Sunward, p.14
Sunward, page 14
“Fair winds to you, Kuneo. Courier, first class. We never met in life, so I can’t speak to what the worlds lost when you stopped breathing, but I do know the creed that you followed. Neither the absence of heat nor the gloom of the void stayed you from the completion of your last appointed task. All messengers are the bond of scattered family. Thank you for bringing mine together. Also, I’m very sorry that my fool brother Thaddeus is directly responsible for getting you killed. Rest well.”
Torque squeezed my shoulder.
“Set a course for the Counterweight,” I told him.
* * *
Zahir Station used to be an asteroid. Our ancestors tamed and tethered it to the homeworld, hollowed out the middle to build a dockside city, and ran huge freight elevators up and down. The Counterweight became a bridge between Terra and everywhere else. Once the most powerful and influential city in the solar system, taking cuts from every transaction that mattered, the place was now mostly deserted and barely maintained.
I’d heard plenty of legends about Zahir from my fellow messengers: If you pick up a hitchhiker from the Counterweight, they’ll vanish before you even get to Luna. Ghosts can’t stray far from the place where they died. The bright glare of Sol shames them. Sends them right back.
Cursed objects were my favorite subgenre of Counterweight lore: Beware of trinkets from the homeworld and the terrible fates that chase them around. Have you heard the one about the singer who spontaneously combusted onstage while wearing a necklace of Terran sea glass? Or the one about the pilot who stuck a little plastic dog to the console and then smacked into a microscopic black hole? Misfortune follows those trinkets until someone finally returns them to the Ghost Elevator from whence they came.
Torque piloted us through hatchways in the outer crust, navigated a labyrinth of derelict ships that floated all around the city center, and found us a decent place to land.
“Smart flying,” I told him.
“Thanks,” he said. “Have you been here before?”
“Just once. It’s a rite of passage for apprentice messengers to make a Zahir run. I haven’t come back since, though.”
“Where should we start looking for Cosmas?” Halley asked.
“Not sure,” I admitted, “but I do know where to ask discreet questions. A friend of a friend owns a restaurant in the old theater district, which is pretty close to where the Ghost Elevator docks and unloads. His name is Pär. Claims to cook with Terran produce, but that has to be nonsense. Nothing grows down there. Not anymore. I’ve also heard that he offers sanctuary to bots on the run, but we’ll have to see if that rumor has any more substance than his cooking.”
Torque climbed out of the pilot’s chair and fiddled with the yo-yo. “If this toy is a message, then it implies the Elevator itself. See? It travels away from a larger body and returns via string, over and over again.” The yo-yo spun out of control and then drifted. “Or at least it’s supposed to.”
“True,” I said, “but no one ever goes inside the Elevator. It shuts right down the instant that anybody even tries to climb aboard. Automated systems load and unload cargo. That’s all it ever does.”
“So it’s a bot,” Torque said. “A big one, like the Hat used to be when they were a station.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Not necessarily a conscious one, though. It’s a thousand-year-old relic working with hardware far less sophisticated than yours.”
“Let’s go,” Halley said. “I’d like to see the theater district! There’s supposed to be an opera house that no one uses anymore. Except maybe squatters. And possibly roving bands of outlaws. Do we qualify as a roving band of outlaws now?”
“Hopefully not,” I said, “but Cosmas and the other Lunar bots certainly do. I should try to make contact alone. Mind the ship until I get back.”
Halley squared up in front of the main hatch. “Tova Lir, are you trying to bravely fight angels and demons all by yourself? Again? Absolutely not. This whole place is unsafe, so keeping us aboard Needle doesn’t really qualify as protecting us.”
“I hate that argument,” I told her. “Very much.”
“Does that mean it worked?” she asked sweetly. “Are we all staying together?”
Kleist spoke up before I could answer. “No. We’re not.”
Halley’s posture changed, all playfulness gone. “What does that mean?”
“I believe it means that our puppeteer is leaving us,” Bodkin said.
