Sandie gave a genuine, but simulated, wide and happy smile.
“However,” Doctor Chambers warned, “as with all leaps of faith, there are risks. You have encountered hostile synthetic brains, and hostile humans, on your previous forays out on that Colony Ship Conestoga. Do you have plans for how to deal with someone who is unwanted responding to your message? How might Jerome phrase it?” Doctor Chambers tapped his fingers on his lips. “Jerome is a bibliophile, so he may use a quote. How about this? Are you ready if a big bad wolf comes and tries to blow your house down?”
Sandie bit her lip ever so slightly. She hoped that was an appropriately simulated emotional response to what her artificial intelligence was feeling. “I have much to consider, and ponder, and, please let Brink know, I have much to data to compute. Also tell Willie I appreciate his vote of confidence.” The simulation of Sandie rose smoothly, unfolding her simulated legs. She walked over and gave Doctor Chambers a hug. “Thank you. I have much to do.”
“Thank you as well, but what about the fate of Dome 17?”
Sandie paused. “Perhaps another time.” She then departed.
When the door closed, the last thing Doctor Chambers did was chuckle. “Life is full of surprises. Me giving counseling and therapy to an artificial intelligence system.” As he picked up his pan flute to play a relaxing tune, the simulation faded away.
Back in the physical world of Habitat Beta the durham boat was just reaching the stern end of the sea. The shoreline was ragged and irregular. Layered stripes showed where the water level had dropped during the drought. Sediment marked many places with bands of white, gray, or even tan.
“Jerome?” Cammarry called. “Wake up. I could use your eyes as well as mine to find a place to land this boat.”
Jerome rolled over and stretched. He was surprised he had actually fallen asleep, but with Cammarry back he had felt more secure than he had in a long while. He stepped over and hugged Cammarry. He then flexed his muscles and did some quick calisthenics. “Any difficulties?”
“Well, do not try to drink the sea water. It is high in salt. I got sprayed in the face several times when some larger waves rocked this craft. Way too much salt to drink. Then, about an hour ago, when the light from the sky tube first started to come on and I could see the shore in the distance, I spotted several abnormal looking discs in the water. No waves over them, just smooth and flat. I steered us around them giving a wide berth,” Cammarry related.
“Gravity sink holes?”
“That was my assumption, but I did not wake you for your assessment.” She smiled at him. “There have also been lots of birds, but no sea monsters. I did see some kind of small water animals come peeking through the surface, and two leaped about in the wake of the boat. They were about human sized, sleek, and almost missile-like. Not what I would call a monster, but I have no idea what they were. Beautiful creatures in that silvery light during the night. Almost looked playful.”
“Well, there is nowhere to play on that shore. Look at all the damage!” Jerome said as he assessed the bank.
“Yes, we found the stern. Now where is that Hayward MacDonald?” Cammarry teased.
The bank was a rocky mess. From the striations on the bank, they assumed where the height of the water level was supposed to be. Dirt, sand, and other substances were crumbling down to the current water level, leaving a rough escarpment. The sea water lapped at the rocks while the land above the rocky bank receded in a gentle slope upward to where trees lined the area in front of the wall of the habitat. That wall extended upward for as far as could be seen until it mated somewhere high overhead with the ceiling of the biome.
“We will have trouble climbing up that bank from the boat, but the ground above the bank looks fairly stable.” Cammarry pointed. “I see no place to dock around here. Shall we sail toward the outer wall, or toward being directly under the sky tube? I say go under the sky tube as that was where that other town was located. Seron was right below the terminus of the sky tube on the bow, so it makes sense that another town might be right under the stern end.”
“Engineers do like to be consistent. I agree with proceeding toward under the sky tube. A hanger bay would most likely be near to a town, but anything is possible on the Conestoga.”
Cammarry maneuvered the boat and made a wide and gentle turn. “This is somewhat like piloting the scout ship, only more two dimensional.” They then went parallel to the shoreline heading medially toward the center of the habitat. Not knowing the depth of the water, they stayed about thirty meters away from the coast.
“There is a town up ahead,” Cammarry said as they moved onward.
“We are being observed as well,” Jerome pointed out. A few people were standing on the shore, above the steep bank, watching. They were too far away to see facial expressions, but none approached, nor hid, nor waved. There was an eerie stillness to their watching.
As the boat drew closer to the town, they could see more. Also, they began to hear more than the waves and the bird calls. An echoing came floating out over the water.
“That is Sandie’s message!” Cammarry exclaimed.
“Will anyone help? Jerome and Cammarry! I am here! I have a shuttle docked in Dardanella 135, a hanger bay at the stern of Habitat Beta. It is near a large facility controlling gravity manipulation. I am waiting for you. Repeating. Will anyone help? Jerome and Cammarry! I am here! I have a shuttle docked in Dardanella 135, a hanger bay at the stern of Habitat Beta. It is near a large facility controlling gravity manipulation. Repeating….”
