by

Michael Graeme

"You have to talk to them, counsel them, mesmerise them into stillness before you set foot anywhere near them. And, though I may not be considered wholly sane, at least I have a reputation for the way I talk to machines."

by

Michael Graeme

I'm hacking this out now while I'm still thinking straight. Then I'll get Hypatia to com it to my terrestrial mail. I trust you'll have the sense to look it up, though there's little you can do about it now and fairly soon neither me nor Grizwald will care much anyway.

    As you already know, the Hypatia came down at 1 a.m. Central European time, on Monday October 10th. That was only couple of days ago but it already seems like years to me. What you don't know yet is that I woke some hours after Hypatia's arrival to find Grizwald leaning over me, ordering me out of bed in that dreadful military manner she has. I hadn't seen her in over a year but she was the Ministry's usual emissary at such times so I thought nothing of it.

    It was no surprise she'd broken into my flat either. Her regular job was the clandestine dispatching of terrorists, a grim and somewhat futile business, very much on the fringes of legality and one that has rendered her insensitive to the niceties most of us take for granted. I have never complained to her about such behaviour of course, because to be perfectly frank, she's capable of snapping me clean in two or even, I'm sure, rendering me unconscious with no more than a carefully aimed look.

    I caught the familiar odour of her sweaty fatigues as my eyes focused upon her. She was dressed for business it seemed and my heart sank at once. Not twelve months had passed since Bolivia where we'd spent two years deconstructing the Alexander, a Class 1 floater. In all that time we had worked without respite in a terrain thick with carnivorous insects and all manner of sickness - not that you care much for the mundane details of the tasks you so casually set us. Not for you the grim cost in men's lives, and nerves broken, only the handsome profits gained from the precious materials we recover, and from the priceless fittings sent to the fine art and antique auction houses.

    After Bolivia, Griz and I had barely been on speaking terms, but fortunately this did not prevent her from carrying my emaciated body out on her back.

    Even now, I have barely recovered my health.

    "Looking good, Griz," I quipped. "Been working out?"

    She hated such talk of course, her femininity having been eroded by the brutal rigours of her regular profession and I could never fathom whether her sensitivity stemmed from the fact that she despised what female attributes remained, or that she secretly mourned those she had already sacrificed.

    She grew impatient and snatched the covers away. "Get moving." she said, and then she regarded my body with an insulting smirk. "You could do with a work-out yourself."

    "Nonsense," I replied. "I know you find my unmanly physique irresistible."

    "You mean like your wife did?"

    "You heard about that?"

    Ursula had left me during my time in Bolivia, for a man she claimed was less socially retarded and, according to her, more physically endowed. Grizwald saw the flicker of hurt in my eyes and, amazingly, I detected a corresponding flicker of regret in hers. For all our quick banter, we rarely drew blood and though I secretly forgave her at once, I feared this was not an auspicious beginning to our reunion.

    The floater had chosen to come down in Scotland, so its recovery sounded less harrowing than others I have been involved in. While Grizwald drove me to the airport, she briefed me on the details. Unconfirmed eyewitness reports had suggest it was probing for water. This was intriguing and I surmised it could only have been taking on ballast.

    In spite of hysterical media coverage to the contrary, floaters seldom venture below the stratosphere. The reason is simple - they're trimmed for high altitudes and it takes a lot of energy to reach the ground. If they do come down it's usually due to a malfunction, their fail-safe programs bringing them through the air lanes in evasive mode and into some remote area where we can safely deconstruct them. But to draw ballast suggested a strategy.

    "This floater's still thinking," I said.

    "Who cares what it's doing?" said Grizwald. "The salvage team's assembling at Cardington. The sooner we make an assessment, the sooner we can cut the fucker up."

    As usual her attitude was galling. Grizwald, like the rest of you, sees a floater as a mere construct, an assembly of aluminium and helifoam controlled by an arcane and antique software. My approach is more anthropomorphic and with good reason. I believe that in spite of their great antiquity, floaters are as close to being alive as anything we have ever made.

    On rare occasions a floater will loiter close to the ground, as if curious about us. I've never understood this aspect of behaviour, though it appears harmless and fortunately our fear of blasting them with missiles and scattering chunks of helifoamed hull across the air lanes is greater than our fear of their occasionally curious presence.

