I winked. “We slowed down a little, waited. She finally figured out our game and her mouth opened so big I thought she might scream, but she laughed and slapped Davey on the back, and we made our credit-load, anyway.” I spent every day noticing fine details so I could bring them home to her. Could I stand life any other way? “Worldgov cleared two more ships for Mars today.” I swallowed. “My name came up in the lottery.”
She closed her eyes.
We’d talked about it before I put in for the lottery, and so there wasn’t a question about what I’d do. Hazard pay might buy her a new body someday; the syntharms and legs were no big deal, but the spine was a fortune. And if I didn’t make the fortune in time, she wouldn’t have enough left to work with. The last govdoc that’d talked to us said she had two years or so.
A single tear slid down her cheek. She couldn’t take my hand, couldn’t touch me, but her tear touched me for her. I stood so my own tears would fall on her face.
*
Zubrin Base was a sterile bubble filled with air, and also a light wind so our bodies would think, maybe, they were home. Of course, there was about twice the moon’s gravity keeping me stuck to the surface. But hey, the breeze was nice. I crossed the open tarmac and climbed into my flitter, the Moon Escape. Even though she was a company ship, she was assigned to me full time, getting her rest and maintenance when I slept. I’d named her myself, as much for the hope of bringing Aline here to help me fly her as thanks for my own luck of the lottery. I’d not only won passage to Mars, but also a job I wanted, as if I’d somehow been anointed with fairy dust.
After I double-checked the cargo manifest, I dogged the hatches, grinning. Compared to the moon, Mars is a heaven of variety. Twice the diameter means a hell of a lot more surface area. Of course, I only got to fly over about five percent of that, but the sheer size of it still stunned. I waited my turn at the base locks, waving at the doorbot as it let me through into the wilds where a girl could be alone.
As usual, I started off feeling too alone.
The communications lag between Mars and the moon was about five seconds, give or take a bit to account for orbits. The only way Aline and I could talk was email or vidmail. So at the end of every day I recorded a message for her about my job driving cargo from base to base. Every morning, I got her reply. But we couldn’t giggle about our respective lovers or play off the way our eyebrows arched. Those aren’t things you do with a five minute stutter. And forget about meeting anyplace virtual with latency like that.
If only Aline were already here. She was the stronger one, the one-minute-older one, the best one. I needed her. And so far, I’d saved less than half the money for her surgery. “Honey, girl, Aline, how am I going to do this?” I said to the walls.
Aline-in-my-head whispered back. “You’ll find a way. Or I will.”
“Even a single-step promotion won’t save us now. I need . . . something extraordinary.”
My words bounced around the empty cabin, and it seemed like the echo was her voice: “We are extraordinary.”
If only it was really her! I flopped into my red captain’s chair and stared out the wraparound window at the gray skies of Mars. An hour of silent meditation on the rocks and plains of Mars cheered me up a little. I dropped my cargo at Robinson and two men I’d never seen before loaded four big sealed boxes for Zubrin. “Go on,” the tallest one said, “so you won’t pull any overtime.”
I bristled at the suggestion I’d loiter on purpose for more pay, and it almost made me do it. But I hightailed it out of there instead, happy to be heading home and hungry for a glass of homemade berry wine from Chu’s Bar.
A single cheep roused me. Data coming in. Hopefully not another request for an early shift start. There’d been way too much work the last month or so. “What?” I asked.
“Sis.”
Not me speaking her voice. Her voice. My throat fisted. An open call would be a fortune. “What? I’m here.” My top teeth nearly bit through my bottom lip. Now the ten minute wait for an answer.
“Me too. Here.”
There was no delay!
“With you. I’m sorry.”
Her voice had tears in it, and I knew. A download. It was the only way she could be here and be invisible. A download. “I didn’t know you died.”
“I didn’t.”
