Glory on Mars (27 page)

"How did that bastard get into the walkabouts'
controls?" Yin asked.

"Like the jumpship that crashed, maybe. I'm gonna
find out." Emma shook her head and laughed.

"It's funny. I feel good. Malcolm tried to kill me
and I feel great. I'm not depressed at all."

"Why would you be, love?" Yin asked.

"Lately I've been... Well, it doesn't matter. I hope
Filip is on duty at MEX. I have to send him a message."

She quickly collected all Malcolm's messages and
forwarded them with a report of the walkabout hijacking.

As it took off, Jumper One's blast raised a cloud of
dust that lingered long after they left for home.

***

When Emma hopped through the airlock at Kamp, Melina
tackled her with a hug.

"I thought you were dead."

Emma rubbed Melina's back and rocked gently side to
side. Over Melina's shoulder, Liz sidled up to join the hug,
followed by Yang and Sanni.

"It's Mars, isn't it?" Melina stepped back with tears
running down her cheeks. "Mars wants us to leave."

"No." Emma shook her head. "Mars isn't the enemy, and
our technology's not at fault. The walkabouts were sabotaged, just
like Jumper Two."

"Quit blocking the door." Ruby's gruff words moved
Emma towards the ladder.

"I could use a cup of tea," Emma said. "Let's open a
comm link to Claude and Daan and I'll explain."

By the time they had Rover Two linked in an MEX
transmission arrived. They had found the program that crashed
Luis's jumpship in one of Malcolm's working folders, not even
encrypted. No one had ever searched in a controller's offline files
for the jumpship timer.

"I'm so sorry." Filip Krast sent a full audio-visual.
"I've sent my resignation to the management board. If I'd searched
more thoroughly... If I'd asked for follow-up psych exams..." He
hung his head.

"Emma, the walkabout sabotage seems to have been
aimed specifically at you. I've transmitted the programs as
inactive text, so you can see for yourselves."

The modification to the GPS satellite was more
complex, with false positioning overwriting the walkabouts'
beacons, but had the same timer.

"Look, there's a timer start but no stop." Ruby
pointed to the code display. "The suit would have walked forever.
He was trying to kill you. I wish I had the bastard here."

"He was trying to kill us all. Look."

MEX also found an incomplete program to shut down the
orbiting power station.

The list of file names kept scrolling.

"Oh, shit."

"What?" Liz looked at the screen in alarm. "I'm not a
programmer. What?"

"This file name is related to the S-4 transport
ship," Emma said.

Her inference was confirmed below the list. With only
a few weeks before S-4 entered Mars orbit, they'd have to search
the entire orbital activity sequence for hidden commands.

"Murder and attempted murder." Emma was stunned.

"I've got to send Filip a message - say I don't blame
him."

"Well, I do!" Ruby's eyes flashed. "He should never
have stopped looking for the timer that killed Luis. And
James."

Emma bit her lip. How long had the signs been there,
in Malcolm's messages? Why hadn't she forwarded them to Filip right
away?

"There was no way you could have known about this."
Liz seemed to be reading her thoughts. "Malcolm fooled the psych
experts at Colony Mars. This is his crime and no one else's."

"But..." Melina was in tears again. "Why?"

Liz shook her head.

"I doubt there's any answer that makes sense."

***

"This corks it for me." Ruby paced, circling the
habitat, weaving among everyone sitting on chairs and boxes. Meline
snatched the cat out of her path and hugged him tight.

"I shut down all the feeds to MEX and suspended their
access to Governor. I don't see how we can trust them for
anything."

"But MEX found Malcolm's programs," Emma said.
"They're helping us."

"I say, every upload could be dodgy. We should
terminate MEX's access to Governor once and for all."

"We can't do that. There must be fifty guys
controlling the satellite systems alone," Yin said.

"Operating around the clock," Yang said. "Not to
mention analysts sifting through all Governor's telemetry. There's
no way we can do their jobs."

"At the very least, we need to run full simulations
on every transmission." Ruby's eyes flashed.

"Look how long it took you to find the jumpship
timer, and that was just a few uploads."

