“What if we got off-planet? Just packed up and left?"
The intelligence hesitated. “Well, boss,” it said at last, “you could try that. You could pack up and go back to Mother and take off for Terra or anywhere else you fancy. But that wouldn't stop Thaddeus. He got off Alpha Imperium centuries after the collapse of the local civilization, remember; he used salvaged materials and slave labor and built himself a starship in a mud-hut technology. He could do the same here. And meanwhile, if you just took off, you'd have to leave behind a lot of stuff. All the mortals, for example. And me. I wouldn't like that. I mean, I know that you won't hang around Denner's Wreck forever, but I always figured that when you left you'd see that I came along, or else you'd leave me a secure situation here. If you run off now, you can't take me along-there isn't room on Mother, and you couldn't make the modifications quickly enough to get away before Thaddeus shot you down. And if you left me behind, I figure Thaddeus would get to me sooner or later."
“I didn't know you cared,” Geste said, genuinely startled. “I thought silicon life didn't have any ego or instinct for self-preservation."
“Well, I can't speak for anybody else, boss. I know you guys built me and evolved me from machinery instead of flatworms or whatever you humans are descended from, so that I don't need to have any instinct for self-preservation, and I know that a lot of machines are about as much alive and self-aware as a rock, and I know that even some smart ones would just as soon be scrapped as not, but I sure think I have an ego. Blame it on your programming-or Aulden's, I guess, since he did the basic design for me. Whatever you want to call it, I know damn well that I don't like the idea of Thaddeus messing around with me."
“He doesn't even know you exist!"
“Yeah, but he'd find out eventually."
“And why couldn't we make modifications?"
“You aren't worried about the mortals around here?"
“Let's leave them out of it for the moment. Why couldn't we make modifications and bring you along?"
“You wouldn't have time. If Thaddeus sees you packing up, he'll try and stop you. He won't want you alerting whatever military authorities there might be out there. The only way you could get off-planet safely would be to just pick up and go, right now, and take off in Mother. Even then, he might try to shoot you down."
Geste leaned back, thinking, and his seat reshaped itself to better fit his new contour. The goblet in his hand also reshaped itself, to avoid spilling, and the feelie vine at his ankle threw a massaging tendril up toward the back of his neck. The music shifted subtly.
“It seems to me,” he said, “that Mother is the big threat to his plans here; why hasn't he already shot her down? If I were trying to take over the planet without letting anyone outside the system know about it, I'd destroy Mother first thing, before anyone else knew I was up to something, in order to keep anyone from escaping. Thaddeus hasn't done that. Why not?"
“I'd guess he probably plans to use Mother himself. Seems obvious. After all, he surely doesn't want just Denner's Wreck. He must want a dozen or more suns, the same as before, and Mother's the only thing in the system with a stardrive. Building a new one would take a lot more time and a lot more resources than he wants, I'd guess. He could do it, he's done it before, but it's a lot easier to take the ship ready-made."
“But it's too big a risk, just waiting until he's ready. He must have something in mind, some way to make sure none of us are going to take the ship and leave him here while we go get help."
“If he does, boss, it's nothing I know about. Maybe we should ask Mother."
Geste waved a command. “Ask her, then.” He sipped his drink through a straw the goblet extruded for him.
“Bad news, boss,” Gamesmaster replied immediately. “Mother says that Thaddeus came up for a visit a couple of days ago and left off a few things, with orders not to touch them. They're hooked into the main controls and the stardrive. Mother's not happy about it, but she didn't have self-defense programs strong enough to override his orders, so they're all there now. He gave her orders so she couldn't even tell anyone until she was asked. It's a safe bet they're booby-traps of some kind, something to make sure that nobody can use the ship except him."
“We're in real trouble, then. I mean, I'm sure that anything Thaddeus can rig up Aulden could get around-probably in about five minutes-but Thaddeus has Aulden stashed away somewhere, and none of the rest of us are fit to program a lunchbox. If those are booby-traps, and I'm pretty damn sure they are, then unless we get Aulden out we're stuck here on Denner's Wreck. Is there any way we can call for help?"
“Who would we call? How? We've been cut off here for centuries on this little vacation you people put together. I don't have any idea what's been happening back in civilization, and neither do any of the other machines that will talk to me. And we don't have an open channel to anywhere, either-nothing outside the system but normal-space communications. We could broadcast a message, anywhere you like up and down the electromagnetic spectrum, but it would go out at light speed, and it's eight light-years to the next inhabited system. That means it would be eight years before anyone could respond. Even if they took your word for everything and launched ships immediately, Thaddeus would have had eight years to do whatever he's going to do."
“Do it anyway. Send the message, before that monster finds some way to jam outgoing traffic for the whole planet. At least then Thaddeus will have a time limit. Eight years isn't much."
“Boss, I don't think that's a good idea, at least not yet."
Annoyed at being questioned by his own machine, Geste snapped, “Why the hell not?"
“Well, first off, it will tell Thaddeus that we know what he's doing, and we haven't got any defenses set up yet. Do you really want to issue an invitation to come and kill us? Besides, it won't set a definite time limit anyway. We don't know that anyone will answer. The nearest known inhabited planet is New Schenectady, but why would anyone on New Sken care about Denner's Wreck? I've picked up crosstalk from there every so often, and it's not a hotbed of wild-eyed idealism. If the message ever reaches Alpha Imperium we can expect an answer-they remember Thaddeus there, and last I heard they still had a death warrant out on him-but that's almost a century away in normal space. We might have help in eight years-or in ninety-six. I suspect we'd all be dead in ninety-six, if we antagonized Thaddeus like that."
Geste saw the truth in Gamesmaster's argument. “Then we've got to stop him ourselves, here on Denner's Wreck,” he said.
“I'd say so, boss. Looks to me like you're up to your neck in trouble."
“We're up to our necks,” Geste corrected.
“Boss, I hate to tell you this, after all these years, especially after what I just said about my being one of the guys, but my secret's out-I don't have a neck."
“That's too bad-means I can't wring it. Anyway, I meant all of the humans, mostly."
“Well, I'd have to agree with that."
“I have got to get help."
“I'd have to agree with that, too. But you didn't do very well at enlisting troops before."
“Then I'll just have to do better. Who haven't I tried?"
The intelligence emitted a synthetic sigh, and began listing names.