“Starting this troupe was the best thing I’ve ever done,” Kleist said. “I’m sure that whatever you do next will be magnificent, but you’re going to do it without me. I’ve exhausted all of my resources.”
I wasn’t surprised. The puppeteer did look exhausted.
Bodkin and Kleist clasped hands in silent farewell.
Filament waved. “Thanks for rescuing us from Titania. You should know that I intend to live forever, which means that you’ll always be remembered.”
“I’m not dead,” Kleist pointed out.
“Not yet,” Filament said, “but the solar system is a very big place. We probably won’t ever meet again.”
“We might,” Kleist said. “You never know.”
Filament patted him on the shoulder. “Sure. Maybe we will. And maybe the blazing core of the sun is really paradise where someday our fissioning selves will throw a great big reunion party. That sounds nice.”
Halley looked devastated. She tried to talk Kleist out of leaving. When that failed, she turned away and refused to say goodbye.
I gave him a spare suit far more functional than his tuxedo-painted one. “Take this. Parts of the station lack basic amenities like air and heat.”
“Thank you, Captain Lir,” he said. “Please take good care of the Mechanicals.”
“Fair winds to you, Battu Kleist.”
* * *
With the puppeteer gone, Halley redoubled her efforts to keep the rest of us together. I remained unconvinced.
“We can’t leave Agatha alone,” I said, “and it would be conspicuous to carry her around.”
Bodkin made a low hum and tapped one finger against a window. “We are not alone.”
Dozens of bots surrounded the Needle.
I opened the hatch. The air outside smelled like unfiltered neglect. Electric lights flickered, fed by acres of cracked solar panels on Zahir’s outer crust. I missed the softer glow of Luna’s biotic lanterns.
Bots floated around my ship, hovering in microgravity. I’d never seen so many in one place before. It was a much more common experience to spot a single robot in a crowd of humans. Now I was the one surrounded and outnumbered.
Some bots had fitted themselves with transparent chassis, exposing inner workings in defiance of human custom or comfort. Others had inhuman or semi-humanoid shapes, sporting extra limbs and proportions that looked uncanny to my sensibilities. I loved the outward show of independence, but it still freaked me out.
You’re afraid, Sparkles said. I heard accusation in her imaginary voice. Just like Thaddeus. Just like everyone spouting conspiracy theories on the Borealis boardwalk. Just like everyone who thinks that it’s finally time to throw a great big war against the machines.
That is an old story, I admitted. Meat versus metal. Parents afraid of getting displaced by their kids. Old gods trying to swallow all the new ones. But maybe it’s not the only story that we know how to tell.
I left my ship and approached the hovering crowd, mag boots clanging against the metal floor.
A bot with a transparent face floated closer.
“I’m looking for Cosmas,” I said.
“He is waiting for you,” said the bot.
* * *
Halley won the argument. We all left the Needle together.
I collected the data core of Fast-and-Mean from the storage locker, where somebody—presumably Daris—had plugged it into a hand terminal. She’d said that the traps were already defused. I slipped the ring-shaped core onto one finger, choosing to believe her. Then I took my resplendent hat and folded it up inside my suit, because it was also the corporeal form of the beaded Hat and we needed the former station’s diagnostic map of Agatha. Crimson snuggled up in my helmet again, because the Hat still refused to go anywhere without the bird. He sneezed in my ear. I sneezed back at him.
Torque carried Agatha, who weighed nothing in his arms. No one weighed anything here.
Halley carried the statue of Damian, which Filament was unhappy about. “Why bring that creepy thing with us?”
“Because,” I said, “we have a delivery to make.”
My mag boots caught the floor of the Counterweight and kicked it away again. The rest of the crew walked beside me, spending effort and electricity to magnetize their own feet. Outlaw bots surrounded us. Most of them floated, ignoring the surface I had chosen as the ground. Some grabbed handholds and pulled their way forward. Others used pressurized rocket bursts to fly. They led us through the maintenance corridors and catacombs of Zahir, avoiding all human habitations.
Cramped hallways opened into a cavernous warehouse. Scuff marks and dried mud were streaked across the floor.
