The Frozen Sky Page 12

  “You know what I mean. They have two captains, three lieutenants, and one noncommissioned officer. Guess who it is? The woman.”

  “She’s a support tech, not a FNEE specialist like the rest of them,” Koebsch said. “You’re reading too much into the situation. I hate to tell you, but you always read too much into it.”

  “If I didn’t, you’d never—”

  “Tavares looks like she’s back online,” Ash said, stopping Vonnie from bristling at Koebsch.

  The two of them had made their peace, but it was an uneasy truce. Partly that was because Koebsch wasn’t old enough to be Vonnie’s father, yet struck a paternal tone with her. Mostly it was because he constantly gave her more leeway than she expected, then second-guessed her. Why?

  Vonnie thought he was attracted to her. Koebsch took his job seriously and wouldn’t compromise his own authority by wooing a subordinate, but they were a long way from home, and there were only four women including Vonnie among the eleven members of the ESA crew. Adding fuel to the fire, she was a celebrity. Koebsch had been compelled to give her too much of his attention, first in overseeing her recovery, then in debriefing her and fielding endless media requests for interviews and sims.

  The rest of his time went into his job. In addition to managing the ESA crew, Koebsch was their liaison to the thousands of scientists back home who wanted specific data, experiments, or new missions into the ice. He also dealt with administrators and politicians who had their own questions. He’d been given a staff on Earth to assist with these demands, but he couldn’t have been busier if he’d given up sleeping, showering, and eating.

  More than once, he’d mentioned to Vonnie that overseeing her media sessions was the most fun he’d had in weeks, a subtle kind of praise. Did he want more time with her?

  Peter Günther Koebsch wasn’t bad-looking. Gene smithing had made age differences of ten or twenty years irrelevant. In many countries on Earth, the average lifespan had increased to a hundred and ten with the bulk of those years spent in active good health. But when Koebsch acted protective and possessive of her, Vonnie felt annoyed.

  She didn’t need a daddy.

  “Reopen channels,” she said, making sure she tamped down her irritation with Koebsch before turning to the showphone. “Hi.”

  “I will need to study this data,” Tavares said.

  “Please share it with Ribeiro. We’re prepared to denounce his actions to the Allied Nations if necessary.”

  “Do not think you would be alone in that,” Tavares said. “Three weeks ago, we filed protests for a cyber assault on our operations.”

  “I know,” Vonnie said.

  Tavares stared at her. She opened her mouth to answer, stopped herself, then began again. “Was it you?”

  Being a celebrity has its advantages, Vonnie thought. Like Koebsch, Tavares was more inclined to listen because she thought Vonnie was a living legend.

  “The assault was non-lethal and it was a preventive action in accordance with A.N. Resolution 4545,” Vonnie said. “Ribeiro brought gun platforms into the ice in violation of international law.”

  “That resolution has changed. Even your team has mecha in the ice.”

  “Our mecha are intended for scientific and diplomatic efforts, not war.”

  “And yet you have spies near our operations.”

  “Claudia, the blasts we’re hearing aren’t small,” Vonnie said. “The NASA base is forty klicks from your base. They’ve confirmed the biggest explosions. My guess is you’ve felt the explosions yourself.”

  “Sometimes there are cave-ins,” Tavares said, but now she sounded uncertain.

  “We’ll give you eight hours,” Vonnie said. “Quit shooting. Extract your team. Maybe we can work together to repair the damage you’ve caused.”

  “I will ask Colonel Ribeiro.”

  “Thank you. We want to be friends, but if you’re killing sentient creatures…”

  Tavares lowered her brown eyes, hiding her dismay and something else. Anger? Recrimination? “I will ask, Von,” she said, allowing Vonnie the smallest victory of calling her by name. Then she cut their connection.

  29.

  Thirty minutes later, after helping Koebsch arrange their next response to the Brazilians, Vonnie and Ash suited up and left Module 01. As usual, Ash took control of the jeep. Not letting Vonnie drive had become a private joke between them, deepening their friendship.

  Vonnie loved being outside. There was room to stretch. She’d been trained to endure being cooped up inside their landers and hab modules, but she didn’t like it — and after five weeks of living inside Lander 04, it was a relief to look around.

