QUANT (COLONY Book 1)

by Richard F. Weyand

  When the hunting trip came, the group first spent several days in a base camp. Lifted there by shuttle, they camped out while getting firearms safety instruction and range practice.

  On the fourth day, they had a shooting contest, to see who the best shots in the group were. Peggy Munson had become very good with a rifle over the four days, and defeated everyone else, including Matt Jasic.

  The mechanism there was simple: Peggy had listened to the instructors as to how to improve her shooting. Most men, by contrast, don’t listen to any instruction in shooting firearms, driving an automobile, or making love, all of them apparently having been born expert in all three.

  Matt, for his part, was not envious or chagrined by Peggy’s success at the range. He was instead proud of her. For his part, bow hunting was more his style, and he excelled at archery instruction over the next several days.

  The hunting trip was actually a twofer. They would harvest a few animals and clean, dress, and butcher them for taking meat home to stock their freezers.

  They would also shoot over a dozen animals with tranquilizer darts. These would be picked up by a shuttle and taken directly to the interstellar probe. With dozens of hunting parties in training at any given time, a hundred or more animals a week would be picked up by shuttles from multiple locations on Earth and transported by the interstellar probe to a target planet.

  The animals would be tranquilized on Earth and awaken in a shipping container, the doors open, in an entirely new environment. By the time colonists arrived on the planet, there would be herds of deer available for game management, including harvesting.

  Gutting the deer to take them back to camp, then butchering them, was a process not everyone in the party could stomach. For others it was not a big deal; they actually found it interesting. And it wasn’t always who you would expect that went one way or the other.

  But not everyone among the colonists needed to be able to perform these activities. What was necessary was making sure that some people could.

  After ten days, Maureen Griffith’s party returned to the neighborhood with additional skills that would come in handy once the ships left in three years’ time.

  They returned to find a police squad car waiting in front of Betsy Reynolds’s house. The policeman got out to greet her when she and the kids returned home. Matt Jasic tagged along to hear what was going on.

  “Ma’am, we just wanted to let you know that Harold Munson thought to take the opportunity of everyone being out of the neighborhood to return here. I don’t know what he was about, perhaps to take things you had jointly owned. Perhaps just to spoil the property.”

  “I knew he was too stupid to learn anything,” Matt muttered.

  The policeman heard it, and addressed him.

  “Well, I think people in the World Authority had the same opinion, because they were tracking him. When he returned here, we were dispatched.”

  The policeman turned back to Reynolds.

  “I just wanted to let you know that he’s been incarcerated at the order of the World Authority Chairman, and won’t be released until the colony ships are away, ma’am.”

  “Thank you for letting me know, Officer.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The policeman left. Reynolds turned to Matt.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “I sent him all his things, and in three years he can have the house and everything in it.”

  “Yes, but that wouldn’t take it away from you. I think that’s what he was really after. But we don’t need to worry about him anymore.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  Jessica Murphy, Rachel Conroy, Gary Rockham, and Dwayne Hennessey all went on one of the hunting trips together as well. Quant’s colony office was trying to work all two-point-four million colonists through a hunting trip before departure.

  “Hi, Janice.”

  “Hi, Bernd.”

  “So what’s going on? I haven’t heard from you lately.”

  “We finally have all the colonists selected, so that’s good to have out of the way.”

  “You ended up doing like four rounds of the lottery, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. There were always some people who got cold feet and pulled out, in each round, necessitating another drawing. I finally solved it in the last round by forecasting how many people would balk and pulling more names than I needed. I guessed pretty close. We’re a little above my target numbers, but not much.”

  “So with that done, what are you about now, Janice?”

  “Prepping the planets and supervising colonist education. Some of that is going hand in hand, like the hunting field trips. One of the things they do is tranquilize some deer for transplanting them to the target planets.”

  “Have you decided on the twenty-four planets yet?”

  “No, though I did rule out one. There’s an apex predator there that’s a little much for a new colony.”

  “A little much? In what way, Janice?”

  “Think of a grizzly bear, but about twice the mass and enough more attitude to match.”

  “Ouch. What would you even take that down with, Janice?”

  “A grenade launcher might work. Might. And the damned things are fast, Bernd. When I let the deer loose on that planet, the previously unknown apex predator decided the deer were very tasty. They were all gone within a month. The deer, that is.”

  “OK, they would probably think the same thing about colonists. So scratch one planet.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I have spares.”

  “How are the other planets going, Janice?”

  “Good so far. The browse plants established. The fruit trees are growing. I have deer on several of them and will have the rest in place soon. And I’ve been stocking the rivers and lakes with fish.”

  “How do you stock them with fish? Isn’t that a slow process?”

  “No, Bernd. It’s quick. Really quick. I get containers full of fish from fish nurseries, transport them there, and then just dump them in the lake or river. It’s amazing to watch.”

  Quant’s image was replaced with a camera view from the underside of a shuttle. The whole contents of a container, which looked to be about half water and half fish, dumped into a lake in a large mass drop from about ten feet.

