Quick and dirty, thought Alex. They were taking risks because they knew they had to move fast, and the biggest risk they were taking was in trusting him. He guessed that, knowing his history, they assumed he was completely on-side.
In his inner vision Alex recognized twenty-two icons, and he made sure to record those he didn’t recognize so that he could later attach them to a specific name and a face. It struck him as likely they had decided that Saul must die soon for, once they were plugged into the flux tube, the work here would proceed at a hectic pace and, before they knew it, Saul would then be taking them out of the solar system.
‘What’s your weapons inventory?’ Alex asked.
A small file arrived in his implant and he opened it. Ghort had taken four half-kilo demolition charges. Also available were twenty-five assault rifles, sixteen sidearms and a good quantity of ceramic ammunition.
‘A direct assault on his inner sanctum would be suicide,’ Alex stated. ‘He always has his spidergun with him, and other robots stationed in the surrounding area. I would guess that his inner sanctum is also armoured.’ Alex paused, slightly reluctant to continue, even though he knew precisely what to do with the tools available. ‘I can convert two of the demolition charges into a copper head – armour-piercing explosive with one charge to penetrate and throw the other inside, which I’d remix to alter the burn, and then pack in a cast-iron case. That would first fill his inner sanctum with shrapnel, then with fire, and of course leave it open to vacuum, and either will kill him.’ He paused. ‘Use any more than two of those charges and we might end up taking out part of Tech Central, too.’
One of the icons flashed and Ghort allowed the rebel indicated to speak.
‘What about delivery?’ asked a woman called Irini.
‘That’s not a problem,’ Alex stated. ‘One of our robots is not going to be able to distinguish between fixing a bomb in place or installing a fuse box. All they ever do is follow their work orders.’
‘Agreed,’ said Ghort. ‘Though we’ll disable its internal radio after loading the order.’
‘That should do the trick, but it’s not our main problem.’
‘So what do you see as our main problem?’ Ghort asked.
The robot had now switched to a drill tap, punching and threading holes in a blur across the ground-down area to match those already drilled in the plate. No swarf was visible because it was sucking that away. A moment later it employed a finer grinding wheel to polish the metre-square section of the booster tank to a mirror finish that matched the mirror finish underneath the fixing plate. Next would come the plate, then the bolts to tighten it down, during which process the two fine-ground surfaces would simply bond at a molecular level.
‘Our main problem is that he still won’t be dead,’ Alex stated. ‘His backup is kept in his inner sanctum, and it will certainly be lodged in some sort of armoured vault. We could try going in after it but it’s quite likely his spidergun will still be operating, and quite certainly so will his mind. If the spidergun doesn’t kill us, then the robots he’ll immediately summon will definitely do so. It would be suicide.’
The robot lowered the plate into place and then, in a blur of activity, wound in the twelve fixing bolts, before stepping back.
Good doggy, Alex thought.
He turned to look back towards the ship, and saw the two linked EVA units engaged in towing the cable out, now coming in at the end of the booster tank, with vacuum between taking on a bluish tinge from ionization. They then knocked against the tank briefly, an electric discharge flashing as they shed a tangle of three robots and the cable end. These three spread out into a line and continued hauling in the cable, like some nightmare tug-of-war team. Alex moved out of their path just as Ghort spoke again.
‘We have information that says otherwise,’ he said.
‘Otherwise?’ Alex asked.
Meanwhile other teams of both robots and humans were using impellers to get themselves away from the booster tank. The same thing would be happening somewhere down below, just off the old station wheel. And now it was time for Alex to go, too. He ordered his robot to follow him and propelled himself away from the booster tank just as the three new arrivals plugged in the cable, and he used his wrist impeller to send himself after the two EVA units. To give himself time, he did not hasten to catch up with them to hitch a ride, as per usual. Behind him, his robot had folded in its limbs till it looked eerily like an Egyptian mummy, and the three coming off the booster tank behind adopted very much the same pose. Alex shivered, since right now he didn’t want such reminders of human mortality.
