by Corey Ostman
Decades ago, Quint had hoped his father would help him rid Mars of the twofer contagion. It would have been much easier, for there had been no Essex twofers bent on upgrading all the others. His father had listened, but never acted. He had been hooked on Ink, the foul psychoactive drug favored by roiders as an escape from loneliness and boredom. As his father atrophied, Quint had quietly assumed the old man’s identity. Aposti gene therapy allowed him to extend his patience, and his reach. In Albor, thirty years away from home, Quint had watched Martians fall further and further under the burden of technology. But he would live to see Mars reborn.
“When will you be departing the south pole? Hmm?” The low voice interrupted his reverie.
Quint looked at his ptenda. “Two hours, max. Essex City is dead. They have minimal life support and no energy production.”
He thought he heard a soft chuckle, though it could have been the compression artifacts of a weak signal.
“And the metarm infestation on the surface?” Panborn asked.
“They’re in infinite limbo. The Essex robots don’t have enough power to complete the upgrade.” Quint smiled. Limbo. That included the Scout robot. He wondered who would be more distressed, the girl or the old man. They had mistakenly placed their affections on metarm circuitry. They should have known better.
“Good, child. And what is your plan for the Archdale team?”
“Most of them are trapped in Essex City.”
“Will they escape?”
Quint shrugged. “So what if they do?” He blinked through to a perimeter display: clear. “They’ll be stepping into a world without twofers. They’ll have to make a new life, just like everybody else.”
“You’ve done well, child,” said Panborn. “And as I promised, you have a new identity waiting at Gusev. A clean record. Just make certain that the Scout does not leave the geyser. A clean record won’t help with a protector on your tail.”
“I guess I could use the pawns on the cruiser.”
Quint looked past his visor telemetry, watching the pawn cloud grow. They were nearly all here.
“Lord Panborn?”
“Yes?”
“When can I get the tech removed from my neck?”
“Soon,” the aposti said, “but are you sure you want to? Haven’t the pawns helped you? Hmm?”
Contemplating an immortal life with a colony of pawns attached to his body sickened Quint. Was this a test?
“Of course I want to get rid of them!” Quint snapped. “I’m done here. I don’t want twofer spawn in my body like a festering wound. You promised—”
“Patience, child. When you return to Albor. We’ll have them removed.”
The voice tried to sooth, but Quint felt paranoia rising. The twofer doctor mentioned it would subside over time as his body acclimated to the pawns’ adjustments. But the paranoia etched at his psyche: the thought of eliminating the aposti flashed through Quint’s mind. Panborn had served his purpose. Quint could bring the pawns back and dissolve him. But if the aposti didn’t remove the pawns from his neck, could anybody else?
He heard the aposti sigh.
“I grow weary. Weary of the stale air and the red skies. I want to ride my horse under a ribbon of blue, following the Platte into the hills. I want to see the homestead again, and my brother Ephron.”
Horse? The man is slipping. Good luck Panborn, Quint thought. With no interplanetary flights, you’ve got a long stretch before you can return to Earth.
“Right. I’ll be in touch. Out.”
Quint disconnected the comm. He reached into the cargo hold, avoiding the pawns as he scooped out the pair of cave shakers. The aposti wanted him to make sure he wasn’t followed? Fine. He’d entomb Essex City, then take his pawns to the Scout. With one explosive in each hand, Quint hiked across the cavern.
Chapter 40
It was a small room with dull gray surfaces, not much larger than Grace’s cabin aboard the Scout. Open-ended conduits hung from the ceiling. Below was a circular depression in the floor. According to her visor, a strong electromagnetic field was present, though dissipating rapidly.
“You would normally see a large stockpile of thorium here, and our pawns arriving and leaving via these tubes,” Planar said, gesturing to the ceiling.
“Why is it open like this? What about radioactivity?” Richard asked.
“There is usually a mesh of pawns surrounding the reservoir. The pawns provide a shield,” Planar replied.