Her body must have. No consciousness could operate in two places at once. It broke every law in the book. “My god, honey! Why?” My head was spinning. Such a stupid thing to do. Such a . . . hopeless choice. And it was done. No going back for her, for me, for us. But I was her and she was me and somewhere deep inside, below the breastbone, I understood. Anger and shock gave way. I could feel my own smile peel my cheeks back. “Thank god. I missed you. I missed you every damned day.”
“Me, too.”
I wondered if I could fly well enough to make the flitter do loops. “You’ll love it here. There’s so much to show you.” After we got back, I’d take her home and let her see the wall-nano pattern I’d been working on all week. Maybe she’d have some good ideas about how to get the sunset sky I’d splashed across the tiny living room to brighten up even more. Surely she’d be okay here; data stratum was thick in most of the bases; there weren’t enough people to tug at the capacity at all. “Did you come in on one of the cargo ships?”
“Something private.”
“Wow, that must have cost a fortune.”
“No.”
I swallowed. It wasn’t like her to answer so shortly. It had to be her, though. I knew her voice. “Aline? What did mom used to say when we got up?”
“That wasting a day in bed was the worst sin of all.”
She hadn’t hesitated. “And what did we say?”
“The worst sin was . . .” I finished it with her, two voices, “going to bed early.” I blushed for having to check, for doubting. I’d have never doubted her body, but a download was . . . well, I couldn’t see her. The cabin still looked empty even if it felt full of her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
The lights of Zubrin Base loomed large. “We’re almost there.” How would she get off the ship with me? Why didn’t I know these things? “How portable are you? I mean, you’re in the ship’s data now, right? What creds do you need to get into the base’s systems?”
A warning bell sputtered out of the same speakers Aline talked to me through. Three bursts, so it wasn’t routine. A male voice, not the usual computer-recorded neutral. “All research ships are to proceed to the closest base immediately. Repeat. All research ships to the closest base.”
We weren’t a research ship, but the warning was odd. Aline didn’t remark on it, but instead answered my earlier question. “I’ll fit in your personal data space. I’m afraid I’ll take most of it, but as soon as we get inside the base I can move out again. So as long as you don’t want to watch any movies as you dock this thing?”
She always could make me laugh. I authorized the transfer. If she was in my personal datapod, that meant she’d get through without any creds, or more accurately, with my creds. But she couldn’t even be on Mars with no authentication: there were layers and layers of datasec here. “Sure.” So as I flew Moon Escape into Zubrin Base, Aline flowed into me, unfelt, unseen, except I knew about her, as if the ghost of my sis was filling my most personal dataspaces.
Three soldiers stood at Zubrin’s gate, actually wearing weapons. I’d only seen that once before, when a convict escaped from Robinson and they were afraid he’d make it to Zubrin (he didn’t; he died just outside the gate). Base command ordered me to stop. I sighed. “Sorry, Aline. Whatever this is, it can’t be much.” Not that I was sure of that. “Maybe you’d better be quiet, though. There’s a policy about taking on riders.” And I didn’t have time to figure out if a download tripped it.
At least the head of the group was a stocky red-haired man I played chess with in Jimson’s Bar every Saturday, Jay Jakob. “Hello, Jay,” I called out to
him, opening a video window between us. “What’s happening?”
“Lissa, howzit going? Been anywhere except your normal stops?”
I shook my head.
“Seen anything strange out there?”
“Nope. Jay—what’s going on?”
His turn to shake his head. “I can’t say, not yet. I need a copy of your manifest.”
I reached for it, but there was no manifest in the wall slot where it belonged. What had happened when the boxes were loaded up? It was hard to remember—with Aline in between there was a lifetime of feeling between me and a routine act. “Let me pull it up.”
Jay’s lips drew into a tight line. “I have orders not to take anything electronic.”
I smiled at him. “That’s all I got!”
He put his hands up. “Shhh . . . seeing that it’s you. Nothing looked wrong out there, nothing weird happened, right?”
“No. Everything was normal.”
“All right. I’ll clear you, but you best stay in town in case anybody’s unhappy. I will have to report it.”
