Mind Over Ship (48 page)

The conventional wisdom about Saul Jaspersen seemed to be true: he so distrusted machine intelligence that there was no mentar, midem, or even subem handling his affairs. The only AI she encountered was an ancient and totally unsecured house puter. And all that it seemed to contain were recipes, photos, house hold budgets, and other homey files.

A scout found the courier pouch in a wastebasket in Saul’s study. Another scout found the greeting card from Alblaitor under a stack of papers on his desk. While two scouts pulled it out and propped it open, a third scanned it for her to read. The text supported her fears.

Meanwhile, the preffing session began, and scenarios alternately designed for Saul or Tia were projected above the table. The two glassy-eyed subjects watched with stuporous indifference.

E-P said,
At the very least we’ll get some good sidebobs out of this
.

The scouts found and scanned dozens of datapins they found in the house, but none of them remotely resembled the one described in the card. After a half hour had passed with no success, Andrea began to worry that Saul had cached it off-site somewhere. She repeatedly dosed him and Tia with the MDMOEP under her fingernails, but the drug’s effect was diminishing. Then she had the inspiration to check Saul’s person and, sure enough, she found the pin in his breast pocket. That, alone, was a good sign of its authenticity.

Got it
, she said and inserted it into her sidekick.

We’re safe-cloning it now
, E-P said a moment later.
It appears to be encrypted, probably to his eyes only. But that won’t impede us once we build his sim
.

When E-P finished copying the datapin, Andrea replaced it in Saul’s pocket and recalled her scouts to her satchel. The preffing session was wrapping up. Andrea put her head back and closed her eyes. She wished she could just leave now and return to her tank, but she was obliged to play out the charade. She had to praise Saul and Tia for their cooperation, to share the dinner roast with them that was already in the oven. Its charnel-house stench made her stomach churn. For the remaining few minutes of solitude that she had, she stood at her always room window and watched clouds drift across the Bay. At home, the sun was only a little farther along its daily path than here in Alaska, but much higher in the sky. There was some sort of sailing regatta in progress around Alcatraz Island. Big colorful sails, like the wedges of pie charts.

Meanwhile, E-P built a quarantine space into which it loaded a newly assembled Jaspersen sim and sidebob, a copy of the datapin, and an Andrea sim. It was a completely isolated little universe where the clock ran hundreds of times faster than normal. There was no link between it and real reality, no chance of any malware leakage in case the datapin was booby-trapped. The plan was to let the quarantine world run for six months of local time. That should give Andrea’s sim the opportunity to use the Jaspersen sim or sidebob to open and explore the datapin and for any evil surprise to make itself known. If there was any funny business at all, the quarantine space would automatically implode, signaling those in the real world to its danger.

In the space yards, construction accidents were rare, but those that did occur tended to be spectacular. A couple of days following Fred’s meeting with Veronica’s proxy, a railgun that was shooting silver ingots from a decommissioned Oship to one of the Lucky Five malfed, spraying a stream of twenty-five-kilogram metal bricks across a wide arc of space. Most had trajectories that sent them harmlessly away from the station, but several dozen were heading for its most densely built regions. Waste scuppers
successfully intercepted all but a handful of these. One ingot slammed into one of the habitation drums of the
Chernobyl
. It pierced the hull plating but was stopped dead by the outer saltwater jacket that shielded the drums from galactic cosmic rays and asteroid strikes. The escaping water froze and formed an ice plug, just as it was designed to do.

Another silver brick struck the engine of a shuttle, causing a crippling explosion that sent the craft into the path of a construction tender, which in turn took out several more ships in a chain reaction that halted all traffic in the Aria yards for several hours.