“How much thorium do you need to continue the upgrade?” Grace asked.
“Eleven megagrams,” Planar said.
“There isn’t that much thorium on the Scout,” Richard said. “We need to find Quint.”
“The Scout’s transmitter should be working. Without thorium, our signal block will be gone,” said Planar.
“The transmitter?” Grace said. “How will that help us get to Quint?”
“It won’t,” Tim said. “But an irreparable crash will occur in a few minutes, and the Scout could give us some time.”
“So we’d use the Scout as a link between Essex City and the surface relay network.” Raj put a glove on his helmet where his chin would be. “We’d need the details of the broadcast.
“We can provide them,” Planar said. “Through The Tim.”
“Tim?” Richard asked, incredulous.
The Podpooch looked up. “Oh he’s quite right. I’m fully connected.”
Richard frowned. “But can you handle that sort of data?”
“Absolutely,” said Tim. “I’ve been monitoring the upgrade since it started.”
“How long do you think we’ll have?” asked Anna.
“If we could continue the upgrade, but at the slowest pace possible, we could buy perhaps fifteen minutes,” speculated Planar.
“And that means I have exactly fifteen minutes to capture Quint and get the thorium back here,” Grace said, already moving out the door. “Let’s bounce. Planar! You’re with me.”
Planar caught up with her quickly.
“I think I know where the thorium is,” Grace said when they were outside. “Can you function outside without your pressure suit?”
“Yes. I will be slower the colder I get, but I still have many hours of function.”
“Good,” Grace said. “Just wanted to make sure you’re still combat-ready. And here. You’ll want this back.”
She reached into the pocket along her right leg and pulled out the small weapon she had confiscated from Planar. She gazed at the cylinder with its small parabolic dish at one end, and handed it back to him.
“Do you have weapons other than these in Essex City?” she asked as they neared the airlock.
Planar shook his head. “Our aim was not to give humanity the impression we were violent or dangerous.”
“I want to go, too!”
Grace turned as Anna ran up to join them. She took one look at the eyes bright with vengeance and nodded.
“Can you shoot?”
• • •
Raj nodded to Richard. “I’m ready. Let’s try it.”
“Archdale to the Scout. Can you hear me, Wragg?” said Richard.
“Perfectly,” Wragg’s voice boomed. “We’ve had complete telemetry on all of you for nearly ten minutes.”
“Excellent,” said Richard. “Now this may sound strange, Wragg, but we’re going to need you to relay a transmission to the surface network. Essex City no longer has sufficient power to complete the upgrade of all the surface twofers.”
“All surface what? An upgrade?”
“The Scout will have to amplify,” Raj said.
Wragg grumbled.
“We don’t have a lot of time, Wragg,” said Richard.
“I’ll have to take the engines offline,” the captain said. “Otherwise we’ll just be amplifying random noise from the ion drive.”
“You’ll have more power to divert to the amplifiers, then,” said Richard.
“All right,” said Wragg. “How cle
an will the signal be?”
Raj looked to Tim. “It will be very clean, Captain.”
• • •
“What happened here, Planar?” Grace said, looking at the pile of rubble just outside the airlock.
“Looks like explosives,” said Planar.
“Quint,” Anna muttered.
Grace offered a hand to Anna and they scrambled up the rubble. Planar deftly climbed over the uneven surface. Once at the top, Grace pointed toward the cavern bypass.
“Back in cloister, I never imagined I’d be on a seek-and-destroy mission inside a Martian geyser.”
She heard Anna’s rough laugh in the comm. “Life is entropy.”
They picked their way down the rubble and jogged to the bypass.
“It is interesting that you mention entropy. We’ve been trying to control it once we reached sentience. Since your arrival with The Tim, many decisions have changed,” Planar said. “We were going to keep you quarantined and retrieve the rest of your crew with pawns.”
“What could we have done to you, Planar? We had Tim, right? Wasn’t he important?”
“We knew The Tim. We did not know you. You were entropy.” Planar knelt beside the lip of an overhang, then thought better of it and jumped down with an echoing clang.
