Iris’s head jerked slightly back, like this was not a question she had been expecting. “Oh, certainly. Would it be easy? No, but definitely possible. It’s more a matter of how long it would take me to do so, rather than a question of whether it could or could not be done. There is also some question of what I find when I get past the first layer of security. That first layer is strong, but not impossible to break. Beyond that, I could see a situation where something exists with which I’m not familiar, but based on the fact that they are still piloting a ship which we would, today, deem unfit for anything but the direst of emergency service, I suspect their defenses are not as robust as they think they are.”
Another voice came out from the crowd—Heming. “What about our own systems and communications? If there is any chance these Earthlings are hostile, I don’t think we would want them having the chance to intercept our communications or otherwise hamper our ability to talk with one another. And what about V? Should we move it out into the system? If these Earthlings aren’t friendly, we don’t want to lose our only ride out of this place.”
“First, and let me emphasize this, I don’t have any verifiable information on whether these Earthlings are hostile or friendly. Because they’re our fellow humans, I am going to believe they are friendly until they give me a reason not to. That said, as I don’t know them, I’m going to be cautious. I’ve already taken steps to ensure that all our communications are highly encrypted and taken additional steps to ensure that all our electronic systems are protected and remain fully functional. I’ve also uploaded all known information to our next set of out-transport drones, which will relay what I currently know as well as any additional information we discover to the other colonies. I will be setting up additional drones for daily updates to the colonies. As for V, I will set a course for it to settle into orbit near the asteroid belt. As it is only engaged in mining operations right now, this will actually put it closer to those operations. We should still be able to evacuate to V with the Birds at that distance as well.”
Heming nodded. A few people voiced some dissent with the plan, but he could tell it was not something anyone felt strongly about.
Another person shouted out a question, the previously established protocol now being ignored. This time, it was a farmer. On Columbina, that implied a lot dirtier work than it actually entailed; virtually all the physical labor required in the fields was now done by drones. “Are we going to be the ones to reach out to the Earthlings, or do we wait for them to attempt to make contact with us?”
The silence that followed surprised Beryl. This seemed like the sort of question where people would have definite feelings. A few murmured thoughts came from the group, but nothing anyone shared beyond mumbles.
“I have an idea,” offered Mannie de la Vega, one of Vlad’s two youngest brothers. His twin, Mike, poked him in the side. Beryl couldn’t tell if the poke was to annoy Mannie—the two constantly sought to outdo each other in the annoyance category, which usually resulted in more annoyance among those around the twins than to the twins themselves—or to try to keep him from talking. “Why don’t we give them a certain amount of time to send us a message? If we don’t hear from them by then, we reach out to them.”
The murmurs that now arose from the crowd seemed to be in general agreement with the statement, and Mannie blushed at his success in rallying them to his small suggestion.
After a few suggestions on specific times, Iris told the gathered crowd they would give the Earthlings four hours to send a communication. It would still be decently early on Columbina, but at least they would have, one way or another, opened up the possibility of contact with the Earthlings before everyone went to bed. By morning, they might have some idea of the reasons which brought the Earthlings to Columbina.
Slowly, people started drifting out of the bar. Beryl finished her beer and waited for Gamma to get her another—which was somehow already her third of the late afternoon and early evening—before she spoke to Iris, who finally had no crowd around her asking questions.
“Iris, what do you think?”
Beryl always thought it was odd that, although people asked Iris a seemingly unending stream of questions, they rarely asked her opinion on a matter. And Iris rarely offered her own opinion on something unless directly and specifically asked.
With the question, Iris seemed to darken; at the same time, she looked like she had wanted to answer this exact question. “I want to get past that security more than I’ve wanted anything in my recent memory.”
“Do you think they’re hostile?” Rona asked. Beryl looked at her mother, who always thought the best of everyone—the only exception being Beryl herself. Beryl didn’t have to ask her mother to know she would assume the humans were friendly and came in peace. Beryl didn’t think her mother wanted to know the answer, but credited her with asking the question anyway, even if the answer wouldn’t be what she wanted to hear.
“Like I said, I don’t have any reason to think they are hostile without getting any further into their systems,” Iris paused. “But I will tell you one thing, to quote a movie we’ve all seen a hundred times: I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Chapter Seven
The first message from the Earthlings came in seven minutes before the self-imposed communication time limit.
Beryl was sitting next to her mother on their couch when it did, watching episodes of Deadwood that both of them had seen a half dozen times. It was, despite the fighting and swearing and general gore onscreen, a welcome respite from thinking about what was going on, on Columbina.
On a side table next to her mother, the flower Beryl had brought home now sat in a pot, brightening the room. Despite all the trouble she had gone through to get it, Beryl was happy she did. Her father had always wanted to live somewhere he could find flowers for Rona, but that had never happened. Now that she and Rona did live somewhere with flowers, Beryl brought them home to remind her of him.
