by Ginger Booth
Zelda blinked. Then blinked harder. “Sports are boring to play, let alone watch.”
Darren poked the flat metal box around with his finger. “But you still feel sad. Low energy. Incurious.” He was describing himself.
“Huh,” Zelda agreed. “I’m always curious. Just not now.”
Dot parked her fists on her hips and sized up her husband with pursed lips. “So how do we deactivate the nanites in your brains?”
The very question made Darren tired. “I don’t know.”
Dot considered this, and glanced around the med-bay. “This old Petunia, she didn’t care whether she lived or died, huh? No interest in becoming young again?”
“What?” Darren asked. Who was Petunia?
Dot opened a hail. “Remi, please report to med-bay.”
“I cannot, I drive the ship. What do you need, ma chère?”
“Drive? Where are we going?”
“We hold station above the spaceport. The locals, they send robots. I lift the ship to avoid them. Clay plays on the regolith. Sass, I cannot call. You have problems?”
“I have two despondent patients. We believe they used to be in contact with the AI. Now they’re just sad. Possibly suicidal. Med-bay isn’t the right place for them. Too many sharps.”
“Two patients? Darren is also…chipped?”
“Yes. Can’t think straight.”
Remi dispatched Corky and Joey to transfer the patients to the galley for observation, milk and cookies.
Darren went along meekly. He forgot to seal the box of transmitters before he left. It was getting awfully hard to think.
22
Sass peered around the corner of Hugo’s backwater hall into the main drag of Ganymede Too. Traffic was light on people, but polebots clustered blocking the stairway up to the sports dome. Those fields held practically the whole population of Sanctuary.
She pulled back and readjusted her grav to 0.5g net, to make lighter work of the heavy ansible carton. “Hugo, there was a fourth staircase down from the sporting dome. What does that one lead to?”
That was the cinder block structure closest to the airlock that held Sass’s pressure suit.
“Just facilities. Air conditioning, recycling, hydroponic tunnels, stuff like that.”
“Can we get there from here?”
He grimaced. “I would look that up by accessing Shiva.”
Sass pointed across the corridor on a diagonal. “It would be that way, right? Can we enter directly from Ganymede Too?”
“I don’t know. There’s the motor pool.”
That sounded more promising than having to traverse a field day crowd, or sneak through the mechanicals, sure to be crawling with robots. “Motor pool it is.”
She sprinted up the main corridor, two halls up and to the right, and waited for the middle-aged Hugo to catch up, out of breath. This new hall seemed vacant of people and polebots, though the ubiquitous ankle-high cleaning bots remained at work. So far, none of those tried to bite her.
Sass shifted the heavy carton to her other hip and ran to the next T-intersection, Hugo lagging. To the right, halls opened on both sides of the crossing corridor, but to the left, she spotted a single door, bearing the Ganny ladder icon, and ran for it.
She set her gravity to 0.1g, making quick work of the twenty-meter ladder climb. At the top, she found a deserted glassed-in garage, prettily stabbed by the final few orange sunbeams of the day.
The garage was a barrel-vault hangar dome, detached from the sporting complex. Opaque roll-up doors blocked her view of the spaceport.
Four balloon-tired vehicles sat parked, gathering copious yellow dust. Two of the trucks sported flats, tilted 30 degrees off level. But a utility runabout still had some lift in its tires. These models were identical to the old ones Sass used for years on Mahina.
In fact…yes, there was the air jack. She reinflated the buggy’s tires. Then she yanked open the driver’s side door, unleashing a cascade of yellow dust onto her pants. She hopped in and verified the familiar controls. The buggy showed a full charge, and half-full air tanks. And with luck – yes! The van-sized hold behind the front seats featured bench seats along the walls and a hatchback airlock.
Crouching due to the low overhead, Sass checked the rack of breath masks back there. Each came with an exhausted air cylinder. No pressure suits. She grabbed a couple air cylinders and recharged them. By then, she heard Hugo clanging up the ladder.
“Coming down, clear the floor.” Sass jumped straight down, and braked her fall at the end.
Hugo stood back aghast, clutching his box. “What are you?”
