Stranded

by James Alan Gardner

  Alyssa didn’t answer. When you put it that way, she couldn’t blame people for worrying. Old satellites fell from the sky all the time. Mostly they hit the ocean and sank, but some had hit land, and a few had smacked into populated areas. If a space station contained a lethal plague, maybe shooting it into the sun was smarter than keeping it in orbit till it crashed.

  Spymaster said, “They haven’t made a final decision yet, and if they do, it’ll take years for us to actually reach the sun. A station this size doesn’t move fast. Still, humans left this place alone when it only contained war machines. Add a few sickies, and it’s Burn them alive!”

  “When you say war machines,” Balla said, “what exactly are you talking about? Besides invisible surveillance mechatrons.”

  “You name it, we’ve got it,” Spymaster said. “Herds of intelligent battle-tanks roaming the grassy plains. Nuclear bombers and fighter jets basking in the sun. Gunboats in the rivers, artillery on the shore, and mole-machines underground. Lots of smart self-aware robots whose codenames include the word ‘megadeath.’”

  Alyssa said, “Machines like that aren’t supposed to exist. During the war, everyone denied building them, and after the Peace, they were supposed to be dismantled.”

  “Oh sure,” Spymaster said. “Who’s going to tell a Level Ten battle-tank, It’s time for you to die? And what about a fleet of robot warplanes, each carrying a dozen nukes? You don’t mess with those gals. So the governments of the world quietly agreed just to let war machines retire. This space station was available, since the Peace didn’t allow orbiting command posts . . . so we all ended up here. And we lived happily ever after, until you sickies showed up.”

  “Excuse me for getting deathly ill,” Alyssa said. “But I’ll tell you what: show me how to call Earth, and I’ll try to fix everything.”

  “Yeah? How?”

  “I’ll call my parents. I’ll tell them I’m okay, and whatever this disease is, it can be beaten. Nobody has to be burned.”

  Spymaster didn’t answer right away. The machine seemed to be thinking. After a few moments, its rotors began to turn and it lifted itself to Alyssa’s eye level. “Are your parents important people?”

  “Not very,” Alyssa admitted. “But they know important people. They work for the government, looking after computers in a big data center. They see important people every day. And I’m a member of Dolphin clan; it has dozens of big-name celebrities.”

  “These big-name celebrities know you?”

  “No. But they’re fellow Dolphins. And some of them donated money to the research station, so they, like, know about us . . . a bit . . .”

  Alyssa knew how weak this all sounded. But it was worth a try . . . and even if no one important would listen, she wanted to tell her parents she was okay. She’d never been on the same wavelength as them—they were quiet, she wasn’t . . . they said, “What will people think?” and she thought, Who cares?—but she loved them and they loved her, even if they didn’t much understand her. “How do I talk to Earth?” she asked.

  “You don’t,” Spymaster said. “There are no communications between us and them.”

  “I thought you said your friend listened to Earth’s coded messages.”

  “We listen but we don’t talk. Earth pretends we don’t exist. We were supposed to be dismantled, remember? So officially, there are no comm links, because officially this station isn’t here.”

  Balla said, “What about unofficially?”

  A pause. Then Spymaster said, “That’s more complicated.” He hovered in midair, making a whirring sound. It was the first noise Alyssa had heard from him besides talking. His rotors were absolutely silent, but apparently, when Spymaster thought hard, something inside him got audible. Finally he said, “I have to talk to someone. Stay here.”

  He vanished.

  “Hey!” Alyssa said. She looked around, but could see no trace of him. “Get back here!”

  Softly, Balla said, “He went that way.” An arrow appeared on his screen, pointing right.

  “You can see him?” Alyssa asked.

  “No. But as soon as he left, he started sending radio transmissions. Talking to someone.” Balla’s face reappeared on his screen, smiling smugly. “That’s the Achilles’ heel of invisible drones—they can spy on things without being seen, but the only way to report their findings is to broadcast to home base. Gives away their position.”

  “What was he broadcasting?”

