The Last Colony вбиос-3 Read online

  "I'll see what I can do," I said. "You're a miracle worker, Bennett."

  "Nah," he said. "I'm just your average geek. I've got those soil reports you wanted." He handed over a PDA, and I fondled it for a moment before looking at the screen. "The good news is the soil samples I've seen so far look good for our crops in a general sense.

  There's nothing in the soil that will kill them or stunt their growth, at least chemically. Each of the samples was crawling with little critters, too."

  "Is that a bad thing?" Trujillo asked.

  "Got me," Bennett said. 'What I know about soil management I read as I was processing these samples. My wife did a little gardening back on Phoenix and seemed to be of the opinion that having a bunch of bugs was good because they aerated the soil. Who knows, maybe she's right."

  "She's right," I said. "Having a healthy amount of biomass is usually a good thing." Trujillo looked at me skeptically. "Hey, I farmed," I said. "But we also don't know how these creatures will react to our plants. We're introducing new species into a biosphere."

  "You're officially beyond anything I know about the subject, so I'll move on," Bennett said. "You asked if there was any way for me to adapt the technology we have to switch off the wireless components. Do you want the long or short answer?"

  "Let's start with the short answer," I said.

  "Not really," Bennett said.

  "Okay," I said. "Now I need the long answer."

  Bennett reached over and grabbed a PDA that he had earlier pried apart, lifted the top off it and handed it to me. "This PDA is a fairly standard piece of Colonial Union technology. Here you see all the components; the processor, the monitor, the data storage, the wireless transmitter that lets it talk to other PDAs and computers. Not a single one of them is physically connected to any of the other parts. Every part of this PDA connects wirelessly to every other part."

  "Why do they do it that way?" I asked, turning the PDA over in my hands.

  "Because it's cheap," Bennett said. "You can make tiny data transmitters for next to nothing. It costs less than using physical materials. They don't cost much either, but in aggregate there's a real cost differential. So nearly every manufacturer goes that way. It's design by accountant. The only physical connections in the PDA are from the power cell to the individual components, and again that's because it's cheaper to do it that way."

  "Can you use those connections to send data?" Zane said.

  "I don't see how," Bennett said. "I mean, sending data over a physical connection is no problem. But getting into each of these components and flashing their command core to do it that way is beyond my talents. Aside from the programming skills, there's the fact each manufacturer locks out access to the command core. It's proprietary data. And even if I could do all that, there's no guarantee it would work. Among everything else, you'd be routing everything through the power cell. I'm not sure how you get that to work."

  "So even if we turn off all the wireless transmitters, every one of these is still leaking wireless signals," I said.

  "Yeah," Bennett said. "Across very short distances—no more than a few centimeters—but, yeah. If you're really looking for this sort of thing, you could detect it."

  "There's a certain point at which this all becomes futile," Trujillo said. "If someone's listening for radio signals this weak, there's a pretty good chance they're scanning the planet optically as well. They're just going to see us."

  "Hiding ourselves from sight is a difficult fix," I said to Trujillo. "This is an easy fix. Let's work on the easy fixes." I turned to Bennett, and handed back his PDA. "Let me ask you something else," I said. "Could you make wired PDAs? Ones without wireless parts or transmitters?"

  "I'm sure I could find a design for one," Bennett said. "There are public domain blueprints. But I'm not exactly set up for manufacturing. I could go through everything we have and cobble up something. Wireless parts are the rule but there are some things that are still wired up. But we're never going to get to a place where everyone's walking around with a computer, much less being able to replace the onboard computers on most of the equipment we have. Honestly, outside this black box, we're not getting out of the early twentieth century any time soon."

  All of us digested that for a moment. "Can we at least expand this?" Zane finally asked, motioning around him.

  "I think we should," Bennett said. "In particular I think we need to build a black box medical bay, because Dr. Tsao keeps distracting me when I'm trying to get work done."

  "She's hogging your equipment," I said.

