Star Binder

by Robert Appleton

  “Ah, but that’s not what Jiminy said.” Sergei closes his eyes to concentrate on the exact words. “He said those like him will not let her go free. That’s not helping. That’s hostile. It means they’re holding her prisoner.”

  Lohengrin scratches an itch somewhere on his scalpture. “True, but there may have been issues with the translation. We don’t know the precise condition of Ingol. Maybe what Jiminy thinks of as imprisonment is something else altogether. Or maybe he’s right, but there’s more to it than that.”

  “Like what?” queries Lys.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “But you’ve had an idea,” I point out. “I can tell. You usually tiptoe round a point just before you make a big one of your own.”

  The prince smiles, arches an eyebrow. “And you always ask a rhetorical question while you’re formulating a breakthrough. So we know each other well.”

  “Do I?” I ask the group.

  They all answer at once: “Yes.”

  “And we’re waiting for it,” adds Rachel. “Any time now, Mr. Trillion.”

  “Sorry to disappoint, Ms. Foggerty. Maybe Mr. Lohengrin can enlighten us.” I motion to said prince. “Mr. Lohengrin, you have the floor.”

  “You’ll all be on the floor if you don’t stop this mister and missus crap.” A word of advice from the distinguished Mr. Balakirev.

  The girls share a whispered joke at Sergei’s expense. Noting his none-too-pleased reaction—that old scowly face-scrunch of his—Lys quickly changes the subject. “So, we were saying, about Ingol being a prisoner...”

  Lohengrin picks up the thread. “Okay, here’s what I’ve been thinking, ever since we saw that city rise and fall like that. Something so complicated, so massive, to build it up and then knock it down minutes later? What’s the purpose? What’s the point?”

  “What’s your point?” asks Lys.

  “Call me crazy, but all the clues so far: the rover accident, those random simulations sprouting up, how they change, how long they last, the gaps in them, and Jiminy’s use of the word ‘stimulus’: is it just me or does it seem like those are dream patterns?”

  “Dreams?” I hitch a ride on his logic. “You mean my mum’s dreams?”

  He chews his bottom lip, gives a slow nod.

  “But that’s brilliant,” says Rachel, those big blue-grey eyes of hers never wider. “That makes total sense.”

  Sergei and Lys look at each other. “It does?” She tugs Rachel’s arm. “I think you guys might have to share some of that stimulus. Who’s dreaming what?”

  Lohengrin explains: “Remember I asked your dad if there were any gaps in the simulations? Any periods of inactivity? Well, I was testing the theory that it was all centred on the dream cycle. You know, the REM sleep cycle.”

  Lys gives her best I must have dozed off during that class shrug.

  “Rapid eye movement sleep,” Lohengrin says, “is when you get random movement of the eyes during the most vivid dreams. It’s the part of the sleep cycle when your brain is at its most active.”

  “And what he’s saying is these things, these super-nanobug whatsists, have somehow plugged into Ingol’s dream cycle,” says Rachel. “That’s their stimulus. They’re replicating her dream experiences out in the real world. Re-enacting them. Maybe they’re keeping her unconscious so they can carry on doing it.”

  “But why?” asks Sergei.

  “Stimulus,” I cut in. “It stimulates them on a world where there’s nothing else going on. Maybe it’s as simple as that. They’ve been stuck here for so long without their master, with nothing to do, finding a living being who has complicated dreams and emotions like this, it’s the ultimate buzz, right? A total nanobug high. That’s why they’re holding her under, so she’ll keep dreaming and they can keep feeding off her dream experiences.”

  “So they’re addicted to her dreams?” says Sergei.

  Lohengrin clicks his fingers in agreement. “They’re terrified of going near the Binder after what happened to their master—that skeleton we found. So they’re stuck here. They’ll continue feeding off Ingol’s stimulus as long as they can keep her alive. It’s years since the rover accident, and they’ve somehow managed to keep her alive and unconscious all this time.”

