A. Warren Merkey Read online

  “Play for them? No. I used to think it would make me popular, but I know my place now. I know who likes me and who doesn’t.”

  “Because you’re Korean?”

  He thought for a moment and chose his words. “Good guess. Most whites think I’m Chinese or Japanese. I’m American, born and raised, and my parents struggled greatly to make me an American. They hardly even wanted me to speak any Korean. No, I don’t think about my physical or cultural ethnicity. I think about my poor eyesight. It was a struggle to read the sheet music. I was always playing the ‘Lee Variations’ on the works of composers. And now I’m an astronomer and I’m still plagued by poor eyesight. I’m sorry if I bothered you tonight. I was curious about you, not being able to see you clearly from a distance.”

  “Why were you curious about me?” I immediately regretted the question. I didn’t want to embarrass both of us with such a personal subject. Did I have some perverse desire to lead the man on and see how far he would go? He could only go so far, before the wheelchair got in the way. He hesitated again while thinking about his reply. He put his glasses back on and stared past me.

  “It gets lonely sometimes.”

  The statement struck a resonant chord with me and I tried to ignore it. “What sort of astronomy do you do?”

  “Oh, mostly the old-fashioned kind. I came into astronomy from mechanical engineering, thus worrying my parents further that I was wasting my education on a degree that would keep me from supporting them in their old age. Dad wanted me to be an engineer. I always wanted to be an astronomer.”

  “And yet, you must see well enough to enjoy the splendors of the night sky.”

  “Not nearly well enough.” He took off his glasses again. They looked heavy to me. “No, I see the universe best in my imagination, and I wish I could help it all make sense. There’s so much out there that begs explaining. Starting with gravity.”

  “You don’t like warped space?”

  “Don’t get me started.” He smiled again. It was a nice smile, innocent and perhaps reluctant. Perhaps his words in opposition to Einstein were pretentious, and maybe his smile was also a comment on his words. I would accept any flavor of smile from Samuel Lee. I suppose it was my fault that I made so few people smile for me.

  I was thinking I would get him started. I was thinking I liked Samuel Lee. I felt comfortable with him, with just a tiny bit of sexual tension to add interest. Very tiny. Get real, girl! I imagined he was a lot deeper than I was. Maybe I could find more depth in myself, a depth that was different from what made me a mathematician. I hoped my physical condition wouldn’t become a problem. I hoped my emotional condition wouldn’t become a problem. The accident, the surgery, the recovery, and the paralysis were still raw in my memory and in my life. I had hardly decided I wanted to go on living. And now I was helplessly complicating my new life, adding Samuel Lee into it, even as I was struggling to finish my doctoral thesis. “I think I will.”

  “Will what?”

  Section 003 Voices in the Wilderness

  Subsection 001 - View 001

  “Hello, Samson.”

  It was not Milly. It was a stranger. But he was alive. He was alive! Or was he? He felt… good. Too good? It was not Milly. It was a stranger out there beyond his closed eyelids, above where he lay. He lay on what, where, why? He stirred, took a deeper breath, tried to decide if he wanted to open his eyes and see the stranger. Yet her voice seemed familiar. He peeked into the brightness above him and saw a dark face hovering there.

  “Hello.” He opened his eyes wider as they adjusted to the glare.

  “I’ve already questioned you but you won’t remember it.” It was definitely not Milly but it was a female voice.

  Samson struggled to sit up and as he did, he saw he was on the ground. He could see very well, with both eyes! He closed one eye, then the other, and there was no doubt: the infected eye was healed. He then tried to see the female person’s face, anxious to understand who she was. She was dark and her expression was lost in the brightness around them. There was something above her, behind her, that was not the sky. He wanted to get up, stand up, and he felt strange doing it - it was so easy. He rushed upward and lost his balance, favoring an injured foot that was apparently no longer injured. The woman grabbed his arm to help him stabilize and the contact was electric, almost negating the anchoring. He couldn’t remember anyone ever touching him.

