Visible Light, page 6
He could take her apart and put her back together if need be, if amusement got more scarce.
If she worked at all now. The chance of failure still scared him.
"Anne," he said, "turn on the pseudosome."
The head slung over, faced him.
"Good morning, Warren."
"Are you functional? Test your legs. Get off the table."
Anne sat up, machine-stiff, precisely reversing her process of getting onto the table. She stood, arms at her sides.
"Go on," Warren said. "Go about your duties."
She stayed fixed.
"Why don't you go?"
"Instruction?"
He bounced a wrench off the lab wall so violently his shoulder ached. It rebounded to Anne's metal feet.
Whirr-click. Anne bent with long legs wide and retrieved the wrench, proffering it to him. "Assistance?"
"Damn you."
AH the sensor lights came on. "Define usage: damn."
He hit her. She compensated and stood perfectly balanced.
"Define: damn."
He sobbed for breath, stared at her, regained his patience. "The perception is outside your sensor range."
The sensor lights dimmed. She still held the wrench, having no human fatigue to make her lower it.
An idea came to him, like a flash of madness. He shoved the debris and bits of solder off the worktable and sat down with his notebook, feverishly writing definitions in terms Anne's sensors could read: tone volume, pace, stability, function/nonfunction/ optimum, positive/negative& "this program," Anne said to him through her bridge main speakers, "conflicts with the central program."
He sat down in the command chair, all his plans wrecked. "Explain conflict."
"I'm government property," the computer said. "Regulations forbid crew to divert me for personal use."
Warren bit his lip and thought a moment, chin on hand. Looked at the flickering lights. "I'm your highest priority. There aren't any other humans in your reach. Your program doesn't permit you to lift off, true?"
"Yes."
"You can't return to government zones, true?"
"Yes."
"There's no other crew functioning, true?"
"Yes."
"I'm your only human. There can't be any lateral conflict in your instructions if you accept the program. I need maintenance. If you refuse to maintain me, I have to disconnect you and restructure your whole system of priorities. I can do that."
The board flashed wildly. Went to red. A light to the left began to blink: autodestruct, autodestruct.
Autodestruct "I'm programmed to defend this position. I have prior instruction. Please check your programming Warren. I'm in conflict."
"Will you accept instruction? I'm your remaining crew. What I tell you is true."
The lights went steady, burning red. "Instruction? Instruction?"
"This new programming applies only to my protection and maintenance under present environmental conditions, while we're on this world. It's not a diversion from your defense function. I'm assisting you in your defense of this position. I'm your crew. I need maintenance. This new program is necessary for that purpose. My health is threatened. My life is threatened. This program is essential for my life and safety."
The red light went off. The lights rippled busily across the boards, normalcy restored. "Recorded."
Warren drew a long-held breath. "What's your status, Anne?"
"Indeterminate, Warren. I haven't yet completed assimilation of this new data. I perceive possible duplication of existing vocabulary. Is this valid?"
"This terminology is in reference to me. These are human life states. Maintenance of me is your duty."
"Negative possible, Warren. My sensors are effective in systems analysis only for myself."
He thought, mechanically speaking, that there was something rather profound in that. It was indeed Anne's central problem. He stood up, looked at the pseudosome, which stood inactive by the door. "Turn your sensors on me."
Anne faced him. The sensor lights came-on.
"Define: pain, Anne."
"Disruption of an organism," the pseudosome-speaker said, "by sensor overload. It is not an acceptable state."
He drew a deeper breath, came closer. "And what is pleasure, Anne?"
"Optimum function."
"Define: feel, Anne."
"Verb: receive sensor input other than visual, auditory, or chemical analysis. Noun: the quality of this input."
"Define: happy."
"Happy; content; pleased, comfortable; in a state of optimum function."
"And anger, Anne."
"An agitated state resulting from threatening and unpleasant outcome of action. This is a painful state."
"Your program is to maintain me happy. When your sensors indicate I'm in pain, you must investigate the causes and make all possible effort to restore me to optimum function. That's a permanent instruction."
The facial lights blinked, died, all but one. "Recorded."
He sighed.
The lights flashed on. "Is this pain?"
"No." He shook his head and began to laugh, which set all of Anne's board lights to flickering.
"Define, define."
He forced calm. "That's laughing. You've heard laughing before now."
A delay. "I find no record."
"But you heard it just then. Record it. That's pleasure, Anne."
Facelights blinked. There were six now. "Recorded."
He patted her metal shoulder. She swiveled her head to regard his hand. "Do you feel that, Anne?"
The face turned back to him. "Feel is in reference to humans."
"You can use the word. Do you feel that?"
"I feel a pressure of one point seven kilos. This does not affect my equilibrium."
He patted her arm gently then, sadly. "That's all right. I didn't think it would."
"Are you still happy, Warren?"
He hesitated, having a moment's queasiness, a moment's chill. "Yes," he said. It seemed wisest to say.
