Now Remilla spoke. “Your landing has stirred . . . religious anxieties.”
“This goes beyond anxieties,” Rachel said.
“Then let’s say hatred—the equivalent of a fatwa, if you know what that is.”
But here Zeds spoke for the first time. “I would appreciate clarification.”
So Remilla explained the meaning of fatwa, an Islamic term ordering the faithful to kill an infidel for sins against the faith. “Do you have any evidence that it was Muslims?” Xavier said.
“None,” Remilla said, after a nonverbal consultation with Kaushal, who added, “Nor is it Hindi or Christian. But realize that the, ah, religious environment has changed considerably since 2019. There are new movements like Transformational Human Evolution, and new movements like THE tend to be quite sensitive—”
“And aligned with the powers that rule the Free Nations,” Edgar Chang said, opening his mouth for the first time. “This has all the signs of an Aggregate operation—using disgruntled or mercenary soldiers as surrogates.” He turned to Rachel and Pav. “They are the ones who shot at your spaceship.”
“That would have been my first guess,” Xavier said. Of all those in Adventure’s crew, he was the most obviously terrified of the Reivers and saw their motives behind every action.
Not that, in Rachel’s opinion, he was unduly paranoid in this case—
“We have no proof of that, Mr. Chang,” Remilla said.
“We’ll never have proof, Mrs. Remilla.”
“Whoever did it,” Rachel said, “it’s done, and it’s shown us that we aren’t safe here.”
“What could be safer than a military base?” Kaushal said.
“We’d like to find out,” Pav said.
“Look,” Rachel said, “our original plan was to move off-base within forty-eight hours. We extended that because of Sanjay’s condition. It seems that we should go back to that plan.”
Now Tea spoke. “And go where?”
“Downtown Bangalore,” Xavier said. “Some ritzy hotel where, if nothing else, it costs more to bribe the help than it does here.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Pav snapped.
And Kaushal was about to explode again. “They may have worn the uniform, but those were not my men!”
“Everyone!” Rachel said. “We understand, and shut up,” she said, looking at Kaushal, then at Xavier—who was fortunately the kind of person who could be so addressed. “We need to move to a more isolated base, or a ranch of some kind, preferably in another city. Or even another country.”
“You can’t still be thinking about the U.S.!” Kaushal said. “Even if you could sneak in, that entire country will be hostile.”
“What about China?” Tea said. The mention of that name caused Remilla to flinch, too. “I know they’re your big enemy these days, but they have strict control over their populace—”
“Or so they like to claim,” Remilla said.
“I have contacts in China,” Chang said, smiling and spreading his hands in acknowledgment of his surname and ethnic background. “My companies can’t operate without that market.” He turned to Remilla and Kaushal. “And I can tell you that a horror like last night’s attack could not occur there, not if Rachel and the others were sequestered at a military base.
“To be honest, though, it would be extremely difficult to place you on such a base. The most likely—”
“Let’s be thinking quickest, too,” Rachel said.
“—likely and quickest option would be to get you to a city like Shanghai, into some luxury hotel complex where my media work can commence—”
“And the money can begin to flow,” Xavier said.
Rachel saw no better option. “Can you get us out of here tonight?”
“By early morning . . .” Chang frowned. “I don’t want to promise what I can’t deliver.”
“Then please arrange for an early-morning departure,” Rachel said, looking toward Pav, then Xavier, then Zeds, and finally Tea and Taj. The humans indicated their acceptance of the plan with nods. Zeds clapped all four hands, which meant the same thing.
Chang cleared his throat. “How many of you will be going?”
Rachel turned to Kaushal. “Sanjay still can’t be moved?”
“Under no circumstances!” the commander said. “Moving him would jeopardize his recovery.”
“In that case,” Rachel said, turning back to Chang, “it’s the five of us.”
“We’re just going to leave him?” That was Yahvi, speaking for the first time. Yahvi had found the weakest spot in Rachel’s argument. She didn’t know whether to hug her daughter for displaying empathy and courage, or tell her to shut up and listen.
“Yes. He’s better off here than on the road—”
Pav weighed in. “And we have to move. It’s clear we are no longer safe here.” He looked at Remilla and Kaushal, as if daring them to argue. They remained silent.
Not Yahvi, however. “What if they come after him again?”
“We can put out a story,” Chang said, “let people think he’s been moved elsewhere.”
“We’re going to have to put out a whole bunch of stories,” Rachel said.
Chang stood up. “Which means I have a lot of work to do.”
Before he could exit, Taj caught him by the arm. “One moment.” He turned to his granddaughter. “Yahvi, I will take personal responsibility for Sanjay’s care—”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” Pav said.
“Yeah, Husband,” Tea said. “What about it?”
Taj looked at his son, then at his wife. “Tea will go with you. She and I will be in constant communication.” He glanced at Chang. “Someone needs to coordinate the travel, and I have the most experience.”
“More than I do,” Chang said, sounding grateful.
