Chapter 27
"His name is Cain," Simon explained a moment later, in the living room. "He's an early prototype, built by the US military and the Faith, about twenty years before they even got started on Noah. He was sent out as a kind of trailblazer, to get this planet ready for the main event."
"Wow, I knew the Faith had been working with the US government for a while, but wasn't this a bit before their time?" Diana tried to put herself in the Cradle's shoes at the time. It would have been about the year 2010 on Earth, when they were just getting started. Not that she knew much about the membership of the group. The Faith database was more about their beliefs than their founding.
Simon nodded. "It was right when they were getting started. Noah thinks that might be why Cain crashed, instead of landing safely. Well, that and the asteroid field. Noah nearly got torn to pieces by it on his way here, and he thinks the same thing might have damaged Cain. He assumed Cain had been shredded, but I guess he made it here."
"Is there any chance he's still, uh, alive?" Diana glanced over at the simulator room, at the image still frozen on the screen in there. She'd been about to say intact, but it didn't seem right for someone who might be almost as advanced as Noah.
"There's no way to know yet. Noah sent out a bunch of signals from the flyer before bringing it back, but he didn't get any responses from Cain. It could be he's in pieces, or his transmitter has just been busted like Noah's was during the EMP thing. He's fueling up a plane to fly out there right now." His expression sobered a bit. "Wow. Fifty or so years all alone? Blind and mute like Noah was? I'm glad it was an AI who went through it. They can just go into sleep mode if they start getting bored."
Suppressing a surge of jealousy, Diana tried to keep her tone even. "I take it you'll be on the plane?"
Simon stared at her for a moment before nodding. "Me and Steve. He's a pretty good engineer by now, and we'll need that. How did you know?"
Diana shrugged. "You're about the only person on the planet who knows what Noah's programming looks like. It makes sense he'd send you to check up on his brother. Especially since Noah’s flying drones don't have fingers like you do."
He only chuckled, and then grimaced. "I'm not looking forward to being in the air again, believe me. And I'll have to fake being some kind of ace pilot in front of Steve. Believe me, you're not missing much."
He was lying and they both knew it, but she appreciated the attempt to spare her feelings. "What about that programming Easter Egg in the historical database? You seemed pretty set on cracking it."
"It's not a problem," he said confidently. "I wrote a program to make some progress while I'm away. I should only be gone a few days at most anyway." He reached out and squeezed her shoulder with his left hand. "Think about it, Diana! Another AI like Noah? I mean not as advanced as him, but still. Noah's programming was based on Cain's. It'd be like a modern human meeting Galileo, or Aristotle, or Edison. And if he is salvageable, think how helpful he could be! With the right upgrades and patches, he could be another Noah to us! You should have heard Noah talk about it. He's about as excited as it's physically possible for him to be!"
Diana spread her hands as if to stem the flow of information. "I get that," she said slowly, "but what's the hurry? That crash site has been there for decades. Why is Noah rushing now, all of a sudden?"
"He's not, exactly. This was his idea, but it's Adam who wants the whole plane flight to happen. He figured that contact with another AI should be a formal event. He wants to 'meet' Cain, if he's still alive, in his formal capacity as President of New Eden. Steve and I are just being sent ahead as tech support. Steve to check for any physical damage, and I'm there to look for programming glitches."
She supposed that made some sense. It was good that Noah's plane design had VTOL capabilities. There wouldn't be a runway at their destination. Also, this plane would be fully fueled this time. She still had nightmares about her failure to land the last one. "Uh, when do you have to leave?"
"Tonight," he said apologetically. "It'll take most of the night to get out there, and Adam wants us to get started on the crashed plane first thing in the morning. I won't get much sleep on the way, that's for sure."
Diana thought back to the stories she'd been told as a child, about Noah's journey here, and his whole reason for existing in the first place. "What was this Cain programmed to do, exactly? Obviously not start a human civilization, and that crash site isn't big enough for many cell samples I'd bet."
"No, but he was storing seeds and bacteria," Simon pulled out a tablet with what looked like a manifest. "According to Noah, Cain was supposed to get the terraforming process started, seeding the oceans and rivers with life. If he'd been able to, we would be a lot further along by now. We might even have fish swimming in the ocean at this point. Cain was also supposed to scout the whole planet, with drones like Noah uses, for any signs of alien life."
"And if he found any?"
