The Passenger Ch. 04

As soon as I stepped through the first airlock door he touched a button, and the door cycled shut behind me. He stopped and turned around, effectively pinning me between the door and his hulking body. Then he smiled his bad smile.

"Allrrright, Harrrvey," he rumbled. "It's time to rrreally cut the crrrap. What's going on?"

"I told you it's a long story," I began.

But his claw, hovering less than an inch from my nose, stopped me.

"You werrre lying," he said. "You forrrget that I can smell you, Harrrvey. Everrry time you say something untrrrue, yourrr strrress levels go up. She didn't lie, but therrre are holes in herrr storrry that I can fly this ship thrrrough. So at the verrry least you arrre lying to herrr. I want the thrrruth. All of it. Rrright now."

I nodded.

"Of course, Raz. I wasn't lying. I just couldn't tell you everything. Not in front of her."

He glared at me. I took a deep breath.

"She's an AI," I said.

"Urrrrr?"

"But she doesn't know."

'Rrrrrrr?" He lowered his claw, which I took as a good sign. "Elaborrrate."

"I told you that Vergence is working with proscribed AI and that they had us transport AI units without knowing. What I left out is that Anne's their prototype, or at least one of their prototypes, I guess. But she doesn't know, Raz. I told you what they did. They did it to her as well. They took a top of the line droid body and they fitted it with their new AI units. But then they implanted human memories. They programmed the AI to think it's human. But then she woke up, Raz. She emerged. She's fully conscious and self-aware now, and she doesn't know she's an AI unit in a droid body."

"So why have you not told herrr?"

This time it was my turn to glare at him.

"Think, Raz, think. What will it do to her, if I tell her that the life she remembers is nothing but a lie? What will it do to her identity, to her self-image? She remembers growing up and living her own life before she met me, and none of that really happened. She won't be able to tell the implanted memories from the real ones she acquired after she emerged. How can she tell who's the real Anne? How can she know who she really is?"

His brown eyes gazed in the distance for a few moments.

"Urrr. I had not considerrred that."

He stood in thought for a few long moments, then he looked at me.

"You rrreally carrre for herrr."

"Yes. I do. And I don't want her to get hurt."

"Rrrrr. That may be unavoidable, Harrrvey. She must know. You must tell herrr."

"How can I? Listen to me, Raz. She has become a real person. Or at least she's in the process of becoming one. Hell, I don't know. Nobody does. All I do know is that she deserves to be who she is, without me pulling the rug out from under her self-image."

"Rrrrr... You arre rrright. But you arrre also wrrrong. You must tell herrr. The soonerrr the betterrr."

He put his paw on my shoulder, leaving the claws out of it this time.

"Think, Harrrvey. The longerrr you wait, the morrre life she has to question the rrreality of. It will be rrrough enough on herrr if you tell herrr now. Waiting only makes it worrrse."

I thought for a moment. He had a point. But...

"'I don't know, Raz," I said finally. "'She doesn't deserve any of this. She has become this self-aware, self-conscious person, and in her mind she always has been. How can I take that from her? I would take away her humanity."

"You wouldn't."

"Yes, I would! Don't you get it, you overgrown hairball? She is a human being because she remembers living her whole life as one!"

I pounded my fist against the steel wall of the airlock in frustration. Then took a deep breath, trying to control myself.

"The thing is," I continued, as calmly as I could. "Identity is largely the product of past experience, which in turn means it's a product of memory. If you change a person's memories, you change who that person is. If you'd have my memories instead of yours, then you'd also have my habits, my morals, my values, my speech patterns, everything that makes me who I am. You would remember a life of being me, and so you would be me, to all intents and purposes. And if I then told you that none of that is real, and that it never was real, what would you have left? Who would you be? You wouldn't be you, and you wouldn't be who you'd been. All you'd know would be that you aren't who you thought you were, but not who you really are."

"Rrrrr. I would be badly shaken, to be surrre. But it would not destrrroy me. In the end I would rrrealize that I am still me, no matterrr who that rrreally might be. I'm not saying herrr sense of rrreality won't be severrrely challenged. But Harrrvey, the longerrr you wait, the worrrse it will be. Forrr herrr and forrr you."

A sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me he was right. But I was scared of what it would do to her.

"Talk about being between a rock and a hard place," I muttered. "I'm not sure how to do this."

I leaned against the bulkhead, closed my eyes. I found a sigh without looking for it, or maybe it found me.

"I underrrstand, Harrrvey."

He put his paws on my shoulders as if trying to steady me.

"Did I everrr tell you about my fatherrr?"

