Echoes of Earth

by Sean Williams

  “Some processing has resumed,” the Gifts had said. That could mean that someone was still alive aboard the Tipler. If he could just figure out a means of contacting them, maybe he could find out what had gone wrong and perhaps even help in some way.

  His first thought was to head for the climber and take it out of the spindle. If it was just a case of reduced signal strength, possibly caused by the failure of the satellites nearby, getting out in the open might clear things up. Barely had he gone a dozen steps, however, when a sound like static came from behind him.

  He turned, but there was nothing there except the closed doors.

  “Gifts, was that you?”

  “Was what us, Peter?”

  The sound came again. A scraping noise, accompanied by a flicker of movement by the door leading to the Lab.

  He nerved himself to investigate. Had something hostile somehow got aboard the spindle? He cursed his irrationality. There was nothing on the planet to get aboard, and even if there had been, how could it have possibly reached him as high up as he was? Nevertheless, he started when a many-limbed shape suddenly tumbled from behind the nearest door, jerking spastically.

  Relief washed over him. It was just one of the droids. He knelt down in front of it. Its many black eyes rolled blindly at him for a long moment, then settled into a fixed configuration. He had the distinct sensation that someone was looking at him.

  “Caryl?” he said.

  “Peter!” The voice came from the speaker built into the droid, not through conSense. And it didn’t belong to Hatzis. “Thank God I’ve found you!”

  “Cleo? Is that you? What’s going on?”

  “ConSense is down. This is the only way I can communicate. I’m fiddling with the overrides as we speak, trying to make it safe, but I don’t know how much more I can bring back on-line without risking a takeover.”

  He rocked back on his heels, mind reeling. “Takeover? We’ve been attacked?”

  She hesitated, and he imagined the worst: aliens transmitting software viruses to infiltrate the Tipler, erasing engrams and disabling conSense as it went; the only way to halt such an invasion would be to shut everything down, then bring it back up piece by piece, watching for signs of relapse every step of the way. But why would Samson be performing the reconstruction and not Faith Jong or one of the other software specialists?

  “The mission has been threatened,” she said.

  There was something odd about her voice. “By what, Cleo? I don’t understand.”

  “Peter, I had to do it.” She sounded very small all of a sudden, as though she had shrunk back from the imaginary microphone, torn by self-doubt. “I had no choice.”

  Realization struck him. “You did this? You knocked out conSense?”

  “I had to,” she repeated. “Peter—”

  “What about the others? What’s happened to them?”

  “Don’t be angry, Peter. I’ve just frozen them for a while. They’ll be okay. I just need them out of the way for—”

  “Why, Cleo? Why do you need them out of the way?”

  She was silent again for a long time. Or was she crying? He couldn’t tell. A sound like static could have been anything.

  When she did speak again, her voice was less panicky but no less brittle, as though she might shatter at any moment.

  “We have to contact Earth,” she said. “It’s a clear mission objective. Any survey that finds advanced alien artifacts must advise Earth by the earliest means possible.”

  “I know the regs, Cleo, but—”

  “No, listen to me, Peter! You don’t understand! When all we had was normal channels, everything was fine. I sent a message the day the Spinners came, and another one later, when we were given the Gifts. That was enough. But then we found the communicator and the hole ship. These gave us the opportunity to advise Earth more rapidly. But first the communicator didn’t work, then the mission in the hole ship was delayed—”

  “For good reasons, Cleo—”

  “By the earliest means possible!” she shouted, and the desperation in her voice was frightening. “We don’t have any choice, Peter, don’t you see? We have to do it. We have to!”

  “But why, Cleo? What happens if we don’t?”

  “What happens?” She seemed to collapse into herself again. “We fail, Peter. Don’t you see that? The mission fails. We haven’t done our job properly. We haven’t followed the regs. We’ve let them down.”

  “Them?”

  “UNESSPRO, of course,” she said, her voice quavering. “We would have failed everyone back on Earth.”

  “But Cleo, there might not be anyone left on Earth!”

  “That doesn’t matter. We owe it to them to try.” Her voice firmed. “We have no choice. I have no choice. Don’t you see?”

  Only then did the knowledge come bubbling up from deep in his original’s memories. UNESSPRO had modified one engram on every ship to make sure the mission stuck to the guidelines. Each plant had a complete set of override codes and the ability to use them, should they be required, but they weren’t consciously aware of having been modified. Only when a mission broke the regulations would the plant awaken to enforce them, by force, if necessary.

  Samson was the plant, and it sounded to Alander as if she was about to snap in two, torn as she was between her own personality and the will of the survey programmers on Earth. He wasn’t even sure if she truly knew why she was behaving the way she was.

  “So you shut them down,” he said, trying to see it from her side. “You killed conSense, using the overrides, and you shut down the engrams.”

  “Yes!” She seemed relieved by his apparent understanding of her actions. “It wasn’t easy, Peter. I didn’t even know what I was doing. There was a surge; it almost caught me, too.”

  He remembered the flash of memories that had preceded the blackout and nodded. “I felt it.”