He stopped on a small rise not far from the ship and the pseudosome went rigid at his side. They stood knee-deep in grass. A few fleecy clouds drifted in the sky. The forest stretched green and lush before them.
"Do you perceive any animate life, Anne?"
"Negative native animate life."
"Is there any record of a world with vegetation of this sort, that had no animate life?"
"Negative. Further information: there is viral life here. This is not in my sensor range, but I have abundant data in my files regarding"
"Cancel statement. Maybe this world was inhabited by something once and the virus killed it."
"I have no data on that proposal."
"No animals. Burlin said it."
"Define: it."
"Cancel." Warren adjusted his pack on his shoulders, pointed ahead, a gesture Anne understood. "We'll walk as far as the river."
"Define: river."
"See where the treesthe large vegetation starts? There's water there. A river is a moving body of water on a planetary surface. You have maps in your files. You've got rivers on them. Why don't you know rivers?"
Anne's facial sensors winked. "Maps are in library storage. I don't have access to this data."
"Well, there's one there. A river."
"My sensors have recorded the presence of water in the original survey. Free water is abundant on this world."
Dutifully she kept pace with him, still talking as he started off, metal limbs tireless. He stopped from time to time, deviated this way and that, walked round the scattered few bushes, investigated bare spots in the grass, which proved only stony outcrops.
Nothing. Nothing, in all his searching.
"Assistance?" Anne asked when he stopped.
"No, Anne." He looked back at her, hesitant. "Do you, Anneever perceive& any other human?"
"Negative. You are my only human."
He bit his lip, nerved himself, finally. "When I was in beddid Sax ever come back?"
The sensors blinked. "I find no record."
He found that ambiguous, tried to think a new way through the question. He looked toward the river back again. "Has he ever come back?"
"I find no record."
Warren let go a small breath, shook his head. "He's not functioning. I'm sure of it."
"Recorded."
He hitched the pack, started walking again. "His body's out here somewhere."
"I find no record."
"I want to find him, Anne. Shouldn't have left him out here. He could have come back and needed me.
And I couldn't answer. I want to find him. I owe him that."
"Recorded."
They came to the trees finally, to shade, in the straightest line from the ship, which seemed most worth searching. Trees. A small slope of eroded sand down to the river, which flowed about fifty meters wide deep and sluggish. A stream, broad and brown.
He stopped, and Anne did. Drew a breath of the scented air, forgetful for the moment of Sax, of what had brought him. Here was beauty, unsuspected, a part of the world he had not seen from the ship secrets underwater and growing round it, trees that relieved the sameness and made evershifting lattices that compressed distances into their back-and-forth tangle. No straight lines here. No scour of wind.
Coolness. Complexity.
Life, perhaps, lurking in the river. One fish, one crawling thing, and the parameters of the world had to be revised. One fish& and it meant life everywhere.
"Stand where you are," he told Anne, starting down the bank. "I don't think swimming is in your program."
"Define: swimming. I find no record."
He laughed soundlessly, left her by the trees and walked through the pathless tangle to the shady bank.
Trees with trailing, moss-hung branches arched out over the sluggish current. Flowers bloomed, white and starlike, on the far margin, where the trees grew larger still and it was twilight at midafternoon. He squatted down by the water and looked into the shallows where the current swirled mosses.
Anne came to life, motors whirring. Brush cracked. He sprang up, saw her coming down the slope precariously balanced in the descent.
"StopAnne, stop."
Anne planted her feet at the bottom, waistdeep in brush, lights flashing. "Warren, danger."
Panic surged. He had brought no gun on this search. Did not trust himself. "Specifydanger."
"The river is dangerous."
The breath went out of him. He halfway laughed. "No, Verb: swim, to travel through water safely. I can swim, Anne. I'm safe. No danger."
"Please consider this carefully, Warren."
He grinned, took a vial from his sample kit and knelt, taking up a specimen of water. He had the whole of the labs to use; he had had the basics, and it was a project, something to do, something with promise, this time.
"I can't assist you in the water, Warren."
"I don't need assistance." He capped the vial and replaced it in the kit, wiped his fingers with a disinfectant towelette and stowed it. "I'll come back to you in a moment."
She made small whirring sounds, cameras busy.
He stood up, turned to face her, waved a hand toward the bank. "Turn your sensors over there, far focus will you? See if you can see anything."
"Vegetation. Trees."
"Yes." He put his hands into his pockets, stood staring into the forest a long time, watching the wind stir the leaves on the far bank.
So the world had a limit. Anne did. There. The ship had a raft, two of them; but curiosity was not worth the risk to the pseudosome. There were the other directionsflat and grassy; there was the land-crawler for crossing them.
But there was nothing in those distances but more grass and more distance.
He shrugged, half a shiver, and turned his back on the river and the forest, climbed back to Anne, pulled branches away from her silvery body and held them out of her way.
"Come on. Let's go home."
"Yes, Warren." She swiveled smartly and reoriented, cracking branches with each metal tread, followed him through the tangle until they had come out of the brush again, walking side by side toward the plain toward the ship.
