“Does it have a name?” Ariel asked. She, Dr. Avery, Wolruf, and the three experimental robots stood beside Derec amid a pile of baggage.
The ground crew robot turned its head to face her. “We have not named it yet.”
“Flying a ship without a name!” she said in mock surprise. “I’m surprised you made it back.”
“I do not understand. How can a name be a significant factor in the success of a test flight?”
Ariel laughed, and Wolruf joined her. “I didn’t know ‘umans had that superstition too,” the alien said.
“It’s supposed to be bad luck to board a ship without a name,” Ariel explained to the puzzled robot, but her explanation left it no more enlightened than before.
“Bad…luck?” it asked.
“Oh, never mind. I’m just being silly. Come on, let’s get on board.”
“Name first,” Wolruf said with surprising vehemence. “May be just superstition, may not. Never ‘urts to ‘umor fate.”
“Then I dub it the Wild Goose Chase,” Avery said with finality, gesturing to the robots to pick up his bags. “Now let’s get this ridiculous expedition into space before I change my mind.” He turned and stomped up the extended ramp, not noticing the black letters flowing into shape on the hull just in front of the wing.
Wild Goose Chase.
Was it? Derec couldn’t know. Avery certainly seemed to think so, but he had allowed his curiosity to overcome his reservations all the same. Derec had been all for the trip, but now he was feeling reservations, both about the trip itself and about the deeper subterfuge it represented. Should he go through with it? He followed Wolruf and Ariel and the robots up the ramp, pausing at the door, debating.
Do it,a tiny voice seemed to whisper in his head.
Okay,he answered it. To the central computer, he sent, Investigate my personal files. Password: “anonymous.” Examine instruction set “Ecosystem.” Begin execution upon our departure.
Acknowledged.
Derec turned away into the ship and let the airlock seal itself behind him. Avery hadn’t destroyed everything when he’d destroyed Lucius’s labs. Derec still had his files on ecosystems, and now the central computer did, too. It would give the robots something useful to do while they were gone, and when they returned, the place would be lush and green, with animals in the parks and birds and butterflies in the air. Avery would have a fit-but then Avery was always having fits. It wouldn’t matter. By the time he found out about it, it would be too late to stop.
“I want to keep it,” Ariel said.
They were in their own stateroom on the ship, hours out from Robot City. Beyond the viewport the planet was already a small point of light in the glittering vastness of space. The sun had not yet changed perceptibly, but as the ship picked up speed in its climb out of the gravity well toward a safe jump point, the sun, too, would begin to dwindle until it was just another speck in the heavens.
Derec had been staring out at the stars, contemplating the vastness of the universe and his place in it, but now, upon hearing Ariel’s words, he spun around from the viewport, the stars forgotten. She could be talking about only one thing.
“The baby? You want to keep the baby?”
She was sitting on the edge of the bed. Now that she had gotten his attention, it seemed as if she was uncomfortable under his gaze. Looking past him into space herself now, she said, “I think so. I’m not sure. I’m still trying to make sense of it all, but after that gardener locked up I realized what I was considering, and after Avery said what he said about it, I realized it wasn’t as simple a decision as I thought at first.”
Her voice took on a hard edge. “He ’ d like it to be, but it’s not. If we were on Earth I might agree with him, but here, with all this space to expand into, with all those robots practically falling over themselves to serve so few of us, it’s a different equation. An Earther gives up the rest of her life to a baby, but I only have to give up part of my comfort for part of a year. For that we get a new person.”
She looked into his eyes as if seeking reassurance, then plunged on: “And if we treat him-or her-right, then we’ll have a family. I know it’s not the way we were brought up; I know Aurorans aren’t supposed to care about our parents and our children, but I’ve seen what happened to us, and I don’t like it. That’s why I’m telling you this now. If I have this baby, I want us to be a family. I want it to grow up with us, to be a part of us; not just some stranger who happens to share our genes. Can you accept that?”
Derec could hardly believe his ears. She was asking him to accept exactly what he had wanted all along. “Can I accept that? I love it. I love you!” He took her hand and pulled her up from the bed, put his arms around her, and kissed her passionately.
Behind him, the door chimed softly and Mandelbrot’s voice said, “Dinner is ready.”
“Damn.”
One of the nice things about a cellular ship, Derec discovered, was that the common room was much more than just a place with a table in it. As dinner wound down and the mood shifted toward the pleasant lethargy that comes after a good meal, the table enclosed over the dirty dishes, dropped into the floor, and the chairs widened and softened from dining chairs to evening couches, simultaneously moving back to give the room a less-crowded atmosphere. The lighting dimmed and soft music began to play.
Derec merged his chair with Ariel’s and put his arm around her. She leaned her head over to rest on his shoulder, closing her eyes. His hand automatically went to her upper back and began rubbing softly, kneading the muscles at the base of her neck and shoulders.
“Oh, yeah,” she murmured, bending forward so he could reach the rest of her back.
The robots had not eaten dinner, so they were not sitting in chairs, but instead stood unobtrusively beside and behind the four who were seated. Avery was leaning back with eyes closed, off in his own universe somewhere, but Wolruf watched Derec and Ariel with open interest. At last she sighed and said, “That looks ‘onderful.” Turning to Eve, she asked,” ‘ow about it? You scratch mine; I’ll scratch yours.”
“I have no need to have my back scratched,” Eve replied without moving.
Somewhat taken aback, Wolruf said, “Do mine anyway, please,” and turned to give Eve an easy reach.
“Why?”
“Because I’d like to ‘ave my back scratched,” Wolruf said, a hint of a growl to her voice now.
“Perhaps you are not aware that I am engaged in conversation with Adam and Lucius.”
Derec had stopped scratching as well, and was looking at Eve with an astonished expression. Hadn’t they been ordered not to use their comlinks when humans were present? No, he remembered now. That had been just a suggestion, and from another robot at that. They could ignore it if they wanted. But this business with Wolruf-this was different.
“What does your conversation have to do with anything?” he asked. “She wants you to scratch her back. That’s as good as an order.”
“Wolruf is not human. Therefore I need not be concerned with her wishes.”
“You wha-? That’s absurd. I order you to-”
“Wait a minute.” It was Avery, evidently not so far away as he had appeared. “This is intriguing. Let’s check it out. Wolruf, order her to scratch your back.”
It was hard to read expression on the alien’s scrunched-in canine face, but Derec was sure he was seeing exasperation now. Wolruf took a deep breath, shook her head once, then said, “All ri’. Eve, I order you to scratch my back.”
Eve stood her ground. “I refuse.”
“Order Lucius to do it,” Avery said.
“Lucius, scratch my-”
“I refuse also,” Lucius interrupted.