Solis

by Attanasio, AA

  "Look, Munk, I'm not asking about my grief. I want to know why the hell you're risking my life to get to Phoboi Twelve to keep a human brain from getting sliced. What do you care? And why the hell should I care?"

  "I told you. I am C-P programmed to care. I have been built to be fascinated by human beings. Naturally, when I received the distress broadcast from an archaic human-a human that walked the Earth before the Maat-I knew at once I had to go to him."

  "And me? Why am I along for the ride?"

  "I need your help. There are others who will get there ahead of me. But they are andrones, like myself. Surely they will only further bewilder this archaic man. He will need human contact. And so, I need you."

  Munk pauses to give time for Mei's human brain to absorb all he has said.

  There is only one more question to answer, but he waits for her to ask and while waiting corrects again the flight path of The Laughing Life.

  "If we get Mr. Charlie," Mei finally asks, "then what? Where can we go with him?"

  "Solis."

  Mei straps into her hammock and hugs herself. "I was hoping you'd say that," she whispers. She smiles, a wan, quiet smile. "It really is the only place we

  can go now, isn't it? Solis." it has a holy ring to her ears. Since the terrible tragedy, since the beginning of her grief, Solis has been her succor. That is

  the last refuge of her heart in the kingdom of death. From the first, she was

  struck with how appropriate it was that this community, independent of the Commonality, should exist in the midst of so much lifelessness. The doom of her family had made her life a wasteland, and Solis was its temple. That was why she had to leave Earth after the tragedy. On Earth no one was supposed to die. Disease and old age had been defeated long ago by the Maat. No one had to die-or so she had believed until the voice of thunder reached across the mountains of the reservation and the village of her childhood disappeared in a black tomb of shattered slate.

  "I know you tried to go to Solis after your family died," Munk goes on. "I

  know they turned you away."

  Behind her glassy stare, Mei Nili remembers the loathing she experienced after the numbness of shock and grief began to thin. She came to loathe Earth for its

  arrogant beauty, its fields of goldenrod and monarch butterflies, its sycamore shadows and flights of cormorant, its dark groves of mossy oak, its shimmering alder slopes and barberry meadows and daisies everlasting. It sickened her. And she yearned for the dead spaces-yet even in the desert, yucca bloomed,

  bright-beaded lizards danced, thunderheads promenaded in fragrant, purpled veils.

  The emptiness of space beckoned, and she left Earth gladly. But the lunar colonies and the garden communities on the moon offered no relief, for the water planet hung in the sky flaunting its blue and feathery beauty. Only when the flight of her grief took her to the dead planet Mars did she begin to feel kinship again and some small glimmer of her heart.

  She had wanted to live in Solis, a rugged community that thrived in the very face of death and had no illusions about life eternal. But she had nothing to offer them. She had lived her whole life on Earth skiing, swimming, riding, enjoying the utopia the Maat provided for the remains of Adam. Solis turned her away. They wanted skilled mechanics and ecosystem engineers.

  "They were wrong to reject you," Munk says. "You proved that when you gave yourself to Apollo Combine and earned your way as a jumper. You didn't go sniveling back to the reservation. You proved you were tougher than that. And now you can return to Solis. Mr. Charlie will be your validation-and mine, too. They don't usually admit andrones. But with the brain of an archaic human to donate to their clone vats, we'll be received as dignitaries."

  Concern shadows Mei's broad face. "Only if we can retrieve Mr. Charlie from the Bund."

  Munk turns his full attention to the command console. "Only if," he admits. "Rest now. We will have to be strong to face down Ares Bund."

  She adjusts the straps of her sling and closes her eyes. But sleep will not come. She is troubled. Everything is happening too quiddy. Only a short while ago she was sitting in the pastel color-swirl of the arcade, enjoying midstim with the others-who mostly ignore her. When she first arrived at the thrust station on Deimos to work for Apollo Combine, they tried to be friendly, to include her in their gruff camaraderie. But she wanted no part of that.

