Nemesis (26 page)

‘We are uncertain,’ said Yunus. ‘What are your intentions regarding the human race?’

‘We have no intentions.’

‘Then what do you plan to do next?’

‘Learn to defend the body. Repair the body.’

‘Where is the body?’ Yunus asked.

‘We do not know how to make this answer yet. Bring your people to us.’

Will struggled to contain himself. ‘Ask about the voice!’ he shouted into the air of the
Ariel Two
’s bridge. ‘Why does it sound like a child? Get them to show you their face! Why aren’t you collecting as much data as you can?’

‘If we brought you a map of the stars on this shell, would you be able to show us where the body is?’ said Yunus.

‘Yes.’

‘We can send you one now.’

‘Bring it to us with the people,’ said the swarm. ‘We will need more information for the map-making.’

There was a pause from the science team. ‘How did you learn to speak English?’

‘We learned from you the last time your type attacked us.’

Yunus and his team deliberated again before trying to answer.

‘We have
no record
of attacking you before,’ he said at last.

‘Clearly you did,’ said the swarm, ‘as we speak English.’

‘Do you intend to attack us again?’

‘We attack in retaliation to an assault on the body.’

‘What constitutes an assault?’

‘We do not know how to make this answer yet. Bring your people to us.’

‘It’s a machine!’ Will yelled. ‘You’re talking to a machine.’

He couldn’t stand being cut out of the conversation any more. He could feel the situation getting dangerous. He wasn’t sure how yet. He just knew.

He sent a tight-beam request to the
Gulliver
, captain’s eyes only, requesting a real-time feed to the diplomacy team and prayed that Mark would be reasonable about it. To his credit, Mark didn’t hesitate. The link appeared in Will’s sensorium with a two-word note attached:
They’re crazy
. A view of the
Gulliver
’s lounge appeared. Will groaned with relief as he patched himself in.

‘… but this isn’t getting us anywhere,’ Sam was saying. He looked more anxious than Will had never seen him. ‘We barely know any more than we did before we hailed them.’

‘Will Monet here,’ said Will. ‘I have to agree with Sam. This encounter doesn’t match any of those we planned for. We need to exercise extreme caution. We need time to analyse and think. I recommend that we pull back to the edge of the system and investigate with probes.’

‘Ditto,’ said Venetia. ‘This swarm just sounds more and more like a SAP to me and less like a full sentient, which means there’s nothing to lose by sending an automated investigation. I want to know whose software we’re talking to and why it’s here. If a SAP wants us on the planet, it’s not going to be to learn about our culture.’

‘No,’ said Yunus. ‘We’re not giving up. We came here to speak with these people, and that’s what we’re going to do.’

Venetia looked exasperated. ‘Yunus, didn’t you even hear us? They’re not
people
.’

‘I heard your
theory
, yes. I just don’t agree with it. Of course Monet thinks we’re talking to machines. That’s what he’s bred for. And a retreat to the system’s edge would conveniently revert control over the mission to him. In doing so, we lose all hope for establishing a diplomatic dialogue. I’m not going to simply hand off control for this mission on the basis of a hunch.’

Here they were, Will thought, in exactly the position that Pari had warned him about.

‘Then let me prove it to you!’ he said. ‘Open a video channel to the swarm. Let’s take a look at them.’

‘We decided not to do that,’ said Yunus. ‘We didn’t want to risk cultural snap judgements about appearances.’

‘
You
didn’t want to risk it,’ said Venetia. ‘And I told you culture is irrelevant at this point.’

Yunus didn’t appear to care.

‘For crying out loud,’ said Citra, ‘please at least acknowledge that my husband knows what he’s doing. You’re all so confident that we’re talking to a machine, but why should that surprise you? Isn’t that exactly what would happen at Earth if aliens visited us? The fact that they have a translator program running is hardly surprising.’

