Backyard Starship Read online

  But, as I rolled over, I gave myself a mental jab. That was a boy’s way of thinking about his hero. Facing a stroke or heart attack was every bit as desperate a struggle against impossible odds as a firefight. If anything, I felt bad more because Miryam had implied it hadn’t been quick, the finality of a bullet. She hinted that he’d lingered, which meant that there might have been time for me to see him before he passed away. If only I’d stayed in closer touch—

  Thunder boomed, truncating the thought. I nodded to the storm and its elemental wisdom. Good point. Don’t go down the if only road—just don’t, because it never led anywhere good.

  I wondered what the morning would bring? What time would Miryam return? Should I set an alarm?

  Nah. Screw it. Morning could wait—

  Beep.

  I turned back toward the door, frowning.

  Beep.

  Lightning flickered and thunder muttered, but more distant, as the storm rolled off to the east.

  Beep.

  Shit.

  I levered myself out of my bed, which had started to warm up quite nicely, and planted my feet on the cold hardwood. Smoke detector, I thought. Dying battery. I’d just rip it out and risk spending one night without its dumb vigilance watching over me—

  Beep.

  I stopped. The sound hadn’t come from above me, in the hallway, where I could see a tiny red LED glowing from the smoke detector. It had come from behind me, back in my bedroom.

  2

  I turned to face the room.

  Beep.

  Huh. Eight years ago, nothing in this room made any persistent beeping sounds. Nor had I heard it, it occurred to me, before I climbed into bed. I was sure of it. And Miryam was a careful woman, fiercely attentive to details. It was kind of implied in her job.

  Beep.

  So that meant two things. There was something new in my room. And either Miryam hadn’t known about it or hadn’t told me about it. Her deliberately not telling me about it wouldn’t have even occurred to most people, but most people didn’t have a grandfather who’d done shadowy things in shadowy global corners.

  Was she afraid someone might be listening?

  Beep.

  It was entirely possible, I supposed, that someone from my grandfather’s past was watching him. And now, in turn, they watched me, incidentally or not. He had controlled a lot of money, as well a lot of secrets. And his past wasn’t that distant. Knowledge of the things he’d done could probably still hurt people working in the government now.

  A bit of a thrill shivered through me. The thought of being watched—while standing in the doorway to my room in my underwear—was actually kind of dumb, even funny. But it was also titillating, in the way that virtually poking around in someone’s computer halfway around the world, while they sat nearby, was titillating.

  Beep.

  I’d been waiting for it this time. The sound pulled my attention to the battered rolltop desk beside the window. It was filled with science fiction books—stories of dragons, and heroes who never took a bullet. The sound came from inside it. Left-hand side. Second drawer, I was pretty sure.

  More distant thunder muttered, and I took that moment to pad across to the desk, pull open the drawer—

  Beep.

  —and pick up a—

  A remote?

  It looked like a remote, anyway, but heavier, with the polished heft of something meant to last. It rested easily in the palm of my hand. The metal—at least I was pretty sure it was metal, though it also had kind of a glassy luster to it—was cool and featureless, but a sense of hidden depths lay beneath it. On the back was a small disc, barely recessed and made to be pushed.

  I hesitated. My grandfather must have left this here on purpose. In another home, I’d have just passed it off as what it seemed to be—a fancy remote. But given my grandfather’s past, it might be more than that, with a purpose well beyond any apparent use.

  As soon as I had that thought, though, something else struck me. It hadn’t beeped since I picked it up.

  And then there was that damned button just begging to be pushed.

  I should just put it aside until morning.

  But that wasn’t going to work, and I knew it. I could be patient if I had to but, by nature, I needed to know things. I needed to see and learn. It was baked right into the mindset of a cyberwarrior whose battlespace shifted and changed by the minute.

  So I got dressed in dry clothes from my backpack, went downstairs, and waited for the rain to stop. I wasn’t sure why. I just had some vague sense that if something happened, I didn’t want to get rained on and wet through again. So I waited thirty-eight minutes. That was how long it took for the line of squalls to finally roll beyond Pony Hollow and scud northeast to punish Garnavillo for a while, before pushing on to Wisconsin.

