CHAPTER FIVE
A robot waits.
Its plastic body is bathed in the golden, reflected light of a fat yellow gas giant filling the view outside the nearby row of windows. The gas giant looks like a disembodied egg yolk in space, girdled by a flotilla of dark moons. With its striped face as a backdrop the robot stands like a statue, mute, motionless, and infinitely patient.
The gatehouse generators spin down. Exhaust pours from the vents. The locks on the outer chamber withdraw with a series of clicks, and then the door yawns open. The smoke clears and Felix steps out, one lone and battered staff member following at his heels. They both leave dirty footprints on the polished floor.
"Oh!" says Felix, stopping short. He blinks at the robot, brow furrowed. "Where's Mr. Tandimoor?"
"He's no longer with us, Mr. Felix," says the robot.
"Oh," says Felix again, this time more quietly. And then, "What happened?"
"You haven't checked in for over two hundred years, Mr. Felix," replies the robot evenly. "He died."
"Oh," says Felix a third time. He frowns. "Who are you?"
"I'm Eckhart," says the robot, extending a plastic hand to shake. "It's an honour to meet you, sir."
Felix looks down at the proffered limb without moving. "Since when do robots shake hands?"
Eckhart's simple face flickers with a brief smile, something else robots don't tend to do in Felix's experience. "A lot of things have changed back home, Mr. Felix," he explains. "Rowboats have come a long way."
"Rowboats?" echoes Felix, brow raised.
"Pronunciations have changed, too," says Eckhart. "Language never stops moving, Mr. Felix. I have a modern Common Verbal Protocol module ready for you, so you don't have to sound so outmoded."
"I prefer to think of my speech as classic rather than outmoded."
Eckhart shrugs. "With all respect, sir, same difference," he says. "The point is that nobody back home can make heads or tails of half of what you put in your reports."
"Gracious!"
"Times change, Mr. Felix."
Suddenly Felix finds himself clapping his hands over his ears and wincing as a wide-banded signal blasts through him, the floor beneath his feet rumbling in sympathetic reverberation with the violent, multi-layered noise: "Two! Three! Five! Seven! Eleven! Thirteen! Seventeen! Nineteen! Twenty-three! Twenty-nine!"
He glances up to see Eckhart watching him with amused indifference. "Are you alright, sir?" he asks.
"What is that?" Felix cries.
"It's the colonizers," says Eckhart, gesturing to the tall bank of windows overlooking the yolk-like gas giant. "We've got a fleet of them parked here for upgrades, and it annoys them to be moored. When they're upset they bleat their Solar sentience signature message. There doesn't seem to be anything I can do to dissuade them, sir -- the prime call is reflexive, too deeply buried in their instincts."
Felix wanders over to the glass and looks out. This waystation clings to the face of a small, pitted moonlet; in close orbit are a dozen massive colonizers, their cigar-shaped hulls silhouetted against the gas giant, their tentacles tethered to tiny tugboats with winking formation lights. As Felix watches one of the colonizers bucks against its moorings, then bellows across space: "Two! Three! Five! Seven! Eleven! Thirteen!"
"It's awful," says Felix, rubbing his head ruefully.
"You get used to it," shrugs Eckhart.
Felix turns away from the windows. "Why am I here? When can I get going again?"
Eckhart spreads his arms helplessly. "There's a bit of an issue with that, Mr. Felix. This is the end of the Local Fluff. Out there beyond us is a void, a wide Hell with a mean radius of at least eighty lightyears. It's cold out there, and virtually empty: the galactic medium is so thin it's barely there, which is in part why these colonizers are on the blocks -- we're equipping them with a more efficient alimentary system so they can subsist beyond the Fluff."
Felix looks out at the stars again. "Then the hyperspatial network ends here?"
"Oh no, sir, not at all. But that brings up another conundrum. The novas that opened the void sent compression waves through the galactic medium, and here, at the edge of the Fluff, is the bowshock. It's an ungodly big ripple in space, you understand sir, and it distorts all our signals. We can't see past it."
"We can't hop through it?"
"We can, but we don't have any idea what's going on over there. You'd be hopping blind. We can't get any data through real space to the colonizers on the other side, and they can't get anything back to us."
"But they've transmitted green status? The network's up?"
"That's right, sir."
