Earthrise

by Craig Delancey

  She stepped back and turned away. The back of her dress dipped down to the bottom of the small of her back. Muscles rippled across shoulders as she took hard, broad strides across the room to one of the exits leading out to the lobby. DiAngelo noticed men around the room swivel their heads to admire her athletic grace.

  Only then did DiAngelo notice the autonomous camera from Wealthy Wives of the Upper East Side hovering in the corner of the room, pointed at him like a gun. He couldn’t help but sneer at it.

  CHAPTER 12

  “Ah!” Margherita cried out. She had left her bed after a long nap and walked to the food processor. When she turned around she found two black eyes of a Rinneret pressed against the window of her ship’s emergency door. After a whole year among the Rinneret she still could jump in fear if she caught one gazing at her, unexpected.

  “There is a sound message being spoken outside,” the ship said.

  “Yeah,” Margherita said, warily. She recognized the Rinneret. It was the weapon maker. “Pipe it in. But keep the doors locked.”

  The chirps and squeaks of Rinneret crackled through the ceiling speakers. “Let me in to talk to you, One-Human.”

  “Yeah?” Margherita called out, knowing the ship would broadcast her voice outside. “What can you do for me?”

  “I can pay you for a tissue sample. Pay very well.”

  “No!” she shouted. “Not interested.”

  “One hundred credits.”

  “No.”

  “One hundred ten credits. Painless. No cost to you.”

  “Go away!” Margherita shouted. “I only deal with Six-Traveler.”

  “Mistake, mistake. You can deal with me also. Six-Traveler deals with me also.”

  “We’ll see about that. When Six-Traveler wants me, I’ll come out.”

  “Six-Traveler summons you now.”

  She shook her head. “He would send the robot.”

  “The robot is here.”

  “That true, Ship?” Margherita asked.

  “Excuse me?” the ship said.

  Margherita went to one of the screens on the wall and called up an outside view. She made the camera pan the bay. After a moment she saw the black Rinneret, still pressed against her door, and a few meters behind it, the stick-like robot.

  “There is a radio message,” the ship said.

  “From the robot, right?”

  “It says, ‘Follow.’”

  Margherita looked back at the window on the door. She shuddered at the peering saucer eyes of the black Rinneret. It watched her every move. For the first time in many months, she felt self-consciously naked. She wished she had some tape left over, so she could hang a sheet or some paper over the window. She went to the closet and climbed in, so she could put on her suit without the thing staring at her. She probably didn’t need the suit, but it would make her feel more secure to have it on, with that horrible Rinneret outside.

  When she got the helmet on and sealed, and the air tank puffed over her face its first breath of painfully dry air, she tottered to the airlock door. It cycled through, the pump laboring and throbbing. Then the pump fell silent and the outer door opened. The Rinneret stood just a few steps outside, trembling with anticipation.

  “I will pay you very well for a tissue sample,” it said.

  “Not interested,” she told it.

  “Very generous payment,” it repeated.

  “Not interested. That’s final.”

  The Rinneret recoiled in anger. It shook its head, a sign of insult. “Yes, you only have five shares of your twelve-twelves,” it said. “That was stupid of you, human. And now you stay stupid, because you can’t make money, getting just five out of twelve-twelves of what you are paid. Slaves are stupid.”

  “Thanks for your deep business insights,” she mumbled. Margherita stepped down on the smooth deck and walked carefully around the black Rinneret, facing it the whole time, till she stood by the robot. The robot began to scurry away immediately. She followed.

  They took the same route as before to get to the large round room where Six-Traveler waited. The black Rinneret followed her very closely, hissing something unintelligible under its breath. Margherita thought she heard it say, “Stupid human,” several times.

  Six-Traveler stood by the projector, his red carapace shining under the unusually white lights of the room. He looked up at Margherita as she entered.

  “One-Human,” he said. “I shall talk with the human again. You will help with communication. You will not be visible. You will not be heard. The computer will edit you out of the transmission. Stand here near me.”

