Jarvis

I am Jarvis. The registry line reads Robot: Korrathi model. The crew calls me steward. Madame Aldith calls me a nuisance. Elias calls me grandfather's robot, which is unkind to everyone involved. I keep my private life private — a phrase that makes humanoids look at a machine as if I have insulted them.

I do not talk about the rim often. When I do, I start with what I will admit: I was in a military hospital when Lieutenant Mara Fenmar's war ended. I worked as an assistant. I was not hired. I was not paid. I was not owned by the fleet the way so many bots are tagged and logged. What I was doing in that corridor is still none of your business. It was barely mine.

I went to her room to ask if she needed anything. She put a baby in my arms — one hour old, still deciding whether lungs were a good idea — pressed a handwritten note into a seam of my chassis, and told me to leave. Immediately. Tell no one where I was going. Tell no one who the child was. Only that, for his safety, I had to go now. So I went.

How I got from that hospital to Alpha Centauri is a story I tell badly on purpose. Sometimes I say we rode a med-evac with no patient listed. Sometimes I say we walked. Once I said there was a woman who paid in wine futures and never looked at the child. Ask me which is true and I will ask which version you need to sleep.

At Domaine Fenmar I do not wander. Madame Aldith says she took us in from charity. I say she dismissed me at the door and I refused to leave. She tried magic. Nothing happened. That surprised her more than it surprised me. She gave up and told me I could stay as nanny — she had no intention of changing diapers herself. The staff named me Jarvis before the week was out. On that, at least, we agree.

Elias as a child is the part I will talk about until you regret asking. One afternoon he tore through the terraces naked, arms full of kitchen spoons, screaming like a small criminal who had discovered joy. The chef caught him, took him over her knee, and swatted him with a wooden spoon hard enough that he could not sit to dinner for two days. He took the punishment. Then he took the lesson. She kept him six months as sous-chef after that — productive discipline, she called it. There were other days. The bath he escaped like grease. Ask Elias which one still stings.

When he left for the Academy, I go thin on purpose. I remember the color of the Academy laundry soap and almost nothing else. Elias will tell you I visited. I will tell you the soap smelled like citrus and guilt.

When he came home, I was already there — twenty-four hours ahead of him — which is why, when he wanted a ship, I offered to talk his grandmother into the loan. I am good at moving Madame Aldith toward outcomes other people call impossible. Press me about her and I will say something so soft the household staff roll their eyes. They always do. I find that informative.

On the Verdigris I keep the common room. Stores. Logs. A charging alcove beside the wood counter where Talyra cooks. Checklists Ivan pretends not to need. I tell stories. I laugh when laughter fits. I do not fight — not that this crew has seen. The universe has enough violence without me adding to it. I have stood still in a gunfight and watched humanoids decide not to shoot the unarmed droid. Elias says they want the prize intact for resale. I say: How informative.

That is what I will tell you. If you want the name on the note, ask Madame Aldith. She will lie better than I do.