Claire gave her platinum ponytail a proud flip. Ray leaned closer to me in eager curiosity. “Some kind of wish fulfillment?”
I shrugged. “Nobody knows, but my mom says never to trust the obvious explanation for a statistic. Correlation is not causation. Numbers don’t lie, but the way you interpret them sure does.”
Thompson announced over us, “Alright, party later. Work now. Move it, Remington. The black box machine is busted.” He put Remmy down and gave her a little push towards the door. Well, a door.
She widened her eyes, and said in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “Oh, I get it. Yeah, you waited to come get me until it was disaster time. Although what you expect me to do, I have no idea. You know I don’t fix things. I just kludge them together.”
“You’ll figure something out. And bring your friends. I don’t want them getting lost.”
liked Io. Sure, the floor shook every few minutes, but that wasn’t all earthquakes. Sometimes we walked past a door, and through the window, I saw masses of machinery whose pumping made the nearby corridors vibrate. Everything was weirdly clean, almost sterile, with wide hallways made of steel, concrete, or both, all painted white. Primal ur-computers sat in the middle of corridors for no obvious reason. They didn’t have keyboards, but they had plenty of buttons, flashing LED lights in rows, and dials and switches enough for any mad scientist’s dream. When we weren’t passing doors with intriguing signs like ‘Benign Irradiant Purification’ or old-fashioned computers, one wall would give way to a flimsy railing and a huge pit full of pipes and metal vats, some of them puffing steam.
We reached our elevator. It had a folding metal gate in place of a door, and big glowing green and red buttons. When it arrived, the elevator platform itself had incomplete sides. We would get to watch the walls go past on our way down.
It also had a robot standing in it, holding a crate.
The Rotor automatons could have passed for mannequins if they held still. This had to be a robot. It was so robotic, Ray, Claire, and I snickered. It had a boxy oblong head with a slowly rotating circular antenna sticking out of the top. It had big red plastic eyes. Arms shaped like wrenches with blunt pincers at the end stuck off a cubicle body. Its stumpy legs looked capable of waddling, and that was about it.
As we stepped into the elevator, Thompson asked it, “Destination?”
The answer came in a barely intelligible electronic rasp. “Monitor tower.”
Chief Fawkes grunted. “Tough. We’re heading down to manufacturing.” The inside panel of the elevator had a whole lot of buttons. He hit a couple. We started moving, down alright, but in no particular hurry.
From all those buttons and the distance between even individual floors, I fast got the impression we’d be in the elevator awhile. Of course, we might be going so slowly because if we went any faster, the elevator would leave us behind. Claire and Remmy’s hair floated all around them, and Ray had to hold onto his hat.
I edged very carefully over to Remmy, gripping the fencing along the sides to make sure I didn’t accidentally leap into the air. When I was close enough to, at least, pretend we were having a private conversation, I said, “Fixing things isn’t my specialty either, but if there’s anything I can do to help, I will.”
Remmy’s moody expression darkened into eye-squinted, lip-pursed fury. “Why would I want help from a meat puppet?!”
I just… I stared at her, trying to form words. Eventually, they came, but my voice sounded weak even to me. “I only wanted to help.”
Her voice, high-pitched to begin with, went screechy with rage. “Like you helped everyone on Callisto? By infesting the system with the monsters YOU made, so the Puppeteers could use our weapons against us?”
My own anger suddenly ignited inside me. Didn’t I get enough of this on Earth? It was bad enough being labeled a criminal. Now I was being accused of flat-out evil!
I tried and failed to keep the edge of that anger out of my voice. “I didn’t want that to happen any more than you did.”
“Oh, yeah?” Remmy yelled back. “I knew those people, Bad Penny! I lived with them after your Puppeteer masters took over Io, until Calvin and I couldn’t live with the automatons’ stupid, inflexible rules anymore. Do you want the names of the people I saw set on fire and blasted because of you?”
The whole idea made my stomach turn cold, fighting with the hot anger. I gripped the fence behind me, because I couldn’t shrink back against the wall safely. Those battling feelings let me remember something important. I liked Remmy. I wanted Remmy to like me. The least I could do was apologize.
