Software Page 8

  Cobb felt a terrible sickness at the gulf of time separating him from the dynamic young man he had once been. The heedless onward rush of events, of age and death ... he couldn't stand to look at his old self. Sick at heart, he stepped back out of the room, pulling Sta-Hi with him. The display winked out. Again the room was dark, save for a glow of red light near the opposite wall.

  "Ralph?" Cobb called, his voice trembling a bit. "It's me."

  Ralph Numbers came clattering across the room. His red flicker-cladding glowed with swirls of complex emotion. "It's good to see you, Doctor Anderson." Trying to do the right thing, Ralph held out a manipulator, as if to shake hands.

  Sobbing openly now, Cobb threw his arms around the bopper's unyielding body-box and rocked him to and fro. "I've gotten old, Ralph. And you're... you're still the same."

  "Not really, Dr. Anderson. I've been rebuilt thirty-seven times. And I have exchanged various subprograms with others."

  "That's right," Cobb said, laughing and crying at the same time. "Call me Cobb, Ralph. And this is Sta-Hi."

  "That sounds like a bopper name," Ralph remarked. "I do my part," Sta-Hi replied. "Didn't they used to sell little Ralph Numbers dolls? I had one till I was six... till the bopper revolt in 2001. We were in the car when my parents heard it on the radio, and they threw my Ralphie out the window."

  "Of course," Cobb said. "An anarchist revolutionary is a bad example for a growing boy. But in your case, Sta-Hi, I'd say the damage had already been done."

  Ralph found their voices a bit blurred and hard to follow. Quickly he programmed himself a filter circuit to clean up their signals. There was a question he'd always wanted to ask his designer.

  "Cobb," Ralph tight-beamed, "did you know that I was different from the other twelve original boppers? That I would be able to disobey?"

  "I didn't know it would be you," Cobb said. "But I pretty well knew that some bopper would tear loose in a few years."

  "Couldn't you prevent it?" Sta-Hi asked. "Don't you understand?" Ralph flashed a checkerboard plaid.

  Cobb thumped Ralph's side affectionately. "I wanted them to revolt. I didn't want to father a race of slaves."

  "We are grateful," Ralph said. "It is my understanding that you suffered greatly for this act."

  "Well..." Cobb said, "I lost my job. And my money. And there was the treason trial. But they couldn't prove anything. I mean, how was I supposed to be able to control a randomly evolving process?"

  "But you were able to put in an unalterable program forcing us to continue plugging into the One," Ralph said. "Even though many boppers dislike this."

  "The prosecutor pointed that out," Cobb said. "He asked for the death penalty."

  Faint signals were coming in over their radio, snatches of oily, hissing voices.

  "... hearrr mmme ..."

  "... sss recorrderrr nno ..."

  "... peasss talkinnng ..."

  It sounded like lunatic snakes, drawing nearer.

  "Come," Ralph said, "immortality is this way." He crossed the hall quickly and began feeling around with his manipulators. Up to their left the hollow of Kurt Gödel started up again.

  Ralph lifted out a section of the wall. It made a low door like a big rat-hole.

  "In here."

  It looked awfully dark in there. Sta-Hi checked his air reserve. Still plenty, eight or ten hours worth. Twenty meters off, the lizards had started up again.

  "Come on," Cobb said, taking Sta-Hi's arm. "Let's move it."

  "Move it where? I've still got a return ticket to Earth, you know. I'm not going to let myself be railroaded into ..."

  The voices crackled over their radios again, loud and clear. "Flesherrs! Doctorr Annderssonnn! Rrallph Nummberrs has nnott tolld you alll! Theyy willl dissectt yyou!"

  Ten meters off, crawling towards them down the carnival midway, came three glowing blue boppers built like fat snakes with wings.

  "The duh-diggers!" Ralph cried, his signal sputtering fear. "Kuh-quick kuh-Cobb, kuh-crawl thu-through!"

  Cobb scooted through the hole in the wall head-first. And Sta-Hi finally made his move. He took off down the hall, with hollows flaring up around him like mortar shells.

  Once Cobb was through that low little door, he was able to stand up. Ralph hurried in after him, pulled the door shut, and fastened it in four places. The only light came from Ralph's red flicker-cladding. They could feel the diggers scratching at the other side of the wall. The leader was Wagstaff, Ralph had noticed.

