Shi’en returned her gaze calmly, as if she’d been expecting this reaction. “
Titus Andronicus
is a military spacecraft, and she’s not
going anywhere right now.”
“I got that. I want to know why.”
“Because she’s in dock for a major refit.”
“What refit? No one told me.”
“I’m not surprised. This is a Guardian project. We’re upgrading her fire control systems. All of her weapons have to be dismounted. At this moment she’s useless as a warship.”
“How long will the refit take?”
“Agnes, could you calm down a little? A dismount/remount for a battery of laser ordinance and ultra-long-range pulse cannons can’t be hurried. It certainly won’t be finished in time to do anything
about
Caliban.
”
“Can’t you send it out without weapons?” Agnes asked.
“
Titus Andronicus
was built to deal with armed incursions from Earth, not internal security problems. It’s going to take weeks to refit. Anyway, if the stalemate’s still unresolved by the time
Andronicus
is ready to leave dock, you’ll really have problems.”
“Damn it… Yes, you’re right, of course.” Agnes kicked the floor of the shop in irritation, launching herself upward fifty meters. She reversed her trajectory, pushing off from the underside of the next level to float back down in the microgravity; she landed on her feet in front of a holographic projection of a sharply tapered silver cylinder. The ship it represented was three and a half kilometers
long, shaped like a huge tusk.
This was humanity’s first interstellar spacecraft,
Caliban.
The base of the cylinder was encircled by twenty-four chemical boosters. These boosters—burning first methane, then hydrogen—would accelerate the spacecraft to the optimum speed for ignition of its antimatter engines. They would also ensure that the ship was at a safe distance from Titania and its hundred million inhabitants before the ship’s antimatter engines began spewing huge amounts
of radiation.
Titania was at aphelion, the best position for
Caliban
to begin its journey. The problem was simple: the ship was carrying 160,000
tons of stolen antimatter.
“What do you intend to do, Shi’en?”
“Nothing. Wait. See what Aguri does. The antimatter on that ship—and the radiation it will release if it fires its anti-m drive—has
made hostages of Port Shiva and one hundred million people.”
“Is that why you don’t want to use
Titus Andronicus,
even for a
demonstration?”
“I can’t. I wouldn’t even if I could. We don’t solve problems like this with force.
Andronicus
and her sisters were built as symbols of deterrence. Terrans understand such symbols. They were developed to project power, not to use it. Unless there’s no other option. You
have to understand that.”
But Agnes already seemed to have abandoned the idea of trying to put a scare into Aguri. She absently poked a finger into the hologram in the vicinity of the crew quarters. “Has Aguri really
commandeered the ship?”
“You’re a scientist, Agnes. You may not want to accept the situation, but I need you to open your eyes. She’s taken control of
Caliban.
”
Caliban
had been constructed to investigate the source of the anomalous gravity waves, the existence of which had been confirmed by multiple unmanned probes. While a few scientists still insisted that the transmissions were a natural phenomenon, most believed the data proved the existence of an extraterrestrial civilization. Both camps agreed on the need to devote more resources
to observation.
Furthermore,
Shantak II
had just completed observations, unprecedented in scale and detail, of the dwarf galaxy Eingana—observations that confirmed the presence of phase-modulated gravity waves. This added fuel to the arguments favoring stepped-up investigation. It also reinforced the confidence of the team working to develop manned interstellar spacecraft, since the main goal of
such vessels was the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Initially Agnes had managed the program; later Aguri had taken over. Development had proceeded smoothly. Through close team collaboration, it had taken only seven years to complete the prototype
spacecraft instead of the decade or more projected by the plan.
The original plan hadn’t included sending
Caliban
to the stars. Instead, the ship’s design and operating systems would be tested in visits to the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. Such distances were great enough for shakedown voyages, but not too great for high-speed
rescue craft if problems were encountered.
Caliban
’s operating trials were set to continue for five years. After that, construction would begin on additional spacecraft, and after another five years, a manned interstellar probe would depart for the stars every year. The first data was expected to reach the solar
system around the year 2200.
Evidently Aguri hadn’t been willing to wait ten years for the first spacecraft to launch. In theory,
Caliban
was fully capable of interstellar travel; however, because of the project plan it hadn’t
been fueled to capacity with antimatter.
Aguri’s reaction to the cautious rollout plan was vehement. “We have the ship and all the fuel she needs. The only problem is our lack of will! The evidence is staring us in the face. An extraterrestrial
civilization is sending out signals. What are we waiting for?”
But she had forgotten one reality: AADD encompassed a wide range of outlooks and values. Older steering committee members understood the importance of manned interstellar exploration, but they saw Earth as an unfriendly presence—the incidents on
Shantak II
had only served to confirm that—and were more concerned with
husbanding resources for possible conflict with Earth.
The younger generation of AADD officers didn’t see Earth as a significant threat. For them, the search for nonhuman civilizations was far more important and any surplus resources should be funneled into those efforts. The generations talked past each other—and Dr. Agnes was with the older members. The last time they’d met, Aguri had listened impassively to Agnes’s arguments against plunging ahead without further preparation. Now Agnes sensed that her urgings had probably struck the younger woman as betrayal,
though on the surface Aguri had seemed to accept them.
