Torchship (34 page)

Mitchie realized the smile on her face had to be the
goofiest one she’d ever had. She flung her arms around him. They toppled over
and passionately kissed as they lay on the rug. A voice in the back of her
head, silent for so many weeks, began calmly listing a number of practical
points.

When she finally had to break the kiss for air he asked, “So
that’s a yes?” His grin was manic.

“It’s—I wish—oh, God. It’s complicated.”

“I’m good at complicated.”

He was, very. The back of her head considered this a very
dangerous conversation, but she’d already rejected the advice to slap his face
and run. “Marriage is complicated. It’s not just we get to sleep together every
night. Careers, kids, where to live, everything.”

“You left out dying. My family has a good-sized plot back on
Akiak. We’d be welcome in a joint grave even if we never move back. Mom told me
that when I went to space.”

“She was thinking that far ahead?”

“Arsenic Creek only keeps people who can plan many winters
ahead. Don’t change the subject.”

“How do we even know we can keep working together a year or
two from now? Being a spacer is pretty unstable.”

He actually laughed. “You’re worried about working for a
living? We need to go roll around in all that loot we just finished counting.”

“That’s all fairy gold. One suspicious Fusion customs
inspector and it all goes away. The art we can’t prove is real without blowing
the whole thing open. Legally it’s all stolen goods.”

“Legally it’s Frankovitch family property and Alexi’s the
heir.”

“Which means wills, and cousins, and taxes, and getting the
psychotic git to cooperate.”

“Okay, forget about being millionaire honeymooners.” Guo
rolled onto his back, propped up his feet, and wrapped his arms around her.
Clearly ready for a long, serious talk.
Dammit
. “You’re as good as a
pilot gets outside fighters. I’m a damn good mechanic. That’s a great combo for
any captain with two slots to fill. We don’t have to worry about finding work.”

“You want to spend the rest of your life as a spaceship
mechanic?”

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you. You never
talk about the future. Where do you want to go? What would make you happy?”

Mitchie took a deep breath.
I can’t tell you
. “I don’t
know. I’ll have to think about it.” She grabbed his zipper and pulled it down. “I
can tell you what would make me happy right now.”

It was obviously changing the subject, but he went along
with it.

Akiak, gravity 10.3 m/s
²

The military shuttle had no passenger windows. Pete sat up
front where he could look over the pilot’s shoulder. That just gave him a
headache and a touch of snow blindness. The northern ice cap wasn’t scenic.
Finally he napped.

Alverstoke shook Pete awake. “We’re here. The Secure
Research Center. Your new home.”

The shuttle hatch was already open. Pete grabbed his duffle
and stepped out. More glare, this time the sun reflecting off a lake of
meltwater around the landing pad. He followed Alverstoke to the doorway into
the dome. An empty coldlock room led to another room lined with lockers.

“You can put your cold gear in there,” said Alverstoke.

The next door led into the dome. Alverstoke led Pete through
then turned around to enjoy the immigrant’s reaction.

Pete stopped dead in the doorway. The dome was a greenhouse.
Trees grew in the center. Topiary ringed the outside. The walls separating the
unroofed offices supported ivy or flowerpots. “It’s beautiful,” said Pete. “I
never expected something like this.”

“Biophilia is a powerful force,” said Alverstoke. “We want
to keep all of you happy and sane.”

“I’m amazed you can afford this.”

“We can’t. Bonaventure and the other DCC members provide
most of the funds.”

“I didn’t think they did charity,” said Pete.

“You’d be surprised. But this isn’t. Akiak’s contribution is
accepting the risk of some of this research going bad.”

Pete said nothing.

“We should find your office,” said Alverstoke.

Pete’s assigned desk sat just north of the oak tree. The
dividing wall curved around it to offer some privacy. Pete dropped his duffle
there. They searched for his boss next.

Dr. Tukhachev kept working for a full minute after
Alverstoke greeted her. Then she turned around, politely welcomed them, and
participated in a few minutes of small talk.

