And yes, he’d grown fond of this machine, in the way he’d formerly grown fond 6f his old laserblade or a particular plaid shirt or his and Annie’s house on Earth, but that wasn’t the same as affection for a human being or a live pet. Somehow he felt it would be wrong to leave without a farewell, but why?
Would the ship have been hurt? He couldn’t believe that. Her words, comradely or concerned as the situation called for, gave simply the illusion of feelings like his. What were hers? Meaningless question. He imagined her taking pleasure in the challenge of a difficult maneuver, he imagined her longing to get back into full connection with others, with the cybercosm, and for that span share in a larger awareness than he would ever know; but this was anthropomorphism on his part. It was as inane as his naming her, privately, Barbara, after the first girl he had loyed and never gotten.
Too long aspace, a man went a bit crazy. By Earth standards, anyhow.
“Commencing descent,” she warned him. Also that was needless. Besides the instruments on the console, he sensed the swingaround. Had the algorithm computed that he would appreciate her gesture?
Signals flew back and forth. Electrophotonic intelligences meshed. Weight returned, settling Kenmuir in his chair, and the ship climbed down the sky to Port Bowen.
The thought of Annie lingered in him. His gaze sought Earth. Where was she yonder? Ten years, now, since last he’d heard anything; a dozen years since they parted. Mostly his fault, he supposed. Space-farers were a poor risk for marriage. But theirs had begun so happily, nestled under Ben Dearg in a land whose heights and heather they had nearly to themselves … He sighed. “It’s space you love, lan,” she had said—oh, very quietly, with a bare glimmer of tears. “It doesn’t leave enough of you for me to live on.” Well, he hadn’t quite given up hope of someday having a little touslehead or two of his own. But no woman whom a spacef arer would likely meet shared it as Annie once did, except dream-women in the quivi-ra, and he dared not call those up very often.
Lilisaire waited! A surge passed through him, half lust, half fear, and left him trembling.
Touchdown into a cradle was feather-gentle. He saw just two other vessels on the field^a globular freighter and a small, slim suborbital that was probably his transport to Zamok Vysoki. In Fireball’s day the number could well have been a score.
Seeking to master himself, and thinking of what Lilisaire might want him for, he looked westward, past the control tower. The spark that was L-5 stood above that horizon. But no, he hadn’t set the screen to enhance the stars, and the sun-glare of early Lunar afternoon hid most of them, including the derelict worldlet. Symbolic, an omen?
Now there was an anachronism for you. Kenmuir’s tautness eased with a grin at himself. Unharnessing, he went to get his luggage. After three daycycles of boost at a fourth again Earth’s gravity, one-sixth was like blowing along on a breeze.
Stripped, his cabin had become a hollowness he gladly quitted. A single bag sufficed him. He had packed the rest of his effects; robots would fetch and stow them till he phoned instructions. He need not actually carry anything. His hostess could provide him clothes and such, lavishly. Too much. He pre-ferre4 his plain personal style, as well as his independence.
As he was about to command an airlock to open, the ship surprised him. “Fare you well, lan Kenmuir,” she said. “May we travel together again.”
“Why, why, I’d like that,” he faltered.
Meaningless wish. If he was assigned a different craft, its intelligence would, routinely, get a download of everything Barbara knew about him. He would find the personalities indistinguishable—if personality, distinct individuality, could be said to exist in sophotects. What then led her to send him off this humanly?
He didn’t really understand these minds. Did they? Beyond a certain degree of complexity, systems go chaotic, inherently unpredictable and unfathomable even to themselves. No doubt the Teramind saw more deeply, but was that insight absolute, and did it include all of the vast psyche?