by Ginger Booth
Her smile gained a wincing edge. Robots didn’t sleep. Sometime around 01:00, Sass threatened to throttle the busy beast. Clay stopped up the shower drain to create a water park out of their bathroom. Who knew minks were aquatic, like their cousin the otter. By 03:00, Sass evicted Fidget to give their apartment a chance to dry. She carried her bodily to the galley and stayed to watch new swaths of Earth unfold beneath them, a mesmerizing pastime. She never did get back to sleep.
Neither did Zelda. But the redhead leaned forward in delight. “Floki, she’s adorable! And so smart! I can’t tell you how much she helped with our analyses.” Porter nodded emphatically, Eli with reservations. “You should be so proud of them!”
Floki couldn’t respond for 40 minutes, and Ben had continued his presentation after the pause, inviting Teke to show off excellent photos of their peachy planet and their limited views of outbuildings and mining on the Martian surface. Then Ben replayed an edited version of his first video comms with a Chairman Gus Groot.
And Ben’s 20 minutes were up. Like Sass’s team, they stretched, then watched rapt. Sass could tell when the attack satellites came around, because Ben and his pet goons Zan and Wilder huddled to discuss, while Remi rounded the table to squat beside the physicist Teke. Floki’s beak pressed flat into a line of displeasure, and his long swan-like neck recoiled. That’s probably when I ordered Clay to retrieve Fidget.
“This is confusing,” Sass announced to her table. “Dismissed if you want.” Her housekeeper Corky decamped for cooking therapy, but the others stuck around.
The end of Sass’s presentation was clear as day. Ben strode to sit on the end of his table in front of the camera, blocking her view of everyone else.
“Sass, don’t do it. Ansible. Now.” He cut the comm.
Ben’s face awaited her on the ansible’s small silvery screen as she took her seat in her office.
He smiled wanly in black and white, or rather grey on grey. She returned the smile sunnily.
“By the way,” he began, “Floki is livid. He’s afraid you’re being mean to my granddaughter.” He paused to let that sink in, eyes averted to the left.
No, Ben isn’t comfortable calling a robot mink his granddaughter.
“The mink is your AI support,” he continued. “We suggest you get better at integrating her into your command processes.”
“Your granddaughter,” Sass acknowledged.
“Her name is Enka,” Ben noted.
Sass leaned forward. “I promise to ask her which name she prefers. But Ben…I’m wondering if it was a good idea to send your – baby granddaughter – to Earth.”
“I had that thought,” he shared. “The grandparent role is new and fraught. And I’m told they aren’t really grandchildren, merely prototypes. Who will grow up to be my grandchildren. Remembering my prior screw-ups, naturally.”
“Huh.” She struggled to keep her face open and nonjudgmental. She mentally noted yet again that Nico – the missing link who tied Ben to emu and minks – was not invited on this trip. Perhaps Ben wearied of locking his adult stepson in the mop closet, his ship’s surrogate brig. In contrast Floki, the guilty emu party, proved the most ideal crewman Sass had ever carried.
“Yeah. Kids.” Ben sighed loudly. “On to business. Bail out, Sass. All the signs are flashing lurid red. Do not do this! I know you want to save Earth –”
“I do not have a savior complex! Ben, this is my home. I know it looks bad. What, you think we built vast starships to colonize lousy moons for our health? No! Maybe we didn’t make it clear, but Earth looks better! The planet is healing. Somehow they kept lots of people alive –”
“That makes it a threat, Sass. Please!”
“No!” She glowered at him. “This is my homecoming! Clay’s too. And all of humanity’s. The door is open. I will step through.”
“I can’t protect you.”
“From myself? Of course not.” She gentled her tone. “No one expects you to make this come out right, Ben. It means the world to me that you’re trying.” She pinched thumb and forefinger before the video pickup. “But we both have this little perfectionist streak. You want to save everyone, too. Don’t deny it. But today is not the day for ass-covering. Today we take a risk. And abide the consequences.”
He worried his lip. “You’re sure.”
“No. But I’m going in. Cheer up, I’ll send terrific pictures from Bermuda. And something will go pear-shaped, because of course it will. And you’ll have your hands full on Mars. And that’s how it goes.”