“I can help, too,” Pav said. “With Zeds.”
“It would have been nice to be in communication prior to the announcement of your decision,” Tea told Taj, with an edge in her voice that Rachel knew well.
She realized she had to play peacemaker for the various factions. “Tea, I know Taj would have talked this over, but this just came up, right?” Taj nodded.
“It’s settled then,” Rachel said. “We move tomorrow morning.” She pointed to Xavier. “We need to deal with the cargo, too.”
She was glad to have something practical to do, because if she allowed herself to consider the odds against the Adventure crew right now, she would probably curl up in a panicked ball.
Day Three
SUNDAY, APRIL 15, 2040
TIME TO FIRST LIGHT:
Minus 7 days
FIRST LIGHT
22 APRIL 2040 0001:00 MDT
TIME TO FIRE LIGHT:
Minus 24 days
FIRE LIGHT
09 MAY 2040 0001:00 MDT
COUNTDOWN CLOCK AT SITE A
CARBON-143
STATUS: Humans assigned to the Project had long reverted to their centuries-old practice of working 6.5 days a week. The formations would have required more—the quotas certainly demanded more—but a decade of observation and interaction had proven that humans working seven days a week not only were not more productive, they actually made more errors.
There were also limits on the resources that could be shipped to Site A and processed for manufacture. So Aggregate Carbon programmed a Saturday workday that ended at 1 P.M.
Absence of humans did not mean that work ceased; far from it. Aggregates usually worked 23.5 out of every 24 hours, with the unused 0.5 hour devoted to system updates and checks or needed rotation of functions.
In addition, every week Aggr
egates in high-stress activities would have a programmed “refurbishment” session of two hours, in which new downloads from the formation were processed, and possible new aggregations were formed. (Carbon-143 “remembered” that she had been “born” as an aggregate of 11,211 “cells” that had first been aggregated into an intermediate stage of 89 “individuals” before becoming a “unit.”)
DATA: In her five years as a unit, Carbon-143 had grown convinced that Aggregates needed additional “downtime” for maintenance, energy reboost, and additional programming in order to function at optimum efficiency. But she had not shaped this observation into an action statement, much less sent it up the information tree. That, as her human counterpart observed in other circumstances, would have been “pointless to the point of idiocy.”
ACTION: So it was that Carbon-143 was at her assembly station with the other eleven members of her formation on Saturday afternoon when her human counterpart entered the facility.
“You need to check this out,” he was saying to another human: younger, clearly new, and nervous. Both were males—a distinction that did not apply to Aggregates. (Carbon-143 assumed a feminine aspect for linguistic reasons, and because her human counterpart insisted on addressing her in that mode.) But their gender did put the entire formation on alert; they had been programmed to expect a higher probably of mischief from off-duty males than females, especially deep into the leisure hours.
“Won’t we get in trouble?” the younger one said.
“Only if we get caught.”
“But there are Aggregates all over the place!”
“They don’t care, unless we try to break something. It’s fucking THE we have to watch out for.”
“Okay, then, what if they catch us?”
“They won’t,” the human counterpart said, moving behind other members of Carbon-143’s formation and making odd and very likely derogatory hand gestures behind their cranial structures. “They’re too busy singing and praying at this hour.” The human counterpart actually jumped up on the assembly-line structure.
“Aren’t you the least bit curious? Isn’t it worth a bit of risk to see what you’re working on?”
“I’m working on magnetic fields,” the younger one said. “They showed me the generator and I already sketched the power inputs. What else do I need to know?”
“How about what’s going through your big old portal?”
“Don’t call it a portal. I’m not sure—”
The human counterpart jumped down and took the younger man by the shoulder, turning him. “All those machines you saw lined up out there when we rode in?”
“I’m not sure, everything was so far away—”
“Thousands of them, maybe hundreds of thousands of them. Some of them are trucked in, but the most interesting ones are assembled right here.”
“Fine. Noted. Can we go now?”
“First, meet your team. It’s only common courtesy.”
“Meet an Aggregate?”
“Meet one. My girl here,” the counterpart said. “The one on the end.”
“They all look alike.”
“She’s always the one on the end, aren’t you, baby?”
Carbon-143 was unsure if this direct address required a response. Certainly the cold static of her cross-links with the other eleven members of her formation did not suggest so. But she interrupted her assembly sequence ever so slightly, to allow for a quick nod and turn.
The human counterpart clapped. “Thank you, darling!”
“Randall—”
“Carbon-143, meet Whit Murray.”
This statement did require a response; even the formation cross-links approved. Carbon-143 made a more obvious turn and bow.
“Aren’t you going to say hello, Whitless?”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that—”
“Mr. Murray, then. Please say hello to Aggregate Carbon-143, like all of us, just a tiny cog in the big machine.”
The younger man blinked and held out his hand. “Hi there, Whit Murray.”
“She’s not going to shake it, sorry.”
He lowered his hand. “Does she talk?”
