And beyond that, set in the ground, that open Hatch.
Stef faced the support unit. “Earthshine. Are you in there?”
“You took your time.”
The voice sounded as authentic as ever, but there was still no sign of a virtual human body, any of his “suits” as he’d once called them, Stef recalled.
Mardina said, “Hello, Great-grandfather. We did come as fast as we could. Given that you abandoned us in the first place…”
“Mardina, I can see you, even if I’m not much to look at. Come closer, child… My word. You’re pregnant!”
Mardina blushed.
“The dynasty continues,” Stef said drily.
“If only for now. Who is the father?”
“Chu Yuen,” said the ColU, speaking from the slate at Mardina’s neck—and, perhaps, directly to Earthshine by other means, Stef thought. “You recall, the slave from the Rome-Xin Culture who is my bearer. An intelligent boy, evidently of good stock, even if he did fall on hard times.”
“A good father, then. I look forward to getting to know him better. And I already know you too well, ColU.”
“I told you on Mars—on that other Mars—that I would hunt you down, wherever you fled.”
“And so you have. Well done. Perhaps you will do me the courtesy of listening to what I have discovered here…”
Stef was starting to feel dizzy. “I’m too hot, damn it, after months of being too cold.” She began to pull ineffectually at her outer coat.
At a call from Mardina, Beth and Chu hurried over with blankets from the cart, and heaped them up on the rocky ground. Beth helped Stef remove a few layers of clothing, and Chu handed her a canteen of water, brought in from outside—icy, but refreshing—and they sat her down on the blankets. Beth and Mardina sat with her, and soon Stef felt a lot more human. She refused food, however. “If I never eat another mouthful of freeze-dried potato, I won’t be sorry.”
Earthshine said, “I of course need no food of that sort. But since the arrival of the others, one of my fabricators has been devoted to manufacturing human-suitable food from the raw materials of the environment—broken-up rock, organics filtered from the ice.”
The others. It was the first time he had mentioned Ari and Inguill, even tangentially.
“A fabricator.” Mardina frowned. “What’s that?”
“Advanced technology from our own timeline,” the ColU said. “A device that can take apart matter at the molecular level, or even below, and assemble it into—well, whatever you desire. It’s slow but effective. My own physical frame once contained such machines. Once Earthshine and his two brothers, artificial intellects as powerful as him, lurked in holes in the ground, on Earth. And they were surrounded by fabricators and other gadgets, like miniature factories, that used the raw materials of the planet to supply them with all they needed—materials for maintenance, energy.”
Earthshine said, “I carried such gadgets with me in this support module. Now, here, I have broken them out and have put them to work. Everything you see here, the dome, this framework around me, has been manufactured from local materials, the rocks, the ice. Over on the far side of the dome I have created a pond, a body of standing water, to refresh the air. As for energy, though I have an internal store of my own, I have plumbed the planet itself for its inner heat. Manufactured drills to penetrate the surface rock layers…”
Stef asked, “Why did you build all this?”
“I came here because of the Hatch, Stef. To study it, and its makers. That’s why we were brought to this planet in the first place, to this epoch—what other reason could there be? That’s what I’ve been doing since I got here, primarily. But I always expected you, some of you at least, to follow. So I prepared this habitat.”
“Generous of you—”
“Although I did not expect those others to be the first of the group to come here.”
Mardina pushed herself to her feet. “‘Those others.’ You mean my father and the Inca woman, don’t you? You keep hinting they’re here, but I don’t see them. Well, there’s only one place they can be.” She set off toward the open Hatch.
Beth called, “Be careful, Mardina.”
But Mardina didn’t slow her pace.
Stef said now, “This frame you’ve put up around yourself, Earthshine. You’ve rooted yourself into the ground. Is this part of your thermal energy mine?”
“Oh, no,” he said now. “You’ll see that outside—a few panels flush to the ground, deep bores beneath. All this is to achieve a more intimate kind of contact.”
Beth asked, “Contact with who?”
“The Dreamers,” the ColU said suddenly. “You’re trying to talk to the Dreamers, aren’t you?”
“This ancient world is infested with them,” Earthshine said. “Well, I imagine it always was. ColU, it is as if I have dropped an antenna into a brain. And I think—”
“Yes?” The ColU sounded breathless, eager.
“I think I hear their thoughts…”
And Stef Kalinski heard a gunshot.
70
Mardina, who had been approaching the open Hatch, threw herself down on the ground.
Chu and Titus were with her faster than Stef would have believed possible. Sprawling, they grabbed Mardina by the arms, slithered back along the ground, and delivered her to Stef and Beth. Beth took her pregnant daughter in her arms.
To Stef, Mardina looked shocked, furious.
“I’m not hurt, Mother. Really, I’m not. I heard the shot—I thought I saw something fly past me—I dropped to the ground—I guess it was a warning shot. I can’t believe he did it. My father.”
Beth stroked her head. “Frankly, love, you and I always meant less to Ari than his ambition.”
“I’ll give them a warning shot,” Titus yelled. With gladio in his good hand, he approached the pit. Chu, too, followed the legionary, a dagger in his hand, looking coldly furious. It was after all his lover and the mother of his baby who had been shot at. That quiet intensity seemed to have burned away the last of his slavish deference, Stef thought.
Titus called, “You, Inguill, quipucamayoc! Ari the druidh!”
“Come no closer, legionary!” It was undoubtedly Ari’s voice, Stef could hear, though it sounded strained, weak. “We are protecting our property… We have rights of priority that…” He broke up in coughing.
“Wait, legionary,” Stef called. “Let’s see if we can talk our way out of this.”
“Talk? Ha! And who in Hades gave them a ballista?”
“It was manufactured here,” Earthshine said. “Using a fabricator. I was naive—I showed them how to operate the fabricator with voice commands. It uses an electrical charge to drive a projectile of—”
“And who fires a ballista in a dome like this?”
“The dome material is self-sealing,” Earthshine said, still more softly. “In that regard at least we are secure. Besides, the outside air is breathable, if cold. We are in no danger.”
Stef got stiffly to her feet. “I don’t understand any of this. What property do they think they own? What do they mean by priority?” She draped a blanket over her shoulders and began to shuffle toward the pit.
“Stef Kalinski,” Titus said, “stay back!”