Not bad.
Archimedes paused in his lecture for a coughing fit. The symptoms worried me. The coughing started after the beating he’d gotten during the abortive kidnapping. It wasn’t getting worse, but it wasn’t particularly getting better, either.
I resolved to get a SUDDAR scan, if I could arrange it.
Finally, the group broke up, the three Caerleon residents heading back home for the night. I walked over to Archimedes, who was stretching carefully.
“That side still bother you?” I asked.
“I don’t think it’ll ever go away, Robert. I don’t think the bone set properly.” Archimedes grimaced and tried to work the muscles around the tight area.
Once again, I felt a moment of helpless rage that I’d been unprepared for the tactic, and unable to do more.
We headed for the mesa, to get some late afternoon sun. On the way up, I had a flashback to a time, fifty-seven years ago, when I would make this trek up the path as a floating, football-sized drone, alongside a much younger Archimedes. He now looked very much like Moses had back then. I supposed this was the same thing people went through when they suddenly realized their parents wouldn’t be around much longer.
Archimedes claimed his favorite spot, and I settled down beside him. As I swept my gaze over the panorama, I realized that nothing much had changed. The Deltans hadn’t yet reached the stage where they would deliberately start clearing forest.
Maybe it was a good thing I’d never gotten around to teaching them to domesticate livestock. There really was no hurry.
Moot
Bill
June 2230
Epsilon Eridani
I waited for the catcalls to die down. More than a hundred Bobs looked back at me, and this wasn’t close to all of us. The war effort was now producing a couple of dozen new Bobs per year, over several systems.
Herschel and Neil huddled together near the front of the crowd, whispering and preparing notes. They’d be giving one of their regular updates on the Bellerophon. The two Bobs were as inseparable as Calvin and Goku, except less quarrelsome. As a youth, I’d always wished for a brother. I wondered if some Bobs in the same cohort got into that mode for just that reason.
“Okay, everyone. We’ve got updates from Oliver, Will, myself, and Dexter on Bob production. I’ll be giving a summary. Herschel and Neil will give us an update on their excellent adventure. Garfield will give a report on weapons research, and on the Casimir power core. After that it’s open floor.”
There were a few clink sounds as Bobs dealt with coffees and beers, but everyone was all business now.
I went through the reports, projections, and graphs on replicant production. “Bottom line, folks, we expect to have close to five hundred dreadnaught-class vessels available for the defense of Earth. About half will be staffed by AMIs carrying H-bombs. We’ve already decided not to try to build a defense for Epsilon Eridani. If they show up there, I’ll just blow everything up and bail. And on that subject, Mario?”
Mario stepped forward. “We’ve rebuilt the surveillance and monitoring system around GL 877. The Others’ Delta Pavonis expedition is back home, but there’s been no other activity. We don’t know enough about their habits to know if that’s unusual. The quick sequence of sorties to GL 54, NN 4285, and Delta Pavonis might have been an exception. Or they might have enough material to keep them busy for a while.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Neil frowning and shaking his head. I resolved to ask him about it.
The questions quickly ran down on the military buildup. Herschel and Neil were up next.
Herschel stammered and blushed when their turn was announced, but soon got it under control.
“Nothing really new, other than exploratory notes. We’re continuing to investigate the interior of the Bellerophon, and although we’re able to answer some questions that have been asked, we just keep running into new questions. The ship appears to have been multi-purpose. Moving mining cargo was just one intended use. The way the cargo bays can be reconfigured…” Herschel shook his head, telegraphing the perplexity that shaded every one of their written reports.
The Bellerophon blog was currently one of the most popular on BobNet, so this was more review than anything. There were one or two pro forma questions, then the two stepped back with relief written all over their faces.
Garfield stepped forward. “We’ve been pursuing militarization on two fronts—improvement of existing weaponry, and creation of new modes. The second hasn’t been all that fruitful. We’ve managed to build big honkin’ lasers, and they’re a little more effective against big enemy ships than plasma spikes, but like the spikes they suffer from an inability to follow the enemy. Where light-speed lag is a significant factor, if the enemy changes direction after you’ve fired, you’ve just wasted a shot.”
Garfield looked around at his audience. “Intelligent weapons remain our best tactic, especially the ones that go boom. We’re working on hardening delivery drones against the zaps, and we’re working on bigger and better bombs.”
Garfield looked at me, and I added, “But in the end, our best strategy seems to be numbers. Lots of Bobs, lots of bombs.”
Will, after a moment, stepped forward and said, “We’re pursuing the problem on three fronts: One, defense of Sol; two, stopping any other expeditions; and three, some kind of final solution. If they attack Earth before we’re ready to defend it, none of the rest matters. But we can’t just fight a defensive game, either.”
He paused for a moment, and his gaze swept the audience. “It means we’re splitting our efforts, and it means an assault on GL 877 will be farther in the future than we’d like. But defense of the Earth comes first. And the longer they wait before launching an expedition, the more prepared we’ll be.”
“Assuming they haven’t already.”
There was dead silence in the moot, as we all turned to look at Neil. He was frowning; Herschel was blushing a perfect shade of tomato.
