“Or ghoul,” said Mahnmut.
“Our mission was to carry out surveillance,” said Suma IV in tones that were meant to be final. “Not start a war.”
“We can do both things for the price of one,” said Orphu. “We have the firepower aboard the Queen Mab to make a difference in whatever is going on down there. And although you haven’t officially told Mahnmut or me, we know there must be a host of more modern stealthed moravec warships following the Mab. This could be a wonderful opportunity to hit that thing—all those things—and coldcock them before they even know they’re in a fight.”
“What an extraordinary suggestion,” repeated Cho Li. “Absolutely extraordinary.”
“Right now,” said Asteague/Che in that odd James Mason voice that Mahnmut remembered from flatfilms, “our goal is not to start a war, but to deliver Odysseus to the Phobos-sized asteroid city in the polar ring as per the request of the Voice.”
“And before that,” said Suma IV, “we have to decide whether to go ahead with the dropship mission under cover of the aerobraking maneuver, or to wait until after rendezvous with the Voice’s orbital city and delivery of our human passenger.”
“I have a question,” said Mahnmut.
“Yes?” Prime Integrator Asteague/Che was also a Europan, thus almost the same size as the diminutive Mahnmut. The two stared visor-plate to visor-plate while the administrator waited.
“Does our human passenger want to be delivered to the Voice?” asked Mahnmut.
There was a silence broken only by the hum of ventilators, comm reports to and from those ‘vecs monitoring instruments, and the occasional bang of attitude thrusters from the hull.
“Good heavens,” said Cho Li. “How could we have overlooked asking him?”
“We were busy,” said General Beh bin Adee.
“I’ll ask him,” said Suma IV. “Although it will be embarrassing at this point if Odysseus says no.”
“We have his garments all prepared,” said the skittering Retrograde Sinopessen.
“Garments?” rumbled Orphu of Io. “Is our son of Laertes a Mormon?”
No one responded. All moravecs had some interest in human history and society—it had been programmed into their evolving DNA and circuits to keep such an interest—but very few were as immersed in human thinking as the huge Ionian. Nor had the others evolved such an odd sense of humor.
“Odysseus obviously has been wearing clothing of our design while he’s been aboard the Queen Mab,” chirped Retrograde Sinopessen. “But the clothing he will wear during the rendezvous with the Voice’s orbital asteroid will have every sort of nano-sized recording and transmission device we could conceive of. We will all monitor his experience in real time.”
“Even those of us who are going down to Earth on the dropship?” asked Orphu.
There was an embarrassed silence. Moravecs were not given to frequent embarrassment, but they were capable of it.
“You were not chosen for the dropship crew,” Asteague/Che said at last in his clipped but not unpleasant tones.
“I know,” said Orphu, “but I think I can convince you that the drop-ship mission must be launched during the Mab’s aerobraking and that I have to be on board. The little corner of the hold on Mahnmut’s sub will serve me just fine as my passenger space. It has all the connections I need and I like the view.”
“The submersible bay has no view,” said Suma IV. “Except via video link, which might be interrupted if the dropship were to come under attack.”
“I was being ironic,” said Orphu.
“Also,” said Cho Li, making a noise like a small animal clearing its throat, “you are—technically, optically—blind.”
“Yes,” said Orphu, “I’ve noticed. But beyond proper affirmative-action hiring practices—never mind, it’s not worth the time to explain—I can give you three compelling reasons why I have to be included on the dropship mission to Earth.”
“We haven’t concluded that the mission itself should occur,” said Asteague/Che, “but please proceed with your reasons for being included. Then we Prime Integrators must make several decisions in the next fifteen minutes.”
“First of all, of course,” rumbled Orphu, “there’s the obvious fact that I will be a splendid ambassador to any and all sentient races we meet after landing on Earth.”
General Beh bin Adee made a rude sound. “Is that before or after you nuke them into radioactive pus?” he asked.
“Secondly, there is the less obvious but still salient fact that no moravec on this ship—perhaps no moravec in existence—knows more about the fiction of Marcel Proust, James Joyce, William Faulkner, and George Marie Wong—as well as the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman—than I do, therefore and ergo, no moravec knows more about human psychology than I do. Should we actually speak to an old-style human, my presence will be indispensable.”
I didn’t know you also studied Joyce, Faulkner, Wong, Dickinson, and Whitman, tightbeamed Mahnmut.
It never came up, answered Orphu. But I’ve had time to read out there in the hard vacuum and sulfur of the Io Torus over the last twelve hundred standard years of my existence.
Twelve hundred years! tightbeamed Mahnmut. Moravecs were designed for a long life span, but three standard centuries was generous for the average ‘vec’s existence. Mahnmut himself was less than one hundred fifty years old. You never told me you were that old!
It never came up, transmitted Orphu of Io.
“I did not quite follow all the logical connections there in the verbal part before you tightbeamed your friend,” said Asteague/Che, “but pray continue. I believe you said that you had three compelling reasons why you should be included.”
“The third reason I deserve a chair on the dropship,” said Orphu, “figuratively speaking, of course, is that I’ve figured it out.”
“Figured what out?” asked Suma IV. The dark buckycarbon Ganymedan wasn’t visibly checking his chronometer, but his voice was.
“Everything,” said Orphu of Io. “Why there are Greek gods on Mars. Why there’s a tunnel through space and time to another Earth where Homer’s Trojan War is still being fought. Where this impossibly terraformed Mars came from. What Prospero and Caliban, two characters from an ancient Shakespearean play, are doing waiting for us on this real Earth, and why the quantum basis for the entire solar system is being screwed up by these Brane Holes that keep popping up… everything.”
56
The woman who looked like a young Savi was indeed named Moira, although in the next hours Prospero sometimes called her Miranda and once he smilingly referred to her as Moneta, which added to Harman’s confusion. Harman’s embarrassment, on the other hand, was so great that nothing could add to it. For their first hour together, he could not look in Moira’s direction, much less look her in the eye. As Moira and he ate what amounted to breakfast as Prospero sat at the table, Harman finally managed to look in the woman’s direction but couldn’t raise his gaze to her eye level. Then he realized that this probably seemed as if he was staring at her chest, so he looked away again.
Moira seemed oblivious to his discomfort.
“Prospero,” she said, sipping orange juice brought to them by a floating servitor, “you foul old maggot. Was this key to my awakening your idea?”
“Of course not, Miranda, my dear.”
“Don’t call me Miranda or I’ll start calling you Mandrake. I am not now, nor was I ever, your daughter.”