“I’m OK!” she shouted into the radio. She shone her helmet lamp around.
She was standing in a gap in the jumble of rocks, on a shelf that ended in another drop into the dark. Refracted sunlight outlined the overhanging rock like a roof.
Dos Santos’s helmet poked over the lip where Elfrida had fallen. “You don’t have to shout.”
“You can’t see from up there, but it’s a kind of cave. This big rock must have stuck here during the landslide, so the area in front of it didn’t get filled in. And I’m standing on a shelf. It looks like there may have been a natural crevice at the bottom of the scarp. So we could go even further down if we need to. The temperature has a lot to do with topography, right? Lower equals cooler.”
“How far down are you now?”
“I could get out if I jumped.”
“Then I’m coming down.”
Dos Santos slid over the edge, pulling the bundle of toasters with her. Elfrida caught her. For a moment, dos Santos’s momentum pressed them together, helmet to helmet. Elfrida quickly stepped back.
“Let’s stay here for now,” dos Santos said, after inspecting the deeper crevice at the edge of the shelf. “I’m getting a suit temperature reading of thirty-nine degrees. That’s nothing, compared to what it was out there.”
Dos Santos unwrapped the toasters and shook out the parasol. She checked the integrated status screen on the parasol’s underside. “Fully charged. I’m going to hook up the toasters. Cross your fingers that this works.”
“If it does?”
“We won’t have enough oomph to send a Mayday off-planet. But I bet we can get through to Wrightstuff, Inc. If they’re still alive.”
xli.
Doug came to, lying on the bridge. He couldn’t breathe.
A medibot’s headpart swam into his field of vision. Then the face of Jake Vlajkovic-Gates replaced it. “Don’t try to talk, sir. You got shot.”
Doug’s back bowed off the ground, but he felt no pain, only pressure. He understood that the medibot was performing emergency surgery on him. It was the latest-generation bot that went with President Doug everywhere.
I killed him.
Distant noises peppered his anesthetized daze. Automatic gunfire. Screams.
Jake stood over him with a sawn-off shotgun. A Secret Service weapon. “I won’t let them get you, sir,” he said.
Doug wanted to tell him that he looked just like his father, and that Mike had been a great man, betrayed by those with more money than him, just like the labor organizers of old. But then Jake was gone, and a shadow stooped over Doug. Bambi eyes blinked above a buck-toothed smile of attachment sockets.
Jake’s shotgun roared.
“Don’t get me mad at ya, kid,” said a voice from the vinge-class’s integrated speaker. “Hey, you; Doug. Which one are you?”
“He’s a hero,” Jake said. “Please, Gonzo! Don’t hurt him.”
“Ain’t gonna,” said the phavatar. “I need him to do something for me. Hey, Doug. You listening?”
Doug achieved a minute nod.
“Tell your people to stop shooting. And? Point me to the way out.”
Doug did not credit what he’d just heard. He had to be hallucinating. He persuaded the medibot to crank his stretcher up to an angle. It continued to suture things inside his chest, jerking him this way and that. The prodding sensations were real. So maybe the rest of this was real, too.
He saw the vinge-class squatting over him, and Jake hugging his shotgun, and the deserted length of Main Street. Shattered windows, trampled flags. Everyone had fled, except the vinge-classes, which were prancing around like they owned the place.
A spark of rage; a sucking ocean of indifference.
The monster squatting over him said, “Last chance. We are leaving. We can do it the easy way … or we can breach your pressurization and kill every last motherfucker in here.”
Doug could not speak, but he could subvocalize. He used the public channel, hoping the Heidegger program would pick it up and know that he was doing what it wanted. ~This is Doug. Clear the airlock. Our guests are leaving.
He had the medibot wheel him down off the bridge. The vinge-classes frolicked around him. He thought that if he wasn’t so tired, he would find some meaning in their whirling movements. The Heidegger program was speaking in sign language to itself. But Doug had no clue how to interpret it.
Jake cringed close to the stretcher.
~Stick with me, kid, Doug subvocalized.
