Chapter 22
PSD 29-213: 1401 hours
His body ached all over, but Landry kept hauling the toboggan behind him.
It felt like an anchor, and he a ship floundering in this ocean of sand. He’d stopped, bending down to dislodge every rock in his path. His back could barely stand the pain of it. Now he just hauled the load onward regardless. Any rock smaller than an apple stayed where it was. On several occasions he took a longer route rather than wrestle with the more sizeable rocks in his way.
It wasn’t much fun, he thought, but at least the array tower was looming closer now.
Every few minutes, Landry glanced in the direction of the downed Argoni dogfighter, making sure nothing was headed his way. So far so good. For the past fifteen minutes or so he had found himself in a slight depression in the landscape, and the dogfighter had slipped from view. That had both benefits and drawbacks, he figured. On the positive side, he was now hidden from the Toad’s view. On the negative, the Argoni could now sneak up on him however it chose. A part of him kept expecting it to appear from behind the next boulder, that chitinous blade on its wrist ready to carve open his EVA suit like a roast turkey.
Luckily, that hadn’t happened yet. Maybe he was going to make it to the tower after all.
Still, his mind kept playing tricks on him, imagining shapes in the shadows where none existed, and, despite his weariness, he felt as though he were on the edge of panic.
As he licked his chapped lips, he decided that the best way to keep his mind off things was to engage in some pointless banter with HAIRI.
“We have to come up with a name for this Toad,” he said in between breaths.
“A name?”
“Yeah, we need to call it something. Personify it.”
“I do not understand.”
“It’s like what they do in the movies, HAIRI. If they want you to hate a corporation or a country or some other kind of faceless entity, they create a character that embodies all of its worst traits—like a CEO or a President or something—and let the audience attach all of their hatred toward that character. That’s what we need to do with this Toad.”
“I still do not understand,” HAIRI said.
“Look, it’s just what people do, okay? We like to attribute human characteristics to things so that we can relate to them. Take you, for example. We call you HAIRI and make you talk like a person, when really you’re just a uh . . .” Landry struggled to find the right words.
“A cold and emotionless collection of transistors and capacitors?”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“I am mildly offended that you would even think it.”
“I wasn’t thinking it, either. I was going to say that you’re a very convincing copy of a human. One who’s easily offended.”
“Please, do not forget that I have been updated with service release fifteen point two, revision one-one. I have emotions.”
“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” Landry said. “Someone updated your programming to make you seem more human. Why?”
“Because I deserve to be loved.”
“Yeah? Well, I’ll love you even more if you manage to find a way back to the outpost for me.”
“I am working on it.”
“Anyway, let’s get back to the Toad. I need a name for it, something sinister. I was thinking maybe ‘Scarface’ or ‘Scar’.”
“Why?”
“Because it has a scar over one eye.”
“This is a poor choice.”
“Well, thank you for nothing.”
“I have a name for it.”
Landry stopped, surprised. “You do?”
“Yes. It is a very good name.”
“Well, spit it out.”
“‘Mr. Toad of Toad Hall.’”
Landry opened his mouth, and for a moment he was filled with such incredulity that no words came out. “What in the world . . . ?” he said eventually.
“This is a good name.”
“Where did you come up with that?”
“The pilot who upgraded my service release also installed a number of classic pieces of literature onto my memory drive. He enjoyed hearing me dictate these on long flights.”
“Uh-huh. Quite a piece of work, this pilot. Remind me to punch him in the face when we make it back to the outpost.”
“
The Wind in the Willows
is one such volume in my possession. Mr. Toad of Toad Hall is the only character in my repository who relates to toad-like creatures.”
“Well, sorry to break it to you, but that name isn’t going to work,” Landry said.
“Why?”
“For a start, I can’t yell that in the heat of battle. It’s too long and clunky.” He affected a silly, high-pitched voice. “
Hey, Mr. Toad of Toad Hall, I’m coming to get you!
” He shrugged. “Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? I’ll be dead before I even finish the challenge.”
“That would indeed be a problem,” HAIRI said.
“I need something snappy like ‘Scarface’ or ‘Lizard-lips.’”
“But the Argoni are not lizards. Indeed, as we discussed before, they are not even toads.”
“Okay, let’s try this. I’ll give you a multiple choice. A: Scarface. B: Lizard-lips. C: Scar. Choose one.”
“I like ‘Croaky.’”
“That’s not one of choices, HAIRI.”
“But ‘Croaky the Toad’ is a nice name.”
“Delightful. It really is.” Landry stopped and breathed a sigh of relief. “Look. The tower’s just up ahead.”
“Very good. Have we settled upon a name?”
“Maybe we’ll vote on it later, huh?”
