by Jeff Carlson
—I want to talk, but I can’t let you overwrite my core. Don’t shut me down again, please.
“No tricks. Tell me what’s going on.”
—I want control of Relay 021.
“Why would…?”
021 was among the buried mecha and devices. Currently it was acting as the primary link between Lam and her lander. If he owned it, he could use it like a firewall, screening their broadcasts for anything that might affect him. Or there was another explanation. It seemed less likely, but Vonnie knew Frerotte would warn her against the possibility. After co-opting the relay’s encryptions, Lam might initiate a counteroffensive against them if he was irrational.
She thought he was all right. Yes, he sounded intense. That had always been true. He was brilliant. But his brilliance was why she couldn’t allow him an opening.
What if he hated them for banishing him to the violent dark?
Vonnie tapped at her display, exempting Relay 021 from their grid. O’Neal shook his head but didn’t say anything, confirming her changes. They left 021 segregated and defenseless. Lam assumed control of it in seconds.
“What next?” she said. “Are you safe?”
—Yes. I’m shadowing and observing the sunfish.
“Where are you?” The mistrust she felt evaporated in a wave of anticipation. Lam had retained enough of himself to keep to their mission. Despite everything, he was lucid and committed. She wanted to ask a million questions. Which breed of sunfish had he found? Was it Tom’s colony? But his next words tempered her excitement.
—They know I’m tailing them. They’ve made two overtures, screeching into the tunnels. I want to respond. In fact, I may have done so already. I’m experiencing skips in my short-term memory.
“I can help you,” she said before she muted her station and turned to O’Neal. “He sounds like he’s inside a fin mountain. Can we triangulate his signals?”
“Not without 021. It’s the only relay close enough to hear him. Even then, the reception is bad. I’m trying to analyze what we have, but the best I can tell you is he’s west or southwest of us, ten kilometers max.”
Vonnie wanted to rely on Lam. Her emotions went beyond her desire to reach the sunfish. She wanted to work together like they’d done in the beginning. She wanted to make him part of their crew again. He could never replace Pärnits and Collinsworth, but he could honor them like he’d honored Bauman, Vonnie, and himself by carrying their first recordings of the sunfish up from the frozen sky.
Why hadn’t he answered?
She reopened her mike and said, “Lam? I have your original mem files. With better signal strength, I can help you restore yourself with corrective sequences.”
—I need to verify your intentions.
“Tell me how.”
—Give me control of Relay 027.
“Ah, shit,” O’Neal whispered. “Don’t do it. He’s playing you. He’s trying to replicate.”
She held her finger to her lips. “Then what?” she asked Lam. “You already have 021 as a firewall. Koebsch won’t let me keep giving away our mecha.”
—027 can crawl free of its position if it moves downward. I’ll bring it closer to me…
“…and that will increase our signal strength,” she said, finishing the thought out loud. “All right. I’m trusting you. Here’s 027.”
—Roger that.
At his response, her mouth curved with a smile. It was such a normal thing to say.
Below the ice, 027 wriggled a few centimeters, then fell into a cramped fissure, tumbling less than a meter before it became stuck again. Relays weren’t designed for brawn or speed. 027 would need hours to dig itself further into the pit, much less to reach an open space and pursue Lam. Could she predict his location from its movements?
“Tell me about the sunfish. Are you following Tom’s tribe?”
—Yes. There are twenty-one of them. Given their pace and their decisiveness, I believe they know where they’re going. We’ve been moving steadily since the assault.
“Where?”
—Unknown. We’re outside any of the areas mapped by the ESA or the FNEE.
“You have FNEE records?”
—Partial records, yes. I’m experiencing skips in my short-term memory.
His behavior was reminiscent of flesh-and-blood people with head trauma or Alzheimer’s disease. He used repetition to conceal his illness. The decay of his core files meant he couldn’t be sure where he’d traveled or what he’d done. He might not even be able to explain his interest in the sunfish.
