Seeds of Gaia

by Rick Partlow

  “They’re putting someone else in charge of the project?” Pris asked, not with disbelief or surprise, Sam noted, just a dolorous acceptance of the inevitable.

  Another furtive glance around.

  “The sense I got from this Devon is that they’re giving up on the Gate altogether,” Propanca said so softly Sam could barely make it out.

  “Shit.” The words were a defeated exhalation, taking with them any emotional energy Sam had left.

  “When?” Priscilla’s question was as cold and unemotional as the expression on her face, not betraying any disappointment or shock.

  “There’s a shuttle waiting for us in Lunar orbit right now. It’s going to take us to the closest Transition Point and then the Raven is supposed to jump in, take us on board and jump out before the Earthers can react to her being there.”

  Which will pretty much ruin our relations with the Consensus. He’d sent that to Pris, not that it mattered at this point.

  I don’t think anyone back home cares.

  “Captain Avalon, do you have a moment?” Telia Proctor asked.

  Sam nearly jumped out of his skin; one second there’d been no one around them in the corridor junction, the next the cyborg was less than a meter over his right shoulder, looming like a gargoyle. It didn’t seem possible for someone who massed so much to be able to move so quietly.

  “Sure, Telia,” he said, trying to keep his tone solicitous despite her abrupt appearance. He hadn’t had a chance to speak with her for more than a few seconds since they’d arrived on Luna, but he had to assume she was still taking Danabri’s death hard. “What’s up?”

  “Alone.” She cast a glance aside at Propanca, not the slightest bit of apology in her eyes.

  “Lieutenant,” Sam told the Communications officer, “go find Belden and Patel and get to the docking bay. We’ll meet you there as soon as we can.”

  He’d been about to tell her to pack her things, but the truth was, none of them had anything to pack. The clothes they were wearing had been fabricated for them by the Consensus shops on Luna.

  “Aye, sir,” Propanca said, then nodded to Pris. “Ma’am.”

  She shot Telia what Sam’s mother would have called “the stink eye” before she left, clearly resenting the brush-off. The Earth woman said nothing until Propanca was around the corner and out of sight, then she motioned for Sam and Pris to follow her.

  “What is it?” Pris asked, but Telia merely held up a finger and kept walking.

  The cyborg led them to an unmarked door wedged into an alcove between two carefully-pruned trees growing out of a square of soil embedded in the floor, under the harsh glare of sun lamps. Telia tapped a code into the door’s lockplate then yanked it open by an old-fashioned metal knob.

  A single, unfiltered light flickered on inside, revealing what looked to Sam very much like a supply closet. Barrels of cleaning fluid were stacked in one corner, surrounded by squat, robotic janitors, waiting for their turn at scrubbing the endless hallways of Harmony Base. Telia waved them inside, then checked both ways before closing the door behind them.

  “This is one place no one would bother to monitor,” she explained. One bionic eye and the matching biological one went back and forth between the two of them. “There’s been a development in the investigation.”

  Sam went from mystified and slightly annoyed to one hundred percent attentive in a fraction of a second. Before they’d arrived on Luna, Telia had promised to keep them apprised of any news she heard of the probe into the incident, but they hadn’t heard a thing from her since, and hadn’t been able to speak to her alone.

  “Tell us,” Sam said, leaning forward as if he were trying to coax an explanation from a recalcitrant child.

  “This is classified material,” Telia explained, a reticence in her voice which Sam sensed was the product of a lifetime of service. “I’m not supposed to know it. We---the Consensus has spy drones floating at intervals between Luna and Mars along the shipping orbits. One of them picked up part of a tight-beam transmission sent to the barge while it was under way to the Gate assembly. It was a powerful maser signal, but there was enough scatter over distance to pick some of it up along the edges. It was code, something our crackers are still working on, but they think it was meant for the automated systems.”

  “It wasn’t the Belters,” Pris declared, the unmistakable smugness of justification in her tone. “Someone else hijacked the ship’s computer. Where did the signal come from? Earth? Luna?”

