“Got it, Bill, got it. But, assuming Neil is right, we’d get there just in time to join the fight, but not really in time to do anything in the way of preparations.”
I looked up and took a deep breath. We seemed to be circling the drain, again. After the loss at Delta Pavonis, Claude had returned to Gamma Pavonis, accompanied by a couple dozen surviving Bobs, and vowed to protect Gamma Pavonis at all costs. It was a noble goal, but in my opinion misguided. Thus this meeting, which so far wasn’t going well.
I dropped my gaze back to Claude and gave him my hardest glare. “The same could be said of staying here. If they show up tomorrow, you’ve got nothing.”
“Not quite nothing, Bill. We’ve been prepping since we got back here from Delta Pavonis. If the Others’ group that hit Delta unloads in GL 877, then turns right around and heads here, they still can’t get here in less than another decade. And we’re going heads-down-ass-up taking advantage of geometric progression to build a large enough defense force.”
“And for what? There’s no damned way that Will is going to send a colony ship here, not while the Others continue to be a threat right on your doorstep.”
“Which brings us to your plan to take the fight to the Others. And not to put too fine a point on it, but you aren’t doing anything to help us prepare for something like that. We talked about that at the moot as well.” Claude was glaring at me, now. We were definitely covering old territory. And we would reach the same conclusion.
“We can’t split our efforts, Claude. Right now, we’re not sure if we’ll be prepared when the Others show up, and that’s without sending some of our assets your way. If we can get you guys to Earth in time—”
“You’ll need more than numbers, Bill. Delta Pavonis taught us that. A million buster-sized pinholes in the death asteroids and cargo ships won’t take them down. You need nukes, you need—”
“—exactly the same stuff that you’re building for the defense of this planet. Look, Claude, we’ve been over this before. Hell, I just caught myself starting to recite my arguments in a sing-song tone. Talk about rehearsed! We’re splitting our resources and efforts by protecting a second beachhead. It’s as simple as that.”
We exchanged glares for a few milliseconds, but it was clear that nothing had changed and no one was going to concede anything. Stalemate. Again.
I nodded and stood up. “Okay, if anything changes—”
“—we’ll revisit things, of course.” Claude gave me a shrug. The closest I was going to get to a concession. I raised my hand in salute and popped out.
*
I hadn’t really expected to win Claude over this time, but the failure still rankled. I couldn’t take time out to pout, though. My next scheduled stop was in Delta Pavonis. We still had a lot of hardware in the system, in the form of drones. As far as I knew, all the Bobs had left by now, but we still needed to keep an eye on things.
I took over a drone that was parked in orbit around DP-4, and trained the optics on the planet below. I hadn’t yet decided if this habit was essential monitoring, or some form of penance. Either way, every time I looked at the planet, my guts twisted in knots. It had been thirteen years since the Others scoured the planet clean, and the normal cleansing effect of weather was starting to show. The planet didn’t look quite as gray; the polar caps, especially, were back to a brilliant white. The oceans were beginning to show more blue than gray as well.
Unfortunately, the land was all grays and browns, and that wouldn’t change. Jacques, every bit as stubborn as his clone-mate Claude, had refused to give up any of the samples he’d taken. He’d explained, reasonably enough, that the biosamples were intended for the Pav on HIP84051-2, and he wasn’t going to take a chance on his inventory. He did promise to take more samples, if and when everything was established on the new planet.
It wasn’t completely unreasonable. I snorted in amusement at the thought. Jacques wasn’t unreasonable, but his impatience with discussions could be irritating. More of that Bobbian variation between clones, apparently.
Well, whatever. It might take fifty or a hundred years, but eventually, I wanted to start rebuilding the Pav ecosystems. It would be great, someday, to offer the Pav their old world back. And the metals issue could be dealt with.
But Claude was right about one thing—none of this was practical as long as the Others continued to be a threat.
Party
Riker
March 2257
Romulus
I knocked on the door, still not sure if I really wanted to be here. Oh, I was always happy to see my relatives, but Justin—
The door opened, and one of Justin’s great-granddaughters opened the door. Beatrice, I remembered. She’d been introduced to me on one of the video chats a few years back.
“Uncle Will! Come on in. Grampa is in the sitting room.” She shut the door behind me and pointed, then was off to take care of something else.
I looked around the house, or as much of it as I could see from the front foyer. There must have been fifty people, from gray-haired elders down to toddlers barely able to stay on their feet. The occasion, Justin’s seventy-fifth birthday, was being used as an excuse to get the whole clan together. Or as many as could come, anyway.
The organized chaos was—no, scratch that, there was nothing organized about this. The chaos was mostly confined to the common areas. Children were not allowed in the kitchen, as the women worked on the meal. Funny, two hundred years after Original Bob’s death, women still ruled the kitchen. Probably, I admitted to myself, because men would have just opened up a bag of chips and a jar of dip.
Well, nothing wrong with chips and dip.
I looked over the dishes spread out over the dining room table, already being attacked by hungry relatives. They were going all out, and I promised myself I’d try a few things, if only to catalog the taste for VR.
I wandered around for a few minutes, saying hello to people and exchanging a word or two here and there. This type of scenario had never been Original Bob’s forte. Small talk and cocktail party socializing had always seemed so shallow and meaningless.
But this was different. Every single person here had some of my DNA, or was married to someone who did. Every single person gave meaning to my life, and the lives of my sisters and parents.
I looked around, and realized I was stalling. Really, this shouldn’t be that difficult. People aged. People grew up, had children, grew old. Died. Julia’s death still haunted me. Now I was visiting Justin, on his seventy-fifth. I could remember the first time I saw him, as clear as the day it happened—two years old, sitting on his mother’s lap in front of the camera. Space Cadet Justin, laughing in delight at the pretty pictures.
With a deep breath, I entered the sitting room. Justin was surrounded by family, chatting, all making sure he was comfortable and wanted for nothing.