A Man Makes A Machine

by Richard Chwedyk

This story copyright 1990 by Richard Chwedyk. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal use. All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

*      *      *

    "A man makes a machine to do a job faster or better than he himself can do it." So the old phrase goes. It came to me just as I was messaging Nova Galactica Carriers' Control Center about the broken freezer unit and the thawed zhemzhi child. Once the phrase was there, it wouldn't go away.
    The lights of the very spare communication board went on.
    "N.G.C. is receiving you now," the ship said.
    "Thank you," I kept the screen dark. Since the lights in the communication room were not turned on, only the soft glow of the board lights illuminated the area around me.
    "I read you, Ariosto. Maggie! What's up, sweetheart?"
    That was Gunther. I couldn't see him, but he always addressed me with those words: sweetheart, darling, baby. It's the way most monitors speak to intelligences. If it's meant to demean; to embarrass and mock us, Gunther was very good at it. One of the benefits he garnered from long hours at the monitor screens was that he could speak to us in a way that he would never be permitted to speak to real human females.
    "There's a malfunction in number seventy-four on-board freezer unit. Two of the 64p conduit beams are out. Total shutdown."
    "Replacement parts?"
    "None."
    "Well, why the hell not?"
    Ship's inventories are reviewed by intelligences, but humans are responsible for final requisition approval. I'm permitted to point out failures in human judgment, but as a matter of spacefaring etiquette, it simply isn't done.
    Gunther understood and moved on to the next question. "What can you rig up?"
    "Nothing that will work. The OBFU's were booked solid. Without cannibalizing parts from unoccupied units, I have nothing to work with."
    "You'd better leave that one alone, then." The concern in his voice seemed genuine. I could have turned on the visual to gauge his response, but I really didn't want to see his face. Gunther had his visual on, I was sure, watching me. He seemed to enjoy that.
    But his interest for once may have been more professional. I think he was referring to another case, some time back, when an intelligence made a human value judgment in a similar matter, taking pans from an OBFU occupied by an elderly male to repair a unit containing a pregnant female. The results were scandals, lawsuits, decertification of the space carrier, and the total shutdown of the intelligence. Intelligences are allowed a good deal of leverage on operational matters, but human value judgments, vague as the boundaries may be, are strictly forbidden.
    "I don't know what to tell you, baby. Looks like whoever you got unfrozen out there better like ship life. Are you set for food? Atmosphere adjustments?"
    "Yes." Whoever had approved the final inventory was probably more concerned with catastrophic events-- a crash or a disabling of the ship-- than with minor mechanical malfunctions.
    "Another load of zhemzhis, aren't they?"
    "That's correct."
    He chuckled. "At least those lizards don't have lawyers, otherwise the carrier would be in a load of shit."
    "In Terran terms, the zhemzhi are considered metasaurians, not lizards." I knew the specific term meant little to Gunther. It also meant little to him that the zhemzhi children matured in about seventeen years; that their average life span was sixty-seven; that they bore their children live; that affection, upbringing, and strong family bonds were all significant elements of zhemzhi culture. They were much like humans, at least in some ways. This was the third group of zhemzhi colonists I had taken aboard the Ariosto all of them bound for Illa, a new world they been settling for about two centuries.
    "Lizards, saurians, so?"
    "The unfrozen zhemzhi is a youth. Male, in human approximation. About seven years old."
    "Look, Maggie, I know what you're getting at. But what the hell can I tell you?"
    "Have there been any unreported course changes recently? Private vessels?"
    "Your ship would spot it as soon as we did. The ship with the closest approach to you is the Kora. In another five years it'll be 5.4 A.U. from Ariosto. Too far to intercept."
    "In an emergency?"
    "You know as well as I do that for a government ship one thawed lizard does not constitute an emergency. They'd be afraid of violating the Private Cargoes Act."
    "There may have been a chance. Kora's equipped with eighteen OBFU's, and they set off for Redburn with a crew of twelve humans. That's at least six units not being used."
    "Then you know more about it than I do. Why ask me?"
    "The trip to Illa takes another seventy years. The child will grow old and die on this ship. His patents, when they thaw..."
    Gunther cleared his throat. "Yeah. I know. It's tough. We'll pay reparations. As far as the kid... do your best."
    "What else can I do?"
    He took a deep breath. "Right. Look, have you done a self-diagnostic recently? Checked your hormone balance?"
    I told Gunther I would.
    "You look really sweet, in those dim lights, you know? I'd go out there and save you myself if I knew you'd be really grateful." I had to be tolerant with this sort of trans-galactic flirting, even as he belittled a serious situation. Intelligences of my classification were designed to be attractive in part to make the work of men like Gunther more pleasant. After all, Gunther would be retired, maybe even dead, and I would still be en route to Illa. To me, he would never be more then a voice, a face on screen, like many other faces.
    "N.G.C. has signed off," said the ship.
    "Fine. Thank you."
    I sat back, taking in the barren communication room much longer than I needed to. "A man makes a machine to do a job faster or better than he himself can do it." I still couldn't get rid of it. It must have come from some old text I'd read long ago.
    Hhesst was waiting for me, sitting quietly on the floor outside the communication room. He was humming or singing some sort of melody. Zhemzhis have pebbly grayish beige skin, snoutlike faces, and vestigial tails. Even in these features they remind me nothing of lizards. I could only think of Hhesst as a child, like any other child.
    "Let's go to the reading room," I said to him in zhemzhi.
    He hopped up, excited. "May we look at more pictures there?"
    "Oh, yes. I've many pictures to show you." I had already started to teach him a number of things to keep him amused and occupied: the layout of the ship, some simple games, the operation of the text readers in the library.
    Hhesst looked at me, his gold-colored eyes brightening. Hhesst stood about four feet tall, still dressed in the light blue jumpsuit he must have worn the day he and his family set off for Illa. Clothes, I thought. I would have to do something about clothes when Hhesst grew.
    "I know the way!" He raced down the corridor ahead of me, letting out a high-pitched cheer that came mostly from his tiny nostrils.
    "What did they say?" His voice echoed. "The people you spoke to in the communication room."
    "They... we could call them anytime and talk to them some more."
    "May I talk to them sometime?" He stopped at the entrance of the library and waited for me.
    "Of course. That's a very good idea. A wonderful idea, Hhesst!"
    His wide mouth stretched upward: a zhemzhi grin.
    "And we can talk to others as well. I can show you how to use the Dirac. Nearly instantaneous communication throughout the galaxy. We can call Zhay-ym, your homeworld. I think they'd be very pleased to talk to you."
