St. Augustine asked the right question: "Does freedom come from chance or choice?" And you must remember that quantum mechanics guarantees chance.
- Raja Flattery, The Book of Ship
USUALLY, MORGAN Oakes took out his nightside angers and frustrations in long strides down any corridor of the ship where his feet led him.
Not this time! he told himself.
He sat in shadows and sipped a glass of astringent wine. Bitter, but it washed the taste of the ship's foul joke from his tongue. The wine had come at his demand, a demonstration of his power in these times of food shortages. The first bottle from the first batch. How would they take it groundside when he ordered the wine improved?
Oakes raised the glass in an ancient gesture: Confusion to You, Ship!
The wine was too raw. He put it aside.
Oakes knew the figure he cut, sitting here trembling in his cubby while he stared at the silent com-console beside his favorite couch. He increased the light slightly.
Once more the ship had convinced him that its program was running down. The ship was getting senile. He was the Chaplain/Psychiatrist and the ship tried to poison him! Others were fed from shiptits - not frequently and not much, but it happened. Even he had been favored once, before he became Ceepee, and he still remembered the taste - richly satisfying. It was a little like the stuff called "burst" which Lewis had developed groundside. An attempt to duplicate elixir. Costly stuff, burst. Wasteful. And not elixir - no, not elixir.
He stared at the curved screen of the console beside him. It returned a dwarfed reflection of himself: an overweight, heavy-shouldered man in a one-piece suit of shipcloth which appeared vaguely gray in this light. His features were strong: a thick chin, wide mouth, beaked nose and bushy eyebrows over dark eyes, a bit of silver at the temples. He touched his temples. The reduced reflection exaggerated his feeling that he had been made small by Ship's treatment of him. His reflection showed him his own fear.
I will not be tricked by a damned machine!
The memory brought on another fit of trembling. Ship had refused him at the shiptits often enough that he understood this new message. He had stopped with Jesus Lewis at a bank of corridor shiptits.
Lewis had been amused. "Don't waste time with these things. The ship won't feed us."
This had angered Oakes. "It's my privilege to waste time! Don't you ever forget that!"
He had rolled up his sleeve and thrust his bare arm into the receptacle. The sensor scratched as it adjusted to his arm. He felt the stainless-steel nose sniff out a suitable vein. There was the tingling prick of the test probe, then the release of the sensor.
Some of the shiptits extruded plaz tubes to suck on, but this one was programmed to fill a container behind a locked panel - elixir, measured and mixed to his exact needs.
The panel opened!
Oakes grinned at an astounded Lewis.
"Well," Oakes remembered saying. "The ship finally realizes who's the boss here." With that, he drained the container.
Horrible!
His body was wracked with vomiting. His breath came in shallow gasps and sweat soaked his singlesuit.
It was over as quickly as it began. Lewis stood beside him in dumb amazement, looking at the mess Oakes had made of the corridor and his boots.
"You see," Oakes gasped. "You see how the ship tried to kill me?"
"Relax, Morgan," Lewis said. "It's probably just a malfunction. I'll call a med-tech for you and a repair robox for thi.... this thing."
"I'm a doctor, dammit! I don't need a med-tech poking around me." Oakes held the fabric of his suit away from his body.
"Then let's get you back to your cubby. We should check you out an...." Lewis broke off, looking suddenly over Oakes' shoulder. "Morgan, did you summon a repair unit?"
Oakes turned to see what had caught Lewis' attention, saw one of the ship's robox units, a one-meter oval of bronze turtle with wicked-looking tools clutched in its extensors. It was weaving drunkenly down the corridor toward them.
"What do you suppose is wrong with that thing?" Lewis muttered.
"I think it's here to attack us," Oakes said. He grabbed Lewis' arm. "Let's back out of her.... slow, now."
They retreated from the shiptit station, watching the scanner eye of the robox and the waving appendages full of tools.
"It's not stopping." Oakes' voice was low but cold with fear as the robox passed the shiptit station.
"We'd better run for it," Lewis said. He spun Oakes ahead of him into a main passageway to Medical. Neither man looked back until they were safely battened inside Oakes' cubby.
Hah! Oakes thought, remembering. That had frightened even Lewis. He had gone back groundside fast enough - to speed up construction of their Redoubt, the place which would insulate them groundside and make them independent of this damned machine.
The ship's controlled our lives too long!
Oakes still tasted bitterness at the back of his throat. Now, Lewis was incommunicad.... sending notes by courier. Always something frustrating.