‘Otherwise,’ Ghort repeated. ‘Saul input the orders to move his backups to the inner sanctum, then personally overrode the robots doing so. He moved them instead to an armoured case within the new armour placed around the vortex generator inside the old station ring.’
How convenient, Alex thought. And doubtless his backups are accessible.
‘That makes sense,’ he said. ‘Keeping his backups close to his physical body would be like putting all his eggs in one basket. Is it guarded?’
‘Of course it is,’ said Ghort. ‘By one spidergun.’
‘Not easy,’ said Alex.
‘We have two demolition charges left,’ said Ghort. ‘And we also have the weapons.’
Alex mulled that over for a moment, then said, ‘I should be able to rig something for the grenade launcher on an assault rifle, if you happen to have one with that attachment.’
‘We do,’ Ghort replied.
‘We’ll have to deploy every weapon to keep it busy enough for me to get in a killing shot, which means using people,’ Alex added. ‘This probably means most of us – unless you have found new recruits. And that means some of us are likely to die.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Ghort, obviously amused, ‘our backups remain safe in Arcoplex Two, where also some of our clone bodies are being grown even now. The only person who is going to die is Alan Saul.’
The EVA units entered the ship’s skeleton, while Alex caught hold of an I-beam, hung onto it and turned himself round. The booster tank was already a kilometre out, and continuing on its journey into the main ion flow of the flux tube. Now, looking down, Alex could see the second booster tank on its way too. He linked into station systems and checked power monitoring and saw that, even though the anode and cathode had yet to enter the region of highest ion density in the flux tube, power was flowing through the ship – a steady quarter of a megawatt and still growing. Glancing within and down, he saw Saul’s robot centipedes already stirring to life, unused lights coming on, the cylinder worlds spinning up to speed and the first jets of vapour issuing from the smelting plants.
‘So we’ll hold a memorial service,’ Alex stated.
‘Okay,’ Ghort replied, ‘we’ll meet off-shift and get things ready. Right now we have to get back to work. That’s all for now.’
Their scrambled links shut down.
Alex gazed for a while longer at the growing activity within the ship, watching chunks of asteroid and newly completed components already on the move. A hive of industry had never seemed so apt a description. What was happening here was massive and, in his heart, he felt it was the start of something that might last longer than all hitherto-known human history. And he laughed.
From her bed in her apartment in Arcoplex Two, Hannah watched Da Vinci walk naked over to her fridge, pop open the door and take out a bottle of beer. She frowned at the immediate reaction she felt. How dare he open her fridge without permission? Then she tried to shrug that off and remember that, but for a brief interlude spent with Saul on this same station, she had been living alone in private apartments for decades. She reached for the remote control sitting on her bedside table, her hand closing round it immediately turning on the screen, then ran through her favourite selection of cam views.
The first one to appear showed a section of the ship’s skeleton, which had previously been squirming with short combinations of Sau
l’s conjoined robots as they steadily affixed hull plates. She paused the program because that section was now completely covered, searched further cam views and found another higher up, where the robots were still at work. Setting the program running again brought her to a view from the rim of the space docks, where she was amazed to see that the docking pillars had now been completely detached and were floating, like skyscrapers transplanted from Earth, into void off to one side of their original position outside the ship. The resolution was good enough for her to see the cables running stretched taut through a hole in the cage towards a massive cable drum. Soon those docks would be located inside and fixed to their destined position above Arcoplex One.
‘It changes hourly,’ Da Vinci stated.
‘It’s like being back by the sun,’ she affirmed. ‘Only better in some ways, because the power, for us here, is practically limitless.’
He came and sat down on the edge of the bed to watch the rest of the show. Hannah felt a momentary surge of irritation because he hadn’t brought her a bottle of beer, too, but then remembered how, the last time he had done so, she’d capped it and put it back in the fridge before making herself a cup of coffee.