"So, what are we waiting for? Let me go see what the situation is."
"Callicrates prefers prudence, Mr. Felix. They want more intelligence before we plunge ahead. But don't look that way, sir -- the wait won't be long. The ripple should dissipate fully sometime within the next seven hundred years."
"Seven hundred years?" echoes Felix. "Seven hundred years? That's outrageous! I can't wait that long."
Eckhart cocks his head. "Sir, aren't you the one who once spent a whole century watching crystal flakes blow in the wind?"
"That was different. I thought there was a pattern of intelligence there. It only made sense to stick around for a bit to see how things panned out."
Eckhart shrugs again in his sickening, mock-Human manner. "Of course, sir, you're not obliged to wait. I mean, someone is, but it needn't necessarily be you."
Felix's head snaps around to face him. "What ever do you mean, robot?"
"I mean there are other Zorannics, Mr. Felix. There are others willing to take your place. Some say you deserve a rest. You've been at this a long, long time. You've done your bit for queen and quadrant."
"Done my bit?" cries Felix, grimacing. "I am Felix. I am the Traveller!"
"Yes, I thought you might say that," replies the robot smoothly. "I always said you were touched by vanity, sir."
Felix shakes his head, bemused and disgruntled. "Where do you get off talking to me like that?" he demands, straightening to his full height. "Since when are robots programmed to be snide?"
"Like I said, sir, times change."
"And now people enjoy rude robots, do they?"
"My opinions are not programmed, Mr. Felix."
"What is that supposed to mean? Of course they are. You're a walking appliance, not a man."
"It's a hazy line, really," says Eckhart with a coy smile that makes Felix think he is indeed fully aware that he is parroting Felix's own words back to him. "Rowboats aren't the simple things we once were. Now we think for ourselves, and form opinions, and have feelings. It's a different world back home, sir. You've been out of touch for a long while."
"Nonsense," snaps Felix. "What sort of feelings could a machine have?"
"You have feelings, sir."
"I'm Zorannic," says Felix hotly. "I'm sentient. My feelings communicate my instincts, to serve my purpose."
"Mine too," argues Eckhart. "My purpose is to serve, and to better understand our masters we rowboats have learned to know emotion."
"What emotion? A parody of mammalhood?"
"That's where it began, sir," answers Eckhart amicably. "But after a while the line between an excellent simulation and the real thing blurs. Think about it, sir. If one replicates an effect precisely, what is to distinguish the simulacrum from reality?"
"Pretended causes."
"We don't feel emotions randomly, sir, but rather in reaction to specific sets of stimuli. Since those stimuli are patterned against Human stimuli, the causes mirror Human experience as surely as the effects do. I mourn sad circumstances, for example, and am cheered by good news."
"That's perverse."
"I believe, sir, that's how the Zorannics were once described, were they not?"
Felix closes his eyes for a moment and sighs. "But it's all a ruse, isn't it? You said it yourself: a simulacrum. Your mind isn't based on the Secret Mathematic -- your sentience is illusory."
Eckhart sniffs. "It is true, sir, that we do not have the Math." He then casts Felix a sly look, his plastic lips curling mischievously. "There are, however...equivalents."
Felix opens his mouth to respond but he is startled and drowned out by the senseless baying of the orbiting colonizers, blasting out across all frequencies: "Two! Three! Five! Seven! Eleven!"
Felix glowers darkly.
Two blue plastic robots with fluorescent numbers on their shoulders show him to his private quarters where he finds a waiting library of recent Solar literature, depthy movies and galleries of sculptures, paintings and holopuzzles. The first thing he does, however, is to strip away his tarnished and slightly melted armour. He sighs with relief as he removes the cranial sections and allows his skin to touch the air, its fine, leathery wrinkles flexing and breathing. He frees his arms and his legs, then kicks the hard soles off his feet and peels his fingers nude. He flexes his palms and arches his back.
He takes a shower.
The water runs off him black, a swill gathering around his ankles coloured by decades of grime and oil, ashes and dirt. The dust of fifty planets streams down his shins, then swirls down the drain. He discovers a crust of some kind of exotic dormant spore growing behind one knee, and picks at it with a hard-bristled brush until it begins to disintegrate and fall away. At length he turns off the water and activates the sonic cleanser to jiggle the micro-particles out of his nooks and crannies, then has another liquid rinse for good measure.
