by H. A. Swain
Dr. Fornax draws in a deep breath as if she’s trying to stay calm, then she says, “I’m not going to argue the finer points of utilitarian philosophy and ethical design with you. Right now, we have to stay focused on the problem at hand. I’m not convinced that using the ExploroBots would work.”
Micra flinches as Fornax shoots down her idea.
“As I see it,” Fornax continues, “the only way to keep Zaniah Nashira off MUSC is by stopping the Res Extensa from docking, and the only way to do that is to override the system and manually control the robotic landing arm. Which is exactly what you’re going to do, Uma.”
“Oh, no. I can’t do that.” Uma backs away.
“Gemini could do it,” Kepler says. “He’s the best one in our cohort at remote control.”
“That’s true,” says Micra.
“But he’s at TourEsa with you, isn’t he?” Dr. Fornax asks.
Kepler nods, and Fornax shakes her head.
“By the time he takes a Moon rover back to the MUSC elevator on the surface, the Res Extensa will have docked.”
“Could you patch him in from the surface to control the robotic landing arm?” Micra suggests.
“It’s worth a try,” says Dr. Fornax. “The loading arm is going to be tricky to override, though. We purposely designed it so that even if everyone on board is compromised, one of our ships can land. Just to be safe, I’m docking all ExploroBots out of the way and initiating station lockdown now.”
“Lockdown?” Uma asks. “But my mom is on her way up from the surface.”
“She’ll have to wait,” says Dr. Fornax. “Nobody comes or goes until the Res Extensa is safely out of our orbit. And that’s an order I expect you to follow, Uma.”
* * *
While Kepler goes off to find Gemini and Randazza checks on the children, Uma takes me to her domicile to rest. I’m so exhausted that I can barely walk, and I’m wheezing worse than a Yoobie pug on a smoggy day.
Her place is tiny—just a common area with a few seats surrounding a constant family photo stream, a kitchen as stark and utilitarian as a lab, her mom’s room with its bare-bones bed and dresser, and Uma’s personal space, which is a little shrine to Earth.
“So this is where you grew up?” I take the PEP gun off my shoulder and lay it on her desk as I watch images of plants and animals rotate across her wall under a blue-sky ceiling with images of clouds. “Was that your dog?” I point to the pix of a pointy-eared brown pup.
“Yes, that’s Mahati.” Uma melts a bit. “Wasn’t he adorable? You can see why I was so excited to meet Quasar.”
“Oh, Quasar!” I slump down on the floor, too exhausted to climb up into her sleeping berth. “Do you think my pup is okay?” Now I wish I’d grabbed the little toy dog to hug.
“Yes,” says Uma. She runs her hand over my clammy forehead and bristly hair. “Your mom is taking great care of him in Calliope. Castor’s probably with them by now, too.”
“I miss my family so much it hurts,” I say, but I’m too tired to cry.
Uma grabs two pillows and a blanket off her bed and covers me up on the floor.
“Is that your mom?” I point to a pix of a woman scanning across her wall. She is tall and broad shouldered, with Uma’s wide smile.
“Yes, her name is Persis,” says Uma with a sad smile.
“She’s pretty. Like you,” I say as my head sinks into the pillow. “I’m sorry Fornax locked her out.”
Tears quiver on the rims of Uma’s eyes.
“Why don’t you override the lockdown?” I suggest. “Let your mother in.”
“If I can reach her before the Res Extensa gets here, I will,” Uma says. “But, otherwise, Dr. Fornax is right. The station needs to be on lockdown until we know D’Cart is nowhere near us. I left my mom a message letting her know what’s going on and I’ll see her when this is over. But, gad, I just … I just want to … I don’t know. Hug her! You know?”
“Of course you do; you’re human,” I say, then add, “After being up here, that saying takes on new meaning, doesn’t it?”
Uma looks at me quizzically and presses her cool hands against my hot forehead. “Your fever is spiking again.”
“Growing up here must have been really odd,” I say, getting woozy with exhaustion. “Moonlings are…” I try to put my finger on it. “I don’t know. It’s like, I’m sure Kepler is a great guy and he seems to care about you a lot, but he didn’t seem all that upset when you told him that his mom was unconscious.” I close my eyes for a moment, then open them again, trying to focus on Uma’s face above me.
