“There are laws against dumping. Ugh! Fouling up the landscape. Just like on Earth during the Industrial Age. You’re supposed to recycle.”
“Recycling isn’t always cost-effective. Fashions change fast. One month, dumb appliances are in. The next, everyone wants their toaster to be able to sing Broadway tunes, greet you by name, and throw your toast across the kitchen and onto the plate when it’s ready.”
“I could do with some toast. With melted cheese.” Elfrida felt slightly delirious. “A grilled cheese sandwich on Weissbrot, like my mom makes.” She sucked on her suit’s rehydration nipple, watching dos Santos fiddle with the toaster. “Shall we try and climb down the scarp? It’s got to be cooler in the shade.”
“Yeah, let’s do that. And I’m taking this. In fact, I’m taking a bunch of them.”
“Why?”
Dos Santos stood up, lifting the parasol on her shoulders. Elfrida could hear her grinning. “These aren’t dumb appliances. They’ve got radio frequency chips inside. If I link enough of them together, I bet I can make a transmitter.”
“What about batteries? They don’t ship them with batteries.”
“Who needs batteries, when you’ve got a solar generator?” Dos Santos twitched the cable dangling from the underside of the parasol. “I can hook the toasters up to this. Come on.”
For the first time since they left the Sunmersible, Elfrida allowed herself to feel hopeful.
They crawled through the junkyard, collecting toasters along the way. At the edge of the scarp, they discovered that the sim had exaggerated the drop ahead of them. The satellite maps were out of date. This part of the cliff had collapsed under the weight of the toasters and washing-machines—or more likely, whatever heavy machine dumped them here. The result was a scooped-out slope, like a landslide on Earth. They scrambled down with greater ease than expected, carrying the parasol with a dozen toasters bundled up in it.
“It was about time something went our way,” dos Santos said jubilantly.
A narrow strip of shadow traced the north-south line of the scarp. At the bottom of the landslide, the shadow was narrower.
Elfrida clambered back up a short distance. A shard of rock stuck out from the landslide, horizontal. She ducked into the black shadow underneath, ignoring dos Santos’s warning that the rocks might not be stable—
—and fell straight down.
She landed on one foot and a knee. On Earth, she would have broken something.
“I’m OK!” she shouted into the radio. She shone her helmet lamp around. She was standing in a gap in the jumble of rocks, on a shelf that ended in another drop into the dark. Refracted sunlight outlined the overhanging rock like a roof.
Dos Santos’s helmet poked over the lip where Elfrida had fallen. “You don’t have to shout,” she said.
“You can’t see from up there, but it’s a kind of cave. This big rock must have stuck here during the landslide, so the area in front of it didn’t get filled in. And I’m standing on a shelf. It looks like there may have been a natural crevice at the bottom of the scarp. So we could go even further down if we need to. The temperature has a lot to do with topography, right? Lower equals cooler.”
“How far down are you now?”
“I could get out if I jumped.”
“Then I’m coming down.”
Dos Santos slid over the edge, pulling the bundle of toasters with her. Elfrida caught her. For a moment, dos Santos’s momentum pressed them together, helmet to helmet. Elfrida quickly stepped back.
“Let’s stay here for now,” dos Santos said, after inspecting the deeper crevice at the edge of the shelf. “I’m getting a suit temperature reading of thirty-nine degrees. That’s nothing, compared to what it was out there.”
Dos Santos unwrapped the toasters and shook out the parasol. She checked the integrated status screen on the parasol’s underside. “Fully charged. I’m going to hook up the toasters. Cross your fingers that this works.”
“If it does?”
“We won’t have enough oomph to send a Mayday off-planet. But I bet we can get through to Wrightstuff, Inc. If they’re still alive.”
xli.
Doug came to, lying on the bridge. He couldn’t breathe.
A medibot’s headpart swam into his field of vision, and then the face of Jake Vlajkovic-Gates. “Don’t try to talk, sir. You got shot.”
His back bowed off the ground, but he felt no pain, only pressure. He understood that the medibot was performing emergency surgery on him. It was the latest-generation one that went with President Doug everywhere.
