InterstellarNet 03 Enigma Page 9

  He wouldn’t go near them, much less be alone with them. Who would?

  AIs were colleagues, often friends. Certainly Corrigan was a friend, if not the sort of buddy with whom he could share a carouse.

  So why not AI-smart robots?

  Robots, somehow, were different. Because they would be … competitors? Possible successors? Maybe. That was only part of it. The reasoned part. The noncreepy part. He wasn’t the type to imagine things going bump in the night—but neither did he see any reason to create them. Give enough smarts to robots, and would they be so different from zombies and vampires?

  If dreading smart robots made him irrational, so be it.

  Lyle waved vaguely, the gesture meant to encompass the claustrophobic bridge. The adjoining multipurpose “cabin,” in which he slept, ate, exercised, and washed, was yet tinier. Betty was all legs. Apart from military couriers, he doubted any ship was faster or offered a greater cruising range. “I feel like a change of scenery.”

  In his mind’s eye, Corrigan shrugged. Lyle took that as “okay.” Or, maybe, as “wacky human.”

  On snowballs like the one Betty was approaching, one docked more so than one landed. He felt his ship shudder, just a bit, as Corrigan fired grapples. By then deceleration had ceased, and with it any semblance of gravity. He waited, already suited up, in the air lock.

  As soon as Corrigan had winched them down to the snowball, almost before the AI could dispatch survey bots from a cargo hold, Lyle was through the outer hatch. With one gauntleted hand, he patted the larger-than-life figure painted on the hull beside the air lock. For luck. Betty had never failed him.

  The distant Sun, although merely a spark, outshone the full Moon seen from Earth. With a bit of amplification by his visor, he could see fine. But that spark, so near the horizon, would soon set. Hills and rubble piles cast long, inky shadows across the pockmarked landscape. Wherever the Sun managed to reach, the surface glinted: a brittle, frozen froth of ice mottled with tarry streamers. His HUD declared the surface temperature to be a balmy fifty. In degrees absolute.

  Mining ship 129 stood, looming, perhaps a hundred meters distant, almost midway to the freakishly close horizon. All struts and pipes and reagent tanks, MS129 was as much a factory/smeltery/refinery as a vessel. By comparison, his ship—no matter its thirty meters of fuel tank, reaction-mass tank, and muscular fusion drive—was a toy. Just a whole lot faster than the lumbering miner.

  Dozens of robots, motionless, lay strewn across the landscape. That couldn’t be good.

  Whatever had happened here had happened fast. The first thing a mining ship did was construct tanks to receive what it extracted. He saw only two storage tanks, neither complete.

  Lyle’s own bots, spiderlike, scuttled toward the miner, rolling out and staking safety cable for him and deploying work lights. On his HUD, status indicators glowed green. He gave the bots a fifty-meter head start before following, “climbing” hand over hand, his safety tethers clipped to the cable. Sans tethers, one careless twitch here could set him adrift in space.

  By the time he reached the mining vessel, bots had already begun to encircle it with cable. Moving clockwise, he began a methodical survey. Dubbing where the main cable met the incomplete loop twelve o’clock, it was between two and three where he first spotted a problem.

  A more-or-less oval expanse, about one meter by two, about six meters from the ground, looked … weird. Stuff had boiled/bubbled/spewed from MS129’s hull, only to congeal into an amoeboid glob. In this meager gravity, the melt had frozen faster than anything like an icicle had had the chance to take shape.

  Per the schematics on his HUD, a primary computing node was just beneath.

  A meteoroid strike? Something internal overloaded, shorted out, or otherwise overheating? Maybe. Didn’t matter. A single comp node gone bad would not disable the ship. It carried three more computing nodes just like this one.

  “Ouch,” Corrigan remarked. He was monitoring via Lyle’s helmet camera and a radio link.

  Lyle resumed his circuit around the inert vessel. At four o’clock on his imaginary clock face, he plunged into the mining ship’s long, black shadow. Methodically he surveyed, as the bots directed work lights wherever he faced. Nothing seemed amiss until, between five and six: a second melted-and-recongealed mass. A second main computing node.