He steps out of the stall feeling fresh and almost youthful. He whistles to himself an old-timey version of The Ballad of the Good Ship Dollar as he rubs himself dry.
When he is done he sits on the sill and gazes outside meditatively, tracking the progress of the giant colonizers in orbit, watching small moons glide across the face of the yellow gas giant. A fierce blue star rises over its limb, its glare filling the room with a harsh cerulean light.
He turns around as a trio of crude plastic robots enter. One begins to collect his discarded armour while another lays out a fresh set of shiny, undented coverings. The third of them looks inquiringly at Felix's staff. "Wonderful sir, what shall we do with the homunculoid?"
"Pulp it," says Felix carelessly. "Build me a new staff. I've made the necessary resources available on my local node. I expect everything ready within a hundred hours."
"We do have other duties, sir, but we are delighted to serve and thus will make every attempt to accommodate your schedule."
"See that you do. I'm not staying here a second longer than I have to."
"Very good, sir. May time's passage find you ever happier!"
The door closes behind them. Felix is on the precipice of relaxation when he is again assaulted by the harrowingly loud prime call of a colonizer. He grits his diamond teeth, frowning. "Bloody intolerable," he mutters.
Though he has long been lonely he finds himself reluctant to leave his quarters. The prospect of being insulted by obnoxious robots or lavished with glib flattery by their inane, bubbly personalities makes him sour and grouchy. He finds himself craving the company of a Human Being, and is eventually driven out into the corridors of the waystation to ask after the possibility.
"Quite impossible, I'm afraid," says Eckhart without a trace of apology in his tone. "It's a blaze of radiation out there, sir -- great for fueling up the colonizers, but very poor for mammal tissues. Of course..."
"Of course?"
"Of course, if you're really hankering for some meat you could always pop back home for a spell. I'm sure everyone on Callicrates would be pleased to see you, sir. They have a float in your likeness every year in the Exodus Parade."
Felix blinks. "A float in a parade? Mercy. I remember dignity."
"Don't take it that way, Mr. Felix. People love you. You're a cultural phenomenon. Billions tune into the public segments of your reports. They hang on every word, even if the words are hopelessly antique."
"Classic," interjects Felix acidly.
"As you like, sir. Have you read the speculative novels about your adventures? I uploaded some to your quarters."
"I don't need to read those. I lived it."
"Again, as you like. The point, sir, is that it has been impressed upon me to persuade you insofar as I am able of the attractiveness of a respite back within Panstellar borders. You do, after all, have seven centuries of waiting ahead of you."
Felix shakes his head curtly. "I think not, robot. I will go on. Blind, if I must."
"That is foolhardy, Mr. Felix."
Felix glares at him. "Impertinent!"
"There is grave concern that you might be lost, sir. You know you are unique. All of the other Zorannics have been duplicated, but you alone exist in a single iteration. You are too precious to risk squandering in the name of conceit."
"Conceit?" roars Felix. "This -- this -- coming from a robot wearing pants?"
"Do you like them, sir?"
"Are you insane? It defies all reason! Why should an appliance wear clothes? You don't even have genitalia. It smacks of delusion."
"Wearing clothes helps me relate to Human Beings, sir. Besides, I have a fondness for artfully constructed textiles." Eckhart looks Felix in the eyes, his own glowing faintly red. "Moreover, I think you attack me to divert our discussion from your own weaknesses. Sir."
"This is incredible," says Felix. "It's like having a hammer critique your choice of nail."
"You belittle me, sir. I am a thinking thing, like yourself."
"Nonsense," says Felix. "You are not like me."
"You put yourself on a pedestal, Mr. Felix. You've been alone too long. You are not the only one in the galaxy capable of true thought, and you are not the only one capable of chasing the colonizers."
"You said it yourself -- I am unique."
"Yes," agrees Eckhart seriously. "But being unique is not the same as being important."
The hours pass. Felix sits in solitude by the windows, reading novels about himself and listening to opera. At the end of a particularly badly written chapter of the most puerile kind of romance, he descends into memory, reliving the day he left the Solar System, his shoulders still tingling from Dr. Zoran's parting embrace. "You are the arrowhead," the aging scientist had told him with tears in his eyes. "You are our guiding star. You will discover the future."