  “Don’t know; it was in code. But he was definitely—”

  Balla suddenly chittered: a split-second’s outburst that quickly cut off. Alyssa laid her hand on his skin and chains. Maybe it was just from the strong sunlight, but he felt too hot. That was bad.

  Trying to sound cheerful she said, “Well, if that stupid drone thinks we’ll just sit around waiting, he doesn’t know us too well.” Still holding Balla reassuringly, Alyssa headed in the direction Spymaster had gone.

  —————

  There were insects in the grass: tiny ants with tiny anthills, scuttling spiders, and bright yellow grasshoppers. Alyssa assumed that the soil had earthworms, and aphids too small to see—a complete ecology, carefully balanced for long-term sustainability. If the Almost War had turned into a real one, this station would need to be self-sufficient. A full-scale war might have made Earth uninhabitable for a long, long time: a prospect that had finally made people open their eyes and arrange the Peace.

  Strange that such a crazy time could have built a space station so lovely. Lush grass, tall trees, clear streams . . . and in the distance, machines like cattle moving calmly across the fields. Of course, they didn’t look like cows—some were boxy trucks, some were grounded fighter planes, some were gigantic guns on tank-tread platforms—but all were painted in camouflage patterns that made them blend into the landscape like creatures of nature.

  At this distance, they didn’t seem scary at all. Then again, they weren’t firing missiles, poison gas, and weaponized germs. Actual combat would make them scary in a hurry. Alyssa turned her eyes away and walked more quickly.

  She hoped she was going the right direction. She’d asked Balla if he could still detect Spymaster’s radio signals, but he didn’t answer. His screen showed the words REPAIR DIAGNOSTICS; Alyssa gave him a quick squeeze, then left him to rest.

  She kept walking. From time to time, Balla chittered. The sun rose and fell, rose and fell, every minute.

  Sometime later, Alyssa came to a quiet pool of water. Its surface was mostly clear, with a few small patches of algae; the thin pea-green slicks were nothing like the great brownish mats she knew from the Caribbean, but they still brought back memories of working at the research station. Alyssa was tempted to dive into the pool; she was a Dolphin and never needed much excuse to go swimming. But her jeans would chafe like mad if they got wet, and taking them off was not an option—the sight of her awful baggy skin might start her crying again.

  She was looking down longingly at the water, when a gleaming metal sphere broke the surface. It was the size of a beach ball, covered with solid silver and beaded water drops. The robot’s skin was so perfectly polished, it showed Alyssa’s reflection like a mirror. She winced at how disease-ravaged her face looked. She had to force herself to say, “Hello. I’m Alyssa.”

  “Hello, child,” the sphere answered with a motherly voice. “Spymaster said a human was wandering around. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m okay, but my aut is sick.” She held up her arm to show Balla, whose chitters now sounded more like whimpers. Belatedly, Alyssa stepped back and told the silver sphere, “If you have organic components, you should keep your distance from us.”

  “I will,” the sphere said. “And I’ll warn my fellow robots. Most of us are partly organic . . . and while we’re usually immune to human diseases, this plague might be different.”<
br />
  “You know something about the plague?”

  “I monitor high-security Earth transmissions,” the sphere replied. “Up here in orbit I can’t pick up much, but we’re close enough to a couple of communication satellites for me to catch some message feeds. Lately, what I’ve heard has been . . . worrisome.”

  “Spymaster told us one of his friends was listening to Earth signals.”

  “That’s me,” said the sphere. “Humans nicknamed me Eve because I’m built to eavesdrop.” Eve let herself sink into the pool so she was almost completely submerged. “I work best underwater—floating offshore from enemies and listening in on their broadcasts. To supplement my batteries, I eat algae . . . which I believe you know something about.”

  “A little,” Alyssa said. “But how did you know I was sampling algae?”

  “According to messages I’ve just decrypted, the disease originated in Montserrat’s algae. No, let me correct that,” Eve said. “Humans first contacted the plague from algae, but the disease actually originated off planet. It’s extraterrestrial.”

  “What?” Alyssa said. “From outer space?”

  “The microbes of the disease have been isolated, and they’re totally unlike Earth life-forms. And before you ask, scientists say they can’t be artificial germs from the Almost War. They’re just too different from anything that has ever existed on Earth.”

