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It hit him then, sudden and coming down like a vast weight. He started to get up, to clear his head staggered and knocked the glass over. "Assistance?" Anne asked.
He leaned on the table rim, reached for the chair and missed it for an instant. Anne's metal fingers closed on his arm and held. He yelled, from fright, trying to free himself. Those fingers which could bend metal pipe closed no farther. "Is this pain?" She asked. "What is your status, Warren?"
"Not so good, Anne. Let go. Let me go."
"Pain is not optimum function. I can't accept programming from a human who's malfunctioning."
"You're hurting my arm. You're causing the pain. Stop it."
She let him go at once. "Assistance?"
He caught his balance against her, leaning heavily until his stomach stopped heaving and his head stopped spinning quite so violently. She accepted his weight, stabilizing with small hums of her motors.
"Assistance? Assistance?"
He drew a shaken breath and choked it down past the obstruction in his throat, patted her metal shoulder.
"Contactis assistance enough. It's all right, Annie. I'm all right." He staggered for one of the reclining chairs a little distance across the room and made it, his head spinning as he let it back. "Keep the lights on. Lock your doors and accesses."
"Program accepted, Warren. This is security procedure. Please state nature of emergency."
"Do you perceive any form of life& but me& anywhere?"
"Vegetation."
"Then there isn't any, is there?" He looked hazily up at her towering, spidery form. "Obey instruction.
Keep the accesses locked. Always keep them locked unless I ask you to open them. Anne, can you sit down?"
"Yes, Warren. You programmed that pattern."
The worktable, he recalled. He pointed at the other chair. "Sit in the chair."
Anne walked to it and negotiated herself smoothly into its sturdy, padded seat, and looked no more comfortable sitting than she had reclining on the worktable.
"Your median joints," he said. "Let your middle joints and shoulders quit stabilizing." She did so, and her body sagged back. He grinned. "Left ankle on top of right ankle, legs extended. Pattern like me. Loosen all but balance-essential stabilizers. It's called relaxing, Annie." He looked at her sitting there, arms like his arms, on the chair, feet extended and crossed, faceplate reflecting back the ceiling light and flickering inside with minute red stars. He laughed hysterically.
"This is a pleasure reflex," she observed.
"Possibly." He snugged himself into the curvature of the chair. "You sit there, Annie, and you keep your little sensorsall of them, inside and outside the shipalert. And if you detect any disturbance of them at all, wake me up."
His head hurt in the morning, hurt sitting still and hurt worse when he moved it, and ached blindingly while he bathed and shaved and dressed. He kept himself moving, bitter penance. He cleaned the living quarters and the galley, finally went down to the lock through crashes of the machinery that echoed in his head. The sunlight shot through his eyes to his nerve endings, all the way to his fingertips, and he walked out blind and with eyes watering and leaned on the nearest landing strut, advantaging himself of its pillar- like shade.
He was ashamed of himself, self-disgusted. The fear had gotten him last night. The solitude had. He was not proud of his behavior in the forest: that was one thing, private and ugly; but when he came home and went to pieces in the ship, because it was dark, and because he had bad dreams& That scared him, far more substantially than any forest shadow deserved. His own mind had pounced on him last night.
He walked out, wincing in the sunlight, to the parked crawler, leaned on the fender and followed with his eyes the track he had made coming in, before it curved out of sight around the ship. Grass and brush. He had ripped through it last night as if it had all turned animate. Hallucinations, perhaps. After last night he had another answer, which had to do with solitude and the human mind.
He went back inside and finally took something for his head.
By 1300 hours he was feeling better, the housekeeping duties done. Paced, in the confines of the living quarters, and caught himself doing it.
Work had been the anodyne until now& driving himself, working until he dropped; he ran out of work and it was the liquor, to keep the nightmares off. Neither could serve, not over the stretch of years. He was not accustomed to thinking years. He forced himself to& to think of a life in more than terms of survival; to think of living as much as of doing and finding and discovering.
He took one of the exercise mats outside, brought a flask of iced juice along with his biological notes and took Anne with him, with his favorite music tapes fed to the outside speakers. He stripped, spread his mat just beyond the canopy, and lay down to read, the music playing cheerfully and the warmth of Harley's star seeping pleasantly into his well-lotioned skin. He slept for a time, genuine and relaxed sleep, awoke and turned onto his back to let the sun warm his front for a time, a red glow through his closed lids.
"Warren?"
He shaded his eyes and looked up at the standing pseudosome. He had forgotten her. She had never moved.
"Warren?"
"Don't nag, Annie. I didn't say anything. Come here and sit down. You make me nervous."
Anne dutifully obeyed, bent, flexed her knees an a/arming distance and fell the last half foot, catching herself on her extended hands, knees drawn up and spine rigid. Warren shook his head in despair and amusement. "Relax. You have to do that when you sit."
The metal body sagged into jointed curves, brought itself more upright, settled again.
"Dear Annie, if you were only human."
Anne turned her sensor lights on, all of them. Thought a moment. "Corollary, Warren?"
"To what? To if? Anne, my love, you aren't, and there isn't any."
