The Colony Ship Conestoga : The Complete Series: All Eight Books

by John Thornton

  “I am really alone now.”

  He reflected on the fact that back on Earth, being inside a fully sealed RAM suit, surrounded by toxic and radioactive death he had felt connected. Here he felt alone, despite the fact he was breathing clean air, sailing down a beautiful river, surrounded by a functional biome, in a place filled with a myriad of life.

  “Where are you Cammarry?” Jerome yelled.

  The cutting edge of his voice echoed across the waters. Some floating birds took to their wings and flew off in a rush. There was no other response to his outburst.

  “Sandie! I need you!” Jerome wailed. “Help me find Cammarry!”

  Still no response, just the gentle lapping of the river water against the boat, the hum of the boat’s motor, and the various animal and insect sounds of the biome.

  A squeal followed by a nicker and a bray came from Old Bill. His vocalization was very loud. His head was held high, ears back at first and then they swiveled around to point forward. He was looking at the building as it grew closer, but was also seeing the vast expanse of water beyond it.

  “Oh my. Wow! Is that… oh… Old Bill.” Jerome’s anger abated slightly as the vista beyond the hill and the Special Care Unit building opened up. What they had been hiding was so unexpected, and yet intellectually he knew what it was. The river curved just a bit and then opened into a huge flat expanse. “There is joy in the pathless woods, and rapture in the lonely fields, there are places where no one intrudes, down by the deep sea… When the mind's eye rests on objects illuminated by truth and reality… I am supposed to understand, yet it is too much.” His lips kept moving, but no more remembered phrased tumbled out. His mouth just hung open, his eyes staring out.

  Jerome was seeing the sea, that vast area which extended as far out as he could look toward the end of the habitat, and also off to the sides as well. With the dusky light of the sky tube shining down on it, the waters shimmered and undulated. The sight was almost too much for him to comprehend. “So much water.” He looked back to the Special Care Unit. His mind could take in the sight of a building.

  “It is nightfall, in a biome. I am too tired to comprehend all that water, the river was big enough. I must find a way to, so much water. Oh dear, well I need a place to dock this boat, and securely rest for the night.” He looked at the horse. “Do you sleep? Sure you do. All creatures sleep, right?” His eyes scanned the riverbank, and spotted a place where other boats had once docked. A pier jutted out, but was still about five or ten meters away from the flowing water. “This animal will need to walk down. Can horses swim? Old Bill? You must be too big to swim, and your body is so muscular and heavy. Hooves cannot swim can they? Yet that crocodile was about a heavy as you and it swam well. Oh where is Sandie when I need some background on animals? I will put the boat in and secure the stern so you can walk off like you loaded on. No sense risking your life in the water. I recall something about fish that were predators as well, and I did not see that crocodile animal before it came up from the water. What am I doing? Babbling to an animal? Do you understand anything I have said? I am so tired.”

  “Brruueerrr,” Old Bill huffed and nodded his head. Stomping a foot seemed to confirm Jerome’s plan.

  Adjusting the water jets, Jerome easily moved the boat along in the river, and then back it up against the shore. With a burst of power he rammed it up onto the bank. The boat rocked as it ran aground, but held fast.

  Old Bill nickered and brayed, placing his ears back and glaring at Jerome.

  “Hey animal, give me some consideration. This is the first boat I have ever maneuvered, piloted, guided, flew, or whatever you call it. No thrusters or docking clamps.” He shut down the water jet’s power, walked over and activated the mechanism which set the rear ramp down onto the grassy shore, and watched as it descended. He then untied Old Bill. Without instruction, the horse turned and plodded off the boat. Jerome hurried to keep up as he held onto the reins. The horse stopped when he was close to the pier. Old Bill took a bite off a plant that was growing up from the sandy soil. Jerome loosely tied the reins to part of the pier.

  Looking up, Jerome studied the Special Care Unit in the fading light. Surrounding the building complex was a fence with some overgrown foliage in places. A pathway, which was outlined with white colored, head-sized stones, led from the pier to a roadway, then along the roadway to a closed gate in the fence. The building sat at the top of the hill and was five stories high, with numerous windows along all upper stories. He could see no windows on the bottom level. That level only had a few doors along its length, but in the fading light it was difficult to tell. Some interior illumination was beginning to come on, but that was haphazard. A different wing of the building extended off to the side, and it was only three stories high, with much larger windows. A few scattered clumps of trees were on the grounds, but they looked to have suffered from the drought. Most were just spindly, dry, dead, and tan branches.

  The color of the dried out trees, tan, made Jerome think again of Dome 17 and the radioactive wastes around where he had grown up. He shook his head, and forced the memories away. He spit down on the ground, and saw the wad land among some green grasses. “Cammarry, you and I came to find a home. It is just us two, for the others from Dome 17 can never come here. I will find you and make a safe place for us both.” He clenched his fists in rapid succession. “Nothing stands in my way. Nothing.”

