Creations (8 page)

“Safi, thank you for showing us that, I’m sure your experiences will be very useful to us in our work here.” He sounded as if he was trying to reassure her: maybe not something she’d appreciate, Max thought. Then Victor turned to the others. “Let’s all take a break now shall we, we can carry on later.”

Then he reached over to the screen and paused the clip, which had been running continuously as they’d talked. It was now showing the inside of the Anchorville airlock, as the crew reentered and began to remove their suits. The chamber looked crowded with all of them in there, especially the two at the head of the group, the tall, crew-cut man at the front and the woman standing next to him. His head was almost touching the ceiling as he looked into the camera, a broad smile on his face and the name badge, “Niall West”, fixed to his chest. She looked young, fresh faced and attractive, with her long fair hair spilling down the back of her pressure suit now that her helmet had been removed. Her name badge wasn’t visible, but as she stood there next to her team leader, smiling up at him warmly, she wasn’t hard to recognise.

* * *

“Hi, Max! I thought I’d start the unpacking without you. Hope you don’t mind.”

Gillian had come to the door to meet him when he got back. The house was a single storey villa, with a living area leading out to a terrace, and a kitchen in a large alcove. The shelves and
refrigerator were already stocked up when they’d arrived. As a home it was comfortable, but nothing special. They’d only been able to bring a few cases of possessions with them, but she’d found places for everything and already it felt more like a home.

“Looks like someone’s woken up since this morning,” he said, squeezing her tight. “So what have you been doing today?”

“I got up just after you left and went off to do some exploring. Did a few pictures too. No one here to sell them to, but what the hell. In fact there’s not much of anything round here is there? Oh, and I met Tess down on the beach, we must have walked at least a mile without seeing another person. Did you know she’s a journalist? A pretty successful one too. I’d wondered why her name was familiar.”

She was talking fast, gabbling even, as if brimming over with excitement. She’d pinned a lot of hopes on their arrival there, like it was a kind of salvation for the ambitions that had been so mercilessly thwarted over the last few years.

I hope she’s not in for a disappointment, Max thought. It’s a long way to fall. “Yeah, Tessa Whelan. You’re right, I’ve heard of her. Is she going to carry on working while she’s out here?”

“I don’t think so. Sounds like the job was getting too much for her and coming out here with Ross was a good excuse to get away from it.”

“Good, I’m glad you’re not the only ESOS widow.” That had been one of his fears, that despite her eagerness to come here, being yanked out of her normal existence would leave her feeling isolated.

“So, how did whatever-it-is go today? Are you making any progress?”

“I don’t know, it was an interesting start. Oliver Rudd caused us a few problems. I’ve got a feeling he’s going to carry on that way.”

“Oliver? He hardly said two words to us on the way down. What did he do?”

“Tried to start an argument, basically. Seems like something touched a nerve. I don’t know, he’s either very very clever or very very stupid, I’ve not figured out which yet.”

“Unlike you to not have judged his IQ on sight. Has your ESP deserted you?”

“It must have.”

“So what about Safi? What’s she like?”

“She’s the one telling us how to do everything, so far anyway.”

“I take it she’s not married if she came here on her own?”

Max shook his head. “I don’t know, I haven’t asked. I saw your new car outside by the way.”

“Yes, it was there when I got back from my walk. It was a bit of a surprise, you didn’t tell me I’d be getting a car.”

“I didn’t know until today either, but we’ve all been given one. Looks like everything on the island is too spread out for walking anywhere.”

“Well, it’s good I can get around the place, because there’s something else I did while you were away.”

“What was that?”

“I found out where the company medical centre is, and got us booked in for a consultation. We’re seeing them on Saturday morning, I hope that’s okay?”

“Yes, sure, that’s more than okay. Did you find out what they can do for us?”

“Everything. The full hormone course, IVF if necessary, full monitoring right through to term.”

“That’s great,” Max said. “That’s wonderful.” And seeing how happy she was, he meant it.

“So, if we’re going to be trying soon, why don’t we get some practice in?”