Good question. It took her two trips because of his box, but she lifted them up to the garage to save him the climb. “I couldn’t find pressure suits.”
“My uniform serves fine outdoors,” Hugo supplied. “I’m afraid for you, though.”
Sass huffed a laugh. “Don’t be.” She clambered into the buggy.
Hugo tarried to close the hatch over the ladder they’d used, plus a second ladder. Then he climbed into the passenger seat. “I think that other hatch must lead to the facilities compound.”
“Oh!” Sass reconsidered. That would save time on retrieving her pressure suit. But if robots ruled here, the mechanicals were sure to be infested with them. Only to exit in plain view of 5,000 locals or so. “No, let’s try this first.”
She flicked a switch, to pressurize the vehicle, which worked. The buggy held hours of air. For about the thousandth time, she mentally saluted a long-dead engineer with a cordial, Hey dumbass, why can’t you fill the tires with the cabin air on these things? But apparently on Sanctuary as on Mahina, nobody ever fixed that little design flaw.
Granted, the breathable nitrogen-oxygen cabin air was more valuable than the pressurized whatever in the tires. And balloon tires more often exploded than they leaked. Still.
She flicked the garage door opener. A red light above the door switched to throbbing red instead of opening. Sass frowned.
“No airlock,” Hugo explained. “Or rather, the whole garage is an airlock.”
“Oh.” Sass tapped her finger as vacuums pumped the bay’s air into its holding tanks. After five minutes or so the light turned green. The door began trundling up its tracks onto the ceiling. Sass inched out the second the gap was big enough.
She paused and made sure the garage closed behind her properly before heading out. To leave an airlock open, especially one that size, was a crime punishable by death under some circumstances. She’d spaced a miscreant for that once.
Only when she looked toward the rise between her and the spaceport did she finally notice the dark bulk of Thrive, external lights off, hanging above the hill. “Why?” Her burning desire for an answer made her check her comms. Sure enough, they worked again. Sheepishly, she realized they’d been available ever since she reached the motor pool above ground.
“Remi, Sass. I’m in a buggy flashing my headlights. Bringing home a guest and some equipment. Shall I come to you?”
Instead, Remi brought the ship to her and hovered Thrive’s trapdoor mere inches above the buggy’s hatchback. In a few more minutes, she was home safe.
23
Husna Zales – hardly the hospitality staff Sass would have chosen – bounded down from the catwalk as soon as the captain popped the trapdoor. The captain made her introductions, and let Husna escort Hugo Silva to the galley.
Sass made a stop in med-bay first. “Dot! Any trouble getting the chip out of Zelda?” She listened horrified as the nurse brought her up to date. Since his chip removal, instead of getting better, Darren’s mental competence nose-dived.
“Have you tried them on the Denali drugs?” Sass suggested. “Those shouldn’t interact negatively, right?” The Denali happy pills operated through gut bacteria. “Most of them are too strong, but Cope swore by Farmer’s Joy. Lightened his mood without clouding his judgment.”
Sass kicked over a step stool and pulled the box of pill bottles from t
he top of a cabinet. “This one. I’ll bring it upstairs. Let’s see the brain scans again.”
“I can see what they’re doing,” Dot complained. “But the Yang-Yangs don’t see the new nanites as an invader to fight off. And I don’t know how to teach them.”
Sass pointed lower on the head-shot. “Is it my imagination, or do some of these linger in the bloodstream?”
“I don’t know. I assume they haven’t found their way to the brain yet.”
“We need to catch and isolate some,” Sass reasoned. “Only then can we cook up a custom batch of Yang-Yangs to identify and fight them. And for that, we need your husband.” She grinned and tapped the vial on the table.
On the way to the galley, she explained Hugo’s headwear to the nurse.
“How very odd,” Dot agreed thoughtfully.
“You removed his chip!” Hugo wailed as they entered the dining room. “No, you mustn’t do that!”
Darren sat and stared dully at the table surface.
