‘Yes; good idea,’ nodded Sma, and put the thing over her shoulder. The crewpeople called out to say they’d see her later as she, the ship’s bizarre remote drone and Skaffen-Amtiskaw headed for the accommodation section.
‘Ooh, you’re nice and warm,’ the little brown and yellow creature mumbled sleepily, snuggling into Sma’s neck as they headed down a deeply carpeted corridor for Sma’s quarters. It stirred and she found herself patting its back. ‘Left here,’ it said, at a junction, then, That’s us just breaking orbit now, by the way.’
‘Good,’ Sma said.
‘Can I cuddle up with you when you sleep?’
Sma stopped, detached the creature from her shoulder with one hand and stared it in the face. ‘What?’
‘Just for chumminess’ sake,’ the little thing said, yawning wide and blinking. ‘I’m not being rude; it’s a good bonding procedure.’
Sma was aware of Skaffen-Amtiskaw glowing red just behind her. She brought the yellow and brown device closer to her face. ‘Listen, Xenophobe -‘
‘Xeny.’
‘Xeny; you are a million-tonne starship; a Torturer class Rapid Offensive Unit. Even -‘
‘But I’m demilitarised!’
‘Even without your principal armament, I bet you could waste planets if you wanted to -‘
‘Aw, come on; any silly GCU can do that!’
‘So what is all this shit for?’ She shook the furry little remote drone, quite hard. Its teeth chattered.
‘It’s for a laugh!’ it cried. ‘Sma; don’t you appreciate a joke?’
‘I don’t know. Do you appreciate being drop-kicked back to the accommodation area?’
‘Ooo! What’s your problem, lady? Have you got something against small furry animals, or what? Look, Ms Sma; I know very well I’m a ship, and I do everything I’m asked to do – including taking you to this frankly rather fuzzily specified destination – and do it very efficiently, too. If there was the slightest sniff of any real action, and I had to start acting like a warship, this construct in your hands would go lifeless and limp immediately, and I’d battle as ferociously and decisively as I’ve been trained to. Meanwhile, like my human colleagues, I amuse myself harmlessly. If you really hate my current appearance, all right; I’ll change it; I’ll be an ordinary drone, or just a disembodied voice, or talk to you through Skaffen-Amtiskaw here, or through your personal terminal. The last thing I want to do is offend a guest.’
Sma pursed her lips. She patted the thing on its head, and sighed. ‘Fair enough.’
‘I can keep this shape?’
‘By all means.’
‘Oh goody!’ It squirmed with pleasure, then opened its big eyes wide and looked hopefully at her. ‘Cuddle?’
‘Cuddle.’ Sma cuddled it, patted its back.
She turned to see Skaffen-Amtiskaw lying dramatically on its back in mid-air, its aura field flashing the lurid orange that was used to signal Sick Drone in Extreme Distress.
Sma nodded goodbye to the little brown and yellow animal as it waddled away down the corridor which led back to the social area (it waved back with one chubby little paw), then closed the cabin door and made sure the room’s internal monitoring was off.
She turned to Skaffen-Amtiskaw. ‘How long are we on this ship for?’
‘Thirty days?’ Skaffen-Amtiskaw suggested.
Sma gritted her teeth and looked round the fairly cosy-looking but – compared to the echoing spaces of the old power station mansion – rather small cabin. ‘Thirty days with a crew of viral masochists and a ship that thinks it’s a cuddly toy.’ She shook her head, sat into the bed field. ‘Subjectively, drone, this could be a long trip.’ She collapsed back into the bed, muttering.
Skaffen-Amtiskaw decided right now would probably still not be the best time to tell the woman about Zakalwe being missing.
‘I’ll just go and take a look round, if you don’t mind,’ it said, drifting towards the door over the neat line of bags that was Sma’s luggage.
‘Yeah, on you go,’ Sma waved one arm lazily, then shucked off the jacket and let it fall to the deck.
The drone had almost made it to the door when Sma sat bolt upright, a frown on her face, and said, ‘Wait a minute; what did the ship mean about “… rather fuzzily specified destination”? Doesn’t it know where the hell we’re going?’
Oh-oh, thought the drone.
It spun in the air. ‘Ah,’ it said.
Sma’s eyes narrowed. ‘We are just going to get Zakalwe, aren’t we?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘We’re not doing anything else?’
‘Absolutely not. We find Zakalwe; we brief him; we take him to Voerenhutz. Simple as that. We might be asked to hang around for a bit, overseeing, but that isn’t definite yet.’
