. A shrug—metal legs flexing—as cobalt lights ticked in random patterns on his face, guilt, nervousness, even something that looked suspiciously like excitement flaring and dying in an instant.

Odd behavior, even from Tig.

What have you been up to? Serengeti
wondered, studying the little robot from the camera above. She almost asked him, wanting to know the meaning behind those guilty glances, and then decided to let it go. She’d figure Tig’s secret out in time. Right now
Serengeti
had more important things to worry about. “Are we there yet?” she asked, the second in a long line of questions she asked every time she woke.

A
clickety-click
of robotic tittering and shy smile as Tig bounced on his tip-toes and nodded his rounded head.

“We are? We’ve arrived?”
Serengeti
stared down at Tig, hardly daring to believe it, but Tig bounced excitedly and nodded again. “Show me.” She slipped inside Tig’s body, snuggling her consciousness next to his.

Tig took off like a shot, scampering across the bridge on his jointed metal legs. He stopped at the door and pried it open, dropped onto his tank treads and trundled out into the hall.

Dark in that hallway. Black as pitch, inky as the void.
Serengeti
got lost for a moment, thinking herself back there. But a pale blue glow appeared, spilling across the walls, shimmering and shifting as it sparkled off the ice rime covering everything in sight.

Still here. I’m still here,
she told herself as Tig rolled forward, tank treads chewing at the hallway’s icy coating, blue eyes lighting the way ahead.
The dream’s waiting, but I’m here with Tig now.

Tig touched at his chest, sliding a panel open, and yet more
light spilled out—a tiny searchlight flaring to life, pouring into the hallway from a cavity inside him. He rolled silently down the corridor, magnetized tank treads clinging tenaciously to the metal composite decking, leaving twin sets of tracks in his wake.

Any semblance of a breathable atmosphere had fled the ship long ago, and with the gravity system shut down, everything that wasn’t nailed down, screwed on or otherwise secured floated free around them, filling the corridor with all manner of debris. Tig rolled through it, dodging pieces where he could, ducking under others, pushing the larger objects out of the way. Halfway down the corridor, he detoured to one side, climbing into a ladderway, legs ends curling around the rungs as he climbed down.

“Where are we going?”
Serengeti
asked.

Tig
burbled
something non-committal and kept descending, passing through one level after another before abandoning the ladderway and working his way out into a scorched and blackened corridor.

Another moment of confusion—the dream’s images blooming in
Serengeti’s
mind, memories overlaying the reality of the hallway in front of her, one lining up perfectly with the other.

Except for the bodies,
she thought.
Those are gone, thankfully.

The TIGs had gathered up the human corpses at some point and stowed them somewhere. At least, she hoped they’d stowed them somewhere. The thought of those corpses being out there, drifting in the cloud of debris surrounding her shattered body…

Serengeti
shuddered inside Tig’s little head and pushed that image firmly away.

Scorch marks marred the paneling of the corridor around them, the burn marks from the fire unmistakable, identical to that carved indelibly into her memory. And the robots…melted robots showed here and there—lumps of misshapen metal melted into the floor, permanently connected to
Serengeti’s
shredded body.