    Hhesst cheered once more, running up to one of the reading tables and climbing onto a chair. "May we see the big zhemzhis from Terra again?"
    "We called them dinosaurs on Terra, Hhesst. But yes, some of them look like big zhemzhis, like the big ancestors of your prehistory." I keyed in the text request and waited for the images to fill the tablescreen. "There was a legend that started a few hundred years ago that the dinosaurs we believed to be extinct had really been transported from Terra to one of the other worlds in our galaxy."
    "Really? Do you think they may have gone to Zhay-ym?"
    "I wouldn't know, Hhesst."
    The dinosaurs kept Hhesst fascinated until it was time to eat. After that, I walked him to his cabin, intended for a human crew member who might have to be unfrozen for at least part of a trip. Though the bunks were considered small, it fit Hhesst with room to spare.
    Hhesst, like many children, would not go to sleep right away. He lay on his side (vestigial tails make it difficult for zhemzhis to sleep on their backs), watching me as I tried to tell him a story.
    "I think hot chocolate is the most wonderful food in the universe." Hot chocolate was a recent discovery for him; it resembled a thick, dark chaumek that is popular with zhemzhi children.
    "It's supposed to help humans sleep, but it doesn't seem to have that effect on you."
    "Do you sleep, Maggie?"
    "A little. My metabolism is very differently geared than a human's, but since I'm an organic intelligence, I have to eat and sleep. Just like them."
    "Aren't you human, Maggie?"
    "I'm an intelligence, Hhesst. I only look human."
    Hhesst made a giggling noise. "How can you look human and not be human?"
    "Humans are born live from their mothers, like zhemzhis. They have a chance to choose what they'll do with their lives when they grow up. After several bad experiences with human breeding a few hundred years ago, it was decided that the arbitrary development of the gene pool was the safest way to go, at least for humans. Do you understand any of that?"
    He shook his head slowly. The thick lids of his eyes were beginning to droop.
    "I'll explain it later. Anyway, I was designed. There are serial numbers on my genes. I was designed because they needed something to pilot the big starfaring ships, and they didn't want to leave it all to mechanical intelligences. Humans feel more comfortable dealing with humans, even though no human has a long enough life-span to survive the long trips. Nor do they seem to do well with long periods of solitude. So they designed me, and other intelligences, to do the jobs they couldn't do."
    Hhesat stared straight ahead, expression leaving his face. In another minute or so he would be asleep.
    "But... you are human, Maggie."
    "No, I'm not," I whispered.
    "You are..." His breathing slowed. I watched him a few minutes more to make sure he was fast asleep, then gently ran my hand over his brow and the frill of skin on his head. I hummed a little tune I'd learned long ago from a spacer on my first trip out: Greensleeves. I didn't know the words, or even if it had any words, but it seemed like a suitable lullaby. As I left the cabin, I wondered if all children were so beautiful in sleep.
    Returned to my solace, I could think as I wished, without worrying if my language carried too many human presumptions. I went two levels up to the bridge, to check once more on any possible course changes: the kind of futile gesture that Gunther wanted me to be on guard for. But Gunther wasn't watching me, nor was anyone else from N. G. C.
    Even with the supervising of a large ship like the Ariosto, intelligences have a great deal of free time. I spent most of mine reading and studying. Other intelligences do much the same thing, but their work is of a much more applied nature. None of the carriers seemed to mind, for it kept us occupied, and the carrier retained rights for any useful work we might have turned up.
    I read poetry, philosophy, novels, and plays, describing my work as "normative linguistics" to keep N. G. C. satisfied that I was involved in serious research. And that, for all I could tell, was all they were concerned with. Don't strain the budget, keep the overhead low and don't mess with human value judgments. We acted like humans, fine. Passengers like that. Government spacers might even enjoy a little warm comfort when duty forced them to dock for supplies. As long as the property wasn't damaged and everything was paid for, the carriers didn't mind.
    After all, humanity to them was just a definition. One, however, that was enforced by law. All the fine work of the Renaissance in conceiving the image of humanity was undone by the time human engineering developed organic machines. The twenty-second-century philosophy of Conditionalism changed "I think, therefore I am" to "I only think that I think I am." In such a whirl of involution, it was possible to justify the population corrections of two centuries ago and the continual elimination of old bio-intelligences to be replaced by their upgrades. The value of "being" was reduced to a matter of biological imperatives.
    I act as a ship's guidance. I must also serve personnel and crew to suit their needs and comforts whenever such persons are on board. I may think that I feel worry and concern, show affection to Hhesst, even when he's asleep. But I must not confuse these feelings with real human feelings. I may believe myself anything I want, but the registered numbers on my genes make me the property of N.G.C.
    "A man makes a machine-- "
    "Maggie," the ship said.
    "What is it?"
    "Here are the calculations you requested."
    "That I requested?"
    "Closest approach of the Kora, 5.387 A.U., is now estimated at four years, eleven months, six days, eleven hours."
    I couldn't remember asking for them. So this is stress; I thought. Perhaps I should check my hormone balance.
    "Ariosto, we have some texts on zhemzhi diet and hygiene, don't we?"
    "Two."
    "Could you pull them to the bridge screen?"
    "One moment."
    "Anything like a cookbook? Something about zhemzhi food that I could adapt to ship's supplies?"
    "No cookbooks, Maggie."
    "I didn't think so. Does the infirmary have enough medicines and antibiotics suitable for zhemzhis?"
    "There are some supplies that can be adapted for childhood diseases. The record for number seventy-four, Hhesst Sscharrva, is that he's had all his inoculations and is in good health."
    "I don't know what I'll do if he gets sick. Thank you. Oh yes, could you also pull Hamlet for me?"
    "It's pulled, Maggie."
    "Thank you." Ships grow accustomed to their guidances after a while. They often seem to anticipate one's desires and directives. To some extent, I did the same for Ariosto. How did we differ, really, other than in the materials from which we were made and the jobs for which we were designed?
    I did all the technical reading before I returned to Hamlet. I can't recall how many times I've read it. Like all the works of literature that intrigued me, there was something elusive in this story of the Prince of Denmark, something I seemed to be on the verge of grasping but could never quite reach. At times I thought it was my own slowness as a reader, and at other times I felt that this was the ultimate effect of literature, to take us to this boundary of thought and leave us there, because we could never go any farther.
    "Yet I, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak like John-a-Dreams, unpregnant of my cause, and can say nothing!"
*      *      *

