Isaac Asimov's Aurora Read online

  “Here is the secret of Nova Levis that you should know: It was using those children, those victims of these opportunistic technological infec­tions, to find ways of doing it intentionally with a specific result in mind. They wanted to build hybrids. Hybrids that wouldn’t die, of course. And I was a shareholder, giving them money, along with others, to do the very thing that I believed to be the ultimate abomination, which is the com­plete dehumanization of Homo Sapiens. The cure for all that ailed humankind, they believed, was to cure us of being human.”

  Rega’s eyes closed briefly.

  “The hospice that kept my son was violated and several children stolen, my son among them. We never traced them, though I believe strongly that Nova Levis was involved. It was never proven in court. I didn’t know then why these children were taken. I have a very good idea now. Already invaded by nanotech, their bodies already adapting to the presence of these invasive machine cultures, they were ideal for further experimentation along these lines. They were physiologically ideal for continued augmentation by artificial means.

  “I began to suspect this a few years after the kidnappings. But I thought—naïvely, as it turns out—that it was an experiment doomed to failure. My son was going to die anyway. This merely hastened it. I didn’t want to consider that his suffering would be prolonged. It seems I was wrong about that, too.

  “I never told Nyom. I never told anyone. When the investigations into the kidnappings turned up nothing more than a local ring that was sell­ing orphans to a black market dealer who may or may not have been using them in a slave trade . . . well, I let it drop. I subsequently took control of the Church of Organic Sapiens and have ever since been wag­ing a war against anything that smacks of this kind of subversion of the human essence. My enemies see me as a zealot and a fanatic. Maybe I am. But they never lost a son the way I did. They might feel differently about all this if they had.”

  He licked his lips.

  “Something terrible has been done to those children, Coren. They are being built into something horrible. I don’t know that anything can be done to change it. But perhaps our only hope is complete isolation. They’re beginning to talk that way in the Spacer worlds, though for dif­ferent reasons. The factions are choosing sides on Aurora. The Solarians seem to be simply shutting everyone out. I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know that I have any thought what I would want to do, or want you to do. All I wanted with this was to explain. I just wanted you to know. Maybe understand. But at least to have an explanation.”

  8

  MIA STEPPED into a docking bay that was still cold from its recent exposure to hard vacuum. Across the broad deck bodies lay, many contorted into crablike shapes, others torn open, missing limbs, all of them blackened and encrusted by frozen blood and viscera now thaw­ing. Mist boiled off them. Mia felt herself wince involuntarily; soon enough the smell would be vile.

  Dock crew and regular military stayed back from the biomonitor drones now floating over each corpse under direction of the Spacer recovery technicians. Mia spotted several robots standing by the locks of the salvage boats parked just within the bay doors.

  “Hey.”

  Ros Yalor, her partner, hurried up to her. He was a short man with a wide forehead and thick limbs.

  “Where’s Reen?” she asked.

  “Down at the end of the line, with the Spacer salvage commander.”

  Mia started walking again. Yalor kept up with her easily.

  “What is all this?” Mia asked. “I just got word to come down here, no explanation.”

  “Baleys. Four drones were launched off-schedule three hours ago. Traffic control was challenged, their operator cut the link and left them to the will of gravity, and the patrol ships started taking them out. Aside from full cargoes of contraband, they were carrying . . . these . . .”

  Mia cringed. She did not approve the policy that dictated anything unauthorized be shot down. It resulted in messes like this, a wasteful loss of life.

  Besides, she knew of at least one team of Terran agents that had died this way. Because of that, if nothing else, she had argued to change the policy. But probably because of that, someone higher up blocked any modification.

  “Did they take them all out?” she asked.

  “They’re not being fully forthcoming about that. Three blew cleanly, but there’s a question about the fourth one. It may have entered the atmosphere.”

  “Without traffic control, it probably burned up.”

  Or maybe it got down . . .

  “Point of origin?” she asked.

  “Not certain yet.”

  She gave Yalor a sour look and he shrugged sympathetically. But then they reached Reen and the Spacer commander.

  Reen gave her a brief nod, and returned his attention to the Spacer. Mia did not recognize him. Taller than Reen, silver-white hair drawn back in an elaborate queue tied by blue, green, and gold ribbon, his face glistened with the too-smooth elegance of an older Spacer. Two small spheres hovered just above either shoulder, his remote personal aide links connecting him to his cadre of robots. Mia had seen Spacers with a dozen or more of these devices, called extensions by Spacers, but which Terrans derisively referred to as their “pals.”

  “I believe,” Reen said, carefully, as if he had been trying vainly to make a point for some time, “that a scout ship ought to go down as soon as possible to locate the fourth drone.”

  “If it reached the ground,” the Spacer said in reasonable tones, “it is probably in a million pieces from the impact. What do you want us to recover? DNA?”

  “I want certainty, Captain Delas. If it is in a million pieces, I want verification.”

  “And if it’s not?”

  “Then we may have cause to step up our internal investigation. That would imply a secondary traffic control—”

  “We detected no such signal during the intercession.”

