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  We nodded.

  “Good.” She looked at Sasha. “So, sweet stuff. What happened to your eye?”

  Sasha met her gaze without flinching. “I sold it.”

  The captain nodded, as if selling an eye was the most natural thing in the world, and nothing to be concerned about. “Right. Find an idiot named Kreshenko. Tell him you’re the help he’s been asking for, and keep an eye on Lester, he’d screw a droid if he found one equipped with a hole.”

  The forklift whirred and carried her to a combination desk and console. She searched through the junk, found a disk, and flipped it in my direction. I caught it and she nodded approvingly. “You’re in charge of the farm. Your predecessor drank himself to death. Don’t make the same mistake. Read the disk, memorize the contents, and don’t mess up.”

  I nodded stupidly, hoped I could comply, and knew I couldn’t.

  The captain reached for a bag of Oreo cookies, spilled some into the palm of her hand, and shoved one into her mouth. The words were muffled. “Good. You can have cabins G and H. Now get to work.”

  We were halfway out the door when she stopped us. Crumbs dribbled down her chin. “One more thing…the dart guns are legal…but keep ’em holstered.”

  We shrugged, nodded, and hit the hall. It seemed as if secrets were damned hard to keep. The ship broke free of Staros-3 about an hour later, accelerated away, and started the long, slow journey to Mars.

  8

  “Although technically competent, Lester Hollings demonstrates certain behaviors consistent with a psychopathic personality. I recommend close supervision by qualified mental health professionals.”

  A notation from Lester Hollinqs’s personnel file that had been scrubbed from memory but was later found on a backup matrix

  I spent the first forty or fifty hours sleeping, exploring the ship’s cavernous interior, and becoming acquainted with the rest of the crew. And a jolly bunch they were too.

  In addition to the porcine captain and the hormonal Lester, the Red Trader boasted an over-the-hill pilot, a cook nicknamed Killer, and a detail-obsessed load master named Kreshenko. There were fifteen or twenty androids too, some of whom had names, and some of whom relied on numbers for identification. The most notable of these was known as “the phantom,” after the character in “Phantom of the Opera,” and was said to be in desperate need of a full-scale electronic tune-up. I decided to keep an eye peeled for him.

  All of which was interesting but didn’t help me learn my job. A job that was connected with the hydroponics section, or “farm.” It seemed that production had fallen off, and, given the captain’s preoccupation with food, I was in deep trouble. Especially since the captain kept the pressure on Killer and he kept the pressure on me.

  Finally, after another close encounter with a cleaver-waving cook, I retired to my cabin and sat in front of my computer screen. The cursor winked at me like an electronic pervert, well aware of my weakness, and happy to exploit it. The problem stemmed from the fact that a penny-pinching corpie had equipped the Red Trader with manual PC’s, denying me the voice recognition systems that I had learned to rely on, and plunging me into despair.

  I inserted the disk, hit the key that made things go, and watched characters flood the screen. I stared at them, forced the images into my mind, and waited for knowledge to flood my brain. It didn’t. The characters remained as meaningless as ever, cutting me off from the information that I needed, and filling me with rage.

  My fist came down so hard that the keyboard jumped. It wasn’t fair, damn it! I must have been able to read, must have been able to understand those squiggles, or the Mishimuto Corporation would never have recruited me. Hell, I’d been an officer, for god’s sake, and surely they knew how to read.

  But the chunk of metal that had taken my memories had taken my capacity to read as well, leaving me unable to do anything more complicated than killing people.

  The rage died away and tears of self-pity trickled down my cheeks. I thought of the others, the ones Bey had mentioned, and wondered if they felt as I did. Was that why one of them had committed suicide? Why the other had been confined to a mental institution? And what about the skull plates? Were they a coincidence? Similar injuries treated in a similar way? Or something more?

