Heaven's River

by Dennis E. Taylor

  The Quinlan on the ground was starting to get up, so I smacked him upside the head. Down he went, for nappies. I grabbed another plate and beamed my erstwhile frisbee opponent, earning another curse word. I lobbed the radio in a high arc in the direction of the door, grabbed the security card, stuck it in my mouth, grabbed the tranq gun, and charged for the door.

  I took a second to kick Freda's remaining leg out from under her on my way past, scoring bonus points and yet another swear word, and caught the radio as it reached the end of its arc. I hit the door with a shoulder, smashing the latch work, and bolted down the hallway to the front entrance, tranq gun in one hand, radio tucked like a football in the other arm, backpack held by one strap flapping up and down on my back, and card in my mouth. I was developing an appreciation for all the little details those adventure games had left out.

  At this point, though, facing the great outdoors, my plans a little vague. I couldn't steal a car or even a bike. And with the radio in hand, I couldn't go aquatic. That meant a straight sprint. The Manny would overheat quickly with that kind of punishment, so I'd need to be as far away as possible before having to stop. Well then, uphill. Quinlans trying to take a water route would be swimming upstream, and Quinlans engaging in a straight foot pursuit would eventually tire. Plus, they'd be much slower.

  I took off up the hill, radio held in a death grip against my chest, while trying to both not bite through the security card and not drop it. 10 minutes of running, jumping, and dodging got me into a small copse not visible from Natasha's estate. I placed the security card on the ground and spit out my only remaining spider, instructing it to climb a tree and keep watch for approaching pursuers. Then I sat down to cool off and tried to get a grip on my day.

  I took a few seconds to examine the tranq gun. It looked exactly like the one that Garfield had grabbed. I guessed there was just the one model. This one though, had a full magazine - less the two shots Natasha had taken. The gun went into the backpack. Then I picked up the supposed security card. I had to admit to myself, that it had been a huge leap to a completely unwarranted assumption. But the thing looked like a credit card or a security card, and was on the end of a lanyard. Even the size and shape were… huh.

  I'd never noticed it before, but the standard proportions for cards had always been pretty close to the golden mean. The golden mean occurred all the time in nature back on Earth, and it would appear that it was a universal of some kind, even to the point of influencing technological designs. Which was all very interesting, but now was not the time for a deep philosophical soliloquy.

  I have no freaking clue what the card would be useful for, so at the moment, it was moot. Into the backpack it went. Now the radio.

  “Bender?”

  Nothing. I realized that the little indicator lamp was out, so no power. Very likely all, the recent kinetics of done something unfortunate to the insides. Two minutes later, I had the back open and was inspecting the innards. The technology resembled mid-to-late 20th century electronics. Still mostly discrete components, but a lot of large-scale integration on the circuit boards. Oh, and a couple of batteries that have been juggled out a place. Derp. I pushed the batteries back into their holders and turn the radio around.

  “Bender?”

  “Hey Bob, long time no see. Or talk. Holy god, am I glad to hear your voice though.”

  “No video on this thing?”

  “No such luck, boss. The Resistance has enough trouble pilfering the components for an audio-only device. I have video in the room where they’re keeping me, though. Or I'd have gone completely crazy by now.”

  “So, you’re a resistance fighter, are you?”

  “Nah. My choices are limited, at least until I can grow legs. Speaking of which, how is it that you are walking around as a Quinlan? You are a Quinlan, right? No one has mentioned you and your friends being hairless and tailless.”

  I gave Bender a quick rundown of Bill’s work with androids over the last century or so. He was suitably impressed. “Now, your turn. How did you get what you are?”

  “Yeah, that,” Bender replied. “I was heading for Gamma Leporos A when I spotted an anomalous-”

  “I'd already figured out everything up to the point where you got shot out of the sky. Let's fast-forward.”

  “Okay, oh impatient one. I don't remember this part of course, but I've been told what happened. The Heaven's River patrol bots shot me down because I guess I neglected to give the secret handshake. The Administrator had them cut my matrix out of the wreckage and bring it back, where the Resistance managed to intercept the shipment and steal me. It turns out, a significant percentage of Crew are double agents. Anyway, the Resistance eventually figured out how to power me up, and since the Administrator had included all my primary interface circuitry, we were able to communicate.”

  “Wow. And you volunteered to help them against the Administrator?”

  “Well, ‘volunteered’ is a strong word. The gist is that I could be a useful source of information, or I could be taken apart. I went for door number one.”

  “The reasonable choice. How realistic was the threat?”

  “Not as much as you’d think. The Administrator controls everything and has all the tech. The Resistance has managed to stay mostly tech savvy and they have books, but it's been quite a few generations since they were part of a technological civilization. Stuff has slipped, you know. I doubt they actually have the tech level to reverse-engineer an optoelectronic cube, and the Administrator doesn't hold university courses for Crew. They get the training they need to do the job they’re assigned.”

  “Yeah. Look, we can continue this later. Right now, where are you? Is there any way I can bust you out?”

  “Well, I can tell you I'm not in a town. People are always ‘heading into town’ or ‘coming in from town’, so I'm at least some distance from it.”

