Читать книгу: «The Falling Bird», страница 2

The following four months Valentin and Elina had done nothing except for eating, sleeping, and getting fat. GAS occasionally tried to talk to them and educate them about their current location and the stars they were flying by, but it found them to be quite poor students and stopped its lectures. On the sixth month of the journey GAS noticed Elina’s quickly growing belly and mentioned it to her.

“Well, Elya, it appears that your belly is growing much faster than that of my master’s.”

“It’s ’cause I’m pregnant, Gassy, and soon will give birth, I think.”

“And what does that mean?” GAS became concerned as it was not prepared for medical emergencies of that kind on its ship.

“Valik and I will be having a baby due to our shacking up together.”

“Wait a minute, I am not prepared to such transformations, what am I supposed to do in this strange case?”

“You’ll need to prepare a special delivery room, for starters,” Valentin joined the conversation; Elya had already broken the news to him regarding his impending fatherhood.

“Acknowledged, I will make the necessary preparations for this unexpected development,” said GAS, as he began searching in every block of his memory bank for any information related to childbirth.

A couple of weeks later with the help of its android assistants, GAS was able to put together a decent makeshift birthing chamber and readied itself, in theory. And in a month’s time, Elina – attended to by GAS and its robotic assistants – successfully gave birth to a healthy boy, weighing at almost five kilograms. Surprisingly, the happiest out of everyone was GAS itself, as the new arrival brought much entertainment to the supercomputer as well as the pleasant responsibilities of babysitting which it had assigned to itself. Day in and out, GAS was primarily monitoring the baby and instructing his mother about the proper methods of parenting, according to the archival data it regurgitated from the depths of its massive brain. The baby was growing up like in a fairy tale – growing not by days, but by the hour – and was gaining weight quickly. Elya, after discussions with Valentin, decided to name the boy Angel, after all being a child born in the cosmos, but the board computer rejected it and bestowed him with the name Arcad, after one of the names of the mythological hunting dogs – the ones the ancients used for Canes Venatici constellation, where their ship was en route to. As for Valentin, he excused himself from parenting the baby and kept living his days leisurely – spending the whole trip watching sitcoms, eating, sleeping, and growing fat. The child was being raised solely by GAS, who found the task to be an interesting experiment.

Two years of the voyage across the endless galaxy had passed. Arcad began walking and talking quite early, much to GAS’ joy, who was now constantly telling the toddler funny stories about Earth and space complete with pictures which it projected on the wall in the nursery. GAS, having gotten carried away with raising the child, entirely neglected to monitor the ship’s flight path – when it did happen to check the ship’s coordinates, it was surprised to discover that the ship had deviated far from its planned route. It was flying in a huge, inconceivable arc in space, caught in the intergalactic curvature of space-time that GAS had failed to take into account. After having corrected the course and factored in the drift, GAS re-calculated the ETA to the planet Hop and became slightly sad at his conclusions – it would take almost twice as long to get there. GAS reported this unfortunate news to Valentin.

“My master, the curvature of the galactic space has slightly altered our ship’s course and we shall arrive to the star Asteroin somewhat later than planned.”

“And when should we expect to arrive at this goddamn planet, my dear?” asked Valentin lazily.

“According to my calculations, it will take as long as we already have flown, if not longer.”

“That’s unbearable!” the expedition’s director exclaimed in indignation. “Can anything be done in this situation?”

“No, nothing, my master. I have already attempted every possible solution I could, and have brought the ship’s course back to the correct direction. The universe is cruel and unpredictable,” GAS philosophized.

“The space curvature can permanently alter the physical appearance of any crew members who are awake, so for that reason I suggest that you and Elya go into stasis for the remainder of the flight to Hop. This way your bodies will remain intact, and time will pass much faster for you.”

“Really? And what about the kid?”

“I will take care of Arcad. As he is a growing child, his body is not in danger of being affected by the curve. However, he also can’t be put into hibernation while he is maturing, so during your sleep my assistants and I will raise him in lieu.”

“But how will I be able to manage the flight?”

“When an emergency occurs, I’ll wake you up, my master.”