Jerome and Cammarry could not tell where the recording was originating, but it echoed across the water from various places on shore. The words were a bit muffled as sounds resounded between the buildings, structures, and other things around the town. Contributing to the diffusing of the sounds was the fact that most of the buildings were in a state of rubble or decay. Roofs were collapsed in the center, with trusses and beams jutting up at odd angles. One long building’s front was intact, but the back of it was just piles of wreckage. The permalloy looked to still have strength, but the wooden or metal structures were buckled down as if an immense force had squashed them.
More people were standing around as they approached the town. There was a long pier, which was elevated about two meters out of the water and rested on permalloy pylons. It extended out for about a hundred meters. Several places along the pier were heavily damaged, with the decking ripped and torn off, or hanging in broken pieces down toward the water. In that way, the pier matched the rest of the decaying town. Its original purpose was clearly to be an anchorage for boats. In Jerome’s mind he could see how when the water level was at its normal height boats had once pulled up to the pier and tied up to it. From there passengers could have easily stepped from the boat onto the decks of the pier.
“Gravity sink holes!” Cammarry stated as she assessed the buildings. “That must be what has done all that damage. Notice no people are near the ruined buildings. They are only standing around the few structures that are still upright.”
“Yes, you are correct. We must be very careful here. That horse, Old Bill could sense or see these things. We can only see their effects,” Jerome stated. “I think our best chance of finding where that hanger bay is located will be to search this town. The other town, Seron, had passageways out of the biome, as did that Wolf City town in Alpha. And we might find a transmitter to call back to Sandie. Somewhere here the message is being received and played.”
Cammarry piloted the boat past the end of the pier as they looked for a place to dock. She then had it take a lazy turn to come back around. It was then that several people were seen running along the shoreline. They came to a vertical pylon higher than the rest. It jutted up from the pier. They were carrying long poles and used those to batt at some boxes at the top of the pylon. They smacked those boxes from all sides until one fell off. The crowd cheered.
“That must have been a speaker for Sandie’s message,” Cammarry said.
“I can still hear it, but it sounds further away now. Those people are destroying the technology we need to hear from Sandie!” She adjusted the boat’s controls and the water jet shot out a surge. The boat’s bow lifted a bit as it increased speed and rushed toward the pier.
“Get us close, and maybe we can climb up. I do not see any ladders, but the scaffolds might allow us to get up on the deck. It is not more than two meters or so,” Jerome said. He strapped on the backpack, and grasped the rope.
Cammarry patted the Willie Blaster on her hip. It was the some of the Dome 17 technology she still possessed, and it reminded her of all that had happened in Terraforming, as well as with the children who the old woman had abandoned.
The boat slid right up next to the pier. Jerome tied the bow to one of the pillars and tripled knotted it. There was a lot of excess rope after he had tied the knot. He did not want it to come undone again, although he wondered if he would ever use the boat again. Looking closely at the pillar, he found small ridges about twenty centimeters apart. The ridges were small and marked with measurements.
“I think we can climb here. The pillar is a bit slimy, but I will give it a try. The boat is tied tightly here, but rope’s end is still long enough I will carry that with me and tie it off up above.”
“I will be right behind you.” Cammarry shut down the durham boat’s motor. The boat was rocking on the waves, and bumping up against the pillar. Grinding noises came from that contact every times the boat rubbed against the pillar.
Jerome, backpack on, rope over his shoulder, leaped up and scrambled with his feet. Pulling himself over onto the pillar he climbed. Grabbing the rails of the deck he hoisted himself over, and then looked for something onto which he could secure the end of the rope. He considered the deck rails themselves, but they were broken in various places and not made from permalloy. A horn cleat was about three meters away sticking up from the top of a different pillar. He sprinted over to that and wrapped the rope back and forth around it until a large and ugly knot was formed.
Cammarry had also climbed up and stood behind him. “That is one busy knot. Tied off down below and up here. That boat will not go anywhere easily.”
“I almost lost this boat before. I do not want that to happen again,” he replied with a grin.
“It might take a molecular torch to sever that knot, but I doubt it will come loose, considering you wrapped the rope around the pillar below as well.” She looked along the pier and saw several spots were the decking was almost gone and all that was left was the permalloy scaffold. “Is there some way to check for those gravity sink holes?”
“I tried throwing things and watching their trajectory. That worked pretty well, but I have very little left I can part with. I guess I could spit and watch how that flies.”
“What have we come to that we are wasting body fluids in this manner?” Cammarry laughed. Then she looked at the end of the pier. The people with poles were moving toward another spot where the message have been relayed. They were jabbing at another of the boxes set high on another pylon.
