The Fifth Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®. Darrell Schweitzer
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Star in range within ten seconds,” Keith murmured.
If Phil heard that—and judging from the annoyed expression which briefly crossed his face, he did—he chose to ignore it. He turned to Bob, the kid operating the remote camcorders. “You got everything, didn’t you?”
“What…oh, yeah, yeah, it’s all here.” Bob was wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. “Do you want a copy, Dr. Burton?”
“No, I want you to delete the whole thing.” Bob stared at him in surprise, and for a moment his hands moved to the editing board. “Goddammit, of course I want a copy!” Phil snapped. “Run it off now! Move!” He returned his attention to me. “C’mon, Jerry, gimme everything you got…”
“Coming right now.” I had already loaded a fresh 100 MB disk. A few deft commands on the keypad above my lap, and a bar-graph appeared on my screen, indicating that the data Phil wanted was being copied. I looked again at Keith; behind Phil’s back, he had his right hand raised, and he was counting off the seconds with each finger he folded into his palm. Five…four…three…two…one…
“Delilah Team just called in.” Once again, Donna had clasped her hand over the wand of her headset. “Dr. Veder wants to meet with you in the test area…umm, right now, Phil.”
The color vanished from Phil’s face. “Uhh…t-t-tell her I’ll b-b-b-be there as…as…”
My terminal chirped. I popped out the disk, shoved it into Phil’s hand, then snapped my fingers at Bob. He ejected the DVD from the camcorder, slapped it into a jewelbox, then passed it to Keith, who tapped it against Phil’s shoulder. That seemed to wake him up; he blinked a few times, then turned to snatch the DVD from Keith’s hand.
“He’s coming now,” Donna said quietly into her headset. “Sorry for the problem. We had a problem here, but…”
“Stick to the rules. No contact except between team leaders.” Phil took another deep breath, then clapped the two disks together as he turned sideways to squeeze past her and me as he headed for the control van’s door. “Wish me luck.”
“May the Force be with you,” Keith said, and I shot a look which told him that I’d like to stick a light-saber where a Jedi couldn’t find it. “Good luck,” he added, albeit reluctantly.
“Thanks.” Phil grabbed a roll of paper towels from the shelf near the door. Then, almost as an afterthought, he looked back at Keith. “Wipe the memory buffer, will you? I don’t want this to affect the next test.” Then he stepped out of the van, slamming the door shut behind him.
For a moment no one said anything, then everyone collapsed in their seats. “Man, oh man,” Keith muttered, covering his face with his hands. “I thought he was going to have a stroke…”
“Thought he was going to have a stroke?” Donna shook her head. “You should have heard what was going on in D-team’s trailer. Kathy sounded like she was ready to…”
“Are you off-line?” I asked quietly, and her eyes went wide as she lunged for the mute button. Keith chuckled as he reached for the two-pound bag of Fritos he kept stashed beneath the console. I glanced at Bob; he said nothing as he hunched over his screen, replaying the test on his monitor. Fresh out of MIT, he had been working for LEC for less than five months now, and only very recently had been assigned to the R3G program. He was wisely keeping office politics at arm’s length, nor could I blame him.
Through the window, I watched Phil as he walked toward the bench where Samson stood frozen, his right hand still extended. He glanced nervously toward the opposite side of the atrium, then he tore a wad of paper off the roll and began hastily wiping the apple shards off Delilah’s spherical head. I had to wonder why someone on her team had felt compelled to put her in a dress. Perhaps to accentuate her feminine role; although the test was supposed to work out bugs in their handshaking procedures, the scenario Phil and Kathy had mutually devised was supposed to playfully emulate a quaint, old-fashioned courtship. So far, though, the results weren’t very promising.
“Oh, such a nice man,” Keith said, propping his sandals up on his console as he shoved a fistful of chips in his mouth. “Look, he’s cleaning…uh-oh, here she comes.”
From behind him, Dr. Katherine “Darth” Veder came stalking through the trees, her hands shoved in the pockets of her lab coat. Even before he saw her, Phil must have heard her coming, for he fumbled with the roll in his hands as he reluctantly turned to face her.
“Oh, boy, is she pissed or what?” Bob murmured.
“What,” I replied, and Donna arched an eyebrow knowingly.
“Dum-dum-dum-dah-de-dum-dah-de-dum,” Keith hummed. “Volume, please. I don’t want to miss this.”
The van was soundproofed, but we had a parabolic mike aimed at the test area. Donna started to reach for her board to activate it. “Don’t,” I said quietly, shaking my head at her. “Let’s let them handle this themselves.” Smiling a little, Donna withdrew her hand.
Keith sighed in disgust, then pulled on his headset and tapped a command into his console. I had little doubt that he was patching into Samson’s external mike to eavesdrop on their conversation, if it could be called that. Through the window, I could see Kathy yelling at Phil, her small hands gesturing wildly as she pointed at him, at Samson, at Delilah, at our van, and back at Phil again. Although Phil’s back was half-turned to us, his hands were almost as busy, first making gestures of supplication and apology, then briefly returning to his sides—he was probably counting to ten again—before rising again to make irate motions of his own.
Donna rested her elbows on the console and cupped her chin in her hands. Bob picked up the month-old issue of Spin he had placed on top of one of the mainframes. Keith pawed at his bag of chips, watching with interest while the two team leaders ripped into each other.
“I wish these guys would hurry up and admit they’re in love,” he muttered.
Meanwhile Samson and Delilah patiently waited nearby, ignored yet omnipresent, as stoical as only robots can be.
Okay. Time to backtrack a bit.
You know about LEC, of course…or at least you should, if you pay attention to TV commercials, browse the web, or visit shopping malls. Lang Electronics Corporation is one of the three major U.S. manufacturers of consumer robots; it started out as a maker of IBM-clones in the early ’80s, then diversified into robotics shortly after the turn of the century, introducing its first-generation robot vacuum cleaners and home sentries about the same time that its closest competitors, CybeServe and Cranberry, entered the market with their own household ’bots. CybeServe was the leading company, and solidified that position after it was bought out by Mitsubishi; Cranberry, on other hand, was hurt by poor sales and a reputation for making second-rate ’bots that tended to forget instructions, burn actuators, and taser the mailman. By the time CybeServe and Mitsubishi merged, Cranberry had laid off one-third of its employees and was on the verge of declaring bankruptcy.
This left LEC in somewhere in the middle. It remained strong enough to fight off hostile takeover attempts by larger electronics companies in both America and Japan, and its Valet and Guardian series of home ’bots held their own in the marketplace, not only selling as many units as CybeServe but even surpassing their sales in Europe. The success of its first-generation robots prompted LEC to invest considerable capital in developing a second-generation series of universal robots. Biocybe Resources in Worcester, Massachusetts, had recently introduced its Oz 100 biochips, pseudo-organic microprocessors capable of handling 100,000 MIPS—Millions of Instructions Per Second, the robotic equivalent of megabytes—and LEC had built them into its Gourmand, Guardian III, and Companion ’bots, successfully bringing them to market nearly two months before CybeServe brought out their rival systems. It also helped that CybeServe’s ’bots were more expensive and that their CybeServe Butler had an embarrassing tendency to misunderstand questions or commands given in less than perfect English (e.g., “Is the dishwasher running?” No, it’s still in the kitchen.