‘Oh all right, go ahead, ‘cause I’m sick and tired of lying on the couch and watching the TV serials over and over about ten times now. I can’t wait to arrive there, but you are wasting our time. Just give us a separate room to hibernate in.”

“Certainly. We’ll prepare the appropriate accommodations right away.”

Elina, though, wasn’t quite eager to be put into sleep along with her “master,” especially since a month earlier she had seen GAS’ assistants pushing a half-awake recruit into the ship’s airlock chamber and then with a special pusher launching him into the dreadful dark space. After accidentally having seen this cruel execution these robots carried out on an innocent person, she asked Valentin about it.

“Valia, how could they do something so merciless to a living human being?”

“He violated orders and dared to wake up ahead of schedule, for which he was punished,” Valentin sternly answered her question.

And as such she was afraid that if she was left on her own without Valia around, GAS would order its heartless mechanical beasts to jettison her overboard into space like unnecessary waste. Her paranoia was fueled more so by the fact that the synthetic GAS was jealous of Elya over the toddler, trying to limit the time she was spending with the child, and repeatedly telling Valentin, “This stupid bimbo can’t teach Arcad anything good.”

GAS arranged separate rooms for his master and the mistress and successfully put them into sleep until their arrival to their destination, while turning its attention towards raising the toddler as it saw fit. To GAS it was quite amusing to see a little human, having absolutely no knowledge of any kind and seeing no worlds other than the nursery where he had been living practically his entire life, talking only to GAS and its robots.

In the three following years it had took to escape from the unforeseen intergalactic gravitational field, GAS taught Arcad to speak, to read and type on the board computers, introduced him to the ship’s design and explained to him where they were flying to and their mission. The boy was quite gifted, learning everything on the fly, as if it was a captivating game. And because he knew nothing beyond his room, he assumed that this was all that the whole world had to offer and nothing and nobody else existed out there – it was just him, GAS and the two mechanical lookalikes of Arcad, carrying out their orders. And as for the documentaries GAS had shown him about Earth and the people living there, he believed those to be strange fairy tales about non-existent worlds among the far away stars, not worthy of any serious attention.

“GAS, you keep showing me some mountains, rivers, seas, a sun, wind, cities, people on the screen and you are trying to persuade me that it all exists on some planet called Earth. But why does it all exist and for what purpose? And have you seen with your own eyes at least something of that strange, unnecessary ecology you showed me?”

Arcad’s inquisitions took GAS by surprise and it tried to answer his young charge as vaguely as possible, promising to show all of Earth’s diversity in the future, when he was older.

“No, I’ve seen nothing of that. My programmers uploaded into my memory the belief that this world does indeed exist.”

“Well, you see? Someone has persuaded you about that, but it seems to me that you aren’t sure yourself that it exists, and I doubt that too. I suspect that these are just colorful pictures, like the ones I draw on paper or on a computer. And as soon as I turn the screen off or go to another room, all of this diversity disappears like a dream.”

Arcad was becoming more interested in the really important issues of the current life on the ship – why was their city-ship so small? Why were there no other people but him and was there anybody else he could talk to but GAS? And why was he not permitted to go anywhere from his room? One day he asked.

“Listen, GAS, where did I come from?”

“What do you mean where did you come from? You were born.” For the first time while mentoring the child GAS was at a loss for words.

“What do you mean ‘was born’?”

“A woman, your mother, gave birth to you seven years ago. And now your mom, along with your dad is sleeping in a special room, five years already, to avoid body deterioration during this flight.”

“And why am I not sleeping and neither are our two helpers?”

“Our helpers are made of metal and are not sensitive to the enormous intergalactic speeds and gravity. But even if they break down for whatever reason, I have more helpers like that on reserve and can bring them to life at any moment to make them work for you and me. But you, as a growing living organism, cannot go into a lengthy anaerobic sleep, otherwise your physical and intellectual development will be compromised. You are currently living in a mini-gravitational chamber I made specifically for you at the expense of the ship’s fuel economy, so that you can grow up normally and when you come back to Earth, you are able to live there freely, like all the other people there.