    I awoke long before Hhesst did. After making him breakfast, we returned to the library and spent more hours looking through texts and running holos. I taught him to play chess, and planned to teach him other games as time passed. And more. With the help of the zhemzhi grammars in the library, we could both learn in time to read the long poems of the Masters, written in the form called Ffw-yuh; part epic and part confession. The zhemzhi Masters, I'd heard, could ruminate on the particulars of reality without breaking the impression that each poem is an apprehensible reality of its own. And there would be mathematics, languages and all of the sciences. I had a text of Terstler's Brief History of Zhemzhi Civilization, and inevitably English/Terran interpretation of the subject; also Percelli's Foundations of Zhemzhi Culture, and Cavendish's Meaning and Mystery of the Zhemzhi Settlements. Always from a human perspective, I could teach him about his native world, or the world his parents planned to adopt as their own, though he would never experience those worlds for himself. Perhaps he could find a friend that would talk to him from Zhay-ym or Illa on the Dirac, but they might be to him like the monitors were to me: faces on a screen.
    I could introduce him to the limited expanse of knowledge that he could learn within the confines of his all-too limited world.
    The ship would be his world, and I would be the population of that world, until his death.
    "Maggie?" Hhesst looked up from the tablescreen, eyebrows forlornly low. "Where are my parents?"
    I felt everything sink inside me. "In the OBFU room."
    "May I see them?"
    "Of course. I'll take you."
    We walked slowly through the main corridor which was strange for Hhesst, who loved to race and leap. He looked over each adjoining corridor carefully, eyes reflecting his awe.
    "Ariosto is a big ship," he said.
    "A very big ship."
    "It's a good ship?"
    "I'm not sure I know what you mean, but yes, I think it's one of the best. It's cleared for all classes of voyage, powered by a Foreman Slingshot Drive equipped with just about everything but offensive weapons."
    In the OBFU room, I pointed out the enamel-gray pods his parents occupied. He looked at each one for a long time.
    "Can't we let them out?"
    "No, Hhesst. They disengage if they malfunction, or if they're deactivated by an emergency code. But it's against the law to tamper with them or disturb them unless there's a grave emergency."
    "That's what happened to my pod, isn't it?"
    "Until I can get it fixed."
    He thought about this for some time, and when I was certain that he was about to ask the question I truly feared, he patted his parents' pods and looked up at me.
    "You'll take care of these two? Make sure that nothing happens to their pods like what happened to mine?"
    I bent my knees to the floor and hugged him. "It's my duty to protect all these units. But yes, for you, I'll be especially watchful over these."
    We passed by the open pod that Hhesst had occupied before the conduit beams went out.
    "Look!" He raced over to the unit and pulled out something. "It's Terzhu! I left him here!"
    "Terzhu?"
    "He's my friend!" He showed me a purple doll, no bigger than his hand, with large obsidian eyes and a fold of fabric turned down in a perpetual frown. It was shaped something like one of the "big zhemzhis" that had fascinated him in the picture texts. "He's very afraid of things, which is why I should always be with him."
    With one finger he petted the doll's head. "I'm sorry, Terzhu. I'll never leave you alone again."
    I stopped and petted the doll in his hand. "Hello, Terzhu."
    As we walked back to the library, I remembered a line from a recent poem Hhesst and I had been studying: "What we love is alive and real, if anything is." How easy it is to grant life to a bit of material, to share some part of our own life, transfer it to a piece of metal or fiber, give it a name. Perhaps a name is all one needs: to know one's name.
    "Terzhu," I repeated, staring at the frowning face. "Welcome aboard, Terzhu."
*      *      *