As an AI, Lam had limited volition. He was an ESA probe designed to study Europa. It was his primary function. He would observe the sunfish even if he didn’t know why.
“Don’t get too close,” she said. “If they attack…”
—I believe it’s been three hours and seventeen minutes since they last set a trap for me. Twice they placed a foursome in hiding. Twice they prepared avalanches. I circumvented both ambushes but tripped one of the rock slides. If those were trials, three out of four may have been a passing grade.
“They were testing you.”
—Yes. After the fourth trap, they began to call into the tunnels. It sounded welcoming.
“Play it back for me. Our database is larger than anything in your mem files, and we have a full day of new analysis. You’re operating on old data.”
—Negative. Our connection will be voice-only until I verify your plans. You tried to kill me.
“Those mecha were Brazilian, not ESA. Lam, you saved my life. I’ve done everything I can to save yours.”
Silence.
“Where are the sunfish now? Can you still hear them?”
—The tribe is one point two kilometers above me. First they went laterally, then downward until they reached liquid water, not the ocean but a fresh water sea suspended in the rock. They swam two point seven kilometers, then reentered the mountain, moving laterally again. More recently, they’ve ascended each time they found routes leading up toward the surface.
“Lam, we’re predicting another aftershock in two minutes. After that, we’ll restart our recovery efforts. I can’t just sit here and talk.”
—I’ll contact you when 027 is ready.
“Listen to me. By tomorrow, I might not be in range. We’re relocating to safer ground.”
—You won’t leave, not with so many mecha entombed in the ice. The larger breed also had a tribe nearby. You’ll search for them. I can lead you to Tom’s group, and there must be fifty dead sunfish in the pit. You’ll stay to dig them out.
“Yes. But it might not be us.”
—Explain.
Vonnie had tapped the group feed. “I’m looking at our orders right now,” she said. “Berlin proposed combining our people with the FNEE. Brazil accepted to make amends. We’ll share their camp and their entrances into the ice.”
—Then I’ll contact you later.
“Lam, I don’t have permission to talk to you. Frerotte established contact on his own, and we’ve hidden this link from Koebsch. Hunting you was the rationale for sending FNEE gun platforms toward Tom’s colony. They wanted to be attacked.”
Silence.
“The bigger atrocity is they’ll never admit they’re wrong. They can’t. They spent too much money. The political shit storm will be even worse. They can’t say it was for nothing, so we’ll extract our mecha and the dead sunfish and then we’ll start the hunt all over again.”
Silence.
“We need to show Earth you’re okay,” she said. “More than that, we need you to talk to the sunfish. Break the language barrier. I know I’m asking a lot, but we’re close. We’re very close. All the pieces are there. We need the sunfish to communicate.”
—I’m experiencing skips in my short-term memory.
“Goddamn it,” she said, trying to rub the exhaustion from her eyes. “If you won’t let me help you, my guess is you have about five days before the FNEE manufacture new gun platforms and go back int
o the ice.”
47.
Four days passed.
Four long days.
As the ESA rebuilt their camp at the FNEE site, Vonnie, Ash, and Metzler took turns listening for Lam, juggling their other responsibilities so at least one of them was always monitoring the link they’d established. Frerotte couldn’t assist. Koebsch had transferred him from Lander 04 to 05 with Dawson and Gravino, partly to relieve crowding, mostly because Koebsch needed support with data/comm.
Losing Frerotte meant less sleep. It made the search for Lam more demanding. Occasionally they broadcast signals through the ice under the guise of coordinating the sensors and data/comm of the mecha trapped in the pit, but there was no reply.
Johal kept their secret, although she’d written off Lam as another loss. “We can’t wait for your AI anymore,” she said on the second day as she and Vonnie installed new airco screens in Lander 04.
“I think we have to,” Vonnie said.
“Why haven’t you heard from him? He malfunctioned and wandered off somewhere. He’s gone.”
