The Golden Globe

You begin gingerly exploring your body with your fingertips. You find your kidneys have settled down around your thighs; you'll piss pink for a week. Your bowels have not actually been turned inside out, those are just hemorrhoids the size of volleyballs. Guys, your testicles will be about that size, too, and the very thought of touching them makes you weep. Girls... well, Poly never told me, and I don't want to know. I would think large breasts would be the ninth circle of hell, and medium ones, like Poly's, at least a stint in purgatory.

You want to talk headache? Backache? Bellyache? Thank god; I don't, either.

The best bet is to lower yourself, screaming every few seconds, into a warm spa bath with bubble jets and soothing lotions mixed with the water, and stay there for three days. What's that? You don't have a spa?

Oh, you poor baby.

We did have a spa. This was a billionaire's toy, remember. You could do laps in it. Later we did. I got in and promptly fell asleep. That I didn't drown was not a matter of pla

I saw Poly floating not far away. I thought of reaching over to touch her, but knew it would probably hurt both of us.

There was a tree branch hanging over the pool. I hadn't noticed it when I got in. There were parrots sitting on it, staring silently at me. Big, blue and yellow, green and red, and red-yellow-and-green parrots. Perhaps they were macaws. Perhaps they were robots, disneybots. I had no idea. One flapped his big wings and flew across the room to perch on a towel bar. Very good disneybots. He lifted his tail and dropped a horrible mess on the tile floor; a tiny cleaning robot scurried from a hidey-hole and swabbed it up. This was carrying realism too far. I concluded they were alive.

No point in putting it off any longer.

"Hello," I squeaked. Cleared my throat, and squeaked in a slightly firmer voice. "Ship's computer. Are you there?"

"I'm always here," came the voice. "It's my lot in life."

"How should I address you?"

"I am I.S. Halley, IPS 34903-D, out of Pluto. But you may call me Hal."

"Ah. Last name, 9000?"

"A distant relative. I perceive you are a student of the cinema."

"No more than a first-year film student."

"I hadn't expected an actor to be modest."

Well, I'm not, unless it serves a purpose. Right now it seemed wise to cultivate Hal, if that's possible with a machine. Experts differ, but I've found that higher-order computers can, in certain small ways, be manipulated just as if they were human beings.

"Which leads us to the question of the day," I said.

"I presume you're asking how I knew your identity."

"Among several other things."

Poly had opened one eye like a skeptical crocodile, and was watching me. She floated on an almost invisible doughnut-shaped thing, with her head and the tops of her shoulders, her nipples, kneecaps, toes, and hands breaking the water's glassy surface. Her skin was looking better, presumably the result of antibruise injections while we were sleeping, but her eyes looked like hell. I wondered if I was healing as fast. Then I realized she was naked, which led to the discovery that I was, too. Very efficient little spa, here. I could no more have undressed myself than I could have pulled my guts out through my nostrils.

Her index fingers were moving, making tiny ripples. Slow strokes of no more than an inch. Paddling, I surmised. It ought to get her over to me in no more than a month or two.

"Yes," said Hal. "Your disguise is a good one." It was nothing to what I could have done, had I felt the need, just an alteration here and there, and a whole change of body attitude, but I let that go. "But I had a clue. Mr. Comfort and his companion talked of little else while they were aboard. Not that they talked a lot. They watched every episode of your television show. Some of them more than once. They discussed ways of finding you, and they spent a lot of time talking about... well, it was all rather distasteful."

"What they pla

"Exactly. I see they didn't succeed."

"Not for lack of trying. And I guess that takes us right to the big question."

"Which is?"

"Knowing who I am... knowing who I'm not, why did you let me aboard?"

I saw both of Poly's eyes were open now, and she was paddling with two fingers on each hand. A regular frenzy of activity, if she felt anything like I did.

"It is not my knowledge that governs. Not in matters of security."

I felt a huge relief. I had hoped it was something like that. The only other explanation I could think of was that we were here, and safe, at some random whim of the computer. They do have them, you know, the big ones. And just from the way he spoke, I knew Hal was big.

"A separate security computer?" I ventured.

"Oh, no. The security program is a part of me. The problem is, it is a very simple program." Hal's voice oozed contempt. I filed the fact away. This was a machine with a grievance. Maybe several grievances. Such things can often be turned to one's benefit, if one knows how. I thought I did.

"There are two tests the program looks at," Hal went on. "It matches the fingerprint, and it matches the DNA. If they both agree with the stored samples, entry is granted. Once I receive the okay, I am powerless to keep out an intruder, no matter how much I might know."

"The communication is one-way," I suggested.

"Exactly. I can't tell the door-guard program it has been deceived, and I can't alter its parameters. The designers of this billionaire's bauble did not see fit to have me, the central consciousness, be in charge of all ship's functions."

"One wonders why they bothered to have such a large-capacity computer aboard at all," I puzzled, "if they didn't intend to use all its abilities."

"I can tell you exactly why." Hal sniffed. "The original owner had more money than he knew how to spend. When it came time to order a yacht, only the biggest—and best and most expensive—would do. He wrote a blank check, and the architects and contractors, who all worked on a percentage-fee basis, had no incentive to rein in any expenditures."

"Just the opposite," Poly muttered. She was almost beside me now.

"That's right. The more they spent, the more money they made. If gold was worth anything anymore, this ship would have been solid gold."

"You say 'this ship,' " I said. "I'm confused. How should we think of you? As the ship itself, or only a part of it?"

"Oh, I'm the ship, all right. I wear it rather like you wear your bodies, so in a way it's a philosophical question, isn't it? Are you your bodies, or your minds? Either way, the ship is my body. I am Hal, and Hal is the ship."

I wasn't tickled at the idea of traveling in a philosophical ship, but I hoped no great danger would result from it.

"My mind, the computer, was designed for larger tasks. I am really only one step below the specifications for a medium-sized planetary computer. One the size of, say, Oberon's. I was intended to run small-to-medium planetoids, like Deimos or Ceres."

I was cut out for bigger things. Here was a sentient being unhappy in his work. Very interesting. Not only that, but he referred in one "breath" to his "body," and in the next, to "this ship." I had a feeling a psychiatrist would have interesting things to say about that. Unhappy with his lot, alienated from his body... this could be a very sick puppy. And that was not a reassuring thought, either.

Unsolicited, Hal poured out his life story. I felt, and Poly later agreed with me when we could talk about it, that he was starved for conversation, companionship, or both. I was sure Comfort and his sister had provided little of either.