A World Out of Time Part 4

"Your mission-"

"Shut up! up!"

The voice of Pierce the checker was silent. Corbell heard the purr of moving air.

What next? If Pierce controlled the computer he controlled everything. Why didn't he turn the s.h.i.+p himself?

Had he? Corbell climbed up into the Womb Room and settled in the control chair. "Full view," he commanded.

He floated alone in s.p.a.ce.

Half a light-year of distance had not changed the pattern of the stars. A year of acceleration had. Don Juan Don Juan was now meeting all light rays at an angle, so that the entire sky was puckered forward. was now meeting all light rays at an angle, so that the entire sky was puckered forward.

In his first life, during nights spent aboard a small boat, Corbell had made a nodding acquaintance with the constellations. Sagittarius was just where he had left it, directly overhead. A ring of white flame around and below him was hydrogen guided and constricted to fuse in stellar fire: the exhaust of his drive. Sol was a hot pink point beneath his feet... and something flickered across it.

Corbell, staring, made out a humanoid form barely blacker than s.p.a.ce, walking toward him across the stars. Coming close.

Narrow features, light hair... it was Pierce. Corbell watched, barely breathing. Pierce was as big as Don Juan. Don Juan. Pierce was angry... Pierce was angry...

Corbell said, "Computer, get that mannequin off the screen."

The figure vanished.

Corbell resumed breathing. "Pierce, or Peerssa, or Computer, or whatever name you will answer to, I give you your orders. You will proceed to the galactic axis under one gravity of acceleration, making turnover at midpoint. You will take all necessary steps to guard my life and the integrity of the s.h.i.+p, subject to this mission. Now speak if you like."

The voice of Pierce the checker said, "I prefer Peerssa."

Corbell sighed his relief. "So do I. Are you in fact under my orders?"

"Yes. Corbell, there are things we must discuss. You owe your very existence to the State. You've stolen a key to the survival of mankind itself! How many seeder rams.h.i.+ps do you imagine we can build? How many package probes do you think will succeed in converting alien atmospheres to something men can breathe? Or do you think that men will never need to leave the Earth?"

"Computer, you will henceforth answer to the name Peerssa. Peerssa, shut the f.u.c.k up."

Silence.

Now Corbell caught himself giggling occasionally. It could happen anytime. At meals, or sitting in the Womb Room watching the sky, or using the Health Club, he would suddenly start giggling. And then he couldn't stop, because Peerssa could hear, and Peerssa couldn't answer- Peerssa. The naming of names: Pierce the checker was far in Corbel's past, while Peerssa was a personality imposed on a computer's memory bank. The distinction was worth remembering. There would be major differences between the man and the computer. Peerssa had different senses. Peerssa would never suffer hunger pangs or a frustrated s.e.x urge. Peerssa would never exercise or use the rest room. Peerssa might well have no sense of self-preservation. That was worth finding out. The naming of names: Pierce the checker was far in Corbel's past, while Peerssa was a personality imposed on a computer's memory bank. The distinction was worth remembering. There would be major differences between the man and the computer. Peerssa had different senses. Peerssa would never suffer hunger pangs or a frustrated s.e.x urge. Peerssa would never exercise or use the rest room. Peerssa might well have no sense of self-preservation. That was worth finding out.

And Peerssa was compelled to follow orders. Peerssa was Corbel's slave.

Two weeks pa.s.sed before Corbell gave in to the urge for conversation. Seated in the control chair, floating among stars that were already brighter and bluer above than below, Corbell said, "Peerssa, you may speak."

"Good. You've instructed me to guard your life and the s.h.i.+p. I can't maintain one gravity all the way without killing you and wrecking the s.h.i.+p."

"Don't lie to me," Corbell snapped. "I checked it out on the computer before I ever pa.s.sed Saturn. The ram effect works better better at high velocities, because I can narrow the width of the ram fields. Greater hydrogen flux." at high velocities, because I can narrow the width of the ram fields. Greater hydrogen flux."

"You used data already in the computer."

"Yes, of course."

