Lost in Transmission (20 page)

“How big is that core?” Conrad pressed. “Our population is growing now, and not slowly. How many full human images can it hold?”

Again, Bascal didn't answer directly. What he said was, “When it fills, there are other things we can do. Unfortunately, building new memory cores is another big problem, like building fax machines. It's more than just a big block of wellstone, you understand. Our need for core modules is reduced anyway, if we can solve the underlying fax problem first. So although it may not look like it, our little society here is directing all its efforts in that direction. Supporting the people who support the industries that support the fabrication of new print plates.”

And all this sounded perfectly reasonable, which meant nothing, because Conrad knew Bascal too well. He looked his old friend up and down, finding nothing amiss, but even so he said, “You've got some master plan, Bascal, which involves pain for the rest of us. But you haven't invited our input. Have you even informed the Senate? Or are they ignorant cogs in this great machine of yours?”

Bascal sighed, flashing a disappointed smile. “
Et tu Brute?
Once again, my best friend in all creation fails to invest me with his trust? This is my job, Conrad: running the colony. For the good of everyone, including yourself. And it's you who've refused my invitations to dinner. Your input
has
been invited.”

“I trust you to do what you think is right, Majesty,” Conrad said, and found that he was also grinning, if a bit uneasily. “In the largest sense, over geological time. I trust you to be good to people when you feel you can afford it. I trust you to work hard, and to think hard about the problems we face. But you have a tendency to cut things close, to skirt disaster, and in the context of a whole society this could get pretty serious. Someone could
die,
irretrievably, with no copies or backups to take their place.”

Bascal's look turned even gloomier. “Someone already has, boyo. One of the quarry kids down south. Never touched a fax machine in his life, not since the day he was born, and there was no stored record even of that. He'd already started to rot by the time they got him to the nearest hospital, and yes, the whole thing could have been averted if they'd had a fax machine on-site at the quarry. He was a
real person,
with dreams and hobbies and everything, and his death is very much on my head. You think I don't feel that every day? You think it doesn't weigh me down?”

Conrad was aghast. “Can't they read his brain or something? Reconstruct his memories? Print a generic human with his genome, and stuff as much of him back into it as they possibly can?”

Such things had been done before, back in the Queendom, on rare occasions when things had gone badly wrong. Conrad had fallen victim to death and rot himself during that first slipshod planetfall, but it had never occurred to him that such problems might still exist, after a hundred and twenty years of development!

Bascal simply shook his head. “We don't have the right equipment for that. Not now, not for a while. The hospital's got the body on ice, or more specifically, on liquid nitrogen. There is hope for this boy, sometime in the indefinite future. We can probably construct some humanesque entity that believes it's him. His name was Bill, by the way. Bill Edison Chuang. He played the piano and studied dead languages.”

“My gods,” Conrad said. And then, because he couldn't think of anything else to say, he said it again. Perhaps Bruno and Tamra were right to worry! As an economic indicator, surely death made a telling statement. Society's ultimate failure: losing the lives and continuities of its people.

“Nobody told us this would be safe,” Bascal said gently but firmly. “We broke the law, and they shipped us here, and the wording of the edict makes it clear that they expect us to return when the sentence expires, with our tails between our legs and our heads bowed in humility. Or they
did,
anyway. I don't think the Queendom government—my parents or anyone else—had any illusions about what they were doing to us, what they were sending us into. And yet, here we are, making do.”

“Why wasn't this in the news? This death.”

“It was, but most people missed it. The kid didn't know anybody, not really. And his parents have declined to make a fuss. It really wasn't anybody's fault—just one of those things. If you live long enough, something improbable will happen. He just beat the odds early.”

“How comforting. Maybe he's with God now, eh? Better off?”

“I didn't say that, and don't you get sarcastic with me. We all have our jobs. If you do yours and I do mine, and everyone stays focused and we face these dangers bravely, we'll get through this. All of us.” He looked at the ceiling, and said, “Palace, bring in my family, please.”

“As you wish, Sire,” the ceiling answered.

