STAR HOUNDS -- OMNIBUS (57 page)

“Uh oh,” said Cal.

H
e thought he knew the quantum forces forward and backward, as though he could hold them in his hands like putty, to be shaped and used as he wished. But now, for Dr. Harla Zox, it was more like he held a brood of coiled, deadly pythons, opening their fanged mouths and racing to devour him.

“No!” he cried.

“Evasive maneuvers, my lord?” cried Brilliantine.

“No!”

“But what then,
mon capitan
?”

Dr. Harla Zox attempted to communicate but could not. He could not, because he was … uncertain.

Were the secrets hidden from him, cached in reservoirs of a nervous system he no longer had? Was it enough to be just a brain attached to a machine? For years, this niggling doubt had troubled him in black moments, though he had easily pushed it back with his arrogance. Now, though, confronted with the abysmal prospect of annihilation, the black doubts flared more powerfully and painfully than ever before.

“No!” he cried, his will resolute and indomitable.

“What?” cried his Number One, sequestered away in the confines of his own ship compartment. “
Mon capitan
. We must retreat.”

And then it came to Dr. Harla Zox, came to him like the flashing of a nova, a burst of cosmic force.

The solution.

“No! Full jump-stasis realignment. Heading—directly into the approaching shockwave vector.”

Flustered objections were aroused. And not just from the Number One, but from the entire crew. Was Zox mad? The furor roared up as the ship rocked hard and furious.

But Dr. Harla Zox ignored them. Instantly seeing that there might be opposition, he used emergency override for all bridge controls. Thrusters soon came to life, realigning the
Prometheus
. Dormant engines pulsed with energy. Jump algorithms converged.

No, he thought. Their only hope was not to retreat. Here before him, now, in the flare of destruction, was the heart of truth that he had so long sought.

Gamma Space.

He saw it not as some inspiration or mysterious apparition. He saw it as a wash of equations, a twisting helix of mathematics.

However, the only thing the crew saw was a shock wave of hellfire filling their vu-screens. It was so bright that they all held their palms up defensively in a futile attempt to impede the blinding glare.

“Insanity!” cried a voice from the ranks.

“We’ll all die!” shrieked another.

Brilliantine looked on, his rigid face obscuring all the anxiety that tormented the crew. But he waited for Zox’s orders. Seconds went by, so slowly it seemed as though time was coming to an end. Every moment the wave approached more closely. Brilliantine was a good soldier, but even he could bear it no longer.

“
Mon capitan
!” cried Number One.

But the objection never registered with Zox. A snap of neurons and all voices were finally still. All of them! Like the bliss of the meditation tanks, his mind was overtaken by the light and its fury.

The sentient mind of Starship
Prometheus
then pointed his ship toward the destruction that he had sowed, the destruction that now bloomed toward him like the grasping claws of a vengeful new sun.

Wasn’t it beautiful? thought Dr. Harla Zox, grinning amidst his own synapse arrays. He adjusted his vector straight for the heart, a maneuver never before attempted throughout the history of man. This was not the suicidal lurch of insanity but something greater, a calling of Prometheus, forged by fury and hate.

They plunged into the unknown …

S
o, there was this cherry tree …

There it grew, arrayed in a nimbus of sunshine. A flag bearing thirteen stripes and stars fluttered in vesper breezes, and the sweet scent of fruit and honey filled the air.

Then, suddenly, a heavily armored tank trundled up above the horizon, its antennae bristling as though it were a sea anemone. Within nanoseconds its turret whirred around, locked on to a target, shuddered faintly and fired. A ragged gash of blue-red energy pulsed from its gunmetal end, hissing through alien air. It connected with the base of the tree and—SLASH!—sliced though the soft wood like a Rigellan energy sword though Turg yogurt.

The tree shivered.

Then it fell over, dislodging hundreds of ripe cherries and thrashed its leafy way deep into the grass.

The turret whisked around, and focused.

“Well, I certainly didn’t cut THAT one down!” said Washington, looking through his binoculars.

General George Washington always wondered about that cherry tree story. Now, though, he was more concerned about the kill tank than with his archaic reputation.

He’d been stationed outside the
Starbow’s
defense perimeter by Dr. Mish. Not so much standing guard,
per se
. There wasn’t all that much to guard against, Dr. Mish had said. But robots had to have something to do, claimed Dr. Mish. Yes, they did, or they’d get rusty and break down, wouldn’t they?

Upon hearing this, the young human named Calspar Shemzak laughed and then displayed to their group—consisting of Dr. Mish, Admiral Nelson, General Robert E. Lee and Julius Caesar—a picture showing a caricature of a robot. The fellow, Shemzak claimed, was the Tin Woodman from a movie called
The Wizard of Oz
. The robot stood frozen in a copse of trees as a young girl and a scarecrow capered up to him. “A rusty robot indeed,” said Cal. “Just needs a squirt or three from his oil can!”

It was all very odd. A great deal had been odd of late for General George Washington, robotic simulacrum.

Up until then he’d simply followed orders: done his job, hauled pi-merc loot, swabbed the deck. Whatever was asked of him. Now, though, he’d been troubled … troubled by unusual thoughts that manifested themselves from somewhere deep within. Their exact origin was a mystery. To him, anyway.