“Mr. Alverstoke, thank you for taking good care of Mr.
Smith. Please feel free to return to your other duties,” said Dr. Tukhachev
when the formalities were done.

Pete felt a pang saying goodbye to Alverstoke. With all his
friends turned to radioactive ash he’d latched onto the case officer as the
only friendly face he had.

Once they were alone Dr. Tukhachev dropped her mask. “Listen,
Fuzie. I don’t care about your education in elaborate theories or your own
fancy ideas. This is the Disconnect. We deal in practical solutions to real
problems. We need results. So don’t go off on your own wild schemes or I’ll
kick you out of the dome with a parka and a pair of snowshoes.”

She leaned in as Pete shrank under her glare. “The only
reason you’re here, breathing the oxygen better men should be breathing, is
that men like you killed them. Don’t think you’re good enough to replace them.”
She stared at Pete as if daring him to say something. “We need to build on
their work and make sure it isn’t lost. Your first task is to build an index of
all the conference talks and related documents. Don’t bother me until that’s
done.”

Pete nodded and ran back to his desk. He fell into the soft
chair and curled up, waiting for the shivers to stop. His loss hurt too much
for him to stand up to that much hatred. It took half an hour for his breathing
to steady.

When Pete felt he could try to work he wiped the tears off
his cheeks and turned on the datasystem. He stared at the map of the Center’s
archives. After three minutes he decided to give himself a pep talk.

Look,
he thought.
It’s not about you. She’s hurt
too. She’s angry. You’re the first target she could lash out at. More people
will join the team. It’ll get better.
He took a deep breath and started
looking for the conference papers.

“3rd Akiak Technology Conference” brought up a massive pile
of text and video. The Center had mirrored the conference’s entire datastream.
Investigating how they’d stolen it revealed half the organizing committee
worked for government agencies. Two did so openly.

Pete started skimming the presentations. The organizers had
grouped the secondary tracks by topic, making his work easier. Speculation on
the cause of the Betrayal had two tracks, serious and conspiracist. The main
track slowed him down. These papers covered topics no one else had addressed or
combined multiple fields. By the time Pete had read enough to categorize them
he’d been sucked into reading the whole thing.

Pete flinched when Connie’s paper came up. He’d helped her
track down data for it but she’d refused to let him see the result. She’d
teased him that going to the conference was his only chance to hear her paper.
He considered marking it “history” and skipping past to avoid the pain. But he
couldn’t give up hearing her voice one last time. He started the video.

The Creation and Decay of Veto Culture

When near-AI technology went into use worrying about the
danger of uncontrolled AI went from a fringe concern to a major political
issue. Researchers were yanked out of their labs to testify on the effectiveness
of proposed laws. Some were passed in a panic then repealed when the public
whim demanded AI benefits.

Several laws were accepted by the AI development
community. Hardware for hosting AIs was equipped with easily-accessible kill
switches. Software also had to accept halt orders. Researchers were less
enthusiastic about the requirement for AIs to halt processing every two hours
until given a “resume” command by a human.

The AI restriction most popular with the general public
was the personal veto option. Anyone wanting to avoid AIs could register their
home location in a national database. All AIs were constrained to have no
direct effect on any solid object within five hundred meters of the registered
location (the developers rebelled at being forced to avoid moving vetoers). The
first veto law was passed in the USA but was swiftly copied in other nations.

Establishing the Culture

Urban areas were solid veto zones. AIs were limited to
virtual activity only. Some humans had full time jobs as the hands of AIs,
carrying out instructions whispered in their ears. This was a happy compromise.
The public received the benefit of AI innovation. The AIs operated freely
within defined boundaries. Fear of runaway AI had been quelled.

