Nerves, that’s all, she told herself. She touched a different waldo’s commandshape and the dodecahedron grew till it swallowed her, infusing her with its sensate data.
Maybe, she thought, calmer now, as a current lifted her marine-waldo, Aculeus Quinque, over a rise blanketed in faint, neon-green rocks—as she scanned the ocean floor with infrared skin-sense and magnified-light eyes and sonar ears, as she tasted the ocean currents with her waldo’s thermocouples and chemical composition detectors—maybe it really is time for a job change. Moss or bamboo harvesting, polar duty—judah shit, even baby-tending—would be better than this endless, oppressive dark. (Okay—maybe not baby-tending.) Maybe Teresa was right and she should join the terraforming effort.
But if there really were vents down here, it’d change everything. All this work would have been worth it. She just didn’t know if she could keep at it much longer. The work made her feel cold—oppressed—even more isolated than she already was.
It slowly dawned on her that she shouldn’t be this cold—not this cold. She minimized the commandball again and then disconnected herself from the livepack that hung suspended in the middle of her projection pod. All her command-; program-, and databalls shrank, flattened, and moved toward the center of her vision, and the hazy boundaries of the light-sphere that defined her projection pod vanished.
Her older twins, Teresa and Paul, the youngest pair of the CarliPablo, clone after Manda, passed by the doorway as Manda pulled off her livemask and tam.
Teresa and Paul were both tall and muscular, with smooth, almond-dark skin and yellow-green eyes, and kinky, ginger-blond hair—their faces and bodies an identical, exotic mix of African and Scandinavian features. The bristles of Paul’s short hair stuck up through the mesh of his livehood; Teresa’s hair was longer, pulled back in a severe ponytail pressed flat under the translucent mesh of hers. Otherwise they were the exact image of each other—and of Manda too, other than the eight seasons of age they had acquired that Manda hadn’t yet. Their livesuits, or what she could see of them, protruding from the sleeves and necks of their cable-knit sweaters, glistened on the backs of their hands and on their cheeks and foreheads like a film of mother-of-pearl.
“Talking to yourself again?” Teresa asked with an arch smile. Manda realized she’d been vocalizing her unhappiness. And as usual, Teresa’s teasing stung, probably more than she intended it to. It resonated with insults others had leveled at Manda recently, implying that there was something wrong with her for being a singleton. As if it were her fault somehow that her brother had died shortly before they were scheduled to be decanted, twenty-one seasons, or Earth-years, ago.
“I’m trying to work. Leave me alone.”
Teresa’s expression went flat and angry. Paul pointed a finger in Manda’s face. “Lay off my sister.”
He followed his vat-twin away.
“She’s my sister, too, asshole,” Manda said to his back. Then regretted her testiness. Warm it up a degree or two, Manda. Your clone is just about the only friend you’ve got.
This irritable back-and-forth between her and Teresa-and-Paul was a stupid pattern, but one Manda seemed helpless to change. From childhood, when Teresa and Paul were adolescents and Manda was “the baby,” they’d always fought too damn much. Teresa was always provoking her, scolding or teasing—and Manda usually insulted her in response. Which invariably brought Paul to Teresa’s defense.
Round and round we go, Manda thought. She’d have to apologize later.
Manda watched Paul catch up with Teresa, down the corridor: watched them walk away, fingers loosely interlaced.
Vat-mates. Rarely apart. Always there, an extension of each other—a remote limb, another self—since before awareness stirred in their cerebral cortices, before their nerve endings began to form and send signals to their nascent brains.
Self and other: the boundaries blurred, between clone siblings. Especially you and your vat-mate. Your vat-mate was part of you. When one died, the other committed suicide shortly thereafter. Almost without exception. No point in going on, when half of yourself had been amputated.
Or so she’d been told. Manda wouldn’t know. Her vat-mate had died as a fetus, shortly before they were scheduled to be decanted, twenty-one seasons ago, as they’d neared this solar system. An accident; equipment failure or something.