‘Yes, yes, I expected that, but… where exactly is Zakalwe?’
‘Where exactly?’ The drone said. ‘Well, I mean; you know, that’s…’
‘All right,’ Sma said, exasperated, ‘approximately, then.’
‘No problem,’ Skaffen-Amtiskaw said, backing off towards the door.
‘No problem?’ Sma said, puzzled.
‘Yes; no problem. We know that. Where he is.’
‘Good,’ Sma nodded. ‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘Well,’ Sma said loudly, ‘where is he?’
‘Crastalier.’
‘Cras…?’
‘Crastalier. That’s where we’re heading.’
Sma shook her head, yawned. ‘Never heard of it.’ She flopped back in the bed field, stretching. ‘Crastalier.’ Her yawn deepened; she put a hand to her mouth. ‘You only had to say that the first time, goddamit.’
‘Sorry,’ the drone said.
‘Mmm. Never mind.’ Sma put out one hand, waved it through the bedside beam that controlled the cabin lights, so that they dimmed. She yawned again. ‘Think I’ll catch some sleep. Take my boots off, will you?’
Gently but quickly, the drone slipped Sma’s boots off, gathered her jacket and hung it in a walk-in cupboard, swept the bags in there too, then – as Sma turned over in the bed field, eyes fluttering closed – the drone slipped out of the room.
It hovered in the air outside, looking at its reflection in the polished wood on the far side of the corridor.
‘That,’ it said to itself, ‘was close.’ Then it went for a wander.
Sma had arrived on the Xenophobe just after breakfast, by ship time. When she awoke, it was early afternoon. She was completing her toilet, while the drone sorted her clothes into type and colour order and hung or folded them in the cupboard, when the door chimed. Sma wandered out of the little bathroom area, wearing a pair of shorts, her mouth full of toothpaste. She tried saying Open, but the toothpaste apparently stopped the room monitor from recognising the word. She walked over and pressed the door-open instead.
Sma eye’s flicked wide; she yelped, spluttered, jumped back from the door, a scream gathering in her throat.
The instant after her eyes had widened, before the signal to jump back from the door had travelled all the way to her leg muscles, there was an impression of almost invisibly sudden movement in the cabin, belatedly followed by a bang and a sizzling sound.
There, stationed between her and the door, were all three of the drone’s knife missiles, hovering roughly level with her eyes, sternum and groin; she was looking at them through a haze of field the machine had also thrown in front of her. Then it clicked off.
The knife missiles swung lazily away through the air and clicked back into Skaffen-Amtiskaw’s casing. ‘Don’t do that to me,’ the machine muttered, returning to sorting out Sma’s socks.
Sma wiped her mouth and stared at the three-metre tall, brown and yellow coloured furry monster cowering in the corridor outside the door.
‘Ship… Xeny, what the hell are you doing?’
‘I’m sorry,’ the huge creature said, its voice only a little deeper than when it had been baby-sized. ‘I thought if you didn’t relate to a small furry animal, perhaps a bigger version…’
‘Shee-it.’ Sma said, shaking her head. ‘Come in,’ she called, heading back for the bathroom area. ‘Or did you just want to show me how much you’ve grown?’ She rinsed out the paste and spat.
Xeny squeezed through the door, stooped, and sidled into a corner. ‘Sorry about that, Skaffen-Amtiskaw.’
‘No problem,’ the other machine replied.
‘Ah, no, Ms Sma,’ Xeny called. ‘I actually wanted to talk to you about…’
Skaffen-Amtiskaw went still, just for a second. There was, in fact, a fairly lengthy, detailed and slightly heated exchange between the drone and the ship’s Mind during that time, but Sma was only aware of Xeny pausing as it spoke.
‘… about having a fancy-dress party, this evening, in your honour,’ the ship improvised.
Sma smiled from the bathroom area, ‘That’s a lovely idea, ship. Thank you, Xeny. Yes; why not?’
‘Good; I just thought I’d check with you, first. Any ideas about costumes?’
Sma laughed. ‘Yeah; I’ll go as you; make me one of those suits you’re wearing.’
‘Ha. Yes. Good idea. Actually, that might be rather a common choice, but we’ll make it two people can’t go as the same thing. Right. I’ll talk to you later.’ Xeny lumbered from the room and the door slid shut. Sma appeared out from the bathroom area, slightly surprised at this sudden departure, but just shrugged.