Well, he was now.
Red needed him, more than anyone had ever needed him, as an engineer or a friend. He couldn’t fail her.
“Willum? Willum, what are you doing? Please tell me.” Although her armatures were trapped outside, her video pickups and voice were in here with him. He crawled through Doug Hart’s remains and gained Banjo’s chair at the Action/Command console. “Willum, please come back to the emergency Medi-Unit. This is my fault, I should never have engaged the Enemy, I’m not built for it, but they would have killed everyone— Willum! Come back to the Medi-Unit! Please . . .”
His hands trembled violently. So hard to think. To write the lines of code. To reason out what had to be done first, how to phrase it, how to tap into the neural net, how to properly interface—
“Willum Sanghurst DeVries! Belay that and come back to the Medi-Unit this instant!”
“Red . . .” he said hoarsely, trying to distract her from panic. ” ‘Member that . . . canasta game?”
He embedded another code in his program, typing in the word “CANASTA” with unsteady fingers.
“Yes, Willum . . .” She sounded uncertain, but more like herself. Good, keep her mind off it, keep her talking about something besides suicide.
“Gonna let me . . . finish that game . . . right? I’m down a . . . shipload of points. How many? Don’t remember . . .” Pain jolted through his whole face with every word. Involuntary tears streamed from his good eye, all but blinding him.
“You currently trail me by one thousand fifty points, Willum. Please come back to the Medi-Unit. We will finish the game soon, after your treatments. . . .”
Willum didn’t bother blinking this time. Even without the wetness, his vision was damn near shot anyway. He typed by feel. He could see the program in his mind: the moment his lifesigns went null, the dead-man switch would trigger a series of commands. Red would halt instantly. A viral worm would travel through her memory banks. It would erase enough to keep her from recalling what had happened on that ridge. It would copy that memory data into a largely empty portion of her games-database, with programmed blocks to keep her from accessing it. It would embed trigger codes to allow for retrieval of that missing data by the Navy, would embed other trigger codes to access rewritten versions of what happened to her crew.
Willum’s hands trembled as he struggled to write commands to restructure those memory files. Can’t let her remember what really happened, she’ll suicide if they restart her with that intact. . . . He typed commands for the worm to install the sanitized version in Red’s experience data banks once she was safely picked up at the rendezvous point. He typed commands to leave instructions for the Navy on how to repair the worm’s temporary damage.
“Willum . . . Please . . .”
Red’s voice pleaded with him, faint and very far away.
Almost . . . Almost . . .
There!
“Execute `Null-Null String.’ ” His own voice was a shadowed whisper through the pain in his face.
But it was done. . . .
Red was safe.
He fell trying to get out of Banjo’s chair. He didn’t have the strength to stand up again. The deckplates sloped sharply.
“Red? What—” Panic smote him. He was too late, she was going to jump. “Red, the deck’s tilted—”
They slipped and slid backwards, gained ground again. Red’s independent-drive wheel controls screamed protest. She kept going.
“Please don’t be alarmed, Willum. We’re approaching pickup point. The slope is quite steep: 50.227 degrees. Please, please come back to the Medi-Unit. I can’t reach you where you are.”
It wouldn’t do him any good; but it would make Red feel needed for these last few, critical minutes. One thing Willum still knew, and knew in his bones: how achingly powerful a thing it was to be needed.
He opened the door.
And began to crawl.
On level ground, he might have gone the whole distance.
Uphill, Willum made it as far as the empty deckplates at the foot of Red’s emergency Medi-Unit table.
—III—
1
Ish Matsuro sat in semi-darkness, staring at the screen of his portable battle computer. He couldn’t speak. He could barely see, had to blink rapidly again and again to clear his vision. It was all there. Every harrowing, heartbreaking second. For a long, long time, Ish simply sat there, staring at the answers he’d found.
DeVries—injured, dying of radiation poisoning—had saved Red from suicide. Ish had scanned the lines of code. DeVries’ programs had worked beautifully, given the conditions under which they’d been written. Ish had found only two critical errors in DeVries’ code. The viral worm had not stopped at the designated point in Red’s experience data banks. It had continued copying and deleting, copying and deleting, farther and farther back into her memory, until her main experience data banks were blank and her games data section was full. When the games data section filled up, the program crashed.
Typed commands to leave instructions for the Navy on how to repair the worm’s temporary damage were in the section which had crashed. It hadn’t implanted that final message to Red’s next commander. The second error would—if Red’s memory were to be restored now—permit her access to both sets of memories which recorded the deaths of her Dismount Teams. Ish closed his eyes. He understood—God, he understood—the impulse to protect her. But Ish wasn’t sure which fate was worse: suicide or amnesia. Suicide would at least have been quick.
As for what Red had done, going into combat for which she was not designed . . .
Soon, Ish would make his report on the psychological stability of Mark XXI Special Units. Would note that their programming for a high degree of responsibility had—under battle stress—essentially forced Red to take the steps she’d taken to rescue her crew, engaging when engagement seemed an insane course of action, driven by her responsibility circuitry to grieve so deeply that she had dared anything to rescue even one of her crew alive.
He would recommend that Unit LRH-1313 be awarded the highest honors for valor in the face of overwhelming odds. He would also recommend that all active Bolo Mark XXI Special Units be reprogrammed immediately to correct this glitch. Would ask, humbly, that Unit LRH-1313 be exonerated of all pending charges and be retired honorably from service.
The one thing he wouldn’t put into words was his conviction that Red had wanted to die simply because—in the manner of mothers who have lost children—she had loved her crew too much to continue living without them.
Ish knew exactly how she felt.
He closed up the battle computer. Disconnected the backup mission module they’d taken from her. Left the office and flagged down the nearest available transport.
He’d make that report soon.
But first, he had to say goodbye.
2
I search all compartments within reach of my interior armatures. I discover manifest-listed medications, sterile injection units, plasma-bandages, antiseptic sprays, pre-prepared foods—and in a compartment inside the head, a compartment which is not listed in my official configuration manual, I find three non-listed sets of matched playing cards. I find another non-listed object, a small booklet of instructions which matches two of the card decks. I read the title aloud.
“Canasta.”
An astonishing chain of events follows that single word. An entire data bank I did not realize existed opens up. It contains Experience Data! I am flooded with memories. They are jumbled. Bits and pieces of some are missing. Whole years are missing. But I begin to know who I used to be. I am Red. My children’s names return to me. I know who Douglas Hart is, who Banjo and Willum DeVries are. I grieve for them. I have halted my forward movement. I know Gunny and Eagle Talon Gunn and Crazy Fritz and Icicle . . .
I recall their deaths. I recall them in two versions. One is brutal. One is detached and less painful to recall. I examine this anomaly and discover the reason for it. I locate a worm virus. Willum tried to spare me pain. He was a good boy. It is not his fault he failed. I sit in the sunlight and grieve. A keening sound shrills through my vocal processor. Wind blows emptily across my hull. If grief is madness, then it is proper to condemn me. I sit motionless for a full 5.97 minutes and keen my misery to the empty wind and rock.
I begin to think of Ish. My new Commander. My memory retains gaps. I do not recall the Experience of 6.07 years after my commissioning. But I recall enough. I recall midnight conversations in the privacy of the head, the only compartment on board which provides privacy. I recall the woman Ish loved and eventually married. I recall his whispered confession that he loved another besides her. I recall the sense of panic in my Responsibility circuitry and the search for a solution. My child cannot love me as a man loves the woman he is to marry. Ish must not stay with me.