Part 34 (1/2)

The woman's heavy lips were not pouty at all when she was smiling. ”I know Michel, everyone does.

Call me Vera, will you, honey?”

Still, a certain strain was in the air. Some awkwardness having to do with the way adults conducted their social lives had just happened, or was happening right now. Into the silence Frank said, ”Michel and I were just talking about Lancelot. The difficulties thereof.”

”Oh?” Vera looked properly concerned. ”If it's not about the forcefield math, I'm afraid I can't help much.”

”More like piloting problems,” Michel said unhappily.

”Honey, if it's getting to you after all, you better tell the medics.” Vera's concern grew more real. ”Or tell my husband. Or I'll tell him for you.”

”Getting to me? Oh no. It's not that I get sick using Lancelot, or anything like that.”

Frank's middle box put out two metal stick-arms, let them swing rhythmically from their upper joints. It seemed to be a gesture miming patience, taking the place perhaps of slow thumb-twiddling.

Vera saw this and shook her head. ”Look, boys, I think I'll just leave you to your piloting discussion.

Catch you later, both of you.”

”Caaatch yoouu.” Frank's answer came in a voice for once tuned far outside the human vocal spectrum, deep as the cough of some giant predator.

Vera giggled. With a wink in Michel's direction and a small wave for both of them she turned in her swinging skirt and strode back in the way that she had come, leaving Michel with a momentary vague curiosity as to why she had come this way at all.

But he had more demanding things to think about. ”Can I ask you something, Frank?”

”Sure. If I can ask you something, too.”

”What?”

”Promise you'll try to teach me how you do it. With Lancelot. When there's time.”

Michel paused. ”I'll try.”

”You don't sound too hopeful. Anyway, what was your question?”

Michel drew a deep breath, and with the sensation of stepping into a gulf of unknown depth he asked, ”Do you ever have the feeling that you're becoming some kind of a machine?”

”Is that all? h.e.l.l, no. Well of course in a sense this hardware that you see has become a part of me. But I'mnot a part of anything except myself . . . oh, maybe you mean when piloting a s.h.i.+p? Yeah, then there's a sense, a very strong sense sometimes, in which the s.h.i.+p and pilot become a unit. But I had that feeling, pretty much the same, before I was all smashed up. It's a pilot's feeling of becoming more than he is otherwise.”

”Not of being swallowed up by anything, though.”

”Swallowed up? No.” Frank paused, his liquid lenses sliding and rotating carefully. ”That answer your question?”

”I don't know. No it doesn't, really.”

”Ah. To me, Lancelot doesn't feel like a machine at all. If it was a machine, felt like a machine, then I could live with it. But to you it does, and the machine part is taking over the live part, is that it? The live part being you?”

”Yes.” It was a surprising relief to have said that much, at last, to someone.

”This feeling ends, I trust, when you take the d.a.m.ned thing off.”

”Yeah. Only . . .”

”Why don't you complain about it, as Vera suggested?”

”Then they might not let me wear it.” Confession, coming almost in a whisper. ”I feel happier when I have it on. And then like there's less of me, or something, every time when they take me out of it again.”

”h.e.l.l.” A heartily sympathetic though mechanized snort. ”I'mhappier when I'm in a s.h.i.+p.”

That wasn't it, though. Or was it? Michel didn't feel sure enough to argue. And certainly he felt better for confession. Even-or especially-to a set of boxes.

Frank remained silent for more than five seconds, which was for him a long and thoughtful pause. ”Let's take a walk,” his speakers grunted then.

Michel caught up with a skip to the swiftly moving train, and then walked quickly to hold his place beside it. He was led purposefully back into the regions where other people and other moving machines were common.

A liquid lens on the head box was studying Michel. Frank asked, ”I don't suppose they've shown you any of the pseudopersonalities.”

”The what? No.”

”I don't know why in h.e.l.l he doesn't communicate with you. It would give you a better perspective on the whole operation.”

They pa.s.sed signs warning about security zones. They pa.s.sed one live guard, for whom Frank did not even slow.

”Colonel Marcus? I should see the kid's clearance, if he's going-”

”Stuff it.Youshould have a clearance, just to talk tohim.”

That behind them, they kept walking and rolling on. Then Frank stopped abruptly, before a plain door with no handle. He put out one of his metal arms and with a touch on the door's featureless surface transmitted some kind of opening code. It opened to let them enter a small and heavily s.h.i.+elded storeroom.

There were a couple of narrow aisles, between low racks. Each rack held hundreds of metal cases, each case being of a size for an adult to carry about one-handed, and fitted with an appropriate grip.

Frank rolled between the racks, inspecting labels. ”These are the little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds we're supposed to replace in the Lancelot system. Or rather you, and other kids like you if they ever find any, are going to replace 'em.Ican't hack it. I really can't.”

”I don't understand.” The cases held complex components of some kind, meant to be plugged into something larger. Beyond that Michel could get no feeling for them.

With a metal arm Frank drew a case down from a rack. Then he trundled down the aisle with it to the end of the room, where work s.p.a.ce had been provided, and slid it expertly into a large console. He made adjustments on a viewer, and a moment later beckoned to Michel.

Looking in, through what seemed to be some great power of optical magnification, Michel could see what at first glance appeared to be imitation snowflakes, cobbled together out of what might be plastic, in a complex and vast array.

Frank's voice beside him said, ”This one's theRed Baron.Quite a story connected with it. Some of the others here have seen use in combat too, incorporated into conventional fighting s.h.i.+ps as well as earlier versions of Lancelot. In places where live human brains tend to fail under the strain. These stand the strain, but they can't really do the job. Not well enough.”

The nameRed Baronmeant nothing to Michel, who was discovering how to tune the viewer. His adjustments led him down through level after level of magnification. When light-quanta became too coa.r.s.e to image the next level of detail properly, electrons were automatically subst.i.tuted, and quarkbeams succeeded those grosser ent.i.ties in turn. The crystalline complexity that had suggested snowflakes was still present, composed of what form of matter Michel could no longer guess, diminis.h.i.+ng apparently without limit into finer and finer delicacies.

”This looks like-like something natural. But it isn't.”

”Nope. People made it. Go on, tune it finer if you like.”