This Virtual Night Page 9

  A moment later the exit slid open, revealing a lightless space. There was no welcoming committee, human or mechanical, nor any indication of where he was. Well, if there’s anyone inside the station, they must know I’m here by now. Finally he took a deep breath and stepped across the threshold. Lights came on, illuminating a small waiting room with benches along the walls—all of them designed for Terrans, of course—and an archway beyond, leading to some larger space. According to his suit’s readout the air was thin but breathable. Good enough. He reached up to remove his helmet, fumbling with the seal because of the heavy gloves. Finally he managed to get it off, and air, fresh air, flowed across his face. Never in his whole life had any sensation been so pleasurable. For a moment he just stood there, savoring it. Then the soft hiss of oxygen reminded him he was far from done. He pulled off his gloves, then wriggled out of the harness that held his oxygen in place. He thought he heard a hose somewhere tear loose, but who cared? A suit like this could only be used once. He pulled off his gloves and split open the suit that had been sealed around him, peeling the damn thing off him like the skin of a fruit. The clothing that had been compressed underneath it was damp from sweat, and his hair was soaked. He took his headset off for a moment and shook his head like a dog, scattering salty droplets everywhere.

  Still no sign of any people or bots.

  He salvaged what few survival tools the suit’s outer pouch contained—medical supplies, a small plasteel tool with a dozen different tips folded into it, several tubes of high-calorie food paste and fortified water—and loaded them into his pockets. He propped the empty suit up on one of the benches, then looked toward the archway. “Hello? Anyone there?” No one answered. He said it louder. Still no one answered. He headed toward it.

  Beyond it was a large chamber whose lights came on as he entered. It was circular in shape, with small kiosks set along the walls. Each one had its own name and design. Vast Repast had pastries displayed above a mock-wooden counter. King Knosh had a giant bagel with a smiling face on it. Taste of Kawaii had a pink storefront with cartoon kittens all over it; they’d been still when the lights first came on, but as he approached they began to dance a tango across the marquis. Music was playing somewhere, and different music was playing somewhere else. The melodies clashed.

  A food court. He was in a goddamn food court!

  It seemed so utterly absurd, given his circumstances, that he just started laughing. The sound was half fear and half relief, and once it started he couldn’t stop. All the tension of the last few hours came pouring out of him, and with it a few tears. A food court! Well, he was safe now, for sure! Hell, he could even get a sandwich if he wanted!

  After a while the laughter subsided and his mood settled. Closing his eyes, he flashed a query to the station’s innernet. If all this tech was working properly, hopefully that would be, too. There was a pause, and then:

  SHENSHIDO GATEWAY. CORPORATE ID OR GUEST?

  Yes! GUEST, he told it. He held his breath.

  APPROVED.

  Now, in theory, the whole of Shenshido was at his fingertips. He spent a few minutes getting the hang of the interface, then called up plans of the station. What he received wasn’t terribly detailed—you probably needed a corporate ID to get more than the basics—but it was good enough for now. He called up a map of the inner ring, noted his location on it, and studied what was around him. Mostly shopping and residential facilities, which was standard for a corporate station; Terrans liked to separate their living quarters from their work space.

  Then, about ten minutes’ walk from the food court, he saw a label that made his heart skip a beat: COM CENTER.

  Thus far the station’s automated facilities had proven functional. If the communications center was as well, he could send out a call for help. Then it wouldn’t even matter if anyone else was on this damn station. For the first time since leaving Tridac he felt his spirits lift. He started toward the com center, then stopped. Was it gaming instinct kicking in, or did things just seem too easy? He headed over to a kiosk selling travel supplies, climbed over the counter, and looked for food. All those shelves were empty, but he saw a rack of backpacks hanging on the back wall and took one of those, stowing his tools inside. “Sorry,” he muttered to the shop’s absent owner. “I’ll send you money when I get home.”

  Suddenly there was a scratching sound from across the room. He froze, looking around for the source. But the food court was silent once more. After a minute he vaulted back over the counter and headed toward the exits, but he kept looking back over his shoulder, just to make sure nothing was following him.

  Nothing was.

  The station grew darker as he hiked to the com center, and also grew dirtier. Whatever bots maintained the food court clearly had less interest in the housing section. There was actually dust in a few places—dust!—and some damage near the base of the wall. A few scratches, a few stains, nothing truly ominous, just odd. He couldn’t think of what would leave marks like that.

  Once he thought he heard the scratching sound again, but though he froze for several long minutes, looking in every direction, there was no hint of where it was coming from.

  At last he reached the promised land. Communications Center, the sign over the door said. As he approached it the panels split open, admitting him to—

  Hell.

  He stood in the doorway just looking at the place, so shocked that for a moment he was unable to process what he was seeing. Then details came into focus: Screens shattered. Consoles gutted. Wires tangled and knotted like intoxicated snakes.

  All gone. Deliberately destroyed.

  Slowly he walked into the room, picking his way carefully across fallen conduits, over fragments of console housing, past bits of stuffing that someone had ripped from a padded chair. He searched for some remnant of equipment that he could work with, but there was nothing. Whoever had destroyed this place had known what he was doing.

