We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) (25 page)
Read We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) Online
Authors: Dennis E. Taylor
I grinned. “A black featureless block. Dimensions one by four by nine.” I leered at Marvin.
He covered his face and shook his head vehemently.
“The strains of
Also Sprach Zarathustra
in the background…” I continued.
Marvin started to moan.
“As the Deltans leap about, one throws a bone into the air…” Marvin’s dropped his hands and his eyes rolled. I waited a few more seconds for effect, then relented. “So we’ll just go with the drone, then?”
Marvin pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t believe I’m related to you.”
I laughed and turned to the desk. “On a more realistic note, we have drones with speakers now, so we can talk to the Deltans. Honestly, I think I’ll just go straight to Archimedes rather than trying to contact an elder.”
“Oh, I agree with that. Any of the others would probably just run screeching from the area. Archimedes will be curious.”
I nodded. “So, no background music?”
“Oy.”
***
The surveillance drone showed Archimedes doing his usual patrol of the area. He varied his search from day to day, and had taken to randomly digging holes, looking for more flint. A couple of the other juveniles had accompanied him on occasion, but without any payoff, that had soon petered out.
I positioned one of the drones in a tree along his usual route. The drone camouflaged itself so that it looked like part of the tree trunk. Even if Archimedes spotted it, he wouldn’t think of it as anything but wood.
The Deltan language was far more guttural than anything humans could produce. I had set up a translation routine, so I could converse in English, without worrying about the fine details.
“Archimedes.”
Archimedes jerked, then went into a defensive crouch, looking wildly about.
“Don’t be afraid. I want to help you and your people.”
Archimedes slowly straightened up but continued to search for the source of the voice. “Who are you?
Where
are you?”
“I’m farther away than you can see, Archimedes. And I’m the one who destroyed the gorilloid that was attacking you. I’m also the one who brought the flint.”
Archimedes’s eyes lit up. Flint was priceless. I now had his complete attention.
“What do you want?”
I thought of all the ways I could answer that and decided to keep it simple. “I want your people to leave this place and go back to one of the old villages.”
Archimedes’ eyes went wide. “So old Moses wasn’t lying? There used to be other villages?”
“Yes, Archimedes. And some of them are better places to live than this one.”
“Some have flint?”
“Yes, and a better water supply, more food, and better defenses.”
His eyes narrowed. “If that’s so, why did we leave there? Wouldn’t that have been the place to stay?”
I turned and grinned at Marvin.
“Kid’s no fool,” he said.
“It would have been, Archimedes, but your people weren’t thinking of that at the time. Then it was too late, and they’d been driven out.”
“So, why tell me? Why not speak to the elders?”
“Would they listen to me?”
Archimedes had been searching for the source of my voice as we talked. Triumph lit up his face when he spotted the odd section of trunk.
“You are a tree?”
“No, that’s just where I am right now. Would they listen?”
He snorted. “Most of them are so stupid. They ask no questions; they have no answers. They just eat and sleep and hunt.”
I spent a few more minutes discussing it with him. He finally agreed to go talk to the village elders, although he made me promise to show a sign of some kind if it became necessary. In response, I cancelled the probe’s camouflage and floated it over to him. “How’s this?”
Archimedes went rigid and his eyes became huge, but he managed to not bolt. “That works.”
***
I watched from a distance as Archimedes talked to his elders, who sat in a semicircle facing him. It didn’t seem to be going well. Despite all his recent accomplishments and rise in status, Archimedes was still just a juvenile. Even some of the other juveniles had started to laugh and make jokes.
Finally, I’d had enough. I activated the probe and flew it over to hover above his head. The laughter and commentary cut off like a switch had been thrown.
Archimedes was no dummy. The sight of the whole village staring at a spot over his head had only one possible explanation. In an impressive display of natural showmanship, Archimedes didn’t look up or directly acknowledge the probe. He simply crossed his arms and looked smug.
In the background, Marvin commented, “Some things just transcend culture.”
“Or species,” I responded.
The disintegrating gorilloid was still very fresh in everyone’s mind, and the probe looked similar enough to the pieces of the buster to convince the Deltans. There was no backtalk after that. Archimedes explained to them what I’d told him. When he was done, Moses leaped to his feet and started yelling at everyone. It was pretty incoherent, but consisted mainly of variations on “I told you so.” Apparently Moses’ stories had been dismissed for years, and this was payback.
Eventually, Moses’ rant ran down, and the elders turned back to Archimedes. One of them—I decided to call him Hoffa—asked Archimedes if the floating thing would protect them from the gorilloids.
Archimedes looked up at the probe, finally acknowledging its existence. “It calls itself the
bawbe.
”
He looked around the circle. “It can help, but there are few of them and they are destroyed with each gorilloid they kill. They will guide, and they will help, but we must fight our own battles.”
