*
For the second time that day, Bandicut awoke from a faint. It took him a few moments to focus his eyes on the icy ground and realize where he was—on Triton, on the surface. Not in a neurosim.
Of course it was not a neurosim. There were no more neurosims. There was no more neuro. He had been having a terrible nightmare, a dream-memory of something he desperately wanted to forget—the accident, the system malfunction that had fried his neuronal connectors beyond repair, had put him in the hands of incompetent company doctors, ended his piloting career, and left him with recurring silence-fugue. It made him tremble to remember it.
/// Forgive me.
It was . . . helpful . . . to me to see that. ///
/Aaa—!/ He gasped in shock at the voice inside his head. His heart pounded as he remembered who, or what, was speaking to him. An alien. A quarx.
/// Are you injured? ///
He sat up, clutching his helmet. He wanted desperately to rub at his forehead. He wanted to rub at that presence in his mind, peering out through his eyes, taking in the landscape with infuriating eagerness. /You! You’re still with me!/ he thought, almost numbly.
/// Yes, of course. ///
He shuddered. Yes, of course. The events of the last hour were slowly coming back to him. /What the hell just happened?/ He’d been trapped underground . . . before all those dreams.
/// We left the cavern. ///
/Yeah. I can see that./ Bandicut peered out toward the horizon and tilted his head back to look at the black Triton sky and the great blue crescent of Neptune. He felt the dreams begin to resurface momentarily, and he shook, waiting for the feeling to pass. He felt bruised and beaten and exhausted. Turning his head, he saw the grounded buggy. He remembered his fall, and thought that it seemed a hundred years ago . . . if indeed it had really happened.
/// It happened. ///
He grunted. At least he was breathing, and apparently unhurt from his fall . . .
If he didn’t count the presence of an alien in his mind.
He felt faint as he wondered, ridiculously, how he was going to report this back at base. Somehow that made him tremble again; there was something wrong in that thought.
He grunted again and got up to walk toward the buggy. Just over the horizon, he glimpsed a small recon robot scooting in his direction. It appeared that he had been located. /We aren’t going to have privacy for very much longer. Will you tell me how we got out of there?/ He watched the robot bob over a hillock and thought he recognized it.
/// How did it seem to you
that we got out? ///
/What the hell—if I knew, would I have asked? I’m sure I didn’t sprout wings and fly!/ He touched the buggy’s front fender. The solidity of it was oddly reassuring.
/// I didn’t intend . . . sarcasm.
I wondered about your perceptions.
Anyway, it was the translation device
that put us out here. ///
/Translation device?/ His memory flickered like a bad holo. Of course. He had found not just this alien being that was occupying his thoughts; he had found an intact artifact—an alien machine. How could he have forgotten? And the machine itself lay underground, in a cavern just beneath his feet. And as quickly as he thought that, he felt a sharp pang in his thoughts—and remembered when the quarx had stopped him from calling for help. /You’re not going to let me report this, are you?/
There was a nervous stirring in his thoughts.
/// I’m sorry. I wish I could.
But it’s just not . . . possible, yet. ///
/Not possible. Right./ He thought he sensed the quarx about to speak again, but there was only silence. He thought about prompting the alien to talk, to explain the secrecy—then decided to drop the subject for the moment. He’d look for his opening to tell someone, when the time was right.
He surveyed the area in front of the buggy, trying to find the spot where he had broken through the ice. There was no indication of any flaw in the surface.
/// You won’t find the break. ///
/No,/ he admitted. /So how’d your translator lift me out of there?/ He was starting to feel like a pawn, and he didn’t like it. It was one thing to be an agent of first contact; it was quite another to be a puppet on a string.
The alien seemed puzzled.
/// I won’t force you to do anything,
if that’s your concern. ///
/It’s one of my concerns,/ he answered curtly.
/// I hope to . . . reassure you.
And to answer your question:
we weren’t lifted.
We were translated . . . spatially.
Do you understand the concept at all? ///
He blinked, eyes unfocused.
/// Your Einsteinian relativity— ///
Bandicut interrupted, /You’re going to try to explain that by relativity?/
/// No, that’s what I . . .
it’s not covered by your relativity,
is what I meant.
In your terms, I’m not sure how to . . . ///
As the quarx’s words trailed off, Bandicut shook his head and scowled at the patch of ice where the hole had briefly existed. He was thinking about the coincidence of that weakness in the ice being there just long enough for him to fall through—then disappearing again. Grunting softly, he turned to see how difficult it would be to free his buggy from the sinkhole that had started this whole episode. He knelt to inspect the undercarriage, and found that the bubble-topped rover was no longer sunk in any sort of slush, but was in fact sitting on top of a nice, hard surface of ice.
He could almost have sworn that he heard the alien clearing its throat.
/// Um, yes—it did that, too. ///
Whatever he might have answered was driven from his thoughts by the bounding arrival, over a hummock, of the robot he had seen a few minutes earlier. It was a gangling but speedy machine, an all-purpose recon-assist unit. It moved like a cross between a grasshopper and a roadrunner.
Its synthesized voice rasped in his helmet comm. “Unit Echo—John Bandicut! Are you unharmed?”
“Suit—comm on,” Bandicut grunted. He felt resistance from within, and snapped, /I have to talk to it, damn it!/
/// Uh—okay.
