Authors: Gregory Benford
—I’ll put it close, be sure.—
“No contact, just leave it—”
Killeen’s ears screamed the horrible sound of circuit ringing—a long high oscillating twang as a load of electrical energy
bled off into space, acting as an involuntary antenna as raw power surged through it.
“Gianini! Gianini! Answer!”
Nothing. The ringing wail steepled down into low frequencies, an ebbing, mournful song—and was gone.
“Cermo! Suit trace!”
—Getting nothing.—Cermo’s voice was firm and even and had the feel of being held that way no matter what.
“Damn—the mainmind.”
—Figure it was on a trigger mine?—
“Must’ve.”
—Still nothing.—
“Damn!”
—Maybe the burst just knocked out her comm.—
“Let’s hope. Send the backup.”
Cermo ordered a crewman out to recon the mech vehicle. But the man found Gianini floating away from the wrecked
craft, her systems blown, her body already cold and stiff in the unforgiving vacuum.
Killeen walked stiffly down the ceramo-corridors of the
Argo
, his face as unyielding as the walls. The operation against the mech was a success, in the sense that a plausible threat
to the ship was removed. They had detonated the charge Gianini had left behind on the mech, and it had blown the vehicle into
a dozen pieces.
But in fact it had been no true danger, and Killeen had lost a crewwoman discovering that fact.
As he replayed their conversation in his mind he was sure he could have said or done nothing more, but the result was the
same—a second’s carelessness, some pointless close approach to the mainmind of the vehicle, had fried Gianini. And had lessened
Family Bishop that much more, by one irreplaceable individual.
Numbering fewer than two hundred, they were perilously close to the minimum range of genotypes which a colony needed. Any
fewer, and future generations would spiral downward, weighed by genetic deficiencies.
This much Killeen knew, without understanding even a smattering of the underlying science.
Argo’
s computers held what they called “DNA database operations.” There was a lab for biowork. But Family Bishop had no Aspects
who knew how to prune genes. Basic bioengineering was of marginal use. He had no time and even less inclination to make more
of such issues.
But Gianini, lost Gianini—he could not so brusquely dismiss her memory by seeing her as simply a valuable carrier of genetic
information. She had been vibrant, hardworking, able—and now she was nothing. She had been chipstored a year ago, so her abilities
survived as a spectral legacy. But her ghostly Aspect might not be revived for centuries.
Killeen would not forget her. He could not.
As he marched stiffly to his daily rounds—delayed by the assault—he forced the somber thoughts away from him. There was time
for that later.
You are acting wisely. A commander can feel remorse and can question his own orders—but he should never be seen to be doing
that by his crew
.
Killeen gritted his teeth. A sour bile settled in his mouth and would not go away.
His Ling Aspect was a good guide in all this, but he still disliked the calm, sure way the ancient Cap’n laid out the precepts
of leadership. The world was more complex, more darkly crosscurrented, than Ling ever allowed.
You assume too much. I knew all the tides that sweep you, when I was clothed in flesh. But they are often hindrances, not
helps
.
“I’ll keep my ‘hindrances,’ little Aspect!”
Killeen pushed Ling away. He had a role to fulfill now and the small chorus of microminds that he felt calling to him could
be of no help. He had followed Ling’s advice and decided to continue with the regular ship’s day, despite the drama of the
assault. Returning to ordinary routine, as
though such events were within the normal course of a ship’s life, would help settle the crew.
So he had told Cermo to carry on as planned. Only now did he realize what that implied.
Killeen rounded a corner and walked toward the open bay where the crew of the morning’s watch waited. Halfway there Cermo
greeted him with, “Punishment hour, sir?”
Killeen stopped himself from clenching his jaws and nodded, recalling the offense from yesterday.
Cermo had caught a crewwoman in the engine module. Without conferring with his Cap’n, Cermo had hauled her—a stringy, black-haired
woman named Radanan—unceremoniously out into the lifezone, barking out his relish at the catch. The deed was publicly exposed
before Killeen had a chance to find other means to deal with it. He had been forced to support his officer in the name of
discipline; his Ling Aspect had drilled that principle into him.