  Had a meteoroid struck one node, drilled through the ship, to exit through a second node? That wasn’t impossible—just damned improbable. He was surprised at Corrigan’s failure to comment.

  “Are you seeing this?” Lyle netted.

  A static hiss was the only answer. Interference from all the metal in the mining ship’s hull? Perhaps. Even so, the link should have been relayed around the ship from bot to bot.

  With a shrug and a yank on his safety tether, Lyle resumed his survey.

  Two comp nodes down, he mused, but the hull seemed otherwise intact. That should leave MS129 with a pair of functioning comp nodes. Unless those, too, had somehow—

  Something jabbed Lyle in the back. Something hard. One of his damned robots?

  On the emergency radio band, a synthed voice instructed, “Do not move.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Hunters: the intelligent species native to the dim red-dwarf Barnard’s Star system (see related entry). Hunters are commonly referred to as Snakes, after the constellation—Ophiuchus, “The Serpent Holder”—in which Barnard’s Star can (with a telescope) be seen from Earth. In formal/diplomatic usage, for their native world of K’vith, they are known as K’vithians.

  Hunters evolved from pack-hunting carnivores. Their early culture centered on clan structures, an apparent extension of pre-intelligence packs. From that genesis has developed an economic system of pure laissez-faire, caveat-emptor capitalism, centered on competing clan-based corporations. The dominant group dynamics are territoriality between clans—in modern times, the contested “territory” can be commercial rather than geographical in nature—and competition for status within and among clans. Usually of relevance only to the clans, these rivalries have on occasion impacted interstellar relations.

  A Hunter enclave exists on the Uranian moon of Ariel, settled by survivors of an unsuccessful Solar System incursion (see related entries, “Himalia Incident” and “Ariel Colony”). Following eighteen years of intrusive United Planets supervision, the Hunter settlement has been granted broader (but still limited) self-rule.

  —Internetopedia

  • • • •

  The woman sat alone in the all but deserted cafeteria, picking indifferently at the tossed salad on her meal tray. At the soft zip-zip of shoes against grip strips, she glanced up. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No,” Carl answered, arching an eyebrow. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Because the warden made a beeline for me.”

  Beeline? Earther slang, he supposed. Warden, he understood. As someone had once noted, the most anxious man in a prison.

  “UP liaison,” Carl corrected. That was his job title, for the past couple of years, anyway, though the change had fooled no one. If Ariel was no longer a POW camp, if its residents had been granted new privileges, neither was this the typical United Planets protectorate.

  Nor would it ever be. Not on his watch.

  The young woman still eyed him skeptically. Only she was no more young than he was middle-aged.

  “Let’s try this again.” Carl offered his hand. “Carl Rowland. We don’t see many new faces here.” Not human faces, anyway. The Snakes bred like rabbits. That was another thing he worried about, no matter that their population on Ariel barely topped twenty thousand. “I just stopped by to introduce myself and ask how civilization is faring.”

  “Grace DiMeara.” She set down her fork to shake hands. Hardly anyone her age did that anymore. “Who says I’m from civilization?”

  Truth was, he had known her name. He’d known her flight plan, the ship’s registration, and her passenger’s stated business here. He knew
that Grace was thirty-five, though something (her eyes? The massive, antique bracelet? The facial nanornaments so understated he barely saw them?) made her seem much older. No ship landed on this rock without a thorough review first. Under his classified title, UPIA station chief, all that intel came through him.

  “Simple process of elimination,” he said. “You’re not from around here.”

  She had a nice laugh. “If you’re planning to chat me up, you may as well have a seat.”

  He sat. “So, routine flight?”

  “That’s how I like ’em.” Grace reclaimed her fork and went back to pushing lettuce shreds around her bowl. “Anyway, as routine as it could be with the owner aboard.”

  “Corrine Elman. The worlds-famous reporter.”

  “That’s her.”

  “Too bad. You had to keep everything shipshape.”

  “Mmm.” Grace fixed her eyes on her salad. Not speaking ill of the boss.