“How strange! You don’t seem to exist physically in front of me, yet you can do anything.”

“Well, almost anything,” agreed GAS proudly.

And while Arcad was engaged in philosophical conversations and being schooled on various sciences, time passed by unnoticed by the little involuntary traveler, a passenger on a ship to a faraway unknown planet.

At last, on the eighth year of the flight, the distance to Asteroin was rapidly shortening, and GAS turned on the ship’s deceleration systems in order not to overshoot the star. The helpers on GAS’ order began to vent the noble gases from all the modules and filling them with an oxygen mixture so that everybody who was sleeping would begin to wake up.

And then it became clear that not all of the crew members survived such a lengthy slumber. Some couldn’t wake up, or, after awakening were unable to walk and were just crawling around in the cabins with no knowledge of who they were. The dead and those incapable of physical labor were being mercilessly “fired” – the robots were ejecting them into space with compressed air through the airlock chamber, like projectiles from a howitzer’s barrel.

Arcad was moving around the ship together with the robots observing with interest what was going on. He was taking in a completely alien world within the same ship he was on himself. His edifice of how the world was organized had been built on the premise that it was revolved around the nursery where he had already been living for the past eight years. And now his belief was seriously shaken and fractured after he had seen something outside of his worldview; the illusion was broken and he began revising his perception of life as he was discovering new areas of the ship – previously off limits – and the members of the crew that were coming to. The stale odor coming from the cabins where the crew members were housed, their sluggish movements, and lethargic indiscernible speech brought about in Arcad only a feeling of disgust and some kind of repulsion. Looking at the nearly insane workers, he wished that the robots had ditched all of the remaining people into space through the airlock. That was exactly what he said to GAS now that he had seen everything.

“I would do that with pleasure, my boy,” GAS answered him. “But who then will be harvesting the weed on Hop? You, maybe?” bursting into laughter like a human.

Valentin Valentinovich woke up after everybody else had done and learned from GAS that all six of his guards perished after the lengthy space sleep and had been disposed of by the robots. So he did his best to leave his module as little as possible in order not to run into the disgruntled surviving crew members and provoke a mutiny, against which he would have no one to defend him.

Arcad met his parents when they woke up but that stirred no interest in him and left him indifferent as if they were completely unrelated to him, and began doubting that it was even them who had brought him into this world. And when a week later he had stopped by their place again and taken a much better look at them, he came to the final conclusion that such primitive beings, like these ones, simply couldn’t be his parents, and decided that it was GAS which was his father and mother.

And for his biological parents, they didn’t protest that he was wrong, as they were wholly preoccupied with rehabilitation of their bodies and trying to bring them back to normal. Arcad’s parents, as soon as they had woken up, right away pigged out on foods, devouring everything in sight, like hungry animals. They pawed the meal up, shoved it into their mouth, pushing it deeper with their fingers almost without chewing it. They were taking short breaks only after getting full, and after they woke up they ate, ate, and ate again, oblivious to anything else around, except for food.

All survivors from the prolonged sleep – and of those were only just half of the crew – were staring with curiosity at a boy, who appeared out of nowhere and was running around in the ship, like a master, with all doors (including those that were off limits to everyone else) opening for him on command from a remote Arcad had in his pocket. He began being regarded as the big boss of the ship, along with GAS, and the executor of its will. And Arcad behaved accordingly, talking to everybody with a commanding voice and tolerating no objection.

On the tenth morning after the crew had been roused from their slumber, Arcad, as he usually would after breakfast, was running along the hallway to continue observing life of the strange – in his opinion – people. From the opposite direction in the middle of the hallway a large man was unhurriedly walking, with no intention of yielding to anyone in his path. Arcad had become so used to the fact that everybody on the ship would give him way that he ran into the stranger without slowing down.

“You little shit, ain’t you looking where you runnin’? You blind?” the big guy yelled at Arcad and brushed him aside with such a great force that Arcad hit his shoulder against the wall with a hard impact.

“I am Arcad, you idiot!” he shouted back, rubbing his hurt shoulder.

