“Sheehy.” A woman appeared on screen for a moment, then disappeared off frame. I got an impression of thick red hair, tied into a ponytail.
“Dr. Sheehy? This is Howard Johansson, returning your call.”
Her disembodied voice drifted back to the phone. “Oh, thanks for getting back to me. Colonel Butterworth wanted me to call you if we had news. We have news.”
I waited for a moment. “And…”
She returned and grinned into the video. “Sorry. I love the drama.
Anyway, we have a possible treatment for the vine.”
“Which is…” Honestly, Sheehy, keep this up and I’ll drop a rock on you.
“Bunnies.”
“I’m going to drop a rock on you.”
Dr. Sheehy laughed. I couldn’t help noticing that she had a great laugh.
Also freckles, dimples when she laughed… I mentally slapped myself. This could go exactly nowhere.
She disappeared again, then returned holding a small section of plant.
“Turns out rabbits not only are able to eat the vine, they seem to be attracted to it. I think the toxin is just added flavoring to them. Bad for the vine. Good for us.”
“Right, but we still have to expend a lot of effort to harvest the vine and get it to the rabbits. Could just as easily incinerate it.”
“No, no.” Dr. Sheehy shook her head. “Rabbits are self-replicating.
Aggressively so. You may have heard…” She grinned at me. “And they make great stew.”
I smiled back at her. There was a certain poetry in the solution. Granted, we’d be unleashing a Terran scourge, even if a fluffy one, on an unsuspecting planet. But Vulcan attacked first. “Have you asked Butterworth about it?”
“He says council will have to approve. But they’re feeling a little humble these days. He thinks he can ram it through.”
“Well, all righty then.”
Dr. Sheehy paused for a moment before continuing. “You heard about the bronto attack yesterday?”
“Well, attack is not the right word. They tried to eat the fence again.”
“Yes, and we had to kill one that had figured out that he could just avoid the electrical wires. That’s one smart bronto. IQ up in the two, maybe three range.” Dr. Sheehy smiled at her own joke. “Anyway, before they airlifted the carcass away from the clearing, someone got the bright idea to cut off a big hunk of meat. It passed toxicology tests, and it passed the barbeque test.
So now bronto is on the menu. You may find your kudzu sales dropping.”
“Whoa! You were not supposed to be hunting for sustenance until the impact studies are completed. Is the council good with this?”
Dr. Sheehy gave me an unbelieving look. “Try to picture the council telling twenty thousand people that they have to eat kudzu instead of steak, when steak is lumbering around in plain view every day. Can you say lynching?”
“Yeah, okay, point taken. Well, I still have the Romulan colony market.
They don’t have bronto.”
Dr. Sheehy grinned and shrugged, then disconnected.
To be honest, this was good news from my point of view. The more the colonies could do themselves, the less I had to do. I could even conceivably take off in a decade or so.
And on that subject, the GUPPI-controlled surveillance system wasn’t going to build itself. Back to work.
26. Selling Poseidon
Riker
December 2175
Sol
“You seem incapable of preventing them from striking at will.” Ambassador Gerrold seemed to be enjoying the situation, which made his attempts at portraying anger unconvincing. I’d ignored his jibes in the past, but I was getting tired of it.
“And what have you been able to do, Ambassador? Found the source of those hacking attempts yet? Made any arrests? Got any suggestions?
Anything besides endless carping?” I exchanged glares with the ambassador for a moment, then moved on. “We’re working on replacing the donut, but it’ll still be a few months. Plus whatever time it takes to get the farm regrown. There will be short rations for a while, but no starvation.” I had a sudden inspiration, one of those mid-action moments, and added,
“VEHEMENT got lucky this time. We stop most of their attempts before they get anywhere. They aren’t really that smart.” It wasn’t true, but baiting them might force some kind of reaction. VEHEMENT depended on fear, and being publicly dissed might provoke a response.
Before anyone could comment, I turned off my audio, effectively giving up the floor. I turned to Guppy without moving my avatar. “Put everything we have on communications monitoring. I want to know who reacts to my words, and how. I want every byte accounted for.”
Guppy nodded and went into command fugue.
The session moved on to the emigration question. The Maldives and Micronesia had pretty much cemented their claim on Poseidon—partly due to lack of interest by the other enclaves. They needed about six hundred more people from other enclaves to form a full colony-ship complement, but they were having a hard time making that. No one wanted to split off from their group, especially to go to a planet so, um, specialized. It was attractive to islanders; to everyone else, not so much.
At the same time, other groups were trying to lay claim to the semi-completed ships for emigration to Vulcan or Romulus. The whole thing was acrimonious and mostly information-free.
[No detectable increase in Earthside traffic. One anomalous communication to spaceside]
Okay, that was something. “Source? Destination?”
[Source New Zealand, although not near any population centers.
Destination Homer]
“Uh, excuse me?”
[It was a tight-beam signal. It would not have been detectable except for a chance alignment with one of our drones on cleanup duty]
Oh. Shit. That just did not make sense. Why would Homer be helping them? Why would he be sabotaging his own project? Unless he didn’t have a choice…
Suddenly Homer’s change in personality took on an ominous cast. It was very un-Homer-like. The complete cessation of jokes, the withdrawal from the rest of us…
Perhaps because it wasn’t Homer.
I sent a message to Charles, requesting a physical meet-up.
27. Luke Returns
Bob
March 2178
Delta Eridani
I walked through the village VR, watching the activity. There had been improvements in the six years since I’d been kicked out. I had enough hidden cameras and camouflaged drones around the village now to feed a real-time VR. No more recorded scenes.
Archimedes had finally started taking my tent design seriously. A few other couples copied the result, and now there were a half-dozen pretty good facsimiles of teepees scattered through the village. It was the dry season, but once the rains started up again, I expected this innovation to increase in popularity.
I was trying to ignore a couple engaging in some very public displays of affection when I received a ping. From Luke!
I responded and he popped in. “Hey, Bob. Long time.”
I grinned and slapped him on the shoulder. “Luke! Good to see you, buddy.”
Luke appeared momentarily surprised. We’ve never been physically demonstrative like that. In fact, Original Bob was a little standoffish in terms of physical contact. Luke got over it quickly, though, and grinned back at me.