“And I remember you, Klein, and you’re as disgusting now as you were then.”
He roared laughter. “Feisty, isn’t she? Well, you’re not in command any more, for all your arrogance.” He glared at the ColU. “You. What are you looking at?”
“At the autonomous colonisation unit on which you sit.” The ColU’s cameras pivoted to look at the group’s second unit, which stood at the edge of another potato field. That too had had its dome removed, all its sensors, though its manipulator arms remained. “You acquired a second machine.”
“ ‘Acquired’. Yeah. Good word, that. When we came across another group and we ‘acquired’ them and all their gear. Mostly we acquired the women, of course,” and he cackled laughter, leering at Mardina.
“And what of the units’ AI modules?” the ColU asked.
“Well, we cut them out and dumped them,” Klein said. “When they wouldn’t do what we wanted.”
“We did the same,” Dorothy admitted. “Didn’t you ever think of that?”
“Evidently not,” said Mardina evenly.
“You dumped them,” the ColU said. “Fully sentient, rendered as if limbless and sightless, dumped them in the sand and abandoned them. Unable even to die—”
Mardina said, “I think there have been greater cruelties committed on this planet than that, ColU.”
The ColU rolled away. “I will inspect that machine. And I will make it a personal goal,” it said, receding, “to recover all my lost and wounded brothers. Some day, somehow…”
Klein ignored it. He stared at Yuri, curiously. “Just the two of you, right? We all got dropped in the middle of nowhere. How did you get out?”
“Tell us how you got out.”
Liu answered for him. “It was kind of brutal,” he admitted. “Turns out we were left even further from any other water sources than most of the shuttle groups we’ve heard about.”
“I wonder why,” Mardina said, staring up at Klein.
“China boy’s too squeamish to tell you how it was,” Klein said. “We didn’t have enough water from the start. Then the lake we were stuck by started drying out. Even the little reedy natives cleared off. Some astronaut screwed up, we should never have been dropped there. So we walked out. And you know how we survived?” He licked his lips, staring back at her. “You want to know what your precious ISF astronauts, your marvellous Major McGregor, made us do? We drank the blood of those who weren’t going to make it. That’s how we survived. Quite a story, huh? A story that will be told as long as there are people on Kleinworld. And don’t pretend you’re somehow above all that, China boy. You stained your mouth too.”
Liu looked away.
Mardina said, “Kleinworld? You’ve got to be kidding.”
Delga grinned. “We just call it the Bowl. Because that’s how it feels, doesn’t it? When you look up at that big sun in the sky, never moving. Like you’re stuck at the bottom of a great big bowl, with slippery sides that you can never climb out of.”
“We call it Per Ardua,” Yuri said, and he explained why.
Dorothy Wynn nodded. “I rather like that.”
“ ‘I rather like that’,” Klein snapped mockingly. “Oh, do you? Well, I fucking don’t. Typical smartass stuff from you astronauts—right, Lieutenant Jones? Let me tell you something. You’re a long way from the officers’ lounge now. You’re in my world, whether you call it that or not. I’m the power here. Look around. And I’ll tell you what you’re going to do before—”
With a single smooth movement Mardina pulled a crossbow out of Beth’s bag, raised it, and shot him in the eye. He fell back on his big chair, limbs splayed, mouth open, and was still.
For a moment there was silence, save for the gurgling of Klein’s gut as it shut down. Nobody moved. Then Mardina held up the crossbow, loaded it again, and showed it to Klein’s “officers”.
Delga was the first to react. She laughed. “Wow. How did you—”
“Practice,” Yuri said grimly.
“Practice, yes,” Mardina said. “I’ve had a lot of time for that the last ten years. But I haven’t got time for an asshole like Klein. And I’ve got a daughter to protect. So, that’s that dealt with. Anybody got any objections? No? Good. Let’s get out of here; we’ve got a lot to talk about. By the way—” she looked contemptuously at Liu’s arms, the ribbons, “—you won’t be needing those any more.”
Flanked by Dorothy and Delga, she walked out of the camp, heading upstream.
Yuri and Liu fell in behind her. Yuri was ready for trouble, but Klein’s people seemed stunned. None of them had even gone to the body yet.
“You’ve got a tiger by the tail there, my friend,” Liu murmured to Yuri.
“Tell me about it.”
As they walked back to Delga’s camp, a few flakes of snow started falling from the sky. By the time they got back Beth and the other children were dancing and shouting, excited by the thickening fall.
Chapter 46
The walls, the carpet melted back, to reveal a washed-out blue sky, well-watered grass underfoot. Only their three chairs remained, and Stef wondered how much else of Earthshine’s fancy chamber had been a simulation.
Earthshine remained seated, while Stef and Penny stood and looked around. They were in a graveyard, set in the grounds of a small country church, evidently very old. The graves in their rows were topped by weathered stones, and some by more modern virtual memorials, nodding flowers or dancing figures or scraps of wedding albums or baby photos, sustained by the energies of the generous sunlight.
“We’re not far from Paris,” Earthshine said. “I mean, that’s where the source of this projection is. Once you would have seen the city smog as a smear in the sky, off to the north. Long gone now. The simulation is based on a live feed, incidentally.”
“I recognise this place,” Penny said. “We came here when Dad was buried.”
“I came here alone,” Stef said.
“Whatever. He wanted to be buried beside Mom.”
Earthshine said, “Who in turn was buried beside her own mother. Your grandmother was a Parisian, and so here we are… I am drawn to graveyards, you know. Fascinating, poignant places. The evidence of human mortality, which I do not share—”
“Even though you were once human,” Penny said.
That surprised Stef. “What are you talking about?”
Penny smiled ruefully. “Since we got this summons, while you have been researching me, I’ve been researching our host…”
It was another outcome of the Heroic Generation age, she said. “Earthshine is actually the youngest of the Core AIs. Already his brothers were strong. They were useful for supporting the big post-Jolt projects: global in scope, very long term. But there was concern that the AIs, being non-human after all and running on an entirely different substrate, would not share humanity’s concern for its own well-being, and would pursue different agendas. So a new approach to emulating human-level AI was tried out. Volunteers were sought—or rather, the hyper-rich of the Heroic Generation competed for places—”
“I was a Green Brain experiment,” Earthshine said. “Major Kalinski, I was reverse-engineered as an AI. My name is—was—Robert Braemann. I grew up in North Britain, as it is known now. They opened up my head and modelled the hundred billion neurones, the quadrillion synapses, in a vast software suite that was itself state-of-the-art. It was done by nanoprobes crawling through my skull, multiplying, reporting… I was brought back to consciousness repeatedly, to monitor the process. I, I, felt nothing.”
Stef frowned. “They modelled every organic bit of you, or the essence of you. And you still claim to be you—whoever you were?”