For We Are Many

FOR WE ARE MANY

Book 2 of the Bobiverse

Dennis E. Taylor

Titles by the author

The World Lines series:

Outland

Earthside (coming soon)

The Bobiverse series:

We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

For We Are Many

All These Worlds (coming soon)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Copyright © 2017 by Dennis E. Taylor - All rights reserved.

eBook edition published by Worldbuilders Press, a service of the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency

Cover art by Jeff Brown

Author Blog: www.dennisetaylor.org

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to all the people who love good old-fashioned space opera.

Acknowledgements

I am truly amazed and grateful for how We Are Legion (We Are Bob) was received by science fiction fans. The response has been both overwhelming and humbling. Thank you. It has been quite the journey…and along the journey I have had great help.

First I would like to thank my agent Ethan Ellenberg for not only taking me on but guiding me through all this. Your help has been invaluable and I am grateful. To Steve Feldberg who saw the potential in We Are Legion and the series…thank you so much for the opportunity you have given me. Betsy Mitchell – thank you for editing my manuscripts and for the words of encouragement.

It takes a “village” of sorts to create a novel, everyone from beta readers, critiques, artists, editors, publishers and now a narrator. To Ray Porter, thank you for bringing Bob Johansson to life.

I’d like to particularly mention the members of the Ubergroup and Novel Exchange group on scribophile. I appreciate your input. And to my beta readers – thank you.

Thanks in particular to:

Sandra and Ken McLaren

Nicole Hamilton

Sheena Lewis

Patrick Jordan

Trudy Cochrane

And my wife Blaihin

...for reading the raw draft and early versions.

It is not down in any map; true places never are.

— Herman Melville

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Table of Contents

1. Sky God

2. Colony Site

3. Life in Camelot

4. Water Planet

5. Progress

6. Contacting Bill

7. Back to Work

8. Farming Satellites

9. Something is Out There

10. Genocide

11. Mating Dance

12. Bob Calling

13. Investigating the Others

14. Sabotage

15. A Visit From Bill

16. Hunted

17. We’ve Lost a Drone

18. It’s Getting Worse

19. Prey

20. Parasite

21. Attacks Continue

22. Fallout

23. VEHEMENT

24. Visiting Marvin

25. Rabbits

26. Selling Poseidon

27. Luke Returns

28. Et Tu, Homer

29. Emergency

30. Found Something

31. Taking Care of Business

32. Linus

33. Trouble in Paradise

34. Moose

35. Sales Call

36. Asteroid Movers

37. He’s Gone

38. Following up

39. Bob-Moot

40. Gotcha

41. Casualties

42. Business

43. An Exchange of Words

44. Baseball

45. Replication

46. Klown Kar Planet

47. New Village

48. Operation

49. Arrival

50. Second Expedition

51. Wedding

52. Bullwinkle

53. Testing

54. Stuff is Happening

55. Contact

56. Descendants

57. Moot

58. News

59. Another One

60. Arrival

61. Starting Over

62. Departure

63. The Pav

64. Moot

65. Grandpa

66. It’s Happening

67. Bad News

68. Recording

69. Wake

70. Conversation

71. Charlie

72. Battle

73. Collection

74. Observing the Process

75. Reunion

76. Funeral

77. Completion

Appendices

List of Terms

Cast of Characters

Genealogy

1. Sky God

Bob

February 2167

Delta Eridani

An angry squeal erupted from the pile of deadwood. The two Deltans paused, poised to retreat. Seeing no further response, they resumed pelting the area with rocks. The individual I had named Bernie, his fur erect along his spine and ears straight out with excitement, chanted, “Here, kuzzi, kuzzi, kuzzi.”

I moved my observation drone to the rear to get out of their line of sight.

They were okay with me observing the hunt, but I didn’t want to distract them when even a slight misstep could result in injury or death. Mike glanced up at the movement, but the Deltans otherwise paid no attention to the football-sized drone.

Someone must have scored a direct hit with a rock. Screaming like an irate steam engine, the pigoid erupted from the entrance to its den. The two rock-throwers sprinted out of the way and the other hunters moved up. Each braced the butt of his spear on the ground and placed a foot on the end to hold it in place.

The pigoid reached the hunting group in less than a second, screaming in rage. The Deltans held their positions with all the courage of medieval pikemen facing a cavalry charge. Even though I watched the action remotely via a floating observation drone, I could still feel my nether regions puckering up in fear. At times like this, I wondered if I hadn’t gone a little overboard with the level of detail in my virtual-reality environment. There was no reason for me to even have nether regions, let alone for them to pucker.

The pigoid crashed into the waiting spears without slowing. Fast, yes.

Smart, not so much. I’d never seen a pigoid try to dodge the spear points.

One of the hunters, Fred, was thrown to the side as his spear bowed and then snapped. He screamed, either in pain or surprise, and blood spurted from his leg. A distracted part of my mind noted that Deltan blood was almost the

same shade of red as human blood.

The other Deltans held fast, and the pigoid was lifted right into the air by the leverage of their spears. It hung in midair for a moment, then crashed to the ground with a final screech. The Deltan hunters waited for any more movement, lips drawn back to show their impressive canines. Occasionally, a pigoid would get back up after this level of mistreatment and wade in for another round. No one wanted to be caught with their guard down.

Bernie sidled up with his spear in one hand and a club in the other.

Stretching as far as he could with the spear, he poked the pigoid in the snout.

When there was no reaction, he turned to his fellow hunters and grinned.

Not literally, of course. The Deltan equivalent of a grin was an ear-waggle, but I was so used to the Deltan mannerisms that I no longer needed to consciously interpret. And the translation software took care of speech, converting idiom and metaphor between English and Deltan. I had assigned arbitrary human names to individuals to help me keep track of everyone.

Truthfully, humans and Deltans would never communicate without a translator. Deltan speech sounded to human ears like a series of grunts, growls, and hiccups. According to Archimedes, my main contact among the Deltans, human speech sounded like two pigoids in a mating frenzy. Nice.

The Deltans looked like a kind of a bat/pig mashup—barrel bodies, spindly limbs, large mobile ears, and snouts not too different from a boar’s.

Their fur was mainly gray, with tan patterns around the face and head unique to each individual. The Deltans were the first non-human intelligence I’d ever encountered, in only the second star system I had visited since leaving Earth more than thirty years ago. It made me wonder if intelligent life was perhaps as common as Star Trek would have us believe.

Bill regularly transmitted his news blogs from Epsilon Eridani, but they were nineteen years old by the time I received them. If any of the other Bobs had found intelligence, Bill might not even have received the reports yet, let alone re-transmitted them to the rest of us.

I returned my attention to the Deltans as they began to organize their post-hunt routine.

The hunters checked on Fred, who was sitting on a rock, swearing in Deltan and pressing on the wound to staunch the bleeding. I moved the drone in to get a close look, and one of the group moved aside to give me a better view.

Fred had been lucky. The gash from the splintered spear was jagged but not deep, and appeared clean. If the pigoid had gotten its teeth into him, he’d be dead.

Mike made a show of trying to poke the wound with his spear. “Does that hurt? Does that hurt?”

Fred showed his teeth. “Yeah, funny. Next time you can have the bad spear.”

Mike smiled back, unrepentant, and Bernie slapped Fred on the shoulder.

“Come on, don’t be a baby. It’s almost stopped bleeding.”

“Right, let’s get this thing hung and bled.” Matching action to words, Mike unwound his rope from around his torso. He flipped the rope over a convenient tree branch, and Bernie tied the rear legs of the carcass.

Knot-making skills, not so good. The rope-work was rudimentary, and probably slipped occasionally. I made a mental note to teach Archimedes some sailing knots.

Mike and Bernie strung up the carcass and proceeded to field-dress their kill, while the other Deltans started a Giving-Thanks chant. As I watched, I had one of those incongruous moments where I half-expected them to attach a hunting tag to its ear. Wrong century, wrong planet, wrong species, of course.

I turned away from the drone’s video window and chuckled as I picked up my coffee. Marvin, who had been watching over my shoulder, gave me a strange look, but I didn’t feel the need to explain. Hell, he should be able to remember Original Bob going hunting with Dad, way back when. I shrugged at him without comment. Work it out, dude.

Marvin rolled his eyes and returned to the La-Z-Boy that he always materialized when he was visiting my VR. I spared a moment to let Jeeves refresh my coffee. As in every virtual reality space that implemented the Jeeves A.I., he resembled John Cleese in tux and tails.

As I took a sip—perfect, as always—I looked around the library from my seat in one of the antique wingback chairs. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a large, old-fashioned fireplace, and tall, narrow windows through which a perpetual late-afternoon sun shone to illuminate the interior. And like a giant shiny black eye, one red corduroy La-Z-Boy, occupied by a clone of yours truly.

All in VR, of course. Physically, Marvin and I were a couple of glowing opto-electronic cubes, installed in the two spaceships currently orbiting Delta Eridani 4. But we had been human once, and our VR environments kept us sane.

Spike wandered over, jumped up onto Marvin’s lap, and began to purr.

The cat’s A.I. was realistic, right down to the total lack of loyalty. I gave a small snort of amusement and turned back to the video window.

The hunters had finished field-dressing their kill. The pigoid didn’t really look like a wild boar. It was probably closer to a bear in general outline, but it filled the same ecological niche as a boar, complete with the same sunny disposition and affectionate behavior.

Hunting them wasn’t a one-sided proposition by any means. The Deltans took a chance on every pigoid hunt. The pigoid usually lost, but it sometimes managed to take down one or two of the hunters. The recent addition of flint tips to the spears was changing the game, though. Yeah, I know. Prime Directive, blah, blah. Pfft. This wasn’t Star Trek, despite Riker’s choice of name and VR theme.

The Deltans trussed their prize to a couple of spears, and four of them hoisted the ends of the spears to their shoulders. Mike beckoned with a gesture, and I maneuvered the drone over to float along beside him. Two others put their arms around Fred and helped him to his feet. His leg hadn’t quite stopped bleeding, and he showed a pronounced limp, but he’d make it back to the village.

We marched triumphantly towards the Deltans’ home, a couple of the hunters singing a victory chant. The others traded good-natured jokes and insults as they compared notes. I never ceased to be amazed at how very similar in behavior the Deltans were to humans. It made me feel nostalgic, occasionally, for genuine human contact.

We soon arrived at the village, greeted by laughter and celebration. A pigoid kill was always a happy event—the hexghi would have a feast tonight, and would eat well for a week. Hexghi translated as something like families of our fire. Of course, it flowed a lot better in Deltan. This hunting group was part of Archimedes’ hexghi, which I’d more or less adopted as family.

Fred was helped over to his family’s spot, where his mate proceeded to fuss over him. One of the hunters hurried off to get the medicine woman,

Cruella. I sighed and prepared myself for yet another argument with her.

The messenger returned moments later with Cruella and her apprentice in tow. Cruella bent down to examine the wound, and I brought the drone in close. Too close, I guess. Cruella straight-armed the drone and it shot back several feet before the AMI controller was able to stabilize it. The other Deltans stepped back in shock, and one looked like he was going to either flee or faint. The drone was small, and really not hard to push around. But still, y’know, sky god.

I’d long since learned that the medicine woman feared no one and nothing.

And she wasn’t particularly good at taking advice, either. I gritted my teeth in frustration, wondering if this time Cruella would pay attention to anything that I’d told her.

Fred apparently was having the same thought. “This would be a good time to try Bawbe’s hot-water thing,” he said to her.

Cruella glared at him, then at my drone. “Maybe he can just dress the wound as well, since you don’t seem to need me.”

“Oh, by the balls of my ancestors, Cruella,” Mike said. “Try something new, just once. Bawbe hasn’t steered us wrong yet.”

Cruella snarled at him. Within moments, the hunters and Cruella had faced off in a yelling match. The hunters were my biggest supporters. Flint tips, spear straighteners, and hand axes were only a few of the improvements that I’d brought to their lives. They, at least, trusted that I had the Deltans’ best interests at heart.

Finally, Cruella threw her hands in the air and barked, “Fine! We’ll do it your way. And if your leg falls, off, don’t come whining to me.”

She turned to her apprentice and snarled an order. The apprentice flattened her ears and ran off.

Minutes later she was back, carrying a bladder and a soft leather skin.

Cruella pointed to the bladder and said, “Freshly boiled water.” She held up the soft piece of scraped skin and said, “Washed in boiling water.” Then she glared right into the drone’s camera. “Now stay out of my way.”

I watched in pleased surprise as she took the time to clean the wound with the piece of hide, using the freshly boiled water. This was progress. Granted, the hunters helped a lot by putting their collective foot down; but if Cruella got into the habit, incidents of infection would drop dramatically.

I bobbed the drone once in acknowledgement, then sent it off to station-

keeping at the perimeter of the village. I returned to my VR once again, sat back, and closed the drone’s video window. The change in procedure by the medicine woman was a major victory, and I was happy to get out of her way in return. It would allow her to save face, and she wouldn’t feel the need to dig in her heels next time.

I’d miss the rest of the celebration, but the pigoid’s ultimate fate was a matter of routine, and well-documented. And probably delicious. I thought of ribs in barbeque sauce and my mouth watered. I didn’t need food any more, being a computer and all, but I could do anything I wanted in VR. And if you’re going to program in a coffee simulation, you might as well program in barbequed ribs.

Spike came walking across my desk, meowed once, and plunked down on my keyboard. I accepted a coffee refill from Jeeves, then turned to Marvin.

“Okay. Excitement’s over. What’s up? You wanted to talk to me about something?”

Marvin nodded and stood. He dismissed the La-Z-Boy and walked over to my work desk. Pulling up a wingback, he invoked a globe of Eden in mid-air over the desk, with a small section of one continent outlined in red. “This is the current range of the Deltans. I’ve excluded the old village, since they no longer live there—”

“—and that was more of a refuge than a permanent home.” I nodded.

“They hadn’t even been there for a full generation.”

Marvin bobbed his head in acknowledgement. “Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of digging—literally, in some cases—and I’ve arrived at a reasonable estimate of Deltan population movements over time.”

He looked at me expectantly, and I made a rolling motion with my hand for him to continue.

“They do not appear to be from this area at all. It looks as though the sentient Deltan subspecies originated here…” Marvin rotated the globe and pointed to a different part of the continent. “…and moved from there to the current location.”

“And they’re no longer at the old location? Why?”

“That’s what I don’t get, Bob. I’ve found a lot of evidence of abandoned Deltan villages, and some burial sites, but not nearly enough graves to account for the expected population.”

“Predation?”

“You’d think, but then we’d find Deltan remains here and there, at least in the form of piles of bones. You’ve seen what the gorilloids leave behind when they’re done with a meal. They’re not fastidious.”

I rubbed my chin, gazing at the globe. “That doesn’t make sense, anyway.

From your notes, the original area didn’t have gorilloids at all. So they moved from a safer area to a more dangerous area, and disappeared in the safer area.”

“Then fled the more dangerous area to set up in an even more dangerous area.” Marvin shook his head in confusion. “They aren’t morons. They may be just in the process of becoming human-level sentient, but they have common sense. We’re missing something.”

I shrugged, and sent the globe spinning with a flick of a finger. “It’s a mystery, Marvin, and we do love a mystery.” We exchanged grins. After all, Bob. “But the important thing is that they’re much safer here, compared to where we found them. They’ve settled in nicely in Camelot, the hunting’s good, and the gorilloids are beginning to get the hint and have pretty much stopped trying to pick off Deltans.”

“You’re really going to call their village Camelot?” Marvin gave me the stink-eye. “Every time you say it, I hear Knights of the Round Table.”

I grinned at him and waggled my eyebrows. “It’s only a model.”

Marvin rolled his eyes and stopped the globe. “Anyway, I’ll keep at this, but we’re at a disadvantage here. On Earth, scientists were building up from existing knowledge of a world they understood. On Eden, we’re starting from scratch.”

“Yeah, and even then, it took years for them to figure out things like the fate of the Anasazi.” I sat back and shook my head. “Yeah, I get it, Marv. I have to admit, I’m glad this is a pet project for you. I did some basic research and exploration when I landed, but it wasn’t a priority for me.”

Marvin chuckled and, with a parting nod, disappeared back to his own VR.

2. Colony Site

Howard

September 2188

Vulcan

Colonization of a new planet was always so easy in science fiction. Actually, scratch that. It was never easy. Something always came out of the woodwork to endanger the colony. Well, they got one thing right. Sort of.

On the plus side, nothing was bursting out of people’s chests. However, setting up a human colony on Vulcan was turning out to be a little bit like being pecked to death by ducks. Large ducks. With teeth and claws. Milo’s notes and planetary catalog made it very clear that setting up would require attention to defensive strategies. The ecosystem was prolific and competitive.

The colony ships Exodus-1 and -2 orbited Vulcan, most of the colonists from the USE enclave still in stasis, waiting for the settlement teams to prepare a site. Construction teams, security teams, and engineers worked day and night to clear enough jungle and build a home for this first wave of humanity.

The USE colonists would also be expected to provide some support to future colony ships. Exodus-3 was only a few months behind us, and more would be coming as fast as Riker could build them.

Like we needed the extra pressure.

Five days after humans set foot on Vulcan, the planet claimed its first casualty.

[Message from the security chief. There has been an attack]

I nodded to Guppy, acknowledging the information. I took a moment to minimize the monitoring window that had been floating in the air in front of me, and ordered the construction AMIs to continue on their own. They could handle most of the tasks involved in building the orbiting farm donut, and they would text me if they ran into something above their pay grade.

I turned in my chair and raised an eyebrow at Guppy, inviting more

information. But the GUPPI system interface, in the form of an avatar resembling Admiral Ackbar, wasn’t inclined to volunteer anything beyond the basic facts. Huge fish eyes blinked at me, waiting for a command.

Accepting the inevitable, I motioned with my hand, and he pushed the video window to me.

The window showed the head of security, Stéphane Brodeur, with that look people get when they’re on an adrenaline high—wide eyes, slight sheen of sweat, nostrils dilated. He began to speak as soon as he saw me. “There has been an attack. The therapod-like predators that we’ve tagged as raptors.

Northwest corner, at the fence construction boundary.”

