Octavia Gone

by Jack McDevitt

  The sun was behind us, and we were moving across a boundless ocean with occasional strings of islands. Eventually we passed above an empty shoreline and continued over what appeared to be a series of small towns. Sometimes houses were clustered in fields, sometimes they were spread out over a wide area. And there were cars. But none moved. A couple of animals that might have been deer stood in the middle of one of the towns chewing on something.

  The sun got farther behind. We overtook the twilight, which gradually turned into night.

  Gabe was leaning to his right, looking out the side window. “What the hell is this about?” he asked. No lights were coming on. The darkness on the ground was unbroken. “Maybe,” he said, “we should go down and knock.”

  “I’m not sure we should try that again.”

  A big city appeared off to port. Shrouded in darkness. The buildings had no lights. Nor did the streets and parks. Or the houses scattered through the area.

  “Belle,” said Gabe, “is it possible the radio transmissions came from somewhere else?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s possible. But I doubt that they did.”

  “Is there another planet in the zone?”

  “I’ve been searching and have found nothing. I can’t be certain, but at this point it seems unlikely.”

  Gabe sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “This is really strange.”

  • • •

  We traveled through the night and caught up with the sun about forty minutes later. By then Belle was certain there was no other world in the system that could support life. “Good enough,” said Gabe. “Are we getting any transmissions from the satellites?”

  “Negative,” said Belle. “They’re all silent.”

  “Belle,” I said, “are any of them geostationary?”

  “Give me a minute.”

  “What’s geostationary?” asked Gabe. “I’ve heard the term but I don’t know what it means. Something about standing still?”

  “Yes. It’s a satellite whose orbital velocity matches the rotation, so it always appears to be in the same place in the sky. It’s used for communications. The advantage of it is that once the transmitter is aimed at it, you don’t have to make adjustments.”

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  “It appears,” Belle said, “they all are. At least, every one that I’ve checked.”

  We were passing over a city at the time, with the same towering structures we’d seen elsewhere, streets and highways, groves and meadows, a couple of fenced places with benches on both sides, resembling athletic fields. But trees and bushes were growing all over everything. There was nothing remotely resembling park maintenance.

  Gabe looked uncertain. Finally he shook his head. “I think it’s time to go down and try again.”

  “Why?” I asked. “We already know they don’t want us around.”

  “I don’t know,” said Gabe. “I just don’t want to simply walk away.”

  “Gabe, I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “Why do we keep having the same conversation? Look, take us down to one of the small towns. You stay in the lander, all right? I’ll go knock on doors. There must be somebody home somewhere.”

  • • •

  I told Belle that if something happened and we didn’t come back, she should return home. In reality there would be nothing else she could do.

  We passed over more small towns, open fields, and occasional lone houses. I was astonished at the resemblance to Rimway. “The reality,” said Gabe, “is that there are only so many ways to construct roads and houses. I guess everything will always look like home.” I didn’t say anything more as we got into the lander and launched. I just sat there staring out at the countryside and waiting for him to tell me where he wanted to go. “Belle,” I said, “what’s the atmosphere look like?”

  “It should be safe. I see no reason to use the suits. Temperatures are in similar ranges to Rimway. The air looks good. And the gravity’s almost normal.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Gabe said. I didn’t comment and eventually he sighed. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Chase, but you didn’t used to be so negative. What’s happened to you?”

  “What’s the right way to take it?”

  “Come on, kid. You know what I mean. I’m in favor of being cautious. But sometimes you just have to take a chance.” We floated over a town surrounded by hills. A road led through it, forked, and disappeared toward more hills in one direction and a lake in the other. There was still no sign of occupants. No one came out to look up at us. No vehicle moved anywhere, although there were several on the side of the road, and others in carports and garages. If there’d been lawns at one time, they were seriously overgrown now.

  We took the road that went toward the lake and stayed with it as it turned north, eventually passing a house. It was a chalet really, a cabin with broad overhanging eaves. A field full of what were probably weeds. “That might be a good place to try,” Gabe said. “It’s out of sight of everywhere else.”

  We descended in the lander. The field had plenty of room for us. There was an animal, though. It looked like a canine and was gnawing on something. A shed stood off to one side, with the rear end of a vehicle that might have been a tractor parked halfway out.

  Vegetation was flourishing. The sun shone in a cloudless sky. As we neared the ground a group of birds left their perches on the chalet’s roof and fluttered away. The canine continued to ignore us.

  I concentrated my attention on the back door. I was wishing it would open and something would come out and scare Gabe off. Finally the canine noticed us and ran away just before we touched down.

  I shut off the drive unit and we sat unmoving. Gabe finally tucked his blaster into his belt, stood up, and went into the air lock. “Stay here, Chase,” he said.

  I wasn’t ready for another argument, and anyhow I still hadn’t gotten those creeping vines out of my mind. I made sure I had weapons close at hand and told him okay. “If you really want to do it this way.” I handed him a link. “Put this somewhere so I can watch what happens.”

  “I’ll be fine, Chase.” He clipped it to his shirt. “If something bad happens,” he said, “I don’t want you coming after me. I’m pretty well armed.”

