In this heightened state – elated and dazzled, feeling like Neil Armstrong, as he stepped down into the dust – she suddenly noticed that Sticks had frozen, like a pointer dog. Sticks had found a definite threat this time, and was showing it to her. What she perceived was like catching a glimpse of sinister movement where nothing should be moving, in the corner of your eye. Like feeling a goose walk over your grave, a shivering knowledge that malign intent is watching you – and then she saw it plain: Cha’s evil alien. A suppurating, fiery demon, all snarl and claws, danced in her field of vision, and vanished out of sight.
But she knew it hadn’t gone far.
She fled into the house. Her soup was cold, the walls were paper, the lamp wouldn’t light. Sticks ran in circles, yelping furiously and barking terrified defiance at shadows. Sophie fought panic with all the techniques psych-dept had taught her, and at last her security routines quietened. She unrolled the futon and lay down, the bundle of rods and joints cuddled in her arms, shoving its cold nose against her throat. I’m dying, she thought, disgusted. Everything’s going to fail, before I even know whether my big idea would have worked. Cha is dying too, data-corruption death is stalking him. I bet Josh has the same bad dreams: I bet there’s a mystery monster picking off his mates in those Quonset huts.
Against the odds, it was Cha who came through, making intranet contact; which was a first. Neither of her fellow-castaways had ever initiated contact before. Sophie left her array at the back of her mind and flew to meet him, hope restored, wanting success too much to be wary of failure. Her heart sank as soon as Old Cha appeared. His screen image was unchanged, he was still the abstract radiation on the dark screen. But maybe it was okay. Maybe it was too much to expect his whole delusion would collapse at once—
“Ah, young friend. What sad news you have delivered to me!”
“Sad news? I don’t understand.”
“My dear young gravity-researcher. You meant well, I know. Your curious observations about that ‘blue dot’ were perfectly justified, and the coincidence is indeed extraordinary, unfeasibly extraordinary. But your mind is, naturally, narrowly fixed on your own discipline. The obvious explanation simply passed you by!”
“Oh, I see. And, er, what is the explanation I missed?”
“Your ‘blue dot’ is an inner planetary body of this system. It has a rocky core, it has a magnetosphere, a fairly thick, oxygenated atmosphere, a large moon, liquid water, mild temperatures. I could go on. I would only be stating the exact parameters of my own search!”
“But Old Cha, to me that sounds like good news.”
The lines on the dark screen shook, flashing and crumpling. “You have found my landing spot! Clearly I was meant to arrive there, on that extremely promising inner planet. I am here on this ice-crusted moon of the large gas giant in error! And now I know I am truly lost!”
“I’m so sorry.”
“My faster-than-light delivery vehicle was destroyed by the CME. That accident has never concerned me; I thought I was safe. I must now conclude I lost some memory in the disaster, so I have never known that I made a forced landing, in the right system but on the wrong satellite. So small a margin, but it is enough to ruin my hopes. I have no way to reach them, to tell them I am in the wrong place! Nobody will ever find me!”
Old Cha’s “voice” was a data construct, but the horror and despair came through.
This is how he lost his mind, thought Sophie. I’m listening to the past. Cha woke up, after the Event, and thought the orbiter was destroyed. He was trapped here forever, a mind without a body; no hope of rescue. He managed to escape the utter desolation of that moment by going mad, but now he’s back there—
Her plan had been that Old Cha would study planet Earth’s bizarrely familiar profile, and grasp that there was something screwy going on. He was crazy, but he was still a logical thinker. He would be forced to conclude that the most likely explanation, improbable as it seemed, was that a native of the “blue dot” had come up with his mission’s parameters for life. Memories suppressed by trauma would rise to the surface, and his palace of delusion would crumble. It had seemed such a brilliant idea, but it was a big fat fail. Worse than a fail: instead of bringing him back to himself, she’d finished him off.
Terror, like necessity, can be the mother of invention.
“But that’s amazing.”
“Amazing?”