He had confused her. The lights flickered one after the other. "Clarify."
"Human nature, that's all. Humans don't function well alone. They need contact with someone. But I'm all right. It's nothing to concern you."
The motors hummed faintly and Anne reached out and let her hand down on his shoulder. The action was so human it frightened him. He looked into her ovoid face at the lights that danced inside and his heart beat wildly.
"Is your status improving?"
Contact with someone. He laughed sorrowfully and breathed a sigh.
"I perceive internal disturbances."
"Laughter. You know laughter."
"This was different."
"The pace of laughter varies."
"Recorded." Anne drew back her hand. "You're happy."
"Annewhat do you think about when I'm not here. When I'm not asking you to do something, and you have thoughts, what are they?"
"I have a standard program."
"And what's that?"
"I maintain energy levels, regulate my circulation and temperature, monitor and repair my component"
"Cancel. You don't think. Like you do with me. You don't ask questions, decide, follow sequences of reasoning."
The lights blinked a moment. "The automatic functions are sufficient except in an anomalous situation."
"But I'm talking to the AI. You. The AI's something other than those programs. What do you do, sleep?"
"I wait."
Like the pseudosome, standing indefinitely. No discomfort to move her, to make her impatient. "You investigate stimuli."
"Yes."
"But there aren't many, are there?"
A delay. Incomplete noun. "They are constant but not anomalous."
"You're bored too."
"Bored. No. Bored is not a state of optimum function. Bored is a human state of frustrated need for activity. This is not applicable to me. I function at optimum."
"Functioning constantly doesn't damage you."
"No."
"Use the library. You can do that, can't you? If there aren't adequate stimuli in the environment to engage the AI, use the library. Maybe you'll learn something."
"Recorded."
"And then what do we do?"
The lights blinked. "Context indeterminate. Please restate the question."
"You could know everything there is to know, couldn't you, and you'd sit with it inside you and do nothing."
"Context of do indeterminate. I'm not able to process the word in this context."
He reached out, patted her silver leg. The sensors blinked. Her hand came back to him and stayed there heavy, on his shoulder. Contact.
"That's enough," he said, and removed his hand from her; she did the same. "Thank you, Anne." But he was cold inside.
He relaxed finally, staring out beneath the ship toward the forest.
There was the fear. There was where it sat. He hurt inside, and the healing was there, not sealing himself into the ship. Sterility. Inane acts and inane conversation.
If he feared out there, the fear itself proved he was alive. It was an enemy to fight. It was something he did not program. It held the unanticipated, and that was precious.
Anne, waiting forever, absorbing the stimuli and waiting for something anomalous, to turn on her intelligence. He saw himself doing that, sitting in the ship and waiting for a human lifetimefor some anomaly in the wind.
No.
He came this time with a different kind of attack, slowly, considerately, the crawler equipped with sensor box and sample kits and recorders and food and water, rope and directional beeper, anything that seemed remotely useful. With the film camera. With a rifle with a nightscope. Overequipped, if anything, in which he found some humor& but he felt the safer for it.
The raft was still securely tied to the branch, the sand about it unmarked by the passage of any moving creature, even void of insect tracks. On the far bank the forest waited in the dawn, peacefuldark inside as it would always be.
Someday, he promised it. He loaded the raft, trip after trip from the crawler parked up on the bank. Anne was with him, disembodied, in the incarnation of her sensor box, in the com unit. She talked to him telling him she detected vegetation, and he laughed and snugged the box into the bottom of the raft.
"Reception is impaired," Anne complained.
"Sorry. I don't want to drop the box into the river."
"Please don't do that, Warren."
He laughed again, in a good humor for Anne's witless witticisms. Piled other supplies about her sensors.
"I'll pull you out if I need you. Take care of the ship. I'm shutting you down. Your noise is interfering with my reception."
"Please reconsider this program. The river is dangerous. Please reconsider."
"Quiet." He shut her down. There was a reciprocal turn-on from her side, but she took orders and stayed off this time. He piled the last load in, coat and blanket in case it grew chill on the water.
He untied the raft then, nudged it out a little, stepped in and sat down, taking up the paddle. It was not one of his skills, rafting. He had read the manual and thought it out. Drove against the gentle current, no great work: he reasoned that he could paddle upstream as long as he liked or wanted to, and return was the river's business.
He passed the landing site on the far bank, passed an old log and wound along with the grassy bank on one side and the forest on the other. The river was so still on most of its surface it was hard to see in which direction it flowed. Shores turned to marsh on either side, and at some time unnoticed, the trees on the right, which had been growing thicker and thicker, closed off all view of the grasslands where the ship had landed. The banks began to have a thick border of reeds; some trees grew down into the water making an obstacle of their knobby roots, making curtains of moss hanging almost low enough to sweep his shoulders as he passed. Green lilies drifted, beds of pads through which he drove the raft with shallow strokes, not to tangle the blade of the paddle in their tough stems. In places the navigable channel was no more than three meters across, a weaving of reeds and sandbars and shadows between banks a good stone's throw from side to side. It was a sleepy place, all tones of green and brown& no sky that was not filtered by leaves. A certain kind of tree was in bloom, shedding white petals as large as a man's hand on the water: they drifted like high-stemmed boats, clouds of them afloat, fleets and armadas destroyed by the dip of his paddle and the raft's blunt bow. The full flower had long stamens and pistils so that they looked like white spiders along the branches when they had shed, and like flocks of bird's before. Lilies were rife, and a fine-leafed floating weed grew wherever the water was shallow. It was worse than the lilies for tangling up the paddle: it broke off and hung, slick brownish leaves. It was not, he decided particularly lovely stuff, and it made going very slow in the narrowest channels.
