Orphans of Earth (22 page)

“That would mean leaving the gifts behind,” said Samson.

Sol nodded. “But I’m not suggesting we abandon the gifts entirely. I know we can’t afford to do that.” She thought as quickly as she could, formulating a blueprint for survival on the hop. “We’re going to tackle this three ways. One: colonies at risk will up ship and regroup in two or three of the dead colony systems. No more than that because we need to reduce the number of hole ships we have committed to communications. I know it’ll take time to find a way to move the Overseer cores and any other hardware we need, so I suggest we get moving on that right away. Two: any colony that has a problem with occupying a dead system will come here, to Sothis. And, three: there are holes in our knowledge of the gifts. That’s become obvious to me in the last day. We’ll need to conduct an intensive search through the Libraries for more practical applications of the Spinner technology. I suggest we concentrate that research in one system close to the front, where the Starfish have yet to reach. Juno, perhaps, in Gamma Serpens. You’re from there, right, Jayme?”

Jayme Sivio stirred at the rear of the gathering from where he’d been watching the argument. “That’s right,” he said. “And I’m sure you’d be welcome there.”

“Who’s your SMC? It’s not me, is it?”

“No, it’s Donald.” Sivio nodded at the version of Schievenin from Fujin. “Our contact is Kingsley Oborn.”

And he’s also your UNESSPRO traitor,
Hatzis confirmed to herself. “Perfect,” she said aloud. “While the evacuations are under way, all volunteers for this project should make themselves known. We can reclaim Overseer resources from the senescent colonies, so processing time shouldn’t be a problem. We must make sure, however, that everything is mobile so it can be pulled out at a moment’s notice. While it’s all very well to make the leap to permanent bodies—” She indicated the crowd of similar faces before her, cursing Peter Alander for setting the precedent. “—I still think we need to remember that we’re more at risk this way. Legs can only run so fast; free engrams can travel at the speed of light. Any questions?”

“What about the other aliens?” asked Wyra, his posture and tone no longer so confrontational. “You haven’t told us how we’re going to deal with them, on top of everything else.”

“I’ve already taken steps to explore that problem, and I expect word to come soon.”
Assuming Axford doesn’t cock everything up,
she added to herself. “We have a report on our books of a hole ship that went missing near pi-1 Ursa Major. I’d like to send a mission to investigate the disappearance. If there are more, they could constitute evidence of direct aggression. We might have already been at war for some time without even knowing it,”

She thought of the systems supposedly raided by the Yuhl then destroyed by Starfish that had come following their call. If this was true, the Yuhl had a lot to answer for. But she didn’t know how far she could trust Frank Axford. He might have reasons for encouraging aggression between the human survivors and the Yuhl. Perhaps he hoped to pick up the pieces once everything settled down.

The eyes of the small crowd were still on her. “Otto, if you or anyone genuinely don’t want to be part of this, I’m not going to force you. You know that. I’m not a tyrant. You are all free to follow your own counsel. Just remember this: we are all that’s left of the human race. If we fail, everything dies with us. Not just our hopes for the future, but the memories of the past as well. Everything that makes us unique will end up as a footnote in a Spinner Library for some other alien species to read about someday—and I don’t want that. If we can survive this, we can survive anything the universe throws at us.” Heads were nodding.
Enough of the rhetoric,
she thought. “We have work to do, people.”

The crowd broke up into smaller groups, muttering among themselves. Not everyone was satisfied, but the crisis had been averted for the moment, at least. Hatzis sensed a flurry of electromagnetic communications as hole ships were summoned. She left the room, happy to leave the logistics of docking and loading passengers to her various selves on Sothis and off. Opening a link to Gou Mang, she said, I WANT EVERY SPARE HOLE SHIP HERE

WITHIN THE DAY. HOW MANY DO WE HAVE NOW?

SEVEN.

AND WHEN THE COLONIES GROUP HERE, WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO MAKE THAT DOUBLE FIGURES AT LEAST.

She pondered how Axford had created a larger hole ship by merging two into one. Using that sort of technique, moving whole colonies around would be a lot simpler.

BROADCAST A REQUEST TO ALL COLONIES TO CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING SYSTEMS FOR RECOLONIZATION: UPSILON AQUARIUS, HD194640, 94 AQUARIUS, AND BSC8477.

THE FIRST ONES ATTACKED?

