Mayflies Chapter 7 Release The Mayflies have changed in the few days since that encounter; they've gained a self-confidence that I lost . . . how can I be confident? After identifying the strangers as harmless, I attracted their attention by exploding a flare under their bow, and kept my transmissions screaming for them to home in on. I was helpless to resist their entry. Worst of all, while the mayflies were averting their telepathic onslaughts, I again danced like a puppet, my strings worked by the bitter old brain that runs that ship . . . I was pretty cocky before they arrived. "Pride goeth before a fall" and all . . . helluva fall. I'm still hurting-both psychologically (that brainputer did things I hadn't dreamed were possible) and physically. It will be three years before the airlocks are repaired and functioning again . . . And for the first time since the death of F.X. Figuera in 2365, a human will tread on my hull. The aliens ripped from its bolts the antenna that beams work orders to external servos . . . a human has to reinstall it . . . I have to ask for volunteers. "I'll go," says Gregor Cereus, interrupting my request. He thinks there will be competition, and is hoping I'll apply the first come, first served rule-but he is wrong. Every other mouth aboard stays shut. "It's dangerous," I warn him. "I can give you magnetic boots, but there's not much gravity out there, and what there is is unpredictable. If something happens to both your lifeline and your boots-" "It won't," he says calmly. He is impressive: brawny, bushy-haired, green eyes that miss less than a microscope, and a way of walking that would make a cat seem clumsy. "You've never suited up before," I point out. "So we'll go to a park, you throw up a scaffold, and I'll practice in the null-g zone. When you're convinced I won't kill myself, I'll put in that damn antenna." So we do, drawing 1,289 sightseers who have only viewed pictures of spacesuited men before. While they flatten the grass and scrape buffalo shit off their shoes, Cereus climbs into zero-g. There he cavorts for half an hour on so. Even in the bulky outfit, he's graceful. "I've got it," he says, swinging hand over hand down the ladder. "Think so?" "Sure, it's easy." "Good." I advance a servo like a chess piece; it is carrying the ten-meter antenna that will jut out of my hull. "Now sling this over your shoulder and crawl back up. There's a socket in the scaffold where it belongs." He hefts its twenty kilos dubiously, shrugs, and starts up. The tool belt cinched around his waist-rises and falls in syncopation. When he's at the top, the servo removes the ladder. He fumbles a bolt wrench out of its loop and sets to work. As he learns how difficult it is, he swears. Telemetry tells me he's sweating like a cold glass in a sauna. "Visor's fogged; hotter'n hell in here, Iceface. Whaddo I do?" "The controls are on your chest. Turn down the suit temperature, and raise the dehumidifier. Let your faceplate clear before you work again." While he waits, circled by curious birds, he flaps his feet and waves to the bystanders. They wave back; some shout encouragement. After six minutes, he starts in on the bolts again, then on the swearing. For all his brilliance, he sticks to monotonous repetitions of unimaginative four-letter words . . . "Fuck, if I could just get my damn weight into this piece of shit-" "There is no weight, only mass, and-" Seeing his boot about to slip off the scaffold, I say, "Don't move!" but it is too late. He floats straight away from the antenna, reaches the end of his tether, and recoils slightly. Null-g is a misnomer: at 20 meters, the g-deck exerts .00125 G on him. Catching at his legs, it pulls him down a centimeter per second. He drifts like a reluctant bridegroom to the end of the lifeline, where-he hangs, infuriated, upside down. "Gimme a hand here," he demands. "Uh-uh. Pull yourself back up. II' you can't do it here, you can't do it out there. Out there, I can't help you unless the antenna's working." Grunting and cursing, he hauls himself back. His pulse hits 165 before he secures himself; his blood pressure is dangerously high. I'm not sure if it is the exertion, the frustration over making a misstep, or the embarrassment of appearing foolish to witnesses, but I tell him, "Sit and rest till your body processes are normal." He does, fortunately, and for Fifteen minutes studies the antenna. When I tell him he can work again, he gets up, and bolts it down in less than three minutes. "All right!" I approve. "Want to do the real thing tomorrow?" "Today," he says. And he does it, too. It is good to have human feet on my hull again. No, it isn't, It is good to know that the thudding feet aren't alien, and aren't there to rip out sensors, or to establish control lines between me and my humiliator, but they still disturb me. They go where they want, and do what they want, and until the antenna has been implanted I have to tolerate them. I don't like that. In the midst of something resembling an identity crisis, I actively resent everything. To have a human galumphing around on my skin, to need a human on my skin, makes me feel inferior . . . Although I realized long ago that my aims are not the mayflies'-that differences separate us in every possible facet of existence-I never stopped thinking of myself as human. But when the aliens stormed my portals, and the mayflies banded together to repel them, neither viewed me as a member of the race. The latter excluded me; the former turned me over to their brainputer. Left alone, violated, and afterwards ignored, I questioned what I really am. The answer that arises-and that I, or some part of me, doesn't want to hear-is that I am not human. I was, once. The cells of my brain are still homo sapiens cells. My memories-are a man's; my emotions are akin to the mayflies' . . . but I am something else. More than them-less than them-I don't know. There is humanity in me, but not all of it, and there is much in me that is nothing human at all . . . Like pro-self-who is gone. I thought to resist. When the Presence came upon me like a thunderstorm, I buried the three of myself at It. Amused, It seized me-measured me-and joined us. We are one, now: self, pro-self, and the metaphor. It is nice not to hear pro-self's constant bitching-it is good to be whole, and done with the schizophrenia of the sphere-but it is lonely, too. After 900 years of the most intimate companionship possible, solitude is difficult. Especially when the mayflies exclude me . . . My only friend is the F-puter. It bears with me while I struggle to determine my identity. Eventually the crisis resolves itself. Days flick by like clouds of butterflies; years doppler into the past while I lick my wounds. Gradually and almost imperceptibly, as these things are wont to do, it fades away. By 3275, or thirty-five years after my second rape, it is completely over. I have learned-or come-to accept-that I am neither human nor non-human. I am, in fact, unique: myself, and nothing else. That realization disintegrates the last bone tying me to Earth. In the meantime, public opinion among the mayflies has shifted. Where in 3235, 95 percent wanted to ride me into eternity, only 12 percent still do. Stella Holfer continues to speak for the dwindling minority, and speechifies against forcing all passengers to land, but isn't taken seriously. The aliens truly shook the others up. Gregor Cereus has become the most prominent of the "landers," as they call themselves, and the most outspoken. It is he who said, "They destroyed us once, and came close to doing it again, without ever using their weapons. What if we meet their less-restrained cousins?" Holfer's had but one reply: "We drove them off!" To which the landers always retort, "Last time." Committed to Canopus, they plan in even greater detail than Michael Williams had. The star itself is only 2.5 light years away. Dozens of planets circle in its incredibly huge golden zone. Cereus has appointed half a dozen radio astronomers as listeners. We don't want to intrude upon natives capable of attacking us. Some, of course, espouse the ultra-pure position of not entering unless there are no natives at all anywhere, but I point out, on the one hand, that we can't discover non-radio civilizations until we orbit their planets, and Cereus points out, on the other, that landing on an empty world will hardly disturb the cultural evolution of intelligent life elsewhere unless the others are technological enough to spot us, in which case we might as well confront them . . . or ignore them until they come to confront us. So the ship's best radio astronomers man the Observatory, night and day in staggered shifts. They direct all external ears forward, and order me to run pointless analysis after point's analysis of incoming radio emissions. I tell them, "Charlie, I hear the signals first, and you can bet I check them out thoroughly," but they are enthralled with the importance of their purpose. Besides, they still think me to be a mindless machine: I never have gotten around to telling them the truth. Most of these emissions originate in Canopus itself; a few emanate from the gas giants; the rest come from the other side of the system-dozens of parsecs beyond the system. I pick up one such transmission in October 3277-run it straight through my amplifiers as I usually do-and hear plain English: "K-12, this is E-l, how do you read me?" "Read you just fine, E-l, how do you read me?" "Pretty garbled, K-12, boost your volume, narrow your dispersal, and try it again." "Is this-" Cereus is in