Sunborn (16 page)

   
“Hello,” she said.

    For a moment, there was no indication that the translator was even aware of her presence. Then she heard the reply in her mind, with a sound ever so slightly deeper than the stones:
*We are prepared for the journey.*

    Julie nodded slowly, not wanting there to be any mistake. “I just want to be clear. The last time we tried to move you, it was not...very successful.”

   
*We were not prepared then.*

   
She hesitated, suddenly conscious of the fact that
her
words were being recorded, but the words of the translator were in her mind, and nowhere else. “Then I can confirm you are...prepared?”

   
*Yes. But we require that you, Julie Stone, accompany us.*

   
Julie cleared her throat and repeated, for the recording, what the translator had just told her. “Then may I report to the crews up on the surface that you’re ready for excavation? We would like to pack you into a protective crate, for shipment aboard one of our spacecraft. Will that be satisfactory?”

   
*Yes.*

   
Julie felt as if her world were spinning.

*

   
The prep crew took careful measurements, and the next day they were all out there again, with a complete arsenal of hoists and excavators. Julie stood to one side, watching the crews jockey the vertical boring machinery into position. The plan was to drill a wider shaft on the side of the cavern farthest from the translator, where the operation would pose the least danger in the event of a cave-in.

   
Standing on the gray-white Triton surface of frozen nitrogen, methane, and assorted oxides, barely illumined by the wan sunlight, Julie found her thoughts gravitating toward feelings of cold. There were at least thirty people out here with her, and only about ten of them actually had a job to do at the moment. She peered up into the star-pricked blackness, where the ghostly planet Neptune, cerulean with white swirls, floated like a moody goddess. A point of light moving slowly across the sky was undoubtedly Triton Orbital, where the interplanetary transport
Park Avenue
was docked, awaiting its precious cargo. That station was where John Bandicut had boarded and hijacked
Neptune Explorer,
 before flying it halfway across the solar system to stop a comet.

    She felt a slight vibration under her feet, and jerked back to the present.

   
“Hey! Who the hell did
that
?”
 someone shouted on the comm.

   
“What? Did what?”

   
“Look! Right there! It just
appeared
!”

    Julie turned around, trying to find the source of the commotion.

   
“Things like that don’t just mokin’ ‘appear’!”
the first voice hollered.
“I coulda’ driven right off the edge!”

   
“Yeah, but—”

   
“Would someone report?”
shouted an annoyed supervisor.
“What the bloody hell’s going on?”

    Julie joined the crowd near the boring rig, and was stunned to see what everyone was yelling about. A perfect, four-meter-wide ice ramp now sloped in a straight line from the surface down into the cavern. The roof had vanished from the cavern altogether. The translator was visible at the bottom, standing alone in a pool of light under the starry sky.

    /How the—?/ Julie began, then shook her head and looked around to see that pretty much everyone was either turning in circles, looking to discover what supermachine had done this, or staring dumbfounded down the long ramp.

   
*It was a simple translation of the ice molecules,*
 said the stones, in her head.

    Julie blinked. /You mean you
moved
 the ice? Is there a big ramp-sized pile somewhere?/ She swung around, searching the landscape.

   
*The molecules were translated into the surrounding and underlying ice. The ground you’re standing on is a little denser now.*

   
/Oh./ She absorbed that for a moment, then made her way to the top of the ramp where it cut into the surface. Nudging a few of the spacesuited gawkers out of the way, she started walking down the long ramp toward the translator. As the comm-chatter died down, she could hear the excavation supervisor hollering,
“Julie Stone! Where’s Stone?”

    She waved a space-gloved hand, but kept walking. “On my way down, Paul.”

    “Find out if the translator did this, will you?”

    Julie waved again, without answering.

    At the bottom, she found most of the floodlights that Kim’s team had set up still working. It was an eerie sight, like approaching a sunken stage, with the translator standing alone at its center. It was poised like a top, as always. But it seemed to her that the churning inner movement of the spheres had slowed. “Are you all right?” she asked. “This—” and she paused to gesture back toward the ramp she’d just descended “—was pretty impressive.”

   
*It was a simple shifting of molecules. You may bring your equipment down now.*

   
For a moment, Julie just stared at the translator through the reflections on her faceplate, and listened to the rasp of her own breathing. Then she said, “Okay. They are intending to install a protective crate around you first, then move you from this location. You will be placed aboard a spacecraft.”

   
*Yes.*

   
“We may go ahead and do that?”

   
*Yes.*

   
Julie turned around and peered up the long incline, where several spacesuited figures were trudging after her. “Gentlemen,” she said, raising her voice as if she needed to shout up to the others, “your hole has been bored. You may begin crating the translator.”

*

   
Once the necessary equipment was in place at the bottom of the incline, the foreman turned to Julie for advice. It took her a moment to understand the problem. The men were unloading the pieces of a large shipping crate from one of the tine-lifts. But how were they going to get the bottom panel of the crate under the translator? Two other men were stretching out cables and hooks, with the apparent intent of grappling the translator and lifting it with a hoist. She had a feeling those would not be welcomed by the translator. /Do you have any suggestions?/ she asked the stones, or the translator, whichever was listening.

   
*Allow the translator to handle it,*
 the stones replied.

    Julie frowned. /How—?/ she began, then caught herself. The translator had begun to glow more brightly. Now it was floating, with a space of about ten centimeters visible between it and the cavern floor. Julie cleared her throat and said aloud, “Is anyone else seeing what I’m seeing?”

   
“What’s that?”
 the foreman asked. He had turned his back, watching the crew set out the pieces. No one except Julie was actually looking at the translator.

    “Would everyone please turn around and look?” she asked quietly.

