Edge of the Wire, page 16
“Okay,” said the engineer. “Safe distance please.”
Rowe and Waverly walked backward until the engineer gave a wave. Then they watched as the engineer punched a virtual keypad hovering beside his enviro-suit. Moments later, there was the sound of powerful thrusters waking up and liquid fuel coming alight. The base of the rocket glowed white hot until it was hard to look at. The glow caught the rocket’s chrome surface and soon it was like trying to look into a sun.
Just when Rowe could bear it no longer—and moved to shield his eyes—the rocket suddenly leapt from the pad, leaving only a blur of light behind it. Moments later, the streaming, screaming glow entered the lightning-rich clouds above Tendus-13 and passed entirely out of sight.
The horrible scent of burnt plastic was all that remained.
The engineer put his hands on his hips and approached the launchpad. He gave it a once-over, and smiled to show he was satisfied.
“Will there be anything else?” he asked.
Rowe and Waverly looked at one another.
There would not.
“Do you think she’ll come personally?” Waverly asked, idly looking up into the sky.
“If I were her, I would just send somebody,” said Rowe. “A subordinate, I mean.”
“Yeah,” said Waverly. “We’ll have to be thankful for whatever we get. I guess now we gotta be patient and see what management decides to do.”
As it turned out, the men did not have long to wait.
No sooner had they ambled back to the lander and sat themselves down upon an unopened crate of mining equipment, a small commotion arose on the craft’s far side. The twenty or so Silkworms working in the immediate vicinity dropped what they were doing, craned their necks skyward, and gestured. Several of them activated their helmets or shielded their eyes.
Rowe and Waverly went back outside.
In the sky was something glowing so brightly that it could be seen behind and through the roiling clouds. It was something burning flat and red, and increasing in size by the moment. Rowe and Waverly would have been alarmed had they not seen such a sight many times before.
“That’s a lander getting hot as it comes through the atmosphere,” Waverly said. “But behind lightning clouds? That’s a new one for me. It shimmers like a spinning crystal.”
“I guess they got our message,” Rowe offered. “That was awfully quick. I mean, did they even take time to read everything?”
“Who knows?” Waverly said, clearly cheered that the cavalry had arrived. “Some people are good at skimming.”
As the Silkworms looked on—now, virtually all of them using a helmet shield to mitigate the approaching glow—the craft burst through the cloud cover and began to deploy great fiery thrusters that would slow its descent. The vessel was much smaller than their own lander. It had a classical rocket shape, and landed vertically. When its great fins finally met the strange surface of Tendus-13, the thrusters hissed and sputtered and slowly ceased spitting fire. (They glowed bright orange for some moments still, like dying embers in a fireplace.) The Silkworms adjusted down their helmet shields.
After the exterior cooled, a long metal gangway lowered from the side of the rocket. A door at the top slid open.
Collins was the first one out.
“Well well,” said Rowe. “She did come herself.”
“She must’ve really liked your handmade drawings,” Waverly offered.
As Rowe watched, ten other Silkworms followed Collins out of the landing vessel and down the ramp. It was a mix of men and women. They all wore large, black enviro-suits quite unlike any Rowe had seen before.
“Good,” Rowe pronounced. “They’re sending women. That means they believed me that it wasn’t a virus pitting the sexes against each other.”
Collins and her team greeted the Silkworms who had gathered at the base of the gangway. Collins appeared convivial and confident. Her smile was measured but clear.
And Rowe could tell immediately that something was wrong.
“Noyes, switch off and stay off,” Rowe said softly. “Understood?”
“Aye aye,” the hologram said, and quickly faded away.
Rowe and Waverly waited at the back of the welcoming group. Rowe had a feeling that Collins would soon find them in the crowd, and she did.
“Gentlemen!” she said, striding up. “Just the Silkworms I was hoping to speak with.”
Both men straightened, but just a little. Even in the presence of a Mission Commander, things were always a bit more casual planetside.
“Got our message, did you?” Waverly asked.
Her smile remained, but Collins inclined her head to the side to say that this did not quite compute.
“Oh, did you try to send up a message?” she asked.
Other members of her landing team approached just behind her.
Rowe found himself smiling back at Collins, aware immediately that a game was being played. That a test was being administered.
But why? What was happening?
For the moment, he elected only to remain silent.
“A communications rocket,” Waverly continued. “With detailed mission notes from Rowe here. Analog mission notes, hand-drawn, if you can believe it. The rocket went up just a few minutes ago. You can see the remains of the launchpad over there. I bet they’re still warm.”
Collins nodded seriously, but did not turn her head to look.
“Perhaps we crossed in transit,” she suggested. “Or, alas, the rocket could have been lost. That lightning! I’ve felt atmospheric turbulences hundreds of times before, but this place is one for the records, eh? How was your own descent?”
“Um . . .” Waverly said. “It was very bumpy and violent. Anyway, so you didn’t get Rowe’s message?”
“No,” Collins answered quickly, not making eye contact. “But you can fill me in. I need to speak with both of you. With Mister Rowe, particularly.”
“But if you didn’t get our message . . .” Waverly continued, seeming genuinely dumbfounded. “You still took the risk to come down here?”