She didn’t need to ask twice, but smiled instead, and led him through to the rear of the house.

* * *

When Max turned up at the ESOS facility the next day, Safi was there ahead of him. She was in an alcove away from the poolside, with some kind of engineering drawings projecting onto a nearby screen. At first it looked like she’d come in early and was keeping herself busy until the others arrived. It was only when he asked how long she’d been there that he found out she’d never actually gone home.

“I could see some faults with their assembler design, so I thought I’d fix it for them. It didn’t take long, just a few hours once I’d realised I had to start from scratch.”

Max hesitated, wondering if she was joking with him. There was no sign of sarcasm on her face, but no sign of tiredness either. And behind her, on the wall, a very different design was being projected: the schematics had zoomed out to something more like a streamlined catamaran than the ramshackle raft ESOS had created.

“You’re serious? You were in all night?”

“Sure. That’s normal for me, I can never sleep when I can see a problem that needs fixing, so there’s no point trying.”

“So, hang on — that design they’ve been working on for almost a year — you’re saying you did the same thing but better, single-handed, in one night?”

She didn’t seem to want to say yes in a way that might sound conceited, but had to admit that it was true.

And Victor and Ross, when they arrived with Oliver, were similarly impressed. Although the design only existed in her omni, she could simulate a replication cycle clearly enough to show the thing in action. It was still no closer to a raw material replicator, but just looking at it working showed how much more elegant it was than what had gone before.

“The through flow of components is much more natural this way,” she said, pointing out features of the machine. “When we add materials and extraction, we’ll have a much easier time linking the process up.”

“And you really did this overnight?” Victor said, showing the same disbelief that Max had done.

“Well, remember I’ve done this before. Whether you’re in a lunar or marine environment, many of the principles are the same: parallel fabrication, production line streaming, that kind of thing. Fifty percent of the problem is how you lay out your factory floor.”

“Or in this case your deck plan,” Ross said.

“Exactly.”

“So, Ross, what do you think of this?” Victor said. He seemed to hold Ross’s abilities in high regard, see him as a valuable advisor on all matters technical.

Ross was nodding, looking at the design appreciatively. “Well, my part in all this is materials, so anything that makes my job easier is a good thing. I don’t know, Victor, I don’t want to criticise anything Mayaan and his team did, but somehow this design just looks right. You know how if something looks right, it usually is? And having seen it go through a rep cycle, seen how it works; I’m feeling better about this already.”

“This could be the answer we needed?”

Ross nodded again, considering his reply. Max still wasn’t sure what kind of problems ESOS had run into, what issues had led to his and the others’ sudden recruitment, but it was clear the programme had hit hard times. “It could be,” Ross said. “It could well be.”

“In which case we’re four weeks ahead of schedule right from day one,” Victor said.

“Yeah, I guess we are,” Ross said. “So, Safi, bearing in mind we’re paying you by the day here, you might want to slow down some!”

She smiled and looked down, as if slightly embarrassed by the praise, but didn’t answer. Oliver too was silent, looking at her design schematics with what seemed to be mild disdain.

“Why don’t we go and meet the teams?” Victor suddenly
announced. “Meet the people you’ll be working with. And show them what we’ve got here.”

* * *

The rest of the morning was spent away from the pool facility, walking round the design and fabrication offices, seeing the various teams that were housed there.

“There are eighty people working here,” Victor said as they walked to the first of the departments. “Most of them are on the SRS project now, so you’ll be getting to know them pretty well. We have a skeleton crew on the manganese beds but the locals seem to be running that for themselves now.”

It seemed to be the main reason the facility existed as far as Max could tell, some kind of ESOS breakthrough ten years ago bringing the Pacific seabed’s manganese deposits within reach for the first time and starting a mutually beneficial relationship with the local island states’ governments. Sufficiently beneficial for ESOS to be allowed to stay and run whatever other projects they wanted to run, no questions asked.

“So we’ll be meeting the sim group first,” Victor said, “then the mech engineers, then materials and chemistry, then the control group. And you’ll be meeting Garrett Gentry later on as well. He’s our resident helicopter pilot, he’ll be on hand to take you to and from the other islands. And just let me know if you want cleaners or housekeepers, we have people to do that as well.”

