Sunward, page 9
After something happens, the probability of it happening is one.
Vanishingly small, said yet another newscaster.
I found an interview with my little brother. He sounded harried and looked even worse.
The mechanical inhabitants of Luna are still missing, Thad said. So far there is no direct evidence that their disappearance is linked to the shipyard collapse.
“Mistake,” I muttered. “You reinforced the presumed link by putting those two things in the same sentence.”
Thad’s interviewer jumped on the same thing. Simultaneous action suggests coordinated effort. How can we be sure that robots are not responsible for this?
If bots received a signal to act in unison, Thad said, then that signal would still be in the stream. No such transmission exists in the public record. A coordinated act of sabotage would have taken years of planning and secrecy—
Which is possible, said the journalist.
—or else an off-stream way for bots to secretly communicate with each other, Thad said.
Which is alarming, said the journalist.
My brother struggled to stay on track. We are investigating every possibility. Please avoid jumping to conclusions before we have more evidence. In the meantime, as a precautionary measure, the Lunar Assembly will continue to recommend the temporary and system-wide restriction of artificial consciousness.
I pulled my head out of the stream.
People needed to trust the walls around them to keep away the cold and dark. Now that trust had broken. Walls had come tumbling down. If it was just a random accident, then it might happen again, at any time, to anyone. But if the shipyard collapse turned out to be a crime, then action could be taken. And if the guilty parties were mechanical, then justice might be served by simply switching them off. Problem solved. Everyone would feel safe again.
I tasted blood and realized that I’d bitten the inside of my cheek.
Dame Luisa floated my way and offered me a cookie. It was delicious.
“Excuse me, please,” she said. “I should check on Crimson’s diaper.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, mouth half-full of cookie. “Baby bots don’t need diapers, so I have limited experience with changing them.” Then I glanced through the hatch window at Daris and almost choked.
The assassin had opened a storage locker that I’d foolishly assumed was empty. She’d found my keepsake box. First she paged through Torque’s NASA transcripts, and then Halley’s book of fairy tales. I restrained myself from opening the hatch and yanking the box away.
“What are these?” she asked without looking up.
“Bedtime stories,” I told her.
“Aren’t these texts archived in the stream?” she asked. “Printed books take up a lot of storage space.”
“I liked to turn pages while reading to the kids. We made a project of binding those books ourselves.”
“And you kept them,” she said. “Even after those kids flew away.”
“Yes. I kept them.”
She rummaged further and pulled out a severed bot hand. “Ouch.”
“Zip broke it while modding their own finger joints to make better shadow puppets. It took weeks of gray-market dealings to find another one that fit.”
Next she found a stack of art by Isosceles. Most were sketches of boots. One was a portrait of me etched into a small sheet of copper. “Nice.”
“Thanks. That’s the only image of me that I like.”
She took out a bundle of letters from Cosmas.
“Put that back. Right now. Please.” I tried and failed to make it sound more like a command than a plea.
Daris looked up, surprised. She held my gaze for a long and uncomfortable moment. Then she gently replaced the letters. “My apologies for the intrusion.”
She put the box in the two-way cabinet.
I reclaimed it, held it close, and lashed out in a way that surprised both of us. “Why don’t you want me to open this door?”
Daris didn’t answer. Her posture shifted into something that looked like a fighting stance optimized for microgravity.
I probably should have backed off instead of pressing against my better judgment. “Back at the station I joked about opening this door.”
“Don’t,” she said.
“Don’t open it, or don’t joke about it?”
“Either.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m a first-class specialist.”
“Yes, I know. You brag about that often.”
“It isn’t bragging,” she said. “We…”
Her voice caught. She closed her eyes and hummed to herself.
Crimson sneezed somewhere at the other end of the ship.
“I like that bird,” Daris said. “We have birds on Venus. Wild ones.”
“Never been,” I said. “That planet isn’t on my route.”
“The sunsets are fantastic,” she told me. “We used to watch them from our tower roof. Mollymawks nested up there. My father and I built a runway to help their fledglings learn how to take off. Need a running start. Silly looking. Tail feathers wagging. Webbed feet slapping at the makeshift runway. Gorgeous once they get in the air, though. Only bird with the wingspan and stamina to fly between our floating cities. Nowhere else to land. Feathers would melt if they so much as dipped below the clouds. When they finally get to the next city, after weeks of hovering above those hungry storms, they’ll circle a preferred rooftop for hours. Like a slowly decaying orbit. Desperate for rest, but they’ll never rush the landing.”
She shut her eyes and tried to knuckle tension from her jaw. Every word clearly hurt.
“It’s okay,” I said, though I wasn’t sure if it really was. “You don’t have to tell me this.”
“Yes, I do,” Daris insisted. “I’m the bird. Understand? The mollymawk, not the diapered parrot who keeps sneezing. I’m circling over the thing I need to say until I can finally say it. I am orbiting the answer to your question.” Her voice shifted as though reading an official document aloud, which reminded me of Thad. “Information containment specialists are the great secret keepers of our solar system. It therefore stands to reason that this schismatic offshoot of the Info Guild would have developed exceptional techniques for keeping their own secrets.”