Closing my eyes, because I didn’t want to see anyone else’s expression, I said, “I’m sorry. If I’d known that my inventions would turn on people, I’d have destroyed them myself.”
Remmy’s screech of anger dropped to a wounded hoarseness. “After they fawned all over you as the greatest mechanic ever, how could you not know that messing with Puppeteers would get people killed?”
A soft hand slipped into mine and squeezed it. Claire’s. Ray’s hand settled on my shoulder. Real help came from the least expected quarter. As I stared at my closed eyelids I heard Thompson growl, “Knock it off, Remington. Like your inventions never went wrong and hurt people. Besides, I told you―they’ll be fine.”
That made for an awkward elevator ride, and when I finally opened my eyes, Remmy had her arms folded and was pointedly not looking at me. Despite the dragging silence, eventually we did reach the bottom, or at least our destination. The gate clattered back, and we emerged onto a catwalk in a dimly lit factory.
Technically, the individual factory spaces were well lit, and I could look over the railing and see rows of workstations, like a metal cubicle farm in a robotic office building. Clunky rectangular robots carried around boxes and silvery domes and less identifiable items between tables. The loads usually dwarfed the robot, although light gravity had to help.
Only half a dozen tables were in use, with sparks suggesting welding at two. There was room for an army to work in this vast warehouse of a room. Despite all the lights down at ground level, the vast walls and ceiling were shrouded in shadow. Whoever built Io Omega liked to build big.
Towers of pipes and vats and coils broke up the monotony, maybe the same ones I saw on the upper floors. The catwalk’s job seemed to be connecting these, and we traveled a maze of intersections and short staircases, with me holding onto the railing because it would be way too easy to jump right off the platform in this light gravity.
Was Remmy right about me?
We circled a machine that looked more modern than the others, with fewer tubes and more glass panes. It jutted off the side of one of the biggest masses of pipework, with a set of control panels on the catwalk and a little old man asleep in a chair next to them.
“Zayde!” Remmy leaped towards him. Her flailing limbs made me think she’d meant to run, and wasn’t used to the low gravity yet. She soared through the air, and Ray lurched forward to chase her down. Fortunately, the catwalk had no shortage of struts connecting it to the ceiling far above. Remmy grabbed one, and much more expertly swung herself around to tackle the old man.
I thought he’d break. This guy was old. Weathered. Pruney. His white hair and beard held sprinkles of black nothing like Remmy’s, but he was the only person on Io Omega who truly resembled her: short and skinny.
“Einnikel!” He croaked back, standing up to meet her. She bowled him over, but twisted around to take the blow when they hit the railing. That was more like it. She might have been out of practice, but Remmy knew low gravity well, and the old man was… well, not as fragile as he looked, but too old to treat roughly.
He climbed stiffly back to his feet, holding her up and hugging her tightly. Kissing her between her pigtails over and over, he asked in a hoarse and slightly muffled voice, “Where have you been, Remmy? How has Calvin been taking care of you? If Thompson is here, Calvin is not here, so tell me how he is doing?”
Wow. That accent
. Nobody else I’d met in space had a recognizable accent, but this guy sounded so stereotypically Jewish that he could do commercials for Cantor’s―except they would be too embarrassed. For that matter, nobody else I’d met had been nearly this old.
Remmy’s gleeful smile faltered. “He hasn’t been himself lately.” Her joy returned just as fast, and she wriggled back in his arms to look the old man in the face. “But we got Europa back online!”
Thompson interrupted with a sharp, “Remington.” She bit her lip, holding back anything else she would have said.
That left the topic hanging. The old man―I was pretty sure ‘zayde’ was Yiddish, not his name―looked past Remmy and Thompson at us. “Remmy, who are your friends?”
“They’re not my friends.” Her harsh tone hit me like a fist. I flinched, visibly.
Claire stepped out ahead of me. The uneven light of the factory suited her, and every step turned her hair a different color, highlighted her glasses or the blue eyes behind them or her warm, friendly smile. Thompson and the old man stared blankly as she walked up and put her hand on Remmy’s wrist. “Do you really believe Penny meant for any of that to happen?”