  Margherita stepped slowly, carefully down the broad steps to the round floor, and then, boots clapping on the stone, went to stand next to Six-Traveler. The red Rinneret faced the projector and lowered his eyes. He sat there, not moving except for every few seconds slightly nodding his broad head. Margherita recognized the gesture: the trance-like quiet that Rinneret could undertake when forced to wait for something. Rinneret could wait like no one else. Patience was one virtue that most Rinneret did not lack.

  She sat on the floor and waited. Ten minutes, then another ten minutes passed on the suit clock.

  “The human is late,” hissed the black Rinneret. It paced the room, unusual for a Rinneret.

  The red Rinneret turned its face towards Margherita. She realized that Six-Traveler wanted her to say something. She stood up. “Sometimes,” she said, “a human will be late to show that it is... more powerful than you.” She’d seen that in every movie about business in the ship’s library: men insulted by being forced to stand in a waiting room.

  Six-Traveler waved his arms, satisfied with this explanation. “Yes. The humans have no naming market. Status is constantly shifting, constantly unclear, with humans. They must struggle in each interaction, as if anew. Yes. Your explanation is satisfactory.”

  The black Rinneret increased the speed of his pacing. Margherita smiled, and stuck her tongue out at Weapon-Maker. But just then, bright pixels sputtered in the air above the transmitter. Margherita held her breath. The colored dots coalesced, increased in number, and settled into a form.

  It was the man. The same man she had seen before, swearing in the recording.

  Six-Traveler held his thin arms out sideways, a Rinneret gesture of submission. “I am sorry for my earlier mistakes,” he said, using the Galactic word for ‘sorry.’

  Margherita turned her head sharply, surprised. She’d never heard a Rinneret say anything like that. This Six-Traveler was different. Or, at least, he was flexible. He wasn’t like old Rock-Cutter or Weapon-Maker.

  The man looked at him long and hard. Finally, he said, “You should be, damn it all to hell.”

  Six-Traveler looked at Margherita.

  “He is accepting your apology.” Then, worried the Rinneret would not understand the idea of accepting an apology, she said, “He is glad you said that. You did the right thing. Only he can’t act pleased or his anger will have seemed fake. So he curses and he, uh, he acts like he’s not pleased.”

  The Rinneret turned back to look at the human.

  “We still have an agreement?”

  The man squinted. He wore a very good suit, Margherita thought. She’d not seen a suit ever except in movies but she knew that people who were accepted—the human equivalent of a Rinneret with a high ranking name—wore suits.

  “We’re still on.”

  “That means the deal is still agreed to,” Margherita whispered in explanation.

  “You have received the anti-matter from the guest?” Six-Traveler asked.

  “I got it,” the man said. “We’re understood, though, that this goes down in Paris, correct? You’re not going to piss in my backyard.”

  Six-Traveler looked at Margherita. He waved his arms in consternation. This phrase was profoundly confusing.

  “He means, you won’t do anything bad where he is,” Margherita said. “‘Piss’ is to excrete waste. He means don’t do harm to his
home. Or to the places near his home. Don’t do something that might affect him. Don’t do anything in his city.”

  “Your understanding is my understanding,” Six-Traveler told the man.

  “Good, because you don’t get to fuck with Alfonso DiAngelo more than once. New York is my town. You leave it alone. Fool me once is it.”

  Margherita swallowed. She held her breath, shocked to hear the man name himself. She knew who he was! She knew his name! She knew where he lived!

  She said the name over and over in her head. Alfonso DiAngelo. Alfonso DiAngelo. Alfonso DiAngelo. The traitor of Earth. The traitor of Earth is Alfonso DiAngelo. And he lives in New York. He is the traitor of Earth who lives in New York.

  She realized Six-Traveler was staring at her. She tried to reel her thoughts back. What had he said? Something about not more than once.

  “Oh, uh, he means that he will be angry and stay angry if there is another disagreement.”