"Corbell, that data was meant for jumps of up to fifty-two light-years. Not thirty-three thousand. We built the field generator as strong as possible, but it will not stand one gravity at your peak velocity. The strains will tear it apart. We'll have to decrease thrust starting three years from now, if you want to live."

Pierce the checker had never lied, had he? Pierce had never bothered. Why lie to a corpsicle? Peerssa was something else again. Corbell said, "You're lying."

"I deny it. Make up your mind. You've ordered me not to lie. Am I under your orders? If not, why don't I just turn and head for Van Maanan's Star?"

Corbell gave up. "This ruins my itinerary, doesn't it? How long will it take us to reach the core?"

"In near-perfect safety, about five hundred years."

"Give me... oh, a ninety-percent chance of getting there alive. How long?"

"Computing. Insufficient data on interstellar ma.s.s density. We'll correct that on the way. One hundred and sixty years, four months, plus or minus ten months, all figures in s.h.i.+p's time."

Corbell felt cold. That long? "Suppose we don't go direct? We could skim above the plane of the galaxy-"

"And thin out the interstellar matter. Computing. Good, Corbell. We lose some time thrusting laterally at turnover, but we still shave some time. One hundred and thirty-six years, eleven months, confidence of a year and a month."

"That still isn't good."

"And you'd have to spend the same time coming home. You'd get home dead, Corbell. We could finish your original mission faster than that. Well?"

"For-" Never Never say say Forget it Forget it to a computer. "You have your orders. I now amend them. Your mission is to get us to the galactic axis in minimum s.h.i.+p's time relative, ninety-percent confidence of getting me there alive." to a computer. "You have your orders. I now amend them. Your mission is to get us to the galactic axis in minimum s.h.i.+p's time relative, ninety-percent confidence of getting me there alive."

"You'll never see Earth again."

"Shut up."

Silence.

"You may speak."

Silence.

"Does it bother you, being cut off like that?"

"Yes, of course it bothers me. I've been silent for a week. That's four weeks added to our trip time. The longer it takes me to persuade you, the longer it will take us to complete our mission!"

"I could order you to give up that idea."

"I would do it. Snarling of my circuits might result. Corbell, I appeal to your sense of grat.i.tude. The State created you, you owe your very existence-"

"Bulls.h.i.+t."

"Is it that easy for you to ignore your duty?"

Corbell swallowed an urge to drive his fist through a bank of dials. "No, it's not easy. Every time you raise the holy name of the State, something in me snaps to attention."

"Then why not listen to the voice of your social conscience?"

"Because it's not my conscience! It's those d.a.m.n shots! You filled me full of memory RNA, and that's where my sense of duty to the State is coming from!"

Peerssa took a good dramatic pause before he said, insinuatingly, "Suppose it's your conscience, after all?"

"I'll never know, will I? And that's your doing, isn't it? So live with it."

"You will never see Earth again. Your medical facilities will not keep you alive that long."

Corbell snorted. "Don't be silly. The medicines and the cold-sleep tank are supposed to keep me young and healthy for the first two hundred years. The cold-sleep tank has a rejuvenating effect, remember?"

"It doesn't. I lied. You were to remain alive for the duration of your mission. If the medicines had been better, we would have extended the mission."

It rang true; it fitted well with what Corbell knew of the State. "You sons of b.i.t.c.hes."

"Corbell, listen to me. In three hundred years the State may discover complete rejuvenation. We could arrive home in time-"

"For non-citizens?"

No answer.

"We're going to the galactic axis. You have your orders."

"You must enter cold sleep immediately," Peerssa said in a dead voice.

"Oh?"

"Your optimum program is ten years in cold sleep, six months to recover, then cold sleep again. You will survive to see the galactic axis, barely."

"Uh-huh. And if you happened to forget to wake me up?"

"That's your problem. Traitor."

II.

Raw throat. Cramped muscles. Eyes that wouldn't focus. Questing hands found him in a coffin with the lid still on.

Waking from cold sleep was like waking from death. He had half expected this when they froze him in 1970. And he had half expected never to wake. He whispered, "Peerssa."

"Here. Where would I go?"

"Yeah. Where are we?"