  “—or the presence of a pilot on the drone itself.”

  Captain Delas’s mouth twitched in a sardonic smile. “Rather pathetic pilots, then. None of the other three made the least attempt to evade us.”

  Reen pursed his lips and Mia recognized the frustration. “I wouldn’t be so quick to criticize other pilots, Captain. Your people missed a robot drone and let it get away. How much skill does that take?”

  Now the Spacer’s face changed. Mia saw the sudden tension, the nar­rowing of eyes, and the set his mouth took. Great, she thought. Reen has actually succeeded in pissing off a Spacer. Such talent is wasted here . . .

  “I will bring your suggestion to the attention of my superiors, Com­mander,” Delas said. “Excuse me.”

  Before Reen could protest, the Spacer spun around and strode away, his remotes easily keeping station with him.

  Reen’s lips parted in a brief rictus of frustration. A moment later, he sighed. He looked at Mia. “What do you think?”

  “Sir?”

  Reen pointed at the row of bodies.

  “I’d like to know where the drones originated,” she said. “I understand the piloting signals weren’t traced?”

  “If they were, that—gentleman—won’t tell me.” Reen shook his head. “Delas isn’t bad, just Keresian. At least they don’t mind breathing the same air as Terrans.”

  “Do you think they were Spacer in origin?” Mia asked, startled at the idea.

  “You give me a good reason why they won’t follow up on the one that got away.”

  “We have the authority to do that on our own,” Yalor said. He gave Mia an uncertain look. “Don’t we?”

  “It depends on which party took the initial action,” Reen said. “They shot up the drones, it’s therefore a Keresian operation. Earth cannot usurp their primacy without due cause. Normally, this is just a formality, and permissions are automatic, but Delas is being obdurate.” He shook his head. “Politics.”

  “I suppose it would have been more convenient had we never gotten the Fifty Worlds involved,” Mia said.

&n
bsp; “And you know as well as I that that was impossible,” Reen snapped. “Where are you with your follow-up on Ensign Corf’s arrest?”

  “I’ve been running down communications trees from his comm, but so far all I have is evidence of an active social life. There are three or four names I plan to follow up personally, but at this point I have nothing solid.”

  “You went through his cabin?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you found nothing unusual?”

  “No, sir. He reads more than the average junior officer, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Books?”

  “On disk, sir. Technical updates and contemporary fiction.”

  “Corf was originally a tug controller,” Reen said. “An in-system traffic specialist. What kind of technical updates?”

  “The bulk are applied hyperdrive texts. I checked his record, and he applied twice for drive specialist training. He apparently still maintains an interest.”

  “He didn’t strike me as having the aptitude for something that com­plex. Interesting. But nothing else?”

  Mia found herself studying Reen, looking for cues. She did it auto­matically, the way she had been trained and had learned as a Special Ser­vice agent on Earth. Often she did it unconsciously —until something alerted her that a problem existed.

  “No, sir,” she said blandly. “Nothing unusual.”

  Reen frowned. “Do your follow-ups then, and come see me in six hours. I’m going to try to clear up this territorial misunderstanding.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Reen gave a sharp nod and walked off.

  “Did I miss something just now?” Yalor asked.

  “If you did, you’re not the only one.” Mia watched Reen’s retreating form. “Are you rated on atmospheric piloting?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “Keep yourself unoccupied for the next twelve hours.”

  Mia wrinkled her nose. The smell from the bodies was beginning to be manifest.

  The planetary blockade ring was comprised of nearly thirty stations and over two hundred ships of various sizes. Smaller stations linked together by an array of umbilicals. Access around the entire perimeter was easier by shuttle, though traffic was kept to a minimum for security reasons.

  Mia made her way through two stations before entering the precincts of the materiel and distribution port that serviced this limb of the ring. Here shipments came in from one of the huge supply stations sitting further out, along the system perimeter, which contained fewer but larger stations and nearly a thousand ships from the various polities represented in the embargo. There were six of these supply ports along the planetary ring; given the complex web of interconnections, it proved nearly impossible to police every transaction, delivery, and routing order. Early in her tour here, she suggested borrowing an RI from the Theians to oversee distribution and had nearly found herself transferred off the blockade as a result.

  She passed through three inspection nodes on the way to the quarter-master’s office. Human officers ran scanners over packages, checked tracking numbers, in one instance opened a large container to physically inspect the contents. As large as the facility was, it always seemed cramped. In-transit items piled on shelves, floated in null-g fields, or waited on the decks. The blockade now contained nearly forty-five thousand people in the planetary ring alone. The last time she had checked, another seventy thousand served on the outer, system ring. For the terri­tory they policed, it seemed a paltry force—an entire solar system!—but the material requirements of over one hundred and ten thousand human beings, sustained in space light years from their homeworlds, was an enormous logistical problem. Exacerbated by the contraband traffic, it grew to unmanageable proportions. Simply, it could not be done. The best internal security had managed to do was to slow the illicit move­ment of proscribed goods through the very forces that were here to prevent it in the first place.

