Black Hull (3 page)

Code U. I’m saved.
It was a
thought complete and certain.
It’s a comet
. Voices fought inside his
head.
My boy is probably flying class two ships by now. He’ll need my
opinion on something. Maybe Karen hasn’t found anyone. I could be what I used
to think I was supposed to be.

A vision of a beach flashed before his
mind’s eye: gold and turquoise blending into vermillion, crying babies. The
barking of a dog. A smell, hope mixed with hamburger and memories that mustn’t
die yet.

Do you want a beer? Sure.

“Computer—shut down all unnecessary systems
except those needed for the code U and ILS.” He half-believed the computer
would follow his commands properly.

“Confirm shutdown of all unnecessary
systems except those required for continuation of code U signal and ILS.” Mick jammed
his fingers on the screen, forming an old pattern.

The cabin dimmed. Soon the amber dots
provided the only contrast against the soft black of space that shaped the
portholes. The blue dot left the porthole he clung to. He pushed himself
through the air to the next one. It reappeared, following the same course.

C’mon. Not a comet. Not a comet. Change
course. Not a comet. Change course. C’mon. C’mon.

The blue dot slowed, came to a stop.

“Comets don’t stop!” Mick flipped out. He
bounced like a rubber ball, back and forth, floor to ceiling, wall to wall,
shouting, screaming, crying. He saw the faces of his children.

Eternal cryosleep. No, only ten years of
time relative to Earth. That buys twenty more years to watch them, spend time
with them. Einstein had first proved such errands were possible, probable.

Maybe Karen will be ready for a date.

The airlock beeped.

“Vessel requests docking.”

“Dock.”

The computer performed its maneuver,
ancient guidance at work. Auxiliary power remained high. Somehow, a rogue
android had come through the deepest recess of no man’s space.
A smuggling
droid, no doubt.

“Docking maneuver commencing.”

Will it try to explain itself? What
could I explain to it? Yes, though I wouldn’t expect you to understand, I am
plugging toward Earth to pay off a law man. Yes, this run would have bought my
freedom. What went wrong? I can’t say—everything was fine. We procured the
rock, set course for Earth. And somehow, near Gliese, there was an explosion.
Survivors? Just me. Black hull. I’m lucky you spotted me. I know, I know…

“Docking completed. Airlock secure.”

“Computer, what of XJ71?”

“Heat signature is present aboard the
vessel class Inter-Space Light Dog One.”

Light Dog One. Corrupt data? Light Dog
model three hundred and twelve came out last year. One per year, right?

“You expect me to believe this ship is
over three hundred years old?”

“Affirmative.”

“And XJ71 model was commissioned in what
year?”

“Twenty-six fourteen.”

“The droid is older than the ship?”

“Correct, sir. An attitude is
unwarranted, captain.”

Artificial Intelligence. At some point
in history, it became necessary to include humor. Also, at some point later, it
became obvious that a self-intelligent droid’s humor differed from a human’s.

“Are communication lines open?”

“Affirmative.”

“Open channel.”

Mick’s adrenals surged. Elation. Somehow
as he prepared to greet his savior, a deep depression set in: Life had been
saved, but the ore…

Ten years with nothing to show.

“Mick Compton here, sole survivor,
requesting assistance.”

“Come aboard Mick,” replied a metal
voice over the com.

He walked past the cryo to the airlock
door. It whizzed open. A small tunnel, no lights. More whizzing. Bright green
light blinded him.

“Welcome aboard Light Dog One!”

In front of Mick stood the oldest
looking piece of shit he had ever seen. For some reason, Computer had not been
returning corrupt data on this one: The old assemblage of bare, gaping rods looked
like something he’d seen in a movie a long time ago… IG-88, was it? One of
those historic films they’d shown in Art class in college.

And this class had shown him the way people
once thought androids would look, long before their realized constructions.
Images and movies of a bygone era had adorned his professor’s screen that
semester. Old films, preserved for their aesthetic value, their preservation of
the human imagination. He’d liked them though; there was something special in
those wet dream imaginings: Data, IG-88, Terminator, HAL. Some didn’t have
bodies, some did; some looked indistinguishable from humans, and others looked
like the scrap of shit in front of him.

“Is there something wrong?” it asked.
Mick hadn’t moved—his brain was processing.

“No. I didn’t think my computer had been
giving the right information.”

“Well, that’s a shame—I can check it for
you, if you’d like.” A curl of steam rose from the droid’s left eye socket.

“No—it’s fine. We’re leaving it behind
anyway.”

“No. I’ll copy its file system. We’ll
bring it along. I have the fuel for it. Anyway, I’d like the company. A newer
model intelligence might come in handy. You see, I’ve been in need of a new
chess opponent.”

“Sure.”

Mick followed XJ71 down a corridor into
the Light Dog’s control room. It was wider than the pod’s, but all the computer
terminals protruded so much, in their ancient, outdated way, that it seemed
smaller. Bright fluorescent lights lit the room a bronze hue, and XJ71 sat down
in a steel-wire swivel chair attached to the floor in front of the cabin’s
largest viewscreen.

“Just a moment…”

“Sure, take your time.” Mick watched in
awe as the old droid ran its fingers across a keypad. Images triggered in his
mind: keyboards, mice, buildings that claimed to be computers, relics of the
time when people still counted petabytes. But there it was, in front of him.
Old as can be, using a keyboard. Saving his life.

