WE

by Unknown

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I was thinking about this when I shut myself away – why I was sent here, when the station was already manned. The reason I had decided on did not work. You were right about that. But you were wrong that my work – our work – is not important. I was sent to investigate the corruptions. Not because Earth wanted the lost data but because they wanted to know about the corruptions themselves. They wanted me to repeat Thorsten’s search, to eliminate for sure the possibility that the source was in the station. That alone mattered enough to get me sent out here. What interests Earth that much? ST2.’

  ‘You think Earth knows it’s here?’

  Paul shook his head. ‘No. Certainly no one person does. It would have been in my briefings. But collectively, yes, when all the different thoughts of all the different people come together – I think Earth is interested.’

  ‘It’s caught a scent,’ brooded Lewis. ‘It’s seen a print in the sand, when it thought it was alone. What do we—?’

  ‘Shouldn’t we report?’ said Vandamme.

  Strange, thought Paul, how those few words affected them! Now that he was used to looking at faces, the details jumped to his eye. He saw Lewis and May, surprised, exchanging glances. He saw the slight stiffening of Lewis’s cheeks, like a man in the presence of danger. Vandamme herself was tight-lipped and pale, as if she had felt a sudden pain even as she spoke. Her eyes were on the air ahead of her. Her hands came together in her lap, and when they clutched each other the knuckles went white.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to take the risk,’ said Lewis slowly. ‘If it thought this was a real ST2 event, the We would come here. It would expand the station, ship out however much shielding it needed, build an environment in which it could operate no matter what the cost. It’s what it’s been waiting for. More than anything.’

  ‘It would take time,’ said Paul.

  ‘Years. But years don’t matter. If it comes here, then everything we’re trying to do here would be finished.’

  ‘But we don’t have to submit,’ said May.

  ‘You’re thinking of us as individuals. But our collective effort, our opportunity to hand it on to succeeding, uncontaminated generations, would be lost. Agree?’

  ‘But – in scientific terms – what’s the point of us being here if we don’t report it?’ said Vandamme. ‘It’s what we’re here for.’

  ‘It’s what Earth sent us here for. But we are not Earth. We must decide what is right for us. Van – Earth is evil. You’ve said so yourself.’

  ‘I know! I know! But – I don’t know what I’m to do! Couldn’t this be its salvation?’

  ‘The We isn’t a human. It isn’t a scientist either,’ said Lewis. ‘It’s a feral child that’s grown by itself in the locked room of space. It’s had no relationships, nothing to teach it how to respond to another being. What do you think it will do if it finds that there’s something else in the room with it?’

  ‘Study it!’

  ‘That’s the scientist’s answer. But there’s more than one way of studying a thing. Haven’t you ever seen a child study a fly by pulling off its wings? How did the European explorers study the peoples they found in Africa and the Americas? By enslavement, exploitation and conquest! If this thing is hiding itself from Earth, then it’s wise – very wise. Its only hope is to escape notice, isn’t it? And that we – the four of us – will help it to do so.’

  ‘I need to pray.’

  ‘But we can’t pray with you, Van. And this is something we must decide together.’

  Vandamme was silent.

  ‘Whatever we decide, Van, it will be your task to study it,’ said Lewis gently. ‘We still need to know about it, don’t we? We’ll need to know everything that you and Paul can find out … Paul, are you going to vote?’

  Paul stirred. ‘Vote?’

  ‘Consensual decision-making. We each say what we think. If the majority of us say that we should not report to Earth, then all of us, even those who disagree, agree to be bound by that decision. It’s the key to any free society. And that’s what we are. The more I think about this … This is a fundamental moment – literally fundamental, because we’re laying our foundations. Up to now we’ve only been hiding. Now we have a choice – to do as Earth wills us to do, or to take another course. Do you see? This is where we start to make our own future. Will you?’

  Paul hesitated. Years of training yelped at him. But Lewis …

  Lewis and May, and Erin Vandamme …

  These were the most important people in his life now. There was no one else.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If you will have me back.’

