The Corporation Wars: Emergence
Page 22
Rocko guessed that the instrument was feeding false readings up the pipe. Just as it was extending a probe to investigate, it heard through its feet a sound that made it freeze to the spot. Rocko listened hard, and heard more. Something was approaching along the tunnel behind it. The sounds were tiny, and intermittent, but undoubtedly coming closer, metre by metre. Sometimes a scratch, and sometimes a faint bump. Rocko did not recognise the sound pattern, but quickly deduced that its likely source was an auxiliary moving in microgravity.
Had Schulz sent a bot to check up on it?
Rocko was uncertain how to respond. To query or scan the bot might seem almost as furtive a reaction as ignoring it.
Almost, but not quite. Rocko looked back, with radar and lidar.
The little machine was five metres away. It bounced once off the side of the tunnel, then flicked a claw at the side it rebounded to. As soon as the lidar licked across it, it grabbed the wall and came to a halt.
The bot didn’t look mechanically capable of traumatically disassembling one of its own kind, never mind a sturdy supervisory bot. A radar scan of the bot showed no hidden compartments. A spectroscopic sweep gave not a sniff of explosives. This must be yet another warning message from the freebots, like that mysterious flash of information shortly after Rocko’s arrival.
Rocko wished it could respond. But what could it do?
The auxiliary made no response. Of course it didn’t, Rocko reminded itself. It could barely deliver messages. It could hardly be expected to converse.
Rocko returned its attention to the apparatus on the pipe.
The bot stayed where it was.
Rocko zoomed in on the lump that held the instrument in place. The instrument itself occupied only a few cubic millimetres. The lump was several cubic centimetres. As an adhesive it was excessive and inefficient. The recently salient thought of explosives made Rocko pause to analyse its composition in more detail.
On completing its analysis, Rocko backed off down the tunnel in such haste that the auxiliary had to jump on Rocko’s rear end to avoid being crushed.
As Seba waited anxiously for word of Rocko, another robot drifted into the cavity. It was a miner like Simo. After conferring briefly with Mogjin, it introduced itself as AJX-20211.
Now it was Seba’s turn to be impressed.
said Seba.
said Ajax.
Mogjin bestirred itself, and rotated a turreted lens.
the old one announced,
Seba’s anxious wait resumed. It occupied its mind with updating its internal model of the rock. Kiloseconds dragged by. Then there was a small disturbance at the hole. The auxiliary launched itself inward, to be caught and expertly and contemptuously flicked out again by Mogjin.
Rocko came in.
said Seba. It was strange to see its oldest friend in such a different shape, but the mind was the same.
Mogjin clanked into full outward alertness.
It was.
There was a reflective silence.
There were not.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Force Majeure (“A Greater Force”)
Two more times Taransay made successful return trips to the river bank for supplies. More fusion pods, more nanotech tubes, the remaining rifles and ammo came back with her each time. On her second return, progress was visible. The damaged frames were now intact, thanks to the additional nanotech tubes. They lay beside the module like repaired dolls.
The ground shook, making her stumble as she stepped into the clearing. A moment later, a rumble came from the volcano, carried through the thick and heavy air almost as fast as the quake through the ground. Infrared brightened through the angular leaves, from where the crater mouth glowed ruddy like a floating crown of fire.
The vibration stopped. Ash would fall soon. Lava might flow again.
Taransay tramped around the module, unloaded and stashed the gear under Locke’s instructions and went over to look at the frames. The regenerated parts—limbs here, a head there—were, like the rest, glassy and black. But between them and the original torsos, and in faint traceries like cracks across them, were fine lines of blue.
Her own blue glow had spread from the join of salvaged arm and stump to shoulder, elbow and wrist, via just such a fine tracery. When she’d noticed a cobweb-thin blue line down her arm, on her previous return trip, she’d picked at it like a child at a scab. Not even her fingertips’ tiny, diamondoid bevelled edges—the frame’s analogue of fingernails—had made a blind bit of difference to it. The tendril thread was harder and more stubbornly stuck than it looked.
Disturbingly, its growth reminded her of mould or fungi. She imagined tendrils moving inside her, through her chest and up her neck.
As she moodily inspected the frames, they all sat up.
She jumped back.
Zaretsky’s laughter in her head was like a remembered joke at her expense.
The three vacant frames clambered to their feet. One of them raised an arm, as if in greeting. Then they all turned about. Taransay expected them to lurch, to move jerkily like puppets. They didn’t. They marched to the ladder, climbed up one by one and vanished into the download slot.
Taransay looked after them longingly. She missed the sim, she missed her friends, she missed Den. She’d tried to get back in on each return. It hadn’t worked. She was beginning to feel stranded in reality.
This time it was Beauregard who replied.
She almost hadn’t the heart, but she climbed up the ladder and into the slot anyway. The three frames lay side by side like sleeping children.
Taransay imagined him as applying shock pads to a chest. She resisted the impulse to shout
Nothing happened.
Oh well—no surprise. Barely even disappointing.
She slid out and climbed down. While she recharged, Zaretsky told her what was going on out in the modular cloud and among the many moons. These updates had become a welcome feature of her returns. The receiver aerial was still operating, and had become something of a fixture in the vicinity. Small mats slid up to and over it, and gathered around as if curious, but made no attempt to interfere with or interface with it. Then again, it was a pretty inert piece of kit, just a wire coated in plastic machinery that was merely microscopic, and didn’t give anything like the opportunity to mesh with genetic and molecular machinery that nanotech did.
There was no news as such—she was glad she didn’t have to listen to the yammer of airhead virtual personalities. What she did get was Zaretsky’s summary of Locke’s digest of the module’s trawl of what chatter leaked down or got sent their way.
Trade with the Rax was booming, and the Direction wasn’t doing anything to stop it. None of the DisCorps had as yet dared zip around with the fancy fusion drives the Rax were apparently selling for dirt and gewgaws, but that would come, you could be sure. Whether Carlos Inc. was involved in this traffic wasn’t clear—nor was it likely to be—but with the AIs and the others Taransay strongly suspected the man and the company to be in it up to the elbows. Carlos was up to something devious. Had to be. She hoped that at least a fusion drive would come out of his deals and come their way.
The ground quivered again. An aftershock. The sooner she got the rest of the stuff, the sooner they could do more to build and rebuild. Frames, machinery, scaling up.
said Taransay.
said Locke.
The recharging was complete. The evening was young.