‘First, that’s not a translator,’ said Will. ‘I know what a translator sounds like. And second, they’re using the voice of a human child. That’s a pretty unusual choice. Don’t you want to know why?’

Yunus arched an eyebrow. ‘Why so curious, Captain Monet? So you can judge them? What if they have a toddler wearing a neural shunt? And what if they had no idea what a child was before they attacked those ships? Does that make them evil?’

‘What are you fucking talking about?’ said Will. ‘This isn’t about good or evil, or any of that shit. It’s about
risk assessment
.’

‘Do I need to remind you that you’re not part of the diplomatic team, Captain Monet?’ said Yunus. ‘Your participation in this conversation breaches our mission plan.’

‘But Will has a point,’ said Sam. ‘Trying to talk to this thing isn’t working. We need to do better than this. Yunus, if you can’t find a way to make your diplomacy programme work, I’ll have to request that the Fleet take over so we can go with Will’s approach.’

‘You don’t need to worry about that,’ said Yunus. ‘I’ve decided to attempt first contact. Mark, can you wake our Spatials from coma, please, and make sure they’re briefed?’

‘Sam,’ said Will pointedly. ‘That isn’t a solution.’

Sam nodded. ‘Yunus,’ he said. ‘Professor Chesterford. Are you sure you want to do this? Whatever is out there sounds very keen to meet in person. Ominously keen. And there’s nothing to stop us sending a drone to meet them instead. Plus, I have to remind you that if we
are
facing aliens, they may have live human hostages. I can’t recommend that we expose any more of this team to danger than we absolutely have to, as that may only make that situation worse.’

‘Your perspective is welcomed, Overcaptain Shah, but this isn’t one of your police operations. We’re not talking about a hostage negotiation here. We are dealing with the unknown, and it has asked to meet
us
. Not a drone or a robot. A limited demonstration of trust is called for and that’s what we came here to do. Based on what happens when we extend that trust, we may have a solid reason to treat the Photurians as adversaries, but we
cannot
proceed on that basis. This may be the first live peer intelligence humanity has ever encountered and we can’t risk ruining that opportunity. I accept that the probability of a fully sentient system is lower than we’d both like, but we’re talking about aliens here. We shouldn’t expect to understand them at first glance. And if we don’t meet them with trust, we may incur a disaster for the whole human race.’

In the invisible privacy of his home node, Will clutched his hair. Yunus was clearly too much in love with the promise of a place in the history books to see the danger staring him in the face.

‘That being said,’ Sam insisted, ‘the risks here are huge. The team must be minimised.’

Yunus shrugged. ‘First contact requires only one.’

Citra looked pained. ‘You don’t need to do that, Yuni. I’ll go with you. I’m not afraid. I can’t get decent biosamples up here, in any case.’

Yunus shook his head. ‘Sam has a point, my love,’ he said. ‘And I couldn’t forgive myself if they hurt you. The diplomacy team should have minimum exposure and this is my responsibility. I’ll take the soldiers and leave it at that.’

‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘You deserve this moment, Yuni, but don’t go alone. Please.’

He took her hand. ‘Don’t worry, my love. I’m not a fool. The soldiers will be with me and the contact shuttle has safeguards. I’ll use the telepresence kit, okay? You’re with me on this, though, right?’

Citra nodded, though Will couldn’t help noticing the cords of stress lining her neck.

‘We came here to do this,’ she said in a strangled voice. ‘This is your dream.’

‘And my job,’ said Yunus. ‘Someone has to find us answers. And that person should be me. I’ll send you the data you need.’

Yunus reached for the control for the communication channel.

‘We will come to the planet,’ he told the swarm. ‘Can you meet me wherever I land?’

‘Yes,’ came the reply. ‘Come quickly. We want to meet all your people.’

Yunus closed the channel and smiled. ‘Mark, please ask the Spatials to prepare for shuttle departure. I’m going in.’

‘I don’t recommend it,’ said Mark bluntly.