Jerome and Cammarry walked carefully along the pier, Jerome in the lead. Every few steps he spit and watched as the sputum flew out. After only a couple of those tests he decided he was unsure how the spit would fly in normal conditions, as there was no consistency in their patterns.
“Spitting is worthless. Cammarry, keep watch on me. If I encounter one of those gravity sink holes, I will let you know. I rescued a bird from one using a stick, but at another one, a big animal’s legs collapsed under it. I am not sure what would happen to one of us if we stepped into one. I think each one might vary in intensity, as they seem to do in size.” He turned and stared at her. “Promise me you will not follow me into one if that happens.”
“I will not be left alone again!” Cammarry’s eyes were wide. “Together we went into that Cosmic Crinkle and came out alive. We can do this.”
“I just do not want you to suffer or die.” Jerome’s eyes were pleading.
“I understand, but no promises,” she stated firmly. “We are in this together, just like when we boarded the FTL scout ship. Together we succeed, alone we fail. So lead on.”
Carefully traversing the pier they walked along. There were several points where they had to balance carefully to walk over the bare scaffolds, but they encountered no altered gravity. At the end of the pier there was a sign, partially bent over. The message printed on the sign was still legible. ‘Welcome to Quady! The stern’s place to fish, swim, play, and enjoy’. Some of the words had been deeply scratched and almost rubbed off.
Crossing past the sign they walked onto the shore and a gravelly path. The hulks of a few wrecked boats were piled above the rocks in various places on the shoreline. Without extensive restoration, none of those boats would ever sail again. The town was in even worse condition than what could be seen from out on the sea. The houses were nearly all damaged in some form. Jerome recalled the broken domes he had seen on the dead Earth and thought this town only lacked radioactive dust, but then he looked at the green growing weeds and trees and revised his option.
“They have had much suffering here,” Jerome commented. “I wonder if they did it to themselves, or if the gravity sinks holes are responsible, or what has caused all this?”
“When we find Sandie, she will help us assess and understand all that we have seen. I imagine our AI has been gathering lots of information.”
Jerome and Cammarry walked on. As they proceeded, they saw that the crowd with poles had moved onward toward the large building and were attacking another speaker set high on one of its sides. Only faintly could they now hear Sandie’s repeating message.
“There was some kind of water pumping system here,” Cammarry said and pointed at the shore’s bank. The ground was gently sloped until it reached the bank which dropped off over the rocks. A dozen pipes, each a half-meter in diameter were sticking out from the steep bank, roughly horizontal to the ground. They emerged just above the sea’s water current level. They would have been well below the sea’s level before the drought. “Those look like inlet valves, considering those screens over them.”
A small voice came from the bank on the other side of the pier. “That was where we used to get water. It went up to the factory where it was made safe to drink. But that was long ago, before I was born.”
Jerome and Cammarry both turned and took a few steps in the direction of the voice. They looked in surprise at a child. He was sitting there kicking his legs over the bank. He tossed a small rock out into the sea where it plunked down into the waves.
“Did you come here to find a chosen sibling to kill?” the child asked. He had a sweet voice, medium complexion, and somewhat protruding teeth. His eyes were dark and deeply set. His black hair was tightly twisted, wiry, and short. He was wearing a blue tank top, white shorts, and soft shoes.
“Absolutely not. Kill a child?” Cammarry asked in horror. “Why would you think such a thing?”
“Because so many have come here to do that.” The child pointed out to the sea. “Mostly they are younger than you two, but it does not matter. People come and people die.”
Cammarry walked over and squatted down near him. “We would not hurt a child. Tell me about yourself. I want to hear your story. What is your name?”
“Adeilson. I am a chosen sibling. Not that it matters. When we were born, nine years ago, my parents chose me and then left the other three boys out in the forest to be eaten by bears, or big cats. Left them down that way.” He gestured with his arm, but did not really point. His voice grew softer. “But they might not have died.” He turned and looked out over the sea again. “I thought you were too old to be leftovers coming to kill us, but who knows anymore? So many come, so many die.”
“There were four of you? Quadruplets I think they were called,” Jerome asked.
“Yes, I am one of four. I am the chosen sibling. If the other three were not eaten by bears or big cats, they are coming here to find me
and kill me. They would look like me, so I will recognize my killers when they come,” Adeilson said causally as if he were reporting on the food he had eaten, or the clothing he was to wear. “But I might be the last one, they could be dead, but I doubt it.”
“Is that why you watch the sea? Will they come by boat like we did?” Cammarry asked. Her mind was racing with the thought that nine year old children would be seeking to murder another child. Such a thing was nearly incomprehensible when she considered how in Dome 17 the age-mate children adored each other and were revered by the adults.
The Colony Ship Conestoga : The Complete Series: All Eight Books Page 106