It was a peaceful, bucolic scene, except for all the armed Deltans walking around. Deltans had always been armed, if course, but in the past the weapons had been for hunting or for protection against predators like the gorilloids. But in the last year or two, there had been incidents of violence between Deltans.
Marvin and I sat in the middle of the village VR, watching the activity.
The VR was now a completely real-time representation of activity in Camelot, with only one or two blind spots where I hadn’t been able to sneak in a camera.
Marvin waved his glass of cognac in the general direction of a group of young Deltans. He’d picked up the habit from Howard over at Vulcan, and I still got a kick out of it. “So, Camelot has street gangs, now,” he said. “Are they going around hot-wiring teepees?”
I responded with an eyeroll and an exaggerated nod, then answered, “This is pretty recent behavior. I think it might have something to do with population density. They’re getting too crowded, and the tents take up more space, which just makes it worse.”
“Everything has side-effects,” Marvin said with a smile. “Have you noticed the gangs are co-ed?”
“Mm, yeah. I’m sure a sociologist would have something to say about that, but the libraries don’t have much in the way of that particular
discipline.”
Marvin snorted. “Doesn’t strike me as a field of study that theists would approve of, y’know?”
I nodded. “Too bad, though. The last mating season was significantly more violent. Two Deltans ended up dying from injuries. And now we’re getting face-offs between the hexghi. It worries me.”
“You could busterize someone…”
“Not funny, Marv.”
Marvin shrugged. He knew that I’d been staying strictly out of sight since my banishment. I couldn’t take the chance of fallout from a bawbe sighting affecting Archimedes.
After a moment, he added, “On the other hand, Bob, the problems we’re seeing are a result of the Deltan population going up. As problems go, it’s a helluva lot better than the problem you first found them with.”
I smiled, as much at Marvin’s transparent attempt to make me feel better as anything. But he was right. When I found the Deltans, attrition had been slowly killing them off. A rising population was infinitely better, for all the issues it was causing.
“So what do we do?”
“Nothing. At least for the moment. I’m banished, remember?” I shrugged.
“I suppose this is that point where I step away and let the Deltans make their own destiny. I talked about it in the past, but I guess I always expected it to be my choice. Not forced on me.” I gave Marvin a lopsided grin, and he laughed.
“I’m sure most parents feel that way at some point.”
34. Moose
Bill
June 2185
Epsilon Eridani
I could feel the wind on my face as I ran. This was nothing like VR. I controlled Bullwinkle directly—well, sort of—as he ran over the surface of Ragnarök. I was easily holding seventy KPH, the android’s reflexes taking care of the limb coordination at that speed.
The system was still far from perfect. In order to make this work, I had two drones following the moose. Radio comms between Bullwinkle and the drones were relayed via SCUT to me. It was more a proof of concept than a practical solution. But ignoring the Rube Goldberg communications, I now had a physical presence on the surface of the planet.
I slowed down as I approached my target coordinates. As I jogged up to the patch of green, I marveled at the smooth feel of the muscles working under the skin. It occurred to me that the VR experience was missing this level of detail. I’d have to correct that. The VR was coming due for a patch release anyway.
I stopped at the edge of the green. I engaged close-up visual and examined the moss/lichen mix. It had taken some brutally heartless breeding to come up with a mix that could survive in this atmosphere. I’d probably had less than a 1% survival rate on each generation for a while. But the result, in front of me, was justification for all the effort.
The green area was taking in CO2 and putting out oxygen. Only during the day, granted, but I’d bred it to go into a deep dormancy at night, so it used up virtually no oxygen. The green could double in size every year, given enough available space, and I’d been careful to give the individual plantings enough room to grow. I would continue to start new plantings as well, so within ten years I expected to have half the global land surface covered. And within a decade after that, I should have an oxygen level that humans could tolerate.
There were still problems with the atmosphere. Too much CO2, not
enough nitrogen, far too much methane and other organics. But I had projects on the go to ameliorate those issues as well.
I had recently seeded some of the seas with different forms of photosynthetic algae. I regretted that these imports would easily out-compete the native life that was just beginning to get a grip, but I knew that it wouldn’t have survived the introduction of Terran sea life anyway. Humanity was still drastically short of available new colonization targets, and that really was my number one priority.
Within another fifty years, I would have a planet people could walk around on without protection. It was good.
Meanwhile, Bullwinkle had the place to himself, the only quadruped on an empty planet. The seas hadn’t yet connected into oceans, although I wasn’t more than a couple of years away from that. Until then, I could go anywhere on foot, er, hoof. I picked my next inspection site and hit the gas.
* * *
“Okay, that was damned cool!” Garfield closed the recording of the moose session. “Can I try it?”
“That’s a little personal, don’t you think? You should build your own.
Doesn’t have to be a moose, either.”
“Yeah, I was wondering about that, Bill. Why wouldn’t you just go for a human-analogue? Isn’t that the point?”
I waved a hand in the general direction of the video window. “Sure, but trying to handle bipedalism would have just cranked up the feedback requirements by an order of magnitude, while reducing the available space for processing hardware. I’ll get there, don’t you doubt it.”
Garfield nodded and rubbed his chin in thought. “Hmm, I’ve always wanted to fly…”
* * *
Ten new Bobs sat around the table, nursing whatever drink they’d ordered. I was now using the pub as my standard VR. I’d gotten tired of the park, and especially the stupid geese.
I raised a glass to them. “Here’s to taking 82 Eridani back.”
“Back?” Loki grinned at me. “Did we ever actually have it?”
“Just roll with it, Loki. This is rhetoric. It doesn’t have to make sense.”
There were chuckles, and the Bobs raised their glasses in response.
These Bobs were to be the second strike force for 82 Eridani. Our first attempt had ended up, more or less, as a draw. We’d killed all the Medeiri in that system, as far as we knew, but with only Khan left alive, we couldn’t hold the system against the automated weaponry. This time, two of the members of the attack force would drive cargo vessels—I’d loaded up a number of innovations and a crapton of extra busters. There would be no issue of being outnumbered this time around.