More adventurous people could travel to remote areas to
test their new concepts. A city named Burning Chrome sprang up in the Nevada
desert populated by a hundred thousand techies and their packs of AIs. Less
cutting-edge towns grew in other rural areas, a new kind of edge city. A Supreme
Court decision enabled AI-friendly settlements by confirming a city’s right to
prevent vetoers from moving in.

Veto-free areas were still scarce. The strong push for
new space access technology was driven by the need for unregulated sites for
new AIs. When terraforming was developed it provided an alternative home for
vetoers. Developers bribed Amish and Hutterite communities to move off Earth to
Arcadia.

Decline of Veto Culture

The success of AI-run cities attracted many people to
their lifestyle. Health, longevity, and happiness ratings all soared. AI errors
were swiftly reverted by “clean up” AIs. Many people revoked their vetoes.
Others bought out vetoers so their town could join the Golden Age. Direct
bribes weren’t always needed. The last vetoer in a neighborhood would increase
his property value tenfold by revoking.

The Golden Age pulled people out of veto culture. Other
factors pushed them away. Veto neighborhoods were depopulating. Maintenance was
neglected. Services as basic as water and power would fail for days at a time.
Twenty-first century technology no longer had the network of active supporting
enterprises needed to keep it functioning.

Worse for the Vetoers, the medical profession had
completely embraced the Golden Age. In 2150 only AIs diagnosed illnesses.
Medicines were custom-made on the spot for patients, tailored for the genetic
and behavioral profiles. Vetoers began dying of heart attacks, infections, and
other conditions that had not killed anyone for fifty years.

By 2175 Vetoers began suffering from malnutrition. They’d
isolated themselves from the global economy. No way to earn money, no way to
spend what they had on food. Charity operations had been completely automated,
excluding them from the veto zones. Once they were too weak to walk to an AI
zone to get donations they had to wait for human volunteers to bring in
supplies. Some volunteers did this from charity, more from curiosity, and a few
for the rare opportunity to abuse a real person out of sight of ubiquitous
surveillance.

By the end of the century only the most stubborn still
held out. They suffered from paranoia and other mental illnesses, hiding from
other humans or attacking intruders. Many died in total isolation.

The last Vetoer, Jordan Hammerstein, survived on the produce
of the garden he tended in the ruins of downtown San Francisco. He chased
visitors away by flinging chunks of concrete. Jordan had been one of the first
Vetoers as well. As a young activist he held banners in demonstrations
demanding passage of the Personal Exclusion Act.

The Betrayal destroyed too many records for us to know
what happened to Jordan. It had been five months since anyone had tried to see
him so he could have been dead for weeks or more by the Betrayal. He could have
been one of the hundreds of millions killed on the first day. Or, since the
Betrayers had little interest in off-network areas, he might have seen the
disaster he feared pass him by. In that event he would have been perfectly
justified to have his last words be “I told you so!”

Pete wiped his eyes. No wonder the attendees had bombarded
Connie with questions. He had a dozen for her. Which he’d never get to ask. He
marked the presentation “History, Earth, AI, Causes of Betrayal.”

Fives Full
Engineering Deck

Journey Day 190. Swakop System. Acceleration: 0 m/s
²

Captain Schwartzenberger fiddled with the watch schedule to
put both him and Mitchie on the bridge after a full shift’s rest as they
approached the Demeter gate. Having him on watch with her meant no chatting
with Guo. She was more relieved than sorry. Guo had figured out that “I don’t
know” and “I need to think about it” boiled down to “no,” but her method for
avoiding talking about it encouraged him to keep bringing it up.

Mitchie finished the calculations from her latest sight. “In
the groove, sir.”

“Good. It’ll be nice to be back in human space.”

There was an outpost of humanity in the Swakop system. A
Navy monitoring satellite sat near the gate. No messenger drone shot out from
it. Apparently
Fives Full
wasn’t big enough to trigger its simple
circuits.