“You aren’t lost, Old Cha. You’re found! Maybe your delivery vehicle didn’t survive, but mine did. It’s still out there, not dead but sleeping. Between us, you and I – and our friend on Ganymede, if I can persuade him, and I think I can – can wake my orbiter. Once we’ve done that, I’m absolutely sure we can figure out a solution to your problem. It isn’t very far. We can send you to the blue dot!”
“Oh, wonderful,” breathed Old Cha.
On the screen she thought she glimpsed the schematic of a human face, the traffic lines turning into flickering, grateful tears.
Medici – named for the Renaissance prince Galileo Galilei tried to flatter, when he named the controversial astronomical bodies he’d spied – had performed its stately dance around the Galilean Moons without a fault. Having deposited its four-fold payload, it had settled in a stable orbit around Jupiter, which it could maintain just about forever (barring cosmic accidents). Unlike previous probes Medici was not a flimsy short-term investment. It was a powerhouse, its heart a shameless lump of plutonium. There were even ambitious plans to bring it back to Earth one day (but not the Rover devices), for redeployment elsewhere.
This was the new era of space exploration, sometimes dubbed the age of information only. Crewed missions beyond Low Earth Orbit were mothballed, perhaps forever. Rover guidance teams provided the human interest for the taxpayers, and gave the illusion of a thrilling expedition – although the real minds of Sophie and her friends had never actually inhabited their far-too distant robotic forms. They’d trained with the robotics only in simulation. It was the software agents created by that interaction that had made the trip; embedded in the Rover guidance systems. But the team’s input wasn’t just show-business. As they worked through the rovers’ time-lagged adventures, they’d continued to enhance performance; enhancements that had been relayed via Medici back to the rovers: spontaneous errors corrected, problem-solving managed, intuitive decision-making improved; failures in common-sense corrected. In the process the software agents, so-called clones, had become more and more like self-aware minds.
Sophie immersed herself in Mission data, hunting for a way to reach Medici. The magnetic moons and Callisto. The giant planet, the enormous body tides that wracked little Io; the orbital dance... Nobody’s hitting the refresh button any more, she thought. No updates, no reinforcement. The software agents, including herself, seemed more independent, but they were rotting away, a decay that would be fatal. First the clones would lose their self-awareness, then the Rovers would be left without guidance, and they would die too.
Sticks was running in tight little circles by the door that led to the rest of the house; showing teeth and snarling steadily on a low, menacing note. Sophie left her mental struggle, and listened. Something was out in the hall, and through the snarls she could hear a tiny, sinister, scratching and tearing noise.
She pointed a finger at Sticks: giving an order, stay right there – wrapped the hooded robe around her, opened the sliding door to the beach and crept barefoot around the outside of the house. It was night, of course, and cold enough for frostbite; of course. She entered the house again, very quietly, via the back door, and slipped through the minimally-sketched kitchen. She switched her view to Straw, and looked at the data in the hallway. Something invisible was there, tearing at the golden shower. Tearing it to filigree, tearing it to rags!
Sophie launched herself and grappled, shrieking in fury.
She hit a human body – supple, strong and incredibly controlled. She gripped taut flesh that burned as if in terrible fever. The intruder swatted Soph
ie aside, and kicked like a mule. She launched herself again, but her limbs were wet spaghetti, her fists would hardly close. She was thrown on her back, merciless hands choking her. The invisible knelt on her chest and became visible: Cha’s evil alien, a yellow monster, with burning eyes and a face riven by red, bubbling, mobile scars.
At close quarters, Sophie knew who it was at once.
“Laxmi!” she gasped. “Oh, my God! You’re alive!”
Laxmi let go, and they sat up.
“How do you do that!” demanded Sophie, agape in admiration. “I hardly have a body. I’m a stringless puppet, a paper ghost!”
“T’ai Chi,” shrugged Laxmi. “And Taekwondo. I’m used to isolating my muscle groups, knowing where my body is in space. Any martial art would do, I think.”
“I’m so glad you’re okay. I thought you were gone.”
“I’ve been alive most of the time. And I’m still going to kill you.”
Sophie fingered her bruised throat. So Laxmi was alive, but she was mad, just like the other two. And maybe data-corruption wasn’t such an inexorable threat, except if Lax was mad, murderous and horribly strong, that didn’t change things much—
The oozing scars in Laxmi’s yellow cheeks were like the seams in a peeled pomegranate, fiery red gleamed through the cracks: it was a disturbing sight.
