With the weight limits of the cherry picker, it took half a dozen trips down, then up, to get all the containers out of Adventure and into the trucks. Xavier realized that by supervising from above—obviously necessary—he had allowed Singh and especially Pandya free rein with the materials on the ground. Either one of them could have been hiding inside a truck, unseen, prying open a container.
Well, nothing he could do about it. He wasn’t too worried that they would find anything useful. . . . Adventure’s cargo was literally just packages of goo. Even the vital proteus gear was secreted inside goo.
Once everything was loaded up and the crane lowered, Xavier and the team headed for the holding area, a corner of a munitions storage bunker about two hundred meters from the ops area, across the runway. It was more exposed than Xavier liked—his particular bunker and its kin were rounded mounds, wisely separated by several meters of open space, with the whole complex bordered by several dozen yards of mud and grass inside a wicked-looking security fence. There were fences beyond that, marking the boundary of Yelahanka Air Base.
He would have preferred an actual warehouse, a building among other buildings, of course. So that, should the impulse strike him over the next day or two, he could make unscheduled or unescorted visits. True, he would face the usual challenges of evading security—locks, cameras, and whatever new toys had been developed over twenty years.
But he had always found that even layered systems are vulnerable at one point . . . with their human operators.
For example, as the enlisteds were helping him stack and arrange the containers near the entrance to the bunker (which proved to be empty; so much for the alert status of the Indian Air Force at Yelahanka), one of them, the most junior aircraftsman, dropped a container on its corner.
The box ruptured, not only exposing the inner sheathing but tearing it, allowing a puddle of goo to escape.
The young man’s eyes—the only expressive part of his face visible over his mask—went wide with fear, either that Xavier would have him arrested or that he might die from exposure.
The sudden silence was apparent to Pandya, who said from outside, “Everything all right in there, Mr. Toutant?” He gave Xavier’s name a beautiful French pronunciation.
“Just some final rearranging!”
Then he pulled down his mask and put on his most engaging face. “It’s not really dangerous. What’s your name?”
He slowly lowered his mask. “Aircraftsman Roi,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’ll get a shovel or a—”
Xavier was already bending to the box, righting it and prying off the lid. “Take a look,” he said. “You’re the first on Earth.”
He did, slowly bending toward the container with its wrapped greenish material, like foaming gelatin. “What is it?”
“It’s just raw material,” Xavier said, an honest if incomplete answer. “It’s what we found on Keanu when we arrived twenty years ago. It’s very . . . adaptable. You can make almost anything out of it.”
Now Roi’s eyes went wide in an entirely different manner. This was curiosity, possibly cunning. (It occurred to Xavier that he had been wrong in identifying Pandya as the likely intelligence agent on Singh’s squad, that it might well be Aircraftsman Roi. It was also possible that everyone on Singh’s squad was a spy—that was how he would have done it. But he was now committed to this gambit.)
“You can touch it,” Xavier said, demonstrating. It was harmless; had to be, since on Keanu the HBs made food out of it.
Roi dabbed a finger in it, smiled. “How does it work?”
“You need to have the right machine—a 3-D printer, what we call a proteus. You tell the proteus what you need, and, basically, it turns this goo into it. Food, equipment—”
“Money?”
Had him. “Anything,” Xavier said. “Especially if you’re just thinking of selling some of this to, say, a Chinese entrepreneur—” That was risky, because his sense of this world was twenty years out of date: China might not have entrepreneurs anymore, or if they did, they might be considered evil.
“Mr. Toutant?” Pandya was in the entrance, though the stack of containers kept him from seeing what the group inside were up to.
“One moment,” Xavier yelled. “Just a final adjustment!”
He turned away, and Xavier leaned close to Roi. “I would be happy to make you a little gift,” he said. He took off one of his gloves. “I could scoop the spilled material into this, and no one would ever know.
“But my colleagues might ask—” Xavier let the last word linger just long enough to earn a knowing smile from Aircraftsman Roi, who then said: “I have two hundred new rupees in my pocket.”
“You know, that would be a welcome gift. If I’m asked, I can say I exchanged the material for some money. We don’t have any!”
And with that, a deal was closed—and a new friend was made.
It was actually reassuring to Xavier, in a way, to know that some things never change.
And that it was possible he could break out of Yelahanka with minimal effort.
Reaction to the presser: not bad as far as it went, but it didn’t go very far.
Confirm that crew includes Rachel Stewart and Pav Radhakrishnan as well as their daughter, Yahvi. Another U.S.-born individual, Mr. Toutant.
But sources say six and that leaves two missing. Wounded? Imprisoned?
Same sources suggest one of the missing two is not human. Can anyone help? It’s important!
COLIN EDGELY TO THE KETTERING GROUP,
APRIL 14, 2040
CARBON-143
STATUS: Following a general Aggregate Carbon maneuver, in which each formation relocated from its workplace to the greater staging area, then, following precise circumnavigation, Carbon-143 found herself resuming her modeling with greater vigor.
It should have been anomalous. One of the least questioned verities of Aggregate existence was that their superiority to more organic life forms was due to their high and steady levels of production. Somatic disturbances such as fatigue or lassitude or general unhappiness were not attributes of the Aggregates.