    The work crew all shuffled to turn in their spacesuits, helmet lights flashing in every direction. For a moment, no one spoke. Then the foreman said,
“Was it like that before?”

    Julie chuckled. “No, it was not.”

   
“Then what—?”

   
“How is it doing that?”

   
“Does someone have a magnetometer—”

    Julie broke in. “Hey, guys? It’s waiting nicely for you to slide the bottom of the crate under it. Are you going to keep it waiting?”

   
The foreman stirred himself to action. “Let’s bring it under with the lift. Tommy?”

    “Ready, boss,” answered the driver. Tommy edged the lift forward, with the bottom of the crate balanced on the tines. Julie could see the concentration in his eyes, even through his helmet visor. He was no doubt remembering melted equipment.

    As Tommy slid the piece under, the churning spheres of the translator looked as if they might at any moment come crashing apart like a hundred bowling balls. The front of the tine-lift reflected the weird glow; it looked as if it were on fire.

    “Stop,” Julie said. “You’ve got it.” The translator was floating about one centimeter above the bottom of the crate. /Is that okay?/

   
*Affirmative.*

   
“All right,” she said, “you can put the rest of it together.”

    The men worked with deliberate speed. When they were finished, the translator pulsed and glowed from within what looked like an enormous archival display case, held securely with impressively large bolts and fittings. Julie checked it over and gave it her approval, though she secretly wondered if the translator actually
needed
 the protection. “That’s it,” she announced. “Let’s load it up.”

   
The box was lifted onto the back of a flat carrier, and the transport started the long, slow crawl up the ice ramp. Julie rode on the back with the translator, hanging on to the grill that separated the cab from the cargo bed. She tried to beam thoughts at it, such as /Are you okay?/, but the translator had fallen silent. It floated impassively in the case, its spheres moving like soap bubbles. It remained silent all the way up the ramp, and for the entire trip back over the Triton landscape to the station.

*

   
Inside the hangar, Julie hopped down and looked around for Kim. She found him stepping out of one of the buggies. “Where are we taking it?” she asked. She’d been so focused on getting the translator out of its underground cavern that it was only on the ride back that she’d started to think about where they were going to put it.

    “Into the secure-lab for the night,” Kim said. “First thing tomorrow morning it’s going onto the shuttle for Triton Orbital. That gives us the night to take every kind of measurement we can get.”

    “Just don’t annoy it,” Julie said, though what would constitute annoyance, she could not have told him.

    “We’ll try not to.” Kim smiled inside his space helmet. “But I suspect a lot of people are going to find reasons to come to the lab tonight, to get a firsthand look. That’ll probably be more annoying to it than anything.”

    Julie pictured the parade. “You want me there?” she asked, not sure whether she even wanted to be part of it.

    Kim put a thick-gloved hand on her arm. “You’ve been out there all day,
and
 you’re leaving for Earth first thing in the morning. Your assignment is to have a good meal, get some rest, and pack.” He paused. “But stay on call for us, okay?”

    “Okay,” she agreed, realizing suddenly just how tired she was. She looked up at the translator, on top of the carrier. /You going to be okay there?/ she asked silently.

    There was no reply.

*

   
Over one last dinner with Georgia, Julie tried not to dwell on the fact that she was about to uproot herself to fly across the solar system to an entirely new life. Once they had the translator stowed aboard the
Park Avenue,
 they would light the fusion rockets and head inbound toward the sun, and Earth. She found herself not wanting to think about that, nor did she want to think about the translator being treated like a specimen and a curiosity for everyone who felt important enough to invite himself down to the lab.

    “Jules,” Georgia said, leaning across the table to grab her forearm. “Have you heard a word I’ve been saying to you?”

    “Hmm?” She blinked. “That depends. What did you say?”

    Georgia rolled her eyes. “That’s what I thought. Look, they’re not down there torturing your friend. Kim is in charge, and you trust Kim, don’t you?”

    “What—Kim? Yes,” Julie said, her head swimming.

    “All right, then. Have a drink with me, and let’s celebrate, okay?” Georgia hoisted a glass of ersatz merlot for a toast. “Here’s to your return home, with the goods.”

    “Fair enough!” she said, raising her beer stein with as much enthusiasm as she could. She took a deep draught, then said, “Maybe it is okay, after all. I’ll have three months on the ship to get to know it. Three months to create my empire!”

    “There you go, girl!” Georgia said cheerfully. “Don’t forget your friends when you’re on top of the world, okay?”

    Julie half laughed, and then broke into her first full smile of the day. “I promise. When I am emperor, I will remember you all...”

Chapter 11

Dreams Awaken

    Bandicut’s dreams seemed to be growing in intensity. He was in the field again—so real, he could smell the earth and feel the stubble poking into the soles of his sneakers. Wheat stalks rustled against his legs, and the ripe heads brushed his upper arms as he trotted along the wheat rows, trying to keep up with his dog Blackie. He was a small boy.
    The storm clouds on the western horizon were glowering. So were the farm’s automated combines bearing down from the far end of the field, cutting and threshing the wheat in wide swaths. The combines were running at top speed, his grandfather trying to get the wheat in before the storm arrived. The young John Bandicut halted, watching the machines churn toward him, great clouds of dust rising in their wake. Something was nagging at him; something felt wrong. He felt a cold, sweating apprehension. “Blackie?” he called. “Blackie, where are you? Come here, boy.”

    And then he remembered why he was scared. His grandfather Anthony had been having trouble with the ranging pilots on those combines, and hadn’t been able to get them fixed before the harvest. That was why he, John, had been severely admonished to stay out of the fields until the harvest was done—because the combines’ autopilots might or might not sense a young boy in the field in front of them, or a dog.