  "No, she's just really cute," Bennett said. "And that's going to get me in trouble with the wife. But also, I've only got a couple of her diagnostic machines :n here, and if we ever have a real medical problem, we're going to want more available."

  I nodded. We'd already had one broken arm, from a teenager climbing up on the barrier and then slipping off. He was lucky not to have broken his neck. "Do we have enough mesh?" I asked.

  "This is pretty much our entire stock," Bennett said. "But I can program it to make some more of itself. I'd need some more raw material."

  "I'll have Ferro get on that," Zane said, referring to the cargo chief. "We'll see what we have in inventory."

  "Every time I see him, he seems really pissed," Bennett said.

  "Maybe it's because he's supposed to be at home and not here," Zane snapped. "Maybe he doesn't much like being kidnapped by the Colonial Union." Two weeks had not served to make the captain any more mellow about the destruction of his ship or the stranding of his crew.

  "Sorry," Bennett said.

  "I'm ready to go," Zane said.

  "Two quick things," Bennett said to me. "I'm almost done printing most of the data files you were given when we came here, so you can have those in hard copy. I can't print the video and audio files, but I'll run them through a processor to get you transcripts."

  "Okay, good," I said. "What was the second thing?"

  "I went around the camp with a monitor like you asked and looked for wireless signals," Bennett said. Trujillo raised an eyebrow at this. "The monitor is solid state," Bennett said to him. "Doesn't send, only receives. Anyway, I think you should know there are three wireless devices still out there. And they're still transmitting."

  "I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about," Jann Kranjic said.

  For not the first time, I restrained the urge to punch Kranjic in the temple. "Do we really need to do this the hard way, Jann?" I said. "I'd like to pretend we're not twelve years old and that we're not having an 'am to, am not' sort of conversation."

  "I turned over my PDA just like everyone else did," Kranjic said, and then motioned back to Beata, who was lying on her cot, a washcloth over her eyes. Beata was apparently prone to migraines. "And Beata turned in her PDA and her camera cap. You have everything we have."

  I glanced over at Beata. "Well, Beata?" I said.

  Beata raised the edge of her washcloth and looked over, wincing. Then she sighed and reapplied her washcloth. "Check his underwear," she said.

  "Excuse me?" I said.

  "Beata," Kranjic said.

  "His underwear," Beata said. "At least one pair has a pouch in the elastic that hides a small recorder. He's got a pin of the Umbrian flag that's an audio,"video input. He's probably got it on right now."

  "You bitch," Kranjic said, subconsciously covering his pin. "You're fired."

  "That's funny," Beata said, pressing the washcloth against her eyes. "We're a thousand light-years from anywhere, we have no chance of ever getting back to Umbria, you spend your days reciting overblown notes into your underwear for a book you'll never write, and I'm fired. Get a grip, Jann."

  Kranjic stood to make a dramatic exit. "Jann," I said, and held out my hand. Jann snatched off his pin and pressed it into my palm.

  "Want my underwear now?" He sneered.

  "Keep the underwear," I said. "Just give me the recorder."

  "Years from now, people are going to
want to know the story of this colony," Kranjic said, as he fumbled with his underwear from inside his trousers. "They're going to want to know the story, and when they go looking for it, they're not going to find anything. And they're not going to find anything because its leaders spent their time censoring the only member of the press in the entire colony."

  "Beata's a member of the press," I said.

  "She's a camerawoman," Kranjic said, slapping over the recorder. "It's not the same thing."

  "I'm not censoring you," I said. "I just can't allow you to jeopardize the colony. I'm going to take this recorder and have Jerry Bennett print you out a transcript of the notes, in very tiny type, because I don't want to waste paper. So you'll have these notes. And if you go find Savitri you can tell her I asked her to give you one of her notepads. One, Jann. She needs the rest for our work. Then if you need any more you can see what the Mennonites have to say about it."

  "You want me to write out my notes," Kranjic said. "In longhand."