  Telia shook her head, the corner of her mouth turning up slightly, as if she took perverse satisfaction in Pris being wrong.

  “Mars.”

  Sam exchanged an incredulous look with Pris and he nearly stumbled over his next words.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked her. “I mean, is Minister Gage going to…”

  “Minister Gage can do nothing,” Telia cut him off sharply. “Not officially. The Prime Minister has washed her hands of the matter, and we will all be very, very lucky if the Consensus isn’t at war with the Belters and Jovians within the month.”

  “But Mestrovic caved,” Sam protested, taking an awkward step toward her and nearly knocking over a stack of janitor ‘bots. “He’s going to get the Belters to give in to our demands.”

  “Events are in motion and all the blowhard politicians in the galaxy won’t stop them. Someone needs to act.”

  “And by someone,” Pris said, eyeing Telia sidelong, “you mean us.”

  “Your ship is in the system. I have read the reports. All you need do is call it.”

  “Fuck,” Sam breathed the word like a prayer.

  “We have to, Sam.” Priscilla’s hand was warm on his arm, and he met her blue-eyed gaze reluctantly.

  “Sure,” he muttered, surprised at the anger in his own voice. “All we have to do is ask one of my best friends to throw away her career, violate the sovereignty of two different governments and take us on an unauthorized trip to Mars. Not to mention what could happen to you if…”

  He trailed off, not sure whether Pris would be comfortable with him sharing what he knew with Telia. Pris’ gaze was resolute, her grip on his arm tighter now, unyielding.

  “If we let this happen when we could have stopped it,” she said, “we’re no better than the ones who did it.”

  Shit. That sounds way too much like something I would say.

  He heaved a sigh. There was a certain freedom in the acceptance of his fate.

  “Let’s get to the shuttle.” He shrugged. “For all I know, Devon’ll tell me to go to hell.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  She didn’t, of course.

  “We have confirmation of clearance from Tarshish Control,” the Raven’s Communications officer announced. It was not D’jonni, which had shocked Sam at first, though it shouldn’t have. People got promoted, replaced, and it had been over two years.

  D’jonni’s replacement was a fresh-faced young buck straight out of the Academy, and Sam had initially thought he’d be a problem once the crew found out where they were going, but Ensign Avera worshipped the deckplates his captain walked on. They all did, even Arvid, who was now the ship’s XO.

  “Take us down,” Devon instructed, looking very much at home in the Captain’s station.

  Sam didn’t feel at all comfortable stuck off to the side in one of the extra acceleration couches like so much useless baggage, but this was Devon’s ship now, and had been for nearly as long as it had been his. Devon snuck him a look, smiling with what might have been a hint of pride, showing her old boss how well she could do his job. He forced himself to grin back, even against the twisting in his gut from the thought he might very well be costing her the job with what he’d asked her to do.

  Pris sat beside him, quiet and somber. She hadn’t said two words since they’d boarded, and wouldn’t respond to his attempts to engage over the neurolinks either, simply responding she was “thinking about some things Danabri had told her.” Telia hadn’t even le
ft the guest quarters, convinced her presence made the crew nervous…and she could be right, for all he knew. Propanca and the other survivors from the station stayed in their compartments as well, possibly because they didn’t want to know where they were going.

  On the main screens, blue began to replace black, and atmosphere began to buffet the Raven, impossible atmosphere from an impossible source. Like so much of his life these last three and a half years, it was a mystery. Once, he’d thought mysteries made life interesting, but now he was beginning to consider that a conceit of youth.

  What about you, Raven? he asked the ship’s AI, wondering if it would still talk to him after all this time. What do you think about the unknown? Challenging or simply frustrating?

  Captain Avalon, I told you once I am not an artificial human intelligence. Sam wasn’t sure, but he thought he detected a faint hint of humor in the sentient computer’s tone. For me, the unknown is always something not sufficiently investigated.

  Even Gaia Herself? Sam teased, feeling like old times. Or is it God, like the Earthers call Him?