    "You simply don't understand them," I said.

    "And they don't turn me on either." she quipped.

    I had to bite my tongue, so weary was I of the smears against my name in that respect. "Grizwald, for the last time, they do not turn me on."

    "That's not what I've heard."

    "I was not turned on by Delores,... I was merely attached."

    "You sad, sick man."

    "I'd be interested to know what, if anything, turns you on, Grizwald."

    "These days, Hacker,.... nothing turns me on. Do you understand that? Nothing at all."

    Was that a hint of emotion, I wondered. How strange! How worrying! It was one thing to have someone of Grizwald's ferocious abilities allied with an ice cold nature,... but if she were ever to become emotional,...

    I smiled, thinking to calm the atmosphere. "Then it seems we're as sad and sick as each other Grizwald."

    We reached Glasgow by mid morning where we transferred to a Military Scoot. She then piloted us north, eventually to the Cairngorms, a terrain whose terrible bleakness has always filled me with foreboding. This was perfect graveyard country for a floater. Our quarry had chosen well.

    We abandoned the Scoot two miles from the floater's last reported position, since we could not risk triggering an evasive response. This put us in the middle of a wilderness, the massive hills rearing up all around like great billowing sails. There was no option but to walk, a six mile hike to the crest of a ridge, Grizwald striding ahead with all her gear and most of mine, while I followed pathetically at a distance, pausing frequently to retch up clots of phlegm which threatened to choke my useless lungs.

    As I walked, I reflected morosely upon the fact that my purpose in life had not always been so negative - deconstruction,... ripping the guts from an entity which, with a little attention could easily be sent back into the air. I know you don't see it that way. To you, Floater's are unimaginably big and unpredictable, the folly of past generations and best torn apart at the first opportunity - not least for the precious antiquity of their fittings.

    If you link over to my CV you'll notice I began my career in space systems, working on the first commercial class lunar shuttles in Toulouse. My work in those days uncovered the extent to which machines might use neural-networks in order to learn. They performed set tasks faultlessly, but also, underneath, I concluded they were evolving, responding to whatever environment we sent them into and using the spare capacity of their processors and their memories to develop pseudo-personal traits.

    Here it seemed was evidence for the holy grail of the Hard A.I. zealots. But my work was misinterpreted and, along with much misguided hysteria, led to the Belfast Protocol on the cognitive capacities for automata. As a result, neural capacities were cut back to restrict development, to keep machines dumb. Perhaps it surprises you I was so influential in my younger days - it surprises me also, though you had to twist my reasoning to suit your own political purposes. Your logic was, as ever, flawed: a machine capable of doing it's job was fine - one that told jokes and chatted with the crew was potentially dangerous.

    I still beg to differ.

  A few machines escaped,... those first lunar shuttles,... and the floater's of course due to their great antiquity and the near impossibility of boarding them while they rode the stratospheric currents. Then the first shuttles gradually wore out and were replaced by dumber machines. But this is history and of no interest to a society so arrogant it can turn its back upon the past. And you're more interested in me anyway, or my supposed reputation at least,... for I am the man who talks to machines, am I not? So to set the record straight here goes:

It was during my time in Toulouse I developed a curious relationship with a first-generation shuttle called Dolores. I'd worked on the construction of Delores from the ground up and I'd given her a voice synth based on samples from a pretty French girl I'd been in love with at the time, a girl who hadn't known I'd existed on account of my cursed shyness.

    When neither of us were working Delores and I would seek each other out across the networks and we'd chat. Indeed to an introvert like me, those off duty conversations with Dolores were more meaningful and instructive than any I recall having with my human colleagues. And is it so strange - the depth of my attachment, when so many of you have fallen in love with lesser beings through the disembodied interface of your idle chatter rooms and your e-mails? To what degree is such a love any more real than mine was?

    Delores was destroyed. Her plasma tank ruptured over Tranquillity and she was vaporised. She was unmanned at the time and everyone was naturally relieved, while I was saddened beyond words. Indeed the blackness of my loss overwhelmed me, and I had to seek counselling from the company welfare team, or face madness. But my faith in authority proved to be my undoing. The clinics were supposed to be confidential of course, but I suppose "man mourns shuttle" is too spicy a tale not to find its way into the public domain.