Arnold, who had been standing outside the circle and listening, chimed in. “We fight here, or we fight somewhere else. The
bawbe
is right—this place is too open to defend. And I like the idea of more axes and spears.” He waved his axe around by way of emphasis, narrowly missing a few bystanders.
The argument went on for hours. Inevitably, some people wanted to stick with the status quo just because it was familiar. They fought the plan tooth and nail, even at one point suggesting that they send a party of Deltans to scout out the other location. Arnold dismissed that idea with a comment that he didn’t want to come home to a camp full of corpses.
I looked over at Marvin. “Jeez, this crap is universal.”
“Yep,” he replied. “Politics is, apparently, politics, through the whole universe.”
[Incoming SCUT Communication from Alpha Centauri]
“Cool!” I put down the file I’d been working on. “Calvin or Goku?”
[Bart]
I raised an eyebrow at Guppy. And got exactly the same reaction as always.
I sighed and grabbed the connection. “Bill here.”
“Hey, Bill, this is Bart. I’m from Calvin’s first cohort. Wow, this is really—”
I popped into Bart’s VR. It was a little rude, doing that without an invitation, but I always got a kick out of the surprised look on my face.
I liked Bart’s VR right away. He’d set up a rustic log cabin, with a cast iron wood-burning stove, a fireplace, heavy hand-made furniture, and lots of rugs and blankets. It reminded me of a place my father used to take us for vacations when I was a child.
Bart was sitting in the big old rocking chair in which dad used to spend most of his time relaxing. He had the look. I mentally added another notch to my SCUT cabinet.
“Holy—”
I laughed at his boggled expression. “Welcome to BobNet. Instant communications up to about 25 light-years. So, Bart, what happened to Calvin and Goku?”
Bart took a moment to examine the VR quality before answering. They all did that.
“The guys reconnoitered Alpha Centauri A and B exactly as set out in the mission profile. They found a Brazilian factory in full swing in A, and the wreckage of a USE probe and autofactory in B. I guess we can consider the USE probe accounted for.” Bart did a half-shrug. “They executed a sneak attack on the Brazilian installation—the modifications for the version-3 Heavens are really effective, by the way—and wiped it out.”
“Excellent. Any colonizable planets?”
“No.” Bart shook his head slowly. “The system is great for resources and such, but nothing livable. And not completely excellent, by the way. One of the Brazilian probes got away, although we don’t think it was completed yet. So it may be unarmed, and it may not have the autofactory equipment loaded in.”
“Mmm.” I thought for a second. “Not great news. Medeiros may try to highjack someone else’s installation. Or maybe skulk around for a while and then raid you guys.”
“We’ve set up early warning systems, not to worry. And we scanned the system pretty thoroughly. I think he’ll head elsewhere.”
I shrugged. It wasn’t worth dwelling on. We couldn’t track him at this point, so we’d just have to wait until he showed up somewhere else.
“Anyway,” Bart continued, “Calvin and Goku set up a Bob factory, then left as soon as one of us was ready to take over. I built the SCUT when I received your transmission, and that brings us up to date.”
I accepted the folder that Bart pushed toward me and took a moment to scan it. Nothing earth-shattering. I was impressed, and a little smug, at how well the version-3 improvements had worked. Medeiros would have to significantly up his game if he wanted to compete now.
“I’m glad to see a Bob factory in operation,” I said. “I’ve been a little remiss in that department since I sent out the last group. I can feel less guilty now.”
Bart smiled in return. We spent a few minutes getting caught up, and Bart promised to pop by occasionally for a game of Scrub baseball. With Bart and the two other Bobs currently being completed, we finally had enough to fill the positions all the way to the outfield.
I decelerated smoothly into the 82 Eridani system. According to all the astronomical info, this was a very good candidate for a habitable planet. The star, a G5V class, was smaller and less luminous than Sol, but still well within the characteristics of yellow suns that human beings would prefer.
I didn’t want to get cocky, but I was anticipating having two good finds in a row under my belt. I doubted I’d ever get a chance to stamp a Brazilian silhouette on the side of my hull like Bob-1, but maybe a couple of planets with green check-marks. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
I watched the survey results intently as the data slowly rolled in. Finally, Guppy announced paydirt. Not one but two planets inside the Comfort Zone, although one was at the inside edge and the other almost at the outside edge. Still, it was exciting stuff. And that would be
four
planets with check-marks, thank you kindly.
Impatient to pass on the good news, I aligned my comms array with Epsilon Eridani and began squirting telemetry back to Bill.
I set a course toward the outer of the two planets, since it was closer. The planet had a large moon farther out and a smaller moon closer in. Strangely, the larger moon showed a blue color. I suspected that it might actually have open water. The planet itself definitely had large bodies of water.