Waverly, perhaps sensing that he was out of his depth, physically stepped back.
“Updated data and additional high atmosphere scans of Tendus-13 have allowed the Goo to amend its conclusions concerning what happened here vis-a-vis the Marie Curie,” Collins said. “I was inclined to agree with these new conclusions. And as Mission Commander, these things are ultimately my call.”
“Of course, Commander,” said Rowe, deciding it was the right time to pipe up. “I’m so pleased the new analysis means you’re able to join us safely on the surface. Whenever you’re ready, I can provide you with an update on our progress and answer any questions. We have some findings which I believe are extremely important.”
“I’m ready right now,” said Collins. “Is there a place we can speak privately?”
Rowe scanned the horizon.
“This whole place gets pretty private in a hurry if you just walk in one direction,” he said. “We could go to the far side of the lander; there’s nobody there.”
“Very good,” said Collins.
An awkward beat passed.
“Do we just . . .” she began.
“I’ll be happy to show you,” Rowe said. “Right this way.”
The other Silkworms from Collins’s lander stayed back, chatting and gladhanding. It was as if these black-clad newcomers had no immediate task, something rare for a Silkworm.
“Incidentally, how are you feeling?” Collins asked as they strode around the lander. She had retracted her helmet and now breathed the strange, legume-scented air.
“Feeling?” said Rowe. “Ah, sorry. That’s right. No pain at all from the aneurysms. Nothing out of the ordinary there.”
“And having your custom AI along,” Collins asked. “The ETC? How’s that working out?”
“You want to ask him yourself?” Rowe said. “He’s turned out to be a very frank little gent, but generally he provides a helpful perspective on things.”
“Ahh,” said Collins. “I’m glad he’s been useful. Can I talk to him?”
A beat passed.
And then, to Rowe’s surprise, another beat passed.
And then, to his greater surprise, another.
It was hard even to think the words in sentence form, but the strange truth of it now washed over him in a deep surety.
Her suit has no Goo. And the Goo in my suit has noticed that.
“You want to bring him up?” Collins asked.
“Sure,” said Rowe. “Noyes?”
Upon the invocation of his name by Rowe, Noyes slowly shimmered into existence.
As the little man took his time materializing, Rowe’s uneasy feeling solidified.
Noyes should not have waited for me. Collins is my commander. Noyes would only hesitate—would only obey me exclusively—if he also knew that something was wrong.
Then Rowe did not have time to consider it further.
“How are you?” Collins said to Noyes. “More importantly, how is our man Rowe here?”
They were now out of the line of sight of the other Silkworms, yet Collins kept on at a brisk pace, seemingly determined that they should put in further distance still.
“Physically, he seems well,” Noyes informed her. “And psychologically, he is brimming with anticipation because he simply has so much to tell you.”
“And I’m here to listen,” Collins said amicably. “Anything else?”
“Just brace yourself,” Noyes said. “It’s going to be a lot. I expect you’ll think he’s nearly gone mad when it comes to parts of the tale. But I was there too, and I can vouch for him.”
Noyes gave Collins a nod to show his sincerity.
When they were a full fifty yards beyond the lander—with no other Silkworms in sight—Collins finally came to a halt.
“All right then,” she told the men. “Proceed.”
“Okay, I’m going to start with what we know for sure,” Rowe said. “Then I’ll conclude with some things that are educated speculation, if that’s all right.”
Collins nodded to say that would be satisfactory.
“The Silkworms who died here—and they did die—were not possessed by a virus exactly,” Rowe informed her. “There was a malfunction in their suits that caused them to see one another as aggressive monsters, and to kill one another. But what they saw was fake. An illusion. They killed each other while thinking that monsters—for lack of a better word—were doing it.”
Rowe took a deep breath and smiled. Then he prepared himself to do one of the most dangerous things he had ever done in his life . . . at least as regarded his ARK Score.
Over the centuries, the Goo had become extremely adept at detecting lies. It knew all about the many different kinds. There were flat-out untruths of course—easy to spot those a mile away—but there were also lies of omission. There were subtle misrepresentations. And there were exaggerations so extreme they became tantamount to lies.
And the Goo caught them all.
Yet Rowe knew that there were also three kinds of lie that the Goo did allow to pass without impacting ARK.
The first was a lie that the speaker believed could be true at the time. For example, children in classrooms who hazarded that two plus two was five, or that the capital of New York State was New York City were not recorded as having lied-lied.
The second was a lie that was the product of having obviously misspoken. (In these cases, people around you invariably corrected you a moment later. And persons with dissociative mental illness—who said things that were false all the time, uncontrollably—were, of course, held to an entirely different ARK protocol.)
The third sort was the lie of involuntary incompleteness. It was, perhaps, the trickiest of all. This was the sort of lie that occurred when a speaker truly believed they had said all that needed to be revealed, even though salient information had failed to get across. But what was salient? For whom? Concerning what? Although it was very good at anticipating things, the Goo often had difficulty guessing all of the reasons why someone might disclose something. Conversations shifted quickly. What someone wanted to know—or wanted someone else to tell them—could change while the sentence was still coming out of their mouth. Yes, you could lie by not telling someone enough. But how much was “enough”?
