Survival--A Novel by Ben Bova

Author:Ben Bova
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

BOOK THREE

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Time became a blur. Ignatiev tried hard to focus on the work at hand, but his thoughts always returned to Gita. The warmth of her. The sweetness of her. Her beautiful smile. Her dancing eyes.

He told her about his illness. “Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,” he explained. “My nerves don’t always carry my brain’s orders to my muscular system.”

“It must be awful,” she sympathized.

“Hundreds of years of medical research,” he complained, “but hardly any progress at all on ALS. One doctor told me it’s evolution’s way of getting you to die.”

“No!” Gita blurted. “There must be something…” But her voice wound down to silence.

Ignatiev smiled grimly. “It killed a famous athlete back on Earth. That’s why it’s called Lou Gehrig’s disease.”

She gripped his hand tightly. “We’ll face it together, Alex. You’re not alone anymore.”

He smiled and gently kissed her.

Yet he knew he was using her, using their newfound relationship, their bond of love, to build a wall against the machines. Read my thoughts, will they? he grumbled to himself. Anytime he found himself thinking about breaking free of the machines’ captivity he deliberately focused on Gita and hoped that that would submerge his vague, half-formed plans for escaping from the machines’ imprisonment.

“You seem to be quite happy these days,” said the avatar to him.

Ignatiev was at his desk, reviewing the reports from his various departments when the humanlike figure appeared in the middle of the tight little chamber he used as his den.

“As happy as a prisoner could be,” he said as he looked up from the reports Aida was projecting on his holographic display.

The avatar shook its head. “Professor, we have explained our reasons for holding you incommunicado—”

“Yes, yes,” Ignatiev interrupted, desperately hoping that the machines couldn’t penetrate his mental subterfuge and get at his deeper thoughts.

“We have built you a permanent residence center,” the avatar said, “a little humanlike city.”

“Up on the surface.”

“Yes.”

“So that the death wave can wipe us out when it arrives.”

“No!” The avatar seemed genuinely alarmed. “Your city will be large enough to house your entire complement from your starship. You will be able to live in complete comfort, just as you did on Earth.”

“Until the death wave hits,” Ignatiev replied angrily. Anger is good, he told himself. Use it to hide your deeper thoughts.

“That will not happen for another two hundred of your years. Most of the people with you today will have died of natural causes by then.”

“Unless you help them to extend their lifespans. Which you won’t do, will you?”

The avatar fell silent for several heartbeats. At last it answered, “That is a decision we have not made as yet.”

“And why not?”

“We need to observe you further. There is much about your existence that we do not yet fully understand.”

“Such as?”

“Such as why you, Professor Ignatiev, are trying to hide your thoughts from us.”

A hit! Ignatiev thought, suddenly alarmed. A palpable hit.

But he quickly temporized, “On Earth, a person does not go about describing the intimate details of his love life.

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