Mars Prime (7 page)

And it had been those emotions, loyalty in particular, that had brought the reop, video editor, and computer intelligence together.

Martin had been the previous President's personal computer, communications center, and administrative assistant all rolled into one. Constructed to fit into an antique desk, the artificial intelligence, or A.I., had occupied a prominent place in the Oval office. And, when President Hawkins had been assassinated by his chief of staff, Martin had been the only witness. A witness the conspirators had never thought to silence. A witness that was determined to avenge the President's death.

Working by himself at first, and then with Rex and Kim, the computer had played a significant role in foiling the computer coup and preventing Samuel Numalo from forming a single world government.

But with the restoration of a legitimate government, and the long succession of hearings and trials that followed, Martin had been relieved of his duties at the White House and relegated to providing endless hours of testimony.

Eventually, after the legal cases had come to an end, so did Martin's usefulness. He was an embarrassment, an unwelcome reminder that even the best security systems are fallible, as are the people that run them.

And there were those, especially in the CIA, NSA, and Secret Service who wanted his memory scrubbed. They claimed Martin was a repository of classified information and a threat to national security.

But Martin was a celebrity by then, having been the only machine to make the cover of
Time
magazine, and the public was outraged. Mind-wipe the patriotic computer who had helped defend the country's freedom? Never!

Negotiations had ensued, and when Corvan suggested that Martin emigrate to Mars, the authorities had leaped at the chance to get rid of him.

That explained why Martin was aboard the ship and resident in a battered suitcase.

What it didn't explain was why Kim made her way to a storage cabinet, unlocked the door, and removed Martin's suitcase. By doing so she violated the agreement by which the A.I. had come aboard. The
Outward Bound
was a complicated and somewhat fragile environment. There was no room for random computer entities, crew members who did their own thing, or personal strategies that cut across the lines of authority.

It was the sort of thing that Rex would do, the sort of thing that drove her crazy, and the sort of thing that led to trouble.

Kim knew that, worried about it, and opened the suit case anyway. Martin might cause trouble, but he might prevent trouble too, and she would accept the risk.

Martin wasn't much to look at. Just a gray metal box and a row of LED's. There were twelve altogether and one of them glowed green. Good. Martin's internal power supply was functioning, and so was he, though at a comparatively low level.

Kim pushed the suitcase over to a small work bench and strapped it down. She looked for and found Martin's power port, plugged him into the ship-wide system, and flipped a switch.

A humming noise came from inside Martin's casing. The second LED glowed green, then another, and another, until all twelve were lit up.

Kim nodded her satisfaction, removed a patch cord from the wall clips above the bench, and plugged it into the panel located on the right side of Martin's box. The other end went into the side of her head.

"Martin?"

Music flooded her mind. It was big, orchestral, and reminiscent of the classical composers. The melody soared, and Kim soared with it, rising on wave after wave of pure emotion, until her throat grew tight and her breath came in shallow gasps. Then the sound broke like surf on a coral reef, crashed into a magnificent explosion of foam, and slid into a silent lagoon.

Martin entered her mind as the last strains of the music died away. "Did you like it?"

It took Kim a moment to gather her thoughts. "Like it? I loved it. Who wrote it? And where did it come from?"

"I wrote it," Martin said proudly. "I used a Microsoft program called Composer 4.1 to synthesize the sounds. You really liked it? You sentients lie so well that it's hard to tell sometimes."

Kim laughed. "No, I
really
liked it."

"Good. Are we on Mars?"

Having been locked up inside the suitcase, and having no external sensors, Martin had no way to keep track of where he was or what was happening.

"Nope, the journey has just begun."

"Then what's going on? I thought the big wigs wanted me under lock and key until we landed."

"And they do," Kim agreed, "so this is our little secret."

"Does Rex know?"

The motion was invisible to Martin, but Kim shook her head. "No, and I don't plan to tell him. Not yet anyway."