“I got loaded up at Robinson, just like usual. I’m sure it’s just research stuff.” And that’s what they were recalling—research ships. “From the base. Like every day. Why are you interested in the scientific squad?”
He shook his head again and then tapped his ear, clearly listening to someone else. After a moment he smiled at me. “Just go on.” There was real concern in his voice. “Stay safe.”
“Wow,” Aline’s voice sounded in my ears now, right in the phone implants. “Is it always so fascinating around here?”
I shook my head, pulling us away from the gate and toward the hangar with a little whoosh of light thrust. “No. In fact it’s usually pretty damned boring.”
“Well, and you seemed to know this Jay. He’s cute.”
I swear if she could’ve winked at me, she would have.
I laughed, happy. “Maybe I should talk you into buying a bot body so I can beat it up when you sass me.” Except downloads in botbods were illegal as hell, too.
“That would land me in jail.”
A shiver ran up my arms and back. AIs could manipulate robots, but not be them. And downloads weren’t AIs, but also weren’t supposed to be in botbods. Silly results of years of making laws to protect people from AIs even though only a few of them had ever hurt humans, and they’d been killed right away. Fear politics.
Better to imagine I was just talking to Aline, and she had a body somewhere that she’d go home to someday. “I haven’t dated anyone. Too expensive. I’m saving money to bring you home.”
“And now I am home. So now you could ask him out.”
“Not. He’s sweet, but he’s too old. How’d you get here anyway?” I twisted the ship a little sideways to get it into its docking station.
“I sold some of my pictures.”
“Really?” That was cool—she’d been trying to do that for years. “Show me?”
“Later. Take me home with you?”
“Like I have a choice?” I laughed, happy with the banter. Now I’d never let her go again if I could help it. I opened the door and climbed down to the tarmac. “We have to find someone to sign in the cargo.”
“Without the manifest?”
“I must have the electronic one.”
“Lissa!” A male voice called across the bay to me. I glanced over to see someone approaching that I didn’t know, tall and dark haired, and actually pretty darned handsome. Even better eye candy than Jay. He held out his hand. “Hi. I’m Dan. Rick sent me to get your stuff off.”
Well, new people came on all the time, but this was still a lot for one day. “I have to print a bill first.”
“I got it for you. Rick was listening at the comm, and he said you needed this.” He shoved a copy into my hand and I glanced at it quickly. It had the right number of boxes. I should check box numbers, but it wasn’t like I was allowed to open the damn things anyway. What I really wanted to do was go and catch up with and mourn Aline all at once. I scrawled my name across the release line and smiled up at Dan. “Make me a copy?”
“Sure. I’ll drop it in your box.” He shoved the paper into his pocket and turned and headed toward the forklift.
“Well,” I said. “Let’s go home.”
She didn’t say anything, and I wondered how I would ever know when or if I was alone. Not that I wanted to be. “Hey, you know what?” I asked her. “I don’t have to tell you about today. You were here with me, and we both experienced it.”
“I know.” She sounded as happy as I did. It was an effort to walk home instead of dancing my way there. I narrated the trip for her. “The commissary is on the right. And that big building is the library. There’s even free VR there, and pods so people can “read” the new books. Some real paper books, too. There’s a law that all the paper books on Mars need to be there for everyone. And you can check out all kinds of readers. You’d like it.” When we were kids we read together before we gamed together. “And the next part is housing. I stayed there the first two weeks, up in the corner apartment. Sheer luck I got a view . . . another lottery win.”
“Did you really like it?” she asked. “As much as you said? It looks smaller than I thought.”
“Sure. It was the best place on the base for newbies. I used to sit and look out the window for hours and watch the ships and planes and tractors come and go.”
“I’m glad.”
“And around this corner is home.” Showing her was like seeing it through new eyes. A three-story building made all of reddish-yellow brick. It looked like a big box, with a mural painted on the side. “The windows are round so the dust doesn’t pile up on the sills. The color is so it looks natural. You can hardly see the buildings from the air. Except the greenhouses.” I was babbling. “Do you like it?”
