Anton kept up a steady lecture. He managed to put even Howard’s factoids to shame. “Microgravity is one of the most persistent problems with long-term space travel. It’s our main area of research here on Infinity Base. How to keep people healthy and hearty for long space trips.”
I crossed my arms, which sent me pitching into the wall. “I know. I saw the skeletons of your chimpanzee test subjects.” They’d been picked clean by tanks of beetles.
“Oh, that’s right,” Anton said offhandedly. “You saw everything on Eureka Cove. Of course, that was just the beta testing. We have the next level up on Infinity Base. Here, we’re trying to prepare for the time when humans will live in space, either permanently, or during long-term travel to colonize other planets. Our dream is that, one day, Infinity Base will be the launch point for humanity’s journey to a million stars.”
Howard’s eyes were so wide now, I was surprised they didn’t pop out of his head. I had to admit, it sounded really nice, until you remembered how their space station was built on a pack of lies.
“So, the stuff we saw on the island. The chimps, and the sheep, and those . . . moths? They’re tests?” Savannah asked.
“We breed species to be most efficient for human needs during space living. Sheep provide wool, milk, and even meat, but we need to keep them compact to fit in our habitats. Those moths spin silk in their larval form, then the adult form is an excellent source of protein.”
“Eww,” said Eric.
“And the chimps stand in for human test subjects. We study their bone density loss, the effects of space radiation on their offspring, and of course, the effects of long-term hypothermic torpor on their brain function.”
“Eww,” said Savannah.
Nate stopped playing for a second. “Wait, I have brain damage?”
“Most human studies of hypothermic torpor are done on people who have already experienced brain damage,” Anton explained. “Hospitals use brain cooling to help drowning or suffocation victims minimize the damage that oxygen deprivation has already done to their brains. But there isn’t a lot of data as to what it can do to normal brains.”
“You’re assuming Nate has a normal brain,” said Eric.
“Hey!” said Nate, and shoved him lightly, though it was enough to send Eric tumbling head over heels down the hall.
“The good news is that our research on chimps seems to show that there’s no permanent damage, even if they are kept in torpor for days or even weeks. They might have some temporary motor-skills issues when they first wake up, though. They may be uneasy walking, or a bit clumsier than usual.”
“Ah, I don’t even have that!” Nate proclaimed as Eric barreled into him from behind and the two of them went crashing into another wall.
Savannah clung to the floor. “Guys. Guys! We don’t all have our space legs.”
As soon as we’d all settled down, Anton stopped at a wide hatch some distance from the end of the corridor. “We’ll all have to be quick getting inside here. There’s a twenty-second window during each rotation. Oh, and go feetfirst.”
“Why?” Savannah asked.
“You’ll see in a minute.” He looked at the indicator lights along the wall and pressed a button. The hatch opened wide with its usual pop. “Okay, go!”
We pulled ourselves through the hatch and found ourselves at a funnel-shaped end of a long tunnel about the width of a car. There were rungs set in one side, I assumed to help us pull ourselves along. Anton turned his feet in the direction of the end of the tunnel and started pulling himself down, end over end.
I floated forward a foot or two, watching him curiously. “What are you doing?”
But I guess I’d pushed myself harder than I thought, as I bumped into Anton’s shoulder with my knee. He grabbed me harshly and slid me in the same direction as him.
“I said, feetfirst!”
“Okay!” I grabbed on to the rungs and was shocked to find myself still sliding downward. When I let go again, the rungs started moving up past my hands, like I was slowly sinking to the bottom of a swimming pool. I grabbed on to a rung and hung on.
Gravity had returned.
“This is so cool!” Eric cried as he slid past me on the far wall of the tunnel.
“Grab on to something! It only gets stronger as we go down!” Anton called down to him.
Because all of a sudden I could tell which way was down.
We weren’t at the end of a tunnel. We were at the top of one. We were inside one of the huge spokes connecting the rings to the rest of the station. I stopped descending for a moment and closed my eyes, trying to see if I could feel the rotation, but then Savannah bumped into me from above.
Quickly, we maneuvered down the rungs, and eventually I even had to use my hands and feet and climb down like a ladder. I felt a little dizzy and disoriented as the pressure on my hands and feet grew stronger. I was getting heavier.
At last, we reached the floor. I hopped down the last few rungs and alighted a foot or two farther than I’d intended. So there was gravity, but not as much as normal. We were standing in a small, bare chamber with a door set in one end.
I bent my legs and did a tiny practice hop. At least, it was supposed to be tiny. Instead of a few inches, I moved a foot and a half into the air, then dropped lightly back down. My hands shot out toward the rungs to steady myself. It felt weird and dreamlike, like falling through water or in slow motion.
When we’d all reached the ground, Anton crossed to the door. “This ring is my baby,” he said, with obvious pride. “All my best work is in here.”
His best work? I made a face. We’d already seen the bees. Did I really want to know what lay beyond that door?
With a flourish, he opened the hatch and stepped aside to let us through.