Brodeur spoke with a pronounced Quebecois accent. I wondered idly how he had managed to get into the USE colony, but dismissed the question as irrelevant. I frame-jacked for a moment and sent a couple of drones to the fence construction area, then returned my frame rate to normal. A human being wouldn’t even notice the millisecond glitch in my image. “Casualties?”

“One.”

“Dead?”

“No, but it will need the new paint job.” Brodeur grinned at me.

I raised an eyebrow, and he continued, “A small group of raptors attacked a backhoe. The equipment will need the paint touched up. We killed most of the animals, and the rest ran off. One of the carcasses is being sent to Dr.

Sheehy for necropsy.”

“So what can I do?”

The security chief shook his head. “About the attack, nothing. It’s done, and we’ve taken care of the attackers. I am hoping you can set up surveillance of some kind.”

A reasonable request. I nodded in thought. “Mr. Brodeur, I have some drones I can put on guard duty now, although they aren’t really optimized for that. Bill, over in Epsilon Eridani, has been refining surveillance and exploration drones for a couple of decades now. I’ll get some plans from him and start printing up something suitable. It’ll take a week or two before they’re ready. Can you hold out?”

“I will talk to the construction chief and see if we can cut back on some of the tasks until you’re done. We would be spread too thin, right now.”

“Do that, Chief. I’ll keep you updated.”

I closed the connection, and sent an email to Bill, requesting information

on his observation drones. He’d designed them more for use by Bobs exploring new systems, but they’d do fine for my purposes as well.

* * *

Security personnel were still swarming the area when my drones arrived at the fence construction site. Blood covered the ground, fortunately all raptor.

A very sad-looking backhoe sat off to one side, long scrapes and scratches marring the bright yellow paint job. I wondered idly if the backhoe’s AMI controller would need therapy.

Personnel were hauling several carcasses into the back of transport trucks.

The raptors resembled movie velociraptors closely enough to give nightmares to anyone who’d seen Jurassic Park. But instead of the peg-like teeth of the canonical carnosaur, their teeth resembled those of sharks—triangular, serrated, and razor sharp. So far, the use of military-grade automatic weapons on them hadn’t blunted their enthusiasm for the newly arrived food group.

I found Chief Brodeur overseeing the cleanup and floated over to him.

He turned as the drone approached and grinned. “And to think I turned down the desk job.”

I chuckled politely in response. “Welcome to the frontier. Did you get all of them?”

“No.” He shook his head. “We let one or two get away to communicate fear of humans to their friends.”

“And how’s that working out, so far?”

Chief Brodeur laughed and shook his head. “I have a meeting with the colonel this afternoon. Perhaps you could attend.”

“He’s already invited me, Mr. Brodeur. I’ll see you there.”

Chief Brodeur nodded to the drone, then turned back to help his staff with cleanup. I took the opportunity to inspect the progress on construction.

A fence stretched about a third of the way around the planned town site.

Five meters tall, it was built from a combination of native wood and metal.

The Vulcan trees were close enough to their Terran equivalents that the setup crews were able to adapt them with little effort. The trees were harvested from the area immediately around the fence, forming a clear-cut for additional security. I had my doubts about whether the fence was tall enough to keep the brontos at bay, but no one had asked me. Not that the brontos would eat people or anything. They were more of an “accidentally step on

you” kind of danger.

To the west, Vulcan’s sister planet Romulus hung in the sky, clouds and seas clearly visible. When Exodus-3 arrived, the passengers, from the FAITH

and Spitz enclaves, would be settling there. I expected life to get very interesting once the FAITH colony got started. I doubted that nineteen years of stasis would improve Minister Cranston’s disposition. The FAITH leader wasn’t what I’d call a people-person to begin with, and his relationship with the Bobs had developed into kind of a hate-hate thing.

I sent another drone up a few hundred meters and set it to circle the area, watching for any movement of native life. Nothing lurked nearby, probably due to the noise of the automatic weapons.

Things appeared to have calmed down, and everyone was back to work. I backed out of the drone and back into my VR. Sighing, I rubbed my forehead. Sometimes I missed sleeping for a third of each day. It had been a nice break from reality.

“Guppy, I have some printer schedule changes.”

Guppy popped in and waited silently for me to continue. Looking at him, I wondered if I should change the Admiral Ackbar image. But nothing else came to mind, and anyway it had become a kind of tradition with the Bobs.

“We need more observation drones.”

[All printer groups are currently engaged in producing parts for the orbiting farms. Do you want to bump this activity?]

“Hmm, not really. Okay, put half the printers on drones, and produce four full squads. Then back to building the farm donuts.”

[Aye]

Guppy went into command fugue while he reprogrammed the 3D printers.

I turned back to the video windows from my active drones. I would build more drones as requested, but I had a bad feeling that we’d go through a few colonists before we got the fence completed.

* * *

“Good afternoon, Colonel.” The video window showed Colonel Butterworth, as usual looking impeccable and wrinkle-free. I wondered how he did it.

“Morning, Howard.” He nodded toward my image on his desk phone.

“Good to see you. I heard about today’s attack.”

I took a moment to be surprised. I didn’t remember Colonel Butterworth

ever greeting Riker with that level of friendliness back on Earth. I wasn’t sure if I should be offended for Riker or pleased for me.

The leader of the USE enclave had been at odds with Riker since day one.

I had all Riker’s memories of those days of course, right up to the moment that Riker had cloned me. It would be an understatement to describe Butterworth as “pushy,” although at least he was always professional.

With a mental shrug, I decided not to worry about it. Different time, different place, and let’s face it, I wasn’t Riker.

“Yeah, but we won’t be so lucky next time,” I replied. “The raptors are smart. They’ll figure out that backhoes aren’t edible. If they’ve got good color vision—a high likelihood—they’ll probably associate bright yellow with inedible things with hard shells. Then they’ll start concentrating on the soft and squishy two-legged things.”

Butterworth snorted. “I saw your immediate strategy with the drones. I’m just reading your plan for observation and surveillance systems. Looks comprehensive. I have a few small suggestions, which we can go over when convenient.”

I nodded without comment. The colonel’s suggestions would be good ones, and I’d very likely implement them.

“So, where’s Mr. Brodeur? Wasn’t he supposed to be here?”

“He was.” The colonel shrugged. “Something came up. I’ll debrief him separately, and call you if anything requires more discussion.”

I nodded, then glanced over the colonel’s shoulder, where the townsite plan was posted on the far wall. I motioned at it with my chin. “Kind of old-school, isn’t it? A paper poster tacked up on a wall?”

“Hardcopy still has its place, Howard. It’s much bigger than an image on a tablet, and I can make notes on it with a color marker. Of course, I also take a picture, periodically.” The colonel gave me his trademark dry smile. “In other news, we are ready to decant the farming specialists from stasis. Mr. Brodeur tells me that they will have the farm area enclosed within a week.”

“Good. Bert and Ernie are getting antsy about unloading everyone soon.”

Butterworth winced as I mentioned the two colony-ship Bobs. I wasn’t sure which was more amusing—that he disapproved so much over our naming choices, or that he recognized the reference.

“Another month or so, Howard, then we can make that decision with confidence.” The colonel reached forward out of frame. “And maybe by the

time Exodus-1 and Exodus-2 get back to Earth for another load, someone will have found another habitable system and they’ll stop shipping people our way.” Without waiting for a response, he ended the call.

3. Life in Camelot

Bob

March 2167

Delta Eridani

Archimedes placed the bone tool with care and tapped it with a rock. A fleck of flint dropped off the core, and Moses nodded in approval. Archimedes repositioned the tool for his next strike, and glanced at Moses with his ears pointed slightly forward. Moses made a small hand motion. Archimedes moved the tool a fraction to the left and his ears curled with concentration as he again tapped on the tool.

The other Deltan adolescent, whom I’d named Richard, watched Archimedes then tried to copy his technique. But the tool slipped off the cobble and stabbed into his foot. He leaped up and hopped on the other foot, cursing with enthusiasm.

After a few moments, Richard noticed Archimedes’ grin and scowled.

Snarling, he compared Archimedes to pigoid droppings, then stalked off, limping.

Moses and Archimedes were the tribe’s best flint experts and tool-makers.

And based on Richard’s performance, still the only ones. Archimedes was a teenager by Deltan standards—past puberty, but not yet fully grown. He was, however, easily the most intelligent Deltan in the village. Which meant, based on our searches, the most intelligent Deltan on the entire planet of Eden.

Archimedes was the first Deltan in years, it seemed, who could understand Moses’ flint-knapping instructions. A couple of juveniles, like Richard, had shown some interest, but couldn’t maintain the level of concentration required to complete a tool. Very likely Archimedes would have to wait for some of his own progeny before he’d be able to attract any apprentices of his own.

“Moses isn’t looking so good,” Marvin commented, looking over my shoulder.

“Yeah, I know. I think the march from the old village was harder than we expected. A couple of other elderly Deltans have died since they got here.”

I mentioned my theory about potential apprentices, and Marvin laughed. “I can think of at least two females from Archimedes’ cohort who are actively working on that.”

Yeah, gotta love adolescence. Between his flint-knapping skills, his tool-making ability in general, and his position as primary spokesperson for The Bawbe, Archimedes had a level of mojo totally out of keeping with his youth.

All of which apparently went over quite well with the girls.

Archimedes set aside the core and the tools, stood up, and stretched. He and Moses exchanged a few words, and Moses got up and wandered off.

There was no nine-to-five in Deltan society. Things got done when things got done. It looked like they’d had enough for the moment.

Archimedes turned and looked around until he located the drone I was using to observe. He grinned up at me and made a head motion toward the practice range. I bobbed the drone in agreement, then floated after him as he headed in that direction.

I opened the conversation. “Things are looking good. Everyone seems to have settled in.”

Archimedes nodded. He walked in silence for a few more moments.

“Arnold is happy with the new village, uh, Camelot?” I had mentioned my name for the camp once, without running it through the translator.

Archimedes was trying to render the word phonetically. It was a valiant attempt, but no human would have recognized the sound.

“Let’s just go with your word for it, Archimedes. My language doesn’t translate well into Deltan.”

“Fine with me. That hurt my throat. Anyway, Arnold likes how we can defend the two access paths instead of the entire boundary.”

Camelot was a located on a small mesa that was surrounded by scree and cliffs most of the way around. It reminded me a little of an aircraft carrier, including a rocky bluff in the center resembling a carrier’s control island.

Two paths, about 120 degrees apart, were the only ways on or off the mesa, unless you could fly. It was a huge improvement over their old village, which had been just a clearing in the forest. Guarding against gorilloid attacks had been a full-time job at the old village, and they’d still been losing the battle.

“Two people were killed in the last two hands of days, though, right?” I said.

Archimedes shrugged. “The gorilloids are a problem. They are always hungry. And there are so many on this side of the mountains. Guarding is a bigger job when people are away from the village.”

All the more reason to make it less necessary to leave the village. I already had herding on my list of things to teach them. I still needed to find an appropriate herd animal to domesticate. I turned away from the drone window just long enough to sigh and shake my head. That TODO list just kept growing.

I found myself in one of those all-or-nothing situations. I’d made a decision to help the Deltans avoid extinction. What had started as a small, anonymous intervention quickly turned into a full-time job as The Bawbe, resident sky god. I hoped eventually to be able to leave them to their own fate, but that probably wasn’t in the cards for a generation or so.

We had arrived at the practice range, so I dropped the topic. Practice range was a trumped-up description, of course. The range consisted of a flat area at the side of the steep embankment leading up to the central bluff.

Deltans staked up targets on the slope, and they used these to practice the new technology of spear-chucking.

We watched for a few minutes. Most Deltans could get a spear into the right area, point first, most of the time. But actually hitting one of the targets was an accomplishment, and usually resulted in a lot of dancing and taunts directed at the other students. Any thought of precision was an unreachable fantasy for most. Some Deltans were out-and-out terrible, and one or two couldn’t get it through their heads that the spear had to fly point-first. Those individuals generally stayed on pigoid-hunting duty, where the spear never left your hand.

Archimedes was exceptionally good with a spear, but he lacked the upper-body strength to get any kind of distance. When he reached full adulthood, though, he would be formidable.

Arnold was the other prodigy in this new technology. He had an intuitive feel for anything that involved killing. A natural warrior, he’d been the first Deltan to kill a gorilloid with a hand axe, splitting the beast’s skull with one blow. Arnold was almost as big as a juvenile gorilloid, so he generally got very little backtalk.

Arnold paced back and forth, helping individuals with their technique and yelling encouragement. I chuckled, without letting it play out through the drone. I’d rigged the translator to render his speech with an Austrian accent.

It never got old.

“How is it going with the medicine woman?” Archimedes asked, interrupting my train of thought.

I cringed inwardly. One of the surprising things about Deltans was their lack of awe for the divine authority of The Bawbe, and Cruella took that philosophy to new heights. A tribe of primitive humans would have been hanging on to my every word, but Deltans were much more skeptical and inclined to question. My first attempt to introduce them to tents still smarted a little.

“Not so well. She either flat out doesn’t believe most of what I say, or she just doesn’t want to change her ways. I am able to get the occasional concession, but it’s an uphill battle.”

Archimedes grinned up at the drone. “Welcome to my tribe. Maybe you should use one of the flying rocks on her.”

I laughed, not only at the comment, but at the fact that Archimedes was sounding so much like me. He’d picked up the concept of dry humor right away, but it was completely beyond any but maybe a half-dozen other Deltans.

And using a buster on the medicine woman was certainly tempting. A self-propelled forty-pound ball of steel impacting at Mach 1 didn’t leave much room for argument. “I’ll take it under advisement. She’s at least taken my suggestions for cleaning wounds. She’s not completely closed-minded, just very conservative.”

Archimedes shrugged. He’d been dealing with that level of conservatism his whole life. It was a constant source of amusement to him that I was surprised by the attitude.

We continued along the path, which led up to the top of the central bluff.

It was a flat area, about the size of a small house. Completely exposed to the elements, it would be useless as a living space, but the view was spectacular.

On a sunny day like this, many of the adolescent Deltans gathered here to do what teenagers did the universe over—get away from the adults.

We endured a few moments of staring as Archimedes came over the crest, the football-sized drone hovering by his shoulder. But I was old news, and

the kids soon went back to what they were doing. They appeared to be playing Rinjhaxa, a sort of pick-up-sticks with betting. Again, I was struck by how very human-like these people were. We only had two data points as of yet, but I wondered if there was some universality about the way intelligent species developed and behaved.

Archimedes waved at Diana, who sat with some of her friends. She smiled and waved back, then glared at the drone and turned away. Not my number one fan, for sure. I’d never given her any reason to hate me, as far as I knew.

It might be as simple as competition for Archimedes’ attention.

Archimedes sat down, facing north-east towards the mountain range that split this section of the continent. I brought the drone down to a comfortable talking height and took a moment to enjoy the view.

One of the two moons of Eden hung in the sky, twice the apparent size of Earth’s moon. The sun, low in the west, imparted a golden highlight on the scattered clouds. The forest, stretching horizon to horizon, would have looked completely natural on Earth, before human beings clear-cut the planet.

Archimedes gestured towards the mountains in the distance. Most of them were high enough to have snow year-round. “That’s a big journey. It was hard with you leading us back here, when we knew what we were heading for. It must have been harder when our parents and their parents were going the other way and had no idea what they’d find.”

He looked around at the village, spread below us on the mesa. “It’s so much better here. Except for all the gorilloids, of course.” Archimedes showed his teeth, which I automatically translated to a frown.

“That’s good, Archimedes. I want to see your people succeed. I don’t know if there are a lot of intelligent species in all the worlds of the sky, but each one is priceless. So far, my brothers haven’t found any others.”

“How many Bawbes are there?”

I smiled at the question, but Archimedes couldn’t see that. “I don’t really know. I made four others before I left the last star, but they will hopefully have made more. I’ve made three here, so far. Two have left, and Marvin is still here, helping me.”

“You make brothers?”

“It’s complicated, Archimedes. I’m not flesh and blood, like you. Each brother I make is a copy of me, with my memories and everything. But usually a little different in personality. Marvin is more cautious than me and

tends to keep me from implementing wild plans.”

Archimedes stared at the drone for a few more seconds, then looked away.

“Questions just bring more questions, and I never catch up. I should stick to things that affect my people.”

I laughed, which the translation routine converted into the Deltan expression of humor. “That’s fine, Archimedes. I have a very similar problem. I call it a TODO list. It only ever seems to get bigger.”

Archimedes grinned in response and turned to the vista spread out before us. He sat and I hovered in silence, enjoying the scenery.

4. Water Planet

Mulder

October 2170

Eta Cassiopeiae

Eta Cassiopeiae was a long-period binary. The brightest of the pair, Eta Cassiopeiae A, was class G3V, only slightly larger and more luminous than Sol. At 19.5 light years from Epsilon Eridani, it was a bit of a hike. But all of the closer good candidates were spoken for. As part of Bill’s third cohort, I had to take potluck, I guess. Most stars are K and M class, and I just didn’t see a tidally locked planet sitting practically inside the chromosphere of its parent star as being a desirable vacation getaway. So, here I was, twenty-odd years later. By now, Homer and Riker would have gotten to Sol, and whatever situation they found would be resolved one way or another.

I chuckled, remembering the early days back at Epsilon Eridani. Homer was a real card. I think he picked his name at least as much because it bugged the other Bobs as anything else. I wondered if Riker would kill Homer himself in a “friendly fire” incident. That made me laugh out loud, and Guppy looked at me with fishy concern.

I lifted Spike off my lap and put her on the desk, then got up and stepped outside into the sun. My VR was a tropical location, with open-air huts, reminiscent of Gilligan’s Island. It would be totally impractical in the real world, of course, but in VR you could do anything.

Guppy followed me out. [Results are in. We have found no Jovians]

“None?” I frowned. “I wonder if that’s good or bad.”

[Insufficient information]

I nodded distractedly, and turned back to face the beach.

I took a minute to enjoy the sun on my face and listen to the surf. I suppose I might eventually get tired of this scene, but not any time soon. It made me regret that I’d never taken the time for this kind of vacation when I was alive.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped past Guppy and back into the hut. The

holotank showed the layout of the star system with about 95% confidence at this point. There might be a few smaller bodies floating around that we’d missed, but I doubted they’d be major players.

