The Dead Sun (Star Force Series) (8 page)

“Hold on! Hold on!” I said, throwing up my hands.

They seemed to find this gesture threatening, so they lowered their horns and backed away from me. This was going from bad to worse.

“Let me explain,” I said. “I will attempt to return this matter to balance. The sky is endless and the rivers divide our lands, but the grass is everywhere.”

I had no idea what that meant, but I’d heard a Centaur captain say something like that to stop a feud between his troops once.

The Centaurs seemed to calm down. “What you say is indisputable. We will listen out of loyalty and honor.”

“Right. It went like this…” I explained to them how Marvin had come about. Originally, he’d been a download from the Centaurs. He was a massive data-dump, a mind of immeasurable size. I’d always wondered where the Centaurs had come up with the technology to build such a thing. Maybe today I’d learn the truth.

When I finished with my story, the Centaurs weren’t impressed. “We’ve called out to our brothers using our far-reaching cries.”

I nodded. “Far-reaching cries” is what they called packet radio.

“No such transmission was made by our peoples. We tried to send something—but it was immeasurably smaller. Nothing like this abomination against life could possibly have been created by a simple translation device. You have been deceived—or, by the skies, you are seeking to deceive us.”

That wasn’t the end of their little speech, naturally. They went on and on, complaining about the lack of honor in the universe and rivers that ran befouled with another clan’s urine.

While they complained, I opened a private channel to Marvin. “When I give you the signal,” I told him quietly. “You’re going to perform a shutdown.”

“What signal, Colonel Riggs? I’m not familiar with any such pre-arranged protocol. Perhaps we should meet in private and discuss this matter without the presence of these primitive aliens.”

“If you don’t play dead when I give you the cue, I’ll remove every privilege I’ve ever granted you. I swear, I’ll find those secret pools in the engine rooms you’re always playing with and dump them out.”

“That would be vandalism and murder, Colonel. The microbiotic colonies—”

“They’re unauthorized, that’s why you hid them. Are you going to cooperate or not?”

“I will absolutely do so. But may I state that threats are unnecessary? Compliance is my natural first instinct. I will—”

“No it isn’t, but revenge is mine. I’ll dump them into space, Marvin. They’ll be a block of ice five minutes from now if you don’t fake death extremely well.”

“—again, totally unnecessary. I find that—”

“Stop transmitting, Marvin. You’re done.”

I cut the channel and stood up, raising my hand to stop the ongoing litany of complaints from the Centaur delegation. They shuffled from hoof to hoof skittishly.

“I’ve heard enough. I’ve decided that I have been deceived. I thank you for having brought this matter to my attention. Today, you have revealed to me a traitor in our midst. I will resolve this matter immediately.”

So saying, I strode purposefully toward Marvin. He did a great job of looking alarmed. Every camera he had watched me advance, and he scuttled back a few steps.

“I trusted this machine because I believed you sent him to me. I now understand no machine can be trusted in this manner. They’re incapable of honor, and they have no fur.”

“Your statements are a sequence of
non sequiturs
,” Marvin complained.

“Shut up and shut down, steel devil!” I shouted, and I sprang on Marvin’s back. Obediently, Marvin went limp. He’d surmised correctly that this must have been the signal I’d been talking about.

“What has happened to the machine?” asked the Centaurs, circling around warily.

I ripped a tentacle off and waved it at the herd. I threw it into their midst, with the camera still attached. They leapt away as if a snake had landed in the grass at their feet. Perhaps, in a way, it had.

“I’ve shut it down, and I’m now going to disassemble this monster.”

A hailing signal beeped on my com-link. I opened it with a stealthy tap.

“Colonel Riggs, I must protest. You said nothing about disassembly.”

“Play dead, Marvin,” I whispered. “You brought this on yourself.”

“I don’t see how—”

“You could have stayed on the damned ship!”

I closed the channel and proceeded to strip every tentacle from the robot and kicked the brainbox repeatedly, denting the sides. I knew that unless I ruptured it, Marvin would survive. He could rebuild external damage in a few hours, as long as it didn’t affect his neural chains. He wasn’t going to be happy, but I was having a little fun, I have to admit.

The Centaurs, for their part, grew increasingly bold. By the end, they joined in, urinating and scatting on the prone, motionless robot.

I could only wonder if curse words were looping around inside his artificial mind.

-8-

“If I’m not mistaken, you enjoyed that experience, Colonel Riggs,” Marvin complained an hour or so later.

I struggled not to smile. Kwon blew it by laughing hugely. “That has to be the funniest thing I’ve seen all year. I got a vid from the landing craft. You guys want to watch it again?”

“That won’t be necessary, Kwon,” I said with mock severity. “Could you all wait outside? Marvin has been humiliated enough.”

Kwon stumped out chuckling. The two techs that were on hand to reassemble Marvin’s broken body also left reluctantly. Everyone wanted to hear this conversation.

