Heaven's River

by Dennis E. Taylor

  “You're going to Three Lagoons?” Kar asked. “Why bother? We’re looking for a good patch of shore to homestead. Why not join us?”

  Bridget smiled at him. “We have plans, Kar. I'm a seeker. My friends and I want to go home, eventually. We’re not looking to start fresh.”

  Kar shrugged, plainly not devastated.

  We soon hit the section of Gronk where the river-bottom impellers were most noticeable. The river surface took on the appearance of a mild set of rapids, and the current became choppy and uneven. I knew what was going on. The impellers were creating a form of storm surge as the water was forced a pile up. A quick android eyeball estimate put the surge level at a couple of feet in height. The boat bucked and tried to turn off its heading, and one of the hounds bleated in fear. The other animals turned briefly to look at it without interrupting their measured gate on the treadmill. I was impressed by these beasts. They seemed capable of walking all day at the same plodding pace, fed and watered regularly by the crew, without even stopping. Perhaps it was hound heaven.

  The battering lasted less than 10 minutes, although I had to admit to myself that it would've been pretty hard to endure in the water. At least for a native Quinlan. As we came out of the apex of the tributary’s curve, our view gradually opened up to the Utopia River, flowing in the opposite direction of the Arcadia. Far in the distance, I could just make out the barest impression of a town. Three Lagoons.

  Bridget was already having a conversation with the deckhand, gesturing occasionally in that direction. She came over to us and made a get-off-your-asses motion. “Time to bail, boys. If we start now, we won’t have to fight the current too much when crossing.” She nodded to Kar. “Nice to have met you and your friends. Maybe we'll see each other in the future.”

  Kar nodded back without comment. The other three hardly registered the conversation. We said a general goodbye to the boat crew, and dove into the river. Swimming submerged, we put on some extra hustle, but not enough to cause any consternation in our erstwhile shipmates. We didn’t want to pop up an impossibly long distance away. We’d probably never see these people again, but why take chances?

  Three Lagoons looked, from the water, like a significantly larger than average town, and perhaps more cosmopolitan. That would make Bridget happy, since it would almost certainly mean a bigger library, or maybe even several. We marched up the dock ramp, one at a time, part of a steady stream of Quinlans. It felt a little like rush hour. Did Quinlans have rush hours in Heaven's River? While it seemed unlikely that word of us would've spread across rivers, it felt like basic common sense to not be seen together. At least while coming into town.

  As before, we each had our tasks to perform. Garfield had suggested on the way over that he'd like to do the pub crawl, but I'd claim seniority, earning me a low growl. In short order, Garfield had us a room at a transient hotel, Bridget had directions to a library, Bill reported no suspicious activity at the dock, and I had a beer. I’d picked the pub closest to the river, since it seemed likely that it would have the most diverse customer base. The others join me and ordered meals and drinks.

  “I'm going to head for the library right after lunch,” Bridget informed us, “before you wankers manage to screw things up and get us run out of town.”

  “One time…” I muttered.

  “Two, honestly,” Garfield said. “At least we haven’t burned anything down yet.”

  “The day is young,” Bill muttered.

  Bridget smirked at him, wiped her haora, and marched off with a parting wave.

  “So, what shall we do?” I grinned at Bill.

  “I vote for eavesdropping while blending in.”

  The vote was unanimous. I signaled for three more.

  The beer wasn't half bad, but the scuttlebutt was strictly local stuff. After an hour of way too much information about people's financial and relationship problems, Bill and Garfield decided to check out other pubs. I couldn’t blame them, but I maintained my theory that the dockside pub was the most likely place to get something other than routine conversations. After three more hours, I was starting to doubt my logic. I’d learned more than I ever wanted to know about the daily dealings of Quinlans, but nothing that would raise an eyebrow.

  I pinged Bridget to see what she might've discovered, and got dead air.”

  “Guys? Guys? Bridget's not answering, something's happened.”

  No answer.

