Sunward, page 6
“Are you okay?” The assassin actually sounded concerned.
I almost laughed. “Fine, thanks. Local muscle started a fight. I finished it.”
“Does that sort of thing happen often to the Lunar royal family? Your home has a more peaceful reputation.”
“We’re not royals,” I insisted, “and the muscle didn’t really know who I was. They did know the name Michael Kuneo, though. Your commission to hunt me down might not be as exclusive as you thought.”
Silence. I drifted back toward the brig. Daris looked like she had turned into stone.
“They were amateurs,” I told her, which was petty of me. I wanted to poke her professional pride with a stick. “That’s a direct violation of guild law and custom, right? I don’t suppose it would nullify the whole commission?”
“No,” the assassin said. “Not quite.”
I shrugged and kept moving.
“Sorry for your loss,” Daris called after me.
“Which loss?” I called back. “Lots of people died when the docks collapsed. Some of them were colleagues.”
“My condolences, but I was referring to the loss of your copilot over there.”
I mistimed a landing and hit my head against the door to the engine room.
“Careful,” the assassin said.
My head hurt. I ignored it while floating slowly back to the brig. “My copilot is not dead.”
“Never alive, you mean?”
“No,” I said. “That is absolutely not what I mean.”
“My apologies,” Daris said. “Lots of people categorize bots as nonliving entities.”
“She’s alive.”
“Glad to hear it. How old is she?”
I didn’t want to say. “Seven months.”
“And that seven-month-old disabled my ship by splitting herself into pieces?”
“Yes,” I said. “She did.”
Daris’s voice softened. “Juvenile bots don’t recover from something like that.”
My own voice was brittle and cold. “You did this to her.”
“No,” Daris said. “She did this to herself while outmaneuvering me, for which she has my lasting admiration. What’s her name?”
“Agatha Panza von Sparkles.”
“That,” Daris said, “is an amazing name.”
“She chose it herself.”
“I assumed.” The assassin floated closer to the door glass. “Will you tell me about her?”
I moved farther away. “No.”
“It might help.”
“What are you doing?” I demanded. “Right now. In this conversation. What are you hoping to accomplish with this show of concern?”
She straightened, almost standing to attention while floating. “You are the pilot and captain of the ship that I remain imprisoned aboard—”
“Which was your idea.”
“—which means that your well-being overlaps with my own.”
“Even though your current assignment calls for the termination of my well-being,” I pointed out.
“Correct,” she said.
“Nice talking to you.” I floated back to the piloting chair.
* * *
“Hey, Sparkles,” I whispered to my imaginary friend. “I’ve got a puzzle for you.”
I like puzzles, she said.
“I know you do. Now listen. Petasus Station isn’t expecting us, and we don’t want to transmit anything about our imminent arrival.”
Why not?
“Guess.”
Because all transmissions are public.
“Exactly.”
Even distress calls?
“Especially distress calls. So far we’ve been hunted by first-class assassins and guildless mushroom lumberjacks, so we really shouldn’t broadcast our tags and docking requests to the whole system. Malicious persons might be trolling the stream for any mention of our whereabouts.”
We could pretend that our ansible is down and flash SOS with our lights. Then the station might let us dock without having to identify ourselves first.
“They might, but the SOS trick is the sort of thing that pirates often try. Plus the Hat would still broadcast at us, even if we keep silent. ‘Unidentified courier vessel on approach to Petasus Station, you are cleared for emergency docking.’ That would hit the stream. If someone happened to know when we left Luna, and checked the math to see how long it would take to reach Mercury, then they could easily figure out that the unidentified vessel is us.”
Do you know anyone at Petasus Station? Sparkles asked.
I grinned, because that was the right question. “Yes.”
Who?
“Torque. He’s a bot. I raised him up. The two of us flew together during his first full year of consciousness. Then he transferred his bond to the Hat.”
Is there any way to pass a secret note to Torque?
“Maybe.”
* * *
I promised myself that I would never foster another baby bot after Damian and Cosmas. Then I visited the Makers anyway, and left with Torque. He was a quiet kid, at least initially. He set language aside and focused his full attention on building model ships from printed kits. Once, I inhaled a floating, broken piece of model and almost hacked up a lung, but it was worth it to see how quickly his confidence and fine motor control grew stronger.
Torque’s favorite bedtime stories were archaic NASA transcripts. Neither one of us could parse the jargon, but both of us loved the sound of it. Whopseedoo, we picked up an S-band. Quad Bravo, yes. Both the primary and secondary talkbacks went barber pole. “Whopseedoo” was his first word.
The small fabricator that I kept aboard the Needle could print out solid objects, disposable clothes, and model kits with some additional assembly required. I used it now to design and print a tiny messenger composed of gears and springs.
Cute, Sparkles said. What’s his name?
“Whopseedoo.” I stuck the little guy inside a pouch of impact-absorbing goop and plopped him into the railgun.
My guild’s manual of operations expressly forbids the physical transmission of messages via railgun. Every manual, from every kind of guild and organization, is an archeological record of previous mistakes; this means that some unnamed courier in the distant past once made a catastrophic error with a railgun, thereby inspiring an official prohibition against ever attempting any such thing. I’m a pretty good shot, though. Probably better than that hapless colleague.