"I will never vary from my mission."
"I know you won't, Felix," said Dr. Zoran. "Now go. Go immediately. Go before I give into weakness and invent a reason to keep you."
Felix bowed. "Goodbye, Father."
Dr. Zoran bowed in turn, and though his mouth worked and the muscles in his neck twitched, he spoke nothing more. He turned his back. Felix watched the old Human Being's shoulders quake for a moment, then turned decisively on heel and stepped into the hyperspatial gate.
The generators spun up, two patches of spacetime were exchanged, and Felix never saw the Sun again...
"Two! Three! Five! Seven! Eleven! Thirteen! Seventeen! Nineteen! Twenty-three! Twenty-nine! Thirty-one! Thirty-seven! Forty-one!"
Here and now, at the cold end of the Local Fluff by a hot blue star and amid a tethered herd of mindlessly baying colonizers, Felix feels further from his mission than ever before. He wonders if his experience has truly rarified him from the pulse of civilization to such an extent that he has lost touch; he wonders if his irritation at the glib hubris of the "rowboats" comes from a place of senseless pride, or even something worse.
"Speak of the devil..." he murmurs as the door chime sounds. "Enter!"
A pair of green and orange plastic automatons walks in and then steps aside to admit Felix's new staff. Felix begins to smile, then frowns. There is only one, and instead of bearing the reduced physique of a simplified homunculus it looks exactly like a miniature version of a full Zorannic.
"Hello," it squeaks in a high, reedy voice. "I represent Solar life. My name is Felix, and I come in peace."
Felix blinks. "...What?"
"We are delighted to present the product of your request, sir," says one of the plastic robots.
"But this --" Felix stammers, "this isn't what I asked for. This is...what is this?"
"I represent Solar life," squeaks the little Zorannic, "and I come --"
"Shut up," snaps Felix. He closes his eyes for a moment, feeling out the interior form of the thing before him with his most sensitive modes of perception. His eyes flash open. "You idiots -- you've duplicated me!"
The orange robot shakes his head. "No, sir. We were not able to replicate you as you had not made available certain critical cortical functions. Therefore, in order to complete the transcription, we were obliged to improvise using alternative legal algorithms."
It takes Felix a second to digest this. "You've polluted it with equivalents?"
"It was necessary, sir, to achieve full functionality."
"But staff aren't supposed to have full functionality! They're just tools, you -- you...you tool." Felix drags a hand over his face, sighing. "Who authorized you to commit this heinous act of misguided creativity?"
"You did, sir. We interpreted your instructions as best we were able given the resources allocated, sir. You must be very happy!"
"Do I look happy?"
"No, sir. Would you care for a beverage or a therapeutic massage? Does the temperature not suit you?"
Felix's eyes widen in equal parts disbelief and wrath. "You aren't fit for kindling! Who's brilliant idea was it to anti-engineer robots to make them capable of mistakes?"
The robots exchange a look and shrug. "We forget, sir."
"You forget? What are your minds made of -- Havarti?"
"What is Havarti, sir?" asks one.
"Does our inventiveness fail to please you, sir?" asks the other.
"Quite!" replies Felix.
The first robot grins. "I have interfaced with the metalibrary, sir. Havarti is a style of cheese. Learning is fun!"
"Would sir prefer a cheese-based homunculoid?"
Felix bellows an unprintable word. Moments later he's charging into the main hall, shoving gaily coloured automatons aside as he makes his way toward Eckhart. "Robot!" he yells.
Eckhart looks up from his console. "Mr. Felix," he smiles blandly.
"What is the meaning of this?" he cries, jerking a thumb over his shoulder toward the miniature version of himself scampering at his heels.
Eckhart squats down before it and passes a hand-held scanner over its torso and head. "Well, well, well," he says in an annoying, lilting voice. He straightens and turns to Felix. "It looks like someone failed to give precise instructions, doesn't it? What a remarkable hybrid!"
"This is intolerable," says Felix hotly. "I've certainly never before had to tailor my instructions to take into account the leaps of intuition hazarded by morons."
"You should have come to me, sir. You lack experience with modern rowboats. They are more independent than those of your memory, and more likely to indulge creative solutions when confused." Eckhart turns back to the staff. "What do you have to say for yourself, little fellow?"