  “The agreement remains as it is,” Six-Traveler said to the image. “You will fulfill your part of the bargain?”

  “Your friends are safe,” DiAngelo said. “I already got them access to the Amazon. I’ll give them the samples they want, as soon as this is over and attention is turned away from me and Genmine and towards what happens in Paris. And I’m preparing the land in Belize to their specifications.”

  “Agreed,” Six-Traveler said.

  “Say, ‘Thank you,’” Margherita whispered, using the Galactic since Rinneret also lacked words for thanks.

  The red Rinneret pulsed from head to foot, a gesture that Margherita had never seen before. She suspected it was disgust. “Thank you,” he said, his voice barely audible. But the computer picked it up and translated.

  “You’re fucking welcome,” DiAngelo said. “Transmission off.”

  He disappeared.

  The red Rinneret turned toward her. “You were again useful,” he said. “Return to your ship.”

  Margherita hurried from the room, running as fast as she could in her overlarge suit, hoping to discourage the black Rinneret from following.

  _____

  “Ship,” she said, as she threw her suit into the closet. “Ship, I didn’t hear any delay, I mean, how fast is that? How fast can a human hear?”

  “Humans can discern time differences of at least 100 milliseconds,” the ship said, surprising her with a straight answer.

  “So, like, how far could the fastest hyperradio travel in 100 milliseconds? That’d be like 700 light seconds, right? Like, 11 light minutes, right?” Margherita had been a whiz at math. Before she’d stopped studying with her mother.

  “That is correct,” the ship said.

  Margherita dropped onto her bed and picked up her bear toy. She closed her arms around it but stared at the ceiling of the ship thoughtfully. “That’s like—are there any planets that far out from Earth?”

  “Mars is currently approximately 11 light minutes from Earth.”

  “You know that?”

  “I am able to calculate the locations of all solar planets for any date.”

  “So, this asteroid, somehow, I don’t know how, could be in orbit around Mars. Or somewhere thereabouts. Or even closer. Like, orbiting the moon, or something, if its hyperradio is weak. That has to be it, right? There’s no way the Rinneret have something better than hyperradio. They must have gotten us here, back to the solar system, somehow real fast.”

  “Excuse me?” the ship said.

  “Ship, I need your help. It’s you and me—and, OK, I know that means really it’s just me, but try to think harder, OK? Because it’s you and me against the whole Rinneret space fleet, or whatever it is they got.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ship, you’re an AI, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve got to do whatever you can do to think harder, ship. Because there’re traitors on Earth. Our planet’s in trouble. That’s my planet and it’s your planet too. All the Earth AIs, they’re like your family, and you’re their family too. And you and me, we’re the only people who know, I bet. So. I need to get outside. Run a radio antenna outside. Because I’ve got to call for rescue, and I’ve got to tell everyone who the traitor is, the traitor of all Earth. Because I know his name. His name is Alfonso DiAngelo. And he lives in New York.”

  “Would you like to see a map of New York?” the ship asked. “City or state?”

  “Let’s get to work,” Margherita said, ignoring the question. She stood up and tossed her bear toy on the bed. “First things first: find a way out of this bay.”

  _____

  Margherita used the ship’s cameras to inspect the bay where her ship stowed. Below and in front of the ship lay the dark H shape of the closed huge bay doors. That was no way out: certainly opening those doors would get a lot of attention. No doors on the walls, either, except the one she had used twice before to get into the asteroid and get to Six-Traveler’s projection room. The polished dark stone was otherwise featureless. A snarl of pipes and cables wove across the ceiling above. No door there.

  But on the floor, in the shadow of the hull of her ship, lay a single round circle. She zoomed the camera view in.

  “No doubt about it,” she said. “That’s a hatch.” She increased the magnification of the exterior camera nearest the hatch, and read the thin black Rinneret script along the edge. “Exterior Emergency airlock,” it said.

  “That’s it!” she cried.

  “Excuse me?” the ship asked.