Yunus scowled into the closest camera. ‘Did I ask your opinion, Captain Ruiz?’

‘Just do it, Mark,’ said Sam. ‘You can’t stop him. Please.’

‘Whatever,’ said Mark. The shuttle ready-warnings came on.

Will contemplated reaching in and trying to secure remote control of the
Gulliver
. He was pretty sure he could do it, but the Vartian Institute defences might make the process take hours. By then, Yunus would be long gone. He turned to Nelson.

‘What do I do here?’ he said. ‘Is this where I start asserting myself?’

Nelson shook his head. ‘I think Sam’s up to something. He’s trying to give you a graceful way out of this. The moment Yunus puts himself at risk, you’ll have control and he’ll thank you for it. If Yunus wants to expose himself, that’s his problem. We just have to stay professional and let this game play itself out, crazy though it is. And after all, he might even be right.’

Will nodded grimly. ‘So be it,’ he said. ‘Fire up the suntaps and get ready for action. Instinct tells me we’re out of our depth.’

Nelson nodded. ‘Already on it.’

6.4: ANN

Ann watched the dialogue unfolding between the
Gulliver
and the Nem swarm with mounting alarm. A long reflection phase, she could accept. The fact that the clean-up phase had, if anything, gone into reverse, she could also just about handle. They’d seen elements of those behaviours before. But this
conversation
was freaking her out.

Nems didn’t do conversation. They pinpointed threats and responded to them – ruthlessly. The
Gulliver
’s interaction window at Tiwanaku was supposed to have been measured in minutes, not the hours it had taken for the ship to reach the colony itself. The machines were being
way
too nice.

Why hadn’t they fired? And why in Gal’s name did they even want to talk at all? She couldn’t imagine how much stress Sam must be under at that moment. Without a violent response from Will, all they had on their hands was a nest of dangerously over-informed Nems and a massive security problem. The way this was going, they’d be lucky to fire a single shot.

Kuril spoke up. ‘Ma’am, are we off mission plan already? What do we do? Do you want me to warm the boser? Are we going to have to make the shot ourselves?’

‘Not necessary,’ said Jaco, calmly. ‘This is just a manifestation of reflection-phase crosstalk. Those Nems aren’t distinguishing between our ships and the pseudo-human activity they’ve created for themselves. For them, this is all play.’

‘But the reply format—’ began Kuril.

‘Is within model tolerances, Mr Najoma. During reflection, the Nems always mimic the incoming format from a peer bounce, and that’s exactly what they’ve done here. The fact that the format was ours rather than theirs doesn’t matter.’

‘Unfortunately, Kuril has a point,’ said Ann. ‘Jaco, I agree with your analysis that this is down to the long reflection. But it’s our job to be paranoid and this swarm is already at the edge of our modelling envelope. We might be able to explain this response but we still didn’t expect it. So move us in a little closer, please. I want to be able to get a clear shot at the Nems, or at
Ariel Two
, whichever becomes necessary.’

Jaco paused, his frustration palpable. ‘On it, ma’am,’ he said eventually. ‘Though I must point out that the closer we get, the more likely we are to be spotted.’

‘Point taken, Mr Brinsen. However, we still have Nem-cloaking. If it comes down to it, we’ll have to rely on that.’

Her job was to make sure that the plan went off without a hitch. Personal risk didn’t factor into it. Much more of this chatting and everything was likely to unravel.

7:
CONTACT

7.1: YUNUS

The salmon-coloured mountains of Tiwanaku Four loomed large in Yunus’s view-field as they descended. On that dusty, frozen world, mankind’s greatest adventure lay waiting to start. He was sure of it. He had butterflies in his stomach, though of course that could have been down to the violent lurching of the shuttle.

Side windows in his display showed him views of the seats in front of him where his two Spatials were hard at work, piloting the shuttle and surveying the local airspace. The names of his escorts were marked at the bottom of the displays: Nico Ratan and Lisa Markus. Neither of them looked particularly fazed by being woken up at the eleventh hour for a shuttle drop to an alien world. They behaved as if this was the sort of thing they did every week.