A third penetrated Fred’s docking spar several space gates away from his own. He left his proxy in charge and hurried to the accident scene to lend a hand. When he arrived, the russ security and donald dockworkers were engaged in patching two breaches in the spar hull. The ingot had passed through the spar, but the holes didn’t line up. The ingot had been deflected by something inside the spar, and Fred searched the space gate to determine what it was. It turned out to be the belt mechanism that fed the gate’s railgun. Fred swam over just as a gang of donalds was removing a cryocapsule that had been crushed inside the mechanism. The capsule was split along its seams, and the damage was so extensive that there was no doubt the colonist inside was irretrievable.

Something odd caught Fred’s eye—a spot of blood on the belt and more along the capsule seam. He might have missed it, since blood at an accident scene was unremarkable, but the biostatic process that these capsules employed required dehydrating the blood. If he saw blood, it should be in a powder form, not liquid.

When Fred looked up, all the donalds in his vicinity were straining themselves to control their laughter. This was such an odd response to a deadly emergency that he looked around to see what they were laughing at. A lone donald was performing a burlesque of a ballet. At first Fred was confounded by this bizarre behavior, but then he recalled the retroboy’s erotic dance in the method nightclub and his Original Flaw. And, in fact, the donald seemed to be sodomizing himself with his tail as he danced, leaving no doubt as to his meaning. When the clown realized that Fred was watching him, he froze in midair. All of the donalds surrounding him seemed to hold their breath. How did they know about the method? Fred turned back to the crushed cryocapsule. Top Ape, himself, was there with fear in his eyes.

In a state of shock, Fred managed to set aside the incident for the moment, and he glanced deliberately at the ceiling. Top Ape understood and
leaped into action. Dock work at the space gate had been suspended during the emergency; now Top Ape got it started again. He formed unnecessarily complicated bucket lines of cargo crates and shells that effectively shielded Fred from all of the fixed security cams. Meanwhile, Fred turned off his TECA sidekick. He pulled a tiny scout from a pouch on his belt and linked it to his Spectre. He placed the scout inside the split seam of the capsule and sent it to explore the interior. What it should have found was biostasis maintenance equipment: pumps, electronics, a liquid nitrogen reservoir. But what it did find was an assault rifle, ammunition, field supplies, a portable medkit.

The supposed colonist, himself, wore a battle suit and was packed into the tight space like a contortionist. As the scout reached his head, which was crushed beyond repair, Fred wasn’t sure who he would see. The member of some aff’s private army? A cloned soldier? What he did see was the biggest surprise of all. The soldier was a TOTE.

Fred recalled his scout. While he waited for it, he swiped the capsule’s control panel, which was redlined across the board. The name that popped up was certain to be counterfeit, but the capsule’s final destination was not—the
Chernobyl
.

When Top Ape returned, Fred told him to lose the cryocapsule somewhere where it would never be found and to fix all records of it. Then he returned to his own space gate. Along the way, the donalds struggled to contain their mockery.

THE FOLLOWING DAY, as Fred was returning on a shuttle from a scheduled mentar delivery to the
Kiev
, and an unscheduled visit to the
Chernobyl
, he received an urgent call from Mando.

“Fred!” his friend exclaimed. “The
Fentan
has a slot! You still want to go? It leaves in four days. Should I buy it for you?”

“Yes,” he said without having to think. “Buy it.”

By the time Fred arrived back at his rez wheel, he had withdrawn seven hundred hours of emergency personal leave, to commence at once. His plan was to move on board the
Fentan
as soon as he could, but before he was finished packing, he received a summons to the Elbow Room. He had been expecting it, and there was no getting around it, so he left his packed travel bag and returned to civieside for one final meeting.

It was unlike any simulgraphic brainscan Mary had ever undergone. Instead of actively thinking about what she wanted a proxy to do, she had no control over her thoughts at all. Instead of emoting on cue for the Leena sims, she was reliving her entire life—all at once. More memories flew by than she could ever hope to catch. She kissed Fred for the first time, and she kissed him for the thousandth time. Shelley introduced her to Reilly who had a friend named Fred. His face was so innocent when he was asleep, and he buttered his bread methodically. Wednesday night in the Tin Room at Rolfe’s and Sazza complains about the silk pillowcase, her hangnail snagged on a thread, while this water tastes funny.