  ‘You’ve never left us, Paul. But we need you to follow the rules. What’s your vote?’

  ‘I will agree with you,’ Paul said.

  ‘Which in this case means you agree that we should not inform Earth. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. So that is clear then …’

  ‘I’m going to pray,’ said Vandamme. She rose to her feet and loped down the long room towards the airlock.

  ‘Van!’ said May. ‘Don’t be upset …’ She and Lewis exchanged glances. She got to her feet and hurried after Vandamme, but Vandamme had reached the airlock and closed the seal before she got there. May pursued her into the airlock, calling, ‘Van! Van!’ as she went.

  ‘Where did that come from?’ said Lewis softly. ‘Where the hell did that come from? Report to Earth? She hates the place more than any of us. Or I thought she did.’

  ‘Maybe she does not know what she thinks,’ said Paul.

  ‘You think it’s that? Science says one thing, belief says another? But she talks of salvation! Salvation – just because there’s someone else?’ Lewis shook his head. ‘I don’t get it. I just can’t tell which direction she’s coming from these days …’

  He was staring at the airlock through which the women had disappeared, as if wishing his eyes could bore through it, through the wall of the chambers beyond and into the skull of Erin Vandamme.

  ‘It may be because of you, Paul. In a way. She’s been all frozen up for years – like a bit of our landscape, round at the poles where it’s dark for ages at a time. And when at last the Sun gets round there, the crust stirs right up – flows, geysers, icy volcanism, the lot. So maybe it’s a hopeful sign. But for the time being – just to be on the safe side – can you lock her out of the communications system?’

  ‘Lock her out?

  ‘Remove her permissions to use the laser and the radio. I don’t want her suddenly deciding she’s got to signal Earth behind our backs.’

  ‘She won’t do that.’

  ‘You can’t be sure what she’ll do.’

  ‘No,’ Paul admitted. He thought there was something terrible about removing someone’s ability to communicate.

  ‘All right,’ said Lewis at last. ‘If you don’t want to do it, I will. But tell me something else. Is there a way of sending a radio signal that will not be picked up by Earth?’

  ‘A signal?’

  ‘I want to use the radio but I don’t want Earth to hear.’

  Paul thought. ‘Yes. We wait until we are in the shadow again. Then we send a signal to a crawler. The satellite will fire at once, at the surface, and the planet will block any rebound.’

  ‘It’ll be days before we’re back in the shadow! Isn’t there another way?’

  ‘Not so certain.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. It’s probably best.’ He looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘I’m glad we’ve got you back, Paul. I’m really, really glad. For the first time in years I feel what we’re trying to do may actually be possible.’

  ‘What are you trying to do?’

  ‘Well, first – we’re going to talk to the thing.’

  XVIII

  Their message read: Do not be afraid. We know you are here.

  Paul had it displayed on the working area of the wall in the main common room. It was the best pl
ace for everyone to see what was going on. He had set the ceiling view to show the sky above the station, with the planet once again a thin crescent and the distant Sun poised above it. Lewis hovered, unable to keep still.

  ‘It’s like the angel’s message,’ he said. ‘Do not be afraid.’

  ‘It is a good way to start,’ said Paul.

  ‘Van would want us to add Good News of Great Joy.’

  He was trying to get May to smile. She was sitting moodily against the wall. Her skin was pale and her eye-sockets dark. She had told them she had slept badly. Now she pulled a face.

  ‘You’re assuming that we’re the angels,’ she said.

  ‘Do you want me to add it—?’ Paul began.

  ‘No! God, no!’ Lewis snorted. ‘That would just confuse it. How much longer?’

  ‘We’re still in the penumbra,’ said Paul, for the third time in half an hour. He wished that Lewis would stop bouncing up and down behind his back.

  ‘Yes, but how much longer?’

  ‘Ten minutes, to be sure.’

