Orphans of Earth (21 page)

Sol parked
Arachne
in its usual dock. Gou Mang, whom she had left in charge during her absence, had had the sense to leave it free. The rest was clearly beyond her, however.

The hole ships above had ferried their physical passengers to McKenzie Base’s rarely used conference room, while their human pilots—most of them copies of herself—were currently doing nothing but waiting. The first thing Sol did was organize a rotating roster enabling them to jump to random broadcast points in order to relay the events on Sothis to the rest of surveyed space. The number of inbound transmissions was rising; there had to be some sort of response to quell the developing panic.

She ensured that the link to
Arachne
was clear, then went to join the meeting. Strictly speaking, her physical presence wasn’t required, but she knew it would have an impact. Since the destruction of her home, she had rarely left the security of her hole ship. As she strode along the tubular access ways to the conference, she adjusted her outfit to reflect the severity of the situation, changing from an imitation UNESSPRO shipsuit to a black and gray ensemble cut in the style of a 2050 business suit.

When the door opened on the conference room, the sound of voices greeted her like a slap in the face. In the three weeks since the destruction of the Vincula, she had rarely met anyone in person apart from Peter Alander. The engrams ran as simulations in virtual worlds; only in recent times had the impetus to house minds in permanent physical bodies become more urgent. The need to be mobile, and therefore able to escape if necessary, was now a priority—especially for the people Sol considered absolutely necessary. These naturally included the various versions of her scattered across the colonies, as well as those individuals contacted by the Spinners to act as interfaces with the Gifts. Unfortunately, it also included some of the mission supervisors with whom she would have preferred not to have to deal directly.

When she entered, all noise in the room abruptly ceased, but the argument she had clearly interrupted still simmered in the air. The pressure of eyes suddenly on her was an almost physical force that made her feel immediately uncomfortable. In total, there were only twenty people in the room, but at that moment, it felt like a multitude to her.

‘Thank you for joining us here,” she said without preamble, as though she had been the one that had requested the meeting. “I came as soon as I could.”

“Where have you been?” challenged Otto Wyra of Pan straightaway. “Why weren’t you here when you were needed?”

She met his accusation squarely. “There’s simply too much work to do and not enough people to do it. I can’t be everywhere at once. As impressive as the hole ships are, they can’t perform miracles; they may get us to our destinations quicker, but they certainly can’t provide instantaneous transportation.”

“But—”

“I’m only
human
, Otto,” she said firmly. “Please remember that.”

He spluttered into silence.
Only human
was something he could never hope to be. Even in a flesh-and-blood android body, he was still just an engram. They were
all
engrams, apart from her, a fact that wasn’t lost on them— nor one would she ever let them forget.

“I was busy observing an attack on a new colony,” she explained. “As Tarsem may already have told you, Hera, our latest addition, engaged a third alien species seeking to obtain its gifts by force. There can be no doubt that this species is the source of anomalous encounters in colonies such as Perendi; they are also responsible for the death markers found wherever the Starfish have struck. It turns out that some of these strikes have been deliberately encouraged by this new race in an attempt to cover up their thefts.” She stared levelly around the room. “It may or may not be something you particularly want to hear right now, given everything else that has been happening, but the fact of the matter is, my friends, that we are being preyed upon.” She shrugged.

“That is what I have to report. I hope you will appreciate that I haven’t been wasting time.”

Her gaze settled meaningfully on Otto Wyra as she said this last part. He looked away uncomfortably.

“Now.” she went on, “I’ve personally interviewed members of this alien race and will share that data with you later. But first I want to know what’s going on here. You were discussing some issues when I came in...”

She let the sentence trail off as an invitation for someone to elaborate.

“There’s only one issue,” said Wyra, looking up at her again. “The Starfish. They’re picking us off one by one.”

Sol nodded. “And what do you suggest we do about it?”

This time it was Ali Genovese of Diana that spoke. “That’s what we’re here to work out.”

Sol faced her. “And what have you come up with so far?”

“We have three options,” she said evenly. “One: we do nothing.”

“Which would be tantamount to suicide,” Wyra pointed out irritably.

“Two,” Genovese went on without addressing his comment. “We move.”

Sol frowned. “But where?”