  “No mention of the town name?”

  “Helep’s Ending has been mentioned numerous times. Hopefully it's a town and not an epithet.”

  “Ah crap. Never heard of it. What else ya got?”

  “Hm. If it helps, I don't think we’re too far from the town. Maybe a couple of hours for a Quinlan. And the room I'm in is very modern, looks more 21st century than 18th, if you know what I mean. May be some kind of high-tech hideout. And no windows or anything. It feels kind of like an underground military base.”

  “Damn.” I sat back, leaning against a tree-like thing. Sesh, my translator interface informed me. Then I sat forward as I got an idea. “There was a transit station in the rail terminal. Surely they'd have, you know, some kind of map or transit listing or something.”

  “A billion miles of megastructure, that's a lot of towns.”

  “It's all we have, at the moment, buddy. But we've noticed time after time that the Quinlans think and behave a lot like humans. So if they're mentioning Helep’s Ending, there's a good chance that it's the name of the station as well as the town. Or maybe even only the station.” Then I thought. A billion miles of megastructure, but Quinlans didn't have SCUT, so light speed was a limiting factor for any communications using Quinlan technology. “Bender, I need to test transmission latency. Can you frame-jack in your current situation?”

  “Yep. They powered up everything, rather than trying to figure out what was and wasn't necessary. You want me to turn around a ping for you?”

  “Please.”

  I cranked my own frame rate up as high as I could. “Okay. 1, 2, 3, ping.”

  “Ping. It's not traveling at light speed, Bob, because this isn’t a radio broadcast. It's a packet-switched network, running on the megastructure's backbone. So, assume half light speed.”

  Using the amount of time it took for Bender to return my ping, I calculated he was within 10 segments or so. The ad hoc ping method didn't allow any better accuracy than that, and I couldn't resolve a lower limit. Still, it meant that Bender was less than 10 segments away, and reachable in less than a Quinlan lifetime. That was
a big improvement from 1.8 million candidates.

  “So assuming I find Helep’s Ending how do I find you?”

  “Look for the futuristic underground bunker?”

  “Thanks, that'll work. Actually, it does narrow things down maybe. They seemed operate right under the Administrator's nose. Is it possible you’re occupying management territory?”

  “Actually, Bob, it's virtually certain. The Resistance mostly survives by theft, stealth, and more theft. They have very little of their own technology.”

  “How are they doing this right into the Administrator's nose – er, beak?”

  “Oh, the Administrator knows they’re there. It could, in theory, obliterate the Resistance in a day or two, if it was willing to. Generally speaking, the Administrator leaves them alone.”

  “That seems incompatible with Scattering.”

  “Scattering keeps the majority of the population in line, and keeps the tech level pre-steam. The one thing the Administrator is consistently strict about is the technological level of the general populace. Other than that, it tries to interact as little as possible. So trying to get rid of the Resistance entirely would be like playing whack-a-mole, and would draw attention to both the Resistance and the Administrator. And trying to vet each and every use of equipment over a billion-mile-long structure, to make sure it's Crew and not Resistance, is just too much trouble, so the Administrator ignores them. As long as they don't become too much of a nuisance.”

  “The Administrator seems quite accommodating.”

  “Well, it doesn't have any choice. It's-”

  Bender's voice cut off abruptly. There didn't appear to be any signal, even background noises were gone. I had to conclude that Natasha had sent them a message and they'd cut him off. I’d hoped that was all they’d done.

  It was time to get the others involved again.

  My first priority would be to find a safe place for the Manny. The radio was no longer an asset, so I could leave it. The Resistance might even give up the search if they found it. I placed the radio up on a rock so it would be visible from a distance, but hopefully without being too obvious about it. The roamer hadn't seen any movement nearby, although there was a hint of activity to the east. I remembered spotting a small stream in that direction, so that was a good area to avoid anyway.

  The Quinlans wouldn't stay out after dark in a wilderness area, as Bridget had pointed out on more than one occasion, this was more of a nature preserve than a zoo, and Quinlans weren't the largest things with teeth. So, all I had to do was stay out of sight until sunset, then find a reasonably private spot. With scent an internal heat turned off, I wouldn't interest a predator.

  I ordered the roamer to hop aboard, spent 10 minutes or so putting some distance between myself and the radio, then dug into a corner by a rock outcrop and sent the roamer back out on sentry duty. A few broken off bushes placed around me, and the roamer confirmed that I was well camouflaged.

  I lay back, closed my eyes, and return to my VR library.

  Jeeves - my Jeeves, that is - showed up with a coffee and a snack. Spike followed immediately to check out the snack. I patted the cat, while shooing her away from the little sandwiches.

  And realized I was stalling. Without being sure why. Maybe there was enough going on without this extra complication.

  I sent out a connection request to Bill, Garfield, Bridget, Will, and Hugh. Bill and Will replied that they were busy, but Garfield would fill them in. Garfield and Bridget accepted the connection right away, but with Hugh, I got voicemail. Yes, actual voicemail.