“Glad to be your chaos,” Grace said as she slid over the side of a wall and lowered herself by its handholds. “Is that why you saved my life?”
Grace jumped the last few handholds to the ground. Anna dropped beside her.
“I deserve no credit,” Planar said, as he led the way down the tunnel. “The Tim saved your life first. I merely followed his parameters.”
“What do you mean? I thought it was Raj who asked you to put on my helmet.”
“Earlier, Protector Donner. Euler was thinking about executing you.” Planar said. “I heard her voice through my filter. She hadn’t decided, but it was one of the ‘inevitabilities’ I picked up when the collective was pinging about Crusp’s fate. Tim helped to stall things.”
“Inevitabilities?” Anna said. “Planar, what you’re telling us is that Euler wants to kill people for disagreeing with her. That’s your leader?” She turned to Grace. “Was it right to leave Raj and Richard back there?”
“They have The Tim.”
“Tim will be busy with the signal.”
“So will Euler,” Grace said.
“That didn’t stop any of them from conducting a murder trial.”
“Then the signal won’t stop Tim either.”
“I just want to point out that in human history—” Planar began.
“Hold on. Raj?” Anna’s comm clicked.
• • •
Raj’s helmet pinged. “Yes Anna?”
“Is Euler with you?”
“No, she’s not here,” Raj said, his eyes on the signal output monitor. “She’s somewhere else in the dome, working to get us a clear signal for Tim to transmit to the Scout. Why?”
Silence stretched.
“Anna?”
“Planar just told us that Euler was thinking of executing Grace.”
Raj exchanged looks with Tim and Richard.
“If we succeed, I don’t think Euler will have any complaints,” Raj said.
• • •
“Euler believed The Tim was a competitive artificial species,” Planar said. “The Homo sapiens to our Neanderthals, as it were.”
“What would humans be in that continuum?” Anna asked.
“Dinosaurs,” said Planar.
They followed the wall into the fissure. The cavern with Quint’s ship was ahead. Seven minutes remained.
“Try to be as quiet as possible,” Grace whispered into her comm. “If Quint’s around, we don’t know what surveillance capability he has. Planar, crawl ahead and tell us what you see.”
I hope Quint is still here, Grace thought. At least his ship is here. Wragg would have told us if his ship had left.
“Planar, you see anything?”
“The ship is there,” Planar said. “And I am sensing thermal activity. Ion engines are not at standby or fully engaged.” He paused. “There is a swarm of pawns. They are flying around the ship. I’ve never seen that many pawns in one place.”
“Can you see Quint?” Grace asked.
“I have not detected him.”
“Quint won’t get far without his transponder,” Anna said smugly, patting her pocket.
“Which will make him more dangerous,” Grace said. “Weapons out. Let’s get a little closer. Planar?”
“Yes?”
“What can you do about the pawns? Can you tell them to take the thorium back?”
“Eventually, yes. I can act as a conduit and relay commands to the pawns.”
Grace moved closer. Soon she made out the soft purple glow of the pawn cloud. The mass swirled around the ship. As she watched, it grew fainter and seemed to contract.
Captain Wragg’s voice crackled in her helmet.
“Grace, we’re detecting an infrared positive cloud in your location.”
“It’s a cloud of artificial life symbiotic with the Essex robots. Can you alert us if you see a sudden change in cloud formation?”
“We don’t have much power because of the signal boost coming from Essex City, but we’ll do our best. Stay safe, Grace.”
Grace looked across the cavern and the tiny ship. Now or never, she thought.
She kept the group next to the wall. When the ship was thirty meters away, Grace motioned for everyone to drop to the ground.
She blinked through her helmet’s menu and selected EMERGENCY. Her voice would now carry on all broadcast frequencies and even some of the lower telemetry bands.
“Quint Brown. Please step away from the ship,” she said.
Grace saw a movement near the shadows of the ship. She heard the low crackle of Anna adjusting her phasewave.