O’Neal was more pessimistic. “Lam is a threat,” he muttered to Vonnie and Ash during a jeep ride between their lander and Module 01. “You watch. He co-opted those relays. That’s why we can’t find them. We need to advise Koebsch before Lam tries to piggyback into our grid.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Ash said.
She’d reverted to the obstinate girl she’d been in her first days on Europa, showing little emotion and less patience. Everything she did now was with robotic precision, as if that could prevent more bloodshed.
“Lam doesn’t have the warfare pods or the spare mem to infiltrate our systems,” Ash said.
“We need to tell Koebsch.”
“Just wait.”
Theirs was a slow-motion conspiracy. Metzler said O’Neal had spoken to him, too. Privately, Vonnie and Ash reworked the corrective sequences they intended to send to Lam, reducing the file sizes and transmission times required.
Her romance with Metzler also felt like it was frozen in time. Except for a few quick, stolen kisses, they’d had no opportunity to enjoy their newfound romance. She remained interested. He was hardworking and loyal, sweet with her, furious with Koebsch and Dawson, and a loud, vocal influence on O’Neal, Gravino, and Johal. But they were too busy to do more than touch hands or nod or whisper.
Rarely, they ate and rested. Most of their hours were swamped with dire needs like hull repairs on 01; sensor replacements on 02 and 04; salvaging food, AI cards, and gear from 03; running checks on Vonnie’s transplants; starting the excavation to find their mecha buried in the pit; assembling new mecha; setting beacons and listening posts; and integrating their hardware with the FNEE grid.
The Brazilians labored on their own projects. Sergeant Tavares touched base with Vonnie and Ash constantly, loading codes into a shared database.
Both sides were constructing fresh squads of mecha. On the second night, the wreckage of Module 03 was reduced to scrap to meet their needs for copper, alumalloy, and plastics. Too easily, Pärnits and Collinsworth’s home became a memory.
On orders from Earth, Vonnie and Ash were forging GP mecha and more sunfish-shaped probes.
The FNEE were building gun platforms.
A new incursion into the ice was imminent… and yet the unified ESA/FNEE crews weren’t unified at all. That the ESA team had parked their flightcraft and modules among the Brazilian structures added more difficulties to their search for Lam. At close range, hiding an open channel was impossible. Instead, they buried their link among the standard torrent of electronic countermeasures and false data, which Koebsch told them to limit to avoid offending their hosts.
“I’ve had a complaint from Colonel Ribeiro about our signals disrupting his grid,” Koebsch announced on the third day. “I want everyone to remember we’re guests here. We’re partners. I know a lot of our AIs are designed to add chatter to everything they do, but nonessential data/comm should be shut off.”
“That’s hilarious,” Ash said later without a trace of a smile. “Koebsch is generating most of our chatter himself. He must have had fifty private talks with Berlin.”
Meanwhile, Vonnie argued with anyone who would listen, Koebsch, Dawson, their administrators on Earth, and the media. She tried to reach Ribeiro, too, but he denied her calls, and she wasn’t allowed to drive across camp and search for him among the FNEE modules.
Her message was simple: “The sunfish are intelligent. They used four-stage logic, real tactics, and engineering to defend themselves.”
On the second day, hundreds of news feeds played her sims and interviews. A famous chat show host featured the sunfish as his lead subject. Science programs strived to boost their own ratings by analyzing the violence.
The battle was too easy for people to interpret however they wanted. Were the sunfish smart? Stupid? Many shows also manipulated Vonnie’s position by editing her sims. Business analysts centered on her remark, “It’s been a waste,” which she meant as wasting the progress they’d made in communicating with Tom and Sue, not a waste of people, fuel, and mecha. Political commentators turned her words into anti- or pro-government bluster depending on their own views, either condemning or supporting any investment in the missions to Europa.
Amateur media was the loudest. Millions of people choked the nets with accusations, opinions, and more. Groups of every flavor established petitions and polls; medical; scientific; religious; animal rights. Even the education and entertainment lobbies weighed in.
