Aguri Kanda was Shiran’s daughter. Soon she would be five years old. The little girl and her rangy Guardian bodyguard made a strange pair.
“Guardians take vacations too, you know,” said Shi’en. “Commander Kanda came to Uranus for sightseeing. She wanted her daughter to see the accretion disk. It’s by far the biggest thing we’ve ever built, as big as Mars.”
“All right—but why are
you
here?”
“The commander wants to enjoy some of the sights on her own, but she can’t unless someone looks after Aguri.”
“Maybe her ‘vacation’ with her daughter is just cover for a top-secret investigation with her trusted subordinate?”
“What kind of investigation?”
“How should I know? It’s top secret.”
“Listen, we didn’t come all the way to Uranus for any secret
investigation. I’m just here to babysit the kid,” said Shi’en.
“It’s just that a badass ninja riding shotgun for a four-year-old
makes less sense than a secret investigation.”
“Children should be protected. They’re not like adults.”
“So you thought I was a child at seventeen?” Agnes said.
“I thought you were an adult at sixteen.”
Shi’en had caught the reference a little too quickly. Agnes hadn’t really meant to dig up the past. It had been six years since Shi’en’s failed attempt to assassinate Agnes. Since then, Agnes had faced danger and brushes with death several times in space. The incident with Shi’en was over and done with as far as she was concerned.
But Shi’en didn’t see it that way. Since joining AADD, she had also faced many dangers, far more than Agnes. Still, she had never
been able to put the assassination attempt behind her.
On the whole, the relationship between the two women was positive, but Agnes would hesitate to call it equal. “I’m sorry,” she
said. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Don’t apologize. Sometimes you do things you can’t go back and change, that’s all. It’s in my nature to let things go, like water under the bridge. But I don’t think people should forget who they are.”
“You’re pretty hard on yourself.”
“I’m an adult.”
“Sorry about that.”
Aguri stared out the window at the work proceeding on
Richard III,
oblivious to their conversation. Not that she was so interested in the ship itself. Anything taking place in zero gravity seemed to
enchant her.
Christening humanity’s first unmanned interstellar probe
Richard III
might have seemed somewhat inauspicious, but the use of names from Shakespeare’s plays was an established tradition for Uranus. Unfortunately, most of the names with positive associations had already been taken, leaving only villains and tragic figures. More obscure names like Cecily Neville were suitable for orbital platforms, but an interstellar probe deserved something memorable.
Richard III
certainly met that requirement. This was another reason why the platform where the probe was under construction had been named Cecily Neville: Cecily Neville, the fifteenth-century Duchess of
York, had been Richard III’s mother.
The probe’s design was straightforward, although it looked more like a cargo shipment than a spacecraft. A cluster of fuel tanks, a powerful main engine using matter-antimatter annihilation for propulsion, the engine’s heat sink, and a bulky nose shield designed to protect the probe from interstellar dust—functional beauty it might have, but compared with the refined designs of interplanetary spacecraft,
Richard III
looked more like a warrior preparing to face the battlefield. This was no accident. In the wastes of interstellar
space, the probe would be beyond human help or intervention.
“Listen,” said Shi’en. “You’re not bitter about the way we handled
your case five years ago, are you?”
“Why not use the correct term? ‘Criminal activity,’ maybe?”
“All right. How’s this: are you still bitter about the measures we
took after your criminal activity five years ago?”
“Did you travel all the way here to pick a fight with me?”
“I told you, we’re here for sightseeing.”
“There’s another possibility,” Agnes said. “Let’s see… Dr. Agnes is running the interstellar probe project, so she might be plotting more criminal activity. Maybe we’d better get out there and investigate her. Does that sound familiar? This project gives me access
to tons of antimatter.”
“Why should you still be under suspicion for a childish prank committed five years ago? Children deserve protection, as I just told you. In fact, the commander is grateful for what you did.”
“Grateful? I have a hard time believing that.”
“You created a phony research project and tried to procure supplies for it. Thanks to you, security for the Distribution Management System and the Sol System Universal Network was redesigned from the ground up. It’s far more reliable now. At least no one’s hacked
into it since you managed to. We’ve plugged the holes.”
“Meaning there’s no one more dangerous to you than me.”
“For you to be a threat you’d need capacity and intent. You’ve got the capacity to commit a crime but not the intent. Therefore you’re not a threat. Your involvement in this project proves it,” said Shi’en.
“How can you be sure I’ve given up on that experiment?”
“I’m not. All I need to be sure of is that you’ve given up breaking the law. You’ve changed since then. You’re an adult. Right?”
“I’m an adult. But I haven’t changed.”
Shi’en floated over to where Aguri peered out the window, fascinated by the views of Titania. Shi’en wasn’t cutting the conversation short; rather, she wanted to explain to Aguri what she was seeing.
Agnes reluctantly joined them.
Cecily Neville was just passing over Port Shiva. Five years ago, only one percent of the fifteen-hundred-kilometer gorge had been occupied. Now the AAD was fully operational and Port Shiva
sprawled across ten percent of the gorge’s length.
The Old City, as the earliest sections were called, had been given over to forest. Trees had been allowed to grow without culling and the resultant natural forest had become an attraction for the inhabitants. In the newer districts of the city, genetically modified dawn redwoods had been planted at regular intervals. The trees were thriving; in a few decades they would be big enough to support
habitat platforms.
“Haven’t you seen trees before?” Agnes asked the little girl. In zero gravity she could easily position herself at Aguri’s level. “There
are forests on Mars.”