The companion star, Eta Cassiopeiae B, had a closest approach of 36 AU

at periastron, which meant planets were unlikely outside of about 9 AU of EC-A. It also meant that the Oort and Kuiper objects had been disturbed many times. Any planets in this system would have taken more than one good pelting. The good news was there was probably very little left out there to send inward.

“That one,” I pointed to the third planet. “Is right smack in the Comfort Zone. Any indication of size?”

[No. But spectroscopic analysis is showing oxygen and water lines]

“Oh, that’s excellent.”

[There is also indication of a wobble, which would indicate a satellite]

“Better and better. Okay, Guppy, plot a course to planet three.”

[Deploy mining and survey drones?]

“Naw, let’s see if this system is worth hanging around in, first.”

Guppy somehow managed to look disappointed, although if pressed, I couldn’t for the life of me describe what a disappointed fish looked like.

I stared in thought at the image floating in front of me. We’d detected four other rocky planets, two inside and two outside the Comfort Zone, but no Jovian planets. That worried me a little, as Jovians tended to keep the inner system relatively safe by perturbing anything coming straight in from the outer system.

Of more concern was the lack of a significant asteroid belt. The general plan for the HEAVEN project was to use the mineral wealth of asteroid belts to build the space station and future Bobs. No asteroid belt could spell trouble.

Meh. One thing at a time.

It took a few days to get there. I spent that time doing fine scans of the system for any sparse asteroid belts that I might have missed. No such luck.

This system really had been swept clean. I had five planets, and whatever moons they might have, to work with. Planetary mining would require a lot of re-think.

I also got a bead on the moons of planet three. There were two bigger ones, one about half the size of Earth’s moon, and one about a fifth the size;

and two smaller ones, closer in, really not much more than big rocks. The planet itself was a little smaller than Earth, with a .87 surface gravity and a 26-hour rotation. The atmosphere was delightfully Earth-like, maybe a little more oxygen-rich.

I inserted myself into a polar orbit and started deep scans. The planet had a lot of cloud, just like Earth. That was good, since it indicated robust weather patterns. It also had a lot of water. In fact, so far, all I’d seen was water.

“Have we detected land, yet?”

[Negative]

“Well, that’s… irritating. Alert me as soon as we find something.”

[Aye]

* * *

[Scans are complete]

“But you were supposed to alert me—oh.”

I examined the scans and started to laugh. Honest to God, a good belly laugh still feels good, even in VR.

The planet had water, all right. Oh, did it have water! What didn’t it have?

Land. None. Nada. Not so much as an atoll. This was just one big ball of ocean. Not even any freakin’ ice caps to stand on.

Which raised the question of what exactly was creating the oxygen. On Earth, that would be green plants. But plants, not to put too fine a point on it, tended to require dirt. Excuse me, soil.

“Guppy, are you sure about the chlorophyll?”

[Affirmative]

Huh. Weird. I was obviously missing something. This would require a closer look.

I’d gotten a message from Bill with plans for planetary exploration drones while I was still incoming, but with no raw materials to work with, I was pretty much S.O.L.

I sighed theatrically and turned to Guppy, who was standing at parade rest, as usual. “I guess we’d better survey the system. Set a course to take us past each planet. Let’s start with a flyby of this planet’s moons.”

[Aye]

It took a couple of weeks to hit all the other planets and their satellites.

While I was buzzing around, I did manage to catalog a couple of asteroids

with relatively eccentric orbits. I sat back in my beach chair, with a coffee in my hands, and reviewed the reports. There was lots of metal in this system. It appeared to be a little richer than Sol, in fact. But everything was planetside.

It looked like the space junk that normally infests a system had virtually all become an impactor at some point. I could only guess that the effect of the binary partner, combined with the lack of a Jovian, had resulted in some weird chain of events that cleared the system. I’m sure an astrophysicist would have an explanation at the ready, and I promised myself I’d give that a think when I had the time.

I flew out to the fourth planet, the second moon of which had good ore deposits close to the surface. I set up the autofactory in orbit and fed several of my drones and roamers into it to use as construction material. A week later, the autofactory had built a couple of small cargo vessels. I loaded them up with mining drones and sent the whole crew down to the moon’s surface.

While I waited, I re-examined the scans of planet three and pondered. I remembered reading that all of Earth’s water could have been supplied by a single icy comet about 1000 km in diameter. Given the amount of material in Sol’s Oort cloud, that was barely a sneeze. Since this system seemed to have had its cloud cleared, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to think that the planets got pounded early on.

While the mining drones slaved away, I pondered the question of whether this world was even worth reporting as a colonization candidate. Oh, it had oxygen, and it had water, but the amount of effort required to build any kind of base would be incredible. I knew from the libraries that Earth in the twenty-second century had started building and populating floating cities, but they operated only with the support of land-bound industries.

Well, not my decision. I would just send in a report and let the powers that be hash it out. If there still were any powers that be, that is. The war could have wiped out humanity entirely, for all I knew, which would make this whole exercise moot.

Still, eventually, Riker would report back to Bill, and Bill would transmit the news in one of his regular blogs. Until I heard different, I was going to continue to play Von Neumann probe. I owed that to Dr. Landers.

* * *

[Construction AMI controller is now online]

“Cool, thanks, Guppy. Order it to start on a couple of Bobs, then the space station.”

[Aye]

The Artificial Machine Intelligence could handle routine construction using standard plans, and would contact me if it ran into any issues that were beyond its programming.

The various construction tasks would take months, so I flew back to the third planet with a couple of exploration drones to look around. I started with a deep scan of the ocean. And got my money’s worth. I had to retune three times before I was able to detect ocean bottom. Eight hundred kilometers deep. That was just nuts. I’d had some thought of artificial islands, but unless there was a Mount Lookitthat down there somewhere, there wasn’t going to be anything close enough to anchor to or build up.

I stared at the result in disbelief, then turned to Guppy. “Start a detailed mapping survey of the ocean floor, using the current SUDDAR settings. Let me know when you have a complete globe.”

[Aye]

Telescopic surveys indicated some kind of green patches on the ocean, so I sent some drones down to investigate. It didn’t take long to discover the source of the atmospheric oxygen. Plants had discovered that by sitting on top of the water, they could get much better light. The plants formed large mats—and by large, I mean literally kilometers in diameter. I dispatched a biology drone to take samples.

The drones couldn’t go underwater. That would just screw up the SURGE

drive something fierce. Even atmosphere required careful tuning to avoid futzing up the field. But SUDDAR scans from in close revealed that the underwater ecosystem was rich beyond belief.

“Well, this is looking not so bad, suddenly. Assuming any of this is edible, people could live here and work upstairs.” I looked at Guppy for a reaction. I might as well not have bothered.

The biological drone spent weeks surveying the mats and immediate area.

The mats actually seemed to be comprised of multiple species of plant in symbiotic relationships. The animals had found the free ride, and there was a thriving commensal zoological ecosystem in and on the mats.

At the end of two months, I took the completed survey results and reviewed them.

Biocompatible. And according to the report, exceptionally so. In fact, other than a few amino acids and vitamins, it looked like humans could go native on the mats, barring anything poisonous.

I formatted a complete report and handed it off to the space station AMI, to be transmitted to Bill once the station was completed. The autofactory had completed a couple of computer matrices and cradles, so I did a backup and restored it into the matrices. HIC3821-1 and HIC3821-2 came online.

I expanded my VR to make room for company and invited them in.

Two Bobs popped into existence across the desk from me. I offered them beach chairs, and Jeeves brought coffee.

I smiled at them. “I guess you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you here.”

H-1 rolled his eyes. “Funny, I knew you were going to say that.”

That got a chuckle from me. And wasn’t what I’d expected, so my clones were already diverging from me. “So, got ideas for names?”

H-1 piped up, “Skinner for me.”

I made a moue of appreciation. “Keeping to the theme. I’m touched.”

“I’m more of a Jonny Quest type,” H-2 said.

Skinner and I chuckled dutifully.

After a polite pause, I pulled up the system schematic with the autofactory area magnified in a cutaway view. “Okay, you guys are going to be helping out around here until your hulls are ready to go. After that, it’s up to you, of course.”

Both Bobs nodded. Jonny said, “No prob with the helping out, but I’m blowing this podunk system as soon as my vessel is ready.” He turned to Skinner. “It’s up to you whether you want to stay or not. Personally, I’d rather go look for something a little more interesting.”

Well, that was a bit harsh. But, his choice, of course. Skinner simply shrugged.

I pointed to the image of the space station. “The station is almost done.

When it sends the report Bill-ward, we set the mining drones to automatic collection, and that really ends our responsibility here. Questions?”

Both Bobs shook their heads.

“I might stay for a while and do another round of Bobs,” I continued. “I’m curious about the life on Three. Hmm, Poseidon would be a good name, I think,”

“Ooh, naming it and everything. You are a sentimental sort.”

Jonny was definitely a sarcastic S.O.B. I decided he couldn’t leave soon enough for my tastes.

Skinner seemed to agree with me, as he was looking askance at Jonny.

This seemed like Mario or Milo all over again. I remembered Bob-1

wondering what he’d do if he found he didn’t like any particular clone.

Turned out it didn’t matter. It’s a big galaxy.

5. Progress

Howard

December 2188

Omicron2 Eridani

The fence was all but finished, the town had been laid out, and now it had an official name. Landing wasn’t particularly inventive, but everyone thought it was appropriate.

I was on a conference call with Colonel Butterworth and Stéphane, discussing the recent deaths. The colonel had his usual glass of Jameson.

Stéphane was calling in from the field, so his image was up in a separate window. Teleconferencing was certainly a lot easier than it had been in Original Bob’s lifetime. And it made things better for me, since in this context, I was as real as anyone else.

“Two dead,” Stéphane repeated, shaking his head. “A couple of raptors hid behind transport trucks hauling logs and simply walked into camp, staying out of sight. The beasts are tricky. Are we sure they aren’t intelligent?”

Colonel Butterworth cocked an eyebrow at him. “By which, I assume you mean human-level sentient. And the answer is no, to the extent we can determine. I’ve discussed this with Dr. Sheehy and her staff, and they assure me that the raptors have no language, beyond stereotyped verbal signaling.

They use no weapons, not that they need any, and we see no evidence of structures.” He shrugged. “In the absence of some other form of evidence, they appear to be only animals. Very smart ones, but nothing more.”

“It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, Colonel.”

Butterworth looked at me, one eyebrow still up. “I understand the philosophical point, Howard. However, in the real world, we are here to propagate our species. It is simply not possible to do that with a zero footprint. I would be happy to stop killing raptors, if the raptors could be persuaded to stop trying to eat colonists.” He smiled. “Failing that, we and they will continue to interact in the ways that competing species have always

handled such situations.”

Stéphane nodded and grinned at me. “And that is where we come in.”

I knew there was no good answer to this discussion, and there were other things at the top of my mind. “On another subject, are we on schedule to decant the rest of the colonists?”

“As long as the second farm donut is ready to go into full production, yes.” Butterworth took a sip of his whiskey and stared at it thoughtfully. “I’m going to have to start rationing this more stringently. The next barrel is sixteen light-years away. If any still exist at all.” He shook off the thought and looked at me.

I ignored the comment about the Jameson. “We’re on schedule, Colonel.

Bert and Ernie are anxious to get going back to Earth for another load.” And in thirty-five years or so, another twenty thousand people would have to find a place to settle on either Vulcan or Romulus. Would I still be here? Or would I have handed it off to one of my clones by then?

Stéphane said, “Security is ready. The fence will be finished within forty-eight hours. Your observation drones are helping greatly.”

I nodded to him. “It’s kind of ad hoc, right now. Eventually I’ll want to put together a really good, automated system.” I turned back to the colonel.

“Farms are ready, and I’m building up a surplus in anticipation of need.”

“And we have adequate shelter, although many will live in barracks for another month or two.” Colonel Butterworth looked at each of us in turn. “I think we’re ready. Please pass the word to the Exodus pilots.”

I grinned. Finally. Opening Day.

* * *

I accepted a ping from Bert, and he popped into my VR. I saw that he was no longer wearing the

Battlestar Galactica

uniform. Well, the joke had been wearing a bit thin.

“Hey, Howard. I just got your email. Butterworth has agreed to offload the balance of the colonists?”

I noted Bert’s obvious excitement. I guess it was a question of pride; Bert and Ernie wanted to be on the road, hauling colonists. Orbiting Vulcan, acting as floating warehouses, just didn’t cut it.

Bert sat and accepted a coffee from Jeeves. “It looks like Exodus-3 will be here mid-next-year.”

“Yep. Riker told Sam to take it a bit slow on the flight, to give us more lead time. We agreed to get the Spits off-Earth within six months of the first two ships. Nothing was said about arrival times.”

“Ah, lawyering. Makes the universe go ‘round.”

I smiled, then grew serious. “We’ve needed the extra time. Milo wasn’t kidding about Vulcan’s ecosystem. They’ve had to go back and reinforce the fence, then add electrical wiring to dissuade the brontos from chewing on it.

And to keep out the raptors, and the giant snake-things, and those burrowing armadillo things…” I shook my head. “We’re making progress, but it’s like wading through molasses sometimes.”

“Well, not really my problem.” Bert took a sip of coffee. “Shuttles start moving people down this afternoon. Just make sure you have somewhere to put them. I’m about ready to just hover over the tarmac and turn the shuttle sideways to dump ‘em out.” He grinned to show he wasn’t serious. Or at least not completely so.

“Okay, Bert, I’ll let the colonel know.”

He finished his coffee, disappeared the cup, and popped out with a wave.

6. Contacting Bill

Mulder

April 2171

Poseidon

Subspace Communications Universal Transceiver. Kind of forced, but we had a tradition, going back to FAITH, of bad acronyms. The radio transmission from Bill contained a complete set of plans and operating instructions.

So, I built the SCUT from Bill’s transmitted plans, and now I was ready for the magic moment.

I just hoped it wouldn’t blow up.

I flipped the switch, and the console immediately started scrolling information.

Sol

Epsilon Eridani

Alpha Centauri

Omicron2 Eridani

I followed the menu prompts and registered myself on the network, then selected Epsilon Eridani and pressed connect. The transmitting icon came on, and I began to speak. “Hi, Bill, this is Mulder out at Eta Cassiopeiae. I’ve found—”

Bill popped into my VR. “Hi, Mulder. How’s tricks?”

“Holy—” I was speechless. It was just under twenty light-years from here to Epsilon Eridani, yet this was Bill, sitting across from me in my VR.

Bill laughed. “It never gets old. Welcome to BobNet. Instantaneous communications across interstellar space.” He waggled his eyebrows at me in our standard Groucho Marx impersonation and took a sip of his coffee.

I nodded slowly in appreciation. “And is that your standard entrance?”

“Oh, hell, yes. And I’m keeping track. Notches on the holster and all.” We both laughed, and I materialized a coffee of my own. This was huge. Real-time communications changed everything. No more decades-long turnaround

times for communications.

“So, anything interesting here?” Bill waved his coffee in a vague out there gesture.

“I think so. We have a colonization target. It’s not ideal, but I don’t know if you’re in a position to be picky. Or if we even need colonization targets.

Did Riker find anything?” I pushed a file towards him. Bill went into frame-jack for a moment while he absorbed the contents. When his avatar unfroze, he looked pleased.

“Not bad. I see your point, though. Colonists would have to establish a space presence immediately. Still, to answer the question: No, we’re not in a position to be picky right now. And yes, Riker found something. Check out his blog on BobNet.”

We spent several more seconds getting caught up, and I promised to read all the blogs. Bill gave me a wave and popped out.

Well, that was interesting. It appeared I should put some effort into preparing this system. The standard plan was to have a supply of refined metals available in orbit when the colonists arrived. And I’d have to write a bestiary, with detailed information. Some of the creatures in-planet were truly impressive by any definition. The kraken, especially, needed an entire chapter of its own.

Time to buckle down and get serious.

7. Back to Work

Riker

July 2171

Sol

I looked at my list of TODOs for the day and sighed. I was a little surprised at how much I was missing my family. Julia and Clan Bob were all aboard Exodus-3, in stasis, heading for Omicron2 Eridani. There would be no contact until they arrived at their destination and were revived. I tried to remind myself that it was an eye-blink at my life scale, but any way I looked at it, I would still have to experience every day of those seventeen years. Twenty-four-hour days, since I didn’t sleep, experienced in millisecond intervals.

This train of thought seemed destined to send me into a deep funk. With an effort of will, I brought myself to task.

The first item, as always, was a status check on colony ship construction. I checked the summary window rather than doing a personal inspection. Unless some significant step was due, I didn’t need to micro-manage.

At that moment, Charles popped into my VR. “Hey, Riker.” One of the first clones I’d made here in the solar system, Charles was still hanging around and helping out. He knew the politics of Earth almost as well as I, and the location of everything in the rest of the system far better. If he ever decided to leave, it would be crippling.

“Charles. What’s up?”

“I wanted to update you on the sabotage.”

“So what’s the scoop?”

“Um, it looks like we’ve got two different groups working. VEHEMENT

is definitely behind the attacks on infrastructure. They’ve left the usual calling cards afterwards. Everything is designed to target food production.

They’re very tech-savvy and obviously know what they’re doing.”

VEHEMENT appeared to be some kind of radical environmental group, whose ultimate goal was to save the world by removing humanity. And they weren’t picky about ethical questions when it came to their methods.

Charles popped up a couple of images, and samples of the VEHEMENT

statements. He waited for me to review them before continuing. Some were the typical pompous ravings of self-important people—all pronouncements and assertions, written with nose firmly in the air. Others were acerbic and even ironic. This latest fell into the latter category: A friendly reminder that you are a scourge on the universe. Do it a favor and disappear.

This public service message brought to you by: Voluntary Extinction of Human Existence Means Earth’s Natural Transformation

Charles continued when he saw he had my attention. “The attacks on Florianópolis don’t fit the profile, though. There’s no announcement afterwards, and the attacks seem aimed at maximizing fatalities rather than damaging infrastructure. They’re not sophisticated, either, mostly just brute-force explosives. I think those are just attacks on Brazil, or what’s left of it.