  Samson looked harder at the woman as she released his arm. His eyes finally resolved the details of her face. Her brown eyes were large, her gray hair short, her cheeks smooth, her lips full. She was exotic to him, somehow unfamiliar to his experience - not that he would ever know what should or should not be familiar to him. She frowned at him briefly, then lost all expression. That disturbed him, perhaps frightened him, because it seemed unfriendly, even threatening. She wore a black uniform with a form-fitting collar that covered her neck and to which was affixed a star-shaped diamond on each side. He began to realize what she was. Navy. Admiral. And…

  “You’re an African?” As soon as he asked it, he had to turn his head to see the great machine that covered the sky. He remembered the shock of the incandescent ball falling upon him, the paralyzing force crushing him. The memory of death, the wonder of the thing above him, his head tilted back to study the few mechanical features visible to him, all made him lose his balance. He felt a hand on his shoulder and reached for it reflexively as he steadied himself. The feel of her warm soft flesh surprised him and he wanted to maintain the contact even as she tried to pull her hand away. He understood nothing of his reaction or of her reaction. He only knew something was now different. The Navy woman cared about him, even if her expression remained blank. She pulled her hand gently away from his grasp.

  Samson looked down at himself and saw the new clothing he now wore: shirt and short pants, shoes and socks. He saw another person rise to his feet beyond the woman, saw the uniform he wore, similar to hers but dark blue, with golden winged emblems on the high collar. He thought he understood what happened. “If you’re Navy then you’re a captain,” Samson said to the man. “That’s your 20 Far Freedom ship! I’m saved!”

  “How do you feel?” the female admiral asked. “You needed several hours of treatment in the medical cocoon.”

  Samson could see clearly with both eyes. He didn’t feel hungry or weak. His skin felt clean. His nose was not runny. His muscles and joints didn’t hurt. He wasn’t dizzy. His foot was healed. “I feel wonderful!” He looked up at the admiral with gratitude.

  “You may feel good now but the treatment didn’t correct everything. You shouldn’t exert yourself too much.”

  Samson nodded and looked again at the belly of the ship above him. “Is it a starship?” Milly had told him many stories about the Navy. They were a fearsome force, not always nice to people, but always interesting. He wondered how accurate Milly’s descriptions were, wondered if he should be careful what he said to them. But they had doctored him and given him new clothes. Perhaps he could trust them.

  “A small one,” the admiral replied. “It nearly squashed you. It never saw you. It should have. I apologize. I know it was painful.”

  “I’ve always wondered why no one could see me down here. There are people up there, aren’t there? Don’t people look at Earth anymore?”

  “Did Milly hide you?” the admiral asked.

  “Why would she do that? Did you talk to her? She’s been very strange lately. I think she was upset that I was close to dying.”

  “This is Milly?” The admiral held forth a gray tablet.

  “I thought it was.” He took the familiar device and rubbed its cleaned surface, seeing the marks of wear and tear that proved it was his own computer.

  “No, I didn’t talk to Milly,” the admiral said. “Perhaps you can talk to her.”

  Samson checked the energy charge and booted the instrument. The screen displayed the usual information as the Milly Program started. He spoke to the tablet. “Milly? Mil
ly, can you hear me? It isn’t damaged, is it?”

  “It was damaged. I repaired it, but I don’t think it is powerful enough to produce someone like Milly.”

  “Milly isn’t real?” Samson was upset. Milly was his only friend in a hostile and vacant world. He had always tried to push the injuries and pain and fear into the realm of the not-real, and pull Milly into the real. Thoughts and dreams and hopes were his reality, lions and flies and infection were all lies of his imagination.

  “I don’t know,” the admiral said with a slight frown. “You needed a friend. Imaginary or not, Milly helped you.”

  It was, at least, a kind thing to say about Milly. But now she was gone. Samson needed her. The admiral’s ship had killed her. He could not remember a time without Milly.

  “Admiral.” The other Navy officer spoke.

  Samson looked again at the captain and saw the man’s gray eyes staring at him. Both of them, he realized, had never taken their eyes off him.