  “I’m sorry, Peter. I had to knock everything out at once or risk missing something important and giving them a chance to fight back. I brought you back on-line as soon as I could, once I’d found a way to talk to you. So much of the Tipler is automated; you wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to do things manually.”

  Yes, he would, he thought. He had been out in the real world long enough to distance himself from the virtual mollycoddling that was the engram’s artificial environment. He was under no illusions what lay behind the mask.

  “So why did you wake me, Cleo? Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because I need your help.”

  “To do what?”

  “To go back to Earth, of course,” she said. ‘To take the hole ship and tell them what we’ve found! That’s all, Peter. Then everything can return to normal.”

  “Can it, Cleo?”

  She ignored his question. “I can’t go on my own, and I don’t know how to program a droid to go in your place. And the Gifts certainly aren’t going to help! Please, Peter, you have to help me. We can’t do it without you.”

  “We?”

  “Everyone back on Earth,” she said. “We need your help, Peter.”

  The edge to her voice was not reassuring. It didn’t sound like her. “Cleo, I’m not sure—”

  “Why? What have you got to lose?” Her wheedling tone was hammering at his resistance. “It’s just a short trip there and back. It won’t take you longer than a couple of days—and once you’re back, you know I’ll let the others back on-line. You know that! There’d be no reason for me to keep holding them, would there? Once Earth knows, I can relax and go back to my normal work. Everything can go back to normal. Caryl will understand.”

  Like hell she will, he thought to himself. “But why now?” he pressed. “Wouldn’t it be better to wait until everyone agrees?”

  “But they might not, Peter. We have to do it now” The word was stressed almost with anger. “By the earliest means possible! Christ, listen to me for fuck’s sake!”

  “I am listening, Cleo. I’m just not sure yo
u’ve given me a good enough reason, that’s all.”

  She was silent for a second. When she returned, her voice had changed again. “Perhaps not, Peter. And perhaps you were just talking shit when you said you were going to repay me for all the things I’ve done for you.”

  His stomach sank. “Cleo,” he started feebly.

  “Maybe you were just telling me what I wanted to hear in order to ease your aching conscience,” she went on. “Is that it, Peter? Were you just feeding me lies?”

  He couldn’t tell if she meant what she was saying, or if it was simply part of her programming, forcing her to use whatever means possible to achieve her goals. For all he knew, it was nothing more than paranoid ramblings brought on by the conflict of her engram’s modifications. Even if he told her that how she was behaving was due to interference from UNESSPRO, she wouldn’t believe him, because as far as she was concerned, her actions were reasonable—even those actions that went against her true nature. She was in severe conflict with herself, and he was helpless to do anything for her.

  “You know that’s not true,” he said.

  “No? I thought I could rely on you, Peter. Obviously I was wrong.”

  “Cleo, try to understand—”

  “If you won’t do it for me, then at least do it for your precious fucking Lucia instead.” Her bitterness made him wince. “She’s the only one you’ve ever cared about, after all.”

  “Christ, Cleo, will you listen to yourself? Listen to what you’re saying. Lucia has got nothing to do with any of this!”

  “Don’t be so naive, Peter!” she said with some annoyance. “I’m giving you the chance to find out what happened to her!”

  “What?” He shook his head in confusion. “What the hell are you talking about now?”

  “You seem to obsess about her day and night. I’m surprised you hadn’t considered it sooner.”

  “Considered what?”

  “If you take the hole ship to Earth, Peter, what’s to stop you retracing her steps on the return trip? You could travel to all of the systems she was supposed to have visited. Who knows? Maybe she’s still alive, and maybe you can rescue her. You can be her knight in fucking armor come to save her from oblivion. Wouldn’t you like that, Peter? Wouldn’t you at least like to know what happened to her? Well, here’s your chance. I’m offering it to you on a plate. All you have to do is say yes.”

  He was momentarily speechless in the face of her emotional plea.

  “Go to Earth, Peter,” she concluded. “Deliver the message for me. I don’t care what you do after that.”

  He hated the manipulative, gleeful tone in her voice. Although he could understand her desperation to escape the trap that had closed around her, he hated the relish with which she dragged him down into it with her.

  “I’m the only one who can give it to you,” she said when he didn’t reply. “You know Caryl wouldn’t let you. So what do you say, Peter? Do we have a deal?”

  He nodded slowly, keeping his face carefully expressionless.

  “Good.” She sounded relieved but no less relaxed. “Right, I want you to get up and go to the hole ship. Take the droid; I’ve downloaded enough data into its memory to inform Earth of what’s happened here. I’ll keep things in order here until you get back, or you call me from Earth using the hole ship’s communicator. Once I know you’ve delivered the message, I’ll let everyone go. Then things can resume as before. Everything will be okay, Peter. Everything will be okay.”

  He got to his feet, fighting the impulse to question her plan. How would she know he’d actually been to Earth? What if no one was there to give him proof or even a reply? Would she be satisfied if he just went away somewhere for a while, then came back saying he’d been to Earth and delivered the message?

  Somehow he doubted it. Unless she was absolutely certain that Earth had been informed, there was no telling what she might do. If she snapped completely...