“I see electromagnetic waves emanating from the bow,” Planar whispered. “It has swept past us once. Probably a range sensor.”
“We can see you, Quint. Drop any weapons and step away from the ship.”
There was a mocking laugh. “No, I don’t think I’ll be dropping my weapon.”
“The upgrade continues, Quint. You’ve lost.”
“Without their thorium it’s incomplete, and you know it, Donner.” The shadow moved, but not into her sight. “Robots are finished on Mars. They’ll all rust orange where they stand.”
Grace saw Anna motion toward the rear of the ship. Grace nodded an affirmative. Anna rose to her knees, then stood with her back to the cavern wall. She began a noiseless creep.
“I’m not interested in your explanation of how this is going to go your way, Quint. Move into the clearing and drop.”
“You know the funny part, Donner? I was going to tell you everything at Archdale’s place. For a moment, I thought you would get it. When I heard you were cloister-bred. And the way you talked about twofers.” Quint’s voice turned to a plea. “You’ve got to see that robots who think they can reason—they’re an aberration. They’re a threat to human freedom!”
“You’re delusional, Quint. Count to twenty. That’s how long you have as a free man or a man at all.” Grace cocked Marty with an audible click. “I’d pick one of the low numbers to surrender, if I were you.”
“Twenty seconds? I’ll live long after you’ve been buried! And I’ll live better without the twofer muck. We all will. Thanks to the aposti.”
Grace frowned. “The aposti are terrorists, Quint. Ignorant terrorists. You have fifteen seconds.”
“Donner, tell me something. How does a person grow up in cloister and end up pointing a gun at a human being in defense of robots?”
She stood pat for a moment, losing where she was in the count.
Quint continued talking, as if he knew he’d hit a nerve. “Don’t you think it’s ironic that robots built slaves for themselves after being created as slaves for us? I mean, doesn’t that raise a red flag?”
“Nine. Eight. Seven.”
“Fine, Donner. Fine. You let those slow synapses fire. And in the meantime, I’ll do this.”
“No! Oh, no. They are leaving us!” Planar exclaimed.
“What?”
Grace followed Planar’s gaze. The pawn-swarm had contracted into a dense sphere. It orbited the small ship and then headed away, toward the mouth of the geyser. Toward the Scout.
Planar rose and raced toward the sphere of pawns. “I’ll be able to call them back,” he said. “There are many, but I’ll—”
“Grace, the cloud is moving,” signaled Wragg.
“Ha! I wonder what your ship will look like when the pawns have dissolved it. Will you recognize their bodies?”
Quint’s laughter flooded her helmet. He was going to kill them! Yvette, Hobbs, and Wragg. They had no defenses against pawns. She looked at Planar, racing across the cavern toward the receding pawns, desperately chasing the twofers’ only hope of survival. The hope of Tim, too, to have a people like himself. Grace thought of Richard as Mazz crashed into a useless heap. Her helmet winked Anna’s tracking blip, moving closer to Quint’s ship, closer to vengeance for all the damage Quint had done to her family.
Your last laugh, you bastard. She raised Marty, sighting along the barrel. From her vantage, she still had difficulty separating Quint from shadow. What about Anna’s position? Grace blinked through her helmet menu and overlaid Anna’s visor. She smiled as she saw the tracking reticle of Quint Brown.
She fired. Thrice.
Quint’s visor shattered on the first shot. The other two shots were for mercy, though not many would have believed her. Protectors usually took one shot and saved vengeful hysterics and self-loathing for later. Not Grace.
Quint didn’t have time to panic over the vacuum. His hands didn’t instinctively come up to his helmet.
Grace knew why.
Quint was dead.
Chapter 41
Grace lowered her right arm, letting it drop to her side. Her eyes tracked from Quint to Marty. In the thin atmosphere, she had felt the recoil but heard no sound. Enclosed in her helmet, she felt distant, but the knot in her stomach meant she wasn’t distant enough. It was always hard to take that shot.