"We haven't determined who was controlling the shuttle,” Collette said, “nor if he, or she, or they were the saboteurs, nor if a saboteur was who murdered Ascendant Chryse. We probably need to do that, if we can, before contacting the rest of the survivors. And we need to keep up the shuttle deliveries of critical nutrients to avoid suspicion."
Doc chuckled. “Perhaps we simply see who's been meeting the shuttle."
Soob wrote, “Secure base first, take risks second."
Helen nodded. “It will be risky to make any deliveries at all; whoever did this may have a contingency plan."
Collette shook her head. “There is some risk, but to effectively execute all of them? That's more than I want on my conscience. Besides, I want to know what happened."
"How much time do we have?” Jacques asked. “When is the next resupply flight?"
"Resupply flights have been at random intervals, generally from six to ten days,” the shuttle AI responded.
"Who orders them?” Collette asked.
"The identifier is: A5428C42."
"We need to see one of those meetings,” Collette said. “I wonder if the security means they are guarding against us or each other."
Helen laughed. “Somehow, I don't see Gabe anticipating that we'd tunnel through to where he's been hiding the shuttle."
"It might not be Gabe. Leo's more the type. Or maybe even one of the women, staying in the background. What are you thinking, Jacques?” Doc asked.
He was thinking they needed more time and less risk. “We could set up a minimum stand-alone facility at Eagle's Nest—we can get there if things go sour with the shuttle. Then let things proceed until we have more information. When we know what we're dealing with and have a good fallback, we can decide the next step."
"To Eagles Nest!” Doc said.
"Not so fast,” Jacques said. “If I was able to track the shuttle's position, whoever's been using it will as well. We shouldn't use it for transportation until we're ready."
* * * *
It was a good concept, Jacques thought, but it gave them only about five days to replicate the replicator. They stayed at “Tunnel's End” for the time being while the shuttle essentially “printed” three-dimensional objects on a five-by-five centimeter stage. The device itself, with its power supply, input matter processor, cooling connections, and so on was almost half a cubic meter. That had to be “broken down” into five-centimeter cubed sections, and it wasn't designed that way. The AI helped, but it was well into the third day before the parts started coming out.
When the call came on the afternoon of the fourth day, it caught them unprepared.
"A5428C42 has directed a flight,” Fortitude announced on Jacques’ wristcomp; only he and Soob were in the vicinity. They quickly helped the robots get their things off.
The Fortitude came back, a day later, to everyone's relief, especially Helen's.
"I got my necklace back!” she beamed.
But when they played back the recording of who was meeting the shuttle, they got a surprise. It was a tiny kangasaur that came aboard and picked up the bottle of nutrient powder from the replicator stage, then hopped away.
"Trained?” Doc speculated.
"Cute, anyway,” Collette said. “I think it's a robot. Nobody would notice it, and our perp wouldn't need excuses for occasional long absences. But a robot is unlikely to command the shuttle to do anything different, nor notice that the Trojan memory chip is no longer in charge."
"We need to proceed quickly; they're bound to be suspicious, eventually."
After two weeks working with the newreplicator, they had a ten-kilowatt boron-proton power plant and a collapsible electric cart to make the trip back to Eagle's nest in a couple of days. Knowing what to look for, they found a vertical maintenance access to the Eagle's nest lava tube.
Another week gave them a second working replicator with a larger assembly platform at Eagle's nest. Tools, sanitary facilities, beds, and small robots soon followed.
On the fourth return of the shuttle, they felt ready to visit the New Landing community. Soob got a dinosaur-capable tranquilizer dart gun. Collette got herself a complete police officer's kit. Everyone else got tranquilizer flechette pistols.
The call for the next shipment of nutrient powder came, and they all got aboard.
The view of Cube World from space was spectacular and bizarre. At the high point of their trajectory, they could see three faces, each with green, blue, and green concentric circles at its center.
"You're not wearing your necklace,” Collette said to Helen as deceleration began. “Edith would love to see it!"
