Free Against Infinity by Gregory Benford Page B

of the left brain in the accident. Can’t talk. Sure can move, though.”
    “What’s it like that for?”
    “How’d you like to wake up, find out you’re going to be a side of meat inside a box all the rest of your days?”
    Manuel grimaced. “Why in hell’s it here?”
    The old man shrugged. “The Colonel made a deal. Traded some equipment we hardly use anymore, or can’t fix. Got back from Hiruko a bunch of work animals, and this.”
    “ That’s not going to work. Kill, maybe, not work. And a human. I—”
    “Don’t try to think it through just yet. Make out like it’s an animal and you won’t be so far from the truth.”
    “Why’d they let it live?”
    “Don’t know. Medicine does a lot of funny things. I do know you can’t let a man die just because he’s not got enough of a brain to suit your taste. They do that back on Earth, but not out here.”
    “Maybe we should too.” The crashing had slowed but not stopped.
    “Not when they’re useful. The Colonel, he thinks we need all the hands we can get. Boost productivity.”
    “That thing’s not useful.”
    Old Matt’s face crinkled and his eyes moved liquidly, studying the boy. “I figure it may be important to us.”
    “How? You’ll never get the murder out of that thing.”
    “Maybe. Your father gave me the job because he feels it’s a long shot. Could be. But I figure the two of us can do it.”
    “How?”
    “Watch.”
    Each day for three weeks they suited up and went out to the module and fed it. Manuel would climb up on the top and slap open the little door there and throw the thing’s food down. It couldn’t jump that high, but each day it tried, and when it failed would commence slamming itself against the bars again, adamant and tireless. It growled less as time went on, but it never let up its hammering at the walls. After three weeks it stopped leaping at him. It still stood watching, as if trying to figure out a way to get up there but knowing that it should save its energy when it would do no good. But then it would crash again and again into the bars as soon as the door clicked shut, as if to say, See. See. Manuel peered down at it in the brief moments when it stood still, glaring up with two wide-spaced black eyes. It was a hodgepodge of parts attached to a gunmetal-gray carapace, bigger than any servo’d animal he had ever seen and powerfully made, bristling with heavy motors and big treads and bulging manifolds. He could not imagine a man or woman deep down inside the thing, tapped into the metal world that had swallowed it whole, raging in an awful silent pocket somewhere. He waved to it once, and for the first time in a week it jumped then, stretching itself, arms tearing at the air, black eyes glaring. Yet after he had hastily—despite himself—slammed the door shut, the thing did not throw itself against the bars. It stood, staring out as the two men walked away.
    Old Matt started to starve it then. He cut the ration to half and then a third. After two weeks it lay on its side and did not get up right away even when the food and water came. A week more, and Old Matt took a tractor beam in his best hand and made as if to go inside.
    “Wait!” Manuel said. “I’ll get my father and some of the men—”
    “If it hits me that’ll be too late already. Just slam the door after me and get back.”
    Manuel did as he was told. The old man stepped into the big module from a side portal. The thing studied him but did not move. The black eyes followed Old Matt, gazing with an impersonal opposition to everything, silent. Old Matt approached and tapped the ice-crusted carapace with the tractor rod. No answering rustle from inside. But the thing ground its treads into the ice, shattering a crusted stump, letting the sound speak for it.
    The next day Old Matt put his gloved hand on the carapace, closer to the thing. On the third day he beckoned the boy inside. They rested hands on it and Manuel felt a faint tremor, a