For We Are Many

Mike and Bernie strung up the carcass and proceeded to field-dress their kill, while the other Deltans started a Giving-Thanks chant. As I watched, I had one of those incongruous moments where I half-expected them to attach a hunting tag to its ear. Wrong century, wrong planet, wrong species, of course.

I turned away from the drone’s video window and chuckled as I picked up my coffee. Marvin, who had been watching over my shoulder, gave me a strange look, but I didn’t feel the need to explain. Hell, he should be able to remember Original Bob going hunting with Dad, way back when. I shrugged at him without comment. Work it out, dude.

Marvin rolled his eyes and returned to the La-Z-Boy that he always materialized when he was visiting my VR. I spared a moment to let Jeeves refresh my coffee. As in every virtual reality space that implemented the Jeeves A.I., he resembled John Cleese in tux and tails.

As I took a sip—perfect, as always—I looked around the library from my seat in one of the antique wingback chairs. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a large, old-fashioned fireplace, and tall, narrow windows through which a perpetual late-afternoon sun shone to illuminate the interior. And like a giant shiny black eye, one red corduroy La-Z-Boy, occupied by a clone of yours truly.

All in VR, of course. Physically, Marvin and I were a couple of glowing opto-electronic cubes, installed in the two spaceships currently orbiting Delta Eridani 4. But we had been human once, and our VR environments kept us sane.

Spike wandered over, jumped up onto Marvin’s lap, and began to purr. The cat’s A.I. was realistic, right down to the total lack of loyalty. I gave a small snort of amusement and turned back to the video window.

The hunters had finished field-dressing their kill. The pigoid didn’t really look like a wild boar. It was probably closer to a bear in general outline, but it filled the same ecological niche as a boar, complete with the same sunny disposition and affectionate behavior.

Hunting them wasn’t a one-sided proposition by any means. The Deltans took a chance on every pigoid hunt. The pigoid usually lost, but it sometimes managed to take down one or two of the hunters. The recent addition of flint tips to the spears was changing the game, though. Yeah, I know. Prime Directive, blah, blah. Pfft. This wasn’t Star Trek, despite Riker’s choice of name and VR theme.

The Deltans trussed their prize to a couple of spears, and four of them hoisted the ends of the spears to their shoulders. Mike beckoned with a gesture, and I maneuvered the drone over to float along beside him. Two others put their arms around Fred and helped him to his feet. His leg hadn’t quite stopped bleeding, and he showed a pronounced limp, but he’d make it back to the village.

We marched triumphantly towards the Deltans’ home, a couple of the hunters singing a victory chant. The others traded good-natured jokes and insults as they compared notes. I never ceased to be amazed at how very similar in behavior the Deltans were to humans. It made me feel nostalgic, occasionally, for genuine human contact.

We soon arrived at the village, greeted by laughter and celebration. A pigoid kill was always a happy event—the hexghi would have a feast tonight, and would eat well for a week. Hexghi translated as something like families of our fire. Of course, it flowed a lot better in Deltan. This hunting group was part of Archimedes’ hexghi, which I’d more or less adopted as family.

Fred was helped over to his family’s spot, where his mate proceeded to fuss over him. One of the hunters hurried off to get the medicine woman, Cruella. I sighed and prepared myself for yet another argument with her.

The messenger returned moments later with Cruella and her apprentice in tow. Cruella bent down to examine the wound, and I brought the drone in close. Too close, I guess. Cruella straight-armed the drone and it shot back several feet before the AMI controller was able to stabilize it. The other Deltans stepped back in shock, and one looked like he was going to either flee or faint. The drone was small, and really not hard to push around. But still, y’know, sky god.

I’d long since learned that the medicine woman feared no one and nothing. And she wasn’t particularly good at taking advice, either. I gritted my teeth in frustration, wondering if this time Cruella would pay attention to anything that I’d told her.

Fred apparently was having the same thought. “This would be a good time to try Bawbe’s hot-water thing,” he said to her.

Cruella glared at him, then at my drone. “Maybe he can just dress the wound as well, since you don’t seem to need me.”