She sits beside me and hugs her knees to her chest. “MUSCies don’t show much emotion. They consider it weak to be vulnerable. And they aren’t as close to their parents as Earthlings are. Everyone here is born ex utero. Sperm and eggs are matched in a lab to optimize natural selection and avoid inbreeding, then all the kids are raised communally in the nurseries while their parents work. And families don’t necessarily stay together. Here, people just sort of love who they want when they want, which isn’t a bad thing unless you lose the people you love most. Even if they live together as a family unit, they don’t see each other all that often. Except for my family. We were different, until Dad died. So … I don’t know. Maybe they don’t get as attached to their families as we do.”
As she says this, I get teary thinking about my mom. “I have to find a way to let my mom know…”
“We will!” Uma assures me. “I promise. As soon as this mess is over.”
“I’m so sleepy.” I snuggle down in the blanket, which smells wonderfully of Uma. “I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.”
“Just rest,” says Uma. She leans down and kisses me on the forehead. “I’m going to check on the pathogen samples. I’ll come back for you in a while.”
“What if…” I try to say but my mouth won’t work right. No what ifs echoes through my brain as I’m pulled down into the blackness of exhaustion.
UMA JEMISON
MOON UTILITARIAN SURVIVAL COLONY
I RUN INTO our domicile and dive down on my bedroom floor. Everything is going wrong!
“Talitha, wake up!” I shout, then shake her heavy body. “Wake up! Wake up! Please wake up.” She rolls back and forth but stays limp beneath the blanket. “No, no, no.” I grab her shoulders. “I should have never left you alone! Please don’t be unconscious.” I pull her up. Her arms flop; her head lolls to the side. “I need your help!” I look around my room for something to rouse her. “I can’t do this alone!”
I hear those words leave my mouth with a pathetic little sob, and I stop. “Come on, Uma!” I chastise myself as I hold Talitha close. “Pull it together.”
Gently, I lay Talitha back down on the floor, and I take a breath, resolving to be stronger. “Divide the problem into parts,” I say aloud, as if I’m coaching myself. “That’s how you do it in a lab. Then solve each part of the problem in order. Problem one…” I swallow hard and try to break down everything that’s going wrong, but all I can do is cry, because the truth is, I have no idea what to do.
“How can I be such a loser?” I yell at myself.
“You’re not a loser.”
I look down and see Talitha peering up at me. I dive toward her again. “You’re awake!”
“Oh, my…” she groans. “I passed out so hard!”
“Thank gad,” I sputter. “For a minute, I thought…”
Her eyes flutter as she works to keep them open. “I could hear you calling me, but I just couldn’t wake up!” She yawns long and loud, then draws in an enormous breath and lets go the loudest sneeze I’ve ever heard. Something silver flies from her nose and skitters across the floor.
We look at each other.
“What the hell?” she says.
I crawl over and pick it up. “It’s a little disk.”
“That is so creepy!” Talitha says.
“Yes, it’s very disturbing.” I shove it into my pocket. “But we don’t have time
to think about that.”
“Why? What’s going on? How long was I out?”
“A couple of hours.” I take her hands and pull her to a sit. She looks better now. Her color is back, and her nose isn’t running as much. Her skin is cool to the touch. “Can you stand up? Can you walk?”
“Yeah,” she says, still shaking off her nap.
I help her up, making sure she’s steady on her feet before I fill her in. “Kep found Gemini, but for some reason, they can’t patch him in remotely or disable the robotic loading arm, and D’Cart is getting closer. She’ll be here any minute and I haven’t been able to reach my mother … and…”
Talitha shakes herself fully awake. “What are we going to do?”
“We have to get to the loading bay to stop the Res Extensa from landing!” I tug her out of my room. She stops in the common area, then runs back and grabs the PEP gun, which she throws in the rear of Randazza’s delivery vehicle that’s waiting in the hall.
“We tried,” I tell Talitha as I drive like a maniac, squealing around corners and speeding through the corridors as fast as I can, avoiding the bodies dotted along the walls.