  ‘God! I’m going to burst, I think. A mind as big as that! And in a moment we’re going to be talking to it! Can you imagine what it must know?’ Lewis turned and took a big skip, pushing far harder than he needed in his impatience, so that he sailed past Paul to the end of the chamber and had to put out a hand to stop himself from colliding with the airlock. He faced them.

  ‘Seriously, about the future,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking how following generations might sustain themselves and so on …’

  Following generations, Paul thought. Not just one but many. It was not the first time Lewis had said it, either. He was back to assuming that they – the four of them – would produce children and grandchildren, a population with enough genetic diversity to last, triumphantly, where all Earth had failed.

  He was assuming something enormous between Paul and Erin Vandamme.

  And Paul looked at it, in the secrecy of his mind, while his eyes stared unseeing at the screen. He thought of the quiet woman in the chamber beyond the airlock. He remembered the feel of her arms around him and the sound of her voice saying, ‘Paul.’

  He did not know the answer.

  ‘… We go down,’ Lewis said. ‘We say goodbye to the surface and we dig. The further down we go, the warmer it will get. Pressure will increase too. That would make a big difference to the engineering. How about that?’

  ‘If we want more pressure we must dig a long way,’ said Paul. ‘How far down do you want to go?’

  ‘It depends on how quickly the temperature rises. And also on what the construction crawlers can do. But maybe – about two hundred kilometres.’

  ‘Two hundred!’

  ‘Around that point you get to the liquid mantle, trapped between the ice sheets. There will be currents down there, and we can tap those for energy …

  ‘Eden in a tunnel of ice,’ he added. ‘How do you like that?’

  ‘How do we insulate the tunnels?’ said Paul.

  ‘I’ve some ideas about that …’

  ‘You’ve been thinking about this.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it for ten years, Paul. But now, please God, I’ve actually got a reason to start doing something about it.’

  ‘How many will we be?’ asked May.

  Good question, thought Paul.

  ‘Time will tell,’ said Lewis smoothly. ‘Speaking of time, Paul …?’

  ‘Another few minutes.’

  ‘God! Can’t we just send it?’

  ‘Should we ask Van to do the sending?’ said Paul. ‘ST2 is her field.’

  ‘She won’t come,’ said May. ‘I looked in there a while ago. She’s still just sitting there, staring at the wall.’

  ‘She’ll get over it,’ said Lewis.

  Paul wondered what it was that had taken May down to Vandamme’s room after her sleepless night.

  Whatever it was, she hadn’t found it there.

  ‘It was blocking her communications that did it,’ May said. ‘Her science has nowhere to go. You’ve taken it away from her.’

  ‘It can’t be helped,’ said Lewis.

  There was a short silence.

  ‘We must have sunlight,’ Paul said. ‘For the plants.’

  ‘They can stay on the surface. We process them remotely and have the product transported down to us. It’s maintaining the living quarters in this environment that’s the big burden. But down there, with more pressure and a much higher temperature, we could sustain a population of – well, God knows how many. Time, Paul?’

  ‘… Yes.’

  ‘Then send it, please.’

  Paul reached for the control. Click. The message disappeared.

  Together they stared at the blank screen.

  ‘How will it answer, do you think?’

  ‘If it can understand our signals …’

  ‘That doesn’t mean it can communicate with them.’

  They went on looking at the screen.

  ‘Of course,’ said Lewis, ‘it won’t be an entirely uncontaminated mind. It’s been picking up noise from Earth for a hundred years. How much of its thinking has it learned from us?’

  ‘Do you think it will be able to help us … you know, survive?’

  ‘Not directly. But there’s no telling what we might learn. Maybe the field itself could be a source of—’

  ‘What’s that?’

  A familiar red rectangle flashed in the bottom right corner of the screen.

  ‘Just an alert. It can wait.’

  ‘What do you suppose its reaction time is?’

  ‘We know that. Seconds, at most, when it was jamming the crawler. Anticipation made it faster still.’