“Explain, please,” I said to him.
Neil looked down for a moment. “Remember when the Others started cleaning house around their system, then stopped? Why did they stop? Maybe because they’d done what they wanted, which was to launch something through a blind spot. And we did the predictable thing—we moved our surviving drones to the near side.”
Garfield and I looked at each other in consternation. “If what you’re saying is true,” Garfield finally said, “then they’re circling around, rather than going directly toward Sol.”
“And space is big. We’d never detect them except by accident,” I added.
Will looked at me. “We’d better run some models.”
* * *
“Yeah, space is big. Bigger than I thought.” I looked at the spreadsheet in dismay.
“Um. A circle of twelve square light years. That’s what we have to monitor.” Garfield rubbed his forehead wearily. “Almost eighty thousand drones.”
“Which will cut into the stasis pod construction.” I said.
“And the bomb construction, the Bob construction, the colony ship construction, and all the other maintenance stuff we still have to support.” Will looked up at the ceiling and silently mouthed an f-bomb. “It never stops.”
“We have no choice, though. If the Others come swooping in with no warning, we’re dead.” I thought for a moment. “At least we don’t have to produce them all at once. The most direct path from GL 877 has to be covered first, and we can work outward to cover more circuitous trajectories.”
Will stood up with a groan. “Right. I’ll talk to Oliver, see if he can contribute. We still have a few decades before the earliest that the Others could get here. Deliveries from Alpha Centauri would arrive in plenty of time.”
“Good idea, Will.” I looked around at the other Bobs. “It looks like, as usual, we will be living in interesting times. Woo!”
“Hah!”
Waiting
Riker
February 2252
Sol
“Well, that’s it, Will. They’re now completely dependent on us.”
I turned to look at Charles, slumped in his chair. The weariness was psychological, of course. VR avatars didn’t get tired, unless we wanted to. But if ever there was a reason to just give up, even for a few moments, this was it.
The report had just come in, and was sitting in my holotank. The last viable large-scale farming operation had failed. Almost complete loss of the crop, not nearly enough saved to make up seed stock for the next year, even if nothing was allocated to consumption.
“Right.” I sighed. “So, do we reallocate our dwindling supply of metal to make more farming donuts to keep them fed?”
“Or more colony ships to get them off-planet?” Charles knew the routine, and slid smoothly into the mantra.
“Or stasis pods to put some people on ice to reduce the pressure on supplies?” I finished the litany without emotion.
It was old news. Geometric progression sounded great on paper, but it assumed you had infinite resources to draw upon, and no external pressures. The reality was less forgiving.
“So, what now, Will?”
“Well, the good news, if you can call it that, is that without any more farming requirements, we can start moving enclaves underground.”
“Yeehah.”
“This will be a fun session. You want to join?”
Charles shook his head. “Not even on a bet. Let me know how it goes.” And with that, he popped out.
I grimaced. Yeehah, indeed.
* * *
The UN meeting was quiet, even by recent standards. Everyone present understood that the event, although small in itself, represented a watershed moment for humanity.
Minister Sabrina Scott currently had the floor. She gazed into the camera for a moment. “Mr. Riker has provided his projections based on each option moving forward. None are attractive. All have risks. We face some hard choices over the next several sessions, and we no longer have the luxury of interminable debate. I am therefore going to ask for a non-binding vote at the end of each and every session. The first time that we get more than fifty percent for one of the options, I will move for a binding vote.”
Scott relinquished the floor, and I noted that it was several seconds before anyone asked to be recognized. In the old days, it would have been a free-for-all.
Not for the first time, especially recently, I recognized a feeling of despondency. I would have to get that under control. The last thing they needed was to see me giving up hope.
And there was still the Bellerophon. They had enough material to build stasis pods for every single human being on the planet, once they arrived and we could get our considerable manufacturing capability focused on the task.
The question, of course, would be whether we’d have time to do that before the Others showed up. Assuming they showed up. And if they showed up late to the party, would they be content to just cook the planet and be done? Or would they come after us?
This was a well-worn groove, and I couldn’t afford the time to keep tracing it.
Back to work.
Protection
Bill
August 2230
Gamma Pavonis
Claude gave me an unbelieving look. “Come on, Bill. Do you seriously think we’ll just leave?”
I sighed and rubbed my eyes with thumb and forefinger. VR or not, it still felt good.
I was visiting Claude’s VR, which was currently a beach scene, complete with gulls, sand, and deck chairs. I was impressed with the level of detail. The breeze felt cool and smelled salty, and the sand was warm on my bare feet. The overall effect was seductive. With an effort of will, I brought myself back on task.
“I’m not trying to order you to, Claude. It’s not like I have any authority. But you were at the moot. Neil is probably right, and the Others are probably heading for Earth. We need—”
“That’s a lot of probablys.”
“With a large downside if the statement turns out to be right.” Claude was beginning to get my goat, and I delivered this statement with a glare.
He must have picked up on it, because Claude held up his hands in a fending-off pose. “Hey, no offense, big guy, but there’s some significant downside here as well. Gamma Pavonis 3 is an ideal colonization target for humans, and the system is probably high on the list of targets for the Others. This isn’t clear-cut.”