AND THE FARTHEST AWAY. WE MIGHT BE PUTTING OUR EGGS IN ONE OR TWO BASKETS, BUT AT LEAST THOSE BASKETS WILL BE A GOOD DISTANCE APART. WE’LL KEEP A BARE MINIMUM OF HOLE SHIPS STATIONED IN EACH REFUGEE SYSTEM: ENOUGH TO PULL OUT IF SOMETHING DOES HAPPEN, PLUS A COUPLE TO PROVIDE COMMUNICATIONS RELAYS. THAT SHOULD INCREASE THE NUMBER AT OUR DISPOSAL.

THE NEWER COLONIES WON’T BE EASY TO MOVE: PERENDI, HERA, MEDEINE, JUMIS...

I KNOW.

Sol pondered this all the way back to
Arachne.
The novelty of the gifts inevitably led to an increased feeling of invulnerability. It was hard to believe, with so many age-old questions being answered everywhere they looked, that the ultimate one—of killing or being killed—was still being asked.

They’ll learn
, she thought to herself.
They’ll have to. One can only take baby-sitting so far.

* * *

By the time the next midday deadline arrived, she had prepared
a long report detailing her experiences with Francis Axford and the Yuhl. It told the colonies everything they needed to know about the situation and closed with a personal plea for both calm and levelheadedness. The last thing the survivors needed was to panic or to cut themselves off from the support networks they would need in order to survive the coming weeks.

Preparations for the evacuations were already under way. Hole ships had been sent to the four proposed refugee systems to ensure they were still fallow. Dormant facilities on and around Sothis were coming back to full operation in readiness for an influx of colonists in both physical and virtual form. Hatzis expected around a third of the remaining colonies to take up her offer of sanctuary. About half would opt for hiding out in the refugee systems. The rest would either do as Wyra suggested—hunker down and hope no one noticed them—or they would follow some other scheme. She wouldn’t be surprised if more than one fell apart under the strain, either from internal conflict within the colony or from engram failure. Such losses would be regretted, but there was little she could do about them except make sure no resources were lost in the process.

One of the first things she did was send an envoy to Juno in Gamma Serpens to discuss the establishment of an intensive library search in the system. She doubted she’d meet much resistance; it did mean more resources for the colony, after all, even if it did also slightly increase the risk of a Starfish attack (with so much flowing through the system, the chances of a slipup would be higher). But she wasn’t worried about a sneak attack at the moment. The Starfish front was still seventy to eighty light-years behind that of the Spinners. If everyone was careful, they should be safe for a couple of weeks yet.

The hard-to-shift recent colonies weren’t a problem for the same reason, although it did make things difficult in other ways. While she had no doubt that colonies like Aretia in Van Maanen 2, which had been buzzed by the Yuhl, would be more than happy to contribute to the effort, they were also farther away from the action than she would have liked them to be. Supply lines would be stretched as a result. But, again, they would manage. She could bring in nongift resources from senescent colonies like New France in Tau Ceti. Some of them had nanofactured a great deal of equipment, as the colonists had on Sothis, that was otherwise lying around rotting or being stolen by the Yuhl.

Only one thing irked her. During the broadcast of the last midday message, a short report had arrived from Thor. Sol had assumed that her engram was still with Axford and Alander, but the report indicated otherwise. Thor had left them planning to investigate the site of a possible alien staging point. Why she had left them wasn’t exactly clear, but she did say where she was going. She was heading to pi-1 Ursa Major to see if she could find any concrete evidence of Yuhl aggression. As Sol herself had reasoned, they couldn’t take Axford’s word carte blanche. She personally thought the aliens were as guilty as hell, but until she had a smoking gun, she couldn’t very well expect anyone to believe her, either.

It all made a kind of sense. The trouble was, though, that Sol had already sent someone to pi-1 Ursa Major. Her engram from Tatenen, flying a hole ship liberated from the destruction of the colony in HD113283, had been happy to check out what had happened to her engram from Eos. The likelihood of both missions arriving at the same time was reasonably high, so
Oosphere
and Tatenen would most likely find nothing but
Pearl
and Thor, and both trips would have been a waste of time.

When Thor finally did return, she would have words with her in regards to wasting valuable resources. She could understand her engram’s grief at the loss of her home colony, but still, if humanity was to survive, then everyone was going to have to put aside their personal needs and remain rational at all times. This type of impulsive behavior had the potential to put others at risk. If Sol realized that, why didn’t Thor?

Perhaps, she thought, something had gone wrong in Thor’s simulation. One of Sol’s experimental alterations, designed to assist the stability of her virtual copies, might have inadvertently had the opposite effect in a stressful situation.