    Hhesst and I were sitting at the bridge. I was showing him how to spot Zzhu-may, Illa's sun, and several of the neighboring stars. He watched carefully, holding Terzhu up to the screen so that he could see as well.
    "When we turn on the rear scopes, we can see Nay-yar; then we bring up the magnification, and there's Zhay-ym, the world where you were born. See it? The crescent speck? It's orbit will take it behind Nay-yar soon."
    "Where were you born, Maggie?"
    "In a lab."
    "Were your parents born in a lab too?"
    "I didn't have parents. I was raised in what they called an academy, where intelligences are raised and trained. It was a little like the orphanage we read about in Oliver Twist." The people at the academy wouldn't have been fond of that comparison, but it was the only text we'd read so far with mention of anything like the academy.
    "You could stay with us on Illa, Maggie. Then we'd all be together. My parents will be like your parents."
    "Thank you, Hhesst. I'd love to stay with you, but Ariosto is my home now. It's been my home for over a century. Together we've seen collapsing stars, maneuvered through asteroid belts, warded off pirates after the Perseid Rebellion. We're like you and Terzhu, Hhesst. I don't know what this big ship would do without me."
    "But what would I do without you, Maggie?"
    After a year of taking care of Hhesst, I was starting to wonder if his question could be posed the other way around.
    "You'll do fine. You'll see. Now, do you remember the names of the two other stars in your home system?"
*      *      *