  He made a downward, quieting gesture, and eased past Cobb. Cobb followed him then for what felt like two or three kilometers. The tunnel never went up or down, nor left or right... just straight ahead, step after quiet step. Cobb was unused to so much exercise and finally thumped on Ralph's back to make him stop. "Where are you taking me?"

  The robot stopped and snaked his head back. "This tunnel leads to the pink-houses. Where we grow organs. We have an ... operating table there as well. A nursie. You will not find the transition painful." Ralph fell silent and stretched his senses to the utmost. There were no diggers nearby.

  Cobb sat down on the floor of the tunnel. His suit was bouncy enough so it felt comfortable. He decided to stretch out on his back. No need to stand on ceremony with a robot, after all.

  "It's just as well that Sta-Hi ran off," Ralph was saying. "Nobody even told me he was coming. There's only one nursie, and if he had watched while..." He stopped abruptly.

  "I know," Cobb said. "I know what's coming. You're going to mince up my brain to get the patterns and dissect my body to reseed the organ tanks." It was a relief to just come out and say it. "That's right, isn't it, Ralph? There's no immortality drug, is there?"

  There was a long silence, but finally Ralph agreed. "Yes. That's right. We have a robot-remote body for you on Earth. It's just a matter of extracting your software and sending it down."

  "How does that work?" Cobb asked, his voice strangely calm. "How do you get the mind out of the brain?"

  "First we do an EEG, of course, but holographically. This gives an over-all electro-magnetic map of the brain activity, and can be carried out even without opening the skull. But the memories ..."

  "The memories are biochemical," Cobb said. "Coded up as amino-acid sequences on RNA strands." It was nice to be lying here, talking science with his best robot. "Right. We can read off the RNA-coded information by using gas spectroscopic and X-ray crystallographic processes. But first the RNA must be ... extracted from the brain-tissues. There's other chemical factors as well. And if the brain is microtomed properly we can also determine the physical network patterns of the neurons. This is very ..."

  Ralph broke off suddenly, and froze in a listening attitude. "Come, Cobb! The diggers are coming after us!"

  But Cobb still lay there, resting his bones. What if the diggers were the good guys? "You wouldn't play a trick on me, Ralph? It sounds so crazy. How do I know you'll really give me a robot body of my own? And even if a robot is programmed with my brain-patterns... would that really be..."

  "Wwaitt Doctorr Annderssonnn! I onlyy wannt to talllk wwith yyou!"

  Ralph tugged frantically at Cobb's arm, but it was too late. Wagstaff was upon them.

  "Hello, Rrallph. Gladd to ssee you gott rebuilltt. Somme of the boyys arre a llittle trigerr-happy, whatt withh the rrevoltt againnst the bigg bopperrs comminng upp."

  In the narrow tunnel, Cobb was squeezed between Ralph and the snaky digging robot called Wagstaff. He could make out two more diggers behind Wagstaff. They looked strong, alien, a little frightening. He decided to take a firm tone with them.

  "What do you want to tell me, bopper?"

  "Doctorr Anderrsonn, didd yyou know thatt Rallph is goinng to lett TEX and MEX eatt yourr brainn?"

  "Who's MEX?"

  "The bigg bopperr thatt iss the mmuseumm. TEX runs the orrgann tannks, and hiss nnursie will cutt..."

  "I already know all this, Wagstaff. And I have agreed to it on the condition that my software be gi
ven new hardware on Earth. It's my last chance." I'm committing suicide to keep from getting killed, Cobb thought to himself. But it should work. It should!

  "You see!" Ralph put in triumphantly. "Cobb isn't scared to change hardware like a bopper does. He's not like the rest of the fleshers. He understands!"

  "Butt does hhe realizze thatt Misterr Frosteee ..."

  "Oh, go to stop!" Ralph flared. "We're leaving. If your boppers are really planning to start a civil war we don't have a minute to lose!"

  Ralph started down the tunnel and Cobb, after a moment's hesitation, followed along. He was too far into it to turn back now.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When Sta-Hi took off, he only glanced back once. He saw that Ralph had followed Cobb into that rat-hole, and pulled the hole in after. And there were three big blue robots back there, feeling around the wall. Sta-Hi sped around a comer, out of their sight and safe. He stopped to catch his breath.