There’s still a lot of resentment against them for the war.”

I nodded thoughtfully. This confirmed my private opinion. “That also means the second group might not be a single organization. It could be multiple groups or even independent individual actions.”

“Agreed. For all that more people are dying in those acts, it’s less of a long-term issue and can be handled by local law enforcement. The VEHEMENT stuff worries me a lot more.”

“Mmm-hmm. They haven’t gotten at any of our space-based assets, but considering the technological expertise they’ve already displayed, I wouldn’t be surprised if they figured out a way.” I had my mouth open to describe the steps I was taking to track them down, but then hesitated. I wasn’t entirely sure why—I couldn’t realistically suspect Charles of anything—but I got a sudden feeling that I should play this close to the vest. VEHEMENT was good. Maybe they could decrypt communications between Bobs.

I had implemented full scanning of all communications in the solar system. A half-dozen AMIs monitored all communications, watching for key words or patterns. It was a scattershot tactic, but I really had no other options.

There was no reason to inform the other Bobs. I wanted them to act natural, anyway.

Charles interrupted my train of thought. “How’s the construction going?”

“Oh, uh, I was just checking that. Generally still on track. I’m going to check with Homer, next, about food production.”

Charles nodded. “Okay, let me know if you need any help in that area.”

I gave Charles a nod, and he saluted and popped out.

Next on the list was food production. I sent Homer a quick text about the space-based production facilities, and he reported that the wheels of industry were turning smoothly. I smiled at his response. I’d taken to calling him General Bullmoose, and rather than take offense, he thought it was hilarious.

Typical Homer.

My smile disappeared as I pored over the attached spreadsheet. Food production Earthside continued to drop as the climate deteriorated. The pounding that the planet had taken during the war was sending Earth into an ice age. As the glaciers advanced and snow accumulated farther and farther from the poles, arable land became tundra, then tundra became ice. We had to balance food production with moving higher-latitude enclaves into more equatorial locations. Homer’s space-based farms were taking a lot of the pressure off. As each farm donut was spun up and began producing crops, we were able to move Estimated Time of Habitable Earth Remaining later by a couple of years. The farm donuts were Homer’s idea, and he ran them like a military operation.

However, the thirty thousand people we’d managed to get off-planet so far were barely a drop in the bucket. Fifteen million human beings were all that was left of Homo sapiens, but it was still a lot of bodies to move. Fifteen hundred ships or fifteen hundred trips.

I put down the document, and took a moment to massage my forehead.

The UN session had started a few minutes ago, and I needed to be there.

Highlight of my day, for sure. Not.

Since the departure of the USE and Spits enclaves in the first two ships, I didn’t really have anyone I talked with regularly. All the other enclaves maintained a very arms-length relationship, except for a few like New Zealand who were actively antagonistic. Between that and my relatives being in stasis, I felt very isolated these days.

Well, at least today’s session would be interesting. We’d just gotten word about Poseidon from Mulder at Eta Cassiopeiae. The biology was compatible, and the floating mats were more than adequate to live on, at least

in the short term. Longer-term, the system had enough resources to support construction of floating cities. Several of the smaller island nation enclaves had expressed an interest.

The problem was one of priority. Exodus-4 and -5 were almost finished.

Would we send one to Poseidon, or send both to Omicron2 Eridani?

The member from the Maldives was speaking. Representative Sharma was campaigning hard on behalf of the tropical island nations. Common wisdom held that they should be last out, since their climate was still the most moderate.

“Yes, as the representative from Vancouver Island has pointed out repeatedly, the Maldives and other equatorial nations still have moderate climates. What the representative has failed to do is explain why that matters.

If we emigrate, our lands become available for those in extreme hardship.

Either way, the hardship cases are ameliorated.”

She motioned to the image of Poseidon. “The important question is whether we settle a second system, or whether we continue to pour all of our emigrants into Omicron2 Eridani. We are better off now, as a species, than we were a few years ago. We are spread through two star systems. But three systems would be better, and four even more so. All other things being equal, let us at least go for three. The challenge to the member from Vancouver Island, and to other objectors, is to show specifically why things are not equal, and not by using faulty associations.”

Representative Sharma stuck out her chin defiantly, held the pose for just the right beat, then released the audio, giving up the floor.

I wanted to clap, but that would be unseemly. I really had no particular skin in the game on this issue, but I agreed about distributing humanity as widely as possible. The species had just finished almost wiping itself out in a single system. You’d think people would grow a brain.

I looked at the board. More than half of the Request-To-Speak indicators were lit up. I sighed, disconnected from my public avatar for a moment, massaged my forehead again, and wondered for the thousandth time how I’d let myself get roped into this duty.

I hoped today they’d call for a vote.

8. Farming Satellites

Howard

April 2189

Vulcan

The holotank glowed with overlapping information windows, all competing for attention. Several nodes blinked red, demanding immediate input. I cranked up my framerate a little. Not enough to overload the VR hardware, just enough to be able to get ahead of all the demands on my attention.

“Guppy, you’ve got coordination of the drone mule-team, right?”

[Affirmative]

Good thing. I thought my head was about to explode.

We were about to spin up the third farm donut, which would increase our capacity just in time for the arrival of the third colony ship.

Farm-1 and Farm-2 were already in full operation, generating a comfortable .25 G in the rim. Riker and Homer had found through trial and error that crops didn’t do well below that level of gravity.

Specialized drones maintained the farm sections, which were producing all the kudzu you could eat. Yum. Of course, I didn’t have to eat it, what with being a computer and all, but the humans were not so lucky. Until the colonies were to the point of being self-sustaining, everyone’s daily calorie intake was up to fifty percent kudzu. And because of kudzu’s digestive side-effects, meals and other social gatherings tended to be outside. Or involve open windows.

One of the status windows dinged. Guppy was starting the spin-up of Farm-3. After a lot of debate filled with discussion of gyroscopes, compressed-air propulsion, and traditional JATO units, Homer had settled on a very old-school system for spinning up the orbital farms, which we were still using. We tethered four drones to the rim with cables, ninety degrees apart, and had them fly in circles until we achieved the proper RPM.

Primitive, but effective.

I watched the status displays as Farm-3 came up to speed. No issues. And

more importantly, no sabotage. It seemed that VEHEMENT was either still completely confined to the Sol system, or they hadn’t acquired any assets here. But we didn’t know how many members might have gone out with the various colony ships. We would have to be vigilant until humanity was well-enough established to survive its own craziness.

I shook my head. Enough daydreaming. I ran final checks on Farm-3, then directed Guppy to start planting operations. Farm-3 would grow regular crops. Vegetables, wheat, berries, stuff people actually wanted to eat. I really needed to get this right or there would be talk of lynching.

* * *

“Coming up on beacon. Fifty klicks and closing.” Sam’s image floated beside the system schematic. Exodus-3 was on track to merge neatly with the L4

point shared by the twin planets, Vulcan and Romulus. The Vulcan colony had declared a holiday, as it was unlikely anyone would be getting anything done anyway. I was transmitting my displays down to the Landing City network, which was broadcasting out to every TV in town.

Exodus-3 slid up beside the communication beacon without as much as a wobble. Sam ran through his shutdown checklist and changed status to station-keeping.

With the formalities out of the way, I popped over to his VR.

“Welcome, Howard. Pull up a chair.” Sam waved a coffee mug in the general direction of a Victorian wingback.

I looked around his VR. It had the feel of an old English drawing room, the kind of place Sherlock Holmes might have hung out. Sam was drinking a coffee, but a quick inspection of the menu showed that I could order from a broad selection of drinks.

I decided to see how well Sam had simulated cognac. I indicated my choice to Jeeves, and sat down.

“I’ve started to decant the setup crews,” Sam said. “I looked over the maps and resource summaries that you provided. Pretty thorough.” He grimaced for a fraction of a millisecond. “No doubt Cranston will still find something to complain about.”

I accepted the glass of cognac from Jeeves and took a moment to taste it.

Not bad. Quite good, really. Sam had obviously spent some time getting it right. I set a TODO to ask him for the template.

I put the glass down and leaned forward. “Your colonists will really need to tread lightly on Romulus. Milo was right—there was a recent extinction event, and the ecosystem is still very shallow. No large-scale clearing, and especially don’t let any Terran biota get loose. Make sure both colony groups understand that.”

Sam nodded, eyes focused on infinity. With an obvious effort, he turned his attention back to me. “You’re really lucky, Howard, getting to see the colonies in the early stages like this. A lot more exciting than driving a bus.

I’ll be leaving in a month or two, to go pick up another load.”

“Sure, Sam, but I keep a blog. And lots of videos of anything that’s even remotely interesting. Yeah, it’s not real-time, but the universe is our playground, now, y’know?”

He grinned in response. We spent a few seconds getting caught up on gossip, then moved on to the serious business of setting up a colony of ten thousand people on an alien world. Just another day at the office.

* * *

Only two days after the first FAITH and Spits personnel were decanted, and everyone was already at war. Or maybe

back at war

was more accurate. The three-way battle between the USE, FAITH, and the Spitsbergen enclave for berths in the first colony ships had been a major pain in the ass for Riker back at Earth. It appeared that not much had changed, and now I’d inherited the problem.

You couldn’t actually come to blows in a videoconference, of course, but the blustering and yelling more than made up for the lack of bloodshed. I put my head in my hand and shook it slowly back and forth.

It took a few seconds for everyone to notice, then the yelling petered out.

“Tell you what,” I said, “How does pistols at dawn sound? Three ways.

That should be interesting.”

President Valter looked slightly sheepish, Minister Cranston indignant, and Colonel Butterworth amused. But at least they’d shut it. The three colony leaders settled themselves behind their desks and waited for me to continue.

“I understand a certain amount of competitiveness,” I said, looking at each person’s image in turn. “But isolationism will just get you dead. And I sure as hell will not buttress any such attitude with extra support.”

Cranston’s face turned red. “You are not in charge, replicant. We will

make our own decisions about what’s best for us. What makes you think you have the right to dictate? Or for that matter, the moral high ground?”

I tilted my head and smiled innocently at the leader of the FAITH colony.

“Hmm, I’m trying to remember now. Of all of us here, everyone who didn’t participate in a war that virtually destroyed the human race, please raise your hand.” I raised a hand, and waited a moment to see if anyone else would have the gall to do so. “I’m a neutral party here, Mr. Cranston. Yeah, even with jerks who treat me as a piece of equipment instead of addressing me by name.

But I’m also a volunteer. I’ll help who I want, and I’ll leave if I want. As a good leader, you should take that datum into account when deciding how much of an idiot you want to be.”

I glared at the three video windows. No one responded.

After a moment of awkward silence, Valter said, “Very well, we will trade some of our decanted livestock. If necessary, for future considerations.

Howard, I am hoping you will act as adjudicator in such cases.”

“Absolutely, Mr. Valter. And thank you. Colonel, some breeding stock now will help you until we’ve finished force-growing the animals in the artificial wombs.” I turned to Cranston. “Minister, your repayment should consist of setting up and running a large batch of artificial wombs to take the pressure off the Spits. The both of you can pay them back with interest once your own stock is high enough.”

I looked around at the various windows. No one commented. With a sigh, I checked my agenda for the next discussion item.

* * *

“You show a lot more patience than Riker ever did.” Colonel Butterworth raised a glass of Jameson toward me.

“Thanks, Colonel. I think. We Bobs are definitely different as individuals.

I wonder why they never picked up on that back on Earth, when they were working on the whole replicant thing.”

Butterworth shrugged. Science-y stuff like that didn’t interest him, except to the extent it affected his job.

He poked at a pile of paper on his desk. “This native vine that I mentioned before is turning into a significant problem. The level of invasiveness puts anything from Earth to shame, except possibly bamboo. If we don’t get ahead of it, we might end up expending all our energy just beating it back.”

“Hmm, the native ecosystem has the home court advantage, unfortunately.

Doesn’t it serve as food for any native species?”

“As far as my scientists can tell, it contains a toxin of some kind that the native browsers find disagreeable. Even the brontos won’t eat it, and they are the un-pickiest herbivores I’ve ever seen.”

I laughed. The brontos would eat almost anything that provided net calories. They would eat all the leaves from a tree, then the twigs, then the bark from the main trunk and branches. What they left behind looked very sad. Fortunately, Vulcan trees could survive having their bark stripped.

The brontos had even started munching on the fence, when they could get close enough. A couple of strings of electrified wire had nipped that habit before it could catch on.

“How does it affect people?”

Butterworth shook his head. “The vine is not edible as such. However, the toxin doesn’t seem particularly effective against Terran biology. As soon as we have some livestock, we’ll see if they’ll eat it.”

I nodded silently. Colonizing an alien planet, as with everything else, was more complicated than TV and movies let on. Clearing the land and building houses was just the beginning. We had neither the resources nor the desire to commit planetary ecological genocide, and doing so would doom the colony anyway. But learning to live here was going to be a case of mutual accommodation.

Fortunately, so far no alien diseases had found humans compatible. I wasn’t really surprised. Even Terran viruses were generally specialized for a specific species or lifestyle. Eventually something would make the jump, but by then we would hopefully be ready for it.

The colonel brought up a few more minor items, then we signed off. So far so good, but my movie-conditioned mind was still waiting for the inevitable disaster.

9. Something is Out There

Bob

September 2169

Delta Eridani

Marvin popped in and started to speak several times, without success. I couldn’t identify the expression on his face, but it reminded me of a fish that had just eaten a lemon. Something was definitely up.

I’d been going over the autofactory schedule with Guppy. I turned back to him. “It doesn’t look like there are any surprises. Make the changes I’ve listed, and let me know if anything goes off-schedule.”

[Aye]. Guppy blinked huge fish eyes once and disappeared.

Marvin was still doing a pretty good imitation of a fish himself. I grinned at him. “Come on, Marv, spit it out. You know you wanna…”

He took a deep breath. “Something, and by ‘something’ I mean damned if I know what, hunted the Deltans almost to extinction at their original location.”

“Uh, say what?”

“I found a number of disarticulated Deltan remains. In different places, so it wasn’t just a one-time thing. The damage was not indicative of gorilloids.

We’ve seen their work. They’re lazy. They strip the meat, not even thoroughly, then go back for a new victim. Whatever this was, it did the full workup. And chew marks on the bones indicate something much bigger than a gorilloid.”

I sat back and rubbed my chin in thought for a moment. “So there’s another apex predator out there. Great. I may have to break out the exploration drones and put them on a kilometer-by-kilometer survey.”

“I think that would be a good idea, buddy. And if we have the printer cycles to spare, maybe print up a few more sets of drones.”

“Of course. Because screwing with the autofactory schedule is never a problem.” I stood up, stretched, and wandered to the end of the library, gazing at nothing. After a moment’s thought, I pulled up the files from my

initial exploration of Delta Eridani 4. I knew that my survey had been less than thorough. But I wasn’t a professional exobiologist, assuming such a job had ever even existed. And once I’d found the Deltans, everything else had taken a back seat.

I replaced the library bookshelves with a blank wall and spread the images of the fauna I’d catalogued across its length. Pacing along the collage of images, I tried to imagine any of them able to take out a full-grown Deltan.

Marvin materialized a La-Z-Boy and settled in with a coffee. Spike immediately assumed an invitation and hopped up to settle in his lap.

The collage offered no inspiration. The leopard analogues and the gorilloids were really the only animals I’d encountered that would prey on Deltans, and they just didn’t fill the bill.

I waved a hand and killed the collage. In frustration, I cancelled the room VR and activated my Deltan village VR. Marvin jerked in surprise, and Spike leaped up and fled. I felt a moment’s guilt for not warning him.

Marvin gave me the Spock eyebrow, and I answered with an apologetic grimace, then turned and started walking through the village. The recording was incredibly detailed, but still just a recording—no interaction was possible. I wished for the millionth time that I could interact with the Deltans through something a little more immediate than a floating mechanical football.

Finally, I turned back to Marvin, who had refused to give up his La-Z-Boy. He was reclining, drinking a coffee, right in the middle of a group of Deltans who were skinning a pigoid. I laughed and he grinned back.

“Okay, Marvin. Let’s get going on that search. Guppy?”

Guppy popped into existence. [You rang?]

Cute. I suspected that Marvin was feeding lines to Guppy just to bug me.

“Printer schedule change, Guppy. Print up four more complete squads of exploration drones. Looks like we’re going snipe hunting.”

Guppy’s huge fish eyes blinked. [This will result in another delay to the armaments project. I remind you that you have assigned that project high priority]

“That’s fine. I think we’re ahead of the curve with the gorilloids.

Attempted attacks are down to almost zero. We’ve got enough spare busters to bash their heads if they try any kind of large-scale attack.”

Guppy nodded and disappeared.

Marvin stood up and waved the chair away. “I’ll get started on the full survey as soon as they’re ready. Meanwhile, I’ll map out some search strategies.”

We gave each other a wave and he disappeared. I closed the village VR

and brought back my library.

10. Genocide

Mario

November 2176

Zeta Tucanae

It took seven years plus change to get from Beta Hydri to Zeta Tucanae, although less than three years ship’s time. I spent almost the entire voyage going over the records from Beta Hydri 4. I didn’t want to believe that someone could have done that. I wanted so much for it to be a natural disaster of some kind.

But the evidence was, if not conclusive, at least pretty damned convincing.

Someone had killed off an entire planet and collected all the bodies—literally all the animal life on the planet—then mined all the metals from the entire system. My mind kept playing all the movies where aliens came in and tried to strip the Earth. This was worse. They killed everything, and they left nothing. But how? And why?

I sighed and dismissed the theorizing for perhaps the thousandth time. I couldn’t know without more information. But I wasn’t going to wait. I needed to report this to Bill. The Bobs needed to be warned.

I couldn’t know in advance if Zeta Tucanae would be stripped of metal as well. If so, I would just skip to the next system, and keep doing so until I either found a good star system in which to build a space station or had traveled back close enough to simply transmit a message to Bill with shipboard comms.

I did the usual cautious approach into the star system, watching for Medeiros, aliens, other probes… it would be funny if I wasn’t so nervous.

I didn’t actually know if there were more Medeiros clones out in the galaxy, but since Brazil’s plan had been to keep producing them, it seemed a reasonable concern. Bob had prevailed against him in Epsilon Eridani, but that had been as much luck as anything.