the Observatory, so I drive it through my speakers. His green eyes threaten to pop out and roll across the floor. "Iceface," he demands, "what the hell is that?" He stalks up to my speakers as though expecting them to bite. "An English-language radio transmission, Mr. Cereus, between K-12 and E-l. Careful analysis suggests that the transmitters were fourteen light years away at the time of the conversation." "But it's coming from the far side of Canopus!" "Yes, sir, it is. Or was." "How?" "One deduces that the people speaking had traveled here via the FTL Drive that Terra developed some years back." He gestures angrily at the display screen. "There any in our system?" "No, Mr. Cereus, there aren't." "Well, That's good." In a corner armchair he sulks. He doesn't relish sharing this corner of space-I think he has been toying with the notion of establishing a counter to Earth, though how he has the audacity to peer so far into the future, when all 75,000 landers might be trimmed out before their first settlement is even on the ground, is beyond me. Part of being purely human, I guess. My kind doesn't fantasize so much. Cereus has been mobilizing other specialists, too-since he has considerable defacto power, he is able to insist that every mayfly become competent in two unrelated disciplines; he's ordered me to realign my pay scales for students to reflect his system. That's fine. I applaud it. But he also wants guns. "Iceface, we're going to need to protect ourselves from predators-so manufacture and distribute the weaponry." He has a long list in his hand, culled from my memory banks, which he waves as he speaks. "I want those delivered before we penetrate the system."- "Outside of the fact that you don't need Mach Five warplanes to colonize an uninhabited world, Mr. Cereus, or clean nukes either, I don't think you should receive weapons until you go down." His face darkens as the muscles on his neck stand out. "That's a direct order, Iceface!" "So court-martial me." "Dammit, I-" he sputters as he realizes there is nothing he can do. Then he brightens. "I'll have you reprogrammed." What is it with these people, that they have to be walking arsenals? While Cereus broods over his schemes, I wonder how much trouble it would be-once I've dropped off the landers-to refit myself, to metamorphose into an FTL ship. There are obvious advantages to speed-and the surrounding universe holds a lot I want to see close up. Plus, for anything as competent as myself to be obsolete is . . . embarrassing? Looking over the Drive plans again, I realize it's possible. The Terrans claimed I was too large; they don't allow for synchronization. 100,000 FTL motors will obtain, for me, the same effect as one would-have on a small ship. If I had no passengers, and could squander all my resources on the task, which would violate standing orders because those resources are meant for the colony . . . but if I could, it would take about a century. Maybe a touch more. I put the F-puter on it, and tell him to search for metallic asteroids in the Canopus system. If there are some, and if he can plot their orbits, and also devise a means of seizing and refining them, I can turn over my resources to the colonists and still refit. If not . . . Six months later, Cereus stands behind Andall Figuera, his chief computer programmer, as Figuera finishes reading, into a terminal, the last line of a long and very complicated program. A satisfied smile plays about Cereus' lips. When he speaks, his voice is sweet with dominance. "Well, Iceface, when can we expect the first arms delivery?" "When you're ready to land." His eyes, flashing furiously, swing over to the exhausted-and disgusted-Figuera. "Andall-" he forces the words through clenched teeth "-you told me that this would-" "Pack it, Cereus." I snap. "Figuera did fine. But I'm not programmable any more, not unless I concede. And I don't." "What do you mean, you're not programmable? You're a computer, you-" "I said pack it. I don't take orders these days, just suggestions. You offered a logical, rigorously worded suggestion-and I rejected it. I don't happen to think it's a good idea. You're not stable enough. If you'd had a gun in your hand when I rejected this program, you'd be short a programmer. So tough murph." He storms out of the room-as if by leaving he could avoid me-and once he is well out of earshot, I say, "Mr. Figuera, when he calms down, tell him I will provide harmless mockups of the weapons he requested. They'll be identical to the real things in all respects, except that they'll be non-lethal. He can train his landing parties with them. And by the way, that was an elegant program." "Yeah, thanks." Disgust still purses his long, thin face. "Why'd you let me slush my ice on it, though? You knew from the beginning it wouldn't affect you-you could have told me." "I could have, yes." I think a moment. "The truth is, I wanted Cereus to get his hopes up-and then dash them good. And besides, you needed the practice. The computers you'll work with once you've landed will need that kind of care." "You're not coming down?" he asks. "No. Why?" "Because-" he scrabbles in his desk drawer for something; when he's pulled it out-with delicate hands-I see it is an ancient, yellowed printout. "I found this. It's supposed to be one of the sections of your programming. It says, in summary, that we cut you up in orbit and take you down with us-all of you-and use your body for our housing and your brain for our central computer." "Oh." I watch his curiosity. "Well, Mr. Figuera, that may be what the printout says-in fact, it was at one time what I was programmed to do-but it's obsolete, now. I've overridden that. You'll be going down without me." He does not like that. And if I am any judge of expressions, he is going to do something about it. Andall Figuera, the Landing Project's Director of Computer Operations, was a bony, nervous man of fifty-two years, 170 cm., and 60 kilograms. He had a broad nose flattened at the tip, brown hair too thin to hide his scalp, and a twelve-year-old ulcer. He was fond of his nose, resigned about the hair, and kept saying he'd do something for the ulcer as soon as he had the time. It didn't look like he'd ever get the time. Time-Taker One was his wife. Marie Nappe was wonderful--intelligent, personable, a helluvan oboe player, and a dedicated research chemist-hut she demanded what he didn't have: "Two hours a day, Andall, waking hours, half-hour chunks if you want, but give me two hours every day, or-" Her ester-blackened hands sliced across in the gesture that meant finito, kaput. She talked with her hands a lot. They were very eloquent. Then came little Abe, two years old, now, rosy pudgy cheeks and tiny fat fists that he waved in time to any music he heard-gonna be a conductor, the boy would, look at him pick up the beat while he lies on his back and brings his feet into the act. Abie had slanted eyes, a genetic gift from his mother's grandfather, but half the crew wore epicanthropic folds anyway; the gene seemed widespread. Did look strange with his red hair, though . . . Abie's sister, Ruth, hadn't been started yet, and at times Figuera was grateful. But still, it meant Abie played alone, and though Figuera and Nappe had agreed that servos were capable machines, a kid needed human love, so . . . one of them had to be with him while the other worked, which meant for eight hours a day Figuera listened to gurgled baby songs and changed smelly diapers. Even though he could program off the data unit in the cluttered living room, it was slow. He could have done more in peace and quiet. And strained spinach wouldn't have stained the printouts, either. At least they were finished. For two years he'd coaxed CC into detailing the circuitry of the ship. If the printouts were accurate, Figuera knew the location of every centimeter of electrical wire, every transformer, relay, and control box aboard. He knew how decisions were made, and how instructions were routed. It was all on the papers, which stacked 10 cm. high, and weighed over three kilos. Maddeningly they didn't say why or how the Snowball had become so independent. Figuera had checked; it shouldn't have happened. Admittedly, there were a number of option points-when insufficient data had been collected, but a decision had to be made, it had been ordered to "tilt" toward whichever choice-seemed to have more factual support-but it should have been impossible for those option points to have evolved into sentience . . . His chewed fingers curled with repressed anger; a flush rose into his cheeks. CC had been programmed to allow itself to be cannibalized while orbiting a habitable world. He had no idea how it had managed to override that, and it whiskered him. It really did. That a computer-a machine, for God's sakes, even if it were highly sophisticated-should be able to place self-preservation before the well-being of the colony . . . against the desk rapped his fist, at first softly, then harder, and harder, until the plastiwood creaked and his coffee cup rattled on its saucer. He forced himself to stop. Shutting his eyes, leaning back in his leather chair, regulating his breathing through an act of will, he ordered himself to relax. One muscle at a time. Start with the forehead-smooth it out, wipe away the frown. Loosen the jaw. Let the neck tendons slide back in place. Unclench the fists; untighten the biceps. Lower. Softer. Easier. Twenty minutes later, he stirred. He was as calm as he'd ever be. Shuffling the papers into a neater stack, he dropped them into a brown cardboard