“This is how you talk to your elders, tyke? How ‘bout I tear your ears off!” said the stranger to Arcad and harshly pulled on his ear.

“Ouch! Let it go, it hurts!” screamed Arcad and added, “GAS, help!”

“Let the child go, Peter,” right away sounded GAS’ metallic voice through the ship’s PA system, and the man let Arcad’s ear go.

All over the ship, every cabin and corner were bugged with the “eyes” and “ears” of the mighty GAS, enabling it to incessantly observe everything that was happening on the ship and make decisions without delay and, if needed, to rectify any problems with assistance from its beast-like helpers. The robots had little patience for humans, and on GAS’ command they could tear a person apart. All crew members knew this and as such carried out the board computer’s demands without questions and complaints.

Freed from Peter, Arcad ran back to his room sobbing from the insult. It was the first time in his life that he was hurt and humiliated by another person – he had never experienced that before – and it felt terrible. Arcad wished to destroy this assailant immediately and accustomed to all his whims being fulfilled on requested, he barked orders to GAS.

“GAS, this savage sadist must be thrown off the ship, like you have disposed of other people you no longer needed.”

The board computer was not programmed to recognize human emotions and it was just at the very beginning of getting to know them on its own, via its automatic learning mode. And at that moment its thinking was based on a pragmatic perspective, centered on its main objective – to deliver the cargo to Earth – so it decided not to carry out the request of the slighted boy.

The thing was that Peter was a space pilot by profession, and GAS knew this from the personal files of the crew members. But he joined this flight as a regular laborer out of despair, because he had been placed into the special “health resort” barracks for a “well-deserved exhale” after his return to Earth, delivering lichen harvested on Proxima. The Admission Investigation Unit became suspicious that he had the garlicky aroma and put him into quarantine until he had “breathed out” everything criminally eaten. But Peter was sure that he had been thrown to the barracks for his comments about the ruling elite. And for that reason there was no chance he would be released from quarantine in the foreseeable future, except if he signed for this insane mission as a volunteer.

The ship’s PIC (pilot in command) had been unable to come to his senses after the lengthy sleep, and GAS had to dispose of him. As a result GAS had been left without a professional pilot for the return journey, as well as to maneuver around the planet Hopus, and here the pilot Peter would come in really handy.

“Hold on for a little while, my boy. For now we need this man,” GAS placated Arcad. “As soon as we can do without him, I’ll push him into the airlock chamber, all right?”

“Well, all right,” agreed Arcad and the conflict was resolved.

Peter was an experienced pilot, and after he had heard that the PIC perished, he realized that he was indispensable for GAS to approach and maneuver the ship around the planet Hopus. That was why he began acting brazenly and aggressively, unlike the other survivors. Soon after coming to, Peter started paying visits to the cabin where the survived girls lived, just four out of twelve remaining. He would pick up the most attractive girl or the first one available (depending on his mood) and take her back to his cabin to have sex. None of the girls would decline his invitations for several reasons. Firstly, Peter was a tall and handsome young man, and, second, there was more than enough food in his cabin – meal packs were being rationed for cabins of four, and he was all alone in his quarters after his three roommates had died. The girls were happy to get their hands on the extra food, as GAS was starving them, thinking of them as useless eaters. Peter perfectly understood that after returning to Earth he would be thrown back to the special barracks under any pretext, and was secretly hoping to stay on the planet Hopus if such an opportunity would arise, with one of the girls who would accept his offer. And he was trying to choose the best one of the four.

Following GAS’ orders, Peter spent every day in the ship’s cockpit, checking the operations of all systems. He was quite savvy in electronics, having a background in engineering and machine programming. And because the ship had been assembled in a hurry and had been flown in automated mode twice as long as had been planned, many manual control units just didn’t respond to his commands – red lights kept turning on to report a problem. Peter was taking them apart, pinging back and forth, pinpointing the damaged parts and faulty electronic boards, and replacing them with the new ones – luckily, spare microchips, diodes, and capacitors were all in plentiful supply on the ship.

The designers and contractors foresaw that the huge rush the spaceship was being built in, breakdowns during the flight would be unavoidable, and prudently loaded the ship with several boxes of all kinds of parts.