  28. United Federation of Sentients

  Will

  July 2334

  Virt

  I stared at the wall of small video windows, wondering for the umpteenth time why I was still doing this. Each window contained the image of a representative of a human colony. The old UN had been replaced by the United Federation of Sentients Counsel, but it was mostly the same bag of rabid spiders with new faces.

  Unfortunately, Bobs as a rule had too much common sense to get stuck with the duty, and I had too much of a sense of duty to listen to my common sense. I couldn't walk away and leave an empty seat representing the Bobiverse, so here I was once again, listening to a snarling, self-centered, self-absorbed, self-righteous heard of bozos.

  Stupid humans.

  The current debacle was about how to handle the Pav. There had always been an assumption that they would, in the fullness of time, join the UFS. We'd even made sure the name wasn't human-centric, in order to avoid any issues of perceived bias. Might as well not bothered. The Pav had made it pretty clear that they weren't interested. Also, that they would come and go as they damned well pleased. The new home in Pangaea colonies were stopping just short of threatening to shoot down any Pav vessel that passed within the Kuiper line of their systems.

  At the moment, Sir Lambert of Pangaea was just winding down. She glared of the Council, or after video windows at least, and sat down. Dozens of request lights immediately lit up. The chair recognized the representative from Newfoundland on Asgard, Sir Wall.

  Sir Wall looked into the video camera with a small smile. “Sir Lambert, while I grant your concerns about sovereign space are legitimate, perhaps you are overreacting just a tad. The Pav fleet consists of two small exploration vessels, based on the Heaven-1 design. Despite their attitude, their military growth is still mostly theoretical.”

  Representative Wall’s statement was a model of calm and moderation. Also, in my opinion, naive. While I didn’t want to be at odds with the Pav, I was fairly certain that their fleet was growing slowly, only because they were putting most of their current production capacity into creating more auto factories. A lot of effort spent bootstrapping early on would pay handsomely down the road, and the Pav, unlike humans were disciplined enough to take the long view about such things. But I'd already pointed this out and been soundly ignored, so screw it.

  I sighed and took a moment to check the status of my projects back on Valhalla. Everything was in the groove. Construction had already started on several cities that would be alfresco with no domes or individually pressurized buildings. Things were looking good.

  The floor been handed to the representative from the Vulcan. I felt a sense of foreboding as I listened to his closing comments.

  “If the Pav are not going to respect our boundaries, and assuming we don't intend to go to war with them, the next best step would be to claim all habitable planets in the area. We have surveys from the Bobs, yes? Let us launch colony vessels, sufficient to tie up all real estate. Leave them no reason to launch in the first place.”

  Seriously, had that ever worked on Earth? Did he actually expect that the Pav would take that state of affairs philosophically? Sooner or later we would be going to war.

  29. Panic Time

  Bob

  July 2334

  Three Lagoons

  This was simply not possible.

  Even if some theoretical adversary managed to take out all three of my friends at the same time, it would only take out the Mannies, not the actual people. By now, Bill, Garfield, and Bridget should have rep
orted in and warned me of whatever. Unless… unless it, whatever it was, had actually taken out Bill, Garfield, and Bridget. But they were physically separated by light-years, not only from me, but from each other. That… that made no sense.

  I sent a quick text to Bill – well, tried to. I got a comm error for my trouble. That meant severed communications. My next step should be to narrow down the possibilities.

  “Guppy, check integrity of communications with the rest of BobNet.”

  “No connection.”

  Oh, son of a bitch. With communications down, the three Mannies were running on AMI standby orders. I leaned on my elbows and put my head in my hands to look like I was resting my eyes. I gave my Manny’s AMI some simple instructions and popped back into VR. Guppy, as usual waited, at parade rest.

  “Can you narrow down where the communications are severed?”

  The Midway Relay Station is responding to pings, but is refusing connection requests.”

  Huh. Not good, but I didn't have time to worry about that just now. I picked up Bridget's Manny's address and checked status. Sure enough, the AMI was operating in autonomous standby.