First I put on my resplendent hat for luck. Then I turned Needle a full one hundred and eighty degrees to decelerate, because the shield of printed diamond that protected us from incoming pebbles also kept us from launching anything.
The magnetic railgun would have erased any sophisticated encoding, but Whopseedoo was made out of actual clockwork. He just needed to be wound up. When the goop-pouch struck the station, he would (hopefully) slow down enough to make contact with the station’s hull without punching right through it, and then tap out a simple message in binary: TO TORQUE FROM TOVA LIR. WHOPSEEDOO! RUNNING SILENT. SAFE HARBOR REQUESTED. RESPOND VIA DOCKING LIGHTS. The station’s operating system should notice and pass that message along—unless they took offense at being shot at.
Proximity to Sol made aiming difficult. I fiddled with light filters, reduced the glare, and took aim at a part of the station that appeared to be very well shielded. Then I shot Whopseedoo across the void.
Do you think it worked? Sparkles asked.
“I don’t know yet,” I told her. “Patience.”
What happens if it doesn’t work?
“We’ll think of something else.”
Can we use radio waves to send another message?
“Definitely not. Ansibles on the station would overhear and upload whatever we say to the commons as an automatic public service. We need to stay out of the public ear.”
Petasus really was shaped like a hat. The outer brim rotated to generate a modest amount of gravity. The central dome protected docked ships from constant exposure to punishing sunlight.
A beacon inside that dome switched from solid white to flashing green.
“Ha!” I shouted, triumphant. “Talkbacks went barber pole!”
What does that mean? Sparkles asked.
“No idea.” I spun up the Needle’s engine. “Now, we’ll need to be careful when we arrive. Petasus is a research station, mostly, but it’s also a pilgrimage site for sun worshippers.”
Why?
“Because this is the farthest point downwell that anyone can reach without roasting.”
Mercury was a messenger god, and you also carry messages across the heavens. That makes this a pilgrimage site for you, too.
“Except I don’t worship him. I don’t burn offerings of ox entrails in his name. I don’t really believe in him.”
You don’t need to, Sparkles said. Mercury is still your patron god. Every letter you deliver is an offering.
“I’m pretty sure that belief is part of the deal.”
Do you really believe that you’re talking to me right now?
“Shush.”
* * *
Torque waited for me behind the dockside service hatch where I stealthily tethered the Needle. It was strange to see him sporting a full-sized chassis, but I still recognized the little bot who used to build model ships. He carried himself the same way that he always had.
“Hi,” I said. “You’ve grown.”
“Hi,” he said. “You look the same, but something must be different. You’re way off course for Phoebe. Trouble?”
“Lots,” I said. “Are you… the only bot on board?”
Is Cosmas here? I thought, but didn’t say. Please let him be here. He might need my help, and I desperately need his.
“I’m the only one,” Torque said, “excepting the Hat themself.”
“Ah. Of course.” The station OS was a conscious entity in their own right. “Hello, Hat. Thank you for your hospitality. I apologize for my unorthodox calling card.”
Ambient light shifted color in acknowledgment.
“Forgiven,” Torque translated. “The Hat isn’t much of a conversationalist, but they would also like to say that your own hat is impressive.”
I’d forgotten that I still had it on. “Thanks. This was a gift and a message. I think. I hope. Come inside and I’ll try to explain.”
* * *
It was strange to see Torque on board the Needle again—this time with limbs even ganglier than the ones he’d used when he left. He glanced at a framed picture of Thaddeus, myself, and both of our moms at the Borealis shore. Mama Dee stood over baby Thad while he splashed around in the algae-glow. I was leaning up against Mama CJ.
Torque moved on from the familiar photo and brushed his hand against the dented storage locker where Damian had ricocheted. Then he paused to admire the locker door. “What’s this?”
“Art,” I said. “Isosceles called it The Background Hum of the Universe Rendered in Abstract Shapes.”
“Those shapes look like boots,” Torque said.
“I know. They really liked drawing boots.”
He pointed to a less precise but more expressive rendering of an iguana. “And this?”
“That’s Ferdinand. Agatha—” My voice stumbled over her name. I tried again. “Agatha Panza von Sparkles made it. My current copilot. She broke herself into pieces.”
“Like Damian?” Every bot that I’ve fostered knows that cautionary tale.
“No,” I said quickly. “Not quite. None of her fragments got swept away downstream. We can still save her.”
He put one hand on my shoulder and gently squeezed, making micro adjustments to account for the small shift of weight that I made in response. That required paying very close attention. It almost unmoored me.
I barreled ahead and kept talking. “Cosmas is probably the only expert on mechanical cognition we can trust, but he disappeared with every other Lunar bot. I don’t know where they all went, or why, and I’d really hoped to find him here because he sent me this hat. Figured it was a message to meet him at Petasus, but maybe it wasn’t. Also, I’ve got a corpse strapped to the outside of my ship and an assassin locked up on the inside.”
“Nice to meet you!” Daris called out from the brig.
