"This is Engineering Officer Jacques Song. We have..."
The shuttle sounded a warning tone.
"Duck! Now!” Jacques said as he pushed Soob to the ground. “It's lifting off!"
With a roaring cascade of exhaust, the shuttle leaped skyward and was already hundreds of meters overhead and shrinking as the wave of hot air rolled over them.
Jacques stared up, helpless. Then he collapsed onto a log and put his face in his hands, tears flowing freely. Everything over the last few months went by in his mind—the parrot-beaked fish, the rescues, the split up, the escape from the fire, the winter in the cave ... all the work, all the effort. Gone. All his efforts fruitless, leaving them with the prospect of retreat, starvation, and living out their lives as savages.
Helen may think that worthwhile, Jacques thought. But he wasn't sure he did. He didn't think he could face an eternity of the kind of labor and striving it had taken them to survive for the last three months, and if he ended his existence now, there would be one less mouth to feed.
Soob was trying to get his attention, shoving his slate at him. With a groan, Jacques took it.
Not out of range. Keep talking!!
Jacques hurriedly turned back to the wristcomp, pointing its directional antenna at the tip of the ascending contrail, said everything he planned to say, and added, “We are at the end of our food supply. If you leave us you may be responsible for human deaths.” If there was anything left of the higher functions in its AI, Jacques thought, that should do it.
The shuttle did not deviate from its upward path, and its contrail ended where it left the atmosphere.
Then Jacques looked down at his wristcomp screen. The “message received” telltale glowed. Pure automation, he supposed, but one microscopic step above complete hopelessness. At least he had the energy to trudge back to camp with Soob, following the swath cleared by the dinotower.
When they got there, Helen, Collette, and Doc all had big grins on their faces, and their arms filled with big thick roots of some kind. Presumably, that meant a respite from the starvation part of his bleak scenario. He wanted to go back into the cave and lie down and leave the explanations to Soob, but, of course, that was impossible. He decided on the short and sweet version.
"We found the shuttle. It flew away. I'm not feeling so good right now, I just..."
"Try some of this and you'll feel a lot better,” Doc said, laughing.
"It's really ... I can't describe. Just wow!” Collette said.
Despite the near-freezing temperatures, Helen discarded her clothes and started dancing, holding a morsel of the root out to Jacques. “Come on, lover boy, cheer up,” she said.
Collette was going after Soob, in a somewhat less spectacular, though equally determined manner.
Why not? Jacques thought. Why the hell not?
Because if they all went crazy, they would all die, not just him. He knocked the piece of root out of Helen's hand.
She looked confused. “Jacques, honey, it's all right. We're just a bit giddy. We're okay. We're due for a party."
"You're intoxicated. You're not thinking right,” he said, suspecting that reason would be futile while they were under the influence of whatever it was.
Something went crunch in the nearby underbrush. Jacques turned and found himself facing what appeared to be a close cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex, except it had a beak instead of teeth, and four tiny arms instead of two.
It didn't seem to know what to make of them. He grabbed his flute plant staff.
"Soob, get everyone in the cave,” he yelled, as he tossed his bag of electronics to the hunter and stood to face the beast.
Everyone was not going to the cave. Helen was behind him saying, “Hey, that's a big dinosaur, isn't it? Maybe it would like some candy. Give the dino some candy."
"What it would like is you,” Jacques snapped. “But it isn't sure yet. Get in the cave!"
"You're no fun! Hey, Soob, where are you going with my roots? Come back here."
Jacques risked a quick look back. Soob had grabbed all the roots and was taking them into the cave. The other three, complaining, were going after him. Nothing wrong with that part of Soob's brain, Jacques thought.
The “tyrannoparrot” began rocking back and forth, looking at him and the people disappearing into the cave mouth. Why had it not attacked? Maybe, Jacques thought, with his staff, he looked approximately like something it hadn't seen yet that was dangerous, poisonous, or both. They must have stood there, tiny human staring down a three-story monster, for almost fifteen minutes. Then, abruptly, the tyrannoparrot turned and strode off into the forest.
He had a feeling of déja vu about this, something he'd read or viewed. Lewis and Clark. One of them had faced down a grizzly bear in the middle of a river with a staff like his. Someday, he told himself, he should find out why the monster had spared him. But for now, it was interesting to note how the adrenaline had set aside his depression. When it came down to it, in spite of everything, he still very much wanted to live.
He joined Soob at the cave and they started a fire at the mouth. The other three had fallen into a deep sleep, so there were no protests as into the fire went the big thick tubers. The gentle breeze out of the cave mouth kept the fumes from going in, while Soob and he pulled shifts to keep the fire and their friends alive through the night.
* * * *
Jacques awoke to find Doc poking around the fire.
"Doc?” he said, fearing the worst. He put some more wood on the fire.
"We should have a sample,” he said. “Imagine a raw potato, but already a little buttery. The drug affect didn't set in until half an hour after ingestion. I suspect it's a chemical given off by a bacterialike bug and not the root itself."
He finally came up with a short segment of charred root and handed it to Jacques.