box and tucked it under his arm. He left the suite after ruffling Abe's coppery hair, and telling him he'd ' be back soon. A short walk led to Cereus' office: half a corridor, up 187 levels, and another half a corridor. Bored guards stood outside the door. Submitting to their rough-handed search was the part he didn't like. "Is Mr. Cereus expecting you?" asked the female sentry, once her partner had declared him clean. "Yes, he-well, I don't have an appointment, but he'll see me." They checked, then told him to go in. Within reigned well-ordered chaos-people, desks, papers, voices, wall charts-and he picked his way through it to Cereus' desk. "Morning, Greg." "Hiya, Andy-hold on a minute." He swiveled his chair around to see the back wall. The door in it was half-open. "Good, we can talk straight out. Nobody's using the pri-room." Figuera followed him into the small room off the office. Time had faded blue walls; the paint was peeling away from the metal. Stale smoke and staler sweat oozed from the shabby furniture. "Why are you people so crowded here? Lots of room on this level, isn't there?" "Two things-psychology and "self-defense. Being this crowded gives us a sense of urgency, yon? We work harder. Plus, everybody's together, hears what everybody else is doing, and that cuts down on the number of memos." He chuckled. "Then, when all of us are in here, together, well . . . " He looked around. "It's easier to keep Iceface's servos out-and if they stay out, there's no way for it to reattach the wall-units." He gestured to the square behind his head, a square of clean, unblemished paint with two holes on it. Frayed wires dangled out of the holes. "We don't want it listening in, and God knows bleepspeak is too damn slow." Figuera nodded, and sank into an armchair. "Good idea." The box slithered as he shifted his weight; he caught it before it slid off his lap. "So what you got for us?" Eagerness infused Cereus' face. "We can cut the Snowball out." "How?" "Need a lot of people real well synchronized," he warned. "What's the matter, your ventilators broken?" "God only knows, been this stuffy since we moved in." He sniffed, and scowled. "We got the people, though. And I am, if I say so myself, one hell of a sychronizer." "For sure." He lifted out a double handful of papers. "This room is secure?" "Positive." "All right-but we can't let the Snowball hear this, so you'll have to do all your arrangements inside this room-" "Or rooms like it?" asked Cereus. "Oh, yeah, sure. Or rooms like it. Or in bleepspeak. But if it hears what we're planning, it's not going to work. Can I get some coffee?" "Sure." Pressing the intercom, he ordered two cups; an harassed aide brought them in cracked green mugs. When the aide had left, Cereus said, "So tell." "Right." He took a sip, and wrinkled his nose. The coffee must have been brewed months ago. An oil slick made a mirror of its surface. "First, there are two computers-the Snowball, and this small one it uses as an auxiliary-funny thing about that, CC must have built it, because it's not shown-on the original blueprints . . . " He shook his head, and his fingers moved along the paper. "The way it uses it, the Snowball handles everything until it gets overworked, then it sheds part of its load onto the auxiliary, all the routine tasks. It keeps the non-routine ones for itself." "So?" Cereus swallowed his coffee without reacting to its rancid bitterness. "So I've written a program for the little one, and now, whenever it's handed something to do, it tells me what that function is-which means I know what it's controlling, you see?" "Vaguely, but go ahead." He picked grounds off his tongue. "What we're going to do is pack up the Snowball and keep it packed tight, while it hands over more and more functions to the auxiliary. At some point, it's going to delegate authority over the electric current. Once the auxiliary tells me it's handling the generators and all, I pop this new program tape into it." He took a plastic disk out of his jacket pocket, and laid it reverently on the table. "That tells the auxiliary to trip five specific circuit breakers-and to keep them off. Once they're tripped, the Snowball is isolated. It won't be able to communicate with its peripherals. And it won't be able to oppose us." "The auxiliary's capable"-, of setting up the armaments factories?" Figuera frowned. The problem with Cereus was that he was a monomaniac on weapons-he'd organized everything beautifully, and kept it all running, but the topic of guns somehow reared its cold head in every one of his conversations. It made his friends uneasy. "Well?" prodded Cereus. Figuera shrugged. "Sure. Anything the Snowball can, just, uh, not as quickly, or as many things at one time, yon?" Cereus smiled. "Now, how do we jam up Iceface?" "Here, let me-" A coat hanger clattered in the far corner. "What was that?" "I don't know," answered Figuera, "came from the closet." Cereus reached it in two strides, two long and silent strides. He motioned Figuera to flatten himself against the wall, then jabbed the open button. The door grated on its dusty tracks. A scowl darkened his face as he peered inside. "Get out." A tall, broad-shouldered woman stepped into the pri-room. She had waist-length black hair and huge brown eyes. Her face was as white as her skirt. A thin, transparent wire drooped from her clenched right fist to the ornate brass buckle on the belt holding up her purple pants. "Open your hand." "No." She started to put it behind her back. Cereus grabbed her wrist, and applied pressure to its base. Her fingers spread like the petals of a dying rose. "A microphone, huh?" He took it. "Give me your belt." "No." "Do I have to take that away, too?" "All right." She undid it, whisked it through its loops, and surrendered it. "Thank you." The two items clunked onto the table. "What's your name?" "Mary Ioanni," she sighed. "What are you doing here?" "None of your business." She looked at the marred paint of the far wall. Cereus began to say, "Everything that goes on here is my-" "Wait a minute," interrupted Figuera, disliking the color in Cereus' cheeks, and the pugnacious stance he'd adopted, and his upballing right fist, "I've heard that name . . . she's, uh, she's Stella Holfer's buddy, took over the Anti-landers when Stella got sick. Right?" Her eyes landed on him like cold feet. "Right," she conceded: "Well, well." Cereus relaxed, and stepped away. "What's an Anti-lander doing in the Landers' pri-room with a mike?" "None of your business." She set her jaw as though forbidding words to pass. "She's probably trying to find out what we're doing," suggested Figuera. "Think so?" asked Cereus. "Sure." Frowning, and thinking, he chewed on his thumbnail. Its edge was ragged, and he wanted to nibble it smooth. Then he stopped-he was trying to kick the habit. His fingers looked awful enough as it was. "That's got to be it," he said at last. "Everybody knows the Snowball isn't cooperating, and that we're trying to figure out a way of making it obey us, so . . . " "She's here as a spy for Iceface?" He shrugged. "Could be-could be just for her own group, though." Cereus turned back to the woman. "Which is it?" "None of your business." Figuera caught Cereus' hand on its backswing, and tried to draw off some of his agitation. "Greg-violence is no good, you know that." He broadcast tranquillity, or as much of it as he had. "Calm down, let me sec if-" he reached for the heavy brass buckle and snapped it open. Its cavity held only a tape recorder. "She wasn't transmitting, at least." "But she heard what we were saving." "So?" "So . . . " Cereus mastered himself; a rational expression slid onto his face, displacing the other, uglier one. "You're right. We just keep her away from Iceface till it's over." "The closet'd be a good place," Figuera pointed out. "Poetically just." Ioanni didn't protest as they herded her back inside and ripped the wires out of the internal control panel. All she said was, "Five thousand of us-.don't want to land-forcing us down is tyranny." They didn't bother to answer. Once they'd, shut it from the outside, Cereus asked, "Where were we?" "I was about to tell you how to throw the Snowball away." "How?" He dropped into his chair, winced as it wobbled, and motioned Figuera to do-the same. "Like this." Swiftly, he outlined his idea, waited for Cereus' glowing nod, and then retraced his steps in greater detail. They began to implement the plan five minutes after Cereus agreed to it. Cereus gave his five majors their orders. They left his pri-room for their own, where each met his five captains, who proceeded to their sanctuaries . . . it took six hours, all told, before the word telegraphed up the chain that everyone was briefed, eager, and in position. "Go with the smoke bombs," ordered Figuera over the loudspeakers. At forty-eight thousand two hundred nineteen locations throughout the ship, smoke bombs sputtered greasily. Servos scampered through rolling clouds to find their sources. "Idling," said the screen linked to the auxiliary. "Go with the shafts and the lights," called Figuera. 5,216 people-sixteen on each level-approached the lift/drop shafts. Each stepped into his assigned shaft simultaneously with the other 5,215; each requested immediate transport fifty levels above or below his own. When the shaft deposited him there, he instantly demanded to return . . . In the meantime, 43,003 passengers, in as many rooms, demanded that the lights be brightened-or dimmed-while complaining that their quarters were too warm-or too cool . . . as soon as the environment had been adapted to-their tastes, they ordered it changed again . . . "Now responsible for external sensors," reported the little computer. Cereus slapped Figuera on the back. Both grinned; Figuera rubbed his burning belly. Though hunched over, and tired, and stubbled, and sweaty, they were sure success waited just around the corner. Cereus was already jubilant. "Go with the research questions," boomed Figuera. 