But Aguri had hacked into AADD’s Distribution Management System and arranged for stockpiled antimatter to be transferred to
Caliban
under false pretenses. She and a crew of like-minded confederates had been just hours from launching
Caliban
toward the source of the transmissions when the Guardians had discovered her intrusion. The entire interstellar exploration project had been frozen, Aguri’s crew summarily dissolved.
Why couldn’t she wait ten years? This was a mystery to Agnes, but with 160,000 tons of antimatter in orbit around Titania, it was
a mystery of decidedly secondary importance.
Agnes had been staggered to learn of Aguri’s crime. When she discovered that Aguri had seized
Caliban
—and threatened to fire its antimatter engines if the Guardians attempted to board—she
had been overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness.
For her part, Shi’en was mystified to discover this side of Agnes. Back when Agnes first assumed her place on AADD’s highest steering committee, relations with Earth had entered an extremely difficult and dangerous phase. AADD’s growth and culture were perceived by the Terrans as threats to their societal norms. Even when the Terrans had begun to assemble an armada, threatening to seize the artificial accretion disk by force, Agnes’s calm hadn’t wavered. Why would she be seized by panic at the rebellion of a
mere student?
Shi’en knew that Aguri was one of the few people in the solar system who really understood Agnes—and that this understanding was mutual. Shi’en knew, too, that the steely personalities of these two women had also been responsible for much misunderstanding, both between themselves and with others. In a sense, both women had wasted a good portion of their lives correcting the mistaken impressions of others, impressions they themselves had been responsible for creating. That made it all the more important for each
woman to have the other, to have someone who was family.
For Agnes and Aguri, trust didn’t mean licking each other’s wounds. Understanding might mean acceptance, but neither of them would ever allow self or other to become dependent. Although they held each other to standards that sometimes left scars, their shared bond of trust was too deep for mere pain to cause either to run away. That confidence was probably the reason their relationship
had endured for so many years.
But Shi’en had always walked alone, and she frankly didn’t understand why it was necessary for two people with such grounds for conflict to sustain a relationship. If mutual wounding was a prerequisite for building deep trust—and mutual dependence was ruled out—then why not choose rejection? Not, of course, that it
made any difference to her.
Still, it seemed to Shi’en that ultimately this mutual understanding had proven a mirage. Although Dr. Agnes and Aguri knew far more about artificial intelligence than the average scientist, Shi’en had a hunch that both of them found two-way empathy with another individual an especially difficult challenge. Such minds might do
better to seek trust from an AI.
But perhaps their tragedy was that they expected understanding from another person—a person as close to family as anyone they’d ever had. And now Agnes was panicking in a way Shi’en
had never seen.
“She’s still ignoring our attempts to contact her. That’s not all.” Shi’en shook her head and webbed her agent program’s latest data
to Agnes.
“What is this? She’s erased her personal data from the network!”
“Are you really surprised? You hacked the system once yourself. If Aguri can slip a hundred and sixty kilotons of antimatter past us,
purging her system data wouldn’t be much of a challenge.”
“How can you be so calm about this, Shi’en?”
“Getting excited doesn’t generate results. If Aguri has demands, she’ll make them. Then again, she may not have any.”
“What does that mean?”
“Maybe she already has what she wants. If so, she’s no threat to us, at least as long as we don’t interfere. Port Shiva is in no danger.”
“You mean…?”
“Aguri isn’t holed up on
Caliban.
She’s preparing for departure. The ship’s configured to be pilotable by a single individual if necessary. Aguri was the chief system designer. If anyone can do it, she
can, even without universal network support.”
“But it will take her fifteen years to reach her destination. How can she… Oh, this is just absurd!”
“Agnes, listen to me. Twenty-six years ago, when Shiran captured me, she gave me two choices: join the Guardians on the spot or try to make it back to Kobe City alone on foot—ten days in the desert with no survival gear and barely any supplies. I’d already decided to join her, but I wasn’t going to do it her way. She had to see that I was choosing the Guardians my way. Sometimes how you face life is more important than life itself. Now Aguri is facing the same decision—and she has more than enough provisions for the trip.”
That was when it happened. Shi’en’s last few words were drowned out by the roar of rocket boosters. Aguri had made her decision. In a moment,
Caliban
became a fiery beacon against the blackness of space, then a bright but dwindling star. Agnes stared in disbelief. The spacecraft was already invisible to the naked eye, but the monitor showed twenty-four boosters falling symmetrically away, like flower petals. Finally,
Caliban
’s eighteen AE-20 antimatter
engines roared to life.
Even at this distance, Titania was directly in the path of the radiation stream. But Port Shiva faced away from
Caliban
now,
and the bulk of the planet acted as its shield.
“So she escaped from the solar system,” Agnes said. “No, she escaped from me.” Agnes felt overwhelmed by the loss. “I don’t
know what she could have done to reject me more absolutely.”
“You underestimate her, Agnes. Aguri is Shiran’s daughter, your disciple. Look at what she’s become. She’s not escaping anything.
She’s just gone ahead of you.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“
Caliban
is a prototype. Aguri may travel to the stars, but I doubt she can make it all the way back on her own—unless more ships are built to follow her. Now she’s made certain that will happen. New spacecraft will have to be designed, plus the infrastructure to
support them.”
“Shi’en, were you expecting this? The distribution system…
How did Aguri…?”
“You want to know the truth? Ask her yourself. You were the first to carry the search for unknown life to the stars. Or have you
forgotten?”