It took a week or so to determine the system layout. The star was a little more luminous than Sol and a bit bigger, but slightly less massive. The

metallicity of the system was lower, but not so low as to make things difficult for me—as long as the Others hadn’t already cleaned it out.

I found a single asteroid belt and several inner rocky planets. Actually, this system was similar enough to Earth’s to make me a little homesick. I headed for the asteroid belt, while I continued to scan for any activity.

I went about halfway around the belt before giving up. The Others had already cleaned up here as well. I decided I would get a quick look at the single planet in the habitable zone, then continue on to the next system on my list.

What I found was the worst possible outcome.

Exploring the planet through various drone cameras, I could see that something had caused massive destruction. Based on the ruined structures, entire cities had been taken apart. Concrete pylons indicated where bridges might once have spanned rivers. Huge washouts indicated where dams had been disassembled without regard for the downriver effects. And junk littered what looked like roadways, where presumably the contents of some kind of vehicles had simply been discarded when the metal and the passengers were collected.

“Guppy, I need a full scan of the planet. Set up the drones to do polar orbits, and get the whole surface.”

Guppy nodded without comment and went into command fugue. I sensed the blips as more drones launched. I settled back to wait.

* * *

If I’d been still living, I would have thrown up. As it was, I couldn’t watch for long.

The destruction was total, the devastation worldwide. These, whatever they were, these Others had callously killed billions of sentient beings the way a construction crew would clear the ground before starting to build. And I could think of only one reason for collecting the dead bodies.

When we met them, it would be war.

11. Mating Dance

Bob

November 2169

Delta Eridani

The Deltans were coming into their breeding season, and the tension in Camelot was climbing. In the past, stressors like the gorilloid threat had kept things low-key. It’s hard to get amorous when you’re looking over your shoulder every few seconds. But this year the Deltans were top dogs in their environment. The gorilloids had finally figured out the new pecking order.

There hadn’t been an attack in almost a month.

A lot of that was due to the busters. Any gorilloid coming within a certain distance of Camelot was met head-on by a forty-pound ball of steel. The encounter was fatal to both, but I could produce more busters faster than the gorilloids could produce more gorilloids. The Deltans rarely even looked up any more at the occasional sonic boom.

I knew more or less what to expect from previous years. Male Deltans vied for the attentions of the females in any of a number of ways. Wrestling matches, mock battles, tests of skill, even good old fashioned bluff and bluster. It was great fun to watch, and generally no one got badly hurt.

This year, though, Archimedes had introduced a new test of skill: spear-chucking. And you couldn’t refuse a challenge. But that wasn’t working out entirely in Archimedes’ favor. The other young males had figured out that they should avoid that particular contest with him, so they were challenging Archimedes first, based on contests of strength. Unfortunately, Archimedes was rather bookish, as Deltans went. I wondered if nerd-dom was a universal thing.

After Archimedes got dropped on his head in a couple of encounters, I decided to teach him some basic jujitsu. It turned out to be harder than expected, because the Deltan skeletal system didn’t always bend the same way as a human’s would. We had to improvise a few locks and throws based on their different physiology.

But the principles were still applicable, and Archimedes was motivated.

We narrowed it down to the five or so most useful moves. He spent a day going through the steps in pantomime, establishing the muscle-memory, before he rejoined the circus.

Almost immediately, a couple of young toughs tried to push him around to establish dominance. His response was slow and tentative, but it was a completely new concept and his opponents didn’t even recognize the danger until they were on their butts looking up at him. After that, Archimedes strutted around the village like he owned the place.

Marvin laughed, watching all the antics. “I’m sure there’s some element of vengeance in there. Getting back at all the childhood bullies by proxy, perchance?”

“Y’know, Marvin, this habit of yours of analyzing my motives is a real pain in the ass. Especially since they were your childhood tormenters, too.”

Marvin grinned and waggled his eyebrows. Sadly, he was probably right about my motivation. I was doing what I could to make sure Archimedes did better at the metaphorical mating dance than I had as a teenager. And the more descendants Archimedes created, the sooner the entire tribe would be at or near his level of intelligence. Win-win, as far as I was concerned.

“Now if you could only change Archimedes’ mind,” Marvin observed.

“Yeah, I know.” Having kicked butt yet again, Archimedes was making the moves on Diana. She had to be a knock-out in Deltan terms, because I couldn’t figure out what else he could see in her. She intensely disliked the drones and wouldn’t hang around anywhere near us when I was with Archimedes. An obvious symptom of low intelligence, in my books.

* * *

Marvin popped in without warning. “Things just got creepier.”

I looked up from the observation window. The mating season was almost done. Most pairings had been decided by this point, but some Deltans hadn’t gotten the memo. You could tell when that happened, because the miscreant would find himself (and sometimes herself) being beaten on by both members of the pairing on which he or she was trying to intrude. That was usually enough to make the point, but there were three or four individuals left who couldn’t seem to take get lost for an answer. Archimedes and Diana had formalized their mating without further challenge, so it was purely scientific

interest on my part.

I glared at Marvin, ready with a sarcastic comment about the interruption, but I changed my mind when I saw his face. He looked distinctly freaked out, and Marvin tended to be level-headed. I set the video window to record and minimized it. “Okay, Marv, what’s up?”

With a flick of a finger, Marvin popped up an image in midair, showing an ancient set of bones. By this point, we were both experienced enough with all things Deltan to recognize parts of a Deltan skeleton. And this one had the bite and claw marks that I’d seen on some of Marvin’s other specimens.

“Looks like another victim of the mystery predator. What’s special about this one?”

“I found it less than a mile from Camelot.”

“Oh, son of a bitch.” If the range of this thing included the immediate area, and it was still around, I may have brought the Deltans back to be the main course. I remembered some comments that had been made when the Deltans first arrived at Camelot. In particular, one of the elders hadn’t been happy with the explanation that it was the gorilloids that had driven the Deltans out. Unfortunately, he’d only had vague memories to support his feeling.

I grabbed a drone and went looking for Moses or Archimedes. I found Archimedes first, fortunately not with Diana, and explained the situation to him.

“That’s not good,” he said. “If we were safer at the old site, and you brought us back here…”

“Yeah, I know, Archimedes. Don’t rub it in. On the plus side, we may have some lead time to prepare. But I need to find the elder who was making those comments.”

“Moses would know, I think.”

We found Moses with very little effort. He’d found and laid claim to a favorite lounging spot on the south side of the bluff, where he spent his afternoons sitting in the sun, relieving the pain of his stiff joints. I allowed myself a moment of sadness. Moses seemed to have entered that long slide into failing health that was all too common in the elderly. I went through the story again.

“It does sound familiar,” he said, thoughtfully. “That was Axler, I think.”

The translation routine was programmed to render Deltan names in human-

pronounceable sounds. It would tag that particular translation for permanent association with the name. “Sadly, he died three or four hands ago. I don’t think anyone else is even close to that old.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “Archimedes, Moses, don’t say anything to anyone else about this. I don’t want to start a panic without more information.

Marvin and I will do some more investigations. I will also set some drones to a wide perimeter guard. If anyone sees them and asks, just tell them I’m doing a gorilloid count.”

The two nodded, both looking worried.

* * *

“But where have they gone?” Marvin scratched his head, staring at the globe.

“Look, maybe Deltans weren’t their primary prey. Maybe they discovered that Deltans were delicious and started hunting them preferentially. After the Deltans left, they would have just gone back to whatever they normally hunted.”

“Right, which is why I’ve expanded the search. But let’s face it, we’re talking about millions of square miles. A predator can have quite a range.” As he talked, Marvin was dividing the land area on the continent into segments. I could see from the metadata that he was assigning drones to each segment.

He sat back and stared at the results. After a few moments of consideration, he handed it off to Guppy for implementation and turned to face me.

“How are we for busters?”

I raised my eyebrows in alarm. “Damn. Good point. I haven’t been keeping up with production. Between the gorilloids all growing a collective brain, and us taking the printers off-schedule to build the extra exploration drones, we’re down to less than a dozen.”

Marvin grinned. “Welp. There goes the schedule again, I guess.”

12. Bob Calling

Bill

May 2171

Epsilon Eridani

[Incoming SCUT connection. New node]

Guppy made the announcement with the same fishy poker face that he would use to announce the end of the world. I looked up and grinned.

Garfield dropped the file he was working on and came running over. Only a handful of Bobs, so far, had received the SCUT plans that I’d been broadcasting and had built their own FTL transceiver. Each new connection was an event.

I held the moment as long as I could. Just as Garfield drew a breath to yell at me, I said to Guppy, “Play the incoming.”

“This is Bob calling. Bill, you actually cracked FTL communications? I’m impressed! ”

I did a fist pump, and then Garfield and I whooped and performed a high five—the nerd kind, where you miss.

Logically, Bob-1 was no more significant than any other Bob that received the SCUT plans, but this wasn’t a matter of logic. Bob-1 was like Odin the All-Father. He started the whole thing. For me it was special, since he’d cloned me. For any of the third-generation or later Bobs, it would be like legend walking among us.

Of course, that wouldn’t stop me from pulling the usual prank.

I popped into Bob’s VR without warning, coffee in hand. I noticed, as the VRs synced, that he’d been doing some enhancements of his own. The versions weren’t incompatible, but there would be video glitches. I’d have to upgrade him to my latest release so he would be fully compatible with BobNet.

“Holy—” Bob jerked in surprise, and Spike bolted from the desk she’d been sitting on.

I laughed. “Works every time. Hi Bob. Welcome to BobNet.”

Bob smiled at the implied tip of the hat. I took a millisecond to look around his VR. This appeared to be a planetary environment—a village of some kind. Some species of natives were going about their business. They were obviously intelligent, since they had spears and axes and stuff. They looked a little like walking bats with a dash of pig thrown in, by way of long snouts with flat nostrils. Their fur was short, generally gray, with brown overtones. Kind of ugly, really.

The level of detail was impressive, and I couldn’t remember any movie or book that featured creatures like this. I looked over at Bob, who was trying to suppress a smug grin—and failing badly.

With a jolt, I realized that this had to be real. Or at least a VR based on reality. This was First Contact.

Keeping my expression neutral, I turned in a circle to take in the full tableau. “Who are the neighbors?”

Bob, now grinning unabashedly, swept a hand around the virtual campground. “This is a recording of the Deltans’ village. I use this to experience their environment. Get a better feel for how they live.”

“Interesting. Have you made contact?”

There was a barking laugh from off to the side, and I looked over to see another Bob. I turned back to Bob-1 and was surprised to see he was blushing. That was better VR realism than my version supported. I decided I’d do a merge on the VR features before upgrading him.

“Bill, this is Marvin.” Bob gestured toward the newcomer. “He’s a disrespectful pain in the ass. And that’s one of his better qualities.”

Marvin and I smiled and nodded to each other. I said, “I recognize the tone of that laugh. I guess Bob has gone overboard.”

Marvin smirked. “You might say that. He’s become the great volcano god.

Did you see the spears and axes?”

“Hey!” Bob interjected. “I resent that. I’m more of a sky god.”

We all laughed together. Despite the joking, though, I was still a little lightheaded. An intelligent species, the first we’d ever run across. I had a pretty good idea which blog was going to be number one on BobNet for the next little while.

Bob motioned me to a couch and coffee-table setup sitting incongruously in the middle of the native village. “So, Bill, what’s new in the galaxy?”

I sat down, accepted a coffee from Jeeves, and took a moment to pat Bob’s

incarnation of Spike, who had come back to investigate. The cat’s A.I.

appeared more independent than my version. Another item to merge. It dawned on me that Bob was still the reigning master of VR coding.

“Wow, what’s been happening?” I thought for a moment. “Well, Milo discovered two habitable planets at Omicron2 Eridani. Named them Vulcan and Romulus.”

Bob laughed. “Of course he did. What else could he do?”

I grinned back at him, then got serious. “Riker and his clone, Homer, had a big battle in Sol with the last of the Brazilian space navy, and discovered that humanity had almost wiped itself out in a system-wide war. They’re building colony ships and are hoping to get some people to Vulcan before the Earth stops being livable.”

Bob interrupted. “How many people left?”

“About fifteen million, give or take.”

“And how big are the colony ships?”

I nodded, understanding where Bob was going. “Ten thousand capacity.

Yeah, I know. Fifteen hundred ships or fifteen hundred trips. But we can only do what we can do.”

Bob nodded. He looked worried, and I couldn’t blame him. Riker and I had this conversation regularly. So far, we hadn’t found any shortcut.

I tried to change the subject to lighten the mood. “We’ve got a minimum of about twenty Bobs running around the galaxy right now, by my estimate.”

I waved a hand in casual dismissal. “You know. The usual. Blah, blah…”

Bob visibly shook off the funk and tried to smile. “Sounds like you’ve taken to the job of central clearing house with a vengeance. Got anything going in Epsilon Eridani besides the SCUT?”

“I’m slowly terraforming Ragnarök. Riker has sent some seeds and plant samples my way with an outgoing Bob. They should be here in three years or so. Then I’ll try to get some basic moss/lichen hybrids growing. Oh, and the Android project. I’ve got a quadruped android working, more or less, and I can control it remotely. It’s slow going though, and I’ve barely scratched the surface.”

“I’ll want one of those when they’re available,” Bob said. “I’d like to be able to go down to Eden as an actual presence instead of a floating camera.”

“Mmm.” I nodded. It looked like Bob was pretty invested in the lives of

the Deltans. No real surprise, though.

13. Investigating the Others Mario

May 2180

Gliese 54

This time, I was lucky. Unlike Beta Hydri and Zeta Tucanae, Gliese 54 was untouched.

I had no clue about what might determine the course of whatever beings had stripped the two other systems. If they travelled as a single unit, and they were travelling in a straight line, they might never meet up with any of us.

My concern was that, if they were mining that much metal, they were probably building something. The obvious answer to that would be more of them. And that would be bad.

This was not a particularly interesting system. The primary was a small K, almost a red dwarf. It had a single lonely planet orbiting in close, and a bunch of space junk. Of course, space junk was what I needed. Although the overall metallicity of the system was low, most of it hadn’t aggregated into planets.

The manufacturing process was routine, even if I only had memories of having done it once as Bob-1 in Epsilon Eridani. It took a couple of months to build and deploy the space station. Once it was up, I squirted every bit of information I had on the Others back to Bill. The station had the added bonus that I would be able to transmit to it from any of the stars in the immediate area, and it would relay my messages to Epsilon Eridani.

I also decided that I didn’t want to be alone, so I started construction of four more Bobs. Bashful, Dopey, Sleepy, and Hungry all agreed to accompany me to deal with the potential threat. Yes, they named themselves after dwarves. And yes, it was pointed out at some length that there was no Hungry in the original crew. Hungry didn’t care. Apparently I can be very perverse. And stubborn. Anyway, there’s that joke about the fifty dwarves…

We sat around the desk in my treehouse, sipping tropical drinks with little umbrellas. Except Hungry, who refused to go along with the theme. He had a coffee. I suggested we rename him Surly and received a middle finger for my

trouble.

Sleepy opened the discussion. “We have to figure out the vector and size of the invasion, or infestation, or whatever it is. Is it heading for Earth? Or away?”

“And what they’re doing with all that metal. If they’re building more ships, it must be a massive fleet. How would we not see them coming?”

Dopey looked around at us, palms up. “And all the, uh, food…”

“Yeah…” I nodded slowly. “We have no information, really. We have to find them. And we have to get a report back without becoming part of their harvest. Their ants are surprisingly efficient. I’ve learned several things from them, which I’ve already squirted back Bill-ward.”

There was silence around the table as everyone digested this.

“So we each pick a system outward and head there,” Sleepy said. “We should keep a transmission channel open at all times, so we’ll have a record if one of us disappears.”

“Yes.” I nodded. “The open line should run all the way back to Bill. If necessary, stop and build a relay station. Keep up a constant stream of commentary and observations and send regular differential backups. Just in case…”

Sleepy took a sip of his drink before responding. “Sounds like a plan.

Although I don’t like the implications. If I get taken down, the Bob that gets restored won’t really be me.”

“What, you’re positing a soul, now? For us?” Surly, I mean Hungry, rolled his eyes. “Every time the crew of Star Trek transported, they faced the same philosophical question.”

Sleepy rolled his eyes back at Hungry in exaggerated mockery. “Again with the fictional TV series. Is that where you get all your life lessons?”

Hungry frowned. “Well, you should know, shouldn’t you?”

“Children, children. Am I going to have to separate you?” I glared around the table. “Can we focus on the planet-destroying, rampaging alien whatzits for now?”

Sleepy and Hungry both looked embarrassed. After a moment of silence, I continued. “I would also suggest that we have some kind of self-destruct capability built in. Maybe a dead-man trigger. Personally, I don’t want to have to feel myself being slowly disassembled if I get caught, and I certainly don’t want it or them to learn anything from me.”

“Wow, this is getting morbid. I don’t feel quite so negative about the backups, now.”

I chuckled. “So let’s pick our destination systems, put together a working comms link, and get this show on the road.”

14. Sabotage

Riker

December 2170

Sol

The image on the video made me curl my lip in a sneer of both contempt and disgust. Half a herd of cattle lay dead in their paddock—fifty animals, poisoned by something in the food, according to the vet. On the other video window, Ms. Sharma, UN representative for the Maldives, waited silently.

She was attempting to maintain a stone face, and failing.

The slaughter represented the third act of full-blown terrorism this month.

VEHEMENT was ramping up from a nuisance to a full-blown threat. This was the first time they’d taken lives, though, even if livestock. I hadn’t come out and said it, but I considered this an act of war. If I caught up with this group, and it came down to an exchange of ordnance, I wouldn’t have any ethical issues with taking some of them down. I admitted to myself that I really didn’t know if I’d be able to pull the trigger. It was one thing to talk war, it was another entirely to actually take a human life.

But I would want to. That much, I was sure of.

Food supply continued to become more critical as Earth’s climate deteriorated. Over half of the thirty-five remaining enclaves around the planet were at least partly dependent on food subsidies from our orbital farms. The Maldives were still nominally self-supporting, but this assault on their food capacity would mean we’d have to kick in, at least in the short term.