“We both stride boldly forth to do something stupid.”
“It’s who we are.” She canted her head and squinted a special smile. “Ben, it’s a best-case scenario. Earth lives! We can reconnect. Sure that makes it complicated. But think of the payoff! A century of the genius of millions applied to a hostile environment. We harvest their advances and bring them home to the colonies.”
He nodded ruefully, then shook his head. “Right. Onward into the lion’s den. Good luck. And be nice to my grand-mink.”
She laughed out loud. “I’m going to throttle your grand-mink!”
Ben smirked. “They carry self-repairing nanites. And she’ll tattle on you. Then Floki will feel hurt at you.”
Sass wiped a tear of mirth from her eye. “Thanks. I needed that.”
“Any time, girlfriend.”
She attempted to sober up. “You take care on Mars, Ben. We’re making history again. Smile for the cameras! Sass out.”
5
Colony Corps records are sketchy at best, as though someone edited out all the juicy details, the wrong turns and misdemeanors. We’re left with few details on what, and almost none on who or why. Their rationale is frustratingly opaque to history.
Sass turned to greet Clay as he took his seat beside her in Thrive’s shuttle. Her brow flew high, because he brought the mink. He thoughtlessly set her free. Sass immediately captured her in mid-scamper across the control panel.
“No running on the dashboard,” the captain ordered.
This inspired the mink to squirm loose and launch herself to Clay’s shoulder, seeking a better deal. “No, you have to obey the captain,” Clay scolded. “You want to see out the window, don’t you?”
The mink nodded solemnly. She arranged herself standing on both the man’s shoulders, bent over his head in the middle. And she purred.
Sass considered ordering the creature to stay behind. But no, she really did need a working relationship with her replacement ship’s AI. So she made nice, voice modulated to address a child. “Fidget, I meant to ask you. Do you prefer to be called Enka?”
The mink glanced at her briefly, then out the window at the bright subtropical blue sky, puzzled. “We play outside?” She warbled in a clear childlike soprano.
“Yes, in a minute. Would you rather I call you Enka?”
The mink blinked.
From the next row of seats, Zelda opined, “Enka is a pretty name. But Fidget is a fun nickname.”
The mink beamed at her, and nodded. She turned back to Sass and raised a wide paw to indicate the window. “We go now?”
“All in,” Clay agreed.
Sass tamped down her annoyance, and pressed the button sequence that caused the shuttle to unfold out of its parking nook inset into Thrive’s hull. This briefly flipped them upside-down, with the tantalizing vista of Bermuda over their heads. But artificial gravity and inertial dampers told their bodies otherwise. Sass tapped her thrusters to right them, then flew gently onward to loop around the islands. Thrive would stand off at 200 meters altitude and wait for them, Darren conning the ship from his podium in the hold. For this first foray, Sass wasn’t about to risk their home. Engineering chief Darren was only mildly disappointed to be left behind.
The geek squad quivered in anticipation almost as bad as the mink, especially Zelda. Eli, who could usually out-bland a Buddha statue, looked like a kid in a candy shop, as did agronomist Porter Pinckney, eager to study wild soil. The paddy
medic Liam looked worried, as did the Denali security guard Kaol. All in spacesuits and carrying gear, the shuttle was packed.
But the shuttle flight was easy. Sass skipped only 50 meters above the waves, which should clear the highest hills by 20 meters. They had no map of this place post-ocean rise. There was a great deal less land remaining.
Porter confirmed his estimate from orbit. “About 40 meters sea level rise since the turn of the millennium.” He continued to play team geographer until he could dig his fingers into true dirt.
Sass reached the northeastern tip of the now-subdivided island, and cut through a gap between hills into a broad inside passage. The water below was a breathtaking cobalt blue, with lighter turquoise sections. The hills sported ruins so battered they could pass for relics from the Roman Empire.
She spotted no paths, no animals, no birds. The sands stretched high onto the low hills cresting the water. “Porter, what are you calling the tide line?”
“I had a reference photo,” he replied. “On the first island, Lighthouse Hill.” He rose to hang over her shoulder and point. “That’s the tide line.”