Helen beamed. “I'll get it right now so I don't forget it."
At a quarter gee, the deceleration provided no real hindrance to moving around the shuttle. They were almost down when she reemerged on the control deck.
"I couldn't find it,” she said, deliberately. “Must have left it at Camp Fortitude."
Camp Fortitude? Jacques was suddenly alert—they'd never named any place Camp Fortitude.
He turned and looked at her. Her eyes were wide and her face was grim. She raised a finger to her lips. Helen hadn't left her necklace anywhere but on the shuttle. On the shuttle Fortitude.
Which wasn't this; there were three to start with—identical, of course.
He looked at the others to see if they'd gotten the clue and was answered by grim faces and grave nods. They had. They would have only seconds before this shuttle's hobbled brain realized they knew and disabled them. Soob took his slate and scratched on it: “gas hoods."
The shipsuits had hoods with clear visors packed in their collars. They would provide protection against a knockout gas, if that was what was intended for them. A quick look at the environmental systems display panel showed fan level at max—something was being blown into the command deck as fast as the shuttle's systems could send it. Without delay, Jacques released his hood, pulled it over his head, and sealed it at the neck. Soob had his on, too, as did Collette.
Doc and Helen weren't quite in time, and slumped, unconscious, in their seats as the spacecraft settled to the ground.
Collette was at the command deck hatch in a flash, and cranked it shut manually, while Jacques and Soob finished getting the hoods over Helen and Doc.
"This is Resolution Shuttle Intrepid. You are under arrest by order of the President of Providence. It is a crime to resist this order. It is also impossible as you will eventually run out of air. You must submit to the authority of Captain Suretta, who will bring you into Providence."
* * * *
Chapter 18
On Being Born Again
"Not in your cybernetic life,” Jacques said, and jumped over to the primary memory panel. It was locked, but he now had a laser tool and quickly cut through its thin composite material. The sound of a torch working on the much more solid material of the command deck hatch reached him. He only had a few seconds.
He fumbled with the panel.
"I think we have about twenty seconds,” Collette said, as she motioned the others into defensive positions. They would block the door as long as they could. Helen had found a roll of space tape and taped over the cut as the robot cut it. It would take the torch only seconds to cut through that “repair,” but those would be precious seconds.
Jacques turned back to his work and focused. Like the Fortitude, the Intrepid had been hacked with a single ersatz memory module. His fingers were like thumbs; the damn thing was stuck in, not budging. His fingers slipped off it, time and time again.
Screwdriver! He fumbled to find it in his tool kit. The torch stopped, followed by loud bangs.
"Jacques,” Collette yelled.
He had the screwdriver and pried at the module, ignoring thumps and curses behind him.
Then it broke free, and Jacques yanked it out.
Silence fell on the command deck. He turned to find his comrades covered with three or four maintenance robots each, stuck to them like crabs, cover
ing their faces and hands. He felt something on his own back; he hadn't noticed it before. It had been that close.
"Intrepid, this is Jacques Song...” he said, beginning the same routine he'd used on the Fortitude. When he finished, the maintenance robots meekly abandoned their positions and skittered back to their stations. He found the backup modules, rebooted the AI, and summoned up a view of the shuttle's exterior.
Leo was standing near the entrance hatch. He obviously knew something was amiss; he had a gun out and was looking at his wrist comp and talking.
Collette stared at him. “Three shuttles. Of course. We knew that. We should have been asking ourselves where the others were."
"Just blast off right now and we solve a whole bunch of problems,” Helen said.
"Uh-uh,” Collette said. “Bring him in. I've got a lot of questions."
"I think what Helen means,” Doc said, “is that the whole question of governance, and thus the authority of anyone to imprison or try anyone else is very murky in these circumstances. The legal tradition is for settlements to elect their leadership. We, in essence, lost that election."
"This is not a colony or an intentional settlement.” Collette responded. “However removed, we are still part of a Solar System expedition, under the authority of the government that sent it."