19
THE FOREST PRIMEVAL
I STEPPED OUT INTO THE CHAMBER, WHICH MUST HAVE BEEN THE INTERIOR of the largest ring on the station. The hollow space was curved, walls and ceiling stretching in a cylinder that could have fit my entire house across without scraping off the paint. And it was filled with trees. Trees, bushes, undergrowth; an entire forest seemed to have sprung to life inside this ring. The air was misty, and off in the distance in either direction the ground rose as if up a hill.
High above, set into the ceiling, were bright lights, casting the whole chamber in the rosy-white light of early morning.
A ladybug flitted by my ear and I ducked. In the distance, I heard lowing, as if somewhere in this massive space we could find other animals as well. I looked back to see if my friends had their mouths open in awe, too. Howard was digging with his toe in the dirt to see how deep it went. Eric was hopping from buttressed root to buttressed root, testing out his half-g powers.
Savannah hopped up next to me. “Wow.”
I leaned into her, relieved that someone else realized how wild this was. “Yeah.”
“I mean . . . he kills all those bees . . . and then he makes this?” She shrugged. Now that gravity was working on us again, wisps of her hair that had escaped its ponytail hung down in straggles around her face, and she swiped them away from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I don’t like him at all, but this is impressive.” She turned and called to Anton. “Is this what happens to your Eureka Cove flocks and colonies after their ‘completion dates’ on the island?”
Anton nodded. At least he didn’t kill them, like we’d thought.
“We’re trying to make life sustainable in space. This is merely the first step. We have to see how these species do long-term in confined spaces and under lower gravitational forces than they are used to. Eureka Cove was the first stage. This is stage two.”
“It’s amazing!” said Eric. “It’s like a whole forest!”
Nate bounced lightly on his toes. “I told you this place was amazing. Scary . . . but really awesome, too.”
Anton gazed out over the woods, beaming with pride. “There are fields on the other side, for the farm animals. We can walk dow
n there and see them if you like.”
I looked at him. This was the Anton I’d met at dinner the other night, passionately arguing for the future of the human race. Somehow I’d forgotten that after seeing his warehouse of dead bees and knowing that he’d set out to terrorize people. I still didn’t agree with his tactics. I never would. But somehow, I understood where he was coming from, now that I saw the end goal.
“Has Dani seen this?” I asked.
“She hasn’t been up here since we got this new ring complete,” he said, then frowned. “Actually, she hasn’t come up at all since soon after the rediscovery of Omega City. I suppose it was because she was too busy sabotaging everything we were doing for the benefit of her father.”
I didn’t like the way his tone had turned bitter and mocking.
“Was she allowed?” I asked.
“Of course!” he snapped. “Dani was a senior Shepherd official. She didn’t need anyone’s permission to come—” He stopped, probably remembering how Dani wasn’t even allowed in Omega City.
“You knew Dr. Underberg was sneaking onto this station,” I said. “And Elana was doing everything in her power to keep Dani away from him. Maybe she hasn’t been up here for a year because Elana wouldn’t let her.”
Anton looked pensive. “Dani never said anything. I just thought she’d lost interest . . .” He turned away, looking out into the forest.
“I bet she would have really liked this,” Savannah said to him.
His eyes didn’t lose their faraway glaze, but a hint of a smile crossed his features. “Probably. She always said she never saw a future for us. But this”—he spread his hands—“this is the future I see.”
I stared out at the habitat. Was this where humanity was headed? Giant wheels in space, spreading outward forever?
“Why would Elana want to ruin this?” I asked. “She’s a Shepherd. Isn’t this the whole point of being a Shepherd?”
I hated the Shepherds and I’d never dream of laying a finger on Infinity Base. It was like Omega City itself, a testament to the will of human achievement. This wasn’t a couple of astronauts floating around inside a glorified tin can. This was life. In space.
Anton whirled on me. “What are you talking about?”
I folded my hands defensively. “That’s what she said, back on the ground. That she couldn’t let Dr. Underberg’s data get out, no matter what, even if it cost her Infinity Base.”
She’d said it twice, in fact. Once when we were still underground, hiding outside the biostation while Elana and Dani loaded my unconscious father into a hypothermic torpor pod, and again on the phone, when she thought I was Dani and she was launching my dad into space.
He narrowed his eyes for a moment, as if trying to parse my words, then shook his head. “You must have misunderstood her. Elana has spent years on this project. It’s our group’s crowning achievement. Everything she does for Guidant is so we have the funds to make this possible. The smart courts, her consumer tracking software—”
“Right,” I said. “The ones that invade our privacy and keep tabs on anything we’ve ever bought.”
“It’ll make a billion dollars,” said Anton. “Each of these rings cost a billion dollars. Space isn’t cheap, but everything we do, we do for humanity’s future.”
Elana had said that, too, on the phone. Guidant Technology had paid for Infinity Base. And by protecting Guidant, she could pay for a hundred space stations. But if Dr. Underberg released his data on Guidant’s program hacks, the company would be ruined, and the Shepherds would lose all their income.
I wondered if I should tell Anton that. If I were really a Shepherd—really believed all the things Shepherds had been taught to believe, like Anton and Dani had their whole lives—what would I want?