“Why not?” Sass didn’t pause on her way to the galley end of the room. She poured a couple glasses of water to rinse down the pills. “Want some, Hugo?” She nabbed the fruit basket while she was there. Corky nodded and got busy making appetizers. By the ship’s clock, gradually adjusted to Sanctuary time over the past couple weeks, supper was due in little over an hour.
“It’s naughty to eat between meals,” Hugo informed her, as she offered him fruit.
Sass chomped into a peach, chewed, swallowed. “It’s a special day, Hugo. Live a little. Take a bite.” She flipped the peach around to present him an unbroken side.
He timorously bit in. “Oh my stars, that is good! What is this?”
“It’s called fruit. Feel free to try them all. We recycle most of it anyway.” Sass moved on to coax a Farmer’s Joy dose into Darren.
Zelda lay on the couch with her eyes covered by a cryo mask. When Sass reached her, she burst into tears and apologized for being such a nuisance.
“Shut up and swallow, Zelda,” Sass ordered. The young woman instantly sobered and nodded resolutely, though blindly.
“Why didn’t I think of that!” Corky boomed. “Harass the sad sack and make her buck up!”
Zelda mewled. Sass patted her shoulder and returned to the table. “The Denali meds aren’t quick. In a few hours they should start to cheer up. So Hugo, explain this to me. You don’t want Shiva controlling your thoughts. So instead of digging the chip out of your arm, you wear a…fine shiny hat. Do you need that on Thrive? Steel hull. Faraday cage.”
“Oh, that’s true!” Hugo gratefully removed his foil helm and set it on an empty chair. He paused, and blinked a few times. Sass narrowed her eyes in mistrust, but he sighed in happy relief. “No access in here!”
“Glad to hear it.”
“This fruit is amazing!” he marveled. “So many flavors and colors! I mean, we have fruit flavored deserts and drinks. But this is totally different!”
“Focus, Hugo,” Sass urged. “What happened to Darren when we removed the chip?”
“Oh, yes! This is just a theory, you understand. But I tried removing the chip eight years ago. I’d done it once before, when Shiva became…intrusive in my thoughts. But then Shiva developed new chips. And everyone started acting strange. And I could only think straight while wearing protection.”
Sass tapped the table. “You removed your chip, and?”
“Oh, the unbearable sadness. My theory is that the new system controls brain endorphins. The bugs in the brain collect up all the feel-good chemicals, and only release them with a regular signal from the chip transmitter.”
“But wouldn’t that make you sad when you left the colony? And now, when your signal is blocked?” She’d asked Remi to park Thrive a few hills away along the lakefront once she was safely aboard. She presumed that went according to plan.
“The system doesn’t rely on a signal from Shiva, just a regular heartbeat-type signal from the chip to continue drip-feeding endorphins,” Hugo elaborated. “You get a strong dose of happy for obeying instructions, or repeating one of her little mantras. Wash your hands before eating, ultimate sacrifice, rah-rah nanny state. Now I have two chips. I felt so much better after they replaced the one, and I’d kept the other for study, so I stuck it back in. With two chips, I felt almost normal. I could think past Shiva’s orders. Enough to wear my hat so I could think straight.”
While he was explaining this, Remi joined them in the galley. “Anything I can do?”
“I’m not sure,” Sass said gratefully. “We have nanites in the brain. If we can extract a sample, can you program a batch of nanites to identify and kill them?”
Remi waved his fingers as though to fend off the assignment. “I know nothing of nanites. But Clay stole an inoculation gun. We can rendezvous with him. Or wait for him.”
“Excellent!” Sass purred. “Dot, if we get an isolated sample, can you program the hunting nanites? Or do we need Darren?”
The nurse pursed her lips. “I prefer he check my work. I don’t like to experiment on him.”
“Smart,” Sass assured her sincerely. “Let’s see if the Denali microbes are strong enough overnight. If not, maybe we can reinsert the chip to bring Darren back to functional. Clay can return when he wants to.”
She took out her comms and sent him a quick text requesting his plans. He shot back a request for permission to bring Colonel Tharsis and their horses home for supper. Sass suppressed a laugh and showed the message to Remi.
To read it, he pulled out the chair next to Hugo and sat on the aluminum foil hat before noticing it. “Sorry.”
