Майкл Крайтон - The Andromeda Evolution

Uncle died. All of them died. They were peaceful men. The black mountain made them crazy. It killed them.

I am sorry, Tupa. Do you know where the black mountain came from? How long it has been there?

No. I think that ( . . . ) it came from [hell | underworld]. It breathed fire and a black smoke that is poison. It hurt my family. And now it is eating the jungle.

These men and women want to stop the black mountain. To make sure it doesn’t hurt anyone else. Do you remember where it is?

Yes.

Do you remember how to get back there?

( . . . ) Yes.

[side conversation]

STONE

If there were stone flakes at his camp, they’re probably all infected. He could be the only survivor.

VEDALA

Ethically, we can’t further expose him to Andromeda. And he obviously doesn’t have Wildfire clearance. We can’t bring him.

STONE

[snorts] That anomaly is sitting in the equivalent of his living room. This isn’t even a choice, it’s our responsibility. He’s only a boy. We have to protect him.

VEDALA

It is a choice. His. We’ll let him decide whether to join us, or to stay out here on his own and look for his people.

( . . . )

STONE

Fine, Nidhi.

VEDALA

Don’t forget, James—this jungle is his home. This is where he belongs. To assume we can save him from his own home is pure arrogance.

STONE

No. This was his home ( . . . ) until Andromeda took it from him. It’s taken his family, too. Now, this little boy doesn’t belong anywhere.

[end side conversation]

Tupa, you aren’t safe here. These men and women are your friends. They need your help. But it is your choice, if you want to go with them or not. Do you want to stay here, away from the danger? Or will you lead them to the black mountain that spits smoke? Will you help them fight this evil?

( . . . )

[end transcript]

As he listened to the last of the canary drone’s questions, Tupa sat and watched the jungle for a long moment. He ran his fingers across the blowgun, thinking. Overhead, insects flickered through rare shafts of sunlight that streamed through the chattering canopy high above.

Finally, Tupa looked past the hovering canary drone and at the Wildfire team. Focusing directly on James Stone, the boy touched his chest. Eyes never wavering, he spoke quickly to the canary.

A half second later, the laptop quietly articulated a translation.

“What is your name?”

A look of relief spread over Stone’s face. Standing up on legs numb from sitting, he took an awkward step forward. He touched his own chest, voice breaking with emotion as he said his first words to the boy.

“James,” he said. “I am James. Good to meet you, Tupa.”

Watching the two of them approach each other, man and boy, Vedala frowned. She had registered a note of true feeling in Stone’s voice. The roboticist seemed deeply sensitive to the fate of this young survivor. It was unexpected, coming from a childless bachelor. The raw emotion she saw on Stone’s face in this moment would continue to haunt her for the remainder of the mission.

Plan B

FLIPPING AN INDUSTRIAL-GRADE LIGHT SWITCH, GENERAL Rand Stern watched as bank after bank of fluorescent lights kicked on, illuminating the massive sweep of the Ambrose High Bay laboratory, a stadium-size area buried under a half mile of solid granite known as Cheyenne Mountain.

The Cheyenne Mountain Complex had housed the command center for NORAD before operations moved to Peterson AFB. For the last decade it had been placed on warm standby, staffed only when necessary. The entire five-acre underground complex was now manned by a skeleton crew.

But this afternoon, Stern wasn’t interested in its human occupants.

Stern proceeded alone, walking in the shadow of a towering equipment rack on his left. He fought the urge to shiver under the loud and constant breeze of the air conditioning. His boots clanged on a strip of metal grating laid into concrete. Beneath the latticework, he could see thick braids of cable snaking off toward self-contained laboratory pods lining the right side of the corridor. Each pod housed some form of robot.

The buzzing fluorescents had been illuminated specifically for Stern.

Few of these machines required light to run their repetitive trials. It gave the general a slightly nauseous feeling to think of them down here in the cavernous darkness, complex tools thrashing about endlessly without human supervision.

Stepping onto solid concrete painted with yellow safety lines, Stern stopped before a glass and metal cage. It had always reminded him of a zoo exhibit—the type designed to contain dangerous predators. Indeed, the modified BSL-4 enclosure was designed to contain incredibly dangerous organisms—although usually microscopic in size.

Beyond triple-paned glass, a twin iteration of the ISS-based Robonaut R3A4 was awkwardly conducting an experiment. It was oblivious to the general, moving in slow, jerky motions. Stern tapped the touch monitor hanging outside the cage, and it flickered on. The display indicated that the current telepresence occupant in control of the robot was a student. Data was being piped in from Australia on a feed owned by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Swiping a key card, Stern tapped in a code and peered into a camera to offer biometric confirmation of his identity. The feed to Australia immediately cut off. Without any commands, the Robonaut returned to a default posture. Turning to face Stern, it squared its shoulders and stared blankly ahead.

After tapping a contact number into the monitor, Stern clasped his hands behind his back and rocked onto his heels. Waiting, he watched as a satellite uplink was established with the International Space Station. Stern was growing anxious about the mission, particularly the fact that Kline hadn’t been more helpful, and he was hoping to use this opportunity to see what she would say off the record.

The robot remained as still as a statue.

With telepresence-enabled applications, Stern had always found the moment of animation to be fascinating. Watching a remote human being take control of a robot was like seeing a soul inhabit a body. Yet after a few moments of waiting, he began to feel uneasy. The connection was already made, but nothing was happening. Something must have gone wrong.

And then Stern realized that the Robonaut was watching him.

Dr. Kline was so adept at inhabiting these machines, her control of them so smooth and natural, that she had given no outward indication that she was occupying the Robonaut’s body. Only something in its expressionless camera eyes, some hint of awareness, had triggered a surge of animal adrenaline in Stern.

“Kline,” he said roughly, ignoring the spooky gaze of the subterranean robot.

“General Stern,” replied the low, husky voice of Sophie Kline.

Her words had been transmitted securely from the International Space Station and out of a speaker embedded in the exterior of the enclosure. Each syllable seemed to slither into the metallic depths of the empty high bay laboratory. Stern had to remind himself that he wasn’t talking to an actual robot, just a robotically determined woman currently residing in a free-falling capsule some three hundred miles over his head.

On the ISS, Kline was wearing her head-mounted display and gloves, able to control this Robonaut as easily as any other.

“Why are you contacting me this way?” she asked.

“Security,” responded Stern. “Unlike everything else up there, your telepresence data is encrypted and transmitted as machine instruction. The other voice and data lines are encrypted, but well, you know the Russians.”