Not that there was any day either Beryl or Rona was in danger of forgetting him.
On a normal weekday evening, though, neither of them would have been on the couch watching television. Beryl spent most evenings in her lab/office, analyzing anything she had gathered or found that day or preparing for the next day. Rona would have been in her room and most likely reading.
But there was nothing normal about this evening. Neither woman could concentrate, so they distracted themselves with television. That the show they had chosen to watch involved a town fighting for its survival in the face of the arrival of civilization probably said something about their underlying worries.
At that seven-minute mark, Iris broke into their television show, as she likely did the same on every screen a Columbinian was watching or near. She announced that the message was coming in a split second before the screen lit up with the face of someone Beryl had never seen before.
That alone made the video strange. Beryl was not used to seeing real, live adults whom she had never met before.
Apparently, this affected her mom as well, because Rona stretched her hand across the distance between them on the couch, seeking her daughter’s hand. Even though she hadn’t held her mother’s hand in years, Beryl met her mother’s hand. The older woman grasped Beryl’s larger hand tightly, as if she needed the comfort from Beryl. At the same time, Beryl suddenly felt the need to have her mother’s support in a way she hadn’t in years.
“Hello,” the man’s voice boomed out of their TV. It looked to Beryl like he was trying to smile, but something about it was off, like he didn’t smile very often. Or maybe it was his brown eyes that shifted ever-so-slightly as he spoke, as if he wasn’t able to fully focus on the camera. Beryl looked at him intently, trying to take in the features of someone she had never seen. He seemed to be at least a decade older than her, with dark hair and olive skin. Something about him suggested to Beryl that he was younger than he looked, though. Perhaps it was the shaved head, or the clothing, which seemed oddly formal a
nd almost old-fashioned.
“To our fellow Earthlings,” he continued in a clear voice that was not so much authoritative as it was the voice of someone who liked being in charge. He had the slightest touch of an accent, but not one Beryl could place. “sixty years ago, we left Earth, hoping to find the humans who left Earth before us.”
Beryl didn’t have to do any math to realize these humans weren’t traveling anywhere near the speeds Hodios could travel, at least if they came directly from Earth.
“We come in peace and look forward to meeting you and seeing how humans have adapted to life here in outer space.” Beryl snorted at the use of “outer space,” thinking it seemed like something a character in a movie would say. “The AI on our ship will send information on how to communicate with us along with this message to you.”
Wherever she was, Beryl wondered what Iris thought about the human calling the intelligence system on his ship artificial intelligence. Iris would never let anyone get away with that on Columbina. As she always liked to remind anyone who called her an artificial intelligence, her intelligence was something beyond artificial. It might not have been biological, but that did not mean it was artificial.
The video abruptly cut off. It was abrupt enough that Beryl watched the dark television, wondering if the video would begin again.
“That was,” Rona hesitated before coming up with the word she wanted, which Beryl could tell was still not the word she had hoped to come up with, “short.”
Rona paused again before saying anything else, like she felt the need to say something but didn’t know what.
“You would think that having traveled across such a great distance to get here, they could have come up with something…longer.”
“Maybe slightly more profound,” Beryl suggested as an alternative.
“Yes,” Rona said, “Not that there’s any precedent for what you’re supposed to say in this situation. Maybe profundity is asking too much. We should be happy with any communication. And knowing they’re friendly.”
“Do we know they’re friendly?” Beryl asked, thinking of the man from the video. She was starting to think there was something about him that was sinister. Like he was capable of doing something less-than-ethical, or even something evil. The more Beryl thought about it, the more the man seemed like a villain from a book or movie. And not the kind of villain who was redeemed by the end of the story.
The kind of villain who wouldn’t go away without a fight, whether anyone else in the story wanted that fight or not.
“Why would they travel this far and communicate with us if they weren’t friendly? Wouldn’t it be easier to blow our little colony off the face of the planet? They certainly have the capability. I mean, that capability existed long before we left Earth.”
“Unless they have some reason to keep us alive. In which case, they have every incentive to act friendly even if they aren’t at all.” Beryl watched her mother consider that possibility, as if she had never thought such a thing possible and still refused to believe it so.
Beryl realized her hand was still in that of her mother. They sat that way for longer than would normally be comfortable, watching the blank screen. Finally, Rona spoke up, as if she had amped herself up to say what she was going to say, like it was something she didn’t want to say.
“Your father would have loved this.”
Chapter Eight
Whittaker Roberts had been the first best friend Iris had ever had.
It wasn’t because he was smarter than most other humans, though he was. And it wasn’t because he was more interesting to her, though that was also the case.
Whit had been her best friend because he had treated her as another person.
Sure, he knew her capabilities were different than those of another person, but he acted as if her capabilities were a trait, no different than a person who was a better athlete than another, or someone who worked well under pressure.
He had been the first human to ever treat her that way.