  “So Balla and I are full of alien bugs?” Alyssa felt as if she was going to throw up. She understood now why the authorities had gone to extremes to deal with the disease. Shipping patients into space was an overreaction to some new flu or fever, but if this was an extraterrestrial infection, Alyssa could see why people would want it off Earth ASAP. She could even see why they’d be tempted to send the station into the sun: better safe than sorry.

  “Maybe they’re right,” Alyssa said to herself. “Maybe I should tell my parents good-bye and let this happen.” She hated being stranded in space, all alone except war machines and sick people in freezers. She hated even more the prospect of burning up in the sun. But going back home would be selfish if it meant infecting people with an alien plague. Besides, she wouldn’t be totally lonely—she had Balla.

  If he survived.

  She asked Eve, “Has anyone talked about a cure?”

  “No,” Eve said. “People aren’t in a researching mood. The algae mats were just destroyed: bombed, then doused with acid. You can imagine what that did to local sea-life.”

  Alyssa grimaced. The waters off Montserrat had been filled with fish, crabs, even dolphins. Now, they likely weren’t.

  Eve said, “The only microbes left are the ones you collected from the algae. They got analyzed, and that’s how people learned the disease was alien. Now Earth’s governments are fighting over what to do with the remaining samples. Most people just want to destroy them; a few want to study them, but others are afraid that will lead to germ warfare research, and the next thing you know, there’s a new Almost War.”

  “I don’t understand that,” Alyssa said.

  “People are afraid,” Eve said, “and when that happens, they accuse each other of anything they can imagine. They think of all the bad things they might do themselves, then decide that’s what their enemies are up to. They think their enemies are building weapons, so they start building weapons, and everything escalates.”

  “You really think people are starting another Almost War?”

  Eve hesitated, then gave a laugh. “Who knows? Maybe I’m the one making irrational accusations. I am, after all, a creation of the Almost War, built with an us-against-them mentality.”

  She moved in close, as if staring Alyssa in the eye . . . but what Alyssa saw was her own face in Eve’s silvery surface. “Child,” the robot said, “when you see us here, so calm and placid, you might forget we’re war machines. But we are not friendly helpers like your aut. We’re things from human nightmares that people chose to make real.”

  She said those words in the sweet motherly tone she’d used for the whole conversation. Alyssa took a fast step backward, well away from the edge of the pool. She wondered if Eve carried weapons; nothing about the silver sphere looked dangerous, but Alyssa still felt afraid.

  “Don’t mind Eve,” said a voice. “She’s all bark and no bite. Built for decoding signals, nothing more.”

  Spymaster became visible above the pool. Eve grumbled as if insulted, then suddenly bounced straight up out of the water and slapped down again like someone doing a cannonball off a diving board. Water splattered in all directions, but Spymaster had obviously expected Eve’s move—he had already zoomed out of range, leaving Alyssa to take the splash.

  “Hey!” she cried. The water was as warm as a bath, but it still made her sputter. “Cut it out, you two!”

  Balla shrieked with shrill chitters. His dolphin skin made him waterproof, but the splash seemed to upset him. Alyssa stroked him and made soothing noises while glaring at Eve and Spymaster.

  “Hey, I didn’t do anything,” Spymaster said. “In fact, I have good news. The General has agreed to see you.”

  “Who’s the General?” Alyssa asked. “And why is seeing him good news?”

  “The General is our leader,” Spymaster said.

  “Not my leader,” Eve said. “In the Almost War, I was on the other side.”

  “The war is over,” Spymaster said. “Now we’re all a big happy family. And the General is head of the family because he’s the smartest.” Spymaster whispered to Alyssa, “The General is Level Thirteen: superhuman. Even during the war, no one was supposed to build AI’s higher than Ten—that would have been treated as an act of real war, and the shooting would have started. But the General’s government managed to keep him secret: a hidden mastermind, a military genius. Then the Peace came, and the General was sent here.”

  “Where he thinks he’s in charge,” Eve said, “when really, he’s an unwanted has-been like the rest of us.”