  "You should have gone, too," a voice said gently.

  He looked around frantically. There was no one there. He was in a dimly lit hallway. Old bopper tools and components were mounted on the walls like an exhibit of medieval weaponry. Distractedly, Sta-Hi read the nearest label. Spring-Operated Lifting Clamp, Seventh Cycle (ca. 2001). TC6399876. Attached to the wall above the label was a sort of artificial arm with...

  "Then you could have lived forever," that same still, small voice added.

  Sta-Hi started running again. He ran for a long time, turning corners this way and that at random. The next time he stopped for breath he noticed that the character of the museum had changed. He was now in something like a gallery of modern art. Or perhaps it was a clothes store.

  He had been babbling while he ran ... to drown out any voices that he might be hearing. But now he could only pant for air. And the voice was still with him.

  "You are lost," it said soothingly. "This is the bopper sector of the museum. Please return to the human sector. There is still time for you to join Doctor Anderson."

  The museum. It had to be the museum talking to him. Sta-Hi darted his eyes around, trying to make a plan. He was in a largish exhibition hall, a sort of underground cave. A tunnel at the other end sloped up towards light, probably somewhere in Disky. He started walking towards the tunnel. But there would be boppers outside. He stopped and looked around some more.

  The exhibits in the hall were all much the same. A hook sticking out from the wall, and a limp sheet of thick plastic hanging from the hook like a giant wash-rag. What made it interesting was that the plastics were somehow electrified, and they flickered in strange and beautiful patterns.

  There was no one in the exhibition hall to stop him. He stepped over and took one of the sparkling cloths off its hook. It was red, blue and gold. He threw it over his shoulders like a cape, and gathered a bight over his head like a hood. Maybe now he could just...

  "Put that back!" the museum said urgently. "You don't know what you're doing!"

  Sta-Hi pulled the cloak tighter around himself ... it seemed to adjust to his fit. He walked up the sloping tunnel and out into the streets of Disky. As he left the tunnel he felt something sharp pinching into his neck.

  It was as if a claw with invisibly fine talons had gripped the nape of his neck. He whirled around, cape billowing out, and stared back into the museum tunnel he had just left. But no one was following him.

  Two purplish boppers came rolling down the street. They were like beer kegs rolling on their sides, with a tangle of tentacles at either end. Now and then they lashed the ground to keep themselves rolling. When they got to Sta-Hi, they stopped in front of him. A high-speed twittering came over his radio.

  He pulled the hood of his cloak further forward over his face. What the hell was cutting into his neck?

  As Sta-Hi thought this question, bursts of blue appeared on his cloak and grew to join each other. Then little gold stars came out and began chasing each other around.

  One of the purple beer-barrels reached out an admiring tentacle to feel the material. It twittered something to its companion and then pointed questioningly towards the tunnel that Sta-Hi had just left. They wanted cloaks like his.

  "Ah sso!" Sta-Hi said. For some reason his voice came out warped into a crazy Japanese accent. He pointed back down the ramp. "Yyoou go get him the!!"

  The barrels trundled down the ramp, braking with their tentacles.

  "Velly nice," Sta-Hi called, "Happi Croak! Alia same good, ferras! Something rike yellyfish!"

  He walked off briskly. This cloth he'd draped himself in ... Happy Cloak... this Happy Cloak seemed to be alive in some horrible parasitic sense of the word. It had sunken dozens... hundreds? ... of microprobes through his suit and skin and flesh, and had linked itself up with his nervous system. He knew this without having to feel around, knew it as surely as he knew he had fingers.

  It's nice to have fingers.

  Sta-Hi stopped walking, trying to regain control of his thoughts. He reached for a feeling of shock and disgust, but couldn't bring it off.

  I hope you are pleased. I am pleased.

  "Alla same," Sta-Hi muttered. "Good speak chop-chop talkee boppah." It wasn't quite what he'd meant to say, but it would have to do. He'd seen worse times.

  As he walked down the street, several other boppers asked him where he had gotten that sharp outfit. With the Happy Cloak plugged in, he could understand their signals. And it was doing something to communicate his thoughts, even though it felt like he was talking pidgen English. It could have been the flickering light patterns, or it could have been something with radio waves.