  He held in a grin. Grace wouldn’t know it, but he and Corinne went way back. To call Corinne a slob would be too kind. But that was from another life, another era. When he had gone by a different name, had worn a different face. The year he’d spent as Corinne’s personal pilot had been among the happiest in his life—up until the Snakes showed up.

  In the crazy, desperate actions that had followed, he had caught the eye of some UPIA types. Who better to forever bury his past than the United Planet’s premier spy agency? Where better to lie low than on this godforsaken, ass-end-of-nowhere rock?

  And so, here he was. The warden. And Corinne, his supposed friend, whom he had not seen in years—the single person outside the UPIA who knew the old and the new him—hadn’t bothered to message that she was coming.

  “How long will you be on Ariel?” Carl asked.

  Grace shrugged. “You’ll have to ask the boss.”

  “You know? I might just do that.”

  CHAPTER 17

  In a series of glides and hops, Corinne followed her escorts. Only her hops, as often as not, bounced her off the corridor’s low ceiling. Too many of her glides did their best to become pratfalls.

  While her Snake escorts moved with an understated elegance.

  When had she last been farther from Earth than the zenith of a suborbital jaunt? Too long, clearly. She had just begun to reacquire micro-gee skills—and to keep down food—when her ship had reached low-grav little Ariel. Whereupon she discovered new ways to flounder.

  That she still owned a long-range interplanetary ship was fairly ridiculous, no matter that renting it out made it a decent investment. But to sell Odyssey would mean admitting she no longer expected to launch on short notice, unconstrained by commercial flight schedules, to chase a Big Story. That she had ceased to be a journalist.

  So you are still a journalist? Then quit whining. Quit wallowing. Observe.

  At least act like a journalist lest anyone wonder why you’re here.

  What did she see? A windowless corridor. Without retinal enhancements things would have seemed dim. Other than off Earth, the passageway could have been most anywhere. Not so the Snakes, streaming both ways.

  Snakes: two arms, two legs, and a head. Upright posture. And there any resemblance to humans ended. Whippet-thin. Nostrils set flat in the plane of the face—and a third, upward-gazing eye set near the apex of the skull. Hairless and iridescent-scaled. Glimpses of retractable talons in each fingertip (and, as they wore sandals, each toe). The tallest Snakes stood a quarter meter shorter than she—and she struggled to aspire to petite.

  Not about you, Corinne chided herself.

  Clumsily, she hopped/glided/careened after her minders.

  Filter plugs irritated her nostrils without keeping out the smells of rotten eggs, freshly struck matches, and all manner of other sulfurous stinks. Collectively, bouquet de Snake. Aptly, fire and brimstone. Every whiff raised bad memories.

  They traveled along a main “road.” Lesser tunnels split off every ten or so meters, marked by wall plaques labeled (in English and, equally impenetrable for her, Mandarin and clan speak) for life support, power generation, and other basic services. To her right, beyond an arc of clear wall, stretched a vast underground farm. To her left, a few bounding paces later, a second plasteel wall looked over an ancient crater. In that hollow sprawled factories, pipelines, and a fusion reactor. Spacesuited workers teemed around a construction whose facade looked newly patched.

  How many Snakes had she seen? Several dozen, at the least. Maybe hundreds. Adults and children. Workers. Families. The ones sporting nape-of-the-neck ridges were male. Clad, regardless of gender, in belted, one-piece jumpsuits. The variety in colors and adornments designated schools, civic groups, and utility workers.

  But it was the uniforms of Snake officialdom that drew Corinne’s eye, the black garb of the police that made her want to cringe. She had had too much experience with Snake warriors. In twenty years, she had not forgotten.

  No matter how much she tried.

  A clumsy hop sent her tumbling. “Sorry,” she said.

  “Careful,” said an escort. And he was the talkative member of the pair.

  She had visited Ariel before. Visited the Foremost before. It wasn’t much farther to the clan leader’s office, she remembered, not needing to access the map download in her implant.

  And she had a job to do here, if not what the Foremost might imagine.

  “Walt,” Corinne netted. “I’m almost there.”