I shook my head.

"Many yearrrs ago, on Gawrr, both his legs became infested with vine parrrasites. You know about vine parrrasites? They arrre almost too small too see, so they burrrow into yourrr flesh unnoticed. When they arrre lodged inside yourrr body, you have a fifty perrrcent chance of a slow, agonizing death afterrr severrral yearrrs. Orrr, on the otherrr paw, nothing may happen. Therrre is no way to tell. But whetherrr you will die in agony orrr live on without any prrroblems, the parrrasites arrre impossible to rrremove. Therrre is only prrreventative amputation."

"So..." I began.

He nodded.

"Yes. My fatherrr chose to have his legs rrremoved rrratherrr than to wait and see if the parrrasites would kill him."

He gazed at the bulkhead, and there was something in his eyes I'd never seen there before.

"Harrrvey, you may know that Gawrran physiology has a verrry limited rrresponse to anesthetics."

"You mean..."

"Yes. Forrr that rrreason, surrrgical techniques on Gawrr arrre prrrimitive at best. Therrre is a considerrrable chance that surrrgical patients die of shock brrrought on by the pain. It is rrreally not good."

"And still he chose to have his legs amputated?"

"He did. The parrrasites might have killed him, orrr not. If they had, his sufferrring would have been much grrreaterrr than the agony of surrrgerrry, even though the latterrr was cerrrtain."

He looked at me, his deep brown eyes boring into mine.

"He did rrrecoverrr. Damaged forrr the rrrest of his days, yes, but still he considerrred that betterrr than the possible alterrrnative."

I slowly nodded.

"I hear what you say, Raz. But the situation isn't the same."

"Rrrr. No. Not entirrrely, no. Both cases rrrevolve arrround a life at rrrisk of being destrrroyed and the cerrrtainty that trrrying to save it will come at a prrrice. Both arrre a choice between pain as a cerrrtainty and total destrrruction as a possibility. But while my fatherrr rrrefused to gamble with his own life, you must choose whetherrr orrr not to gamble with herrrs."

He looked at me for a moment, a sad expression on his furry face.

"I do not envy you the morrral dilemma. But I cannot rrresolve it forrr you. You must do that yourrrself. And forrr herrr."

Once again I found a sigh that needed sighing.

"Yes, it seems to work out that way, doesn't it?"

He nodded.

"I wish I had morrre to offerrr."

"Well," I said, in the interest of moving on from imponderables for now, "You said you have a plan. Did you want us to look into your cargo, or was that just an excuse to buttonhole me here and beat the truth out of me?"

He smiled his good smile.

"Both. Let's move on to the carrrgo hold."

He pushed the button that opened the airlock door behind me, then turned and stepped ahead of me into the hold. It was quite a bit larger than the one in the Slowboat, and mostly filled with he standard three by four by five foot shipping containers, evenly spaced across the cavernous space.

"You're already loaded?"

He nodded.

"Loaded, but not yet serrrviced. Yourrr call came firrrst."

"Yeah... About that, Raz... I know this delay is costing you a hell of a lot of cash. But I'll make it up to you. It will take me a while to get back on my feet--"

He raised his paw.

"Stop rrright therrre, Harrrvey. I owe you a lot morrre than this and we both know it. I've had some good rrruns lately and my finances arrre in good shape rrright now. So stop worrrying."

"I think I will owe you a lot before this is over."

He shook his head.

"No. We may be closerrr to being even. But what does it matterrr?"

"Thanks, Raz," was all I could say.

Because that's Raz for you. This wasn't about debt and we both knew it. We'd saved each other's hides quite a few times, but neither of us had really been keeping score. If he felt he owed me, it was because of our friendship more than anything else. And when you get right down to it, I felt the same way, and some day our situations will probably be reversed and I'll bail him out like he was doing for me right now. We'd both still have done this for each other if we'd both been broke.

"No prrroblem," he rumbled.

I looked at him for a long moment.

"I know," I said, softly.

He smiled his bad smile.

"I'll cut it out of Deke Rrryder's hide."

"Now that sounds like a plan."

He growled and turned away.

Speaking of plans," he rumbled, looking at the containers that filled the hold. "This is what I have in mind. We rrrearrrange some of this to make rrroom forrr two extrrra bulk fuel containerrrs. We hook those into the Prrride's main fuel lines, so they fill up when we rrrefuel the main tanks. Therrre won't be time to rrrebalance, so we worrrk out the mass distrrribution firrrst."

He smiled his good smile.

