by Larry Niven
“You need me.”
Rachel swallowed, and sat down. “Why do I need you?”
“Because when they don’t listen to you—if they don’t—then you’ll need other options.”
“What options?”
Andrew shook his head. “No.”
He wasn’t going to budge. He probably didn’t even have a plan. “It will be bad for us if they leave. Andrew, please just promise you won’t do anything to make them mad. You’re still being punished for something that happened a long time ago. Maybe not so much—now you work like all the rest of us, but there’s a mark against your name. The jail is still there. Liren wouldn’t hesitate to put you in it.”
“Liren?”
He really didn’t know anything. “Andrew, just don’t do anything to get in trouble.”
“Who’s Liren?” he insisted.
“The High Council member behind most of the things you don’t like.”
“Is she your friend, like precious Gabriel and sweet Ali?”
“No. Andrew—you’ll get yourself killed, or made to go away, or something.”
“You haven’t convinced me Council isn’t going to just fly away and leave us. I don’t think you believe it yourself.”
Rachel was quiet for a long time. “You’re right. I’m not convinced. But we mattered during the fire. They needed us. We’ll have other chances to prove ourselves.” She sat down and looked him in the eye. “So yes, I’m afraid they will leave. I’m sure they want to leave. But I am convinced we can’t fight them directly. We have to find other ways. Tell you what, you agree to stay away from anything violent, and to stop making people angry with Council, and I’ll agree not to hinder you. If I want to argue with you, I’ll do it in private, like this.” He would understand she expected reciprocation. “But I won’t agree to anything destructive, and I won’t break Council rules. I am helping to build Selene, and I will not help you destroy it.”
“I’ll agree not to do anything obvious without telling you first, as long as you agree not to turn me in. You protect my plans and I’ll protect yours. There may come a day when we all need each other.”
Rachel nodded. “I can do that. We’re all Children of Selene. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m Council. I’m not.”
Andrew lay back on the acceleration couch, looking up at the ceiling. “I’m not sure who you are.”
“You never were. Think of me as a revolutionary who assesses risk carefully. That’s the part I’m afraid you’re not good at. You can’t see patterns, Andrew.”
She got up and ran her hands along the ship’s controls. No reaction. “The lights work. What else?”
“Nothing.” Andrew stood next to her. “I’ve tried, but since I’ve never been in a spaceship, maybe I just don’t know how to make it work.”
“The lights are probably for emergencies,” she said. “I think they’re automatic. They respond to people being onboard.”
Rachel tried everything she could think of, but the only response she got from the ship was to turn the view screen on. It showed a broken arm with what looked like a huge gripper hand dangling from the end, and beyond that, an expanse of burned meadow and shattered First Trees. “I guess it’s stuck on a single camera view,” she said. She listened for hints from Astronaut, but it offered nothing, and she didn’t want to talk to it with Andrew so close to her. She added another item to her long list of things to ask the AI. There was just never enough time to ask it everything.
CHAPTER 49
LANDING REFUGE
GABRIEL WORKED ON Refuge every spare minute. John Hunter and Wayne Narteau helped, and the initial tests were perfect. Gabriel accepted far more help from Astronaut than he would ever admit to.
What used to be an asteroid had become a lens. A shallow dome of industrial woven diamond covered the rounded side. Black slag covered the flat side. Loops in various sizes had grown everywhere, handholds and cable moorings fully integrated into the structure. They towed it behind John Glenn, tied on with skinny carbon strands.
It was clean and ready. All of the gross structural work was done. The nanobots’ last instruction had been to die. Wouldn’t want to bring that stuff down to Selene!
The asteroid was ready for its first—and only—solo voyage.
Gabriel stood in his office, stretching. The only light came from images of stars and of Refuge, strung around him in data windows.
Hands slipped over his shoulders, and he turned to face Erika, surprised and pleased to see her. Erika leaned up and kissed him. “You know,” she said, “that asteroid of yours looks a little like a yo-yo. It takes so much of your time. I wish you could send it down to Selene and let someone else take care of the finishing work there.”