“But on Mars trees don’t go underneath me,” said Aguri. She was riveted by the fascinating sights flowing past. Beyond Port Shiva and the gorge, Titania was blanketed with devices for relaying energy from Kali to the rest of the solar system. This offered a very
different view from anything one could see on Mars.
When Kali became a satellite of Uranus, its moons were inevitably affected. The greatest impact fell on Uranus’s largest moon, Titania.
Kali’s orbital insertion was the culmination of two decades of effort. For the first time, humanity had altered the orbit of a celestial body with significant mass. Efforts to change the orbit of the next object—Titania—began immediately. Its distance to Uranus was around 436,000 kilometers. Kali, with a mass close to that of Mars, orbited Uranus at only 550,000 kilometers. Naturally Titania’s orbit
would be greatly perturbed by proximity to such a large body.
Kali’s influence threw Titania out of its original orbit and into an elliptical one beyond Oberon, one with a perihelion of 660,000 kilometers and an aphelion of 30,000,000 kilometers. But for Titania to act as a relay station for energy transmission throughout the solar system, this orbit needed further adjustment. Gigantic propulsion devices were built along its equator. Every time Titania reached aphelion the devices would fire, using Kali’s energy to gradually nudge the moon into a circular orbit thirty million kilometers from Uranus. This orbital adjustment had been in progress for several years.
“Are you saying you haven’t given up on that experiment with Kali after all?” Shi’en continued looking down at the surface. “That
probe is going to the stars, not into a black hole.”
“Ever heard the expression ‘kill the rider by shooting the horse’? One of this project’s main goals is to search for extraterrestrial life. That’s why we’re not going to just fly by different planetary systems. We’re going to slow down, stop, and investigate thoroughly. That’s
why I need so much antimatter.”
“Wouldn’t flybys be technically simpler?”
“Of course. But to spend nearly a decade getting somewhere just to have a few hours for observation isn’t good enough for this mission,” Agnes said. “By carrying enough fuel to decelerate, we can observe continuously over several years. If we run into problems, we can still do flybys.”
“Still… the nearest system is Alpha Centauri, and that’s a triple system. Proxima Centauri has planets, but it’s a flare star. I doubt
life could survive under those conditions.”
“You know me—I’m convinced there might be life in the most
unlikely places.”
“I knew you lacked common sense even before you ran that experiment with Kali. Still, if the hypothesis you told me about five years ago is correct, this probe might be a way to verify it. Seems
like a very slow way, though.”
“Of course, we may not find life, not even life outside our theories of what life is. But even finding nothing would tell us something valuable. The search for life doesn’t have to have positive results to be worthwhile. I can’t ignore the nearest star if that’s the fastest way to test the probe’s capabilities,” Agnes said.
“I see. Well, that makes sense.”
“Now are you convinced that I’m not plotting anything?”
“Pretty touchy, aren’t we? I already told you why we’re here.”
Shi’en noticed that Aguri had drifted over to a different spot along the window. From there she could see the entire length of
Richard III.
“Why doesn’t that ship have windows?” Aguri asked Agnes.
“Because nobody’s going to ride in it.” Agnes floated down to Aguri’s level again. The little girl’s eyes widened in surprise. She
pointed to the probe accusingly.
“Nobody rides in it? How can it go without people?”
“It has an advanced AI… The ship can think, just like you.
That’s why it can go all by itself.”
“Won’t it be lonely with no people?”
“No, it’ll be fine. It’s going to look for friends who understand
what it wants.”
By the time Aguri would be old enough to understand Agnes’s real meaning—to understand the concept of extraterrestrial civilizations and intelligent nonhuman entities—the probe would be making its first transmissions from a distant star. Agnes gazed at the little girl, lost in thought. The time required to reach even the closest stars was a significant fraction of the human life span. What
could Agnes accomplish in the time left to her?
Agnes and Aguri gazed down at
Richard III.
Shi’en wordlessly activated her agent. “Professor? White. Just as I expected… Nothing suspicious on your end? I’m not surprised. This probe is what it appears to be. I don’t think this investigation is worth more of our time. You’ll be heading back, then? Yes, that’s a good idea. I can be ready immediately… What? What do you mean, look after Aguri? Why should we stay another week? No, that’s not what I’d
call a special vacation. Professor? Professor!”
Shi’en’s agent signaled that the call had been terminated. Shiran’s trust in Shi’en must have been boundless. Either that or Shiran
didn’t care much about her daughter.
Shi’en had served under Shiran Kanda for five years without ever quite figuring out what sort of person her boss was. As soon as she thought she understood, Shiran pulled something off the wall—like this. Someone else might assume this meant Shiran trusted her. But Shi’en knew the truth. Shiran would simply never accept that Shi’en—or anyone else who worked for her—was an outsider. From
the moment you met Shiran, you were an insider in her eyes.
“Auntie!” Aguri sailed toward Shi’en, heedless of her own inertia. Shi’en caught her carefully, as if the girl were an egg that might
break. “Momma told me to stay and play with you.”
Parents often gave their toddlers small webs that could be worn on the wrist. It seemed that Shiran had also given her daughter her own agent program. It would let Shiran stay in touch with Aguri
even when Shiran was sleeping.
“Amazing. The badass is also ‘Auntie’?” marveled Agnes.
“Mm-hmm. Momma said she likes to be called that,” the girl
said.
“I guess children really are innocent. Right, Shi’en?”