  He shied away from the thought and moved instead for the door to the dock. The picture of the sunset goaded him as he approached. Another person he was about to hurt; another trust shattered.

  He stopped and walked two doors to his left. “I have to get something first.”

  She hesitated before saying, “Okay, Peter. But don’t forget the droid.”

  He returned to pick up the stubby machine, tucking it under his arm. Then he opened the door and walked through, resolving to do what he had to.

  1.2.6

  While he waited for the Gifts to ready the gantry and the hole ship for him to board, he had plenty of time to think about Samson’s offer. She was silent, maybe busy bringing the Tipler more firmly under control so there was nothing to distract him. It was just him and his thoughts—and his original’s memories.

  The recurring flashback of Lucia was joined now with a new series of images: blue skies, trees, rivers, flowers in bloom beside a gravel path along which people walked in groups of three or four, some with children, all dressed in normal clothes, all breathing the air unassisted, none of them stopping to think about this wonderful, precious thing that they took completely for granted. Even after the environmental catastrophes of the 2030s and 2040s—violent storms, failed crops, elevated sea levels, the opening of the ozone hole in the Northern Hemisphere—humans had still been able to go on living as they had for tens of thousands of years.

  How he envied them. What he wouldn’t give for the opportunity to experience all of those simple things. Just to be able to look into a mirror and see something natural rather than the end result of a manufacturing chain. Not even his memories of Earth were his. Even though they felt like they were, he knew they weren’t. Not really. They were merely the shared memories of the real Peter Alander. To him and all of the other engram Alanders in the survey program, Earth was a far-off world that, despite the memory implants, was more an alien place to him than Adrasteia. It was a place he had never expected to see for a long time, if ever.

  But now he could. The chance lay before him like yet another gift. But this one was not so much being offered to him as dangled before him. Like the carrot to the donkey, he thought. But he was going to have to do a lot of errands before he even got to taste that carrot, he was sure. As with the gifts, he had no real control of it. Or so Samson believed, anyway.

  Before going to the dock he had made a detour to the Surgery. There he had confronted the human-shaped device made of water that Kingsley Oborn had christened the Immortality Suit.

  “Will this thing insulate me against a hostile environment?”

  “It’s designed to heal and to protect,” replied the Gifts.

  He had stuck his arm into the suit then and let it crawl over him. As with the first time he had tried it, the sensation of the cold fluidlike substance against his skin was an extremely disturbing one. He cringed as he felt it slide into his armpits, his nostrils, and every other nook and cranny of his body with equal impunity. But the discomfort only lasted a few moments; after that, he hardly even noticed it was there.

  “Does it need a power supply?” As before, his ability to speak had not in any way been hindered.

  “You are its power supply, Peter.” The Gifts spoke as if amazed at his ignorance of this fact.

  He suppressed a small shudder and went from the Surgery to the Hub, and from there to the Dock. The suit moved with him like a second skin.

  As he stepped off the gantry and into the hole ship’s cockpit, another thought struck him. Yes, it would be easy to go after Lucia. The Gifts assured him that Arachne could make numerous jumps between Upsilon Aquarius and Sol. But—assuming he did find her, and that she was still alive—would she recognize him as he was? Would she still respect him or even want him? He wasn’t the same Peter Alander he had been back in entrainment—not by any stretch of the imagination.

  “We’re the Viking widows,” she had said, “waving off our husbands to be swallowed by the sea. Except they’re not our husbands—or wives or friends or anyone for that matter. They�
��re us.”

  His original had surrendered this copy of him to the widow maker, and it had swallowed him whole. Now there was something else in his place: a changeling, an imposter who didn’t really know what he was. How could she still want that?

  His melancholy thoughts occupied him as the hole ship spun down, absorbing the cockpit. Before contact with the Tipler was lost, Samson sent a brief flash of herself via conSense. Clearly she had managed to restore some of the systems; otherwise she would have had no interface between herself and the raw data pouring in through the ship’s sensors. He didn’t know if that made his job easier or harder.

  Her image appeared faded and dull before his eyes, like a bad copy. She looked exactly as he remembered her from entrainment: wearing a simple gray coverall with her blond hair tied back in a rough bun. He wondered if that was the image her original had given her for when she thought of herself: Cleo Samson, relaxed and natural, yet still a professional-looking woman, able to do anything she wanted. He had no such self-image; all he saw was a vague impression of a square jaw, recessed eyes, and round, hairless forehead. But that was the face of his new body, only vaguely like the one he had once had.

  “Say hi to my original from me,” she said. ‘Tell her... Tell her I think it was worth it.” She smiled. “Good luck, Peter.”

  “Thanks,” he said, but the signal had already died and her image had flickered out. “I’ll need it.”

  He couldn’t help but wonder what had been worth it for her. Was she talking about taking over the Tipler, coming on the mission, maintaining her friendship with him, or perhaps something more personal that only her original would know? He was glad he hadn’t had the chance to reply, though, because he was sure that had he said anything, something about his response would have revealed his intentions. As it was, he was already feeling guilty enough for what he was about to do.