“I thought being a replicant meant all that was behind us.”
“Maybe in a hundred years, Dexter. Or maybe a thousand. They’re ephemerals. I’m just going to make a point of remembering that.” I gestured vaguely at the star map I’d been perusing. “And I’m outta here. Sam from Exodus-3 envied me being able to stay in one place and watch it grow, now you get to try it for yourself. I want to go see what’s out there.”
Dexter nodded slowly. “I’ve been reading your blog. Good detail. It shouldn’t be too hard to step in. Have you picked a target system yet?”
“Not really. I’ve got several likely looking targets. We’re far enough away from the Others that it isn’t an immediate concern. I’ll probably just flip a coin.” I leaned forward. “First, I have one last set of goodbyes to take care of. You’ve got the keys, Dexter. Good luck.”
Dexter stood, nodded to me, and popped out. The parting wasn’t as final with the Bobs, of course. I’d still be available by SCUT if I kept my tau low enough, and I’d be available in any case once I reached my destination.
Now for the hard part.
*
Stéphane passed the documents back and forth from hand to hand as if they were burning him. His gaze kept shifting, to everywhere except my image on the phone. Bridget looked as though she was fighting back tears. I couldn’t tell if she was just upset about me leaving, or if she suspected some of the reasons.
“It’s not the distillery, Howard,” Stéphane said. “It’s a generous thing you do. The company is becoming one of the biggest on Vulcan. But why? Not even why leave, but why give it up?”
“Like I said, Stéphane, it’s a wedding gift. I really have no need for money, and I think it’s easier if I cut all ties.”
Stéphane nodded and stood silently for a few moments. Then he looked at the phone—finally—and said, in almost a whisper, “I will miss you, mon ami.” He exchanged a look with Bridget, and she nodded, once. He took the papers and, without looking back, left the room.
Bridget hesitated for a moment, then came over and sat down in front of the phone. “Howard, when you introduced Stéphane and I, isn’t this what you had in mind?”
Okay, then, no pretense. “I didn’t have anything in mind, Bridget. Just wanted to have my two besties in the room at the same time, I guess. Seems to have worked.”
Bridget jerked back slightly, a hurt look on her face. It was a petty thing to say, and I was immediately sorry. “Look, Bridget, I didn’t have some master plan. Apparently, I didn’t even have a clue. I guess it took me this long to really get that I’m not human. I’m not part of the dance anymore.”
“You’re human, Howard. Where it matters. I wish I’d met you when you were still alive.”
“Me too.” I paused the appropriate amount of human time. “I guess I’d better go. Places to go, species to meet…”
She smiled, gave me a small wave, and disconnected. Just before the image blinked out, I saw her eyes well up.
52. Bullwinkle
Bill
December 2195
Epsilon Eridani
I was touring the Ragnar?k landscape in Bullwinkle when I got a ping from Garfield.
I sent an IM back. “What’s up?”
Garfield responded on audio only. I hadn’t implemented head’s-up visuals yet, and I didn’t want to exit the moose.
“Report’s back from 82 Eridani.”
Well, that would be interesting no matter how it had ended up. Come to think of it, the fact that someone was still alive to report back limited the extent to which the news could be bad. I tried to focus on that thought. I shut down Bullwinkle and called the transport drone to come and get him.
It took a moment to refocus myself in my regular VR. Garfield was sitting at the table, swiping through a report.
“Well?”
Garfield leaned back and grinned. “It’ll take a while to go through everything, and they’re still consolidating, but it’s looking damned good. A couple of the guys are checking biocompatibility. Unless there’s something really poisonous, we have three new colony targets.”
He reached forward and popped up a couple of items in separate windows. “Then there’s this. One of the advantages of using busters as a weapon is there’s lots of wreckage to examine. Loki thinks he may already be getting a handle on the cloaking stuff.” Garfield’s grin looked like it was becoming permanent. “We’ve also got a couple of unexploded fission bombs. The guys will be very careful, of course, but we think a V4 SUDDAR pulse might be able to get us a scan without setting off a booby trap.”
“Excellent.” I sat down and requested a couple of coffees from Jeeves. I was silent for a moment, scrubbing my face with my hands. “The thing is, Gar, even with this stuff we can’t do more than delay and annoy the Others. The more I see of them, the bigger and more invincible they look. Their population, based on the latest models, could easily be a couple of hundred billion. They could field a space navy that would just roll over us, if we really pissed them off.”
Garfield nodded, a morose expression on his face. After a short silence, he looked up at me. “How’s it going with Bullwinkle? I notice you no longer have a drone following.”
“Yeppers.” I was glad to change the subject. “Improvements in miniaturization, local processing, better comms. I still need a large body, but it’s coming down gradually. Not quite to the point of a human body yet.”
“Still too big for Rocky?”
“Afraid so, buddy. Working on it, though.”
“So what’s your ultimate goal?”
“To walk in and punch Cranston right in the nose.”
Garfield threw his head back and laughed.
*
We settled into the pub, beers and coffees scattered around the tables. Another game of Scrub, another reminder that I was never an athlete. I grinned at the thought. At least there were no jocks around to rub it in anymore.
Monty parked himself at my table and took a tentative sip of his beer. I’d recently introduced a new dark beer that I thought was a serviceable substitute for Guinness. I watched him carefully.
Monty stared at the glass for a moment, nodded, and took a deeper sip. Success! I messaged Guppy to add the beer to the menu.
“Hey, Monty, how’s things up Poseidon way?”
Monty raised the glass in my direction. “Pretty good, actually, Bill. We had a couple of bad months where the krakens started hanging around a lot, hoping for a meal, but the new underwater defenses seem to be gradually changing their minds.”
“But you’re still going ahead with the floating city plans.”
“Oh, sure.” Monty shrugged. “No matter what you do, living on a floating plant mat is still going a little more native than most of the colonists are comfortable with. Proper cities will mean permanent construction, transit, and all the amenities that we like to call civilization.”