“Oh, by the balls of my ancestors, Cruella,” Mike said. “Try something new, just once. Bawbe hasn’t steered us wrong yet.”

Cruella snarled at him. Within moments, the hunters and Cruella had faced off in a yelling match. The hunters were my biggest supporters. Flint tips, spear straighteners, and hand axes were only a few of the improvements that I’d brought to their lives. They, at least, trusted that I had the Deltans’ best interests at heart.

Finally, Cruella threw her hands in the air and barked, “Fine! We’ll do it your way. And if your leg falls, off, don’t come whining to me.”

She turned to her apprentice and snarled an order. The apprentice flattened her ears and ran off.

Minutes later she was back, carrying a bladder and a soft leather skin. Cruella pointed to the bladder and said, “Freshly boiled water.” She held up the soft piece of scraped skin and said, “Washed in boiling water.” Then she glared right into the drone’s camera. “Now stay out of my way.”

I watched in pleased surprise as she took the time to clean the wound with the piece of hide, using the freshly boiled water. This was progress. Granted, the hunters helped a lot by putting their collective foot down; but if Cruella got into the habit, incidents of infection would drop dramatically.

I bobbed the drone once in acknowledgement, then sent it off to station-keeping at the perimeter of the village. I returned to my VR once again, sat back, and closed the drone’s video window. The change in procedure by the medicine woman was a major victory, and I was happy to get out of her way in return. It would allow her to save face, and she wouldn’t feel the need to dig in her heels next time.

I’d miss the rest of the celebration, but the pigoid’s ultimate fate was a matter of routine, and well-documented. And probably delicious. I thought of ribs in barbeque sauce and my mouth watered. I didn’t need food any more, being a computer and all, but I could do anything I wanted in VR. And if you’re going to program in a coffee simulation, you might as well program in barbequed ribs.

Spike came walking across my desk, meowed once, and plunked down on my keyboard. I accepted a coffee refill from Jeeves, then turned to Marvin. “Okay. Excitement’s over. What’s up? You wanted to talk to me about something?”

Marvin nodded and stood. He dismissed the La-Z-Boy and walked over to my work desk. Pulling up a wingback, he invoked a globe of Eden in mid-air over the desk, with a small section of one continent outlined in red. “This is the current range of the Deltans. I’ve excluded the old village, since they no longer live there—”

“—and that was more of a refuge than a permanent home.” I nodded. “They hadn’t even been there for a full generation.”

Marvin bobbed his head in acknowledgement. “Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of digging—literally, in some cases—and I’ve arrived at a reasonable estimate of Deltan population movements over time.”

He looked at me expectantly, and I made a rolling motion with my hand for him to continue.

“They do not appear to be from this area at all. It looks as though the sentient Deltan subspecies originated here…” Marvin rotated the globe and pointed to a different part of the continent. “…and moved from there to the current location.”

“And they’re no longer at the old location? Why?”

“That’s what I don’t get, Bob. I’ve found a lot of evidence of abandoned Deltan villages, and some burial sites, but not nearly enough graves to account for the expected population.”

“Predation?”

“You’d think, but then we’d find Deltan remains here and there, at least in the form of piles of bones. You’ve seen what the gorilloids leave behind when they’re done with a meal. They’re not fastidious.”

I rubbed my chin, gazing at the globe. “That doesn’t make sense, anyway. From your notes, the original area didn’t have gorilloids at all. So they moved from a safer area to a more dangerous area, and disappeared in the safer area.”

“Then fled the more dangerous area to set up in an even more dangerous area.” Marvin shook his head in confusion. “They aren’t morons. They may be just in the process of becoming human-level sentient, but they have common sense. We’re missing something.”

I shrugged, and sent the globe spinning with a flick of a finger. “It’s a mystery, Marvin, and we do love a mystery.” We exchanged grins. After all, Bob. “But the important thing is that they’re much safer here, compared to where we found them. They’ve settled in nicely in Camelot, the hunting’s good, and the gorilloids are beginning to get the hint and have pretty much stopped trying to pick off Deltans.”

“You’re really going to call their village Camelot?” Marvin gave me the stink-eye. “Every time you say it, I hear Knights of the Round Table.”

