Echoes of Earth (39 page)

“When do you think it will be safe to go back?” she said.

Alander looked startled by the question. “Go
back
?”

“We’ll have to return at some point. We need to check for survivors.”

“But the Starfish—”

“There’s no reason why they should hang around,” she said. “After all, they abandoned Upsilon Aquarius once they’d finished with the
Tipler
.”

She could tell by his sudden expression that her words had stung him and, for a fleeting moment, she regretted her insensitivity. But she quickly dismissed her guilt. It was hard enough dealing with her own grief without worrying about his. There would be a time for sensitivity later.

“You know,” she said after a few moments of silence, “I think you were right.”

His brow furrowed as he said, “About what?”

“About this being a trap,” she said. “I think it’s possible this whole thing was a setup by the Spinners.”

He laughed at this. “Come on, Caryl. I was just rambling back then. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

“Nevertheless, it does make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t, Caryl,” he said. “I was simply trying to rationalize what had happened. And that’s all you’re doing now. We want explanations for the unexplainable.”

“Think about it, Peter,” she insisted. “Your survey team was bumbling along quite happily until the Spinners came on the scene. They mysteriously leave you a bunch of gifts, then disappear without a word. What’s the next thing you do after poking around for a bit? You contact Earth. Hell, they even give you a ship that will get you there in a couple of
days.
What more could you ask? I mean, Christ, all your dreams had come true at once!”

She watched his reaction. He didn’t say anything, but she could tell from his expression she had his attention.

“Well, what if your going back to Earth was what they were wanting you to do all along? What if they were feeding you just enough rope to hang us all?”

“The gifts were placed there solely to get the hole ship to go to
Sol
?” His tone bordered on incredulity and amusement. “Come off it, Caryl! This is crazy.”

“It’s not crazy,” she said firmly. “Once the hole ship had gone, they were free to wrap things up there. They had no more use for Adrasteia, so they got rid of the evidence.”

“Evidence of
what
though?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But it does fit together.”

“So you’re saying the gifts were sent as a means of tricking us into revealing the heart of our civilization? For the sole purpose of annihilating us?”

Another shrug. “In a nutshell, yes.”

“But they
knew
where Earth was,” he said. “They had access to all of our data.”

“Perhaps they were bluffing, or perhaps they just weren’t sure. After all, if they had surveyed Sol, they would have found a reality
very
different from your maps. They may have thought your data deliberately falsified so it couldn’t be traced, much like what they’ve done with the hole ship and the gifts. The
only
way to be sure would have been to see where you actually went when given the opportunity.”

“And then?” He left the question hanging, but she didn’t supply the answer. “What do you think happened then, Caryl?”

“Christ, I don’t know. Maybe the hole ship uploaded some sort of viral attack when it arrived. Maybe it notified the Spinners. Maybe there are things it could’ve done that we’d never think of.”

“That’s a lot of maybes.”

“All I’m saying is that it’s a possibility. At the very least, it’s an explanation for what happened back in Sol.”

She rubbed her pounding head, unsure whether she believed wholly in what she was saying but wanting to keep herself occupied, keep her mind from returning to the pain and anguish she had felt while her greater self died. If she sat down for too long, her thoughts returned to the memories of those endless hours, the despairing cries, and if she looked at the screen, at the vast starry emptiness, she was reminded of how vulnerable she felt.

She was distracted by a short, soft bleat from Alander, all he could manage in the way of a laugh.

“We haven’t got a clue, really, have we?” he said when she looked at him. “That’s the truth, isn’t it? We haven’t got a fucking clue about anything!”

“I know, and it’s driving me crazy.” The hope that some—even one—of her povs might have survived the attack because of her warning simmered inside her, making her restless. “I want to go back there.”

“Why? There’s no point.”

“Have you got another destination in mind?”

He shook his head. “Okay, but not yet. I need to rest. It could be dangerous, and it’s not going to help if one of us is run down.”

“I’m alert enough to handle it on my own.”

