Howard
August 2342
Trantor City, Big Top
Isighed theatrically as I closed the door to our apartnt. Bridget looked up from her computer, gave a brief smile, but didn’t otherwise comnt.
Things had settled back into a routine for us, since the end of the Heaven’s River escapade. And I was glad to have my wife back full-ti. Or as full-ti as a career-obsessed exobiologist could be. There had been so casual talk of adopting another brood, since most of our latest batch of children were now becoming grandparents. But neither one of us was feeling a lot of enthusiasm at the mont. Instead, Bridget had latched onto Mario’s latest find, a planet harboring an intelligent species, and it was consuming most of her free ti lately. And I had my human–manny interface project to keep busy. It was generally considered a truism that immortality would make it harder and harder to fill the years and decades, but so far, the two of us still didn’t have a couple of spare minutes to rub together.
I ca up behind her and peered at the screen. “Where’s my martini, dammit?” I said, overacting for all I was worth.
“Sa place as usual. In the bottles. Make one.”
Our ritual greeting having been satisfied, I assembled two martinis and handed one to her. “How’s it coming along?”
Bridget took a sip, made an appreciative sound, and leaned back in her work chair. The chanism obediently swiveled out a leg rest, and she settled into a three-quarters recline. I whistled, and another chair scooted over and placed itself behind .
“Mario has completed the autofactory in the Jabberwocky system and—”
“Jabberwocky?” I interrupted.
“He discovered the planet; it’s his right to na it. However unoriginal.” She gave a glare. “As I was saying, I’ve started manufacturing survey drones. I’ll have a better picture soon.”
“I thought Mario had already done that?”
Bridget took another sip, then put the martini down on her chair arm. The chair reconfigured to support the glass safely. “Planetary survey, sure. Mario’s looking for Others, and once it was clear there were none in this system, he more or less lost interest. It’s the standard Bob survey—lots of facts about the system and the planet, not so much on the local population. Other than pictures, of course.”
“Ah. So you’re going for … ”
“Language, culture, details of biology … the sa stuff we did for the Quinlans. And we learned a lot from that exercise. The Gars extracted a lot of detail in a short ti, and pioneered so brilliant techniques in the process.”
I chuckled. “Let’s make sure we dot all the i’s on slang and idiom this ti. We don’t need to go through what Bob did.” I reached past Bridget and scrolled her docunt. “Flying monkeys.”
“Stop saying that. Other than having the right number of arms and legs—”
“And wings.”
“Yes, okay. But they’re not anthropoid, not really. Honestly, given the shape of the head, if it wasn’t for the scaly feather things replacing fur, I’d go with rats or squirrels.”
“Sa thing. But no, definitely not flying squirrels.”
Bridget frowned and looked at quizzically. She also had that expression that said she knew a punch line was in the works but couldn’t help herself. “Why not squirrels?”
I pointed. “No goggles or aviator hat.”
Bridget made a low growling sound. “You’re lucky there are martinis in this world. Makes you almost bearable.” She held out her now-empty glass to .
Taking the hint, I made another round. As I delivered the new drink, I said, “I love the floating islands, though. Not held up by monopoles, right?”
“Is that how they explained the floating rocks in that movie with the blue aliens?” She shook her head. “But no. They’re actually alive. Hydrogen-filled balloon animals, sothing that’s rare enough on a terrestrial planet at any size. Big enough, in this case, for entire ecosystems to grow on their backs. Comnsal, I think. I’ve dubbed them leviathans.”
“And the natives build villages on them. Do we have a na for the intelligent species yet?”
“Mario calls them dragons. That seems a stretch, because they look more like—”
“Squirrels. Yeah. Pretty big stretch, that. Maybe we’ll get a na we can use from their language. So when will we be ready to go in?”
Bridget gave the hairy eyeball. “A couple of months, oh impatient one. We learned a lot from the Quinlan Affair, but we still aren’t magicians.”
My face must have betrayed sothing, because Bridget looked slightly alard and said, “What?”
“Uh, you know how we’ve been working on tensor field printers that would be able to assemble almost literally anything? Including biological items?”
“Uh-huh. ‘Items’ ans living things, right?”