Jacques watched Leo outside, pacing with increasing restiveness. Might he try to shoot his way in? “People, the alternative to us taking charge appears to be to allow mass murderers to run things. For now, Mr. Suretta waits outside with a gun. As Helen points out, to simply blast off with him in his present position would solve a lot of things. I'm not sure the shuttle AI will do that, however. Does anyone have any ideas about how to disable Mr. Suretta without doing him great bodily harm?"
"Do we still control Fortitude?" Helen asked. “Could its robots do something?"
"In an hour or so,” Doc said. “It's on one of the other Cube World faces now."
Soob wrote furiously.
"We have one robot outside now,” Helen read, with a puzzled look.
Doc laughed. “Of course!"
Half an hour later, they watched Leo Suretta collapse from a dart fired by a tranq gun held by the miniature kangasaur that had been unloading the nutrient shipments.
Leo couldn't see both sides of the shuttle at once, and they'd gotten the tranq gun out a maintenance door just big enough for Helen's arm, after they'd removed the intervening equipment.
With Lt. Collette's prisoner secured in one of the Intrepid's berths, they lifted off for New Landing, or “Providence” as Gabe had apparently renamed it. For good measure they contacted the Fortitude and had it join them. The Resolution's shuttles set down on the beach on the north side of New Landing.
The place had grown, with several huts on stilts near the cave mouth, fish and laundry drying on lines, and a faint whiff of untreated sewage.
One would expect that two spaceships landing at this settlement of some stranded astronauts would have attracted some attention, Jacques thought. And it did. Everyone was open-mouthed except for Gabe. He sat down and cradled his head in his hands. Then he focused on Jacques.
"Where's Leo?” he asked, simply.
"In custody,” Collette answered. “What was your role in all this?” she asked with a wave toward the shuttles.
"Leo woke me up before we hit this planet's atmosphere. He told me to be on the Fortitude," Gabe said, “and said the ship would notify the others. Look, this was a chance to go back to Eden. To get everything right. To live the way..."
"What others?” Collette demanded.
"I'm sorry about not telling you about the shuttles, but if y'all knew, you wouldn't have formed the community. You all would just try and build a starship to go back to something that was over and done with thousands of years ago. There's a way people were meant to be, and that's not part of it any more than what those New Reformationists were doing."
"What others?” Collette repeated.
"Leo, Evgenie, and I were on one. There's a group over on the face east of here from the Intrepid. They're the control group; they know about the shuttles. The third shuttle crashed."
"Control group? You were running an experiment?” Doc sounded incredulous.
"I had some ideas about how to ease the New Reformationists back into the fold. I sort of adapted them to the situation."
"Which you helped engineer,” Collette stated.
Gabe shook his head. “No, no. We were already here when Leo woke me up. We discussed how to handle things. He'd just found out and had some good ideas about how to handle this.” He looked around at a sea of stony faces. “At least I thought so."
"Then it was Leo who disabled the homing lasers,” Collette said, looking at her copcom.
She could probably tell if he believed what he was saying, Jacques thought.
Gabe looked absolutely miserable. “I don't know that for a fact."
"Let's say I believe you. The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming."
"Leo sabotaged the deceleration mechanism at 36 Ophiuchi?” Maria Lopes questioned. “He wouldn't do that! He's a good man! Where is he?"
No one said anything for several minutes. This was going to be very difficult, Jacques knew.
"He's in custody,” Collette said. Slowly and carefully, she took Maria through everything Leo had done, from the initial sabotage and his efforts to see that only a select group of reliable people were on the shuttles to keeping their existence from the rest of the survivors at the price of letting Jacques’ group go off to what they thought would be certain death.
"How are you going to have a trial?” Gabe asked. “What are you going to do, hang him?"
"Maybe we'll think of something,” Doc offered. “What about Ascendant's murder?"
Gabe wasn't looking at him. He was looking up at the path down from the Rim and pointing with a shaking finger at the end of a shaking arm. A lone woman in what looked to be a shipsuit was walking down the path from the rim.
