Free Case and the Dreamer by Theodore Sturgeon Page B

never-before-seen legends on the doors: A RMAMENT , D RIVE , E LEMENT B ANK , B IOLOGY , C HEMISTRY (he knew without looking that these were interconnected), G ENERAL R EPAIR AND T OOLS  … on and on to the end of the corridor and around two comers and forward again on the other side of the ship: A TMOSPHERE AND P RESSURE ,C OMMUNICATIONS , C OMPUTER R ECREATION AND E XERCISE , on and on again, until at last he faced the door marked M ASTER C ONTROL . It dilated for him with a snap as he approached it, and he entered.
    The control room was sizable, and again he found himself perfectly familiar with equipment he had never seen before. By the main control bank and its three chairs stood the blue man. There had been no one else anywhere on board, “And you’re a hologram,” said Case, completing his thought aloud.
    The blue man inclined his head. “There has not been a man aboard this ship in over seven hundred years. It’s too far away, and anyway … nobody cares. Correction. A great many people care, are interested, even fascinated. But the urge to come out, to be personally involved—it seems to have left us. You know what Earth is like now.”
    It was not a question. Case called upon the knowledge which had been fed into his brain in just the way you can call upon the likeness of your first teacher’s face, your first fist-fight, the time she … or he came to you and said … You see? These things are with you always, but are not evident until you call.
    So Case looked on Earth as a contemporary, ten centuries past his death, and wagged his head slowly. “It shouldn’t have come to this.”
    “It had to. It was that or die,” said the blue man; and Case thought a bit and saw that it was so.
    “You can go back, Case. You can be suspended rather more efficiently than you were before, and for a good while longer. It would take—oh—another fifteen hundred years to get you there, and it is not possible to predict what Earth would be like when you got there. Still, it would be Earth—it would be … home.”
    “ ‘You can’t go home again,’ ” Case quoted from somewhere, with not a little bitterness. “I suppose there’s an alternative.”
    “There is, and it is a matter of your free choice. You see, Case, primitive as you may seem to some of us, you have a quality which we lack and admire—a willingness to go out, to do, to explore and discover and find, actually and physically, and not in theory or extrapolation or imagination. This ship was designed, yes, and used, bymen like you, and when the last of them died on an exploration, there were no replacements, and besides, the ship was already so far away that only long-suspended men could reach it.
    “The ship itself is self-supporting, and not only has a superb computer system, but is tied to all the computers of the Terran Group. We have what might be called a standing-wave situation, constantly locked on to this ship. Through it we can transmit nothing but information—but we can give you any amount of that. From it, we will have an opportunity to experience with you the places you go, the things you see and learn and experience.”
    “You are giving me this ship? To take where?”
    The blue, shimmering figure spread its arms. “Anywhere.”
    “But you watch everything I do.”
    “If you’re willing.”
    “I’m not willing. I need some sort of privacy—including inside of my head.”
    “That is a sacred matter with us. We will not intrude, and if you like we will give you a zone of privacy anywhere you like in the ship.”
    “How about this: instead of any special place, we make it anywhere I am—any time I say so?”
    “You would not deny us the—”
    “No, no, no,” Case said impatiently; “I am conditioned to keep a bargain once it’s struck. You’re giving me this ship and a free hand, and you want something in exchange. I’ll see that you get it, and I won’t short-change you.”
    “Very well,” said the blue