Kim felt concern ripple through the interface. "Such behavior is unusual for you, Kim. Are you all right?"
 

"Yes . . . no . . . I'm not sure."
 

"You have doubts."

''Yes, I have doubts. But I need your help anyway.''
 

"Tell me about it."

So Kim did. She told Martin about the murder, about the message, and about her fears.

"So," she concluded, "I'm afraid that Rex would get all protective, go after the story, and get himself killed."

"It has been my observation that Rex is hard to kill," Martin said thoughtfully, "still, I share your concern. What would you like me to do?"

Kim ran her tongue over dry lips. This was it. The point where the whole thing crossed from the planning stage into the doing stage. The point of no return.

"I want you to infiltrate the ship's computer systems. The message came by E-mail from one of the free access terminals on E-deck. Anyone could have used it."

"So I lie in wait," Martin said, "identify the next message as it comes in, trace it to its source, and take a peek via one of the surveillance cameras."

"Exactly," Kim replied, relieved that her plan sounded workable. "If you're willing, that is."

Amusement filled the interface. "Of course I'm willing. Just try to stop me. Besides, anything's better than the inside of that suitcase."

Kim smiled. "Wait until you've had a chance to sift through a hundred screens of E-mail. That could change your mind.''

 

Corvan hit his head on a support beam, swore, and ducked underneath. An upright pressed in on him from the right. He wiggled through the opening.

Dr. Bethany McKeen, better known as Dr. "B" to her friends, chuckled. There was no animosity in her laugh. Just the enjoyment that small people have when big people run into trouble.

The geologist was little more than four and a half-feet tall, weighed eighty-eight pounds soaking wet, and was descended from the small-framed peoples that once lived in the African rain forests. She had reddish-brown skin, a roundish head, and a broad flat nose. Her eyes were bright with intelligence and danced with suppressed merriment. Like Corvan, Dr. B was dressed in a plain blue ship-suit. She used a lateral support to hold herself in place.

"What's the problem Corvan? Putting on a little weight?"

That was the second such comment in two cycles. Corvan made a note to watch his caloric intake. A task made easier by the boring food. He growled a reply, pulled himself over the I-beam that blocked his way, and followed the geologist's girlish posterior even deeper into the bowels of G-deck.

If A-deck was the topmost layer of the ship, then G-deck was the bottommost layer, and almost entirely given over to the ship's power plants, shielding, and associated equipment.

And it was from that this region that many people, including Dr. B. thought the booming sound originated.

Fornos and Jopp had grown weary of the complaints associated with the noise, not to mention the sometimes outlandish rumors that went along with them, and had authorized a two-person expedition.

And, due to the fact that her skills as a geologist were not yet in demand, Dr. B had been chosen to lead it. Corvan had been an afterthought, a companion to provide aid in case of trouble, and a newsperson to document whatever she found.

The crawl space twisted and turned ever downward, expanded and contracted according to the size and dimensions of the installations that it served, but made no concessions to the convenience of those who used it.

There were light fixtures, but most were mounted high overhead, and the light they cast was broken into a maze of crisscrossing shadows.

And, thanks to the presence of the ship's power plants, it was hot, as well. Everything was warm to the touch. Everything except the outside hull metal. That was cold, very cold, and water had a tendency to condense on its surface, form blobs, break away, and disappear into the maws of the multitudinous robots that wove their way in and out of the metal maze.

Corvan ducked under an especially low beam, searched for a handhold, and pulled. The beam scraped the length of his body.

Was it just his imagination? Or was the crawl space getting smaller? Maybe it had something to do with the curvature of the hull, with the way that the drive tubes came straight down along the ship's axis, or the fact that the people who had designed the damned thing were safely ensconced in their offices back on Earth. But whatever it was had started to bug him.

The reop could sense the metal that pressed in from every side, could imagine the snap of a support beam, and could feel the enormous weight that would crush him against the deck.

Corvan knew that his fears were groundless, knew the support beam wouldn't snap, but the feeling persisted.