There was a slight crackling from the fax machine, and three robots staggered out of it, one of them human sized and the other two perhaps half as tall. And these robots were not household servants. Conrad didn't know
what
they were, but they moved slowly, with drunken steps and lurches. Their bodies and heads and faces were featureless gold, or something colored like gold, but it was all scratched up, no longer quite so shiny, and they were even dented in places, as if the fax machine had declined to repair their accumulated wear and tear. They were suffering from the robotic equivalent of geriatry.

Conrad had met an “emancipated” robot like this once before. It was Hugo, a sort of pet that King Bruno had kept in his own palace on Earth. A robot cut off from the larger world, its calculations restricted to the hypercomputers in its own wellmetal skull. Left to fend for itself, to find its own way in the world. To be, in a limited way, a kind of person.

The larger robot had vague swellings on its chest, a suggestion of femaleness, and in a kind of parody it staggered over and clanked itself down on the arm of Bascal's chair. One of the smaller robots came and sat down at his feet; the other wandered around the room, turning its blank metal face on this and that shiny object, as if entranced by the world around it.

“Please tell me this is a joke,” Conrad said.

The king grinned. “Not at all, my boy. My good man, my friend. Meet my practice family, the wellmetal apples of my all-rehearsing eye. This is Matilda, and this here is little Barnaby, and his sibling Rachel. They fill the house up pleasantly, with never an argument or an ill turn of phrase. I invented them a long time ago, back onboard
Newhope
when I was desperate for company, but I've been bringing them out a lot recently. It scratches a kind of itch, exercises a muscle that gets little use these days. And no, there's nothing sick about it. Nothing sexual, nothing delusional, although I can see the perverse hope of it in your eyes.”

“Hi,” the large robot grunted, turning its face in Conrad's direction. “Hi. Hi. A pleasure to meet you.” The words were forced, at once comical and tragic. With effort and fax tweaks you could train a wild dog to speak, too!

Conrad could only hope that the look on his face matched the bad taste in his mouth. “Do they bring your slippers for you, Bas? Do they bring you psychoactive weeds, and a pipe to smoke them in?”

“Nothing like that,” the king said, clearly annoyed. “It just calms my nerves to have them around. They amuse me, help me think. I don't normally trot them out in front of people, but I thought perhaps you and I were close enough to share this moment. Are we not? If they disturb you, then you have my apology, and my promise to send them away forthwith and posthaste.”

“That's not necessary,” Conrad told him. He wasn't about to tell a king how to behave in his own home.

“Ah,” Bascal said, “but your tone and your words speak to opposite purpose. You've been robophobic for as long as I can remember, so perhaps it was thoughtless of me to inflict these on you. Almost like having the Palace Guards back at my back again, eh?”

“No. It's nothing at all like that.”

“Well, thank heaven for what mercies it can spare. Still, consider me chastised for this error. Striving for wisdom does not, by itself, make a thoughtful person of me.” To the robots he said, “Off you go, family. Back to the fax, that's right.”

At first, the robots didn't move. But after a moment's reflection, the female stood up again and began limping in the direction of the fax machine. One of the smaller robots got up as well, and followed behind her. The other one—Rachel, the king had called it—continued its wandering around the room, looking randomly at nothing.

Ignoring the thing, Bascal said, “They are brighter than they appear. Brighter than dogs—perhaps as bright as children. You've got half a billion years of evolution telling your brain how to organize and respond.
They
were merely printed from a factory pattern. They don't know how to be people, any more than you know how to be a hypercomputer. But they struggle, and they learn, and bit by bit their behavior improves. I find their example instructive, but if you do not, I suppose that's all right, too. Being open-minded includes allowing for others' disapproval, yes?”

“I was just surprised,” Conrad said, struggling now to seem friendly rather than intrusive and rude. “I mean . . . as you say, there's nothing sick about it. Your father did the same thing. I'm sure a lot of people have. We've all got our hobbies.”