  A Supreme Being is not the unknown, It is the Unknowable, the AI corrected him. By definition. A true creator would necessarily be outside of Its creation, else It would simply be a part of it.

  How could a creator be part of Its creation? Sam nearly forgot the descent, forgot the trouble into which they were inviting themselves. Talking philosophy with an AI was like roller-skating on a Moebius strip.

  Perhaps you should ask a Christian, the ship’s computer suggested. Did not their God become man in order to save them?

  Good point.

  He’d have to try to remember to ask Telia about that. The Earthers’ religion retained several aspects of ancient Christianity, though they’d combined all the monotheistic beliefs into one, ecumenical church centuries ago and he wasn’t a hundred percent sure where Jesus fit into their pantheon at the moment.

  The roar of the atmospheric jets swept away theological ruminations and the majesty of Olympus Mons filled the forward viewscreen’s, rising up into the firmament, a monument to the Unknowable Creator. Whoever They might be. Its rust-colored skin was a window back to ancient Mars, when the entire surface of the world had been a desolate wasteland, wind-swept, barren and lifeless. He’d seen the footage Mother had brought with her from Earth. Just a couple thousand years ago, an eyeblink on the geological scale, the flicker of a fly’s wings on the cosmological timeline.

  Yet so much has changed in so short a time. Hundreds of planets made habitable, the seeds of Gaia spread out through the galaxy, life where there was once only death. Who needs gods for such a miracle?

  Tarshish seemed subtly different to him, even from the air. There was no other space traffic coming in, which might have just been a quirk of scheduling, and the city seemed less…alive somehow. It was just past sunset and the last time they’d arrived in daylight, but he sensed it was something more. He whispered something to Pris and she finally responded.

  “People know war is coming,” she said quietly, though Devon’s head tilted slightly at that, her eyes narrowing. “They’re huddled in their homes, waiting it out.”

  The city was mostly dark. He wondered whether their light pollution shielding was just that good, or whether the Martians simply didn’t use indoor lighting unless absolutely necessary. He’d never been in the home of a native the last time they’d visited, never been allowed out after dark. Even the outlander-owned shops were closed at dusk, by law. The port had lights…some, but even many of those were infrared. Spaceships didn’t generally need lights to land.

  It felt to Sam as if they were stealing into the city under the cover of night like the Hebrew spies at Jericho in the old story his mother had told him once. Was that from the Bible? He couldn’t remember, he’d never read the whole manuscript, just the selections in his comparative religions course in Preparatory School. It seemed like such a thing of Earth, so full of blood and anger.

  The darkened city disappeared behind the dull glow of the spaceport walls and then into a cloud of airborne dust and debris kicked up by the belly jets. They screamed in effort, lowering the incredible mass of the starship down to the fusion-form plain, each a technological Atlas with the world on its shoulders. The Raven settled with a jolt and a sigh and they were on Mars.

  “I thought we might come back here,” Devon said, pulling the release for her seat restraints. “Thought I might get another chance to see it. But I never imagined it would be like this.”

  “I’ve got word from Collective Control,” Avera reported, head cocked in the distinctive tilt of a man receiving a message over his neurolink. “They said they’ll have someone out in the main port building to meet you.”

  “Did they say who?” Devon asked him, deadpan, and Sam nearly corrected her before he caught the glint in her eye.

  “Umm…,” Avera stuttered, eyes flickering back and forth uncertainly. “I can try to…”

  Laughter spread across the cockpit like a light rainstorm, clearing some of the tension built up during the approach. Even Priscilla smiled, which he hadn’t seen in weeks.

  “Martians consider it bad manners,” Devon explained to the Ensign in gentle reproof, “to ask for personal names. If you ever happen to be around one, you should avoid asking for a name or any personal information whatsoever. Martians don’t do small-talk.”

  Devon let him off the hook and came to her feet, turning her attention to Sam and Pris.

  “Who’s going?” she wanted to know.

