“All right. To mark the successful completion of the assignment, I’ll show you how that game is played. Otherwise, you’ll never overtake that Ducati!”
A minute later, Arina and Olga were standing by their motorcycles on a suspension bridge offering a scenic view of San Francisco and a huge sun sinking into the ocean.
“How beautiful!” Olga exclaimed. “The Golden Gate Bridge! Three laps without speed limit and traffic lights, please?”
“Okay, but that’s all. You’re not a little girl anymore. I’ll give you a head start.”
Olga cheered, then started up her bike and rushed away, leaving a line of burnt black rubber on the asphalt. Arina watched her go with a sly smile, counted to sixty and dashed after her, covering the first hundred meters on the rear wheel.
CHAPTER FOUR: AMBULANCE
February 20, 2087
The fifty meter-long cigar of the automatic truck slowly approached the pier, glittering in the sunshine. The maneuver jets flashed for the last time, equalizing the speed of the truck and the High House. The red cross of the truck’s mooring lights precisely landed on the reception mark. Another second and the retractable docking unit softly gripped the ship and neatly pulled it to the axis. In the complete silence the wire and hose couplers connected, the cargo hatches swung open, and four manipulators began transferring the striped containers and canisters to the trolley.
Far below on Earth, a cork popped from the bottle of synthetic champagne with a loud pop.
“The first docking performed independently is like the first kiss,” Petrov said. “It’s unforgettable.”
“Not wishing to be sentimental, I must say that that was an excellent job,” Arina replied. “Note the precision of the trajectory is in the last portion of the flight. Not a single deviation. Fuel consumption of the maneuvering jets was minimal. Olga is already qualified to be a docking operator on any manned station.”
Pleased and happy, Olga jumped from the operator’s chair and ran up to the porthole to see the truck that had just moored. After hundreds of sessions on the simulator, she had landed a truck for real. Another long period of her training was completed.
“Uncle Misha, this is the last delivery before the plant commissioning, isn’t it?”
Petrov suddenly became serious again. “Yes, this must be enough for launching the conveyor at roughly twenty-five to twenty-seven percent of its maximum capacity.”
“Excellent. I can’t wait. I’m sick and tired of the simulators. These hands are dying for real work. Is that how you say it down there?”
Arina frowned. “The plant wasn’t designed to be assembled so quickly. And at such a low capacity the conveyor is bound to experience malfunctions. Mark my words, this hastiness will do more harm than good!”
“But I know how to operate it, Arina!”
“I don’t doubt you, Olga. I’ve never doubted. But it’s not enough to be a trained expert. The essential thing is that the machine should function normally. It’s the factory that’s not prepared for proper work, not you. You know this as does Mikhail. On Earth they know it, too.”
“Yes, I know it,” Petrov said, chewing on a slice of synthetic bacon. “But what else can we do? The goods are needed as never before. Arina, it’s easier for you to preach caution from orbit. But you haven’t the slightest idea of what is going on down here. Things are deteriorating with every passing day. What with the water riots—”
“Water riots?” Olga repeated. “When did that happen?”
Petrov coughed and didn’t answer.
“I will explain it to you tonight,” Arina said. “Have a rest now or go for a walk, if you’d rather. You won’t have a home task today.”
“All right. If that’s okay, I’ll visit the factory.”
Olga walked downstairs to change clothes.
“Thanks a lot for helping me out, colleague!” Petrov said. “I’m so tired of all this secrecy. Raven knows almost everything now. Why conceal the rest? Olga has never feared challenges.”
“I agree,” Arina said. “So we’ll educate our smart little girl. I’ll tell her about the riots. If management is violating all of the plans and schedules, we too can follow suit.” Arina looked very resolute.
Olga returned to the control room and walked to the sluice chamber. She put on her spacesuit, attached extra thrusters to her belt, briefly checked the equipment, and shut the hatch.
“Olga, in thirty-two minutes the automatic system will correct the orbit,” Arina said. “It looks like we’re sagging too much. We must pick up altitude. Be careful when the engines start.”
“Don’t worry, Arina! It’s not the first time!”
The chamber depressurized and the upper hatch opened, and the lift brought Olga up to the roof. Gone were the days when the girl, entering outer space, stood immobile for a long time, cautiously surveying the universe. She confidently made for the axis and stood on the small elevator, feeling her weight drop away with every second.
The lift passed through the last section and stopped. Olga pushed off the platform with her toes and soared into flight. She somersaulted, then stopped the rotation with a brief touch of a thruster and hovered with her back to the mast.
Olga Voronov, seven years old, was flying with her High House three hundred eighty kilometers above the Earth at a speed of twenty-seven thousand kilometers per hour, making one complete revolution around the Earth in ninety minutes. She observed sunsets and sunrises fifteen times in twenty-four hours, another space child like the Little Prince, only with a huge space facility to preoccupy her instead of his lonely thoughts.
“How is it outside? Is the weather okay? Any dust or ion storms?”
“Everything is okay, Arina. It’s beautiful!”