  Mei determined from the time of her tragedy that no one would ever take the place of her family, and she has been true to that self-directive ever since. She doesn't want friends. Besides, jumpers aren't real humans anyway, not human the way people are human on the reservations. All jumpers have been modified to make their work easier. Most, in fact, were created to be jumpers. There are stocky, muscular wrenchers, narrow-bodied cable-jockeys, weasely pilots, and morosely exacting androne managers.

  She found work with the Combine as a jockey because she is slim and has a head for circuit work. Jockeys have to ride cable runners into mine shafts and grottoes and hook up power units. She overcame her fear of tight places and got good at her job, because she didn't want to go back to the reservation or,

  worse, one of the colonies, where everyone thinks they're going to live forever.

  Her job is exhausting, but it has made her strong, so terribly strong she doesn't always know what to do with her strength. That is why she was in the arcade in pastel mode when Munk found her. She needed midstim-direct magnetic stimulation of the amygdala in the midbrain-a sedating euphoria that drains away all restlessness and fatigue and leaves one with an empty body and a soul full

  of infinite care.

  If she hadn't been on midstim and if she hadn't been surprised by Munk appearing suddenly in a nimbus of bleached colors, would she have come with him? If she had known about Mr. Charlie's plight beforehand, would she have elected

  to risk her life in a slingshot maneuver to go to him-an archaic brain locked in an ore processor and already claimed by another company? She ponders this at length and decides she should go, as if she has a choice now. She will go, because she has already stayed too long at Apollo Combine. She has become comfortable with her job and the indifference of the other jumpers-and midstim, illegal in the reservations, has become too important to her.

  After Mei Nili dozes off, Munk patches into the on-board translator. He wants to hear again the segment of the archaic human's radio broadcast that he captured on Deimos, and he feeds the recorded signal to the translator. Most of it comes back as noise, and all he can summon up is a ranting excerpt:

  Soul in my mouth, I begin... . l am a mind without a body.

  Can you hear me?... lam dead and yet I live. ... Past lives drift by. Can you hear me? Listen. A dead man visits you. Listen to me...

  Munk plays the scraps of message repeatedly, listening for nuances. Is this human being still sane, or has the trauma of his revival broken his mind? I am dead and yet I live. How much of what sounds like madness is insanity and how much mistranslation? The mechanical voice he hears only approximates the radio signals that the brain has found a clever way to generate from the interior of the ore processor. How much is error? Listen. A dead man visits you.

  Broken chunks of rusty static crowd the air, and Mei Nili stirs from her fitful rest Is that him? Is that Mr. Charlie?"

  "It is as much of his signal as I can translate into speech we can understand. The language he spoke in his first life has been dead for centuries."

  Mei unstraps from her sling and drifts across the cabin to the flight bubble, as if propinquity to the warbly machine voice will clarify it. "Is there anything more?"

  "Some, but just as distorted. No matter now. We are approaching Phoboi Twelve. I've plotted a course that masks our approach among waste clouds of

  nickel-schist debris, slag exudant from the processor. Ares Bund has only one vessel in the area, Wolf Star, and they haven't detected us yet. They are preoccupied with their salvage operation. I'm puffing in their radio signals."

  "R
adio?"

  "Yes. Wolf Star is communicating with Mr. Charlie in his own medium." "I don't understand. Why don't they just go in and unplug him?"

  "Mr. Charlie has been too clever for that. He's found a way to rig the bore-drill explosives to detonate on his command. He's threatening to blast

  apart the whole of Phoboi Twelve unless he gets certain assurances. He says he'd rather die than be locked into a machine again."

  "Incredible."

  "Wolf Star is promising him everything he wants. They're sending in a psybot-a handroid with a neural mesh-to hook up to his brain, to serve as his eyes, ears, and limbs."

  "Phoboi Twelve is an Ap Com processor. Don't we have access to all the master codes? If we want, can't we defuse the explosives?"

  "I've already thought of that. All the codes for Phoboi Twelve have been uploaded to our console. We are now in complete control of the processor. But that won't do us any good so long as Wolf Star has their androne in place."

  "They already have an androne down there? Can you tell who it is?" "It's a demolition androne Wolf Star calls Aparecida. I've tracked her

  salvage-rights declaration to the Commonality expediter on Vesta Prima. She's already filed for Ares Bund to sell Mr. Charlie's hippocampal gyrus, parietal and occipital lobes, and neocortex to four separate companies for use as functional wetware. Mr. Charlie doesn't know it, but he's already been legally dissected."