  “Jon, this is Samson,” the admiral said. “Samson, this is Jon. My name is Fidelity.” She did not turn to her captain as she addressed him. She kept her gaze on Samson while she continued to speak to the captain. “When I landed the yacht near the African Space Elevator he was directly beneath. Yet the yacht’s sensors didn’t see him. The gravionics reported an anomaly in its pressor skirt and forced a change in landing zone. Samson’s health was very poor and the yacht further aggravated his condition. I winked him into isolation and put him in the medical cocoon. I questioned him while he was semiconscious.”

  Samson tried to understand what the admiral said. He would have asked questions but he was afraid to be too demanding. There was an intensity in their eyes and a tension in their bodies that he could sense without knowing that was what he sensed. Something was wrong and it might be him. Yet they had helped him.

  “Why is he here, Admiral?” the captain asked. “How could he be here?”

  “He couldn’t tell me, Jon,” the admiral answered, still not turning to face the captain, very oddly keeping her back to him.

  Now the admiral and the captain spoke in a language Samson couldn’t understand, although he was fairly sure it was Standard. He tried to find some meaning in the voices and expressions of the Navy officers but all he could detect was the subtle tension between them, expressed mainly by the admiral continuing to keep her back to the captain.

  “You must leave us for awhile,” the admiral said to Samson, switching back to English. “We’re not abandoning you. We’ll help you go home as soon as we can. Stay nearby, where we can find you.”

  This unexpected news alarmed Samson. He didn’t understand.

  “Samson,” the captain said.

  Samson looked to the captain and saw what he thought was an expression of concern, but no further words of reassurance came from his mouth and his expression turned blank. Then the admiral handed Samson his backpack. He knew he had been abandoned before but he had no memory of it. He didn’t remember his parents. Here was a man and a woman who had magically appeared to rescue him. They were not his parents, but now he feared a second abandonment. He trembled as he fumbled his computer into his well-cleaned backpack. The admiral helped him shoulder it. She handed him his spear and without speaking another word, pushed him toward to edge of the ship’s cover. His face plunged into an invisible curtain of electric sensation which quickly parted, making him stumble forward. When he stopped and turned around, the ship was gone from sight.

  Something buzzed in his backpack. Samson pulled the pack onto one shoulder to remove the little computer from it. He saw words on the computer’s display.

  “Don’t go to the elevator.”

  “Milly! Is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You aren’t imaginary?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then you are.”

  “Perhaps we each imagine the other.”

  “Why wouldn’t you talk to the Navy officers?”

  “The Navy doesn’t need to know more about me.”

  “Why? Are you some big secret? Milly?”

  Samson waited for a reply. He walked and waited. Milly was a big secret, even from him. He hoped he was not abandoned. He glanced back several times at where the starship might still exist. He remembered touching the admiral, how warm her hand was, how soft her brown skin. He remembered her sweet scent and how her eyes stayed on him, making him feel so alive. He missed her. Gone for a few moments and he missed her terribly. She was the first real person Samson could ever remember seeing. He still had Milly. Maybe he also 22 Far Freedom

  had the admiral, and the captain.

  Subsection 001 - View 002

  “Hello, Samson.”

  Jon Horss heard the words as he stepped out of the yacht’s egress elevator. Jon Horss heard the voice. He was free at last! He started to charge forward and demand an explanation for his imprisonment, but the voice stopped him. The words stopped him. His rage, building for days, sputtered and died as he took in the scene. It was remarkable for two reasons: one, the admiral’s back was to him; two, she was kneeling over a small body on the raw ground of a planet.

  The body on the ground stirred, opened its eyes and said, “Hello.”

  Horss stepped carefully forward to observe. He swallowed the anger that tried to revive. He stayed far enough away from the admiral to relax his combat reflexes. The admiral raised a hand, obviously intended for him to obey as a signal to remain at a distance. Horss squatted to one side. He was bothered by the unnecessary command. He was irritated by not having the admiral’s full attention. He was unsettled by something totally unexpected and bizarre. He analyzed and tempered his responses in a failing attempt to objectify and control a situation that now seemed further out of control.

