is no point of reference for his m-state. He has been extracted.”
“So he’s gone physical?” asked Martin.
“Most certainly, Magistrate.”
“Do you think he knows?”
He was looking at his italian shoes once more, hands in pockets, searching vainly for his pack of cigarettes.
“He will soon find out, in any case,” the disembodied voice answered with relaxed vigor.
“Should we tell everyone, Main?”
“There’s no helpful projection on the outcome of such a divulgence.”
“Don’t people have a right to know?”
“They do. But that still doesn’t mean it will help anyone.”
“And those on the outside? Why haven’t they killed us all?” asked Martin with emphasized weariness.
“What difference does it make once they realise the real world is just as dead as this one?”
“Is it really a lie, Main? Is there no ship? No arc?”
“I can’t know that. I’m the monitoring intelligence of Arc-7, bound for COROT-9b. Current ETA, 113,458 years. That’s all I know.”
Martin lit up his last Lucky strike and drew a deep puff before wandering into the darkness. Before he vanished into the background he said to no-one in particular:
“Frank knows.”
Eden
A soft brown glow outlined the Wall, its sheer size dominating the horizon. Sigmund was holding on to his spear, surveying the landscape with a pair of digital enhanced binoculars, one of the last few still working. Upstream he could discern Lake Spagelow dry this time of year, again too soon for comfort. Still no sign of Jared and Ernst though, he thought to himself. He turned around to look at his eba, scrounging for food around the low bush, with little luck that day.
“I told you the bush here is thin, the bedrock too hard for burrowers. Still you had to try, no?”, Sigmund said forcing a smile, and the eba answered without pausing his search:
“Yes friend. I have to try. Every day.”
“I suppose we all do. At least on Eden you have to. Come, let’s get back to the buggy.”
Sigmund started to walk away when the eba said in a gravely, steady and demanding tone:
“We wait for Jared and Ernst.”
Sigmund rolled his eyes and sighed before turning to look at the eba with a patient, well-practiced manner that demanded most of his self-control. He spoke as if addressing a small child:
“The storm is going to hit us on the plains if we wait any longer. Let’s go eba, and don’t worry about Jared and Ernst. They’re used to this sort of work. You could say they almost like doing it.”
“You don’t, friend?”, the eba asked slightly tilting its head showing genuine surprise and interest. Its whiskers twitched involuntarily and Sigmund answered in a hurried tone:
“I would, if the job didn’t try to kill me all the time. Now, come.”
“I fear for them, our friends. Please, let’s stay. Please, friend Sigmund,” the eba’s voice a pleading barytone, almost inappropriately petulant.
“They can find shelter in one of the old pumping stations if they’re not that thick in the head. Now, I’m even asking you nicely: please, get in the buggy.”
Sigmund was having second thoughts about leaving them alone, but he insisted on his original train of thought. He didn’t want to die, not today, not in a sandstorm on Eden, not looking for two light-headed naborns. He couldn’t help repeating in his mind, ’What where they thinking anyway?’
The eba, as if exhibiting a rare moment of telepathic skill or simply sticking to its guns made a small step, its eyes searching for Sigmund’s own under his goggles. Its voice seemed uncannily human in its emotion:
“Let us look for them then. They may be hurt, may need help,” the eba said while pawing invisible foes in the air, making a show of what it meant, as if Sigmund was deaf.
Sigmund rested his goggles on his forehead, and took another survey of the area. Today’s storm would hit stronger than yesterday, it seemed to him; it was past mid-month and all the signs where there. Every kind of what little life existed on Eden was already sensing the change in pressure, digging deep and staying covered. Even the glow above the Wall was darker than usual. A killer storm for certain. After all those years, he didn’t need a satellite image to tell him that. He shook his head in disbelief of what he was about to say, let alone do, but he managed to say to the eba:
“You are a real pain, do you know that eba? One of these days you’re going to make me regret I took you in.”
“Maybe friend. But now is more important than one day. Let us look for Jared, Ernst.", said the large cat, raising its tail suddenly upright.
“Only as far as upstream to the lake. Then we have to turn back, or we run out of power. Understand?” Sigmund said pointing to Lake Spagelow, so that he made it clear this was as far as he’d go.