His shoulders began to ache with the long effort. He kept going long after the ache became painful anxious not to give ground& decided finally to put ashore for a space, when he had seen an area not so brushy and overgrown. He drove for it, rammed the bow up and started pulling it about with strokes of the paddle.
The paddle tip sank in, worse and worse with his efforts, tipped the raft with the suction as he pulled it out again and the raft slapped down with a smack. He frowned, jabbed at the sand underneath with his paddle, reducing it to jelly and thinking ruefully where he might have been if he had not mistrusted the water purity and if he had bounded out to drag the raft ashore. It took some little maneuvering to skim the raft off the quicksands and out again, back into the main channel, and he forgot his aching shoulders to keep it going awhile.
"Warren?"
On the hour, as instructed. He stilled his heart and punched on his com unit, never stopping his paddling.
"Hello, Annie. Status is good, love, but I need three hands just now."
"Assistance? Estimate of time required to reach your position"
"Cancel. Don't you try it. I'm managing with two hands quite nicely. How are you?"
"All my systems are functioning normally, but my sensors are impaired by obstructions. Please clear my pickups, Warren."
"No need. My sensors aren't impaired and there's nothing anomalous."
"I detect a repeated sound."
"That's the raft's propulsion. There's no hazard. All systems are normal. My status is good. Call in another hour."
"Yes, Warren."
"Shut down."
"Yes, Warren."
Contact went out; the box lights went off.
He closed off contact from his side, pushed off the bank where he had drifted while he was arguing with Anne, and hand-over-handed himself past a low-hanging branch. He snubbed a loop of the mooring rope around it, snugged it down, resting for a moment while the raft swayed sleepily back and forth.
It's beautiful, he thought, Sax. Min and Harley, it's worth seeing. He squinted up at the sunlight dancing through the branches. Hang the captain, Harley. They'll come here sometime. They'll want the place. In someone's lifetime.
No answer. The sunlight touched the water and sparkled there, in one of the world's paralyzing silences.
An armada of petals floated by. A flotilla of bubbles. He watched others rise, near the roots of the tree.
Life, Harley?
He rummaged after one of the sample bags, after the seine from the collection kit. He flung the seine out inexpertly, maneuvered it in the current, pulled it up. The net was fouled with the brownish weed, and caught in it were some strands of gelatinous matter, each a finger's length, grayish to clear with an opaque kernel in the center. He wrinkled his lip, not liking the look of it, reached and threw the sensor unit on again, holding its pickup wand almost touching the strands.
"Warren, I perceive an indeterminate life form, low order."
"Howindeterminate?"
"It may be plant but that identification is not firm."
"I thought so. Now I don't particularly know what to do with it. It's stuck to the net and I don't like to go poking at it bare-handed. Curious stuff."
"Assistance?"
"Wait." He put the scanner wand down and used both hands to even the net, cleared it by shaking it in the water. He put the net into plastic before letting it back in the raft and sprayed his hands and the side of the raft with disinfectant before picking up the wand and putting it back. "I'm rid of it now, Annie, no trouble. I'm closing everything down now. Observe your one-hour schedule."
He slipped the rope, took up the paddle and extricated the raft from the reeds, where it had swung its right side. Headed for the center of the clear channel.
It might have been eggs, he thought. Might have been. He considered the depth of the channel, the murkiness of the water, and experienced a slight disquiet. Something big could travel that, lurk round the lily roots. He did not particularly want to knock into something.
Nonsense, Harley. No more devils. No more things in the dark. / Won't make them anymore, will I, Sax?
No more cold sweats.
The river seemed to bend constantly left, deeper into the forest, though he could not see any more or any less on either hand as it went. The growth on the banks was the same. There was an abundance of the fleshy-leaved trees that poured sap so freely when bruised, and the branches hung down into the water so thickly in places that they formed a curtain before whatever lay on shore. The spidertrees shed their white blooms, and the prickly ones thrust out twisted and arching limbs, gnarled and humped roots poking out into the channel. Moss was everywhere, and reeds and waterweed. He realized finally that the river had long since ceased to have any recognizable shore. On the left stretched a carpet of dark green moss that bloomed enticingly. Trees grew scattered there, incredibly neat, as if it were tended by some gardener and the earth looked so soft and inviting to the touch, so green, the flowers like stars scattered across it.
Then he realized why the place looked so soft and flat, and why the trees grew straight up like columns without the usual ugliness of twisting roots. That was not earth but floating moss, and when he put his paddle down, he found quicksand on the bottom.