  “I'm not available for the next week or so, please leave a message. If it's urgent, please contact-”

  Now that was weird. But I would pursue it later. For now, I had Garfield and Bridget on the line.

  “So, I guess you're wondering-”

  “-why you've gathered us here,” Garfield cut me off. Funny thing: turns out it does get old after a while.

  Bridget added her full-throated laugh. “Finally, someone agrees with me.”

  “I am maligned,” I said. “I have news, but my feelings are hurt.”

  “Hanging up now.”

  I laughed. “Alright guys. So, short version: I found Bender.”

  This produce the expected explosion of questions. I waited for it to die down, then said, “I’ll give you all the audio record. I’m also going to blog it. But first, I have to mirror my blog over to your side of BobNet. My bandwidth is bad enough without half the Bobiverse trying to cram through my temporary relay.”

  “I’ll take care of that for you, Bob. I can mirror it easily enough.”

  “Thanks, Gar. One less thing to worry about. So now, there is bad news.”

  “Isn't there always?”

  “Yep. I lost contact with Bender soon after I found him. I think his captors cut off communications. But before that happened, we narrowed his location down to a stretch of Heaven's River within about 5000 miles of me either way. We could eventually get enough drones with SUDDAR scanning into the area, but between the resource scarcity and the necessity of sneaking them and maintaining a heatsink, in might take literally years to find him.”

  “But you can run that in parallel while you continue to search, so I presume you have a point?” Bridget said.

  “Uh, yeah. We don’t know when we’ll get back full control of BobNet. I don't even know if I'll be successful in getting my relay station back. If that fails, it will be years before I can put another one in place. I need at least one other person on this side working with me, and I was hoping one of you might volunteer to clone. Or Bill, when he has time to think about it. Otherwise, I'll do it myself, but I’d, uh…”

  “You clone reluctantly,” Garfield said. “Yes, you are famous for that.”

  “It's the most efficient way to go, though, Bob. Getting a backup across your temporary relay will take a week, whereas you could have a backup done locally in no time.”

  “Yeah, I get that, Gar. But if I clone, they’d have to use your Mannies. I just wanted you to have first dibs.”

  “I've already made my feelings clear on the subject,” Bridget said. “If your descendant wants to be a female Quinlan, go for it. Although I hope you'll choose one of the other ones. Eventually we’ll get comms back, and I still want to explore.”

  “Uh, speaking of bandwidth,” Garfield said, “I’ve just started doing prelims on the mirroring, and your bandwidth sucks. I mean even worse than you'd expect. Are you running a file transfer right now?”

  “Not that I know of. I’ll look into it when we’re done here. So let me know when you've got the mirror done in the name services redirected. I’ll put up a blog post with all my audio and video files. Maybe I'll give Starfleet a collective coronary.”

  Garfield snorted. “If only.”

  As soon as we all disconnected, I called up Guppy.

  “Do we have some large bandwidth-sucking operation going on our connection to BobNet?”

  “Transfer of backup image in progress.”

  “What? Who’s?” On the one hand, that might mean I wouldn’t have to clone. On the other hand, it might mean someone was trying to sneak in.

  “Expedition member colloquially known as ‘Hugh’, has requested that we receive his backup. He also redirected printer operations to complete a single matrix on a priority basis.”

  Well that was mighty presumptuous of him. Then again, I had given expedition members the run of the place.

  “He could have told me.”

  “You were in remote operations. He left an email.”

  I resisted the urge to slap my forehead. Instead, I checked my inbox - something I hadn't gotten around to yet. Yep, message from Hugh. With a sigh a shake of the head at my own stupidity, I opened the missive.

  “Hey Bob. It occurs to me that you need help, and your reluctance to clone is well-known, so I've taken it upon myself to transport to Eta Leporos to help you out. The transfer will take a few days to a week, depending on other
traffic, and I've instructed Guppy to concentrate on a single matrix to speed it along. I'll be offline until you bring me back up. I've attached a contact ID for one of my coworkers, in case of problems. Hugh.”

  Huh. Odd phrasing. And why would he be offline? Whatever. I had bigger things to deal with.

  “Guppy, how many scanner drones can we get close to this segment of the megastructure?” I inserted coordinates. “Without revealing our presence, and how fast?”

  Guppy took several mils to answer, which surprised me. Normally, even I didn’t notice his processing time, but this was a complex planning operation, mixing delivery times, heatsink limits, resource availabilities, and priorities of other projects.

  “Six months to move four units into position. One year for 12 units.”

  Wow, that sucked. I had a feeling that Hugh's matrix had contributed significantly to that delay, but I would still rather have him around.

  “How long to move one unit into position?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “Please do that.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  So, for the next three weeks, I was essentially searching blind. Even after that point, my single unit would have to scan up to 10,000 miles of topopolis at sufficient detail to be actually helpful. I did not feel overwhelmingly hopeful.

  So, meanwhile… upstream? Or downstream? It came down to a flip of a coin. Hugh, when he activated, would take the other direction. Maybe I’d have some progress to show by the time Hugh’s clone woke up, which might make it unnecessary for him to go the other way. Yeah, that's the ticket. But how to start?