Giddy with near completion! Thanks, Tikatu, Varda's Servantand Agent Five, for the kind and helpful comments.
62
Mars-
The incredible, suffocating dark had come with a wind that keened and moaned unendingly, for all the world like a lost soul begging for help. There were constant scratching sounds, as well, against the quivering flanks of tractor and cylinder, both. Not so bad, in itself, but when it wouldn't stop…!
You felt like letting the damn cat in, fixing that drippy spigot, or throwing something heavy at the neighbor's howling dog. Except that you couldn't. There was nothing at all to do, but sit and wait. Far too dangerous to go outside; the suit joints and treads might seize up, jammed by flying dust. As Pete McCord put it (quoting Dr. Seuss),
"So all we could do was to sit, sit, sit, sit,
And we did not like it,
Not one little bit."
The men had tracked Dr. Kim's signal, turning their low-slung, rumbling tractor to follow each briefly-glimpsed flash of silver light. Where ordinary short wave and RF beacons couldn't get through, the emergency flares lit a torch that astronomers spotted from Earth.
At the cylinder itself, Linda Bennett and Kim Cho had been forced to climb down from their immobilized power suits, then fasten a guide rope from flare to access hatch. Sand scoured at helmet and armor, gnawing and biting less than two inches away from their faces and flickering heads-up displays. It was like deep-sea diving in rusty quicksand.
They neither saw nor heard the tractor until it was nearly on top of them, cresting a rise, glimmering with violet static. Linda and Cho ducked behind a massive robot leg, keeping tense hold of the guide rope. Getting lost now meant almost certain, lingering death.
The tractor drew up as close to the flares as possible, and the men disembarked; Pete first, then Roger, and John.
Eye-searing effulgence, masked occasionally by thick swirls of gritty dust, lent the scene an almost strobe-like effect. In the partial shelter of Cho's power suit, the group reunited, then followed the guide rope to safety. Almost.
Last in line, John kept a one-handed grip on the vibrating tether. Ordinarily, he'd have felt it sliding along his gloved palm, but the hard suit's cybernetics had been largely shut down. Otherwise, he'd have been treated to the wire-brush sensation of airborne sand.
In bits and flashes, he could see Roger's bulky form outlined in St. Elmo's fire, his own sparking glove, a tiny portion of steel rope, and the reflective interior of his face plate. Every so often the heads-up display would flicker to life, projecting a jumbled hash of alphanumerics. Wounded nonsense, mostly… until he received an unexpected message.
Splintered, cascading symbols reassembled in the green display field; fractured data forming gradual patterns. Not in English. Not in any language he had experience of. Yet, somehow, John understood.
: Provide Access: it commanded.
At the same instant, his hard suit locked up, and the reserve oxygen tank vented. All the air he had was what little remained in his helmet. His crewmates went on, not realizing that one of their number had fallen behind.
Again, the message, in alien symbols now crystal sharp and diamond clear. Not flat lines, but rotating polyhedra, their speed, axis of rotation, rate and depth carrying as much information as shape and order did. Incredibly complex, and strangely beautiful.
: Provide Access:
It wanted the same thing from him that it had tried to wrest from Five, passage to Earth's computer systems. Newly reassembled after John's first attack, only a lucky dust storm now prevented the AI from simply jumping to Earth across open comm channels. That, and the pilot's slowly fading resistance.
Lump of grey matter… couple handfuls of neurons… some particularly stubborn chemicals… not a lot, really. Not when compared to something like that.
If someone said to you, 'Don't think about blue elephants', you'd be hard-pressed to consider anything else. Just then, prisoned like a bug in amber by his locked hard suit, in the midst of a storm, some 46 million miles from home, John Tracy was doing his damndest not to think of blue elephants, or computer access codes.
All at once, he understood why Five had 'disappeared'. John was infected, so deeply and insidiously that any contact between them might spread the alien intelligence.
…From a mirror universe, connected to this one via wormhole, in a past where all physical laws were one. Probes had been sent through the hole, to preserve the lore and knowledge of a dying race. To remake themselves on a likely planet, by using its altered life forms. Only, through a quirk of fate or programming, the probe had selected Mars, not Earth… and been forced to power down, waiting long eons for life that never flowered. Not here. Now, after failing twice, it meant to complete its task…
But International Rescue was in business to save people, the entire world, if necessary. Even if the battle was fought alone, and never recognized. Even if it killed them.
John said aloud (wasting oxygen, but it hardly mattered at this point),
"Access denied. You're trapped here… with me. The storm could last for months, and once I'm dead, you're finished. Organic wetware falls apart damn quick, after death. Starts to smell bad, too. Enjoy."
The polyhedra shifted a bit, several switching places, reversing spin, or changing size.
:Provide Access In Return For Continued Existence And Unencrypted Data:
Like he wanted anything to do with its 'data' after all this! John took a deep, wasteful breath. Might as well make it quick…
"Go directly to hell. Do not pass 'Go', do not collect $200. Put it another way: 'F.O.A.D'. It's been a long day."
And he visualized slamming a hand through the delicately suspended alien symbols. Damned if they didn't move.
A thought came to him, then. Clearly ridiculous. Obviously never work.
With painful concentration, gasping at his helmet's fouled air, John mentally rearranged the pretty shapes. He coded a false message, containing the alien equivalent of:
-Set User ID
Then,
-Set ID to root
The AI sensed his manipulation, but not its purpose, and failed to respond in time. It had expected capitulation, not a back door hack. From the alien's perspective, John Tracy's species was too primitive for such an assault. Once again, it paid like hell to be underestimated.
