“Where are you?” The mistrust she felt evaporated in a wave of anticipation. Lam had retained enough of himself to keep to their mission. Despite everything, he was lucid and committed. She wanted to ask a million questions. Which breed of sunfish had he found? Was it Tom’s colony? But his next words tempered her excitement.
—They know I’m tailing them. They’ve made two overtures, screeching into the tunnels. I want to respond. In fact, I may have done so already. I’m experiencing skips in my short-term memory.
“I can help you,” she said before she muted her station and turned to O’Neal. “He sounds like he’s inside a fin mountain. Can we triangulate his signals?”
“Not without 021. It’s the only relay close enough to hear him. Even then, the reception is bad. I’m trying to analyze what we have, but the best I can tell you is he’s west or southwest of us, ten kilometers max.”
Vonnie wanted to rely on Lam. Her emotions went beyond her desire to reach the sunfish. She wanted to work together like they’d done in the beginning. She wanted to make him part of their crew again. He could never replace Pärnits and Collinsworth, but he could honor them like he’d honored Bauman, Vonnie, and himself by carrying their first recordings of the sunfish up from the frozen sky.
Why hadn’t he answered?
She reopened her mike and said, “Lam? I have your original mem files. With better signal strength, I can help you restore yourself with corrective sequences.”
—I need to verify your intentions.
“Tell me how.”
—Give me control of Relay 027.
“Ah, shit,” O’Neal whispered. “Don’t do it. He’s playing you. He’s trying to replicate.”
She held her finger to her lips. “Then what?” she asked Lam. “You already have 021 as a firewall. Koebsch won’t let me keep giving away our mecha.”
—027 can crawl free of its position if it moves downward. I’ll bring it closer to me…
“…and that will increase our signal strength,” she said, finishing the thought out loud. “All right. I’m trusting you. Here’s 027.”
—Roger that.
At his response, her mouth curved with a smile. It was such a normal thing to say.
Below the ice, 027 wriggled a few centimeters, then fell into a cramped fissure, tumbling less than a meter before it became stuck again. Relays weren’t designed for brawn or speed. 027 would need hours to dig itself further into the pit, much less to reach an open space and pursue Lam. Could she predict his location from its movements?
“Tell me about the sunfish. Are you following Tom’s tribe?”
—Yes. There are twenty-one of them. Given their pace and their decisiveness, I believe they know where they’re going. We’ve been moving steadily since the assault.
“Where?”
—Unknown. We’re outside any of the areas mapped by the ESA or the FNEE.
“You have FNEE records?”
—Partial records, yes. I’m experiencing skips in my short-term memory.
His behavior was reminiscent of flesh-and-blood people with head trauma or Alzheimer’s disease. He used repetition to conceal his illness. The decay of his core files meant he couldn’t be sure where he’d traveled or what he’d done. He might not even be able to explain his interest in the sunfish.
As an AI, Lam had limited volition. He was an ESA probe designed to study Europa. It was his primary function. He would observe the sunfish even if he didn’t know why.
“Don’t get too close,” she said. “If they attack…”
—I believe it’s been three hours and seventeen minutes since they last set a trap for me. Twice they placed a foursome in hiding. Twice they prepared avalanches. I circumvented both ambushes but tripped one of the rock slides. If those were trials, three out of four may have been a passing grade.
“They were testing you.”
—Yes. After the fourth trap, they began to call into the tunnels. It sounded welcoming.
“Play it back for me. Our database is larger than anything in your mem files, and we have a full day of new analysis. You’re operating on old data.”
—Negative. Our connection will be voice-only until I verify your plans. You tried to kill me.
“Those mecha were Brazilian, not ESA. Lam, you saved my life. I’ve done everything I can to save yours.”
Silence.
“Where are the sunfish now? Can you still hear them?”
—The tribe is one point two kilometers above me. First they went laterally, then downward until they reached liquid water, not the ocean but a fresh water sea suspended in the rock. They swam two point seven kilometers, then reentered the mountain, moving laterally again. More recently, they’ve ascended each time they found routes leading up toward the surface.
“Lam, we’re predicting another aftershock in two minutes. After that, we’ll restart our recovery efforts. I can’t just sit here and talk.”
—I’ll contact you when 027 is ready.
“Listen to me. By tomorrow, I might not be in range. We’re relocating to safer ground.”
—You won’t leave, not with so many mecha entombed in the ice. The larger breed also had a tribe nearby. You’ll search for them. I can lead you to Tom’s group, and there must be fifty dead sunfish in the pit. You’ll stay to dig them out.
“Yes. But it might not be us.”
—Explain.
Vonnie had tapped the group feed. “I’m looking at our orders right now,” she said. “Berlin proposed combining our people with the FNEE. Brazil accepted to make amends. We’ll share their camp and their entrances into the ice.”
—Then I’ll contact you later.
“Lam, I don’t have permission to talk to you. Frerotte established contact on his own, and we’ve hidden this link from Koebsch. Hunting you was the rationale for sending FNEE gun platforms toward Tom’s colony. They wanted to be attacked.”
Silence.
“The bigger atrocity is they’ll never admit they’re wrong. They can’t. They spent too much money. The political shit storm will be even worse. They can’t say it was for nothing, so we’ll extract our mecha and the dead sunfish and then we’ll start the hunt all over again.”
Silence.
“We need to show Earth you’re okay,” she said. “More than that, we need you to talk to the sunfish. Break the language barrier. I know I’m asking a lot, but we’re close. We’re very close. All the pieces are there. We need the sunfish to communicate.”
—I’m experiencing skips in my short-term memory.
“Goddamn it,” she said, trying to rub the exhaustion from her eyes. “If you won’t let me help you, my guess is you have about five days before the FNEE manufacture new gun platforms and go back into the ice.”
47.
Four days passed.
Four long days.
As the ESA rebuilt their camp at the FNEE site, Vonnie, Ash, and Metzler took turns listening for Lam, juggling their other responsibilities so at least one of them was always monitoring the link they’d established. Frerotte couldn’t assist. Koebsch had transferred him from Lander 04 to 05 with Dawson and Gravino, partly to relieve crowding, mostly because Koebsch needed support with data/comm.
Losing Frerotte meant less sleep. It made the search for Lam more demanding. Occasionally they broadcast signals through the ice under the guise of coordinating the sensors and data/comm of the mecha trapped in the pit, but there was no reply.