“But they have it coming,” he said. “We do not. You and all the other bots and gengineers and people who accept modern technology. You, they, we do not. Our only sin is that we are different. We look forward. We embrace the future. While they…”
She nodded. “But we don’t need to destroy them.”
“They destroy themselves.”
She nodded again, her hand heavy on his arm. “All we have to do is save…”
“As many as we can, yes. But they will destroy what they do not want just so we cannot have it. We have to stop them.”
* * * *
Donna Rose abandoned the ODC’s control room for the living quarters she shared with Jeremy Duncan. There, beneath a bank of bright lights, stood a trough of lunar regolith mixed with compost, well watered. She sank her roots into the rich, black soil, closed her eyes as a wealth of nutrients rushed into her system, and briefly wondered why they used no regolith on Probe Station. Long ago, in the 1960s, when the first astronauts had brought samples of the Moon to Earth, researchers had discovered that plants of all kinds loved lunar soil. It had not been sapped like Earth’s by eons of biological activity.
She missed Frederick. He had suffered as much as Duncan, and for far longer. But he was not vindictive. He was patient, willing to wait while he prepared the scene, like her more intent on saving what could be saved, not on destroying.
She wondered, Did he miss her? And what was he doing with Narcissus Joy?
Chapter Twenty Two
Lois McAlois lay naked on her bed. Her thighs tapered abruptly toward her knees, the skin shading to pink and hairless smoothness. Below the knees, her calves and feet were small and thin, yet they did not seem shrunken with atrophy like those of a paraplegic. They were clearly functional, aquiver with life and potential, the limbs of a child, or of an adult who had been treated with the viruses gengineered to stimulate regeneration. The bulk of her thighs had gone to feed the process of regrowth, to match the thick muscles near her hips to the new and slender bones below.
The rest of her body was that of a mature woman. Her belly swelled above a triangle of pubic hair a little darker than the close-cropped auburn that topped her head. Her ribs made visible lines beneath the skin of her torso, and her breasts, barely affected by the light gravity of this level of Probe Station, were nearly perfect cones, their nipples erect.
Renny sat beside her. His tongue lolled, he panted lightly, and then he winced as his tailtip twitched. He had involuntarily tried to sweep the whole organ from side to side over the sheet.
“Poor boy,” said Lois. She gently touched the bandage that held the broken bones immobile. “The painkiller just isn’t enough. Will you be able to fly?”
“There’s only six of us,” he growled. “And six ships. I have to. Besides, a pilot doesn’t need a tail. And they’ll block the nerves anyway. Or try to.”
“It needs to heal. You’ll ruin it.”
“It won’t matter much longer, will it?” He shifted his hindquarters out of her reach and leaned over her legs, one hand supporting his weight. The other touched her shin, stroking, patting, exploring.
“They won’t stay this way,” said Lois. She was using the fingers of one hand to knead the fur of his shoulder. “They’re still growing. But they’re already better than stumps.”
“I know,” said the dog, his voice revealing just a hint of canine whine. He pointed his long German shepherd nose toward her belly. “I wish you were a bitch.”
“I can’t smell right to you.”
“You would then.” He sniffed ostentatiously and ran his tongue along one side of his mouth. His hand moved upward. “And then…”
“No,” she said. Her voice was as turgid with yearning as his own. “Not now. I want to too. But it wouldn’t be right.”
He touched her breasts, her throat, her lips. “People have done it before.”
“It still isn’t right.”
“We may never have another chance.”
“I know.” The fuel depot, that great fabric bag that had filled with lunar dust while the Q-ships were being finished, had been moved. It now waited in low Earth orbit, next to Nexus Station, while another swelled, nearly full, near Probe Station. Finished bubblesats had also been moved nearer Earth, ready to serve first to free the Q-ships for their rescue missions; they had their own small Q-drives, and as soon as they were filled with refugees, they would depart for lunar orbit. The new sections of the LaGrangian habitats were ready, waiting for their tenants; so were the barracks on the Moon.
Renny and Lois and their fellow pilots had hauled up from Earth their last loads of oil and wood. They were done with bringing to safety those pitifully few bots and gengineers and others who could squeeze into whatever cracks their cargos left. Tomorrow they would fly the first missions intended to bring only refugees. They would save as many as they could before…
“They’ll be shooting at us. They’ll be trying to drop missiles on our landing zones, and Duncan won’t be able to stop them all. Some of us will…”
“I know,” she said. He touched her again. Her hand slid across his side and found… “You’re too excited.”
He whined and grimaced.
“I wish…”
“There hasn’t been the time. We’ve been too busy. But if we make it through this…”
“No! Don’t!”
“I’ll let them Freddyize me.”
“What?”
He held his free hand between their faces and twisted it back and forth. “I’ll let them make the rest of me match this. I won’t have a tail then.”
“Oh!” she said. “I’ll like that! We’ll… Stop that!”
He stretched his length beside her, his head on her shoulder, his nose beside her ear, his breath warm against her cheek and neck. One hand moved from breast to breast to… She stroked his side, his arm, his…
Eventually, they slept.
