Black Hull Read online

  “ILS duration at current power level?”

  “ILS can be sustained for an estimated four days at current power level.”

  Relief spread. The thought of a nap passed through his head.

  I have time for it. I can sleep, troubleshoot. Figure out this mystery—I always do. That’s why I was in F.R.I.N.G.E.

  Another voice replied: You used to know how to figure things out. You’re old, but even you are too young to figure out this computer system. This ship is hundreds of years old. You spent your career on new ships. Give up.

  “Run full-range scan.” Always do things twice. Three times if necessary.

  “Please allow three minutes for scan.”

  Mick returned to all three portholes, double-checking the blank canvas of space. Nothing moved. Stars blinked, nothing more. Power doesn’t just restore itself. Could the computer have had full power the whole time, been misreading data? How long was I floating on ILS since the explosion on Crake? The computer beeped, data returned.

  “Full range scan return: one heat anomaly, no trace of cross transmissions, empty matter analysis.”

  Adrenaline flowed again.

  “Heat anomaly on display.”

  The screen flashed several times, appeared to turn off, then listed its return:

  HEAT ANOMALY DETECTED:

  SPACETIME REFERENT: 4.56743 x 2.1110092 x h7 o 0.12 {0.0000138}

  HEAT: 19.1 kelvads at range of 8,560 miles.

  SIGNATURE STRENGTH: 24 meters squared.

  VELOCITY: no velocity detected.

  No velocity? An error—nothing there. The board is fried. It’s fucked.

  “Double-check heat anomaly velocity.”

  “No heat anomaly detected or recorded.” The screen blanked, returned empty.

  “Heat anomaly on display.”

  “Data is corrupt or irretrievable.”

  “Holy shit.”

  He sat on the ground. Adrenaline rolled into anxiety.

  “Shut off gravity.”

  He floated into the center of the cabin.

  Save power.

  He let his body twist through the void. His eyes surveyed the rotating cabin.

  Without a reliable computer, I could be in range of a UCA ship and never know it. I could have thruster power and never know it.

  Something caught his eye in one of the portholes: a moving star.

  He grabbed the rail of a terminal and pulled himself to the porthole: Blue-white and moving fast.

  “Code U signal.”

  “Advise against code U signal: power consumption too great in proportion to remaining auxilia—”

  “I know how much power it uses!”

  “Recommend ILS—”

  “Code U signal, immediately!”

  “Commencing code U signal.”

  The blue dot traced a line across the speckled black of space.

  Code U. I’m saved. It was a thought complete and certain. It’s a comet. Voices fought inside his head. My boy is probably flying class two ships by now. He’ll need my opinion on something. Maybe Karen hasn’t found anyone. I could be what I used to think I was supposed to be.

  A vision of a beach flashed before his mind’s eye: gold and turquoise blending into vermillion, crying babies. The barking of a dog. A smell, hope mixed with hamburger and memories that mustn’t die yet.

  Do you want a beer? Sure.

  “Computer—shut down all unnecessary systems except those needed for the code U and ILS.” He half-believed the computer would follow his commands properly.

  “Confirm shutdown of all unnecessary systems except those required for continuation of code U signal and ILS.” Mick jammed his fingers on the screen, forming an old pattern.

  The cabin dimmed. Soon the amber dots provided the only contrast against the soft black of space that shaped the portholes. The blue dot left the porthole he clung to. He pushed himself through the air to the next one. It reappeared, following the same course.

  C’mon. Not a comet. Not a comet. Change course. Not a comet. Change course. C’mon. C’mon.

  The blue dot slowed, came to a stop.

  “Comets don’t stop!” Mick flipped out. He bounced like a rubber ball, back and forth, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, shouting, screaming, crying. He saw the faces of his children.

  5

  Eternal cryosleep. No, only ten years of time relative to Earth. That buys twenty more years to watch them, spend time with them. Einstein had first proved such errands were possible, probable.

  Maybe Karen will be ready for a date.

  The airlock beeped.

  “Vessel requests docking.”

  “Dock.”

  The computer performed its maneuver, ancient guidance at work. Auxiliary power remained high. Somehow, a rogue android had come through the deepest recess of no man’s space. A smuggling droid, no doubt.

  “Docking maneuver commencing.”

  Will it try to explain itself? What could I explain to it? Yes, though I wouldn’t expect you to understand, I am plugging toward Earth to pay off a law man. Yes, this run would have bought my freedom. What went wrong? I can’t say—everything was fine. We procured the rock, set course for Earth. And somehow, near Gliese, there was an explosion. Survivors? Just me. Black hull. I’m lucky you spotted me. I know, I know…

  “Docking completed. Airlock secure.”

  “Computer, what of XJ71?”

  “Heat signature is present aboard the vessel class Inter-Space Light Dog One.”

  Light Dog One. Corrupt data? Light Dog model three hundred and twelve came out last year. One per year, right?

  “You expect me to believe this ship is over three hundred years old?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “And XJ71 model was commissioned in what year?”