Victor seemed to like reeling off the list of people who worked for him, revelling in his role as emperor of his island domain. But ESOS was a big company, and Marine Extraction only one of its divisions, so Victor must have had his own superiors, people to whom he had to explain himself. Max tried to imagine where this replication idea had first come from: was it decreed from above, or was it Victor’s own pet project? Was he
told to do it, or had he had to justify it, make the case for its funding? And if it failed, would he be the one feeling the heat? Suddenly Max had a suspicion he and the others weren’t just here to help the project to stay afloat; they were keeping Victor’s career intact too.

By the time they’d toured the offices, meeting the personnel whose talents they’d be drawing on over the next few months, it was lunchtime. They’d been taken round seven separate departments, including the modelling and simulation group Max was told he’d have working for him, but everywhere they went the reaction was the same: polite curiosity, greetings and handshakes traded all round but tempered by mild wariness as to just what these newcomers were about and how they were going to change things. The reaction to Safi’s new design was similar: no overt sign of resentment that twelve months’ work had just been overturned, but plenty of searching questions on the technical side which she fielded ably while Victor looked on, smiling with appreciation, as if watching his latest asset fulfil her potential.

Oliver had been silent for almost the whole walkabout, saying little more than hello, even when he was introduced to the control and mechanical engineers he’d be working with. It only was when the five of them finished up at the canteen that he had anything more to say.

“A machine which builds a copy of itself,” he said as they sat down at one of the tables. He spoke slowly, almost as if the words didn’t belong in the same sentence together. “Is that really what you’ve got us doing here?”

“Yes, that’s the aim,” Victor said.

Oliver shook his head as if in disbelief. “What a waste of time.”

“Oliver, can you take us through your specific objections?” It was clear that Victor wanted to get Oliver’s views out in the open, and was doing his best to keep the discussion civilised, but the contempt emanating from Oliver for everything he’d heard was
unmistakable.

“Okay, point number one: making them copy themselves. I’ve already made my position clear on this, so there’s little more I can say. Point number two: controlling them. You’re describing these things as behaving autonomously, yet you don’t have the faintest idea how you’re going to keep them where you want them. What’s to stop them just wandering off when you’re not looking?”

“We know exactly how we’re going to do it,” Ross said. “We haven’t got to that part of the design yet, but that’s actually the easy bit.”

“So what are you planning?” Max said.

“A chain of short-range acoustic transmitters, all around the operating zone. We’ll need a few thousand of them but they’re easy to mass produce. We could start making them today if we wanted. We just build our machines so that whenever they pick up the signals they turn away from the barrier. It’s that easy.”

Max hesitated, running what Ross had just said through his mind.

“Max? What do you think about that?” Victor said. Max’s thoughts must have been showing on his face. Either that or Victor had read his mind. “I don’t know,” he said. “I can see the reasons for making them mobile, but the containment issue worries me.” He was having to be careful with his words, aware he was echoing what Oliver had said, but not wanting to seem like his ally. “We need to be absolutely sure we can keep them where we want them.”

“We will be Max,” Victor said, “I can assure you.” He seemed eager to move on to a different subject. “So then, we know what these machines will look like, pretty much, and we’re starting to understand how they’ll work. The only other question is what we’re going to call them. I’m getting tired of all these ‘SRS’ designators we’ve used until now. Any fresh ideas?”

“Factory ships?” Ross suggested. “Sail barges?”

“Prospectors,” Safi said firmly. It was obviously an idea she’d brought with her.

Victor repeated the word to himself a couple of times. “Yes, I like that. The old word for gold miners. Prospectors it is.”

Oliver, however, just shook his head. “Can you people hear yourselves?” he said, looking round and smiling as if he was the only one who could see the joke. “Making up fancy names before you even know if you can do this.” He stood up from the table. “Look, if you want to get gold out of the sea, I’ll help you. But the sooner you realise this approach won’t work, the better it will be for all of us.” Then he left.