  Europa’s sky was peppered with other moons. Vonnie identified Io and Himalia as they trundled across camp, and there were other dim shapes set against the stars.

  Jupiter had seventy-one satellites. That number included the four largest Galilean moons such as Europa and Io, four medium-sized bodies like Himalia, and sixty-three hunks of rock in a variety of prograde, retrograde, or irregular orbits. They formed a dizzying system which would have been deadly to ships without navigation AIs, which were vital to piloting spacecraft through the ever-changing revolutions.

  In time, some of those tiny moons would be drawn too close to Jupiter, where its gravity would crush them into dust. A very few would drift away, expanding their orbits and tugging loose of Jupiter’s grasp.

  Which is better? Vonnie thought, feeling a familiar touch of melancholy. The moons that break free will survive, but they’ll be lost forever, while the moons that disintegrate will become a part of Jupiter’s rings. Eons from now, they’ll help create new moons. They’ll stay home.

  She knew she was projecting her own emotions on an inanimate system, but her head felt as chaotic as the debris surrounding Jupiter. Did she have the right to feel like she belonged to Europa? Or would she always be an outsider?

  It was a short drive to Lander 04. Inside, Ash and Vonnie took off their pressure suits and stripped down to their blue jump suits. Then they joined Metzler and Frerotte in the living quarters.

  Metzler had folded up three of their bunks, leaving one of the low beds open as a bench. A table was extended from the wall. He gestured to the box of fruit juice he’d set out. Vonnie declined. She was too riled to sit down, and it increased her agitation when Ash sat between Metzler and Frerotte, smiling at both men.

  The girl was nowhere near as hard-edged as she’d first been with the group. Vonnie wished she weren’t so skittish herself, but everyone knew she was in trauma therapy. That made her self-conscious.

  She said, “Did you watch me talk with Tavares?”

  “Yeah.” Frerotte nodded. “She won’t help us.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t think they’re hunting sunfish.”

  “They wouldn’t go down there with explosives for anything else. Six men don’t have the resources to build a subsurface base. Even if they did, the blasts are spread over nine kilometers. They’re chasing something.”

  “What if they’re chasing Lam?”

  Vonnie sat down, taking the last spot available on the bed beside Metzler. Then she grabbed the juice and filled a bulb for herself, delaying the question as long as possible. “You heard another signal?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t tell Koebsch.”

  “He’s going to find out,” Metzler said, and Frerotte said, “The Brazilians will tell him if we don’t. That’s their excuse for blowing things up. They can use it against us. They wouldn’t be using explosives if we hadn’t programmed one of their mecha with your AI.”

  It’s nice of you to say ’we,’ Vonnie thought. Frerotte could have distanced himself from Vonnie and Ash, leaving them to take the blame. Instead, he’d kept their secret. So had Metzler.

  Vonnie supposed their decision was one more example of the cohesion of a mixed-gender group. If she and Ash weren’t eligible females, would Metzler and Frerotte have been le
ss inclined to protect them?

  “I’d like to see Lam’s data bursts,” she said.

  Frerotte handed his pad to her. “The signal’s attenuated,” he said. “Most of it we can’t read. There must be three or four kilometers of ice between him and our closest spies. The Brazilians are jamming him, too, which explains the distortion. He’s trying to bounce his signals through tunnels and caves.”

  “It can’t help that he’s in a FNEE digger,” Ash said. “Our mecha have better data/comm.”

  “Is he trying to reach us?” Vonnie said.

  “You tell me,” Frerotte said. “Maybe he doesn’t know where we are. He might not know where he is.”

  “No, he was active until you pulled me from the ice. He tapped NASA and FNEE signals before Koebsch shut him down. Even if he wasn’t able to co-opt the digger’s memory banks, he must have a decent idea what part of Europa he’s in.”

  “Then he is looking for us.”

  “Maybe he’s trying to convince the Brazilians to stop shooting. He’s no threat to them.”

  “They don’t see it that way, Von.”

  “This is my fault,” Ash said. “I should have kept him in storage. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Vonnie looked at Metzler and Frerotte to clarify. “Ash and I thought Lam would disappear, then we’d pick him up later. Maybe a lot later. He was supposed to be like a long-term scout.”