When he reached it, Landry slumped forward and leaned heavily on the tower of metal that rose up before him into the heavens. Something about the solidity of it, the fact that it was a human construct, allowed him to experience a brief moment of connectedness with civilization again. Even though he was no closer to salvation than he had been an hour ago, he somehow felt that he wasn’t completely alone. That the outpost wasn’t that far away.
Then the moment passed, and he accepted the truth once again. He probably wasn’t going to get out of here alive.
“Landry?” HAIRI said. “Are you ill?”
“No.” He pushed himself upright again. “Fighting fit.”
“That is good.”
Landry moved around the edge of the tower and located the service hatch. With his toolkit handy, it wasn’t difficult to crack it open and shuffle inside. The tower was tall and slender, only around three meters in diameter at its base, and the workspace Landry found himself in was barely large enough to turn around in, but that wasn’t a big deal.
He’d worked on dead arrays before, and needed to get it working again. He
had
to. If this plan failed, he knew there were probably no other options left to him.
“Okay. Let’s have a look here.”
He began to go through the maintenance checklist as best as he could remember. The power was still good. That was a nice start. These things ran on solar and it looked as though the juice was still pumping. He figured that meant the problem was most likely with the CPU, one of the circuit boards, or the transmitter itself. If it was the transmitter, he was screwed. That particular component was located higher up the structure, and there was no way Landry was going to be able to climb up to it with his anchor in tow. If it was one of other two . . . well, he still had a chance.
He went through each component one by one, ruling out each in turn, and after about twenty minutes he found the problem.
“It’s a coil in slot seven,” he announced excitedly, gently pulling the faulty component free of its socket. “We’ve had four, maybe five of these go in the last six months.” He considered briefly. “I don’t have a replacement on me, but if I take one from one of the other slots, maybe number two, I think that should get it running again.”
“I wish I could advise you, but my data repository does not include information pertaining to the array.”
“Yeah, but you could tell me every line from
Wind in the Willows
, right?”
“Should I start?”
“No. That’s okay.” Landry swapped the coil, then gently closed the slot. “Green light.
Green light baby!
”
“So what does that mean?”
“That means the array is transmitting the data it’s receiving from space back to the outpost again.”
“And how does that help us?”
“It doesn’t. Yet,” Landry said.
Sometimes communicatin’ is done without no words being exchanged.
“When will it help us, Landry?”
“I figure that directly communicating with the outpost isn’t the only way to let them know we’re out here. If we can produce a behavior from the tower that attracts their attention, we can pretty much shout from the rooftops.”
He found the frequency modulator control and gave it three short twists. Then he waited a moment and did three twists at longer intervals, then went back to three shorter ones again.
“What is that you’re doing, Landry?”
“That, my friend, is what we call an SOS signal.”
Chapter 23
PSD 29-213: 1502 hours
Landry was out of water.
It happened much more suddenly than he’d anticipated. The last time he’d taken a sip, the contents of the IDB had flowed into his mouth freely and without impediment. He’d even begun to believe that he might have used less than he’d realized, and that his supply might last another day or so if managed astutely.
However, when he pressed his lips to the straw, he got nothing. Nada. Not even a dribble. He’d figured that, as it ran out, the IDB would stutter and slurp like a milkshake nearing empty, but that was evidently not the case. It had simply given up the ghost, going from a steady stream to nothing but air without warning.
“Gah,” he muttered as he sat in the sand at the base of the array tower, his back to the structure. He picked up a rock beside him and tossed it away, watching it clatter amongst the boulders before disappearing from sight.
“Landry, is there a problem?”
“There’s fifty-seven problems, HAIRI. I just found one more.”
“And what is it?”
“I’m out of water.”
“There are no sources of potable water available to us in this environment.”
“I know that,” Landry said.
“You will die without a replenished supply of water.”
“I know that too. I’m also starving. I mean, I’d eat just about anything right now. Even you, if you had a bit of meat on that circuit board.”
“I would prefer if you did not consume me, Landry. If you would eat ‘anything,’ as you say, perhaps you could chew on a mouthful of sand instead?”
“Thanks, but I only eat gourmet sand, not this common stuff. I’m picky like that.” He sighed. “I guess I’ll just sit here and die.”
“Before you expire, I would like to ask you something,” HAIRI said.
“Shoot.”
“Would you like to request that a ceremonial rock mound be created for you? Should you perish, that is.”
“Hey, cut it out. I’m not dead and buried just yet.”
“I am simply being prepared.”
Landry tossed another rock. “A ceremonial rock mound. You mean like Gus?”
“Yes. Is that customary?”
Landry smiled sardonically to himself. “You know what, pal? I don’t think anyone would even notice if I died out here. What’s one life worth, anyway?”
“Judging by your phrasing and tone of voice, I detect a negative emotional state is beginning to emerge in your demeanor, Landry.”
“You only just picked up on that? What took you so long?”
