Redmond dragged himself upright. As soon as the computer ferreted out Grant’s meddling, he’d find him and deal with him. Briefly he considered waking the crew himself. With forty-eight extra helpers, they’d neutralize Grant in a hurry.
No. That wouldn’t be good. In their lifetime of battle, the only rule that couldn’t be broken was that it remained private. Only Redmond could hurt Grant, and only Grant could hurt Redmond. When they were eighteen and playing football, Grant took on a linebacker who was going to blindside Redmond. Strained all the ligaments in Grant’s left knee. Redmond had watched the video later, seen how Grant had broke his pattern to save him. Grant took an injury rather than letting someone else hurt Redmond. On the next play, Redmond went purposely low on a block and snapped the linebacker’s ankle.
No, he wanted to see Grant himself, to look him in the face before he pulled the trigger. There would be no outside help. Redmond’s arm hung awkwardly at his side as he walked toward the sleepbay. The gun he carried loosely in the other hand.
At first Redmond didn’t hear the whispering voice. He had turned his earplug down low to tune out the computer’s constant yammering.
“The doors are locked, you bastard.”
Redmond paused. It was Grant, his raspy breathing filling Redmond’s ear.
“You almost killed everyone with that stunt,” said Redmond, forcing himself to speak calmly.
“If you wouldn’t have screwed with the computers, the doors behind you would have closed. Nobody was at risk.”
The computer beeped. “Program done,” it announced. A report popped up, showing the changes Grant had made to the system. Redmond reactivated Grant as a crew member, and the computer showed his location in the living quarters lounge, directly behind the south sleepbay. Another adjustment, and the vid showed the true image. Grant stood in the middle of the lounge, his hands on his hips. So he’d only been one door away when Redmond had awakened. He swallowed. Had Grant got there just before Redmond had dogged the door, or had he been in the sleepbay before Redmond revived?
“What the hell did you do to the bots?” said Grant.
Redmond ran a dozen scenarios through his head. With the decompression as evidence, immobilizing Grant would look like an act of good will. The crew would give him a medal. Redmond could leave a record of the events and wake with the rest of the crew, a hero.
In the vid, Grant moved sideways through the room, his eyes intent on one wall. He didn’t look seventy-three years older than when Redmond had seen him last. His hair was dark, still messy from the long sleep, and his face still baby-like, which belied his biological age of twenty-nine. He carried himself gracefully, like a spider, Redmond thought. One of those garden spiders with long legs that moved from thread to thread with perfect certainty.
“What’s wrong with the bots?” Grant said again.
“What do you mean?” said Redmond. Grant’s ghostly image floated in the air before him. Redmond cut through the gymnasium’s bare space—all the equipment was stored—and into the hallway that would bring him to the lounge’s back door. If he jammed it like he’d done the one into the sleeproom, Grant wouldn’t be able to get out, even if he talked the ship into cooperating.
“Damn it! A bot’s hunting me!” yelled Grant, an unusual tenor in his voice. He was frightened.
Something moved at the bottom of the display. In the middle of the empty gym, Redmond stopped walking so he could concentrate on the image. Grant maneuvered himself behind a couch, his posture wary. A bot slid through one corner of the picture, almost out of view. Redmond sent a command, and the vid went wide angle.
“What’s it holding?” said Redmond. A multi-limbed extension had unfolded from the bot’s round shell, and it gripped an odd tool. Grant held himself taut, ready to spring away, and his normally graceful movements became panicked. The bot rolled a couple feet to its left, then rotated so the tool pointed at Grant, but the vid resolution wasn’t good enough for Redmond to see what it was. Hands on the couch’s top, Grant sidled away, apprehension on his face. Redmond flicked through ship data until he ran into a block. Puzzled, he tried another query. Blank. All information on the bots was locked up. It wouldn’t access. This wasn’t his work; it wasn’t Grant’s either. Redmond tried a data runaround. Nothing. A backdoor he’d built into the programming was closed too. Tension rose in his throat. The bot skittered around a chair, keeping the tool aimed.
Redmond said, “Stay low. Stay away from it.” He pressed the earplug hard against his head so he could hear better. Grant’s quick breathing rasped.
A pop.
“Damn it!” Grant clutched his chest. “It shot me.” He took a shaky step toward the door, then fell. The bot withdrew the extension before heading for a tunnel.
“Grant! Grant!” Redmond ran toward the lounge, Grant’s vital signs displayed in the air in front of him. Breathing and pulse slowed. Only his hands and the top of his head were visible; the couch hid the rest. One hand clenched. Then he spasmed for a couple seconds.
The airlock swung ponderously closed before Redmond could get to it. He pounded on it, his hardest blows failing to elicit more than dull slaps. Even as he punched the button to open it, he knew it was useless. The heads-up display revealed more and more of the ship’s control locking out. None of them responded.
Across the gym, the door he’d come in was closed too.
Almost weeping, he watched Grant’s vitals retreating to straight lines. How had this happened? Who else had tinkered with the computers? He could have sworn that only he and Grant were capable of this kind of work.
When the bot tunnel door squeaked open, though, he knew. It was the ship. Grant alerted a deep self-preservation program when he blew open the corridor segment. The Blind Man was awake; the ship was protecting itself. As the bot rolled toward him, tool arm extended, grasping the same weapon that shot Grant, Redmond looked at Grant’s vital signs one more time. Were they flat, or was there the tiniest twitch in all of them? Would the ship kill them, or was it only putting them to sleep for the rest of the crew to deal with?
He didn’t try to dodge, but even as he surrendered he couldn’t help shuddering. The beetle-backed bot, its tiny vid eyes shining, seemed nearly alive. And it paused. Why did it pause if it wasn’t to savor the moment?
Redmond stared at it, and it stared back. Only the sentient gloat.
The bot fired.
ECHOING
The semi’s engine roared steadily while the heater poured warmth on Laird’s ankles. His headlights cut into the snowstorm, flakes coming hard. He rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn. There hadn’t been another truck or car for the last hour on the long stretch of I-25 between Trinidad and Albuquerque, but he wasn’t surprised. Christmas Eve in a snowstorm, who would be moving then?
The road unfolded. No tracks. Every twenty seconds or so he passed a highway reflector on his right. He moved the truck closer to the middle, or at least what he hoped was the middle. Snow dove from the darkness, slashing straight toward him, blindingly white. His knuckles ached from gripping the steering wheel. It had started snowing when he pulled out of Denver after dinner, soft at first, and glowing in the late afternoon light. The radio had played an instrumental medley of carols. Laird hummed along, thinking about his family waiting in Albuquerque. After he checked the shipment in at the warehouse, he would climb into his car and drive home in plenty of time to be awakened by the kids. Denver to Albuquerque: eight hours on a good night.