Simon gave her a distressed look. "He was supposed to destroy any aliens he found, intelligent or otherwise. It makes sense, in a sick kind of way. He was built by the US military, remember. They wanted this world for themselves, and if they had to take it by force, so be it."
Diana growled. "I guess we're lucky he never got the chance to find anything to kill. And that there isn't anything to find. The closest we got to aliens was our own mutated algae."
"Don't be so sure. Remember, we haven't searched the whole planet ourselves yet, and there are some very deep oceans that could be hiding aquatic civilizations. For all we know, there could be entire cities buried deep beneath our very feet! A whole species of advanced beings who don't know or care that we're even here!"
He sounded so sincere that she gave him a concerned look, but then he broke out laughing. "I'm just kidding. If there was intelligent life here, or any life at all, we would have seen signs of it by now."
She smiled with a little relief. "If you're such a storyteller, maybe you should talk to Rhys about writing some story or other for his newsletter. The one for the kids," she clarified quickly. "The other one won't be ready for years yet, he thinks." Rhys had started foraying into children's entertainment recently, with mostly positive results.
He shook his head. "I write machine code, not prose. It would be like putting a desert turtle in the ocean and expecting it to swim. But thanks for the thought anyway."
He stood abruptly. "I should start packing. Noah's putting some rations on the plane, but do you mind if I take some of that trail mix we put together? It's gotta be better than the MREs he's programmed to make."
Diana nodded slowly. It was mostly greens like peas and beans, with raisins sprinkled in. The last ingredient had been expensive, since Argent was the only one with the greenhouse space to grow lots of grapes. Peanuts were also difficult grow and harvest, but there were some in there, too.
Half an hour later he was ready to head out, and she hugged him goodbye. "Be careful out there, Simon. You don't have the best history with planes, but at least this time it won't be some desperate flight away from disaster or towards it."
He put on a brave face and nodded. "I'll be back before you know it. Just don't finish Dracula without me, ok?"
Diana smiled. They'd been reading the original Bram Stoker book together, since it was in the vein of the fiction books they'd enjoyed as kids. It was also much more adult than anything they'd been allowed to read back then. It was good, so far as she'd gotten with it. "No promises."
Giving a fake look of hurt, he bowed and closed the door.
-.-
By morning, the plane was approaching its destination. Diana hadn't gotten much sleep, but she went to the city center anyway, after making sure she looked presentable. She had to keep up appearances.
Most of the first class was there, watching the screens set up in the lobby of the city's central structure. Adam and Sarah lived off to one side, but this building functioned as the seat of government so far. Like a combination of the White House and Congress, she supposed. She was greeted by Naomi and Abby almost immediately, and could see Bez, John, Tycho, Adam and a bunch of others in the crowd. They were all whispering excitedly at what Simon and Steve might find out there.
Diana put on a brave face when asked what she thought, parroting what Simon would say here. This was an exciting opportunity, seeing Noah's predecessor and what he must have gone through, etc, etc. Not that it was entirely wrong, but it wasn't what she cared about. Why was Adam even allowing this to be televised? It wasn't the official function he was preparing for. Maybe he'd caved to public pressure in this case. After all, there were a lot of interested parties, now that word had gotten out.
Diana suspected Simon had done that. Not even intentionally, she guessed. He was just too excited to think about what Adam might want. She'd have to have a talk with him about that when he got back. She didn't care in the slightest what her 'president' wanted, but she at least had the sense to pretend that she did.
"We're on approach," Simon's voice filtered through the camera feed, and the monitor showed the crash site up ahead. The plane slowed clumsily—she could have done a lot better—and came to an awkward hover near it. Then it lowered itself onto a relatively flat stretch of rock just south of the site.
The feed switched to the helmet cams worn by Simon and Steve. They had geared up and exited the plane, jumping down onto the ground. Simon did a small test with his weight. "The ground is different here. It looks like rock from above, but it's almost spongy in texture at the very surface. It gets harder a little further down. Are you there, Tycho?"
Diana looked to her left. One of Adam's aides handed Tycho a headset, and he put it on. "I can hear you, Simon. It looks like you're standing on New Eden's version of gravel. You're higher up there, so it's probably normal volcanic stone that has been weathering for a few thousand years now. Don't worry, it can support the plane's weight easily."
"If you say so." Simon's camera tilted up to look at the crash site again, and he got moving. "Drone footage showed a ramp of some kind on the near end here. Noah's schematics showed it there, too. His drone sent the signal that's supposed to open it, but nothing happened. I guess we have to cut our way in."