On the other hand, he reflected, both soldiers had been sourced from the Fleet’s Covert Ops Division. Who knew what they did every week? It didn’t bear thinking about.

‘I’ll be using the telepresence rig,’ he reminded them to break the silence. ‘The secure set-up. As soon as we hit the ground, one of you will be on shuttle defence, the other will be manning the cut-out and will double as a human pilot if we need one. Does that work?’

Both Spatials nodded.

‘Textbook operating practice, Boss,’ said Nico. ‘We’re on it.’

‘I want to thank you for your bravery,’ said Yunus. ‘What we’re about to do is momentous. It’s a first in human history. Nothing like this has ever been done before.’

He wanted to touch them somehow. To make them understand the significance of what they were walking into. However, they accepted his remarks with nods and blank faces.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Nico. ‘That’s why we volunteered. Not every day you get a job like this.’

‘We’ll have you in and out in no time,’ said Lisa. ‘Safe as houses.’

Fast and safe was hardly the point, Yunus thought. But both soldiers had probably been extensively briefed on protecting the diplomats and weren’t thinking far beyond that. They both looked to be the classic military type. No sense of awe. No interest in the unknown. Bodies lousy with killtech, no doubt. Nobody should be carrying that amount of artificial augmentation. It was against nature.

He blamed the Galatean influence. Between augs and genetic modifications they were reducing the human race to specialised pieces of machinery. It would have been better for everyone if that particular genie had never escaped the bottle. The Truists had tried, of course. They’d fought the war to keep mankind human, and they had lost. The old-style Truist Spatials would have at least been humbled by the gravity of their task.

Colonials were so self-righteous in their assumptions, changing everything they came across and throwing out their moral compass along the way. His colleagues on this mission were perfect examples of that smugness. They all imagined they were so smart, yet their vision was so narrow. Everyone on the
Gulliver
had been applauding themselves for their caution. Yet they didn’t appear to realise that
all
human reasoning came from assumptions.

For all they knew, they’d be incurring a risk for mankind by
not
trying to communicate. What mattered in life was the assumptions you chose to work from and your willingness to adapt, not how far you got from the set of faulty axioms you’d started out with. Yunus had lived his whole life by that logic. And he’d been waiting all his life for a moment like this one. He’d known that one day, it would happen.

Meanwhile, the others on the
Gulliver
just sounded keen for the Photurians to not be real, despite all the evidence to the contrary. It was the only way they could keep their blinkered understanding of the world alive, he suspected. Should they be surprised that the Photurians used a machine to communicate? Of course not. Should they be surprised that they couldn’t understand what they were looking at? He didn’t think so. Monet and the others regarded him as some kind of fool. He was aware of the risks. He was simply ready to face them, that was all.

The Spatials brought him down at the carefully selected point he’d chosen near the planet’s equator. It was close enough to Photurian activity sites to make communication easy, but far enough away that they wouldn’t be able to impede his exit if something went wrong. Outside lay a bland expanse of pinkish desert under a dirty orange sky. It looked like half the worlds he’d visited.

‘Okay,’ said Nico. ‘Ground checks complete.’

Yunus unclipped from his couch and clambered down the narrow access tube on his left that led to the telepresence tank. The tank was one of the more impressive pieces of kit the Vartian Institute had installed. It enabled him to link with a biodroid perfectly shaped in his likeness, specifically designed for missions such as this. While his real body remained secure inside the shuttle, all his physical sensations would come from the remote bot.

The bottom of the tube opened into the access ring for the body-sleeve below. It looked like a wet, green rubberised sock large enough for a person to slide into – quite revolting, really. Yunus removed his ship-suit and stashed it in the small locker in the wall. Then he sat on the edge of the ring, dipped his feet into the unpleasant aperture and slithered after them. He pushed himself down, testing his body against the simulant gel surrounding it as darkness swallowed him. It was, surprisingly, like floating in a bath of warm nothing. The tank linked to his retinal implants, showing him green status lights all across the board. He was ready.