Evangeline School, and Mary is submerged in a sea of sisters. The games! The adventures! Pinching Marie and leaving a mark. Raising her hand in class; pick me, pick me. Listening real hard and telling you what I thought I heard you say.

A very distinct memory surfaced and lingered awhile before melting away. It was a class in flower arrangement, a skill that would always be in fashion. She’s nine years old by the calendar, eighteen in maturation. It’s her last year in school. Shelley bursts into the classroom, tears in her eyes. What’s wrong?

Shelley opens a frame, and the sisters come around the workbench to watch, dropping sprigs and wires. It’s a news program on the Anti-Transubstantiation Channel, which is no friend to clones. What does it mean? asks a sister, and the rest of them shush her. Shush!

“Vanity is a fickle master,” the reporter is saying, “and recent figures from E-Pluribus bear this out.” She is no impartial journalist, this reporter, but a partisan, as any ’leen can tell from the note of satisfaction in her voice.

The news scene switches to the headquarters of their future employer, Applied People, where CEO Zoranna Alblaitor is answering questions. “It just goes to show that the needs of society change, sometimes quickly. Now, fifteen years later, that demand is no longer there.”

The reporter asks a question, and Zoranna replies, “No, I wouldn’t call it a ‘fad’ per se. That completely mischaracterizes the nature of trend forecasting. We certainly wouldn’t have invested our resources into designing this or any new germline on the basis of a ‘fad.’ ”

Another question, and, “Perhaps. But you’re going to have a time lag with any new germline. We’re able to cut a human’s maturation period in half, from crib to college, but that still means nine years before the first units are released to the marketplace.”

A final question, and, “No, we’re canceling development of the evangeline line immediately. Fortunately, only the prototype batch was ever decanted, and that consisted of only ten thousand units.”

What does it mean? repeats your sister. It means our stock has crashed. It means we have no value. It means we’re in for a very bumpy ride.

“Before we get to the unpleasantries,” Veronica TOTE’s proxy said, “let me commend you on your quick thinking the other day.”

Fred said, “You know what I found, of course.”

“I can only imagine,” the proxy said, unwilling to give anything away.

“Don’t strain your imagination,” Fred said. “I’ll show you.” Fred used his Spectre to project a little frame with the dead soldier’s sheet. A tissue sample Fred’s scout had retrieved had enabled his Spectre to make a positive ID. “I don’t know exactly how many men you have aboard the
Chernobyl
, but I did some traffic analysis last night, and I estimate there’s as many as five thousand. I was just over there today, and I scanned over 450 possible TOTEs in one crypt alone. The way I figure it, and I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong, you plan to hijack the
Chernobyl
en route to Upsilon Andromedae.” He waited for a reaction, but the proxy remained poker-faced, so he continued. “I’m not sure when, but I figure you’ll postpone the takeover for as long as possible because unless you have some quantum trick up your sleeve, you’ll still need the Heliostream particle beam for acceleration. And you’ll want to wait at least four years because that’s how long it’ll take to leave the solar system and any likely pursuit by the UD Space Command. But I’m thinking you’d like at least twenty years because by then the Chinas will have their own solar harvesters online, and you’ll probably be able to rent a particle beam from them.

“So that’s my window, four to twenty years. If you touch me anytime before then, the Space Command will get a copy of this, and they’ll either
capture you or shut off the beam, or both. I’d like more time to get out of your reach, but four years oughtta do.”

Fred stopped talking. Veronica’s proxy seemed more amused than he would have liked.

“My, what a rich fantasy life you lead, Commander,” she said. “I can see you’ve put a lot of thought into this, as well as a lot of wishful thinking. Too bad you didn’t finish your homework. Otherwise, you would have realized that the same clue that gave us away argues against your scenario.”