  So, first things first: I had to get the Mannies out of town. I entered Bridget's Manny and found myself in the library. Or book repository. Or bookstore. Someplace with books. Anyway, I quickly gave the AMI some simple orders, waited for a moment to make sure it was responding, and popped out. The Manny would maneuver itself to the docks and submerge itself to below a Quinlan’s maximum depth. It would ping me if something happened on the way that was beyond its ability to handle.

  It only took a few seconds to do the same with Garfield's and Bill's Mannies, then my own. I needed more than anything else to get the Mannies out of any possible danger. If they were damaged or captured, our expedition was over, and we might never find Bender.

  I waited the few minutes while the four Mannies made their collective way to the river and dove in. Only when all four reported themselves in position did I relax. I put them all in low-power mode, then turned to Guppy.

  “Okay Guppy, fill me in.”

  “The local station is behaving within normal operational parameters. The midway station is actively refusing connections, other than basic diagnostic pings.”

  That was the station I had ordered built in Delta Eridani and flown out to the midway point between that system and Eta Leporos. At least wasn't destroyed.

  “A malfunction? Any information from diagnostics?”

  “Negative. The station is refusing to execute diagnostic procedures.”

  That was odd. The pings were handled at a much lower level and were serviced without any need for the AMI's attention, but any explicit commands would… I started to get a bad feeling, just the barest hint of a theory, and not a good one.

  “Guppy, can you force a reset?”

  “Negative.”

  “Is the drone I set up as a temporary station still in working order?”

  “Affirmative. It is in standby, but still potentially operational.”

  “Boot it up, please.”

  “Done.”

  I pinged Bill as soon as I felt the SCUT connection come up. The comms protocol indicated a valid connection, but for several milliseconds I got no response. Then I had an audio only connection.

  “We have a situation here, Bob. How are you doing? Where are our Mannies?”

  “I put them all at the bottom of the river, they're safe. What's going on?”

  “More than half of our space stations have shut down and are refusing connections. BobNet is attempting to reroute, but we still have a lot of locations off-line. I'm coordinating a response, but right now we're just trying to determine overall status.”

  “Got it. Have you contacted Bridget?”

  “No. Quilt is one of the nodes we can't reach. Garfield is busy mapping the network to see where we should concentrate our energy.”

  “How about the Skippies?”

  “Hugh has already contacted me,” Bill replied. “He was monitoring the expedition, then was abruptly kicked off. I told him I'd update him if I found out anything.”

  “Okay, Bill. Let him know I'm back on, and keep me posted.”

  “Hey, by the way, how are you able to communicate?”

  “Remember that temporary SCUT relay I set up by dropping off a drone at the midway point? I reactivated it. It doesn't have enough bandwidth to maintain Manny or VR connections, so you're all still SOL until we get the main station back up, but at least we can talk.”

  “Hmm. Handy. Is it anywhere near the midway station?”

  “Of course, I aimed them both for the same… ah.”

  Bill's intent became clear. The drone could fly over to the station and do a physical inspection. Maybe even some repairs, if necessary, since I'd supplied the drone with a roamer inventory out of habit.

  Bill and I exchanged promises to keep each other updated, then I gave the necessary orders to Guppy to get the drone moving.

  “Transit time, approximately six weeks.”

  Well, considering the interstellar distances involved, that was practically a bull's-eye. I had literally ordered the two devices to the same location, halfway between systems. Only navigational inaccuracies accounted for even that relatively small discrepancy. Meanwhile… what? My relay drone couldn't support a VR or Manny session, so I couldn't visit Bill and the others, and they couldn't visit me. Or help me with the Mannies. And I couldn't do much until the drone reached the full-sized relay station. Might as well get something done.

  I connected up with my Manny and found myself underwater with my hands clamped to something unidentifiable. Three other Mannies floated beside me in similar positions. So, the AMIs had been successful. I just hoped the incident didn't start a Legend of Zombie Quinlans staggering through town.