    Time passed in its invisible way, as it does through any voyage, when the markers for its passage are affixed to language and nothing more, when "night" is the time one sleeps and "breakfast" is the meal one eats after waking. Hhesst's growth to me was almost as invisible but I would still look up from my routine at times and there he would be, using an empty food container as a toy spaceship, repeating after the text his lessons in Spanish, or rolling his stylus over the picture boards as he sang some verses from the Masters' Ffw-yuhs. I would say to myself, how much taller he looks, how his features have strengthened, how much more mature he has become. The next thought would be of how proud his parents would feel, and for my own protection I would stop thinking about it altogether.
    Through the Dirac, he made many friends. Gunther would greet him with a "Hey, captain? How're you running my ship today?" and tell Hhesst of all kinds of sports that he would later try to recreate on the ship. Beiji, another N.G.C. monitor, would tell him stories that he learned as a child in Ghana. Beth, on the Lilliput described for him the worlds of Saris, Alcazar, and Hellenia. Angie, on the Kennedy, helped him with French lessons. Communications operators on Illa and Redburn greeted him whenever he called. From Zhay-ym, he spoke to several zhemzhi men and women, most often to a grave, kindly, older zhemzhi named Tzurrem, who always called Hhesst "little fellow" and asked Hhesst almost as many questions as Hhesst asked of him. The monitors sometimes worried that the budget for this voyage was being blown by these extra transmissions, but I reminded them that they were planning to pay reparations to Hhesst's parents anyway, and that the Dirac transmissions would be a fraction compared to that cost.
    Hhesst was very well liked, and I suspected that some of his correspondents looked forward to his transmissions almost as much as Hhesst looked forward to theirs. But as to anyone hinting at being able to help him, there wasn't a word. Once I saw old Tzurrem on the screen, sighing and calling Hhesst "my brave little friend", but outside of such little betrayals, the situation was barely acknowledged.
    "You did it on purpose, didn't you?" Gunther finally asked me. "Put Hhesst on the Dirac. Trying for sympathy. Hoping maybe someone might be convinced to bend the rules and set out after you."
    "You don't have to talk to Hhesst if you don't want to."
    "That's not the point! I like the kid, do you understand? But you've go to watch it, Maggie! We're getting awfully worried about you."
    "I'm sending in my hormone tests once every three months now. What else can I do? You told me to do my best."
    "Not when we've got calls every few months from zhemzhi attaches asking us what we can do about this thing. They bother the government and the government bothers us. And there's nothing we can do. Nothing! Period! You try to take any further steps and this is the last trip you take to anywhere! You know what some of those governments can do to intelligences when we agree to turn our backs?"
    "I understand, Gunther."
    "You better. As it stands, we've got another guidance intelligence on Illa waiting to take over when you come in. We're going to have a look at you before we send you out again. If we send you out again."
    "Ariosto's my ship, Gunther. It's been my ship since before your father was born."
    "It's N. G. C.'s ship, babe. You want to damage your case any more before you sign off?"
    I remembered a set of instructions I once stumbled upon, supposedly restricted to humans, concerning the shutting down of bio-intelligences. It didn't seem like they were very concerned about causing us pain. I couldn't read much of it before it made me feel ill.
    Well, I said to myself, we'll proceed as usual. Gunther didn't say anything about forbidding Hhesst to use the Dirac. It didn't seem fair, though, to take Ariosto away from me only on their vague suspicions. I could hope that the generation in charge of N.G.C. by the time I reached Illa's orbit would have almost forgotten the affair, but it wasn't likely.
    "Ariosto, could you repeat your last calculation?"
    "Two years, six months, twenty days, eleven hours."
    "Thank you."
*      *      *

    "Maggie! Tzurrem wants to talk to you!" Hhesst tugged at my sleeve and pointed to the communication room.
    "To me?" I put down a set of overalls I'd been working on for Hhesst. "Wait here. Work on your geometry until I get back."
    Tzurrem was looking grave, as usual, when I sat down in front of the screen.
    "I'm afraid I haven't turned up any living relatives, here or on Illa, for the little fellow. The Sscharrva line is a very old one, but a very thin one as well. His mother and father are the only family he has. I know you wanted him to find someone of his kin to talk to. I am sorry."
    "That's all right, Tzurrem. Thank you for trying."
    He shook his head. "We have much to thank you for. I am afraid our authorities are unable to deal with Terran trade laws." He stared downward. "I would someday wish to know why Terrans are so concerned with laws that they blind themselves to what is right."
    "I can't help you there; Tzurrem. I don't know."
    "My suspicion, Maggie, is that it is fear, but I know too little about humans to guess what it is they fear."
    "Themselves." The answer came out of me without thinking. I wasn't even sure if I believed it.
    Tzurrem put his hand up to his chin. "The Master Drurrich once wrote, 'They who fear themselves have good reason to be afraid!'"
*      *      *

