Edge of the Wire, page 17
Rowe faced the unpleasant prospect of following a leader whose intentions and goals were not fully known to him. A nice thing about living in a world wired with Goo was that it was easy to reassure yourself about the collective objectives of a work project, and/or the role of a member of the leadership team. You literally just asked the Goo to tell you. While the Goo might only be able to respond in broad strokes—if some information were confidential or above your pay grade, for example—it would always reliably give you the touchpoints that everybody could agree on. This is the project. This is who’s in charge. This is why they’re in charge.
It was sometimes very general, but at least it was something.
Rowe was now filled with a creeping trepidation—though he tried vigorously to force it from his mind—at the certainty that the local Goo didn’t know any more than he did about why Collins had chosen to descend to the planet, or what she planned to do now that she was here.
Feeling like your own understanding of the situation might be equal to the Goo’s was like the first time you beat your father at arm-wrestling or outran him in a race. There came equal parts a sense of excitement and a sense of “No, this shouldn’t be.” You felt that you were, somehow, no longer protected. Or maybe that you had gone from protected to protector. And if you were being honest, you still wished desperately for your father to be stronger and faster than you—and for that always to remain the case.
Rowe felt acutely that he was now on watch, and that no one protected him. He also felt unsure who was friend and who was foe.
Collins did not make chit-chat during the walk to the vessel, but she also did not seem anxious or grim. She wore a confident smile and let her chin jut forward. It put Rowe in the mind of a conquering general being shown lands that were now hers to govern.
They reached the lip of the valley and looked down at the dead hulk of the Marie Curie. Immediately visible were the destroyed Silkworms who had been killed by the thing of five wheels. At this sight, Rowe expected Collins’s expression to change, but she remained as sanguine as ever. Collins made a circular, “get on with it” motion with her hand to say that they should not linger, and the group headed down into the valley.
Rowe kept an eye out for any sign of movement among the bodies below, but all was still. Even so, Rowe let his eyes linger carefully on each and every shadow. Collins, in contrast, kept her eyes mostly trained on the exterior of the ship, where no danger could be concealing itself. Against all reason, she seemed to proceed with no fear or hesitation.
On the valley floor they paused to inspect the remnants of the destroyed men and their enviro-suits. Collins regarded a pool of pus and meat the way a physician might confirm a diagnosis during an autopsy. She prodded gently while nodding vigorously. The evidence was upsetting and disgusting, but apparently it all proved she had been correct about something.
Collins said: “It seemed to impact the Goo inside the suits, changing what they saw; it distracted them to make them vulnerable physically . . . or else aggressive.”
Rowe realized this was not a question. Collins was speaking to the Silkworms from her away team. They collectively nodded as they surveyed the carnage.
Suddenly, Noyes materialized.
“Mister Rowe,” Noyes said, “I realize it is now a secondary matter, but I believe I have processed the optional placement for the irrigation project we discussed.”
“I thought I told you . . .” Rowe began.
“It would make sense for me to show you now, while we are in the immediate vicinity,” Noyes continued. “It’s right over there. Can we take the time?”
“Well . . . okay then,” Rowe said. “If it will make you happy . . . and if it will be quick.”
Rowe smiled apologetically at Collins. She nodded to say that he should go ahead and take care of it. Her own attention was still on the bodies.
“It’s just a few steps this way,” Noyes said.
Rowe walked until the hologram told him to stop.
“Here is a secret,” Noyes whispered excitedly. “There is no irrigation project. That was a ruse!”
“I understand that,” said Rowe. “Forgive me if I’m not amused.”
“I employed a ruse because I had to,” whispered Noyes. “Please look down and pretend that I am showing you something in the ground as we talk. Good, like that. Now listen . . . I have been considering things on the walk here from the lander. Though it was a walk of only a few minutes—not very long for a human—I can think faster than you, and I have had time to run through hundreds of thousands of scenarios regarding what lies ahead. By doing this, I now deduce that you are likely in danger.”