  “Me,” Sam told her, “Pris and Telia. You if you want, it’s your boat now. No one else though.” He shrugged. “I don’t want to spook them.”

  “I don’t think that’s even possible,” Pris said. She was staring out the viewscreen, as if she could see the Martians waiting for them out in the darkness.

  “Yeah, I’ll go,” Devon told him, shrugging. “Maybe this time no one will try to kill me.”

  ***

  “We greet you in the name of the Collective Will of the Martian People,” the tall man said, bowing to them cordially.

  Sam returned the bow by instinct, but his eyes stayed on the man, plagued by a sense of déjà vu. The odd clothes were the same, of course, plain and khaki and unmarked. The narrow cheekbones, the long, aquiline nose, the sunken eyes, the flare of his ears away from his head, they all seemed very familiar.

  Is this the same guy who we talked to three years ago? he said to Pris over the neurolink, not wanting to offend the man by asking him directly.

  It is. There was no doubt in her tone and no surprise either.

  The slender, towering Martian had been standing alone in the spaceport’s main office suite, a statue motionless in the dim lighting. The sensor displays were dark, the communications nets silent, and Sam wondered who from traffic control had spoken to Avera. An AI maybe? Or someone on the small Phobos station? It hadn’t been anyone in the port control areas, not unless it was this guy. Suddenly, he felt very naked without a weapon. It made no sense, there were no threats down here, but the hair on the back of his neck was standing up just the same.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Sam ventured carefully, trying not to offend the man, “but I thought we made it clear this is a matter of the utmost urgency and we need to speak to someone with the authority to make decisions on the executive level.”

  “You did,” the Martian confirmed, nothing in his demeanor or his voice showing the slightest reaction. “And you are.”

  Sam blinked at the response. He looked to the others for help, but Pris’ attention was on the Martian, peering through him as if she were trying to probe under the skin. Telia said nothing, her arms crossed, her stance squared, while Devon just shrugged helplessly.

  “I apologize for prying, but unless you’ve been promoted significantly since the last time we were here, aren’t you with the diplomatic corps?”

  “There was a transmission,” Pris interrupted, cutting through the niceties with a direct question, “from th
e main communications antennae outside Tarshish to a Belter ore barge inbound to the Gate Assembly the Resolution was building in conjunction with the Consensus at the Sun-Mars L5 point 810 standard hours ago. We need to know who sent it.”

  “We are aware of the transmission,” the Martian told her, “and we are aware of its consequences, but it was not sent by the Collective.”

  “How can you know that?” Sam demanded, his patience with the whole business wearing increasingly thin. He threw his hands up, frustration boiling over. “There have to be hundreds of thousands of people in this city! How can you be sure whoever sent the message wasn’t a Collective citizen?”

  “We are sure,” the Martian responded with cool reserve, “because we did not do it.”

  He was about to blow up again, knowing he was screwing up but past caring, when he sensed Pris moving up beside him.

  “Sam.” A thin smile played across her face and he thought he recognized it as her “Eureka” expression, the look she’d get when she’d solved a problem that had been bothering her. “You don’t understand.”

  “Yeah, I don’t either, ma’am,” Devon admitted, palms out in an “I surrender” sort of pose. “Are we just getting a runaround here?”

  She seemed upset, and Sam couldn’t blame her; she was risking more with this trip than they were.

  “The Collective isn’t the name of their government,” Pris said, and the almost-smug satisfaction in her tone reminded him of Danabri. “It’s what they are.”

  Her eyes were alight, nearly feverish in their intensity.

  Are you all right? he asked her privately, but she ignored the neurolink and made a gesture of impatience.

  “They’re literally a hive mind!” she insisted, motioning toward the Martian. “Probably connected by something like our neurolinks, but even more advanced and definitely more comprehensive. They don’t have any individual identity! That’s why none of them use names; it’s not just with us, they don’t need them.”

  “That’s impossible.” Devon regarded Pris through narrowed eyes. “A human brain couldn’t work that way.”