All These Worlds (Bobiverse Book 3)

by Dennis E. Taylor

  Instead of slowing down, I accelerated. As I came almost to the flint tips of their spears, I threw myself down and sideways. Half sliding, half rolling, I passed under the spear points before the Deltans could react. My tumbling body took out three of the front defenders, and knocked down a couple behind them.

  With the sudden hole in the defensive line, the Caerleons were unable to hold off the attackers. The defenders tried to swivel to close the gap, but left themselves open to attack from the side. I heard growls and the smack of colliding bodies, as well as the more cringeworthy cries of people being impaled.

  I couldn’t worry about it at the moment, though. A couple of the Caerleons seemed to have had exactly the thought I’d been concerned about. As I’d feared, they drew their flint blades and turned to Archimedes’ limp form.

  I grabbed a spear that had been dropped and thrust it at the first enemy. At the last moment, I redirected the spear to what I hoped was a non-fatal attack. The spear passed through Deltan muscle and jabbed the Deltan behind him. I released the spear, leaving both Deltans howling with pain and surprise, grabbed the knife that one had just dropped, and drove it into the thigh of a third enemy.

  With the quick removal of three of their number, the others backed away from Archimedes, fear written on their faces. I pulled my lips back as far as I could and did my best Hulk impression, roaring and gnashing my teeth.

  Apparently, it was effective. One tripped while trying to backpedal and sat down abruptly, and the other two turned tail and fled.

  I stood over Archimedes’ still form and spun around, snarling, looking for anyone within reach. At this point, if I had caught someone, I very probably would have done something impossible for a Deltan and blown my cover.

  Not necessary, though. The battle was over. Three of ours were down. Eight of theirs were down, three of them obviously dead. Including Fred.

  Buster and I exchanged silent looks, then we turned to Archimedes. I knelt and examined him. He was still breathing, although a faint liquid sound in his lungs concerned me. The beating looked to have been more enthusiastic than really necessary. Deltans had marvelous healing abilities—I hoped it would be enough, otherwise Archimedes might lose an eye. The teeth, at least, would grow back.

  Very slowly and carefully, Buster and I lifted Archimedes and headed back to the village.

  * * *

  A week later, Archimedes was looking much better. He hadn’t lost the eye, although he was still complaining about blurry vision.

  He sat with his granddaughter, Lisa, who went into fits of giggles watching her grandfather eating baby food. He’d be on that diet for a few more weeks, according to Belinda.

  Donald sat in front of the fire, nursing a large hunk of jerky. He extended an arm, holding a knife out to me. I took the flint blade and examined it.

  “Mm, yeah, not exactly up to Archimedes’ standards.”

  “It’s crap,” Donald said. “It looks like you guys were right. We questioned a couple of the survivors, after the medicine woman was done with them. By the way, she thinks you’re an idiot for wasting resources healing enemies.”

  I waved the comment away. “Once the fight is over, everyone bleeds the same color. And Annie is way more reasonable than Cruella ever was. She would have just told me to stuff it.”

  Donald nodded. “Anyway, the knife is some of the best work coming out of Caerleon. So they have crap knives and crap spears, and are barely doing better with hunting than how my father says things were back at the old village. They’ve even started to get gorilloids sniffing around again.”

  “And they blame us.”

  Donald grinned at me. “I never said it made sense. I guess it’s our fault for having more skilled people and better tools and better hunting.”

  “And more adults.” I grinned back. Then I grew serious. “But if this is the problem, it’s fixable. Just have some of their best and brightest come over and get Archimedes to train them.”

  “I’m sure they’ve thought of it,” Buster cut in, as he came up and sat down. “But there’s been so much fighting, they probably think we’d just laugh at them.”

  “And they don’t want to look weak.”

  I rubbed the fur above my eyebrow, the Deltan equivalent of pinching the bridge of my nose. “Unbelievable. So, how do we broach the subject?”

