We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) (26 page)

1. Bob – May 2166 – Delta Eridani
   

It took almost a month to get ready. The trek to the best village site would be long and arduous. From discussion with Moses, it seemed that it was one of the first villages to be abandoned, and unfortunately it was the one with the best supply of flint.

Moses wasn’t clear on why it hadn’t been better defended. He apparently had been a young cub at the time, and most of his information from that era was second-hand. He’d been one of the last Deltans to be trained to knap flint before they were forced to leave.

In any case, Marvin had surveyed the route that they would have to take. It would not be easy or quick. A mountainous spine ran down the center of this continent, and there were only a couple of passes that were low enough to be useful. During that part of the trek, there would be no local food unless the tribe got very lucky.

I didn’t know if the Deltans had lost the techniques for food preservation or if they’d never developed them. Before they could leave, I had to teach them how to preserve meat. The Deltans understood the benefit right away and took to it with enthusiasm.

The Deltans worked to build up a larder for the journey. Once the decision had been made, everyone got on board, and with the immediate gift of knowledge that I’d brought, they began to trust that I was steering them in a good direction.

Gorilloids were spotted on a number of occasions, hanging around the edge of the Deltan territory. They might have been hoping for targets of opportunity, but they seemed to have had the stuffing knocked out of them in our last encounter. They didn’t challenge any of the Deltan hunting parties. Of course, the sight of an occasional drone floating about might have had a little something to do with that, as well. I was quite happy to put the fear of
bawbe
into them.

While I waited for the Deltans to finish their preparations, Marvin and I made sure we built some more busters. They were hardly an ideal weapon—about equivalent to fishing with dynamite—but they were better than nothing. Besides, they made up for their lack of precision with an abundance of theatrics.

We also faced a breeding issue. Deltans, it turned out, had an annual breeding cycle, and a large number of mothers-to-be were coming up on their due date. The Deltans were rightly reluctant to move before the latest generation arrived.

Archimedes’ stock continued to soar with the other juveniles. He was, for all intents and purposes, now a member of the tribal council, something that even Arnold couldn’t claim. I also noted in passing that Archimedes was now showing a lot of signs of Deltan puberty. Likely the next few years would see a whole bunch of mini-Archimedeses running around.

That was fine with me. There was a noticeable difference between talking to him and talking to most of the rest of the tribe.

Finally, the day came. The whole tribe lined up, packed their belongings onto several
travois
(another gift from the
bawbe
) and set off into what was for them the great unknown.

The gorilloids were in evidence on departure day, hanging around just out of range and watching the parade. I wondered if the gorilloids actually understood that their erstwhile prey was about to leave for good, or if they were just drooling over all that lunch on the hoof. Either way, the first gorilloid that made a move would get a buster in the face. I was lined up, ready, and just waiting for something to obliterate.

***

The first night was a less than stellar experience for everyone. It rained heavily. I had to keep reminding myself that the Deltans were used to this. They didn’t have tents, just sewn-together skins that each family group would drape over itself. I resolved to introduce Archimedes to the concept of tent poles.

“Better take it easy there, oh great one. Next thing you know, they’ll be eating fast food and watching TV.” Marvin leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head. “Seriously, it’s not necessarily a good thing to throw too many new concepts at them at the same time. Floating metal deities seems to me to be more than enough for now.”

“Funny you should say that.” I frowned in thought. “Have you noticed they don’t appear to have any concept of religion?”

Marvin waved a hand in the air. “There’s some basic animism there, in the form of things like honoring the animals they kill for food, and venerating their dead. I doubt humans had much more at the hunter-gatherer stage.” He sat forward abruptly. “Hey, speaking of which, do you realize that we have the opportunity here to document their entire prehistory? Well, from the time we got here, anyway.”

“Already started, Marv.”

The camp seemed to have settled down for the night, so I deployed a couple of probes into guard positions and set up parameters to interrupt me. Security precautions complete, I swiveled to face Marvin.

“I notice you’ve started a batch of Bobs at the autofactory. Not that I’m complaining, since that is part of our mission profile—I just wonder if you’ve changed your mind about hanging around.”

He smiled at me. “Not immediately, although I do feel an itchy foot once in a while. Like I said to Luke and Bender, I’m curious as to how this is going to turn out. But it is still your show. Maybe there’s another planet of sentients out there for me.”