She paced the interior of
Arachne,
wishing there was an easier way to coordinate her engrams. They were primitive, stubborn, and inclined to be flaky the older they became. But they were all she had. They were all
her,
so how could she blame them for shortcomings that stemmed from her own personality in the first place?

WE’VE LOST A RELAY.

Gou Mang was gradually getting used to using the Overseer channels for private communications. Operating at a level below conSense, they were much harder for an external source to access and interpret.

WHICH ONE?

ADAMMAS IN
KOYOTE.
SHE WAS BROADCASTING FROM ETA LEPUS WHEN HER SIGNAL WAS CUT OFF.

STARFISH?

I’M GUESSING YES. THEY MUST HAVE TRACKED HER DOWN AND SURPRISED HER, OTHERWISE SHE WOULD’VE SAID SOMETHING IN THE MESSAGE. BUT IT JUST STOPPED DEAD.

Sol pondered the loss. One less hole ship; one less facet of herself. She shook her head firmly. She couldn’t allow herself to be sentimental.

SEND OUT DIANA IN HER PLACE. HALVE THE TIME THE RELAYS STAY IN POSITION. IF THE STARFISH ARE COTTONING ON TO WHAT WE’RE DOING, WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO START BEING CAREFUL.

It was the relays’ job to move among the systems, collecting data and then jumping elsewhere to broadcast it. They also ferried equipment and people. As the evacuation began, their distribution and movement would be critical. The necessity for fine control of the process gave her an extra reason to encourage her engrams to pilot the alien vessels, thus giving her an even tighter stranglehold on communications and transportation.

SHOULD WE SEND SOMEONE TO VEGA?

Sol dismissed the suggestion out of hand.
NO. AXFORD CAN HEAR WHAT WE’RE BROADCASTING. HE’LL RESPOND IF HE WANTS TO.

YOU DON’T THINK HE’LL WANT TO JOIN FORCES?

I GUARANTEE HE WON’T. THE ONLY WAY HE’LL JOIN US IS AS CONQUEROR. HE’LL NEVER FIT IN.

BESIDES WHICH, HE MIGHT BE USEFUL JUST WHERE HE IS, RIGHT?

Sol smiled,
THAT, TOO. WE NEED SOMEONE TO DO THE DIRTY WORK.

But the smile was short-lived. Neither Axford nor Alander had reported back from their encounter with the Yuhl, if it had in fact gone ahead as Thor had suggested. The hole ship sent to investigate Alsafi had returned to report that the system was empty. A feeling of frustration rolled through her. Despite being at the center of such an enormous flow of information, it was still easy to be very much isolated.

* * *

Another midday broadcast came and went. The Library research
team was coming together on Juno and had already reported some progress in the area of hole ship amalgamation: once they knew the data was there, it was much easier to find. Two refugee colonies had been established in 94 Aquarius and BSC8477. Seven colonies had indicated that they would like to relocate to Sirius, once a safe way to move their core survey resources was found. Somehow, in among the chaos, two new colonies were found on the forward edge of the Spinner advance. That was still a priority: preserving lives from the stupid mistakes of the early days. Just because there were new threats to deal with didn’t mean that the old ones had gone away.

Meanwhile, a rush of information crisscrossed surveyed space via the Overseer channels from all the manifold versions of herself visiting dozens of systems: Yuhl vessels raided five senescent colonies whose resources had been earmarked for Sothis; another relay hole ship was targeted by the Starfish but managed to escape unscathed; covert software that Sol had devised for installation in the colony Overseers was spreading as expected, bypassing virus checkers and firewalls that were a hundred years out of date by the Vincula’s standards. The Congress of Orphans was falling into place, even if, as yet, there was no mention in the broadcasts of what it would ultimately be used for. The secret transmissions had always been circumspect about that. Since Axford had let the secret out to Alander, Sol had even more need to be careful.

When the transmissions ended, Thor didn’t move for half an hour. She lay on
Pearl’s
couch, still wary of her bruised abdomen, thinking long and hard about what she was doing. There had been a request from Sol for her and Tatenen to report in. Earlier, she had actually recorded a message and had
Pearl
queue it, ready to transmit the moment midday arrived. But she didn’t send it. She had regretted leaving Alander and Axford the way she had, and hearing Sol’s annoyance in her message only compounded that regret. But that, in turn, only added to the urgency with which she felt she needed to redeem herself. It was why she had volunteered for the pi-1 Ursa Major mission in the first place, although she was aware that not telling Sol in advance what she intended to do would have undoubtedly negated the value of her effort. But she hadn’t been thinking rationally after the loss of her home colony. And now it was too late: now she couldn’t call in without giving herself away.