Hayden made an angry gesture. “Don’t be daft! I-”
“No, I am not driving this thing into the hands of the authorities!”
“Then maybe you’re not driving it at all!”
Simon cut in. “Hayden, please!” he said. “Max-hold on.”
Andrew cleared his throat. “We can always calibrate the front console to display holographic readouts without AI signature or assisted connectivity,” he said.
Max turned on him. “What?”
“There is a straight digital feed coming from the external sensors. I can plug in a nice, dumb interpreter to throw that up on a display right in front of you. It’ll be just like an open window. And meanwhile Ryan and I can decouple the AIs, dumb them down enough to get their readouts, too, without even a whisper to the satellites.”
Hayden rolled his eyes, “Fine. Rebuild the whole damn ship, why don’t you?”
Simon sighed. “Hayden. Is it possible?”
He gave Simon a withering look. “Probable,” he admitted with great reluctance. “But I’ll tell you one thing: it’s impossible to do without being inside the Spector.” He tossed back the rest of his heavily laced coffee. “I suppose Andrew and I could start on some preliminary programming,” he muttered, “but…goddamn it.”
Max almost sneered. “And I gather you won’t have to fire up any of your AI buddies to do that,” he said. “One little signal and-”
“You don’t need to explain my work to me,” he snapped. “I designed them. I know what they are capable of.”
Samantha shifted in her chair. “Excuse me,” she said. “If the AIs can’t be used, how can I read the data from the bio-devices feeding info into the main frame medical console?”
Max gave her a sidelong look. “What did you do when you didn’t have the assistance of bio-devices,” he asked her, “years ago? I presume everything was just fine back then.”
She blinked at him in surprise, started to say something, and then stopped herself. A moment later she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. Her mouth was an angry line.
Simon tried to bring them all back together. “Guys,” he said. “We have to operate with minimal AI intervention. That’s all there is to it. We have to operate with our gut and do things as we used to when we were kids. We have gotten used to AI-assisted devices, but the threat to the whole operation and to ourselves is too great if we’re discovered.”
“Simon is correct,” Nastasia said, her accent broad and exotic. “You remember, the quarantine deadline was extended by two weeks? ‘Logistical problems,’ UNED told us.” She shook her head. “No. The truth is, fourteen different teams of scientists and explorers broke away and tried to hide in the ice after the quarantine was announced-some of them under the ice, in the tunnels and caverns they created. They were all caught-as far as we know. But the South American team was the last to be detected. They had managed to stay free for three weeks longer than anyone else, because they used no AIs-none at all.”
Hayden humphed again. “They also didn’t have an amphibious vehicle with no windows, trying to navigate from ocean to ice three hundred feet below the surface,” he said. “But…we’ll manage. Somehow.”
And that’s as close to unanimity as we’re going to get today, Simon told himself. Better end this on as good a note as I can. He stood up and said, “All right, then. Let’s talk about the days ahead.”
Ryan took that as his cue to stand up and pass out yet another set of forged documents and fake passports. “As you all know, we have to get to Valdivia. From there, the journey will be a little rough. According to the data Simon gave me, the Munro is currently entering the Straits of Magellan, so once we make it to Valdivia, we will have to take a short flight to Puerto Williams.”
Max frowned at that. “That route is very carefully monitored by the Chilean military,” he said. “Trust me, I speak from firsthand experience. Nothing flies, floats, or swims in or out of Puerto Williams that the local military doesn’t see and approve of. But then,” he allowed himself a very small smile. “Luckily, I have some-let’s call it experience with these fellows; we’ll be fine-if we’re careful.”
“It’s not this route that I’m worried about,” Ryan said looking at the holographic image of the vessel.
“It’s the entry into Antarctica.” Max already knew where he was going with that.
“Precisely.”
“Are we sure there is no other was to enter the continent besides this Station 35?” Hayden asked.
For a moment Max was caught by surprise, as Simon had not elaborated beyond what they discussed before.
Simon tried to explain the situation so that the whole team was in sync, including Max. “Our first point of entry will be a location known as Station 35, which Nastasia knows intimately and will describe it to us. Our coordinates are deeper into the continent, and we will need to enter from inside the water to avoid detection. Station 35 is our only option for a stealth entry during this quarantine.”
Nastasia nodded to Simon in recognition and began to describe their entry point in further detail. Station 35 was an experimental program by a special German scientific team that had dug tunnels from the top of the ice shelf to approximately three hundred feet below. Their mission had been to study possible habitation and logistics for future expeditions, and so they had developed an extensive underground network dug into the ice. During the process they had hit a fissure that had later flooded from the melting of ice, and thus the project had been evacuated. This entry through the channels of water was where Nastasia would lead them toward their coordinates with the Spector.
Simon looked at his group with a mixture of amusement and concern as they listened to Nastasia. They still handled the papers like they were alien objects. They had become so used to their electronic helpmates, their holograms, and pads that they were visibly uncomfortable with paper and the printed word.
“Guys,” he said, trying to sound gentle. “We have to get used to this. The way things were done in the past.” He weighted the envelope in his hand and smiled sadly. “This is the way it will be for us from now on.”
“Welcome to the Stone Age,” Hayden muttered.
“Or the age of tissue, anyway,” Andrew said, trying to make a joke.
No one laughed.
PUERTO WILLIAMS, CHILE
8:32 AM
The evening fog that filled Puerto Williams to the brim made it impossible to see more than ten feet in any direction. Which is not a bad thing, Simon told himself. There’s not a chance of being seen by anyone…or anything. They would each be able to approach the harbor without being noticed, and the frigid air was an eerie reminder that they were getting very close to the icy continent of Antarctica.
Close, Simon said to himself as he moved from one street to the next, following the route he had memorized hours before. So close. He knew the others were feeling more and more apprehensive-he couldn’t blame them-but Simon could feel no fear. His father was closer than ever, and the hope in him was almost overwhelming.
He knew that the others had their own reasons for being here: Hayden wanted his ship back; Andrew wanted to prove his tech; Sam was here to try and protect them all. But Simon had not forgotten the one and only reason he had set all of this into motion: to find his father. To save him. To bring him home safe.
Simon was the first to arrive at Doc A-67. The hollow sound of his boots on the wooden slats was far too loud to suit him; he felt like a giant tromping on a drum skin. His father’s journal was a constant weight against his heart. As he walked closer to the water’s edge, he noticed an old freighter looming out of the sea-a black-painted cargo vessel with two huge, dormant smokestacks, dark and silent since the vessel’s energy conversion. Until all this had begun, Simon had been unaware of how completely sea travel had changed in the last fifty years, with new propulsion systems and new fuel economies. Still, a seaworthy hull was a seaworthy hull, and every ship that could stay afloat was still working, one way or another, including this barnacle-encrusted behemoth buried in the fog. He strained to find its name and registry number painted on the bow, and almost gasped when he found it.