Within the blue fog of the ambient, the shadow thrust, spitefully, at a cluster of code. He extended himself and blocked—the door slid properly open, allowing the child to exit.
"You also," Command Prime said, but the man shook his bright head.
"My ship," he said. "My children. My crew."
An order of protocol, and an imperative to defend. He understood such things, and honored them.
Honor was no defense, however, and defense the child's uncle surely required. The ambient fair trembled with spiteful intent, and power drenched the air.
The charge was still building. Discharged, it might not kill a man, though men were oddly fragile, but it would surely damage one. The man spun toward the sealed compartment, snatched it open and pulled out the utility apron.
The fifth iteration of himself, sent on the quest for codes, rejoined Command Prime, data unfolding like a flower.
The first iteration of himself met the menace in the ambient, codes a-bristle. The third, swimming aloof in the main banks, received those same codes and held them close.
The menace lunged—neither subtle nor clever, seeking to overcome him with a burst of senseless data laced with virus vectors. He shielded, and thrust past, to the intelligence behind the attack, certain that he would meet one such as himself.
So certain was he that he discounted the real threat, thinking it a mere device, belatedly recognizing the structure of the scantily shielded code.
Realizing his error, he made a recovery—a mere jamming of keys and code until the device fragmented and ceased functioning. It was ugly, brutal—and stupid. He ought to have merely captured, and subverted, it. Once, he could have done so.
Once, he would not have mistaken the actions of a simple machine intelligence for one of his own.
Inside the main banks, the third iteration of himself, armed with codes and an understanding of what he hunted, detected the device slipping down the data-stream, sparkling with malice. A data-bomb, much more coherent than that which had been hurled at him in the ambient.
This, he understood, as he subtly encompassed it, had been crafted well, and with intent. He halted the device, inserted the command keys, stripped out its imperative, plucked the rest of the construct apart, and absorbed the pieces, isolating them for later analysis.
Then, he pulled together the image scans he had stored, connecting them in a time plot: there the crated robot opening its own way into the workroom, there at the plug permitting highspeed data access, there rushing itself back and sealing the crate as voices in the hall had become the child Val Con.
Task done, the third iteration of himself rejoined Command Prime.
In the workroom, the man had not been idle. The disassembled pieces of the physical unit lay on the workbench, the man wearing the apron, a shielded spanner in one gloved hand.
He glanced to the data-box, where the whole of his actions were recorded, and at the images of the gifted danger, then directly at him.
"For your service to my ship, I thank you," he said. "What is your name?"
He paused, counting, mindful of the child's counsel. "I remember that I had a name," he said carefully. "I no longer recall what it was."
Golden brows lifted. "Age or error?"
"Design. I was decommissioned. It is my belief that I was to be destroyed. Erased."
"You are sentient." It was not a question, but he answered as if it were.
"Yes."
The man sighed and closed his eyes. "The child," he said, "is uncanny." His eyes opened. "Well.
"There will be tests, and conversations. Analysis. If it transpires that you are, after all a threat to Val Con's life, or to this ship, or any other, I will do as you asked me, and see you destroyed—cleanly and quickly."
That was just, though he still did not wish to die.
"And if I am found to be no danger to you or those who fall under your protection?" he asked.
The man smiled.
"Why, then, we shall see.”
* * *
Thus it transpired that fiction assisted him, after all. For, after he had spoken at length with Er Thom yos'Galan, and with Scout Commander Ivdra sen'Lora, the first to ascertain the temper of his soul; the second to gain a certification of sentience, he agreed to hire himself as the butler at Trealla Fantrol, the house of yos'Galan on the planet Liad.
He studied—manuals, the records of one Ban Del pak'Ora, lists of alliances—and the works of a long-ago Terran.
In time, he signed a contract, and was presented, amidst much merriment to the mother of Val Con and Shan, the lifemate of Er Thom, who firstly, as Master Val Con had predicted, asked him his name.
"Jeeves, madam," he had said, pleased with the resonance and timbre the up-market voder lent his voice.
She laughed, the lady, and clapped her hands.
"Perfect," she said. "You'll fit right in."
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Framed