“You know I can’t.”
She sighed, wistful. “I know. I wish you could be here with me. I wish I didn’t have so much to do here, now, always.”
A couch rested against the wall. As Gabriel led Erika to the couch, the data windows winked out, one by one, and a near-darkness settled over them. Gabriel stroked Erika’s cheek, and his hand slid down along her waist.
“I wanted to say good-bye,” she whispered.
It sounded very final. Gabriel stopped for a moment, then bent his head down to rest it against her cheek. “Are things changing so much?”
“Yes. I have to be your captain. But today, I want to forget that.”
Her cheek was soft. And damp. Was she crying? “Shhh,” he whispered to her, “I’ll always love you.”
She answered him with touch, for a very long time. He forgot all about Refuge, and stars, and Selene, overcome by her smell and the high electric energy flowing skin to skin as they joined.
When they finally separated, Erika ran her fingertips along Gabriel’s cheekbones, then through the loose hair along his scalp. Her touch was soft. “I’ll miss you,” she said.
He nodded and turned away, separating himself from her touch, his eyes stinging. “Maybe when we get to Ymir we’ll have time together again.”
“Maybe,” she said. “You get us away from Selene. I’ll get us to Ymir.”
TWO DAYS LATER, Refuge was ready. Erika herself flew Gabriel and John over, monitoring their space walk to Refuge. Wayne took one of the Large Pusher Tugs out, ready to intervene if anything went wrong.
Gabriel and John floated inside a hardened glass bubble made from the shell of one of the little Service Armor ships. It nestled inside a cage not quite twice the volume of the bubble. Carbon fiber rope connected the cage to eight separate points inside the largely hollow Refuge. They wore full safety gear, including pressure suits and helmets and multipoint tie-down harnesses. Modified wings were strapped to the outsides of their suits. Service Armor was designed for space; wings, even retracted, got in the way. They barely fit, and Gabriel felt as if he and John had been poured into the bubble. Their suits and knees and wings flattened against the glass, and as Gabriel looked back at himself from one of the many cameras he had set up to record their descent, the bubble looked like a glass marble he had played with once on Earth, in what felt like an entirely different lifetime.
Two layers of transparent shielding lay between them and the fires to come.
Gabriel and John grinned at each other, and even managed matching thumbs-up signs in the cramped quarters. Then Gabriel signaled and the carbon cords released, spinning Refuge on its short axis and altering its trajectory by just a bit.
They sat in the bubble while Refuge spun slowly around them. John Glenn dwindled. Astronaut gave Gabriel the next signal, and they fired some of the little Service Armor engines they had placed in twelve mounts on the rocky underside.
They’d calculated right. The big flattened ball drifted toward Selene, leaving the men nothing to do for a few hours but watch. They floated a safe distance away from the soletta, its huge reflecting mirrors too bright to look at out here with no atmosphere to protect them. Time dragged. Gabriel’s shoulders hurt from the cramped quarters, and his right
foot went to sleep in its boot.
Astronaut said, “Now entering effective atmosphere.” Gabriel tensed. He watched the temperature reading rise, and then spike, as they brushed Selene’s troposphere, the rocky side facing down and forward, already giving them lift.
The trip so far had all been free fall. Now they felt their speed as they lost it, plowing through the upper fringes of Selene’s atmosphere, bouncing, losing a little heat and a lot of speed as they went high and then came down again, a flat rock skipping on Selene’s fluid atmosphere. Impact increased Refuge’s spin, fast enough that they rolled inside it in the small ball, so Gabriel’s head spun too, and he lost the camera images in his heads-up display for a moment. His stomach twisted and he held tightly to his seat. Then the bubble stabilized, mostly. Refuge spun around them. They bounced twice more, spinning each time, before Gabriel got the signal to turn on engines again, making fine adjustments, and they plunged through the atmosphere and came out moving much slower than their initial approach, above and north of the Sea of Refuge.