  "It worked for Samuel Pepys," I said.

  "You're assuming Jann knows how to write," Beata mumbled from her cot.

  "Bitch," Kranjic said, and left the tent.

  "It's a stormy marriage," Beata said laconically.

  "Apparently," I said. "You want a divorce?"

  "Depends," Beata said, raising her washcloth again. "Think your assistant would be up for a date?"

  "In the entire time I've known her I haven't known her to date anyone," I said.

  "So that's a 'no,'" Beata said.

  "It's a 'hell if I know,'" I said.

  "Hmmmm," Beata said, dropping the cloth back down. "Tempting. But 111 stay married for now. It irritates Jann. After all the irritation he's provided me over the years, it's nice to return the favor."

  "Stormy marriage," I said.

  "Apparently," Beata said.

  "We must refuse," Hickory said to me. It and Dickory and I were in the Black Box. I figured that when I told the two Obin that they needed to give up their wireless consciousness implants, they should be allowed to be conscious to hear it.

  "You've never refused an order of mine before," I said.

  "None of your orders has ever violated our treaty," Hickory said. "Our treaty with the Colonial Union allows the two of us to be with Zoe. It also allows us to record those experiences and share them with other Obin. Ordering us to surrender our consciousness interferes with this. It violates our treaty."

  "You could choose to surrender your implants," I said. "That would solve the problem."

  "We would not choose to," Hickory said. "It would be an abdication of our responsibility to the other Obin."

  "I could tell Zoe to tell you to give them up," I said. "I can't imagine you'd ignore her order."

  Hickory and Dickory leaned in together for a moment, then leaned out again. "That would be distressful," Hickory said. I reflected that it was the first time I had ever heard that word provide such apocalyptic gravity

  "You understand I have no desire to do this," I said. "But our orders from the Colonial Union are clear. We can't let anything provide easy evidence we're on this world. The Conclave will exterminate us. All of us, including, you two and Zoe."

  "We have considered the possibility," Hickory said. "We believe the risk to be negligible."

  "Remind me to show you a little video I have," I said.

  "We have seen it," Hickory said. "It was provided to our government as well as yours."

  "How can you see that and not see that the Conclave represents a threat to us?" I asked.

  "We viewed the video carefully," Hickory said. "We believe the risk to be negligible."

  "It's not your decision to make," I said.

  "It is," Hickory said. "By our treaty."

  "I am the legal authority on this planet," I said.

  "You are," Hickory said. "But you may not abrogate a treaty for your convenience."

  "Not getting an entire colony slaughtered is not a convenience," I said.

  "Removing all wireless devices to avoid detection is a convenience," Hickory said.

  "Why don't you ever talk?" I said to Dickory.

  "I have yet to disagree with Hickory," Dickory said.

  I stewed.

  "We have a problem," I said. "I can't force you to surrender your implants, but I can't let you run around with them, either. Answer me this: Is it a violation of your treaty for me to require you to stay here, in this room, so long as I have Zoe visit you on a regular basis?"

  Hickory thought about it. "No," it said. "It is not what we prefer."

  "It's not what I prefer, either," I said. "But I don't think I have a choice."

  Hickory and Dickory conferred again for several minutes. "This room is covered in wave-masking material," Hickory said. "Give us some. We can use use it to cover our devices and ourselves."

  "We don't have any more right now," I said. "We need to make more. It might take some time."

  "As long as you agree to this solution we will accommodate the production time," Hickory said. "During that time we will not use our implants outside this room, but you will ask Zoe' to visit us here."

  "Fine," I said. "Thank you."

  "You are welcome," Hickory said. "Maybe this will be for the best. Since we have been here, we have noticed she has not had as much time for us."

  "She's being a teenager," I said. "New friends. New planet. New boyfriend."

  "Yes. Enzo," Hickory said. "We feel deeply ambivalent about him."

  "Join the club," I said.

  "We can remove him," Hickory said.