“Yeasay. Proceed.”
“Could give her more, y’know.”
“I said proceed.”
He had firmly resolved to speak as little as possible to his officers during ordinary ship operations. He was like a drinker
who could not trust himself to stick to moderate amounts. In Family meetings he gave himself a little leeway, though. There,
eloquence and even outright oration served his ends. He knew he was not very good at talk, and the briefer he was the more
effect it had. As
Argo
had approached this star system he had gotten more and more terse. There were days when most of the crew heard him say only
a short “ah-mmm” as he pointedly cleared his throat at some demonstrated inadequacy.
As they made their way to the central axis Killeen set his face like stone. He was ashamed of his aversion to watching punishment.
He knew that to punish a crewmember was a
sign of his own failure. He should have caught the slide in behavior before it got this far. But once the event had occurred
there was no turning back.
In this case, Radanan had been trying to sneak into the thrumming dangers of the engine zone as they decelerated. This alone
would have been a mild though flagrantly stupid transgression. But when Cermo caught her she had bristled, bitterly angry,
and had called on some friends nearby, trying to provoke a minor mutiny.
A wise Captain hands out rougher justice than this
.
His Ling Aspect offered this without being summoned. “She just screamed and swore some, is all,” Killeen subvocalized. “And
was stupid enough to take a poke at Cermo.”
Mutiny is a capital offense
.
“Not on the
Argo
.”
She’ll incite others, harbor resentment—
“She was looking for food, just a minor—”
You’ll lose control if—
Killeen damped the Aspect’s self-righteous bark into silence.
Evidently Radanan had been looking for a way to scavenge something extra, though Killeen could not imagine what she thought
she might find. Usually, crew were caught pilfering food, an outcome of the strict rationing Killeen had imposed for a year
now.
The watch crew stood a little straighter as Killeen came
into the area. Radanan was at the center of a large circle, since this was both a shipboard matter and a Family reproach.
She looked down dejectedly. Her eyes seemed to have accepted already the implications of the cuffs around her wrists that
held her firmly to a mooring line.
Cermo barked out the judgment. Two crewmen stood ready to hold Radanan at the elbows in case she should jerk away from the
punishment. She bleakly watched as Cermo brought out the short, gleaming rod.
Killeen made himself not grit his teeth. He had to enforce his own rules or else nothing he said would be believed. And he
did blame himself. The woman was not overly bright. She had originally been a member of Family Rook.
By tribal consent, all those who had chosen to set off in the
Argo
had realigned, so that they constituted a new Family composed of the Bishops, Rooks, and Kings. They had elected to term
it Family Bishop still, and Killeen had never been sure whether this was a tribute to him, a Bishop, or a simple convenience.
At any rate, as he watched the hard rod come down upon Radanan’s buttocks, he thought it seemed unlikely that a woman small-minded
enough to venture into dangerous territory in search of an oddment would benefit from so crude a tactic as flogging. But tradition
was tradition. They had precious little else to guide them in this vast darkness.
A dozen cuts of the rod as Family punishment, each one counted out by a midshipman. And as ship’s punishment, twelve more.
Radanan held herself rigid for the first six and then began to jerk, gasps bursting out from behind clenched teeth. Killeen
thought he would have to turn away but he made himself think of something, anything, while Cermo ran the count to twenty.
Then she collapsed to the deck.
“Belay that!” Killeen said sharply, and the awful business
was over. She had stumbled so that she hung by her wrists. That took matters beyond anything he would tolerate and gave him
grounds to call it off four strokes short.
He struggled for something to say. “Ah-mmm. Very well, Lieutenant Cermo. On to the day’s orders, then.”
Killeen turned and left quickly, hoping that no one noticed that he was sweating.
He made his way in a sour temper through the slick corridors connecting the life vault with the central axis spiral. His anger
with himself could find no clear expression. He knew he should have become hardened to the necessity of imposing punishment.