This kind of thing happened a lot. All the machines were ancient, built back on Earth long ago. And even though they’d been designed for longevity in severe environments, and even though Manda’s people had learned how to fix just about anything, entropy always took its cut. It was pure luck that Manda herself survived.
She remembered none of it, naturally. She’d always been alone. She was used to it.
She smiled at the retreating figures. You’ll never know the freedom of being a single, she thought. Except that it wasn’t joy that coursed through her now, but a bolt of fierce hatred, as she watched their casual closeness: so much a part of their world they would never even know enough to take it for granted.
A wave of nauseated guilt followed. Without her clone, she had nothing. Teresa, especially: she was the only one who’d ever stuck up for Manda, when the other kids had tormented her for being a single. (And then turned around and demanded to know what Manda had done to provoke them—but hey, it was more than anyone else had ever done.)
Then Manda noticed the rock wall, which was beaded with frozen condensate.
Frozen?
The readout above the thermostat on the wall read two degrees Celsius; that couldn’t be right. Striding over to the wall, she ripped off a fleece-lined shell and nylomir mitten and her liveglove and touched the wall’s white, chalky surface with her bare left hand. Ice cold. Sticky-cold, as the sweat from her fingertips froze. More like minus fifteen. The heaters had failed, again. No wonder she was so cold.
With a sigh of disgust Manda recoiled her short, frizzy braid. She pulled the cool, slick-soft mesh of the livehood down over her head and face again, dragged the tam’s cuff down over her ears, and plugged back into the livepack. The large sphere of soft light reappeared around her. With her right, swathed hand she stabbed at a shiny icon that now hovered at shoulder height, which solidified as she focused her sight on it.
“Damn you, ObediahUrsula!” she snapped at the young, round face that materialized. “I can’t work with the heaters failing all the time.”
ObediahUrsula’s brow puckered and his eyes widened. So young. What was a child doing, in charge of something as critical as the heaters?
“It’s, it’s just that the thermostats are—”
The words darted out of Manda’s mouth in explosive puffs, like little ice daggers. “Don’t. Give. Me. Another fucking sob story about equipment breakdown. Just fix it. If I lose a waldo, I’m going to put your name down as the cause.”
She stabbed the comm icon off in the midst of his reply, and rubbed her hands over her painfully spasming stomach. A knot in her throat formed, swelled, threatened to burst.
“Goddammit.” She swallowed the knot, washed it down with a dose of anger. “Damn it to hell.”
Someone passing by in the corridor glanced in at her and shook his head in disapproval. PabloJebediah: one of Jack and Amadeo’s younger sibs. Jack and Amadeo, along with Arlene and Derek and the senior twins or triplets of three other clones, ran Amaterasu’s governing council. And, Manda remembered belatedly, Pablojebediah and ObediahUrsula were closely allied. Manda had probably just disrupted some sort of delicate, interclone power balance, or given Derek and Arlene some kind of coup-related headache. Too bad. She glared at him until he went away, then pulled her livehood back over her head, adjusted her specs and mic, and hooked back into her livepack. Her data- and commandballs reappeared, within the confines of her sphere of light.
All right, she admitted to herself. It isn’t ObediahUrsula’s fault the heating systems are failing. But if I didn’t yell about it nothing would get done, and we’d all freeze to death.
She reconsidered and started to disconnect; she needed to calm down. She couldn’t work when she was this upset. But a glimmer in one of the dataglobes at waist level caught her eye. Probably nothing—another false alarm; Aculeus Septimus’s visuals might need calibrating again.
Or.
Maybe this time it was the hydrothermal vent she was looking for. The place where, if this frozen, forsaken pissball of a world had any remnants of life left, it would probably be.
Yeah, right. Shaking her head at her own optimism, Manda reached out for the little sphere, which showed a snippet of ocean floor with a bit of flickering red in it.