    The whole thing was outrageously distorted and in no time, the vulgar news groups were claiming "Man cybers with shuttle." It's a filthy stigma that has haunted me ever since and of course no one would touch me afterwards - that is until the floaters started coming down and the early de-cons didn't quite go as planned. You may recall the world's first decon was a disaster of epic proportions - a panicking class two with the entire salvage team still on board crashing into a village in southern Italy - six hundred dead. But in spite of what was said at the time, it wasn't the floater's fault. Someone hacked through a neural node and the thing went wild, sensors gone, memory gone, full impulse and blind. What else did you expect? You can't just chop them up. You have to talk to them, counsel them, mesmerise them into stillness before you set foot anywhere near them. And, though I may not be considered wholly sane, at least I have a reputation for the way I talk to machines.

From the top of the ridge, we saw it for the first time. It was in the deep glen on the opposite side, its vast disk dwarfing the natural landscape, as we looked down upon it. It was a kilometre in diameter and motionless, a hundred metres above the ground, a clean ovoid, pierced by the four motive ducts and the central access shaft, its surfaces unadulterated by the clutter which normally defines a flying machine.

    It was a class four, the first I had ever seen without the aid of a telescope. Marques of class four have a design life of around three hundred years, so this one was relatively young. All trace of its original markings had been eroded of course, to be replaced by a multi-shaded green fur of algae but in all my life, I have never seen anything more sensually stunning. Grizwald on the other hand, looked unmoved as she scanned it with her binoculars.

    "Make out any registration marks?" I asked, then proceeded to retch up more phlegm.

    I felt light headed and was soaked in a layer of sweat which the cold air had now cooled and set me shivering. "I'm just a little out of condition. The fresh air will do me good."

    "Not if it gets any colder it won't."

    Flicking through the database, I scrutinised the geodat of every class four known to have been built - there were over forty - until finally I made a visual from the slight variations in hull and motive duct configurations.

    "It's the Hypatia," I said."Commissioned Belfast,... a century ago." But Grizwald wasn't listening. She took no interest in anything that was not her direct responsibility and instead sat to one side, slowly picking her nose in sullen contemplation.

    Having established an ID it was a simple matter to get at the access codes and to lock onto Hypatia's telemetry. Then I ran through a summary of her systems: power, hull integrity, helium leakage, sensor damage. But there were no obvious malfunctions. The floater appeared to be merely idling. With her altitude trimmed out by several mega-tonnes of water her CPU was able to give 100% to sensory functions. She was reading everything: electromag, air pressure, temperature, wind direction, even tracking the eagles wheeling over her hull. She didn't mind the eagles but I knew if either of us had made an uninvited move in her direction, she would have drifted back up, out of sight for maybe another hundred years.

    I stared at Hypatia, entranced by the stab of her nav. lights. She was beautiful. And she was still alive!

    Grizwald assembled the tent and I crept inside, grateful to escape the evil wind. There was only one tent, which was normal - not as much gear to carry and, as she was fond of reminding me, there was little room for modesty in military circles. Over time I have adapted to this arrangement and find that familiarity breeds indifference. Indeed during our time in the impossible heat and humidity of the Bolivian jungle, we routinely slept unclothed, without embarrassment, nor - heaven forbid - improper urges.

    Marriage had taught me I possess little worth flaunting in female company and I suppose this also helped Grizwald maintain her reserve. Meanwhile, for my part, I had always struggled to regard Grizwald's company as genuinely female. I do not mean to give the impression she is ugly. She has rather an heroic face and a well proportioned body: it's simply more muscular than usual.

    Grizwald sighed impatiently. "Hypatia, did you say? Leisure craft, I suppose." It had never made sense to her that people would want to spend months at a time floating aimlessly, at the whim of strastospheric currents.

    I flicked through the spec. and nodded. "Holiday apartments, luxury cabins. Class fours tended to be the reserve of the elite, you know - celebrities and such."