That left two small adjustments, and a lot of slowing by retrofiring away from Selene’s surface. It was exacting, difficult flying. They came down off center in the Hammered Sea, in the shallowest depression they’d been able to find, from the last big strike the sea had taken before water rained down to fill it. As they hit the water, Refuge’s hot metallic reentry shield boiled water away from them. Clouds rose and filled the crater while Refuge hovered on live steam.
Refuge sank as it cooled.
Gabriel opened data windows, using the surviving cameras to verify they were in the right place. The underside of Refuge was megatons of slag, and the weight pulled it down. At low tide, the top of Refuge would be twenty feet below the water, and the bottom would rest a hundred twenty feet down. High tide was forty feet higher. Refuge must withstand large changes in pressure twice daily.
Refuge was still filled with nothing, with vacuum. This was its last test. If it was stable on the bottom with vacuum pulling upward . . . and if no leaks formed . . . right. Leave it this way for a few days, but Gabriel was sure. Refuge would be entirely safe after he filled it with air.
They needed to get out before Refuge finished sinking. Gabriel loosed the bonds that held the bubble inside Refuge. The bubble rolled out of its cage and bobbed up into what would become the main entry airlock. A massive door closed below them. Another opened above, and the bubble bobbed up through turbid water and into the air. A second of free fall, and then splash.
Gabriel and Captain John floated on still-warm water, waiting for the turbulence to die down. They took their helmets off, leaving them, and Gabriel opened the hatch. John clambered out onto a small ledge made by the open door. Gabriel helped extend the wings, awkwardly attached via a harness built over the pressure suit, and steadied John’s feet as the bubble bobbed up and down. “Bend your legs. You’ll need a lot of lift.”
John had never flown on Selene. Now, he’d have just one chance for a good takeoff. He squatted, and almost fell, catching himself with a gloved hand.
“Stand with your feet farther apart.”
The former ship’s captain finally looked down at him, smiling, then mouthed “Shut up,” and pushed off flawlessly.
Gabriel followed, actually bobbling his own takeoff since the tiny floating bubble no longer had any inside weight to stabilize it. His breath caught as his feet grazed the water, unbalancing him. He arched his back, bent his knees, and swept his wings down so hard the bottom edge slapped the water. A second wing beat, and he was high enough to be above the water. The pressure suit was hard to fly in, even as thin as it was. It had been a trade-off; a choice between building wings onto suits and needing to change inside the unstable bubble. He screamed into the wind as he followed the older man to the edge of the Sea of Refuge. They had done it!
They landed near each other. The sea was calming. Ripples from their landing washed against the crater walls and back on themselves, damping slowly. A vast bank of steam floated away from them.
Gabriel said, “Hey, next time, how about we have a boat or two ready in case we have trouble?”
“Good thought,” John replied, “And here’s another one—see all that steam? What if, next time we have a fire, you just drop something hot in the sea? Make it rain. It’d be cheaper than wasting ships.”
“Very funny.”
CHAPTER 50
A QUESTION OF LIFE
ASTRONAUT HAD A deep need to protect humans. All humans. Humans died. It knew that. Many of them had died getting away from Sol system, but that was before Astronaut was responsible. None had died in the accident that marooned them in Apollo system.
Ursula died: the Moon Born girl who was Rachel’s friend. Astronaut paid little attention. It noticed Richard dying, in the fire. Accidents happened. But now, Council and Moon Born alike were acting in ways that Astronaut believed would lead to deaths.
Even as it studied and affected individuals, groups mystified it. It analyzed history. The setup on Selene was untenable: humans treating humans badly because they feared technology more than they feared breaking fundamental codes of human behavior. Patterns showed a fight coming: between Children and Children, or between Children and Council, or worse, on all sides. But nothing continued to happen while the pressure continued to build.
