Orphans of Earth (32 page)

Her self-assurance faltered. “But—?”

“Ten twenty-two went to Alsafi. I’m seven seventy-four.”

“Then what happened to ten twenty-two?” she asked, a little confused. “He must’ve come back for you to be here, surely.”

“And why is that, Caryl?”

“Because you said that
Mercury
was the only hole ship you had.” She could already feel herself starting to bristle at the superior-than-thou smugness his expression hinted at.

His smile widened. “That’s not
Mercury
.”

She suppressed another startled double take. “What do you mean, it’s not
Mercury
?” she asked with some irritation. Clearly he was enjoying putting her off guard. “You told me—”

“Situations change, Caryl,” he interjected casually. “This one is called
Orcus
.”

“And would you care to tell me how you came by it?”

“Not particularly,” he said. “You see, the thing is, I’ve never really been one for laying all my cards on the table at once.”

“So it would seem,” she said.

“Listen, Caryl,” he said, swinging himself onto the couch. His movements were surprisingly smooth and graceful. “I’m going to be blunt here. Your last missive to the masses has left me a little confused. As far as I’m aware, you’ve had no direct engagement with the Roaches. Why, then, are you declaring war on them?”

“According to your data, Frank, we’ve had numerous encounters with the Yuhl,” she said. “I’ve seen footage of at least one colony destroyed by the Starfish as a result of their interference, and I have no doubt that there have been more. On top of that, we’ve lost three scouts sent to investigate one particular system in the last few days. If this doesn’t count as direct engagement, then I don’t know what does.”

He shrugged. “I think you’re overreacting.”

“Why? You’re ex-military, aren’t you? You know a threat when you see one.”

“And I know an opportunity when I see one, too. Caryl, you’re jeopardizing the future of all of us by jumping the gun. The Yuhl
could
be a valuable ally.”

“But they’re already a powerful enemy,” she said soberly.

He nodded thoughtfully for a moment. “Do you want to know what I think, Caryl?” He didn’t wait for her to respond. “I think you want this battle.”

“That’s absurd,” she said with disdain. “Why would I
want
a war?”

“Because you feel it’s one you have a chance of winning.”

She was about to protest, but he silenced her.

“This is a knee-jerk reaction at best, Caryl, and you know it. In the face of the Spinners and the Starfish technology, you feel small—hell, we
all
do. But a victory against the Yuhl—well, that will make you feel just that little bit bigger, won’t it? You won’t feel so insignificant.”

Hatzis snorted her contempt of his suggestion. “And I suppose you would rather make allies with them.”

“It’s an option.”

“For exactly the same reason,” she pointed out, standing. She took a couple of steps away and faced him. “You have no hope of achieving it with the Starfish, because they ignore you as though you were little more than an insect. But the Yuhl at least talk to you.”

“My way we don’t lose as many people,” he said. “When you tally up the lives lost in a war with the Yuhl along with those being wiped out by the Starfish, how many will be left by the end? But if we can ally ourselves with the Yuhl, then maybe, just
maybe,
we’d stand a chance against the Starfish.”

“That’s a big maybe, Frank.”

He shrugged. “It’s a big enemy,” he said. “But the Starfish are going to keep eating away at us until there’s nothing left, Caryl. Of that you can be sure. We need another solution. The Yuhl, with all their years of experience dealing with the threat, are the only one I’ve found.”

She could see the sense in his words, but there were too many facts backing her side of the argument. Wishing was all very well, but at the end of the day, wishing would never stop the ax from falling.

“No solution can make up for the colonies we’ve lost because of these aliens,” she said. “Not to mention the scouts in pi-1 Ursa Major—or even Peter and Axford 1022, for that matter. How can you casually sit here and talk about negotiation when they might have been destroyed the moment they arrived in Alsafi?”

“They weren’t.” Axford’s self-satisfied smile returned.

Another curve ball that caught her off guard. “How could you possibly know that?” she asked.

“Yesterday I received a short, coded message from ten twenty-two,” he explained. “He was in Rana in Becvar, en route to another system where he intended to rendezvous with the Yuhl fleet. At the time of the transmission, he seemed fairly optimistic. He felt that progress was being made.”