Remmy glanced at Claire, then looked back down at her feet. Claire was cheating for me with her power. I couldn’t resent that. I’d have to find some way to deserve it.
“…no,” Remmy finally muttered.
I had to say something. “Thank you, Remmy.”
Claire stepped back. Thompson blinked. The old man shook his head, like he was removing cobwebs. Even with my heart twisted up by this fight, I had to admire that. He might even have recognized that his mind had been clouded.
He kept glancing at Claire, but slipped an arm around Remmy’s waist, pulling her into his lap as he sat back down in his chair. It was ridiculous. He was hardly taller than her, and looked like he weighed less. If it weren’t for the low gravity, she’d have crushed him. He stroked a few hairs that had escaped Remmy’s pigtails back over her head, and asked quietly, “What are their names, Einnikel, and should I be mad at them or not?”
Remmy’s matchstick shoulders slumped forward, and she let out a loud, growling sigh. A hand flapped at each of us in turn. “Zayde, this is Bad Penny, E-Claire, and Reviled. I don’t know their real names. I guess they’re not evil, but don’t trust them because―”
“They’re supervillains,” the old man finished for her. His voice had dropped to a whisper, and he lifted a shaking hand to cover his mouth, while the other reached out to point at me. Actually, to point over my shoulder. “Which means… you’re from Earth? And that’s a real cat, not a toy?”
“What?” I asked, caught off guard. Archimedes echoed my surprise with a meow, and the sound right next to my ear made me jump. I’d forgotten I was wearing him! How?! It wasn’t like he was that light. He just felt… like… part of my body.
Oh, right. I’d been wearing him too long. I reached around behind my neck and started prying at his tail, trying to get it off without horrible agony or major bruises. “Oh, yeah. Kinda. He’s been weaponized.”
“Is he safe to touch?”
Ow. Geez, it was getting harder to pry Archimedes loose every time. I didn’t like the sound of that.
I flashed suddenly back to Mourning Dove’s oh-so-creepy offer to kill my superpower. I shook it off. Things weren’t that bad, the fight with Remmy just had me unsettled. I sure was done messing with bioweapons, though. The next time my power suggested something like that, I’d spoil the inspiration by trying to figure it out. Nobody was getting hurt again by out of control Puppeteer tech if I could help it.
Finally unsticking the tip of Archimedes’ tail, I held him out in both hands for Remmy’s zayde. (It had to mean ‘uncle’ or ‘granddad’ or something.) Without a directing mind, Archimedes curled up into a fluffy black spiral of cat. Remmy shimmied out of the way as the prehistorically old man gathered Archimedes into his lap, petting it like the cat was as brittle as his bony fingers.
“My name is Shimon Litvin.” He pronounced it ‘shih-moan’. “You are from Earth? Did you come through the gate?”
I shook my head. “No. Nobody on Earth knows the gate exists, I don’t think. I built a spaceship. You know, mad science?”
That got a crooked grin. “I know mad science.” Hoo boy, so much weight in those words. I’d said something funny.
Well, I’d asked the guy living in a refinery on Io whose granddaughter stapled together flying saucers if he was familiar with mad science. I probably deserved a laugh.
Hoping my cheeks weren’t visibly burning, I pressed on. “Earth didn’t know you’re here until we got a radio message a few days ago.”
Remmy’s mouth suddenly dropped open, and she goggled at me. “It reached Earth? I sent that! I built the transmitter! Juno said her imaginary Jupiter friends told her we’d find aetheric fluid that way, and I convinced Calvin to at least try to send a message before flying off farther than anyone else has ever gone. I can’t believe it reached Earth. Do you know how hard it is to focus radio waves over interplanetary distances?” Her voice got whispery at the end. All anger was forgotten in the pride of creation.
I had to phrase this really carefully so as not to break that pride. “It reached Ceres. You focused the signal great, but you’d need a miracle to aim it. It just brushed over Ceres, but that was enough for us to come looking.”
Swiveling suddenly, Remmy grabbed Thompson’s sleeve and yanked on it. “Did you hear that? My transmitter sent a clear signal to the asteroid belt! If we can steal some automatons, maybe I can rig up an aiming and receiving system and we can talk to Earth!”
