It's the start of the off-week, so of course, it's more Space Guys. This time, I'll put a table of contents at the end. Also, here's a link for my posts on the bots and accessories. And this really is supposed to be a little ambiguous...
A week and more passed, as much as weeks counted on the ship. Already, there were enough crew to make the ship feel crowded. Jason and Jax were kept busy flying the shuttles that carried cargo and crew to the ship. In that time, he did not so much as say a word to Alek.
On the tenth day, he had returned with the contingent from New Edo on an 18-hour run from Phobos. There were six men and two women, the latter even less talkative than the former. He made the flight with Harrison as his copilot, really his teacher. The amiable man made the flight bearable. He even managed to connect with one of their passengers, John Tanaka, who identified as an Edonian Ranger. This was apparently the title of an elite corps sworn to their nation’s defense and to exploration in the name of the common good of humankind. He told nonchalantly of diving to the bottom of the 7-Mile Trench, crossing the trackless jungles of Indochina with no weapons or tools but a shovel and kukri, ejecting without a parachute 40,000 meters over the Kamchatka wilderness, and a dozen other hair-raising adventures that seemed to have no purpose but to prove his mettle.
Jason was bone-tired as he descended into the hold of the drive nacelle where the shuttle had docked. He passed a line of three storage tanks, and a pair of gaming cabinets. In the middle of the floor, two robots were at work, one chrome and one a brassy gold, stumping along on legs shorter than their stout feet. Their squat, 1.6 meter-tall forms made him think of mushrooms, if only because of the transparent domes that covered the workings of their electronic brains. They were already loading cargo modules onto a cart, using pincer claws on the ends of accordion-like extending arms. One swiveled its head to track him with two red eyes beneath the clear housing.
He paused at the sight of another robot, at least 2.1 meters tall. It shared with the other robots the clear housing of its brain, which was only the top half of a roughly spherical head. Its boiler-like body was taller and proportionately thinner than the smaller robots, concealing its still much greater mass. It was supported by two strong legs and feet that could convert into tracks. He had passed it before without giving it any further thought. Now, however, it seemed different. The obvious difference was that a glow came from beneath the dome, barely visible in the light but quite clear in the shadowy recess where it stood. More than that, it seemed alert even as it stood motionless. He was still taken off-guard by sudden confirmation as an optical housing that ringed the middle of its head flared to life. The head turned, just enough to lock on him. The arms suddenly rose. Each bore three independently-swiveling metal digits that looked like egg beaters. It was not lost on him that they might very well scramble his insides like an egg.
Suddenly, a sharp, cold, seemingly unidentifiable voice called out, “Identify hostile.” The soft blue-white glow of the dome became yellow. The voice spoke again, “Restrain.” He cried out as the robot suddenly advanced, its claws already fully extended. He easily withdrew beyond its reach, but it was like the tale of the Tortoise and the Hare. The machine was not hindered by cramps from 3/4ths of a day sitting in a cockpit, nor did it have to look over its shoulder to avoid tripping over a cargo module or backing into a bulkhead. He might still have escaped, if the robot had not already cut off the path to the corridor of the life support ring. Perhaps it would not have mattered; he momentarily pictured running through the corridor, always sloping slightly uphill. At any rate, the triple claws gripped his shoulders like a crane in an electromechanical game. He kicked and struggled, purely as a matter of instinct. He had the presence to call out, “Hey! Stop! Let me go! I order you to let me go!”
That would indeed have been enough if an ordinary mech had laid hands on him, if its programming had somehow allowed it to do so in the first place. But of course, it was already obvious that this was anything but ordinary. Still, it was evident that it was trying to minimize the damage to him and itself, as it held him up at enough distance that his kicks only grazed its body. The voice called out again, “Execute maximum restraint.” Suddenly, the arms wrapped around his torso, drawing him into a crushing bear hug. He struggled to breath and soon failed. Just as sparks flashed before his eyes, the voice called out, “Release.”
He dropped to the floor. He was still laid out prostrate as a second figure advanced. He wouldn’t have recognized the silhouette standing over him, but there was no mistaking the singularly unfashionable shoes. “Alek,” he said. “Look, I was just… going to…” He slumped to the floor.
Alek dropped to a half-crouch. “You really screwed me over, Jason,” she said, her voice finally recognizable. Her diction was slow, meticulous, and perfect apart from one or two subtle oddities of pronunciation and emphasis. He finally looked up at her up enough to see her put on her glasses, which was just slightly comforting. He still slumped back to the deck, panting.
“You are hyperventilating, if it is no psychosomatic,” she said. She twirled a mechanical pencil. “I checked, the readouts show the machine didn’t apply a tenth of the force it would take to induce unconsciousness. If it were wrong, you should have bruises… Dammit. Chopper, carry him to my cabin.”
This time, the robot was
reasonably gentle as it carried Jason to a cabin Alek evidently had to herself.
He saw only then that she wore a sweater of the same tubed material as the
dress she had worn at their first meeting, this time with a skirt from a
servicewoman’s dress uniform. “What happened to the English?” he said.
“I can talk like this as long as I need to,” Alek said. She continued in the same almost uninflected tone, “Puedo hacer lo en espanol. Und Deutsche. E ruskiy. To Nihon. I naravno Hrvatski. But it takes longer, it is hard, and people always say I sound like my machines.” Her voice finally changed back to what he knew. “It is more pleasant when I talk like this. No?”
