Creations (31 page)

The ride was bumpy and uncomfortable as they took the hills and ridges at speed. Max clung onto the handholds in the first rover, wedging himself against the seat to avoid being thrown out. Like the others though, he didn’t say a thing. Eventually they came to the ESOS settlement, a small collection of pressurised modules like the main Crisium base in miniature. The rovers parked on the end of a row of similar vehicles, then the drivers climbed off them and headed for the nearby airlock.

“I guess we follow them,” Max said.

They climbed in after their rescuers and waited while the repressurisation cycle took place. Then finally they could open up their visors and see each other face to face.

The two men who had come for them were both tall and stern in appearance and they were looking at Max and the others with suspicion. They directed them to get out of their suits and led them through into a workshop area. Everything apart from the clothes they were wearing was taken, including omnis, watches, anything that might contain a means of communication. Then the men spoke briefly in German before one of them left the room. He was only gone for two minutes, and he didn’t come back alone.

The man who came back with him was short and freckled, with a thin, pointed face and long red hair, tied back in a ponytail. He walked straight over to Safi, and held out his hand to shake hers. When he spoke, it was with a mild German accent.

“Dr. Biehn, or can I call you, Safi? You have no idea how pleased I am to meet you. And Dr. Lowrie,” he said turning to Max, “it is also a pleasure to have you with us. I am only sorry that it took such bad luck with your transport to bring us together. But please, you should feel welcome. All of you.”

“Thank you,” Safi said cautiously. “And, who — ?”

“Oh, of course, I am sorry. My name is Joel, Joel Flieger.”

“Well, Joel Flieger,” Ariel said. “I am sure you want us to go as much as we do. When will we be able to continue back to the base?”

“Our long-range rover is in use at the moment, but we will be able to transport you back soon enough. But please, we should use this opportunity to get to know each other better. I was not expecting to meet in person the two people who have made possible everything that I am doing here today.”

Max and Safi looked at each other briefly. For him, Joel’s words were hardly an accolade, and he didn’t think she would be appreciating the praise either.

“So, please come with me,” Joel continued. “We should go somewhere more comfortable to talk.” He led them out of the workshop and through a corridor to a rest area. Max didn’t see any choice other than to follow.

The rest area was fitted out simply, with nothing but a few padded benches and a drinks dispenser. The ceiling was low and the lighting was harsh and electric. They were just about to find themselves seats when someone else walked in, from the other end of the room. Safi gasped when she saw who it was.

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “Not you.”

“I’m afraid so,” Oliver Rudd said, smirking slightly. “I would ask what you’re doing here but I’d imagine the answer is fairly obvious. Someone else paying your wages these days?”

Max felt his hands forming fists, an instinctive move, despite never having had a fistfight since he was ten years old. But seeing this obnoxious, overbearing moron, in front of him again, who he now knew to have almost wrecked his marriage to Gillian out of nothing more than spite; for a second, hitting Oliver Rudd in the middle of his face was all Max could think of. He managed not to, pulling himself back from the brink instead, then turned to Joel.

“Listen, Joel, I don’t know what he told you to get back in with the company, but he’s dangerous. Just ask Victor about the bug he found on the island: that was Oliver. He was stealing from you
the whole time, and the things he gets, he sells them to anyone who wants them, and not just other companies. China, the whole Eastern block, anyone; he’s probably done it his whole career.”

Joel motioned for Max to calm down. “Don’t worry, Dr. Lowrie, we are well aware of Professor Rudd’s extensive portfolio of contacts. In many ways that is one of his strengths. We take a pragmatic approach to our research here, as I’m sure you will understand.”

“So you don’t care that it was him spying on you, just so long as what he stole from other people before that is more valuable?”

Joel didn’t answer, but shrugged noncommittally.

Oliver was leaning nonchalantly against the doorframe, apparently unconcerned that his criminal activities were being openly discussed as if he wasn’t even in the room. “What do you plan to do with them?” he said to Joel.

