“I’m for trying to return.” Gelmann dabbed at her lips with a quasi-napkin. “I’ve already missed one meeting of the garden club. If I miss another, they’ll decide on what annuals to plant without me, they should be so clever. You don’t know the work that goes into …”
“Please, Mina.” Follingston-Heath adjusted his monocle and leaned back against a speckled black and gray monolith. No one had thought to ask the Autothor to synthesize a table and chairs. They’d been eating cross-legged on the floor, a situation which pleased no one, Gelmann least of all.
“We currently find ourselves in at least nominal control of a wondrous piece of technology. This is an opportunity that may never occur again and should not be wasted. Today we ask for food and utensils and these are supplied. What might we ask for tomorrow?”
“We need to ask carefully.” Iranaputra looked thoughtful. “It must have its limits and we do not know what might happen if we exceed them.”
“Agreed. By the same token we ought not to underestimate its capabilities, which we have hardly begun to explore. Who knows what it can do?”
“We can’t just abandon the thing. The Colonel’s right,” Hawkins admitted grudgingly.
“Of course I am.” Follingston-Heath beamed at his companions. “We have come into possession of a tool. A bloody big tool, I grant you, but a tool nonetheless. What is a ship but a tool, a device for accomplishing certain ends?”
“I am not certain,” said Shimoda, “but that I agree with Mina.” The others turned to him. “Various portions of this ‘tool’ continue to come on-line. It’s been nothing but patient and courteous with us so far. What if when it’s fully activated and alert, it realizes that we have no business here? Might it not react accordingly?”
“You mean, defensively?” Hawkins asked.
“Hai. Precisely.”
“We shall proceed carefully,” said Follingston-Heath, “but proceed we must. To do otherwise would be to abjure our responsibilities as human beings.” His tone grew solemn. “Besides, who better than us to test the limits of its acceptance? We have all of us lived full lives. Better we should take this risk than some young engineers or technicians with families. I am not afraid of dying in the course of serving humanity.”
“Good. You serve. I’ll clean up afterward,” Hawkins grumbled.
“Come, come, old chap.” Follingston-Heath smiled at his perennial antagonist. “We must give it the old service try.”
“Your old service, not mine.” But Hawkins subsided somewhat. “How do we know what to ask?” He brightened at a new thought. “How about we ask it to synthesize a million tons of platinum?”
“Now, Wallace, what would you do with a million tons of platinum?”
He winked at her. “Make you one hell of a bracelet. Or maybe a platinum house.”
“Be difficult to heat in the wintertime.” Shimoda meditated on the problem. “Whatever we ask for should be modest in scope. There could be danger in pressing the ship’s capabilities. But I agree with the Colonel. We can’t just ask it to take us home. There is time for that. There is also a danger in leaving.”
Iranaputra frowned. “What danger?”
“The ship requests guidance via the Autothor. At present we are the only ones providing such guidance. If we were to ask it to return us to Lake Woneapenigong, if we were to leave, it would subsequently be directionless. It might then start to make active decisions on its own. There’s no telling what consequences might result.” His companions were still.
“So in a sense, we are trapped here by the responsibility,” Iranaputra surmised, breaking the silence.
“Tell it to synthesize us a boat and make it set down,” Hawkins suggested. “It can’t hurt anything floating in the middle of the Atlantic.”
“Ah,” said Shimoda, “but without anyone aboard to provide directions, it might not continue to do that.”
Gelmann wore a dreamy expression. “What if it has no limits, you should excuse the entropic overtones? What if it could do anything you wanted? What would each of you have it do?”
Hawkins made a disgusted noise. “Already said. I’d level every damn park and flower bed on the planet. Build some real factories, make Earth the power it once was.”
“Wallace!” Gelmann shook her head sadly. “Me, I’d make the worlds of the leagues more like Earth. Less emphasis on industry, more on nature.”
“I should like to organize a pan-human military force to keep the peace,” avowed Follingston-Heath grandly.
Shimoda shifted his bulk on the floor. “I would see to the construction of an artificial planetoid devoted entirely to meditation and contemplation of the higher philosophies … and to gourmet cooking.”
Off to one side the Ksarusix muttered to itself. “Typical self-centered humans. Now, if I were in control here …” Its electronic musings went unnoticed.
Gelmann looked at the remaining member of the quintet. “What about you, Victor? What would you do?”
Iranaputra shrugged, slightly embarrassed. “I have children and grandchildren who respect me, I did my job as well as I could, and I tried to live my life decently and not give harm to any around me. I am afraid I have no great ambitions. There is one thing that has begun to trouble me, though.”
“What might that be, old chap?” the Colonel inquired.
Iranaputra surveyed the somewhat disappointed faces of his friends. “Now that the ship is active, its presence here is no longer a secret. What if these Drex come to reclaim their reactivated property?”
“Given that a million years have passed, if the Autothor is to be believed,” said Shimoda, “that may not be a matter for immediate concern.”
“Yeah, but what if ol’ Putrid is right?” Hawkins was alarmed. “If he is, I don’t wanna be here when the absentee owners show up.”
Iranaputra turned to the somnolent, drifting blue ellipse. “What about this? What are you capable of? What were you designed to do?”
The rutilant Autothor bobbed above the deck. “I am afraid that portion of my programming is unavailable. The passage of excessive time has produced gaps in my memory that are proving difficult to restore. However, I continue to work on the problem. Rest assured it should cause you no inconvenience.” The blue light intensified suddenly, forcing Iranaputra and the others to squint or look away.
“In fact, I have just reintegrated an entire quinux of memory.”
“No kidding?” Hawkins eyed the brilliance expectantly. “What does it tell you?”
“That I was not meant to be deactivated for quite this long.”
Hawkins slumped. The revelation was less than enthralling.