“That’s the problem,” said Genovese, nodding. “The Starfish seem to be scouring surveyed space reasonably thoroughly, but they tend to concentrate around the loci containing their most recent kills. That is, every time a colony slips through our fingers and uses the communicators, they jump elsewhere. That’s how the colonies neighboring Athena managed to escape, we think. If the Starfish had been
truly
thorough, they’d be dead now.”

“Thank God for small mercies,” breathed Donald Schievenin of Fujin, one of the spared worlds.

“That doesn’t mean they won’t come back, though,” Genovese added. “We’ve some evidence of back-filling, although the data really is too patchy to be certain. Some of us are under the impression that no one will be safe as long as we’re anywhere that’s likely to be targeted by the Starfish.”

“So you think we should leave surveyed space entirely?” Hatzis asked her. “Migrate to another section of the galaxy entirely?”

Genovese looked uncomfortable. “Not in the short term, no. I was thinking more of moving the colonies at risk to the sites the Starfish have already struck. I doubt they’d return to a system they’ve already wiped clean of life, so the risks would have to be greatly reduced. As long as no one breaks communicator silence in one of those systems, we should be safe.”

Wyra sneered. “Dead systems,” he said.

“Why not?” Genovese retorted. “Adrasteia, Varuna, Athena, Thor—there are plenty to go around, and most of them are habitable. Yes, some have sustained long-term environmental damage, but that’s not necessarily a problem.”

“Maybe not for you,” Wyra said. “For me, it’d be like sleeping in someone’s grave.”

“But isn’t that better than dying yourself? Besides, it’d only be temporary. Once we’re sure the Starfish have gone, we can move back to what’s left.”

“I’d rather set myself adrift in interstellar space, thanks. No one would find us there.”

Sol nodded. “That’s a possibility,” she said. “But, Ali, you said there was a third option.”

Genovese hesitated, a look of uncertainty passing across her face. She glanced at Donald Schievenin, on Hatzis’s right, his artificial body taller than most, his features elongated in a rough approximation of his normal face.

“You’re not going to like it, Sol,” he said.

“Well, drawing it out isn’t going to help.” Again she looked around the room. “Is someone going to tell me?”

“Secession,” said Wyra, the slight sneer on his face giving the word the emphasis of an insult.

She hesitated for a nanosecond, an instant too small for any of the engrams to notice, even if they were fast-tracking their processing speeds. She knew exactly what he meant by that single word, but she feigned innocence to give herself time to think.

“Secession from
whom,
Otto?”

“From everything,” he said. “From the Spinners; from
you
.”

“What difference is that going to make? Ignoring us won’t stop the Starfish from killing you.”

“They can’t kill us if they don’t know we’re there,” said Genovese. “So far, they’ve only attacked colonies using the gifts. They haven’t visited or harmed the rest. Maybe that’s not a coincidence. Maybe they home in on more than just the communicator broadcasts.”

“If that was the case,” said Sol, “then we’d all be dead right now.”

“Maybe it’s the Gifts themselves they see as a threat.” Wyra waved his arms for emphasis. “People are dying out there, Caryl, and we don’t know why. But if we drop the Gifts now, then maybe we can at least give them a few more days to live.”

“Crap, Otto,” Sol jumped in incredulously. “The Gifts aren’t some hot potato you can simply put down because you’re fingers are getting a little burned.”

“Don’t throw these trite aphorisms at us, Caryl, please. We’re talking about
people
here, not—”

“I know that,” said Sol forcefully. “All I’m saying is that you can’t abandon something just because people are dying right now. Where would we be if humanity had turned its back on electricity following the first electric shock? Or dismantled the telephone system after the first obscene phone call?”

He scowled at her. “Downplaying the magnitude of this isn’t helping either. We’re not talking about someone getting a goddamn—”

“You came here in
Prometheus,
didn’t you?” she cut in.

Wyra stopped, blinking in confusion at her abrupt change of tack. “So?”

“What would humanity have been like if we’d refused his gift of fire?”

He became instantly angered, knowing full well he was being mocked. “To hell with you, Caryl. Some of us don’t have your confidence in the Spinners. They don’t care what’s good for us. They just toss us these baubles to make themselves feel magnanimous as they pass by, on their way to God only knows where! They don’t give a damn whether the gifts end up destroying us. Why should they? There must be thousands of other species out there. Who’ll miss us?”