"Try a very small piece. We'd each eaten maybe a hundred grams, and if I'm right about the bacterium, the fire will have killed it and degraded the toxin. But, I'm not sure I trust myself."
Jacques held the charred morsel in his hand, feeling very uncertain.
"It is the only edible thing we've found here,” Doc said, looking down at the ground. “We don't have much choice, and, by the way, thank you for saving my life again.” He said the last in a whisper and with a slight bow.
Jacques touched him on the shoulder for a moment.
Then, with a wry smile, Jacques took a bite of the root, still warm from the fire. It did taste like buttered potatoes, and, irrationally, he wished for some salt. Or maybe not irrationally. They probably weren't getting quite enough salt. He swallowed and waited to go crazy.
"Half an hour, you say?"
Doc nodded.
Jacques unfolded their little solar array, plugged in the wrist comp, and sat down in front of the fire. “Do you remember what I said about the shuttle?"
"It flew away. I'm sorry I wasn't in a state of mind to appreciate that news, or, maybe I'm not so sorry. Pretty disappointing, that."
"Yeah."
Doc shivered and covered himself with his batskin sleep sack, even though the fire was going strong. “We'll need to move to a lower altitude for a permanent camp."
"Or go back to where we know the territory better."
Doc nodded. “A little easier, if cooking this root works."
They continued to talk until Collette, Soob, and Helen joined them.
"I wish I didn't remember everything so well,” was Helen's only comment.
"We need a name for this stuff,” Collette said. “It should be a warning, like ‘crazyroot.'” “I'll go with crazyroot,” Jacques said, “and, by the way, am I crazy yet?"
"We accidentally cooked some, and he's tried that,” Doc explained.
"You sound okay to me, Jacques,” Collette said.
Soob tried to talk. It came out something like, “Yuh-uh,” but those were his first words since almost suffocating in the snowdrift.
Doc cut another piece off the cook
ed ‘crazyroot’ and popped it in his own mouth. “Okay. I think it would be best if Jacques and Soob gather the next batch. I don't want to be tempted. It felt good, way too good."
"We can't stay here,” Helen said. “I mean, the temptation would always be there."
She wasn't one to resist sensual temptations, Jacques thought. But at least she knew herself.
"I wouldn't want to raise children with that kind of temptation around, either,” Collette said. “And I think the megabats are probably easier to deal with than the tyrannoparrots."
"There are four other faces on this cube that we haven't seen,” Doc said. “It's probably premature to say which is best for us."
Soob grunted and tried to speak, then shook his head and pulled his slate from his shoulder bag and scratched, R we welcome anywhere?
Jacques thought about the huge maintenance operations in the hollow ridge behind him. This immense, self-perpetuating operation had to be controlled by a high-grade artificial intelligence.
"I think so. Of course, something is clearly in charge here. But it has made no effort to communicate, to wipe us out, nor to help us, at least as far as we can tell."
"Maybe it's not aware we're here, like you're not aware that a specific microbe is on or in your body,” Doc said. “Our impact, so far, could be well under its threshold."
"I don't know,” Collette said. “If we made something to manage this, it would be very concerned with biological contamination."
Helen laughed. “We've become like Gabe. He knows there's a god, or at least says he does, but what does it want, what does it expect of him? When it doesn't say, he makes up answers or quotes others who made up answers."
"Then that becomes doctrine, regardless of any later evidence,” Collette said.
Doc chortled. “People like Gabe have evolved an ability to withstand a level of cognitive dissonance that would be fatal to ordinary mortals. We may make up answers, but we test them."
Soob scratched furiously on his slate. “People make this? Four hundred years."
Jacques shivered. Yes, a thousand years in time, but only six hundred or so in space; the Resolution could easily have been passed by human descendants during its long slowdown from relativistic velocities. Before they left, the potential of self-replicating robots to make megastructures in decades or even years had just begun to be used: the solar power stations of the interstellar transport complex, the Venus sunscreen, and the beginnings of the Mercury sphere. What could they do in this age?
"They may feel we aren't ready to handle the shock of what humanity has become,” Helen said quietly. “They could be right."
Collette shook her head. “So they let us starve to death? That doesn't make sense. Anyway, we need some food.” She began poking around the fire, apparently hoping to find some cooked crazyroot missed in earlier searches. “We'll also need weapons."
Jacques wondered what sort of weapon would deter a tyrannoparrot, but after reflection decided something would be better than nothing. They made long spears, sharpening the ends of the “neobamboo” with a diagonal cut and fire-hardening them. Then they set out.
A couple of hours later, burdened with roots and almost back to the camp, Jacques thought he heard a distant hissing noise, something between a waterfall and an angry cat. It seemed to be coming above him. He looked around. They were too high and too cold for something like a megabat, he thought.
Helen was looking too. “The shuttle! Everyone, the shuttle is coming back!"
* * * *
Chapter 17
Lost and Found
"Captain Song,” it said as they approached, “I have determined that you are correct. As senior surviving crewmember, command devolves on you. It was necessary to preserve life, get confirmatory data, and preserve the ignorance of the unauthorized users to carry out one more scheduled supply run. The Resolution shuttle Fortitude is now under your command. I will need your assistance to recover much of my memory."