She spent the rest of the first-watch work shift trying to figure out what was going on with Aculeus Septimus. Hours—and countless tedious cross-checks and equipment calibrations—later, as she’d expected, the temperature anomaly turned out to be a false reading. Aculeus Septimus, which had reported the last two anomalies, was malfunctioning again. Time to haul it in for a tune-up. Or better yet, she thought irritably, putting away her icons, maybe I’ll just junk it.
Manda had her own little space, separate from the rest of her clone. It wasn’t supposed to be like that but she’d held out against all the recriminations and insinuations, back when, and eventually people had stopped making a fuss about it. She woke up from her first-watch sleep to find Paul and Teresa at the craggy entrance to her nook.
“Lights up,” she said, sitting. A bulb burned out with a flash and a pop. Manda swore. Finding a replacement was going to be tough. She wrapped the fur about herself and eyed her older siblings in the dim light. “What’s going on?”
Paul held out a data crystal, which she took. “Here’s some stuff Arlene wanted you to look over,” he said. “Inventory and loading schedules for Project IceFlame,” Teresa added. Manda was going to be their primary coordinator Amaterasu-side, once the terraforming team headed for the poles. Paul said, “They’ll need you in Stores tomorrow, to double-check everything.”
“All right.” She stood and tucked the crystal into a pocket of her pullover, which hung on a hook by the head of her sleeping mat.
But the data could just as easily have been transmitted online. Something else was up.
Their gazes pressed on her back. Ignoring them, she triggered her livesuit’s don-routine and stepped into the center of the suit as footprints formed in it. The livesuit rippled up her form like liquid metal. She pulled her longjohns on over it, then lowered the yoke over her head, plugged it into her livesuit, slid on her gloves, and fitted them to the sleeves’ leads. Finally she turned with an exhalation, bracing herself.
“Go ahead and break it to me,” she said.
Teresa started: “We want you to—”
“—stay with us tonight,” Paul finished. “For a while.”
“We’re holding a covalence ceremony,” Teresa said. Which meant someone had a new exo-bond—a sexual pairing.
It had to be really important for them to be here. She’d refused to participate every single time they’d asked in the past six seasons, since her disastrous experience with JebediahMarshall. Curiosity overcame her initial impulse to simply refuse and kick them out.
“Who?”
Teresa and Paul exchanged a look. “JennaMara,” they both replied. One of the other clones on the governing council.
Manda’s eyes widened. “For real?”
“For real.”
Wow. Major coup is in play, then. She started to ask, Which ones? Paul anticipated her. “Janice, on our side. You know Charlotte?” Manda shook her head. She didn’t really know JennaMara, except for its prime, Lawrence. He was okay.
Manda worried a hangnail. “How is Farrah?” Farrah was Janice’s vat-twin.
“She’s dealing with it,” Paul said, tersely.
About six seasons ago there’d been a pairing between Teresa and a ByronMichael. It had been really hard on Paul. The exo-bond had been Teresa’s first—and only—serious one. All his anxiety and anger over it Paul had taken out on Manda when she’d refused participate in the covalence ceremony.
Teresa had somehow gotten Manda off the hook with ByronMichael and Paul, and the exo-bond with ByronMichael had eventually dissolved. But Teresa had extracted a promise from Manda to attend the next covalence she asked her to, and Manda had agreed. Until now, Teresa had been careful to avoid calling Manda on it—which had only increased Manda’s indebtedness to her.
“I hate this,” Manda said. She couldn’t get away with a flat refusal. Still, it was worth a try. She gave Teresa a pleading look. “Can’t you—”
“No.” Teresa’s tone was sharp. “Charlotte has asked for you.”
Manda was surprised. “She did?” Paul and Teresa both nodded. “Why?”
“We don’t know,” Teresa replied, “but JennaMara wanted us all to be there.”
“JennaMara really put its coup on the line for IceFlame,” Paul added.
“So that’s what this is about.”