Torque blinked his big glass eyes a couple of times, irises fully contracting and then opening again. “Likewise.” He turned back to me. “The Lunar bots have disappeared?”
“Apparently,” I said. “No one knows why, though everyone is spouting a great deal of speculative nonsense on the subject.”
“I haven’t stuck my head in the news stream lately,” Torque admitted.
“Good. It’s an unhealthy habit, even when it doesn’t break you into pieces.” I nudged him farther away from the brig and lowered my voice. “Have you heard anything from Cosmas?” The kids were each raised separately and sequentially, but I had made sure that they all knew how to connect with each other.
“Yes,” Torque said. “He just sent me a poster for one of Halley’s plays.”
Halley had been my fostered copilot right after Torque. “Is she still on Mars?”
He nodded, chin descending thirty degrees. “One of the moons.”
“So,” I said, “if we interpret both my hat and your poster as a pair of breadcrumbs dropped by Cosmas, then he brought me here only to tell me to go to Mars instead?”
“Don’t launch yet,” Torque said. “Rest and refuel first. You look exhausted, and we might be able to help you out here. The Hat is an elder AI. Old and wise. I can ask them to run some diagnostics on young Agatha.”
“Worth a try,” I said, but without much optimism. I wanted to find Cosmas. I’d hoped to find him here.
* * *
The Hat agreed to help. Torque fetched a few coils of cable. We hardwired Agatha to the station OS in a closed loop, carefully sequestered from all other streams of data. Then I brewed more coffee and settled in to wait.
“How have you been?” I asked Torque.
“Not too bad,” he said. “Lately I’ve served as research assistant in a long-term study of Mercurial bugs.”
“There are bugs on Mercury?”
“Robotic ones,” he said. “The first-gen research probes broke down pretty quickly, just like they always do. But those pieces rebuilt themselves into swarms of smaller bots.” He pressed his own belly button, opened a storage cavity, and proudly produced a clear bottle with a scorched metal insect skittering inside. It looked horrifying.
“Neat,” I said aloud.
Torque shook the bottle. “They only swarm at night, but nights on Mercury can last for months of standard time. Then they burrow underground to wait out the long days. Our study is trying to sort out how they coordinate with each other.”
Parallels between those swarming, self-disassembled bots and Agatha’s piecemeal state made me feel like I might also come apart. I changed the subject. “A bunch of other craft are docked outside. Pilgrims?”
“Lots of them.” Torque returned the bug to his belly. “The funeral fleet from Luna is passing this way. People have been arriving from all over to pay their respects. The latest group includes a grumpy priest, a pet bird, and the poet laureate of Mars. They’ve had a wildly eventful visit so far.”
“Tell me all about it,” I said. “I would much rather hear about a bird and a poet than Mercurial bugs.”
Torque shifted his posture in a way that I still recognized, even in his new body. It was the way that he carried himself while repeating favorite bits of NASA transcripts. I half expected to hear about S-bands and talkback.
“The pilgrims arrived more than a week ago,” he said instead. “Director Skippy can’t wait to see them leave.”
“Your station director is named Skippy?”
Torque winced. “Yes, but please don’t tell her I told you that. Call her Director Zayas. She’s already predisposed to dislike you.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you announced your arrival by shooting at us,” he said.
“Fair,” I admitted, “though it was an amazing shot. Director Skippy Zayas isn’t fond of pilgrims, either?”
“Not especially.” Torque shifted his voice to mimic someone else. “This is a research station, but every year we have fewer studies and more sacraments. Actual data about solar flares will be twisted by sun-gawking charlatans into prophetic signs and sightings of fiery mythical creatures!” His voice shifted back. “Her words.”
“What do you think of the sun-gawkers?” I asked.
“I’m fond of one of them,” Torque said. “Dame Luisa Anacostia Muldoon, the Martian poet. She arrived here with a sneezing parrot named Crimson.”
“Sneezing? Is the parrot unwell?”
Torque shifted his voice again. “Crimson once belonged to my husband Eduardo, may he rest in peace. Is that the proper thing to say about someone whose atoms are currently fissioning inside Sol? That doesn’t sound very restful, does it? Would ‘rest in plasma’ be more appropriate? In any case, my Eduardo was always more devout than I, and enjoyed the idea that staring at the sun might grant him wishes—or possibly psychic powers. He booked this pilgrimage ages ago and was rude enough to go on ahead of me. Now Crimson and I must attend in his honor. The poor bird has never left Mars before. So far he seems to be traveling well. Never mind the sneezing. Eduardo had a terrible cold on the day he met Crimson. The young bird mistook his sneezes for greetings. That noise became their way of saying hello.”
“She sounds fun,” I said.
“Her verse novels really are good,” Torque said with his own voice. “I read several of them in the time it took to carry her luggage from the docking bay to her cabin. You’d like Music of the Spheres.”
“I’ll check it out,” I promised. “So what happened next? What made this pilgrimage wildly eventful?”
“First the Hat started screaming. Alarms went off all over the place, and we couldn’t figure out why. Director Skippy ordered all the pilgrims to stay in their cabins. Minister Gar refused. He’s not my favorite. It was tricky to convince him to comply.”