  The questions crowded around me and made my head hurt. I pushed them away and turned my attention to the problem at hand. I didn’t understand the characters, so I’d get some help from someone who did. There were a variety of techniques available, and one of them would work. True, this situation called for a more complicated scam than usual, but there was no reason to believe I couldn’t come up with one.

  I withdrew the disk, glanced at the time, and stood up. The cabin was small compared with those assigned to the regular crew, but comfortable nonetheless. I had a bunk with overhead entertainment console, a locker ten times larger than my wardrobe, and a desk-computer combo. The only trace of the previous occupant was the half-empty bottle of hooch stashed under the mattress and a black sock in one of the drawers.

  I stepped into the corridor and knocked on Sasha’s door. There was plenty of time, since her shift didn’t start for another hour so. Her voice was muffled by the steel hatch. “Yes?”

  “It’s Max.”

  “Are you alone?”

  I looked around. Lester was nowhere in sight. The corridor was empty. “Yup.”

  The hatch slid open. The bandage had been replaced with a black eyepatch that gave Sasha a piratical air. And that, plus the bra and panties, was reminiscent of the more exotic strip shows I’d seen. It was nice to be trusted yet somewhat disturbing at the same time. I felt like Uncle Max, eccentric, but essentially harmless. Sasha had no idea that she’d offended my delicate male ego and motioned me inside. I slipped into scam mode.

  “Hi, how’s it going?”

  “Lester’s a pain in the ass, but otherwise fine. How ‘bout you?”

  “Oh, nothing much,” I said casually. “The captain’s on my case…but what else is new?”

  Sasha nodded understandingly. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I’m so tired of working on Kreshenko’s inventories I could puke. I’ll bet the guy dreams about decimal points. What’s your job like, anyway?”

  I shrugged. “That’s the problem. I haven’t started yet…and the captain’s pissed. Not to mention Killer.”

  Sasha stepped into her pants and pulled them up around her waist. I tried to ignore the fact that she had nice legs and failed. She looked surprised. “You haven’t started? Why not?”

  I produced the disk. Light glinted from its surface. “1001100101111000011110. This stuff is complicated. I wouldn’t want to screw up.”

  Sasha nodded understandingly, as if my tendency to screw up was an ongoing problem, which it definitely was. “You want some drill? No problem. Let’s take a look.”

  I felt the thrill of victory as she slipped the disk into her console and hit the appropriate key. “Where shall we start?”

  “From the top,” I answered quickly. “And read it aloud. I learn better that way.”

  Sasha nodded and started to read. “The Nutralife 4000 food maintenance and production system is intended for use on Class IV ships carrying no more than twenty crew and passengers. It is essential that this system be provided with sufficient oxygen, water, and nutrients. Failure to provide these materials in sufficient quantities will reduce the system’s capabilities to provide dependents with a balanced diet and nullify the Nutralife 4000’s warranty.”

  Then she paused, frowned for a moment, and pointed at the screen. “What’s that word?”

  I shook my head slowly. “Beats the heck out of me.”

  Sasha raised an eyebrow. “Really? You don’t know the word ‘and’?”

  Blood rushed to my face. I tried a bluff. “Of course I know it…”

  She held up her hand and looked as concerned as a person with a black eyepatch can. “Admit it, Max…you don’t know how to read. It goes with the brain damage.”

&
nbsp; The way she said it was sort of sad, as if accepting the truth of something she’d suspected all along, and managed to ignore. “People think you’re stupid when you can’t read.”

  I felt her fingers on my hand and looked up into her face. It was the nice Sasha, the same one who had kissed my cheek, and was occasionally sympathetic. “You’re far from stupid, Max. Disadvantaged, yes, and strange at times, but far from stupid.”

  The compliment was rather heavily qualified but I decided to accept it anyway. Doing so made me feel warm, loved, and damned near human.

  Sasha looked at her watch. “I have about forty-five minutes. Let’s get to work.”

  She read, and I listened, and the information began to accumulate. Other sessions followed, and two cycles later, on the eve of the very shift when Killer had promised to eject me from the main lock, I was ready to go. Or semi-ready, since there were vast tracts of highly technical information that had gone in one ear and out the other.