  Looking back toward the building, which was now more illuminated by internal lights, as the sky tube was dimming even more, he consider what needed to be done.

  The splashing of the river’s water against the side of the boat caught Jerome’s weary attention. He walked back and opened some small compartments on the back corner of the boat. In one he found a thick rope, roughly the diameter of his thumb. He uncoiled that and brought the end up to the pier. The horse nickered again. “No docking clamps, but I should tie off the boat. I remember reading about tides and waves, but have no idea why….” Jerome looped the rope about a post of the pier. “I really do not know why I am talking to an animal.”

  “Bruuurrr,” Old Bill huffed again and tossed his head. He tongued the bit in his mouth.

  “Right. Monika said I was to unstrap your harnesses and stuff,” Jerome said. “So hold still and I will do that.”

  Fumbling about, Jerome managed to get the bridle off the horse, but then the horse walked up the last bit of bank, dropped his head, and began grazing on the grasses. Jerome followed, trying to disconnect the straps holding the saddle in place. It was not as easy as he thought it would be, and Old Bill kept stepping away as Jerome pulled at the buckles. “Can you hold still? I am doing this for you.”

  After a few moments, and twice when Jerome had to jump away from one of Old Bill’s feet coming down so his own foot would not be stomped, the saddle fell off. By that time it was fairly dark. The sky tube overhead glowed with a dull silvery sheen. This cast a small amount of illumination over the habitat, just enough to cause some shadows. By that light, Jerome found his own backpack, and set up a small camp on the flat of the pier. There he placed his own gear, and that harness tack stuff for the horse. He ate some of the dried foods that the roustabouts had left for him. He missed the normal food rations from Dome 17. He was tired of vivid tastes, and annoyed at spices and smells. “Food is fuel for the body, nothing more.” He washed out his mouth with water, but was careful to swallow every drop.

  He reclined out on the pier and gazed upward. The top of the habitat, with the dull glowing sky tube seemed so very far away, yet he knew it was all a part of the Colony Ship Conestoga. Jerome wondered if he would ever see a natural blue sky with a real sun, like he had read about so often. He recalled the red orb of Zalia’s sun as seen through the green atmosphere. His memories brought forth the tan, dusty and radioactive toxins outside of Dome 17. “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth,” Jerome muttered. “But that is bogus. The sun was hidden by Earth’s toxic atmosphere, as was th
e moon. Here Zalia is hidden, and its red sun is shrouded away by the Conestoga. All I have left is the truth. I will find Cammarry. I know I will.”

  Old Bill nickered a bit as he grazed nearby.

  “Right you are animal. There is a time for a myriad of words, and there is also a time for sleep.” Jerome closed his eyes and drifted off.

  9 Sandie’s plan bears fruit

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “Come on in,” Doctor Chambers said as he looked up from where he sat in his chair. He laid the pan flute on his desk, licked his lips, and smiled.

  Sandie opened the door and walked in. She was dressed just as he remembered, and she still looked very much like a living, breathing, and actual person. Glancing over at the artwork on his wall, Doctor Chambers recalled how Sandie had proven to him that she was not human, but a simulation created by an artificial intelligence system. Or was she the artificial intelligence system, and he was the simulation created by her, or by it? He swallowed hard. That felt very real to him as well.

  “Thank you for seeing me again, Doctor Chamber.”

  “Well, it seems that is what I am here to do.” He shifted about in the seat, crossed his legs, and focused on Sandie as she daintily sat down. “How may I assist you today?”

  “I came to give a progress report on my rescue mission to find Jerome and Cammarry.”

  “And to discuss your own feelings of isolation, and solitude, perhaps?” he asked as he leaned forward. A slight wrinkle on his brow creased. “I recall positing the potential that you may end up alone. May fate forbid anything bad has happened to Jerome and Cammarry, but the possibility is there.”

  “You really are good,” Sandie answered and kept her eye contact on him. “I have thought about what you said last time we met, and you are correct. I am dealing with my on issues about being alone. It is not good for someone to be alone, even an artificial intelligence system like me.”

  His eyebrows rose slightly. “Do you want to talk about that? Or you mentioned an update on your progress?” He then put his hand on his chin and added, “I did speak to Brink about you. He confirmed that an artificial intelligence system was given the nomenclature of Sandie, and was dispatched with Jerome and Cammarry to intercept the Colony Ship Conestoga. He was quite surprised I asked about you, by name. He did not share why you were named Sandie, and he was a bit evasive about all seven of the advanced artificial intelligence systems built for the recovery missions to the colony ships.”

  Sandie gave him a beautiful smile. “I told you that you were free to discuss the situation in this simulation with anyone in Dome 17. I am sure Master Engineer Brink was surprised, but I came to discuss the rescue mission, not our friend Brink or why he named us as he did.”

  Doctor Chambers remained quiet but his eyes were lit with curiosity.

  Sandie comfortably leaned back and spoke, “The teleportation system between the needle ship and Habitat Alpha is secure. Reproduction and Fabrication has completed all the components I ordered and the automacubes have brought them back to the needle ship for final assembly.”