  In her mind’s eye, seated behind a battered wooden desk, an avatar appeared. As always, his suit was two centuries out of style.

  “I’m ready,” Walt said, tapping an imaginary cigarette out of a virtual box.

  Turning a corner, she came upon a foyer offering human-and Snake-sized chairs. The Foremost’s office was just beyond.

  “Here,” an escort said. His eyes glazed, telltale of an implant-mediated infosphere consultation.

  Wait here, she supposed that meant. Clan-speak implied verbs. Only the more fluid English speakers managed to use verbs appropriately. Glithwah did.

  The escort reconnected with the physical world. “Arblen Ems Firh Glithwah, Foremost, in acknowledgment of your arrival.”

  Definitely, wait here.

  Corinne decided: I don’t think so.

  • • • •

  I’m ready.

  So, anyway, Glithwah supposed the message would indicate, in preemptory tone if perhaps not in precise wording. Her implant had shown only a sender ID. Glithwah dismissed the alert, the message unopened, staying focused on her labors. She didn’t have to see this woman, even after agreeing to an interview, although to refuse now could raise suspicions.

  None of which elevated the human’s appointment to the importance of Glithwah’s work.

  I’m tired of waiting.

  The second message might have said that. Or not. Glithwah dismissed it, too, unread, concentrating on the latest spate of industrial accidents. More than she could explain—other than by attribution to United Planets saboteurs. And, perhaps related: the pattern of attempts to penetrate the colony’s secure networks. (Or, the experts told her, at least two patterns. One grouping of failed intrusions, almost certainly, was by their jailers. Other would-be intruders would be her rivals within the clan.)

  And if a surge in accidents had not occupied her thoughts, other important matters would. The productivity of mines, factories, and farms. Demographic data. Staffing trends and labor shortages. Graduation rates and skills deficits. Macroeconomic statistics. Current events on Ariel and across this solar system …

  The details seemed endless, and yet the torrent of data somehow kept managing to grow. It was too much to wrap her brain around. Even offloading much of the task to her implant. Even netting to trusted allies. Even delegating simulations and analyses to trusted AIs.

  But maybe with an AI in her brain? Not netted and bandwidth-limited. Physically embedded, thoroughly integrated. Though they remained a tiny minority, more and more humans were doing that.
The Augmented, the changelings called themselves. Two minds, one never sleeping, in one body. A temptation, every now and again, just for a moment ….

  And if the notion weren’t disgusting? It wouldn’t have mattered. Glithwah’s United Planets overlords would never allow the clan access to such advanced technology.

  And so, summary graphs, tables, and animations covered her office walls. As for her aspirations for the clan and her progress toward achieving them, the walls gave no hints.

  At a hesitant knock, Glithwah glanced at the door. “What?” she snapped.

  Cluth Monar entered. The aide said, “Foremost, that woman in readiness for her interview.”

  Mind to mind, that woman would have been fine. Too kind, in fact: Corinne Elman merited no courtesy. Aloud, however, the phrase lacked discipline.

  No matter that humans could not reproduce any Hunter language. (Absent the gene tweaks to grow an extra pair of vocal cords. A handful of diplomats had had the procedure done.) Plenty of humans understood clan-speak. Elman had never demonstrated that aptitude, but Glithwah had her suspicions. And if the woman didn’t understand? Doubtless she had a translator AI netted in.

  As Glithwah would link in Loshtof to interpret and analyze the journalist’s every word and gesture. Her AI was but a netted command away.

  (No matter that Glithwah had long ago trained herself to think in all major human languages, and even to intuit their often absurd units of measure. “Know your enemy” was clan protocol long before Sun Tzu scribbled The Art of War.)

  “Respect for my guest,” she growled at Monar.

  Because she would not have that woman stirring up the human public over needless slights. A bit of waiting, though, to put the human in her place? To remind who was Foremost of the clan and who a mere gossipmonger? That was appropriate. Perhaps even expected.

  In English this time, her voice pitched to carry to the anteroom, Glithwah ordered, “In five minutes, show in Ms. Elman.”

  With his head bowed and shoulders hunched, Cluth Monar turned to scamper away.