The phavatars moved off in a swarm as Doug directed them to the front gate. It was not easy to find, hidden behind River Street Elementary and the public gymnasium. Now, it was also blocked by the cars and tractors that President Doug had led outside for his historic victory. The men who should have been returning them to their places had already fled. The phavatars climbed over the vehicles.
~Don’t let the airlock hit you on the way out, Doug subvocalized exhaustedly.
The phavatars packed themselves into the airlock’s chamber. It was big enough to hold them all.
Consciousness fading in and out, he stayed right there until he was sure they were gone.
★
A few hours later, he was awake again. Drugged to the eyeballs, but coherent, he had himself propped up in the White House situation room. On the monitors, the surviving Secret Service folks accompanied Dopey Doug along a half-finished corridor in Level Zero. The rest of the Dougs had sent him out to boost morale.
“You’re the president now,” Doug had told him.
“I can’t do it,” Dopey had said. “I’ve got all the charisma of a foamcore moose.”
“And that ideally qualifies you for the top job.”
“Can’t you do it?”
“Nope. Listen, being boring is a good thing in a politician. It entails less risk of murder and mayhem.”
If Dopey was uncomfortable in his new role, it did not show on the surveillance monitors. Stimheads and sim addicts clustered around him, their fears soothed by his presence.
It would be a while before Wrightstuff, Inc. could do without its Dougs.
Well, they had to start somewhere.
Doug turned to his wife, who’d just come into the situation room. “I thought there would’ve been more casualties,” she said.
“The vinge-classes didn’t hurt anyone. A few people were hurt in the stampede. Some friendly fire.”
“Why? Why didn’t they go after the purebloods, like they did at UNVRP HQ?”
He shrugged. “Be glad,” he said.
“I am. But why did they just … leave?”
“I dunno.”
She stood by his shoulder. He pulled the external infrared feed up. There was nothing out there in the crater but ice.
“We have to find them,” she said intensely. “And frag them.”
He hesitated. But if this was to be a new era, honesty had to be part of it.
“Honey, I pinged some people I know on Earth. The discussion is still ongoing: everything’s going through the Belt, via line-of-sight to Ceres. Fifty minutes one way. It’s slow. But we’re working towards a deal. We will give them a share of the He3, in exchange for their support at the UN. There’s gonna be an investigation … of course there is.”
He breathed heavily. His right lung was still intubated. Too much talking made him dizzy. His wife watched him, her expression unreadable.
“We’ll have to cooperate fully with the investigators. Surrender any evidence to them.”
“So why did you let the evidence walk away?”
“Because the alternative was, quote, they’d breach our pressurization and kill every last motherfucker in here.”
“I’m not the one you should be mad at,” she said. And she was right. President Doug had done this. Doug had killed him … and yet he was still mad at him. Go figure.
“I’ve got everyone left alive on this planet looking out for those phavatars,” he said, calmer. “We’ll find ‘em, as long as they don’t st
ray onto the dayside. And why would they do that? They’re the last mobile assets the Heidegger program has on this planet. They’ll try to get away, is my guess. We’ll catch ‘em at Yoshikawa.”
She hugged her elbows. She was a spaceborn woman, lanky and long. Hips like a crane, hair like a Pre-Raphaelite painting.
Doug used his good arm to pull her down onto the stretcher. “You are going to be a bigger part of my life from now on.”
“I’m a clone’s wife, Doug. I know I can’t compete with your brothers for your attention.” The bitter words were spoken without heat.
“It’s not going to be like that anymore.” He kissed her neck. She didn’t pull away. “I was thinking we might try for a baby.”
“A baby baby?”
“That’s right. Not a clone. You’re not gonna be a gestation tank for the next generation of Dougs. I’m thinking of a baby that’s yours and mine … Ours.”
The hard line of her mouth wobbled. He kissed her again.
Ping! Ping! Ping!
“Aw, crap. Gimme a second, honey.” The ping was a text addressed to his secret ‘George Washington’ ID, transmitted via the relay installation on top of Mt. Gotham.
~Yeah, what? he subvocalized irritably.
