"Yes, Warren."
He was amused. "Take those dishes to the galley and come back up here. I'll play you."
"Yes, Warren." The board altered. She had chosen white. The first move was made. Warren turned his chair and reclined it to study the board, his feet on the newly cleared table. He gave her his move and the appropriate change appeared on the screen.
The game was almost over by the time the pseudo-some came topside again. She needed only four more moves to make his defeat a certainty. He sat back with his arms folded behind his head, studying his decimated forces. Shook his head in disbelief.
"Annie, ma belle dame sans merci—has anyone ever beaten you?"
"No, Warren."
He considered it a moment more, his lately bolstered well-being pricked. "Can you teach me what you know?"
"I've been programmed with the works of fifteen zonal champions. I don't estimate that I can teach you what I know. Human memory is fallible. Mine is not, provided adequate cues for recall and interrelation of data. One of my programmed functions is instruction in procedures. I can instruct."
He rolled a sidelong glance at her. "Fallible?"
"Fallible: capable of error."
"I don't need the definition. What makes you so talkative? Did I hit a program?"
"My first programmer was Franz Mann. He taught me chess. This is an exercise in logic. It's a testing mechanism, negative private appropriation. My function is to maintain you. I'm programmed to instruct in procedures. Chess is a procedure."
"All right," he said quietly. "All right, you can teach me."
"You're happy."
"You amuse me. Sit down."
She resumed the chair opposite him. . . her back to the board, but she did not need to see it.
"Amusement produces laughter. Laughter is a pleasure or surprise indicator. Amusement is pleasant or surprising. Please specify which, Warren."
"You're both, Anne."
"Thank you. Pleasure is a priority function."
"Is it?"
"This is your instruction, Warren."
He frowned at her. In the human-maintenance programming he had poured a great number of definitions into her, and apparently he had gotten to a fluent area. Herself. Her prime level. She was essentially an egotist.
Another chessboard flashed onto the screen.
"Begin," she said.
She defeated him again, entered another game before he found his eyes watering and his senses blurring out on the screen. He went to bed.
Trees and black and white squares mingled in his dreams.
The next venture took resting. . . took a body in condition and a mind at ease. He looked over the gear the next morning, but he refused to do anything more. Not at once. Not rushing back exhausted into the heart of the forest. He lazed about in the sun, had Anne's careful hands rub lotion over his sore shoulders and back, felt immeasurably at peace with the world. A good lunch, a nap afterward. He gave the ship a long-neglected manual check, in corridors he had not visited since the plague.
There was life in the botany lab, two of Rule's collection, succulents which had survived on their own water, two lone and emaciated spiny clusters. He came on them amid a tangle of brown husks of other plants which had succumbed to neglect, brushed the dead leaves away from them, tiny as they were. He looked for others and found nothing else alive. Two fellow survivors. No knowing from what distant star system they had been gathered. Tray after tray of brown husks collapsed across the planting medium, victims of his shutdown order for the labs. He stripped it all, gathered the dead plants into a bin. Investigated the lockers and the drawers. There were seeds, bulbs, rhizomes, all manner of starts. He thought of putting them outside, of seeing what they would do—but considering the ecology . . . no; nothing that might damage that. He thought of bringing some of the world's life inside, making a garden; but the world outside was mostly lilies and waterflowers, and lacked colors. Some of these, he thought, holding a palmful of seeds, some might be flowers of all kinds of colors. . . odors and perfumes from a dozen different star systems. Such a garden was not for discarding. He could start them here, plant them in containers, fill the ship with them.
He grinned to himself, set to work reworking the planting medium, activating the irrigation system. He located Rule's notebook and sat down and read through it, trying to decide on the seeds, how much water and how deep and what might be best.
He could fill the whole botany lab, and the plants would make seeds of their own. No more sterility. He pictured the living quarters blooming with flowers under the artificial sunlight. There was life outside the ship, something to touch, something to find; and in here. . . he might make the place beautiful, something he could live in while getting used to the world. No more fear. He could navigate the rivers, hike the forest. . . find whatever it was. Bring home the most beautiful things. Turn it all into a garden. He could leave that behind him, at least, when another team did come, even past his lifetime and into the next century. Records. He could feed them into Anneand she could send them to orbiting ships. He could learn the world and make records others could use. His world, after all. Whole colonies here someday who would know the name of Paul Warren and Harley and Rule, Burlin and Sax and Sikutu and the rest. Humans who would look at what he had made.
Who would approach what he had found out on the river with awe. Find it friendly, whether or not it was an intelligence. The ship could fit in. . . with the gardens he intended. Long rhythms, the seeding of plants and the growing of trees and the shaping of them. No project he had approached had offered him so much. To travel the rivers and find them and to come home to Anne, who maintained all he learned. . .
He smiled to himself. " Anne. Send the pseudosome here. Botany four." She came, a working of the lift and a tread of metal feet down the corridor and through the outer labs into this one. "Assistance?"
"You had a standard program for this area. Maintenance of water flow. Cleaning."
"I find record of it."
"Activate it. I want the lights on and the water circulating here."
"Yes, Warren." The lights blinked, the sixth one as well, in the darkness where her chin should be. "This is not your station."
"It is now."
"This is Rule's station."
"Rule stopped functioning. Permanently." His lips tightened. He disliked getting into death with a mind that had never been alive. "I'm doing some of Rule's work now. I like to do it."
"Are you happy?"
"Yes."
"Assistance?"
"I'll do it myself. This is human work."
"Explain."
He looked about at her, then back to his work, dropping the seeds in and patting the holes closed. "You're uncommonly conversational. Explain what?"
"Explain your status."
"Dear Annie, humans have to be active about twelve hours a day, body and mind. When we stop being active we don't function well. So I find things to do. Activity. Humans have to have activity. That's what I mean when I use doin an unexplained context. It's an important verb, do. It keeps us healthy. We always have to have something to do, even if we have to hunt to find it." Annedigested that thought a moment. "I play chess."
He stopped what he was doing in mid-reach, looked back at her. As far as he could recall it was the first time she had ever offered such an unsolicited suggestion. "How did thatget into your programming?"