  Archimedes looked up from playing with Lisa. “We should just offer to teach a couple of their people.”

  “The teaching thing didn’t work so well before,” I pointed out.

  “They weren’t hungry before,” Archimedes answered. “I bet they’ll pay more attention now.”

  We looked at each other around the fire. No one had to put it into words. It was worth a try.

  Cities Victorious

  Marcus

  October 2215

  Poseidon

  A month after the uprising, things were finally settling down. But despite all my attempts to dodge, bob and weave, and otherwise avoid taking on a position of responsibility, I’d still somehow ended up as the Chairman Pro Tem. Of course, there was some logic to having the reins held by someone who was available twenty-four seven, never forgot anything, and couldn’t be bought or blackmailed.

  Still, I was going to arrange elections as soon as possible.

  The drone settled into New Thark’s docking bay and floated into a parking spot. The cargo bay doors opened and I stepped out. I took a moment to look around—most of the spots were taken, as people continued to move into the city.

  I walked to the elevators at the end of the bay and got in with a half dozen random strangers. Interestingly, two hundred years later and twenty light years away, people still behaved the same in elevators as they did in Original Bob’s day. Everyone turned to face the doors, and ignored each other.

  As the elevator rose to ground level, I surreptitiously examined the other passengers. No one paid me any particular attention. I was just another anonymous, random individual. It amazed me how good that felt.

  I stepped out of the elevator and found myself outdoors, with a transport station to my left and a park to my right. I let the other passengers hurry to grab taxis first, while I took the time to look around. This was my first time in the new version-3 floating city. This model boasted two square kilometers of usable surface, divided about evenly between residences, businesses, and parkland.

  The fibrex dome stretched over the city, ensuring a warm, dry environment, no matter the weather outside. Residents were scattered around, sitting on benches or on the grass, working away on their tablets or remote-controlling some piece of equipment, VR headset and gloves firmly in place.

  Why the Council would have wanted to prevent this was beyond me. Some people just seemed to want to display their power by defining what others could or couldn’t do.

  I shook my head, then turned and headed for the transport station. I grabbed the next available pod, spoke Kal’s address, and sat back as the pod accelerated into the underground track.

  In less than two minutes, I exited the pod, followed the directions it had given me, and was standing at Kal’s front door.

  * * *

  We sat around the table, Kal, Denu, Gina, Vinnie, and myself, drinking beer and comparing war stories. The new government of Poseidon, such as it was.

  Gina put up a list of names. “Here’s the Council members we’ve captured. Five out of seven. Based on comments from a couple of them, you might be right about the last two having escaped in subs.”

  “So they might be hiding out on any of a hundred mats.” I smiled at her. “Or they might already be in the belly of the leviathan.”

  Gina shrugged. “Yeah, no way to know. But they’re not like royalty. They won’t command a following of fanatically loyal subjects.”

  “Right. We’ll keep an eye out, do patrols, but it’s not top of the priority list. What are you doing with the five you captured?”

  “Four of them will go to trial for the hundred and fifty deaths of
Thark citizens. The consensus seems to be a lifetime posting to the fish plant, or something equally smelly.”

  “And Brennan?”

  Gina sighed. “Honestly, Marcus, we don’t really have anything. We played with the idea of incarcerating him for life, or deporting him to another colony, or even back to Earth. All of those alternatives are a ton of effort and cost, and make no sense except as some form of retribution. And he’s not worth it. We’re considering just sticking him with the other four and being done with it.”

  There were nods around the table. Fish plant labor was easy to automate, but the Council had used it as a punishment for dissidents and miscreants. The irony of hoisting them on their own petard was so overt that it needed no further words. Brennan deserved worse, but I agreed that he didn’t deserve the effort required to arrange something.

  “And meanwhile,” I looked to one of my monitor windows in my heads-up, which showed the orbital autofactories in full swing. “Another dozen or so cities and we’ll have the entire population of Poseidon in the air.”