Peter had to work quickly as the ship was finishing its slowdown – very soon, when Hopus’ orbit was reached, he was supposed to switch to manual control. Sometimes he even was sleeping in the cockpit, leaving it only to have a bite in his cabin. It was during those routine trips through the hallway between the two spaces when he ran into the little boss. His fellow crew members had told him about some child, who appeared out of nowhere and was running back and forth, poking his nose into everything and trying to give orders on GAS’ behalf. But Peter was ignoring what others were saying, assuming that it was some new advanced robotic assistant of GAS, and after colliding with the buster in the hallway immediately forgot about him.

After the incident with Peter, Arcad had been staying in his room for two days, watching people moving about the ship – he had a CCTV feed on the monitors installed in his place. But on the third day, he resumed his rounds of the spaces and cabins. He didn’t stop by his parents’ place – in his view, they were too primitive beings in comparison to him and they didn’t bring about any feelings of kinship in him. He rightly believed that GAS was his father and mother all in one. After the brief inspection of all ship modules, Arcad dropped by the cockpit – Peter was there tinkering with the manual piloting control panel.

“What is it that you are doing here all the time?” he asked Peter placatingly.

Peter turned to look at him and gladly answered his query.

“I’m replacing the faulty parts, soldering the wires so we can hover over the planet Hopus and send a probe down.”

“Very interesting. Can I help you with anything?”

“Well, maybe you can hold this board while I solder the tips,” and he gave Arcad something with wires sticking out.

The boy was very pleased to do what the adult asked of him and stayed to watch him working, all the while carrying out small errands. Arcad stayed with Peter for about two hours until lunchtime and learned a lot from him about the design of the ship’s control systems. He began coming to the cockpit to see Peter every day and spent hours helping here and there or just simply watching him work, while listening to Peter’s stories about the principles of the automatic flight control and piloting the ship manually. Peter informed him of many new things about the ship; everything there was being operated by GAS, who exerted power over everyone and everything. Yet, even GAS was not omnipotent, and like all machines was prone to wearing out and breaking down. And the robots – GAS’ appendages – once in a while perform a cleaning of its memory cabinets, replacing any malfunctioning boards, running diagnostic tests on all programs and keeping an eye on its overall “brains” to make sure that no life support system would run into critical problems. To achieve that, GAS was equipped with four redundant memory blocks taking up six cabinets – this structure allowed the robots now and then, in turns, to switch off one of the blocks for maintenance and repair.

“So, does that mean that GAS is not almighty?” Arcad asked Peter in surprise. “The two robot-helpers are more important than GAS? And I used to think that it had these robots like obedient little dogs to do various errands.”

“No, no, you were right. GAS IS the ship’s central brain, and all other robots take orders from it, and the crew members obey it. But everything can always go haywire, and for that servicing is needed. Robots perform this according to the program installed by the designers living on Earth. So, the power balance can be changed – someone who used to be an omnipotent god, in no time can become the lowest of slaves.”

Peter’s revelations disturbed Arcad a big deal, and even though he didn’t believe any of them, yet another doubt crept into his soul.

The ship’s automatic slowdown system completed its task and reported to the main control system that the approach speed had been slowed down to the first cosmic velocity. Peter had managed by that time to repair the manual piloting controls, and having said “OK!” to himself, he took over the ship flight control. He informed GAS of that and GAS to reinforce its authority, in turn communicated that to Valentin.

“Finally,” grumbled Valentin indifferently, chewing and swallowing his food.

Over the course of the flight, he had doubled his weight and developed a shortness of breath, not allowing him to move around as much. So, in the most part Valentin was staying in his cabin, eating or sleeping. His girlfriend Elya didn’t spend too much time in boredom, and upon waking up began frequently visiting the laborers at their quarters, having fun in their company. So much so, that GAS, having read up enough about pregnancy, got worried about what would happen if they impregnated Elina. It shared its doubts with Arcad, and he made GAS a merciless proposition.

“You need to get rid of her at the first opportunity.”