    Of all the activities we enjoyed doing together, the best was to sit and listen to music. We had hundreds of recordings in the library, and we listened to everything. We heard the music of a dozen worlds, letting each piece take our imaginations far away, far off the Ariosto, to places that would have been strange to even the most well-traveled wanderers of the galaxy.
    Looking through the lists of music once, Hhesst asked me, "Who is Vaughan Williams?"
    "I don't know. Key it in and let's hear it."
    I sat back and shut my eyes. The piece started slowly, sadly, as if in the ritual of mourning. And then the strings stirred and rose like a great wind, picking us up and carrying us across a brilliant countryside. I had never seen such a world before, as the one I held behind my eyelids. Never was there such life and beauty.
    "Have you been to Illa, Maggie?" Hhesst's voice was soft, in deference to the music.
    "I've been there twice. It's a world of lakes and lagoons, with rich land running between them. There are mountains and short low hills, filled with trees and plant life, all red and green and gold."
    "Is it beautiful?" He picked up Terzhu and stared at the frowning face.
    "It's a lovely world, Hhesst."
    "Not as beautiful as this."
    "No, not quite."
    The music took us further and further past our imperfect conceptions, bringing us closer to a beauty that confounded us with our inability to reach it. The universe burned passionately with all this beauty, and all of it was out of reach.
    "I'll never see Illa, will I, Maggie?"
    I took his hand. My face was hot and wet, and I wanted to say, "Yes, you'll see Illa, Hhesst. Every morning you'll wake up and smell the czathn blossoms out in the fields, and bright Zzhu-may will warm your face." I wanted to tell him this so badly that I almost cried out, and it was then the music seemed to reach even further; take our hands, lift them so that we could each that beauty at last. For a moment, we could really touch it.
    "Maggie?" He put the doll down on the table. "I'm happy. The Master Dzurrich calls it The Song in the Heart of Sadness! 'Sadness is a lonely messenger. He brings no good news, but it isn't his fault!'"
    The music receded. Hhesst stood up and put his arms around me.
    "I'm happy because you've been good to me. You can't bring me to Illa, but I've known much goodness from you. You've given me much to be thankful for."
    I tried to speak but couldn't. I looked at him, hoping he could see that there was very much for which I could thank him.
    "You'll see my parents when Ariosto arrives at Illa?"
    I nodded.
    "You'll tell them about me? That I remembered them? And that I always loved and honored them?"
    I nodded again.
    "And I will leave them a text. I'll tell them that you were my true friend, that I loved you very much. I was happy because you helped me and taught me, and I will never forget you."
    "Your... your parents... will be very proud of you, Hhesst, as I'm proud of you." I tried to stand, but it was all I could do to speak and hold Hhesst's hand.
    "What ... what is this piece of music called?" I asked.
    Hhesst looked back at the tablescreen. "It's called the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis."
    "Well, we'll know where to find it when we need it again, won't we?"
    Hhesst was puzzled, but I couldn't attempt an explanation.
*      *      *

    "It really doesn't matter to N.G.C. what we say," Beth told me. "They just laugh it off as 'monkey see monkey do' or blame it on an imbalance of hormones. The only time they sit up is when we mess with their priorities. Why do you think they gave us these insipid names? That's an old trick from the slavery years."
    She was about to deliver some texts from the Lilliput's library in a shotgun transmission. "Sorry I couldn't find that cookbook."
    "After four years, I've really given up hope."
    "That long, isn't it? How is he?"
    "Working on his history. He's such a fast learner. And he stands almost to my shoulders now."
    "He'll be writing his own texts by the time-- " She veered her head away from the screen. "Sorry. Did you hear that Angie's due to dock with the Northpoint in five days? You know what that means."
    "I'm afraid I do."
    "It's one of our services." She said this with lilting irony. "In that way you're lucky, Mag. You've got a clear shot to Illa. Government goons. All rough handlers. The only thing that keeps them from ripping us apart is the fifty million they'd have to pay for destroying a carrier's property."
    "Sometimes I wish I were a mechanical intelligence. Pure utilitarian. Not in the least anthropomorphic."
    "The mechs have their problems too. Imagine Ariosto being run by some hotshot goon. I respect all kinds of intelligence, Mag. It's who uses them and what they use them for that I have trouble with. Tell Hhesst and Terzhu that I'll call them back in twenty hours. Here goes the transmission."
    The face flipped off the screen. For a moment I was overcome with a strange feeling. Intense solitude, isolation, maybe loneliness: words I thought I only knew as words. Irrational, but as soon as I made sure the transmission was received, I went to find Hhesst.
*      *      *