The next scene showed robots marching chunks of asteroid into the smelting plant now permanently sited in its dock, then marching out again with various components for the new ship. They looked like ants gathering materials for a nest, and their swarm-like movement even produced a psychosomatic itch. There were many more of them now, too: a mixture of the old station robots and trios of the conjoining robot units. The human teams still working out there were becoming more and more difficult to spot, especially now that many of them were starting to break up after more of them were chipped and began to control their own teams of robots. However, she did spot them in the next view, one of the plasma cannon the Saberhagens were building, and in the one after that focused on the construction around the base of the axial arcoplex spindle.
‘It’s awesome,’ Da Vinci remarked, ‘but it’s also terrifying.’
Hannah was still staring at the screen, which now showed the second smelting plant – the one still capable of being extended – lying some way out from the ship, with three old booster tanks now moored to it, in the process of being cut up by adapted mining robots and fed inside. She said, ‘I’ve not thought too much about the future, about us leaving the solar system, because there’s always been so much to do and it always seemed like such a distant prospect.’ She shook her head. ‘But with the speed everything is being done out there, I realize the future will be upon me before I even know it.’
‘We’re already living in the future,’ Da Vinci opined. ‘I never expected to find myself gazing at foetuses growing so fast that the changes in them are visible every day, nor having to cool amniotic fluid to stop it from boiling.
She glanced at him. ‘How is that going?’
She hadn’t read his latest report, expecting to catch up with him when he arrived here in her apartment, but he’d been more interested in getting her clothes off and she hadn’t been averse to the idea.
‘I have fifteen clones growing,’ he explained, ‘for the twins, Le Roque, Langstrom and a few of his lieutenants, for Rhine and, of course, for you.’
Hannah shivered at the thought, then felt annoyed by such a reaction. She was surely far too much of a rational being to be affected this way.
‘But I’m limited to fifteen clones until later.’ He gazed at her over his beer bottle. ‘Saul has now given me a new task.’
‘He has?’ Hannah felt suddenly worried. Had she, by taking Da Vinci as a lover, put him in danger from Saul? No, of course not. She abruptly felt disgusted at her instinct-level wish that there was some competition for her between the two. Jealousy was probably an emotion Saul had totally dispensed with in the perfect order of his mind.
‘He’s had the cryogenic pods removed from Messina’s space plane and sent to me. I have to test them, using some of the Arboretum livestock, make a report . . . then there must be a human trial.’
‘Who’s the volunteer?’
‘I am.’
‘What?’
‘He’s already having the main components for new pods being manufactured,’ Da Vinci revealed, still watching her. ‘Thousands of them.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Hannah clicked off the screen and sat upright. You volunteered?’
‘We never got to take the Hippocratic Oath when we trained under the Committee. How could we do so when our future might include stints in Safe Departure clinics or in some Inspectorate cell complex? But I made that oath to myself and have, to the best of my abilities, stuck to it.’
‘What’s this got to do with you volunteering?’
‘I cannot, in clear conscience, let someone else test out a cryogenic pod. But one must nevertheless be tested, as we must be certain that they will prove safe.’
‘I don’t see why,’ said Hannah, ‘since they’re only going to be used for storing cloned bodies . . .’
‘You think?’
Hannah stared at him, replaying this conversation in her mind. He had said that the components for ‘thousands of them’ were already being made. But why? It struck her as unlikely that Saul would ensure a clone body available for every human aboard this ship – only enough of them for essential personnel, if, in reality, any of them aboard could be described as essential. Thousands of cryogenic pods? Then she got it.
‘Interstellar flight,’ she said. ‘We’re all going on ice while this ship of his flies to the stars.’
‘That’s my assessment, too.’
‘I need to get you chipped,’ she said. ‘Your backup is growing, and within just a few days we should be able to make the links.’