  Less than an hour, and I was still sitting in the kitchen, trying to convince myself to push that damned button. Outside, the world dripped in darkness, the soft, steady plink of water from eaves and trees a far cry from the storm’s fury when I first arrived.

  I was dithering.

  So I shrugged and pushed the button. It recessed, but slowly, like the mechanism was tired or old. The circular spot only sank a quarter inch or so, but it was apparently enough to cause—something. Deep blue light suddenly glimmered beneath my finger. I pulled it away to find—

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  My fingerprint had been impressed on the button in soft whorls of blue light, perfect in every detail. The effect lasted for a few seconds, then faded.

  And that was that.

  “Huh.”

  Whatever it was, it seemed to incorporate a biometric lock, a fingerprint reader that would only activate the device. While that was tech I understood, it was certainly not expected, and my only source of information was Miryam, who I respected too much to bother again. We were both in an hour of grief, and the remote, or object, could wait until morning. I placed it on the table with a deliberate motion, then closed my eyes as the weight of the day began to catch up with me.

  Tap.

  I twitched at the sound, my eyes snapping open with instant awareness.

  Not a beep this time. A tap—distinct, sharp, and right in front of me on the window over the sink. I stood and moved to the glass, then realized I couldn’t see a damned thing except my own reflection. It was truly pitch black outside, meaning the barn light was out, probably cooked off in the storm.

  I moved to turn off the kitchen light to get rid of its glare—

  Tap tap.

  I jumped back. Something had indeed just banged against the glass maybe a foot or two away from my face.

  What the hell?

  I thought about going to the back door and walking around the house to see what was out there. But the thought of squelching through wet grass and mud in that thick gloom to find myself facing—something—didn’t appeal to me at all. Instead, I did go and snap off the kitchen light, then returned to the window and lifted it.

  Something large and dark immediately pushed through the opening. For the third time, I felt a pang of nervous curiosity as my eyes tried to make sense of the moving object before me. The dark shape bounced on the edge of the sink with a sharp rattle and leapt to perch on the back of a chair.

  It was a bird.

  But a bird wholly unlike any I’d ever seen in Iowa, or, well, anywhere for that matter. Big, the size of a large eagle, with eyes that seemed to glow golden—not from reflected light but from some place behind them. Its feathers were blacker than space, its silver talons glittered like daggers, and its beak looked as though it could shear my hand off.

  I stared.

  It stared back.

  Finally, the bird cocked its head at me and spoke in a smooth baritone with a hint of something like wind chimes.

  “You rang?”

  “I—”

  “You should get dressed,” the bird said.

  A flicker of reason finally found its way to my mouth.

  “You can talk.”

  “An astute observation. And it doesn’t change the fact that you should get dressed.”

  I glanced around, then scraped my finger across the corner of the kitchen counter, hard. It hurt, just like it was supposed to. I’m awake, and aware. Good to know.

  But the talking bird didn’t vanish, or even stop talking, like it was supposed to.

  “A test to determine if you’re dreaming, am I right?” the bird asked, glancing at my finger.

  My voice crackled to life after a moment. “Can you blame me?”

  “I suppose not. At least as long as you don’t bumble around convinced you’re dreaming, or crazy—oh, that’ll be next, by the way, the thinking you must be going crazy part. Anyway, there are things we need to do, so please, get it all out of your system right now.”

  I held up a hand. “Okay, wait a second. I get it. You’re a talking bird. Like a parrot, or—I hear ravens can be taught to speak as well.”

  “You’ve never owned a parrot, or ever really interacted with one, have you?”

  “I—no. Why?”

  “Because if you had, you’d know that they don’t actually speak. They mimic. Therefore, unless your grandfather spent a lot of time drilling this particular conversation into me so I could flawlessly mimic it in this particular way—” The bird cocked its head. “You’re a smart guy. What are the odds of that working?”