"Then the trrricky parrrt. We file a rrregularrr flight plan. You give me the overrride codes forrr the Slowboat. Then you and Anne take the Prrride up while I hijack the Slowboat. Herrr rrremaining fuel rrreserve should get her about halfway out-system. We rrrendezvous beforrre I rrrun out of fuel and we rrrefuel the Slowboat out of the extrrra bulk tanks, then we continue outwarrrd, using the same flight plan solution forrr the Slowboat. Easy."

I remembered to close my mouth as the details of his hare-brained scheme slowly sank in. Easy? Insane was more like it.

"Harrrvey? What's wrrrong?"

"Wrong? I... Raz, I don't even know where to begin. You just hijack the Slowboat? In-flight refueling? Piggy-backing on the 'Pride's hyperspace jump solution? Are you suicidal?"

"No. I agrrree therrre is some rrrisk involved. But that is unavoidable. Therrre arrre only the thrrree of us. Ourrr options arrre limited."

"Alright," I said, trying to stay calm. "Let's start with the main problems. First of all, your plan to hijack the Slowboat. Without being captured or shot, I hope. How to you expect to do that? Brax is sure to have her watched, and he's definitely the kind of guy who will have at least one strike team on site. Maybe more than one."

He nodded.

"Yes. Timing will be imporrrtant. But yourrr emerrrgency take-off rrroutines arrre still in the computerrr, am I rrright?"

"Of course. But that's not the problem. The problem is, how are you going to make it to the computer controls in the first place?"

He smiled his good smile.

"I still have a full set of decontamination gearrr frrrom a few flights back when I had to make porrrt at Koobal. Nasty micrrrobes, therrre. So I will wearrr a full decontam suit and kit. I'll just be a decontaminatorrr on his way to one of the ships on a long terrrm storrrage field. When I'm nearrr the Slowboat I rrrun, jump in, and close the airrrlock. The emerrrgency take-off rrroutines should not take morrre than a minute orrr so, rrright?"

"Not right. You'd be risking your life that way, Raz. What if they spot you before you can get in? What if Brax has been in the Slowboat's computer and locked the controls or encrypted the whole thing? And there's no way of telling what kind of artillery his strike team will have. What if they hole the ship?"

He shrugged.

"Life is not worrrth living without some rrrisk."

"Unless it kills you."

"Therrre's that," he agreed calmly.

"By the way, refueling in-flight is going to be fun," I continued. "I trust you haven't forgotten we can't stop accelerating without messing up our jump calculations. Are you proposing we go EV and try to hook up fuel lines against three gees of acceleration?"

"No. We stop accelerrrating and rrrefuel the Slowboat in zerrro-G, then boost at a higherrr accelerrration to make up forrr the time lost. The Prrride's onboarrrd computerrr can easily handle the corrrection calculations. What is the Slowboat's maximum boost?"

"Just over four gees sustained. Five and a quarter at max emergency, up to about fifteen minutes."

I didn't have to mention what would happen after those fifteen minutes. He knew. The fusion containment chambers of a sublight drive are lined with magnetic fields to keep fusing atoms safely away from the chamber walls, but under enough sustained pressure those walls will eventually go, and the explosion will be visible to the naked eye throughout the entire system. The other problem is that 'about fifteen minutes' is a hopeful guesstimate at best. It could be more, which was unlikely, or it could be less. Probably less. Maybe a lot less.

"Maximum boost is a little higherrr forrr the Prrride, but not much. So fourrr gees it is. I haven't worrrked it out yet, but I figurrre that as long as the fuel trrransferrr doesn't take morrre than two hourrrs, ourrr jump calculations will not be afffected."

He thought for a moment.

"We'll have to buy a prrressurrre suit forrr you herrre."

"Ehm... Oh. Yes. Of course. I hadn't even thought of that yet."

He nodded.

"My prrressurrre suit will be on the Prrride and yourrrs on the Slowboat. We can easily buy a human-sized P-suit off the shelf herrre, but one forrr me would have to be custom made, and there's no time forrr that."

I slowly nodded. He was right, of course. Ursa's population is mostly human and more than a little xenophobic, so aliens shopping for P-suits would have a hard time. Also...

"That means that I'll be doing the EV work, right?" I asked.

He nodded.

"Urrr. Unless you have found a way to fit a Gawrran into a human P-suit."

"Not really," I said, glumly.

Because if there's one thing I hate, it's going EV.