I killed him.
Distant noises peppered his anesthetized daze. Automatic gunfire. Screams.
Jake stood over him with a sawn-off shotgun. A Secret Service weapon. “I won’t let them get you, sir,” he said.
Doug wanted to tell him that he looked just like his father, and that Mike had been a great man, betrayed by those with more money than him, just like the labor organizers of old. But then Jake was gone, and a shadow stooped over Doug. Bambi eyes blinked curiously above a buck-toothed smile of attachment sockets.
Jake’s shotgun roared.
“Don’t get me mad at ya, kid,” said a weary voice from the vinge-class’s integrated speaker. “Hey, you; Doug. Which one are you?”
“He’s a hero,” Jake said. “Please, Gonzo! Don’t hurt him.”
“Ain’t gonna,” said the phavatar. “I need him to do something for me. Hey, Doug. You listening?”
Doug achieved a minute nod.
“Tell your people to stop shooting. And? Point me to the way out.”
Doug did not credit what he’d just heard. He had to be hallucinating. He persuaded the medibot to crank his stretcher up to an angle. It continued to suture things inside his chest, jerking him this way and that. The prodding sensations were real. So was the pain in his heart.
He saw the vinge-class squatting over him, and Jake hugging his shotgun, and the deserted length of Main Street’s spiral. Shattered windows, trampled flags. Everyone had fled, except the vinge-classes. Prancing around like they owned the place.
A spark of rage; a sucking ocean of indifference.
The monster squatting over him said, “Last chance. We are leaving. We can do it the easy way … or we can breach your pressurization and kill every last motherfucker in here.”
Doug could not speak, but he could subvocalize. He used the public channel, hoping the Heidegger program would pick it up and know that he was doing what it wanted. ~This is Doug. Clear the airlock. Our guests are leaving.
He had the medibot wheel him down off the bridge. The vinge-classes frolicked around him. He thought that if he wasn’t so tired, he would find some meaning in their whirling movements, like a Sufi dance. The Heidegger program was speaking in sign language to itself. Treading on the junk his folk had dropped when they fled. Jake cringed close to the stretcher.
~Stick with me, kid, Doug subvocalized.
The phavatars moved off in a kaleidoscopic swarm. Doug directed them to the front gate. It was not easy to find, hidden behind River Street Elementary and the public gymnasium. Now, it was also blocked by the cars and tractors that President Doug had led outside for his historic victory. The men who should have been returning them to their places had fled. The phavatars climbed over the vehicles, wantonly stabbing their crampon-toes into engine blocks.
~Don’t let the airlock hit you on the way out, Doug subvocalized exhaustedly.
The phavatars packed themselves into the chamber. It was big enough to hold them all.
Consciousness fading in and out, he stayed right there until he was sure they were gone.
★
A few hours later, he was awake again. Drugged to the eyeballs, but coherent, he had himself propped up in the White House situation room. On the monitors, the Secret Service accompanied Dopey Doug along a half-finished corridor in Level Zero. The rest of the Dougs had sent him out to boost morale.
“You’re the p
resident now,” Doug had told him.
“I can’t do it,” Dopey had said. “I’ve got all the charisma of a foamcore animal.”
“And that ideally qualifies you for the top job.”
“Can’t you do it?”
“Nope. Listen, being boring is a good thing in a politician. It entails less risk of murder and mayhem. That’s my conclusion based on the last 24 hours.”
If Dopey was uncomfortable in his new role, it did not show on the surveillance monitors. Stimheads and sim addicts clustered around him, their fears soothed by his presence.
It would be a while before Wrightstuff, Inc. could do without its Dougs.
Well, the new era starts now.
Doug turned to his wife, who had just come into the situation room.
“I thought there would’ve been more casualties,” she said.
“The vinge-classes didn’t hurt anyone. A few people were hurt in the stampede. Some friendly fire.”
“Why? Why didn’t they go after the purebloods, like they did at UNVRP HQ?”