“Over and over. Micra and Fornax and Kepler and Gemini, everybody did everything they could to patch into the system and gain control of the robotic landing arm, but it just won’t work. And nobody, not even Darshan with his blanket override, can disable it without shutting down the entire station and stopping rotation, which would wreak all kinds of havoc because gravity would be gone. Which means the Res Extensa is going to dock, and once it docks, the doors will open and D’Cart will come inside.”
I take a corner too fast, and the delivery vehicle leans precariously onto two wheels. “Whoa! Whoa!” we both yell. Talitha grabs the steering wheel and rights us again.
“If she gets inside, we’ll ambush her. Take her out!” Talitha says.
“She has Mundie and Aurelia under her control,” I argue as I take a ramp up onto an AutoWalk and speed forward. “We’re no match for them.”
“So what are we going to do?” Talitha asks.
“They want us to use ExploroBots.”
She gasps. “But Fornax said that wouldn’t work.”
“Without control of the landing arm, it’s the only option we have left,” I tell her as I exit the AutoWalk and careen around one more corner to the docking area.
“No,” says Talitha, shrinking back. “You can’t let them—”
“Not them.” I screech to a stop in front of the red armored truck still flashing its lights over the bodies of the guards strewn across the corridor. “You. You have to do it.”
“Me?” she pulls away.
“I saw how well you drove those AutoPods on Earth. How you caught the fish with one swipe of the net. You have excellent control and hand-eye coordination. And you didn’t flinch when we landed and you looked out at the stars whizzing by. I get sick immediately, too dizzy to focus and concentrate if I look outside the station. I can do a lot of things, Talitha, but I cannot do this.”
Talitha searches my face. “I can’t either,” she whispers.
“If you don’t…” I start to say, but can’t finish.
Then I hear my name. From inside the secondary loading bay, Dr. Fornax calls.
Talitha and I run inside, where Randazza and I have set up several holos. Dr. Fornax, Micra, Kepler, and Gemini are each projected in the tiny space, but Randazza is no longer there.
“Finally!” Micra says when we run inside. “I thought you’d never get back.”
“Micra, shut up,” Kepler says. “You’re doing fine, Uma,” he calls to me. “Talitha, you all right?”
“Who’s that? An Earthling?” Gemini sneers. “Can she be trusted?”
“Both of you, shut it!” Kepler elbows Gemini away. His holo trips out of the frame. “Don’t pay attention to them,” he tells us. “You’re going to do great.”
A large holo against the back wall of the loading bay projects the progress of the Res Extensa from a stationary camera fixed to the nonrotating elevator shaft leading to our station. The ship is even closer than I thought. I take the mesh hood that will connect Talitha to the ExploroBots and shove it onto her head. “Does it fit? Can you see? Is the Lenz in the right place?”
“Yes, it’s okay, but…” Her voice shakes as badly as her hands. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“Okay.” I take a deep breath, shutting out the noise of the others all talking at once and try to calm myself. “Look out the window. I can’t do it with you or I’ll get sick, but Gemini is watching on a screen from the surface, and he’ll walk you through the process. I’ll watch from the stationary camera image back here.”
I keep my head turned away while Talitha steps up to the window behind me and gazes out.
“Look to your left,” Gemini tells her. “Do you see the Shuttle docked beside you?”
“Yes,” says Talitha. “Is that the one we came on?”
“That’s right,” says Gemini. “You’re in the loading bay next to it. Just below where you’re standing is the secondary robotic landing arm where the Res Extensa is going to dock. See it?”
“Yes,” she says. “I see it.”
From the holo projection on the back wall, I glimpse the arm, reaching out as if in slow motion, under water, unfurling from the station with the grace of a dancer about to catch her partner.
“Okay, get ready,” Gemini says. “The Res Extensa is going to pass by.”
Talitha gasps. “I see it. It’s so close. There it goes!”
“Right,” says Gemini. “Remember, you’re spinning because you’re on the station. The Res Extensa is orbiting you while spiraling down toward the landing arm. It’ll make five passes, then on the sixth one, the loading arm will be in position to grab it. Now, look up. Do you see the row of ExploroBots tethered to the station?”
“Yes,” she whispers. “I see them.”