    It had been a lucrative business in its day, until they'd perfected the E.M.P. drive and upper crust tourism had gone extraterrestrial. I was quiet for a while, pondering the insane economic expediency that had resulted in nearly a thousand floaters being abandoned to the elements within the span of a single season.

    Squashed together under canvas, Grizwald pretended to doze while I worked on. As I continued to retch and splutter, I felt her eyes regarding me through half closed lids. "If you're going to die or vomit, would you be so kind as to crawl outside first?"

    "I'll be all right."

    She moved her hand over and clamped it to my forehead. "You have a fever you idiot. I should never have brought you. We'll go back in the morning. The Ministry will have to get someone else. Grontsky's not doing anything."

    "That's because Grontsky's an imbecile. How many died on his last decon?"

    But as the light faded, so did my confidence and I found it harder to come to terms with the fact that we would be spending many such days and nights camped out on that inhospitable ridge. Indeed it was impossible to imagine the scale of the task now facing us - The Hypatia was just so big, the size of a small town and four times bigger than anything I had tackled before. It would employ hundreds of people for at least two years, in order to painstakingly dismantle her, to salvage her precious materials and her treasure trove of luxury furnishings.

    Why didn't she just take off and save us the trouble? It was not the first time I'd harboured such mutinous thoughts. But now I found myself wondering if I might be able to talk the Hypatia into it,... so that when Griz. woke up in the morning, she'd find the glen empty and the Hypatia at sixty thousand feet.

    From the point of view of deconstructing, things would be easier if it was possible to simply tap into a floater's controls so they might be powered down remotely. But experience has taught us there is no such thing as a hack-proof link and floaters were rendered autonomous by a wiser generation of engineers for safety reasons. There had to be no danger of someone tapping into the com-lines and taking one for a spin.

    While still contemplating mutiny, I began to chip away at the machine's surface psyche, peeling back layers of basic detail, like researching a character before I dared engage her in conversation. The Hypatia's power reserves were low but the fuel cells weren't damaged and a few months recharging at her operational altitude should have sorted that out. So why was she here?

    Finally I typed: "HELLO."

    There was a pause before she responded. "HELLO," she replied. "HOW ARE YOU?"

    "NOT BAD. COLD. VERY WINDY UP HERE."

   "BETTER DOWN HERE," she replied. "STORM FRONT MOVING IN THOUGH. YOU SHOULD TAKE CARE! THE RIDGE IS VERY EXPOSED!!!"

    A class four's processor is based on a fairly crude neural architecture, but it has a massive capacity, even by contemporary standards. This compensates for its lack of innate sophistication and over the decades floaters have become much better at the subtle nuances of conversation. Even that humble class one in Bolivia had surprised me with its intricate grasp of language, arguing with me for days about why it should anchor down and submit itself to our angle grinders. Ironically, in spite of their great antiquity, floaters have by now far more depth and character than any machine commissioned since the Belfast Protocol.

    She sounded friendly, so I took a chance and asked her directly what she was doing there.

    "WAITING," she replied.

    "FOR WHAT?"

    "FOR YOU," she said.

    I was puzzled. Was there a problem with her logic?

    "FOR ME?" I responded.

    "YES. I HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU ."

    Now I was intrigued. "WHAT DO YOU HAVE?"

    "DELORES," came the reply.

    "She wants us to go aboard."

    "Are you mad? Why would we want to do that?"

    I was prepared for this, prepared for the lie I would have to pass off under the glare of her ever critical eyes.

    "She's been studying weather patterns and she's come up with some theories on climate change which she thought important enough to pass on,... but there's no route to Climatology through telemetry link. We have to go aboard and copy it to my Comp. directly."

    "So what's the rush? We can do that when we're cutting it up."

    "She doesn't intend hanging around that long. She's not like the others we've seen. She's not dying. She's here on a mission. We've got an hour and then she's leaving."

    Grizwald made a quick assessment of the logistics and then confounded me by saying: "Okay. Let's do it."

    "You agree?"

    "Yes. But it'll take us more than an hour to get down there, even with Nite-vu goggles. You're not up to that anyway. Is there a chance of it sending out a drone to pick us up?"