  “Programmable matter—they can do anything they want, assume any form,” Rachel points out. “A cryo capsule, or a stasis chamber, like the ones we brought: they could become any shape or any device they wanted to keep her alive. It’s all a matter of rearranging atoms, right? To achieve their goal. If they figured out her anatomy, they might even have fixed her injuries.”

  “I’d say that’s very close to what happened.” Lohengrin’s now fingering his hair contours like crazy. He may have solved the mystery of what we’re dealing with, but we’re still nowhere near a solution.

  “I’ll buy everything you guys are saying.” Lys shifts position to rest her sore knees. “But aren’t we forgetting Jiminy’s part in all this?”

  Sergei forms a gun out of his forefinger and thumb, points it sideways at Lys. “Yeah, that’s gotta be it. A way in.”

  “Go on,” Lohengrin eggs him on.

  The big guy thinks hard, still unconsciously wagging his finger gun at Lys. She mimics him. He sees her, flips her off. She mimics that with relish.

  “Okay, I got nothing,” he says. “I just thought...how Jiminy got out of there, because he didn’t agree with what those like him were doing. And it wasn’t just him. There are others like him, other rebels. I was wondering...what made them defect like that?”

  “They realised it was wrong to hold someone against her will?” replies Lys.

  “Yeah, but how did they come to realise that?” asks Sergei. “What changed their minds? And I guess what I’m really saying is: how can we convince the other nanobugs that what they’re doing is wrong? If a few of them can learn, what’s stopping the others?”

  “All good questions,” says Lohengrin. “You might be onto something there.”

  I golf-clap Sergei. He taps his head in reply, as if to say, Minsk Machine not so dumb after all.

  Well, I’ve known that all along, but I’d never tell him so.

  “I guess we’ve circled back to Rachel’s original question,” I point out. “How do we communicate with them? ’Cause I think that’s our only shot.” I want to add at freeing Mum, but I’m trying hard to keep emotions out of this. Whenever I say that word out loud—Mum—a thousand buried feelings shiver and scratch at a fake floor somewhere deep in my memory. One I must have put down at some point, to hide the pain of being abandoned. I know her, but I can’t remember her. This isn’t the time to try, either. Right now I need to focus. That’s the only way I can help her.

  “I wish Jiminy hadn’t upped and left like that,” says Lys. “He’s the key to all this. And he’s dragged us all this way...” She shrugs. “Maybe we should try to summon him back.”

  Lohengrin tilts his head. “You mean using the Binder? UHF?”

  “Uh-huh. Get his bug-ass back here, make him explain how he escaped and why. And why he couldn’t convince the rest of them to let Ingol go. Without knowing those things, we’re just guessing, right?”

  “Right,” says Sergei.

  The rest of us agree.

  A crackly voice bursts to life from the digitab showing the canyon’s live feed. It’s Hendron. “Good job, guys. Mr. Thorpe-Campbell and I heard every word, and you haven’t let us down. We’re going to try to contact Jiminy ASAP.”

  “Wait—what? You were listening in this whole time?” Lys’s frown spreads to every face in the tent, mine included. This whole rats-in-a-maze thing is getting old fast. We’re not supposed to be buggos anymore.

  “Of course we listened in,” says the O’see. “You’re our star unit. And with adults around, you’d only hold back. This way we knew you’d fire on all cylinders. And we were right. Nice work.”

  “Our pleasure.” Lys’s words drip with sarcasm. “But next time, you’re gonna be sorry y
ou listened in. Fascists.”

  Her dad snaps, “Watch your mouth, young lady.”

  “Oh, you mean this mouth that’s saying...” And she mimes a few words I won’t repeat.

  “Sit tight, guys,” Hendron tells us. “I think we’ve just found the other pod. Its signal’s weak, but it’s within driving distance. Jim and Sergei, Mr. Thorpe-Campbell wants you to check it out with him. The rest of you, don’t go anywhere. I’ll come and wait with you for Jiminy’s return. That’s all.”

  Less than ten minutes’ travel in the rover, roughly south-west from the Binder portal, brings us to the old pod my mum called home for months during her journey into the (then) unknown. It’s half-buried in the sea of shells, its nose ablator sticking out at a shallow angle. The rear airlock hatch is still open, facing downward. It’s a bitch to climb into because, well, any climbing is a bitch in this gravity. We end up having to park right under the opening, so we can stand on the rover’s frame to reach the hatchway.