  "Really, no," I said.

  "Perhaps later," Hickory said.

  "Rather than killing off Zoe's potential suitors, I'd prefer the two of you focus on helping Jane find whatever it is that's out there pawing on our perimeter," I said. "It's probably less emotionally satisfying, but in the grand scheme of things, it's going to be more useful."

  Jane plopped the thing down on the floor of the Council meeting. It looked vaguely like a large coyote, if coyotes had four eyes and paws with opposable thumbs. "Dickory found this one inside one of the excavations. There were two others with it but they ran off. Dickory killed this one as it was trying to get away."

  "He shot it?" asked Marta Piro.

  "He killed it with a knife," Jane said. This caused some uneasy muttering; most of the Council and colonists were still deeply uncomfortable with the Obin.

  "Do you think this is one of the predators you were concerned about?" Manfred Trujillo asked.

  "It might be," Jane said.

  "Might be," Trujillo said.

  "The paws ere the right shape for the marks we've seen," Jane said. "But it seems small to me."

  "But small or not, something like this could have made the marks," Trujillo said.

  "It's possible," Jane said.

  "Have you seen any larger ones?" asked Lee Chen.

  "No," Jane said, and looked over to me. "I've been out on the night watch on the last three days and last night was the first time we've seen anything approach the barrier at all."

  "Hiram, you've been out past the barrier almost every day," Trujillo said. "Have you seen anything like this?"

  "I've seen some animals," Hiram said. "But they've been plant eaters, as far as I could see. I haven't seen anything that looks like this thing. But then I've not been out past the barrier at night, either, and Administrator Sagan here thinks these are active during the night."

  "But she hasn't seen any more of them," Marie Black said. "We're holding off settling because of phantoms."

  "The scratches and holes were real enough," I said.

  "I'm not arguing that," Black said. "But maybe they were isolated incidents. Perhaps a pack of these animals was just passing through several days ago and was curious about the barrier. Once they couldn't get through, they moved on."

  "It's possible," Jane said again. From her tone I could tell she didn't think much of Black's theory.

  "How much longer are w
e going to hold off on settling because of this?" Paulo Gutierrez asked. "I've got people who are going insane waiting for us to stop farting around. The last few days people have started getting in each other's faces about idiotic things. And we're running against time now, aren't we? It's spring here now, and we've got to start planting crops and readying grazing fields for the livestock. We've already eaten through two weeks of food. If we don't start colonizing, we're going to be in deep shit."

  "We haven't been farting around," I said. "We've been dropped onto a planet about which we know nothing. We had to take the time to make sure it wasn't going to flat-out kill us."

  "We're not dead yet," Trujillo said, interjecting himself. "So that's a good sign. Paolo, step back for a minute. Perry is absolutely right. We couldn't have just wandered out into this planet and started setting up farms. But Paolo's right, too, Perry. We're at a point where we can't stay stuck behind a barricade. Sagan's had three days to find more evidence of these creatures, and we've killed one of them. We need to be cautious, yes. And we need to keep studying Roanoke. But we need to get colonizing, too."

  The entire Council was staring at me, waiting to hear what I would say. I glanced over at Jane, who gave one of her nearly imperceptible shrugs. She wasn't entirely convinced that there wasn't a real threat out there, but aside from the one dead creature, she had nothing definitive. And Trujillo was right; it was time to get colonizing.

  "Agreed," I said.

  "You let Trujillo take that meeting away from you," Jane said, as we got ready for bed. She kept her voice low; Zoe was already asleep. Hickory and Dickory were standing impassively on the other side of our screen in the administrative tent. They were wearing full body suits made from the first bolt of the newly produced nanobotic mesh. The suits locked in the wireless signals; they also turned the Obin into walking shadows. They might have been asleep as well; it was hard to tell.

  "I suppose I did," I said. "Trujillo's a professional politician. He'll do that sometimes. Especially when he's right. We do need to move on getting people out of the village."