“Okay,” Rowe deadpanned. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful, Noyes, but I think we already knew that.”
“I mean in danger from Commander Collins specifically,” Noyes said excitedly, “and probably also her attachés.”
It was rare to be warned by your AI that another human might intend you harm, but not unheard-of. What was unheard-of was an AI forecasting such danger from another Silkworm.
“As we have said, she is not connected to the Goo,” Noyes continued. “Her suit cannot connect to it. Nor can the suits of anyone on her team. The suits are like nothing I’ve ever beheld. They seem to have parts and aspects that are familiar-feeling—if you follow—but I don’t really know what they are.”
“And this poses a danger to me?” Rowe said. “Their different suits?”
“No, it is not only the suits,” Noyes replied. “There is a deception happening. I am still making guesses about its purpose, but behind almost all of the outcomes I can simulate . . . there lurks danger to you. I don’t know what the danger will be, but you should watch yourself, as they say.”
Rowe nodded and began to head back over to the group, his imaginary irrigation survey concluded. After a handful of steps, something occurred to him and he stopped once more.
“One more question Noyes, while I have you. If Collins and I both serve the Goo, and Collins outranks me, then aren’t you obliged to serve Collins and not me—regardless of her suit? Like, shouldn’t you be warning her that I pose a danger?”
“How to explain . . .” Noyes replied. “Waverly makes a point in calling me an Encarta. Yes, it’s true. I am a small, finite version of the Goo. But while I am in this state, I am your Goo. And I only know what I knew at the start of this mission. The rest is guesswork and inferences. But for as long as I’m here with you, I am here to serve you. You and no one else. The Goo up above these clouds serves the entire universe, wherever it is wired. But until I touch that universal Goo again, my entire universe is you. Does that make sense?”
“I get the idea,” Rowe said. “I suppose I should be flattered to have you all to myself.”
Noyes shrugged—as if to say Rowe could take this exclusivity any way he pleased—and faded away. The final expression on his fading face reminded Rowe to be cautious.
Rowe ambled back to the group.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “We’re good to go.”
Waverly looked at Rowe and raised an eyebrow. Rowe merely shrugged.
“We’ve just been discussing the best approach,” Commander Collins said.
“Oh,” said Rowe. “Good.”
Then he realized he did not really know what she meant.
“I’m sorry,” he added. “Approach to what, exactly? I’m still a little hazy on the project here. If your goal is to help us discover what happened, then getting the black box out of the ship’s dorsal fin still seems to be the best bet.”
“Ah, then I’ve not been clear after all,” Collins told him. “I thought it would have been obvious by now, but our goal is to make contact with the thing—what did you call it—‘the thing of five wheels’?”
Rowe nodded as though this were a sensible suggestion, though inside he was dumbfounded.
“I believe I called it something like that,” he managed.
“I want to learn what happened here, just as you do,” Collins continued. “But that thing killed your team. If we try the same things again—setting up more scaffolding and drilling—what’s to stop it from coming back?”
Rowe did not know what to say.
“My understanding is that you did not make entry into the fin?” Collins said.
“That’s correct,” Rowe replied. “My team members were still working through the exterior armor. There’s actually quite a ways left to go.”
“And you haven’t drilled anywhere else?” she pressed. “By that I mean: you didn’t make any other holes on the outside of the ship?”
“No,” said Rowe. “We didn’t try opening up the ship’s exterior anywhere. Why would we do that?”
Collins nodded and narrowed her eyes. Her expression said that this was the answer for which she had hoped. It flipped some sort of switch. It seemed to Rowe that something—perhaps something terrible—was now in motion.
“All this being the case,” Collins said after a deep breath, “there is still only one opening that leads into the Marie Curie.”
Collins glanced up to the top of the ramp. She stared directly at the spot where Rowe had first seen the trio of heads.