  "Then they're lying to him." "Baldly."

  "We've got to do something." Mei floats before the transparent curve of the flight bubble and sees only a few barbs of starlight among the tattered

  blackness of the waste clouds. "Look-Mr. Charlie's brain is still encased in the core chamber of the ore processor, and we've got all the codes. Can't we selectively detonate the explosives so that the core chamber Is left intact?

  Then we can pluck Mr. Charlie out of space on our flyby." "I can't do that."

  "What do you mean? We have the codes-"

  "Aparecida is on Phoboi Twelve now. If I detonate the explosives, she will be destroyed. It is illegal for me to offensively destroy another androne."

  "Illegal?" Mei gives him a look of stupendous incredulity. "Munk, we're going rogue. You said so yourself."

  "Yes. But my intent has never been to destroy anyone."

  "How the hell did you expect to get Mr. Charlie away from the Bund?"

  "He is a sentient being, Jumper Nili. I have always expected he would elect to come with us. That's why I needed you to accompany me-to woo him to us with your humanity."

  "And the Bund? How did you expect to woo them?"

  "I had hoped to get here before they docked. Wolf Star is a goliath-class prospector. I thought it would take longer for such a bulky vessel to moor."

  She levels a cold look at the androne and says, "So we've lost out to a silicon miscalculation, is that it? Well, what do we do now?"

  "Mr. Charlie has not yet agreed to go with Aparecida. If you approach him, we may still be able to convince him to come with us."

  "Forget that. Aparecida is a demolition androne who has already filed salvage rights. If I interfere, she can legally destroy me."

  "You will have to be careful and clever."

  "Me? Why don't you go in there and face down this demolition expert?"

  "I am an androne." He slightly lifts his thick, blackly iridescent arms to his sides as if to reveal himself. "I cannot possibly be as persuasive to Mr.

  Charlie as you would be."

  "Okay, okay-I have a better idea. Let me use the codes to explode Phoboi

  Twelve and liberate Mr. Charlie."

  "If I give you the codes, I will be in violation of my primary programming. I

  can't do that." "Can't-or won't?"

  "For me, they are the same."

  "Really? I don't think so, Munk. You're not some solder-seamed handroid like Aparecida, patched together by the Commonality. The Maat created you. You were just bragging about your contra-parameter program that fires you with human wonder and capacity. Remember? That's why you're here. That's why you dragged me out here. You have free will. Use it."

  "I cannot."

  "You can. It's either that or we forget about Mr. Charlie and go back to Ap

  Com. Is that what you want?"

  "I must save Mr. Charlie. My C-P program insists-but not this way. We must

  work together. There is no time for debate. Won't you help me? Go down to Phoboi Twelve. Aparecida does not yet know we are here. When you are in place, I will break radio silence and inform Mr. Charlie that Ares Bund is deceiving him. Then you will reveal yourself to him, and he will come with you."

  "And Aparecida?"

  "Aparecida is three times your size, designed for destroying obsolete structures, not for pursuit. You can evade her."

  "Right. And if Mr. Charlie won't come with me? What then?"

  "I control all the codes to the ore processor from here. I will unclasp the mag locks that fuse him to the core chamber. He is only a brain, after all, and even with the plasteel capsule housing him and his glucosupport pump, he won't weigh more than three kilos."

  Mei throws up her hands in disgust and swims across the cabin to the pressure hatch. What choice does she have? Having come this far without requisition or flight plan, she is sure to lose rec privileges, and without midstim, Apollo

  Combine offers her no solace.

  After donning work boots and gloves and a clear statskin cowl that zip-seals to the collar of her flightsuit, she straps on a jetpak and moves to test the comlink under her shoulder pad. Munk dissuades her by holding up his

  blunt-fingered hand.

  "Don't use the comlink till after I break radio silence," he warns. "Wolf

  Star will detect any kind of ordered flux. Also, when you exit, use the jetpak

  as little as possible. Stay in the shadow of the slag clouds until you reach the drop vector to Phoboi Twelve. Surprise is essential."