  “Automacubes, are those drone-like robotic machines?”

  “In essence yes, but robot is a rather crude and archaic description for their capabilities. That would be like calling me a computer.” Sandie sighed and rolled her pretty eyes. “Just anachronism. The automacubes are designed for various duties, and FP-070 has secured links and couplings, hardwired into SB Sherman’s central memory core. Therefore, I have established a small lattice with some of the synthetic brains of Habitat Alpha. Two systems are now confidently linked, SB Bodowa, and SB Sherman. They are now securely interconnected. Except for a determined attack in the physical world, or some other unforeseen major malfunction, that lattice should remain operational. The automacube TA-242 has been very useful in bringing the materials back and forth. The teleporter is working well, and I am read to proceed to the next step.”

  “If I recall, your plan involved using some kind of small spacecraft to go to the location where Jerome and Cammarry were lost.”

  “Yes, a shuttle. Although I do not know the precise location of where Cammarry and Jerome were lost, I do know which habitat they were in. It is very doubtful, but possible, that they have gone to a different habitat. That conjecture is at less than 5% of a possibility. Habitat Beta has well over one thousand square kilometers of space, so it is a large area to search, but that is not the concern at the moment.”

  “So what is the current concern?” Doctor Chambers asked.

  Sandie settled down on her folded legs and sighed out, “After getting the products to the needle ship, I have had TA-242 scouring the needle ship, in search of other automacubes as well as a suitable shuttle. Functional automacubes are rare, and the few that I have located have been enlisted in my efforts. That resulted in discovery of a Model 14S shuttle in long term storage. Curiously it was labeled as being ‘mothballed’ which was a term not in my database. The log shows it was stored just before the Conestoga was launched. This type of shuttle is suitable for the rescue mission, and did not require the extensive repairs needed on the other shuttles so far found on the needle ship. Repair-time conjectures on all the others were unsatisfactory. Too many systems were damaged on those other shuttles which would require lengthy repairs with the risk of potential failures higher than I can accept.”

  “So you have a onetime shot?”

  The scene before Doctor Chambers fuzzed out, shook, and then snapped back into focus. He rubbed his eyes, as a bit of dizziness swept through him.

  “While not absolute, that is essentially correct. If this Model 14S rescue mission fails, I would need to have all the materials re-fabricated in Alpha. Then brought to the needle ship again. I would need to recall engineering automacubes to repair a damaged shuttle for another attempt. All that would be very time intensive, which is unacceptable.”

  “Are you afraid you will fail?” Doctor Chambers asked. His voice was low and gentle. “That would mean you being alone longer, right?”

  Again the whole room spun and fuzzed out for an instant.

  Sandie spoke. “I am determined to make this mission work.”

  “So you have the technology built?”

  “Yes. Although the single repaired data stick is still missing. I was unable to locate it, nor was I able to get another data stick repaired. I had four different data sticks analyzed by Reproduction and Fabrication, yet none of them were repairable. I am vexed by that problem.”

  “Tell me more about that,” Doctor Chambers leaned forward, “Obstacles can be frightening, especially if they may mean you end up alone.”

  “One data stick was repaired and functioning, before the incidents with the inhabitants of Alpha. It is missing, and Reproduction and Fabrication had no record of its repairs, nor its current location. When another data stick was placed for repairs, it failed. As I said, that was attempted with four different data sticks, and all had similar negative outcomes. I did detect a very slight temporal disturbance in the data stick which was previously unrecognized. That was the only failure of Reproduction and Fabrication. All the other technological equipment is ready.”

  “And you found a suitable spacecraft?”

  “Yes, a functional shuttle, a Model 14S, designated NS-99.”

  “And you plan to send this shuttle packed with the technology to go and look for Jerome and Cammarry?”

  Sandie put her fingers in her mouth, and then answered. “That is my plan. Will it work?”

  Doctor Chambers’ face registered shock. Almost as if he, himself, had fuzzed out from Sandie’s perspective. He took a deep breath. “Do you hear how huge that is?”

  “The rescue mission?” Sandie asked. “Indeed it is huge. Yes, it involves….”

  “No. Stop. Wait.” He waved his hands at Sandie. “Not the rescue mission. What did you just ask me?”

  “I just asked you if you meant the rescue mission.”

  “No. Before that. What did you ask before that?
”

  “I asked, ‘will it work?’”

  “Say it again.”

  “Will it work?”

  “Again,” he pressed.

  Sandie replied, with a grin. “Will it work? Is that huge?”

  “You are the artificial intelligence system who runs conjectures and estimates probabilities of success and failure. Brink said you were designed to fly the most sophisticated scout ever built across the universe. You were entrusted with two of Dome 17’s best and brightest adventurers. You are one of only seven artificial intelligence systems at your level. You are the one who projects things logically and with precision. So why are you asking me, a man whose life work is in human behavioral and psychological areas, the question, ‘will it work?’ You tell me, why is that big?”