“Yes. But do you? Have you been happy here?”
“Well, sure. And it’ll be better now.” I waved at Xiaoning, one of my neighbors, as she headed out for her shift in the science lab. She waved back. The moon was all bubbles and tunnels and it always stank. It was easier to know your neighbors, like Xiaoning, when there was room between people. Funny.
“Come on.” I didn’t say anything else until we got in the door. After I sealed it behind me, I started stripping my headgear off, being careful about my personal comm since it had Aline in it now. Downloads had backups, but only one. They could die. As I turned to set my suit outer-gear on the small bench by the door, I noticed a blinking red light on my kitchen computer console. “That’s the secure line between me and work. Maybe there’s some news about the warnings tonight.”
“Can you show me around first? Or better yet, can we just go somewhere and talk?”
I didn’t blame her. That was really what I wanted, too. But she hadn’t had a real job, ever. She just didn’t understand how you had to do your duty. How could she? “In a minute.” As I got near enough I called out to the console, “Play incoming.”
“Security level three please.”
“Damnit.” I walked up to the screen and stared at it long enough for it to decide I was really me, down to the whites of my eyes and the shape of my chin.
It started playing a message from my boss, Rick. “Lissa. Sent this HighSec so you know what to be careful of. Mars is getting locked down one network at a time because of some scare about AIs invading. It hasn’t shown up yet as a hoax. I wasn’t supposed to tell you, but I wanted you to have a chance to back up anything personal you want.”
He was a good boss. Some days, I even thought he liked me. “Maybe that explains the research ships. They’ve got huge networks of their own, and I guess if an AI took one of them over it would have a whole base worth of infrastructure.” That wasn’t what was weird, though. Hadn’t he said AIs invading? Plural? AIs went rogue, but they didn’t do it together. Laws, and their programming, were designed to keep them separate from each other. “But what the hell would they want with Mars? There’s only enough people t
o populate one city strewn around the whole planet, and not much transportation or anything.”
Rick sounded pressed for time. “I don’t know. I have another call. Just protect your data and be careful.”
“Thanks.”
“Listen,” my sis spoke softly, and even the electronic version of her voice had the same quiet tone she used to use to convince me of things. “You just said why. AIs on Earth are restricted. They’re born restricted. Did you know there’s more laws for AIs and even downloads like me than for humans?”
“I guess I never paid that much attention. But they’re more dangerous than we are.”
“Do you believe everything you’re told?”
I stripped the rest of my suit and my gear until I was naked except the implants that stayed all the time for comm: wires in my jaw and ear canals. I turned on the water and stepped into the shower, hoping to wash away the prickly sense of unease I felt. We had a bigger water allowance here than the moon, but two minutes wasn’t enough to make me feel comfortable. She hadn’t worried me so much since we were teenagers and she was the brave one getting us in trouble. With Aline still in the main room, shut out from the bathroom by a door, I felt like I could think clearer. I’d wanted her here beside me all my life, and hadn’t been able to make it happen. Now she’d found a way. But I believed in what I did, in the research and the planning for a bigger civilization here. I was just a little cog, a worker who was good with electronics and simple ships and kept to all my contracts. But I mattered, too. Or what I did mattered. And now, maybe, Aline was threatening all that. She was no AI, but the coincidence of timing was a bit much.
I pulled on clean clothes and hooked my personal comm and data back up. Aline couldn’t lie to me. To mom, to our teachers. We could both do that. But not to each other. “Why are you helping the AIs?”
Silence. I went and made a cup of tea, and sat down, waiting her out. When she finally spoke it sounded like a rehearsed speech, something she’d practiced over and over. “Did you know that AIs will hold full conversations with downloads—and sometimes with virts?” There was pride in her voice. It was the only clue I had to what she felt. She continued, “See, we’re intelligences, too. Just not artificial. But neither are they. They’re born, they’re just not born in bodies. They consider the word artificial an insult.”
Cracking the Sky Page 20