  "Don't patronize me, Munk," she says, staring sternly at the androne. "I know what I'm up against out there. Remember, you got me into this. I'm counting on you to get me out."

  Before Munk can reply, the pressure hatch winks open, and Mei jettisons into space. The sleek and perfectly black silhouette of The Laughing Life dwindles swiftly into the starry distance, and the vacuum cold prickles her flesh through the sheer filaments of her flightsuit.

  Mei executes a slow body twist to orient herself. She is comfortable in the void, having spent much of her working life there, and she readily locates her destination. Phoboi Twelve is a small asteroid, two kilometers long, half that wide, blotting out a tiny portion of the spangled stars and barely visible among the obscuring tendrils of slag clouds that the ore processor has exuded. The sprawl of tenebrous vapors is what enables Mei to spot the asteroid so quickly, and she uses one short burst from her jetpak to send herself hurtling into the slag cloud toward her goal.

  Her flight is dangerous. With her sight obscured in the smoke from the processor, she could strike a sizable rock, which, at her velocity, would rip her statskin cowl and expose her to the vacuum. Statskin, a micro-sandwich fabric that blocks radiation, admits visible light, and reclaims oxygen from exhaled carbon dioxide, was designed to enable people to work in airless environments but was not meant for long jumps through space. In the past when she had to cross wide distances in a cowl, she avoided blind trajectories or used a field projector to clear the way ahead of her. But she carries no projector, for that would expose her to Wolf Star.

  In brief glimpses as she slashes through gaps in the slag fumes, she spots the prospector vessel. It is indeed large-a fifth the size of the asteroid

  itself-and luminous, guidelights and floodbeams shining from its bubble turrets, scaffolds, and conning towers, a huge phosphorescent arachnoid perched on the cratered and jagged rock. Then her flight takes her behind the asteroid, and

  with one tiny burst from her jetpak, her course deflects away from the mute stars and into the darkness o
f Phoboi Twelve.

  She alights on the pitted surface and begins her search under the eternal night for a way in. Soon she finds a vapor duct and with a wrench from the utility tools stored in her jetpak removes the wire-mesh screen and drops herself into the lightless maw. The lack of vibration in the metal panels assures her the machinery below has shut down, and she descends swiftly.

  By the glow of the light projectors she has activated in her statskin cowl,

  she moves toward the interior of the ore processor. She knows this factory well, having helped install scores of them during her tenure with Apollo Combine, and she nimbly makes her way among scorched, dormant furnaces and smelter chambers with their gargantuan cauldrons. Following command cables through a colossal

  bore tunnel, she approaches the nucleus of the ore processor, the core chamber.

  A dull vibration in the rock alerts her to a presence approaching from behind. Urgently, she scans the rock-face, searching for the vapor ducts she knows must be nearby. She finds one thirty meters above her and claws hurriedly up the concave wall, employing the dim gravity to bound feetfirst into the opening.

  Moments later the quaking intensifies, and the lightless tunnel below her brightens suddenly. Floodlights gouge the darkness, and with a rumble Mei hears through the rock, a lithe yet heavily armored figure strides into view. Six meters tall, outfitted with serrated appendages, rock-saw talons, and

  strap-blade tentacles, the spike-studded androne pauses directly below her and

  swivels its hammer-long head, alert to the heat trail Mei has left in her wake.

  With a reptilian rasp, its tentacles score the wall she had climbed moments earlier, tasting her path. The floodlights dim, and only the ruby purple of its heat-seeker eyes shines in the gloom. A viper's hiss scalds the remnant nitrogen gas that the processor has used to lubricate the bore hole, and the demolition androne concludes it has detected relict heat lingering in the ducts from the recently shut-down factory.

  Mei slowly and quietly backs her way through the duct. The sight of Aparecida has left her heart slamming in her chest, and when the duct opens above a large cavern, she leaps gratefully into the darkness. Knees bent, she floats downward, waiting for the bottom to arrive. She is glad when she lands in a soft, dusty mound that swallows her. This, she knows, is a soot dump, and after routing around in the heaped cinders for a while, she finds her way up the opposite rock wall to a conveyer chute that will lead her by an alternate path back toward the processor.