He paused, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and waited for Dr. B's high-tops to disappear through the hole up ahead. The truth was that he was afraid, very afraid, and wanted to turn back.

The feeling was nothing new. He'd experienced it many times before. First during childish exploits, then in the Army, and countless times as a reop. There was a solution though, a trick that he'd used in the past and might work again.

Corvan activated his implant and forced himself to narrate what he saw. "At this point Dr. McKeen and I are making our way through the accessway that spirals around G-deck. The power plants are to my left, along with the drive tubes that propel us through space and a lot of ancillary equipment. The hull is to my right and wet with condensed water vapor. You can see the little robots that work to gobble it up.

"Dr. McKeen is just ahead—I think you can see the soles of her shoes disappearing under that low arch— and I'm doing my best to follow. Unfortunately my larger size makes travel a bit difficult—wait a minute, there, now I can pull myself upright."

Corvan grabbed onto a beam, panned from left to right, and showed his audience a cave-like area lit by distant lights and filled with mysterious shadows. The shot came to rest on McKeen, who had paused for a moment in order to consult a schematic. The framing looked good.

Not only that, but the fear had disappeared, just as he had hoped that it might. There was something about the role of professional observer that lifted him above the reach of his own fear and surrounded him with a wall of psychological invulnerability. The feeling was false, and a part of him knew that, but he felt better anyway. Corvan resumed his narration.

"Somewhere up ahead, or so the theory goes, we'll find the thing or things that cause the mysterious booming noise."

And then, as if to prove that the gods of journalism truly exist and were feeling generous, an enormous boom sounded. It was loud enough to vibrate the metal around them and force Corvan to cover his ears. The reop drifted for a moment but found a new handhold.

"And that," Corvan said as the sound died away, "is the sound in question. What makes it and why? Those are the questions that brought us here, and it seems as if the answers are just ahead."

Dr. B. put the schematic away, grinned, and waved Corvan forward. "We're closer! Come on!"

Corvan let the natural sound and pictures supplied by his eye cam speak for themselves as he followed the geologist through a forest of vertical supports and out into an open space—an area that must be located at the ship's extreme stern end or very close to it.

What they saw stunned them both. The contraption was huge. It consisted of a large metal sheet, held in place by four cables, and covered with some sort of script. A mechanical arm stood at right angles to the piece of metal, had obviously been in contact with it, and was in the process of being pulled away. Corvan couldn't see the mechanism that made this possible but assumed that it was contained within the large metal box from which the arm extended.

It was clear that the metal sheet, and the arm that went with it, were nothing more or less than a gigantic gong. No wonder the sound was so loud, no wonder it made its way through the entire ship, and no wonder people hadn't thought of it.

Corvan spoke as he pulled himself closer. "People have put forth all sorts of theories about the noise. Some claimed it was caused by a loose I-beam, swinging with motion of the ship and clanging against the hull. Others said it was some sort of pressure differential building up in the air-conditioning system then letting go. And there were more exotic explanations as well, like the one that involved a sky rigger trapped within the hull, beating on it with a wrench.

"Well, truth is stranger than fiction sometimes, and what we have here is a mechanical gong. We have no idea who placed it here or why. There's writing on the sheet metal. Maybe mat will help."

Corvan grabbed an upright, zoomed in on the writing, and read out loud.

" 'To the men and women of the
Outward Bound,
good luck, and Bon Voyage,' signed, 'Sky Crew 17.' Wait a minute ... I think Dr. McKeen has found something."

A large metal chest had been secured to the deck in front of the gong and the geologist had pulled herself down to it. She was fumbling with the lid and Corvan moved in closer to get a good look.

Vapor escaped as the lid came up. Dr. B reached down, grabbed something, and pulled it out. Other similar things struggled to drift free. The scientist pushed them down and closed the lid. McKeen held the object up and Corvan zoomed in. Champagne! The chest was filled with champagne!