Representative Sharma finally couldn’t hold it in any longer. “This is senseless. Senseless! Cattle? What have they proven? What have they accomplished? Cowards!”

I nodded at every word. For all the bickering in the UN, the various representatives were united in their hatred and contempt for VEHEMENT.

After an event like this, I could probably push through any special measure I wanted to, with little debate or opposition.

Too bad I didn’t have anything in my queue.

“This is going to hurt, Ms. Sharma. Those cattle represent a lot of high-quality calories, not to mention the breeding capacity.” I took a moment to check the herd numbers. “It’s not life-threatening, but it is damaging. I think, if the handlers hadn’t noticed the animals getting sick, we could have lost this entire herd. And that would have been devastating.”

“I will move to set up a task force at the UN meeting tomorrow,” Ms.

Sharma said. “I think there’s been a general feeling up to now that if we just ignored them and didn’t give them the attention they obviously crave, that they’d go away. No longer.”

I nodded without comment. I had the pronouncement from VEHEMENT

up in another video window. These people were several screws short, but there was no doubt they were deadly serious. The essential message was that humanity had made a mess of the solar system, and it was time for them to bow out and let the universe recover. And because we might be reluctant to go along, VEHEMENT was going to help us towards that goal.

Great. Violent, self-absorbed crackpots. On top of everything else.

I forwarded the missive to Homer, Charles, and Ralph, and also sent a copy on to Bill. Not that he would have any specific ideas, but I’d gotten in the habit of looping him in on everything. I smiled briefly at the thought.

Universal Archives.

Homer popped in a few milliseconds later. “Number Two, I am forced to admit I’m coming up blank. These clowns trump anything I could possibly say, just by existing.”

“Yup. Just when you think humanity has found the limits of stupid, they go and ratchet up the standard by another notch.” I shook my head. “We’re going to have to modify our schedules to replace the calories that the cattle would have supplied. Got any ideas?”

Homer bobbed his head back and forth. “Could be. It’s just possible that I’ve been under-reporting production a bit, to establish a small surplus. I suppose now would be a good time to notice the error with a gasp of relief.”

He grinned at me, and I smiled back. Homer was full of surprises.

That was fine for right now. But what about next time VEHEMENT

struck? I had a bad feeling that it was going to get worse, rather than better.

15. A Visit From Bill

Mario

November 2180

Gliese 54

I stared in frank amazement at the header on this latest communication from Bill.

Plans for a Subspace Communications Universal Transceiver (SCUT) with zero latency.

Holy. Crap. On a cracker.

Well, the big guy had delivered. I examined the plans and attached notes.

Bill was candid that this was an early version, and probably cantankerous. He also wasn’t sure about the range. Yeah, yeah, disclaimer, disclaimer. A hundred-plus years after our death and we still felt the need to lawyer at ourselves. Hmm, and keeping up the FAITH tradition of bad acronyms, too.

Simple math said other stars had received the plans already. I didn’t know if any of them had Bobs crewing the stations rather than AMIs. That would have been a decision made by the Bobs involved at the time. But there was a good chance I’d be able to get a line all the way back to Bill. The specs indicated that the system took care of discovery, routing, and encryption.

Cool!

I was lucky to have been still in the system when I intercepted the radio transmission. Bill was obviously beaming the plans to all stars within some arbitrary radius of Epsilon Eridani, but if I’d been between stars, it probably would have missed me entirely.

With no further ado, I suspended all other projects and turned every printer and roamer I had to the task of building myself a, er, SCUT.

* * *

It wasn’t visually impressive. Kind of kludge-looking, really, almost steampunk. I held my virtual breath and flipped the switch. Within moments, connection confirmations began to flood onto the console.

Tau Ceti

Omicron2 Eridani

Sol

Epsilon Eridani

Epsilon Indi

Alpha Centauri

Delta Eridani

Pi(3) Orionis

Eta Cassiopeiae A

Kappa Ceti

I checked the console menus and found that I could register myself on the global directory, which would get me on email, IM, and chat.

Very nice.

I set up my account, then pinged Bill.

“Bill here.”

“Wow. That is truly amazing stuff. Bill, this is Mario at GL 54. I have—”

“Really? Mario? ” And with that, Bill appeared in my VR, sitting on the other side of my desk.

“Holy—”

Bill raised a coffee cup at me in greeting. “Dude! Long time!”

“Yeah, well, that’s what I get for aiming for the far reaches.” I gave him a quick smirk, then turned serious. “So, the light-speed report won’t reach you for a couple of decades yet, but we seem to have a problem out here. Here’s the relevant data.” I shoved a set of files over to him.

Bill’s avatar froze for a few milliseconds as he went into frame-jack and scanned the files. When he came back, his eyes were haunted.

“Entire planets… an entire intelligent species…”

“Yeah, buddy. We thought Medeiros was our biggest problem. On this scale, he doesn’t even tweak the needle.”

Bill looked down at his coffee for a bit. I understood the feeling of shock, so I let him work through it uninterrupted.

Finally, he looked up. “This has immediate ramifications. We’ve got humans out here to worry about too.” At the expression of surprise on my face, he waved a hand dismissively. “Stuff’s been happening. Read my

current-affairs blog when you get a chance.”

Bill put his coffee down on the desk, and I was momentarily bemused by how well the VR was meshing over a 23-light-year distance.

“This is not the way I envisioned a First Contact situation,” I mused. “I sure hope this isn’t the norm in the universe. Although it would explain the Fermi Paradox.”

“Second.” Bill flashed a wan smile. “Bob beat you to first place by a couple of years. His is more of the good kind, though. Like I said, read the blog.”

He visibly shook himself. “I’ve been running a lot of projects here. The SCUT is just the most dramatic. I’ll pull a few other files and send them your way—stuff you can use for making weapons.”

I nodded. “Anything that’ll help. I don’t get the impression that busters are going to be enough against someone who can zap a whole planet.”

“Yeah, I’ll bump up the priority on anything that looks like it can be weaponized.” He picked up his cup. “And I’ll push this info out to every Bob in the directory. You’d be amazed what can come out when all the Bobs get together to brainstorm. You guys are on your own, though, physically. Even if we assembled a flotilla, it wouldn’t get there for a couple of decades.”

“I’ve already started. I built four to begin with— Bashful, Dopey, Sleepy, and Hungry, believe it or not.”

Bill threw his head back and laughed. “So, uh, Dopey? Really?”

“One of them suggested a name of one of the dwarves, then it became kind of a thing. Before they could grow some collective sense, they’d all taken dwarf names.”

Bill chuckled and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hungry? So, fifty dwarves?”

I laughed in response. “Ah, yep. Half a century later, we’re all still working from the same material.”

* * *

I’d been working on another cohort of Bobs. This was certainly worth a small delay to modify the plans to add FTL communications, and to upgrade them to version-3. I didn’t expect any reports back from the first cohort for another decade. If I could send the new Bobs in the same directions, they’d intercept the return messages in four years or so and forward them to me via SCUT.

Once again, I scrapped my schedule.

16. Hunted

Howard

September 2189

Vulcan

The buster struck the raptor at just shy of Mach one, spreading fragments of carnivore over the hunting party, other raptors, and most of the nearby vegetation. The red cast that it added to the greenery lent an eerie, dangerous aura to the scene.

Not that a dozen hungry raptors needed help looking dangerous.

This was the third hunting party this week to run into a raptor ambush, and I was glad I’d decided to bring a couple of busters along. The raptors were getting bolder since they’d been successful in taking down a couple of settlers. The Landing City planning committee was still smarting over that—

it was their decision to reprioritize guard details that had led directly to the deaths.

The spectacular death of one of their number caused the raptor hunting pride to hesitate, just long enough for the humans to regroup and open up on them. The raptors were tough, but they hadn’t evolved to withstand a twenty-second-century assault rifle.

Within seconds, the raptors were down. The hunters bent over, panting, more from nervous reaction than exertion. My observation drone hovered nearby, keeping watch.

The group leader, Stéphane, looked up at my drone. “Eh, thanks there, big guy. They come out of nowhere, those bastards.”

I bobbed the drone once by way of acknowledgement. The raptors had set up an ambush for the hunters and almost pulled it off. They were intelligent

—there were still ongoing arguments about how intelligent. The original three-person hunting parties were now double the size. And everyone involved took the duty very seriously.

“No prob, Stéphane. A little buster billiards now and then is great fun.”

Stéphane laughed, and the group organized themselves back into a proper

skirmish line. We had another kilometer of perimeter to cover before we could head back. I silently ordered down another buster from orbit, and assigned a mining drone to come pick up the remains of the one I’d just expended.

Bob’s personnel busters were a versatile tool for wildlife control. I still wasn’t sure if it was more economical than rigging up an armed drone, though. I resolved to discuss Bob’s plastics-backed shells, if I ever had five free seconds to rub together.

Security was turning out to be a much bigger deal than we’d initially planned for. This planet’s ecosystem was incredibly rich, diverse, and competitive. Even many of the plant eaters had weaponry that would give an earth predator pause. In that particular, it was very much like the popular vision of the dinosaur era.

We’d gotten the hint in the first week on Vulcan, when a pride of raptors had paced through the new townsite like they owned the place. Without so much as a please-and-thanks, they’d tried to eat one of the AMI backhoes.

I grinned at the memory. The backhoe wasn’t harmed, other than needing a new paint job. But it suddenly occurred to the planning committee that they weren’t in charge. At least not yet. Hunting and guarding details had been beefed up forthwith, and we’d mostly managed to keep people and raptors separate. Mostly.

And speaking of which, I had a job to do. I sent the drone up to a thousand meters to get a thorough scan. The colony spread below me, looking a lot like twenty-first-century suburbia—except for the very large fence around most of the perimeter. The fence was backed with sonic stunners, to handle the more unruly wildlife, and the trees had been cleared back an additional half kilometer. A small herd of brontos munched on leaves at the edge of the treeline. Like the raptors, they only generally resembled Apatosauri, and they were only half the size of their namesakes. The colonists had gotten on a dinosaur kick when naming the local fauna, even though some of the associations were a bit of a stretch.

I did a quick overflight of the cleared perimeter. Nothing big enough to matter revealed itself. Satisfied, I turned back towards Landing.

The larger buildings at the center of the town comprised the administrative hub, while the airport and two manufacturing centers formed a triangle around it. People and goods moved around in communally-owned AMI-

driven vehicles, available in all sizes from commuter cars to buses. The colonists had decided to build their new life on Vulcan with some social changes, starting with the abolition of private vehicles.

Only three months after landing, the city looked and felt established and stable. I was truly impressed at how quickly everything had gone up. Of course, the USE staff had had literally decades to refine their plans while they were stuck in the enclave after the war. No surprise that they’d worked out a lot of the bugs.

I finished my aerial sweep. It looked like the raptors were done for the day. I called Stéphane. “Hey, chief. All clear. There’s nothing anywhere near the fence now.”

Stéphane grinned into the phone. “Bon! I guess the fence crew will have to come up with something new. They keep thinking they are finished…”

We both laughed. The Fence Construction group was taking a lot of flak lately.

“So, Howard,” Stéphane continued after a moment. “We will be going to the Groggery after our shift, to sample the latest attempt at beer. Care to tag along?”

“I might just meet you there, Stéphane. I have a meeting with the colonel first. I do love watching you guys fall over dead, though.”

Stéphane grinned at me. “Eh, the last batch did remind me a little of actual beer. I think they’ll have it right, soon.”

I nodded and promised to be there.

* * *

“Afternoon, Howard.”

“Colonel.” I noted that the colonel had his bottle of Jameson out again.

Not that I disapproved, but there couldn’t be much of the stuff left, and the supplier was sixteen light-years away. And no longer in existence, but who’s counting. I said, in an aside to Guppy that wouldn’t show on the colonel’s video feed, “I have a TODO to build a distillery, right?”

[Affirmative. And set to a high priority]

Well, all work and no booze… I chuckled, and merged back into my public avatar.

The colonel had been talking during this sidebar. I frame-jacked momentarily and played back the video to get caught up.

“No deaths for the last three days on the patrols. I hope we’ve gotten ahead of this issue with the raptors.”

I put my hands behind my head and stretched while I considered that statement. The raptors weren’t really dinosaurs. They weren’t really anything Earth-equivalent. They were bipedal hunters, slightly larger than the velociraptors in the first Jurassic Park movie. They had large mouths full of teeth more reminiscent of a shark’s than the peg-shaped teeth of the canonical carnosaur. The raptors—and the USE settlers—had discovered that biocompatibility was a two-way street. Judging by the subsequent increase in raptor incursions, humans had proven to be a tasty treat.

“I wouldn’t want to get complacent, Colonel. These are intelligent animals. They won’t just keep marching into weapon range like a horde of zombies.”

“Yes.” The colonel waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “Which is why I like the aerial surveillance system that you are implementing. Thermal imagers at night. And take out any that approach within a minimum radius.”

“Well, I doubt that the committee will give you any grief about that decision now.”

The colonel snorted, nodded to me, and ended the connection.

Colonel Butterworth and I got along much better than he and Riker ever did. Whether that was a difference in personality, or just the fact that the colonel was less stressed, was anyone’s guess.

I sighed and scrubbed my hand across my chin. It was time to get back to work.

I took a moment to check the status on the Artificial Womb construction.

We were going to be force-growing a generation of farm animals, just in time for the completion of the secure ranching area. If raptors liked human, they’d love cow. Best be prepared.

Everything seemed to be in order, so I called up a session with Bob and Bill. It took a few milliseconds for the connection, and then they both popped into my VR, sitting around the campfire.

“Hey, Howard,” Bob greeted me with a smile. “Always love the camping theme.”

I smiled back, handed both of them sticks, and laid out the marshmallows and wieners. I’d put a lot of effort into getting the campground just right.

Evenings around the campfire had been one of the highlights of my summers

when my dad would take us out to the cabin. Even as a child, I had felt the spirituality and timeless Zen of sitting around the fire with the trees looming in the semi-darkness.

This fire had just enough poplar in it to cause the occasional pop, but not so much that it began to sound like gunfire. I’d edited out insects—we Bobs tend to be a little obsessive about realistic detail, but come on, who needs mosquitos?

Once everyone was properly set up and ruining perfectly good marshmallows, I started the meeting. “One of our hunting parties ran into a dozen raptors today. They’d set up an ambush, and a pretty good one. I had to busterize one of them or we’d be down another settler.”

Bill shrugged. “I’ve said it before—I know it looks like really intelligent behavior, but pack predators on Earth did that kind of thing all the time. It’s easily explained by instinct. Get Jurassic Park out of your mind.”

Bob was grinning at me, so I just smiled and nodded. “Yeah, okay, point taken. Anyway, Bob’s automated surveillance system should be pretty valuable, once we get it set up. Especially with Bob’s new and improved ordnance.”

“Guppy ran the surveillance system on Eden for years,” Bob said. “It’ll be interesting to wire up a dedicated GUPPI to handle the job, though. No replicant oversight. You sure about that, Howard?”

“Not entirely,” I admitted. “But I wouldn’t dare suggest using up resources to build Bobs just for running guard details, you know?”

Bill and Bob said in perfect unison, “Butterworth would have a cow.”

We all broke up in laughter. With certain notable exceptions, the Bobs all had similar senses of humor. What tickled one funny bone tickled all.

There were a few milliseconds of contemplative silence. I looked at Bob.

“How’s it going with the Deltans?”

Bob smiled a sad smile and shrugged. “Archimedes has a growing family, now. Time marches on. People age, you know? It’s starting to freak me out a little. I’m watching people I know live their lives, getting older…”

Bill and I both nodded. Immortality had sounded like a great idea back on Earth, but there were costs, especially when you became attached to ephemerals. I glanced quickly at Bill as I had that thought. I knew Bill was touchy about the use of that term. But no, he couldn’t read my mind. I hoped I didn’t have a guilty expression.

Probably a good time to change the subject. “We’re ahead of schedule overall. We’ll probably be finished decanting the settlers from Exodus-3 this week. Riker will be happy to get back in touch with our relatives.”

Bill and Bob both nodded. Bob said, “I enjoy watching the exchanges, but I have to admit that it would be too painful for me to talk to them. I’m glad Riker is up for it. I keep seeing the resemblance to my sisters in people’s faces, and it’s gut-wrenching.”

I smiled slightly. I don’t think anyone had ever come out and said it to him, but the common feeling was that Bob-1 had gotten an extra dose of Original Bob’s anxiety. He tended to get wound up about stuff like that.

I said to Bill, “Before I forget, I need to contact Riker. I want to find out if he can locate some oak and scan it for me.”

“Oak?” Bill raised an eyebrow at me.

“If Riker can get a good enough scan, I should be able to print some real oak barrels.”

“It’ll take forever to print something biological, you know.”

“I know, Bill. It’s more a proof of concept at this stage. I’ll have a printer doing nothing but making staves until I have enough.”

Bill looked confused for a moment, then grinned. “Going into business?”

“No, just doing my part to maintain morale.”

We talked for a few more milliseconds about miscellaneous items, then they signed off. And Guppy popped in with my next TODO.

Oh. That one. I’d been putting that off…

* * *

Butterworth was livid. This was no mere cow he was having, this was the whole herd. I listened, jaw agape, as he carpet-bombed his tirade with expletives. I hadn’t even been aware he knew the f-word. Turned out he was an expert in its use as a verb, noun, adjective, adverb, article, and several forms of punctuation. I made sure I was recording.

Finally, he calmed down. Relatively. Sort of.

“So these, these… Others—moronic name, by the way—are going around depopulating planets? Just because?”

“Well, according to Mario...” I noted that Butterworth couldn’t quite suppress an eye-roll. He didn’t think much of our naming choices. “…they kill all the life on any planets in the system, then extract all the metals and

rare elements.”

“And we’re parked out here like a juicy target!”

I looked down and took the time to rein in my tendency to sarcasm before answering. “Colonel, it’s not like you’d have been any safer on Earth. If anything, Vulcan is slightly farther away from where they appear to be operating. And Earth has been advertising its presence for a couple of centuries with radio pollution.”

The colonel nodded, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. I felt for him.

He had no doubt thought that the worst was over with the landing on Vulcan.