I grinned at him and waggled my eyebrows. “It’s only a model.”

Marvin rolled his eyes and stopped the globe. “Anyway, I’ll keep at this, but we’re at a disadvantage here. On Earth, scientists were building up from existing knowledge of a world they understood. On Eden, we’re starting from scratch.”

“Yeah, and even then, it took years for them to figure out things like the fate of the Anasazi.” I sat back and shook my head. “Yeah, I get it, Marv. I have to admit, I’m glad this is a pet project for you. I did some basic research and exploration when I landed, but it wasn’t a priority for me.”

Marvin chuckled and, with a parting nod, disappeared back to his own VR.

2. Colony Site

Howard

September 2188

Vulcan

Colonization of a new planet was always so easy in science fiction. Actually, scratch that. It was never easy. Something always came out of the woodwork to endanger the colony. Well, they got one thing right. Sort of.

On the plus side, nothing was bursting out of people’s chests. However, setting up a human colony on Vulcan was turning out to be a little bit like being pecked to death by ducks. Large ducks. With teeth and claws. Milo’s notes and planetary catalog made it very clear that setting up would require attention to defensive strategies. The ecosystem was prolific and competitive.

The colony ships Exodus-1 and -2 orbited Vulcan, most of the colonists from the USE enclave still in stasis, waiting for the settlement teams to prepare a site. Construction teams, security teams, and engineers worked day and night to clear enough jungle and build a home for this first wave of humanity.

The USE colonists would also be expected to provide some support to future colony ships. Exodus-3 was only a few months behind us, and more would be coming as fast as Riker could build them.

Like we needed the extra pressure.

Five days after humans set foot on Vulcan, the planet claimed its first casualty.

[Message from the security chief. There has been an attack]

I nodded to Guppy, acknowledging the information. I took a moment to minimize the monitoring window that had been floating in the air in front of me, and ordered the construction AMIs to continue on their own. They could handle most of the tasks involved in building the orbiting farm donut, and they would text me if they ran into something above their pay grade.

I turned in my chair and raised an eyebrow at Guppy, inviting more information. But the GUPPI system interface, in the form of an avatar resembling Admiral Ackbar, wasn’t inclined to volunteer anything beyond the basic facts. Huge fish eyes blinked at me, waiting for a command. Accepting the inevitable, I motioned with my hand, and he pushed the video window to me.

The window showed the head of security, Stéphane Brodeur, with that look people get when they’re on an adrenaline high—wide eyes, slight sheen of sweat, nostrils dilated. He began to speak as soon as he saw me. “There has been an attack. The therapod-like predators that we’ve tagged as raptors. Northwest corner, at the fence construction boundary.”

Brodeur spoke with a pronounced Quebecois accent. I wondered idly how he had managed to get into the USE colony, but dismissed the question as irrelevant. I frame-jacked for a moment and sent a couple of drones to the fence construction area, then returned my frame rate to normal. A human being wouldn’t even notice the millisecond glitch in my image. “Casualties?”

“One.”

“Dead?”

“No, but it will need the new paint job.” Brodeur grinned at me.

I raised an eyebrow, and he continued, “A small group of raptors attacked a backhoe. The equipment will need the paint touched up. We killed most of the animals, and the rest ran off. One of the carcasses is being sent to Dr. Sheehy for necropsy.”

“So what can I do?”

The security chief shook his head. “About the attack, nothing. It’s done, and we’ve taken care of the attackers. I am hoping you can set up surveillance of some kind.”

A reasonable request. I nodded in thought. “Mr. Brodeur, I have some drones I can put on guard duty now, although they aren’t really optimized for that. Bill, over in Epsilon Eridani, has been refining surveillance and exploration drones for a couple of decades now. I’ll get some plans from him and start printing up something suitable. It’ll take a week or two before they’re ready. Can you hold out?”

“I will talk to the construction chief and see if we can cut back on some of the tasks until you’re done. We would be spread too thin, right now.”

“Do that, Chief. I’ll keep you updated.”

I closed the connection, and sent an email to Bill, requesting information on his observation drones. He’d designed them more for use by Bobs exploring new systems, but they’d do fine for my purposes as well.

