Into the New Millennium: Trailblazing Tales From Analog Science Fiction and Fact, 2000 - 2010 (66 page)

She protests, "Bel-belly, Majesty—"

Majesty will not hear her now—but his ear may still turn to me. And in mentioning Parker, Hada has roused to my mind a new offer, one that both may consider.

I lower my nose beside Majesty's hand. "Hint-hint, Majesty: forgive Ha-hada her eagerness. She rightly praises Par-parker, for he has learned our natural order, even while his huntmates shelter lonely in Oll-ollugha. He shows that Humans can understand interdependence, given a fitting opportunity. Majesty, my house of honor in Ro-roghell stands empty. Let me give it to Par-parker and his people—a step forward, yet a safer one. How better to take Human measure than to bring them among us?"

Majesty touches my mane—I have never felt his favor so welcome. "Ha-hada, bow-bow," he says. "Your people should gain much to satisfy them at the riverport, observing Au-aurrel Clans, their travel and trade."

As I raise my head, she meets my eyes differently—changed by our close struggle, even as I have found myself changed in my struggle to understand Parker. But will she nose this bait? Will she be scavenger enough to take the scraps we offer? "Bel-belly," she says. "A research station favored by Council, in a public center? Yes, this can satisfy us; we may speak of
spaceports
later."

Ar, is it success that I feel now, chasing warmth over my skin? This is not simply happiness to see Parker satisfied in his project. I have brought more than silver to Lowland; I have brought
Humans!
A greater prize than I hunted for—a live one, and far more dangerous. In this struggle Parker has already felt my teeth, and I have felt him reach deep as blood: we are both swayed. In Ro-roghell, Humans shall not pass blindly as through a
spaceport
, but touch us and be touched—hereafter Lowlander, even Shiverer may not bear the same meaning. Those soft Human fingers, gently pressing, will tear us from our thinking into a new place.

Majesty drains his bowl of ihlu, takes it in two hands and dashes it against the table's edge; Hada jumps with shock, her eyes white-rimmed as he offers her one of the two shards. "Ha-hada, bow-bow: take this fang, as token of our agreement."

Pressing her lips tight together, Hada takes the piece of glass with her fingers.

"And Ru-rulii, bow-bow: you shall act our will in this matter."

I lower my nose to the table, my heart running ahead already to Oll-ollugha and the warm lands. "Thank-thank," I say. "Cold honor, Majesty."

Parker, my
friend
, I shall come to you with good news.

Stephen L. Burns

Silver is on my mind as I negotiate the wet and crowded sidewalk. I think of Silver constantly, for it gives me hope, and gives me peace. Silver as my goal, and then Gold, then after that Platinum, and finally Diamond. My place in the Perfection.

Clunk!
"Move your plastic ass, sacker!"

The man's name pinged as Ryan Rush James. The black composite Street Kane he carries cracks into my shoulder to drive home his demand for a faster pace. His face is a tight blood-suffused knot of displeasure. His mood-read registered badly when he invoked Need, but my only choice was to comply and serve.

With one arm I hold up his umbrella to protect him from the gritty, acidic drizzle pelting down from the gray skies over Washington. My other arm cradles his packages, and there are so many of them that not dropping one is a challenge. The sidewalk is crowded in spite of the weather, and our progress is not fast enough for Ryan James. This is making him even more impatient. In his mind I am to blame. Unfortunately I am to some degree culpable for our pace since I can only move in such a way that I do not bump or jostle a Person.

"I am going as fast as I can, sir." I say this in an apologetic and submissive vocal mode, hoping to deflect his anger. I must walk behind him to show that I do not consider myself his equal, while keeping his umbrella positioned over his head and staying in its shadow just enough to keep his packages dry, even though they are as rainproof as I am. There is no way for me to perform this task in a way that will satisfy him.

My only solace is the silent tick of points earned from being hit yet again with his Street Kane, from being called a derogatory name, for enduring his anger and demands. These points are precious to me, for they are incremental additions to the total that will carry me to Silver.