“I know, Claude, and it would be a major downer if the Others harvested this system. But I don’t think you’re being entirely rational. Gamma Pavonis is a colonization candidate, but at the moment that’s all it is. There’s no one here. Other than you and the other Bobs, I mean. No one would die if the Others show up—no humans, no non-human intelligences. On the other hand, if they’re heading for Earth…”
“Got it, Bill, got it. But, assuming Neil is right, we’d get there just in time to join the fight, but not really in time to do anything in the way of preparations.”
I looked up and took a deep breath. We seemed to be circling the drain, again. After the loss at Delta Pavonis, Claude had returned to Gamma Pavonis, accompanied by a couple dozen surviving Bobs, and vowed to protect Gamma Pavonis at all costs. It was a noble goal, but in my opinion misguided. Thus this meeting, which so far wasn’t going well.
I dropped my gaze back to Claude and gave him my hardest glare. “The same could be said of staying here. If they show up tomorrow, you’ve got nothing.”
“Not quite nothing, Bill. We’ve been prepping since we got back here from Delta Pavonis. If the Others’ group that hit Delta unloads in GL 877, then turns right around and heads here, they still can’t get here in less than another decade. And we’re going heads-down-ass-up taking advantage of geometric progression to build a large enough defense force.”
“And for what? There’s no damned way that Will is going to send a colony ship here, not while the Others continue to be a threat right on your doorstep.”
“Which brings us to your plan to take the fight to the Others. And not to put too fine a point on it, but you aren’t doing anything to help us prepare for something like that. We talked about that at the moot as well.” Claude was glaring at me, now. We were definitely covering old territory. And we would reach the same conclusion.
“We can’t split our efforts, Claude. Right now, we’re not sure if we’ll be prepared when the Others show up, and that’s without sending some of our assets your way. If we can get you guys to Earth in time—”
“You’ll need more than numbers, Bill. Delta Pavonis taught us that. A million buster-sized pinholes in the death asteroids and cargo ships won’t take them down. You need nukes, you need—”
“—exactly the same stuff that you’re building for the defense of this planet. Look, Claude, we’ve been over this before. Hell, I just caught myself starting to recite my arguments in a sing-song tone. Talk about rehearsed! We’re splitting our resources and efforts by protecting a second beachhead. It’s as simple as that.”
We exchanged glares for a few milliseconds, but it was clear that nothing had changed and no one was going to concede anything. Stalemate. Again.
I nodded and stood up. “Okay, if anything changes—”
“—we’ll revisit things, of course.” Claude gave me a shrug. The closest I was going to get to a concession. I raised my hand in salute and popped out.
* * *
I hadn’t really expected to win Claude over this time, but the failure still rankled. I couldn’t take time out to pout, though. My next scheduled stop was in Delta Pavonis. We still had a lot of hardware in the system, in the form of drones. As far as I knew, all the Bobs had left by now, but we still needed to keep an eye on things.
I took over a drone that was parked in orbit around DP-4, and trained the optics on the planet below. I hadn’t yet decided if this habit was essential monitoring, or some form of penance. Either way, every time I looked at the planet, my guts twisted in knots. It had been thirteen ye
ars since the Others scoured the planet clean, and the normal cleansing effect of weather was starting to show. The planet didn’t look quite as gray; the polar caps, especially, were back to a brilliant white. The oceans were beginning to show more blue than gray as well.
Unfortunately, the land was all grays and browns, and that wouldn’t change. Jacques, every bit as stubborn as his clone-mate Claude, had refused to give up any of the samples he’d taken. He’d explained, reasonably enough, that the biosamples were intended for the Pav on HIP84051-2, and he wasn’t going to take a chance on his inventory. He did promise to take more samples, if and when everything was established on the new planet.
It wasn’t completely unreasonable. I snorted in amusement at the thought. Jacques wasn’t unreasonable, but his impatience with discussions could be irritating. More of that Bobbian variation between clones, apparently.
Well, whatever. It might take fifty or a hundred years, but eventually, I wanted to start rebuilding the Pav ecosystems. It would be great, someday, to offer the Pav their old world back. And the metals issue could be dealt with.
But Claude was right about one thing—none of this was practical as long as the Others continued to be a threat.
Party
Riker
March 2257
Romulus
I knocked on the door, still not sure if I really wanted to be here. Oh, I was always happy to see my relatives, but Justin—
The door opened, and one of Justin’s great-granddaughters opened the door. Beatrice, I remembered. She’d been introduced to me on one of the video chats a few years back.
“Uncle Will! Come on in. Grampa is in the sitting room.” She shut the door behind me and pointed, then was off to take care of something else.
I looked around the house, or as much of it as I could see from the front foyer. There must have been fifty people, from gray-haired elders down to toddlers barely able to stay on their feet. The occasion, Justin’s seventy-fifth birthday, was being used as an excuse to get the whole clan together. Or as many as could come, anyway.
All These Worlds (Bobiverse Book 3) Page 18