“Yeah. So Bill has a working model. I use the word ‘working’ loosely, but it’s produced living masses of tissue. No differentiation yet if you want living tissue—not fast enough. But soon … ” ŗΑＮＯ𝐛ĚⱾ
She shook her head. “You still need a design to print. Once you have one, you can print copies, and maybe even vary so details. But it’ll still be a process.”
I shrugged without comnt. Bridget was right anyway, and she could tell when I was being stubborn just to be stubborn. That never ended well. A change of subject seed in order. “I’m popping over to Vulcan. You want to co?”
“Sothing you need to be there in person for?”
“We’re going to be running a huey test. I want to see it up close.”
Bridget shut down her Canvas with a swipe. “Hot damn! Let’s go!”
I grinned and held out my arm, and we headed for the bedroom to park our mannies. We had long since arranged custom mannies on Vulcan, and we stored them at MannyPark Remote Services LLC since that was reasonably central to everything. And because we owned the company.
*****
I gazed out the window as the technicians fussed with the test subject, a woman who had been introduced simply as Terry. At the mont, she was festooned with cables and various sensor packages, making her look more like so kind of techno-bush than a human being. Most of the equipnt was for testing and monitoring, of course. The actual huey control hardware consisted of a combination head cap and neck ring. With just those basic items, an operator would look like they were wearing a toque and scarf. And even that would likely be trimd down in the production model.
The view out the window was of far more interest to at the mont. We were about eight floors up in the city of New Landing, one of the floating cities that were increasingly replacing land-based versions all across the UFS. And why not? Floating cities didn’t require clearing natural growth or covering up watercourses or any of the various ways that humanity had always scarred up the land. Or dealing with Cupid Bugs or Ickeys or giant mutant ninja mosquitos, or any of the other monstrosities that the universe insisted on throwing at us. The worst effect for the ecosystem was the occasional shadow drifting overhead. Hell, clouds did that.
From here, I could see down past the edge of the city to the riotous jungle that still covered pretty much the whole planet of Vulcan. Sowhere down there, brontos were attempting to eat trees without forgetting to breathe in the process, and raptors were attempting to eat, well, pretty much anything. Cupid Bugs were no longer a problem, even assuming any were left—my Cupid Bug hunters had been gratifyingly successful. And rabbits were now officially an invasive species.
I had to fight off a montary wave of nostalgia. Vulcan was no longer the frontier planet that I’d helped settle so hundred and fifty-odd years ago. Beside , Bridget said softly, “It’s beautiful, Howard, and I’m glad we were here for the start of it.”
I smiled without turning and took her hand. A silent squeeze was all the communication we needed.
“I think we’re set,” one of the techs said, breaking my reverie. Terry was carefully laying herself down on a gurney, techies crowding around and making sure nothing got folded or kinked. To one side, a generic android form lay in its pod, hairless and pallid. We’d taken to calling them hueys, a sort of mashup of human and mannies, just to differentiate the project.
“Activating,” Terry said. She closed her eyes …
And the huey opened its eyes, sat up, and looked around. “Colors are okay. Depth perception is still off,” it said. The voice was generic manny, but the tone was all Terry.
On the gurney, Terry twitched a few tis as her huey climbed out of the pod and started doing so basic movents. One of the techs, observing this, muttered sothing about requiring more suppression and made a note. anwhile, the huey touched its toes, did so twists, ran in place for a few seconds, then settled into a ta-dah posture, arms held wide.
I smiled despite myself. This was going to explode into UFS society when it hit the public feeds. And sohow, despite our almost total lack of interest in the subject, Bridget and I were going to beco even wealthier.
Oh, the pain.
Terry and the techies started working through a long checklist of items, the techs carefully writing down each result. I glanced at Bridget, who was already losing interest, then nodded to Mark Harris, the project manager, as he ca over. Mark was missing the lower half of his left arm from just below the elbow. When asked, he always claid it was a chainsaw-juggling accident. The grow cuff on his stump was covered with scrawled signatures. The new appendage would be completely regrown in a couple more months, from the look of it.
“This part is duller than watching paint dry,” Mark said. “Want to get lunch?”