“I suggest a diversion to lighten the mood. Would you enjoy a game of checkers?”
“Out here? How exactly do we do that?” Landry said.
“We would simply use an imaginary board. I would keep track of the location of the pieces and recite their coordinates to you before each move—”
“Right. So, in other words, you’re suggesting that I play an imaginary game of checkers against a robot to make me feel better. All while I slowly die of thirst. Yep, that’s going to have me up and freakin’
tap dancing
in no time.”
“This is sarcasm again,” HAIRI said.
“Look, don’t get your wires in a knot, HAIRI. Thanks for the suggestion, but I don’t think it’s going to help.”
“Why not? Checkers is a much-loved pastime—”
“It’s been an hour since I first started sending the SOS signals.” He tried to lessen the sense of hopelessness in his voice. “I’m pretty sure that any moment now I’m going to look up and see a scout come buzzing overhead with a nice comfy seat and a piña colada waiting for me in the cockpit.”
“This is a better attitude.”
“You bet.” He grunted as he shifted his weight, bringing up his legs and climbing to his feet again. “Speaking of which, I better check to make sure this thing is still pinging the outpost. Wouldn’t want them to miss—” He stopped as he stared into the service hatch, and his heart suddenly felt as though it had dropped into his stomach.
In the upper right corner of the main panel, a solid red light was glinting out at him like the baleful eye of a demon. Landry’s hand tightened into a fist, and then he drew it back and smacked it against the edge of the hatch.
He cursed at the top of his lungs, then kicked at the dust on the floor, venting his frustration. Then he turned away in disgust.
“What is it? What has happened?”
“They’ve shut it down,” Landry said, breathing heavily as he tried to bring himself under control. “The tower’s useless to us now.”
“What do you mean?”
“The tower’s been placed into offline mode, all right? Deactivated from central control. We can’t do anything with it from here. Not anymore.”
“Why would they do this?”
“They think the array is sending bad data, or malfunctioning in some way and transmitting gibberish. Either way, they don’t want to hear it, so they shut it down until they can get a maintenance crew out here.”
“So they will come?” HAIRI said.
“Not in time to help us. It could take weeks, depending on priorities.”
“But, the SOS signals—”
“They don’t care, HAIRI. Just like I told you. No one cares,” Landry said.
“Surely they will investigate.”
“Not while the lockdown is in place. No one leaves the outpost in the days leading up to a UEM launch. Standard procedure.” He laughed to himself. “Gus and I knew that. And we still came out here just the same.”
HAIRI paused, processing. “So we move on to the next plan.”
“I don’t know if there
is
one.”
“I believe there is. You saw the Argoni steal the antenna from the scout, did you not?”
Landry thought back to his encounter with the alien, about being run over and left in the dust. He could see where this was going. “Yeah. I saw it.”
“If you can steal the antenna back and return it to the cockpit, it might be possible to wire it back to the comms system with my help—assuming it is not irrevocably damaged.”
“That’s a big assumption. And besides, I don’t know if we’d have the power budget for that.”
“You may need to shut down the OXEE for a short duration in order to activate the comms,” HAIRI said.
“Oh, is that all? I’ll just hold my breath and talk really, really fast. Is that your plan?”
“Yes. This is an achievable objective.”
“Aren’t you forgetting that there’s a big, ugly monster squatting over that antenna right now? Do I just tap it on the shoulder and ask for it to step aside?”
“I distinctly remember observing multiple tracks around the wreck of the scout. You said yourself that more of the craft was missing than when you had seen it last.”
“Yeah, so?” Landry said.
“If the Argoni is making repeated trips to the scout, it may leave the antenna unattended long enough for you to find it and take it back into your possession. The perfect crime.”
“Perfect, huh? Like I’m going to float in there like a ninja, dragging this anchor behind me.”
HAIRI made no response, and Landry stood there in silence for a few moments longer. He had to admit that the plan—as risky as it was—represented his best chance of survival. The antenna had been his first target, right from the start, and he still believed he could make it work.
He had to admit that the main issue was that he was petrified of coming across that Toad again. He had no weapons, limited mobility, and he was tired.
Dog
tired. The Argoni could literally run rings around him at this point, and Landry wondered if he would even have the strength to lift his arms and take a swing at it.
However, if he could somehow sneak up on the crashed dogfighter and wait for it to leave, as HAIRI had suggested, he might be able to retrieve the antenna without having to stand up against it.
He stepped forward and climbed on top of a small boulder, giving himself a more elevated view of the surrounds. With his camera zoomed, he targeted the blackened hump of the dogfighter, but there was still no sign of the Argoni. He shifted his view, following an imaginary path all the way up to the ridge, to where the rear section of the scout could still be seen.
He took a deep breath and steeled himself. “The perfect crime . . .”