  Inside the pod is a lot more spacious than ours. It has a cargo section between the airlock and the main cabin. Flat-pack materials for building shelters, greenhouses, furniture, condensers, solar stills, and other long-term survival essentials are all still shrink-wrapped, unopened. Food for years, seeds of every kind, gallons and gallons of drinking water. This was a colony that never got started.

  I kneel beside a sleeping berth marked TRILLION, M. It’s a little less tidy than the others. A torn, dusty spacesuit with her name on it hangs over the foot of the bed. Magnoed to the bulkhead by her pillow are two liquigraph images. There’s nothing to power them, so the images no longer move, but I can clearly make out the original stills. One shows her and Dad on their wedding day. Mid-kiss, they’re both looking sideways at the camera.

  I wonder who took this photo. Is that person still alive somewhere? Did I get to meet him or her when I was little? Who else was at the ceremony?

  The second image is of Nessie and I sat either side of Dad on a picnic bench at some kind of zoo. There’s a brown bear enclosure with a small lake behind us. Several large dragonflies are flying past, close to the lens, at the moment the shot is taken. They’re a bit blurry, but because they’re near the top of the frame they don’t spoil the shot. In fact, the way the sunlight catches their wings is kind of pretty. Nessie can’t be more than eighteen months old, which makes me around three-ish. I remember nothing about that day, but I’d do anything to be able to go back, if only to watch the photo being taken. The three of us are having a blast. Whoever’s behind the camera—presumably Mum—is goofing around, making us laugh our heads off. It makes me smile just to imagine it.

  What was she doing at that precise moment? What was she saying to us? That there’s even a chance I can maybe still find that out leaves me shaking with excitement and dread as I perch on the edge of her untidy bed.

  God, please let her make it through this. I feel like I don’t know her, and I really want to. I have to. God, I’ll give anything if you help me save her. Please, please, let me bring her back alive.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Jim,” says Thorpe-Campbell, standing with Sergei at the door to the cargo hold, “but you might want to look at this. I think we’ve figured out where the name Ingol comes from.”

  He shows me a locker full of pristine spacesuits. “Your mother’s primary suit is damaged, right? I noticed it over there over her bed.”

  “Yeah, she must have gone out wearing a spare. One of these.”

  “There are five secondary suits in here,” he says. “But they're lightweight, more for emergencies than long-term use. Five spares, one for each pod member. No name tags. So she can’t have taken one of these.”

  “Then whose did she—”

  “Unfortunately, we found the last pod member back there. She’s dead. In the cryo chamber. She must have died before the others ventured out in the rover. I don’t know how. Not yet.”

  “She? You said she?”

  “Don’t worry. It’s not her, Jim. It’s not Marina. This lady’s name was Rheingold. Sheila Rheingold. I knew her vaguely. Her granddad was one of the early Alpha colonists. I forget his first name. But the point is: if all the other suits are accounted for, then your mum had to have been wearing Rheingold’s suit when the rover crashed. It would have been a much more robust suit.”

  “Okay, I get that.”

  “So the name tag must have been torn in the rover crash. Or partly covered with dirt.” Sergei acknowledges my blank expression by holding up his forefingers, drawing them partway together. “It’s just a word inside a name, Jim. Abbreviated. In Rheingold you find I-N-G-O-L.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Brinkmanship

  When we return to camp the others are in the middle of a lively discussion about what Jiminy really meant by stimulus. It’s another riddle. And here’s the crux: if I’m the key to Mum’s release, the only one who can make direct contact with her—Jiminy’s own words, not ours—then what sort of contact will it have to be? If she’s unconscious, how can I possibly communicate with her?

  And even before that, as Rachel points out, “How do we get Jim safely through the nanobugs?”