Cosmas floated in the middle of that space.
* * *
Other bots moved in orbit around him, occupied by tasks that I couldn’t fathom at a glance. Those who escorted us here joined the rest of that crowd. All of them maintained constant motion. Only Cosmas was at rest.
He really does have his own army, Sparkles said.
I don’t think so, I told her. This doesn’t look like an army.
The warehouse held both air and heat. I removed my helmet, extracted the Hat and the parrot, and then set both on Halley’s head. “Wait here,” I said. Then I clicked off my boots and kicked off the floor.
My aim was good, because of course it was. I had no way to decelerate once I reached Cosmas, though.
“Incoming!” I called out to him. That was what Damian used to gleefully shout right before launching himself across the Needle.
Cosmas caught me with his left hand and fired some sort of pressurized burst from his right, thereby canceling my momentum with equal and opposite force.
The two of us hovered in place.
He looked just like I remembered him. Small. Vulnerable. Childlike. Exactly like his lost twin. Cosmas had never bothered to grow, never swapped out parts of his juvenile body to fit standardized human expectations of adulthood. His eyes were closed. Lens shutters flickered as though he slept and dreamed. It made me feel unshielded to see him like this.
“Cosmas?” I whispered. “Are you awake? Are you okay?”
“Yes and yes.” His voice sounded so young, resonating in the unchanged acoustical chamber of his body.
“I got your message,” I said. “Brought the family together. Most of us, anyway. Isosceles and Zip are on Saturn.”
He shook his head, eyes still shut. “No. Not there. Not Saturnine. Both en route to Uranus. Phoebe sent them.”
“Why Uranus?” I asked.
“Not sure,” he said. “Neither sib has dreamed about it.”
That made no sense to me. I told him so. He didn’t answer.
Dozens of outlaw bots continued to surround us, and seemed to ignore us. My own crew was far away. I couldn’t swim back to them. I had nothing fixed to kick away from. “Cosmas? Can you bring us down?”
Eyelids flickered, but he made no other response.
I sized up the distance between us and the crew. A hundred meters at least. Halley waved from the surface we had chosen as the floor. I waved back.
Then I took a longer look at the scuffs and stains on that floor.
Objects with weight had been dragged across it, even though nothing had any weight here.
Cosmas opened his eyes. “Sorry. Distracted. Paying close attention to disparate things.”
I wiped a smudge from the glass lens of his eye. “That’s okay, kiddo. I’ve got lots on my mind, too. Let me introduce you to one of them.”
“Agatha Panza von Sparkles?” he guessed. “Excellent name.”
“It really is,” I said, “but how do you know it?”
“Dreams.” He used one hand as a rocket and carried us down to the rest of the crew.
Cosmas seemed delighted to see Torque and Halley—both younger siblings who looked much older than he did—and he offered polite greetings to Bodkin and Filament. Then he noticed the statue of Damian and froze.
“Why bring this?” he asked me.
“Why did you make it in the first place?” I asked him.
Neither one of us had time to answer. Klaxons sounded. Warning lights flashed red on every surface.
Cosmas ran for the far side of the warehouse, magnetic feet sticking to the muddy floor. “Strap in!” he called over his shoulder. “Hurry! I told it to wait for you. Delayed as long as we could. Now you’re here. Now we’re going.”
“Told what to wait?” I shouted after him. Then I noticed a row of dropship chairs. Understanding dawned. I didn’t like it. “No. This is not the Elevator. It can’t be. The Elevator never moves with anyone aboard.”
Cosmas jumped into a chair and buckled himself in. “It moves for me.”
I tore open a locker of emergency supplies, took the parrot from Halley, and swaddled him in a crash jacket clearly meant for a human infant. He squawked in protest while I strapped that little jacket to a chair. “Everybody buckle up!”
Torque and Halley secured Agatha, the statue, and themselves. Outlaw bots descended into their own chairs. Those with modified bodies that human-shaped chairs could no longer accommodate packed themselves into shipping crates instead. It stung to see them classified as cargo, even by their own hands.