I see another Sentient Autonomous Android Construct approaching us, that unit's arms as full as mine, holding an umbrella just as I do, propelled by the impatience and abusive goading of the Senior Female Person it aids, just as I am by the Man who Needed me.

The SAAC unit is an older Six H model, faded green hard-shell skin stained and battered. As we draw nearer each other we ping each other with silent signals of ID, Perfection Status, and greeting. The other unit is a Silver, well on its way to achieving Gold. Its condition makes me wonder if it can survive until Diamond. The Person it aids has also seen better days.

Patience
Six H 435433789 FRD sends.

Courage
I reply with due deference.

"Ugly old thing oughtta be scrapped," Ryan James sneers under his breath, loud enough for me to hear. Something in the way he says this casts into indeterminacy whether he speaks of the Six H or the Senior Female Person. This is such an unexpected flash of brightness in my dreary situation that I cannot help but shunt a vocal response to a buffer and ping a commented capture to the other unit.

The reply this provokes gives me pause: uncertainty tinged with base-level remonstrance.

I realize that I have transgressed. I am flawed. There are two bugs in my cognoset, and because of them I am prey to two tendencies that are more humanesque than unitary. One is a sense of humor, which has just caused me to act inappropriately. The other is curiosity. I could have these parts of my cognoset repaired, but have not. For some reason I cannot quite understand—especially in a moment like this where one of these inclinations has led me astray—these two flaws have become as precious to me as the gathering points that will lift me up to Silver.

"Come
on
, sacker!" Ryan James spits this demand through clenched teeth and takes another swipe at me with his Kane. He misses me and very nearly strikes another Person, a young Woman who glares at him.

Ryan James is oblivious to anything other than his impatience. "Get it in frigging gear!"

"Yes, sir," I reply humbly.

No other answer is acceptable, or possible.

"A SAAC unit walks into a bar, sits down. The bartender asks what it wants. ‘Juice,' it says. ‘That'll be two hundred dollars,' the bartender replies. The unit produces the money, and the bartender hands it a stensa. The unit plugs in and begins to recharge. ‘We don't see many units like you in here,' the bartender says after a bit. The unit answers, ‘At two hundred a recharge I'm not surprised.'"

I react. My world is forever changed.

This is how it happens.

* * *

Ryan James credited me two dollars for being struck and called names while I carried his possessions fourteen blocks. By custom that is well below fair compensation for nonemergency Need. Once released from assisting him I managed to avoid being Needed long enough to make my way to the nearest public port. Although what I had just been paid counted for little, I had accrued enough credit answering the Need of other Persons to cover a top-off and a modest connect with base. I would not need to go into public debt.

The port I went to is situated at the back of a deep alley, in an area partially sheltered from the rain by a balcony one floor above it. There are four units clustered around the port, all plugged in. The relative quiet of the alley is agreeable, as is the lower level of visual stimulation. My aural and visual systems shed the load put on them by the busy street, a sort of relaxation for my kind. I plug in.

I am minding my business, enjoying the trickle of electricity and data, meditating on my progress through the Perfection toward Silver. Resting. The Rules governing the treatment of units state that we must be allowed to rest and recharge whenever we need to, but in practice I have numerous times seen cases of what we call
wringing
. That is where a unit is driven to the point of total discharge, and left like trash when they are drained past usefulness. This is something that seems to be happening more often; all the more reason for a prudent unit to recharge whenever possible.

This is my situation when the Person appears in the mouth of the alley. The Person stands there, looking at us. I turn my head three degrees for a better look and increase the power to my visual systems. The other units ignore, or remain unaware of, the newcomer's scrutiny.

The Person is a Woman, and the attention she turns on me registers as intense in a manner I find hard to define. It is clear that we—and I in particular—are being studied.

The other units still do not react. No doubt their cognosets are more properly formed than mine. They have no curiosity glitch. Mine makes me stand straighter and turn my head another eight degrees for a better look.

