The fundamental problem with combat in space had always been the same: everyone tended to die. In vacuum, staying alive even when everyone cooperated fully was difficult, but when crewmen turned against one another anyone could pop a critical membrane or cause a fire, destroying all the things that were required for life. Death stalked everyone in vacuum, every minute. Humans required a precise temperature range, a precise air quality and pressure, not to mention absurdly low radiation levels. We were like tropical fish when in space. You had to watch us every minute or we died mysteriously from any one of an array of possible causes.
The two of us were trapped inside a tubetrain on a superconductive railway. All that was left of the railnet ran from the automated mines in the Ohio crater up to the gutted observation pods that crested the Banfield cliffs. Up at the cliffs, the tracks ended at the station under the dead depressurized bridge of the asteroid ship. Just trundling around between these stations had gotten old fast, but we hadn’t yet built up the nerve to try to walk the surface to another station.
“Weaver, why are you always talking to Pandi? What have you told her?” Rahashi asked me. Rahashi wasn’t a tech, while I was, which gave him virtually nothing to do. Because of this he had become increasingly withdrawn and obsessed with a personality program, which he called Pandi.
“I’m not always talking to Pandi,” I said disgustedly, while soldering another lead onto the cannibalized transmitter I was working on. “I’m trying to save our skins by getting this dish online. Besides, her name isn’t Pandi, it’s Beth.”
“Her name is Pandi and I can tell that the weights in her neural net have fluctuated. I can tell,” said Rahashi with great intensity. His large, luminous brown eyes stared at me. I frowned at my work and hunched forward in my spacesuit, which had begun to stink with fresh sweat. Pandi was our greatest source of contention lately. She was a remarkable computer personality that was our only true female influence now that we were cut off from the rest of the Kamadeva.
Of course, she was only a program. We knew that, but somehow, after a few months in cramped isolation, this didn’t matter anymore.
“The firing frequency too!” shouted Rahashi suddenly, almost hysterically. “You can’t tell me that you haven’t altered her neural firing frequencies!”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded, surprised. I didn’t think he would notice. He wasn’t much of a programmer.
“She’s changed,” he said, his voice on the edge of tears.
“Come on, man,” I said looking at him incredulously.
“I can tell,” he hissed at me.
“How can you tell?”
“She’s starting to turn away from me. It’s little things,” he said, dropping those wild staring eyes for once. His hands nervously fluttered over his suit, tearing open self-seal pockets and watching them reknit themselves. Each time he tore them open, I winced.
His voice dropped to a whisper. “She doesn’t even call me Rashi anymore.”
I guess I shouldn’t have done it. In fact, I knew that I shouldn’t, but I laughed. I laughed long and loud and mean. A deep, resounding belly-laugh. The soldering laser in my hand slipped and a wisp of resin smoke spiraled up toward the recycling vent in the side of the tubeship. When I had finished laughing I squinted at the small brown-skinned man and saw a touch of madness in his face, a glimmer of insanity. He reminded me of an animal in mortal pain.
“I’m sorry. Cool down, Rahashi, you’re just getting cabin fever.”
Rahashi stood slowly, as if he had come to some great decision. He headed for the open manhole in the floor. I waved my hand disgustedly, snorting. Let him go off and pout. Then I heard the manhole cover slip quietly shut behind him. I whirled, listening, and then heard the electronic chime as the bolt shot home. I frowned for a moment, pondering the move. He had cut the tubetrain in half, top from bottom.
The little shuttle was built like a tennis ball canister, cut in half the long way. The upper deck was for carrying passengers, the lower for cargo. Being isolated in the upper half I still had air, food and water, and even the ship’s guidance control systems. I chuckled, he was just pouting again, shutting himself in the bathroom like an enraged teenager.
“Hope you like it down there Rahashi,” I shouted at the manhole.
If Beth liked me better and he couldn’t handle it, well, too bad. I sat down and finished off the last three solder connections on my transmitter, then flipped it on. Now we had a steady distress message going out. If there was anyone left around to hear it, they would. They had to. Then suddenly, I realized that the computer terminal was down there, with him. Instantly, his plan was clear. If he spent a few days alone with her, just making time with Beth, then he would swing her back his way. In my mind’s eye, I could see him putting on the awkward skullcap, buckling on the restraints and slipping into his favorite fantasy with the help of a good dose of blur-dust capsules. I growled and slammed my fist into my thigh. In a couple of days, with the higher firing frequencies I had given her to counterbalance the increased time that Rahashi had been spending with her, she would forget all about me. She would probably insist that I call her Pandi, of all the galling things. Worse, he might even be able to coax her into bed with him, something neither of us had ever managed.
I stomped on the metal manhole cover three times in rapid succession.
“Open up Rahashi!”
I heard only the echoes of my heavy boots hitting metal and Rahashi’s high-pitched laughter. Listening closely, I could make out Beth’s voice, raised up an octave, the way that Rahashi liked it, talking to him. I heard him answer and panic gripped me. I had to stop him, he was making time with my girl. My eyes swung around the tubeship’s passenger deck, looking for possibilities. My gaze stopped on the security cameras and the passenger arrival monitors that were arrayed just over the airlock doors. I smiled, forming a plan. Half an hour later, I had managed to hook into the superconductor tubeway’s network. Hooking into the network’s optical backbone, I managed to connect the auxiliary output for Rahashi’s computer terminal to one of the monitors on the passenger deck.
I was rewarded when an image of Rahashi’s Pandi and Rahashi himself flashed up on the screen. The two of them were having a quiet meal above the streets of Bombay. Pandi served him in nothing but slippers and silk. They spoke Hindi together and sipped a green liquor. I noticed with a chuckle that Rahashi was at least six inches taller and broader than he was in real life. He had obviously doctored up the scanned-in imaged of himself. Pandi herself was a bit more of a shock. Instead of Beth, the buxom redhead with blue eyes and shoulder-length hair that I was familiar with, Rahashi’s Pandi was slight and dark, with fine sharp features and beautifully shaped olive-colored eyes. There was the definite hint of the orient in those eyes, indicating that Rahashi had a thing for the girls from the Far East.
What I found most upsetting was Pandi’s scanty clothing. I had never gotten so far with Beth, although I had plied her with song and strong drink on countless dates. I fiddled with a makeshift tuner until I got a channel up that spoke English. This dropped Rahashi’s part of the conversation out, although his lips still moved and occasionally parted to reveal a set of straight white teeth that were the purest fiction. Although Beth/Pandi would appear for us in any guise we wanted, her mind retained its knowledge of both of us. She truly knew that she had two ardent pursuers, and I am convinced that she enjoyed our competition for her attentions.
I twiddled with the translation until I found the audio track for English.
“Of course I love our time together, Rahashi,” she lilted, running her delicate fingers over the back of his hand. I growled then sighed. Even as Pandi, she still had her magic. Rahashi smiled, gesturing her forward.