Barring that, he should have been clever enough to find a way around the situation that Cermo’s quick action had forced on
him.
A whiff of sewage wrinkled his nose. He hastened past. All of third deck was sealed off. Even so, some sludge had leaked into
ventilation shafts here, and crew somehow never got it all cleaned out. The problem had started a year ago with clogged toilets.
Attempts at repair damaged the valves and servos. The waste had spread through the third deck until work details gagged, fainted,
and refused to go in. Killeen had been forced to seal the deck, losing bunking quarters and shops.
He irritably demanded of his Ling Aspect, “You’re
sure
you can’t remember any more about pipes and such?”
Ling’s reply was stony:
No. I have informed you often enough that I was brought up through the combat ranks, not the engineers. If you had not let
ignorant crew tinker with the problem—
“I got no engineers know ’bout that, in chip or living. You savvy so much, why can’t—”
If you’ll read the ship’s flow diagram—
“Can’t! They’re too ’plexified. It’s like tellin’ what a woman thinks by studyin’ every hair on her head.”
Even a ship like this, though far advanced beyond some I commanded, requires intelligence to run. If you’ll institute the
study sessions I recommended long ago—
Make Family sit and decipher for weeks?” Killeen laughed dryly. “You saw how far I got with that.”
Your people are unlike anyone I ever commanded, I’ll grant that. You are from a society that scavenged and stole for a living—
“Won battles ’gainst the mechs, you mean. The food and ’quipment we got was war booty.”
Call it what you will. Such training is a far cry from the discipline and skill needed to fix even a broken sewer connection.
Still, with time and proper training—
Killeen piped the Ling Aspect back down again; he had heard all this before. Ling knew of the Chandelier Age, when humans
had great cities in space. Cap’ns had made year-long voyages between Chandeliers, braving the increasing mech raids. Ling
himself had functioned then as a full interactive Personality. The Family could no longer maintain Personalities, so Ling
was available only as the lesser, truncated projection—an Aspect.
Ling invariably recommended the strict discipline necessary in the Chandelier Age. Superimposed on that, though, was an older
theme. The original, living Ling had come from the fabled Great Times, or possibly even beyond. The Aspect’s memory flattened
time distinctions, so it was hard to tell which facet of Ling was speaking. The sensation of having at the back of his head
a voice from an unimaginably grand past, when humans had lived free of mech dominance, made Killeen uneasy. He felt absurd,
maintaining the persona of a confident Cap’n when he sensed the supremely greater power of lost ages.
As he climbed up the axis, saluting crew as he passed, he was uncomfortably aware of the scuffs and dings the walls had suffered.
Here a yellow stain covered a hatchway. There someone had tried to cut away a chunk of hardboard and had given up halfway
through, leaving a ragged sawtooth slash. Random chunks of old servos and electronics packages had been chucked aside and
left, once they proved useless for whatever impulse had made crew yank them out of some locker.
Argo’
s systems could handle nearly any threat, but not the insidious barrage of ignorance that Family Bishop served up. Their lifelong
habits told them to strip away and carve up, haul off and make do, confident that mech civilizations would unthinkingly replenish
everything. Scarcely the talents appropriate to a starship crew. It had taken
Killeen quite a while, and some severe public whippings, to get them to stop trying to harvest random gaudy bits from the
ship’s operating parts.
He would have to order a general cleanup again. Once clutter accumulated, crew slid back into their old habits. The last week,
distracted by the mech escort, he had let matters slide by.
Breakfast was waiting in his cramped quarters. He slurped a hot broth of savory vegetables and gnawed at a tough grain cube.
The day’s schedule shimmered on the tabletop, a 3D graphic display of tasks to be done about the ship.
He did not know how this was done, nor did he care to learn. These last years had so saturated him with the Byzantine lore
of the
Argo
that he was content to master what he had to, and leave much else to the crew. Shibo had ferreted out this particular nicety;
she had an unerring instinct for the ship’s control systems. He wished she were here to share breakfast, but she was on watch
already at the helm.