We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 4: Chapter 14: Council of War

Book 4: Chapter 14: Council of War

Bob

April 2334

Virt

It was an even fuller house today. I had the leaders of the support team, as well as the expeditionary members. Bill, Will, Garfield, Bridget, Gandalf, Hugh, and Locutus all sat, according to individual preference, in La-Z-Boys, beanbag chairs, or wingbacks. I’d given in and expanded the library floor space. It was a bit jarring to see everything just that little bit farther away.

“Things are going well, relatively,” I said. “No major hiccups at this point.”

“Uh …” Locutus held up a hand.

I sighed. “Something happened since I talked to you this morning? Manny construction in trouble?”

“No, nothing that dramatic. Just something that occurred to me. We need to field-test the mannies, but there’s no actual field where you are. If you get my drift.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Garfield muttered.

I grinned at him. “Isn’t it always the little things that bite you?” I scanned the group. “So, okay, the Steam-Borg have the mannies ready, but we have no way to test them in a realistic environment. In the past, we’ve always had a planet for testing. And if something went wrong, we could just do a fix and re-release. In this case, once the androids are in-country, we’re stuck with them.”

“We could use the Quinlan home planet,” Garfield suggested.

“Absolutely not,” Bridget replied. “We don’t know everything that went into the destruction of the home world. Can we call it Quin?” We all nodded and she continued. “The Quinlans had some kind of conflict or multiple conflicts that ended up killing off everything on the planet. Nukes and orbital bombardment are obvious because they leave evidence, but what if they used biological warfare as well? Imagine us picking something up on the mannies and then transporting it to Heaven’s River. By definition, it’d be virulent and hard to kill.”

“Um. Good point.” Garfield sat back, embarrassed.

“Still, we can’t afford to not test the mannies,” Bill said. “Look, it’s not quite as good, but we can at least test the design. We send one or two mannies down to Quin, and just leave them there when we’re done. It’ll set our schedule back, having to fab a couple of replacements, but it’ll be much faster with the second batch. And if we find an issue, we can fix all of them.”

Locutus sat forward, showing enthusiasm. “We can send some maintenance equipment down with them, including a small printer, so we can perform any fixes on the planetside mannies as well. That way we’re always testing the current version.”

We all looked at each other, smiling. It was an excellent solution. And, as a bonus, it might settle some questions about Quinlan history.

“Good.” I turned my attention to Gandalf. “Now, how about gaining entry?”

Gandalf blew out his cheeks. “Uh, good news and bad news.”

“Great,” Garfield grumbled.

“The good news is we have a plan. The bad news is it will carry some risks, not only of getting caught, but also of getting ground to a pulp.”

“Even more great.” Garfield sat back and crossed his arms, looking aggrieved.

“We can’t activate the Spin Transfer system. That’s the bottom line. There’s no way to do that without alerting the powers that be. It’s just too tightly bound to internal control systems.”

“That’s not terribly surprising,” Bill said. “Do you have an alternative?”

“Yeah, but you’re not going to like it.”

“I already don’t like it.”

Gandalf flashed a quick smile. “The collection bins in our mining drones are just big enough to fit one Quinlan manny at a time—”

“No. No way!” Garfield interrupted. “You cannot be serious.”

“Sorry, but yes. We’ll ferry the mannies in the same way we ferried the spy drones in, except one at a time, like I said. Look at the bright side, you won’t all be at risk at the same time. It decreases the chances of losing the entire expedition—” ?à??BÊ?

“While increasing the chances of losing one member,” Garfield interrupted. “I don’t like it.”

“No one does, Garfield, but we haven’t come up with anything that isn’t even riskier in one way or another. I assume that getting discovered by the topopolis administration is a nonstarter?” Nods around the coffee table confirmed the statement. “Then by definition, risk of equipment loss is less critical. So we examined a number of alternatives, and this is the least risky.”

“What is the risk of damaging the topopolis itself if we screw up?” I asked.

“Negligible,” Bill replied before Gandalf could. “You have to think of the relative masses. If you’re jogging and you run into a mosquito, how much damage do you take?”

“I hate mosquitos.”

“As do we all, even out to twentieth generation,” Bill replied. “I doubt that’ll ever change, as mosquitos have no redeeming features. But to my point, the drone and manny would get slapped onto the inner surface of the outer shell hard enough to leave a crater and not much else. That inner shell, though, is tough. It has to be.”

“You’ve tested it?”

“We originally reconstructed the material from scans. There’s some truly ingenious layering involved. It’s about fifty percent stronger, pound for pound, than our hull material. And that stuff is wicked strong.” Bill nodded emphatically to reinforce his statement.

“Huh. Okay.” I thought for a moment. “Can we bring in a spare manny?”

“Expedition needs to be four,” Bridget said. “That’s the most typical number for young Quinlans going on a sabbatical.”

“Yeah, I’m not clear on that part,” Will said. “Sabbatical?”

“It’s not the right English word, but it’s the closest we can come. Young Quinlans, just around adulthood, often leave their home city, usually in a group of four called a sabbat, to see the world and possibly find a new place to settle. They might start a new town, or they might just join an existing one. My guess is that the behavior evolved to keep the gene pool diverse. It’s generally mostly males that do this, although females are common enough that no one would be surprised if one of the group is female.”

“So no one will be curious about a female alone with three males?”

Bridget smirked at Garfield. “Quinlan females are slightly larger than males and have the same teeth and claws, so unwelcome advances would not work out well. Anyway their mating is seasonal, so it isn’t even a question most of the time.”

“Got it. But what about having a fifth manny ready, just in case we trash one of the four?”

“Okay, Bob.” Bridget shrugged. “As Howard always says, you can’t be too paranoid.”

“Fine. Now, Hugh. Language and culture?”

“We’ve made progress, but no real revelations. Our level of language comprehension is good enough to not be suspicious. There’s regional variability, and we haven’t catalogued a lot of the colloquialisms sufficiently yet, but thanks to the sabbatical thing, it will probably even out. So you’ll probably always be able to understand the locals. There are some things we haven’t been able to get a handle on. Maybe you’ll find out more on your travels.”

Gandalf was waving his hand.

“You had more?” I asked.

“Yes. We won’t go in through the cargo bay. We’re going to dig a tunnel.”

“Yeah, it’s been discussed. And it seems reasonable, given that mannies are bigger than spy drones. Why do you bring it up?”

“Well, we’ll have to start now.”

“Ah. So you’ll need miners and roamers immediately.”

“Yup.”

I shook my head. “The TODO. It burns.”