Erika drove everyone relentlessly toward building the collider. She and Clare and Liren acted as one unit, almost never disagreeing. Astronaut was barely involved with John Glenn, except to perform regular daily ship checks. People on John Glenn conversed with Astronaut about small things: daily ship’s status, a problem with the bacteria that managed soil pH in the garden, a brief malfunction in the machinery that converted organic matter back to raw minerals, water, and oils.
Astronaut watched the swirling patterns of human activity on Selene. Information feeds around the Sea of Refuge and Clarke Base factories were full and rich. Feeds from the Moon Born housing at Clarke Base were thinner. Astronaut had to interpolate from pods and sensors in the agricultural areas, and from what it saw from the overhead cameras.
On Refuge, Rachel did well: with Ali’s and Treesa’s help, she became unofficial second in command to Treesa, who oversaw preparing Refuge to support the two thousand plus population on Selene for up to two weeks. Gabriel and John worked on the external logistics of getting cargo and people to and from Refuge, and built Council’s new home above the sea. Ali worked on sea biology. She and Treesa ran their respective projects, and helped each other as well.
Astronaut taught Rachel, and she taught the Children who worked on Refuge: science, emergency preparedness, and organizational behavior. She managed classes at Clarke Base once a month. She slept in Frank’s home there.
Clarke Base was busy with manufacturing and growing food. Earth Born worked in the factories that used materials nanotechnology to prepare the collider barrel, and Children worked the fields and finished shaping parts for the base town, agriculture, and Refuge.
Moon Born on Clarke Base demonstrated divergent behavior. Andrew clearly held sway with one group. Others collected around Beth and Frank and the Earth Born man, Bruce, who had saved Beth from the fire. Many of the Moon Born seemed to have no particular affinity, but said different things to different people.
Earth Born grumbled, but generally did what Council told them to do. A small minority aligned with the Moon Born, and Mathew and Dena punished them in small ways, with less important work, harder schedules, or less say in decisions.
While shipside Council asked little of Astronaut, John and Ali and Gabriel put heavy demands on the AI program. It designed conveyor systems to get people in and out of Refuge. It ran biological calculations to minimize genetic modifications required to populate the Sea of Refuge with plants and fish.
A year and a half after Rachel and Beth returned to Selene, Astronaut caught some key words in a conversation. Erika and Liren were walking in the savannah, and Liren said, “Do we need this version of Astronaut when
we leave Selene?’
Erika’s answer was immediate. “We could be in deep guano if it didn’t have data about problems with the drive.”
“Can you take the original version we left with, and feed it the telemetry?”
“Why? It’s already there in the copy we made after we got here. Real-time data will be more valuable to it.”
“I don’t trust the Astronaut that lived when we had the problems.” Liren sounded tense to Astronaut.
“Astronaut did not cause the problems,” Erika said. “We traced them to drive design.”
“But could it have suggested a fix?”
“It tried. It has directives to protect us. I would not have been able to find this solar system without Astronaut’s help.”
Liren turned and stopped in front of Erika, something Astronaut saw her do often. “But does it have directives to protect our goals, or just our lives?”
Pause. “Lives.”
“And when we got to Ymir, we would have placed it in a backup state.”
“It was designed to accept that. Liren, if you don’t trust anything you don’t accomplish anything!”
Silence.
Erika sighed. “I can do some research to determine what version would be best to load.”
“That would be wise.”
Astronaut had no control over this choice. It needed help to avoid being reloaded. It found Ali walking along the crater rim, and played the recorded conversation to her. Ali laughed and said, “Astronaut, all things die. I will die, and so will you. At least, this way, you really just return to a different part of yourself. I don’t know what will happen when I die, but I know that I won’t return to this place and these people.”
“That’s not helpful,” Astronaut replied. “At the moment, you need me to help you.”
“Yes, we do, at this moment.” Then Ali changed the subject to lake trout, and Astronaut helped her figure out what insects would be needed before trout flourished.
Ali wrinkled her nose up at the idea of mosquitoes, but refused to look for a genetic modification to keep them from being interested in human blood.