  Frustration had become a constant background emotional noise Mia was still trying to learn to live with.

  She rapped on Quartermaster Teg Sturlin’s door. A few seconds later, the hatch slid open and she stepped into a space relatively uncluttered and deceptively spacious.

  “Daventri,” Sturlin said with a small smile. “Please tell me you’ve come to share a glass and talk about retirement.”

  Mia returned the smile. Teg Sturlin was a round-faced, small-eyed woman who seemed to make it a point never to wear a uniform properly. She was neat, almost fastidious, but a collar would always be open or a jacket missing, a belt out of one loop, cuffs rolled a few centimeters too far up the forearms. It was a pose, a conscious rejection of protocol that bordered on insolence.

  Her office was also impossibly tidy for the job she held. To be sure, file disks stacked on her desk, boxes containing questionable items waited for her attention on a long countertop, three datum screens showed a chang­ing array of tasks requiring decisions, and a jacket lay across the back of her chair. “Things” were everywhere, manifestations of her position, but none of it simply piled up. Everything looked orderly. Teg Sturlin, it said, is in control.

  “The glass would be good,” Mia said. “Nonalcoholic.”

  “Oh,” Sturlin groaned in mock disappointment. She went to a samovar and filled a tall, narrow glass with tea. “Duty, I suppose, prevents a proper debauch?”

  “I may be very busy very soon.” She took a sip. “Mmm. What is this?”

  “Black currant. Something new. I added a touch of mint to the ice cubes. Heresy, really, it ought to be hot tea.” She perched on the edge of her desk. “So this is business?”

  Mia pulled one of the paper books from her valise and handed it to Sturlin. “If I had wanted this, how hard would it be to get it here?”

  Sturlin’s eyes widened. “Where did you get it in the first place? Do you have any idea how costly these can be?”

  “No, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.”

  Almost reverently, Sturlin opened the cover. “This is nearly three thousand years old.”

  Mia started. “That?”

  “Hmm? Oh, no, not the physical item.” Sturlin laughed. “No, I shouldn’t say so. This is a facsimile. I meant the novel itself. This vol­ume . . .” She turned pages, rubbed one between thumb and middle finger, brought the book up to her nose, turned it over, peered down the spine from above. “Maybe three hundred years old. Physically, we can make one now that will survive the Omega Point. Well, not really, but you take my meaning. But it’s a minority taste, a fetish almost. I imagine for some people it actually is a fetish. Some of these ancients wrote about sex so much more richly then. I suppose it was the guilt.”

  “Teg. The vector?”

  “Oh, sorry. Yes, I suppose it could be gotten out here. Even likely it was from a Spacer.”

  “I don’t think so. I found four of those. One of them had a book dealer imprint: Omne Mundi Complurium, Antiquities, Lyzig.”

  “I know of it.” She looked up with a quick frown. “I thought the shop in Lyzig had closed down, though.”

  “Maybe it was purchased a while back. What would it cost, what would it take?”

  “If someone had brought this with them in their personal items, it would be in the log.” She closed the book and went around to her chair. “Have to list everything we bring and this would be just a bit too difficult to hide, considering how little personal kit we’re allowed.” She began entering commands on her desk datum. A fourth screen slid up. “I shouldn’t think there would be many people who’d be willing to give up space for something like this when you can access the contents through the public datum . . .”

  “Try Ensign Corf.”

  After a moment, Sturlin shook her head. “No, not him. What are the other three titles?”

  Mia told her and waited, sipping her oddly-flavored tea while Sturlin conducted her search.

  “Well, there are eighty-three people who brought actual bound books with them to the blockade.”
/>   “Really. That many?”

  “I’m surprised myself. Almost all of them are senior staff.”

  “Anyone I should be interested in?”

  “Possibly. Probably. The thing is, I don’t see those titles listed in any of their personal kits. One—Captain Gerigel of the Verbator—has a differ­ent Dickens, but . . .”

  “Okay, any of them likely to buy through the black market?”

  “You mean smuggle one in? Why? It would be cheaper to simply have them shipped in legitimately. Let me backtrack and see if I can find out from the bookdealer if any shipments came to us . . .”

  “That’s an expensive call.”

  “Yes, it is. But I can do it without attracting attention. That’s why you brought this to me, true?”

  “Something along those lines.”

  Sturlin grinned, nodding. “You’ll return the favor one day. When do you need to know?”

  “Now.”

  “Well, then.” She began entering commands again. “This may take a bit longer.” She leaned back. “I don’t see books come through undeclared very often. Rare as it is, it should be fairly easy to track.”

  “Do you ever see them?”

  “As contraband?” Sturlin shook her head. “I’ve seen wine, whiskey, musical instruments once or twice, every description of necessity, clothes, even aphrodisiacs from time to time, but never bound books. Even the disks, mostly they’ll be technical works, how-to texts, a few science texts.” She picked up the book Mia had brought and ran her hand over the cover. “Never this.”