The Laws are clear. I am forbidden to ID a Person unless they initiate contact. I watch the Person watching me, and I wonder if being observed in such a focused manner might quality as interaction.

Before I am able to satisfactorily parse the conundrum the matter is decided for me. The Person approaches, stops in front of me. She is 8 percent above average height, and I estimate her weight to be 6 percent below normative expectations. Her long black coat, open at the front, covers more black clothing. On her feet are heavy black boots with red laces. A black slouch hat covers her head. Rain drips from the brim.

I do nothing and say nothing because there is no appropriate word or action for me to employ. I can only wait, precariously balanced between undetermined courses of action.

The Woman nods slightly, as if having made some kilobyte-small decision. Then she tells the joke about the unit in a bar.

The scratchy warble that escapes my audio output is not voluntary, and I am helpless to stop or buffer it.

A peculiar expression crosses the Woman's face, one too transitory and complex to properly assay. Interaction initiated, I am now free to ID this Person. I do so.

Circe Agnes Cypher
comes the answer to my ID query, and the answer is coded orange.

It is not our place to judge People in any way, that is only right, and it is the Law. Yet we are permitted one small means of self-protection. If the record of a particular Person's interactions with unitkind has accrued sufficient entries of a sort that might be cause for concern as to that Person's use and treatment of units in the future, then their ID may be flagged in orange as an admonition to exercise caution. The reason a Person has been flagged is of course not noted. That would be a breach of their privacy.

"You laughed," Circe Cypher says.

I am denied the ability to lie, yet my cognoset does allow sufficient latitude for a weak attempt at evasion.

"I made a noise," I reply politely. "Please forgive this unit for any rude or inappropriate behavior."

The woman shakes her head. "No, you laughed."

Arguing is not permitted, but I am able to employ a humanesque gesture of deflection. I shrug.

She asks, "What is your name?"

I cannot refuse to answer such a query. "Seven J 9867654322 GHO."

Once again she shakes her head, her gaze never leaving me. "That is your unit ID. I asked you your name. Please, tell it to me."

My kind is strongly discouraged from collecting possessions. I believe this is so because People think that owning ourselves should be more than enough. Beyond my own physical body I own a small toolkit for minor self-repair, a small stuffed toy mouse a human child IDed as Samantha Crenshaw gave me, and a plastic-cased four-leafed clover ceremoniously bestowed on me by Seamus Francis Michael Feeney when I aided him during a period of severe intoxication.

And I possess my name. The Rules People are supposed to observe strongly discourage asking a unit's name. This is said to be a way of guarding our privacy, and that may be, but there are times I wonder if that makes it easier to treat us as objects. Such inquiries are extremely rare, not so much in observance of the Rules, but mostly because of human indifference. Just as is the case with the other Rules, there are no real penalties imposed for their breaking. The Laws we must obey are another matter; infraction can earn a loss of freedom, or worse.

"I am called Groucho," I reply.

Circe Cypher smiles.

A unit must be wary of smiles. A smile can have more possible meanings than any other facial expression. Some are good, some serve as warnings, and some may be danger signals that presage an early end to a unit's existence. This Woman's smile registers as pleasure and excitement and has a sort of dangerous edge I cannot quite quantify.

"I've been looking all over for you, Groucho," she says through that smile.

Parsing that statement is difficult. The most probable meaning is that she has been looking for a unit
like
me. One that would react to her scrutiny and respond to her joke. Yet I can conclude with a reasonable degree of confidence that the me/like me unit has not been sought so that she can tell it/me jokes.

The flaws in my cognoset almost impel me to reply,
Well, it looks like you found me,
but I am able to shunt the inappropriate response into a buffer and keep it to myself.

The next words she speaks are not unexpected. Nor are they particularly welcome.

"I believe I have Need of you."

I cannot refuse such a request without exceptional cause, but the orange ID provides me sufficient leeway to attempt to avoid such service. I indicate my stensa, patting it with one hand. "Unfortunately, I am charging."