  I could only shrug. “No idea. I don’t know what factors are involved, the variables—”

  “Take a guess.”

  “Probably not very high.”

  “There you go. So keeping with the smart guy thing, here’s the next logical place your mind should go. Maybe I’m not actually a bird at all…”

  The bird en
ded it with a dramatically sinister flourish. All it was missing was an ominous burst of organ music.

  I almost laughed. Almost. Well, if this is what going crazy is like, it could be a lot worse, I suppose.

  “Okay, I’ll play along. If you’re not a bird, what are you?”

  “Metal-ceramic composite chassis with a quantum neural net, broad-spectrum sensors, on-board fusion power-cell, and a mono-bonded feathering system that allows actual flight.” The creature spread its wings—an impressive sight, as they were nearly six feet across—and promptly knocked the mug containing the last dregs of my unfinished coffee off the counter. As it banged to the floor, the bird settled them again with a tidy metallic flick.

  “Sorry about that,” the bird said, glancing at the small puddle of cold coffee.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I replied, but I only had eyes for the bird. Another possibility was taking shape amid the swirling tumble of thoughts now spinning through my mind. It had been triggered by words like metal-ceramic composite and quantum neural net. Tech words. In other words, my language. They finally gave my thoughts some traction, letting me start arranging them back into something resembling sense.

  So maybe I wasn’t dreaming, I wasn’t crazy, and this bird was real, as in a real piece of advanced military hardware that my grandfather had somehow kept under wraps here, on the farm. Whether he’d done that deliberately, which might mean he’d stolen the damned thing, or somehow just managed to die without returning it, I wasn’t sure.

  “See, if your grandfather had better prepared you for this, we wouldn’t have to go through this whole shock and wonder step,” the bird said.

  “Shock and wonder—?”

  “Yes. The part where you start by thinking you’re dreaming, or going crazy, and then you slowly come to believe it's all real. I told him this would happen, but he didn’t care.”

  This time, I did actually smile. The bird was doing a fantastic job of simulating frustrated irritation.

  “That’s amazing,” I said, shaking my head.

  “What is?”

  “Well, you. You’re amazing.”

  “Why thank you. And you don’t even really know me yet. So let me properly introduce myself. Probably should have done that right up front, but it’s been a while since I’ve paired with a Peacemaker.” Now the bird actually managed to sound apologetic, even dipping his beak in contrition. A fresh rush of chill, damp air swirled into the kitchen through the open window. I glanced outside, but the night was still utterly dark.

  “Yeah. Introducing yourself is a good place to start, I guess,” I said, reaching over and sliding the window closed. “Along with, ah, what a Peacemaker might be. I get the sense that it means me, but I’ve never heard the term used for anything but an old strategic bomber.”

  “The Convair B-36, the largest piston-engine production aircraft ever built, in service with the US Strategic Air Command from 1949 to 1959,” the bird replied matter-of-factly.

  I blinked. The bird had nailed it for sure. I’d once built a plastic scale model kit of one of the giant bombers. It was probably still upstairs, in fact, on the top shelf of my bedroom closet, along with a few other kits I’d built.

  “So you know about that,” I said.

  “I know about lots of things. For instance, would you like to know the acceptable operating temperature range for the Peacemaker’s Pratt & Whitney R-4360 radial engines? The maximum dynamic shear-stress load of its main wing spar? The absolute best way to make crème brulée?”

  “Not really, no.” I leaned back against the counter. “Well, maybe the crème brulé thing sometime.” I laughed, harder than I normally would. But I normally didn’t end up talking to AI birds who could make crème brulé. I gave my hand a vague wave. “I’m sorry, but you’ll understand if this is all a bit much.”

  Again, the beak dipped, which I guessed was a sort of cross between acknowledgement and apology. It made sense. After all, a bird-construct would be pretty limited in the emotional range it could convey. Mind you, the fact this construct could convey any emotions at all made it—

  I shook my head, stunned at the elegance of the machine before me. I must have been looking at the most advanced expression of AI on the planet. And it was a bird, perched on a chair, in the kitchen of an Iowa farmhouse.