'Going extra-vehicular' is a very silly and completely made-up term that refers to the unsavory practice of taking a perfectly good ship all the way into space, and then stepping out of it. This is something one should never do, and I really mean 'never'. Space is a very hostile place for living creatures. Not many people realize how enormously vast and empty space is. It's full of the hardest vacuum known to science. It can leave you either freezing cold or roasting hot, depending on where you are. There's usually some hard radiation, sometimes a lot of it, depending on how far you are from the system's primary and what type of star it is. And solid particles at high velocities, from dust-sized micro-meteoroids to rocks the size of a marble or even bigger, will sandblast you or punch holes in you if you happen to be in their way.

And of course there's no gravity, which means that neither your blood nor the contents of your stomach will stay where they belong. Your head feels like it's swelling up and your stomach wants you to burp, and burps may end up being... well, lumpy. Some people aren't bothered by those feelings and some even enjoy it, but I've never managed to get used to it. In fact, I hate it.

The planets on which we evolved, and where most of us live, protect us from all that nonsense by means of atmosphere, gravity, magnetism and a proper distance from the local sun. We built space ships to do much of the same for us while we travel between planets. More than anything, a ship is a mobile biosphere. But all a pressure suit is little more than a glorified balloon. All it does is to keep the vacuum out and the air in, and it gives you some thermal insulation. But that's pretty much it. If your P-suit gets hit by a micro-meteoroid, all you can do is try to slap a patch on the hole (which is hopefully only in the P-suit and not in you as well) before all your air can escape. And when it comes to really hard radiation, you might as well wear a tin foil hat.

But there was no help for it. I would simply have to man up and do what had to be done. The prospect of floating through the lethal emptiness of space wearing nothing but a few layers of suit material to protect me was nothing compared to the very real risk of Raz' getting his furry ass shot off.

I looked around the cargo hold.

"Right," I said. "We've got work to do. And we need to check up on Anne. She'll be monitoring the navigation computer while I'm out. She shouldn't have to make any course corrections, but you never know. Speaking of which, what's plan B in case this doesn't work?"

He growled softly.

"If I can't lift the Slowboat, therrre is no plan B. If I can lift herrr but we can't rrrefuel, we'll set the Slowboat's nav computerrr forrr a parrrking orrrbit arrround Urrrsa and come back forrr her laterrr. You'll take my P-suit acrrross to the Slowboat so we can both go back to the Prrride, and we'll have to hope forrr the best."

"I'd really hate to do that."

"Urrr. Yes. Last ditch options arrre like that."

He turned and walked back to the cargo hold airlock.

"Let's check on Anne and then get starrrted. Therrre's a lot to do."

"What are you hauling and where?"

"Agrrriculturrral equipment forrr Manaka."

"Manaka? Never heard of it."

But then, I most likely wouldn't have. Given the cost of interstellar transport, it's not worth moving anything that can be manufactured locally at a more reasonable price. If Manaka had to import agricultural equipment, that meant they didn't have the kind of resources it took to support local farming. If it had been settled recently, the colonists would have taken a good supply of everything they'd need for farming. Therefore Manaka almost had to be one of those small, old, slowly decaying backwater planets. Yet Raz considered it worth this trouble to fly shipments there. And because interstellar trade is rarely a one-way affair, there had to be something on Manaka worth shipping elsewhere. If Manaka had been the source of some commodity with value in the mainstream market (say, rare minerals or biochemicals) it wouldn't have been the obscure little mudball that it apparently was. So it had to be something else. And I knew Raz well enough to know he'd never haul drugs or something like that, so it would have to be something obscure yet valuable. Interesting.

"So what's on Manaka?" I asked.

He smiled his good mile.

"Need to know, Harrrvey. Need to know."

I shrugged. It was his ship, his cargo, and his customers. If nothing else, common courtesy demanded that I keep my nose out of it. Also, he'd never tell me. Also, I'd probably find out sooner or later anyway. So I let it lie. We had bigger fish to fry.

* * *

If there's anything better in life than giving a woman a few good, hard, gut-wrenching orgasms, I don't know what it is. Even the thought of it makes me feel good. So when Anne told me how much she had liked the feeling of my mouth on her pussy and her clit and that she wanted much more of it, I was happy to give her what she asked for.

We were in the tiny passenger's cabin aboard the Starman's Pride. The bunk was narrow but comfortable, although we both would have preferred a little more room for our lovemaking. But we made it work, with Anne sitting on the edge of the bunk with her legs spread wide and her knees pulled up and me on my knees in front of her, and before long she shuddered and moaned as the tip of my tongue sent sparks of pure pleasure through her clit and pussy, until she screamed and shook, and the flood of her juices, clear and thick and sweet, filled my mouth.