Sol stared at him tight-lipped during his rant, wanting him to get it out of his system before she said anything else. In her head, she conducted a hurried, nonverbal conversation with Gou Mang:

WHY DIDN’T YOU WARN ME ABOUT THIS?

THERE WAS NO TIME—

YOU DON’T NEED TIME. USE THE OVERSEER CHANNELS. TALK TO ME LIKE THIS.

I’M SORRY. I DIDN’T—

IT DOESN’T MATTER. IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT I HAVEN’T WORKED OUT HOW TO FIX SENESCENCE YET. JUST REMEMBER WHAT WE’RE TRYING TO DO HERE, AND BE ON THE BALL. BE AN ASSET.

I’LL TRY, SOL.

“—CAN’T EXPECT US TO SIT HERE LIKE IDIOTS WHILE YOU—”

“That’s enough, Otto.” She felt like a pale midget surrounded by green-skinned giants, but when she spoke,

Wyra fell quiet, and she knew she had all of their attention. “Your simplistic analysis of the situation has a certain persuasiveness, I’ll admit, and I’ll certainly be interested to know who the others are that agree with you. I’ll also be quite happy to accept whatever gifts you’re planning not to use while you bury your heads in the sand waiting for your asses to be kicked.”

Wyra and a couple of the others bristled at this, but she went on without giving them chance to voice their indignation.

“Because that
is
what will happen, people, I assure you.” She stared around the room, daring any one of them to defy her. “If you aren’t prepared to do anything now, then you aren’t doing humanity any favors, believe me, because clearly what connects you
to
humanity in the first place has already left you. You’re not human anymore. You’re just some nth-generation copy waiting to be erased. You’re just echoes of the real thing. You might as well just get the Starfish on the blower right now and have them put you out of your misery. You sure as hell aren’t any good to me anymore.”

In the silence that followed, she breathed heavily through her nose, delivering oxygen to an anger that burned with more heat than even she had expected. “Look, you can do what you want to, Otto, but I’m not going to sit around and watch humanity die again. If fighting for survival means sacrificing a few individuals along the way, then so be it—even if one of those individuals is
me
.”

Everyone in the room remained silent, as if hanging on her every word, which gave her the confidence to go on: “I’ll be the first to admit that at this moment in time I haven’t got the faintest idea of what we should be doing, or how we can possibly overcome the odds stacked against us. But I do know this: today I spoke to an alien whose species had been tailing the Starfish for twenty-five hundred years. If they can survive that long, then there’s no reason why we can’t as well.”

“But in all that time,” said Wyra, in a tone that was more subdued than before, “they haven’t managed to find a solution to the Starfish problem, have they?”

“No,” said Hatzis simply. “But that’s not to say there
isn’t
one, either. Look, I’m not trying to tell you that this is going to be easy. It’s not! But I believe it can be done, and to do it I’m going to need all the help I can get. Everyone else, everyone who wants to stand around crying about how unfair life is, you can all go and get the fuck out of here right now, because your whining isn’t helping the situation. If anything, it’s holding the rest of us back. You’re wasting my time, and I don’t need you. None of us do.”

They stared at her for a good twenty seconds before someone spoke. It was Cleo Samson, of all people, of Hammon.

“Otto doesn’t speak for all of us, Caryl,” she said. “Most of us are willing to do whatever it takes to overcome this problem. Just tell us what to do, and we’ll do it.”

Sol forced herself to be calm, slowing her heart rate and reducing the levels of some of the primitive fight-or-flight hormones rushing through her bloodstream.

“Okay,” she said after a few seconds. “Then this is what I want. Our biggest problem at the moment is communications. We’re too spread out, and there aren’t enough hole ships to plug the gaps. We’re also vulnerable the way we are, spread out at random across surveyed space. I do agree with Otto in that respect: I simply don’t see the point in making us even
more
vulnerable, though. I think Ali’s second proposition has some merit, too: we’ve yet to see any Starfish activity in systems that have already been attacked, so they might be good havens, if only temporarily—until the threat has passed.”