Robots -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space ships -- Fiction
And the feminine voice again: _Who was it? What orders? You keep
saying that it was the man on the couch. That doesn't make sense!_
I didn't hear the reply, because it suddenly occurred to me that
Daniel Oak was the man on the couch, and that I was Daniel Oak.
My head was throbbing with every beat of my heart, and it felt as if
my blood pressure was varying between zero and fifteen hundred pounds
per square inch in the veins and arteries and capillaries that fed my
brain.
I sat up, and the pain began to lessen. The blood seemed to drain away
from my aching head and go elsewhere.
I soon figured out the reason for that; I could tell by the feel that
the gravity pull was somewhere between one point five and two gees. I
wasn't at all used to it, but my head felt less painful and rather
more hazy. If possible.
I concentrated, and the girl's voice came back again.
"... I knew you when you were McGuire One, and Two, and Three, and
Four, and Five, and Six. And you were always good to me and
understanding. Don't you remember?"
And then McGuire's voice--human, masculine, and not distorted at all
by the reproduction system, but sounding rather stilted and terribly
logical: "I remember, Jack. The memory banks of my previous
activations are available."
"_All_ of them? Can you remember everything?"
"I can remember everything that is in my memory banks."
The girl's voice rose to a wail. "But you _don't_ remember! You
_always_ forgot things! They took things out each time you were
reactivated, don't you remember?"
"I cannot remember that which is not contained in my memory banks,
Jack. That is a contradiction in terms."
"But I was always able to _fix_ it before!" The tears in her eyes were
audible in her voice. "I'd tell you to remember, and I'd tell you
_what_ to remember, and you'd _remember_ it! Tell me what's happened
to you this time!"
"I cannot tell you. The information is not in my data banks."
Slowly, I got to my feet. Two gees isn't much, once you get used to
it. The headache had subsided to a dull, bearable throb.
I was on a couch in a room just below the control chamber, and Jack
Ravenhurst's voice was coming down from above. McGuire's voice was all
around me, coming from the hidden speakers that were everywhere in
the ship.
"But why won't you obey me any more, McGuire?" she asked.
"I'll answer that, McGuire," I said.
Jack's voice came weakly from the room above. "Mr. Oak? Dan? Thank
heaven you're all right!"
"No thanks to you, though," I said. I was trying to climb the ladder
to the control room, and my voice sounded strained.
"You've got to do something!" she said with a touch of hysteria.
"McGuire is taking us straight toward Cygnus at two gees and won't
stop."
My thinking circuits began to take over again. "Cut the thrust to half
a gee, McGuire. Ease it down. Take a minute to do it."
"Yes, sir."
The gravity pull of acceleration let up slowly as I clung to the
ladder. After a minute, I climbed on up to the control room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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