"Governor could do it," Emma said. "The AI can run
simulations at the speed of light if we create the right
instructions."

"That still allows uploads to the AI." Ruby resumed
pacing.

"How about if we do it at Phobos Base? Governor has
redundant servers there. I can compartmentalize a directory to
receive uploads from MEX and run the simulations. That would
protect the servers in Kamp."

"None of us are sapience programmers," Yin said.

"We don't need to be. Governor's already up and
running. It has a mind in its own way. It's a settler, like us, and
its priority is Kamp Kans." Emma turned to Ruby, eager to convince
her.

"I've worked on smaller systems, like the one in the
walkabouts. Those systems melded with Governor when we activated
them, and I know how they're baselined. Human survival is a
built-in priority."

Ruby stopped pacing, fists on hips. "That human
survival thing didn't work very well in the walkabouts, did it? Or
Luis's jumper."

"They got overwritten, bypassed somehow. That won't
happen if Phobos Base runs your simulations. My father's company
could make sure. He could send us custom programs to run from this
end and no one at MEX ever has to see a copy."

"And how are we going to pay for that without going
through MEX?"

Emma hated to admit it, but she wasn't sure how her
father would react to an IOU. From Mars.

"I'll send a message to Miss Lambert."

"Who?" Ruby dropped her fists from her hips.

"Mademoiselle Lambert?" Claude asked over the rover's
comm link.

"That crazy old bat who finances this thing?" Ruby
swept an arm overhead.

"Yes. Mars is her dream. She'll protect it."

"But it still depends on the AI. How do we know
Governor is loyal to us?"

"Governor, we're talking about you. Do you know
that?"

"Yes, Emma. I am following the conversation."

"Don't you have anything to say about a fundamental
change to your programming? About compartmentalizing your servers
on Phobos?"

"No."

Ruby tossed her hands up.

The cat had been sitting in Melina's lap, snapping
his head from side to side as they argued. Now in the lull, he
jumped to the floor and pawed at a galley cabinet, crying his "feed
me" meow.

"Melina, a settler requests your assistance,"
Governor said.

Emma snatched up the cat and held him out to Ruby.
The cat hung in her hands, looking puzzled. "Governor thinks the
cat's a settler. It bonded with a cat..."

She dropped the cat, plugged in her pad, and opened
the MEX-to-Governor usage charts. They showed zero interaction
since Ruby suspended the link.

"Governor, are you in contact with the settlers?"

"Yes, Emma. I have contact with all current settler
transponders."

"Are you linked to MEX? On any level?"

"No Emma. I have suspended contact with MEX as Ruby
directed."

"Are you missing any hierarchal command links?"

"No, Emma. I am not."

Emma returned their blank stares with a look of
triumph.

"See? Governor doesn't care about MEX. It's on our
side."

"How do we know there's not a back door?" Ruby jabbed
her fists back into her sides.

"Now you're being paranoid."

Her chin jutted out. "I may be paranoid. But Luis and
James are dead."

"I'll ask my father to scan for back doors, too."

***

There were so many threads to follow.

Emma sent Filip her best wishes when his resignation
was announced. She deleted all Malcolm's messages and didn't ask
what happened to him. There were apparently a host of
jurisdictional issues that she didn't have the patience to follow.
As long as he couldn't hurt her, her was Earth's problem, and she
didn't care how the Earth Scan reacted, either.

She spent her spare time refurbishing the walkabouts
- Yin and Yang had dragged the inert bots into the docking
module.

Ruby studied the S-4 manifest to see if the cargo
knarr carried enough servers to let Governor swallow the whole MEX
satellite database. She was determined to break control ties with
Earth.

As soon as Rover Two had docked, Claude happily added
Emma's lava tube rocks to his own collection and nothing could pry
him loose from them. He spread rocks across tables in the Plaza,
sneezing frequently at the irritating smell that lingered, and
dragged over portable lighting along with his optical microscope.
Emma visited his makeshift workbench several times, absorbing his
explanations of competing lithology theories and how the rocks
would parse out the truth.