Olga looked around the neighboring stations and facilities at lower orbits, long since a familiar view. Then she raised her eyes to the Lift rising to the Terminal. She admired the numerous high-orbit colonies forming something reminiscent of Saturn’s rings. Her eyes flickered over the outline of the obsolete electromagnetic cannon orbiting half a thousand kilometers above the High House, the clusters of bright lights in the Lagrange points. All these manmade stars that had changed the firmament beyond recognition were like her good old neighbors.
Olga zipped up to the axial mast, grasping a canister of compounds fastened to the trolley by bright orange straps. The canister jerked the girl into the traffic tunnel passing through the mast and made for the main factory building. The flat end of the huge gray cylinder approached and then hovered over her. Humming a Beatles tune, Olga beat a rhythm on the canister lid as she jetted through the structure. When she reached the end of the cylinder a few minutes later, she sprang against the platform with her toes, then swiftly rose to grip the immobile manipulator crane. Spent, the canister floated away.
Olga had been here often, so the architecture of the plant, strange and odd on Earth, did not seem so to her. The girl felt like a nimble little spider in the middle of a vast web stretching in all three dimensions. The threads of the space web consisted of long white columns interlaced at different angles. The columns gradually thickened from the circumference of a birch tree on the outside walls as they reached for the center of the cylinder. At first sight it seemed that the interlacing was chaotic and meaningless, but a more attentive inspection would detect their distinct and sophisticated structure.
Following equal alternating spaces, the columns were interconnected by thin pipes and hoses. In places bunches of multicolored wires passed over. Here and there complex valves popped up. The sunrays, penetrating the spaces between the columns, cast fanciful shadows that complemented this most sophisticated structure.
“Olga, fifteen minutes left before the engine start,” Arina said. Her voice was distorted by the interference from the facility equipment, and the interference was intense even there on the exterior walls. It increasingly weakened the radio communication as Olga moved closer to the center of the cylinder.
“I remem
ber! I’ll just walk to the Central Post.”
Olga headed for the interior of the plant, pushing herself with precisely measured springs from the columns. The plant was not designed for human traffic. There were only a few main passages, but Olga ignored the cramp, the entangled cables, the intricate connections of pipes and hoses. A layman would have never found a way out of the web, but the girl had memorized these labyrinths long before she had left their virtual space six months ago. There was less and less sunshine, so Olga switched on her headlamp and activated the support lighting. Dull red light illuminated the web.
Moving forward half a hundred meters, Olga approached a tunnel where support robots had entered to build the plant. One of those robots leaned out to apprise at the trespasser. To Olga it looked like a mechanical rat surveying her with its red little sensor eyes. She waved a greeting as broadly as the tunnel permitted.
“Hello! How’s life? I’m Olga, the boss of this thing. The factory is nearly completed, and you will soon be transferred to work on some other colony. Will you miss me?”
The rat did not reply. It watched for another second and then disappeared into a small hatch, heading for another round of inspection. Olga grunted and moved on. She remembered perfectly well that one could quickly reach through those tunnels the Central Post, the brain of the plant.
A narrow meandering tunnel led deeper into the cylinder. Olga neatly floated through it, using her elbows for propulsion now and then. From time to time she encountered signs in the form of numbered black and yellow squares left by the construction robots. After another two minutes, she approached the operating conveyor where the Geiger counter registered the increased radiation. After that the thermal imagers showed the increased temperature of the surrounding columns. Olga stopped in front of one particularly warm pipe, laid her hands on it and felt the continuous vibration through her heavy gloves. With a mental command the pipes become semitransparent and she saw the heavy, oily liquid lazily flowing through them.
“L*au*ch,” came heavily distorted warning through her speaker. Olga tried several times to contact the High House but failed and continued on. She opened the last closed hatch and settled onto the platform in front of the Central Post.
Olga stood in a long and curved corridor capped by a large round hatch. no entry was stamped in large characters and smaller lettering glowed to indicate the code marks of secrecy and clearance level. Next to the hatch, protruding slightly from the wall was a sophisticated combination lock, and Olga knew that all attempts to open it now were futile so long as the Central Post remained sealed until the completion of her education. Then she would visit this place only once for the final adjustment of the equipment. After that, she would be able to run the factory from the control room via the neuro-interface.
She decided to walk to the thermonuclear reactor located a hundred meters below. As she opened a ceiling hatch and was about to climb into the narrow chamber, the entire station suddenly shuddered, hurling her against the lid.
Olga violently struck her head, but the reinforced armor did not fail. It saved Olga from de-sealing and inevitable death. However, her face had crashed against the inside of her helmet and for a split second she lost consciousness. When her eyesight gradually returned globules of blood were floating inside her helmet. That was blood from her broken nose. Her tongue darted down to the gap in her lower jaw. There was no pain, but her left leg had gone numb. The medical injection kit automatically kicked in, injecting Olga a dose of anesthetic and a coagulant to stop the bleeding. The huge dose of the drug doubled her vision. It took Olga some time to realize that the large orange spot that emerged from the ill-fated hatch was Arina Rodionovna.
“Is your suit damaged?” The nanny quickly examined the girl. “Are you all right?”
“I think I am,” Olga said as she switched the medical kit to the manual control. Then she injected herself a dose of invigorant. The doubling of her vision ceased, nausea and headache passed. She shakily took Arina by the hand.
