She finally opened one eye, looked around, and spotted me peering at her from the phone. She squinted, grimaced at me, and said, “Jeez, what do I need to do to get a day off?”
I laughed, then had to override the video image to keep from embarrassing myself. My image froze for a couple of milliseconds—not nearly long enough for her to notice. When I’d recovered control, I grinned at her. “Not to worry, sales are good. This year you can take Christmas off, and even use up some extra coal.”
I was considering what I would say next, when Stéphane walked back in, coffee in hand. Bridget’s face lit up, and Stéphane smiled when he saw she was awake. He exclaimed, “Ma minette!” and pulled up a chair as close to the bed as he could manage. He took her hand, and I ceased to exist for any practical purpose.
How did I miss this?
We made small talk. I don’t remember it. I’m sure I could play back my logs, but why? I made my excuses as soon as I could without appearing to be acting odd, then retreated to my VR.
Right, well, what did I expect? Bridget was a human. An ephemeral. Her plans would include a home, a family, a place in society. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’d been very carefully avoiding thinking about certain issues.
And one of the issues that had just come into focus was that I was an outsider. I saw the world through video calls and chat windows and drone cameras. I really shouldn’t have been surprised that something could develop right under my nose.
I materialized a bucket and kicked it as hard as I could. Strangely, it helped.
49. Arrival
Mulder
March 2195
Poseidon (Eta Cassiopeiae)
“Poseidon. Good name.” Marcus shook his head in mock amazement, then took a sip of his coke. “I’ve had a look at your summary and notes. Pretty cool. I really want to see a kraken.”
I smiled in response. “You won’t be disappointed. I promise. Anyway, right now, you’re…”
“I’m just settling into a polar orbit. Monty is about a week away, and should be down to VR tau by now. I’ll ping him.”
Marcus settled more comfortably into his seat and sipped thoughtfully on his straw. For some reason, Marcus had never taken to coffee. He preferred his virtual caffeine in carbonated form. Well, whatever.
At that moment, Monty popped in and materialized another chair for himself. He accepted a coffee from Jeeves and looked around.
My VR wasn’t particularly inspired, as such things go. I’d never felt the need to come up with something new and imaginative. I had a variation on Bob-1’s library, but with high windows for more sunlight, and more casual furniture.
“So, anyway, things grow big in the water, in direct proportion to the available space. A global ocean, eight hundred kilometers deep, makes for some very large nasties.”
Monty looked concerned. “They couldn’t take down a mat, could they?”
“Oh, hell no. Nothing’s that big. But on this planet, a day at the beach is likely to be fatal even if you don’t get wet. The kraken in particular has tentacles, and one of its feeding strategies is to grab animals off the edges of mats.”
“Right.” Monty nodded. “Well, the mats are a short-term solution, anyway. The colonists will be building floating cities for the long term. We’ll just need tough enough perimeter defenses to keep them out.”
“So,” I looked at him, changing the subject. “When are you going to decant the colonists?”
“I’m waking the Setup Management team right now. Couple of hours, they’ll be ready to start.” Unlike the land-based colonies in other systems, the teams here would be working from the colony transport—Monty—for a considerable time, and the civilian population likely wouldn’t start to emerge for a good six months. Future shipments would have it a little easier.
We had a number of variations on floating city plans on file. Free-floating cities had been a bit of a thing for a while in the twenty-second century. Of course, they had access to land-based support, and they didn’t have to deal with predators up to a hundred meters long, with tentacles.
*
Discussions with the Prep team hadn’t taken as long as I expected. I guess there’d been a lot of planning before they’d launched from Earth system, and there hadn’t been any surprises at this end. Yet.
I had tagged all the biggest mats with beacons, so we knew what was available. The Prep team picked a couple of large mats that were drifting in the north tropical current. They were both well over a hundred square km in area, complete with commensal ecosystems. Within a day, we were ferrying down supplies and equipment.
The colonists, a conglomerate of enclaves from Micronesia, the Maldives, Vanuatu, and Saint Lucia, would have to be awoken in small groups as living space was constructed on the mats. It would be about a year before Monty would be able to leave.
Marcus would be staying here to help with the colony setup after Monty headed back to Earth. He would build a fleet of human-crewed spaceships so that the colonists wouldn’t be dependent on us. With no land on Poseidon, all industry would have to be space-based, and Marcus didn’t want to play permanent taxi-to-the-world.
*
Marcus popped in without warning. “We just lost another settler.”
“Kraken?”
Marcus nodded and sat down. He took a moment to give Spike a chin-scritch, then materialized a Coke.
“I’m sure Chief Draper is pissed,” Monty said. “We have to come up with some better defense. We could go through the entire setup team pretty fast.”
“Or we could reconsider flying cities.” Marcus grinned at me.
“Oh for Pete’s sake, Marcus. There are no plans in the libraries for flying cities.”
“Yeah, but you could start with Bill’s asteroid mover and I bet you could end up with something that would hold a city in the air.”
“Let us know when you have a design, there, Marcus.”
Marcus made a dismissive gesture and changed the subject. “Well, we can’t stick to the status quo. The krakens will just keep getting bolder. But building floating cities without an established land base of some kind is going to require some inventive re-thinking.”
“Can we beef up the protection around the floating mats?” Monty asked.
In response, Marcus popped up a schematic view of the island. “Here’s the problem. The Kraken are able to wriggle a tentacle through the mat and grab inland prey. Native life has figured out how to tread lightly, but humans have two left feet, so to speak.”
“Plus,” I added, “all the equipment makes a racket.”
Monty rubbed his forehead, looking disgusted. “Um. Any ideas? Serious ones, I mean.”
“Actually, yes.” Marcus nodded. “I can adapt some library plans to construct an electrified net that discharges on contact. A million volts or so should provide some negative reinforcement.”
“Or a watery grave. Either is good.” I nodded. Nice.
Marcus grinned at me. “Now the bad news. To build the net, and to build the equipment necessary to deploy it, will add six months to our schedule. Draper will take that about as well as Butterworth would.”