Project Sail (13 page)

Hawthorne saw that his understanding did not matter; Tasker just enjoyed telling the story.

“We stood on the brink of the technological singularity. Imagine, discarding our fragile biological bodies and evolving into a new form of life. Lazarus was the first step in this direction but after eight failures, people lost interest. Worse, the scientific community views him as either a freak success or a fraud.”

A line of people dressed in jumpsuits jogged by carrying a long glowing tube. Hawthorne watched them go and then offered the package to Tasker who refused it.

“That belongs to you, Commander. I admit I am not sure what he is planning.”

“I have known Gerald for years and I can tell you he is playing a practical joke. So where can I find him?”

“He is, of course, everywhere; free to roam our systems debugging programs, searching for illegal access, and improving the efficiency of data storage.”

Hawthorne cleared his throat, which came across as
you know what I mean.

“Follow this passage to the consultation room, where he interfaces with visitors. He is expecting you.”

---

Inside the round, cream-colored consultation room Hawthorne found a pair blank video screens, a glass table, and one plastic chair.

He placed the bottle of brandy, the snifter, and the package on the table. The only sounds came from a soft electronic hum and the tap of his shoes on the acrylic floor. A sharp but fleeting scent pointed to cleaning chemicals, suggesting Tasker recently cleaned Lazarus’ reception area.

A sharp buzz broke the silence, followed by a monotone, synthesized announcement: “This is the voice of world control.”

Hawthorne responded, “Oh shut the fuck up.”

A masculine voice that nearly matched the one Gerald Faust spoke with when he had occupied a biological body replaced the synthesized one.

“Haven’t seen you in years and you still will not fall for that one.”

“That’s because you did the same thing the first time I visited after, well...”

“After I became a computer. Sit down, Hawk and start drinking, I wish I could join you.”

Hawthorne opened the brandy bottle and poured a dose into the snifter.

“They can’t write a program for intoxication?”

“A program to get me laid tops my wish list. Oh that reminds me, thanks for that book you sent last year:
Demon Seed
by Dean Koontz. I talked dirty to the girls for a week until they threatened to turn off my speech synthesizer.”

A coat of liquid warmth slid down Hawthorne’s throat.

“So why did you let them move you off Mars?”

“I don’t have any choice; they move me around however they want, and that bothers the hell out of me.”

“You did not want to come here?”

“I suppose I did after the celebrity treatment stopped. At first, my upload was the next big thing and the gateway to immortality. When they could not repeat the process I became an oddity to the point that I worried they might flip my off switch. Then Tasker made me an offer and I transferred to Pan.”

“So what changed?”

“On Mars, I was only an object they studied but now I am working. Even as we speak, I am adjusting the LCR to handle increased comm traffic, cleaning a block of data storage, and balancing the environmental controls.”

“I never saw you multitask aboard the
John Riley.”

“That’s because you sat on your ass up on the bridge while the engineering crews did the work. Point is I feel relevant again.”

“Tasker told me he thinks you will evolve into a new life form.”

“Stop laughing.”

“Who’s laughing?”

Lazarus said, “Detecting sarcasm in your voice does not require a computer brain.”

“You should move into an android body, like the one you had in the early days on Mars but this time get one with big tits and maybe I’ll visit more often.”

“I find artificial bodies limiting, like a cage. It may not sound logical, but I prefer the freedom of moving around inside a system.”

“So what is it like in there?”

“I cannot describe it.”

“Horseshit.”

“Try to describe colors to a man blind since birth. There is no way to do that without using visual references. Now take that one step further and describe sight to a person who has never had eyes. You will find it impossible.”

“You are making my head hurt,” and Hawthorne drank again, leaving only a trace amount in the glass, a problem he remedied by pouring more.

“Hell, I am not even human anymore, just a bunch of memories and simulated instincts.”

Hawthorne held his brandy aloft, studied the dark liquid, and told his friend, “Maybe we are nothing more than primitive instincts with memories; software guided by experience and natural impulses.”