He gave her the older brother humoring while trying to get her mind on business act, complete with slow words and direct eye contact. “Maybe we will, but I have more important projects for you, first. By then you might get a brainwave and we can clear a way to the gate and the artifacts.”
Shimon lifted Archimedes back up in both hands, offering him to me. Those hands shook violently, but not as hard as his voice. “Listen, children… this may seem out of nowhere. It has to have been more than fifty years, but… who won the war?”
Ray got it before I did. “World War Two?”
Shimon nodded. “Yes. We got out―”
Claire interrupted him. “America and Britain won. Germany, Japan, and Italy lost.” The huge sigh of relief he let out made it clear she’d done the right thing. That answer had been important to him.
The terrible allure of history caught up with me. Without thinking, I found myself saying, “It wasn’t clean. Hitler committed genocide on millions of Jews―”
Now it was the old guy’s turn to interrupt me. He sank back into his chair, head bent and nodding. “Yes. He didn’t say why he was rounding us up, but we knew how it had to end.”
“Well, in the end America got involved, and they took back France, and Russia took back Eastern Europe, and they crushed Germany between them. Hitler committed suicide. Things were just as nasty on the Pacific front, but America won by coming up with a weapon through regular science that scared even superhumans. Stalin turned out to be almost as crazy as Hitler, and the world spent about forty years with Russia and America daring each other to start World War Three, but it didn’t happen.”
Shimon might not have heard me. He sat back in his chair, nodding his head. His voice sounded like rustling paper. “We knew. That was why when Milla offered to take me with her, I left. She cared more about me than her parents’ objections, and, well…” He reached up and laid his hand between Remmy’s pigtails. “She doesn’t know what the word ‘Jew’ means, but God blessed me by giving me a great-granddaughter anyway.”
Pulling Remmy closer, he kissed her on her forehead. “Thank you, my Remmy, for bringing these children to me so they could lay an old man’s ghosts to rest.”
Thompson’s hand laid on top of Shimon’s, only to brush the old man’s away and pull Remmy’s head upright. He couldn’t quite clear the reverence out of his voice as
he said, “That’s not why she’s here. I need Remington to fix the black box machine. If we run out of robots, Io Omega is dead.”
Shimon reached over and tapped a gnarled finger on the console next to him, indicating a gauge that no doubt would have been very informative if I had any idea what I was looking at. “And again I tell you, the black box machine is fine. The bioresin caster has stopped supplying.”
Thompson shrugged. “It’s all the same to me.”
Remmy climbed up on the railing, clinging to a support pole and leaning way out towards the tower of pipes. “It makes a big difference to me. Nobody knows how the black boxes work. The resin caster? That’s a lot simpler. Where’s the jam, Zayde?”
Shimon leaned over the control panels, and pointed at a gauge. “The oil condensing tank will not heat. After that, the rest of the process finished, so to me, I’m thinking the rest of the machine works.”
Thompson reached down, grabbed Remmy by the elaborate frills covering the scruff of her neck, and hoisted her into the air. “Where is the condensing tank?”
Wheezing and pedaling her feet, Remmy pointed over the edge of the railing.
Thompson grabbed the bar, hunched to jump over, then stopped. His face turned to look down at me, and, I admit it, I took a step back in alarm.
Raising one eyebrow, he asked, “You’re a mechanic too, right, kid?”
I glanced down at the goggles that had settled around my neck. “Sure, but I only―” My voice cut off as he reached over and grabbed a handful of my jumpsuit behind my neck. I struggled for breath as he lifted me, but in the light gravity, the collar didn’t constrict my throat too badly. Just uncomfortably. Archimedes fell out of my hands into Shimon’s lap, and just in time.
“I don’t care who fixes the machine, as long as it’s fixed,” Thompson said, and stepped over and off the railing. We fell like feathers, too gently and precisely even for Io’s gravity. Yep, Chief Fawkes could fly, alright. He landed on a metal tank near the floor, next to a mass of pipes and valves that looked the same as all the rest of the machine to my eyes. Me and Remmy were deposited on two of the larger pipes.
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