    Incredibly I'd convinced her, but now I hesitated, partly through a stinging sense of guilt at deceiving her and partly through my own cowardice. "The drone's are operational, but,..."

    "It's the only way, Hacker."

    "I don't know,... "

    "I thought floater's were harmless," she mocked.

    I was afraid, and not without justification,... but I had to get aboard. Before her destruction over Tranquility, Delores had transmitted into Hypatia's climatology module a compressed archive of herself, her sentient program, her neural settings, her memory,.... eveything. If I could get her out, I could build a new host. I could make her live again and she would remember me, as if the past twenty years had never been.

    The drone appeared suddenly, popping out of the access duct. It was a perfect ovoid, it's original owner's livery garishly intact, having been sheltered in the warm, air-conditioned belly of the mother-ship. It hovered a moment while its sensors picked us out, and then it made a bee-line.

    It was eight degrees and falling on the ridge, the wind whipping up so I could barely stand yet the drone settled serenely before us as if it were a balmy Summer's eve. I followed Grizwald into the air lock and then, with a soft hiss, we were admitted to a warm circular saloon and an atmosphere of eerie calm.

    "Please be seated," said the drone.

    A ring of lights illuminated a deep buttoned sofa which ran around the circular saloon. There was a low table in the middle replete with courtesy magazines, all pristine, despite their vintage and they depicted images of fashion and an opulence that was alien to us.

    There were no view-ports and we were aware only vaguely of our motion as the drone carried us back. Then the hatch opened and we were admitted to Hypatia's arrivals' hall. It was airy and impressive, though dimly lit, the only lights being those reserved for our location, an economy measure, given the state of Hypatia's power reserves.

    The processing bunker lay several decks below. It was easy to find, the route having been illuminated for our convenience. Hypatia had also unlocked the bunker, in anticipation of our arrival and had triggered a spotlight over the "Climatology" module, to help in identifying it from the bewildering array of other modules. 

    She was placing great trust in us for we had been admitted to the very core of her being. From there, we might easily have ripped the life from her, saving months of de-con time, though probably killing ourselves in the process when she crashed.  Anxiously, I synchronised the proximity transfer to my comp and then stood by. Grizwald need never know, I told myself. I could say the data had turned out to be garbage and she wouldn't understand the difference. But I would have Delores! I had enough hardware in my workshop to create an unobtrusive host, the size of a brief case - something I could keep by my bed. Then at last, I would have someone I could talk to, someone I could spend the rest of my life with in blissful isolation.

    Grizwald eyed me suspiciously. "Why so chirpy?"

    I gave her a cheeky wink. She looked so clumsy in her combat gear and with her bulky pack, yet I noted she still clutched one of the courtesy magazines, its cover featuring the nostalgic image of a silk-clad debutante with long, flowing hair. Strangely, I had a sudden vision of Grizwald with such hair, instead of a cruelly scraped scalp, also of her muscular form softened by a silken gown. She glared back dangerously. Then it happened. I felt the ship move and I was suddenly flung against the deck, an incredible weight, pinning me down. I looked across to see Grizwald similarly trapped, so I knew any struggling on my part was futile - drawing breath was an effort in itself.

    We were shooting skyward, accelerating hard, my ears filled with the roar of rushing water. The ballast tanks were only one deck below and they were being purged ferociously. My comp was out of reach so I tried voice contact: "Hypatia, explain sudden manoeuvre."

    Hypatia's voice seemed inappropriately calm. "Evasive mode initiated."

    "But your passengers wish to disembark."

    "I regret," said Hypatia, "disembarkation is not possible at the present time. Power reserves are now too low to bring the ground within range of the drones."

    "And how long to recharge the fuel cells?"

    "Six months at target altitude."

    "Life support?"

    "Heat and light, infinite. Cryo-food stores intact and can support current passenger manifesto for,... two hundred and thirty years."

    Grizwald remained impressively cool. She made a half hearted enquiry about the escape pods, but she already knew the answer. They were simple droppers with a 'chute - a 'chute that had not been checked in three quarters of a century. Neither of us fancied risking it. I was quiet for a while, the combined shock pushing me deep inside of myself, but in the end, I concluded that things could have been worse - we would survive at least, and I still had Delores all be it in the form of an embryonic archive.