  ‘It’s being a lot slower this time. Does it know we’re talking to it?’

  ‘Check the field readings?’ said Lewis.

  Paul called them up. They danced in jiggling yellow lines against the darkness of the canyon wall on the display.

  ‘High!’ said Lewis. ‘But we’re well into the tail, of course. How high were they before we sent the message?’

  Paul called up the readings of five minutes earlier and superimposed them on the wall.

  ‘They’ve jumped, haven’t they?’

  ‘They have.’

  ‘We’ve given it something to think about, anyway … My God!’

  A huge spike in the readings had flickered briefly up the wall, there and gone like a lightning flash in the storms of Earth.

  ‘I hope it doesn’t do that too often. I’m not sure—’

  Something beeped. In the bottom right of the working area another alert was flashing red. There were letters. Paul did not recognize the acronym.

  ‘Damn!’ said Lewis. ‘Why’s that happening? I’ll have to sort that. Paul, for God’s sake tell it not to shout!’

  Paul flicked to the message screen. Nothing was showing, except for the red alert lights flashing in the corner. Three lights now.

  ‘It is not making sense,’ he said.

  ‘Tell it not to shout.’

  Paul picked out a message. That is too much. Be more gentle. ‘Will that do?’

  ‘Who knows?’ said May.

  ‘Will that do, Lewis?’

  ‘He’s gone to sort out those alerts,’ said May. ‘It must be the strength of the thing’s signal that’s doing it. It’s like a magnetic storm, interfering with some of our systems. Look – it’s dying off now. Try sending.’

  Paul sent the message. Over the microphone he could hear Lewis muttering in his chamber. Lewis must have opened the channel so that he could listen to what was going on in the common room.

  ‘Ah!’ said May. One of the red lights had gone off.

  Then it came back again. So did two more.

  ‘Lewis!’ called May.

  ‘I know, damn it!’ came Lewis’s voice. ‘What’s it doing?’

  ‘There is no message,’ said Paul. Then he said, ‘Field readings, current.’ The screen changed.

  ‘Oh my Go
d!’

  ‘What’s it doing?’ snapped Lewis. ‘What the hell’s it …?’

  He must have called up the field readings himself then, for his voice died away.

  ‘It hasn’t understood,’ said May.

  ‘What’s it saying, Paul?’ called Lewis. ‘Any idea?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s saying anything. It’s just—Shit! Look at that!’

  A string of error messages started to mount the screen.

  ‘Particle readings, current,’ said Paul. The screen changed obediently. Still the error messages mounted.

  ‘Lewis …’ said May.

  She was looking at the particle readings, trying to control her voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lewis. ‘I see it.’

  ‘Is that what’s damaging the systems?’

  ‘Shouldn’t be … Maybe …’

  There was a short silence. Then Lewis said, ‘If the computers are susceptible … I can’t predict what will happen to the life-support functions.’

  May and Paul looked at each other.

  The computing systems governed everything in the station – including the heating and life-support systems. The computing systems were distributed in the outer layers, to exploit the conductivity that could be achieved at low temperatures. The outer layers were most exposed to the magnetic storm. The computers had a five hundred per cent redundancy, in case of damage. But a storm like this might affect all the systems at once.

  ‘I’m increasing the density in the outer layers,’ said Lewis. ‘I’m going to take it as high as I can, to give us maximum protection. That means the heat loss from the station will increase. It’s going to get chilly.’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘When you say chilly …’ May began.

  ‘How low will it get? I don’t know …

  ‘We should get into suits,’ he added. ‘Just in case. Suits, both of you. Keep your helmets to hand. I’ll tell you if you have to put them on.’

  ‘You had better get Van,’ muttered May.

  Paul yielded his seat to her. He skipped down the common room and through the airlock. He called at Vandamme’s seal. There was no answer. He entered. Vandamme was sitting in the middle of her chamber, surrounded by the images of ice on her walls.

  ‘You have to come,’ Paul said.