She cracked her eyes open, and the heat in the corridor dried them out immediately. She blinked and looked again. Black smoke coiled and writhed above her like a wounded demon. Beside her, light streamed in where the entire wall of the corridor had been blasted out. The smoke was already beginning to bleed out of the gash in the massive ship, and the temperate breeze that rushed in through the opening felt like an icy blast against Evelyn's scorched skin. She raised a hand and saw that her skin was blackened and peeling.
Someone coughed beside her, and she raised her head to see Clove trying to push herself up, Her hair had been burned nearly entirely off her head, and as she raised a hand to her own head Evelyn found that her stubble too had been reduced to an uneven scattering of hairs.
She got shakily to her feet, but ducked low immediately, for the air above seemed infinitely hotter than that at floor-level. By now all of the others were beginning to stir, groaning in pain as they did so. They looked like hell. Their clothes had large holes burned in them, and as Matthew turned to look at her she gasped in horror. The left hand side of his face had been so badly scorched that the skin had cracked and begun oozing a translucent yellow liquid onto the blackened scabs of his cheek.
“We … need … to get out,” Evelyn forced the words through her cracked lips. Glancing up the passageway to where she could just make out the prone forms of Matthew's father and the other higher humans. Were they dead? She supposed not. If she and the others had survived the blast then they would have as well. But it would take them longer to recover, for they no longer had the help of the NAMs. She knew that there would be others, however. These had been but a handful of the higher humans aboard the Cloud.
Keeping low, she made her way towards the opening in the hull. The twisted metal was too hot to touch, but she was able to see that the ground was not far below them, and they appeared to have crashed into a pine forest on a slope. The trees rose far above her.
Turning back to the others she saw that aside from burns, some worse than others, they all seemed to be okay. “We can jump down, it's not far. Can you all stand?”
They nodded.
“Stay low, watch out for the metal. It's hot. I'll go first.” Peering over the edge again she guessed the ground was about eight feet below them, and it had been scorched and churned up by the downed ship. Aiming for a mound of sand, Evelyn placed the sole of her shoe on the edge of the ruptured wall and kicked off. She hit the dirt and rolled into a pile of pine needles.
Getting to her feet, she looked back at the Cloud. It was enormous – she couldn't see to either end of it. Smoke rose from several parts of its broken body.
Clove's face appeared in the hole from which she had jumped, looking fearful.
“It's not as far as it looks,” Evelyn called up to her. Try and roll when you land.
Clove nodded but didn't move.
“On three!” Evelyn called. “Count with me: one, two, three!”
Clove jumped, rolling in the dirt, and Evelyn helped her up.
Kenji appeared next. “Whoa, that's far!” he said uncertainly.
“We made it, didn't we?” Evelyn said. “Come on, we need to get out of here.” Didn't the others understand? They had a head start, and every second counted.
“Okay, here I come,” Kenji said, bouncing up and down a few times. Then he placed a foot on the edge and launched himself into the air. He landed badly, crying out as he hit the ground, and Evelyn rushed over to him.
“Are you okay?”
“I think I twisted my ankle.” Kenji winced in pain as he tried to rise.
Trying not to panic, Evelyn sat him down. “Just sit here for a moment. The NAMs should sort you out.” They'd better, she thought, because they had to get moving before the higher humans who hadn't been caught in the explosion came after them.
“I don't know … I've still got some pretty bad burns. They're not healing.”
Evelyn remembered with sinking feeling what Holly had said when she had been possessed by Ciso: the NAMs required energy and resources to be effective. Kenji's must have used all he had in healing the stump of his hand and replenishing the blood he'd lost. He needed more food.
“Just try not to put any weight on it yet. We'll help you,” Evelyn said, hoping that by the time Matthew and Brenner had joined them his ankle would have healed at least enough for him to limp on it.
She turned in time to see Matthew jump down to join them, and once he was clear Brenner appeared in the hole above them. She jumped without hesitation.
Evelyn turned to Kenji. “How's your ankle?”
“It's still pretty sore, but I think I can walk.”
She offered him her hand and pulled him to his feet. He immediately winced and shifted his weight onto his uninjured foot. Evelyn knew his sprain must still be pretty bad.
“Here, you can lean on me,” Matthew offered.
“Where are we going Evelyn?” Brenner asked, and Evelyn thought she detected a smug tone in her voice. “I have no idea where we are. Do you?”
“No. But the land is rising here. We should head upwards and try to find a vantage point from where to take a look around. All of the colonies have one of those 'tall huts'. If there's one nearby, we'll see it.”
“Lead the way then.”
With one last glance up at the wreckage of the impressive Hub, Evelyn turned and began striding uphill and away from it. She had not gone far when Matthew called for her to slow down. Kenji was really struggling to walk. While she and the others waited for them to catch up, Evelyn listened to the sounds of the pine forest. Birds chirped overhead, and some small animal up in the branches seemed to be snickering at them. Then she heard the voices.
“Did you hear that?” Clove asked.
