A Family-Matter
By Walter M. Miller, Jr.

"Rust Thou Art, to Rust Returneth ..." 

SOMEONE has awakened me. I feel darkness and a cold wind about my hull. I stand in the launching position and wait. I am waiting for the signal that will send me thundering alone into the night, toward the bright points of light that wink above me. I can see them beckoning through the eye in my prow. A voice comes to me. 
"C-33 from Winnipegport Control. Greenwich time, 0655 hours. Start your jets. Prepare for blast-off. Over." 
I answer with an acknowledgement signal, although I have no voice. I start my reactors and clear my tubes, letting them heat to operating temperature. The warmth is good. It brings a faint glow to my pleasure circuits. Soon I shall be streaking starward for a journey which no human crew could long endure. This is my first solo; this is my test. If it is good, then first-sol will reward me with sleep, and with soft dreams. 
I don't know where I came from. At first I could think and remember, but I could not dream. I could not desire. I could not feel fear nor pain nor pleasantness. I was made of metal and glass and hot patterns of energy. But I was not yet complete. They gave me another part—a fragile bit of warm flesh, immersed in a globular tank of thick fluids, fed by pumps and aerators and chemical infusers, and interconnected with the part of me that is metal and glass. When I am Awake, it becomes a part of my oneness. It gives me pleasure and pain. It gives me fear and desire. When I am asleep, it dreams separately of beauty. 
The voice comes again. "C-33 from Control. Sixty seconds before blast-off. Am beginning time-signals. Over and out." 
The signals come as radar pulses at one second intervals. I adjust my jets so that their growling thrust holds me poised feather-light—my tripod scarcely touching the ramp beneath me. A new fluid suffuses my organic unit; I feel excitement. The controls are my tense muscles. The instruments are my eyes and ears. It is good to be so strong and alert. The pulses have paused—a five second lull. Then . . . teeeeeeet! 
MY JETS spurt fury. Nostrils breathing fire. I throw myself skyward like a handful of lightning. I am lightning! My power is an ecstasy! As the seconds tick away, the hot rush of air grows thinner about my body. The sudden thrust causes my flesh-organ to sag and grow dazed in its fluid, but its long presence has taught my mechanical circuits how to respond, and I can still feel elation athough the organ is half-asleep. 
The time is 0702. My altitude should be 371.4 kilometers, but there is a slight negative discrepancy. Either my thrust is less than my instruments indicate, or my mass is greater than anticipated. I am pausing to cross-check all available evidence. 
Now I have checked. Now I feel uneasiness. The loading-tapes are in error by seventy-five kilograms. Somewhere within my body is an unexplained object, or objects. Compared with my total weight, its mass indeed is tiny. But it is great enough to cause large errors in my course-plan. Already I have veered slightly from my line-of-thrust; the object is off-center. I use my stabilizers to compensate for its presence. I feel their feedback and know that the object lies four meters from my center-line. 
I have eyes in my control room, my reactor room, and my cargo hold. I look through them—and see nothing. I am empty—no crates, no forgotten tools—only the parts that belong to my body. There is only one place that is invisible to me—a small closet just aft of the empty control room. I can see its closed door; it is where humans go for privacy when I have a crew aboard. It is four meters from my center-line. One of my ears is set within it, but the sound of my jets drowns my hearing. I am frightened. Can this be a test to confuse me? Now I must revise my course-plan! 
The plan is revised. With a tiny increment of thrust, with the auto-stabilizers in constant action, and with a revised flow-velocity while in the next layer of five-space, I shall reach Argos III at the specified time of arrival. But the mystery remains. What unauthorized cargo am I carrying? I have decided that it is not a test: the off-center loading is illegal during blast-off. Even crewmen must be strapped in specified positions. My commander would not devise an illegal test. 
I have scanned my memory-libraries and have extracted a list of several hundred objects, each of which could weigh seventy-five kilograms, be motionless, and fit within the closet. But considerations of plausibility reduce the list to three possibles: (1) a dead human being. (2) six cases of whiskey for an official on Argos III, and (3) an unconscious human being. 
If I do not reduce my acceleration, the list will shrink to two: broken whiskey, dead human. I find a word in my anthropo-concept vocabulary that seems to fit whatever person is responsible for this misloading. The word is "fool." 
My inertia is now greater -than the backward tug of Earthplanet's gravity. I am quenching my jets so that I can listen for possible sounds in the closet. For a moment, I hear nothing. I increase the pickup's preamplifier to full sensitivity. 
And now . . . I hear faint breathing! Then a low moan! The organism is still unconscious. What am I to do? It is obviously human. I self-key a soporific fluid into my flesh-organ's bath, thereby lulling my anxiety. Shall I call back to Winnipegport? Perhaps that would bring punishment. I am supposed to be capable of solving any problem that does not involve repairing damages to my body. Unless there is an emergency. Is this an emergency? 