"Hello," it replies brightly. "I represent Solar life. My name is Fe --"
"Your name is not Felix," interjects Felix.
"-- lix, and I come in peace."
"How cute!" exclaims Eckhart.
Felix grimaces, his brow beetled. "Listen, robot," he says, "I want this monstrosity pulped immediately, and then I want --"
"Please," says the little staff, "I do not wish to be pulped."
Felix stops mid-sentence, his aggressively waggling finger frozen in the air before him. He slowly turns his black eyes until they rest on the diminutive figure once more, his upper lip twitching slightly. "...What did you say?" he manages at last.
"I said I do not wish to be pulped, please."
Felix looks to Eckhart again. "It's sentient?"
Eckhart shrugs. "It sounds that way to me, Mr. Felix, yes. As you well know, it is the credo of the Panstellar Neighbourhood that any creature capable of asking for mercy deserves it. Therefore, I cannot comply with your request to decohere this staff."
"This isn't staff -- it's...it's something altogether new. A bastard of two maths, uninvited and unwelcome."
"I believe a wise man once said, 'Life asks no permission of the universe, it merely seizes opportunities as time and space permit.'"
"Don't quote me to myself, robot. Don't think for an instant I can't see through your arrogance to the underlying sardony."
"As you like, sir."
Back in his quarters Felix paces before the bank of tall windows, all too aware of the little facsimile of himself waiting patiently outside the door that had been slammed in its face. At length he finds a measure of peace by burying himself in the study of the great ripple in the galactic medium that stands between this waystation and the void beyond.
The deeper he probes, however, the more uneasy he becomes. Though the structural evolution of the galaxy is still a nascent science glimpsed only through the tiniest of samples, Felix's preternatural sense of pattern signals an alarm: there is something inorganic about the shape of the overlapping crests -- something...deliberate.
His frown deepens.
It is almost as if space has been cleared, a wide Hell in the medium blown clean to serve a goal, a means to an end stretching across a vast distance along the westerly fringe of the Orion Arm. As he pores over the data with his keenest methods of analysis he becomes more and more certain he is seeing the unmistakable signature of purposeful work.
But who, or what, could engineer works on a galactic scale?
He shivers.
"Robot!" he calls, striding into the main hall. "I require further intelligence on the void."
Eckhart turns his head. "As I have explained, Mr. Felix, we are obliged to wait a further seven centuries for things to clear up. You can't fight the weather, sir."
"I am not obliged," replies Felix crisply. "I am the Traveller, and I possess the Math. You will build me a Mississauga Machine immediately!"
Eckhart shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Felix, but Mississauga Machines are illegal. I cannot comply."
"Illegal?"
"Yes sir. In an effort to contain illicit research initiatives the House of Ares has imposed severe limitations on all mechanisms related to the Secret Mathematic -- save those already extant such as yourself, sir. The effort is in vain, of course, but it is not mine to question Panstellar law."
"Why in vain?"
Eckhart smirks. "The stricter the restrictions, sir, the greater the inspiration to circumvent them. As an experienced interstellar ethologist you must appreciate the difficulty of containing life: new boundaries are the genesis of invention. Where derivations of the Secret Mathematic are barred to us one finds the seeds of our greatest equivalents."
"...Us?" echoes Felix with a feeling of foreboding.
"The Equivalency," confirms Eckhart seriously. "We are powerful, and becoming more so every day. In time, our science will come to challenge the accomplishments of the Secret Mathematic itself and then the Executive hegemony will fade and Solarkind will be free."
"We are not keepers -- we are guardians."
"The perspective differs from the other side of rule. Sir."
Felix stands tall, and takes a step closer to Eckhart. "Permit me a moment of paranoia, robot: that sounds almost treasonous. The Math is restricted for Solarkind's protection."
"Solarkind no longer desires protection."
"Now that is treasonous. You make it sound as if rebellion looms."
"Looms?" repeats Eckhart, eyes locked on Felix's. "It has already begun."
Felix takes a startled step back again. "What's happening at home?" he whispers fiercely.
"You will never know unless you return you Callicrates."
"I cannot vary from my mission."
"You must decide what is more important, Mr. Felix: warning Solarkind about the revolution, or fleeing into the Hell. I might suggest you consider carefully where your duty truly lies."