They reached the cabin, which had the partitions opened casually. In her own room, there was a quite spacious bed, cluttered with schematics, models, notepads, and even actual books. She cleared enough space for the robot to set him down sitting upright. The robot clomped over to a matching space across the way had been converted into a machine shop. As it hooked itself into a terminal, another of the small robots promptly began performing diagnostics on the larger machine. She matter-of-factly opened his uniform and undershirt to inspect his chest. As she did that, Jason took a closer look at the robots across the way, especially the smaller one, which was painted blue. “Tik-Tok,” he said. It was a name from his beloved Oz books, often shared in their letters.
“Yes, you remembered,” Alek said. She clearly was not impressed. She pointed at the small robot and the tall one with her pencil. “That is the demonstrator for the J3 model. I upgraded him to be my assistant. I have called the big one Nick Chopper, like the Tin Man. I know, Tin Man was a real man, not machine like Tik-Tok, until all his parts got chopped off by his own axe. But the way Chopper goes through spare parts, he really is like Tin Man. I replaced his whole brain board three time; maybe name should be Jack Pumpkinhead, no?”
By then, she had finished her inspection. “No bruising, as I thought. I am sorry, it is a new feature I am developing on the captain’s orders. It modifies Chopper’s program to allow it to restrain a human when it is necessary to protect others. I really did need to test it. Usually, we would ask for volunteers, but it is not the same.”
Past the end of the bed, there was a complete computer work station. She grabbed a semi-movable chair and sat down facing him. “You really hurt me, Jason,” she said. She held the point of the pencil level with his eye. “Not just this time, either. First you tell me you love me, then you stop writing when I offer to come to you. Now, I go out on a limb coming to you, you promise to marry me, you, you show me making love… And then you don’t even talk to me. But they talk about me, you know.”
“When I woke up, you were gone,” he said. “What did you expect me to do? Besides, practically everybody on the ship is either a super brain like you or an old spacer like Harrison. They don’t care what we do, and why would you care what anybody else thinks, anyway?”
Alek shook her head. Jason was surprised to see tears in her eyes. “People think I don’t care, they think I don’t understand either, they think I know about machines but not people,” she said. “But I do, and it hurts. Some of them think you treat me bad, like, like wicked man. The rest think I am not good enough woman for you. I can see it when they don’t talk. Sometimes, they talk like I am not even there. Everywhere, I hear them talk, even those two Melayu who hardly say anything. They are the worst. The things they say, absolute filth, just because they think nobody else understands Javanese. They even say I wouldn’t even know if I was a virgin.” Her cheeks flushed at that. “You knew I kiss boys before.”
Jason looked back into
her eyes. “Why didn’t you stay?”
She blinked in vague surprise. “I may not be decent woman, but I am professional,” she said. “Did you think an intelligent, enlightened woman like me would spend all night in your bed before you are my husband, just to moon over you while you sleep?”
“You might be surprised,” Jason said. That got a smile from her. “It wasn’t that, anyway. I told you, down there, getting engaged isn’t just about you and me.” By happenstance, Mars came into view in the porthole, with Hellas visible to the south. “I had to tell my folks about you. I didn’t hear back from them. It happens all the time, and right now, the traffic for this ship has the wires jammed up all over the planet.”
Her face became hopeful.
“What did they say?” she asked.
“My parents were happy,” Jason said. “They knew about you, of course. They think we would be a good match. They just asked to have a video of the ceremony if we do get married. Well, if you still want to.” He looked at her intently. “Look, I’m sorry I put you through that. So… what can I do to make it up to you?”
“Be an indecent man,” she said. “Treat me like, like you are the hound dog and I am in heat. Follow me, hug me, kiss me, hold me, grab me and try to make love to me while everybody is watching. Especially those dirty Malay.”
Suddenly, she sprang up and took off her glasses. She strode the length of the cabin and her lab twice and back again. When she stopped, she started to smooth her sweater down. It soon stretched down her hips, until he realized that it was her dress or one like it. “I am sorry,” she said. “I am getting excited.” Her face flushed immediately. “Not like you are thinking, perro. I am thinking of math. I can see it, not just numbers, also lines, shapes. I need this to draw what I see…” She snatched up a notebook and plopped down beside him, ignoring a scale model of the Janus that crunched audibly beneath her. She licked her upper lip as she began to draw. Somehow, he was less shocked when she kissed him.
“There,” she said. “Now, I can really think. Better, in fact. Thank you.” He stared as she sketched a series of ellipses that together formed something like a flower. He shivered, this time with unquestionable pleasure.
It lasted until he looked down at the unsorted papers on the floor. Among them was a Sparky the Space Squirrel poster, with a cluster of holes drilled where it would hurt the most. “Moxon was here,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” Alek said. She pointed with her pencil toward the lab, then in the direction of the gaming cabinets. “That was his room. He let me have it. He still comes back for target practice. I convinced the captain to put those in so he wouldn’t shoot his real gun.” Only then did Jason make the connection that one cabinet was a shooting gallery. Suddenly, she deposited herself in his lap. “But please don’t talk about him. Just kiss me, and touch me, and talk to me like you are making love.”
After a while, he removed
his undershirt. By then, neither of them noticed the bruise on his back.
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