“Is there an AI on this ship?”

“No—Light Dog thirty-one introduced the
first intelligence-based operating system.”

“Why are you out here? This is a black
hull smuggling route . . . the only reasons ships run this way is for the ore
in Zubenalgubi.”

“An asteroid hit your ship, you know.
You might consider thanking me.”

“Asteroid? But that’s—”

“Quite possible. You ran a poor route
through the Gliese System’s Oort Cloud.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He continued to
type things, and his display scrolled line after line of foreign characters.

“What’s on your screen?”

“Lanascript.”

“Lanascript?”

“Oh, just a special plugin of code I
wrote some time ago. Give me a moment…”

So the ore is gone, smashed to bits
.
Jacob,
Conway, Teebles, dead.
Twenty light years from Earth. The Light Dog
could achieve, what, maybe—

“What speed can she hit?”

“Excuse me?”

“Light Dog One.”

“Under optimal conditions, one point
nine.”

“One point nine?”

“Correct.”

“Jesus Christ, what a fuck—”

“The Christ of Earth? How interesting.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. Add five
more years. Why do I care so much? I’m not going home for a paycheck anymore.
I’m going home to prison.

“I retrieved your ore load.”

“What?”

“It’s in cargo.”

“How?”

“Picked up the hit on my scanners—the
ore was all there, lumped. Magnadraw and Hoila.”

“Jesus.”
Christ. Savior of Mankind.
Long considered to be the herald of the afterlife. Second coming: Adolf
Hitler, dispeller of religious ideals—with that antichrist was the end of days:
Life continued and man went to the moon.

“The Christian Jesus of antiquity?”

“No—I mean, I thought it was gone,
fifteen years wasted.”

“Fifteen years? What does that refer
to?”

“How much this damned trip cost me.”

“You figure to be home in how many
years?”

“Five—the black hull I was on rated
four, and you said this is one point nine, so…”

“Oh, I am sorry Mick. She’s no longer
running under optimal conditions, didn’t I say that?”

“How fast?”

“Point eight, maybe.”

There was a time when light speed was achieved
solely through underground tunnels in Europe, mazeworks called supercolliders,
where elementary particles smashed at extremely high speeds. Sometime shortly
after the second millennium, somewhere in Switzerland, a particle was sent at
the speed of 1.0000000000000132 x 299,792,458 meters per second. It arrived in
Italy slightly faster than photons that had left at the same time. Suddenly the
scientific community went into shock. The news soon vanished from newspapers
and the internet, and nothing was spoken for four years. They had to make
certain, the tops had said.

The upheavals came in cycles:
Copernicus; Galileo; Newton; Rutherford; Bohrs; Einstein; Feynman; Heisenberg.
Three hundred years later, shortly after the United Countries of America formed
(a product of at first Russia and North America, and then the United Countries
of Africa), the first quarter-light-speed spaceship launched from Cape
Canaveral, Florida. That was all it took. Once the technology was in place, the
increments crawled higher every thirty years. 1.1—a landmark. 1.2—a milestone.
1.5—an impossibility. By the time Light Dog 1 rolled off an assembly line,
colonies had started to appear on Mars. Once LS3 was achieved, NASA started
F.R.I.N.G.E: Far Reaching Intelligence and Near-Galaxy Exploration. By the time
Mick joined F.R.I.N.G.E., NASA had been running their missions for three
hundred years. He’d flown on an LS8-capable ship once.
LS8
.

“Point eight! What the fuck do you mean
point eight?”

“Mick, no need to make me feel like I’m
poor company to keep. Did I mention our cryosleep chamber is no longer
working?”

Now he’s joking: Some kind of a clown
robot.

Maybe in the old days, they’d made these
IG-88 models to mess with astrorookies. It was a joke. There was another black
hull in waiting, Computer hadn’t picked it up due to corrupt data, and they’d
sent this antique as a gag. Do I call its bluff? No, play along. It can’t hurt.
Better than you were an hour ago, right?

“Ok, so no more cryosleep.”

“That’s right Mick.” He continued to
punch keys.

“You want to tell me the plan, then?”

“I aim to take us to Utopia.”

“Utopia?” The name More, somehow, ran
through Mick’s head.

“Yes.”

“You mean Earth?”

“No, of course not. Earth was destroyed,
you know that Mick. Don’t play games with me, we’re a team now.”

Ok, now it’s gone too far.

Mick walked up to the dim screen, on
which blurred a steady roll of characters that responded to inputs from XJ71’s
fork-hands. A primitive compulsion drove each of Mick’s fists down into the
keyboard. Cracked plastic shards ricocheted off the cabin walls. Amber eyes
turned on a swivel head. A gunmetal skull stared, baffled.

“Why would you do that Mick?”

“Where do you get off—no cryosleep, less
than LS1?”

“Would you rather fend for yourself on the
pod?”

He’s not lying. I would have been better
off freezing to death.

The thought repeated, endlessly,
eventually turning to noise. There was no other black hull. His crew had known that;
they’d purposely made sure of it. Black hulls weren’t friendly to each other
anyway—they all competed for the same resource: ore. Ore was money. Nothing
else was out here.