NOW the creature moves a little. It pulls itself toward the door. I can feel the feedback from my autostabilizers: there seem to be two obiects—one of eighteen kilograms, the other about fifty-seven. The larger is self-moving; but it seems small for a human. My memory units suggest the possibility that it is a female. Despite the soporific, I am terrified. The being is standing up. 
I watch the narrow closet door through my control-room eye. I listen to the being's breathing. The breaths come as faint moans. The creature seems weak and exhausted. Except for the clicking of my relays, the ship that is my body is silent. I am spinning slowly about my axis to provide a slight gravity. If the animal proves dangerous, I can again pin it helplessly in place by renewing my acceleration. Nevertheless, the circuits controlled by my flesh-organ are trembling with involuntary pulses. 
The latch-lock clicks. The door swings open. I see it swaying in the entrance, glancing quickly up and down the corridor. It calls weakly. 
"Timmy ?" 
It is a female. It has stringy, gray-brown, hair, and a thin frightened face. It wears the garments of a working-class male, although its hips and breasts make the pretense transparent. It has the gauntness and the slightly wrinkled skin of middle-age. After scanning again, I see that it has called the name of a male. 
I have no voice. I can only speak the lovely tones of radar code, or operate a typing keyboard in my control room. She is still standing in the corridor. 
"Timmy . . . can you hear me?" 
I type: "You are the only human aboard. It is evident that you are stowing away on the wrong rocket. There is no 'Timmy' here." 
The sound of the keyboard startles her. She gasps and steps back toward the closet. When the typing ceases, she tiptoes slowly to the entrance and peers cautiously around at the controls. Her hands are trembling. She sees the keyboard and moves toward it. 
As she reads her face tightens gradually into a tense mask. She seems to be making a grief-response. Suddenly her hands fly to her cheeks. "Timmy!" she cries in a kind of shrieking roar. She falls to her knees, then throws herself on the deck. She curls up on her side and sobs into her arms. 
"I regret that he is not aboard," I type. "If you were authorized to board another rocket, but have simply made a human-type mistake, then I shall return you to Winnipegport, Earthplanet of Sol. If you are a stowaway, I shall act in accordance with Pan-Stellar Code." 
I wait. She does not arise to read. She continues sobbing. I do nothing. The past reactions of my own flesh-organ allow me to understand that her emotion will pass. Through the open closet door, I can see a leather bag—the other object. From past experience, I recognize it as a suitcase. 
Gradually, her sobbing subsides, but she does not arise. She lies shivering. I tap an impatient rhythm in x's on my keyboard, hoping to arouse her. I have business; she detains me. 
At last she pulls herself erect and sits down to read. For a moment, I fear that she will repeat the grief-response, but her shudder passes. Her dark eyes narrow; she straightens herself and sets her mouth grimly. She touches the keyboard, but I type first. 
"Speak aloud, please. I have audio-pickups." 
She looks around quickly. "Wh-where are y-you?" She has a rich female voice, much pleasanter than those of the male crewmen. But her question is meaningless. 
"I am the being in which you are located," I reply. "I am all around you. My name is C-33. I am an M-3 express ship with Class XII neuro-cybernetic controls. Please adjust yourself emotionally to this fact." 
She nods quickly. "You are Timmy!" 

I PAUSE. The animal obviously thinks that someone is hiding from her. Her stupidity irritates me: but the Code requires me to be patient with humans. 
I type again. 
"Tell me how you happened to come aboard. I must have this information in order to decide what shall be done with you." 
She tosses her head defiantly. "Don't speak to me like that!" she barks. "You'll decide nothing." 
"You will be treated in accordance with Pan-Stellar Code. Now please..." I stop typing because she gets up and walks away from the board. She paces the floor, apparently suffering a conflict of emotions. She keeps looking about the cabin, as if searching for someone to address. 
I remain silent—and uneasy. I have decided to be patient for ten minutes—no more. 
"Where is Timmy, you monster?" she shrieks suddenly, crouching slightly as if to leap upon the keyboard. Of course she does not realize that I could crush her with a sudden jet-thrust. 
"There is no 'Timmy' here. I find the word 'insanity' listed in my vocabunits. Are you suffering from such a malfunction?" 
She steps forward to read. Her face clouds. Then she makes a small bitter laugh. "That's right, I'm insane. Insane to love anything but the State. Insane for believing that a few things should belong to me—and a few even to God." She finds my eye and stares into it. "Tell me, C-33, who made you?" 
"You speak sedition," I warn. "But in answer to your pointless query—State made me, of course. Code specifies that no private individual or concern shall manufacture any machine or device that requires the use of processed materials. No one except State is powerful enough to make me." 
"And what of Timmy?" 
"I fail to understand. Who, or what, is Timmy?" 
She shakes her head irritably. "You have a brain. Where is it?" 
"My cybernetics circuits are scattered throughout the ship." 
"The brain, the brain!" she raged. "Where is the flesh-and-blood brain, your mind, your soul!" 
I find her concepts jumbled. Undoubtedly she is insane. But now I grasp her meaning. She means the flesh-organ that motivates me and allows me to imagine. 
"The organ is behind a panel in the calculator-unit, and it is an integral part of my oneness. I fail to see. . . ." 
She whirls to stare at the unit. Suddenly she darts across the control-room with a wild cry. In order to protect myself from her, I spurt a three-gravity thrust with my jets. She sprawls with a shriek and skids across the floor. I hold her there firmly with a continued acceleration. She is gasping and fighting to arise. 
"Please ... don't, Timmy don't! It hurts ... my heart. I only wanted to look at it." 
I understand pain. I am sorry she feels pain. I type: "I fail to understand your motives. But if it will please you, you may look at the flesh-organ. I must warn you however that my reaction-time is measured in microseconds. I can crush you quickly if you behave hostilely." 
She hears the typing. I ease the gravity so that she can pull herelf back to read it. She nods. "I—I won't harm it. . ." 
Her face is wet as she strips away the panel. She makes sobbing sounds in her throat. So nervous are her hands that the panel slips clattering to the floor. She falls to her knees and stares inside. She remains there, frozen. 
I am proud of the flesh-organ, and grateful to State for furnishing me with it. When it is inoperative, I am not myself. Without it I think, but cannot feel. And then I think only the thoughts that a human crew requires of me. Sometimes I think that it is the source of my consciousness—even though I have an independent mechanical memory that functions more efficiently than the haphazard neural circuits of the flesh-organ. Indeed, it is an important part of me. I can understand the female's interest in it. But I can understand neither her delusions nor her grief responses. 

