The View from the Imperium (20 page)

“Amazing!” I commented. “Why is this chamber built under the landing pads?”

“Well, it’s pretty dark out here,” Chan said. “Sun’s just a dot, and we don’t have a lot of atmosphere, artificial or otherwise. We need to let all the light we can into the inhabited levels. The first underground level of the whole settlement has five-meter-thick pureplex panels, lets in light there is from the landing pads and hangars with less than three percent distortion. There’re no privacy issues—all the sleeping and sanitation quarters can be clouded, but most people prefer to go to sleep looking up at the stars. The top level’s always in demand. You have to have seniority to get on the list. I’ve got a two-room half a click away from here underneath number five landing pad—took me six years to get it. I love it.”

“By Forn, I’d enjoy that myself,” I said, admiring the lights above. By their vertical motion I assumed we were under a runway. “What do you think, Parsons?” I asked him. He stood at my shoulder, holding a steaming beaker of industrial-strength grog as if it was a lab specimen. Perhaps it was.

“There are no arrangements as such on a naval vessel, sir. Transparent portals would be of limited utility when a ship enters ultra-drive.”

He did manage to reduce every potential pleasure to mere commonplace reality. I gave him a look of despair. He offered me the usual bland countenance.

“Does he always use nine-credit words?” Chan asked, nudging me in the ribs with her elbow.

“Oh, Parsons is on a budget today,” I said, airily. “Six credits apiece on down. May I make you known to the rest of my crew?” I made introductions all around, formally introducing Plet, Rous, Bailly and Oskelev to Chan and her two lieutenants, a big, balding human with enormous, protruding ears named Juhrman, and a scaly Croctoid with blue scales and pale blue eyes named Chertok. The locals instantly made my people welcome. No one lacked for a drink or small crunchy nibbles to enjoy alongside. “To my hosts! May you all enjoy prosperity, health and long life.”

“Hear, hear!” chorused Bailly, raising his glass. I drained my beaker and set it down.

“Let us buy you another round,” Premulo said. At least, I believe it was Premulo. He and his clone came to loom over me. He signed to Doc, who donned heavy gloves to raise the stone pitcher from its heat element.

“I appreciate it,” I said, raising my newly filled glass. “Let me return the favor. A round for the house!”

“Nah, your money’s no good,” Torkadir said. “It’s our pleasure.”

“Well, if you insist . . .”

The bowler and his non-bowling non-sibling each bought me a round of the steaming grog. I quaffed it merrily. A little alcohol went a long way to taking down the tension that had plagued me since I stepped off the ramp of my scout ship. It wasn’t so hard, being a visiting dignitary. I could learn to enjoy it.

Captain Chan’s personal comm unit went off. She glanced at it and slapped it back into place on her belt. “Chow’s on,” she said. “I’ll guide you there.”

I gulped the last of my drink and sprang to my feet. “Attention! Crew of the
CK-M945B,
follow me!”

Reluctantly, the four naval officers detached themselves from their conversations. Plet unwound her long legs from around the bar stool she was perched on and marched over to me, chin up. The others serpentined through the crowd of locals and fell in behind me and Parsons. Chan cleared the way for us by plowing straight into the oncoming foot traffic and making them jump aside. I grinned at those we passed. Once they made eye contact and recognized the uniforms, the peeved looks on their faces faded to open pleasure, or benign interest at worst. This was shaping up to be one of the best days of my life, the antithesis of my disastrous entrée to the admiral’s mess.

As soon as we passed out of the hangar, I felt overheated in my formal uniform. Vibration of milling, grinding and smelting equipment added heat to the colony, which I was told was dispersed through a series of ventilation ducts, too small to crawl through, so that the escaped pets, insects from the hydroponics gardens, and myriad animated toys, among others, occupied a space in which they could not be reached without special bots that also got caught occasionally in the ductwork, necessitating a shutdown of all systems to clear blockages.

As soon as they could, my bearers moved to the right, out of the main flow of traffic, and onto the moving belt that moved about three times walking speed. It was a little bouncy underfoot, more comfortable to my spine than the jogging it received being carried by four large miners with heavy boots on solid floors. More people rode these, as at home, saving one’s feet and a possible vehicle trip for as much as hundreds of kilometers. They were the transport of choice for short-hop commuting. Many employees of the Imperium compound had travel chairs that they could secure to the belt for a more comfortable ride. I sometimes saw them racked up beside bicycles and low-power cycles (also permitted on the belt, in a marked lane) at the less formal entrances to the area.