  It was a child! It appeared to be a child. He concentrated, tuned his ocular augments, refined his auditory filters and gain. It was long-haired but perhaps it was male. It must be an android, but there were negative psychological issues for possessing a child android. Thermal emissions were inconclusive, example data impossible to retrieve for comparison. Why was it lying on the ground? Why would an admiral - or anyone - have one? Why would it be here? Where was here? The questions spun around in his mind, almost occluding his personal concerns. Where was patience to examine the problem, logic to unravel the dilemma? Horss watched the thing sit up, close one eye, look out the other, then switch eyes. It pulled its feet under itself and pushed up. It teetered as it favored one foot. The admiral grasped its upper arm to help it. It started at the touch and almost fell down. The actions seemed very peculiar to Horss. Why was this such a clumsy android?

  “I’ve already questioned you but you won’t remember it,” the admiral said to

  it.

  The voice came softly to his straining aural augments. She spoke Twenglish! It almost shifted Horss’s mood into a different dimension. He was forced into the Navy procedure for determining what was real, and it hurt . Once the pain was gone, he let his augments run the rest of the diagnostics in the background. He was awake. The scene was real. He could now let fascination command his attention as the events unfolded millisecond by millisecond.

  It squinted in the glare under the yacht to see her. Horss never saw an android squint. He saw it was Eurasian. The admiral was neither of those Earthian flavors. Why would she want a child of that type? Why did the admiral speak Twenglish to it?

  “You’re an African?” it asked - in Twenglish. One question answered, another created. Why would it speak that ancient subset of modern English? Only actors bothered to speak it fluently. A large fraction of the population could understand the old dialect. It was not so unusual that a child used the language, perhaps influenced by seeing too much entertainment media from that era of history.

  Samson - she called it Samson - looked from the admiral to the ship above

  him. It began to sway, perhaps simulating vertigo. The admiral offered a hand on its shoulder to steady it. It reached for
her hand. She allowed it to touch her hand. They each reacted, it trying to hold onto her hand, she trying to pull the hand gently away. Horss noted this detail with detachment, unwilling to assign significance to the effect he observed in the admiral. She seemed to react as a person, not as an admiral.

  Samson looked down at its feet and let its eyes and hands explore the clothing it wore, as though it was strange attire for it. Then it noticed Horss and turned to him. Regardless of what it was, Horss felt special in its gaze. As Horss rose, Samson apparently saw the insignia on the collar of his dark blue uniform.

  “If you’re Navy then you’re a captain,” Samson said. “That’s your ship! I’m saved!”

  Saved from what? Horss wondered, marveling at the detail of manufacture, the flawless human mimicry. This was a very expensive android. Was it an android? It simply could not be a real child! How could the presence of a real child be explained?

  “How do you feel?” the admiral asked Samson. “You needed several hours of treatment in the medical cocoon.”

  Samson’s eyes abandoned Horss, returned to the dark female admiral. The eyes seemed organic to Horss, their expressiveness perfect. Every visual datum argued for human, every point of logic demanded inhuman. “I feel wonderful!” it said with gratitude.

  “You may feel good now,” the admiral said, “but the treatment didn’t correct everything. You shouldn’t exert yourself too much.” She was trying to convince Horss this entity was a real little boy, freshly discovered on this planet, somehow sick or injured, and now restored to health by the kindly Navy admiral. That was an impossible break in the flow of events leading up to this moment. The boy android could have nothing to do with Navy politics and any plans the admiral had for Horss’s future.

  Samson rubbed his fingers across the fabric of his clothes, wiggled his toes in the shoes on his feet. He looked up in wonder at the belly of the ship under which they stood. “Is it a starship?” Samson inquired, seeming full of innocent wonder.

  “A small one,” the admiral replied. “It nearly squashed you. It never saw you. It should have. I apologize. I know it was painful.” She landed the yacht on top of him? Why would she claim to find him on this planet? What planet was this? Horss should have checked for a shiplink immediately but overlooked it in his rush to be out of his prison. He found the link available and was loath to take the time to verify its factual integrity while the scene progressed before him.