“I haven’t had a bronto burger in ages,” Bridget exclaid. “Please tell the caf has them.”
“They’re Veat now instead of actual bronto,” Mark replied as he led the way, “but I challenge you to detect a difference.”
We maneuvered through the cafeteria lineup, gathering sustenance according to our desires. Bridget and I didn’t actually need the calories, of course, being mannies, but manny taste buds were now so refined that recent ex-humans using mannies reported no difference in taste or sll—or even an improved experience for the older individuals who’d been dealing with duller senses in their later years.
Bridget had her usual burger and mountain o’ fries with way too much salt. Mark had picked a baked mac and cheese and was liberally applying ketchup. My mom would have had a bird, seeing perfectly good food desecrated like that. I had chosen a bowl of chili and a side of poutine. I blad Stephane for getting hooked on the latter, even if posthumously.
By unspoken agreent, we spent several minutes getting ahead of things, with nothing but the sounds of snarfing and munching to break the companionable silence. But finally, Mark sat back, idly poking at the remnants of his pasta.
“So I guess you’ve heard—Romulus has preemptively outlawed flying cities?”
I jerked my head up. “I had not. When did this happen?”
“Yesterday. You know that FAITH finally got their majority governnt with this last election—”
“Yes, pending verification of the vote. I still think they cheated,” Bridget growled.
Mark shook his head sorrowfully. “Wish that were so, but I think it’s legitimate, Bridget. That’s three wins in a row for them now. Anyway, they’ve wasted no ti. They ran on a platform of reduced technology and getting back to basics, whatever that ans. So no flying cities, heavy restriction of mannies, no post-life replication, no cloned at—”
“Seriously?” I said, frowning.
“Not natural, not made by God, or so such.” Mark shrugged. “They aren’t giving up printers, though.”
“Of course not.” I sighed. “I’ll send a text to Will, just in case. He really needs to ramp up the effort to get our relatives out of there.”
“I expect diplomacy between Vulcan and Romulus is reaching an all-ti low,” Bridget mused.
Mark sighed and nodded. “We aren’t quite anticipating war or anything, but borders may be closing—or at least tightening up.” He glanced at . “You’d better make that text a high priority.”
*****
We arrived back at the lab to find the scene considerably more tense than when we’d left. Techs were muttering to each other and comparing things on their tablets while the huey paced back and forth, looking concerned—or as concerned as a hairless, pallid android could manage.
“What’s up?” Mark asked.
“Can’t exit,” the huey replied in Terry’s clipped tones. “I want to use the safe phrase, but the crew is trying to debug.”
I glanced at Terry, still lying on the gurney, and felt a mont of sympathy. The technology activated the sa brain region that prevented movent during dreaming to allow the user to execute voluntary movents through the huey without moving their own body. But this ant that the user was paralyzed while the device was active. The design innovation was actually based directly on a suggestion made by Thoth in negotiation with the Skippies.
The process to deactivate the huey was supposed to be straightforward, but as a backup, we’d built in a user-configurable “safe phrase,” the utterance of which would also flip the switch.
One of the techs glanced at us, then said, “You might as well go for it, Terry. We’ll have to go through the logs to find out what’s going on. That’ll take a while.”
The huey stopped pacing and chanted, “I’m a little teapot, short and stout.” It stood for a mont in an expectant stance, then exclaid, “Oh fuck! That’s failed, too. Pull the goddam plug!”
A tech hurried over and hit a button, then gingerly took the cap off Terry as she sat up. The huey, following standard manny programming for autonomous situations, placed itself in the pod and powered down.
“Do not like,” Terry said, glaring at Mark. “Not one bit. You better fix that glitch soonest. You get a stuck user going into a panic, and soone is going to be suing everyone in sight.”
Mark nodded to Terry, then grinned at . “Don’t make plans for that dividend check just yet. Looks like we’re not quite ready for pri ti.”
“Keep at it. We want it quickly, but it has to be done right. Can’t risk giving FAITH any ammo.”
“Or the Luddies,” Bridget added, referring to the anti-manny, anti-replicant activist groups.
I sighed and turned to go. “See you in a week, Mark.”
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