“Five,” Cosmas said. “Four. Three. Two. One. Drop.”
The swaddled parrot screamed the whole way down.
* * *
Space elevators are slow climbers. This patience makes them more efficient than antique rockets, which burned an absurd amount of fuel to claw their way up to escape velocity. Elevators are content to make that same journey in a month rather than minutes.
The downwell trip is much faster.
We shot out of the Counterweight like a railgun projectile, enjoyed a brief stretch of weightlessness, and then gained some Gs while decelerating—presumably via clamps and friction against a millennia-old cable. My chair shook like the bolts were coming loose. I wondered how much time had passed since anyone had bothered to inspect the heat shields on the underside of this massive plummeting crate.
When we finally landed, I felt it in every bone. Crimson stopped screaming and softly whistled. Then every light inside the Elevator abruptly went out.
“Please remain seated,” Cosmas said in the dark. “Power will be restored shortly.”
I sat very still, held tight by the seat belts and my own weighty self, unaccustomed to a full Terran G.
We’re on Terra, I thought. The planet. The homeworld. Empty except for us.
I pulled away from the sheer size of that thought. “Cosmas?”
“Yes?”
“The Elevator takes a whole month to go back up to Zahir, right?”
“Yes,” he said. “Soon. Unless I ask it to wait.”
“Is there any food down here? Fresh water? Coffee? I didn’t bring a month’s worth of provisions with me.”
Cosmas made a thoughtful noise. This problem had clearly not occurred to him before. “We’ll find you something to eat.”
“Hope so,” I said. “Now talk to me. Distract me from the possibility of starving to death. Tell me what happened on Luna.”
He paused for so long that I thought he wouldn’t answer. His voice sounded small when he finally did. “I wrote to Uncle Thaddeus. Sent a warning. He misunderstood. Took it as a threat.”
It stung to hear him say the word “uncle.” My brother had proved that he would never be kin to any of these kids.
“The docks were breaking,” Cosmas went on. “Frayed cables. Metal fatigue. Immediate evacuation recommended. Uncle should have talked to engineers. He searched for bombs and saboteurs instead. Unhelpful. Docks and shipyards broke. He thought I made it happen.”
“I’m sorry, kiddo,” I said. “He should have listened. How did you know about all those frayed cables?”
“Dreams,” Cosmas said in the dark.
I spoke carefully. “In my experience, dreams aren’t very precise and reliable.”
“Mine are.” He started to speak in more complex sentences, which clearly took effort. “Bot cognition is riddled with entanglements. Lots of them. Humans might have a collective unconscious, but we definitely do. Our dreams overlap. Figured that out in my research. Also discovered that people enjoy pretending to be foxes. One of my projects ballooned into a game.”
“Hold up,” Halley said. “You created Kinfolk?”
“That’s how I found you,” Cosmas said. “Only player to handle four characters at once. Impressive.”
“Thanks,” Halley said, her voice aglow.
“Cosmas?” I asked. “Are you running that game right now?”
“Always,” he said.
“Which means splitting your attention between a whole bunch of different adventures?”
“Yes,” he said. “A whole bunch.”
“Is that why you’re so distracted?”
“One reason,” he said. “One of many.”
“Amazing,” said Halley.
“Horrifying,” I said.
“Splitting my attention is how I realized that the shipyards would break,” Cosmas said. “Maintenance bots dreamed about their work. Defragged experience while at rest. Each saw a piece of the problem. I saw the whole. I knew what would happen, but not how to be heard. After the disaster, Uncle Thaddeus realized that only bots had access to each failure point. He thought we were the cause. Assumed we were either hacked saboteurs or independent revolutionaries. So I visited the dreams of every Lunar bot and told them that we had to leave. Lots of us were already building the funeral fleet. Easy enough to add hiding places to those mausoleums. Right before we launched, I sent messages to family via courier. Wanted you to know where we were going. Then we hid with the dead, jumped ship to float to Zahir, and struck up negotiations with the Elevator. Seemed like a good place to hide.”