No sign of Sax. It was useless. Sax would have drowned in the river if his fever had carried him this way; drowned and been swept out to some brush heap elsewhere. Or seaward.
"Anne, would you have followed me if I'd tried to cross the river?"
"Instruction directed me to stay. Program directs me to protect you."
"I love you, too, Annie, but don't ever take the risk. I could cross the river without danger. My body floats in water. Yours sinks. The mud would bog you down."
"Program directs me to protect you."
"You can't protect me if you're at the bottom of the river. You can't float. Do you understand float?"
"Verb: be buoyant, rise. Noun"
"Cancel. You stay away from that water, hear me?"
"I'm receiving you clearly, Warren."
"I order you to stay away from the river. If I go close, you stop and wait until I come back. You don't ever go into water. That's a permanent order."
"I perceive possible priority conflict."
"You have to preserve yourself to carry out your instruction to protect me. True?"
"Yes."
"Water can damage you. It can't damage me. If I choose to go there, I go. You stay away from the water."
A delay. "Recorded."
He frowned, hitched the pack up and looked askance at her, then cast another, longer look backward.
Build a bridge, perhaps? Make the other side accessible for Anne? The thought of going beyond her range made him uneasyif he should run into difficulty, need her There were the com units. The portable sensors.
He wanted to go over there, to know what was there. And not there.
The microscope turned up a variety of bacteria in the water. He sat in the lab, staring at the cavorting shapes, shaken by that tiny movement as if it had been the sight of birds or beasts. Something lived here and moved.
Such things, he recalled, could work all manner of difficulties in a human gut. He called up Library, went through the information gleaned of a dozen worlds. The comparisons might have told Sikutu something but he found it only bewildering. They might be photosynthesizing animalcules, or contractile plants.
Heat killed the specimens. He shoved the plate into the autoclave and felt like a murderer. He thought even of walking back to the river to pour the rest of the vial in. Life had become that precious. He nerved himself and boiled the restimagined tiny screams in the hissing of the bubbles. It left pale residue.
Two days he lay about, thinking, distracting himself from thought. He sat in Anne's observation dome at night, mapped the movements of the system's other worlds; by day, observed the sun through filters. But there were the charts they had made from space, and looking at the stars hurt too much. It was too much wishing. He stopped going there.
And then there was just the forest to think about. Only that left.
He gathered his gear, set Anne to fetching this and that. He unbolted a land-crawler from its braces serviced it, loaded it to the bay and loaded it with gear: inflatable raft, survival kit.
"Let it down," he told Anne. "Lower the cargo lift."
She came out afterward, bringing him what he had asked, standing there while he loaded the supplies on.
"Assistance?"
"Go back in. Seal the ship. Wait for me."
"My program is to protect you."
"The pseudosome stays here." He reached into the crawler, where the sensor remote unit sat, a black square box on the passenger seat. He turned it on. "That better?"
"The sensor unit is not adequate for defense."
"The pseudosome is not permitted to leave this area unless I call you. There's no animate life, no danger.
I'll be in contact. The unit is enough for me to call you if I need help. Obey instructions."
"Please reconsider this program."
"Obey instructions. If you damage that pseudosome, it's possible I won't be able to fix it, and then I won't have it when I need you. True?"
"Yes."
"Then stay here." He walked round, climbed into the driver's seat, started the engine. "Recorded?"
"Recorded."
He put it in gear and drove off through the grass looked back as he turned it toward the forest. She still stood there. He turned his attention to the rough ground ahead, fought the wheel.
A machine, after all. There were moments when he lost track of that.
The sensor unit light glowed. She was still beside him.
He dragged the raft down the sandy slope, unwieldy bundle, squatted there a moment to catch his breath on the riverside. The wind whispered in the leaves. No noise of motors. He felt the solitude. He saw details, rather than the sterile flatnesses of the ship, absorbed himself in the hush, the moving of the water.
He moved finally, unrolled the raft and pulled the inflation ring. It hissed, stiffened, spread itself.
Beep. Beep-beep-beep.
The sensor box. His heart sped. He scrambled up the sandy rise of the crawler and reached the box in the seat. "Anne. What's wrong?"
"Please state your location," the box asked him.
"Beside the river."
"This agrees with my location findings. Please reconsider your program, Warren."
"Anne, you keep that pseudosome where it is. I'll call you if I need you. And I don't need you. I'm all right and there's no danger."
"I picked up unidentified sound."
He let his breath go. "That was the raft inflating. I did it. There's no danger."
"Please reconsider your program."
"Anne, take instruction. Keep that pseudosome with the ship. I've got a small communicator with me.
The sensor box weighs too much for me to carry it with the other things I need. I'm going to leave it in the crawler. But I'm taking the communicator. I'll call you if there's an emergency or if I need assistance."
"Response time will be one hour seventeen minutes to reach your present location. This is* unacceptable."
"I tell you it is acceptable. I don't need your assistance."
"Your volume and pitch indicate anger."
"Yes, I'm angry."
"Be happy, Warren."
