I laughed as I read the details. No doubt Cranston had his suspicions, but there was no way to trace anything back to Will or myself. Speaking of, I fired off an email to Will, in case he had more juicy info.
Things were going well. If it weren’t for the Others, humanity would be in a good place.
And that was it for the delaying tactics. With a sigh, I went on to the part about the Brodeurs.
Okay, not terrible. They had a son. They’d named him Howard.
I smiled, as the message became suddenly blurry. I would have to send a short thank-you note.
59. Another One
Bill
April 2205
Epsilon Eridani
I leaned back in my chair, looked straight up, and used some words that I normally don’t like to use.
Surveillance drones around GL 877 had reported that the Others had just launched another expedition. From the initial vector, it looked like they were heading for NN 4285. That wasn’t too bad—it was a small M star, too dim for any chance of usable planets.
No, I corrected myself: under no circumstances should this be considered acceptable. If the Others had stuck to uninhabited systems, well, it was a big galaxy. But that wasn’t their behavior. If they didn’t happen to kill off a planet, it was only because there was nothing to kill off, not because of some moral reluctance. Lack of opportunity isn’t the same as self-restraint. They were evil. End of story.
And if distance was an indicator, both Gamma and Delta Pavonis would probably be next, and they were good candidates. I checked the archives, just on the off chance. No such luck. No one had visited those systems yet, although a couple of Bobs were heading for them as part of Mario’s scouting.
I got up and started pacing around my office. Then I pinged Mario, and he popped over.
“What’s up?”
“Mario, the Others just moved again. This time heading for NN 4285.”
“Yeah, I saw that. Not a prime system.”
“Still, we have to figure out how to nip this in the bud. I’m concerned about the Pavonis candidates. Do you have an ETA for them?”
“Gamma and Delta? Claude and Jacques are heading for those. Claude will be at Gamma in about a month, and Jacques at Delta in twenty-two months or so.”
“Dammit. The closest significant presence we’ve got is Sol, and we can’t divert them from building colony ships.”
“Epsilon Indi?”
“No, Epsilon Indi is too far away as well, although closer than Sol. But resources are poor, and colonists to KKP will be too busy setting up to help.”
Mario nodded. He looked down at his toes for a few milliseconds, then turned and glared at me. “What is it with the Pavonis systems that’s giving you a pickle up your butt, anyway?”
I sighed and stopped pacing. I favored Mario with a self-conscious smile. “Call it a premonition. Call it superstition. Call it utter faith in the power of Murphy. Based strictly on distance, those two are among the next likely targets. Based on the stars’ types, they’re good habitable-planet candidates. Based on our experience so far, most good systems with a planet in the right place have life. Not intelligence, necessarily, but life.” I shrugged, letting Mario make the connection.
He was silent for a few moments, thinking. “On the other hand, they’ve just sent out an expedition to NN 4285, and the GL 54 expedition hasn’t made it back to their home system. How many armadas to you suppose they have?”
“Fair point. They don’t seem to have any real sense of urgency. I wonder how long a Prime lives.”
“So look, Bill, why don’t you build a group here and send it to the area?”
I shook my head. “Too far. I’ll do it if there’s no other way. We need to get an inventory of what Bobs are in what systems, so we can figure out what response is possible.”
Mario gave me a nod and popped out.
I pinged Claude. His return indicated he was down to a low tau, about 0.03. That wouldn’t affect communications at all, and was hardly worth adjusting frame rates for. He was open for company, so I popped in.
“Hey, Bill.”
“Claude.” I looked around at his VR. Not particularly anything. Tropical beach, cabana, deck chair. Could be Mexico, Hawaii, or some made-up location. I didn’t have any memories of a vacation like this, so I assumed the last option.
Claude was looking at me with slightly wide eyes. He was a generation removed from me, and it was funny how the Bobiverse was becoming hierarchical like that.
I materialized a deck chair of my own at sat down. “Been following the Others, Claude?”
“Yeah, I was at the moot. And I heard about NN 4285.”
“Okay, so here’s the thing. With the Others taking out GL 54, there’s no Bob-controlled system anywhere close to you. When you get to Gamma Pavonis, you have to assume you only have a couple of decades at most before the Others come visiting. You’re going to have to mobilize for war, essentially.”
Claude frowned. “A lot of assumptions in there.”
“Not as many as you’d think, and the assumptions are high probability.”
Claude sighed and resettled himself in his chair to face me squarely.
“Look, Bill. I get the whole thing about the Others, and they’re evil, blah blah. But why here, and why now? Why this particular line in the sand?”
“I’ll grant you there’s nothing unique about Gamma Pavonis to the limit of our current knowledge. But we have to start somewhere. Maybe we won’t be ready for them in time. Maybe they’ll swoop down on you in a decade and you’ll have to flee like Mario did. But at some point, we have to try. Why not here, and why not now?”
Claude gave me a wry smile. “Because here and now puts me in the crosshairs, thank you very much.”
I laughed. “Well, that’s why God invented backups.”
*
I popped back to my own VR, after extracting a promise from Claude that he’d get the system report on Gamma Pavonis to me on a priority basis. I checked Jacque’s tau, but he was still way up there. A conversation would take days, even if he frame-jacked.
I quickly went down my list of known manufacturing centers. There weren’t a lot. Most Bobs didn’t bother in most systems, other than building a space station. I remembered Bart, who was the last Bob that I’d talked to in Alpha Centauri.
I sent a quick ping to him, but it looked like he was between systems. Bart’s acknowledgement indicated a ridiculous tau. I’d be a few days even waiting for a response, never mind a conversation.
I queried the Alpha Centauri space station directly. The status report appeared in front of me in a window. Garfield came around and looked over my shoulder.
“No one there right now,” he said. “Looks like the last group left it uninhabited.”
“Well, we can’t force anyone to stay and play caretaker. It’s a free galaxy.” I ran a hand through my hair, then stopped and looked at my hand. That was Riker’s tic. I didn’t need to start that. “It looks like a full-power AMI, though. If I can get it to build a replicant matrix, I can load my backup and the new me can bootstrap up from there.”