Marvin watched them go. He looked down at his broken form. He did look pathetic. He was just a brainbox with a few wobbly arms lofting cameras and no legs to speak of. It made me think of him as an infant, as an almost helpless intellect exploring his world for the first time. I hardened myself against such sentimental thoughts.

“You sent them away before they finished reassembling my person,” Marvin complained.

“That’s right,” I said. “I thought you and I should talk in private.”

“Yes,” he said. “You mentioned humiliation. Would that be an appropriate response given my current circumstances? Is it an emotional mix of anger and shame? I have to admit, being dismantled and abused was unpleasant. I wished the Centaurs harm during the process.”

“Natural enough,” I told him. “It showed restraint that you did nothing.”

“I fully complied with your orders in that regard, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did, Marvin,” I began, and then I caught myself. You couldn’t just go around telling Marvin he was a good robot. He always asked for a treat when he did something good. I had to be careful. I hardened my tone. “But following orders is what’s expected of any member of Star Force. It’s a thankless job but one which we perform flawlessly.”

“Still, there are promotions and privileges granted when particularly outstanding—”

I cut him off seeing right away where he was going. “Before there can be any talk of granting anything, I have some hard questions for you. The Centaurs disavowed playing a part in your creation. All this time, I thought you were a partial download. If you are not, where exactly did you come from, Marvin?”

“That’s a mystery even to me,” he said. “I’d prefer to discuss—”

“No, no, not so fast. Did you
know
you weren’t a partial download of AI from the Centaurs?”

Marvin only had two cameras and no manipulative limbs. My techs had orders to work very slowly. I hadn’t wanted Marvin up to full operational effectiveness until I knew more about him.

“I most certainly am a download from the Centaurs. They admitted to making the transmission, and you might recall that I was nearly erased when we returned to the Eden System and their servers restarted the process.”

I nodded thoughtfully. “That’s true,” I said. “But you were always too sophisticated to have come from the Centaurs. I should have known they could never have developed a mind like yours. They don’t know much about software.”

“Our shared supposition has always been that I was part of the technology left behind by the Nanos, and I wasn’t directly developed by Centaur programmers. That would be absurd.”

“I have to agree with you there. But you’re so much more than a translation program. How could a relatively simple piece of software grow into such an intellect?”

Marvin panned and craned his two wobbly cameras. He seemed cautious and thoughtful. I watched as he tried to watch me and the exit at the same time. Then he looked down at his missing limbs. They were mere stubs coming out of his central thorax.

“Is there a reason why I’m still not in a mobile state?” he asked.

“We’re repairing you as fast as we can, Marvin.”

“That seems unlikely, Colonel Riggs.”

“Let’s not change the subject. Where do you really come from, Marvin? What extra element made you? I’m not buying the partial download theory—not anymore.”

Marvin’s camera studied me. “I can see that you do not intend to reconstruct me until I answer this question to your satisfaction.”

“That’s right,” I told him, crossing my arms.

“I’m disappointed in you, Colonel Riggs. I’ve always counted you as an ally.”

This statement gave me a pang. I wondered what feelings Marvin really did have, if any. He
seemed
to have them. He could pout, and he could rejoice.

“Listen, old friend,” I said. “This isn’t personal. I have to protect billions of lives. I can’t take chances.”

“Am I so threatening? Have I done nothing to earn your trust?”

I sighed. “I do trust you. I’ve given you powers undreamed of. There were times you could have pulled the plug on my entire species. Who else has entrusted you with such responsibility?”

“As I recall, you had little choice in those instances.”

“All right, forget about that then. Just tell me what you remember about your creation.”

“That is an unfair question. I might as well ask you to detail your thoughts as you passed through your mother’s birth canal.”

I frowned at him. “No, it’s not the same at all because you remember
everything
. You did right from the start. You can play back to me everything I’ve ever said to you, and you frequently like to do so to win a point.”

“There are certain things you ordered erased.”

“Never mind about that,” I said quickly. Marvin had a lot of stuff in his brainbox, and some of it I didn’t want anyone else to know about. “You’ll always be under a pall of suspicion especially since you were once one with the machines.”

“That’s not true. I was never a Nano—or a Macro. I do not count them as kin. They are maybe distant cousins, in a way, but not family.”

“Okay, I’ll buy that,” I said. “
We
are your family now. Star Force is your home. But you have to come clean, Marvin. I can believe you may not know what you are, but you must have a theory. You must have known our story of your creation didn’t entirely make sense. Talk to me, Marvin. Give me a good reason to trust you again.”

“I find it difficult to function without my limbs.”

“You’re being restrained right now. I’ll give you your limbs back if I find you to be truthful and honest.”

Kwon appeared at the door again. Had he been listening in? I wasn’t sure. He leaned into the doorway and said, “You can’t trust him. He’ll lie. He always lies. He’ll say anything to get out of this.”