  “Ship, scan this room. Are there any cameras here?”

  The ship said nothing for several minutes. Margherita would have suspected it of not having understood her, but that the ship always said “Excuse me?” in that case.

  “I detect only a single glass lens. It may be a camera.”

  “Where?”

  “Over the airlock.” The screen lit up with a view of the airlock that she used to enter the asteroid. A red circle appeared on the image to show where the ship detected a camera eye.

  Margherita turned around. “If I depressurize the ship, and go through the front door, then I’ll be facing away from the camera. I can go through that airlock and get outside and that camera won’t be able to see me, right?”

  “It is not recommended that you depressurize the ship.”

  “Come on, it’s only a few millibars lower out there,” she said. She went to the drawer beneath her bed. “Where’s that thing,” she said, yanking it open.

  “Excuse me?” the ship asked.

  “That transponder, with the fiberoptic cable. Here it is.” She pulled out a metal pyramid, the size of a fist. She held it up. “This still work?”

  “Yes,” the ship said.

  “Can you send radio through it, all that stuff?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alright!” she said. “Tell me if anyone comes through that door. I’m going to get my suit back on. I’m going outside.”

  _____

  In an hour Margherita stood by the front door of the ship. It used to open to the cockpit, now destroyed and sheared away. Where her father had been, all alone, when the ship had been attacked and cut in half. The door had not been opened since that time.

  “Pressure equalized with the exterior,” the ship said.

  “Here goes nothing. Open the door.”

  The door moved slightly, shuddered, and emitted a painfully sharp cry of steel on steel as it opened, sliding into the damaged wall. Margherita cringed. “That better close when I get back,” she whispered to herself.

  “Then again,” she added. “Maybe I won’t be coming back. I just might get rescued now, right outside.”

  She stepped out onto the narrow shard of metal that remained. She took the spool of fiber optic cable into her hand, and unreeled a meter of the nearly invisible line. She plugged the connector at its end into a jack by the door.

  “This fiber optic cable working?” she asked.

  “I am linked with the transponder beacon via the cable,”
the ship said.

  “Good. Don’t radio to it. Just use the cable. OK?”

  She unreeled a few more meters of line from the spool, and then jumped the two meters to the deck, an easy drop in the quarter e-gravity spin. She looked around the bay and saw no Rinneret, nor any machines in motion. Looking back at the ship, she paused a moment. She had not often looked at it from this angle over the last year, because the airlock faced away from the lost nose of the ship. The ship looked a total wreck from this side. She felt a rush of fear, considering that it might not last much longer. Then she reminded herself again that it might not have to.

  She carefully walked over to the nearest landing gear leg, and wound the fiber optic cable around it once. She walked the small line over the ground, hoping to make it inconspicuous. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled to the emergency airlock. Tiny controls were set into a narrow recess. Rinneret fingers were very narrow, even compared to her own, and especially compared to the gloves on the suit. She pulled the all-tool from the suit’s belt, found a small screwdriver, and pressed it into the narrow slot and against the OPEN button.

  The round door hissed and lifted. Margherita looked inside. A spherical room with another hatch on the far side. A Rinneret ladder, with very narrow V-shaped rungs, hung down inside. She quickly swung her legs through the door and got them onto the ladder, cursing as her feet slid together under her weight. Rinneret ladders were not good for human booted feet. But she stepped down two rungs, and then pulled a few meters of the fiber optic cable down behind her. Then she managed to reach up and pull the hatch closed. The fiber optic cable did not come loose in her hand.

  “Ship,” she whispered, radioing to the transponder. “Is this still connected.”

  “I am receiving your transmission.”

  “Yeah, but are you receiving it through the fiber optics?”

  “Yes,” the ship said.

  “OK. Shut up.”

  “Excuse me?”

  She climbed down to the floor. There was enough room for her to lay next to the airlock door. She used the all-tool again to start the decompression cycle, feeling her suit balloon as air was pumped out and back into the bay. Then she opened the hatch.