“And Peter?” She was surprised at her concern for Alander, but she justified it by telling herself that he was her only hope of keeping Axford on the straight and narrow when she wasn’t around. “What about him?”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “He went on ahead of ten twenty-two in
Silent Liquidity,
the hole ship we liberated from the Yuhl around Hera.”

“Why did they separate?”

“It was a hostage swap, as I understand it. He went to open negotiations with one of the prisoners while ten twenty-two held the other as ransom. What exactly happened then, I’m not sure. The transmission was brief, and I wouldn’t like to speculate in the absence of hard data.”

Hatzis imagined Alander killed and dissected by the aliens once they had got him away from Axford, and a warm anger flowed through. How could Axford have let something like that happen to him? Why hadn’t Axford gone in his place? After all,
he
was the one who was disposable, not Alander.

“So basically we don’t know much more than we did before,” she said, making an effort to keep her voice level. “Peter could be dead by now, and whatever negotiations he was trying get under way may have ground to a halt before they even had a chance to get started. Frank, you haven’t given me a single reason to trust the Yuhl. There are plenty to justify defending myself.”

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t defend yourself,” Axford jumped in quickly. “I’m all for you expending energy and resources on ways to fight back. I’m just saying you shouldn’t fight back unless you have to, that’s all. You could end up doing us more harm than good. Try to remember, it’s the Starfish who are our real enemies.”

Hatzis snorted derisively. “But as you said, we don’t have much hope of defeating them, do we? Technologically speaking, they are so far ahead of us that they’re effectively invincible.”

“Which is exactly why talking to the Yuhl makes more sense than fighting with them.”

“If the Yuhl knew how to defeat the Starfish, don’t you think they would have done it by now?”

“Maybe they lack the will,” he said, shrugging. “Or they’re still building up their strength. Combined, we might be enough to do the job.”

She stared at him, trying to see past the android facade to get a glimpse into what he was really thinking. “You don’t honestly believe that, do you?”

“I believe we need to try something more than picking fights with the smallest kid in the schoolyard just to make us feel better about ourselves.”

“And when you’re a bug about to be stepped on, you don’t hang around to philosophize and make poor schoolyard analogies! In the end, as always, it comes down to practicalities. I’d give up ever knowing what the Spinners and Starfish are in exchange for simply staying alive. And I don’t believe you’d willingly sacrifice yourself just to make a point, either.”

“Not all of me, perhaps,” he said.

SOL, I’M SORRY TO BOTHER YOU AGAIN, BUT WE HAVE ANOTHER REQUEST TO DOCK.

She turned away from her argument with Axford with a sigh of frustration.

WHO THIS TIME?

IT’S PETER ALANDER.

WHAT?

She didn’t believe it at first. On the one hand, the timing was remarkably fortuitous, for it would allow her to see if his story matched Axford’s. But on the other, the timing was unsettlingly suspicious.

TELL HIM TO PARK
SILENT LIQUIDITY
IN THE MAIN DOCK AND COME DOWN STRAIGHTAWAY.

I WILL, BUT THAT’S NOT THE NAME OF HIS HOLE SHIP.

ACCORDING TO AXFORD —

THIS ISN’T PETER ALANDER FROM ADRASTEIA, SOL. THIS ONE’S FROM VAHAGN IN CHI HERCULES.

VAHAGN? I’VE NEVER HEARD OF THAT COLONY.

NEITHER HAD WE UNTIL HE ARRIVED. IT’S NEW. CHI HERCULES IS RIGHT ON THE SPINNER FRONT; THE COLONY WAS CONTACTED ONLY TWO DAYS AGO. HE WANTS TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT THE LAST BROADCAST WE SENT.

Hatzis closed her eyes and sighed. Clearly it was going to be one of those days.

* * *

“Welcome to Sothis, Peter,” she said as, half an hour later,
the chi Hercules version of Alander entered
Arachne’
s cockpit. She had been expecting to see Alander’s face but instead saw an android wearing general-purpose features, the sort of average face that looked like no one in particular, employed when an android was used by many people either at once or in series. He obviously hadn’t had his own body grown before leaving Vahagn. She made sure her surprise was kept in check as she extended a hand toward him. “It’s always a pleasure to meet a representative from a new colony.”

