I looked over at Marvin. “Jeez, this crap is universal.”
“Yep,” he replied. “Politics is, apparently, politics, through the whole universe.”
Bill – January 2165 – Epsilon Eridani
[Incoming SCUT Communication from Alpha Centauri]
“Cool!” I put down the file I’d been working on. “Calvin or Goku?”
[Bart]
I raised an eyebrow at Guppy. And got exactly the same reaction as always.
I sighed and grabbed the connection. “Bill here.”
“Hey, Bill, this is Bart. I’m from Calvin’s first cohort. Wow, this is really—”
I popped into Bart’s VR. It was a little rude, doing that without an invitation, but I always got a kick out of the surprised look on my face.
I liked Bart’s VR right away. He’d set up a rustic log cabin, with a cast iron wood-burning stove, a fireplace, heavy hand-made furniture, and lots of rugs and blankets. It reminded me of a place my father used to take us for vacations when I was a child.
Bart was sitting in the big old rocking chair in which dad used to spend most of his time relaxing. He had the look. I mentally added another notch to my SCUT cabinet.
“Holy—”
I laughed at his boggled expression. “Welcome to BobNet. Instant communications up to about 25 light-years. So, Bart, what happened to Calvin and Goku?”
Bart took a moment to examine the VR quality before answering. They all did that.
“The guys reconnoitered Alpha Centauri A and B exactly as set out in the mission profile. They found a Brazilian factory in full swing in A, and the wreckage of a USE probe and autofactory in B. I guess we can consider the USE probe accounted for.” Bart did a half-shrug. “They executed a sneak attack on the Brazilian installation—the modifications for the version-3 Heavens are really effective, by the way—and wiped it out.”
“Excellent. Any colonizable planets?”
“No.” Bart shook his head slowly. “The system is great for resources and such, but nothing livable. And not completely excellent, by the way. One of the Brazilian probes got away, although we don’t think it was completed yet. So it may be unarmed, and it may not have the autofactory equipment loaded in.”
“Mmm.” I thought for a second. “Not great news. Medeiros may try to highjack someone else’s installation. Or maybe skulk around for a while and then raid you guys.”
“We’ve set up early warning systems, not to worry. And we scanned the system pretty thoroughly. I think he’ll head elsewhere.”
I shrugged. It wasn’t worth dwelling on. We couldn’t track him at this point, so we’d just have to wait until he showed up somewhere else.
“Anyway,” Bart continued, “Calvin and Goku set up a Bob factory, then left as soon as one of us was ready to take over. I built the SCUT when I received your transmission, and that brings us up to date.”
I accepted the folder that Bart pushed toward me and took a moment to scan it. Nothing earth-shattering. I was impressed, and a little smug, at how well the version-3 improvements had worked. Medeiros would have to significantly up his game if he wanted to compete now.
“I’m glad to see a Bob factory in operation,” I said. “I’ve been a little remiss in that department since I sent out the last group. I can feel less guilty now.”
Bart smiled in return. We spent a few minutes getting caught up, and Bart promised to pop by occasionally for a game of Scrub baseball. With Bart and the two other Bobs currently being completed, we finally had enough to fill the positions all the way to the outfield.
Milo – August 2165 – 82 Eridani
I decelerated smoothly into the 82 Eridani system. According to all the astronomical info, this was a very good candidate for a habitable planet. The star, a G5V class, was smaller and less luminous than Sol, but still well within the characteristics of yellow suns that human beings would prefer.
I didn’t want to get cocky, but I was anticipating having two good finds in a row under my belt. I doubted I’d ever get a chance to stamp a Brazilian silhouette on the side of my hull like Bob-1, but maybe a couple of planets with green check-marks. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
I watched the survey results intently as the data slowly rolled in. Finally, Guppy announced paydirt. Not one but two planets inside the Comfort Zone, although one was at the inside edge and the other almost at the outside edge. Still, it was exciting stuff. And that would be four planets with check-marks, thank you kindly.
Impatient to pass on the good news, I aligned my comms array with Epsilon Eridani and began squirting telemetry back to Bill.
I set a course toward the outer of the two planets, since it was closer. The planet had a large moon farther out and a smaller moon closer in. Strangely, the larger moon showed a blue color. I suspected that it might actually have open water. The planet itself definitely had large bodies of water.
As I decelerated to place myself in a planetary orbit, proximity alarms sounded. It took me a moment to focus on the cause. Four missiles were coming around the curve of the moon, and they were accelerating aggressively.
Crap! I turned tail and accelerated away, but it was obvious that they had far better legs. I did the calculations, examined alternatives, but there was no out. I was hooped unless I took out all four missiles. I took a moment to give my busters extra instructions to seek out a ship matching the Brazilian profile after dealing with the missiles, then launched all eight busters in the usual pairing strategy.
As the busters headed toward the attacking missiles, my proximity alarms blared again. Four more missiles had appeared, coming around the opposite side of the moon. I was out of busters. With no chance of calling them back to me in time, I had to depend on my rail gun. I did a quick computation. I’d likely get two, possibly three, but there just wasn’t enough time to load the rail gun fast enough to take them all out.
