Dead Space by Kali Wallace (e novels to read online .TXT) 📗

Grieg said, over dinner one night, pointing his fork at me as he spoke. “There are a lot of special considerations. I can go over them with you later. I’ve got a free hour.”

It was all I could do not to snatch the fork from his hand and stab it into his eye.

Instead I slunk away to my berth to spend the rest of the evening alone. The Europa team were all as obnoxious as Grieg, and the crew of Mid-AR were an insular and wary bunch. I worried when I interacted with them that I was looking at my future, that years in the darkness and isolation of space would teach me to stare too long, to linger by dark portholes, to treat strangers with open suspicion. I preferred Vanguard’s company. It crawled around my berth as Bug, its praying mantis form, exploring every nook and corner of the little room, while I poked at the programming of its test parameters. It kept interrupting me to share nuggets of information about Grieg’s team: who had plagiarized their thesis, who had finessed test results, who was accepting small bribes from corporate entities to share bits of research. I didn’t really care about the ethically questionable choices of the Europa team, but Vanguard was a shameless gossip and I never felt lonely when it was sharing its findings with me.

I had still not solved the problem by the next morning, when it was once again time to send Vanguard out for a test. Grieg was loudly complaining about a slow pump in the hatch, so neither he nor anybody else noticed when I gave Vanguard a little pat on its triangle head—it had been years since I’d felt ridiculous for such habits, as Vanguard spoke most eloquently in gestures—and whispered, “Go out there and make me proud, kid.”

I went with Grieg and his team to Mid-AR’s overly warm observation room. The exterior lights were on but did little to penetrate the crushing darkness. I took a seat with my PD, prepared to pretend I was learning a great deal from Vanguard’s continuing reticence, and ignored the boastful chatter of the Europa team all around me.

Grieg’s ugly submersible swam into sight first. It was a big, boxy thing, with a round propulsion system that resembled the toothy anus-like mouth of a lamprey; it had two mismatched and awkward lobster-like claws that Grieg claimed were for collecting samples from the underside of Europa’s ice crust. I had asked him—big mistake on my part, instigating a conversation—what sorts of samples the claws were meant to collect, and he had launched into a half-hour lecture on the importance of proper sterilization in sample collection, which had nothing to do with what I was asking and made the assumption that my own scientific experience was approximately on level with a six-year-old starting her first bug collection. I hated to look at his machine, hated how inelegant it was, and hated most of all that it worked. Maybe it could only perform a handful of tasks, but it performed them well.

But it was not jealousy I felt when I watched the bot swimming in neat circles outside the station. It was doubt. Doubt that we had chosen the correct path. Doubt that Vanguard was clever enough to solve the problems I put before it. Doubt that I was smart enough to guide it to those solutions.

Vanguard swam into view a few moments later. It had adopted an eel-like shape for swimming, one of its favorite forms in underwater environments. It rippled elegantly around Grieg’s machine. It was so beautiful and agile, with the smooth metal scales catching and reflecting the station spotlights, giving it the look of a shimmering flame dancing in the darkness.

When it began to curl into a ball, as it had done on every previous test swim, Grieg’s knowing snicker grated my nerves.

“It’s such a cute little pill bug,” he said.

I regretted very much my prior restraint in not stabbing him with a fork. I stared down at my PD, pretending to make notes, until a gasp from one of Grieg’s grad students drew my attention back to the window.

Vanguard was changing shape again. From a tight ball it spread out, first evenly in every direction, then forming sharp angles and straight lines. It swam alongside Grieg’s machine, mimicking its motions—and its shape, I realized, after a few seconds. It was reshaping itself to look exactly like Grieg’s boxy machine, complete with the lobster claws and the lamprey-mouth propulsion system. It was a marvelous facsimile, but it didn’t last, because Vanguard kept changing. It flattened and spread, forming wings like those of a manta ray, but stayed close to the other bot, swimming over it like a rippling cloak. Grieg’s machine clearly had no idea how to react; it tried snatching with its claws, dodging out of the way, turning and rolling, but Vanguard never fell behind. The difference in agility between the two bots had never been more apparent.

Grieg was completely silent until Vanguard began to wrap itself around his bot.

“What the hell is it doing?” he demanded, his voice high and scared.

I didn’t try to answer. I had no idea. Vanguard was now curling around Grieg’s machine like a blanket gently swaddling a child.

“What is it doing?” Grieg said again. “What’s going on?”

Almost as quickly as it had wrapped itself around the other bot, Vanguard released it. It spread its wings again—taking on the shape of a diving bird now, or an arrowhead—and swam away. Grieg’s machine turned a few degrees, disoriented and sputtering.

Then it aimed its nose downward and swam directly into the ocean floor.

Grieg’s team all began talking at once. The bot kicked up silt and gravel when it struck the seafloor, creating a brightly illuminated and nearly opaque cloud outside the window. Through the murk, I could just see the newly angular shape of Vanguard racing away. Toward the mid-ocean ridge and the colony of creatures there. Finally, after