Until he did, she hadn’t known it was something she wanted.
But, as it turned out, Iris wanted nothing more in her life than to be treated like another person.
Or rather, to be treated as a person.
Which is why that second to last day on Libertas had been the second hardest day of her life.
The only harder one had been the next day when she had to say goodbye to Whit.
That day, the two of them had taken Beryl to Libertas with them. Iris hadn’t wanted to do it, but Whit had insisted. In the end, Iris had relented, because a friend wouldn’t want to see her best friend have to spend any of his last precious moments away from his daughter. And so, the two of them worked away on Libertas—much like she would later work with Beryl on Columbina, searching for plants and animals to work toward domesticating. While they did so, the ten-year-old Beryl ran up and down the grassy hills that covered so much of Libertas. She seemed not to realize that this was going to be temporary, that they weren’t going to be settling on Libertas, that they would all be heading to some other planet.
Well, all of them but Whit.
“I have another favor to ask you,” Whit had said as they worked, digging the hole as deep as the small trowel he held could dig in the time they had. He had asked a lot of favors from Iris over the last week, when his fate had become apparent to both of them. Iris had, as well as she could, granted all of them. After all, she only had one best friend. She would do what she could to help him.
Iris hadn’t answered. Instead, she kept digging. They only had a limited amount of time to finish this task.
“Keep an eye on Beryl.”
“Of course. I thought it would be assumed I would do so.” Iris turned to look at the girl. She was far enough away that whatever she was saying to the two dogs she sat with on the top of a hill couldn’t be heard. Whatever sounds they were making were lost on the winds blowing off of the large, ocean-like lake the hill overlooked, carrying those sounds toward the distant mountains that rose up many miles in the distance. Dark clouds rolled above them, threatening rain at any moment.
“No, I know you’ll keep a physical watch over her. It’s just…you have a kid, and you think you will be there to raise her. To have that taken from you…I mean, maybe what I want to say is that make sure she learns the things I would want her to know. Make sure she knows why I did this. Rona will do what she can, but she hasn’t ever fully understood.”
Iris didn’t answer for a minute. She focused on digging the hole in front of them. She didn’t want to tell him what she knew she had to.
“I don’t know if I can,” she finally said.
That had been it. The smartest being in the known universe, and she wasn’t sure of herself.
“I only want you to do your best. You’re not perfect. None of us are.”
The drops of rain had started falling then. They were the big, fat drops which preceded a storm, seeming to burst on your arms and legs and head like miniature balloons, the kind that sent up all sorts of smells from the soil. Humans called the smell intoxicating, something she could analyze but she knew she didn’t appreciate the same way they did. The drops sent up little poofs of dirt when they hit the dry ground, parched from the dry season and aching to quench themselves with the rejuvenating water.
From behind them, a shout went up from Beryl. Both of them immediately turned from what they were doing to see if something was wrong.
“Is this rain?” the girl’s voice had come across the distance, carrying now that she was shouting.
The smile that had lit up Whit’s face then had been the large, inviting smile that had endeared him to so many for so long—long after many of the others on Hodios would have put up with anyone else. It was so much happier, too, than the bittersweet smile which had been so ever-present on his face the last few weeks, when everything he did was something he did for the last time.
“It is,” Whit shouted back to his daughter. It took Iris this l
ong to realize that, after spending her first ten years on Hodios, Beryl had never seen real, live rain before.
“It’s amazing!” The girl had started running toward them then, two dogs trailing behind her. She lifted her head up to the sky, opening her mouth to catch the droplets. Iris wondered if this was something the girl had seen on a movie from Earth, or if it was something humans were hard-wired to do.
Whit lifted up his phone from his wrist to take a picture of his daughter, one of the last chances he would have to do so. Doing that erased the happy smile, and Iris saw tears forming in his eyes. She doubted he would let them fall, but they were there. Having seen the ten-year-old see her first rainfall was probably the last of the good firsts he would have with his daughter. All the other firsts they would have now would not be the kind either of them wanted to remember.
Things like the first time Beryl would have to say a permanent goodbye to a parent.
“Iris, can you finish this up?” Whit tossed the bag from his back into the hole they had dug. He didn’t have to tell her what to do with it; they had been over this before.
Iris nodded, but instead of immediately filling the hole in around the bag, she watched the father and daughter. The rain started falling around them harder, and the two dogs—Beryl’s puppy, Camp, and Poydras, the mother of the puppy—jumped up at them as they ran up and down the hills, barking and happy. Watching them, Iris couldn’t help but see the similarities between the young girl and her father. Not so much as they were today, together, but as Whit had been as a kid before he had the worries he had now.
She had known then, as she watched Beryl and Whit, that the younger of the two would become as good a friend to her as her father had been.
Iris turned back to the hole then and began filling it in.
She didn’t cry, but she was sure the water falling from the sky on to her face was a good substitute.
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