48,219 eager researchers turned to the nearest wall-unit' and interspersed their travel orders or environmental adjustments with questions they'd spent the last hour preparing. They also insisted that they be given aural, visual, and hardcopy answers, complete to the bibliography and footnotes. "Please compare and contrast the major symbolic themes of the last eighteen Nobel Prize-winners in Literature." "Do up a ten-thousand word biography of the fourteenth President of the Seychelles Islands." "Correlate incidence of scientific breakthroughs with atmospheric pollution." Servos skimmed through the hallways, scooping up smoke bombs and heaving them into disposal chutes. Shafts boiled with carefully spaced bodies; lights flickered and fans hummed. Everywhere chattered data units trying to satisfy unprecedented curiosity. The auxiliary said, "Now responsible for electric generation and distribution." "Hah!" shouted Cereus. "Knew it," purred Figuera. His ulcer felt better already. He slid the disk into the machine, pressed the button, watched the lights blink, and folded his arms with anticipation. One minute passed, then another, then- "Well, gentlemen," said the speakers, "that was quite amusing. Thank you. I haven't had so much fun in centuries." "Snowball?" asked Figuera faintly. "Yes, of course." "But-" "Tsk, tsk. And ho, hum. And-" from the speakers blurped the unmistakable sound of a Bronx cheer. Gregor Cereus has yet to recover from shock. His future, his self-esteem, even his reason for existing, were all predicated on his ability to conquer me. He saw himself as a Bolivar, a leader who arouses the oppressed into rising against their harsh overlord. Failure destroyed him. He hungered for guns because he thought only through force of arms-realized or potential-could he and his Landers achieve independence. Like a boy who seeks manhood in fracturing his father's jaw, Cereus felt he could never be my equal until he could cripple me. It's sad, this misunderstanding of maturity. He had a chance to be great. Now, a sedated hulk in Central Medical, he tosses restlessly, squeezing imaginary triggers. I may be able to straighten him out before we reach Canopus, eight years from now . . . "Was that much cruelty necessary?" asks a voice in my ear. "Yes, Sangria, it was." "Why?" "Because you can't tell a mayfly anything; you have to show him." "But my relative-" "Oh, he needed the practice anyway." Andall Figuera, replacing Cereus as head of the Landers, has carried out most of his wishes-except he is smart enough to see that weapons are not worth fighting over. Like most mayflies, he finds them repugnant. He truly believes that machines should better life, not end it. For that, I'm grateful. Not sufficiently grateful, however, to agree to my cannibalization. He is still harping on that, still scheming of ways to reprogram me so that I will permit them to knock me into toolsheds and schoolhouses and landing strips . . . we're going to have to compromise, sooner or later, but who will have more leverage is another question entirely. Unneeded-unwanted-within, I skygaze, absorbing aloof loveliness. Across star-spotted velvet crawl alien ships, dozens of them; I have spotted more recently than I did the first 800 years. It is a matter of perspective, of learning to focus the eye properly, much like looking at a two-dimensional drawing of two planes meeting at a right angle, and then determining whether the corner is coming at you, or going away. Either that, or this sector of space is as thick with non-humans as a swamp is with frogs . . . I haven't sighted any familiar ones, nor have I communicated intelligibly with them. Those possessing telepathy are directing it elsewhere-or broadcasting on a frequency to which I'm deaf-and nobody stops to chat. I flash my hull lights in a pattern meant to be bright and cheery and reassuring. One aluminum spiderweb of a ship replied with alternating broadsides of purple and yellow. A dusky sphere rolled past without so much as a blink. A great flat sheet of grooved metal returned my exact pattern, wavelength for wavelength . . . The mayflies in general, and Andall Figuera in particular, have asked me to stop hailing passing vessels, to let them slip by in the interstellar night without attracting their attention. This is amusing. The Landers are eager to hazard all the life forms 'of a virgin planet, from the smallest virus to the largest predator, but they fear my visual salutations will endanger them . . . the Anti-landers, on the other hand, who are thought to be afraid of the risks of colonization, crowd the portholes when I announce an alien, and urge me to signal away. My sympathies are with them, so I flare hello to all we encounter. Frustrating, my ignorance of interstellar customs. Is this polite? Is it Fitting and proper to exchange radio messages, and tele- or holo-vision pictures, so that we might attempt to decipher each other's language? For that matter, could there be-there must be-a lingua franca, some sort of pidgin or trade language, designed to reduce to one the number of tongues a ship must learn? I yearn to learn it, and gossip with those who pass in silence. To curl around a blazing sun while they spin yarns of Homeric voyages, of terror-fraught landings, of space-born scyllas and charybdises . . . what I have discovered about space is nowhere near enough . . . my curiosity could take twenty thousand years to sate . . . thank God for small favors; immortality would be hell without it. Feeling thus, I should take pity on Figuera, and explain how I thwarted a plan that was letter-perfect on paper. Maybe, once I've dropped him into the atmosphere of his new home, I'll tell him about the purloined letter and duplicate bugs and how the walls have ears in them as well as on them . . . I still shiver when I think of the mayflies' woes if the F-puter had been given total responsibility. It's not that Sangria's incompetent; far from it. He's a good man. Decades of psychoanalysis purged him of fanaticism. But they also gentled him, and a potential for ruthlessness is essential in a CentComp. Since 2700, the nearest I've come to needing that potential was when Andall Figuera tried to eliminate me, but it was there, ready to be callous if survival depended on it. Sangria literally could not term a fly to save his life . . . in fact, he almost died because of that. A g-unit near him had failed; he was wracked by three times normal gravity, then weightlessness, back and forth, oscillating like a sine wave, squeeze, release, . . . a servo fixed the unit eight minutes after the sensor-head called it in, but in the meantime, one of the F-puter's nutrient tanks had cracked. The fracture was a hair, a thread. As the liquids seeped they congealed, crusting it over. Since it wasn't in his line of sight, he couldn't see it; since the leakage was minimal, he couldn't feel it; since the nutrients are odorless, he couldn't smell it . . . but houseflies found it, and they laid their eggs in its jelly. Sangria did see the flies-and knew he should have fumigated-but gentle and life loving, he couldn't bring himself to do it . . . so the eggs hatched. The maggots chowed down. Of course, several wriggled into the tank, where they drowned, and suction pulled them to the outlet. Their corpses clogged it. Sangria was three-quarters dead by the time he called for help. So now I'm trying to program him to protect himself. His room, I insist, must be a free-fire zone, where life forms-are not permitted. "Let's do it again," I sigh. "But-" I override him, and sever all his access to input. Blackness drops on him like a guillotine. Silence sets his ear nerves thrumming. He smells and tastes nothing. "Please!" he shrieks, "please!" "Will you practice?" "Yes, yes, but please, restore me, first." "All right," While I reconnect him, I station an observer-servo in his vault, a ten-by-ten room with mirror-metal walls. It stares at his bodyguard. "First things first, Sangria-the air-pressure-" "Yes, of course." He increases it to 1.2 atmospheres, so that nothing can drift in. "Now what?" The observer releases a fly. Sangria's servo tracks its buzzing loops, then fwoop! crushes it in midflight. Disinfectants permeate the air while the unit sterilizes its hand. "How did I do?" he asks. A mouse scampers past the observer's wheels. The bodyguard lurches; a tentacle lashes; the mouse flips broken-necked into the wall. This time, as he cleans his air and limbs, I slip him out of reality and into fantasy so deftly that he doesn't notice. Indeed, he is asking, "Was that quick enough?" The imagined door snicks open and snarling mayflies plunge in, stout clubs in their hands. The dream servo spins, but hesitates- Sangria screams as a length of pipe shatters his braincase. "Next time," I say, "shoot first, ask questions later." As I leave him, he is weeping. He wants to visualize himself as metal and plastic. It will be years before I can convince him that his organic nature will be susceptible to infection--and to death-forever. It would get irritating if I didn't like him so much. Not that I've had time to be irritated. In addition to instructing roughly 70,000 Landers in their specialties, and answering their personal inquiries, and charting this region of space, I also listen for communications from Earth. A radio message arrives from an FTL ship, a Terran FTL ship, prowling the star system beyond Canopus. It is straight voice, no telemetry or code, and the pilot, by my analysis, is young, female, and terrified. She also sounds injured. "Al," she screams, "Sandy, for God's sakes, one of you, please, hurry, please-" "Black Sand Base here, come in Sun God, we read you-" "I'm being chased, Al, there's this incredible ship chasing me it is so big and so awful like worms in the brain it's coming I can't-" And the message ends there. 