On one hand, Anton clearly loved this station. And as strange as he was, I had to agree with him on that. I’d never seen anything like Infinity Base. Omega City had been awe-inspiring, but this place was literally out of this world. I couldn’t imagine that he’d ever want to let it get destroyed.
On the other hand, Shepherds were weird. Anton shrugged off killing millions of bees. He didn’t seem to understand why Dani would want to protect her own father. They lied to the whole world and destroyed people’s lives and kidnapped entire families to get what they wanted and it didn’t bother them. If Elana could just make him another space station, maybe he wouldn’t actually care if this one was destroyed.
I wasn’t sure which answer was right, or which one would be playing the game the way we were supposed to. This was probably the type of thing Dad would be better at figuring out.
“How many animals are there in this ring?” Savannah asked, probably to fill the awkward silence.
“I actually have an exact number,” said Anton. He turned to a panel set in the wall and pressed a button, opening it up to reveal a double row of machines.
“Robots!” Eric exclaimed. He hopped down from the root he’d been standing on and bounded over with long leaps.
The ones on the top were flying drones, like the machines we’d seen feeding the sheep at Eureka Cove. The ones on the bottom had six legs and looked more like cat-size tarantulas. As they came online, each detached itself from its charging bay on the wall and fanned out across the space. I ducked when the flying drones buzzed over my head and hopped up on a branch as the spidery ones skittered past me on their way into the forest.
Eric took one look at the spider ones and jumped onto a low tree branch. I didn’t blame him.
“This is a recent project I was really proud of. Each of these drones has specialized programming to care for one species or one creature, depending. They work a bit like a tracking dog. You feed the drone a bit of the animal’s DNA, and it will follow it inside the habitat. It’s an excellent way to keep tabs on the animal—the drone will bring food or medicine as needed, and report back data on its habits or any special needs it might have. We have these guys all over the place, watering plants, checking on the silkworms, all the day-to-day tasks. It helps keep our staff requirements low.”
“Wow,” said Savannah, watching the robots flit here and there among the wildlife. “It’s nice to know you don’t just want to kill animals.”
Anton ignored that. “What I wanted to do was give this technology to wildlife conservationists back home. Imagine if you could track each individual member of an endangered species with a drone. I was especially keen on getting drone protection for species endangered due to poaching, like tigers and rhinos.”
“That’s great!” said Savannah. “Why haven’t you?”
“I will,” he insisted. “It’s just . . . it’s a very expensive project, and there are more immediate commercial uses for the technology at present.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“Like the military,” Nate said. We looked at him and he shrugged and hopped clear over a tree root nearly as tall as he was. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Yes.” Anton did not sound happy about it.
“Ha!” Nate sounded triumphant. “Take that, brain damage!”
“How did you know?” I asked him.
“Because that’s how it works,” Howard answered for him. “That’s how it always works. Scientists invent things, and the military uses it first. Worked with the space program, works with the Shepherds.”
“We already have drones in the military,” I said.
“Yes, but imagine you could train a drone to only shoot people with certain DNA markers,” said Anton. “You could even feed it the DNA of a terrorist and have the drone root them out. Like a robot assassin.”
I went cold all over. “So then all you would need to target someone is to feed it a bit of their DNA?”
Those spidery drones had just gone from vaguely creepy to absolutely terrifying. And the ones flitting about my head were even worse.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry!” Anton called, laughing as I ducked as one buzzed my head. “It’s not like they have guns or
anything on them. These are just feeding drones. The worst they can do is drop pellets on you or mist you with antibacterial spray.”
One of the spider drones skittered close to Eric, who punted it into the far wall.
“Hey!” Anton said sharply. “I just finished telling you how expensive they are!”
“What is it with this guy and bugs?” Eric asked.
“These are robots,” said Anton.
Yeah, scary robots that wanted our DNA so they could target us. Creepy. “Can you put them away?” I liked the forest, but I could do without the killer robots from outer space.
Anton rolled his eyes, then turned to the panel in the wall, and all the drones zipped and skittered back into their little pen. “I never understood why people think animals are so cute, but robots are so creepy.”
“I don’t think all your robots are creepy,” Eric said helpfully. “I really liked the waiter at the restaurant that time.” He looked at me and shrugged helplessly.
Well, Dad said we didn’t have to be perfect supporters of every single Shepherd project. And tarantula robots were a perfectly natural thing to fear.
Still, the forest was beautiful. We wandered the full length of the ring, enjoying both the feel of up and down, however slight, and the pretty plants and miniature animals. Alongside the sheep and goats were bunnies, birds, and even lizards. I felt light, and not just because I weighed less than fifty pounds. It was easy to pretend to like the Shepherds in this outer-space park. I wasn’t sure I was even pretending, after a while.
Anton looked down at his wrist, where his digital watch face buzzed and beeped. “That’s odd,” he said. “I’m getting a call from the main chamber. Maybe Dr. Underberg has woken up again.”
He pressed a button on the side of the face. “Hello?”
“Anton.” It was a woman’s voice. Elana’s voice.
Infinity Base Page 17