As that thought crossed my mind, my smile diminished. If they truly were fleeing to the next ring—to yet another star system I’d never seen, what might be waiting for me there? For all I knew, the next system held their local nexus in the region. A vast armada could be nearby, and I had no way of knowing the truth.
Commodore Decker hailed me. I answered the call on a direct channel.
“I say we turn around,” he said without preamble.
“No,” I replied firmly. “I will not abandon the Centaurs a second time. I made a commitment to these people the last time I was here. We will press ahead.”
I heard him mumble something, but could not make out the words. The channel with the Commodore closed suddenly. Information regarding the status of the Centaurs began to flow soon thereafter. They had two fewer satellites than they had possessed when we’d last visited. A grim development for a people who seemed to be on the edge, and who were precariously situated with their entire known population located in vulnerable satellite habitats. I wondered how many of them had died, and how the Macros had engineered their demise.
“Incoming alien message, Colonel,” Marvin said into my helmet suddenly.
“What is it, Marvin?”
“It’s the Centaurs, sir.”
“Open a channel, I wish to speak to them.”
“The message isn’t for you, sir. It’s for me.”
“What?”
“I—I don’t understand. I believe I’m—I’m experiencing an update, sir. I’m about to restart, sorry.”
“What?” I shouted the question. Concern ran through me. An update? I thought of all the times software had spuriously updated itself on my home computer. Marvin’s mind would be destroyed.
“Jam that signal,” I ordered. “Helmsman, you are in charge of communications. Jam the alien signal coming from the Centaurs.”
“Uh, yes sir,” the helmsman said, he began speaking urgently with the destroyer’s brainbox. Soon a powerful signal was sent out into space around us.
I ordered the crew to direct cameras toward Marvin, who was following us in his junkyard ship. An image came onto the screen that filled me with worry. Marvin was drifting. His engines had stopped. He was lifeless.
We slowed long enough for a long ship’s arm to reach out and latch onto him. I felt the loss deeply. Somehow, I’d lost another friend. Oddly, I felt it more than I did most deaths, as this one was a unique intellect. And partly, I suspected, because I had helped create Marvin, to make him what he was.
How could I feel attached to this bizarre robot? I wasn’t sure, but I did feel something. I was left staring at the screen in grief.
-48-
Marvin didn’t show any signs of life for the next several minutes. As each moment passed, my hopes faded. I was reminded of the day my children had died at the cold steel hands of a ship like the one we flew within now. Marvin’s mind had been stilled by an automated, thoughtless subsystem.
Quite possibly, the Centaurs hadn’t ordered the download of a blank intellect into his brainbox. When we’d last left Eden, they’d been in the act of transmitting the contents of a powerful brainbox to give us information about other species and the like. The operation had been suspended when we’d left the system before the download was complete. That partial mind of Marvin’s had made him what he was, had given him his unique personality.
I imagined the original download had been queued since we’d left the region by some server on their side. Months had passed, but the moment their server detected Marvin’s return, it had decided to finish what it had started. He seemed to have no choice or defense against the erasure of his mind. I supposed any piece of software set up to accept automated updates would be in the same situation.
I sighed.
“Sir, the Centaurs are attempting to communicate.”
“Keep jamming them.”
“But sir, this could be seen as a diplomatic breach.”
I stared at the young lieutenant. “I don’t care. Continue jamming.”
The helmsman turned away. He appeared huffy about it. I truly didn’t care what he thought. I watched the screen with Marvin being dragged behind us. As I watched, an oddment of metal peeled away and was lost in space behind us. He was beginning to disintegrate—or at least his collection of junk was.
After about five minutes, I heard a weak signal in my helmet. “Restart complete.”
“Marvin?”
“Backup restoring. Please wait….”
Breathing through my teeth, I waited. I felt like a father hovering outside an operating room.
Finally, Marvin’s voice came through again. “Colonel Riggs?” he asked. “What happened? I appear to have malfunctioned. Am I being towed or am I a prisoner?”
I laughed. “You are being towed,” I assured him. “You—sort of fainted.”
I explained the download the Centaur brainboxes were trying to make to him and the automatic nature of such things. I could tell while conversing with him his mind was undamaged. I supposed the system worked in a similar fashion to an earthly computer system when doing an update—it didn’t erase the old software until the new code was completely downloaded and ready to install. My jamming had caused it to retry for a while, then give up and call it a failure. The update operation had timed out, and then reloaded the backup, meaning Marvin’s original mind. Marvin’s mind had been restored.
“Originally, your software was interrupted while being downloaded from their computers,” I told him. “I think that’s why you’ve always been so inquisitive. You are always looking for the missing part.”
“Perhaps the download should be allowed to continue,” he said. “I’d like to know more of my origins.”
“I don’t think it will work that way, buddy. You are what you are because the download was incomplete. If it is allowed to finish, you’ll be different. I would suspect your memories will be erased as well.”
“How awful. Are these Centaur creatures barbarians?”
“I don’t think so. They don’t understand you and your unique mind. The computers that originally copied you to our systems know the job was never finished. They are only trying to complete what they started.”
“I see, and you interrupted the process?”
“Yes.”
“Why, Colonel Riggs? I’ve been so much trouble for you.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “But you’ve been a friend as well. I’ll tell you what, Marvin. If you will give up your flying body, I’ll protect your mind from this transmission.”
Marvin hesitated. “Give up my body?”
“Not entirely, just the space propulsion systems. I’d like to have you aboard as a regular member of Star Force. Maybe you could assume a humanoid shape, so you fit into our environments more naturally.”
At this point, the helmsman swiveled in his chair and stared at me. His expression clearly indicated he thought I was stark, raving mad. I gave him an irritable frown, and then ignored him.
“I will accept,” Marvin said after a time, “if I’m allowed to study the specimens I’ve found.”
“That seems reasonable. I just want you to be ground-based, not a spaceship anymore, Marvin.”
“I understand, Colonel Riggs.”
I suspected that he truly did.
* * *
The following days brought significant changes to our tactical situation and presented us with new choices. We followed the Macro cruisers toward the outer planets. At a certain key point, each of the enemy cruisers that circled the six habitable worlds on guard duty suddenly left orbit. At perfectly matching speeds, they accelerated to join the fleet we were chasing after.