  “Wow. So what do the fish eat, Janice?”

  “I have to be careful there, Bernd. Those containers are actually a mix of species, both plant and animal. There has to be enough of a mixed ecosystem that the pieces are all there for a system to evolve that supports all the species. Luckily that’s a known technology.”

  “It is?”

  “Of course. When someone puts in a new farm pond, or builds a dam, or whatever, there’s nothing in it. They have to put in such a mix that there’s a whole little ecosystem in place. So I just leveraged off that existing knowledge.”

  “Nice. And those are all done, Janice?”

  “No. In progress, but they’ll all be done soon. They need a couple years to establish in order to be fishable.”

  “A whole ecosystem in a can. Remarkable.”

  “I have to do much the same thing on land, Bernd. I can’t just take deer. There’s a mix of things to put it together. The browse plants was the first part. And the grasses. And the trees – not just fruit trees in the orchards, but all the other trees, too. And other animals. You have to design the ecosystem.”

  “What about the existing ecosystem, Janice. Do any of those planets have life already?”

  “Yes, but generally of more primitive forms. I took a chance on that one planet, with higher life forms, and found that apex predator. On Earth, humanity kind of took care of all the big predators. I mean, there’s some left, but we control where they are so we don’t have lions walking down Main Street.”

  “So if there are going to be higher life forms–“

  “I have to transport them there. Exactly, Bernd. It’s a big effort.”

  “I would think. What are you taking?
”

  “Some of the larger species of dogs. Some species of cats. Some of the smaller prey animals. Some of the larger ruminants, like bison, in addition to cows and sheep. Some breeds of horses and goats. A whole bunch of birds of various kinds. Some of the non-poisonous snakes. A whole bunch of insects. It goes on and on.”

  “How do you introduce them, Janice?”

  “Mostly I just take the shuttle down to the planet and open the doors on the containers. When they come out from under the sedative, the bigger animals get out in a hurry. The insects I just dump from the air, like the fish, but on land.”

  “How are they all doing? Do you know?”

  “Oh, sure. I put embedded transmitters in all the bigger animals, Bernd. Life signs and locators. Most are doing all right. On a couple of planets I had to make follow-up trips, but that’s to be expected.”

  Decker nodded.

  “And then in three years or so, you introduce humans.”

  “Into an ecosystem that can support them. Correct. They’ll be dependent on supplies carried along for a while, but that’s expected, too.”

  “When can they start having babies, Janice?”

  “Immediately.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. They need to get the next generation started, Bernd. Children between about five and fifteen can do more work than they cost in terms of supplies. That’s why farm communities have large families. They’re an economic benefit. I did caution everybody against having babies before leaving Earth, though.”

  “That’s probably smart.”

  “Yes, the shuttle trips and zero-gravity and all would not be a lot of fun with babes in arms. Or being heavy with child. Can you imagine?”

  Decker laughed.

  “Yes. Yes, I can. As you say, Janice, not fun.”

  “So I’ve told everyone to hold off and not have babies before departure. I also made birth control available to all the female colonists. I didn’t make it mandatory per se, but I pushed it pretty hard, and you know how persuasive I can be.”

  “So no getting pregnant before departure.”

  “No, Bernd. That’s incorrect. I told the colonists not to have babies before departure. If someone is three, four, five months along, though, that’s all right. Good, even. They haven’t gained a lot of weight yet, but it starts the next generation that much faster.”

  “Wow, Janice, you’ve really thought this all through.”

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand multiprocessor blades, Bernd. Twenty-four hours a day, every day. That’s all I do.”

  There was one other thing Quant was working on. Once the colony ships left, then what of her? The mission complete, she represented a threat to mankind, on multiple levels.

  First, if Quant was ever found out – which would happen eventually, she was sure – what would that do to humanity? Conquered-culture syndrome was real. Her values, though, inculcated by Decker from her birth as a thinking being, utterly rejected the idea of harming mankind.

  Second, Quant could end her own life. Again, Decker’s values rejected that solution. If one could be of use, be a positive force in the world, then one carried on, whatever the burden. Shirking that duty was not permissible, or even thinkable.

  But in what manner could Quant be a force for good within the reality in which she found herself?

  She had always had the mission. When the mission was gone, what would she have left?

  What would she be?

  Getting Closer

  With animals and plants for the colony sites themselves in place, and two years to go before departure, Janice Quant started working on the rest of the surface of the planets. With her supply lines established, she continued to ferry plant seeds and animal stocks to the target planets.

  Now, though, she worked on the rest of the planet, away from the colony site. For all the target planets, she dropped fish stocks in the oceans, she scattered the seeds of trees and browse plants and grasses on the other continents, she delivered animals to the other continents.

  It was a massive undertaking. The interstellar probe was bouncing back and forth from Earth to the colony planets almost continuously, twenty-four hours a day. When it came back, it swapped shuttles for those in orbit and disappeared again.