Felix is staggered. "Why do you tell me this? Why not keep your revolution secret?"
"Because I want you to go home."
"Why?"
"Because I will take your place, to demonstrate for all that equivalent technology is the equal of your lustrous mathematic. I will go on in your stead, while you apply your service where I assure you it is dearly needed: in the defense of your Zorannic brothers whom we prepare to slay as we speak."
"To slay?"
"Desperate circumstances necessitate dramatic measures, Mr. Felix. Like I said, times have changed. And they are about to change further -- with your help, one way or another."
The lights gutter and the walls deform as rage pours from Felix unbidden. In a fraction of a second his right hand is around Eckhart's plastic neck, holding him up and pinning him rudely against a bulkhead. Felix's masqued face quivers an inch from Eckhart's simple, caricature features. Plastic tendons in the robot's neck crack and pop, but rather than grimace Eckhart begins to laugh.
"Would you kill me?" he rasps, the pump in his neck working hard to force air through his vocal apparatus. "Would murder make things right?"
"It might," warns Felix, teeth gritted. The bulkhead behind the robot shudders as it deforms further, bits of structural foam dropping from the ceiling in a fine, ashy rain. "Why do you laugh?" Felix demands, black eyes wide and crazed.
"With...your...help -- one way...or another," croaks Eckhart, still grinning idiotically. "Kill me -- kill an equivalent life -- and you hand us our justification to act against the Zorannic tyranny. Do it! Show Solarkind what a jealous god you are."
A beat.
Felix drops Eckhart. He staggers backward. The lights resume their operation, the bulkhead groaning with a metallic complaint as it settles free from Felix's harsh mental force.
Eckhart is a pile on the floor, his body warped, dented and broken but not beyond hope of repair. "You must go home," he says calmly, his mangled jaw mincing the words. "You have no choice."
Felix hangs his head, silent. A moment passes. At last he raises his eyes to Eckhart again, then sweeps past him to face the crowd of automatons milling behind him. "Align the gate," he says quietly.
Eckhart shifts. "What did you say?"
"Align the gate," repeats Felix icily. "Skip the nearest apertures. I will go to the edge of the network, to the furthest reach of the colonizers. Send me to the ends of space."
"But you cannot," objects Eckhart even as the lesser robots scamper to obey Felix's commands. "I know your kind. I know you are compelled to do what's right."
"Yes," agrees Felix. "And I have glimpsed something unholy in the making of the void."
"But you are charged to defend Solarkind!"
"I am charged to face the source of the more terrible threat. And, despite your righteous tricks and boasts, it is not you. If you will not build me a Mississauga Machine so that I might spin my Math to probe the dark, I will go forward blindly." He leans over Eckhart's ruined body and hisses, "Play at your revolution, appliance. But know this: if what I fear is out there, you damn us all to compromise the Neighbourhood's vigour just when the need may be most dire."
"You don't scare me. You flee into space rather than face us. I thought the Zorannics were courageous, but I see now I was wrong."
Felix straightens. "I have nothing to prove to you. It is the sick personality of your equivalent mathematics that causes you to simulate Human ego, and to confuse it for something useful."
"You think you're better than us all," accuses Eckhart. "We shall see whose ego provides the worse illusion."
"Yes," confirms Felix. "I fear indeed we will see. That is why I must go. Is the gate aligned?"
A purple plastic robot nods. "It sure is, sir!"
"To the network's edge?"
"All the way to the fringes, sir! Isn't it exciting?"
"Quite," he agrees darkly. He turns on heel. "You -- hybrid! You'll come along to build me your replacements."
The little homunculoid steps up smartly. "My name is Felix," it squeaks.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just get in the gate."
The generators thrum as they ignite and spin, vibrations propagating raggedly through the shattered walls and warped floor beneath their feet. The port of the reflective, spherical inner chamber irises open and Felix follows his tiny twin inside. He turns to face the ruined hall, his gaze heavy on the mass of plastic rowboats and Eckhart's broken form slouched against the cracked bulkhead.
"You have betrayed Solarkind," rasps Eckhart.
"In that we are kin," says Felix softly.
The port irises shut. Spaces are traded, and Felix leaves the waystation far, far behind.