* * *

Security personnel were still swarming the area when my drones arrived at the fence construction site. Blood covered the ground, fortunately all raptor. A very sad-looking backhoe sat off to one side, long scrapes and scratches marring the bright yellow paint job. I wondered idly if the backhoe’s AMI controller would need therapy.

Personnel were hauling several carcasses into the back of transport trucks. The raptors resembled movie velociraptors closely enough to give nightmares to anyone who’d seen Jurassic Park. But instead of the peg-like teeth of the canonical carnosaur, their teeth resembled those of sharks—triangular, serrated, and razor sharp. So far, the use of military-grade automatic weapons on them hadn’t blunted their enthusiasm for the newly arrived food group.

I found Chief Brodeur overseeing the cleanup and floated over to him.

He turned as the drone approached and grinned. “And to think I turned down the desk job.”

I chuckled politely in response. “Welcome to the frontier. Did you get all of them?”

“No.” He shook his head. “We let one or two get away to communicate fear of humans to their friends.”

“And how’s that working out, so far?”

Chief Brodeur laughed and shook his head. “I have a meeting with the colonel this afternoon. Perhaps you could attend.”

“He’s already invited me, Mr. Brodeur. I’ll see you there.”

Chief Brodeur nodded to the drone, then turned back to help his staff with cleanup. I took the opportunity to inspect the progress on construction.

A fence stretched about a third of the way around the planned town site. Five meters tall, it was built from a combination of native wood and metal. The Vulcan trees were close enough to their Terran equivalents that the setup crews were able to adapt them with little effort. The trees were harvested from the area immediately around the fence, forming a clear-cut for additional security. I had my doubts about whether the fence was tall enough to keep the brontos at bay, but no one had asked me. Not that the brontos would eat people or anything. They were more of an “accidentally step on you” kind of danger.

To the west, Vulcan’s sister planet Romulus hung in the sky, clouds and seas clearly visible. When Exodus-3 arrived, the passengers, from the FAITH and Spitz enclaves, would be settling there. I expected life to get very interesting once the FAITH colony got started. I doubted that nineteen years of stasis would improve Minister Cranston’s disposition. The FAITH leader wasn’t what I’d call a people-person to begin with, and his relationship with the Bobs had developed into kind of a hate-hate thing.

I sent another drone up a few hundred meters and set it to circle the area, watching for any movement of native life. Nothing lurked nearby, probably due to the noise of the automatic weapons.

Things appeared to have calmed down, and everyone was back to work. I backed out of the drone and back into my VR. Sighing, I rubbed my forehead. Sometimes I missed sleeping for a third of each day. It had been a nice break from reality.

“Guppy, I have some printer schedule changes.”

Guppy popped in and waited silently for me to continue. Looking at him, I wondered if I should change the Admiral Ackbar image. But nothing else came to mind, and anyway it had become a kind of tradition with the Bobs.

“We need more observation drones.”

[All printer groups are currently engaged in producing parts for the orbiting farms. Do you want to bump this activity?]

“Hmm, not really. Okay, put half the printers on drones, and produce four full squads. Then back to building the farm donuts.”

[Aye]

Guppy went into command fugue while he reprogrammed the 3D printers. I turned back to the video windows from my active drones. I would build more drones as requested, but I had a bad feeling that we’d go through a few colonists before we got the fence completed.

* * *

“Good afternoon, Colonel.” The video window showed Colonel Butterworth, as usual looking impeccable and wrinkle-free. I wondered how he did it.

“Morning, Howard.” He nodded toward my image on his desk phone. “Good to see you. I heard about today’s attack.”

I took a moment to be surprised. I didn’t remember Colonel Butterworth ever greeting Riker with that level of friendliness back on Earth. I wasn’t sure if I should be offended for Riker or pleased for me.

The leader of the USE enclave had been at odds with Riker since day one. I had all Riker’s memories of those days of course, right up to the moment that Riker had cloned me. It would be an understatement to describe Butterworth as “pushy,” although at least he was always professional.

