“No,” he said. “But I might have put her body into the medical pod to be repaired. And she might have been used by the microbials as raw materials. Accidentally.”
“You might have?”
“Yes-if such an admission does not negatively influence your decision to fulfill your commitments.”
I snorted and shook my head, staring at him. Marvin quietly awaited my decision. I wasn’t completely sure what had happened between Ning, Marvin and Sandra. If Marvin’s story was the truth, it explained a lot. I tended to believe he had taken unsavory action, but that he was not a murderer. He was more of a mad scientist.
In the end, I decided to help him. I guess after he had saved the lives of several of my crewmembers, it hard to say ‘no’. A promise was a promise. Even if it was made to a robot…at least, that was the way I saw it.
“Okay Marvin,” I said. “I promised. We’ll build you some new parts as soon as I heal up. But you can’t continue to experiment upon humans the way you do machines.”
“Agreed,” he said. “How will we proceed?”
“Come back in three days,” I told him. “I need to recuperate.”
The days passed quickly, and before I knew it I was working out with barrels of nanites at the base where we still kept most of our factories. I set Marvin’s brainbox up in the heart of a Nano ship that looked eerily like Alamo. As I built his new body, I had to wonder if I was making some kind of far-reaching error. I hoped not.
I hooked up the manipulator arm and gave him a single engine. There was no repair unit onboard-no factory he could use to duplicate his mind or other parts. There was no armament, either. He had power, sensors, an engine and an arm. That was it.
How much trouble could he get into with that?
