Commander Criswell cut her off, somehow appearing to be standing steady despite the lack of gravity. “Sometimes coincidences actually happen. And maybe not that much of a coincidence, if the rumors about Second Gustafson are true.”
You should know better than to listen to rumors, XO. But she kept her mouth shut.
After a couple of years onboard, she was finally used to the XO’s personality. But it had taken a while. The Societans on Ceres had won her over with their warmth and kindness – the promise that a new humanity wouldn’t just be free from violence, but free from conflict of any kind. That freed from the shackles of Earth culture, by our very nature humans would want nothing more than to love, be loved, create, and recreate.
That might have been a childish hope, but it was effective. And while her joy in joining the crew of the Aotea was still as high as it ever was, she understood now that it was much broader than that childish sales pitch. She’d come to understand and respect that there was indeed more to natural human inclinations than love and pleasure and joy, and that communities needed more rigid personalities like the XO just as much as it needed those like the neo-hedonists of the Cerean Societans.
“The chief inspector is still conducting his investigation,” was all she said.
“Now we know the cause. Tell that to the chief inspector — he can wrap up his investigation, but it should be soon.”
But what caused it to fall and short the circuit? “Aye, sir,” was all she said, and she was dismissed.
Someone was waiting for her in the passageway outside her quarters. The woman’s face was familiar, but it took Mattoso a few seconds to place it — the face at the bottom of every issue of Aotea Today.
“Elena Conneer,” she said.
The journalist oozed energy, even as she stood. The muscular little woman thrust a vidcam forward, a pulsing red light signaling that the device was recording. “Lieutenant Mattoso, what’s the latest on the investigation into First Muahe’s death? Did Second Gustafson’s negligence lead to his death?”
Mattoso took a deep breath. Damn cameras. Escaping the near constant video surveillance of Earth, whether by public or private forces, was a significant part of the Society for a New Humanity’s Charter. The ubiquitous wearables didn’t even have the capacity to record video without modification.
“I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.” You know that, Elena, even if you’re out of practice.
The journalist switched off the camera and smiled, the tense energy in her gymnast’s build seeming to evaporate. “I know, Lieutenant. Just need to have some sort of vid in the article — ‘no comment’ is par for the course for a murder investigation.”
Mattoso chuckled. “Okay… wait, murder? Who told you this was a murder investigation?”
Conneer just widened her crocodile grin.
“It’s not,” Mattoso added. “Well, maybe… no comment. Just no comment.” Guess I’m out of practice too.
“Thank you very much, Lieutenant. You’ve been very helpful.” The journalist finally stopped smiling and walked away.
Mattoso shook her head to herself. Nice going. At least Conneer hadn’t recorded Mattoso’s verbal misstep.
She was startled upon entering her quarters to be wrapped up in wiry, strong arms. “I’ve been waiting for this all day…” Mattoso silenced Pat’s husky voice with her own lips.
“How long’ve you been waiting?” said Mattoso, finally pulling away.
“Hours. Cycles.” Mattoso’s companion pulled her in for another kiss. “But I have a qual watch in an hour.”
“Then we gotta be quick…”
She signed contentedly after Pat left. She had that urge to lie in bed forever, but motivated herself to arise and change into off-duty duds. Her door chimed — it was Konami. She caught his eyes darting for the barest moment to her chest.
“I just wanted to give you the latest news.”
She invited him in and offered him a drink.
“No, thank you,” he responded, clearing his throat. “Let me get to the point — Second Gustafson called me. Rumors have already spread. Nothing major, but he’s been getting anonymous emails.”
For a moment she was shocked. Not by the rumors, but by the emails. Aoteans were the cream of the human crop in terms of rational thinking and emotional control, based on the geneset requirements for potential colonists. The millions of individual genomes submitted alongside the submission fees — a substantial part of the funding of Aotea’s construction in the decades prior to launch — were weeded down to the twenty thousand applicants with the right combination of skills, experience, diversity, personality, and genetic tendencies toward health, advantageous behaviors, and other concerns. The ones that didn’t make the cut, but were close, were saved for the sake of genetic diversity — new generations would be largely built off these saved genesets. And all it takes for network vandalism and threats is the death of a crewmate?
“We should assign someone to look out for him. Can your watchbill support?” she asked, finally.
“Taken care of.”
“How about the messages? Can we track down who sent them?”
Konami shook his head. “Maybe, though we’d need the cooperation of the data techs. But none of the messages were direct threats — they wouldn’t violate the Charter, even if we knew who sent them.”
“So what’s the latest from the labs?” he asked.
She filled him in on the shard of metal that short circuited the hatch interlock. And she forced herself to tell him about Conneer’s “interview” — she didn’t want it to be a surprise if he saw the vid on the next issue.
At the mention of the XO’s request, Konami laughed. “You can’t rush an investigation. Didn’t you learn that in class?”
“Of course,” she replied. Please don’t lecture me, CI.
“Tell the XO next time you see him, that it’ll be done when it’s done.”