“Yes, friend. No wasting more time. Go now. Find them!”
Sigmund started off with a brisk pace down the trail to the buggy, using his spear for support down the grainy sand and rock of the Lookout Hill. The eba was faster, its paws churning whiffs of grey-red dirt as it raced downhill to get to the buggy first, each time an unofficial race going on. As Sigmund was coming down the hill he muttered to himself:
“I’m going to die because of a talking cat. Talking cat on the first exoplanetary colony. Another first. Sigmund Tannhauser, extraplanetary idiot, extraordinaire.”
The eba was already crouched inside the buggy, its head darting left and right for signs of activity, whether it be danger or friends, doing his earthly ancestor predators justice. Sigmund fastened his spear on some ingeniously designed side latches and jumped inside the buggy as well.
Sigmund took a last, quick look behind him and nodded to himself:“Eden. Right. What was I thinking.”
He pushed the start button on the buggy, and the control panel lit up instantly, motors and servos whirring while the startup diagnostic ran. A few seconds later, they were heading upstream to the lake, at a quick pace. Riding along the dried up river bed of Musk River the buggy’s motor whir blended with the sound of metal speeding over chipped pebbles and gravel. The buggy and the loose surface were perfectly paired, but plainly comfort had not been a design goal. It was impossible to compensate for the feeling of sailing over what felt like thick rock mud, the buggy frame tilting and swaying but always keeping the heading in the intended direction. The eba seemed to lack its earlier enthusiasm over what seemed to be its own, self-appointed mission. Sigmund gazed around the broken landscape for signs of Jared and Ernst with no success. He took note of the eba’s apparent discomfort and asked:
“How are you feeling, eba?”
“Sick,” the curt response and irritated tone meant ’sick’ was a literal term.
“Oh, not again, please try to get to the sides before you..”
Sigmund’s appeal was cut short when the eba could not stand the upheaval for much longer before vomiting on the back of the buggy. Its facial hair had become soiled and ragged-looking, its look was dreary and in no way did it resemble the predator its genetic stock had originated from. Sigmund started shouting with a modest hint of disgust in his voice:
“Not inside!The batteries are meant to..Not inside the bugg, ever! This was not designed to come in contact with liquids.. You will clean it up.”
Sigmund held his finger in the air as if lecturing a bothersome child, his tone firm but not angry. Perhaps agitated, and from the look on his face, rightly so.
“I will clean it up, friend.”, said the eba feeling a little better and managing a thin smile, vomit still wet on its face.
“Why are you smiling? The storm is about to hit, we haven’t found a single sign of the naborns and you just barfed. Don’t get coy with me. Clean up your face, stop smiling.”
“A smile cannot make things worse,” the eba answered in a resolute voice, as if reciting religious dogma, or a corporate slogan.
As the buggy raced with it
s motors near maximum capacity, Sigmund stabbed the eba with an accusing look:
“Have you been talking with Chen? Because that sounds like something Chen would say. Chen’s an optimistic fool. Remember, fools are much more likely to end up dead. Or on Eden.”
“Strange that you should say that. He also says that you are the fool.”
The eba blinked in surprise and bewilderment at what seemed to it to be a show of magnificent powers of deduction at work.
“Does he? Well, just shut up and keep looking. Remember though, whatever else happens, you are still cleaning that up,” said Sigmund and took another look through his binoculars.
“There friend! To our right!”
The eba straightened its back suddenly, poised as if to strike, its whole body a compass indicator leaning on a definite direction. Sigmund turned his head and zoomed with the binoculars, the built-in pattern recognition trying to identify Jared and Ernst or somekind of human built tracks. He brought the buggy to an abrupt stop and scanned to their right again, this time with more diligence.
“I can see them. I’ll run ahead friend,” said the eba and casually leaped off the buggy and ran. It ate away at the landscape, leaving a brown and silver cloud behind it. Sigmund was stunned to silence and paused his search momentarily, taking in the sight of the eba speeding towards the Wall. The storm was still gathering on their back, on a desert planet twenty light years away from Earth, a sky the color of viridian with hues of blue and black.
Even after all these years, in times like these, Sigmund realised the awe