“Is that true?” Avery asked the console, but the computer evidently thought he was asking Derec and remained silent.
“Yes, it is,” Derec answered for it. “I’m also trying to find out why they tried to escape in the first place. Now be quiet so I can hear myself think.”
“How do I know you aren’t plotting against me?”
Derec rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “You want your own comlink, inject yourself with chemfets. Until then, let me use mine.”
Avery glowered, balling his fists in frustration, but at last he let out a deep breath and said, “Go ahead.”
“Thank you.” Derec hesitated a moment, considering reward theory as a tool for conditioning, then sent to the computer, Echo my comlink conversation to the com console.
“Echoing,” the computer responded aloud.
What were you planning to do on Ceremya?he sent to the robots. He wasn’t sure which of the three he was talking with, or if it was all three at once, but he didn’t suppose it mattered at this point.
“What were you planning to do on Ceremya?” The computer simulated his voice faithfully; it sounded as clear over the corn console as if he had actually spoken aloud.
We must continue to research the Laws of Humanics. Also, Eve did not have the opportunity to imprint properly upon the Ceremyons while she was there, and we believe doing so may be important to our joint development.
The echo was distracting, but Derec held his hands over his ears and sent, What type of development do you expect?
If we knew that, we wouldn’t have to go,the robots replied with characteristic logic.
The spaceship was like none Derec had ever seen before. Normal ships were usually streamlined for atmospheric passage, but not to this degree. This ship was smoother than streamlined; it was seamless. It looked as if it had been sculpted in ice and then dipped in liquid silver. Derec, standing before it, realized that the design robots had, however inadvertently, produced a work of art.
Resting on the runway in takeoff configuration, it was a sleek, fast airplane, but Derec knew that its present appearance wouldn’t last beyond the atmosphere. Once away from gravity and wind drag, the ship would transform into whatever shape most easily accommodated its passengers, for its hull and most of the interior furnishings were made of the same cellular material that made up the City. The hyperdrive and the more delicate mechanisms such as control, navigation, and life support were made of more conventional materials, but the majority of the ship was cellular.
It was one of perhaps three dozen at the spaceport, all built within the last few weeks. Derec had ordered them constructed on a whim, remembering when he and Ariel had been stranded in Robot City for lack of a ship and deciding to remedy that problem for good now that the robots had his own ship to refer to, but he had been too busy to inspect them until now.
“It’ll do,” he told the ground crew robots, who were hovering about anxiously, pleased that the humans had chosen this ship for their journey yet nervously awaiting rejection all the same.
Ever mindful of his duty to protect his human charges, Mandelbrot asked, “Has it been tested?”
“We took it on a test flight of twenty light-years round trip,” one of the ground crew replied. “Six days of flight and four jumps. All its subsystems performed flawlessly.”
“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?”