“Indeed we do,” Bascal agreed, though he made no move to call the two robots back as they vanished into the fax. The third continued to wander, and be ignored. “It's very kind of you to say so. Although if you're too busy to hoist a beer in this tiny town every now and again, I'll wager you're too busy to have a hobby of your own. I suppose that contributes to your surprise, when you see someone else engaged in pointless activities for nothing more than the idle pleasure they provide.”

Touché.

“And how about women?” the king asked, like a dozer driver suddenly changing gears. “Any interesting interests you can tell your dear old friend about? Like any good citizen, I'm voyeuristically concerned about how much of what is being had in my kingdom.”

“Nothing permanent, I'm afraid,” Conrad said, and the two of them shared a laugh, because it was a running joke between them. Permanence, ha! Conrad went on, “Besides, who's new around here, anyway?”

“The young ones,” Bascal said with a leer. “But I don't have to tell you that, eh? If rumor is to be believed—and I fervently hope so, for that's its function!—then you are a man who knows his way around the nursery.”

These two had known each other a long time, but even so Conrad blushed. “Your flattery . . . appalls me, Sire. If I want painful truths, I'll look in a mirror. And how about you? Are there any would-be queens sniffing around? It does get kind of unseemly after a while, having a bachelor king. There will come a day, my friend, when you've slept with every one of your female subjects. And that's half the population who will never listen to you again. If you settle down, you can at least preserve some mystique.”

“Now, now,” the king said seriously. “I'm more selective than that. I have to be. As you say, my position requires it. And yes, now that you mention it, there is someone special entering upon the stage. Someone
quite
special, of whom I think you would approve.”

“Do I know her?”

“I'm not sure,” Bascal said. “She was a revolutionary, but not in our bunch. She didn't unpack until the third year, and she spends most of her time in Bupsville. Her name is Nala Rishe.”

Conrad thought about it and said, “It doesn't ring a bell. How is it I've never heard about this?”

“Well, you seem to have missed a lot of news,” Bascal told him. “Working too hard, yes? But also we've kept it quiet, off the TV and such. There are only six reportants on the planet, and only two who handle palace gossip, so it's not like we have to fool a whole Queendom of paparazzi. Nala has reason to visit the palace anyway, mostly lobbying for the Bupsville agriculturists, so the speculation hasn't been any more or less than you'd see for other visitors.”

“Ah. Is she nice?”

“Nicer than I deserve. You should meet her sometime. Have your house call mine and we'll set something up.”

Slyly: “And she knows about this robot fetish of yours?”

“Actually, she's got one of her own to add to the collection. I guess you'd call him the daddy robot. Named Herschel, after the astronomer.”

“Hmm. Well. That does sound nice. I'd like to meet her, yes. Let me get the Gravittoir up and running and this stupid tuberail switch under way. A couple of days, and I'll be a much freer man.”

Bascal's smile lost some of its warmth. “There are other architects, you know. You don't have to build this entire world yourself. You're entitled to take some time off, and in fact you should. Everyone should. Idle hands do the devil's work—any space pirate knows that!—but we oughtn't gravitate to the opposite pole. We can't afford to, or our children will simply rebel once again, and the cycle will never end. We've got to build a better society than that. It can have flaws—even dangerous flaws—but if it doesn't have room for the finer things, my boy, then what's the point?”

“I know,” Conrad said. “Truly, I've been planning to slow things down. You've met my assistant, Mack Duggins? A troll, about yea high? He's really coming along. He's ready for more responsibility, and I'm nearly ready to give it to him. And then I'll have time, I promise.”

“Hmm,” Bascal said, unconvinced.

Conrad sighed, then felt his lips curve upward again. “Listen, Bas. If you want to see more of me, why don't you hire me to redo this house? It was all well and fine as a freshman effort, stretching my wings and all that, but it does look pretty damned silly now.”

“Hey, I like my house,” Bascal objected.

“Oh, it's all right, but it lacks . . . grandeur. Or rather, the grandeur it's got is rather childish. Painted on rather than woven through the bones.”

“It's perfect, Conrad. I've always loved it.”