“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.”
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