Now we were all back in the frying pan.

“So what plans do the Bobs have, Howard?”

Now I was on more neutral ground. “Mario has built a bunch of scout-Bobs, and they’re checking nearby systems. He’s going to keep building cohorts, and they’re going to keep spreading out until they’ve mapped the Others’ depredations. Then we’ll take it from there. Bill has turned his attention to methods of destruction. Unfortunately, the Others are probably ahead of us technologically. We have some bootstrapping to do.”

“Keep me informed, please.” He wandered over and sat at his desk, rubbing his forehead. I enjoyed the few seconds of silence as he reviewed his notes.

“Farm donuts.” He said, looking up at me. “Those appear to be exceeding expectations.”

“Yes, Colonel. Bill came up with a lot of engineering improvements while breeding up the plant stock for release on Ragnarök. He has something called free time. I hope to experience it someday.”

Butterworth snorted and gave me a wry smile. We were both going full-bore, getting the colony up and running. The fact that replicants didn’t need to eat or sleep just meant that I was available seven days a week, twenty-two hours and thirteen minutes a day. Or thirty-one forty-nine, on Romulus.

Scheduling was going to be a headache once the Romulan colony was up and running. Funny, I couldn’t remember any science-fiction stories that actually dealt with how you’d handle timekeeping on a new planet.

“And that means,” Butterworth continued, “that we’ll be able to set up the Spits and FAITH colonies on an accelerated schedule. I expect you’re looking forward to your descendants coming out of stasis.”

“No one more than Riker.” I grinned. “I have to admit it’s been a pretty

popular program in BobNet.”

Butterworth grimaced. “BobNet. Seven billion people on Earth in the early twenty-first century, and FAITH decided to replicate a nerd-slash-engineer with a Star Trek fixation.” He grinned at me to take the sting out of the comment and reached for the disconnect button. “Until tomorrow, then…”

17. We’ve Lost a Drone

Bob

May 2171

Delta Eridani

The conversation with Bill had been both awesome and depressing. The idea that humanity was down to fifteen million people was devastating. On the other hand, it sounded like that number had come close to dropping to a big fat zero.

On the plus side, I wasn’t surprised that he’d cracked the subspace problem, but I was impressed by how quickly he’d done it. It left a small, nagging question in the back of my mind as to whether I could have pulled that off. How different from me was Bill?

Meh. No matter. The problem had been solved, Bill and I were working on merging the VR source from our two independent development branches, and real-time communications between Bobs was now a reality, at least in principle. I grinned to myself at the idea of a galactic internet. There still weren’t a lot of Bobs online, but that would change as Bill’s message spread through the local sphere at the speed of light.

I was overjoyed to find out that I had the official First Contact position sewn up. But I doubted I would be the only one.

Luke and Bender hadn’t come online yet. I hoped they would eventually intercept Bill’s transmissions so we could get caught up. Just in case, I instructed the local space station to periodically retransmit the SCUT plans along their flight paths. One way or another, they’d eventually receive the plans.

The lack of significant progress on Bill’s Android project was a little disappointing. A lot of the basic tech was being developed back on Earth when Original Bob was still alive. But it was proving difficult to put all the concepts together into an artificial body that could operate like a complete organism. Oh, well. Sooner or later, Bill would make some breakthroughs.

Meanwhile, I had my own projects.

Marvin had taken delivery of the exploration squads and was deploying them into his search grid covering the Deltans’ original territory. At the level of detail we were trying for, he expected to be finished in three months or so.

* * *

“I just lost a drone.” Marvin popped into my VR unannounced. He had a perplexed expression on his face.

“Define lost. ”

“Have a look.” He popped up a video window. It showed a panoramic view of Eden from several hundred meters in the air. The drone was flying a search pattern, looking for clearings that could be potential former villages.

Suddenly, the image began corkscrewing wildly and breaking up. After about half a second of this, the image disappeared.

“The hell,” I muttered. “I’m assuming that was an attack from above?”

“It would appear so. I did a frame-by-frame, and this was the best I could come up with.” He popped up a still image. It was out of focus and broken up by video interference lines, but there was an impression of something biting or chewing on the drone.

“I ran some filters and cleanup routines on it. The result is partly extrapolated.” He switched to a second image. This one was still grainy and lacking in detail, but I could make out what appeared to be a large beak or muzzle, filled with teeth.

“Wow,” I said. “I would sure hate for that to be the last thing I saw.”

“Guppy, are we getting any telemetry at all from the drone?” Marvin asked.

[Negative. Attack likely took out the power system]

“Hmm, well, I want to take a look at the wreckage. I’ll set up a SUDDAR

search. Highly refined metal should stand out like a lamp in a cave.” Marvin stood up, gave me a salute, and disappeared.

* * *

The wreckage of the drone rotated slowly in the holotank. Marvin had found the destroyed unit several kilometers south of its last known location and had taken a full-detail SUDDAR scan.

The drone was bitten almost in half, and had two parallel claw marks dug into the shell. The units were designed to be lightweight—unlike the busters,

there was no armor. Still, anything that could dent metal like that had to be dangerous. And whatever it was, it was airborne. Scary.

“Then there’s this.” Marvin popped up a couple of images. One was a closeup of the damage to the drone, and the other was a close-up of some bones.

“Interesting…” I reached out and pointed to a spot on the picture. “That looks a lot like the bite impression on the drone.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a number of similar examples. Whatever this is, it used to snack on Deltans.”

“Could that be why the Deltans migrated out of their original area?” My eyes got wide at the thought. “They weren’t moving to a more dangerous territory. The gorilloids were the lesser evil.”

“Or they didn’t know, or care, about the gorilloids.” Marvin’s voice was hushed.

“Then the gorilloids chased them over the mountain range to the location where we found them.”

We sat in silence for several milliseconds.

Marvin finally broke the silence. “I still don’t have enough information to narrow the search.”

“Well, we know they’re big enough to eat a Deltan.”

“Or pull a drone out of the sky.”

I did not like this. Not a bit.

18. It’s Getting Worse

Riker

Sept 2172

Sol

A crowd stood outside the police lines. Hopeless faces, some crying; parents holding children by the hand, couples holding each other, wearing stricken looks. People who would be better off almost anywhere but here.

Sixty-three confirmed dead, so far. The apartment building, a run-down six-floor concrete structure with no balconies, now had a huge bite taken out of it at ground level. That it would have to be condemned was a given. I was more worried that it might fall over any moment, crushing everything nearby.

This wasn’t a great neighborhood. By almost any pre-war standards, it would be a slum. Buildings all had their own power systems since the invention of dependable fusion, but the streets were dirty, unlit, and covered with graffiti. Windows and doors at ground level had long since been reinforced or completely covered over. Stains ran down the sides of the structures from weather, deteriorating paint, and contributions from birds.

The people living in this favela hadn’t been significant in any way. They weren’t government, or military, or anything that would justify making them a target. Just people, probably unemployed, living on the edge of poverty.

Most of them likely had no hope, no future, other than the possibility of eventual emigration to another star system.

What was the point? What could possibly justify this? The perpetrators had attacked people with next to nothing, and taken even that. Sometimes it shamed me to think that I used to be human.

I accepted a call from the Brazilian minister.

“This is the third attack this month, Riker. And there has been no progress in catching the perpetrators. What assurances can you give me that something will be done?” Minister Benedito looked more spooked than angry. Very probably he was worried about his job. Still, this wasn’t the time to get my back up.

“Minister, I’m not in charge of the investigation. Really, I’m not in charge of anything except the global emigration effort. I’m here as, well, a consultant. I will help out the investigation any way I can. But you have to look to your internal security forces to get this resolved. Plus whatever the UN can do, of course.” I could see from Benedito’s face that he didn’t think much of my response. But it was all I had.

I made mining drones available to the emergency personnel, to help locate and extract bodies or survivors. I set up surveillance drones around the perimeter, in case the terrorists tried to send in a follow-up attack. And I made sure that those in charge had a direct line to me. And mostly, I waited.

This was, as the minister had said, the third attack this month. This was terrorism, pure and simple. And not even for any political end, as far as I could tell. There had been no announcements, no demands. Someone simply seemed to be out to get Brazil. Since Florianópolis was pretty much all that was left of the former empire, this was the natural target.

Fifteen hundred ships, or fifteen hundred trips. The inexorable logic of mathematics mocked me.

* * *

Minister Gerrold, the representative from New Zealand, was holding forth again on my shortcomings, both real and imagined. He really hated me, for some reason, and had since day one. Not that I cared—the man was a putz—

but my orderly mind liked to have a link between cause and effect. Plus, if I was going to create this kind of reaction in someone, I would rather have an end-game. Fighting some random idiot was a waste of energy.

Today’s rant was about the sabotage and our inability to deal with it. I let my public avatar display alert interest, while I rolled my eyes in my VR.

He finally ran down, and I prepared to offer a response, but the minister from the Maldives beat me to it. And beating a computer to the punch was an impressive feat. I wondered if I should do a systems check.

The chair recognized Minister Sharma and she stood up. “I’d like to thank the minister for giving us a summary of his speech from last session. Which, if I recall, was also a summary from a previous speech. I’d be even more appreciative if it had been a prelude to some new information. Or at least witty. Minister Gerrold, you’ve obviously got a problem with the replicants.

I’d like to ask you to take it offline, so we can get on with actual business.”

The attention lights blinked rapidly, the remote meeting’s equivalent of applause. Minister Gerrold’s face clouded up and he sat back, arms crossed.

I made a note to send Sharma a thank-you note. But she was right. He obviously had a pickle up his butt about replicants in general, and me in particular.

The next item on the agenda concerned the deteriorating climate. Several enclaves in the higher latitudes were approaching non-viability. Two ships, Exodus-4 and Exodus-5, were due to launch this month. The UN had confirmed that the island nations would be sent to Poseidon. The question on the table was whether we needed to switch the order of emigration, or whether we could just move the troubled enclaves into the vacated territories.

Everyone had an opinion, and every opinion seemed to be different.

I leaned back and looked around. I’d just realized that Homer wasn’t here.

He usually popped in to mock the UN meetings. I think I was starting to depend on his satirical take on things to get me through the tedium.

Looked like I’d have to get through this one the old-fashioned way. I activated sandbox Bob and handed off the video window. Freedom.

19. Prey

Bob

June 2172

Delta Eridani

Archimedes patiently tied two strands of vine together while the cub watched. I smiled, observing the tableau in the video window. His mate, Diana, kept one eye on the drone. She had never liked the drones, or me, and still tensed up when one was around. Having a child to protect just made her that much touchier.

Archimedes was oblivious. He was too busy teaching his cub basic skills.

The cub took the vines and, tongue sticking out of a corner of his mouth, tied a perfect granny knot. Archimedes sighed and corrected it into a square knot.

The cub smiled up at his father and I experienced a jolt of—well, something.

Pride? Envy? Wistfulness? Maybe all of the above. It was hard to sort out.

My eyes were watering, and I had to suppress a strong urge to re-watch one of the recordings of Riker’s chats with our family.

I minimized the window and turned to see Marvin watching me. He said nothing, and after a moment he dropped his eyes and went back to what he was working on.

I took a few deep breaths and brought the window back up. The cub had successfully executed a square knot, although he still didn’t seem to be clear on the difference. I chuckled. I’d given Archimedes some sailing knots over the last while, and he was learning them, one at a time. It looked like he was trying to pass that knowledge on to his cub.

The boy would be given a Naming Ceremony as soon as he said his first word. Both Archimedes and I expected that to happen earlier than average.

The Deltans quite reasonably considered language to be the difference between them and animals, and the first use of language was the proof that the child had, for want of a better word, a soul. The Deltan word didn’t quite mean the same thing, but it was close enough.

Diana was still eyeing me, so I decided to give her a break. I told

Archimedes that I was going to go for a cruise around, then took off.

I brought the drone up to a kilometer altitude and rotated slowly. It was still early in a beautiful spring day, and dew sparkled on the trees and grass.

This part of Eden was mostly forest, but there were enough meadows and open areas to allow grazing animals to make a living. I was making a point of recording panoramas like this whenever I could. Someday, maybe ten thousand years in the future, the Deltans would be civilized, and would probably have done something to Eden similar to what humans had done to Earth in the twentieth century. It would be nice to be able to show them what their world had once been like. I wondered if I would still be hanging around here by then.

Wow, I needed to shake off this melancholy mood. I enjoyed hanging with Archimedes, but once in a while it triggered images of my parents and sisters.

When that happened, a change of scenery was in order.

I instructed the drone to fly back to Camelot and take up station-keeping, and I switched to a drone stationed at one of the Lagrange autofactories.

The armaments project was overdue for inspection, anyway. I had a section, carefully separated from everything else, where I was experimenting with explosives and munitions manufacture. I was playing with the idea of a shell powered by plastics instead of gunpowder. A primer triggered by an electrical current would remove the need for a hammer. Using ethylene glycol as the binder would result in a compound that was usable under all environmental conditions, including extreme cold. And the stuff didn’t become unstable with age. Oh, and it was easier to work with safely than gunpowder.

I moved on to the main autofactory area. Four replicant matrices were currently nearing completion, to give life to the version-3 Heaven vessels lined up nearby. I hadn’t decided yet if I wanted to upgrade myself as well.

Granted, the threes were significantly faster than my version-2 hull; but I had no immediate need for speed. Everything in the Delta Eridani system was accessible by drone. I seldom had any need to fire up my SURGE drive.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t left orbit around Eden in years.

Despite my ongoing reluctance to replicate, I felt a moral obligation to get more of me out into the universe. Besides the simple fact that more Bobs exploring meant more interesting revelations, there was the implied promise to Dr. Landers to perform the task that he’d resurrected me for. By extension,

I had a responsibility to what was left of the human race. Riker was doing a magnificent job of getting them off-planet. It was up to the rest of us to find places for them to go.

My brooding was interrupted by a text from Marvin. There’s been an attack.

I sent the drone back to station-keeping and re-entered my VR. Marvin was waiting.

“Gorilloids?” I asked, sitting down.

“No, I think it might be our Giant Claw. A foraging party was out gathering food when one of them was grabbed. They say they couldn’t really see it, except they got the impression it was really big. It flew away with the victim, and everyone else high-tailed it back to Camelot.”

“What do you mean, they couldn’t really see it? Did it jump out of a tree?”

“Um, no, that’s the thing. They were looking right at it but couldn’t make it out. The Deltans didn’t really have a word for it, and the translation routine was having fits, then finally settled on invisible. ”

“Ah, jeez. So a giant flying thing that can become fully or partly invisible, or maybe blend in…” I trailed off as I watched Marvin’s eyes get bigger.

“Umm…?”

He flipped through the archives and pulled up a video segment from my early investigation of Eden, back before I’d even found the Deltans. The video depicted what I’d named a hippogriff. About the size of a robin, this little critter had four legs and a set of wings. It was predatory, and it could hide in plain sight because it could…

… change its coloration to match the environment. Oh, crap.

“They’d be a lot bigger than this little guy, but what the Deltans sort of saw would fit the bill.” I nodded at Marvin. “Good catch. But we still don’t know where it comes from, right?”

Marvin shook his head. “I’m still searching outward from Camelot. I’ve reached the ocean in one direction, but still lots of land left at the other compass points. I’m biasing it towards the original Deltan territory, although that’s not a sure thing either.”

“The big question,” I said slowly, “is whether any of our drones saw it.”

“I already checked. There weren’t any in the area. Everything we could spare is out searching. Somehow this thing snuck inside our perimeter.”

“Wonderful. Wonder-freaking-ful. I haven’t just brought the Deltans back

to the fire, I’ve put them back in the frying pan. Some sky god!”

* * *

I watched from a distance as the tribal elders gathered to discuss the recent death. I wasn’t invited to attend, since I was probably the subject under discussion, and I didn’t feel like forcing the issue. Archimedes was told to be there, and he looked nervous enough for both of us. He and Diana exchanged frightened looks before he left.

The meeting went on for quite a while, and there was a lot of gesticulating and yelling. I’d probably never mentioned directional microphones to the Deltans, so I guess I couldn’t blame them for not realizing that I could hear everything.

Archimedes passed on my theories, which in retrospect probably made things worse. But it would have come out sooner or later. The central theme of the meeting, though, revolved around whether I was malicious or just an idiot. Either way, a lot of people believed that they’d been safer back at the old site.

Objectively, that wasn’t true. They’d been slowly going extinct, and wouldn’t have lasted more than another generation or so. But explaining population trends to essentially innumerate people was a losing game. They understood death when it happened in front of them, far better than they understood attrition.

The meeting took about two hours. When Archimedes came back to his spot, he looked very hangdog. He sat down and accepted a piece of jerky from Diana.

“They’re about evenly split,” he explained. “Half think you’ve led us here to be food for the flying things. The other half ask how you could have known about these things if we didn’t know. And we’re from here.”

I thought about that and sighed. If the Deltans had been human, those would have been the two camps, but the split wouldn’t have been fifty-fifty.

Deltans were surprisingly rational.

“You’re not in trouble, are you?”

“Not really.” Archimedes glanced at Diana and smiled ruefully. “But my, uh, stock is down. I think that’s how you say it.”

“Don’t worry about it, Archimedes. You’re still the best damned weapon-maker in, well, anywhere. If you need to distance yourself from me for a

while, that’s fine. But either way, Marvin and I will continue to look for the hippogriffs.”

Archimedes nodded. His cub toddled up and dropped into his lap. Head-first.

* * *

“Well, that explains it,” Marvin said. “I stopped at the shoreline and I shouldn’t have. The things seem to be centered on a rookery out on this island…” Marvin pointed to a large island a kilometer or two offshore.

Obviously volcanic in origin, it was steep, deeply folded, and very probably had a lot of lava tubes that would make perfect homes for large flying things.

“How many of them are there?”

“Can’t tell for sure.” Marvin shrugged. “They’re always coming and going during the day, but unless I start tagging them, I don’t know how many nests or dens or whatever are in those caves. But certainly scores of adults, at minimum.”

I frowned. “That’s a significant population of predators. So what do they eat when they can’t get Deltan?”