  But Sasha had instructed me to take heart from the fact that no less than three of the ship’s androids were assigned to the farm and would handle the real as well as the intellectual heavy lifting. No, my role was to supervise and provide something the instruction disk called “psycho-reinforcement,” but sounded a lot like petting. So, armed with my newfound knowledge and the very best of intentions, I headed for the farm. It was located about two-thirds of the way down the length of the ship’s hull and consisted of two sections.

  The first was reminiscent of the way a revolver works. Nine cylinders rotated around a central axis, but rather than bullets, each chamber contained a thirty-foot-long hydroponics tank. Rather than using soil, which was heavy and therefore expensive, the tanks contained trays full of water mixed with nutrients. Each tank was shielded against radiation, received sunlight via external solar collectors, and had its own internal irrigation system.

  Rotating as they did around a central axis, the tanks paused in each of the nine possible positions for two hours at a time. Retractable decking slid into place and allowed my robotic assistants to open the chamber and take care of the more mundane chores like seeding, trimming, and harvesting. And what a harvest it was!

  I arrived on the maintenance deck just in time to see the androids remove the last of some basketball-sized tomatoes. One of the robots, a rather functional-looking unit with four legs and three arms, spotted me and minced over. Multi-colored paint drippings covered him from sensors to foot pads. They were the residue of a maintenance assignment, and the source of the nickname: Picasso. Like most higher-order androids, Picasso had the ability to supplement his original programming through on-the-job experience, and his speech reflected that fact. “Hey, dude…what’s happening?”

  “I’ve been assigned to run the farm.”

  “All right! ‘Bout time the captain sent a bio bod down here. The veggies are fine but the aniforms are antsy as hell. We shoot the breeze with ’em, and shovel their shit, but it ain’t the same. Come on…I’ll take you into section two.”

  I followed the robot past the still-open module. Though smaller than Picasso, and built more like spiders, the other androids stood waist-high and were equipped with all sorts of highly specialized sensors, cutters, and grabbers. Picasso handled the introductions. “The one with the stickers all over his torso is known as Decal, and the other one prefers the official designator of Agrobot Model XII.”

  Decal was the more friendly of the two and trundled right up. “Could I have the privilege of knowing your name, sir?”

  “You can call me Max.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Max. Your predecessor programmed me to generate large quantities of alcohol. A surplus has accumulated since his death. Should I make more, or wait for you to consume existing supplies first?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “I won’t need as much as my predecessor did. Save what you have but don’t make any more.”

  To the extent that a machine can look relieved, this one did, and rolled away. Picasso explained as we walked towards section two. “You made his day. Operating the still ran counter to his main mission and made him less efficient than specs called for. The result was an internal dissonance that had to be resolved. Yeah, nothing bothers a droid more than countervailing objectives, and we get ’em all the time. No offense intended.”

  “And none taken,” I assured him. “Humans provide each other with countervailing objectives every day.”

  Picasso turned a paint-splotched sensor in my direction. “Really? How strange. Well, it’s like I tell the others: ‘They were smart enough to invent us, so they must know what they’re doing.’“

  I wasn’t so sure, but it didn’t seem appropriate to say so. The hatch slid open and we entered section two. The rich, almost sweet smell of animal feces filled the air. I decided to breathe through my mouth. Even though I knew what to expect, the reality of it surprised me. The aniforms saw us and started to moo, bleat, grunt, and cackle. Cubicles lined both sides of the corridor, and each one contained one or more biologically engineered life forms. The cows came first.

  Like their distant ancestors many times removed, the cows had heads with ears, eyes, and mouths, but that’s where the resemblance ended. Necks that had been long were shorter now and connected to rectangular bodies that rested within identical stainless-steel boxes. Legs had been deemed unnecessary and eliminated, along with tails and carefully selected bones. They all looked alike, which wasn’t surprising, since they were clones. The aniforms had been designed for one thing and one thing only: meat. The mooing had grown to almost frantic intensity as nineteen pairs of big brown eyes stared into my face and begged me to make contact. It seemed as though something unexpected had occurred during the long process that created them.