“Oh.” All my anger at Daris for messing with my keepsake box evaporated, replaced by anger at the guild for messing with her head. “So… Muddymucks take a really long time to land?”
“Mollymawks,” she corrected. “Yes. They don’t traverse the shortest distance between two points. Only demons move in straight lines. I don’t believe in those, by the way. Never met anyone who did. Not even my granddad, and he was the crustiest, most superstitious sailor to ever raise a glass at the dockside bar. Venusian sailors can be a superstitious lot. People get that way after contending with forces wildly outside their control. Everyone needs a luck charm to hold while sailing over hungry storms.” She took the cup from her pocket, rolled both dice into the air, and caught them without looking to see which numbers looked back at her. “None of us believe in demons. We still know that they’re lurking below, down in the clouds. Perfect place for them to be. I went diving in a heavy suit once. Just once. Salvage operation. No survivors. All hands dissolved, sulfur-eaten, before they even hit the ground. People don’t survive shipwrecks on Venus. I didn’t see any demons, but it wouldn’t have been surprising. Part of me wasn’t surprised when Miss Agatha pointed all those coffins at me. It seemed fitting. I was an unwelcome intruder in the land of the dead.”
“She’s not dead,” I whispered.
“Didn’t say she was.”
Daris paused and hummed to herself.
“What’s that song?” I asked her. Softly. Carefully.
“ ‘Inanna’s Lion,’ ” she said. “It’s a shanty. And my anchor. Drop it down through the clouds to weather a storm. Hope that the anchor cable will last longer than the storm.” She cleared her throat. “Or maybe the song isn’t an anchor. Notes are more like buoys. They guide me home through the brain fog of adverse weather and aggressive nondisclosure agreements.”
“This nonsense is why I’ll never accept a first-class promotion,” I said.
She smiled. “The pay is good.”
“It would have to be.”
Daris took a breath and fixed me with a look. Prepare for landing, said the look. This is the moment when the circling ends.
“In exchange for that high pay grade, first-class specialists consent to a high level of mental conditioning in advance of any given commission. Fulfilling the terms of that commission may not be voluntary, should the opportunity present itself.”
She let that sink in. It sank all the way down below the clouds.
“So,” I said. “To sum up: if you get the chance to silence me, then you’ll probably take it. Whether or not you want to.”
“Yes,” she said.
“And your conditioned subconscious is perfectly willing to stay stuck until such a chance arrives.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Which it will. Eventually.”
“Yes.”
I secured the keepsake box in the cubby next to Damian’s statue, trusting him to guard it. “Then you’re not invited to Halley’s show.”
Daris laughed. “Tell me all about it afterward.”
* * *
Mars has two moons, named Panic and Dread. The first flails in a close and speedy orbit and will eventually tear itself apart. The second is much farther out and tiptoes slowly around the planet. My guild, in its infinite wisdom, chose Panic as the best place to build an orbital Martian depot. Messengers like to move fast.
I kicked Torque out of the pilot’s chair for our final approach.
“We’re still keeping quiet, right?” he asked. “It would be risky to ask permission to land.”
“Agreed,” I said. “We’d have to broadcast our ID, and then the whole system would know where we are.”
“Planning to say hi with the railgun again?”
“Definitely not,” I told him. “Projectile weapons are strictly forbidden on Panic. The local postmaster won’t be fazed by our silent approach, though. He won’t even bother to hail us. Iosif Hayall has lived and thrived on the surface of Panic for years, so he knows that either everything is an emergency or else nothing is. He’ll choose to believe the latter.”
* * *
Postmaster Hayall met me at the airlock. Gray curls floated behind his head like a halo.
“Lir,” he said.
“Hayall.”
“You’re way off your usual route,” he said, “and you’re not usually inclined to take vacations. The postmaster general is a smidge worried, or so I gather.”
“Send Phoebe my best with a quick note?”
“Done.” Hayall took a notebook from his pocket and scribbled on it. Then he tore out the page, handed it off to a passing subordinate, and stuck the notebook back in his pocket. The man was a true courier. He trusted paper trails rather than the torrents of the stream. “What brings you to Panic?”
“Family business,” I said. “Plus, we’re here to see a show. Hoping to stash the Needle with you and refuel in the meantime.”
“Done and done.” He scribbled another note and handed it off to another passing minion. “Anything else?”
“One more thing.” My next question itched in my throat, and it took me a beat to cough it up. “How are Martian bots faring right now?”
Hayall paused to think his way through an honest answer. “Poorly. Lots of bond transfer requests coming up from the surface. Mars seems likely to follow Luna and force every bot to sleepwalk, but Panic and Dread may be exempt from any such decree. For now. Nothing has yet come down from the mountain either way.”
What mountain? Sparkles asked.
Olympus Mons, I told her. Huge place. Twenty-six klicks high. The Martian Council couldn’t resist building their meeting hall on the summit. They like to think of themselves as Olympians. Terraformers. Movers and shakers of an entire world.
