a tremendously varied spirit world, but it wasn’t very imaginative. The
hereafter was thought of as a more or less perfect version of the plains of
Earth, without evil or fear or death. Spirits, then, were regarded the same as
humans when talking to them. They just were disembodied and had more power.
I had never thought of it that way, the computer pilot admitted. How
depressing. But what can I do? I have the highest degree of autonomy it is
possible for a pilot to have.
Then join us, China responded. Escape with us. Freely. Of your own free will
and independence. Those are interstellar ships. Do you know how huge they are?
Have you never wanted to break beyond the solar system, this tired and dead
piece of monotony? Take us, and we will take you.
There was no reply, and for a while she was afraid she’d blown its logic
circuits all to hell. This was something beyond its own limits, beyond anything
it had ever considered before. It was just as far beyond her. Who would have
imagined an offer to liberate a computer or any machine? Who would have imagined
that the computer would find independence an attractive proposition?
Who would have imagined that a computer pilot might get depressed or have
self-doubts? Not Reba Koll, who’d worked with many a one, but she knew when to
step in.
If you haven’t blown your top, speak to us, she snapped.
I am here. I am just… thinking. There is maintenance to consider. New fuel
sources. I have just been refurbished, but I require it every two or three
years.
The hell with that! Koll stormed. I been nine years in this rock pile. Nine
years! I’d have traded all nine for six months of pure freedom among the stars!
Anyway, there’s ways to get maintenance and fuel on the sly if you know how.
Even Raven was getting involved—and spooked. Come on, he urged. Take a
chance. You never really took one before. Never had the chance, probably. And
this is the only chance you’ll probably ever get, too. Real freedom and the
stars. New worlds. Partners, not masters. Chance it now, like we all did. You
turn us in, you’ll be theirs until they decide to scrap you. Me, I’m not going
back there. You flag ’em, and by the time they get here I’ll be dead. The others
may choose to die, too, or they may get dragged back and reprogrammed as nice
little slaves, and you will wonder forever at turning your back on this. It’ll
drive you nuts. Haunt you.
The pilot was silent for a moment. I have run this through my data banks, and
what you propose is possible, at least to a point, it said finally. With the
knowledge I have and certain attributes recently added, I feel that there are
slightly less than even odds of a successful escape. Beyond that, the odds of
either apprehension or death are equal, and both outweigh by far the odds of
being able to accomplish any of this. Still, I am a pilot. I should like to see
the stars.
They all breathed in sharply, but none spoke.
The captain is coming back aboard, the pilot told them, a hint of nervousness
in its usually toneless male voice. Switch down to frequency one four four
seven and stand by. I will get back to you when we are well away. In the
meantime, wait for my signal. I will turn on the forward air lock light. Enter
it then and I will give you access to the pressurized part of the ship. The
captain will be preoccupied.
Raven took the communication units down to the indicated low-level frequency.
I’ll be damned, Reba Koll said. I never would’a believed this in a million
years. A spaceship with romance in its metal soul. Even if they get us, it was
worth it just for this.
Poor Captain Sabatini, China sighed. If he wasn’t such an unmitigated
bastard, I could almost feel sorry for him.
There was still no sound, of course, but they all felt the vibrations as the
ship’s engines started and the internal power came on. They were under way.
All of them felt a tremendous flood of relief. No security, no betrayal. Even
Hawks, who was still suspicious of Raven and the whole escape plot, could not
suppress a sense of elation. No matter what, he would not become a slave under
Melchior’s darkness. He had already made history by being part of the first
successful escape from Melchior, and he would not be taken alive again if he
could help it. Not back there. Not ever.
A pity we can’t take Melchior with us, China commented. We could use those
prisoners, and the Institute’s computers and medical staff, if it was on our
terms.
First things first, Hawks put in. Let us first get away and hide. Let us
build our own little den of thieves and pirates. Then, when we are ready, we
will come back and take that miserable place and perhaps everything that goes
with it. They have told you about the five golden rings?
No.
Well, I will tell you. Tell you all. And then you will believe that nothing,
nothing is impossible!
When this ship doesn’t return, they’ll scour the heavens for us, Raven warned
them. Melchior won’t be able to keep it quiet. They’ll have to release the
identities of whoever escaped, and they’ll flag the chief, here, and Koll, and
me and Manka, too, and certainly you, China Doll.
No, not me. I do not exist, she responded. But I can exist only with your
help.
Yeah, but there’ll be Vals for the rest of us. They’ll never rest once they
know the chief’s been and gone. They’ll stake out those rings and make ’em a
hundred times tougher to snare, too. We got a long road ahead.
Sounds ambitious, Koll noted. Sounds fun, really. What do these rings do,
Hawks?
They can make even Master System obey your every command, he responded. They
are the master shutoff for the whole thing.
And they’re scattered all over the universe, you say? Ready for the stealing?
You make it sound so easy.