“Spare me the bullshit, Caryl,” he said, his hands at his sides, refusing to take hers in greeting. “I haven’t come all this way for a pleasant chat.” His gaze shifted to Axford. “And I certainly wasn’t expecting to see Frank the Ax here, either. I wouldn’t have thought you the type to indulge in hand-holding and banner waving.”

“I assure you, I’m not,” Axford responded with a slight inclination of his head.

“Then—” Alander hesitated for a split second, his eyes becoming vacant. Then he was back, clearly annoyed with himself. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Something’s not going quite right with me. Cleo, our SMC, says they had problems with my engram during the voyage out, and they had to put me on ice. But I don’t remember any of that. All I know is that the Spinners woke me up when the gifts came. They brought me back from the dead.”

Not quite,
Hatzis thought, taking a microsecond out of the conversation to dip into his Overseer. There she found the same elegant yet roughshod technique that the Gifts had used in senescent colonies to give a nonviable engram a kind of life. His mind was fundamentally unstable, careering from thought to thought with all the control of a drunk driver on one of Earth’s old freeways; his thoughts reached a gridlock every few minutes, unable to sustain the illusion that all the conflicting processes that comprised them belonged to one mind. Every time he failed, however, instead of crashing to a halt, his initial state was reloaded from the Overseer, deleting any minor changes that might have built up in that time. This initial state would only run for another few minutes before needing to be rebooted but, combined with the memories it had laid down in those few minutes, it was at least enough to create the illusion of continuity. That’s all it was, though: an illusion. Alander’s mind was like a short loop of film going around and around, redrawing over the frames as it went to make it appear as though the action was changing.

Hatzis knew that this couldn’t be maintained forever. It didn’t address the problem, only the symptoms.

She withdrew, satisfied he hadn’t noticed her intrusion. She didn’t like having to rely on this crude method to revive nonviable engrams. But as she hadn’t yet been able to find a more effective technique, it was just going to have to do for now. She didn’t want to spend the rest of eternity with a bunch of tape loops, endlessly repeating the same emotions, over and over again.

“You’re not the only engram who’s had that problem,” she said as diplomatically as she could.

“Well, I’ve had a couple of days to sort myself out,” he said, “and I’m sure I’ll feel better in a couple more.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Axford.

Alander shot him an impatient look but said nothing in response. His lack of curiosity was puzzling. Instead, he turned back to Hatzis and said, “We picked up your message on the ftl communicator. Everyone in the
Marcy
is stunned by what’s been going on. They’ve been there for over forty years, now, and there’s never been any hint of life. Then suddenly,
this.
It’s pulled everything out from under them: the Earth is gone, humanity is practically dead, and it looks as though you’re the only real one of us left.” He shook his head slowly. “I can’t believe it either. Two days ago I woke up thinking we’d just broken orbit, and here I am, a century in the future, and aliens are fighting over the scraps of what we’ve become.”

“Trust me when I say I can appreciate your bewilderment,” Hatzis said. “Having an extra century on you doesn’t make it any easier.”

“It obviously hasn’t made you any wiser, either,” said Alander pointedly. “Frankly, I can’t believe what I’m hearing in your broadcasts. We finally find evidence of intelligent alien life—sentient beings we can actually
talk
to—and you’re declaring
war
on them? Jesus Christ, Caryl. Are you insane?”

She felt herself stiffen and was unable to repress it. “If you came all this way to abuse me, then you can damn well—”

“What do you expect, Caryl? You think I’m going to sit back and say nothing?”

She took a brief moment to control her rising anger. “I gather you came with Cleo’s approval.” Cleo Samson, according to Sol’s records, was the civilian survey manager of the Geoffrey Marcy, core vessel dispatched to explore chi Hercules.

Alander looked uncomfortable. “Actually, they voted against it. But I came anyway; the Gifts listen to me, not the others, and I recognize a con-con-con-conspiracy of silence when I see one.”

He nodded as though perfectly satisfied with the point he’d made. Hatzis didn’t say anything, and neither did Axford. She wondered if Alander even suspected the resetting of his Overseer functions and the slight glitch it had caused.

Axford’s android couldn’t hide a slight smirk, though. “Tell me, Peter, how it feels to be proven wrong.”

Alander frowned. “About what?”

“About us being the only intelligent life in the universe, of course. That was your theory, wasn’t it? Back on Earth? I can’t imagine it being invalidated in a less subtle way.”