The Seventh Angel

She moved carefully as she worked. There was frost on the deck, and she didn’t want to slip and fall on her ass in front of all these Navy yahoos. They’d laugh about that for forty years, wouldn’t they?

Mouse hung from the heavy steel arm of the boat davit, swinging gently from the cable that was ordinarily used to raise and lower the ship’s two Rigid-Hulled Inflatable Boats. The robot was bright yellow, disk-shaped, and about seven feet in diameter. A pair of large multi-jointed manipulator arms protruded from the leading edge of the disk, and three pump-jet propulsion pods were mounted to the trailing edge in a triangular formation. The forward end of the robot was arrayed with clusters of camera lenses, sonar transducers, and other sensors.

The curve of the machine’s yellow carapace was stamped with the words NORTON DEEP WATER SYSTEMS, and the streamlined black ‘N’ of the Norton corporate logo. It was the company’s mark of ownership, there for all the world to see. For all of Ann’s personal sense of ownership, Mouse belonged to Norton, not to her.

She unscrewed a waterproof pressure cap from the ventral data port, and plugged a length of fiber-optic into the narrow connecting jack beneath. She plugged the other end of the cable into a hand-held test module about the size of a brick, and began to punch buttons and watch the results on the built-in digital display. The readouts were all in hexadecimal, but Mouse was Ann’s baby. She knew every status code by heart.

Officially, the machine’s name was Multi-purpose Autonomous Underwater System Mark- I. Usually, that was shortened to M-A-U-S, or Mouse. By classification, it was an Unmanned Underwater Vehicle, not a robot. The United States Navy didn’t care for the word robot, with its science fiction movie connotations. Consequently, that word was never officially used, and even unofficial use of the R-word was discouraged. The machine was either referred to as Mouse, or by one of several more generic designations: the unit, the package, the system, the equipment, or even the UUV. Never the robot.

To Ann, the controversy over that one word was a perfect example of the warped logic at the heart of the military value system. Military types had no problem launching missiles at people they’d never even met, but they practically wet their pants if you called a piece of equipment by the wrong name.

Ann’s coworker, Sheldon Miggs, attributed that particular fixation to improved communications. According to Sheldon, standardizing the names for equipment, tactics, and supplies went a long way toward making sure that someone didn’t launch the wrong missile at the wrong time, shoot the wrong target, or pour the wrong kind of chemical extinguishing agent onto a raging fire. When Sheldon told it, the whole thing made a certain twisted degree of sense. Then again, Sheldon bought off on too much of that whole ‘defense of freedom’ shtick. To him, these military types represented something heroic. Ann saw them for what they really were — robots in starched uniforms, responding to programs written by greedy politicians and the military industrial complex.

And that, come to think of it, might explain why the Navy didn’t care for the R-word. Maybe they didn’t like the competition — one group of robots to another.

Screw the Navy. Not one of their acceptable terms came as close to describing Mouse’s nature and abilities as the dreaded R-word. Mouse was a robot, and Ann was damned well going to call it a robot.

She sequenced through the test readouts one at a time, verifying that every one of Mouse’s components was operating within design specifications. She paid particular attention to the error-checking routines for the robot’s command code. She’d put in a brand new patch in the software last night, and she wasn’t entirely sure that it was stable. But no errors were showing up this morning, so maybe she was worrying for nothing.

Just for good measure, she sequenced through every test readout again. Again, every test passed without error. The robot was purring like a kitten.

Ann disconnected the test cable and replaced the pressure cap on the data port. She was careful to check the o-ring seals, and to make sure that the threads of the cap were properly seated. Like all of the other external fixtures, the data ports were waterproof, and rated to withstand the pressure at the robot’s maximum operating depth. She could have theoretically left the cap off entirely without affecting the robot’s performance, but there was no point in taking unnecessary chances.

When she was satisfied that the port was properly covered, she checked the seals and alignments on every other external fitting. Finally, she looked up at the burly Navy man standing by the controls for the boat davit. She knew from earlier introductions that he was a second class petty officer, but she couldn’t remember what it was about his uniform or rank insignia that was supposed to tell her that.

She had forgotten the man’s real name, but she knew that the Navy types all called him Boats. Maybe that was because he was in charge of the boat deck. Ann didn’t know, and she didn’t particularly care. As long as he handled her equipment with respect, the man could call himself the Queen of Sheba.

Ann caught his eye and nodded. “Let’s do this thing.”

Boats gave her a thumbs-up, then he glanced around the boat deck and spoke in a loud voice. “All hands stand clear of the boat davit while conducting over-the-side operations.”

The crowd of khaki onlookers was well clear of the work area, but they all shuffled backwards a few steps anyway. Their murmuring trailed off as the angled arm of the boat davit pivoted smoothly to the left, swinging Mouse out over the lifelines, where the robot dangled twenty feet above the wave tops.

Boats checked the alignment of the davit, made a minor adjustment, and then punched the control for the winch motor. With a muted hydraulic rumble, the winch began to reel out cable, and Mouse descended toward the water.

This was what the looky-loos had come to see: the weird yellow machine, embarking on the great rescue mission. What a bunch of freaking idiots.

The davit operator was good. At the last second, he reduced the speed of the winch, and Mouse settled into the water with barely a splash.

Boats caught Ann’s eye, and waited for her signal.

Ann looked over the side of the ship. Mouse was trailing at the end of the cable, his bright yellow hull about three-quarters submerged in the cold slate-gray waves.

This was always the scary part. As long as Mouse was hooked to the cable, they couldn’t lose him. But the second they let him off the leash, the robot would be on his own — beyond human control.

In some places, the Aleutian trench went down more than 25,000 feet. If something went wrong in water this deep, Mouse could be lost forever.

But they couldn’t keep the robot on the leash. He couldn’t do his job with the cable attached, and even if he could, that went against the entire purpose of an autonomous machine. Ann had devoted years of hard work to making sure that Mouse could operate safely without human intervention. Why was it always so difficult to turn him loose?

She took in a deep lungful of the startlingly cold Alaskan air, and exhaled, her breath coming out as a cloud of vapor. She gave Boats a nod. “Let him go.”

The Sailor manipulated the davit controls, and the clamp at the end of the cable disengaged itself with a metallic thump. Hydraulics moaned again, and the winch began reeling in the cable.

Free of his tether, Mouse floated just below the waves for a couple of seconds, bobbing gently with the swells, as though gathering his wits or getting his bearings. And then the robot’s propulsion pods came to life, driving the machine forward, and down.

For a second or so, Ann could see the robot’s yellow form through the water, and then it disappeared into the depths. For better or for worse, Mouse was on his own.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Ann sat in the ship’s Combat Information Center, and stared at the screen of the ruggedized laptop computer that served as the display and control interface for Mouse. Somewhere out there, across two miles of ocean and three thousand feet under water, Mouse was approaching the downed mini-sub. The robot was due to transmit a final updated position report before beginning its survey of the accident site.