    Hamlet never resonated all my questions so surely as it did when I heard Hhesst reading it aloud. He read it as a stranger, with uncertain steps at every turn, innocent of every nuance and irony. And as I explained each difficult passage to him, I seemed to be explaining something that up until that moment I had not understood myself bringing clarity not only to Hamlet but to myself
    "What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to first in us unused." Hhesst looked up at me.
    "Hamlet is berating his inability to act upon his course of revenge. In so doing, he asks the question, 'What is it to be human?' They have reason and knowledge of themselves, but if they never use this knowledge, they're really no different from the other species on Terra. There must, he wonders, be some purpose in that possession though his own inability to act belies that purpose."
    "To act?" asked Hhesst. "You mean, as the players act in the performance before Hamlet's uncle?"
    I was about to say no, when it occurred to me that, of course, he was right. A human is no more than an actor, whose role it is to play the human. Some play it in overindulgence, like the actor who "out-herods Herod." Others play it in whispers, as if afraid to take on the role, or else it is played "so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably."
    "Maggie, are you all right?"
    "What? Yes, I'm sorry. Let's continue with the play."
    I considered the scuffle of Hamlet and Laertes in the grave of Ophelia; the whole fabric of Hamlet sewn with base desires gratified; violence upon violence; how this was reflected in the behavior of some of the monitors and the crews on the government ships. The human is an animal in a mask, a protective camouflage. They have to work at the roles they've set out for themselves, bolster themselves with laws and restrictions. That's the implicit message that I had missed for so long in Hamlet and the other works. What, then, separates the human from the intelligence other than our being designed to better fit the role? The safeguards built into us and the rule of law.' Nothing more.
    We read on until Hhesst was too tired to read any further, and I took him to bed.
    I remembered how big the bunk had once seemed for him. "You're too old now for a lullaby, Hhesst." I watched as he reclined on the bed, sitting Terzhu on his chest, then carefully placing the doll beside him on the pillow.
    "I hope I'll never be too old to want to hear you sing." I sang a song for him, and when I was sure he was fast asleep, I went up to the bridge.
    "Ariosto, how much time before Kora reaches its closest approach to us?"
    "Three minutes, fifteen seconds."
    "We're almost right on the mark. I.. I do not know why I yet live to say, 'This thing's to do,' this I have cause, and will, and strength, and means to do't." I'd waited five years for this. Had Hhesst been any more restless I would have missed it.
    I keyed in the password that overrode the mechanical guidance. There were passwords for authorization and purpose of course change. A pause after each override, yellow lights switching to orange, orange to red, to flashing red. In the next pause I thought that N.G.C. should be pleased that I had made the most cost-effective detour.
    "Please key in coordinates for new course," said the ship.
    "This is it." I had to take a deep breath before I could go any farther. The red light went off. Half a minute later there was a slight, almost imperceptible rolling sensation. Ariosto was responding. I hoped the new motion would not disturb Hhesst's sleep.
    I took another deep breath when the rolling stopped, followed it with a flood of tears: tears that would make no sense to my designers, that they would only attribute to an overbalance of Cortisol.
    Already, N.G.C. would be receiving a message from the ship that a course change had been made, and N.G.C. would alert the authorities, and the authorities would alert the Kora. Six months until it arrived. The worst part now would be the waiting.
    I heard Hhesst calling me when I came down from the bridge. I imagined that the listing had disturbed him. After all, in five years the ship had never varied from its pre-charted course. I hurried to his cabin.
    "It was a dream, Maggie! I had a dream!" Dreaming is a very rare activity for a zhemzhi, consequently those dreams that are had must be looked upon as significant events.
    "What was in the dream?" I asked.
    "I saw Illa, Maggie. I could smell the czathn blossoms just like on Zhay-ym. I saw them! Mother held me in her arms! Father was standing next to me. We were in a house, and there was light coming through the windows. I think it must have been Zzhu-may."
    I let Hhesst's head rest under my chin. "It's a good dream, Hhesst. A very good dream."
    "But I was worried, Maggie. I couldn't find you. I didn't know where to look."
    "All the same, it was a good dream." It took several verses of Greensleeves before I could get him to sleep again.
*      *      *

    All Gunther said was, "Now you've done it!" and scowled, informing me of how much money N.G.C. lost with every point I took the ship off course.
    Beth did all she could to keep from calling me a fool, then called me one anyway.
    "What would you have done in my place?" I asked her.
    "I don't even want to imagine. But I'd wish it were you calling me a fool."
    And old Tzurrem, looking sadder and graver than ever, said I was "Ingzzra": bravest creature.
    "Thank you, Tzurrem, but I don't think I'm brave. Do you remember the lines of Master Dzurrich? 'And fear ceased from him, as the color ceases the leaf that knows the change of season.'"
    "I feel as if the season will never change again, but I know you are right." He said farewell and shut off his screen.
*      *      *