“Yes.” Evelyn replied, listening again. They came from downhill, from the crash site. It had taken the higher humans even less time than she had hoped to get on their trail, and she knew they were all in terrible danger. There was nowhere to hide under the pine trees. Hardly any foliage grew beneath their towering trunks. The only thing for them to do was keep moving and hope the higher humans didn't catch up to them, but with Kenji slowing them down she knew they didn't stand a chance. She shuddered to imagine what would happen to them if they were captured. She had to do something.
“Do any of you still have blasters?” She had dropped hers during the explosion.
“I have one,” Matthew said, as he and Kenji reached them. “What are you going to do?”
“Try to buy us some time.” She accepted the offered weapon. “You guys keep heading upwards. I'll catch up.”
“Evelyn, don't do anything dangerous.”
She gave a tight smile. “Like crash a space station into Earth? Or nearly kill us all in a gas explosion?”
Matthew paled. “Yeah.”
“I'll try not to. Now go!”
He nodded, and the rest of them continued up the hill, leaving her alone in the woods.
She glanced down at the weapon in her hand. She knew that it would only be effective against a small group. More than a few people and they would be able to out-gun her. But then, she didn't plan on getting into a shooting match.
She rummaged around for a small, sharp stone and used it to pry off the blaster's cover. After rearranging the wires, and leaving one loose, she circled around the slope and began following the voices.
24
Miles Tucker stirred. Burning pain raged all over the right-hand side of his body, where he had lain exposed to the fire. Pain. It was something he hadn't felt in so long that for a moment he wasn't certain what he was experiencing. The pain wasn't the only thing new to him. Other new feelings, emotions – anger, fear, guilt – were rushing around his head, clouding his thoughts and his judgment. True, they weren't exactly new, rather they were like memories so distant he had entirely forgotten them.
One thought was clear, and it rallied him: he had to stop the AI. How had he let her destroy so much of his work? He should have shut h
er down, he'd known she posed a threat, but he had hoped she could help him. And now she had destroyed the Cloud.
He gingerly raised a hand to the augmentation on the back of his head. It was nothing more than a lump of metal now. She had taken away his higher humanity. All of them were mere lower humans now. And if they didn't find her before she found Ciso she would prevent them from ever rebuilding what she had destroyed.
He pushed himself up and looked around at the blackened and twisted corridor. Several others lay around him. He knew instinctively that most of them were dead, but one or two were stirring and groaning. He left them and half-crawled, half-dragged himself to the massive rent in the side of the Cloud. Peering out, he saw a pine forest. The angle of the ground told him they had crashed on a slope. He knew where they were. The Cloud had been positioned over Colony 23, for they had been recycling the lower humans who lived there. They had crashed somewhere in the hilly, forested area behind the mountain, and couldn't be more than a day or two's walk away from the Colony. The AI had a head start.
Voices behind him made him turn.
“Miles? What happened here?”. The speaker was Mai Nguyen, the woman who had developed the NAMs. Miles found himself marveling at how she hadn't changed at all in the ten thousand years he had known her. How strange, he thought, such a pointless observation wouldn't even have occurred to him were his augmentation still functional.
“The air duct was under pressure. They blew it up.”
“Where are they now?” Mai asked.
“Gone,” he replied. “They're going to Ciso.”
Mai nodded. She understood what this meant. She came over to help him up. “You need medical care.”
He chuckled humorlessly – another quirk of lower humanity. “How?” They had no medical supplies; there was no need. The NAMs had been keeping them healthy up until now. “I'll be fine,” he said dismissively. The pain all over his skin was intense, but he found that he could ignore it. He knew it did not matter. He knew he did not matter. As long as the AI was stopped and the quest for ultimate complexity could be resumed, a little pain was bearable.
“We need to get the Jumper,” he said.
Mai looked at him in surprise “We haven't used it in centuries … Do you think it survived the crash?”
“It will most likely require some repairs.”
“We'd better send a party after the AI on foot as well, don't you think?”
“Do it,” he said, though he knew it would be pointless. On Earth the higher human's would likely be unable to keep up with the AI and it's accomplices. They had the benefit of functioning NAMs – remarkable as it was that they had somehow adapted to harness the energy of their hosts. And besides, the higher humans were unaccustomed to Earth's atmosphere and gravity. They would tire quickly.
The Jumper was their only hope.
He waited for Mai to give the orders to the group who had gathered in the scorched corridor, then he accepted her offered shoulder and hobbled beside her through a series of passageways towards the hangar at the rear of the Cloud where the Jumper was stored. Since they'd developed the far more efficient Earth elevators centuries ago, the energy-guzzling short-range craft nicknamed the Jumper due its job of jumping between the Cloud and Earth had been left untouched.
Miles Tucker was surprised how little damage the interior of the Cloud had sustained in the crash, though some of the passageways were a little twisted. Then again, the structure had been constructed to withstand collisions with flying space-debris and even rogue asteroids.
They finally reached the hangar, and his spirits fell. The Jumper, which was in essence a large drone with four powerful electrical turbines – one at each corner – had suffered more badly than he had hoped. It appeared to have been flung across the hangar in the crash, and one of its turbines had been snapped completely off.