Together, they lit up modified acetylene torches with their own O2 sources, and got to work on the door. Simon explained where they were cutting and why as he did so. According to the schematics, when Cain's ship crashed, it would have locked itself down, and he had to cut through a series of struts designed to keep it in place. "It's strange, though," he added thoughtfully. "There's nothing here keeping this closed. It's not like the weight of the ship is pressing down on it or something. It's like someone cleaned this place up. I know Cain had drones like Noah does, but then where are they?"
After a few more minutes, there was a grinding noise and the ramp slid down onto the ground. It was dark inside, despite the rising sun, so both guys turned on their headlamps. Silently willing him to be careful, Diana tightened her hands into fists.
The lights swept the inside of the ship, which looked like a scaled-down version of the schematics of the Hail Mary. They came up empty, right from the start. "Uh, guys? There's nothing here. The ship's internal systems are intact, if unpowered, but all the cargo is gone. I don't see any of Cain's core drives, or any bacterial storage, or any seeds. He's just gone!"
Noah's caretaker drone tilted his head slightly. "If Cain survived the crash, his protocol would be the same as mine. He would have started searching for minerals close to the surface, just as I did. He would have set up a mining operation, and moved his technology there. Are you picking up any signals other than the ones from my drones?"
Simon shook his head, and the camera fluctuated because of it. "Nothing. Could you send out one of the flyers, with a battery pack? If Steve can get the ship's computer back online, we might be able to see where he went."
Noah acknowledged his request, and a few minutes later Simon and Steve were hard at work in the ship's control center. Diana could tell that Simon was letting Steve take the lead, and the younger boy was really in his element. The camera fluctuated again. "We've really come a long way from that old settlement, haven't we?"
Steve smiled, but didn't look away from his work. "I guess so."
It took some effort, but eventually they were able to get the computer running again. Simon plugged in what he called an interpreter, and data from the ship streamed across the tablet he was carrying. "Ok. I think I have the log here. Transmitting it to you now."
One of the monitors here in Greater Harmony lit up with the information. Noah studied it as it came in, and then nodded. "Got it. According to this, Cain detected a mountain range forty-five kilometers southeast of his landing site. Typical for him, calling it a landing and not a crash. It says he was planning on going there to set up his core drives, just like I did to the west of Greater Harmony." He looked over at the feed from Simon. "Care to take another trip? This will be a much shorter one."
On Steve's feed, Simon gave an exaggerated look of patience. "Just call us a modern-day Lewis and Clark. Come on, Steve." He helped the other to his feet and they retreated from the ship. "Noah, make sure you let me know when you send someone out here to salvage this thing, ok? I could use a lot of the computer equipment on board. With the President's permission, of course," he added hastily.
Adam laced his fingers together as the crowd rustled amusement in his direction. "I think I can safely say that your company has salvage rights here," he admitted with a dignified tone.
Once they took off again, Simon shut off his helmet cam and the feed switched to the plane's cameras again. Everyone was probably assuming he was at the controls. What he was telling Steve, Diana couldn't say. Maybe he was just saying he trusted Noah's remote piloting skills. Whatever it was, Steve was a good kid. Man, really. He trusted Simon, and liked working with him.
The group broke for half an hour as the plane navigated its way southeast, still using its VTOL turbines in hover mode because of the rocky terrain. Sarah and a few of her hired helpers brought out refreshments, and the crowd took in a little breakfast at her urging. On one of the monitors, Noah brought up an orbital picture of the plane, taken from the small satellite still up there. It was little more than a communications and camera node after all the rest of the Hail Mary had been sent down, but it was able to give them a close view of the plane as it moved. Noah superimposed a general map of the area on top of it, with a red dot indicating where the plane was going.
"I think I see it up there," Simon's voice filtered through again, a little later. "It's processed metal, glittering in the sun. A lot like your core drives, Noah. We're still too far out to get a good look though. Wait, what's that?"
On the plane's camera, two tiny points rose up into the air, seeming to disappear above the metal structure. The orbital picture didn't show anything, but it was way too high up to see. On the plane's camera though, Diana could see yellow-white plumes behind those two points, as they reappeared. Memories flashed through her, of combat simulations back home. She knew that yellow-white glow: those were missile trails!
"Simon, get out of there!" She screamed over at Tycho, hoping to be heard through his headset.
On the screen, the missiles slammed into the plane, and all the local feeds went dark.