And just like that, he was in. For the second time since leaving Princeton, John experienced again the visceral rush of direct interface. No keyboard or processor… no shields at all. Just him, and the victim computer. Probing here and there, selecting very delicately the right set of 'keys', he set and executed the next line of code. Simple and blunt:
-Shut down
After all, what was the alien intelligence but a computer? And what did computers do? Once you'd entered the proper command, exactly what you told them to. The AI had no defense against a properly phrased order. Not one that came from within.
'Primitive', maybe. 'Foolish', possibly. 'Stupid', never.
Deep within his mind, John felt certain changes taking place. Alien files, an infinite array of whirling spheres, began to save, and then close. They froze in place, their speed and orientation branded onto his hypoxic mind.
Then, like a forest fire being put out with a little 'close your eyes and make a wish' breath, the spheres began to vanish. They reduced to circles, then glowing line segments. Next, the lines burnt away at both ends, becoming dull red points.
In the end, all that remained was a constellation of ash; of glowering, powered-down stars. Not gone, but 'off'. For the time being, anyway.
'Strike three…,' John thought drunkenly, 'Should've taken the walk.'
He wasn't that shit-hot a pitcher, even after all the baseball games his group had played with the other astronaut hopefuls. Had the alien waited till after the storm to act, things might have gone differently. No cloud of comm-screening dust, and a further weakened human vessel.
John coughed, all but smothering in carbon dioxide. Rather to his surprise, the suit unlocked, allowing him to move again. Then his heads-up display decided to talk to him.
'Cylinder. Follow rope to cylinder. Go!'
At nearly the same time, someone bumped him, then knocked at the top of his helmet. It turned out to be Roger, looking damn shiny in all that staticky plastic. That was nice. Just now, John discovered, he didn't really want to be alone. Whether his friend could help him, or not, it was good that he'd shown up.
The Marine used an emergency conduit to patch his own air supply to John's. Almost immediately, canned Nitrox began to circulate, and his temple-stabbing headache packed up and left town. Helluva guy, Roger.
Together, battered this way and that by shifting terrain, the two men trudged blindly along their guide rope. At the cylinder, they were met by three other sparking, hard-suited figures. To touch each other was to send long white arcs of static flaring between them, but John was hauled inside, regardless. They would not, he realized suddenly, have let him die. Even though they weren't brothers, or operatives, either. Weird.
Once the airlock doors were sealed, and a breathable atmosphere generated, the crew un-helmeted. They sat on crates and barrels, gathered in a close circle around a portable heating unit, helmets at their sides (just in case). The heater gave off a little light, along the lines of a small, dim campfire. Most of the cylinder's interior lay wreathed in shadow, a labyrinth of tumbled boxes. There was just enough warmth to keep from freezing, though their breath still misted in the dusty air, and sparkling motes flared and vanished with every gesture. That smell was still present, but he was beginning to get used to it. Beautiful down-town landfi… Mars.
They'd made quite a party of breaking into the food, but greetings had come first. Between the men, rough hair tousles, 'zaps' and back-of-the-neck grabs, while the women were only slightly more restrained. Doctor Bennett actually kissed his good cheek (not the bandaged one), the brush of her lips leaving a warm spot for some time thereafter. She didn't say anything, though. Very confusing.
Later, over opened cans of absolutely anything edible, the Ares III crew conferenced.
"Suit locked up, I take it?" Pete asked him, around a big mouthful of Spam and soy cheese.
John considered a moment, then nodded. Close enough.
"Electrical interference," he replied quietly. "The cybernetics screwed up on me, then vented the tanks."
As John went back to his chosen picnic fare, cheese pizza, McCord asked another, less subtle, question.
"Everything else okay?"
A second nod, without looking up.
"Yeah, Pete. I'm good." (Kind of wished McCord would drop the third degree, though…)
Fortunately, the conversation soon turned to other matters. How the ladies had ignited their signal, for instance, and what their chances were of getting the power suits restarted. (Pete kept quiet about his not-saved 'goddam equipment'. Something to do with his very saved life, probably.)
When to break out the drills and start digging a colony still needed deciding, along with which came first: collecting Martian specimens, or setting up the frozen embryo 'zoo'.
Much to do. But, first, much to eat. They sat, McCord at the head of the group, facing the airlock, with John to his left, and Linda on the right. Roger and Kim shared an up-ended crate across from Pete. The food was lukewarm, at best, but varied and filling. Like Thanksgiving day on a frigid alien world, over canned and boxed bounty.
The food got shared around, and severally sampled. At one point, Roger Thorpe became interested in the 'family-sized' tub of lemon pudding John had turned up.
"Hey," he ventured, leaning forward, "mind if I…?"
Shrugging, John handed it over.
"Go ahead. If you can drink water that's been filtered through five sets of kidneys, eating out of the same bowl isn't going to kill you."
The Marine paused, spoon midway to his open mouth.
"Thanks."
"No problem."
As Cho gazed at the floor, biting her lip, and the other two shook their heads, Roger added,
"Really. I appreciate the imagery, Buddy."
"Any time."
By now, Roger had started grinning, again.
"You must be hell on wheels at family gatherings, AO'."
John cocked an eyebrow.
"Actually, I wear out my welcome pretty quickly. They deny it," he thought for an instant, then shrugged again. "But, if they start to miss me, they can look at the pictures."
The big Samoan grew serious, suddenly. Mostly in Klingon, he demanded,
"You're not planning to pull that shit with us, are you? After all this is over? Disappear, and just mail a damn card? 'Cause I'll hunt you down to drag your ass to the wedding, if I have to. And then, every time you don't show up, I'll name another baby after you. Sons, daughters, even cousins and neighbor kids. All 'John', and all mad. You got any clue how pissed-off fifteen or twenty Samoan 'John Juniors' could get?"
Better not to find out, maybe. John Tracy folded his arms and gave the floor a brief smile.
"I won't disappear," he promised.