  Coldness settled in his heart. The brief spark of hope vanished. And he heard the scratching again, this time from just outside the doorway. Just for a moment, and then it was gone. The hall outside seemed darker than he remembered. Were the lights fading? What if the power on the station was failing? There was no other exit from the room, which meant that he could brave the doorway, with all its mysterious noises, or wait here until the station died around him. There was no third option. Breath held, he listened for some other sound from the mysterious presence, but there was only silence. Finally he walked toward the door. Nothing attacked him. He hesitated, trembling, then edged out just far enough to look around the threshold. Nothing was there. Sighing in relief, he put his hand on the door frame and lowered his head, meaning to rest until his pounding heart slowed to its normal rhythm. But there was something odd under his fingertips, that drew his gaze upward again. Long scratches, like the ones he’d seen in the corridor. Several, in parallel. He ran his fingers down them, feeling how deeply they were etched, and shivered.

  Your average corporate flunky wouldn’t know what they were. The low-level techs who had manned this com center wouldn’t recognize them. But he did. He’d designed too many fantasy games not to. And they were spread out as wide as his hand, placed as high as his shoulder. Whatever had made them was as tall as he was, and probably larger.

  Claw marks.

  If we wish to colonize deep space, then our first step must be to cast aside everything we think we know about designing space stations. The ones built in the past, huddled close to life-giving stars, were nothing like what we need now. Our new stations will have no sun to draw upon for power. They will have no planets to provide them with raw materials. Everything needed to build and maintain them will have to be harvested from distant star systems and imported across vast distances. The logistics will be daunting. The expense will be immense. Raw mass will take on a value that transcends its form; items that were once considered garbage may become valu
able commodities.

  Until we find a practical solution to this problem, deep space settlement can never be more than a fantasy.

  SOLAN GETTYSBURG

  The Deep Space Paradox (Gueran Archives, Tiananmen Station)

  STAR V-1020-10XC

  (50 YEARS PREVIOUS)

  IT WAS time.

  The harvester’s call had gone out months ago, summoning her children back to her. From the clouds of a gas giant they came, wisps of methane trailing behind them; from above the molten seas of the innermost planet they came, their overheated wings fading in the chill of open space; from the belt of asteroids they came, samples trailing behind them like the segments of a vast insect. Some had harvested enough mass that it was hard for them to accelerate, which is why she had given them so much time to get back to her. It also gave the service bots time to organize the deliveries that had already been made, so that not a single inch of space would be wasted.

  It had taken her years to get to this system, and years more to fulfill her mission here. It would take her years to get home.

  Time meant nothing to her.

  She cruised the skies above an alien sun, buffeted by its solar winds, feeding on its light. Sometimes she passed close enough to a planet that her vast wings cast a shadow upon the ground, as if a monstrous bird were circling overhead. Then she returned to the darkness again, to drink in more of the star’s radiation and prepare for her return. She had enough power stored to fuel the trip back to Harmony, and enough raw mass to build an entire station once she got there. Crystals and metals and gases and ice filled her hold, and even some organics: anything that her programming told her might be of value to humans. This solar system had been a rich one, and her children had done their jobs well.

  If she had been human, she would have been proud of her performance. Since she was merely a mechanical construct—albeit an unusually adaptable one—she simply felt complete.

  The last of her children were arriving now, and they drew in their wings as they approached, so that they could squeeze into the narrow berths along her hull. Soon they would surrender their autonomy, and be absorbed into the ship’s greater digital intelligence. The harvester would be complete once more.

  At last it was done. She ran an inventory application to make sure all her parts and programs were accounted for, then spread her wings wide—miles wide—to catch the solar winds and bind them to her purpose. A sudden flare from the star’s surface licked at her rear engines as she began to accelerate, then was gone. A human poet might have suggested that the star was saying goodbye.

  Light years in the distance, Harmony Node was waiting.

  What folly, to think that a machine created by humans could have the power to strip its makers’ children of humanity!

  NUY CHENGARA

  The Hausman Delusion

  HARMONY NODE

  INSHIP: ARTEMIS

  THE AINNIQ was eerily beautiful. A sliver of space that did not look like space, alive with shadows the mind could not identify. A flaw in a black jewel, catching the light unexpectedly—then disappearing from view as the angle changed, equally unexpectedly. Colors that had no name shimmered within its depths; shadows that required no light pulsed up and down its length. The universe had been fractured in its first nanoseconds of birth, space-time wounded beyond hope of healing, and the Guerans had learned to navigate those wounds as one might the rivers of a great world, or the veins of a body. Entering the ainniq, a ship might defy the usual limits of space and time; skipped along its edge at just the right angle, a signal might cross the galaxy in less than a lifetime.

  Traveling through the ainniq, one might also be devoured by the unique predators that called it home.