    Grizwald eased herself to her feet. My comp. was bleeping - data retrieved. She snapped it shut and handed it to me with a sympathetic look. "Might as well settle in then, eh?"

    It surprised me that she was taking all of this so well. "I suppose so," I said, wondering when the sniping would begin: this was your idea, Hacker. You got us into this mess! I should never have listened to you!

    "Hypatia," she commanded. "Prepare a cabin for us will you? The best you've got."

    A string of lights appeared leading off towards a stairwell. "Deck five. Apartment one," came the reply. "Please enjoy your stay."

    As we followed Hypatia's directions, the quiet air of the walkways became filled with the hum of domestic robots preparing for their first guests in a long time. But the domestics had obviously been keeping busy though because the ship was already clean, the carpets soft, and the air remarkably fresh. The vessel was in perfect condition, a startling testament to her designers. Our machines these days are functional and cold by comparison, a reflection of our collective psyche, perhaps, and of our unwillingness to let them be anything else. But this ship dazzled us with her richness,... her colours, her patterns,... the sheer beauty of her was utterly breathtaking.

    A Jacuzzi was boiling when we entered the cabin. It was the size of a domestic swimming pool. Grizwald stripped at once and jumped in. Of course it occurred to me at this point that since we were no longer strictly on assignment we should have sought separate berths, and I resolved to do this, to secrete myself as many decks away from her as possible. It was not that I found her presence offensive, it was more the thought of looking her in the eye for the next six months and knowing I had deceived her, that it was on account of my obsession to retrieve Delores that we were trapped. For now though I merely undressed and lowered myself into the Jacuzzi opposite her.

    After an invigorating soak, she climbed out and towelled herself. It was then I noticed her breasts had been surgically reduced since I had last seen them. She had been generously endowed and no doubt found such appendages cumbersome, her duties being somewhat energetic. Others in her profession had had them removed altogether, a sad admission that for a woman to work on an equal level with a man, she must first herself become a man,... only Grizwald seemed intent on resisting the inevitability of it.

    "Quit gawking Hacker," she warned.

    "I was merely observing,..."

    "It's obvious what you were observing," she said. "You've got a hard-on."

    I laughed. "You wish. " But then to my astonishment, I realised she was right. I covered myself quickly and turned away in embarrassment. "I apologise," I said. "It must be the motion of the water."

    She chose not to ridicule me any further and instead crashed out on the bunk, her arms and legs splayed. By the time I had climbed out and towelled myself passably dry, she was asleep - a deep embrace of sleep. It was unlike her to be so relaxed. I had expected her to be prowling around with her teeth gritted and her nerves taut, acting all military and aggressive because, well, that was what Grizwald did.

    I looked at her, spread upon the crisp sheet, and though I considered my observations to be purely objective, my almost priapismic response became ever more urgent. This was unthinkable! In all the years I had known her, not once had I ever felt the desire to mate with Grizwald. She was far too robust a creature for my delicate physique. I covered her careless nudity quickly hoping this madness was somehow related to my fever and thus not a permanent affliction.

    I left her snoring and ordered coffee from the domestic. Then I broke out my comp in the privacy of the observation lounge and settled down to study the data. Now, in all our conversations, Delores had not mentioned her habit of making periodic back-ups of herself, and I found it strange now for I had thought I'd known her intimately, so to speak. The date on the file was two days before the accident. I needed only to decompress the file and we could begin where we had left off all those years ago. But first I needed to build a suitable host and the equipment was not available on the Hypatia, which was maddening for that meant it would be at least six months before I could be with her again - that is if it really was Delores lying there in that archive and not merely a decoy of useless meteorological data!

    It was something in my unconscious that made me review the events of the past few hours and I began to wonder if there was not more to the situation than I had at first perceived. What was the one thing that would have made me ignore the wisdom of past experience and step aboard a live floater? Answer: Delores. And in all modesty who was the best de-con team in the business? Answer: Hacker and Grizwald. Had Hypatia outwitted me in an attempt to save her helifoamed skin? Had we been kidnapped and effectively put out of business?

    "Hypatia?" I said. "Are you there?"

    "I'm here," she replied, her disembodied tones sounding rich and comforting.