Jacques looked at the shuttle, then back to Helen and the others, dumbfounded. Less than a Cube World day ago, he had hit rock bottom, contemplating suicide. Now, he had apparently succeeded in everything. Oh, there was still a lot to do, decisions to be made, questions to ask and have answered. But with the shuttle's replicator, they could do everything they wanted.
"We'll be on that in a moment,” he said, softly, then turned to the party. “I, I have a hard time believing this, but I think we're over the hill here."
"We can move to better quarters, anyway,” Doc said.
As it sank in, Jacques found himself emotionally unprepared for success. It was as if all the stress of the last few months had spilled out and left him as empty as a deflated balloon. He collapsed onto a nearby log, eyes moistening. “I just want to go home. I want to go home."
"Jacques,” Helen answered. “We can't. Home is a thousand years in the past, sixteen hundred counting travel time. Whatever the Solar System has become, it's not home anymore. That's only in memory."
She was right, of course. They had all signed up for what was to have been a significant hunk of time displacement to go on the initial mission, but that was tiny compared to what they now contemplated. She led the way to the shuttle lock. “Permission to board, Captain?"
* * * *
The shuttle had been hobbled. The wireless data links it used to communicate with its robots had been removed. Its primary memory slots had been vacated, except for one card; clearly a “Trojan card” inserted by the saboteur. What the saboteur apparently did not know was that there was a backup executive agent program in the engineering node, a limited AI but with the basic security protocols and Asimovian restraints. Absent a higher authority, this had followed the primary card, but Jacques’ statements had created a conflict, eventually resolved in Jacques’ favor.
The shuttle had been used by Gabriel Eddie, Leo Suretta, Arroya Montez, and Evgenie Malenkov. No surprise there, Jacques thought. Gabe and eleven others had been revived and assigned to shuttles by the ship before its final crash into Cube World's atmosphere. They were supposed to recover CSUs that survived atmospheric entry—but that mission had to be postponed. The Shuttle Fortitude had come down on another face of Cube World. It had taken Gabe some time to discover Jacques’ group—which he'd done from the air.
"According to the log, he'd only just arrived when we met him,” Collette said. “The Robinson Crusoe get-up was a ruse."
Doc nodded. “When he found us, he kept the shuttle a secret, apparently seeing an opportunity to become the dictator of a new accidental colony. He knew there was no danger in staying at New Landing—no wonder he was so adamant."
"If he'd only just gotten there, he couldn't have killed Ascendant Chryse,” Helen observed.
Jacques stated the obvious. “We're missing a lot of information."
After mining what data they could from the saboteur's card, Jacques replaced it with a set of backup cards, in storage since before the Resolution left the Solar System. Then he went to work on the wireless system, and after an hour of testing, locating replacement parts, and plugging them in, he was rewarded by a small crablike maintenance robot showing up, ready to work.
"Soup's on,” Helen's voice rang down the narrow corridor to the engineering section. Jacques left the cleanup to the robot and pulled himself up the passageway.
By twenty-third-century starship standards, the shuttle's berths, tiny mess, and compact flight deck were cramped and utilitarian. But compared to how Jacques and company had been living for the last six months, they were the height of luxury.
Everyone but him had cycled through the tiny shower and gotten fresh shipsuits. Even Helen was wearing hers—she hadn't left all the cooking to the robotics.
"Go have your shower. It'll wait ten minutes,” she said, and he complied. The head was an oval cross-section marvel of spatial efficiency, with an improbably tiny combination commode and washbasin in one end and the shower in the other. He removed his clothes, stood on the grat
e, and let the doors close around him. Almost immediately, a warm hurricane descended on him, followed by a short needle spray that emerged from every direction, reached every crevice of his body, and was quickly sucked away. The cycle repeated twice automatically, and he had it repeat again. He emerged clean, dry, and somehow feeling both stimulated and exhausted.
When they all got together, before they dug in to a meal of real replicated Earth food, Helen said, “We've been really lucky. I'd like to do something to commemorate this. Maybe sing?"
Soob quickly scratched something on his slate and handed it to Helen.
"Amazing Grace,” she read. “Very appropriate, I think. Do we all know it?"
Everyone nodded, and they began, led by Doc's deep baritone. Somehow, while he still couldn't talk, Soob was able to sing along, surprising himself as much as everyone else. Afterward, however, he still couldn't talk. They held off business until after their meal of gyros and white wine; everything replicated, of course, but it tasted wonderful. Finally they sat and stared at each other.
"We still have a lot of work to do,” Helen started. “We need a base of operations. We need to decide what to do about Gabe's group."
"We have a huge crime to deal with,” Collette said, “dozens of dead or deprived...” She had difficulty finishing the sentence. “...of the lives they knew."
"Whoever the conspirators are, there are innocent people with them,” Jacques said.
Helen looked as hard as he had ever seen her. “Just how innocent are the ones that chose to stay with Suretta and Eddie? Misogynist power-hungry charlatans. Anyone should see that. And how do you have a trial in a community this small, especially when you're a minority? They made their choice. Leave them to live, or die, with it."
Analog SFF, December 2009 Page 20