My point, I guess, is that I don’t have a lot of history or experience to draw on here. As far as I know, I’m humanity’s first serious emissary to an alien intelligence.
I really hope I don’t fuck this up.
I REMEMBER BEING hot the last time I was down here.
“You could have warned me about this,” Nasha says, as a fine mist of condensation forms around her rebreather. “I could have packed a thermal.”
The last time I was here, of course, it was below zero outside, and I was dressed accordingly. It’s probably the exact same temperature down here now that it was then, but it feels distinctly chilly in nothing but a jumper and a single-layer skin suit.
“Sorry. I’m not any better dressed for this than you are, you know.”
We’ve been underground for most of an hour by now, working our way gradually deeper through a mix of clean-cut tunnels and what appear to be natural seams in the rock. We haven’t yet seen any signs of habitation. We’ve just reached a crossroads, with a smaller, rough-cut tunnel slanting upward, and two larger ones forking off to our right and left. Nasha leans back and plays the light clipped to her shoulder up the smaller one.
“Think that runs to the surface?”
I shrug. “Probably? It’s too small for the big creepers to fit into, so I’d guess it’s either a quick exit for the little ones, or maybe an air shaft.”
“Huh.” She turns to face the two larger tunnels. “Which way?”
I shine my light down one tunnel, then the other. “No idea. They both look pretty ominous to me.”
“Are they talking to you yet?”
“Not yet. Maybe not ever. It’s been two years. The comm gear they took out of Six might have failed by now.”
She sighs. “Interpretive dancing aside, this is gonna be a really short negotiation if we can’t speak to them.” She steps closer to the wall, reaches up, and runs one finger along a shallow groove that spirals down through the stone before petering out a meter or so above the floor. “You think they used machines to cut these tunnels?”
I move over to stand beside her. “I’m not sure they make a distinction between themselves and their machines. The little ones are definitely hybrids. Wouldn’t surprise me if the bigger ones are as well.”
She slides her arm around my waist. “Seriously, Mickey—what happens if they can’t talk to us? Or if they won’t?”
“In that case, I’d imagine we die. That’s kind of why I didn’t want you with me down here, you know?”
She leans the side of her head against mine. “If that’s the way it plays out, we’re all finished, aren’t we? If not now, then whenever the weather turns.”
I sigh. “Yeah, it seems likely. Probably not by freezing, though. If we can’t get the bomb back by asking nicely, Marshall will have to try to get it back by force. No way he just squats in the dome and waits for death.”
“No,” Nasha says. “Waiting for stuff to happen isn’t his thing, is it? You think he could pull it off?”
“You’d know better than me. Our biggest advantage is our lifters, but they’re no use if the creepers stay in their tunnels. We’d need to draw them out into the open, and I don’t know how we’d manage it. As far as fighting down here goes, we’ve got plenty of accelerators, and we can make more, I guess. How many people could we pull together who know how to use them?”
She turns to look at me. “You know how to use an accelerator, babe.”
“Yeah, but…”
And then I see where she’s going.
“He wouldn’t.”
She tilts her head to one side. “You don’t think so?”
“Leaving aside Marshall’s religious objections to multiples, which I’m guessing he’d forget about pretty quickly if the colony’s survival was on the line, every copy of me that he pulls out of the tank takes seventy thousand kcal out of our energy budget. That’s not even considering the calcium and phosphorus and trace minerals. How many of me could he make without bleeding our stores completely dry?”
“He wouldn’t care about bleeding our stores dry,” Nasha says. “If he gets the bomb back, he’s got plenty of power again, right? That means he can run the cycler all day for a month if he wants.”
Which means that all those Mickeys, after saving the colony, would be rewarded by immediately getting converted back into nutrients and trace elements.
“That’s dark,” I say. “You really think Marshall would go down that road?”
“If he thought it would work? Hell, yes.”
“And would it?”
“No idea,” Nasha says. “How many creepers are there down here?”
I think back to the still image Eight sent me just before he died. “Lots. Enough that I don’t think it matters how many Mickeys Marshall could pull out to fight them.”
“He’ll probably try anyway, you know.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Probably.”
She leans into me. “If it comes to that, I guess I’d just as soon go down today with you. Not sure I’d want to live in a colony that would be willing to go that far.”
I take her hand where it rests on my hip and give it a squeeze. She sighs again, straightens, and steps back from the wall.
“I’ve got a good feeling about this one,” she says, and gestures to the tunnel on the right. She pats my shoulder, turns, and goes. After one last glance at that cut in the rock, I follow her down.
<Mickey7>: Hello?
<Mickey7>: I hope you’re reading this. We’ve come to talk.
<Mickey7>: We’re in the tunnels now, hoping to make contact.
<Mickey7>: This is important, for both of us.
<Mickey7>: Hello?
<Mickey7>: Can you hear me?
IT’S MAYBE TWENTY minutes later when we run across our first creeper. We’re in a gradually upsloping tunnel and I’m thinking about maybe turning around and heading back to the last crossroads when it shows up in the wash of Nasha’s shoulder light, maybe twenty meters ahead of us. It’s one of the small ones, milky-white and a meter or so long, with a dozen legs and a pair of wickedly sharp-looking mandibles on its front segment. Nasha curses under her breath and reaches over her shoulder for the linear accelerator, but I cover her hand with mine and whisper, “Wait.”
The creeper rises up until it’s balanced on its last three segments. Its head weaves slowly back and forth, like a cobra preparing to strike.
“You said they don’t care about these things, right?” Nasha whispers, and eases the accelerator over her shoulder until she has it in both hands.
“I said they aren’t independently intelligent,” I say. No point in whispering when the thing plainly knows we’re here. “That doesn’t mean blowing this one to bits wouldn’t be interpreted as hostile, though. Imagine someone coming into your house, walking up to you, and cutting off the tip of your pinkie finger. You wouldn’t call him a murderer, but you’d still be pretty pissed.”
“Okay,” she says. “Fair point.” She lets the accelerator slide back until it hangs from the strap over her shoulder again and lowers her hands to her sides. “So what now?”
“Not sure,” I say. I take a deep breath in, hold it for a moment, then let it back out. The creeper’s head falls still.
I take a slow step forward.
“Mickey?” Nasha says. “What are you doing?”
“This is what we’re here for. I’m making contact.”
I take another step. The creeper stands frozen. Nasha steps up beside me.
“If it comes at us,” she says, “I will end it, diplomacy or no.”
“Fair,” I say, and take two more slow steps.
The creeper drops back onto its legs. I can hear Nasha’s intake of breath, and the clatter of the accelerator coming to bear. It doesn’t come for us, though. Instead it wheels around and starts back up the tunnel. After it’s gone a few meters, its head lifts and twists back to face us.