Sass turned to follow along a shallow reef. Porter fed a reference map to Fidget, who happily superimposed it on their view, correcting the perspective on the fly. “Wow, Fidget, good job!”
The mink nodded smugly. Porter scratched her ears and beamed positive reinforcement.
The captain veered through another gap toward the highest point of the island chain, now 35 meters above the waves. When she caught a glimpse of broken dome gracing the hill, she abruptly hung a left, to loop back to where they started.
“Thank you,” Kaol said with feeling.
Sass couldn’t blame him. If people lurked here, they likely holed up in some fragment of the dome. What she wanted first was samples of air and water, not an encounter. So she settled the shuttle onto the sand of the sheltered inner slope of Lighthouse Hill. No structure remained, even in ruins. But the view was pretty.
“Helmets on,” Liam requested. “And stay on until cleared.”
“Agreed, Liam,” Sass said mildly, “but let me give the orders.”
“Aye, sar.” He grimly clicked on his helmet, and clutched his medical bag firmly. When Ben told Sass he’d found a paddy medic for her, she thought he was crazy. Yet Mahina and Denali medicine were more exotic than they wished to explain. The ex-slave was well-trained in the finest pharmaceutical and surgical techniques Sagamore could offer, and self-trained on Denali drugs as well. Dour little guy, but paddy culture seemed that way to her.
He was grateful to earn a suite of the self-healing nanites for himself. He also hoped to raise his people’s self-esteem by serving on a high-profile expedition.
In Sass’s opinion, the guy could stand to lighten up. But as a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, she respected the hell out of him. For a rice paddy slave to earn his freedom, then pay his own ticket to Mahina, all by dint of hard work – that was pretty amazing.
“OK, Zelda, lead the way!!” Sass encouraged.
Kaol pushed ahead of the atmo specialist into the airlock, but at least he carried her heavy sample analyzer for her. Clay with Fidget, Porter and Eli, packed the chamber, and had to cycle through first. Sass and Liam waited for the second cycle.
“Kaol, report,” Sass requested while she waited.
“Clear, sar.”
“No dangerous beasts?” she teased.
“Only Fidget, sar.”
Finally the outer door opened, and Sass jumped out. She sank into soft sand to her boot ankles. In delight, she stepped around the shuttle to gaze in all directions, enjoying the forgotten effort of trudging through sand. Regolith, the dust and gravel of unimproved Mahina, wasn’t the same. Sadly the famous pink sand of Bermuda had been supplanted by grey, like grubby rock salt. All around lay low herb growths, reminding her of sand dunes from old pictures. She’d never seen a real sand dune, the rising ocean having chased Downstate dwellers into the forests in Upstate. New dunes took centuries to form, and never got the chance.
This wasn’t dune either, merely sand washed up a hill. And the plants… Sass stepped closer and studied them. Sturdy small flowers of assorted varieties bloomed among tough hummocks of silver and green and yellow foliage. Tumbrels of bright blue trembled on green stalks. She walked along the sand-plant verge entranced.
“Clay, it’s gorgeous.”
“It is that,” he murmured, voice choked. “I’m headed for the water.”
“Wait for me,” Sass requested, before Liam could bark at him. She turned from her herb study to jog to his location, downhill near the junk heap of the high tide line. “Zelda, any verdict yet?”
“First verdict,” Zelda offered. “Oxygen levels 15%. We prefer 21%, of course. This level…it’s kind of like being on the top of the highest mountains. Carbon dioxide is high – 5,000 PPM. That’ll make you grumpy, for sure.”
“Both make you irritable,” Liam corrected. “Also unconscious, depending.”
Zelda asked, “Do you remember the values when you left, Sass?”
“Not me. I wasn’t scientifically inclined.”
Clay said, “At that point, up to 3000 PPM CO2, and 17% oxygen. Combined, there were no-go days. As in, you wouldn’t die of it, but you sat still. Try to stand up and walk without a rebreather, and you’d pass out. So, yeah. It got worse.”
“Much worse,” Eli concurred. “Not enough primary production – plant life. Do you have sample vials? I’d like surface and two-meter sea water samples, please.”