They were only spinning their wheels. The number of citizens who suggested aiding the sunfish or leaving them alone was equal to the amount who wanted the ESA and FNEE crews to mount reprisals. Their motives varied. The infirm and the retired wanted miracles from new gene smithing. The politicians needed to cement the agreements between Brazil and the E.U., while their militaries and the civilian agencies refused to back off of any gains in space, fleet commitments, or valuable claims on extraterrestrial real estate.
Dawson basked in his role as a poster boy for the groups advocating their return to the ice. He wore gauze bandages on his head and a sling for his arm. The wounds made it easy for him to project steely determination. “This was a terrible set-back,” he said in his most popular sim, “but men have always risen above our tragedies.”
Vonnie could have socked him. Maybe it was fortunate he’d stayed in Lander 05. She hadn’t seen him in person since the blow-out, and she didn’t learn about his declaration until the recording was hours old.
Even his enemies played it repeatedly, using the sim to debate with him on Earth. A few people mocked his melodramatic style. More condemned his arrogance, but his air time increased with each rebuttal, and he looked like everyone’s grandfather — a fit, attractive, educated grandfather who’d faced death and regained his feet without shying from his beliefs.
Vonnie forced herself to speak of him respectfully. She disagreed with him at every chance, yet she always gave Dawson his due when urged to respond to his statements.
She’d become a hero again herself, albeit one who played to a different demographic than Dawson’s supporters. For the first time, she felt like Europa wasn’t so far from home. The systemwide debate brought Earth to her. Even with assistance from Koebsch and Ash, she struggled to prioritize tens of thousands of personal calls and requests.
Then it stopped.
On the fourth day, Koebsch moved his seat of operations from Lander 05 back into Module 01, which housed their central AIs and data/comm. He’d been able to access those systems from Lander 05, but his job was better done from the command module.
He rescinded most of his crew’s data/comm privileges, beginning with Vonnie. She was the sole crew member at her station. Except for O’Neal, who slept in 04’s living quarters, her friends were outside in pressure suits and armor, conducting tests on their new listening posts. It was a superb time for Koebsch to restrict access. He called Vonnie first and almost caught her listening t
o the channel they’d dedicated to Lam.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been told to route all media responses through headquarters. We can’t afford this kind of distraction.”
“Distraction!?” she said. “You mean the truth.”
“It’s not our job to set policy.”
“Koebsch, what’s happened to you? You’re not like Dawson. I haven’t forgotten what you told me. We volunteered to come here because we’ve dreamed about finding aliens since we were kids.”
“I wish things were different. What else do you want me to say?”
“Help me! It’s not too late to stop the FNEE from sending down another war party.”
“That’s not our decision.”
“Who should I talk to? The director?”
“No one wants to talk. They want to move forward. They want to honor Pärnits and Collinsworth.”
“Pärnits would never say we needed revenge!”
“Von, public support for developing our presence on Europa and increasing gene corp access is polling near sixty percent in most of our member nations.”
“’Increasing gene corps access.’ What a bucket of shit. How do you think it would poll if they asked people if we should shoot more sunfish?”
“The prime minister is personally involved. So are leaders of the senate and every boss you have in the ESA. This is larger than you think. It’s not only Berlin. There’s support in Washington and Tokyo. Sydney. Jerusalem. Rome.”
“The pope should want to save their souls.”
Koebsch managed to shrug, parroting a line she’d heard repeated among the most devout of the religious feeds. “Animals don’t have souls,” he said.
He didn’t mean it, but Vonnie sneered again. “Three hundred years ago, that’s what a lot of churches said about Africans and Native Americans. They said it because it was good business, taking slaves and taking land. They said it because it made them feel holier than any subhuman mongrel. Is that the kind of small-minded dogma we want to bring with us to the stars?”
“Christianity and Islam have a lot of clout on Earth.”