Marvin waved up a picture. “Seals. Well, seal-equivalents. Or maybe closer to walruses. They seem to fill the same niche. They spend most of their down-time basking on the beach, and they hunt in the water. They’re a little more mobile than seals or sea-lions, but still basically sitting ducks on land.

Although I’d imagine they could do some damage with those tusks.”

I stared at the picture for a few milliseconds, rubbing my chin. I turned to the globe and expanded it until it showed just the island and the Deltans’ past and current range. “So the hippogriffs discovered the Deltans, who were probably easier prey, chased them out of their original territory…”

Marvin continued the thought. “Then eventually caught up with them after they moved into gorilloid territory. The Deltans could handle the gorilloids, with flint weapons to help, but they couldn’t handle both predators. They retreated over the mountain range…”

“…which put them out of range of the hippogriffs, but lost them the flint resource. Without that, they couldn’t quite hold their own against the gorilloids,” I finished.

“And then we, and by we I mean you, led them back to the flint site.

Where they are, once again, on the menu.” Marvin gazed at me with one

eyebrow raised. “So what now?”

I sat down, called up coffee, and leaned back in thought. “I think we can agree that just doing nothing is off the table?” Marvin nodded and I continued, “Likewise, asking the Deltans to move again is probably a non-starter. I doubt they’d do it even if I had a good, safe destination in mind.”

“Plus, the flint site really is their best long-term bet, generally speaking.”

[Approaching predator detected]

We both looked up at Guppy’s announcement. We’d used all available drones to set up a tighter perimeter around Camelot, and set them to looking specifically for anything large and airborne. It appeared we had a bite.

I pulled up the video that Guppy offered. The hippogriff was hard to make out. On a clear day, it would have been almost impossible to see, the blue of its hide matched the sky so well. But today there were too many scattered clouds for the animal to camouflage itself from all angles. It was heading directly for Camelot. There was no doubt in my mind of its intentions. And this was almost certainly the one that had taken the Deltan two weeks ago.

“Right, let’s busterize it.” I called up a buster and set it to full acceleration.

It shot towards the hippogriff.

At the very last moment, though, the hippogriff dodged the bullet.

Literally. The thing’s speed and aerial agility was unbelievable.

We both stared for a few milliseconds, then I called up more busters.

“Don’t overdo it,” Marvin cautioned. “Let’s find out what the animal is capable of. We know we can get it if we throw enough busters at it. Let’s find out what ‘enough’ means.”

I nodded at him, and ordered most of my second wave to stand down.

Instead, I sent in two busters in the fore/aft formation that Riker had used so successfully in the Battle of Sol.

Again, the hippogriff dodged the first buster. The speed of the animal was really impressive. But it was unable to correct for the second one. The splat created a cloud of fine red mist, which settled slowly to the forest below.

“I didn’t like that,” Marvin said. “We got it with the second one, but it was close. I think if we want to take them out dependably, we should go with an encirclement using three or more busters.”

“The question is whether this was a one-off or whether they fly some kind of patrol pattern. Maybe there won’t be any more coming this way.”

Marvin didn’t look convinced. “Predators almost always have a patrol

pattern of some kind, if only to protect their territory from competitors. I doubt we’ve seen the last of them.”

* * *

It took less than a day to prove Marvin right.

[Multiple incoming detected]

Oh, God, this just keeps getting worse. I pulled up the window and leaned forward. It was hard to tell from the returns, but it looked like about a dozen hippogriffs, give or take a few, were bearing down on Camelot.

“What the hell?” Marvin said, popping in. “What’s attracting them?”

“Just a guess, but I’d say the blood in the air yesterday from the busterized hippogriff. I’m sure a predator would be able to smell the spoor for miles.

Maybe it draws them like sharks.”

“Oh for— okay, a dozen of them will require thirty-six busters. We don’t have that available.”

“We’re going to have to wing it, Marv. They’re in a fairly tight group.

Maybe we can thin them out some of the first pass.”

Marvin nodded, and we called up the twenty busters that we had available.

I ordered Guppy to fly in reinforcements from orbit, and we set the ones we had on a direct line of attack with maximum acceleration. By the time they neared the flock of hippogriffs, they were doing about Mach 1.5.

The first pass took about five hippogriffs, and allowed us to see that there had been fourteen total. Now, we had fifteen busters left for nine attackers.

There was a good possibility one or two might reach Camelot.

While the busters were coming around for another pass, I activated one of the drones in Camelot. I flew towards the first recognizable face I saw, which was Arnold.

Everyone was looking in the direction of the sonic booms, staring at the red clouds that had appeared. I shouted at Arnold, “Hippogriffs coming. Get everyone under cover!”

I shifted back to my VR without waiting to see if Arnold reacted. The busters were just coming in for the second pass, and Marvin had stacked them two-deep. The leftover buster trailed the group, ready to take out a target of opportunity.

The second pass took out three hippogriffs, and injured the wing of a fourth. The clouds of red were now making it hard to see. SUDDAR was not

particularly effective with biomass—bodies showed up as dim ghosts—and infra-red was having a lot of trouble with all the fresh blood floating around.

The injured hippogriff lost altitude quickly, but it was a controlled descent. We probably couldn’t depend on the impact killing it. We now had eleven busters—no, nine. Two busters had collided and taken each other out

—and five attackers left. It was going to be tight, unless they turned around and retreated. If they were anything like sharks with blood-spoor, though, that wasn’t going to happen.

The busters came around for a third pass. There were fewer hippogriffs now, though, and they were spreading out. And the damned things really had quick reflexes. Despite buster pairing, we only took out three of the attackers.

We were down to six busters, and had two healthy and one injured hippogriff to deal with. Still reasonable odds, except that they were now close enough to Camelot to present a real danger. And we didn’t have the uninterrupted line anymore for a supersonic approach.

“Switch to bludgeoning and harassment. Guppy, where are the reinforcements?”

[Five minutes out]

Not good enough. I checked the action in Camelot. The mesa didn’t have much in the way of caves or any other kind of overhead protection. It was ideal for protection from a ground assault, not an air attack. The Deltans were streaming out of the village, down the two available paths. But with the bottleneck, they couldn’t get the whole tribe evacuated in time, and they would be sitting ducks until they reached the trees.

We commenced low-speed bludgeoning of the hippogriffs. They were even better at dodging at this speed, but they couldn’t really do anything else at the same time.

We finally managed to bounce one off the head of a hippogriff. It went down immediately. The other hippogriff ignored the byplay and tried to take a pass at the Deltans on one of the paths. But the busters kept it too distracted and it passed overhead without completing the attack. Unfortunately, a couple of Deltans panicked and fell or leaped off the path. I could see them tumbling down the steep scree.

The Deltan hunters laid into the unconscious hippogriff. It was my first opportunity to get a good feel for relative scale. If the Deltans were human-sized, then the hippogriffs were about the size of a Clydesdale, with bat-like

wings. The animals looked more reptilian than anything. Teeth and claws were disproportionately large, resulting in an impression of something built for nothing but killing.

It took only a few seconds for the Deltan hunters to ensure that the animal wouldn’t be waking up. The live hippogriff, though, was still a major threat, and I had no idea where the injured one had gotten to.

The busters continued to harass the healthy hippogriff, and it apparently decided to reduce the defensive zone by landing. Well, not a bad strategy, really. Now the busters could only buzz it from above.

As it landed, the hippogriff changed its coloration to match the ground and rocks, but no one was going to be fooled at this stage. The animal snapped at the busters as they came within range, and it managed to snag one. It looked as though this would turn into a process of attrition, until the Deltans brought in their “A” game. Twenty to thirty spears flew at the animal in a solid cloud.

Fast or not, the hippogriff simply couldn’t dodge that amount of incoming.

Within moments, it resembled a pincushion. The hippogriff screeched and snapped at the spears sticking out of it. Arnold grabbed another spear from someone, ran straight toward the hippogriff, and made an Olympic-caliber throw from point-blank range. The spear went right through the animal’s neck and it dropped instantly.

There were cheers from the hunters. The jubilation lasted only a moment, however. Screams from the retreating tribespeople brought our attention back to the paths out of Camelot. The injured hippogriff had made its way to the base of the scree, found one of the people who had fallen, and was eating him.

I sent all my remaining busters straight at it, with no allowance for pulling up if they missed. Two impacted with enough force to kill the last animal. It was too late for the Deltan, though.

* * *

The good news, if it could be called good, was that we’d only lost three Deltans. A fourth had a broken leg, and I was going to have a confrontation with the medicine woman if she didn’t listen to me this time. I’d lost eighteen of my twenty busters. Twenty more made it down from orbit, too late to do any good. And once again I was pulling all my printers off of their assigned duties to make more busters.

The Deltans had called another tribal council. For them, two councils in a month was akin to panic. This time, I was invited, or maybe summoned. I doubted it was to give me a medal.

I had noticed that some people were giving Archimedes a bit of cold shoulder. They couldn’t overdo it, of course. He and Moses were still the only source of shaped flint, and Moses wasn’t moving around much these days. If I was to describe the attitude in human terms, it would be “coldly formal.” Since Archimedes hadn’t done anything to deserve it, I had to conclude that it was guilt by association.

Arnold was sitting in council now. After that display with the hippogriff, he was man of the hour. Hopefully that would mean at least one sympathetic voice.

There was some discussion among themselves, then they called me over. I floated down to head height and waited.

“Are there any other surprises that you have for us?” Hoffa said without preamble.

“That was a surprise to me, too. You’ll remember that I asked why you’d left Camelot. Only Axler had an inkling, and he didn’t remember enough to warn us.”

“Just the same, by following your advice, we seem to get deeper and deeper into trouble.”

“By following my advice, you’ve retaken a location that you can defend against gorilloids and that has flint for weapons. I know a lot of you have trouble following my explanation, but I maintain that in the old camp, your children would have been the last of the Deltans.”

I paused for dramatic effect before continuing. “As for the hippogriffs, they’re a problem because they’re a surprise. I’m going to find out more about them, then I’m going to remove them.”

“I’ve noticed,” Hoffa said, “that despite your talk, it’s still we who do most of the fighting.”

“Really? When was the last time a group of your hunters had to beat off a gorilloid attack? Did you hear the sonic booms? Two hands and four hippogriffs approached Camelot, but only three arrived.”

Hoffa’s ears were straight back and his eyes were narrowed to slits. I was mishandling this, but I couldn’t stop myself. I’d never been able to handle shortsighted stupidity.

“That’s three more than would have arrived at our old camp.”

In VR, Marvin and I rolled our eyes in sync.

“I’ve already talked about that.”

“Perhaps next time, we should leave your Archimedes out as an offering for them.”

I sent the drone straight up ten feet. “Don’t. Ever. Threaten. My. Family.

Not ever.” As I finished saying the words, I realized that I’d turned the volume up. It had probably been painful to sensitive Deltan ears. The entire council was cringing, and possibly not just from the volume.

I slowly lowered the drone back to head-height. “I mean it, Hoffa. I’ll take care of the hippogriffs. And thanks to you, I’ve figured out how.”

Hoffa looked confused and somewhat concerned. I noticed that Arnold looked at Hoffa and smiled.

* * *

“Okay, I’ll bite.” Marvin was grinning at me. “How? And how did Hoffa help with it?”

I glared at him. “I’m going to drop a rock on the island. Which is what I wanted to do to Hoffa.”

“Jeez, Bob, here you go again. You’re going to perform planetary ecological surgery just because it’s convenient.”

“No, Marvin.” I jumped to my feet. “I’m going to do it because those things threaten my family. And you can analyze that all you want. I don’t give a damn.” I closed down his VR connection and he disappeared, effectively kicked out. Pretty rude, and I’d be apologizing later. But for the moment, I was too steamed to care.

* * *

I had a far more immediate problem, though. Assuming I was right about the hippogriffs smelling blood, then today’s battle would bring yet another wave tomorrow—maybe much larger. It would take time to find a large enough mass to destroy the island. I calculated an initial size of a hundred tons would about do it. We had identified a number of nickel-iron asteroids in the system, some of which would be about the right size.

I received a ping from Marvin. It was time to eat crow. I invited him in, and we looked at each other warily.

He broke the silence first. “You know we’re no good with this crap, right?”

It was enough. I broke down laughing, and we nodded at each other.

Done. Possibly identical twins could come close to understanding, but certainly no one else.

We sat down and I described my thoughts on the impactor.

“Huh,” he replied. “So, a couple of months to build Bill’s asteroid mover, a couple more weeks to move the asteroid into place. You think the hippogriffs will just wait around?”

“I’m open to suggestions.”

“I understand you’re angry, Bob, and you want to smash the island to smithereens. But all you need to do is hammer it enough to take out the hippogriff population. You don’t need a Yucatan-level event to do that.”

I nodded. “So, a bunch of small impactors?”

“A thousand-pound steel ball will do a lot of damage.”

“Ohhhhhh…” I nodded. “Ship busters. Yeah, I’ve still got four in inventory.”

“The thing is, though, Bob, you don’t want too big of a bang. Tsunamis, ground shocks, flying debris could do more damage to the Deltans than a bunch of hippogriffs. Get this wrong, and you could be directly responsible for the extinction of the Deltan species.”

I nodded, shocked. Time to get my temper under control.

* * *

We decided to use the ship-busters one at a time and gauge the results after each strike. I sent the first ship-buster in at what I hoped was a reasonably sedate velocity.

The results were slightly more, um, spectacular than expected.

In retrospect, maybe I didn’t allow for the amount of material that would normally be shed by a meteor on the way down. Or I forgot to carry the two.

Whatever the reason, the impact produced a mushroom cloud that would have done a fission bomb proud. As the smoke and dust cleared, it was obvious that the island, and the hippogriffs, were gone.

Well, that was the good news.

The bad news was that this was definitely going to produce ground shocks all the way to Camelot. And at least some debris. I flew several drones over

to the camp, to find everyone already awake, staring at the bright cloud to the southwest.

Archimedes looked up at the drone as I arrived. “Did you do that?” he said in a hushed voice.

I wasn’t sure of the expression on his face. Awe, certainly, but I thought maybe a bit of fear. I hoped not. That wasn’t the legacy I wanted to leave.

“Yeah, Archimedes. That’s the hippogriff island being obliterated.”

Archimedes’ eyes grew wider and his ears went down. He took a half-step back from me.

Damn.

At that moment, the ground shock arrived. It wasn’t the worst earthquake I’d ever seen, but was probably the first in the Deltans’ experience. They hugged the ground, and there were many screams.

The shaking was brief. It was followed a few minutes later by the sound of the explosion. The crack and roar seemed to go on forever, but couldn’t have been a minute in all. The Deltans continued to huddle until it let up.

But now came the hard part. I went to the elders. “There may be some burning rocks falling from the sky, in about a hundred heartbeats or so. You should get everyone into the lee side of the bluff.”

There were wide eyes and flattened ears, but no one was going to argue with me. In short order, every Deltan was huddled behind the central bluff.

The debris arrived right on time. Drones hadn’t been able to detect anything big. I hoped that would hold, as I wasn’t really sure I could intercept incoming debris with a buster. Or if it would do any good.

The pelting lasted several minutes. It was impressive, and there was some minor damage to the village, but no one was hurt. The Deltans huddled for the rest of the night, unwilling to leave the sanctuary of the rock.

* * *

When morning finally came, people spread back out to their normal locations. A few of them had to do some cleanup, but their neighbors pitched in. Overall, the amount of actual damage was minor.

The council was having yet another session. Again, though, I wasn’t expecting a medal.

When they were done, they motioned to the drone. I flew it over, and Hoffa stepped forward. “We understand what you’ve done. We understand

your explanations. But everything you ask, everything you do, seems to come with a larger and larger cost. We’re not sure if we’re better off now or not.

There’s a lot of argument about that.”

He paused for a moment, a determined look on his face, then faced me squarely. “We’d like you to go away. We’ll face our fate ourselves. If you want to kill us, we can’t stop you. If you want to kill me, I can’t do anything about it. But you’re not welcome here anymore.”

I stared at him, through the drone, for what seemed like forever. I was frozen. Numb. It was too much to process. The emotional circuit breaker had tripped. I’d lost a family already, now I was losing a second one.

I backed out of the drone, and turned to Marvin. His face was grey. I was sure I didn’t look any better. “I guess I screwed up,” I said.

“Look, let’s just clear out for now,” he replied. “Give things time to cool off. You can talk to Archimedes later.”

I nodded, and re-entered the drone. I floated over to Archimedes, who was not looking well. Deltans didn’t display shock the same as humans. His facial fur was lying in disorganized mats. But the wide eyes and flat ears were probably universal. A disconnected part of me started theorizing about why that might be, and I squashed it.

“Archimedes, I’m going to take off until things cool down. I’ll talk to you later.”

He nodded. I noted that Diana had a look on her face of either satisfaction or triumph. I’d never hated anyone as much as I despised her at that moment.

20. Parasite

Howard

October 2189

Vulcan

Things that make you go “Ew!” This definitely qualified. I couldn’t take my eyes off the video, as the doctor made an incision on the patient and proceeded to extract a small bundle of eggs. A few had hatched and the larvae were trying to burrow away. At that moment, right there, I was so thankful that I was no longer biological.

I glanced at Butterworth’s video feed and noticed that he was paying an extreme level of attention to his glass of Jameson. Huh, not a bad idea. I invoked a glass of Sam’s cognac and turned on my alcohol receptors. A slight buzz was just what the doctor ordered.

Finally, thank the Universe, the video ended. Butterworth turned to look at the video camera. A slight smile formed when he saw the glass in my hand. I shrugged a “what about it?” shrug.

“The parasite appears to be a large insect,” he explained. “The bite itches a bit, then disappears. When the eggs have grown enough, though, it becomes a large swollen area. By that point, we have less than a day to remove the eggs.”

“What if you don’t?” I knew I would regret asking, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“The larvae go for the heart. Fatal within two days or so. Then the larvae feast on the corpse. That seems to be the life cycle. We’ve lost four people and two cattle so far. The doctors think they might be able to come up with a blood test, but I can’t see poking every colonist every other day to draw blood.”

“Wonderful. Have we caught any adults yet?”

Butterworth shook his head. “No, nor do we have very good descriptions, other than that it’s about hummingbird-size. We’re working on it, but I was hoping you might be able to throw in some surveillance drones.”