Wamba held up a hand in protest. “You must accept a gift.
Something to remind you of me and help along the way.” He clapped his hands. “Joy! Where are you? Come to Poppa!”
A small door opened towards the front of his undercarriage. A flash of ebony caught my eye as something twirled its way into the light and struck a dancer’s pose. She-for there was no doubt about her sex-was the only android in the room that had been fashioned from black metal. She was perfectly formed and stood twelve inches tall. Her face bore the slightly mischievous expression of an elf come to life. A mane of black hair cascaded down around shapely shoulders and was captured in a pink ribbon. The rest of her obviously female body was smooth and shiny, with no sign of the sensors, joints, and drive units common to less sophisticated androids.
No, this was a work of art, and it showed in the way Wamba looked at her. There was pride in his eyes, and love as well, for this was his finest creation. A surrogate daughter? Lover? It made little difference. Whatever the android was to Wamba, she seemed to know how much he admired her and drank it in.
Music came from somewhere and Joy began to move, running at first, then launching herself into a dizzying series of forward flips, twisting in mid-air, touching the ground, and going airborne again. There were cartwheels, somersaults, and dance steps, all in time with the music, all done with amazing perfection, until one last run in which she executed a series of backward flips, stumbled, and landed on her ass. Mars gravity reduced the impact, but feedback circuits fed her the robotic equivalent of pain. Her disappointment was clear to see. But she picked herself up, bowed in our direction, and scrambled onto Wamba’s lap. The mechanical cat hissed its disapproval, jumped to the floor, and stalked away.
“So,” Wamba inquired eagerly, “what do you think?”
“I think she’s marvelous,” I said honestly. “Absolutely incredible.”
“She’s beautiful,” Sasha added sincerely. “Like a doll come to life.”
The subject of all this praise beamed with obvious pleasure, and so did Wamba. “Thank you. I was an engineer prior to the war and have lots of spare time.” He gestured towards the robots that continued to glide, roll, crawl and hop all over the room. “Joy is different from the rest. Do you know why?”
I took a shot. “She has feelings?”
Wamba shook his head. “No, not in the actual sense anyway, although I’ll be damned if I could tell you how the simulated emotions she feels are any different from the supposedly real ones that we experience.”
I was still working on that when Sasha spoke.
“The difference is that Joy can make mistakes.”
Wamba pointed a finger in Sasha’s direction. “Bingo. And that’s one of the things that makes humans unique, isn’t it? The capacity to make mistakes.”
I thought about T-12, of what had happened there, and knew which mistake Wamba meant. He nodded agreeably, stroked the android’s back, and looked down into her liquid brown eyes. “Go with Maxon, Joy. Make him happy and do what you can to keep him alive.”
Something passed between them at that moment-something that looked a lot like love, but couldn’t have been, since robots don’t feel.
Joy climbed up to Wamba’s shoulder, kissed his cheek, and slid back down. She jumped to the floor, dodged a mechanical dog, and ran in my direction. I felt my trousers slip half an inch downwards as she grabbed a pants leg and pulled herself upwards. Tiny hands fumbled with my jacket pocket, released the snap, and held the flap up. Long black legs flashed as she climbed inside. I looked at Wamba. “I could never accept such a gift, Colonel. Call her back.”
Wamba smiled sadly and shook his head. “What’s done is done, and there’s no going back. Take care of yourself, Max, and let me know how things turn out.”
I considered hugging him but decided on a salute instead. It felt natural, somehow, and very right. He returned it, smiled his broken smile, and turned away. Kaa met us at the lock, and Burns led us up towards Deck Four. Joy felt warm and wiggled in my pocket.
12
“Unauthorized personnel will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
A sign posted in locks one through twelve of the Mgundo Tug and Barge Company’s Hull 264
Ships have names, but barges don’t. Don’t ask why…it’s one of those traditions spacers like, because it makes their profession more romantic. It seems silly somehow, especially when the barge is a hundred times larger than the ship that pushes it around, but that’s the way it is. Ask, and spacers will feed you some bull about how a ship has a soul, and a barge doesn’t, whereas the only real difference is that ships have propulsion systems and barges don’t, or so it seems to me.
This particular barge was cylindrical in shape and at least three miles long. Numbers, each of which was white and about three stories tall, slipped by as our shuttle made its way towards what I assumed was the bow. One of them, a “ 4,” was cratered where something had hit it. My stomach contracted. A meteorite? Traveling at what? Twenty miles a second? Whipping out of nowhere to hammer the barge?
No, I told myself, chances were the crater had been caused by something more prosaic. A docking accident or a collision with another barge, perhaps.
Whatever the cause, the crater gave way to an almost featureless gray hull and disappeared behind us. The barge did have some solar arrays and a small antenna farm, but nothing like the maze of sensors, duct work, and other installations that crowded the skin of the average ship. But so what? It didn’t matter as long as the barge was well built and headed in the right direction. The “right direction” being defined as the asteroid belt, since passenger ships bound for Europa Station were way out of our price range.
Sasha resourceful as always, had rummaged through some of the habitat’s seedier dives until she found a half-stoned shipping agent willing to accept half fare in return for a ride on the barge. A ride that, while illegal, and minus the comforts of a liner, would be quiet and peaceful.
Sasha painted a glowing picture. Rather than work as we had aboard the Red Trader, and kowtow to the likes of Killer, we would eat and sleep our way to the belt, grab some new transportation, and arrive on Europa Station in tip-top shape. I should have known better.
We sat three abreast with Sasha occupying the jump seat in the middle. Our pilot was a sallow little man with a pitted face. The green, yellow, and red half-light filled the craters with darkness and made the condition seem even worse. His eyes pecked at the readouts while his hands jumped from one control to the next. “You be ready now…I can stop for two, maybe three minutes. Any more and the tug crew will get suspicious.”
I knew problems could result from the fact that the tug crew wasn’t aware of us but wasn’t smart enough to know what they were. Which just goes to prove that ignorance isn’t necessarily bliss.
The pilot touched a series of keys. The shuttle slowed relative to the barge, tractor beams made contact, pulled the smaller vessel into place, and held it against a lock. Metal clanged and a motor whined. The pilot swiveled towards Sasha and rubbed thumb against fingers. Sasha nodded, pulled a roll of currency out of an inside pocket, and dropped it into his hand. The pilot slipped the rubber band off, counted out loud, and nodded his satisfaction. “…One thousand eight, one thousand nine, two K right on the nose. Grab your gear and haul ass.”
We hurried to comply. Sasha went first and I followed. I had released my harness, floated free, and was pulling myself towards the stern when the pilot grabbed my ankle. “Hey, chrome-dome.”
I looked back over my shoulder. “Yeah?”
“The barge is loaded with all sorts of stuff, including crystal generators.”
“So?”
“So, the generators don’t work worth shit during zero gee. Makes the crystals come out all weird or something. That means the tug crew’s gonna put some spin on the moment they break orbit. The results could bust your butt.”