With a mental shrug, I decided not to worry about it. Different time, different place, and let’s face it, I wasn’t Riker.

“Yeah, but we won’t be so lucky next time,” I replied. “The raptors are smart. They’ll figure out that backhoes aren’t edible. If they’ve got good color vision—a high likelihood—they’ll probably associate bright yellow with inedible things with hard shells. Then they’ll start concentrating on the soft and squishy two-legged things.”

Butterworth snorted. “I saw your immediate strategy with the drones. I’m just reading your plan for observation and surveillance systems. Looks comprehensive. I have a few small suggestions, which we can go over when convenient.”

I nodded without comment. The colonel’s suggestions would be good ones, and I’d very likely implement them.

“So, where’s Mr. Brodeur? Wasn’t he supposed to be here?”

“He was.” The colonel shrugged. “Something came up. I’ll debrief him separately, and call you if anything requires more discussion.”

I nodded, then glanced over the colonel’s shoulder, where the townsite plan was posted on the far wall. I motioned at it with my chin. “Kind of old-school, isn’t it? A paper poster tacked up on a wall?”

“Hardcopy still has its place, Howard. It’s much bigger than an image on a tablet, and I can make notes on it with a color marker. Of course, I also take a picture, periodically.” The colonel gave me his trademark dry smile. “In other news, we are ready to decant the farming specialists from stasis. Mr. Brodeur tells me that they will have the farm area enclosed within a week.”

“Good. Bert and Ernie are getting antsy about unloading everyone soon.” Butterworth winced as I mentioned the two colony-ship Bobs. I wasn’t sure which was more amusing—that he disapproved so much over our naming choices, or that he recognized the reference.

“Another month or so, Howard, then we can make that decision with confidence.” The colonel reached forward out of frame. “And maybe by the time Exodus-1 and Exodus-2 get back to Earth for another load, someone will have found another habitable system and they’ll stop shipping people our way.” Without waiting for a response, he ended the call.

3. Life in Camelot

Bob

March 2167

Delta Eridani

Archimedes placed the bone tool with care and tapped it with a rock. A fleck of flint dropped off the core, and Moses nodded in approval. Archimedes repositioned the tool for his next strike, and glanced at Moses with his ears pointed slightly forward. Moses made a small hand motion. Archimedes moved the tool a fraction to the left and his ears curled with concentration as he again tapped on the tool.

The other Deltan adolescent, whom I’d named Richard, watched Archimedes then tried to copy his technique. But the tool slipped off the cobble and stabbed into his foot. He leaped up and hopped on the other foot, cursing with enthusiasm.

After a few moments, Richard noticed Archimedes’ grin and scowled. Snarling, he compared Archimedes to pigoid droppings, then stalked off, limping.

Moses and Archimedes were the tribe’s best flint experts and tool-makers. And based on Richard’s performance, still the only ones. Archimedes was a teenager by Deltan standards—past puberty, but not yet fully grown. He was, however, easily the most intelligent Deltan in the village. Which meant, based on our searches, the most intelligent Deltan on the entire planet of Eden.

Archimedes was the first Deltan in years, it seemed, who could understand Moses’ flint-knapping instructions. A couple of juveniles, like Richard, had shown some interest, but couldn’t maintain the level of concentration required to complete a tool. Very likely Archimedes would have to wait for some of his own progeny before he’d be able to attract any apprentices of his own.

“Moses isn’t looking so good,” Marvin commented, looking over my shoulder.

“Yeah, I know. I think the march from the old village was harder than we expected. A couple of other elderly Deltans have died since they got here.”

I mentioned my theory about potential apprentices, and Marvin laughed. “I can think of at least two females from Archimedes’ cohort who are actively working on that.”

Yeah, gotta love adolescence. Between his flint-knapping skills, his tool-making ability in general, and his position as primary spokesperson for The Bawbe, Archimedes had a level of mojo totally out of keeping with his youth. All of which apparently went over quite well with the girls.

Archimedes set aside the core and the tools, stood up, and stretched. He and Moses exchanged a few words, and Moses got up and wandered off. There was no nine-to-five in Deltan society. Things got done when things got done. It looked like they’d had enough for the moment.