  Gina grinned at me. “And then we’re gonna vote you out on your ear.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  Announcement

  Riker

  October 2227

  Sol

  Bedlam.

  No, even that wasn’t a strong enough word. It reminded me of the first meetings of the UN, way back when. Everyone was attempting to talk at once. Half the people were hammering their Request buttons, the other half were ignoring them. The chairperson sat at her desk with her head in her hand.

  I grinned into the camera. Technically, I still had the floor, so my mike was active. “Sooooo, want to hear more?”

  The chaos cut off like a switch had been thrown.

  “As I said, this vessel will hold all of the remaining population of Earth. Every last one. We will obviously still have to build stasis pods. However, Herschel and Neil, the two Bobs in charge of the Bellerophon, are also building pods in their cargo bay as they travel. Good news, they have all the material they could possibly need. Bad news, with relativistic time dilation, they’ll only have three and a half years to work with.”

  Representative Misra requested and got the floor. “Could they slow slightly and enjoy a longer subjective time to work in?”

  I smiled and nodded. Ms. Misra understood the mechanics very well. It made talking to her so much easier than most of these bozos. I grimaced for a moment at the unintended contempt in that thought.

  “That’s correct. However, it would result in a longer transit time from our point of view. There’s still the Others to worry about. Their plans are a big unknown, but we’re going to assume we don’t have time for a leisurely flight plan. I’d rather get them here quickly, then we can make use of all that scrap in their hold.”

  I shared out a list of tasks and milestones. Most of the UN delegates ignored it, but a few looked down and started reading.

  “Once the Bellerophon gets here with her hull full of scrap metal, we can assign every single printer and AMI to the task of building more pods. Meanwhile, we need to make sure our shuttles are all in good working order. I’ve calculated that we can move about three hundred thousand people at a time, using the existing airworthy enclave shuttles and cargo vessels. I’d like to get that number up to a round million.”

  I released the floor and nodded to the chairperson. Every Request light in the UN lit up.

  Fun times.

  Representative Hubert from the North African enclave took the floor. “Mr. Johansson, I am concerned that we will not have enough stasis pods for all of Earth when the ship, er, the Bellerophon arrives. Yet I note that you are still allocating resources to things like colony ships and shuttles. What about creating more printers, to increase the throughput? I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but have you considered what the most efficient schedule is?”

  Hubert sat down and turned off his mike, giving up the floor.

  I nodded an acknowledgement. I could have been offended, but I’d rather have the question asked and answered. “Representative Hubert, it is a good question, and well worth asking. And the answer is that I spend a considerable portion of my time considering all the alternatives. The problem is that, no matter what course you navigate, there is always a bottleneck. Whether it’s lack of printers to build everything, or lack of sufficient material, or lack of drones and roamers to assemble the parts into the end product—it’s always something. Shift your schedule and you simply shift the nature of the bottleneck. Printers, for instance, are the most complex thing that a printer can make, except for something biological. They take forever, and have a high defect rate because of the precision required. So it’s not as simple as just making more printers to enjoy the benefits of exponential growth. You give up considerable manufacturing opportunity while engaged in that particular task.”

  I paused and looked around at the various windows. “Concentrate on shuttles and we may not have enough stasis pods come arrival day. Concentrate on stasis pods and we may not have a way to get people up to the carrier quickly enough. I’ve already decided to stop manufacturing colony ships. We’ve got enough returning ships, now, to keep a flow going, and we need the raw materials for shuttles and pods.”

  I paused again, then turned off my mike and sat down. Immediately, a dozen request lights lit up. With a sigh, I realized I would be here for a while.

  Court Battle

  Howard

  September 2220

  Omicron2 Eridani

  “How long do you expect this to last?” I whispered to Ms. Benning. I glanced across the courtroom where Bridget’s children sat with their lawyer, Gus Kistler.