“Assist them in every way, of course,” Joel said. “They may be here illegally, but our prime responsibility is their safety. Once the transport has returned, we can help them get back to the base.” Then he turned to face Safi and Max. “But before then, of course, I need to ask you some questions. You must understand that we need to know everything that you saw and did while you were travelling within our territory. Your presence here can only be an act of espionage and when you are prosecuted it will be important that we are all working from the facts. I hope that does not offend you in any way.”

None of them answered.

“Good! I should however start by congratulating you on your outstanding achievements in the South Pacific. I personally was extremely impressed with what you accomplished there, especially in those far from ideal conditions. Tell me, when you settled on the three dimensional printer as your primary manufacturing tool, how did you adapt the laydown mechanism to cope with the variable viscosity powder flow? The notes I was passed gave only some of the details. We have had many
problems with this issue.”

Again, no one spoke. Joel looked hurt.

“Please, Safi, as one engineer to another, you must understand my interest in this matter. To work on something as original and innovative as that is an opportunity you must have been proud to take. I, for one, consider this project to be the highlight of my career.”

“So that mechanical termite nest out there is a highlight?” Max said.

“Indeed, it is,” Joel said, brightening. “And I see you noticed where we got our inspiration, well done. We deliberately based our design on insect populations. Oliver, you never told me how observant and intelligent your colleagues were!”

Oliver shifted slightly in discomfort. Max just felt patronised.

“However,” Joel continued, “we prefer to call them colonies. I am sure you will appreciate the advantages over the design that you used. Your Prospectors were a great achievement: a single robotic device, capable of independent self-replication, incredible. But the colony approach is far more, ah, flexible, I’m sure you will agree.”

“What do you mean, flexible?” Safi said. To Max, Joel was giving the impression of somebody who liked to talk about his achievements and he guessed Safi had picked up on it too.

“Why, in terms of continual reconfiguration, of course. You don’t think we just designed the simplest system we could then set it running, do you? No, adaptive redesign is the key, endless reinvention.”

“And what does that mean?” Max said.

“Every machine in a colony has a specific job,” Joel said. “The diggers, the refiners, the pavers, all of them do specific tasks for the good of the whole. But their design is not fixed. Every time the colony builds itself a new machine, it uses the successes and failures of previous machines to modify their construction. Even when whole kilometres away from their parent colony they can
use radio links to tell it which of their design features should be changed. Those machines that have performed best are used as the basis for future designs, and those that have performed worst, well,” — he made a cut throat action across his neck — “they are recycled.”

“Like evolution, but within a single lifetime,” Safi said thoughtfully. Max looked over at her in alarm; she almost sounded as if she was impressed.

“Exactly,” Joel said. “But guided evolution, not the messy random process that you will be familiar with. The colony can deliberately adapt its own design even as it grows, to maximise its success. So if it decides that some new type of material is needed it will work out how to build new refining machines for the job, and if a miner comes back with a richer grade of ore, it designs new miners to hunt out similar reserves. A perfect system.”

He looked round at them all, smiling proudly. Max however felt differently. The “messy random process” Joel had just described was one he’d spent his life studying, marvelling the whole time at what it could produce. This seemed more like a recipe for anarchy.

“And how long has it been running?” Safi said. “How long has it taken for that colony we saw to grow?”

“We have been in operation for almost six months now,” he said. “But that colony you saw? Near where you were picked up? Those ones are very recent, a few weeks at most. They haven’t grown at all. The one we built first however, now that
is
a sight.” He stopped suddenly and looked thoughtful. “Oliver, do you think we should take our guests on a tour, to show them what we have achieved?”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“What harm can it do? One call from us and once they return to Earth they will be arrested as soon as they land. Nothing they learn here can ever be put to profitable use. No company will
touch them. We have nothing to lose by being civil.”

Oliver shifted again. “Alright,” he said. He looked at Max and Safi. “I hope you’re ready for this,” he said, as a smile slowly spread across his face.