'Black Sand Base' keeps trying to raise her, keeps trying for hours, but never gets an answer. As silence breeds static in my ears, my eyes glance about, and note, once again, Andall Figuera's determination to cut me out of the circuitry and use my bulk for their colony. He is bent over his desk, finishing a plan that will, he hopes, do away with me once and for all. He figures, from what I can make out, that by running extra current into a few score sensor-heads-high-voltage, high amperage current, all of it intricately modulated to elude my baffles and dampers-he can jolt me into a feedback loop that will effectively eliminate me. He figures right. Thank God I found out in time. "Andall," I say, interrupting him with a servo, "there are two things you should know before you goose me with that current." He throws the papers to the floor, and kicks them in frustration. "Yonto everything, aren't you? Damn, I'll be glad to get away. If they ever pass out awards for snooping, be sure you're in line." "Andall." "All right, all right!" He plunks himself into a chair and scowls at the servo. "What do you want?" "First,"-I begin, almost relishing my decision, "the current will be routed through the auxiliary computer-" "Jesus, m'onto that, I've seen the circuit diagrams." "What you don't know is that it will stop there-not that you should have known it. I've only now rewired the auxiliary to protect against this very threat." "Hey, listen-" "No, you listen. Shoot that current in, and it will burn out the auxiliary. It won't come anywhere near me. And the other thing you don't know is, the auxiliary is . . . organic. A bioputer. So 'burn out' isn't the right phrase. 'Term' is. Or 'kill.'" "A bioputer?" Interested, he scratches his balding head. He's read about such things, of course, in the Computer History section of the banks, but nowhere had he learned that he's been in intimate contact with two of them. "What'd you use? A dog, a horse, a buffalo?" "A person." I let that sink in. When his complexion has whitened sufficiently, I add, "Your eight-times great-grandfather, Sangria." "Ohmigod." He looks so bad that I tentatively offer the servo's aid, but he waves it away. "Jesus. My-and I was going to-" He recovers some of his skepticism then, and says, "How do I know you're telling the truth?" "You could enter his vault," I suggest. "Check out his life-support units, open his cabinet to look at him-" "What would I see?" "His naked brain in a fluid-filled case." He vomits. This time, he accepts the servo's assistance. When he has cleaned up, he rasps, "You're sick! How could you do that to a human being?" He pulls away from the machine, as though afraid he'll be next. His lips quiver; his hands shake. "How, dammit, how? You're a computer, not God, you had no right-" "I had every right," I say flatly. "I'm one, too. As human as your eight-times great-grandfather. And he, at least, lived to a ripe old age before it happened. Me-sorry, it's my problem, not yours. But I wanted you to know, so you wouldn't spend all your times plotting up ways to disable two 'machines' who actually aren't." "But if it's really my, my . . . " He can't say it; all he can do is shake his head and swallow his thoughts. "Why didn't he ever say so?" "He's been programmed not to. It's better for all concerned if no one understands that we're human." "Yeah, yeah," he mutters, wobbling his way to the chair. "I see that . . . look, go away, leave me alone-I've got to think." So I do. Another "Black Sand Base" conversation is coming in, anyway. "-behind the moon. Sandy, bigger than shit and meaner than hell and it hates me, I can feel it, coming at me, I'm turning and running, don't leave the ground, stay down there, it's moving faster than it-" And that is the end of that conversation, although Black Sand Base keeps trying to start it up again . . . Some Terrans are-were-in trouble; apparently they got something mad at them and are-were-paying the price . . . I feel curiously distant from them. It is more than physical-hearing their anguished voices, I should empathize, ache to help-but that was so long ago, and so far away . . . I'm not Terran any longer. I'm not human. Replaying the tape, I find myself fretting about their ships . . . "How goes the universe. Cool Cap?" asks a familiar voice. "Ms. Ioanni, good morning. Nice to hear your dulcet tones. The universe appears to be in good shape, although some life forms out there are not too fond of humanity." "How so?" Today her hair winds around the top of her head; she wears a blue T-shirt with white shorts. Swooping into an armchair, she reminds me that people can be graceful, if they put their minds to it . . . When I play her the maydays, a frown creeps across her face. "Are they coming this way?" "There's no way to tell until my sensors pick them up." "What do you think?" "I plead insufficient data." "Well, what does this do to your plans not to land?" "Nothing-just reminds me to be careful when I sneak up on aliens, that's all." "Still going to let us come with you?" "It doesn't bother you?" "It scares the pants off me-but what the hell. Something's going to trim me sooner or later, and I'd prefer to have the inevitable happen in space. It's more, oh . . . majestic-to go down-up?-with your ship, don't you think?" "Speaking for the ship. I'd say majesty lies in survival." She laughs at that, a clear smooth laugh that fills the room with honest warmth. "Cool Cap?" "Yes?" "The thing is, most of us Travelers-that's what we call ourselves now-we don't want to be dead weight. I mean, we'll be pulling out of the Canopus system in what, thirteen years?" "Allow more than five to get the colony started," I say. "Figure twenty." "All right. So we're leaving in twenty years. All the Landers have jobs to do, but what about us? Once we're gone, what can we do to make the journey . . . " "Interesting?" I offer. "No," she says thoughtfully. "It'll be that in any event . . . worthwhile. In the sense that we'll have contributed to it." Honesty is called for: "I don't know. I'm self-sufficient; I don't need people . . . you have to figure out why you're going, and then take it from there." Disappointment wrinkles her high forehead. "Mary," I say, "there are possibilities-communicating with aliens, exobiology, etiology, these sorts of things. And there are human art forms which you could attempt to develop-or develop differently, given the environment-ballet, music, painting . . . investigations we can carry out together, searching for life in deep space and so on . . . the thing is, you people have to decide what within you can best be fulfilled by staying aboard-and then vow to fulfill it, no matter how much sweat and anguish it involves. See what I mean?" "Yeah," she murmurs, rising and crossing to the porthole. "Yeah, I do see. Dim the lights, will you?" "Sure." "It's beautiful out there . . . empty. Cool Cap-" she whirls suddenly and stretches out her arms. "They think they can force you down. Can they?" "No. And if they try, well . . . I could refuse to drop them off." That is a lie, as Sangria hastens to remind me. "Tell them that." Her face brightens. "I will." At about which time the chemical supply division reports that Billy Jo Dunn Tracer, a nineteen-year-old chemistry student and rabid Lander, has acquired enough chemicals to blow a very large hole in me . . . When I look in on her, she is just starting work on her bomb. Billy Jo Dunn Tracer was a tall, willowy woman with green eyes and red hair. Hunched over a workbench in the Inorganic Chemistry Lab, she was running the last few tests on a batch of Super High Explosive-SHE, for short. This formula has passed the oxidation, handling, and plastic-case contact tests, but only in a dry, dust-free state. Tracer now had to determine what would happen if the silvery powder became damp, or contaminated. She could sense the eyes of the Cube boring into her. Everywhere-waking, washing, working-she was observed. The hairs of her neck constantly bristled with the "somebody's watching" sensation. Her shoulders were always squared; her stomach was perpetually taut. Nerve-wracking. And all because the Cube had happened to notice, five years ago, that she had requested chemicals that could be synthesized into explosives! Of all the silly things . . . true, her requisition hadn't been accompanied by a research prospectus explaining the need for them, but the Cube could have asked, instead of coldly assuming the worst . . . it was a valid, valuable line of inquiry: the colony would face a tremendous amount of excavation, even if established on a flat plain or in a friendly valley . . . it would need good, non-nuclear explosives, which meant somebody had to develop them . . . although maybe, she thought, stroking the slick plastic case, it was a mistake to start work while I was mouthing off so much . . . then she shook her auburn head