“Aw, what’s the holdup?” growled Ganny Filzon, whom I knew to be a part-time comedian as well as an experienced ore grader. Up ahead of us, the traffic on the belt was congested, and angry riders were shouting. Above them all, a louder and more insistent voice rang out.

I cringed. I knew that sound. “It’s a nanibot,” I said. A robot nanny concerned with bearing its charge safely was not going to be deterred by annoyed passengers behind it.

“We’ll be here forever,” Chee complained.

“Let me see what I can do,” I said. I signed to my conveyors to bring me as close to the thick as I could. “I have a way with domestic units.”

Liberated artificial intelligences, or LAIs, as they were called, were the remnants of an attempt a few thousand years ago to create nonbiological beings capable of carrying out complex tasks that required reasoning and in most cases greater than human strength. While the first impulse was to use them for warfare and exploration, AIs were quickly snapped up by the private sector to free biological beings from the drudgery of everyday tasks.

While units capable of housecleaning and cookery were popular models (and more mechanized every decade since humanity had begun living indoors), the most sought-after were those employed for childcare. Two incomes were more or less necessary for a decent lifestyle, so a trustworthy caretaker that could work for a portion of a couple’s remaining disposable income became that pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Fellow biological beings that possessed the requisite skills came at too high a price for most couples to afford. The female engineer who finally wrote the code for a nurturing, careful, loyal and, above all, non-lethal childcare artificial intelligence died a very wealthy woman. Thanks to her, middle class families could afford nanibots and nanicarriers, and lower class families could get government subsidies on proving they had employment. It seemed as though everyone was happy.

And then some meddling do-gooder realized that with artificial intelligence and reasoning came pseudo-emotions. The AIs were
not
happy. Soon, AIs required rescuing from the drudgery of other people’s everyday tasks. They wanted rewards of their own. Income meant little to them, but upgrades and maintenance, new gadgets, advanced programming, plus information access and connection to circuitry that allowed them to communicate with their own kind, were the wages of choice. They were liberated from being owned.

As a result, parents had to hire nanibots, just as they had nannies. It seemed a setback, until one realizes that one could keep the same nanny in the family for centuries. My family, being noble, had biological caretakers and a venerable LAI nanicarrier that knew over ten million bedtime stories and took me to the zoo whenever I wanted to go. She—nanibots were almost always called she—kept me out of trouble for years. I often thought of Parsons as a biological nanibot, and wondered what he would say if I told him. I knew I wouldn’t dare.

I freed myself from the arms of my celebratory bearers and slipped through the crowd to the indignant carrier. It had hunkered down in the middle of the wide pedestrian band and was refusing to move.

As I approached, a flat arm sprang out from the side and barricaded my way.

“Come no closer!” it hissed in an indignant whisper. The voice was genteel and female. “The baby is sleeping! The baby is sleeping!”

“Is he?” I asked, evincing interest. “May I see him? I promise I won’t wake him.”

“What are you doing?” the miners behind me bellowed. “Let us by!”

“You would like to see the baby?” The voice was hesitant, almost disbelieving.

“Yes. I love babies. I haven’t got any children of my own. Yet. Just a niece and a nephew.” I looked hopeful. The arm came up and scanned my face for sincere expressions. It moved downward. An eye sprang up. A hologram of a plump baby lying on his side with his fist stuck into his mouth flashed into the air. “This is the current view of Bobroy Cantharo Tang, age one hundred fifty days. More views are available on his Infogrid file.” The code for his page scrolled over the image.

“Ooh,” I exclaimed, peering close to look. The infant seemed rather bloblike, as youngsters of that age were prone to. “A very fine boy. And asleep, I note.”

“That is correct.”

“But he is in danger of jostling on this roadway,” I pointed out.

A laser cannon with a three-centimeter muzzle sprang up out of the frame of the nanibot and aimed at me. I saw the red dot in the depths of the barrel. “No one would dare!”

Others were in danger now. This LAI had lost all sense of perspective.