CHAPTER 10
A cheer rippled through the Arena, loud enough to interrupt their conversation despite the sparse attendance. Not that the attendance was surprising, considering that the Arena had nearly enough seating for the entire population of Aotea.
“Did you see that?” asked Medical Director Ilsa Madani. “Smooth!”
“Smooth indeed!” said Konami with genuine wonder. He was enjoying himself far more than he’d expected. It had been a while since he’d done anything that could credibly be described as “fun”.
“Shame that Eng is so far ahead that it probably won’t matter,” responded Madani.
He agreed. The engineering department’s team dominated the ship’s ironball league most seasons, and this one seemed no different. Most departments, like Konami’s constabulary, were too small to form their own team, so they joined up with another department or two. Engineer’s current opponent, Fab-Supp, was made up of players from the fabrication and supply departments. Only two of Konami’s constables were interested and talented enough to play ironball, so they joined the human resources and administration departments’ team. Konami recalled that it was rare for them to win a single game. He thought he ought to try and attend more games — or at least the games in which Maria and Owen played. Gotta support my deputies, even if they barely see the field.
He asked her about Medical’s team.
Madani gave the so-so gesture with her hand, explaining that they joined with the Science department, with middling success.
The buzzer sounded for the final break between periods.
He thanked her for inviting him.
“It’s my pleasure,” she replied. Madani spoke again just before Konami worried the silence was becoming awkward. “What do you think it’s going to be like? Samwise? I mean, a whole new world. And the first world we’ve seen, besides Earth, with an atmosphere to support life. At least some sort of life.”
“We’ll need oxygen masks, right?”
She explained that the gas mixture on Samwise wasn’t quite right, but tha
t the geneticists were working on modifying the human genome to better adapt.
Konami successfully kept his eyes from glazing over at the technical details and nodded. “As to what it will be like, I suppose that will depend on what we make of it,” said Konami. He thought for a minute. “It will be big.”
“Big?”
“Yeah, big. Where are you from, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“The Jovian moons. My parents were frontier doctors.”
“Frontier? But they’ve been settled for a century!”
“Sure, but they’re big too.” She laughed. “Like Samwise. Every time some ice prospector finds a new cache of volatiles, there’s a run to set up a new settlement.”
“Volatiles? What is this, the 20th century? Why not fusion?”
“Earthers…” She shook her head. “Sorry. Fusion reactors are tough to build, and they take time. Years — Jove-years, I mean. Volatiles are easy. I must’ve seen a dozen new towns on Callisto and Ganymede with my moms. It was always the same — get there first, burn the volatiles while you dig tunnels, plant the bloom farms in the melt, and charge the mineral prospectors for the right to dig in your claim.”
“What happens when the volatiles run out?”
“That’s only a worry if prospectors find some valuable mineral. It goes two ways — if no one finds a thing, everything is abandoned long before the volatiles run out. Or someone finds something. If it’s a big enough vein, then some investor will cough up the cash to build a fusion plant.”
“Exciting stuff.”
“How about you? Tell me about Earth.”
“Have you ever been?”
She shook her head. “Expensive journey, even for doctors. Plus, all those open spaces…” She shivered.
Konami raised his eyebrows. “Samwise is gonna have those big open spaces.”
“Yeah, I know,” she replied. “By then, I’ll be accustomed to it.”
“Accustomed? On a spaceship?”
She laughed, gesturing up and around the cylinder of Aotea. “There’s not a single chamber on Ganymede as big as one of the Cans.”
Konami hadn’t thought of it that way. “Did you ever go to the surface?”
“Occasionally. Just for fun, really… but it’s such a pain, suiting up. Kind of a rite of passage, unless you’re a prospector.”
The way she looked at him brought him back. Way back – he hadn’t been in a serious relationship since Earth, and not even recent Earth. More like a decade before. He felt an overwhelming longing, and it was gone in an instant.
“It will be different on Samwise,” he said. “Real sky — blue and violet, I think — not just black and stars.”
She smiled and put her hand on top of his. “I’m looking forward to seeing it.”
CHAPTER 11
“Fuck!”
For the third time in the last fifteen minutes, Konami bumped his head on some overhanging object. Mattoso didn’t remember him being clumsy at the scene of Muahe’s death — in fact, he had been rather adroit in navigating through the passageways. Maybe he’s distracted? Or maybe he just wasn’t used to this part of the ship. Mattoso could count on one hand the number of trips she’d made to the Fabrication shops, deep as they were beneath Aotea’s living spaces. The curses were a little much, though. Did aggression count if it was against inanimate objects? She didn’t recall anything specific on the subject from various SNH tomes. But his scowl certainly seemed un-Aotean.
She tried to focus her mind on the task at hand. She’d had a little blow up with Pat that morning and her mind always seemed to go into overdrive after their rare fights – what if they leave me? What if they’ve had enough? She knew it wasn’t logical. They’d had these little fights before, usually about something trivial like conflicts on their calendars, and it always blew over. Usually in less than a day. Another bump and a curse from Konami brought her attention back, and she suggested they slow down, but he waved dismissively and blamed himself.