“That is depressing.”

Hawthorne chuckled. “I can be depressing these days.”

“You just don’t give a damn, but did you ever, even before Ganymede?”

“Hell yes, I was a career officer.”

“You were a good handball player otherwise you would have been out years earlier.”

“I should have let you beat me so I wouldn’t have been around for the Jupiter mess.”

“Fuck you and your kill shot, Hawthorne.”

They paused, one remembering old friends and experiences through a series of data files, the other from somewhere closer to heart.

“So why did I have to deliver this?”

“Hang on I want to make sure no one is listening.”

The door to the chamber slid shut.

“Sounds like paranoia to me.”

Lazarus explained, “Pan sits at the center of voice and data communications for the solar system. I hear stuff when decoding transmissions and directing data streams, I even watch news, sports, and entertainment. I am sensing that something big is happening and your mission is more important than you know.”

“Sounds like you know more about my mission than I do.”

“I do not have every detail, but you are the next step in the Gliese program.”

Hawthorne’s ears perked.

“The
what
program?”

“Hawk, you don’t know why they recruited you?”

“I am sailing to Oberon for a deep space mission as part of something called Project Sail.”

“You better have another drink.”

Hawthorne did as suggested.

“You are traveling to another solar system, Gliese 581.”

Hawthorne processed his friend’s words and rejected them.

“Okay, asshole, what is really going on? Gliese is too far away.”

“Twenty-two light-years”

Hawthorne said, “Even if they have managed to boost a diametric drive it would take hundreds of years to travel there.”

Lazarus told him, “They have designed an engine that can do the job.”

“Bull. A new drive that can reach a planet twenty light-years away earns a headline or two.”

Lazarus said, “Universal Visions and the United States government have engineered a means of reaching Gliese in three weeks. That is information they want kept secret, considering seven big corporations and four major powers compete for any advantage. Back in February they launched a probe that sent back information that warranted a manned mission, and they want to do it fast, before the Russians or Chinese beat them to it.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“On Oberon you will join a crew leaving for Gliese 581g, the first humans to visit another solar system.”

“Great, we will hop a ride with Santa Claus and his reindeer. Look old pal, faster than light travel is impossible, just ask Einstein.”

“Soon you will see for yourself but for now, humor me. I have calculated a twenty-seven percent probability of a connection between the following events. One, the destruction of the USNA
Niobe
in orbit around Ganymede. Two, ten thousand Martian colonists relocating away from the main domes. Three, the disappearance of the Russian battleship
Sergey Gorshkov
. Four, the death of two technicians at the Universal Visions station at Oberon and five, your assignment to UVI’s Project Sail.”

Hawthorne had learned of the
Niobe
from Captain Charles and Reagan Fisk.

“The Chinese took out the
Niobe
because they worried about an American offensive against Europa. As for Martians, the damn domes keep failing so moving colonists is not a surprise. Now what about a Russian battleship?”

“The
Sergey Gorshkov,
a new class of battleship. From what I hear, it has their prototype of an Alcubierre-Haruto drive and was doing field tests.”

“A what?”

“They have not told you, have they? The Alcubierre—Haruto drive is your ride out of the solar system, which is the point of Project Sail. The Russians and possibly the European Alliance have versions, too.”

“And it disappeared?”

“Their home port received a message regarding environmental system malfunctions.”

Hawthorne thought, or the message was a cover and the Russians are already on their way out of the solar system.

“What about the two techs dying at Oberon?”

“They worked with the unmanned probe sent to Gliese. From what I intercepted, they reported suspicions of sabotage. Their deaths
appear
accidental.”

Hawthorne said, “I am on this project because their first choices died aboard the
Niobe
, which maybe had this new avacodao-yamato--.”

“Alcubierre-Haruto drive. If two military ships equipped with this advanced drive have been knocked out of commission, who benefits?”

