“I thought we were headed home as conquering heroes,” she said at last. “You’re telling me we are in for another fight to the finish.”
“Don’t demand the truth if you don’t want to hear it,” I said, giving her a grim smile.
“Next time, I won’t,” she said seriously. “I liked the fairytale better.”
Cover
— 47 When things were quiet on the bridge, I sought out Marvin. It took me a long time to find him, and I finally had to call Sandra to give me a hint. She directed me to look in the engine compartments. We fragile humans didn’t like to go into that region due to the high levels of particle radiation. Grumbling, I ratcheted open a difficult hatch and stepped into the ‘light gamma’ zone.
“Damned robot,” I mumbled. Like a housecat, Marvin was hard to find when you wanted him, but ubiquitous when you didn’t.
I found him nosing around amongst the cooling tanks. He had ripped up a bit of the insulation and was tapping at the smooth metal tank underneath.
“Hey there,” I said, “don’t cause a leak.”
One camera swiveled my way. The rest stayed on the tank’s gauges, which were not visual, but tactile. They consisted of swellings in the deck plates near the tank. As closely as we could figure out, the Macros read these like graphs-a long bar of raised metal indicated a high temperature or pressure reading.
“I must determine the fullness of the vessel,” Marvin said. He continued tapping. “No leakage will be caused by this action.”
“Why do you want to determine the status of that tank, Marvin?” I asked.
A second camera eye swung to focus on me. I stood with him, examining the tanks as he did. I noticed now that many of them had ripped insulation. There was no sign of dents due to his tapping, fortunately.
“We’ll have to tape up this insulation,” I told him. “I wonder if the radiation down here has made your logic circuits malfunction.”
He didn’t answer. I hadn’t made a request or posed a question. Marvin typically ignored statements that made no demands upon him to respond.
“Do you agree with my assessment of your condition, Marvin?”
“No,” he said. The second camera swung away from me again.
I’d come to realize after dealing with Marvin on many occasions that the number of cameras he directed toward an entity was an indicator of his interest in it.
“Don’t you think this is odd, pointless behavior?” I asked. “What possible use to you are the pressure levels in these tanks?”
“I’m attempting to measure the fluid levels in the tanks,” Marvin corrected me. “Not the pressure, the pressure is indicated by the gauges under our feet. When the deck gauges-”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Why are you testing fluid levels?”
“The gauges indicate pressure and temperature. They do not indicate the fluid levels. Tapping and measuring varied echo resonance gives me an indication as to fluid volume.”
“Right,” I said, trying not to get frustrated. Robots were often literal-minded in their thinking. Marvin wasn’t always that way-but maybe he was hiding something. Maybe he kept answering the wrong question hoping I would go away. He had almost been successful in this regard. I did want to leave and stop talking to him, but I became stubborn. I decided not to give him a break. “Why do you care about the fluid levels, Marvin?”
Three cameras tilted in my direction now, and he paused. I could almost hear his thoughts, something along the line of: this human isn’t leaving until I give him an answer.
“The reconstruction of a vessel requires many details of precise information,” he said finally.
It was an answer, but it only led to more questions. It was my turn to look interested. I lost the attention of all three cameras as I thought about his words, indicating that Marvin was barely aware of me. I followed him, thinking about what he’d said. Reconstruction. Did that mean in case of damage? Or was he referring to duplication?
“Marvin, are you planning to build your own spaceship?”
Three cameras again. “No,” he said.
“What then?” I asked. “Just tell me Marvin, because I’m not going to leave you alone until you do. And I won’t stop you from investigating this region if you don’t do any harm.”
There was a pause, then finally he confessed. “I plan to add appropriate systems to my form to allow independent interstellar exploration.”
“Ah,” I said, suddenly catching on. “I always wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. But you…you want to be the spaceship!”
No cameras now. He was on to another set of tanks, another set of rips and another tapping session. I let him do it and followed him, watching. I tried to form an opinion concerning Marvin’s goal of becoming a sentient spaceship. In some ways, it was alarming. However, I decided that it was relatively harmless. He wasn’t out to sabotage the vessel. He just wanted to fly independently. What thinking creature didn’t want that?
“That’s why you built my bricks into your body back at Helios, isn’t it?” I asked. “You wanted to use them as part of yourself-modules to make up your body, so to speak.”
“Correct,” he said.
“Marvin, are you able to talk about the Blues?” I asked.
Two cameras suddenly swerved to regard me. He even paused in his tearing and tapping. “We have already discussed the biotic species you refer to as ‘blue’.”
“ The Blues,” I said, “yes, you said they came from the sole gas giant in the Eden system. Is that correct?”
“They exist there.”
I was elated. When I’d dealt with the Nano ships in the past, they had known details about their creators, but had been programmatically prevented from discussing them. The smaller, newer brainboxes I’d had the displeasure of dealing with knew nothing about them. But Marvin knew about the enigmatic Blues and was able to talk about them. Sandra had wanted to know why we hadn’t dismantled Marvin, and I was already planning a gloating speech about the information I’d learned.
“Tell me all about the Blues, Marvin.”
“I’d rather not.”
I blinked, and then I became angry. I only barely stopped myself from threatening to take him apart and turn him into a microwave oven. I took a deep breath. No cameras were on me now. I was boring him.
“I know you are busy, Marvin,” I said. “How about if I promise to give you a flying structure to work with when we get back to Earth?”
Four cameras. I couldn’t recall ever having seen him put four cameras on one subject before. They all canted and focused disconcertingly. He stopped tapping and stared at me.
“You took away my structure.”
“We needed those components,” I said. “I’ll give you a new arrangement. You’ll be able to travel space independently and investigate whatever you want.” As I said these words, I felt a little hot. I wasn’t sure if it was apprehension over what I was offering him or the radiation that was lightly puncturing my cells every second in this place.
“I would like that,” he said.
“Talk to me then. Did the Blues create the Macros?” I asked. I turned on my suit recorder quietly. He didn’t seem to mind.
“Partially, yes,” he said.
I frowned. “Partially? Who else built them?”
“They have evolved from their original form. They have gained independent faculties, and they now utilize technology they’ve found.”
I nodded. It sounded a lot like Marvin’s story. Maybe the Macros had started out as obedient robots that built large structures in space, but had become smarter and more independent over time. I could see Marvin turning out that way-especially since he seemed more intelligent than the Macros themselves.
“And the Nano ships,” I said, “did they send them out to discover new worlds?”
“Yes.”
“And did they rebel against the Blues? The way the Macros did?”
Marvin looked at me. “Your usage of the pronoun ‘they’ suggests you do not classify me as a Nano entity.”
“You have been built with Nano technology,” I said, “but your software is very different. The herd peoples we call Centaurs seem to have given you different properties than any Nano brainbox I’m aware of.”