They passed a shop and stopped to watch. A narrow hatch opened up into a very crowded workshop. Along a short conveyor belt, robotic arms moved so quickly as to blur together, building up what looked to be the main casing for one of the ubiquitous DustBots, molecule by molecule.
Mattoso asked if he’d been in these spaces before.
He turned and furrowed his brow. “Of course. Ship’s quals. Gotta tour every space on this tub.”
“And since then?”
Konami scratched his temple. “Maybe once or twice. I’m not sure, though — why would anyone need to come down here? Anything I need, I just make an order.”
“Sometimes folks just don’t want to wait.” They both turned toward a little passageway to their left — the speaker was a little bald man, almost as small as a child.
“Chief Inspector, I presume?” said the man. He was accompanied by a round-domed TaskBot, child-sized and vaguely human shaped, which the little man occasionally patted on its “head.” Probably the most common type of robot onboard aside from the cleaning Bots, TaskBots were utilized for assistance and general manual labor throughout the ship.
“Yes,” answered Konami. “And you must be Fabrication Engineer Zubiri.”
The engineer came forward and stuck his hand out. “A pleasure,” he said as he shook Konami’s hand.
He looked at Mattoso and smiled, and she introduced herself. His hand was dry and papery.
“Enjoying our handiwork?” he asked, idly scratching the TaskBot where its ears would be, if it had any.
“Yes, very impressive,” replied Mattoso. “Is it all automated?”
“Come, I’ll show you.” Zubiri led them past a few more shops of varying sizes and functionality. They seemed to differ based on the material and size of the objects produced — one small shop was making household sundries out of polymers, while the largest shop was putting together an enormous alloy object that could be destined for a fusion reactor.
They arrived at the fabrication control room, manned by a single fabrication tech presiding over a jumble of monitors and touchscreens. Two additional stations were unmanned.
“I remember, from my quals,” said Mattoso. “Only one fab tech on duty at a time.”
“Normally, that’s correct,” replied Zubiri. “For unusual orders, or particularly high-volume times, we might assign a second tech on watch.”
“And these extra stations…” started Konami.
“…Are for special orders, usually,” Zubiri finished for him. “Not everything is in the main catalogue. And some Aoteans enjoy designing their own products, even down to the molecule.” He laughed. “A few weeks ago, a youngster came in for a new set of polymer dishes. He demanded a strict molecular count — powers of the number two!”
“We had fun with that one,” the fab tech added.
“Fascinating,” said Mattoso, though it wasn’t. But maybe she could come back later and finally get a blanket that wasn’t too warm and wasn’t too cold.
“So what is it I can help you with?” inquired the fabrication engineer.
“You’ve heard about the incident with DT1 Muahe?” Zubiri answered affirmatively, and Konami summarized their findings so far with regards to the mask and filter. “We’d like to see one produced, soup to nuts.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.” Konami gave him the fab number and the fab tech entered a string of commands.
Zubiri ordered his tech to wait, and led them to one of the smaller fabrication shops. “Go ahead,” he said into his wearable, and the automated shop sprang into action. “As you can see,” narrated the fabrication engineer. “The first step is for the printer to build the ‘draft,’ as we call it.” Mattoso watched closely as a small, oblong machine glided back and forth over the beginning of the conveyor belt, accelerating to a blur. It was finished in less than a minute, a soft polymer object in the rough shape of a breather mask filter. The engineer’s pride in his work was evident on the man’s face. “The draft advances forward to th
e shapers.” Insectile arms skimmed over the surface of the draft, cutting and trimming the details of the filter into the draft. “Then, the cladders.” Another set of little automated arms, this time attaching generic tags and clips used for countless applications. “And finally, the scan.” The filter slid into a transparent box and was lifted and spun. “The green light tells us the scan was satisfactory, so it’s packaged and sorted.”
So they’re scanned… Mattoso thought back to the lab analysis. “Would the scoring on Muahe’s filter be picked up by the scanner?”
“May I see it?” asked Zubiri.
Mattoso projected on a bulkhead and showed the engineer close-up images of the defective filter.
Zubiri sent his TaskBot to pick up the just-produced filter, removed the packaging, and they compared it to the images on her projection.
“Absolutely. The scanners would pick this up in seconds. Their resolution goes down to the nanometer scale, and this would be well out of tolerance. My friends, this was no fabrication error.”
Konami crossed his arms. “So the scanner never makes mistakes?”
The engineer’s brow furrowed. “Impossible. Each box has three scanners, and they all have to agree to go green.”
“Can the scanner be disabled?” asked Mattoso. She noted that the chief inspector did not look satisfied.
Zubiri scratched the top of his head. “I suppose, but only from the control station. And it’s not a standard procedure — I don’t think anyone but one of my Techs could do it.”
A shadow of a grin crept into the corner of Konami’s mouth. “How good are your logs?”
The engineer tilted his head. “As good as any, I suppose. All fabs are logged automatically, by date, fab number, and quantity.”
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