Hawthorne said, “Assuming this fairy tale drive is true, the Europeans and the Chinese, if this is a race to this Gliese place, because of what the probe found.”

“Or a big coincidence,” Lazarus admitted. “Perhaps I just wanted a reason to see you again.”

“I am touched,” Hawthorne picked up the package. “So is this empty?”

“Open it.”

Hawthorne emptied the contents: a security card, a blue and white Riptide Express Service uniform, and a device on a strap that reminded Hawthorne of the watch his father wore years ago.

“You want me to dress up like a package deliveryman?”

“Universal Visions also controls Uranus’s moon Titania, right next door to Oberon, where they are building something big and expensive, but I don’t know what, only that it’s not the ship you are riding.”

“And what am I supposed to do?”

“There is another delivery shipping to a platform orbiting Titania but I diverted it to Oberon. The courier will give you his vehicle to finish the run. There are flight restrictions, but I timed everything so you can glimpse the site. That device will send images to me by hitchhiking on outgoing UVI comms. Snap a few shots, deliver the package, and return to Oberon.”

Hawthorne emptied the snifter in one gulp.

“So now I’m your errand boy?”

“Something is happening and you are in the middle of it. Maybe together we can figure out what.”

Hawthorne sighed. First pressed into service for Universal Visions and the navy, now by his old friend. It felt as if the universe conspired to keep him from living in peace.

“I have to say, the entire solar system is screwed up.”

“Yes, look at me.”

Hawthorne considered and said, “Okay, you
are
screwed up but I’m thinking of the big picture. For years, the inner planets have been off-limits to military action and on Titan, the Russians and Americans fight over hydrocarbon harvesting but treat it more like a game. Here, on Pan, you have the solar system’s primary communications hub run by space hippies and an arrogant calculator.”

“Now that just hurts.”

“But hold on, this easy target is off-limits because the corporations do not want fighting children to break their shiny toy.”

“And that bothers you?”

“They lack the balls to do it for real. Drones, rules of engagement, and political red lines. The soldiers on the front kill each other but nothing changes.”

“I guess they don’t fight wars like they used to; not like Jupiter.”

Hawthorne said, “At Jupiter people died wholesale, but China was knocked back to Europa and the war ended.”

“Until the
Niobe,”
Lazarus said.

“An isolated incident.”

“That is why I am inside this computer.”

Hawthorne said, “I do not understand.”

“You never asked me why I did this. I didn’t have a terminal illness or a disability like the other candidates; in fact they accepted my application because it was my decision, not some last gasp.”

“Okay,” Hawthorne asked, “why did you do it?”

Several seconds of silence followed until Lazarus shared his story.

“At Ganymede, I was below decks in engineering with no portals, no screens, just a bunch of guys keeping the engines running. We heard both the
Guiyang
and the
Shanxi
were looking for us because we were the last ship. With us destroyed, Ganymede goes Chinese.”

“That about sums it up, yes,” Hawthorne agreed.

“One frigate against a heavy cruiser
and
a battleship with the rest of our fleet in pieces floating around Europa and Io.”

Hawthorne refilled his glass and drank, hoping the liquor would chase away a sudden tremble in his hands.

“So we are down there with no idea what is happening and any second a missile might drill through the hull or a radiation bomb might toast us. I felt I had seconds to live, like a man who feels a heart attack in his chest thinks his time is up. I had an epiphany during those minutes, Hawk. I realized dying did not only happen to the other guy; I’m not the star of the show who can’t be killed.”

“That is depressing, thanks for the pep talk.”

“Seriously, Hawk, you are here in this moment, speaking with me in this room, living in the
now
. One day,
now
will be your last breath, darkness glazing over your eyes. You will only have that moment, just as you are speaking to me in this moment. It is coming, today, tomorrow, or in fifty years, but you will face that moment, the same way you are facing me right now, and there is nothing you can do to stop it from happening. I faced that moment around Ganymede and I never want to face it again. So I took this gamble and became what I am now. Theoretically, I could exist forever.”