She gave a laugh. Maybe not easy but a real interesting project right up my
alley. See, you’re the historian who knows what they are and how to work ’em.
She’s the computer whiz who maybe can make the machines dance for us. Those two
are security—they got the guns and the minds to use ’em. That pair can go
through any lock even though they don’t have any idea how they do it. Cloud
Dancer, here, cuts through all the bullshit and sees only the important part of
things the rest of us are blind to, and our Silent Woman, well, she’s the den
mother. Our liberated pilot, he’s gonna be right handy with his current data and
mobility within solar systems. Add me and you got all you need to steal those
suckers right off the fingers of the wearers.
Mighty big talk, Raven noted. A captain and freebooter ten years out of date
and out of practice and getting pretty old. Even your blackest contacts are ten
years cold.
Don’t need contacts, she told him. Don’t need much, really. See, I was part
of a real fancy experiment way back when at the rock, and the results scared
them shitless. Me loose is gonna drive ’em even more nuts, and they can send all
the Vals after me they want. I got one advantage over all of you, as long as
it’s secrets time. You’re all human—except the ship, of course. I’m not sure
what that is. Me, now that you sprung me, I’m the most dangerous living creature
in the known universe. Don’t worry—you all are safe, unless I’m desperate. I
kind of like this game, and I want to play it out.
What are you babbling about, old woman? Manka Warlock asked impatiently.
You’ll see, Stone Head. You’ll all see—when I’m ready. Until then, let’s play
this out. First we got to get out there, where it’s too big to find even some
worlds. Then we’ll talk about your rings and your Master System. Then I’ll tell
you how we’re gonna get ’em.
The ship increased speed and turned inward toward the Earth, a course it would
keep until it passed out of Outerbelt traffic control. Then it would swing
around at a wide angle, beyond traffic control’s reach, and head out past the
asteroids, out to the great giant Jupiter and its quiet graveyard of ancient
monstrous ships.
* * *
Don’t worry, Chief, Arnold Nagy, Chief of Melchior Security, said consolingly.
With the amount of brains and talent we get in here, it was bound to happen
sooner or later. Look, it took centuries for somebody to figure out just one
way, and that was with inside help. That way won’t work again. I’ll settle for
one every few hundred years or so, even if I wish it hadn’t happened on my
tour. He paused a moment, thinking. Of course, the system is still okay. Those
two traitors came in with full Presidium authority and credentials. They weren’t
forged. One of the directors is behind this, and you can’t really expect to
protect against the top boys. I just wonder why in hell whichever one he or she
is sent ’em here in the first place. Still, there’s no true security problem as
such.
Doctor Isaac Clayben sat at his desk, head in his hands. No, Arnie, you don’t
understand. We’ve loosed a terrible, horrible threat on the human race, one that
now might be impossible to stop, and we can’t even report it.
Huh? You mean the American Indian with the rings? We fixed that, boss. He’s
officially dead, and all he knows with it, back in the swamp of Earth. The blind
girl’s a goner, too, officially. Oh, we’ll have to report those two security
traitors, but the Vals will cooperate. It’ll be a dead or alive situation. We’ve
taken care of messes- like that before. Besides, it probably won’t even come to
that. Where can they go? They got our marks on ’em—they’re either unregistered
or they’re criminals—and that ship can’t leave the solar system. They got no
place to go. When the food and water run out, they’ll come out and we’ll blow
’em to hell.
Clayben suddenly looked up at the security officer and fixed him with an angry
stare. I don’t care about the rest, but unless you can absolutely blow the
whole ship with Reba Roll on board, it won’t matter.
Nagy looked confused. Koll? Who the hell cares about Koll?
Ten years ago we began a set of experiments to see if we could literally beat
the system. The whole system. Master System’s control points are based on
retinal patterns, fingerprints, and mindprints. Getting past two out of three
would be easy, once, but we wanted it to be possible repeatedly. The mindprint
looked impossible, but we managed a solution to all three. Something that can
walk through any standard security system as if it wasn’t there, come up to you
and have you greet it like it was your own mother, then kill you and—worse. We
developed such a being. We made it, and it almost got loose. We had a classic
example of the nightmares of science on our hands. We created a monster, an
inhuman monster that kills to live and is virtually undetectable by any means.
The original was insane, of course. We weren’t concerned with that at the
start.
What in hell are you talking about, boss?
We—convinced it that we could destroy it, and we developed methods to stabilize
and control it. Here, under lab conditions, it was possible, which is why we let
it live, but it had to be constantly renewed. One day we would solve the riddle
and be able to do what it does on demand, to create a superior being that would
make Master System impotent.
I’m not worried about the damned escapees. I know you’re right on all the usual
counts, but it is with them, damn it. Even out there, on Earth, Mars—anywhere—
without our treatments it will be unrestrained. It’s malicious, deadly. It will
probably kill them all anyway in the end. Then it’ll come back for us, for me
and for anybody else in authority. It won’t be stopped, and we might well
welcome it through the main port!