But don’t tell it— ///
/Yeah, yeah, yeah./ He frowned, remembering that the robot was undoubtedly here to find out why he had violated the boundaries of the survey zone. He hadn’t yet figured out how to explain that away. “Hi there, uh, Napoleon. Er—yeah, I’m okay. I just . . . uh, had a little bit of—” What the hell could he say? Silence-fugue? No way. “—er, navigational trouble. I think I’m all right now. But I’m glad you found me.” As the robot stepped closer, seeming to examine him with its gleaming holocam eyes, he felt ridiculously embarrassed. It wasn’t as if he had to answer to a stupid robot for his excursion across the STOP HERE line. Did he? Of course, this might be an opportunity to tip someone off to what had happened—
/// Don’t. ///
He exhaled in annoyance. /Why the hell not?/
/// Because we have something very important
to do. ///
/Like what?/ he snarled. /Conquer my . . . my homeworld?/ It sounded ridiculous, but that was what had popped into his head.
The quarx sounded weary as it answered,
/// John Bandicut,
I have no designs on your homeworld—
none whatsoever. ///
/Then what? Seize control of the base here? Throw us off Triton?/ He wasn’t sure where he was getting these ideas, but he really couldn’t think of anything else that an alien might want to do that would require secrecy.
/// Not even that.
My mission here is to be helpful, if I can. ///
Bandicut squinted at the robot, thinking that he must be making this robot wonder if something really was wrong. /Well, I have to tell the robot something. If yo
u don’t want me to tell it the truth, what excuse do you want me to use? I’m open to suggestions. I’m in enough trouble for being here already./
The alien seemed puzzled.
/// Must you answer
to this simple device? ///
/No, but it’s going to send a report back to someone I will have to answer to./
/// Then tell it . . .
you had an electrical malfunction. ///
/Are you serious?/ Bandicut snorted. /I can’t lie about that! They’re going to notice that there’s nothing wrong with the buggy, when I get back./ As he spoke to the quarx, he was aware of the robot staring back at him, and for an instant he had the humiliating thought that he was moving his lips as he subvocalized to the alien.
/// You won’t . . . lie.
Tell it
you had an electrical malfunction. ///
He grumbled to himself for a moment, then spoke aloud. “Napoleon, I’m glad you came along. I had a bit of an . . . electrical problem. Maybe you can help.” Wincing at the transparent phoniness of his statement, he cleared his throat.
/// You already fixed the problem. ///
“What?” /I mean, what?/
The robot eased forward, a small display of red lights winking behind its eyes. “John Bandicut, are you certain that you are all right?”
“Uh, yeah. Why do you ask?” He coughed and moved nervously toward the driver’s seat of the buggy.
The synthesized voice sounded almost chiding. “You sound . . . anxious. Have you had any unusual . . . physiological symptoms? Perhaps I should drive the rover in for you.”
“What physiological symptoms? What the hell are you talking about, Nappy?” He felt his voice quavering.
The robot extended a slender tool-arm toward him, as though in empathy. He knew it was just programming, but for an instant, he felt as if the robot really did want to reach out to him. He’d worked with Napoleon from time to time, and the robots did maintain memories of individual human workers. “John Bandicut,” it said, “may I suggest that you allow me to check your suit and rover for proper function?”
Bandicut drew a breath. /Well?/
/// I have no objection. ///
He shrugged. “Okay, Nappy. But my reserves are getting a little low, so snap it up.”
The robot inserted a small probe into a jack located at belly-button level on Bandicut’s suit. “You have a damaged antenna, and your power reserves are below twenty percent,” it remarked. “But your life support is within acceptable limits.”
/// Put your hand on the robot, ///
the alien said urgently.
/Huh?/
/// Please. ///
Bandicut shrugged and placed his right palm on the top of the robot’s vision module. He felt a slight warmth in his hand, and Napoleon quivered a little and froze in place. Bandicut was aware of something passing between him and the robot, something like . . . thought . . . or perhaps it was just fleeting electrical impulses.
/// That’s fine.
You can take your hand away. ///
He did so, and Napoleon suddenly resumed its activity.
It withdrew its probe from the navel of Bandicut’s suit, and turned to the rover. Lifting the cowling with a quick, smooth movement (something that Bandicut himself never could seem to do), it visually inspected the rover’s electrical and mechanical components. Jacking in its probe, it said, “The rover’s drive systems test satisfactory. Although . . .” The robot hesitated.
“Although what?” Bandicut said suspiciously.
“There appear to be certain anomalies in the system. I am unsure of their nature.” The robot extended its tool-arm into the power compartment. Bandicut couldn’t quite see what it was doing, but he thought he glimpsed some electrical-arc flashes. Before he could move to look, Napoleon unplugged its probe and closed the cowling. “I will recommend a thorough check when we return to base. With your permission, I will ride along and monitor.”
Bandicut squinted at the robot, wondering what had just happened. Finally he shrugged. “Okay—hop aboard.”
The robot clamped four of its appendages to the side of the rover and hoisted itself off the ground, pivoting its center of gravity in close to the cowling. It plugged into another jack and adjusted its position like a strange monkey perched on the side of the rover’s power compartment. “Whenever you’re ready, John Bandicut. Shall I call in for you?”
Bandicut scowled and climbed back aboard. “Never mind. I’ll do it from here.” He reconnected himself to the rover’s life support, then settled into position to drive. /Mind if I take a nav fix?/ he asked the quarx. /So we can locate this spot again?/
/// Not necessary, ///
the quarx answered calmly.
/// Your nav’s out, anyway. ///
Bandicut nodded slowly. /If you say so./ He switched on the power. The nav, as promised, was indeed out. He shrugged, nudged the joystick, and drove off in a sweeping turn, the robot bobbing gently up and down on the fender.