  “I understand,” the bird replied. “Anyway, you may call me Perry. And while the peregrine falcon doesn’t have black feathers, I’m willing to take some artistic license regarding my coloration. Besides, birds are not a galactic species, but they are unique to your world. At least, falcons are.” He cocked his head again. “And I like the name Perry.”

  “Perry.”

  “That’s right.”

  I shrugged. “Sure. What the hell. Nice to meet you, Perry.”

  “As to what a Peacemaker might be, you’ve correctly surmised it has nothing to do with strategic bombers. Well, not directly, anyway. But, yes, you’re the Peacemaker in this case. The term refers to a Galactic Knight Uniformed. But let’s take this all one step at a time, shall we? So our next trip is outside, which brings me back to the fact that you should get dressed.”

  I glanced down at myself, then back up. “I am dressed.”

  “Not for going outside. It is a rainy night in Iowa.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the barn.”

  “I—oh. Wait. To the barn? Why?”

  “That’s easier to explain in the barn than here.” Perry opened his wings slightly, as though he were going to hop back to the now-closed window. I suspected he’d have no trouble opening it again. But he stopped and folded his wings back up.

  “Before we go, it strikes me that you implicitly asked me a question, which I haven’t yet answered—that is, who am I?”

  I guessed I had, so I nodded.

  “I’m a combat AI. Yours, to be specific,” Perry said.

  “Wait. My combat AI? Not my grandfather’s?”

  “I was his combat AI, but he’s, you know, dead now. And you’re his successor.”

  “But why do I need a combat AI? I’ve never even been in combat.”

  Perry’s golden eyes glittered back at me.

  “You will be.”

  3

  I put on my shoes and jacket, then opened the door into the cool, rainy night. Perry leapt from the kitchen chair to the top of the short flight of stairs that led down to the back door, then paused.

  “Excuse me. AI bird coming through.”

  I stepped back and gestured. “After you.”

  The bird spread its wings and launched itself into the night in one smooth motion. The wings extended just enough to clear the doorframe, then spread as it sailed off into the gloom.

  I just stood, staring, shaking my head. Amazing. I had no idea AI had come so far. Or, for that matter, materials science that allowed a bird-construct to be that large but still able to fly with what appeared to be only wings for propulsion. Or power-cell technology, which had to provide it all with enough juice to keep running for—

  I didn’t know how long, I realized, stepping into the drizzle and closing the door behind me. Presumably, the bird had been in some sort of low-power state when I pressed that button. It had been just enough to allow it to receive and respond to whatever signal the remote control thing had produced. I expected it would need to be recharged soon. Power-source life was still the big Achilles’ heel of these sorts of constructs. No matter how fancy or sophisticated they were, when they ran out of power, they were just elaborate works of high-tech art.

  I squelched through mud and grass, heading for the barn. I could barely see it, just a shape in the darkness, but that was okay. My feet knew the way. It let me keep ruminating about Perry along the way.

  Clearly, the bird was a piece of cutting-edge, experimental military tech. Why my grandfather had it, I had no idea. Maybe he was involved in trialing it. It did make a sort of sense, I supposed, to try out something like that in a remote corner of Iowa. But it seemed awfully strange that Gramps could just bring the thing home with him. No matter how much he might be trusted in the shadowy circles of his former profession, that just wasn’t how things like that were done. You didn’t simply sign out a super-advanced piece of no doubt multimillion dollar, probably irreplaceable hardware and bring it home with you for the weekend to try out. Or, if you did, then the spooky world of defense research was a hell of a lot more laid back in terms of its real-world security than it was online. I’d only occasionally bumped up against it during the course of my day job, and never with the intention of trying to penetrate it. But even if I had, I doubted I’d ever find a way through its labyrinthine, almost paranoid depths of protection.