  Working on my own would be harder. I needed to be able to cover more territory to make up for the loss of manpower. Well, maybe roamer power. I sent commands to the other three Mannies, and they opened their mouths. Out popped four 1-inch roamers from each android. I didn't have room internally for all the extra mechanical servants, so I have them attach themselves firmly to my fur and snuggle in as much as possible. I swam up to the dock as nonchalant as you please, and joined the line of Quinlans walking up the ramp. Five minutes of button hauling passersby got me the names and general locations of every pub in the area, not just the ones immediately around the dock. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was a start. And the only consistently successful source of information we discovered to date.

  It took most of the day to visit each pub, look around, and place a roamer or two in a discreet location. That accounted for 12 of my roamers. I placed two more in the local equivalent of the municipal hall, and kept two as spares. Bill would have a fit if he knew what I'd done. The roamers were an irreplaceable resource, and their loss could endanger the Mannies as well. But it was time to bet the wad.

  With everything in place, I retired to our hotel room. It really was a step or two up from the crap we've been staying in before. I visited the proprietor and paid for a week, just to make sure he didn't hassle us. I waited until nightfall, then one at a time, I rode the other Mannies from the river to the hotel room. Now we were all together, sort of. If the blackout didn't resolve itself, I'd have to adjust my plans. I couldn't keep shepherding four Mannies from city to city. For better or worse, I was going to make a stand here.

  Three Lagoons. No kidding. I'd seen some of the Quinlans festivals, so I knew they were reasonably artsy, but it apparently didn't extend to town names. Well, Humans did always wax lyrical either. I remembered street names from back in the 20th century. Main, Broadway, East, First, or named after some city father. I scowled I seemed to be in a really black mood. Well, everything was in place. The roamers would record all conversations, and Guppy would forward them to the Skippies for processing. I would just about max out my relay’s bandwidth, but I felt it was a priority. Hugh would alert me if anything of importance su
rfaced. Meanwhile, I might as well relax.

  I put my Manny to bed and returned to my VR library. A quick and quite unnecessary check of the status of all the roamers revealed nothing outside of expectations, so I summoned a coffee and settled back in my La-Z-Boy.

  Bridget's voice broke my concentration. “Hi Bob.”

  “Bridget! Bill said quilt was off-line. How did you -”

  “Harold can give you the details, but something about routing the long way around through the original Pav home system.”

  “Seriously? That is the long way around. Like New York to Miami by way of Hong Kong, but that's how routers work. Well, I'm glad to hear from you. Unfortunately, you won't be able to control your Manny with this connection. My relay station is too small.”

  “Bill explained it to me, but is it good enough to transmit a backup?”

  “Yes, but not in a reasonable timeframe. In any case, I don't have any matrices under construction. Too low on the TO-DO. I've been concentrating on increasing our spy drone inventory up until now. Why were you rethinking the whole cloning thing?”

  “No, I hadn't gotten that far. Just working through options. I guess I was mostly hoping you’d have a workaround soon.”

  “Well, we sort of do, but it'll take a while. I’m going to build some matrices as soon as I can, but I'm also working on getting the Midway station back. We’ll see which plan of attack pans out first.”

  I received a ping from Hugh. I sent him a ‘please hold’ response. “Busy day. Hugh wants to talk to me now. Look, Bridget, even if I get the station back, we need to consider using local replicants, just to remove the vulnerability. Think about it, okay? Just in case?”

  “Okay, Bob.” Bridget closed the connection.

  Immediately, Hugh’s voice said “Hey.”

  “Hi Hugh, what's up?”

  “I've been talking to Bill. The comms outages are looking more widespread as we continue to investigate. Its seeming more and more like this is going to be a long drawn-out thing. Bill and Gar will probably not be able to return to the expedition right away, even if and when we get your main relay station backup. You need to consider setting up some local matrices.”