"One hundred and six light-years from Sol. You must eat." Suddenly Corbell was ravenous. He sat up, rested, then climbed down from the tank, treating himself like fragile crystal. He was lean as death, and weak. "Fix me a snack I can take to the Womb Room," he said.

"It will be waiting."

He felt light-headed. No, he felt light. He picked up a large bulb of hot soup in the Kitchen, and sucked at it as he continued to the Womb Room. "Give me a view," he said.

The walls disappeared.

The stars blazed violet-white over his head. The stellar rainbow spread out from there: violet stars in the center, then rings of blue, green, yellow, orange, dim red. To the sides and below there was almost nothing: a dozen dim red points, and the feathery ring of flame that marked his drive. That had dimmed to, for Peerssa had pulled the ram fields close; and had reddened, because the fuel guided into that ring was moving at near light-speed relative to the s.h.i.+p.

Peerssa was bitter. "Are you satisfied? Even if we turned back now, we have lost over four hundred years of Earth time-"

"You bore me," said Corbell, though he felt stabbing pain from what he would once have called his conscience. "What happens next?"

"Next? You eat and exercise. In six months you must be strong and fat-"

"Fat?"

"Fat. Otherwise you could not survive ten years in cold sleep. Finish your soup, then exercise."

"What do I do for entertainment?"

"Whatever you like." Naturally Peerssa was puzzled. The State had provided nothing for Corbel's entertainment.

"Yeah, I thought so. Tell me about yourself, Peerssa. We're going to be together a long time."

"What do you want to know?"

"I want to know how you got to be this way. What was it like to be Peerssa the checker, citizen of the State? Start with your childhood."

Peerssa was a poor storyteller. He rambled. He had to be led by appropriate questions. But there was more than his voice to tell tales with.

He was an inept motion-picture director with an unlimited budget. On the wall of the Womb Room he showed Corbell the farming community where he had grown up, and the schools of his childhood (skysc.r.a.pers with playgrounds on the roof), and the animated history texts he had studied during his final training. The memories were usually hazy. Some were shockingly sharp and brightly colored: the enormous ten-year-old who bullied Peerssa on the exercise roof; the older girl who showed him s.e.x and thus frightened him badly; his civics teacher.

Corbell ate and slept and exercised. He tended Don Juan Don Juan with the half-instinctive love and understanding absorbed with his rammer training. In between, he had from Peerssa all the knowledge he had not dared demand of Pierce the checker. with the half-instinctive love and understanding absorbed with his rammer training. In between, he had from Peerssa all the knowledge he had not dared demand of Pierce the checker.

He saw views of Selerdor, the city he had only glimpsed from a rooftop. The buildings were as blocky and unimaginative inside as out. The carvings at street level were in Shtoring, the State language. They were edifying principles, rules of conduct, or the life stories of State heroes.

He grew to know Peerssa as well as he had known Mirabelle, his wife for twenty-two years. In knowing Peerssa he grew to know the State. The computer memory held what Corbell would have called civics texts. He read those, with helpful comments from Peerssa.

He learned of two brush-fire wars that had half destroyed the world. In ashes of war and fires of idealism the State had been born, said Peerssa, and had rapidly grown all-powerful. It was a benevolent fascism, Peerssa said. What Peerssa described had distinct overtones of Chinese and j.a.panese empire. Society was drastically stratified. A citizen's obligations to those above him (and below him!) were backed with his life.

The government built and controlled every power generator. Once these had been very diverse: d.a.m.ns, geothermal plants, temperature differential plants in the ocean depths; now they were big fusion generators supplemented by rooftop and desert solar-energy collectors. But the State owned them all.

Once he asked, "Peerssa, do you know what a water-monopoly empire is?"

"Pity. A lot of early civilizations were water-monopoly empires. Ancient Egypt, ancient China, the Aztecs. Any government that controls irrigation completely is a water empire. If the State controls power of all kinds, they also control the fresh water supply, don't they? With a population of twelve billion-"

"Yes, of course. We built the dams and rerouted the rivers and distilled fresh water for deuterium for the fusion plants and sent the excess water onward. If the State had ever paused to rest, half the world would have died of thirst."

Musing, Corbell said, "I once asked you if you thought the State would last fifty thousand years."

"I don't."