Paul frowned. “It’s not just that. Don’t be so fucking cynical, Manda.” “Janice really has a thing for Charlotte,” Teresa interjected. “She needs you to help make it okay.” Paul went on, “If you’re there, it’ll mean major coup for us. Everybody knows—”
—how you are. Manda heard it without him saying it, and glared, but he stared steadily back.
“And Farrah needs you,” Teresa said. Paul nodded. “She’s taking it hard.”
“She is?” Manda felt a twinge of sympathy. It hurt—she was told—when your vat-mate took a lover. The covalence ceremonies were supposed to salve anxious feelings and resentment between the unpaired vat-siblings on each side.
She thought, At least Farrah has a vat-mate. She doesn’t give a shit about me. None of them do.
Try not to be a bigger asshole than you can help, Paul’s gaze said. And, you owe me, said Teresa’s. You promised.
Manda’s heart fluttered painfully. No clean way out.
It was just a formality. It wouldn’t take too long. She’d participated once or twice when she was younger, before she’d worked up the nerve to refuse. And at least Janice was showing good taste.
Manda sighed heavily. “All right. This once.”
Relief spread onto their identical faces. Teresa hugged her and Paul gave her shoulder a squeeze.
“Thanks,” they said in unison.
“When and where?”
Paul said, “Arlene has prepared—”
“—a meeting space on the Mound,” Teresa added. “See you there,” they both said, and finished, as Manda opened her mouth to ask when, “at twenty-seven o’clock tonight.”
Manda arrived a few minutes late to the IceFlame project meeting.
“Well, this is it,” Arlene was saying, as Manda entered. “The council has settled on a final launch date for the polar expedition.”
The entire project team was there. Manda’s clone sat in front, seven of it, not counting Arlene and Manda: three men and four women. The others were all at least eight seasons older than Manda. At sixty seasons, Arlene and Derek were the eldest. Several other clones were also present, including those who, like Manda, would be providing Amaterasu-based support.
“We ship out in eight days. I’ve got everyone’s assignments.”
An excited murmur broke out.
Eight days? Manda felt a pang of anxiety. She hadn’t expected things to happen so quickly.
She seated herself next to Teresa and Paul, and listened with perhaps half an ear while Arlene went over the initial setup stages of the project. Her role in that would be minimal. The other attendees were more attentive as with an economy of word and gesture cultivated by genetics and upbringing, honed to a high gloss over decades of working together, her siblings went over each phase of the assignment with the other team members.
Project IceFlame had two main thrusts. The first, which had been going on for several seasons, was a massive drilling effort: at twenty-eight locations strategically placed around the moon’s surface—primarily in t
he upper latitudes, where most of the Moon’s carbon dioxide was stored, in deadly, smoking-cold glaciers of CO2 and methane-hydrate ice—drills would pierce the crust and tap into the magma, creating vast fields of lava “irrigation.” These would serve as the ongoing energy source to keep Brimstone’s many fields of methane-hydrate deposits burning, with fleets of air-avatars controlling the intensity and spread of the burns.
During the town meeting last month, at which the colonists had debated whether to carry on with IceFlame, those opposed had pointed out the risks of piercing the Moon’s crust. There was a small risk it could set off a series of major quakes that could jeopardize the colony, and a greater risk that their precautionary tamps would fail: that the terraforming fires would burn out of control, put toxic amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, or melt the ice caps to the point that Amaterasu would be inundated.
It had been decided that the risks were worth it. Their equipment was slowly breaking down around them; their population was dwindling, as dozens of colonists a year died of exposure or cold-related accidents. They needed to get out of these caves.
“Bart and Charles will give us a status report on the magma drilling,” Arlene said. The middle-aged CarliPablo twins came to the front of the room.
“The first drill is scheduled—” “—to penetrate the crust and reach magma—” “—at thirty-six o’clock tonight,” they said, trading off with such natural ease that it didn’t matter who was talking. “The other twenty-seven should be breaking through the crust—” “—over the next six to eight days.” “Any delays in drilling will result in a delay in the polar expedition’s launch.”
Worldmakers Page 69