"He's like you right now," she told Liz. "Contented,
doing what he came here to do."

MEX examined everything sent to Governor since
Malcolm had joined the controller staff. Ruby monitored their work
and gave them access to strip out programs Malcolm had planted in
the GPS system. She locked them out again when they finished, and
no one argued.

With the transport approaching Mars, the S-4 crew was
frantic for assurances they were safe. MEX went through the ship's
AI line by line and Ruby accepted text-only reports on their
progress.

Liz was distracted by medical worries. Melina and
Sanni could hardly function, but all she had to help them was
Governor's psych program. She traded messages with Noah, the
psychologist aboard S-4, in the hope he'd develop some treatment
options. The text-only comms Ruby allowed hampered their
discussions.

Liz quizzed Emma repeatedly about how going walkabout
affected her. Emma confided her crying jag before Malcolm's
hijacking, but said she felt unexpectedly optimistic holed-up in
the lava tube. She'd been scared, but confident - her mind was
clear, she could think, she could accomplish things. Exploring the
tube was exhilarating and she wanted to go back.

"Noah suggested we administer adrenalin-mimics," Liz
said. "The bioreactors S-4 is bringing could manufacture the drug,
and I agree excitement perks us up, but long-term..." She shook her
head. "We can't build a colony that way."

Emma never heard back from Mlle Lambert, but her
father responded as quickly as the transmission lag allowed, saying
'anything for my girl.' He started a team designing manual
overrides for the robots that Emma could build from Kamp's spare
parts and sent her programming upgrades for Governor faster than
she thought possible.

Emma used Governor's new capabilities to confirm
Malcolm's code was gone from the GPS system and found no other
intrusions. She set the AI to receive every upload from Earth at
Phobos, even messages in plain text, and run the new scans before
enabling access at Kamp.

Ruby relented and full communications resumed.

"Thanks for fixing our comms," Liz said. "I've missed
my family's videos."

Emma hadn't thought much about the messages everyone
else must get from their families. She'd been okay with text
versions from various acquaintances and even from her mother, and
she'd keep her father's 'anything for my girl' text - texts were
normal from him. But messages and MEX updates weren't the only
file-types sent to Kamp.

"It's nice to access whatever we want from the Earth
net again. Dad must have put every programmer he had on creating
the Phobos front-end."

"No one's been watching their usual entertainments."
Liz frowned. "Even Claude - he used to post to his lithology site
all the time. Now he just hunkers over his rocks."

The thrill of Emma's walkabout trip faded and her
headaches returned. But she didn't let that stop her from building
the manual overrides. She worked in the Plaza close to Claude,
though he no longer offered impromptu lessons in lithology.

I know I can get these done, she thought. I've got
grit.

Chapter Thirty-Four:
Hindsight

Emma and Liz sat in the north habitat staring at
spinach salad, poached fish, and a bowl of lukewarm beets. It was
past supper time, but everyone was, once again, late. Sanni
wandered in with a vacant look in her eyes. She dropped the cat on
the table. He splayed out his legs and rested his chin to the
tabletop.

"Hi Sanni. Has the cat been cheering you up?" Liz
asked. Sanni shrugged.

"Melina's been in her bunk all afternoon. The other
guys are coming, but they said not to wait on them for supper. I
think I'll sleep, too."

Liz watched Sanni step into her bunk and close the
flap.

"How's she and Melina doing?" Emma asked.

"Not good," Liz said.

Emma spooned out some beets. "Maybe Melina's right,
maybe we don't belong on Mars. I loved robotics on Earth. I'm
installing overrides in the rovers now, and that should feel great.
But I'm..." She paused, reaching for the right word. "I don't know.
I feel vague, disconnected."

"The colony will fail if we can't solve this psych
problem," Liz had sudden, fierce tears in her eyes. "There's no
joy. We can't live like this."

They heard the airlock in the docking module unlatch.
Yin and Yang stepped in. Yin stopped at the table and slipped a
finger under the cat's chin.

"What's this little guy got to be tired about?"

"He's been with Melina and Sanni all sol. Just
sensitive to their mood, I guess."