“I want to find this thing,” she continued, her voice suddenly distant. “Maybe I haven’t gotten across how important it is to me. You’re not the only one frustrated by the ‘un-knowns’ down here, Mr. Rowe. I want to find this thing more than you can possibly imagine. All impediments to the Goo’s interplanetary spread must be overcome. Surmounting this obstacle is therefore paramount among our objectives. Personally, the fact that I have to hunt it is as exciting as it is infuriating to me.”
“Well we’ve never seen it very far outside the ship,” Rowe pointed out. “It only came out to kill some Silkworms, and then it went right back up the ramp. I fear I can’t make any other useful observations when it comes to how to hunt it.”
“My guess is it’s hiding inside,” added Waverly. “I mean, where else could it be?”
“That’s my hope as well,” said Collins. “And I want to ensure it stays that way.”
Then she nodded to one of the men from her away team who produced what appeared to be a large welding torch from a pack attached to his spacesuit.
“You want to close it off in there?” Rowe observed. “Trap it? Hmm. I guess that might work. Then you could come back and study it at your convenience.”
“I do want to trap it inside,” said Collins. “But not to keep it isolated. I want to trap it inside with us.”
“What?” Rowe and Waverly said, nearly in unison.
“We’re going to hunt it together,” Collins continued. “Catch it. Talk to it. Make friends with it, sure, if that’s what it wants. But, by the Goo, I’m going to kill it if I have to. This thing has already stood in our way for too long. And all impediments to the Goo’s knowledge must fall.”
Rowe said: “But we could just wall the ship off. Wait for it to die in there. It’ll starve to death if it’s alive. I mean, maybe it will . . . The ESA has encountered dangerous organic fauna before. My recollection is that the policy has generally been to interact with them very carefully, and as part of a gradual process. That puts safety first and allows the Goo time to learn about the new lifeform. A gentle, patient approach seems like a win-win.”
“Of course, that’s correct in many circumstances,” said Collins. “And if this were a typical case, we would follow procedures that have worked in the past, but this is not a typical case at all. The facts in this situation now point to a need for an immediate confrontation. And that is what I am going to do. There is nothing more to discuss.”
Rowe wanted to ask, again, what compelling need there was to go back inside the ship, but the words seemed to stick in his throat. He hesitated, and then it seemed he had waited too long to say anything.
Collins strode to the base of the ramp leading up into the darkness of the bay. Her fellow Silkworms followed.
This time, Rowe and Waverly took up the rear. Collins paused for a moment, appearing to carefully inspect the yawning opening that lay ahead.
Then she began a careful ascent.
Rowe and Waverly followed Collins’s team into the belly of the ship. As they stepped into the shadows of the loading bay, their suits—though black as onyx—threw up a bright blue glow from fixtures in all the joints. They were the brightest suit-lights Rowe had ever seen. Wherever they walked, it looked near to natural daylight. The effect was extraordinary.
“The thing seems to make a groaning noise periodically,” Rowe said as Collins surveyed the equipment pallets stacked in orderly rows throughout the bay. “Or maybe it makes the ship itself groan. It’s one of those two, anyway.”
“Yes,” Collins said mysteriously. “That could make sense.”
Rowe did not see how it made sense at all.
With Rowe and Waverly pitching in, the Silkworms broke into a panel near the hinge of the ramp and unearthed what looked like a large floodgate wheel. With the added strength their suits provided, it was little work for the team to get the wheel turning. As they carefully rotated it, the tremendous ramp began to rise inch by inch from the ground.
“I can’t believe someone thought to build this in,” Waverly said as they huffed and puffed. “A manual control. The ESA thinks of everything.”
“I suppose they have to,” Rowe said, not looking up from where his hands clasped the wheel. “They’ve got to think about situations that supposedly can’t happen . . . until they do.”
It took nearly an hour, and the Silkworms allowed themselves several breaks. When the door had finally been raised, shutting off completely any exit via the ramp, there was a sound like the clicking of a latch as large and heavy as an anvil.