“I’ll do it!” Sass offered. The chance to dive into the clear turquoise waves sounded divine.
“In your suit,” Liam reminded her.
“Yeah, yeah.” She reached Clay, both grinning ear to ear, and shared a hug. “We did it!”
Clay thought she was nuts 13 years ago when she bought Thrive – two decades ago objective. The best she hoped for at the time was to make Mahina settlers healthy again. A homecoming to Earth was unimaginable. The original Colony Corps stranded their system without even the bad old warp. Yet here they stood. On this November day under a bowl of blue sky and a warm ocean breeze, her heart felt full, triumphant. Her feet couldn’t bear to stand still.
“Race you!” Laughing, she bounded downhill toward the water. She only noticed the knee-high garbage heap at the high tide line to leap over it toward the placid wash of half-foot-high waves.
Clay loosed Fidget, who reached the water first like a streak of white. The mink hit with a splash, eager to frolic. Then she immediately bounded out again and flew up the beach, launching into Clay’s arms.
Sass pounded to a halt and reversed to them. “Did you catch something fun, Fidget?” Still smiling, she turned on her external mikes, normally unused in a pressure suit.
And she sobered immediately. The mink keened piteously, sobs warbling in panicked gulps of air. No, she didn’t breathe, except to fill an air bladder to improve her voice quality – Floki used the same system. “What happened?”
“The water,” Clay murmured, struggling to hold and calm the crazed creature. This was no mean feat. Less than arm’s length nose to tail, Fidget was two kilos with dry fur, and agile as a ferret. “It hurt her.”
Sass tore off her helmet. She filled her mouth from her sipping straw, and spit it into the mink’s face.
Clay took the hint, but disagreed with the method. He took off running up the beach to the shuttle and its water supplies. “Mink hurt!” he called ahead.
Sass started to follow, having forgotten her removed helmet. Three sinking steps later, she found herself on her knees, astonished. Oh, yeah. Oxygen. She didn’t feel out of breath. Her knees simply buckled. She could hear someone calling in the helmet speakers, but it lay on the sand a toss away.
She trusted Clay to deal with the mink. She slitted her eyes and dropped her head back to feel the sea breeze ruffling her hair, caressing her face. The sun’s warm rays penetrated her skin. She heard the lapping of the waves breakin
g onto the beach a stone’s throw behind her. From the green tussocks beyond the shuttle came a roar of insects.
And not a single bird. Not a seagull cry to be heard. She remembered them from her childhood, before her family fled up the ever-broadening Hudson. She’d forgotten their raucous shrieks. She couldn’t recall whether she saw birds by the time she left the planet, in the constant pouring rain. Maybe not.
The beach stank of seaweed and dead sponges. She’d remembered the fantasy of wave-washed beaches and fresh sea air, forgotten the authentic low-tide aroma. The straw-colored seaweed heaps reeked of rotten eggs.
She pulled off her gauntlet and sifted her fingers through the sand. The tide was going out, so this stretch remained damp. She enjoyed the fine crumbly texture. She peered closer, to see tiny shards of green plastic intermingled with white and clear and pink bits in the grey. She tried to brush it off, only to recall how stubborn the stuff was. Her hand burned a bit, a red rash trying to rise as fast as her nanites repaired it. Despairing of getting any more sand off, she pulled the glove back on and secured it, recalling sand in her shoes in early childhood after playing in the beaches of Prospect Park. The city was losing its battle for survival against the storms, its starving survivors desperate. But she’d been too young to understand. Every street and park offered sand to play in.
Her glove sealed again, she knee-walked to retrieve her helmet, still squawking. Certain she’d regret it, she pulled the thing back on and sealed it with a snick. She’d only stolen a couple minutes offline to herself.
“Sass back on comms. Clay, how’s Fidget?”
“Still crying. Her fur is falling out in tufts. Poor mangy mink.”
Sass’s heart went out to the creature. “Give her a kiss for me. I’ll get the samples.”
“Is that smart?” Liam countered. “The water dissolved a robot.”
Sass grimaced, and studied her sand-caked knees. She brushed off a spot. The damp sand made no lasting impression on the high-tech fabric. “I’ll be quick.”