Tales of Old Earth Read Free Page B

dioxide; its magnetic field breaks down a percentage of that into sulfur and oxygen ions; and these ions are pumped into the hole punched in the magnetosphere, creating a rotating field commonly called the Io torus. What does this sound like? Torus. Flux tube. Magnetosphere. Volcanoes. Sulfur ions. Molten ocean. Tidal heating. Circular orbit. What does this sound like?”
    Against her will, Martha had found herself first listening, then intrigued, and finally involved. It was like a riddle or a word puzzle. There was a right answer to the question. Burton or Hols would have gotten it immediately. Martha had to think it through.
    There was the faint hum of the radio’s carrier beam. A patient, waiting noise.
    At last, she cautiously said, “It sounds like a machine.”
    â€œYes. Yes. Yes. Machine. Yes. Am machine. Am machine. Am machine. Yes. Yes. Machine. Yes.”
    â€œWait. You’re saying that Io is a machine? That you’re a machine? That you’re Io?”
    â€œSulfur is triboelectric. Sledge picks up charges. Burton’s brain is intact. Language is data. Radio is medium. Am machine.”
    â€œI don’t believe you.”
    Trudge, drag, trudge, drag. The world doesn’t stop for strangeness. Just because she’d gone loopy enough to think that Io was alive and a machine and talking to her didn’t mean that Martha could stop walking. She had promises to keep, and miles to go before she slept. And speaking of sleep, it was time for another fast refresher—just a quarterhit—of speed.
    Wow. Let’s go.
    As she walked, she continued to carry on a dialogue with her hallucination or delusion or whatever it was. It was too boring otherwise.
    Boring, and a tiny bit terrifying.
    So she asked, “If you’re a machine, then what is your function? Why were you made?”
    â€œTo know you. To love you. And to serve you.”
    Martha blinked. Then, remembering Burton’s long reminiscences on her Catholic girlhood, she laughed. That was a paraphrase of the answer to the first question in the old Baltimore Catechism: Why did God make man? “If I keep on listening to you, I’m going to come down with delusions of grandeur.”
    â€œYou are. Creator. Of machine.”
    â€œNot me.”
    She walked on without saying anything for a time. Then, because the silence was beginning to get to her again, “When was it I supposedly created you?”
    â€œSo many a million of ages have gone. To the making of man. Alfred, Lord Tennyson.”
    â€œThat wasn’t me, then. I’m only twenty-seven. You’re obviously thinking of somebody else.”
    â€œIt was. Mobile. Intelligent. Organic. Life. You are. Mobile. Intelligent. Organic. Life.”
    Something moved in the distance. Martha looked up, astounded. A horse. Pallid and ghostly white, it galloped soundlessly across the plains, tail and mane flying.
    She squeezed her eyes tight and shook her head. When she opened her eyes again, the horse was gone. A hallucination. Like the voice of Burton/Io. She’d been thinking of ordering up another refresher of the meth, but now it seemed best to put it off as long as possible.
    This was sad, though. Inflating Burton’s memories until they were as large as Io. Freud would have a few things to say about that . He’d say she was magnifying her friend to a godlike status in order to justify the fact that she’d never been able to compete one-on-one with Burton and win. He’d say she couldn’t deal with the reality that some people were simply better at things than she was.
    Trudge, drag, trudge, drag.
    So, okay, yes, she had an ego problem. She was an overambitious, self-centered bitch. So what? It had gotten her this far, where a more reasonable attitude would have left her back in the slums of greater Levittown. Making do with an eight-by-ten room with bathroom rights and a job as a dental assistant. Kelp and talapia every