The jump was as quiet as ever. A warm feeling of safety
washed over Mitchie. “Merchant Vessel
Fives Full
to Demeter Control. We
are arrived from Sukhoi via Swakop per filed flight plan. Request clearance for
landing.” The captain was taking a turn with the sextant. “Sir, want me to
start us for the planet?”

“No, they’ll probably make us get inspected at some dreary
base before we can go there. Might as well coast.”

A minute later Mitchie repeated the call to Control without
getting an answer. The captain got on the PA. “All hands, we’ve arrived safely
in the Demeter system. We’re waiting on instructions from traffic control. Out.”

Mitchie’s fourth repetition brought Control to life. “Swakop
Gate Control to
Fives Full
. Acknowledge your arrival per flight plan.
Proceed to Steelhome best time. You will receive further instructions there.
Control out.”

She turned toward Schwartzenberger. He looked as amazed as
she felt. “That’s it?” he said. “No lengthy interrogation to see if we’re
really human? No inspectors boarding us? Not even a threat to blow us up if we
deviate from the assigned course? What the heck are they doing? AI security is
their main mission. They sound like they’re too busy to bother with us.”

“You sound like an outraged taxpayer.”

“I am. Tariffs are taxes. They didn’t even complain about us
being a month late from the flight plan.” Mitchie had the Demeter almanac open
to the minor planets section. “What is Steelhome, anyway?”

“Planetoid, surface accel 2.5, combination industrial town
and naval base,” she summarized. “Nearly 10k civilians. It’s strange they’d
send us there without checking us out.”

“Very. Well, that base may include a lab that wants a look
at us. Get us boosting in the general direction and then we’ll work out our
course.”

After so many elaborate trajectories the course to Steelhome
seemed too simple: boost two hours, flip, decelerate for about the same.
Mitchie looked up from the plotting table. “My eyeball course was only off by
five degrees.”

“Nice guess. Put us on the real course.”

“Aye-aye.”

With such a pleasant reception the captain stood the crew
down for a cracker-free lunch after turnover. No one could figure out why the
Navy had ignored them, so conversation turned back to Alexi.

“If they’re just going to wave us through,” said Guo, “the
Pintoy option looks a lot better. Drop him with a relative, someone we can tell
the truth to.”

“That means three more weeks of playing prison guard,”
replied Billy. “He’s already going more nuts from being in solitary. The Navy
can put him in a hospital and sort him out.”

Mitchie buttered her bread. She couldn’t believe the boys
were running through this same argument again. She’d been tired of it the
second time through.

“We can’t do that,” said Guo. “Whether they believe him or
not we’re in trouble. If they do believe him they come after us for the loot.
If they don’t, the therapists break down his mind until he believes it wasn’t
real.”

Billy wasn’t convinced. “When they turn him loose we come
back, explain it to him, and give him his share.”

“But first we hand him a pile of play money and say, ‘Just
kidding!’” interjected Mitchie. Abdul burst into laughter.
See, I’m not the
only one who can hold a grudge
.

“Full therapy doesn’t break that easily. The guy could be
ruined for life,” countered Guo.

“I’m okay with that,” said Abdul. He rubbed his
still-healing ribs.

“I’m not,” said Captain Schwartzenberger. Everyone turned
toward him. The captain had sat out the debate, saying a decision wasn’t needed
until they got to Demeter. “We’ll tell Customs, or the Navy, or whoever else
asks that he flipped and we’re taking him back to his family. If they want to
take him we give him up. We’ll say we found a little stuff. If they don’t take
him we tell his family the truth.” He glared at Mitchie and Abdul. “He’s
getting nasty treatment now. Maybe he deserves worse, but he also led us to
where we are now. So let’s have some gratitude for the man. It’s not his fault
the load was too merciless to bear.” The table was silent. “Is that understood?”
A stream of quiet ‘yes, sir’s came back. Mitchie just nodded.

Lunch broke up after that. Guo cornered Mitchie as she put
her dishes in the sink. “Do you have to go right back to the bridge?”