He shrugged. He hadn’t told her, or anyone, about President Doug’s last confession. “Be glad,” he said.
“I am. But why did they just … leave?”
“I dunno.” That, anyway, was the truth. She stood by his shoulder. He pulled the external infrared feed up. There was nothing out there in the crater but ice.
“We have to find them,” she said intensely. “Frag them.”
He hesitated. But if this was to be a new era, honesty had to be part of it.
“Honey, I pinged some people I know on Earth. The discussion is still ongoing: everything’s going through the Belt, via line-of-sight to Ceres. Fifty minutes one way. It’s slow. But we’re working towards a deal. We will give them a share of the He3, in exchange for their support at the UN. There’s gonna be an investigation … of course there is.”
He breathed heavily. His right lung was still intubated. Too much talking made him dizzy. His wife watched him, her expression unreadable.
“We’ll have to cooperate fully with the investigators. Surrender any evidence to them.”
“So why did you let the evidence walk away?”
“Because the alternative was, quote, they’d breach our pressurization and kill every last motherfucker in here!”
“I’m not the one you should be mad at,” she said. And right then he knew that she knew. Even if he never told her. Even if the truth did not come out at the UN investigation, as his friends in the NHRE had promised. She knew that President Doug had done this, and he was … glad of it.
“I’ve got everyone left alive on this planet looking out for those phavatars,” he said, calmer. “We’ll find ‘em, as long as they don’t stray onto the dayside. And why would they do that? They’re the last mobile assets the Heidegger program has on this planet. They’ll try to get away, is my guess. We’ll catch ‘em at Yoshikawa.”
She hugged her elbows. Spaceborn woman, lanky and long. Hips of a crane, hair like a Pre-Raphaelite painting.
Doug used his good arm to pull her down onto the stretcher. “You are going to be a bigger part of my life from now on.”
“I’m a clone’s wife, Doug. I know I can’t compete with your brothers for your attention.” The bitter words were spoken without heat.
“It’s not going to be like that anymore.” He kissed her neck. She didn’t pull away. “I was thinking we might try for a baby.”
“A baby baby?”
“That’s right. Not a clone. You’re not gonna be a gestation tank for the next generation of Dougs. I’m thinking of a baby that’s yours and mine … Ours.”
The hard line of her mouth wobbled. He kissed her again.
Ping! Ping! Ping!
“Aw, crap. Gimme a second, honey.” The ping was a text addressed to his secret ‘George’ ID, transmitted via the relay installation on top of Mt. Gotham. ~Yeah, what?
The comms screen in his HUD area displayed the image of a toaster. Its side panel morphed into a chubby, 3D silver face. It said, “Doug?”
“Eh?” Doug was so surprised he forgot to subvocalize.
“Oh, thank dog, you’re alive!”
“Thumbs down. No matter how many times they recycle the Art Deco aesthetic, it still looks clunky. Bye now.”
“What? Oh, you think I’m a marketing poll.” The voice was what you’d expect a toaster to sound like. Crispy at the edges. The transmission quality was poor. “It’s me! Elfrida Goto! Can you please, please help us?”
“Whoa. Aren’t you dead?”
“Not yet.”
“Where are you?”
“79° N, 50° W.”
Doug ordered a signal trace.“79° N, 50° W,” he said aloud. His wife slid off his chair and hurried to the mapping terminal. The terminator sliced a fuzzy line down the middle of the globe of Mercury. Even before the hub came back with coordinates for the signal’s source, roughly the same as those Elfrida had given, Doug knew there was no hope. His wife’s fingertip rested on the globe. The light of the dayside turned her flesh crimson.
“Can you come and pick us up? We’ve taken shelter in the shade of a scarp. But we’re running out of air, and …”
Doug shook his head, although she could not see him. “We don’t do surface mining, you know? We don’t have anything that could last ten minutes out there. I’m … I don’t know what to say. I’m so doggone sorry.”
Could there be some functioning, dayside-capable vehicles left amid the wreckage of the OEMs in the twilight zone? It would be a long shot.
