“Hey, buratino, that ain’t bad if what you wanna do is pump up your ego. But let’s change the subject or I’ll start to believe that God created the universe for my own personal suffering. How old are you, Raymond? Did you have any sort of childhood?”
“You gotta stop with the dumb questions. You know perfectly well all pozzies are the same age, fifty-seven. We were all created when the aliens arrived, when the William S. Burroughs was built. And we were born—or rather, assembled—as adults. Who would have any respect for a child police officer, even if he was a robot? Better we talk about you, Vasily Fernández. How did you choose this life?”
“Sorry, Raymond, nobody chooses to be a crook. It’s what you do for survival when you got no other options. How many possibilities you think a kid like me—no parents, no family—had? Was I supposed to mortgage forty years of my life so a corporation would pay for my studies and let me become an engineer? Or maybe buy a ship, become a trader, and haggle with aliens on your station? Yeah, I could have done that, I guess—but it never occurred to me. I was too worried each morning might be my last. The life of a child alone in the world ain’t easy. It don’t get any better when you’re a teenager alone. So—look here, buddy, let’s quit gabbing for a while, before I say a couple of things you wouldn’t want to hear.”
“Okay, Vasily, as you wish.”
After a thorough search to be sure the shuttle was empty, the bad guys blew it up, of course. Good thing we were far away. Then the Chimera started hunting in the vicinity like a shark circling a shipwrecked sailor’s raft.
Five days had gone by since then. Not a minute more or less. It occurred to me that having a computer built into your brain can sometimes be a defect. I figured my pal must have already lost his sense of time, if not his mind altogether. In a way I envied him. He was beyond all responsibility. Not me. I had to keep talking to him, constantly, even when he refused to answer: if anything stood between him and madness, it was my being here, always trying to strike up conversations, which began to seem more and more incoherent to me.
“Raymond, where’d we screw up?”
“Huh?”
“You know. Those two novels by your guy Chandler you told me from memory—in the end, the good guys always win. Maybe they get beat up and arrested and worse along the way, but they win. So, what did we do wrong?”
“Well, it isn’t all over yet. Sometimes real life isn’t like a novel.”
“Hey, that was supposed to be my line! Look, I think our problem is, I ain’t one of your honest but unorthodox private eyes. I ain’t even a cop, just another crook. Fighting fire with fire don’t always work, looks like.”
“That’s not your fault, Vasily. You did your part, and you did it well. You went above and beyond. If you hadn’t put your powers to work, most likely we wouldn’t be here now, and I’m very grateful to you for it.”
“No problem. But for all the fun we’re having, they shoulda just gone ahead and fried us with the particle beam. At least it woulda been a quick death.”
“Don’t be silly. Where there’s life, there’s hope.”
“Raymond, do me a favor, spare me the clichés. At this point, if God himself don’t save us, you might be the only one with any hopes of… living, if that’s what you call it. Tell me: the gas exchange membranes in my tank are filling with toxins, right? How much longer do you think I can hold out?”
“No, Vasily, what are you saying? Everything’s fine. You have space paranoia, that’s all. Talk to me.”
“What if I don’t feel like talking?”
“Then I’ll talk. Look, let me tell you another Chandler novel you haven’t heard yet. It’s called Farewell, My Lovely.”
“What’s it about?”
“A big guy—huge, mammoth, very badly dressed, just got out of prison and he’s looking for his little girlfriend.”
“Hey, don’t sound bad. But no thanks, maybe some other time. Raymond, could I ask you a favor?”
“If it’s anything I can do, I’d be happy to, Vasily.”
“Shut up for a while. You talk so much I can’t hear myself thinking.”
The bad guys hadn’t called off their search. Makrow and company were patient and meticulous, and they knew what was at stake if they didn’t find us. They passed within thirty or forty yards of us a couple of times. Good thing our suits contained hardly any metal and we maintained strict radio silence. Good thing, too, that Vasily’s powers seemed to work even when he wasn’t fully conscious of our situation.
Just two things worried me. If they couldn’t find us, neither could our theoretical rescuers—at least not any time soon. And, though I persisted in telling Vasily otherwise, I thought the biomembranes that were supposed to purify and recycle the air in his suit really might be too old to last until we were picked up—not before poisoning him with the waste from his own metabolism. I took the only precaution at hand, improvising a connection between his suit and mine. Since I don’t breathe, my suit’s membranes might give him a few more hours of life. But they were probably pretty old too, so unless a miracle materialized soon, my friend was doomed, like he said. As for me—it would be ironic for a pozzie like me to work his ass off to save a human criminal and then end up alone and forced to choose between Chacumbele’s inelegant suicide escape and sinking into boredom for the rest of time.
“You