  Not only had each successive generation of cows become a little bit smarter, they had become more emotionally dependent as well, until ongoing social interaction had evolved from something they tolerated to something they couldn’t do without. And the same was true of the sheep, pigs, and chickens.

  And that was my function, to visit them on a regular basis, and keep them happy. Failure to do so resulted in steady weight loss and tougher meat. Which explained why the captain and the cook were so concerned. “Go ahead,” Picasso shouted over the din, “pet them.”

  Having never touched a farm animal before, I was scared. I reached out to the nearest cow and its head met my hand. The aniform’s hair felt short and wiry. I ran my hand up towards the top of its head and saw its eyes close in ecstasy. A shiver ran through its black-and-white-spotted body and reminded me of the moment when Sasha had kissed my cheek.

  Was the cow feeling the same warmth I had? If so, I could understand the importance of the contact. But there was no way to tell, and I continued to stroke the cow’s head. The thought of killing, much less eating, the aniform made me sick.

  Droids aren’t supposed to feel emotions, but I would have sworn that Picasso sounded wistful. “An android can pet them all day long without the slightest sign of pleasure. A human comes along and they go crazy. Why?”

  I gave the first cow a final pat and moved to the next one. “Beats me. Some kind of evolutionary linkage or something?”

  “Maybe,” Picasso said doubtfully, “but it still seems strange.”

  Time passed, and Picasso turned his attention to shoveling shit. I was halfway through the cows and well on my way to the sheep when the captain called. Her voice came from a speaker mounted over my head. There was a vid cam as well but duct tape covered the lens. “Hey, Maxon, you there?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned. He’s actually doing some work for a change.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, get your ass to the bridge. We got trouble.”

  There was a cacophony of disappointed moos, baas, grunts, and cackles as I turned towards the hatch and made my way forward. “What kind of trouble?”

  “Bad trouble. It seems that Lester made a move on your skinny-a
ssed friend and she put a dart through what was left of his brain.”

  “He deserved it.”

  The captain’s voice followed me through the hatch. “Probably…but that’s beside the point. Lester was our engineer and we needed him.”

  “Give me a break. This ship has backups for its backups. I assume Lester was no exception.”

  There was a long silence followed by the sound of the captain clearing her throat. “Well, Lester was supposed to have a fully qualified assistant, but I couldn’t find anyone to fill the position.”

  I remembered the long lines outside every business office on Staros-3 and knew the captain was lying. The miserable bitch was using a phony identity to line her own pockets. I knew better than to say anything, however. “How unfortunate.”

  “Exactly,” the captain agreed. “Now get your butt up here.”

  I entered the “holy of holies” four minutes later. It was roomy and almost entirely automated. Banks of seldom-used manual controls glowed softly, air whispered through duct work, and the star field hung almost motionless on a curvilinear screen. The entire crew had gathered around the captain’s thronelike command chair. There was Wilson, the round-shouldered, gaunt-faced pilot; Killer, his whites stained with what looked like blood; Kreshenko, his carefully shaved face devoid of all expression, and the captain, who looked as she always did: fat.

  I saw Sasha and hurried over. She had an angry-looking bump on her left temple and her clothes were ripped. The question sounded lame even as I asked it. “Are you alright?”

  She gave me one of those “how could anyone be so stupid?” looks and shook her head. “Never felt better.”

  But the size of her remaining pupil, the tightness around her mouth, and the quick, shallow breathing told a different story. It felt awkward to put an arm around her shoulders, but I did it anyway, and felt pleased when she made no attempt to escape.

  The captain raised an imperious hand. Light glinted from her rings. “Now that chrome-dome has been kind enough to join us, we can begin.”