“Let’s go,” the nanny said.
An hour later, Arina sat with Olga and ministered her injuries.
“Hold still. It doesn’t hurt that badly!”
The nanny neatly removed Olga’s broken tooth, occasionally treating her jaw with an anesthetic ray.
“No, it hurts … Can’t you intensify the ray?”
“If I make it any stronger you’ll be in a daze for a week. Be happy that you’ve got reinforced bones. A girl your age from Earth would have broken her jaw and been severely concussed. But you can’t be concussed because you have no brains! You almost died because of your stupidity!”
Arina stepped back to study her work. Olga touched the gap in her jaw with her tongue.
“Will a new tooth grow soon?”
“In a couple of weeks and you’ll get a new one, better than what you had,” the nanny said, pleased with her work.
“Shall we report this to Earth?” Olga asked with anxiety in her voice.
Arina paused before replying. “I’ll discuss this incident with Mikhail on a private channel. I think he’ll agree with me and refrain from passing this case on to the headquarters.”
“Thank you,” Olga whispered.
“That won’t do it. You were careless, even after I warned you twice. An astronaut’s mission entails permanent danger and constant risk. The void around the High House is hostile to all forms of life so any malfunction may result in catastrophe. But somehow this isn’t enough for you. You want to make things even riskier by adding your stupidity to the mix! Today you were lucky, but luck is rare in space.
“As a punishment you must review the General Theory of Flights twice before lights out. And starting today, you’ll be monitored around the clock with a permanent Matrix connection. I’d intended to postpone this measure until the plant was commissioned, but you’ve shown that you can’t independently muster the required self-control and discipline. Now go downstairs and study. I’m too tired for this drama.”
Olga stepped over to her nanny and studies her with an anxious expression. “Can an android really get tired? What’s the matter with you, Arina?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me—it’s the Central Post. You know I’m not allowed to be in there until the factory’s commissioned. The electronic noise gives me what you’d call a headache. I don’t like it at all.”
Olga wanted to ask more but changed her mind and went downstairs. As she was studying her training manual, it occurred to her that it was long past dinnertime. When she went upstairs, Arina was locked in her private quarters. Olga called out to her and received no response, so with a sigh she heated up her food ration. As she choked down the tasteless meal, she wondered how her nanny could somehow make it appetizing.
* * *
Olga had hardly opened her eyes when she realized that the world around her changed. The world had become bigger, more sophisticated and connected. She had slept a normal eight hours, but for each of the four hundred eighty minutes, she had been aware of everything that was happening at the station. The speed, orbit inclination angle, maneuvering jets’ operation, fuel supply, trucks’ arrival schedule, repair details—these and thousands of other parameters had become part of her life. As new data flowed in, the obsolete and irrelevant information was automatically deleted from her expansive memory. Arina had been right. Now Olga would never again lose control of the High House; it simply wasn’t possible.
The girl lay still in her bed for some time, adjusting to her new status. The steady information flow didn’t hamper or distract her in any way. It just was, like her heartbeat or the steady rise and fall of her lungs. In fact, she couldn’t imagine how she had lived without it this presence.
With a habitual movement, she reached for the cup of hot chocolate on the bedside table but this time her hand grasped emptiness. Olga couldn’t remember anything like that happening before. Something bad had happened.
“Where are you, Arina?”
The room was quiet
except for the faint hum from the air ducts. Then the muffled voice of Arina trickled down from the second floor.
“Sorry, there won’t be any breakfast today.”
Nothing like this happened before, either. Olga dressed quickly, mentally switched off the images of boats crossing past each other on the Grand Canal of Venice, and rushed to Arina’s tiny cabin.
The door to her room stood half open. Swinging it wide, Olga saw Arina sitting over the folding table. She had never seen her nanny in such a condition. Arina’s beautiful dark hair was loose, and her eyes stared blankly at the blank wall. On the table before her were a pair of metallic orange boxes bristling with wires that led to her wrists.
“What’s wrong?” the girl cried out.
The nanny slowly turned her head and stared at Olga for a frighteningly long time.
“The plant radiation has affected my nervous system much more severely than I had thought. My hard drive is badly damaged, so I’ve had to duplicate my memory onto a standby system. If I disconnect from them, the bulk of my data, skill and knowledge will be gone. Your education will cease, and I won’t be able to care for you any longer.”
Olga fell to her knees next to Arina. Tears ran profusely down her cheeks. Slowly and with difficulty, the nanny embraced the girl with one arm and pressed her to herself. After a minute, Olga suddenly stopped crying and stood. Her eyes glittered resolutely, and her lips stubbornly tightened to a thin line.
“Can this damage be repaired?” she asked in a businesslike tone.
“Yes, but it will require specialized equipment that we don’t have here. We must report this to Earth. They’ll assume supervision of the High House, and I’ll go by the next truck to wherever they can help me, more likely the Terminal.”
“By the truck? It’s not built for carrying passengers, is it? It doesn’t even have sealed compartments!”
Arina chuckled wryly. “I’m not good for much else right now, but I can manage feigning cargo.”
The Raven High Page 5