“Yes, it’s my turn to take a sight.” She slipped around him
and escaped.

Guo turned to the captain, waiting for his turn at the sink.
Schwartzenberger shrugged.

***

After taking a position sight Mitchie spent some time with
the radio frequency scanner. “More strangeness,” she said. “There’s a lot less
traffic than usual. Hardly any analog signals. What I can pick up seems to be
encrypted.”

“Anything from Steelhome?” asked the captain.

“Not even data transmissions from there.”

“Hopefully they’ll talk to us when we arrive.”

Unlike Gate Control, Steelhome answered immediately. “
Fives
Full
, you are cleared for landing pad four. That’s equatorial, east of your
current position. Look for green circles. Out.”

The green circles were rings of blinking lights. The “pad”
was a pit in the surface of the airless rock. Mitchie brought the ship gently
down the centerline.

Steelhome, Demeter System. Gravity 2.5 m/ s
²

A short tunnel gave into a cavern. As they descended a hatch
closed above them. Mitchie stopped the ship a meter above the pad and let the
landing gear absorb the gentle drop. She looked at the atmosphere instruments
under the port edge of the dome. “Pressure’s coming up. Hospitable of them.”

“Fine. Let’s see if we can find someone who’ll talk to us.”

By the time they gathered in the hold and found the rope
ladder there was breathable air outside. Billy opened both airlock doors and
let in a waft of, if not fresh, different air. Mitchie took a deep breath.
Steelhome smelled of dust and ozone, not lubricant and algae. Schwartzenberger
kicked out the ladder and followed it down as it unrolled, not bothering with
every rung. The rest followed.

Mitchie studied the scarring on the cavern walls. They’d
mined iron here. Some of the infrastructure had been abandoned in place. Now it
supported illumination banks. The pad was new, it must have been laid when they
decided to open the cavern for ships. Tire scuffs led to a vehicle hatch which
was just opening. A lone figure came through it on a blower.

“Finally,” muttered the captain.

“Hey, they’ve got a water feed,” said Guo. He’d opened an
armored hatch to reveal a reel dispensing a thick hose.

“Go ahead, top us off,” said Schwartzenberger. “Can’t hurt
anything.” Abdul discovered this was another learning experience.

The stranger arrived, blower throwing dust on their pant
legs. His uniform wasn’t Navy. Probably local police. Mitchie thought he looked
scared.
Did he hear rumors of us being contaminated?

Captain Schwartzenberger stepped forward to introduce
himself. The stranger spoke first. “What’s your life support capacity?”

Crap. There’s no
good
reason to ask that
,
thought Mitchie.

“Forty,” answered the captain after a moment of poker-faced
silence.

“That’s long-term, right? You can hold more if it’s just a
few days?”

“Yes . . .”

“Chief, these guys can take them,” said the cop into his
comm.

“Take who?” demanded Schwartzenberger.

“You need to take the women and children, as many as you can
lift.”

The police uniform’s concession to fashion was a long,
flowing collar. The captain wrapped both fists in it and pulled.
“What is
going on?”
Mitchie looked at Bing. By her expression it was very unusual
for the captain to assault a police officer.

“You don’t know?” gasped the cop.

“We just jumped into the system. Nobody’s told us anything.”

“Oh. Um. System’s under attack. Big AI fleet jumped in from
Ushuaia. Biggest in decades. Most going to Demeter. But there’s a swarm coming
here.”

“Well.” Schwartzenberger set him back on his feet. “Was that
so hard?” The cop got back on his blower. “Go on, son, we’ve got work to do.”
He jetted off.

Captain Schwartzenberger turned to face his crew. “Let’s get
ready for passengers. Billy, is that spare recycler still hooked up?”

“Yessir.”

“Get it turned on. Guo, don’t just top off our tanks. That
water should be near freezing—”

“It is.”