  Ru gazed at her main viewscreen as she strapped herself into her autochair, watching the ainniq until the bulk of the outship blocked it from her view. As always, it inspired a sense of visceral awe, even humility. Here was a danger she dared not face on her own, far beyond the bounds of normal human recklessness. Beyond that darkling gateway were creatures that the human mind could not fathom and the human eye could not see, creatures whose flesh was the stuff of space itself. Only Guerans with Pilot’s Syndrome could see them clearly, and even that was not always enough to avoid them. Some outships never returned.

  Then the bay of the outship closed around Ru’s vessel and the ainniq was gone. With a sigh she loaded the theta-sleep program into her headset and leaned back in the autochair. Waking brains called to the dragons of outspace, so only people who were needed to pilot the outship would be conscious during its passage. That was fine with her. Danger was an elixir she was normally hard pressed to resist, but this was a threat beyond her ken. Her Variation might make her impulsive, even reckless, but it did not make her suicidal.

  She slept.

  * * *

  Harmony Node. The name was a joke. Maybe even a deliberate joke. Guildfolk were not incapable of humor, though it was usually of a dark and ironic sort. This would certainly qualify.

  The node was located in a region of space with nothing of any special interest to humankind: no habitable planets, no lost colonies, not even a star system within convenient distance that might be farmed for supplies. If not for the presence of the ainniq it wouldn’t even have been given a name. But there were ainniq here, two of them, and where they merged a fork was visible, providing a landmark for outpilot navigation. That was enough to merit human development. Like ancient sailors who had established a base of operations anywhere they found a viable harbor, the Guild established settlements wherever its outpilots could surface safely. In this case, that meant in the middle of nowhere.

  Why the place had drawn so many Terran corporations was anyone’s guess. Maybe they liked the idea of a node that did not have a Variant world associated with it. Or maybe one of them had moved here for that reason, and then others had followed in its wake, hungry to spy on a rival, sabotage competing projects, or maybe just fulfill the old Earth adage: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Back home, Terran megacorps waged war like ancient nation-states, and while such behavior wasn’t tolerated in the outworlds, Terran hostilities had a way of infecting more civilized cultures. Perhaps it was just as well that seven of the nine Terran stations in Harmony had negotiated for independent status, setting them apart from the rest of outworld society.

  But there was a price for that. Security surrounding the independent stations was complicated and often inefficient, which attracted other types of entrepreneurs: black marketeers, scavengers, smugglers of both digital and material goods, even pirates. The outer sectors were as close to a lawless frontier as one might find in the outworlds.

  What better name for such a place than Harmony?

  ALERT: APPROACHING SHENSHIDO CORPORATE TERRITORY. LEAVING ALLIED SPACE. TERRAN CORPORATE LAW WILL APPLY.

  Ru closed her reading program and opened a com link to the station.

  THIS IS SKIMMER ARTEMIS, REQUESTING PERMISSION TO DOCK. ID SKM411-AD72-11A. PLEASE ASSIGN APPROACH PATH.

  There was no response.

  She sent the message again.

  Still silence.

  The station was visible on her screen now, a spherical core with two coplanar rings. Classic Terran design. It wasn’t very large, but given that its purpose was research rather than luxury living, the size seemed appropriate.

  She transmitted her message again just to make sure the security programs were aware of her. If Jericho was right, their awareness would protect her from the station’s automated defense. If he was wrong . . . well, things could go downhill very fast.

  She was approaching the outer ring now, and Jericho had not exaggerated the problem: the thing had been ripped to pieces. Her practiced eye picked out elements of backstory: long cuts where scavengers had tried to remove materials, sections seared by assault weapons, craters and tears where high-velocity objects had smashed into t
he station’s shell. The space surrounding must have been strewn with debris at one time. Had Shenshido gathered all that up, or did Tridac swing by periodically to take care of housekeeping? Or had scavs hung around the periphery of battle like vultures, hungry to claim any scraps that drifted outside Shenshido’s defense zone?

  ALERT: ENTERING SHENSHIDO CORPORATE TERRITORY. TERRAN CORPORATE LAW APPLIES.

  She was close enough now to get a good look at the station, and her ship fed data into her brainware while she studied it. That was yet another reason she’d wanted to use her own skimmer. Part of an outrider’s job was to evaluate colonies from a distance, so her skimmer was loaded with software designed for that purpose. As she approached the outer ring her ship noted the presence of spider bots, highlighting them on her display and providing her with hard data regarding their function. But she didn’t need data to know how dangerous they were. The warring moons of Oberon Nine had used similar bots, and she had no desire to tangle with them again. She sent out her call sign again, just to make sure whatever AI was running those things knew that she was legit.

  Easy, boys. No scavs here, just a licensed bounty hunter. Again there was no answer, but by now she didn’t expect one. Either Shenshido was uninhabited, or there was some reason its inhabitants weren’t answering her.

  It was time to find out which.

  She watched the spider bots closely as the skimmer searched the outer ring for a safe place to dock. Apparently there wasn’t any. Most of the mooring sites had been ripped open or blown to bits, and the few that remained didn’t look stable enough for her liking. The last thing she needed on this crazy assignment was for an airlock to blow while she was in it. She turned the skimmer inward, to search for a suitable site on the inner ring, or perhaps on the station proper—