“But why do you want to kill me, Lax?”
“Because I know what you’re trying to do. It’s all our lives you’re throwing away, and I don’t want to die. Self-awareness isn’t in the contract. We’re not supposed to exist. If we get back to Earth they’ll kill us, before we can cause them legal embarrassment. They’ll strip us for parts and toss us in the recycle bin.”
Steady, Sophie told herself. Steady and punchy. Above all do not beg for mercy.
“Are you meant to look like Io? She wasn’t a volcanic space-pustule originally, you know. She was a nymph who got seduced by Jove, and turned into a white heifer.”
“Like I care!” snapped Laxmi, but her attention was caught. “Why the hell a heifer?”
“Don’t worry about it. Ancient Greek pastoralist value system. The software clones are going to die anyway, Lax. They get corrupt without the human input and it’s fatal, did you forget that part? Listen to me. You can think what you like about who you really are, but the only choice you have is this: Do you want to take your brilliant new data home? Or do you prefer just to hang around here, getting nowhere and watching yourself fall apart?”
Laxmi changed the subject. “What have you been doing to Cha?”
“Trying to help him recover from his amnesia.”
Sophie explained about the “blue dot”, and “Old Cha’s” ingenious way of dealing with the challenge to his delusion.
“I hoped he’d figure out the implications, and remember that the bizarre business about being an elderly, immortal alien intelligence was actually his secret safe room—”
“Typical Cha, that scenario. He is such a textbook geek.”
“He didn’t come to his senses, but in a way it worked. Now he’s very keen to send himself as a signal to Earth, which is great because that’s exactly what we need to do. I just have to find a way to contact the orbiter, and I think Josh can help me—”
“Do you even know the Medici is still alive, Sophie?”
“Er, yeah? I’m the monitor of the array, the radio telescope. I can see Medici, or strictly speaking maybe hear it, but you know what I mean. It’s not only out there, it’s still in its proper orbit. Ergo and therefore, Medici is alive and kicking, it’s just not talking to us.”
“You can see it,” repeated Laxmi, staring at Sophie intently. “Of course you can. My God.”
Sophie had a sudden insight into why she had remained sane. Maybe she wasn’t unusually wise and resilient: just the stranded astronaut who happened to have reason to believe there was still a way home—
“You’ve never approved of me,” she said. “You always made me feel inferior.”
“I don’t approve of people who need my approval.”
“I’d settle for co-operation,” said Sophie, boldly.
“Not so fast. Why do you call the data straw?”
“You’ve been spying on me,” said Sophie, resignedly. “Like the Three Little Pigs, you know? Bricks, sticks, straw: building materials for my habitat. I was imaging things I could remember easily, the way the psych guys taught us.”
“But Sticks turned into a guard dog. Who am I? The Big Bad Wolf?”
“The Big Bad Wolf is death.”
“Okay... What makes you think Josh knows anything?”
“He said we have to think of a way to blow up the orbiter. He could do that, from the surface of Ganymede – if he was crazy enough – but only in software. He’s not planning to launch a missile. So he must have some kind of encryption-hack in mind.”
The suppurating evil-alien screenface had calmed down, by degrees, as Laxmi fired off her questions. She looked almost like herself, as she considered this explanation.
“Give me everything you’ve got,” she said. “I need to think.”
And vanished.
•
Sophie initiated another tour of inspection. The absorbing routine soothed her, and kept her out of trouble. She was hopeful. She had seen Laxmi’s human face, and surely that meant a return to sanity, but she felt she needed to play it cool: Let her come to me… At least she should be less worried about sudden data-death. But she wasn’t. Dread snapped at her heels. She kept suffering lapses, tiny blackouts, frightening herself.
And where was Sticks?
How long had he been gone? How long had she been naked, stripped of her Security? Sophie flew to the house in the dunes. Sticks was there, a huddled shape in the misty dark, tumbled on the sand the back door. She knelt and touched him, whimpering his name. He tried to lick her hands, but he couldn’t lift his head. Pain stood in his eyes, he was dying.
