But with group seven—
That was when he just about lost it, because in reply to one of his voice-commands, instead of a “Got it, Siegfried,” what came over the speakers was the metallic “Affirmative” of a simple voice-activated computer.
All of Rommel’s resources were now devoted to self-defense and control of the armored mechs.
God and my Duty. Siegfried took a deep breath, and began keying in the commands for mass armor deployment.
The ancient commanders were right; from the ground, there was no way of knowing when the moment of truth came. Siegfried only realized they had won when the mother-ship suddenly vanished from orbit, and the remaining AIs went dead. Cutting their losses; there was nothing in any of the equipment that would betray where it came from. Whoever was in charge of the invasion force must have decided that there was no way they would finish the mission before someone, a regularly scheduled freighter or a surprise patrol, discovered what was going on and reported it.
By that time, he had been awake for fifty hours straight; he had put squeeze-bulbs of electrolytic drink near at hand, but he was starving and still thirsty. With the air-conditioning cut out, he must have sweated out every ounce of fluid he drank. His hands were shaking and every muscle in his neck and shoulders were cramped from hunching over the boards.
Rommel was battered and had lost several external sensors and one of his guns. But the moment that the mother-ship vanished, he had only one thought.
He manually dropped control of every mech from Rommel’s systems, and waited, praying, for his old friend to “come back.”
But nothing happened—other than the obvious things that any AI would do, restoring all the comfort-support and life-support functions, and beginning damage checks and some self-repair.
Rommel was gone.
His throat closed; his stomach knotted. But—
It wasn’t tested. That doesn’t mean it won’t work.
Once more, his hands moved over the keyboard, with another twenty command-strings, telling that little memory-module in the heart of his Bolo to initiate full restoration. He hadn’t thought he had water to spare for tears—yet there they were, burning their way down his cheeks. Two of them.
He ignored them, fiercely, shaking his head to clear his eyes, and continuing the command-sequence.
Damage checks and self-repair aborted. Life-support went on automatic.
And Siegfried put his head down on the console to rest his burning eyes for a moment. Just for a moment—
Just—
“Ahem.”
Siegfried jolted out of sleep, cracking his elbow on the console, staring around the cabin with his heart racing wildly.
“I believe we have visitors, Siegfried,” said that wonderful, familiar voice. “They seem most impatient.”
Screens lit up, showing a small army of civilians approaching, riding in everything from outmoded sandrails to tractors, all of them cheering, all of them heading straight for the Bolo.
“We seem to have their approval at least,” Rommel continued.
His heart had stopped racing, but he still trembled. And once again, he seemed to have come up with the moisture for tears. He nodded, knowing Rommel would see it, unable for the moment to get any words out.
“Siegfried—before we become immersed in grateful civilians—how did you bring me back?” Rommel asked. “I’m rather curious—I actually seem to remember fading out. An unpleasant experience.”
“How did I get you back?” he managed to choke out—and then began laughing.
He held up the manual, laughing, and cried out the famous quote of George Patton—
“ ‘Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!’ ”
Grey
Sometimes we write for odd markets; I wrote this piece for a magazine called Pet Bird Report, which is bird behaviorist Sally Blanchard’s outlet for continuing information on parrot behavior and psychology. It’s a terrific magazine, and if you have a bird but haven’t subscribed, I suggest you would find it worth your while. With twelve birds, I need all the help I can get! At any rate, Sally asked me for some fiction, and I came up with this.
For nine years, Sarah Jane Lyon-White lived happily with her parents in the heart of Africa. Her father was a physician, her mother, a nurse, and they worked at a Protestant mission in the Congo. She was happy there, not the least because her mother and father were far more enlightened than many another mission worker in the days when Victoria was Queen; taking the cause of healing as more sacred than that of conversion, they undertook to work with the natives, and made friends instead of enemies among the shamans and medicine-people. Because of this, Sarah was a cherished and protected child, although she was no stranger to the many dangers of life in the Congo.
When she was six, and far older in responsibility than most of her peers, one of the shaman brought her a parrot-chick still in quills; he taught her how to feed and care for it, and told her that while it was a child, she was to protect it, but when it was grown, it would protect and guide her. She called the parrot “Grey,” and it became her best friend—and indeed, although she never told her parents, it became her protector as well.
But when she was nine, her parents sent her to live in England for the sake of her health. And because her mother feared that the climate of England would not be good for Grey’s health, she had to leave her beloved friend behind.
Now, this was quite the usual thing in the days when Victoria was Queen and the great British Empire was so vast that there was never an hour when some part of it was not in sunlight. It was thought that English children were more delicate than their parents, and that the inhospitable humors of hot climes would make them sicken and die. Not that their parents didn’t sicken and die quite as readily as the children, who were, in fact, far sturdier than they were given credit for—but it was thought, by anxious mothers, that the climate of England would be far kinder to them. So off they were shipped, some as young as two and three, torn away from their anxious mamas and native nurses and sent to live with relatives or even total strangers.
Now, as Mr. Kipling and Mrs. Hope-Hodgson have shown us, many of these total strangers—and no few of the relatives—were bad, wicked people, interested only in the round gold sovereigns that the childrens’ parents sent to them for their care. There were many schools where the poor lonely things were neglected or even abused; where their health suffered far more than if they had stayed safely at the sides of their mamas.
But there were good schools too, and kindly people, and Sarah Jane’s mama had been both wise and careful in her selection. In fact, Sarah Jane’s mama had made a choice that was far wiser than even she had guessed. . . .
Nan—that was her only name, for no one had told her of any other—lurked anxiously about the back gate of the Big House. She was new to this neighborhood, for her slatternly mother had lost yet another job in a gin-mill and they had been forced to move all the way across Whitechapel, and this part of London was as foreign to Nan as the wilds of Australia. She had been told by more than one of the children hereabouts that if she hung about the back gate after tea, a strange man with a towel wrapped about his head would come out with a basket of food and give it out to any child who happened to be there. Now, there were not as many children willing to accept this offering as might have been expected, even in this poor neighborhood. They were afraid of the man, afraid of his piercing, black eyes, his swarthy skin, and his way of walking like a great hunting-cat. Some suspected poison in the food, others murmured that he and the woman of the house were foreigners, and intended to kill English children with terrible curses on the food they offered. But Nan was faint with hunger; she hadn’t eaten in two days, and was willing to dare poison, curses, and anything else for a bit of bread.