“All right,” replied GAS in a metallic voice. To GAS, as well as to the child, the difference between the human sexes didn’t exist and it determined their value whether or not to keep on the ship in accordance with the need of harvesting the weed. Valentin’s mistress (like Valentin himself) didn’t fit this criteria, so her presence aboard wasn’t justified. Even though it was in GAS’ program to bring Valentin back to Earth, it didn’t apply to Elina, his lover, so she could be written off at any moment.

Peter smoothly piloted the ship into an orbit around Hopus, and the onboard computer started examining the surface looking for a good spot to land a descent vehicle. The shuttles didn’t have rocket engines, and were of a hybrid type – they used the energy accumulated on the ship and the principle of planetary anti-gravity. That made them quiet and smokeless, but quite speedy and with a short flying time.

Hopus was the only planet orbiting the red star Asteroin, three times the size of the Sun. The lonely planet was making one rotation around its celestial body very slowly, as long as ten earth years. The planet itself (a bit smaller than Earth in size) was spinning on its axis for a period of time comparable to one year on Earth. That factor was affecting the planet’s climate and life conditions quite profoundly. Hopus’ atmosphere composition was quite similar to that on Earth – it was just more saturated with vapor. The temperature on the surface was on average plus 40 degrees Centigrade, but because the spin was very slow, the bright side would at times get heated up to 100 degrees, while the dark side would cool down to 100 degrees below zero. The planet’s landscape was sheer plains, with no seas, rivers, nor mountains. Viewed in a telescope from a distance the planet’s surface resembled a red scorched desert, similar to that of Mars.

Hopus’ poles were covered with something shining and white, appearing like ice, covering some fifteen percent on the north pole and five on the south, due to the planet’s axis being slightly tilted towards the star. And only a crooked band around the equator, looking like a horseshoe – a narrow green strip that could be seen on the day-night line – led to believe that something was growing there.

The spaceship got into orbit over Hopus, and the robots immediately began preparing a shuttle to land on the planet. The robots themselves couldn’t leave the ship, as their controls operated in a short range from the main computer center and they didn’t have the auxiliary power supply to work outside of the ship. For that reason, GAS offered the flight director Valentin Valentinovich to choose those who would be the first to descend upon the planet. Valentin, after having been doing nothing for a long time, decided to demonstrate his leadership skills and declared:

“It needs to be me, this expedition's director. I must examine what kind of area it is, how much of this wonder-weed is growing there, so that I could make further decisions regarding its harvest.”

Valentin secretly hoped to be the first to find this weed so he could taste it, in order to start extending his life towards immortality. Elina too wished to join Valentin to land on the planet, having the same goal in mind. Besides the shuttle pilot, it was decided to take one botanist along to determine whether the weed was edible. GAS responded indifferently to the director’s decision.

“Yes, my master. The board gauges indicate that the air composition and the planet’s temperature on average match those of Earth, but they greatly fluctuate depending on the probed areas, and there are some locations unsuitable for you to go to. So, you will need to put on light spacesuits – they will help you explore any landing site for an hour, even if the temperature there exceeds forty degrees and the air is very thin. That’s also in the event the descend vehicle will make an unsuccessful landing – either in a cold or very hot zone of the planet.”

The robots prepared the shuttle for landing on Hopus’ surface. Clad in the orange spacesuits were Valentin, Elina, botanist Garik and the shuttle pilot Fox – an experienced space explorer who a while ago had worked as the second pilot on short tour flights to the Moon – went aboard. The ship’s airlock garage gates opened, the shuttle’s turbo-engine started on with a whistling sound and the vehicle slowly began descending. And just an hour and half later its released legs touched down on Hopus’ surface a hundred kilometers away from the planned landing site. The landing was rough and the air turbines raised a thick dirty-green cloud of dust around the landed shuttle, which was hanging in the air making the surroundings completely indiscernible from the portholes. The gauges showed that the outside temperature was below zero, some minus forty degrees Centigrade. The crew had been peering into the greenish haze for ten minutes, expecting that the dust would settle down at any time, but it was not clearing away, and conversely began sticking to the glass of the portholes.