“Two hours is all I need, then we’ll go back.”

She was on the brink of denying his request when she realized that she was being unreasonable. What difference would two hours make, really? If any of her povs had survived the attack, they would survive that much longer.

“Okay. I’ll keep watch from here.”

He nodded and stood, then moved off in the direction of his cubicle. Before exiting the cockpit, he stopped and faced her again.

“Call me if anything happens, okay?”

“Of course I will.”

He nodded once more and disappeared into his cubicle. She had no doubt that he would confirm his last request with the ship’s AI, ensuring that if she didn’t rouse him, it would. And while she couldn’t blame him for that (she would have done the same in his position), it did make her sad. If she and Alander were all that remained of humanity, instead of anything even remotely resembling camaraderie, all that existed between them was a mistrust that was positively palpable.

2.2.5

On the eighteenth hour of their search, they found an
object identical in nearly every respect to the one left in Upsilon Aquarius.

Alander had thought the ruins of Adrasteia bad, but they were nothing compared to the destruction that had been unleashed upon Sol System. Everywhere he looked he saw wreckage. The Frame had been completely atomized, along with the Shell Proper and anything functional that had clung to it. The thin atmosphere of Mars had been stripped away, along with every habitat on the planet that had harbored any form of life. The Moon had been blasted into fragments; the moons of Jupiter and Saturn were stripped bare, as was Mercury; the asteroid bases and deep-system stations, active or inactive, were clouds of dispersing dust. Every satellite, every relay, every navigation buoy and every experimental outpost like McKirdy’s Machine were all gone.

The Starfish themselves had been gone for several hours, and the hole ship could find no evidence that they’d laid traps for anyone seeking to investigate what had happened. How the AI and Hatzis had determined the Starfish had gone, Alander hadn’t worked out. Nor did he ask. He preferred not to know if they’d simply assumed it had been safe to return. Such guesswork scared him.

Hatzis was stone-faced all through the exploration of the system. When she did talk, it was in abrupt, clipped tones. She looked brittle, as though something deep inside of her had fractured, and the cracks were widening. He doubted that she had rested while he had, and he imagined her awake the whole time, brooding. Instead of trying to distract her from her thoughts, he stayed out of her way as much as possible, allowing her the freedom to be in control during this phase of the journey. He was content, for the moment at least, to be nothing more than an observer.

She had instructed the hole ship to broadcast a low-power beacon everywhere they went, clearly hoping that someone, somewhere, had survived the assault on the system. But the lack of any response told them what he already suspected: The Starfish had, with frightening efficiency, eradicated all life within the system. In fact, there was little remaining to suggest there had ever been life there in the first place.

Except one. When the hole ship announced that it had found something, her face came alive for a brief moment, then died again.

“Another death marker,” he said, watching the object glint in Sol’s steady light, ten kilometers from the hole ship.

Hatzis shrugged. “If that’s what it is.”

“What else could it be? It’s certainly not a mine or some other kind of trap, or else we’d be dead already.”

“I don’t know; it just doesn’t strike me as the sort of thing these slash-and-burn types would leave behind.”

“We don’t know anything about them,” he said. “For all we know, the system might be a trophy for them and
this
thing is just an invitation for others of their kind to come and admire their work.”

Her skeptical look was almost a sneer. “If they were conquerors, yes. They’d want everyone to know their might and power; they’d leave clues all over the place. But if the motive of
these
people really is to sneak up on others, obliterate them, then sneak away to do more damage elsewhere, I don’t see why they’d leave anything at all behind.”

“But it’s not likely they could be traced by something like this, is it?”

“Why not? There are bound to be ways to identify a culture from its artifacts, if only from the way it manufactures them or the materials it uses.”

“I guess.”

She stared at him as though wanting to say something else—or waiting for
him
to say something—then she looked away.

“I’d be happy to find just
one
beneficent race,” she said. “One we can trust, anyway, who we could ask for help. Is there anyone we can appeal to,
Arachne
? Some sort of galactic police force, perhaps?”

