Thank you. As if courtesy had a point. She was the product of a hundred or more minds over the course of her sixteen-year service, men and women who programmed her for the moment's convenience and left their imprint.
Please and thank you. Cream or sugar, sir? She could apply a wrench or laser through the pseudosome, lift a weight no man could move, bend a jointing into line or make a cup of coffee. But nothing from initiative.
Thank you.
It was another few hours before he was sure he was going to live. Another day before he did more than send Annegalleyward and back, eat and sleep again.
But at last he stood up on his own, went to his locker, dressed, if feebly. The pseudosome brightened a second sensor at this movement, then a third. "Assistance?"
"Report, Anne."
"Time: oh six four five hours ten point one point two three. Operating on standby assistance, program E one hundred; on program A one hundred; on additional pro—"
"Cancel query. Continue programs as given." He walked out into the living quarters, walked to the bridge, stood leaning on Burlin's chair, surrounded by Anne's lazily blinking consoles, by scanner images no one had read for days. He sat down from weakness.
" Anne. Do you have any program to lift off?"
The console lights rippled with activity. Suddenly Burlin's deep voice echoed through the bridge.
"Final log entry. Whoever hears this, don't—repeat, don't—land. Don't attempt assistance. We're dead of plague. It got aboard from atmosphere, from soil. . . somehow. It hit everyone. Everyone is dead. Biological records are filed under—"
"Cancel query. Reply is insufficient. Is there a course program in your records?"
"Reply to request for course: I must hold my position. If question is made of this order, I must replay final log entry. . . Final log entry—"
" Bypass that order. Prepare for lift!"
The lights went red. "I am ordered to self-destruct if bypass is attempted. Please withdraw request."
"Cancel—cancel bypass order." Warren slumped in the chair, stared at the world beyond the viewport, deadly beguiling morning, gold streaming through cumulus cloud. It was right. Burlin had been right; he had ensured even against a survivor. Against human weakness.
" Anne." His voice faltered. "Take program. If I speak, I'm speaking to you. I don't need to say your name. My voice will activate your responses. I'm Paul Warren. Do you have my ID clear?"
"ID as Warren, Paul James, six eight seven seven six five eight—"
"Cancel query. How long can your pseudosome remain functional?"
"Present power reserve at present rate of consumption: three hundred seventy-eight years approximate to the nearest—"
"Cancel query. Will prolonged activity damage the pseudosome?"
"Modular parts are available for repair. Attrition estimate: no major failure within power limits." Warren gazed out at the daybreak. Sax, he thought. He had made a promise and failed it, days ago. He tried to summon the strength to do something about it, to care—to go out and search in the hope that a man could have lived out there, sick, in the chill of nights and without food. He knew the answer. He had no wish to dwell on guilt, to put any hope in wandering about out there, to find another corpse. He had seen enough. More than enough.
"Library. Locate programming manual. Dispense."
An agitation ran across the board and a microfilm shot down into the dispenser. He gathered it up.
There was this, for his comfort. For three hundred seventy-eight years. Annewas a marvelous piece of engineering. Her pseudosome was capable of most human movements; its structure imitated the human body and her shining alloy was virtually indestructible by heat or corrosion. Walk-through programming made her capable in the galley: her sensitive vid scanners could read the tapes on stored foods; her timing system was immaculate. She carried on domestic tasks, fetched and carried, and meanwhile her other programs kept more vital functions in working order: circulation, heating, cooling throughout the ship, every circuit, all automated, down to the schedule of lighting going on and off, to the inventory reports going up on the screens each morning, for crew who would no longer read them.
Warren worked, ignoring these processes, trusting Annefor them. He read the manual, wrote out programs, sitting naked in bed with the microfilm reader on one side and a coffee pot on the other and a lap full of notes.
An illusion, that was all he asked, a semblance of a mind to talk to. Longer plans he refused as yet. The plotting and replotting that filled the bed and the floor about him with discarded balls of paper was his refuge, his defense against thinking.
He dreaded the nights and kept the lights on while the rest of the ship cycled into dark. He slept in the light when he had to sleep, and woke and worked again while the pseudosome brought him his meals and took the empty dishes back again.
3
He called the star Harley, because it was his to name. The world he called Rule, because Harley and Rule were sometime lovers and it seemed good. Harley was a middling average star, the honest golden sort, which cast an easy warmth on his back, as an old friend ought. Rule stretched everywhere, rich and smelling sweet as Rule always had, and she was peaceful. He liked the world better when he had named It, and felt the sky friendlier with an old friend's name beaming down at him while he worked.
He stretched the guy ropes of a plastic canopy they had never had the chance to use on harsher worlds, screwed the moorings into the grassy earth and stood up in pleasant shade, looking out over wide billows of grass, with forest far beyond them.
Annekept him company. She had a range of half a kilometer from the ship over which mind and body could keep in contact, and farther still if the booster unit were in place, which project he was studying. He had not yet had the time. He moved from one plan to the next, busy, working with his hands, feeling the strength return to his limbs. Healing sunlight erased the sores and turned his skin a healthy bronze. He stretched his muscles, grinned up at the sun through the leaf-patterned plastic. Felt satisfied.
" Anne. Bring the chair, will you?"
The pseudosome came to life, picked up the chair that remained on the cargo lift, carried it out. And stopped.
" Set it down." His good humor turned to disgust. "Set it down." Anneset it, straightened, waited.
" Anne. What do you perceive?"
Anne's sensors brightened, one after the other. "Light, gravity, sound, temperature."
"You perceive me."
"Yes, Warren. You're directly in front of me."
" Anne, come here."
She walked forward, into the shade, stopped, hands at her sides, sensors pulsing behind her dark faceplate like so many stars in a void.
" Anne, I'm your duty. I'm all the crew. The directives all apply only to me now. The others have stopped functioning. Do you understand? I want you to remain active until I tell you otherwise. Walk at your own judgment. Identify and accept all stimuli that don't take you out of range."
"Program recorded," Annepurred. "Execute?"