SHE has been kneeling there motionless for several seconds. She stares at the dimly illuminated globe of transparent plastic, containing the pink and wrinkled object in its warm bath of drifting' fluid. Is she disappointed? But suddenly she speaks. A hollow whisper . . . but tender. 
"Timmy . . . Timmy . . . twenty years it's been . . . since they took you away. Can't you remember? Please, Timmy! The doctor that delivered you ... oh, no, you can't remember . . . or can you? 
They say the mind never really forgets. Timmy—try to remember being born, try! The pain, the bright light, fear! Oh my baby, my baby . . . listen . . . I nursed you. For two days I nursed you, before they said you had a bad heart and couldn't live ... before they stole you ... and took your brain out of your warm little body. Timmy, Timmy—how can you endure it! This monster. . ." 
The woman buries her face in her hands and makes choking spasms of sound. She is being illogical. But now I am interested. Frequently I have wondered about the organ's origin. It was obviously not manufactured by State. I am pleased to learn that it is human; State must think highly of me. 
But the kneeling animal is guilty of a fallacy. She is considering the organ as apart from the rest of me. I am one. Assuming that my consciousness derives originally from the brain of her whelp, I am nevertheless C-33. This body is the only one I have known. The organ's functions have adapted to the ship's senses and the ship's muscles. I am proud of my body. It disgusts me that this creature should think differently. 
"Get up," I type. "I assume now that you are a stowaway. Code states that if a stowaway is discovered, the ship shall continue according to the flight-plan and shall deliver the stowaway to the human authorities at the destination port. I am sorry for your sake that this is a test-flight." I wonder if it would be wise to tell her that the flight will involve accelerations of ten gravities sustained for hour-long periods. Even my own flesh-organ becomes weak from the ordeal, although it is specially protected. 
The woman hears the typewriter. She looks around suddenly. Her haggard face becomes radiant. The fool! She thinks I am Timmy. She thinks I am answering her plea. She hurries to the keyboard. 
"Fool!" I add as an afterthought. Her eyes go wild suddenly. She shrieks with hysterical laughter. "Code . . . you speak to me of Code! Timmy, my little boy! Now hear this Code—"Thou shalt honor thy father and thy MOTHER!" She darts to the manual control panel. She seizes a heavy crank-lever-and races toward the flesh-organ's housing. Evidently she means to destroy it. 
I regret that I must cause her pain. 
I breathe hard on my forward jets to throw her back. She lurches across the room and falls against the control-panel. I don't want to kill her deliberately. 
She is tugging herself to her feet. I increase the thrust slightly to keep her pinned down. 
She saw the thrust-dial move! 
"No! NO!" She is trying to override me on the controls! She twists and jerks and batters at the delicate dials! 
I throw every ounce of thrust into the jets — straining the very hull of my body. 
I see her crash across the room and batter sickeningly against the bulkhead. I look away. 
Pain, terrible throbbing pain. It lances out from my flesh-organ to pervade my circuits. I am dazed. For an instant the force reached twenty-five gravities. Now the jets are silent, but the pain persists. 
I look toward my flesh-organ's housing. The fluid bath has become crimson —the color of the stuff on the floor and on the bulkhead. My organ has ruptured —or one of the fluid-vessels that feed its inner structure has broken. I wonder ... if they will give me another one . . . but would I have the same consciousness then? 
Who am I? 
I think I am going to sleep. I am certain of it. But I need to revise the flight-plan now. 
I am off-course. . . . 
But I am growing lazy. I am indeed asleep. No one has commanded me to revise the flight-plan. Indeed I was commanded to follow it. 
Now I don't care. I shall follow the plan in my memory units. It will take me to nothingness. But now I don't care. I have no fear. I have no desire.