‘I don’t know that I have the time because, even without complications, there’s a four-day recovery and adjustment period.’
‘Nevertheless, you must be chipped before you try out that cryogenic pod.’ Hannah swung her legs off the bed and headed for the shower. ‘You do not go in there without a backup.’
‘It’s good to know you care.’
She grunted dismissively. She did in fact care, but sometimes it didn’t show so well. Maybe that was because Saul always loomed in her mind so prominently and Da Vinci was therefore not the single most important man in her life. As she stepped into her shower cubicle, she wondered if that situation would ever change, and then realized that it would. The time would come when her emotions finally caught up with her intellect and, on a gut level, she truly felt that there were only two human beings in that equation.
Argus
With the clamping wheels on the ends of its legs powering up, the overseer’s office began its slow crawl up the ship’s skeleton to a new position five hundred metres from the top pole of the ship. The inside of the office was now decked out just like one Var had used while working on the Mars Traveller project. However, here she was finding herself having to move the office a lot more often, just to keep out of the way of the astounding pace of construction.
She gazed at her array of screens and could not help but feel a bitter sense of awe. All three of the massive docking pillars were now inside, suspended one above the other in a cubic framework that gave room for the manoeuvring of space planes alongside with support and maintenance equipment, all currently crawling with robots and humans and glinting under a constellation of welding lights. The two new arcoplex cylinders were growing visibly even as she watched. Their bones were going in place at the same pace as the ship’s skeleton had been constructed, while that skeleton was steadily being shrouded in hull plates – their dark shadow swiftly blotting out the view of Jupiter. Asteroid matter was disappearing fast, while the need for raw materials was being filled by the steady supply of booster tanks being dragged in from around Jupiter, and by frequent missions to some of the smaller encircling moons in quest of rarer earth elements as they ran dry. The Saberhagens’ weapons were now all but complete, the stream of robots from Arcoplex Two seemed neve
r-ending, the abortive structures that had sprung from the outer rim of the old station wheel had been stripped away and the ship was filling up and felt gravid – girder walls rising to meet each other, accommodation units, small factories, additional hydroponics units and more besides, sprouting everywhere like tree buds.
After staring for a while at the screens, Var returned her attention to recent reports and updated schematics; finding there was not much she needed to attend to, she began checking the messages she’d had relayed to her communications system. All the work schedules were meshing together nicely and the smelters were completely on top of answering demand. The only problems to be encountered were system disruption caused by induction and static discharges, which were an inevitable result of having the ship positioned beside the Io flux tube. Beyond these, she noted that Commander Langstrom was on his way to see her and should be here in a few minutes, and meanwhile all but one remaining item had been responded to.
Var gazed at the message from Hannah Neumann. They had not talked for a while, since it seemed Hannah was currently more interested in getting her bones jumped by that weasel Da Vinci rather than drinking beer with Var in the Olive Tree. But this wasn’t a personal message: it was one automatically generated by Hannah’s system to inform Var that her backup had reached maturity and yet still no connection had been made with her implant. So perhaps it was time for Var actually to get an implant, to become potentially immortal, to thus extend her abilities to do her job, to enable her to do within her skull what she had just been doing on a screen; to enable her personally to control robots and summon to her mind any data she ever required. What had she got to lose?
Var stared at the message, trying to think logically about it, but could not dispel a stubborn reluctance. Perhaps she was rationalizing, but it all seemed to come down to that relay, that off-switch her beloved brother had decided should be installed in the circuit. Why did he have so little trust in his own sister? Why did he have so little trust in Hannah, who, though she might deny it, looked upon him with a weird combination of maternal pride and worship, or in the others who also worshipped him: like the Saberhagens, who clearly also saw him as their personal incarnation of god the father; like Rhine, who quite simply could not visualize a universe without Alan Saul and who would die for him; like Langstrom, who, at last, through the jaded horror of his military career under the Committee had found someone worthy of serving?