Elfrida’s voice was spidery, far-away. “Oh. I guess I thought, if we can establish contact with someone, everything will be OK. But that’s not how it works, is it? You’re on the same planet, but we might as well be in different galaxies.”
It seemed inhuman to leave her to die out there. It was inhuman. But that was life in space. His wife was shaking her head at him. He had his own people to think of.
“I’m sorry, Elfrida.” He breathed stertorously through his tube. “Listen, if you wanna record a message for your mom or anyone, I’ll make sure it gets to her.”
Pause.
“Um… yes, I’ll do that. Thank you.”
She had said thank you, for leaving her to die. UN manners.
“Doug, there’s someone else here who wants to talk to you. Can I put her on?”
xlii.
While dos Santos talked to Doug, Elfrida tried to compose a message to her parents. It was tough to think of ways to say “I’m trapped on the dayside of Mercury,” without having it sound like “Goodbye.” And she was not saying goodbye. Doug had meant his offer precisely as a chance for her to say goodbye in her own words, but she was not giving up.
But as she struggled to put a positive spin on her plight, the sheer hopelessness of their position overwhelmed her. Her recording turned into an emotional missive, accusing her mother of working for the NHRE and hiding the truth from her family all these years. By the time she hit send, she was sobbing. Snot trickled down her upper lip. With her helmet on, she could not wipe it away.
Dos Santos leapt to her feet and kicked the toaster array, scattering the appliances through the cave. Elfrida flinched. But dos Santos was just venting her frustration.
Squatting, dos Santos put the toasters straight again. “Welp,” she said. Her voice was flat, choked, as if she were so angry she could hardly speak. “Threats didn’t work.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I told him, you can’t just leave us here to die, it’s inhuman. I said I’m gonna smear you all over the system. Cloning is illegal. You’re a crime on legs. He said, laugh. You don’t even have an internet connection.”
“Can’t we use theirs?”
“Not without their permission.”
“Can’t we get through to Yoshikawa Spaceport? There must be someone there.”
“Not with this piece-of-shit transmitter.”
Dos Santos squatted and straightened the toasters
, which she’d hooked together with cables carefully picked out of the parasol’s backing. It had taken hours. Elfrida had helped.
“I think that if you had said you were alone,” dos Santos said, glancing at Elfrida, “he would probably have found some way to come get you. So, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t even have tried.”
“Oh dog, I don’t think it was that. He just … can’t.”
Dos Santos’s helmet moved from side to side. “He’s mad as hell at me. He called me a traitor to humanity. A useful idiot. A dumb idealist. And a bunch of other things. All rude. All true.”
“He thinks you downloaded the Heidegger program on purpose?”
“Yup. And so will the entire solar system. I’m going to be remembered as a mass murderer. Crazy ex-Marine, undiagnosed PTSD … Sorry, Angie,” dos Santos addressed the dead woman whose identity she had stolen. “I didn’t mean to blacken your name. I wanted you to be remembered as the heroine you were. A savior.”
“Dos Santos, how were you expecting that to work?”
“Oh.” Dos Santos’s audible sigh said that she didn’t even want to think about it now. But what she said was completely unexpected. “Remember the stross-class?”
“What?”
“The stross-class. Fastest, smartest telepresence platform ever built. Sorry to bring back bad memories. Well, the idea was to upgrade those vinge-classes to stross-class.”
“I … OK. I can kind of see how you thought that was not a bad idea.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Goto. It doesn’t suit you. The truth, which I am in a position to know and you are not, is that the stross-class got a bad rap. People overreacted to the Galapagos incident. The development program was cancelled, but Derek didn’t give up. He and his team at LiRI kept working on it …”
Elfrida finally made the connection. Derek. Derek Lorna. The lead developer at the Un’s Leadership in Robotics Institute, on Luna. And apparently, a friend of dos Santos’s from way back.
“He was convinced—he convinced me—that he could build a friendly AI.”
“I guess that would be a major breakthrough.”
The Mercury Rebellion: A Science Fiction Thriller (The Solarian War Saga Book 3) Page 30