  “Twenty-six fourteen.”

  “The droid is older than the ship?”

  “Correct, sir. An attitude is unwarranted, captain.”

  Artificial Intelligence. At some point in history, it became necessary to include humor. Also, at some point later, it became obvious that a self-intelligent droid’s humor differed from a human’s.

  “Are communication lines open?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Open channel.”

  Mick’s adrenals surged. Elation. Somehow as he prepared to greet his savior, a deep depression set in: Life had been saved, but the ore…

  Ten years with nothing to show.

  “Mick Compton here, sole survivor, requesting assistance.”

  “Come aboard Mick,” replied a metal voice over the com.

  He walked past the cryo to the airlock door. It whizzed open. A small tunnel, no lights. More whizzing. Bright green light blinded him.

  “Welcome aboard Light Dog One!”

  In front of Mick stood the oldest looking piece of shit he had ever seen. For some reason, Computer had not been returning corrupt data on this one: The old assemblage of bare, gaping rods looked like something he’d seen in a movie a long time ago… IG-88, was it? One of those historic films they’d shown in Art class in college.

  And this class had shown him the way people once thought androids would look, long before their realized constructions. Images and movies of a bygone era had adorned his professor’s screen that semester. Old films, preserved for their aesthetic value, their preservation of the human imagination. He’d liked them though; there was something special in those wet dream imaginings: Data, IG-88, Terminator, HAL. Some didn’t have bodies, some did; some looked indistinguishable from humans, and others looked like the scrap of shit in front of him.

  “Is there something wrong?” it asked. Mick hadn’t moved—his brain was processing.

  “No. I didn’t think my computer had been giving the right information.”

  “Well, that’s a shame—I can check it for you, if you’d like.” A curl of steam rose from the droid’s left eye socket.

  “No—it’s fine. We’re leaving it behind anyway
.”

  “No. I’ll copy its file system. We’ll bring it along. I have the fuel for it. Anyway, I’d like the company. A newer model intelligence might come in handy. You see, I’ve been in need of a new chess opponent.”

  “Sure.”

  Mick followed XJ71 down a corridor into the Light Dog’s control room. It was wider than the pod’s, but all the computer terminals protruded so much, in their ancient, outdated way, that it seemed smaller. Bright fluorescent lights lit the room a bronze hue, and XJ71 sat down in a steel-wire swivel chair attached to the floor in front of the cabin’s largest viewscreen.

  “Just a moment…”

  “Sure, take your time.” Mick watched in awe as the old droid ran its fingers across a keypad. Images triggered in his mind: keyboards, mice, buildings that claimed to be computers, relics of the time when people still counted petabytes. But there it was, in front of him. Old as can be, using a keyboard. Saving his life.

  “Is there an AI on this ship?”

  “No—Light Dog thirty-one introduced the first intelligence-based operating system.”

  “Why are you out here? This is a black hull smuggling route . . . the only reasons ships run this way is for the ore in Zubenalgubi.”

  “An asteroid hit your ship, you know. You might consider thanking me.”

  “Asteroid? But that’s—”

  “Quite possible. You ran a poor route through the Gliese System’s Oort Cloud.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He continued to type things, and his display scrolled line after line of foreign characters.

  “What’s on your screen?”

  “Lanascript.”

  “Lanascript?”

  “Oh, just a special plugin of code I wrote some time ago. Give me a moment…”

  So the ore is gone, smashed to bits. Jacob, Conway, Teebles, dead. Twenty light years from Earth. The Light Dog could achieve, what, maybe—

  “What speed can she hit?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Light Dog One.”

  “Under optimal conditions, one point nine.”

  “One point nine?”

  “Correct.”

  “Jesus Christ, what a fuck—”

  “The Christ of Earth? How interesting.”

  You’ve got to be kidding me. Add five more years. Why do I care so much? I’m not going home for a paycheck anymore. I’m going home to prison.

  “I retrieved your ore load.”

  “What?”

  “It’s in cargo.”

  “How?”

  “Picked up the hit on my scanners—the ore was all there, lumped. Magnadraw and Hoila.”

  “Jesus.” Christ. Savior of Mankind. Long considered to be the herald of the afterlife. Second coming: Adolf Hitler, dispeller of religious ideals—with that antichrist was the end of days: Life continued and man went to the moon.

  “The Christian Jesus of antiquity?”

  “No—I mean, I thought it was gone, fifteen years wasted.”

  “Fifteen years? What does that refer to?”

  “How much this damned trip cost me.”

  “You figure to be home in how many years?”

  “Five—the black hull I was on rated four, and you said this is one point nine, so…”

  “Oh, I am sorry Mick. She’s no longer running under optimal conditions, didn’t I say that?”

  “How fast?”

  “Point eight, maybe.”