“Well,” said Mai. “That's unfortunate.”
“We can repair it. Find Felix and any other survivors with engineering experience. We need to get this thing running.”
Mai nodded and left him alone in the hangar.
Before the Cloud had been destroyed anyone could have repaired the vessel, since all knowledge was shared, but now … Miles Tucker looked at his empty hands, feeling useless. His leg was paining him, and he sank to the cold floor. The anger that had possessed him earlier seemed to have subsided, for which he was grateful. He did not like the way these human emotions he had so long lived without affected his mind.
But it wasn't only the emotions that were strange. It was the emptiness.
He shook his head at the damage the AI had caused. She had destroyed his augmentation, but he had simply had another one fitted. Then the Cloud's central computer system, the very thing that elevated them above the lower humanity, had been destroyed in the crash. How strange it felt to him to be so alone. There seemed to be a vacuum in his mind, where before there had been an entire world – worlds – of knowledge, of possibility, of reality. With the augmentation, he had never been alone. The very concept was impossible.
Lower humanity was so incredibly weak, so inefficient. That was what he was now. That was what they all were.
But he would fix it.
He thought about the AI, trying to remain objective, forcing himself to keep his anger in check. Yes, she had ruined thousands of years of work, but that was not her fault. Reyner had programmed her with a conscience, one that was typical of the lower humanity. It didn't make sense. She was a manufactured intelligence, she should be above that …
There was something about her, aside from what she had done, that bothered him. Something he was missing. He had caught a glimpse of it, when he was inside her head, an encrypted instruction within the data of Reyner's subconsciousness.
He shook his head hard; frustrated at the slowness of his brain.
He would fix this, he thought again. He had to fix this.
Footsteps drew his attention. Mai had returned with the engineers.
“Felix,” he said, seeing the man who had helped to design the original Earth Orbit Ecosystem. “What do you think?” he said, indicating the Jumper. “How long to get it running.”
Felix, a tall, thin man with pointed features and unkempt brown hair, went over to the craft and walked around it. “Assuming its only the obvious mechanical damage, we should be able to get it running in a few hours.”
Miles Tucker nodded. That was less time than he'd expected.
Seeing his surprised frown, Felix explained. “I've already been to the power room. We still have two functioning cores, so we have energy at our disposal. We're not back into the stone age just yet.”
Miles Tucker gave a small smile, his first in millennia. He remembered now how Felix had always had a sharp wit and wry sense of humor, how he'd always made his colleagues laugh.
Now his old friend's face turned serious. “What will we do with them?”
“With who?”
“Your … son. And his friends.”
Miles felt a strange pang in his chest. His son: the notion had meant nothing to him before, but now … He thought of Matthew, the boy he had seen only once or twice a month when he was growing up. Matthew had betrayed him. He had chosen to follow Reyner, conspired with him all those years ago, even before he had chosen to follow Reyner's AI.
“We will get rid of them.” He hoped that when the time came he would not let his human emotions get in the way of securing the future of humankind.
25
There was a group of about ten of them. They must have jumped from the same tear in the Cloud's hull as she and the others, and they must not be waiting for any more of their comrades for they now began following the trail left by Evelyn and her companions in the pine-needle-strewn forest floor.
Evelyn was just uphill from them, hidden behind the trunk of one of the pines. If she moved now they would see her. She remained where she was, hoping her plan would work. The timing had to be perfect.
One of the higher humans w
as speaking, her voice carrying up to Evelyn: “I hope they can get the Jumper running. I don't like our chances on foot.”
“They will. But we can't be too careful,” replied a male voice. Evelyn thought the conversation sounded unnatural, almost forced, and she realized this was probably the first time any of them had actually spoken aloud in centuries. More importantly though, what was this Jumper they were talking about? It must be some kind of vehicle, and since it was aboard a space station she had to assume it would be airborne. That was definitely bad news, but she pushed the worry from her mind: it was time for her to act.
She peaked around the tree trunk and saw that the higher-humans were about twenty paces away from her. She connected the loose wire in her modified blaster and immediately felt it begin heating up. Careful not to be seen she tossed it low, directly into the path of her pursuers, and began counting in her head.
1 … 2 …
In the Tall Hut, when she had rigged the blaster to explode and take out the toughened-glass window, it had taken around ten seconds to overheat.
3 … 4 …
A tremendous squawking rang through the treetops above and the higher humans stopped in their tracks, peering upwards. Evelyn cursed whatever bird had distracted them. They needed to keep moving or they would be out of range of the explosion.
She stepped out from behind the tree trunk, waving her hands. “Looking for me?” she called.
Ten blasters pointed in her direction, but she was already running, weaving between tree trunks.
… 9 … 10.
She glanced over her shoulder. Her heart fell: the higher humans had spread out, attempting to close around her.
She felt the shock wave before she heard the explosion, and the four higher humans closest to the blast vanished in a cloud of dust and pine-needles. Another two were blasted through the air: one of them slammed into a tree trunk and fell to the ground like a rag-doll, the other went rolling down the slope.
The Cloud Page 23