Medeiros had outflanked me and done a good job of it.
As I fired at the approaching missiles, I made sure the communications array was still lined up and squirted off a description of my situation and a differential backup. A calm part of my mind calculated that I wouldn’t get it completed in time. Damn.
The last two missiles filled my view…
Riker – January 2166 – Sol
“They’re dying, colonel!”
The colonel wore his chin-out expression, a sure sign that I was in for a fight. In the last year, VEHEMENT had started attacking food production and supply facilities. Most of their attempts were no more than token efforts—statements, really. But the last three incidents had taken out supplies that the groups in question couldn’t spare. Now they were out of or about to be out of food, with half the winter still to go. Barring cannibalism, we were looking at hundreds of deaths before spring.
Unfortunately, the current political climate was short on empathy. A couple of failed groups, to most of the others, just meant slightly less competition for the emigration queue.
The USE encampment, the FAITH enclave, and the Spits were the richest in terms of food reserves, but they had made it clear that they weren’t about to volunteer anything to help out. The Spits, in particular, were trying to stretch their resources out for as long as they could. Their annual surpluses were swiftly being whittled away. They would be a have-not within a few years.
Three hours of negotiating, pleading, and threatening had accomplished zero. They knew I wasn’t about to abandon them, so they were willing to call all my bluffs.
In disgust, I finally cut off the video connection without so much as an over-and-out.
Homer looked at me from his video window. He’d been following the whole thing. “Damn, number two, this is kind of a rock-and-a-hard-place situation.”
I nodded glumly. For the moment, at least, I was out of ideas.
“It’s going to get worse,” Homer added. “The climate isn’t improving. A lot of groups are only surviving because of reserves of some kind. They’re not producing enough food
to get by.”
“Thanks, Homer. I needed that encouragement.”
Homer shrugged. To be fair, he probably wasn’t trying to bait me.
“What we need, Riker, is to go into the farming business or something.”
“We’ve been over that, Homer. We actually could establish farms in the former tropics, but they’d be good for maybe twenty years maximum. And we’d have to build the infrastructure. All the existing farming infrastructure is in the formerly temperate zones.”
Homer stared into space, rubbing his chin. “I keep coming back to space stations. Something itching at me…”
I opened my mouth to object, and Homer held up a hand to forestall me. “I know, Riker. Too complex, not enough population density in a space station to make it worthwhile, too much risk. I just think we’re looking at it wrong.”
I gave a half-shrug and started to respond when Homer yelled, “Crap!” and froze.
I pictured Homer getting hit by a missile and had a moment of panic, but he came back right away.
“Arthur’s dead.” Homer looked as angry as Homer ever did. “I just got the telemetry from the drones up Saturn way. He was working some wreckage when there was a nuclear detonation. I’m getting reports from drones farther away from it.” Homer sighed. “Booby trap. No way to tell who set it up. I told him, several times, to watch for those. He got careless.”
“Did he save a backup anywhere?” Even as I said it, I knew the answer. Making a backup and keeping it on board was easy, but pretty useless in a case like this. And we didn’t have the space to save each other’s backups. I had a TODO item to build some storage into the Sol space station for just this purpose. And, like 99% of my TODOs, it was filed under “Someday.”
I took a moment to mourn for Arthur. Downer or not, he was one of us. Homer was looking at me expectantly, and I realized I was having trouble focusing. With an effort, I brought myself back on track.
“Okay Homer, get the drones to recover what they can, and I’ll go talk to the colonel. Looks like we’re going to need to change the schedule again. We can’t do without a fourth Bob. And I think we’d better build that storage matrix.”
“Um, there’s an alternative,” Homer said. “We’ve got the printers for my Earth-scavenging ops. I wouldn’t say they’re exactly idle, but at least Colonel Butterworth isn’t leaning over them and steaming them with his breath.”
I laughed at the unexpected imagery. And Homer was right. I nodded an acknowledgement to him, and forwarded to Bill an In Memorium entry about Arthur, for the archives. As soon as Charles was back in Earth orbit, we would have a wake.
Bob – May 2166 – Delta Eridani
It took almost a month to get ready. The trek to the best village site would be long and arduous. From discussion with Moses, it seemed that it was one of the first villages to be abandoned, and unfortunately it was the one with the best supply of flint.
Moses wasn’t clear on why it hadn’t been better defended. He apparently had been a young cub at the time, and most of his information from that era was second-hand. He’d been one of the last Deltans to be trained to knap flint before they were forced to leave.
In any case, Marvin had surveyed the route that they would have to take. It would not be easy or quick. A mountainous spine ran down the center of this continent, and there were only a couple of passes that were low enough to be useful. During that part of the trek, there would be no local food unless the tribe got very lucky.
I didn’t know if the Deltans had lost the techniques for food preservation or if they’d never developed them. Before they could leave, I had to teach them how to preserve meat. The Deltans understood the benefit right away and took to it with enthusiasm.