The comms between the biodroid and Yunus were highly secure. Once inside the telepresence tank, he had only a one-way link to the shuttle – they could hear him, but he couldn’t hear them. That way, the mission could still collect data about his experiences while preventing the kind of feedback hacking that had notoriously co-opted the original
Ariel
. It also meant he’d be on his own. Yunus wasn’t that fussed. He’d just have to spend less time listening to the witterings of his colleagues. His droid also came equipped with sensors for all manner of dangerous technology. They could detect the presence of everything from enzymes to nanobots to radiation. Yunus suspected he wouldn’t need any of them.

His view showed the shuttle bay opening and the contact rover heading out across the sand. It travelled five hundred metres, stopped and deployed the inflatable neutral-zone habitat-bubble it carried. The invitation beacon atop the habitat started winking its message to the Photurians nearby.

Yunus felt a brief stab of regret. The Photurians had asked to meet
him
, not some artificial substitute. On the other hand, the biodroid would, in effect, be a part of him – if the Institute scientists were to be believed. To an observer, it would look like him, smell like him and even scan like him. And the light-lag on the line-of-sight comms was effectively zero. Besides, if he took any more risks than this, Citra might never forgive him.

The countdown in his view clicked from five to one. Then the droid came online and Yunus’s concerns instantly vanished. He felt as if he was actually standing alone inside a small transparent dome on the surface of a barren world. He patted his chest, looking down at the crisp ambassadorial uniform his double wore, and then out across the rosy dunes. He suddenly felt profoundly exposed. He could hear the squeak of the dome shifting in the planet’s feeble breeze, and the hiss of the air recyclers. The canned atmosphere felt dry and chilled his skin. Were it not for the status icons winking at the corners of his vision, he’d have had no way to tell that he wasn’t really there.

Yunus looked around at the empty, sterile pocket of habitability and felt like a figurine in an antique snow globe. Typical, he reflected. The Vartian Institute had thought of everything except proper furniture. And without a feed from the shuttle, he had no idea when the Photurians would send their envoy. He sat down on the rubberised floor of the bubble to wait.

He shifted on the uncomfortable plating and wondered what the crew aboard the
Gulliver
would be saying. Not much of value, he suspected. A few snide remarks. More pointless panicking. In any case, Citra would fill him in as soon as he got back.

In the meantime, God had given him his chance. Just five minutes with the aliens might be enough to establish himself as the trusted point of contact. If he could manage that, power would follow. With an interspecies relationship to manage, the Earth would regain its rightful primacy and all this foolish talk of war would be over at last. If anything was worth the wait and the risk, it was surely that.

As it was, the Photurians didn’t take long to arrive. Just fifteen minutes later, a very ordinary-looking rover appeared on the horizon and headed straight towards him. Yunus felt a twinge of disappointment. He’d hoped that the contact vehicle would be somewhat more exotic. But given the extent to which the Photurians were reusing human material, it was hardly surprising.

As the rover neared, his heart began to race in anticipation. Yunus got to his feet as the rover drove up and docked with the bubble. The airlock opened. Yunus held his breath, peering into the shadows beyond.

Out of the rover limped a teenage boy. He had no hands. His arms ended in damp orange sacs. A Sanchez clone head had been rather clumsily glued into his neck, along with a complicated system of rubber tubing. Pouches of organic machinery stuck out of his skin at irregular intervals. He wore a torn ship-suit that looked and smelled like he hadn’t changed it in weeks. He was clearly terrified. The boy scratched his stomach mournfully with one elbow. The ripped flaps of his ship-suit parted briefly to reveal a piece of a coffee machine that appeared to have been inserted there.