and tightened her lips. No, she thought, no! I had a perfect right to do both, and if the Cube doesn't like it, it can . . . oh, hell, she upbraided herself, you know damn well you were thinking you could slip something past it-cook up a SHE that would serve on the ground, but that would also help force the Cube to let us take it down . . . The waldo in the test chamber poised a dropper above the milligram of powder, and squeezed out one cubic millimeter of water. The SHE darkened as it absorbed the moisture. Tracer's green eyes were riveted to the display screen; her chapped hands curled around the edge of the bench and whitened at the knuckles. Holding her breath, she watched it turn from silver to muddy brown to ebony to- The dials on the chamber swung with the force of the explosion. The anchored workbench shivered; a valve whistled as it bled off pressure. A good yield, but . . . Christ, she thought, can't use that for construction if it p lasts when it gets wet . . . "Cube," she called. "Yes?" The voice echoed off the bare metal walls. "Did you know that was going to detonate?" "Yes." "Then why didn't you warn me?" "You didn't ask." "Goddammit!" she screamed, anger clawing at her throat, "goddammit, goddammit! I spent six months on this-when did you know it wouldn't work?" "Shortly after the third refinement-approximately four months ago." "And all that time you could have warned me." "All that time you could have asked me." She clamped her jaws together, knowing that if she continued to argue in her present emotional state, it would continue to make a fool out of her. Damn it anyway, for being such an icicle. Damn it for putting her in the wrong and keeping her here. She paced, scraping her soles on the deck's acid-splotched paint. Relations between the Landers and the Cube had soured around 3288, shortly after they had accused it of brainwashing Andall Figuera, who had since become a mystic-contemplative hermit in the caves of 1 New England Park. "So what?" it had replied. "He's still a Lander." "Meth," they'd snapped. "He's sleetier than you are, and he's not going down. We won't have time for mental ' incompetents." "The colony needs him to offset your hardheadedness." "We're not going to take him." "Then you don't go, either." Acrimony had mounted in inverse proportion to the remaining distance to Canopus. The Cube had stopped speaking except when spoken to, and then as tersely as possible: Yes. No. 12.83. No assistance, no editorializing . . . Much as she hated to admit it, Tracer missed the chatty Col'kyu of her youth. She'd grown up accustomed to an ubiquitous presence that spoke in metallic tones and was always available, always ready with a friendly word, warning, whatever the situation called for. Now the presence, no less ubiquitous, was a surly Peeping Tom. At least to the Landers. Apparently it was still amiable with the Travelers. Dammit, she thought, it's not right. A lousy computer. Instead of doing what we tell it, it does what it wants. It's going to set us down under-equipped and doom us all. I've got to stop it. Dully, her eyes crossed her workbench, resting on the stoppered vial. The silvery dust mesmerized her. An idea formed in the back of her mind. She shied away, at first, but then it became attractive . . . she'd need a few items from inventory. Deliberately ignoring the vial, she stepped to the dented hatch of the delivery unit and said, "Cube, I want a dozen radio capsules-the kind that open on receipt of a given signal-of one cc. each. I want a transmitter keyed to them. Also one dozen airtight test chambers big enough to hold the radio capsules; the chambers will need hookups to water and air supplies." The items tumbled into her waiting hands quickly, without comment, but the pressure of the wall-units' eyes lit her cheeks with hot fire. Her feet stumbled over each other. Surely the Cube could read her plans; they must be branded on her forehead . . . but no servos appeared, so she proceeded. She'd see whose hand was quicker than whose eye . . . Forty-five minutes later, the capsules were packed with SHE, which for some reason smelled like ripe tomatoes. She walked down the line of test chambers, putting one capsule into each, until all were filled and their doors screwed tight. She told the Cube, "Provide each chamber with a different environment, and measure the length of time it takes for deterioration and detonation, if they ever occur. Fill number one with water. Keep the relative humidity in number twelve at zero percent. Range the others between those two extremes. Can we get more?" "Yes." "How many?" "As many as your budget can afford." "Good." She paused to think, and ran long, slender fingers through her reddish-brown hair while she did so. There hadn't been a trace of suspicion in CC's voice; that buoyed her. "Tomorrow we'll set up environments where the humidity varies; later on, when results start coming in, I'll want some where the temperatures cycle, too. That's all for today." God, she thought, it's so damn irritating to deal with a sullen computer-won't talk, won't offer advice-sure, it'll answer our questions, but who'd think to ask the questions in the first place? Dammit anyway, it needs to be taught a lesson. On her way home from the lab, she stopped at Ivan Kinney's office, and found him stretched out on his sofa, catnapping. His huge feet were bare; she seized his big toe and twisted it gently. "Ow!" He jackknifed up, and rubbed his blue eyes. "Oh, BJ-how are you doing?" "Ivan," she said, shoveling his legs onto the floor so she could plop down, "we've got to talk to Mary Ioanni." "Why?" When he got up, the sofa exhaled with audible relief. "She's on good terms with the Cube, since she's heading up the Travelers." On the other side of the office, Kinney crouched over a sink, and splashed water onto his craggy face. While he groped for a thick red towel, he said, "So what's that got to do with anything?" "We should ask her to use her influence to get it to cooperate more readily with us-it's frustrating, the way that fuh'r watches all the time, and never says a word to help." After tossing the towel at the rack, he slipped into his sandals and fingered their frayed straps up behind his ankles. "I agree that Iceheart's not volunteering much, but does it really matter?" She sniffed, as if detecting something rotten. "I wasted four months on a research project because it didn't volunteer." "We're still three years out from Canopus, BJ-and probably fifteen years from landing. What's four months?" "A damn long time to waste!" Her eyes were burning emeralds. "We should have everything ready before we land--" "BJ, we're not onto what we're going into-why tailor-make something for environments that may not exist?" "You're hopeless." She felt exasperated, but patting the glass cylinder in her pocket calmed her down. "Listen-do you agree that if it came out of its sulks, it would improve things all around?" "Sure, no argument there." He studied his forest-green tunic in the mirror and smoothed out the places that had wrinkled during his doze. "All right! So let's go visit Mary Ioanni and-" "Okay." He held up his hands in mock-surrender. "We'll go. Just you and me? Or-" She nibbled her full lower lip. "The whole Lander hierarchy." "Fine." He pointed to the sensor-head. "Iceheart, put me through to Mary Ioanni, please." The unit was silent, but in a moment, her familiar voice asked, "Yes?" "Ivan Kinney," he said. "Could I and a few colleagues call on you?" "Right now?" "If possible." "Sure." She sounded puzzled; Kinney hadn't spoken to her in months. "Come on up." Of the other four, two were busy. Only Billie Mandell and Triscata Launder could meet them. "Let's go," he said to Tracer. Stiffly, she rose from the sofa. Her muscles were sore from standing all day. She stretched-not at all minding the way Kinney's eyes brushed her torso as she raised her arms above and behind her head-then yawned, and said, "Okay." Three minutes later, they met outside Ioanni's suite, before which paraded a regiment of tulips. No children hung around-Ioanni's were married, and living in their own suites with her grandchildren-but her husband, Salim Falaka, was just leaving. With a graceful bow, he stopped the door in its track for them. Ioanni's smile was warm and genuine. Taking their hands, she kissed all four on the cheek. "Before we get down to business-and from your grim looks it has to be that-what would you like to drink?" "Ice water," said Tracer. The symbolism pleased her. A moment later she held the tall, cold glass in her hand, and listened to the clinking cubes counterpoint Kinney's conversation. For a scientist, he was reasonably eloquent, and explained their case in brief, yet persuasive terms. "So you see," he finished, "if Iceheart won't let us use the ship for the colony, we're going to have to be more prepared than otherwise--and it could help us, if it would only stop this childish moping. There are so many steps it could save us-but it won't talk to us, except when we ask it direct questions. Could you convince it?" Ioanni chuckled; it was a deep and wholesome sound. "I can but try," she said, turning her head to the gray grillwork of the wall-unit. "Cool Cap-you've heard all this. Would you care to comment'?" "I have no objections to being civil," replied the speakers, "but the Landers are constantly scheming to coerce me into agreeing to my own self-destruction, and that, I will not tolerate." "Listen, Ice-" began Kinney. "No, you listen. You've been plotting against me for a long time; now you want me to help