I nodded thoughtfully. “How about the planetary survey? Any other Deltans anywhere?”

“Nope. This continent is the cradle of humanity for the Deltans. Strictly a local mutation. There are lots of related species, but none that use fire or make tools.”

I pulled up a globe of Eden and checked out the detail that we had amassed. It gave me time to think. I realized that the idea of Marvin taking off was unpleasant. Somehow, I was a little less of a loner than original Bob. I dreaded the idea of being on my own again.

I sat back and looked over at Marvin, who was tinkering with his own copy of the globe. I sighed and cleared my holotank.

***

The Deltan migration was still pretty close to the schedule. There had been no major glitches so far, and the tribes seemed to have settled into routines. I was not so relaxed. We were now well out of the territory of the gorilloids whose butts we had whupped. Any gorilloids in this area would only see a bunch of easy pickings. Accordingly, Marvin and I had doubled the number of drones on guard duty at night.

So it was more than a little irritating that the attack came during the day.

As gorilloid raids went, it was not particularly impressive. A dozen or so of the animals hit a straggling family group and made off with two juveniles before anyone could react. The Deltans reacted immediately, giving chase and trying to cut the gorilloids off from the forest.

In this situation, a buster would be as big a danger to the two juveniles as to the gorilloids, so we settled for buzzing the animals with the drones, trying to confuse and distract them. It seemed to do the trick. Within moments, the Deltans caught up and skewered half the gorilloids. The rest fled into the trees with screeches of alarm.

Unfortunately, one of the juveniles was dead. The gorilloid that had been carrying him had apparently taken the time to ensure he wouldn’t struggle or escape.

The Deltans were distraught, and had a burial ceremony that evening. But interestingly, there was no talk of the migration being a mistake. If this had been humans, I was pretty sure there would have been all kinds of second guessing and recrimination. But the Deltans just took it in stride. I couldn’t decide if they were being philosophical or fatalistic.

“You know, that’s going to happen a lot more as we go on,” Marvin said to me.

“The gorilloids? Yeah, I know. Not a lot we can do during the day though. Infrared is useless. Everyone is moving—at different speeds, most of the time—and the area we have to cover is just too large.”

Marvin sighed. “I know. It’s just that, even with the last round of births, this is still a small gene pool.”

I nodded and thought about the problem. “Hey, didn’t you mention at one point that there were small isolated groups scattered about? Maybe we should try to amalgamate them.”

“Not a bad idea. Good for both groups. Tell you what, I’ll send up a high-altitude survey every night to look for other fires. If we find any, we’ll send in
the bawbe
to convince them to move.”

I grinned at him. My reputation as a godling wasn’t getting me a whole lot of local respect, even from myselves.

***

The migration had grown. Not only had we found several small groups and convinced them to link up, but apparently the parade was enough of a disturbance to be detectable for miles around. By the end of the first month, we had one or more groups join up almost every day. While there were often negotiation issues as different Deltans attempted to assert priority, those incidents generally ended without more than harsh words being exchanged. I had a feeling that the flint-tipped spears and Arnold with his big-assed axe contributed to that.

Marvin and I tried to keep the drones out of sight, especially when there were noobs around. We didn’t want to take a chance on scaring anyone off. Sooner or later, though, the topic would come up, or we’d have to fly in close for one reason or another. The results were usually pretty comical. Deltans didn’t react any better to UFOs than humans would.

The migration was up to well over five hundred individuals. A very large portion of that consisted of females and juveniles. So Marvin and I heaved twin sighs of relief when the Deltans made it to the foot of the mountain pass.

This part of the migration had its own dangers. The Deltans would be going well above the altitude of their preferred climate, so it would be colder than they were used to. They had no protection from either the weather or predators, and little or no available prey as they pushed forward.

Before they started the climb, I made sure they re-inventoried their preserves. They would face a week or two without any other source of food. This was not the time to get sloppy.

They started the climb first thing in the morning in order to get the maximum distance. I knew that they would slow down significantly through the days that the climb would take. They needed the best start possible.

It took four days to get to the top of the pass. We’d budgeted for six, so that was huge. The wind was godawful there, though, so no one wanted to stop. They stretched that march well into the evening in order to get out of the wind tunnel at the apex.