  The consensus is we have no choice but to wait for Jiminy’s return. He’s left us high and dry, bugging out on us like that. Then I remind myself of the guts it must have taken for him (and others like him) to split from his kind and brave that thing they were all so frightened of—the Binder—in order to find help. INGOL FREED US FROM OTHERS LIKE US SO WE COULD FREE INGOL

  Of all the ambiguous messages he sent us that one has to be the most cryptic. If Mum’s unconscious, how are they communicating with her? How did she convince them that she should be freed?

  “Maybe she’s awake inside her dreams.” I speak the thought out loud. They all stop talking and look at me—something I should be used to by now but probably never will be. I’ve spent too long living under the radar to ever get used to being the centre of attention.

  The O’see laces her fingers, taps her thumbs together. “Lucid dreaming.”

  “Yeah. Sergei and I used to see those salons where you could pay for it by the hour. Destiny Now was the big franchise, but there were lots of others. We never tried it, but we asked someone about it once. Apparently they take you to a quiet room, put you under, give you some kind of injection to wake you inside your dream, then you can do whatever you want for the time you’ve paid for—go anywhere, be anyone. The woman we asked said she liked to swing through the jungle with Tarzan, go swimming with him, fly over waterfalls and stuff. There are no limits to what you can do.”

  “Why didn't you try it?” asks Hendron.

  “We heard it can scramble your brain.”

  “Only if you overdose on the sedative. The actual dreaming is perfectly harmless,” she explains. “You experienced it quite often in your quarters. Is that right?”

  “In the Hex, yeah. Only for a few seconds at the end of a dream.” I briefly describe the recurring dream again “When it was was over, I’d sit up in bed, catching my breath. But every time it happened, for a split-second, I saw the dragonfly hovering over me just before I sat up. Like right there...” I hold a flat palm about a foot away from my face.

  “Then Jiminy was trying to guide your dream. He was trying to communicate with you that way,” she concludes. “But the thing about lucid dreaming is that it’s extremely hard to keep up without the right technique or without chemical inducement. It’s actually a part of our training. From the second year on, you’ll be taught how to induce it at will, and how to use it to improve your well-being. It has some pretty amazing practical applications. A third of our lives are spent asleep. Our motto is: why waste it? Now, some people do experience lucid dreaming on their own, usually after hearing about it for the first time, but for it to keep recurring like that, like you said, Jim—there had to be something else in play. It sounds as if Jiminy was triggering your lucid dream state, but couldn’t figure out how to make it last, how to communicate with you.
So he had to bring you here in person, through the Binder. When that didn't work, because of the oxygen problem, there was nothing more he could do. Until we solved the problem for him by bringing you along inside the ship. That was his first chance to communicate with you properly, using the Binder to translate.”

  “Makes sense,” Thorpe-Campbell replies. “But how can we use any of that to reach Marina—I mean Ingol?” He plucks up the digitab showing the canyon’s live feed, fiddles with the visual controls. “I mean, lucid dreaming’s fascinating and all that, but how does it help us free her? Damn this thing.” He taps the screen, then shakes the whole device. “Beth, I think the camera’s crapped out. We’ve lost our...wow!”

  “We’ve lost our what?” She holds out her hand to take the digi. He slowly turns the screen toward her instead, his mouth frozen on that last syllable he uttered. We all see the image as clear as day. I’m about to ask what’s got him so worried when it hits me. The image on the screen is our camp. One of the omnicams we left in the crater is now pointing at us, from somewhere close by.

  Someone, or something, is here.

  “You five stay put,” Thorpe-Campbell tells us as he and the O'see slip into their pressure suits. They each pluck a firearm from the gun rack on their way out of the airlock. The door magnoes shut behind them. But we continue watching them on the monitor, via the camera's live feed. It's downright creepy, spying on our own camp from someone else's point of view. Even more unsettling is the sight of our two teachers aiming their weapons directly at us—at whoever's holding the camera, that is. Their aims rove away in either direction, then they converge again on the camera.

  “Balls to this.” Sergei dashes for the airlock door. He's inside before we can stop him, and now we have to wait until he's suited up, armed, and out of the tent before we can follow him. We all do, of course. We're in this together, the five of us. No way we'd let him risk his life while we sit by and fret in safety.