Yunus shivered in disgust. This wasn’t what he’d hoped for. Still, maybe he could salvage things. He should trust his own protocol and not put too much stock in appearances.

‘Who are you?’ he said carefully.

Everyone back on the
Gulliver
would be watching through his eyes. He had to play this out with dignity, whatever the consequences.

‘Ryan,’ said the boy sheepishly. He looked away.

‘We are Punishment,’ said the horrible clone head under his chin. ‘You only have one person? Where are the rest of your persons?’

Yunus chose not to reply to that one. ‘What happened here?’ he asked.

‘They changed me,’ said Ryan. He started to cry.

‘The pest site was claimed and integrated,’ said the Sanchez head primly. ‘Pattern dictates that we remain at pest site to destroy stragglers. However, integration is behind schedule as we do not understand the human components. They have no clearly defined function. Their system protocols are strange wrong with many level. They are challenging!’

Yunus tried to keep the revulsion off his face and struggled to understand what he was looking at. If this was a straight physical subversion, it was terrible job. Human surgeons had developed more impressive puppet-hacks decades ago. What had been done to Ryan resembled a cliché of alien control as executed by halfwits. Even the most botched alien fake made by a sect group would look more plausible than this.

‘Please kill me,’ Ryan blubbed. ‘I hurt so much. I don’t want to be like this any more.’

The Sanchez head talked over him. ‘You will help us understand,’ it said enthusiastically.

‘We will do what we can to facilitate peaceful coexistence,’ said Yunus. ‘We will provide you with knowledge and tools for trade. However, we will need our human components back.’

‘The components are integrated,’ said the head. ‘We do not need for trades. You will supply further instance of person to enable us derive more harmonious interface.’

‘What happens if we don’t want to do that?’ said Yunus.

He hoped the Spatials were watching this closely. He was counting on their instincts as to when to pull the plug.

‘Integration is preferable to destruction,’ said the head. ‘Through integration, pest species may serve the body and become useful. Integration is good! Enjoyment of integration will be inserted. Enjoyment will be applied to all persons.’

Yunus started to see contagion alerts in his display.

‘We’ll have to consider your offer,’ he said hurriedly.

‘You delay,’ said the Sanchez head. ‘Do not delay. There is not need of delay.’

Ryan screamed. Abruptly, the bulbs on the ends of his arms burst, filling the air with a fine orange mist. He collapsed sideways.

At the same time, Yunus’s control over the android started to deteriorate. Contagion warnings piled in his view and he watched in horror as his hands started to dissolve.

Nico pulled the plug. Yunus gasped with relief to be back in the shuttle. He started desperately clambering out of the pod as the sleeve retracted, his lungs labouring for air.

‘Let’s get the hell out of here!’ he yelled.

‘Already on it, Boss,’ said Lisa. ‘We’ll have you out of here in no time. Safe as houses.’ The shuttle’s engines started to whine even while Yunus was clawing his way up to the hatch. He had never heard so lovely a sound.

7.2: MARK

As Mark watched the feed from Yunus’s android, his unease about the man’s departure melted into outright horror. The Ryan-thing had been both pathetic and hideous. He no longer had any doubt that Will was right. Their adversaries were machines, and not very smart ones.

Citra Chesterford pinged him from the lounge.

‘Captain Ruiz, is there anything we can do to get closer to that shuttle?’

‘Not yet,’ he told her. ‘They need to hit the stratopause before I can compute a decent intercept vector. There’s too much drone traffic in low orbit. I can’t risk it until I know where they’re going to be.’

‘Please let me know as soon as you can,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to leave him out there a second longer than we have to.’

‘I’m on it, Professor,’ said Mark. ‘Don’t worry.’

He powered up a trajectory computation SAP and set it racing over the vector options while he watched the shuttle creep up through the atmosphere.

‘If a drone so much as twitches near them, they’ve had it,’ said Will over the comms. ‘I have low orbit on lockdown.’