* * * *
“Facing the Future with Frank Fogarty”
Veedo panel discussion, security fibercast,
transcribed from GNN (Government NewsNet):
Fogarty: Tonight, our veedo audience wants to know the answer to a vital question: Is it true that the government is asking those who live in the Stations and Habitats above our fair planet to help us reestablish the Machine Age?
Alan Sakherji, Secretary of State: No, Frank. We’re not asking. We’re demanding. The genetic engineers are directly responsible for our current difficulties. Years ago, they stopped public spending on maintaining roads and improving efficiency and finding new sources of energy. They deliberately allowed the old infrastructure to deteriorate. They forced us to subsidize genimal trucks and airplanes and other…
Fogarty: But it’s the government that chooses what to subsidize.
Secretary Sakherji: Be careful, Mr. Fogarty. We know what the truth is. The government at the time was under intense pressure from the gengineers and their environmentalist allies. It had very little choice.
Fogarty: But why are you asking the Orbitals for reparations?
Senator Cecil D. Trench (DemSoc-NC): Because they owe us! They stole every little bit of mechanical technology the gengineers didn’t destroy. They took it right away from us, and now that we need it they won’t give it back.
Secretary Sakherji: I have reliable information that they are even landing their ships in remote areas to loot stands of oil trees. They are actually stealing fuel that we need desperately.
Fogarty: Fuel? What would they need fuel for?
Senator Trench: How else do you run machines?
Fogarty: I see. Can you tell us how you plan to force the Orbitals to cooperate?
Secretary Sakherji: First, quite frankly, there are still a great many botanicals, half-humans, and gengine
ers here on Earth, and we have told the Orbitals that how we treat them depends on how they respond to our demands.
Senator Trench: We’re holding them hostage.
Fogarty: What will you do if the Orbitals refuse to cooperate?
Secretary Sakherji: I understand that your network’s broadcasts of our mass cleansings have enjoyed quite high ratings.
Fogarty: That’s true.
Senator Trench: But we’re keeping the gengineers themselves.
Secretary Sakherji: We have set them to restoring the basic genetic technology. We don’t have the mechanical infrastructure we need, and if the Orbitals continue their selfish obstinacy, we’ll have to have the genimals. Of course, we’ll only need them temporarily. As soon as we have the factories running again, we’ll…
Fogarty: You’ll let them go? Perhaps to join the Orbitals?
Senator Trench: That’s what we’re telling the Orbitals.
Secretary Sakherji: But the Orbitals won’t be there. We still have a great many of the old missiles in storage, and we will…
Fogarty: Is there any truth to the rumors that you’ve already launched some of those missiles? And that the Orbitals have destroyed them?
Secretary Sakherji: They have no weapons! How could they possibly destroy them? By throwing rocks?
Fogarty: Will you be sending troops into space?
Secretary Sakherji: I can’t say. But the gengineer saboteurs did not manage to destroy all the spaceplanes. If we decide to seize the Orbitals’ technology, we do have the means.
* * * *
“Minerva, how many barracks on the Moon?” asked Frederick Suida.
“Seventy two,” said the computer.
“Do we have enough air?”
“Check.”
“Water?”
“Check.”
“Food?”
“Insufficient data,” answered the machine.
“Depends on how many we get,” said Narcissus Joy.
“Bubblesats?” asked Frederick.
“Fifteen,” answered the computer.
“They’ll be crowded in their transfer mode,” said the bot.
“How many refugees have we got already?”
“Six hundred and seven,” said the computer.
“How many more can we take?”
“Four thousand six hundred.”
“That’s two dozen loads,” said Narcissus Joy. “Four apiece.”
“If the loads are full. If there are enough refugees at each stop. The ships aren’t Bernies. They can’t make more than one stop.”
“And if we don’t lose any ships.”
“We should have more, and more pilots, in case of injury.”
“At least, we have the fuel.”
Frederick and Narcissus Joy were running over their checklists one last time, making sure that none of the necessary preparations had been skipped or scanted. Their voices were stiffly formal, Frederick’s distant, the bot’s cool and hurt.
She had done her best to fill Donna Rose’s place in his life. She had taken over the other bot’s job and done it well. She had moved into Frederick’s quarters and occupied the soil trough that Donna Rose had left before the window. And the night before, when Frederick had been lying on his bed, she had sat beside him.
“She meant a lot to you,” she had said. “She wasn’t just an assistant.”
Frederick had thrown an arm over his face as if to block her from his view. “How could you know?”
“The honeysuckle that she planted. It’s small, but it remembers…”
He had sighed wordlessly. Then he had glanced toward the trough where it sat in its bright puddle of illumination. The sprig of vine Donna Rose had left had grown in the days since she had gone. It now hid a quarter of the soil with green, and buds were forming. Soon it would hold to the light blossoms full of self-fermented wine, of euphoric alcohol and drug. If he chose, he could… But he had never before wished to dull his pain in that way.
“I could…”
“No!” He had rolled abruptly from the bed, avoiding her reaching hand, and left the room.