  “Well, now we’re up to our ears in shit,” Metzler said, taking the sting out of his words with a friendly nudge. “Koebsch is going to hit the roof.”

  Vonnie leaned into Metzler and bumped him back, both apologizing and flirting. Dealing with Koebsch and the Brazilians wasn’t how she wanted to spend her time. She wanted to study the sunfish, but managing the human factions outside the ice was almost as critical as dealing with the aliens below.

  Ruefully, she thought, We’re so selfish.

  As a species, we’re self-important and self-involved. I guess that’s the primate in us, always obsessed with what the other guy has and how to get it.

  In prehistory, base reflexes like envy and desire had propelled early man to develop better tools, better organization, and better dreams — but thousands of years later, those same drives left them permanently divided.

  Vonnie wasn’t sure if the sunfish were less greedy. Competition had made them tough and clever. Maybe no race could increase its intelligence without conflict of some kind, and yet she’d seen them act without regard to self. For the sunfish, the whole seemed to come before the individual, which would be a fundamental difference between them and Homo sapiens.

  “Let me talk to Koebsch,” Vonnie said.

  “I’ll call him, too,” Ash suggested.

  “There’s no reason to get you guys in trouble. Tell him you were surprised to hear ESA signals from FNEE territory. I’ll swear I’m the one who uploaded Lam’s files to their digger.”

  “Koebsch won’t believe you.”

  “He’ll pretend he does. He doesn’t want to take more disciplinary actions, so he’ll go along with it. First let’s see if we can exchange signals with Lam. That’s the evidence we need to show it’s really him. How close are we?”

  “I’ve moved nine spies inside the FNEE grid,” Frerotte said. “Most of our eyes and ears are still a few kilometers out. It helps that they’re blasting. The vibrations cover most of the noise our spies make in the ice.”

  Vonnie scrolled through the lay-outs on Frerotte’s pad, examining the dots and lines representing the tiny mecha he’d arrayed against the Brazilians. Some of his pebble-sized spies hadn’t moved in weeks. Others had drilled, squeezed, and melted their way toward the Brazilian’s territory, advancing with painstaking care to avoid detection.

  Mecha this size were unable to host AIs. Spies had only the barest level of self-awareness. Linked together in groups of ten or more, they could muster enough judgment to think as well as a cat, but these spies had been running silent, each separate from the rest. They needed human input.

  Frerotte’s a spy just like his mecha, Vonnie thought, admiring his work.

  Henri Frerotte was a pale Frenchman with a slight build and slim, agile hands. Nominally, his role in the ESA crew was as an exogeologist with secondary responsibilities in suit maintenance and in data/comm. That was why Koebsch had put Frerotte in charge of their perimeters. Distributing sensors was easy work. The mecha did most of it automatically. But for an assistant, Frerotte was too skilled with systems tech, and he was too eager to interfere with the Brazilians.

  Vonnie believed he was an operative sent by one of the European Union’s many intelligence agencies such as Germany’s BFV or France’s newly-formed Directorate of Internal Security. Ash probably worked for an agency, too, and Vonnie wasn’t sure how to feel about that. What if Ash had seeded the FNEE digger with Lam’s mem files not to preserve him, but purposely as a disruptive weapon?

  “I don’t know if Colonel Ribeiro will pull back,” Vonnie said. “If he does, or if he calls us, that could be the right time to signal Lam.”

  “We’ll be ready,” Frerotte said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank me, too,” Metzler said, nudging her again. “I’ve got big news. Eat lunch with me and I’ll show you. Otherwise you have to wait for the group presentation tonight.”

  Vonnie smiled. “Tell me now or I’ll break your arm.”

  Do we have at least this much in common with the sunfish? she wondered. Sex affects everything we do even when those urges are subliminal. It’s part of our self-absorption, I think. We can’t leave each other alone.

  I like it. I like watching him and feeling him watching me. It’s a distraction, but it gives us energy, too.

  I want him to want me.

  Looking at her three friends, Vonnie saw the same spark in Ash’s face. They were young, in close quarters, and subjected to unending stress and excitement. Pheromones were merely part of the spell. The ape in them yearned for physical contact, grooming, and reassurance.