As I decelerated to place myself in a planetary orbit, proximity alarms sounded. It took me a moment to focus on the cause. Four missiles were coming around the curve of the moon, and they were accelerating aggressively.
Crap!
I turned tail and accelerated away, but it was obvious that they had far better legs. I did the calculations, examined alternatives, but there was no out. I was hooped unless I took out all four missiles. I took a moment to give my busters extra instructions to seek out a ship matching the Brazilian profile after dealing with the missiles, then launched all eight busters in the usual pairing strategy.
As the busters headed toward the attacking missiles, my proximity alarms blared again. Four more missiles had appeared, coming around the
opposite
side of the moon. I was out of busters. With no chance of calling them back to me in time, I had to depend on my rail gun. I did a quick computation. I’d likely get two, possibly three, but there just wasn’t enough time to load the rail gun fast enough to take them all out.
Medeiros had outflanked me and done a good job of it.
As I fired at the approaching missiles, I made sure the communications array was still lined up and squirted off a description of my situation and a differential backup. A calm part of my mind calculated that I wouldn’t get it completed in time. Damn.
The last two missiles filled my view…
“They’re
dying,
colonel!”
The colonel wore his chin-out expression, a sure sign that I was in for a fight. In the last year, VEHEMENT had started attacking food production and supply facilities. Most of their attempts were no more than token efforts—statements, really. But the last three incidents had taken out supplies that the groups in question couldn’t spare. Now they were out of or about to be out of food, with half the winter still to go. Barring cannibalism, we were looking at hundreds of deaths before spring.
Unfortunately, the current political climate was short on empathy. A couple of failed groups, to most of the others, just meant slightly less competition for the emigration queue.
The USE encampment, the FAITH enclave, and the Spits were the richest in terms of food reserves, but they had made it clear that they weren’t about to volunteer anything to help out. The Spits, in particular, were trying to stretch their resources out for as long as they could. Their annual surpluses were swiftly being whittled away. They would be a have-not within a few years.
Three hours of negotiating, pleading, and threatening had accomplished zero. They knew I wasn’t about to abandon them, so they were willing to call all my bluffs.
In disgust, I finally cut off the video connection without so much as an over-and-out.
Homer looked at me from his video window. He’d been following the whole thing. “Damn, number two, this is kind of a rock-and-a-hard-place situation.”
I nodded glumly. For the moment, at least, I was out of ideas.
“It’s going to get worse,” Homer added. “The climate isn’t improving. A lot of groups are only surviving because of reserves of some kind. They’re not producing enough food to get by.”
“Thanks, Homer. I needed that encouragement.”
Homer shrugged. To be fair, he probably wasn’t trying to bait me.
“What we need, Riker, is to go into the farming business or something.”
“We’ve been over that, Homer. We actually could establish farms in the former tropics, but they’d be good for maybe twenty years maximum. And we’d have to build the infrastructure. All the existing farming infrastructure is in the formerly temperate zones.”
Homer stared into space, rubbing his chin. “I keep coming back to space stations. Something itching at me…”
I opened my mouth to object, and Homer held up a hand to forestall me. “I know, Riker. Too complex, not enough population density in a space station to make it worthwhile, too much risk. I just think we’re looking at it wrong.”
I gave a half-shrug and started to respond when Homer yelled, “Crap!” and froze.
I pictured Homer getting hit by a missile and had a moment of panic, but he came back right away.
“Arthur’s dead.” Homer looked as angry as Homer ever did. “I just got the telemetry from the drones up Saturn way. He was working some wreckage when there was a nuclear detonation. I’m getting reports from drones farther away from it.” Homer sighed. “Booby trap. No way to tell who set it up. I told him, several times, to watch for those. He got careless.”
“Did he save a backup anywhere?” Even as I said it, I knew the answer. Making a backup and keeping it on board was easy, but pretty useless in a case like this. And we didn’t have the space to save each other’s backups. I had a TODO item to build some storage into the Sol space station for just this purpose. And, like 99% of my TODOs, it was filed under “Someday.”
I took a moment to mourn for Arthur. Downer or not, he was one of us. Homer was looking at me expectantly, and I realized I was having trouble focusing. With an effort, I brought myself back on track.
“Okay Homer, get the drones to recover what they can, and I’ll go talk to the colonel. Looks like we’re going to need to change the schedule again. We can’t do without a fourth Bob. And I think we’d better build that storage matrix.”
“Um, there’s an alternative,” Homer said. “We’ve got the printers for my Earth-scavenging ops. I wouldn’t say they’re exactly idle, but at least Colonel Butterworth isn’t leaning over them and steaming them with his breath.”
I laughed at the unexpected imagery. And Homer was right. I nodded an acknowledgement to him, and forwarded to Bill an
In Memorium
entry about Arthur, for the archives. As soon as Charles was back in Earth orbit, we would have a wake.