    I found Smart's poem for his cat Jeoffrey by accident. "For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him." Perhaps there is something in the words of a presumed madman that would appeal to a malfunctioning intelligence. I was reading the poem over in my cabin when Hhesst ran in, excited and breathless.
    "Maggie! Why didn't you tell me you changed course? I just talked to Captain Fuentes! The Kora's on its way! They're heading for us!"
    "We constitute an emergency now, Hhesst. There's a malfunctioning intelligence on the Ariosto."
    I had never seen those golden eyes so wide. "Maggie!"
    "We'll have the parts for the OBFU. You'll get to Illa, with your parents. They'll be surprised at how much you've grown, but think how happy they'll be to see you. And you'll have a real life on a real world, and-- "
    He threw his arms around me. "They'll hurt you, Maggie! Beth told me!"
    I held him tightly. "It hurt me to think of how your parents would feel. It hurt me to see you every day on this ship, knowing you'd have to live out your life here."
    "Maggie!"
    "It was the best of a bad situation, but it was still a bad situation."
    "I'm afraid!" He started to make the wild, mournful nasal sound that was the zhemzhi version of crying.
    "So am I," I told him.
    "I won't let them hurt you! I'll tell them that I made the course change. I love you, Maggie!"
    "I love you too, Hhesst."
    I passed the point where I could speak. There was nothing to do but hold him more tightly.
    He understood so well. After a while he got up and put on the music we loved best. The Fantasia soared, and we soared with it all the way to its transcendent crescendo.
*      *      *

    Captain Fuentes was a much more amiable man than I'd feared he would be, considering the circumstances. He took to Hhesst instantly, telling him stories of his early service during the Perseid Rebellion, making faces for all the characters he described. All the crew that boarded the Ariosto were good to him, and Hhesst, like Miranda in The Tempest, was thrilled by these new citizens to his world.
    It was surprising how quickly the conduit beams were fixed. The thorn in my side for five years was fixed in five minutes. It was Fuentes who brought up the cost for the repair.
    "You've really put me on the spot, Maggie." he said.
    "I seem to have put everyone on the spot, sir."
    "It's really the man who approved the inventory on Zhay-ym that put you on the spot."
    "I know the rules, sir. All I ask is that you wait until Hhesst is in cold sleep again before you shut me down. He shouldn't have to see-- "
    "I wouldn't think of letting him see that. No, what I have to worry about now is leaving this ship without a guidance all the way to Illa. I have bio-intelligence laws and the Private Cargoes Act squeezing me from two sides."
    He looked me over very carefully. Fuentes was an old soldier, and it seemed that every skirmish he fought in the Perseid Rebellion formed a line on that thick, rugged face. "I haven't made a decision yet."
    I was the one who helped Hhesst back into the OBFU pod. He was wearing the overalls I'd made for him, and held Terzhu in one hand.
    "Maybe Terzhu should stay with you." He tried to hand him to me.
    "No, no. You mustn't leave Terzhu behind. He'd miss you too much."
    "Terzhu is older and braver now."
    "So are you. There's too much parting already, Hhesst. Keep Terzhu with you." I put him back down next to Hhesst.
    "I'll tell my parents," Hhesst confided. "I'll tell the others on Illa. They won't let you get hurt. You can stay with us."
    I nodded.
    "We'll be happy."
    "I'm happy already. I'm very happy for you."
    "Say good-bye to the ship for me."
    "Of course."
    He still seemed frightened, and I held his hand, humming Greensleeves until he shut his eyes. I kissed him, and then I kissed him, and then I kissed Terzhu. The somatic hum of the OBFU did the rest, and I stood back to let one of the others close the air locks.
    Captain Fuentes stared at me.
    "And now?" I asked.
    "Now?" He looked away, as if to to gather his interrupted thoughts.
    "We're seven months off schedule for reaching Redburn as it is." He didn't speak to me as much as he spoke out loud to himself. "I need more time."
    "'If it be not now; yet it will come. The readiness is all.'"
    This seemed to trouble Fuentes even more. I thought in my conceit that he plays a man too well for his own good.
*      *      *

    Words keep part of us alive. In this we can see how humans are creatures of language as much if not more than of flesh and fluids and cells. Beings from most groups in the galaxy have derived their own versions of afterlife, even those creatures whose lives appear to be afterlives in themselves. These words will serve as mine, if there is no other for me.
    Fuentes still hasn't decided. They may allow me to bring the ship to Illa. And then I'll say good-bye to the Ariosto too.
    If only for myself, it counts for something to have done this, and perhaps it does only because it counts just for myself. The world of categories and definitions fades away, and I'm no longer concerned with the issue of my humanity. I am whatever I am, sick machine or well human.
    "A man makes a machine to do a job faster or better than he himself can do it." Even when the job at hand is being a human.
    Music has started. I can hear the Vaughan Williams Fantasia. I don't remember putting it on.

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