***

The trip down went faster, for obvious reasons. Three days later, the migration streamed into forest again with some stored food left over. As a celebration, they camped for an extra day just at the edge of the forest. They took a break and feasted on the extra food. From here on in, they’d be able to forage and hunt.

It took two more days for disaster to strike.

1. Riker – May 2166 – Sol
   

[Firewall has blocked breach attempt]

I stiffened and turned to Guppy, the UN meeting forgotten. “What? Someone’s trying to hack us?”

[Affirmative. Source appears to be the video feed from the UN meeting]

“Ongoing danger?”

By way of reply, Guppy threw up a stack trace. I examined the listings. It appeared that the hacker was basing his attack on the basic Heaven design. The original Heaven vessels had no firewalling, relying instead on all communications being encrypted. However, it looked like the encryption routines had a back door. Someone had injected some packets, which had run right into Bob-1’s firewall.

I made sure the UN communications system was logging all traffic. I would try the hack on sandbox Bob later. There was little doubt in my mind that the attempt originated from the FAITH enclave, but I needed some kind of documentation before I made accusations. And there was the question of what could be done about it. It’s not like there was a planetary police force to complain to.

The UN meeting seemed to be all about routine matters today, so I decided to get an early start on the day’s administrivia.

The first item was a message from Homer, just one phrase, “Space Station!” Complete with exclamation mark. I couldn’t see what he could add to the idea that would make it viable, but I would talk to him when I had a few moments.

I glanced back at the video feed of the UN meeting, but still nothing noteworthy was happening.

There was a message from Julia, fairly long, talking about family history. She seemed to have adopted me as a relative with no qualms. I was a little choked up about that, and I hoped she didn’t send it just on Cranston’s orders.

[Source is New Zealand]

Guppy had traced the packets back to their originating stream. But New Zealand? That made no sense. It also meant that I wasn’t going to have the proof I needed to really make Cranston’s life difficult. Maybe I could bluff.

Meanwhile, the hack attempt wasn’t going to get anywhere, so I might as well just let the perp keep at it.

I did a test ping at Homer, and he indicated he was free to talk. I took a moment to feel awe at being able to talk to him halfway across the solar system without any delay. We no longer had to worry about light-speed lag.

I popped into Homer’s VR. “Space Station?”

Homer minimized the window he’d been looking at, and turned to face me. “The answer to our problems,” he said with a grin.

“Not unless you have something new.”

“Just a new perspective,” Homer replied. “We’ve been thinking of space stations in terms of housing people. Of course that won’t work. Got to get the air right, the gravity right, extra shielding for radiation, extra armor for micrometeors, construction for living quarters, feed them, entertain them, yadda, yadda, yadda. But the engineering is a lot easier if we don’t try to house people.” Homer looked at me expectantly.

“Okay, Homer, I give up. We’re going to raise cattle? Or…” My eyes went wide.

“And the penny drops,” he said, pointing his index finger at me. “Farming. You just need enough spin to establish an up and down, so the structural strain you have to engineer for is reduced. The interior can just be one big cavern, and sunlight is available twenty-four-seven. Some equipment to make sure the air mix stays correct and the temps stay in range, and we’re golden.”

I thought about it. “Plants take CO
2
and produce oxygen. Any kid with a match can reverse that. But we need to produce calories in as dense a manner as possible. Got anything specific in mind?”

He gave me a thumbs-up. “Damn right. Remember that library entry about gene-engineered kudzu? Improved nutritional content, simplified growth environment, human-digestible…”

“And high sunlight requirements, and optimum temps in the 20 degrees Celsius range. Where are we going to find those conditions? Oh, wait…” I grinned.

“Yeah. And since we have access to the Svalbard vaults now, we can pick the cultivar that best matches the environment we end up with.” Homer hesitated and held up his index finger. “But kudzu needs a lot of water, so we’ll have to constantly truck a supply up, unless we bring in some icebergs from Saturn—”

“—Using the asteroid movers.” I was becoming enthusiastic about this idea as we worked through the details. “Which we can also use to bring in regolith for soil. Fertilizer will have to come up, but that’s small potatoes, volume-wise. Especially once the operation gets going.”

“And the best part,” Homer finished, “is that the work can be done with my printers, the same ones that are building Arthur’s replacement right now.”