Nevertheless, it had become clear to the formations that, especially in a new planetary environment like Earth’s, certain affirming measures helped maintain productivity and contributed to the general sense of purpose. Carbon-143 certainly felt more aligned with her immediate partner, 143/A71, as well as the rest of the A formation.
The march past the rows of vehicles being prepared for action served as a reminder of the scale of the work being performed and impressed upon individual units their relative unimportance and disposability.
Carbon-143 noted the day’s lesson.
INPUT: Although no actual data reached her, Carbon-143 detected a tremendous amount of signal noise on her military operational channels. Some action was about to take place. It was too soon to be directly related to the work at Site A—the countdown timer available to all formations and units still stood at minus twenty-five days.
But somewhere on Earth the Aggregates were going into action.
ACTION: None at this time.
HUMANS RETURN FROM KEANU
BANGALORE, APRIL 14—The Indian Space Research Organization confirmed what the rest of the world already suspected: Five humans from the Near-Earth Object Keanu returned to Earth yesterday, landing at a still-undisclosed air base in India. The humans—four of them originally born on Earth and transferred to Keanu by the mysterious Objects in August 2019—are in excellent condition and are expected to make a public statement within the next two days. They are currently being debriefed by government officials and ISRO scientists.
The group includes Rachel Stewart, daughter of American Destiny astronaut Zachary Stewart, who commanded the first human vehicle to land on Keanu, and is believed to have died there. Also Pav Radhakrishnan, son of General Taj Radhakrishnan,
commander of the Coalition’s Brahma mission to Keanu in 2019. General Radhakrishnan is chair of the official welcoming committee.
One human, daughter of mission commander Stewart and her husband, Pav Radhakrishnan, was born on the NEO.
Also traveling with the humans is a member of the so-called race of Sentries, extraterrestrial aliens who reportedly lived aboard Keanu for centuries prior to the arrival of humans.
BANGALORE TIMES, APRIL 14, 2040
See this, typical of all official reports: Note that there is no mention of the Aggregate attack on their ship, or the severe injuries suffered by one of the crew members.
Why is India hiding the truth? This is what we’d expect from the so-called Free Nations.
COLIN EDGELY TO THE KETTERING GROUP,
APRIL 14, 2040
RACHEL
“May I present the candidates for representation of the Adventure saga,” Taj said.
There were three smiling people to his left at the front of the conference room. “Miss Arunjee Lim from Popular Malaysia Group.” She was a woman Rachel’s age, slim, confident, dressed for corporate success and wearing a pair of spectacles that were so thin they vanished when she turned to smile.
“Mr. Urvashi Muraly of Times Independent.” Male, perhaps a year or two younger than Miss Lim, equally stylish, equally confident. He did not appear to be wearing the magic spectacles.
“And Mr. Edgar Chang of NewSky.” This was an older gentleman, heavy, rumpled, looking more like a Hong Kong pawnshop owner than a media genius. “Cheers,” he said, revealing a strong Australian accent.
In truth, all Rachel heard was blah-blah, blah-blah, blah-blah-blah. Her lack of concentration—or interest—was partly due to the nature of the meeting: She saw the search for a representative as a necessary exercise, but little more than that.
It was also due to a series of static-filled bursts in her head. Keanu was trying to get in touch. She kept biting down to activate her transmitter, silently grunting “Rachel” or “here” or some other single syllable that might travel across four hundred thousand kilometers without resulting in an embarrassing moment in the presentation.
And there was the nagging distraction caused by her concerns about Sanjay. If not for him, they would have been packing to go . . . somewhere else.
Don’t blame the victim, she reminded herself.
She almost missed the presentations.
Lim and Muraly had swiftly laid out similar plans: a press conference within twenty-four hours to “introduce” the Adventure crew to the world, then exclusive “in-depth” profiles to the highest bidder. “I see four major media groups,” Lim said.
“I see three,” Muraly said. “But my financial targets might be higher.”
That was all short-term. Mid-term, there were “as told to” stories, then “insider views” of the Adventure vehicle, “tales of Keanu.”
Chang sat silent through the verbal tennis match between Lim and Muraly until: “One useful thing we might do is connect Earth-based families with their lost loved ones on Keanu,” he said.
That made Rachel sit up and listen. They had talked about this on Keanu. She glanced at Pav, who nodded as Chang talked about a website and links to humanitarian organizations on the subcontinent.
“What about Free Nation U.S.?” Rachel said. Since that would be important to forty percent of the HBs. “Aren’t you, here, sort of at war with them?”
Chang didn’t seem fazed by the question. “The model isn’t World War Two, though the utter domination and subjugation of North America, Europe, and much of Africa answers very well to that.
“It is more like the cold war, where you had a Soviet bloc that forbade access, did almost no trading, and blocked the flow of information to the West.
“Yet no system is perfect, not even that of the Aggregates, and especially not in the post-Internet age. New Sky has wires into Free Nation U.S. We have facilities, in fact, in the gray zones—”
“Which don’t exist!” Arunjee Lim said.
“Whether they exist or not,” Rachel said, writing off Lim at that moment, “I’d like to hear about them.”