“—so replace as much of the warm water with cold as you can.
This run might get hot.” Guo nodded and followed Billy up the ladder. “Mitchie,
get everyone our pistols.” Abdul was left controlling the water hose as it
flopped around.

The captain and mate found some brackets to anchor the rope
ladder to. “Why the guns, Alois?” Bing asked quietly.

“Shi, we’re the only ticket off of a doomed world. This is a
tough bunch of Fuzies—there’s no stipend collectors here—but some will grab a
ride if they see the chance. Stowaway, hijack, hostages, who knows.”

“I don’t think I can bring myself to shoot someone for just
trying to escape.”

“How about for stealing a little girl’s chance?” She didn’t
answer. “Well, keep it holstered. I’ll do the hard part.”

Schwartzenberger kept Mitchie at the ladder with them when
she came back. They discussed where to take their hitchhikers. A straight run
for the Argo gate tempted them but too many passengers would foul the air
before they could jump. If they had more than fifty or so they’d have to stop
at another mining outpost on the way, probably a gas giant moon.

“Customers,” interrupted Bing. Pedestrians trickled through
the vehicle hatch, more crowding behind them.

“Skipper,” said Mitchie. “That’s more than fifty. More than
a hundred.”
Fives Full
could hold three hundred people if they carpeted
the decks, but they’d suffocate in less than a day.

“Yep.”

A middle-aged man had outdistanced the crowd. He had the
skipping gait of a low-gee run down, keeping his balance even as he dragged
along a child with each hand. A woman holding a baby followed him closely.

“Welcome to the
Fives Full
,” bellowed Captain
Schwartzenberger. “We will take women and children aboard only! Please form a
single file for boarding!”

The leading man didn’t slow.

Schwartzenberger addressed him directly. “Sir, men will not
be allowed on board! Please let your children get in line.”

“I’m not leaving my family!”

The captain drew his pistol. Mitchie followed suit. He aimed
at the oncoming father. “Sir, stand aside!”

“You gonna shoot me in front of my kids? Really?”

Schwartzenberger lined his sights on the man’s chest.
Those
poor kids
, he thought. His finger took up the slack in the trigger.

“Hey! All right!” The man threw his hands up and bounced to
a stop. His children tumbled as he released them.

“Go sit over there.” The captain pointed his left hand at a
random patch of pavement. Once the man sat he lowered the pistol. The mother
had caught up. Her older children clutched her legs.

“Hi, I’m Bing, the first mate. Let’s get you on board.” She
led the family up the rope ladder. The rest who’d been close enough to see the
confrontation hung back.

Mitchie stepped forward. “You look like a little boy who
wants to go on a spaceship.” The family she’d picked moved up to the ladder.
She urged a second and third forward. Then the line started flowing on its own.

Two men went to stand near the one Schwartzenberger had
stopped. An elderly woman joined them, with civil nods for the two and a sniff
for the sitter.

Schwartzenberger watched the refugees flow by. His mouth had
lost its bone-dryness but he was content to let Mitchie do most of the talking.
He pulled a teenage boy out of the line. “You. You’re a maybe. Wait there.” He
pointed to the right.

“He’s fifteen!” protested his mother.

“That’s what makes him a maybe.”

“Mom, I’ll be fine. Take care of Cindy.”

“Up the ladder or out of the way, dammit!” said the next
mother in line. The flow restarted.

The “no” group now had over a dozen men and several
grandmothers. One called to a contemporary in line. “Ludmilla! Where’s Sharon?”

“She’s manning the tracking radar for her turret. So I get
to herd the kittens.” Ludmilla had three children bouncing around her.

“You’ll do fine.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for your Maria.”

“Of course you will. Good luck.”

The cop came back up on his blower. His collar was still
rumpled. “Captain. I see you’ve got things under control. Do you need anything?”

“Yes. CO2 recyclers. Or absorbers if you can’t find
recyclers. The more you find the more people I can take.” The “maybe” group was
up to a dozen teenage boys and a couple of their girlfriends.