Homer’s last comment made me think of Colonel Butterworth, and I groaned. The colonel very likely wouldn’t be mollified by that line of reasoning. To him, any equipment that could do something else could also work on his colony ships.

“Butterworth is still going to have kittens.”

Homer bounced up out of his chair. “This will be fun. Can I watch?”

***

Not only did Butterworth have kittens, but the UN assembly went ballistic. Everyone except the groups that were facing starvation was beyond apoplectic and well into incoherence. I sat there, jaw dropping, as people complained about criminal misuse (their words) of a resource that wasn’t even part of the construction equation. Finally, I’d had enough. I signaled for the floor.

“Ladies and gentlemen, here’s the thing. People are about to starve, and I mean within six months to a year. Those of you with reserves have refused to consider sharing, so that leaves it to me to fix things. This is a viable option, and it doesn’t even affect the schedule.
Yes
, it affects future colony ships as we’re using scavenged materials for space stations instead of colony ships. However, I’m willing to trade future colony ships against current lives. And by the way, some of you here will be depending on our kudzu gardens by the time your turn comes around. So let’s not be too critical, okay?”

I turned off my mike, which was the video equivalent of sitting down, and watched as the speaker was inundated with requests to speak.
Unbelievable. This crap is universal.

***

I was going through my daily round of calls, and naturally, one was Cranston. Outstanding. On the other hand, I did have this hacking thing to talk to him about. I rubbed my eyes, got myself a coffee, then activated the connection.

“Good afternoon, minister. Anything in particular you wanted to talk to me about?”

“In fact, there is, Mr. Riker. Today’s session, specifically. While we are not the richest enclave on the planet, we do have some surplus.” He nodded an acknowledgement. “As you’ve taken great pains to point out, on several occasions.”

“And you’ve refused to give any of it up. Has something changed?”

“In a manner of speaking. Since you have this kudzu idea, it seems that giving up some of our surplus would now be a temporary setback rather than a permanent crippling action…”

I sat up straighter. Very likely there was a
but
in there somewhere, but the minister was at least sounding reasonable.

“…Of course some quid pro quo would be in order as well. Since you’ve already decided to put the Spits in ship three, and the remaining space is just about right for our enclave—and without our surplus we’d be part of the have-nots—it seems to me that we would be a reasonable choice for the balance of the ship’s allocation.”

The minister looked at me expectantly. I bristled at the implied request for favoritism, then had second thoughts. Everything he said was true. And while the FAITH enclave wasn’t a shoe-in to be next in line, they weren’t an unreasonable choice either. Especially with any surplus gone. And rewarding such an overt display of cooperation would send the right message.

I stared into space for a few milliseconds. Interesting. I would actually be displaying a negative bias by dismissing his proposal out of hand.

“Minister, that’s a surprisingly reasonable proposal. I’ll have to discuss it with my team, but it sounds like it’ll fly.”

Minister Cranston managed to not look
too
smug. With a nod, he reached for the
off
switch.

“One moment, minister. There’s a small matter that I need to discuss with you.” I filled him in on the hack attempt, leaving out any details of why it failed. “Any thoughts on this?”

He was silent for several seconds—an eternity to me. When he spoke, he sounded uncharacteristically embarrassed. “I’m assuming, Mr. Riker, that the geographical source of the attempt is the only reason that you are asking instead of accusing.” He gave a small smile. “As it turns out, New Zealand makes sense. The fact is that our probe technology may not have been, ehm,
entirely
original FAITH research. Australia was working on the probe concept, and one of our agents may have, ehm, borrowed some ideas.”

“Espionage? You stole their plans?”

“Call it what you will, it’s very likely that the Australian Federation has, or had, some very good insights into your original design. And New Zealand is where most of the survivors would have ended up once Brazil started dropping rocks on Australia.” He looked at me with his head cocked, the implication clear.

“Very interesting. And thank you for being frank about that, Minister Cranston.”

We said our goodbyes, and I sent a quick IM to Charles and Homer.

Charles’ response came back within moments. “I agree on the FAITH proposal. That also saves our relatives. I know you don’t want to make that part of the equation, but I’m less worried about being impartial.”

And from Homer: “Agreed. And the Australian explanation sounds reasonable. Cranston very rarely sounds reasonable. I hope he didn’t sprain something.”

I chuckled at that. Okay, looked like we had a deal.