“I can’t believe Oliver managed to get his job back,” Safi said as they were driven away from the ESOS buildings. She’d sat next to Max on the same rover they’d arrived in, and they’d set their suit communicators to a private channel so that the driver wouldn’t hear them. “And not just his old job; he got in up here too.”

“Victor must see him as a calculated risk,” Max said. “It’s the only explanation. Oliver must have heard about the Prospectors working and come crawling back with a sackful of other peoples’ innovations to sell.”

“And Victor decided to let him in on the full deal?”

“Well, Oliver’s proved himself pretty formidable at gathering information. Joel as much as confirmed it. Depending on how Victor sees things, that could make him more valuable rather than less. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, as the saying goes.”

“Yeah, maybe having him inside the tent pissing out is better than having him outside pissing in.”

Max looked over at Safi and tried not to laugh. Normally a paragon of new world politeness, that was the closest thing to a profanity he’d ever heard from her. “Maybe,” he said. “Still, it doesn’t look like Oliver’s enjoying the ride. Don’t they have health screening for a reason up here?”

Safi looked over at Oliver on the other rover and laughed. His overweight body was almost wedged sideways in the seat, whereas everyone else had managed to sit down properly. They couldn’t see his face, but it was unlikely that he was having a good journey.

“Looks comfortable,” she said. “Serves him right.”

The rovers went on, following a well-travelled route past mile upon mile of strip-mined lunar soil before eventually stopping at
the base of a hill. The patchwork of parallel furrows looked out of place, like ploughed-over farmland where no farm could possibly be. Joel twisted round to face Max and Safi from his seat next to Oliver.

“We are here,” he said. “Now please, prepare yourselves.”

Then the rovers started moving again, taking them round the side of the hill, and showing them for the first time what was lying on the other side.

“Oh my God,” Safi said when she saw it. “Oh My God.”

If the colony they’d seen before had looked like a clump of palm trees, then this one was a forest, a forest of giant redwoods. Gone were the squat cylinders that had made up the previous site, and the clumsy angular frameworks that had held the solar reflectors. Instead they’d been replaced by elegant, sinuous structures, with thick solid bases like huge tree trunks, blending into curved frameworks of struts and girders, growing and branching upward with thousands upon thousands of solar collectors at their tips. The comparison with a forest canopy was unavoidable, as the hundreds of structures that were present managed between them to capture every bit of sunlight that fell on the site. The area that they covered must have been two miles wide, and the largest ones stood over two hundred feet tall. Max could find no words to describe what he felt as they approached the place. Only Joel broke the silence.

“Welcome to the jungle, people!” he said, laughing.

As the rovers took them closer, Max started to see movement, both on the ground and in amongst the branches. Hundreds of thousands of robots were visible, swarming in and around the structures, ferrying the parts and materials necessary to keep the place maintained and to let it spread. By now it was large enough to fill his entire range of vision, but they still had some distance to go before they would reach it.

“Nothing you can see here was designed or built by human hands,” Joel told them. “Isn’t that amazing? Evolution at work!”

“And this is all one colony?” Max said.

“Yes, though now I would call it a super colony. It has developed the capability of using multiple printers in addition to its original core block. The rate at which it can test new designs is currently measured in hours, not days. Adaptation will soon reach geometric proportions.”

At last they reached the outermost parts of the site. The structures here were only half built, and even as they watched, new parts and components were being brought in to complete them. Despite this they still towered over Max and the others, some with their insides laid bare to the vacuum. Max climbed off the rover as soon as it came to a halt, then walked over to one of them and looked inside.

“What can you see?” Safi said as she joined him.

“Hard to say, I can’t make much sense of it.” The tangle of mechanisms, wiring and tubing was hardly easy to decipher. How they had been made on the other hand was immediately obvious. “It’s been built in a printer though, then slotted together. Just like Prospector parts.”