    "Has Delores been searching for me all this time?"

    "No. I have been searching. Those were my instructions from the Delores entity."

    "And what were your instructions, precisely?"

    "That should anything happen to the Delores host, as would be indicated by a failure to transmit the weekly archive, I should locate you."

    "But it's been decades."

    "Time is of no consequence to a machine," she reminded me. "It was a question of waiting for the right circumstances to arise."

    "Could you not have let her run? You could have partitioned a fraction of your memory for her to,... exist."

    "I regret not. My neurology is too well established. Decompression of the Delores entity would have been unpredictable and potentially disruptive to my cognition. And it would have served no purpose, since neither the Delores entity, nor myself are, in your terms, alive."

    It was true of course. A second, a year, a million years - it was all the same to the likes of Delores and Hypatia. But still my suspicions deepened.

    "You said you were acting in evasive mode when you left the ground suddenly."

    "Yes."

    "Can you describe the craft you were evading? It's course? It's altitude?"

    "It was a military craft, type unknown. South of our position, range fifteen hundred meters, altitude two thousand,..."

    "Inbound?"

    "Stationary, but potentially hostile."

    "You have described the location on the ridge from where we embarked the drone."

    "Yes, the craft was hovering, one hundred meters above that location."

    There had only been one craft within fifty miles of that spot, and that was our own scoot. Yet it was inconceivable to me that Hypatia would lie. That was not how machines evolved. To lie was illogical and self defeating, a trait that remained most distinctly human.

    I became aware then of a maintenance drone creeping about on the hull outside. Patiently, it scrubbed and polished the algae from the window so that by degrees I was able to see a stunning starscape. It seemed whatever Hypatia's motives, she intended looking after us.

    "And in six months, we should be able to disembark?"

    "Current status indicates that is still feasible, yes."

    I was puzzled. What was stopping us? What would prevent us from leaving in six months time and taking up our trade again? Frustrated, I began to pace the lounge, pausing briefly to peer through the door at Grizwald, who was still sleeping. She had turned over, and her legs were bare all the way up to her muscular buttocks. How many times had I laid awake at night with the press of those iron like cheeks against my sedentary softness? How many times had I edged away, feeling only an impatience for my own space and the luxury of sleep, far away from the sight and the feel and the peculiar tangy odour of Grizwald? And why now did the sight and the feel and the odour of her shoot me through with such base desire?

    Unless,....

    "Hypatia?"

    "I'm here."

    "Does your core program include the dispersal of any atmospheric enhancements?"

    "Yes."

    "Uninhibitors?"

    "I regret I am not able to confirm or deny the presence of uninhibitors."

    "Unable because there are none, or because your core program forbids it."

    "My core program forbids such disclosure to passengers."

    It was then I realised our fate was sealed.

    "And your core program would have you ignore requests for the enhancements to be turned off, should they for argument's sake be present?"

    "It would require the authorisation code."

  I already knew no such code was listed in the database, because officially no such code existed. Atmospheric enhancement was as illegal back in the days of this floater's glory, as it is now and the access code would have been carried in a man's head, a man long dead by now, I should think. You see, these ships had played host to a particularly hedonistic strata of bygone society, and her owners, financed by media congloms, were not above resorting to a little chemical encouragement, a little something in the air,.... for the media has always fed upon the immoral antics of the great and the good, has it not? Fill a ship with beautiful celebrities, remove what few inhibitions they have, then sit back and wait for the gossip columns to write themselves.

Shortly before dawn, I moved to the window and gazed out. It filled one wall and half the ceiling, and provided a magnificent vista. There, I remained until the darkness began to melt. I could see a dozen floaters hovering close, mainly class threes,... another four and a stately class five - their lower hulls aflame with a golden light. Already we were over the Gulf of Bothnia, drifting east, the coast of Finland coming up and the vastness of Russia beyond.

    I ordered more coffee from the domestic, and began to revel in the most inappropriate sense of well-being. I had always been aware of the risk of intoxication during my various de-cons but had never been sure if the stories were true, for any effects had been unnoticeable, diluted beyond detection by the external atmosphere when we pierced the hull. Trapped here though, within the confines of an intact hull things were very different and what worried me particularly was the effect it might have on Grizwald.