The comms screen in his HUD area displayed the image of a toaster. Its side panel morphed into a chubby, 3D silver face. It said, “Doug?”
“Eh?” Doug was so surprised he forgot to subvocalize.
“Oh, thank God, you’re alive!”
“Thumbs down. No matter how many times they recycle the Art Deco aesthetic, it still looks clunky. Bye now.”
“What? Oh, you think I’m a marketing poll.” The voice was what you’d expect a toaster to sound like. Crispy at the edges. The transmission quality was poor. “It’s me! Elfrida Goto! Can you please, please help us?”
“Whoa. Aren’t you dead?”
“Not yet.”
“Where are you?”
“79° N, 50° W.”
Doug ordered a signal trace.“79° N, 50° W,” he said aloud. His wife slid off his chair and hurried to the mapping terminal. The terminator sliced a fuzzy line down the middle of the globe of Mercury. Even before the hub came back with coordinates for the signal’s source, roughly the same as those Elfrida had given, Doug knew there was no hope. His wife’s fingertip rested on the globe. The light of the dayside turned her flesh crimson.
“Can you come and pick us up?” Elfrida pleaded. “We’ve taken shelter in the shade of a scarp. But we’re running out of air.”
Doug shook his head, although she could not see him. “We don’t do surface mining, you know? We don’t have any machinery that could last ten minutes out there. I’m … I don’t know what to say. I’m so doggone sorry.”
Could there be some functioning, dayside-capable vehicles left amid the wreckage of the OEMs in the twilight zone? It would be a long shot.
Elfrida’s voice was spidery, far-away. “Oh. I guess I thought, if we can establish contact with someone, everything will be OK. But that’s not how it works, is it? You’re on the same planet, but we might as well be in different galaxies.”
It seemed inhuman to leave her to die out there. It was inhuman. But that was life in space. His wife was shaking her head at him. He had his own people to think of.
“I’m sorry, Elfrida.” He breathed stertorously through his tube. “Listen, if you wanna record a message for your mom or anyone, I’ll make sure it gets to her.”
Pause.
“Um… yes, I’ll do that. Thank you.”
She had said thank you, for leaving her to die. UN manners.
“Doug, there’s someone else here who wants to talk to you. Can I put her on?”
xlii.
While dos Santos talked to Doug, Elfrida tried to compose a message to her parents. It was tough to think of ways to say “I’m trapped on the dayside of Mercury,” without having it sound like “Goodbye.” And she was not saying goodbye. Doug had meant his offer precisely as a chance for her to say goodbye in her own words, but she was not giving up.
But as she struggled to put a positive spin on her plight, the sheer hopelessness of their position overwhelmed her. Her recording turned into an emotional missive, accusing her mother of working for NHRE intelligence and hiding the truth from her family all these years. By the time she hit send, she was sobbing. Snot trickled down her upper lip. With her helmet on, she could not wipe it away.
Dos Santos leapt to her feet and kicked the toaster array, scattering the appliances through the cave. Elfrida flinched. But dos Santos was just venting her frustration.
Squatting, dos Santos put the toasters straight again. “Welp.” Her voice was flat, choked, as if she were so angry she could hardly speak. “Threats didn’t work.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I told him, you can’t just leave us here to die, it’s inhuman. I said I’m gonna smear you all over the system. Cloning is illegal. You’re a crime on legs. He said, laugh. You don’t even have an internet connection.”
“Can’t we use theirs?”
“Not without their permission.”
“Can’t we get through to Yoshikawa Spaceport? There must be someone there.”
“Not with this piece-of-shit transmitter.”
Dos Santos squatted and straightened the toasters, which they’d hooked together with cables carefully picked out of the parasol’s backing. It had taken hours.
“I think that if you had said you were alone,” dos Santos said, glancing at Elfrida, “he would probably have found some way to come get you. So, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t even have tried.”
“Oh God, I don’t think it was that. He just … can’t.”
Dos Santos’s helmet moved from side to side. “He’s mad as hell at me. He called me a traitor to humanity. A useful idiot. A dumb idealist. And a bunch of other things. All rude. All true.”