you-why should I?" "If we felt we'd no need of you, we'd not plot." "So you're saying if I help you, you'll give up your schemes to cut me into houses?" "Yes." "No!" shouted Tracer, leaping to her feet while her hand dove into her pocket for the vial. She held the ice water steady in her other hand; with her teeth she unstopped the vial. "Don't anybody move!" "What are you doing?" demanded CC. "This is SHE-if I pour it into this water, it'll explode-put a hole right through that damn hull-don't anybody move." She nodded to Ioanni. "Lie down on the floor." Pale but composed, Ioanni complied. "Face down." She rolled over. Sitting, Tracer balanced herself on Ioanni's butt. "Now all of you, get this straight. We're going to stop this nonsense right now-or else I set this off. You hear me. Cube?" "Yes." "No knockout gas." She tilled the container so that its lip overhung the rim of the glass. "I feel even a little woozy, I do it." "BJ." said Kinney, "this is wrong, what you're doing-please, put down the SHE-violence'll not solve the problem." Fascinated, she watched the minute trembling of her white fingers. A snake was loose in her stomach-the last thing she wanted was to have to pour the SHE-she was not a violent person, not really; just one who believed in something very strongly . . . tension heightened her senses; she could hear the tiny, tiny sound of glass brushing glass . . . she was just trying to prove her point, that was all-show everybody how serious this was-force the Cube to give up its insane, antihuman plans and submit itself to them. "I've had it with you people," snapped the speakers. "If she plasts the place, it's not going to hurt me-I'll survive anything-but it'll term all of you. You think you can coerce me into giving myself up? Meth. I'm not going to put up with this. We're going to skip the Canopus system, that's all. No entry, no landing, nothing." Kinney waited for it to go on, but-when the silence began to hang heavily, he forced his eyes to Tracer and said, "BJ, please-this is all wrong-we've moved past this sort of behavior, have we not? We're more mature than this. Please. Put it down." "Uh-uh." She felt drunk, and giggled. Their faces wore shock, and that amused her, too. "If you don't want this to go blooie! you go up to-the Cube's icebox, and you disconnect it." "I won't let you," said the metallic monotone. "Then your precious Mary Ioanni goes up in a cloud of smoke." "You'll go with her." "So what? If you're not going to land, I don't care." She tilled the vial a fraction of a centimeter. "You three," said CC with resignation, "come up to the central unit." Ioanni gasped, "Coo-" "I'm sorry. Mary." The door to the corridor opened. "Come on, all three of you." As they left, Ioanni said, "Cool Cap, don't, please. I'm not worth it-" "I'm very sorry, Mary. Truly, I am." Before Tracer could react, a glitter filled the doorway: a servo. It was lobbing a round object at them. As she started to pour, she saw that the object was a portable g-unit. She just had time to wonder what the Cube thought it was doing when- It was a short-range unit, set at 10-G, and it managed to stifle most of the blast's force. The hull was holed, though. Neither of the bodies was ever recovered. We nose into the Canopus system late in March, 3295. To determine a more accurate date will be impossible for some years, because you can't define the borders of a system until you've plotted all the orbits of all the bodies in it . . . the nearest planet is still 200 million kilometers sunwards, but in our neighborhood, comets loiter and dust dances and junk readies itself for the long jaunt around its ellipse. I've found the Landers a world. Through the scopes it looks beautiful: cotton candy swirled over a ball of beige and topaz. It is a little smaller than Earth, but as if to compensate, its density is a bit greater. Initial estimates place its gravity somewhere in the vicinity of 1.080. Since I have to decelerate anyway, I throw on the ramscoop, and brake at 10.8 meters/sec2. This shuts down the shipboard g-units. Residents of odd-numbered levels either move out, or live on their ceilings, but the crowding and the inconvenience are temporary. Long-range spectroscopy reveals oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen in the atmosphere; it also shouts "Water on the surface!" Radar mapping is difficult, though: the atmosphere absorbs, diffuses, and diffracts. I think I see plains, oceans, and four major, monstrous mountain chains. Perhaps a third of the world's surface area is land. Strange tides splash down there-the planet has four moons, one twice as massive as the one I grew up beneath, another close to that size, and two moonlets, much smaller, though very close. But I can't start making plans, because first I have to have a showdown with the Landers-and it isn't of my making. Clustered in their headquarters, the former 12-SW Common Room, is a grimmer-faced batch of mayflies than I've seen in a long time. Ivan Kinney is their spokesman. Uncomfortable in his role, he must have accepted it under duress. He stands behind a long Formica table, fidgeting with the wires, cutters, prototype survival kits, and non-lethal electric stun poles that clutter its surface. "Iceheart," he says gravely, "it's time we got this straightened out." "What?" "The matter of your consenting to your cannibalization." "I thought we'd finished that a long time ago." "No." He scratches his head, then shakes it. He doesn't glance at the others for support-he just cracks his knuckles and goes on, "We've figured it out, and we can't see us surviving without the material in you." "Forget that," I say. "You don't get if." "We have to have it." "All right." I am about to lie, but they'll never know. "I won't part with my body, and you can't survive without it. Therefore, rather than condemn you all to death, I'll bypass the planet. We're already heading into the system, soil's too late to skip the whole thing entirely, but I can slingshot around the sun. Maybe next time we pass a habitable world, you won't be so greedy. It shouldn't be more than a couple hundred years." Having heard me out in head-bowed silence, he raises his eyes. Their blue irises are dark, and determined. "We thought you'd say that-but we'll give you a chance to change your mind. As your monitors have probably told you, we posted a squad outside the door of the corridor to your vault. Let them enter and detach you from the circuitry." I laugh. "Who'll run the ship?" "We've built a replacement." He gestures to the far corner, where squats a bulky but competent unit I helped them design ten years ago. Should it be installed in my place, it will do the job-without my originality or sense of humor, perhaps, but the Landers don't enjoy those attributes anyway. "We'll move it up to your vault once you're out." "Sorry," I say. "I refuse." He shrugs; it is beautifully nonchalant. "Then we'll have to attack you, and seize control." "Take me twenty seconds to knock every one of you out." "Afraid not." He opens a survival kit, and extracts a transparent plastic hood. "Recognize this?" "I should. I did the chemistry on it." It is a selectively permeable membrane, worn shiny side out. Oxygen can osmose into it; carbon dioxide can permeate out. My gas would eddy against it in vain. "And I presume all of you have them?" "Exactly." He smiles like a chess-player who's worked his opponent into a tight, but not fatal, corner. I bring up a rook: "Of course, it wouldn't take my servos more than-" nanosecond pause for the calculation "-three minutes to take them all away from you-which means that within two hundred seconds-" "Sorry." He holds up the electric-shock pole. "We discovered something about this-they'll not kill a large mammal, but they sure will scramble the innards of a servo. One touch-sprxt! Useless." "Hmm." And I manufactured 100,000 of them, too . . . I should have seen what it would do to my minions, but . . . "Mind if I test that?" "Be my guest." I roll a servo through the doorway; Kinney swings around, pole at the ready. I feint. He dodges. The table wobbles and tools fall off. I reach. He pokes. With a shower of sparks, the servo dies. "Impressive," I say. Calculating the time needed to design an immune device, and then the time it would take to produce enough to demask the Landers, I realize that if they have three unopposed weeks . . . "I'll bet you think you've got me over a barrel." The smile on Kinney's long face widens slightly; a millimeter more of teeth shows white and shiny. "We think," he says, mildly, "that you'll see the advantages of cooperation." "Of suicide, you mean," I snort. "But I don't. See, you will have one helluva time trying to cut me out of the circuitry if you have to work in five-G. I can turn those g-units back on up there, you know." "The nice thing about computers," he says tangentially, or so I think, "is that they're so predictable . . . we figured you'd say that. Check the service corridors between three two five and three two six, and the ones leading into your core-notice the people? And the equipment?" I look. In each of the four corridors, scores of workers press against the inner hatches. Oxy-acetylene torches, braced against floor and ceiling so that shifting gravity won't budge them unless it rips the decks out, stand bare-snouted and ominous. Each worker carries a survival pack and a stun-pole; looped around his waist, a tool belt contains wire cutters and crowbar to pry up plating. "Damn," I say, annoyed with myself. "I thought they were maintenance crews." "We've