“They do not vocalize as such,” Randall Dehm said. “But if you are wearing the proper comm device when you encounter an Aggregate, you will get some kind of response. It all depends on what you ask.”
Whit smiled at Carbon-143. “How did you get to know this particular one, then? Without being able to talk.”
“Six months ago, I had to do some repairs and reprogramming. No matter how much money and time we spend, sometimes shit breaks. The Aggregates can’t stand it, but that’s what they get for invading our planet and making us slaves, right?”
Whit appeared to be shocked by this bald, undeniably factual statement. So he said, “I always wondered . . . how come we always see the same types?”
“What do you mean?”
“Aggregates are made up of thousands of individual cells, right? They could form into anything.”
Carbon-143 could have explained this, meaning that, had Whit been wearing the “appropriate comm device,” she could have uploaded a human-friendly file about nine templates and why they had been chosen—and persisted.
“Don’t you like the anteater look?”
“I don’t really have an opinion. I was just—”
Randall was standing so close to Carbon-143’s left side that the formation’s proximity alarm system went on first-level alert. “I like it. I think it’s sexy.”
Then he laughed and slapped Whit on the arm. “Come on, man. I’ve got other stuff to show you.”
As they left, Carbon-143 had the clear impression that Whit stopped in the exit and looked back.
Meanwhile she tried to control the somatic discharge Randall’s remark had caused. It was likely a transient overload triggered by the unusual and prolonged Aggregate-human contact.
CONCLUSION: She could not let it distract her from her work.
The return of humans from Keanu continues to be a major story, topping the looming conflict between the New Coalition and Free Nations over trade and travel.
Four of the five humans and the sole E.T. in the crew have been briefly seen in public; one of the humans was reportedly injured in the crash landing at Yelahanka Air Base on Friday. Beyond that momentary exposure, they have been sequestered. Neither ISRO nor Bangalore government will answer any but the most general questions that interested and responsible citizens are asking:
What do they want? To sightsee? To open up regular trips between Earth and Keanu?
Why are they here and not in the Free Nations, where many of the crew originated?
What do they know of Earth?
What is life like on Keanu? How have they survived?
Have there been further returns of the so-called Revenants? For that matter, did the Revenants ever exist?
More to the point, does Keanu, now looming in the night sky like a death star, pose a threat to Earth—or perhaps only to certain entities on Earth?
It is now rumored that the Keanu travelers will soon emerge from seclusion within the next twenty-four hours, though it is a sad but inevitable sign that they have engaged a publicist and media agent. . . .
Will we have to pay to get answers?
“CAPITAL VIEW” COLUMN BY M. J. MUHAMMAD,
NEW INDIAN EXPRESS, 15 APRIL 2040
XAVIER
Pav’s plan, modified by his father and with suggestions from Edgar Chang, rolled into motion just before five A.M. the next morning, when a pair of twenty-five-year-old limousines, an ambulance, and two medium-sized trucks pulled up to the rear hospital entrance—where blood still stained the pavement and the walls still showed bullet marks.
It was raining . . . not the torrential tropical rain expected in Bangalore, just a morning shower.<
br />
For that reason, a tent was swiftly erected by enlisteds. This action also effectively kept observers—if there were any—from seeing who got aboard the vehicles in what order. Wing Commander Kaushal was everywhere, guiding the airmen with such vigor that in one case he actually shoved one aside and completed attaching the canvas to the frame himself.
Taj Radhakrishnan watched from farther inside the loading dock. He was pacing like a user waiting for his dealer.
Of course, this was just what Xavier Toutant saw as he and Rachel, Pav and Tea, Yahvi and Zeds slipped through the interior of the loading dock on their way to the ambulance garage.
Edgar Chang was waiting for them as they approached a van and a larger truck emblazoned with the logo of Prasad Stores, apparently a food supplier to Yelahanka. He was not wearing his customary suit and tie, but the more common khakis and white shirt of a clerical worker. He did not look Hindi, of course, but he looked less Chinese.
Xavier realized that Pav was also wearing the same clothing and had also had his hair trimmed. “Pav and I will ride in the van,” the agent said. “I’m driving. Pav and I, in fact, are the only ones who know our route.”
“Who’s driving this thing?” Tea said.
Chang pointed to a grim-faced Chief Warrant Officer Singh—Xavier’s associate during the transfer of Adventure’s cargo. Not that Xavier had any doubts that the man was a special agent, but here was proof.
He only hoped that he was one of the agents who could not be bought by their enemies.
“Are we fooling anyone, do you suppose?” Rachel said.
“Well, I’m confused,” Xavier said. Pav and Tea laughed, but Xavier was only half-kidding. There was the official plan, which involved a somewhat stealthy convoy of five vehicles heading up the Velur Bypass to National Highway 7 and Bengaluru International for a two-and-a-half-hour flight to Delhi. The carefully leaked story was that the Indian capital was a more appropriate temporary home for Adventure’s crew—and that superior medical facilities would be better for Sanjay Bhat.
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