The group was exhausted.
Collins appeared pleased.
“It wouldn’t do for space travel,” she said as the Silkworms relaxed on the floor around the wheel, “but I don’t think anything much larger than an insect is going to escape until we open it again.”
The Silkworms shuddered at the thought of the exertion it would take to rotate the wheel again for egress—whenever that might come.
“Now do the spot welds, just to make sure,” Collins said.
The man with the torch made small welds at points along the door, sealing it further.
As the man worked, Rowe whispered: “The light from their suits is so good. I’ve never seen this.”
“I think it was developed for miners,” Waverly said. “It uses juice much faster, but uncanny good, isn’t it?”
“Uncanny,” agreed Rowe. “That’s one word for it.”
Collins approached Rowe and Waverly, her own suit seeming to emanate the light from a beautiful spring morning on Earth.
“Now the thing has to deal with us,” she said with evident satisfaction. “No escape.”
As if on cue, the strange and deep moan—like something giant and subterranean exhaling a long-held breath—seemed to rise from the backmost bowels of the ship.
Collins smiled.
“That’s not ESA,” she said. “That is definitely something alive in here with us.”
The other Silkworms rose to their feet as though her words had been a signal to move.
“Do you want to start with the medical bay?” Rowe asked. “We can show you what we found before. Where the killing happened.”
“No,” said Collins. “I want to start with the deepest, darkest, most isolated part of the ship.”
“We already went to the data core,” Waverly chimed in. “It was fucked up and everything was burned. There definitely wasn’t anything alive in it.”
“I don’t want to go there either,” said Collins. “I want to go to a place where a beast would hide and make a lair. I want to go to the very center of the maze.”
“Where would . . .” Rowe began, but stopped talking when Collins activated a projected map on her suit. It was a primitive sort of projection, Rowe noted. The animation technology seemed many generations old, possibly even pre-Goo. Even so, it was legible, and Collins began to zoom in and out on what was eventually discernable as a crude 3D model of the Marie Curie.
“I’ve already made some educated guesses about where we should look,” Collins told the men. “With the power out and the crew deceased, there are still several regions of the ship into which a sentient thing could pass if it wanted to be very, very alone. Specifically, there are the vaults. Here and here. If the creature acts like most creatures do, then it’s going to create a place where it goes to be by itself.”
“Those are the storage vaults for sample collection,” said one of Collins’s team.
“Yes,” Collins agreed, rotating the projection of the ship. “And ironically, I believe they have collected something.”
The projection traced a glowing red line from the cargo bay to the first of two vaults, deep inside the Marie Curie. The route looked winding and precarious. Rowe realized it would not be a short trip.
Collins turned off the projection. She gave a cursory inspection of the welds along the loading bay door and seemed satisfied. Then she turned back to Rowe and Waverly.
“You gentlemen have already explored a few parts of this ship,” she said. “You have more experience than we do. Thus, I’ll ask you to take point.”
Rowe and Waverly nodded.
“We can begin our trip to the vaults by passing through the hole your team drilled,” Collins continued. “We’ll have to make a few transfers on the way, but it’ll be faster than breaking down one of these doors. We’re ready if you are.”
“Uh, yes,” Rowe managed. “Whatever you say, Commander.”
Rowe and Waverly walked to the ragged opening made by their drill. As they did, Collins and her team held back a moment and conferred—Collins making a few remarks that Rowe and Waverly could not hear—then they began to follow at a relaxed gait.
Rowe and Waverly slithered through the opening. When they both had passed within, Rowe took Waverly aside with some urgency. He spoke quickly, anxiety rising in his voice.
“What do you think?” Rowe asked.
“I think they’re going to watch for any sign of the Goo in our suits becoming infected,” Waverly said. “I think they’re going to use us to determine if the thing is near. And if we freak out—start acting as though we see monsters—I expect they’re going to immediately kill us. Their suits have to be full of powerful weapons.”