"Do you believe in ghosts?” Gabe asked, pointing to a woman walking down the path. Then he laughed hysterically. “'Cause if you do, you all can ask her."
The woman descending the path looked exactly like Ascendant Chryse.
* * * *
Chapter 19
Beyond Crime and Justice
"There's nothing to fear,” she said as she reached the group and touched a shuddering Gabe. “I'm flesh and blood, nothing supernatural."
"Whoever built this world ... rebuilt you?” Doc asked.
"I'm not a robot, Doc. The caretaker's nanites recorded my brain and my DNA. Its replicators are somewhat more advanced than ours.” She grinned. “I'm missing some memories, some scars, and I'll need to work on a tan."
"But you are a mind reader, now, it seems,” he said, smiling slightly.
"I made a good guess,” she answered. “Though the latter is possible, if we want to do it."
We. Jacques shuddered. Whatever ran this place apparently could replicate whatever it chose, which did not surprise him too greatly, and had the willingness to use it in this fashion, which did.
"Are you really Ascendant Chryse?” he asked.
"I certainly feel like me, but thanks for saving the diary, Jacques. I went to sleep in my CSU and woke up at Rim Camp. But, and this will be difficult to explain, I'm much more than me."
"More? Who or what are you ... now?” Doc asked.
"On a time scale of milliseconds, my awareness extends to this entire world; on a time scale of hours, this entire planetary system; on a time scale of decades, all the stars human beings have settled; on a time scale of millennia, a part of an arm of the Milky Way and the wisdom of ten thousand races; and on a time scale of hundreds of millennia, the collective culture of our galaxy.
"But there's more. I compass a heritage of races including some now beyond the horizon of space and time—though, and I can only explain this in metaphor, the far horizon is quite misty."
"Intelligent
life may be the Universe's way of becoming conscious,” Collette said in hushed tones. “Or something like that. I can't remember who said that—hundreds of years ago."
"Carl Sagan, on Earth. Also by millions of other beings on millions of other planets,” Ascendant said.
Soob pulled his slate out of his bag, scratched on it, and showed the others what he wrote: Did you meet God? He handed it to Ascendant.
Ascendant smiled and kissed Soob on the forehead. “Feel better?"
"Very much,” Soob said. “Oh, my..."
"God,” she said. “The word ‘meet’ doesn't quite do justice to my present circumstance. Tell me, does it make a great difference to you that I did this with nanocells rather than some supernatural force?"
Soob took a long time to respond. “In a philosophical sense, a very profound difference; in a practical sense ... perhaps none at all."
Gabriel Eddie sat on a rock and covered his face with his hands. Evgenie, Arroya, Maria, and Dominic gathered around him. Edith stood, staring at Ascendant.
"There's a net here?” Doc asked. “I don't sense anything."
"Different frequencies and protocols,” Ascendant said. “We'll fix that later."
"Are you an individual or part of a collective mind?” Helen asked.
"The question itself assumes categories that don't really apply,” Ascendant answered. “Our language requires me to use singular or plural pronouns, thus misleading you greatly. The sort of isolation that you experience, and I did, before my ... change ... is a very primitive characteristic by galactic standards, a stage that many races went through and most passed beyond."
"When we left the Solar System,” Collette said, “most philosophers ascribed the lack of contact with other civilizations to a very strong quarantine, an ethic much like that of our own environmentalists that forbids interference with nature."
Ascendant smiled. “But that can't go on forever, can it?"
Jacques nodded. “Eventually, we would start impacting other civilizations. We've probably screwed things up here, ecologically, haven't we? As I'm sure you know, that was not the choice of any of the individuals here."
"You have killed sentient beings to keep your individual selves alive. In most of the galaxy, that would be regarded as a very primitive characteristic in a spacefaring race. As people, we are still driven by emotions, needs to dominate, reproduce, preserve ourselves. Most of the Universe has moved beyond that."
Analog SFF, December 2009 Page 21