The tank’s cannon turned crimson. Coughed. It wobbled and then it drew a bead.

Aiming directly at General George Washington.

The General stared right back, straight into the gun’s black bore. He had fought in many battles, in line with his historic namesake. He was also a proud and noble pi-merc simulacrum. He was a robot, after all, and robots had no fear.

But that was the odd thing. Something strange trembled at the base of his neck. Something … uneasy.

What was it?

The tank rumbled. Jagged electricity trembled at the lip of its cannon. For a moment it flailed about, like crooked drool caught in a fitful wind.

And then—General George Washington realized the significance of it all. Could it be? But even as he pondered its meaning, he knew he should not be feeling such …

Fear.

With an explosion, the bolt left the barrel of the gun. Like a demon arrow it raced toward General George Washington. The horizon melted. The
Starbow
, off to the left of him, danced a jig. A moon rose up from a frazzled horizon, bleeding. The smell of ozone and burning daffodils erupted all around.

And then, the bolt struck.

General George Washington woke up, expecting … well, if not death, at least some type of discontinuation. Oblivion. A smidgen of nothingness. After all, the bolt from the cannon of a huge tank, an alien behemoth of strange technology, had just potted him with all of its ample power.

He should have been pulverized. Blown up. Incinerated into micro-particles of dust. Instead, General George Washington discovered himself blinking his optics with ferocious puzzlement.

There before him was the frizzing landscape with its shifting chiaroscuro patterns; there was only Omega Space. And yes, there was the grounded
Starbow
, hulking up from its landing pad. Peering off to the left … no sign of a cherry tree. And further off to the extreme left there was no sign of the armored fighting tank, ready to fire or otherwise.

General George Washington realized suddenly that he was sitting on the ground. He effortlessly rose, without even a whisper of servomotors. He examined himself. Yes, epaulets rested neatly on his shoulders, and his smooth white breaches, his boiled leather boots, his waistcoat, his fine woolen regimental coat—all seemed in place. And there, upon his head, was his dear, dear tri-cornered hat. What was odd, however, was that once more all seemed different in his head.

A dream? A
dream
? Robots weren’t supposed to have dreams!

He’d had a dream even though he knew he was a mere robot. Identity-matrix aside, there was a quadrant of his electronic brain that knew he was just a simulacrum of the original Washington composed of non-organic components. And he knew that robot simulacra did not dream.

Something rippled. Something waffled and unpinned itself inside of him, slanting his point of view into a knotty manifestation of newly born self-awareness.

Then, like a wisp of ghostly haze … it vanished.

A tremble went through General George Washington, as though it were trying to eliminate his experience. He’d had it before.
Deja vu
.

Something was struggling inside of him to become alive.

And then, with a transfiguration of time and space, all seemed normal. It was as though nothing had ever happened to begin with.

All at once, a communication rattled on his interior comband. “Unit 58, report!” came a voice in monotone staccato.

Yes, General George Washington had always wondered about that cherry tree story. Now, though, he was more concerned about that tank than about any lingering remnants of his namesake’s historical reputation. He shook off the improbable dream. The strange cherry tree had disappeared and the robot had found itself once more in the strange and dreary landscape of Omega Space.

And the tank. What had happened to the tank?

“We repeat: Unit 58, report!” blared the inner voice again.

“General George Washington,” said the robot. “Reporting.”

A
frisson
passed through General George even as he reported his routine communication.

Wait, he thought. It would be improper for a robot to have
frisson’s
. Well, maybe General Lafayette suffered them …

“We have not yet received your status report due at 4700 hours.”

“Apologies, gentlemen. Unscheduled downtime.” Quickly, his oculars and the rest of his sensory array surveyed his immediate surroundings. “Nothing much to report. Events: static. Territory: as before.”

“We’ve got some odd readings up here. And they seem to be emanating partially from your location.”

“I repeat,” said General Washington. “At this time, I register nothing unusual at my station.”

That was a lie. There was something going on inside of General Washington himself, something weird. But there was no way he could report on those events even if he wanted to. Sometime soon, perhaps, he would take Dr. Mish aside and discuss it. But now was not the time.

“Very well. Stay alert and report on schedule.”

“Yes.” He paused for a moment. “I would like to be relieved, when convenient.”

“Is there a problem?”

“No. However, I am uncertain about some readings from my forward ancillary sensors, and would like to go off-line for more diagnostics.”

“Very well. That could be why our sensors fluctuated.”

“Yes. That indeed could be the case.”

“We’ll send Unit 78 to relieve you at 4900.”

“I roger that, and am indebted to you, good sir.”

General George Washington straightened up and performed a quick survey of himself and his surroundings. What could be happening? he wondered. What unimaginable internal changes are taking place? Within his core memory, anomalous concepts began emerging like bubbles atop a muddied puddle. Self-awareness … sentience … soul …

And then, from out of nowhere, there came something quite extraordinary:

“PREMONITION”

As though drawn by a magnet, his face turned up to the frizzy gray sky of Omega Space. Somehow, he knew what was about to take place.

And then a hole—one spanning infinitely more than mundane space and time—ripped through the fabric of reality like a surgeon’s knife engaged in a Caesarean section.