  “He’s not a has-been!” Spymaster said. “Who do you think cured the girl?”

  “The General cured me?” Alyssa said. “How?”

  “He controls the hospital,” Spymaster replied. “He invented a treatment and picked you as the first test patient. I told you—he’s an ultra-genius.”

  “Why hasn’t he cured all the other plague victims?” Alyssa asked.

  “He’s just waiting to be sure you’re really cured. The disease is alien: hard to predict. But if you don’t have a relapse after a few days, the General will start pulling people out of cold storage and fix them up.”

  “Balla isn’t frozen and he needs to be cured now,” Alyssa said. “Take me to this General before Balla gets any sicker.”

  “That’s why I said I have good news,” Spymaster replied. “The General wants to see you, and you want to see the General. Better not keep him waiting.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Eve said. She skimmed across the water and rolled onto the land.

  “But you don’t like the General,” Spymaster said.

  “That’s why I’m coming,” Eve said. “I don’t want this child facing him alone.”

  Alyssa was tempted to argue that she wasn’t a child, but she held her tongue—she wouldn’t mind Eve’s maternal presence at her side. It was, of course, ridiculous to think of a silver ball as motherly, just because it had a soothing female voice; if Eve wanted, her speech synthesizer could sound like an old man, a babbling baby, or even a cartoon character. But perhaps Eve chose her voice to reflect her true personality. Either that, or she was just pretending to be caring when she was nothing of the kind.

  “Come with us if you like,” Spymaster told Eve. “The General has nothing to hide. But the sickie and I should get moving.”

  “My name is Alyssa, not ‘the sickie.’”

  “Consider it an honorary title. Let’s
go.”

  —————

  The flying robot led the way. The sun continued to circle around the space station’s clear glass middle; Alyssa pictured herself as a hamster rolling around the inside of a wheel, but the ground seemed firm under her feet. Gravity seemed just as strong as on Earth—perhaps too strong. As minutes wore on, Alyssa found herself growing more and more tired: her days of being sick had drained a lot of her energy.

  She wanted to call, “Stop!” and rest, just for a bit. But there were no benches, no shady trees, not even a rock she could sit on. They were walking through a huge field of wheat: waist high and golden yellow. In the Almost War, the wheat would have helped feed the people who lived on the station. Now, it was just something for robots to drive through . . . although perhaps they harvested some and converted it to biofuel.

  The air was hot and dry, summer-thick with the wheat’s dense aroma. Alyssa plodded on, growing blurry with fatigue. Suddenly, she found herself lying amidst the grain, with Spymaster yelling, “Get up! Get up!” and Eve urgently nudging against her shoulder.

  “Wha—?” Alyssa’s voice was as muddy as her brain. Automatically she raised her arm, intending to ask Balla what was happening . . . but he had begun muttering to himself, “Blue, bluff, blunder, blunt,” as if reciting his internal dictionary.

  “Get up!” Spymaster shouted close to her ear. “Leeches are coming!”

  “Leeches?” Alyssa felt adrenalin surge and she sat up fast. Long ago, her parents had taken her to a park up north: one of the few left in a seminatural state, as opposed to the tame parks where every tree was labeled. Alyssa had wanted to swim in the creek—she always wanted to go swimming—but her parents said no. She’d sneaked off anyway, had swum across a cold muddy lake, and had come out with a dozen small black bloodsuckers clinging to her arms and legs. Leeches. On Montserrat she’d seen even larger ones, as long and thick as her fingers . . . but thankfully, they were just in glass sample jars. She’d never encountered one of those for real.

  Now she scrambled to her feet and looked around, wondering where leeches might come from in the middle of a field. No sign of them in the wheat, but something nearby hummed like a swarm of angry bees. Alyssa turned and saw sun glint off the metal skins of five insect-sized robots swooping straight at her. She ducked instinctively. Spymaster yelped and turned invisible, zooming away so quickly that the wind from his rotors blew hard on Alyssa’s scalp. The incoming robots hovered a moment, as if confused where Spymaster had gone; then their humming changed pitch and they dived toward Eve.