“You’re connected to their CPUs through the mesh hood on your head. They’re connected together so they’ll move as one,” he explains. “All you have to do is put enough of them in position so the Res Extensa plows into them and gets knocked off course just enough that the landing arm won’t reach it.”
“No,” says Talitha. “The ExploroBots will be obliterated if I do that!”
“Yes, but the station and everyone on it will be saved,” Dr. Fornax says impatiently.
“But you said yourself it might not work,” Talitha says to Fornax. “That ship is going fast. It might just plow right through them without consequence. There has to be another way.”
“If you’re so smart, what is it, then?” says Micra impatiently.
“I don’t know,” says Talitha.
“But we better figure it out because here it comes again!” says Gemini. We all watch the small white capsule pass by, closer to the station than it was the last time.
“What if I position the ExploroBots to grab on to those black rectangular wings on the back of the ship and push it off course so the landing arm can’t reach it?”
“The solar panels attached to the tank?” Fornax asks.
“Yes,” says Talitha.
“That’s a great idea!” I yell.
“It’s too risky,” Dr. Fornax says.
“Yeah, if you miss—” says Micra.
“But what if I get it?” Talitha asks. “What happens to the Res Extensa then?”
“Exactly what you said,” Kepler replies. “It’ll be knocked off course and won’t be able to land.”
“And then what?” Talitha asks.
“Most likely, eventually, it’ll fall back to Earth and burn up on reentry,” Dr. Fornax says with far too much satisfaction.
“With Aurelia inside,” Talitha says sadly. She turns to me. “She’s like my second mother…”
I sigh. “I know.”
“She’s AI,” Dr. Fornax says. “She won’t feel pain or fear.”
“But ExploroBots might,” Talitha insists. She t
urns back to the window. “What will happen to the ExploroBots if they push the ship off course?”
“Nothing if they let go in time,” says Kepler. “As long as they let go, they should stay tethered to the station and be fine.”
“Here it comes again!” Gemini says.
“You have to do this now! Move the ExploroBots into position!” Dr. Fornax barks. “Or everyone at MUSC, including the two of you, will die.”
Talitha ignores Fornax. I press my back against Talitha’s. Over my shoulder, I whisper into her ear, “You don’t have to do this. It’s okay.”
“No,” says Talitha. She reaches down and finds my hand beside her leg. We weave our fingers together. “I’ll do it, but I’ll do it my way. Gemini, tell me how to work the ExploroBot connection.”
“All you have to do is think through step by step how you want them to move,” Gemini tells her.
“Oh, is that all?” Talitha says.
“The more specific you can be, the better they’ll respond,” I say.
“How do I make them move when there’s no gravity?”
A fleeting memory of floating with Kepler the night before I left drifts through my mind. “It’s like swimming,” I tell her. “Imagine kicking your legs and moving your arms as if you’re in water.”
Everyone is quiet again as Talitha connects her mind to the ExploroBots’ bodies. With my back against hers, I can feel her stand tall and drain the tension from her muscles as her shoulders drop and her sternum lifts. She swallows hard, then takes a clean, even breath. After a few seconds, she says, “It’s working! They’re moving.”
Kepler, Micra, and I erupt in a cheer, but Dr. Fornax shushes us.
“You have to think ahead and move to where the rocket is going to be on the next pass, not where it is now,” says Gemini.
“Just like when you caught the fish,” I say.
“I understand,” says Talitha. I glance over my shoulder at her. She shifts her left shoulder and swoops a bit. “There we go,” she says. “I’m getting it now.”
“Here it comes again,” says Gemini. “That’s pass four. It’s getting closer!”
I catch sight of the stars spinning outside the window and have to look away as my stomach lurches. My whole body tenses when I turn back to the holo and see the Res Extensa getting closer and closer as it circles the station. From the stationary camera following its path, I can see it clearly as it passes. It’s a small conical ship with a large window taking up the front and six smaller, round windows dotting the perimeter of the crew module. Protruding from the tank in the back, two long solar panels, like rectangular black wings, rotate to position the ship in place for the robotic arm to capture it. As it looms nearer, I can make out the shapes of D’Cart and Aurelia through the front window.