When he had returned an hour later, she had been in the trough, leaves spread to the sunlight. She had turned her head to watch as he knelt at her feet to pinch away the honeysuckle buds but she had said nothing more. Nor did he as he rose and drew the curtain that walled off his bed.
Now Minerva, their computer, said, “Two scooters closing.”
Narcissus Joy touched her keyboard and spoke into a microphone. In a moment, she said, “It’s the Eldest, her Speaker, and…”
Frederick turned toward the window that overlooked the construction shack’s work area. Here Arlan Michaels and his crews had built the drives for the Q-ships and Duncan’s rocks. They were still building the small rock drives and working on the large ones for the Gypsy. But the design work was finished. Now Michaels and three of his physicists floated over a workbench to one side, leaving the routine assembly work to others while they concentrated on… Frederick did not know what they were working on, except that it looked more or less like a standard Q-drive from a distance and that Michaels and his colleagues covered it with a Velcroed tarp when they were not there.
“Let them in,” he said. He sighed. He did not know what the bots might want with him. The ones Renny had rescued had been a significant help. Their hands had indeed hastened the construction of the lunar barracks, the bubblesats, and more. But now there was nothing more that they could do. Nor could he do any more than he had already done to help them, to build safety for their kin, to give the refugees a refuge.
Yet they had not come to ask for more. That much was plain very soon after the Eldest, propelled by the hands of her companions, floated into the office of the construction shack.
“You have a soil trough there,” said the first to speak. She was a tall bot whose scalp blossoms were yellow with dark centers. Narcissus Joy had introduced her as Shasta Button. “Is that for your aide?”
“She uses it,” said Frederick. “But…”
“It was for Donna Rose,” said Narcissus Joy.
The Eldest bent her amaryllis-red head toward the trough and a wave of scent spread through the air of the office.
“Where is she?” said Eldest’s Speaker.
“She left me,” said Frederick. “She thought I wasn’t willing enough to fight, to save the bots—and others—still on Earth.”
The scent that issued from the Eldest’s flowery head turned soothing. “She misunderstood,” said Eldest’s Speaker. “You and she have done just what you must. Saved us all. We expected no more, and we are grateful.”
“Where is she?” asked Shasta Button.
“With Jeremy Duncan.”
“The weapons master,” expanded Narcissus Joy. “She helps him in the Orbital Defense Center.”
Frederick nearly choked on the richness of the next gust of perfume. “Call her, please,” said Eldest’s Speaker.
Narcissus Joy immediately spoke to the computer, “Minerva, get Donna Rose.”
A veedo screen promptly lit with Jeremy Duncan’s face. “Hey, Freddy,” he said. His eyes were red, his cheeks unshaven and, showing beneath his unbuttoned lab coat, the lips of his gills were puffy. “We’ve been working flat-out for the last thirty hours, but we’re ready. We should be able to stop whatever they throw at us tomorrow, and then…”
“Is Donna Rose there?” asked Narcissus Joy. As she spoke, Eldest’s Speaker pushed the Eldest in her pot a little closer to the screen.
Duncan stepped aside, and his bot assistant, her face drawn and her blossoms limp with weariness, appeared. “Eldest,” she said.
The Eldest’s perfumes billowed effusively, chokingly. The hitherto subliminal hu
m of hidden ventilators became audible as the fans strove to clear the air. “We thank you,” said Eldest’s Speaker. “You have done well. You could have done no more. It does not matter how tomorrow ends. We wish success, but the effort counts.”
She turned toward Frederick. “When you first offered sanctuary, she used the honeysuckle. She told us of you, and then of that potential refuge here in space. We instructed her, told her to go if chance but offered. She did, and so did you.”
Frederick was puzzled. “But how could you know we would try to rescue you? No one knew about the Q-ships. No one knew that the Engineers were about to take over the world, or that they would try to exterminate…”
“Donna Rose told us immediately. We knew near as soon as you about the ships. We had clues as well. About the future. We were everywhere. Where we weren’t, there was honeysuckle.”
Duncan abruptly pushed Donna Rose out of the veedo screen’s field of view. “Then why!” he cried. “Why didn’t you do something?”
“We were powerless.” Narcissus Joy did not wait for a perfumed message from the Eldest or for words from her Speaker. “We could only prepare as best we could.”
“We used the honeysuckle,” said Eldest’s Speaker. “It grew everywhere. Even in the pots of BRA’s computers. And it could talk to them root to root. Through them then, through wire-net not root-net, connecting everywhere, we canceled job and ticket, cut your roots, cut you free.”
Frederick grimaced awkwardly. “You manipulated me, marooned me here.”
“Would you rather have stayed on Earth, Freddy?” Donna Rose had edged back onto the screen.
Frederick hesitated only briefly before he shook his head. Only a fool, he knew, could answer otherwise. “But why couldn’t you manipulate others? Why couldn’t you stop it all from happening?”
“No,” said Shasta Button. “There were too many Engineers. Their voices were too strong.”
Another burst of odor prompted Eldest’s Speaker to say, “We could only stimulate and catalyze. Put you where you might help. Where your natural sympathies might create a home anew. Where those who might escape might go. Where at worst a single bot might live.”
Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK® Page 94