  I nodded. “Leave the hatches open.” He took that frustrated look at the distant sky. Then he went through the air lock, checked outside in both directions, signaled that the canine wasn’t visible, and got out. The display was still blank. “Gabe,” I said, “turn the link on.”

  The monitor lit up just in time for me to see the canine charging out of the trees. It resembled a mastiff and was half as big as Gabe was. He fired the blaster into the air. The animal stopped, thought about it, and came for him again. He took aim and blew it apart. “I hope,” I said, “we didn’t just kill someone’s pet.”

  “I do too.” He stood for a minute, waiting to see if the noise would draw attention from someone in the house. I was thinking he should come back into the lander. But nothing changed. No one came out of the chalet. Gabe waved to signify he was okay. Then he started for the back door. It had a knob.

  He walked over, knocked, and got no response. Then he pulled on it, and it opened. He yelled, “Hello,” and went inside, into an area that had two wooden chairs and a large sofa and a table. I caught my breath: There was a skeleton. It wasn’t human; the skull was too large and the arms too long. It was sprawled on the floor near the entry to a corridor. Tatters of clothes surrounded it. Gabe took a moment to look down the corridor, from where he could see into another room that housed more chairs and a larger table. He knelt down to examine the skeleton. “Don’t know what happened to it,” he said. “It’s been here awhile.” After a minute he got up and entered another room. This one had a sink, something that looked like a refrigerator, and an electronic device that might have been an oven. He tried to open the refrigerator, but the door wouldn’t move. There was another door at the end of the corridor. And a se
t of stairs ascended to the upper floor. He looked up the stairway, saw nothing of interest, and walked over to the door. He pushed on it and it opened. A glass outer door looked across the front. Its glass was shattered.

  He came back outside and returned to the lander. “I don’t know what killed him,” he said.

  “Is it a male? Can you tell?”

  “I’ve no clue.”

  “I wonder if the rest of the area is like this?”

  “Probably.”

  I was wondering about the rest of the planet. I was ready to go back to the Belle-Marie. “What do you want to do next?” I asked. He settled into his seat and we lifted off.

  “Follow the road. Let’s see what else is here.”

  • • •

  We found another town nestled against a river a few kilometers away. But the place had been torched. Almost every house, every building, had burned to the ground. A car that had plunged into a ditch contained four skeletons. Its windows were broken, and it was rusted. It had been white at one time, a smooth, sleek vehicle, and would have fit into the traffic at home without drawing much attention. Except maybe that it was large.

  We passed overhead. We didn’t see any other places that had burned, but all were in a neglected condition. Eventually, in the distance, skyscrapers emerged.

  “I wonder,” I said, “if Rick Harding saw this.”

  “Maybe he missed this part of the world.”

  “I’ve got a creepy suspicion it’s like this everywhere.”

  “So who was on the radio?”

  “I don’t know. But if he did see this, why didn’t he ever say anything?”

  “I have no idea, Chase.”

  We stared out at the approaching towers. The forest was dissolving into a plain. A herd of animals that resembled buffalo except that they had gray fur wandered around munching vegetation. We saw more hills and caught glimpses of an ocean on the far side of the city. A two-lane highway came in from our left and eventually absorbed the road. There were occasional abandoned cars.

  Houses multiplied. And more intersecting roads appeared. The houses were mostly fenced. We touched down and inspected one. It appeared to be made of plastic.

  Finally we were over the city. It was also quiet. We saw only the usual birds and other animals.

  The towers were located primarily near the coastline. A long bridge connected with an island, where more tall buildings rose into the sky. There were beaches, both on the mainland and on the island, but they too were empty. Sheltered platforms, probably lifeguard stations, were visible in both places.

  We circled the area. Finally, Gabe pointed at a landing pad atop one of the skyscrapers. “Let’s set down there,” he said.

  It was about forty stories high. We descended onto the pad, climbed out, listened for a minute to the rumble of the surf, and followed a ramp down to the roof. We passed a parking area half-filled with vehicles that must have had antigravity units, and ultimately arrived at a metal door. It had a latch. Gabe released it and pulled. But the door didn’t move. I had both weapons with me. I showed him the laser. “You think we should?”

  He didn’t like the idea. Instead he banged on the door, waited a minute, and tried again. There was no sound of movement inside. “I hate doing this,” he said.

  “How about we go down and park in the street? Try the front doors?”

  “How much fuel do we have?”

  “It’s not a problem.”

  “All right. Let’s do that.”

  • • •

  The street-level entrance consisted of two pairs of glass doors. The glass was broken in two of them. The doors were set back between large display areas also with broken glass. Whatever had been on display was gone.

  Getting through the doors was no problem. We walked into a lobby. Chairs and tables were distributed around the room. All were too large to accommodate us. A long counter on our left extended almost the length of the interior. Elevators were at the far end. One was open with only the shaft exposed. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust.

  Gabe walked over to the elevators while I went behind the counter. Two computers were built into it. I played around with one and the screen lit up. “Hey, Gabe,” I said. “We’ve got power.”