The Deltans worked to build up a larder for the journey. Once the decision had been made, everyone got on board, and with the immediate gift of knowledge that I’d brought, they began to trust that I was steering them in a good direction.
Gorilloids were spotted on a number of occasions, hanging around the edge of the Deltan territory. They might have been hoping for targets of opportunity, but they seemed to have had the stuffing knocked out of them in our last encounter. They didn’t challenge any of the Deltan hunting parties. Of course, the sight of an occasional drone floating about might have had a little something to do with that, as well. I was quite happy to put the fear of bawbe into them.
While I waited for the Deltans to finish their preparations, Marvin and I made sure we built some more busters. They were hardly an ideal weapon—about equivalent to fishing with dynamite—but they were better than nothing. Besides, they made up for their lack of precision with an abundance of theatrics.
We also faced a breeding issue. Deltans, it turned out, had an annual breeding cycle, and a large number of mothers-to-be were coming up on their due date. The Deltans were rightly reluctant to move before the latest generation arrived.
Archimedes’ stock continued to soar with the other juveniles. He was, for all intents and purposes, now a member of the tribal council, something that even Arnold couldn’t claim. I also noted in passing that Archimedes was now showing a lot of signs of Deltan puberty. Likely the next few years would see a whole bunch of mini-Archimedeses running around.
That was fine with me. There was a noticeable difference between talking to him and talking to most of the rest of the tribe.
Finally, the day came. The whole tribe lined up, packed their belongings onto several travois (another gift from the bawbe) and set off into what was for them the great unknown.
The gorilloids were in evidence on departure day, hanging around just out of range and watching the parade. I wondered if the gorilloids actually understood that their erstwhile prey was about to leave for good, or if they were just drooling over all that lunch on the hoof. Either way, the first gorilloid that made a move would get a buster in the face. I was lined up, ready, and just waiting for something to obliterate.
***
The first night was a less than stellar experience for everyone. It rained heavily. I had to keep reminding myself that the Deltans were used to this. They didn’t have tents, just sewn-together skins that each family group would drape over itself. I resolved to introduce Archimedes to the concept of tent poles.
“Better take it easy there, oh great one. Next thing you know, they’ll be eating fast food and watching TV.” Marvin leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head. “Seriously, it’s not necessarily a good thing to throw too many new concepts at them at the same time. Floating metal deities seems to me to be more than enough for now.”
“Funny you should say that.” I frowned in thought. “Have you noticed they don’t appear to have any concept of religion?”
Marvin waved a hand in the air. “There’s some basic animism there, in the form of things like honoring the animals they kill for food, and venerating their dead. I doubt humans had much more at the hunter-gatherer stage.” He sat forward abruptly. “Hey, speaking of which, do you realize that we have the opportunity here to document their entire prehistory? Well, from the time we got here, anyway.”
“Already started, Marv.”
The camp seemed to have settled down for the night, so I deployed a couple of probes into guard positions and set up parameters to interrupt me. Security precautions complete, I swiveled to face Marvin.
“I notice you’ve started a batch of Bobs at the autofactory. Not that I’m complaining, since that is part of our mission profile—I just wonder if you’ve changed your mind about hanging around.”
He smiled at me. “Not immediately, although I do feel an itchy foot once in a while. Like I said to Luke and Bender, I’m curious as to how this is going to turn out. But it is still your show. Maybe there’s another planet of sentients out there for me.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “How about the planetary survey? Any other Deltans anywhere?”
“Nope. This continent is the cradle of humanity for the Deltans. Strictly a local mutation. The
re are lots of related species, but none that use fire or make tools.”
I pulled up a globe of Eden and checked out the detail that we had amassed. It gave me time to think. I realized that the idea of Marvin taking off was unpleasant. Somehow, I was a little less of a loner than original Bob. I dreaded the idea of being on my own again.
I sat back and looked over at Marvin, who was tinkering with his own copy of the globe. I sighed and cleared my holotank.
***
The Deltan migration was still pretty close to the schedule. There had been no major glitches so far, and the tribes seemed to have settled into routines. I was not so relaxed. We were now well out of the territory of the gorilloids whose butts we had whupped. Any gorilloids in this area would only see a bunch of easy pickings. Accordingly, Marvin and I had doubled the number of drones on guard duty at night.
So it was more than a little irritating that the attack came during the day.
As gorilloid raids went, it was not particularly impressive. A dozen or so of the animals hit a straggling family group and made off with two juveniles before anyone could react. The Deltans reacted immediately, giving chase and trying to cut the gorilloids off from the forest.
In this situation, a buster would be as big a danger to the two juveniles as to the gorilloids, so we settled for buzzing the animals with the drones, trying to confuse and distract them. It seemed to do the trick. Within moments, the Deltans caught up and skewered half the gorilloids. The rest fled into the trees with screeches of alarm.
Unfortunately, one of the juveniles was dead. The gorilloid that had been carrying him had apparently taken the time to ensure he wouldn’t struggle or escape.
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) Page 24