Rowe had to bet that his best friend was going to understand what was happening and follow along . . . and that his AI would do the same.
Before Rowe could speak further, Collins said: “And what about Martha Cortez?”
Rowe realized he had been served the perfect pitch at which to swing.
Now, for a moment at least, his smile was real.
“She is among the dead,” Rowe said.
“I see,” said Collins. “Such a shame.”
Rowe said nothing more.
Collins shook her head and looked away to indicate this was indeed a sad thing. In that moment, Rowe risked a sideways glance at Waverly. His friend’s expression said: I don’t understand what you’re doing, but I understand that you are doing something.
And then Rowe knew Waverly would not accidentally betray him.
Next, Rowe waited for the other shoe to fall. For the death blow. Would Noyes come alive and point out that Cortez had not died in quite the same way as the other Silkworms?
But the hovering man stayed silent, and Rowe realized he had done it.
He had succeeded.
Noyes was quiet on the issue, and would seemingly remain so.
Before this could change, Rowe rushed on to other parts of his tale, giving Collins a very general overview of their explorations aboard the Marie Curie. He told of the smashed interfaces and barred doors. The horror in the medical bay. The destruction at the ship’s core.
He also told of the Silkworms from his own crew who had died in the loading bay and at the base of the ramp, and of a strange shimmering beast made of five wheels. But he said nothing of the encounter with Cortez, or anything related to it. The invisible ship was also never mentioned.
“I’d like to take my team to the Marie Curie and have a firsthand look,” Collins said when Rowe had finished. “Can the two of you accompany us?”
“Of course,” said Rowe.
“Very good,” Collins said. “We should go directly. Give me just a few moments to debrief and organize. Meet you out in front of the lander in ten?”
“Yes,” said Rowe. “We’ll see you there.”
Collins turned and headed back to her team at a swift stride. Rowe and Waverly allowed her to outdistance them.
When they could no longer hear her energetic footfalls, Rowe said: “Her suit is not fitted with Goo. It’s not connected to the other suits. It’s just empty. It might have lights and buttons, but in reality it’s a husk.”
“You’re right,” Waverly said. “The way she didn’t know where to go to be alone? The way Noyes didn’t respond to her? Don’t think I didn’t notice that. None of the people in her landing party have a connection, I’ll bet. What the fuck is going on?”
“It might make sense if they’d read the notes I sent up,” Rowe said. “Like, if they knew the Goo down here could get infected, they might have selected empty suits. But I believe Collins when she says she didn’t get my message. Like they used to say in olden times, those letters crossed.”
“Excuse me, boy-o,” Noyes interjected. “I hate to butt in, but at this juncture, I think it would be important for me to tell you that I don’t really understand what is happening.”
“That’s okay,” said Rowe. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”
“But I feel bad about it,” said Noyes. “It is a strange sensation, one to which I’m unaccustomed.”
“Seriously, don’t let it trouble you,” said Rowe.
“I knew enough to stay silent when you were talking to her,” Noyes said. “How to explain . . . I was not receiving the kind of electronic confirmation I normally would that she should be acknowledged as your commander. I could also tell that something was wrong with the way she was presenting the situation. In cases with that sort of ambiguity, an AI is trained to simply stay mum.”
“You have a lot of tact for an Encarta,” Waverly said.
“I also appreciate your prudence,” Rowe said to Noyes. “I’d like to ask you to continue keeping quiet until we get more answers, if that’s all right. You can talk if I ask you a direct question, or if you see some form of danger.”
“Like the thing with five wheels?” Noyes asked.
“Yes,” Rowe told the hologram. “Obviously, like that.”
“Aye aye!” Noyes replied excitedly.
They found Collins back among her landing party, in the midst of a debrief. Several of the Silkworms in the original landing team listened-in too, and Rowe noticed that Collins did not attempt to prevent this.
“We’re going to accompany Mister Rowe and Mister Waverly to the ESA Marie Curie,” she was saying. “Part of my detachment will come along, and part will remain here . . . for other purposes. You men and women already know your orders. And yes, I said ‘women,’ for it is safe for females to be on this planet. Our understanding of the nature of the threat has evolved. Our tactics will evolve with it. This is the way of the Silkworm. We evolve, we adapt, and we always get the wire job done. Our work here remains vitally important. All of you should be very proud. Tendus-13 is a planet like no other, and this accomplishment—your accomplishment here—will be truly unique.”
Her words seemed to create a crackle of excitement throughout the camp. Even if the details were scant, everyone felt that the tide was turning, and now the wire job would be a success.
“Ready to go?” she asked Rowe and Waverly.
“Yes,” Rowe said. “And we’ll be happy to lead the way.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
COLLINS LEFT HALF OF HER BLACK-SUITED TEAM BEHIND, BUT TOOK three men and two women on the walk to the Marie Curie. Rowe did not know any of these people and had not seen them aboard the Apollinax. He considered discreetly asking Noyes to pull up their information but decided against it. (Something gave him the feeling that there was a good chance Noyes might mysteriously come up short.)