  “Excellent.” He looked happy. There was a ramp at the far end of the elevators. Like the rest of the interior, it was covered with dust and occasional debris. Broken furniture, discarded tools, and a couple of skeletons. We followed the ramp to the second floor and entered a corridor. I jumped when a ceiling light came on.

  We tried knocking on doors, but no one answered. Eventually we went up to the third floor and did the same thing with the same result. Finally we used a laser to cut through one of the doors into an apartment. There was carpeting, which had rotted due to rain coming through a pair of broken windows. There were also two outsized armchairs. A large electronic device that was probably an HV stood against one wall. It had two lamps, neither of which worked. There was also a bathroom. With a skeleton inside blocking the door. A second skeleton was lying facedown. “What the hell happened here?” Gabe asked.

  “I’ve no idea,” I said. “But I think we should go back to the ship, go home, and let somebody else come back to figure it out.”

  I guess both of us were impacted by a morbid curiosity. We took down another door and were happy to discover no more remains. But it was enough. Neither of us had much interest in walking away from an unresolved mystery, but I think by then we just wanted to leave. We returned down the corridor, descended on the ramp, and walked through the lobby toward the front doors.

  The sun was directly overhead. Gabe led the way outside, saw something, grunted, and stopped in his tracks. “Where the hell . . . ?”

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  He got out of my way so I could see. The lander was missing. We hurried out into the street and looked in both directions. Nothing was moving. Then I called Belle. “Where are you?”

  There was no answer.

  XXV.

  No scientific advance has had a greater impact on our social lives than the development of artificial intelligence. It provides more than self-driving cars and chess partners and warnings about security issues. It is of far more value than simply answering phone calls and maintaining the house in which we live. With the arrival of a genuine AI, loneliness was banished from the world. Today, everyone has a friend.

  —HARAM ECLEVIUS, THE WAY FORWARD, 3002 CE

  We stood for several minutes, while a sense of utter helplessness crushed us. To our left, a few blocks away we could see the ocean. In the opposite direction, the street continued indefinitely through the city. I tried again to call Belle but got no response.

  We looked at each other and exchanged comments about how this could not have happened. It was crazy. I looked up at the tops of the buildings. At the sky. And at the sun. There was no movement anywhere. A group of about thirty small birds sat on window ledges three and four floors up directly across from us. “It couldn’t have been stolen,” Gabe said. “How could they have gotten past Belle?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought it was possible,” I said. “She’d have shut it down if someone had tried.” I stared out at the empty streets. “So I guess I was wrong.”

  “She got hacked.”

  “It’s the only thing I can think of.”

  “I can’t imagine what else might have happened. We’re probably going to have to upgrade the technology.”

  “Let’s hope we get the chance.”

  The air was hot. There was some wind off the ocean, but it wasn’t enough to compensate. We went back inside the hotel and sat down in the lobby, positioned so we could see through the front doors. It was too warm in there also, but at least we were out of the sunlight.

  We were both in a state of shock. I’d never before felt so helpless. “I miss the air-conditioning,” I said.

  “There wasn’t any air-conditioning in here.”

  “
I was talking about the lander.”

  “Oh.” He closed his eyes for a minute. Then: “Chase, we have no way of bringing the Belle-Marie down, do we?”

  “Not if we can’t get Belle to talk to us.”

  Periodically one of us got up, walked over to the door, and looked outside. I spent time trying to call her. “Belle, where are you?” Eventually, if the yacht was still orbiting, it would be overhead again. I couldn’t be sure precisely when. We wouldn’t have been able to see it, and I hadn’t checked to find out how long it would take to complete an orbit. So I kept calling. I tried every few minutes. But we got nothing. After a while we started getting desperate. “It should have passed us by now,” I said. “I think they took over the ship as well.”

  “That’s not possible, is it?”

  “I don’t think we know how to do it. But it’s the only reason I can think of that we’re not getting an answer from her.”

  I don’t know why but I kept expecting to see someone walk in through the front doors. That didn’t happen either. Gradually, it began to grow dark outside. And then we got a surprise: lights came on in the lobby. We went out and looked at the surrounding buildings. They were dark.

  I hadn’t gotten hungry yet, but I would have appreciated some water. Two fountains stood on opposite sides of the lobby, but neither worked. There was also a restaurant. While Gabe remained in his chair looking increasingly depressed, I went through a glass door, walked past chairs and tables, and continued into the kitchen. Three refrigerators were lined up against a wall. But they were not working.

  There were water faucets that didn’t work either. I was probably getting too thirsty to have resisted, and I’m not sure putting any product from that kitchen into my stomach would have been a good idea.

  I went back out and rejoined Gabe. The place was cooling off now that the sun had gone down. We were sitting with an increasing sense of desperation. I continued to call Belle every few minutes, but the silence was deafening. Then finally we heard a noise. A thumping sound. We didn’t see anything, but there was something in the building. We drew weapons and got to our feet. I thought it came from a passageway that led into the side of the building nearest the ocean. The one we’d inspected earlier. Gabe took a few steps toward it. Then a cackle came from that direction, and a large black-winged bird soared out of the corridor, crossed to the other side of the lobby, and landed on a table. It took off again within a few seconds, circled the room, and disappeared back down the passageway.