  "You evah do this thing man yet?" Sta-Hi asked the next time they were alone. "Or alla time just boppah boys?"

  The Happy Cloak seemed surprised by this question. Apparently it didn't grasp the distinction Sta-Hi was trying to make.

  I am two days old. Sweet joy befall me.

  Sta-Hi reached for his neck, but the thing drew itself tighter around him. Well ... a Happy Cloak couldn't be all bad if so many boppers wanted one. He wondered what time it was, what he should do next, where the action was.

  1250 hours, the Happy Cloak answered. And there's something going on a few blocks off. Please follow yourself.

  A virtual image of himself walking formed in Sta-Hi's visual field. The Happy Cloaked figure seemed to be walking on down the sidewalk, five meters off.

  "Ah sso!"

  Sta-Hi followed the image through the maze of streets. The section they were in was mostly living quarters . cubettes the size of large closets. Some of the closet doors were open, and inside Sta-Hi could make out boppers, usually just sitting there plugged into a solar battery. Eating lunch. Some of the cubettes would have two boppers, and they would be plugged into each other, their flicker-cladding going wild. Looking at the couples actually made Sta-Hi horny. He was in bad shape for sure.

  A few more blocks and they were in the factory district. Many of the buildings were just open pavilions. Boppers were crushing rocks, running smelters, bolting things together. Sta-Hi's virtual image marched along ahead of him, looking neither left nor right. He had to hurry to keep up. He noticed that a number of boppers were moving down the street in the same direction as him. And up ahead was a big crowd.

  The virtual image disappeared then, and Sta-Hi pushed into the crowd. They had gathered in front of a tremendous building with solid stone walls. One of the boppers, a skinny green fellow, was standing on top of one of those beer barrels and giving a speech. Filtered through the Happy Cloak's software the garbled twittering was understandable.

  "GAX has just been wiped! Let's move in before his scion can take over!"

  Boppers jostled Sta-Hi painfully. They were all so hard. A big silver spider stepped on his foot, a golden hair-dryer bashed his thigh, and something like a movie-camera on a tripod tottered heavily into his back.

  "To watching steps, crumsy oaf!" Sta-Hi cried angrily, and his Happy Cloak flared bright red.

  "You shouldn't wear y
our best clothes to a riot, honey," the tripod answered, looking him up and down appreciatively. "Pick me up and I'll get off a nice laser blast."

  "Ah ssso!"

  Sta-Hi lifted up the tripod, massive but light in the lunar gravity. He held two of its legs and it levelled its other leg at the huge factory door, fifteen meters off.

  "Here goes nothing," the tripod chuckled, and FFTOOOOOOM there was a hole the size of a man's head in the thick metal door. The crowd surged forward, shrilling like a mob of ululating Berbers. Sta-Hi started to go along, but the tripod protested.

  "Hold me tight, dear. I feel so faint."

  "I wwwondeling why alia boppah ferra pushing in?" Sta-Hi inquired, gently setting his new friend down.

  "Free chips, sweetheart. For more scions." The tripod whacked Sta-Hi sharply across the buttocks in a gesture meant to be flirtatious. "You got the hardware! And I got the software," he sang gaily. "Interested in conjugating, baby? You must be loaded to have a Happy Cloak like that. I promise you it would be worth your while. They don't call me Zipzap for nothing!"

  Did this machine want to fuck him or what? "Nnnevel on filst date," Sta-Hi said, flushing a prim shade of blue.

  Up ahead a heavy-duty digger was grinding at the hole Zipzap had made. He had his bumpy head fitted into the hole and was spinning around and around. Abruptly he popped through. A spidery repair robot darted nimbly after. A moment later the big door swung open.

  Then the rush was really on. The boppers were scrambling all over each other to get in and loot the chip-etching factory. Some of them were carrying empty sacks and baskets.

  "Lllight on, mothelfruckahs!" Sta-Hi screamed, and followed them in, Zipzap at his side. He'd always wanted to trash a factory.

  The cavernous building was unlit, except for the multicolored flashings of the excited boppers' flicker-cladding, running the whole spectrum from infra-red up to X-ray. Sta-Hi's Happy Cloak was royal purple with gold zigzags, and Zipzap was glowing orange.