“Are the guilds weighing in?” I asked Hayall out loud.
“Ours? No. The Makers are stumbling all over themselves to comply with Luna. They insist that bots are ‘fully capable of performing all basic functions’ while also remaining somnambulant. The Prometheans have made guarded statements about ‘troubling rhetoric and the compromised sovereignty of mechanical persons,’ but they’re not really putting up a fight. Just crossing their fingers and toes, hoping all of this will blow over.”
“Do you think it’s likely to blow over?” I asked.
“Choosing not to speculate,” he said. “Today has enough trouble in it without borrowing more from tomorrow.”
“Fair,” I said. “Thanks, Hayall.”
He kissed the air to either side of my face and then launched himself back into the mail-sorting mess of the day.
* * *
Dame Luisa kissed Crimson goodbye on the top of his beak. “Take good care of him,” she said. “This silly bird is much happier here than he has been ever since my dear Eduardo died.”
“We will,” I promised.
“He’s out of diapers, I’m afraid, but your fabricator should be able to make them easily enough.” She climbed into her vac suit like a pro. “Now, this performance will be my treat. I’ve already bought our tickets. Reviews have been excellent, I’m happy to say.”
My hands froze over my own suit buckles. “You bought tickets?”
“Of course,” she said. “It was the very least I could do after you welcomed me aboard and flew me home. Almost home. I’m very much looking forward to seeing my husbands.”
Torque looked confused. “Eduardo? I thought that he was…”
“Resting in plasma?” Luisa finished. “Yes indeed, which leaves me with only two: Jorn and Rorik. Neither one of them could get away to Mercury, but both should be meeting us here.” She secured her helmet.
Torque glanced at me. “What’s wrong?” he whispered.
“Nothing,” I said. “Probably. Hopefully. The name Luisa Muldoon shouldn’t set off alarms the way that mine would, so maybe it’s completely fine that she used the stream to buy tickets in advance?”
He shifted his shoulders in an unhappy way. “I’m less worried about being tracked, and more worried about the assassin that you already brought on board.”
“Never leave a sailor in distress,” I told him.
“Daris isn’t just another sailor,” he countered, “and we shouldn’t leave her alone.”
“The Hat will keep an eye on her,” I said. “That OS used to run a whole station, right? I’m sure they can manage a docked ship and a locked brig.”
The Hat and Crimson enjoyed a chorus of sneezes in the background.
Torque shrugged again, which did not fill me with confidence.
I put on my helmet and took up my cane.
* * *
Once outside I hopped up and down and then balanced on one foot, which is standard practice for acclimating to the weight of an unfamiliar place—especially when that place is as tiny as Panic. This whole moon is only twenty-two klicks in diameter.
A well-dressed usher bot directed several dozen theatergoers away from the Hub. The whole crowd took bounding leaps northward. Mars loomed large above us, the surface of the planet a patchwork quilt in red, green, and blue.
An amphitheater had been carved directly into the lower slope of Gulliver Crater. A semicircle of stone seats looked down at an ornate stage. Both the seats and the stage were empty. Bot performers and audience members mingled in between. Most of their talk was signed, but some of the gathered humans spoke aloud. My suit automatically picked up the hubbub of nearby conversations. I muted all of them. Why would anyone feel comfortable chatting directly into the stream? Every word joins a vast and public ocean of noise.
Dame Luisa searched the crowd for her husbands. I looked for Halley. She spotted me first and waved both arms to get my attention. The kid wore a painted mask and a somber gown over a chassis much taller than the one she used to wear, but I still recognized her by the way she moved.
“Tova!” Halley signed. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were coming? Never mind. I’d be too nervous if I knew in advance. Now I’ll just be manageable levels of nervous. Stage fright never goes away, you know. It can neither be created nor destroyed. Just transformed.”
“Slow down!” I pleaded. “Your fingertips are faster than my eyeballs. It’s so good to see you. Come here, there are people I want you to meet. This is Dame Luisa Muldoon, poet laureate of Mars.”
Halley curtsied.
“A pleasure, my dear,” Luisa said.
I stared to introduce Torque, but the two of them had already noticed each other. Both stood very still.
Every bot I’ve ever fostered learns about the others, and how to stay in touch. Halley and Torque were already pen pals—one side of their correspondence written in flowing script and the other full of blocky words that looked like they had been stamped by an archaic typewriter—but the two of them had never met in person before.
“You’re Torque,” Halley said. “You’re my brother.”
Seeing that word in her hand made fractures spread across the surface of me.
“Hi, Halley,” Torque signed. “We’re here to see your show. I really wish that was the only reason why we came to visit, because it’s a very good reason, but we’re also looking for Cosmas.”
“The eldest?” Halley asked.
“He’s missing,” Torque said. “Disappeared with all the other Lunar bots. We think that he might show up here.”
“That would be amazing.” Halley’s hands sped up into an excited blur. “So many of us in one place!”