  There was a time when light speed was achieved solely through underground tunnels in Europe, mazeworks called supercolliders, where elementary particles smashed at extremely high speeds. Sometime shortly after the second millennium, somewhere in Switzerland, a particle was sent at the speed of 1.0000000000000132 x 299,792,458 meters per second. It arrived in Italy slightly faster than photons that had left at the same time. Suddenly the scientific community went into shock. The news soon vanished from newspapers and the internet, and nothing was spoken for four years. They had to make certain, the tops had said.

  The upheavals came in cycles: Copernicus; Galileo; Newton; Rutherford; Bohrs; Einstein; Feynman; Heisenberg. Three hundred years later, shortly after the United Countries of America formed (a product of at first Russia and North America, and then the United Countries of Africa), the first quarter-light-speed spaceship launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. That was all it took. Once the technology was in place, the increments crawled higher every thirty years. 1.1—a landmark. 1.2—a milestone. 1.5—an impossibility. By the time Light Dog 1 rolled off an assembly line, colonies had started to appear on Mars. Once LS3 was achieved, NASA started F.R.I.N.G.E: Far Reaching Intelligence and Near-Galaxy Exploration. By the time Mick joined F.R.I.N.G.E., NASA had been running their missions for three hundred years. He’d flown on an LS8-capable ship once. LS8.

  “Point eight! What the fuck do you mean point eight?”

  “Mick, no need to make me feel like I’m poor company to keep. Did I mention our cryosleep chamber is no longer working?”

  Now he’s joking: Some kind of a clown robot.

  Maybe in the old days, they’d made these IG-88 models to mess with astrorookies. It was a joke. There was another black hull in waiting, Computer hadn’t picked it up due to corrupt data, and they’d sent this antique as a gag. Do I call its bluff? No, play along. It can’t hurt. Better than you were an hour ago, right?

  “Ok, so no more cryosleep.”

  “That’s right Mick.” He continued to punch keys.

  “You want to tell me the plan, then?”

  “I aim to take us to Utopia.”

  “Utopia?” The name More, somehow, ran through Mick’s head.

  “Yes.”

  “You mean Earth?”

  “No, of course not. Earth was destroyed, you know that Mick. Don’t play games with me, we’re a team now.”

  Ok, now it’s gone too far.

  Mick walked up to the dim screen, on which blurred a steady roll of characters that responded to inputs from XJ71’s fork-hands. A primitive compulsion drove each of Mick’s fists down into the keyboard. Cracked plastic shards ricocheted off the cabin walls. Amber eyes turned on a swivel head. A gunmetal skull stared, baffled.

  “Why would you do that Mick?”

  “Where do you get off—no cryosleep, less than LS1?”

  “Would you rather fend for yourself on the pod?”

  He’s not lying. I would have been better off freezing to death.

  The thought repeated, endlessly, eventually turning to noise. There was no other black hull. His crew had known that; they’d purposely made sure of it. Black hulls weren’t friendly to each other anyway—they all competed for the same resource: ore. Ore was money. Nothing else was out here.

  Stuck. With an ancient robot, on an ancient, broken ship. Looking at twenty years.

  “Look at it this way, Mick: We’ve got plenty of food and fuel, more than enough to get us to Utopia.”

  Mick slumped down, grazing a wire harnesses that snagged and drew blood. He didn’t notice any pain. His son was into music. They’d made a pact to record something together. He’d been having ideas, different sorts of “going home” songs. One ended: “As I wander far from home and soul / Always will I return / to you, the hearts from which I roamed.”

  “Ok. I’m all ears, XJ71. That’s what you want me to call you?”

  “Call me XJ.”

  “I’m all ears XJ.”

  “All ears . . . that is a colloquial phrase. Checking database…”

  It has to check its colloquial database. That’s okay. It gives me time. I need to sort this out: Grateful to be alive. Average human lifespan: one hundred and eleven years. I have plenty of time. What do I care if I’m seventy when I get back to them? Because Karen will have a new love. Why are you kidding yourself, she already does. That prick? He’s dumb, rich, and arrogant. He never piloted a god damned hovercraft. Does that concern you now?

  “All ears means what?”

&nb
sp; “Tell me what the plan is.”

  “I told you the plan. Although our plans have changed. Now my plans include replacing this console with one that works.”

  “What are you doing out here?”

  Mick waited for his answer, watching the droid disappear from the console station. He thought about the word, Utopia. He remembered it meant something important, but he couldn’t be sure.

  A perfect world? Let us go there. Let us rejoice and be glad. The refrain from church, wasn’t it? The end of that trap. Religion did not die out, after all. It faded away, didn’t it? God—do you remember the refrain? God be with us. There were principles, that was all. Don’t misconstrue God for principles, he’d told his kids. Be honest, hard-working, helpful, kind. Apply those principles to your daily life, and forget that God bullshit. Could it be that mental clarity was returning? How long has it been? Four hours since waking from cryo? It hadn’t been that long. It doesn’t matter. You can recognize how fucked you are without regaining mental clarity.

  A creaking accompanied the movement of rusting joints as XJ waltzed back into the control room with a new keyboard console. He diligently began disconnecting the old one.

  “What are you doing out here?”