“Gray zones,” Chang said, bowing toward Lim, “or rather, ‘Zonas Grises,’ are geographical areas within Aggregate-controlled nations where it is possible to visit . . . as long as one is discreet.”
Now it was Muraly’s turn to take a shot at Chang. “Even if these Zonas Grises exist, and I’m not convinced that they do, I don’t think the Keanu crew is going to be able to be ‘discreet.’ Your arrival was surely known to the Aggregates long before your actual landing . . . and with the announcement today, they’ll be able to track your every move.”
Rachel had to admit that Muraly was correct: She and Pav and the others would have a hard time sneaking into a gray area.
And they weren’t supposed to be talking about that, anyway. “Stipulating that a gray area might exist, and that we might have some kind of access to it,” Rachel said, “how is that helpful to our mission . . . to connecting the Keanu population with their families and vice versa?”
“The grayest of the gray areas is Mexico,” Chang said. “Where you will find numerous pirate transmitters. If you want to get information into or out of Free Nation U.S., that’s the place to do it.”
Rachel turned to Tea. “What do you think about this?”
Her father’s-former-girlfriend-turned-mother-in-law just shook her head. “Oh, honey, I got out of the U.S. fifteen years ago, just when things were getting really bad. I haven’t been back since.”
“Don’t you miss it?”
Tea glanced at Taj, as if concerned that her next words would offend him. “All the fucking time.” She sighed. “But it’s not the country I grew up in. . . .”
There was more back-and-forth, but Rachel had truly ceased to listen. Lim, Muraly, and Chang were sent off, leaving the three Adventure travelers, Taj, and Tea to confer, though to Rachel, the choice was clear and the outcome never in doubt.
It didn’t happen without argument, but everyone eventually agreed to let Rachel have Edgar Chang.
In the hallway afterward, she grabbed Pav, who had wanted Muraly. “I didn’t really,” he said. “I just said that to see the look on your face.”
“You bastard!”
“And to see you be what you’re supposed to be, which is the leader.” He kissed her. “Welcome back.”
She welcomed the kiss, and his touch . . . but was troubled by his joking comment. She knew she was the “leader” of the Adventure mission; she was the one who had been mayor of the Houston-Bangalores for years.
But in that job, she felt secure . . . she knew the issues, the players, the possibilities. Not here, where the issues were complex, the population vast, even the landscape great and unknowable. The circumstances were unpredictable.
Had she let those factors paralyze her? Had she been reluctant to act? Was she, to use another phrase Zack Stewart loved, punching above her weight?
The only way to answer that would be the results. And the problem with getting results was . . . she and the Adventure crew had only one goal, which was to somehow free Earth from Reiver domination.
At the rate they were going, it would be a thousand years from now, or never.
In spite of her doubts, Rachel expected to sleep more soundly the second night. The bed would be more familiar, as would the noises and smells of the Yelahanka infirmary. And she was tired.
She was also wrong. She and Pav closed the door around eleven P.M. local time—as good as any, given their “space lag,” as Xavier called it. Rachel snuggled against Pav, who went to sleep as fast as a human being could.
While Rachel lay there for a good long time
She carried no watch—none of the HBs did—but there was a clock on the nightstand, and it said 1:27. She had not slept at all so far, and it did
n’t appear that she would.
It was frustrating. Having Edgar Chang on board meant that her team had taken its first public step toward accomplishing its mission . . . and having Xavier returning from Adventure with an armful of equipment, and a knowing smirk, meant that the less-public plan was now in motion, too.
All they truly needed was for Sanjay to get well. Or to recover enough to be movable. Having seen him, however, she had to be realistic: He wasn’t going anywhere soon.
The brief contacts with Harley Drake and Keanu had been sort of reassuring—Rachel hadn’t realized how truly disconnected she had been feeling.
So why the restlessness? And how the hell did Pav manage to lie there snoozing like an exhausted infant? Like Yahvi as a baby—
Yahvi, of course, was another contributor to Rachel’s lack of sleep, with her chorus of sneezes, sniffles, and moans heard from the next room. Taj had seen the afternoon signs of an oncoming cold and prescribed spicy food, but Yahvi had rejected it—not that Rachel blamed her. (The Keanu diet was bland by any standards, especially the Houston side of it. Yahvi was just as likely to eat a bowl of live insects as a dish of hot curry.)
Yahvi seemed to be quiet now, thank goodness. Rachel had never been a victim of insomnia—she had even been able to fall asleep easily on the hard-packed nanodirt of the Keanu habitat during her first months, before the Bangalore teams “created” hammocks and actual mattresses.
Of course, she had been fourteen then . . . and was thirty-four now.
Exhale. Close eyes. Empty the mind . . . these were all meditation exercises Pav and others had taught her, and they had proved useful, for meditation. As for sleep, she would see—
Then she heard—and felt—a whump!
It was significant enough that it forced her to open her eyes, and wait. What could it be? It reminded her of her childhood in Houston, a Dumpster being emptied early on trash day—
If so, that would be the end of it.
Then she heard a second whump, and a third, and a series of fast rattling vibrations.
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