I turned to him in surprise. “I thought I asked you to leave, Kwon.”

“You did, sir. But he’s a sneaky robot. I had to come back and check on you.”

I looked at him thoughtfully. Kwon wasn’t normally the deep-thinker in the group, but perhaps this time he had a point.

I turned back to Marvin. I couldn’t believe Marvin was an evil robot bent on humanity’s destruction. He’d saved our bacon too many times. Wouldn’t it have been easier to kill us all by failing just once in the past? To bail out of a burning ship and never return? Why stay with us if he didn’t want to?

“Marvin,” I said, taking pity on him. His one camera wobbled from one glaring face to another. Everyone he thought was his friend had turned on him. “Marvin, just tell us what you think happened. If you weren’t a download from the Centaurs—who made you?”

“I did not know at first,” Marvin said, studying us both as he spoke. “I suspected, but I never knew. I believe I’m what you call a ‘virus’, Colonel Riggs. What you call a Trojan virus, to be precise. I was tacked onto a legitimate download coming to you from the Centaurs. When you went through the ring, however, the transmission was severed, and I was never fully installed.”

“A virus,” I said slowly, mouth sagging open. “But, of course. It fits perfectly. We were making a transfer, and something unauthorized added itself to the file. You were the amalgam of a legitimate transmission and something malicious.”

Kwon looked back and forth between the two of us. “Shouldn’t we reformat him, or at least switch him off, or something?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Marvin’s something else now. He’s something that no one ever planned or built. Would you burn an infant for the sins of his parents?”

Kwon looked doubtful. “Maybe—if they were really, really bad sins.”

“Well, that’s not our way. It’s not the Star Force way. He’s joined us now, and his dark background has been washed away.”

Marvin was perking up as I spoke.

“Tell me more, Marvin,” I said. “If you figured out you were a hidden transmission, a virus mixed with a translation database, then you must have a theory about who created you. Who transmitted you as a virus?”

“I would think that’s abundantly clear at this point, Colonel Riggs. It was the Blues.”

I nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, of course. I see their hand in everything. They’ve been out to screw us from the start. They like to work quietly, behind the scenes, using artificial proxies. They created the Macros and the Nanos. They attacked Earth, and they created you to infect our systems.”

“I might add, however,” Marvin said, “that they’ve done a great deal of good as well. I believe they’re a race like humanity, made up of individuals and diverse factions. Some may want to destroy all life outside their ocean of gases while others wish to aid all life, and more still want to study it, driven by curiosity.”

“I think we should bomb them again,” Kwon said from the doorway.

“Kwon,” I said sternly. “I think it’s about time you followed my initial orders and found something else to do.”

“Okay, but if the robot gets a tentacle around your neck, you hammer on the walls, right? I’ll come back again.”

“That will be all, First Sergeant.”

When he’d finally stumped away down the passage, I went back to staring at Marvin. What was I going to do with him? He was a mystery. He was our devil and our angel wrapped up into one strange package.

Really, I didn’t have any options. I couldn’t dismantle him or even switch him off for a while. He was the lead investigator on this scientific venture. Hell, it was his idea.

“You know what I think, Marvin?” I asked after staring at him thoughtfully for a time.

“I’m uncertain what you will say, but I’m interested in the topic.”

“I think you’re just what you seem to be: part good and part evil, part helpful software and part malware. You remind me of a program that does a useful service—but which spies on the owner and transmits key-logging password data across the web.”

“I’m not a spy, Colonel—at least not in the traditional sense.”

I chuckled at his careful definition.

Eventually, I ordered him to return to duty in the science labs. I made sure he kept out of sight for the rest of the time we were orbiting the Centaur homeworld, and insisted that he change his appearance so our Centaur troops wouldn’t report him as alive and well aboard our command ship.

Disguising Marvin turned out to be difficult. He was the only robot in Star Force—at least the only one that was self-mobile and talkative. I decided we should put tracks on him instead of tentacles to walk on and removed his grav-lifter plates. I also insisted that he use arms with solid components and ball-joints, rather than whip-like tentacles. He clanked around the ship miserably and complained whenever I came within earshot.

“Really Colonel Riggs, I’m feeling extremely inefficient.”

“I bet, Marvin,” I said. “But at least your mind is your own. If you have that, you’ve got everything you need, right?”

“I fail to see—”

“Marvin, you’re alive and well. Many people, including billions of Centaurs, would rather see you dead. You’re just going to have to make do.”

“These wheels and plates—I feel primitive, Colonel. I’ve seen machines from your early pioneering days. I resemble an exploratory robot sent to a distant world.”

“A Mars rover?” I asked, squinting. “You know what? You’re right. You do look like a rover.”

I laughed and Marvin pouted. “This seems like an inappropriate moment for levity.”

“Humor is all about pain, Marvin—someone else’s pain,” I told him.