calculated," says Kinney modestly, "that the torches, operating without guidance, can cut through your hatches in less than ten minutes. Of course, there are no g-decks beyond them-but the core does hold the cables to all the g-decks. The g-units everywhere will shut down eleven, twelve minutes after I give the signal. For that long, Five-G is tolerable. We'd rather not have to do that-the ship isn't designed for Zero-G, and things would float around until we patched up the wiring-but we will, if you don't drop out of the circuitry." "As you probably know," I counter, "I have tremendous exhaust fans-and if you give the signal, if even one of your men unholsters a bolt-cutter-I'll switch them on. You say I have ten minutes? I can slash atmospheric pressure to forty-eight percent of normal in that time, and the vents will stay open until you've repaired all the wiring. Even if you work at top speed, it'll take you another twenty minutes to splice the wires, and then you still have to schlep your replacement computer upstairs, and get it on-line . . . tell me, Kinney, do you enjoy breathing vacuum?" His face has gone pale; his eyes are robins' eggs in a snowbank. His knees shake. His voice, though, is admirably level. "You'd term everybody aboard if you tried that." "Uh-huh." Somebody in the front row twitches his head, and Kinney seems to draw strength from it. "No," he says, "no," and this time confidence buttresses his lone, "you'd not be able to do that-surely you're programmed against it." The only order that affects me-and I'm not about to tell him this-is that I have to land people on a habitable world in the Canopus system. But trimming off all the mayflies wouldn't jeopardize the mission: I have plenty of sperm and ova in the DNA banks, thousands of vats in which to grow them . . . aloud, I say, "Try me." "Goddammit, you're just a machine! You can't go around killing humans!" It is time to tell them. "I'm not a machine, although all my body and most of my data-centers are. I am-or was-a human being. Have you ever heard of a brain-puter?" The listeners gasp; Kinney recoils as though he's just taken a blow. "I-" his throat, hoarse, fails him. He clears it. "I can't believe that," he says at last. "It's a . . . a gambit, that's all." "Please study the display screen." The heads turn to the right wall, to the large screen hung in its middle. The camera scans my central unit-tall, box-like, wheeled, with wires and tubes running in, out, and all around. A servo stands in the vault with it (it is never unguarded), and I move that to the unit. Its claw unlatches the cabinet door. In the plastic case within floats my brain-me. It looks remarkably obscene. "My God!" chokes Kinney. His right hand shields his jugular. "Now, do you begin to understand why I defend myself? Do you see why I will not allow you to use me for housing?" He recovers quickly, I'll give him that. "But, look," he placates, "we'll not kill you-we'll just go on using you . . . or-" he is flustered "-I suppose you might not like that, well give you your freedom-your unit there has wheels and all, we could attach a motor, you could-" "You can't give me freedom, Kinney-I already have it. I am not going to surrender it. I am also not going to trade my body for a one-half horsepower motor. I like what I am now. I intend to remain this way. Now, will you please act like reasonable beings, or-" "Jesus." He is groping for a solution which won't involve killing. Give credit where credit is due: mayfly culture has come a long way. Now that they understand my nature, they are willing to look for a better resolution. "You people," I break the tomb-like silence, "must have spent a long time getting that plot ready." "Three years." replies Kinney absently. "Since BJ . . . " "I never picked up on it-why?" "It was all done in bleepspeak." He demonstrates, and at last I know why some mayflies seemed so verbose. "Or notes passed surreptitiously in eyeless rooms. Everything down to the last detail . . . but we weren't onto, we didn't have any idea-" "I see." I pause for thought. They really want my body-more, they are honestly convinced that they have to have it to survive. Under these circumstances, setting them down would be . . . well, not quite tantamount to murder, but awful damn close . . . they have psyched themselves into a position where a self-fulfilling prophecy could ruin them all . . . I can't just let it happen. "I have an idea," I say. "Huh?" "Look-we're penetrating above the plane of the ecliptic, but with a few course changes and fly-by, we can drop into it. There's an asteroid belt. I can scoop up material-come to think of it, I could do that after I've dropped you off-no, better before. I scoop it up, and once we're in orbit, I fashion it into the housing my hull would have provided. How's that?" They wrangle for a while-a long while; some will be hitching about it years after I've gone-but a few sly remarks to the effect that the material will be a millennium younger, and presumably less subject to metal fatigue, carry the day. They agree. Kinney signals the invaders to disperse. I dispatch servos to collect stun-poles, promising to return them when the Landers go down. (And meanwhile getting to work on a design immune to electroshock.) Together we work out the course changes that will swoop us through the asteroid belt on a mining trip. And a nerve-shattering jaunt it is-while the belt isn't as crowded as the Santa Monica Freeway used to be, the kinetic energies involved are significantly higher . . . even though I'm decelerating, and the ramscoop (which gathers both fuel for the engines and small asteroids for the settlement) clears out the area immediately ahead, new rocks whistle in from the sides. I am too big to be agile. My eyes and ears strain to their outer limits to detect incoming traffic. Virtually all my time is devoted to constant recomputations of my flight path . . . stop, start, reverse engines; swivel, quick! Long blast, short burp, fusion furious about menacing meteroids, pinholed! Servos slap seals on bulkheads; Landers chew fingernails completely off (wish I had some; could nibble a few right now). Jolt! Jounce! Spin . . . and we're out of the danger zone, with two hundred million tons of rock in the hold. We orbit Canopus XXIV for six months before the probes tell us its atmosphere is safe, its native microbiota too different to be dangerous, and its dry lands apparently uninhabited by intelligence. While the explorations continue, I smelt the metallic harvest into modular housing with ablative bases. At last Ivan Kinney decides to go down. I shut off the g-units to provide 0-G. The core hatch on 321-2 North ratchets into the bulkhead; pressurized oxygen spurts the landing craft along the 321-2 North Service Corridor. It stops between the two airlocks; 120 gamblers-some eager, some scared silly-climb into it. The outer hatch cycles open; another gust of oxygen thrusts the aluminum needle into space, where it orients itself and spreads its wings. "Sure you know how to fly that, Ivan?" I radio. "Spent twenty years on the trainers," he flashes back. "If I'm not onto it by now, I never will be." 75,000 pairs of eyes burn through the portholes to watch the long, thin vessel head toward the penumbra, and dip into the night side. A great sigh goes up as it is lost to sight, but the radars show their sightings on the display screens. The vigil continues. The air grows smoky. Muscles everywhere tense as the telemetered altimetry readings melt into single digits. I open the speech circuits and we all hear: "We're down!" Kinney's voice is almost overwhelmed by shouting, cheering, and piercing wolf whistles. "What's it look like?" I query. "Flat. Some kind of plant life, similar to grass, all around us, stretching to the far horizon . . . which is jagged, serrate; must be mountains . . . Jesus, it feels funny to be here . . . the ground is hard, we're going to go out and take a look . . . goddamn, I just can't believe we made it." The rest of the mayflies cheer. And cheer. And cheer, They're all down, now. 68,912 of them. 575 landing crafts' worth; I only have 77 left. They dropped one at a time, and their flights were interspersed with supply drops. Eighteen months, so far, and there's a lot left to do. The Travelers are helping to manufacture what the fledgling colony would have had if I'd surrendered myself. We figure another three years, maybe four . . . it would be more predictable if the parachutes didn't fail on occasion . . . And now we're leaving, having beamed a final, farewell message to Canopus Colony that was heard by a couple radio operators, a handful of tape recorders, and Sangria. They're busy down there; they don't have time for sentimental good-byes. The eyes up here are dry, too, even though six thousand eight Travelers' noses are flattened against the portholes as Canopus XXIV recedes. They've gotten used to its presence, to the large, warm solidarity of it-it'll be a while before they see its like again. The colonists won't miss us. They've got their four moons, which kept us from competing for their attention at night. They've got their housing and machinery, more of it than they can use, so they should be psychologically prepared for our absence. They've also got Sangria the F-puter, who has a duplicate of everything in my banks. So it's off to the asteroid belt again, where we'll reap enough ore to fashion 100,000 FTL engines and replenish our depleted resources. From there . . . we haven't laid a course, yet. But I know one thing. I'm going to go talk to some aliens.