  “Actually, it’ll be over in an hour,” Benning replied. “In the end, it’s a really cut and dry situation. Bridget Brodeur’s last will is on file, and its veracity is not being questioned. They are trying for an ‘undue influence’ ruling, but since that’s usually about inheritances, it’s not likely to fly. Lastly, they’re trying for sympathy with the ‘laying our mother to rest’ gambit.”

  She shuffled some papers. “What it’s really about is a delaying action. They’ve been trying to prevent it for long enough that something would happen, or we’d run out of money—” I snorted. Fat chance of that. “Or get tired of fighting, or we’d make a mistake…” Ms Benning turned to me. “They’ve thrown everything but the kitchen sink at us. It’s a good thing Mrs. Brodeur was wealthy.”

  She sat back and sighed. “Anyway, Mr. Johansson, they’ve used up all their ammunition, and we’ve used up all of ours. Today, the judge will decide. Unless a miracle occurs for them, we will win.”

  I looked over at Rosie, Lianne, and Howard. Howard looked ready to throw up. It seemed like a bit of an over-reaction, since my impression through all of this had been that he was being dragged along by the girls.

  And speaking of, they didn’t look nearly as nervous as would be indicated by Ms. Benning’s confident remark. Perhaps their lawyer was stringing them along. But why? It wouldn’t increase his billing. And anyway, he didn’t look all that confident.

  Then Rosie turned and looked at me, and my heart froze. I don’t think I’d ever seen the particular facial expression malicious triumph before, but trust me, it’s one of those expressions you’ll recognize the first time with one hundred percent certainty. What was going on? She couldn’t be expecting to win this case? And if not—

  With a sinking feeling of panic, I remembered Dr. Onagi’s suspicions. I sent a text to Will, Bill, and Bob. One of them had to be free, and they were in the minority of Bobs that were guaranteed to not be travelling at relativistic speeds.

  I’ll take care of it, came back a moment later from Bill. I breathed a sigh of relief, but my stomach refused to un-knot.

  The judge came in, we did the all-rise thing, then sat. There was considerable noise from the surprisingly large number of spectators. Apparently this case had achieved significant notoriety. The judge banged his gavel s
everal times and demanded quiet.

  Judge Katz spent a long time summarizing the facts and pleadings of the case. Even though I was deeply emotionally involved, I still found my mind wandering. I had to respect people like Ms. Benning who could sit through this regularly without their foreheads slamming onto the desk.

  Then, finally, the judge came to the punchline. “I must, in the end, uphold the right of the decedent to decide her own destiny.”

  There were gasps and muttering around the courtroom. I half-expected Rosie to stand up and start screaming invective, but no. She just—huh. She just took out her phone and texted something.

  And, at that moment, I knew that Dr. Onagi had been right.

  * * *

  We all filed out of the courtroom. Ms. Benning was shaking my hand, and her assistant was making a phone call, when Rosie strode up to me.

  “You may think you’ve won, but you still won’t steal our mother from us.”

  “Chrissake, Rosie, are you still on that narrative? There is no stealing. There never was any stealing. Ignoring for the moment the fact that it was your mother’s decision, you still have her. You still have the body to bury, you still have her memories. You lost nothing!”

  “Just the same, you won’t get her. I’ve made sure of that.”

  “You mean sabotaging the stasis pod at the hospital?” I raised my eyebrows in an expression of exaggerated inquiry, and she went white. “I’m sorry, Rosie, but if you can defy a court order, so can I. Bill sent in a drone with the scanner and did the deed while we were in court. Except that, unlike you, Bill would have respected the court’s decision if we’d lost.”

  Rosie took a step back and her lips formed into a silent snarl. I shook my head. “Bill confirmed with me that a device embedded in the stasis pod damaged it and shut it down, just around the time you sent a text. There will be an investigation, of course. I’m pretty sure sabotage of hospital equipment is a crime of some kind. I’m willing to throw myself on the mercy of the court for my transgression. I have a feeling it’ll go worse for you.”