“He thinks you downloaded the Heidegger program on purpose?”
“Yup. And so will the entire solar system. I’m going to be remembered as a mass murderer. Crazy ex-Marine, undiagnosed PTSD … Sorry, Angie,” dos Santos addressed the dead woman whose identity she had stolen. “I didn’t mean to blacken your name. I wanted you to be remembered as a heroine. A savior.”
“Dos Santos, how were you expecting that to work?”
“Oh.” Dos Santos sighed audibly. “Remember the stross-class?”
Elfrida was thrown by what seemed like a complete change of subject. “What?”
“The stross-class. Fastest, smartest telepresence platform ever built. Sorry to bring back bad memories. Well, the idea was to upgrade those vinge-classes to stross-class.”
“Wow, ma’am. What an excellent idea.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Goto. It doesn’t suit you. The truth, which I am in a position to know and you are not, is that the stross-class got a bad rap. People overreacted to the Galapagos incident. The development program was cancelled, but Derek Lorna, the lead developer, didn’t give up. He and his team at LiRI kept working on the stross-class. He was convinced—he convinced me—that he could build a friendly AI.”
“I guess that would be a major breakthrough.”
“It would be huge! Everyone believes no such thing is possible. Anything with human-equivalent intelligence, or greater, is intrinsically hostile to human goals. Or at best indifferent to them, like those Chinese no-we’re-not-really-AIs. Yadda, yadda, received wisdom, yadda. But friendly AI is possible. I know it. What happened on Callisto proved it. Derek saw Angelica Lin talk those phavatars down.”
“Um, maybe he was lying about what he saw?”
“No. He wasn’t. Those sixty-eight hostages walked out of there alive. How else are you going to explain that? Konstantin’s phavatars became what he had always said they were: friendly AIs. Angelica made it happen. All it takes … is faith.”
“So you thought you were going to replicate the same effect?”
“Chances better than even,”
dos Santos said defiantly.
“All right. I get what happened. Mike Vlajkovic thought the firmware upgrades were jailbreaking software. You thought they were Derek Lorna’s stross-class upgrades, which would turn the vinge-classes into friendly AIs. But when the code was actually installed in the phavatars, it turned out to be none of the above. It was the Heidegger program.”
“Someone screwed up,” dos Santos said, as she had back at UNVRP HQ.
“Did you tell Doug this stuff just now?”
“Yeah, some. But he stopped listening after ‘friendly AI.’ Which I guess I understand.”
“Call him back. Tell him everything.”
“No,” dos Santos said. “I’m not telling that asshole anything. I am going to get off this planet myself, and find out exactly what went wrong. I am not going to die here!”
Elfrida instinctively reached out to her. She let her glove fall back before the gesture took form. She tried to figure out whether this changed their own situation.
Her gaze drifted over their pathetic stash of supplies. All those snacks and drinks from the concession stand, which they couldn’t consume, because they were stuck in EVA suits. And that mysterious pelican case, which dos Santos had lugged all the way from UNVRP HQ, and salvaged from the Sunmersible, heavy though it was, and cumbersome.
“Dos Santos?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s in that case?”
“Never you mind,” dos Santos snapped.
Elfrida was just about to get angry at her when the toaster array trilled in her helmet. They both jumped.
“Hey, Ms. Goto. This is Doug. Uh, Gloomy Doug.”
“Where’s Grumpy Doug?” Elfrida said.
“Busy. Things are not looking good here. I just thought you might want to know that our radiation-monitoring equipment has detected a spike a couple thousand klicks out. The neutron/gamma ratio matches the signature of an enhanced-radiation warhead.”
“So?” Elfrida said.
“Oh, fuck,” said dos Santos.
“What?”
“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what that implies,” Gloomy Doug sighed. “On the bright side, the Crash Test Dummy is no longer visible to our ground-based instruments. That could mean it is currently around the far side of the planet, but our operating assumption is that it got nuked.”
The Sol System Renegades Quadrilogy: Books 1-4 of the Space Opera Thriller Series Page 90