Our luggage had been loaded earlier, when the weather was clear. We hurried down onto the covered walkway. The rain was still blowing in on us. Not that it mattered. We'd have to run through the rain anyhow. The lander was too big for the shelter, so it had been left in the middle of the lawn.
We got drenched. I didn't care. I love getting behind the controls of a new vehicle for the first time. (The test run didn't count, of course.) We sat down and said hello to Gabe, who'd been installed by the manufacturer. I checked in with the tower, got clearance, and within a few minutes we were on our way to Skydeck.
Alex sat in back with Shara. They were talking about the chances of success and how many ships might be out there, lost in transdimensional tunnels.
We rose through the clouds. Alex leaned forward and asked about my reaction to the Coyote, how did it handle, would I have any problem getting used to it, but I could tell he was just making conversation, that his mind was elsewhere.
I asked Gabe what he thought of the Coyote. “It is,” he said, “a substantial upgrade over that junker we used to ride around in.”
On approach, I reported in to the station. And a familiar voice replied. “Hi, Chase. This is Skydeck.” Brad Hopkins. He was a heavyset guy who drank too much. Life-of-the-party type. He'd been in the Pilots' Club the night I was there. “You just can't stay away, can you?”
“Never could, Brad.”
“Lucky for us. Okay, Chase. Release the Coyote.”
I turned control over. “You have it, Brad.”
“Indeed I do, beautiful.” Hopkins was never much for standard operating procedure. “You headed for the Belle-Marie?”
“Yes, we are.”
He slowed our forward motion while a maintenance vessel emerged, then guided us into the docking area. When we were alongside the Belle-Marie, he told me the Coyote looked pretty nice. Then he said something about seeing me at the Club. And, finally, “All yours, Chase.”
I ran a preflight check, reported to Ops that we were ready to go, and sat back to await clearance. Alex and Shara were back in the cabin. I wasn't paying much attention to what was going on back there until I became suddenly aware that they'd gone quiet.
Then Alex came in behind me and pointed at the auxiliary screen. “Put on WWN,” he said.
The Worldwide News Feed.
I switched it on and read the headline:
SEVEN WOULD — BE RESCUERS KILLED ON VILLANUEVA
(Andiquar, 11 Mor.) Seven persons died this week during an abortive “rescue” attempt on Villanueva. Early reports indicate that the victims had entered a public building in an effort to retrieve ancient AIs. They were trapped inside the building by an onslaught of bots, construction devices, and vehicles, and ultimately died in a missile attack.
I caught my breath as I skimmed down for the names of the casualties. I didn't know any of them. I half expected to see Doc Drummond among them. But he wasn't. According to the report, they'd been led by one Matthew Po. Po and two others had survived.
The story recapped the running debate about AIs and sentience, and they cited Alex as the “instigator” for the movement, which was described as “controversial.”
I felt relieved at not seeing Drummond's name. But you know what runs through your mind when you feel happy to replace one victim with another.
They put up pictures of the victims, five men and two women. World News Live was also on the story. “We have reports,” said the anchor, “that six other expeditions are known to be en route in the effort to save the hardware.” He looked saddened by the tragedy. I turned it off, but Alex had switched over to it in the cabin. “It's possible there may be as many as a hundred vehicles en route as we speak. Marcia, what do you think's going on here?”
Marcia started to talk about mass hysteria. Then that one got shut off.
A few minutes later, we were cleared to go. Ordinarily, I'd have let Belle manage the departure, but I needed something to take my mind off Villanueva. We undocked and moved slowly out of the station. I remember looking down and thinking how much Rimway resembled that pitiful world. The same gauzy clouds, the wide green continents, the ice caps, the scattered storms. There'd been a large blizzard in the south when we'd first arrived there, and there was a large storm now on Rimway, though over the northern ice cap. Terrestrial worlds always induce, at least for me, a wistfulness, a sense of returning to a place I know well. Even a place like Salud Afar, expelled from the Milky Way millions of years ago, with almost no stars in its sky, nevertheless retained that domestic quality. You show up at one of these places, and it always feels like coming home. I mentioned it to Shara as we cruised past the Moon.
“I haven't traveled the way you have, Chase,” she said, “but I'd be surprised if it weren't true for everybody. It strikes me, though, that it could be a dangerous affinity. Some of these places are definitely not friendly.”
We were looking at four days to get out to our target site. Belle complained that we didn't have a more specific location. “I'll get you into the neighborhood,” she said. “But we'll need some luck.”
Alex tried to keep busy, something to do with twelve-hundred-year-old abstract portraits, one of which was thought to be the work of Thiebold Marcetti. Unfortunately, he'd explained earlier, nobody could prove anything one way or the other. He thought he'd pinpointed a factor that indicated the portrait was genuine, and he was comparing brushstrokes. But he was still unusually subdued.
When we made our jump, I couldn't help thinking about the lost ships. There was no indication of a black-hole track in the neighborhood. But I knew that doing the transit into hyperspace would never again feel quite the same.
On that first day, Shara moved up front with me, and we exchanged glances and eye contact and other nonverbals, relating our mutual concern for Alex, who was obviously stressed. “I'll tell you,” she said, “I wish you guys had never gone near that place.”
“Me, too.” I kept my voice low. “These are not the best conditions for a long ride.”
She gazed down at the control panel. “Wish I could do something.”
“So do I. But he'll be fine.” That was easy to say. People were dying as a result of something he'd started. It had to be painful.
Despite the uncomfortable beginning, the flight passed more easily than I'd expected. Once away from Rimway, Alex again became his affable self. Mostly, we just talked. The conversations ranged over a wide variety of topics, but mostly they concentrated on why creatures as smart as humans did so many dumb things. Alex thought that we're wired to hold on to our opinions despite what the facts might show. “It's more critical to survival than just being smart,” he said. “It always helps to be able to persuade other people to follow you, and to do that, you have to be consistent. And you have to be part of the tribe. It's why beliefs are more important than facts.”
I wondered whether we'd ever develop a capability to cross to another galaxy. Shara said that we might be able to improve star-drive technology, but to get to Andromeda we'd need something completely new. “I'm reluctant to say we've exhausted the possibilities,” she said. “That always turns out to look like a foolish position a few years later. But it's hard to see where we can go from here.”
“I'd be interested,” said Alex, “in coming back in, say, ten thousand years to see what the human race is like.”
“We'll all be different by then,” I said. “We'll probably have gotten rid of old age. We'll have a complete map of the Milky Way. Everybody will have a 200 IQ. And we'll all be impossibly good-looking.”