Then Dandy did something that shocked me badly. He took a tiny package from his pocket, approached a decorative fountain in the terminal and broke the package over the main nozzle. The package quickly swelled in the water like a lump of rising dough. A tiny mechanical observer poked out of the mass and painted me quickly with a gridwork of red lines of light. The lump flopped in the pool around the fountain, popping arms and legs. The legs neglected to sprout toes, growing shoes instead.
It began to look like me, clothes and all, right down to the lumpy white armor. In a few seconds, it stood, squeaked, and with a convincing if inelegant gait, followed the arbeiter into the shuttle. The shuttle sealed the terminal bridge and its hatches, rolled away, and rose into the pink afternoon sky on flame-rooted feathers of white steam.
I shivered away the prickling hairs on my neck.
“My call, ma’am,” Dandy said. He and Jack each took an arm and guided me down the corridor. “Maintenance trains go to old station tunnels from here. We’ll take one of those.”
So I was back where it all began for me, the birthplace of my political consciousness. The pioneer tunnels behind the UMS train depot were still dark and narrow and filled with forgotten debris eventually awaiting the recyclers. The air was downright cold and smelled bad. My head swam as Dandy and Jack paused to consult their slates.
“All com’s out except for secure channels, and they’re not active,” Jack said. He shook his head. “Satcom’s out. We might hook into a port and try internal optic.”
“No ports here,” Dandy said. “Why no com on the secure channels?”
Jack thought for a moment. “I doubt anybody’s sending. President’s crew is going to stay quiet and in the air until they hear from Point One.”
“Point One doesn’t rely on thinker coordination…” Dandy mused. “But they have links with thinkers, and computers route the com like anywhere else.”
“Evolvons?” I asked.
Dandy waggled his head, not committing himself to any theories. Jack, however, reached up to the roof of the tunnel with long arms, scraped his fingers there, and said, “We’ve put Terrie thinkers back in authority after sweeps. UMS was running its day-to-day with thinkers.”
“Not life support,” I said.
“No, but everything’s coordinated… Computers talk with thinkers, thinkers give computers high-level instructions, even backup systems refer to the system boss… and that’s a thinker. We swept for them and we missed, that’s all.”
“Earth evolvons,” Dandy said. “Why?”
Jack dropped his hand to his side, wiping ice crystals on his pants, and said, “Madam Vice President, where are the Olympians now?”
“Some of your people are protecting them,” I said.
“Of course, but do you know where they are?”
“I assume most of them are at Melas Dorsa. Franklin ’s core group. Some may be at Tharsis Research University with Leander.”
“I need to know some things,” Jack said. “Will you brief me?”
“I’ll try,” I said.
“Let’s find a hidey hole with some insulation. We’ll settle in until Point One tells us what to do… assuming they can. If we don’t hear in several hours, we’ll commandeer a train and move out of here.”
In the dark, the three of us sat in a old branch still lined with foamed rock, marginally warmer than the long tunnels.
I wondered if I could still find my way to the trench dome where I’d first spoken with Charles, where the students had gathered before going Up.
“I have a theory,” Jack began. “But you should tell me some things first.”
“All right,” I said.
“Don’t be hasty, Ma’am,” Dandy said, half-joking. “Check out his clearance.”
Jack nodded sincerely. “That should be first, he’s right,” he said.
I held my slate to his and checked his security clearance by comparison of coded signals. The signals found a locus of agreement. Jack and Dandy were both cleared for top secret, but only on a strict need-to-know basis.
“I think Earth is fapping with our dataflow,” Jack began. “That isn’t good. We’re vulnerable as hell. Our contingency plans call for getting you to a safe location of our choosing. We’ll put together the government at that point by popping up a shielded satcom. Assuming they still have evolvons in most of our thinkers, and the evolvons have polluted the computers as well, Mars is going to be in bad shape. Stations will be cut off except for direct optic links and they’ll be down for a while. Governors won’t be able to report to Many Hills for several days. Techs will have to go in with certified Martian computers and start rearranging dataflow.”
“There will be more fapping,” Dandy said. “You can bet our certified computers will be polluted.”
“Comes from too much reliance on Earth,” Jack said sourly, “Ma’am, what I need to know is, why would Earth do this? Just to screw up our government?”
“No,” I said. “They’d want to deal with a stable government.”
“Have we got something going that would scare them that bad?” Jack asked.
“Yes,” I said, cutting through all my instinctive equivocation. My life probably depended on these two men.
“The Olympians?” Jack asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m just asking because they were put under top security protection a month ago, and I planned the pattern,” Jack said. “Unusual for industrial stuff.”
“Is there any chance this is just a local failure?” I asked, the strain in my voice obvious. My last ray of hope was about to be extinguished.
“No, Ma’am,” Dandy said. “We’d get Point One immediately.”
“Then I’d like to be with the Olympians, and as soon as possible,” I said.
Dandy and Jack considered this in silence. “Ma’am, you undoubtedly have your reasons. But we have to make you available for talks with negotiators representing the aggressor. You will be exposed before the President, in case the aggressors are trying to decapitate Mars. Security for the Olympians assumes they will be killed if the aggressor knows their whereabouts. They’ll be removed from Melas Dorsa as soon as possible, and we don’t know where they’ll be.”
“I need to communicate with them, then.”
“Nobody’s talking with anybody for the next few hours, perhaps longer, if we guess correctly.”
“If it’s that bad, then people are dying,” I said.
Jack nodded. “Yes, Ma’am. Power blackouts, tunnel collapses in the fancier stations, oxydep, recycler failures…”
My neck stiffened with rage beneath the armor. “When will Ti Sandra and I be able to talk?”
Dandy was about to answer when his slate chimed. Coded signals flashed onto the screen.
‘That’s Point One,“ he said. ”Someone’s popped up a mini satcom. Things are happening fast. We’re to get you to a shuttle and take you to Many Hills immediately. You’re to meet with someone who has a message from Earth.“
“I hope you like adventure, Madam Vice President,” Jack said.
“Not this kind,” I said.
“Nor I, Ma’am.”
“What’s your last name, Jack?”
“Name’s Ivan Ivanovitch Vasilkovsky, Ma’am, from Yamaguchi BM in Australe.”
Terror can only last so long before it subsides into numbness and a sour stomach.
A sleek black and red maintenance train engine had been sidelined in the depot roundhouse. We boarded through the engineer’s lock. Dandy checked the computer and found it had been completely deactivated. Together, Dandy and Jack pulled the computer offline so it would not start with powerup, switched the engine to emergency manual override, turned on safety sensors but left lights and beacons off, and took us out of the roundhouse. Dandy took the first watch in the driver’s seat.
I did not want to go to Many Hills, but their arguments were irrefutable. Running unloaded, on a straight trace the engine could push up to four hundred kiphs. The trip would take at least fifteen hours.