Sass purred, “Don’t worry, Hugo. My engineers can make you a better hat. Can’t you, Remi?”
Remi handed over the flattened wad of foil. Hugo sadly peeled it apart, trying to restore the model to 3D. Remi shook his head and sighed, reading the message. “Sure. I’ll make that right after I build a horse recharging station.” He raised his eyes to Darren. “I hope you fix him soon.”
“That’s our priority,” Sass agreed. “But right now, I want to talk to Cope and Ben! So first you’ll help Hugo and me set up an ‘ansible’ in my office.”
Remi returned her tablet. “I get to sleep tonight, yes?”
“So that’s our state of play,” Sass concluded her summary over the ansible around 03:00 local time. She sat alone in her office, yet reunited with most of her dearest friends from Mahina.
Cope and Kassidy, Hunter and Eli weren’t much changed. She’d never met the Sagamore metallurgist Elise Pointreau before. The assured captain Ben Acosta was strange at first, but his sunny outlook still shone through. Her madcap young stowaway Teke, now a grown man and easily the greatest physicist in Aloha history, was the biggest shock. She was stunned at what they’d accomplished with their new warp breakthrough, and saddened to hear how Mahina had backslid.
They had a lot of catching up to do.
On Sass’s side, Clay and Darren popped their heads in for a few minutes to say hi, but didn’t tarry. The gut bacteria were helping, but Darren remained lethargic, and went to bed early. Clay was minding the ship and hosting the two locals. Of all things, he joined them and the electric horses sleeping under the stars tonight in an air tent, connected to the ship by an umbilical.
On Prosper’s side, her dear friends only exited the conversation for bio breaks and to collect snacks. Sass wished Abel and Jules were there too.
“So what can we help with?” Ben asked practically. “Our new warp isn’t quite tamed yet. We know Sanctuary had the tech base to build one. But it sounds like it may have been this AI.”
Cope shook his head. “I wouldn’t transfer this technology even after it was working. Veto.”
“Ditto the veto,” Teke declared. Elise nodded her head sharply. “The old warp technology has its advantages,” the physicist elaborated. “Discourages unwelcome guests, invasions, stuff like that.”
Kassidy chimed in with a laugh. “Guys! She’s been there less than a day.
Sass, I’m sure you’ll have the locals eating out of your hand in no time. Your first day was lovely compared to our first day on Sagamore.”
Ben chuckled. “Or Mahina Orbital! Remember that stench? That revolting food?”
“I quite enjoyed our first day on Denali,” Eli mused.
“Until the bakkra infested our skin,” Cope reminded him. “Mostly I was grateful to survive the landing.”
“Watch it,” Teke growled. “That’s my home you’re disparaging. Granted, I’m glad I left. I do miss the hunting.”
That earned him several mock punches. No one else missed the self-defense against voracious monsters on Denali. In Sass’s view, it didn’t qualify as ‘hunting’ when she was the prey. And she couldn’t eat the beast even if she managed to kill it before it killed her.
Cope smiled at the fond memories and reasserted control. And for Sass, that was the strangest part. He was the leader of the band now on the Aloha end of this call. Teke’s theoretical breakthrough was stunning. But bringing theory into practice, in a star system clinging to technological competence by a thread and failing spectacularly in the political realm, Cope’s achievement was phenomenal.
“Impressed as hell, Cope,” Sass murmured. “With all of you, but Cope, wow. To think I knew you when. I’m so proud I could burst.” She wiped a tear.
“You too, Sass. Wish I could give you a hug.” The ansible’s crappy little silver screen didn’t offer enough resolution for her to see his eyes, not with so many of them crowded into the view. But the understanding in his voice made her gulp.
“Call us,” Ben invited. “Any time. But how about a full review in a week. And who knows, maybe we’ll fly out there and meet you before you warp back. With a spare device.”
“That isn’t likely.” Cope quashed a hand over his husband’s face. “Bye cap – Sass. Old friend. Good luck.”
They waved and called out good wishes. Then the screen died back to its Colony Corp placard, the hallmark of Sanctuary, an answering machine.