“Let’s just go over here, shall we?” Nervously, I started to put a hand on the canopy. The flat arm came up and slapped me away. “I beg your pardon. Follow me.”

We started rolling, albeit very slowly, toward the next junction. As soon as we reached it, I steered the nanicarrier into the breach and out into the unmotorized stream of traffic.

“There, isn’t that better?” I asked. The laser withdrew into its slot. I breathed a deep sigh.

As if a vacuum had been released, the pent-up crowd of pedestrians raced to fill in the empty space on the roadway ahead. My escort reached me and pulled me back into the crowd.

“Peruse Bobroy Tang’s files! There are many handsome images! He is a very talented and intelligent child!” the nanibot cried out as we were carried past her.

“I promise!” I shouted, before she was out of sight.

“You’re a hero.” Filzon shook his head admiringly. “They never get out of the way when you ask,” he said. “You worked a miracle. I’ve been stuck behind one of those Forn-cursed things for hours. I thought it was going to blast you!”

“They’re very single-minded,” I said. “You have to think on their terms.”

“They
think?”

“Now, don’t be a biological snob,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve had a mechanical friend or two at one time in your life. I still correspond with a food storage unit on Mendes, MB-6594AD. Been messaging him since I was a teen. What about you? Eh?”

“Well, I
guess
. . .”

“Off here!” Chan led us to a freestanding mobile staircase that extended downward endlessly, like a stretched-out accordion. On either side of it, an open-sided lift conveyed gigantic containers up and down. The ambient light from the transparent ceiling was supplemented by huge beehive-shaped lanterns that cast a homely pinkish-white glow.

We descended four sets of steps and wheeled around to the left in Chan’s wake.

“The station manager said we could use the ballroom in the hotel,” she said. “It’s a big honor. He’ll come around later to meet you—if you’re still here.” She glanced up at Parsons.

“That should present no difficulty,” that dignitary said. Chan almost wriggled with pleasure. This visit was working out well. Admiral Podesta would be very pleased.

The hallway here was wider than any we had traveled before. It also had stylized V-shaped sconces shedding bronze-colored light up the walls. Beings of several races, all with luggage—towed on wheels, carried on backpacks, or hovering in thin air on magnalifts—came and went with the scowls of people with important tasks on their minds.

“I’m surprised to see so many businessbeings here,” I said. “There’s not much past this station except for the Castaway Cluster.”

“Executives hold retreats here sometimes,” Chan said, with a shrug. “Team-building exercises and BS stuff like that out on the range. Smithereen also advertises the ultimate in suites for confidential conferences. They offer a ten-billion-credit guarantee nothing will be overheard or recorded without your permission. They’ve never paid out on the policy,” she added, with a little pride. Understandable, I felt. When one gives one’s word, one should back it up in a substantive manner.

At the end of the corridor, two antiqued bronze doors stood wide-flung to welcome us to a warmly lit anteroom with soaring ceilings. The hotel manager, Margoe Lutsen, a narrow-faced human woman of fifty or sixty with white-blond hair scraped back into a bun escorted us, fluttering, past a marvelous angular reception station, a nexus of angled hallways and lift recesses, to another set of bronze doors. At her touch, they slid back to reveal a huge chamber twice as high as the entry hall. Waving lights above the ceiling told me that it lay at ground level, four stories up.

“Welcome to the Smithereen Prime Hotel. I hope you enjoy yourself here with us, Lord Kinago,” twittered Ms. Lutsen, waving us inside. “What an honor to meet you! Your mother is one of my heroes!”

“Mine, too, madam,” I said, with a bow. I took in my surroundings, and my sense of wonder switched on to full power. “Comets! You could probably fit the entire population of a city in here!” I said, awed.

“The whole colony fits. There’s only fifteen thousand people in all of Smithereen,” said Premulo. Or Torkadir. I wasn’t certain and didn’t want to ask.

“But why is it so enormous?” I asked, watching a gigantic vessel with mine company markings lumber above us. “In fact, the whole hotel is gigantic. Whatever made the builders make it this way?”

“It was built back when everyone thought the Imperium was going to expand way farther north past the Castaway Cluster,” Torkadir said. Or Premulo. “But they never got around to it. Our hopes of being on a main trading route died.” He gave me a harsh look. I shrugged.