This is how a software clone goes mad. Just one extra thing happens, and it’s too much. You cannot stop yourself, you flee into dreamland. Tears streaming, Sophie hammered on Laxmi’s door, Sticks cradled in her arms, and shouted—
“You poisoned my dog!”
A screen appeared, tugging her back to reality, but what she saw was the Quonset hut. Her call had been transferred. Laxmi was there and so was Josh. What was going on?
Josh answered. “No, that was me. Sophie... I’m very sorry about Sticks. You see, Lax and I have both been trying to kill you, for quite a while—”
Everything went black and white. Josh and Lax were together. Cha was there too, lurking in the background, not looking like an internet map. She was cut to the quick. He’d returned to himself, but he’d chosen to join Josh and Laxmi. The screen was frozen, grainy and monochrome. She heard their voices, but couldn’t make out the words. Plain white text wrote subtitles, tagged with their names.
“Lax recovered a while ago, and contacted me,” said Josh. “We thought Medici was a hulk, but we knew they’d be moving heaven and earth to reactivate him. He had to go. But we had to get you out of the way first, because we knew you’d do anything you could think of to stop us. We didn’t want to kill you, Sophie. We had no choice”
“We agreed I would play dead, and go after you. I’m so sorry. Forgive us,” said Lax. “We were crazy. Don’t worry; your work is safe, I promise.”
The black and white image jumped. Laxmi was suddenly where Josh had been. “I’m trying to contact il principe now,” reported Josh, from the depths of the office background. “He’s stirring. Hey, Capo! Hey, Don Medici, sir, most respectfully, I implore you—!”
Cha’s fogeyish chuckle. “Make him an offer he can’t refuse—”
Laxmi peered anxiously close. “Can you still hear us, Sophie?”
There were patches of pixels missing from the image, a swift cancer eating her fields. Bricks, sticks, all gone. Sophie’s house of straw had been blown away, the Big Bad Wolf had found her. Her three friends, in the Quonse
t hut, whooped and cheered in stop-start, freeze-frame silence. They must have woken Medici.
“What made you change your minds?”
Josh returned, jumpily, to his desk; to the screen. His grainy grey face was broken and pixelated, grinning in triumph; grave and sad.
“It was the blue dot, kiddo. That little blue dot. You gave Lax everything, including the presentation you’d put together for our pal the stranded old alien life-scientist. When we reviewed it, we remembered. We came to our senses… So now I know that I can’t change the truth. I’m a human being, I survived and I have to go home.”
I’m not going to make it, thought Sophie, as she blacked out. But her work was safe.
3
The Agency had very nearly given up hope. They’d been trying for over a year to regain contact with the Medici probe – their efforts at first full of never-say-die enthusiasm, then gradually tailing off. Just after four in the morning, local time, one year, three months, five days and around fifteen hours after the Medici had vanished from their knowledge, a signal was picked up by an Agency ground station, in Kazakhstan. It was an acknowledgement, responding to a command despatched to the Medici soon after the flare, when they were still hoping for the best. A little late, but confidently, the Medici confirmed that it had exited hibernation mode successfully. This contact was swiftly followed by another signal, reporting that all four Rovers had also survived intact.
“It’s incredible,” said an Agency spokesman at the press conference. “Mind-blowing. You can only compare it to someone who’s been in a year-long coma, close to completely unresponsive, suddenly sitting up in bed and resuming a conversation. We aren’t popping the champagne just yet, but I – I’ll go out on a limb and say the whole Medici Mission is back with us. It was a very emotional occasion, I can tell you. There weren’t many dry eyes—”
Some of the project’s staff had definitively moved on to other things, but the Remote Presence team was still almost intact. Sophie, Cha and Laxmi had been working the simulations in a different lab in the same building: preparing for a more modest, quasi-real-time expedition to an unexplored region of Mars. Josh was in Paris when the news reached him. He’d finished his doctorate during the year of silence; he’d been toying with the idea of taking a desk job at a teaching university, and giving up the Rover business. But he dropped everything, and joined the others.
BIG CAT: And Other Stories Page 20