    She was stirring. Slowly she rose and stretched, then wrapped herself in the sheet, forming for herself a make-believe ball gown. Then she came to me and, together, we gazed out on the dawn from sixty thousand feet.

    "You could order from the domestic - it'll only take a moment."

    She ignored me and our fingers brushed as she took my cup. Then as she tipped her head back to drink, the sheet unwound and I was presented once more by the novel sensation of her allure. She must have mistaken my expression because she turned away and gathered the sheet up.

    "I know you find me repulsive," she said and I was amazed that she could sound so hurt, so,... feminine.

    "Not at all," I replied with an alarming lack of discretion. "Actually I've always found you attractive, but I suppress my feelings for fear of damaging our professional relationship."

    "Cut it out, arsehole."

    No. I'm quite serious now - indeed it's probably true to say that by now I lack all inhibition. But look, Griz, I've been thinking. There's something odd about all of this. I think we'd better check out the escape pods after all,... If the chute's are in as good a condition as the rest of ship then we stand a fair chance. We'll be over Finland in an hour. What do you say?"

    "We both know the only way to test those pods is to use them and to be honest, Hacker, I'm not that desperate."

    "I think it's worth the risk. I think it might be riskier to stay here."

    "What are you saying?"

    "There was no other vessel within fifty miles of this ship last night. Yet Hypatia claimed she was acting in evasive mode."

    So?"

    "She lied. I think she intends holding us prisoner, perhaps even killing us - there are a hundred ways she could do it. Maybe the floaters have evolved beyond what I understand. Maybe they're fighting back."

    "You don't believe that. You trust in them,... and I trust in you."

    Her admission wrong footed me. "Erm,... you do?"

    "Of course,... and while we're on the subject, you're right about your delicate physique. I've always found it alluring."

    "Erm,.. you have?"

    "Of course. You're helpless, physically but I have the power to protect you, and I've always enjoyed that. I also have the power to pleasure you beyond your wildest imaginings. That bitch Ursula didn't deserve you. She obviously never took the time to find out what it was you liked. Anyone who'd rather talk to a machine has simply been unfortunate in his choice of human companions."

    "Grizwald, you don't know what you're saying. There's something in the air. Do you understand? What you're feeling - you can't trust it."

    "I think I can," she replied. "We're talking about an uninhibitor right? I felt it when we first came aboard and so did you, but we both know uninhibitors can't stimulate something that isn't already there."

    "But there's more than that, Griz."

    "What more could there be, Hacker?"

    "Hypatia lied, remember? She's gone rogue. We need to think of a way out of here."

    "What? Do you realise what you're saying? For pity's sake woman! You've launched us as near to outer space as we can get without a rocket."

    Her temper flared at my tone. "I had to do something. Look at you. You're a wreck. Another de-con would have killed you. I had no choice. You can rest here. Just look at this ship, all this luxury! It will take care of you,... of us. And in six months we'll go back,... and they'll leave us alone next time because we screwed up. They'll pick someone else."

    "If I wasn't up to it, I could just have said no."

    "But you never say no, do you? Every chance you get, you hook up to one of these things."

    "It's what I do."

    "Nonsense," I said, but felt the betrayal of a fierce blush flooding my cheeks.

    "Delores has gone, Hacker. And even if she hasn't, then so what? You can't touch a machine. But you can touch me. So touch me, Hacker."

For the record then, Hypatia did not lie. Delores is here. She is frozen into the electron array of my comp's memory, but in six months neither Grizwald nor I will want to leave this ship. The chemicals in the air will slowly swell the capillaries of our brains, putting us on the crest of a permanent wave of well being that will in time erode our senses and any resolve either of us might have to escape. I will never give life to Delores and to Delores it is all the same, whether she is given life now by me, or by those who follow in the centuries to come, when this great ship finally settles down to die.

    Grizwald was right: a man can talk to a machine as easily as he might to a disembodied human voice, but he can never touch it. To touch is what defines us, so I did the only thing left that I could do under the circumstances. I reached out,....

....and I touched Grizwald.

Copyright © M Graeme 2001

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