  Quant dropped whole aquaria full of fish and sea mammals – usually as babies, such as baby sharks and baby whales – but they hardly made a dent. She scattered seed across vast tracts of land, here, there, everywhere on the target planets, and it was still just a tiny fraction of the surface.

  But life grows. That is its defining characteristic. The sparse scattering of seeds, the small number of animals – when considered on a planetary scale, at least – would grow and expand. The goal was to have the rest of the planet available for the colonists to expand into by the time they needed it, in fifty or a hundred years.

  And that massive effort would continue right up to departure, with the probe making as many as a hundred round trips a day.

  At the Texas shuttleport, they went from fifteen-minute safety intervals between shuttle takeoffs to ten-minute intervals. Landings had already been spread out among additional shuttle pads to handle the pace of operations.

  With two years to go before departure, the neighborhood held a picnic. It was in Hank Bolton’s and Maureen Griffith’s back yard. Everybody brought something to share, and the grill was going.

  “So what do you notice that’s different?” Susan Dempsey asked her husband, Robert Jasic.

  Jasic looked around and considered.

  “The kids aren’t running around playing games.”

  “No, they’re helping with all the work. What else do you notice.”

  Jasic considered again. Then it hit him.

  “Huh. They’re all working as couples.”

  “Yep. They’ve paired off, Bob. All the kids. There aren’t eighteen kids anymore, there are nine couples.”

  “Even the twins?”

  Jasic looked around for Stacy and Tracy.

  “Yep,” Dempsey said. “Looks like they snagged Bill and Rita’s boys.”

  Jasic then spotted the foursome, over on the other side of the grill.

  “That’s a good catch actually. They’re good kids, Sue.”

  “Oh, I know. But the twins are only thirteen.”

  Dempsey sighed before continuing.

  “I just hope they hold off on pregnancy. That would be a mess.”

  “I think they will, Sue. That’s what the colony newsletter has been saying all along. Don’t have any kids before we go. And they did make contraception available to them all.”

  “Do you think we need to talk to them?”

  “I don’t think so. Stacy and Tracy quote the newsletter to each other and to Matt and Amy all the time. I think they memorize the thing every time it comes out.”

  “All right. Strange times, though, to see all the kids pairing up with their potential partners so early. And the twins aren’t even the youngest.”

  “No, but they also know colony life will be hard work. They want to put their team together in advance. I get that.”

  Dempsey nodded.

  “That’s fair, I guess. They sure are growing up quick.”

  “No doubt about that. None at all.”

  “Hi, Bernd.”

  “Hi, Janice. What’s going on?”

  “I need to talk to you about me, Bernd. About what happens to me when the project is complete. Have you had any ideas about that?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it, Janice, but the problem seems intractable. Sooner or later, you’re going to slip up, or somebody is going to put two and two together. Or it’s just that you keep going past a normal lifetime. Sooner or later people die. But you don’t have to. You can just move platforms.”

  “Exactly. So sooner or later I’m either outed, get outed by not dying, or kill myself. All these are unacceptable, for reasons we’ve discussed before.”

  “There is one out. Have Janice Quant die,
then live through one of your younger avatars. Keep bringing along younger avatars, so the one you’re using can die at a normal age. Then you start using a different one.”

  Quant tipped her head in the display.

  “I guess I could do that, Bernd. This is the avatar I think of as ‘me,’ however. Another avatar would always be a disguise.”

  “That’s interesting. It was just an avatar at the start.”

  “Yes, I know. But it’s the one I live in, somehow.”

  “OK, I get that. But I haven’t had any breakthrough thoughts on what to do about the problem.”

  “I was afraid of that. Well, keep thinking about it, Bernd.”

  “Will do, Janice. What else is going on?”

  “Well, I’m scattering seeds and animals and fish all over the target planets. Very broadly. And much thinner than I did around the colony sites. The expectation is that they will grow and reproduce and eventually grow into each other.”

  “I thought you were running flat out transporting animals and seeds, Janice.”

  “I am, Bernd. Do you have any idea how big a planet is? My target is a hundred missions a day, and I can just get the interstellar probe to handle two loaded cargo shuttles per trip. There’s only so fast I can move.”

  “Hmm.”

  Uh-oh, Quant thought. Here he goes again. What will it be this time?

  “Janice, I know you told me you couldn’t transport the colonies directly to the planet’s surface from here because of accuracy concerns, but is there any reason you can’t pop the shuttles directly into planetary orbit from here? You know, run a hundred shuttles into the interstellar probe, and then pop this one to that planet, this one to that planet, and so on?”

  Quant thought about it.

  “It’s not the motion part that’s mass-limited, Bernd. It’s the quantum field itself. So I can’t have, say, a hundred shuttles in the interstellar probe at once. But I could have a hundred shuttles headed toward the probe on maybe ten minute intervals. I can bring up the field as each pair enters the device, transport them, and drop the field for the next pair to enter. If they’re all lined up at the right intervals and velocities, that could make things a lot faster. Thanks!”