  Gene smithing also made their society more free in its sexual norms. Western Europe had already been more sophisticated than most of Earth’s cultures, placing few taboos on nudity or female equality. By the twenty-second century, the defeat of venereal diseases and infallible birth control had led to an era called the Age of Love. Sharing partners, threesomes, and group sex were common experiences for young men and women in the European Union.

  Vonnie’s main consideration now, away from Earth, was to avoid disrupting her professional relationships. None of them wanted to waste time on jealousy or drama.

  “We can have lunch,” she promised. “Don’t make me wait if you’ve had a breakthrough.”

  “Well, sort of. The fucking Brazilians are causing problems we don’t need,” Metzler said. Was he posturing for her benefit? “The explosions scared off most of the lifeforms in the area, so it’s taken longer than we anticipated finding sunfish. The good news is we think we’re near a colony because Tom came back again this morning.”

  “I love Tom!” Vonnie said, yelling in celebration.

  Tom was the name they’d bestowed upon the most easily identifiable sunfish. Others were Jack and Jill and Hans and Sue.

  One of Tom’s arm tips had healed in a whorl after a partial amputation. His deformity made him unique. It seemed to have affected his thinking. He was the only sunfish who’d signaled their probes instead of attacking. Then he’d run from them. With further contact, they hoped to coax Tom into a dialogue… opening the door to meaningful contact between humans and sunfish…

  Vonnie kissed Metzler’s cheek, smelling the faint, pleasant salt of his skin. He touched the back of her neck. His fingertips caused an erotic thrill. Beside her, Vonnie saw Ash glance at Frerotte, and she knew they all felt the same adult heat.

  We have this lander to ourselves, she thought. We could do whatever we want in here.

  30.

  “Uh, let me show you the latest sims,” Metzler said, rubbing his face
where she’d kissed him. He tried to cover the gesture by looking for his pad, but he couldn’t find it, flustered by the two women.

  Ash had blushed. Vonnie felt a similar warmth in her cheeks. Even adapted to Europa’s gravity, their hearts were too strong not to betray their arousal. Vonnie basked in it. She enjoyed feeling healthy even if she hadn’t gotten over the fear of making herself vulnerable.

  Be patient with me, she thought.

  Metzler was a good man. He acted as if he’d heard her say it. Maybe her anxiety showed in her eyes. He linked his pad to the wall display and said, “Look at this,” drawing everyone’s attention away from Vonnie.

  Four days ago, ESA Probes 112 and 113 had stolen into a branch of catacombs occupied by the smaller breed of sunfish. Each probe carried a dozen spies with it, like beetles clinging to its top, because spies weren’t capable of covering as much ground as probes yet were better suited for surveillance.

  Spreading through the ice and rock, patiently forming themselves into a dish-like array, the spies had watched the sunfish for fifty-two hours before Probes 112 and 113 emerged from hiding.

  Technically, it wasn’t Second Contact. The Americans had pursued two groups of sunfish into the ice. They’d also reported more carvings, fungus, bacterial mats, and eel-like fish in a cavern half-flooded by a fresh water sea. More startling, the Americans had also found a vein of shells and dirt suspended in the ice with the corpse of what appeared to be a warm-blooded, shell-eating creature like a ferret. The corpse had been ravaged by compression, but it was unquestionably a fur-bearing animal — an eight-legged thing with beaver-like teeth, talons, and an elongated body made for burrowing and climbing.

  If the Chinese were having similar success, they’d made no announcements. Vonnie thought the Brazilians must have encountered sunfish even if their focus had turned to destroying Lam. The FNEE mecha were too deep. At the very least, they must have found carvings or ruins.

  In both of their encounters, NASA’s probes had been attacked. The first time, NASA rolled its mecha into balls, meekly accepting the sunfishes’ beatings. That had cost them every probe in the scout team, which they deemed an acceptable loss. Vonnie fretted it sent the wrong message. She’d told a NASA biologist that now the sunfish thought their metal doppelgangers were easy prey. “No,” the biologist said. “Now they know the probes are inedible and nonaggressive. Next time they might accept us.”