“There is no common moral code governing behavior in the galaxy,” the alien AI replied. “Even if there was one, there would be no guarantee that it would accord with your own.”

“No rules, huh?” Her tone was bitter. “No wonder your makers keep to themselves, then.”

Alander watched Hatzis’s face as she studied the screen, and he was reminded of Cleo Samson on that seemingly far-off day on Adrasteia when he had tried to take a bath. She had been talking to him about Lucia, about whether he would choose her company over solitude if he could. He hadn’t seen the point of such idle wishful thinking, to which Samson had said,
“
We all wish, Peter. It’s very much a human quality.
” Looking at Hatzis now, he thought he knew what she would be wishing for.

“So what do you want to do now?” he said shortly.

“How the fuck should I know, Peter?” Her tone was low, but it contained enough scorn to sting him, nonetheless.

“Look, Caryl,” he offered, “I can imagine how you feel right now. I—”

Her derisive laugh cut him short. “Really? I don’t see how you could
possibly
have any idea—”

“Hey!” he snapped. “I lost my home, too, remember?”

“The comparison is ludicrous.”

“Well, don’t expect me to tear my heart out over what happened to the Vincula, given the fact that they lied to me and attacked me without provocation. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a good thing it’s gone!”

“If you’re trying to boost my morale, Peter,” she said, shaking her head, “you really suck at it.”

“Okay,” he concurred, doing his best to keep a lid on his own emotions. “Fair point. But the fact remains that I am in exactly the same position as you, Caryl. We’ve both lost everything, and we need to consider what we’ll do next.”

Her eyes were red and painful—the most human they had ever seemed to him. “If you’re about to suggest rebuilding, then you’re out of your mind.
And
blind.” She pointed at the screen as though stabbing it with her finger. “Have another look. There’s nothing left to rebuild
with
.”

“We have two working brains, don’t we? We have
Arachne
. We can at least
start.
So what if it takes a thousand years to finish? Or a million? At least we’ll be doing something.”

“Who says I want to do
anything
?” She turned away from him as if to end the discussion. “
Arachne
, take me to Io—the asteroid, not the moon.”

The screen went black on the view of the death marker.

“That’s it, then?” he pressed, not allowing the conversation to die. “We just roll over and give in?”

“Humanity is dead,” she said. “The first thing you need to do is to accept that.”

“There’s always hope,” he insisted, but even as he said it, he could hear how empty the words sounded.

“For what?” she said. “For
me
? You have no idea what I’ve lost, Peter. It’s not just the idea of humanity as a species. I practically
was
my own species. Can you even begin to imagine what it felt like to belong to something like that? I can’t go back. I’d rather not exist at all if the only thing left to look forward to is life in this body.”

The screen came alive with images of rubble, twinkling in the sunlight. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Are you saying you want
kill
yourself?” He stared at her incredulously for a few moments. “You can’t be serious!”

“What I do is none of your business, Peter.”

He could tell she wanted to move away from him, but with the cockpit being the size it was, there was simply nowhere for her to escape to.

“You’re right,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. You don’t have to justify anything to me. You don’t have to talk to me or listen to anything I have to say. So why not do us both a favor right now and go for a space walk without a suit? Be sure to take your maudlin, self-pitying bullshit along with you.”

She faced him with her arms folded across her chest, eyes glistening with tears. She looked so different from the Hatzis he remembered from Adrasteia—but he had never seen
her
under these circumstances.

“There are no good alternatives,” she said.

“I didn’t say there were. I just think suicide is always the wrong decision.”

“Who gives a damn what you think, Peter?”

He shrugged. “Maybe you do. After all, why else would you be arguing the point with me? Your body’s modified; you could just pull the plug right now and die if you really wanted to... in a second.” He waved a hand at the screen. “Well, here’s your precious Io, Caryl. Here’s where your father died. What are you waiting for? Rescue?”